The Origins of American Philosophy of Education

120 Pages·1968·12.031 MB·English

by  J. J. Chambliss

THE ORIGINS OF
AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION
THE ORIGINS
OF AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY
OF EDUCATION
ITS DEVELOPMENT
AS A DISTINCT DISCIPLINE,
I808-I9I3
by
J. J. CHAMBLISS
. .
~
MARTINUS NI]HOFF / THE HAGUE / I968
C I968 by Martinus Nijhofl, The Hague, Netherlands
All rights reseroed, including the right to translate 01' to
reproduce this book 01' parts thereot in any t01'm
ISBN 978-94-011-8697-1 ISBN 978-94-011-9518-8 (eBook)
DOl 10.1007/978-94-011-9518-8
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
While I was a graduate student at the University of Illinois, A. W.
Anderson encouraged me ao I began to study the meaning of
philosophy of education as a distinct discipline. I am not sure when
the idea of studying its origins first came to mind, but I was no doubt
stimulated by talking with G. D. Phillips, who introduced a course in
the history of the philosophy of education at Boston University.
Recently, James E. Wheeler and John Hardin Best, colleagues here at
Rutgers University, have generously offered suggestions for which I
am grateful.
The Research Council of Rutgers University provided a Summer
Fellowship as well as financial assistance for the typing of a working
draft.
Some of the material of the study has appeared, in a different form,
in Educational Theory, History of Education Quarterly, and Paedagogica
Historica.
And I shall not forget that Thea, Harry, and Tenley were nearby
during the preparation of the manuscript.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
A cknowledgments VII
INTRODUCTION 1
I. INDUCTIVE EMPIRICISM 5
Joseph N eef' s Sensat ionalis tic Empiricism 6
George Jardine's Philosophical Education 8
James G. Carter: An Inductive Science of Education 12
Thomas Tate: An Inductive Philosophy of Education 21
Herbert Spencer: Evolutionism and Progress 25
Joseph Payne on the Science and Art of Education 31
G. E. Partridge: Scientism and the Philosophy of Education 36
II. RATIONALISM 43
James P. Wickersham: Rationalistic Principles as Precepts 45
Rationalism's Classic Philosophy of Education 48
Herman Harrell Horne's Idealistic Theism 64
III. NATURALISTIC EMPIRICISM 75
Chauncey Wright's Suggestive Naturalism 75
John Dewey: Experience as Empirical and Natural 84
John Angus MacVannel: Experimentalism and Function-
alism 96
A COMMON PROSPECT 106
Bibliographic Note 109
Index II3
INTRODUCTION
John Dewey once wrote: "Education is such an important interest of
life that ... we should expect to find a philosophy of education, just
as there is a philosophy of art and of religion. We should expect, that is,
such a treatment of the subject as would show that the nature of
existence renders education an integral and indispensable function of
life." Indeed, such treatments of education are at least as old as Plato's
Republic. Even so, it was not until the nineteenth century that the
philosophy of education was recognized as a distinct discipline. His
torically, it has been one thing to treat education in such a manner as
Dewey mentions; it has been another thing to do so while deliberately
making explicit a discipline with a subject matter which is in some
sense distinct from that of other disciplines.
The aim, in the present study, has been to study the origins of
philosophy of education as a distinct discipline in the United States. In
doing so, "origins" are taken to mean, first, that from which the disci
pline has come, and second, that which initiates, serves as a point of
departure for what follows. In searching for origins, I have explored the
philosophic considerations of education from which came those distinct
conceptions of the philosophy of education that were to serve as points
of departure for later considerations of the discipline.
The meanings of terms such as "philosophy of education," "science
of education," "theory of education," and "pedagogy" have had a
history which is relevant to the origins of philosophy of education as a
distinct discipline; and in this history, their meanings took shape
according to the philosophic points of view of the writers who used
them. Therefore, their several meanings are discussed in the contexts
in which they were found to be relevant to the origins of philosophy
of education.
The earliest work on education which may fairly be considered to
2 INTRODUCTION
have a place among the origins of the philosophy of education as a
distinct discipline is Joseph Neef's Sketch 0/ a Plan and Method 0/ Edu
cation (1808). Paul Monroe's Cyclopedia 0/ Education (19II-1913) still
remains the most thoroughgoing attempt in English to provide an
encyclopedic, comprehensive account of topics which have a bearing
upon educational ideas and practices. The Cyclopedia, conceived as the
work to which later considerations of ideas and practices might refer
in order to find their points of departure, marks the end of the period
of origins. Monroe's was the first encyclopedia of education to include
an article entitled "Philosophy of Education." Furthermore, its in
clusion of some five hundred articles on topics bearing on the subject
makes evident not only the fact that the philosophy of education was
recognized by the editors of the Cyclopedia as a discipline in its own
right, but also the fact that various conceptions of its nature had become
established so firmly that they could be viewed as points of departure
useful to later students of the discipline. The present study, then, has
found the origins of American philosophy of education as a distinct
discipline in writings of the period 1808-1913.
American philosophy of education as a distinct discipline produced
only a small body of writings by 1913. Most of the literature on
education in the century from Neef's Sketch to Monroe's Cyclopedia
either did not recognize or did not make explicit philosophic consider
ations of education. The most striking cases in point are the writings
of Pestalozzi, Herbart, and Froebel, together with the writings of their
followers. While they enjoyed a considerable influence on nineteenth
century educational thought and practice, they do not have a large
place in the origins of philosophy of education as a distinct discipline.
The use made of Pestalozzi's thought and work by American edu
cators was, for the most part, non-philosophical - that is, his object
lessons were taken narrowly just as educational "methods" without a
philosophical consideration of the nature of the aims for which such
lessons were to be employed; or, put more generally, questions of the
nature of any larger context in which object-lessons might be employed
were usually not raised. Those empiricists who considered Pestalozzi's
method in the context of a conception of knowledge, and those ration
alists who considered the larger whole in which Pestalozzi's method
would take its place, stand apart from the usual non-philosophical uses
of Pestalozzi.
William T. Harris' observation, "I am glad that our friends are
pushing the Herbartian pedagogy, but when they reject the Herbartian
INTRODUCTION 3
philosophy they do not put anything in its place," points to the lack
of a serious consideration of a philosophical ground for Herbart's peda
gogy among most American advocates of Herbartianism. While the
title of Herbart's important pedagogical work - The Science of Edu
cation, Its General Principles Deduced from Its Aim - suggests that the
aim of the science of education was essential in determining educational
principles, there was, in American Herbartianism, a prevailing tendency
to take Herbart's aim and principles as precepts that needed no critical
examination, or to forgo critical examination while discussing general
and special methods of education. The most outspoken American
Herbartians tended to view their work as something other than phi
losophy of education. The serious philosophic considerations of
Herbart's educational thinking did not come from its main advocates,
but from some of its critics and from those who found a place for certain
Herbartian concepts in their philosophic points of view. As examples,
Dewey was critical of the Herbartian conception of interest in particu
lar and of the Herbartian psychology in general; and Harris interpreted
the concept of apperception as dealing with Aristotle's four kinds of
causes in such a way that it could take its place within Harris' system
of rationalism.
In the case of Froebel, no full-blown "Froebelian philosophy of edu
cation" came from the pen of an American educator. Again, the philoso
phers Harris and Dewey found Froebel suggestive, but in different
ways. For Harris, Froebel was a philosopher who related his education
al principles to a philosophic view of the world in such a way that
immediate facts and events are found to be related to the ultimate
principle of the universe - in short, Froebel exhibited the rationalistic
spirit. For Dewey, who eschewed Rationalism's ultimate principles,
Froebel had fundamental insights into the ways in which children
develop, and his conception of play was suggestive for formulating a
naturalistic theory of childhood education.
Not only was the great bulk of educational literature largely uncon
cerned with philosophic considerations of education, but the philo
sophic literature also was largely unconcerned with bringing its various
points of view to bear in considering educational questions. The several
versions of transcendentalism; the realistic philosophy of James
McCosh which was so influential in the denominational colleges; the
"new realism" which developed in the early twentieth century: not
one of these produced an explicit philosophy of education in the period
of the discipline's origins.
4 INTRODUCTION
And among the new breed of academically-trained philosophers who
came from graduate schools from the eighties on, Herman Harrell
Horne and John Dewey were unusual for their work in philosophy of
education. The outstanding new philosophic journals of this period
such as Philosophical Review and Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and
Scientific Methods scarcely ever dealt with philosophic considerations
of educational matters.
Even though the writings which made explicit the origins of American
philosophy of education constitute but a small portion of the edu
cational and philosophical literature produced in the period 1808-1913,
three distinct philosophic points of view stand out in those writings.
In the present study, a chapter is devoted to a discussion of the ways
in which each of these points of view contributed to the origins of
American philosophy of education. The first, inductive empiricism,
early in the century had a tendency towards scienti sm and later came
to express this tendency more and more as child study and educational
psychology sought to establish a scientific basis for education. The
second, rationalism, found its roots in a transcendentalistic opposition
to scientism and sought a purely rational sort of experience that is
independent of the matters which natural science treats. The third,
naturalistic empiricism, found unnecessary the rationalist's quest for
a non-natural explanation of things; yet it sought a wider range of
experience than did scientism, refusing to limit the universe of meanings
to those which are warranted by scientific tests. In considering the
philosophies of education which had their origins in these three points
of view, the emphasis here is more on the conceptions of the meaning,
nature, and scope of the discipline and less on the substantive matters
which give a fuller meaning to the conceptions. Substantive matters
are treated insofar as they seem to be needed to make clear the nature
of the conceptions.