Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects

Essays on Education and
Kindred Subjects

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Subjects
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Title: Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects Everyman's Library
Author: Herbert Spencer
Commentator: Charles W. Eliot
Release Date: August 11, 2005 [EBook #16510]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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_EVERYMAN, I will go with thee, and be thy guide, In thy most need
to go by thy side_

HERBERT SPENCER
Born at Derby in 1820, the son of a teacher, from whom he received
most of his education. Obtained employment on the London and
Birmingham Railway. After the strike of 1846 he devoted himself to
journalism, and in 1848 was sub-editor of The Economist.
He died in 1903.

HERBERT SPENCER
Essays on Education AND KINDRED SUBJECTS
INTRODUCTION BY CHARLES W. ELIOT
DENT: LONDON EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY DUTTON: NEW
YORK

_Made in Great Britain at the Aldine Press · Letchworth · Herts for J.M.
DENT & SONS LTD Aldine House · Bedford Street · London First
published in Everyman's Library 1911 Last reprinted 1963_
NO. _504_

INTRODUCTION
The four essays on education which Herbert Spencer published in a
single volume in 1861 were all written and separately published
between 1854 and 1859. Their tone was aggressive and their proposals
revolutionary; although all the doctrines--with one important
exception--had already been vigorously preached by earlier writers on
education, as Spencer himself was at pains to point out. The doctrine
which was comparatively new ran through all four essays; but was

most amply stated in the essay first published in 1859 under the title
"What Knowledge is of Most Worth?" In this essay Spencer divided the
leading kinds of human activity into those which minister to
self-preservation, those which secure the necessaries of life, those
whose end is the care of offspring, those which make good citizens, and
those which prepare adults to enjoy nature, literature, and the fine arts;
and he then maintained that in each of these several classes, knowledge
of science was worth more than any other knowledge. He argued that
everywhere throughout creation faculties are developed through the
performance of the appropriate functions; so that it would be contrary
to the whole harmony of nature "if one kind of culture were needed for
the gaining of information, and another kind were needed as a mental
gymnastic." He then maintained that the sciences are superior in all
respects to languages as educational material; they train the memory
better, and a superior kind of memory; they cultivate the judgment, and
they impart an admirable moral and religious discipline. He concluded
that "for discipline, as well as for guidance, science is of chiefest value.
In all its effects, learning the meaning of things is better than learning
the meaning of words." He answered the question "what knowledge is
of most worth?" with the one word--science.
This doctrine was extremely repulsive to the established profession of
education in England, where Latin, Greek, and mathematics had been
the staples of education for many generations, and were believed to
afford the only suitable preparation for the learned professions, public
life, and cultivated society. In proclaiming this doctrine with ample
illustration, ingenious argument, and forcible reiteration, Spencer was a
true educational pioneer, although some of his scientific
contemporaries were really preaching similar doctrines, each in his own
field.
The profession of teaching has long been characterised by certain
habitual convictions, which Spencer undertook to shake rudely, and
even to deride. The first of these convictions is that all education,
physical, intellectual, and moral, must be authoritative, and need take
no account of the natural wishes, tendencies, and motives of the
ignorant and undeveloped child. The second dominating conviction is

that to teach means to tell, or show, children what they ought to see,
believe, and utter. Expositions by the teacher and books are therefore
the true means of education. The third and supreme conviction is that
the method of education which produced the teacher himself and the
contemporary or earlier scholars, authors, and publicists, must be the
righteous and sufficient method. Its fruits demonstrate its soundness,
and make it sacred. Herbert Spencer, in the essays included in the
present volume, assaulted all three of these firm convictions.
Accordingly, the ideas on education which he put forth more than fifty
years ago have penetrated educational practice very
slowly--particularly in England; but they are now coming to prevail