New Learning

“ The material may be the same, the science of physics, biology or history as the case may be, but the method of treatment may be widely different in the two cases.
Education is really one of the newest of the arts and sciences. The idea of particular, exceptional people pursuing learning has been familiar to the world for scores of centuries, but the idea of preparing the minds of whole classes or whole communities for co-operations and common actions by a training in common ideas is comparatively a new one. ”

“ In an ideal University, as I conceive it, a man should be able to obtain instruction in all forms of knowledge, and discipline in the use of all the methods by which knowledge is obtained. In such a University the force of living example should fire the student with a noble ambition to emulate the learning of learned men, and to follow in the footsteps of the explorers of new fields of knowledge. And the very air he breathes should be charged with that enthusiasm for truth, that fanaticism of veracity, which is a greater possession than much learning; ”

“ The sweetest and most inoffensive path of life leads through the avenues of science and learning; and whoever can either remove any obstructions in this way, or open up any new prospect, ought so far to be esteemed a benefactor to mankind. ”

“ If you admit the latter, then you have admitted the case for the new education. Temperaments, impulses, interests—or, if you like, the lack of interests—will insist on dominating, on determining the way each child takes his experience. All education can ever do is to provide the experience, and stimulate, guide, organize interests. ”

“ But who can say that any curriculum that can be packed into the years of school life and the years of college life combined contains all the elements of modern learning? Modern learning has been so drawn into a score of consequences, has been so extended into a system of uses, that it is a sort of mirror held up to life itself, and the man of affairs now seeks in the laboratory, in the quiet places of counsel, from the scholar, those main elements which shall guide him in accomplishing the particular material tasks which lie immediately under his hand. ”

“ But, understanding the design of education to be, to discipline the mind, and furnish it with the elements of knowledge, there is no science, no branch of learning, but what is useful for these objects; and the only question, where education cannot be liberal, is, What branches will best secure these ends? ”

“ But the distance between twenty and sixty—the life beginning and the life advancing toward its close— was frequently apparent; also between an active, original mind, requiring humanity for its study, and one whose whole bent was among the dry bones of ancient learning—the difference, in short, between learning and knowledge—the mere student and the man who only uses study as a means to the perfecting of his whole nature, his complete existence as a human being. ”

“ Finally, I shall discuss intellectual education, its aims, its curriculum, and its possibilities, from the first lessons in reading and writing to the end of the university years. The further education which men and women derive from life and the world I shall regard as lying outside my scope; but to make men and women capable of learning from experience should be one of the aims which early education should keep most prominently in view. ”

“ There has been an immense æsthetic development since then. And I believe that in the future it is going to mean far more to us than we have yet begun to realize. I refer to the kind of training that comes to mankind through direct operation upon his environment, the incarnation of his thought, the putting of his ideas into new material relations. ”

“ I might speak of his quickening influence on one body of men—five hundred strong—assembled in one of our newer institutions of learning. But that influence extends far beyond those who stand in institutions of learning. ”

“ Many new plans and schemes for education are daily starting up, but the whole, of which I have any knowledge, have the above common error; for the subjects upon which our youth are taught to read and write, and those in which the dead or foreign living languages are taught, are by no means calculated to expand the mind, or to give it a knowledge of Nature and her laws ”

“ The Revival of Learning.—But the human mind, ever restive to discover the relation between causes and effects in the production of natural phenomena, would not permanently brook this restraint. The minds of the more energetic and independent thinkers revolted against the reign of authority, and, under the leadership of such minds, there began a reform that is known to us all under the title of the revival of learning, a reform of wide extent and of great importance to the human race. ”

“ Such a course of development, exactly opposite to the path taken by the old-fashioned methods of education, I now see mankind about to enter upon; nay, it has been actually entered upon already in a few single cases, though these cases are almost unknown and therefore unregarded; and with this new course of development a new period is to begin, a new age for all mankind, and therefore in the higher inner sense a new world; a world, perceiving and understanding, perceived and understood ”

“ He may excite interest by devising ingenious examples, such as finding out how much all the numbers from one to fifty will make, when added together, or the amount of the ages of the whole class; or any such example, the result of which they might feel a little interest in learning. Thus the object is steadily pursued, though the means of pursuing it, are constantly changing. We have the advantage of regular progress in the acquisition of knowledge truly valuable, while this progress is made, with all the spirit and interest which variety can give. ”

“ This is the very essence of education, its informing spirit. The student no longer thinks merely of becoming an expert turner; he thinks of becoming a man! All the powers of his mind are roused to vigorous action; imagination illumes the path, and reason, following with firm but cautious step, drives straight to the mark. Rapid development results from the combination of practice with theory—rapid because orderly, or natural. ”

“ One thesis, which is, perhaps, new, that Education is the Science of Relations, appears to me to solve the question of a curriculum, as showing that the object of education is to put a child in living touch with as much as may be of the life of Nature and of thought. Add to this one or two keys to self-knowledge, and the educated youth goes forth with some idea of self-management, with some pursuits, and many vital interests. My excuse for venturing to offer a solution, however tentative and passing, to the problem of education is twofold. ”

“ Experience is beginning to show that teaching, like every other department of human thought and activity, must change with the changing conditions of society, or it will fall in the rear of civilization, and become an obstacle to improvement.... In this volume an endeavor has been made to examine education from the standpoint of modern thought, and to contribute something to the solution of the problems that are forcing themselves upon the attention of educators. ”

“ So, a man eminent as a scholar and in the social sciences has said, not so long ago: "The first question I would ask is, has not this learning a large part to play in supplementing those practical powers, instincts and sympathies which can be developed only in action, only through experience?... ”

“ Let the basis of training be modern and scientific, instead of ancient and classical, and, the new standpoint being taken, let the courses of study be widened, so as to include moral, literary, and aesthetic agencies of training. ”

“ One writer has characterized the Revival of Learning as the beginnings of the emergence of the individual from institutional control, and the substitution of the humanities for the divinities as the basis of education. ”

“ The first fact is that, in states of rapid transition like ours, which witness a continuous battle between old and new theories and old and new practices, the educational methods in use are apt to be considerably out of harmony with the times. ”

“ Among the first, perhaps the very first, instrument for the improvement of the condition of men is knowledge, and to the acquisition of much of the knowledge adapted to the wants, the comforts, and enjoyments of human life public institutions and seminaries of learning are essential. ”

“ Here we have a rule of selection by which the different parts of learning may be classed for our purpose. Those which belong to the province of the judgment [pg 175] are religion (in its evidences and interpretation) , ethics, history, eloquence, poetry, theories of general speculation, the fine arts, and works of wit. Great as the variety of these large divisions of learning may appear, they are all held in union by two capital principles of connexion. First, they are all quarried out of one and the same great subject of man's moral, social, and feeling nature. ”

“ These, then, are the general ideas with which we must set out in discussing a curriculum:—Life as divided into several kinds of activity of successively decreasing importance; the worth of each order of facts as regulating these several kinds of activity, intrinsically, quasi-intrinsically, and conventionally; and their regulative influences estimated both as knowledge and discipline.
Happily, that all-important part of education which goes to secure direct self-preservation, is in great part already provided for. Too momentous to be left to our blundering, Nature takes it into her own hands. ”

“ But limited though they be, where is the country to which these discoveries do not extend, or what, the mind not utterly barren and opake that they have not enlightened and improved?
They are heard on the sea, they are seen on the land; and though not so obvious, their impress is as palpable upon the schools. They work in a circle. In the schools they begin, to the schools they return. Improvements in education gave rise to the spirit of research, of discovery, and invention, which now pervades the world. Action and re-action are reciprocals. ”

“ Education, in the sense in which I mean it, may be defined as the formation, by means of instruction, of certain mental habits and a certain outlook on life and the world. It remains to ask ourselves, what mental habits, and what sort of outlook, can be hoped for as the result of instruction? When we have answered this question we can attempt to decide what science has to contribute to the formation of the habits and outlook which we desire.
Our whole life is built about a certain number—not a very small number—of primary instincts and impulses. ”

“ Can there be a new basis for education? Does the foundation upon which education rests really change? Is the educational system of one age necessarily unfitted to provide for the educational needs of the next? ”

“ In intellectual education, the same principle: simultaneous growth, a balance of all faculties without exception; faculties of assimilation and production, of science and of art; the spirit of observation, justice, memory, imagination, the feeling of beauty. Integral instruction, reciprocally the goal and the means of education, is defined as [:] a complete conjunto, entwined, synthetical, progressive in each category of knowledge in parallel, and all despite the younger age and the first elements. ”

“ For it assumed that the aim of education is to enable individuals to continue their education—or that the object and reward of learning is continued capacity for growth. ”

“ And looking attentively at this universal foundation on which our own human value is supported—call it language, logic, law,—we were led to study the relationship existing between individuality, which is the aim of all forms of education, and this universal spirit which here intervenes as it does in every moment of the human life. It intervenes in education, as the science and the conscience and the entire personality of the teacher. ”

“ The theory of development, which is now widely received and applied to all things, from star dust to the latest fashion, is at once a sign and a cause of the almost unlimited confidence which we put in the remedial and transforming power of education. ”

“ The power of the student to think independently, to digest the facts he has absorbed into some current theory which enables him to absorb more, and thus continually upbuild and rebuild his science, should be uninterruptedly stimulated by lectures, conferences and reading. ”

“ As the mind, consisting at first of but few active faculties, has its later-completed faculties successively brought into play, and ultimately comes to have all its faculties in simultaneous action; it follows that our teaching should begin with but few subjects at once, and successively adding to these, should finally carry on all subjects abreast. Not only in its details should education proceed from the simple to the complex, but in its ensemble also.
2. The development of the mind, as all other development, is an advance from the indefinite to the definite. ”

“ This condition of the new pedagogy results directly from its two fundamental principles: (1) that the aim of the school is development and not science, and (2) that development and the means for attaining it may be theoretically defined. ”

“ They will have to be shown simple facts and truths, and have their mental relations and importance explained. By gradually introducing new knowledge as occasion offers, the field of study is sufficiently widened. ”

“ Then as the present merges insensibly into the future, the future is taken care of.
2. Education as Unfolding.—There is a conception of education which professes to be based upon the idea of development. But it takes back with one hand what it proffers with the other. Development is conceived not as continuous growing, but as the unfolding of latent powers toward a definite goal. The goal is conceived of as completion, perfection. Life at any stage short of attainment of this goal is merely an unfolding toward it. Logically the doctrine is only a variant of the preparation theory. ”