Herbert Spencer - Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects

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_EVERYMAN, I will go with thee,
and be thy guide,
In thy most need to go by thy side_

HERBERT SPENCER

Born at Derby in 1820, the son of a teacher,
from whom he received most of his education.
Obtained employment on the London and
Birmingham Railway. After the strike of 1846
he devoted himself to journalism, and in
1848 was sub-editor of _The Economist_.

He died in 1903.

HERBERT SPENCER

Essays on Education
AND KINDRED SUBJECTS

INTRODUCTION BY
CHARLES W. ELIOT

DENT: LONDON
EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY
DUTTON: NEW YORK

_Made in Great Britain
at the
Aldine Press . Letchworth . Herts
for
J.M. DENT & SONS LTD
Aldine House . Bedford Street . London
First published in Everyman's Library 1911
Last reprinted 1963_

NO. _504_

INTRODUCTION

The four essays on education which Herbert Spencer published in a single
volume in 1861 were all written and separately published between 1854
and 1859. Their tone was aggressive and their proposals revolutionary;
although all the doctrines--with one important exception--had already
been vigorously preached by earlier writers on education, as Spencer
himself was at pains to point out. The doctrine which was comparatively
new ran through all four essays; but was most amply stated in the essay
first published in 1859 under the title "What Knowledge is of Most
Worth?" In this essay Spencer divided the leading kinds of human
activity into those which minister to self-preservation, those which
secure the necessaries of life, those whose end is the care of
offspring, those which make good citizens, and those which prepare
adults to enjoy nature, literature, and the fine arts; and he then
maintained that in each of these several classes, knowledge of science
was worth more than any other knowledge. He argued that everywhere
throughout creation faculties are developed through the performance of
the appropriate functions; so that it would be contrary to the whole
harmony of nature "if one kind of culture were needed for the gaining of
information, and another kind were needed as a mental gymnastic." He
then maintained that the sciences are superior in all respects to
languages as educational material; they train the memory better, and a
superior kind of memory; they cultivate the judgment, and they impart an
admirable moral and religious discipline. He concluded that "for
discipline, as well as for guidance, science is of chiefest value. In
all its effects, learning the meaning of things is better than learning
the meaning of words." He answered the question "what knowledge is of
most worth?" with the one word--science.

This doctrine was extremely repulsive to the established profession of
education in England, where Latin, Greek, and mathematics had been the
staples of education for many generations, and were believed to afford
the only suitable preparation for the learned professions, public life,
and cultivated society. In proclaiming this doctrine with ample
illustration, ingenious argument, and forcible reiteration, Spencer was
a true educational pioneer, although some of his scientific
contemporaries were really preaching similar doctrines, each in his own
field.

The profession of teaching has long been characterised by certain
habitual convictions, which Spencer undertook to shake rudely, and even
to deride. The first of these convictions is that all education,
physical, intellectual, and moral, must be authoritative, and need take
no account of the natural wishes, tendencies, and motives of the
ignorant and undeveloped child. The second dominating conviction is that
to teach means to tell, or show, children what they ought to see,
believe, and utter. Expositions by the teacher and books are therefore
the true means of education. The third and supreme conviction is that
the method of education which produced the teacher himself and the
contemporary or earlier scholars, authors, and publicists, must be the
righteous and sufficient method. Its fruits demonstrate its soundness,
and make it sacred. Herbert Spencer, in the essays included in the
present volume, assaulted all three of these firm convictions.
Accordingly, the ideas on education which he put forth more than fifty
years ago have penetrated educational practice very slowly--particularly
in England; but they are now coming to prevail in most civilised
countries, and they will prevail more and more. Through him, the
thoughts on education of Comenius, Montaigne, Locke, Milton, Rousseau,
Pestalozzi, and other noted writers on this neglected subject are at
last winning their way into practice, with the modifications or
adaptations which the immense gains of the human race in knowledge and
power since the nineteenth century opened have shown to be wise.

For teachers and educational administrators it is interesting to observe
the steps by which Spencer's doctrines--and especially his doctrine of
the supreme value of science--have advanced towards acceptance in
practice. In general, the advance has been brought about through the
indirect effects of the enormous industrial, social, and political
changes of the last fifty years. The first practical step was the
introduction of laboratory teaching of one or more of the sciences into
the secondary schools and colleges. Chemistry and physics were the
commonest subjects selected. These two subjects had been taught from
books even earlier; but memorising science out of books is far less
useful as training than memorising grammars and vocabularies. The
characteristic discipline of science can be imparted only through the
laboratory method. The schoolmasters and college faculties who took this
step by no means admitted Spencer's contention that science should be
the universal staple at all stages of child development. On the
contrary, they believed, as most people do to-day, that the mind of the
young child cannot grasp the processes and generalisations of science,
and that science is no more universally fitted to develop mental power
than the classics or mathematics. Indeed, experience during the past
fifty years seems to have proved that fewer minds are naturally inclined
to scientific study than to linguistic or historical study; so that if
some science is to be learnt by everybody, the amount of such study
should be limited to acquiring in one or two sciences knowledge of the
scientific method in general. So much scientific training is indeed
universally desirable; because good training of the senses to observe
accurately is universally desirable, and the collecting, comparing, and
grouping of many facts teach orderliness in thinking, and lead up to
something which Spencer valued highly in education--"a rational
explanation of phenomena."

Science having obtained a foothold in secondary schools and colleges, an
adequate development of science-teaching resulted from the introduction
of options or elections for the pupils among numerous different courses,
in place of a curriculum prescribed for all. The elaborate teaching of
many sciences was thus introduced. The pupil or student saw and recorded
for himself; used books only as helps and guides in seeing, recording,
and generalising; proceeded from the known to the unknown; and in short,
made numerous applications of the doctrines which pervade all Spencer's
writings on education. In the United States these methods were
introduced earlier and have been carried farther than in England; but
within the last few years the changes made in education have been more
extensive and rapid in England than in any other country;--witness the
announcements of the new high schools and the re-organised grammar
schools, of such colleges as South Kensington, Armstrong, King's, the
University College (London), and Goldsmiths', and of the new municipal
universities such as Victoria, Bristol, Sheffield, Birmingham,
Liverpool, and Leeds. The new technical schools also illustrate the
advent of instruction in applied science as an important element in
advanced education. Such institutions as the Seafield Park Engineering
College, the City Guilds of London Institute, the City of London
College, and the Battersea Polytechnic are instances of the same
development. Some endowed institutions for girls illustrate the same
tendencies, as, for example, the Bedford College for Women and the Royal
Holloway College. All these institutions teach sciences in considerable
variety, and in the way that Spencer advocated,--not so much because
they have distinctly accepted his views, as because modern industrial
and social conditions compel the preparation in science of young people
destined for various occupations and services indispensable to modern
society. The method of the preparation is essentially that which he
advocated.

Spencer's propositions to the effect that the study of science was
desirable for artisans, artists, and, in general, for people who were to
get their livings through various skills of hand and eye, were received
with great incredulity, not to say derision--particularly when he
maintained that some knowledge of the theory which underlies an art was
desirable for manual practitioners of the art; but the changes of the
last fifty years in the practice of the arts and trades may be said to
have demonstrated that his views were thoroughly sound. The applications
of science in the arts and trades have been so numerous and productive,
that widespread training in science has become indispensable to any
nation which means to excel in the manufacturing industries, whether of
large scale or small scale. The extraordinary popularity of evening
schools and correspondence schools in the United States rests on the
need which young people employed in the various industries of the
country feel of obtaining more theoretical knowledge about the physical
or chemical processes through which they are earning a livelihood. The
Young Men's Christian Associations in the American cities have become
great centres of evening instruction for just such young persons. The
correspondence schools are teaching hundreds of thousands of young
people at work in machine-shops, mills, mines, and factories, who
believe that they can advance themselves in their several occupations by
supplementing their elementary education with correspondence courses,
taken while they are at work earning a livelihood in industries that
rest ultimately on applications of science.

Spencer's objection to the constant exercise of authority and compulsion
in schools, families, and the State is felt to-day much more widely than
it was in 1858, when he wrote his essay on moral education. His proposal
that children should be allowed to suffer the natural consequences of
their foolish or wrong acts does not seem to the present generation--any
more than it did to him--to be applicable to very young children, who
need protection from the undue severity of many natural penalties; but
the soundness of his general doctrine that it is the true function of
parents and teachers to see that children habitually experience the
normal consequences of their conduct, without putting artificial
consequences in place of them, now commands the assent of most persons
whose minds have been freed from the theological dogmas of original sin
and total depravity. Spencer did not expect the immediate adoption of
this principle; because society as a whole was not yet humane enough. He
admitted that the uncontrollable child of ill-controlled adults might
sometimes have to be scolded or beaten, and that these barbarous methods
might be "perhaps the best preparation such children can have for the
barbarous society in which they are presently to play a part." He hoped,
however, that the civilised members of society would by and by
spontaneously use milder measures; and this hope has been realised in
good degree, with the result that happiness in childhood is much
commoner and more constant than it used to be. Parents and teachers are
beginning to realise that self-control is a prime object in moral
education, and that this self-control cannot be practised under a regime
of constant supervision, unexplained commands, and painful punishments,
but must be gained in freedom. Some large-scale experience with American
secondary schools which prepare boys for admission to college has been
edifying in this respect. The American colleges, as a rule, do not
undertake to exercise much supervision over their students, but leave
them free to regulate their own lives in regard to both work and play.
Now it is the boys who come from the secondary schools where the
closest supervision is maintained that are in most danger of falling
into evil ways when they first go to college.

Spencer put very forcibly a valuable doctrine for which many earlier
writers on the theory of education had failed to get a hearing--the
doctrine, namely, that all instruction should be pleasurable and
interesting. Fifty years ago almost all teachers believed that it was
impossible to make school-work interesting, or life-work either; so that
the child must be forced to grind without pleasure, in preparation for
life's grind; and the forcing was to be done by experience of the
teacher's displeasure and the infliction of pain. Through the slow
effects of Spencer's teaching and of the experience of practical
teachers who have demonstrated that instruction can be made pleasurable,
and that the very hardest work is done by interested pupils because they
are interested, it has gradually come to pass that his heresy has become
the prevailing judgment among sensible and humane teachers. The
experience of many adults, hard at work in the modern industrial,
commercial, and financial world, has taught them that human beings can
make their intensest application only to problems in which they are
personally interested for one reason or another, and that freemen work
much harder than slaves, because they feel within themselves strong
motives for exertion which slaves cannot possibly feel. So, many
intelligent adults, including many parents and teachers, have come to
believe it possible that children will learn to do hard work, both in
school and in after life, through the free play of interior motives
which appeal to them, and prompt them to persistent exertion.

The justice of Spencer's views about training through pleasurable
sensation and achievement in freedom rather than through uninterested
work and pain inflicted by despotic government, is well illustrated by
the recent improvements in the discipline of reformatories for boys and
girls and young men and women. It has been demonstrated that the only
useful reformatories are those which diminish the criminal's liberty of
action as little as possible, require him to perform productive labour,
educate him for a trade or other useful occupation, and offer him the
reward of an abridgment of sentence in return for industry and
self-control. Repression and compulsion under penalties however severe
fail to reform, and often make bad moral conditions worse. Instruction,
as much freedom as is consistent with the safety of society, and an
appeal to the ordinary motives of emulation, satisfaction in
achievement, and the desire to win credit, can, and do, reform.

Many schools, both public and private, have now adopted--in most cases
unconsciously--many of Spencer's more detailed suggestions. The
laboratory method of instruction, for example, now common for scientific
subjects in good schools, is an application of his doctrines of concrete
illustration, training in the accurate use of the senses, and
subordination of book-work. Many schools realise, too, that learning by
heart and, in general, memorising from books are not the only means of
storing the mind of a child. They should make parts of a sound
education, but should not be used to the exclusion of learning through
eye, ear, and hand. Spencer pointed out with much elaboration that
children acquire in their early years a vast amount of information
exclusively through the incessant use of their senses. To-day teachers
know this fact, and realise much better than the teachers of fifty years
ago did, that all through the school and college period the pupils
should be getting a large part of their new knowledge through the
careful application of their own powers of observation, aided, indeed,
by books and pictures which record the observations, old and new, of
other people. The young human being, unlike the puppy or the kitten, is
not confined to the use of his own senses as sources of information and
discovery; but can enjoy the fruits of a prodigious width and depth of
observation acquired by preceding generations and adult members of his
own generation. A recent illustration of this extension of the method of
observation in teaching to observations made by other people is the new
method of giving moral instruction to school children through
photographs of actual scenes which illustrate both good morals and bad,
the exhibition of the photographs being accompanied by a running oral
comment from the teacher. In this kind of moral instruction it seems to
be possible to interest all kinds of children, both civilised and
barbarous, both ill-bred and well-bred. The teaching comes through the
eye, for the children themselves observe intently the pictures which the
lantern throws on the screen; but the striking scenes thus put before
them probably lie in most instances quite outside the region of their
own experiences.

The essay on "What Knowledge is of Most Worth?" contains a hot
denunciation of that kind of information which in most schools used to
usurp the name of history. It is enough to say of this part of Spencer's
educational doctrine that all the best historical writers since the
middle of the nineteenth century seem to have adopted the principles
which he declared should govern the writing of history. As a result, the
teaching of history in schools and colleges has undergone a profound
change. It now deals with the nature and action of government, central,
local, and ecclesiastical, with social observances, industrial systems,
and the customs which regulate popular life, out-of-doors and indoors.
It depicts also the intellectual condition of the nation and the
progress it has made in applied science, the fine arts, and legislation,
and includes descriptions of the peoples' food, shelters, and
amusements. To this result many authors and teachers have contributed;
but Spencer's violent denunciation of history as it was taught in his
time has greatly promoted this important reform.

Many twentieth-century teachers are sure to put in practice Spencer's
exhortation to teach children to draw with pen and pencil, and to use
paints and brush. He maintained that the common omission of drawing as
an important element in the training of children was in contempt of some
of the most obvious of nature's suggestions with regard to the natural
development of human faculties; and the better recent practice in some
English and American schools verifies his statement; nevertheless some
of the best secondary schools in both countries still fail to recognise
drawing and painting as important elements in liberal education.

Modern society as yet hardly approaches the putting into effective
practice of the sound views which Spencer set forth with great detail in
his essay on "Physical Education." The instruction given in schools and
colleges on the care of the body and the laws of health is still very
meagre; and in certain subjects of the utmost importance no instruction
whatever is given, as, for example, in the normal methods of
reproduction in plants and animals, in eugenics, and in the ruinous
consequences of disregarding sexual purity and honour. In one respect
his fundamental doctrine of freedom, carried into the domain of physical
exercise, has been extensively adopted in England, on the Continent,
and in America. He taught that although gymnastics, military drill, and
formal exercises of the limbs are better than nothing, they can never
serve in place of the plays prompted by nature. He maintained that "for
girls as well as boys the sportive activities to which the instincts
impel are essential to bodily welfare." This principle is now being
carried into practice not only for school-children, but for operatives
in factories, clerks, and other young persons whose occupations are
sedentary and monotonous. For all such persons, free plays are vastly
better than formal exercises of any sort.

The wide adoption of Spencer's educational ideas has had to await the
advent of the new educational administration and the new public interest
therein. It awaited the coming of the state university in the United
States and of the city university in England, the establishment of
numerous technical schools, the profound modifications made in grammar
schools and academies, and the multiplication in both countries of the
secondary schools called high schools. In other words, his ideas
gradually gained admission to a vast number of new institutions of
education, which were created and maintained because both the
governments and the nations felt a new sense of responsibility for the
training of the future generations. These new agencies have been created
in great variety, and the introduction of Spencer's ideas has been much
facilitated by this variety. These institutions were national, state, or
municipal. They were tax-supported or endowed. They charged tuition
fees, or were open to competent children or adults without fee. They
undertook to meet alike the needs of the individual and the needs of the
community; and this undertaking involved the introduction of many new
subjects of instruction and many new methods. Through their variety they
could be sympathetic with both individualism and collectivism. The
variety of instruction offered is best illustrated in the strongest
American universities, some of which are tax-supported and some endowed.
These universities maintain a great variety of courses of instruction in
subjects none of which was taught with the faintest approach to adequacy
in American universities sixty years ago; but in making these extensions
the universities have not found it necessary to reduce the instruction
offered in the classics and mathematics. The traditional cultural
studies are still provided; but they represent only one programme among
many, and no one is compelled to follow it. The domination of the
classics is at an end; but any student who prefers the traditional path
to culture, or whose parents choose that path for him, will find in
several American universities much richer provisions of classical
instruction than any university in the country offered sixty years ago.
The present proposals to widen the influence of Oxford University do not
mean, therefore, that the classics, history, and philosophy are to be
taught less there, but only that other subjects are to be taught more,
and that a greater number and variety of young men will be prepared
there for the service of the nation.

The new public interest in education as a necessary of modern industrial
and political life has gradually brought about a great increase in the
proportional number of young men and women whose education is prolonged
beyond the period of primary or elementary instruction; and this
multitude of young people is preparing for a great variety of callings,
many of which are new within sixty years, having been brought into being
by the extraordinary advances of applied science. The advent of these
new callings has favoured the spread of Spencer's educational ideas. The
recent agitation in favour of what is called vocational training is a
vivid illustration of the wide acceptance of his arguments. Even the
farmers, their farm-hands, and their children must nowadays be offered
free instruction in agriculture; because the public, and especially the
urban public, believes that by disseminating better methods of tillage,
better seed, and appropriate manures, the yield of the farms can be
improved in quality and multiplied in quantity. In regard to all
material interests, the free peoples are acting on the principle that
science is the knowledge of most worth. Spencer's doctrine of natural
consequences in place of artificial penalties, his view that all young
people should be taught how to be wise parents and good citizens, and
his advocacy of instruction in public and private hygiene, lie at the
roots of many of the philanthropic and reformatory movements of the day.

On the whole, Herbert Spencer has been fortunate among educational
philosophers. He has not had to wait so long for the acceptance of his
teachings as Comenius, Montaigne, or Rousseau waited. His ideas have
been floated on a prodigious tide of industrial and social change, which
necessarily involved wide-spread and profound educational reform.

This introduction deals with Spencer's four essays on education; but in
the present volume are included three other famous essays written by him
during the same period (1854-59) which produced the essays on education.
All three are germane to the educational essays, because they deal with
the general law of human progress, with the genesis of that science
which Spencer thought to be the knowledge of most worth, and with the
origin and function of music, a subject which he maintained should play
an important part in any scheme of education.

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