Charles Hubbard Judd

“ When one has learned that there is a natural and orderly evolution of the play impulse, one realizes that it is rational to follow this natural order in promoting individual development. Play takes on a dignity that it never had in the days when it was looked on as an uncurbed attribute of infancy to be tolerated only because there seemed no possible way of eradicating it. ”

“ One does not have to go far from the door of any educational institution to find people who look on reading and writing—to say nothing of higher forms of education—as luxuries rather than necessities. ”

“ It would be possible to multiply indefinitely examples which show that the pupil’s view of the school is very limited. What pupil understands the duties of the principal or the superintendent, or of the still more remote and mysterious board of education? Where does the daily program come from? Who decides about textbooks? Why are school buildings commonly planned with large study-rooms? Most of these questions are never thought of by pupils. Everything in school life seems to have a kind of inevitableness which raises it above question or even consideration. ”

“ The schools of America or any other country have a kind of colossal personality. The teacher who teaches a fifth grade or a sixth grade or a high-school class does not determine the character of the education given at these points in the system. To be sure, the teacher can do his or her work effectively or inefficiently. The special methods employed may be well or ill adapted to their ends. But above and beyond the individual teacher is the system which controls the pupil’s progress in many subtle ways and determines all the main lines of his training. ”

“ The slow, painful effort to draw letters like those in the copy book is not an unfamiliar exhibition in the penmanship class. A standard derived from the school work itself is a social standard; it is based on what pupils really do. One need not be satisfied with present performances, but one starts from solid ground. Furthermore, out of actual measurements will come a clear idea of the range of variation. One of the most astonishing facts which have come out in the course of the study of standards is the fact that there are very wide variations in the same grade. ”

“ Thus, why so much arithmetic in the lower school? Is it necessary to have as much as we do in the upper grades, even admitting its value in the lower grades? Are students of higher mathematics practical men? ”

“ We know to-day that every center in a state is involved in the behavior of each of its communities. Indeed, our generation is witnessing the assumption by the federal government of an influence and authority in education which is without precedent in American history. This is not the place to comment at length on these changes, but one result is absolutely certain—the simple district control of schools is gone. ”

“ The modern school building is the embodiment of a wholly new conception of education. The building is constructed with the utmost deference to the demands of hygiene. The placing of windows, the means of heating and ventilating, the style and arrangement of seats, have all been considered in every possible detail. When the demands of hygiene have been met, the various needs of the school are studied, and the rooms and equipment are arranged with the fullest possible regard for an enriched course of study. The exterior of the building reflects the interest of the community in æsthetics. ”

“ Is it desirable that shopwork be supplied in a school when it costs nearly twice as much as English? Is Latin enough better than modern languages to justify its retention in the program of a school when it costs eight dollars more per unit of instruction? ”

“ It is sometimes said that good school discipline is to be found only where there is no discipline. This remark is true only when discipline is thought of as synonymous with punishment administered; it assumes that the administration of such punishment is the chief or only form of discipline. In a larger view of the situation one should recognize that the best school discipline is that which guides the social group at all times and controls its attitudes toward all acts. The spirit of a class is no accident of the moment. ”

“ The teacher of science cannot ask for unlimited equipment for laboratory exercises; the teacher of music or arithmetic cannot say that he is interested merely in spiritual and intellectual affairs and that he has no reason to consider material matters. The impressive fact is that a great public trust has been committed to the hands of teachers. The community has erected schoolhouses and taxed itself to the point where school expenditures have come to be looked upon as a serious burden in many a section of the country. ”

“ I won’t even stop to argue that they can all at a bound make themselves much better than they are. Parents cannot possibly make many practicable suggestions by way of improving them. But just because we all know so little, just because schoolmasters are so hampered by tradition and organization, just because parents are so helpless in making practicable suggestions, for these very reasons the complacent following of traditions is the most inexcusable of attitudes. ”

“ We are less likely to realize the extent to which the community is drawing on its material resources for a similar purpose. The city of Chicago—to choose a single example—gives to each boy or girl who goes through elementary school and high school an aggregate of six hundred and thirty dollars. If a child were notified to go to the city hall when he is eighteen years of age and receive this sum of money, we should recognize what it means for a community to pay for the education of its new generation. We should understand that the children of a city are its wards. ”

“ Society as a whole does not33 share the slight esteem of reading exhibited by the man who takes his child out of school. Indeed, society has gone so far as to set aside that man’s judgment and to assume control of the child to the extent of insisting that the rudiments of an education shall be made universal.
Society still leaves it to the individual to decide whether he is to study higher branches. One may take algebra or not as one elects, but not so with arithmetic. ”

“ Whenever a class is given a series of review questions for the purpose of requiring a general review of a whole subject, the result of the exercise is to fix in the student’s mind certain larger elements of the study and to establish certain broad habits of selection. Written examinations may be, from this point of view, devices of training, not merely tests of results. The examination method as a training method has, accordingly, an important place. ”

“ The effort to lay down by investigation satisfactory standards of school work is one of the most productive lines of educational inquiry which has ever been instituted. Like all great movements, this movement of standardization has been misunderstood and opposed, but it is steadily gaining ground and promises to be the largest contribution of this generation to education. ”

“ This teacher will be told that 100 per cent means perfection. But what is perfection in a subject? Is the student perfect when he tells what is in the textbook, or is there a demand for original thinking? ”

“ Health work in the schools, as it has risen to the level of a subject of instruction, has encountered the kind of obstacles met by every new school subject. Teachers are ignorant on medical matters, and the doctors who come into the schools are ignorant of methods of teaching. The result is that the instruction given by teachers is sometimes formal and unscientific, while the work of the doctors does not prove as effective as it might because it does not reach the pupils. A partial corrective for this difficulty can be supplied through a better system of training teachers. ”

“ In Europe girls have only very recently been given opportunities of higher education, and even now the opportunity is limited to the few. We have undoubtedly made the mistake in this country, in our enthusiasm for equality of opportunity, of administering to girls a course of study originally designed for their brothers. In due time we shall learn how to give to girls an education suited to their needs, but there can never be any question among us about the wisdom of a higher education for women. ”

“ The education which we are criticizing is overwhelmingly formal and traditional. If objection is made to this or that study on the ground that it is useless or unsuitable, the answer comes that it “trains the mind” or has been valued for centuries. “Training the mind” in the sense in which the claim is thus made for algebra or ancient languages is an assumption none too well founded; traditional esteem is an insufficient offset to present and future uselessness. A man educated in the modern sense will forego the somewhat doubtful mental discipline received from formal studies ”

“ Others felt that at most free education should be extended only to the children of the poor, and for the rudiments of learning only. Still others felt that all forms of education would be conducted best if turned over to the various religious and educational societies of the time. A system of public instruction maintained by general taxation, such as we to-day enjoy, would not only have been declared unnecessary, but would have been stoutly resisted as well. ”

“ Commendation, like blame, is useless except as it sets up in the pupil’s mind true canons of judgment. To praise a child for a particular act, merely concentrating attention on that act, is to neglect the opportunity of cultivating a general virtue. ”

“ The teacher is concerned, therefore, not alone with intellectual instruction; he is concerned also with what is sometimes called school government or school discipline. If the class is in a riot, it is impossible to make any headway with history or arithmetic. Young and inexperienced teachers are often ineffective because they do not know the art of social management. They know the subject-matter which is to be impressed on the minds of the pupils, but they do not understand the serious social distractions which are sure to arise at times in a group of immature human beings. ”

“ Each year discloses more and more clearly that the school is the one institution we have yet conceived that is best fitted adequately to conserve these interests and utilize them for educational and social progress. Opportunities that came as a matter of course to children a generation ago do not come to many children now unless they are specifically planned for by some agency other than the home. Met wisely by the community, this seeming handicap may, in the end, result in a great and new-found social strength. ”

“ Nevertheless, the curriculum tends to persist, and often because of its conservatism becomes a menace to progress. Suggestions for innovations come through the insights of individuals or through the formulation of social demands. Whatever the source of suggestions for change, the student of education will find his problem in the fact that the curriculum is undergoing change as is every other phase of modern life. How to understand the changes that are imminent and how to direct them into productive channels is a major problem of the science of education. ”

“ If one goes back to the beginnings of any school system, it will always be found that the original courses of study grow directly out of the intellectual ideals of the times. For example, if one goes back to the beginnings of medieval universities, he finds that these institutions grew up because there was an interest in certain well-defined bodies of ideas. At Bologna one Irnerius had made himself acquainted with the laws of the northern Italian cities, and students came from all Europe to hear him expound these laws. The course of study was directly related to a specific demand. ”

“ He cannot be content with pure individualism, because his experience has broadened so that he sees his dependence on others. A new social era opens. With self-consciousness and with a desire to get back into society by accepting its ways and complying with its demands, the adolescent seeks, albeit somewhat clumsily, a new contact with his fellows. The awkwardness of this period, its lack of self-assurance, its eagerness for social recognition, are all perfectly clear to the student of human nature who has analyzed the case of a twelve-year-old pupil. ”

“ Taken in the aggregate, however, the body of information at hand regarding schools is so great that we are justified in speaking of a science of education. Furthermore, the use of the term “science” would be justified even if we were in possession of fewer solutions of school problems than we now have, for the essence of science is its method of investigation, not its ability to lay down a body of final rules of action. ”

“ The course in geography or Latin is not a quantitative matter; it is not a static affair; it is an organized body of material which grows and changes with the development of society. To the intelligent teacher a course of study is a subject of constant scrutiny and revision. Every detail must be weighed as to its importance and as to its relations to the whole series of topics and to the needs of pupils. ”

“ The one-room school escapes these questions for the most part because it is at liberty to allow the pupil to take a different pace in each subject. The one-room school is a place where the subjects of instruction taken in their totality, or the curriculum, as the whole series of subjects may be called, is usually not recognized as important. Each subject has a sequence of its own, but the curriculum as a whole is not thought out. ”

“ In 1917 we were told by the Commissioner of Education of the United States that more than 1,300,000 of the young people in this country were in the high schools. Even now, however, the eight-year vernacular rudimentary school of Germany has its stamp on our American life. As a rule our American schools do not permit a pupil to study foreign languages in the lower school, even when we know that he is going on to high school. The general exclusion of languages is due to the tradition that the elementary school is a vernacular school, not to inability on the part of pupils to learn languages. ”

“ The indefensible reasons given above for advancing pupils ought to make anyone who expects to become a teacher the more ready to turn to the careful study of the problem. It is undoubtedly a social and financial necessity that pupils be grouped in classes. It is equally necessary for purposes of administration that the groups have some kind of permanency and some degree of internal uniformity. It is certainly legitimate that the individual’s needs be asserted to the extent of freeing him from absolute subordination to the interests of the group. ”

“ There has been of late an increasing recognition of the justice of giving pupils different degrees of credit for work which they do in one and the same course. The student who carries a course in algebra with a high grade undoubtedly learns more than the student who does low-grade work in the same class. ”

“ His task is that of dictating school policies, not that of organizing the school on the basis of a complete scientific study of the educational situation in the community in which he works.
It cannot be asserted that the American principals of schools are everywhere devoted and competent students of the science of education. There is, however, a freer opportunity in our schools than in those of any other nation for a complete realization of the scientific ideal. There is comparative freedom of organization, and there is comparative adequacy of equipment. ”