Present Day Tendencies in Education

correct ideas. One must have correct ideas before he has the right attitude toward things. It is not necessary that a man be educated to be moral; but it is necessary that he have right ideas. Indeed, our moral standards are the result of social thought; whatever society thinks is right is morally right. It may not be in harmony with the eternal principles of truth, but it will be the moral standard accepted by society.

FEELING, KNOWING, AND WILLING

The unity of feeling, knowing, and willing is very important to the teacher. The emotional and the intellectual faculties are very vitally related to each other. Knowing results in feeling, and, not only this, the feelings are very important factors in the acquisition of knowledge. The schoolroom in which there is enthusiasm will accomplish a far greater amount of work than the room where enthusiasm is lacking. In fact, it is extremely doubtful whether there can be effective work in a schoolroom where there is no enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is necessary to interest, interest to attention, and certainly there can be no learning without attention. Enthusiasm is as necessary to effective work on the part of the teacher as fire is to the worker in metals, and there could be no more profitless undertaking than trying to teach a room full of little children without first arousing their enthusiasm for their work. The cold-hearted teacher may be able to cram some facts into the minds of her pupils, but she will not get them to assimilate these facts into mental and moral fiber. Enthusiasm is as necessary to the proper digestion of mental food as the enzyme is to the digestion of physical food.

Not only is feeling necessary to knowing, but knowing should result in feeling. The man who knows a thing,

and knows that he knows it, is a master. This cannot be said of the man who knows a thing without knowing that he knows it. This being aware of our accomplishments, the feeling that flows from it, is what makes us masters. It makes no difference how phlegmatic one is, he feels the spirit of conquest when he masters a difficult problem.

Then the feelings are necessary to the fullest development of character. Love, sympathy, reverence, and all those cardinal elements of Christian character have their taproot in the emotional life, and the man or woman lacking in the proper development of these emotions will also be found lacking in these virtues. The feelings are at the base of the will, and the person of an enthusiastic, emotional temperament is most likely to have his will power developed to the highest degree. He may make mistakes in judgment, but he will not be afraid to act. Hence we can see that a symmetrical character has all three faculties developed; one is necessary to the complete development and functioning of the other, and there is a complete unity among them.

RECEPTIVE, REFLECTIVE, AND EXECUTIVE FACULTIES

The most fundamental unity discussed by Froebel and the one that has had most influence on modern educational thought is that of the receptive, the reflective, and the executive faculties. It takes the three to complete the learning process. The cycle is not complete until the knowledge has been acquired, organized, and applied. In the old education we emphasized merely the acquisition of knowledge and never thought either of organizing or of applying it. We emphasized textbook work, and the whole aim was to get the pupil to master the textbook. We lost sight entirely of the unity in these three steps in the educational process.

The most serious defect in the educational system of the past was its lack of thoroughness. Students were rushed over a prescribed educational field in a certain time and were expected to get into their heads as best they could the information included in that field. All the emphasis was placed on the acquisition of knowledge, and the pupil had to go so fast to get over the field in the prescribed time that he had no time to organize his knowledge; hence it soon passed out of his mind. There is nothing more pathetic than the modern graduate who has been chased around our educational race course a certain number of times and made to feel that he is educated. He has studied English four years, history four years; he has read Caesar, Cicero, and Virgil, and has caught a glimpse of the mysteries of graphs, the binomial theory, and logarithms; but he has no thorough knowledge of English literature; he knows the names of some authors and, maybe, he remembers some of the things they wrote, but he is not able to talk about their writings in an intelligent manner and to show you that he has made these writings a part of himself. He has read ancient, medieval, and modern history, but he has only a hazy grasp of it. He can give a few facts here and there; but he does not understand the great causeand-effect side of history. His knowledge of algebra and Latin lacks thoroughness. The trouble with his work is that it lacks organization. Knowledge acquired and not organized soon passes out of the mind.

Then knowledge may be organized and still not be real knowledge. It does not become a part of one until it is applied. Applied knowledge is the only real knowledge. It is the only knowledge that results in a complete coördination of all our faculties. Our schools have so long been emphasizing the accumulation of knowledge,

making no effort to apply it, that the proper coördination of the receptive and executive faculties has been largely lost. Most of us are like the lady who wept over the sufferings of the fictitious character in the play, while her coachman was freezing to death on her cab outside the theater. We should not permit ourselves to acquire information that we do not use. Knowledge was never intended to be stored, but to be used as it is accumulated. Like the manna collected by the ancient Israelites, it is to be collected as we need it, and the results of our going on, year after year, accumulating knowledge that was never used has been most demoralizing. Character is not in any sense of the term a result of the accumulation of knowledge. The accumulation of knowledge has nothing to do with growth. Growth is a result of the assimilation of that knowledge that comes with its application. The world is full of mental and moral dyspeptics-those who have taken into their mental and moral digestive organs more food than they can digest. Such a process is not productive, but destructive, of character. The man of character is the one who lives up to his limit every day, who uses all the knowledge he has in store.

There is a certain fascination about knowing things just for the sake of knowing them; it tickles our fancy to have our neighbors call us well read, well informed, educated, but we pay a dear price in character for such compliments. Ice cream, certain candies, and fancy foods are also pleasing to our tastes and often we enjoy eating them, but we pay a dear price for such pleasures. We should take into our bodies such foods as these bodies need, and at the time they need them. We should not take foods just because they are pleasing to our tastes, nor because we may need them after awhile. So we should

take into our mental and moral digestive organs just such food as these organs need, and as they need it. We should not try to store it away for future use. We should apply our knowledge as we acquire it and close up the gap between knowing and willing. We should complete the unity of the receptive, reflective, and executive faculties.

These are some of the unities stressed by Froebel. With him, the law of unity is the fundamental law of education. His whole system of educational philosophy is based on this law, and we cannot understand him unless we grasp his conception of unity.

TOPICS FOR REPORT AND INVESTIGATION

I. The relation of the physical to mental and moral development. 2. The cultivation of the emotions as a factor in education. 3. Froebel's conception of individuality and self-expression. 4. The kindergarten as Froebel saw it.

5. What Froebel contributed to modern education.

Libros