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CHAPTER XVIII.

CORRELATION OF STUDIES.

[The two following papers continue the discussion aroused by the report of the Committee of Fifteen, from a new point of view.]

ISOLATION AND UNIFICATION AS BASES OF COURSES OF STUDY.!

By Emerson E. White, LL. D., Columbus, Ohio.

An important condition in the development of any science is the use of clearly defined terms to denote its facts and principles. This is strikingly illustrated in the development of the natural and physical sciences. The terminology of chemistry, physics, and biology has made these sciences possible. It is difficult to see how they could be presented in language without the use of definite technical terms, not only to denote phenomena, but principles and laws. Most of the terms in the present science of electricity lie outside of the vocabulary of the general scholar, and are known only to specialists in the science. The same is true, to a greater or less degree, of all the modern trades, professions, and arts. Each has a large glossary of technical terms peculiar to itself, each term having a definite meaning.

It is one of the recognized infelicities of the science of psychology that so many of its terms are in general literature, where they are used with varying and often diverse significations. Indeed, one of the first conditions of the intelligent reading of a work on psychology is the determining of the definite meaning of the terms used by the author-not always an easy task. No psychologist who uses important terms in different senses, or with the meaning obscure, can be a successful author. This is specially true in that branch of psychology known as moral science or ethics. Much of the inconclusive and fruitless discussion which besets the student of ethics is due to the fact that the disputants use terms in different senses. A common source of disagreement is the use of words by one party with a larger or smaller content than the other, and this is true even when these contents contain a considerable common element.

We thus approach one of the serious obstacles in the development of a science of pedagogy. Its terminology presents a most striking contrast to that of the physical sciences. Many of its terms are borrowed from psychology and ethics, not a few from philosophy, and these from authors who use the same terms in different senses. Indeed, the science of pedagogy has a very small vocabulary of technical terms, which are used by all writers with the same meaning. This fact is the source of wide confusion in thought and much fruitless discussion. It must be evident to every careful observer that the movement in recent pedagogical inquiry is the reverse of the movement in other modern sciences. Instead of careful differentiation and the use of special terms to denote things that differ, there is in pedagogy much ambitious generalization and the use of terms that express indefinite and vague entities-terms that have been appropriately called "blanket words," since they so readily cover a group of diverse ideas. I frankly confess that I read articles and listen to

From the Proceedings of the Department of Superintendence of the National Educational Associa. tion at its meeting in Jacksonville, Fla., February 18-20, 1896.

ED 96-30

929

addresses on pedagogy that bafile my understanding, not, as I flatter myself, because they are too deep for me, but because of their vagueness and obscurity. Much of the present conflict of opinion in pedagogy is largely due to the fact that those who differ do not understand each other, and it is doubtful if each one always understands himself.

We have an instructive example of this difficulty in the discussion of the past year over the place and value of “correlation," "coordination," and "concentration" in school instruction. The discussion has been a Babel confusion of ideas, if not of tongues, and well-meant attempts to settle the pedagogical meaning of these terms have only added to the confusion. After all that has been said, several writers for the educational journals are using the incongruous terms coordination and concentration as synonymous. One of the surprises of the profession was the expressed expectation that a recent report on the " correlation of studies" would be devoted to a discussion of the theory of concentration!

The desire to be understood in the present paper has led me to avoid, as far as possible, these badly mixed up terms, and to use instead terms that are more definite and fundamental. For this purpose I have selected the terms "isolation" and "unification" as denoting opposite processes and results.

The term isolation, as used herein, denotes the separation of a branch of study from other branches for the purposes of instruction—the teaching of it in a separato exercise. I do not use the term in the sense of exclusion. The isolation of a branch of knowledge in instruction does not involve the exclusion of all the facts and skill that may have their origin in other branches. For example, the isolation of arithmetic as a school exercise does not mean that the data for its problems may not be taken from another branch of study. It simply means the making of instruction and drill in number the central and controlling end of the exercise, the unit of activity. The same is true of isolation as applied to the other branches of the course.

The term unification is used in a contrary sense. The unification of two or more branches of study means their union in instruction in such manner as makes them one branch, with a common sequence of facts, and taught with a common end or purpose. The term is not limited to any particular mode of uniting the several subjects. For our present purpose it makes no difference whether they are united as coordinate elements, or whether one is made the principal or core and the others subordi nated to it, as we construct complex sentences.

The term unification is, however, exclusive of isolation. It does not include the teaching of branches in separate exercises, however skillfully these exercises are related to each other. If two branches are taught in separate exercises, each having its appropriate and special development, they are not unified in any true pedagogical sense. For the purposes of instruction they are isolated. Nor is this fact of isolation changed if the several separate exercises all center in the pupil and actaally contribute to one teaching result. All rational instruction necessarily centers in the pupil, and in this respect methods do not essentially differ. The essential fact. in complete unification is the unity of the subjects or branches in actual instructiontheir oneness in the teaching process.

This leads to the natural division of the studies of a school course into coordinate groups or unities. Fortunately this subject has been too ably and too exhaustively discussed in this presence to require further elucidation. The only question is whether there are more or less than five coordinate groups of studies. Dr. Harris admits that there is a sixth coordinate group of knowledge, the one that includes religious truth-the fifth in Dr. Thomas Hill's "hierarchy of studies;" and Dr. De Garmo's earnest plea for the recognition of three coordinate groups, the third being called the "economic," necessitates, if conceded, the adding of a seventh coordinate group-a group that includes drawing, construction, book keeping, etc., and better designated the "industrial art" group. Whether these two additional coordinate groups or be not, recognized as belonging to the school course does not concern our

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present purpose. The important fact is that, while these coordinate groups, whether five or seven, have certain interrelations, they have a different origin, a different law of sequence, and, as a consequence, a different development; and it follows that no one of these coordinate groups can be united with another coordinate group by making the one or the other subordinate. Coordinate entities can not be unified on the principle of subordination. This is a fact of prime importance in pedagogy. If the existence of coordinate groups of studies be once conceded, the Ziller theory of concentration is left in the air, since this involves subordination.

It is also plain that, in discussing the question of unification, a clear distinction must be made between the unifying of allied subjects in the same group and the unifying of subjects that belong in different coordinate groups. A failure to observe this distinction is resulting in much confusion. There is necessarily a close relation between subjects in the same natural group, and their union at different points in instruction may, as a consequence, be both feasible and desirable. But the unifying of coordinate branches is a different matter. Take, for example, the several subjects that make up the mathematical group. Whether arithmetic, algebra, and geometry shall be taught tandem, or the elements of algebra and concrete geometry run abreast of arithmetic in the latter part of the arithmetical course, is a pedagogical question that can be best settled by experience. This is simply the proper correlation of allied subjects within a group. But the harnessing of mathematics to history or to natural science is another procedure. It constitutes a team of pedagogic animals that do not naturally travel the same road or in the same direction.

The unifying of allied subjects within a group and the unification of separate coordinate groups are very different pedagogic problems. The distinction has a parallel in the difference of the powers of the signs and — and the signs X and÷÷ in algebra, the former denoting relations between terms and the latter the relations of numbers within a term. It is important to keep this distinction in mind, for it is easy to pick out facts, and even groups of facts, in allied subjects which are so closely related that they may be taught together with obvious advantage, and then cite these instances as evidence that unification is a universal principle of teaching. It should also be kept in mind that the unifying of closely related facts or groups of facts selected from separate branches is not the unification of the branches as wholes. A teacher may, for example, use the transparency of glass to illustrate the meaning of a lucid style in writing, but this would hardly be the unification of physics and rhetoric. The pedagogic purpose is not to teach the transparency of glass. The same is true when the skill acquired in one branch is used as an aid in teaching another. Thus, skill in drawing may be utilized in teaching geography, but this is not, in any true sense, the unification of drawing and geography, and, whenever it may be desirable to call such a procedure unification, care should be taken not to broaden the meaning to a unifying of the branches of study.

We are prepared to ask whether either isolation or unification can be made the basis of a course of study. It may be helpful in this inquiry to note that each of these principles may have three quite distinct degrees of application, as follows: INSOLATION.-First degree: Complete; all branches taught separately throughout the course. Second degree: General isolation, with incidental blendings; especially in primary instruction, including the language arts. Third degree: Coordinate branches for development and drill, with rational blendings of allied subjects when relations are close and helpful; especially in elementary instruction.

UNIFICATION.-Third degree: Allied subjects at points of close relation, especially in elementary instruction, with isolation of all coordinate branches for special development and drill. Second degree: Groups; all branches united in two or three coordinate groups, each with a central core; incidental isolation of branches for special development and drill. First degree: Complete; all branches united in one organic whole, with a central core.

It is here seen that isolation is considered complete when it applies to each branch

of instruction, whether the end be knowledge or skill, and to each branch from the beginning to the end of the course. It seems unnecessary to add that this degree of isolation is not found in the American school. Spelling and reading were united more or less closely long before I was a pupil, and the same has long been true of the elements in other allied branches. Complete isolation is neither practicable nor desirable.

The second degree of isolation more nearly represents the practice of the modern school. The coordinate groups of studies are isolated in instruction, except in the lowest grades, and the well-defined branches in each group are taught, as a rule, in separate exercises. There is, however, an increasing blending of the school arts, especially in primary grades, the arts of reading, spelling, writing, and language having many close relations and possibly interunions. Advantage is also taken of the natural relations between allied subjects, and there is much incidental blending of these subjects in actual instruction. But in many schools unification is not intelligently sought as an end. What is done in this direction is incidental, and only the more simple associations are attempted. Isolation is the dominant principle, unification being incidental and exceptional.

The third degree of isolation will be best explained in connection with the same degree of unification.

Complete unification is the blending of all subjects and branches of study into one whole and the teaching of the same in successive sections. When this union is effected by making one group or branch of study in the course the center or core and subordinating all other subjects to it, the process is properly called the concentration of studies. In such a unification of subjects the principle of sequence and development of the central or core study necessarily dominates the entire group, and the proper development of each subordinate study is sacrificed. Nor is this result avoided by making the child the center, whatever this may mean, since this ignores the principle of development in all branches. Complete unification of school studies is neither practicable nor desirable.

In the second degree of unification all branches and subjects are united in two or three coordinate groups, each with a central core. It recognizes coordination as a true and fundamental principle in a course of school studies; and it allows each coordinate group to have its own principle of development, contenting itself with those natural and simple associations which are easily established between subjects in the same group. It also permits the isolation of the coordinate branches in actual instruction, and their systematic treatment. All this means much, for, if the principle of isolation applies to coordinate groups because they are coordinate, it necessarily applies to all the coordinate groups in a course, whatever be the number of such groups.

If the attempt to subordinate mathematics to literature or history leads to fantastic results, as is conceded, the same will be true of an attempt to subordinate either physical or biological science to the so-called culture studies. Hence the argument for two or for three coordinate groups, each with its own sequence and development, concedes the whole ground; and we thus again reach the fact, making one subordinate to the other. Coordination excludes subordination.

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A glance at the outline given above will suffice to show that the third degree of unification and the third degree of isolation are practically the same. They differ chiefly in emphasis, one putting the emphasis on unification and the other on isolation. Both agree in the unification of allied subjects and closely related facts, and both require the isolation of coordinate branches for development and dr proposes to subject one branch of study to the principle of development to another, but each branch and subject is to receive such separate tre nature demands. Both agree that unification is most feasible in elemen tion where the association of facts is simple and easy. It is obvious from this survey that the application falls largely within the details of actual instructi

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