The Scope of Education as a University Department
The Psychological Clinic Copyright, 1914, by Lightner Witmer, Editor. Vol. VII, No. 9 February 15, 1914
- Author:
Lightner Witmer, Ph.D.,
University of Pennsylvania.
At the dawn of civilization, education probably began as an induction of the young adolescent to full social union with the adult members of the tribe, through ceremonial rites, tests of endurance and efficiency, and something approximating to a course of study. Perhaps from the beginning, although more likely later in the race’s development, this training of the young adolescent assumed a religious aspect, preserved up to the present time by most churches as an indoctrinating of the youth in the truths of religion, usually by means of a course of instruction based upon a catechism, the direct purpose of which is to prepare the boy or girl for the ceremonial of confirmation.
Later on civilization developed a body of useful or supposedly useful knowledge, and we find each generation ardently assuming the task of transmitting to the next generation its traditional and acquired culture. Education thus came to involve a course of instruction in one or more subjects, these subjects only at later stages of development becoming differentiated from philosophy, the mother of all knowledge. In consequence it is natural to find throughout the history of education, that attention has been chiefly directed to the subject matter of instruction. The needs of an individual boy or girl or even of a group were ignored; and really they are even yet a secondary consideration, for the culture and traditions of the race must be upheld at any cost. This ideal of education we find best represented in the college course, which originally undertook the instruction of the young adolescent in the cultural elements of the philosophy of his day, though not always of his generation, for the traditional element in this instruction has always given the college curriculum an inclination backward rather than forward. Nevertheless there has been a development, an augmentation of the subject matter of instruction, leading to a lengthening of the course, until at the present time the standard cultural course for adolescents has been increased from four to eight years, comprising four years in the high school, followed by four years in the college. It should be remembered in all discussions of the relation of the college curriculum to the students and to the culture of our generation, that the high school pupil comes to college today at about the age and with the equipment which our grandfathers had when they left college.
A different type of education also developed very early in the history of civilization, a technical or professional training, first perhaps for the priesthood, then for medicine, then for law, and now only recently for what in my opinion is to become the greatest of all professions, the profession of teaching. Differentiated from what a real professional training should be, there has been and always must be a training of a more mechanical or technical sort, although it is not an easy matter to draw a sharp line between a professional and technical training. Nevertheless the acquisition of a technique rather than a wide range of information and high degree of intellectual functioning, is the chief aim of the training of the musician, the artist, the engineer, and those employed in vocations supposed to represent a lower level of intellectual attainment, the trades and business. At first concerned only with the adolescent period, the training of the pre-adolescent being left to the amateur efforts of the family, education finally took over the child from his seventh year to puberty, and organized for his benefit an eight-year course of instruction, at first limited to only a few children, but during the progress of the last century, through the adoption of universal compulsory education, applied in theory at least to all children. In the elementary course the subjects of instruction, that is the curriculum, as in the secondary and college courses, have had the center of attention. In general, the elementary course of study incorporates the” ideal of modern society that every child before he goes to work should know at least how to read and write and cipher. To this irreducible minimum other subjects have been added, as many indeed as are permitted by the limitations of time and the necessity of the child to contribute to his own support. With a general ideal of the content of popular education, formal pedagogical methods have been devised and directed to group units, representing the eight grades of the primary school, wherein attention is centered on the passage of groups of children from grade to grade, the prescribed curriculum of each grade being the same for all children. The chief agent for the execution of this work is the grade teacher. She must know what is to be taught; she must know standard pedagogical methods. In general, the grade teacher is now doing her work well and is adequately equipped for her task by the normal school.
The development of a conscious social impulse and the growth of the science of psychology led at first slowly, and then more rapidly, to a restatement of the motive of education and a reconsideration of its methods. The first proposal to create a system of education to fit the recognized needs of a particular group of children, came from Froebel and led in time to a half-hearted acceptance of the Froebelian kindergarten as a part of the school system. From the standpoint of psychology the kindergarten is yet the best attempt at a scientifically grounded system of education, even though we are compelled to admit in the same breath that the Froebelian philosophy has always been a distorting factor, leading to confusion on the part of both its adherents and its critics. In more recent times the psychological attitude toward the educational problem has expressed itself in a tentative way through the treatment of truants and other disciplinary cases, the methods employed in classes for backward children, and the efforts which are being made toward a satisfactory vocational training. It is recognized now that there are groups of exceptional children calling for exceptional educational treatment, and we even hear it said that the exceptionally bright child should not be lost in the class group. The problems of intellectual differences in children and the adjustment of the curriculum and methods to the individual, or at least to groups of individuals, have come to be accepted as important problems of school administration. What often fails to be recognized in the discussion of these problems is that we hereby come to a new departure in education, revealing a social motive and a psychological method distinctly different from the accepted and primary aim of education, i. e. the instruction of youth in the traditional and acquired knowledge of the adult generation. Undoubtedly there has always been present in educational discussion a recognition of the fact that education is after all a process of individual development, but it is scarcely recognized even yet that the phenomena of individual development fall within the scope of the science of psychology. The whole problem of the mental development of an individual personality belongs to genetic psychology, and too much emphasis can not be laid upon the fact that competency to discuss or minister to the mental and physical development of the individual child must be scientifically grounded upon the facts, principles, and methods of modern psychology. There is no fundamental difference between one kind of psychology and another kind. All psychology that is worth while is experimental, physiological, and genetic. Nevertheless psychology may address itself to problems of general mental development, overlooking for the moment individual differences. On the other hand, it may take the problem of group differences and through the employment of the statistical method evolve a comparative psychology. It may also confine its attention to the ascertainment of the mental and physical status of a given individual, endeavoring to interpret his present condition in the light of his past history, and employing this knowledge to prognosticate his future and select the best agencies for advancing his development. This field of psychology I have called clinical psychology. In general its object is to know the personality of an individual child and to determine how best to get him to make the longest possible step forward. When the object of education is defined as the development of a child’s natural endowments to the highest degree of efficiency possible, the object of education is being defined in terms of a clinical psychology. Here I believe we can and must draw a line between the purposes of psychology and pedagogy. Pedagogy deals with mass instruction, and is justified in being content with a psychology which presents for school purposes an abstraction, the typical or normal mind. As a psychologist I naturally approach the problem of education from the psychological point of view, but I trust I may never underestimate the importance of the function of the schools to train groups of children, assumed to be mentally homogeneous, in the recognized subjects of the curriculum, by approved pedagogical methods, guided by competent supervisors. But questions relating to the curriculum and to methods can not be discussed without confusion and obscurity if we fail to realize that individual differences must be ignored by those who are engaged in the solution of this most important part of the public school problem. Because the schools are required today to take cognizance of individual differences, and to provide somewhere within the system for an education based upon the psychological principles of individual development, it must not be assumed that this point of view must be either hastily or heedlessly injected into the discussion of the general problem of pedagogical technique. The grade teacher, the high school teacher, and the college teacher, do not require a thorough grounding in the facts and methods of psychology. For them to become psychologists and to regard too intently the individual personality of their pupils, would seriously diminish the efficiency of their work. These teachers require a thorough grounding in the subject matter of the curriculum which they are required to teach, combined with an adequate training in the methods of good teaching. Nevertheless there must be officials connected with the school system who are competent to look upon the problem of education as a problem of individual development, who know their psychology as well as their pedagogy, and who are prepared to reclassify groups and to adjust the curriculum and methods of educational treatment to meet the needs of individuals and groups. In my opinion it is a mistake to ask or to expect the grade teacher to secure the training in psychology necessary to undertake this task. It should be left to those to whom we have assigned the function of supervision, among whom I include supervising principals. In other words, the growing demands of educational practice require us to recognize within the profession of teaching two groups of differently trained persons?the grade teacher, who is and must remain a mechanic, a technician, and the educator who must be a man or woman of high professional attainments.
These professional attainments must rest upon a solid basis of knowledge in such modern sciences as psychology, sociology, biology, hygiene, physiology, etc., as well as the usual equipment in administrative procedure and pedagogical technique. The educational administrator, or as I would call him more briefly, the educator, should occupy by virtue of his professional attainments a position analogous to that of the general practitioner of medicine, the family doctor. The requirements of modern school administration call also for an educational expert, or we may call him a clinical psychologist, who will perform the functions of a consultant in connection with difficult problems which may be referred to him for advice. The clinical psychologist or educational expert will perform a function in the schools analogous to that of the medical consultant or specialist in nervous diseases, surgery, internal medicine, etc.
The diversity of function which I have posited for the grade teacher on the one hand and the educator or educational expert on the other, has an important bearing upon the part which our universities should play in training students for the profession of teaching. Let us rid ourselves of the notion that grade teachers and educators can come out of the same mill, namely, the normal school, even though that normal school be called a teachers’ college and be connected with a university.
It is the function of a normal school to train good teachers for the grades. It is not so necessary for an educator to be a good teacher. He needs only to be a good critic of teaching, to know good teaching when he sees it. It is absurd to believe that a man must always be able to do expertly what he is able to criticize. One does not need to be able to lay an egg, to distinguish between a good egg and a bad one. Nor does one need to be able to write good poetry or compose good music, to exercise a discriminating taste in literature or music. The great successes in administration, whether they be in education or business, are often achieved by executives who know enough to select assistants who can do the work better than they can do it themselves.
There must therefore be a fundamental differentiation between the training which will equip doctors of education and educational experts, and the training which wall make a good grade teacher. In my opinion it is the function of the university through its graduate school to train the educator and the educational expert. In the college, courses in education should be offered which may be taken, along with courses in biology, psychology, sociology and other cultural subjects, in order that college students who feel drawn toward the profession of education, and even those who are not drawn to it but only tempted to explore the scope and purpose of the educational field, may have during their college course the same opportunity which other students now enjoy, of acquiring a familiarity with the principles and methods of sciences leading up to specific professional training. I believe the university has an extremely important function to perform, no less than the creation of a new profession, a learned profession of education, which shall receive the same social recognition as the three older professions.
This work can never be done by the university, unless the university resigns to the normal school the task of training grade teachers. The standard of our normal schools is already high, in fact there is reason for believing that the curriculum of many normal schools is already overloaded. The failure to recognize and emphasize the real object of normal school training has led us to put before the embryo grade teacher, and through institute lectures and exhortation before the grade teacher in active service who is seeking to improve his or her professional standing, an assortment of ill-digested scientific knowledge and points of view in education which lead not to greater efficiency but to distraction and inefficiency. Why should those of us who consider so minutely the needs of different groups of pupils in the primary grade, not consider with equal minuteness the diverse needs of grade teachers and educators? To present the situation as I see it today in the field of education, let me turn to the medical profession for an analogy. Medicine is now a term which comprehends a group of sciences some of which are not at all medical, i. e. therapeutic, in their intent. Thus bacteriology is a department of botany; anatomy and physiology are biological sciences; physiological chemistry is a branch of chemisTHE SCOPE OF EDUCATION. 243 try; pathology belongs in part to botany and in part to chemistry.
These sciences took their origin within the department of medicine, but they would now be maintained on their own account whether medicine endured as a profession or not. Indeed some of the professors in these subjects in our medical schools do not now possess a medical degree. All of these sciences, for example even physiology, were looked upon at one time as medical sciences, a fact which led Lotze as late as 1852, when he came to write his treatise on physiological psychology, to call his work Medical Psychology, although there is not a word in it which has to do with medicine in the narrow sense of therapeutics.
Within recent years the field of education has been so broadened that it comprehends within its boundaries many sciences which are only indirectly related to education in the narrower sense of pedagogical practice and school administration. The modern conception of education as individual development has brought within the scope of education almost the entire science of psychology, and the socialization of the schools is rapidly adding to the list of educational sciences hygiene, sociology, some parts of biology, and even medicine. We are now awaiting a new definition of education, for the scope of education as a university department can not be conceived to include less than all those branches of learning which contribute to our understanding of the helps and hindrances to the normal development of the infant, the child, and the adolescent.
Indeed when we consider that medicine and social service are conducting a campaign involving the education of adults-to prevent disease and poverty,?although the education of the adult is often futile where that of the child may be signally effective,?we see there is some support for the contention that the ultimate aim of medicine and social work, i. e. happiness and race betterment, and the modern aim of education, i. e. normal development and individual efficiency, are practically the same. A group of sciences exists today whose direct purpose is to foster normal development with the ultimate object of race betterment, just as another group of sciences under the caption of medicine, exists for the cure and prevention of disease. What caption will be chosen for this modern group of sciences? Will it be psychology? Will it be sociology? Or will it be education? The science of individual development for which I have proposed the word orthogenics, is fundamentally psychological, and one might imagine the coming into existence of a school of psychology or orthogenics paralleling some of our schools of education of today. Moreover, within the field of education psychology will play a part analogous to that which is now played within the field of medicine by anatomy, physiology, and pathology. Education both in the phase of individual development and in the phase of group instruction, deals with the human mind, and psychology is the science which informs us as to the nature of the human mind, its functions, its growth, and its biological or pathological variations. The student of education must have a wide range of information to be gleaned only within the field of psychology, and in addition, if he is to be a member of a learned profession, he must be trained in scientific method. Psychology is the science to give him the method as well as the information. Despite the way in which the science of psychology bulks large within this field of the new education, I nevertheless believe that the type of work which I am considering will never be subsumed under the caption of psychology. While psychology gives the foundations, education through defining the aim and intent is more likely to furnish the appropriate caption. In some respects sociology, being broader than education and having a conscious intent toward race betterment, suggests itself as the most fitting term of the three. Unfortunately, however, sociology neither possesses a distinctive scientific method of inquiry, nor has it been able to define with exactness its scope of inquiry. Education suffers in the estimation of men of science and the other learned professions, for a similar reason. Strip education of its psychology and its history, and usually we have stripped it of that portion of its content which is based upon sound scientific procedure. One might suppose that no one of these terms could ever be expanded to become sufficiently inclusive to cover the entire field, and that this new department of learning will be styled a school of education, psychology, and sociology. I am convinced, however, from observation of the trend of development within this field, that the term which society will employ to comprehend and to designate this group of sciences, is the term education, unless some new term like orthogenics be substituted for it, a substitution I consider most unlikely.
A school of education, that is to say, a department of education in a university or a course in education within the college or graduate school of a university, must therefore comprehend a number of sciences. Some of these sciences have such marked educational intent and application that we may in time come to look upon them as educational sciences, very much as we look upon physiology and pathology as medical sciences. Educational psychology is not what some departments of education would lead us to suppose, a little cream skimmed from the milk of psychology to make tasty the subject matter of pedagogy. Almost all of psychology is educational psychology. Of the thirty-six courses in psychology offered at the University of Pennsylvania, twenty cover work commonly included within the scope of educational psychology, and only three lie entirely outside this field. Of the remaining thirteen courses, two are introductory courses which must be completed by students of education before proceeding to more advanced work; five of them are in what might properly be considered related fields of knowledge, i. e. aesthetics and statistics; four are advanced courses which advanced students of education as well as of psychology might profitably take, especially those who wish a more thoroughgoing training in psychology; and two represent individual laboratory work and a seminar course, both of which might be within the field of educational psychology. At the 1913 summer school of the University of California, every course offered under the caption of education, with the exception of one on modern American education in theory and practice, fell within the field of modern psychology. Although psychology is perhaps the most closely related to education of all the sciences, biology, anthropology, and hygiene must necessarily form a part of the scientific training of any student who would seek to become an expert in the modern educational field. With this end in view, the professional training of the educator requires, like the professional training of the medical practitioner, a four-year graduate course in the various sciences comprehended within the scope of education as I have defined it.
Education in the past has not been a learned profession with a body of expert opinion to which the world pays deference, because those who occupy the positions of authority within the profession have come to fill these positions from the ranks, rising too often only by seniority of service and political preferment. The difference between a real profession of education and what we have had in the past, is just the difference between a professional army and a volunteer army. Officers and privates in a professional army are differently trained, and no one today would consider an army efficient if all the officers had been taken from the ranks. No more important step can be made in upbuilding a modern profession of education, than to recognize that the course of preparation and subsequent training of the grade teacher and of the educator must be made to follow diverse lines.
In comparing the grade teacher to the private in the ranks, I would not be understood to wish to minimize the professional and social value of the grade teacher’s functions, nor do I mean to imply that the grade teacher in the daily practice of her profession has nothing more to do than to carry out the orders of the officers of education. I believe a greater measure of freedom in school-room practice very desirable today, but I also believe that one of the causes which prevents the exercise of freedom on the part of the grade teacher in the classroom is the deficient training of supervisors. When supervisors are provided with adequate information and are inspired by a true scientific spirit, when grade teachers are thoroughly drilled in the technique of educational practice, supervisors and grade teachers working together harmoniously will be able to carry out educational experiments in the classroom which are today impossible, and which will furnish us with real contributions to our knowledge of the relative value of different educational methods. We want grade teachers to have individual initiative and originality, just as in the army we need some private soldiers with initiative and originality. Modern educational treatment and modern warfare are making greater demands upon what may be called the non-commissioned officers of these two professions, and difficult practical problems must often be left to their judgment. I only desire to emphasize that efficiency within the profession of the grade teacher must be based upon training in technique, and not upon dribblings of knowledge from history, literature, and science.
Modern requirements within the medical profession have called into existence within recent times a new branch of this profession ?perhaps I had better say a new profession, that of the hospital social worker, who is doing a grade of work requiring the exercise of individual judgment and some ability for research. In connection with such institutions as our Psychological Clinic, the social worker also exercises a function scarcely second in importance to that of the clinicians. Both men and women are required for this work, although women drafted for the service will doubtless always outnumber the men. As the training of this group of social workers requires a thorough grounding in the science of psychology, the Psychological Laboratory and Clinic at the University of Pennsylvania offers courses to college graduates, leading to the Master of Arts degree and requiring a summer’s work and one full academic year in the graduate school, as a standard course for the professional training of the social service worker.
Within the field of education also, there is room for a psychologically trained teacher whose professional training should be superimposed upon a four year college course or its equivalent. This expert teacher is the trainer of backward children, not of the feebleminded children who constitute so large a portion of the classes for backward children, but of those backward children who give promise of restoration to the normal grades?the teachers of what I suggest we seek to distinguish as the restoration classes.
I believe too, that the Montessori teacher must represent this grade of cultural and professional training. Much more than a three months’ course is needed to make a Montessori teacher. Dr MontesTHE SCOPE OF EDUCATION. 247 sori herself emphasizes the function of her teachers as psychological observers and experts, in contradistinction to their function as instructors. I even venture the assertion that the kindergartner also should represent a similar type of expert trainer.
The proposal to develop a scientifically trained worker within the field of education, i. e. the expert teacher or orthogenic trainer, would remain little more than an impractical dream, if we did not have in sight the possibility of a recognition of expert service through an adequate salary and professional rank. This recognition is already manifest in the action of the Board of Education of New York City which went into effect January 1,1914, placing the teachers of the backward or ungraded classes in that city in the professional rank of eighth grade teachers who receive a higher salary than the teachers of the other grades. These teachers consequently stand in rank just below the high school teacher. The kindergartner, if scientifically trained for her extremely important work, will gain an equal if not superior position.
The city of New Orleans has adopted a procedure which is likely to develop in one and the same person a better equipped kindergartner and special teacher for backward children. The kindergartners of that city are being employed to supplement the work of the grade teachers by giving individual instruction to the backward pupils of the grades. The kindergartner will thus be compelled to acquire orthogenic technique, and a type of expert special teacher will be developed who knows normal children and is familiar with kindergarten methods. The Froebelian philosophy, bad enough in itself but doubly bad when filtered through the mind of an immature girl without scientific training, has hitherto prevented a just appreciation of the kindergartner’s contribution to psychology and education. If the reconstructed kindergarten, which many kindergartners are working for with great earnestness, is put upon the same psychological foundation as the Montessori method, the kindergarten can be made the most scientifically conducted portion of the public school system. To achieve this distinction, there will only be required in addition that the kindergartner be adequately equipped through instruction in the facts and methods of modern science to perform her task in a manner to realize this new ideal of the function of the teacher of the pre-elementary grade. The problem of this expert kindergartner, the Montessori teacher, and the restoration teacher is identical. It is the adjustment of the child through individual development to the more formal work of the elementary grades, and the beginner should be taken to the point where he is made ready through initiation into reading, writing, and perhaps arithmetic, as well as through his arrival at a satisfactory stage of mental growth cultivated by general training, to master the curriculum of the grades. For many reasons, psychological and educational, the kindergarten may serviceably be extended to cover much of the work of the first grade. As this problem of individual adjustment is primarily a psychological one, the department of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania has organized a course for the professional equipment of expert special teachers or orthogenic trainers. Students will be required to have had a college course or its equivalent, upon which will be superimposed a course planned to cover at least six weeks of a summer school session and a full academic year of graduate work, the amount of work required being enough to give those who may be otherwise qualified a Master of Arts degree. This course is available also for the scientfic training of ldndergartners and Montessori teachers. More than once I have referred to educational experts or clinical psychologists who will undoubtedly find more and more extensive employment in connection with the school system. Their training must be predominantly psychological as that of the educator will naturally be predominantly pedagogical. In 1896 I began tentative work in applied psychology, calling this department of the laboratory of psychology, the Psychological Clinic. It was not until 1907 that I felt sufficiently certain of the methods and scope of the Psychological Clinic to begin the publication of reports concerning its organization and function. Up to 1907 the Psychological Clinic of the University of Pennsylvania remained the only clinic of its kind in existence. Since that time with amazing rapidity psychological clinics, sometimes called educational clinics, have been organized in this country. No more important service can be rendered by our Psychological Laboratory and Clinic, than the maintenance of a high standard of professional training in this important field. A minimum of four years of graduate work in psychology and allied sciences is necessary and will be required for the training of one whom we shall be willing to consider a clinical psychologist. My thesis is that an equal standard should be erected by our universities as the minimum standard for the adequate training and professional equipment of the educator. That is to say, there should be a four-year graduate course fully equal in difficulty and severity of discipline to a four-year course in medicine, directed to the purpose of training men and women who will find employment as supervising principals, administrative officers, and educational experts. In the college or undergraduate course there should be offered courses in education and the various branches tributary to it, and these should be offered to college students because of the cultural value which they possess, as well as because they will enable those students who already look forward to the profession of education to prepare themselves in part for this work while still in college. The educational sciences in the college would therefore have the same relation to the professional graduate course in education that college courses in biology bear to the professional course in medicine.
I believe that the definition and scope of education as I have presented them in this paper, must be adopted by our universities if the profession of education is ever to win society’s deference to its opinions?a deference which society will pay only to opinions resting upon expert scientific knowledge. Moreover it is only through scientific insight and method that the profession of education can accomplish its present purpose, which I conceive to be the conservation and development of the natural endowments of every child. The orthogenic training of the next generation is the safest and most practicable road to adult efficiency and race betterment. Who will deny the appreciation now enjoyed by the learned professions to those who patiently and scientifically undertake to render this important service to humanity?
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