Thus through the subject of nature study, study of agriculture, sewing, manual training in the grades; through commercial high schools, trade schools as yet supported by philanthropic enterprise, commercial and industrial courses in high schools, evening schools, manual training high schools, in the secondary field; through colleges of commerce and schools of applied sciences, either initiated or projected in the higher fields, the educational system of the United States is responding to this most recent social demand upon education which has already such remarkable response in European countries.

Relation of the modern

Thus is the politico-economic tendency shifting from the political to the economic basis in education. The significance philosophy of the Froebelian philosophy of education in placing such in- to this ecodustrial and constructive work on a rational pedagogical basis nomic and has been mentioned (p. 339). This offers the chief explana- tendency. tion of the fact that it is the Froebelian idea of education that is coming to prevail in the present.

technical

SUMMARY

From the sociological view-point, education is the process of securing the stability and the betterment of society. The sociological view emphasizes the importance of a proper selection of educational subject-matter as a chief means of preparing the individual for proper social life and has resulted in making education universal and free. All those who led in the practical aspect of the psychological tendency, contributed to the sociological view in their emphasis upon the moral or social aim in education. Pestalozzi and Froebel especially looked upon education as the means for social betterment. Those who led in the scientific movement also contributed to the sociological tendency in insisting that new material should be introduced into the curriculum and that education should meet the needs of modern life. The advanced statesmen of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century saw the relation of education to political and national welfare. Many of them recognized that the perpetuity of the new form' of democratic government depended upon the education of the masses. During the nineteenth century, social and political thought and practice has been revolutionized with resulting changes in education. One of the earliest forms of this sociological interpretation agreed with the general

scientific view in considering the function of education to be the general dissemination of knowledge. A second, and more practical, interpretation viewed education as one form of social control. A third, more abstract view, interpreted education as the process of the social mind; - the processes of transferring the result of experience from generation to generation. From a somewhat similar view-point, education becomes the chief means of social evolution; the means by which man negates the law of non-inheritability of acquired characteristics and hands on to successive generations the accumulated experience of past ones. The concrete development of educational facilities in response to the ideas of the sociological tendency has been through two distinct phases: one that of schools founded from philanthropic and religious motives, and the second that of systems of public free schools established from economic and political reasons. Governments frequently contributed to schools during this first general period; but such schools remained under the control of churches or of quasi-public organizations. Both control and support of schools in this latter stage are political. The states of the Teutonic peoples began to develop such systems during the sixteenth century and perfected them in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. While some of the New England colonies originated such systems earlier, in most of the American commonwealths they developed gradually during the first half of the nineteenth century. In England this growth has dated from 1870. The most marked present tendency in these public school systems is towards the inclusion of various phases of vocational and industrial training as a preparation for citizenship and as a means of economic and social advance. Modern philosophical interpretation is furnishing a theoretical basis for these changes, which practical considerations have demanded.

CHAPTER XIV

CONCLUSIONS: THE PRESENT ECLECTIC TENDENCY

various

tendencies

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. — The educational thought Harmonization of prinof the present seeks to summarize these movements of the recent ciples under past and to rearrange and relate the essential principles of each lying these in one harmonious whole. The educational activity of the present seeks the same harmony in reducing these principles to practical schoolroom procedure. The frequent changes in subject-matter, in method, in organization, bring their own evils and appear as curious phenomena to conservative educators of more stable societies. Yet they are recognitions that new principles have been formulated, new truths recognized, and that practice controlled by tradition or by principles derived Rationalizafrom a partial view alone must be readjusted in close accord tion of eduwith the new truths derived from the ever expanding knowledge tices of life and of nature.

cational prac

to this eclec

tic view by the psychological tend

ency:

FUSION OF PSYCHOLOGICAL, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIO- Elements LOGICAL TENDENCIES. To this eclectic view of education contributed the three tendencies in the educational thought of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have contributed. In the main the psychological contributions have related to method; the scientific to subject-matter; the sociological to a broader aim and a better institutional machinery. And yet each movement has exerted some influence on method, on purpose, on organization and on subject-matter. The most prominent contributions of these movements can be summarized in a few sentences. From by Rousseau; Rousseau came the idea that education is life, that it must center in the child and that it must find its end in the individual and in each particular stage of his life. From Pestalozzi came lozzi;

by Pesta

L

the idea that efficient educational work depends upon an actual knowledge of the child and a genuine sympathy for him; that education is a growth from within, not a series of accretions from without; that this growth is the result of the experiences or activities of the child; consequently, that objects not symbols must form the basis of the process of instruction; that sense perception, not processes of memory, form the basis of early by Herbart; training. From Herbart came the idea of a scientific process of instruction; a scientific basis for the organization of the curriculum; and the idea of character as the aim of instruction, to be reached scientifically through the use of method and by Froebel; curriculum as defined. From Froebel came the true conception of the nature of the child; the correct interpretation of the starting point of education in the child's tendency to activity; the true interpretation of the curriculum as the representation to the child of the epitome of the world's experience or of the culture inheritance of the race; and in general the first, and as yet the most complete, application of the theory of evolution to the problem of education. From the scientific tendency came the insistence upon a revision of the idea of a liberal education; by the scien- a new definition of the culture demanded by present life; and the insistence stronger than ever when reënforced by the sociological view, that industrial, technical and professional training be introduced into every stage of education and that it all be made to contribute to the development of the free man, the fully developed citizen. From the sociological tendency came the commonly accepted belief that education is the process of by the socio- development of society; that its aim is to produce good citizens; logical tend- consequently that every citizen must be educated; that this

tific tend

ency;

ency

education is secured through the fullest development of personality in the individual; that this development of personal ability and character must fit the individual for citizenship, for life in institutions and for some form of productive participation in present social activities; in a word, that one must learn to serve himself by serving others.

the curricu

lum:

of method;

closer articu subjects an of types of

lation of

CURRENT EDUCATIONAL TENDENCIES. A more profit- Expansion able and more concrete summary of the past can be made in terms of present tendencies. Most evident of all to the teacher are the many changes now being made in the curriculum. Such changes are chiefly an outgrowth of the sociological tendency, and are attempts to make the curriculum expressive of present social activities and aspirations. Following this there is the rationalizin effort to make educational method and the procedure of instruction more definite, more scientific and more universally followed. This requires the further preliminary training of teachers and continuous professional study by the teacher and training of teachers; oversight by the supervisor throughout the teaching experience. This, above all, is the result of the psychological tendency. Connected with this change is the correlated tendency to closer articulation of subjects within the curriculum and of the various types of schools within the system. This is a result of the recognition of the significance of education as a social process, of the more scientific character of schoolroom work, and of the more general attention to the administration and the perfection of institutions. Hence there is at present a combination of psychological, scientific and sociological influences. The growing centralization in school administration and the specializamore thorough and scientific school supervision are the results tion in of new economic conditions bringing about centralization in all lines of social activities and a specialization in all lines of work. The latest phase of this tendency to specialization is revealed in all the professions, among them that of teaching. This recognition results in another tendency, -the recognition of teaching as a vocation and as a profession with higher and more definitely fession; recognized standards. This recognition depends primarily upon two conditions; namely, the demand for higher qualifications by those who employ teachers, and the incorporation of instruction in education and of training in teaching into the profes- educational sional work and cultural investigations of higher institutions of learning.

schools;

teaching;

of teaching

as a pro

work in universities