Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/culturedisciplinOOyocurich CULTURE, DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY BY A. DUNCAN YOCUM, Ph.D. Professor of Pedagogy, University of Pennsylvania ^ PHILADELPHFA: CHRISTOPHER SOWER COMPANY 1913 Copyright, 191 3, by Christopher Sower Company CONTENTS PAGE Foreword vii CHAPTER I The Present Status of Culture Discipline and Direct Prepa- , RATION FOR LiFE II I. Conditions Resulting in Reaction Toward Academic Specialization, ii. — 2. The Lessening Confidence in Formal Discipline, 17.— 3- The Increasing Demand for Direct Preparation for Life, 19.— 4. Increased Willingness for Readjustment, 20. — 5. Readjustment Must Be Determined by Scientific Research, 23. — 6. Direct Preparation for Life More Certain Than General Discipline, 24. — 7. Either Academic or Vocational Specialization May Be Hostile to Culture and Democracy, 25. — 8. The Mutual Interdependence of Direct Preparation for Life and General Discipline, 29. CHAPTER II An Analysis of "Formal Discipline" into Essential Phases OF Formal Self-activity — Including General Discipline 30 ^ I. The Aim of Education Useful Self -activity, 30. — 2. Educational or Formal Phases of Self-activity Distinguished from Its Psychological Forms, 33. — 3. The Five Educational or Formal Phases of Self-activity, 33. — 4. Dis- tinction between Direct and Indirect Furtherance of the Educational Aim, 35- — 5- Cumulative Impression, 36. — 6. Initial Remembrance, 40. — 7. Vary- ing Apperception, 47. — 8. Specific Discipline, 57. — 9. General Discipline, 76. /^ CHAPTER III A Discussion of the Conditions Favorable to General Dis- cipline 79 I. Extent of General Discipline Dependent Upon Occurrence of the General Stimulus, 79. — 2. Necessity for Determining the Extent to Which it is Useful, 82. — 3. Continuity Its First Condition, 83. — 4. As General a Stimulus as^is Useful, the Second, 85. — 5. The Third, Permanent Association of the General Stimulus with Typical Applications, 90. — 6, The Fourth, the Habit of Seeking Unaccustomed Applications, 91. — 7. The Fifth, Emotionalizing of the General Stimulus, 93. — 8. The Sixth, Its Varying Apperception, 96. — 9. The 'Seventh, the Knowledge Necessary to Its Identification and Application, 98. — 10. The Eighth, the Habit of Analysis and Synthesis on the Recognition of Any Part of It, 101. 267341 IV CONTENTS CHAPTER IV PAGE The Comparative Uselessness of the Old "Disciplinary" or "Formal" Subjects to All Phases of Formal Self-activity Except Specific Discipline no I. The Usefulness of an Idea or Activity Dependent Upon the Relationships in Which It Is Recalled, no. — 2. Mode of Measuring Their Usefulness, in. — 3. The General Course of Study Must Emphasize Subjects Containing High Proportion of Directly Useful Material, 112. — 4. The Study of the Formal Subjects But Little Favorable to Phases of Formal Self-activity Other Than Specific Discipline, 113. — 5. The Limited Formal Self -activity Resulting From the Elementary Study of a Foreign Language, 114. — 6. The Limitations to the Formal Value of Mathematical Study, 116. — 7. Varying Apperception Fur- thered by the Presentation of the Most Many-sided and Recurring Relation- ships Wherever Found, 119, — 8. Material Organized for Direct Furtherance Most Useful to Varying Apperception, 120. — 9. Recapitulation of the Advan- tages of Direct Preparation Over the Formal Branches in the Furtherance of General Discipline, 120. — 10. General Conclusions Concerning the Course of Study, 122. — II. The Greater Part of Mathematics, Exclusive of Arithmetic, Must Be Eliminated from the Required General Course, 123. — 12. Foreign Languages Should Be Required Only of Those to Whose Specialization They are Essential, 126. — 13. The Place of the Natural Sciences in the General Course, 130. — 14. Increased Representation of Subjects Rich in Humanistic Content, 132. — 15. The Use of Selected Portions of Academic Branches No Menace to Discipline, 132. — 16. The Partial Subject Matter Selected Can Usually Be Organized Academically, as Well as for Direct Preparation, 134. CHAPTER V The Interdependence of Culture and Direct Preparation FOR Life 136 1. Culture Itself a Partial Phase of Direct Preparation for Life, 137. — 2. The Essential Factors in Culture, 137. — 3. Selection and Specialization Necessary in Culture Itself, 138. — 4. Specialization in Culture Must Be Preceded by a Culture Common to All Educated Individuals, 140. — 5. Culture Must Further Other Phases of the Educational Aim, 140. — 6. A General Culture Related to Vocation Should Parallel All Vocational Specialization, and Direct Prepara- tion, All Specialization in Culture, 143. — 7. Undemocratic to Develop Artistic Expression at the Expense of Aesthetic Appreciation, 144- — 8. The Rapid Multiplication of Means for Developing a Common Aesthetic Appreciation, 147. — 9. Instruction in Aesthetics Should Be Distinct from Other Phases of Instruction Which Interfere with It, 152. — 10. Both DirectJPreparation and General Discipline Must Include a Part of the Content Most Useful for Cul- ture, 156. — II. Culture Not Only Included in Direct Preparation, but Depend- ent Upon It, 158. — 12. The Study of Greek and Latin Belongs to Specializa- tion, 160.— 13. The Test of Relative Worth Determines the Cultural Material Which Should Be Required of All, 162. — 14. No Ground Remains for Exclud- ing From Higher Education the Students Who Fail in the Old Formal Subjects, 163. CONTENTS V CHAPTER VI PAGE Uniformity for Various Localities in the General Course OF Study Limited to the Essential Relationships Which Must Be Certainly Memorized 165 I. The Fundamental Nature of the Distinction Between Essential and Optional Relationships, 165. — 2. An Exact Determination of Relative Worth Unnecessary, 166. — 3. Courses of Study, While Uniform in Their Essential Relationships, are Identical in the Relative Usefulness of Their Optional Relationships Rather Than in the Optional Relationships Themselves, 167. — 4. The Certain Memorizing of Essential Relationships a Necessary Condition to the Mastery of Optional Material, 169. — 5. Ignorance of Essential Rela- tionships Too Severe a Penalty for Carelessness or Incompetence, 171. — 6. For the Sake of Both Individual and State Essential Knowledge Must Be Compelled in School, 171. — 7. Specialization Varying With Individuals Should Parallel Direct Preparation in General and Be Paralleled by It, 172. CHAPTER VII The Inadequacy of Tests for the Mere Elimination of Harmful, Specialized, or Impracticable Material from THE Course of Study 179 I. Dr. McMurry's Test for Elimination Suggestive Rather than Determin- ing, 179. — 2. A More Adequate Test for Total Rejection or Exclusion of Par- ticular Relationships, 181. — 3. Necessity for the Further Exclusion of Material Hostile to the Educational Aim, i8i.— 4. Necessity for the Further Exclusion and Continual Rejection of All That is Not Useful to the Majority of Individuals Who Are Not Specialists, 183.— 5. All Material Must Be Rejected Which is Being Effectively Taught Outside the School, or Which Cannot Be Effectively Taught in the School, 187. CHAPTER VIII Application of the Test of Relative Worth from the Stand- point OF All Formal Self-activity Which is Indirectly Useful 191 I. Application of the Test to Relationships Intended to Further Cumulative Impression, igi. — 2. Relative Worth from the Standpoint of Mere Remem- brance, 195. — 3. Genetic Conditions Determining Only for Optional Material, 198. — 4. Words the Most Useful Material from the Standpoint of Mere Re- membrance, 200. — 5. Application of the Test for Selection to Varying Apper- ception, 213. — 6. Application of the Test for Relative Value to General Disci- pline, 225. VI CONTENTS CHAPTER IX PAGE Application of the Test of Relative Worth to Specific Discipline, with the Consequent Determination of a Cumulative and Dominating System, Both Directly and Indirectly Useful 237 I. Specific Discipline as Essential to Formal Self -activity as to Direct Preparation and Specialization, 237. — 2. Application of the Test to Direct Preparation for the Various Phases of the Educational Aim, 239. — 3. Deter- mination of the Relative Worth of Specific Relationships Results in Specific System, 245. — 4. Application of the Test to Academic Organization, 260. — 5. The Reorganization of the Course of Study Into a Dynamic System of Essen- tially Useful Relationships, 267. — 6, Application of the Test to Specialization, 271. — 7. Specialization in Portions of Mathematics a Necessary Preparation for Many Vocations, 274. — 8. Specialization in Some Modern Language Broadens Apperception ,Is Helpful to the Majority of Vocations, and Desirable from the Standpoint of Avocation, 276. — 9. Even Specialization in Avocation Determined by the Test of Relative Worth, 278. — 10. Only the Test for Rela- tive Worth Can Determine the Relative Part to Be Played by General Educa- tion and Specialization, 280. CHAPTER X The Continuity Necessary to a Cumulative and Dominating System to Be Ensured Primarily Through Direct Prep- aration AND, Secondarily, Through Specialization 282 I. From the Standpoint of Continuity Habit Must Be Considered in at Least Four Degrees of Complexity, 282. — 2. The Impracticability of Vocational Specialization as a Means to Continuity, 285. — 3. More Likelihood of Con- tinuity Through Academic Specialization Strengthened by Varying Voca- tional Motive, 286. — 4. Continuity Practicable and at the Same Time Most Use- ful Only Through the Progressive and Cumulative Organization of the Material Most Directly Useful to All, 289. — 5. Early Opportunity for Specialization Should Re- enforce the Continuity Based on Direct Preparation for Life in General, 290. — 6. The Specific Discipline Involved in Direct Preparation for Life Necessary to Increase the Probability of Usefulness of Every Form of Indirect Instruction, 292. — 7. The "Old" Education and the "New" Com- plementary, 294. — 8. Continuity and Concentration Through Specialization Must Supplement Direct Preparation for Life in General and Be Related to It, 296. — 9. The Development of Education as a Science Necessary Both to Democracy and Christian Civilization, 298. FOREWORD If I had been writing wholly from the standpoint of edu- cational tradition, the title of this book would have been Democracy through Culture and Discipline. For the first step taken toward democratic education was to ensure in- telligent citizenship by making the culture and discipline, which in the past had been reserved for privileged social classes, accessible to the whole people through a system of free schools. Writing as I have done, wholly as an investi- gator who records in as logical order as he can the results of his inquiry, a truer title for my work as it reaches its comple- tion would be Culture and Discipline through Direct Prep- aration for Democracy. For from the standpoint of cul- ture and discipHne as distinct from democracy, I have been forced to see that for the majority of individuals who do not continue to lead the life of academic specialists, no discipline can be lasting or culture continuing which is not closely related to every-day life. And to an education which is democratic only in its opportunity, I have gradually come to add education which is democratic, on the one hand, in its ideals, its subject matter, its organization and its method, and on the other, in compulsion which demands not only that each individual shall have through compulsory school at- tendance the rudiments of academic knowledge, but, through the compulsion of repetition, every detail of culture and dis- cipline essential to usefulness to the community and the state. That is, purely academic training, with its general informa- tion, general culture, and general discipline, has proved itself viii FOREWORD to be not only an uncertain preparation for citizenship, de- pendent for its own usefulness upon more direct preparation for life, but to depend even for its continuity as habit and system upon its relationship to the every-day experience of ordinary people. It is, after all, the fundamental changes which the last hundred years have made in the every-day experience of the masses that are responsible for the educational readjustment of which we are just becoming fully conscious. Not only democracy, but the transformation of industrial Hfe, increas- ing leisure, a higher standard of living, the broadening of social service, and the almost inconceivable extension of the domain of human knowledge are compelling a different kind of education. More than this, as slowly but surely the com- pulsion of scientific determination is added to that of social readjustment, individual opinion in educational practice must yield to the truth laid bare by analysis, research, and experimentation, as tradition is yielding to changing life and civilization. Meanwhile, our national educational policy is being widely influenced by two classes of extremists — traditionalists, to whom a liberal education means a discipline and culture re- mote from life; and iconoclasts, to whom preparation for life is limited to a vocational training which has no time for gen- eral discipline or culture. Not only is an open mind one of the highest products of civilization and education, but there is probably no field of investigation, and especially of read- justment, in which it is more difficult to maintain it than in that of education itself. Not merely what is taught, but the method by which it is imparted, becomes a part of one's personality and tends to dominate it, if not through an ade- quate discipline, at least in point of view. As the life of a particular individual is crowned with success, the vocational training or the general education which prepared for it appears to him to be justified by the logic of experience itself, while the particular form of culture which he possesses, as it raises him above routine, becomes a part of his faith and his FOREWORD IX idealism. Indeed, a strong mind cannot be an open one if it is not also analytic. The traditionalist cannot be justly called upon to surrender old beliefs as wholes which are, after all, partial truths, or to accept new ones as wholes which too often represent hasty generalizations as well as scientifically determined facts. Nor can the iconoclast see the partial truths in an old belief when he fails to see it in its parts, or tolerate criticisms of the new when he cannot discriminate between its generalizations and its facts. This is why, in a period of transition from a variety of deductive educational systems to education as an inductive science, it is so difficult for us to follow *^the argument whither- soever it may lead." Fortunate it is for human progress that as educational science is beginning to analyze and ex- periment, philosophy is becoming pragmatic, culture more truly liberal, and experience expectant and receptive through the continual contributions of discovery and invention to the every-day life of the people. Whether or not each individual is able to meet readjustment with an open mind, the ulti- mate triumph of analysis, experimentation, and research is sure. The discussion which is to follow is not so much an at- tempted solution of the educational problem, as an effort to formulate it. It seeks to analyze the vague presuppositions and generalizations of current debate, and to apply to exist- ing theory and practice the definite facts and propositions upon which a multitude of partial or uncertain truths are collectively based. The result is not an assemblage of de- ductive conclusions, but a thousand and one specific problems which only experimentation and research can solve. Obvi- ously, if at each stage of the argument the reader is unable to follow the analysis, if he substitutes his accustomed ideas for tentative though cumulative conclusions on which further discussion is based, he will utterly fail to take the successive steps necessary to an intelligent comprehension of the prob- lem as a whole. At best, with an open mind, he can share the writer's hope that both tentative conclusions and the X FOREWORD highly organized system of direct preparation which they appear to justify may soon be put to scientifically valid test. In the educational field, as elsewhere, the compulsion of science must be substituted for that of tradition and displace the individualism which, like that of Protagoras, still makes individual man the measure of all things. CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY CHAPTER I THE PRESENT STATUS OF CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DIRECT PREPARATION FOR LIFE I. Conditions Which Have Resulted in a Reaction Toward Academic Specialization If not quite unknown to the mass of thinkers, at least in utter absence of that general interest which a realization of their consequences would call forth, two revolutionary tend- encies are becoming dominant in educational practice — a continually increasing demand for direct and specific train- ing for definite activities of life and a lessening confidence in the certainty and efficiency of formal discipline. This lack of popular interest is more remarkable from the fact that the present educational crisis is a direct and gradual develop- ment of the educational movement of the nineteenth century. The beginning of the century was marked by a many-sided- ness of achievement which widely extended the domain of human knowledge and broadened the range of human inter- ests. It was a period of successful exploration, discovery, and invention, of political revolution, and moral, religious, and social reform. As the revival of ancient learning stimu- lated sixteenth century scholars to the activities which con- stitute the Renaissance, so Australasia and the South Sea Islands, Harvey's circulation of the blood and Priestley's discovery of oxygen, the invention Jj^^asrin of the spinning jenny, the steam engine and the knowledge locomotive, the rise of manufactures, the French at beginning Revolution and electoral reform, Wesleyanism, centoy. temperance societies, homes for the deaf and dumb, abolition, phrenology — these, and many equally 11 IP. CULTURE DI^aaiNE AND DEMOCRACY potent factors in a changing civilization, united to compel a truer and fuller educational readjustment as yet in its beginning, in whose completion the Renaissance itself will become complete. In America the public school system was created. In England, after the failure of Lord Brougham's Commission to establish a national school system, the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge was formed, and, through Penny Encyclopedia and Penny Magazine, began its systematic and determined effort to give the new knowledge to the masses. Equally enthusiastic and persistent attempts were naturally made to introduce it into the school curriculum. The elaborate course proposed in all seriousness by Jeremy Bentham, in which this enthusiasm had its culmination, must be presented in its entirety in order to show the quanti- tative extreme which was reached:^ Elementary Arts. — Reading, waiting, arithmetic. First Stage (Age Seven). — Mineralogy, botany, zoology, geography, geometry (definitions only), history, chronol- Its press- ogy, drawing. ure upon Second Stage (Age Eight). — Same subjects, the school. ^^j|^ mechanics, hydrostatics, hydraulics, pneu- matics, acoustics, optics. Chemistry: mineral, vegetable, animal. Meteorology, magnetism, electricity, galvanism, balistics. Archaeology, statistics. English, Latin, Greek, French, and German grammars. Third Stage (Age Nine). — Subjects of previous stages and mining, geology, land-surveying, architecture, husbandry, including the theory of vegetation and gardening. Physical economics — i, e., the application of mechanics and chemistry to domestic management, involving "maximi- zation of bodily comfort in all its shapes, minimization of bodily discomfort in all its shapes," — biography. Fourth Stage (Age Ten).— Hygigstics (art of preserving and restoring health), comprising physiology, anatomy, pathology, nosology, dietetics, materia medica, prophy- lactics (art of warding off evils), surgery, therapeutics; zohygiastics (art of taking care of animals). CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 13 Phthisozoics (art of destroying noxious animals: vermin killing, rat catching, etc.). Fifth Stage (Age Eleven). — Geometry (with demonstra- tions), algebra, mathematical geography, astronomy. Tech- nology, or arts and manufactures in general. Bookkeeping, or the art of registration or recordation. Commercial book- keeping. Note-taking. To all this a certain Mr. Simpson adds: Sixth Stage (Age Twelve). — ^History, government, com- merce. Political economy. Philosophy of the human mind. It is this impossible scheme that is used by Joseph Payne to illustrate the fallacy that, because there is so much to be learned in the world, children must learn it all in school.^ It is absurd only when, in the light of the modern course of study, one thinks of the limitations and inefficiency of the early charity schools. When one turns to the course of study of the Winchesters and Etons for which it is intended, with the whole of boyhood and young manhood devoted to an equally quantitative study of Latin and of Greek, Jeremy Bentham's substitute does not appear quite so extraordinary. The actual defense of the traditional curriculum against the onslaught of the new knowledge was the inertia of school men trained through the old content, together with not a little of the religious prejudice which was so potent a factor in the defeat of Lord Brougham's reforms. It was not until the latter years of Mr. Spencer's life that the charge of irre- ligiousness, brought, for example, against Horace Mann and the Combes, was toned down to such an extent that he ex- pressed his surprise at its almost utter absence. The theoretical defense against a many-sided curriculum in the beginning and, as conservatism began to yield and religious prejudice softened, the only defense was its check the theory of formal discipline. It, too, reached by formal an extreme which perhaps contrasts itself most ^"^ ^^®* sharply with Jeremy Bentham's in Joseph Payne's insistence that "in order to train the mind usefully, concentration and not accumulation must be our guiding principle — in other 14 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY words, we must direct the most strenuous efforts of our pupils to the complete and full comprehension of some one subject as an instrument of intellectual discipline. ^^^ Since this one sub- ject must itself be many-sided in the activities which it calls forth, and must be closely connected with human interests and feelings, Mr. Payne concentrated upon Latin, as opposed to mathematics or natural science. That is, in common with Thomas Arnold^ and W. T. Harris,^ he gave Latin prominence, not, with modem Hellenists, on account of a liberal culture remote from life, but because of a humanism and universality which make possible the many-sided relation to modern life, without which the habits fixed with the aid of concentration cannot be generally applied. Champions of formal discipline are not yet urging many- sidedness as necessary to the general application of the habits which constitute specific discipline. On check to ^^^ contrary, they are beginning to perceive that discipline, in failing to insist upon an extreme concentration, decreasing logically inevitable if discipHne is to be given by tion. " branches of knowledge taken as wholes, they ignored one condition fundamental to the fixed habits without which formal discipline is impossible. Mr. Payne himself necessarily prepared the way for a diversity fatal to concentration through a single formal subject by admitting that other subjects than Latin have disciplinary value, and must be included in so far as they do not interfere with concentration upon the subject selected as the main instrument of discipline.^ A few years later Alexander Bain, with his keen power of analysis, pointed out in a general way the activities developed by each branch, and demonstrated once for all that Latin develops no activity which cannot be developed by some other subject of study.^ This left no effective defense against the individualism of genetic psy- chology which, re-enforcing that of Rousseau and later itself re-enforced by Herbartianism, appeared to give scientific sanction to the elective system. So to Latin and, in the secondary school at least, a critical study of English have CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOC: ut the ilJ^Sal been added not only the modern languages, but sciences and numerous other subjects, all justj^|i,^t least in part, on the plea of discipline, and all so ineff^^eiy taught, from the disciplinary point of view, as to result in gener^y admitted failure. Hence, Woodrow Wilson's reference to the social sideshows that interfere with the main performance,^ and President Lowell's reactionary modification of the elect- ive system at Harvard. The former's most characteristic stand is for concentration on academic work in general* through a lessening of distractions and a closer supfcvision of study; the latter's, for concentration through academic specialization. The recent recommendations of the Carnegie Foundation concerning college entrance requirements point in the latter direction — concentration on two or three subjects, . with free range in a variety of others.^ Professor concentra- Isaac Schwatt took a still more consistent and tion not the courageous step when he suggested before the ^^^j^g ^^' New England Association of Teachers of Mathe- matics that high school pupils who are not looking forward to specialization in some subject requiring applied mathe- matics, can be given the discipline peculiar to mathematics through a far more thorough study of arithmetic to the exclusion of algebra and geometry.^^ In short, the apparent but partial remedy of concentration through specialization is being seized upon without regard to its possible supple- ment or alternative — concentration through the selection and equally systematic organization of material pre-eminent in its direct usefulness to life in general. The attempt at discipline through at least the elementary study of a variety of subjects as systematic wholes, with its consequent lack of concentration, would not, per- haps, have resulted so disastrously had it not Jon against been made in a period of reaction against mechan- formal ical memorizing. Since habit is the first stage memorizing of discipline, failure to repeat ideas and activities check. again and again in the unvarying sequences neces- CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY sary to the formation of fixed habits is the immediate cause of a forgetfulness, for which too large a number of sequences is but a condition. One of the most contradictory fallacies into which teachers have been led in the effort to develop self-activity is insistence upon an immediate self-activity which refuses to utilize even a temporary imitation, verbatim repetition, or mechanical prompting, which may be the most direct and effective means to a self-activity truly independent and persistent. On the other hand, immediate self-activity, apperception, and interest, temporarily called forth through the stimulus of an intelligent teacher, will leave behind them pleasant impressions rather than discipline if the potentially most useful of the new associations have not been made definite by drill and the old ones more firmly fixed in the spe- cific relationships upon which their usefulness depends. Mechanical memorizing in unvarying relationships is as neces- sary to discipline and the independent exercise of rational activities as repetition in continually varying relationships is necessary to apperception and adequate knowledge. A third reason for failure has been overconfidence in the disciplinary efl&ciency of the method peculiar to a particular Neglect of branch of knowledge, to the common and some- pedagogical times arrogant exclusion of the pedagogical method a method through which it can be most economic- ally and certainly mastered. For this an equally arrogant pedagogy has been in part responsible. Until general pedagogical principles are analyzed into specific propositions that clearly apply to the details involved in the teaching of every branch, and the problems revealed by such application are solved by scientific experimentation and re- search, the failure resulting from the attempt to teach too much and inadequate memory drill will be made all the more inevitable by ineffective methods of instruction. From the standpoint of the formal discipHne claimed for the abstract subject, as distinct from the specific discipline more or less adequately given, the chief pedagogic lack is a study of the conditions favorable to general discipline. CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 17 The culminating blunder of all, possible only to thinkers blinded by the point of view just discussed, is the assumption that the more remote a branch of knowledge from life, the better the means which it affords for from every- discipline. The assumption usually accompanies day life it that such subjects, through their remoteness, {^^^^^^ ^°^' present greater diflSiculties and demand — and through their lack of connection with every-day distractions receive — ^greater concentration. Even granting this, it is necessary still further to assume that the resulting discipline once gained is so thorough that it can persist outside the school in the absence of the incidental and continual repeti- tions possible only to subject matters which are most closely related to life. With the speciaHst such study, though often specific and narrow, may constitute an exceptionally persist- ent discipline, because of the very fact that his specialty, remote from the every-day life of the mass, is connected with his own. In similar fashion, the specific discipline peculiar to any branch, a discipline which may never become formal or general, depends for its mere continuance upon the per- sistence with which its essential sequences and relationships are called to mind in the years that follow school life. In the case of students and pupils who are not specialists, with a discipline sought through too much subject matter, with inadequate memory drill in the absence of effective method, the conscious selection of relationships and sequences that do not occasionally recur in every-day life robs them of the last possibility of the continuance of habits which, if formed at all, have been bought too dear. 2. The Lessening Confidence in the Theory of Formal Discipline Itself To this conspicuous failure of specific discipline, which could not but weaken confidence in the formal discipline to which it is a condition, and from which most educational 2 l8 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY workers and students do not distinguish it, have been added serious doubts as to the theory of formal discipline itself. Its first breakdown came when the new psychology demon- strated that the human mind does not consist of faculties which can be trained into general usefulness. When the memory, the intellect, and the will were seen to be composites of specific activities and habits, formal discipline reduced itself to the operation of a habit in fields of knowledge and experi- ence other than that in which it is acquired. As yet the mass of thinkers have been little influenced by this new viewpoint of the specialist. Although when once familiar with it they will be less impressed by the enumeration of particular activ- ities in so-called disciplinary subjects, which may or may not become habitual or may or may not be carried over, they as yet are more or less under the influence of the grandiloquent plea that the study of mathematics or the languages trains the human intellect, and, therefore, constitutes the most efl&cient preparation for life. To expert students of education the results of experimental investigations made by Professors Thorndike, Bagley, and others, tentative though they are, have, on the whole, been a still more disturbing factor. The mere fact that a particular group of mathematically trained individuals compared un- favorably in exact judgments with a group which had not been mathematically trained, or that the habitual proportion of neat papers in arithmetic did not result in neat papers in other school subjects, is perhaps no more convincing than a statistical investigation which shows that a larger proportion of graduates of the old classical course at a certain college have been successful in life than of those trained in the vari- ous parallel courses included in the modern curriculum. But the champions of formal discipline have been placed on the defensive, and the great majority of educational thmkers who are at present dominating educational theory and influ- encing educational practice have at least gone so far as to say, "You may learn to swim by learning to walk, but why not learn to swim by learning to swim?" CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 19 3. The Constantly Increasing Strength of the Organized Demand for Direct Preparation for Life The popularity of Herbartianism in America has had not a little to do with the development of this state of mind. A many-sided mental activity may result from the adequate study of one or two formal subjects, but the many-sided interest dear to the Herbartian can result only from a many- j sided course of study. All this, however, is but one phase of the positive factor which with irresistible force is storming the weakened defences of formal discipline — the organized demand through propaganda, legislation, and confident, though not as yet convincingly successful, practice for direct preparation for each specific phase of life through the teach- ing of facts and activities in the relationships which definitely and certainly further it. It is substituting for the maxim, that preparation for col- lege is preparation for life, the equally epigrammatic proposi- tion that preparation for life should prepare for college. In place of first attempting to form the man and then the citizen, it insists that in forming the citizen directly and efficiently equipped for public service, specific right action, healthful living, industrial efficiency, and the ever-increasing period of leisure, it is most certainly forming the man. A step farther, and it will urge that if the habits peculiar to a specialty di- rectly useful to the few, may become indirectly useful to the many by being carried over into the ordinary fields of knowl- edge and experience, it is more pedagogic and economic to teach them through reorganized courses of study and more effective method, in the relationships which make them directly and certainly useful to the many, with a view to carrying them over to the specialty in whose narrower sub- ject matter they will be useful to the few. Each succeeding report of the United States Commissioner of Education brings to light new organizations — local, state, national, and international — for the furtherance of moral and religious instruction, personal and public hygiene, patriotic 20 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY citizenship, and manual or industrial training. Especially with this latter end in view, state commissions have been appointed, state departments of education reorganized, large appropriations voted, text-books written, and rdating^of ^^urses of study revised. In the high schools of academic Pittsburgh and other cities botany or zoology, as subject first year electives, have given place to a "general ^g^ ®^ ° science," in which certain portions of physics, chemistry, and all the natural sciences are com- bined to furnish the facts and principles most closely related to every-day experienced^ Even the term "general mathe- matics'' is creeping into use. The high schools in Berkeley, California, and Chelsea, Massachusetts, recognize as part of their curriculum instrumental music taught at home, if the quality of the instruction is approved by the supervisor of music. ^^ A w^ell-known university allows one unit of credit each for editorship and the management of college periodicals. The University of Wisconsin has taken what is probably the most extreme step of all in recognizing forty credits in the theory of physical education and athletics toward the one hundred and twenty required for the A. B. degree.^^ 4. Increasing Willingness for Readjustment on the Part of Colleges and Universities As yet, even in the face of this tendency, many colleges and universities are continuing to require the traditional type of preparation, including fixed requirements in mathematics and the languages. The University of Chicago, however, is leading the way to a more general recognition in college en- trance requirements of subjects essential to general prepara- tion for life, and the Carnegie Foundation, after attempting to gain a consensus of expert opinion, recognizes both the reaction toward formal discipline and the demand for direct preparation for life by recommending more or less superficial examination in a variety of subjects, combined with an in- creasingly severe examination in mathematics and a foreign language.^ This will probably be the present answer to the CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 21 questionnaire of the special committee of New York High School Teachers, which has been seeking to determine to what extent higher institutions of learning in the East are willing to follow the lead of the West.^^ "May we ask," says their questionnaire, "what, in your opinion, would be the objections, if any, to the acceptance by your college of the graduates of the high schools of New York City? Such a definition of entrance Q^estion- 11 1 11 <. ^aire of the requirements would secure to the college a four New York years' preparatory course and would enable the High School high school to perform its function as a tax-sup- Asrociatfon. ported institution. Under the present method of defining entrance requirements, students who have not completed our courses of study repeatedly gain admission to college, often to the weakening of both college and high school. "If this departure seems too radical, may we call your attention to the following statements, and recommend the modifications in present entrance requirements which seem to us most urgent? There are seven distinct lines of work which we believe essential to a well-rounded high school course; to wit: language, mathematics, history and civics, science, music, drawing, and manual training. Girls must be taught household science and art. Moreover, we believe that the twentieth century demands that the high schools should not cast all students in the same mold; that the amount of science and manual training which is sufficient for one student is utterly inadequate for another; and that a training for busi- ness may be given in the high school which will be as cultural and as respectable as any other course. To enable the high schools to adapt secondary education to the varying needs of different students in such a manner as to meet the diverse demands of the professions, of industry, and of commerce, progress seems to us to require — '\a) The reduction in the number of so-called 'required' subjects, together with "(5) The recognition of all standard subjects as electives. 22 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY "The specified entrance requirement of two foreign lan- guages, the meager electives in science, and the absence of recognition for drawing, music, household science and art, shopwork, commercial branches, and civics and economics, constitute the chief difficulty. "We should like to see it possible for a student upon enter- ing the high school to choose Latin or German or French; to confine his work in foreign language, during his high school course, to one such language in case the remainder of his time is required for other subjects; and to find at the end of his high school course that he has met the foreign language requirements of whatever college he may choose to enter. We should like to see no discrimination against Latin for the course leading to the B. S. degree, so that students choosing any language may enter the B. S. course. "We should like to see the following subjects recognized by college entrance credits: "Music, I unit; mechanical and freehand drawing, each I to I unit; joinery, pattern making, forging, machine-shop practice, each | to i unit; household chemistry, botany, zoology, physiography, applied physics, and advanced chemistry, each i unit; modern history, i unit; civics and economics, each | to i unit; household science and art, 2 units; and commercial geography, commercial Islw, stenog- raphy and typewriting, elementary bookkeeping, advanced bookkeeping, and accounting, each J to i unit. "A recent study of entrance requirements shows that many colleges are already requiring only one foreign language for admission, and that many of the above subjects have received recognition.'' The majority of the answers received from the colleges were favorable to these propositions, the most antagonistic being that of President Emeritus EHot. The most common objection advanced was against the reduction in language re- quirements. For example, President Garfield, of Williams College, wrote, "So far from abandoning the work in language, I should much prefer that students entering college were CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 23 through with the beginners' work in Latin and both modern languages, or with Latin and Greek and one modern language, but I realize that, at the present time, it would appear to put upon the school too great a burden to have accomplished so much." Woodrow Wilson took a similar position, both on the ground that a command of a variety of languages was highly useful and that it is most readily developed in child- hood. 5. Readjustment Must Not Be Left to Consensus, hut Must Be Determined by Scientific Research Obviously, if readjustment is left to consensus, the result- ing curriculum will be a parallelogram of conflicting forces which will probably involve more complete domination of the college by the high school than the high school has ever been dominated by the college. The solution of so fundamen- tal a problem must not be left to consensus. Here as else- where science must intervene; not a pedagogy all aglitter with generalities — a peacock plumage borrowed from other branches of learning — ^but an independent science, with problems which other sciences may suggest, but which it alone can solve. It is high time that in the spiritual domain upon which the future of individuality, the family, democracy, and religion ultimately depends, should be introduced the same analytic and experimental methods that have given us not only atomic weights, electrons, and axis-cylinder processes, but, through invention and manufacture, complex modern life itself. It is strange that education is almost the last of all the great branches of human endeavor to accept the full in- heritance of the Renaissance, and to pass from the unity and compulsion of tradition and authority through the pro- gressive but disorganizing dominance of individualism into the more stable unity and more certain compulsion of uni- versally valid fact checked by inductive experimentation * and research. Here, as elsewhere, scientific method must isolate and vary single factors, choose between alternatives, determine 24 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY and count relationships. Self-activity must be analyzed into factors, of which discipline and many-sidedness are only seemingly antagonistic parts. Each phase of the educational aim must be analyzed into specific ends, and the whole range of human knowledge and experience searched through and through for the details which definitely and certainly further each in the most many-sided relationships and with the greatest likelihood of recurrence in every-day life. When included in the educational content they must be organized, not merely with a view to the indirect furtherance of these ends through general knowledge and culture, academic habits and general discipline, but in such fashion that, whether facts or activities, they will, through gradual accumulation and reorganization, be definitely and certainly associated with all others that tend to the specific aim upon whose fur- therance their direct usefulness depends. Method must be so scientifically determined that there shall be a minimum of waste in the educational process. The groupings most effective for retention and for thought, the form of presenta- tion best adapted to the thing that is to be accomplished, the extent of gradation necessary to self-progress, the length of the interval that can be allowed to elapse before review, these and a multitude of other factors must be measured and com- pared. The formulation of these problems should not be left to individual enthusiasts or local effort alone. Just as certainly as there is both a local and a national side to representative government, is there both a local and a national side to the education that should prepare for representative govern- ment. The functions of the United States Bureau of Educa- tion should be so extended that it can lead in the necessary research.^^ 6. Direct Preparation for Life More Certain than General Dis- cipline, and Necessary to Make it Useful Meanwhile, with all of its present inefficiency, checked as its operation is by the absence of the analysis, experimenta- CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 25 tion, and research, without which it cannot be most effective, the advantage of direct over indirect preparation for Hfe lies in the readily apparent fact that it is specific and therefore certain. It is not direct unless it is specific. On the other hand, any effort at general training is ineffective which falls short of habit, which fails to make habit continuing, or which fails to carry it over into the fields upon which even its indirect usefulness depends. More than this, even should the aca- demically well-disciplined man as a result become more gen- erally efficient, in the absence of the direct training which makes certain his good citizenship his very efficiency may make him a greater menace to the well being of the com- munity and the state. Direct instruction, supplementing general training and supplemented by it, finally comes to have the irresistible form of accumulation. Fact added to fact, activity to activity, impression to impression, month after month and year after year, must in the end achieve their common aim. The *^line upon line, and precept upon precept, here a little, there a little'' of Isaiah, which made the Jew a true Jew, must sooner or later make the American a true American. 7. Either Academic or Vocational Specialization Without Direct Preparation for Life Hostile Both to Culture and Democracy What makes the present an educational crisis is the grave danger that, in a period of educational readjustment so rapid and apparent, a lessened confidence in general training and general culture, with a growing demand for direct instruc- tion, may result in two almost equally unhappy extremes — a professional specialization, which ignores general training and culture, and through reaction, an academic specializa- tion, which, whether disciplinary or cultural, refuses to relate itself to life. The effect of the former is already apparent, first, in the numerous vocational schools which, requiring an inadequate cultural preparation either through high school or college, devote themselves to training for vocational phases 26 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY of life; and, second, in the colleges where the cultural courses and the specialized academic courses, which are falsely called cultural, are being crowded to the wall by electives or group electives which, because they are preparatory to vocation, are stigmatized as utilitarian even when as cultiural as those which are purely academic. The natural result is a reaction within the college, which, failing to see that both culture and life require many-sided Direct knowledge, confuses preparation for life with prep- preparation aration for vocation, and demands an academic fusid^^th" education that is not related to life, in place of mere prep- demanding a many-sided course that is all the aration for more cultural and disciplinary because it is re- vocaion. i^ted to life. For example, Dean West, after asserting that the proposed Graduate College for Princeton "is in spirit and substance an institution for humanizing knowledge in the field of the higher liberal studies," proceeds to characterize the "half truth of ^service,' the doctrine that only knowledge of obvious use is worth having," as follows: "Under this notion historical, social, and political studies come to be pursued as a kind of 'contemporary topics' of live interest; the study of literature, even of our own, is narrowed to the most recent periods, thus shutting off depth of back- ground; philosophy descends into the nursery of 'child psy- chology,' and the great fundamental sciences are neglected except in their most practical applications."^^ Obviously, this somewhat limited characterization of the directly useful is not intended to apply to graduate schools, but to high schools and colleges. Indeed, the recommendations of the three Amherst graduates of the class of 1885, so favorably reviewed by Mr. Roosevelt in The Outlook,^^ would result in precisely the independent "republica litteraria" that Dean West considers ideal. They urge that a wholly academic institution shall be created, in which the classical course shall be modified by some addition to science, and taught by the best qualified instructors that adequate compensation can attract, to a limited number of students admitted by compet- CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 27 itive examination. There is room for a graduate school in which a broadly humanistic training in the higher branches is substituted for intensive research in some narrow field of knowledge, if, before its students become humanists, they have been given the direct training for life in all of its many- sidedness, which should precede every sort of specialization. But heaven help democracy and culture if future citizens must choose between a professional training that excludes culture and the culture dreaded by old Benjamin Rush when he asserted: "The study of the Latin and Greek languages is improper in the present state of society and government in the United States. While Greek and Latin are the only avenues to science, education will always be confined to a few people. It is only by rendering knowledge universal that a republican form of government can be preserved in our country. ... Men are generally most proud of those things that do not contribute to the happiness of themselves or others. Useful knowledge generally humbles the mind, but learning, like fine clothes, feeds pride, and thereby hardens the human heart."i9 Education for the highest citizenship in a republic demands, as Mr. Roosevelt points out, the addition to *^the ordinary and usually more necessary form of training" that is purely commercial of another "which should be undergone simply for the sake of learning and for the benefit of the state.'' This may be found in Dean West's Graduate School, and is found here and there in others where academic special- ization has not been carried so far as to produce the "logician" and the "rhetorician," who five centuries after Montaigne are more likely, after all, to be gentlemen than citizens. But in place of the new Amherst, unless it, too, becomes a higher school, there must be, both preparatory to the period of specialization, whether professional or academic, and paralleling it throughout, a variety of education which will directly train for moral and healthful living, social and 2S CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY civic service, the phases of industrial life common to all in- dividuals and such employment of leisure as is not devoted to the specialized culture peculiar to an academic group. „ ^ For so broad has the sum total of humanistic ii«ven aca- demic spe- knowledge become — ^knowledge that is humanistic cialization through its relationship to many-sided modern fere with" ^^^^y ^^ ^^^^ ^^ ^^ ^^^^ ^^ Greece and Rome — that general cul- there has come to be specialization in culture itself, ture. ^j^(j ^}jg Amherst plan represents specialized cul- ture that is no truer and infinitely less democratic than the sum total of directly useful knowledge and activity, which, while not connected with wage earning or in any other sense commercial, would constitute a social bond for all classes of educated individuals. So long as the knowledge which is a common possession, either of a particular social group or the whole of educated society, has a many-sidedness that is hu- manistic and a means to the aesthetic, it is cultural whether its many-sidedness is related to modern or to ancient life. Pre- mature specialization, whether professional, academic, or subjective, is equally hostile both to general culture and to preparation for life. By premature subjective specializa- tion is meant the misleading many-sidedness of a free elect- ive system which, on the plea of adaptation to individuality, excludes much that all students should possess in common, whether as part of a common culture or as a means to the direct preparation for a common life from which a common culture can result. Obviously, any attempt on the part of the formal disciplin- ists to make discipline effective through concentration upon two or three branches may constitute a menace both to gen- eral culture and to many-sided preparation for life. In the case of the new Amherst, academic specialization would strongly tend to diminish, or at least to narrow, general cul- ture. The problem which here becomes apparent is the ex- tent to which a many-sided course of study at each stage of education necessarily excludes specialization, subjective, academic, and vocational. CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 29 8, The Mutual Interdependence of Direct Preparation for Life and General Discipline Before it can be discussed, it is well to lay down the proposition that while direct preparation for life, on account of its specific and therefore certain realization of the educational aim, must be given primary place, aration^in-" indirect preparation through general knowledge adequate in and discipline is too economical a factor to be the absence ignored. Potentially, there is more economy in disdpirne. a habit or relationship which may be generally applied than in a specific activity. The advantage of the specific activity lies in its certainty. If its general applica- tion is made as certain, or even highly probable, its useful- ness is multiplied. The fact that general discipline has not been commonly attained is no reason why it cannot be. Toward its achievement, however, concentration, whether through specialization or through effective pedagogical method upon the most directly useful subject matter in the relationships which make it useful, is only the first step. More than this, specific and general discipline are not the only forms of self-activity which certainly figure as means to the development of independent and useful individuality. The first step toward a solution of the general educational problem, that does not represent a mere resultant of conflict- ing opinions and theories, is an analysis of self-activity into all forms in which it tends to develop permanent and inde- pendent right action. JPerhaps such analysis may show that culture, discipline, and direct preparation for life are not mutually exclusive, but, on the contrary, supplementary and interdependent. CHAPTER II AN ANALYSIS OF "FORMAL DISCIPLINE" INTO ESSENTIAL PHASES OF FORMAL SELF-ACTIVITY— INCLUDING GEN- ERAL DISCIPLINE I. The Aim of Education Not Self-activity, hut Useful Self- activity While, as pointed out by Dr. Harris, psychologically all activity of the self is self-activity ,20 self-activity as the edu- Self-activity cational aim means useful self-activity, as inde- need not be pendent and intelligent as possible, in contrast with mere verbatim memorizing and recollection, sensational interest or attention, and mechanical imitation. It does not follow, however, that the act of learning — the method by which self-activity is developed — should never utilize unintelligent memorizing, interest or imitation, but rather that when they are used they should lead as directly as possible to more independent self-activity. The extent to which they should be utilized in a given case consti- tutes a series of important problems in educational method to which attention will be directed later in the discussion. One of the most absurd and yet hopeful blunders of the con- scientious teacher, dominated by the fallacy that all activity on the part of the learner should be self-activity, is the effort to question forgetful children into the recollection of a fact that should be told them, or into the doing of something that should be shown them. "What is the capital of France? Can't you think? It begins with a P. What kind of plaster did we use the other day?" Small wonder if "self- activity" responds with "porous" in place of "Paris." Self- activity is the ultimate end of education, its crowning achieve- ment, rather than an exclusive means which must be invari- ably used in every stage of instruction. 30 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 31 Closely allied to this fallacy is another equally fundamental, the assumption that an immediate self-activity, dependent upon the stimulus of a live teacher, satisfies the j^g^g educational aim. Dr. Harris has paid his respects temporary to it in condemning what he seemed to regard as self -activity a necessary misuse of the oral instruction which satisfy the first Horace Mann, and still more influentially educational Colonel Parker, accepted as the chief means to self- ^^' activity: "Oral instruction is constantly liable to destroy the self-activity of the pupil — that is to say, the very merit claimed for it is the one that it least accomplishes. The pupil listens to the teacher's living voice. The first impressions are. all he gets, even if he takes notes; it requires time to reflect. The pupil is dragged from one point to another without fully digesting either. ... He does not acquire the habit of regular systematic study, even though he may foster brilliant, flashy habits of mind."^^ Dr. Harris is right in so far as he anathematizes the ex- clusive development of merely temporary activities which, being dependent upon the immediate activity of the teacher, do not appear to be self-activity at all. The modern recita- tion is too often like the circus procession. The pupils are mentally alert because they are interested, in place of being interested because they are self-active. They thrill at the lady and the tiger, listen to their teacher's steam piano, and follow the clowns and dromedaries whithersoever they may lead. But after a while the procession has passed by. Has anything permanent and useful been left behind? One sort of permanent self-activity, whose highly potential value has been too largely ignored as a factor in life and in education, almost invariably results — impression. The vague and intangible feeling that sometimes tional inad- rises to emotion, based less on the few things equacy of we remember than on the myriad we have for- '^ff^^® "^' -^ pression. gotten, made stronger and stronger as it is re- enforced by successive experiences involving every possible form of activity, but all resulting in the same impression, 32 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY may in the end become an ideal, a point of view, a permanent interest which constitutes character and determines action. The longing for home, the attitude of labor toward capital and of capital toward labor, love of country, the fear of strong drink, even reverence for deity itself, result far less from definite recollection, specific habits, or general discipline than from the cumulative, and in the end the overwhelming, force of a thousand and one petty forgotten impressions which unitedly tend to a common end. The temporary self-activity, dependent upon the daily inspiration of the teacher, must not take the place of other Usefulness essential forms of self-activity necessary to inde- of emotional pendent and useful development, for some of centers. which, by the way, oral instruction is indispen- sable. In itself, temporary self-activity constitutes but a highly efficient means to impression which becomes individual and permanent. Its usefulness depends upon the centers to which, through accumulation, the impression attaches itself, the vaguest and most general among them being the school. Love of school may be as playful as the love of the "magic ring" so delightfully described by Kenneth Graham, and, to use President Wilson's figure, attract to the side shows rather than to the main tent, but if useful in no other way, it is worth while. Owing to the anthropomorphic tendency of children, pointed out by Bain in his criticism of "natural punishment/ '^^ love of school will often coincide with love of teacher. Im- pression, however, is also a means to interest in school activi- ties, in branches of study, in specific phases of the educational aim, and in the fundamental forms of self-activity essential to the mastery of all. No development of self -activity, in the shape of "interest- ing" lessons in which pupils have much to do or to say, is useless. It must not, however, be paraded as a pleasant short cut to education, or, through its apparent efficiency, crowd out other fundamental forms of self-activity. The aim of education is not self -activity, but useful self-activity; CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 33 not necessarily self-activity that is immediate, but that which is persistent and sure, without either excluding or being excluded by that which, burning brightly for a moment, leaves behind it the same vague pleasureableness as a drift- wood fire or a sunshiny day. 2. The Necessity for Distinguishing the Educational or Formal Phases of Self-activity from Its Psychological Forms At the very outset, then, it is necessary to distinguish between the various forms of self-activity that are educational in the sense of being essential to the development and the right use of all kinds of self-activity — that is, between the various forms of self-activity pedagogically considered, as distinct from the various kinds of self-activity psychologically considered. Much confusion has resulted from, if not an unavoidable, at least a very natural interchange of pedagog- ical and psychological terms, or the use of the same terms for pedagogical and psychological conceptions. The psy- chologist would have avoided much vexation of spirit if he had left "apperception" to the pedagogue, while the Her- bartian has had reason to mourn over the fact that "interest" is a highly elastic means to psychological and hence to peda- gogical expression. The present discussion does not concern itself with such phases of mental activity as judgment, imagination, feeling, and will, but with forms of self-activity by which they are to be usefully developed, and through which the right relationships necessary to their useful exer- cise must be brought about. 3. The Five Educational or Formal Phases of Self -activity that Can Be Distinguished Through the Distinct Kinds of Relationships from Which They Result Obviously, then, these fimdamental forms must be dis- tinguished from each other through the distinct kinds of relationships from which they result. An idea or an activity is not useful in itself, but through its recurrence in a relation- / 3 34 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY ship which furthers some phase of the educational aim. In the case of impression, relationships, most of which are evan- escent, accumulate about some central idea or activity. Their sum-total is a feeling which is probably in part identical in its basis with Kiilpe's "direct recognition,''^^ but whose educational significance lies in its rendering the common idea or activity with which they are associated certainly and per- manently as attractive or unattractive as may be useful. The relationships themselves are improbable of recall — the forgotten knowledge and experience which make up most of life in school and out. On the contrary, mere remembrance is based upon the vary- ing and individual relationships which happen for a time to hold an idea or an activity in mind and through which it may be recalled. They will, for the most part, differ with indi- vidual learners, and constitute partial, accidental, and even false concepts, no matter how patiently instruction has sought to ensure common and adequate knowledge. Their sum total is information, the knowledge that is power, because it is a mass of memory and apperceiving centers which not only prevent ideas and activities from sinking to the level of for- gotten knowledge, but serve as a means of retaining and classifying new experiences that make information more adequate. Varying apperception, the third phase of self-activity, is based upon many-sidedness of relationship. Through it, an idea retained in one or more relationships is made recallable in a continually increasing number of relationships. These relationships may be as individual, accidental, and non-essen- tial, as those on which mere remembrance is based — their function being to ensure variation in mental content, and, through accumulation, both completeness of knowledge and the domination of specific groups or systems of ideas. The fourth phase of formal self-acti\dty is specific disci- pline, not merely in the sense of the system peculiar to a par- ticular academic subject, but as including all habits and groups of habits. Through it an idea is certainly and permanently CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 35 recalled in a definite relationship or group of relationships. It includes the whole gamut of invariable relationships, from the simple habits and complexes of habits useful in direct preparation for life or within an academic branch, through those necessary to general discipline, to the completest possible interrelation of all habits that dominate life and character, whether as a result of experience or instruc- tion. The fifth and last phase of formal self-activity is general discipline — the carrying over of a habit to a field of experience other than that in which it is developed. It must be sharply distinguished from the old "formal discipline" which, through the development of mental "faculties," was supposed to en- sure all forms of mental development. It is neither a "gen- eral habit" nor the inevitable result of the study of "formal" or "disciplinary" subjects, but certainly results only when a habit, with a stimulus general enough to be carried over into various fields, is certainly associated with the conditions favorable to its being carried over. Dominant among these are not only specific discipline itself, but the cumulative im- pression, mere remembrance and varying apperception which the old formal discipline ignored. 4. Distinction Between Direct and Indirect Furtherance of the Educational Aim Of these five forms of educational self-activity, only two — impression and specific discipline — are based upon the direct and specific relationships that alone can be made certainly useful. The habits resulting from experience are, and the impressions may be, specific and certain, but not necessarily useful. On the other hand, no relationships are certainly useful unless they specifically, and hence directly, further some phase of the educational aim. It is obviously the func- tion of instruction to make certain the specific relationships giving rise to habits and impressions essential to the direct furtherance of each phase. More than this, as will be later 36 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY demonstrated, specific and certain relationships are as essen- tial to useful remembrance, apperception, and general dis- cipline as the varying relationships of apperception are necessary to the multiplied usefulness of specific discipline. Mere remembrance, varying apperception, and general discipline, while not certainly useful, tremendously multiply the usefulness of the specific relationships which are. The educational aim, then, is realizable through five forms of self-activity — directly and certainly through specific discipline and impression, and indirectly and potentially through mere remembrance, varying apperception, and general discipline. The problem of correctly apportioning the time available for instruction, between specific discipline and the indirect furtherance of the aim, belongs to method. In its solution three facts are fundamental — first, the primary importance of specific discipline not only in itself, but as a condition to indirectly useful self-activity; second, the limited number of specific relationships so essential that they must be made certain; and third, the limited time which, from the standpoint of attention and fatigue, can be effectively spent in memory drill. A somewhat more detailed discussion of each of these five forms of educational self-activity will make clear their inter- relationship and demonstrate their interdependence. 5. Cumulative Impression, a Directly Useful Phase of Formal Self-activity While in a school where instruction is carried on by a teacher intelligent enough to be misled by the will-o'-the- wisp of immediate and temporary interest, edu- klmediate nation may become too nearly a passing show, and tern- in which impression for the most part narrows porary itself to a love of teacher or of school, other forms 'Educational. ^^ educational self-activity will be present, and impressions will be usefully associated with other things than school. In fact, precisely the same type CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 37 of instruction that predominantly results in mere impression, also fosters varying remembrance and apperception. In this it is educational as far as it goes, but only indirectly so. It fails to develop specific discipline. Failing to result in specific discipline, and consequently in general discipline, even its indirect furtherance of the aim is inadequate. This combination of variable impression, remembrance, and apperception constitutes what W. H. Payne was accus- tomed to call the "tonic'' value of education.^ If developed at the expense of discipline, its finished product is the indi- vidual justly referred to by Dean West as educated but not intelligent.^^ Assuming that impression is developed with due regard to the other forms of educational self-activity, the chief danger is that it will not be so centered and _ ^ , ... . - Impression accumulated as to aid m ensurmg the perma- can operate nent viewpoints, ideals, and motives essential to against the the various phases of the educational aim. The ®.^<^^*^onal cumulative impressions left behind by the school work may and should result in permanent interest in various branches of study. But they must involve something more than a love of school or even of the academic subjects that are taught there. In fact, a teacher may leave behind him impressions that result in love for him and respect for his ideals without developing the love for essential school sub- jects at all. One of Mr. Quick's old Cranleigh boys, after stating that all his subsequent life had been "stayed by his kindly hand and cheered by his kindly voice," goes on to say, "I was also in Mr. Quick's class, though for what subject or subjects I have forgotten."^^ By far the most important results of the impressions made certain by the school are the ideals, the viewpoints, the attitudes of mind, and the tendencies that directly further the details, which together constitute the various specific phases of the educational aim. Just what these details are, analysis of the various phases must determine. For example, it is highly essential to the furtherance of the SS CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY aim that the form of self-activity now being discussed as impression should play its part in developing faith in divine providence, determined opposition to anything which menaces the public health, an earnest belief in the doctrine of equal rights as opposed to special privilege, or any other detail necessary to right living, good health, industrial effi- ciency, social service, good citizenship, and the proper em- ployment of leisure. Conscious effort in the formal educa- tional process to make impressions provoke interest in such details has of necessity been occasional and limited, in the absence of the analysis which alone can determine what details are necessary. At the worst, the cumulative force of impression is used against the school, or, through force of external experience, in favor of activities that are conflicting with or hostile to its activities. On the one hand, dislike of teacher, lack of interest in studies, impatience of routine, reaction from purely academic existence, discomfort from unhealthful or unnatural environment — hourly, daily, week after week, month after month, and year after year; on the other, love of play, the joy of motor activity, the social companionship of chums or the "gang," the longing to make money, moving pictures, the theater, the lure of real life. Sometimes the solution seems easy when the introduction of some one of the many possible sources of interest into the school makes the school interesting. It is a temptation, for example, to look upon manual training as a panacea, and to depend upon it to hold the motor and construction-loving boy to his task. The sympathetic teacher, vocational motive, school city, each often serves to remove a hostile condition within the school and at the same time to check antagonistic forces without. Such solutions are but partial, and substitute favorable and even, in the case of particular individuals, necessary conditions to success for the elements essential to the useful development of all. Pupils may love their teacher, their school, and their work, and students their college without gaining the permanent impressions funda- CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 39 mental in the realization of the aim to which teacher, school, and work are but conditions and means. Desirable as inter- est in the whole school environment is, it is better that it should be lacking than that it should be nmst r^^°^ permitted to take the place of a constantly in- enforce the creasing attraction toward what is useful in life ^^^^ useful and antagonism for what is evil. When the learner, day by day and year after year, is consciously accu- mulating the impressions which directly and certainly make for respect for law and the equal rights of others, a love of justice, truth and honesty, devotion to all necessary work, interest in the common good, the useful feelings which, if persistently enough and effectively enough sought, will in the end dominate life and character, he will in most cases come to love the environment with which such teachings are associated. None the less, as Compayre says of pupils in relation to school discipline,^^ and Miinsterberg of those to whom through heredity it is easiest to lead criminal lives,^^ every one of us has the right to the sum total of influences, conditions, and means, whether essential or non-essential, weak or potent, that tend toward the right. Of course, interest — the feeling of attraction or repulsion — is incidentally and variably associated with ideas and activities, through mere remembrance and ap- The efficacy perception, as it is definitely associated through of emotional specific and general discipline. But mere re- ^®^*®^^- membrance, with its incidental feeling, and apperception, with its changing interest in many relationships, cannot ensure the continual repetition of experiences certain to stimulate in ever-increasing degree a common feeling in a common idea or activity. Specific discipline must first, through certainly associating exceptionally impressive in- cidents or passages with the common centers, ensure for it a definite and permanent emotional nucleu, about which the mass of vague and forgotten impressions can multiply. Such an association transforms an idea into an ideal whose ap- pUcation becomes increasingly sure. And every application 40 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY of such an idea or activity through general discipHne either adds to the fixed emotional nucleus or to the impressions for which it is the center. The fimdamental ideals, points of view, and motives in life must not be left either to chance or to the certain recall of a few unemotional facts. It will take more than scientific temperance instruction to compel total abstinence, or than the principles of civil government to bring about good citizenship. But impression re-enforced by habit and habit by impression can come to have the force of instinct and heredity. 6. Initial Remembrance, the Phase of Formal Self-activity Which Holds Ideas Until They Can Be Variably Ap- perceived and Specifically Memorized The second form of self-activity, from an educational rather than a philosophical or psychological viewpoint, is indirect recognition or initial remembrance. Initial re- Back of direct recognition lies the same mass of membrance . *^ i . i i . usually forgotten experiences which, concentrated m based on some particular direction, constitute impression cents. ^°^" ^ ^^ sense in which we have just discussed it. It is in their physiological basis that Klilpe finds a possible explanation for the immediate judgment of famil- iarity.^^ In contrast with this, back of indirect recognition or initial remembrance, lies some definitely recallable associa- tion. It does not at all matter what it is, but only that it is definite and readily comes to mind. Unless it has as its basis a single relationship, it involves but partial compre- hension and is dependent upon a partial concept. The two distinguishing characteristics of the partial concept are, first, the fact that it is partial, and, therefore, gives rise to the initial remembrance that may ultimately lead the way to an adequate concept and fuller comprehension; second, the fact that though definite, in so far as it is dependent on ordi- nary experience, it is accidental, and consists of relationships which vary with occasions and individuals. CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 41 This variability is equally true of the relationships upon which recollection depends — the chain of associa- tions that determine ordinary thought. Any one of the relationships ensuring remembrance may result in recall, and may, for the time being, constitute the remembrance itself. Investigations of Mr. Earl Barnes and others have shown that the minds of developing children are full of such partial concepts.2^ The monk is not the self-sacrificing member of a religious order, but the chipmunk or, better, the individual who sends out St. Bernard dogs to rescue children lost in the snow. The clock is something that ticks or tells the time. Sometimes, as in one instance in President HalFs well-known study, a concept is incorrect because it is partial.^® The un- familiar cow was supposed to be no larger than the familiar mouse. Quite often the concept is both partial and incorrect, as when a high-school girl who had heard of pirates defined a pilot as a sea robber. Even here, as is usually the case, there is a partial truth in the absurd misconception. Both pilot and pirate are spelled with pi and / and have to do with the sea. The laugh that rises from such misapprehension is generally turned against the school. Its work is not being well done. Children are attempting studies which are too ^j^ knowl- difficult, learning too fast, or, at any rate, being edge can- imperfectly taught. The usual effect of such in- ^^t be vestigations as that of Mr. Barnes has been agi- * ^^^^ ^' tation for more adequate knowledge. *'Let us see that chil- dren know thoroughly what they get, even if they get but little. Every word in the reading lesson must be spelled and defined. Pupils must be questioned into complete comprehension of all which they pretend to know at all." More than this, the scientist of a certain type steps in and insists upon exact knowledge. Physicians scoff at physi- ology primers because learners in pinafores speak of the heart as a pump. Physiographers despair because young- sters look upon volcanoes as mountains. 42 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY Nothing could be more fatal to self-activity in general than insistence upon completeness of comprehension. The „ ^. , number of ideas that can be remembered in all Partial con- . .^ . . . . , _ cepts the the specinc relationships necessary to define them very germs is relatively small. Most concepts of adults as growth.*^^ well as children are not only recognizable, but capable of recall only through some partial, non- essential, and, frequently enough, false or absurd relation- ship. It is the function of initial memorizing or mere remem- brance, based as it is upon any relationships at all, to hold an idea in mind and to make its recollection possible and definite. Such a simple relationship, however, constitutes the very germ of mental growth. Without it, fuller self- activity would be impossible. Partial concepts are points of attraction for all related ideas. They constitute association centers, apperceiving groups which reach out after new ex- perience. Facts, activities, impressions that would other- wise be forgotten, cluster about them. In a broad sense, education itself can be looked upon as the addition of one relationship after another to a partial concept until it is rela- tively complete. The greater the number of partial concepts, the greater the opportunity for development. The absence of a partial concept leaves many an experience without a means to the development of self-activity. One helps in retaining and developing the other. Without the interrela- tionships that come to exist between the many, the few are more likely to be forgotten. "To him that hath shall be given, from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.'' Even in adult life, in the most complete and most useful forms of self-activity, the partial concept must be the point of departure. The flash of temporary in- sight, the perception of a new relationship, more readily forgotten because it is the product of accident or inspiration, may lead to the writing of a Thanatopsis, the invention of the telephone, or the building up of a hypothesis that explains the movements of the celestial spheres. No wonder that Dr. Holmes exclaims, "When found make a note of it." CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 43 The more stories that are told to children, the more they hear of intelligent conversation, the more they read or have read to them from miscellaneous books and periodicals, the more they travel, hear lectures, and see moving pictures; in short, the broader their environment and the more many- sided their experience, the greater the opportunity for partial concepts. The better the native retentiveness of the chil- dren, the more they can profit from the opportunity. It is an important function of the home, the press, the church, and public amusements to provide all children with this broad environment and many-sided experience. In the school, the resulting partial concepts and partial comprehension should not be scoffed at as incorrectness and foolishness, or mourned over as failure, but wel- comed as essential means to still further devel- "^n? partial opment. At every stage of advancement the concepts to learner should be tested for incidental information ^e taught as well as for adequate knowledge. He should ^^^ be asked of each idea, not only — do you remember it in this specific relationship or group of relationships, but, in what relationships do you remember it? In college and university, as well as in elementary school, instructors should make sure that every individual is getting not only the few essential ideas in the specific relationships which make them useful, but that, in addition, he is getting in each branch he is studying as many ideas as possible, no matter what the relationships in which he holds them. There is the same distinction between a vacant mind and one filled with inci- dental and partial concepts as between a desert and a garden. This recognition of the partial and the variable may, at first thought, appear to encourage the carelessness in teaching to which the presence of partial concepts in children's minds has commonly been attributed. On the contrary, it will result in far more careful teaching. It is the recognition of the fact that a particular relationship or group of relation- ships, directly useful to the aim or to some branch of study, must be repeated with sufficient frequency to ensure the 44 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY specific discipline involved in their exact and ready recall by the whole mass of pupils taught in common. Otherwise, if remembered at all, they will not only be partial and include non-essential parts, but will vary with individuals, and fre- quently add to themselves or have substituted for them acci- dental or absurd relationships. Just what relationships should be readily and exactly recalled must eventually be determined through research into their relative usefulness; and just what number, through research into the amount of time that can be effectively spent each day in the memorizing of new material or the repetitions and reviews necessary to adequate retention. Haphazard partial concepts cannot be recognized except through contrast with partial relationships that are essential, and useful relationships not partial, the necessity for whose ready and exact recall through adequate repetition is thereby emphasized. If Mr. Bain is right in his assertion that memorizing is the most exhaustive phase of mental work,^^ ample time will be left for the development of impression and mere remembrance through the presentation of a multitude of facts and activities which cannot be certainly memorized in exact relationships. It is at this point that realization of the value of mere remem- brance most directly tends to more careful teaching. Re- membrance is most useful when the relationships to which it is due are true and essential relationships. Here the formal step in the recitation which the Herbartians have popularized as "preparation" ensures carefulness. It is the calling to mind in the pupils of past experiences, which can be usefully related to what is to be taught. It seeks to detect the partial concepts which will be most useful, in case they exist, and, by stirring them into activity, not only tends to give the new experience a greater likelihood of remembrance, but to deter- mine the relationships in which it will be remembered. The partial concept, if it is a partial one, is made selective and more complex; the new one is remembered in useful re- lationships. CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 45 But, notwithstanding the carefulness which makes certain and definite by adequate repetition as many useful relation- ships as possible, and which through "prepara- tion" gives greater likelihood and usefulness to membraiice remembrance, much that is taught will be re- useful, even membered, if remembered at all, through non- ^rm^iTd*^^" essential, accidental, or absurd relationships with recollections which the teacher did not touch in spite of his skilful questioning, or which he incidentally revived with- out knowledge of their revival or their existence. After all, remembrance is useful as mere remembrance. The partial concept may become complete, the ridiculous relationship will be forgotten or remembered as an amusing blunder; but the indispensable condition to the future usefulness of an idea or activity is that somehow or other, in some way or other, it must be kept in mind long enough for it to be made fast by one incidental association after another. The teacher should never deliberately choose the non- ^ essential or accidental relationships where a more useful ong can be formed. But all children should be given in school the many-sided experience that more fortunate children get outside. Ultimately, all should get it by every possible instrumentality outside. It is not merely many-sided experience that is needed, but many-sided experience so directed and controlled that it is most likely to be useful. Travel, family trips, j^^^^ school excursions, collecting expeditions, visits for useful to museums and art galleries, stereographs, many-sided stereopticon views, realistic fiction, dramas, moving pictures that do not present what would be punished or suppressed in real life as immoral or illegal ; plenty of inter- esting periodicals and newspapers, with their good and evil; collections of all sorts of specimens, changing as children's interests change; all sorts of books which, not being juven- ilized, give partial concepts of useful wholes; sermons and lectures not fully within the comprehension and interest of children but not too long; oratorios, musicals, luncheons. 46 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY parties and receptions; conversations, discussions, and oppor- tunities to listen to conversations and discussions not fully understood; above all, patient and intelligent replies to child- ish questions; all these and other experiences should not only be brought about, if necessary, by or through the school to children, who without such intervention would lead abnormal "shut in," crippled, oriental lives, but should be consciously selected and directed with a view to possible relationships which may further the various details of the several phases of the aim. As partial concepts, the roots, the seeds, and the sucklings of self-activity are formed and held in children's minds by all sorts of inconceivable and kaleidoscopic catchalls and garden spots, it is easier to determine what is to be given the chance of taking root than what it is to be rooted to. Finally, it must not be forgotten that mere remembrance is in itself a pleasurable form of self-activity. It is as inter- esting to know in part as to fully know where one, sideZness ^^^ ^^^ ^™^ being, takes the part for the whole. of experi- Especially with children, ready recognition of the ence essen- experience as it appears to them, ability to in tialinthe r i.- A. xi. ^- i, college. some fashion or other answer the question who, what, when, or where, indeed, to answer any question at all, is part of the joy of living. This many-sided- ness is as necessary in higher education as in the training of the child. While the "side shows" of the college course must not take the place of the "main tent," the main tent must not exclude the side shows. College life must be many-sided, not only for the sake of recreation, but as a means to the mere remembrance and varying apperception which must supplement specific discipline if education is to be complete. Enjoyment of music, art, and the drama — where possible, through membership in musical or dramatic club — reading along lines of individual interest, membership in literary societies, participation in political activities, leisure for ramble in country or woodland, above all, participation in social life, not merely in the democratic sense proposed by Dr. Wilson, but in that of a natural and congenial social group, far from CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 47 being tabooed as a menace to the real work of the college, should be required and compelled as an essential part of it. College life should only in part become a mechanical routine. The boyish prejudice against the ^'greasy grind," meritorious as his achievements may be, has again and again been justi- fied by the failure of valedictorian and salutatorian to carry over their efficiency from school to life. To many-sided application, many-sided knowledge and experience are as essential as routine. If modern education cannot include and dominate every phase of life, as Rabelais made it include, and dominate the daily experience of Pantagruel, it must at least see that due recognition is given to all that tends to develop the versatile and imaginative man of affairs. 7. Varying Apperception, the Phase of Formal Self -activity which Ensures the Many-sidedness of an Idea and Its Interconnection with Others Not Permanently Related to It In its most general sense of many-sided relationship apperception is far more inclusive than in the sense to which I have applied the term varying apperception. General discipline may itself be regarded as a form of apperception — the ''generalization" and "appHcation" of the Herbartians. Specific discipline, as it is developed into complicated systems of thought in which groups of associations react as certainly as one, is apperception. But in the latter form apperception is unvarying, and in the former variable only in its operation. It is uncertain, but specific. Apperception itself may be specific in its presentation — and, so far as it is a means to instruction, should be, — but a group of relationships when once presented in some specific form will either give rise through unvarying repetition to specific discipline or, in its absence, become apperception that is varying. The partial concept, held in mind by mere remembrance, through lack of recall sinks to a mere impression which may or may not be useful. If sufficiently recalled to be perma- nently retained, it either tends, through unvaried repetition 48 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY in essential relationships that have been added to it, to become an adequate or at least a definite concept and a means to specific discipline, or, through repetition in varying relation- ships, to become a full concept, and hence a means to var3dng apperception, and, as will be demonstrated later, to general discipline itself. Effective education demands both unvaried and variable repetition, and each results from incidental ex- perience. The only educational value possessed by varying apper- ception, as distinct from discipline, lies in its variability, in . the fact that through it any idea in the human penfeptfon^" mind may be related to all others, and a specific the chief relationship find its accustomed stimulus in fields means to ^£ experiences remote from the one in which it is formed. It is the main correlating force in edu- cation, establishing a thousand and one different sorts of relationships for each idea figuring in individual experience. It is the fact that through it an idea may recall a multitude of other ideas, or be recalled by any one of them, that gives it its educational function. Its principle which, with all the exaggeration of recent fad and theory, is not yet sufficiently popular, is — repeat each useful idea in continually varying relationships. Some, differing in the case of every individual with individual experience, will through incidental repetition become permanent and result in specific discipline. The mass of them, for the time forgotten, constitute the potential energy of the individual mind, latent until some favorable condition causes the idea to recall them or them to recall it, to serve in turn either a specific or varying function. An apple drops from a tree, and in place of eat, wind, dodge, bruise, or any other association to which apperception has related the idea which is its symbol, Newton thinks of fall, of gravity, and then of other falling spheres and gravity. If hungry, he might have thought of eating it, if he had been hungry the day before — of colic. But, after all, it was by no mere chance that, in the absence of strong and immediate association pointing elsewhere, his thought turned to the CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 49 stars. The presence of various incidental and changing conditions psychologically determines the selection of the relationship which any fully apperceived idea will suggest. But back of this lies a more permanent condition which can be pedagogically controlled — the existence of groups of ideas, great apperceiving centers, variable in their relationships through their multiplicity, but dominant through the fact that they are continually called to mind. If a cook, a poet, or a huckster had been under Newton's tree, he also might have recalled food or colic, but, failing some immediate dis- traction, he would not have thought of gravitation. Just as Newton naturally pictured volumes, concentric spheres, or the greater velocity with which apples higher in the tree would hit the ground, the cook would have recalled apple- sauce, roast pig, or pie; the poet, the "Planting of the Apple Tree," "The Last Leaf," or "The Apple of Discord," and the huckster, market price or bushel measure. The application is clear. No one relationship or fixed group of relationships can be made certain of recall by vary- ing apperception, but the recall of some one of the relationships belonging to the mass and through ^^f^^ess it of others, and always, vaguely at least, the of relation- central idea with which all are associated, is ship makes made exceedingly probable through an ever in- dominant, creasing many-sidedness. The educational use of apperception lies first in mere many-sidedness, in making it possible for any two ideas to be re-associated. However incidental and unimpressive their association may be, the relationship has been formed, and in some flash of recollec- tion or of insight may serve as the connecting link between ideas, activities, and experiences otherwise remote. But second, it lies not merely in making a concept fuller, but on account of its frequent recurrence in varying relationship, in making increasingly probable the recall of any one relation- ship and in far higher degree the relationship which consti- tutes the concept itself. Just as through their continual and many-sided recurrence 4 50 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY occupation, money getting, food and clothing are naturally made dominant in experience, so must instruction artificially ensure the continual many-sidedness necessary to the domi- nance of morality, health, efficient industry — as contrasted with mere occupations, — citizenship, social service, and right recreation. Multitudes of associations must be cumulatively formed about each specific phase of the educational aim — both for the sake of the many-sidedness which makes it pos- sible of association with every field of experience, and for the sake of the repetition which makes it dominant in recall. "Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, what- soever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good re- port; if there be any virtue, if there be any praise, think on these things." This "concentration" of many-sidedness about funda- mentally useful relationships is essential to the realization "Concen- ^^ ^^^ educational aim, and is employed by tration" de- Herbart as an antidote for a purely incidental mandsuse- variation in recall. Without it many-sidedness ys em. ^^^ ^.^^ ^.^^ ^^ ^ ^^^^ ^^ "Banderloggism" — the state of mental instability of which Kipling's jungle people accuse the monkey tribe. To such useful concentration, neither "the five formal steps"^^ nor correlation constitute certain means. Through effective "preparation" and "presentation" new ideas may be associated in a many-sided way, and so further variation and reorganization of relationships. Even "generalization" and "application" may ensure merely a broader range for variation. Concentration is brought about only when generalization, made permanent in its general form, results in useful subordination or systematization; in the recognition of the idea as associated with the groups in which it will be specifically useful, and to whose specific usefulness it will add, or as specifically establishing a new relationship many-sided in a usefulness of its own. This is equally true of corre- lation. Indeed, assuming that it avoids the absurdities of CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 51 artificial apperception, the lamb-haunted school session made classical by Bardeen, or the "do-bird" and the "re-bird/* which Findlay found connecting music and nature,^^ its con- centration being that of branch with branch, tends to become academic, and so useful from the standpoint of specializa- tion rather than that of a general education. Whether in general or in specialized education, however, useful concen- tration — the cumulative usefulness of apperception as dis- tinct from its usefulness as a means to variation — is depend- ent upon the varying apperception of an idea made certain in some definite relationship or group of relationships. For example, the mere name Lincoln, and usually the fact that he was President during the Civil War, can be recalled by humorous anecdotes, assassination, school holidays, Gettys- burg, emancipation, or any other of the many-sided relation- ships in which Lincoln's Birthday celebrations have made it familiar. The more many-sided the association, the more frequently the name Lincoln is recalled, and the more fre- quently it is recalled, the more likely its recall or that of any one of the ideas to which it is related, as opposed to possible alternatives. But mere cumulativeness and frequency of recurrence does not ensure concentration, but rather the pathways through which useful relationships and groups of relationships can get into contact with other ideas and rela- tionships. A mere name can reorganize mental content, but it cannot dominate life and character. In place of a name, there must be definite and certain relationships — ^Lincoln's faith in divine Providence, his sympathy as illus- trated in the letter to the mother who had lost groupings her son, the democracy of his Gettysburg address essential to — or all others that relate the many-sidedness of ^q^^^^*^^" Lincoln to the essentials of religion, citizenship, or any other phase of the aim. These essential relationships must be recalled; the varying ones may be. The essential ones must be drilled upon until the name eventually suggests them, just as religion must eventually suggest faith and sym- pathy, and citizenship democracy. This done, the variation 52 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY and reorganization to which many-sidedness is the indispen- sable means will ensure useful concentration. The essential ideas that dominate life are not only made more certain of recall, but a means of contact has been forged for them, with a vast number of shifting and changing ideas. Specific disci- pline must supplement varying apperception if there is to be i useful concentration, just as varying apperception must sup- j plement specific discipline if there is to be general discipline. Mere remembrance and varying apperception incidentally provide the means by which the greatest possible number of ideas may recall each other. It is the function of specific discipline to see that the ideas most frequently recalled and recalling are recalled and recall in essentially useful relation- ships. Through varying apperception the essential relationships of life can be carried into any field of experience. Its varia- tion differs, however, from that of cumulative ^erce^fion' ^^P^^^^^on. There, varying incidents and ideas may be resulting in a common feeling are associated with hostile to a common idea. The more they accumulate, impresyon. ^^^^ though forgotten, and the greater their variation, the stronger the feeling aroused by the common idea, especially if the form of each is adapted to the development of the feeling in high degree. With varying apperception each new association may result in a different impression, which may modify instead of inten- sif)dng the feeling that impression makes sure. To sum up the educational function of varying appercep- tion, on the side of knowledge it serves to develop full or at least broader concepts; to make ideas many-sided in their relationship. From the standpoint of self-activity this many-sidedness is useful in two ways. First, it associates an idea with as many other ideas as possible, and so, both through their possible recall and association through them with still other ideas, furnishes the means for carrying it into any field of experience. Second, it makes more probable the recall of the idea, in continually varying relationships — every successive re- CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 53 call making the recollection of the idea and of each of its rela- tionships more probable as compared with that of other pos- sible associations with which they must continually compete. From the standpoint of instruction the fields of experience opened to each idea through this first use of varying apper- ception must, so far as possible, include those in r^^^ ^^^^ which it is known to be most useful. A few useful relationships in which it will be highly useful — varying ap- especially if they are typical of distinct fields or p®^^®^ *°^* kinds of relationship — should be made certain through spe- cific discipline. So far as the time available permits, many more known to be useful should be associated even though they will be at once forgotten, or be variously held in mind through miscellaneous remembrance. Always possible of recall in the original relationship, useful concentration will make them increasingly likely of recall. In the case of indi- vidual learners a few relationships will continue to be recalled in their original form, and so will become specific even in the absence of specific discipline through instruction. But over and above the many-sided relationships in which the relatively most useful ideas are known to be useful, are an immeasurable number of relationships in which they may become useful. From this point of view, miscellaneous and varying many-sidedness, apperception merely for the sake of apperception, the accidental as well as the necessary rela- tionships of every-day experience, become educational. Relations may be added that are artificial, remote, or absurd. The naturally imaginative mind, probably based upon a brain in which associative fibers readily grow, will bridge over the gaps which instruction and experience leave behind. But both to the imaginative and to the unimaginative, made in part at least imaginative as children by fairy story, ro- mance, tales of invention, and books of travel and of golden deeds — constructive and imaginative experience and instruction must be given at every stage of Varying ap- educational development. They probably need throughlm- imaginative material more in the culture epochs agination. 54 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY of sense-perception and judgment than in that of imagination itself, which theoretically and perhaps biologically lies be- tween. They must form the special habit of S3aithesis, not only in so far as it involves the recombining of the material immediately presented to the mind through experience, but where it must leap over time or space, through incidental or even temporary relationships, to ideas until then unassociated. The "bromide," if truly educated, must become, in part at least, a ''sulphite." The man in the orchard must have some of his ideas among the stars. Old Sir Thomas Browne's evils of the imagination^^ — the dangers rising from an unrestricted apperception which may put ideas into new relationships that are harmful, are, through this educational use of varying apperception, directed and regulated both negatively and positively. Negative pre- vention is practicable only through impression, in which some evil idea or idea group, certain to rise from experience, has associated with it a cumulative mass of material which will result in a growing feeling of repugnance or repulsion. To point out or to caution against associations that are merely possible in their evil has all the suggestive force of "Don't put the cat in the oven." Positive prevention results di- rectly from limiting the varying apperception of instruction to relationships known to be useful, and indirectly from the FroebeHan dominance of counteracting groups of useful ideas which concentration continually makes stronger. When the seal is once broken, the genie of imagination does not have to be put back into the vase. Again, from the standpoint of instruction, the continually increasing frequency of recall, which constitutes the second Specific phase of varying apperception, must not tend discipline to bring to mind only a central association that usefuf ^ *^ is a mere abstraction, or one or more of the varying ap- ideas to which it has been related, but the perception, specific relationship or group of relationships in which the central association is most useful. That is, the CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 55 central idea itself must be the most useful relationship with which the useful many-sidedness can be associated, made definite and certain through specific discipline. For example, the notion of rights may be associated through incidental experience with woman's rights, punishment for misbehavior outside of the school groimds, self-defense, trespass, the carrying of canes by freshmen, the right to take a drink if one pleases, Jim Crow cars, a freedom from arrest when within the law, public school education, and a multitude of other things associated with what one has or has not the right to do. But certain specific relationships fimdamentally useful should be so certainly associated with the notion of rights that they will be recalled when it is recalled. At least, considera- tion for the rights of others, the lack of moral necessity for and the unwisdom of always demanding one's own, the domi- nance of moral over legal right, and the fact that political equality not only demands for one's self rights equal to those^ of all citizens, but for all other citizens rights equal to one's ' own — should be so repeatedly drilled upon in connection with the idea of rights in general that they will always be suggested by it and one will always suggest the others. Then, through instruction, there should be associated with the particular sort of right with which it belongs, inquiry as to whether rais- ing a car window will make a neighboring passenger uncom- fortable, prevention of noise that would be annoying to others, or of whispered conversation during a sermon or public lec- ture, the giving up of a seat in a street car, refusal to strike back at a petty or unworthy opponent, the forgiving of a debt to one who cannot afford to pay by one who does not need to take, the payment of a father's debts by a son on whom there is no legal claim, equal taxation, equal suffrage, and equal opportunity to prove innocence of crime. The number of primary relationships thus associated directly with the central idea itself, and of consequent relationships indi- rectly associated through each, is limited by the time avail- able for memorizing on the one hand and by their relative usefulness on the other. 56 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY As associations multiply, their recollection is made more probable and the dominance of the primary relationship The effect- S^^^^^Y furthered, if the secondary associations iveness of represent not only useful relationships, but those typical re- that are suflSciently similar in form or kind with ps. j^^j^y others to suggest an association otherwise not readily apparent. The firm association with the equal rights of citizenship of equal opportunity to prove innocence of crime makes it easier to associate with it, lynch law, habeas corpus, trial by jury, and the '^unwritten law." Later the importance of such fixed typical relationships to general discipline will be fully demonstrated. Through them vary- ing apperception not only makes it possible for a habit or a definite relationship to be carried to any field of knowledge, but more probable that it will be carried to the field in which it can be usefully applied. Any association may become directly or indirectly useful, but those known to be useful, even though but once repeated in relationship to the central idea, may recall the primary relationships most fundamentally useful, and with each recollection make their dominance more certain. For example, woman suffrage, personal liberty, sumptuary laws, self-defense, the right of search, freedom of worship, eminent domain, prohibition, and federal election laws, associated but once with equal rights, are not only themselves given an increased likelihood of usefulness, but increase the probable usefulness of the ideal with which they have been once connected. The varying apperception of experience must be supple- mented by imaginative work and material in the school to ensure the maximum many-sidedness that is potentially useful. To make it most certainly useful through con- centration, its most useful varying relationships must be associated — and the most typical certainly associated with the specific relationships in which the central idea will be most useful. CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 57 8. Specific Discipline J the One Certain Phase of Formal Self -activity, and Essential to the Usefulness of all the Others The one form of self-activity which can be certainly made to further the educational aim in all of its phases and details is specific discipline. By specific discipline I do g ^^.^^ not mean merely the discipline peculiar to some discipline particular branch of study, but the self-activity includes which is based upon habit in the broad sense of ftTand ^ a fixed and specific stimulus invariably calling to systems of mind a particular fact or activity. It not only t^o^gj^* and involves the operation of isolated habits, but of fixed systems of thought and experience, in which habit has been associated with habit and general ideas with those sub- ordinate to them. It is the mechanical factor in education. In the case of miscellaneous apperception, an idea may sug- gest any one of a number of related facts or activities. In the case of specific discipline, whose distinguishing character- istics are definiteness of relationship and the certainty to which definiteness is a necessary condition, a particular fact or activity is sure to follow. In ordinary individual experience, or experience common to a particular environment or occupation, presentations tend to repeat themselves in definite relationships. These, re-en- forced by varying apperception w^hich, however many-sided, brings continually to mind one's ordinary concept of the thing apperceived, are made even more certain than formal educa- tion can make them, through a persistent repetition that continues long after the period of formal education has ended. The relationships thus made certain are usually the narrow, the partial, and the commonplace. They may be highly useful, but their usefulness is limited to particular locations, occupations, or social groups. Education should seek to make \ still more certain of remembrance and recall relationships that are broadly and directly useful, and that have as their stimulus what will continue to recall them in many phases of 58 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY every-day life after the repetition involved in formal education is no longer possible. Dr. Halleck, in illustrating the opera- tion of apperception, represents a man up a tree as judging the occupation of passers-by from what their comment or actions showed them to understand the tree to be.^^ It was good- morning, Mr. Tanner, to the man interested in the bark; Mr. Carpenter or Mr. Lumberman, to one who estimated its contents in board feet; Mr. Artist, to another who admired the form and color of its foliage, and so on, with poet, gunner, priest, or school boy. The only well-educated man, however, was the man up the tree. His concepts included that of all the others. Apperception in as broad a sense as the highest usefulness of each essential relationship demands, must be made specific and certain by education, as in a narrower way it is incidentally made specific and certain by experience. Specific discipline and varied apperception must supplement each other. Children can have but partial and individual concepts of the great mass of possibly useful things, but the partial concept . of these things that are certainly most useful must tion must be selected with a view to its possible useful rela- be specific tionships and be made fixed and certain through ^!J!^t„^^ formal instruction. Tree, through education, varying. ' ^ ' eventually might suggest aesthetic and religious feeling, the usefulness of its different parts, drainage, and conservation. Through the incidental apperception that results from experience, it would sometimes be something to swing on, sometimes something to climb, and usually the thing that occupation or environment happens to make it. Left to ordinary apperception, sugar may suggest the maple tree, fudge, vacuum pan, sugar tongs, the tariff, sugar beet or Cuba, and, on reflection, a various mingling of such associa- tions. With apperception made specific and certain through instruction, it should when used as a general term suggest a great staple with its raw materials, the countries pro- ducing them, manner of production, trade, manufacture, and the uses to which the finished products are put, ex- CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 59 pecially in America. Even the partial concept of any highly useful thing should, so far as possible, begin Even partial with the specific memorizing of one or two of its concepts most useful relationships. Through a purely ^egfn^with incidental experience, a church becomes a place essential re- where sermons are preached, where Sunday-school lationships. is held, where there are entertainments at Christmas. Edu- cation should make it certainly suggest the reverence becom- ing God's house, which in childhood begins, if not with Richter's mighty organ and the light of saint illumined windows, at least with the taking off of hats and subdued voices rather than blue tickets or chewing gum on the backs of pews. Usually the partial concept stops far short of specific apper- ception. Even the one or two associations upon which re- membrance is based are indefinite and uncertain. Witness the agitation of the public press when a year or so ago many of the winners of competitive examinations for appointment to West Point were not sure whether Alexandria was in Asia or Africa, or Saratoga in the Civil War or the Revolution. In fact, one of the most serious criticisms made of the new education is the lack of definiteness, which President Sharp- less recently illustrated by the Sunday-school boy who when asked, "What was the first thing which St. Peter did after he denied his Lord?" replied with, "He went out in the garden and crowed three times." In place of the unvarying repetition of definitely associ- ated facts which characterized the old education, there has been too frequently substituted an individual specific apperception which, whether optional or acci- discipline dental, leaves the determination of what is to be J®^* *°® remembered and the relationships in which it is individual remembered, to the selective activity of each determina- individuaPs mental content. When the old ^^^^' education stopped short of specific discipline it was because it sought to fix certainly all ideas in definite relationships and consequently give adequate repetition to but few relations or 6o CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY to those that were non-essentiaL The new education stops short of it when it seeks to certainly fix indefinite relationships for too few ideas or none at all. Apperception is not disci- plinary where it merely develops temporary and many-sided self-activity based on varying relationships. Discipline involves habit, and depends for its persistence upon the ade- quate and unvarying repetitions of fact and activities in defi- nite relationships. Whatever the object of a particular sort of school work or branch of study, whether it is intended to further directly industrial efficiency, good citizenship, or some other phase of the aim, or to further indirectly all phases of useful activity through academic training and general discipline, specific discipline should result in two distinct ways and involve the development of quite distinct systems of ideas. First, the new ideas and relationships resulting from study will be apperceived differently by each individual according to his dominant mental content, his past experience, and the ideas that happen to be uppermost in his mind. Whether or not the habits and systems of the school carry over into life, the habitual attitudes of mind of individual fife carry over into the school. Since the repetitions of thought and experience make life habits sure, those that are useful must be made to play their part in formal education, through teaching the material of varying apperception in relation to them. Second, both the new ideas and relationships and the old should be apperceived by all individuals through common habits and systems of thought which instruction has created and compelled. It is the function of specific discipline to make these habits and systems of thought acquired through formal instruction as certain as those acquired through every- day life. It must make them certain of operation in the academic field or they are not disciplinary at all. It may or may not meet the conditions necessary to their being carried over into other fields of knowledge and experience. Their dominance in any field, however, is primarily dependent upon CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 6 1 their system and their certainty. Habit must be systematic- ally added to habit until constellations of ideas swing in their orbits as unvaryingly as the planets rotate about the sun. In the case of the traditional * 'disciplinary/' '^abstract," or "formal" branches, such as the languages and mathematics, system and certainty are not only essential to their mastery as wholes, but are favored by the 5^^160?^^^* very sparseness of their subject matter, and the compels necessity for continually and unvaryingly repeat- temporary •£ 14.' u- J -T^i, habit and mg specmc relationships and sequences, iney system. have been contrasted with "real" or concrete branches in whose many-sided content system is more variable and the repetition of particular relationships and sequences is not compelled by their unavoidable reiteration. It by no means follows that the study of the formal subject \ is necessary to discipline. Certainty and system are made ' more probable because specific discipline is neces- continuity sary to the formal subject. Indeed, the present essential to demand by advocates of formal discipline for permanent concentration upon one or two formal subjects ^^"P^^®* for a term of years constitutes a confession that continuity in the use of subject matter is necessary to certainty of its relationships, even should its abstractness and system compel discipline so long as it is in use. A modified course of study\ may partially ensure this continuity within the school.! Outside of it, certainty of academic system is possible only through the continuity of specialization. Certainty of par- ticular habits may be ensured through the continuity result- ing from the many-sided relating of the subject matter of the school to every-day experience. Without permanent certainty I of relationship there is no permanent habit. Without per- | manent habit there can be no lasting, formal, or general dis- discipline. The side-shows must not distract attention from the main tent. But nothing will be gained by substituting for the merry-go-round of the elective system the hobby- 62 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY horse of an academic specialization, which will be left behind in school. To demonstrate, however, that the system and many of the habits resulting from the study of formal subjects are not permanent and continuing for students who do not be- come specialists, does not deprive mathematics, or the lan- guages, of the aid to specific discipline given by the necessity of repeating its details in unvarying relationships. But the importance of what is after all only a favorable condition can be easily exaggerated. Arithmetic, for example, is not commonly so taught in the schools as to rise to the dignity of mathematical system. The method peculiar to the formal subject compels a certain amount of disci- phne, but pedagogical method is necessary to ensure it in its fulness. Every step toward the development of effective pedagog- ical method in the teaching of the various branches in general is a step toward the equalization of conditions ical mefhod i^^^^^^^ i^ subject matter favorable or unfavor- can ensure able to specific discipline. The repetitions of system history are proverbial, but in it and other many- subject, sided branches, such use of specific relationships and conditions that continually recur, as to make pupils remember by them and think with them, is not com- pelled by a method peculiar to the branch itself. It is de- pendent on a pedagogical method that the teacher too often has not mastered and for which he substitutes outlines, topics, and associations too numerous to be memorized with cer- tainty, which confuse the mind through their number and block the way to general discipline. In the present state of pedagogical training — not much different today in college and university than when President Butler voiced his dis- trust of the "experience that stands alone "^^ — from the standpoint of certainty as distinct from continuity and other conditions yet to be discussed, the advantage still lies, though quite unnecessarily, with the "formal dis- ciplines." CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 63 The unforgivable sin pedagogical is that on the strength of the minor and temporary aid to specific discipline which the continual repetition of ideas in unvarying j^j^gj.^ relationships gives to the formal subjects, they preparation have become the required subjects of the school *or life curriculum in place of the equally specific systems greater sys- of thought directly necessary to citizenship, right tem than the living, health, industrial efficiency, social service, "formal'* and the proper enjoyment of leisure. There is not a phase of the educational aim which in addition to all that general discipline, information, and culture can contrib- ute does not require a more cumulative and complex system of specific relationships and fixed habits than mathematics or a language. The direct teaching of good health and good citizenship demands a more adequate specific discipline than the mastery of civics or physiology. The reason why history and civil government have been taught without making good citizens, and physiology without resulting in healthful men and women, is mainly because we have been teaching history, j civil government, and physiology instead of good health and ' citizenship. They too are sciences. To impression and many-sidedness must be added the certain interrelation and subordination of group after group of ideas and activities. The duty of suffrage, for example, must be permanently associated with the noting of registration day and the dates of primaries and elections, the study of men and of issues, the habit of overcoming all obstacles that stand in the way of registration and of voting. It, in turn, with Australian ballot system, the inexorable punishment of frauds at the polls, the Fourteenth Amendment, naturalization, woman suffrage — each one of which like it, and many more has a mass of subordinate associations in its train — must be certainly re- lated to equal suffrage. Equal suffrage must call to mind equal taxation, equality before the law, equal responsibility for its enforcement, with their several series of subordinate groupings and subgroupings, and together with them and other ideas fundamental to democracy be classified as equal 64 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY rights. Through equal rights the whole complicated body of thoughts and activities of which all these are but a part must be firmly connected with the divisions and subdivisions similarly subordinate to the obedience to law, love of Hberty, patriotic self-sacrifice, loyalty to the union, and other funda- mental phases of true American citizenship. If the religion and morahty, health, political and social service, industrial efficiency, and avocation developed through instruction are to cope with physical, social, industrial, and political evil made certain by experience and systematic through life itself, their specific discipline must be more certain and systematic than that of the "formal . disciplines" themselves. Whatever the human will may be theologically and psycho- logically, educationally the first step in its development is the Confined building up of specific relationships. It is im- to special- pression with its specific centering of the feelings *^fi*^^d-* ^^^" that constitutes conscience and "good will" so pline makes ^^^ ^s they can be regarded as pedagogical crea- life too tions. It and the force of specific discipline, the one-sided, habitual range of ideas within individual systems of thought, form both the negative power of conscience or inhibition, and the positive incentives to routine existence, imi- tation, and general discipKne. It is they that not only make the mathematician a mathematician, the soldier a soldier, and the good man a good man, but the "bromide" a "bromide," the poet a poet, and the inventor an inventor. The "bro- mide" or "philistine," satisfied with his petty routine, seeing things as he has always seen them, doing what he has ever done, and saying w^hat others have said, whether he is mathe- matician, soldier, good man, or all three, is one in whom ap- perception as a solely centripetal force has become certain and continuing. All conflicting associations, all relationships which lead away from the accustomed paths are inhibited by the fixed feelings or idea sequences that reign supreme. Once put the will to sleep or break down its inhibitory force, and the many-sidedness of relationship which has been centered upon fixed circles of thought becomes centrifugal in a reaction CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 65 which hurries the mind to associations that, whether useful, evil, fantastic, or absurd, have the one quality in common of being different from the old. One glass of champagne and the bashful or cautious man of few words may give a brilHant and witty after-dinner speech or become a loquacious fool. The bishop is quite likely to swear in the delirium of fever; the imimaginative man to dream of elephants that cKmb trees. Now the individual who has been so specifically disciplined in some one field that its feelings and habits dominate all others, except when the will is temporarily conquered, is more of a monomaniac than if he had been obsessed by one idea. The monomaniac of one idea is only a monomaniac part of the time; the monomaniac who is dominated by a system of feelings and ideas is never likely to be sane at all. He may play a necessary part in civiliza- tion. He may be a mighty conqueror, the remorseless cap- tain of industry, or a glorious fanatic who blesses a people or destroys a creed. But such a monomaniac is the product of heredity and environment or the gift of God. Were it possible to produce him through education, we would not dare for fear that assuming the function of nature and of deity, we would create a Frankenstein. So far as instruction can supplement nature and experience by completing or correcting the systems which they so spe- cifically and certainly develop, it will be first by • building up not one but all of the several great ^^iMtionof systems of specifically related feelings and all systems thoughts which correspond to the several phases *o direct of the educational ideal, including a subordinate essentfd.^^ academic specialization; and second, by ensuring for each a many-sidedness through apperception and general discipline, that is as essential to their highest usefulness as is specific discipline to the useful concentration of varpng ap- perception. Specific discipHne, through and for morality, religion, health, work, social service, citizenship, and avocation, is primary. It can be brought about only through continual 5 66 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY repetition and reiteration year by year of ideas and activities definitely associated in the relationships which make them directly and certainly useful and in which they will continue to be useful in every-day life, as well as in school. For this continuity is as essential as certainty. Not only must habits be continuing, but they must be continuing in the relation- ships which ensure their direct usefulness. Obviously, the direct and general usefulness of an academic subject or "formal discipline" is Hmited to its contribution Even as a ^^ various relationships, which will be reorganized specific dis- in specific association wath some phase of the cipline, the educational aim. Its mastery as a systematic subject is whole is only justifiable for all individuals in on the^ common, if it thereby develops some relation- defensive, gj^p Qj. ggj.jgs of activities, highly useful to all, that cannot be developed as thoroughly or at all by other subjects whose closer relationships to life make useful application either certain or more probable. That is, even from the standpoint of specific discipline, the highly organized subject matter of the formal subject, with its certainty of specific relationships and system, is a disadvantage rather than an advantage if its mastery as a whole is not directly useful. If mastery of the whole is unavoidable as a necessary condi- tion to that of some part which gives a relationship otherwise unattainable, or so much more thoroughly developed that the time spent in the mastery of the whole is justified, the more exact and thorough the branch as a whole, the greater the waste of time in its mastery. Hence, from the standpoint of a general education required of all, as distinct from a speciahzation possible to each, every "formal" subject is on the defensive — first, to prove that the specific relationship it develops cannot be developed at all or as thoroughly by subject-matter organized for direct usefulness; and, second, to prove that to ensure such mastery or its directly useful i relationships, it must be studied as a whole. From the standpoint of specialization, however, the mastery of the branch as a whole may become necessary — not as a CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 67 required subject for all individuals in common, but in order that particular individuals may directly and specifically serve various phases of the aim in some way to which the branch as a whole is essential. All men to be healthy need not be math- ematicians and physiologists, but the physician must know his anatomy, and the specialist in advanced medical research his mathematics and electro-chemistry. Sharp discrimina- tion, then, must be made between the specific discipline which is specifically useful to all individuals, and that which is spe- cifically useful to the specialist. Science and civilization demand only of the few, the teachers and investigators, that, for the sake of knowledge alone, they shall devote their life- effort — their continual study to some particular branch of knowledge which to others may be avocation, industry, or citizenship, but to them means the advancement, the con- servation, and the transmission of learning. The specific discipline that directly and certainly makes for the various phases of the educational aim, must not only utilize and reorganize the system that may have r^^^ ^ been in part academically acquired, but it must cific dis- utilize and reorganize the specific disciplines of cipline of life itself. Conspicuous among these is imitation aration*^^^" — especially imitation of a personal example, must in- Ernest gained from the Great Stone Face a lesson ^^uf ^^^\f which no mere mass of rock could give. The contemplation of Buddha, and ''the putting on" of Christ as advocated by St. Paul and attempted by Thomas a Kempis, add through the presence of personality, the repetition of feeling and of action to that of idea, and so bring about interaction of habit and ideal. The imitation of ordinary life, however, needs direction through instruction, and the addition of other forms of specific discipline to ensure its usefulness. No human example is perfect, no divine ex- ample will remain unimpaired by the human imperfections which humanity has ever seen reflected in the divine. The personal example of a great teacher impresses itself upon the few; each of the Spheres of Helmholz responds to but a single 68 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY note. It is, after all, the sufficiently persistent pointing out of a great example by teachers who are not great that, added to all other forms of specific discipline, tends most strongly to ensure the ideals and the habits necessary to each phase of the educational aim. Example is better than precept, but it is still better when precept and fixed sequence of feelings and ideas are added to it. The specific discipline, then, of instruction directly prep- aratory to each phase of the aim, must be strong enough not only to continue in life, but to reorganize and to r^or^*an^ dominate the specific disciplines of experience, ize experi- To this continuance and domination the closest ence must possible interconnection between the school and to U^ef ^ every-day life is an indispensable condition. The specific discipline of the formal subjects most re- mote from life may be exceptionally certain on accoimt of their remoteness. They are continuing and dominating, however, only for pedant or specialist; and then usually in the negative sense of inhibiting other relationships. Witness Fenimore Cooper's naturalist among the pioneers in *The Prairie," or the professor of the modern newspaper cartoonist, provokingly untrustworthy in life's simplest experiences. Even systems of instruction not merely formal, but directly and specifically disciplinary in health or citizenship, always tend to be limited to the relationships in which their useful- ness has become habitual. Specific discipline is negative and inhibitory because it is specific. It tends to prevent wrong activity alternative to useful habits already formed, but not to carry useful habits over into new fields. The carrying over of academic systems as systems is reserved for the spe- cialist, except in so far as an academic system has in whole or in part been associated with the system specifically furthering some phase of the aim. If the habit of systematically noting details developed in chemistry, or a habit of analysis formed in grammar, is to be carried over into industry, it must be specifically associated with some definite phase of industry. The systems essential to morality, citizenship, and the CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 69 other specific disciplines directly necessary to complete living, must be carried over as wholes into every-day experi- ence not only to inhibit conflicting habits, but to reorganize and dominate every phase and episode of life in which they can be applied. The sole means to this end are varying! apperception and general discipline. I The varying apperception of each specifically useful group in all useful relationships that can be anticipated, is impossible through instruction. Still more out Domination of the question is the anticipatory association of possible only each in all useful relationships that are possible, through for few useful relationships are determinable in perception advance of the situation in which they are needed, and general At best, as has been said vinder varying apper- ^^^^^ ^®* ception, instruction must present as many specifically useful associations as time permits, and make certain the few that are most typical. Joseph Payne early pointed out the two fallacies of insisting that because there is so much to know in the world children should learn it all at school, and that because there is so much to be done in the world children should anticipate it all through instruction.^^ His solution was formal discipline; Herbart's was many-sidedness. Strange that we have been so long in perceiving that each solution is partial and inadequate without the other. Many- sidedness furnishes the system of transportation and inter- communication by which an idea or relationship can be associated with any other that is capable of recall. It makes equally possible the most desperate freaks of insanity and the noblest flights of imagination. Varying apperception of a useful relationship in manifold useful connections makes its usefulness more probable, both by multiplying the paths of certainly useful recall and by increasing the likelihood of recall. Its specific association in a few typically useful rela- tionships, gives it the only usefulness that is certain, and makes easier the task of general discipline. It remains for general discipline to give the highest probability of application to any useful sequence or habit, and consequently to the whole 70 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY system of ideas and activities of which it forms a part, in case that, through many-sidedness, its accustomed stimulus is associated with some unaccustomed field of experience. If specific discipline is to result in general discipline, if a habit or a sequence is to be carried over into some other General environment than that in which it is formed, it discipline must not only be certain and continuing, but its h^b^f ^\h s^i^^^^s must be general enough to be found in ^i as general the Other environment. The fact that it is ' a stimulus found there does not, of course, make it useful as IS use u . -j-j^^j.^^ j^^j. ^j^^g [-^^ possible usefulness there ensure its recognition and the consequent and certain operation of the habit. The conditions necessary to its recognition will be discussed imder general discipline. Meanwhile it is clear that specific discipline must meet the fundamental obstacles to the operation or the usefulness of general discipline — the association in the sequence or habit of a stimulus too par- ticular or too general to be useful. The too narrow stimulus is well illustrated by the mythical but classical case of the woman who having broken her right leg was sympathetic with all similarly afflicted, but wholly in- capable of sympathizing with anyone who had broken the left. A boy may learn to be certainly obedient to his father and not his mother, to a particular inflection or stress of voice, to a particular teacher, to any teacher on the second floor, or to no teacher off the school grounds. He is not as usefully disciplined as he should be until the stimulus to obedience is a command that does not violate conscience, given by any one who has the right to give it. On the other hand, the habitual stimulus to an idea or other activity should not be as general as possible, but only as general as may be useful. The whole German Empire laughed because a little town obeyed the absurd commands of an adventurer who assumed imperial authority with a cast-off uniform. Useful as the habit of observation is, its stimulus should not be any object which happens to fall within the range of the senses. The amiable lecturer before teachers' assemblies, who proves his CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 71 auditors poor observers by asking them the color of the neck- tie he wore the day before, the number of houses in the neighborhood which have front porches, or on which pair of legs a cow first rises from the ground would be a monomaniac more hopeless because scientific if he carried that sort of observation very far beyond the institute platform. Imagine him noticing the color of each auditor's eyes, the style and number of buttons within his range of vision and the details in the pictures, or other decorations on the wall. One of the most important problems connected with the development of self-activity is the determination of the extent to which it is useful for the stimulus to a useful habit to be general, if the habit is to be most useful. Generalization of the stimulus to a habit, thus limited, is the first necessary condition to general discipline or application, and will be more fully discussed in relation to it. It is the stimulus to the habit, not the habit, that is generalized. Habit is always specific. There is no such thing as a general habit, except as the term is loosely applied to a habit with a general stimulus. The important fact to note at this point is the necessity from the standpoint of education in contrast with incidental experi- Extent of ence, of limiting generalization, Herbartian or generaliza- otherwise, to the useful and to what furthers *^ISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY details until the stimulus as a whole is identified. As pointed out by Alexander Bain, drawing results in an observation which, having reproduction for its aim, is little likely to be synthetic. The analysis worth while from the standpoint of general discipline is what Dr. Adams shows to be true of the ''observation'' of Sherlock Holmes — not observation in the usual sense at all, but analysis followed by synthesis and reassociation.^2 Sometimes the possibility of application in a seemingly remote environment flashes upon a thinker through the selec- ^ , . tion and identification of some detail that forms commonly P^^^ ^^ ^^^ Stimulus. That is, what Professor due to tem- James used to call "sagacity" comes into play. porary in- More frequently one is confronted with a propo- the habit of sition or situation as a whole which gives some analyzing hint as to the sort of stimulus that should be lar^fieldT" identified — an original problem in geometry where analysis will separate out equal lines and angles, or a new city with possible factors that in combination form the stimulus for the judgment "manufacturing center." From the standpoint of sagacity, on the other hand, applica- tion has no limit. In an environment not formerly associa- ted with it, a flash of insight suggests the usual stimulus to some habit or relationship that may be brought into play. In either case, analysis and synthesis must follow. But the cue to purposeful analysis is usually the presence of a situa- tion or proposition which presents some temporary interest or which one has formed the habit of analyzing. That is, general discipline will not only fail to operate where one is ignorant of details, but in combinations of familiar details to which one has not formed the habit of carrying over relation- ships, or in which one is not otherwise interested. Here it is plain, on the one hand, that the many-sidedness of interest to which apperception gives rise is a condition to the incidental operation of general discipline, and on the other, that in place of the impossible habit of analyzing every environment with which one is confronted, must be substituted the habits of CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 103 analyzing the particular situations to which the relationships made certain through direct preparation for life must be ap- plied. Where the stimulus is not composite, analysis is all that is necessary for its identification. If the habit has been cer- tainly formed, the identification of its stimulus Recognition will at once result in its operation, but where the of parts of a stimulus is composite, recognition of its several gj^^^j^g® parts by no means carries with it its identifica- must be tion as a whole. Two sides of one triangle may be followed by recognized as equal to two sides of another, and synthesis, the included angle of the one may be recognized as equal to that of the other without sides and angles i^being combined into the famiHar stimulus "two sides and the included angle." Here, again, there can be no habit of synthesizing all details, but rather the habit of combining and recombining details in fields of knowledge and experience where the habits to be applied may be expected to usefully operate. Information or experience in most minds embraces far too many details for their occurrence to be accepted as a general stimulus to either analysis or synthesis. Indeed, except in the case of a monomaniac, varying interest and attention would make this impossible. Conditioned, as general discipline is, by habits whose stimuli cannot be general, the only certainty of its useful operation is in making analysis and S3mthesis habitual in the specific field to which general discipline is to carry other habits. In the case of the more concrete stimulus, identification may be direct, or partial identification may precede analysis and suggest it. The identification of a more abstract stimulus in concrete form, however, not only requires analysis, but the analysis is itself conditioned by knowledge of the concrete details of which the stimulus is a part, or of the spe- cific response for which it is the signal. For example, to solve a problem through the fundamental principles of per- centage the habits of synthesis and analysis must be associ- ated with any problem in which hundredths figure. Th^ I04 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY readily apparent presence of the rate per cent, is itself the signal for analysis, with a view to identifying the stimulus of which it is the whole or a part. If the rate per cent, itself is to be determined, it in itself at once becomes the whole stimulus to the division of the percentage by the base. If not, its recognition as a partial stimulus should become the first step in an analysis which finally supplies cost or gain, amount purchased or commission, etc., followed by a syn- thesis which completes the stimulus as per cent, and base, per cent, and percentage, one plus the per cent, and the "amount" or one less the per cent, and the "difference." The failure of pupils to identify the stimulus as a whole after partially recognizing it in the per cent, may be due to the absence of the habit of analysis, but more frequently to the absence of the habit of synthesis or to lack of knowledge of the terms which denote the whole number of hundreds on which the per cent, is taken and the number resulting from the taking of the per cent. If pupils have never been taught the prin- ciples of percentage at all, and are wholly dependent upon the more abstract stimulus of multiplicand and multiplier, multiplier and product, or product and multiplicand, not only must analysis and synthesis become associated with any The most problem involving times more or division into general equal parts, but further and more difficult analy- stimulus ^^^ ^^^ synthesis become necessary without a most use- knowledge of details becoming any less essential. ful poten- The most general stimulus that is useful is always the con^ ^^^ most useful, and in number the most abstract Crete more stimulus is always potentially the most useful, certain. because a numerical stimulus cannot become too general. But the more concrete stimulus is the more certain. To identify cost and rate of gain or rate of commission and commission requires less complex analysis than to identify multiplicand and multiplier or multiplier and product, and ensures readier judgment than when cost and rate of gain have to suggest base and rate, and base and rate, multipli-. cand and multiplier, before the judgment "multiply" results, * CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 105 This is one reason why each general stimulus must be certainly and permanently associated with a few of its most useful and suggestive applications. Thus associated, how- ever, they are not merely specific and, hence, certain habits, but serve to make easier recognition of the general stimulus in similar concrete forms. Academic analysis and synthesis are readily associated with the fields in which they are academically useful: mathemat- ical problems, flowers, forms of life, minerals, chemical sub- stances, movements, and forces. That is, the analysis and synthesis necessary to general discipline within a so-called "specific discipline" can be readily made habitual. This is in part true of the "specific discipline" necessary to direct prep- aration for life, which may or may not include the academic disciplines. The analysis and synthesis necessary to morals, health, industrial efficiency, social service, good ^^^ ^.^^^^ citizenship, and right avocation must be associ- preparation ated with particular phases of diet, respiration, ensures an- 1 , . ..1 J.' ^ alysis and clothmg, particular occupation, government, or synthesis public welfare. From the standpoint of general outside the discipline, the fundamental difference between the ^^^^^^^ habits of analysis and synthesis due to specific academic discipline and those due to equally systematic and specific preparation for some phase of life, is that the mastery of the academic discipline does not demand that they shall be carried over into life in general outside the fields in which they can be certainly associated, and that the direct prep- aration for life does. It is not necessary to a pure science that it shall be applied at all. On the other hand, the habit of analysis and synthesis necessary to carrying over as a means to direct preparation is identical with the habit necessary to such general analysis and synthesis as may be useful — that is, the certain association with the identification of any detail as part of a general stimulus, of analysis and synthesis with a view to the identi- fication of the stimulus as a whole. While analysis and syn- thesis in the academic subject, and more especially in the lo6 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY formal discipline, can be thus suggested by the partial identi- fication of some stimulus, all that academic proficiency re- quires is that they shall be suggested, as already pointed out, by the presence of the particular t3^e of material ordinarily associated with them. Language will suggest the analysis necessary to grammatical or rhetorical form. Matter of a particular kind will suggest the analysis and synthesis of botany, zoology, or geology; and particular manifestations of matter, that of chemistry or physics. The object of the academic study is not to make as independent and probable as possible the carrying over of its relationships into every useful field, but to make the learner capable of applying them whenever he is called upon to do so. That is, outside of the academic subject matter itself, the aim is not self-activity and a continual analysis and synthesis on the recognition of any part of the usual stimulus, but the ability to analyze and synthesize if application is demanded. While an industrial specialist or a specialist in pure science may seek new applica- tions, the general student trained in chemistry, for example, either brings it to bear in explanation of phenomena with which it has already been associated, or in the solution of some problem with which he has actually been confronted, obvi- ously chemical in its explanation. Now, although the habits of analysis and synthesis neces- sary to morality, health, industrial efficiency, social service, good citizenship, and even right avocation are in part like those involved in academic study suggested by specific kinds of experience, they most frequently operate not only when the specific phase of experience which suggests them is lacking, but when the specific experience -presented is strongly suggestive of other groups and systems of thought which tend to exclude them. For example, the failure of a street railway conductor to collect a fare may suggest official carelessness and con- sequently failure to call out streets, lack of courtesy and so on — a sufficiently potent group of ideas to distract attention from the passenger's personal resppnsibility for payment, unless the very idea of fare in pairt, at least, suggests it, CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 107 and raises the question of honesty. If it does, analysis and synthesis must at once determine the presence or absence of the general stimulus to the judgment honest or dishonest. The various specific phases of direct preparation for life differ widely in the extent to which they can, like the aca- demic subjects, depend upon specific forms of experience to suggest analysis and synthesis. More than this, it is possible to ensure the carrying over of habits of analysis and synthesis from the academic subjects. But with the former it is essen- tial; with the latter, artificial. Just as the formal subjects, through their essential certainty and system, favor specific discipline, so do the systems of relationship made equally certain in their furtherance of every-day life, naturally favor general discipline. A minor distinction unfavorable to the study of the abstract subjects as a means to general discipline lies in the fact that the specific kind of experience which suggests their habits of analysis and syn- requires thesis is for the most part concrete and tan- analysis gible — ^word forms, symbols, lines and angles, ^nassisted ^, . 1.11 i- 1 -1 ^y concrete objects and other phenomena of sense, while details pres- both life and direct preparation for it require entin • r 1 • 1 **abstract" a far greater proportion of analysis and syn- g^^jgcts. thesis of ideas unassisted by things. Finally, although in both the formal subjects and direct preparation for life, the association of cumulative impression with a general stimulus, its apperception as a center for concentration, its certain association with various typical fields and frequent association with favorable fields outside its own, and frequent effort to discover new applications, may point the way to analysis and synthesis where they will be most useful; they are naturally developed in the abstract or even the academic subject only through specialization, while they are as essential to direct preparation for life as is specific discipline itself. In both academic work and that directly preparatory to lo8 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY life, innate interests, varying interests, and the interest that Varying in- 2,rises from even temporary concentration should terest a be utilized as a favorable condition for analytical ^^^^d^^^t ^^^ synthetical work with a view to general analysis discipline. The fact that analysis, like observa- and syn- tion, when effectively exercised in one field, is for thesis. ^Yie time being at least less probable in any other, merely emphasizes the importance of temporary or changing interests and concentrations. This is why thesis work, involv- ing weeks of research, possesses such marked advantages over frequent and unimpressive papers which are necessarily mere compilations or transpositions, valuable mainly from the standpoint of written repetitions of facts and drill in form of expression. The habit of analysis and synthesis certainly associated with the identification of any part of a general stimulus is the best antidote for '^too hasty interference" and "jum^ping at conclusions." Wherever there is opportunity for it, each part of the stimulus as a whole must be identified before the sequence or the habit results. The very "hastiness" and the tendency to "jump" are invaluable if they lead toward the stimulus as a whole instead of skipping over to its con- sequences. Where certain parts of the familiar general stimulus are found to be missing, drill in adaptation should be substituted Value of the ^^^ application. Here, adaptation, in place of drill in being dependent upon a sufficiently general adaptation stimulus, takes the form of noting whether or not scientific the variation in the stimulus does or does not experimen- seriously modify the ascertained result, or of tation. actually attempting variation in the stimulus with a view to a desirable modification of the result. All experi- mental sciences involve adaptation as certainly as they ensure application. The drill necessary to the formation of this habit, however, not only does not demand the mastery of any one of them as a whole, but the modified stimulus or result which is a signal for its operation will be associated with more CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 109 fields of experience, and general application made more prob- able, if the habit is formed through experimentation with material selected from a variety of sciences. On the contrary, mathematics as an exact science tends to make the individual so certain of his judgment in the absence of the modifying conditions which its abstract- _. ^- ,.. 1 1 •! 'r J.' r Matnemat- ness elimmates, that on the identmcation ot a ics in itself familiar stimulus as a whole the usual judgment ill-suited to is likely to follow with an inexorability and self- ^abit^cS *^^ confidence which leave no room for adaptation, adaptation ! After all, human nature is such that the easiest or truth- habit to carry over from mathematics to life in general is a strongly increased confidence in the infallibility of one's own conclusions. The common impression that, some- how or other on account of its exactness, the study of mathe- matics tends to make one more truthful, fails to take this tendency into account. If exactness results in a narrowmind- edness that focuses attention on the correctness of small de- tails of life, without the due sense of proportion and the broader perspective of which modifying conditions form a part, the resulting truth is partial and misleading. It is well to remember that the exact science which has made the most helpful contribution to modern logic is in itself alone inadequate not only as a general discipline for reasons al- ready discussed, but from the standpoint of adaptation and of truthfulness. Life is not abstract. Its conclusions are con- • tinually being modified by its many-sidedness, and its exact statements, though true in themselves, are often the farthest swing of the pendulum from whole truths. CHAPTER IV THE COMPARATIVE USELESSNESS OF THE OLD "DISCIPLIN- ARY" OR "formal'' SUBJECTS TO ALL PHASES OF FORMAL SELF-ACTIVITY EXCEPT SPECIFIC DISCIPLINE The necessity for this complex analysis of educational self- activity now stands revealed. A discipline no longer formal in the traditional sense cannot be the sole alternative and complement of knowledge and culture. In the new sense of general discipline, it is only one among several forms of educa- tional or formal self-activity, all of which are interrelated and interdependent. Apperception also is too vague a term to displace it, even when used in as inclusive a sense as formal discipline itself. Varying apperception is the complement of specific discipline, and with it and cumulative impression a necessary condition to general discipline. Mere remembrance is the initial step by which experience that does not fade away into impression becomes specific discipline and varying ap- perception. I. The Usefulness of an Idea or Activity Dependent Upon the Relationships in Which It Is Retained and Recalled From the standpoint of instruction, knowledge depends for its usefulness solely upon the relationships in which it is mastered. In forgotten relationships it gives rise to impression which as common feeling centered upon a useful idea becomes cumulative in its force and creates an emotional center. In partial relationships, it results in mere remembrance which holds an idea in mind, usually in incidental associations varying with individuals, until its relationships are multiplied by varying apperception or made certain by specific discipline. In many-sided relationships it produces varying apperception through which it may be carried over to any other directly or 110 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY ill indirectly related ideas, and they concentrated upon it. In definite and certain relationships, it leads to specific disci- pline, on which the permanence of all fixed relationships, the usefulness of varying apperception, and the possibility and usefulness of general discipline depend. Even here it emerges from information only as its relationships result in system. In definite and specific relationships having a general stimulus , it furthers general discipline, the only means by which the cer- tainly useful can be applied in all possible fields of experience. 2. The Usefulness of Relationships Can Be Measured Only Through Degree of Inherent Sensation or Emotion that is Useful, the Number of Relationships in Which They are Potentially Useful, and the Number of Their Useful Recurrences in Every-day Life Now if by usefulness is meant either direct or indirect fur- therance of the educational aim, the usefulness of a single relationship or a system of relationships, whether of knowl- edge or activities, can be measured only through the degree of useful sensation or feeling inherent in it, the number of relationships in which it is potentially useful, and the fre- quency of its recurrence in such relationships in every-day life. In cumulative impression the degree of inherent sensation or feeling is determining; in mere remembrance and varying apperception, possible many-sidedness of relationship and fre- quency of recurrence; in general discipline, all three. Here interest, many-sidedness, and frequency of recurrence not only unite to increase the probability of usefulness, but through greater impressiveness and likelihood of repetition themselves tend to ensure certainty. Either for a single relationship or a system of relationships, whether regarded as a whole or as an aggregate of the parts and relationships which comprise it, the test is the same. That is, a specific system of knowl- edge and activities can be evaluated in part and as a whole through the aggregate worth of component single relation- ships, measured by sensational or emotional appeal, many- sidedness, and recurrence. 112 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 3. Since the Relationships Directly Useful in Highest Degree Are Capable 0} Being Indirectly Useful in the Highest Degree, the General Course of Study Must Emphasize Subjects Containing a High Proportion of Directly Useful Material Holding in mind the fundamental distinction, ignored by Mr. Spencer but pointed out by W. H. Payne and others among his critics, between what is useful to the race through the specialist and what is directly useful to all, it is clear that every branch of human knowledge will continue to figure in the course of study. Most have subject-matter directly or indirectly useful to all. Some contain material useful only through the specialist. But general education will exclude all subjects as wholes which are useful to all as wholes, through their disciplinary value alone. More than this, all learners, including the specialist, must master, on the one tratioiT' hand, the subject-matter directly preparatory to through life, and, on the other, that which is essential to special- useful general discipline. The present tendency inadequate toward a paralleling of a many-sided course of remedy for study with intensive work in two or three formal disciDUne^ subjects required in common of all might be peda- gogical, were it not for two facts. On the one hand, the formal subjects have been demonstrated to be not only unnecessary to general discipline, but to a limited extent disadvantageous to it. On the other, the systematic organi- zation of material with a view to direct preparation for life has just as certainly been demonstrated to involve the forma- tion of all habits that should be generally applied, and to be to a serious extent essential to the general application of useful habits wherever they may have been formed. If the truth of these two propositions has been demonstrated, the traditional position of the abstract subjects and that of those more directly preparatory to life must be reversed. The abstract subjects must become the electives, and the subjects directly preparatory to life the required subjects. As re- CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY II3 gards the necessity for direct preparation, no demonstration is necessary. As regards the superior efficiency of direct in- struction as a means to the indirect furtherance of the edu- cational aim through the formal phases or educational forms of self-activity, recapitulation cannot but be convincing. 4. The Study of the Formal Subjects But Little Favorable to Phases of Formal Self -activity Other Than Specific Discipline From this point of view, the advantage of the old "formal subjects" over the academic branches lies in the fact that they are formal through their essential organization and the method inherent in their organization. Their adequate mas- tery compels the certain and systematic specific discipline which in other subjects is far more largely dependent upon pedagogic method and not inherent in an inevitable organiza- tion of their subject matter. While in the case of other aca- demic subjects the same certainty and system are possible through pedagogic method, in direct preparation for life it must be compelled. Morality and religion, health, industrial efficiency, and citizenship cannot be adequately taught un- less they are formally taught in the true sense — ^with each form of educational self-activity certainly developed, includ- ing a more certain and more systematic specific discipline than that of a branch of mathematics or a language. At this point, however, the formal subject has the right to throw down the gauntlet which direct preparation can only theo- retically pick up until the necessary organization has become actual. From the standpoint of general discipline and all other formal phases of self-activity, the supremacy of mathematics and the languages is irretrievably lost, while that of direct preparation for life is irresistibly destined to become more complete. Cumulative impression, both in itself and as a favorable condition to general discipline, demands subject matter which is inherently emotional or which is made so through its form of expression. This involves, in place of the formal subjects or in addition to them, the utilization through 8 114 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY direct instruction of selections both from emotional experi- ence and literature and art, made on account of their emo- tional expression of ideas which should dominate life and character. Artistic expression and appreciation, as distinct from emotional sensibility and aesthetic enjoyment, are from this point of view not essential to the mass of individuals, and, indeed, are possible in any high degree only to the specialist — on the side of appreciation, the specialist in culture, on that of expression, the specialist in art. In fact, since analysis and discrimination tend to lessen emotion, both sensibility and aesthetic enjoyment may actually be lessened through artistic training. Mere remembrance, dependent as it is on connection with individual experience, like the varying apperception which it conditions, finds little encouragement in abstract subject matter. It helps more in the mastery of the abstract subject matter than the abstract subject matter helps in developing it in every-day life. That is, any idea, no matter how ab- stract, may be temporarily held in mind in some incidental or even ridiculous association. But it is the subject matter full of vastly more concrete details than can be certainly remembered that profits most from mere remembrance and makes the most useful contribution to it. 5. The Limited Contribution to Formal Self -activity Resulting From the Elementary Study of a Foreign Language Even in the case of language, it is only in the general sense of the partial mastery of mere words in the vernacular and Mere re- ^^t through grammatical terminology or tech- membrance nique that it makes its fundamental contribution and vary- ^^ vaeve remembrance. Both mere remembrance ing apper- , . ,. , -j j ception and varying apperception, however, are aided furthered by the mastery of a foreign language in the in- use^olT^"^^ strumental sense. They are not materially foreign furthered through the process of mastery, except language. {^ j-^g added associations given words through etymology, and a broadening of their information and inter- CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 115 ests through the translating of passages that could have been far more readily acquired in the vernacular. The increased many-sidedness comes through the mastery of a language as a ready means of gaining knowledge and experience not accessible in the vernacular, or of adding to that which is. Thomas Arnold's appeal for the classics, in so far as it was not disciplinary, was made from this point of view: ''Expell Greek and Latin from your schools, and you confine the views of the existing generation to themselves and their immediate predecessors. Aristotle and Plato and Thucy- dides and Cicero and Tacitus are most untruly called ancient writers. They are virtually our own countrymen and con- temporaries, but have the advantage which is enjoyed by intelligent travelers, that their observation has been exercised in a field out of the reach of common men, and that having thus seen in a manner with our eyes, what we cannot see for ourselves, their conclusions are such as bear upon our own circumstances."^^ But as Alexander Bain pointed out, with the exception of a certain aesthetic quality inherent in the form of a language as distinct from the thought which it expresses, its whole benefit from this instrumental point of view, its culture and its knowledge, can be acquired through the reading of what others have translated.^ Since, as President HalFs investigations have helped in- guch ready dicate, the mass of students in high school and use involves in college fail to attain either the degree or the continuous stage of advancement at which a language be- ^^ ^' comes instrumental, it follows that either more thorough instruction or more time must be given to those whose mas- tery is attempted. This, as in the case of discipline, justi- fies concentration, but, like it, not a concentration required in common of all students. The knowledge, the culture, and the experience that cannot be obtained through the vernacu- lar are in America necessary only to the specialist. This fact is recognized by the present requirement that each arts and science student shall master one or two languages, without the specification of any particular one. If no one language Ii6 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY opens the way to a knowledge, culture, and experience which, in addition to what is furnished through the vernacular, must be required of all, it follows that the requirement of one or two is wholly unjustifiable. A particular one might be required of all on the ground of its special fitness for a dis- cipline peculiar to language study in general. This peculiar discipline, however, reduces itself to linguistic habits which can carry over from one language to another, of which the carrying over the habit of noticing the spelling of foreign words to English words is one of the most practical examples. But quite aside from the further arguments developed in the present discussion, Mr. Bain long ago demonstrated that language study involves no general discipline exclusively its own,^^ which applies outside the linguistic field itself. It is true, of course, that a large proportion of individuals need Ready use some language or languages other than their of foreign own for the sake of knowledge and experience language j^q^ possible through the vernacular alone — for essential to many, but the sake of travel, for the pleasure of some specific not to be re- culture, for the sake of some industry or vocation, quired of all. f^^. ^^^ ^^-^^ ^f g^^^ ^^j^ ^f advanced study. This means, however, that the majority will necessarily elect some language or be required to take it as a condition to some phase of specialization, and not that the study of foreign language, especially of a specified foreign language, shall be required of all. 6. The Limitation to the Formal Value of Mathematical Study While a certain proportion of the instructors in mathemat- ics who responded to the questionnaire of the American sub-committee of the international commission on the teach- ing of mathematics insist on the cultural value of the subject, the majority ignore this phase of its possible usefulness alto- gether.^ This is significant of the limited extent to which many-sidedness is inherent in mathematical study. Obvi- ously, it neither abounds in a wealth of ideas and activities which will add to the apperceiving mass through incidental CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 117 association with others, nor in ideas which incidentally re- membered will constitute centers for valuing apperception. As a pure science, its details certainly associated with each other give rise to specific discipline rather than to continually changing relationships. From the standpoint of application and general discipline, however, it is necessary to examine into the extent to which it demands varying apperception, and so promotes its development through reorganizing the subject matter of more concrete subjects. If any branch of mathematics is related to life in a many- sided way, it is arithmetic. As has been already pointed out, v^ however, the stimulus to arithmetical operation is too general for a varying association of number application or numerical principles with all possible ideas to of mathe- serve any useful arithmetical purpose. In gen- maticsinde- eral experience it is not recognition of the presence fn^uction. of number or the possibility of operation that should suggest operation, but the need of it. The few fields in which each mathematical principle is usefully and cer- tainly applied in the every-day life of the majority of learners are, of course, definitely associated with it as part of the specific discipline of the subject. Even this can be overdone, as in the old association of percentage with brokerage, foreign exchange, and duties on imports. The experience and vocab- ulary essential to such applications belong to the specialist. It is not the possibility of teaching mathematical subject matter in many-sided relationships with life in general that is questioned, but its necessity to arithmetic and its useful- ness to varying apperception. Dr. Eugene Smith, himself chairman of the sub-committee mentioned above, with Her- bartian skill has associated arithmetical principles with a great variety of technical processes and other forms of specialized experience. Such association, however, though common in many modern text-books, is not necessary to as general application as is useful. In many instances the vocabulary and experience involved belong to the specialist, and are of necessity associated with the general principle Il8 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY when he needs it in his work or his avocation. In others, they are already fapaihar to the pupils and need not be spe- cially associated with the habitual arithmetical analysis Number too necessary to the identification of the required general in principle. On the other hand, many-sided appli- es applica- cation is useless in the development of varying tion to re- , . , .... , ,, call many- apperception whenever it is too general to call sided asso- varying experience to mind. The fact that dol- ciations. j^j.g ^^^ trilobites have been separately added or have been separately associated with the idea of addition, unites them by a connecting link which, being suggestive of all objects and possible of suggestion by all, is little likely to bridge over the gap between any two. That is, number, neither suggesting its concrete applications nor being sug- gested by them, is little likely to associate them with each other, while its more concrete associations are not numerical associations at all. Outside its own subject matter, arith- metic can develop varying apperception as it can develop general discipline, but in both cases unnecessarily from the standpoint of varying apperception and general discipline. Its very demand of certainty makes varying association less likely, because practically all of its subject matter being made certain, there is little left for incidental remembrance and apperception. What is true of arithmetic is true of the higher mathematics as well. Mr. Bain summed the whole matter up when he said, ^^In the point of view of information, the uses of mathematics are more obvious; but these uses when carried to their utmost stretch, suppose special profes- sions.'' He further asserts, however, that "In the examples of arithmetical and algebraic operations, much valuable The limit practical knowledge is incidentally obtained, and to the use more might be done to turn the opportunity to of mathe- account."^^ Dr. Smith has been wisely turning matics as a •/ o means to the opportunity to account. When a sufficient varying ap- variety of applications are found in familiar perception, experience, the limit to the use of mathematics as a means to varying apperception lies in introducing new CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 119 terms and concepts that add to the difficulty of the work, by either unnecessarily anticipating experience which will in due course of time become familiar, or trespassing upon the domain of specialization. Carried to this point, the "new arithmetic' ' is not arithmetic at all. If the only usefulness of mathematics lay in its contribution to varying apperception, it would not be necessary to include it in the general course of study. 7. Varying Apperception Furthered by the Presentation of the Most Many-sided and Recurring Relationships Wher- ever Found On the other hand, literature, history, sociology, economics, the natural sciences, and all 'other subjects rich in concrete subject matter, with an abundance of relationships not made certain through specific discipline, both furnish continual material for varying apperception and demand its develop- ment. While even the seemingly most useless associations that experience brings about should be welcomed in so far as they are not antagonistic to the educational aim, it is the function of instruction to further a useful varying appercep- tion by presenting for incidental association ideas most many-sided and frequently recurring. This means select- tion from all phases of human experience and branches of knowledge whether real or abstract, on precisely the same principles as in the valuation of material from the stand- point of direct preparation. In the case of indirect prepara- tion, however, many-sidedness is in itself useful regardless of whether the relationships in question are known to further the educational aim or not. If they are known directly to further it, many-sidedness and frequency make furtherance exceedingly^probable. Hence, from the standpoint of varying apperception, the potential usefulness of all directly useful material is measured by many-sidedness and frequency. If they are not known directly to further the aim, the possibility of furtherance as well as its extent are measured in the samq way. I20 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 8. Material Organized for Direct Furtherance Most Useful to Varying Apperception, Because it is Composed of the Most Many-sided and Frequently Recurring Relation- ships from all Branches However, material organized for the direct furtherance of the aim, both in its furnishing of material for varying apper- ception and in the necessity for its furtherance of it, possesses great advantages not only over the abstract subject, but over those branches organized from the academic viewpoint alone. Over the abstract subjects, because it must involve the pre- sentation of a vast amount of potentially useful material which cannot be certainly memorized, and because its rela- tionships which are made certain depend for their highest usefulness upon their varying apperception of and through what is thus potentially useful. Over even the academic subjects most rich in content, because both its potentially useful material, and that which is made certainly useful, must be the most many-sided and frequently recurring that all branches of knowledge and phases of experience can ajfford. Finally, it must not be forgotten that even in special- ization, the usefulness of an academic subject in the further- ance of varying apperception and in utilizing varying apper- ception for the furtherance of its special aim depends upon the many-sidedness and frequency of recurrence of the material presented to the learner. 9. Recapitulation of the Advantages of Direct Preparation Over the Formal Branches in the Furtherance of General Discipline From the standpoint of general discipline, the advantages of direct preparation over the formal subjects have already been demonstrated. Every advantage it possesses for cumu- lative impression, mere remembrance, and varying apper- ception ensures a condition advantageous to general disci- pline. Direct preparation compels continuity of habit. The abstract or academic subject which does not become a CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 121 part of either direct preparation or specialization is soon for- gotten. Direct preparation compels a highly complex system which is itself a part of life. The pure science and abstract subject are inherently remote from Hfe, and the formal discipline is at times selected on account of its extreme remoteness. Yet the usefulness of the academic subject to a general discipline that is not confined to its own subject matter is wholly dependent upon many-sided relationship to hfe. The getieral appHcation in Hfe of habits having useful general stimuli is essential to direct preparation. For the academic subject and especially for the formal subject general appHcation outside its own subject matter is wholly unneces- sary. The very method inherent in the formal subject, while compelling specific discipline, is hostile to general discipHne, In direct preparation all habits that are made certain are generaUy useful in life outside the school, and can be so taught that their stimuli are just general enough to be useful. In the formal subjects, in order to master the habits that are generally useful, far more that is only specifically useful must be just as certainly made habitual, while the stimuli to the generally useful habits cannot be limited except through the certain association with them of particular fields of ap- plication. Finally, useful general discipline through the formal sub- ject is found to be absolutely dependent upon both specifically associated knowledge outside the formal subject matter and upon habits of analysis and synthesis in specific fields or in response to specific stimuH, which, after all, must be devel- oped through direct preparation. Even the single advantage for specific discipline which remoteness from life gives to abstract subjects or pure science involves a disadvantage which far more than counterbalances it. It is true that the subject matter of branches whose content is concrete or directly useful, on account of its con- creteness tends to be more firmly associated in the minds of the students through individual and varying apperception 122 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY than through the relationships most specifically useful or those essential to general discipline. Although this may mean more immediate distraction than while abstract relationships are being formed, it also means that the ordinary operation of individual apperception is far less likely to call abstract relationships to mind. Number symbols and formula apply Wh'l ^^ units, not to things, and are too universal many-sided- either for things to call them to mind or for them nessmay in themselves to constitute a suggestive and ap- atteSion perceiving mass for every-day experience. But during the if general sequences and groups high in their mastery of relative usefulness are, in spite of the constant it finally * Struggle against purely individual apperception, makes once certainly and persistently formed, they ever them dom- continue to serve as a means not only to the apperception of new material in the relationships in which it will be most directly and certainly useful, but continually recalling individually apperceived material and being recalled by it, they act as a persistent reorganizing force and cumulatively increase the usefulness of the whole mental content. Even if this reorganization were as pos- sible in the case of the formal subject, it would not be as useful. The counteraction of individual and varying ap- perception, in itself so useful, must, therefore, be met by a more systematic and determined effort firmly to memorize and retain the general groups and sequences most essential to a useful general discipline. They, and not individual apperception, must, through continual, unvarying, and, hence, mechanical repetition, come to dominate. lo. General Conclusions Concerning the Course of Study In short, from the broader standpoint of formal self- activity, including general discipline, the traditionally ^'formal subjects,'' formal through a formal discipline propositions which the ^'faculty psychology'' fully justified, are not only not exclusively formal, but lack the educational or formal certainty and potentiality of direct CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 1 23 preparation. As regards the course of study, four momen- tous and more or less revolutionary conclusions are ap- parent: First, no subjects, especially no abstract or formal subjects, such as the languages and mathematics, can be required as wholes on disciplinary grounds alone. Second, the curriculum "required'' in common of all should include only those subjects as wholes or parts of subjects, that are directly useful to all individuals who are not specialists, or that, like the mother tongue and basal geographical and his- torical associations yet to be discussed, are indirectly useful in the highest degree through the many-sidedness and fre- quency of recurrence of their subject matter in every-day Hfe. This does not mean that each individual may not also be re- quired to take some specialty, but rather that all individuals shall not be compelled to take the same specialty on formal grounds alone. Third, to form the content of this required curriculum, selection of relationships must be made from the whole range of human knowledge and experience on the basis of the degree of sensation or feeling and the relative many- sidedness and frequency of recurrence through which they directly and indirectly further the educational aim. Fourth, the resulting subject matter must be organized and taught with a view both to the direct furtherance of the aim through a highly systematic specific discipline and cumulative impres- sion, and its indirect furtherance through both it and the remaining forms of self-activity — that is, mere remembrance, varying apperception, and general discipline. II. The Greater Part of Mathematics, Exclusive of Arithmetic, Must he Eliminated from the Required General Course To sum up the effect of ail this upon the curriculum as at present organized — ^mathematics, with the exception of limited parts of its elementary branches, is handed babilitv over to the specialist. In elementary arith- of a broader metic, indeed, the process of elimination is already elementary almost accomplished, if it has not here and there ^^t^e-"^ been carried too far to ensure ready and com- matics. 124 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY plete mastery of its directly useful principles. When old Thomas Hill of Harvard, the forerunner of elective sys- tems, though the first text-book maker to popularize originals in geometry, insisted that the study of higher mathematics should be "only for those of mathematical ability,"^^ he had in mind a far broader course in mathematics for the element- ary school. Perhaps the selection of the mathematics directly useful to all, in so far as such selection is possible from an exact science, will ultimately realize his ideal. Although algebra and geometry as systematic wholes will no longer be required, it is essential that the required ele- mentary course shall include enough algebraic and geomet- rical subject matter to develop mathematical interest and to determine individual fitness for mathematical specializa- tion. For the sake of continuity, the study oi mathematics, in- cluding that of generally useful phases of arithmetic, should be distributed at weekly or semiweekly intervals throughout the entire high school course. For the additional reason that failure to develop mathematical interest or ability in the high school may in the case of some individuals be overcome by different instructors, changed methods of instruction, and other conditions, it should be continued for the first half year in the college. But mathematics as a required study should no longer include material useful only to the specialist, should no longer be concentrated into one or two years of the high school course and then forgotten until it is partly revived in the college, should no longer consume the whole of a hopeless college year for those not interested in it or who are not com- pelled to become so through the demands of a chosen spe- cialty, and, above all, should no longer involve the absurd and harmful requirement that a year of mathematical failure shall be compensated for by the repetition of the same course until failure is transformed to success. The moral training in- volved in voluntary persistence in the face of mathematical failure is invaluable to those students who must master mathematics to succeed in some specialty which involves it. CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 125 In the case of others, it is robbed of all incentive, drives them into moral and intellectual apathy or rebellion, and with similar insistence on the mastery of a particular language, is one of the chief causes of students dropping out of college, or of their failure to gain the interest in alternative subjects that will urge them on to independent achievement. It is in regret over such wasted opportunity in his own early years at Oxford that Mr. R. H. Quick quotes the following passage from Henry IV: "I beseech you heartily, scurvy, lousy knave, at my desires, and my requests, and my petitions, to eat, look you, this leek: because, look you, you do not love it, nor your affections, nor your appetities, and your digestions, does not agree with it, I would desire you to eat it." If these conclusions appear radical and antagonistic to prevalent opinion, it should be remembered that they are conclusions whose disproval is possible through demonstra- tion of the fallacy of the cumulative propositions on which they have been based. It should also be held in mind that they apply to only a limited portion of the student body. Because all students of the sciences in their most advanced stages, and of the various branches of engineering and other professions require thorough knowledge of the ^^j^anced higher mathematics, and even because a multi- algebra and tude of mathematical instructors are in conse- geometry quence required, a very large proportion of the willresiUt^ whole mass of students will specialize in mathe- in more matics. The science of mathematics will lose J^ojo^s^ nothing from the fact that students not inter- ^^^^^' ested in it and who do not need it as a part of their direct preparation for life are eliminated from mathematical classes. On the contrary, with smaller and more earnest classes on the one hand, and greater continuity through academic and pro- fessional speciaKzation on the other, the mathematical work of the college and university should become more efficient. At present this favorable condition can be brought about, and is in part brought about, only by driving men not adapted to mathematical study out of college. It is better, after all, to 126 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY attain it by permitting them to gain their general discipline in some other way. The magnificent specific discipline inherent in the mathematical subject matter has not been questioned. It will be more certain and complete, however, and self-activity within the specialty from the solution of originals in geometry to research in the newest and most abstruse phases of the science be the better assured, if the conditions already discussed as favorable to general discipline are brought about through pedagogical method within the mathematical field itself. Beyond that, mathematics does not require discipline to go, though in part it can and, in varying degree with individuals, it will. 12. Although One or More Foreign Languages Are Useful to Most Students, They Should he Required Only of Those to Whose Specialization They Are Essential Much the same can be said of the foreign languages, as distinct from foreign literatures. Greek has already been handed over to the specialist — to the specialist in culture as well as in theology, philosophy, and philology. Probably a carefully limited amount of Latin etymology mil be found to be of high usefulness in the mastery of the meanings of English words and especially in their spelling. That is, in place of the usual effort at exhaustive lists of Latin deriva- tives, all examples that mislead from either the standpoint of meaning or of spelling must be omitted. Outside of this, and indeed in most cases including this, Latin has also become a phase of specialization, except in institutions w^hich can af- ford to offer but one or two languages, and must require them of all, because alternative courses cannot be given. Par- ticular modern languages have never been required except as involved in some phase of specialization. At least two lan- guages, ancient or modern, however, are still generally re- quired for college entrance and as a condition to graduation. It is this requirement that in the small high schools and col- leges still forces a particular language upon all students. CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 127 That is, the fault is directly economic and only indirectly pedagogic. The New York High School Teachers' Com- mittee has raised the question as to whether but one required language cannot be substituted for two.^^ Wood- row Wilson would substitute more. In the light one foreign of the preceding discussion the answer is plain, language Since it is an incontrovertible fact that both direct ^^^^}^ 5® i-r 11 1 11 required, preparation for life and the adequate develop- most stud- ment of every formal phase of self-activity are ents should possible without the study of any foreign language, ^^more?^^ neither one nor more, but no foreign language should be required except in so far as it is involved in such parts of etymology as are helpful to the mastery of the vernacular itself. It is true that the concrete indication of grammatical distinctions through an inflected language might, as Alexan- der Bain has pointed out, make the transition from Greek or Latin to English an instance of proceeding from the sub- jectively simple to the complex. But where the essentials of English grammar have been mastered before the study of the foreign language is begun, this advantage becomes im- possible or reduces itself to a review and concrete re-enforce- ment of distinctions but partially mastered that should and could have been thoroughly mastered. That translation in general and Latin etymology in particular aid in the mastery of the English language, and should be made so to aid far more effectively where specialization demands the foreign tongue, is a readily apparent fact. But no unprejudiced thinker will seriously contend that the years of study neces- sary to free translation are economically spent by an indi- vidual who does not need the foreign language either as a means to specialized study or experience, as a relatively effective mode of developing formal self-activity, or as a special instrument to culture, many-sided knowledge, and experience. Neither a branch of the higher mathematics nor a foreign language should be uniformly required of all who enter college or who seek a general as distinct from a specialized college education. 128 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY Dr. Wilson's argument for more foreign languages rather than less as a requirement for college entrance/ being based upon the greater relative readiness with which the languages are mastered by children, and, as he might have added, the continuity of instruction made possible by their early study, applies only on the assumption that the languages are essen- tial to all and that the more of them that are mastered the better. That is, he assumes what his argument is meant to prove. So far as many individuals are concerned, he is un- doubtedly right, but there is a multitude of college graduates who never fully mastered the languages which were required of them or never put them to use outside the college walls. If, from the standpoint of specialization, the majority of individuals will continue to elect or be compelled to take the higher mathematics, a far greater majority will continue to pursue the study of one or more languages, owing to their wider usefulness and the greater number of specialties likely to require them. As already pointed out, aptness for linguis- tic study and the pleasure derived from it, love of some Limited Special field of culture, advanced scientific re- attendance search, foreign business or foreign travel, even in language ^]^g demands of certain forms of social life, unite classes will result in to make the omission of language study more or more effi- less exceptional. Indeed, there is a certain social cient work.^ tendency toward the study of what almost all educated people study. The aboHtion of the higher mathe- matics as a required subject in general education, by in- creasing the time available in high school and college for other study, will tend in the same direction. Moreover, as in the case of mathematics, the elimination from language classes of all individuals who neither through natural fitness or the demand of specialization are interested in language study will increase the thoroughness and the continuity of instruction. So long as even the exceptional individual can be broadly cultured, effectively disciplined in the more inclusive sense of formal self-activity, and directly and effectively prepared for CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 129 moral and healthful living, social service, good citizenship, and his individual vocation and avocation without the study of a foreign language, the study of a foreign language should not be compelled either for entrance to a general college course or its completion. From the standpoint of general discipline within either a particular foreign language or the whole domain of linguistic study, a discipline of which the carrying over of gramLtnatical and rhetorical habits from a foreign language to the vernacu- lar is a part, pedagogical inquiry must, as in the case of mathematics, more seriously concern itself with the study of the conditions favorable to application. A highly qqj^q^qx important first step has already been taken discipline through the discussion which preceded and fol- within the lowed the appointment in 191 1 of the joint com- ^ependen^t mittee on grammatical nomenclatiure by the on pedago- National Educational Association, the Modern ^c condi- Language Association of America, and the Ameri- can Philological Association. Professor Hale has admirably indicated the desirability of a terminology general enough to unify language study and to make more readily possible the carrying over of combinations and judgments from one lan- guage to another.^ Professor Kuersteiner has pointed out the fact that a less general terminology may be more readily understood and applied by school children in the mastery of one or two foreign languages.^^ Dr. Rounds has been a national leader in the effort to agree upon a common termi- nology for all English grammars and language books.^^ The bearing of this movement upon ready identification of the general stimuli involved in application of grammatical dis- tinctions, and, therefore, upon general discipline within the field of language, is highly important, while the analytic nature of the discussion which characterized the recent Sym- posium on language teaching held under the auspices of the Michigan Schoolmasters' Club is prophetic of a valuable contribution by the national committee. 130 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 13. Bearing of the Analysis of Formal Self -activity Upon the Place of the Natural Sciences in the General Course of Study The effect upon the natural sciences of the conclusions reached from the analysis of formal self -activity is less revo- lutionary. Although most colleges have been including in their required course of study at least chemistry and physics, the movement has already begun toward requiring an equal or a greater amount of work in one or two sciences elected from the whole group, rather than the customary amount of work in one or two specified sciences. For example, it has been proposed to substitute for, say, two required units of work in physics and chemistry respectively, three units of work in each of any two of the natural sciences. The domi- nance of experimental method in all the natural sciences vitiates the objection which might have been urged against this on the ground of Bain's distinction between the disciplin- ary value of the experimental sciences and of sciences of classi- fication. As against requiring any pure sciences as wholes, however, much the same arguments apply as in the case of the languages. Since the entire system of knowledge and activities belonging to any one of the sciences is non-essential to many-sidedness and culture, the requirement of one or two sciences as systematic wholes is obviously based upon disci- plinary grounds alone. And on that ground it would be jus- tified, if the useful training in adaptation as distinct from ap- plication involved in experimental work were peculiar to the natural sciences alone. While scientific method study of ^^ ^^t t^^s peculiar to a naturalistic and objective science ade- subject matter, the necessity of selected parts of quate for natural sciences to direct preparation for life formation , . ., , .... . . ;_,, of the habits niakes it. possible to utilize its training. The peculiar to new movement is wrong in compelling selection tation°^^°" ^^^"^ among the natural sciences as wholes. Selection must be made from within them. Per- haps all the natural science that is most essential to life in CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 131 general, both in its many-sidedness and frequency of recur- rence, can be taught in and below the high school. The so- called courses in "general'' or "elementary" science that have recently been successfully introduced into the high schools of Pittsburgh and elsewhere are planned from this point of view. The old physical geography courses were equally composite without ensuring the same many-sided relation to every-day life. More than this, the general science is experimental and disciplinary in place of being merely informational. Through laboratory work the pupils are both directly prepared for life and given invaluable sense training and a form of mental and manual development which, while involved in other phases of direct preparation for life, is thus strongly supplemented and re-enforced. Thomas Hill believed that enough of this sort of instruction can be given in the elementary and high schools to leave natural science in the college and university entirely to the specialist.^ Both the abundance of naturalistic sub- ject matter and the desirability of continuity in the material of instruction make it probable that he is wrong. If he is, it is likely that when the test of comparative worth, both from the standpoint of direct preparation and of formal development, is pedagogically applied, it will be cQ^^se ^^ found that a similar selection of more advanced should in- subject matter than is within the ready compre- cl^f © ^ vflnctv 01 hension of the ordinary high school pupil, to material which, however, the general science of the high taken from school has been preparatory, will be far more gcfences^* useful than the study of one or two pure sciences as wholes. In any event, the proposed status of natural science in the college is inconsistent. If students are per- mitted to elect any two natural sciences to meet the require- ment, why, from the disciplinary point of view, not one in place of two? Except from the standpoint of direct prepara- tion or specialization, one taught through a longer term of years than is probable with two, will ensure a more certain specific discipline. In any event, the likelihood of the general application of the resulting habits is in proportion to the 132 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY extent to which a subject matter naturally allied to every-day life is still more many-sidedly connected with it through instruction. 14. Increased Contribution to Required Subject Matter from the Subjects Rich in Humanistic Content Perhaps the most dramatic result of analytic investigation of formal self-activity is the reversal of the relative place in the curriculum held by literature, history, sociology, civics, and economics as compared with mathematics and the languages. The latter become electives; it is highly prob- able that when the proposed test of comparative worth is applied, the former will each furnish so large a portion of the required subject matter as to become required subjects. Each of these subjects is so broad in its content that the col- lege course, after either furnishing or taking for granted its general organization, necessarily selects here and there spe- cialized phases. Direct preparation demands that whether this specialization is of period or of topic, it shall include all directly useful details that are essential, in the relationships and the form which most certainly and most potently further right living, good health, general industrial efficiency, social service, and good citizenship as well as avocation. Selection which disregards this for a vain effort at exhaustive represen- tation and organization, passes into the territory of academic, scientific, or vocational specialization. 15. The Use of Selected Portions of Academic Branches No Menace to Discipline At first thought the academic specialist sees in the partial use of his subject matter on the basis of its direct usefulness nothing less than the destruction of its system and the loss of the resulting discipline. His aim is completeness, both in inclusiveness of subject matter and in degree of organization. To be sure, under the influence of culture-epoch, biology, and genetic psychology he has attempted to adapt his elementary text-books to the pupils of the age for which they are intended, CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 133 but his aim has never ceased to be as complete a treatment as is within the comprehension of the pupils and as the time he can secure in the course of study permits. His attitude of mind is that of the pure scientist, not that of the teacher. Completeness is essential to the advancement of science through the specialist, and to the spiritual inheritance which each generation must pass on to the next. It is not essential to instruction, either through direct preparation ^j^^ ^^^ ^^ or the resulting phases of formal self-activity. It the special- is, however, mainly from this latter viewpoint ^^t a com- that the specialist has sought to so far as possible ^j^^^ hostile present his subject as a logical and scientific to interest whole. It must contain as many details as adap- ^2^^^*^"' tation permits, but, above all, they must be so selected as to secure the completeness of organization which has been assumed to be necessary to discipline. That is, even in the exact sciences there has been partial presentation of the branches. But however bare of illustrative material and the material essential to adequate application the text- book may be, it must cover the entire range of the specialty and present it as an entire though abstract and attenuated whole. The result has been admittedly unsatisfactory, especially from the disciphnary point of view. Pupils are not thorough in mathematics or the languages. They are not interested in history and literature. The remedy selection ^' is obviously concentration, but why on one or within the two branches as wholes? It is possible at the 7"^°^^ r .11 . ^ . branches, expense ot many-sidedness to require sufficient time in the school course for the complete mastery of arith- metic, algebra, and geometry, and two languages for every pupil who under that inexorable condition will continue in school. The procrustean classical course, against which such lovers of the classics as Sydney Smith^^ and Thomas Arnold revolted, accomplished this. But the result is at best a highly limited specific discipline for the survivors, hostile not only to many-sidedness, but to both the direct preparation 134 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY and the general discipline to which it is an equally favorable condition. The alternative is concentration within the branch through a still more partial selection from its subject matter. This, obviously desirable from the standpoint of specific discipline, in so far as specific discipline is not de- pendent upon the mastery of the organization of the branch as a whole, makes possible the selection of the parts most cer- tainly and specifically useful from the standpoint of direct preparation, furthers many-sidedness and general discipline, and even renders judicious specialization more probable by making the first step taken in every field practical, interest- ing, and sure. 1 6. The Partial Subject Matter Selected Can Usually Be Organ- ized from the Standpoint of the Academic Subject, as Well as from that of Direct Preparation And even specific discipline is not dependent upon the mastery of the branches as wholes. Selection from the standpoint of direct preparation will ensure in many respects a different content for certain of the branches, but unless a subject is almost wholly lacking in what directly prepares for life, the subject matter can be organized from the stand- point of the specialty as well as from the standpoint of direct preparation. Indeed, in most cases the organization peculiar to the special branch not only is as possible through its directly useful parts as through the specialty as a whole, but is as essential to direct preparation as to formal self-activity. Judged by the many-sidedness and frequency of recurrence which have already been seen to be the basis for selection, the general sequences of ideas and actions in time and space characteristic of general history, geography, and literature will be found to be indispensable, while the selection of directly useful details results both in the topical study of citizenship, industry, and morals throughout all times, lands, and litera- tures, as well as throughout the more intensive treatments of particular periods, countries, or writers in which such details may exceptionally abound. CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 135 On the other hand, it is easy to demonstrate that the thor- ough mastery of a part of arithmetic or geometry, or of se- lected facts and principles from a group of sciences, can be made specifically disciplinary from the standpoint of the specialty. One set of experiments will serve as well as an- other to develop the habits essential in scientific investiga- tion. The arithmetical discipline which, as Professor Schwatt urged, can be as well developed through a more complete study of number as through higher mathematics,^^ can be even better developed through the complete mastery of selected arithmetical operations or practical operations selected from the whole range of number. The foreign languages alone, since their peculiar usefulness is instrumental, cannot be usefully taught in part except from the standpoint of ety- mology. Incidentally, however, it is interesting to call to mind even here Thomas Hill's final argument for the teaching of the languages from a disciplinary point of view: "But the most valuable part of the study of words does not consist in acquiring that intimate familiarity with any one foreign language which will enable one to write or speak it, nor does it consist solely in the intellectual exercise of learning to read it, and the intellectual vigor thereby produced. It consists rather in rising, by the study of particular examples, to a perception of some general laws of thought and laws of ar- ticulation," for the attainment of which, "a moderate ac- quaintance with four or five languages is better than a thor- ough acquaintance with one or two." In concluding this brief review of the probable consequences of readjustment, if, in the spirit of the old Athenian, we fol- low the argument whithersoever it may lead, two funda- mental and controlling facts must be held in mind. The first is, that direct preparation for life m general itself demands as adequate specific discipline as can be made possible by concentration upon any of the old "formal" subjects; and the second, that direct instruction prepares the way for and at every point strengthens the specialization which should parallel it throughout the entire course of education. CHAPTER V THE INTERDEPENDENCE OF CULTURE AND DIRECT PREPA- RATION EOR LIFE But however convincingly analysis may demonstrate the indispensability of direct preparation for life to formal self- activity, it is when it is brought to bear upon the relation- ship of both direct preparation and formal self-activity to culture that the result seems most radical. It is especially important for some of us to discern that what is commonly called culture is not a distinct form of self-activity, as assumed by W. H. Payne and others, but rather an attitude of mind or apperceptive state far more largely dependent upon ina.- pression than upon discipline. This is especially true of the traditional culture, something which to be a gentleman one must at least have forgotten and which one is likely to forget because it is based upon knowledge unrelated to every-day life. The fact that it is so unrelated, that its concepts and activities are not more or less definitely associated with what is most certain to recur in ordinary experience, tends to re- move it from the domain of discipline to that of remembrance and impression, from the domain of the specific to that of the vague, the intangible and the relatively useless — not utterly useless because it is vague and intangible, but relatively use- less because it is not related to life. It is in protest against such a culture that Emerson exclaims: "Poetry and prudence should be coincident. Poets should be law-givers, that is, the boldest lyric inspiration should not elude and insult, but should announce and lead the civil code and the day's work." 136 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 137 I. Culture Itself a Partial Phase of Direct Preparation for Life Indeed, culture is itself a phase of preparation for life, but a phase from which old Greek tradition has tended to exclude the worker. Historically considered, it is not only prepara- tion for a leisure which the mass of workers cannot share, but through a kind of education which the mass of workers can- not hope to attain. It has not been partial preparation for leisure regarded merely as a part of life, but for a life of leis- ure. It is this that led Benjamin Rush, when he came to believe that "the business of education has acquired a new complexion by the independence of our country, "^^ to argue against the study of Latin and Greek as unsuited to democ- racy, not that it failed to provide examples of illustrious citi- zenship, but that it set aside those who mastered it as an educated class too often made arrogant through a peculiar learning.^^ Today when democracy is triumphant, when\ leisure is playing a constantly increasing part in the life of the \ mass, when a far more many-sided learning is accessible S through the vernacular than inspired the Renaissance through the Latin and Greek, it is high time to analyze culture into its essential conditions and factors in ordqr to discover what part of it, if any, is involved in other phases of direct prepara- tion for life, and to what extent, if to any, preparation for other phases of life is antagonistic to it. 2. The Essential Factors in Culture In the first place, while culture is liberal in the sense of being distinct from work, it does not of necessity include all knowledge that is not vocational. Pure science is distinct from science applied in work and may constitute a part of culture, but the specialist in pure science is not necessarily a man of culture, and a man of culture does not necessarily possess an intensive knowledge of pure science. The sub- ect matter of culture must be liberal, but, except that it must 138 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY include what is essential to the development of aesthetic appreciation, the only additional requirements are that it must be many-sided and that it must be the common posses- sion either of the whole educated leisure class or of a social group within it. It is both from the standpoint of many- sidedness and the use of culture in social intercourse that the specialist in pure science may fail to be a man of culture. In fact, an unrestricted elective system with its subjective specialization, and the group elective with its specialization, whether academic or vocational, are equally hostile to cul- ture if instead of paralleling a liberal content required in com- mon of all, they are permitted to take its place. With all of their many-sidedness, the pedant with the knowledge that he fails to put to use, the man of science absorbed in the advance- ment of learning, and the worker learned in all that contrib- utes to his specialty, may still lack the essential elements of culture. The many-sidedness must not mean mere informa- [ tion or applied knowledge, but many-sided social contact; ' through a common knowledge and a common intellectual and emotional experience in which the aesthetic plays conspicuous J part. So necessary to it is this social quality, that culture , must include the politeness and civility which are the outward expression of the understanding and the sympathy in taste \ and in thought which many-sidedness of knowledge makes possible but does not ensure. It would be possible even to conceive of a Bernard Shaw possessing the form of culture, but lacking its spirit, a superman, contemptuous of his fellows because the knowledge and experience which should make him comprehend and love humanity have only made him a man apart. The Philistine may know what the man of culture knows, but he does not appreciate what he appreciates or love what he loves. 3. Modern Culture So Extensive as to Make Necessary Selec- tion and Specialization in Culture Itself At the beginning of the Renaissance, many-sidedness was impossible without knowledge of the Greek and the Latin CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 139 tongues. They not only contained what was Culture universal in thought, but expressed and inspired l^il ^^y what was universal in literature and art. The through early humanists were a noble but arrogant band Latin^with — an intellectual aristocracy. The fact that the leisure con- masses were debarred from their intellectual fined to the fellowship because the vernacular was unfitted ®^* for scholarly use did not trouble their minds. "The cus- tom or convenience of ten thousand hinds/' argues Flori- das, "is not to be weighed against those of a single man of learning. "^^ Sir Thomas More alone, Christian as well as humanist, dared to dream of a Utopia where all men should have leisure to live according to the direction of reason and where reading was made the chief avocation of the masses because they had "all their learning in their own tongue which is both a copious and a pleasant language in which a man can fully express his mind.''^^ Gradually the vernaculars of modern Europe not only were made "copious and pleasant," but came to have noble Hteratures of their own, and to in- clude through translation what is best not only in the Latin and the Greek, but in any other tongue which has become the medium of culture. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, with its mar- vellous expansion of the boundaries of human knowledge, its exploration and travel, scientific discovery, industrial in- ventions, commercial development, political revolution and social reform, culture could not only be found outside the ancient languages, but could not fully be found within them. More than this, the humanistic content has become too broad for all educated men to possess it in common. Hence the elective system within a liberal education, the study of branches in part, and academic specialization which may either be a part of culture or hostile to it. That is, it has become possible to specialize in culture as in discipline or vocation. In a succession of simpler civilizations the culture of one age or epoch has given way to that of the next. In complex I40 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY Culture now modern civilization various cults exist side by topermit^^ side — the classical, the literary, the artistic, and specializa- even the Browning, Shakesperian, or Wagnerian, tion within rj.^^ ^^^ Amherst and Dean West's Graduate School would represent specialization in culture as certainly as Massachusetts' School of Agriculture or Boston School of Technology represents specialization in vocation. 4. Specialization in Culture Must he Preceded by a Culture Common to All Educated Individuals However, just as specialization from the standpoint of discipline or vocation must be paralleled and preceded by direct preparation for life in general, so specialization in cul- ture must be preceded by a culture which is common to all cults. The thorough man of culture must be a lover of the beautiful in all of its general forms. He must possess a cul- tivated and discriminating taste for literature, music, paint- ing, sculpture, architecture. He must enjoy aesthetically and ethically as well as physically what is beautiful in nature — "the flower in the crannied wall" or the sunrise in the Alps. He must love learning for the sake of learning as well as for its direct usefulness to man. He must appreciate each aes- thetic and intellectual field, but in some form or other, rather than in all forms or the same forms. Some will enjoy one novelist and not another; others, essays or poetry rather than fiction; some, oratorios; some, grand operas; others, ballads or symphonies. But all must acquire as common an aesthetic \ appreciation of every form of art and all that is great in mind \ or beautiful in nature as innate tendencies permit. 5. Culture Must Not Antagonize, hut Further Other Phases of the Educational Aim Neither this common and required culture nor the culture that is specialized should contain anything hostile to the "half truths of service." On the contrary, what makes for the right enjoyment of leisure is subordinate to what makes CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 141 for healthful and ethical living, and should further industrial efficiency, good citizenship, and social service. Aristophanes and his fellow Athenians were right in struggling against the philosophy of Socrates and of Plato, which led the young Greek to exclaim with Alcibiades, ^^He makes me confess that I ought not to live as I do, neglecting the wants of my own soul, and busying myself with the concerns of the Athenians." While all can readily agree with Dean Riley, of Bryn Mawr, when she insists that on the whole the liberal education of today tends in the direction of good citizenship, Justice Hughes, in his Yale address, j^^g^ ^q shows clearly the need of direct training for related to civic service ; while Mr. Roosevelt sees, even in the citizenship, classical reaction at Amherst, an exceptional and all other opportunity to teach political ideals.^^ It is phases of not enough to say that everything hostile to p™^ation. citizenship shall be omitted from modern cul- ture; in the selection of its subject matter all that directly makes for citizenship in any high degree must be included. It is none the less cultural because its emotional form makes it potent for good. From this point of view, however, the greatest wrong done modern education by the domination of its culture by ancient ideals has been through the assumption that ideas and ac- tivities related to vocation are rendered illiberal if they are also associated with work. To the traditional thinker voca- tional culture is inconceivable. Culture must not only pre- pare for leisure, but must be disassociated with work. While many phases of culture have no connection with work at all, wherever such connection can be established, avocation, the calling of the mind away from every-day routine, is most readily brought about. The more certainly and permanently a thousand lines of interest and points of contact relate cul- ture to life in general or even put otherwise remote and many-sided material to vocational use, the more certainly and permanently will the worker come into possession of the broader life which he can share with those whose initial inter- 142 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY ests in a common knowledge and emotional experience differ from his own. The essential thing -to xuiture fitted to a democracy is not that it shall have no utilitarian relation- ships or be taught in relationships which are not utilitarian, but that, wherever possible, it shall have relationships which are utilitarian in the most many-sided way. It must not have but a single door to be reached through some steep and secret path, but a thousand doors through any one of which the seeker after knowledge may enter, and through all of which he will at times depart. But to connect the aesthetic and the many-sided with work and even with wage earning does not mean that its rela- tionships must be exclusively or even predominantly voca- tional. There must be direct preparation for leisure distinct from preparation for work and potent enough to develop a liberal attitude of mind. The significant fact is that culture and direct preparation for phases of life other than leisure have in common many-sided ideas and activities — some of them aesthetic — which can be directly related to each. From it two important consequences follow: First, that vocation can be liberalized without losing its efficiency, and that culture can be related to the "half-truth" of service without losing its freedom. Second, that culture and other phases of direct preparation overlap. That is, discipline, specialization, and the various phases of direct preparation, including culture, require a many-sidedness that is in part identical. Democracy demands a culture which, made com- mon to all citizens through its many-sided interrelationship with direct preparation for life, shall not be displaced at any stage of the educational process by specialization, whether in vocation or in culture itself. It must precede lating of ^^^ accompany each. To it a vocational train- culture to ing that ignores the common culture, and a cul- vocation tural training which displaces it, are equally democracy! l^^stile. Dr. Gilbert has performed important public service in pointing out again and again the menace to American institutions which lies in a special!- CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 143 zation in elementary education that prevents this common culture.^^ So has Professor Hanus, who, with all of his championship of vocational courses in high schools, insists that they shall be given in the same building and center about a common arts and science course7^ 6. A General Culture Related to Vocation Should Parallel All Vocational Specialization, and Direct Preparation, All Specialization in Culture The most critical situation lies in the higher education with its specialization in culture versus specialization in vocation. If the vocational specialist is insistent upon cul- ture at all, it is that it must precede rather than ture and accompany specialization. A four-year college specializa- course, for example, is required for entrance to contin^tT the stronger colleges of law or of medicine. Finance and commerce show a better tendency in insisting upon the paralleling of technical courses with liberal study.^^ Indeed, the practice of certain universities in allowing a certain amount of professional specialization within the arts and science course itself, gives the lead that points to the solution of the problem. Just as certainly as culture is a growth, should specialization be a slow development through- out a long term of years. Continuity is favorable to each. Through it habits and attitudes of mind are made certain, one being added to another until a sure system of ideas and activities results. Four years of pure arts and science work may create a distaste for vocation, while four years of exclu- sively technical work may mean arrested development if not atrophy in culture. The assumption that the cultural and the vocational are mutually exclusive in education is absurd. If they cannot co-exist in education, how can they co-exist in life itself, of which education, after all, is but a part. The real antagonism is between a culture remote from life, which despises work, and a vocational training which has no time for culture. Culture, like every other phase of direct 144 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY preparation for life, should at each stage of education parallel specialization and be paralleled by it. Even after the common culture has been attained, special- ization in culture must not be hostile either to it or to any other phase of direct preparation. Direct prep- aration'also ^^^tion demands continuity as persistent as demands that demanded by culture and specialization, continuity ^^^ g^ must parallel specialization in culture and must ^ . i i i i , ,. parallel all ^s certamly as both culture and direct prepara- specializa- tion must parallel specialization in vocation. The toe.*^ ^^^" graduate school or the college which specializes in culture should and vnil create the love for pure science, whose sacred vocation it will be to pass on and to advance the learning which it inherits; it can, but it must not, produce the pedant. It should and will produce a love of what is beautiful in nature and mankind; it can, but must not, produce a sensuaHst or voluptuary. It should and will produce a more spiritual citizenship; it can, but it must not, produce the man without a country who withdraws himself "from the madness of the multi- tude," because "there is no one who ever acts honestly in the administration of the state, nor any helper who will save any one who maintains the cause of the just." 7. The Obstacle to Common and Democratic Culture Which Lies in the Attempt to Develop Artistic Expression at the Expense of Aesthetic Appreciation Now that the great mass of individuals have a constantly increasing amount of leisure and rapidly multiplying means for its cultured enjoyment, perhaps the most serious obstacle to a democratic and common culture lies in insistence upon specific phases of culture that are democratic in the sense of being accessible to all, but imdemocratic because all have not the capacity to attain them. This, of course, does not apply to many-sidedness in general, but to its aesthetic manifestations. Nor does it apply to the unfortunate limit to aesthetic appreciation imposed by such physical or mental CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 145 defects as color-blindness or inability to discriminate the ordinary gradations in musical sound. It rather consists in substituting for the development of an aesthetic appreciation possible to all normally constituted human beings the vain attempt to develop in all the artistic expression possible only to the few. The limit to effort to develop expression through the fine arts lies in interference with the development of aesthetic appreciation. Artistic expression is a form of specialization more unessential to general culture than are mathematics and the foreign languages to general discipline. It is possible to the many only in the form of r^^ ^j^^^^q loving familiarity with the art of the master who promotion interprets for all what he alone can express. That ^g^ point of both mere remembrance and many-sided- ness, much reading is more important than the reading of what develops aesthetic taste. Crude stories that interest children should not be excluded from public and school libraries for lack of literary tone, if, through dealing with various occupations, industries, periods and environments, they tend to broaden juvenile interests and vocabularies. The books that should be inexorably excluded are those which by juvenilizing literature and ^^simpHfying" language in an absurd syllabic sense, prevent the addition of new words to the eager and word-hungry memory with which childhood is blessed. School readers, used in class instruction and for oral reading, however, should not be informational. Aside from the aid given by the aesthetic, and especially the emo- tional and dramatic content of good literature, to expressive reading, conversation, and eloquent speech, the vocabulary of culture cannot be too early acquired. Apart from a more or less general prejudice against pho- netic reading, on the ground that it is antagonistic to correct spelling, the greatest obstacle in the way of rapid specific vocabulary expansion is insistence upon the spell- spelling drill ing and more or less exact definition of every word f.^°^^^^® that happens to be included in a reading lesson, words corn- Specific spelling drill, including the repeated moninordi- writing of particular words, should be limited to ^^ry wntmg. those that immediately and more or less frequently recur in the type of writing peculiar to each stage of development. The words whose spelling should be thus made sure are the ordinary verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, and connect- ives, but include among nouns, only those that are com- monly written by all who write at all. Dr. Chancellor has probably come closest to a correct list by basing his selection upon frequency of recurrence in the daily papers,^ though 212 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY many words frequently recur there that ordinary individuals will not have to write. Without regard to the prevention of interference with vocabulary expansion through school reading, if pupils are to leave the elementary grades "good spellers" of the words they will continually have to write in business and social correspondence, the number of words selected for specific drill must be so limited that continual review will be possible. Perhaps experimentation may prove that Cleveland has been too parsimonious, with its two or three new spelling words a day, but the result has been better spellers.^^ Memory centers for words as wholes may be of use, at this point, to spelling as well as to oral vocabulary, through holding words long enough in mind, during the period of initial memorizing of their spelling, for the spelling to be repeated until retained. If the word, as a whole, is forgotten as soon as the lesson is over, the time used for drilling upon its spelling is wasted. This holding of the words themselves in mind is the only justification for grouping words in spellers, as names of flowers, household utensils, and so on. If it is limited to the period of initial memorizing, it need not inter- fere with the gradual formulation of cumulative lists of words similar only in their spelling. Where, as in the case of ety- mological grouping, words are similar in meaning as well as in spelling, both intitial spelling and its retention are fur- thered. The worst type of speUing list, though one of the most popular, on the plea of adaptation to local and immediate needs, includes the words most often rnisspelled from the readers and other text-books in local use, without regard to the frequency with which they will be ordinarily used outside of written recitations or examinations. Specific spelling- drill on words brought into a particular school-book through the taste of an individual author or the necessity of a single description or narrative, not only prevents adequate drill on more useful words, but miscellaneous words multiply too rap- idly to be persistently reviewed. They should not be repeat- edly spelled, but should be incidentally used for developing CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 213 the habit of observing the spelling of all new words, through unconsciously sounding them over to one's self and noting phonetic exceptions. The mastery of a foreign language, duplicating as it does the vocabulary of the vernacular, develops few centers useful to remembrance. A foreign vocabulary is not Mastery of something to remember by, but something to be foreign remembered. Its value is from the standpoint ^^^^^^^^f of varying apperception, specific discipline, and tie aid to direct usefulness. On the other hand, for most remem- coUege graduates who are not specialists, as the °^^^^®' years go by and specific systems of thought are forgotten, the part of the college course which does not cluster as impression about ideals and principles, has been mainly serviceable through mere remembrance and the individual and varying apperception which it makes possible. 5. Application of the Test for Selection to Varying Apperception If apperception were to be confined to the incidental association and reassociation of ideas common to ordinary experience, the selection of material favorable to mere remem- brance would be fully adequate for apperception as well. To fix certainly in mind the most many-sided and frequently recurring ideas, both directly and indirectly useful, and, with the aid of effective method, to bring consistently to bear upon them and the multitude of other memory centers made certain by individual experience, the ideas which have been selected on account of their useful many-sidedness, recurrence, and interest, is to ensure a many-sided and useful apperception, but not the most many-sided and the most useful. If ap- perception is to be made either directly or indirectly useful in the highest degree, individual memory centers must be certainly associated together in interre- Systems of lated groups and subdivisions. The individual centers memory centers may be numerous enough or necessary general enough to reach out after, and for a time a^n^ercep- retain, any idea presented to the mind, but, if they tion. 214 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY are not memorized in groups which the usual test of relative worth has shown to be highly many-sided and recurring, varying apperception will ensure neither the cumulative many-sidedness, which makes the useful idea potent, through general discipline, nor the complete system of mental inter- connection essential to the greatest possible variation, and, therefore, to the most general application. That is, both the direct and indirect usefulness of varying apperception are dependent upon specific discipline — ^in the sense of system, as well as through the certain sided Tnd"^' and definite association of each individual idea, recurring The groupings and the systems directly useful groups aid in the highest degree will be determined for each perception." P^ase of the aim from the standpoint of specific discipline, and will include all academic or formal groups and systems that are directly useful enough to be cer- tainly memorized. But, while all directly useful groups that are useful to varying apperception will be included, from the standpoint of the special phases, all directly useful to the various phases will not necessarily be useful to varying apper- ception and serve to make varying apperception directly use- ful. Such a group of ideas, as the association of the name of Lincoln with humor, human sympathy, faith in God, the presidency of the United States, the Civil War, and the emancipation of slaves, is both ethically and politically useful and furthers useful apperception. But the association of Meade, Pennsylvania Reserves, Pickett's charge, and the Peach Orchard with Gettysburg is useful to citizenship with- out being helpful to apperception. The component ideas in this latter group should be recalled as long as Gettysburg continues to be an illustrious example of American courage and endurance, and hence a highly useful factor in cumulative impression; but, neither singly nor as a group, are they many- sided enough to the ordinary individual to have been memor- ized from the standpoint of varying apperception alone. They constitute a group that is to be remembered, not one to think with or even to remember by. CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 215 Most of the outlines that learners are compelled to plan, record, and even to memorize, as a condition to further ad- vancement at every stage of their educational xhe waste- progress, are useless either for direct furtherance fulness of or varying apperception. A detailed outline of memorizing the life and work of a particular author, the in- neither dustrial resources and political and social condi- many-sided tions of a particular country, the events in even a ^°^ recur- great military campaign, expend the memory in place of assisting it, and tend to develop unimaginative indi- viduals, who can think only by recalling the concrete thing which they have thought out before. Put to the test for relative value, its restricted usefulness is immediately ap- parent. Even though it may be inherently interesting, it is neither many-sided nor recurring. The ideas that are directly useful within each academic subject must be grouped, both for direct and for indirect usefulness, into sequences and systems that are both many- sided and frequently recurring. Within most branches rich in content, not only citizenship, health, or morality, but vary- ing apperception both in the sense of concentration and of interconnection may be furthered by directly useful groups formed from ideas directly useful. In all but the abstract subjects, interconnection is furthered by the system peculiar to the branch of knowledge itself, in proportion as its com- ponent groups are many-sided and recurring whether they are directly useful or not. Even in specialization with its group- ing and organization of details without regard to their direct usefulness or to var3dng apperception, the test of many-sided- ness and recurrence is still determining and varying apper- ception may be furthered without the branch as well as within it. These general systems with their subordinate groupings, while in themselves constituting separate and individual apperception centers of high value, multiply both their centripetal and centrifugal power, if they are combined and interrelated. When their interrelationship is based organiza- tion. 2i6 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY solely on the systems peculiar to various branches of learn- ing, phases of direct preparation for life and specializa- Oniy direct ^j^^ ^^ occupation or knowledge, appercep- preparation tion takes the form of specific and general dom^ance ^^^^^P^^^^' ^^^ gradually results in the domin- thr^igh^^^ ^^ce of fixed ideas and habits. Through them cumulative the old idea or experience needs to be always apperceived in the same relationships, and the new one to be promptly subordinated in some limited "circle of thought.'' In general education such dominance is essential only to the directly useful appercep- tive groups and systems. Religion and moraHty, health, industrial efficiency, social service, good citizenship, and right avocation, themselves usefully interrelated, must, so far as possible, regulate and control human existence. To them, from the standpoint of centripetal apperception, academic and specialized systems must be subordinated. Their selection is the most important service to which the test of relative usefulness is put. Their many-sided- ness, recurrence, and sensational and emotional appeal, potentially the highest, must be made actual through in- struction and experience. But, aside from their direct usefulness, they combine, with academic organization and all other possibly useful re- Correlation l^Ltionships, to ensure, on the one hand, their own between varying apperception, and, on the other, the means academic to the interrelationship of every idea and experi- inadequate ^^^^ ^^^ ^^Y Other. To this end, the ordinary for useful and incidental application of Herbartian correla- appercep- ^ion and the five formal steps is too specific, and, therefore, limited, a means. However numerous the specific relationships formed between various branches of human knowledge, and ensured through preparation, pre- sentation, and the other apperceiving activities to each useful idea presented in a recitation, the vast multitude of inter- relationships possible to experience are but slightly furthered. Still less is their probability increased if the associations and CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 217 correlations are artificial and temporary — music associated with nature study by calling the bar a fence, and the notes of the scale do-birds and re-birds, or all the elementary branches with each other, by making Mary's Little Lamb the correlating basis of a day's round, or the story of Crusoe the general apperceiving system for a term. With the exception of the great systems of ideas cumu- latively developed from the standpoint of direct usefulness, the most many-sided and frequently recurring General systems of interrelationships, and hence the most location, effective basis for complete and varying apper- and^phases ception, are not far-fetched associations between of personal formal subjects, but the more general phases experience of personal experience, together with historically useful ap- related periods, reigns and epochs, and geograph- perception ically related localities, features, and sections, centers. Their value to apperception lies in the fact that, when an idea is associated with them, it is put into mental juxta- position, with a multitude of others with which it is almost certainly seen to have something in common which would otherwise remain undiscovered. While the interrelated sys- tems of directly useful apperceiving centers limit and control apperception, those of general experience and geographical and historical location and sequence open the way to an apperception as variable as human life itself. More than this, inclusion in particular historical and geographical envi- ronments, and even in particular phases of personal experi- ence, is very likely to be based upon essential similarities which juxtaposition makes it easier to discover. If early in life, however, every-day experience and historical and geo- gjraphical systems come through instruction to include cer- tainly what is consciously associated with direct furtherance, a multitude of ideas which they generally locate and retain are given higher probability of becoming directly useful as well as of being miscellaneously apperceived. In these larger interrelationships many-sidedness and recurrence are deter- mining, and result in an interest of their own. The general 2i8 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY conditions essential to a manufacturing center, the ideas com- mon to a geographical description of any country or of any staple of commerce; the general sequence or classification of events in colonization, war, or epochs, reigns and administra- tions; the various branches of literature as parts of literature in general, the association of the names of authors with the branch to which they belong and the books that they have written, the classification of facts common to the life and work of all authors; sequences of essentially related facts and principles in science; these are groups many-sided and recurring enough both to remember by and think with. They will be committed to memory not as directly furthering the aim, but as constituting means by which ideas will be interconnected and apperceived. In the determination of the apperceiving centers most useful for each stage of development, immediacy of sensa- tional and emotional appeal, as well as of many-sidedness and recurrence, must be taken into account. But at every stage, immediacy of many-sidedness and recurrence are determin- ing. Individual personal experience is not organized through instruction, but organizes itself, except in so far as it increas- Instruction ^^g^Y comes to be dominated by direct further- must select ance. But instruction must at each stage of the personal development select the phases of experience to to which it which a many-sided optional content is to be relates presented. That is, instruction determines the content. parts of systematic experience that are to be formally utilized as centers for varying apperception. If the fern is not presented in the more many-sided group of trees, flowers, and plants, with their suggestion of growth, decay, the need of proper care and a constantly increasing number of other ideas, the young child, if it retains it and apperceives it at all, may think of the less many-sided and suggestive "pot of green feathers.'' The nutmegs in the shop windows may be "white peanuts," if they are not given a far greater likelihood of many-sidedness by being apperceived as "spice" CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 219 that is brought from far away. Incidental apperception should not be wholly left to incidental experience. Instruc- tion should assure initial apperception through the greatest manysidedness and most permanent recurrence that are immediate. The most peculiar service of experience to varying apper- ception, however, consists of an external and accidental juxta- position of ideas wholly due to its incidental Experience nature. An idea once associated with a fre- useful quently recurring and many-sided apperceiving through . .1 ^ -^ u • • -J accidental group IS, through its happemngs, comcidences, ^^^ even and illogical combinations, brought into relation- absurd ships only less variable than the vagaries of a ij^^taposi- dream. Instruction should associate the optional material which it presents with the apperceiving groups com- mon to actual personal experience in which it is certain to be directly or indirectly useful. This accomplished, the accidents of experience may, through some one relationship in all the many-sidedness of the apperceiving group, bring the new material into contact with an idea to which only acci- dent or the providence of God himself could relate it. Many of the relationships most useful to modern civilization have been accidentally revealed — Watts, through the teakettle, and Newton, through the falling apple, each gained a great thought that would not have been possible if steam had been associated only with physical laws and not with teakettles, or gravitation through too pure a science with experimental apparatus in place of with every-day pheno- mena. So a foreign product, instead of merely being grouped with other exports in a list having only a narrow and specific usefulness, if associated as a domestic import with the use to which it is put, will have a better chance of being known in some new relationship. Each scientific principle apperceived through its most frequently recurring applications, each moral law or ideal of citizenship associated with what is most common in actual experience will through chance be put 220 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY into connections which instruction cannot anticipate and which failure to relate academic subject matter to hfe would make impossible. Similarly, the idea that is initially associated with some general part of the complete historical or geographical apper- ceiving systems is given a vastly increased chance of being connected with anything that the learner knows and comes to know of the accidents and essential relationships of world experience since the dawn of history. Once associate a name, a fact, or an activity with the Age of Queen EHzabeth, the coal regions of Pennsylvania, China, the French Revolu- tion, the Mediterranean region, or the Civil War, and impres- sions, partial remembrances, and certain relationships which it may share come crowding into the mind to ensure a many- sided apperception and to encourage the identification of the general stimuli involved in general discipline. These certain and specific associations through geograph- ical and historical contiguity are equally essential to direct Increasinclv Preparation for life, culture, and discipline, but exact geo- are commonly memorized no more thoroughly or graphical retained no more persistently than the thousand ical location ^^^ ^^^ more or less significant facts which with- essential as out them are far less likely to be useful. Per- knowiedge gistent drill in general, as distinct from exact location, should figure in each stage of education. Exact location, either by date or point of the compass, usually makes no material addition to the number of details that may be usefully associated with it, and should be memorized only when it does. As each advancing stage of education in- creases the number of details that may be associated, increas- ingly exact location may, though not necessarily will, become necessary. Only the specialist need commit to memory in chronological order the names of Merovingians and Carlo- vingians or the relative location of the provinces of France. They are many-sided and recurring to the historian and the Frenchman, but not immediately many-sided and recurring to the majority of learners. CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 221 This drill in location should not be confined to the formal study of history and geography. Although in literature and art an aesthetic appreciation is possible which ^^g^g ^^^ merely discriminates between the relatively good master- and the relatively bad, it remains difficult to pieces develop and retain in the absence of the identi- ^.^ ^yp^ ^j fication of the masterpiece with its creator, and production, relatively unintelligent and non-suggestive, if un- iiationaUty, . "^ ■, . ■, •, .,-..,.,. \ and epoch, associated with the period of civilization, and even the nationality and the century, which inspired it. As al- ready pointed out, the names of artists should be mechanic- ally associated with their masterpieces, and of authors with their characteristic works; essayists should be associated with essayists, novelists with novelists. It is as important, from the standpoint of culture and direct preparation for leisure, to mechanically retain in chronological order the names of German composers, Italian painters, and French dramatists, and in the college course itself the names of Elizabethan poets, as for the specialists to know lists of hydro- carbons or theorems and corollaries in logical order. No name of a pre-eminently great writer or artist or of a pre- eminent masterpiece of literature or art which continually recurs in public library, art gallery, and museum, or even pop- ular periodicals and the public press, should remain unas- sociated with historical period or epoch, race, nationality, and general geographical locality. The initial memorizing or the drill necessary to the reten- tion of such material is as certainly the work of the college and professional school as of schools that are more ^^^^ ^53^. elementary. The college must not refuse to ciation as retail "second-hand" material through a ''gen- t^^ly t^e eral information course" on the ground that a college as ''lively man might find it for himself" by a of second- judicious use of the dictionary or the encyclo- ^^^ school, pedia. Its function is to make the "lively man," not to take him for granted. It must not leave to chance the occa- sional but persistent review necessary to the retention of 222 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY the specific relationships which the self-active man must remember by and think with. Any idea, if in itself many-sided in the highest degree in potentially useful relationships, made permanent by contin- ual recurrence in every-day experience or through useful sys- ^^^ persistent repetition of memory drills, may terns make serve as the basis for retaining new ideas and for ^}^^^y' giving them the greatest likelihood of being fully useful. apperceived in relationships which will further general culture, general discipline, direct prepa- ration for life, and even specialization itself. They differ from the ordinary mental content, which may happen to be as many-sided, in the fact that, selected because they possess the greatest number of potentially useful relationships, they are to be made, so far as possible, common to all individuals for the sake both of furthering the common knowledge, activities, and culture essential to democracy, and of consti- tuting selected and specific relationships through which all new ideas will not only be associated, but definitely associ- ated. For example, it matters much, both to certainty of reten- tion and probability of further useful apperception, whether the story of the Prince and the Chief Justice is incidentally connected with a particular book, a pleasant afternoon, or a children's magazine, or specifically associated through instruction with England, the fifteenth century, and good citizenship. The two phases of the service which this specific apperception performs are well illustrated by the game of twenty questions. Starting in ignorance of the thing selected by one's opponents from the whole mass of possible ideas, the player successively determines that it is English, medieval, a person, a prince, and almost certainly guesses the Black Prince, one of the Princes in the Tower, or Prince Henry. Reversing this process, and starting with Henry, the possibil- ity of associating him with many other ideas steadily in- creases as you relate him to prince, English, medieval, and other terms about which a thousand other ideas cluster. CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 223 The incident of the Prince and the Justice may be remem- bered just as certainly by association in one mind with Dicken's "Child's History of England/' and in another with the story of the "Prince and the Pauper," but it is not poten- tially as useful as if it were associated in both minds through "medieval" with chivalry, feudalism, gorgeous costume, her- aldry, tournament, knightly faith, free cities; through "Eng- lish," not only with honesty and justice, Henrys and Ed- wards, Magna Charta, parliaments and barons, but with every English idea and event that each individual happens to remember from the coming of the Saxons to the coronation of Edward VII. If it is held in mind, with such miscellane- ous connections made as probable as possible, the mind is far more likely to perceive inherent relationships between it and other faithful justices, other just and honest princes, the popularity of royalty, confidence in the impartiality of courts, obedience to law and the doctrine of equal rights, than if it is remembered through association with another story or book. Obviously, however, the sum total of ideas presented to the mind through formal instruction cannot be made certain in such connections. Individual, incidental, and, instruction therefore, varying associations and apperceptions must ensure will be far more largely responsible for the cer- association tain recollections, the mere remembrances, and most useful the impressions which form the greater part of apperceiv- education. It is the place of formal instruction to ^^^ centers. see, first, that these basal mnemonic and dynamic groups and sequences are themselves certainly fixed in mind, and, second, that the new ideas are presented as often as possible in relation to them. The part of the time effective for cer- tain memorizing and retention that need be devoted to this mnemonic and dynamic drill is relatively small. Probably less than five or ten minutes a day throughout the entire educational course would be quite adequate. But it is as necessary in the college, professional school, and university as in the high school or the lower grades. It may properly 2 24 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY be beneath the dignity of the college professor to serve as the drill master, but the drill master or, at least, examiner must be found, whether in professor or preceptor and tutor. So essential a basis for many-sidedness and interrelationship must not be taken for granted or left to chance. The optional content most useful to apperception is largely identical with that most useful to mere remembrance. With Efficiency both directly and indirectly useful apperceiving of essential centers and systems certainly fixed in the mind content q£ ^^le learner, the extent of the many-sidedness upon the ^^ varying apperception depends upon the rela- usefulness tive usefulness and the quantity of optional o op lona . iYia,tenaly and, so far as the recitation is con- cerned, the efficiency of the method through which it is pre- sented. It is at this point that the Herbartian contribution to method has been most helpful. The "five formal steps" are steps to apperception, and, in the absence of memory drill, usually to varying apperception, though "preparation" de- termines the associations in experience through which instruc- tion seeks to retain the new idea. In the absence, however, of the constant drill necessary to the dominance of a particular group, even "generalization" and "application" may serve no further purpose than the temporary association of a few ideas insufficient to create an apperceiving center. Every new association, however apperceived, even though tem- porary, tends to completeness of mental interconnection, and so favors both varying apperception and general discipline. From the quantitative standpoint, each foreign language, thoroughly enough acquired to be pleasurably read or orally comprehended, may be made an effective instru- ff^o^eign^ ment to varying apperception through untran- languages a slated literature, business, travel, and even occa- great aid to sional letters and conversation. As has been al- perception." ready demonstrated, aside from direct usefulness in business, avocation, and academic or vocational specialization, it is through varying apperception, and not through general discipline, that the mastery of a foreign CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 225 language is usefuL The study necessary to its mastery, how- ever, involves a specific discipline peculiar to the language itself, and intellectual habits which can become general, but are little likely to become so through it. As for other aca- demic subjects and systems, if imperfectly and temporarily mastered, they make contribution, though not necessarily very useful contribution, to optional material. If thoroughly and permanently mastered, they become apperceiving centers and systems which are directly useful if included in direct preparation or specialization, and are indirectly useful through varying apperception in proportion to the many-sidedness and recurrence of their subject matter. 6. Application of the Test for Relative Value to General Dis- cipline Certain of the relationships most useful to general disci- pline have either been already determined in the application of the test to cumulative impression and varying appercep- tion, or will form a part of what is specifically useful to direct preparation. But, while a relationship or group of relation- ships may be specifically useful enough to some phase of direct preparation to be made certain, before it is selected as a center for cumulative impression and varying apperception, with a view to general discipline, its stimulus must be de- termined in as general a form as is most useful through its many-sidedness and recurrence in fields of experience other than that in which it is developed. For example, .^j^g deter- obedience will undoubtedly be included among the mination of relationships most useful to morality, industry, J^® ^*^"^rli and citizenship, but obedience to what? In enough to morality its stimulus is individual judgment of be most right, backed by a moral code and all custom ^^® ^ * accepted as essential to the well-being of the community that is not wrong for the individual. In industry it is every com- mand or direction of the employer which pertains to the em- ployment; in citizenship, law or the legal command of legally constituted officials. Each stimulus to obedience, which 15 226 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY forms these various relationships with it, is plainly many- sided enough, and frequently recurring enough in each to be certainly mastered in each in all the specific relationships essential to general discipline. Indeed, the mastery of all will further the application of each in its separate field of usefulness. Each general stimulus to obedience must then be identified as generally as possible in the field in which it operates. It, with the specific relationships necessary to ap- plication, must become a part of the complex sys- use^fuTliabit tem of ideals, information, activities, and habits must have essential to morality, industry, or citizenship, specific gen- -g^^ obedience to morals, to employer, and to law eral stimuli. ./- , . i i mi • i i must be identified with the still more many-sided and frequently recurring obedience to any command or direction not in itself evil, given by one who has the right to command. Here is the relationship which is most useful because it adds to its many-sidedness and recurrence from the standpoint of morality, industry, or citizenship, a still wider many-sidedness and recurrence in useful relationships from the high concept of obedience to the will of God or to the example of Christ, to boyish obedience to the captain of the nine oj the eleven and the notion of fair play in all sport. In any one of these relationships the habit of obedience may be firmly formed, and from any one of these it may fail to carry over. The weakness in dependence upon "general moral habit," as against the specific development of moral habits essential to industry or citizenship, is that habits, including moral habits, are not general at all. The greatest likelihood of general application lies in certainly associating with each useful consequence, in addition to its most general stimulus that is useful, each stimulus that is useful in high degree in some specific field. And to both general and specific stimuli, the test of many-sidedness, frequency, and sensa- tional or emotional appeal must be applied. On the other hand, the stimulus most general within each specific field should be consciously, certainly, and per- sistently associated with the stimulus which is most useful CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 227 for all, in order that the cumulative impression But aU must developed through all can be brought to bear upon fied with the each. Obedience to law will not necessarily most gen- result from obedience in home and school, erally use- , ' ful stimulus, obedience to employer, and obedience to moral judgments, but good-will toward law, the wish to obey it, will be tremendously re-enforced if its stimulus is identified with obedience in general, and so associated with a cumu- lative mass of ideals, feehngs, imaginations, knowledge, actions, and habits which are applicable to all forms of obedience. With the exception of varying apperception, and the habit of analysis and synthesis on the recognition of any part of each general stimulus with a view to its identi- ^ ^^^^_ fication as a whole, all other conditions favorable tionships to general discipline are specific, and must be essential to included in direct preparation within the field of determined application. Here, again, is abundant reason through for including the development of essential moral x?®"^^®^^^ habits in direct preparation, in place of hopefully depending upon the application of moral habits developed elsewhere. The determination of the particular* fields, in which the useful many-sidedness and recurrence of the stimu- lus are highest, determines the fields in which detailed knowl- edge is to be acquired, the habits of analysis and synthesis made certain, and the habit of seeking possible appHcations formed. The relative many-sidedness and recurrence of particular details of knowledge, as a condition to application, determines which are essential. It is the many-sidedness, the recurrence, and even the sensational or emotional appeal of a particular application that determines whether it is suffi- ciently useful to be associated as a "type" of similar applica- tions. Even the particular habit which is to be made certain and sure, as the basis for all the complex associations favorable to its general application, must be selected on the ground of the relative many-sidedness, frequency, and emotional appeal of its general stimulus. 228 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY To continue the illustration, take obedience to law as a factor in citizenship. The basal habit of obedience, whether The test ^^ ^^^ home or elsewhere, cannot be taken for illustrated granted. Obedience to some stimulus or other through Its niust be made sure for every pupil of the school. apphcation _,^, . .„ i.iir* to the habit What IS SO fully under the control of instruction, of obedi- and, at the same time, more immediate in its ence to law. many-sidedness, its recurrence, and its emotional appeal as the law of the school? From the standpoint of citizenship, however, the general stimulus of which the pupils are made habitually conscious must not be love of teacher, the hope of reward, the fear of punishment, rational conviction of the necessity of particular rules, the fact that they have been made by the school itself as a self-governing body, or even the presence of authority which has the moral right to command, but the naked fact that the law of the school is the law of the community and the state created by legislature and school board, and that the teacher is a legally constituted officer of that law. All other motives to obedience must unite to re-enforce the incentive of legality, but no one of them can be substituted for it. The teacher may be hated, reward scorned, punishment defied, the necessity for rule unappreci- ated, self-government betrayed, and moral motive undevel- oped, but the law of the school as the law of the state must be obeyed. No boy should be expelled or suspended from school, to be educated into outlawry through successful defi- ance of law, and to become to other pupils an impressive ex- ample that law can be successfully defied. On the contrary, his removal to some special institution or school where obedience can be effectively compelled should keep him in the habit of obedience to law, and accustom both him and his companions to the inexorability with which it is compelled. Continual identification of obedience to law, with the more general stimulus of any command given by one who has the right, performs the double service of re-enforcing the stimu- lus of law by the cumulative force of all other motives, and of CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 229 adding its force to theirs, but obedience to law must make a cumulative impression of its own. From the standpoint of citizenship, it is not only necessary to obey the law, but to obey the law because it is the law. So, with due regard for the test of relative worth for the sake of cumulative impres- sion, a few highly emotional illustrations are selected to be specifically and certainly associated with it as an emotional center for a gradually developing will to obey the law: the judge who condemns his own son, Gascoigne and Prince Henry, Christ and the tribute money. To these must be continually added incidents and exam- ples relatively impressive, many-sided and recurring, which, though themselves forgotten, will strengthen the common feeling of regard for and pride in obedience to law. Further- more, such many-sided and frequently recurring ideals and habits of obedience as have been formed in the home should be made legally potent through persistent emphasis of the fact that the teacher stands in loco parentis. Similarly, the test of relative worth must be applied with a view to mere remembrance and to varying apperception. With the ideal of obedience to law must be specifically associ- ated the periods and the localities in which it is likely to have the most frequently recurring, many-sided and impressive relationships: the Roman Empire, the age of Justinian, the development of the British constitution. In addition, there must be brought to bear upon it as many as possible memory and apperceiving centers, less many-sided and recurring than democracy, habeas corpus, trial by jury, and other concepts that must be certainly memorized, but more many-sided and recurring than those which might be referred to or discussed: the common law, constitutional law, the canon law, despot- ism, anarchy, limited monarchy. These concepts whose lack of immediacy in many-sidedness and recurrence makes them the partial concepts and mere remembrances of the lower stages of advancement, become the concepts that must be fully comprehended and definitely and certainly associated in the more advanced grades. 230 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY For the remaining conditions to the general application of the habit, specific discipline is solely responsible and the test of relative worth still more obviously applies. It is specific discipline that must certainly associate with law, as the stimulus to obedience, the few acts of obedience which will be most frequently recurring and many-sided for those who are being taught. With some schools it may be prevention of the defacement or destruction of property, public order during a strike, or observation of the law concerning the col- lection of refuse; with others, it may be the prevention of smuggling on returning from a trip to Europe, and the observation of the speed laws on the pubKc highway. The associated applications will vary with locality, school, and grade, many-sidedness and recurrence always being deter- mining for locality and immediacy for grade. With the gen- eral stimulus must also be certainly associated such frequently recurring and many-sided fields of application as business, public health, property and person, together with the most many-sided and frequently recurring terms associated with each: receipt, contract, protest, levy; fumigation, health inspection, quarantine; trespass, lease, ejectment, damage, distinction between real and personal property; self-defence, resistance to an officer, assault and battery, perjury, and right of search. These are but a few examples of the terms which, immediately many-sided and recurring at various stages of educational progress, will aid in carr)dng over the habit of obedience to law if cumulative impression has created the will to make it general. Finally, it is self-evident that the selection of the general stimulus which is most useful, or of the most useful fields of application, is also determining for the habit of seeking out applications while in school, the habit of analysis and syn- thesis in particular fields, and the habit of analysis and syn- thesis with a view to the identification of the stimulus as a whole on the recognition of any of its parts. That is, the general test for relative value can be used not only with a view to determining the habits and relationships which should CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 231 be applied in other fields than those in which they The test are made certain, but to determining the various ^®!^^2,^^^^ relationships which most effectively aid in carrying most useful them over. In direct preparation involving moral habits and or intellectual habits generally useful, the memoriz- ||j,^g^|*' ing of these latter relationships must include those favorable essential to the general application of habits in *<> t^eir^ all fields of experience in which they are useful. ^^^ ^^ ^^' This follows not only from the desirability of carrying them over into other fields, but from the necessity of re-enforcing them in each specific field in which they are certainly devel- oped, with the sum total of influences which tend to make them stronger than possible alternatives. Obedience, truth- fulness, honesty, promptness, punctuality, industry, perse- verance, endurance, bravery, and their common personal and social factors, self-control, self-respect, consideration for others, the respect of others, love and self-sacrifice, whether developed and exercised in school or out, are always opposed by conflicting tendencies and habits, and need in any one field of experience the cumulative re-enforcement from all others in which they have become dominant. Their general application within each is dependent upon the certain memo- rizing or habitual operation of specific relationships rela- tively most useful to general discipline, including not only cumulative impression, but the whole group of favorable relationships just illustrated in discussing the general appli- cation of the habit of obedience. And the certainty of their application in each and the probability of their application in all is increased by each addition of the circle of specific relationships favorable to application in any one. From the standpoint of general discipline, then, it is as necessary to apply the test of relative worth to the relation- ships which constitute favorable conditions to the broadest useful application of a habit as to use it in the determina- tion of the basal habit itself. That the basal habit may be academic and certain of development in the mastery of a particular branch is no reason for developing it there as 232 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY a step toward general discipline, unless its subject matter also furnishes the relationships necessary to its carrjdng over The condi- ii^^o Other fields, or special provision is made tions favor- through Other subject matter and the life of the able to use- iga^j-^ej. j^ school and out, to ensure its carrying discipline over. A System of specific relationships, quite form a sys- distinct from any academic system, but equally from ^^ ^^^ complex and equally subject to the test of relative academic worth, is essential not only to direct preparation system. f^j. j^£g^ j^^^ ^q ^j^g general application of each gen- erally useful moral or intellectual habit. Without direct and specific preparation for life, general discipline is at its minimum for the habits which academic training has made most sure. Since a branch of study as a systematic whole cannot be usefully applied outside the field for which it is specifically organized, its usefulness as a whole to general discipline is limited to its contribution of specific relationships which are to be carried over and the ensuring of cumulative impression and varying apperception necessary to general application. The inadequacy of the abstract subjects from this point of view, outside the province of specialization, has been cumu- latively emphasized. It is the rich subject matter of natural science, history, literature, and art which not only affords the material for directly useful organization, but which, through the organization peculiar to each branch as a whole, furnishes the apperceiving and memory centers and systems which further general discipline through varying appercep- tion and mere remembrance. There are, however, certain habits which the test of rela- tive worth will show highly useful, from the standpoint of General general application, that are dependent upon the moral and mastery of complex and systematic bodies of intellectual knowledge. The habit of progressive or cumula- habits can- , ^ . xi. • i.- i. • not be de- tive analysis or synthesis which is necessary to veloped in the building up of complex logical wholes, of envir^n-^^* exact thinking, which passes from initial premises ment. to conclusions which in time become premises, of CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 233 industry, exactness, persistence, and patience in complex and abstract endeavor, form a necessary part of the mental and spiritual equipment of all great thinkers. The ac- quisition of such habits, however, is a phase of speciahza- tion. Since the individuals whose specialty demands them, whether it is vocational or liberal, will, from the same standpoint of direct preparation, just as certainly require mathematics and the languages, such carrying over as may be incidental to "formal" and abstract study will result. But in the course of preparation for life in general a far differ- ent application of these intellectual and moral qualities is essential. If the patience and persistence which are equal to material that reacts against the worker through twistings and turnings, splittings and breakings that seem to make it perversely alive, or which overcome animate ^j^^ cumu- nature whose stupidity or folly, unfriendliness lative sys- or wickedness make perversity real, are not of !?Tx ®|?®^I different quality from the patience and persist- preparation ence involved in the analysis and synthesis of ensure lines and symbols, they at least represent applica- * ®°^* tion in so different a spiritual environment, and with so much stronger alternative impulses, that they must be separately developed. The moral or intellectual habit that triumphs over conflicting impulses and incentives must be something more than a by-product of academic achievement or even an essential condition to it. In order to have the inexora- bility to conquer material resistance and human opposition and temptation it must be made "stern" and strong, not merely from facing the complex problems involved in the mastery of great systems of thought, but from having the cumulative re-enforcement of a great intellectual, emotional and motor system of the application of which it is a part, and upon which its general application directly depends. In every-day life the spirit and the habits of science should be continually applied, but they are most certain of application when they are acquired through those parts of science that are not only organized as science, but in systematic relation- 234 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY ship to life itself. For the great mass of mankind it is safe to conclude that direct preparation will not only develop the moral and intellectual qualities most general in their useful- ness through the recurrence and many-sidedness of each essen- tial relationship best fitted to their perpetuation and general Manual in- application, but, through a sufficiently systematic dustrial ^^d complex subject matter, to ensure the "stern" su^bjecfto resistance to application which Dr. Kerschen- the test of steiner finds lacking in academic elementary ^^^J" school work.^ The industrial training, in the sidedness . i . . . i . i i and sense 01 manual trammg, which he urges as the recurrence, elementary substitute for the complex organiza- tion of more advanced studies, can be more truly regarded not only as a part of a highly organized direct preparation for morality or citizenship, but as a part for which the test of sensational appeal will not be determining in the absence of many-sidedness and recurrence useful to learners who are not specialists. Although he is safe in assuming that elementary and indus- trial manual training may result in the spirit of cheerful co-operation, it does not follow that, by industrializing the school, he has developed the cheerful spirit and basal habit of co-operation essential to good citizenship. He will find it hard enough to carry over his cheerful co-operation, re- sulting from an immediate interest in an exceptional and per- sonal task, to the monotonous grind of putting on boot-heels or polishing watch cases in an employer's factory. It is a still farther cry from individualistic occupation or cheerful co-operation in the making of a heel as part of a shoe that never will wear itself out on a workman's foot, or the polish- ing of a watch case that never will be scratched in a workman's pocket, to cheerful payment of one's just part of a public tax or cheerful co-operation with the police force when the shop is shut down by a strike. From the standpoint of civic, as distinct from industrial training, better the more direct preparation of Miss Wister's League of Good Citizen- ship, with its cheerful co-operation in cleaning school grounds CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 235 and protecting private and public property,^ than that of the . manual training school, in making a desk or a book-rack to be displayed in the principal's oiB&ce. The ideals, the partial concepts, the many-sidedness, and the habits, equally essential to direct preparation and general discipline, when once selected must be more specifically and certainly organized in every phase of direct preparation than in the academic branches whose organization is in part at least included in it. Including, as they then will, both the relationships which are to be generally applied and the rela- tionships through which application is made most certain, they must be as complex in their direct usefulness as a pure science in its abstraction. On the other hand, it can safely be asserted that the most thorough study of even a formal branch, in the absence of the certain memorizing of relationships quite external to its logical organization, far from General carrying over the resulting habits into other ^tWn an fields of experience, will fail to result in gen- academic eral discipline within the formal branch it- ^^*^*^^ self. The great mass of pupils in arithmetic upon mem- are still confused in the face of miscellaneous orizing re- examples, and students in geometry are yet ^**Jo^ships helpless when confronted by original theorems to it. and problems. To illustrate, a student may know every proposition re- garding the relation between lines and angles and the equality of triangles, and still be unable to demonstrate the simplest original theorem involving them. Given the fact that one angle equals another or is to be proved equal to another, he must not only know the preceding theorems and their demon- strations, but he must have firmly associated with the notion of equal angles every way in which they have been demon- strated equal — exterior-interior angles, alternate-interior angles, vertical angles, right angles, corresponding angles of equal triangles, opposite basal angles in an isosceles triangle, superimposed angles, angles equal to a common angle, etc. 236 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY Similarly, with the notion of equal triangles, he must have associated triangles having two sides and the included angle equal, three sides equal, coincidence on superposition, etc. These relationships — conditions to general discipline within the branch, which many teachers of geometry do not drill into the minds of pupils — are far more many-sided and frequently recurring than the theorems themselves, which, when sys- tematically memorized, collectively constitute a thoroughly adequate specific discipline. So with the habit to which they are a condition, the habit of progressive analysis and synthesis, with a view to the identification of each familiar stimulus, and consequently the drawing of every formal con- clusion which is possible at each new stage of the demonstra- tion or solution. Quite outside of the formal subject matter of geometry, and not necessarily involved in the mastery of theorems whose demonstration is given by the text-book, are specific relationships and habits, in the absence of which independent general application within the geometrical field itself is improbable. The relative fewness of the specific relationships and habits essential to general discipline in geometry, presents sufiicient contrast with those essential to the general carr)dng over of a moral habit, both to indicate why an abstract subject is least likely to be in itself adequate to general discipline in other fields, and to suggest the fact that relationships vary greatly in the sum total of specific associations and habits necessary to make them as general in their application as is useful and possible. But each rela- tionship, useful enough to be generally applied through the independent self-activity of the pupils, must have specifically associated with it other specific relationships and habits, essential from the standpoint of general discipline, whose relative worth is determinable, like that of the general rela- tionship itself, by their relative many-sidedness, frequency, and sensational or emotional appeal. CHAPTER IX APPLICATION OF THE TEST OF RELATIVE WORTH TO SPECIFIC DISCIPLINE, WITH THE CONSEQUENT DETERMINATION OF A CUMULATIVE AND DOMINATING SYSTEM, BOTH DI- RECTLY AND INDIRECTLY USEFUL I. Specific Discipline as Essential to Formal Self -activity as to Direct Preparation and Specialization Perhaps the most important fact that has been cumula- tively demonstrated in the preceding discussion is that the indirect furtherance of the educational aim, through the various phases of formal or educational self-activity, demands a system of specific relationships and habits quite distinct from the various branches of human knowledge organized as wholes, or the even more complex and certain systems essen- tial to direct preparation for life. While thus distinct from both specific academic learning and specific preparation for life, it is a necessary part of each, and each must furnish the basal relationships which it should make general, and with which its peculiar relationships must be specifically and certainly associated. Hence, from the standpoint of specific discipline, the rela- tionships essential to the usefulness of cumulative impression, mere remembrance, varying apperception, and general discipline are of the highest value, and repetition^ must be made as certain and enduring as those essential to directly essential to life or to academic specializa- intellectual tion. Ignored in text-books, omitted from courses freedom, of study, neglected by the mass of teachers, they constitute the only means to the independent self -activ- ity which is the ideal of the new education. Before the hu- man mind can independently remember and] think in the most useful relationships, it must have certainly, cumula- 237 238 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY lively, and systematically mastered the relationships which it can most usefully remember by and think with. The slavery of imitation, memorizing, drill, accumulation, and review must precede and accompany intellectual and moral freedom. Specific discipline includes: (i) The specific relationships and systems essential to formal self-activity which have just been discussed and illustrated. While distinct from academic learn- dUcipline "^S> they include the general relationships essen- includes tial to some academic branches as wholes, such t*^T w' ^^ general geographical and historical location and connected sequence, and many-sided and frequently re- systems of curring terms and principles, fatio^h/ps' (^) ^^^ specific relationships and systems essential to direct preparation for life in general. Their determination through the application of the general test for relative worth will soon be discussed and illustrated under different phases of the educational aim. They include many particular academic relationships, and occasionally academic branches in part or as wholes, such as portions of civil government from the standpoint of citizenship and general elementary science from that of industrial efficiency. With these and the relationships necessary to such general application as is useful, they constitute more complex sys- tems than the academic branches themselves. (3) The specific relationships and systems essential to specialization. They include all academic branches as wholes when mastered with a view either to academic or vocational specialization. Within the subject matter of each branch regarded as a systematic whole, as well as for particular re- lationships that further the specialty, the test of many-sided- ness, recurrence, and emotional appeal is determining. In most existing courses of study the specific relationships and systems essential both to formal self-activity and to direct preparation for life are given only in so far as they are naturally included in academic subjects. Science, literature, CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 239 history, and civil government, for example, however academic the selection of their subject matter, contain a varying amount of material of direct worth to citizenship, morality, or industry. History and geography present the general sequences and locations in time and space favorable to mere remembrance and varying apperception. But the most "formal" or disciplinary subjects of them all fail to include as an essential part of their subject matter the relationships favorable to general discipline. The application of the general test for selection, within and without existing text-books and courses of study, should result, first, in a sharp contrast between specific relation- ships and grouping, most useful, either in direct preparation or academic specialization, and those relatively less useful; second, in the determination of those so essential that they must be certainly memorized and generally applied, and eventually through indication of the relationships most favorable to such application, in the building up of inter- related systems of thought and action that will dominate life and character. 2. Application of the Test to Direct Preparation for the Variom Phases of the Educational Aim Where the test of relative worth has been applied to specific discipline, as it already has been to the other phases of formal self-activity, it will be still more clearly Rgj^tive evident that, whether the several phases of the worth of the educational aim are to be directly or indirectly various furthered, the means of determining the relative J^^g aim° worth of relationships remain the same. Indeed, itself only theoretically, it can be used to determine the theoretic- relative usefulness of the various phases of the aim themselves, through their relative many-sidedness and recurrence, both in the present or an ideal civilization, and in all succeeding epochs of social and national development. While the ethical and the healthful, being general in their application to the more specific phases of life, have always 240 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY been the most many-sided and frequently recurring, the extent of even their usefulness has varied, both with geo- graphical location and in the course of human history. Where individuals live crowded together, whether in Eskimo huts or a great city, relationships affecting health are more frequently recurring and many-sided than when they live apart. Where physicians are rare and inaccessible, or their skill is limited, more relationships affecting health are directly useful to those not specialists. Citizenship takes on far more many-sided relationships under a democracy than under a despotic form of government. Industrial efficiency demands far more relationships in complex civilization than primitive life, but demands proportionately less many-sided skill on the part of each individual when industry is highly specialized. Even leisure, as pointed out in discussing cul- ture, is more frequently recurring as the condition of labor is improved, and more many-sided as social life itself becomes more complex. If the relative educational worth of the vari- ous phases of the aim is to be theoretically determined, it must be through their relative recurrence and many-sidedness for the majority of individuals in a given country and in a particular period rather than through Mr. Spencer's evalua- tion based on the contribution which each makes tini de- ^ ^^ racial survival. Practically, however, the part voted to that each is to play in the present courses of study d^^^ - is determined more by relative difficulty of realiza- upon rela- tion and efficiency of method than by its relative tive diflfi- theoretical worth. As each phase is so essential realfzation. ^^^^ ^^ must be realized as fully as possible at each stage of educational development, those that demand more or stronger ideals and incentives, more many- sided knowledge, more complex habits, greater system and more many-sided application, will take up a proportionately larger part of the course of study and of the time available for memorizing, and the time occupied by each will be lessened or increased by the relative efficiency of the methods of instruc- tion which are brought to bear. The relative theoretical CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 241' value of the various phases will become determining only in case it shall be found that the time available for formal education is inadequate for the realization of all, and conse- quently that choice must be made among them. With the course of study Hmited to subject matter and organization that stand the test of relative usefulness, together with the introduction of effective method, the time available for formal education should be fully adequate. This becomes even more probable if, with a more many-sided course of study which interchanges physical and aesthetic activities with mental work, the length of the school day and the school year is increased for all learners, and, through continuation school paralleling and for half of the day taking the place of indus- trial occupation, the number of years spent in formal educa- tion is extended for those compelled by economic conditions to leave the ordinary school. With the general interest which has been aroused in direct preparation for life, it is almost inconceivable that the first essential step toward determining the relative Analysis of worth of the subject matter of instruction — the general analysis of general phases of the aim into definite phases of and specific ends — has yet to be taken for citizen- ggsary con- ship, industrial efficiency and social service, has dition to been so recently taken for health and has ^???^*?°? been so partially taken for religion and morality. The many-sidedness, frequency, and emotional force with which a particular relationship furthers good citizenship may be determined without analysis, but not the sum total of the relationships which further it with most many-sidedness, frequency, and emotional force. In such familiar terms as patriotism, love of country, obedience to law, political hon- esty, * ^cheerful co-operation," and self-government we have the present loose conception of what good citizenship means. It is indefinite, unanalyzed, incomplete. The use of obedi- ence to law, as an illustration of the application of the test from the standpoint of general discipline and of equal rights, as an example of the complexity and system essential to 16 242 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY direct instruction, has already demonstrated how far analysis must go if the test is to be adequately applied. Take, for further example, love of country. No search for emotional material, which is sufficiently many-sided and frequently recurring to most effectively develop it, can be intelligently carried on until it is analyzed into all the definite and specific factors which constitute it. It includes love of country in the physical sense — the love of mountains and hills, rivers and valleys, forests and flowers, gray mists or sunny skies. It embraces the more personal love of home — of "altars and fires," "green graves," and scenes of childhood. It extends to pride in national characteristics and achievements — the simplicity and democracy of American life, heroic deeds in war and peace, industrial triumphs, feats of engineering skill, national music, literature and art. It finally reaches confidence in national power and influence, and culminates in love of political freedom and equality for all mankind — the spirit of American democracy. When the general aim is once analyzed into such definite ideals, the test of relative worth is easy to apply. It is not necessary to compare the usefulness of love of country with obedience to law, or even their component ideals one with another. In their specific association together, as general and subordinate phase of citizenship, they are so many-sided, frequently recurring, and highly emotional as to be obviously essential in their sum total. But with their subordinate ends once determined, it becomes easy to apply the test to the selection of subject matter that will not only be relatively useful in developing love of nature, home, and national characteristics and achievement, but in relating it to citizenship. Since formal self-activity is included in direct preparation, perhaps the greatest aid to analysis of the various phases of , , . the aim is consideration of each from the stand- Analysis . ^ r 1 ^' • and organ- pomt of Cumulative impression, mere remem- izationmust brance, varying apperception, and specific and icaUs \fell" 8^^^^^^ discipline. Each form of educational self- as logical, activity, if it is to be made as useful as possible CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 243 to a particular phase of the aim, demands the selection and presentation of the relationships which ensure the greatest many-sidedness, frequency of recurrence, and emotional appeal for it, and at the same time specifically bring it into definite • association with the particular aim. Recognition of the feelings, the sentiments, the viewpoints, the interests, the ideals, and the public opinion that cumulative impression must create; of the concepts that are, for the time at least, to be partial and merely remembered; of the knowledge and information within the particular phase which most certainly and usefully relate it to every other field of experience and every other field to it; of relationships or habits which must be made specific and sure; of the further relationships neces- sary to general discipline within the particular phase and without it, potentially assists in analyzing religion, morality, health, industrial efficiency, social service, citizenship, and avocation into definite ends, and in preventing a partial and one-sided attempt to achieve each general phase through the emphasis of some one of its more apparent or more easily attainable ends to the exclusion of others. Civil Govern- ment, "school city," or "cheerful co-operation" cannot separately ensure good citizenship. Scientific temperance instruction is not the sole antidote for the social temptations of strong drink. Religion must not remain dogma alone or vague emotion. Education itself must not become merely a point of view. Each phase of the aim must be analyzed into its essential parts, and throughout the course of education the sum total of relationships that are most useful, whether directly or indirectly, must be made certain and permanent. Education, in place of being academic knowledge and disci- pline, which gradually merge their certainty into a vague culture or point of view, is rather a cumulative emergence of certainty from impression and varying apperception. While at every stage of instruction all of the five forms of educational self-activity are being developed, the impressions and mere remembrances of one stage become more adequate concepts in the next, the partial concepts and varying associations of 244 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY earlier years, the habits of adult life, until collectively they form a system which, increasingly certain in its essential parts, and, therefore, increasingly useful in the general trend of its varying associations, determines character and dominates action. In the case of religion and of morality the analysis of the general phase into particular ends has long been complete. Logical '^^^ Sermon on the Mount, twelfth chapter of analysis of Romans, and the thirteenth chapter of Second ^^^*^^m* Corinthians eloquently specify the Christian vir- and health tues. The Jewish religion largely owes its per- relatively petuation to the definiteness of its requirements, comp e e. ^^^ their continual repetition in accordance with scriptural injunction. The moral code of all peoples is equally definite and specific. Within the last few years the conditions essential to good health have been scientifically specified and demonstrated. But their further analysis into such definite relationships that the test of relative worth can be applied, together with both the general and detailed analy- sis of industrial efficiency, social service, good citizenship, and the activities proper to leisure, has been checked by failure to consider the relationships necessary to formal self-activity. It is not only faith, honesty, cleanliness, legal aid icalanafysis ^^ ignorant or poverty stricken defendants, the still lacking doctrine of equal rights, or appreciation of litera- for all ture that analysis must reveal, but the feeling the aim. ^^ faith, the ideal of honesty, pleasure in cleanli- ness, interest in legal aid, devotion to equal rights, and a love of literature; the essential vocabulary of each, even where partially understood, and as many words and ideas relating to each as can in varying associa- tions be held in mind; the habits that are basal for each, together with the associated fields of application, typical examples, emotional centers, knowledge necessary to identification, specific stimuli to analysis and synthesis, and all the other conditions necessary to their general application. CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 245 Analysis, with a view to thus searching out the specific relationships favorable to cumulative impression, mere re- membrance, varying apperception, and general discipline, goes further and is more inclusive than the mere subdivision of general principles into a formal outline. 3. Determination of the Relative Worth of Specific Relation- ships Results in Specific System As the test of relative worth is applied to these definite and specific relationships the inevitable result is system — a system not merely logical, but pedagogical and dynamic. The definite ends into which each phase of the aim is ana- lyzed are co-ordinated, subordinated, and interrelated. In place of comprehensive outlines suitable for the exhaustive classification of details, the groups of relationships proved to be most useful to the various forms of educational self- activity are associated with each. If the most many-sided, frequently recurring, and usefully emotional are firmly memorized and retained not merely through var3dng ap- perception, but definite and specific review; if persistent instruction gives continuity in formal education to what experience will give continuity in life, every form of self- activity will result through direct preparation for life, and indirectly as well as directly contribute to it. It is in this sense that moral and religious training, preparation for citizenship, and education for every other phase of life should be formal — ^not in that of a logically organized body of knowledge. It is this that Jacotot was groping after when he had Telemachus memorized verbatim to become the basis for the retention and assimilation of all other knowl- edge.^^ It is this, limited to the academic subjects, that in the classroom of Elihu Nott gave Francis Wayland the clue to his "new system," with its incessant drill upon the funda- mental relationships of the various college subjects.^^ It is this, forgotten by the new education in its easier develop- ment of apperception and interest, that is, after all, the only 246 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY certain means through which all self-activity can be made useful. System, in this sense, must be sharply distinguished from an outline or mode of procedure that classifies and inter- relates according to some formal logical scheme. System ^^^^^ Any system, outline, or mode of procedure tem- sharply dis- porarily aids mere remembrance, and, so long tinguishable ^g it is retained in part or as a whole, continues o^utUne!^^^ to further varying apperception. Most tem- porary, and hence, most delusive of all, is the painstaking outline applicable only to the specific details which it has classified. Whether it appHes to the facts of a particular year, administration, country, or set of products, or the treatment peculiar to a particular lecture course or text-book, the more elaborate it is, the more readily it is forgotten. Ordinarily, its one possible survival, except such details as it has held in mind long enough for them to be otherwise apperceived and retained, is the habit of out- lining, and hence of analyzing, the particular sort of subject matter it included. In case the learners have repeatedly and successfully made such outlines for themselves, the practice may become habitual, though mainly within the particular subject matter alone, unless, as is little likely, the conditions favorable to more general application are ensured. If a particular outline is not too elaborate in its ramifications, and its subject matter is not likely to be held in mind in other relationships, a high degree of many-sided- ness, frequency of recurrence, and emotional appeal may jus- tify its retention through persistent review. The mass of the outlines given to learners and required of them, however, "the hammering the facts home,'' against which President Butler has so forcibly protested,^^ not only substitutes some- thing to be remembered for something to remember by and think with, but something that will not be remembered long. The same conclusion is less likely to be true in the case of the general outline or mode of procedure common to CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 247 a considerable number of particulars. Its de- Even useful lusive phase lies in exhaustiveness and elaborate- o^tl^^ies, ^ . . many-sided ness. The more '^thorough" it is in this sense, and recur- the more likely it is to be forgotten. More than ring, but a this, an exhaustive mode of procedure which in- pedagogic eludes all details in each case in which it is ap- system, plied cannot be general, and carries the unneces- sary burden of specific parts for which all the limitations of the specific outline hold true. From the standpoint of memorizing and permanent retention its weakness lies in the fact that, both in these specific parts and in those that are general, it is certain to include relationships too little many-sided, recurring, or emotional to be highly useful. Restricted, however, to essential relationships, the general outline or mode of procedure becomes a necessary party though but a part of the system whose memorizing, inces- sant review, and cumulative force constitute direct prepara- tion. For example, take the practice which has been rather popular in the teaching of geography of applying to each country a more or less exhaustive outline, including location, boundaries, area, population, subdivisions, climate, physiog- raphy, natural products, manufactures, cities, . <. .. and all other topics necessary to completeness, of the test It is convenient for a teacher or a text-book ^^ relative maker who wishes to be sure to leave nothing out. ^^tUne ^ ^° If it could be readily retained in school and after illustrated school it would constitute a memory and ap- ^^^^ , £[eo£[raDnv perceiving center. But it usually contains far too much for ready retention and recall, and includes factors which either apply to but one or two countries, or call for details which are neither many-sided, frequently recurring, nor emotional. Few geographies present subdivisions for the mass of countries. If they do, the most of them, together with such more general topics as area and population, are so little many-sided and recurring in any useful connection that it is folly to either present or retain them. Boundaries are useless to the mass of learners in any more exact sense 248 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY than is involved in general geographical sequence, that is, it is useful to know what countries are adjacent, but usually useless to know the exact curves and limits of certain lines upon a map; still more so, except for the sake of manual dexterity or artistic skill, to draw them neatly. What associations come crowding into the mind of the ordinary student from the fact that Germany's area is two hundred and eight thousand eight hundred and thirty square miles, or five times the size of Pennsylvania, or from whether each little curve of the Rhine is from east to west or north to south, whether the population is fifty millions or fifty-two milHons two hundred and seventy-nine thousand, nine hundred and fifteen, or whether it is ten times that of Illinois! On the other hand, if the general outline is limited to a small enough number of topics for them to be readily memorized and retained, topics that are common to all countries, and hence many-sided and frequently recurring, and especially if they stand in essential relationship to each other, their mechanical memorizing as common to all is the most certain guarantee of definite and intelligent work. Climate and physiographical features, natural products, population, industry, and commerce constitute a necessary sequence of topics which ensures not only a means of recol- lection, but a stimulus to thought and reflection. An effective pedagogic grouping such as this is a more essential factor in even academic system than exhaustive An outline classification. But in system, organized for may itself direct preparation for some specific phase of life, become many such groupings cumulatively combine with that^S^^^^' other interrelationships which are immeasur- formalin ably more potential and more certainly "dis- the true ciplinary" than the logical organization which constitutes academic system. Here relation- ships are selected on account of their many-sidedness, recur- rence, and emotional force, and not for the sake of logical completeness. They are related to each other not as divisions and subdivisions, but as emotional centers, words CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 249 and ideas necessary to apperception or application, generally useful stimuli and conditions favorable to general discipline. Except from the standpoint of specialization, academic branches are included not as wholes, but in their most many- sided, recurring, and emotional parts; not in ^^jademic isolation from each other, but re-enforcing each branches other wherever they can be most useful, whether included in in direct furtherance of the educational aim or gystem^^^ in indirect furtherance through formal self- through activity. This is the true correlation and con- *^®^i^ °^°^* centration to which academic correlation and concentration, from the standpoint of a special subject or '^remote from life," are at best but a helpful condition. Every imaginable relationship, every branch of knowledge as a whole, is at least a possible means to mere remembrance and varying apperception or a basis for them. But direct preparation demands, in place of the poten- tially useful but readily forgotten elaborateness and com- pleteness of exact sciences and of academic branches in general, a certain and permanent system, every relationship of which has not only been selected and organized for its potentially many-sided, recurring, and emotional further- ance of life, but through which such furtherance will become cumulatively more many-sided, recurring, and emotional. A good example of such a dynamic whole can be given by collectively calling to mind the various illustrations which citizenship has furnished from the standpoint jj^^ peda- of system and of the various phases of formal gogic force self-activity. First, continual consciousness on °^ direct the part of teacher and learner that citizenship, illustrated together with morality, health, industrial effi- through ^ ciency, social service, and avocation, is the aim "^^^^^^hip. of the school. No one of these aims must be disassociated with the other; no one emphasized at the expense of the other. With American citizenship must be inalienably associated the idea of love of country, of co-operation for the general welfare, of equal rights; with love of country. 250 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY the emotional centers and experience which in highest degree further love of natural scenery, of spots hallowed with the sacred associations of home, and of essential national charac- teristics and ideals, pride in great national achievements in war and in peace; with co-operation for the general welfare, participation in self-government, obedience to law, the payment of taxes, self-sacrifice for the common good, the furtherance of national and international peace and goodwill, safeguarding of public interests, defense of the national honor; with equal rights, equality before the law, equal suffrage, equal participation in public benefits. To each of these definite ends must be specifically added the re-enforcement of general morality, and of the sum total of the feelings and ideals that constitute love of country. With each must be associated such systems of cumulative impression, partial concepts, related knowledge, fixed relationships and habits, and specific and general conditions necessary to application as have been illustrated in detail for equal rights and obe- dience to law. It is in the subordinate but essential form of information and related knowledge that academic system plays its part in direct preparation for citizenship and each other phase of life. For example, while equal suffrage must call to mind qualifications for suffrage, woman suffrage, naturalization, the race question, the habit of personally exercising the right, and so on, and each of these, in turn, must suggest memory and emotion centers, specific relationships, and the condi- tions necessary to general application, there should come with it all in proper association and subordination facts and related groups of ideas drawn in part from academic subjects. To illustrate, qualifications for suffrage should include not only the provisions in regard to suffrage in the United States constitution, but the facts which United States history gives concerning the qualifications for suffrage in the various colonies, and steps taken toward universal suffrage after the Revolution. To this should ultimately be added the story of the English "rotten boroughs," the Reform Bill of CULTURE' DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 251 1832, and similar material from modern European history. Since knowledge necessary to the intelligent exercise of citizenship is an essential subdivision both of qualifications for suffrage and of the habit of individually exercising the right, all this must be supplemented by a highly organized body of knowledge concerning qualifications for office and public issues. This embraces not only various sections of civil government, but much historical, economic, sociological, literary, and even scientific material, together with syste- matic study of contemporary newspapers, books, and periodicals. Resulting from this or added to it is a mass of incidental information including both definite knowledge and partial concepts — ^Australian ballot, suffragist, pluraHty, voter's assistants, repeaters, and similar terms. From the standpoint of system the fundamental question here is, not shall there be a highly complex and specific system of direct instruction organized for citi- zenship and each other general phase of the v^orth^^ educational aim, but shall it include or take the determines place of academic organization. From the *^® t^*t^* standpoint of specialization and indirect fur- academic therance of the aim, there is no question as to the systems necessity for the logical schemes of organization ^°^?^ ^^.* ^* peculiar to each academic subject. In the case of indirect furtherance, it must be a general outline of the subject, including, for the sake of varying apperception, such interrelationships as are most many-sided and recurring in every-day life; in that of specialization, if vocational, all that the usual test proves essential, and if academic, the system in all of its fulness and complexity. But the extent to which academic organization figures, in direct furtherance of each phase of the aim embraced in general preparation for life, is determined purely through application of the test of relative worth. While the specific relationships selected become an essential part of a system of direct preparation, they are not necessarily taught in isolation from other subject matter belonging to the same academic branch. On the con- 252 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY trary, if the branch is taught as a whole, whether from the standpoint of indirect furtherance or specialization, varying apperception and other conditions essential to general discipline are effectively served by the correlation which results when the selected subject matter is taught as a part of both the directly useful and the academic systems. From the standpoint of indirect furtherance this is con- spicuously true of geography and history, including the history of science, literature, and art. From the standpoint of specialization it is true of any branch of usefufsys- knowledge. In subjects thus taught as wholes, tern possible regardless of the amount of directly useful within the material they contain, the purpose of direct in- branches. struction will be most effectively furthered if all essential directly useful material is included and consciously and continually grouped by the learner under the cumulative topics of religion and morality, health, industrial efficiency, social service, good citizenship, and avocation. This in no sense takes the place of the complex specific systems necessary to direct furtherance, but use- fully correlates the academic branches with them. When, however, the subject matter of the academic subjects is taught only from the standpoint of direct further- ance or general discipline, whether it shall be presented as an academic whole or academically organized at all, de- pends upon the nature and amount of academic subject matter included through application of the test of relative worth. For example, although arithmetic is taught for the sake of industrial efficiency and a discipline which for the most part is specific, from both points of view it must be taught as an academic whole. Various applications have The scope been excluded as useful only to the specialist, of academic ^^j- j^g higher processes are dependent upon the in^general lower, and both practical appHcations of proc- education esses and principles, and such moral and intel- itrrelative ^^^^^^^ habits as may be generally applied, upon its worth. mastery as an academic branch. Hence, it must CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 253 be taught as an organized academic whole, in spite of the fact that its peculiar organization is useless to varying apperception except through a confusion of the many-sided- ness and recurrence of a particular application with the many-sidedness and recurrence of the material to which it is applied. On the other hand, physiology and anatomy, introduced by the Combes and Horace Mann, and sanctioned by Mr. Spencer for the sake of health, are rapidly taking on a purely hygienic form to the exclusion of anatomical and physiological treatment. Here the subject matter is directly useful to those not specialists only from the standpoint of hygiene, and the details necessary to complex academic organization in the old physiological sense are not included. A somewhat similar change in organization would ultimately take place with civil government, useful to the majority only as directly preparatory to citizenship, were it not that so many of its logical groupings are directly useful in their academic interrelationships. That is, civil government, as an organized academic whole itself, becomes a part of the specific system which furthers good citizenship. With it, the application of the test of relative worth for the sake of direct furtherance will merely eliminate technical subdivi- sions and prevent the absurdity of young children memor- izing the United States constitution in all of its parts. In the case of the natural sciences the contribution to direct furtherance comes in the shape of both isolated facts and general principles. However great the amount of material included by the test of relative usefulness, such complexities as Joseph Payne encountered in his effort scientifically to explain the piledriver make impossible the teaching of complete sciences except to the specialist. But while each specific relationship must become a part of the system of direct preparation which it furthers, as Thomas Hill long ago pointed out, it need not be taught in academic isolation, but in illustration of a principle, whose study even as distinct from others not only ensures in part the organiza- tion necessary to academic system, but affords opportunity 254 CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY for experimentation and the acquisition of the intellectual and moral habits peculiar to laboratory work. As for the general discipline, so long assumed to be im- probable without the mastery of formal academic branches as wholes, an overwhelming sum-total of facts, arguments, and illustrations has shown it to be the crowning result of the systems that directly prepare for life, including as they do the cumulative and certain addition of the conditions essential to general application, in place of being the incidental by- product of some academic subject whose chief aim is a specific discipline, often not general within the academic field itself. Educational reform does not lie along the line of academic specialization required in common of all with a view to more thorough specific discipline. It permits aca- system of demic specialization to vary with individuals, education and subordinates it to a direct preparation for must either jj£g which collectively constitutes not merely a national body of isolated knowledge, but a system of life or be mutually helpful activities made certain by bvlt^^*^ repetition, and independent and continuing in operation when formal instruction reaches its limit. Contrasted with this, it is a puerile scheme of education which takes general discipline for granted, and leaves direct preparation to academic outlines and individual apperception. The national system of education which is not compelling enough to reorganize and develop the knowl- edge and experience of a people is doomed to be conditioned and dominated by the popular ideals which it fails to trans- form. While each phase of life has its specific morality, general morality must be similarly organized. No "formal lessons" Education in morals and manners can answer here. Not for every j^j. Sheldon's moral selections from literature,®^ direct prep- the virtues resulting from school routine, Mr. aration, Fairchild's illustrated talks on boy life,®^ the truly* ^^ emphasis of moral subject matter in academic formal. Subjects, or, still less, Mr. White's biographical CULTURE DISCIPLINE AND DEMOCRACY 255 course of study with its honesty in the third grade and industry in the fifth.^'^ Moral instruction means all of this and something more. The cardinal virtues must become the interrelated centers for definite systems of knowledge and activity in which each of the formal phases plays its properly proportioned part. So with industrial efficiency, as yet but partially analyzed, social service, and even avocation itself. As for religion, the church should not be a mere lecture room, but a school, and the Sunday- school, parochial school, or synagogue not merely a place for formal worship and purely academic instruction, but a training school for service in which rightly directed activities and essential relationships are made certain through repeti- tion, and become general through their continual re-enforce- ment by the conditions favorable to application. From the standpoint of school administration the funda- mental deduction from all this is that morality, health, industrial efficiency, social service, citizenship, 5-SPK APR 2 i Z003' LD 62A-50m-2,'64 (E3494sl0)9412A General Library University of California Berkeley