The tension between scientific inquiry and popular instruction: A pedagogical crisis

“ The popular mind persists in thinking that there is a wide difference between science and knowledge in general. Yes, there is a wide difference, but it is just the difference that there is between a trained and organized body of men for the accomplishing of some great work, and a crowd of men unorganized and undisciplined. What unscientific knowledge has accomplished may be roughly seen in the condition of savage races to-day ”

“ Science is the light that points out what different phenomena have in common, and establishes their origins and changes. To-day the term is often taken in vain, as when we speak of pugilistic, tonsorial and domestic science, which shows that the general idea of it is any special skill or knowledge. But pure science, as strictly used, is much more than either skill or knowledge, it is explanation without any thought of immediate application to human needs. ”

“ It is not unlikely as great changes as took place during the last century in the beliefs on many important subjects will be required for the work of the twentieth century.
So far I have been speaking of science as related knowledge. Knowledge of such a kind as to react upon our opinions of men, of institutions, society, and the universe as a whole, but science is more popularly conceived as improved ways of doing things, of new products and new possibilities in life, of the arts as managed for economy of effort, enhancing comfort and removing the stress of living. ”

“ We speak of the science of botany, for one reason because all the facts relating to botany can be classified, and so, as to other departments of human knowledge, classification or the lack of it may determine the scientific character of the knowledge. Science demands a classification of facts so rigid that all men will consent to its use and to the conclusions to which it may point.
Notwithstanding statistics is a science or a scientific method, its. use is often empirical, deceptive, illusory and dishonest, and because of these things the method itself is often condemned. ”

“ There are roughly at the outset two main divisions of higher education—the one directed to the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, of which the practical result cannot yet be foreseen, whereby the 'scholar' and the votary of pure science is evolved ”

“ But material science, while searching for truth, has not failed to contribute to the practical needs of society. Its applications in the arts and manufactures have guided the course of civilization. One man to-day can do the work which required ten men a hundred years ago, and the poor have now comforts and opportunities which were formerly not within the reach of the rich. In like manner we shall probably find that more exact knowledge of the mind will have many applications in pedagogy, in political science, in medicine, in the fine arts, and, indeed, in the whole conduct of life. ”

“ If to try by knowledge to make this world a better place to live in, and. to teach men how to make the highest and best use of it be utilitarianism, then I make bold to say that any knowledge that cannot make good its claim to such usefulness is worse than utilitarian, for it is useless knowledge. The charge that is meant to be brought is this, that none but the advocates of classical learning have or can have the higher ends of life in view in planning schemes of education; that all other systems look solely to the stomach or the pocket. ”

“ The failure to recognize that before deciding what to teach and how to teach we must solve the question how we can find that out has led the pedagogues to a complete disagreement with reality, and the abyss which fifteen years ago was felt to exist between theory and practice has now reached the farthest limits. Now that the masses are on all sides begging for education, while pedagogy has more than ever passed to personal fancies, this discord has reached incredible proportions. ”

“ But the time has come for entering upon similar arrangements in behalf of the multitude of teachers in our common schools. We have normal schools for their preparation, but they are fashioned upon the old academic and collegiate pattern, and furnish only a book-education. The little science they pretend to give is book-science, and not the knowledge of things. Throughout nearly all of the common schools of the country, physics, chemistry, botany, and zoology, are taught, if taught at all, by the same method as history or Latin—that is, by committing and reciting lessons from books. ”

“ Science, as now generally interpreted, means the accumulation of facts relating to man and the universe that have been discovered because they were sought. Learning is used to designate data that have been stored up in the memory without examination of their accordance with facts. A man may be very learned, yet be in possession of a very small quantity of real information. Knowledge is used to designate those facts that men have come into possession of by experience and observation. ”

“ If knowledge were nothing more than comprehension, or the analysis and classification of facts, the progress of science should be bringing us nearer to universal knowledge, but each new discovery puts it farther from our grasp than before, and they who know most, are most convinced of its unattainableness, not because the reality of things is unknowable, but because of the innumerable multitude of things knowable. ”

“ The unexplained things which are brought to our knowledge by each scientific explanation far outnumber the things it explains. The progress of knowledge is no mere comprehension, or gathering in. It is more like sowing seed than gathering a harvest, for the known world grows with knowing. We are told that “when every fact, every past or present phenomenon of the universe, every phase of present and past life therein, has been examined, classified and coordinated with the rest, then the mission of science will be complete.” ”

“ The worst feature of the present state of things is that the great majority of the members of many scientific societies, and a large part of others, are men whose chief interest in science is as a means of gaining money, and who have a contempt, or half-contempt, for pure science. Now, to declare that the sole reason for scientific research is the good of society is to encourage those pseudo-scientists to claim, and the general public to admit, that they, who deal with the applications of knowledge, are the true men of science, and that the theoreticians are little better than idlers. ”

“ But such countries are rare, and those who wish to pursue pure science in our own country must be prepared to face public opinion in a manner which requires much moral courage. They must be prepared to be looked down upon by every successful inventor whose shallow mind imagines that the only pursuit of mankind is wealth, and that he who obtains most has best succeeded in this world. Everybody can comprehend a million of money ”

“ Men who are not scientists are apt to shrug their shoulders and to say that science may be interesting to some, but that they can not see the use of it and consequently can not see the value of education in pure science. So long as this remains the point of view, higher education and research must have the old hard road to travel. But if we will open our eyes to the fact that even pure science is really of useful value, and its history is proof of this, then the standing objection to higher education will be removed. ”

“ We may have a teaching of so-called science that is a mockery of the reality.
It is surely now clear that any mere book teaching is worse than useless. It leads to no real knowledge, can give no healthy training of the faculties, and can lead to no sound development. He who can teach only by the book had better not begin. For pupils just commencing science it is doubtful whether it is not better for a while to avoid the use of text-books altogether. From first to last the student should be an investigator. ”

“ The science in our schools is too often a make-believe, and the schools will lose nothing when every make-believe slips out of the curriculum. Deeply as I am interested in the progress of science, both in school and out, with Prof. Huxley "I would not turn my hand over" to have biology taught in every school in the land, if the subject is taught through books only. To pretend to do, without doing, is worse than not to pretend. The conventional "fourteen weeks" in science gives no contact with nature, no training of any sort, no information worth having ”

“ Yet, as I have already said, the current popular lectures upon scientific topics are frothy and worthless; the theologian often misrepresents science for partisan purposes; and the newspapers, with all the good they may do, are too frequently conducted by those ignorant of all science. The people ask for knowledge, and unwittingly get much chaff with their wheat. . . . Therefore it seems to be time that true students of science should seek to popularize their learning. . . . Men of science constantly lament that the Government does not extend more aid to scientific research. ”

“ People cannot have their intellects on the rack forever, you know; they must have a little relaxation. This tendency to pander to a low public taste, and, under the respectable name of lectures, to degrade the platform to purposes of mere speculation, ought in every way to be withstood. Let amusements stand upon their own basis, and not appeal to the public under false pretenses. Lectures upon science, history, or philosophy, to be really valuable, should be given in courses with sufficient fullness to produce some depth of impression. ”

“ Science is so commonly ill-treated in popular magazines and newspapers that the very words "popular science" need to be redeemed. The sensational newspapers, the side shows of the circus and the "movies" supply what people will pay for. It is no discredit to our democracy that these are what they want; on the contrary, it represents a great advance when a hundred million people care for such things. We may be satisfied if progress is made by education and an improved environment in a hundred years if a slightly better germ-plasm is established in a thousand years. ”

“ Technical terminology is here confused with "science"; and any person of common sense can tell you that it is not at all scientific to use in teaching such terms as make the work of the pupil unnecessarily difficult. Another teacher prides himself that he has a thorough scientific training, since he is able at a moment's notice to describe the laboratory technique for any experiment or demonstration you are likely to want ”

“ But we forget that a laboratory helper can acquire all these details without understanding either their pedagogical purpose or their theoretical significance. One science teacher speaks of another as being "well up" in science, because he knows the names of minerals or of spiders that you and I never heard of; or he knows all the stages in the life-history of some very rare red sea-weed. Here science is confused with erudition that happens to concern itself with objects of nature rather than with words out of books; but erudition is not science in the one case any more than in the other. ”

“ But where it is all talk and no work, and text-books are filtered through the very imperfect medium of the ordinary teacher's mind, and the pupil has nothing to do but to be instructed, every sound principle of education is outraged, and science is only made ridiculous. This failure to gain the benefits of real scientific study has its source deep in the constitution of the public schools. In dealing with masses of children, classification became necessary, which gave rise, as we have seen, to grading and an elaborate mechanical system. ”

“ It may be asked what all this has to do with science. Well, a good deal; or, if not with science, at least with the want of it. What are the schools of the country doing, let us ask, that the Post-Office should have to step in to save the free and enlightened citizens of this republic from the consequences of their own ignorance and folly? The object of popular education, we make bold to say, ought to be to give the people sense; yet here we have indisputable evidence that large masses of our population don't know enough to protect themselves against the most barefaced forms of imposture. ”

“ Science alone has furnished that knowledge of the human organism and of surrounding nature that confers the power of warding off the causes of death, and thus leads to a more reverent view of the government of the world. Eight and left, and every day, and all around us, men, women, and children are struck down and sent to unripe graves for lack of the knowledge which science has given of the avoidable causes of death. And the same thing may be said of a great number of the diseases by which, if life is not ended, it is turned into a calamity and a curse. ”

“ The problems of how science shall be taught in the public schools, or indeed whether it shall be brought into them at all, depend for their solution upon having the right kind of teachers. They need to realize the utter ignorance of the child-mind as it comes for instruction to the public school, and to understand how to build up in that mind a fabric of real and coherent knowledge. ”

“ In truth, it is confidently believed that no man can be a teacher of the highest order who has not walked in the temple of mystery itself, and wrung from Mother Nature some of her closely-guarded secrets. As well ask one who has only read about disease to properly teach medical students the practice of medicine as to ask one who has only read about any science to give proper instruction to his students in it. Yet this is the thing which the majority of our colleges are doing, and they fill their chairs as if they thought a thorough training in any science disqualified a man for teaching it. ”

“ A popular mistake consists in regarding a professor as a living embodiment of science—complete, infallible, mysterious; whereas, in truth, he is or ought to be only a senior student, who devotes the greater part of his time to extending and consolidating his own knowledge for the benefit of those who come to learn of him, not only what lies within the boundaries of the known, but how to penetrate into the far greater region of the unknown. ”

“ And should our universities, ceasing to be schools of grammar and mathematics, resume their proper functions, it will be found that a far larger proportion of minds than we now suspect are capable of arriving at this stage of progress. For, be it again repeated, it it not a knowledge, but a discipline that is required; not science, but the scientific habit; not erudition, but scholarship. And those who have not leisure to amass stores of knowledge to master in detail the facts of science, may yet acquire the power of scientific insight, if opportunity is afforded them. ”

“ Training and inspiration, not the facts themselves, are the justification of science-teaching. Facts enough we can gather later in life when we are too old to be trained or inspired.
What is true of one science is true of all in greater or less degree; and I may take the science of zoölogy for my illustration simply because it is the one nearest my hand. In very few of our high schools has the instruction in zoölogy any real value. For this unfortunate fact there are several causes, and some of these are beyond the control of the teachers. ”

“ Were I a dictator, I should drive all teachers of science out into the great field of dead-work, force them to go through all the gymnastics of original research and its description, and not permit them to return to their libraries until their note-books were full of their own measurements and calculations, sketch-maps and form-drawings, severely accurate and logically classified, to be then compared with those recorded in the books. What teachers fail to keep in mind is this: that learning is not knowledge; but, as Lessing says: "Learning is only our knowledge of the experience of others ”

“ What is needed more than large bodies of information—which any reader can get out of a half-dozen books—is a habit of clear and honest thinking. This is not to say that the quality in question is not desirable in teachers of other subjects. It is simply to say that in the selection of teachers of science this qualification has been too greatly overlooked. ”

“ Stick to your frog, if you are studying frogs, and he will teach you more of the science of animals than can be learned from all the memorized classifications that you can bracket out on a hundred rods of blackboard!
The prime defect in our schools is not, after all, that the teachers do not know the subjects they teach, but that they do not know nor care for the purpose of their teaching. In other words, they do not know how to teach. The book is placed in their hands by the school board, and they teach by the book. If the book comes to them wrong-side up, their teaching is forever inverted. ”

“ Science is rapidly acquiring the means for teaching its great pedagogical lesson that most knowledge may be obtained better from the study of things than from the study of books. This little manual is such a means. ”

“ Past endeavors have not given us a science of education because, from the nature of the case, education is the last subject that can become a science. Who is it whom we seek to educate? Man. What is man? Evidently if we are to educate man upon scientific methods we must know what man is; we must know the laws of his being, the relation of these laws to one another, and to the end for which man is made. The science of education, therefore, presupposes a true psychology, and a knowledge of the formation of character based upon this psychology. ”

“ With regard to education, it is evident that we can not know the best it can do until it has been reduced to a science—until, that is to say, as a result of the joint labors of practical educators and psychologists, we can claim to possess a reasonable degree of certainty as to the best arrangement and sequence of studies and the best methods of stimulating the mind and imparting knowledge. ”

“ So much the science of education, when it is fairly established, may reasonably be expected to do. It will deal with the mind upon true hygienic principles. There remains the more serious question how such a moral atmosphere can be created as will incline the young to take a right view of knowledge and its uses. Knowledge, it is hardly necessary to say, is power, just as money is power ”

“ If none seem so tedious to us, it may be because our own education was so bad; or that we have reflected so little about it that new suggestions find in our minds no soil to strike root in; or that the complexity and practical difficulties of it paralyze our faculties: in any case, the more reason for spurring ourselves to the study. There is no subject more beset with popular errors, none in which science is more useful, explanatory, and suggestive. Not only every professional educator, but every father and mother (amateur educators!) , ought to have some acquaintance with psychology. ”

“ Pedagogy, even if it can be dignified by the name of science, has suffered sadly at the hands of its friends. Loose, unsystematic, fallacious and frothy books abound; screaming too often takes the place of close reasoning, wishy-washy guessing of sober investigation. ”

“ We have a right to claim that science shall be put upon the same footing as any other great subject of instruction, that it shall have an equal share in the schools, an equal share in the recognized qualification for degrees, and in university honors and rewards. It must be recognized that science, as intellectual discipline, is at least as valuable, and, as knowledge, is at least as important, as literature, and that the scientific student must no longer be handicapped by a linguistic (I will not call it literary) burden, the equivalent of which is not imposed upon his classical compeer. ”