A REPLY TO DR. WHITE'S PAPER.

BY CHAS. A. MC MURRY, NORMAL, ILL.

[The following reply to Dr. White's Paper is in part an effort to clear away some of the misconceptions which have sprung up in the minds of many, relative to the idea of concentration. It is also an attempt to analyze Dr. White's notion of isolation and to draw the necessary inferences from that idea. Doubtless some of these inferences will be objected to as contrary to the well-known pedagogical principles often expressed in Dr. White's writings and lectures. This reply is not an attack upon Dr. White's system of pedagogy, but upon certain views expressed in this Paper. The question may be raised whether Dr. White, in his antagonism to the idea of concentration or correlation, has not been led into statements which are antagonistic also to his own previously expressed views. In this reply there is certainly no purpose of assailing the long and honorable career of Dr. White as a progressive educator.]

In this discussion both parties will admit the value of each principle under discussion, that is isolation and unification. We may not agree, however, as to the meaning of the term unification. In some phases of the discussion we seem to approach substantial agreement. The matter in question is the relative importance of the two principles in determining the arrangement and mutual interrelations of studies. There need be no serious dispute as to what the studies are which are to be so related. The common-school course will be made up of essentially the same studies in either case. The important question now is not what studies, but how are they to be organized and adjusted to one another in the school course? There is a single point in which this controversy finds its center and its explanation. It is best expressed by the word relations, the closer relating and binding together of all studies and of all forms of knowledge in a child's mind.

The complaint is often made, and also by Dr. White, that correlation, coordination, and concentration are mixed and confused terms, but the offense suggested to the minds of many by the mention of these terms is due to the fact that they are unwilling to grapple with this idea of relations. The same idea underlies all these terms, but in modified forms. Dr. White prefers to emphasize isolation, the exact opposite of the idea involved in all these terms. The

fact that these terms are mixed is not the main offense, but rather that they all mean the same thing, the same objectionable proposition is involved in them all, namely, a closer interrelation of studies.

The notion of concentration does not involve the mixing of studies. There is no good ground for supposing that concentration means the mingling of two or more studies in equal portions in a single recitation. Every study that is important enough to be a study has its appointed time in the program, during which it dominates the work of the hour and everything else is incidental and secondary. This is true also of those studies which are subordinate to the more important ones. Language lessons, for example, may derive their thought materials from geography, or natural science, or history, but the treatment of these materials in the language period is strictly for language purposes. When once the series of topics in geography or language or any other study has been fixed, it remains for the study period devoted to that subject to occupy itself primarily and chiefly with that study, and only to use other ideas and materials derived from other studies as those materials aid to explain or illustrate the topic in hand. To branch off into some other subject, no matter how closely connected, and to become absorbed in its treatment, means simply to be side-tracked, to lose one's bearings, to be guilty of illogi cal and unsystematic thinking.

Dr. White introduces the term unification for the purpose of avoiding the confusion associated with the terms. correlation, coordination, and concentration. There is much prevalent confusion and mixing of these terms, but it seems to me doubtful whether Dr. White, by introducing still another term, has done more than to add to the confusion. "The term unification," he says, "is, however, exclusive of isolation. It does not include the teaching of branches in separate exercises however skillfully those exercises are related to each other." If this is the meaning of unification it is a nondescript, an extravaganza to begin with and has no place in pedagogical thinking. But it should be clearly understood that concentration, even in

the extreme view held by Ziller, has no resemblance to this nondescript unification set up by Dr. White. There is no disposition among the disciples of Herbart to teach two or three studies in an hour, to mix and mingle different branches, in the same recitation. To assume this is simply a perversion of the idea of concentration from the meaning which has been abundantly defined and illustrated by the disciples of the doctrine of concentration.

There are some very knotty problems not yet satisfactorily solved by the advocates of concentration, but they can not be ignored because some people identify concentration with the mixing of studies. The isolation of the separate studies into distinct periods and the absolute predominance of each study within its own sphere is a fundamental condition of any course of study whether under concentration or under some other name. This is also true whether some studies stand in a subordinate relation to other studies or not. A subordinate study, when once its topics have been selected and arranged, should be handled in a series of independent recitation periods during the time of which its topics are the prevailing, controlling thoughts, and the relations to other studies are only incidental. Before assuming that concentration involves a mixing and confusion of studies it would need to be shown that its disciples either expressly sanction it or unwittingly bring it to pass.

Rein says, p. 20, (Erstes Schuljahr): "Concentration requires only that one form (study) of instruction seek and find points of contact with another form, the material worked over in one study must be recapitulated in another, and that which has been handled in one branch of instruction must be turned over to another for further elaboration. Every branch of study must presuppose that the other study either has or will do its duty in its own peculiar way, with the material which concerns them both. It is only this sort of mutual interaction between the branches of instruction which is demanded by genuine concentration." It can easily be shown that there are topics in which two or more studies are nearly equally con

cerned. The Hudson river appears, for example, in both history and geography, and the knowledge gained in one is a direct support to the knowledge gained in the other. The point of the criticism against unification of studies as defined by Dr. White is that it means amalgamation of what ought to remain separate branches. It is assumed without further proof that concentration, because it subordinates some studies, has the same fatal defect-the amalgamation of studies. For one, I am not prepared to pass final judg ment upon Ziller's plan of concentration, either for or against. But there is no sufficient proof as yet that it leads to amalgamation of studies. Even if we reject Ziller's theory of concentration in its extreme form, it still suggests important phases of correlation of studies, which must be worked out.

Dr. White's discussion of school studies seems to set up the branches of school instruction as ends in themselves, as an ultimate goal in education. Each of the three or five fundamental lines of instruction stands out clear and distinct, naturally and artificially isolated from one another, and the isolation is looked upon as the fundamental principle underlying the course of study, because otherwise the sequence and unity in each branch may be threatened. The five fundamental studies are set up not only as having rights of their own, but as a sort of finality in education. There is a very apparent tendency in all this isolation and emphasis of distinct branches of study to forget two of the most vital requirements of education.

1. The direct relation and value of knowledge to a child's mental growth, which is in itself more important than the formal system of the sciences. Dr. White, I have no doubt, will accept this statement, and claim that his arrangement of studies is planned with this very child psychology in mind. And yet the emphasis placed upon this formal isolation of the sciences, as sciences, seems to me to set up a controlling influence in the arrangement of studies, which emanates not from the child but from an external or objective view of certain bodies of knowledge in their purely scientific aspect.

2. The relation of scientifically organized and classified knowledge to the practical world of men and things in the midst of which a child has to live and act.

In laying out our school course and in determining the relations between studies, we cannot be governed solely by the fact that the sciences require a certain degree of isolation in order to be brought into systematic order. This is only one among three perhaps equally important considerations. If the studies as sciences demand isolation in order to be understood and mastered, as separate sciences, the mind of a child on the other hand, sets up an imperative requirement for unification. No matter how many sciences, nor how much knowledge and experience a child may acquire, they must be organized and unified in his own consciousness or they are fatally defective.

Again, the reduction of different kinds of knowledge to scientific system in separate studies must always be regarded as simply a means to an end. The great end in view in every study is to get a better understanding of the world of men and things around us. If the isolation of a single study leads to a better understanding of that study in its relations to the world and in its practical influence as a part of the environment of life, then isolation is important as a means to a much more important end. In the world of business and of life-activities the studies are not isolated. Now if the purpose of all education is to give a child an insight and a mastery of the school studies as artificially arranged and classified in books and schools, and not to give insight and mastery of life experiences and surroundings as they come to us, in practical life, then isolation of school studies may be looked upon as a goal in education.

But we are now fully awake to the fact that the most difficult thing in education is not the scientific mastery of facts as given in text-books and schools, but the ability to turn our school-acquired knowledge into useful channels in the tangled relations and difficulties of real life. School sciences are at the best artificial and unpractical. It is certain that the classification of the sciences and their isolation are the necessary prelude and introduction to a mas