Franklin's "Academy of Pennsylvania"

Response of the universities slow

University of Halle,

1694, the first modern university

German university reform

cal mathematics, especially surveying and navigation, were introduced by the middle of the eighteenth century. Not until this later period, however, was a typical "real-school" introduced and the term academy used. This was the "Academy and Charitable School of Pennsylvania," later the University of Pennsylvania, which was suggested by Benjamin Franklin in 1743 and opened in 1751. Three schools were included in this academy, a Latin, an English and a mathematical. Franklin's writings exalted practical economics into a philosophy of life, and did much to further a scheme of education which had much in common with the educational theories of the sense-realists. While the philosophical basis might have been quite different, in its concrete embodiment it was almost identical with the "real-school" of Germany. After the Revolutionary War, the academies became the typical educational institutions of the American states. By this time several other momentous forces, besides the realistic educational philosophy, were at work to produce revolutionary changes in education.

The Universities responded much less quickly than the secondary institutions to the new educational ideas. The theological-classical scholasticism controlled the German universities throughout the seventeenth century. But in 1694 the University of Halle was founded, chiefly as a protest against the narrowness of the old institutions. Halle is considered the first modern university, for here first were the "real" subjects taught, with the new methods and in the modern tongue. Francke and Thomasius, both of whom had been expelled from Leipzig because of their too liberal ideas, made Halle the center of the new influence. The custom of using German in the university lecture room, introduced by Thomasius, who also published the first German magazine, soon gained adherents; so also did the university teaching of the natural sciences and a more liberal philosophy. In fact, the German university ideal of "freedom of teaching and freedom of study" first found its' embodiment in the foundation of Halle. In 1737 the Univer

sity of Göttingen became a second center of these same influences. By the close of the century the conquest of all the universities, at least of Protestant Germany, was accomplished. The conservative English universities responded much less quickly and much less thoroughly to the new influences. During the professorship of Isaac Newton (1669-1702) and the headmastership of Richard Bentley (1740-1742), Cambridge was given the strong mathematical bent which it has since retained, and the mathematical and physical sciences were fostered. During the eighteenth century a number of regius professor- English ships in history and the sciences were founded by the Georges. reform muc university But there was no such renovation of the university by the new later spirit, as in Germany, until late in the nineteenth century.

SUMMARY

The realistic movement is the development of the interest in nature found in the Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. During the seventeenth century this interest received philosophical and scientific formulation. At this time modern science and modern philosophy began. Educationally, however, there were two preliminary stages. One was the Humanistic Realism, or the study of the classics for their content value. This was but a continuation of the idea of a broad liberal education of the early Renaissance. It is best represented by Erasmus, Rabelais, and Milton. The other was Socialism-realism, or immediate education for the practical duties and pleasures of life. This view held schools and literary training in low esteem and exalted travel and direct contact with the world as the proper educational means. While this conception of education had found some representatives at all times, it had peculiar force throughout the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and is best expressed by Montaigne. Sense-realism was the beginning of the modern scientific movement in education, although it contained the germ of the psychological and sociological movements as well. Bacon first clearly formulated the theory; Comenius gave it practical pedagogical embodiment. However, there were many representatives of the movement in every country. The German real-schools and the English and American academies were the institutional embodiment of this theory.

259

1

The narrow

umanistic ducation eases to

ave a fune

ional or

ocial value

CHAPTER IX

THE DISCIPLINARY CONCEPTION OF EDUCATION. JOHN LOCKE

ORIGIN OF THE MODERN DISCIPLINARY CONCEPTION. With the Reformation, Latin ceased to be the language of religion and of the clergy; similarly, during the later seventeenth century, it ceased to be the exclusive language of the universities, of the schools and of learning. Even before this time it had been superseded by French as the language of diplomacy and of the courts. When, with the development of the vernacular literatures, it ceased to be the language of culture and of the humanities as well, Latin could no longer dominate the schools upon the same basis and for the same reasons that it had done hitherto. But by the seventeenth century the century_the linguistic and literary curriculum had become traditional, with the authority of the learning of two centuries behind it. Moreover it had developed a scholastic procedure which in details of By the seven- method and of curriculum, and in the entire technique of the

eenth cen

ury it had

:>ecome

raditional

nd its

schoolroom, had never been equaled by any previous system of educational practice. In fact, it has had no equal since. Now perfection in the technique of schoolroom procedure is no justification for a system of educational practice. Yet, since it has ad become behind it to give it stability, both the force of tradition and the most tenacious professional conservatism, it is the strongest influence working for such a system.

echnique

erfected

A new theory

nust be

ound to

ustify its >erpetuation

Consequently, since this narrow humanistic education no longer had any direct connection with the practical demands of the times and no longer offered the sole approach to a knowledge of human achievement and thought, a new theory must be

relative im

found to justify its perpetuation. This new theory was the disciplinary conception of education. FEATURES ESSENTIAL TO THE CONCEPTION. -The Greater essence of the disciplinary conception of education can be given in a few words; namely, that it is the process of learning rather than the thing learned that is the important and determining thing in education.

portance of

the process

than of the

thing

learned

power derived from

cial activitie

thoroughly

The disciplinary conception takes a great variety of forms. But substantially they unite on the one point, namely, that a particular activity or experience, especially of an intellectual A general character, if well selected, produces a power or ability out of all proportion to the expenditure of energy therein. Such certain spea power when developed will be serviceable in most dissimilar experiences or activities, will be available in every situation, and will be applicable to the solution of problems presented by any subject. More specifically the theory asserted that one or two subjects, thoroughly taught and mastered, were of much greater educational value than a variety of subjects One or two demanding the same amount of time and energy. The dis- subjects ciplinarians believed that those subjects which, through the mastered generality of their principles, such as mathematics and logic, the aims of or through the formal nature of their content and arrange- education meuch as the classical languages, furnished a formal training for the various "faculties" of the mind, were of "Faculties supreme importance educationally. This value belonged to such subjects irrespective of their relation to life or of their final mastery or use by the pupil. It was further implied, so far as the period of complete dominance of this theory was concerned, that these subjects were peculiarly adapted to the development of the memory and the reason, and that these powers of the mind" were preeminently the ones demanded for success in any walk of life.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONCEPTION. In respect to its fundamental principle, the new education was but a revival. of the formalism of mediæval scholasticism. To the elaboration

will secure

of

and of reasor were held to cial impor

memory

be of espe

tance

1

the social changes of the sixteenth

and seventeenth centuries

In duence of of the theory a number of factors contributed. The general social changes (p. 254) were in themselves the most important of these factors. The new realism emphasized even more strongly than had the early Renaissance thought with reference to the old scholasticism, that the important thing educationally was the thing learned, not the process of learning. The narrow humanistic education now adopted, in addition to the argu ments advanced as peculiar merits of its own, all those formerly used for the scholastic education.

Support of

'religious

'beliefs

In the second place, the disciplinary education, as it repredisciplinary sented the continuation of the narrow humanistic education, education by yet retained the almost undivided support of those who viewed education from the religious standpoint. As is evidenced in the attitude of the Church toward most of the leaders of the realistic tendency, notably Descartes, Bacon and even Comenius that movement was looked upon as irreligious and atheistic. But from a yet more general reason, and that a pedagogical one, the religious view supported the disciplinary conception. The religious In fact, since it looked upon education as one process of eradicating the essentially evil character of human nature, the religious the disciplin- view of education on its pedagogical side was the disciplinary one. On the ethical side, then, religious thought furnished the theory of the disciplinary education.

view of education was

ary one

Support of

On the psychological side, so far as that entered into the disciplinary educational thought of the times, the disciplinary conception i'education by the current received the support of the current belief. This was the old Aristotelian Aristotelian faculty psychology, with its medieval implications, psychology which demanded a training of the various faculties of the mind by appropriate disciplines formulated into schoolroom procedures. No subject afforded better facilities for this new psychol than the formal side of language study, unless it was the mathematical branches to which, consequently, greater importance was now attached than formerly. Even the new psychology of Bacon and Locke, so far as their theory of knowledge formulated a psychology, contributed to the prevailing disciplinary

Even the

ogy of sen

sationalism did not oppose the 1 disciplinary view