view. At least Locke made it so contribute, as will be seen subsequently. While the doctrine of innate ideas was rejected by these men in favor of experience, training in sense perception did not supersede nor make unnecessary the training of the higher faculties. In either case, so far as the popular view went, the training was to be a "discipline."

ent time

nineteenth

tendency

So persistent has been this narrow disciplinary view that Survival in the faculty even when the old rational psychology, based upon intropsychology spective analysis, began to give way or to be supplemented to the pres by a conception of the mind based upon a study of its development, education was still viewed as a process of developing Support the "powers" or "faculties " of the mind through appropriate found in discipline. This is to be seen in the case of Pestalozzi (p. 312), century who first represents this newer view in practical educational scientific work Nor was the case different when the natural sciences also began to find a place in the work of the schools; for the pursuit of such studies was most frequently justified by the arguments for their disciplinary value (p. 225). Such undoubtedly has been the popular view; the general public believed, at least in regard to a college course, that "the great problem in education is how to induce the pupil to go through with a course of exertion, in its results good and even agreeable, but immediately and in itself irksome."

to the disci

during the

developed

THE CONTRAST OF TWO MODERN VIEWS. -The na- The great ture as well as the force of the disciplinary conception of opposition education is best seen by placing it in opposition to an equally plinary vie one-sided view of education, but one that, on the contrary, places the whole emphasis on the thing learned rather than upon the process of learning. A nineteenth century writer, Fouillée, in his argument for the disciplinary education of the classics as opposed to the content or practical education of the modern sciences, contrasts these views as follows:

Huxley proposes to make the natural and physical sciences the basis of education. Spencer, in his turn, by a kind of idolatry of science which is widespread in these days, makes of positive science almost exclusively

S

nineteenth century as

an outgrow

of the nat

uralistic teaching

the subject for youth, under the pretext that, in this life, geometry is necessary for the construction of bridges and railways, and that in every definite trade, even in poetry, we must have knowledge. How conclusive is poetry as an instance! Is a Virgil or a Racine made by learning rules of versification? The scientific man is not made by teaching him science, for true science, like poetry, is invention. We can learn to build a railway by rule of thumb, but those who invented railways did so only by the force of the intellectual power they had acquired, and not by the force of the mere knowledge they had received; it is therefore intellectual force that we must aim at developing. And then returns the question: Is the best means of strengthening and developing the intellect of cur youth, to load the memory with the results of modern science, or is it to teach them to reason, to imagine, to combine, to divine, to know beforehand what ought to be true from an innate sense of order and harmony, of the simple and the fruitful, a sense near akin to that of the beautiful? And, besides, are youths educated to be engineers, or poets? Education is not an apprenticeship to a trade, it is the culture of moral and intellectual forces in the individual and in the race. //

On the other hand, Huxley answers this argument by showing, in somewhat satirical language, that the sciences could be so arranged and so taught as to give a disciplinary training similar to that given in his times in the public schools. Then he says:

It is wonderful how close a parallel to classical training could be made out of that palæontology to which I refer. In the first place I could get up an osteological primer so arid, so pedantic in its terminology, so altogether distasteful to the youthful mind, as to beat the recent famous production of the headmasters out of the field in all these excellencies. Next, I could exercise my boys upon easy fossils, and bring out all their powers of memory and all their ingenuity in the application of my osteogrammatical rules to the interpretation, or construing, of those fragments. To those who had reached the higher classes, I might supply odd bones to be built up into animals, giving great honor and reward to him who succeeded in fabricating monsters most entirely in accordance with the rules. That would answer to verse making and essay writing in the dead language. To be sure, if a great comparative anatomist were to look at these fabrications he might shake his head, or laugh. But what then? Would such a catastrophe destroy the parallel? What, think you, would Cicero, or Horace, say to the production of the best sixth

form going? And would not Terence stop his ears and run out if he could be present at an English performance of his own plays? Would Hamlet, in the mouths of a set of French actors, who should insist on pronouncing English after the fashion of their own tongue, be more hideously ridiculous?

-

STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS OF THE THEORY. This theory of education, dominant for so long a period, so trenchantly attacked in the present, must consequently present elements of both weakness, and strength. Among the chief defects was the fact that the special demands which the various callings or needs of life make upon education received no special consideration. All were to be met by the simple turning of the ability generated by the formal training of the school into the desired channel. Nor were the special aptitudes or inaptitudes of the pupils given any consideration. Since these studies with their appropriate discipline furnished the best possible preparation for every obligation that life made upon education, those pupils that were unable to meet the demands of such a training were ipso facto incapable of fulfilling any of these higher offices or functions in life or of meeting the requirements of any of its greater opportunities.

Disciplinary education

gave no con

sideration to social needs

or to needs

or capacitie

of individua students

tive system

effective

As a consequence, however, it possessed one great merit. Excellent Since the educational subjects elected were chiefly those deal- social selec ing with abstract ideas, it did furnish valuable training for did give a limited class of the intellectually superior, and did develop training for a capacity to deal with those phases of life's activities (law, special theology and the like) which were concerned chiefly with classes abstract ideas. That such a process of instruction offered nothing of value to the great masses of children, was no objection to it in an aristocratic society, and in an age before the development of democratic sentiment.

professiona

nothing to

the masses

The chief modern argument for the theory has been, that Offered such a discipline develops the power of voluntary attention. But modern psychological thought questions, if it does not positively deny, that there is any such thing as a general power

children

of general

Dower or

ability a

disputed one

But the old

lisciplinary

education leveloped Special powers of

The question or ability. But this power of voluntarily attending to linguistic, legal, theological abstractions, developed through such a training, was just the capacity necessary for the success of this particular intellectual class. Consequently, whether explained through the theory of general ability or of special abilities, this disciplinary training for many generations did afford an effective education for the classes receiving an education. Furthermore, voluntary attention must be more depended upon in all those life activities dealing with abstract ideas than in others, for here the natural interests offer little of that support which they would give in other lines of action. The comparative sufficiency of the theory in these earlier periods is more evident when it is remembered that the opportunities Great defects for education were offered to a very few, selected from a limited of the system class. It is with the entrance of all classes of pupils into the schools, with varying capacities and with varying social needs to be met, that the total insufficiency of the disciplinary theory becomes apparent.

value to a imited few -`n society

ecome evi

ent with niversal

ducation

ertain sub

ects do have

general "alue

lso there

However, even with a total disbelief in the theory of general mental capacity, it must be admitted that there is a certain identity in the content of experience which gives to some subjects a far more general value than to others. Thus arithmetic and language study, since they give a training in activities that enter very generally into the experiences of after life, possess a general value as subjects of study, which, if not identical to that argued by the old disciplinarians, is at least similar. an identity Moreover, there is a certain identity of mental procedure in all experiences now more apparent since the mind is conceived as a unit in its action, than when viewed as a bundle of faculties. or the disci Consequently, every subject has a disciplinarý value. But this merit is not the peculiar possession of a favored few, nor is it of so wide an applicability, nor can it be possessed at all by a particular subject that has no content value, i.e. one not apt to enter into later experiences, as was held by the old disciplinarians.

mental

rocedure

at gives

Dme basis

linary view

While the disciplinary conception, even in its early form, Continued yet prevails very generally and is apt to continue, we are here prevalence chiefly concerned in its historical formulation, especially by the plinary view great English philosopher, Locke.

of the disci

in practice

of education pline much

as a disci

broader than the disciplinry idea of

the school

JOHN LOCKE AS A REPRESENTATIVE OF THE DIS- Locke's idea CIPLINARY EDUCATION. - John Locke (1632-1704) held the idea that education was a discipline, and his view strongly reënforced the prevalent one. But the "discipline discipline" of the philosopher was a much broader one than the discipline of the schoolmasters. Locke's one great passion in life the thought master emphasized in his philosophical writings as the aim of intellectual: endeavor, was the love of truth The guide to the attainment of truth and to every activity in life, was reason; but the mind was capable of attaining to truth and of formulating it only when educated to this end. This education consisted in a rigid Based upon discipline. In his Essay concerning Human Understanding, his empiriLocke formulated the Baconian philosophy, or more especially knowledge. the theory of knowledge, that of empiricism, which has remained. the dominant philosophy of the English thought-world to the (present time. This theory was that all knowledge comes from the perception of the senses and the "perception of the intellect";. that is, from experience.

cal theory of

must be

worked up

into knowl

edge througl

percep

The doctrine of the sensational origin of knowledge became But sensethe most important part of his teachings, philosophically; but perceptions it was the second part of his theory, that concerning the elaboration of knowledge through the perception of the intellect, that became the most important educationally. (After the simple the stuff of experience is furnished by the senses, according to Locke, our ideas, judgments, etc., are formed through the perception of the intellect. This can be developed, not through training in sense-perception, but through the discipline of mental veloped powers, chiefly reason. n.)

tion of the intellect"

This is de

through training or

the disciplin

ary edu

Though it is impossible to enter into details here, it must be borne in mind that Locke's philosophical and psychological cation views do not always accord with his views on education. The