I
It is difficult not to be depressed by the irrational radicalism of
contemporary educational theory. It would seem that the workers in the
higher ranges of educational activity should, of all men, preserve a
balanced judgment and a sane outlook, and yet there is probably no other
human calling that presents the strange phenomenon of men who are called
experts throwing overboard everything that the past has sanctioned, and
embarking without chart or compass upon any new venture that happens to
catch popular fancy. The non-professional character of education is
nowhere more painfully apparent than in the expression of this tendency.
The literature of teaching that is written directly out of
experience--out of actual adjustment to the teaching situation--is
almost laughed out of court in some educational circles. But if one
wishes to win the applause of the multitude one may do it easily enough
by proclaiming some new and untried plan. At our educational gatherings
you notice above everything else a straining for spectacular and bizarre
effects. It is the novel that catches attention; and it sometimes seems
to me that those who know the least about the educational situation in
the way of direct contact often receive the largest share of attention
and have the largest influence.
It is in the attitude of the public and of a certain proportion of
school men toward elementary teaching and the elementary teacher that
this destructive criticism finds its most pronounced expression.
Throughout the length and breadth of the land, the efficiency of the
public school and the sincerity and intelligence of those who are giving
their lives to its work are being called into question. It is
discouraging to think that years of service in a calling do not qualify
one to speak authoritatively upon the problems of that calling, and
especially upon technique. And yet it is precisely upon that point of
technique that the criticisms of elementary education are most drastic.
Our educational system is sometimes branded as a failure, and yet this
same educational system with all its weaknesses has accomplished the
task of assimilating to American institutions and ideals and standards
the most heterogeneous infusion of alien stocks that ever went to the
making of a united people. The elementary teacher is criticized for all
the sins of omission that the calendar enumerates, and yet this same
elementary teacher is daily lifting millions of children to a plane of
civilization and culture that no other people in history have even
thought possible. I am willing to admit the deficiencies of American
education, but I also maintain that the teachers of our lower schools do
not deserve the opprobrium that has been heaped upon them. I believe
that in education, as in business, it would be a good thing if we saw
more of the doughnut and less of the hole. When I hear a prominent
educator say that we must discard everything that we have produced thus
far and begin anew in the realm of educational materials and methods, I
confess that I am discouraged, especially when that same authority is
extremely obscure as to the materials and methods that we should
substitute for those that we are now employing. I heard that statement
at a recent meeting of the Department of Superintendence, and I heard
other things of like tenor,--for example, that normal schools were
perpetuating types of skill in teaching that were unworthy of
perpetuation, that the observation of teaching was valueless in the
training of teachers because there was nothing that was being done at
the present time that was worthy of imitation, that practice teaching in
the training of young teachers is a farce, a delusion, and a snare.
Those very words were employed by one man of high position to express
his opinion of contemporary practices. You cannot pick up an educational
journal of the better sort, nor open a new educational book, without
being brought face to face with this destructive criticism.
I protest against this, not only in the name of justice, but in the name
of common sense. It cannot be possible that generations of dealing with
immature minds should have left no residuum of effective practice. The
very principle of progress by trial and error will inevitably mean that
certain practices that are possible and helpful and effective are
perpetuated, and that certain other processes that are ineffective and
wasteful are eliminated. To repudiate all this is the height of folly.
If the history of progress shows us anything, it shows us that progress
is not made by repudiating the lessons of experience. Theory is the last
word, not the first. Theory should explain: it should take successful
practice and find out what principles condition its efficiency; and if
these principles are inconsistent with those heretofore held, it is the
theory that should be modified to suit the facts, not the facts to suit
the theory.
My opponents may point to medicine as a possible example of the opposite
procedure. And yet if there is anything that the history of medical
science demonstrates, it is that the first cues to new discoveries were
made in the field of practice. Lymph therapy, which is one of the
triumphs of modern medicine, was discovered empirically. It was an
accident of practice, a blind procedure of trial and success that led to
Jenner's discovery of the virtues of vaccination. A century passed
before theory adequately explained the phenomenon, and opened the way to
those wider applications of the principle that have done so much to
reduce the ravages of disease.
The value of theory, I repeat, is to explain successful practice and to
generalize experience in broad and comprehensive principles which can be
easily held in mind, and from which inferences for further new and
effective practices may be derived. We have a small body of sound
principles in education to-day,--a body of principles that are
thoroughly consistent with successful practice. But the sort of
principles that are put forth as the last words of educational theory
are often far from sound. Personally I firmly believe that a vast amount
of damage is being done to children by the application of fallacious
principles which, because they emanate from high authority, obtain an
artificial validity in the minds of teachers in service.
I cannot understand why, when an educational experiment fails
lamentably, it is not rejected as a failure. And yet you and I know a
number of instances where certain educational experiments that have
undeniably reversed the hypotheses of those who initiated them are
excused on the ground that conditions were not favorable. That, it seems
to me, should tell the whole story, for precisely what we need in
educational practice is a body of doctrine that will work where
conditions _are_ unfavorable. We are told that the successful
application of mooted theories depends upon the proper kind of teachers.
I maintain that the most effective sort of theory is the sort that
brings results with such teachers as we must employ in our work. It
would be a poor recommendation for a theory of medicine to say that it
worked all right when people are healthy but failed to help the sick.
Nor is it true that good teachers can get good results by following bad
theory. They often obtain the results by evading the theory, and when
they live up to it, the results faithfully reflect the theory, no matter
how skillful the teaching.