Individualism in Education

ALL advance in civilization, indeed we may say the very foundation of the social order, rests upon the organization of men into troops or bands which are trained to act together for a common purpose. Only the lowest tribes lack all trace of discipline by which individuals are taught to combine their efforts for a common cause.

It is hardly too much to say that the first step upward from savagery is taken when men begin to subject themselves to the training by which the leader prepares his followers for the serious tasks of war. The forethought required in the chief to plan military manŐuvres of even the simplest kind, and the self-sacrifice demanded of those who submit themselves to command until they acquire the habit of the soldier, are alike highly educative, and serve much to develop the better qualities of the early states. As industries develop, they too demand an organization similar to that of armies : the captains must plan and command, and the privates obey their orders. So, step by step, each advance is won through the forethought of leaders and the subordination of their followers.

It is not surprising that, in the course of their experience, societies have come to look upon perfect organization as the condition of all associated work, and that the army, which is always the first to be developed, and the most perfect in its system, of all parts of the governing machinery, should be the type on which men strive to model all their schemes of orderly combined labor.

Thus it came about that when, long after the other more immediate needs of society were provided for, education became the object of general care, the ideals of systematic arrangement which had been so happy in their effects in other departments of action were made the basis on which the plans of teaching were founded. The teacher was expected to command his scholars as an officer his company; the scholars were looked to for an obedience, an implicit following, such as private soldiers gave to their captains. Discipline became the ideal, and militarism the dominant, motive of all school systems developed in states where, as in all Europe, the army set the standard of dutiful conduct. We of the new continent inherited this theory of schooling from the Old World, as we have all the other essential elements of our social structure; and with it we acquired the conception of routine training by which a master seeks to shape the whole mental conduct of his pupils precisely as the commander brings his raw recruits into the condition of an effective soldiery.

There was doubtless a certain utility in this conception of the schoolmaster’s task ; the duties of society demand a spirit of subordination in all its members, and with the greater part of them obedience to command is a duty to which they need to be well accustomed. If all persons whatsoever could receive a certain measure of training in the practice of the soldier’s art, it would be well, for that art has much to teach which the citizen needs to know; but it does not therefore follow that the military spirit should enter into our system of schooling. A certain amount of subordination is of course necessary in any plan of education, but it should not be based on the motives or assume the form which it must have in a military command. The soldier should obey because absolute, unquestioning obedience is the very foundation of his usefulness. It is indeed well to have him love, or at least respect, his superiors, but these are minor points compared with the supreme duty of doing just what he is ordered to do. The object of the machinery of which the individual soldier forms a part is to apply force with the intent of overcoming the resistance of other men, and to secure its application exactly where and when the superior wills it. To this end the canons of duty and the training of the soldier are well adapted. The ideal, or at least the practical, result of this peculiar education is the production of a man in whom the word of command arouses just as much thought as is necessary to secure its intelligent execution, and no more. When the order has been obeyed, the stimulus of duty is satisfied, and the human machine ceases to be active, but remains in poised expectation until again bidden to move.

The ordinary mental condition induced by a strict and long - continued military discipline is in a way represented by the ingenious catchpenny devices set up in public places, where a working model of a locomotive or a steamboat can be put in motion by dropping a piece of money through a slot in the top of the box on which it rests. The whole contrivance is so nicely adjusted that it never acts without the required stimulus, and never fails to act when the foredetermined impulse is given. I would not have this comparison of the common soldier’s work to that of machinery seem in any way derogatory to his character or calling, for I have a sincere and abiding esteem for them both. The need is to exhibit the characteristic result of that part of military education which is peculiar to the occupation and is essentially mechanical. Every one knows, of course, that officers of all grades, and especially those of the higher positions in the service, are called on to exercise judgment, perception, ingenuity, and other high mental parts in a way rarely demanded in other vocations. It is indeed because of the frequent and great opportunities for the utilization and development of these qualities that able men have willingly lived the soldier’s life. But it is clear that such employments are incidental, and that they have no relation to the disciplinary task which alone is the common element in a military education.

In only one regard can the military training be considered a fit model for a school system which purposes to develop the mind and the body of men for the great and varied duties of the citizen, and that is in its admirable fitness for accomplishing the end which is sought to be attained. The aim of the soldier’s discipline is to make his action follow immediately and inevitably on the word of command ; to breed in him a habit of obedience strong enough to overcome the instinctive behests of his nature. This is accomplished by the long-continued association of command and act, until the very force of habit will make the man obey the familiar order. If anybody will but heed the command of “ Forward march ” a hundred times a day for a few years, and especially if he do it in the spirit of mere routine, he will come to a state in which, however timid his nature, he will, at the word, be able to charge an enemy’s battery with the most valiant. The military man has learned that custom goes far to make nature in all that pertains to action ; therefore he repeats the tasks he would have men do with studied reiteration.

There are evident reasons why certain principles of education have been more studiously considered by masters of the art of war than by any other school-teachers. The tests of accomplishment are, in the soldier’s path of duty, far more serious than under any other phase of social obligation : the fate of the commonwealth hangs upon them. Moreover, these tests are applied in a very trenchant way, so as to show the average effect of the training upon the men who have been subjected to it. Such a basis of criticism, unfortunately, is wanting in other branches of education. We cannot prove the results of any system of ordinary schooling as we can those accomplished by a military leader. On this account, the military art has attained a measure of perfection in its methods of education which is not yet approached in any other field of educational work. We should not mistake the lesson which the art of war offers us ; this lesson is not that the military method is the plan to be adopted in all education, but that success in bringing men to the desired development consists in determining accurately what is the end sought to be attained, and in fitting the measures which are taken exactly to the object in view.

The object of military discipline is to develop the will power of the individual, but at the same time to subjugate this volition to the command of the superior; the aim of the education of civilians is to enfranchise the man, to put him in the fullest possession of his natural powers, to quicken and elevate him in every way, and finally to leave him absolutely self-centred and free. So far as disciplinary control may be used in educating the ordinary citizen, it is but a temporary agent, whereby the person may be brought to the position in which he will be governed by himself alone. Whoever will clearly set these two diverse objects of the military and the civil training against each other will see how futile, and even dangerous, it is to seek their combination in one education. The first of these tasks, that devised for training the soldier, is simple, and rests upon the most primitive qualities of the mind, and reckons on no individual peculiarities. The second, which should be fitted for the cultivation of man for society, is necessarily diverse, and should take account of the exceedingly varied attributes of men.

The obvious tendency of discipline is to stamp certain traits in men ; this indeed is not only the characteristic feature, but is the necessary object, of military training. The effect of this peculiar education is conspicuous in professional soldiers of all grades. All who have known many of the graduates of our military academy will have noticed the remarkable uniformity of quality which that admirable school gives to all its graduates. Drawn as the pupils are from all parts of an exceedingly varied people, chosen in a competitive manner from the able youths of their generation, West Point most likely receives a larger share of intellectual young men than any other college in this country, and its students probably have originally all the variety of ability which is found in the youths of any civilian school. But while the graduates of the ordinary college are characterized by a great diversity in individual quality, those who go forth from the military academy are singularly alike in all the features which education can induce. They are exceedingly well adapted to the important functions which they have been trained to perform. The suitability of their training was well shown during our civil war. Although the greater part of the abler young men of the country sought military service and found a chance to prove their fitness for command, nearly all of those who succeeded in this work were from the small number of graduates from West Point. There certainly were not less than twenty thousand officers drawn from civil life, whose capacities as commanders were well essayed during that war. The total number of graduates from West Point who were engaged in the struggle probably did not much exceed one thousand, yet the eminent successes among men presumably of somewhat equal original capacity were overwhelmingly more numerous among those who were trained for the peculiar function. There could hardly be a better proof of the effect of appropriate education in preparing men for the duties of a calling.

Although many men pass from our own military school and those of other countries into civil life, it is generally remarked that they do not readily accommodate themselves to the ordinary stations of society. When they succeed, it is commonly in a position where it is necessary to conduct the operations of a large body of men in something like a military fashion. They are not usually fit for the tasks which demand the varied attainments and powers of adaptation which characterize the men who constitute the body of our civilized states.

It is evident that the limited success of men of the characteristic military type in our modern societies is not due to any lack of capacity for usual employments, for the fact is that these men are, by their conditions, selected from the abler portion of the population. We must explain their manifest unfitness for the ordinary work of the state as we may account for the somewhat similar disabilities of the priestly class, namely, by the effect of a special education. The priest, like the soldier, is, by his training, set apart for a particular function in society, and through the training which prepares him for his career, and the influence of the career itself, he becomes more or less unfitted for the general work of the world. For many centuries of the Christian era education fell mainly into the hands of the clerical class, for they alone were sufficiently educated for the work of teaching. The evils of this method were in time perceived, and the system of lay education has been established in nearly all countries. The military or disciplinary idea which pervades our modern education is not in any way to be attributed to the direct influence of the army, for the soldier is never a propagandist of his methods ; it has come into existence through the general effect of the military arm on the theories of social organization.

In considering the manner in which the central problems of education should be approached, or the spirit in which the teacher should set about his task, we should at once recognize the fact that the aim is not to train the youth for particular duties, such as those of the soldier, but to bring out of that curious body of latencies, the human mind, the good therein contained. There is but one way in which we can hope to educe these powers in an effective manner, and that is by sympathy, by the spontaneous outgoing of the youth’s intelligence towards the spirit which seeks to have contact with it. Some recognition has been given to this truly eductive or outbringing action of sympathy, but its critical importance has not been adequately conceived by teachers. To perceive the value of this emotion we must understand the historic relation of the development of intelligence. This is a difficult matter to state in a brief manner, yet I must essay its presentation.

In the stages of life below man, we find that everywhere the intellect receives its principal development through the care of parents for their offspring, and the dependence of the young upon the elders of their kind. All this primal education rests upon the affection which is common to all beings which possess any distinct share of intelligence. In the human family the element of sympathy is more developed and its action longer continued than among the lower creatures ; but it differs only in degree, and not in nature, from its primal forms. The children of men are roused to thought by sympathetic contact with the household : first by apprehending the motives of the mother; then by association with other persons who lovingly approach them. If we compare the intellectual movements of a child when it is with those whom it regards with affection, and when it is in contact with strangers, we see the nature of this difference in action of the infantile mind. In the society of its familiars its intellect is incessantly active; it seeks eagerly their sympathetic help in the interpretation of the world about it, and so proceeds to develop in the natural, instinctive way. But let the stranger appear, and his presence at once breaks the delicate bond which unites the frail and impressionable spirit with the life about it.

It is clear that the way to knowledge which is first trodden is that which is entered through the gateway of affection. Until, indeed, the human being is thoroughly individualized, and has become self-dependent in a measure rarely attained by any save certain very strong natures, this natural stimulus to intellectual labor which exists in the sympathies is required for all intellectual advance. Men must think in sympathy, or they do not think at all ; at best, while mentally active, they must have a constant reference of their thoughts to some one to whom they are to be submitted. Most persons who deem themselves independent will, on analysis of their minds, find that they retain much of this instinctive reference of their thoughts to others. The author is ever speaking to the fellow-being beside him ; the man of science explores with the sense that there is another profiting from the path he is breaking. Our passage from childhood makes us in a measure independent of the bodily presence of beloved human beings, but they abide with us as spirits, inspiring us to activity by their companionship.

One of the most difficult tasks of the educator is to lead the student from the original dependence on the bodily influence of his instructors to the state where he can be contented with the spiritual presence of his fellow-man. It is here that the offices of the secular and the religious teacher come in contact with each other; it is the field in which the best conquests of education are yet to be made. A man’s life depends upon the company he keeps, and the best of his association in mature years is with the souls he has adopted in his inner life. Fortunate indeed is the youth who has had through his education noble men and women so impressed upon his memory, and so firmly associated with his thought and action, that they dwell ever with him. It is, in truth, the first object of enlarging education to give the youth a chance to win these spiritual helpers to his life. In a way, literature and history accomplish this end by the pictures of human nature which they afford ; but these images of unseen people are to the most of us like the memories of a dream, — very unsubstantial things compared with the recollections of the men and women whom we have known.

All these relations between the generation which is arising to its duties and that which is bearing the burden of its elevation are not advanced by discipline : they are in fact hindered by it. The essence of discipline consists in obedience to command, — obedience which is rendered because there is a sense of authority about the commander. This habit of compliance tends to make mental action automatic, while our object is to make it rational ; moreover, if there be any intellectual activity connected with action under orders, it is likely to develop the element of resistance, which is the greatest enemy to all educative processes. The youth who begins to set himself against his natural intellectual leaders soon loses the habit of spontaneous sympathy which is the condition of his rapid advance in culture. If the discipline is made effective, it may give the youth certain important compensations for the lack of attachment to his teachers ; it may make him patient and resolute, in a way give him soldierly qualities; but the imperfect manner in which discipline is applied in all save the truly military training, commonly results in developing the obdurate habit of mind.

In my considerable experience with young men. I have more often found them suffering from the evils of an incomplete and ineffective discipline than from any other cause. The most hopeless cases with which the college instructor has to deal are those in which the youths have long been subjected to a control of some disciplinary kind ; ineffective to reduce them to the state of the well-drilled soldier, who acts from pure habit, yet sufficient to destroy the sympathetic relation which should exist between the teacher and pupil.

It will doubtless be suggested that discipline is necessary to any form of education ; and while opposing the ordinary form of such training, we may maintain without paradox this proposition, namely, that discpline of a certain sort is clearly necessary to overcome the indolence which affects most minds, as well as to secure the fixedness of attention which it is naturally difficult for any youth to acquire. The point at which I find myself at variance with the common method of obtaining these results is this : usually the effort is to secure this control through habits created from the will of the teacher impressed upon the youth, while in my opinion they can be profitably won only through the exercise of the will of the pupil. There is a world of difference between the diverse uses of the will power. If it be accomplished by sympathetic stimulus awakened in the student’s spirit, the effect is truly educative ; if it arises from the mere dominance of the teacher, the effect is to repress development.

There is undoubtedly a decided advantage in a certain amount of discipline of a purely military sort, but it is difficult to find a place for it in our American life. If we could send every youth for a year or two to an army in campaign, we should in a certain important way enlarge his education, and from the stern, dutiful spirit of war he could learn many lessons. But the imperfect military life such as civilian schools with a military drill afford seems to me to be useful merely as gymnastic training, and perhaps for police uses. Soldierly discipline needs the sanction of military law to give it any moral value. As a gymnastic exercise, the drill of the recruit, as commonly practised, is by no means satisfactory, and the police effects of such amateur soldiery are not of much value.

Perhaps the worst feature of any routine discipline is that it fails to take account of the vast differences which exist between individual pupils, and treats a whole class of students as if they all were cast in one mould. A large part of the evils of society arises from this practice of making a rough classification of men, with the assumption that all who fall within each category are alike. This way of dealing with human beings leads in all our affairs to much injustice : but nowhere is it so prejudicial as in the treatment of youth. The fact is clear that the apparent likeness between men which is conveyed to our senses by the shape of their bodies is very illusory. Within this common envelope of a rigid form we find minds which vary in an almost incredible degree. The biologist perceives in man a singularly invariable species : in form he presents not a tithe of the variations under the diverse conditions of society which are shown in the domesticated animals ; but when we consider his emotional and intellectual nature, we observe in man a greater range in characteristics than is discernible in the structures of any order of animals. Thus, the tests of the mathematical examinations in the University of Cambridge show that the variety in this single mental power is enormous. Reckoning the mathematical capacity of the ordinary intelligent man at one in the scale, it is found that the ablest of say a thousand youths is something like one hundred times as great. No similar test can be applied to the other mental capacities ; but when we consider the accomplishments of poets, orators, philanthropists, discoverers, and other pathbreaking geniuses, it seems likely that about the same range in ability exists in all the powers of the mind. When we come to understand the vast scope of the variations in the dormant moral and intellectual abilities of youths, we perceive the essential folly of our Procrustean methods of culture.

For the task of educating or developing this variety of latent abilities our ordinary methods are as fit as if we gave the same training to eagles and hares, and sought to bring them to the same methods of life. We see that the very first task of the educator is to place himself in close and sympathetic contact with the pupil, and thus to discover what his nature offers to culture ; the next task is to adopt measures to develop these offerings. In a word, the business of the true teacher is like that of the gardener who is dealing with hybrids, where the product of each seed is a problem to be studied at every stage of its development, to be fostered by all the resources in the way of soil and climate which can be applied to it through all the resources of art. We know very well what the measure of his success would be if he regarded these rare gifts of nature as the farmer does his crops, giving them no other care than the rude and general nurture which is due to commercial products. Yet this is substantially what is done in the work of routine education. In the society of our state every child embodies features which are in a measure unique ; they are all from the common stock. It may indeed be said that there are no normal human beings in the sense that there are normal horses or oaks. Physically, man is a well-marked and only moderately variable species; intellectually, he is utterly vagarious, each individual being a group in himself. Under this common physical mask of mankind there is a whole world of variations.

It is evident that this view of the basis of education makes the task of the teacher infinitely more difficult than it usually is conceived to be. In the old view, all that was required was a careful gradation of the scholars according to age and attainments, and a painstaking set of masters who should see that the allotted tasks were done faithfully. In a certain number of years the mill would grind out a satisfactory product with as much certainty as the system of army discipline would, by its training, develop trustworthy soldiers. In the new education, the school will have to be a psychological observatory, where men who conceive the nature of human beings acquire and practice the most difficult art of discovering the capacities of each pupil, and of fitting the culture to his needs. To attain this end will require a vast change in our school system, and a great increase in its cost. In the first place it will be necessary to alter the general conception as to the dignity and the value to society of the teacher’s art. Even now the function of the primaryschool teacher is held in relatively low esteem. He is the worst paid either in salary or honor of all the intellectual servants of society. It is rare indeed that any care is taken to teach primaryschool teachers the true nature of their calling ; and if they had every aid which instruction could afford, the conditions of their arduous service would make it impossible for them to apply their knowledge in any effective way.

While in the other important professional occupations, particularly that of the ministry, the candidate feels it his duty to ascertain whether he has a natural fitness for the calling, the teacher of young children generally stumbles into the place, or, if he — more commonly she — deliberately chooses it, does so because no better chance of making a living can ne at the moment secured. With men the primary-school teacher’s place is always regarded as a steppingstone to higher intellectual pursuits; with women it is adopted usually to meet what is supposed to be a temporary necessity of winning a support. Nothing is more certain than the true place of this function in the social system : it is in its nature the most important, if not the most exalted, position which civilization has created, and the organization of our society will be fatally defective until the position of those who lead up the youth to their duties, especially those who have them in charge in the earliest and most critical state of their development, is adequately recognized.

Through the advance in the arts which is taking place, our most civilized societies are rapidly securing an increase in the reserves of capital from which the means of education are drawn. The amazing development of the altruistic motive ever inclines men to spend more of their means upon the rising generation. Yet it will be long before the ideal of industrial culture can he attained. It will require the diversion of the expenditures which are devoted to war and other barbaric pursuits to the cause of education, before it will be possible to do justice to the offerings of capacity which our children bring to us. Although no general plan of such culture can yet be undertaken, it seems possible already to make a beginning in this better method in the higher schools. Our greatest colleges and universities probably afford the field in which a careful experimental study of the problems afforded by the character of the individual students can best be undertaken. The number of students in these institutions is relatively limited, their corps of teachers is proportionally large. Thus, in Harvard University the proportion of teachers to pupils is about one to ten, and in our other American institutions of higher learning the ratio, though somewhat less, is approaching this standard. There are, moreover, changes in the methods of instruction now in process which will lead far towards the end in view, if indeed they do not of themselves compel a general resort to an attention to individuality in our more advanced teaching.

The reformation of our academic methods of instruction, which is now under way, has been mainly, if not entirely, due to the influence of modern natural and experimental science on the ancient branches of education. When natural science first came into our seats of learning, instruction in it was framed as nearly as possible on the then current methods of those schools. The teaching was almost entirely didactic and by class work. The inutility of this practice was quickly manifested; very rapidly the didactic system has given place to the experimental, and the success in this teaching has been so great that it has had an important influence on the methods of all academic work. The better teachers now introduce the principles of personal inquiry into such studies as mathematics, language, and history, where of old the whole labor was thrown upon the memory of the pupil. The great advantage of the method of instruction by experiment consists in the close relation which it secures between the teacher and the pupil, and the more sympathetic nature of their contacts. In such work the pupil finds the master more helpful than in class-room work, and the teacher thus secures a far clearer idea of the capacities and needs of the pupil than can otherwise be obtained. In no case can the youth there be treated as an average man ; he must be dealt with as an individual, and his tasks gauged by his necessities. Very soon the student finds himself in the position and with the strength of a pioneer; he begins to teach his master even while he is himself dependent upon him. Such are the depths of the phenomenal world that this mutual relation may indefinitely continue, and always afford beautiful opportunities for sympathetic contact between men who are united in the work as master and apprentice.

Although natural science has done much, and doubtless in the future has still much to do, incidentally, in promoting individualism in education, the task cannot be adequately begun until its exceeding gravity is well recognized. We need so far as may be to strip away the rubbish which a rude empiricism has gathered about the schools, and to find room for some research as a guide to our educational labors. Above all, it is important that the commonplace humor with which the subject is ordinarily approached should give place to a sense of its true and imposing dignity. If these gains can be made in our higher schools, where alone we can hope to see them instituted, they will undoubtedly be propagated downward to the primary grades of instruction. With such a system well formed, we should welcome the youth of each generation no longer to a grim scholastic mill, where they are to be treated as mechanically as the recruits of an army, but receive each stranger, as he comes to us from the darkness, with a tender consideration for the good and evil he brings with him, and with an apt adjustment of the resources of education to his individual needs. There are doubtless many ways in which men may make a new heaven and a new earth of their dwelling places, but the simplest of all ways is through a fond, discerning, and individual care of each child.

Nathaniel Southgate Shaler.