The Evolution of Education: From Self-Directed Learning to Compulsory Schooling, Resúmenes de Historia

¡Descarga The Evolution of Education: From Self-Directed Learning to Compulsory Schooling y más Resúmenes en PDF de Historia solo en Docsity! A Brief History of Education http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/200808/brief-history-education Peter Gray August 20, 2008 When we see that children everywhere are required by law to go to school, that almost all schools are structured in the same way, and that our society goes to a great deal of trouble and expense to provide such schools, we tend naturally to assume that there must be some good, logical reason for all this. Perhaps if we didn't force children to go to school, or if schools operated much differently, children would not grow up to be competent adults. Perhaps some really smart people have figured all this out and have proven it in some way, or perhaps alternative ways of thinking about child development and education have been tested and have failed. (1) In previous postings I have presented evidence to the contrary. In particular, in my August 13 posting, I described the Sudbury Valley School, where for 40 years children have been educating themselves in a setting that operates on assumptions that are opposite to those of traditional schooling. Studies of the school and its graduates show that normal, average children become educated through their own play and exploration, without adult direction or prodding1, and go on to be fulfilled, effective adults in the larger culture. Instead of providing direction and prodding, the school provides a rich setting within which to play, explore, and experience democracy first hand; and it does that at lower expense and with less trouble for all involved than is required to operate standard schools. So why aren't most schools like that? (2) If we want to understand why standard schools are what they are, we have to abandon2 1 prodding: verb: prod: persuade (someone who is reluctant or slow) to do something 2 abandon:verb: give up completely (a course of action, a practice, or a way of thinking) 2 the idea that they are products of logical necessity3 or scientific insight. They are, instead, products of history. Schooling, as it exists today, only makes sense if we view it from a historical4 perspective. And so, as a first step toward explaining why schools are what they are, I present here, in a nutshell, an outline of the history of education, from the beginning of humankind until now. Most scholars5 of educational history would use different terms than I use here, but I doubt that they would deny the overall accuracy of the sketch. In fact, I have used the writings of such scholars to help me develop the sketch. (3) In the beginning, for hundreds of thousands of years, children educated themselves through self-directed play and exploration. (4) In relation to the biological history of our species, schools are very recent institutions. For hundreds of thousands of years, before the advent of agriculture, we lived as hunter- gatherers6. In my August 2 posting, I summarized the evidence from anthropology that children in hunter-gatherer cultures learned what they needed to know to become effective adults through their own play and exploration. The strong drives in children to play and explore presumably came about, during our evolution as hunter-gatherers, to serve the needs of education. Adults in hunter-gatherer cultures allowed children almost unlimited freedom to play and explore on their own because they recognized that those activities are children's natural ways of learning. (5) With the rise of agriculture, and later of industry, children became forced laborers. Play and exploration were suppressed7. Willfulness8, which had been a virtue9, 3 logical necessity: noun: that state of things that obliges somethng to be as it is because no alternative is logically possible 4 historical: adjective: (of the study of a subject) based on an analysis of its development over a period of time; historical perspective of eduction is a point of view developed by studyng education throughout history 5 scholar: noun: a specialist in a particular branch of study, esp. the humanities 6 hunter-gatherers: noun: nomadic people who live chiefly by hunting, fishing, and harvesting wild food 7 suppress: verb: forcibly put an end to 5 With the rise of industry and of a new bourgeoisie22 class, feudalism gradually subsided, but this did not immediately improve the lives of most children. Business owners, like landowners, needed laborers and could profit by extracting as much work from them as possible with as little compensation as possible. Everyone knows of the exploitation that followed and still exists in many parts of the world. People, including young children, worked most of their waking hours, seven days a week, in beastly conditions, just to survive. The labor of children was moved from fields, where there had at least been sunshine, fresh air, and some opportunities to play, into dark, crowded, dirty factories. In England, overseers of the poor commonly farmed out paupers' children to factories, where they were treated as slaves. Many thousand of them died each year of diseases, starvation, and exhaustion. Not until the 19th century did England pass laws limiting child labor. In 1883, for example, new legislation forbade textile manufacturers from employing children under the age of 9 and limited the maximum weekly work hours to 48 for 10- to 12-year-olds and to 69 for 13- to 17-year-olds [2]. (11) In sum, for several thousand years after the advent of agriculture, the education of children was, to a considerable degree, a matter squashing their willfulness in order to make them good laborers. A good child was an obedient child, who suppressed his or her urge to play and explore and dutifully carried out the orders of adult masters. Such education, fortunately, was never fully successful. The human instincts to play and explore are so powerful that they can never be fully beaten out of a child. But certainly the philosophy of education throughout that period, to the degree that it could be articulated23, was the opposite of the philosophy that hunter-gatherers had held for hundreds of thousands of years earlier. (12) For various reasons, some religious and some secular24, the idea of universal, compulsory25 education arose and gradually spread. Education was understood as 22 bourgeoisie: noun: the class of people who own most of society’s wealth and means of production 23 articulate: verb: express (an idea or feeling) fluently and coherently; pronounce something clearly and distinctly 24 secular: adjective: attitudes, activities, or other things that have no religious or spiritual basis 25 compulsory: adjective: required by law 6 inculcation26. (13) As industry progressed and became somewhat more automated, the need for child labor declined in some parts of the world. The idea began to spread that childhood should be a time for learning, and schools for children were developed as places of learning. The idea and practice of universal, compulsory public education developed gradually in Europe, from the early 16th century on into the 19th. It was an idea that had many supporters, who all had their own agendas concerning the lessons that children should learn. (14) Much of the impetus27 for universal education came from the emerging Protestant28 religions. Martin Luther declared that salvation depends on each person's own reading of the Scriptures. A corollary29, not lost on Luther, was that each person must learn to read and must also learn that the Scriptures represent absolute truths and that salvation depends on understanding those truths. Luther and other leaders of the Reformation promoted public education as Christian duty, to save souls from eternal damnation. By the end of the 17th century, Germany, which was the leader in the development of schooling, had laws in most of its states requiring that children attend school; but the Lutheran church, not the state, ran the schools [3]. (15) In America, in the mid 17th century, Massachusetts became the first colony to mandate schooling, the clearly stated purpose of which was to turn children into good Puritans. Beginning in 1690, children in Massachusetts and adjacent colonies learned to read from the New England Primer, known colloquially as "The Little Bible of New England" [4]. It included a set of short rhymes to help children learn the alphabet, beginning with, "In Adam's Fall, We sinned all," and ending with, "Zaccheus30 he, Did climb the tree, His 26 inculcation: noun: to instill (an attitude, idea, or habit) by persistent instruction; teach (someone) an attitude, idea, or habit by such instruction 27 impetus: noun: the force that makes something happen 28 Protestant: noun: a member or follower of any of the Western Christian churches that are separate from the Roman Catholic Church and follow the principles of the Reformation, inluding the Baptist, Presbyterian, and Lutheran churches. All Protestants reject the authority of the Pope and find authority in the text of the Bible 29 corollary: noun: a direct consequence or result 30 Zaccheus / Zacchaeus: noun: he was a chief tax-collector at Jericho who repented his acts of corruptions and vowed to pay people back 7 Lord to see." The Primer also included the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, the Ten Commandments, and various lessons designed to instill in children a fear of God and a sense of duty to their elders. (16) Employers in industry saw schooling as a way to create better workers. To them, the most crucial lessons were punctuality, following directions, tolerance for long hours of tedious work, and a minimal ability to read and write. From their point of view (though they may not have put it this way), the duller the subjects taught in schools the better. (17) As nations gelled 31and became more centralized, national leaders saw schooling as means of creating good patriots and future soldiers. To them, the crucial lessons were about the glories of the fatherland, the wondrous achievements and moral virtues of the nation's founders and leaders, and the necessity to defend the nation from evil forces elsewhere. (18) Into this mix we must add reformers who truly cared about children, whose messages may ring sympathetically in our ears today. These are people who saw schools as places for protecting children from the damaging forces of the outside world and for providing children with the moral and intellectual grounding needed to develop into upstanding, competent adults. But they too had their agenda for what children should learn. Children should learn moral lessons and disciplines, such as Latin and mathematics, that would exercise their minds and turn them into scholars. (19) So, everyone involved in the founding and support of schools had a clear view about what lessons children should learn in school. Quite correctly, nobody believed that children left to their own devices, even in a rich setting for learning, would all learn just exactly the lessons that they (the adults) deemed to be so important. All of them saw schooling as inculcation, the implanting of certain truths and ways of thinking into children's minds. The only known method of inculcation, then as well as now, is forced repetition and testing for memory of what was repeated. (20) With the rise of schooling, people began to think of learning as children's work. The same power-assertive methods that had been used to make children work in 31 gelled: verb: to form into a shape