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MODERN EDUCATORS
AND THEIR IDEALS
[Illustration: i_cover]
MODERN EDUCATORS
AND THEIR IDEALS
BY
TADASU MISAWA, +Ph.D.+
[Illustration: logo]
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
NEW YORK MCMIX
+Copyright, 1909, by+
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
_Published March, 1909_
PREFACE
The present work is intended mainly for students of pedagogy in
colleges or normal schools, teachers and other practical workers in
educational fields, and those parents who take a special interest
in the problems of education. It aims to give a general idea of the
educational views of great philosophers and reformers in modern times,
which form the basis of the present day education in its ideals and
practice. The author’s endeavor has been to present the fundamental
ideas of these thinkers and epoch makers in a concise and coherent
form, and with a sympathetic interpretation. An academic criticism or
amplification of any theories is purposely avoided; and very little
is added to what each writer has said for himself, beyond that which
was found necessary to make the connection of thought clearer and its
significance more comprehensible to the reader.
Thus the book practically consists of excerpts from the main works
of the thinkers here chosen, which are either put in their original
form or modified by the author so as to meet the extent and intent of
the book. And he believes that, though not always agreeing with their
ideas, he has made himself a faithful mouthpiece for each of them.
The bibliographies attached are by no means meant to be exhaustive.
They include only those references specially consulted by the author as
well as those which were judged to be easily accessible and worthy of
recommendation to the reader.
The author wishes to express his sense of great indebtedness to
President G. Stanley Hall for inspiration and help in many ways, to
Professor William H. Burnham for suggestions and encouragement, to Dr.
Arnold L. Gesell for aid in correcting his English, and to Dr. Theodate
L. Smith for assistance in revising the manuscript and putting the book
through the press.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I.--+Introduction+ 1
II.--+John Amos Comenius+ (1592-1670) 18
III.--+John Locke+ (1632-1704) 35
IV.--+Jean Jacques Rousseau+ (1712-1778) 59
V.--+Basedow and Kant+
Johann Bernard Basedow (1723-1790) 93
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) 98
VI.--+Heinrich Pestalozzi+ (1746-1826) 116
VII.--+Johann Gottlieb Fichte+ (1762-1814) 143
VIII.--+Friedrich Froebel+ (1782-1852) 166
IX.--+Johann Friedrich Herbart+ (1776-1841) 199
X.--+Herbert Spencer+ (1820-1903) 223
XI.--+Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel+ (1770-1831) 245
XII.--+W. T. Harris and G. Stanley Hall+
William Torrey Harris (1835-1909) 267
Granville Stanley Hall (1844-1924) 276
+Index+ 295
MODERN EDUCATORS AND
THEIR IDEALS
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION
The Ægean peninsula was the great reservoir of ancient civilization
into which the cultural stream of every nation around the Mediterranean
had its outlet and from which all subsequent ages of Europe have drawn.
Therefore without an understanding of the Greek ideas and ideals of
education we shall not be able to understand the European ideas and
ideals of education. As Compayré says, “in respect to education, as in
respect to everything else, the higher spiritual life of modern nations
has been developed under the influence of Grecian antiquity” (5: p.
18). And we can safely say that, with the exception of the ancient
Chinese--so misunderstood and misrepresented in the West, but the Greek
of the Orient in my opinion--no nation in antiquity represents modern
conceptions so nearly as the Greek, especially the Athenian.
The complete and harmonious development of the human body and soul
in their strength and beauty; the perfect and full, yet regulated
enjoyment of earthly life in its social as well as individual form; the
attainment of virtue and happiness in and through the state--these were
the fundamental ideals which governed the ancient Greeks. The state not
only took nearly the sole charge of the education of its citizens, but
it was in itself the educational and educative institution. People were
educated through their social and communal life. The part played by the
school was very small; it had a later and private origin, beginning
with the rhetoricians and philosophers, and meeting the need of the few.
There were two main types in Greek education, one represented by the
Spartans, the other by the Athenians. In the former, the power and
vigor of personality were emphasized above all else, while in the
latter, beauty and wisdom were adored. The former produced men of
action, the latter, persons of elegant manners and speech. Efficiency
in the state service had larger place in the former; individual
perfection and felicity received more attention in the latter. In a
word, the Athenian represented intellectual and æsthetic culture; the
Spartan, military and moral culture.
In Greece, the Athenian ideals and tendencies superseded the
Spartan, and Greece lost her vitality under the pressure of
overintellectualization, overrefinement, and the almost necessary
consequence, overindividualization. But the Spartan ideal revived in
Rome; military and political Rome needed men of strength and action
for its citizens. So, while the Greek philosophy degenerated into
Neo-Pythagorean and Neo-Platonic mysticism, stern and practical
stoicism took root in Italy. Roman education was essentially the
education of her warriors and legislators; physical and mental
vigor and courage, justice, integrity, and practical sense were to
be cultivated above everything else; mere knowledge and effeminate
refinement were despised. While the Greeks intrusted the education of
their children largely to the State, the Romans laid great stress upon
the home training. Not the group life of children among themselves and
under adult influences, but the personal direction and discipline of
parents were to be the chief molding power. Rome thus had no public
institution concerned with the education of her children until she
began to imitate Greece and establish schools for the teaching of
grammar and rhetoric. Cicero gave voice to the individualistic point
of view of old Roman education when he said: “Our ancestors did not
wish that children should be educated by fixed rules, determined by the
laws, publicly promulgated and made uniform for all” (5: p. 46).
The advent of Christianity necessarily introduced a new epoch in the
tendency of education as well as in the general course of social
evolution. Its fundamental principles, unity with the absolute,
supreme, personality as the destiny and possibility of each individual,
the realization of the kingdom of God, to be governed by justice, love,
peace, and felicity as the common aim of the whole body of humanity,
should have become the higher realization of the Greek ideals of
life. But Christianity in its historic form, as an outgrowth from
the Semites, promulgated by single-minded enthusiasts, was fated to
conflict with Hellenic thought. It not only neglected the civic and
economic life of the state, but condemned, as asceticism crept in, the
perfection and enjoyment of earthly existence. The natural man was
evil; passion made the body the source of sin. Even the improvement of
intellect or taste was considered to be contrary to religion. Its God
became deprived of all His human qualities or content, and was made
an abstract, negative spirituality. The kingdom of God receded to the
other world beyond the grave or to some imagined distance. It conceived
everything human and natural as opposed to the divine and spiritual,
and strove to crush the body that the soul might live. Thus instead of
a new heaven and a new earth, the age of death and darkness came to be
introduced into the European world.
Education in the Middle Ages was largely education through and for
the Church. The reward of the victory of Christianity over the pagan
world through that long-suffering struggle and martyrdom was the Church
universal, enthroned above all other human institutions. The seat of
divine authority, the ultimate standard of evaluation shifted from the
state to the Church infallible. Schools were established, universities
organized, but in them the young generation was trained to be better
citizens of a future heavenly state or to serve ecclesiastic interests.
Efficiency in social life or the qualities of individual personality as
such were scarcely considered.
Outside the Church there was constant warfare within and among newly
risen nations. Neither rulers nor the people themselves had time to
give their attention to the advancement of culture. The education of
the knights was essentially military; that of the masses, limited
chiefly to the training naturally offered by home occupations and
trades. The settlement of nations, the rise of free cities, more peace
and prosperity, necessarily tended to arouse an interest in culture.
Contact with the Hellenic and Eastern civilizations through the
crusades, the discovery of America, the expansion of foreign trade, all
could not but broaden the mental horizon and vitalize the soul. The
dialectic education of scholasticism, although formal, had sharpened
the reasoning powers of men. With a new explosion of self-consciousness
and life impulse, Europe keenly realized the pressure of the Church,
its dogmatism and asceticism. The revolt against its dogmatism was the
Reformation, the revolt against its asceticism was Humanism.
The Humanistic movement started as the revival of the ancient classics.
Tired of the dry, attenuated Latin of church scholasticism, the student
wanted to return to the naïve, simple, yet beautiful literature of the
old Roman and Hellenic masters. Weary of the sophistical interpretation
and disputation of the Greek philosophers, he desired to drink directly
from their untainted source.
This Renaissance, though mainly literary at its beginning, brought back
the seemingly exterminated spirit and ideals of the ancient world,
especially of Athens. Man, liberated from the bondage of monastic
spirituality, returned to the human. The beauty and joy of life and the
arts were again restored; learning came to be pursued for its own sake.
But the age of the Renaissance tended to exalt intellectual and
æsthetic culture at the expense of the moral. The revival of Hellenism
brought with it antireligious tendencies and threatened to bring to
naught Europe’s labor of centuries to build up Christian character.
This was rescued by the stronger sister movement of the Reformation,
which united in it both the Hellenic and Christian spirit leading
Christianity to its destined end--namely, to become a human religion.
Unity of religion and life, heaven and earth, divine and human, now
enters into the consciousness of the race. The dignity of individual
conscience and reason, the equal destiny of all mankind without
national, class, or sex discrimination, the future grandeur of the
race and its earthly abode, begin to become the living faith of the
West. Mediæval Christianity aimed to establish a spiritual kingdom
beside and beyond the earthly one; modern Christianity aims at the
gradual spiritualization of the earthly kingdom. Although the above
revelation or message of Christianity was again submerged under the new
scholasticism and ecclesiasticism into which Protestantism fell, the
modern world has never lacked men of insight who, from time to time,
have proclaimed it.
No great new movement in history can pass without having its influence
in the field of education. The Reformation really marks the beginning
of modern education in the West, though to the Catholic Church belongs
the honor of having preserved through the dark ages the treasures of
ancient culture which made the Renaissance possible. In it we see the
basis and germs of the fundamental ideas and ideals which have governed
the education of Christendom until to-day. Luther is naturally the
greatest name in this movement and deserves to represent it in its
educational as well as religious aspect. As Compayré says:
“The German reformer Luther is, of all his co-religionists, the one
who has served the cause of elementary instruction with the most
ardor. He not only addressed a pressing appeal to the ruling classes
in behalf of founding schools for the people, but, by his influence
methods of instruction were improved, and the educational spirit was
renewed in accordance with the principles of Protestantism” (5: p.
114).
If Luther had done nothing else than translate the Bible into German,
he would have been remembered as a great pedagogic figure. Through his
translation the Bible became the text-book of the people, not only in
religion and morality, but also in language study. His plain, refined
style is said to have introduced a new era in the German language and
worked toward the unification of the national speech. But he did more
direct service for the cause of education. In 1519 he wrote a sermon
on married life, in which he appeals to the parents’ sense of duty
to educate their children. Home education should be the basis and
preparation for school education. True piety, better Christian life
can be hoped for only by beginning with the child. It is the duty of
all parents to devote themselves to their children, and the neglect
of this duty will be the heaviest sin. Children should be taught and
led with reasonable words instead of blows and stripes. One must be an
example to them by words, conduct, and life. They must be guarded from
the weakness and effeminacy which comes through indulgence in worldly
pleasures. Yet, on the other hand, asceticism in the education of
children is to be avoided.
Home education, though fundamental, is not sufficient; for many parents
lack the piety and learning, skill and art, time and means to enable
them to lead their children; therefore we need schools and teachers.
In his address to the magistrates and legislators, in which he urges
them to establish and maintain Christian schools in each city for the
education of all citizens regardless of rank and sex, Luther speaks
as if he were proclaiming the oracle of God. He was obliged to speak
because God opened his mouth, nay, God and Christ spoke through his
mouth; education of youth was the fight against the devil; the cause
of religion and education was one. He showed a high estimation of the
teacher’s profession, saying:
“I tell you, in a word, that a diligent, devoted school-teacher,
preceptor, or any person, no matter what is his title, who faithfully
trains and teaches boys, can never receive an adequate reward, and no
money is sufficient to pay the debt you owe him; so, too, said the
pagan, Aristotle. Yet we treat them with contempt, as if they were of
no account whatever; and all the time, we profess to be Christians.
For my part, if I were compelled to leave off preaching and to enter
some other vocation, I know not an office that would please me better
than that of schoolmaster, or teacher of boys. For I am convinced
that, next to preaching, this is the most useful, and greatly the best
labor in all the world, and, in fact, I am sometimes in doubt which of
the positions is the more honorable” (12: p. 414).
But turn your eyes upon the actual state of things, and see if schools
and teachers are fulfilling their honorable missions. “Everywhere we
have seen such teachers and masters, who knew nothing themselves and
could teach nothing that was good and useful; they did not even know
how to learn and to teach” (5: p. 117).
Luther’s innovation in education was to liberate children from this
strait-jacketness of instruction and discipline, and to bring in the
air of freedom, cheerfulness, broad-mindedness, and respect for the
child’s growing personality. “It is dangerous to isolate the young.
It is necessary, on the contrary, to allow young people to hear, see,
learn all sorts of things, while all the time observing the restraints
and rules of honor. Enjoyment and recreation are as necessary for
children as food and drink” (5: p. 119). The individuality of the
child should be respected and nourished. “A child intimidated by bad
treatment is irresolute in all he does. He who has trembled before his
parents will tremble all his life at the sound of a leaf which rustles
in the wind” (5: p. 119). As to the subject-matter of instruction,
religion, classical languages and Hebrew, history, music, and
mathematics should be taught. Luther speaks slightingly of the mediæval
learning of philosophy as “the devil’s rubbish,” which was “acquired
with too great cost, labor, and harm,” and wanted to substitute for it
the study of history, conceived as the source of the real knowledge
of the world. He attaches also a high importance to music, as a means
of emotional culture, even saying that “unless a schoolmaster know
how to sing, I think him of no account” (5: p. 119). “Knightly
sport” is to be encouraged as a means of physical culture. To remedy
“the greatest evil in every place”--i.e., the lack of teachers--he
emphasizes the urgent need of special training for them. The best of
the pupils, boys and girls, are to be selected, kept a longer time in
school, given special instructors, and libraries opened for their use.
The professional training of teachers as well as the education of the
people is the duty of the authorities.
Thus the Reformation represented by Luther was no less an educational
than a religious movement. It awakened a sense of the worth of the
individual; the longing for the perfection of personality in its
all-sidedness, intellectual, moral, and physical, was aroused. It
stirred the parental and official conscience to educate children and
citizens. Schools, which as an institution were, hitherto, only a
part of the ecclesiastical system, and chiefly as a means of training
servants of the Church, now sprang up as a coördinate agency in the
upbuilding of humanity. The chief aim of the new education was not in
behalf of the ecclesiastic interests, nor the soul’s concern for heaven
or hell, but it was to furnish a city with “instructed, reasonable,
honorable, and well-trained citizens,” in which its prosperity, safety,
and strength lie. It was for the need of the world, “to the end that
men may govern the country properly, and that women may properly
bring up their children, care for their domestics, and direct the
affairs of their households” (5: p. 115). If the Renaissance idea
of education was aristocratic, the Reformation idea is democratic; if
the characteristic of the former was literary, that of the latter is
civico-economical. Born the son of a miner, living the life of the
people, Luther could not think with philologists that the humanities
alone could meet the whole educational need of common citizens.
He says: “I by no means approve those schools where a child was
accustomed to pass twenty or thirty years in studying Donatus or
Alexander without learning anything. Another world has dawned, in which
things go differently. My opinion is that we must send the boys to
school one or two hours a day, and have them learn a trade at home for
the rest of the time. It is desirable that these two occupations march
side by side” (5: pp. 117-118). The religious conception of Church
education, the humanistic ideal of the Renaissance, the military and
civic training of knighthood, the industrial claim of the home and
trade, all find recognition and reconciliation in Luther’s view, and
are established as the four pillars on which the educational temple of
modern Christian citizenship rests.
Fifteen years after the death of Luther the world received into its
lap another gifted child, this time to work out reformation in the
field of science. The Reformation together with Humanism restored
the ideal of the total man. But their intellectual outlook was still
chiefly limited to the attainments of the ancient world. Therefore,
they soon degenerated into a new scholasticism on the one hand, and a
linguistic formalism on the other. Then came Francis Bacon to preach
the gospel of knowledge, of true knowledge. For this “father of
English philosophers” the aim of knowledge “is no mere felicity of
speculation, but the real business and fortune of the human race.”
Indeed, “men have entered into a desire of learning and knowledge
sometimes from a natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite; sometimes
to entertain their minds with variety and delight; sometimes for
ornament and reputation, and sometimes to enable them to victory of
wit and contradiction, and most times for lucre and profession” (2:
p. 42). This abuse of learning was the greatest evil of the mediæval
and Renaissance scholarship. The vocation of scholars is “to give a
true account of their gift of reason, to the benefit and use of men”
(2: p. 42). Knowledge must generate, bear fruit; her function is
to satisfy the needs of human life, to increase men’s control over
Nature, and to enrich and ennoble his enjoyments. This can be attained
not by a mere mastery of vain words and letters, or of tricks of the
syllogism, but only by humble, diligent, and methodical inquiries
into the great “volume of God’s works.” “Man is but the servant and
interpreter of nature: what he does and what he knows is only what he
has observed of Nature’s order in fact and thought; beyond this he
knows nothing and can do nothing. For the chain of causes cannot by any
force be loosed or broken, nor can nature be commanded except by being
obeyed. And so those twin objects, human knowledge and human power, do
really meet in one; and it is from ignorance of causes that operation
fails” (13: p. 48). The first-hand experience of living Nature
and induction from it alone provide us real knowledge and truth, and
nothing else. “It cannot be that axioms established by argumentation
should avail for the discovery of new works; since the subtlety of
nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of argument. But
axioms duly and orderly formed from particulars easily discover the
way to new particulars, and thus render science active” (13: pp.
46-47). According to this standard of true knowledge, “all the received
systems are but so many stage plays, representing worlds of their own
creation after an unreal and scenic fashion” (13: pp. 56-57). Our
age is far older than that of the ancient people. Why should we bear
the bondage of immature, inexperienced minds? “The wisdom which we
have derived principally from the Greeks is but like the boyhood of
knowledge, and has the characteristic property of boys: it can talk,
but it cannot generate; for it is fruitful of controversies, but barren
of works” (13: p. 54). Turn your eyes from the antiquated record of
the past to the infinite reality of living nature. The key to open
its secret is in your hands. The sphere of conquest here is vast and
inexhaustible; its pleasure is noble and insatiable. Thus rings out
the scientific Sermon on the Mount. The real goal is shown, a broad new
highway opened; science being vitalized by reunion with the infinite
reality of living nature and the ever-progressive life of humanity
marches to her never-ending conquest. Knowledge rescued from the depths
of ignominy and impotence is raised to its heavenly seat; the ideal
of omniscience, coupled with omnipotence, has ever since become the
aspiration and motive power of the modern world. Although Bacon did not
concern himself with the direct problems of education, a conception
such as the above could not but introduce a new tendency into it. If
we may call Luther the father of Protestant education, Bacon should be
called the father of scientific education, both of which, when broadly
interpreted, characterize the modern period of the Western education.
Bacon’s direct influence in the educational field naturally was to be
exercised upon the higher institutions of learning. But the admittance
of his ideas and spirit into them was a very slow and hard process.
In the “advancement of learning” he advocated the founding of a real
university, “left free to the arts and sciences at large,” devoted
entirely to the free investigation and advancement of learning, without
professional aim or any external restrictions. In the “New Atlantis,”
his ideal state, an academy of science with its museum and laboratory,
stands as the center. He also suggested a plan for the coöperation of
all European universities. But the time was not ripe for all these
ideas, nor have his visions yet been fully realized. A more immediate
effect was the inspiration which his new gospel of learning and its
principles have given to those through whom Europe first attained a
definite theory of educational purpose and art, especially Comenius and
Locke.
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