Fundamentally, there is, I believe, no discrepancy, no inconsistency,
between the scientific spirit in education and what may be called the
philosophical spirit. As I have suggested, there are always two dangers
that must be avoided: the danger, in the first place, of thinking of the
old as essentially bad; and, on the other hand, the danger of thinking
of the new and strange and unknown as essentially bad; the danger of
confusing a sound conservatism with a blind worship of established
custom; and the danger of confusing a sound radicalism with the blind
worship of the new and the bizarre.
Let me give you an example of what I mean. There is a rather bitter
controversy at present between two factions of science teachers. One
faction insists that physics and chemistry and biology should be taught
in the high school from the economic point of view,--that the economic
applications of these sciences to great human arts, such as engineering
and agriculture, should be emphasized at every point,--that a great deal
of the material now taught in these sciences is both useless and
unattractive to the average high-school pupil. The other faction
maintains that such a course would mean the destruction of science as an
integral part of the secondary culture course,--that science to be
cultural must be pure science,--must be viewed apart from its economic
applications,--apart from its relations to the bread-and-butter problem.
Now many of the advocates of the first point of view--many of the people
that would emphasize the economic side--are animated by the spirit of
change and unrest which dominates our latter-day civilization. They wish
to follow the popular demand. "Down with scholasticism!" is their cry;
"Down with this blind worship of custom and tradition! Let us do the
thing that gives the greatest immediate benefit to our pupils. Let us
discard the elements in our courses that are hard and dry and barren of
practical results." Now these men, I believe, are basing their argument
upon the fallacy of immediate expediency. The old is bad, the new is
good. That is their argument. They have no sheet anchor out to windward.
They are willing to drift with the gale.
Many of the advocates of the second point of view--many of the people
who hold to the old line, pure-science teaching--are, on the other hand,
animated by a spirit of irrational conservatism. "Down with radicalism!"
they shout; "Down with the innovators! Things that are hard and dry are
good mental discipline. They made our fathers strong. They can make our
children strong. What was good enough for the great minds of the past is
good enough for us."
Now these men, I believe, have gone to the other extreme. They have
confused custom and tradition with fundamental and eternal principles.
They have thought that, just because a thing is old, it is good, just as
their antagonists have thought that just because a thing is new it is
good.
In both cases, obviously, the scientific spirit is lacking. The most
fundamental of all principles is the principle of truth. And yet these
men who are teachers of science are--both classes of them--ruled
themselves by dogma. And meantime the sciences are in danger of losing
their place in secondary education. The rich promise that was held out a
generation ago has not been fulfilled. Within the last decade, the
enrollment in the science courses has not increased in proportion to the
total enrollment, while the enrollment in Latin (which fifteen years ago
was about to be cast upon the educational scrap heap) has grown by leaps
and bounds.
Now this is a type of a great many controversies in education. We talk
and theorize, but very seldom do we try to find out the actual facts in
the case by any adequate tests.
It was the lack of such tests that led us at the University of Illinois
to enter upon a series of impartial investigations to see whether we
could not take some of these mooted questions out of the realm of
eternal controversy, and provide some definite solutions. We chose among
others this controversy between the economic scientists and the pure
scientists. We took a high-school class and divided it into two
sections. We tried to place in each section an equal number of bright
and mediocre and dull pupils, so that the conditions would be equalized.
Then we chose an excellent teacher, a man who could approach the problem
with an open mind, without prejudice or favor. During the present year
he has been teaching these parallel sections. In one section he has
emphasized economic applications; in the other he has taught the class
upon the customary pure-science basis. He has kept a careful record of
his work, and at stated intervals he has given both sections the same
tests. We propose to carry on this investigation year after year with
different classes, different teachers, and in different schools. We are
not in a hurry to reach conclusions.
Now I said that the safeguard in all work of this sort is to keep our
grip firm and fast on the eternal truths. In this work that I mention we
are not trying to prove that either pure science or applied science
interests our pupils the more or helps them the more in meeting
immediate economic situations. We do not propose to measure the success
of either method by its effect upon the bread-winning power of the
pupil. What we believe that science teaching should insure, is a grip on
the scientific method and an illuminating insight into the forces of
nature, and we are simply attempting to see whether the economic
applications will make this grip firmer or weaker, and this insight
clearer or more obscure. I trust that this point is plain, for it
illustrates what I have just said regarding the danger of following a
popular demand. We need no experiment to prove that economic science is
more useful in the narrow sense than is pure science. What we wish to
determine is whether a judicious mixture of the two sorts of teaching
will or will not enable us to realize this rich cultural value much more
effectively than a traditional purely cultural course.
Now that illustrates what I think is the real and important application
of the scientific spirit to the solution of educational problems. You
will readily see that it does not do away necessarily with our ideals.
It is not necessarily materialistic. It is not necessarily idealistic.
Either side may utilize it. It is a quite impersonal factor. But it does
promise to take some of our educational problems out of the field of
useless and wasteful controversy, and it does promise to get men of
conflicting views together,--for, in the case that I have just cited, if
we prove that the right admixture of methods may enable us to realize
both a cultural and a utilitarian value, there is no reason why the
culturists and the utilitarians should not get together, cease their
quarreling, take off their coats, and go to work. Few people will deny
that bread and butter is a rather essential thing in this life of ours;
very few will deny that material prosperity in temperate amounts is good
for all of us; and very few also will deny that far more fundamental
than bread and butter--far more important than material prosperity--are
the great fundamental and eternal truths which man has wrought out of
his experience and which are most effectively crystallized in the
creations of pure art, the masterpieces of pure literature, and the
discoveries of pure science.
Certainly if we of the twentieth century can agree upon any one thing,
it is this: That life without toil is a crime, and that any one who
enjoys leisure and comfort and the luxuries of living without paying the
price of toil is a social parasite. I believe that it is an important
function of public education to impress upon each generation the highest
ideals of living as well as the arts that are essential to the making of
a livelihood, but I wish to protest against the doctrine that these two
factors stand over against one another as the positive and negative
poles of human existence. In other words, I protest against the notion,
that the study of the practical everyday problems of human life is
without what we are pleased to call a culture value,--that in the proper
study of those problems one is not able to see the operation of
fundamental and eternal principles.
I shall readily agree that there is always a grave danger that the
trivial and temporary objects of everyday life may be viewed and studied
without reference to these fundamental principles. But this danger is
certainly no greater than that the permanent and eternal truths be
studied without reference to the actual, concrete, workaday world in
which we live. I have seen exercises in manual training that had for
their purpose the perfection of the pupil in some little art of joinery
for which he would, in all probability, have not the slightest use in
his later life. But even if he should find use for it, the process was
not being taught in the proper way. He was being made conscious only of
the little trivial thing, and no part of his instruction was directed
toward the much more important, fundamental lesson,--the lesson, namely,
that "a little thing may be perfect, but that perfection itself is not a
little thing."
I say that I have witnessed such an exercise in the very practical field
of manual training. I may add that I went through several such exercises
myself, and emerged with a disgust that always recurs to me when I am
told that every boy will respond to the stimulus of the hammer and the
jack plane. But I should hasten to add that I have also seen what we
call the humanities so taught that the pupil has emerged from them with
a supreme contempt for the life of labor and a feeling of disgust at the
petty and trivial problems of human life which every one must face. I
have seen art and literature so taught as to leave their students not
with the high purpose to mold their lives in accordance with the high
ideals that art and literature represent, not the firm resolution to do
what they could to relieve the ugliness of the world where they found
it ugly, or to do what they could to ennoble life when they found it
vile; but rather with an attitude of calm superiority, as if they were
in some way privileged to the delights of æsthetic enjoyment, leaving
the baser born to do the world's drudgery.
I have seen the principles of agriculture so taught as to leave with the
student the impression that he could raise more corn than his neighbor
and sell it at a higher price if he mastered the principles of
nitrification; and all without one single reference to the basic
principle of conservation upon which the welfare of the human race for
all time to come must inevitably depend,--without a single reference to
the moral iniquity of waste and sloth and ignorance. But I have also
seen men who have mastered the scientific method,--the method of
controlled observation, and unprejudiced induction and inference,--in
the laboratories of pure science; and who have gained so overweening and
hypertrophied a regard for this method that they have considered it too
holy to be contaminated by application to practical problems,--who have
sneered contemptuously when some adventurer has proposed, for example,
to subject the teaching of science itself to the searchlight of
scientific method.
I trust that these examples have made my point clear, for it is
certainly simple enough. If vocational education means simply that the
arts and skills of industrial life are to be transmitted safely from
generation to generation, a minimum of educational machinery is all that
is necessary, and we do not need to worry much about it. If vocational
education means simply this, it need not trouble us much; for economic
conditions will sooner or later provide for an effective means of
transmission, just as economic conditions will sooner or later perfect,
through a blind and empirical process of elimination, the most effective
methods of agriculture, as in the case of China and other overpopulated
nations of the Orient.
But I take it that we mean by vocational education something more than
this, just as we mean by cultural education something more than a veneer
of language, history, pure science, and the fine arts. In the former
case, the practical problems of life are to be lifted to the plane of
fundamental principles; in the latter case, fundamental principles are
to be brought down to the plane of present, everyday life. I can see no
discrepancy here. To my mind there is no cultural subject that has not
its practical outcome, and there is no practical subject that has not
its humanizing influence if only we go to some pains to seek it out. I
do not object to a subject of instruction that promises to put dollars
into the pockets of those that study it. I do object to the mode of
teaching that subject which fails to use this effective economic appeal
in stimulating a glimpse of the broader vision. I do not object to the
subject that appeals to the pupil's curiosity because it informs him of
the wonderful deeds that men have done in the past. I do object to that
mode of teaching this subject which simply arouses interest in a
spectacular deed, and then fails to use this interest in the
interpretation of present problems. I do not contend that in either case
there must be an explicit pointing of morals and drawing of lessons. But
I do contend that the teacher who is in charge of the process should
always have this purpose in the forefront of his consciousness, and--now
by direct comparison, now by indirection and suggestion--guide his
pupils to the goal desired.
I hope that through careful tests, we shall some day be able to
demonstrate that there is much that is good and valuable on both sides
of every controverted educational question. After all, in this complex
and intricate task of teaching to which you and I are devoting our
lives, there is too much at stake to permit us for a moment to be
dogmatic,--to permit us for a moment to hold ourselves in any other
attitude save one of openness and reception to the truth when the truth
shall have been demonstrated. Neither your ideas nor mine, nor those of
any man or group of men, living or dead, are important enough to stand
in the way of the best possible accomplishment of that great task to
which we have set our hands.