What a Complete History of Education would be.—In writing an elementary history of pedagogy, I do not pretend to write a history of education. Pedagogy and education, like logic and science, or like rhetoric and eloquence, are different though analogous things. What would a complete history of education not include? It would embrace, in its vast developments, the entire record of the intellectual and moral culture of mankind at all periods and in all countries. It would be a rÉsumÉ of the life of humanity in its diverse manifestations, literary and scientific, religious and political. It would determine the causes, so numerous and so diverse, which act upon the characters of men, and which, modifying a common endowment, produce beings as different as are a contemporary of Pericles and a modern European, a Frenchman of the middle ages and a Frenchman subsequent to the Revolution. In fact, there is not only an education, properly so called, that which is given in schools and which proceeds from the direct action of teachers, but there is a natural education, which we receive without our knowledge or will, We see what a history of education would be: a sort of philosophy of history, to which nothing would be foreign, and which would scrutinize in its most varied and most trifling causes, as well as in its most profound sources, the moral life of humanity. What an Elementary History of Pedagogy should be.—Wholly different is the limited and modest purpose of a history of pedagogy, which proposes merely to set forth the doctrines and the methods of educators properly so called. In this more limited sense, education is reduced to the premeditated action which the will of one man exercises over other men in order to instruct them and train them. It is the reflective auxiliary of the natural development of the human soul. To what can be done by nature and by the blind and fatal influences which sport with human destiny, education adds the concurrence of art, that is, of the reason, attentive and self-possessed, which voluntarily and consciously applies to the training of the soul principles whose truth has been recognized, and methods whose efficiency has been tested by experience. Even thus limited, the history of pedagogy still presents to our inquiry a vast field to be explored. There is scarcely a subject that has provoked to the same degree as education the best efforts of human thinking. Note the catalogue of educational works published in French, which Buisson has recently prepared. Still farther, educational activity may manifest itself in different ways, either in doctrines and theories or in methods and practical applications. The historian of pedagogy has not merely to make known the general conceptions which the philosophers of education have in turn submitted to the approbation of men. If he wishes to make his work complete, he must give a detailed account Pedagogy is a complex affair, and there are many ways of writing its history. One of these which has been too little considered, and which would surely be neither the least interesting nor the least fruitful, would consist in studying, not the great writers on education and their doctrines, not the great teachers and their methods, but pupils themselves. If it were possible to relate in minute detail, supposing that history would furnish us the necessary information on this point, the manner in which a great or a good man has been educated; if an analysis could be made of the different influences which have been involved in the formation of talent or in the development of virtue in the case of remarkable individuals; if it were possible, in a word, to reproduce through exact and personal biographies the toil, the slow elaboration whence have issued at different periods solidity of character, rectitude of purpose, and minds endowed with judicial fairness; the result would be a useful and eminently practical work, something analogous to what a history of logic would be, in which there should be set forth not the abstract rules and the formal laws for the search after truth, but the successful experiments and the brilliant discoveries which have little by little constituted the patrimony of science. This perhaps would be the best of logics because it is real and in action; and also the best of treatises on pedagogy, since there We have just traced the imaginary plan of a history of pedagogy rather than the exact outline of the series of lessons which this book contains. However, we have approached this ideal as nearly as we have been able, by attempting to group about the principal philosophical and moral ideas the systems of education which they have inspired; by endeavoring to retain whatever is essential; by adding to the first rapid sketches studied and elaborate portraits; by ever mingling with the expositions of doctrines and the analysis of important works the study of practical methods and the examination of actual institutions; and, finally, by penetrating the thought of the great educators, to learn from them how they became such, and by following them, as they have united practice with theory, in the particular systems of education which they have directed with success.
Division of the History of Pedagogy.—The abundance and the variety of pedagogical questions, the great number of thinkers who have written upon education, in a word, the complexity of the subject, might inspire the Perhaps a better order of division would be that which, without regard to chronological order, should distinguish all pedagogical doctrines and applications into a certain number of schools, and connect all educators with certain general tendencies: as the ascetic tendency, that of the fathers of the church, for example, and of the middle ages; the utilitarian tendency of Locke, and of a great number of moderns; the pessimism of Port Royal, the optimism of FÉnelon; the literary school of the humanists of the Renaissance, and the scientific school of Diderot and of Condorcet. Such a mode of procedure would have The best we can do, then, is to follow the chronological order and to study in turn the educators of antiquity, those of the middle ages, of the Renaissance, and of modern times. We shall interrogate in succession those who have become eminent as teachers and educators, and ask of each how he has solved for himself the various portions of the problems of education. Besides being more simple and more natural, this order has the advantage of showing us the progress of education as it has gradually risen from instinct to reflection, from nature to art, and after long periods of groping and many halts, ascending from humble beginnings to a complete and definite organization. This plan also exhibits to us the beautiful spectacle of a humanity in a state of ceaseless growth. At first, instruction comprised but few subjects, at the same time that only a select few participated in it. Then there was a simultaneous though gradual extension of the domain of knowledge which must be acquired, of the moral qualities demanded by the struggle for existence, and of the number of men who are called to be instructed and educated,—the ideal being, as Comenius has said, that all may learn and that everything may be taught.
Utility of the History of Pedagogy.—The history of pedagogy is henceforth to form a part of the course of study for the primary normal schools of France. It has been included in the prescribed list of subjects for the third year, under this title: History of Pedagogy,—Principal educators and their doctrines; Analysis of the most important works. Is argument necessary to justify the place which has been assigned to this study? In the first place, the history of pedagogy possesses great interest from the fact that it is closely connected with the general history of thought and also with the philosophic explication of human actions. Certainly, pedagogical doctrines are neither fortuitous opinions nor events without significance. On the one hand, they have their causes and their principles in moral, religious, and political beliefs, of which they are the faithful image; on the other, they are instrumental in the training of mind and in the formation of manners. Back of the Ratio Studiorum of the Jesuits, back of the Émile of Rousseau, there distinctly appears a complete religion, a complete philosophy. In the classical studies organized by the humanists of the Renaissance we see the dawn of that literary brilliancy which distinguished the century of Louis XIV., and so in the scientific studies preached a hundred years ago by Diderot and by Condorcet there was a preparation for the positive spirit of our time. The education of the people is at once the consequence But there are other reasons which recommend the study of educators and the reading of their works. The history of pedagogy is a necessary introduction to pedagogy itself. It should be studied, not for purposes of erudition or for mere curiosity, but with a practical purpose for the sake of finding in it the permanent truths which are the essentials of a definite theory of education. The desirable thing just now is not perhaps so much to find new ideas, as properly to comprehend those which are already current; to choose from among them, and, a choice once having been made, to make a resolute effort to apply them to use. When we consider with impartiality all that has been conceived or practised previous to the nineteenth century, or when we see clearly what our predecessors have left us to do in the way of consequences to deduce, of incomplete or obscure ideas to generalize or to illustrate, and especially of opposing tendencies to reconcile, we may well inquire what they have really left us to discover. It is profitable to study even the chimeras and the educational errors of our predecessors. In fact, these are so many marked experiments which contribute to the progress of our methods by warning us of the rocks which we should shun. A thorough analysis of the paradoxes of Rousseau, and of the absurd consequences to which the abuse of the principle of nature leads us, In truth, for him who has an exact knowledge of the educators of past centuries, the work of constructing a system of education is more than half done. It remains only to co-ordinate the scattered truths which have been collected from their works by assimilating them through personal reflection, and by making them fruitful through psychological analysis and moral faith. Let it be observed that as studied by the men who first conceived and practised them, pedagogical methods present themselves to our examination with a sharpness of outline that is surprising. Innovators lend to whatever they invent a personal emphasis, something life-like and occasionally extravagant; but it is exactly this which permits us the better to comprehend their thought, and the more completely to discover its truth or its falsity. However, it is not alone the intellectual advantage which recommends the history of pedagogy; it is also the moral stimulus which will be derived from the study. For the sake of encouraging to noble efforts the men and women who are our teachers, is it of no moment to present to them the names of Comenius, Rollin, and Pestalozzi as men who have attained such high excellence in their profession? Will not the teacher who each day resumes his heavy burden be revived and sustained? Will he not enter his class-room, where so many difficulties and toils await him, a better and a stronger man We are warranted in saying, then, that the utility of the history of pedagogy blends with the utility of pedagogy itself. To-day it is no longer necessary for us to offer any proof on this point. Pedagogy, long neglected even in our country, has regained its standing; nay more, it has become the fashion. “France is becoming addicted to pedagogy” was a remark recently made by one of the men who, of our day, will have contributed most to excite and also to direct the taste for pedagogical studies. Even with this reserve, the teaching of pedagogy is destined to render important services to the cause of education, and education, let us be assured, is in the way of acquiring a fresh importance day by day. This is due to the fact, first, that under a liberal government, and in a republican society, it is more and more necessary that the citizens shall be instructed and enlightened. Liberty is a dangerous thing unless it has instruction for a counterpoise. Moreover, we must recollect that in our day, among those occult coadjutors of which we have spoken, and which at all times add their action to that of education proper, some have lost their On the other hand, social conditions, the very progress of civil and political liberty, the growing independence accorded the child in the family, the multiplication of books, good and bad, all these collateral agents of education are not always compliant and useful aids. They would prove the accomplices of a moral decadence did not our teachers make an effort as much more vigorous to affect the will and the heart, as well as the mind, in order to establish character, and thus assure the recuperation of our country.
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