Presidential address before the Association of Colleges and Preparatory Schools of the Middle States and Maryland, at Easton, Pennsylvania, November 29, 1895 IS THERE A NEW EDUCATION? The title of this discussion is designedly thrown into the form of a question. Its purpose is to provoke, if possible, a difference of opinion-always a healthier and more productive intellectual state than the dull mediocrity of agreement. Difference of opinion begets doubt, doubt begets inquiry, and inquiry eventually leads to truth. Virgil's fine line, Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, is profoundly true; but more fortunate still is he who comes to his knowledge by the sure method of honest doubt. education For a generation we have been doing lip- Evolution and service to the doctrine of evolution; but only with great slowness and difficulty do old forms. of speech and old habits of mind fit themselves to a new point of view that makes so strong an appeal both to our reason and to our imagination. In no department of knowledge is this more true than in the field of education. Education is essentially a conservative process; it cherishes its time-worn instruments and reveres its time-honored standards. The treasures of the mind are too precious to be lightly exposed to the loss or harm that might come to them through change. Yet the opinion has found lodgment among our craft that after all, and despite the excellence of old methods and old standards, the educational theory and practise of a given age or generation must stand in close relation to its intellectual and ethical ideals, and to the material fabric of its civilization: and surely all three of these habitually vary, not only over long periods but in relatively short intervals of time. It is a grave matter for the teacher if virtue is identical with knowledge, as Socrates taught; or if it is the result of habit, as Aristotle held; or if it is the cunning invention of rulers, as Mandeville suggested; or if it is mere skill in calculating the chances of pleasure and pain, as Bentham laid down. It is important, too, primarily for the higher education, but eventually for the lower schools as well, if our intellectual ideal is represented by the active mind of a Leibniz or a Gladstone, with its immense energy and broad range of interests; or if it is better typified by the narrow, plodding specialization of a Darwin or of those Teutonic philologers who are unduly distracted if their investigations cover more than the gerund or the dative case. Still more directly must our education depend upon the material equipment of the time. In this day of innumerable printing-presses, with a power of production sadly out of proportion to their power of discrimination, it is quite inconceivable that we should not find ourselves forced to con anew the grounds on which rest the principles and methods that have come down to us from the age of manuscripts and pack-saddles. Such a process of questioning has been under way for some time past, and has contributed in no small degree to that marvellous enthusiasm for education and to that belief in it, the evidences of which are to be seen on every hand. education as a science There are three avenues of scientific ap- Study of proach to the study of education, and in each of them the evolutionary point of view is not only illuminating but controlling. These three avenues are the physiological, the psychological, and the sociological. Their points of contact are many and their interrelations are close. Modern psychology has already given up the attempt to treat mental life without reference to its physical basis; and it will sooner or later regard any interpretation as incomplete that does not relate the individual to what may be called the social life or consciousness. Man's institutional life is as much a part of his real self as his physical existence or his mental constitution. Robinson Crusoe is, in one of the catch phrases of the day, a barren ideality. It must be admitted that this point of view is both very old and very new. It is very old, for it was Aristotle himself who wrote: "Man is by nature a political animal. And he who by nature, and not by mere accident, is without a state, is either above humanity or below it." It is also very new, for it is in flat contradiction to the doctrine of Rousseau: "Compelled to oppose nature or our social institutions, we must choose between making a man and a citizen, for we cannot make both at once" 2the crudeness and superficiality of which have not prevented it from exercising a wide and long-continued influence. Modern philosophy confirms here, as so often, the analysis of Aristotle; and it rejects, as is becoming customary, the extreme individualism of the later eighteenth century. The significance of this for our educational theory is all-important. 1 The Politics of Aristotle (Oxford, 1885), I, 2, Jowett's translation, p. 4. 2 Rousseau's Émile (New York, 1893), translated by W. H. Payne, p. 5. |