WHAT IS EDUCATION?

CHAPTER I

WHAT IS EDUCATION?

Years ago, while a student in New York City, I attended a meeting of the Graduate Club of Columbia, which was addressed by some three or four of the leading professors of the University upon the subject, "How I came to choose the work which I am now doing." I remember that on that occasion. Professor Brander Matthews told us how, as a student living in a garret in Paris, he made the acquaintance of the French drama; and Professor Franklin Giddings, how he came to devote his life to sociology; and that Professor, now President, Nicholas Murray Butler gave an account somewhat like this, of how he came to study education. He said: "I was a junior in Columbia College when one day, as I was passing President Barnard's door, he called me into his office and said, 'Butler, what do you mean to do when you get out of college?' I replied: 'Mr. President, I have not decided, but I shall probably study law.' Then President Barnard

replied: 'Butler, do not do it. There are plenty of lawyers already. Study education. In this country it is an unbroken field. There is no subject which so much merits study or which will yield larger return in point of opportunities for service to him. who makes himself an authority in it than this subject of education.' I replied, in a more or less vague way, that I did not know what he meant by education in that sense. He replied by giving me Ludwig Wiese's 'German Letters on English Education,' and asked me to read it, and after I had read it to come back and talk it over with him. I did read this book and became greatly interested in the whole field of reflection and study which it opened up. As a result, I read under President Barnard's guidance, during my next summer holiday, Karl von Raumer's 'Geschichte der Pädagogik.' He pointed out that I must be sure to study philosophy in order to have a basis upon which to build any genuine knowledge of educational theory and practice. With this, I was launched on what proved to be my professional career."

The advice which President Barnard gave is not often given by university men to their students, yet his reasons for giving it are as sound to-day as when he uttered them. There is no subject which so much deserves study, or which offers larger opportunities for service to mankind than this.

Education is one of the major concerns of the race. The chiefs of the philosophers have regarded it as the one thing needful for the perfecting of states and the improving of lives. Civilized nations have taken its claims so seriously that giving instruction and attending upon instruction is now the occupation in which the largest numbers of their people are engaged. What was formerly the privilege of the few is now compulsory for all. The very magnitude of this undertaking puts it above the plane of indifference. The seriousness of the issues involved is such as to give the most unimaginative person who for a moment contemplates them a sense of responsibility almost too great for mortals to bear. Other occupations work with things or with human interests taken singly. This occupation assumes a guardianship over the generations which affects all that they do. The directors of schools, the makers of courses of study, and the teachers of the young are engaged in "choosing experiences for people," not for a day or an hour but for life. The study of education is the effort to put intelligence into that high task. "Nothing is worth doing, which is not worth thinking about." The world, even the educated world, is quick to see that education is worth doing, but slow to admit that it is worth thinking about. Gradually it is being won over from its reliance upon the customary and the traditional, and

hesitatingly it begins to examine the life which it prescribes for the young. The first fruits of intelligence applied to education are better laws and administrative devices. These produce a better teaching personnel. Yet this is but a beginning of reforms. Those who teach must think about the experiences which they choose for those who are taught.

One of the earliest books written in this country upon the work of the teacher begins with the question, "Why is it that there is such a 'singular contrariety of opinion in regard to the pleasantness of the business of teaching?"" Some teachers regard their daily task as intolerable drudgery, others never cease to think and to talk of their delightful labors." The answer is that " every mind is so constituted as to take a positive pleasure in the exercise of ingenuity, in adapting means to an end, and in watching their operation." "1 Those who do this find pleasure in their work, those who do not, regard it as drudgery. This continuous adapting of means to ends is not only the sole expedient for vitalizing the teacher, it is the sole method of vitalizing the school and of vitalizing education itself. This is the thinking which is enjoined upon all who work at anything which is worth doing. Theory and practice must go hand in hand, for theory is nothing but thinking about practice, and 1 Jacob Abbott, The Teacher. Boston, 1834.

the practice which is worth while must be thought about, that is, must grow out of theory. The notion that theory and practice should work together in education is older even than Socrates, for the first of the culture teachers of the Greeks, the great Protagoras, left the world these two conclusions from his reflection upon education: the first, "teaching requires natural disposition and exercise, and must be begun in youth"; the second, "neither theory without practice nor practice without theory avails at all." 1

Some uses of theory. Without theory, practice must be a blind doing of what somebody else— tradition, authority, or accident has directed. Rational purpose is lacking, there is no selecting of aims, no turning over of plans to decide which is best, and little checking up to find out the real worth of what has been accomplished. The individual situation is slighted. The authorities do the thinking, if indeed any is done. Other members of the undertaking are only hands to carry out their orders. "Tell us exactly what should be done in a high school, and we will go and do it," say our students sometimes to us. The teacher can no more maintain himself on such a basis than the physician can. The principles of medicine are not rule-ofthumb recipes which tell him exactly what to do in 1 Gomperz, Greek Thinkers, 1-p. 441.