Part 3

In recent years, especially through the scientific study of physical geography, the processes that go to the formation of climate, soil, and general configuration of land masses have been accurately determined, and the methods of teaching so simplified that it is possible to lead out from the central idea mentioned to the physical explanations of the elements of geographical difference quite early in the course of study. Setting out from the idea of the use made of the earth by civilization, the pupil in the fifth and sixth years of his schooling (at the age of eleven or twelve) may extend his inquiries quite profitably as far as the physical explanations of land-shapes and climates. In the seventh and eighth year of school much more may be done in this direction. But it is believed that the distinctively human interest connected with geography in the first years of its study should not yield to the purely scientific one of physical processes until the pupil has taken up the study of history.

The educational value of geography, as it is and has been in elementary schools, is obviously very great. It makes possible something like accuracy in the picturing of distant places and events, and removes a large tract of mere superstition from the mind. In the days of newspaper reading one’s stock of geographical information is in constant requisition. A war on the opposite side of the globe is followed with more interest in this year than a war near our own borders before the era of the telegraph. The general knowledge of the locations and boundaries of nations, of their status in civilization, and their natural advantages for contributing to the world market, is of great use to the citizen in forming correct ideas from his daily reading.

The educational value of geography is even more apparent if we admit the claims of those who argue that the present epoch is the beginning of an era in which public opinion is organized into a ruling force by the agency of periodicals and books. Certainly neither the newspaper nor the book can influence an illiterate people; they can do little to form opinions where the readers have no knowledge of geography.

As to the psychological value of geography little need be said. It exercises in manifold ways the memory of forms and the imagination; it brings into exercise the thinking power, in tracing back toward unity the various series of causes. What educative value there is in geology, meteorology, zoölogy, ethnology, economics, history, and politics is to be found in the more profound study of geography, and, to a proportionate extent, in the study of its merest elements.

Your Committee is of the opinion that there has been a vast improvement in the methods of instruction in this branch in recent years, due, in large measure, to the geographical societies of this and other countries. At first there prevailed what might be named sailor geography. The pupil was compelled to memorize all the capes and headlands, bays and harbors, mouths of rivers, islands, sounds, and straits around the world. He enlivened this, to some extent, by brief mention of the curiosities and oddities in the way of cataracts, water-gaps, caves, strange animals, public buildings, picturesque costumes, national exaggerations, and such matters as would furnish good themes for sailors’ yarns. Little or nothing was taught to give unity to the isolated details furnished in endless number. It was an improvement on this when the method of memorizing capital cities and political boundaries succeeded. With this came the era of map drawing. The study of watersheds and commercial routes, of industrial productions and centres of manufacture and commerce, has been adopted in the better class of schools. Instruction in geography is growing better by the constant introduction of new devices to make plain and intelligible the determining influence of physical causes in producing the elements of difference and the counter-process of industry and commerce by which each difference is rendered of use to the whole world, and each locality made a participator in the productions of all.

_D. History._

The next study, ranked in order of value, for the elementary school is history. But, as will be seen, the value of history, both practically and psychologically, is less in the beginning and greater at the end than geography. For it relates to the institutions of men, and especially to the political state and its evolution. While biography narrates the career of the individual, civil history records the careers of nations. The nation has been compared to the individual by persons interested in the educational value of history. Man has two selves, they say, the individual self, and the collective self of the organized state or nation. The study of history is, then, the study of this larger, corporate, social and civil self. The importance of this idea is thus brought out more clearly in its educational significance. For to learn this civil self is to learn the substantial condition which makes possible the existence of civilized man in all his other social combinations--the family, the Church, and the manifold associated activities of civil society. For the state protects these combinations from destruction by violence. It defines the limits of individual and associated effort, within which each endeavor re-enforces the endeavors of all, and it uses the strength of the whole nation to prevent such actions as pass beyond these safe limits and tend to collision with the normal action of the other individuals and social units. Hobbes called the state a Leviathan, to emphasize its stupendous individuality and organized self-activity. Without this, he said, man lives in a state of “constant war, fear, poverty, filth, ignorance, and wretchedness; within the state dwell peace, security, riches, science, and happiness.” The state is the collective man who “makes possible the rational development of the individual man, like a mortal God, subduing his caprice and passion and compelling obedience to law, developing the ideas of justice, virtue, and religion, creating property and ownership, nurture and education.” The education of the child into a knowledge of this higher self begins early within the nurture of the family. The child sees a policeman or some town officer, some public building, a court house or a jail; he sees or hears of an act of violence, a case of robbery or murder followed by arrest of the guilty. The omnipresent higher self, which has been invisible hitherto, now becomes visible to him in its symbols and still more in its acts.

History in school, it is contended, should be the special branch for education in the duties of citizenship. There is ground for this claim. History gives a sense of belonging to a higher social unity which possesses the right of absolute control over person and property in the interest of the safety of the whole. This, of course, is the basis of citizenship; the individual must feel this or see this solidarity of the state and recognize its supreme authority. But history shows the collisions of nations, and the victory of one political ideal accompanied by the defeat of another. History reveals an evolution of forms of government that are better and better adapted to permit individual freedom, and the participation of all citizens in the administration of the government itself.

People who make their own government have a special interest in the spectacle of political evolution as exhibited in history. But it must be admitted that this evolution has not been well presented by popular historians. Take, for instance, the familiar example of old-time pedagogy, wherein the Roman republic was conceived as a freer government than the Roman empire that followed it, by persons apparently misled by the ideas of representative self-government associated with the word _republic_. It was the beginning of a new epoch when this illusion was dispelled, and the college student became aware of the true Roman meaning of _republic_, namely, the supremacy of an oligarchy on the Tiber that ruled distant provinces in Spain, Gaul, Asia Minor, Germany, and Africa, for its selfish ends and with an ever-increasing arrogance. The people at home in Rome, not having a share in the campaigns on the borderland, did not appreciate the qualities of the great leaders who, like Cæsar, subdued the nations by forbearance, magnanimity, trust, and the recognition of a sphere of freedom secured to the conquered by the Roman civil laws, which were rigidly enforced by the conqueror, as much as by the violence of arms. The change from republic to empire meant the final subordination of this tyrannical Roman oligarchy, and the recognition of the rights of the provinces to Roman freedom. This illustration shows how easily a poor teaching of history may pervert its good influence or purpose into a bad one. For the Roman monarchy under the empire secured a degree of freedom never before attained under the republic, in spite of the election of such tyrants as Nero and Caligula to the imperial purple. The civil service went on as usual administering the affairs of distant countries, educating them in Roman jurisprudence, and cultivating a love for accumulating private property. Those countries had before lived communistically after the style of the tribe or at best of the village community. Roman private property in land gave an impulse to the development of free individuality such as had always been impossible under the social stage of development known as the village community.

To teach history properly is to dispel this shallow illusion which flatters individualism, and to open the eyes of the pupil to the true nature of freedom, namely, the freedom through obedience to just laws enforced by a strong government.

Your Committee has made this apparent digression for the sake of a more explicit statement of its conviction of the importance of teaching history in a different spirit from that of abstract freedom, which sometimes means anarchy, although they admit the possibility of an opposite extreme, the danger of too little stress on the progressive element in the growth of nations, and its manifestation in new and better political devices for representing all citizens without weakening the central power.

That the history of one’s own nation is to be taught in the elementary school seems fixed by common consent. United States history includes first a sketch of the epoch of discoveries and next of the epoch of colonization. This, fortunately, suits the pedagogic requirements. For the child loves to approach the stern realities of a firmly established civilization through its stages of growth by means of individual enterprise. Here is the use of biography as introduction to history. It treats of exceptional individuals whose lives bring them in one way or another into national or even world-historical relations. They throw light on the nature and necessity of governments, and are in turn illuminated by the light thrown back on them by the institutions which they promote or hinder. The era of semi-private adventure with which American history begins is admirably adapted for study by the pupil in the elementary stage of his education. So, too, the next epoch, that of colonization. The pioneer is a degree nearer to civilization than is the explorer and discoverer. In the colonial history the pupil interests himself in the enterprise of aspiring individualities, in their conquest over obstacles of climate and soil; their conflicts with the aboriginal population; their choice of land for settlement; the growth of their cities; above all, their several attempts and final success in forming a constitution securing local self-government. An epoch of growing interrelation of the colonies succeeds, a tendency to union on a large scale due to the effect of European wars which involved England, France, and other countries, and affected the relations of their colonies in America. This epoch, too, abounds in heroic personalities, like Wolfe, Montcalm, and Washington, and perilous adventures, especially in the Indian warfare.

The fourth epoch is the Revolution, by which the colonies through joint effort secured their independence and afterward their union as a nation. The subject grows rapidly more complex, and tasks severely the powers of the pupils in the eighth year of the elementary school. The formation of the Constitution, and a brief study of the salient features of the Constitution itself, conclude the study of the portion of the history of the United States that is sufficiently remote to be treated after the manner of an educational classic. Everything up to this point stands out in strong individual outlines, and is admirably fitted for that elementary course of study. Beyond this point, the War of 1812 and the War of the Rebellion, together with the political events that led to it, are matters of memory with the present generation of parents and grandparents, and are, consequently, not so well fitted for intensive study in school as the already classic period of our history. But these later and latest epochs may be, and will be, read at home not only in the text-book on history used in the schools, but also in the numerous sketches that appear in newspapers, magazines, and in more pretentious shapes. In the intensive study which should be undertaken of the classic period of our history, the pupil may be taught the method appropriate to historical investigation, the many points of view from which each event ought to be considered. He should learn to discriminate between the theatrical show of events and the solid influences that move underneath as ethical causes. Although he is too immature for very far-reaching reflections, he must be helped to see the causal processes of history. Armed with this discipline in historic methods, the pupil will do all of his miscellaneous reading and thinking in this province with more adequate intellectual reaction than was possible before the intensive study carried on in school.

The study of the outlines of the Constitution, for ten or fifteen weeks in the final year of the elementary school, has been found of great educational value. Properly taught, it fixes the idea of the essential three-foldness of the constitution of a free government and the necessary independence of each constituent power, whether legislative, judicial, or executive. This and some idea of the manner and mode of filling the official places in these three departments, and of the character of the duties with which each department is charged, lay foundations for an intelligent citizenship.

Besides this intensive study of the history of the United States in the seventh and eighth years, your Committee would recommend oral lessons on the salient points of general history, taking a full hour of sixty minutes weekly--and preferably all at one time--for the sake of the more systematic treatment of the subject of the lesson and the deeper impression made on the mind of the pupil.

_E. Other branches._

Your Committee has reviewed the staple branches of the elementary course of study in the light of their educational scope and significance. Grammar, literature, arithmetic, geography, and history are the five branches upon which the disciplinary work of the elementary school is concentrated. Inasmuch as reading is the first of the scholastic arts, it is interesting to note that the whole elementary course may be described as an extension of the process of learning the art of reading. First comes the mastering of the colloquial vocabulary in printed and script forms. Next come five incursions into the special vocabularies required (_a_) in literature to express the fine shades of emotion and the more subtle distinctions of thought, (_b_) the technique of arithmetic, (_c_) of geography, (_d_) of grammar, (_e_) of history.

In the serious work of mastering these several technical vocabularies the pupil is assigned daily tasks that he must prepare by independent study. The class exercise or recitation is taken up with examining and criticising the pupil’s oral statements of what he has learned, especial care being taken to secure the pupil’s explanation of it in his own words. This requires paraphrases and definitions of the new words and phrases used in technical and literary senses, with a view to insure the addition to the mind of the new ideas corresponding to the new words. The misunderstandings are corrected and the pupil set on the way to use more critical alertness in the preparation of his succeeding lessons. The pupil learns as much by the recitations of his fellow-pupils as he learns from the teacher, but not the same things. He sees in the imperfect statements of his classmates that they apprehended the lesson with different presuppositions and consequently have seen some phases of the subject that escaped his observation, while they in turn have missed points which he had noticed quite readily. These different points of view become more or less his own, and he may be said to grow by adding to his own mind the minds of others.

It is clear that there are other branches of instruction that may lay claim to a place in the course of study in the elementary school; for example, the various branches of natural science, vocal music, manual training, physical culture, drawing, etc.

Here the question of another method of instruction is suggested. There are lessons that require previous preparation by the pupil himself--there are also lessons that may be taken up without such preparation and conducted by the teacher, who leads the exercise and furnishes a large part of the information to be learned, enlisting the aid of members of the class for the purpose of bringing home the new material to their actual experience. Besides these, there are mechanical exercises for purposes of training, such as drawing, penmanship, and calisthenics.

In the first place, there is industrial and æsthetic drawing, which should have a place in all elementary school work. By it is secured the training of the hand and eye. Then, too, drawing helps in all the other branches that require illustration. Moreover, if used in the study of the great works of art in the way hereinbefore mentioned, it helps to cultivate the taste and prepares the future workman for a more useful and lucrative career, inasmuch as superior taste commands higher wages in the finishing of all goods.

Natural science claims a place in the elementary school not so much as a disciplinary study side by side with grammar, arithmetic, and history, as a training in habits of observation and in the use of the technique by which such sciences are expounded. With a knowledge of the technical terms and some training in the methods of original investigation employed in the sciences, the pupil broadens his views of the world and greatly increases his capacity to acquire new knowledge. For the pupil who is unacquainted with the technique of science has to pass without mental profit the numerous scientific allusions and items of information which more and more abound in all our literature, whether of an ephemeral or a permanent character. In an age whose proudest boast is the progress of science in all domains, there should be in the elementary school, from the first, a course in the elements of the sciences. And this is quite possible; for each science possesses some phases that lie very near to the child’s life. These familiar topics furnish the doors through which the child enters the various special departments. Science, it is claimed, is nothing if not systematic. Indeed, science itself may be defined as the interpretation of each fact through all other facts of a kindred nature. Admitting that this is so, it is no less true that pedagogic method begins with the fragmentary knowledge possessed by the pupil and proceeds to organize it and build it out systematically in all directions. Hence any science may be taken up best on the side nearest the experience of the pupil and the investigation continued until the other parts are reached. Thus the pedagogical order is not always the logical or scientific order. In this respect it agrees with the order of discovery, which is usually something quite different from the logical order; for that is the last thing discovered. The natural sciences have two general divisions: one relating to inorganic matter, as physics and chemistry, and one relating to organic, as botany and zoölogy. There should be a spiral course in natural science, commencing each branch with the most interesting phases to the child. A first course should be given in botany, zoölogy, and physics, so as to treat of the structure and uses of familiar plants and animals, and the explanation of physical phenomena as seen in the child’s playthings, domestic machines, etc. A second course, covering the same subjects, but laying more stress on classification and functions, will build on to the knowledge already acquired from the former lessons and from his recently acquired experience. A third course of weekly lessons, conducted by the teacher as before in a conversational style, with experiments and with a comparison of the facts of observation already in the possession of the children, will go far to helping them to an acquisition of the results of natural science. Those of the children specially gifted for observation in some one or more departments of nature will be stimulated and encouraged to make the most of their gifts.

In the opinion of your committee, there should be set apart a full hour each week for drawing and the same amount for oral lessons in natural science.

The oral lessons in history have already been mentioned. The spiral course, found useful in natural science because of the rapid change in capacity of comprehension by the pupil from his sixth to his fourteenth year, will also be best for the history course, which will begin with biographical adventures of interest to the child, and possessing an important historical bearing. These will proceed from the native land first to England, the parent country, and then to the classic civilizations (Greece and Rome being, so to speak, the grandparent countries of the American colonies). These successive courses of oral lessons adapted respectively to the child’s capacity will do much to make the child well informed on this topic. Oral lessons should never be mere lectures, but more like Socratic dialogues, building up a systematic knowledge partly from what is already known, partly by new investigations, and partly by comparison of authorities.

The best argument in favor of weekly oral lessons in natural science and general history is the actual experiences of teachers who have for some time used the plan. It has been found that the lessons in botany, zoölogy, and physics give the pupil much aid in learning his geography, and other lessons relating to nature, while the history lessons assist very much his comprehension of literature, and add interest to geography.