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  • The Project Gutenberg EBook of Moral Principlesin Education, by John Dewey

    This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere atno cost and withalmost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copyit, give it away orre-use it under the terms of the ProjectGutenberg License includedwith this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

    Title: Moral Principles in Education

    Author: John Dewey

    Release Date: April 25, 2008 [EBook #25172]

    Language: English

    *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MORALPRINCIPLES IN EDUCATION ***

    Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier and theOnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at

  • http://www.pgdp.net

    Riverside Educational Monographs

    EDITED BY HENRYSUZZALLO

    SOMETIME PROFESSOR OF THEPHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION

    TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIAUNIVERSITY, AND PRESIDENT OF

    THE UNIVERSITY OFWASHINGTON

  • MORALPRINCIPLES IN

    EDUCATIONBY

    JOHN DEWEYPROFESSOR OF

    PHILOSOPHY INCOLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

  • HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANYBOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO DALLAS

    SAN FRANCISCOThe Riverside Press Cambridge

    COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY JOHN DEWEYALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  • The author has drawn freely upon hisessay on Ethical Principles UnderlyingEducation, published in the Third Year-Book of The National Herbart Society forthe Study of Education. He is indebted tothe Society for permission to use thismaterial.

    The Riverside PressCAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS

    PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

  • CONTENTS

    IntroductionI. The Moral Purpose of the School

    II. The Moral Training Given bythe School Community

    III. The Moral Training fromMethods of Instruction

    IV. The Social Nature of the Courseof Study

    V. The Psychological Aspect ofMoral EducationOutline

  • INTRODUCTION

    Contents

    Education as a public business

    It is one of the complaints of the schoolmasterthat the public does not defer to his professionalopinion as completely as it does to that ofpractitioners in other professions. At first sightit might seem as though this indicated a defecteither in the public or in the profession; and yeta wider view of the situation would suggest thatsuch a conclusion is not a necessary one. Therelations of education to the public are differentfrom those of any other professional work.

  • Education is a public business with us, in asense that the protection and restoration ofpersonal health or legal rights are not. To anextent characteristic of no other institution,save that of the state itself, the school haspower to modify the social order. And underour political system, it is the right of eachindividual to have a voice in the making of socialpolicies as, indeed, he has a vote in thedetermination of political affairs. If this be true,education is primarily a public business, andonly secondarily a specialized vocation. Thelayman, then, will always have his right to someutterance on the operation of the public schools.

    Education as expert service

    I have said some utterance, but not all;for school-mastering has its own specialmysteries, its own knowledge and skill into

  • which the untrained layman cannot penetrate.We are just beginning to recognize that theschool and the government have a commonproblem in this respect. Education and politicsare two functions fundamentally controlled bypublic opinion. Yet the conspicuous lack ofefficiency and economy in the school and in thestate has quickened our recognition of a largerneed for expert service. But just where shallpublic opinion justly express itself, and whatshall properly be left to expert judgment?

    The relations of expert opinion andpublic opinion

    In so far as broad policies and ultimate endsaffecting the welfare of all are to be determined,the public may well claim its right to settleissues by the vote or voice of majorities. But theselection and prosecution of the detailed ways

  • and means by which the public will is to beexecuted efficiently must remain largely amatter of specialized and expert service. To thesuperior knowledge and technique requiredhere, the public may well defer.

    In the conduct of the schools, it is well forthe citizens to determine the ends proper tothem, and it is their privilege to judge of theefficacy of results. Upon questions that concernall the manifold details by which children are tobe converted into desirable types of men andwomen, the expert schoolmaster should beauthoritative, at least to a degreecommensurate with his superior knowledge ofthis very complex problem. The administrationof the schools, the making of the course ofstudy, the selection of texts, the prescription ofmethods of teaching, these are matters withwhich the people, or their representatives uponboards of education, cannot deal save withdanger of becoming mere meddlers.

  • The discussion of moral educationan illustration of mistaken views of

    laymen

    Nowhere is the validity of this distinctionbetween education as a public business andeducation as an expert professional servicebrought out more clearly than in an analysis ofthe public discussion of the moral work of theschool. How frequently of late have thoseunacquainted with the special nature of theschool proclaimed the moral ends of educationand at the same time demanded direct ethicalinstruction as the particular method by whichthey were to be realized! This, too, in spite ofthe fact that those who know best the powersand limitations of instruction as an instrumenthave repeatedly pointed out the futility ofassuming that knowledge of right constitutes aguarantee of right doing. How common it is forthose who assert that education is for social

  • efficiency to assume that the school shouldreturn to the barren discipline of the traditionalformal subjects, reading, writing, and the rest!This, too, regardless of the fact that it has takena century of educational evolution to make thecourse of study varied and rich enough to callfor those impulses and activities of social lifewhich need training in the child. And how manywho speak glowingly of the large services of thepublic schools to a democracy of free and self-reliant men affect a cynical and even vehementopposition to the self-government of schools!These would not have the children learn togovern themselves and one another, but wouldhave the masters rule them, ignoring the factthat this common practice in childhood may bea foundation for that evil condition in adultsociety where the citizens are arbitrarily ruledby political bosses.

    One need not cite further cases of theincompetence of the lay public to deal withtechnical questions of school methods.

  • Instances are plentiful to show that well-meaning people, competent enough to judge ofthe aims and results of school work, make amistake in insisting upon the prerogative ofdirecting the technical aspects of education witha dogmatism that would not characterize theirstatements regarding any other special field ofknowledge or action.

    A fundamental understanding ofmoral principles in education

    Nothing can be more useful than for thepublic and the teaching profession tounderstand their respective functions. Theteacher needs to understand public opinion andthe social order, as much as the public needs tocomprehend the nature of expert educationalservice. It will take time to draw the boundarylines that will be conducive to respect, restraint,

  • and efficiency in those concerned; but abeginning can be made upon fundamentalmatters, and nothing so touches thefoundations of our educational thought as adiscussion of the moral principles in education.

    It is our pleasure to present a treatment ofthem by a thinker whose vital influence uponthe reform of school methods is greater thanthat of any of his contemporaries. In hisdiscussion of the social and psychological factorsin moral education, there is much that willsuggest what social opinion should determine,and much that will indicate what must be left tothe trained teacher and school official.

  • THE MORAL PURPOSE OFTHE SCHOOL

  • I

    THE MORAL PURPOSE OFTHE SCHOOL

    Contents

    An English contemporary philosopher hascalled attention to the difference between moralideas and ideas about morality. Moral ideasare ideas of any sort whatsoever which takeeffect in conduct and improve it, make it betterthan it otherwise would be. Similarly, one maysay, immoral ideas are ideas of whatever sort(whether arithmetical or geographical orphysiological) which show themselves in

  • making behavior worse than it would otherwisebe; and non-moral ideas, one may say, are suchideas and pieces of information as leave conductuninfluenced for either the better or the worse.Now ideas about morality may be morallyindifferent or immoral or moral. There isnothing in the nature of ideas about morality, ofinformat ion about honesty or purity orkindness which automatically transmutes suchideas into good character or good conduct.

    This distinction between moral ideas, ideasof any sort whatsoever that have become a partof character and hence a part of the workingmotives of behavior, and ideas about moralaction that may remain as inert and ineffectiveas if they were so much knowledge aboutEgyptian archology, is fundamental to thediscussion of moral education. The business ofthe educatorwhether parent or teacheris tosee to it that the greatest possible number ofideas acquired by children and youth areacquired in such a vital way that they become

  • moving ideas, motive-forces in the guidance ofconduct. This demand and this opportunitymake the moral purpose universal anddominant in all instructionwhatsoever thetopic. Were it not for this possibility, thefamiliar statement that the ultimate purpose ofall education is character-forming would behypocritical pretense; for as every one knows,the direct and immediate attention of teachersand pupils must be, for the greater part of thetime, upon intellectual matters. It is out of thequestion to keep direct moral considerationsconstantly uppermost. But it is not out of thequestion to aim at making the methods oflearning, of acquiring intellectual power, and ofassimilating subject-matter, such that they willrender behavior more enlightened, moreconsistent, more vigorous than it otherwisewould be.

    The same distinction between moralideas and ideas about morality explains forus a source of continual misunderstanding

  • between teachers in the schools and critics ofeducation outside of the schools. The latter lookthrough the school programmes, the schoolcourses of study, and do not find any place setapart for instruction in ethics or for moralteaching. Then they assert that the schools aredoing nothing, or next to nothing, for character-training; they become emphatic, evenvehement, about the moral deficiencies ofpublic education. The schoolteachers, on theother hand, resent these criticisms as aninjustice, and hold not only that they do teachmorals, but that they teach them everymoment of the day, five days in the week. Inthis contention the teachers in principle are inthe right; if they are in the wrong, it is notbecause special periods are not set aside forw h a t after all can only be teaching aboutmorals, but because their own characters, ortheir school atmosphere and ideals, or theirmethods of teaching, or the subject-matterwhich they teach, are not such in detail as to

  • bring intellectual results into vital union withcharacter so that they become working forcesin behavior. Without discussing, therefore, thelimits or the value of so-called direct moralinstruction (or, better, instruction aboutmorals), it may be laid down as fundamentalthat the influence of direct moral instruction,even at its very best, is comparatively small inamount and slight in influence, when the wholefield of moral growth through education istaken into account. This larger field of indirectand vital moral education, the development ofcharacter through all the agencies,instrumentalities, and materials of school life is,therefore, the subject of our present discussion.

  • THE MORAL TRAININGGIVEN BY THE SCHOOL

    COMMUNITY

  • II

    THE MORAL TRAININGGIVEN BY THE SCHOOL

    COMMUNITY

    Contents

    There cannot be two sets of ethicalprinciples, one for life in the school, and theother for life outside of the school. As conduct isone, so also the principles of conduct are one.The tendency to discuss the morals of theschool as if the school were an institution byitself is highly unfortunate. The moralresponsibility of the school, and of those who

  • conduct it, is to society. The school isfundamentally an institution erected by societyto do a certain specific work,to exercise acertain specific function in maintaining the lifeand advancing the welfare of society. Theeducational system which does not recognizethat this fact entails upon it an ethicalresponsibility is derelict and a defaulter. It isnot doing what it was called into existence todo, and what it pretends to do. Hence the entirestructure of the school in general and itsconcrete workings in particular need to beconsidered from time to time with reference tothe social position and function of the school.

    The idea that the moral work and worth ofthe public school system as a whole are to bemeasured by its social value is, indeed, afamiliar notion. However, it is frequently takenin too limited and rigid a way. The social workof the school is often limited to training forcitizenship, and citizenship is then interpretedin a narrow sense as meaning capacity to vote

  • intelligently, disposition to obey laws, etc. But itis futile to contract and cramp the ethicalresponsibility of the school in this way. Thechild is one, and he must either live his sociallife as an integral unified being, or suffer lossand create friction. To pick out one of the manysocial relations which the child bears, and todefine the work of the school by that alone, islike instituting a vast and complicated systemof physical exercise which would have for itsobject simply the development of the lungs andthe power of breathing, independent of otherorgans and functions. The child is an organicwhole, intellectually, socially, and morally, aswell as physically. We must take the child as amember of society in the broadest sense, anddemand for and from the schools whatever isnecessary to enable the child intelligently torecognize all his social relations and take hispart in sustaining them.

    To isolate the formal relationship ofcitizenship from the whole system of relations

  • with which it is actually interwoven; to supposethat there is some one particular study or modeof treatment which can make the child a goodcitizen; to suppose, in other words, that a goodcitizen is anything more than a thoroughlyefficient and serviceable member of society, onewith all his powers of body and mind undercontrol, is a hampering superstition which it ishoped may soon disappear from educationaldiscussion.

    The child is to be not only a voter and asubject of law; he is also to be a member of afamily, himself in turn responsible, in allprobability, for rearing and training of futurechildren, thereby maintaining the continuity ofsociety. He is to be a worker, engaged in someoccupation which will be of use to society, andwhich will maintain his own independence andself-respect. He is to be a member of someparticular neighborhood and community, andmust contribute to the values of life, add to thedecencies and graces of civilization wherever he

  • is. These are bare and formal statements, but ifwe let our imagination translate them into theirconcrete details, we have a wide and variedscene. For the child properly to take his place inreference to these various functions meanstraining in science, in art, in history; meanscommand of the fundamental methods ofinquiry and the fundamental tools ofintercourse and communication; means atrained and sound body, skillful eye and hand;means habits of industry, perseverance; inshort, habits of serviceableness.

    Moreover, the society of which the child isto be a member is, in the United States, ademocratic and progressive society. The childmust be educated for leadership as well as forobedience. He must have power of self-direction and power of directing others, powerof administration, ability to assume positions ofresponsibility. This necessity of educating forleadership is as great on the industrial as on thepolitical side.

  • New inventions, new machines, newmethods of transportation and intercourse aremaking over the whole scene of action year byyear. It is an absolute impossibility to educatethe child for any fixed station in life. So far aseducation is conducted unconsciously orconsciously on this basis, it results in fitting thefuture citizen for no station in life, but makeshim a drone, a hanger-on, or an actualretarding influence in the onward movement.Instead of caring for himself and for others, hebecomes one who has himself to be cared for.Here, too, the ethical responsibility of the schoolon the social side must be interpreted in thebroadest and freest spirit; it is equivalent tothat training of the child which will give himsuch possession of himself that he may takecharge of himself; may not only adapt himselfto the changes that are going on, but havepower to shape and direct them.

    Apart from participation in social life, theschool has no moral end nor aim. As long as we

  • confine ourselves to the school as an isolatedinstitution, we have no directing principles,because we have no object. For example, theend of education is said to be the harmoniousdevelopment of all the powers of the individual.Here no reference to social life or membershipis apparent, and yet many think we have in itan adequate and thoroughgoing definition of thegoal of education. But if this definition be takenindependently of social relationship we have noway of telling what is meant by any one of theterms employed. We do not know what a poweris; we do not know what development is; we donot know what harmony is. A power is a poweronly with reference to the use to which it is put,the function it has to serve. If we leave out theuses supplied by social life we have nothing butthe old faculty psychology to tell what ismeant by power and what the specific powersare. The principle reduces itself to enumeratinga lot of faculties like perception, memory,reasoning, etc., and then stating that each one

  • of these powers needs to be developed.Education then becomes a gymnastic

    exercise. Acute powers of observation andmemory might be developed by studyingChinese characters; acuteness in reasoningmight be got by discussing the scholasticsubtleties of the Middle Ages. The simple fact isthat there is no isolated faculty of observation,or memory, or reasoning any more than thereis an original faculty of blacksmithing,carpentering, or steam engineering. Facultiesmean simply that particular impulses andhabits have been cordinated or framed withreference to accomplishing certain definitekinds of work. We need to know the socialsituations in which the individual will have touse ability to observe, recollect, imagine, andreason, in order to have any way of telling whata training of mental powers actually means.

    What holds in the illustration of thisparticular definition of education holds goodfrom whatever point of view we approach the

  • matter. Only as we interpret school activitieswith reference to the larger circle of socialactivities to which they relate do we find anystandard for judging their moral significance.

    The school itself must be a vital socialinstitution to a much greater extent thanobtains at present. I am told that there is aswimming school in a certain city where youthare taught to swim without going into thewater, being repeatedly drilled in the variousmovements which are necessary for swimming.When one of the young men so trained wasasked what he did when he got into the water,he laconically replied, Sunk. The storyhappens to be true; were it not, it would seemto be a fable made expressly for the purpose oftypifying the ethical relationship of school tosociety. The school cannot be a preparation forsocial life excepting as it reproduces, withinitself, typical conditions of social life. At presentit is largely engaged in the futile task ofSisyphus. It is endeavoring to form habits in

  • children for use in a social life which, it wouldalmost seem, is carefully and purposely keptaway from vital contact with the childundergoing training. The only way to preparefor social life is to engage in social life. To formhabits of social usefulness and serviceablenessapart from any direct social need and motive,apart from any existing social situation, is, tothe letter, teaching the child to swim by goingthrough motions outside of the water. The mostindispensable condition is left out of account,and the results are correspondingly partial.

    The much lamented separation in theschools of intellectual and moral training, ofacquiring information and growing in character,is simply one expression of the failure toconceive and construct the school as a socialinstitution, having social life and value withinitself. Except so far as the school is anembryonic typical community life, moraltraining must be partly pathological and partlyformal. Training is pathological when stress is

  • laid upon correcting wrong-doing instead ofupon forming habits of positive service. Toooften the teachers concern with the moral lifeof pupils takes the form of alertness for failuresto conform to school rules and routine. Theseregulations, judged from the standpoint of thedevelopment of the child at the time, are moreor less conventional and arbitrary. They arerules which have to be made in order that theexisting modes of school work may go on; butthe lack of inherent necessity in these schoolmodes reflects itself in a feeling, on the part ofthe child, that the moral discipline of the schoolis arbitrary. Any conditions that compel theteacher to take note of failures rather than ofhealthy growth give false standards and resultin distortion and perversion. Attending towrong-doing ought to be an incident ratherthan a principle. The child ought to have apositive consciousness of what he is about, so asto judge his acts from the standpoint ofreference to the work which he has to do. Only

  • in this way does he have a vital standard, onethat enables him to turn failures to account forthe future.

    By saying that the moral training of theschool is formal, I mean that the moral habitscurrently emphasized by the school are habitswhich are created, as it were, ad hoc. Even thehabits of promptness, regularity, industry, non-interference with the work of others,faithfulness to tasks imposed, which arespecially inculcated in the school, are habitsthat are necessary simply because the schoolsystem is what it is, and must be preservedintact. If we grant the inviolability of the schoolsystem as it is, these habits representpermanent and necessary moral ideas; but justin so far as the school system is itself isolatedand mechanical, insistence upon these moralhabits is more or less unreal, because the idealto which they relate is not itself necessary. Theduties, in other words, are distinctly schoolduties, not life duties. If we compare this

  • condition with that of the well-ordered home,we find that the duties and responsibilities thatthe child has there to recognize do not belong tothe family as a specialized and isolatedinstitution, but flow from the very nature of thesocial life in which the family participates and towhich it contributes. The child ought to havethe same motives for right doing and to bejudged by the same standards in the school, asthe adult in the wider social life to which hebelongs. Interest in community welfare, aninterest that is intellectual and practical, as wellas emotionalan interest, that is to say, inperceiving whatever makes for social order andprogress, and in carrying these principles intoexecutionis the moral habit to which all thespecial school habits must be related if they areto be animated by the breath of life.

  • THE MORAL TRAININGFROM METHODS OF

    INSTRUCTION

  • III

    THE MORAL TRAININGFROM METHODS OF

    INSTRUCTION

    Contents

    The principle of the social character of theschool as the basic factor in the moral educationgiven may be also applied to the question ofmethods of instruction,not in their details, buttheir general spirit. The emphasis then fallsupon construction and giving out, rather thanupon absorption and mere learning. We fail torecognize how essentially individualistic the

  • latter methods are, and how unconsciously, yetcertainly and effectively, they react into thechilds ways of judging and of acting. Imagineforty children all engaged in reading the samebooks, and in preparing and reciting the samelessons day after day. Suppose this processconstitutes by far the larger part of their work,and that they are continually judged from thestandpoint of what they are able to take in in astudy hour and reproduce in a recitation hour.There is next to no opportunity for any socialdivision of labor. There is no opportunity foreach child to work out something specifically hisown, which he may contribute to the commonstock, while he, in turn, participates in theproductions of others. All are set to do exactlythe same work and turn out the same products.The social spirit is not cultivated,in fact, in sofar as the purely individualistic method gets inits work, it atrophies for lack of use. One reasonwhy reading aloud in school is poor is that thereal motive for the use of languagethe desire

  • to communicate and to learnis not utilized.The child knows perfectly well that the teacherand all his fellow pupils have exactly the samefacts and ideas before them that he has; he isnot giving them anything at all. And it may bequestioned whether the moral lack is not asgreat as the intellectual. The child is born with anatural desire to give out, to do, to serve. Whenthis tendency is not used, when conditions aresuch that other motives are substituted, theaccumulation of an influence working againstthe social spirit is much larger than we haveany idea of,especially when the burden ofwork, week after week, and year after year,falls upon this side.

    But lack of cultivation of the social spirit isnot all. Positively individualistic motives andstandards are inculcated. Some stimulus mustbe found to keep the child at his studies. At thebest this will be his affection for his teacher,together with a feeling that he is not violatingschool rules, and thus negatively, if not

  • positively, is contributing to the good of theschool. I have nothing to say against thesemotives so far as they go, but they areinadequate. The relation between the piece ofwork to be done and affection for a third personis external, not intrinsic. It is therefore liable tobreak down whenever the external conditionsare changed. Moreover, this attachment to aparticular person, while in a way social, maybecome so isolated and exclusive as to be selfishin quality. In any case, the child shouldgradually grow out of this relatively externalmotive into an appreciation, for its own sake, ofthe social value of what he has to do, because ofits larger relations to life, not pinned down totwo or three persons.

    But, unfortunately, the motive is not alwaysat this relative best, but mixed with lowermotives which are distinctly egoistic. Fear is amotive which is almost sure to enter in,notnecessarily physical fear, or fear of punishment,but fear of losing the approbation of others; or

  • fear of failure, so extreme as to be morbid andparalyzing. On the other side, emulation andrivalry enter in. Just because all are doing thesame work, and are judged (either in recitationor examination with reference to grading and topromotion) not from the standpoint of theirpersonal contribution, but from that ofcomparative success, the feeling of superiorityover others is unduly appealed to, while timidchildren are depressed. Children are judgedwith reference to their capacity to realize thesame external standard. The weaker graduallylose their sense of power, and accept a positionof continuous and persistent inferiority. Theeffect upon both self-respect and respect forwork need not be dwelt upon. The strong learnto glory, not in their strength, but in the factthat they are stronger. The child isprematurely launched into the region ofindiv idualistic competition, and this in adirection where competition is least applicable,namely, in intellectual and artistic matters,

  • whose law is coperation and participation.Next, perhaps, to the evils of passive

    absorption and of competition for externalstanding come, perhaps, those which resultfrom the eternal emphasis upon preparation fora remote future. I do not refer here to thewaste of energy and vitality that accrues whenchildren, who live so largely in the immediatepresent, are appealed to in the name of a dimand uncertain future which means little ornothing to them. I have in mind rather thehabitual procrastination that develops when themotive for work is future, not present; and thefalse standards of judgment that are createdwhen work is estimated, not on the basis ofpresent need and present responsibility, but byreference to an external result, like passing anexamination, getting promoted, entering highschool, getting into college, etc. Who can reckonup the loss of moral power that arises from theconstant impression that nothing is worth doingin itself, but only as a preparation for something

  • else, which in turn is only a getting ready forsome genuinely serious end beyond? Moreover,as a rule, it will be found that remote success isan end which appeals most to those in whomegoistic desire to get aheadto get ahead ofothersis already only too strong a motive.Those in whom personal ambition is already sostrong that it paints glowing pictures of futurevictories may be touched; others of a moregenerous nature do not respond.

    I cannot stop to paint the other side. I canonly say that the introduction of every methodthat appeals to the childs active powers, to hiscapacities in construction, production, andcreation, marks an opportunity to shift thecentre of ethical gravity from an absorptionwhich is selfish to a service which is social.Manual training is more than manual; it is morethan intellectual; in the hands of any goodteacher it lends itself easily, and almost as amatter of course, to development of socialhabits. Ever since the philosophy of Kant, it has

  • been a commonplace of sthetic theory, thatart is universal; that it is not the product ofpurely personal desire or appetite, or capable ofmerely individual appropriation, but has avalue participated in by all who perceive it.Even in the schools where most consciousattention is paid to moral considerations, themethods of study and recitation may be such asto emphasize appreciation rather than power,an emotional readiness to assimilate theexperiences of others, rather than enlightenedand trained capacity to carry forward thosevalues which in other conditions and past timesmade those experiences worth having. At allevents, separation between instruction andcharacter continues in our schools (in spite ofthe efforts of individual teachers) as a result ofdivorce between learning and doing. Theattempt to attach genuine moral effectivenessto the mere processes of learning, and to thehabits which go along with learning, can resultonly in a training infected with formality,

  • arbitrariness, and an undue emphasis uponfailure to conform. That there is as muchaccomplished as there is shows the possibilitiesinvolved in methods of school activity whichafford opportunity for reciprocity, coperation,and positive personal achievement.

  • THE SOCIAL NATURE OFTHE COURSE OF STUDY

  • IV

    THE SOCIAL NATURE OFTHE COURSE OF STUDY

    Contents

    In many respects, it is the subject-matterused in school life which decides both thegeneral atmosphere of the school and themethods of instruction and discipline whichrule. A barren course of study, that is to say,a meagre and narrow field of school activities,cannot possibly lend itself to the developmentof a vital social spirit or to methods that appealto sympathy and coperation instead of to

  • absorption, exclusiveness, and competition.Hence it becomes an all important matter toknow how we shall apply our social standard ofmoral value to the subject-matter of schoolwork, to what we call, traditionally, thestudies that occupy pupils.

    A study is to be considered as a means ofbringing the child to realize the social scene ofaction. Thus considered it gives a criterion forselection of material and for judgment of values.We have at present three independent valuesset up: one of culture, another of information,and another of discipline. In reality, these referonly to three phases of social interpretation.Information is genuine or educative only in sofar as it presents definite images andconceptions of materials placed in a context ofsocial life. Discipline is genuinely educative onlyas it represents a reaction of information intothe individuals own powers so that he bringsthem under control for social ends. Culture, if itis to be genuinely educative and not an external

  • polish or factitious varnish, represents the vitalunion of information and discipline. It marksthe socialization of the individual in his outlookupon life.

    This point may be illustrated by briefreference to a few of the school studies. In thefirst place, there is no line of demarkationwithin facts themselves which classifies them asbelonging to science, history, or geography,respectively. The pigeon-hole classificationwhich is so prevalent at present (fostered byintroducing the pupil at the outset into anumber of different studies contained indifferent text-books) gives an utterlyerroneous idea of the relations of studies to oneanother and to the intellectual whole to whichall belong. In fact, these subjects have to dowith the same ultimate reality, namely, theconscious experience of man. It is only becausewe have different interests, or different ends,that we sort out the material and label part of itscience, part of it history, part geography, and

  • so on. Each sorting represents materialsarranged with reference to some one dominanttypical aim or process of the social life.

    This social criterion is necessary, not onlyto mark off studies from one another, but alsoto grasp the reasons for each study,themotives in connection with which it shall bepresented. How, for example, should we definegeography? What is the unity in the differentso-called divisions of geography,mathematicalgeography, physical geography, politicalgeography, commercial geography? Are theypurely empirical classifications dependent uponthe brute fact that we run across a lot ofdifferent facts? Or is there some intrinsicprinciple through which the material isdistributed under these various heads,something in the interest and attitude of thehuman mind towards them? I should say thatgeography has to do with all those aspects ofsocial life which are concerned with theinteraction of the life of man and nature; or,

  • that it has to do with the world considered asthe scene of social interaction. Any fact, then,will be geographical in so far as it has to do withthe dependence of man upon his naturalenvironment, or with changes introduced in thisenvironment through the life of man.

    The four forms of geography referred toabove represent, then, four increasing stages ofabstraction in discussing the mutual relation ofhuman life and nature. The beginning must besocial geography, the frank recognition of theearth as the home of men acting in relations toone another. I mean by this that the essence ofany geographical fact is the consciousness oftwo persons, or two groups of persons, who areat once separated and connected by theirphysical environment, and that the interest isin seeing how these people are at once keptapart and brought together in their actions bythe instrumentality of the physicalenvironment. The ultimate significance of lake,river, mountain, and plain is not physical but

  • social; it is the part which it plays in modifyingand directing human relationships. Thisevidently involves an extension of the termcommercial. It has to do not simply withbusiness, in the narrow sense, but withwhatever relates to human intercourse andintercommunication as affected by naturalforms and properties. Political geographyrepresents this same social interaction taken ina static instead of in a dynamic way; taken, thatis, as temporarily crystallized and fixed incertain forms. Physical geography (includingunder this not simply physiography, but alsothe study of flora and fauna) represents afurther analysis or abstraction. It studies theconditions which determine human action,leaving out of account, temporarily, the ways inwhich they concretely do this. Mathematicalgeography carries the analysis back to moreultimate and remote conditions, showing thatthe physical conditions of the earth are notultimate, but depend upon the place which the

  • world occupies in a larger system. Here, inother words, are traced, step by step, the linkswhich connect the immediate social occupationsand groupings of men with the whole naturalsystem which ultimately conditions them. Stepby step the scene is enlarged and the image ofwhat enters into the make-up of social action iswidened and broadened; at no time is the chainof connection to be broken.

    It is out of the question to take up thestudies one by one and show that their meaningis similarly controlled by social considerations.But I cannot forbear saying a word or two uponhistory. History is vital or dead to the childaccording as it is, or is not, presented from thesociological standpoint. When treated simply asa record of what has passed and gone, it mustbe mechanical, because the past, as the past, isremote. Simply as the past there is no motivefor attending to it. The ethical value of historyteaching will be measured by the extent towhich past events are made the means of

  • understanding the present,affording insightinto what makes up the structure and workingof society to-day. Existing social structure isexceedingly complex. It is practicallyimpossible for the child to attack it e n masseand get any definite mental image of it. Buttype phases of historical development may beselected which will exhibit, as through atelescope, the essential constituents of theexisting order. Greece, for example, representswhat art and growing power of individualexpression stand for; Rome exhibits theelements and forces of political life on atremendous scale. Or, as these civilizations arethemselves relatively complex, a study of stillsimpler forms of hunting, nomadic, andagricultural life in the beginnings of civilization,a study of the effects of the introduction of iron,and iron tools, reduces the complexity tosimpler elements.

    One reason historical teaching is usually notmore effective is that the student is set to

  • acquire information in such a way that noepochs or factors stand out in his mind astypical; everything is reduced to the same deadlevel. The way to secure the necessaryperspective is to treat the past as if it were aprojected present with some of its elementsenlarged.

    The principle of contrast is as important asthat of similarity. Because the present life is soclose to us, touching us at every point, wecannot get away from it to see it as it really is.Nothing stands out clearly or sharply ascharacteristic. In the study of past periods,attention necessarily attaches itself to strikingdifferences. Thus the child gets a locus ofimagination, through which he can removehimself from the pressure of presentsurrounding circumstances and define them.

    History is equally available in teaching themethods of social progress. It is commonlystated that history must be studied from thestandpoint of cause and effect. The truth of this

  • statement depends upon its interpretation.Social life is so complex and the various parts ofit are so organically related to one another andto the natural environment, that it is impossibleto say that this or that thing is the cause ofsome other particular thing. But the study ofhistory can reveal the main instruments in thediscoveries, inventions, new modes of life, etc.,which have initiated the great epochs of socialadvance; and it can present to the child types ofthe main lines of social progress, and can setbefore him what have been the chief difficultiesand obstructions in the way of progress. Oncemore this can be done only in so far as it isrecognized that social forces in themselves arealways the same,that the same kind ofinfluences were at work one hundred and onethousand years ago that are now working,andthat particular historical epochs affordillustration of the way in which the fundamentalforces work.

    Everything depends, then, upon history

  • being treated from a social standpoint; asmanifesting the agencies which have influencedsocial development and as presenting thetypical institutions in which social life hasexpressed itself. The culture-epoch theory,while working in the right direction, has failedto recognize the importance of treating pastperiods with relation to the present,asaffording insight into the representative factorsof its structure; it has treated these periods toomuch as if they had some meaning or value inthemselves. The way in which the biographicalmethod is handled illustrates the same point. Itis often treated in such a way as to excludefrom the childs consciousness (or at least notsufficiently to emphasize) the social forces andprinciples involved in the association of themasses of men. It is quite true that the child iseasily interested in history from thebiographical standpoint; but unless the herois treated in relation to the community lifebehind him that he sums up and directs, there

  • is danger that history will reduce itself to amere exciting story. Then moral instructionreduces itself to drawing certain lessons fromthe life of the particular personalitiesconcerned, instead of widening and deepeningthe childs imagination of social relations, ideals,and means.

    It will be remembered that I am notmaking these points for their own sake, butwith reference to the general principle thatwhen a study is taught as a mode ofunderstanding social life it has positive ethicalimport. What the normal child continuouslyneeds is not so much isolated moral lessonsupon the importance of truthfulness andhonesty, or the beneficent results that followfrom a particular act of patriotism, as theformation of habits of social imagination andconception.

    I take one more illustration, namely,mathematics. This does, or does not,accomplish its full purpose according as it is, or

  • is not, presented as a social tool. The prevailingdivorce between information and character,between knowledge and social action, stalksupon the scene here. The momentmathematical study is severed from the placewhich it occupies with reference to use in sociallife, it becomes unduly abstract, even upon thepurely intellectual side. It is presented as amatter of technical relations and formul apartfrom any end or use. What the study of numbersuffers from in elementary education is lack ofmotivation. Back of this and that and the otherparticular bad method is the radical mistake oftreating number as if it were an end in itself,instead of the means of accomplishing someend. Let the child get a consciousness of what isthe use of number, of what it really is for, andhalf the battle is won. Now this consciousness ofthe use of reason implies some end which isimplicitly social.

    One of the absurd things in the moreadvanced study of arithmetic is the extent to

  • which the child is introduced to numericaloperations which have no distinctivemathematical principles characterizing them,but which represent certain general principlesfound in business relationships. To train thechild in these operations, while paying noattention to the business realities in which theyare of use, or to the conditions of social lifewhich make these business activities necessary,is neither arithmetic nor common sense. Thechild is called upon to do examples in interest,partnership, banking, brokerage, and so onthrough a long string, and no pains are taken tosee that, in connection with the arithmetic, hehas any sense of the social realities involved.This part of arithmetic is essentially sociologicalin its nature. It ought either to be omittedentirely, or else be taught in connection with astudy of the relevant social realities. As we nowmanage the study, it is the old case of learningto swim apart from the water over again, withcorrespondingly bad results on the practical

  • side.In concluding this portion of the discussion,

    we may say that our conceptions of moraleducation have been too narrow, too formal,and too pathological. We have associated theterm ethical with certain special acts which arelabeled virtues and are set off from the mass ofother acts, and are still more divorced from thehabitual images and motives of the childrenperforming them. Moral instruction is thusassociated with teaching about these particularvirtues, or with instilling certain sentiments inregard to them. The moral has been conceivedin too goody-goody a way. Ultimate moralmotives and forces are nothing more or lessthan social intelligencethe power of observingand comprehending social situations,andsocial powertrained capacities of controlatwork in the service of social interest and aims.There is no fact which throws light upon theconstitution of society, there is no power whosetraining adds to social resourcefulness that is

  • not moral.I sum up, then, this part of the discussion

    by asking your attention to the moral trinity ofthe school. The demand is for social intelligence,social power, and social interests. Our resourcesare (1) the life of the school as a socialinstitution in itself; (2) methods of learning andof doing work; and (3) the school studies orcurriculum. In so far as the school represents,in its own spirit, a genuine community life; in sofar as what are called school discipline,government, order, etc., are the expressions ofthis inherent social spirit; in so far as themethods used are those that appeal to theactive and constructive powers, permitting thechild to give out and thus to serve; in so far asthe curriculum is so selected and organized asto provide the material for affording the child aconsciousness of the world in which he has toplay a part, and the demands he has to meet; sofar as these ends are met, the school isorganized on an ethical basis. So far as general

  • principles are concerned, all the basic ethicalrequirements are met. The rest remainsbetween the individual teacher and theindividual child.

  • THE PSYCHOLOGICALASPECT OF MORAL

    EDUCATION

  • V

    THE PSYCHOLOGICALASPECT OF MORAL

    EDUCATION

    Contents

    So far we have been considering the make-upof purposes and results that constitute conductits what. But conduct has a certain methodand spirit alsoits how. Conduct may belooked upon as expressing the attitudes anddispositions of an individual, as well as realizingsocial results and maintaining the social fabric.A consideration of conduct as a mode of

  • individual performance, personal doing, takesus from the social to the psychological side ofmorals. In the first place, all conduct springsultimately and radically out of native instinctsand impulses. We must know what theseinstincts and impulses are, and what they are ateach particular stage of the childsdevelopment, in order to know what to appealto and what to build upon. Neglect of thisprinciple may give a mechanical imitation ofmoral conduct, but the imitation will beethically dead, because it is external and has itscentre without, not within, the individual. Wemust study the child, in other words, to get ourindications, our symptoms, our suggestions.The more or less spontaneous acts of the childare not to be thought of as setting moral formsto which the efforts of the educator mustconformthis would result simply in spoilingthe child; but they are symptoms which requireto be interpreted: stimuli which need to beresponded to in directed ways; material which,

  • in however transformed a shape, is the onlyultimate constituent of future moral conductand character.

    Then, secondly, our ethical principles needto be stated in psychological terms because thechild supplies us with the only means orinstruments by which to realize moral ideals.The subject-matter of the curriculum, howeverimportant, however judiciously selected, isempty of conclusive moral content until it ismade over into terms of the individuals ownactivities, habits, and desires. We must knowwhat history, geography, and mathematicsmean in psychological terms, that is, as modesof personal experiencing, before we can get outof them their moral potentialities.

    The psychological side of education sumsitself up, of course, in a consideration ofcharacter. It is a commonplace to say that thedevelopment of character is the end of all schoolwork. The difficulty lies in the execution of theidea. And an underlying difficulty in this

  • execution is the lack of a clear conception ofwhat character means. This may seem anextreme statement. If so, the idea may beconveyed by saying that we generally conceiveof character simply in terms of results; we haveno clear conception of it in psychological termsthat is, as a process, as working or dynamic.We know what character means in terms of theactions which proceed from it, but we have nota definite conception of it on its inner side, as asystem of working forces.

    (1) Force, efficiency in execution, or overtaction, is one necessary constituent ofcharacter. In our moral books and lectures wemay lay the stress upon good intentions, etc.But we know practically that the kind ofcharacter we hope to build up through oureducation is one that not only has goodintentions, but that insists upon carrying themout. Any other character is wishy-washy; it isgoody, not good. The individual must have thepower to stand up and count for something in

  • the actual conflicts of life. He must haveinitiative, insistence, persistence, courage, andindustry. He must, in a word, have all that goesunder the name force of character.Undoubtedly, individuals differ greatly in theirnative endowment in this respect. None theless, each has a certain primary equipment ofimpulse, of tendency forward, of innate urgencyto do. The problem of education on this side isthat of discovering what this native fund ofpower is, and then of utilizing it in such a way(affording conditions which both stimulate andcontrol) as to organize it into definite conservedmodes of actionhabits.

    (2) But something more is required thansheer force. Sheer force may be brutal; it mayoverride the interests of others. Even whenaiming at right ends it may go at them in such away as to violate the rights of others. Morethan this, in sheer force there is no guaranteefor the right end. Efficiency may be directedtowards mistaken ends and result in positive

  • mischief and destruction. Power, as alreadysuggested, must be directed. It must beorganized along social channels; it must beattached to valuable ends.

    This involves training on both theintellectual and emotional side. On theintellectual side we must have judgmentwhatis ordinarily called good sense. The differencebetween mere knowledge, or information, andjudgment is that the former is simply held, notused; judgment is knowledge directed withreference to the accomplishment of ends. Goodjudgment is a sense of respective orproportionate values. The one who hasjudgment is the one who has ability to size up asituation. He is the one who can grasp the sceneor situation before him, ignoring what isirrelevant, or what for the time being isunimportant, who can seize upon the factorswhich demand attention, and grade themaccording to their respective claims. Mereknowledge of what the right is, in the abstract,

  • mere intentions of following the right in general,however praiseworthy in themselves, are nevera substitute for this power of trained judgment.Action is always in the concrete. It is definiteand individualized. Except, therefore, as it isbacked and controlled by a knowledge of theactual concrete factors in the situation in whichit occurs, it must be relatively futile and waste.

    (3) But the consciousness of ends must bemore than merely intellectual. We can imaginea person with most excellent judgment, who yetdoes not act upon his judgment. There must notonly be force to ensure effort in executionagainst obstacles, but there must also be adelicate personal responsiveness,there mustbe an emotional reaction. Indeed, goodjudgment is impossible without thissusceptibility. Unless there is a prompt andalmost instinctive sensitiveness to conditions, tothe ends and interests of others, the intellectualside of judgment will not have proper materialto work upon. Just as the material of knowledge

  • is supplied through the senses, so the materialof ethical knowledge is supplied by emotionalresponsiveness. It is difficult to put this qualityinto words, but we all know the differencebetween the character which is hard andformal, and one which is sympathetic, flexible,and open. In the abstract the former may be assincerely devoted to moral ideas as is the latter,but as a practical matter we prefer to live withthe latter. We count upon it to accomplish moreby tact, by instinctive recognition of the claimsof others, by skill in adjusting, than the formercan accomplish by mere attachment to rules.

    Here, then, is the moral standard, by whichto test the work of the school upon the side ofwhat it does directly for individuals. (a) Doesthe school as a system, at present, attachsufficient importance to the spontaneousinstincts and impulses? Does it afford sufficientopportunity for these to assert themselves andwork out their own results? Can we even saythat the school in principle attaches itself, at

  • present, to the active constructive powersrather than to processes of absorption andlearning? Does not our talk about self-activitylargely render itself meaningless because theself-activity we have in mind is purelyintellectual, out of relation to those impulseswhich work through hand and eye?

    Just in so far as the present school methodsfail to meet the test of such questions moralresults must be unsatisfactory. We cannotsecure the development of positive force ofcharacter unless we are willing to pay its price.We cannot smother and repress the childspowers, or gradually abort them (from failureof opportunity for exercise), and then expect acharacter with initiative and consecutiveindustry. I am aware of the importanceattaching to inhibition, but mere inhibition isvalueless. The only restraint, the only holding-in, that is of any worth is that which comesthrough holding powers concentrated upon apositive end. An end cannot be attained

  • excepting as instincts and impulses are keptfrom discharging at random and from runningoff on side tracks. In keeping powers at workupon their relevant ends, there is sufficientopportunity for genuine inhibition. To say thatinhibition is higher than power, is like sayingthat death is more than life, negation more thanaffirmation, sacrifice more than service.

    (b) We must also test our school work byfinding whether it affords the conditionsnecessary for the formation of good judgment.Judgment as the sense of relative valuesinvolves ability to select, to discriminate.Acquiring information can never develop thepower of judgment. Development of judgmentis in spite of, not because of, methods ofinstruction that emphasize simple learning. Thetest comes only when the information acquiredhas to be put to use. Will it do what we expectof it? I have heard an educator of largeexperience say that in her judgment thegreatest defect of instruction to-day, on the

  • intellectual side, is found in the fact thatchildren leave school without a mentalperspective. Facts seem to them all of the sameimportance. There is no foreground orbackground. There is no instinctive habit ofsorting out facts upon a scale of worth and ofgrading them.

    The child cannot get power of judgmentexcepting as he is continually exercised informing and testing judgments. He must havean opportunity to select for himself, and toattempt to put his selections into execution,that he may submit them to the final test, thatof action. Only thus can he learn to discriminatethat which promises success from that whichpromises failure; only thus can he form thehabit of relating his purposes and notions to theconditions that determine their value. Does theschool, as a system, afford at present sufficientopportunity for this sort of experimentation?Except so far as the emphasis of the schoolwork is upon intelligent doing, upon active

  • investigation, it does not furnish the conditionsnecessary for that exercise of judgment whichis an integral factor in good character.

    (c) I shall be brief with respect to the otherpoint, the need of susceptibility andresponsiveness. The informally social side ofeducation, the sthetic environment andinfluences, are all-important. In so far as thework is laid out in regular and formulated ways,so far as there are lacking opportunities forcasual and free social intercourse betweenpupils and between the pupils and the teacher,this side of the childs nature is either starved,or else left to find haphazard expression alongmore or less secret channels. When the schoolsystem, under plea of the practical (meaning bythe practical the narrowly utilitarian), confinesthe child to the three Rs and the formal studiesconnected with them, shuts him out from thevital in literature and history, and deprives himof his right to contact with what is best inarchitecture, music, sculpture, and picture, it is

  • hopeless to expect definite results in thetraining of sympathetic openness andresponsiveness.

    What we need in education is a genuinefaith in the existence of moral principles whichare capable of effective application. We believe,so far as the mass of children are concerned,that if we keep at them long enough we canteach reading and writing and figuring. We arepractically, even if unconsciously, skeptical as tothe possibility of anything like the sameassurance in morals. We believe in moral lawsand rules, to be sure, but they are in the air.They are something set off by themselves.They are so very moral that they have noworking contact with the average affairs ofevery-day life. These moral principles need tobe brought down to the ground through theirstatement in social and in psychological terms.

  • We need to see that moral principles are notarbitrary, that they are not transcendental;that the term moral does not designate aspecial region or portion of life. We need totranslate the moral into the conditions andforces of our community life, and into theimpulses and habits of the individual.

    All the rest is mint, anise, and cummin. Theone thing needful is that we recognize thatmoral principles are real in the same sense inwhich other forces are real; that they areinherent in community life, and in the workingstructure of the individual. If we can secure agenuine faith in this fact, we shall have securedthe condition which alone is necessary to getfrom our educational system all theeffectiveness there is in it. The teacher whooperates in this faith will find every subject,every method of instruction, every incident ofschool life pregnant with moral possibility.

  • OUTLINE

    Contents

    I. THE MORAL PURPOSE OF THESCHOOL

    1. Moral ideas and ideas aboutmorality 1

    2. Moral education and direct moralinstruction 3

    II. THE MORAL TRAINING GIVEN BYTHE SCHOOL COMMUNITY

    1. The unity of social ethics and schoolethics 7

    2. A narrow and formal training forcitizenship 8

    3. School life should train for manysocial relations 9

    4. It should train for self-direction andleadership 10

    5. There is no harmonious

  • development of powers apart fromsocial situations 11

    6. School activities should be typical ofsocial life 13

    7. Moral training in the schools tendsto be pathological and formal 15

    III. THE MORAL TRAINING FROMMETHODS OF INSTRUCTION

    1. Active social service as opposed topassive individual absorption 21

    2. The positive inculcation ofindividualistic motives andstandards 23

    3. The evils of competition for externalstanding 24

    4. The moral waste of remote successas an end 25

    5. The worth of active and socialmodes of learning 26

    IV. THE SOCIAL NATURE OF THECOURSE OF STUDY

    1. The nature of the course of study

  • influences the conduct of the school31

    2. School studies as means of realizingsocial situations 31

    3. School subjects are merely phases ofa unified social life 32

    4. The meaning of subjects iscontrolled by social considerations

    335. Geography deals with the scenes of

    social interaction 336. Its various forms represent

    increasing stages of abstraction34

    7. History is a means for interpretingexisting social relations 36

    8. It presents type phases of socialdevelopment 37

    9. It offers contrasts, andconsequently perspective 37

    10. It teaches the methods of socialprogress 38

    11. The failure of certain methods ofteaching history 39

  • 12. Mathematics is a means to socialends 40

    13. The sociological nature of businessarithmetic 41

    14. Summary: The moral trinity of theschool 42

    V. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT OFMORAL EDUCATION

    1. Conduct as a mode of individualperformance 47

    2. Native instincts and impulses arethe sources of conduct 47

    3. Moral ideals must be realized inpersons 48

    4. Character as a system of workingforces 49

    5. Force as a necessary constituent ofcharacter 49

    6. The importance of intellectualjudgment or good sense 50

    7. The capacity for delicate emotionalresponsiveness 52

    8. Summary: The ethical standards for

  • testing the school 539. Conclusion: The practicality of

    moral principles 57

  • RIVERSIDEEDUCATIONALMONOGRAPHS

    General Educational TheoryCoolidges Americas Need forEducation.Deweys Interest and Effort inEducation.Deweys Moral Principles inEducation.Eliots Education for Efficiency.Eliots The Tendency to theConcrete and Practical in ModernEducation.Emersons Education and otherSelections.Fiskes The Meaning of Infancy.Hornes The Teacher as Artist.Hydes The Teachers Philosophy in

  • and out of School.Judds The Evolution of aDemocratic School System.Merediths The EducationalBearings of Modern Psychology.Palmers The Ideal Teacher.Palmers Trades and Professions.Palmers Ethical and MoralInstruction in Schools.Prossers The Teacher and Old Age.Stocktons Project Work inEducation.Strattons Developing MentalPower.Termans The Teachers Health.Thorndikes Individuality.Trows Scientific Method inEducation.

    Administration and SupervisionBetts New Ideals in Rural Schools.Bloomfields The VocationalGuidance of Youth.Cabots Volunteer Help to the

  • Schools.Coles Industrial Education in theElementary School.Cubberleys Changing Conceptionsof Education.Cubberleys The Improvement ofRural Schools.Dooleys The Education of theNeer-Do-Well.Gatess The Management of SmallerSchools.Hiness Measuring Intelligence.Kooss The High-School Principal.Lewiss Democracys High School.Maxwells The Observation ofTeaching.Maxwells The Selection ofTextbooks.Miller and Charless Publicity andthe Public School.Perrys The Status of the Teacher.Russells Economy in SecondaryEducation.Smiths Establishing Industrial

  • Schools.Sneddens The Problem ofVocational Guidance.Weekss The Peoples School.

    MethodAndresss The Teaching of Hygienein the Grades.Atwoods The Theory and Practiceof the Kindergarten.Baileys Art Education.Bettss The Recitation.Cooleys Language Teaching in theGrades.Doughertys How to Teach Phonics.Earharts Teaching Children toStudy.Evanss The Teaching of HighSchool Mathematics.Fairchilds The Teaching of Poetryin the High School.Freemans The Teaching ofHandwriting.Haliburton and Smiths Teaching

  • Poetry in the Grades.Hartwells The Teaching of History.Hawleys Teaching English in JuniorHigh Schools.Hayness Economics in theSecondary School.Hills The Teaching of Civics.Jenkinss Reading in the PrimaryGrades.Kendall and Strykers History in theElementary School.Kilpatricks The Montessori SystemExamined.Leonards English Composition as aSocial Problem.Losh and Weekss Primary NumberProjects.Palmers Self-Cultivation in English.Ridgleys Geographic Principles.Ruedigers Vitalized Teaching.Sharps Teaching English in HighSchools.Stocktons Project Work inEducation.

  • Suzzallos The Teaching of PrimaryArithmetic.Suzzallos The Teaching of Spelling.Swifts Speech Defects in SchoolChildren.Tuells The Study of Nations.Wilsons What Arithmetic Shall WeTeach?

    HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

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