History of Education II

History of Education II

	Educational Theory in the 17th Century

Educators of the 17th century developed new ways of thinking about education. Czech education reformer Jan Komensky, known as Comenius, was particularly influential. A bishop of the Moravian Church, Comenius escaped religious persecution by taking refuge in Poland, Hungary, Sweden, and The Netherlands. He created a new educational philosophy called Pansophism, or universal knowledge, designed to bring about worldwide understanding and peace. Comenius advised teachers to use children’s senses rather than memorization in instruction. To make learning interesting for children, he wrote The Gate of Tongues Unlocked (1631), a book for teaching Latin in the student’s own language. He also wrote Orbis Sensualium Pictus (1658; The Visible World in Pictures, 1659) consisting of illustrations that labeled objects in both their Latin and vernacular names. It was one of the first illustrated books written especially for children.

The work of English philosopher John Locke influenced education in Britain and North America. Locke examined how people acquire ideas in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690). He asserted that at birth the human mind is a blank slate, or tabula rasa, and empty of ideas. We acquire knowledge, he argued, from the information about the objects in the world that our senses bring to us. We begin with simple ideas and then combine them into more complex ones.

Locke believed that individuals acquire knowledge most easily when they first consider simple ideas and then gradually combine them into more complex ones. In Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1697), Locke recommended practical learning to prepare people to manage their social, economic, and political affairs efficiently. He believed that a sound education began in early childhood and insisted that the teaching of reading, writing, and arithmetic be gradual and cumulative. Locke’s curriculum included conversational learning of foreign languages, especially French, mathematics, history, physical education, and games.

	Education During the Enlightenment

The Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century produced important changes in education and educational theory. During the Enlightenment, also called the Age of Reason, educators believed people could improve their lives and society by using their reason, their powers of critical thinking. The Enlightenment’s ideas had a significant impact on the American Revolution (1775-1783) and early educational policy in the United States. In particular, American philosopher and scientist Benjamin Franklin emphasized the value of utilitarian and scientific education in American schools. Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, stressed the importance of civic education to the citizens of a democratic nation. The Enlightenment principles that considered education as an instrument of social reform and improvement remain fundamental characteristics of American education policy.

	Education in the 19th Century

The foundations of modern education were established in the 19th century. Swiss educator Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, inspired by the work of French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau, developed an educational method based on the natural world and the senses. Pestalozzi established schools in Switzerland and Germany to educate children and train teachers. He affirmed that schools should resemble secure and loving homes.

Like Locke and Rousseau, Pestalozzi believed that thought began with sensation and that teaching should use the senses. Holding that children should study the objects in their natural environment, Pestalozzi developed a so-called “object lesson” that involved exercises in learning form, number, and language. Pupils determined and traced an object’s form, counted objects, and named them. Students progressed from these lessons to exercises in drawing, writing, adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, and reading.

Pestalozzi employed the following principles in teaching: (1) begin with the concrete object before introducing abstract concepts; (2) begin with the immediate environment before dealing with what is distant and remote; (3) begin with easy exercises before introducing complex ones; and (4) always proceed gradually, cumulatively, and slowly. American educator Henry Barnard, the first U.S. Commissioner of Education, introduced Pestalozzi’s ideas to the United States in the late 19th century. Barnard also worked for the establishment of free public high schools for students of all classes of American society.

German philosopher Johann Herbart emphasized moral education and designed a highly structured teaching technique. Maintaining that education’s primary goal is moral development, Herbart claimed good character rested on knowledge while misconduct resulted from an inadequate education. Knowledge, he said, should create an “apperceptive mass”—a network of ideas—in a person’s mind to which new ideas can be added. He wanted to include history, geography, and literature in the school curriculum as well as reading, writing, and arithmetic. Based on his work, Herbart’s followers designed a five-step teaching method: (1) prepare the pupils to be ready for the new lesson, (2) present the new lesson, (3) associate the new lesson with ideas studied earlier, (4) use examples to illustrate the lesson’s major points, and (5) test pupils to ensure they had learned the new lesson.

A

Kindergarten

German educator Friedrich Froebel created the earliest kindergarten, a form of preschool education that literally means “child’s garden” in German. Froebel, who had an unhappy childhood, urged teachers to think back to their own childhoods to find insights they could use in their teaching. Froebel studied at Pestalozzi’s institute in Yverdon, Switzerland, from 1808 to 1810. While agreeing with Pestalozzi’s emphasis on the natural world, a kindly school atmosphere, and the object lesson, Froebel felt that Pestalozzi’s method was not philosophical enough. Froebel believed that every child’s inner self contained a spiritual essence—a spark of divine energy—that enabled a child to learn independently.

In 1837 Froebel opened a kindergarten in Blankenburg with a curriculum that featured songs, stories, games, gifts, and occupations. The songs and stories stimulated the imaginations of children and introduced them to folk heroes and cultural values. Games developed children’s social and physical skills. By playing with each other, children learned to participate in a group. Froebel’s gifts, including such objects as spheres, cubes, and cylinders, were designed to enable the child to understand the concept that the object represented. Occupations consisted of materials children could use in building activities. For example, clay, sand, cardboard, and sticks could be used to build castles, cities, and mountains.

Immigrants from Germany brought the kindergarten concept to the United States, where it became part of the American school system. Margarethe Meyer Schurz opened a German-language kindergarten in Watertown, Wisconsin, in 1855. Elizabeth Peabody established an English-language kindergarten and a training school for kindergarten teachers in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1860. William Torrey Harris, superintendent of schools in St. Louis, Missouri, and later a U.S. commissioner of education, made the kindergarten part of the American public school system.

B

Social Darwinism

British sociologist Herbert Spencer strongly influenced education in the mid-19th century with social theories based on the theory of evolution developed by British naturalist Charles Darwin. Spencer revised Darwin’s biological theory into social Darwinism, a body of ideas that applied the theory of evolution to society, politics, the economy, and education. Spencer maintained that in modern industrialized societies, as in earlier simpler societies, the “fittest” individuals of each generation survived because they were intelligent and adaptable. Competition caused the brightest and strongest individuals to climb to the top of the society. Urging unlimited competition, Spencer wanted government to restrict its activities to the bare minimum. He opposed public schools, claiming that they would create a monopoly for mediocrity by catering to students of low ability. He wanted private schools to compete against each other in trying to attract the brightest students and most capable teachers. Spencer’s social Darwinism became very popular in the last half of the 19th century when industrialization was changing American and Western European societies.

Spencer believed that people in industrialized society needed scientific rather than classical education. Emphasizing education in practical skills, he advocated a curriculum featuring lessons in five basic human activities:
(1) those needed for self-preservation such as health, diet, and exercise;
(2) those needed to perform one’s occupation so that a person can earn a living, including the basic skills of reading, writing, computation, and knowledge of the sciences;
(3) those needed for parenting, to raise children properly;
(4) those needed to participate in society and politics; and
(5) those needed for leisure and recreation. Spencer’s ideas on education were eagerly accepted in the United States. In 1918 the Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education, a report issued by the National Education Association, used Spencer’s list of activities in its recommendations for American education.

	National Systems of Education

In the 19th century, governments in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, and other European countries organized national systems of public education. The United States, Canada, Argentina, Uruguay, and other countries in North and South America also established national education systems based largely on European models.

A

In the United Kingdom

The Church of England and other churches often operated primary schools in the United Kingdom, where students paid a small fee to study the Bible, catechism, reading, writing, and arithmetic. In 1833 the British Parliament passed a law that gave some government funds to these schools. In 1862 the United Kingdom established a school grant system, called payment by results, in which schools received funds based on their students’ performance on reading, writing, and arithmetic tests. The Education Act of 1870, called the Forster Act, authorized local government boards to establish public board schools. The United Kingdom then had two schools systems: board schools operated by the government and voluntary schools conducted by the churches and other private organizations.

In 1878 the United Kingdom passed laws that limited child labor in factories and made it possible for more children to attend school. To make schooling available to working-class children, many schools with limited public and private funds used monitorial methods of instruction. Monitorial education, developed by British educators Joseph Lancaster and Andrew Bell, used student monitors to conduct lessons. It offered the fledgling public education system the advantage of allowing schools to hire fewer teachers to instruct the large number of new students. Schools featuring monitorial education used older boys, called monitors, who were more advanced in their studies, to teach younger children. Monitorial education concentrated on basic skills—reading, writing, and arithmetic—that were broken down into small parts or units. After a monitor had learned a unit—such as spelling words of two or three letters that began with the letter A—he would, under the master teacher’s supervision, teach this unit to a group of students. By the end of the 19th century, the monitorial system was abandoned in British schools because it provided a very limited education.

B

In Russia

Russian tsar Alexander II initiated education reforms leading to the Education Statute of 1864. This law created zemstvos, local government units, which operated primary schools. In addition to zemstvo schools, the Russian Orthodox Church conducted parish schools. While the number of children attending school slowly increased, most of Russia’s population remained illiterate. Peasants often refused to send their children to school so that they could work on the farms. More boys attended school than girls since many peasant parents considered female education unnecessary. Fearing that too much education would make people discontented with their lives, the tsar’s government provided only limited schooling to instill political loyalty and religious piety.

C

In the United States

Before the 19th century elementary and secondary education in the United States was organized on a local or regional level. Nearly all schools operated on private funds exclusively. However, beginning in the 1830s and 1840s, American educators such as Henry Barnard and Horace Mann argued for the creation of a school system operated by individual states that would provide an equal education for all American children. In 1852 Massachusetts passed the first laws calling for free public education, and by 1918 all U.S. states had passed compulsory school attendance laws. See Public Education in the United States.

	Education in the Twentieth Century

At the beginning of the 20th century, the writings of Swedish feminist and educator Ellen Key influenced education around the world. Key’s book Barnets århundrade (1900; The Century of the Child,1909) was translated into many languages and inspired so-called progressive educators in various countries. Progressive education was a system of teaching that emphasized the needs and potentials of the child, rather than the needs of society or the principles of religion. Among the influential progressive educators were Hermann Lietz and Georg Michael Kerschensteiner of Germany, Bertrand Russell of England, and Maria Montessori of Italy.

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