The Need for a More Scientific Attitude in

Education

EDGAR MENDENHALL, DIRECTOR CO-OPERATIVE BUREAU OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH, STATE MANUAL TRAINING NORMAL, PITTSBURG, Kansas.

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¤OT long ago a state normal had among its corps of speakers, to address its some 1,500 students, three types of lecturers: a scientist and educator of national renown, a sociologist of profound scholarship and breadth of view who dealt much with ungarnished facts and unembellished fundamental principles, and a platform entertainer capable of putting incisively and in somewhat emotional popular language, generalities commonly recognized. Attendance at these lectures was largely optional with the student body. It became a matter of interest to some of the faculty on the side-lines to note the drawing force of the three types of speakers indicated. No absolutely accurate count was made of the number in the audiences, for the purpose of comparison. This was not necesIt took but a casual glance to reveal the fact that the average student, the teacher and the "would-be" teacher, prefersshall I term it "the hurrah" type of speaker-prefers on the whole, glittering generalities to hard facts and basic principles requiring some effort of attention.

sary.

If this were an isolated example, we might account for it as a desire for relaxation, or perhaps recreation, but examples of similar situations may readily be multiplied. I have noted the same tendency among teachers in county institutes. It was my duty as a county superintendent to employ the institute lecturers. The appealing institute instructor was too frequently the "brass band" sort, with a repertory of anecdotes, able usually to "wave the flag" grandiloquently or "dope out sob-stuff." He entertained

and held attention. Little effort was exacted of the listener. When the institute lecturer of real worth spoke, papers and magazines were surreptitiously read, billets-doux written. The intent listeners, easily counted on the fingers, were the staid members of the teaching profession--they who truly had a more scientific attitude and had cultivated some power of sustained attention.

My thesis can be checked up further with the general public. Note, if you will, the type of books and magazines read in our libraries. Any librarian will tell you it is not the technical, nor even the so-called popular scientific literature, that appeals to the reading public. Pull down from the shelves Darwin or Huxley, James or Dewey, and scientific treatises in other fields. How clean and white are the pages! Here are these volumes in their pristine binding, fresh and new. The pages would be uncut if the librarian had neglected this duty. Go to the fiction shelves. Here you must often elbow your way. It is here you find the grimy, dog-eared books in re-bound editions. In this connection I would commend a well-planned scheme on the part of the schools -high school and grade-for a better use of the library in conncction with the school work, as a corrective.

In December, 1900, a leading American magazine requested ten of the great educators and thinkers of the day to name the books published in the nineteenth century which, in their opinion, had most infiuenced its thought and activities. Among the judges were such well-known men as Hon. James Bryce, Edward Everett Hale, Henry Van Dyke, President Arthur T. Hadley of Yale. These men did not act in conjunction. Independently of each ather, each of them made up a list of ten books, his individual choice, in response to the question. In all forty-seven titles were named. Darwin's "Origin of Species," a book of science, stood first, receiving ten votes, the unanimous choice of these eminent judges.

Here is a book that has profoundly affected educational thought. It was the fruition of twenty years' careful, exacting work, collecting and organizing facts. In this book there is no attempt to

embellish-none of what is termed "fine writing." It is a sober, direct, scientific presentation and discussion, well within the range of comprehension of the average reader. Notwithstanding its educational significance, I believe I would "play safe" in saying it is a closed book to four-fifths of our teaching body, and I fear if many did open it they would not find, nor even make the effort to find, the material appealing, and try to see in it a bearing upon their work.

In a talk to a group of Michigan teachers, not many months ago, Prof. Millikin of the University of Chicago, urging more scientific training, stated that the nation that will win in war and in peace, the people who will survive, will be the people who know. This statement need not be limited, in my judgment, to a knowledge of physical sciences. It has a wider application. There is a science of teaching and science methods must be incorporated in the daily practice of our common school teachers, if the schools are to be a factor in the onward march of this nation. I believe it vital that many-very many educators, superintendents, grade teachers, rural teachers, high school teachers-need more of the requirements of the scientist than they now possess. What these requirements are is a question worthy of our consideration.

Primarily, all teachers, principals and superintendents should determine early in their work the aims and note the outcomes of their educational efforts. I endorse heartily the statement of Rugg and Clark, in their Chicago University monograph, "Scientific Method in the Reconstruction of Ninth-grade Mathematics." "Nothing is more important to the teacher, to the administrator, or to the educational' critic," they say, "than the writing out of the general aim of the subject of study in question, so as to include a very clear and minute analysis of what the instruction in the course is intended to do." And they add this pertinent comment: "The writing of this detailed statement is one of the most difficult tasks that teacher or administrator can be called upon to do." Notwithstanding this difficulty, the value of this must be evident to all.

We can readily see that if we have a goal in

view, we are in a position to weigh our plans and measure with more exactness the value of our devices and methods. A big proportion of our teaching is aimless-a groping in the dark. I thoroughly believe that if a teacher of reading would write out as definitely as possible, for herself, early in the school year, what she planned for her class to accomplish in this subject by a certain time, and would keep this aim in mind from day to day in planning lessons, she would find defining the goal eminently worth while. This could and should be done, not alone for the school subjects, but the larger aims of a room, a building, and an entire school system could be made a matter of record for constant guidance.

The next requirement of a scientific attitude I would note would be the constant analysis of the teaching situation. It is important that the teacher be constantly alive to the reactions of her pupils to her instruction. This knowledge of the teacher should not be general. It needs must be exact. The teacher would find it highly advantageous to tabulate errors in the various school subjects. For example, in spelling some record should be kept of the words mis-spelled, the number of times they are mis-spelled. If errors occur in a particular part of words, this should be noted. Mistakes in language and in arithmetic, even shortcomings in penmanship, could frequently be made a matter of record for the class and the individual pupil. The knowledge the average teacher has of her class is far too hazy. It needs must be more definite. It is impossible, without exact knowledge, wisely to direct our instruction. Without this knowledge we constantly "over-teach" and "under-teach."

A A scientific attitude means a constant effort to weigh values, values with constant reference to aims. We still find teachers giving tests with five or ten questions, each question rated the same-twenty or ten-when these questions vary greatly in difficulty for the pupils, easily known if the teacher only would make the effort to know. Lists of five or ten words are still given in spelling, and each word is arbitrarily rated worth twenty or ten,

with little or no consideration of their relative difficulty. I would like to see more teachers venturesome enough to base the rating of spelling lists more upon the real difficulty they present to the group, and better to the individual pupil. I can conceive of a list of ten words, in which difficult words for particular pupils could be weighted 15 or 20, and some less difficult less than ten. If this is done by teachers, and attention of the pupils called to this fact, they will, in all likelihood, distribute their study more intelligently.

In a larger sense, the scientific attitude means the open mind, needed, I suspect, by most of us. Too many of us are more concerned in establishing our petty view-point in education than in finding the truth. The scientific spirit is, as Prof. L. H. Bailey well says, "The quest to find out, always to discover, never to prove a thesis or demonstrate an assumed position. Herein does this mind differ from that of the advocate, who must merely prove his case, or from that of the preacher, who must support a dogma, or from that of the politician, who must defend a party." "Science cannot be dogmatic, if it is science; it cannot be partisan, if its judgment is that of the open mind, seeking." Educators are still numerous who woefully lack this attitude. Superintendents and teachers are still to be found who resolve ignorantly that there is nothing in the measurement movement in education; that psychologies and discussions of educational methods, educational experiments should be "scrapped." Dealing, as the teacher must, constantly with immature minds, having her opinions seldom challenged, she needs must watch herself constantly to keep the open mind so needful to progress.

As I have already suggested, the scientific attitude means the love of facts. When the teacher can say with Prof. Bailey, "Never have we arrived at mastery, and never do we discover the greatest intellectual delights until plain facts, ungarnished, standing for themselves, are poetry and painting and inspiration," when the teacher can feel this as she arranges systematically the grades of her class so they can be intelligently interpreted, or tabulates

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