REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THE CITIZENS' + ASSOCIATION OF CHICAGO, ON EDUCATION. WALTER CRANSTON LARNED, CHAIRMAN. CHICAGO: GEO. K. HAZLITT & CO., PRINTERS, 172 AND 174 CLARK STREET. 1881. REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THE CITIZENS' ASSOCIATION OF ON EDUCATION. CHICAGO, The questions submitted to your Committee on Education are as follows: First. Is it the duty of the State to furnish free education, supported by taxation? and, if yes, how far should the child be educated, as to age and kind of study? and should such education be compulsory? and if compulsory, should there be a limitation of time each year? Second-A. Is the system of education, as practiced in our public schools the best that can be had under existing circumstances? Let the answer embrace all branches of the subject, including primary, grammar, high and normal schools, also limited and graded education. B. Should not our education above the primary be devoted to teaching the useful arts, which will enable the pupil to earn a living, rather than to instruction in the dead languages, or what may be termed, for the purpose of this inquiry, ornamental learning? Third. Are the majority of those who graduate from our high schools the children of parents who are able to pay for education? Fourth. What modifications of the present system, as practiced in this city are desirable? Let the answer embrace a view of the subject in its financial and political bearings, its relation to taxation, and the emoluments of the staff and teachers. Fifth. What course would you recommend to obtain the modifications and reforms? Is Legislation on the subject needed? These questions are very comprehensive, covering, as they do, almost the whole subject of popular education in its relations to the life of to-day. It has been impossible for your Committee, in the time they could spare from their ordinary business, to give to them that thorough consideration which the importance 253968 of the subject demands. Many eminent men have spent their lives in studying these subjects, and still no conclusion has been reached upon many of them which is universally accepted. It is, therefore, only possible for your Committee to give some general views on this great subject and call attention to some of the principles underlying it which seem most in danger of being forgotten, leaving to those practically engaged in the daily task of educating the young to work out in practice such of these suggestions as may seem to them useful. The first question is as to the duty of the State to furnish free education supported by taxation, and whether such education should be made compulsory, and how far it should be carried. It would now seem rather late to open an inquiry in this country as to the duty of the State to furnish free education to a certain extent at least. The system of free schools is here so generally established and so universally acquiesed in, that it has become a part of our national life, and should certainly not be interfered with except upon the very strongest possible cause shown. It is considered by most writers on this subject that the safety of the State depends upon the education of its people, and this is certainly true, provided the education be a real education in the best and highest sense of that word. It is nevertheless the fact that many and strenuous objections are made to the furnishing by the State of the present system of education, and there are some who say that such education as is now furnished does not tend to the safety or well-being of the State, but quite the reverse, and that the individual, instead of being practically benefitted by what are called the higher portions of our present educational system, is thereby rendered impractical and totally useless in that life which most of these individuals must lead. Your Committee do not agree with those so strongly criticizing our whole educational system, because such views seem to them narrow and prejudiced, and indicate an extreme position which the facts do not warrant. Nevertheless such objections are made, and the fact that they can be made by intelligent and thinking men indicates some lack in our present system. It has seemed to your Committee necessary to discover, if possible, what this lack may be. The discussion of this question will serve also as a partial answer to the second inquiry laid before this Committee. come. There are four defects which appear in our educational system : I. The method of teaching is not what it should be, and must in time be 2. There is no attention given to direct moral or religious training. 3. There is very little attention given to physical training. 4. There is an absence of practical training, the training of the hands and eyes, which would enable those leaving the schools to become useful and productive immediately in some manufacturing or industrial art. We will discuss these four defects in their order. 1. That our present system of teaching the young is not what it ought to be, might be and eventually must become, is a fact which is attracting the attention of some of the leading thinkers of our time. In Harper's Magazine for November, 1880, Charles Francis Adams, Jr., has an article upon this subject entitled "Scientific Common School Education." Speaking of the common school system of Mas 66 * * * * sachusetts, and we suppose this to be at least a fair sample of all the common school systems of the country, Mr. Adams says: Approaching this work in an organizing instead of scientific spirit, the impossible—as might have been foreseen -was attempted, and it was attempted in a purely mechanical way. The indefinite multiplication of things to be taught became the fashion of the day, with little or no regard to the laws of mental development." This spirit he says naturally results "in the hands of any mechanical or routine superintendent in what may perhaps best be described as the drill-sergeant stage, or the company front, in education. Not that it should for an instant be inferred that throughout this, as in all other periods, many good results were not reached by what must be considered irrational and mistaken means and theories. It is quite unnecessary to say that this always has been and always will be the case. * * Without, therefore, at all detracting from the good results accomplished by individuals, reference is now made simply to the drift and general tendency of the recent and intermediate period, the presence in it of the mechanical and the absence of the intellectual. Whether agreeing with this proposition or not, any one who has had to do with modern common schools knows what is referred to. Huge mechanical educational machines, they are peculiar to our own time and country, and are organized, as nearly as possible, as a combination of the cotton mill and the railroad, with the model State prison. * * Mechanical methods could not be carried further. The organization is perfect. The machine works almost with the precision of clock work. It is, however, company front all the time. From one point of view children are regarded as automatons, from another as India rubber bags, from a third as so much raw material. They must move in step and exactly alike. They must receive the same mental nutriment in equal quantities and at fixed times. Its assimilation is wholly immaterial, but the motions must be gone through with. Finally, as raw material, they are emptied in at the primaries; and marched out at the grammar grades, and it is well!" * These words of Mr. Adams are very severe, and coming, as they do, from a man of so much experience in the matter of education, and holding so prominent a position in the intellectual world, they are entitled to much consideration. Are they not all true, at least to a great extent? This training of children by rote, this education of their memories instead of their minds is by no means confined to the primary and Grammar schools. It is to be found in the high schools also, nay our best colleges are not above criticism in this particular. Take the study of mathematics, for example, begining with arithmetic and going on to algebra, geometry and trigonometry, it is one system of rules which the student is to commit to memory, and then the examples immediately following the rules are done by a mechanical application of the rule just committed to memory. This is no education, and is of scarcely any value whatever. That children thus trained really know nothing of the subject is shown by the fact that the minute the child comes to the dreaded miscellaneous examples, where an application of one or more simple principles is required, the only result in many cases is complete failure, and a tearful application to the teacher or the parent at home for assistance. The same result is seen in college when original problems are given to the students for solution, generally they hardly even know how to begin, though they may have spent a whole term in committing rules and theories to memory, and working out prob |