Contributions of the Social Reformers in

Education

GEORGE W. GAMMON, JOHN MARSHALL SCHOOL,

W

DORCHESTER, MASS.

HENEVER teachers meet today, one of the topics of discussion is the "new" method of teaching. It seems to many teachers as though the methods which were considered excellent in the normal schools ten years ago are being fast relegated and that a rebirth, which is about to revolutionize the art of teaching, is fast taking place. The social movement in education is engaging the attention of every live teacher. Some of the recommendations of the reformers are probably very good, and some are probably faulty, if not very bad. It is the duty of every teacher to proceed cautiously, to weigh carefully, and to adopt what proves to be good. A review of the past will reveal the fact that each new method adopted was thought, for a while, to be a panacea. No method of teaching in the past has proved to be, nor will the problem-project method and socialized recitation probably prove to be, a remedy for all ills in teaching.

Every method of teaching and every form of recitation of the past has possessed some good features. A certain residue has been left which will obtain as long as teachers continue to teach school. Teachers must not think that this priceless heritage is to be discarded. There is place yet for a certain amount of rational mastery, for the development method, and for drill. Without any doubt the social reformers are making a splendid contribution. It is the duty of each teacher to be a seeker for truth. The most successful teachers will be those who first find the residue that is left after the filtrate has drowned those among us who are too casily convinced.

In this article the writer will endeavor to present some of the

recommendations which he considers good and to register objections to some others which he thinks to be bad. At the outset, it is fair to say that many teachers concur with the reformers in their statement of the aim of education, and that most teachers agree with the reformers in their general statement of means to be used in realizing the aim. For instance, could any one disagree with the statement, "A democracy which proclaims equality of opportunity as its ideal requires an education in which learning and social application, ideas and practice, work and recognition of what is done, are united from the beginning for all"? And would not every one agree that "a method of education is necessary which bridges the gap between the purely intellectual and theoretical sides of life and their own occupations"? Furthermore, most teachers probably agree with the reformers on the following: that each child should enjoy going to school, that each child should be educated according to his capacities, that each child should have an opportunity to develop initiative and leadership, that each child should be trained to think for himself, that children should be taught to work together, that the teacher should make the best use of the school's environment, and that the teacher should make use of all instincts, as instincts for play, competition, dramatization, imitation, construction, etc.

The writer disagrees emphatically with the reformers as to the concrete interpretation of, or the working out of, the proposed method. The reformers claim that teachers should "wait for the desire of the child, for the consciousness of need, and then supply the means to satisfy the desire." In many of the experiments conducted by the reformers, these desires and needs seem to be artificially imposed and are not the child's own desires and felt needs. Many teachers with whom the writer has consulted believe that a child's purpose can never be more than a partial guide.

The reformers claim that "each of the subjects of the curriculum should be given to the child to meet a demand on his part for a greater knowledge of relations than he can get from studying objects." They claim that "children should not be allowed to use books until the eighth or ninth year." The writer believes

that it is impracticable to pursue such a policy and that it is impossible to realize the aim of education through methods based on such claims. It would mean each child starting, if he started at all, at a different time, and possibly in a different direction. To attempt to carry out the plan of the reformers would mean a small class, or better a small group, progressing with the same teacher from year to year. In most schools the classes are too large, and in some schools the population is ever shifting. In following such a method of teaching there can be no class plan of promotion. Each child is a class by himself.

Every up-to-date teacher knows that problem solving, co-operation among pupils, the socialized recitation, unified subjects, immediate values of knowledge, pupil initiative, pupil activity, and a natural setting, are all splendid and that there is a place for each. Every teacher of good judgment and common sense ought also to know that the problem-project method has its limitations. To be sure the problem-project method (combined with the socialized recitation) emphasizes the learner's purpose, gives a wide variety of situations, develops tastes and attitudes, and perhaps helps to retain knowledge longer. On the other hand, this "new" method places undue emphasis on immediate ends and gives too great value to a child's purposes, which are likely to be momentary. Teachers using the problem-project method and socialized recitation wholly, do not seem to recognize that knowledge has any value beyond application to problems. The strongest argument, however, against the sole use of this "new" method is the contention that organized knowledge cannot be acquired except through a well organized course of instruction followed by drill. The writer is positively convinced that mathematics, for instance, cannot be taught in any hit-or-miss way.

What is the place, then, for the project method of teaching? Surely it cannot be the primary method. The writer believes that the project method has many excellent features, but he believes it should be used as an introductory or supplemntary method, and only rarely as a primary method. Teachers should always let the estimation of the effect precede the application of the means.

Outline Study of Thoreau's Walden

OUTLINE STUDY No. 87.

(HENRY DAVID THOREAU (tho'ro), 1817-1862.)

A. PREPARATORY WORK.

CHARACTER AND SCOPE OF WALDEN.

I. CHARACTER AND SCOPE of Walden.

Note 1. In 1845, when Thoreau was twenty-eight years old, he built with his own hands a hut on the shore of Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts, and retired to the woods to lead the life of a recluse. "I went to the woods," he writes, "because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I wanted to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it." That is, he went into the woods, not because he wished to avoid his fellow men as a misanthrope, but because he wanted to confront Nature, to deal with her at first hand, to lead his own life, to meet primitive conditions; and having done this, he abandoned the enterprise, recommending no one to try it who had not a pretty good supply of internal sunshine. . To live alone comfortably, he must have that self-comfort that rays out of Nature-a portion of it at least. (Encyclopaedia Britannica.)

Walden is the record of Thoreau's mode of life, his experiences, and his reflections during the two years of his isolation. From this experience he draws the conclusion that in proportion as a man simplifies his life, "the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they

should be. Now put the foundations under them." And again, "Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul."

The book closes with this bit of sound advice: "However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names." The gospel of Walden is plain living and high thinking.

B. FIRST READING.

OUTLINE OF "WALDEN" AND STUDY OF THE

TEXT.

I. OUTLINE OF Walden AND STUDY OF THE TEXT.

1. Economy.

a. Purpose in writing Walden.

Note 2. Chapter one is an effort to prove the statement of paragraph 6, Most men, even in this comparatively free country....machine.

Suggestion 1. Give the chief points in the argument of paragraphs 3-8. Make a list of the allusions in this paragraph and state the value of each in the argument. Note 3. William Wilberforce, an English merchant and philanthropist. He devoted his entire life to the cause of the abolition of slavery. The Emancipation Bill of 1833, which abolished slavery in the West Indies and in other tropical dominions of the British crown, was largely his work, although he died before the bill became law.

b. The true necessaries of life.

Suggestion 2. Define the expression necessaries of life. Explain, New people put a little dry wood....birds. Of what is this statement offered as proof? Refute or uphold the statement, One may almost doubt if the wisest man has learned anything of absolute value by living. We might try our lives by a thousand simple tests. Enumerate some of these tests.

(1) Food the first necessary.

(a) Folly of striving for more food than enough. (When a man has obtained those things.... commenced.)

Suggestion 3. Enumerate the enterprises which the author has cherished. What point does the author make by the story of the Indian and his baskets?