The scientific method is the method of unprejudiced observation and
induction. Its function in the scheme of life is to furnish man with
facts and principles,--statements which mirror with accuracy and
precision the conditions that may exist in any situation of any sort
which man may have to face. In other words, the facts of science are
important and worthy because they help us to solve the problems of life
more satisfactorily. They are instrumental in their function. They are
means to an end. And whenever we have a problem to solve, whenever we
face a situation that demands some form of adjustment, the more accurate
the information that we possess concerning this situation, the better we
shall be able to solve it.
Now when I propose that we try to find out some facts about the teaching
of English, and that we apply the scientific method in the discovery of
these facts, I am immediately confronted with an objection. My opponent
will maintain that the subject of English in our school curriculum is
not one of the sciences. Taking English to mean particularly English
literature rather than rhetoric or composition or grammar, it is clear
that we do not teach literature as we teach the sciences. Its function
differs from that of science in the curriculum. If there is a science of
literature, that is not what we are teaching in the secondary schools,
and that is not what most of us believe should be taught in the
secondary schools. We think that the study of literature should transmit
to each generation the great ideals that are crystallized in literary
masterpieces. And we think that, in seeing to it that our pupils are
inspired with these ideals, we should also teach literature in such a
way that our pupils will be left with a desire to read good literature
as a source of recreation and inspiration after they have finished the
courses that we offer. When I speak of "inspiration," "appreciation,"
the development of "taste," and the like, I am using terms that have
little direct relation to the scientific method; for, as I have said,
science deals with facts, and the harder and more stubborn and more
unyielding the facts become, the better they represent true science.
What right have I, then, to speak of the scientific study of the
teaching of English, when science and literature seem to belong to two
quite separate rubrics of mental life?
I refer to this point of view, not because its inconsistencies are not
fully apparent to you even upon the surface, but because it is a point
of view that has hitherto interfered very materially with our
educational progress. It has sometimes been assumed that, because we
wish to study education scientifically, we wish to read out of it
everything that cannot be reduced to a scientific formula,--that,
somehow or other, we intend still further to intellectualize the
processes of education and to neglect the tremendous importance of those
factors that are not primarily intellectual in their nature, but which
belong rather to the field of emotion and feeling.
I wish, therefore, to say at the outset that, while I firmly believe the
hope of education to lie in the application of the scientific method to
the solution of its problems, I still hold that neither facts nor
principles nor any other products of the scientific method are the most
important "goods" of life. The greatest "goods" in life are, and always
must remain, I believe, its ideals, its visions, its insights, and its
sympathies,--must always remain those qualities with which the teaching
of literature is primarily concerned, and in the engendering of which in
the hearts and souls of his pupils, the teacher of literature finds the
greatest opportunity that is vouchsafed to any teacher.
The facts and principles that science has given us have been of such
service to humanity that we are prone to forget that they have been of
service because they have helped us more effectively to realize our
ideals and attain our ends; and we are prone to forget also that,
without the ideals and the ends and the visions, the facts and
principles would be quite without function. I have sometimes been taken
to account for separating these two factors in this way. But unless we
do distinguish sharply between them, our educational thinking is bound
to be hopelessly obscure.
You have all heard the story of the great chemist who was at work in his
laboratory when word was brought him that his wife was dead. As the
first wave of anguish swept over him, he bowed his head upon his hands
and wept out his grief; but suddenly he lifted up his head, and held
before him his hands wet with tears. "Tears!" he cried; "what are they?
I have analyzed them: a little chloride of sodium, some alkaline salts,
a little mucin, and some water. That is all." And he went back to his
work.
The story is an old one, and very likely apocryphal, but it is not
without its lesson to us in the present connection. Unless we
distinguish between these two factors that I have named, we are likely
either to take this man's attitude or something approaching it, or to go
to the other extreme, renounce the accuracy and precision of the
scientific method, and give ourselves up to the cult of emotionalism.
Now, while we do not wish to read out of the teaching of literature the
factors of appreciation and inspiration, we do wish to find out how
these important functions of our teaching may be best fulfilled. And it
is here that facts and principles gained by the scientific method not
only can but must furnish the ultimate solution. We have a problem. That
problem, it is true, is concerned with something that is not scientific,
and to attempt to make it scientific is to kill the very life that it is
our problem to cherish. But in solving that problem, we must take
certain steps; we must arrange our materials in certain ways; we must
adjust hard and stubborn facts to the attainment of our end. What are
these facts? What is their relation to our problem? What laws govern
their operation? These are subordinate but very essential parts of our
larger problem, and it is through the scientific investigation of these
subordinate problems that our larger problem is to be solved.
Let me give you an illustration of what I mean. We may assume that every
boy who goes out of the high school should appreciate the meaning and
worth of self-sacrifice as this is revealed (not expounded) in Dickens's
delineation of the character of Sidney Carton. There is our
problem,--but what a host of subordinate problems at once confront us!
Where shall we introduce _The Tale of Two Cities_? Will it be in the
second year, or the third, or the fourth? Will it be best preceded by
the course in general history which will give the pupil a time
perspective upon the crimson background of the French Revolution against
which Dickens projected his master character? Or shall we put _The Tale
of Two Cities_ first for the sake of the heightened interest which the
art of the novelist may lend to the facts of the historian? Again, how
may the story be best presented? What part shall the pupils read in
class? What part shall they read at home? What part, if any, shall we
read to them? What questions are necessary to insure appreciation? How
many of the allusions need be run down in order to give the maximal
effect of the masterpiece? How may the necessarily discontinuous
discussions of the class--one period each day for several days--be so
counteracted as to insure the cumulative emotional effect which the
appreciation of all art presupposes? Should the story be sketched
through first, and then read in some detail, or will one reading
suffice?
These are problems, I repeat, that stand to the chief problem as means
stand to end. Now some of these questions must be solved by every
teacher for himself, but that does not prevent each teacher from solving
them scientifically. Others, it is clear, might be solved once and for
all by the right kind of an investigation,--might result in permanent
and universal laws which any one could apply.
There are, of course, several ways in which answers for these questions
may be secured. One way is that of _a priori_ reasoning,--the deductive
procedure. This method may be thoroughly scientific, depending of course
upon the validity of our general principles as applied to the specific
problem. Ordinarily this validity can be determined only by trial;
consequently these _a priori_ inferences should be looked upon as
hypotheses to be tested by trial under standard conditions. For example,
I might argue that _The Tale of Two Cities_ should be placed in the
third year because the emotional ferment of adolescence is then most
favorable for the engendering of the ideal. But in the first place, this
assumed principle would itself be subject to grave question and it would
also have to be determined whether there is so little variation among
the pupils in respect of physiological age as to permit the application
to all of a generalization that might conceivably apply only to the
average child. In other words, all of our generalizations applying to
average pupils must be applied with a knowledge of the extent and range
of variation from the average. Some people say that there is no such
thing as an average child, but, for all practical purposes, the average
child is a very real reality,--he is, in fact, more numerous than any
other single class; but this does not mean that there may be not enough
variations from the average to make unwise the application of our
principle.
I refer to this hypothetical case to show the extreme difficulty of
reaching anything more than hypotheses by _a priori_ reasoning. We have
a certain number of fairly well established general principles in
secondary education. Perhaps those most frequently employed are our
generalizations regarding adolescence and its influences upon the mental
and especially the emotional life of high-school pupils. Stanley Hall's
work in this field is wonderfully stimulating and suggestive, and yet we
should not forget that most of his generalizations are, after all, only
plausible hypotheses to be acted upon as tentative guides for practice
and to be tested carefully under controlled conditions, rather than to
be accepted as immutable and unchangeable laws. We sometimes assume that
all high-school pupils are adolescents, when the likelihood is that an
appreciable proportion of pupils in the first two years have not yet
reached this important node of their development.
I say this not to minimize in any way the importance that attaches to
adolescent characteristics, but rather to suggest that you who are daily
dealing with these pupils can in the aggregate add immeasurably to the
knowledge that we now have concerning this period. A tremendous waste is
constantly going on in that most precious of all our possible
resources,--namely, human experience. How many problems that are well
solved have to be solved again and again because the experience has not
been crystallized in a well-tested fact or principle; how many
experiences that might be well worth the effort that they cost are quite
worthless because, in undergoing them, we have neglected some one or
another of the rules that govern inexorably the validity of our
inferences and conclusions. That is all that the scientific method means
in the last analysis: it is a system of principles that enable us to
make our experience worth while in meeting later situations. We all
have the opportunity of contributing to the sum total of human
knowledge, if only we know the rules of the game.
I said that one way of solving these subordinate problems that arise in
the realization of our chief aims in teaching is the _a priori_ method
of applying general principles to the problems. Another method is to
imitate the way in which we have seen some one else handle the
situation. Now this may be the most effective way possible. In fact, if
a sufficient number of generations of teachers keep on blindly plunging
in and floundering about in solving their problems, the most effective
methods will ultimately be evolved through what we call the process of
trial and error. The teaching of the very oldest subjects in the
curriculum is almost always the best and most effective teaching, for
the very reason that the blundering process has at last resulted in an
effective procedure. But the scientific method of solving problems has
its very function in preventing the tremendous waste that this process
involves. English literature is a comparatively recent addition to the
secondary curriculum. Its possibilities of service are almost unlimited.
Shall we wait for ten or fifteen generations of teachers to blunder out
the most effective means of teaching it, or shall we avail ourselves of
these simple principles which will enable us to concentrate this
experience within one or two generations?
I should like to emphasize one further point. No one has greater
respect than I have for what we term experience in teaching. But let me
say that a great deal of what we may term "crude" experience--that is,
experience that has not been refined by the application of scientific
method--is most untrustworthy,--unless, indeed, it has been garnered and
winnowed and sifted through the ages. Let me give you an example of some
accepted dictums of educational experience that controlled
investigations have shown to be untrustworthy.
It is a general impression among teachers that specific habits may be
generalized; that habits of neatness and accuracy developed in one line
of work, for example, will inevitably make one neater and more accurate
in other things. It has been definitely proved that this transfer of
training does not take place inevitably, but in reality demands the
fulfillment of certain conditions of which education has become fully
conscious only within a comparatively short time, and as a result of
careful, systematic, controlled experimentation. The meaning of this in
the prevention of waste through inadequate teaching is fully apparent.
Again, it has been supposed by many teachers that the home environment
is a large factor in the success or failure of a pupil in school. In
every accurate and controlled investigation that has been conducted so
far it has been shown that this factor in such subjects as arithmetic
and spelling at least is so small as to be absolutely negligible in
practice.
Some people still believe that a teacher is born and not made, and yet
a careful investigation of the efficiency of elementary teachers shows
that, when such teachers were ranked by competent judges, specialized
training stood out as the most important factor in general efficiency.
In this same investigation, the time-honored notion that a college
education will, irrespective of specialized training, adequately equip a
teacher for his work was revealed as a fallacy,--for twenty-eight per
cent of the normal-school graduates among all the teachers were in the
first and second ranks of efficiency as against only seventeen per cent
of the college graduates; while, in the two lowest ranks, only sixteen
per cent of the normal-school graduates are to be found as against
forty-four per cent of the college graduates. These investigations, I
may add, were made by university professors, and I am giving them here
in a university classroom and as a university representative. And of
course I shall hasten to add that general scholarship is one important
essential. Our mistake has been in assuming sometimes that it is the
only essential.
Very frequently the controlled experience of scientific investigation
confirms a principle that has been derived from crude experience. Most
teachers will agree, for example, that a certain amount of drill and
repetition is absolutely essential in the mastery of any subject. Every
time that scientific investigation has touched this problem it has
unmistakably confirmed this belief. Some very recent investigations
made by Mr. Brown at the Charleston Normal School show conclusively that
five-minute drill periods preceding every lesson in arithmetic place
pupils who undergo such periods far in advance of others who spend this
time in non-drill arithmetical work, and that this improvement holds not
only in the number habits, but also in the reasoning processes.
Other similar cases could be cited, but I have probably said enough to
make my point, and my point is this: that crude experience is an unsafe
guide for practice; that experience may be refined in two ways--first by
the slow, halting, wasteful operation of time, which has established
many principles upon a pinnacle of security from which they will never
be shaken, but which has also accomplished this result at the cost of
innumerable mistakes, blunders, errors, futile efforts, and
heartbreaking failures; or secondly, by the application of the
principles of control and test which are now at our service, and which
permit present-day teachers to concentrate within a single generation
the growth and development and progress that the empirical method of
trial and error could not encompass in a millennium.
The teaching of English merits treatment by this method. I recommend
strongly that you give the plan a trial. You may not get immediate
results. You may not get valuable results. But in any case, if you
carefully respect the scientific proprieties, your experience will be
worth vastly more than ten times the amount of crude experience; and,
whether you get results or not, you will undergo a valuable discipline
from which may emerge the ideals of science if you are not already
imbued with them. I always tell my students that, even in the study of
science itself, it is the ideals of science,--the ideals of patient,
thoughtful work, the ideals of open-mindedness and caution in reaching
conclusions, the ideals of unprejudiced observation from which
selfishness and personal desire are eliminated,--it is these ideals that
are vastly more important than the facts of science as such,--and these
latter are significant enough to have made possible our present progress
and our present amenities of life.