General Principles of Education

 

Some, like Jean Jacques Rousseau, thought Nature made formal education unnecessary. According to them the best education was to let Nature unfold, to permit the child to follow his own instincts and desires. Truth, on the other hand, is that Nature provides the basis for education, but not education itself. While the potential to acquire knowledge and virtue is naturally implanted within us, the actual knowledge and virtue are not so given. These must be acquired. Hence, all who are born to man's estate have need of systematic instruction if they are to fulfill their potential as men.

As the complexity of its components imply, Education can not be a matter of chance or haphazard procedure. It must proceed in accordance with some regular plan or order. There can be no organic growth without the control of principles determining and shaping the development. The plant grows in obedience to the laws of vegetable life; and the development of man, of his mind and of his body, which is the primary object of education, must be controlled by the laws of its own being.

A system of education must therefore be based upon certain broad and fundamental principles which express the laws of human life and development. These principles are not only the foundation upon which the system rests, but they give shape and character to the entire superstructure. The following principles embrace all the fundamental ideas of education from Aristotle to Locke, and are believed to be based on a correct assessment of human nature. The design is to enumerate only the general laws of education; the particular laws of culture and instruction will be presented in another place. These principles are presented in ten propositions, which may be called The Ten Commandments of Education.

1. The primary object of education is the perfection of the individual. The educator should understand the object for which he labors; for the object to a large extent determines the means and methods employed in the work. A correct end in view will lead to correct methods; a false object will vitiate both the means and the methods of using them. In education, especially, the end aimed at crowns the work with excellence.

The true object of education has not been generally understood by educators and parents. Parents usually send their children to school just to fit them for a business or a profession. Teachers often seem to think more about the amount of knowledge they are imparting to the child than of the training of its mind and the development of a virtuous character. All of these objects fall below the high ideal we should set before us, and degrade and injure the work of education.

Perfection is not a mythical attribute. Man is born with certain mental and bodily powers. Nature gives those powers to individuals in differing degrees. These powers are susceptible to development. Developing a certain power to the limits Nature has set for that individual is the perfection of that power. The developing of all essential powers of an individual to their limits is the perfection of that individual. While a man who was born with an IQ of 70 and who was educated to be a decent, self-supporting menial worker may be considered to have attained perfection, a man who was born with an IQ of 150 and was educated to be an engineer with no design of his own can be considered far from perfection.

It should always be remembered that the highest object of education is human perfection in his entire nature -physically, mentally, and morally.

2. The perfection of the individual is attained by a harmonious development of all his powers. Man possesses a multiplicity of capacities and powers, all of which contribute to his well‑being and his dignity. A perfectly developed manhood or womanhood implies the complete development of every capacity and gift. These powers are so related that they may be unfolded in nearly equal proportions; they may be blended coordinately in the final result. For the attainment of our ideal such a development is required. The educational work should reach every power, and aim at a full and harmonious development of them all.

This principle is limited by the existence of special talents and the demand for special duties. While a general scheme of education should seek to give culture to all the powers, we should not be neglectful of special and unusual gifts. Genius should be recognized, and our general system be so far modified as to give opportunity for its highest development and achievements.

3. These powers develop naturally in a certain order, which should be followed in education. Intellectual life begins in the senses; the child awakens into knowledge through sensation and perception. Then follows the action of the memory as a retaining and a recalling power, accompanied by imagination as the power of representation. After this come judgment and reasoning and the power of abstraction, generalization, and classification. Still later we become conscious of the intuitive ideas and truths, and learn to work them up into new truths by the power of deductive thought.

Finding in man such a relation of faculties and powers, we should learn the order of their development and follow that order in our work. We should first afford food for the growth of the mind through the senses. We should call the memory into activity, and afford means for the culture of the imagination. We should lead the mind gradually from things to thoughts and give activity to judgment and reasoning, and also to the powers of abstraction and generalization. Desires should be awakened and directed, the affections unfolded, and the will be subordinated to the values determined by the intellect.

Though these powers develop in a certain order, it is not to be thought that the activity of one waits upon the full development of another. To a certain extent they are all active at the same time; but they are active in different degrees. The order given represents the relative activity, and thus indicates the relative attention required to be given them in the work of education. Such a relation should be clearly understood by the educator, and should guide him in his work.

Trying to short-cut this order, and endeavoring to force all faculties to equal activity in a premature age would be a mistake injurious to the mind and subversive of the best results of culture. This is one of the common mistakes of over-zealous modern educators who, in immediate need of news of success, attempt to bypass the laws of Nature.

4. The basis of this development is the self‑activity of the child. Education is a spiritual growth, and not an accretion. It is a development from within, and not an aggregation from without. For this growth there must be forces working within the child. These forces are the self‑activity of the soul, going out towards an object as well as receiving impressions from it; gaining power in the effort, and working up into organic products the knowledge thus acquired.

The object of education is to stimulate and direct this natural activity. The teacher, therefore, should never do for the child what it can do for itself. It is the child's own activity that will give strength to its powers and increase the capacity of the mind. The teacher must avoid telling too much, or aiding the child too frequently. A mere hint or suggestive question to lead the mind in the proper direction is worth much more than direct assistance, for it not only gives activity and consequently mental development, but it cultivates the power of original investigation.

We should aim to cultivate a taste and desire for knowledge on the part of the child, so that this activity may be natural and healthful. To force the mind to the reception of knowledge is not education, it is cramming; and the object of education is not cram but culture. For the attainment of the high end of education, therefore, we must depend on the self-activity of the child; and it is the teacher's function to excite and direct this activity.

5. This self‑activity has two distinct phases; from without inward -receptive and acquisitive; and from within outward -productive and expressive. First, the mind is receptive of knowledge. Objects of the material world make their impressions upon the senses, and ideas and thoughts spring up in the mind. Knowledge thus comes into the mind from without through the senses. The contents of books also flow into the mind through written language, and are treasured in the memory. In all this the mind is receptive, the process is from without inward, and the result is acquisition, learning.

The mind is also active in creating as well as in receiving. It has the power to reproduce as well as to receive. In its self‑activity it can take the material thus acquired, and work it up into new products. It can also send it forth on the stream of clear and definite expression in audible or visible speech. It thus works from within outward, creating, and evolving what it creates.

The mind in its receptive phase is said to be intuitive; that is, the knowledge comes directly into the mind. The mind in the second phase is called elaborative, because it works up the material into new products. This distinction has also an educational significance.

6. These two phases, the receptive and productive, should go hand in hand in the work of education. This is evident from their natural correlation. The activity of the mind in receiving naturally creates the correlative activity of producing. The knowledge coming into the mind through the receptive capacity excites the mind to a productive activity. It acts like food in the stomach, which excites the powers of digestion and assimilation. Besides, the knowledge gained by the receptive powers becomes the material for the production of the creative powers. This material is operated upon and worked up into new products.

These two operations are not to be separated in education. Each gives life and vigor to the other. The receptive powers are stimulated by the activity of the productive powers, and the productive powers are set into immediate activity by the presence of receptive knowledge. They thus play into each other's hands, act as a mutual stimulus to each other, and should go hand in hand in the work of education.

7. There must be objective realities to supply the condition for the self‑activity of the mind. The mind cannot act upon itself alone; there must be food for the mental appetite. Since knowledge is the product of the mind operating upon external realities, there must be an external world of knowledge to meet the wants of the internal knowing subject.

Such an external world is to be presented by the educator. There is the objective world of Nature, like an embodiment of thought; and this thought, developed into sciences, meets the wants of the active spirit. There is also the great world of space and number, with its ideas and truths; and also the loftier abstractions of the True, the Beautiful, and the Good.

8. Education is not inventive; it only assists in developing existing possibilities into realities. The mind possesses innate powers. These may be awakened into a natural activity. The design of education is to aid nature in unfolding the powers she has given. No new basic power can be created by education; the object is to arouse those which exist to a healthful activity, and to guide them in their unfolding. In other words, the object of education is to aid nature in unfolding the possibilities of the child into the highest possible realities.

9. Education should be modified by the different tastes and talents of the pupil. All minds possess the same general capacities or powers. These powers are, however, possessed in different degrees. An unusual gift of any one or more powers constitutes genius. Tastes or dispositions for particular branches of science or art also differ.

Such differences should not be overlooked in a scheme of education. While all should receive a course of general culture, opportunity should be given for the development of special tastes and gifts. It is these which enrich science and art, and add to the sum of human knowledge; and the progress of science and art demands that genius shall have the most abundant opportunities for its fullest and highest development.

10. A scheme of education should aim to attain the triune results -development, learning, and efficiency. Development relates to the culture and growth of the powers of the child. This is the fundamental idea of education, and is of primary importance.

Education has reference also to the acquisition of knowledge. It aims to enrich the mind with the truths of science, to make a man learned, to produce scholars.

A third object is the acquisition of skill in the use of culture and knowledge. It is not enough that the mind has well‑developed powers and is richly furnished with knowledge. There should be efficiency, the power to make use of this culture and knowledge. The educated man should be able to do as well as to think and know.