The Elements of General Method | Page 6

Its roots go deep
into native soil. Secondly, the door of the common school has been
thrown open to the new studies and they have entered in a troop.
History, drawing, natural science, modern literature, and physical
culture have been added to the old reading, writing, and arithmetic. The
common school was never so untrammeled. It is free to absorb into its
course the select materials of the best studies. Teachers really enjoy
more freedom in selecting and arranging subjects and in introducing
new things than they know how to make use of. There is no one in high
authority to check the reform spirit and even local boards are often
among the advocates of change. In the third place, by multiplying
studies, the common school course has grown more complex and
heterogeneous. The old reading, writing, arithmetic, and grammar
could not be shelved for the sake of the new studies and the same
amount of time must be divided now among many branches. It is not to
be wondered at if all the studies are treated in a shallow and

fragmentary way. Some of the new studies, especially, are not well
taught. There is less of unity in higher education now than there was
before the classical studies and "the three R's" lost their supremacy.
Our common school course has become a batch of miscellanies. We are
in danger of overloading pupils, as well as of making a superficial
hodge-podge of all branches. There is imperative need for sifting the
studies according to their value, as well as for bringing them into right
connection and dependence upon one another. Fourthly, there is a large
body of thoughtful and inquiring teachers and principals who are
working at a revision of the school course. They seek something
tangible, a working plan, which will help them in their present
perplexities and show them a wise use of drawing, natural science, and
literature, in harmony with the other studies. Finally, since we are in
the midst of such a breaking-up period, we need to take our bearings. In
order to avoid mistakes and excesses there is a call for deep, impartial,
and many-sided thinking on educational problems. Supposing that we
know what the controlling aim of education is, we are next led to
inquire about and to determine the relative value of studies as tributary
to this aim.
It is not however our purpose to give an original solution to this
problem and to those which follow it. We must decline to attempt a
philosophical inquiry into fundamental principles and their origin. Ours
is the humbler task of explaining and applying principles already
worked out by others; that is, to give the results of Herbartian pedagogy
as applied to our schools.
Instead of discussing the many branches of study one after another, it
will be well to make a broad division of them into three classes and
observe the marked features and value of each. First, history, including
the subject matter of biography, history, story, and other parts of
literature. Second, the natural sciences. Third, the formal studies,
grammar, writing, much of arithmetic, and the symbols used in reading.
The first two open up the great fields of real knowledge and experience,
the world of man and of external nature, the two great reservoirs of
interesting facts. We will first examine these two fields and consider

their value as constituent parts of the school course.
History, in our present sense, includes what we usually understand by it,
as U. S. history, modern and ancient history, also biography, tradition,
fiction as expressing human life and the novel or romance, and
historical and literary masterpieces of all sorts, as the drama and the
epic poem, so far as they delineate man's experience and character. In a
still broader sense, history includes language as the expression of men's
thoughts and feelings. But this is the formal side of history with which
we are not at present concerned. History deals with men's motives and
actions as individuals or in society, with their dispositions, habits, and
institutions, and with the monuments and literature they have left.
The relations of persons to each other in society give rise to morals.
How? The act of a person--as when a fireman rescues a child from a
burning building--shows a disposition in the actor. We praise or
condemn this disposition as the deed is good or bad. But each moral
judgment, rightly given, leaves us stronger. To appreciate and judge
fairly the life and acts of a woman like Mary Lyon, or of a man such as
Samuel Armstrong, is to awaken something of their spirit and moral
temper in ourselves. Whether in the life of David or of Shylock, or of
the people whom they represent, the study of men is primarily a