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»o3f77

COPYRIORT, 1990^ BY JAMX8 LBBOT STOCKTON

ALL RIGHTS RBSBRVBD

Acknowledgment is made to the following pub-
lishers for courteous permission to make quo-
tations from their copyrighted publications: To
The Macmillan Company for material from
Students History ofEducaiion, by Frank Pierre-
pont Graves; to The A. Flanagan Company
for a quotation from My Pedagogic Creeds
by John Dewey; to Teachers College, Colum-
bia University, for material from the Speyer
School Curriculum; and to the Elemenkuy
School Teacher.

CAMBSIDGB . MASSACHUnTTS
O . S . A

CONTENTS

Editor's Introduccion v

Preface xi

PART I

\ PROJECrr WORK AS A METHOD

'' I. The Evolution of the Principles underlying
^ THE Project Method i

II. The Transfer of the Principles to America . 27

in. Modern American Principles of Education . 36

XV. The Project Method in the Modern Public

School 53

V. Project Work in Trade Education .... 89

PART II

FROJECrr WORK AS A SUBJECT

VI. The Evolution of the Project Subject . . 99

Vn. The Broader Conception of the Content of

THE Project Subject 117

VIII. The Necessity for More Direct Teaching of

THE Project Sxtbject 140

IX. Summary 160

OXTTUNE ».••• 163

419331.

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

The life of man is a practical thing, not in any narrow
material or utilitarian sense, but in the broadest
spiritual meaning of practicality. His life is finally
measured in terms of action or influence on action.
His sensibilities and attitudes, his aversions and en-
thusiasms, gain their ultimate worth through the
deeds to which they commit him. His intellectual life
is merely academic or powerfully dynamic just to the
extent that his thoughts and their arrangements
accurately represent the realities with which his
technique of life deals. The process of education,
therefore, is and ought to be highly concerned with
bringing his emotional and intellectual training into
correct relation with his technique of working and
living.

The wise educationist has perceived that this view
of education and life is bound to reconstruct his con-
ception of the means of giving educative experiences.
He realizes that the subjects which Constitute the
traditional courses of study are more or less isolated
treatments of the real world whereby knowledge is
resolved into separate parts by artificial though logi-
cal boundaries. However useful these classifications
of knowledge may be for scientific discovery or for
keeping knowledge available for the uses of mature

minds, it has become increasingly apparent to the
psychologist of childhood that these groupings of
information are not adapted to the most effective
development of the immature and growing mind
whose interests are quahtatively different and whose
experiences are more meager than those of the aver-
age adult.

The dissatisfaction of American educators with
traditional teaching by isolated subjects has thus far
expressed itself in two constructive movements which
have in turn dominated the thinking of those con-
cerned with elementary education.

The first of these two widespread reconstructive
movements began with the advent of Herbartian
doctrines which were reinterpreted, modified, and
amplified in increasing but never completely satis-
factory ways. The approximately isolated school
subjects were to be tied together by "correlation."
They were to be rescued from the humdrum of
equal valuation through "coordination" and "con-
centration," First one subject and then another
was to be made the center of the curriculum and
the child's intellectual activities. In its practical
operations in the classroom of the unexceptional
teacher the movement proved an unsuccessful make-
shift. It did not attack the existing difficulties in a
sufficiently fundamental way. The original subdi-
visions of subject-matter were left untouched, and
intervaluations and connections which the doctrines

tion

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

of "correlation," "coordination," and "concentra-
tion" could evoke were too artificial and too slight to
be effective.

The second of these far-reaching reconstractive
efforts to avoid the artificial intellectual experiences
consequent upon teaching young children by hard-
and-fast subjects was not disconnected from the first
movement or uninfluenced by it. Its dominant
methods, however, are so considerably different as
to mark it off as a distinctive impulse and process
in American education. Its developing presence is
manifest by the terms currently used to describe its
varied intentions and methods. Thus at an early
stage the lack of intellectual initiative and resource
in children is to be overcome by "teaching children
to study," A little later the emotional dullness of
the school is to be conquered by new methods of
"motivation." Still later, instruction through the
"problem" becomes important. And now we hear
of "project teaching."

Each of these phrases indicates an effort to over-
come some prevalent defect in the teaching situation.
"Project teaching" is the more inclusive swing of a
current movement which is trying to organize educa-
tion on a practical psychological basis. The claim is
made that it does this in many ways. A few of the
major contentions may be mentioned, (r) The study
of vitally related facts in isolation from each other is
overcome by studying truths as required and related

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

by the need to solve problems connected with the
execution of desirable projects. (2) Personal initia-
tive in the finding of needed facts and discriminating
judgment in determining the relative worth of facts
found are two powers which are stimulated and devel-
oped by the perfectly natural need of the child to
solve a problem or execute a project in which he is
interested. These powers or abilities have been diffi-
cult to evoke under traditional methods of teaching.

(3) Working and living attitudes are provoked and
corrected in connection with actual realities and
working aspirations through project teaching. Thus
there is no false development of the emotional life

■ such as is the case when sentiment is created out of
connection with imescapable truths ajid effective
skills. Motivation becomes real rather than artifi-
dal, self-stimulated rather than externally imposed.

(4) The need of high standard skills in doing is
readily appreciated and practice work heartily ac-
cepted by students when they see that faint skill,
or no skill, leads to obvious failure and that ample
and refined technique in execution leads to marked
success.

The above are some of the claims for "project
teaching." They are too important to be ignored.
They promise a rectification of many defects. The
fulfillment of that promise depends partly upon the
soimdness of the psychology assumed by the claim-
eints, and partly upon the skill of the experimentalists

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

in providing an ample organization of appealing proj-
ects which will stimulate the child to make ^ose
acquisitions of knowledges, attitudes, and skills use-
ful to superior adults living in a responsible society.
The hope is not held out that everything necessary
can be, or ought to be, taught through the project.
Unquestionably the method will be more useful with
yoimg rather than with advanced students. With
the former it will doubtless make haste slowly, but
with the more mature, who can see connections with
the swiftness of logical imagination, the over-employ-
ment of such a method may mean intellectual retar-
dation. Every approach to teaching has its strengths
and weaknesses, and the wise schoolmaster will heed
both. In this novel revival of a very fundamental
and ancient way of learning, which schools had for-
gotten, it is rather startling to note how much learn-
ing and teaching through the ^'project" promises.
Yet little will come out of this extension of practical
ways of teaching into the schools unless the historic
backgroimds of its advent into school theory are
understood, its psychological implications compre-
hended, its particular opportunities appreciated, and
its concrete procedures mastered. Hie book pre-
sented has been written with these essential require-
ments in mind.

Henry Suzzallo

SeatUCf WashingUm
April 26, 1920

PREFACE

American education has been quite generally char-
acterized by a tendency to seize upon and to over-
emphasize, temporarily, certain aspects of the total
problem. This tendency to over-emphasis opens the
way for a given aspect to become detached and to be
regarded as more or less independent. It thus gets
out of perspective, and is likely to be looked upon as
a separate, specific, new invention which is "in the
fashion," and which one must therefore know and
use; but which is, perhaps, to be discarded for the
next innovation that comes along. Or, if it is not to
be totally discarded, it is at least to become seriously
submerged in the next new thing.

It is common for the progressive teacher who has
been out of touch with the march of events for even a
short time, to ask, upon returning, "Well, what's the
cry now?" Then she hears that it is object teaching,
or Grube method in arithmetic, or school excursions,
or interest (motivation), or elimination of subject-
matter, or standardization, or some other "ism" or
"ation" which has caught the current for the time
being. The result often is that the teacher in ques-
tion plunges with her accumulated enthusiasm into
the new thing, without relationship and balance, and
tends to emphasize it as a more or less mechanical

PREFACE

surface device, rather than as a flexible outgrowth
of the deep principles in which it is really rooted.

It is not that the relation to principles is not seen
by those who originated the idea. The whole process
usually starts from the presence of the principle
(whether intuitively or logically arrived at) in the
mind of some thinker or group of thinkers. But the
principle must get into action in a more or less con-
crete and detached manner, and in the minds of those
who think less, the connection is very likely to be
lost.

The condition just discussed is evident in regard to
the "project," "project method," "project teach-
ing," or whatever other name may be given to the
idea involved in such terms. This idea has grown out
of the profound insight (sometimes intuitive, and
sometimes logically conceived) on the part of a few
leaders. Kept in right relationship to the problem of
education as a whole, it has even greater possibilities
than have yet been claimed for it. Yet it is surely
tending to become detached as a fashion, as a device,
used more or less blindly, and without full realization
of its significance and power.

Some teachers tend to look upon the "project" as
a method — as a means of getting work done in almost
any subject, as a device for interesting children in the
subject, or for the correlation of subjects, etc. Other
teachers look upon it as the central element in a new
subject^ or evea as a new subject in itself, which sub-

PREFACE

ject is, in some more or less indefinite way, to tate the
place of manual training and domestic science and
art, under the name of "Industrial Arts" or other
similar title.

What is the relation of the "project" work to the
problem of education as a whole? Is "project" work
a method or a subject, or both? These questions must
be discussed and answered for the rank and file of
teachers if "project" work is not to be allowed to
become detached in the nature of device, and gradu-
ally shelved for the next thing in fashion.

It seems possible to show that the so-called "proj-
ect" work is both a method and a subject, and that
the idea consistently appealed to could be made to
interpret and to relate much that is hazy and appar-
ently unrelated in American education. "Project
teaching" has become a method because in all good
schools ^'project" work in all subjects is a direct and
inevitable result of the working-out of the most funda^
mental of modern educational principles. It is a sub-
ject because "project" material can be so organized as
to fulfill a specific need not met by any other school
subject. It is a need which has never been fully real-
ized, expressed, or incorporated into the school pro-
gram, but which must be definitely incorporated if
democratic education is fully to succeed. To incor-
porate tl'ia subject will not necessarily involve an
increase in the number of school subjects. Rightly
handled it will tend to reduce rather than to increase

PREFAGB

oyercrowding of the already ftill curriculum. The
new subject will have relation to manual training and
to domestic science and art, and it will have a rela-
tion to the newer "Industrial Arts" courses. But it
will have a significance not specifically found in any
one of these courses.

What the fundamental principles in modem educa-
tion are, and how they make "project" work inevit-
able as a method in all subjects, it is one of the prob-
lems of this book to make dear. The other problem
is that of showing the body of material for the new
school subject, and of justifying its substitution for
its more indefinite existing representatives.

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

PART I
PROJECT WORK AS A METHOD

THE EVOLUTION OF THE PRINCIPLES UNDER-
LYING THE PROJECTT METHOD

One of the best ways to get principles in mind, to
assimilate their real significance, and so to be able
to use them to interpret a given situation, is that of
tracing their development through their simple and
gradually more and more complex stages. This plan
provides the key to the significance of the principles,
and furnishes the repetition necessary to a familiarity
with them. Seeking, therefore, a grasp of the prin-
ciples of modem education sufficiently comprehen-
sive to clarify the idea of the place of the project in
that education, it is worth while to turn to a brief
consideration of the evolution of educational prin-
ciples.'

But since the aim of the historical survey is just
that of interpreting the modem project movement,
it is necessary to go back only to some point of de-
parture subsequent to which all of the essential prin-

> The historic&l material b largely from the work of Graves.

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

ciples are involved. Such a point is found in th(
eighteenth-century reforms advocated by Rousseau
Pestalozzi, Froebel, Herbart, and some of their less
well-known disciples. Of course the members of thisL
group of thinkers, who have practically "set the
pace" for modem education, were in their turn influ-
enced by other thinkers in the generations before
them; but it is not necessary to the present purpose
to outline those influences. It is only necessary to
turn at once to the masters named — the masters
whose wonderful, but largely intuitive, insight is
being continually verified by the slower, but more
finally reliable, methods of later scholarly research.

In the times referred to, the prevailing education,
in spite of the efforts of certain far-seeing scholars
of previous centuries, was Church-controlled, aris-
tocratic, expensive, almost exclusively linguistic in
content, and formal and individual in method. Stated
more concretely it may be said that the Church still
had a tendency to dominate even the State. Only
the higher classes of the people were educated, educa-
tion was not free, and the memoriter study of Latin
and Greek classical literature provided the bulk of
the curriculum. This literature was taught largely
from the point of view of the individual, and in a
mechanical (grammatical) manner, with much more
regard for the mere form than for the content.

To-day education is largely State-controlled, non-
sectarian, democratic, free, much enlarged and en-

THE UNDERLYING PRINCIPLES

riched in content^ and less formal; mcchanlcali
memoriter; and more social, thought-provoking, and
scientific in method. It is the evolution from one of
these conditions to the other with which this section
is concerned as a brief preliminary to a later pointing-
out of the relationship of this evolution to the in-
creasing prominence of the project idea.

The reforms of this evolution have been at least
threefold in character. They have been sociological,
psychological, and scientific. Defined very loosely
the sociological movement is the trend toward regard-
ing education as a social function, and the aim of edu-
cation as sodal improvement or the so-called "social
efficiency." The psychological movement is the
trend toward basing education upon a clear knowl-
edge about, and a correct utilization of, the mind of
the learner. The scientific movement is the trend
toward the introduction of natural science and its
immediate usefulness as a substitute for the older
linguistic education with its exaggerated formal dis-
cipline theory — its theory that through the study
of language, power was definitely stored up and could
be used in other chosen connections. The scientific
movement also has another aspect in the development
of scientific method, which method is slowly but surely
making itself felt in all phases of human life. It leans
toward the application of that form of induction
which makes intelligent use of the hypothesis, con-
firmed on the basis of actual data. As a method it is

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

held to be convertible. That is to say it is considered
usable in various connections for the solution of vari-
ous types of problems. Hence it represents that en-
lightened aspect of the formal discipline theory which
claims transfer of method rather than transfer of
specific power.

For the purposes of this discussion it is unnecessary
to try to keep the types of refonn (sociological, psy-
chological, and scientific) entirely separated. In-
deed, it is quite clear that it is impossible fully to
separate them, since at times each becomes an aspect
of the other. But in spite of this fact the three main
lines may form a sort of supporting background upon
which to weave the discussion,

A. EOnSSEAU

Focusing temporarily upon Rousseau and his the-
ories, it is plain that the key to his influence and real
importance lies in his intention to awaken the people
from their apathy in regard to education as a remedy
for social Uls — as a universal means of propagation
and realization of social programs. TTiis position at
once minimizes mere knowledge as the aim of educa-
tion, and stands for doing, for efBciency in action; and
it plans to use both knowing and doing in the service
of a series of consciously held social ideals. In it
there is implied the relation of philosophy and educa-
tion. Unless social development is to be left to hap-
hazard chance only, some one must have a conscious

THE UNDERLYING PRINCIPLES

social philosophy — a conscious social program.
Then education may be used as a means for the car-
rying-out of this program. The philosophy behind
the program should, in so far as possible, of course, be
backed up by a knowledge of systematized social
facts (social science) ; but, in the long run, what one
attempts to do with the facts depends upon his social
philosophy or set of more or less consciously formu-
lated social ideals which he conceives to be consistent
with themselves and with life. Sometimes, it is true,
only certain leaders of a society are conscious of the
real aims (ideals), and, by means of a subtle process
of suggestion, lead the masses of the people, through
the natural human tendency to uncritical concerted
action (crowd psychology), to accept and to act upon
them. The root of the action is stitl in thinking, in
point of view, in ideals, in philosophy, but it is in the
thinkin g of the few who manipulate the many.

It was this autocratic, aristocratic, unfair manipu-
lation of the many by the few, which finally caused
the revolt of Rousseau. His social ideals (his new
social philosophy) became a revolt against civiliza-
tion itself, even to the extent at first of repudiation
of society, and return to extreme individualism and
"state of nature." Later he softens this and finds
the ideal state not in the "state of nature," but in a
"society where simplicity and natural wants control,
and where aristocracy and artificiality do not exist

I
I

(Graves). But he had really to give up going even ^M

L i

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

this far, and in his £mUe merely tries to show "how
education might minimize the drawbacks of civiliza-
tion, and bring men as near to nature as possible"
(Graves). The education advocated in the ^rnile
is really aristocratic, contradictory, and in many ways
absurd. Yet its influence, in its essence, has been
toward the ideals which Rousseau earlier enimciated
— toward the overthrow of aristocracy, artificiality,
non-understanding, arrogance, and exploitation, and
the encouragement of democracy, simplicity, cooper-
ation, and the rights of the common man (individual),
and of common men (social).

But it is, perhaps, for his intuitive psychological
insight, and for his attempt to found pedagogy upon
child psychology, that Rousseau is to be most ad-
mired. This intellectual theorist who could not put
his own theories into operation; this father who re-
fused to father his own children; this thinker whose
thoughts often contradict each other, and often lead
him into absurdities; this psychologizer whose times
provided only a formal and a now discarded psychol-
ogy — did, nevertheless, out of his intuitive apprecia-
tion of the child mind, out of his ability to see the
world through the child's eyes, lay down the essen-
tials of modem psychological procedure. In spite of
the impracticability and the absurd contradictions
in his total work, the truth lifts its head and is not to
be mistaken.

His first and foremost p^diological contribuf*

THE UNDERLYING PRINCIPLES

was emphasis upon the fact that although education
was to be used to further a social program, yet it
could not begin on the basis of that program — on
the basis of adult preconceptions as to what the child
should know and do in the future. It should rather
take the child as a center, and begin on the basis of
what is given in the child. First and foremost it
should be recognized that the child is not merely a
miniature adult, but that he has an individuality and
a nature of his own. In Rousseau's time children
were dressed as adults, given the manners of adults,
and in every way considered from that point of view.
He proposed that a shift be made to the point of
view of the child; that the child be regarded as a
child ; and that it be recognized that the child reaches
adulthood only after starting with an original equip-
ment of instincts, impulses, and tendencies, and pro-
ceeding through a natural change or development,
more or less definitely divided into periods. To this
natural foundation, and to the natural process of
development, physical, mental, and moral, educa-
tion cannot (with the best results) be antagonistic.
These things should be reckoned with. They should
be seized upon and made allies if education is to be
most successful. The foundation must be recog-
nized, and the process uninterfered with, if the best
success is to come. The child must be shielded from
being forced into adult methods of thinkin g and act-
', since such methods are not suitable to him.

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

Rousseau also pointed out that the method of de-
velopment from childhood to adulthood is through
interaction of tite natural child with his environ-
ment. The chUd is developed (changed) through his
experience; and experience is defined as everything
that happens to him through his contact with his
environment. But while this plan recognizes the
"natural" process of development in the child, and
stands for non-interference with that process, its very
essence is, nevertheless, a policy of interference with
the direction of the development. That direction is
to be toward those ideals which the adult, in his more
or less conscious philosophy of life, holds for the
child. The child is to be guided into those ideals,
and not merely forced into them through an external
fashioning, or plastering on from without. There is,
rather, to be such manipulation of the environment
that the interaction of the manipulated environ-
ment, with the recognized equipment and personal-
ity of the child, results in development in the chan-
nels desired. It is well to keep in mind this differ-
ence between (i) a policy of recognition of original
equipment, and of non-interference with natural
processes of development, and (2) a policy of con-
scious, judicious, guiding interference, intended to
direct the development toward certain ideals which
the adult hopes may in time become consciously pur-
sued by the child himself.
In thinking about what naturi " 'of the

THE UNDERLYING PRINCIPLES

child were to be reckoned with, to be seized upon
and utilized, Rousseau in his original revolt against
society, and his consequent return to extreme indi-
vidualism, neglected one of the most primitive and
important ■ — perhaps the most important — of them
all. This was the tendency instinctively and uncriti-
cally to act in concert with the group. To it the race
in its early history probably owes its survival. In it
13 found the guarantee of future, more conscious and
intelligent, sympathy and cooperation. It is charac-
terized in itself, however, by an uncritical acceptance
of suggestion, by an untliaught acquiescence and
crowd psychology. Uncontrolled it gives little hope
of being the means of modem progress. Perhaps
this is why Rousseau in the £mile put oS an emphasis
upon social conformity until very late in his pupil's
life. It was natural for him to recognize and to pro-
mote individuality, and he discovered that founded
in another deeply rooted, primitive tendency — the
tendency to solve problems which seemed real prob-
lems to the individual, the tendency to vary instead
of to conform, the tendency to invent, to meet new
situations, the tendency to tkink. This thinking be-
comes the balance wheel for an uncritical conformity.
In seizing upon it, Rousseau unerringly seized the key
to the whole situation. He recognized its connection
with motor activity, and with play; and threw his in-
fluence in the direction of these desirable allies of

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

As to the materials of education, Rousseau, in his
preference for "nature," naturally turned to the en-
vironment. It was the soil, the crops, the trees, the
animals, birds, and insects, which should furnish the
experience necessary to development. This empha-
sis upon the utilization of the natural environment
made Rousseau one of the first advocates of the scien-
tific movement, as he was also one of the first advo-
cates of the sociological and of the psychological
movements. He became an advocate of a curriculum
containing much natural science (not yet very well
organized) in contrast to the prevailing linguistic
content. He advocated the immediately useful, in
contrast to dependence upon the more bookish, formal
discipline idea. In addition to this he advocated the
turning of this more practical content in the direction
of industry, and thought of industrial training as a
preparation for personal support, as well as for the
development of social understanding and cooperation.
But he neglected the past and tended to rob the
child of his social inheritance of history, literature,
language, and book knowledge in general.

Basedow, as a disciple of Rousseau, made more
specific some of the positions of his master, and tried
to get them into practice through his "philanthropin-
ic" movement. He advocated non-sectarian. State-
controlled education (sociological); education prac-
tical in content (scientific), and playful in method
(psychological). The movement spread rapidly in

THE UNDERLYING PRINCIPLES

Europe, but the principles were early forgotten and
the movement became a fad, and died out without
permanent action; but it aided, in the long run, Rous-
seau's influence upon his more permanently successful
followers, Pestalozzi, Froebel, and Herbart.

B. PESTALOZZI

Pestalozzi became interested in Rousseau's writ-
ings, and set out to raise his son on the Rousselian
principles. He, however, developed and modified
the ideas involved, and was the first to get them at
least partially into practice. He carried over the idea
of education as a remedy for social ills — as a means
for the realization of social programs, based upon a
social philosophy. Thus he tended to emphasize
both knowing and doing, and not only knowing and
doing alone, but knowing and doing in the service
of certain more or less consciously formulated ideals.
Moreover, he made practical inclusion in his plan of
all children, a thing which Rousseau had conceived
only in his earlier theory. In £mile he was com-
mitted to aristocratic education — to the training of
the gentleman, and of the woman who was to be his
wife. Pestalozzi, on the other hand, not only the-
oretically, but also actually, took to his heart the
children of the poor. Yet, while he was willing to
spend himself in a philanthropic effort in behalf of the
poor, it is not dear that Pestalozzi had in mind a real
democratic education which would permit any person

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

to fall or rise according to his abilities. He did define
education as "the harmonious development of all the
powers and capacities of the human being." But he
seemed to leave a place for caste, and to feel that the
natural powers of those who were in low stations were
to be so treated as to fit them for those stations only.
The poor were thus to be educated for their natural
place in the industrial world. Also, education of the
poor was conceived as a philanthropic undertaking,
and did not rise to the proposition of a common-
school education for all, at the expense of the State.
Children were to leam a trade, and at the same time,
as a sort of side issue, they were to be given intellec-
tual and moral advancement. He did not conceive
of free pubhc schools as we know them. His point of
view, however, even going only so far as it did, was
revolutionary for the times.

Pestalozzi's psychology, and his attempt to found a
pedagogy upon it, were, as in the case of Rousseau,
intuitive. In their conclusions the two had much in
common, Pestalozzi followed his master in making
the child the center, and in arguing that education
must be with direct reference to the natural develop-
ment of the whole child, physical, mental, and moral.
The child was to be considered as a child and taught
as a child, and not according to adult ways and pre-
conceptions. His endowment and his natural proc-
esses of development were to be reckoned with; and
with regard to the processes, the same policy of non-

THE UNDERLYING PRINCIPLES

interference was to be followed. Hence the begin-
ning was to be in the child's natural equipment of
instincts, impulses, and tendencies; and development
was to proceed through its natural periods to its
adult conclusion. But in its totality the result was
to be the product of the interaction of two forces —
the natural endowment, and the influence of the en-
vironment. Education was not to be a veneer me-
chanically plastered on from without. It was rather
to be a developmental blend of external and internal
factors in the total life of the child.

But, although carryuig out the policy of non-in-
terference with processes, Pestalozzi was necessarily
committed to the policy of specific interference with .
the direction of the processes (just as Rousseau was).
For he planned, by tactful manipulation of the
environment, to influence child development in the
direction of his social program. As has been said,
he, in common with Rousseau, thought of this ma-
nipulation in relation to, and conditioned by, the
nature of the child; but he made a very significant
original contribution by thinking of it also in relation
to, and conditioned by, the nature of subject-matter
(subject-matter being understood to be organized
experience, used for the purposes of directing child
development). He thought of this subject-matter as
"psychologized" (to use Dewey's word) — as itself
manipulated, until it was ready for reception by the
mind of the learner. To this end he beg >c-

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

ess of analysis of each subject of the curriculum into
its simplest elements, and of arranging these ele-
ments in order so that a "cumulative effect" could
be produced by presenting the analyzed material
step-by-step in a series of graded exercises. His "ab
abs" in reading, and his "tables of imits" in arith-
metic have been household words in America, and
whatever portion of these specific applications may
have passed away has not carried with it any of the
real significance of the principle, for the principle
remains to-day as one of the valued possessions of
good teachers.

Pestalozzi also made other contributions (intui-
tively arrived at) to the psychology of teaching.
Among them was his insistence upon the necessity
for a pause at each stage of the learning process in
order to give time for the assimilation of the new.
In addition to this there was his contribution to the
psychology of discipline. This came out of his love
for children and his intuitive insight into child life;
and laid the foundation for a revolution in the disci-
plinary attitude of the schools. For, both because he
loved to make children happy, and because he in-
tuitively realized the good effect upon the learning
process, he made the atmosphere of the school one
of good-will and love, and displaced the prevailing
dogmatic authority and harshness. He was "Fa-
ther" Pestalozzi, the ideal type of the teacher. His
emphasis upon "periods of development" might also

THE UNDERLYING PRINCIPLES

be called almost original in that it was more psycho-
logical than that of Rousseau. The latter empha-
sized as serial, periods which are really concomitant;
but Pestalozzi was dimly, at least, in real psychology
when he made his statement that " the time for learn-
ing is not the time for judgment and criticism."
Neither did he forget the two fundamental tendencies
of originality and conformity. He encouraged in-
vention, the meeting of new situations, the solving
of problems, and insisted that these problems should
be problems which the child found for himself, or
which were at least recognized by him as real prob-
lems. On the other hand, he worked for understand-
ing, for social cooperation, and he seems to have had
some originality in his balancing of these two natu-
rally opposing forces.

Since the materials of education were again to be
those simple, practical ones of the environment, Pes-
talozzi inclined to minimize books, and to emphasize
sense-training and industrial education. Indeed, it
is perhaps Pestalozzi's "object teaching," his "obser-
vation for the sake of developing clear ideas," and the
industrial content of his curriculum, that are the
things for which he is best known (at least in the
United States). Thus he also becomes represent-
ative of the scientific movement — the movement
toward the practical and the useful — as well as
representative of the sociological and of the psycho-
logical movements.

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

C. 7R0EBEL

Two important lines of influence have flowed from
Pestalozzi through his successors^ Froebel and Her-
bart.

Froebel was a direct student of the theories of Pes-
talozzi, and more or less indirectly of those of Rous-
seau. He took over most of their principles, and
hence in his policies there is much of similarity to the
other two great teachers. He looked for social regen-
eration through education, minimized mere knowing,
emphasized doing, and planned to use both knowing
and doing in the service of philosophical and social
ideals. His expressed philosophy is, however, ex-
tremely m3rstical and symbolical; and while it dis-
tributes itself very prominently throughout his work,
yet it is not necessarily an organic part of it. It deals
with a m3rstic imity of relation between man and
nature; and FroebePs writings are usually interpreted
to mean that children are to be made conscious of this
m3rstic imity. It is possible to take another view.
It is possible to conceive that through their contact
with certain natural phenomena, children might im-
consciously gather and treasure up a background of
impressions, attitudes, and interpretative illustra-
tions, which would in later years be the raw material
for the better appreciation of the divine unity. How-
ever this may be, it is when we look away from
this mystic philosophical and social program to his

THE UNDERLYING PRINCIPLES

"social participation" that we find a great original
contribution. In this he proposed a shift from the aim
of the school as a place to prepare for social life, to
the aim of regarding the school itself as a miniature
society, and of regarding actual present participation
in this miniature society as the most certain means of
insuring adequate participation in an enlarged so-
ciety. In the school society, children were to learn
co&peration by practicing coSperation; they were to
learn democracy by practicing democracy; and in
general were to be brought into organic touch with life
as it is lived in i.'s simpler and more desirable forms.
Thus they were to live themselves into the larger and
more extended life, and to find their habits and atti-
tudes naturally right.

In his psychological views (when he let himself go,
and depended upon his intuidve insight rather than
his mystical-philosophical-psychological views) he
was largely in accord with the others who have been
discussed; but made larger original additions, am-
plifications, and changes of emphasis. He, perhaps
more even than the others, recognized the child as
the real center, wished to reach all children (although
not necessarily with free schools), and had a respect,
amounting almost to veneration, for the possibilities
involved in each individual child. He saw education
as real development; and advocated the development
of the whole child, physical, mental, and moral (and
he would add, spiritual). This education was to be
17

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

founded upon original instincts, impulses, and tend-
encies; and he increased the stress upon this idea. In
his judgment the germ of the total f utiure character
was within the child. All it needed was the right
atmosphere in which to develop. He (in common
with Rousseau) held that the right atmosphere is the
atmosphere of nature. Hence under a S3rstem of love
(Pestalozzi's idea of discipline), joy, and freedom, and
in "a school without books or set tasks," but in free
interaction with nature, the result was siure to be
good.

With his supreme confidenjce in Pestalozzi's prin-
ciple of natural development, he was a most ardent
advocate of non-interference with the natural proc-
esses of development. He recognized child nature
in development, and reckoned with it. He wanted
development to be free, and therefore tried to grasp
the natural process and to make it an ally. '^ Educa-
tion,'* he said, "in instruction and training, should be
passive, following; not prescriptive, categorical, in-
terfering." But he, as did the others, provided for
interference with the direction of development; and
wished, through manipulation of the environment, to
guide development toward certain chosen ends. Yet
he wanted even this directing, this guidance, to be
more in the way of opening the right opportunity,
and of permiUing the child to enter into it through
his own inner impulses, than in forcing him into a
prearranged mould. In this sense he trusted inner

rTHE UNDERLYING PRINCIPLES ^M

development, and had a general policy of "hands ^M
oS." ■

This policy was largely due to his special insight
into what constituted the natural tendencies to be
utilized. We have seen how, in his "social participa-
tion," he emphasized the tendency to conformity
based upon suggestion afforded by the social environ-
ment. He also wanted to see children exercise their
natural tendency to be individual, to vary, to solve
problems. But he emphasized, especially, motor
activity as common to both of these tendencies; and
greatly illuminated them by insisting that not mere
activity, but se//"-activity was the thing to be desired.
By self-activity he meant the activity that springs,
not from teacher pressure, but from the child's own
inner impulses and decisions. Thus there comes about
a real inner motive (not an externally attached one)
for the solution of problems. There is an individual-
ity, an initiative, a selfhood in learning (even in the
learning to conform). These mean, in turn, leader-
ship — creativeness.

Since Froebel considered play, song, and all motor
expression as the most fundamental self-activities,
these naturally became the j core of his system.
Games, music, and practical work in the open
air predominated. Children sang, played, "built
dams and windmiUs, fortresses and castles, and
searched the woods for animals, birds, insects, and
flowers." But they also heard hteiary and historical
19

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

stories (in this he paralleled Herbart), and so had
the benefit of a more rounded, and less exclusively
linguistic, education.

As an assistance to the necessary amount of adult
direction of child activity, the materials of education

— playthings, games, songs, and bodily movements

— were to a degree selected, systematized, and tact-
fully introduced with reference to the development
to be achieved. This organization included the
well-known "gifts" and "occupations." The theory
was that children would naturally play, sing, be in
numberless wa3rs self-active in response to nature.
Therefore if repression and formalism in instruction
were disregarded, and judicious manipulation of en-
vironment tactfully adiieved, they could be led —
not forced — to engage in those pla3rs, and other
activities most tiseful to their development. This
method, as used by Froebel, was indirect, incidental,
and would probably have been made more direct as
children grew older. But Froebel does not express
himself as to whether, with older children, he would
have more books, more set tasks, and more conscious
learning of specific things. He, of course, was igno-
rant of the modem theory of habit formation, which
calls, in a degree, for direct rather than for indirect
and incidental instruction.

In his theory of content, Froebel was a strong ad-
vocate of Rousseau's and Pestalozzi's doctrine of
industrial education. But he gave less stress to this

THE UNDERLYING PRINCIPLES

work for the sake of making a living, and more upon
the idea of constructive and occupational (industrial)
work for their purely developmental results in physi-
cal education, and in social (mental, moral, spiritual)
development, leading to social sympathy, insight^
and equalized cooperation.

He did not continue Pestalozzi's analysis of sub-
jects of instruction into their elements, although that
he did not was a natural outcome of his special inter-
est in yoimg children, and of his special emphasis
upon the unity of experience. He rightly felt that,
with young children, experience is a totality unorgan-
ized into subjects, but existing as a total relation of
child and environment. Just how much he would
have been inclined to differentiate subjects later in
the child's life, if he had outlined his work for the
later period, can only be a matter of conjecture.

Neither did he deal much with "periods" of de-
velopment, since he confined his activities largely to
infant education; but, in turning attention to this
need for earlier attention to the education of the
young, he advocated a needed crucial reform which
has not yet been acted upon with anywhere near the
needed universality. To "reform the education of
the nursery" (even to the extent of beginning with
birth or even before birth, perhaps), to prevent un-
desirable developments from even starting, and. thus
prevent the future necessity for breaking down (with
the consequent loss) that which has already been

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

built up, is one of the profoundest and most impor-
tant of all educational suggestions.

Thus Froebel in his sociological and psychological
views did much to change education from the older
aristocratic, linguistic, and formal conditions. In his
emphasis upon nature-study, and upon Pestalozzi's
"objective" and "observational" methods, he was
also directly in the current of the scientific move-
ment.

D. HEBBART

Herbart was a student of Pestalozzi's ideas, and a
reviewer of them. In general he leans toward the
principles already discussed, although he makes his
own contributions toward them. In his social phi*
losophy he looks toward education for all; and, more
definitely than any one previous to him, he gave up
mere knowing and doing as ends, and insisted upon
knowing and doing in the service of a specific ideal.
That ideal to Herbart was morality — character.
Education was to have as its supreme end the sjrs-
tematic building up of those attitudes and relation-
ships to society which constitute the moral law.
The whole child was to be educated, but all other
phases, physical or mental, were to focus in the moral.

In his psychology he saw education as develop-
ment through interaction of the child and his environ-
ment; but, apparently, he emphasized in this develop-
ment, the effect of the external factor — the building

THE UNDERLYING PRINCIPLES

up of the mind from without through environmental
influences — even as Froebei put emphasis upon the
development from within. Yet this emphasis upon
the external was more apparent than real, and came
in a great measure from his attempt to prepare sub-
ject-matter for the mind whose initial equipment and
natural developmental processes he tried to under-
stand and to reckon with. All of his main doctrines,
which are to be later noticed, show him as advocating
non-interference with natural processes, and as look-
ing for a je//-realization comparable to Froebel's self-
activity. But he also wanted careful and expert in-
terference with the direction of the natural processes,
as a means for the development of sound moral char-
acter. This selection of morality as the aim, though
tending to be narrowly conceived, had the virtue of
being more conscious and definite than any previous
program. In the carrying out of this program, he
depended upon the native tendency to imcritical
acceptance of suggestion, and resultant action with
the group. But he also put special emphasis upon
thinking, upon variation, upon the solution of prob-
lems; and in doing so, made clearer than any one else
the relation of specific aim to solution. To his way of
thinking there was necessity for cooperation; but for
a more intelligent cooperation, based upon judgment
and individual insight. Thus he hoped for a better
balance of conformity and invention, of social and
individual, than had yet been achieved.
23

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

He recognized "periods" of development with
much more tendency toward real science than did his
predecessors. He saw also the relation of motor
activity and play to the problem of development,
especially with regard to specific aims for attack
upon problems; and in general accepted in varying
degree the better aspects of the work of other leaders.
In a greater emphasis upon careful study of indi-
vidual differences in equipment and developmental
tendencies, he was imique.

But he went further and made an attempt to apply
real scientific method to education. He began a con-
scious inquiry into the real psychology back of his
ideas. He did not depend alone upon a sympathetic
insight into child nature, as did Pestalozzi, nor upon
this sympathetic insight plus a vague and mystical-
philosophical-psychological view as did Froebel. He
attempted rather to develop a perfectly clear, practi-
cal, and scientific psychology of the learning process,
together with a scientific analysis of the nature of
subject-matter, and of its relation to the learning
process. Out of these he planned to develop a peda-
gogy which was in scientific accord both with the na-
ture of mind and of subject-matter.

While there is disagreement as to just how much
of Herbart's psychology was merely fanciful and me-
chanical, yet there is no doubt about the enormous
influence exerted by the more definite reference of
pedagogy to che psychology of the learning process.

THE UNDERLYING PRINCIPLES

To use an analogy, Rousseau and Pestalozzi were
fanners by the cut-and-try, trial and error, practical-
art, plan. Froebel looked for scientific direction, but
he admitted some pseudo-science of the phases of the
. moon, and the influence of other m3rstical and sym-
bolic factors upon seed and soil. But Herbart,
though perhaps he did not see all of the correct scien-
tific principles, was at least more consistently scien-
tific than the others, and gave the impetus to much
of the present scientific procedure.

He conceived the center of the learning process to
be a conflict of ideas already in the mind, with ideas
concerning outside subject-matter desiring admit-
tance to the mind. In the process of this conflict, the
new was assimilated, or ''apperceived," and found its
place in the total mental content. This appercep-
tion or assimilation (in his opinion) took place in
relation to, and by means of, certain "interests" or
motives; and it could be directed toward the final
"morality" which was the real end of all education.
Especially significant for the development of this
morality were history, language, and literature; and
Herbart emphasized these subjects in contrast to the
program of geography, natural science, reading, form-
study, drawing, writing, and music of Pestalozzi. He
also emphasized the interrelations of studies (correla-
tion), and analyzed his apperception idea into cer-
tain steps to which he fitted certain "formal steps
of instruction." Thus he brought the idea of system

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

and order into pedagogy — a S3rstem and an order
founded upon a conscious theory of the mind in rela-
tion to the nature of the learning process.

Although his particular S3rstem is not popular at
present, since it is held to be in conflict with later
developments in psychology, yet his idea that there
could be, and that there should be, a conscious sjrs-
tern — a teaching scientifically in accord with a con-
scious, scientific theory of the learning process, is one
of the mightiest forces active in the education which
has followed him.

In his over-emphasis upon history, literature, and
language, he minimizes the scientific movement (in
the sense of heavy scientific content of the curricu-
lum); but his great contribution to the scientific
movement understood in the sense of scientific
method will alwa3rs stand as a monument to him,
even though his particular contribution to it may
fade away.

THE TRANSFER OF THE PRINCIPLES TO AMERICA

The transfer to America of these principles, and the
resulting practice, and their incorporation into Amer-
ican education is now to be briefly considered. The
seventeenth-century American education was but a
duplication of that prevailing in Europe. Generally
speaking it may be said that the system was brought
over intact by the colonists, and was of the regulation
Church-controlled, aristocraric, linguistic, and formal
type. It was well into the eighteenth century before
the evoluUon of American social and political ideals
had crystallized sufficiently to provide a basis for any
distinctively American educational ideals.

It was the spirit of the RevoluUon — the vision of
the new freedom — that turned to education in real-
izing its plans. There is no doubt that in the plan
itself, and in the attitude toward education as an aid
to the plan, the uifluence of Rousseau was very great.
His works were read in America, and his ideals influ-
enced profoundly the leaders who were doing the
constructive work for the new type of common-
wealth. Gradually, as a result of that beginning,
there has come about a complete secularization of the
school, a democratization of it, and a State control
and support. There are, in theory at least, free
27

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

schools in which all of the children of all of the people
have opportunity for education. In these schools
there is a widely expanded curriculum, and a less
formal and mechanical method, which method has
the intention, at least, of balancing the individual
and social aspects of life, and of being scientifically
adjusted to the natural development of child mind.

But after all, much of the influence which brought
about these remarkable changes did not come di-
rectly through Rousseau. Much of it did not even
exist in Rousseau. It was, however, from his won-
derfully suggestive ideas, caught up and disseminated
by Basedow; listened to, elaborated, and supple-
mented by Pestalozzi, Froebel, and Herbart; and
again listened to and further elaborated by great
American leaders, that the development has come.

Pestalozzi's influence first appeared in America in
the nineteenth century, coming partially directly
from Switzerland, and partially at second-hand
through other Exuropean coimtries. In 1805 William
McClure made translations of articles with reference
to the system, and later brought Joseph Neef to this
coimtry as Pestalozzi's "apostle.'' Professor John
Griscom, in 1819, gave a report of visits to Yverdon
and Burgdorf; Colbum, in 1821, applied the Pesta-
lozzian principles to arithmetic, emphasizing mental
arithmetic; Mason, in 1836, applied these principles
to music; and the Pestalozzi-Ritter geography meth-
ods were presented here by Guyot in 1848, and later

THE TRANSFER TO AMERICA

continued by Francis Wayland Parker. (Parker's
geography work also represents a later development
of the Herbartian principles of correlation and con-
centration.)

But the most tar-reaching and general interest in
Pestalozzi came through the seventh annual report of
Horace Mann; and through the dissemination of the
"Oswego methods" of Dr. Edward A. Sheldon,
Superintendent of Schools, at Oswego, New York.
Mann's information about Pestalozzi came from per-
sonal observation while on a trip to Europe, Dr.
Sheldon, on the other hand, received his inspiration
in Toronto, Canada, through publications of "The
Home and Colonial School Society" fostered by the
Mayos of England, who, in their turn, got Pestaloz-
zianism directly from contact with the master him-
self.

In 1861 Dr. Sheldon procured from England a
Pestalozzian teacher for his city training school.
This school afterwards became a State normal school,
with Pestalozzian methods somewhat formalized, and
based upon object teaching and observational work.
Other normal schools copied the Oswego methods,
which soon became paramount in elementary educa-
tion in America. But the methods rapidly became
more and more formal and mechanical, lost their con-
nection with real Pestalozzian principles, and tended
to fall to the level of mechanical device.

About the time that Festalozzianism was being
29

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

propagated in America through the Oswego methods
(the early sixties) there was a general turning to
Europe for ideas in education; and one of Pestalozzi's
pupils, Froebel, was also coming into notice here at
that time. His influence in America has largely been
founded in the kindergarten, though it is now seen that
many of the principles which he advocated for that
institution are just as applicable to the higher schools.
The first attempt to bring the kindergarten to
America was made in the early sixties by Miss Eh'za-
beth P. Peabody, a sister of the wife of Horace Mami.
In 1867 Miss Peabody went to Europe to study with
Froebel's widow, and soon came back and started a
periodical to aid in the spreading of Froebelism. In
1868 she obtained the establishment of the first kin-
dergarten in the United States at Boston; and in
1872 Marie Bolte, who had also studied with Froe-
bePs wife, opened a kindergarten in New York. The
same year saw the beginning of Susan E. Blow's
work at St. Louis. In 1876 the California work was
started by Emma Marwedel, and by 1890 there were
kindergartens in other leading American cities, car-
ried on at first largely as philanthropic enterprises.
However, a few cities gradually made them an in-
tegral part of the educational system. This was done
as early as 1873 in St. Louis through the influence of
Miss Blow, who also established a kindergarten train-
ing school there. Kindergartens were adopted by
the school system of San Francisco in 1880, and by

THE TRANSFER TO AMERICA

the end of the century they were found in over two
hundred progressive cities; and kindergarten training
schools were found in many public and partially pub-
lic normal schools. In these training schools the
Froebelian principles were studied; but they tended
to be studied as a thing apart from the general prob-
lem of education, and without reference to the school
as a whole. Moreover, kindergarten practices were
for a long time more and more symbolic, tending to
rigidity and mechanism — to the very formalism
which Froebel himself fought. On the part of many
teachers they came to be applied as devices and rigid
formulas, intentionally and carefully shielded from
any innovation or variation based upon thought con-
cerning the requirements of any given specific situa-
tion. But very recently there has come about a very
hopeful reform movement in the kindergarten. The
followers of this movement propose to take and to
keep all that is good in the old kindergarten, but also
to be willing to make changes of all kinds that seem
to be demanded by any of the more scientific educa-
tional knowledge which is being developed.

The work of the other great pupil and follower of
Pestalozzi, Herbart, did not reach America before
about 1880. It then began to be brought here
largely by students stud3ang with Rein at Jena, and
returning to this coimtry with ideas which they
thought America could utilize. These students saw
in Herbartian principles an opportimity to systema-

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

tize the solution of many American educational prob-
lems through the application of scientific method.
Such systematization was badly needed. The origi-
nal work done in America, and the ideas brought
from Europe, had been mostly in the form of isolated
efforts, each along its own more or less narrow line,
and imrelated to any general theory or plan. Hence
all became formal and mechanical in a short time,
almost inevitably, because of isolation and original
lack of breadth. Herbart had a real systematized
plan. It involved definitely formulated theories of
the aim, method, subject-matter, and materials of
education, and seemed to offer the first reaUy feasible
hope of appl3ang scientific method in that field.

The movement centered in northern Illinois in
the State Normal University. De Garmo, F. M.
McMurry, Charles McMurry, and others were leaders.
The practice school of the Normal University was the
first established upon Herbartian principles, and be-
came an experimental school where real research was
made in an effort to apply the scientific method to
education.

In 1892 there was formed the Herbart Club to
study Herbartian principles, to translate them, and
to make them available. In 1895 the dub became
"The Herbartian Society for the Scientific Study of
Education," persons who were not Herbartians were
admitted to membership, and a year-book began to
be published.

THE TRANSFER TO AMERICA

The movement was soon opposed by other think-
ers. It was objected to as a foreign importation.
Its metaphysical implications were called absurd,
and it was criticized as containing nothing new. Its
influence grew, however, and not only did the con-
troversy succeed in emphasizing the fact that theo-
ries of education must rest back upon philosophical
theories (metaphysical theories), even though Her-
bart's metaphysics might be wrong; but it also drove
its advocates and others into real, though often crude,
experiments, to prove their doctrines, or to disprove
the other person's.

When Herbart's psychology was shown to be
faulty, and became discarded by the then increasing
power of new and brilliant American psychology stu-
dents, it was possible to show that the more modem
psychology did not invalidate many of his other prin-
ciples. Hence, one by one, there were introduced
into American education, in a more or less isolated
way, the five formal steps of instruction, appercep-
tion, concentration, and the doctrine of interest. The
attempt to feature the whole Herbartian plan was
thus abandoned, and a loss was sustained in that
there was now a return to more or less isolated efforts,
rather than the complete systematization of educa-
tion. But the scientific method was continued more
or less in the cases of the isolated principles. These
were taught everywhere in clubs and in normal
schools, and became for a long time dominant. The

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

work of Parker and the Reports of the Committee of
Ten and of Fifteen were very markedly influenced.
The use of history and of historical material was
very much augmented. There came a wide apprecia-
tion of morality as a growth; and of moral character,
rather than knowledge, as the aim of education. Cul-
ture and social life, rather than the mere develop-
ment of patriotism, became the aim of history. His-
tory of other countries, and especially biography, as
an aid to moral instruction, appeared; and there was
an attempt to use European Ustory as a setting for
American history. There was similar development in
literature. Brief and poor selections were given up
for total classics.

While Herbartianism, pure and simple, has been
abandoned for less dogmatic methods, yet the spirit
of most of the great principles remains. Perhaps any
over-emphasis and tendency to dogmatism and for-
malism were needed to give the principles roots by
which to survive and to be modified. Certainly the
influence upon the application of scientific method to
education has been immeasurable; and it is in that
direction, at least, that the honors for original con-
tribution can never be taken away from Herbart and
his followers. In line with this, "The Herbartian
Society for the Scientific Study of Education" has
been made "The Society for the Scientific Study of
Education," and by this movement for systematiza-
tion education is beingimmeasurably benefited. This

THE TRANSFER TO AMERICA

movement should not be confused with the other
phase of the scientific movement which has aimed to
increase scientific content in the curriculum (mainly
on the basis of its usefulness and practicality). This
phase of the problem, starting from Rousseau, Pesta-
lozzi, Froebel, and Herbart, reinforced by the English
scientific movement represented by Spencer, Darwin,
and Huxley, and early fostered in this country by
President Eliot of Harvard, represents a still dom-
inant influence in American education.

Ill

MODERN AMERICAN PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION

Tbe period of transplantation of education^ suc-
ceeded by the period of rather unorganized develop-
ment largely influenced from Europe, has been fol-
lowed by a period of reconstruction and original effort
which is still in progress. Reforms have divided
themselves into two types: (i) those which have to do
with providing the candUions and tools for education;
and (2) those which deal with the immediate school-
room problems of instruction. Under the first head,
organization and administration are dealt with.
This movement has been away from provisions for
Church control, sectarianism, and individually eacpen-
sive and aristocratic education; it has been toward
State control, non-sectarianism, and free and tmi-
versal education. The relation of this administra-
tive work to the project is that of providing for con-
ditions under which the project can appear at its
best.

The movement having to do with immediate prob-
lems of instruction is greatly indebted to William
James. At a time when the "faculty" psychology
was breaking up, this student of philosophy, and
of the best in psychology here and abroad, put the
''new'' psychology into a form which has been the

MODERN AMERICAN EDUCATION

well from which all succeeding students have drunk.
G. Stanley Hall and his followers are also to be cred-
ited with the starting and maintaining of a child-
study movement. Yet this movement was largely
on a questionnaire basis; and it has given way to a
real laboratory-experimental movement of great sig-
nificance and extent. This laboratory-experimental
work has been done in many different laboratories
and schoolrooms, and imder varying conditions. At
first it was somewhat haphazard and contradictory;
but of late it has assiuned at least something of defi-
nite form, and is more and more putting a real scien-
tific foimdation imder the intuitive work of the old
leaders. A good siunmary of what has been done,
and by whom it has been done, together with an esti-
mate of the relative importance of the various pieces
of work, is to be foimd in Thomdike's Educational
Psychology.

The material is too bulky to deal with in full here;
but in general it covers the following points: (i) The
natural endowment, including (a) instincts, impulses,
and tendencies manifested at birth, and (b) instincts,
impulses, and tendencies progressively appearing
through life, and so dividing life into "periods" of
development. (2) The process of change or develop-
ment by which the child becomes an adult. In other
words, the learning process itself, dominated by the
two great primitive tendencies, (a) the tendency to
conform uncritically to the action of the group,

PROJECT WORE IN EDUCATION

through uncritical yielding to emotional impressions,
to intuition, to suggestion, to relatively unconscious
learning; (6) the tendency to vary, to invent, to meet
new difficulties through the focusing of emotion and
critical judgment upon new and imusual sets of con-
ditions (in other words the tendency to solve problems
through the conscious use of the intellect). (3) The
problem of individual differences, the problem of vari-
ation of the one from the norm or type.

The variations referred to imder (3) are due both
to endowment and environment. The investigations
concerning them have dealt with differences in work
and fatigue, in sex, in imagery, in attention and per-
ception, etc. With the problem well worked out,
with the general processes known, and the individual
variations determined, teaching may be made to fit
the individual case more completely and scientifically.

The latest development has been a realization that
if individual differences are to be regarded in the
most successful manner, if complete diagnosis of in-
dividual cases is to be used as a basis for repressive
or remedial measxures, then there must be developed
better systems of measurement, physical, mental, and
pedagogical. The amount of various traits and ac-
complishments must cease to be a matter of opinion
and become referred to standard measures, similar
at least in exactness to the standard measures applied
in other sciences.

If the work of any one man were taken to represent

MODERN AMERICAN EDUCATION

the modem situation with regard to actual problems
of instruction as a whole, the best one for our pur-
poses would be John Dewey. The work of this mod-
em educational reformer, through his own efforts, and
through similar efforts of those influenced by him,
has, Graves says, "been the largest factor in deter-
mining the theory and practice of the present day,"
He has accepted, in spirit, at least, the valid domi-
nant and determining principles of the leaders who
have gone before him; and both as a philosopher and
as an educationist has organized and obtained follow-
ers for a system which is a synthesis of much of the
best which has gone before and of the hopes which
hover ahead.

A closer view of this modem reformer makes it
dear that his work has tended to socialize and to
psychologize American education, to point out a
practical content (industrial and scientific) calcu-
lated to interpret life, and to encourage natural and
effective child development through unification of
the school with life.

He stands for the use of education as a remedy for
social ills — for the carrying-out of a definite social
program, based upon a definite social philosophy or
theory of moral-social development, directed toward
democratic ideals by conceiving of the school itself as
a society. The school is to be looked upon as just a
part of real life, a continuation of the home social life,
carried out in the home spirit. School attendance is
39

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

to be a real "social participation," which reveals to
the child, and makes intrinsic in him through natural
processes of contact, the democratic social ideals.
Sympathy and the other social virtues carry over
from the home and become natural in the new home-
school atmosphere. Thus "the end is in the proc-
ess"; the school is just a bit of real life, not a place
in which to prepare for life. The aim of education
is focused not upon mere knowledge, but upon doing;
and more than that, upon efficient social doing —
social efficiency. This social efficiency is to be pro-
duced through real social participation, and guided
toward definite democratic social ideals. The child
is to live the life of a child, to do the things necessary
to a child, and so live himself naturally into the life of
the adult.

By the same plan, also, the disjointed elements
of the school system — kindergarten, elementary
school, intermediate school, and high school, which
are the products of various social conditions, and
various suggestions from many systems — are to be
really welded together by eadi being related to life
as it is conceived and lived.

In his psychological attitude Dewey recognizes
Rousseau's idea that education should not begin on
the basis of adult preconceptions of what the child
should be. It should not have the social program as
a center; but should rather be begun on the basis
of the child's endowment — instincts, impulses, and

MODERN AMERICAN EDUCATION

tendencies — and continue as a process of develop-
ment. This development is to be a development of
the whole child, with the physical development spe-
dally caied for as a foundation for the mental and
moral.

But the development is not to ht forced. This is
the famihar principle of non-interference with the
natural process. To this natural process, education
must not be antagonistic, but it must, rather, ally
itself with it.

The method is to be the method of experience —
of interaction of the child and experience, or of the
child and the curriculiuu, if the curriculum is seen as
merely himian experience organized into the "sub-
jects" of instruction. He argues that the child can-
not develop things out of bis own mind in isolation,
but develops only in contact with the environment.
There is no gap between the child and his experience.
The sum of the experience is the child. Books are
advocated, but are to be used to interpret experience,
not as a substitute for experience.

Experience (subject-matter) is to be so organized,
and so used by the teacher, as to direct the child to-
ward democratic ideals; but it is not to be a forcing
type of direction. Herein lies Dewey's attitude to-
ward self-activity. His feeling is similar to Froebel's.
There is to be an atmosphere of joy and freedom, of
motor activity and play; the mild discipline of love;
an opening of doors in the right direction; a creating

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

of opportunities of which the child takes advantage
through his own inner impulses and decisions. The
selfhood, the individuality of the child, is to be re-
spected. Since this self-activity is to mean the iden-
tification of the self with the thing, it cannot come
purely externally. It must have the cooperation of
the whole self, including the use of the senses and the
muscles. Motor activity is not only an accompani-
ment of the learning process; it is a part of the learn-
ing process. This fact was stated long ago by James
in the phrase "no impression without eitpression,"
and has since then been a part of the theory, though
not always a part of the practice, of teachers. This
motor activity may become quite incipient in time,
under certain conditions of abstraction; but it is
much more prominent and visible in the learning of
children than in the learning of adults.

Education, therefore, involves play, construction
of objects, manipulation of material and tools. Thus
the child is to be self-active in the best sense, and the
policy of interference with the direction of the proc-
ess of education (though it definitely exists) is to be
"following" and non-prescriptive. Activity on the
part of the child is, in so far as possible, to precede
the giving of information by the teacher; and the
school is to be a place for working, rather than merely
a place for listening. It should be a place for self-
education through practical activities.

But Dewey goes further than Froebel's intuitive
42

MODERN AMERICAN EDUCATION

appreciation of how development takes place, and
further than Herbart's' theoretical psychology and
pedagogy, and founds education upon a really scien-
tific experimental psychology of the learning process.
This modem psychology is not original with Dewey
(as has already been pointed out in the account of the
modem psychological movement). It comes also
from James, and from the many other careful inves-
tigators previously mentioned, who have done real
and painstaking experimentation in the field. One
of his original contributions (to be later discussed
under the head of the utilization of the great natural
tendency to vary, to solve problems) is an analysis of
the thinking, or learning, process itself, in his book,
How We Think. Another is m his treatment of sub-
ject-matter, his plans for the manipulation of it, with
relation to its reception by the child mind. He
really does more to "psychologize" subject-matter
than did Pestalozzi, for Pestalozzi's "ab abs " and his
" tables of units," while they simplify the material, do
it more upon a logical, adult basis, than upon a psy-
chological basis. Psychologically the child mind
often receives as wholes the things which seem sim-
pler to the adult mind when analyzed into elements,
But Dewey points out that while modem life is not
to be so much analyzed into its elements, it is, never-
theless,'so complex that it ought to be reduced to its
lowest terms — reduced, as it were, to its prunitive,
embryonic form, which form still holds the elements in
43

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

relation to each other, but in a manner more suited to
the child mind.

As to the two great apparently opposed natural
tendencies, the one toward uncritical conformity and
the other toward critical variation, it may be said
that Dewey makes most intelligent use of both, and
that he consciously tends to balaace them, and to
make the tendency to vary contribute in the long run
to intelligent conformity. That is, through sodal
participation he plans to get both conformity and
variation, and to make the best good of the greatest
number (which is, after all, the kernel of democracy)
the final outcome. He shows clearly that under the
average, unreformed, present school condition chil-
dren are taught always to do what they are told to do
and nothing else. They are expected to be passive,
submissive, to await conmiaads, and to reflect their
teachers and their books. But in a school where ac-
tivity is the basis of the curricultun he shows that the
child gets his knowledge through action, and that
what he gets is so built into his muscles and his whole
physical being that he does not have to try to remem-
ber it, for it is a real part of himself, and comes out
naturally in any situation demanding it. Moreover,
the result of such education is shown to be the devel-
opment of initiative and originality — the develop-
ment of the power to think for one's self, and these
virtues are the virtues of democracy. They are, and
should be, opposed to the virtues of submission so

MODERN AMERICAN EDUCATION

commonly taught in the older schools. For
State is founded upon freedom, and children raised
exclusively upon the virtues of submission do not
readily make good use of freedom when they sud-
denly acquire it after graduation into life beyond the
school.

Hence he very sincerely advocates the encourage-
ment of the tendency to vary, to be inventive, to
solve problems, rather than the tendency uncon-
sciously and passively to follow the lead of the crowd,
And be is an advocate of this originality because,
although it seems to be, and is, individual, he sees in
it the best guarantee of a progressive social solidarity.
He is looking for conformity where conformity is
desirable; but he wishes an intelligent, not a blind,
conformity.

Social-occupational and constructive work, and all
kinds of observational and first-hand contact with
nature, are therefore held by him to be not only "so-
cializing," but progressively socializing, since in the
independent solution of the multitude of definite,
concrete, individual problems which are bound to
arise through general activities lies the best guarantee
of an original interest in the welfare of the group, and
an individual power to solve problems with reference
to the progressive welfare of the group.

In his program of occupational and constructive
activities, it is plain to see how far he is away from
the old memoriter, linguistic school program. But in
45

r our ^M
«dso ^H

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

his argument that the activities in question develop
sense-training, observation, ingenuity, and construc-
tive imagination which can be available in other con-
nectionsy he seems to carry over something of the
'^ formal discipline" phase of the older education.
Yet it is only in appearance that this is so, for he does
not think of the storing-up of actual power to be
transferred, but thinks, rather, of the development
of a thought-method of attack upon a problem, and
the transfer of that '^ method of attack " to other situ-
ations. In this sense he is in the very stronghold of
formal discipline. The transfer of methods of attack
makes the individual independent in new and unusual
difficulties, and this is what the ''new" education de-
mands. Facts have multiplied until the time has
gone by when one can expect to master all facts.
Even if the "pouring-in" process were the best
method, there would not be time in a lifetime to com-
plete it, since the amount of material is too enormous.
So education will not advance by devising methods
*' to increase the constmiption of facts about all situa-
tions," but must, instead, abandon this ''force-piunp-
reservoir-system" in favor of training a child in such
a way that he has power to face and to master a new
situation for himself at the time that it presents itself.
So education must develop in the child transferable
methods of attack upon problems.

What correct methods of attack are, Dewey makes
dear in his book Haw We Think. Here he analyzes

MODERN AMERICAN EDUCATION

the thought (learning) process, and makes one of
the most important of modern contributions to this
phase of modern psychology.

In this connection also should be mentioned Dr.
F. M. McMurry's contribution in the same field,
through his development of the problem of How
to Study, which is essentially the problem of how to
think. Dewey's book and McMurry's are natural
complements of each other, and should be used to-
gether. Among the "factors" of study named by
McMurry are aim, initiative, attention to relative
values, and organization. These items have been
developed by him, and widely used by others, as
standards for the judgment of the work of teachers.
If their pupils show that these elements are being
cared for, the work of the teacher is regarded as good;
otherwise it is criticized as inadequate.

In dealing with this topic of individual initiative in
the presence of problems, Dewey also points out more
clearly than others that a general psychology and a
general pedagogy have only a general application.
Children cannot all be cast in the same mould. Vari-
ation, even in the equipment of children, is the rule;
and variation in response of children, and therefore
in the treatment of individual children, is inevitable
if education is to succeed, and selfhood and individ-
uality are to be conserved. Thus his idea of training
the whole child is much more comprehensive than was
Froebel's. It is to be a training which provides for
47

1
I
I

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

individual differences, where the law is set by the con-
dition of the individual child; not a imiversal system
under the general law of which each child is to come.
Uniformity of curriculiun, method, and organiza-
tion must give way as soon as the individual child
(not a semi-theoretical typical child) is made the
center.

Hence in the tendency of children to vary individ-
ually, he emphasizes the importance of variable en-
dowment, and stresses children's "interests," or, in
other words, their "attitudes toward possible experi-
ences." It is these "attitudes," interests, motives,
and specific aims which furnish the "push" — the
motive power. They are part of the original equip-
ment and their appearance at any given time is "to
be observed as showing the state of development
which the child has reached." The teacher cannot
get subject-matter in from without if the child is
passive. The only significant method is that of the
mind as it reaches out and assimilates. This is
Dewey's real contribution to the use of the emo-
tions in school. Thus he sees "interest" not as a
"sugar-coating" opposed to "effort," but as the
cause and ally of "effort."

But Dewey takes great care to show that he con-
ceives social and individual as necessarily balanced if
final success in education is assured. And he sees the
social as dominant, as of course it must be in a democ-
racy. To make this dear, he has in one connection

MODERN AMERICAN EDUCATION

defined education as "the reconstruction of experi-
ence, giving it a more socialized value through the
medium of increased individual efficiency."

The content of the curriculum has already been
shown to be away from the narrow linguistic one
toward an industrial and science content. It thus
emphasizes the practical, the useful; and teachers are
urged to teach that which can be directly utilized in
everyday life. Eliminations are made from the cur-
riculum, also, upon this basis. But this emphasis
upon the practical, the useful, and even the voca-
tional, or at least pre-vocational, is not to be under-
stood as making education a "money-getting" ven-
ture. The emphasis comes, rather, from Dewey's
appreciation of the fact that modem h'fe is industrial
and scientific in nature; and that if the school is
to interpret life, if the school is to be but a small
life-unit, the unification must come through content
which is peculiar to the life in question. Of course the
self-support idea enters in as a secondary matter.
Self-support is a social obligation, since one ought not
to be a "drag" upon his group. Yet the self-support
idea does not lead; and the practical and useful con-
tent urged by Dewey is cultural, and not purely
economic or vocational in its aim (at least in the ele-
mentary school). It is that content which he con-
ceives is demanded for everybody (rich and poor,
high and low, alike) by the present life, if every one
is to be in sympathy and cooperation with the present

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

life. It is the ideal of democracy put into practice
through the school.

In this connection, ako, he calls attention to the
fact that social life is always changing, and so educa-
tion must be a changing, not a static thing, especially
in content. He shows that the fundamental indus-
trial and social processes by which life maintains itself,
have hidden themselves away in factories and large
industrial enterprises, and do not any longer touch
the real experience of the child as they once did.
Thus children lose a training that they once used to
get outside of the school — a training in personal re-
sponsibility and a knowledge of the physical realities
of things. Hence, combining this idea with his idea
of simplifying hfe — of reducing it to lower terms in
order to fit it to the child's mind — he recommends
that the simpler, primitive processes of industry
(spinning, weaving, candle-making, pottery-making,
and the like) be incorporated into the school program.
They should be made a part of that Httle section of
life, through the living of which the children become
unified with the larger social life of the land, and with
which they grow into sympathy and cooperation.

This leads him to call for a larger expansion, and
change of point of view, in manual tr aining and do-
mestic science work, and in the science content of the
curriculum; and to lean toward these factors upon
the basis of their real life-interpretation values. Thus
he looks upon them not as "special studies which
50

MODERN AMERICAN EDUCATION

are to be introduced over and above a lot of others in
the way of relaxation or relief, or as additional ac-
complishments. . , . Rather they represent, as types,
fundamental forms of social activity; and it is possi-
ble and desirable that the child's introduction into
the more formal subjects of the curriculum be
through the medium of these activities."

His pohcy of unification also leads him to favor
Herbart's doctrine of concentration, especially in the
lower grades. He takes the position that, to the
young child, experience is a unit, "concentrated,"
undifferentiated into "subjects"; and that differen-
tiation of subjects comes only slowly as the child de-
velops, and never is (and never should be) complete.
Early education should deal with experience as a
whole; and later education, though it develops "sub-
jects," should alwa^ keep in view their interrela-
tionships, both with each other, and with the total
experience of life. He makes it very clear that the
real basis for this concentration and correlation can-
not be any one subject or subjects, but must always
be the social hfe to which all are referred.

With the evolution of modem educational princi-
ples well in mind, it is now time for consideration of
the relationship of those principles to project method
in the modem public school of America. This mate-
rial appears in chapters iv and V. Then follows a
chapter on another line of project-method devel-
opment, which has been largely outside of the

I
I

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

public schools, but which has a vital relation to
them; afterwards the use of project material as a
separate subject in itself (independent of its value
as a method of getting work done in other subjects)
is discussed.

THE PROJECT METHOD IN THE MODERN PUBLIC

SCHOOL

What is a project method in the conunonly ac-
cepted public school use of the term? Thus far it has
been asstmied that the reader understood the mean-
ing of the term^ and could identify it in use^ and per-
haps (if a teacher) use it. It is probable, however,
that the idea needs further development for many
persons. Most people have heard the term. At
least most teachers have heard it. They could not
have escaped the niunerous references to it in books,
in teachers' meetings, institutes, and teachers' asso-
ciations. But in the minds of many the knowledge is
very vague and indefinite, and many of the attempts
of teachers to utilize it are groping and unsatisfactory.
It is just this vagueness of idea, and this groping in
use, which have seemed to make this book worth
while as a factor in clearing up the situation.

The claim has been made in the Preface, that a proj-
ect method is no more or less than the natural, con-
crete expression of modem principles of education in
action. What modem principles of education are
has been shown by tracing their historical develop-
ment through a ntunber of leaders, and of showing
their gradual concentration in the concrete personal-

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

ity of a living educational reformer. This process
has involved enough of repetition to assure familiar-
ity with the principles. It now remains to make the
principles concrete through a series of typical illus-
trations of them in action. Then on the basis of the
illustrations it will be possible to turn to the asserted
connection between the principles and a project
method. The illustrations are chosen from the files of
the Elementary School Journal because of (i) avail-
ability, (2) the spirit of Dewey's educationalfphiloso-
phy found in the many articles on project work, and
(3) the variety in authorship and schools represented.

The making of a playhouse is presented to the diildreD
as a plan to be worked out, and with this in view other
types of shelter are considered. During the previous
year the children have played at Indian life and enjoyed
the making of wigwams. These experiences are recalled
and other kinds of Indian homes are suggested. Primi-
tive tree- and cave-dwellings, brush huts, stone cairns,
Eskimo igloos, Japanese houses, and log huts are typical
forms of shelter discussed. On the sand table the chil-
dren make some of these dwellings with appropriate set-
tings. The geography of the region in so far as it in-
fluences types of structure is pictured, and in this way
typical physiographic areas are worked out, as, for in-
stance, the wooded hills of temperate zones for the tree-
and cave-dwellers and the Arctic regions for the Eskimo.

From these primitive forms of shelter the children's
attention is caUed to modem structures. Here, often for
the first time, children's eyes are opened to the archi-
tectural detaOs about them. Windows begin to vary

THE PROJECT METHOD

from the stereotyped rectangle of a chUd's first drawings;
doors, roofs, and chimneys gain an interest entirely
The materials used in modern buildings are noted,
and through pictures, stereoscopes, models, and reading,
something of their sources and production is worked out.
The children use the Meccano set to make in the sand
pan a quarry with derricks. Toy trains and tracks are
brought from home to heighten the realism.

In all this plans for the playhouse are becoming better
defined and the ideas of its form, its material, its arrange-
ment gradually develop. When the shape and propor-
tions are determined, wood cut to shape is supplied, and
each child builds his own playhouse. These are painted;
windows of transparent celluloid are fitted into frames
measured and made by the pupils from construction
paper; and window boxes, awnings, porches, and lattice
for the entrance ways are made as individual problems
from materials of the children's own choosing. The mak-
ing of furniture creates problems in nimiber construction.
The rugs and hangings alone are lacking, and this becomes
the textile problem which begins the work of the second
semester.'

In the past we have taught the history of printing.
To-day we are giving the children an opportunity by
actually doing some printing to assimilate this knowledge
and to make it a power in their own lives. For along with
the work of printing, history must be studied to give
meaning and value to the shopwork. The pupil should
learn of the various ways in which this has been carried on
from the days of the clay tablet to the making of a mod-

1 "Course in Community Life, History, and Civica," Elementary
SckoQUmmal, xvu, 6 ^Februacy, 1917), 411-13.

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

em newspaper. Much of this IdstonGal matoial is not
available in siiitaUe form for elementary ptqnlSy and our
printshop is proving its commercial as well as its social
value in helping to provide for this need. The pupils
themselves are printing stories, translations^ articles,
and selections containing the necessary information.
Another source of information is found in visits to mod-
em printshopsy engraving establishments, paper-mills,
type-foundries, and other allied industries. The relation
of the school printshop to outside life is so vital that
the child is instinctively conscious of it. But visits to
modem plants do much to enlarge his vision and give
him a broad idea of printing and its position in the
world to-day.

The most obvious result of the printshop is its effect
upon the English work. The conscious attention to form
in typesetting leads to dose observation of all form.
Through printing the child comes to a knowledge of para-
graphing, to the meaning of punctuation marks, to cor-
rect spelling, and the right use of capital letters. He
notices the forms of verse and the style of e]q)ression. He
becomes careful and accurate because his work demands
care and accuracy, and children naturally respond to the
inherent demands of their own work. They resent only
the imposition of standards from outside.

The study of mathematics is directly strengthened by
its practical application in the printshop. Besides the
constant measuring, it furnishes practical problems such
as computing the number of ems to a given page, finding
the amount of type necessary to set a required piece of
copy, calculating the number of pages the manuscript
copy will cover, finding the percentage of spoilage in the
pressworky determining the cost of a zinc plate, and the

f^^^ THE PROJECT METHOD ^M

amount and cost of paper for a desired piece of work. All ^|
these enter intimately into the regular shopwork. ^|

But no less important is the connection between art and
the printshop. The first real art problem which the child
there faces is that of spacing between words, and he soon
learns that well-spaced lines are more legible and therefore
more pleasing than unevenly spaced ones; that neither
choice type or initial letter, colored ink or attractive
paper can hide the holes made on a page by irregular spac-
ing. Since print is used as a means of communication be-
tween one person and many persons, legibility is the chief
tonsideration of the printer, although it should not be the
Bnly consideration unless the word be made to include all
that adds to it. The child should be led to see that the
page of type is most legible when it is most beautiful;
that legibility depends upon choice of type, length of line,
(pacing, arrangement, page proportions, margins, quality
*nd color of paper, good ink, and good craftsmanship;
that good craftsmanship means clear and even impression
of the type on the paper; and that the form of the expres-
sion should bannonize with the thought. Any page
which fills these requirements is readable and beautiful,
I Decoration may make it more beautiful only if it empha-

sizes these points, if it is subordinate to the design, and
does not attract attention from the print to itself.'

Accordingly, the teacher chose for the first lesson the
finding of Scott, the hero of the South Pole. The children
Were to place themselves on the spot at the time of the
rescue and were to express the emotions aroused in the res-
cue party when they read the part of Scott's diary which

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

told of hardships, disappointments, and love of humanity.
To read the words of the diary even once, without a vivid
personal appreciation of the wonderful meaning behind
them, would be to lose forever their deepest significance.
For that reason the first expression was to be in writing.
On the morning of the experiment the words at the end
of Scott's diary were put on the board, and there arose a
discussion as to the discovery of the South Pole, Amund-
sen's success, and Scott's vain efforts and death. When
interest in the subject was at a liigh pitch the children
were told to choose the moment at which the rescue party
came, then to decide and write what the different men
would do and say at such a tragic and intense moment,
ending their compositions by using Scott's own words.
While they had talked much "about it and about," no
hint of what the men might say had been made by any
one before writing. The following, written by a girl and
selected for brevity, was one result:

FINDING OF SCOTT'S PARTY
Scene: Inside of tent not far from South Pole.
Cast: Scott, Wilson, Bowers, Wright, Nelson, Gran (few
others).

(Men uncover heads when entering)
Ndson {steps inside tent, sees men in sleeping postures,

turns pale at sight of smile on Sowers' s face) : God ! He is

still smiling, it almost gave me hope.
Wrighi {comes in, goes toward Scotl, touches kis face,

skivers slightly): England's bravest men!
Gran (comes in, followed by others, sees Bowers, coughs to

hide his emotion): How splendid to die smiling! And no

word to tell us of their brave deeds.

THE PROJECT METHOD

Wright (looks thoughtful): Captain Scott must have
been the last to pass away, for the others are securely
wrapped in their sleeping baga, which he, of course, did,
not being in his own sleeping bag. (Moves Scoffs hattd,
sees diary.) What is this? Read, Nelson, while I search
for other word.

Ndson (takes diary, turns to first page).

Gran (impaiienlly): The last, man, read the lastl

Nelson (turns pale, reads): "We took risks; we knew
we took them. Things have come out against us, and
therefore we have no cause for complaint, but bow to the
will of Providence, determining to do our best to the last.
But if we have been willing to give up our lives to this
enterprise, which is for the glory of our country, I appeal
to our countrymen to see that those who depend on us are
properly cared for. Had we hved, I should have had a
tale to tell of hardihood, endurance, and courage of my
companions which would have stirred the hearts of every
Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies
must tell the tale, but surely, surely, a great, rich coun-
try like ours will see that those who are dependent on ua
are properly provided for, — R. Scott."

Wright: How sad ! And Amundsen was there before him.

Gran (emolUmaily): To seek, to strive, to find, and not
to yield.

(Curtain)

The class read aloud thdr papers, but m most cases the
readmg was so much weaker than the writing as to prove
that the lofty ideas and intense feeling expressed in writ-
ing could not yet find adequate oral expression.'

' Alberta Walker, " DramatiKation and Current Events," Eie-
maOary Schoti Journal, xvi, 3 (November, 1915), 135-26.

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

The plan consisted of two parts: visits to the factories
of the city, and the study and discussion of the problems
growing out of the visits. . . . The discussion atways cen-
tered around the problems arising out of the inspection of
the manufacturing processes and were of an industrial,
labor, geographical, and civil nature. These problems
were dealt with in so far as they were within the scope
of the intelligence of the group. The fundamental pur-
pose of work of this kind is to restore to children during
their period of training the opportunity of knowing the
life of the community as children knew the community a
century ago — an opportunity of which they have been
deprived through the industrial revolution of tire past
century. In accordance with this general purpose we
sought in so far as possible to have the boys arrive at a
general appreciation of industry, and especially to under-
stand the relation of individual industries to the whole
social life. . . . With this knowledge we wished to create
new ideals and attitudes toward our industry and new
patriotism toward our dty and countiy. Two concrete
illustrations will indicate our aims and methods. One of
the institutions studied was the street-railway system and
its relation to the life of the dty. We began the study by
a visit to the factory where the cars are built and got a
glimpse of the whole process of manufacture, the length of
life of cars, the number of laborers employed with the
amount of wages received, the amount of skill required in
each occupation, means of preventmg accidents, and sim-
ilar information. At the time of oiu- visit the heating
system was receiving lively consideration at the hands of
the Civic League, the dty council, and the newspapers,
and for that reason we examined in detail the various
plans of heating and ventilating street-cars and the diffi-
60

THE PROJECT METHOD

culties connected with each. Having learned the point
of view of those connected with the system, we discussed
and criticized their views at the next class meeting. In
the meantime the class had had the opportunity to con-
sider the newspaper and other discussions of the subject
as a basis for class consideration.

Our next step was to take a trip to various parts of the
city on the cars, following this with a discussion of the
effects of street-railway transportation upon the value of
teal estate in the various parts of the city, upon housing
conditions, upon the distribution of residences of laborers,
and many odier s imil ar questions. ... A second case was
that of the bread industry. This industry afforded end-
less opportunity for study. We began by visiting the
flour-mills in the city. This led to the study of the origin
of the grain and a study of the grain-producing areas in
the United States and of the world. Moreover, we at-
tempted to make the study as human as possible by
determining how the work of producing the grain was
carried on; how grain was planted, reaped, threshed,
stored in elevators, and brought to the mills. Here we
had access to a lantern with plenty of slides, and this part
of the work was presented by one of the boys in a half-
hour talk with slides portraying the various phases of the
industry in a highly interesting manner.

We studied, furUier, the methods of producing Sour as
compared with those of a century ago. This led us again
into the bread-making industry and a comparison of it
with that of the old days when " mother made the bread."
We had access in this study to the factories of the sim-
plest kind where one oven was used, to the biscuit factory
where looo laborers were employed and the product sent
to all parts of the world, and the bakery where 60,000
6i

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

loaves of bread were baked in one day. In this study
there is hardly a problem of economic significance that the
boy from ten to fourteen was not interested in and able in
some degree to understand.^

The following statement issued in Springfield, Mis-
souriy gives so complete an account of a possible course
in agriculture that it is here reproduced in full. £. A.
Cockefair, Greene Coimty farm adviser, in co5peration
with Coimty Superintendent J. R. Roberts, has written a
course of study which includes each month of the year.

Sowing crimson dover, sweet dover, winter oats, al*
falfa, and vetch should be done the first two weeks of
September. Plots of ground on the sdiool grounds, four
feet square, should be dug for these experimental beds*
Winter wheat, rye. Durum wheat, spdtz, timothy, and
orchard grass can be sown the third and fourth weeks in
September. These are a few of the facts the diildren will
learn. For advanced pupils uses of fertilizers, induding
nitrates, add phosphates, groimd rock, potash, ashes, and
lime, will be studied. Demonstrations of treatment of
wheat for smut are suggested. A bushel of wheat can be
taken to school, placed in a loose burlap bag, and im-
mersed for ten or fifteen minutes in a solution in a barrd
or tub, then spread to dry.

Study of acreage and yidd of hay, grain, and pasture
crops for the sdiool district, with location of fidds and
reports of yidds, set out on maps of the district, is part of
the September coiurse. These maps afterwards can be
displayed at the annual coimty show in December con-
tests.

^ E. George Payne, "An Experiment in Motivation," Elemen-
tary School Journal, xvn, 9 (May, 19x7), yaS-ja

THE PROJECT METHOD

October is the month of seed-corn selection. Visits of
the students to fields, with lessons in marking the stalks
carrying the best ears will be made on Friday of the last
quarter. Some of the older students nmy be interested
in obtaining fair exhibits.

Corn-judging from samples furnished by pupils will
be part of the study in November. Planting of tulip
bulbs will be taught. The older pupils and high school
students will be instructed in a tree nursery. A strip
of ground twenty feet long will be prepared, and seeds
from the wild cherry, walnut, butternut, hickory, pecan,
chestnut, white oak, black oak, and ash of the forest
trees, and apple, plum, apricot, and peach of the fruit
trees will be planted. Girls of the school can interest
themselves in planting roses, lilacs, barberry, and other
shrubs.

Stock-judging is scheduled for December. A horse
and a cow will be taken to the grounds for expert judging
as to points. The children will go to a neighboring pen to
judge swine. . • • Girls will be taught to interest them-
selves in cows and poultry. Stock-feeding will be a
theme for January lessons and visits will be made to pens.
Reports on feeding balanced rations will be made to the
schools. Statistics as to number of head of stock pro-
duced the last year, value and average price per head,
must be recorded. Milk records for cow testing will be
taken from home by pupils.

The first pruning lesson will be given in February, . . .
Seed-testing of oats and treatment of potatoes for scab
will be done in March. • • . Planting flowers and improve-
ment of school yards will be done in April. Stimulation
of the growing of prize acres of corn for the annual county
contest will be featured this month. Growing tomatoes,

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

with lessons on canning, for the girls, also wiU be featured.
Pop-corn and peanut growing will be taught. Adviser
Cockefair believes the parents and pupils should join in
Arbor Day exerdses, planting trees and shrubbery.

Summer cultivation and care of live stock on smnmer
pasture, will be included in the May studies. Instruc-
tion on silos and cost of their construction, and methods
of combating drouth, and maintaining feed and water for
live stock, will dose the year's studies.^

As history unfolded itself and the settlement on the
Tiber grew to be the Mistress of the World, the diildren
needed to know more of the buildings and public works
which were the result of that far-reaching dvilization.
So when we had reached the middle of the period of the
republic in our study, we destroyed the scene of the Seven
Hills on the sand table and began to build the neighbor-
hood of the Forum. The whole space in the pan was de-
voted to the Capitoline and the Palatine Hills and to the
construction of some of the monmnental buildings and
other structures whose ruins still remain as evidence of
Rome's greatness and power. These were studied and
constructed from the point of view of the relation which
they bore to history at the time of their erection. They
were a means of devdoping in the minds of the diildren
an appreciation of the stages of growth and progress of
the Roman people. Each building represented to the
children that particular bit of history induded in its
erection.*

* "A Course in Agriculture," EkmefUary School Journal, xv, a
(October, 1914), 92-93.

* Grace E. Storm, ''Roman History in the Fourth Grade," EI0*
meiUary School Journal, xvi, 3 (November, xpxs)* ZST-SS-

THE PROJECT METHOD

For instance, a sixth-grade teacher in one of the largo
school systems of Illinois organized her language work
entirely from the standpoint of children's interests and
was careful to undertake nothing which was not thor-
oughly motivated from the child's standpoint. As the
year's work was nearing completion, she checked up by
the course of study to see how fully the requirements of
the language work for that grade had been met, having
in mind to give the last month, if necessary, to details not
covered by the motivated work. This seemed a reason-
able procedure, but she was surprised to find that she had
not only covered all of this specified detailed work for the
grade but had included of necessity, a great many details
called for in upper grades. It was apparent upon review
of her year's work that the zeal of the children in success-
fully accomplishing projects in which they were more or
less personally interested had made the mastery of tech-
nical difficulties an easy matter. Technical difficultiea
naturally appeared relatively small, because they were
subordinate to the larger undertaking, such as writing
letters of request and appreciation, brief articles for the
school paper, dramatizations for special programs, the
preparation of a special booklet which was later used as
a gift as well as an illustration of the pupil's own work,
etc.'

After a first general reading of the illustrations, the
reader is asked to go over them again for the purpose
of identifying the principles involved. He is asked to
note how completely the school is identified with life,

' G. M. WilaoQ, "The Motivation ot School Work," Eiementary
School Joumd, xvu, 4 (December, 1916), sfinSj.

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

and school attendance with '' social participation";
how ^' participation" reveals to the child, and tends
to make intrinsic in him, the ideals of democratic
society; how it aims, not to prepare for life, but to be
life; how the concq>tion of education as development
through social participation is never lost sight of; and
how, as a foundation and skeleton work for this de-
velopment, the original equipment of instincts, im-
pulses, and tendencies (both those active at birth and
those arising at later ^'periods") are recognized. It
is also to be noted how the natural processes of devel-
opment, resulting from interaction of the child and
his environment, are welcomed as allies, and are not
interfered with. Books are plainly used to interpret
experience, and not as a substitute for experience;
and while the direction of development is intention-
ally interfered with, the guidance is that of love rather
than of authority. It is to be noted how doors
are opened, and opportunity afforded, of which the
children take advantage through their own inner
impulses and decisions. Thus individuality, self-
hood, is conserved; and real self-activity is fostered
in an atmosphere of play, happiness, and freedom.
The whole child (physical, mental, moral) is included
in the program through the use of constructional and
occupational subjects and through the manipulation
of materials and tools. The school has really become
a place for working rather than for listening, and is
not sharply set off from the larger social community;

THE PROJECT METHOD

but through excursions and other contact, it is made
integral with the community.

Subject-matter is manipulated and prepared for
the mind, not in a logical, but in a psychological,
manner; and individual differences have full play.
Special "interests" furnish the "push," the motive
for attack upon problems; and the solution of prob-
lems rather than the pouring-in of facts is seen
operative everywhere. Yet in the final analysis,
individuality is kept in subordination to the sodal
ideal — to the best good of the greatest number,

"Subjects" are taught, not so much as separate
factors, but as inter-related (correlated) elements of
the social life involved. The whole content of the
curriculum is unified and made practical (useful), not
on an economic basis, but on this broad, cultural
basis which interprets modern practical Ufe, and
makes the school part and parcel of it.

If one looked for a single phrase to sum up the
whole set of principles, he could not find a better one
than Dewey's "self-education through activities," or
the common "learning to do by doing" so often
quoted in the illustrations. And the imporlanl thing in
relation to the original thesis of this hook is that this
phrase which sums up the principles — this "learning
to do by doing" — is also the absolutely fundamental
element in prefect work. Project teaching has been
trying to vitalize the school ; it has been trying to con-
nect the school with real life, and to recognize and to
67

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

promote child development through the natural proc«
esses; it has seen the need for the greater use of iho
materials of the natural environment, and for natural
interaction of the child with that environment; in its
best form it has looked for its results in the child,
and not in the finished material product; and has
been trying to achieve all of this through activities —
through having children "learn to do by doing." In
other words, project work is the result of all degrees of
consciousness of the principles. It has arisen because
progressive teachers everywhere have been, through
reading and personal experience, getting hold of the
principles, finding in them the essence of activity, this
essence of " self -education through activity," this
"learning to do by doing"; and through all degrees
of conscious and imconsdous insight, have been
putting the principle in motion. The illustrations
accepted as illustrations of the combined modem
principles would have been accepted just as quickly
and imquestioningly as illustrations of the best in
project work. It is worth while to consider them
individually from that point of view.

The first one, the making of the playhouse, is an
illustration of a single project used as a basis for work
in several different subjects. The children lived in
their real social problem and yet subject-matter was
not neglected. Reading, writing, spelling, language,
arithmetic, history, geography, manual training, etc.,
were all represented. The difference between this

THE PROJECT METHOD

and an ordinary school program lies in the fact that
the conception of "subjects" and their continuity wa?
in the mind of the teacher; but this logical organization
did not need to be so much in the minds of the chil-
dren. With them the organization was allowed to be
psychological. They were aUowed to live in the
situation as a whole, and the teacher, in a manner
similar to that of a good chairman of a pubhc meet-
ing, stood to one side, and without imposing Jiis spe-
cial will upon the situation was yet able to give the
occasional suggestion, the judicious guidance, which
kept things going in a certain general direction, and
with enough breadth to insure the inclusion of such
parts of specific subj'ects as he had in mind to cover.

This plan could be used in any grade, and to cover
all subjects, if only the teacher is ingenious enough
and tactful enough to start things going and to keep
hands off except in the few right places, and even in
the few right places to make the guidance come as
assistance to plans originated by the pupils them-
selves.

The next illustration shows how a printing-project
may be made the core from which is developed the
work of many school subjects. In the main it is a
project which motivates and vitalizes general English
composition, but it touches history, geography, math-
ematics, art, and in fact most subjects, and furnishes
motive and subject-matter for all of them. Here
again children are not memorizing from books the iso-

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

lated facts of individual studies, but are living an
active, unified, social life within which the relatively
invisible threads of the studies are carried.

In the third illustration project method is used to
tap the emotional reaction required in a single sub-
ject. It is hard to make reading and English com-
position vital on the emotional side and the device of
original play-writing and acting is a conmion one. It
furnishes the concreteness, the dear realization, and
the physical activity which are needed to enlist the
whole personality of the child, and to insure the free
response of his true self. To know Scott and his
problem as these children came to know him is to be
infinitely removed from that type of reading teaching
which says: "You may read the next paragraph."
The exercise in question is also important for the in-
terpretation of current history (for which purpose it
was in fact devised), and any good teacher uses simi-
lar plans in a variety of other situations.

The next illustration is particularly suggestive of
the value of the school excursion. The importance of
this outdoor work, often done at a distance from the
school and with a definite object in mind, needs to be
more and more emphasized with both parents and
teachers. If children are to get the necessary basal
experience for their thinking, if they are to know life
through the unification of the school with life, then
parents and school trustees must not be surprised if
the schoolroom is of ten deserted, and the children and

' THE PROJECT METHOD

teachers are fotind out along the water-courses, or on
the hills, or inspecting factories or other industries,
or on trips to other places of historical or geographic
or scientific interest in the neighborhood. Such
work is the very essence of the best in modem educa-
tion.

The illustrative course in agriculture next quoted
involves a multitude of expressed and suggested op-
portunities for the use of project method. It is in this
field that as much has been done, and perhaps more
than in any other. The whole modem plan for the
reconstruction and redirection of the rural school is
based upon the working-out of school and conununity
social cooperation in agricultural and other enter-
prises of mutual interest. The plan helps old and
yoimg alike, through breaking up monotony, induc-
ing healthy and progressive social intercourse, and
bringing up children who come to love rural Hfe. It
helps them to find in their own surroundings those
genuine life interests and opportunities which they
otherwise seek in the more artificial conditions of the
cities. The drift of population toward the cities is
thus arrested and more normal conditions prevail.
But it is not wholly in rural conditions that such
project activities are worth while. The city teacher,
through the occasional excursion and with the help of
a vacant lot, or even of some window-boxes, can do
much to put life and unity into her work, and balance
into the lives of her children.

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

The last two illustrations serve to show how the
project idea may be further applied to individual sub-
jects; and the last one serves to answer the natural
question as to the relative rate of progress compared
to that made by book or mere drill methods. There
is also evidence that technical details taught by these
activity methods are more easily remembered than if
taught formally. In fact, retention, as Dewey con-
tends, comes to be effortless, since the facts are built
into the self through the concrete experience.

The illustrations might have been continued with
specific reference to children's plays and games, and
many other phases of life; but they are sufficient as
they stand, except for the desirability of outlining
the working of a plan whereby a community project
unifies not only many subjects at one time, but also
the total work of a whole school for a whole year.
This phase of the work is so important that such an
attempt at unification (published October, 191 1, in
a "Bulletin" of the State Normal School at Winona,
Minnesota, over the signature of the writer) is
quoted entire:

The modem outlook of education is social. The true
indictment f oimd against the school which is not modem
is that it is isolated from life. The demand is that the
school fit for life by exemplifying life. Although there is
much vagueness about what this "fitting for life" means,
nevertheless the idea has imdoubtedly turned educational
theory in the right direction, and, as a result, schools are

THE PROJECT METHOD

everywhere being vastly improved. But even many
schools which have more or less adequately grasped the
idea of sodal responsibility, are still far from being social
units in themselves. They are a more or less loosely
strung together aggregation of rooms or departments,
with practically no common interests or activities.
Hence the sodal life of any one of these small groups is
necessarily incomplete, because it does not go outside of
itself, and does not contain within itself the necessary
diversity of sodal elements.

In order to achieve this desirable social imity, all of the
rooms or departments of a school, from the kindergarten
through the eighth grade, at least, should be linked to-
gether by a common cause which requires a conunon
meeting-place and community work. There should be
for the whole school a social dearing house where inter-
ests may be pooled; and where interdependence may be
recognized m its actual working-out. Experience seems
to prove that the school assembly can be made to fill this
need. Many schools have found this out, and they have
not been slow to utilize the idea. But a thing which has
not been very generally realized is that the regular school
work is the best basis for such assemblies. This is evi-
dent from the observation that too often the assembly
program consists of a miscellaneous collection of unre-
lated parts (unrelated dther among themselves or to the
daily work). They have been gathered together merely
for the sake of entertainment, or if with some idea of a
further value, at least not selected on the basb of any
general prindple. Therefore they are usually not pro-
gressively effective, and often very wasteful of time both
in preparation and in delivery.

Show-work required of already overburdened teachers,

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION ^

and lacking in point for the children themselves, is not
what is needed. Such work is external. We must get
our unity from within. If only it were realized that the
need for unity, for social meeting and mingling, is a need
for unity and socialization in that which is the real core of
the school life — the daily work — we should have better
assemblies and better daily work. For this need can be
met. There is not a sqhool subject which cannot be used
to furnish to the assembly material which is of vital im-
portance to the daily tasks, and also of absorbing interest
to those children who present it and to those who listen.
It is remarkable how interesting even the mapped outline
of a campaign, or of the westward march of the California,
gold seekers, may be made for such an exercise, if ex-
plained to children by a child in his own way. Each
grade is doing every day many a similar thing in which
other grades would be interested if only it could be
brought to them.

Where reading is taught in a niodem way, there is
much dramatization, and dramatization is one of the best
kinds of material for the assembly. Often it does not
have to be especially prepared, but can be taken directly
from the schoolroom just as it has been developed there,
and put before the others with no elaborate staging, cos-
timoing, or other preparation. But even if some extra
time and effort are expended to get it ready, it is time and
effort which functions thereafter in the regular work of
the class and is therefore not lost, as is that given to show-
work. There is no stronger motive for good work of any
kind, than the motive of presenting that work to others,
and so the assembly becomes a lever whose power is con-
stantly applied in the direction of better dass-room re-
sults. No child likes to repeat before his own dass those

THE PROJECT METHOD

things which he knows are as familiar to all the others as
they are to himself; but he is willing to work hard and if
necessary go over and over that which he is to present to
some one to whom it will be new. On the other hand,
those grades who listen to what another grade presents,
seem to find a perennial interest. There is something
about children's work, done for children, which does not
leave time for any dullness.

We have mentioned dramatization because of its obvi-
ous adaptability to the situation, but there seems to be no
end to what may be utilized, and often the most unex-
pected source will furnish the program. An adding con-
test; making some object in manual training; freehand
drawing before the assembly ; memory gems, perhaps pan-
tomimed as recited; demonstrations in cooking with ex-
planations of theory and distributed samples of the prod-
uct; an origmal play based upon an event in history; a
geographical study (illustrated by either purchased or
original maps) of some industry or route of commerce, or
of exploration; the interesting story of the life and habits
of some insect or animal from the nature study or ele-
mentary science work; demonstrations in penmanship;
compositions selected as the best from regular work
handed in by the pupils; regular reading lessons, using the
books of one grade which are unfamiliar to the others;
spelling contests; original poems; arithmetic applied to
such topics as amount of water necessary to fill the swim-
ming tank, or space necessary for ball and tennis grounds;
games, rhythmic exercises, and contests from the physical
education department; vocal music by full chorus, glee
dubs, classes, or individuals; instnunental music through
the utilization of the work of individuals, or through the
organization of orchestras or drum corps.
75

i
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PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

Admitting all these possibilities for the assembly, we
still might question whether the idea is not mainly appli-
cable to older pupils — whether it offers to the yoimger
>nes the desired opportunity for expression and enjoy-
/nent. Yet experience proves that a program of songs
and games presented by the kindergarten, brings out
immistakable expressions of the highest enjoyment from
the others; and, on the other hand, the programs of the
older pupils do not seem to be dull even for the children
of the kindergarten. They enjoy the dramatizations, the
marchings and drills and all of the other activities, take
part in the choruses, and do not lack delight even in those
parts of the program which are far beyond their compre-
hension. The novelty is, in itself, sufficient to attract
them, and they continually ask whether '4t is not time
for assembly day to come again."

It would of course be possible to divide the children
into assembly groups according to grades, but as has al-
ready been intimated, the very essence of the plan con-
sists in not doing this. No social unit is homogenous, and
it is the actual concrete social situation developed in the
general assembly which gives us the values we seek. Not
the least of these values is that which is so often seen in
rural schools, in the reflex influence which comes from the
natural mingling of older and yoimger pupils. The older
pupils gain a gentleness and appreciation of childhood,
and the yoimger ones a maturity of outlook upon life —
an inspiration for meeting life, which is most valuable,
and which is not developed in the exclusive graded isola-
tion of most dty schools.

So the argument for the school assembly might be con-
tinued indefinitely, but enough has already been said to
show how, through such a gathering, regular school work

THE PROJECT METHOD

may be made more effective; to emphasize how the meet-
ing together in a conmion cause cements the diverse
groups of the school into an enthusiastic social body, with
common interests, responsibilities and privileges; gives
the strongest kind of a motive for good daily work;
teaches children how to appear well and with confidence
before others through frequent practice in the social de-
tails of the situation; and, most of all, gives one opportun-
ity for that motor reaction, that doing of something,
which is rightly so emphasized in these days of a peda-
gogy whose creed is "no impression without expression."

A good plan is to have the assemblies once a week, and
to ask the children of each room in turn, from the highest
to the lowest, to provide a program and have charge of
the assembly. This definite succession allows each group
to look ahead and to plan for its turn, and makes auto-
matic many details which would otherwise have to be
especially provided for each time. Every effort is made,
however, to introduce suitable variations so that formal-
ity and routine shall be in the background. The intro-
duction of certain games, the occasional working out of
school yells, songs, mottoes, etc., and the emphasizing of
the thought of "right fun in the right place" have been
foimd not entirely incongruous with the school assembly
idea, nor is an occasional meeting for entertainment,
given entirely by outsiders. The metrostyle or other
musical recital, ihe talk illustrated by slides, the expert
reading of good literature — all of these have their val-
ues, but in them we are getting away from the regular
school work done by the children, and we should con-
stantly return to it.

There are, however, at least two very important limita-
tions affecting the work ahready discussed. First, it is

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

confined, so far as an3rtlimg has yet been said, rather
closely within the walls of the school itself. That is to
say, it ministers to that phase of the social ideal in which
the school is regarded as life (not as a preparation for life) ;
but the life lived is very narrow and restricted. It needs
to be broadened, and since it cannot take in all of life it
must be content with a cross section, as it were, which
cross section shall, in a sense, prepare for life as a whole.
This necessary reaching out into life as a whole — this
unification of the school with the extended life of the
world, is partially accomplished by inviting parents, and
citizens in general to become auditors of the assembly
programs. This also carries with it the opportunity for
the necessary acquaintanceship and cooperation of parent
and teacher. It is an aid in inducing parents to visit at
the same session other school work, and to remain after
the school is dismissed for special conferences or general
parents' meetings. But this, though extremely impbr-
tant for various reasons, is only a beginning in the broad-
ening (M'ocess which must go farther into life and abstract
from it those dominant characteristics which are abso-
lutely essential to its true understanding, and make it
possible for these characteristics to be brought to the
children, or the children to them, in such a way that they
become part and parcel of their existence. Modem life
is, above all, industrial; and one of the greatest responsi-
bilities upon schools is that they shall prepare the child
to understand life and intelligently to partake in life,
through helping him to imderstand, and to have some
part in, the great industries whereby life maintains itself.
We do not mean that he must study these industries for
the sake of taking part in them (necessarily), but it is de-
sirable that he understand them. The proper introduce

THE PROJECT METHOD

tion to such industries is an introduction to thdr local
representatives, whatever those may be. The lack, then,
of representation of local industries on the assembly pro-
grams so far discussed, is a serious one. The second lack
comes from the fact that in the plan already outlined,
where a grade at a time has charge of the program, the
social consciousness of unity within that grade itself ia
assisted in somewhat larger proportion than is the idea
of unity in the school as a whole. The search for reme-
dies called attention to the possibility (already empha-
sized by many writers on education) of a continuous utili-
Bation of all local industries in the regular work of the
school (and therefore in the assembly) and also to the
possibility of at least one general assembly in the year,
which from an industrial standpoint unites al! grades and
all subjects.

In the search for such a unity the past year, the loca-
tion of Winona in the midst of the flax belt of the United
States proved to be a great advantage, for the subject of
flax furnished at once an ideal possibility for a center.
Flax in Winona is represented by a local industry which
receives the straw from surrounding farms of Minnesota,
Wisconsin, and the Dakotas, and converts it into an in-
sulating product called hnofelt which is largely used in
buildings and constructions where it is necessary to keep
heat or noise in or out of a given space. Flax also has
everywhere a very close connection in time and space
(history and geography) with the human race itself. As
a subject of study it furnishes limitless opportunities for
computation, for construction, for composition, for read-
ing, for nature study, and elementary science. It has its
own literature, its own folk songs, games, and rhythmic
exercises, most intimately related to life in its simplest
79

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PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

and most understandable phases. It offers unexcelled
opportunities for drawing and art work. In fact without
any of the wrenching and unwise stretching of situations
which have brought the word correlation into more or less
disrepute — without any of this, it is easy to find almost
numberless real connections between flax and all parts
of the regular school curriculum, from the work of the
highest grade to that of the lowest.

The problem, therefore, in regard to this unity, became
that of adjusting the flax idea to the curriculiun in such a
way that the regular work of the school should not be
interfered with by the flax material but rather should be
assisted by it, making it possible at the close of the term
for the pupils of all grades to pool their interests in a pro-
gram which was a flax unity, at the same time that it was
a program drawn from the ordinary school subjects of
arithmetic, geography, history, manual training, physical
training, music, English, nature study, etc., etc., as re-
quired in any grade.

In laying out the work, it was not by any means in-
tended that ever3^thing done in a grade for a certain time
should have the flax stamp. This, of course, would have
led to tediousness and lack of interest. But it was
planned to make the contribution of each department
such as best fitted one major phase of its normal progress
as provided for in the curriculima. Therefore, since part
of the regular work to be done in the kindergarten cou'
sisted of certain games and songs about the farmer, and
certain activities in the school garden, it was very easy
to decide that this work, turned in a simple and easy way
toward the idea of flax farming, should constitute the
contribution of the kindergarten. The work was carried
on by the teachers in the usual natural way, nothing being

THE PROJECT METHOD

said at first about its use in a program. Sowing and reap-
ing songs were practiced. Dramatizations of the plant-
ing and growth of seeds were attempted, school gardening
was fostered, all with the idea {which was finally realized)
of selecting out of the mass of this material that which
would finally fit into the common program. From time
to time, photographs of the different activities were
taken, and these provided a very substantial aid to the
final undertaking when they were thrown on a screen by
a stereopticon during the progress of the entertainment,
and explained by the same little people who were the
subjects of the photographs.

In the primary grade the main connection was made
with the elementary nature study or environment work.
In one sense, of course, this means that it was connected
with elementary geography. For the modern view of
geography being that of "relation of earth to life" this
early environment or nature study work becomes that of
collecting many of the earth facts and of the life facta
which are afterward to be related in the science of geogra-
phy. The regular school gardening was done both out-
side the schoolroom and also in sand boxes (for rapid
growth) inside the building. Wheat, flax, oats, com, etc.,
were planted and carefully watched and compared in their
growth. An excursion to a farm was made where, since
it was in the spring time, the pupils saw a field prepared
for flax planting, and arrived at some idea of comparative
sizes of their own little indoor fields, with the great fields
that produce the world's products. Incidentally many
other values were appropriated. The barnyard, the
granary, the milkroom, the windmill, the cattle, chickens
and otier farm animals came in for their share of atten-
tion. Sketches and notes of these interesting things were
8i

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

made by the children and became the basis for later com«
position and art work. Photographs were taken on this
trip alsO; showing the children in their many activities
and researches.

Near the dose of the visit to the farm the children were
invited into the house by the farmer's wife, and at their
own suggestion sang for her some songs ''to pay her/' as
they naively said, for the fine entertainment which they
had enjoyed. On the way home they did not fail to note,
and stop to try to sketch, the. beautiful hills covered
with blue haze, and to pick certain flowers which "were
too pretty to leave where no one would see them.'*

These children also, as a part of their regular work,
dealt with the myth of Frigga's gift of the flax to man-
kind, and as one portion of their part of the final program,
one of their number told this story of the beautiful blue
flower and what it meant in the simple lives of common
people. Others told of their planting and growing exper-
iments, while the visit to the farm was made vivid to the
audience when the actual scenes caught by the camera
were thrown upon the screen and described by the chil-
dren in semi-spontaneous speeches, which had never been
written down and committed to memory, but which had
been rehearsed to some extent, and judiciously criticized
and culled by the teacher.

In the intermediate grades the application peculiar to
that department was made through home geography, and
arithmetic, in a study of the local flax industry of linof elt
making and through a study of folk songs. An excursion
was made to the linofelt factory, the machines, processes
and products examined one by one, and the material so
collected was later made the basis for extended computa-
tions of costs and returns, for detailed study of sources of

82 -

THE PROJECT METHOD

materials, transportation routes, and the general idea of
social dependenceas it relates to the local industry. Some
of this factory material was also very valuable when used
in written composition, for drawing and color work, and
for construction in raffia, Venetian iron, and wood. Some
of these things were only suggested and not fully worked
out, because the available ideas proved to be so great in
, number that time forbade carrying out many of them.

One division of the program presented by this depart-
ment had to do with the manufacture and uses of linofelt.
Tlie flax straw as it comes to the factory was described, aa
were also the processes of manufacture and the uses of the
product. The talks were of the same nature and prepara-
tion as those in the preceding section, and like those also,
were made vivid by slides sliowing the children on their
rounds through the factory. An original [)oem was read
entitled " First Impressions Inside the Factory." Follow-
ing this, other children of the section rendered the songs,
"The Flax Flower" and "Ye Spinning Carol."

TTie grammar grades chose to connect their work
mainly with colonial history, art, and the rhythmic exer-
cises of the physical education department. The old-
fashioned methods of spinning and weaving in use by the
early settlers in this country were studied and compared
with modern methods. In the English classes original
imaginative stories of colonial times were written by the
children, taking such topics as "A Spinning Contest,"
etc. In the art classes there were drawing and coloring
of the flax flower, the working out of conventional de-
signs from this same flower, and the stenciling of these
designs upon hnen towelings and other materials. Sam-
ples of hand apparatus used in colonial times for linen
manufacture, were made in the manual traiumg deport-
Si

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

ment and when the program was given their use was iUus-
trated and explained before the assembly by means of
flax materials secured from the local factory. Maps and
other data concerned with the world's great flax areas
were then presented, and finally the program was closed
by rhythmic exercises illustrating two Swedish folk-
dances, given in costume by children selected from differ-
ent grades. These exercises represented spinning and
weaving; and, as the figures developed, these processes
were apparent in pantomime. This work is part of that
regoisily done in the ph3rsical training department. It
has large values for poise and grace, and yet much more
in that it represents that almost forgotten and yet ideal
spirit of natural social association in play, which dignifies
work, and again emphasizes unity and kinship.

In connection with this program there was held an
exhibit of children's work, and smce the program was a
flax unity, the exhibit was made a flax exhibit. Thisgave
a point to whatever work was himg for observation, and
made the exhibit possess more meaning for those who ex-
amined it, inasmuch as the bearing of eadi portion upon
the main subject was at once apparent. Having a real
basis of this sort for the exhibit also tended to decrease
that tendency to work merely for show, which is often
apparent where work is put up as isolated individual
efforts, without general value.

In the exhibit, however, it was again true thatall of the
school subjects were represented as they were in the pro-
gram. There were maps and drawings of transportation
routes and agricultural areas; historical charts and sto-
ries; arithmetical problems involving flax information; the
products of the manual training work; and the sketches,
Btenriling and color work from the art department; a

THE PROJECT METHOD

progressive exhibit of materials, processes, and products
from the factory visited; written work dealing with ex-
cursions to farm or factory, or with other matter pertinent
to the general topic; a sand-box farm (modeled after the
one visited) where different grains, including flax (which
had been planted and cared for by the children), were
green and taO in their little fields; linen work from the
sewing department, and so on, until all were represented.

At the close of the program, this exhibit was called to
the attention of the audience, and as parents and others
moved about inspecting the work, there was opportunity
for social acquaintance and exchange of ideas, in an en-
tirely informal way.

Of course numberless other unifying ideas as basis for
assembly work, will suggest themselves at once to any
person who gives this matter any attention. The flax
unity has been cited merely as an illustration. It would
be impossible to have each program worked out in such
detail, but as already suggested, a single program of this
sort in the year is very possible, and very profitable. For
the remainder of the year the assembly program will
probably need to be given in turn by the individual
rooms, for the benefit of the other members of the school.
The main point is that the social and other values in-
volved should be appreciated, and that it be remembered
that a large part of these values is lost if the numbers
presented be not drawn from regular school work.

Some schools, because of lack of a suitable assembly
room, will no doubt find it hard to utilize the idea at all;
but school boards are happily seeing the necessity for
such a provision in all modem buildings; and in those
buildings where no such room exists, makeshifts can often
be arranged by a corps of teachers who see the real value
8s

1
I

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

and necessity for this gathering together. Use the largest
room, and for extra seats bring in planks placed on nail
';egs or other supports. Or divide the school into sec-
tions, and even ii no more than two rooms at a time can be
brought together, doing even this has its value. In good
weather outdoor assemblies may be held, and in many
ways the handicap of no assembly room may be over-
come. But let us hope, considering the vital necessity
for this phase of modem school work, that in the near
future it will be a part of the accepted procedure of all
schools.

This however is not all of the project story, for
growing out of the pedagogical phases just dis-
cussed, are administrative and organization phases
which are revolutionary. If there is to be exact
measurement of individual differences, by means of
standard tests, if complete and expert diagnosis is to
be made of the individual child, and his possibilities
discovered, then administration and organization
must be with reference to the possibilities that ap-
pear. For example, a knowledgeof the individual dif-
ferences of children and an attempt to regard them,
is the natural enemy of the "lock-step" graded sys-
tem. For the regard for individual differences tends
toward an entirely different flexible-group organiza-
tion. To set up suck an organization is but one way of
trying to fit the project to the child, or to a group of chil-
dren similar to each other. The need for sudi fitting
in the matter of gradation has long been felt, and the
evidence of this lies in the long line of efforts for in-

■ THE PROJECT METHOD

dividual instruction, for group work, for differenti-
ated and parallel courses, represented by such names
as the Batavia plan, the Pueblo plan, the New Cam-
bridge plan, the Baltimore plan, the San Francisco
Normal School plan, etc. The decision upon a gen-
erally accepted plan is yet in the future; but there
is no doubt that if the present trend continues the
graded system is, to a degree at least, marked for
reorganization.

But the attempt to fit the specific project to vari-
ous specific groups has gone much farther than mere
effort at various schemes of gradation. Groups have
been segregated in special classes or special schools,
and there are non-English-speaking classes, over-age
classes, ungraded classes, disciplinary classes, open-
air classes, classes for children with special physical
defects, classes for subnormals, and classes for super-
normals. Even a cursory examination of each of
these types will make it clear that the essence of
each one (its reason for existence) is the realization
of individual differences, and the desire to fit the
projects — the kind of "doing" — to the group.

The same is true of such efforts as the Junior High
or Intermediate School, and of many schools of the
Gary or other unusual type. In each case the school
has appeared because some one has felt that the proj-
ect, the "doing," needs to be different in the particu-
lar group in question. This feeling is easily seen to
I be the center of such systems as that of Montessori, ^M

L J

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

or of such changes as are represented by the reformed
kindergarten movement, or the extended rural-life
movement.

Thus all modem reorganization and redirection of
education goes back in the end to some application of
the project method, because project method is only
the reflection of modem principles in action; and the
core of all modem principles is "self -education
through activity." The attempt to fit the activity
to the pecuUar nature of the peculiar self, or group
of similar selves — the attempt to find the type of
project fitted to all the various kinds and classes of
pupils — is the imiversal key to modem reform.

It is not meant to be implied that this widespread
application of the project idea has always been under
that name. Former use of the method, and often
also the later use of it, has been designated by other
names or by no specific name at all. Yet although
the method itself has been widespread, as indicated,
under whatever name or lack of name, nevertheless
there has been the failure to see the whole problem in
its full perspective with regard to prindples of educa-
tion — a failure which it is hoped the present dis-
cussion may overcome.

PROJECT WORK IN TRADE EDUCATION

Project work has been shown to be the application
to education of the principle of "self -education
through activities," which principle is the core of the
modem system of educational principles. The phase
of the subject already discussed is that in which the
method is used in public schools with the intention of
giving a broad, general, cultural education, adapted
to individual diSerences, but aiming to result in some-
thing of a common foundation upon which future
specialization may be built. This education has
been thought of as given to every one without rela-
tion to social class or possible future vocation, except
as the contact with industry afforded "vocational in-
. sight." The development of this use of the method
follows the historical line already reviewed.

But there is another line of influence having to do
with a project method as applied to special or trade
education, which must now receive attention. It is
an offshoot of the historical sequence already traced;
but it does not go back quite so far, and because of its
different focus or aim, it needs separate discussion if
confusion is to be avoided.

This movement is connected with the theory of
Pestalozzi regarding the relation of industrial educa-

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

tion to education in general. It has already been
shown that this teacher never rose to the conception
of real democracy with equal rights and opportunities
(including free education) for all. His view of edu-
cation for the poor was always a philanthropic one.
Their education was by him regarded as a gift from
the more fortunate, not as a right which the State
should supply.

Early in his life he tried to apply this idea to the
uplifting of the peasants in his locahty, through giv-
ing instruction in improved methods of agriculture.
Later he made industrial education the foundation
of his work with the large group of orphan children
which he took into his home and treated as his own.
It was his plan to teach these children to earn their
own living through the industrial work, and at the
same time he planned to develop their intelligence
and their moral nature. That is, he did not plan
organically to relate other work to industrial work by
making activity the center of school life. Nor did he
rise to the idea of industrial work for general cul-
ture, without regard to the economic gain. But he
planned to teach specific industrial activities for the
sake of enabling Ike child to make a living, and at the
same time to give the additional instruction.

In his work at Stanz he improved upon this idea,
and began to get something of a real organic correla-
tion between industry and the subjects of instruction ;
but he was soon compelled to move to Burgdorf,
90

_ I

PROJECT WORK IN TRADE EDUCATION

and to give up his industrial work because of tht
social class of his new pupils. His efforts in the line
in question were, however, efficiently continued by
his friend and pupil Emanuel von Fellenberg, a
young Swiss noble.

Fellenberg had become interested both in Pesta-
lozzi's industrial work, and in his observational
methods, and decided to try to combine both in an
"agricultural institute for poor boys," at Hofwyl, a
short distance from Burgdorf. Here on a large six-
hundred-acre farm he so planned the work that as
fast as one pupH was trained be took a new pupil
under his care. The school was thus, in a sense, a
family group. The chief occupation was, of course,
that of agriculture ; but the trades contributing to the
farm were naturally featured also. In the trade
workshops the pupils received a practical education,
though books were not neglected. Student self-sup-
port was possible under the plan, and this enabled
many to remain in the school who could not otherwise
have done so. The institute trained and sent out
directors for like institutes; and it also sent out many
rural-school teachers, concerning whom Fellenberg
took the modern view that those who are to teach
in the country should be sympathetic with, and in-
formed about, rural conditions.

The principles involved here are plain. It was an

attempt to better the condition of the masses through

industrial (trade) instruction fitted to them, and at the

1
I

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

same time to give them such book learning as it was
conceived would be good for them in their station.
But it was not an attempt to give every one an oppor-
tunity to make his own station according to his own
ability, using industry from the standpoint of activ*
ity applied to development.

Fellenberg's efforts were very successful during his
lifetime, and although the particular institution
founded by him did not persist for long after his
death, yet similar institutions sprang up and indus-
trial courses were introduced everywhere in the main
European countries as a result of his influence. The
modem attempt, made very conunonly almost every-
where, to take care of the poor, the defective, and the
delinquent by giving them industrial education, is the
direct outcome of Pestalozzi's industrial education
as developed by Fellenberg.

The movement arrived in the United States about
1820. While directly due to the Fellenberg influence,
it developed at first in a rather original and very in-
teresting relation to the early " academies " or institu-
tions for secondary training, and somewhat to the
higher collegiate institutions also. In these institu-
tions three difficulties had arisen: (i) The students
were engaged in intellectual pursuits, and did not
have enough physical exercise to keep their bodies in
condition. (2) They did not have enough exercise to
"work off" their natural youthful spirits and surplus
energy, and so there was temptation to engage^in

f I

' PROJECT WORK IN TRADE EDUCATION ' ■

I hazing, in rough practical jokes, and in many other ^|

. very undesirable forms of student activity. (3) ^1

Many of the students were poor and needed to earn

I their own way at school.

To meet these conditions industrial or manual* ^
labor features were introduced. The movement ^H
started in the New England and Middle States in the ^M
decade iSao to 1S30, but spread rapidly and soon ^m

' covered the whole country. Secondary schools, the- ^M

ological schools, and colleges adopted the system, and ^|
the men were often put at work irrespective of their
financial need. As the Andover Theological Semi-
nary plan expressed it, it was "for invigorating and

' preserving health without reference to pecuniary H

pro&t." The other reasons already mentioned were, H
however, also active. There was even organized a H
"Society for Promoting Manual Labor in Literary ^|
Institutions," and its influence was quite generally ^M

I extended previous to 1840-50. General increase in ^|

material prosperity in the country, and changed
social conditions brought about a decay of the move-
ment, and by 1850 it was largely replaced by a de-

[ velopment of college athletics, ^^

This "manual labor in literary institutions" move- ^M

ment does not, however, represent the main current ^M

, of the Fellenberg movement. It never paid much

attention to the psychological relation of activity to
the learning process. It did not make activity, either

I m a cultural or a trade capacity, the center of the cur- ^M

i J

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

riculum; but it used activity , as a side issue^ for cer-
tain supplementary purposes.

The original Pestalozzi-Fellenberg idea of "re-
demption through manual labor" has, however,
through other channels, a firm foothold in certain
phases of American practice outside of the public
schools. It is the core of our movement for prison
reform, and for all educational treatment of defec-
tives and delinquents. There is a tendency to replace
contract and factory work with the Fellenberg farm
and domestic industries, and the good effect is be-
coming gradually more and more apparent. In this
work, however, at least until very recently, there has
not been the broad grasp of fundamental educational
principles which has been apparent in the public-
school movement; and the work has had the "trade"
and peamiary significance more than the general
"social intelligence" and developmental significance.

There is no intention to deny the importance of the
trade, the self-support, aspect of the problem. One
of the first social requirements is that every person be
able to carry his own load, that he should not be a
drag upon ^e rest of the sodal group. This phase
of project method ought to be favored, and is fa-
vored in evening classes, parental schools, correspond-
ence schools and all sorts of industrial and trade
schools where the necessities of the situation force an
extra emphasis upon the problem of support; but it
would be well if the broader idea was even in these

PROJECT WORK IN TRADE EDUCATION

scbools favored as mudi as possible, in order that the
student might come to see his own problems — his
total life — in relation to the social whole and its
lemocratic ideals.

This turning to the broader idea has come about in
America in one form of extension and use of the Fd-
lenberg idea. This development has taken place out-
side of the public-school system, and has done much to
combine the trade and self-siq>port industrial educa-
tion with the broader more cultural, social, interpre-
tative idea. It (with the addition of certain prison-
reform work of similar type) represents at present
the most important phase of the Fellenberg inspira-
tion as worked out in this country.

The reference is to such schools as those at Car-
lisle, Hampton, and Tuskegee, established for the
regeneration and redemption of certain racial ele-
ments of our population. The success of these ven-
tures, both on the practical, "eam-a-living" side,
and on the side of real culture and breadth of social
view, has been a wonderful revelation; and they per-
haps stand as examples of a trend which the public
schools could take to their advantage. Indeed, their
use of project method stands very dose to its use in
the best modem schools with the added accomplish-
ment of more dignifying of labor, more organic
teaching of the relation of labor to life, and more
real socializing through labor, than comes in the
ordinary modem public school.

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

This teaching of the relation of labor to life was
part of the Fellenberg plan; but his conception of life
was the aristocratic, and not the democratic, one.
He did not plan an equality of social classes; but he
hoped, through industrial education, to create a bet-
ter understanding between classes.

The following quotation from Graves's A Students
History of Education (pages 296-97) states Fellen-
berg's ideal with reference to this matter:

But the work of Fellenberg did not stop there. From
the begiiming he had felt that the wealthy should under-
stand and be more in sympathy with the laboring classes,
and learn how to direct their work more intelligently.
Hence he began very early an agricultural course for
land-owners, and many young men of the wealthy classes
came to show a striking interest in his deep-soil plough-
ing, draining, irrigation, and other means of educating
the poor. But these wealthier youths remained at the
institute so short a time that he could not extend his
ideals very widely. To retain them longer at Hofwyl, in
1809 he opened a "literary institute,'* which, besides the
usual academic studies, used Pestalozzi's object-lessons,
and strove to develop physical activities. Moreover, the
pupils in the literary institute had to cultivate gardens,
work on the farm, engage in carpentering, turning, and
other mechanical occupations, and in many ways come
into touch and mutual imderstanding with the poorer
boys in the agricultural institute. The wealthy learned
to dignify labor, and the poor, instead of envying those in
the higher stations of life, became friendly and desirous of
cooperating with them. Eventually there arose an inde-

.96

PROJECT WORK IN TRADE EDUCATION

pendent conmmnity of youth, managing its own aflFairs
outside of school, arranging its own occupation games and
tours, choosing its own officers, and making its own laws.
Within this little world was provided a training for so-
ciety at large, with its various classes, associations, and
corporations, which Fellenberg seems to have regarded as
divinely ordained. Likewise in 1823, a school for poor
girls was opened by his wife, and four years later he
started a "real," or practical, school for the middle
classes, which was intermediate between the two "in-
stitutes."

This statement makes it plain that Fellenberg's
hope was to create sympathy and understanding be-
tween rich and poor by putting the rich at a certain
amount of work so that they came in touch with the
poor, came to know what real labor signifies, and what
its real difficulties and compensations are. But rich
and poor were to continue to occupy their respective
stations, and the industrial phase of the work was
primarily for the sake of teaching the "trade" to the
person who would continue to earn his living by it.

In the degree to which project work in America
is focused, therefore, upon trade rather than upon
general values, it is back in the more "practical,*'
Pestalozzi-Fellenberg movement, as opposed to the
broader, more strictly educational, use of activity,
represented by the work of Froebel in Europe, and
focused in this country in the general educational
theory and practice represented by Dewey.

Two fundamental modem tendencies in American

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

education are related to the use of project method
of the Fellenberg tj^e. The first one is the tendency
to the formation of an American system of caste^
based somewhat upon distinctions between capital
and labor; and the second one is the related tendency
to put trade education lower and lower in the ele-
mentary school grades, partially for the purpose of
holding pupils longer in school; but partially, if rather
unconsciously, because of the pressure for the produc-
tion of skilled operatives in various lines of industry.
These points are covered by the discussion in chapter
vn, in which chapter the consideration of project
method is replaced by the discussion of the project
used as a subject of instruction. In the meantime
chapter vi will also concern itself with the project
used as a subject of instruction, but the phase therein
discussed is an earlier and less developed one than
that considered in chapter vn.

PART II

PROJECT WORK AS A SUBJECT

THE EVOLUTION OF TEIE PROJECT SUBJECTT

The use of project work as a method in all subjects
has been discussed, both with regard to its common
public-school use and its narrower trade use. The
problem of project work as a subject is now to be
bandied.

The difference between method and subject as
here used can be briefly and clearly stated in terms
of English work, for example. There is a body of
subject-matter about English, and studying English
as a subject has for its primary aim that, at the end
of any given lesson, the student shall command more
of the subject-matter. He shall know more about Eng-
lish. But English is essential as a tnetliod in all sub-
jects; and when used as a method in one of these
other subjects (geography, history, etc.) the primary
Eiim is not that the pupil shall learn more English
subject-matter, but rather that he shall learn more
geography or history subject-matter, through the aid oj
English.

Exactly the same distinction is meant in the ques-
99

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

tion of project work. Project work, or "activity,*^
or "doing," as a method in other subjects (geog-
raphy, history, etc.)i has for its aim the assisting of
the pupil to learn more of the subject-matter of the
given other subject — more of the subject-matter
of geography, history, etc. But project work, or ac-
tivity, or doing, used as a subject, has for its aim
the learning of more subject-matter about activity
or doing itself. That there is such a subject-matter
has long been admitted, and its representative in
the curriculum has been manual training or some
other so-called activity subject. But is there need
and place for such a subject? Under the improved
use of project work as a method, could the extra
subject not be dispensed with; and in this way could
not certain overcrowding of the curriculmn be reme-
died?

There is no doubt but that too many different
subjects are carried in most curricula, and that this
is a source of some of the serious overcrowding of
which complaint is made; and possibly the school
could partly relieve the situation by getting along
with project work as a method, alone. Perhaps
there is no real, specific need for a special subject
to represent these activity aspects of life. Perhaps
it is even not necessary to have "subjects" at dl,
if project method is properly used. This tends to
be the view of Dewey who stands for a relatively
informal instruction as regards subjects — an in-

ICO

EVOLUTION OF THE SUBJECT

stniction which will psychologize the experience of
the child, and keep that experience unified about
activities. Thus it will minimize the "subject"
which at its best is only the adult logical organiza-
tion of the real experience involved.

But many persons feel that the "no subject" view
goes too far. They feel that it tends to make in-
struction "indirect" in afield where a more "direct"
instruction is required (see chapter vui). But leav-
ing this consideration temporarily aside, a second
presents itself. There is no doubt about the desira-
bility of keeping separate the child's real experience,
and the adult's logical organization of it as a subject
of instruction. Yet, if education is to be definite,
and is to be certain of adequately covering life in
all its subjects or phases, and in their mdividual
continuity, then the subjects ought to be logically ^h
clear and distinct in the mind of the teacher at least, ^H
no matter how undifferentiated the experience may ^H
be in the mind of the child. For the teacher to see
the phases of life (the subjects) in their individual
continuity, even in the midst of an undifferentiated
unity presented to the child, is the only guarantee ^H
that she will not get lost in a mass of details. It is ^H
the only guarantee that work will be balanced and ^|
correctly progressive in all lines; and that the work
of one teacher will be properly founded upon the
work of those who preceded her. Subjects should, ^^
1 therefore, be differentiated. ^^|

I I

r 1

f PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION ^1

But there is no doubt that too many different ^|
subjects are carried in most curricula, and that this ^|
is the source of some of the overcrowding of which
complaint is made. Yet it is very doubtful if manual
training {or at least its later representarive, industrial
arts) is one of the "extras." Instead of dropping it
out, therefore, the real reason for the overcrowding
should first be sought in another connection.

Two ways to determine the correct number of
subjects in the curriculum are possible. One might
make a philosophical analysis of life (of experience),
determine its main and vital phases, and organize
and assign subjects based upon the phases found.
But one can do an easier thing and arrive at ap-
proximately the same result. He can go on the
assumption that there has been unnecessary differ-
entiation of courses; that courses often scheduled
separately are really only fragments of more com-
plete courses, or, perhaps, duplicates of work else-
where provided. On this theory he may make a
complete list of courses found in an extended series
of elementary curricula, and by combination and
reorganization, try to reduce the number.

When such a list is made it has something the ap-
pearance of the following: (i) geography, (a) ele-
mentary science, (3) nature-study, (4) school-garden-
ing (agriculture), (5) history, (6) civics, (7) current
events, (8) primitive life, (q) elementary handwork,
(lo) maauaJ training, (11) cooking, (13) sewing,

EVOLUTION OF THE SUBJECT

(13) algebra, (14) geometry, (15) arithmetic, (16)
physical education, (17} physiology, (18) hygiene,
C19) folk-dancing, (20) sense-training, {21) plays and
games, {22) athletics, (23) music, (24) fine art, (25)
drawing, (26) picture study, (27) reading, {28) liter-
ature, (29) language, (30) composition, (31) grammar,
(32) speUing, (33) phonics, (34) penmanship, (35)
modem language, {36) ethics.

The causes of such an overwhelming list of titles
(and the list might be easily increased, perhaps) have
already been hinted at. They start from at least
two sources: (i) A growing consciousness of the com-
plexity of life, and a desire on the part of makers of
courses of study to cover all life phases. There
is frequent discovery of something that has been
omitted and which must be added to the list. (2) A
failure to recognize the possibility (a) that the
omission is only fancied, and that the matter is really
taken care of in another connection, or (6) that the
material omitted may be used as new material in a
course already scheduled, or taken care of by a mere
change of emphasis within the old course.

With these causes recognized, one can gc at work
to exercise his "practical judgment" on the over-
differentiated hst. Fragments may be brought to-
gether, duplications pointed out, and a revised list
made. Under this plan the first eight subjects in the
list {geography, elementary science, nature-study,
school-gardening, history, civics, current events, and
103

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

primitive life) may be reduced without loss to history
and geography, with some residual lower-grade work
thrown into a composite nature-study (or "nature-
and-man ") course. The next four courses (elemen-
tary handwork, manual training, cooking, and
sewing) become one imder the name of "industrial
arts," or better the name "himian work" (see chap-
ters vn and vin). The next three courses (algebra,
geometry, and arithmetic) properly sifted, are only
one — arithmetic; or perhaps better, mathematics,
with elements of arithmetic, algebra, and geometry
easily combined into one subject. The next seven
(physical education, physiology, hygiene, folk-danc-
ing, sense-training, plays and games, and athletics)
are just plainly one great subject of physical educa-
tion. Music and fine art remain as separate sub-
jects; drawing drops out as a separate subject, and is
combined partly with industrial arts, and partly
with fine art. Picture-study is part of fine art.
Reading and literature become one subject. Lan-
guage and composition are just different names for a
single subject. Grammar would probably have a
separate place in the seventh and eighth grades.
Spelling and phonics become word-study. Penman-
ship remains by itself; modem language should prob-
ably survive as a separate subject; and imder present
conditions the controversy about methods of moral
instruction make a decision concerning ethics un-
certain and varying.

104

EVOLUTION OF THE SUBJECT

Just exactly this solution might not be agreed to
by every one, but some such solution could be arrived
at which would be to a degree satisfactory as a com-
promise. Under it there would survive from the
thirty-six courees listed not more than thirteen to
fifteen; and there would be abundant room in the
list for an activity subject, a project subject, such
as manual training, or industrial arts if justification
were found for it as a separate subject. Since the
complex present is 'best understood in the light of
the more simple past, the discussion turns at once
to the evolution of this manual-training movement
as the first key to the status and meaning of proj-
ect (or activity) work used as a separate subject of
instruction.

The movement in question took its rise in Europe
directly from educational leaders who have already
been discussed in previous chapters. As it has ex-
isted in American schools in the form of busy-work,
whittling, clay-modeling, sloyd, etc., it is a direct
outgrowth of the work of Froebel; but is not always
so recognized. The path by which Froebelian in-
fluence has come to manifest itself in this form is an
interesting and devious one, leading through Finland
and Sweden before arriving in America. The inspi-
ration for it as an offshoot of Froebel's work comes
from the desire of Uno Cygnieus {1810-88) to develop
the kindergarten occupations and to make them ap-
plicable to the higher grades. In pursuance of this
105

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

desire he developed a system of occupational and
constructive work (project work as a subject) for
upper grades, and, in 1866, Finland made it a part of
the curriculum of its elementary and teacher-training
schools. This system was not meant for trade edu-
cation and resulting industrial efficiency; but was for
general educational purposes. Cygnseus had caught
something of the more or less vague idea of Froebel
of respecting the individuality of children, and of
bringing out desirable individual and social char-
acteristics through processes of manipulation of
material and tools. Through his influence the idea
was developed in Finland, and in 1866 that country
adopted for its elementary and normal schools the
first manual-training course in any school system.
This course was definitely not for trade instruction —
not to train for a special place in a specific industry —
but was to make a broad and general contribution to
the educative process. It was, therefore, meant for
all students alike, and had a standing comparable
to the other general subjects such as mathematics
or language.

In 1874 Sweden became interested in this plan
through a visit made to Finland by Otto Salomon,
and the interest was sufficient to cause the recon-
struction of trade courses, previously given in that
country, into a more general project course, called
"sloyd" or "manual training," given to all for its
general value after the Finnish idea. The plan was
106

EVOLUTION OF THE SUBJECT

taken up in other parts of EuropCj and reached
America through the Centennial Exposition held
at Philadelphia in 1876.

American sloyd, manual-training, or project
courses consisted at first of a copy of the Swedish
system, and called for the making of a rather formal
series of definite models. This system featured the
idea of "from the simple to the complex" (conceived
logically) ; and dealt with the learning step-by-step
about tools and constructive projects, intentionally
graded so as to require more and more complex
equipment and operations.

There was a good deal of the old formal disdpUne
idea involved in this plan. It implied, even where
it did not assert, that such work, formally carried
through, would function later in a broader life which
was being " prepared for." The aim was rather com-
monly expressed as "coordination of hand and eye";
or as general muscular coSrdination, plus a general-
ized knowledge of tools and processes. It there-
fore featured memory and skill more than anything
else, and was relatively barren of thought and direct
relation to life and life motives. As this barreimess
became more and more evident, there was the in-
evitable tendency to compensate for it by increasing
emphasis upon the trade values of the instruction:
and there was, a decade or two ago (as there is to-day
for another reason), more or less danger of falling
back to some type of trade instruction such as was
107

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

featured by Sweden before the visit of Salomon to
Cygnaeus. There was, also, even among those
teachers who repudiated the trade idea, a tendency
to overemphasize the element of skill, and the pos^
sibility of its transfer to lines other than that in
which it was acquired.

Antidotes for tiiese tendencies gradually developed.
The general solution arrived at by Dewey has al-
ready been outlined. He includes this material in
his general scheme of activities — in his general use
of project tnethod, and does not plan to use a sepa-
rate project stdject at all. Quoting from his "Peda-
gogic Creed " :

I beb'eve, therefore, in the so-called expressive or con-
structive activities as the center of correlation. I believe
that this gives the standard for the place of cooking, sew-
ing, manual training, etc., in the school. I believe that
they are not special studies which are to be introduced
over and above a lot of others in the way of relaxation or
relief, or as additional accomplishments. I believe rather
that they represent, as types, fimdamental forms of social
activity; and that it is possible and desirable that the
child's introduction into the more formal subjects of the
curriculum be through the medium of these activities.

Dewey's solution, however, has not been employed
very generally in its entirety. Very many schools
have turned to his idea and have used project method
to enrich and to vitalize the whole curriculimi; but
the great majority of schools have tended to retain

xo8

EVOLUTION OF THE SUBJECT

also the special project course in the form of manual
training, which course he would discard.

Those who have retained the subject, however,
have "seen the writing on the wall" and have been
driven to justify the subject on some other basis than
that of mere trade or sidll values, or even the old
"coordination of eye and hand." One of the leaders
in putting a better foundation under the subject has
been F. M. McMuiry, of Teachers College, Colum-
bia University. He has advocated the enrichment
and dignifying of the subject by putting emphasis
upon the real thought and life content involved, and
upon the resulting opportunity for using the sub-
ject as a means for training children in "thought
methods of attack " upon life problems which are real
to them.

He has shown how, by using construction projects
which do not necessarily follow a fixed sequence
based upon the simplicity or complexity of the tool
used, but by using those which touch the life of the
child and serve a useful present purpose (not neces-
sarily economic) for him, real living educative value
is possible. He accepts the prevailing emphasis
upon the importance of the motor as a part of the
learning process, and also that idea of formal dis-
cipline which claims the carrying-over of "thought
methods of attack" upon problems; and emphasizes
the enormous advantage of specific aims comiu]

1
I

from giving children an opportunity to make the ^|

i - J

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

things they want to put into direct use in their Kves.
He points out that any subject of elementary in-
struction is dignified and worthy of a place in the
curriculum only when it possesses within itself a rich
body of thought (not mere skill) which is not dupli-
cated by any other subject, and which is necessary
to, and intimately related with, life.

He shows how to lead children to attack their
problems of construction on the basis of previous
thinking about something they want to make be-
cause they conceive it to be useful to them. He tact-
fully makes clear to the child that it does not pay to
plimge into ill-considered work of construction, and
that disappointment is almost inevitably the result
of such a proceeding. He brings to the child's con-
sciousness the items which should receive prelimi-
nary consideration: (i) Just what is it that is to be
made, and why. (2) What materials will be neces-
sary. (3) Where are they to be obtained. (4) How
much of each kind will be needed, judged from the
dimensions and type of the object to be made.
(5) What tools will be necessary — do we know
enough about their use, etc., etc.

All of this thinking about the ends or aim of the
project, about the special fitness of certain ma-
terial for certain work, the amoimt and source of
material necessary, and similar topics, furnishes the
body of thought which dignifies and enriches the
subject, and which takes it out of the formal memor-

EVOLUTION OF THE SUBJECT

iter, and old formal disciplinary category, into a
newer, less formal, more thoughtful relation to real
life. The work is made really social since it deals
with life problems of things actually to be used
by the child himself, or by those with whom he
thus learns to be in better sympathy and cofipei-
ation.

The idea has gradually grown and spread until no
educationally intelligent person any more justifies
manual training on the basis of skill in manual ma-
nipulation or knowledge about tools and processes,
which knowledge is to function later according to the
older formal discipline idea. But very generally
manual training is enriched, justified, and used on
the basis of its thought content in relation to life,
and its value in developing "thought methods of
attack" upon the real activity problems of children.
Of course the trade (skill) idea again becomes dom-
inant as soon as specialization begins, and the child
settles down to a choice upon liis life-work. But the
tendency in American education is, and ought to be,
to defer such choice and specialization until after the
elementary-school period, and to make the elemen-
tary period a time of broad, cultural, unspcclallzed
participation in life.

Bonser, building further upon Dewey's idea of
"self-education through social activities," and com-
bining it with the condition of the manual-training
movement as developed by McMurry in his " thought

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION '

work," has been the leader of those who would still
further expand manual trainmg and domestic science
and art courses into general industrial arts courses.
The plan has been to expand the courses beyond
the mere wood, iron, clay and raffia work of the older
manual-training courses into a consideration of the
place and importance of industry as a whole in the
past and the present life of the race.

Perhaps the idea is best expressed in the gen-
eral statement of the aims of this work, taken from
page s of the Speyer School curriculimi prepared by
Dr. Bonser in collaboration with the Speyer School
teachers:

All work involving processes in the transformation of
materials is included in this field. A rich subject-matter
relating to the problems of man vital in his control of the
material world is the backbone of the course. Until the
end of the sixth grade there is no differentiation of work
for boys and girls, and there is not the breaking up of the
work into the subjects heretofore known as domestic
science, domestic art, manual training, and drawing.
One unified subject with appropriate xmits from each
aspect of the work for each year makes up the course.
In its organization, the material groups itself about man's
needs in six particulars, namely: foods; shelter; clothing;
records ; utensils ; and tools, machines, and weapons. The
work under each is divided into subject-matter and
projects. Projects are illustrative of processes of manu-
facture. Their design involves a careful study of the
principles of design, an examination of designs used to-
day, and a study of the designs used by historic peoples.

112

EVOLUTION OF THE SUBJECT

Processes of construction involve, not only hand produc-
tion, but a study of power machinery, factory production,
and transportation. The social aspects of the subject
include studies of sources of material, markets, the condi-
titms of laborers, and the relations of employers and la-
borers, and of these to consumers. Excursions form an
essential part of the work. The Metropolitan Museum
of Art and The American Museum of Natural History are
often visited. Much emphasis is placed upon the study
of these topics from the standpoint of the consumer — the
development of intelligence and appreciation in selection.
All will use from each field of industry and art, but few
will produce in each. Those having inherent aptitudes
for production, however, may, and should, discover
themselves by this work. It thus becomes of specific use
in vocational guidance.

History as studied in the lower and middle grades fur-
nishes an invaluable aid in the work here offered. Indus-
trial geography and nature-study are also closely corre-
lated with many aspects of the industrial arts work.

In the seventh and eighth grades the work is differen-
tiated to meet the needs of children whose interests and
aptitudes are diverging, and whose work must be shaped
so as to point toward some group of life callings.

In this sense, then, industrial arts as a subject has
entered the curriculum in the place of the older man-
ual training, domestic science and art, and drawing.
It does not, however, supplant fine art which at least
in certain of its aspects still remains in the curricu-
lum as a separate subject.

The aims of the enriched subject are expressed

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

in still another form by certain theses and given
below:

(i) Large units of industrial subject-matter and spe-
cific projects should be selected which most typically
illustrate industrial methods and industrial life.

(2) The Project in handwork should serve as points of
departure for opening up the study of the industries in all
of their larger relationships, social as well as material and
technical,

(3) Industrial arts should function in the child's life
even more specifically in the direction of intelligence as a
consumer, homemaker and citizen than as a producer.

(4) The study of industrial arts should develop pri-
marily industrial intelligence, insight, and appreciation,
subordinating skill in manipulation to thought content.

(5) Industrial arts as a subject should incorporate all
of the values of manual training, domestic science, do-
mestic art, and drawing as appropriate to the elementary
school, and should add a rich body of thought giving
them social meaning and real life value.

It is plain that this use of industrial arts as a
subject with industrial-social subject-matter, and
with projects to provide activities, is completely in
accord with McMurry's plea for thought work; and
that it is also entirely in the spirit of Dewey's use
of occupational and constructive activities as the
center of the school program. There is no arrange-
ment of artificial exercises for muscular and sense-
training, but children get these things as the result
of direct participation in affairs of everyday life
114

EVOLUTION OF THE SUBJECT

wMch require them. Industrial education is not
centered upon any one industry, and not on the ma-
terial welfare of a given community. It is centered
rather upon the general (cultural) welfare of the
young people of the community. But it differs from
Dewey in that the industrial arts subject provides
a means of getting the values of the Dewey idea into
schools which are not willing to be radical enough to
go the whole way in acceptance of Dewey's program
of informal instruction, with the subject entirely
subordinated to the real life processes.

With its value thus considered by many thinkers
to be clearly evident, industrial arts stands firmly
entrenched as a separate project subject in the
great majority of progressive modem schoob; but
this use of it in no way interferes with its use as a
method, unless the two uses are confused to the detri-
ment of both. As a subj'ect, it is "a rich body of
subject-matter relating to the problems of man in
his control of the material world" and organized
" about man's needs in six particulars, namely: foods,
shelter, clothing, records, utensils, and tools, ma-
chines, and weapons." This body of thought (this
subj'ect) is a body of thought about the activities of
man, about that phase of his life which is summed up
in the word "doing"; and is just the expansion of
the manual-training idea, which started out as a
subject to feature this same doing, but in a less
rich and more mechanical manner.

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

It is the task of succeeding chapters to deal further
with the project used as a subject (now best repre-
sented in the curriculum by the prevailing industrial
arts courses), and to put forward a theory that this
course is not yet on the ideal basis, either in subject-
matter or method.

VII

THE BROADER CONCEPTION OF THE CONTENT
OF THE PROJECT SUBJECT

In chapters m and iv it was shown that the essence
of modem education is '' self-education through ac-
tivity" and that, as a result of this realization proj-
ect method or the active solution of real problems,
has naturally become connected with modem, Ameri-
can, democratic, public-school education. Thus it is
directed toward broad, general, cultural results with
all children in all subjects of instmction.

In chapter v was shown another use of project
method arising out of the Pestalozzi-Fellenberg idea
of elementary industrial education, with its recogni-
tion of caste or social classes, and its trade education,
fitting for a specific place in life. In this form
project method has had a wide and often benefi-
cent influence in American prison reform, and in
the institutional treatment of delinquents and de-
fectives in general. It would, however, have been
a calamity if this trade use of project method had
fastened itself upon the public school, since it could
not have fulfilled the cultural aims, there so im-
portant.

In chapter vi which begins the discussion of proj-
ect material used as a subject, it is explained how

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

the public schools, in organizing the new subject,
again happily escaped this more aristocratic con-
ception of industrial education, by the acceptance
of the stream of Froebelian influence coming through
Finland and Sweden. In the same chapter it was
shown how the project subject evolved from its first
rather formal and barren conception into the richer
and less formal industrial arts courses. The justi-
fication for any course in the curriculimi was dis-
cussed, and industrial arts justified on the basis of
a rich body of "thought subject-matter" which
gives the subject social meaning and real life value.
This body of thought subject-matter about doing
(the general theory of doing) is not covered by any
other subject, and is important enough to claim a
place as a subject by itself. This is true, even though
doing is itself made the center of all of the other
subjects. For besides being a tool in all other sub-
jects (just as English is a tool in all other subjects)
it has its own body of subject-matter, the weight of
which makes it a separate subject (just as English,
through the weight of its body of subject-matter be-
comes a separate subject). And subjects should be
kept separate and logically organized, in the mind of
the teacher, no matter how much an imdifferentiated
and total experience of the child is emphasized.

In the present chapter the question is raised as to
whether tiie body of subject-matter utilized in in-
dustrial arts courses is as broad and rich as it should

ii8

THE BROADER CONTENT

be if industrial arts is to stand in the curriculum as
the project subject.

What is this doing, about which there is the rich
body of thought subject-matter? Industrial arts
courses confine it to the industrial phases of doing
— to the transformation of material for the use of
human life. But is there not a broader view, or at
least a different view, which will ^throw new light
upon the situarion?

Man must struggle with his environment for at
least three reasons: (i) for sustenance; (2) for de-
fense; {3) for that development which comes only
through struggle. The struggle would be necessary
even if the sustenance and defense reasons were elim-
inated, for without it development would cease and
stagnation or death ensue. The human race is here,
therefore, confronted with an inevitable law — a
law of contact and interchange with the environment
through activity. The friction of this contact is the
force which insures human development.

This active contact with environment — this nib-
bing up against natural circumstances — is called by
two names, play and work. Both require certain
combinations of physical and mental factors; neither
can be all physical or all mental, for man is a mental-
physical creature. His mental and physical aspects
are everywhere complementary to each other. Both
act together to keep him alive and to keep him grow-
ing toward the goal of his possibilities. Passivity is
119

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

death everywhere. Active physical-mental man
comes into contact, and often into conflict, with his
natural environment; and wrests from this contact
not only life, but a continued development of a
richer and more abimdant life. In this conflict,
thinking and doing are both essential, and must be
balanced to suit the occasion and also the full life
requirement. Too much thinking or too much doing
are each equally bad extremes. Thinking prepares
the stage for doing, and doing executes the plajis of
thought. The balance of the two elements changes
with the progress of experience. Much thought and
little doing in the presence of a new difficulty, and
more doing and less thought in the presence of an
old one, are the rule. Much early motor activity on
the part of youth, for the sake of mere bodily develop-
ment, and less bodily activity and more thinking on
the part of age, seems to be the natural status of
the two factors. But let it be repeated that the two
are complementary. The one dies without the other,
and in the absence of both the creature is the sport
of circumstances, and in a sense already dead.

Man's life, then, may be said to consist in a struggle
with environment, through play and work. Man,
to live, must do something, and the doing utilizes
both physical and mental factors in varying propor-
tions at different times and under different drciun-
stances. But this struggle with the environment is
not concerned alone with the transformation of mar

Z20

THE BROADER CONTENT

ly means ^|
;ical skill ^B

terial in the phs'sical sense. It is not by any
concerned with merely the motor or physical
aspect of the work. That it is not exclusively so
concerned has been the very foundation of the argu-
ment for a subject enriched by emphasis upon the
"rich body of thought" involved. Even the indus-
trial processes selected for the course have both
physical and mental aspects. Why, then, should
there be omitted from the course those other aspects
of the struggle which have a greater proportion of
the mental, but which bear just as vital a relation-
ship (and perhaps a more vital one) to the whole
struggle?

It is one of the theses of this chapter that logically
these more mental aspects cannot be omitted. The
body of subject-matter which dignifies project ma-
terial as a subject is a body of subject-matter about
man's whole struggle with his environment. It is a
body of subject-matter which should include those
phases which have more of the mental and less of the
physical, just as much as it includes the phases which
have more of the physical and less of the mental.
The management phases, the business administra-
tion phases, the professional and any other phases,
are just as much a part of the whole struggle as are
the more manual phases.

It is another thesis of this chapter that ever since
the introduction of project material as a subject,

its main defense has been the semi-conscious attempt ^H

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

at focusing the course upon the interpretation of

man's whole struggle with his environment. But
there has always seemed to be some hidden force
preventing an inclusion of the whole problem, and
holding the subject-matter content down to the more
physical aspects of the struggle.

Perhaps the hidden force lies in the unconsdoU3
tendency to tie the subject, in a degree, to the older,
more aristocratic idea of the education of the poor.
In this conception the poorer {and so-called lower)
classes were destined to do the more physical work
of the world, and the rich (the few in the higher
classes) were destined to do the more mental work.
They were to be the leaders, and were to do the
thinking, both for themselves and for the others.

It is not true, of course, that modem industrial
arts courses, in focusing upon the more physical as-
pects of the struggle, inleniionally are influenced by
the older aristocratic conception of relation of physi-
cal and mental in the life struggle. They stand for
the combination of physical and mental — for the
"rich body of thought," as over agamst the training
for mere skill which is to be directed and controlled
by some one else. They stand for everybody taking
the same industrial arts course. It is not merely for
the education of the poor. It is to be the means of
enlightening every one, of creating sympathy and
cooperation, and of giving vocational insight to all,
but not determining vocational choice among the

THE BROADER CONTENT

trades. But, nevertheless, in some way the course
has still retained the vestige of the aristocratic idea,
in tliat it clings to its old association with the more
physical aspects of man's struggle — to its associa-
tion with the work of the poor as that work used to
be conceived.

It perhaps needs to be noted that industrial arta
courses do deal with large manufacturing and indus-
trial enterprises which, since the Industrial Revolu-
tion, are the enterprises of the rich; but it is dear
that they deal only with the more mechanical and
physical phases of these enterprises, and not so much
with the more mental phases of administration and
management, which phases, it is to be remembered,
were, under aristocracy, the work of the rich.

Management, administration, business, and law,
medicine, theology, teacliing, etc., are all only the
more mental phases of the total doing by means of
which man conquers his environment and insures
his own development. Project work used as a
subject should recognize tliis fact, and should deal
not alone with the transformation of materials, not
alone with the more physical aspects of the wonderful
human struggle with environment, but it should
organize and use a body of thought subject-matter

I
I

about the whole struggle — about work and play, ^H

their relationship, and their total significance in the ^H

life of man. ^H

i What this plan signifies is not an attempt at ^H

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

'* redemption through manual labor'* alone; but re-
demption through an tmderstanding of, and a partici-
pation in, the whole struggle. It is to be redemption
through a consideration of everything that must be
done to secure the development and the real welfare
of a cooperating group.

Thus this study would lead into the very strong-
hold of social theories. In finding itself confronted
by the whole struggle of man, and by a study of
the significance of the struggle, it would at once be
obliged to favor one of the two great divergent theo-
ries. There must be bom either the aristocratic
conception of special opportunities for the few, and
of the rule of these specially favored few over the
many; or there must be bom the democratic con-
ception of equal opportimities for all according to
their capacity. This wavering between social theo-
ries of the claims of the individual and of the group
has been characteristic of the past, but there seems
now to be an almost imiversal choice of the equal-
opportunity theory. At least America has made
that choice, and stands committed to the theory
that ultimately the welfare of the individual is
wrapped up with, and subordinate to, the welfare
of the group. Our democracy is built upon the rule
of the majority; individual activity is held to be de-
sirable, both for the individual and for the group,
imless it goes so far as to be antagonistic to the
group. Then it is held that it should be suppressed

124

THE BROADER CONTENT

and subordinated to the group. Thus the best and
ultimate good of the group as a whole is taken
standard, and ultimately the majority of the group
decides what that best good is.

But this majority rule does not mean that the
majority considers itself capable of doing everything
for itself, and fails to recognize the individual expert.
The majority turns many particular things over to
the expert, retaining in regard to any of these par-
ticular things only its faith in its own ability to judge
the results of the expert's work. Then it holds the
expert accoimtable for results, under pain of dis-
missal for failure. Theoretically every one is made
expert in some one particular line — the line for
which he proves particularly fitted. And every one
is to have opportunity to prove what he is fitted for.
That work is then turned over to him, and society
holds him responsible as an expert, just as he, in his
turn, as part of the society, holds other experts re-
sponsible.

Thus is exemplified America's theory of "the
equality of man," understood as meaning "the equal-
ity of opportunity," and conditioned only upon
original endowment. And the project study, if it
becomes a study of all doing, must of necessity
in America be a study of equality of opportunity
for doing. It must of necessity have for its aim,
not the creation of caste, not trade education which
divides the classes, but a broad^ cultural foundar
125

IS ^H

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

tion, which, by its very breadth and insight, tends
to militate against and to break down all classes, ex-
cept those inevitably created by endowment. And
even with regard to them, its effort must be to min-
imize the differentiation, and to emphasize the com-
mon foundation which holds all together in bonds
of mutual need, sympathy, and cooperation.

Theoretically, except for the reason of difference
in real capacity, in endowment, there should be no
"Man with the Hoe" condition. There should not
be those who do so much manual labor that the
mental is dulled and brutalized. On the other hand,
there should not be those who do so much mental
labor that the physical is neglected and becomes im-
paired; nor should there be such mental and physical
idleness that the whole man degenerates and seeks
excitement and excess to relieve ennui. But there
should be such a balancing of physical and mental
that each individual stands forth with all the best
that is in him given opportunity to work in the inter-
ests of all and therefore of himself.

So the struggle is not a calamity. It is the center
of existence. It is life itself; it is salvation in the
truest sense. The man beats out his real character
through his conflict with the problems of his environ-
ment. Both his work and his play contribute. In
fact it is difficult to distinguish between work and
play when social conditions are right. Play is not
idleness — not cessation of activity. It may at times

126

THE BROADER CONTENT

be activity directed toward an end with a less definite
and more remote product than comes out of work.
But there is often so little distinction between the
two that one man may work in his garden, and play
by going fishing; and another man may work by going
fiishing, and play in developing his garden. It is
change and resulting relaxation in one direction and
refocusing in another, which constitutes the real
difference. There is no play activity which cannot
be made work, or no work activity which cannot be
made play under the right manipulation of circimi-
stances. And the important thing in regard to the
two apparently different kinds of activity is that
while reasonably balanced activity is life, too much
activity in one line is death, just as too little activity
is death. The real spirit of play, as distinct from
work, or work as distinct from play, is the spirit of
the necessity for change of activity. Hence from now
on the word "work " will be used to express the whole
situation, including work and play.

This philosophic-social ideal of activity, therefore,
this democratic program, is nothing more or less than
society's theory concerning man's great project —
his struggle with his environment; and the study of
this great project as a separate subject of instruc-
tion is no more or less than an elementary sociology
focused upon social ideals. What the method of such
a study must be in order to keep it from being mere
formal, ineffective preaching, is the subject of the

127

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

next chapter. The remainder of this chapter will be
occupied with further consideration of the content of
the subject.

The subject is to focus upon the significance of
man's struggle with his environment. This struggle
has been briefly denominated as work, although it
includes work and play. What is the significance of
work?

I. Above all, work is necessary. It is necessary
from two standpoints, one of which is social and the
other individual. From the social standpoint there
is a necessity for the satisfaction of himaan needs,
which satisfaction, in a measure at least, must come
from group action. It is not fair if some individuals
fail to do their share in the group activity. Even
though some one (living earlier) has made an accumu-
lation of material resources, and passed them along
to a certain individual, yet that individual is still
morally boimd to be a worker himself. He person-
ally must earn, or be a parasite in using what he
does not earn. The world has not yet reached the
place where it has an over-supply. Even if it had,
the reduction in necessary effort should be distrib-
uted, not concentrated in one person. The idler, from
whatever cause his idling may arise, is a drag upon
the wheels of progress. As an idler he has no place in
a social scheme whose very essence is struggle — work.

And work, besides being necessary from this social
view, is also necessary as an individual matter, be-

128

THE BROADER CONTENT

cause it is the one and only way in which the individ-
ual develops his possibilities. It is the stone against
which he sharpens his sword of life. It dulls and
rasts without it. It is one of those inborn necessities,
one of those conditions (processes) of development
which must always be regarded, because they are
natural, original, and cannot be changed or inter-
fered with without loss. The individual can, with
safety, no more expect some one else to do his work
for him than he can expect some one else to eat his
dinners for him.

II. Work is dignified. Work is not to be regarded
as a disgrace, as a calamity, to be ashamed of, and
the fact of it concealed as much as possible. Since
the hope of the world is in human life and its possi-
bilities, and since the many kinds of work are neces-
sary to sustain and develop life, then none of these
many kinds of work can rightly be considered un-
worthy. If some one sweeps the street, he is doing
his share of street-sweeping, and also the share of
many other people, while the other people do some-
thing else. Surely, then, these other people shall not
look askance at the sweeper merely because of the
sweeping, part of which each of them must do if the
other did not do it all. They must, rather, take the
position that ail useful work — all work necessary
to the common good of the social whole — is dig-
nified work. Even the head must not be ashamed
of the hands.

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

in. Work may be joyful. The reasonable dis-
charge of energy is pleasurable. It is only excess
discharge, or over-monotony of discharge, which is
painful. If all help in the work so that none have to
fvork too hard, if a worker is not made unhappy by
being looked down upon because of the character of
his work, then there is no reason why he may not be
happy in his work. To spend energy in the solution
of the world's problems — to make one's work a
problem, and to solve it by doing the work as well as
one can (even though that work be street-sweeping) —
is foimd to be one of the greatest joys that the world
offers.

IV. Work must be divided, and each must find his
place in it. No person can do all. It is (in modem
life, at least) a physical impossibility for himaan be-
ings to try to live in that way. "We are meant to
help each other like hands and feet, like upper and
lower rows of teeth." At least we must live life on
this principle if we succeed. Therefore each should
look for, and should be assisted to find, his place in
work; and then should expect to be happy and re-
spected in his contribution.

Perhaps these four elements do not constitute the
best analysis of the significance of work that could
be made; but they will serve as an illustration of the
idea which is being advanced, and can be used tenta-
tively, subject to revision at any time. With them

130

THE BROADER CONTENT

in mind it is easy to see what must be done, from the
content side, to get this material before children. All
that is necessary is to expand the industrial arts
course to include all human work, and organize it all
about these items in the signij&cance of work.

But more needs to be said to make this plan defi-
nite enough. In the first place, the plan implies, in
the mind of the teacher at least, a more definite and
conscious realization of the distinction between the
project work used as a method and project work used
as a subject. The value of project method is prima-
rily that of getting subject-matter in aU subjects (in-
cluding the project subject) through right utilization
of the principle of self-activity. The value of the
project subject is primarily that of carrying a spe-
cific subject-matter concerning the significance of
activity to life.

Even makers of industrial arts courses have not
always given evidence that they have dearly con-
ceived this distinction, and the result has been bad
for the industrial arts courses, because imless the
project subject is very clearly differentiated from
the use of project method, then the project subject
seems to "spill over'* into every other subject, its
continuity as a subject is obscured, and interfered
with, and vagueness and indefiniteness result. And
even at the expense of seemingly unnecessary repe-
tition it is here repeated that tiiis vagueness must
be guarded agaiost in all subjects. If education

131

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

is ever to get anywhere the teacher miist see ex-
perience (life) as consisting of certain phases (sub-
jects) each of which has its own ends, and cumulative
development and continuity in its march toward
those ends, no matter how imitary the experience is
kept for the child. Otherwise work will become mere
dabbling in a mass of details — mere wandering
through a wilderness of facts and experiences un-
focused and xmprogressive in any particular direction.

The proposed expanded course, therefore, is to
have its own definite continuity in terms of the sig-
nificance of work. It is not to consist of mere expe-
riences Tvith work, nor yet of a mere piling-up of facts
about work, except as those experiences, and that
piling-up of facts, are all focused upon the significance
of work in the life of man. The method of mak-
ing this significance dear is to be project method.
It is to be the same project method that is used in
other courses, but it is here to be applied to the proj-
ect course itself; and the backbone of the project
course — its continuity — is to be in terms of the
significance of man's one greatest project, his strug-
gle with his environment. That significance is:
(i) that work is necessary, (2) that it is dignified,
(3) that it may be joyful, and (4) that it must be
divided, and that all must codperate in this divided
work for the good of all.

If the project course does not result in implant-
ing these ftmdamentals firmly in the mind of the

132

THE BROADER CONTENT

child, if it does not succeed in so welding them with
his experience that they become a part of him, then
the project course has failed, no matter how much
it may have given experience in work or piled up
fact about work, and no matter how much project
method may have assisted in the development of sub-
ject-matter in other courses.

Such a course as the one recommended will neces-
sarily include much of the same material as that now
used by industrial arts courses. It will deal with
man's relations to his environment, and so will cover
his early conquest of that environment (primitive life),
much of the so-called "nature-study," and many
of the nature facts and human-life facts which are the
background for real history and geography; and will
also incorporate much of the higher-grade manual
training and domestic science and art. In all this
it will deal with man both as a producer and a con-
sumer. But it will deal with production and con-
sumption as they a_ffect all phases of work. It will aim
to make a person intelligent in his consumption of
those forms of human work in which the mental pre-
dominates, as well as to make him intelligent In his
consumption of the more physical aspects. A man
ought to choose his physician, his lawyer, his busi-
ness manager with as much insight as he chooses
his tie. He asks what firm made the tie, what firm
furnished the goods, etc.; but he seldom asks at
what university or other school his physician received
133

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

his training. He goes by the physician's personal
appearance, or by his easy accessibility, or by the
opinion of some one who refers him to a given phy-
sician. Of course the matter of accepting opinion is
in itself all right if rightly done. We must accept
the opinion of the one whom we think knows — of
the expert; but the safeguard is to be sure first that
the person is an expert, and this certainty is often
not forthcoming, especially in our "consumption"
of advice concerning these more mental phases of the
life struggle.

The tendency to focus upon the less mental phases
also serves to emphasize (unconsciously and unin-
tentionally on the part of makers of industrial arts
courses) the tendency to look more to material values.
This is at best already too strong in human nature.
The leader of the George Junior Republic tells that
when he first brought children to his farm he gave
them some presents; and that the first thing the next
group asked was, "Where are de tings?" It was his
task to train them to a different point of view — to
point them to the more immaterial "tings"; just as
it is the task of the enlarged industrial arts (or hu-
man work) course to point students to the real and
more spiritual significance of work to life.

In common with industrial arts courses, the hu-
man work course admires Fellenberg for his keen
insight into the use of industrial work for the pur-
pose of creating sympathy and co5peration among

134

THE BROADER CONTENT

the workers; but it tries to keep clear from his es-
sentially aristocratic tendency to specific trade in-
struction in popular education, and from his naive
kindness to animals attitude toward the poor. It
combats the tendency toward too early speciali-
zation and emphasizes the need of the broad, uni-
versal foundation upon which foundation one's spe-
cialty — one's particular phase of expertness — is
to be built. It deplores, and throws its influence
against, any tendency to push trade education so
low in the elementary grades that the broad prepa-
ration is interfered with; and it recognizes the spe-
cial danger that the very introduction of the project
work may, imder relaxed vigilance on the part of
far-seeing teachers, result in an attempt to exploit
the elementary school for the purpose of the produc-
tion of skilled operatives, and thus make the schools
the agent of that very child labor and consequent re-
striction of broad development which they fear.

In addition to all of this it tries to expand the
course into a consideration of all human work, to
focus it definitely upon the significance of that work,
and to present a direct continuity in terms of the
items of that significance.

An attempt to make a beginning on such a course
was made in 1915-16 by the writer, in a rather ten-
tative and incomplete manner, with the representa-
tive of the industrial arts course in the program of
the training school of the State Normal School, at

^3S

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

Winona, Minnesota. At that time the idea was only
imperfectly developed, the course was called "in-
dustry," in order that it might not be too radically
removed from the practices of other schools, and
much industrial and activity material was directly
borrowed (with credit given) from the Speyer School
course. But the borrowed material was reorganized
and at least partially made to fit the plan here
proposed.

Believing that children of the kindergarten and
first three grades were not yet ready to study the
significance of work (nor to study directly history
and geography), the principle of the relative "total-
ity of the young child's experience" was appealed
to, and for the first three years a composite course
was carried which was, as a whole, a preliminary,
preparatory course, called "nature and man." It
carried a background of nature facts and life facts,
which background was necessary to the industry
course, and also to geography, history, and nature-
study as well. At the fourth grade this composite
course was differentiated into industry (a better
name would have been "human work"), history,
and geography, while the science aspect of nature-
study was carried on by the geography course, and
the appreciation aspect was put into the fine art
course.

After the industry course was definitely differ-
entiated in the fourth grade, that grade's work, con-

136

THE BROADER CONTENT

sisting largely of the same material usually taught
in mdustrial arts courses, was organized about the
necessity for work. Similarly the work of the fifth
grade was organized about the added fact of the
dignity of work, and that of the sixth grade about the
added fact of the joy of work j the other elements being
included in each case in review. In all of these grades
boys and girls were taught together. The seventh
and eighth grades seemed the natural place to stress
the division of work. It is the point at which the
work of boys and girls usually divides into manual
training for the one and domestic science and art for
the other. And it is the place where boys and girls
are at least beginning to think about what they in-
tend to do in life. Hence to stress the necessity for
the division of work, and to give opportunity for
direct contact with as many f amis of work as possible,
seemed to be the very best sort of pre-vocational
work, and at the same time thi$ very best iniiiatioii
into real life conditioM with r ef id'ence to the division
ofwork. Of course the otbitt' crlnttkfiits in the division
of work were also kept to ttAsA mid ki relationship to
the whole problem*

In considering the ^yMm ^ wmkf imd possible
pre-vocational leaiifai|s Umufd e^fUdh kinds of work,
the professions were ini^ltided in the course; and it
was intended to expfMud the emrm and Include the
problem of work as a wh^le^ Hds was not so suc-
cessfully accompUsbed i# it ecmld be in future ex-

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

periments; but the course was at least broader and
more comprehensive than many similar courses, and
there was the recommended attempt to focus upon
the significance of all work to life.

This course is published as one part of a complete
curriculiun which was issued at the time, and a few
copies are available at the Winona Normal School.
The industry course should, however, be regarded
as a conservative and only partially worked-out ex-
periment, drawing heavily upon the Speyer material,
reorganizing it, but only partially fulfilling the ideal,
discussed in these pages, of a broad, cultural coiurse
directed toward the real significance of work in ^a
coimtry conunitted to the Uieory of equal opportu-
nity conditioned only by original endowment.

There is great need for such a course in America.
The tendency to form castes here has its roots in the
relations of capital and labor, and something should
be done (everything possible should be done) to
combat the tendency. The tendency to shirk work
as a calamity and as an irksome thing; the growing
indications of dass strife represented by the labor
and capital controversies, and fostered by extreme
and ill-considered social doctrines; the increased
social snobbishness which causes workers to be looked
down upon by a leisure dass, and which causes all
rich to be envied i£ not cursed by those who have less;
the increasing tendency for housework to be regarded
as menial; the too many bizarre and unfit choices of

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THE BROADER CONTENT

occupation — all of these call for a subject whose
particular social significance is that of making in-
trinsic in character a knowledge of the significance
of work, right attitudes toward work, and a keen in-
sight into the choice of a life-work for which one is
peculiarly fitted.

The difficulties of handling such a course so that it
will not be "preachy," and so that it will be effective,
are very great; but it is with the hope and the con-
viction that the task can be accomplished that the
problem of method is attacked in the next chapter.

VIII

THE NECESSITY FOR MORE DIRECT TEACHING
OF THE PROJECT SUBJECT

After giving all possible credit to industrial arts
courses (and they deserve a very large share of credit)
it must be admitted that there is a certain vagueness
and indefiniteness about them. Many persons have
not felt exactly sure of what such courses are aiming
at. They are not clearly differentiated from the use
of project work as a method in other subjects, and
they seem to feature industrial projects for the sake
of piling up certain facts about industry, and for the
sake of exposing children to certain rather vaguely
conceived attitudes toward industry. But the facts
are not orgam'zed with reference to the attitudes
as a specific goal, the continuity of the course is not
definitely in terms of any fundamentals which are to
be progressively realized, and all of this has led to
much haphazard and ineffective teaching.

Definitely to change this condition by choosing
worky and a knowledge of the significance of warky as
a center about which tiie whole miscellaneous vol-
ume of factis is to be organized, and into which the
whole is to converge — to make the continuity of
the course directly in terms of the factors of the
significance of work in the life of man — banishes

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MORE DIRECT TEACHING

indefiniteness, "brings the course down to earth/'
and puts upon the teacher of it a perfectly definite
problem.

But by what method is the teacher to go about the
teaching of the significance of work? No good teacher
would depend upon "preaching" which was to be
accepted in a formal, memoriter way by the children.
For teachers have had too much experience with
formal instruction in many subjects, and with the re-
sulting failure of the teaching to fimction in real life,
to make any mistake of trying to do formal teach-
ing of the significance of work. The material is of
such a nature that the attempt could only result in
failure.

But formal teaching is entirely unnecessary. In
teaching the significance of work one finds it per-
fectly possible, and natural, to follow in the footsteps
of the industrial arts course and to continue to ap-
ply the best type of project method to this separ
rate, expanded project course. In this matter no
change at all will be made. The course will appeal
to "self-activity in the solution of problems." But
the change that will be made will be to use the method
directly instead of indirectly and incidentally in the
service of certain specific aims. It Is this direct teacb-
mg, coupled with the expansion of content discussed
in chapter vn, which is depended upon to take the
vagueness out of industrial arts courses. For their
vagueness has not been in their general metbod; but

I4X

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

in their incomplete content, and in the indirectness
and incidental character of their attack upon their
rather obscure and limited aims.

In the proposed course there is to be direct use of
an expanded content, in the service of very definite
and complete aims. There is to be direct teaching of
the significance of man's whole struggle with his
environment, direct teaching of the significance of
work, as opposed to the more incidental teaching of
certain phases of work.

The dangers and difficulties of this program are
keenly realized and freely admitted. But it is also
believed that there is no necessary reason why they
cannot be overcome by diligent, conscientious effort.
The main danger, that of formality, is controlled
just so long as really vital project method is used;
and there is every reason for continuing this method
in the project course, since, rightly handled, it is the
best ally of the direct teaching proposed.

The teacher who has used the indirect and inciden-
tal method has been willing to work on the basis of
rather imperfectly and indefinitely conceived goals;
and she has been willing to approach the goals by
repeatedly, but only incidentally, "exposing" chil-
dren to them, in the hope that gradually they will
be "caught" through the more or less contagion of
the "exposure." That such a plan has had a wide
currency in America is difficult to realize. But its
real detriment to the whole educative process is so

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certain that it is worth while to drive home the facts
about it by rather copious illustration.

The illustration meeting our purpose, which goes
farthest back in the history of modem education, is
the use of the old method of spiral teaching. Old spiral
system is used advisedly, for there is a new spiral sys-
tem which is to be commended as good, while the old
is to be discarded.

In the old system as used in arithmetic, it was the
plan to have certain phases of division of fractions,
for example, come round and round in the book, in
a regular "merry-go-round," all on the "exposure''
theory. There was never illustration enough, or
interest enough, or practical application enough to
make the necessary impression and to furnish the
necessary drill. There was no specific consciousness
of specific aims. At least there was no direct realiza-
tion of specific aims. For there was no direct attack
upon something to be conquered. There was just a
sort of blind faith in the "exposure"; and this "ex-
posure" was often almost instantaneous, being usu-
ally two or three examples removed from any con-
crete situation, or at least not given in any situation
concrete to the child because it "bit him where he
Kved."

Thus the grind round and round the cycle* ac-
complished little, and the child who had "had" arith-
metic "for long and ever so long" was still Jufit about
the same candidate for it as be was in the beginning.

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PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

The substitute for the old spiral method goes upon
one of the suppositions that was at the bottom of the
old. It goes upon the supposition that a person can-
not learn all about a certain thing at one time. There-
fore it cuts the material up into sections to be learned
separately. But it does not fail to be very definite
about just exactly what is to be learned ; and it does
not depend for the learning of the sections upon mere
"exposure" of section after section, and then repeat.
The mere repetition of vagueness does not very surely
lead to the desired definiteness. Hence the new spiral
method conquers its problems in one section, and then
proceeds to the next. Of course it would be unfor-
tunate if it did this conquering in a formal manner,
but formality is not at all necessary to definiteness
in learning. Good project method of the most in-
formal kind can be directed toward, and arrive at,
the most definite of results. It is only necessary for
the goals to be held clearly in mind and for experi-
ence to be manipulated toward them.

A later American experience with indirect (inci-
dental) method is connected with the problem of the
teaching 6f spelling. There was a long time during
which direct (and rather formal) study was put upon
spelling words in school. Then in a certain city an
experiment was made in two schools. In one of the
schools the regular time was put upon spelling. In
the other, spelling was taught "incidentally." That
is to say, the words were dealt with as they happened

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MORE DIRECT TEACHING

to appear and to be needed by the pupils. At
close of the experiment it seemed apparent that
pils in the school that did not teach spelling as a
separate subject, but only taught it incidentally, had
made as much progress as had the pupils in the school
where the regular time had been given to the teach-
ing of spelh'ng.

The conclusions of this experiment, ajid of others
of approximately the same import, were circulated
widely over the country; and as a result there was a
rather general discontinuance of regular, direct spell-
ing instruction, and a rather common dependence
upon the incidental method. The children were ex-
pected to "pick up" their spelling from their more
or less chance contact with words in their other les-
sons. The words were constantly before them, they
were constantly read and copied by them, and "ex-
posed" as the children were to the correct spelling,
it was assumed that this " exposure " would conquer a
majority of the words, and that the occasional focus-
ing upon a difficult word at the time the difficulty was
discovered, in whatever subject, would complete the
process. For so it seemed to have worked out in the
experiments.

But there soon proved to be a serious falling-o£E in
spelling ability'_as the result of the " incidental " proc-
ess. It became evident that it was not getting the
results that were hoped for it and that had seemed to
come in the experiments. A possible explanation of
MS

it the H

It pu- V

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

the experimental results is that perhaps in the ex-
periments teachers, enthusiastic for the "incidental"
method, had really put more time upon spelling than
they realized, and had been especially conscientious
in watching for opportunities to meet the real spell-
ing need of the pupils; but that the rank-and-file of
teachers, pushed by the great ntunber of details of
their work, and not so enthusiastic for the spelling
teaching, rather unconsciously fell into the habit of
neglecting spelling entirely.

There is no doubt but that the teachers engaged in
the experiments got the results; but it is probable
that they did not really save much time by the proc-
ess. The sum of the necessary little bits of time
given to incidental teaching was probably as great
in the long run as would have been the time devoted
to a regular spelling period. At any rate, the experi-
ment and its application have shown that when
teachers get anywhere with the teaching of spelling,
they do so by putting definite work upon definite
things, either in a definite spelling period or in little
bits scattered through many periods. And the "ex-
posure" part of the process showed that spelling is
not very contagious upon mere "exposure." It re-
quired a real "inoculation" process to be efficacious;
for if "inocutarion" is properly carried out there is a
certainty of result unless the person proves to be
absolutely immune.

As a result of this experience most schools are back
146

MORE DIRECT TEACHING

to the old spelling period, and to direct attempts at
"inoculation." For it is safe to say that the keynote
of the new spelling is that spelling must be definitely
taught — that mere "exposure" is too uncertain.
Specific word-lists must be handled and specific diffi-
culties found and conquered. Experiments have
been made to determine what words cliildren should
learn to spell, the continuity of the spelling course is
made in terms of those words, and words necessarily
dealt with in other courses are regarded as temporary
and relatively non-essential. Experiments have also
been made as to how best to fix the spelling of specific
words; and organic, non-formal, direct technique of
"inoculation" has been developed, and the spelling
course now comes much nearer to knowing where it
is going, and how it expects to arrive.

The problem of study, or "How to Study," has
had a similar evolution. In the whole history of
modem education until very recently the teaching of
how to study has been on an indirect basis. In so
far as teachers tried at all to teach children how to
study, they did it by studying with children. In this
studjdng with children they used good methods of
study, or at least they used the best methods they
knew. Thus they " exposed " children to the methods
which they hoped would be so contagious that the
children would "catch" them. There was some
contagion, especially of the repetitive, memoriter
method, partly because this is the easiest method
147

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

to catchy and partly because it is the natural method
with no teaching at all. Moreover, when teachers
did make an attempt to tell how to study, about the
only conscious method in their own minds was "the
read it over so many times " method ; and it was, there-
fore, this method which was consciously passed on.

No one really took the trouble to analyze study
into its factors — to become conscious of what the
problem really involved. Much less did they have
any idea of making children conscious of the factors.
Then came Dr. F. M. McMurry's contribution in the
form of a real anal3rsis of study into factors which
could be isolated for both teacher and pupil; and his
advocacy of a more conscious use of these factors.
Teachers could then even improve their "exposure"
technique and could have greater hopes of an im-
proved degree of contagion, because, with the factors
clearly in their own minds, they could arrange the
stud3dng so that the factors were much more likely
to carry over than they were before.

But teachers could improve vastly more by stop-
ping the mere studying with pupils, with its incidental
"exposure" theory, and its dependence upon a con-
tagion which was never very virulent; and by turn-
ing to the direct "inoculation" theory, and beginning
really to teach children how to study j through making
children themselves conscious of the definite factors
involved. Then there could be real focusing upon
the important factors, real illustration of them, and

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MORE DIRECT TEACHING

real drill upon them. The whole could constitute a
course with a continuity in terms of the factors, and
hence there became possible a direct drive toward a
definite goal. Such a course in "How to Study" or
"How to Think" is a real part of the curriculum in
many schools, and will become more and more s
everywhere. It is the logical outcome of the con-
viction, earlier discussed, that it is no longer possible
to teach all of the multitudes of facts accumulated by
the race; but that it is possible to develop "methods
of attack" which will make the student independent
in his solution of difficulties as they arrive, A good
course in "How to Study" or "How to Think" ful-
fills this purpose. It attacks its problems directly
and not incidentally, but it does not "preach" the
factors for mere mechanical memorization. It welds
them into the child's experience by connecting them
with real life in the most vital way, through an appli-
cation of the best project method.

This decision for direct method is supported by
some of the oldest and most definite and most au-
thentic of American psychology, James outlined it,
and it has been featured in a number of books since
his time, besides being everywhere imphed in edu-
cational writings. It deals with the necessity for
repetition imlh attention, as contrasted with mere
repetition; and hence calls for specific aims, and a
concentration upon specific factors, which is directly
opposed to the "exposure" theory.
149

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

Tlie facts about the two theories are the common
possession of every one. A person who stops to
think about it knows that he seldom leams the num-
ber of steps which lead up to his door, or even the
Aumber of buttons on his coat, merely by repeated
**e3q)osure" to the facts. There must usually come
some reason for focusing upon, some reason for fixing
attention upon, them; and for having emotions and
attitudes raised concerning them, before the facts
become really fiixed. But let the specific aim ap-
pear, let the attention be focused, and especially let
the whole be accompanied by a considerable amount
of emotion, and no effort has to be made to remembet
the facts. They fiix themselves a» an accompaniment
of the experience, as an integral part of the experi-
ence, and they come back as such, and not as a de-
tached series of facts to be remembered.

Even so short a consideration of the psychology
involved is perhaps sufficient. It shows that the
teacher's business is to be very conscious of the spe-
cific things upon which she wishes to center the
attention and the emotional experience of the child.
It shows, moreover, that she must, if she is to be
most effective, not merely see that a child repeats an
experience, but that he repeats it in a life situation
fraught with enough of attention to a specific thing,
and enough of emotion concerning it, to cement it
into the experience as a living part of it.

It will be recognized that this is but another way

ISO

MORE DIRECT TEACHING

of saying that successful teaching requires project
method focused directly upon specific aims held very
consciously by the teacher, and accomplished through
specific aims of the child, connected with the proj-
ect. There is also to be again mentioned the im-
plied responsibility that the teacher shall make the
child more and more conscious of the specific aims
which are in her {the teacher's) mind; and also of
maMng it more and more certain that the child will
be emotionally moved by these aims. For teachers
leave their pupils, and pupils must then stand alone;
and the only guarantee that they will stand alone
when the teacher is gone is the fact of their doing
some standing alone when the teacher is with them.
In thus emphasizing the project method, the
method of "self-activity at work solving problems,"
it is not intended to minimize the importance of that
other great original tendency, the tendency to un-
critical conformity to the action of the group. Con-
formity is important; even uncritical conformity has
been one of the means by which the race has ad-
vanced, and it still has its importance. But uncrit-
ical conformity to new situations is not the essential
virtue of democracy. It is rather the essential virtue
of the rank-and-file in an aristocracy where the many
are under the control of the few. In a democracy,
conformity has its place; but, theoretically, it is to
be critical conformity which comes after the matter
in hand has been attacked as a specific problem and
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PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

a decision arrived at. Even if a person reaches a
conclusion averse to the idea, he may conclude to
conform because the idea has received the approval
of the majority if not of himself. Yet even then his
conformity is intelligent conformity; and his thinking
about the idea has furnished a basis for future effort
at influencing change in the direction in which his
thought has led him.

Thus far the chapter has made a claim for the use
of a direct "inoculation" attack, instead of an in-
direct incidental "exposure" attack, upon the prob-
lem of a certain course ; and has attempted to justify
the stand in favor of the direct attack by giving con-
crete examples taken from American educational ex-
perience, and by making a very brief survey of the
psychology involved. If this plan were carried out
in the case of the project subject, it would result in
a course which attempted consciously and directly
to instill into the minds of the children the factors
which weigh in the significance of work; and a course
which tried finally to make children the conscious
servants of the democratic ideals of which the factors
are the center. The course would have its conti-
nuity in terms of the factors, and would be organized
with reference to them, just as a definite course in
"How to Stu4y" is directly organized and attacked
on the basis of the factors in study.

But is this demand for the formation of children's
ideals through direct teaching not an imposition

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MORE DIRECT TEACHING

upon them? Ought there to be any direct attempt
reaUy to form children's opinions? In this case is not
the "exposure" theory better after all? Should not
children just be brought into experience, put through
it, and allowed to make their ownwayand toform their
own opinions? Ought children not to be allowed to
live their own lives without adult interference? Is
not every one entitled to the unrestricted forma-
tion of his own opinions? The unthought answer to
these questions would be, "Yes"; but the thought-
ful answer is, "No." The world does not run upon
the principles implied in the "Yes" answer. It is
true that there is a certain policy of non-interference
with the lives of children. It is true that non-inter-
ference has become a sort of stock phrase for a cer-
tain attitude toward children; but as already pointed
out in these pages, the really justified non-interfer-
ence is a non-interference with processes of develop-
ment which are natural and cannot be changed without
loss. These processes are psychological: they be-
long to the nature of the learner and of learning, and
interference with them causes loss. Hence teaching
follows the laws of specific aim, repetition with at-
tention due to specific aim, etc.

But the aims themselves are not fixed. They only
indicate directions which processes of growth may
take, and these directions are multiple. Education
— development — may be in practically any direc-
tion (good or bad) and the child must be aided in his
1%%

pt ■
ot ■

I
I

L ^

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

choice^ The knowledge of the "good " and the " bad *'
comes out of the rich racial experience; and the child
has a right to his inheritance in these aims. Other-
wise, in directing his course he cannot stand upon the
shoulders of those who have preceded him; but he
must beat out his whole problem for himself, with
the inevitable mistakes and consequent loss.

Hence there ought to be an end put to the con-
fusion about non-interference with the lives of chil-
dren. The policy of non-interference is a policy of
non-interference with processes of development. If
adults see a child developing toward dishonesty they
interfere to turn him toward honesty — they do not
expect that he will absolutely form his own opinion
about it. If he persists in dishonesty he is finally
even put into restraint so that he cannot exercise
his dishonesty. If he fails in other fundamental
principles of democracy there is definite attempt to
turn him back into the accepted pathways. Yet
a weak and indefinite acceptance of this principle^
coming because of its confusion with non-interfer-
ence with processes, has led to much laxness and
indefiniteness in both home and school training.

But, after all, direct teaching does not actually iw-
pose adult aims upon children. The policy of inter-
ference in the matter of aims does not really drive us
to this rather unpalatable conclusion. There is an-
other way out; and there must be, for the importance
of the training and exercise of the critical judgment

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MORE DIRECT TEACHING

has already been emphasized as one of the essential
virtues in a democracy, and children should, there-
fore, be allowed experience in judging. Yet the eth-
ical judgments of children, of necessity, must be to an
extent weighted judgments. There are those direc-
tions, such as the one already cited, in which it is not
desired or permitted that they shall go without pro-
test or final restraint, and a compromise has to be
made.

The situation is very similar to that of the pruning
of a tree. The tree must grow, if it grows at all, ac-
cording to its own inner processes — according to
its own law and nature of growth; but the direction
of growth is interfered with by the pruner. Certain
external things are done to the tree which militate
against its growth in certain directions; and doors are
opened, and inducements offered for it to grow in
other directions. There is not the imposition of a
specific thing, but there is interference with certain
possibilities and encouragement of others among
which the tree is left to select. Of course what is left
is the possibility of a limited selection, and it is a
great responsibility for the gardener so to limi t it.
He may spoil the tree unless he is very expert; but the
tree certainly caimot reach its highest possibilities
without his interference, and he feels justified in tak-
ing the responsibility.

So, with children, mankind has come to take the

responsibility of conscientious guidance toward (not

I5S

PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

imposition of) aims, ends, ideals. The human work
course contemplates such guidance. It contem-
plates guidance toward the fundamental ideals of de-
mocracy, and it feels sure of its justification in such
guidance. The ideals involved constitute a sincere
and carefully thought-out social philosophy. The
philosophy is more than carefully thought out. It
has been wrought out in the very blood and tears and
final triumphant success of generations. It is be-
lieved to be the true solution of social life, and it is
dreamed of as the heritage of future generations. As
such, there is an obligation to pass it on. If this is
not done, democracy will be beaten out by other op-
posed influences which do take the trouble to incul-
cate a definite program; and these opposed ends,
aims, ideals, inconsistent with the good of humanity
as a whole, may prove a world tragedy — chaos and
unutterable pain and loss. The world is Just now
in danger of such a catastrophe, due to Germany's
direct teaciiing of an opposed social philosophy.

So America ought not to be afraid — she must not
be afraid — to use her whole power to weave her dem-
ocratic ideals into the very warp and woof of the be-
ing of the young whose lives are to be the only chan-
nel through wliich the currents of the ideals can be
continued. She must deliberately try to make her
ideals dominant because she be ieves in them with
her whole soul, and because st id^^t, in the long
run, the world must rise or fa" ' 'be ideal3

■56

[

MORE DIRECT TEACHING

(the philosophies) of its dominant groups. But to
do this she must go at it directly and not inciden-
tally; she must do direct teaching of her sociology to
the young ; and she must reach these young while they
are still young enough to be sufficiently unformed
and sufficiently plastic. It does little good to try
to ' ' build in ' ' llieories in the upper grades which theo-
ries are not founded upon continuous life experiences
of early years. Hence America's direct teaching of
her sociology must begin with definiteness in the low-
est grades; but it must be of such an elementary and
informal character that it meets the real demands of
child development and yet is effective in its own be-
half. These demands have been partially met by
the industrial arts courses which in themselves are
really elementary sociology courses. But it can be
more fully met by the expanded human work course,
if that course features direct teaching of the princi-
ples involved.

But such a course, focused as it would be toward
ends, aims, ideals, of work, is really ethical, and the
plan calls for direct teaching of it. Can ethics be di-
rectly taught? Is the course not doomed to failure
from the first, just because, as Dewey says, no amount
of knowledge about elfncal principles will insure the
translation of that knowledge into ethical action ; and
no amount of teaching (preaching) about the dignity
of work can make a person see it as dignified.

It i' xurse, that tailure would result if the

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PROJECT WORK IN EDUCATION

plan were really to preach or to teach these things
formally. But it is far from that, as has been made
dear. The plan is to teach them in direct contact
with life, and in direct relation to life, just as Dewey
would have them taught. The attitude toward work
is to come through contact with work — in many
cases, through participation in work. The facts are
to be taught in these organic connections, fitted to
the ages of the various children; and with a certam
balance of emphasis which creates certain predis-
positions to certain views,^ and therefore to certain
actions. For ethical action is influenced by a very
vivid conception of facts. One acts upon the basis
of either an unconscious, imcritical crowd psychology
(which action is in general to be discouraged in a
democracy), or he acts upon a conscious weighing of
ideas one against another. Hence the way to inter-
fere successfully in the direction of democratic ideals
— the way to secure the ethical action desired — is,
through teaching, so consciously and intentionally to
weight the facts which control the ideals that this
very weight will create a predisposition in favor of
action upon them.

Hence the gist of the chapter is that in the "hu-
man work " course whose continuity is to be in terms
of facts concerning the significance of work, there
ought to be direct as opposed to indirect teaching.
This means (i) that there ought to be a very vivid

MORE DIRECT TEACHING

consciousness of ideals involved, and of the relations
of the facts to the ideals; and (2) that the teaching
of the facts, in its turn, calls for attentive focusing
upon them in such vital life situations that they be-
come weighted in favor of the action required by the
ideals.

SUMMARY

It is hoped that the reader will not make the mistake
of looking upon this monograph as a book upon in-
dustrial arts. That phase of the subject has neces-
sarily been prominent in the discussion; but it is only
an element in the main purpose which attempts to
take a rather vague term — project method, project
teaching, etc. — and to save it from formality and
the device level. It does this because it sees in this
term the most significant summing-up of modem
education.

By means of a brief survey of certain phases of the
evolution of educational principles, the attempt is
made to show how they are related and focused in
"learning to do by doing" or in "self -education
through activities." Then it is shown that this self-
education through activities is exactly what is meant
by the best conception of project method. But
project method and a project subject are, very gener-
ally, partially or wholly confused; and the attempt
is made to separate them. In the process of this at-
tempt there has developed the discussion of an ideal
project subject, taught by project method, and fo-
cused toward the perpetuation of democratic ideals.
This perpetuation is to come about through the cen-

i6o

SUMMARY

tering of the project course upon man's greatest proj-
ect — his struggle with his environment. This strug-
gle with environment — this great project — is work;
and attitudes toward work are shown to be at the
root of the fundamental opposition of aristocratic and
democratic social philosophies. Hence there is the
conclusion that the fundamental facts concerning the
significance of work should be directly taught, and
dependence put upon the weight of these facts to
turn the balance in favor of democratic ideals.

From the whole discussion, therefore, two oppor-
tunities for teachers are apparent:

(i) To make themselves free from formal, memor-
iter teaching, and to keep a school vitally related to
life and to the nature of the child, by accepting the
creed of " self -education through activities," with the
resulting use of project method in all subjects.

(2) To realize that it is vital that America should
begin a conscious resistance to that type of individ-
ualism which leads to caste and classes, and also to
those unwise and extreme social doctrines which, on
the other hand, lead to instability and disorganiza-
tion; that this resistance should be organized and ap-
parent in the education of the young; and that teach-
ers may further the work through the conscientious
teaching of some course which appeals to them as
attacking the problem without preaching, and yet
with a sincerity and a directness which gives promise
of arriving at the goal.

OUTUNE

PART I— PROJECT WORK AS A METHOD

I. THE EVOLUTION OF THE PRINGIPLBS UNDER*
LYING THE PROJECT METHOD

1. The value of a historical survey X

2. Differences between eighteenth caiituxy education
and present day education a

3. Three reforms produced in the evolution — socio-
logical, psychological, and scientific 3

4. Rousseau and his theories 4

5. The theories of Pestalozzi xx

6. Froebel's contributions x6

7. The educational philosophy of Herbart aa

II. THE TRANSFER OF THE PRINQPLES TO

AMERICA

I. The American colonists bring European practices. . 27

a. The influence of revolution and the new freedom. . 37

3. The transmission and modification of Rousseau's
ideas a8

4. Pestalozzianism in America a8

5. Froebel's Kindergarten is introduced 30

6. The Herbartian movement 3X

III. MODERN AMERICAN PRINQPLES OF

EDUCATION

1. The American period of reconstruction and original
effort 36

2. Two types of reform 36

a. Better school organization and administration 36

b. Better classroom procedure 36

163

OUTLINE

3. The better psychological interpretation of the prob-
lems of instruction 36

a. The natural endowment 37

b. The process of growth or development 37

c. The problem of individual differences 38

4. The contributive thinking of John Dewey 39

IV. THE PROJECT METHOD IN THE MODERN

PUBLIC SCHOOL

z. A project method is only the fnatural, concrete
expression of ^ modem educational principles in
action 53

2. Typical illustration^ of the principles from the work

of progressive teachers 54

3. The dting of the prindples common to the illustra-
tions 65

4. Each individual illustration of the principles^
shown to be also an illustration of the best in proj-
ect method 67

5. Project work in the unification of school life, as
shown in the illustrations 68

a. For a single grade 68

b. For a single subject 72

c. For a whole school 73

6. Suitable changes in organization and administration 86

V. PROJECT WORK IN TRADE EDUCATION

1. Project work as used for cultural education 89

2. The project method as applied to special or trade
education 89

3. The status of Pestaloz2d's industrial work. 90

4. The work of Emanuel von Fellenberg at Hofwyl. . . 91

5. The Fellenberg movement in America 92

164

OUTLINE

PART II -PROJECT WORK AS A SUBJE
VI. THE EVOLUTION OF THE PROJECT SUBJE

I. The difference between project work as a method

and aa a subject

3. Are subjects necessary under project work?

3. Two ways to determine the correct number of

CT
7T

100

loa

los
10s

107
109

III

irg
119
119
119

lai

"4
\'5

4. The connection of the project subject with the work

5. The beginnings in Finland and Sweden

6. The development of the project subject in America

a. The growing tendency to mechanism and em-
phasis upon mere skill

(. The injection of thought methods and content
c. The expansion of manual training and domes-
tic science courses into industrial arts courses.

,VII. THE BROADER CONCEPTION OF THE
CONTENT OF THE PROJECT SUBJECT

a. For sustenance

b For defense

3. The vague semi-consdous tendency of the older
manual training couises to focus upon the signifi-
cance of this struggle

4. The relative significance of aristocratic and demo-
cratic conceptions of the struggle

5. The project subject as a study of " equality of oppor-
tunity" for "doing"

-4

OUTLINE

IX. SUMMARY '

1. This book not a monograph on industrial arts, but a
total consideration of the project in education i6o

2. Since ''learning to do by doing" is central in educa-
tion, all subjects should be taught by a project
method i6o

3. But there is also a project subject which should be
focused upon the significance of work in human life 160

4. Suggestions as to immediate opportimities for
teachers 161

RIVERSIDE EDUCATIONAL MONOGRAPHS

Edited bT HENRY SUZZALLO

. „. jirotith

CitKit'i Tolimtear H«lp to tbg Schooli
Cunpuau'i Tba Ttarhlng of Compoiitlon
Cole^ bdulilal Bdncition Is ElsnuDtsiy Sc'
Cooley'i LuwucB Tauhinc in ths Grades

Cubberlcy'i rimijfiiif c " ' •■■■-—■'

'* "-^ rler'a Ths UBfiniT

'■ loMcut 4ad Effort in

Dcwey'i Honl FiinciplH in E
Dooley'i Tha EdnutiBn of the he ci-uk
Eufaait'i T.-fhrar ChUdnn to StDd;

Eliot

Education J

la uid Pncticii] In

.'s The Teichlog of BiBlon

HjFile'i The Tuchai'a Phil...,_^

JenkiBt') Readlnf In tte Piimoiy Gndsi

Jpdd'i Th* Erolulon al > Droiocntic ScEmol Sjitem

Kendill and Stiyker'i HlitoiT In the Elsmentety Gnde*

Kllpittlck'i The Uonteuori Syatam Eumined

Leonird'i <t"i''«'' Compositioa ai B Soda] Prablem

Lewie'i Denucracr'B Blgh School

Maiwell'i Tha Obietratluu of Teachlna

Uuwca'i The B riaBlaa of Teitbodn

Hetedith't Ttw Bdscadonal Beuinca of Modem pBycholon

Palmer'! Ellikal aod Moral togtnictiDn in tha Schoola

PBhner'i Sdt-Caltlntion in En^iili

Patmer'i The Ideal Teacher

Falnwt's Tiadaa and PrafeBsioni

Feny'i Btahia of flie Teacher

Prouer'i The Tateher and Old Am*

In Secondary fldocatlDn
omiia ■ jfciaDiianing IndiuQial Schoola
SDcddCD'a The Preblem of VocatlMUtl Edncatloa
Etockton'a Pniject Work In Bdocadoa
Suinllo'i Tha Taachlnc of Piinurr Aridunatie
Suiiilla'i The TeachiOE of Spelling
SwUt'i Speech Dafectain School dildrao

■n't Tba Slwly of Nation*

RIVERSroE TEXTBOOKS
IN EDUCATION

Gtm$ral BdweoH%nml Thmn

Avesill: Psychology for Normal Schools

Freeman: Experimental Education

Freeman: How Children Learn

Freeman: The Psychology of the Common Branches

Perry: Disdpfine as a School Problem

Smith: An Introduction to Educational Sociology

Waddle: An Introduction to Child Psychology

History ofBd&cmtiom

Cubberley : The History of Education
CuBBERLEY : Readings in theEQstoiy of Bdocatioii
Cubberley: Public Education in the United States
Emerson: The Evolution of the Educational Ideal

AdmiwiMirtHom MudSwHrvMon ofStk—h

Ayres, Williams, Wood: Healthful Schools

Cubberley: Public School Administration

Cubberley: Rural Life and Education

HoAO AND Terman: Health Work in the Schools

Monroe: Measuring the Results of Teaching

Monroe, DeVoss, Kelly: Educational Tests and Meas>

urements
Nxttt: The Supervision of Instraction
RuGo: Statisticsl Methods Applied to Education
Sears: Classroom Organization and Control
Showalter: A Handbook for Rural School Qfllcets
Terman: The Hygiene of the School Child
Terman: The Measurement of Intelligence
Terman: The Intelligence of School Children

M0tkod9 of Tmukiug

Bolenius: Teaching literature in the Grammar Orades and

High School
Kendall, Mirick: How to Teach the Fundamental Subjects
Kendall, Mirick: How to Teach the Special Subjects
Trafton: The Teachingof Science in the Elementary Schod
WoonER: Teaching in Rural Schools

SteomdMfy BdwoaHom

Brioos: The Junior High School

Inous: Principles of Secondary Education

Snedden: ProDlems of Secondary Education

Thomas: The Teaching of Eni^ish in the Seeondsxy Schod

HOUGHTON MIFFUN COMPANY
BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO

THE HOUGHTON MIFRIN
PROFESSIONAL LIBRARY

For Teachers and Stndents of Edacation

Practical Aspects of Education

Akduss's Holth Education !□ Roral Schools
Ckabtess's TeacUa« the CommoD BnncbsB
Noun's The Teaching o( Agrlcnltun
EARHAEt's Tjftt of Teaching
WiLBOH'g The MotlraliaD of School Work
ti^tvoT AKD BaowN'a

Schoola
Hau'b Tho Qoaitlaa u ■ Futm faiTeidiliic
XuADT^ A Stndr o< rdi7 TilBi
Bnun'B How to Tell SCoilsB M ~'
Cabot'b Bthln tor ChOdten
BaowNun's Chuuter Building
A Coorae in Cidzenihip and Pi
BuxniFiELD's loath. Scbool, sad VocaUon
Colby'b UteiatDre and Ufa In
Blow. Hql, mo Habjuson's The 1
FuLUEB's The Die of the Ebdergarten Qlfta
Batib's Talks aa Teachinc Utenlnie

Theory and Principles of Education

DoOLn's Fiindples and Method! of Indnitilal Bdncetim

Boaam'a The Curriculum

UcMdiT-a IF.M.) Hov to Studyand Teaching How toStudf
HcMoan'a (C. A.| Confllcdni Prindplei in TeaEhiaf
Woodliv'b The Piofesalon of Teaching

KuEFATuci's The Individual In the Mihinc
KmiiKjEE'a The Principlea of Edncation
O'Sbea's Sodal DevelaiBnent and Education
Trua'a Gmrth and Bdacatioa
BncDUSOH'i EducotioD and the Larger Ufa
CEAXCEiuni'a AThaoryotMotiTM, Id

I HOW TO STUDY AND

l^TEACHING HOW TO STUDY

^^r F. M. McMURRY

I Prtftssor of Elementary Education, Teachen College

I ColutBbia Universily

V Every teacher, student, and parent should

read this book, — perhaps the most funda-
mentaUy important educational book that has
recently appeared.

Some of the questions which are fully and
helpfully answered in the book:

Why young people have not been learning to
study effectiveiy,

The changes necessary to be made in the schools
in order that they may learn to study properly.

How the large amount of waste in home study
can be prevented.

How adults should study.

To what extent children have the native capa-
city and experience necessary for fruitful study.

What can be done towards teaching even the
joungest cliildren to fonn the right habits of study.

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO

PROBLEMS OF CONDUCT

BY
DURANT DRAKE

Praftuirr ^ Pkilaufhy, Vaaar Collet*

An Introductory Survey of Ethics

The Boiton Transcript says: "It Is the great
merit of Professor Drake's book that it moves always
in a concrete sphere of life as ne daily live it. It
never moralizes, it never lays down obiter dicta, it
simply talks over with us our personal problems pre-
cisely as a keen, experienced, and alwavs sympathetic
friend might do. Through and througn scientitic and
scholarly, it is never academic in method and matter."

PROBLEMS OF RELIGION

DURANT DRAKE

This book, like Professor Drake's Froblims of
Coniiutrt, represents a course of lectures given for
several years to under^aduates of Wesleyan Univer-
sity. Their aim is to give a rapid survey of the field,
such that the man who is confused by the chaos of
opinions on these matters, and himseU but little able
to judge between conflicting statements, may here get
bis bearings and see his way to stable belief and
energetic action.

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
. BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO

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