AV #104 - A Treasure Found - a relative's book on education, written for Thomas Jefferson

Nov. 12, 2013

Looking back – were good schools and good teachers so different from today? 

                                part 1- #102 - Anne of Green Gables, by L.M. Montgomery (1908 ->)

                                part 2- #103 - Emma Willard School (1814)

                                part 3- #104 - A Treasure Found (1800)

“Education reform is a-historical, and this does not serve us well.  We operate as if we have no past to look to, to learn from, to build on.  We act as if we need to make it all up ex nihilo, as if nothing we ever did in education …  applies to teaching and learning in Colorado in 2013.”

Part 3 - A Treasure Found - a relative's book on education, written for Thomas Jefferson

“Why? Asks childhood, and the question is quite right.”

Once more, into the past—this time back to our nation’s early years.

What a treasure! I recently found a copy of National Education in The United States of America, written for Thomas Jefferson, by my (start counting!) great-great-great-great-great-grandfather (GG5) shortly after he came to America in 1800.  They had come to know each other in Paris in the 1780’s, when Jefferson was Minister to the Court of Louis XVI and my relative took part in negotiations with the new country.  In the final days of 1799, the Frenchman immigrated with his family to America.  That winter, he received this welcome from the Vice President:

                Jan. 17, 1800

          SIR,

   I have just heard, my dear friend, of your arrival/ and I hasten to welcome you to our shores, where you will at least be free from some of those sources of in-quietude which have surrounded you in Europe.

My relative (referred to hereon as GG5, or Pierre) and Jefferson met again that winter.  Writing from the nation’s temporary capital a few months later, Jefferson made a request:

                PHILADELPHIA Apr. 12, 1800

…I mentioned to you when you were here, that we had in contemplation in Virginia to establish a university or college on a re-formed plan; omitting those branches of science no longer useful or valued, tho hitherto kept up in all colleges, and introducing the others adapted to the real uses of life and the present state of things:… I wish to have your aid in this business also. I do not mean to trouble you with writing a treatise; but only to state what are the branches of science which in the present state of man ….

 So Pierre set out to write–surprise, a treatise!–on his educational ideas.  It went through several drafts over the next decade, and included three parts: Primary Schools; Secondary Schools or Colleges; and The University, or Rather the Special Schools for the Higher Sciences. I just read his (out of print) work, translated and with an introduction by my great-grandmother, “from the Second French edition of 1812,” and published by the University of Delaware Press in 1923.  As you can imagine, much of what he wrote in these 160 pages (Students will rise at 5 in the summer.… They will wear their hair short and comb it themselves.) is dated, even amusing.  And yet it is a thrill to read passages that speak to me—perhaps to you as well—over 200 years later. 
 

FIRST PART – PRIMARY SCHOOL (ages 7-10) - Children are “relentless inquisitors”  

No nation has “school books suitable for early childhood.”  America needs such books.

      It must always be remembered that children have a great desire to learn. They do nothing else. They are always in search of new sights and experiences; they are relentless inquisitors. And the reason they often dislike the school work which is provided for them is that it takes them from their chosen studies which they pursue freely and profitably in their walks and in their games, or in examining us with an interest of which we are unaware, and of which we do not realize that we are the objects. (13-14)
     It is important that these books should engage and satisfy the curiosity of the children, and should not bore them.

The young grades are most important (or, Lt. Gov. Garcia, keep up the focus on early childhood education).

      By the time they are seven years old most of them have acquired half of the impressions that they will gain in their whole life time, -and those impressions are the ones that will never be lost. (14)

 

     The primary schools will be the rich source of intelligence, morals and happiness for the nation.

GOOD STAY NEAR NEW YORK, May 6, 1800 To Mr. Jefferson   SIR, I am now about to busy myself upon the work with which you charged me. I should like this to be done in a manner worthy of you and the importance of the subject. But I dare not hope for so much. A plan of education which does not begin with the elementary school is what is called in France "the cart before the horse" [une charrue devant les boeufs].

         Those men in the Government who establish the higher schools of the University, will receive the applause which distinguished scholars so well know how to offer.

     The founders of the colleges will receive the gratitude of parents and pupils.

         The approval of heaven, the administration of posterity, the joy of a happy conscience are for the creators of the primary schools.

         Let us aspire to all those honors, all those pleasures and let us earn them. Let us leave to our children nothing to do but to thank us. (117-118)

A section on teaching includes points “Concerning physical instruction.”  (Makes the case for hands-on science.  Anticipates a concept on the Colorado Department of Education’s web site: provocative Inquiry Questions “should guide students’ thinking from concrete to abstract.”) 

   They should have some information on the natural history of animals and of common plants. Such subjects are interesting at all ages, and they will suggest some ideas on vegetation, both cultivation and harvests….
   Nothing is easier than to make this study a pleasure; it must be taught as nature herself would teach it without us, and as she has taught it to past generations.   Nature has never offered us an abstraction—only objects, physical things, that interest us and that we wish to understand. (17)

   When we teach a youth to pass from the very metaphysical conception of the point to    that of the line; from that of the line, still distinctly metaphysical, to that of the surface which at least means a definite thing to him; and from that of the surface to that of the solid, we reverse the natural order of observation. We keep his ideas too detached with no knowledge of what they are based on; therefore we tire him. Why? asks childhood, and the question is quite right. It is imperative that he be shown why, or we lose the great help that will be given by the natural activity of his mind. Can we expect that children will be attentive, that they will try,  that they will work at our command, when we ourselves only work for our own interest or self-satisfaction? (18)

The bored student—a timeless issue.  Pierre’s comment might be called “teacher bashing” today. But isn’t he putting the responsibility where it belongs?  Aren’t we too quick to blame the kids?

   When a child sees nothing new and learns nothing, he despises both his instructor and his work. The young and alert intelligence of pupils advances easily and that of their teachers usually grows lazy. We accuse students of indifference or stupidity when, unable to offer them material to strengthen and stimulate their minds, we force them back to games their own development has taught them are unprofitable or to the amusements of their younger brothers, and so curb and dwarf their mentality, sometimes permanently. (22-23)

SECOND PART – SECONDARY SCHOOLS OR COLLEGES (ages 10-17) 

Diane Ravitch might believe competition was introduced to public education only recently, and by greedy hedge fund managers (or is that redundant?).  But it is nothing new, and to Pierre, nothing to fear. While making the case for public schools, he also approves of private schools and home-schooling:

   To provide the means of education is a praiseworthy task which should be forbidden to no one.

   Teaching is a very honest and honorable way of earning one’s livelihood. It should be free like all work, and competition is as improving to educators as to men of any profession.

   And so, if adjoining the primary school authorized by the State and supported by its citizens, someone establishes a school in which he teaches by another method, let him….

The same liberty should be granted parents who wish to teach their children themselves…. (147-148)

To Pierre, competition from “free schools” can help state schools get better.  Still true, when public education sheds its defensive frame of mind and proves willing to learn from successful independent and public charter schools.  

… it would be an excellent thing if a large number of free schools, having no support except the genius and ability of the masters, should enter into competition with our national schools, criticize our methods, show us by their example and their success how we can improve. (150)

Principals should do the hiring.  Common sense, which district offices have just begun to relearn….

                The principal would command very little respect unless he had the right to nominate the professors and assistants and ….” (111)

                  In every special school or in every college, we must try to avoid dissension, to maintain unity of purpose, to insure that good appointments be made, by limiting the authority of the government or the administrators of public education to the selection of Principal for each college or school, and to the right to confirm or reject other agents of education; trusting to the intelligence and the interest of the Principal for a careful choice of his colleagues. His interest is in this matter the best guarantee that could be given that he will do his best. (159-160)

Pierre’s advice for new schools has happily been the approach taken by many of our best new charter schools: start one grade at a time.  (See KIPP, STRIVE, DSST, etc. See one factor in SOAR’s failure to intervene effectively at Oakland Elementary School.)

We must be careful lest we harm our work in our haste to complete it. Let us go step by step; let our courses grow one from another in their natural order. Let us allow for the formation of our colleges the six years demanded by the six classes that will be taught there, with the preparation of the seventh, by adding a new class each year for the pupils who have finished the preceding one. (108-109)

Balance!  Ask students to work hard … but make time for play. Under “Recreations” he states:

By giving variety to their lessons we have tried to satisfy the instinct of curiosity. But curiosity does not always mean love of work. In childhood it passes as quickly as it is kindled….  A medium must be sought…. (85)

He then lists five times during the day–from morning to after supper—“For Games and Liberty.”

We ask those who think it too much, not to judge us thoughtlessly from their heights of scholarship, but to look back to their boyhood and see whether they would have reproached us for the time lost, whether, indeed, they would not have promised us better work if we had been more interested in their play. (86)

Long before the publication of The Overscheduled Child (2001) or The Hurried Child (1981), my GG5 found it critical to give a child time to reflect—and a few words to reflect on:

… Everyone should be in bed at nine.… Perhaps after they are in bed the assistant professor might remind them by some such phrase as, “Good night, my friends, now is our time for self-consideration, and I leave you to your thoughts;”… But he should never permit himself to ask the result of his suggestion. No questioning of consciences!...

   Our only responsibility is to suggest a helpful idea, to do it at an opportune time, and to give children the habit of self-examination when they are quite alone, entirely free.… Every man who has not chosen evil ways, and who has an opportunity to look into his own mind, will be just and will advise himself wisely.  To enlighten and develop the conscience, to teach it to use its own reason and intelligence, independent of all human authority, in the presence of God alone—that should be the great service we render to youth. (84-85)

That last sentence might suggest no separation of church and state.  But Pierre’s own words suggest otherwise.  The “wall” between religion and public education is sound. And yet schools can still emphasize character and values.  Teachers can still address the conscience of our students.

   If … we wish our young people to feel an honest piety they must not be compelled to attend religious ceremonies. We have tried … to teach them to think, to know, to wish, to act, to cast their own vote, not merely on suggestion; and perhaps that is the most valuable of our ideas for national education. But if they have become free and intelligent beings, if they have learned to use their own judgment in their relations with their work and their friends, why should we not show them the way to a similar and more important development of their soul, that they may examine their own actions and judge between themselves and their conscience, in accordance with the ideas of good, or right, of justice and honesty, of which they have learned the principles in primary school…? (81-82)

**

Yes, I am lucky to be able to look back and listen to these insights from the past, from a relative no less, in this way.  But actually we are all fortunate—if we are willing to respect voices, ideas, practices—and lessons learned–from the past.  We should be less dismissive of what took place before we arrived on the scene.   This tendency, I believe, is one reason public education in America so often exhibits such blindness to efforts that failed, or succeeded—some just a few years ago!

Am I saying go back to the past?  Of course not. The stirring words from Abraham Lincoln—in his message to Congress in 1862—apply to school reform today: “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present…. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.”  But let’s also keep in mind the wisdom—and humility—in an even older classic line (dated 1676) from Isaac Newton: “If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”