literary efforts once more to his beloved Journal, and until his death a generation later it absorbed his entire attention. Value of Barnard's Educational Collections. Hence an experience of more than thirty years in the inspecThis was his tion and administration of schools in America and illu life work and marked him as the repre sentative of the literary side of the educational awakening. It is not a systematic account, but a great the saurus of material. minating visits to Europe proved only introductory and auxiliary to Barnard's real life work of collecting a great educational compendium. By temperament, native ability, and habit, he proved himself well fitted to be the leading representative of the much desiderated literary side of the awakening. Through his work American education was, in its period of greatest development, granted the opportunity of looking beyond the partial and local results of the first half century of national life. It was enabled to modify and adapt to its own uses the educational theories, practices, and organizations of the leading civilized peoples, and to bring together for a comparative view sections and states that were widely separated. Those who have criticized Barnard's American Journal of Education on the ground of its being confused, unskillful, and careless in its editorship, have failed to understand his true purpose. The editor did not intend to build a universal encyclopædia of education, but to do all "with special reference to the conditions and wants of our own country." To that end he often found it necessary to condense important works or to present highly scientific methods and profound philosophic systems in popular form. Nor was it possible to classify and work out a connected and complete historical account, when there were no reliable records or collections of materials in existence. It was necessary that some one should first gather the information from newspapers, pamphlets, memorials, monographs, and plans, and publish it as it was found. In this way he accomplished a more valuable work than if he had published a systematic history of education in the United States. The Journal was his crowning work and a means of international repute. The expositions of Vienna and Paris, as well as those in this country, decorated him with medals, and he was lauded by educators in every land. This great thesaurus of information and enlightenment, in connection with the virile efforts of Mann and other practical leaders in education throughout the country, has made the American educational awakening one of the most fruitful in history, and has enabled it to become both an inspiration and a guide in the remarkable development of the common schools and state educational systems that has since taken place. SUPPLEMENTARY READING I. SOURCES BARNARD, H. American Journal of Education. MANN, H. Annual Reports of the Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education (1838–1849), Common School Journal, and Lectures on Education. MANN, MARY. Lectures and Annual Reports on Education of Horace Mann (Vol. II of Atkinson's Life and Works of Horace Mann). SUPERINTENDENTS AND COMMISSIONERS OF EDUCATION. Annual Reports of schools in the various states of New England. II. AUTHORITIES BOWEN, F. Mr. Mann and the Teachers of the Boston Schools (North American Review, Vol. LX, pp. 224–246). BOONE, R. G. History of Education in the United States. Chaps. VII-VIII. BROWNING, O. Henry Barnard (Encyclopædia Britannica). COMBE, G. Education in America: State of Massachusetts (Edinburgh Review, Vol. LXXIII, pp. 486-502). DEXTER, E. G. History of Education in the United States. Chaps. VII-XIII. GRAVES, F. P. Great Educators of Three Centuries. Chap. XIII. HARRIS, W. T. Horace Mann (Educational Review, Vol. XII, pp. 105-119). HINSDALE, B. A. Horace Mann and the Common School Revival in the United States. MANN, MARY. Life of Horace Mann. MARTIN, G. H. Horace Mann and the Revival of Education in Massachusetts (Educational Review, Vol. V, pp. 434-450). MARTIN, G. H. The Evolution of the Massachusetts Public School System. Lects. IV-VI. MAYO, A. D. Horace Mann and Henry Barnard (Report of the United States Commissioner of Education, 1896-1897. Vol. I, Chaps. XV and XVI). MONROE, W. S. The Educational Labors of Henry Barnard. PARKER, F. W. Horace Mann (Educational Review, Vol. XII, pp. 65-74). WINSHIP, A. E. Horace Mann the Educator. CHAPTER VII DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN EDUCATIONAL PRACTICE Froebel and Herbart as Disciples of Pestalozzi.Before considering the educational development that took place later as a result of the awakening, it may now be well to take up some of the wider movements that have affected modern educational practice everywhere. In the discussion of naturalism, observation, and industrial training, we have noted great improvements taking place in educational practice and have witnessed the rise of the psychological tendency in education. The germs of this, as of other modern educational movements, were found in the suggestions of Rousseau, and were developed into more constructive and practical suggestions by the philanthropinists, Pestalozzi, and Fellenberg. The positions of Pestalozzi were somewhat vague and were based upon sympathetic insight rather than scientific principles, but, besides leaving a direct influence upon the teaching of certain subjects in the elementary curriculum, they became the basis of the elaborate systems of Herbart and Froebel. And the development Herbart and of educational practice introduced by these latter edu- be considered cators has most profoundly affected the content and contemporary method of the course in all stages of modern training. Pestalozzi. Herbart and Froebel may be regarded as contemporary disciples and interpreters of the Swiss reformer, who was born a generation before, but they continued his work Froebel may disciples of em Froebel phasized the aspect of education velopment from within and stressed as his activities; along rather different lines. Each went to visit Pestalozzi, and it would seem from their comments upon what they saw that each found in the master the main principle which appealed to him and which he afterward developed more or less consistently throughout his work. There were two very definite aspects to Pestalozzi's positions, which may at first seem opposed to each other, but are not necessarily contradictory. On the one hand, Pestalozzi seems to have held that education should be a natural development from within; on the other, that it must consist in the derivation of ideas from experience with the outside world. The former point of view would logically argue that every characteristic is innate and natural de implicit in the child at birth in the exact form to which it is afterward to be developed, and that the teacher can at best only assist the child's nature in the efforts for the child and its own unfolding.1 This attitude Pestalozzi apparently borrowed from the psychology implied in Rousseau's naturalism. The other conception of education as sense perception, which is evident in Pestalozzi's observational methods, depends upon the theory that immediate and direct impressions from the outside are the absolute basis of all knowledge, and holds that the contents of the mind must be entirely built up by the teacher. Some such naïve interpretation has been common since speculation began, especially among teachers, and had been formulated in Pestalozzi's day by Locke, Hume, and others. In the main, Froebel took the first of these Pestalozzian viewpoints and rarely admits the other, but 2 1 This view is especially revealed in the quotations concerning his educational aim, given in Chapter V, pp. 137f. 2 See pp. 139f. |