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CHIEF SCOLDS-A-BEAR," "RIDING 'EM HEAP" IN THE MERRY-GO-ROUND.

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KINDERGARTEN MAGAZINE

Vol. XV-JANUARY 1903-No. 5.
TWENTIETH CENTURY SERIES.

THE SPECIFIC AIM OF THE ETHICAL CULTURE SCHOOLS OF NEW YORK CITY.

F

BERTHA JOHNSTON.

OR twenty-three years the Ethical Culture schools of New York have rendered great service to childhood, the community, and to pedagogy. On the twenty-second of November Felix Adler laid the cornerstone of a fine new building to be erected at Central Park West, between Sixty-third and Sixty-fourth streets. The mayor, Hon. Seth Low, city superintendent, Dr. Maxwell, Mr. John D. Lange, president of the society, and others, gave appropriate addresses, and music was rendered by Samuel Franko's orchestra, the Arion Society, and the children of the Ethical Culture schools.

The Ethical Culture schools stand for a specific ideal, as their name suggests. In view of the enlargement of the work incident to the occupation of the new school, Dr. Adler has considered it timely to restate to his teachers those aims which distinguish the schools from all others. This he did in four impressive lectures. All good schools claim the formation of character as their ultimate purpose. These propose to make character of a specific kind. Dr. Butler is quoted as saying recently, that the purpose of the "New Education" is to produce men and women who can adjust themselves to their environment. "The Ethical school idea includes this, but it considers this adjustment to be the means, not the end, the end being the readjustment of the environment." The lectures clearly and forcibly discuss these aims and the methods for securing them. We propose to give a summary of the same, but recommend a careful reading of the pamphlet containing them to all parents and educators and statesmen. Dr. Adler thus states the purpose of the schools:

The ideal of the School is not the adaptation of the individual to the existing environment, it is to develop persons who will be

competent to change their environment to greater conformity with moral ideals; that is, to put it boldly, to train reformers. But this must be rightly understood. By "reformers" are meant persons who believe that their salvation consists in reacting beneficently upon their environment. This ideal of beneficent activity, beneficent transformation of faulty environment, is the ideal of the Society and of the School.

Dr. Adler then names the four corollaries that result from this position:

1. Children must be protected from the debasing influence of their city environment-commercialism, luxuriousness, pleasureseeking, sensuousness, etc.

2. Children are to be developed into duly conservative men and women. The unbalanced reformer is most harmful. The lessons of history, especially of history taught from the standpoint of evolution, should give this balance. ..

...

3. Children should be so taught that they get an enthusiasm for progress. They should come to know of the human sweat and toil by which alone progress has been secured. . .

4. The School should develop men and women who have a reasoned-out ideal of progress.

The side of the subject considered in the second address was "the school as a protecting environment." It discusses how the school may counteract the chief faults (luxuriousness and love of pleasure) of the home without antagonizing it. This may be done by creating an environment favorable to simplicity, and by using the so-called doctrine of interest judiciously and with proper discrimination.

Interest may well be utilized to arouse the pupil's power, to start with; then, however, he should learn to use his powers to work for work's sake; to grind, whether he finds it pleasant or unpleasant, and without new interests being continually supplied.

Some strenuousness, and a due insistence upon the adequate performance of assigned tasks within the time allotted for them, are absolutely necessary to preserve power and virility.

The question arises whether the children in the school should become conscious of its ideal. Dr. Adler sees the possibility of the children, in such case, developing a spirit of self-righteousness, but believes that such danger can be nullified if the school is parmeated with the idea that it is élite, but elite in that it stands for responsibilities rather than for privileges.

The third address leads on to a discussion of how enthusiasm for moral progress is to be developed. To accomplish this, the schools would depend upon pedagogical method-classroom in

struction. Thus, in teaching science, manual training, art, literature, etc., not only would the facts and laws of a particular subject be taught, but its history, its development as well, thus establishing in the child's mind a sense of gradual progress, "of the whole world moving." "But," to quote Dr. Adler, "the most important of all subjects in illustrating this idea is history. The central idea here is that of Froebel, i. e., to make the child acquainted both with nature and with humanity." He continues:

The teacher of history should show what each nation has contributed to the progress of the race, starting with the early civilizations, with Persia, perhaps, and coming down to the present time and the idea of democracy. They should now be brought to ask: What is the aim of democracy? What has it done? What is left for it to do? They should eventually be brought to see that there are two great problems awaiting solution: (1) How to make the best men rulers and leaders, and (2) How to bring about Aristotle's idea of securing the best life to each citizen? We do not yet know, apparently, what the best life is; the majority seem. to define it as the life of material ease, or of the pursuit of happiness, which is a fatal mistake. It should be defined as the pursuit of perfection. .. The words "reform" and "reformer" should probably not be used in all this effort to create reformers. The child is to absorb at first; to get things by contagion thru example. He should be brought into admiring relations with men and women who have caused progress. Full, reflective consciousness comes later.

The fourth address weighs the merits of "incidental versus systematic moral teaching." Incidental teaching, the speaker claims, is not "sufficiently inclusive; does not cover the ground. It is invaluable when opportunities arise that permit of it. But these opportunities do not arise often enough and are not varied enough." This point he elucidates at some length, showing the weaknesses of the incidental method, and summing them up thus: "It does not cover the field, does not furnish a unifying conception, and does not provide for an orderly sequence in the building. up of moral ideals," for, as he says, "the higher moral conceptions presume the lower. They cannot be rightly grasped before the lower have been thoroly assimilated." Dr. Adler fully appreciates the possible dangers that the systematic method may breed, i. e., "a barren intellectualism, a cold, abstract way of looking at moral ideals," and of "divorcing precept from practice"; but he shows, also, how this may be avoided: First, by the right attitude of the teacher, who should feel the responsibility and sacredness

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