52 THE CLASS STRUGGLE THE CLASS STRUGGLE 53 manac.
rather less valuable than the weather forecasts of a Hicks AlNevertheless it may be worth while to consider briefly the general tendencies indicated by such outlines of the experiment as are available.
The formal announcement issued to the public on January 20 makes mention of two pamphlets. Ex President Eliot Changes Needed in American Secondary Education and Dr. Abraham Flexner A Modern School, Moreover all of the definite suggestions contained in the announcement indicate that the sponsors for the project based their action on the principles outlined in these two works. It is to their pages, then, that one goes for hints as to the temper, the point of view, the educational theories of men who will control the destinies of the Lincoln School.
Both documents are frankly and refreshingly iconoclastic.
Their bias is, firstly, scientific, and, secondly, American To one who has labored through volumes of philosophically European pedagogy their unconventional method of attack brings something of shock but more of relief. They say, quite simply, science is the great thing in the modern world, so our young people must be trained to observe and to think. Or, they argue, here we are, a great nation with certain social problems born of our new time; therefore let us teach what our young people need to know in order that the nation may grow and justify itself. For a good part of the time Dr. Flexner close on the track of Pestalozzi, but never once does he name that revered saint. He puts the matter on a recognized, common sense American basis; why all this fuss about words? It is knowledge of things and ability to think that count. Hitherto America has bowed so humbly before Europe in matters of educational theory that this freshness of attack contains a promise of change if not of improvement.
The purpose of the modern school is to train the young person to know, to care about, and to understand the world he lives in, both physical and the social world. The object in view, we are told in another sentence, is to give children the knowledge they need, and to give them the power to handle themselves in our own world. No subject matter or activity is to be accepted on the strength of its traditional claim. positive case must be made out for each item in the program. The pupil may be forced to learn some things that run counter to the grain of his liking. But the teacher must be quite certain that knowledge of them will serve directly some useful purpose. Nothing is to be taught for the sake of discipline. The learners will get their discipline just as we all get our real discipline; that is, by doing real things, solving real problems. It is indeed absurd to invent formal difficulties for the professed purpose of discipline, when, within the limits of science, industry, literature, and politics real problems abount. So says Dr. Flexner.
Coming more definitely to the charaoter of the curriculum.
Dr. Flexner divides the field of activities into four parts: science, industry, esthetics, and civics. more formal person would have talked of mind and soul on the one hand and of industry and politics on the other. The most significant sentence in his whole discussion is this: The work in science would be the central and dominating feature of the school. There we have it. This school is to be characterized by the domination of the men of science. Dr. Flexner is perfectly correct in saying that even in our most advanced schools the nature study work in the grades has been too incidental. And there is much truth in his remark that the physics and chemistry taught in our high schools is too abstract. The science teaching, in short, has not been organic; it has not grown with the child, has not been a part of his life. In the new modern school the child whole development is to be based on observation and the consequent natural development of reason. One feels in reading the paragraphs devoted to science that the author speaks with enthusiasm and authority. It is here that he is delivering his real message.
The treatment of industry is far less satisfactory. In this field Dr. Flexner sees little beyond the possibilities of educational experience. Dr. Eliot discussion of the subject is fuller and more sympathetic. He dwells on the educative value of industry as carried on in the old fashioned home and in the guilds of former centuries, and then goes on to discuss the part that formal education must play in the industry of our time.