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ADVENTURING IN EDUCATION
LONDON : H U M P H R E Y
MILFORD
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
PAUL H . HANUS, ABOUT I 9 O 9
ADVENTURING IN EDUCATION BY
PAUL H. HANUS
CAMBRIDGE
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS I
937
COPYRIGHT, 1 9 3 7 BY THE PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE
PRINTED AT THE HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE, MASS., U. S. A.
PREFACE ί THE title page suggests, this book is not a treatise; it is a historical narrative. In it, besides incidentally revealing myself, I have tried to give some account of schools and universities in which I was a pupil or a teacher; to describe the founding of the Department of Education at Harvard University — the first department of the kind in an endowed university — and the gradual development of that department into Harvard's Graduate School of Education; and at the same time to describe important movements for school improvement in which I participated during the more than forty years of my professional career. P. Η . H. CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
CONTENTS I. BOYHOOD AND EARLY EDUCATION
. .
3
II. STATE NORMAL SCHOOL, PLATTEVILLE, WISCONSIN; NEW YORK CITY
. . . .
III. UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, 1874-1878
17
. .
31
IV. DENVER HIGH SCHOOL, DISTRICT NO. 1
47
V. UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO, 1879-1880 AND 1881-1886
53
VI. DENVER HIGH SCHOOL, DISTRICT NO. 2, 1886-1890
92
VII. COLORADO GREELEY
STATE
NORMAL
SCHOOL,
VIII. FOUNDING THE NEW DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY IX. PROGRESS
98 107 142
X. CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS IN ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION . 151 XI. INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION XII. SCHOOL SURVEYS
166 175
XIII. SOME IMPORTANT CHANGES IN PUBLICSCHOOL EDUCATION SINCE 1900 . . . 204
vili
CONTENTS
XIV. THE HARVARD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION XV. TRAINING FOR LEADERSHIP IN EDUCATION APPENDIX INDEX
ILLUSTRATIONS P A U L H. H A N U S , A B O U T 1909
.
.
BURG K Y N A S T , HERMSDORF U N T E R DEM K Y N A S T
.
Frontispiece
facing page 3
MEMORIAL P L A Q U E , L A W R E N C E H A L L , H A R V A R D UNIVERSITY facing page 247
PART I EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION 1855-1874
BURG KYNAST HERMSDORF
UNTER DEM
KYNAST
CHAPTER I BOYHOOD A N D E A R L Y EDUCATION N U P P E R Silesia, in Prussia, there is a picturesque village, Hermsdorf unter dem Kynast, where I was born on March 14, 1855. A turbulent stream from the Riesengebirge (Giant Mountains) rushes pell-mell through the town. A huge crag, the Kynast, more than a thousand feet high, rises sheer from the valley of the stream. On the top of the Kynast, inaccessible save at one point to which winds a steep road, is the ivy-covered ruin of a not large but rather impressive castle. The story goes that in former times the castle was the home of an influential family, and at one time an important member of this family was a beautiful girl, Kunigunde, daughter and heiress. Naturally she had many suitors. One of them offended her father, who thereupon frowned on the whole tribe of suitors and declared that only he should marry his daughter who could ride his horse on the wall surrounding the castle, in full armor, by moonlight. As already stated, because of the precipitous sides of the Kynast, the castle was quite unapproachable save at one point. But being a castle it had to have a wall. This wall is, however, only about eighteen inches wide at the top, and six to eight feet high, and clings precariously to its irregular rock foundation. The girl was an alluring prize, and suitors continued to come, determined to try the hazardous ride. Many tried it and were dashed to pieces by falling from the wall, without in the least disturbing the equanimity of the girl. Then
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came one whose suit awakened a ready response in her heart. He was manly and handsome, and she greatly enjoyed his stay in the castle. She found many pretexts for delaying his dangerous ride. At last he said he could wait no longer, that his affairs at home demanded his presence there. So, reluctantly and no doubt tremulously, with many warnings as to the most dangerous portions of the wall, she allowed him to undertake the perilous adventure. He was successful. She was overjoyed and eagerly awaited his coming to claim her as his bride. After some delay, he came. But instead of claiming her as his bride, he denounced her and her father, saying that he had been in training for a long time to put a stop to the barbarous procedure in which so many of the finest nobility had lost their lives, and added, "Now that I have been successful, I shall ride home to tell my wife about it!" One version of this story relates that Kunigunde threw herself from the castle wall and perished; another that she entered a nunnery and was heard of no more. This bit of local folklore was related to me on the top of the Kynast by an old man as we rested just outside the ruined castle in the spring of 1898. He had been employed, when a boy, in my father's little factory in Hermsdorf. I met him by chance on arriving in Hermsdorf on a visit to my birthplace while on sabbatical leave. My earliest recollection is of a small boy playing with a deck chair in a stateroom of a transatlantic steamer. The sea must have been rough, for I remember sliding across the floor of the stateroom on the folded chair and thinking it was fun. The steamer was the Bremen, and the year was 1859. My widowed mother was coming to the United States with her three young children, myself, aged four, my sister,
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aged eight, and my brother, aged eleven. It was no easy undertaking in those days for a woman who knew no English to travel with three young children from southeastern Germany to southwestern Wisconsin. There she was to marry my stepfather, Robert George, who was established (precariously, as it turned out) as a mining engineer in the little town of Mineral Point in the lead and zinc region of southwestern Wisconsin. Mr. George had courted my mother (then Ida Aust) unsuccessfully before she married my father, Gustav Hanus. My mother's married life (about a dozen years) was cut short by my father's death in 1855, when I was only six weeks old. After my father's death my mother managed to hold her little family together by keeping a small store. Meanwhile, Mr. George had been married, his wife had died, and he had emigrated to America and had become a naturalized citizen of the United States. Some time after my father's death Mr. George began a correspondence with my mother which eventually induced her to accept his proposal of marriage, and she left her home and friends in Germany for the then little-known Midwest of the United States. This separation must have been a real trial to my mother; as I grew older, I gradually realized that this was so. She was a brave woman, however, and a devoted mother. M y father's early death had left her with very limited means. She knew that in Germany, because of her poverty, her children could not have the education required for a career. Her brothers were professional men, and her sisters had married professional men. N o doubt my stepfather had an attraction for her, but, looking back, I am sure she took the great step of marrying Mr. George because of her children.
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I remember nothing about our arrival in Mineral Point. My next definite recollection is that of standing admiringly in front of the many jets of burning gas issuing from the small conical retorts projecting from the face of a zinc furnace, and watching as the molten zinc was drawn from the retorts and poured into molds to cool for shipment. I remember few details of the vicissitudes of the family fortunes. But I learned thoroughly the meaning of res angusta domi by a somewhat prolonged experience beginning within a year or so after arrival in Mineral Point. In time, my stepfather succeeded in organizing a company for the manufacture of zinc, and for several years he was its manager. During that time we children at first attended a district school within easy walking distance from home. We lived near the zinc factory in a house built for the manager by the company, a good long mile from Mineral Point. The school must have been a typical country school of the sixties; but all I remember about that school is that in it I learned to read, to write execrably, and that I loved the teacher, who seemed to me fair beyond words. Then something, I don't know what, caused Mr. George to give up his post as manager of the zinc factory, and we migrated to New York State — to the valley of the Walkill River, a few miles from Kingston on the Hudson. There Mr. George was the superintendent of powder mills (Smith and Rand Powder Company, I think it was), and we lived there for two or three years. We children walked about two miles in all kinds of weather to a country school (near Rifton Glen) and — liked it. Two experiences of mine in that school stand out clearly. I do not remember much about the teacher, but I do remember that she caused me to learn the multiplication table and to make a beginning in mastering the (to me) well-nigh overwhelming diffi-
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culties of "long" division. Also, she flogged me soundly twice, once for bringing powder to school and burning it at recess on the school grounds, and once for going swimming with some other boys in a little waterfall not far from the school during the noon intermission, both being against the rules. Both whippings were richly deserved, and I bore the teacher no grudge. I do not remember that I was ever punished in school before or after. When the whole family moved back to Mineral Point, we children attended the public schools of that town, and later, when I was ten or eleven years old, my sister and 1 1 attended a "parish school" (Episcopalian), reputed to be the best school of Mineral Point and the region round about. All the schools I ever attended, whether public or private, whatever their real quality may have been, were hugely satisfactory to me. In the public schools of Mineral Point I soon acquired and retained a reputation as a reader; and I have had much satisfaction all my life in reading aloud — not as an elocutionary performance, but as the simple and intelligent oral interpretation of good prose and poetry. Incidentally, I have often been distressed and annoyed by the mumbled or inappreciative reading by pupils that is accepted by their teachers with little or no attempt on the part of the teachers to secure good reading, to say nothing of the lamentably defective reading of many teachers themselves. But pupils and teachers, including college professors, are not the only poor readers (indeed, some of them are excellent readers and a joy to the listener). The reading of many adults — parents, often — is atrocious, too. It is exquisite misery to listen to a droning or monotonous voice indistinctly or 1 My brother was preparing under private instruction to enter the United States Naval Academy.
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hurriedly, and often quite uninterestedly, reading prose or poetry inherently interesting, vivid, and perhaps fascinating in its imagery or brilliant phrasing. F o r such abominable oral reading the schools and colleges are largely to blame. In the parish school I first studied Latin and algebra. T h e teacher of Latin was the parish clergyman. T h e instruction in both must have been crude and mechanical. I still remember that w h e n I learned to decline mensa and learned that the "vocative" case was translated, " O table," I wondered vaguely h o w or under what circumstances one w o u l d address a table in that fashion. But I did not ask, and repeated parrotwise the several cases and the meanings given them in m y book {Principia Latina). In similar fashion I declined musa, but I had no idea what a muse was (or i s ) ; and I don't recall that any explanation was given. In algebra the instruction and "learning" must have been equally mechanical. I remember only that while I became proficient in the fundamental operations, I never could solve the "problems" unaided. Y o u let χ equal the "unk n o w n quantity," and then by a series of necromantic manipulations of terms containing χ and the " k n o w n quantities" you arrived at "x = the desired result." I may add that, although I "passed" in algebra w h e n I was admitted to college, I never conceived the subject save in a very rudimentary way until I had to teach it myself. 2 In 1866, I think it was, M r . George made a trip to Colorado with a view to engaging in the mining operations of that state (territory), and to gather data for an invention to which, as it happened, he devoted the rest of his life, to the almost complete abandonment of any active business undertakings. F i n d i n g that he would remain in Colorado 2 Many years afterward I became a professor of mathematics, as will appear!
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for some time, he sent for his family, and we all lived in Denver until 1871. 3 I shall never forget the last stage of that journey to Denver. There was no railroad nearer to Denver than Cheyenne on the Union Pacific Railroad. So the trip from Cheyenne to Denver, about a hundred and twenty-five miles, was made by coach. When I first saw that (to me, immense) vehicle with its six horses, I was thrilled to the foundation of my small being. The coach, a typical coach of the period, had seats for nine passengers on the inside and could accommodate nine more outside on its top. As it happened, every place was occupied. My place was on the middle seat inside, between a large man and a very large woman. All the men passengers carried rifles, in case any hostile Indians should appear. As a matter of fact, there were no hostile Indians within a hundred miles of our route, but the passengers evidently took no chances. We left Cheyenne with a rush and a clatter at about 7 P.M. and were due in Denver at noon the next day. For a time the novelty and excitement of our mode of travel kept me awake; and I watched with great interest the process of changing horses at two or three stations. There was also brief general excitement caused by what seemed to the passengers the yelling of Indians. The excitement subsided when the driver of the coach said laconically, "Them's coyotes." Of course I fell asleep and was nudged alternately by the man on my right and the woman on my left times without number when I leaned too heavily in one direction or the other. N o doubt my neighbors suffered more than 'Except my brother, who had entered the United States Naval Academy.
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I did, for I remember nothing more of that ride across the prairie until we came in sight of the mountains. Denver was at that time a thriving town of perhaps three or four thousand people. The principal hotel was the Tremont House (pronounced Tranont) on the west side of Cherry Creek just beyond the Larimer Street Bridge. The hotel was a two-story frame building with a flaring front, the common type of building in the business sections of country towns. There was not a tree or blade of grass to be seen near by. At a distance were a few cottonwood trees on the banks of the Platte River. Only a few blocks of scattered wooden houses, and then the endless prairie in every direction — except toward the mountains.4 Twelve or fifteen miles west of Denver the mountains lifted their wonderful heights from the foothills to the snowy range, and extended north and south for many miles — the Rocky Mountain range is visible from Denver for more than a hundred miles. In those days there were no tall buildings or smoking smelters to obstruct the view. Today one must go to Capitol Hill and beyond, or outside the city altogether, to get this superb view. Boy as I was, the sight of the mountains, from the first glimpse I had of them as we approached Denver, filled me with admiration — a feeling that later familiarity only served to heighten. As soon as the family was established in Denver, my sister and I for a year or more attended separate schools, she going to Wolfe Hall, then a small school for girls under the control of (or perhaps founded by) the Episcopal 4
In 1 8 7 1 , when I left Denver, it had already begun to take on the appearance of a little city. It is now a beautiful modern city, with an important business section, fine residences, green lawns and shade trees, and has upwards of 300,000 inhabitants.
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Church, and I to Jarvis Hall, a much smaller school for boys under the control of (or founded by) the same church. I do not remember the number of pupils at Wolfe Hall; but Jarvis Hall had ten or a dozen pupils, boys of about my age, one teacher (a young Englishman), and was established in a rented room on the ground floor of a smallish private dwelling. Wolfe Hall and Jarvis Hall were, when I last heard of them, large and flourishing schools. After one year in Jarvis Hall I attended a public school. It was located on what was then E Street (now Fourteenth). I haven't a clear recollection of what I learned or studied there; but I remember that I began the study of physics (I was the only one in the class), and that I found the subject queer and unintelligible. As physics laboratories were unknown in the schools of those days the physics I studied was "book" physics, and the textbook I had was doubtless not adapted to my years. At any rate, the only thing I remember about it, and that vaguely, is the section of the book on sound. I learned that there were sound waves, and nodes, but that they had anything to do with the propagation or quality of sounds I did not learn, or, if I did, I have forgotten. But I recited glibly what was in the book, and what's more, received credit for so doing! I have already said that we were poor. My dear mother had suffered our poverty uncomplainingly, but she was disappointed that my brother had not gone into business, and persuaded my stepfather to apprentice me for four years to a druggist in Denver, thinking that at least one of her sons should be put in the way of becoming ultimately a prosperous business man. So I spent about three years in one of the two drugstores of Steinhauer & Walbrach, in Denver. My hours were from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., with an hour out for each of three meals and a free Sunday afternoon
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every other Sunday. Before I left the store I had acquired a good knowledge of the drug business. In those days a drugstore was primarily a drugstore and not an incidental addendum to a general notion store such as most drugstores are today. Although the manufacturing druggists were already in the field, most druggists did not buy their supplies ready-made; they made nearly all of those supplies themselves, and I learned to make them. I was usually in Steinhauer & Walbrach's Larimer Street store, which had a large prescription business, and I became proficient in the art of compounding prescriptions. Also, for part of the time I spent with Steinhauer & Walbrach I swept the store, cared for the many kerosene lamps that lighted the store, washed bottles, was messenger boy, and was expected to make myself generally useful. It was against the rules of the store to sit down before 6 j.m. even when there was nothing that needed immediate attention. After 7 ¡P.M. I invariably sat on a chair when I had to cut labels, paste labels on bottles, or when I read the pharmacopoeia or the United States Dispensatory. I think I was naturally industrious, so neither the long hours nor the varied duties I had bothered me. On the whole, I was interested. But the net result of my drugstore experience as a learner, and long afterward when I was part owner of a drugstore (for a year) in Denver, was to give me a general contempt for medicines as a group (and particularly for prescriptions compounded of drugs), with the exception of a few medicines of well-established efficacy. Toward the beginning of my fourth year in the drug store, when I was about fifteen years old, my family returned to Mineral Point, leaving me in Denver for two or three months. Mr. George always sympathized with my desire for an education. When the family had reestablished them-
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selves in Mineral Point and had placed my sister in the State Normal School at Platteville (about twenty miles from Mineral Point), Mr. George wrote to me suggesting that I give up the drug business, rejoin the family, and attend the school at Platteville. I was not long in making up my mind to follow his suggestion. I secured a release from Steinhauer & Walbrach and within a week after receiving Mr. George's letter I was in Mineral Point. Among my experiences on the trip from Denver only two made a lasting impression. On the second day out from Denver, a pleasant-looking man who sat across the aisle from me (I was in a day coach during the entire trip) began to play with three playing cards, and, seeing that I was looking his way, asked me if I could pick out one of the cards, an ace, as he rapidly moved his hands to the right and the left, the ace being in one hand, and suddenly dropped all three cards, face down, on the seat before him. I said I could, and pointed to one of the cards. Sure enough, it was the ace. He picked up his cards and challenged me to do it again. Again I was successful. He seemed to be baffled, and for a little while said nothing. As I continued to watch him manipulating the cards, he looked banteringly at me and said, "I bet you a dollar you can't do it again," taking a dollar from a roll of bills which he took from his pocket and laying it on the seat beside me. But I said, "I've seen threecard monte before today, and I won't bet." Whereupon he smiled gravely and left the car. When we arrived at Omaha the through passengers had to leave the train to be ferried across the Missouri River. It was a windy day. The ticket taker collected the ferry tickets on the boat. As he approached me I was standing at one side of the boat with my through ticket, of which the ferry ticket was one section, in my hand; and, at the moment of handing
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the long strip to the ticket taker, it left my hand and was blown away. But I was lucky. The ticket was about to be blown into the river when it caught in the very middle on one of the slender iron poles supporting the upper deck, the two portions of the ticket fluttering in the wind until with a frantic rush I seized it. My reference to an earlier knowledge of three-card monte deserves a word of explanation. Denver was in the sixties a frontier town with all the usual characteristics of such a town. Gambling was practiced openly, and as a druggist's apprentice I frequently delivered purchases made at our store to gamblers in their places of business. Hence my knowledge not only of three-card monte but also of other gambling games. I may add that I have always had a strong distaste for gambling in any form, quite apart from what I learned about professional gambling as a boy. It is a vice, the attraction of which to its devotees I have never been able to understand. I am tempted to carry this digression on the subject of Denver as a frontier town one step farther. Of course, there was much brawling and petty disorder. But thieving and murder were not common. These serious crimes when they occurred were promptly and effectively punished, occasionally by due process of law, but more often by vigilance committees, whose doings were condoned. Such committees of citizens hesitated not at all to seize a known desperado or criminal when he appeared in town and to hang him promptly. I have seen criminals who had been disposed of in this way hanging from a bridge over the usually almost dry bed of Cherry Creek. Usually a vigilance committee before taking final action gave a warning that was well understood. They scattered coffin-shaped bits of white paper with the word Time in black letters written or printed on
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them. This definite hint that it was time to leave was usually sufficient to inform an evildoer that he was being watched, and to induce him to leave town without delay. I need hardly say that on the whole Denver was an exceptionally orderly frontier town. It shed its frontier characteristics, such as they were, long ago, and has been for a long time and is now one of the most desirable residence cities in the country. In those days Denver was visited annually by the friendly Ute Indians. They seemed about a thousand strong (perhaps there were only a few hundred), and established themselves in an encampment on the north side of the Platte River — a populous section of the present city, but at that time uninhabited. One of the features of their visit to Denver was a procession through the business streets headed by a few braves on horseback, who had taken the scalps of enemies (Navajos, Arapahos 5 ). Each brave displayed the scalp he had taken stretched on a small hoop fit the top of a pole which he carried. The rest of the procession consisted of men, women, and children, nearly all on foot. Of course, this procession, whatever attention it may have attracted from the adult people of Denver, was of great interest to the boys of the town, who, when the procession was over, tried to trade with Indian boys for bows and arrows, and other Indian possessions. I seem to remember that the Indian boys usually got the best of the bargain. I have already said that the railroad station nearest to Denver was Cheyenne. Consequently, freight was hauled to Denver in covered wagons, coming not only from Cheyenne but also from places farther east. These wagons were often attached to each other in long trains, each train being drawn by many oxen. I have seen as many as twenty pairs " Hostile to the whites.
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of oxen attached to a chain of wagons. The oxen were guided and driven by men with short-handled, long-lashed, cruel-looking whips. The use made of these whips may have suggested the name by which the drivers were universally known — "bull whackers." I do not remember seeing the oxen abused. But when a bull whacker cracked his whip, which he did frequently, he produced a report as loud as a pistol shot. As a warning to the oxen it seemed to be effective. When these ox-drawn freight trains arrived in Denver, everybody was interested, and a spurt in business usually followed.
CHAPTER II S T A T E N O R M A L SCHOOL, P L A T T E V I L L E , WISC O N S I N ; S C H O O L S OF T H E S E V E N T I E S ; N E W Y O R K CITY O O N after joining my family in Mineral Point, I applied for admission to the State Normal School in Platteville; but, alas! I could not pass the entrance examination (covering the eighth-grade work of the public schools) ; moreover, I was not quite sixteen years old, and pupils under sixteen years of age could not be admitted. Of the entrance examination I have no recollection, but I suspect the result was due largely to my failure in arithmetic. There was, however, a preparatory department, owing, no doubt, to the prevailing lack of satisfactory elementary schools at that time. So I was enrolled in the highest class of the preparatory department, and at long last I was a pupil in a real school. In the spring I was examined again for admission to the normal school proper, and was admitted. I doubt if I passed in arithmetic at this second examination. I remember only one question, namely, "If five were eight how much would sixteen be?" After deep thought I decided that even if five ran wild and became eight, there was no reason why sixteen should be equally erratic. So I answered the question by saying, "Sixteen would be sixteen." I have often thought of the blind way in which that question was put. It seemed to me absurd, at the time, and I answered accordingly. But I was admitted to the normal school, and there for nearly three years I enjoyed the first systematic schooling of my experience.
S
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The state normal school of that time was really a high school, its admission requirements being equivalent to completion of the eight grades of the public elementary schools, and the program of studies of the normal school itself covering three or four years of "academic" studies, with a very limited amount of professional work, i.e., studies and practice intended to prepare the student for the actual responsibilities of teaching and managing pupils in the public elementary schools, with special emphasis on methods of teaching elementary-school studies. Incidentally, it should be noted that, as university courses in education were unknown at the time under consideration and for a long time afterward, superintendents and others responsible for the selection of secondary-school (high-school) teachers often preferred to recommend for appointment normal-school graduates rather than college or university graduates because, meager and limited in scope as the scholarship and the technical training of normal-school graduates were, such graduates frequently showed superiority as teachers over the college or university graduate who had no technical training whatever. In those days, also, many if not most of the superintendents of schools were normal-school graduates who had risen from the ranks. Most high-school principals were, even at that time, college graduates who naturally and properly preferred college graduates as members of their teaching staffs — knowing nothing of professional training for college-bred teachers in addition to the usual courses pursued for the bachelor's degree, and caring less. This common difference between the scholarship of the high-school principal and the scholarship of the superintendent and the fact that the superintendent was inclined to prefer normalschool graduates to college graduates in the selection of
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teachers was, not infrequently, the cause of inharmonious relations (to put it mildly) between the superintendent and the high-school principal. Many superintendents never presumed to exercise any official supervision over the high school, nor ventured any attempt to unify their school systems by bringing the high school and the elementary schools into organic relation with each other. (And that is true of many superintendents today.) Accordingly, it was the rule in the public-school systems of the country for the high-school principal and his staff to maintain a lofty isolation from their colleagues of the elementary school, while insisting that the pupils admitted to the high school should be able to pass the usual entrance examination set by, or at least formulated by, the high school. When the superintendent called teachers' meetings, the high-school teachers were prone to regard those meetings as no concern of theirs and resented the suggestion of the superintendent that they should attend them. It must be said that the high-school teachers were not always wrong. Relatively few superintendents of that day were capable of planning and carrying on teachers' meetings that were really profitable to all concerned. The meetings were too often limited to the discussion of routine matters, and to announcements (not to say pronouncements) by the superintendent. Only rarely were those meetings concerned primarily with educational problems that would or might have been of interest to all. The whole situation, together with the fact that the elementary-school program of studies covered the three R's, book geography, English grammar, and very little else, and therefore offered little or no articulation with the high-school program of studies, created a gap between the elementary school and the high school, and prevented the proper unification of the school system as a whole.
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This situation persisted for a long time. I think it quite possible that it exists here and there to this day. In general, however, the situation in our public-school systems is much better today. The progressive unification of our whole educational endeavor throughout the pupil's school career will receive further consideration in later chapters of this book. I have said that during my stay in the normal school at Platteville I enjoyed the first systematic schooling of my experience. Several features of that experience deserve mention. There was no laboratory for physics or chemistry; but the textbooks studied, together with illustrative experiments performed by the teacher in the classroom, served as an introduction to both sciences in their then state of development. The instruction in botany, though also elementary, taught us botanical classification. W e learned to "analyze" plants — i.e., with the help of Gray's Manual we learned to identify the family, genus, and species of a given plant. This, in my case, laid the foundation for a lifelong interest in the vegetation of any region where my lot happened to be cast. I do not remember that I studied zoology. Geology was studied from a textbook and did not comprise any field excursions. In English, we studied Quackenbos's rhetoric, and Karnes's (I think it was Kames's) Elements of Criticism·, and we wrote occasional essays which were intended to embody applications of the principles studied in Quackenbos and Kames. I do not remember any study of English literature. History was limited to a single small textbook in United States history. In mathematics we had good instruction in algebra, and in the first three books of plane geometry. I showed considerable facility in algebraic processes but had little understanding of the subject. In geometry, however, I found
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for the first time a mathematical subject that I could understand and that actually interested me. The first time I was called on in class for a demonstration, the teacher (one of the best teachers I ever had) said, "Have you ever studied geometry before?" and when I said, "No," he said, "Well done." Of course, I have never forgotten that experience! Latin was the only foreign language taught in the school, and I added to what little Latin I already had, but I do not remember clearly what was studied. I seem to remember that the work consisted of drill in Latin grammar and the translation of short, disconnected bits of Latin prose. During one term of my last year at Platteville I studied "School Economy." W e had a textbook with that name, and learned and recited the lessons in it. I have a vague recollection that the book was an elementary treatise on school and class management. During six weeks I taught, for practice, a class in geography in the preparatory department under the very general supervision of one of the normal-school teachers. The extracurricular activities of the school in which I participated with more· or less success were a "literary society," a debating club (I remember taking the affirmative in a debate on Chinese exclusion!), and a military company, officered by one of the normal-school teachers. Of these, the first was by far the most interesting. The members were elected by the society, and it was an active, flourishing organization. As the school was coeducational, the membership comprised both boys and girls. A student critic was appointed for every meeting, and gave his or her report at the following meeting. The critic's report was frequently decidedly searching and profitable to us all. While the critics did not fail to mention and approve what they considered meritorious in a student's performance, they did not
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fail either to point out defects or inadequacies. I suffered more than once from their impartial criticisms — to my profit, I hope. The literary society of the school held an annual "public exercise," when students read original essays, declaimed prose or poetry, and varied the entertainment with musical numbers (vocal or instrumental; the school gave instruction in choral singing). These public exercises were popular in the school and in the community, and were largely attended. For one of the public exercises I was chosen to declaim "Darius Green and His Flying Machine." That was a great day for me. The classes marched to the music of a piano from the large assembly room to their classrooms, and different students took turns at the piano. I had at my command a (very limited) repertoire of marches and so was drawn upon often for this service. As a small boy I had had piano lessons but had naturally not progressed very far. "Naturally" should be understood to refer to both the limited instruction I had had, and the unfortunate fact that I am not "musical" by nature — but I refused to acknowledge this until some years later. While in Platteville I went regularly for a long time to the house of an amiable couple who allowed me the use of their piano to "practice" — between 6 and 7 A.M. But, as I have already said, I have no natural musical ability, and that heroic effort failed to yield the result at which I aimed. I have not yet spoken of a very important, one of the most important educational influences of my life, which came to me incidentally during my stay in Platteville. I lived as a boarder with an unusual family (they were originally Vermonters, Tracy by name). Of this family Mrs. Tracy, an active and a rather strait-laced but kindly
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lady, was the unquestioned head. She exercised a parental supervision over her boarders — for there were five other boarders beside me, all girls, including my sister. Study hours from 7:3ο to 9:3ο were rigidly prescribed by the normal school, and Mrs. Tracy saw to it that they were actually used for study. But supper was over by 6:3ο and that left an hour for the right kind of diversion. A s I shall point out in a moment, this diversion usually consisted of reading. A l s o living at the Tracy's was one of the normal-school teachers, Miss E v a Mills (a f e w years later she became Mrs. Anderson), w h o was an elder sister of all the student boarders. Miss Mills seized the opportunity afforded by the evening hour of leisure to get us students together in the living room to spend that hour in reading. A s the girls had sewing or some other feminine handwork to do, it fell to me to be the reader for the group. Under Miss Mills's guidance w e were introduced, in this way, to some of the best English literature. I remember with what delight w e read Walter Scott's poems, with which w e began, some of Shakespeare's plays, Paradise Lost, Macaulay's poems and some of his essays, Longfellow's and Whittier's poems, two or three good novels, and much other good literature. For me this reading, which was continued sometimes on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, was a real awakening, for up to that time I had read little. I have never ceased to be grateful to Miss Mills for that awakening. T h e two winters during which this reading went on implanted in me a love of literature that, fortunately, has never waned. In the spring of my third year in Platteville my mother, w h o had not given up hoping that at least one of her sons would become a business man, influenced my stepfather, M r . George, to procure for me a position with a newly established drug-importing concern in N e w Y o r k City.
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So I left Platteville with regret and became a clerk in. the office of Paul H. Kretzschmar & Company on Cedar Street in New York. (The office staff consisted of an office boy and myself.) I spent my days for about a year in that office, in durance vile, and my evenings in classes at the Cooper Union. I won four certificates for work in chemistry and physics (no laboratory work, but lecture-table experiments), algebra, and geometry. This instruction was largely a review of what I had already learned at Platteville; but it deepened my interest in the subjects studied. Those certificates were signed by Peter Cooper himself, in his large, bold handwriting. He made a point of attending the simple ceremony of distributing the certificates to those students who had been regular in attendance; and he was an occasional visitor to the classes. I remember distinctly how he looked, but I do not remember that he ever spoke to us. He was of small stature, rather slender, with a benevolent face, and long wavy white hair. He also seemed rather feeble, for he had an attendant who never left his side and who carried a cushion which was carefully placed on any chair used by Peter Cboper. I commonly left the office on Cedar Street at about five o'clock and walked up Broadway or the Bowery to Eighth Street. Early in the winter I made a friend of the engineer in the basement of one of the buildings near the Cooper Union, and I commonly ate my supper (consisting usually of a dozen buns or biscuits) while visiting with my basement friend. Thence to the reading room of the Cooper Union (at that time occupied by readers only, and not, largely, as I have seen it of late years, by persons of all sorts who seek shelter rather than enlightenment) until it was time for classes. I spent many profitable hours in that reading room at other times also.
SCHOOLS OF T H E SEVENTIES
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As luck would have it, toward the end of my year (i.e., in the spring of 1874) it became evident that the firm of P. H . Kretzschmar & Company was to be liquidated, and I should consequently be out of a job. Mr. Kretzschmar bought a drugstore in Brooklyn and asked me to continue in his employ in his store. But I was satisfied from my experience with Mr. Kretzschmar that it would not be long before another liquidation would take place. So I sought another job, and found it in a wholesale tea house on Vesey Street. But I never entered that establishment. Naturally, I had told my people of the anticipated demise of P. H . Kretzschmar & Company. It happened that on the Saturday preceding the Monday on which I was to enter on my work in the tea company I received a letter from Mr. George, telling me that if I wanted to prepare myself for college I might come home. The letter also contained a money order with which to pay my railroad fare. So on the following Monday, instead of reporting for work on Vesey Street, I was on the train bound for Mineral Point, and I rejoined my family. That tea business lost a rather lukewarm apprentice. The reference to preparation for college needs a word of explanation. In the winter or spring of 1873-1874, I had attended as one of "the public invited" a graduating exercise of the City College in the old "Academy of Music." The graduates were represented by a group of young speakers who seemed to me marvels of wisdom and eloquence. Some time before this I had made up my mind that for me the only satisfactory career must begin with a college education; and that commencement of the College of the City of New York served to fix my determination to get a college education, somehow, sometime. N o doubt I had written of this to my parents, for I was sure that Mr. George would sympathize with my ambition. Hence his opportune letter.
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I ought not to leave my New York experiences without expressing my belated but profound regret that I did not tell the tea company that I was leaving the city. But at the time I was obsessed with the prospect ahead of me and was only anxious to get away. Not an excuse, certainly, but an illustration of my generally impetuous actions. I had hardly arrived in Mineral Point when my sister, who was teaching the fifth grade in one of the public schools of Platteville, fell ill, and I substituted for her for about six weeks — my first responsible teaching experience. I wish I could recall that experience with satisfaction; but I look back on it with mingled feelings, of which the most pronounced is shame. It is not that I failed in teaching, but that I ruled those thirty or forty children with undue and unwarranted severity. I had been told that my sister's illness was due to nervous worry caused by "bad" boys who constituted the majority of the pupils in the grade. So when I took charge I have no doubt that my treatment of some of those boys — "whaups" — about twelve to fourteen years old was determined by the report that they had made my sister ill. At any rate, on the slightest infringement by a boy of what I regarded as proper schoolroom decorum, I whipped him soundly before his fellows with a leather strap I had procured for the purpose. (Whipping children for misbehavior in school was common enough in those days; but I doubt if it was as common anywhere as it was for a time in my schoolroom.) Some boy was whipped every day, sometimes more than one a day, until I was brought to my senses by the principal of the school, who mildly but definitely called a halt in my disciplinary measures, and suggested a more rational and more sympathetic way of dealing with many if not most refractory pupils. Hence my shame, not only at my inexcusable and un-
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27
necessary severity but that I had to be brought to a realizing sense of my cruel blundering by the principal. If any of those boys are alive today, I hope I shall sometime have an opportunity to tell them how bitterly I have regretted my conduct toward them. I have referred to the fact that whipping children in school was common in the seventies. Children were whipped not only for misconduct, or what was interpreted as such, but for failure to learn the assigned lessons. Many teachers never took the trouble to find out the cause of a pupil's failure but proceeded at once to corporal punishment. The injunction, "Spare the rod," etc., was generally taken very seriously, especially by thoughtless or domineering teachers. This abuse of corporal punishment, together with a gradual realization of the fact that severe punishment and whipping in particular were of doubtful value as incentives to better conduct or to industry in school, that at best they served only as deterrents, brought about a slow but steady growth of professional opposition, and ultimately strong antipathy to whipping in schools. I have no doubt that parental opposition played an important part in determining the abandonment of whipping in most public schools. But before this desirable end was attained it was found necessary to place restrictions on the resort to corporal punishment, such as requiring each teacher to report the number and kinds of corporal punishments he had administered during a given period (and in many cases to forbid such punishment except by the principal acting on the report or request of a teacher), forbidding such punishment before other pupils, and always requiring the presence of an adult witness, prescription of the means and methods employed, and so on, until, as I have said, public opinion within and without the teaching profession required the abandon-
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ment of corporal punishment by vote of the local boards of education or school committees in most public-school systems throughout the country. But it is one thing for a school board to prohibit corporal punishment and another thing to enforce the prohibition. In nearly every public-school system there are some children (almost invariably boys) who subject their teachers to untold nervous strain and sometimes to physical injury unless they know that they may be whipped for their misdemeanors— physical pain being the only corrective they can appreciate. In such cases (in large school systems such children are not uncommon — I know several such school systems myself) principals and school boards, while deprecating the occurrence of corporal punishment, rarely take official notice of it. The days of the indiscriminate use of corporal punishment in schools are now happily a long time past. Teachers have found or learned a better means of influencing most pupils for their own good. Incentives, natural and useful, are now employed to influence children to learn and to behave. Punishment is reserved for the persistently refractory youngster. The most comprehensive incentives now in use are the cheerful atmosphere that habitually pervades the schoolroom, itself a cheerful place, and the interesting things the pupil learns and does there. The narrow, dry-asdust routine and drill of the former school with its abstract studies and formal discipline has given place to a totally different regime of intrinsically interesting subject matter with sufficient drill when appropriate, useful activities, and a kindly but in most cases firm discipline. It is sometimes alleged that kindliness has often been carried too far in the schools of today, that firmness in the discipline of children has given place to sentimental coddling. But dur-
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ing my hundreds of more or less prolonged visits to classrooms in many parts of the United States I have not found this to be true. Of course, teachers vary today, as always, in the wisdom they display in teaching and managing pupils, but I have seldom seen them show weakness or sentimentality. Closely associated with the sterile routine and the severe discipline of the schools of the past was the problem of truancy. Many were the expedients employed to lessen or to eradicate truancy. A s late as the nineties of the last century the superintendent of schools of Boston, for example, urged, and with the help of citizens finally secured, a truant school for his city. Truants, prior to the establishment of that school, had been confined on Deer Island, a place for the detention of criminals. One of the superintendent's (Mr. Seaver's) chief arguments ran something like this: "Truants are not criminals, but they are in danger of becoming criminals"; hence the need of a special institution for the confinement and instruction of truants. T h e name chosen for the projected school was the "Boston Parental School." It "flourished" for some years, and went out of commission because of lack of patronage. Truancy, not only in Boston but everywhere, is not common now. Individual cases still occur and are dealt with in various ways, but no city would today found a separate truant school. Truants are rare today because children like their schools. A n d this, together with the superior attainments 1 of contemporary children, constitutes the final proof of the superiority of the schools of today as compared with former schools. More hereafter of the schools of today as compared with the schools of a generation or more ago. In the late spring of 1874 I returned to Mineral Point and 1
Proof : Experiments in Springfield, Boston, and elsewhere.
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began my preparation for college in earnest, for I hoped to enter the University of Michigan in the autumn. That university was chosen instead of the University of Wisconsin (also under consideration) because of the undoubted superiority of that university at the time; and I never had any reason to regret the choice. The endowed eastern universities were not considered because education there was too expensive.
CHAPTER III U N I V E R S I T Y O F MICHIGAN, 1874-1878 N OUR little house of three or four rooms one corner of the living room was my study, and I worked there every forenoon from about half-past seven until twelve o'clock, and sometimes in the afternoons and evenings, during the summer and early autumn. In the afternoons I usually went botanizing and geologizing in the vicinity of Mineral Point, a region well adapted to stimulate amateur devotion to botany and geology. I knew that I could not prepare myself to pass the entrance examinations at the University of Michigan for admission to the "classical course," leading to the degree of B.A., because candidates were examined in both Latin and Greek; but at first I thought I could prepare myself for admission to the "Latin and scientific course," leading to the degree of Ph.B., because candidates had to pass in only one classical language, Latin. So I bought a copy of Chase and Stuart's Virgil (I had a Latin grammar), and spent many arduous hours in the attempt to make something out of the Aeneid. (The whole of the Aeneid was required.) Four books of Caesar and six orations of Cicero were also required, but I did not even make a try at Caesar or Cicero. Before long I realized that in the time at my disposal I could not acquire a passing knowledge of Latin, even if I devoted my whole time to the attempt; and I could not devote my entire time to Latin because I needed much time to prepare myself to pass the examinations in other required subjects. Accordingly I spent all the remaining time in preparing for admission to
I
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the "scientific course," leading to the degree of B.S., for which neither Latin nor Greek was required. I reviewed the physiology, chemistry, and physics I had studied at Platteville and at the Cooper Union, and studied mathematics and French — all required for admission. I had no teacher. For the first half-dozen lessons in Fasquelle's French Course (seventy-five lessons were required), I did have the assistance of a young doctor not yet burdened by his practice. Dr. Brown did not profess to be proficient in French, but he had studied it, in England, probably in a night school. (He was a Cornishman whose parents were miners.) I had had elementary algebra and three books of plane geometry at Platteville and at the Cooper Union, but I had to study the rest of plane geometry and solid geometry (Davis's Legendre) by myself. There was no examination in English. Thus "prepared" I presented myself at the University of Michigan in the autumn of 1874. Most of the examinations were written, but in mathematics the candidates were examined orally. The examination in geometry passed without incident. I shall never forget a part of the examination in algebra. The examiner, Professor Olney (an excellent teacher, though probably not much of a mathematician), asked me the meaning of an exponent. I said, "An exponent shows the power of the number to which it is attached." Whereupon he stepped to the blackboard and wrote ah, and said, "What power is denoted by the exponent in a i ? " I said, "The expression means the cube root of a " Then he said, "Is the cube root a power?" And more to the same effect, until I had properly defined an exponent. The examinations continued throughout three days, and on the fourth day I anxiously awaited the result. I was admitted! But I was conditioned in the use of the subjunctive in
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French — a condition which was removed without examination after three months in college. I sent a laconic telegram to Mr. George: " A m admitted. Please send money." As the university had no dormitories, I sought and found a furnished room (containing a small table, a washstand, ,a bed, and a chair) in a house to which I had been directed by another prospective freshman. I do not remember what I paid for that room, but probably less than a dollar a week; nor do I remember what I paid for board during my freshman year, but certainly not more than two dollars a week. In subsequent years I paid a little more for room and board, but I know that my total expenditure for living expenses, tuition (forty-five dollars for the first year, twenty-five dollars a year thereafter; residents of Michigan paid less), books, and incidentals for my four college years was less than a thousand dollars. There were student boarding clubs, one of which I joined immediately, consisting of a dozen to twenty or more men who chose one of their number, usually an older student, as food provider, and they also made him responsible for an eating place and a cook. T h e cook was usually a woman who owned a house, or rented one for the purpose of serving such a club of students. T h e food was simple but wholesome, sufficient in quantity, and usually palatable — at least to hungry boys. Most of the houses in which I lodged while in college had no bath rooms, but public baths were available, and were used by the students — more or less conscientiously. What I have just described represents the living conditions of the rank and file of the students at Ann Arbor in my day. T h e well-to-do and the occasional rich student fared better, at least in appearance. Most of these men were members of college fraternities, each of which commonly had its own eating club, and owned or rented a chapter
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house for its members. Not all fraternity men were rich. During my third year in college I became a member of one of these fraternities (ΔΤΔ). Once established in my room with my few belongings, among which were a one-volume edition of all of Shakespeare's plays, Milton's poems, four of Macaulay's essays — all bought in second-hand book shops in New York, and my meals arranged for, I looked forward eagerly to the beginning of the college exercises. I can never experience again the exultation and elation of those weeks in the autumn of 1874. At last I was in college! I was young; the education which I had longed for had begun, and I could look forward to four years of progress toward my goal. When the college exercises actually began, I was not disillusioned. In those days all the studies of the first three years were prescribed. The studies for the senior year were elective. The studies of the freshman year were: Olney's higher algebra, Olney's geometry ("originals" entirely), plane and spherical trigonometry (Olney's), Smith's history of Greece (first semester) and Smith's history of Rome (second semester), somebody's rhetoric (first semester), Earle's Philology of the English Tongue (second semester); a rapid review of Fasquelle, Hennequin's French Verbs, and the reading of two or three French stories and plays; we were also required to write two essays (or "orations") each semester and had to deliver the best one of the orations in class. I was interested in all this work, but particularly in Earle's Philology. During the second semester I bought Spiers and Surenne's large dictionary (a book I kept until 1933) and read French books in the college library from that time forward whenever I had any leisure to spend in that way. Unfortunately, French was offered during only the freshman and sophomore years, and the language of the instruction was Eng-
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lish. I did not acquire a moderate speaking ability in French until some time after I graduated. Earle's Philology was an elementary treatise on the history of the English language — very interesting to me because I had never thought of the English language as a growth, nor had I become conscious that other languages had made their contributions to it. Here I found my knowledge of German and my elementary knowledge of French and Latin a great help. I have ever since been interested in words not only for the ideas for which they stand but just as words. Throughout my four years, students in the classical course and in the Latin and scientific course attended the same classes as students in the scientific course in some subjects, notably in English, history, mathematics, and physics, and in logic and philosophy. There was no physics laboratory. There were lecture-table experiments. I remember how, on one occasion in a lecture on electricity, we all filed down to the desk to put our ears to a telephone and listened to the sound of a tuning fork in a distant part of the building. It was near the time when the telephone became a commercial instrument. The chemistry laboratory was a good one for its day, and I worked there for about two years. There was also required laboratory work in biology, but no laboratory work in zoology. The work in zoology was very elementary and otherwise unsatisfactory. So was most of the work in botany and geology. As I spoke German as fluently as I did English I was not required to study German in college. Instead I studied Italian and Spanish — one semester of each! But no more was offered in my day. As I was interested in languages and was not prepared for admission to any college courses in Latin, at the beginning of my junior year I found out that the hour in which the
7,6
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senior class of the Ann Arbor High School (near the university) recited in Virgil was not required for college classes, and I secured admission to the Virgil class and attended it regularly throughout the year. The instruction was not very good, but I did get some further knowledge of Latin and a good introduction to ancient geography and classical mythology. As the scientific course did not require all my available time, I attended classes in other courses also — classes to which all students had access. Incidentally, I learned (for a small fee) to identify birds and to prepare bird skins for mounting; and I worked with two of my classmates (David DeTarr, afterwards a physician, but now dead; and Charles E. Beecher, afterwards a distinguished paleontologist at Yale University, who also died young) in identifying the land and fresh-water mollusks of the vicinity of Ann Arbor. My part in this work was to translate French or German books about mollusks to those men while they worked with the creatures. I had a mild interest in snakes (non-venomous), and while my friends were collecting live shells in ponds or swamps, I frequently captured snakes. I remember one fine snake about six feet long that I carried to my room. I kept him for some weeks. Then, one day, as I was looking at my correspondence, it seemed to me that someone else had been interested in it, because some letters that I was looking for were not where I had put them. Subsequent observation convinced me that my letters were of interest to some person unknown. So I took my snake out of his box, and put him in the drawer of my bureau where I kept my letters. A day or two later, as I returned to my room after an afternoon spent in the chemistry laboratory, I found the bureau drawer open and the snake on the floor. Thereafter I was not annoyed by
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having my letters read by some unauthorized person; but in about a fortnight, my landlady came to me and said that she had been told that I kept a snake in my room, that the knowledge of that fact seriously disturbed her other tenants, and that, in short, if I wished to remain in her house, I must get rid of the snake. So he was chloroformed and bottled; and, so far as I know, he is still in the university museum. Extra-classroom activities were limited in variety and were unorganized. There was no teacher of physical education, and no gymnasium. We played baseball and football in season. There was some wrestling and some competitive running. The football of my day was quite unlike the football of today. Each of the contending sides comprised a large number of players, the ball was kicked and caught, or scrambled for, and anyone who seized and held it or managed to get near it on the ground was entitled to kick it. I tried to play both baseball and football, but soon discovered that I was a complete failure in baseball and that my comparatively small stature and corresponding weight were such a handicap that football was also impossible for me. I enjoyed walking in the vicinity of Ann Arbor (I soon began to botanize), and practically all my exercise during my four college years was walking. The students edited and published a fortnightly paper, the Chronicle, but I did not try for it; and there were two fairly active "literary" societies, one of which I joined in my freshman year; but I was not an enthusiastic member and resigned during the next year. There was also a students' lecture association with which I think the faculty cooperated, or perhaps they only exercised a general oversight over it. This association secured prominent persons as lecturers and usually provided a concert or two during
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the college year. These lectures or concerts occurred fortnightly. Committees of students were appointed by the association to sell tickets and to act as ushers. I had a part to play there, but during only one year. The number of students in the scientific course was small, but students from all three courses recited together in some studies, as I have already said. Each of the four classes was organized each year, having the usual class officers — president, vice-president, secretary, etc., and also a class orator who held forth at the annual meeting of his class toward the end of the college year. I was the orator of my class at our annual meeting in the spring of 1875. Examinations were held in each course at the end of each semester. N o grades were given, but after the final examination in a course each student received a printed slip on which was written "passed," or "conditionally passed," or "not passed." A student conditionally passed was allowed to take another examination at a later time; one who failed was obliged to take the course again. During my freshman year the results of the final examinations were read out in chapel; but in response to student protest announcement by slips was substituted thereafter for the oral chapel announcements. The custom of announcing success or failure in a course, on its completion, without grades, seemed to me then as now quite right. There were no scholarships or fellowships at the University of Michigan in my time; hence no nice discrimination between the achievements of successful students was attempted or recorded. Examinations in some courses were held occasionally during the progress of a course, primarily for teaching purposes, I suppose; but no general announcements of results followed such an examination. Students were not discouraged from asking whether
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their work was successful. But not many students asked. The great majority of the students at Ann Arbor in those days were serious-minded, quite aware of the fact that their education would be their only capital, and they did not need periodic reminders to enforce application to their studies. Attendance at chapel exercises was voluntary, but as all general announcements were made in chapel, immediately preceding or following the regular chapel exercises, the attendance was usually fairly large. The seating of the students in chapel was so planned that the students of each class sat together, but so that no two "hostile" classes should be near each other, i.e., next to the freshmen were placed the juniors, then the sophomores, and finally the seniors. Class "hostility" really manifested itself only between freshmen and sophomores. It was on the whole harmless — a somewhat patronizing or domineering attitude of sophomores toward freshmen. But for some years there was one actual collision of the two classes in the spring toward the close of the college year. This was the annual "cane rush." Both classes sported canes on the evening of the rush, and one or the other took possession of the campus, whichever arrived there first, I suppose. Then began a tussle at the opening in the fence surrounding the campus where the broad walk leading to the main college building (University Hall) began. Juniors stood by to see that the freshmen had fair play, and seniors performed the same service for sophomores— i.e., they were supposed to do this; as a matter of fact, they only stood by to encourage their respective protégés. Each class tried to get possession of the other's canes, and that class which was outside the campus tried forcibly to eject those who were inside. Naturally, as the contest progressed, it became rough and intense; and, as it some-
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times lasted a long time, some students were hurt and clothes generally ruined. The damage to clothing did not matter much because the students usually dressed themselves for eventualities. But the bodily injuries of the students were not infrequently more or less serious. The whole thing was, of course, a crude exhibition of boyish combativeness that was out of character in a university. After the cane rush of my freshman year, in which several students were hurt, one of them seriously, the authorities decided that these rushes should cease; and President Angeli announced that "tumultuous collisions" among the students would not be tolerated thereafter. The cane rushes ceased, and with them such hazing of freshmen by sophomores, or, on occasion, of sophomores by freshmen, as had been practiced, gradually ceased also. Of course, the students did not give up their "right" to their annual brawl without protest, but protests were of no avail. Of my teachers at Ann Arbor I remember with special satisfaction Professors Edward Olney (mathematics), Moses Coit Tyler (English and American literature), Benjamin F . Cocker (philosophy and psychology), Spaulding (biology), Charles Kendall Adams (history — excellent lecturer, but very poor classroom teacher), and President Angeli, who taught courses for seniors only, but whose influence on all students was pervasive and always beneficial. Although engineering, architecture, and pharmacy were taught, the students of those subjects were not organized in separate schools; they were within the Department of Literature, Science, and the Arts. This department, during my time, included only about one-third of the students, but it was the "heart" of the university. The university comprised also a law school and a medical school, both flourishing departments. It is worthy of notice that anyone
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who could read and write could be admitted to the medical school or to the law school, as there were no requirements for admission except a certificate of character. The course in medicine leading to the degree of M.D. required only two terms of about six months each, separated by a certain amount of time (about one year) spent with a practicing physician. The law course was also a two years' course, and no apprenticeship in a lawyer's office was required. Those were low standards for prospective doctors and lawyers. They have been outgrown long ago at the University of Michigan. The university also conferred the M.A. and M.S. degrees on graduates of three years' standing and of good repute without further study or examination, up to and including the year 1878, when the practice was discontinued. The master's degrees thereafter had to be earned by advanced study and examination. My four years at college were profitable; but I realized before many years, as I could not at the time, how elementary the courses leading to the degree of B.S. were. One reason for this was that the work was nearly all prescribed. A n attempt was made to cover, on the college level, not only what was considered an introduction to science but also other fields of study regarded as important in a college education, and in four years there was not time enough for anything more than an elementary introduction. I don't remember a single subject of study that could be pursued for more than two years — except the classics, and most subjects were offered for only one year or even one semester. Some students carried the work farther, by themselves, as well as they could. Another reason for the elementary character of the work, closely associated with the one just given, was that college
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study of science was, in those days, struggling for development. Such study was as yet regarded as inferior in comparison with "literary" studies, meaning, primarily, the study of Latin and Greek. Of course, the preference for a classical education was not peculiar to the University of Michigan. It was well-nigh universal, owing mainly to tradition but also, in no small degree, to the substantial achievements of "classical" education. The very large numbers of students who had not profited by it, and who had consequently largely failed to get an education while trying to get it by means of the classics, were persistently disregarded. A t the time of which I am speaking there was no doubt of the superiority of the "classical course" and even of the "Latin and scientific course," in requirements for admission and in the solidity and continuity of the work in college. The students in those courses had a real opportunity to get beyond elementary work in the classics. So it is only just to say that in my day the scientific course was, in fact, inferior to the other two. Unfortunately, this inferiority could not be cured by a comprehensive introductory survey of many sciences, although just that was what the early protagonists of scientific courses in colleges, including those in my Alma Mater, attempted. Happily, the spread of the election of studies in colleges led necessarily to more advanced work in science and modern languages; and a growing recognition of the educational value of such work as well as of the classics gradually diminished the inferiority of the scientific courses; and today, although many still regard a classical education as superior to any other, few, if any, regard scientific education as less solid. I shall have more to say about classical and nonclassical studies, especially in pre-college education, later on. As commencement time in 1878 drew near, I had to
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think of a job. I was lukewarm about becoming a business m a n and serving as apprentice to that end in some business concern. I k n e w the drug business well enough to " r u n " a drugstore. I did not want to be a drug clerk, and the d r u g business, even if I had had the necessary capital to invest in a drugstore, did not appeal to me as a permanent occupation. M y only capital was m y education, and I naturally thought of investing it in teaching. I was not sure, at the time, that I wanted to be a teacher always. A s it happened, two opportunities to teach came m y way, one of them before commencement and the other immediately after. I had had the good luck to make the acquaintance of t w o women, in a class ahead of m e in college, both of w h o m afterwards became famous — Miss Alice Freeman, afterwards president of Wellesley College, 1 and Miss L u c y M . Salmon, afterwards professor of history at Vassar College — and both became friends; but I k n e w Miss Salmon much better than I k n e w Miss Freeman. W h e n I was about to graduate, I appealed to Miss Salmon, w h o was at the time teaching in the high school (perhaps she was principal) of McGregor, Iowa, to help me to secure an appointment in M c G r e g o r ; and with her help m y application to the McGregor Board of Education was favorably considered. I was appointed to teach G e r m a n in the high school and to supervise the teaching of German in the elementary schools at a salary of sixty-five dollars a month ($780 a year), and I accepted the appointment. Soon after this my sister, w h o was teaching in Denver, wrote to me telling me that there was a vacancy in the Denver H i g h School (there was only one high school in Denver at that time), and that the superintendent of schools ( A a r o n G o v e ) was looking for a teacher of science and mathematics for that school. M y sister also 1
And later Mrs. Alice Freeman Palmer (Mrs. George H. Palmer).
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told me that she had spoken of me to the superintendent; that he was expecting an application from me; that he was prepared to consider my application favorably if, after a personal interview, he was satisfied that I was the man he needed; and finally, that I could see him at Racine, Wisconsin, a few days after commencement if I went home from Ann Arbor by way of Racine. As I was planning to go by boat from Detroit to Chicago on my way home, and found that the boats touched at Racine, I made my arrangements accordingly. The result of my interview with Mr. Gove was an appointment to teach mathematics and science in the Denver High School at ninety dollars a month ($950 a year). Naturally, the Denver position was more attractive than the one in McGregor. Denver was a city, McGregor was a small place; the salary was higher in Denver; I would rather teach mathematics and science than German; and I wished to be with my sister. But I was in a quandary. I had accepted the McGregor appointment, and I had secured that appointment through the good offices of Miss Salmon. But I wanted to go to Denver. So I asked the McGregor Board of Education to release me. They refused, on the ground that they had been seeking a man who was of German birth but who had been educated in this country. I was such a man. Then, once more, I appealed to Miss Salmon to help me out of my predicament, and the Board of Education again did as she requested, and released me. Naturally I have always been grateful to Miss Salmon, and fortunately, I could tell her so, more than once, before her death many years afterward.
PART II TEACHING IN COLORADO 1878-1891
CHAPTER IV D E N V E R H I G H SCHOOL, D I S T R I C T NO. 1 O I went to Denver with my sister in the autumn of 1878. The Denver High School at that time occupied the upper floor of a building, the two lower floors of which housed an elementary school; and on the second floor of the same building was also the office of the superintendent, Aaron Gove. The high school comprised about a hundred and fifty pupils. The teaching staff consisted of the principal, James H . Baker, 1 three women teachers, and myself. I presented myself in the superintendent's office the day after arriving in Denver and was pleasantly received and referred to Mr. Baker, who would explain what my work W a s to be. Baker was ill when I went to call on him, but he insisted on getting up to receive me. He was a N e w Englander from Maine, a graduate of Bates College. He was a large man, and seemed to me somewhat reserved and formal at this first interview. The interview would have been entirely pleasant, however, if I had not received a shock when he told me what classes I was to teach. Baker either did not know or ignored the fact that I had been engaged to teach mathematics and science. He told me that I would teach a class in Cicero, a class in Virgil, a first-year class in French, an advanced class in French, a class in chemistry, and a class in trigonometry, and that Latin composition would replace trigonometry later in the year — six daily classes, and only two of them science and mathematics!
S
1
S o m e years afterwards president of the University of Colorado.
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Although I had not studied Latin in college and had never read a line of Cicero, it did not occur to me to protest against this assignment of the subjects I was to teach or the number of teaching periods; and as nothing had been said about Latin in my interviews with Mr. Gove, I did not want to confess my ignorance of Cicero. It was then the middle of the week. The schools were to open on the following Monday. I left Baker in a state of perturbation. The Virgil I thought I could manage, after a fashion, having studied it in the Ann Arbor High School, as I have mentioned; but what to do about Cicero ("The Manilian Law" was the first oration I should have to deal with) was a disturbing question. A minor difficulty presented itself in the matter of Latin pronunciation. In Ann Arbor the "English pronunciation" had been taught. Baker had adopted the "Roman pronunciation" (i.e., the vowels must have the Italian sound, and the consonants c and g were hard). The pronunciation I soon mastered, however, and before the end of the first week, to satisfy myself that I had done so, I asked Baker to hear me read a page of Latin, and got his approval. But a decent translation of Cicero's orations, to say nothing of a knowledge of the proper historical setting of each of them, was a formidable problem. Fortunately, the introductions to the orations and the explanatory notes in the textbook we used were satisfactory to the pupils (they were easily satisfied, of course), but there remained the problem of translation. I knew that I must resort to an English translation for my own guidance, no matter how reprehensible the use of a "pony" might be under normal circumstances. So, on the afternoon of the day of my interview with Baker, I searched the two or three stores of Denver for "Bohn's" or some other translation of Cicero.
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As luck would have it, there was one copy, and only one, of Bohn to be had, and I bought it. I cannot leave this assignment of work to me without expressing the fervent hope that my experience was unusual, if not exceptional. It is nothing less than cruel to hold a teacher, especially a young teacher, equipped in a certain field, responsible for good work in a field in which his equipment is meager or nil — to say nothing of the injustice done to the pupils. Since, however, the time of departmental organization of high schools had not yet arrived and teachers usually conscientiously attempted the work assigned to them, whatever it was, it is likely that for a long time my assignment was paralleled or approximated in other schools. I have always had a suspicion, also, that Baker had told Gove what would be required of the new teacher needed in the high school. Gove had assumed responsibility in choosing that teacher without fully considering Baker's specifications. Baker himself was a recent arrival — he had been principal of the high school for only a year or two when I arrived — and completely harmonious professional relations between Baker and Gove were not yet as firmly established as they subsequently became. In any case, "someone had blundered," and I was the hapless victim. Incidentally, it is obvious that a high-school principal, charged as he is, and ought to be, with maintaining as good a school as he can, should be required, not merely allowed, to nominate the members of his staff; or, at the very least, to approve nominations made by the superintendent. There is no greater handicap to good school administration, and hence to good schools, than to place a school principal in a position of responsibility without adequate authority to discharge that responsibility; and a school principal who has no voice in the selection of his teachers is subject to just
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that handicap. I am assuming, of course, that the principal is a competent principal. If he is not, then the fault lies with the superintendent who nominated him for appointment to the board of education — or with the board who appointed the principal without requiring the superintendent to nominate him. Boards of education of those days often did just that — and they often still do so — thereby placing their superintendent, who is responsible for the quality of the whole school system, in that position of responsibility without authority which I have condemned. If the superintendent is not competent to discharge this responsibility, the board alone is to blame. N o w it happened that in 1878 Baker was, in most respects, a good principal, and Gove was, in many respects, a good superintendent. A conference between the two for the express purpose of selecting the new teacher needed for the high school should have resulted in the appointment of a teacher with the qualifications required. They probably had a conference, but, as I have already intimated, the chances were that Baker had told Gove that a teacher was needed and, doubtless, what he wanted the teacher to teach. But Gove had gone his own way in making the appointment. Otherwise I might not have been appointed; and my subsequent career would have been quite different from what it was. That I was appointed was ultimately fortunate for me; but the pupils failed to get the instruction in Latin they should have had. A s the Monday arrived on which I was to meet my classes, I approached my duties with no little anxiety. I was to find, however, that not many classes were to meet that day. Nearly the whole forenoon was taken up by Baker, who explained to the pupils, at great length, the rules of the school, with which he had covered most of the blackboard
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on the four walls of the assembly room. This proceeding filled me with some chagrin; it seemed to me a mistaken way to introduce the pupils to what the school had to offer them. But I was to learn that Baker was a strict, even if just, disciplinarian; and that he regarded obedience to the rules of the school an important part of the pupils' education. Most of the rules seemed to me matters not needing explicit comment, which, if infringed, could easily be attended to at the time; and I think so still. In after years I have often thought that the principal of a school too often misses a valuable opportunity at the beginning of the school year, the opportunity, namely, of strengthening by a few words of congratulation the satisfaction the pupils naturally feel in having attained or in being part of the high school (or any school, for that matter) ; of telling the new pupils and reminding the old ones in simple language and with appropriate illustrations how their insight into the world and an incipient command over its intellectual resources are promoted by their studies; and, finally, of assuring them of the growing satisfaction they will feel in the refining influence of a wholesome school life that they and their teachers can work out together. If then some reference to rules seems desirable, such reference should be brief, and it should close with the remark that in such a school few rules are necessary and that these few are intended chiefly for the guidance of the new pupils. Of course, such a speech must not be long; and it must express in spirit and in substance what the principal really believes his school to be or in process of becoming. Its keynotes must be sincerity and restrained but positive enthusiasm. Equally, of course, the subsequent work of the school and the necessary control of the pupils must be permeated by a sympathetic understanding of young people, and a kindly but
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firm discipline, including appropriate punishment necessary.
when
D u r i n g Baker's exposition of the rules I had an opportunity to collect myself. A l s o it w a s fortunate that the classes I met that day were in mathematics and French, subjects that I had pretty well in hand. O f course, I w a s afraid of the pupils, but I soon saw that they were no less apprehensive about me. I left the school that day somewhat encouraged, and looked f o r w a r d to the next day w i t h some composure. A l s o I bent myself to the task of getting some mastery of the L a t i n I was to teach. So the w o r k w e n t on d u r i n g the year, a very important year for m y apprenticeship as a teacher. Fortunately I frequently reviewed m y w o r k and, of course, f o u n d m u c h that I intended to correct or improve in future. F o r about half of the year I was often discouraged and was inclined to m a k e up m y m i n d that I w o u l d not continue to teach; but later I began to find that I was really interested in teaching and toward the end of the year looked f o r w a r d to the next year (if I were reappointed) w i t h something approaching enthusiasm. I was reappointed, w i t h a small increase in salary; but as will presently appear, I left the h i g h school early in the a u t u m n of 1879. M e a n w h i l e I had become decidedly interested in one of m y pupils, at that time at the fascinating age of sixteen and a very attractive y o u n g person. In short, she, Miss Lottie (Charlotte) Hoskins, w a s all that I had imagined m y future w i f e w o u l d be, should I ever be fortunate e n o u g h to have a w i f e . B y the end of the year w e were engaged, although w e both k n e w that it w o u l d be some time before w e could be married.
CHAPTER V U N I V E R S I T Y O F C O L O R A D O , 1879-1880 A N D 1881-1886 A R L Y in the autumn of 1879 the teacher of mathematics in the University of Colorado at Boulder resigned. Having consulted Messrs. Baker and Gove, I applied for the position and with other candidates was asked by the regents of the university to appear before them on a given date in Denver. I have never forgotten that interview with the regents. W e candidates (about a dozen) were a miscellaneous lot. T h e president of the university was then Dr. Joseph A. Sewall, and he naturally took charge of the proceedings. T h e candidates were called in one at a time. W h e n my turn came, it seemed to me that the regents did not know just what they wanted to find out about me. After some preliminary questions about my age and my college, one of them asked if I was competent to teach a class in cryptogamic botany! I had had one course in that subject at Ann Arbor; and with the confidence of youth and no undue modesty, I affirmed that I was. But I suggested that as the vacancy under consideration was in mathematics, I should be glad to speak of my qualifications to teach mathematics, and to state my references without troubling them to ask questions. I suppose I feared that they might ask my qualifications to teach something for which my preparation was even more slender than for cryptogamic botany. T h e regents assented to my suggestion, and for a few minutes I had the floor. As I have already said, the candidates were a miscellaneous lot; some of them were
E
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not even college graduates. Perhaps I seemed to the regents the least objectionable. Anyhow, I got the job. In those early days (the university was less than two years old) there was only one university building. The president and his family lived on the first floor; the chapel was also on that floor; and the library, a respectable library for so young an institution, was on the second floor. The rest of the building was occupied by classrooms and by a small and poorly equipped chemistry laboratory. The preparatory department — a high school — was much the larger part of the university, but college work had begun in several departments. After some years, the university was able to discontinue the preparatory department, and it was then well started on its career of progressive usefulness. Its progress was most marked, after a few years, under the presidency of James H . Baker, with whom I had begun my teaching when he was principal of the Denver High School. Baker became president of the university some years after I had left the state. As I have already said, he challenged my respect from the start. The friendship which began when I first came to Denver was strengthened as the years went on. Colorado owes him much. He was devoted to his profession; he was a courageous and tireless worker for education in Colorado, where his lot was cast; and he also became an outstanding figure in the educational affairs of the country. He always elicited respect, whether speaking or writing, and his influence was always on the side of the right, as he saw it. The little city of Boulder (much larger now than it was in 1879) is situated at the mouth of Boulder Canyon, about forty miles north and a little east of Denver. Immediately to the west of the city rise the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. At this point those foothills, themselves consisting of
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strata of red Jura Trias sandstone and leaning against the higher mountains beyond, rise to a height of two to three thousand feet above the plain, and, together with those mountains and the snowy range some forty miles away, but plainly visible as one approaches Boulder, form a striking background for Boulder and the university. I was to become very familiar with that whole region and with the rolling plains between Boulder and Denver. As soon as I was established in Boulder, I bought a saddle horse, and rode about the region nearly every afternoon, sometimes alone, sometimes with a colleague, Professor Isaac Dennett (Latin); and when I went to Denver, I usually went on horseback, too. The train, on a rather roundabout route, took nearly four hours to reach Denver; across country (there were few fences in those days), on horseback, I could arrive in Denver, easily, in less than three hours. I enjoyed the trips to Denver; sed retro! I also walked on the plains and often climbed the foothills, and took many trips to the falls of Boulder Creek, about a dozen miles up Boulder Canyon. With congenial subjects to teach (mathematics, chiefly, and physics; and an occasional class in some other field) I enjoyed my teaching in the university from the start. I also found there, in the person of Professor Dennett, already mentioned, one of the best friendships of my life, a friendship unfortunately cut short by Dennett's death only a few years after I left Colorado. Dennett was, like my friend Baker, a Maine man, and had been a classmate of Baker's in Bates College, where they both had graduated only three or four years before I met them. In some respects they were much alike; in others, very different. While Baker was intentionally austere and, on occasion, somewhat pompous in bearing, Dennett was, on a
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similar occasion, merely reserved and earnest. Both were men of the highest integrity, devoted to their profession and courageous and persistent in promoting its advancement, but Dennett lacked austerity entirely and was never pompous. H e was always companionable, while Baker was sometimes fairly unapproachable. I learned a great deal from both men; but to Dennett I owe a growth in maturity that had been sadly lacking, although I was already twentyfour years old when our association began. I became a member of Dennett's household not long after I came to Boulder. And it was owing to that circumstance that his association with me was continuous and influential. And to his influence I am happy to remember that Mrs. Dennett added her own. She was a New England woman of refinement and poise, and helped my development in her own way. She also died young, some years before her husband's death. One illustration of my boyishness early in my stay with the Dennetts will suffice. I have already said that I used to have a mild interest in snakes, besides my interest in nature generally. From my walks and rides about Boulder I often brought home some mineral, plant, or small animal for further examination. On one occasion I brought home a couple of snakes and kept them in my room without saying anything about them. Across the hall from my room, on the second floor, was the maid's room. She was a woman past middle life and of ample proportions. As I went out one afternoon I left my door ajar. One of my snakes was a fine Eutaenia, a yard or so long. The maid was reading, seated in a large armchair. I had not gone far when I heard screams, followed by the sound of someone half falling, half running downstairs. Suspecting what had happened, I returned to the house and found both the maid and the
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Dennett family much excited. I found that my Eutaenia had left my room on an exploring expedition, had gone into the maid's room, and was not discovered by the maid until she looked down from her reading; then she saw him wriggling, partly under her chair. As the maid ran and fell downstairs, she had noticed that the door of my room was not closed. It availed me nothing to say that the snake was harmless, as indeed it was. I had been guilty of intentionally letting the snake escape to go wherever he might be inclined to go. In her haste the maid had hurt herself when she fled downstairs. I was in for it. Then followed a conversation with the Dennetts (the snake had been retrieved by me meanwhile and safely confined in a box in my room), and practical jokes have had no attraction for me ever since. Of course, I did what I could to appease the maid. Some days after I arrived in Boulder, while looking for a place to eat, I noticed a basement sign, "Louis Ruffier, Restaurateur," and on investigation I found Louis Ruffier to be an intelligent and well-educated man who kept a tiptop little restaurant. But more important than the food I obtained there were conversations with Louis, who, when he found that I wanted to learn to speak French, talked to me in that language, and gave me an opportunity to talk to him as well as I could. As time went on we became friends, and through him I was able to acquire a moderate ability in spoken French. He was so well acquainted with French history and literature, and so much of a gentleman, that I was interested in his personal history. He told me that he was a graduate of the Lycée Louis le Grand in Paris, and that he had been in the United States for some years; but I learned nothing more about him, since he evidently did not care to tell me more. I have a vivid recollection of
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his striding to and fro in his restaurant when he and I were alone there, declaiming prose or poetry, or setting forth some episode in history — all in French, of course; and sometimes becoming much excited and gesticulating vigorously, as is the custom of his race, and for a time giving me no chance to get in a word. Then he would stop suddenly and, firing a question at me, would listen carefully and correct my mistakes. We had grand times together. Shortly afterwards Louis went away, and I never knew what became of him. In the early spring I was told that I was to be reappointed as instructor in mathematics, and some agreeable things were said about me generally; but no mention was made of promotion, or of an increase in salary ($1,200). So, although I liked my work and the new friends I had made, I was dissatisfied and decided to resign, although I did not declare my intention at the time. While teaching in Denver I had found a friend in a young and socially prominent man who was a clerk in the drugstore where I had served my apprenticeship years before. He was anxious to go into business for himself but lacked the necessary capital. On one of my visits to Denver we had considered the possibility of forming a partnership to carry on a drug business. I had no money either, but I was fairly certain that I could borrow enough to enable us to buy a store if one should be offered for sale. It happened that while I was intending to resign my post in the university, my friend learned of a drugstore with a good reputation that was for sale; and on my next trip to Denver we decided to join forces, buy the store, and carry on the business under the firm name of Scholtz and Hanus; he to contribute his established reputation as a druggist, and the further asset of a large acquaintance among the "right"
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people of Denver, and I to secure most of the necessary capital. When I announced to President Sewall my intention to resign, he seemed disturbed and hoped that my decision was not final, and presently I had a call from the local regent, who endeavored to dissuade me from my intention. But I was not to be turned from my purpose. So, once more, what had promised to be the beginning of my life career as a teacher was interrupted. Soon after the end of the college year I was again established in Denver, this time as a druggist carrying on my own store, for I had been successful in borrowing the capital required for the venture which Scholtz and I had planned. As a business venture our store was decidedly successful. But I found before long that I should not be satisfied to remain in business. And before a year had passed I decided to return to teaching. Luck was with me. The man who had taken my place at the university was to leave at the end of the college year. So I entered into correspondence with the university authorities, suggesting that I should be glad to return to the university if they would appoint me full professor of mathematics, with the corresponding salary. They acted favorably on my suggestion, and in the autumn I was again in Boulder with the intention of making teaching my lifework. Scholtz and I dissolved our partnership after Scholtz had arranged to satisfy our creditors and to carry on the business by himself. During the year we had been able to pay off half (about $4,000) of the money we had borrowed; and on the basis of that financial success, Scholtz had no difficulty in borrowing enough to repay the remaining capital that I had borrowed. So I left business life with satisfaction. I cannot regret, however, that I have had, all told, nearly
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six years of business experience. It has served me in good stead in my subsequent very different career. My partner, Scholtz, was for a time successful, and in after years owned a chain of drugstores in Colorado. However, the most important event of the year 1880-1881 for me was not the financial success of the drug business. It was something entirely different. On August 10, 1881, Miss Lottie Hoskins and I were married; and our married life has continued ever since, entailing many blessings not measurable in money. We have one daughter, Mrs. E. C. Whiting, one granddaughter, Mrs. W. P. Reed, and a great-grandson, Peter Whiting Reed, now more than five years old. Once more established in Boulder, and realizing that I was at last launched on my permanent career as a teacher, I addressed myself to my work with appropriate energy and no little enthusiasm. My first task was to deepen and extend my knowledge of mathematics. I had taken all the mathematics that was offered at Ann Arbor when I was in college; but as plane analytics and a first course in calculus constituted all the advanced mathematics (besides "advanced algebra") available, I naturally turned to those subjects with a view to obtaining a more satisfactory command of them. Although I had been a successful student of mathematics in college, I had always found mathematics difficult; and the difficulties continued as I proceeded, now that I was studying by myself. I went on with my studies, however, and achieved a moderate success. In the course of my reading of Frost's Solid Geometry (solid analytics) a book probably now superseded, and perhaps out of print, I encountered the phrase, "the following result is best expressed with the help of the determinant," etc. Now, I had never heard of a determinant. So I wrote to my pro-
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fessor in Ann Arbor to find out how I could learn what a determinant is. In reply, I was referred to the last chapter of Todhunter's Theory of Equations. I procured that book without delay; but I found the chapter on determinants more unnecessarily obscure than Todhunter's books usually are. Further investigation, however, finally brought to light Muir's Determinants, and I found that book a godsend. After several years of further study, I wrote and published Elements of Determinants — the first American book on determinants.1 In the university I taught everything from elementary algebra and geometry in the preparatory department to analytics and calculus in the college. After a few years, a naval officer was assigned to the university for various duties, chief of which was military drill; but he also taught the mathematics in the preparatory department, and I taught only college classes. During the year 1882-1883 I was asked to teach geology to a college class, because I was the only teacher in the university who had studied that subject. When I met the class I told them that I had had only one course in geology at college, but, if they were willing, we would study the subject together; and so the work began. The natural environment of the university offered a favorable opportunity to study geology in the field, and we took full advantage of that opportunity. Among the students was an able young man who had never studied geology but who soon distanced all the rest of us. In addition to the field work done by the whole class, this young man and I often went geologizing on Saturday afternoons. On one of those Saturday excursions, my companion found an exceptionally fine 1
Boston: Ginn and Company, 1886.
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fossil which we were afterwards unable to identify with the books we had at the university. So we sent this fossil to Dr. James Hall, at that time New York state geologist. In due time Dr. Hall replied, naming the fossil for us and thanking us for the beautiful specimen — which we never saw again. The student of whom I have been speaking was Timothy W . Stanton, whose brilliant career as a geologist I have always been happy to think I had a small part in starting. Without the elementary course in geology at the University of Colorado so many years ago Dr. Stanton might not have discovered himself. He has been for many years in the service of the national government as a geologist, and since 1932 he has been chief geologist of the United States Geological Survey. It was about 1884, I think, that I first became interested in "teachers' institutes" held in several counties of Colorado and throughout the West, generally. These institutes were intended to help teachers in service, elementary-school teachers, chiefly. A n institute was really a short-term normal school lasting two or three weeks. The institutes were makeshifts, of course; but, since most teachers of that time had had no training at all for their work, they undoubtedly were helpful. In 1885, and again in 1886,1 was asked to conduct an institute in a neighboring county. This I did, and was impressed with both the earnestness of the teachers in attendance and their dire need of help. It was necessary to give the teachers instruction in the studies they had to teach — English, history, geography, etc., of which their command was, in many cases, rudimentary. Such instruction in my institutes, at least, was so planned that instruction in methods of teaching paralleled the instruction in subject matter. There was little time or opportunity to deal with the larger problems of education, but I attempted a daily
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lecture on that subject at the opening of each session. As I myself was only beginning to organize my ideas about education, the lectures must have been superficial. But whatever the institute students got from them, those lectures were good for me. During the years 1881-1886 I visited schools as often as I could, to familiarize myself with school conditions as they actually were. At first I was interested chiefly in the teaching of mathematics, but I soon became alive to the importance of school activities as a whole. And as time went on I found myself much more interested in studying schools than I was in studying mathematics. And that interest became stronger daily. In 1883 I obtained a leave of absence for the month of December to visit colleges and schools in the East. I went straight to Boston, first of all, and spent a profitable ten days or so, visiting classes in mathematiçs in Harvard College, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and several Boston high schools; then on to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. A t Johns Hopkins I was just in time to attend a farewell reception in honor of Professor J. J. Sylvester, who was returning to England after several years of stimulating teaching, and especially of writing, in the higher reaches of mathematics. I was naturally eager to take note of Sylvester's personality, profoundly impressed, as I had been, with both his and Professor Arthur Cayley's contributions to the American Journal of Mathematics founded by Sylvester, which I had been trying to read (unsuccessfully). When Sylvester rose to reply to the addresses, which, naturally, had been very laudatory, I was all agog with interest. He was a small man, almost bald, with only a fringe of hair at the base of his skull; he had a hesitant manner and also stuttered a little. Of course, I do not remember much of
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what he said. But I do remember that he said in his hesitant, slightly stuttering way, "It h-has been s-said that I was leaving Johns Hopkins because I am too b-big for the place. That's not so at a-all; I'm leaving because the p-place is too b-big for me." Actually, it was known that he wanted to be in England with Cayley. At Johns Hopkins University, I met, also, Professor W . E . Story and Dr. Fabian Franklin; and from the latter I obtained much useful information. Some time after my return to Colorado, while I was writing my book on determinants, I thought I had discovered a new way of writing out the value of any determinant, and I naturally wanted to publish it. So I sent my "proof" to Professor Franklin, asking him if it was worth publishing. He replied tactfully but definitely that my "proof" was unnecessary, as the process was "obvious" and well known. That ended my endeavor to be a mathematician. For although I enjoyed teaching mathematics (that someone else had produced), I had long suspected that I was not a mathematician and would never become one. Moreover, I was beginning to realize that my real interest lay in the study of education, and not especially in any of the conventional academic studies. A t Harvard I had the good fortune to meet Professor B. O. Pierce early in my visits to classrooms. (I had called on President Eliot on my arrival at the university, and he had given me a card of introduction to the professors whose classes I wanted to visit.) Professor Peirce gave me directions which facilitated my purposes while in Cambridge and took time to talk with me at length about my work and plans. He was most helpful, and my indebtedness to him is great. He was a brilliant mathematician and physicist, and his early death deprived Harvard University of one of its most respected and most useful men. Besides
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Professor Peirce, I was most impressed by Professor W . E . Byerly. He was an excellent teacher of mathematics, beloved by students and colleagues. I watched him teach a class in calculus with admiration, and determined to incorporate in my own teaching something of what I had seen. A t the Institute of Technology I visited Professor John D. Runkle's classes, and in him found another good teacher. He was also interested in a problem of education lying outside the field of his special interest, namely, the "manual element" in education, and I got from him my own first interest in that field. I met, also, Mr. James P. Munro, then secretary or registrar of the institute, whom in later years I was to know as a colleague in the propaganda for industrial education, under state auspices, in Massachusetts, and a writer on many phases of education. The Boston high schools impressed me chiefly by their large attendance. I had never before seen such large high schools. I found the teaching good, fair, and indifferent, as in other high schools I had visited. Comparing the pupils of the Boston Latin School for boys of that time with the pupils of a later day, one could not fail to be impressed by the change in the origin of the pupils. A teacher of that school said to me some years later, after I had begun my work at Harvard University, "The 'sealskin' families no longer send their children to this school." That is only partially true; but it is true that most of the children of the older or well-to-do Boston families are now found in the private and endowed schools of Boston and vicinity, and not in the public schools. And, in my judgment, that is not an advantage to the public schools. When a considerable proportion of the families of a community — not by any means, in these days, the older families
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only — send their children to private schools, it is inevitable that their active interest in the public schools should decline; and since such families are or can be influential members of the community, the withdrawal of their interest in the public schools usually entails the loss of a watchful attitude on their part toward the public-school system; and the loss of such an attitude easily entails a serious loss in the quality of those schools, to the great disadvantage of the community as a whole. Naturally every thoughtful parent, if he can afford it, will send his children to the school which, all things considered, is in his judgment the better or the best school. It therefore behooves all public-spirited citizens who care for the public schools to see to it that those schools are the best schools available to the whole community. Without the leadership of the more cultivated and the influential members of the community, that is a large order! What is true of Boston in this respect is true, more or less, of our larger cities. The equipment, the courses of study, and the instruction are much better in the public schools than they used to be; and, in general, they are generally as good as and often better than in the private schools. But there is little doubt that the older atmosphere of cultivation and refinement that used to prevail in the public schools is too often lacking in them today. And this last defect of the public schools is, in my judgment, the principal reason why so many parents prefer private to public schools for their children. It seems likely that public schools will continue to be regarded, as they have been for many decades, as a necessary collective charge on our democratic society. That being so, it is a pity that all members of a community do not feel justified for one reason or another in taking advantage of them, but put themselves to large expense to secure for their children the education that they
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feel the public schools do not afford. That this is so, seems to me to involve a challenge to us all. There is another aspect of the private schools, including, of course, parochial schools, that deserves serious consideration. The schools of a community are, or should be, unifying influences. To segregate a considerable proportion of children, especially of adolescents, in schools, each ministering to a particular section of society, for social or ecclesiastical reasons, and therefore not equally accessible to all, is, to my mind, to cultivate a divisive, not a unifying influence in our society. This does not mean that private schools should be abolished. But they should be made unnecessary. Make the public secular schools so good that no other school can compete with them. The only schools that might not be affected by such improvement of the public schools are the parochial schools, Catholic and Protestant; those schools and their sponsors might be unwilling to surrender their ecclesiastical — I do not say religious — advantages, no matter how superior the public schools are in all other respects. For the present, we must recognize certain real superiorities in many private schools; and we must gratefully acknowledge that some of them render exceptional service in educational experimentation that public schools would find it difficult, if not impossible, to undertake and carry on. Back again in Colorado, I went on with my work with renewed interest and more determined than ever to master determinants. The naval officer to whom I have already referred (Lieut. W . F. C. Hassan) and I used to meet at the university on Saturdays to study determinants together; and after making some progress we decided that we would write a book. But Hassan's interests were really elsewhere, and after two or three months he deserted me, and I pur-
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sued my studies alone. In due time I wrote and published (1886) the first American book on determinants, to which reference has already been made. For a book of its kind, it had a modest success. I was well aware that it was largely a compilation and not an original treatise in any sense, except in its presentation of the subject matter. It had a small sale, however, for a good many years, doubtless because, as I have said, it was the first American book in that particular field. During the years just reviewed, I was sent occasionally, alone or with a colleague, by the university to various communities in the state to awaken or help to strengthen the interest of the people in their state university. One of those trips took me to Silverton and Lake City among the marvellous mountains of the San Juan River region in the southwestern part of the state. That region is now accessible by rail, but in my time a considerable part of the trip had to be made by coach. T h e site and surroundings of the little city of Silverton are both grand and startlingly picturesque. It lies on a small but high plateau entirely surrounded by huge precipitous mountains, some of them brilliant with red, orange, and yellow coloring similar to the coloring of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River in Arizona. I do not remember that those trips in the interest of the university achieved any definite results so far as recruiting students was concerned. But I hope they helped. Also during the eighties, some of my colleagues and I organized a course of public lectures to be given by university professors on the invitation of any community willing to pay the traveling expenses of the lecturers. I was invited to lecture two or three times, but I don't remember that my lectures awakened much enthusiasm. My recollection is that in general there was no great demand for our
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lectures and that the enterprise was abandoned after two or three years. In those days, Boulder had no liberal church, although there were several evangelical churches and a Roman Catholic church. It seemed to me and to some other citizens of Boulder that we ought to have a liberal church in the city. Accordingly, a committee was organized to canvass the community to see if there was sufficient demand to support a Unitarian church. I was appointed a committee of one to undertake the canvass. With the help of one of the most prominent and influential citizens (Col. Ivers Phillips, a Massachusetts man), and a liberal subscription by him and my own subscription, the canvass began. In a short time, it appeared that there were enough persons interested in the establishment of a Unitarian church to guarantee the success of the undertaking. So the church w¿s founded with the Rev. Thomas Van Ness (later minister of the Second Church in Boston and afterwards of a church in Brookline) as minister. The church flourished for some time. Then Mr. V a n Ness accepted a call to the Unitarian church in Denver, and we were left without a minister. But not for long. We secured the Rev. George L . Stowell (a Harvard graduate) for our minister, and the church continued to flourish until Mr. Stowell returned to Massachusetts in 1886. That same year I also left Boulder for Denver, and I lost touch with the Boulder people, and do not know what finally befell the church. Since the little city of Boulder was thrown very much on its own resources for intellectual diversion (apart from the university), it was natural that it should have a "literary society." This society during my time was a fairly large and flourishing organization, holding fortnightly meetings. One of the most active leaders in this society was an able
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lawyer, S. A . Giffin, a graduate of Middlebury College; and very soon after our arrival in Boulder, the Giffins and the Hanuses became and remained warm friends. Later, Giffin was the local member of the Board of Regents of the university; but that was after I had left Boulder. But our most congenial friends were the Braces. Dr. Brace was the leading physician of Boulder, and incidentally mayor of the city; and I had known Mrs. Brace when she was Miss Mabel Maxwell, a student at the University of Michigan in my own college days. T h e friendship with the Braces founded in Boulder was continued when both families moved to Denver and later to the East. Although the Braces moved to N e w York City, and we to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and although death deprived us of Dr. Brace not long ago, our friendship with the Brace family has continued happily unbroken to the present day (1936). M y own participation in the Boulder "fortnightly" was not conspicuous, although I presented one or two papers on the works of Wordsworth. I have not yet mentioned that my friend Dennett was an ardent Wordsworthian, and that through him I became interested in Wordsworth's poetry, especially in " T h e Excursion." I remember only one other poem which, in my younger days, affected me as profoundly as Wordsworth's "Excursion" did. That poem was Edwin Arnold's "Light of Asia," probably not much read nowadays, but in the eighties it had a great vogue, at least among the people with whom I came in contact. For some time I went about with " T h e Light of Asia" in my pocket and before long had much of the poem by heart. Some others of my generation may remember that " T h e Light of Asia" depicts the career of Buddha, and I was fascinated, almost possessed, by it. But all that belongs to an earlier time. In Boulder I became a devotee of Wordsworth, par-
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ticularly of "The Excursion," as I have already said. On many a late afternoon, seated on a rocky eminence in the foothills just back of Boulder, I read "The Excursion." Wordsworth's fine descriptions of nature, especially when read amid such ideal scenery, were an inspiration and a delight to me. My reading finished for the time, I, like the Wanderer, In solitude returning, saw the hills Grow larger in the darkness. I am still devoted to Wordsworth. It was during the eighties, also, that I first became acquainted with some of the great German classics — the writings of Goethe, Schiller, and Lessing. These I read aloud to my mother when she visited us from time to time in Boulder. She had never acquired a strong command of the English language, though she spoke it readily enough for ordinary conversational purposes; and she welcomed the opportunity to refresh her own recollection of the classics of her mother tongue, while enjoying my introduction to them as much as I did. In the course of her visits we read a considerable part of the writings of the authors I have named. Unfortunately I have had little time in after days to carry farther my reading of German classics. I insert here an experience or two that occurred earlier. During the summer vacation of 1879 I went on an extensive camping trip with four other men and two boys (the boys were taken along for "fatigue duty," but they failed us in that) to the southwestern part of Colorado. The general plan of our trip was to follow the Rio Grande River from a point in San Luis Park, Alamosa (the terminus at that time of the Rio Grande Railroad), to its source; to cross
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the "Snowy Range" there, and to return to Alamosa by another route. W e estimated that our trip would cover about five hundred miles, and we knew that the country through which we planned to travel was mostly uninhabited, mountainous, and largely roadless. W e expected the trip to require about six weeks. In Alamosa we bought a covered wagon, a team of horses, and a saddle pony. The wagon was needed to carry our stock of provisions (mostly canned beans). For fish and meat we intended to depend on the fish we should catch and the deer to be shot by the two self-elected Nimrods in our party. The wagon was to serve also as sleeping quarters for at least two of the party; we had a fairly large tent, but it proved too small to serve the whole party at one time. The saddle pony was intended for each member of the party, in turn, for an hour's ride, throughout the trip; for we knew that all of us would have to walk most of the time, even when going down grade — of which, once we were under way, there seemed to be very little. The first day, after completing our purchases, we camped and spent the night on the bank of the Rio Grande, just outside Alamosa. In the evening we had our first experience with the hordes of mosquitoes which from that time forward, until about ten o'clock every evening, pestered us on the entire trip, except when we were above timber line on the mountains. While fighting mosquitoes on that first evening, we allotted the work to be done by each member of the party. One man was to care for the horses; another was to pack and unpack the tent, and set it up, for we expected to move toward our goal every day; another was cook; another was to supply the camp with wood and water (this was my job) ; a fifth was to be generally helpful as help was needed; and the boys were to wash dishes and
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see that everything was kept clean during our stay in camp and that all camping utensils were carefully cleaned and loaded when we broke camp in the morning. As I have already intimated, the boys were a disappointment. They were careless, untidy, and generally unsatisfactory, although they did pretty well the first few days. The men were to take turns in selecting a camping site, each man to have that assignment for one day, and to be free to find fault with any other man when it was the other man's turn. The Rio Grande was a broad stream at Alamosa. But it narrowed as we proceeded up stream and after a couple of days was less than fifty feet wide; and it grew narrower every day, often rushing through deep gorges. It was crowded with trout, many of them eight inches or more long, and heavy in proportion. They were particularly numerous in the bends of the river, so numerous, in fact, that they could have been scooped up with a net, if we had had one; and if our fishermen, of whom we had two in the party, had deigned to secure them that way. I never cared to fish. But my friend Baker, of whom I have spoken, was one of our party, and was an ardent and successful fisherman. Incited thereto by Baker's success, as I saw him drag one big trout after another from the river, I decided to try my luck. But the perverse fish would not rise to my bait; and after some time, having caught only two fish while Baker had landed a dozen or more, I gave it up in disgust. During the six weeks of our trip I occasionally tried my luck at fishing, but I landed just six fish in six weeks. I have never fished again. More fish were caught every day than we could eat at one meal. But we always cooked them all, and those we did not eat were stowed away and eaten cold. The altitude and the dry air enabled us to keep them fresh.
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As I have said, my job was to keep the camp supplied with wood and water. As we often camped high above the river on the side of a mountain, my task was not always an easy one. T o bring water for a group of seven persons from the river, often a thousand or fifteen hundred feet below our camp, meant hard climbing with a pail of water in each hand. And that was not the worst of it. It never seemed to occur to most of my companions that the water should be used economically, considering the labor often expended in procuring it. Of course, I protested against the lavish use of water under such circumstances, and for a little while after the protest the worst offenders were more considerate, but it was not long before there was a relapse into former wastefulness. Finally I called a council of the whole party to consider my difficulty, and thereafter they were more reasonable in the use of water whenever it was hard to get. I encountered a similar difficulty about the wood supply for the camp. The higher we ascended, the scarcer was the wood. At last I had recourse to a simple device. During the day when I saw near the road a likely small dead tree or dead branches, I asked the driver to stop until I could tie the tree or branches to the rear of the wagon; and thus the wood was dragged to camp. That worked very well until we camped one evening above timber line. W e had been traveling all day over a very steep and very bad road through stunted and scrubby timber, and I had seen no pieces of dead wood, except a few small branches and twigs. These I had collected and put in the wagon; but it turned out that when we made camp that night, with snow banks all about us, there was barely wood enough to cook our supper, and no wood for an evening fire. That was a bad night for all of us. The ground was so steep that we had to place rocks at our feet in the tent to
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keep from sliding down hill as we slept. And during the night a howling snowstorm added to our discomfort. In the morning there was no wood for heating water to wash in, or for cooking. It was evident that the combined efforts of the whole party would be needed to climb down hill for a mile or two to collect enough wood for our immediate needs. That we did; and in an hour or so we had a small fire — small, but large enough for our purposes. Thereafter, when near timber line, I saw to it that we had a supply of wood long before reaching a camping place.· It was not altogether my fault that we had no wood on the occasion I have described. On our way up the mountain we frequently had to contend with mud holes into which the wheels of the wagon sank to the hubs; and we all had to put our shoulders to the wheel to get through. We were so much occupied in this way that no one noticed that we were leaving the region of wood; hence our predicament about dark, when we finally reached a possible camping place above timber line. The next morning we left the snow banks from which the Rio Grande begins its long course to the Gulf and after an hour's climb crossed over Stony Pass and began the descent into the valley of Las Animas River, a tributary of the Colorado River. We had crossed the Continental Divide at about thirteen thousand feet. Although we were now descending to lower levels, that was not always apparent to us, for we had many places of up-grade to traverse in our descent, and many mud holes which required the efforts of the entire party to negotiate. About the time we arrived at timber line, or soon afterward, I have forgotten which, our "road" ended; and from there on we had to follow a rather narrow trail, sometimes very narrow, to our destination, still some distance ahead. W e left our wagon
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at this point and, packing our most important belongings on the backs of our horses, we picked our way along the trail to Rico, a new and at that time a small but flourishing mining town. Two of our party had friends at Rico who welcomed us and took us to their shack to entertain us while we were there. The wooden shack or cabin they inhabited boasted two stories. The upper story consisted of one fairly large room without furniture of any kind, and there our entire party were invited to make themselves at home. With our coats for pillows and our blankets for covering we slept indoors for the first time in about three weeks. The lower story consisted of one large room for all household purposes, but it had a small lean-to of one room, which contained a bed and, to my surprise, a small but excellent collection of English, French, and German books. The occupant of the room and owner of the books was John Cotton Dana, at the time engaged in surveying claims for the miners of Rico; but he evidently did not regard surveying as his permanent occupation. I was to know him in after years as the librarian of the public library of Newark, New Jersey, where he distinguished himself as one of the outstanding librarians of the country. Although our sleeping quarters in Rico were primitive, in other respects we were well cared for. The food was good and plentiful, and we enjoyed the first venison during our trip. (Our Nimrods had not failed to try to provide us with venison, but they had been and continued to be unsuccessful.) We also enjoyed real bread, to which we had been strangers for some time, and other food which we had not eaten during most of our trip. The food supply of Rico was all the more remarkable because everything from butter to flour and from kerosene to stoves had to be brought
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in on the backs of pack animals. Some valuable silver mines had been discovered at and about Rico, and the little settlement was experiencing a short-lived boom. After a few days in Rico we began our return trip to Alamosa, going down the Animas River to Silverton, mentioned above; and going east we crossed the Continental Divide by way of the Toltec Gorge. Our crossing the Divide on this return trip was a simple matter. At the point of crossing, it was several thousand feet lower than where we had crossed it on our outward trip. The Toltec Gorge was a wonderful chasm of grandeur and beauty. Beyond that gorge Pagosa Springs gave me my first sight of hot water issuing from the earth. But the surroundings were not attractive. I have been told that Pagosa Springs is now an attractive watering place and that there are many visitors every year. In due time we were again in San Luis Park, and nearing Alamosa. The return trip had been uneventful and lacked, for the most part, the gorgeous mountain scenery we had had on our outward journey. A t Alamosa we disposed of our equipment, and boarded the train for Denver; our trip was over. It had been a strenuous and rough outing. But it was thoroughly enjoyed by all of us. I had gained closer and more intimate acquaintance with the grandeur and picturesqueness of the Colorado mountains, and my memory was permanently enriched by what I had seen. Strengthened muscles and a heavy coat of tan were incidental advantages. During the summer vacation of 1880 I joined a party of surveyors charged with surveying a spur of the Union Pacific Railroad from the main line to Fairplay in South Park. South Park, like San Luis Park, and every other mountain "park" of Colorado, is an elevated plateau many
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square miles in area, surrounded by high mountains. I was only a lineman; but, incidentally, I acquired some practical knowledge of railroad surveying in general. The surveyors had expected their work to occupy several weeks, but for some reason not disclosed to us at the time the work was discontinued after a much shorter time, and the party was disbanded. So I was left adrift in Fairplay, which offered no attractions for a prolonged stay. Over the mountains (over Mosquito Pass, twelve thousand feet) was Leadville, about twenty miles away; at that time it was one of the most celebrated mining towns in the United States. Naturally, I wanted to see Leadville, but there was no regular transportation service from Fairplay to Leadville. After some delay I hired a saddle horse to take me over the Pass, the livery stable man from whom I had hired the horse having said he was willing that I should send the horse back to Fairplay by someone who would agree to deliver him to his owner. I started on the trail up the mountain. All went well until I reached the top of the Pass. There I was overtaken by a driving snowstorm so dense that I could not see the trail. For about an hour I did not attempt to guide the horse, and he brought me safely through the storm and to Leadville. There a difficulty declared itself at once. H o w was I to care for my horse? I found no one going back to Fairplay that day. Finally I arranged with one of the livery stables, where I had made inquiry, to board my horse until I could send him to Fairplay, as agreed; and meanwhile the livery stable was to let the horse to pay for his keep. As the regular charge for boarding a saddle horse was four dollars a day, I was well satisfied with this arrangement. In two or three days a man appeared who was more than willing to ride the horse back to Fairplay, and I had
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no further responsibility for him, though I parted from him with regret. He had served me well. As I had very little money, I sought shelter in one of the many lodging houses in Leadville. They were all alike, consisting of logs up to a height of several feet, and a canvas top; and inside they were furnished with bunks along the walls, one over the other like the berths in a sleeping car. But that was the only resemblance to a sleeping car they had. On the second day I sought and found an acquaintance in Leadville (Frank Gove, brother of Superintendent Gove of Denver) who, I knew, was preparing to return to Denver after spending some weeks as a surveyor in Leadville. Leadville had at that time about ten thousand inhabitants and was a wild and booming mining town. Many of the dwelling houses were temporary structures, and the business section was crowded with gambling "hells" and saloons. I did not care to stay long after visiting two or three of the principal mines. But how was I to get to Denver with only a few dollars in my pocket? My wages for the work done with the surveying party were to be paid in Denver on the first of the next month. I held a consultation with Frank Gove. It appeared that he also was without funds. But he knew where he could borrow enough money to buy a broncho, for we wanted to return to Denver on horseback. He also told me that he knew the cashier of the First National Bank of Leadville, whose name was Clemes. Now Clemes had been a boyhood friend in Mineral Point, but we had not met for many years. However, I needed money. If I could persuade the bank, through Clemes, to lend me fifty dollars I too could buy a broncho and my share of very simple camp equipment (we intended to sleep in the open, wrapped in our blankets),
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and we should be ready to start. I called on Ciernes; he lent me the money! I bought a fine little broncho, and, four days after I arrived in Leadville, Gove and I were on our way. Our route led almost directly south, through South Park, and emerged from South Park by way of a splendid gorge leading past Manitou and Colorado City to Colorado Springs. W e knew that there were a few ranches on our route where raw food could probably be procured. We had a frying pan, a coffee pot, and two drinking cups. We were also supplied with blankets. The first day we traveled about sixty miles. W e had bought eggs and milk at a ranch, and decided to camp at about eight o'clock in the evening. I was not much accustomed to riding, so I experienced even more difficulty in dismounting than I had about two o'clock, when we had stopped for our midday meal. Our camp was on the bank of a small stream. After supper (taken standing), I wrapped myself in my blanket and immediately forgot my troubles in sound sleep. By six o'clock the next morning we were stirring and after breakfast mounted our horses, not without groans, and pursued our way. That whole day was torture for me, but, as Gove did not seem to be uncomfortable, I suffered in silence. And I suffered all the more because, during a good part of the afternoon, we were riding downhill. That evening we arrived in Colorado City and proceeded at once to a livery stable. There, after arranging to have our horses cared for, I tumbled down on the hay and was lost to the world until eight o'clock the next morning. I knew very little about horses, and it was not until some time later that I realized how we had abused our horses as well as ourselves during the trip from Leadville to Colorado City. I have always felt ashamed of that. Oddly enough,
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when I awoke the next morning, I did not feel so sore as I had the day before. And on that day we rode about the region of Manitou and visited the renowned "Garden of the Gods." I could enjoy that day as I had not enjoyed the two preceding days, and I have carried the picture of that wonderful region in my mind ever since. But we were anxious to get on to Denver. First, however, we must see Colorado Springs, less than five miles from Colorado City. Colorado Springs was already an attractive city and has since become even more attractive. After a day spent in and about Colorado Springs we started for Denver, still seventy-five miles away. But we had begun to learn our lesson and decided to spend two days in traveling that distance. As I was again short of funds and my first duty was proper care of my horse, I put the horse in a good livery stable and slept the night on a mattress in a remote corner of the stable. I paid dearly for that night's experience. The mattress was densely inhabited, and the inhabitants swarmed all over me. I did not get rid of them until we arrived in Denver, where I burned the clothes I had been wearing. Gove had been similarly afflicted in Colorado Springs, although he had lodged in a boarding house. He did as I did. On the way to Denver we camped the first evening on the bank of a fine little stream which, although it enabled us to bathe, did not rid us of the disagreeable companions we had collected in Colorado Springs. We had bought a chicken, ready to cook, at a farm, and resolved to bake it in our camp fire and have it for breakfast the next morning. When cooked, we carefully covered it with ashes and, wrapping our blankets about us, slept soundly until after sun-up the next morning. But when we sought our chicken it was gone! The ashes had been scattered, and there was other
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evidence that some animal had visited us during the night and made off with our chicken. A faint but pungent smell told us the character of our visitant. We congratulated ourselves that he had not left other evidence of his visit. We breakfasted later at a farmhouse where the family exerted themselves for our benefit, and we went on our way rejoicing. That summer's experiences added yet other memories of the wonders of Colorado's mountains to those I had gained earlier. But I have naturally always regretted that physical misery prevented my appreciation of the scenery between South Park and Colorado City. Also I had learned a little more about the proper care of a willing horse. I tried to make up to my horse for my cruelty by giving him good care as long as I owned him. Meanwhile the administration of President Sewall at the university occasioned a good deal of unfavorable comment as time went on; and the local opposition to him was especially pronounced — not all of it well founded. By 1886 it had become evident that a change of administration was impending. Naturally, the teachers in the university were a good deal disturbed by the situation, and several of them, myself among the number, contemplated resignation; but I was the only one who actually resigned. By this time I had reached the definite conclusion that my career lay in the field of education and not in mathematics. I had had some experience as a high-school teacher and had touched elementary education in visits to schools and in my teachers' institutes. It seemed to me that my next step should be to seek a high-school principalship; and just then a lucky chance enabled me to take that step.
CHAPTER VI D E N V E R H I G H SCHOOL, D I S T R I C T NO. 2, 1886-1890 T H A P P E N E D that in the spring of 1886 a principal was to be appointed for Denver High School, District No. 2. Denver had at that time three high schools : that in District No. ι , the original high school of the city, usually referred to as the Denver High School, where I had taught in 1878-1879; that in District No. 2; and that in District No. 17. The district numbers were the numbers of the county school districts which Denver had covered in its growth, and each district had its own independent school system. In after years the school districts within the city were consolidated into one city school system.
I
On one of my botanizing excursions into the foothills I had been delighted to find, in a cranny between two huge rocks, a rather rare species of fern (grasslike in appearance), and on my way home I stopped to examine my find. While I was thus occupied, a buggy drove up with two men in it. One of them was Dr. H. F. Wegener, superintendent of Denver School District No. 1, whose own hobby was botany. I had met Dr. Wegener at teachers' gatherings but did not know him well. And I did not know that he was an amateur botanist. It happened that he had never seen a specimen of my fern and was consequently much interested in it. I knew also that he was looking for a principal for the high school of his district. Before he and his friend drove on, I had told him of my intention to resign my post in the university and of my wish to be a high-
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school principal. He was interested and said that I should hear from him. I also told him that I had made a collection of more than a hundred bird skins (of birds of Boulder County), which I was ready to offer to anyone who would have them mounted and keep them on display. He thought his school board would do that and thus begin a collection for a natural history museum, something he had long wanted. It was not long before Dr. Wegener wrote that he had nominated me to the board, and that he was sure that the board would appoint me to the principalship. They did so, and I accepted the appointment. So, at the beginning of the next school year, I was again established in Denver, this time as principal of Denver High School, District No. 2. District No. 2 was, as I have already intimated, the part of Denver west (and south) of Cherry Creek, which flowed (when there was any water in it) through the city. The business section of the city was east of Cherry Creek, and there also were most of the best residence sections, although there were already some good residences in the southern part of District No. 2. But the wealth of the city was east of Cherry Creek in District No. i . 1 So, Denver High School, District No. 2, served a fairly populous but not, for the most part, socially prominent or wealthy part of the city. When I became principal of the high school it was just emerging as a distinct unit of the district's school system. The superintendent of the district had had general charge of the high school as acting principal in addition to his other duties. As 1 "School District No. 2, situated in West and South Denver, has a school population of 3,063, and a property valuation of $3,461,000, while District No. 1, situated in East Denver, has a school population of 9,400 and a property valuation of $28,450,000, or more than eight times as much money with only three times as many children to educate" (First Report, Public Schools, District No. 2, Denver, 1861 to 1886, pp. 6, 7 ) .
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will presently appear, he had little conception of what a good high school should be, and was relieved, at first, I am sure, when a principal of the incipient high school of his district was appointed. D u r i n g my entire term of a little more than four years as principal the high school occupied the upper floor of an elementary-school building — the Franklin School, the best school building of the district. W e had an assembly room capable of seating about a hundred pupils, two recitation rooms, a very small office for the principal, and a small chemistry laboratory in the basement (where, of course, it ought not to have been). There were about thirty-five high-school pupils divided into three classes, for the highschool "course of study" was a three years' "course." T h e teaching staff consisted, during my first year, of two fulltime teachers besides the principal, and two part-time teachers (one of German and one of singing). During those four years the high school grew rapidly. In September of 1890 there were about a hundred and fifty pupils, and four full-time teachers, besides the principal. T h e quarters occupied by the high school were crowded before that date, and for some time I had urged the superintendent and the Board of Education to secure a site for a high-school building. But it was not until I had left the school that a new building was actually built. That high school has now more than two thousand pupils and a corresponding staff of teachers. But to return to the school during my principalship. I have already said that the "course of study" 2 covered 2 1 use the term "course of generally used to signify the "program of studies" really school — made up of courses etc.
study" because it was the name then total offering of a school. T h e term designates the entire offering of a of study in English, history, French,
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only three years. My first efforts were accordingly directed to lengthening the course of study to four years in order to bring it into harmony with the courses of well-established high schools, at that time almost everywhere four-year courses. But that effort was not completely successful until the fourth year of my principalship. There was a transition period during which the fourth year was optional. Pupils might graduate in three years if they wished. But few did so; and by the fourth year of my principalship, as I have said, the four-year course was established as the only course of the school. The chief reason for so long a transition period was the fear of the superintendent that pupils would not stay four years to graduate and that, if we required them to take four years, they might attend the east-side high school in spite of the tuition they would have to pay. Of course, I pointed out that as long as we had a voluntary fourth year, only the less ambitious pupils would take the three-year course, and that we should lose the better pupils to the eastside high school, with which we were already in competition because of its better equipment and its acknowledged social superiority. Our responsibility was to make our high school as good as any in the city; no one would argue that west-side pupils should not have equal educational opportunities with east-side pupils, so far as it was possible to provide them. And, finally, I argued that four years was the minimum time for a good high-school education. My next efforts were devoted to improving the program of studies. It was defective in many respects. For example, the only course in English was a one-term (about a third of the year) course in rhetoric and composition. N o English literature was found in the program. To arouse an interest in English literature as a step toward a course in that
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field, I adopted a simple device. One recitation period of every week was set aside for a "literary exercise," the regular recitation of that period for that day being omitted. In that way only one recitation of any week was "sacrificed" for the purpose in hand. I took charge of these literary exercises myself, but in cooperation with the pupils. That is to say, I appointed a committee from each class in turn to prepare the program of the literary exercise for a given day and then helped the committee to make out the program. In this way the whole school touched some of the best English and American literature during the year. Each program consisted of a brief account of a single author and readings from his works by two or three pupils. Since most of the pupils came from homes where little or no reading of English literature was done, it was gratifying to see the interest of the pupils grow from week to week. Toward the end of the first year most of the pupils looked forward to the literary exercises with interest, and some of them had begun to read more of the authors than the mere programs could present. Another device which I found profitable was to make the annual library entertainment of the school an occasion for arousing or strengthening the interest of both pupils and parents in some of the best literature. The library entertainment had been an annual function from the time the high school was recognized as such. A small admission fee (twenty-five cents) was charged, and the proceeds were devoted to the purchase of books for the school library. There had been three such entertainments before my time; but unfortunately they had been merely the presentation of farces by the pupils for the amusement of their audiences, and seemed to me also of questionable taste. Certainly they were not educative in any sense.
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The first library entertainment under my direction was announced, rather pretentiously, as devoted to "The Literature of the Age of Elizabeth and Readings from Dickens." As a matter of fact, Elizabethan literature was represented only by one of Shakespeare's plays ( T h e Merchant of Venice). I had abridged that play so that it could be presented within an hour. Scenery and costumes were prohibited; but it proved to be the pièce de résistance. While I rehearsed the pupils who presented this play, I confirmed an opinion which I already held provisionally that, given the proper guidance, high-school pupils would not only understand and enjoy Shakespeare themselves but could cause a mixed audience to understand and enjoy Shakespeare too. But I was not prepared for the great appreciation of Shakespeare manifested by my youthful actors and for the good, in some cases really excellent, interpretation of Shakespeare they gave. The Dickens readings at the same entertainment went well, too, but did not approach the triumph of the Shakespeare play. Thereafter an abridged play of Shakespeare's formed the chief attraction of the library entertainments as long as I remained at the school. And always without scenery and costumes. This last I felt compelled to prescribe because of some unfortunate experiences that I was told had accompanied the presentation of the farces of which I have spoken. But I was glad to find that the absence of scenery and costumes did not detract at all from the performances but actually seemed to add to the enjoyment of both pupils and audiences; it certainly enhanced the educational value of the whole Undertaking for the pupils. Two other devices which I succeeded in carrying out during my principalship served the same purpose that the improved library entertainment served, but in another way.
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I also wanted to establish other traditions of accomplishment in which the entire school could take satisfaction, in addition to whatever they might accomplish in the regular class work. T o that end I offered first a prize for an annual "Oratorical Contest," i.e., for the preparation of original compositions that should be delivered subsequently by the authors at a public meeting held for the purpose of deciding on the best oration and awarding the prize. The contest was open to any pupil, but the number of contestants was limited to ten; and the judges were to take into account the subject matter, composition, and delivery of the orations. Three citizens of the district were appointed to act as judges. T o secure some public opinion among the pupils in support of this enterprise, I called into conference a dozen pupils before announcing it to the school, and was encouraged to call for volunteers to enter the contest. The response for the first contest was not promising. But by dint of some persuasion, and my promise to help, half a dozen pupils entered the contest. The public meeting turned out a complete success; and it happened, fortunately for the whole undertaking, that one of the most popular pupils won the prize. In subsequent years there was no dearth of candidates, and I had to adopt a scheme for the selection of the contestants. The scheme adopted was this: In order to be recognized as a candidate, a pupil must have made a good record in his regular work and must have been among the best pupils in English; if then there were still too many eligible candidates, the school chose ten candidates from the total number. In subsequent years a citizen of the district made himself responsible for the prize, and my own (first) offer was no longer needed. The oratorical contests were open to both boys and girls. I wanted a similar contest open to girls only. So I offered,
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in the second place, a prize for the best oral reading of an appropriate piece of literature by any girl in the school. The twelve candidates for the final contest were to be chosen by their schoolmates as follows: Each class was to select three of the best readers by vote of the class; the preliminary readings for choosing the final candidates were to be held on four successive Fridays during the last recitation period of those days. The preliminary contest was compulsory for every girl in the school. Of course, I had conferred with the girls in advance of launching the whole project and found them, almost without exception, in favor of trying it. This scheme also proved to be a success; and, even in the first year, another citizen made himself responsible for the annual prize. The judges of the contest were chosen as before. It goes without saying that preparation for these public exercises entailed a good deal of extra work on the part of the principal and some of the teachers whose cooperation he enlisted, as well as of the pupils. But we found it all extremely interesting, and gradually the whole school came to take as great an interest in it as we teachers did. A somewhat elaborate device intended to give the citizens information about their high school was a series of public oral examinations which were held on the last day of each of the three terms of the school year and which the public were invited to attend. Committees of citizens, each consisting of three members, were appointed to attend the examinations; and each committee was asked to visit the examinations in which they might have a special interest— mathematics, Latin, science, and so on. Of course, the members of the committee were chosen in accordance with their preferences. Each examination lasted an hour, and the school day was lengthened accordingly. Each pupil of a class was required to draw one question at a time, in the presence
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of the committee and other visitors, from a number of slips, on each of which a question had been written by the teacher, and after a few minutes each pupil in turn answered the question he had drawn. Except in classes in mathematics in which blackboard work was necessary most pupils were called upon to answer several questions during the examination period; and if there was time, mathematics pupils answered more than one question. The committees were asked to report in writing on the impressions they had received. As was to be expected, those reports were in most cases not very significant. But the committees and the other visitors at the examinations served the purpose of acquainting the public to some extent with the regular work of the school. These examinations, having served their purpose, were discontinued after two or three years; and written examinations took their place. Had I remained longer as head of the school, I should have tried at least one other plan which should be both educational and contributory to school traditions. That plan was to have chosen pupils participate in the discussion of significant contemporary questions in at least one public symposium each year, the participating pupils for a given symposium to be chosen for their avowed or developed interest in the subject to be discussed, and each pupil so chosen to support or oppose the question, not by being appointed to take one side or the other, but because his study of the question had led him to take the affirmative or the negative side as the case might be. It is evident that such a procedure would require research, and thoughtful consideration of the question to be discussed, on the part of the pupils; moreover, such a procedure would obviate what has always seemed to me a vicious accompaniment of the usual debate, viz., the assignment of debaters
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to the affirmative or the negative side in advance of a serious study by them of the question to be debated. This usual practice must tend to develop the bad habit of seeking plausible arguments rather than solid arguments for or against any question the debater may be called on to consider. The habit of approaching any question with an open mind and studying it with a view to reaching conclusions (arguments) that seem valid to the debater is valuable. It cannot be cultivated by the usual practice in school and college debates. It is often argued that the usual practice of assigning debaters to the affirmative or the negative side of a question irrespective of their convictions affords excellent training for them as possible future lawyers. If that is so, then it is an additional reason for considering it a vicious practice. On the Monday morning following our public contests I devoted a few minutes of the opening exercises to comments on the performances of the pupils. My purpose was to congratulate the victors and to make the whole school feel that they had shared in the success of the victors; to administer a bit of (cold) comfort to the other contestants by telling them that without them there could have been no public contest; that the effort they had put forth was appreciated by the whole school; and more to the same effect. W e had the usual graduation exercises, at which representatives of the graduating class delivered original orations and essays, the principal performers being a salutatorian and a valedictorian, the pupils who had the second highest and the highest record, respectively, in scholarship, for at least three years during their connection with the school. In every public exercise, the graduation exercises included, we all agreed that pupils must be so sure of themselves that
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"prompting" woüld not be necessary; and no prompting was ever allowed. Under such circumstances prompting was never needed. W e also agreed that every school exercise must begin at the time stated. Laggards, if there were any, lost their opportunity to participate on that day or that occasion, and we had no laggards after the first public exercise. I may say, incidentally, that very soon after I took charge of the school, pupils w h o failed to prepare their lessons on any day had to learn them before they left school on that day, unless they had a valid excuse for their failure to meet their obvious responsibility. After a few weeks very few pupils had to be disciplined in that way; and after the first year the pupils gave us no trouble by being "unprepared." Another disciplinary procedure which I found to work well was this: If a pupil was sent to me by one of the teachers because of some misdemeanor (the principal himself rarely has difficulties with pupils in his school), when the culprit appeared in my office, he usually announced himself by saying, "Miss (or Mr.) X sent me to you." T h e n I, " W h y ? " P., "I don't know, sir." I, "Very well. Sit down; perhaps you will be able to tell me by and by." In the course of ten or fifteen minutes, the pupil was asked if he could tell me then why he was sent to me; if then he told what had happened but failed to bring out his misbehavior, it was easy by questions to cause the pupil to incriminate himself. If the pupil was not ready to talk after the brief time allowed him for reflection, he was told to get his books, return to my office to study, go to his classes as they occurred, and return to my office after each recitation. A t the noon intermission, if he was still unwilling to talk, he was not allowed to mingle with the other pupils but remained in my office, and after the school reassembled he was allowed a
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recess by himself. Usually an hour or two in my office was enough to cause the pupil to give his account of his difficulty with the teacher concerned; and then I pursued my policy of asking questions until the whole matter was clearly before us and the pupil's guilt made plain. (My attitude throughout was friendly but serious.) That much accomplished, the pupil was ready (sometimes with a little prompting) to take the proper steps to reestablish himself with his teacher, and the matter was settled. The principle underlying this procedure was, of course, to put the responsibility for clearing himself on the culprit. If my interview with the pupil had begun by accusing him of wrongdoing, and if I had proceeded then to administer some appropriate punishment, he would have assumed, in most cases, the attitude of injured innocence. Moreover, causing the pupil to incriminate himself was a decidedly unpleasant experience for him, and not likely to be forgotten. The total result of this procedure was to lessen the number of cases of misbehavior in the classrooms; and during the last three years of my principalship, very few such cases occurred. But all cases of discipline were not so readily disposed of. If a culprit proved to be recalcitrant, I invariably sought an interview with his parents, and in only one instance did I fail to secure from the parents the cooperation necessary to settle the affair with satisfaction to all concerned. In that one case the parents were more recalcitrant than the pupil. Teachers themselves are sometimes responsible for a pupil's misconduct; and when that happens they cause the principal much trouble. When, from a pupil's account of his difficulty with a teacher, it seemed likely that the teacher was as much to blame as the pupil, I at once sought an interview with the teacher; and if I found the teacher had erred,
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I did what I could to clear up the matter with the teacher and usually succeeded in getting him (or her) to forget all about it, it being understood that I would let the pupil off with a warning to be more careful in the future. But sometimes this way of adjusting the matter left scars which both pupil and teacher carried permanently. T h a t could not be helped. Teachers also, occasionally, failed to meet a pupil halfway when he had left me with the intention of reestablishing himself with the teacher. A n d that situation, when it developed, was the most trying of all. But such happenings are a part of the principal's occasional experiences, and he must deal with them as best he can. Of course, the principal then has to labor with the teacher, and may accomplish much or little. I have dwelt on this matter of school discipline at considerable length because it may be suggestive to some young principal who may chance to read these lines. Of course, much more is involved in school discipline than I have touched upon. But the secret of good discipline, as I see it, is a kindly but firm attitude on the part of principal and teachers which the pupils sooner or later recognize as characteristic of the treatment they are subjected to; together with never-ending care to let the pupils feel that in cooperating with the teachers they together inevitably make the school a place of serious pleasure and profit. When once the pupils feel that, serious cases of discipline will be a thing of the past. It is not difficult to awaken the loyalty of young people in their school. Of course, here as elsewhere, actions (on the part of principal and teachers) speak louder than words. I greatly enjoyed my experience as principal of Denver H i g h School, District N o . 2, especially after the first year.
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As I have said, the school grew rapidly in numbers. A genuine school spirit became manifest, and all went well, seemingly. I had almost forgotten that we had a superintendent. But sometime during my third year I heard that the superintendent of School District No. 2 was not satisfied with our high school; and soon I discovered that his dissatisfaction centered in the principal. About that time he came to me one day and said that he must call my attention to the fact that my presence at the desk in the assembly room when one of the teachers was teaching a class there embarrassed the teacher so that he (or she) could not do himself (or herself) justice, and asked me to leave the assembly room at such times. (We had to use the assembly room for classes, since we had only two recitation rooms besides the laboratory in the basement.) As I had not noticed that my presence embarrassed the teachers when I worked at my desk (the only large desk we had) in the assembly room, I told him I thought he was mistaken; but, if it really was so, I would see what I could do about it. When I conferred with the teachers, it appeared that the superintendent was mistaken; and I accordingly continued to stay at my desk. Then came the time for our annual library entertainment. For this and all public exercises the large lower hall in the Franklin School building had to be converted into an auditorium. Electric lights had to be installed, a stage erected, and seats provided. The superintendent had authorized me to make these arrangements on former occasions. But to avoid any possible appearance of undue independence, I sought him in his office and said, "I am preparing to arrange for our library entertainment. Shall I go ahead?" He said, "No, I will make the arrangements myself." I was young and jealous of my function as principal of the high school. So I said something to the effect that he could have my
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resignation if he wanted it, but he could not attend to my business as long as I was principal of the school. The superintendent said nothing further, and I left his office to go immediately to the chairman of the high-school committee of the school board, Mr. Shepard. Mr. Shepard said he would take the matter up with the superintendent, and I left him, not knowing what action he would take. But the next morning, the superintendent came to me and said, "The board told me to instruct you to go ahead with the arrangements, except that I am to have the lights installed"! The superintendent's conception of his own functions was well shown by the term examinations which he conducted himself throughout the elementary schools of his district. H e not only prepared the examination questions himself, but actually read and graded all the pupils' answers himself; so that the last three weeks or so of each term were required for those examinations, to the exclusion of all other business that might properly come to the superintendent's office. So far as I remember, the superintendent never took the initiative in devising or carrying out any educational policy for his district, or otherwise manifested any educational leadership. Naturally, such a superintendent could not hold his office as the city outgrew its primitive condition; and two or three years after I left the high school, he resigned and moved to California. Although he was not a good superintendent, he was a good botanist and might have been successful as a teacher of botany. During my fourth year as principal, I was invited by the regents of the University of Wyoming to become professor of mathematics at that institution. On the invitation of the regents, I visited the University of Wyoming to look the ground over. But I was not attracted to the post offered me and declined the invitation.
CHAPTER
VII
COLORADO STATE NORMAL
SCHOOL
U R I N G September of the next year, after the school year had begun, I was invited by the trustees of the State Normal School in Greeley (the first state normal school in Colorado) to become professor of "pedagogy" at that school. The school was to open its doors early in October. I hesitated for some time about accepting the new position. If the regents had offered me the principalship, I would have accepted their offer without hesitation, but they had already engaged a principal. On reflection, I did accept the professorship, because it seemed to be in harmony with my dominant interest in the problems of education as such. I secured a release from my post in Denver to take effect on the first of October (1890) and was in Greeley on that date. Greeley was a thriving town about fifty miles northeast of Denver in the heart of a fertile, well-irrigated farming section. It was situated due east of the mountains about forty miles away; and in 1890 its chief claim to distinction was, in my judgment, the superb view of those mountains for many miles along the western horizon. The normal school opened before the building then under construction (one wing of the main building) was quite ready for occupancy. Our assembly room was the auditorium of the Unitarian church, and the recitation rooms were located in various rooms in buildings near by. Some of the recitation rooms were quite unfit for the purpose, but we had to take what we could get. My recitation room, for example, was located in an unused paint shop, over a black-
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smith shop, portable blackboards, seats for the students, and a desk having been installed there. Teachers and students made the best of everything, and the school started enthusiastically. Most of the students were not even high-school graduates, as in other normal schools of that day, but we had a few such graduates, among them several graduates of Denver High School, District No. 2. The program of studies, also like that of other normal schools, was really a high-school program with some technical courses, chiefly courses in methods of teaching, the principal elementary-school studies of that time — reading, writing, arithmetic, grammar, geography—, and courses in psychology, principles of "pedagogy," and the history of "pedagogy" (one term, about twelve weeks, for each course). I taught the three courses last named, and methods in reading and in arithmetic. I also had charge of our "model school" for observation and practice teaching by the normal-school students. It goes without saying that a "model school" could be a school for observation but could not be at the same time a school for practice teaching. Nevertheless, our model school was made to serve both purposes during my connection with the normal school. It is evident that my work covered a considerable range of subject matter which I had never taught before, and some of which I knew very little about. Also, the available textbooks in the history of education and principles of education (educational theory) were very elementary and otherwise unsatisfactory, and few in number; and our library, as yet, afforded no reference books that might help. I managed to do something for the students in educational theory — my earlier attempts in this field in the teachers' institutes were drawn upon and developed as the year went on. But my
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course in the history of education was merely a textbook course, for I had never studied the history of education as such. Naturally, I sought to make use of every scrap of educational history I could get hold of — which in those days amounted to very little, all told; and I look back on that course with sorrow for my inadequacy. As a matter of fact, there is no subject more rich in everything pertaining to educational theory and practice than the history of education; and no subject that more clearly shows the student that the history of education is a vital part of the history of civilization — that education, in short, is a social force which must be reckoned with in every progressive state. The students may have got some occasional glimpses of such a conception of the history of education from my course, but nothing more. Fairly good textbooks were available for the courses in methods, and the work was based very largely on those textbooks. There was also a limited but gratifying opportunity to guide the students in the use of the methods they studied in their practice teaching, since, during that first year, the number of normal-school students was small enough to enable each student to do some practice teaching in the model school. Incidentally, I may say that I was the only college graduate on the faculty. The principal ("president" was his title) was a normal-school graduate from Minnesota and, though an agreeable man, lacked the education, general and professional, and the professional insight and outlook that the head of a normal school should have. H e remained at his post only two years, then studied medicine, and became a practicing physician in Chicago. From the foregoing it appears that I did not find in the normal school the work that would enable me to make the
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progress I wanted to make in the study of education. I could have discovered that before going to Greeley if I had inquired more closely than I did just what would be expected of me as professor of "pedagogy." I relied too much on my own notion of what such a professor in a normal school should do, and the teaching resources he could draw upon. Of the latter, I knew very little and, as has appeared, I soon found that there were few that could command respect. So I often looked back rather longingly to my Denver principalship. The man who followed me proved to be unsatisfactory, and I had been asked unofficially whether I would return to my former post the next year. In that post I had found time and opportunity to continue my study of education while doing work that I valued and which was growing more important daily, and more interesting. Then in the spring of 1891 an event occurred that profoundly affected my whole life and promised all that I had hoped for in my profession. That event was the arrival in Denver of President Eliot of Harvard University, who was returning to Cambridge after one of his trips to the western part of the country. I had met President Eliot when he was on his way west at a dinner of the Rocky Mountain Harvard Club in Denver, at which I was a guest, earlier in the year, but I knew him only slightly. President Eliot's son, the Rev. Samuel A . Eliot, was pastor of the Unitarian church in Denver while I was principal of the high school in District No. 2, and I was for a time a member of the board of trustees of that church. During the winter of 1890-1891 I was president of the Colorado State Teachers' Association, which held its annual meeting in Denver during the Christmas holidays, and the Rev. Mr. Eliot, whom I knew fairly well by that time, had given the annual evening lecture.
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President Eliot was visiting his son while in Denver, and from him I received a letter saying that his father wished to see me again. I need hardly say that I lost no time in replying to Mr. Eliot's letter, and, soon after, Mr. Eliot invited Mrs. Hanus and me to dinner at his house. I did not know then, as I came to know well in after years, that President Eliot regarded Mrs. Teacher of importance as well as Mr. Teacher. T h e dinner passed pleasantly for Mrs. Hanus and me, and as we rose from the table President Eliot detained me, saying that he wished to talk with me. A s soon as the table was cleared and tea was placed on the table, President Eliot told me about the new department to be established at Harvard for the training of secondary-school teachers and said that he had been looking for a man to take charge of that department. H e said, further, that he had thought he had found the man he needed — a Harvard graduate, teaching at the University of Wisconsin; but when he met that man he had decided that the man was too old. H e believed a young man was required, and thereupon asked me if I were willing to consider an appointment to the new post at Harvard University. I expressed my willingness! A n d after some further conversation about the university and Cambridge, President Eliot told me that my appointment would follow soon after he returned to Cambridge. A t this point it is a temptation to speak at length of President Eliot as I knew him during nineteen years of association with him as Harvard's president and after his resignation in 1909. I must not do that here. But I cannot refrain from citing the following brief tribute which I wrote for the Harvard Crimson soon after his death in 1926.1 1 A much longer memorial article of mine about President Eliot was prepared for School and Society, and for the Progressive Edu-
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"President Eliot possessed, in the highest degree, the personal qualities and the administrative ability essential to successful leadership in education. He was sincere, ardent with due restraint, an untiring and careful student of details whether of policies or practices, fertile in constructive suggestions, clear and cogent in exposition and debate, patient in the face of opposition whether reasonable or unreasonable, courageous, absolutely fair in all his dealings. During his administration and under his leadership the Faculty of Arts and Sciences discussed freely and frankly the measures brought before it whether by the President or by a member of the faculty; and the faculty meetings became a clearing house of educational opinions. Most of the progress made by the university during his administration was due to his initiative, and all of it profited by his guidance. "But President Eliot's services to education were not limited to Harvard University nor to higher education in general, important as those services were. His influence was also great in the field of secondary education, and in elementary education as well. The reforms which he advocated, many of which have permanently enriched education from the grammar school to the university, are a monument to his penetrating insight and his practical wisdom. "He was not content to be a mere spectator of educational endeavor. He was a persistent student of education, and he participated actively in many educational organizations — local, regional, and national. He accordingly cation Association, in the same year. But no magazine article can adequately describe President Eliot, the man, the educational leader, and the citizen. Henry James's two volumes on President Eliot do that as well as it can be done in book form.
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obtained a comprehensive and detailed knowledge of educational needs and of contemporary aims and practices; and on that knowledge were based his just criticisms and constructive suggestions. At a time when the study of education as an important subject of university study was regarded with suspicion by the majority of academic faculties in leading American universities, he had the vision and the courage to establish the study of education at Harvard. "President Eliot's leadership was not due to his impressive personality or to his office, although these were advantages of which he made good use. His insight and his judgment so often compelled respect that men came naturally to depend on him for guidance. And he had the rare quality of greatness that caused him to change his mind when he felt that his opponents were right, as they sometimes were. "He was a severe critic, but he was just. He was the outstanding exponent of freedom as contrasted with hampering restrictions in all educational endeavor. His wholehearted devotion to the service of education — a service which he deliberately chose early in life — was conspicuously evident throughout his career; and for nearly fifty years he was the most influential educational leader in America." On the way back to Greeley Mrs. Hanus and I talked of nothing but the new professional opportunity that had come to me. And from that time forward, I spent all the time I could in preparation for my duties at Harvard, as well as I could determine them before my arrival in Cambridge; and I received some direction for that preparation from President Eliot's letter notifying me that my appointment had been "completed."
PART III THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION 1891-1921
CHAPTER
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F O U N D I N G T H E N E W D E P A R T M E N T OF EDUCATION AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY R E S I D E N T E L I O T ' S letter was so characteristic of the man and gives, directly and by implication, such a clear idea of the tentative nature of the experiment which Harvard University was undertaking in view of the faculty's attitude toward it that I reproduce his entire letter below. It is written in his remarkably perfect script on four lettersize pages. (President Eliot had a secretary who was also a stenographer, but in those days and for some time afterward he wrote many letters in longhand himself. And it was not until some years later that professors were provided, at the expense of the university, with clerical assistance.)
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Cambridge 25 March, 1891. Dear Mr. Hanus : You will see by the enclosed paper that your appointment has been completed. The salary is to be two thousand dollars a year, the first quarterly payment 1 being made Dec. 1 , 1 8 9 1 . The Corporation also voted to pay you the sum of five hundred dollars to cover the expenses of moving from Colorado to Cambridge, and establishing your family in Cambridge. In voting this extra payment the Corporation had also in 1 F o r several years after I came to Cambridge the established custom of paying the salaries of Harvard professors in quarterly installments was the rule. Monthly payments have been in force now for many years.
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mind the fact that you will give much time before Sept. ist to preparation for your new duties. You can have this sum, or any part of it, as soon as you begin to move hither. Please advise me of your desires in this respect. The function which you are about to assume is a new one at this University, and it is not possible now to describe it with completeness. According to the present views of the President and Fellows it will embrace the following particulars: ι . The delivery of lectures on the art of teaching and on the history of teaching. 2. The visiting of schools which feed the University, with a view to establish and maintain cordial and helpful relations with them. 3. The conduct of a summer school for teachers at Cambridge, giving instruction in your own subjects, and being at the service of the considerable number of teachers who come to Cambridge in summer. 4. Taking part in teachers' institutes, and teachers' associations in N e w England, and occasionally beyond New England. 5. Acting as general agent for the new "Normal" department established within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Whenever the discharge of these duties involved travelling, your expenses would be paid. For the duties described in paragraph 3 there would be some small extra compensation. In enumerating these particulars I do not suppose that I have done more than touch the principal points which are now visible. The function is really one which you are gradually to create. In talking with Professor Josiah Royce about you, he asked how familiar you were with contemporaneous German
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thought in philosophy and ethics. He wanted to know what journals you read on these subjects. He is chairman of the Faculty's committee on the "Normal" course, and you might appropriately write to him, asking his ideas about your function. Please tell me how much Greek you know. That is your most vulnerable point as a visitor at secondary schools. I have kept the fact of your appointment from the newspapers, and shall try to keep it secret until the middle of April; but when some thirty persons have to be trusted with a secret, it may be inadvertently revealed by some of them. Your telegram received this morning relieved my mind somewhat on this point. Present my best regards and congratulations to Mrs. Hanus, and believe me Very truly yours Charles W . Eliot Professor Paul H . Hanus Greeley Colorado The "enclosed paper" mentioned by President Eliot in the first line of his letter was the official communication from "the President and Fellows of Harvard College" (the legal name of the trustees of Harvard University — usually referred to as "the Corporation") notifying me of my appointment as "Assistant Professor of the History and Art of Teaching" for five years from September 1, 1891. The term of service was significant; President Eliot wanted the appointee to have time enough to develop the new department if he could. Equally significant was the title of the new professorship, which limited the activities of the department to considering the art of teaching. The more fundamental and the broader problems of education were
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not covered by the title; and, indeed, I doubt if they occurred to the members of the faculty as legitimately within the province of the new department. But, as President Eliot stated in his letter, the function of the department was one which the new professor was "gradually to create." Full advantage was taken of that statement from the start. I did not learn until after the college year began in September that many members of the faculty were doubtful about the value of the new department and that some of them looked on such a department with little more than contempt. Quite in harmony with this attitude of a considerable minority of the faculty, and doubtless as a concession to that minority, the faculty, while voting in favor of establishing the new department, also voted that the courses in the history and art of teaching should not be allowed to count toward any degree without special permission of the faculty; so that any students who might elect those courses would run the risk of receiving no academic recognition for the work done. W h a t finally caused the faculty to vote for the new department was the persuasive cogency of President Eliot in faculty discussions (several meetings were devoted to the consideration of the project) and the fact that, as President Eliot told the faculty, a number of prominent secondary-school men of Boston were agitating for the establishment of a state institution for the training of secondary-school teachers. I learned these facts gradually during my first year in Cambridge; and recently I confirmed the reports then made to me by consulting the minutes of the Harvard faculty for 1890-1891. I think that much of the opposition to the new department was due to the name attached to it in the faculty discussions. It was called the "normal" department; and the name "normal" suggested the practice of the normal schools at that time for the training of elementary-school teachers. While
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very few of the members of the faculty had any real knowledge of normal schools, nearly all of them knew in a general way that those schools were devoted very largely to the rather rigid inculcation of current methods of teaching elementaryschool subjects and that consequently their work was circumscribed and definitely elementary. And they did not want narrow and elementary instruction in the university. The conception of the university study of education entertained by most college and university professors of that day was that it consisted of necessity of instruction in methods of teaching; and most of them did not believe that such instruction had any value. The dictum, "Teachers are born, not made," was both implicit and explicit in their consideration of the subject. They ignored the fact that "born" teachers do not happen more frequently than "born" lawyers or doctors or college professors or members of any profession, and that, human beings being what they are and the choice of a profession being free to all, men and women of every profession must develop by training what native ability they have for the work they elect to do. That the faculty's conception of the study of education was as narrow as that of the normal schools is revealed by the steps taken to establish the new department, as follows : At a faculty meeting on October 7, 1890, President Eliot introduced the subject of "a possible Normal course of one year designed to meet the demands of those who sought legislative action from the General Court in 1889/90 in favor of such a project"; and after discussion, the faculty voted unanimously in favor of the appointment of a committee to consider this subject and report a plan if it saw fit.2 The 2 Minutes of the faculty meeting of October 7, 1890. Through the courtesy of President Conant's office I have had access to the early minutes of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
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committee reported a plan at a meeting of the faculty on October 11, 1890. It was discussed at that meeting and at meetings on December 2 and December 16. A t the last meeting the report of the committee was finally amended and adopted, and the faculty also voted, "That the attention of the Corporation be called to the importance of the appointment of an instructor in the history and art of teaching." Thus the report of the faculty's committee, together with the vote of the faculty concerning an instructor in "the history and art of teaching" and the subsequent appointment of such an instructor, launched the experiment in the professional training of prospective college-bred teachers at Harvard University in the autumn of 1891.3 A s soon as possible after completing my work at Greeley, I started for Cambridge. O n the way I attended the meeting of the National Education Association, in Toronto that summer, and that of the American Institute of Instruction (a N e w England organization, at that time of almost national importance), in Bethlehem, N e w Hampshire. A t both meetings I made the acquaintance of teachers and school officers of the eastern states, and renewed contacts with teachers whom I had met at former meetings of the National Education Association. It was evidently of importance to the work I had undertaken at Harvard to extend my acquaintance among leading teachers and school officers as widely as possible. A t those meetings I found great interest in the fact that Harvard University had undertaken the technical training of college-bred teachers, and some very natural * Harvard was not the first important university to establish such training. The University of Michigan had had such training since 1879; and several other state universities had followed the example of Michigan. But, so far as I know, the Harvard experiment was the first one in an endowed university.
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curiosity concerning myself as the person chosen to develop the enterprise. At Toronto I met for the first time President Nicholas Murray Butler (then professor of philosophy) of Columbia University. He had already launched the New York College for the Training of Teachers (which became Teachers College of Columbia University in 1898) ; and he had founded the Educational Review, which at once became the leading educational magazine of the United States and held that position until the differentiation of educational interests led to a demand for departmental periodicals, each ministering to the special needs of teachers of English, history, mathematics, and the rest, or to the specialized interests of elementaryschool teachers, secondary-school teachers, superintendents of schools, college professors, etc. Professor Butler and I had no sooner met than he began to unfold a plan for a celebration he was maturing to commemorate the three-hundredth anniversary of the birth of John Amos Comenius at Columbia University, and he asked me to participate by preparing a paper on the permanent influence of Comenius, to be read at the celebration. I underscore "at Columbia University" because Professor Butler seemed to me to underscore the words as he spoke. The celebration was duly held in New York. I could not be present, but I prepared the paper Professor Butler had asked for, and it was published in the Educational Review 4 (my first appearance in print in an eastern magazine). At the meeting of the American Institute of Instruction in the White Mountains I found the representation of teachers and school officers of New England much in the majority, 'Republished in my Educational Aims and Educational (New York and London: Macmillan, 1899).
Values
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as was to be expected. The president of the association that year was Ray Green Huling, headmaster of the English High School in Cambridge. He asked me to take part in the discussion of the topic under consideration — moral training — and I gladly accepted his invitation, although I should have preferred to make my first speech before a New England audience when somewhat better prepared on that topic than I was then. That meeting at Bethlehem laid the foundation for a number of friendships with New England teachers, and especially with Mr. Huling, whose friendship I enjoyed until his death many years afterwards. Incidentally, my visits to Toronto and Bethlehem introduced me to some of the most delightful scenery, including the White Mountains, that our country affords. I traveled from Toronto to Montreal by boat, passing through the rapids of the St. Lawrence River on the way. I have never forgotten the boiling, surging waves, tossing the boat about more or less and dashing over the half-submerged rocks, seemingly only a few feet from the sides of the vessel; it seemed frequently as if we must hit those rocks and be wrecked. On the way to Bethlehem from Montreal I got my first glimpse of the White Mountains, and more than a glimpse, because, once near the mountains, I had to change cars two or three times to reach Bethlehem and at each stop I had to wait some time for my connecting train. From the station platforms I could see far reaches of those picturesque mountains. Having just come from the West, with the colossal mountains of Colorado a vivid memory, I was not impressed by any grandeur of the White Mountains, but I was greatly impressed by their picturesque quality, and I have been so impressed by them ever since. I arrived in Cambridge on the evening before the Harvard commencement, and, of course, I wanted to see what I could
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of the commencement exercises. But not having had an opportunity to make the acquaintance of any of the commencement officers, and not knowing "the ropes," I drifted the next day with the crowd into Sanders Theatre. The seats were all occupied, but I established myself on the radiator just back of the rows of seats in the first balcony directly opposite the stage and from that point of vantage witnessed my first Harvard commencement. In 1892 I wished to attend all the commencement exercises, but I found that there was no place in the commencement procession for officers of the university who were not Harvard graduates. So I joined the class of '78, ranging myself alongside of a member of that class whom I knew (George H. Browne), and as we marched along the marshal scrutinized me searchingly and said, "I don't seem to remember you." But I told him that '78 was my class, as indeed it was at the University of Michigan, and Browne told the marshal I was a friend of his, and I was allowed to proceed. Afterwards I wrote President Eliot, relating my experience, and since that time a place in the commencement procession has been regularly assigned to officers of the university who are not Harvard graduates. In those days the degrees were conferred in Latin, a custom with which I did not sympathize, although I liked that language well enough, but I could not fail to appreciate President Eliot's superb voice and manner as he summoned groups of candidates to his presence and conferred the appropriate degree on the members of each group. After the commencement exercises I returned to my hotel in Boston — the Parker House, where I had lodged on my visit to Boston in 1883.5 Since I did not know that the Harvard Alumni Association met in the afternoon of that day, I missed that important 6
In 1891 it was still possible to secure a good room for one dollar a day at the Parker House.
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meeting and learned about it only the next morning from the Boston papers. On the day after commencement I set out to call on President Eliot to report my presence and to learn from him anything he might have to tell me. To travel from Boston to Cambridge in those days, one boarded a horsecar at Bowdoin Square, near the old Revere House (now no more), and often rode three-quarters of an hour or longer to reach Harvard Square (which, like many other "squares" of metropolitan Boston, is not a square at all). It was not long, however, before electric cars and horsecars were running on the same track, and shortly the electric cars relegated the horsecars to oblivion. It was a good many years, however, before the subway reduced the time of transit from Boston to Cambridge to eight minutes, the present rate of travel. I was lucky on that June morning of 1891, for it took me only half an hour to get to Harvard Square. At that time there was a row of fine elms bordering Massachusetts Avenue the whole length of the Yard, and the Yard was surrounded by a wooden two-rail fence with stone posts. A few steps from the car-stop at Harvard Square took me inside the Yard, which then contained most of the visible university in Cambridge. I made my way rapidly to University Hall, then, as now, the principal administration building, where I found President Eliot. He immediately interested himself in the practical matter of a lodging for me — I had left my family in Denver until I should find a suitable dwelling place — and provided me with notes of introduction to various college officers with whom I should have business to transact, either then or later; and he also set on foot the payment to me of the money generously voted by the Corporation for moving from Colorado. And, finally, he closed this very satisfactory interview
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by inviting me to lunch with him and Mrs. Eliot at their house in the Yard. (No one in Cambridge ever refers to the original campus of Harvard University by any other term than "the Yard.") When I arrived at the president's house, President and Mrs. Eliot were sitting on the porch, and Mrs. Eliot was engaged in rolling a ball of yarn from a skein held by her husband, a pleasant domestic scene. I learned from President Eliot that during the summer at Northeast Harbor on Mt. Desert, where he and Mrs. Eliot habitually spent the vacation, he took complete charge of the housekeeping during the entire vacation to relieve Mrs. Eliot of all responsibility; and Mrs. Eliot added that her husband was a very efficient manager of household affairs. President Eliot evidently believed that consideration, like charity, begins at home. The next day Harvard University was practically deserted. Most members of the faculty had left for their various vacation pursuits; some had gone to their summer places on the shore or in the mountains, and some had started for Europe. Only a few of them remained in Cambridge to be near the library or the laboratories to carry on work that could not well be carried on away from those resources of the university. And in the general void I was left to orient myself in my new surroundings. Before I left Colorado I had acted on President Eliot's suggestion and had written to Professor Royce, chairman of the faculty's committee on the "normal course," and to Professor James. From Royce I wanted definite information about the plan formulated by his committee and adopted by the faculty and any suggestions bearing on my work he might be willing to make. Royce's reply to my inquiries was very cordial but once more conveyed very definitely the ten-
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tative and experimental character of the enterprise on which the Faculty of Arts and Sciences had embarked, and especially the faculty's idea that the work of the new department must consist chiefly of instruction in methods of teaching. I quote Royce's letter in full. 103 Irving Street Cambridge April 7, 1891. Dear Prof. Hanus :— I shall be delighted to be of any service possible to you as you enter upon your tasks at Cambridge. It is a very healthy place, this, except for the east winds of the Massachusetts Bay. Otherwise the climate is good — especially the intellectual climate — criticism keen but not personal or bitter, — mental atmosphere frosty, but highly tonic — personal relations very kindly — intimacies slowly formed, but very delightful and close when once they do form. Your topic will be regarded with general scepticism at the outset by your colleagues; but you will have the fairest of fair play, and success will be very cordially rewarded and appreciated. As for any suggestion as to your equipment, I hope that you will make Psychology prominent in your own work. I am sure that James will welcome a collaborator, whenever you have had time to make yourself one. Do you see Ribot's "Revue Philosophique" and Stanley Hall's "Journal of Psychology?" They will be very accessible here. If you are planning a course of general (say public) University Lectures on your topic, I should suggest that a sceptical presentation of the limitations of systematic Pedagogy, joined with a very firm insistence upon your own positive convictions as to what, despite such limitations can be accomplished, — and
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all presented in a compact and telling shape such as one addresses to a quasi-professional audience, whom one can hope to find attentive without flattery, and to conciliate without lavish apology — that such a presentation would greatly aid you in finding here an early hearing for the rest of your undertakings. For such a course of public lectures there might be found an opportunity in the evenings pretty early in the year. For next year the Faculty has voted a series of brief courses, intended for graduates of colleges, on methods of school instruction in Greek, Latin, Mathematics, German, French, Physics, Chemistry, English, History and Geography, with additional lectures in Psychology. These brief courses will be given by different officers representing each his own department. There will be no effort to make the advice given by the various teachers tally. Each will speak for himself, and you for yourself when you come. As for the future in other years, that is in your hands. T h e present plan is a provisional one. Nobody regards it as ideal. Nobody very seriously opposes it. You will have great chance to modify it in the direction of better organization in future. Yours very truly, Josiah Royce. Write me for any further help I can give. Naturally, I was grateful to Royce for his cordial and informing letter, and it served me in good stead. 6 Naturally, " I was to receive many other evidences of Royce's kindly nature as time went on. One instance I must record here. Although a philosopher, he, like President Eliot, had an eye to practical affairs. On the morning after the arrival of my family in Cambridge, when we were established in a house on Craigie Street, he appeared, bright and early, to teach us how to make a hard-coal fire in kitchen stove and furnace! He knew that we had burned only bituminous coal in
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also, I was again strongly impressed by the sceptical attitude of the faculty with respect to the work I had undertaken and unfavorably impressed by the faculty's plan for my first year. That plan confirmed my opinion of the faculty's mistaken conception òf the nature of the work of the "normal department." As I considered that plan as set forth in Royce's letter, I could not help thinking that the tail was wagging the dog. Here was a long list of short courses (some of them comprising only four lectures) in methods of teaching, uncoordinated, and unrelated to the work of the "general agent" of the whole enterprise. But there was solace in the thought that the plan of the faculty was provisional and for only one year, and also in the fact that the plan included a course of lectures in psychology, and that President Eliot had told me that the "function" of the department was one that I was gradually to create. In the same mail with Royce's letter I received a letter from Professor William James which gave me further comfort; and I quote his letter also. 95 Irving St. Cambridge, April 6, '91. My dear Sir: I am happy to learn from President Eliot that you are to be the incumbent of the new chair of pedagogy here. Colorado and that making a hard-coal fire required knowledge that we did not possess. Later on he was of great help to me in planning and carrying on the work I had undertaken at Harvard — although, and perhaps because, he was himself sceptical at first about its value (at least, he was sceptical about pedagogical systems and about a "science of education") ; but I was sceptical, too, about those things, and that fact helped in enlisting his cooperation so far as he was in sympathy with my endeavors.
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I write to ask what your preference is as to some 12 or 15 lectures on pedagogical psychology which the committee on the new department of work has adopted. Shall you or shall I be responsible for giving them. I am quite willing to sacrifice myself, but even more willing to be relieved. I should wait till you are on the ground and could know some of the other conditions which will meet you here before asking you such a question, and probably they can be left open anyhow until you come. But if you decidedly would l i f e those lectures — I not knowing just what pedagogic psychology means except the habit, association, apperception, and attention chapters of common psychology — we could print your name forthwith on the forthcoming list of studies for next year as giving that course, and it would enable you to step without faculty discussion or explanation into the "philosophical department" where of course we should like to have you. Pray understand that it is not important that you should answer this question now. If you prefer, you can wait till next fall. I only give you the chance of settling it now, if you like to. Hoping, ere long to make your acquaintance, I am Very truly yours, Wm. James Professor Hanus. Like Royce's letter, this letter was cordial, and showed that James was both willing to be helpful and unwilling to commit himself to work that I might want to undertake myself. Of course, I was more than glad that he was willing to give the lectures in "pedagogic psychology," and wrote him accordingly. It happened that I had a letter from President Eliot about
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the time I received James's letter, telling me that he would try to get James to give the psychology lectures planned for by the faculty's committee and that James would probably write me. He added that if James told me that he did not want to give the lectures, perhaps I would better refer James to him, since it was "something of an object to get him to deliver 15 lectures on psychology applied to teaching, even if he only gives them one year." I was myself decidedly of the opinion that President Eliot was right and was glad that I had written James as I had. James actually gave those lectures for two years, and they proved, as was to be expected, the feature of our whole enterprise that was almost universally regarded as an unqualified success. James afterwards (1899) printed those lectures in a volume entitled Talles to Teachers on Psychology; and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals·, they have been studied by hosts of teachers from that time to the present day. On April 24,1891,1 received a letter from Professor George Herbert Palmer, chairman of the Division of Philosophy, cordial and helpful, like the other letters I had received from Harvard University. I quote Palmer's letter also because it specifically called for my own contribution to the work of the new department and also definitely placed me as a member of the Division of Philosophy. Making me a member of that division suggested two things: first, that Harvard University, in establishing a department for the study of education, was following the example of German universities in which certain professors of philosophy had interested themselves in "pedagogy" and had written and lectured on the subject; and second, that the Division of Philosophy at Harvard was possibly the only division of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences showing any willingness to give me academic shelter. Later on I shall have something more to say
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about this placing of the Department of Education in the Division of Philosophy — its advantages and disadvantages. Palmer's letter is as follows: Cambridge — April 24,1891. Dr. Paul H . Hanus; Dear Sir— President Eliot informed me that you have been elected to the Chair of Pedagogy here, & that you will consequently become next year a member of the Philosophical Department. Allow me to express my own satisfaction that you are to join us &, as Chairman of the Philosophical Department to ask you to send me an announcement & description of each of your courses for insertion in our Programme, a copy of which I enclose. From this you will see how we generally announce and describe our courses. Your own should be treated with sufficient fullness to give to your novel work the interest and dignity it deserves. Very truly yours, G. H . Palmer About the time I received Palmer's letter President Eliot also wrote to ask me to send him an announcement of the courses I planned to give, and I sent him such an announcement of three courses, each requiring three hours of class exercises a week. He replied immediately, saying that he was "decidedly of the opinion" that I had put myself down for too many hours of instruction and that he "had taken the liberty" to reduce the numbers of hours so that I should not have more than six hours of teaching a week. He made some suggestions, also, about the nature of the instruction which the "normal" students should have — all of which I
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accepted with joy. His reduction of the number of teaching hours was not only a relief to me but also, as I realized when I subsequently learned that I had put myself down in my very first year for the maximum number of hours of teaching prevailing in most courses at Harvard, an act that was both in my interest and in the interest of the university. His suggestion about the kind of instruction my students should have was gratifying to me because it was in entire accord with my own ideas. The announcement of my courses for the first year, as modified by President Eliot's suggestions, I sent to President Eliot and also to Professor Palmer, in accordance with his request; and that announcement, slightly but significantly modified once more, was published in the pamphlet of the Division of Philosophy and, of course, also in the "Elective Pamphlet" (the pamphlet announcing all the courses under the Faculty of Arts and Sciences for a given year). I reproduce that announcement here because it shows more clearly than any other description could both the scope and the limitations of the study of education at Harvard University when that study was inaugurated in 1891. Courses for Teachers The following courses adapted for teachers and persons intending to become teachers, will be offered in 1891-92. ι. History of Teaching and of Educational Theories — Lectures and Discussions — T w o essays. Twice a wee\. Asst. Professor Hanus 2. Theory of Teaching — The Psychological Basis of Metho d s — Critical Examination of Educational Doctrines — Lectures and Discussions. T w o essays. Once a wee\. Asst. Professor Hanus
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3. The Art of Teaching — General Schoolroom Practice — Management, supervision, and organization of public schools and academies — Lectures and Discussions. Twice a wee\. Asst. Professor Hanus Students will be expected to observe the teaching in designated schools in the vicinity of Cambridge, and to present reports thereon during the second half year. 4. Topics in Psychology of interest to teachers. Twelve lectures. Professor James In addition to the above, special courses upon the Methods of Elementary Instruction with lectures and practical exercises will be given by instructors in each of the following subjects. [Then follows the list of subjects, fourteen of them.] This announcement was printed in the pamphlet (program) of the Division of Philosophy and appeared under the heading "Courses in Pedagogy," after the list and description of the courses in philosophy. Immediately under that heading appeared the statement: "The following courses for graduates, offered this year for the first time, cannot, without special vote of the Faculty, be counted toward any degree." So the work began in the autumn of 1891 under the conditions which have been sketched in the preceding paragraphs. The attendance on the courses in methods was not large, but James's course in psychology was largely attended. About a dozen students, all told, registered in my three courses in education, but only four of them (faithful souls!) persisted to the end of the year. Decidedly not an encouraging beginning for me. But I found that one reason why students left my courses was this : since it was doubtful that they could obtain academic
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credit for courses in education, most of them were disinclined to do the work which I assigned in preparation for the lectures and classroom discussions, and hence, ere long, they parted company with the progress of the work and lost interest in it. Accordingly, before and about the time all the courses under the Faculty of Arts and Sciences were to be presented for adoption for the ensuing year, at a faculty meeting I called the attention of the faculty to the anomalous situation in which students were placed who wanted to take the courses in education offered by the faculty but not recognized by the faculty as worthy of academic credit. Most of the members of the faculty, although having little or no sympathy with my department, were nevertheless fairminded men and, after some discussion, voted that my courses might thereafter be counted toward the degree of A.M. This was a decided gain, but, as some seniors expecting to teach after graduation manifested a desire to elect the courses in education and as it was well known that most of those men would not return for graduate study, it was necessary to open the question of academic credit for those courses once more the following year; and at that time the faculty voted that the courses might also be counted toward the bachelor's degree, it being understood that the courses were to be classified as "For graduates and undergraduates" and "Primarily for graduates" — a classification which was quite acceptable to me, because, from the beginning, I had looked forward to making the department largely, if not at first wholly, a graduate department. We were all agreed that a prospective teacher should have an education before studying his profession, but we also knew that for a long time to come most prospective teachers must get their technical training, if they got any, before they graduated.
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During several years some of the courses in methods continued to be offered, but the number of such courses steadily declined. At the same time the courses in education gradually assumed, more and more, the status of a separate department within the Division of Philosophy — as, indeed, to all intents and purposes, they were. But unlike the courses in philosophy, they were also under the general direction of the faculty's "Committee on Courses for Teachers." The effect of this arrangement was to make the courses in education run the gantlet of several committees before they came to the faculty for adoption for any ensuing year. First, there was the committee on courses for teachers; second, there was the Division of Philosophy, which had to approve all courses offered in that division; third, there was the administrative board of the Graduate School, which had to approve all courses for graduates; and finally, the faculty's committee on courses of instruction, which had to recommend every year to the faculty for adoption all courses offered by that faculty. It was evident, therefore, that whatever dangers might lurk in the new enterprise to which the faculty was committed, they were likely to be discovered and eradicated, or at least minimized, as time went on. At first I was inclined to resent this rather formidable scrutiny to which the emerging Department of Education was subjected, but before long I realized that it was beneficial both to me and to the department. For it required careful planning on my part, and it also gave me an opportunity to give information to members of the faculty about the aims, content, and methods of the courses in education, information which they and the entire faculty needed to enable them to judge whether the study of education ought to survive as a function of the university. Accordingly, it was not long before I welcomed scepticism or opposition on
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the part of members of the supervising committees because I could not fail to appreciate their unwillingness to approve courses that they feared might not be worthy of the university, and because it gave me excellent opportunities to educate the faculty — and myself. After two or three years President Eliot wrote to me asking whether I wished to have the faculty's committee on courses for teachers reappointed, adding that it was entirely within his province to continue or discontinue that committee. T h e committee was discontinued. W h e n I began seriously to prepare for the three courses that I had announced for the year 1891-1892, I found, as I had anticipated, that the dearth of good educational literature in English was my greatest handicap and that the books in French and German that were available in the university library, while of some assistance to me, would probably not be of much use to students. Moreover, I found the foreign books so largely national in their treatment of educational theory and educational history that they were far from being what I needed. However, I made what use I could of the foreign books. For material in educational theory I had to spin largely from my own substance, utilizing my earlier efforts in that field whenever possible, and I planned to refer the students to such English books and articles as there were for critical consideration. There was some rather inferior literature in English in the history of education, to which students could be referred in connection with my lectures. But I look back on what I tried to do in those first years in the history of education with dissatisfaction. I felt strongly that the history of education should be treated as a part of the history of civilization, but I also felt my lack of preparation to treat it in that fashion and stumbled along as best I could, resolving to turn that subject over to someone else as soon as I could. I had to wait some years, however, before I
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could do that. T h e situation was better so far as my third course was concerned because materials for that course could be found in reports of state and city superintendents of schools and in private-school catalogues, and I began immediately to collect such documents for my own use and for study by my students. Moreover, I found in the Educational Review and, not long after, in other new periodicals, articles that I could use for assignments to students. A n d that course was constantly vitalized by actual observation of schools and school systems in operation in the vicinity of the university, for as soon as the schools opened in the autumn I visited many superintendents and principals and readily secured permission for my students to visit in their schools. T h e response of teachers and school officers in the vicinity of the university to my request that students should be allowed to visit their classrooms was so cordial and their willingness to cooperate with me in my new enterprise at Harvard was so general that I felt, in spite of the scepticism of which I was conscious at Harvard, greatly encouraged. I quote here a letter from a distinguished principal of Boston which is typical of the cordiality with which my proposal to invade their classrooms through my students was received by all whom I approached. Public Latin School Boston, March n , 1892 Dear Professor Hanus : Please to pardon my delay in giving an answer to your proposition made to me the day of your visit. It was not convenient for me to get my associates together after school till yesterday, for one reason or another. I made known to them your request and it was at once cheerfully granted and a good deal of sympathy with your
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work at Harvard was expressed, and all desired to cooperate with you in making the work of your department successful, so far as it is in their power. The sensibilities of the more diffident teachers were slightly moved when I announced that the observations of these Harvard students would be subjects for discussion in your lecture room. I assured them of your sympathy in that feeling, as a practical teacher yourself, and of the restrictions you would place on all such reports and discussions. Some of the teachers, and I think it may be well to make it universal, desire to reserve the privilege of refusing admission to the class under certain circumstances, which they assure me, will happen very infrequently, and may not happen at all while the students are in the school-house. I am sure you will appreciate the motive of this single reservation. . . . Very respectfully and cordially yours Moses Merrill. Nevertheless, the handicap of the lack of good literature which I could use and to which students could be referred persisted for a long time. It is probably difficult for students of education today to realize that books in English for college students in education were almost nonexistent at that time. It was not until nearly 1900 that such usable books and magazine articles were forthcoming in any quantity. It was entirely possible to read all the usable books and articles (in English) on education for some time after I began my work at Harvard. Today it is difficult for one to keep abreast of the usable publications in a single division of the subject. Of course, much of the educational literature then produced was of little or no value for college students, and
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that is true o£ the literature of education today. But a large amount of that literature was and is good. I think it is safe to say that no country has produced more good literature on education during the last forty years or so than the United States. And the volume of such literature is still increasing. I have already told how small the number of students was during my first year and noted one reason why not all of that small number continued with me until the end of the year. For several years the number of students continued to be small, although there was a gradual increase in that number. For a year or two there was even apprehension on the part of some persons outside the university lest my whole enterprise should be abandoned. As the number of students increased I heard no more about the possibility of an early death of my department, and I also had reason to believe that the scepticism within the university about the usefulness of the department was diminishing. Summer courses were offered before 1891 by several departments of the university, but they were not organized as a summer school. The announcement of each course was printed as a separate leaflet, and for the summer of 1892 my courses in education were similarly announced. But during the academic year 1892-1893 the summer-school committee, of which I was a member (Professor Shaler, chairman), recommended the organization of the summer courses, the number of which had increased from year to year, into a summer school of arts and sciences. The faculty approved that recommendation, and the summer school of the university as known today was the result. There is no summer-school faculty in general charge of summer-school courses; but there is a director of the Summer School of Arts and Sciences and of Education, and that school is now a department under the administrative board of University Extension.
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T h e number o£ students who registered in my courses in education in that first summer was so much larger than the number in my term-time courses that I felt much encouraged; and as the number of summer students increased in subsequent years faster than the number in term time, and as the summer students seemed to be satisfied with my work, I realized ere long that the summer courses could probably be counted on to extend the influence of my department both without and within the university. This feeling seemed reasonable because some summer students afterwards became term-time students. For a long time (and perhaps today, I don't know how that is) the income from summer courses in education, even after there were several instructors in the department, exceeded the cost of those courses. I myself taught regularly in the summer school for seventeen consecutive years, and irregularly after that until I retired in 1921. Although the summer-school work afforded me encouragement and buttressed my self-respect in the largely unsympathetic atmosphere of the university (there are some die-hards today among the officers of the university, and doubtless in other universities, who continue to look upon a department for the study of education with distrust), I obtained that encouragement at heavy cost to my own productivity. Early in my first year I began to publish articles, and later some of my addresses, in leading educational magazines whenever they seemed to me worth publishing, and I continued that practice during my entire career at Harvard. Most of those articles and addresses were afterwards collected and published in several books. In addition to my departmental responsibilities and service on various committees within the university, and participation in teachers' associations in different parts of the country, including occasional committee work, I had, as time went
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on, frequent lecture engagements, sometimes f a r f r o m home. I have been a member of the board of trustees of Wellesley College since 1916, and f r o m 1 9 3 1 to 1935 I was a member of the board of trustees of International College in Izmir ( S m y r n a ) , T u r k e y . 7 I served as chairman of the Massachusetts Commission
on
Industrial
Education
(1906-1909),
charged with the function of starting state-aided vocational education throughout the C o m m o n w e a l t h ; and when the work of that commission w a s taken over by the reorganized State Board of Education in 1 9 0 9 , 1 was appointed a member of that board and served as such for ten years. 8 F r o m 1 9 1 1 on, I engaged f r o m time to time in making or directing surveys of schools and school systems (for some of which I had leave of absence from the university for a half year or a whole year). It goes without saying that those surveys, quite apart from what they might do for the schools or school systems concerned, were of great professional value to me. T h e y gave me direct contact with schools and school ' I became interested in that college because a former student of mine, Dr. Cass Arthur Reed (now minister of the Pilgrim Church in Pomona, California), was its president. The college was about forty years old, had done good work for many years, and was doing good work in 1934. But in that year the trustees voted to suspend the college because of the extreme nationalism of the Turks. The charter of the college required the trustees to devote their funds to education in or near Izmir. As a member of the board of trustees of International College, I gradually became convinced that it was unwise to try to maintain colleges with American ideals and American money in the Near East, and particularly in Turkey. So I felt that I ought not to remain a member of the board of trustees and resigned my membership in 1935. But in accordance with a request of the trustees my resignation was to be accepted as soon as the charter was amended so as to terminate a provision stipulating that a certain proportion of the trustees must be Massachusetts men. " The work of the Commission is described in Chapter XI.
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systems, and required me to wrestle with the practical problems with which individual schools or school systems have to struggle. The preparation of the reports on those surveys and the printing of them, if published (as nearly all of them were), was an intensely interesting, though arduous, task. One of them (the report on the survey of the New York City schools) occupied me more than a year after the actual survey was completed. I shall have more to say farther on about school surveys in which I participated. Returning to the early nineties — it was not long before the correspondence growing out of my work was fairly heavy. Even during my first year I often wrote half a dozen letters a day, and later many more. This correspondence, whether intrinsically important or not, had to be disposed of without clerical assistance, and so consumed a great deal of time and was sometimes a real burden. Fortunately, clerical help, though delayed too long, was finally provided. During my second summer, in accordance with a suggestion made by Professor N. S. Shaler, and taking advantage of the large number (for that time) of teachers attending the summer school, I founded the Harvard Teachers' Association. } Shaler was one of Harvard's best-known officers. He was a popular professor (of geology), dean of the Lawrence Scientific School (in the course of years supplanted by a school of engineering), and chairman of the summer-school committee, a prolific writer, an alert and active debater in faculty meetings, and perennially devoted to the general interests of the university as well as to the specific duties assigned to him. He was a man of broad sympathies, and sometimes referred to himself with a rather deprecating smile as "a professor of chores." Students in difficulty customarily appealed to him, and never in vain. In person he
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was slender but vigorous. He had a shock o£ reddish hair turning grey, combed straight back from his forehead, and the ruddy complexion that usually accompanies that hair coloring. Mrs. Shaler was a charming hostess, and the Sunday afternoons when the Shalers customarily received students and other friends are a cherished memory. Shaler was a good friend of mine and of my department. His early death in 1906 was a severe loss to the university and a great grief to me. Professor Shaler was the first president of the Harvard Teachers' Association. I was "elected" secretary — and I was secretary for twenty years. It was a satisfaction to see the association grow from year to year. Its annual meetings have always been held in March, at a time when no other teachers' association of our vicinity is likely to meet. For a time a summer-school meeting of the association was held each year during the session of the summer school; and also for a time the association published annually a number of leaflets (most of which I wrote) dealing with contemporary educational interests; but after a few years both the summer-school meeting and the leaflet were discontinued. The association was able, in time, to bring to its meetings persons of distinction outside of as well as within the teaching profession. The program was generally so arranged that the forenoon session was devoted to topics of special interest to teachers; then followed the annual dinner, at which the speakers were laymen of known interest in education who spoke from the layman's point of view. Occasionally, after those meetings, in the evening, some of those speakers, with other guests, met at dinner at my house. I remember particularly one such occasion when the guests were Walter H . Page, the Rev. Samuel M. Crothers, and Professors Josiah Royce, Ν . S. Shaler, Barrett Wendell, and W . M. Davis.
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Some time after I resigned as secretary, the association experienced a few years of retrogression. But with the election of Professor Charles Swain Thomas as secretary the association took on renewed vigor, and its annual meetings in Cambridge are again largely attended. Under the editorship of Professor Thomas the association published the Harvard Teachers Record, which has now given place to the Harvard Educational Review. In recent years during the week of the meeting of the association educational conferences covering the special interests of different groups of teachers have been held under the auspices of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. In 1892 President Eliot won the approval of the faculty to his proposal to organize within the faculty the Schools Examination Board. The function of this board was to examine any school on the invitation of the school and to make a confidential report of its findings which neither the board nor the school might publish. President Eliot himself was chairman of this board, and a number of professors, including myself, were appointed members. If a school desired a "complete" examination, the board sent six examiners, one for each of the principal departments of instruction offered by the school. If it desired only a "partial" examination, i.e., an examination covering only part of the instruction, examiners were sent accordingly. I was appointed secretary of the board, my duties being to conduct the correspondence of the board and to write some of the reports to school» on the basis of the reports of the examiners. (Other members of the board also wrote reports to schools.) If a school desired an examination of its department of mathematics or a general examination of its organization and administration, I was always one of the examiners. Although the board was called an examination board and the specialists sent to the
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schools were called examiners, the purpose of the board was not to "examine" in the usual meaning o£ that term, but to inspect, appraise, and confer. If an examiner chose to set examinations in the course of his inspection, he was, of course, free to do so. The whole enterprise was intended to be helpful in the best sense of that term. Sometimes other members of the board as well as myself were appointed examiners; in general, the board, acting through its chairman, secured its examiners as they were available within or without the Harvard faculty. The board charged each school a small fee for the services of the examiners and for the preparation of the report to the school. Naturally, the activities of the Schools Examination Board were of great interest to me, although the additional work it entailed was heavy. Both public high schools and private or endowed secondary schools asked for examinations. Among them were Groton School, St. Mark's School, the Roxbury Latin School, Utica Academy (in Utica, New York), the Newton High School, the Salem High School, and the New Bedford High School, the last three all in Massachusetts. The reports to all schools we examined contained favorable as well as unfavorable comments and, of course, appropriate suggestions for improvement when an examiner found it necessary to comment unfavorably. But I shall always remember one school (not included in those enumerated above) on which the report was almost wholly unfavorable. However, one page of the report consisted of a favorable comment on a single feature of the school. The head of the school thereupon wrote to me saying that he wished to publish that page in the prospectus of his school. When I called President Eliot's attention to this man's letter, he said: "Call his attention to the agreement that neither the school nor the board may publish the report to a school,
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and say that if he publishes any part of the report we will publish the whole of it." I wrote as President Eliot directed and heard nothing more from my correspondent. The Schools Examination Board did a flourishing business for a time — until President Eliot himself undermined its work as chairman of the celebrated Committee of Ten of the National Education Association. I intend to give an account of the work of that committee later. Here I need only say that the report of the Committee of Ten gave secondary schools important information concerning courses of study and methods of teaching — just such information as the clients of the Harvard Schools Examination Board sought from that board. Meanwhile I had reaped from my work as secretary of the board a rich harvest of information concerning contemporary secondary-school problems and equally valuable suggestions for the progressive solution of those problems, all of which I could use in my teaching. In December 1891 I was invited to address the Massachusetts Teachers Association on the study of education at Harvard University, and, of course, I was glad to accept that invitation. In a sense it was my inaugural as a New England teacher, and I was much concerned that it should be a worthy exposition of my subject and not discreditable to me. When I had written the first draft of my address, I asked President Eliot if he would read it and make such comments on it as he saw fit. In after days I came to know how conscientiously President Eliot always responded to any request for help from one of his professors, but I learned it for the first time when he returned my manuscript. He had used his blue pencil unsparingly and had been equally unsparing in some of his marginal comments. But he had done just what I wished him to do, and I profited by his severe but just criticisms. I rewrote the entire paper,
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not without some discouragement because of President Eliot's criticisms but with a clearer conception of what should be said to the teachers of Massachusetts. The most important result to me was, however, the effect of his criticism on my English. He was himself a master of English expression, and he tolerated no deviation from the high standard he set for himself. I am happy to add that my address as delivered was favorably received. In it I said what I thought in 1891 (and still think) should be said to those who want or need information about the university study of education, although my exposition of 1891 by no means covers the aims and scope of that study at Harvard and elsewhere today. Here are some excerpts from that address.9 "Education, as a subject deserving serious study, occupies, today, a place not unlike that held by the mother-tongue only a few years ago. It has been but a short time since English was a very subordinate subject in our colleges and secondary schools. The educational value of the mothertongue was, commonly, not recognized. . . . Today, English has a respectable place in the programs of most high schools and academies. In the best colleges it has won an honorable place. "Not so the study of education. . . . "Contrary to what would naturally be expected, this apathy regarding the study of education has been most characteristic of those who were most liberally educated. Until recently the attitude of many college-bred teachers in secondary schools and of many college professors toward courses in education, was, in general, one of indifference, sometimes of aggressive opposition. Naturally, the students have shared the indifference of the professors. Even for future teachers, " Printed in full in my Educational Aims and Educational Values.
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for men who should be thoroughly equipped at all points for the exigencies of their future profession, it has been doubted that instruction in education and teaching could be of real value. Indeed, such value was positively denied. The opinion was current that no amount of preliminary study of the problems and processes involved in education could improve the teacher's work. It was held that the complex activities of a city school system could not be studied and understood, to any respectable degree, without setting the student to teaching a class; without plunging him in medias res, where, it may be remarked in passing, his professional horizon would be limited by his grade or his school. According to the same view, the important questions pertaining to the choice of subject-matter and to the order and distribution of the subjects in a course of study could only be satisfactorily answered while the teacher was wholly absorbed in teaching some particular subject, or doing the work of a particular grade. . . . The important question with what aim, could not be profitably considered until, after years of wasteful groping and experimenting, each teacher had, consciously or unconsciously, formulated an aim for himself. "The experience of the past, it was held, in formulating and testing educational theories and practices, unlike the past experience of the race in all other respects, had no value in helping the parent and teacher of today to avoid useless experiments and false theories. In other words, in education there is no lesson in the accumulation of past experience; everything must be done over again from the beginning. . . . Thus, it was held that the political history of nations, but not the history of education; philosophy and ethics and psychology, but not the application of them to the development of manhood and womanhood; natural science, but not
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the natural history of children [and youth] ; the study of existing political institutions, and a formative social science, but not of existing educational institutions and of a formative educational science — special researches in every department of human thought and activity — were profitable, save in the domain of education. "It was in the nature of things that such opinions regarding the study of education and the professional training of teachers should not endure. . . . The first university departments of education were the direct result of a demand for better-trained secondary-school teachers. . . . To provide such training is and will remain a great gain to our educational resources. But it is not enough. Training for leadership in education is also required. . . . The importance, the range, and the difficulty of the duties of principals and superintendents of schools in our rapidly growing communities have come to be recognized; and the recognition has been followed by a demand for a higher general culture and a deeper and more comprehensive professional training than most of them have hitherto enjoyed. . . ."
CHAPTER IX PROGRESS Τ Η some improvement in details, the courses in jducation outlined above continued to be given until 1896 under the conditions that have been described. During those years it had become increasingly apparent to everybody that it was impossible for a single teacher to cover the essential minimum of university instruction in education, even limited as that essential minimum was at that time. Accordingly I sought an enlargement of the staff of the department. But at the time it was possible to secure only one additional teacher — Mr. George H . Locke (now Dr. George H . Locke, the well-known head of the public library of Toronto, Canada). Locke's appointment was one of several appointments in the Department of Education as time went on, made possible, to begin with, by gifts from outside sources covering the necessary salary or salaries. Locke's salary was guaranteed by several Boston women teachers who desired to make the Harvard courses in education accessible to women. After reflection and conferences with Radcliffe College, I told those interested women that if an additional teacher could be provided for the Department of Education we could repeat some of our courses at Radclifïe. Thereupon they guaranteed the salary of an instructor, Locke was appointed, and we began to repeat courses at Radclifie. 1 Thus was begun a cooperation with 1 In after years, advanced Radcliffe students were admitted to our "primarily for graduates" Harvard courses. One such course, "Education 3 " — one of my own courses, soon had a considerable
PROGRESS
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Radclifïe College which has lasted, mutatis mutandis, to the present day. Shortly after the work in education had been begun at Harvard, the cooperation of neighboring school authorities was obtained to enable our inexperienced students to teach for practice under the direction and guidance of the Harvard Department of Education and the local principals and teachers. Only a limited number of students (but enough for our purpose) were allowed to teach at one time in any one city or town. In return, the university offered free tuition to as many teachers of a city or town (one course — any course — per teacher, per year) as there were student-teachers in that city or town. Practice teaching for inexperienced Harvard students of education has been improved and has continued to the present day. The appointment of Mr. Locke relieved me of the course in the history of education, and he helped to supervise the practice teaching of the students and enabled me to differentiate my course in schools and school systems into two courses — a course in secondary education and a course in the organization and administration of schools and school systems, thus effecting a substantial improvement in the work of the department. The year 1897-1898 I spent in Europe, education-hunting. The next year I was able to offer a course in the school systems of England, France, and Germany in addition to the courses already established. Mr. Locke left us after another year, and Arthur O. Norton (now head of the department of education at Wellesley College) was appointed in his stead. In subsequent years other teachers, fellows, and assistants were added to the staff number of women students, and I learned that it was dubbed "CoEducation 3 " by Harvard students.
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of the department, especially after the department became a division of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in 1906. A m o n g the teachers were Henry W . Holmes (now dean of Harvard's Graduate School of Education); Ernest C. Moore (now director of the University of California at Los A n geles) ; Alexander Inglis and George E. Johnson, both taken from us by death in the midst of their active careers; Walter F . Dearborn and John M . Brewer, both members of the present faculty of the Graduate School of Education. A m o n g the fellows were T . C. McCracken (now dean of the School of Education at Ohio University, Athens, Ohio) ; and Frank W . Ballou, now superintendent of public schools, Washington, D . C. A m o n g the assistants were H . S. Gruver (now superintendent of public schools, Lynn, Massachusetts); and L . O. Cummings, who later became assistant professor (and is now dean of the School of Education at the University of Buffalo). A l l of them helped, in their several ways, to forward the work of the department, and some of them that of the division (when the department had become a division) and later that of the Graduate School of Education. By 1906 I had become convinced that the Department of Education was out of place in the Division of Philosophy. It seemed to me that if the Department of Education belonged in any division it was in the Division of Social Studies (if there was such a division), but that it should really be an independent division of education. T h e history of education, the study of the organization and administration of our schools and school systems, and of foreign school systems, statistical studies of educational procedure and of educational results, school financial administration, school hygiene, the problems involved in planning programs of study, the content and distribution of the subjects of study for elementary
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I45
and secondary schools, and the methods of teaching in those schools, all these things and many others could not be regarded as philosophy. Moreover, the method of studying all these things is not the method of studying philosophy. There is a common ground of philosophy and education in the important field of educational aims and educational values — the field commonly called the philosophy of education; and there is another meeting ground in the study of the learning processes — what we commonly call educational psychology. But even in these overlapping fields we seek the applications of philosophy and psychology to education and not philosophy and psychology as such. These common grounds merely mean that no field of study can be wholly distinct from other fields. In general, the study of education is so different from the study of philosophy that it deserves separate classification among academic fields of study. Incidentally, the administration of the Division of Philosophy had for some time obstructed the development of the Department of Education. T h e chairman of the Division of Philosophy was at that time Professor H u g o Münsterberg (a fairly recent importation from Germany, through the influence of Professor William James). Münsterberg was a brilliant psychologist. For a time he was a decidedly influential member of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, but his influence waned long before his death in 1917. From his advent he had manifested pronounced hostility to the Department of Education at various times. In 1898, while I was in Europe, he had told Locke that he was sorry that Locke had come to the Harvard Department of Education, because he felt certain that department could not survive. Besides being chairman of the Division of Philosophy, with which the Department of Education was affiliated, he was a member of the administrative board of the Graduate School
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of Arts and Sciences which had to approve the programs of study of candidates for the higher degrees. Several times graduate students reported to me that they would like to include a course in education in their programs of study for the degree of A.M. but could not do so because Münsterberg had told them that the administrative board of the graduate school would not approve such a program. Naturally this was a decided disadvantage to the Department of Education and not advantageous to the students. There was another marked but different disadvantage. Fellowships and scholarships were allotted to the several divisions of the faculty. As an addendum to the Division of Philosophy whose chairman had no use for the Department of Education, that department got only what was left after the students of philosophy had received all but one or at most two of the fellowships and scholarships available to the Division of Philosophy — the smallest ones, at that. Accordingly, having discussed the matter with the Division of Philosophy and having secured the approval of a majority of that division, I proposed and obtained an amicable divorce of the Department of Education from the Division of Philosophy by a vote of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences; and by the same vote, the instructors in the department were constituted an independent Division of Education, parallel to the other divisions of the faculty. When this vote to establish the Division of Education was presented to the faculty by Miinsterberg, as a vote offered by the Division of Philosophy, he added a statement to the effect that the Division of Philosophy had not voted that the new division should be authorized to recommend candidates for the higher degrees. (Recommending candidates for higher degrees was a regular function of every division.) Naturally I told the faculty that I had attended every meeting of the Division of
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Philosophy oí which I had been notified and that I had never heard a suggestion of any such restriction on the functions of the proposed Division of Education. In opposing the motion of the Division of Philosophy, Münsterberg also said, among other things, that while courses in education might look well on paper, he knew them to be valueless because he had given such courses himself in Germany. When the motion came to a vote, only two members of the faculty voted against it. With the gradual enlargement of the staff of the Division of Education, it became possible to broaden the work done and at the same time to strengthen it by specialization. My own work tended more and more to specialization in the field of educational administration, and from about 1910 I was able to devote myself chiefly to that field. In a number of addresses during those years I directed attention to contemporary conditions in school administration and sought to formulate principles that must underlie better procedure. What I was advocating may be gathered from the following principles formulated in an address — "Some Principles of School Administration" — delivered at the meeting of the Department of Superintendence in 1913 and published in the proceedings of the department for that year : 2 The efficient management of a public-school system depends on the following conditions: ι . A clear conception on the part of all concerned with its work of the purposes for which the school system exists •— of its aims. 2. A clear conception of the difference between the functions of the board of education and those of its staff, and 2 Republished with other addresses and essays in my School Administration and School Reports (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1920).
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actual differentiation between them in practice; that is, centralization o£ authority and responsibility for ( a ) effective lay control in the board; (b) business and professional management in the board's staff of employees. Complete accountability of the board to the people for the work done and the money expended under its direction. A general manager and executive for the whole enterprise appointed by the board, whose authority is commensurate with his responsibility — the city superintendent of schools. A competent staff of employees for the educational activities and for the business affairs of the school system directly responsible to the general manager. Complete accountability of the general manager and through him of the staff to the board of education for the proper performance of the duties with which they are charged. Habitual and well-organized self-examination within the school system; including adequate objective appraisal by the staff of results achieved, and well-conducted experiments to confirm or refute educational opinion within and without the school system. Cooperation under leadership throughout the school system itself, and of the school system and the community.
By about 1900 the need of a department library at Harvard had become acute. It was no longer possible for the instructors in the Harvard Department of Education to supply the books, documents, and periodicals they needed for their own use and for the use of their students. W h e n I talked this matter over with Professor Royce, he suggested that I appeal to Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Lee of Boston, and I did so. Through the generosity of the Lees we succeeded in making
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a fair start toward the department library we needed. T h e library of the Graduate School of Education, begun in this way long before that school was established (in 1920), now numbers about 57,000 volumes. I should say at once, however, that the library of the School of Education is only a part of the educational collections available to Harvard students of education. T h e University Library (Widener Library) has a large collection of educational books and documents, probably the most nearly complete collection of such materials to be found anywhere. T h e Widener Library collections of educational books and documents were begun long ago — long before 1891, when my connection with the university began — and have been growing through the years and are still growing. 3 A n interesting part of the department library is the textbook collection. This collection began with a suggestion to publishers that the summer school offered an opportunity to them to display their publications to teachers, and they were not slow to realize the advantages of such displays. T h e publishers were then invited to send such of their books as they wished to bring to the attention of the teachers attending the summer school, we agreeing to care for them during the session and to return the books after the close of the summer school. It was also stipulated that there must be no solicitations by salesmen while the books were in our charge. T h e final result of these arrangements was that many publishers preferred to donate the books to the library, and the library was glad to accept them. T h e textbooks now constitute a considerable part of the total number of volumes 8 See "The Education Collection of the Harvard College Library" by Louise M. Taylor, in the Harvard Teachers Record, February
1935·
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in the library of the School of Education, and the collection is still growing. An incident in connection with the beginning of this textbook collection is worth recording. My first letter to publishers failed to meet the approval of President Eliot. He feared that we might be assuming obligations to the publishers that would be embarrassing in case we could not approve some of their books — in book reviews or otherwise. So I did not get the textbook collection started on my first attempt. The next year, having revised my letter to publishers, I again sought President Eliot's approval, and again he did not approve it. The next year I revised my letter once more, and at last he was satisfied, and I went ahead. Meanwhile, each time I reappeared with my letter he said, "Mr. Hanus, I thought we settled that matter some months ago." But he did not refuse to consider my revisions, and finally, as I have said, I succeeded in writing a letter that he could approve. My acquaintance with Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Lee was one of the incidental and important results of the endeavor to start a department library. Both of them became and continued to be friends of the department until Mrs. Lee's lamented death, and Mr. Lee's active interest has continued to this day. The Department, the Division, and the Graduate School of Education owe him much, having benefited by his interest and his judgment on many occasions and by his generous gifts of money from time to time.
CHAPTER
Χ
C O N T E M P O R A R Y PROBLEMS IN
ELEMENTARY
A N D SECONDARY EDUCATION
E
A R L I E R in these recollections I commented on the unsatisfactory condition of elementary and secondaryschool courses of study throughout the country in the years preceding and immediately following 1891. During the last decades of the nineteenth century, and especially during the 1890's, the teaching profession was much concerned with the problem of "enriching" the "course of study" 1 in elementary and secondary schools. President Eliot took a lively interest in that problem, and participated actively with others in promoting its solution by speaking and writing on the subject. A t first he was not listened to with general approval, many teachers interpreting his attack on contemporary educational practice as an attack on them — as indeed it was, so far as they acquiesced unthinkingly in that practice. But ere long he won enthusiastic approval and strong support for his efforts, and when in 1892 he was selected as chairman of the significant and widely influential "Committee of T e n " on secondary-school studies of the National Education Association, he had become a national leader dealing with the 1 1 use the term "course of study" here because it was used at the time of which I am writing to mean the entire scheme of studies in a school or school system. Nowadays, the term "program of studies" has come into general use to designate that entire offering, and "course of study" to designate the instruction offered in a single subject (English, history, etc.). Also, a pupil's "curriculum" means the courses of study that pupil pursues.
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important problem of improving the program of studies in elementary and secondary schools. My first printed contribution to the discussion of this problem was a rather long article in two consecutive numbers of the Educational Review (afterwards reprinted in my Educational Aims and Educational Values) entitled "Attempted Improvements in the Course of Study." In it I pointed out that during the past twenty or thirty years education in the schools had been acquiring a new significance — it had been emerging from the sphere of mere routine into the sphere of rationalized endeavor — and then went on to describe the prevailing courses of study of the recent past (and to a large extent of that time) and the equally prevalent endeavors to improve them in content (subject matter) and in flexibility of administration, and at the end I formulated the following conclusion : "From the foregoing discussion, I think we may conclude that whatever dissatisfaction we may feel with courses of study as they now are, our attempts to improve the courses of study as they were, have led us to an improved conception of our entire educational endeavor. This conception, I believe, is fairly interpreted in the following statement of the aims of elementary and secondary education, which, it seems to me, are emerging from the tumult of educational discussion and experimentation now under consideration. "The special aims of elementary or early education are: ι. To nourish the mind of the child through a course of study which should comprise an orderly presentation of the whole field of knowledge in its elements, i.e., to acquaint the pupil with the world in which he lives and the civilization into which he is born, and his own relations to them, including his duties and his privileges; and in so doing to provide the opportunity for the exercise of all the child's
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powers — mental and moral, aesthetic, manual or constructive— through good instruction and wise discipline. 2. T o guard and promote his normal physical development. 3. Gradually to develop in the pupil an enlightened vocational purpose and to help him to discover the vocation in which his capacity and tastes lie, and which his circumstances permit him to choose as a career. "Continuous development from the stage of early childhood, covered by the period of elementary education, into the stage of later childhood and youth, covered by the period of secondary education, does not involve the abandonment of these aims. On the contrary, these aims must continue to influence the pupil's education throughout the entire formative period. But they are subject to some modifications. "The pupil's mind must still be nourished, but it is no longer possible for him to pursue simultaneously the elements of all knowledge when that knowledge has diverged into distinct subjects, except within certain well-defined limits. "The special aims of secondary education are, therefore: χ. T o discover and systematically to develop a human being's interests and capacities — intellectual, moral, aesthetic, manual or constructive. 2. With constant regard to the progress of this discovery to so direct his development as gradually to emancipate him from external restraint and guidance, in order to render him, as far as possible, self-directing; i.e., physically, mentally, morally stable, alert, vigorous, and active. 3. T o enable a youth to realize that he owes a duty to society as well as to himself; and hence that the prizes of life — namely, wealth, leisure, honor — in order to possess lasting worth in his own estimation and in the estimation of
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his fellow-men must be earned; or when inherited, as they sometimes are, that they must be deserved; that, in short, man's highest and most permanent ideal is service." Of course, I was only one of those who were writing and speaking on the enrichment of the program of studies in elementary and secondary schools. Although most of us did not see it clearly at the time, it is apparent now that we were seeking a new and definite formulation of the aims of elementary and secondary education, such as those formulated above, and practices in accordance with those aims. In the absence of generally recognized aims changes in program of study were largely imitative. If A had made changes in the program of studies — changes in accordance with aims he had more or less clearly conceived — B, C, etc., not wishing to be outdone, often made similar changes without reference to any aims whatever. The changing programs of study were most widely represented in the Middle West and the Far West by the time I arrived in Cambridge, although they were not absent from the eastern states. In the early nineties, owing chiefly to President Eliot's earlier and contemporary advocacy of "enrichment," important changes were made in the elementary-school program of study in Cambridge. Through two Harvard professors,2 successively members of the Cambridge school committee, two new studies, physics and geometry, and important improvements in the course of study in geography were introduced into the elementary-school course of study of Cambridge. It was recognized that the teachers of Cambridge needed instruction to enable them to carry out the proposed changes. Professor William Davis and Professor Edwin H . Hall gave the instruction in geography 'Professors A. B. Hart and F. W. Taussig.
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and physics, respectively, and I gave a series of lectures in geometry. All these lectures were well attended. The substance of my lectures was afterwards published in a pamphlet entitled Geometry in the Grammar School? During the following year the new work got under way and was carried on with moderate success for several years. I was glad to have a small part in this actual endeavor to improve the elementary-school course of study. But I was far from believing that the Cambridge experiment represented the right way to go about it. I did not believe that the improvement we sought could be effected by merely substituting concrete geometry for some of the useless arithmetic of the last two or three grades of the elementary-school course (although that was an improvement as far as it went), or by introducing physics into the work of those grades without previous nature study leading up to physics. Nor did I believe that the needed improvement in the study of geography admirably advocated by Professor Davis could be realized without similar nature study. My own belief was that what was needed was a thorough overhauling of the elementary-school course of study of the sort outlined in the paper written some time afterwards, "Attempted Improvements in the Course of Study," referred to above. The Cambridge experiment did, however, represent the general trend toward improvement and helped forward the whole endeavor. Throughout the country experimentation of various kinds to improve the elementary-school work had been going on even before the early nineties; and that experimentation has continued to the present day and has been guided increasingly by more clearly perceived, more rational, and more " Boston: Heath, 1893.
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adequate aims in view of the whole educational process during the pupils' school career. One very important result of all this endeavor is the contemporary junior high school, usually covering the last two years of the old elementary-school "course" and the first year of the old high-school "course." But before this desirable result had been achieved, there was a good deal of doctrinaire experimentation as well as more justifiable experimentation and, of course, a more or less well-advised endeavor to rationalize the experiments under way, whether merely imitative or based on recognized considerations. T h e most important of the experiments which I have called doctrinaire were attempts to improve the work of the elementary school by "concentration" and "correlation." Both concentration and correlation were Herbartian ideas; but as they appeared in this country they were really the ideas of Herbart's successors rather than of Herbart himself. T h e extraordinary lengths to which these doctrinaire ideas were carried by some of the successors of Herbart is illustrated by a rather voluminous German work by Rein, Pickel, and Scheller. That work proposed as the center of correlation (concentration) — the core to which everything to be learned should be related — the ethical and religious material to be found in the history of the human race, and proposed further that since, as they maintained, the development of the child epitomized the historical development of the race, the correlating core for the studies to be pursued in each grade of the elementary school should be chosen from that period of the evolution of the race corresponding to the stage of development of the children of that grade. They discovered, further, that the successive historical stages through which the human race had passed from the time of the Hebrew patriarchs to the present day were just eight
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in number, and hence that the materials for instruction for each grade of the elementary school were ready to hand! Concentration and correlation were never accepted in the United States in the form proposed by Rein, Pickel, and Scheller. But Herbartian ideas were imported into this country by a group of Americans (at that time normalschool teachers, of whom some of the most important were Charles De Garmo, Frank McMurry, and Charles McMurr y 4 ) , who organized a national Herbart society, and that society helped forward a more serious study of fundamental educational problems than we had had theretofore. It afterwards became the National Society for the Study of Education, which has been and is now an active and decidedly useful organization. The idea of correlation, in spite of the absurdities advocated by some of its adherents, is valuable. To enable a child to see clearly the world in which he lives and his own relation to it, his educational experience should be unified; and that means not only that the natural interrelations of his studies should not be missed but that those interrelations must be consciously perceived by him. Hence good teaching requires, for example, that we do not teach history, and geography, and English literature as if they were totally independent; on occasion, we make any one of those studies more vital by making excursions into the others, when such excursions illuminate the geography, or history, or literature, under consideration at the time, and so on. Correlation was also advocated to relieve congestion (too many studies pursued at the same time) which followed hard upon "enrichment" of the work of the elementary * All three normal-school men at the time; afterwards professors of education at Cornell University, Columbia University, and Vanderbilt University, respectively.
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school because of the introduction of new studies into the old barren work without proper elimination of the older useless material. It was thought, for example, that it might be possible to cover most, if not all, of the older statistical geography (locations, areas, populations, and products, still in vogue quite generally) in the study of history, thus partially or wholly obviating the necessity for a separate time allotment for geography. This whole matter was studied by a committee (appointed in 1893) of the Department of Superintendence of the National Education Association — the Committee of Fifteen. That committee invited the cooperation of individuals or groups throughout the country. I organized a small group 6 to deal with the questions sent out by the committee, and our contribution was published in the appendix to the committee's report,® together with many independent contributions by other persons. T h e report of the Committee of Fifteen had little effect so far as correlation was concerned. It was, nevertheless, an important theoretical document. T h e chairman of the committee (Dr. William T . Harris, then United States Commissioner of Education) declined to deal with correlation in the sense in which the term had been used. H e believed the term should mean the adjustment of the child to contemporary civilization, and that led him to set forth the educational values of studies for effecting that adjustment. T w o other parts of the report dealing with the training of teachers ' T h e group consisted of Paul H . Hanus, Ray Greene Huling (headmaster of the Cambridge English H i g h School), Samuel T . Dutton (superintendent of schools, Brookline), Augustus H . Kelly (headmaster of the Lyman School, Boston), Frank A . Hill (secretary of the State Board of Education), Charles H . Grandgent (director of modern language instruction, Boston). * See Report of the Committee of Fifteen (American Book Company, 1895).
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and the organization and administration of city school systems, especially the latter (of which more hereafter), were important contributions to the solution of professional problems prominently before the country. The report of the Committee of Fifteen was, however, as a whole, not so influential as the report of the Committee of Ten (on secondary-school studies), of which an account is given below. Concentration as finally developed in this country is best represented in secondary (high-school) education. There it gradually came to mean in the larger high schools (even before the advent of the junior high school), apart from and sometimes in harmony with college admission requirements, such a choice of studies by the pupil from the program of studies offered by the school as to require him to concentrate his efforts in some one field of closely related studies, while permitting him, and usually requiring him, to distribute his efforts over remaining studies of the program. Such concentration and distribution of his work is intended to enable the pupil to acquire an incipient command over at least one field of study and some appreciation of other fields — i.e., it enables the pupil to make some progress in the acquisition of general culture. 7 But for some time before this conception of secondary education was established in practice, there was, as in the case of elementary-school programs, much experimenting with secondary-school programs. The problem of improving secondary-school programs was complicated by differences in the requirements for admission of different colleges, those differences being found not only in the different subjects re7
My definition of general culture — a definition which I have used for many years in almost that form — is: General culture is the capacity to appreciate the resources and the problems of our civilization and the power to deal effectively with some of them.
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quired by colleges but also in different requirements within a given subject; so that many schools found it difficult to prepare their pupils for admission to the colleges they chose without burdensome and expensive duplication of the instruction in certain subjects (Latin, for. example) and expensive provision for instruction in some subjects required by only one or a very small number of colleges. At the same time those schools had to meet a growing public demand for modern subjects. Since the grade of a high school or academy tended to be judged by its success in college-preparatory courses, no matter how good its work was in subjects outside the college admission requirements, and in the college admission requirements of those days Latin, Greek, and mathematics were the most important in important colleges, it is evident that the problem of "enrichment" was not a simple one. So secondary-school programs, like elementaryschool programs, suffered from congestion and confusion. To remedy this situation, the council of the National Education Association appointed the celebrated Committee of Ten, of which I have already spoken. The vote appointing that committee in 1892 stated, among other requirements, "That it is expedient to hold a conference of school and college teachers of each principal subject which enters into the programs of secondary schools in the United States and into the requirements for admission to college . . . each conference to consider the proper limits of its subject, the best methods of instruction, the most desirable allotment of time for the subject and the best methods of testing the pupils' attainments therein, and each conference to represent fairly the different parts of the country." The vote establishing the Committee of Ten named President Eliot chairman and also named the other nine members, outstanding secondary-school and college teachers. T o
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secure the results desired by the council, President Eliot appointed nine conferences of representative secondary-school and college men, each to consist of ten members; each conference to deal with one of the nine principal subjects of study at that time offered in secondary schools with respect to the matters specified in the vote quoted above; the conferences to report their findings to the Committee of Ten; these reports to be the basis of the report of that committee to the council. Each of the nine conferences made a valuable report, and after a year of "incubation" (a term adopted by President Eliot), the Committee of Ten presented its report (prepared by the chairman), together with the reports of the conferences, to the council and the public (1893). That report was immediately recognized as a document of outstanding importance. It was widely studied and discussed throughout the country for several years and had a marked effect in helping to bring order out of confusion in secondary education in the United States. Among its important contributions was a comprehensive table listing what studies, in the judgment of all the conferences, should be included in secondary-school education, when each subject of study should begin, and how much time should be devoted to it. That table contained far too much for any one school to undertake in four years — the time devoted to high-school education as then organized. Also it showed that all the conferences desired to have their several subjects begun earlier than they then appeared in high-school "courses of study." (In this the conferences anticipated the subsequent advent of the junior high school, although that school was not yet envisaged by them or by the Committee of Ten.) In the opinion of the Committee of Ten (and particularly of its chairman) the comprehensive table just referred to was
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much more important than four specimen four-year programs ("courses of study") constructed f r o m the comprehensive table. But school men all over the country seized on those four-year programs as definite recommendations of the committee; whereas, as President Eliot often said, they were regarded by the committee as "scaffolding," i.e., as illustrations of what a school desiring to align itself with well-considered suggestions might use to plan its w o r k under its o w n local conditions. In time the v i e w of the committee with respect to the specimen four-year programs prevailed. Before attempting to generalize further about the influence of the two important reports that have been considered, it is necessary to consider briefly another report of a committee of the National Education Association, namely, the report of the Committee on College Entrance Requirements. (I was a member of that committee.) T h i s committee, like the Committee of T e n , consisted of school and college teachers. It was appointed, jointly, by the Department of H i g h e r Education and the Department of Secondary Education of the National Education Association in 1895 and presented its report in 1899. T h e name of the committee suggests the nature of the problems with which it was asked to deal. T h e Committee of T e n had not directly attacked the problem of the articulation of secondary schools and colleges, although that committee had considered it incidentally, and it was felt that a special study o f that problem was necessary. O n e of the important recommendations of the Committee on College Entrance Requirements advocated electives (choice of studies by the pupil) in secondary education, together with certain constants to be required of every pupil; and another advocated that any study covering at least four recitation periods per week, under competent instruction, for
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a year should be regarded as a "national norm" (unit of secondary-school work) and should be allowed to count toward satisfying the admission requirements of any college. An incidental but important recommendation was that secondary-school teachers should be college graduates — a recognition of the fact that the teaching stafïs of secondary schools of the country were too often below the standard of scholarship required for "competent instruction." The three reports which have been considered were an outgrowth of the educational ferment of the time and also affected the trend and outcome of that ferment in different ways and in varying degrees, as has already appeared. One important result of the work of the Committee of Ten and of the Committee on College Entrance Requirements and the country-wide study of college and secondary-school education was the founding of the College Entrance Examination Board. That board provides uniform examinations in secondary-school studies for college-entrance purposes throughout the United States. Such a board had been recommended by President Eliot as early as 1877. But it did not become a reality until 1900, and then it was established by others. Before the days of the "board exams," each college set its own examinations. Today nearly all, if not all, our colleges accept the results of the board examinations, without surrendering their right to specify what units (subjects) and how many units they will require for admission to the freshman class. Meanwhile, and ever since the days of the three reports that have been described, other groups within the Ν . Ε. Α., other organizations, and many individuals have been and are actively engaged in studying and reporting on the many educational problems always pressing for solution. Among the best known organizations are the National Society for
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the Study of Education, the New England Society of Colleges and Secondary Schools, the Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools of the Middle States and Maryland, and the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools. While all these organizations have made valuable contributions to the common cause, and all are vigorously active today, the North Central Association has rendered special service in improving the standards of the smaller secondary schools (more particularly within its own territory, but also beyond), and it has also been influential in improving the standards of colleges. It is a temptation to dwell at some length on some of the achievements of individuals and of the organizations that have been referred to, but I must not yield to that temptation. The reader who may be interested in accounts of their activities will find them in the North Central Association Quarterly, in the published reports of the other educational organizations, and in leading educational periodicals and books. I published several papers dealing with the problems under general discussion during the early 1900's. But I shall mention only one of them. In 1902 I was asked by the National Department of Superintendence of the Ν. E. A. to present a paper, and did so — on "Obstacles to Educational Progress." In that paper I contended that with all our earnest discussion of educational problems we had failed to make the progress we should have made by that time, and asked: "Why is it that after twenty or thirty years of unparalleled interest and activity there is still so much vagueness about our aims, so much indecision about the adaptation of means to ends (programs and methods), and so much uncertainty about our results?" I answered by saying: "We have not yet organized our educational doctrine; we have only formulated it piecemeal; and we have not yet organized our educa-
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tional experience — we have not gathered the fruits of experience as we went along?' The entire paper 8 is, accordingly, a plea for such organization, with illustrations of the waste involved in educational experiments not determined by common aims, and not collected and appraised by competent, disinterested observers. The Department of Superintendence appointed a "Committee on the Organization of Educational Doctrine and Educational Experience," the committee to report at a subsequent meeting of the department; and I became the chairman of that committee. Money was needed to carry on the work of the committee, and as soon as possible I sought the chairman of the committee on appropriations of the Ν. E. A. (President Nicholas Murray Butler of Columbia University). But President Butler did not encourage me to believe that his committee would appropriate any money for my committee. The committee met once or twice, but as I failed to secure a substantial appropriation for traveling expenses, for clerical help, and other obviously necessary expenses, the Committee on the Organization of Educational Doctrine and Educational Experience died "unwept, unhonored, and unsung." I still feel, however, that that committee could have rendered important and much-needed help and perhaps leadership in promoting the solution of the problems on which all forward-looking educators were engaged. 8 Printed in the proceedings of the Department of Superintendence and republished in my book, A Modern School (New York, London: Macmillan, 1904).
CHAPTER
XI
INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION H E winter of my sabbatical year, 1904-1905, was spent in Munich, where I became greatly interested in that city's vocational continuation schools. Munich was at that time a city of small industries (perhaps it is now), except for beer and locomotives. The city superintendent of schools was Dr. Georg Kerschensteiner, and the city's vocational continuation schools were the result of his energetic advocacy. The vocational continuation schools were planned to meet the needs of young people who were obliged to go to work as soon as they had graduated from the elementary schools, and also the needs of their employers who wanted workers with some understanding of the underlying theoretical basis — the science, mathematics, drawing, etc. — of their calling. The necessary skills the young workers were to acquire while pursuing their several callings, although a beginning in the acquisition of skill was also provided for in the continuation schools. In 1905 there were already more than a dozen vocational continuation schools in Munich — schools for watchmakers, for hotel and restaurant employees, for butchers, tailors, bakers, shoemakers, barbers, gardeners, business apprentices, etc.; by 1907 the number of such schools had increased to thirty-eight, including similar continuation schools for girls, and the intention was to increase the number until each of the principal callings should have at least one continuation school for beginners in each of those callings. All the continuation schools provided also
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instruction in "religion" and in civics, both taught rather dogmatically. Each school was in session at times when the young workers could best be spared by their employers, and employers were required to release the employees at those times. A l l graduates of elementary schools were required to attend continuation schools six to twelve hours a week for three years, each youngster attending the continuation school related to his occupation. 1 T h e merits of these vocational continuation schools were great, but the schools were not intended to help workers to rise above the stations in which they had been born. They were intended to make good workmen, not to enable a worker to become a manager or other executive. For the higher posts in industry and commerce higher technical training was required, and such training was not accessible to elementary-school graduates. T h e vocational continuation schools embodied a well-defined principle at that time underlying all forms of activity in Germany, namely, that every efficient worker in any calling must have general education followed by technical education for the particular work he has to do — in itself an admirable principle. W h e n I returned from my sabbatical year in 1905 I lectured and wrote about those vocational continuation schools of Munich and about industrial education; and it happened just at that time that Massachusetts had become interested in trade training. During that year a state commission authorized by the legislature and appointed by Governor Douglas to investigate the industries of the state and the need of industrial education throughout the state had made a valuable report on that subject and recommended, among 1 More details of these schools are given in my Beginnings in Industrial Education (Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1908), Chapter V .
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other things, a law directing the governor to appoint a commission to continue investigations into industrial needs and into methods o£ industrial education, and particularly to promote the establishment and maintenance of schools for industrial education, with state aid, throughout the Commonwealth. T h e legislature of 1906 adopted the recommendations of the Douglas commission and passed the necessary legislation to establish such a commission — the State Commission on Industrial Education, appointed by Governor Guild in 1906. Thus Massachusetts became the first state to found public vocational education under state auspices in the United States. W h e n the Commission on Industrial Education was appointed, Governor Guild named me chairman. I accepted the appointment on condition that the members of the commission should serve without pay. T o this the Governor assented. But later he sent for me to tell me that two of the persons who, he felt, should be members of the commission could not or would not serve without compensation. After some discussion of the situation the Governor said that the legislature had authorized the payment of two thousand dollars a year to the commission, but the commission was free to distribute that sum as it pleased. So we voted to pay each of the two members referred to one thousand dollars a year, and the other three members took nothing. Provision had been made for the employment by the commission of a specialist in industrial education who should serve as the executive secretary of the commission and as its technical adviser. T h e necessary clerical assistance and traveling expenses of the commission in carrying on its work were also provided for. Early in 1906 the commission energetically began its work. It was necessary to acquaint the cities and towns of the state
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with the provision made by the legislature for founding and maintaining industrial and agricultural education in separate public schools, and later in special departments in the established public high schools, and still later in founding such schools or departments for trade education for girls as well as for boys. Accordingly, the commission spent much time in traveling about the state, holding meetings with both employers and employees. Usually different meetings were arranged for employers and employees in the same community, on successive evenings. Occasionally it seemed expedient to meet employers and employees at one and the same meeting, but such meetings proved to be less successful than the others. As was to be expected, no little opposition to our enterprise was manifested, here and there, by both employers and employees, the employers unwilling to believe that the proposed schools could provide the training of advanced apprentices (which was all we claimed for them), and the employees fearing that the proposed schools were a covert device to make half-baked artisans who could be used by employers to reduce wages, or as strike-breakers. As chairman of the commission, it was necessary for me to carry the laboring oar in explaining, in detail, how the plans we were trying to work out would meet these doubts and fears. A t the same time, it was generally recognized that the economic welfare of Massachusetts was vitally dependent in the long run on the superior quality of its manufactured goods, since the manufacturers of the cheaper grades of some goods (e.g., shoes and textiles) had already left or were leaving the state, and that such superiority was dependent in large part on the developed intelligence and skill of the workmen. And the employees realized that the highly specialized processes within an industry made it impossible
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for a man to learn the whole of a trade in the industry itself (even if he had the chance, which was seldom) and that, consequently, most shop workers had only the skill required in the special processes which they severally had learned in the shop; and very little or, usually, no knowledge of the science, mathematics, drawing, etc., underlying a trade or even of a part of it. Further, they knew that a worker possessing skill in a single process was at a disadvantage if work happened to be slack in that particular process — he would be out of a job for a shorter or longer time. Now the proposed schools planned to train all-around apprentices, and since such men could be employed after a time as "second hands" and as foremen (of whom the factories seldom or never had enough), and since by the same token all-around apprentices could soon command more of the processes required in a shop, besides possessing the underlying theory, such trained apprentices were less likely to be subject to the ups and downs in the varying conditions in any one industry. Since all these things were so, it gradually became possible to found trade schools in a number of communities, and today such schools are doing good work throughout the state. Somewhat similar difficulties attended the founding of agricultural schools and agricultural departments in public high schools and the founding of trade schools for girls, although the initial opposition to those schools and departments was not just like the opposition to the trade schools for boys. It may be said, I think, that no vocational schools or departments in the state are now more successful than the agricultural schools and departments and the trade schools for girls. The movement for vocational education in Massachusetts was greatly helped forward by the possibility of founding schools with the cooperation of certain industries. The in-
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dustries agreed to give the necessary shop training in their own shops, the schools to give the necessary theoretical training underlying the shop practice, such training being closely correlated with the shop work. The pupils in such schools were paired, so that while one boy was working in the shop his mate was working in the school; after an interval, the length o£ which was determined by the nature of the work, the two changed places, and so on throughout the period of training. Meanwhile the commission was encountering not-unexpected obstruction through the activity of the State Board of Education. From time to time, when we tried to get a community interested in founding a vocational school (with a separate local board in immediate control as specified in the law), we found that an agent of the state board had been before us and had cultivated public opinion against such a school under our auspices, the agent having stated, in effect, that there was no need of a separate local board under the commission to do what the local school committee could do with the help of the state board — the state board being an old and well-established authority. I have said that the opposition of the State Board of Education was not entirely unexpected. Immediately upon the organization of the commission, I called on the secretary of the board (its executive officer, Mr. George H . Martin), and suggested that as both the board and the commission were charged with the promotion of education in Massachusetts— the board's field being general education and our field vocational education for children fourteen years old or older — we might cooperate to the advantage of all concerned. Mr. Martin's reply was, "The statute does not provide for any cooperation." Naturally I was disappointed; but I had learned that the commission must carry on its
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work without the cooperation of the State Board of Education, and we proceeded accordingly. Mr. Martin was an able and decidedly useful school man. Before he became secretary of the State Board of Education, he had already won a high reputation, and I had a high regard for him. H e had made no secret of his opposition to the legislation establishing a commission on industrial education, because he believed that vocational education as well as general education should be in charge of the State Board of Education. It happened, however, that the advocates of vocational education at public expense had no confidence in the interest of the state board in vocational education, and argued for a separate state authority for the promotion of public vocational education; and they succeeded in winning the legislature to their point of view. I have dwelt on this difficulty with the State Board of Education for two reasons: first, because it reveals the hesitation on the part of a considerable portion of the country, including Massachusetts, to acknowledge the duty of the state to provide vocational education as well as general education at public expense, and this in spite of the fact that commercial education (chiefly clerical education) was already well established in the existing public schools and the fact that vocational education on the professional level was also well established in state normal schools and in state universities; and second, because it shows the unwisdom of a double-headed state authority for public education. T h e progress of public vocational education in Massachusetts was retarded because of the two independent state authorities, not infrequently working at cross purposes. After the work of the Commission on Industrial Education was merged with the work of the State Board of Education (in 1909), public vocational education progressed normally.
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The Commission on Industrial Education lasted three years (1906-1909). During its second year the question of merging our work with that of the State Board of Education began to be discussed by the commission, and I suggested that we take steps to effect such a merger, thus abolishing the commission. This the commission was unwilling to do without at the same time urging the abolition of the existent membership of the State Board of Education and of its officers. Finally, in 1909, legislation abolishing the Commission on Industrial Education, abolishing the existent membership of the State Board of Education and instructing the governor to appoint a new membership of that board, and merging the work of the commission with the work of the reorganized board was obtained. The law also stipulated that at least one member of the reorganized board should be a member of the former Commission on Industrial Education. The board's executive officer (the secretary), appointed by the board, as before, was thenceforward known as the commissioner of education. I was appointed a member of the reorganized State Board of Education and became chairman of the board's Committee on Industrial Education. By that time public opinion no longer hesitated about recognizing the duty to provide public vocational as well as general education. A deputy commissioner was appointed by the board, and he became responsible, under the commissioner, for an adequate staff of subordinates to carry out the intentions of the state in the field of vocational education. In a short time there was no longer need of a board committee on vocational education, and that committee gradually ceased to function. I remained a member of the State Board of Education until 1919. In that year legislation was passed changing the functions of the board so that it became an advisory body
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with very limited authority; a state department of education was created in charge of the commissioner of education, thenceforth appointed by the governor "with the advice and consent of the (governor's) council." Although this legislation was proposed and supported by the chairman of the State Board of Education, I opposed it as vigorously as I could on the ground that it might render the educational interests of the state subservient to political interests — whereas the existing organization expressly provided against such a misfortune. But my opposition was of no avail; and I gave notice that I myself did not wish to be a member of the new board. For some years it was not apparent that great harm had been done to public education by this legislation.
CHAPTER XII SCHOOL SURVEYS A R L Y in the spring of 1911 the Board of Estimate and Apportionment of the City of N e w York appointed a committee on school inquiry and charged that committee with the responsibility of securing a survey of the city's public-school system. The Committee on School Inquiry consisted of John Purroy Mitchel, president of the Board of Aldermen (later mayor of New York City), Cyrus C. Miller, president of the Bronx, and William A . Prendergast, comptroller of the City of N e w York. Mitchel was chairman.
E
It seems worth while to give some account of my experience in directing this survey of the largest public-school system in the country. Other large cities have had school surveys; but none of them, so far as I know, was so obliquely originated or had to be carried on under such persistent and harassing obstruction from persons outside the school system as the New York survey. It took some time — about three months — after I arrived in N e w York to discover the real motives of those who were responsible for it. By that time I was determined that the survey should be the professional study that I had every reason to believe had been asked for. The persistent attempt to make it something else — a disgraceful source of publicity for selfish or political purposes, or a failure — had to be persistently fought until it was defeated. In itself, a real survey of the public-school system was a colossal task, absorbing and intensely interesting. Of course, my associates and
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I could not attempt a complete survey of the New York school system in a few months or even in a year; but we intended to make it as comprehensive and as thorough as we could within the time limits set. As I have looked back on that survey, I have felt some satisfaction at the outcome, but I never undertook another survey without making sure that a real survey — a professional job — was wanted. The first intimation I had of a prospective study of the school system of New York City was a letter from X , 1 one of the directors of the Bureau of Municipal Research in New York City, an organization which was not a bureau of the city government but was supported by private funds. I knew this director slightly and had cooperated with him in a project for an educational museum — a project that came to naught. I had heard of him as a critic of municipal affairs, including the public schools. X's letter, dated March 2, 1911, told me that President Mitchel was to be in Boston "tomorrow or next day" and would telephone me to arrange for a conference. The conference between Mitchel, Dr. Snedden, then state commissioner of education in Massachusetts, and myself took place. Near its close, after some very general conversation about a proposed school survey for N e w York City, Mitchel asked Snedden if he would undertake the direction of the educational aspects of the survey. Snedden declined. Then Mitchel turned to me and asked me the same question. I told him I was interested but should like to know more about the nature and scope of what the Committee on School Inquiry had in mind before I agreed to undertake it. Also it would be necessary for me to obtain leave of absence from my post in the university, and I could ascertain the possibility of that while I waited for 1 (t^rt)
X
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for
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convenience.
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his letter. When Mitchel's letter came, it seemed to envisage as thorough a study of the N e w York schools as could be undertaken in the time allowed for the survey. The provisional time limit was from June 1 to December 31 of the current year; but Mitchel added that, as he expected the survey would have justified itself by that time, it was also expected that the survey would continue until July 1 of the following year. A suitable office would be provided, as well as clerical assistance. I was free to name my associates and clerks. Acceptable financial arrangements were also made in a subsequent letter. I obtained leave of absence from my responsibilities at Harvard for a year, and on June 1 I was in New York, ready to begin the survey. In his letter to me giving the information I had asked for, Mitchel said among other things, "By educational aspects of the inquiry [he had said in an earlier letter that the committee wanted me to take charge of the educational aspects of the inquiry and I had asked just what was meant by that phrase], we meant phases of school administration other than those which relate to business matters such as purchasing, auditing, selection of sites, preparation of the annual budget, and analysis of the use of funds. Even for these matters we expect to have your advice and suggestion because we appreciate that they are intimately related to every branch of educational work. We would hope that you would deal primarily with such questions as the efficiency of teaching service, curriculum, school equipment, school needs, etc." Accordingly, I felt assured that my primary duty was to study and make recommendations on the educational activities of the school system, and this conception of my duty was confirmed on several occasions by Mitchel. Immediately after arriving at my N e w York office at 51 Chambers Street I set about acquainting myself with the
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city's school system, a n d b y June 14 I h a d f o r m u l a t e d a provisional p l a n f o r the survey.
T h i s p l a n w a s presented
to President M i t c h e l and a p p r o v e d b y h i m . A revision of the provisional plan, presented to M i t c h e l o n July 10, also m e t his approval. T h i s revised p l a n covered the actual survey c o m p l e t e d b y July 1, 1912. 2 T h e specialists required to deal w i t h the different phases of the survey w e r e n o m i n a t e d b y m e a n d appointed
by
President M i t c h e l . It w a s not possible f o r all the specialists to be in N e w Y o r k at the same time, nor could most of t h e m g i v e continuous service; b u t each of t h e m g a v e at least six ' T h e public-school system of New York City in 1911 comprised a Board of Education, consisting of 46 members, and 46 local school boards; a city superintendent of schools and 8 associate superintendents; a Board of Superintendents consisting of the city superintendent (chairman) and the 8 associate superintendents; 26 district superintendents; a Board of Examiners consisting of the city superintendent (chairman) and 4 persons nominated by him; 3 training schools; 20 high schools; 407 elementary schools; 3 truant schools; 2 vocational schools; ι school for the deaf; 1 nautical school; in all, 527 day schools. There were also 101 evening schools; playgrounds and recreation centers; together with 47 "corporate schools," industrial schools, and orphan asylums, receiving a share of the general school fund. The net enrollment (number of different pupils during the school year) was 770,243, an increase over the preceding year of 23,000. About 40,000 of the net enrollment were high-school pupils. The total supervising and teaching force (exclusive of teachers in evening schools, recreation centers, vacation schools, and playgrounds) was 18,195. The magnitude and complexity of this school system are revealed in the foregoing data. To select a single item by way of illustration — some of the high schools had several thousand pupils each; if in the 20 high schools, in a given year, only 6 new teachers were the average number needed for each school, that would mean 120 new high-school teachers to be examined, certified, appointed, and assigned to their several schools (with their respective salaries) in a single year.
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weeks of service. T h e list below also reveals the plan of the survey, its scope, and the range of its details.3 ' Paul H. Hanus, Professor of Education, Harvard University. In charge of educational aspects of school inquiry. Continuous service. Frank P. Bachman, Assistant Superintendent of Schools, Cleveland, Ohio. Statistical studies pertaining to the needed number of elementary-school teachers, promotions, and part-time, intermediate schools. Continuous service commencing June 5, 1911. Edward C. Elliott, Professor of Education, University of Wisconsin. Organization and methods of the supervisory staff, including the Board of Superintendents, district superintendents, directors of special branches, Board of Examiners. Service at intervals; discontinued on account of illness commencing in September; resumed in January 1912. Frank M. McMurry, Professor of Elementary Education, Teachers College, Columbia University. Teachers and teaching in the elementary schools, together with the supervision of their schools by the principals. Also (after December 1911) elementary-school course of study. Service at intervals. Jesse D. Burks, Director of the Bureau of Municipal Research, Philadelphia. Compulsory-attendance service. Service at intervals. Herman Schneider, Dean of the College of Engineering, University of Cincinnati. Vocational schools. Service at intervals. Frank W . Ballou, Director of School Affiliation and Assistant Professor of Education, University of Cincinnati. High-school organization and administration. Continuous service commencing August 12, 1911. Ernest C. Moore, Professor of Education, Yale University. Board of Education and local school boards. Almost continuous service commencing January 17, 1912. Calvin O. Davis, Assistant Professor of Education, University of Michigan, and Inspector of High Schools. High-school courses of study (except commercial courses). Continuous service for about seven weeks from January 2, 1912. Frank V . Thompson, Assistant Superintendent of Schools, Boston, Massachusetts. High School of Commerce, Commercial High School, and commercial courses in high schools. Service at intervals commencing January 15, 1912. Henry H. Goddard, Director Department of Psychological Re-
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Owing to the activity of X in arranging the appointment to meet Mitchel in Boston and in arranging a subsequent meeting with Mitchel in New York, I at first invited X's comments and suggestions on the survey and also assented to his suggestion that we meet at luncheon once a week, together with a representative o£ the New York Globe. But very soon I began to distrust X's judgment and intellectual honesty and was entirely out of sympathy with the method he advocated for carrying on the survey. That method consisted of acrimonious faultfinding embodied in many questions, some of them unanswerable, some irrelevant, some confusing, and some, by their very form, ingeniously devised to cast suspicion on the qualifications or even on the honesty of the person questioned. It was, further, a part of his method to make much of publicity — and that in the first weeks of the survey. I also learned that the policy which he advocated and which had certainly been followed in the preceding year, especially at budget hearings, was the method of humiliating, or at least disciplining, the Board of Education and its officers in public. All this was exceedingly distasteful to me, and I drew away from X . The luncheons with him were discontinued early in July. He continued to write to me, however, and, as I learned afterwards, wrote letters addressed to me (on the stationery of Mitchel's office) for Mitchel to sign, asking me to do various things not included in my plan — the plan that had search, N e w Jersey Training School for Feeble-minded Boys and Girls. Ungraded classes. Service at intervals. Stuart A . Courtis, Head of Department of Science and Mathematics, Detroit Home and Day School, Detroit. The Courtis tests in arithmetic for about 30,000 children in the 4A-8B grades of the elementary schools and in at least one high school. Service at intervals.
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been approved by Mitchel. Some of those letters consisted of questions to school officers or teachers and usually bore the marks of X's pernicious method. In August came an allegation from X that Mitchel (who was in Europe at the time) expected me to report on the budget of the Board of Education and take part in the budget hearing before the Board of Estimate and Apportionment. I naturally protested against this alleged request of Mitchel; Mitchel's letter explaining what his committee expected me to do had expressly excluded work on the budget from the sphere of my activities. But Mitchel's letter had also said that even in financial matters his committee wanted my assistance and advice, and as X alleged that Mitchel would be greatly disappointed if I did not do as requested, I allowed myself to be persuaded to undertake the formidable task of analyzing certain portions of the budget, and also prepared questions for Mitchel to ask the Board of Education at the budget hearing before the Board of Estimate and Apportionment. For about two months and a half those of us engaged on the survey who were in New York worked on the budget to the exclusion of all other work. But as it seemed to me only fair that the Board of Education should be prepared to defend its budget, I persuaded Mitchel to send a letter, which I wrote for him, to the president of the board giving him information about the nature and scope of the questions to be asked at the hearing. When the hearing on the budget was held, I attended and participated to some extent in asking the questions we had prepared. On the whole, the officers of the Board of Education gave satisfactory answers to the questions, and this greatly disturbed X, who had expected some sensational discomfiture on the part of the Board of Education, of which he probably intended to make much in his general publicity
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activities. From X's point of view the hearing had been a failure. For myself, I felt rather humiliated by the whole affair and resolved never to be caught again in a similar situation. Looking back on this aspect of my New York experiences, I regard my part in it as an egregious blunder. My only excuse for committing it was a conscientious endeavor to meet what I supposed to be the desire of the committee whose employee I was. As a matter of fact, I subsequently learned that my budget activity originated with X, who doubtless thought in that way to make me carry on in accordance with his wishes to obtain evidence that should discredit the Board of Education and the administration of the city superintendent, thus supplying X and his bureau with material which Mitchel might use in forwarding his ambition to become mayor of New York. Probably Mitchel did not lend himself in advance to this method of promoting his ambition. But when he returned from Europe and found what X had done, he was apparently willing to make use of X's scheme. At any rate, he did nothing to repudiate what X had done. Perhaps a partial explanation of Mitchel's conduct is to be found in the fact that while Mitchel (as president of the Board of Aldermen) had been acting mayor during the enforced absence of Mayor Gaynor (who had been shot and was obliged to remain in retirement during his recovery) — during that time X had been active in supplying Mitchel with material to use in forwarding Mitchel's political ambitions. That X regarded himself as having Mitchel under his control was evidenced by the fact that X declared, later, in a conversation with me in which I had told X that I would no longer tolerate his attempts to participate in the survey, "I've got Mitchel, and I've got this town." That Mitchel had
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allowed him to direct the survey through Mitchel's own office I did not learn until November, when Mitchel agreed with me that X must henceforth be kept out of the survey. This agreement, however, Mitchel did not adhere to, as will presently appear. Immediately after the budget hearing it was necessary to know whether the survey was to be continued after January ι . As I have said, work on the budget had occupied more than two months of time that should have been devoted to carrying on the survey as planned. Accordingly, as I was convinced that the budget hearing had been a failure from X's point of view, I wanted to know just where the survey stood in Mitchel's mind. But, before I could proceed to get this information, on the morning of October 30 X called me on the telephone and said I ought to prepare a statement for Mitchel showing what work we had done and what we were planning for the future. T o X's telephone statement I paid no attention, but in about half an hour Mr. B. G . L e w i s 4 came to my office and said that Mitchel wanted a statement from me about work done and work planned, which he wished to use at two o'clock that afternoon at the hearing on the preliminary budget. Lewis also said that Comptroller Prendergast also wanted a copy of that statement for use at the hearing. Such a statement was hastily prepared, but when I handed it to Prendergast and to Mitchel neither seemed to know what it was. By now I was convinced that X and not Mitchel was responsible for the survey. Accordingly, on October 31 I wrote Mitchel a letter in which I urged the necessity of knowing within a week, if possible, whether the survey was ' A n employee, probably secretary of Mitchel.
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to continue beyond December, and stating that if the survey was not to go on, it would be necessary to suspend much important work that had been commenced, and that we must concentrate our efforts on an approximation to as definite a report as possible on a few selected topics which I specified. I wrote also, "My hope has been from the start that we should try to emphasize the purely educational aspects of the inquiry so as to make it clear . . . that your committee meant the inquiry to result in a contribution to the educational efficiency of the school system as well as a means of securing a more satisfactory and reliable basis for the budget demands of the Board of Education." I added that, on the first point, "the teachers and the thoughtful public are especially expectant, and great disappointment will result if we do not have time to attempt something worth while. . . . Up to now we have had all we could do to acquaint ourselves with the data of the colossal and complicated problems the school system of this city presents. . . . W e are now in a position to collect data more rapidly and more effectively than hitherto, and we could now proceed with greater insight into their meaning than was possible when we were entire strangers to the school system." 5 In the same letter to Mitchel I also said, after pointing out some of the obvious defects from which the school system was suffering, that the city school system of New York was not the only school system having these defects but that "if we could get started here the habit of self-scrutiny; begin the substitution of cooperation under leadership for bureaucratic " Very soon after my arrival in New York, I sent letters to officers and teachers of the school system, inviting their cooperation in getting facts and reaching conclusions, because I wanted the survey to be a cooperative enterprise. The response was gratifyingly cordial and helpful.
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control all along the line; set going an appeal to well-conducted experiments to verify or refute educational opinion; we should render a very important service to this city, and should, at least, definitely attempt the important task which my conception of an inquiry into the educational aspects of the school system should cover." I said further, that "from the recent work which the staff has been asked to do, I am not clear whether your committee desires us to attend to the financial as well as to the educational aspects of the inquiry in the future," and added that in that case a much larger staff and much more money, and, of course, more time, would be required, and asked for a conference at an early date. After some delay I secured a conference with Mitchel at his home on the evening of November 11,19x1, which lasted until nearly midnight. T h e conversation had hardly begun with my telling Mitchel how little we had been able to do, so far, in carrying out the plan for the survey because of the special requests that had come from his office, including the work on the budget, and the immense amount of work to be done if the survey was to be of real service to N e w Y o r k City and to his committee, when Mitchel interrupted me to say, "Set your mind at rest, Mr. Hanus, the survey is to go on until July. T h e aldermen will cut out the appropriation, but we will secure the funds from other sources." H e showed much interest in the details I put before him. H e also authorized me to secure the additional specialists, five of them, needed to carry on the work as planned in July. In the course of our conference Mitchel said that he did not want the survey, that X did want it very much, and that he (Mitchel) agreed to have the Committee on School Inquiry appointed and to become a member of it on condition that B, another director of the Bureau of Municipal
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Research, should do all the work and that he (Mitchel) would not be asked to do any of it.6 Mitchel then said that no sooner was the committee appointed than Β came to him and said, " X is all broken up about this, and if he does not get in on this survey it will break up our happy family, and there will be trouble." "Whereupon," said Mitchel, "I consented, and that is how X came to manage the inquiry." T o this I replied that, if the survey was going on, X would have to get out of it and keep out, and that Mitchel himself would have to direct it, as chairman of the committee. T o this Mitchel gave hearty assent, saying, "I certainly will!" But what was my surprise when, a few days after this conference, Mitchel came to my office and said, " H o w long will it take to close the work on the survey? T h e aldermen have cut the appropriation out of the budget, and we have no money." I reminded him of what he had said at our conference and showed him my correspondence with the several specialists I had asked to work on the survey, immediately after that conference on November 11. But he merely said, " W e can't go on if we haven't any money, can w e ? " and went away. T h e next day I wrote to Mitchel asking for a conference with his committee at the earliest possible date. But it was "Looking back, I think X's interest in securing a survey of the city schools was based on two desires or ambitions. He cherished a personal animosity against the city superintendent of schools (Dr. William H. Maxwell, in many respects the best superintendent New York City has ever had), and he wanted to "get" Maxwell. In the second place, I think he wanted his bureau to be the permanent research agency for the city school system — that would provide him with a permanent job. But this ambition, in view of the unsavory reputation as a critic lie was fast acquiring or had already acquired, was, of course, absurd.
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not until November 29 that such a conference was held in Comptroller Prendergast's office. All three members of the committee were present. Mitchel opened the conference by saying, " I have assured Mr. Hanus many times that the survey is going on. But the aldermen have cut out the appropriation; we have no money, and he asks for instructions from the committee." I showed the committee that the survey would be a fiasco if discontinued in December, and that would be quite as discreditable to the committee as to me, etc. A t the close of the conference I left with a letter signed by all three members of the committee asking me to continue the work on the inquiry "until July 1, 1912, as was designed when the appropriation was placed in the budget for 1912." Soon after this conference Mitchel fell ill with typhoid fever, and President Miller became acting chairman of the Committee on School Inquiry. But I was not satisfied that the necessary funds would be available, and I urged Miller to give me a letter telling me that the necessary funds were assured. On December 27 I received such a letter from Miller, and most of the effective work of the survey was accomplished between that time and May 1912. President Miller having assured me in writing that the money needed to continue the survey until July 1, 1912, in accordance with the vote of the Committee on School Inquiry dated November 29,1911, was assured, I naturally concluded that our work could at last proceed normally and without further obstructions. But another attempt to wreck the survey was made — a covert attempt to prevent the payment of our bills for services and expenses; and I could not help suspecting that this attempt owed its origin to X . When I tried repeatedly to find out why the bills were not paid when due, I was told at the comptroller's office that the bills
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were on their way; that, of course, a great number of bills had to be attended to; etc. This situation continued for some weeks. Meanwhile it was intimated to me — I do not remember by whom — that the bills were held up because attention had been called to the fact that neither my associates nor I had been certified by the Civil Service Commission. I came to believe my informant, because one morning, soon after, I was called to the office of the Civil Service Commission and was questioned about my qualifications and the qualifications of my associates for the job we had undertaken. Before I left that office I dictated a long statement about my education and experience and the education and experience of my associates. Perhaps the Civil Service Commission was satisfied. At any rate, I heard nothing more from them. The bills remained unpaid, however, and presently I consulted Eliot Goodwin, at that time chairman of the National Service Reform League (afterward resident vice-president of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, Washington, D. C.). In the course of our conversation Mr. Goodwin told me, to my amazement and chagrin, that the survey inaugurated by the Committee on School Inquiry was illegal and that any taxpayer could bring suit to stop it. I let the Committee on School Inquiry know what I had heard, and soon after our bills began to be paid. And they continued to be paid until our work was finished. I was told that the committee used "contingent funds." So the attempts to destroy the survey by cutting off the "sinews of war" failed. But on May 6 Mitchel resumed the chairmanship of the committee, and X again became active, as will appear. Without my knowledge at the time, X secured copies of the reports of my associates to me when I submitted them to Mitchel before they were sent to the printer, or when they
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were in first unrevised galley proof, and attempted to "edit," i.e., to discredit them, hoping in that way perhaps to prevent the publication of our report, because he would allege its worthlessness. I had tried to have complete control of manuscripts and proof by exacting a promise from Mitchel that no one but him and his committee should have access to them until the entire report was printed in its final form, after my associates and I had finished it. But doubtless X had persuaded Mitchel not to do as he promised. At any rate, Mitchel insisted that his office should send the manuscripts to the printer and that the proofs should be sent first to his office and from there to the several writers of the report. Later I learned from a letter from Mitchel in reply to a question of mine concerning what I had heard about his having asked some members of the Bureau of Municipal Research to consider some of the reports, that he had done so. Upon receipt of this letter from Mitchel I protested vigorously against anyone else's meddling with our reports, while always recognizing the right of his committee to confer with me about any or all of them, and insisted that my report (including, of course, those of my associates) must be printed in the form in which my associates and I had submitted it to the committee after our final revision of the page proof. And this was finally achieved, but not without many delays and obstructions. What the committee chose to do after that was immaterial to us. One means employed to frustrate these delays and obstructions is worth recording. Since I was convinced that X was doing all he could to delay or prevent the publication of our report to the Committee on School Inquiry, I said as much to some of my friends in New York. One of those friends suggested that he would be glad to invite the editors of the New York papers to a luncheon at which I could explain
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the whole situation. I welcomed this suggestion, but stipulated that I should confine myself, if possible, to telling the editors what was in the report. The luncheon at the City Club was attended by the editors, or their representatives, of about a score of the New York papers. My exposition, with their comments and questions, lasted for about five hours. Toward the end of the afternoon someone wanted to know when all this was to be published. I then told them about what seemed to me the unnecessary delay in getting proof and said that I was somewhat apprehensive that publication would be prevented. Against this possibility there was vigorous protest. All seemed agreed that the report must be published. I left the conference with permission to tell Mitchel what had happened, and I was not slow in acting on that permission. Soon afterwards the proof began to come, and, after final correction by my associates and me, the survey was completed. Our entire report on the New York City school survey (with the exception of Dr. Burks' report, which I did not care to publish) was afterwards republished in eleven volumes by the World Book Company, Yonkers, New York, entitled School Efficiency Series, under my editorial direction, and with a preface for each volume written by me. One of the volumes, entitled School Efficiency, A Constructive Study Applied to New Yor\ City, was also written by me, and comprises "The Report as a Whole" — a summary and interpretation of the entire report. The aims and procedure we followed in the survey are stated in my introduction to "The Report as a Whole," as follows: "The aims of the inquiry are constructive throughout. W e have tried to deal judicially with the achievements, merits, and defects of the school system. But since our chief purpose was constructive criticism we have given most attention to
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such defects as we have been able to point out. It will be apparent, therefore, that we have not dealt with the defects of the school system in order to give prominence to them but in order to suggest the means of remedying or minimizing them. We have, of course, sought to ascertain the facts, so far as time and opportunity permitted, and to make such recommendations as the facts justified. "Neither the professional reader nor the lay reader needs to be told that there are very few established standards whereby the efficiency of educational activities may be measured, and that accepted methods of studying such activities are, for the most part, yet to be found. The science of education is, as yet, in its beginnings. We have, however, used such standards as are available, and have employed or developed such methods of studying the problems with which we have dealt as commended themselves to our judgment. The methods we have employed are statistical, comparative, and experimental — the last only so far as such methods could be immediately applied by us (e.g., the Courtis tests in arithmetic and the Binet-Simon tests for mentally defective children). "At the present time educational opinion rather than organized educational experience is often the only available basis for educational procedure. Consequently some of our recommendations (e.g., those pertaining to courses of study in elementary schools and in high schools, the size of high schools, specialized and general high schools) necessarily rest on such opinion. Such recommendations are regarded by us as a safe basis for experimentation for progressive improvement; but we also urge, once for all, that the fruits of educational experience following the adoption of such recommendations be collected, organized, and carefully appraised, in order that established educational truths may
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gradually take the place of mere opinion; i.e., we recommend that statistical and experimental methods of studying educational procedure and results be greatly developed and continually applied within the school system itself to confirm or refute educational opinion within the school system and in the community. " W e have endeavored throughout, so far as possible, to enlist the cooperation of the supervisory officers and teachers in getting facts, and to some extent in arriving at the conclusions derived from them, and recommendations based on them. It is a pleasure to state that our endeavors in this direction, especially in getting information, met with a hearty response on the part of the City Superintendent and his staff. "During the progress of the inquiry, the question whether it was possible to publish portions of the report in advance of the publication of the final report was considered more than once. We found, however, that such publication was not feasible, because ( 1 ) it was manifestly important to minimize the possibility of error in our conclusions by the opportunity to revise them up to the last moment, and, as exigency or opportunity frequently required us to turn from one piece of work, before completing it, to another, final revision of partially completed portions of the report was repeatedly and necessarily deferred; (2) the time that possible controversies would demand was urgently needed for the inquiry itself; and (3) most of the reports of the contributing specialists were not ready for the printer until the end of May, and some of them were not ready till the last week of June (1912)." This account of my survey of the N e w York schools may close with the following quotations from the introduction to my report to the committee, also contained in the introduction to my volume in the School Efficiency Series:
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"During the progress of the inquiry we have repeatedly received oral and written suggestions and memoranda concerning the inquiry from one of the directors of the Bureau of Municipal Research in New York. A t first these suggestions and memoranda were welcomed and received with interest. But it gradually became apparent that these communications, in large part, represented a spirit and methods widely divergent from our own; hence they were of diminishing interest to us; and since November 1911 we have pursued our work without reference to them. "Later this same director of the Bureau of Municipal Research secured — without my knowledge until long afterward — the unrevised first galley proof of the report of my associates and myself as it came from the printer, and at once made elaborate preparations to 'edit' it! Of course this attempt of his to meddle in our affairs had to be defeated — and it was." One of the most interesting surveys that fell to my lot, and vastly different in origin from the N e w York survey, was a survey of Hampton Institute, Virginia, which I directed for the General Education Board, begun in 1917 and finished in 1920. The General Education Board was actively interested in the education of Negroes, and Hampton Institute was one of the most important beneficiaries of that interest, receiving a considerable annual contribution from the treasury of the board. Hampton Institute was founded by General S. C. Armstrong in 1868, and long before 1917 had won a just reputation for substantial achievements in the general and vocational education of Negroes. Hampton Institute (about a thousand term-time students) and Tuskegee Institute (founded by Booker Washington, a graduate of Hampton),
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also a beneficiary of the General Education Board, were in 1917 the most important institutions below college grade in the country for the education of Negroes of both sexes. T h e General Education Board wanted a professional judgment on what Hampton Institute was accomplishing and what further development of its aims and work was desirable. Hence the Board's proposal that I undertake a survey of the institute. When D r . Abraham Flexner, then secretary of the General Education Board, 7 first asked me to undertake the Hampton survey, I hesitated to comply with his request because I had little first-hand information about southern Negroes and southern social conditions. But Flexner said that the board would make it possible for me to get this information. I was to live, with Mrs. Hanus, on the campus of Hampton Institute and participate in the life of the school for as long a time as I thought necessary; I was to travel in the South to acquaint myself with southern social conditions; and I was encouraged to visit such schools (for both races) as I might find it desirable to visit for my purposes; I should, of course, appoint my assistants, and office space would be provided at the Institute. T h e board stipulated, however, that I was to write the report, my associates to report to me. So, without further persuasion, I secured a leave of absence from my post at Harvard for the second half of 1 9 1 6 - 1 9 1 7 and in February 1917 was at the Institute.8 ' N o w director of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey. 8 The scope of the Hampton Institute survey will be seen from the titles of the ten chapters constituting my report: I. Getting Ready to Study Hampton Institute. The Colored People. The Spirit and Aims of Hampton Institute. II. The Academic Department.
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W h e n I u n d e r t o o k the study of H a m p t o n Institute, it w a s a g r e e d that m y report should n o t be published unless I assented to publication after the report w a s
finished.
Up
to the present t i m e it has seemed to m e best to refrain f r o m publication because I felt that the report w o u l d best serve H a m p t o n Institute w i t h o u t publicity. III. IV. V. VI. VII. VIII. IX. X.
T h e report covered
T h e Home Economics Department. Business Course. Music.. Play and Recreation. T h e Armstrong-Slater Trade School. The Agricultural Department. The General Organization and Administration. Achievements of Hampton Graduates and Former Students.
My associates for the Hampton survey were: For the academic department, Leslie O. Cummings, at that time superintendent of schools, Franklin, Massachusetts; later assistant professor of education, Harvard University; now dean of the School of Education, University of Buffalo. For the Armstrong-Slater Trade School, Charles R. Allen, at that time agent of the State Board of Education, Massachusetts; later specialist for the Federal Board for Vocational Education. For the department of agriculture, R. W . Stimson, state supervisor of vocational agricultural education, Massachusetts. For the home economics course, Mrs. Mary Woolman, specialist in industrial education for women; formerly principal of the Manhattan Trade School for Girls in New York City, and a professor in Teachers College, Columbia University. For the business course, Frank V. Thompson, assistant superintendent, later superintendent of schools, Boston, Massachusetts. For music, Archibald T . Davison, professor of music, Harvard, University. For play and recreation, George E. Johnson, associate professor of education, Harvard University. For the achievements of Hampton graduates and former students, George E. Haynes, professor at Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee.
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about 800 pages of typewritten matter and, as already stated, was not finished until 1920. The following excerpts from the first chapter of my report, "Getting Ready to Study Hampton Institute," etc., will give some idea of the nature of the work I had undertaken, certain conclusions concerning the Negroes at which I arrived rather early in my study of them, and which I still hold, and the aims and spirit in which the survey was carried on as it progressed. "It is not uncommon in the North, as well as in the South, to hear the Negro disparaged; to think of him as essentially inferior in ability, ideals, and character to the white man. My experience with the Negroes at Hampton and in the South generally showed me that this view of the Negro is essentially false, and even grotesque. T o be sure, I have associated with 'picked' Negroes; but in the North I have associated mainly with 'picked' whites; and I am strongly convinced that the only possible generalization as to the difference between whites and blacks is this: The difference is not primarily a difference of inborn characteristics; it is chiefly a difference of social background and education. "Indeed, it has seemed to me again and again that the Negro has certain advantages which the white man does not possess. I have seen and known about much quiet endurance by Negroes of unjust discrimination to which they submitted only because they felt that more could be accomplished for their race by quiet endurance than by active resistance. I have seen so much evidence of the Negro's high ideals in speech and action that I am confident he is not surpassed in these respects by the white man. I have seen him contribute from his poverty for the education of his people sums which it seemed to me it would be quite impossible to secure from white people under similar circumstances. I
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have seen his eagerness to learn, his keenness for the cultivation of intellectual interests — an eagerness and a keenness, once again, not surpassed by whites much more favorably circumstanced. I have seen and have learned about Negroes who are achieving marked, and sometimes distinguished, success as farmers, artisans, homemakers, teachers, doctors, dentists, lawyers, business men. In all this, the characteristics of the Negro that have impressed me most are his ability, his patience, his persistent endeavor to lift himself, through character, intelligence, and industry, to the level of the best American citizenship, and his eagerness to be of service to his own people and to the white race. " T o the perpetuation, development, and progressive dissemination of these characteristics of the colored people as an asset of tremendous importance in our national life Hampton Institute has already devoted itself for fifty years. "The cheerfulness and courtesy prevailing at Hampton Institute are of immense value in any serious undertaking, and Hampton is a very serious place. It is a place of serious pleasure. Teachers and pupils alike are in earnest. It is a hive of industry. The day begins at half-past five in the morning and does not end before half-past nine o'clock at night. While, of course, no one individual is constantly occupied during this entire time in taxing activities, it is nevertheless true that no one is idle. Work, play — and not too much of that, sleep, and the time for meals are all regulated. No one is unaccounted for during the twenty-four hours. "The dormitories of both girls and boys are subject to daily inspections, and on Sundays to special inspection. I have attended some of these inspections and noted the care with which the inspectors passed their white gloves over
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furniture or cupboards to sec whether the dust had been allowed to accumulate on them. . . . "Many more students apply for admission to Hampton every year than can be accommodated. The Institute takes pains to select those who are most promising. This body of youth presented to me during my entire stay most interesting aspects. I saw them at work and play, at their meals, in church and Sunday School, in the Y . M. C. A. meetings, and in their various voluntary organizations. Taken together, they represent as fine a body of youth of similar education as I have ever seen — manly, womanly: with good ability, good ideals, and good habits either already formed or developing under Hampton's influence. "Work with the hands has always embodied in such a significant way the spirit and aims of Hampton Institute, and represents so largely Hampton's conception of its peculiar educational responsibility, that any discussion of what Hampton is and does must take due account of this phase of the Institute's activities.9 "The Negro race still feels the influence of slavery. Too many Negroes regard work with the hands as beneath the dignity of free men. Fundamentally wrong as this notion of such work is, it is still firmly and widely held. Accordingly, it offers a frequent and troublesome obstacle to the development of the right kind of training (particularly agricultural and industrial training) in the Negro schools of the South. 10 Hampton sets its face squarely against this ' "Labor," said General Armstrong, "next to the grace of God in the heart, is the greatest promoter of morality, the greatest power for civilization. . . . Character is the outcome of the labor system. It is not cheap, but it pays." 10 "In most of the counties at the close of the term an exhibit is held of industrial work done in the schools. . . . The introduction of
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mistaken notion and substitutes for it the proper conception of work as the foundation of all welfare — spiritual as well as material. It aims to arouse and develop in its students an appreciation of the dignity and practical value of intelligently performed manual labor — to do this, not by precept, but by directed work with the hands; to cultivate in them through work and study the self-respect that is the natural concomitant of trained ability to be useful in a skilled vocation. i "Students at work under the direction of officers and teachers are, accordingly, everywhere in evidence. The whole Institute — buildings, shops, laundry, kitchens, offices, farms and gardens — is to a large extent utilized as a laboratory in which 'the virtues of work' may be acquired and the satisfaction afforded by work well done may be habitually experienced. "But work with the hands as an educational instrument must not be mere manual labor or even mere mechanical skill, important as this last is. Such work must be directed by intelligence. Practice in handicrafts must be accompanied by such a study of the practice that it is shot through with significance. The sciences, mathematics, and drawing that underlie the practice of the machinist, the farmer, and the homemaker, must be drawn upon so as to give real insight into the scope and the details of the work done; and the relation of any one practical art to the others as a part of the total work whereby society keeps itself going must be made industrial work into the Negro schools has not always been easy. Many of the parents object to their children doing anything at school but study and recite from books. In many cases the preacher has publicly opposed it . . ." (Jackson Davis, State Supervisor of Rural Elementary Schools, Richmond, Va., The Human Way, 1913, pp. 80-81).
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apparent. To that end the Institute causes its students to study books, and makes use of instruction and other means of intellectual guidance to give the workers an understanding of their work. The less conspicuous intellectual work of the clássroom, therefore, accompanies the more conspicuous work with the hands; so that the workman may be enabled to work with understanding and, what is equally important, with the abiding interest that such understanding develops. The fact that this educational work has a commercial value contributes an element of great importance to the student's appreciation of its significance and his interest in it. "But the Institute rightly maintains that another and very important result flows from such work, namely, character. Whatever else character means it certainly means the intention and the ability to do well whatever work one has to do. Hence, the kind of service that a woman renders in the home, or that a man renders as a plumber, machinist, farmer, or in business activities, both suggests their ideals of conduct and shows the extent to which their performances square with their ideals. That is, the kind of work one does reveals his character. As a man works, so is he. . . . "From what precedes, it is evident that I have been deeply impressed by the spirit and aims of Hampton Institute and by its very substantial achievements. If, therefore, in what follows, I have often found it necessary to comment adversely as well as favorably on the Institute's organization, administration, and work, it should be equally evident that such adverse comment and the accompanying recommendations are prompted solely by the natural desire of one who is both an official investigator and an ardent friend — one who desires to do all he can to help the Institute to minimize or eliminate such shortcomings or defects as its development during
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fifty years of strenuous missionary work naturally entailed, and to suggest such changes as its adaptation to present and future needs seems to require, and thus to do his full share in helping the Institute to realize progressively its own conception of its great task." For a time, from about 1910, surveys more or less similar to those I have described were common throughout the country; then the demand for them declined, and, while they are still in vogue, they are not so numerous as they were. T o my mind one of the valuable general results achieved by them is that they stimulated self-surveys — a self-survey being a survey directed and carried on by the local school officers and teachers. Whatever good surveys conducted by outsiders may accomplish, self-surveys are likely to result in more fruitful and more permanent good to the schools or school systems surveyed; moreover, they tend to become habitual; and the habit of self-examination in schools and school systems is a very desirable habit. Another important outcome of the surveys, whether carried on by outsiders or by local staffs, was this: They showed clearly that the larger school systems needed a permanent agency for records and appraisal — for research. A s early as 1914 departments of educational research were functioning in a number of cities, among them Boston, N e w Orleans, Detroit, N e w York City, Baltimore, Rochester, Oakland, Kansas City. It had been discovered that educational activities, like other activities of society, need to be accompanied by research in the interest of economy of effort and value of results. Before 1918 educational research as an important phase of educational endeavor had become well established in university schools of education and, to some extent, in teachers'
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colleges. Today, apart from a number of local journals of educational research, this important field in the study of education is represented nationally by the American Association of Educational Research (and its annual publication), and by the education section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. All this means progress in the scientific study of education from which much good may be expected as the methods of such study are perfected and the results are made generally available.
CHAPTER XIII SOME I M P O R T A N T C H A N G E S IN P U B L I C S C H O O L E D U C A T I O N S I N C E 1900 ARLY in the present century another responsibility of public education — vocational and educational guidance, hitherto unrecognized — was recognized as such, and is now widely provided for in the public-school systems of the country. It had an interesting origin. In 1901 Professor Frank Parsons of Boston University, who was active in the Civic Service House in the North End of Boston, founded, at the Civic Service House, the Breadwinners' Institute. This institute brought Parsons into intimate and sympathie contact with workers in many occupations. Later he tried to help them as a vocational adviser. His efforts were directed to helping dissatisfied and ambitious men and women to discover their native capacities and interests and, on the basis of that endeavor and on an analytical study of occupations, to find the work likely to afford them satisfaction and, on occasion, better their earnings. Besides carrying on this guidance at the Civic Service House, Parsons also had hours for guidance at the Women's Educational and Industrial Union, at the Young Men's Christian Association, and at the Economic Club. So far as I know, Professor Parsons was the first person to attempt vocational guidance in somewhat systematic fashion. The idea of vocational guidance appealed particularly to Mrs. Quincy A. Shaw and to Lincoln Filene of Boston, both well known for their interest in education and generous support of it. With the financial support of Mrs. Shaw, in
E
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1908 Professor Parsons organized the Vocation Bureau of Boston. In his first report to the bureau Parsons urged, among other things, that vocational guidance should become a function of the public schools. Later in the same year Parsons died, and Meyer Bloomfield (then director of the Civic Service House; now lawyer and consultant in industrial relations in New York City) became director of the bureau. Mrs. Shaw's lamented death occurred not long after the death of Parsons, and Filene became the principal contributor to the support of the Vocation Bureau. In 1908 or 1909 I became chairman of the bureau. Bloomfield continued as director until 1917, when he left us to engage in services connected with the World War. Through Bloomfield's energetic advocacy the Boston public schools became interested in vocational guidance, and in 1910 the first national conference on vocational guidance convened in Boston. Courses in vocational guidance for teachers and others soon became established in colleges and universities and are now widely available. Bloomfield gave the first courses, at Harvard, in our summer school, 1911. After Bloomfield left to engage in war work, regular term-time as well as summer-school courses in vocational guidance were given in the Division of Education by Dr. John M. Brewer, one of our own doctors. In 1917 the Vocation Bureau became the Bureau of Vocational Guidance of the Division of Education (with substantial help from Filene) with Professor Brewer as director, and he is still the director of that bureau in our Graduate School of Education. I have said that provision for vocational guidance is now prevalent in the public schools. In some school systems it is well organized and is carried on by teachers especially trained for that service. A considerable literature in the field of vocational guidance is now available and is growing rap-
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idly in quality and quantity. Some valuable textbooks for classes in guidance are in use. Much remains to be done, however, before the ideals of the proponents of vocational guidance in schools and colleges are approximately realized in practice. Bloomfield, with others, organized the National Vocational Guidance Association (later reorganized by Professor Brewer and others), and that vigorous organization soon published the Vocational Guidance Magazine. That periodical is now the magazine Occupations, sponsored by the National Vocational Guidance Association and the National Occupational Conference. In some quarters more or less irresponsible persons outside schools or colleges have attempted to commercialize vocational guidance. Such persons have established offices or bureaus for giving vocational counsel — for a fee — to workers or to children about to leave school. Not seldom in their advertisements they have made reference to "psychology" or "applied psychology" (with very limited knowledge of either) to give an air of scientific method to their performances. Not seldom, also, such persons have professed directly or by implication the ability to prescribe the right vocation for their patrons. Of course, such "guidance" is usually nothing less than a scheme to exploit real vocational guidance for profit. To my mind, the central ideas of true vocational guidance are (1) to lead the person seeking guidance to a knowledge of his real interests and capacities; and (2) to lead him to a study of occupations with a view to enabling him to choose an occupation likely, all things considered, to afford him the most satisfaction. Wherever it is possible, i.e., wherever the intermediate schools (junior high schools), now common in the school systems of the country, provide practical labora-
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tory introduction to several occupations, the pupil can test experimentally the validity of his provisional choices. Under such circumstances, and wherever it is carried on by adequately trained teachers, a progressively valuable outcome of vocational guidance may be confidently expected. Meanwhile, during the first two decades of the present century, an important reorganization of the grades in our public-school system was gradually taking place. W h e n I described the report of the Committee of T e n 1 mention was made of the fact that President Eliot had called attention to the desire of all the conferences reporting to that committee that secondary education (high-school education) should begin earlier than the prevailing plan of eight elementary grades followed by four high-school grades permitted. But it was to be nearly twenty years before the desire of the conferences found practical realization. About 1910 actual beginnings were made in lengthening downward the high-school period by regrouping the grades, as follows. T h e first six grades were left undisturbed. But Grades Seven, Eight, and Nine (sometimes only Grades Seven and Eight) were grouped together as a "lower high school" — soon to be known as the junior high school; 2 and Grades Ten, Eleven, and Twelve were grouped together in a three-year "upper high school" — soon to be equally well known as the senior high school throughout the country. A t the same time important extension of educational opportunity was afforded in the junior high school, beyond the offering in the old seventh, eighth, and ninth grades, and the work of the senior high school was strengthened by Chapter X. When only Grades Seven and Eight are thus grouped, they are often called an "intermediate school." 1
2
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greater continuity and intensiveness in the pursuit of different fields of study. Naturally such a reorganization of the grades in our school system was not accomplished without opposition. When first proposed, it was vigorously discussed for some years. After the actual beginning of the junior-senior high school organization in Berkeley, California, under the wise and energetic advocacy of Superintendent Frank F. Bunker 8 (which attracted much attention both in California and elsewhere) the spread of the junior-senior high school organization throughout the United States was continuous and fairly rapid. My own contribution to this movement was slight, although I favored it in lectures and addresses. In one of my public addresses — "A Six-Year High School Program" — afterwards published in my Modern School,* I said: "Our experiments during the last two decades or so have taught us, I think, that, in general, about six years should be assigned to the elementary-school course, the time needed for the acquisition of the school arts. We have learned further that during those same years the beginnings of general culture should have been undertaken. . . . It seems to me therefore not difficult to point out the meaning we attach to 'elementary education' and 'secondary education' today. Elementary education means the acquisition of the school arts, together with some beginnings of general culture during the first six years of the pupil's school career. Secondary education follows. It means that, although the school arts still demand some attention, the emphasis thenceforth shall be on the acquisition of general culture." ' N o w editor of the Carnegie Institution, Washington, D. C. ' N e w York, London: Macmillan, 1904.
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If I were to revise that statement today, I should add after the word "culture" "or on an introduction to beginnings in various kinds of vocational education." In the same article I called attention to certain data collected by Mr. George D. Pettee of Cleveland from nearly two hundred teachers, principals, and superintendents which showed that "the ages indicated for secondary education are from twelve or thirteen up to seventeen or eighteen. That is, according to the opinion of these two hundred . . . the time limit of secondary education is fixed at six years, and the age of pupils during that time is from twelve to eighteen years." I said further: "Now precisely this period from twelve to eighteen years of age is the period of secondary education as defined by many private and endowed schools. They recognized long ago that four years on the basis of our contemporary elementary education is too short a time to do the work that should be done in secondary education. Consequently, for a long time they have given more than four years to secondary education. We are now pleading for an extension of the time of secondary-school pupils for the public-school pupil, too, so that he as well as the privateschool pupil may profit by all the resources that schools with good teaching and good equipment can offer." Dr. Bunker mentions this address among other publications on the same subject in his book, The Junior High School Movement? as one of the current publications to which he was indebted when he was preparing his report to the Berkeley Board of Education — the report which actually resulted in establishing the first junior high school in the United States as a part of the Berkeley school system. 'Washington, D. C.: W. F. Roberts Company, 1935.
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Since those days public high-school opportunities have been still further improved. I wish it were possible to say that the results achieved were commensurate with the opportunity provided. I think the present situation is fairly summed up in my Inglis Lecture delivered in 1926, Opportunity and Accomplishment in Secondary Education, and I present two or three excerpts from that lecture.® "Looking carefully at our secondary education as it is, we see that the result of all our striving since the seventeenth century is, at its best, a great opportunity; and it is a considerable opportunity even when that best is only approximated. At its best, this opportunity may be described as follows: We have a junior-senior high school that is a refining and unifying force in our complex society — a school that, in spite of many shortcomings and the often weak reënforcement its best endeavors win from the general public, offers the elements of general culture to all normal children approximately twelve to eighteen years old who are led to seek general culture through the persuasive influence of a good beginning at an early age. At the same time, it provides more and more satisfactory opportunities for the pupil to find himself, and to make the most of his dominant interests and powers as he proceeds. It provides for the pupil early in his secondary-school career preliminary vocational training and experience, and later, actual vocational training if he wants it. Accompanying these opportunities for general culture and for vocational training, this juniorsenior high school provides continuous educational and vocational guidance, so that the danger of inappropriate education of the individual pupil may be minimized. A flexible scheme of classification is provided whereby pupils of "Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1926.
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approximately the same ability are taught together, so that each will feel the stimulus of measuring himself with his peers and have a chance to proceed as fast and as thoroughly as he can, or as slowly as he must. During the whole secondary-school period the school guards and promotes the pupil's health and physical development by theoretical instruction and directed physical exercises. Through its curriculum and its management it provides for the development of character, that is, of moral ideals and conduct in harmony therewith; and with the same end in view, it encourages and helps to carry on a great variety of collateral or extracurricular pupil activities. This school is well articulated with the elementary school on the one hand, and with the college on the other. It is open to all children of the community, without tuition, on precisely the same terms. This is our public secondary school at its best. We have also endowed and private schools, notably some schools carried on in connection with university departments or schools of education, which are organized on the same general plans as the public junior-senior high school.7 "Taking the secondary schools the country over, or in a single state, to what extent do they really afford the opportunity sketched above? We do not know. Nor do we know what they actually accomplish with whatever opportunity they do afford. All that we do know is that the opportunities afforded by our secondary schools vary greatly, and that their product — the secondary-school graduates — is a very uneven product as to scholarship, character, and all the other qualities essential to superior citizenship. This statement is 'They, too, especially the so-called progressive schools, like our best public schools, are contributing, each in its own way, further insight into the problems of secondary education and to the progressive solution of those problems.
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based on general experience and observation during a long period of time — in my case, more than forty years." I urged a study of a sufficient number of secondary schools in different communities in different parts of the United States by a properly constituted and adequately financed agency in order to obtain a cross section of the educational opportunities the secondary schools of the country afforded; and a study of the same schools by a similarly constituted agency to determine what they accomplished in the light of their opportunities. Either without or with such a survey of our secondary schools as was suggested, I offered a number of ways in which it seemed to me the accomplishment of our secondary schools, whatever the scope of their opportunities was at present, might be improved, and concluded by saying: " A t its best, we have achieved a real opportunity in secondary education for our youth of both sexes. W e are as yet far from realizing this opportunity save in favored communities. How to make this opportunity more general, and progressively more responsive to our needs, and how to make accomplishment more and more commensurate with opportunity is still, as it has been, our secondary-school problem. It cannot be solved all at once or once for all. Its solution offers a perennial challenge." In many communities, in recent years, a new educational unit — the junior college — offers a significant educational opportunity beyond that afforded by the high school. In some cases the junior college represents only the first two years of the usual four-year college; in others it represents a diversified educational opportunity, including besides the
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courses of the first two usual college years a number of semiprofessional courses. The best illustration known to me of the diversified junior college is the junior college of Los Angeles, California. That college was fortunate in securing as its first director Dr. William H . Snyder, at the time principal of one of the Los Angeles high schools. For the professional or semiprofessional courses of his junior college, Snyder made extensive studies of the vocational opportunities Los Angeles afforded and the nature and scope of the semiprofessional preparation that employers desired many of their employees to possess. On the basis of this study, committees composed of employers and teachers planned the semiprofessional courses for the college. The Los Angeles Junior College was opened in 1929 with a faculty of 54 and more than 1300 students. In 1933 there were a faculty of 169 and nearly 5000 students. Such a rapid growth, besides being a tribute to the wisdom and practical efficiency of Director Snyder, is evidence that a well-planned junior college satisfies an important educational demand not hitherto provided for. Other junior colleges may not have had such a phenomenally rapid growth, but wherever established they have won prompt recognition. That is not to say that mistakes have not been made in the haste to found junior colleges, whether supported by public or by private funds, without due consideration of aims and means, and also in the transformation of existing educational institutions with aims quite different from junior-college aims into alleged junior colleges; but on the whole the junior-college movement has justified itself. In some cases the transformation of an existing four-year college into a junior college has been a decided advantage. Struggling colleges maintaining with difficulty, or failing to
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maintain, the standard of a good four-year college have found their salvation in frankly giving up their attempt to be satisfactory four-year colleges and transforming themselves into junior colleges with only two instead of four years of college work.
CHAPTER XIV THE HARVARD GRADUATE
SCHOOL
OF E D U C A T I O N O N G before the advent of the Division of Education J (1906) within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard, I entertained the hope that the Department of Education would develop into a graduate school of education parallel to the other professional schools — of law, medicine, etc. — of the university, and on occasion I had expressed that hope in conversation, and also to some extent in print. But the realization of that hope was deferred for many years. In a letter from President Eliot, dated August 3, 1903, he said among other things : "If I were you, I should neither talk nor think about a 'School of Education' at Harvard. The Corporation and Overseers are unquestionably opposed to the establishment of more 'schools' within the University. Their hope and expectation is to reduce the number of separate schools rather than to increase it." On August 19 I wrote President Eliot a long letter in reply to that statement. My letter began, "Ever since I received your letter of August 3d I have been much disturbed by the suggestion in the last paragraph that I should neither talk nor think about a school of education at Harvard; and therefore, in spite of your suggestion, I venture to ask your consideration of the following facts — for I think they are facts." I then proceeded to set forth as cogently as I could the facts which seemed to me to show Harvard's responsibility to promote
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the study of éducation as only a graduate school parallel to the other professional schools of the university could promote it, and Harvard's unrivaled opportunity to do so; incidentally, I pointed out the extensive provision for such study progressively made by other important universities, notably Columbia University and the University of Chicago, and, further, directed attention to the pronounced interest in such a school on the part of the thoughtful public and cited, by way of illustration, the following quotation from an editorial article in the Outloo\ for August ι entitled "Educational Progress of the Year": "Harvard University has during the past year called for two and a half million dollars with which to expand its Department of Education into a professional school of the highest type. The success of this undertaking would be a distinct gain to our national education." I ended the letter by saying, "I am aware that this letter, already too long, does not give any information concerning the nature of the 'School of Education' I have in mind. To set that forth in a letter is impossible. But perhaps you will give me an opportunity to discuss it with you at some length when we both return to Cambridge." To this letter President Eliot replied immediately (on August 22). I quote the first two paragraphs of his letter: "If some single giver should wish to establish a separate School of Education, and should offer a very large sum for that purpose, such as Mr. Pulitzer has offered Columbia for a School of Journalism, I suppose the Corporation would accept it; but they would regret the establishment of a separate School of Education, and I know they would not be willing to have a general subscription attempted for such a school. "I regard education as an entirely suitable subject of study for the A.B., the A.M., and the Ph.D.; and I believe these
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degrees to be more valuable to teachers than any special degree would be. After we admit the force of everything that can be said concerning the necessity of good methods in teaching, and of good organization in education, the fact remains that knowledge of the subject is the main requirement for the teacher. T h e proportion of technical information and skill which the teacher needs is much smaller than the corresponding information and skill which the lawyer, physician, or minister needs." T h e first paragraph shows that President Eliot had somewhat modified his opposition to a school of education; and the second paragraph shows that he had not yet fully grasped the meaning of professional study for leadership in education — the special function of a university school of education — involving a much more comprehensive and intensive study of education than is implied in the training of the classroom teacher as such, while not neglecting that training. W h e n we both returned to Cambridge I seized an early opportunity to confer with President Eliot on my proposal — the first of many such conferences. It was characteristic of President Eliot that he considered carefully and objectively every important matter brought to his attention; so, in time, he made no further objection to my proposal, provided I proceeded in accordance with the suggestion he had made in the first paragraph of his letter of August 22. Accordingly, relinquishing for the time all thought of a general campaign for funds for a school of education, I devoted myself thenceforth to finding the "single giver" he had suggested as possibly acceptable to "the Corporation"; and after some years such a giver was found, as will presently appear. Since the Corporation would not approve a general solicitation of funds for a graduate school of education, but did not disapprove of an endeavor to secure funds for the further
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development of the Division of Education, that endeavor was actively but quietly carried on from 1903 onward. A brief description of one such attempt follows. In 1906 my colleague, A . O. Norton, and I wrote a pamphlet, sumptuously printed on thick paper — paid for by James J. Storrow, at the time chairman of the committee of the Overseers to visit the Department of Education — with the following title page: A COMPARISON of the P R O V I S I O N for the S T U D Y of EDUCATION and the Training of Teachers at Harvard University and at Other Important Universities The Consequences of Harvard's Inadequate Equipment An Appeal to the Friends of Education Cambridge Printed Privately 1906 In that pamphlet we began by asking "Is New England's Educational Influence Declining?" and presented tables showing that N e w England colleges, including Harvard, were surpassed by important universities elsewhere in their offering of courses for the study of education; that Harvard's offering was less than one-third of the offering of several other important institutions, and less than one-ninth of the offering of one of them; that Harvard stood at the
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foot of the list in the number of instructors in education. W e showed further that, nevertheless, the number of students of education at Harvard exceeded the number of such students in all but two of the colleges and universities under consideration, indicating a promising preference for Harvard; pointed out the great difference between the small sum spent on our Department of Education and the much larger sums spent on similar departments elsewhere; explained in a f e w concise paragraphs the meaning of professional training for school officers and teachers; set forth a threefold demand: ( i ) the demand of the intelligent public "who want teachers of professional insight, interest, and power," (2) the demand of cities and states who as the guardians of public educational interests give effect to this demand by insisting on adequate professional training wherever local opinion will support such insistence, and (3) the demand of college-bred teachers then in service w h o had come to feel the need of professional training or w h o had been made to feel that need by their professional superiors; and, finally, set forth the aims and scope of the enlarged Division of Education we hoped for and gave an itemized estimate of the cost of the proposed enlargement — half a million dollars. T h e pamphlet was mailed to several hundred persons. W i t h three exceptions noted below, it and other attempts yielded little in the way of immediate practical results, but there is reason to believe that it did have a favorable influence on our endeavors as the years passed. In 1907, through the generosity of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Lee of Boston, we were enabled to add an instructor to our staff — Henry W . Holmes, who later became assistant professor and professor. During my absence in N e w York in 1911-1912 Holmes was acting chairman of the division, and from 1912 to 1920 chairman; and when the Graduate School
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of Education was established in 1920 he became dean of the school, a position he still holds. Also through the generosity of Mr. Lee, George E . Johnson joined the division in 1915 and was a professor in the Graduate School of Education until his untimely death in 1931. Through the generosity of Lincoln Filene of Boston, it was possible to carry forward the work of the Bureau of Vocational Guidance for some years by the appointment, successively, of two teachers (one we lost by death, and the other left us to engage in business) until 1920, when D r . John M . Brewer, who had been an instructor prior to that time, became a professor and director of the Bureau of Vocational Guidance in the Graduate School of Education, his present position, as already noted above. Professor Alexander J . Inglis joined the division in 1914 and remained until his lamented death in 1924. Professor Walter F . Dearborn joined the staff in 1912, and remained to become a professor in the Graduate School of Education. During some years prior to 1913 I. had cherished the hope that the developing Division of Education would, ere long, control a model school — a school for boys and girls which should embody in concrete form the best features that educational experience had developed and careful thought could suggest. Our work required us to have much to say about such a school, but we had no illustration of such a school near at hand. Such a school would not be a school for practice teaching; we had excellent opportunities for practice teaching in six neighboring cities and towns. Our model school should not be bound by contemporary aims and practices, but it would not disregard or run counter to aims and methods that experience had proved to be sound. 1 1
See "A Proposed University School," Harvard Graduates' Magazine, September 1913.
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Such a model school, to be located in Cambridge, was definitely proposed in 1913, and a brief canvass among parents in Cambridge and the vicinity showed that more than sixty pupils would be entered in the school the first year. But to my great regret the project had to be abandoned, chiefly because my colleagues were unwilling to launch the enterprise without a substantial endowment, but also because we were all thinking, first of all, of an endowment for a graduate school of education. I, myself, was willing to take the risk of starting the school without initial endowment, believing that endowment would be forthcoming soon, because the school would justify itself by its work. And I still think so. Meanwhile I had reason to believe that the unsympathetic or more or less antagonistic attitude of members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences toward the Division of Education was giving place to comfortable indifference or even to active interest. A n outstanding evidence of this was the following. One day in 1912 when I was playing golf with Professor Edwin F . Gay of the Department of Economics, he asked me if the Division of Education would be interested in making a study of the teaching of economics in his department; when I replied that I was sure we should be interested, he said that we might soon expect an invitation to make an inspection of the Department of Economics and to report our findings to his department and to the president of the university. That invitation was duly received and accepted by the Division of Education in 1912, but we could not begin the work until 1913; we were engaged in it and in preparing our report during about three years. We had the complete cooperation of the Department of Economics throughout, especially of Professors Gay and Ε . E. Day. We found the
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work extremely interesting, but arduous in view of the fact that we were also carrying on the work of our own division at the same time. Seven members of our division, including myself and a number of assistants, participated in this inspection, but the laboring oar in all the work was carried by Professor Holmes, chairman of the division. The report was published in 1917. 2 I know of no other university in which an important department subjected itself voluntarily to inspection by the Department of Education in the same university. Perhaps it could happen only at Harvard. In 1916 the Division of Education had a permanent staff of six full-time teachers, several part-time teachers, and several assistants. The situation suggested another attempt to found the graduate school of education which we had looked forward to for so long, especially since by that time the president and the Corporation had been won over. At a meeting of our Overseers' committee on December 16,1916, the committee was informed that the Corporation had approved the proposal for a graduate school of education, but had conditioned the raising of funds by insisting on an endowment instead of a guarantee of income, and that the first installment of the fund should be secured from persons not usually contributors to Harvard enterprises. Before going on to describe further the founding of the Graduate School of Education, I must speak of the great assistance our visiting committee rendered our department (division). This committee was one of the committees appointed regularly by the Overseers to visit the different departments and schools of the university; they almost invariably manifested an active interest in the departments 2 The Teaching of Economics in Harvard University (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1917), Harvard Studies in Education, vol.
III.
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which they were appointed to "visit," and each of them usually presented an annual report to the Overseers. T h e y might and often did actually visit classes; but their chief usefulness was based on conferences with the departments that enabled them to promote the progress of the several departments, whether that progress meant an increase of the staff, or changes in or extension of the instruction offered by the departments or their material equipment — laboratory facilities, additions to department libraries, etc. N o t infrequently a visiting committee charged itself with raising the funds needed for the improvements desired. Under the chairmanship first of James J. Storrow, banker, philanthropist, and outstanding citizen of Boston, and later of Jerome D . Greene, for many years secretary to President Eliot and later a banker, 3 our visiting committee was one of the most useful of all the visiting committees. Individual members of the committee not only showed a continuous sympathetic interest in our work but at times helped us generously with money. Besides the two chairmen just named, w e were especially indebted for stimulating interest in our work and very substantial financial help to Felix M. Warburg of N e w York, banker and philanthropist, and to Joseph Lee and Lincoln Filene of Boston. Perhaps those men and other members of the committee on whom we relied for lay guidance or financial help never realized how much what they did meant to us while we were still a struggling division, and later when we proceeded to the establishment of the Graduate School of Education, and I want to record here my deep appreciation of their vision and generosity. Meanwhile, ever since the N e w York survey (1911-1912), and especially during and after the Hampton survey (begun "Later secretary to the Corporation and director of the Harvard Tercentenary Celebration.
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in 1917), there were frequent conferences with Buttrick and Flexner of the General Education Board and much correspondence with them, sometimes on matters in which they were primarily interested, sometimes on matters in which they and I were equally interested. The conferences gave me the opportunity, when the business which brought us together had been disposed of, to discuss with them both my hope that the Harvard Division of Education might develop into a graduate school of education and the chief obstacle to the realization of that hope, namely, the necessity of securing a large gift of money from a single source before the Corporation would approve a campaign for funds for the endowment of the proposed school. One such conference occurred in December 1918, when Buttrick and Flexner were both in Baltimore. They had sent for me to discuss with them a chapter of my Hampton report. The matter of the report was soon disposed of to our common satisfaction. In the conversation that followed I seized the opportunity to ask their consideration of a definite proposal to the General Education Board for the "substantial sum" which the Corporation stipulated we should have in hand before they would authorize a campaign for subscriptions to a fund of $2,000,000 — the sum we believed to be needed for the initial endowment of the proposed school. My proposal was sympathetically considered. When Buttrick asked how much I thought that "substantial sum" should be, I replied that I thought half a million dollars would satisfy the Corporation. After some further conversation Buttrick thought that the General Education Board should make the appropriation, and Flexner agreed with him. I asked when they thought it likely that the General Education Board would act on my proposal. They replied that it could not be considered at the next meeting of the
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board, which was to occur in a few days, but at the next meeting thereafter, and added that the application for the gift must be made by the president of the university. Of course, I was delighted at this outcome of our conference and, equally of course, I said so. A s soon as possible after my return to Cambridge, I told Holmes about the result of my conference with Buttrick and Flexner, and he lost no time in telling President Lowell. Holmes reported that Mr. Lowell was disinclined to write the application; but later he did write it, Holmes and I both being present when he dictated it. A s soon as the letter of application had been dictated, I telegraphed to Buttrick and Flexner that the application was on the way to N e w York. That was on a Saturday, and on the next Monday, May 22, 1919,1 received the following telegram: "Board appropriated five hundred thousand dollars toward your school of education. Congratulations and best wishes for you and your associates. Buttrick, Flexner." I telegraphed in reply: " W h e n the desire cometh. Most grateful appreciation from us all." T h e gift of the General Education Board met the requirement of the Corporation that a substantial sum toward the endowment of a graduate school of education should be in hand before a general campaign for endowment could be undertaken, and, with the help of our visiting committee, we lost no time in launching that campaign. Soon the Corporation agreed to contribute toward the total to be raised the capital sum from the interest of which it had met the expenses of the Division of Education — half a million dollars. Meanwhile the Harvard Fund Campaign, a campaign for general endowment, was under way; and the campaign for the Graduate School of Education Fund was merged with
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the Harvard Fund Campaign. The proposal for this merger was made by the officers of the Harvard Fund Campaign, with the understanding that the total to be secured by the Harvard Fund Campaign should be raised to eleven millions (it had been set at ten millions) and that the Graduate School of Education should be given from the Harvard Fund enough to complete the school's fund of two millions as soon as the Harvard Fund had reached the sum of eleven millions. The Harvard Fund passed the eleven million mark in December 1919. Special gifts toward the fund for the Graduate School of Education had amounted to nearly two hundred thousand dollars. Thus the total amount of the endowment for the Graduate School of Education had been secured before March 1920. On March 8, 1920, the Corporation passed the following votes : "Voted to establish a Graduate School of Education, the Faculty of which shall be one of the separate Faculties of the University." "Voted that the ordinary requirements for admission to the Graduate School of Education shall be the possession of a bachelor's degree; and that women shall be admitted to the School as students and candidates for degrees." These votes consummated the hopes I had cherished for nearly twenty years. In their report to the Corporation dated April 20, 1920, our committee said, among other things, "It is a distinctive feature of this new enterprise at Harvard that it is established on a strictly graduate basis." This, too, was in accordance with the plan of the school I had urged for many years, based on the hope that the school would emphasize the training of leaders in the field of education while not neglecting the best training that could be devised for the usual practitioner.
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Accordingly, two degrees (Master of Education — Ed.M. — and Doctor of Education — Ed.D.) were offered to students who were planning to make education their lifework; and the school has conferred those two degrees to the present time (1936). On February 17, 1920, our committee, with the approval of the Corporation, gave a dinner at the Harvard Union to celebrate the establishment of the Graduate School of Education. Speeches were made by the chairman of the committee (Jerome D. Greene), the Governor of Massachusetts (Calvin Coolidge), President Eliot, Dr. Wallace Buttrick (president of the General Education Board), Professor Hanus, and Professor Holmes. When the Graduate School of Education was an accomplished fact, I was sixty-five years old. I did not want to retire until I was seventy, and perhaps I should have been active indefinitely if I had been a well man. But I had been in poor health for some years and felt that I ought to retire as soon as possible. However, I remained with the school during its first year, retiring in 1921. Some years after my resignation I was entirely cured of my illness. I have now been an interested spectator of the career of the school for fifteen years. I have cherished many hopes for the school, some of which have been realized. I have long looked forward to the establishment and maintenance of a model school for children and youth, completely controlled by the department, as one of the most desirable adjuncts to its activities. Such a school should embody in concrete form the best features that educational experience has developed and careful thought can suggest. A l l its resources should be so managed as to minister to the needs and interests of each individual child for his own development and for future participation in
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human affairs; that is, it should lay the foundation for the progressive growth of every pupil in character, knowledge, and power, whatever his future career may be. Such a school should embody the best features of a good public school and a good private school. W e have reason to believe that such a school would render a service to our immediate community; we would endeavor to make it also a school which teachers would find it more than usually profitable to visit and study; and it would certainly be, for us, a school in which our own thinking and practice would be brought to book. W e know that this opportunity is at hand, but up to the present time we have not found the money that would enable us to take advantage of it. Another opportunity which we have already taken advantage of and which we would like to extend is the opportunity for cooperative educational research and experiments in neighboring schools and school systems. W e would welcome suggestions for such cooperation from any who may be interested. I have already referred to the important role of this country in the field of educational literature. This is not only one of our opportunities, it is a duty; but a duty which it was extremely difficult for us at Harvard to discharge when our staff was as small as it was during the greater part of the twenty-five years which closed in 1916. It is a great satisfaction to me that during the last few years we have been able, as a department, to increase materially our contributions to educational literature.
CHAPTER XV TRAINING FOR LEADERSHIP IN EDUCATION EDITOR'S NOTE: In 1916 the Department of Education at Harvard University was twenty-five years old; so was the Harvard Teachers Association. T h e officers of the Harvard Teachers Association decided to celebrate this double birthday at the annual dinner of the Association held that year at the Brunswick Hotel in Boston. On the printed menu of the dinner appeared this statement: "In 1891 Professor Paul Henry Hanus began his teaching at Harvard University and in the same year founded the Harvard Teachers Association. This Anniversary Dinner is given in his honor by the Overseers' Committee for the Division of Education, Harvard University, and by the Harvard Teachers Association. In recognition of his leadership and influence the following societies have given their hearty cooperation : American Association for the Advancement of Science, Section L ; American Institute of Instruction; Boston Association of Principals; Boston Educational Society; Boston Elementary Teachers' Club; Boston Head-Masters Association; Boston Masters' Association; Boston Women's City Club; High School Masters' Club of Massachusetts; Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents; Massachusetts Teachers' Association; Massachusetts Teachers' Federation; Massachusetts Schoolmasters' Club; National Education Association, Department of Superintendence; National Society of College Teachers of Education; National Society for the Promotion of Industrial Education; National Society for the Study of Education; N e w England Association of College Teachers of Education; N e w England Association of School Superintendents; Phi Delta Kappa; Vocation Bureau of Boston." A t the conclusion of the dinner a silver piece was presented to Mr. Hanus by the president of the Association, Dr. Frank V . Thompson, bearing this inscription, " T o Professor Paul Henry Hanus with the gratitude and affectionate regard of his present and former students on the completion of the twenty-fifth year of his teaching at Harvard University." Opening his address at the dinner, Mr. Hanus said, "I am profoundly moved by the cooperative spirit of this occasion and by its stimulating optimism. I am deeply grateful to all of you for your part in it. I wish I could really say what is in my heart. I can't do that, but I beg you to accept this brief expression of my sincere appreciation of all that it means for me personally and especially for the Department of Education." During the preparation of the present volume Professor Hanus has written: "Since my address at
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that dinner, apart from some references to the occasion when it was delivered, definitely embodies the aims and hopes of the Graduate School of Education, which our Department of Education became only four years later, as described in the preceding chapter, liberal sections of the address are reproduced in this chapter, with only such changes in dates as make them applicable to the present. These may fittingly close this account of my 'adventuring in education.' "
H A V E been referred to as a pioneer. It is true that I have been a pioneer most of my professional life. On graduating from college I taught in a high school which had been going for only two years; then in a state university that was just fourteen months old; then as the first principal in a city high school not yet three years old; then I taught in a normal school which had not been running at all (my recitation room was in a paint shop over a blacksmith shop during the first months of my teaching in this school) ; then I came to Harvard University where there was as yet no department to which I had the honor to be called. I am rather glad to have been a pioneer because pioneering means opportunity, and every opportunity that comes to a man is a challenge to do the best he can — to render the best service that it is possible for him to render under the circumstances. Not very long after coming to Harvard I participated in another bit of pioneering with Professor John Dewey, then of Chicago University, and Professor Walter B. Jacobs of Brown University. We founded the National Society of College Teachers of Education. Although the first permanent university department for the study of education had been established at the University of Michigan as early as 1879, college teachers of education were not yet very numerous, and they were all pioneers in a new field of university work. When we were assembled, I remember looking the group over and saying to Dewey and Jacobs (we three were together), "What a job lot we are!" That was said
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nearly fifty years ago. The remark is no longer applicable to college and university teachers of education in this country. The members of our profession may take a just pride in what they have accomplished since that time, and particularly in their contributions to good educational literature. It is a just claim that in educational literature, today, our country leads the world. During the past forty-five years I have often had to feel that comparatively little was known or thought of what a department of education might or could do. I had hardly been in Cambridge a week before one of the members of the faculty said to me, "Education! H o w do you teach that?" Twenty-five years later at a dinner a lady asked me what my occupation was. I told her. "You a professor!" she said. "It is a bit odd, but it's true," I replied. Then she wanted to know my department, and I told her; and she asked the same question that I had answered twenty-five years before, and many times since then — "How do you teach that?" It is evident, therefore, that although education has traveled some distance in forty-five years, it still has some distance to travel. The frontier is not a hundred miles from this spot; it is all about us. I do not cherish any illusions. I find much encouragement in what has been accomplished, but I feel sure that in spite of all the pioneering that has been done the complete realization of what the pioneer movement signified is still some distance ahead. It need hardly be said that what our Department of Education has thus far accomplished is not the work of any one man. Some of the men who helped have left for other fields of work, but my colleagues and I owe much to them; and I take pleasure, on this occasion, in expressing our appreciation of their help. I must not dwell too long on these personal aspects of
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the subject. The real situation has been very well described by other speakers. Forty-five years ago nobody thought of a scientific study of education — such a study of it as would give us facts about educational procedure and results which nobody could dispute. Forty-five years ago education was based wholly on personal experience and individual opinion. We used to say, "I believe so and so," "I am convinced so and so," "in my opinion," and so on. Today we are rapidly coming to see that what we think is not the question. The question is, what are the facts? The progress we have made in these years is found just there. In our contemporary insistence on an objective basis instead of subjective opinion in estimating the value of the results we achieve, we are demanding a substantial basis of verified and verifiable data as the sole condition for belief in alleged achievement and as the only safe guide to future practice. A brief anecdote will illustrate how difficult it is to take this modern point of view in education. Some years ago I chanced to be in New Zealand. While there it fell to my lot to lecture. I chose for my subject "The Contemporary Movement for the Scientific Study of Education," and I took particular pains to point out, with numerous illustrations, that agreement or disagreement with the matters I was presenting was beside the point; that my contentions must stand or fall by the results of controlled experiments, as in other fields of scientific study. After the lecture, my host said to me: "I think you will be interested to know what one of your hearers, prominent in education here, said about your lecture. She said, 'He is a clever old chap, but I disagree with him in toto!' " So firmly rooted is tradition that it is often, temporarily at least, practically impossible to make headway against it. Incidentally, of course, I learned what my standing would
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be in New Zealand if I were pioneering there in education. The New York school inquiry, I suppose, is notorious. If I had sought notoriety, I could not have chosen a better way to get it than by undertaking that inquiry. For years scarcely a week passed by — the work was done in 1 9 1 1 - 1 9 1 2 — in which I did not receive a letter containing reference of one sort or another to the N e w York City school inquiry. Often the reference was to what had been said happened to me and my associates in that investigation — not what we did but what certain persons tried to do to us because we did it, seems to be the thing of greatest interest to my correspondents! Yet I have reason to believe that that extensive bit of pioneering — it was not by any means the first important school survey, but it was among the first of those intensive studies of individual city school systems that have now become common — has not been without results of value not only for N e w York City but for other sections of the country. During the summer quarter of 1914 I taught in the University of Chicago. One of my courses was "limited" to forty students. When the students assembled, they numbered about seventy-five. My other course was similarly "limited" to seventy-five students. I had one hundred and fifty. Another visiting instructor who offered a course parallel to one of mine also had about twice the number of students his course was announced to receive. In both cases the students came from all parts of the country, although chiefly from the Middle West and the South. I said to Professor Judd, director of the School of Education, "What does this mean, this limiting the number of students in a course?" "Oh," he said, "that is just to whet their appetites." The point I am trying to make is this: in that region there
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is evidence of great eagerness in the study of education. I never saw a body of students more interested in the work they had to do. I like to refer to this because it seems to me to be a capital illustration of the service which the University of Chicago is rendering to the country. In size it is not so large as Columbia University, but its influence is as farreaching. I bow to these institutions for the good they do, and to other great universities — the University of Michigan, Stanford University, the University of Illinois, and the University of Wisconsin. They have all helped mightily in promoting the university study of education. Let us now turn to the kind of service to the nation which a university department of education may be expected to render — its aims, and the aims of our department at Harvard in particular. In general terms, these aims are to train adequately equipped college-bred teachers of all grades and kinds, and especially to develop educational leaders — men and women who on the basis of their acquired professional resources may become leaders in educational thought, educational practice (both as classroom teachers and as supervisory and administrative officers), and leaders in educational research. W e have long cherished these aims at Harvard. Even a partial realization of them means that the Department of Education will send into American life a body of trained men and women who have laid the foundation for a careful study of the spiritual and material needs of this great democracy of ours, and of the schools and school systems that must be developed to meet those needs, and who are able to work progressively toward the fuller realization of our worthiest ideals in private and public life. By virtue of the professional resources we seek to have them acquire here, by the insight and outlook we endeavor to
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help them to attain, we may hope that teachers and supervisory officers trained here will not be merely conscientious workers in a professional routine; we may expect them to become wise and aggressive molders of public opinion and effective leaders in educational theory and practice. This is not the time or the place to go into details; but I cannot forbear to point out, first, that every untrained teacher, no matter how scholarly he may be, has yet to learn to be a teacher; and second, that every untrained principal or superintendent, no matter how successful he has been as a classroom teacher, has yet to learn to be a supervisor and administrator. Unless he learns this, he is likely to be a blind leader of the blind. Incidentally, I need hardly say that an untrained teacher or supervisory officer is a doubtful asset to his alma mater. So we look forward with eager hope to the future for fuller realization of our aims and to an increasing share in the professional service we want to render. One of the greatest obstacles in the way of the progressive realization of these aims is that the American public in general has not yet learned to discriminate between trained and untrained teachers, and trained and untrained supervisory officers; and this is particularly true when they select the chief educational administrative and executive officer — the superintendent of schools. Consequently there is no such strong, persistent, and universal public demand that the teacher who is charged with the responsibility of strongly influencing, in many cases of actually determining, the ideals and habits of children and youths shall be as well trained for his work as the physician who ministers to their physical welfare is trained for his. Nor is the demand for trained educational executives comparable to the demand
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for trained medical or engineering executives. Untrained superintendents are common. An untrained head of a hospital or of an important engineering enterprise is unthinkable. Expressed in another way, we may say that public opinion as yet too often fails to discriminate between lay control, which is the function of boards of education, and professional management, which is the function of the superintendent. Hence, also, the public, represented by the board of education, too often lacks the insight and the will to secure educational executives who have acquired the professional equipment that a good university department of education can furnish. Consequently we have a vicious circle — too few teachers, principals, and supervisory officers who by virtue of their training can demonstrate in their daily work the great difference between the trained and the untrained educational leader; and the failure to make this distinction evident to the public promotes the continued employment of untrained teachers and school officers. Fortunately we have teachers and school officers today who, though originally untrained for their work, have worked unceasingly to equip themselves for it. They are rendering efficient service. It need hardly be said that they are what they are not because of, but in spite of, their lack of original training — and in spite of the lack of an insistent and unmistakable public demand for such training. On the other hand, we have too few school officers, principals, and superintendents who have the insight and the accompanying courage to develop this public demand; for it takes courage as well as insight to educate public opinion, especially when, as is the case in the field of school administration, many hampering, sometimes wrong-headed or nefarious traditions have to be overcome. I have often said
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to my students in school administration, "It is your business to help educate public opinion in educational affairs. You must stand for principles. You are lost if you compromise with principles. T o be sure, you may sometimes lose your job if you stand firm, but you won't have to look far for a better one"; and experience shows that this is true. What I mean more specifically is this: Whose business is it to formulate educational policies if it isn't the business of the teaching profession? Who will take the time for it if they will not? Who will distinguish professional service from amateurishness if they cannot make it clear that there is such a distinction? And how can they make it clear unless they have a professional consciousness born of professional resources? Why does the public have confidence in the physician, the engineer, the lawyer? They have technical knowledge and skill. Such knowledge and skill compel respect. A technically trained individual has so much more to bring to bear on his subject than the layman possibly can have that the leadership of the technically trained man follows almost as a matter of course. I have said that a department of education should seek to train educational leaders for the whole field of educational endeavor — workers who are equipped for leadership in every grade and kind of school, whether kindergarten, elementary school, high school, vocational school, college, or university. It will be seen, therefore, that I am one of those who believe that college teachers need training as well as school teachers. A little while ago I said it makes no difference what one believes in education, the question always being what are the facts. But I have just said, "I believe." This is an illustration of how hard it is for me to get away from the language of my generation. In this case, however, there is
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some justification for my use of the phrase, because the facts — that is, systematically collected, well-organized and verifiable data on the subject of the quality of college teaching — are not available; all we have is general observation and individual experience; and this tends strongly to suggest that college teaching is in need of improvement. Since we have abundant evidence that trained school teachers are better teachers than the untrained, and have a professional influence far greater than that of the untrained, we have every reason to believe that corresponding training will improve college teaching and give the college teacher a professional value he too often lacks at present. Certainly we have reason to believe that clearness and adequacy of aims and good methods of procedure are not more generally developed by the college teacher without special study than by the school teacher. Hence I hope the time will soon come when university departments of education, and our own department in particular, will be able to provide adequately for the satisfactory training of college teachers. Of course, we now train college teachers of education; but these teachers (candidates for the higher degrees in education) have already proved their ability to teach before coming to us. W e would not otherwise accept them as candidates for the higher degrees in education. Of course, many college teachers today work out their professional salvation or the reverse — as all teachers used to have to do — by the wasteful method of trial and error; a method not only wasteful but also too often disastrous to the subjects taught, to the students, and, as just intimated, not infrequently to the teachers as well. But whatever we may or may not be able to do in training college teachers, it is clear that contemporary educational endeavor in many diverse fields urgently needs well-trained,
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constructive thinkers and practitioners. No period in our country's history has been marked by such a vast range oí complex educational needs as the past dozen years or so have brought to light, and there has never been a time when careful analysis and evaluation of both professional practices and new ideas or policies in education were so persistently called for. Nor, as I have already said, has scientific procedure in education ever been so urgently demanded and so consciously aimed at by the teaching profession as today. May I say incidentally, but with emphasis, that I am not one of those who feel that our great contemporary interest in vocational education may have a harmful influence on "liberal" education? A man's vocation is more than his means of earning a living. Through the special service he renders as a grocer, plumber, dentist, manufacturer, merchant, lawyer, teacher, or what not, he reveals himself to his fellows. He shows what manner of man he is, what his interests are, and what capacity he has for general social service. A man's vocation thus becomes the chief means of establishing significant relations with his fellow men, those relations in which he will be called upon to utilize all the resources which education, whether liberal or vocational, can help him to acquire. The greater the range of these resources and the more complete his command over them, the better for him and for society. Whether a man's whole power for good — vocational and extra-vocational — can best be developed by separating his education into two distinct periods, liberal education first, followed by vocational education, is at least an open question. For myself I am willing to risk the experiment of combining the two, and of making an individual's education center in the life-career motive for all children and
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youth fourteen years old or older, as fast as these motives emerge distinctly. It seems to me that this hypothesis is a sound basis for the education of our youth, because general experience and observation reveal the vitalizing influence of the vocational motive wherever it is embodied in our educational activity — and this whether a pupil is studying English, Greek, electricity, or commerce. Any study can, of course, be made abstract, and it can be narrowly interpreted. Any of the subjects I have mentioned can be so taught. But if taught as portions of organized human experience, as they should be, whether for vocational or extra-vocational purposes, they are, to my mind, liberalizing in the highest degree; and they do not lose this liberalizing quality in the vocational school. The danger that they will not be so taught is great, I admit; but it is no greater when the life-career motive controls the student's activities than when it does not; and when this motive does not control, the greatest danger of all is the absence of any compelling motive whatever. I think, therefore, that a vocation ought to beckon every youth from afar. Everything he does would be all the more significant and worth while in his eyes. Even if he changes his objective half a dozen times, what he does, because he has made definite choices, would be all the more effective at the time. But to make it effective he needs vocational and educational guidance. It may be worth while to point out in passing what vocational guidance is not. It is not prescribing a vocation or an education. It is collecting and organizing all the information it is possible to get concerning vocations and all the information we can get concerning individuals; and then it is an endeavor to induce the individual to make his choices in the light of this information. Is it not apparent that this particular thing must be studied
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comprehensively and intensively — that men and women should be properly equipped to undertake this important work, not only with sympathy but with the insight and outlook that only careful training can furnish? I am very glad to say that our University has recognized this fact. Another matter to which I must refer briefly at least is the great need of men trained for research in education. During the past few years we have had many school surveys (of which the New York survey was an early example); and at this moment more than a score of such surveys are under way, or are projected. These surveys are the result of an appeal to the specialist in education, the man who can bring to bear trained judgment in dealing with educational problems and technical methods of appraising the value of educational procedure and results in the work of schools and school systems. To my mind, the growing demand for these surveys is gratifying evidence of public recognition that the educational expert has appeared above the educational horizon and that he has important work to do. Now the fundamental thing in our new technical methods of dealing with educational results is that they are approximately scientific; that is, they are based on quantitative measurements as objective as we can make them wherever and whenever they can be advantageously employed. T o measure results in education we must have some standard results to measure them by; and one important function of educational research is to develop these standards. Some time ago I said to a small group of teachers that a certain school was not the place in which educational research was possible. One of the teachers in that school asked me, "What is research in education?" I need not go at length into the answer to that question, but it may not be amiss to say that, among other things, educa-
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tional research means an attempt to apply quantitative measurement to educational results. We want to know not merely that boys and girls are improving in arithmetic; we want to know how much they are improving between stated intervals. We want to know not merely that they do improve in algebra and geometry; we want to know how much. We know that the ordinary marking system will not tell us that. We know that the same examination paper in mathematics or English may be marked by several teachers from fifty to one hundred per cent. The point is that we need objective standards of measurement. If you want to know the size of a room (not merely someone's opinion about it), you must have a given objective standard (a fixed length) to measure it by. If you want to measure arithmetic, you must have an arithmetical yardstick to measure it by. If you want to measure handwriting, you must have a handwriting yardstick to measure it by. And so educational results must be determined by objective measurement. Until they are, your opinion about what is achieved is just as good as mine, and neither is worth anything as a real criterion of value. We have always had leaders in education, and they have done much to advance the theory and practice of education; but their leadership has hitherto been the leadership of individual opinion; and that, as I have pointed out, is no longer adequate; and this is true of the opinions of all of us, from the humblest teacher to the university president. So far as possible we now demand verified objective facts, not opinions, as a guide to practice. We have made great progress during the last few years in developing methods for getting these facts, but our object is yet far from being attained. Every one of the methods we now have needs to be improved and otherwise developed, and for measuring
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results in many phases of education we have not yet found any even approximately scientific standards. Such standards must be developed by men trained in educational research. But we need not only standards of measurement; we need clear definitions and evaluations of educational purposes if education is to be a rationalized endeavor and not a mere routine. Why do we teach algebra, or history, or Latin? What social and individual needs do these studies serve? When and how shall they be taught and to what extent at the successive stages of the pupil's development in order that the purposes we have may be realized? The choice of the subjects we teach, the distribution of our emphasis on them as wholes and in the details of each of them depends on the answers to such questions — on a careful analysis of the educational resources of each (and also on a recognition of the limitations of each of them). In other words, educational research covers inquiries into the spiritual (intellectual, moral, esthetic), civic, economic, and hygienic significance of educational endeavor as well as the measurement of educational results. I need not say that this phase of educational research is not new; but its problems are profound, complex, and largely unsolved. Many of them must be solved anew for each generation. Every progressive manufacturing or commercial establishment has its research laboratories or departments and its designers. What these laboratories or departments and designers are to industry and commerce the newly established departments for investigation and measurement in our public-school systems, and the individual investigators needed where such departments have not yet been established, are to education. Here, then, is another great opportunity — the opportunity to train constructive educational thinkers. But I must stop. In what I have said in these pages I have
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tried to set forth the ambition I hold for a department of education pledged to training for leadership in the field of education; and through the range and quality of that service to win for educational training a position of leadership among the molding forces of the country that in time shall be fully commensurate with a great university's responsibilities and opportunities.
APPENDIX
PAUL H. HANUS PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION 189I-I92I PRESENTED IN HONOR OF HIS SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY, M A R C H I 4 , I 9 3 O BY HIS FRIENDS, ASSOCIATES AND FORMER STUDENTS TO THE HARVARD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION W H I C H HE W A S C H I E F L Y I N S T R U M E N T A L IN ESTABLISHING
APPENDIX SUMMARY A N D SUPPLEMENT Born, March 14, 1855, in Upper Silesia, Prussia. B.S., University of Michigan, 1878; LL.D., 1925. LL.D., University of Colorado, 1906. Teacher of mathematics and science, Denver High School, District No. ι, 1878-79. Instructor and professor of mathematics, University of Colorado, 1879-86 (with the exception of one decidedly profitable year in business). Principal of Denver High School, District No. 2, 1886-90. Conductor of "Teachers' Institutes" in Colorado (in the summer time), 1888-90. Professor of "pedagogy," Colorado State Normal School at Greeley, 1890-91. Assistant professor and professor of education, Harvard University, 1891-1921.* Engaged in many educational activities. Taught for seventeen consecutive years in the Harvard Summer School, and from time to time thereafter. Lecturer in summer schools in state universities and (1914) at the University of Chicago. Founder of the Harvard Teachers Association; secretary for many years; now honorary president in perpetuum. Principal founder of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, 1920. Resigned and appointed professor emeritus, 1921. Consultant in education since 1921. * My official title was "Assistant Professor of the History and Art of Teaching" — a title suggestive of the narrow conception of the study of education at that time. I have always signed myself "Professor of Education."
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In 1891, and for a long time afterwards, universities in the United States were not hospitable to departments for the study of education. But the Department of Education founded at Harvard in that year (the first department of the kind in any endowed university) gradually progressed in spite of much opposition; and the Harvard Graduate School of Education is the outcome of a long struggle against academic opposition, and of endeavors to secure the necessary endowment for the School — a school parallel to the L a w School, the Medical School, and the other professional schools of the university. As its name indicates, the Graduate School of Education admits only college graduates to candidacy for its degrees — Master of Education and Doctor of Education. Its purpose is to train leaders in the field of educational theory and practice. T h e School has an initial endowment of two million dollars, the first half million of which I was fortunately able to secure, myself, from the General Education Board. Some happenings not mentioned above: Married, August 10, 1881, to Lottie (Charlotte) Hoskins of Denver; the best thing that ever happened. President of the Colorado Teachers Association, 1889. Chairman of the State (Massachusetts) Commission on Industrial Education, 1906-09. This commission started the first public schools (for trades and agriculture) in this country. Its work was taken over by the State Board of Education in 1909. Member of the State (Massachusetts) Board of 1909-19.
Education,
Member of the Board of Trustees of Wellesley College, 1916-36. Member of the Board of Trustees of International College, Izmir (Smyrna), Turkey, 1930-35. Chairman of the Boston Vocation Bureau, 1909-17 — now the
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Bureau of Vocational Guidance of the Graduate School of Education. Member of the Massachusetts Schoolmasters Club. President, 1903-04. Member of the Harvard Club of Boston and of the Cambridge Club for many years; of the Economy Club (Cambridge), president, 1927-28; of the Faculty Club (Cambridge). Member of Phi Beta Kappa (Michigan Chapter). Honorary member of the National Society for the Study of Education; of the American Educational Research Association; of Phi Delta Kappa (Harvard Chapter); of Kappa Delta Pi (Laureate Chapter). The last two organizations are honor societies in education. Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Vice President (Chairman of Section L , Education) of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1914). Director of surveys of schools and school systems since 1910. Among them, a survey of the public schools of N e w York City for a Committee on School Inquiry of the Board of Estimate and Apportionment; and a survey of Hampton Institute, Virginia, for the General Education Board. For the N e w York survey I had a dozen associates and about forty clerks, and leave of absence from the university for the year 1 9 1 1 - 1 2 ; and for the Hampton survey seven associates, several clerks, and a half year's leave of absence from the university ( 1 9 1 7 ) . During the World War, my age prevented me from obtaining the participation I most desired. But I was able to render a slight service by teaching French to a group of doctors and nurses in Boston just before they went overseas in 1917; and by teaching a course in French in the same year at Harvard
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in the R . O. T . C. from the beginning of the college year until the date of the armistice. In the summer of 1914, with thirteen other Americans and Canadians, on the invitation of the government of N e w Zealand, I visited that country for meetings, in N e w Zealand, with about one hundred members of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (meeting in Australia that summer) who had been invited by the government of N e w Zealand to hold supplementary meetings in N e w Zealand. I was the only "educationist" in the group from America. During the past forty years, I have travelled extensively — in this country; in Europe (seven trips); in the West Indies (more particularly Puerto Rico, where for a month I was a fellowguest, with Lincoln Filene, of Governor Towner) ; in Mexico; to the islands of the Pacific (remaining three months in Hawaii on one of those trips); to the Near East as far as Palestine and Cairo; and through the Panama Canal to California, stopping at several Central American ports, and visiting also the capital of San Salvador. I have valued souvenirs (mosdy silver) of a number of "testimonials" — dinners, receptions, and other functions. Among those occasions are the following: A dinner of my Summer School students, 1896; a farewell meeting of students when I retired in 1921; a dinner of leading educational and civic societies of N e w York City after the completion of my survey and report thereon of the public schools of N e w York City, 1 9 1 3 J a dinner of the Harvard Teachers Association (in cooperation with twenty-one leading state and national associations of teachers and school officers) on March 1 1 , 1916, in Boston, on the completion of my twenty-fifth year at Harvard University; a dinner in connection with the Seventh Annual Conference of Massachusetts School Superintendents,, at the State Normal School, Framingham, in
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1921; a surprise dinner arranged by my former colleague, Professor L . O. Cummings, now dean of the School of Education, University of Buffalo, on my seventy-fifth birthday, in which many of my former students and associates and other friends participated. Those friends, besides presenting me with a substantial sum of money, also arranged for a permanent memorial of me which took the form of a bronze bas-relief, now in Lawrence Hall (the present School of Education building),* and a handsomely bound volume of many of the congratulatory letters and telegrams sent to me or to Dean Cummings for me (now in the Harvard University Library). In 1935, my former colleague, Professor John M. Brewer, without my knowledge, reminded former students and other friends that my eightieth birthday was approaching, and on or near March 14 I received many cordial letters and telegrams. * See reproduction facing page 247.
INDEX
INDEX Adams, Charles Kendall, 40 Allen, Charles R., 195 American Association for the Advancement of Science, 228 American Institute of Instruction, 1 1 3 , 228 Angeli, James B., 40 Ann Arbor, Michigan, 36, 37, 39, 40, 44, 48, 53, 60, 61 Arizona, 68 Aust, Ida (Mrs. Gustav Hanus), 4. 5.
23
Bachman, Frank P., 179 Baker, James H., 4 7 - 5 5 Ballou, Frank W., 144, 179 Bates College, 47, 55 Beecher, Charles E., 36 Bloomfield, Meyer, 204-205 Boston Association of Principals, 228 Boston, City of, 29, 63, 65, 69, n o , 1 1 5 , 148, 176, 180, 201, 203 Boston Educational Society, 228 Boston Elementary Teachers' Club, 228 Boston Head-Masters Association, 228 Boston Latin School, 65, 129 Boston Masters' Association, 228 Boston Parental School, 29 Boston University, 203 Boston Women's City Club, 228 Boulder, Colorado, 53, 54, 55, 57, 59, 60, 69, 70, 7 1 Brewer, John M., 144, 204, 205, 2 1 9 Brown University, 229 Bunker, Frank F., 207-208
Bureau of Municipal Research, New York City, 176, 185, 189, 193 Burks, Jesse D., 179 Butler, Nicholas Murray, 1 1 3 , 165 Buttrick, Wallace, 223, 224, 226 California, State of, 97, 207, 2 1 2 California, University of, 144 Cambridge, Massachusetts, 64, 70, 1 0 1 , 104, 107, 108, n o , 1 1 4 , 1 1 6 , 1 5 4 - 1 5 5 , 216, 220 Catholic Church, 67, 69 Chicago, Illinois, 44, 100 Chicago, University of, 2 1 5 , 229, 232-233 Civil Service Commission, 188 Classical course, 42 Cocker, Benjamin F., 40 College of the City of New York, 25 College Entrance Examination Board, 163 Colorado, State of, 8, 54, 55, 60, 62, 67, 68, 7 1 - 7 7 , 82, 107, 1 1 4 , 116, 1 1 7 Colorado State Teachers' Association, 1 0 1 Colorado, University of, 47, 5 3 - 5 5 , 58-63, 68 Columbia University, 1 1 3 , 165, 2 1 5 , 233 Committee on College Entrance Requirements, 162 Committee of Fifteen, 158, 159 Committee of the Overseers, 2 2 1 , 222 Committee on School Inquiry, New York City, 175, 176, 187, 188, 189
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Committee of Ten, 138, 151, 159163, 206 "Concentration and Correlation," 156«. Coolidge, Calvin, 226 Cooper, Peter, 24 Cooper Union, 24 Courtis, Stuart Α., i8o Cummings, L. O., 144, 195 Davis, Calvin O., 179 Davis, William, 154 Davison, Archibald T., 195 Day, Ε. E., 220 Dearborn, W. F., 144, 219 DeGarmo, Charles, 157 Dennett, Isaac, 55, 56, 57, 70 Denver, Colorado, and schools of, 9-16, 43, 44, 47, 48, 53-55. 58, 59, 69. 77. 79. 81, 83-96, 98, 99, 101, 102, I l 6 Department Library, Harvard University, 148-150 Department of Superintendence, 158, 164, 165, 228 DeTarr, David, 36 Detroit, Michigan, 44 Dewey, John, 229 Discipline, school, 26—29, 93~95 Division of Education, Harvard University, 144 ff. Douglas, Governor, 167 Dutton, Samuel T., 158 Educational Review, 113, 129, 152 Electives, 162 Eliot, Charles W., 64, 101-104, 107-111, 115-117, 119, 120, 128, 136-139, 150, 160, 161, 206, 214-216, 222 Eliot, Samuel Α., ι ο ί Elliott, Edward C., 179 English literature. See Mills, Eva
Filene, Lincoln, 203, 219, 222 Flexner, Abraham, 194, 223, 224 Franklin, Fabian, 64 Freeman, Alice. See Palmer, Alice Freeman Gay, Edwin F., 220 Gaynor, Mayor, 182 General Education Board, 193, 194, 223 George, Robert, 5, 6, 8, 12, 23, 25, 33 Giffin, S. Α., 70 Goddard, Henry H., 179 Goodwin, Eliot, 188 Gove, Aaron, 47-50, 53, 79 Graduate School of Education, Harvard University, 214 ff. Grandgent, Charles H., 158 Greeley, Colorado. See State Normal School Greene, Jerome D., 222, 226 Gruver, H. S., 144 Guild, Governor, 168 Hall, Edwin H., 154 Hall, James, 62 Hampton Institute, Virginia, Survey of, 193—200, 222 Hanus, Charlotte Hoskins (Mrs. Paul H.), 52, 60, 102, 104, 194 Hanus, Gustav, 4, 5 Hart, A. B., 154 Harvard Crimson, 102 Harvard Educational Review, 136 Harvard Teachers Association, 134136, 228 Harvard Teachers Record, 136 . Harvard University, 63-65, 69, 101, 103, 104, 107 ff., 109, 110, 112, 114, 116, 117, 122, 124-125, 129, 138, 154, 194. 214 ff.; Corporation of, 107, 109, 112, n 6 , 214, 222, 223; Department
INDEX of Education, under Division of Philosophy, 107 ff.; Division of Education, 144 ff.; Faculty of Arts and Sciences, 103, 108, 1 1 8 , 1 1 9 , 122, 126, 2 1 4 ; Fund, 2 2 4 225; Graduate School of Education, 136, 144, 149, 150, 204, 2 1 4 fi., 230; library, 1 4 8 - 1 5 0 ; Schools Examination Board of, 1 3 6 - 1 3 8 ; Summer School, 1 3 1 132 Haynes, George E., 195 Hermsdorf, Prussia, 3, 4 High School Masters' Club of Massachusetts, 228 Hill, Frank Α., 158 Holmes, Henry W., 144, 2 1 8 , 2 2 1 , 224, 226 Hoskins, Charlotte. See Hanus, Charlotte Hoskins Huling, Ray Greene, 158 Illinois, University of, 233 Industrial education, and state commission on, 166 ff. Inglis, Alexander J., 144, 2 1 9 Inglis Lecture, 209 International College, Turkey, 1 3 3 Jacobs, Walter B., 229 James, William, 1 1 7 , 120, 122, 145 Johns Hopkins University, 63-64 Johnson, George E., 144, 195, 2 1 9 Judd, C. H., 232 Kelly, Augustus H., 158 Kerschensteiner, George, 166 Kretzschmar, P. H., and Company, 24-25 Leadville, Colorado, 78-80 Lee, Joseph, 148, 150, 2 1 8 , 222 Lewis, B. G., 183 Lowell, A. Lawrence, 224
219,
257
McCracken, T . C., 144 McMurry, Charles, 1 5 7 McMurry, Frank M., 157, 179 Martin, George H., 1 7 1 , 1 7 2 Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents, 228 Massachusetts Commission on Industrial Education, 133, 1 6 8 - 1 7 3 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 63» 65 Massachusetts Schoolmasters' Club, 228 Massachusetts State Board of Education, 1 3 3 , 1 7 1 - 1 7 4 Massachusetts Teachers Association, 138, 228 Massachusetts Teachers' Federation, 228 Maxwell, William H., 186 Merrill, Moses, 1 2 9 - 1 3 0 Michigan, University of, 30-44, 53, 60, 70, 1 1 2 , 1 1 5 , 229, 233 Middlebury College, 70 Miller, Cyrus C., 1 7 5 , 187 Mills, Eva, 23 Mineral Point, Wisconsin, 5, 6, 7, 1 2 , 1 3 , 17, 25, 26, 29, 3 1 , 79 Mitchel, John Purroy, 1 7 5 - 1 9 0 Moore, Ernest C., 144, 179 Münsterberg, Hugo, 1 4 5 - 1 4 7 National Education Association, 1 1 2 ; Committee on College Entrance Requirements, 1 6 2 ; Committee of Fifteen, 158, 159; Committee of Ten, 138, 1 5 1 , 159, 160, 1 6 1 , 162, 163, 206; Department of Superintendence, 158, 164, 165, 228 National Service Reform League, 188 National Society of College Teachers of Education, 228-229
258
INDEX
National Society for the Promotion of Industrial Education, 228 National Society for the Study of Education, 157, 163, 228 Negroes, education of, 1 9 3 - 2 0 1 New England Association of College Teachers of Education, 228 New England Association of School Superintendents, 228 New England Society of Colleges and Secondary Schools, 164 New York City, 23, 24, 26, 70, 1 1 3 , 201, 204, 232; school survey of, 134. 1 7 5 - 1 9 7 · 232. 240 New Zealand, 231 Normal schools. See State Normal School North Central Association, 164 Norton, A. O., 2 1 7 Occupations, 205 Olney, Edward, 40 Outlook., 215 Palmer, Alice Freeman (Mrs. George H.), 43 Palmer, George Herbert, 1 2 2 - 1 2 4 Parochial schools, 67 Parsons, Frank, 203, 204 Peirce, B. O., 64, 65 Pettee, George D., 208 Phi Delta Kappa, 228 Prendergast, William Α., 1 7 5 , 183, 187 Private vs. public schools, 65-67 Platteville, Wisconsin. See State Normal School Raddiffe College, 142 Research, need for, 240 Rico, Colorado, 76, 77 Rio Grande River, 7 1 , 72, 73, 75 Rocky Mountain Harvard Club, 1 0 1
Royce, Josiah, 108, 1 1 7 - 1 2 1 , 148 Runkle, John D., 65
135,
Salmon, Lucy M., 43 Schneider, Herman, 179 Scholtz, Edmund, 58, 59, 60 School surveys, 175-202, 240 Sewall, Joseph Α., 53, 59, 82 Shaler, Nathaniel, 1 3 1 , 1 3 4 - 1 3 5 Shaw, Mrs. Quincy Α., 203 Shepard, Mr., 97 Snedden, David, 176 Snyder, William H., 2 1 2 Stanford University, 233 Stanton, Timothy W., 62 State Normal School, Greeley, Colorado, 9 8 - 1 0 1 , 104 State Normal School, Platteville, Wisconsin, 1 3 , 1 7 , 18, 20-24, 98 Steinhauer and Walbrach, 1 1 - 1 2 , 1 3 Stimson, R. W., 195 Storrow, James J., 2 1 7 , 222 Story, W. E „ 64 Summer Courses, Harvard University, 1 3 1 , 1 3 2 Superintendents of schools in the '70s, 18 ff. Survey of Department of Economics, 220-221 Sylvester, J. J., 63 Taussig, F. W., 154 Teachers College, Columbia University, 1 1 3 Teachers' Institutes in Colorado, 62 Thomas, Charles Swain, 1 3 6 Thompson, Frank V., 179, 195 Truancy, 29 Tuskegee Institute, 193 Tyler, Moses Coit, 40 Unitarian Church, 69, 1 0 1
INDEX University of California. See California, University of University of Chicago. See Chicago, University of University of Colorado. See Colorado, University of University of Michigan. See Michigan, University of University of Wisconsin. See Wisconsin, University of University of Wyoming. See Wyoming, University of Vassar College, 43 Vocation Bureau of Boston, 228
259
Vocational education, 239 Vocational Guidance Association, 205 Vocational Guidance Magazine, 205 Warburg, Felix M., 222 Wegener, H . F., 83, 84 Wellesley College, 43, 133, 143 Wendell, Barrett, 135 Wisconsin, University of, 30, 102,
233 Woolman, Mary, 195 Wyoming, University of, 97 Yale University, 36