Basic education

“ Not a question have I ever heard in any school meeting of the necessity of educating every American child—at any cost. Think of it! Think how far we have come in that respect, in seventy—yes, fifty—years. Universal education has become a settled axiom of our life. ”

“ What shall we say of this far-reaching modern movement to adapt education to the immediate needs of all people? What shall we say of teaching of trades to the children of elementary schools? What shall we say to the overshadowing of the remotely practical subjects of the secondary-school curriculum by immediately practical courses? ”

“ It seemed to me that we teachers had unconsciously elaborated a system which should secure the discipline of the schools and the eagerness of the scholars,—by means of marks, prizes, and the like,—and yet eliminate that knowledge-hunger, itself the quite sufficient incentive to education. ”

“ In general terms we may say that our educational system will be made purposive where it is now haphazard, and that it will be brought into definite connection with the economic life of the country. Education will be regarded as a preparation for livelihood as well as for life,—as a training [50] for working citizens rather than for a leisured class. ”

“ It is taken for granted that Education, properly so called, will result from the ensemble of these particular educations—physical, intellectual, moral, etc.,—each one of which contributes its share to the final result, and is therefore a part of the entire education. And each field produces certain peculiar results which it would be idle to demand of another section, just as we never expect an olive grove to yield a crop of peaches. Every part, self-contained and quite distinct from the rest, absolutely excludes all other parts from itself. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In a public school, therefore, when all classes of the community are to be taught, the truths and exercises should be selected in such a manner, that they shall, if possible, be equally useful to all; leaving the navigator and the agriculturist, the surgeon and the lawyer, to supplement their general education, by the study of those special branches of learning which their several professions require. ”

“ The provision of education for all, with facilities for children of every class to pass on to higher grades of work, is essential if the latent powers in all, whatever they may be, are to be developed to the utmost. ”

“ Thus even if we imagine a perfect educational process, carried out by teachers who are all men and women of light and leading, the result of that process will be ultimately conditioned by the quality of the human beings who pass through it. Just as democracy pre-supposes education, so education pre-supposes children who are educable. ”

“ Yet, in general, the educational policy, matters touching the curriculum, and all the discipline of the student body, as almost a matter of divine right, whether or not by custom or by statute, belong to the men whose craft and experience is in lines of education. ”

“ The education of each class in society has, or ought to have, its ideal, determined by the wants of that class, and by its destination. Society may be imagined so uniform that one education shall be suitable for all its members ”

“ I am anxious to bring a quite successful educational experiment before the public at a moment when we are told on authority that “Education must be ... an appeal to the spirit if it is to be made interesting.” Here is Education which is as interesting and fascinating as a fine art to parents, children and teachers.
During the last thirty years thousands of children educated on these lines have grown up in love with Knowledge and manifesting a ‘right judgment in all things’ so far as a pretty wide curriculum gives them data. ”

“ I wish to discuss with you some phases of the problem that is perhaps foremost in the minds of the teaching public to-day: the problem, namely, of making education bear more directly and more effectively upon the work of practical, everyday life. ”

“ Education to fit the child to earn a better living, to command a higher wage,—- this myopic view of the function of the school could do but little to make the work of teaching anything but drudgery; and yet it is this narrow and materialistic view that has dominated our educational system to within a comparatively few years. ”

“ What is commonly and technically called education—the development and instruction of the faculties of children, is only preparatory; the scholastic education of the boy is but introductory to the practical education of the man. It is only this preparatory education of the children of the people that is the work of the schoolmasters. ”

“ Under the phrase, 'Education is a life,' I have tried to show how necessary it is to sustain the intellectual life upon ideas, and, as a corollary, that a school-book should be a medium for ideas, and not merely a receptacle for facts. That normal children have a natural desire for, and a right of admission to, all fitting knowledge, appears to me to be suggested by the phrase, 'Education is the science of relations.'
These considerations clear the ground towards that of a curriculum. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Have these institutions succeeded in raising the general level of character and improving the general conditions of life? Can we indulge any sure and certain hope that the work of education will be increasingly fruitful? ”

“ In like manner, those branches of education which are most important for securing the welfare of the pupils, and most for the benefit of society, ought to be selected and preferred before all others; seeing that to neglect, or wilfully to err in this matter, would be injurious to the child, and unjust to the community.—Our object at present therefore is, to enquire what those general principles are which ought to regulate us in our choice of subjects and exercises for the education of youth. ”

“ Elementary education is there of a more practical character than with us; it is our primary instruction, with the omission of the ideal, and the addition of some instruction in commercial and economical affairs ”

“ The education of each child is compulsory.... In addition to this wide-spread education each child must be taught a profession, art, or trade, so that every member of the community will be enabled to earn his own livelihood. ”

“ The problem of how to produce as effective and as thorough education for leadership with a one-class school system as with a two- class; the opening-up of opportunity for youth of brains in any social class to rise and be trained for service; the selection and proper training of those of superior intelligence; the elimination of barriers to the advancement of children of large intellectual endowment ”

“ In the narrower sense, education may be confined to instruction, the imparting of definite information on various subjects, because such information, in and for itself, is useful in daily life. Elementary education—reading, writing, and arithmetic—is almost wholly of this kind. But instruction, necessary as it is, does not per se constitute education in the sense in which I wish to consider it. ”

“ It provided very wisely for the development of elementary education, with the object of "conveying to the great mass of the people, who are utterly incapable of obtaining any education worthy of the name by their own unaided efforts, useful and practical knowledge, suited to every station in life." ”

“ They see that for many children a “liberal education” is not necessarily one which follows the traditional academic curriculum, but rather one which suits itself to individual needs and which seeks to develop the pupil’s powers by setting him to do what he can do, instead of forcing him to try to do what he can never do with success. ”

“ I have enumerated some of the points in which our work is exceptional in the hope of convincing the reader that unusual work carried on successfully in hundreds of schoolrooms—home and other—is based on principles hitherto unrecognized. The recognition of these principles should put our national education on an intelligent basis and should make for general stability, joy in living, and personal initiative. ”

“ Under this conception general education, instead of being the prerogative of the ruling or moneyed class, is urged as a common right, a social duty and an economic necessity. Learning is not limited to those who expect to enter the theological, medical, legal, or academic professions. ”

“ The Western educationalist will admit, then, that the function of education is to foster growth; and if you ask him what it is that grows or ought to grow under education's fostering care, he will give you a long list of faculties—mental, for the most part, but also moral and physical—and then break off under the impression that he has set education an adequate and a practicable task. ”

“ But there is another principle being tested, and that is the right of education. It is a settled point in the development of American civilization, that education is essential to the proper discipline of the citizen—some degree, at least, of elementary education. ”

“ In brief, you will have to carry on your own higher education at the same time that you are educating your children. Intellectually you must cultivate to good purpose that most complex of subjects—human nature and its laws, as exhibited in your children, in yourself, and in the world. ”

“ These things being so, the authorities who have charge of our public education, primary, secondary, and tertiary, have decided in their wisdom—to do and compel the exact contrary. Object-lessons and the visible being admittedly preferable to rote-lessons and the audible, they have prescribed that our education, so called, shall be mainly an education not in things and properties, but in books and reading. They have settled that it shall deal almost entirely and exclusively with language and with languages; that words, not objects, shall be the facts it impresses on the minds of the pupils. ”

“ The practical tendency of modern education, by which discipline and culture may be given while at the same time preparing the student for the active duties of life, makes education more necessary for all persons and classes. The great changes that have taken place in methods of instruction and in the materials of scientific investigation, and the tendency to develop the man as well as to furnish him with information, evince the masterly progress of educational systems, and demonstrate their great worth. ”

“ For the most fruitful part of all intellectual education is the acquisition of the general outline and the basal idea,—the categories, so to speak, of the provinces of human learning. This intellectual part of school education could not well be more accurately directed to aid the cause of civilization. For the kind of knowledge and mental discipline that conserves civil life is the knowledge that gives an insight into the dependence of the individual upon society. The school is busied with giving the pupil a knowledge of the conditions of physical nature and human nature ”

“ But to understand business on this plane, and to conduct it in this large way, needs a fine education, an education built, first of all, on a practical basis, such as the education of our common schools. Then should follow a course in the ideals of the race, the classic studies in language, literature, history, science, and philosophy. ”

“ How to establish the moral aim in the center of the school course, how to subordinate and realize the other educational aims while keeping this chiefly in view, how to make instruction and school discipline contribute unitedly to the formation of vigorous moral character, and how to unite home, school, and other life experiences of a child in perfecting the one great aim of education—these are some of the problems whose solution will be sought in the following chapters. ”

“ The experience of our ancestors, floating in a vast number of educational maxims, is handed on from lip to lip; and few or many of these maxims form the educational code of every household.
But we hardly take in how complete a revolution advancing science is effecting in the theory of education. ”

“ The mass of the people have indeed more instruction but, at times, we doubt if they are better educated. Results are the best judges of educational values. History and experience prove that success in education depends more on the sense of responsibility in the parents and of duty in the children, than on palatial school-houses and elaborate programme of studies. ”