THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF STUDIES-THE

DEMANDS OF

CIVILIZATION VS. MENTAL DISCIPLINE AS THE

BASIS OF SELECTION.

Taking up these problems in the order given we come first to the problem of educational values as a basis for the selection of studies. The report of the committee of fifteen upon this subject is a noteworthy document, since it abandons the dogma of formal culture or mental discipline that has hitherto reigned supreme in American education, and adopts in its stead substantially that demanded by the Herbartians, namely, the idea that the primary purpose of instruction in the branches of learning is the moral revelation of the world to the child. The old motto was "discipline and knowledge," the former at all hazards, the latter if there is time for it; the new motto is "discipline through knowledge." The report substitutes the demands of civilization for the former psychological demand of mental discipline as a guide to the estimates of educational values. Whenever a new method is discovered or a new standpoint adopted for any field of thought, the inevitable consequence is that an entirely new survey of the whole must be made. This part of the report of the committee of fifteen, being based upon this new Herbartian principle of institutional morality offers an almost inexhaustible mine for fresh investigation. Prof. Hinsdale's article on the dogma of formal culture, already referred to, and to be found in the last volume of Proceedings of the National Educational Association, as well as in the Educational Review, will help any teacher who reads it to understand the great limitations and the general unfruitfulness of the old method of estimating educational values.

THE EQUIVALENCE OF STUDIES.

There is another phase of the objective correlation of studies not emphasized in the report, but necessarily considered wherever the principle of electives is introduced. This is correlation in the same sense in which we speak of the correlation of forces; as when, for instance, we say a

given amount of motion may be transformed into an equiv alent quantity of heat, or electricity, or light. There are many languages, some ancient, some modern; one person cannot afford to study them all, for to a large extent one is the educational equivalent of another. So, too, there are many sciences, all pursued by substantially the same method. Here also the principle of equivalence should be considered, since knowledge has now become so inexhaustible in extent that we must perforce content ourselves with the study of types. This aspect of correlation, nowhere exhaustively treated, is briefly touched upon in the concluding chapter of Fitch's Lectures on Teaching. It is a problem for the future, which, like that of the selection of studies, may be approached from the old standpoint of formal mental discipline, or from the modern one accepted by Dr. Harris in the Report of the Committee of Fifteen, viz., the function of studies in fitting the child for the complex civilization in which he must live.

THE SCOPE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL CORRELATION.

Using the term correlation in its broad sense of mutual or inter-relations among the studies, all forms of organization for the various branches may be brought under it. The question now naturally arises, What is left of correlation. when its objective phases have been eliminated? Much. Objective correlation decides that a given study, say Geography, has an essential office in fitting the child for his future career. Geography must, therefore, go into the program; but where? For what length of time? To develop according to what principle? How shall it be brought into relation to history? To science? How shall it be taught to appeal most powerfuily to the child's mind, to effect his conduct most favorably? There is no answer to these questions to be found in objective correlation. The course of study recommended in the aforementioned report has no visible organic relation to the study of educational values found in the same volume, but is seemingly made up arbitrarily from opinion and experience. It does not develop from the principle of the educational function of the studies

themselves; but the important things for the teacher to know, after his studies are selected for the whole course, are to be determined by principles arising from the nature. age, and ability of his pupils; that is, from psychological considerations. The most essential problems are as follows: 1. When shall a study be first introduced?

2. Upon what principle shall it unfold, or what shall determine the sequence of its parts?

3. What shall be the organization within an important department, such, for instance, as science?

4. How shall its relations to kindred subjects be established so as to involve the minimum of time and labor, and to secure the maximum of interest, knowledge, and development of character?

The solution of these problems depends primarily upon the apperceptive capacities and interests of the child. To a certain extent, the logical unfolding of a subject, like mathematics, may determine the sequence of parts, but such considerations are secondary, and to be subordinated to the laws of apperception. Just as Kant shows in the "Critique of Pure Reason," that the mind gives laws to nature, since nature is but the sum total of the real or possible experiences to be acquired in accordance with mental constitution or not at all. So the followers of Herbart show that the aptitudes and interests of children point the way to the solution of all the problems that arise in connection with the course of study.

THE PRINCIPLE OF SEQUENCE FOR CULTURE STUDIES.

We have now to consider in outline a topic to be treated much more fully in the paper on "Culture Epochs" by Dr. Van Liew. The idea as a pedagogical reality originated with the late Prof. Ziller, of Leipsic. He finds before him the child whose mind develops through somewhat distinct epochs of apprehending power, imagination, capacity to reason; through different phases of moral insight and disposition as well as of childish sympathies, tendencies, and and ruling interests. Is there any development in the sub

ject-matter of education that corresponds to this growth of mind in the pupil? Of necessity Ziller could not be content with the bare mechanism of learning to be found in reading, writing, arithmetic, and other formal disciplines, and which may easily enough be graded in difficulty; for, to his mind. education must also be concrete, must build up positive idea-structures which will not only reveal the moral world to the child, but which will at the same time excite his sympathetic interest in the ideas themselves. With this conception of education, nothing could be more natural than for Ziller to turn to literature and history as the main receptacles for concrete moral ideals. In the history of civilization, however, no fact is more apparent than that the race has, on the whole, been in a constant state of development. There was no difficulty for a German professor with his eyes fixed, now upon the culture about him, now on the history which told of the struggles of his savage ancestors with the Legions of Rome, to comprehend that the German race has risen rapidly through a succession of culture stages each of which is described in history and embodied by the imagination in literature. The idea is now close at hand that perhaps each child lives through in little all that the race has passed through in large. Looking farther he finds, as Prof. Rein says, that this idea of the analogy between the individual and the general development of humanity is a common possession of the best and most noted intellects. It appears, for example, in the works of the literary heroes, Lessing, Herder, Goethe, and Schiller; with the philosophers, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Comte; with the theologians, Clement of Alexandria, Augustine, Schleiermacher; with the evolutionists, Huxley and Spencer; with the classical philologists, F. A. Wolf, Niethammer, Dissen, Lübker; with the educators, Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Froebel, Diesterweg, Herbart, Ziller and others.

Convinced of the truth and importance of this analogy, Ziller at once proceeds, in the name of the child's apperception and spontaneous interest, to arrange the leading studies, literature and history, in accordance with the various culture epochs During the first year, fairy stories from

Grimm form the leading material. In the second year, Robinson Crusoe becomes the center of activity. In the third year, the earliest and most primitive Bible and profane history join with literature to form the nucleus of the curriculum. Thus history begins with myths, legends, heroic tales; then merges into biography, and finally culminates in history proper, somewhat in accordance with the recommendations found in the report of the committee of ten, which says that history should begin with mythology, pass on to biography, and culminate in history itself, though there is no special recognition of culture epochs in the report. In the same way Ziller makes literature correspond in grade and culture epochs step by step, as far as it is continued. So much attention is paid to Bible history in his plan that literature does not receive the attention its importance demands, for literature must, in the nature of the case, be to the public school what ancient languages were to the academy,-its chief source of culture. If we take the world literature in English we have the culture content of the old languages plus much that they have never contained, but minus their grammatical and etymological elements. These have to be supplied by other agencies.

Ziller was the founder and Dr. Rein the continuer of what may be termed the radical school of Herbartians. Prof. Stoy, of Jena, and Dr. Frick, of Halle, were the leaders of the conservative branch. The latter did not subscribe fully to the idea of culture-epochs as an invariable guide to the sequence of topics, but urged that the present environment is quite as important, and that even if present conditions of organized life are complicated, they may easily be separated into their elements and thus successfully taught. Think, for instance, of the German child's capacity to understand the last Franco-Prussian war as compared with his apperceiving power in the case of the primitive warfare his ancestors waged against Rome. The agencies for prosecuting the former-the railroads, the modern arms, the standing army, are all features in every German child's environment, whereas only as a result of much teaching could he form an accurate idea of the conditions as they existed at the earlier time.