Science of education

“ During recent years the demand for a thorough and comprehensive study of schools by scientific methods has led to a number of investigations which can be offered as an optimistic beginning of a science of education. It would, indeed, be far beyond the truth to assert that science has settled all the problems of teaching and of school organization. ”

“ That science should be a staple of education, that the teaching of Latin, of modern languages, of mathematics, must be reformed, that nature and handicrafts should be pressed into service for the training of the eye and hand, that boys and girls must learn to write English and therefore must know something of history and literature; and, on the other hand, that education must be made more technical and utilitarian--these, and such as these, are the cries of expedience with which we take the field. ”

“ If, then, these great truths in education be at the doors of our educators, why do they not acquire and use them? The answer is not far to seek. Not one teacher in five hundred ever makes a practical, thorough study of the history of education, to say nothing of the science.
“The tremendous projecting power of tradition stands stubbornly in the way of progress in education. It can only be met and overcome by the most thorough searching and indefatigable study of the child’s nature, and of the means by which the possibilities for good in God’s greatest creation may be realized.” ”

“ The recognition of the science of education as a separate discipline can be urged on the ground that the scientific methods which were first applied to the problems of mental development have opened up every aspect of school organization to scientific study. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Education, then, is the development of all the powers of man to the culminating point of action. What kind of action? Action in art. What is art? “The power of doing something not taught by nature or instinct; power or skill in the use of knowledge; the practical application of the rules or principles of science.” Again we have the last analysis of education—“skill in the use of knowledge; the application of the rules or principles of science.” And this is tool practice. ”

“ We need especially, now that the purpose of education is adequately defined, an adequate doctrine of educational values and a rich and vital infusion of the spirit of experimental science. For efficiency in the work of instruction and training, we need to know the influence of different types of experience in controlling human conduct,—we need to know just what degree of efficiency is exerted by our arithmetic and literature, our geography and history, our drawing and manual training, our Latin and Greek, our ethics and psychology. ”

“ I take it that the whole object of education is, in the first place, to train the faculties of the young in such a manner as to give their possessors the best chance of being happy and useful in their generation; and, in the second place, to furnish them with the most important portions of that immense capitalised experience of the human race which we call knowledge of various kinds. I am using the term knowledge in its widest possible sense; and the question is, what subjects to select by training and discipline, in which the object I have just defined may be best attained. ”

“ In a paper on The Higher Education, published in the seventh volume of the Popular Science Monthly, having defined the purpose of true education as being "to develop the mind; to strengthen the thinking faculties in every possible direction; to render the acquisition of new knowledge easier and surer; to increase the student's resources; and to render him better fitted for dealing with the useful affairs of the world," he sets forth the advantages of science over the ancient and even the modern languages for the accomplishment of it. ”

“ But if, as we have seen, education must bend to the same rigid discipline to which the other sciences have had to submit,—and if teaching can be improved only by following the laws which have determined the success of the other arts—the question [Pg 33] naturally arises, "What is to be done now for education?"—"Where are we to begin?"—"How are we to proceed?"—"In what manner are the principles of the science to be investigated, so that they shall most extensively promote the success of the art? ”

“ But education should be a science of proportion, and any one subject that assumes undue importance does so at the expense of other subjects which a child’s mind should deal with. Arithmetic, Mathematics, are exceedingly easy to examine upon and so long as education is regulated by examinations so long shall we have teaching, directed not to awaken a sense of awe in contemplating a self-existing science, but rather to secure exactness and ingenuity in the treatment of problems. ”

“ Again, schools and education, technically so called, are not the antecedent but the consequent of progress. The men who have been most successful in penetrating the secrets of Nature and solving the problems of society have been in advance of any school. The education of these men has not been for mental discipline; they have studied to find the truth, and an incident of that study has been discipline. Whence came that discipline which rendered schools possible? ”

“ In consequence of this scientific progress, the educational theorists began to introduce science and a knowledge of real things into the curriculum. It came to be widely felt that humanism gave a knowledge only of words, books, and opinions, and did not even at its best lead to a study of real things. ”

“ To direct studies of306 the school the science of education must add full studies of the social life of which the school is a part and of the individual nature which is to be trained and molded through the educational processes. ”

“ The reason of this will be obvious when we reflect on the deep interest which the best and most philanthropic individuals in society take in this science. The other sciences are in some measure removed from the busy pursuits of life; they are the concern of certain persons, who are allowed to investigate and to experiment, to judge and to decide as they please, without the public in general caring much about the matter.—But education is a science of a different kind. ”

“ 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. ”

“ More vocational education will come, and better education, because it will be based on quantitative studies of aims, needs, and values—of educational processes and results,measured with precision. Even in school administration, guesses, opinions, and prejudices are gradually giving way to science. ”

“ The other sciences, during the last half century, have advanced with amazing rapidity. This has been the result of a strict adherence to well established facts, and their legitimate inferences.—A docile subjection of the mind to the results of experiment, and a candid confession and abandonment of fallacies, have characterized every benefactor of the sciences;—and the science of education must be advanced by an adherence to the same principles. ”

“ Education must be cultivated as a science, before teaching can ever flourish as an art. The philosopher must first ascertain and light up the way, before the teacher can, with security, [Pg 20] walk in it. Experiment must be employed to ascertain facts, investigate causes, and trace these causes to their effects. By fair and legitimate deductions drawn from the facts thus ascertained, he will be enabled to establish certain principles, which, when acted upon by the teacher, will invariably succeed. ”

“ Before educational methods can be made to harmonise in character and arrangement with the faculties in their mode and order of unfolding, it is first needful that we ascertain with some completeness how the faculties do unfold. At present we have acquired, on this point, only a few general notions. These general notions must be developed in detail—must be transformed into a multitude of specific propositions, before we can be said to possess that science on which the art of education must be based. ”

“ You have set no restrictions upon access to the instruction you propose to give; you have provided that such instruction, either as given by the university or by associated institutions, should cover the field of human intellectual activity. You have recognised the importance of encouraging research. You propose to provide means by which young men, who may be full of zeal for a literary or for a scientific career, but who also may have mistaken aspiration for inspiration, may bring their capacities to a test, and give their powers a fair trial. ”

“ Education, I say, is now looked upon as a science, closely allied to and continually assisted by its sister science of sociology, definitely based upon and springing out of the sciences of psychology and physiology, and even having its roots deep down in the sub-soil of biology. ”

“ They seek something tangible, a working plan, which will help them in their present perplexities and show them a wise use of drawing, natural science, and literature, in harmony with the other studies. Finally, since we are in the midst of such a breaking-up period, we need to take our bearings. In order to avoid mistakes and excesses there is a call for deep, impartial, and many-sided thinking on educational problems. Supposing that we know what the controlling aim of education is, we are next led to inquire about and to determine the relative value of studies as tributary to this aim. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Let our schools and our colleges and universities make men first, and then let them make lawyers and physicians and teachers. Ordinarily, so far as education is concerned—and we are confining our discussion to that now—the only path to true completed manhood is through a thorough course of educational training. Latin and Greek and the higher mathematics, rhetoric and logic and mental and moral philosophy, these are the useful studies in education. ”

“ The mission of education is to show the child, by purely scientific methods, that the more knowledge we have of natural products, their qualities, and the way to use them, the more industrial, scientific, and artistic commodities we shall have for the support and comfort of life, and men and women will issue in larger numbers from our schools with a determination to [65] cultivate every branch of knowledge and action, under the guidance of reason and the inspiration of science and art, which will adorn life and reform society. ”

“ It systematically promotes practical instruction in the classes; it affords facilities to teachers who desire to learn their business thoroughly; and it is always ready to aid in the suppression of pot-teaching.
All this is, as you may imagine, highly satisfactory to me. I see that spread of scientific education, about which I have so often permitted myself to worry the public, become, for all practical purposes, an accomplished fact. ”

“ Hence in deciding upon the right method of education, an inquiry into the method of civilisation will help to guide us.
5. One of the conclusions to which such an inquiry leads, is, that in each branch of instruction we should proceed from the empirical to the rational. During human progress, every science is evolved out of its corresponding art. It results from the necessity we are under, both individually and as a race, of reaching the abstract by way of the concrete, that there must be practice and an accruing experience with its empirical generalisation, before there can be science. ”

“ Well, that being so, you see a question arises of very great difficulty—What is it most important that persons should know?—and till we can answer that question, we cannot satisfactorily solve the question which I am now proposing to consider—What is the education that ought to be given to the middle and upper classes of this country? We must invent for ourselves a sort of new science—a science of weights and measures; of ponderation, if I may coin a word—in which we shall put into the scales all the different objects of human knowledge, and decide upon their relative importance. ”