Contest between advo

and sciences.

modern culture and education. Many English and American writers began to maintain that an exclusive study of the classics did not provide a suitable preparacates of classics tion for life, and that the sciences should be included in the curriculum. This step was bitterly opposed by conservative institutions and educators. During a greater part of the century a contest was waged between the advocates of the classical monopoly and the progressives, who urged that the sciences should be introduced.

Preparation for complete

purpose of education.

A representative argument for sciences in the course of study is that made by Herbert Spencer (Fig. 52) in his essay on What Knowledge Is of Most Worth. He ventured to raise the whole question of the purpose of education. He held that "to prepare us for complete living as the living is the function which education has to discharge; and the only rational mode of judging of any educational course is, to judge in what degree it discharges such function. Our first step must obviously be to classify, in the order of their importance, the leading kinds of activity which constitute human life. They may be arranged into: 1. Those activities which directly minister to self-preservation; 2. Those activities which, by securing the necessaries of life, indirectly minister to selfpreservation; 3. Those activities which have for their end the rearing and discipline of offspring; 4. Those activities which are involved in the maintenance of proper social and political relations; 5. Those miscellaneous activities which make up the leisure part of life, devoted to the gratification of the tastes and feelings. The ideal of education is complete preparation in all these divisions. But failing this ideal, the aim should be to maintain a due proportion between the degrees

Leading kinds of activity;

of preparation in each, greatest where the value is greatest, less where the value is less, least where the value is least."

these, sciences

useful;

Applying this test, Spencer finds that a knowledge of for all of the sciences is always most useful in life, and therefore are most of most worth. He considers each one of the five groups of activities and demonstrates the need of the knowledge of some science or sciences to guide it rightly. An acquaintance with physiology is necessary to the maintenance of health, and so for self-preservation. Any form of industry or other means of indirect self-preservation will require some understanding of mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, and sociology. To care for the physical, intellectual, and moral training of their children, parents should know the general principles of physiology, psychology, and ethics. A man is best fitted for citizenship through a knowledge of the science of history in its political, economic, and social aspects. And even the æsthetic or leisure side of life depends upon physiology, mechanics, and psychology as a basis for art, music, and poetry. Hence Spencer advocates a complete change from the type of training that had dominated education since the Renaissance and calls for a release from the traditional bondage to the classics. Instead of Greek and Latin for 'culture' and 'discipline,' and an order of society where the few are educated for a life of elegant leisure, he recommends the sciences and a new scheme of life where every one shall enjoy all advantages in the order of their relative value. But Spencer uses the term 'science' rather loosely, and seeks to denote the social, political, and moral sciences, as well as the physical and biological, as being 'of most worth.' Hence

and a change

of educational

content is

advocated.

cule of the education in vogue.

he does not deserve to be severely arraigned for his 'utilitarianism,' as he has been so frequently. His 'preparation for complete living' includes more than 'how to live in the material sense only,' and with him education should contain such material as will elevate conduct and make life pleasanter, nobler, and more effective.

Advocacy of the Sciences by Huxley and Others.Another great popularizer of the scientific elements in Huxley's ridi- education, who also stressed the value of the sciences for 'complete living' and social progress, was Thomas H. Huxley (Fig. 53). His use of English was vigorous and epigrammatic, and he showed great skill in bringing his conclusions into such simple language that the most unscientific persons could understand them. Especially in an address on A Liberal Education before a 'workingmen's college,' he has most forcefully depicted the value of the sciences and other modern subjects in training for concrete living, and ridiculed the ineffectiveness of the current classical education. He maintains that "the life, the fortune, and the happiness of every one of us depend upon our knowing something of the phenomena of the universe and the laws of Nature. And yet this is what people tell to their sons: 'At the cost of from one to two thousand pounds of our hard-earned money, we devote twelve of the most precious years of your life to school. There you shall not learn one single thing of all those you will most want to know directly you leave school and enter upon the practical business of life."" Instead of this, "the middle class school substitutes what is usually comprised under the compendious title of the 'classics'-that is to say, the languages, the literature, and the history of the ancient Greeks and Romans, and

the geography of so much of the world as was known to these two great nations of antiquity." Thus "the British father denies his children all the knowledge they might turn to account in life, not merely for the achievement of vulgar success, but for guidance in the great crises of human existence."

Many other vigorous lecturers and writers entered into this reform of the curriculum. Opposition to the over-emphasis of languages, especially the classics, in the content of education was undertaken even earlier in the century by the distinguished phrenologist, George Combe. Combe. In his 'secular' schools and in his work on Education, he emphasized instruction in the sciences relating to moral, religious, social, and political life, as well as those bearing upon man's physical and mental constitution. After the middle of the century a number of men undertook to popularize the sciences in America by tongue and pen. One of the most effective of these was Edward L. Youmans, who collected and Youmans. edited a set of lectures urging the claims of the various sciences under the title of Culture Demanded by Modern Life (1867). He also founded the International Science Series (1871) and the Popular Science Monthly (1872). A service for the sciences, bearing more directly upon the educational world, was that performed by Charles W. Eliot (Fig. 54), President of Harvard. Eliot. This he accomplished largely by an extension of the elective system and an emphasis upon science in the curriculum of school and college. In his description of ‘a liberal education,' he argues that "the arts built upon chemistry, physics, botany, zoölogy, and geology are chief factors in the civilization of our time, and are

growing in material and moral influence at a marvelous rate. They are not simply mechanical or material forces; they are also moral forces of great intensity."

The Disciplinary Argument for the Sciences. Thus, in general, the writers and lecturers interested in the scientific movement held that a knowledge of nature was indispensable for human welfare and that the content of studies rather than the method was of importance in education. Many of them also expressed their dissent from the disciplinary conception of education urged by the classicists. Huxley, for example, parodies the usual Huxley paro linguistic drill by stating: "I could get up an osteological ment of formal primer so arid, so pedantic in its terminology, so altogether distasteful to the youthful mind, as to beat the recent famous production of the head-master out of the field in all these excellences. Next, I could exercise my boys upon easy fossils, and bring out all their powers of memory and all their ingenuity in the application of my osteogrammatical rules to the interpretation, or construing, of those fragments."

dies the argu

discipline.

Yet the tradition of 'formal discipline' and the belief in faculties or general powers of the mind that might be trained by certain favored studies and afterward applied in any direction (see pp. 182f.) were too firmly rooted to be entirely upset. Even the greatest of the scientists seem to have been influenced by this notion and to have attempted occasionally a defense of their subjects on the basis of superiority in this direction. After Spencer has made his effective argument for the sciences on the borrow the dis- ground that their 'content' is so much more valuable ciplinary argu- for the activities of life, he shifts his whole point of view,

But Spencer

and others

ment of the classicists.

and attempts to anticipate the classicists by occupying