INTRODUCTION.

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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, through the influence of the social environment in which we live. There are what a philosopher of the day has ingeniously called the occult coadjutors of education,—climate, race, manners, social condition, political institutions, religious beliefs. If a man of the nineteenth century is very unlike a man of the seventeenth century, it is not merely because the first was educated in a LycÉe of the University and the other in a college of the Jesuits; it is also because in the atmosphere in which they have been enveloped they have contracted different habits of mind and heart; it is because they have grown up under different laws, under a different social and political rÉgime; because they have been nurtured by a different philosophy and a different religion. Upon that delicate and variable composition known as the human soul, how many forces which we do not suspect have left their imprint! How many unobserved and latent causes are involved in our virtues and in our faults! The conscious and determined influence of the teacher is not, perhaps, the most potent. In conjunction with him are at work, obscurely but effectively, innumerable agents, besides personal effort and what is produced by the original energy of the individual.

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.[1] Though incomplete, this list contains not less than two thousand titles; and probably educational activity has been more fruitful, and has been given a still greater extension in Germany than in France. This activity is due to the fact, first of all, that educational questions, brought into fresh notice with each generation, exercise over the minds of men an irresistible and perennial attraction; and also to the fact that parenthood inspires a taste for such inquiries, and, a thing that is not always fortunate, leads to the assumption of some competence in such matters; and finally to the very nature of educational problems, which are not to be solved by abstract and independent reasoning, after the fashion of mathematical problems, but which, vitally related to the nature and the destiny of man, change and vary with the fluctuations of the psychological and the moral doctrines of which they are but the consequences. To different systems of psychology correspond different systems of education. An idealist, like Malebranche, will not reason upon education after the manner of a sensationalist like Locke. In the same way there is in every system of morals the germ of a characteristic and original system of education. A mystic, like Gerson, will not assign to education the same end as a practical and positive writer like Herbert Spencer. Hence a very great diversity in systems, or at least an infinite variety in the shades of educational opinion.

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 of what has been accomplished, and make an actual study of the educational establishments which have been founded at different periods by those who have organized instruction.

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 might be learned from it, not general truths, which are often of difficult application and of uncertain utility, but practical means and living methods whose happy and efficient applications would be seen in actual use.

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.[2]

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 historian of pedagogy with the idea of dividing his work, and of distributing his studies into several series. For example, it would be possible to write the history of education in general by itself, and then the history of instruction, which is but an element of education. As education itself comprises three parts, physical education, intellectual education, and moral education, there would be an opportunity for three series of distinct studies on these different subjects. But these divisions would present grave inconveniences. In general, the opinions of an educator are not susceptible of division; there is a connection between his manner of regarding the matter of instruction and the solution he gives to educational questions proper. One mode of thinking pervades his theories or his practice in the matter of moral discipline, and his ideas on intellectual education. It is, then, necessary to consider each of the different systems of education as a whole.

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 its interest, because in the manifestations of educational thought so apparently different it would sharply distinguish certain uniform principles which reappear at all periods of history; but this would be rather a philosophy of the history of education than a simple history of pedagogy.

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.[3]

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 of all that it believes and the source of all that it is destined to be.

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, is no less instructive than meditation on the wisest precepts of Montaigne or of Port Royal.

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 if his imagination teems with articulate memories of those who, in the past, have opened for him the way, and shown him by their example how to walk in it? By the marvellous agency of electricity we are now able to transport material and mechanical power, and to cause its transfer across space without regard to distance. But by reading and by meditation we are able to do something analogous to this in the moral world; we are able to borrow from the ancients, across the centuries, something of the moral energy that inspired them, and to make live again in our own hearts some of their virtues of devotion and faith. Doubtless a brief history of pedagogy could not, from this point of view, serve as a substitute for the actual reading of the authors in question; but it is a preparation for this work and inspires a taste for it.

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.[4] The words pedagogue, pedagogy, have encountered dangers in the history of our language. LittrÉ tells us that the word pedagogue “is most often used in a bad sense.” On the other hand, we shall see, if we consult his dictionary, that several years ago the sense of the word pedagogy was not yet fixed, since it is there defined as “the moral education of children.” To-day, not only in language, but in facts and in institutions, the fate of pedagogy is settled. Of course we must neither underrate it nor attribute to it a sovereign and omnipotent efficiency that it does not have. We might freely say of pedagogy what Sainte-Beuve said of logic: The best is that which does not argue in its own favor; which is not enamoured of itself, but which modestly recognizes the limits of its power. The best is that which we make for ourselves, not that which we learn from books.

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 influence, while others, so far from co-operating in this movement, oppose it and compromise it. On the one hand, religion has seen her influence curtailed. She is no longer, as she once was, the tutelary power under whose shadow the rising generations peacefully matured. It is necessary that education, through the progress of the reason and through the reflective development of morality, should compensate for the waning influence of religion.

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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