with ideas

of constructive work in ¡ education

Industrial training had been recognized as a phase of education by Rousseau, but upon social and economic grounds. Pestalozzi introduced object study and manual activities largely from the receptive point of view, that of imparting knowledge, or at best that of developing the sense-perceptions. Fellenberg made these more practically effective than had hitherto been Comparison done. Yet he hardly seized more than the social and economic import. On distinctly educational grounds, Froebel gave to all manual and industrial training and to all forms of constructive work the place which they are coming to occupy in modern schooling. Through them the child was to develop power, since each activity was to the child but an expression of some idea or purpose gained through instruction. The use of any object or material or bit of information introduced into the school is to find out what the child can do with it. Thus, in a broader sense than with Herbart, all culminates in application; in a broader sense than with Pestalozzi, all school work is constructive.

Educational

value of

constructive work

Educational value of

nature study

The great significance of constructive work, however, is found in the principle that education is but the development of the power to give outward manifestation and expression of the inner self. Creation with the hand is not the highest expression of this. But the development of the ability to give such material manifestations of ideas forms a basis of the higher power of expressing the intellectual, moral and spiritual life in action. When crystallized into habits, character is produced.

Nature Study in the Schools. Here again Pestalozzianism and Froebelianism, as well as other minor streams of educational thought, converge. What has come to pass in the actual study of nature in the schools is a resultant of them all. But with Froebel the basal principles underlying this study are quite different from those held by others. Least important of all, with him, was the simple knowledge of the facts of nature; most important of all was the moral improvement, the religious

varied

uplift, the spiritual insight, which the child got from association A source of with nature. As a source of natural interests and as affording interests opportunity for varied activity, nature study retains a place in elementary instruction as influenced by Froebel, altogether aside from either the value of the facts taught or of the symbolical spiritual import. As suggesting material for reading, writing, language work, constructive work, number work, nature study has come to play an important function in the school. Even when all of these ideas concerning the function The funcof nature study are rejected, Froebel has influenced fundamen- tional or dynamic tally the conception of this study as it is conducted in all grades. conception o For it is no longer nature analyzed and dissected according to the old formal classificatory science, but it is nature as life -the plant as developing, the animal as acting, the organ as functioning that is studied. While the symbolism is antagonistic to the modern scientific attitude, yet in the conception of nature, and of the value of science, and the use made of it in the school, it is quite in harmony with the modern scientific view.

the study

vanced ideas

first made

concrete in the kinder

The Kindergarten. -The fundamental thought of the kinder- These adgarten is to aid the child to express himself and thus produce of Froebel development. To accomplish this he must start from his native interests and tendencies to action. The work of the school must be based wholly upon "self-activity" and must culminate garten in the expression or use of the ideas or knowledge acquired in the process of the activity. The primary aim is not acquisition of knowledge, but growth or development, in which knowledge functions merely as a means to an end. Knowledge is, as it were, a subordinate or by-product; yet always essential, if growth is to be secured. Both the acquisitive and assimilative processes - exalted into ends in all previous school procedures

are here wholly subordinated. Both appear in every completed educational process as stages preliminary to, or incidental to, the expression or constructive process.

The forms of expression of the child's feelings and ideas which

Correlations Froebel seized upon as of importance in this training were forms of self- (1) gesture, (2) song, (3) language. So far as possible these

of the various

expression

The mateials of

<indergarten nstruction

means were to be coördinate. The story, for example, when told by the teacher, was to be expressed by the child, not only in his own language, but through song, or gesture, or pictures, or construction of simple articles from paper, clay or other convenient material. In this way ideas would be given, thought stimulated, the imagination vivified, the hands and eyes trained, the muscles coördinated, the moral nature strengthened through the effort to put into concrete objective form the higher motives and sentiments aroused. The chief materials of the kindergarten, aside from the songs, the Mutter und Kose-lieder, Froebel organized into a series of "gifts and occupations." These are introduced gradually and in order. As the child becomes familiar with the properties of the one gift or the activities called forth by the occupation, he is led on to the next, which grows out of the preceding, each introducing new impressions and repeating old ones. The distinction between the gifts and occupations, though commonly made, is an arbitrary one. Froebel himself called all the activities occupations, and the materials for them, gifts. But the distinction seems to bring out a most prominent tendency in the development of the Froebelian principles; namely, that a much greater stress has come to be placed upon the occupations than upon the gifts. While Froebel rendered the greatest service to education in thus transforming his principles into concrete schoolroom procedures, and develop yet it is evident that many of these, including the songs, were appropriate only to his age and to the people with whom he was familiar. To keep his principles effective, modification may be necessary in the present and future.

Continuous

nodification

nent

ecessary

Practical lisseminaion of

EFFECTS OF THE PSYCHOLOGICAL MOVEMENTS ON SCHOOLS. The Pestalozzian Influence. Both at Burgdorf Pestalozzian and Yverdun, Pestalozzi's institute was frequented by numerous investigators, public men interested in education, students, even groups of students, from various countries of Europe. The

deas and

nethods

institute had been made a normal school, subsidized by the Swiss government. Later, Pestalozzian institutes were founded in Madrid, Naples and St. Petersburg. The monarchs of Russia, Prussia, Austria, and of the Italian states were personally interested in the reforms; and, as Pestalozzi said, any hedge schoolmaster, in order to succeed, had but to proclaim the use of Pestalozzian methods.

the political

reaction of

early nine

teenth cen

tury

Nevertheless the popular introduction of the new ideas was Checked by very slow. This was due partly to the reactionary political policies then dominant in most European countries. The new educational ideas, outgrowths as they were of the teachings of Rousseau, were ever associated with revolutionary propaganda. Outside of the German states little progress was made until after the Revolution of 1830. Then in France, especially under Victor Cousin, minister of education, great advance was made, especially in the training of teachers.

methods

German

schools

Among the German states Würtemberg first fell under the Pestalozzia new influence. During the first decade of the century Pesta- introduced lozzian enthusiasts had been appointed school inspectors and into the principals of normal schools. Prussia followed. The philosopher Fichte, in his address to the German people after the defeat at Jena in 1806, pointed out Pestalozzian education as the means of regeneration for the nation. The minister of education and the royal family were deeply concerned in the new educational movement. Picked young men were sent to Yverdun, and through them and the German assistants of Pestalozzi the new ideas were incorporated in the training of the teachers for the Prussian elementary schools.

ism in the

Much of the Pestalozzian influence exerted on the United Early States came through England. To this fact is largely due the Pestalozzia formal and even superficial character of much of American United Pestalozzianism, relating as it did to petty methods. How- States ever, not all of it was of this character, for the movement for the training of teachers, as well as the character of this training, were outgrowths of the Pestalozzian ideas. From the time of Neef,

one of Pestalozzi's assistants, who was induced by a philan thropic American to settle in Philadelphia in 1808, sporadic instances of the transplanting of the new ideas occurred. The translation (1835) of Cousin's Report on the State of Public Instruction in Prussia, which did so much for the reform of the French schools, had great influence upon educational leaders in The Horace America. From the results of the reform movement, especially

Mann

novement

1ovement

as he saw it in Germany, Horace Mann drew many of his ideas and much of his inspiration. His Seventh Annual Report, 1846, one of the most influential educational documents ever published in America, embodies the results of his personal investigation. The most specific source of this influence, however, was what The Oswego is known as the Oswego movement, begun in 1860. The ideas underlying this movement came indirectly from the Mayos in England and centered largely about the use of objects as the basis of instruction. The result was a previously unknown attention to the technique of instruction and to the details of special method. Such was the chief characteristic of normal school instruction during the generation following. Hence it comes that, for the most part, our schools are yet upon the Pestalozzian basis. However, the special methods of applying these principles have been much improved.

estalozzian ethods, the asis for

One other practical effect of the Pestalozzian method on schools deserves at least mention; that is the new basis which lucation of it gave for the care of social dependents and defectives, es

eaf and

lind, and f juvenile ffenders

pecially paupers, semi-criminals, deaf mutes and the blind. From Pestalozzi's institutions for the poor sprang the agricultural colonies, especially those for juvenile offenders. The industrial occupations furnished a reformatory element hitherto wanting in criminal punishment. Guided by the principles of his master, one of Pestalozzi's assistants established a school for deaf mutes. The method of object teaching introduced hitherto unknown possibilities of developing such defective classes, while the industrial element gave them the prospect of economic independence, which was both a great gain for society and a