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gradually opened the road to the ever increasing expenditures and taxation that had to come before satisfactory schools could be established. Moreover, the Lancasterian schools were not only economical, but most effective, when the educational conditions of the times are taken into consideration. Even in the cities, the oneroom and one-teacher school was the prevailing type, and grading was practically unknown. The whole organization and administration were shiftless and uneconomical, and a great improvement was brought organization about by the carefully planned and detailed methods of and methods. Lancaster. The schools were made over through his definite mechanics of instruction, centralized management, well-trained teachers, improved apparatus, discipline, hygiene, and other features.

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But while the monitorial methods met a great educational emergency in the United States, they were clearly mechanical, inelastic, and without psychological foundation. Naturally their sway could not last long, and as when educaenlarged material resources enabled the people to make tional sentigreater appropriations for education, the obvious de- proved. fects of the monitorial system became more fully appreciated and brought about its abandonment. Before the middle of the century its work in America was ended, and it gave way to the more psychological conceptions of Pestalozzi and to those afterward formulated by Froebel and Herbart.

The Infant Schools' in France.-Another form of philanthropic education that came to be very influential during the nineteenth century and has eventually been merged in several national systems is that of the so-called 'infant schools.' The first recorded instance of these

Oberlin;

development in Paris;

institutions occurred late in the eighteenth century through the attempt of a young Lutheran pastor named Beginning with Oberlin to give an informal training to the small children in all the villages of his rural charge in northeastern France. This type of training was copied in Paris as early as 1801, but did not amount to much until its revival through the influence of a similar development in England a quarter of a century later. It then rapidly expanded, and in 1833 was adopted as part of the French tional system. national system of education. In 1847 a normal school was founded to prepare directresses and inspectors for these institutions, and in 1881 they became known as 'maternal schools,' and the present type of curriculum was adopted. Besides reading and writing, these schools have always included informal exercises in the mother tongue, drawing, knowledge of common things, the elements of geography and natural history, manual and physical exercises, and singing.

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Lanark;

The Infant Schools' in England. Quite independently, though over a generation later than Oberlin, Owen at New Robert Owen opened his 'infant school' in 1816 at New Lanark, Scotland. He was a philanthropic cottonspinner, and wished to give the young children of his operatives a careful moral, physical, and intellectual training. From the age of three they were taught in this school for two or three years whatever was useful and within their understanding, and this instruction was combined with much singing, dancing, amusement, and out-of-door exercise. They were not "annoyed with books," but were taught about nature and common objects through maps, models, paintings, and familiar conversation, and their "curiosity was excited so as to

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ask questions concerning them." To afford this informal training, Owen secured a poor simple-hearted weaver, named James Buchanan, who at first could scarcely read, write, or spell," but who, by following the instructions of Owen literally, made a great success of the system. But when Buchanan, with the consent of Buchanan's Owen, had been transferred to London, to start a sim- London, ilar school for a group of peers and other distinguished philanthropists, his lack of intelligence reduced the training to a mere mechanical imitation of the procedure he had learned at New Lanark. Unfortunately, this London school became the model for Samuel Wilderspin, who was destined to become the leading exponent of infant schools. The schools of Wilderspin, while retaining some of the principles and devices of Owen, for Wilderwere much more formal and mechanical. He thought and metoo highly of 'books, lessons, and apparatus,' and confounded instruction with education. He overloaded ' the child with verbal information, depending upon the memory rather than the understanding. Before the child was six, it was expected that he had been taught reading, the fundamental operations in arithmetic, the tables of money, weights, and measures, a knowledge of the qualities of common objects, the habits of different animals, the elements of astronomy, botany, and zoölogy, and the chief facts of the New Testament. Even the games were stereotyped, and the religious teaching most formal.

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Wilderspin's first school was opened at Spitalfields, Spread of
London, and soon attracted a horde of visitors. He schools;
then began lecturing upon the subject throughout the
United Kingdom, often demonstrating his methods with

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Home and
Colonial
Society;

classes of children he had taken along, and organized Infant School infant schools everywhere. In 1824 an 'Infant School Society' was founded and through it several hundred schools were established. A dozen years later an organization for training infant school teachers, known as "The Home and Colonial School Society,' was founded at London by Reverend Charles Mayo, D. D., and others. This society undertook to graft Pestalozzianism upon the infant school stock. While the combination resulted in some improvement of the infant schools, and real object teaching and sense training were more emphasized than they had been, the spirit of Pestalozzi was largely lost, and there was too much imitation of the formal instruction of older children, and there was an evident attempt to cultivate infant prodigies. Through these agencies infant schools spread rapidly in Great Britain, and were adopted as a regular part of the Part of public public system, when it was established in 1870 (p. 388). And four years later a marked advance was made through merging in them some of the methods and games of the kindergarten.

system.

'Infant Schools' in the United States.-Schools open to all younger children also sprang up in the United States during the first quarter of the nineteenth century. For many years they were nowhere regarded as an essential part of the public school system, and were managed separately, but about the middle of the century they were generally united. In 1818 Boston made its Boston 'pri-, first appropriation for "primary schools, to provide instruction for children between four and seven years of age." These schools were divided into four grades, beginning with the study of the alphabet and closing

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with reading in the New Testament. Besides reading, writing, and spelling, sewing and knitting were taught the girls. A formal course and the monitorial method were employed until about 1840, when the primary schools became largely inoculated with the informal procedure of Pestalozzi. The primary schools were for a long time under a separate committee, but in 1854 the management was fused in a general city board.

New York started an 'Infant School Society' in 1827. This organization opened two 'infant schools' for poor children between three and six years of age. One of 'Primary departments' in these schools was located in the basement of a Pres- New York. byterian Church and the other in that of a monitorial institution belonging to the Public School Society (see p. 261). The Pestalozzian methods used in these infant schools greatly commended themselves, and in 1830 the Public School Society added them as 'primary departments' in all their buildings, but under separate management. A committee was appointed in 1832 to examine the Society's schools and suggest improvements. Upon the recommendation of two of this committee, who had inspected education in Boston, primary schools were established in rented rooms in sufficient numbers to be within easy reach for the young children. The subject-matter and methods were likewise made less formal.

In 1827 three 'infant schools' were also founded in Philadelphia and other centers of Pennsylvania through Infant schools' in Philadelphia Roberts Vaux. By 1830 the number of infant schools in the state had risen to ten, with two to three thousand pupils. As the numbers would indicate, the schools were largely organized upon the Lancasterian plan.

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