I
One way to be definite in education is to formulate as clearly as we can
the aims that we hope to realize in every stage of our work. The task of
teaching is so complex that, unless we strive earnestly and persistently
to reduce it to the simplest possible terms, we are bound to work
blindly and ineffectively.
It is only one phase of this topic that I wish to discuss with you this
morning. My plea for the definite in education will be limited not only
to the field of educational aims and values, but to a small corner of
that field. Your morning's program has dealt with the problem of
teaching history in the elementary school. I should like, if you are
willing, to confine my remarks to this topic, and to attack the specific
question, What is the history that we teach in the grades to do for the
pupil? I wish to make this limitation, not only because what I have to
say will be related to the other topics on the program, but also because
this very subject of history is one which the lack of a definite
standard of educational value has been keenly felt.
I should admit at the outset that my interest in history is purely
educational. I have had no special training in historical research. As
you may perhaps infer from my discussion, my acquaintance with
historical facts is very far from comprehensive. I speak as a layman in
history,--and I do it openly and, perhaps, a little defiantly, for I
believe that the last person to pass adequate judgment upon the general
educational value of a given department of knowledge is a man who has
made the department a life study. I have little faith in what the
mathematician has to say regarding the educational value of mathematics
_for the average elementary pupil_, because he is a special pleader and
his conclusions cannot escape the coloring of his prejudice. I once knew
an enthusiastic brain specialist who maintained that, in every grade of
the elementary school, instruction should be required in the anatomy of
the human brain. That man was an expert in his own line. He knew more
about the structure of the brain than any other living man. But knowing
more about brain morphology also implied that he knew less about many
other things, and among the things that he knew little about were the
needs and capacities of children in the elementary school. He was a
special pleader; he had been dealing with his special subject so long
that it had assumed a disproportionate value in his eyes. Brain
morphology had given him fame, honor, and worldly emoluments. Naturally
he would have an exaggerated notion of its value.
It is the same with any other specialist. As specialists in education,
you and I are likely to overemphasize the importance of the common
school in the scheme of creation. Personally I am convinced that the
work of elementary education is the most profoundly significant work in
the world; and yet I can realize that I should be no fit person to make
comparisons if the welfare of a number of other professions and callings
were at stake. I should let an unbiased judge make the final
determination.