CHAPTER X
Individuality and Education
I. THE VALUES OF INDIVIDUALITY
If we try to imagine what the world would be like if there were absolute uniformity among human beings, we realize anew the precious worth of individuality. It is marvelous that each one of us is unique. In all the generations there has never been another just like anyone, and there will never be exactly his like again. Each is, strictly speaking, irreplaceable.
By this inexhaustible diversity of mind and body life is faceted, and gives off sparkle instead of dullness. So far from being irritated by the idiosyncracies of our fellows, we ought to cherish their variety as a thing that makes life worth living. Instead of striving to force all children to learn the same things, at the same time, in the same way, because that would be cheap and convenient, we ought to foster individuality in its socially valuable aspects, so that the charm of human contact may be increased. To the connoisseur of human nature, the suggestion that all children be reduced to similarity is as dreadful as the suggestion to the connoisseur of art that all pictures and intaglios be turned out identical, by a uniform factory process.
Nor is the value of individuality limited to the æsthetics of personality, and to social intercourse. The economic peculiarities of the world, as we have it, permit the exercise of abilities in great variety. Organized society needs and will use capacity of all degrees, from that of a man who can load sand on a carrier, and be satisfied thereby, to that of the man who can with satisfaction work out a new theory of inflammation, or construct a drama to interpret existence anew.
Failure to know the facts concerning the distribution of mental traits, the organization of intellect, and the laws of heredity and variation, leads to much wasted effort on the part of all who deal by profession with people. The most frequent error is that of demanding that others adopt one’s own religious beliefs, standard of living, reaction time, or politics—usually with the idea that they will be greatly benefited thereby. Another common error of theory is that general happiness would be increased if some force could be established great enough to hold all down to the same plane of work, leisure, and reward. In education it has been assumed that justice would be well served by prescribing the same curriculum, at the same rate, at the same time, for every child.
If the uniformity of thought and action, to which these theories and practices tend, could be secured, the result would be deadening. Such uniformity cannot, however, be achieved, because of the biological forces of heredity and variation. The formulæ governing the interplay of these forces are little known, and they therefore lie outside of human control.
Many thinkers believe that nothing would be lost and much be gained for human welfare, by cutting off the variants who fall low in intellect and stability, and by increasing the number of those who fall highest, on the curve of distribution. However, it is possible to take, and perhaps to defend, the view that this would be meddlesome rather than helpful. Civilization becomes complex through the discoveries and inventions of superior deviates. It was they who invented wheel and lever, clock and calendar, court and statute book. They discovered the use of electricity, gravity, and steam. When moral life and industrial life become very complicated, great numbers of men are unable to meet the situations devised, and perish mentally, morally, and physically. Law may become so intricate that only the steadiest can suffer its restrictions. Mechanical and chemical contrivances may grow so numerous and complex that typical human nature cannot cope with them. Would it be better, then, to end invention at its source, by eliminating superior deviates? Or would mankind thereby lose other gifts, wholly benign for all, which only the superior deviate can bestow? In the absence of the highly endowed, would there not be a return to barbarism? And, if so, would the greatest good of the greatest number be thus promoted? Or should the welfare of the majority give way as a social ideal to the welfare of the best—the most capable, the most upright, the most enduring? Is it possible to evolve a social order in which the greatest good of all can be well served, since biological inequalities are so very great? These are questions for social and educational philosophy.
Men of science labor to acquire the knowledge that would give power to alter, at will, the shape of the curve of distribution for mental capacities. Such knowledge might work more changes in the world than have been wrought by knowledge of chemical formulæ or of electricity, but its right use would call for a wisdom and philosophical foresight which men at present probably do not have. The conditions and the theories that confront us in education call on us at present, as a matter of fact, to provide for the whole enormous range of capacities, general and special.
II. COMPULSORY EDUCATION
It is useful to recall that for centuries after mankind reached a point where prolonged formal education was available, attendance upon instruction was voluntary. Those who wished to learn what could be taught of the arts and sciences, hired tutors. It is true that the public ceremonies may, perhaps, be considered to have represented compulsory education, even in primitive times. However, education in the sense of several years of devotion to learning what men have previously done, thought, and devised, was formerly a private matter. The educated, who could communicate by writing, calculate in large numbers, see the present to some extent in the light of the past, and engage in even more complicated intellectual work, formed a small and highly selected group. They were individuals who loved learning, and their median IQ was doubtless far above 100.
As the white peoples of the earth, in parts of Europe and America, accumulated wealth, and more and more of those who cared to do so could buy education, political power began to be decentralized. Generous men of high intelligence conceived the idea that government should be representative. Political democracy with manhood suffrage was established in the United States. It was then seen that political democracy cannot be sustained on the basis of private education, and public money was appropriated to establish public schools.
Merely to establish free schools did not, however, solve the problem of education for a democracy. The leaders of thought and action found that not only must opportunity be provided, but many must be forced to take advantage of it. Compulsory education laws were therefore passed in many of our states, and they stand upon their statute books to-day. Truant officers became a part of the regular school staff, their duty being to apprehend all children between statutory ages, and bring them forcibly to school. The City of New York, for instance, now supports 308 truant officers, who are constantly kept busy by future citizens who wish to avoid education.
Why do they wish to avoid education? The reasons are various. Some of them avoid school because they have not enough clothing to wear; some because their parents need their earnings; some because they are ill; some because they are temperamentally unsuited to school discipline. The most important single cause of truancy is, however, that the curriculum does not provide for individual differences.
The curriculum upon which all children are now required by law to attend, is that which was formulated when only a few selected children were educated. Our schools are reading schools, and they teach abstract subject matter to a very great extent, much of which has no tangible relation to the life of many children. Children of IQ over 120 take pleasure in the abstract subject matter of grammar, mathematics, geography, and history. Children of IQ under 80 are made miserable thereby.
Not only is the curriculum not adapted to individual differences in general intelligence, but it is far less adapted to individual differences in special defects and aptitudes. The child who can never learn to sing is compelled nevertheless to pursue singing, even after school hours. The child who cannot learn reading by the method generally used is still treated by that method and no other. The schools were established with an undifferentiated curriculum, which they have tried to force upon intellects of an enormous range of diversity. Their purpose, so benign, has resulted in extraordinary cruelties and wastes.
III. THE IMPORTANCE OF GENERAL INTELLIGENCE FOR SCHOOL PROGRESS
If we examine mentally the large numbers of retardates in any public school where attendance is compulsory, we find that by far the majority of them are inferior in general intelligence. A child of superior general intelligence (IQ) is seldom found among retardates. Of children of 120 IQ and over, Terman reports that they are almost invariably at least up to grade. Whatever the vicissitudes of fate—illness, absence, special disability—a child of superior general capacity manages to hold his own, at least.
It is not true, however, that the superior child is allowed, under the undifferentiated curriculum, to make full use of his power. He is compelled to slow down to the typical progress of his group, and to use only a portion of his capacity for learning. It is rare to find a superior child who is doing “a full day’s work” in school, because the tasks assigned do not call for maximum effort. Superior children could easily do much more than is allowed.
General intelligence is, then, the single most important factor for school progress. The same may be said of progress in vocational careers. The life success of a human being may be said to depend upon general intelligence, character, health, and opportunity (including the factor of sex). If any of these factors is reduced to zero, so that the individual is totally lacking in intelligence, character, health, or opportunity there can be no achievement. The order of importance of the various factors is probably that in which they have been mentioned, with general intelligence certainly at the top of the list. Intelligence may create character, opportunity, and even health, but none of these can create intelligence.
IV. SPECIAL ABILITIES AND DISABILITIES AS DETERMINANTS OF SCHOOL PROGRESS
As before stated in these pages, no census has ever been taken of special aptitudes and defects, in the functions which we have been discussing, and which are important for progress through the elementary school. No one can tell whether any have been advanced on the basis of a special gift. No one can say how many children are retarded, because of a specialized disability, though we know from reports rendered, that some pupils become retarded in school status through special failure in one or two respects.
The children described under the topics of special retardation in reading and in arithmetic, in this volume, are illustrative of the way in which specialized defect contributes to retardation in school status. Without passable mastery of these “tool” subjects a child cannot proceed through the elementary school. His progress is halted, much as it would be if he were deficient in general intelligence.
It is quite possible, on the other hand, that children may be occasionally overrated as to intellect by teachers, who are deceived by conspicuous talent in a special function. Coy, who studied for two years a class of highly intelligent children in Columbus, has given an account of a boy who was thus overrated. When the children were being selected for the special class described, this boy was sent by his teacher to join the group. She considered that he must be “very bright,” “since he could draw cartoons, play the ukelele, and sing.” He was said by the art teacher to have more ability than any other child in the building. He was retained in the special class by the investigator, but he was not able to do good work there. His IQ on three annual testings stood as 114, 119, and 120. (The other children in the group possessed general intelligence clustering about an IQ of approximately 135.) This boy surpassed the others in music, acting, and drawing, but “his ability to reason was far below the class level,” and he could not compete successfully in general intellectual work. His teachers had been misled by his special gifts to recommend him as a child of surpassing intellect.
V. EXPERIMENTAL ATTEMPTS TO INDIVIDUALIZE EDUCATION
Official administrative recognition of individual differences among public school pupils began with the extremely stupid, whom we call feeble-minded. This was natural, because the feeble-minded are incapable of even approximately normal progress, and this, added to their tendency to become disciplinary problems, renders them an intolerable burden to teachers in the regular grades.
As long ago as 1872 we find that attention was called to the “pedagogical misfits,” in proceedings at professional teachers’ meetings in the United States. By 1890 the city of Cleveland had established two special classes for children presenting particular difficulties of discipline. Special classes for extremely dull children (the feeble-minded) have passed the stage of experiment. They are now an accepted part of the school system of many cities in this country, and a few state departments of education have undertaken to establish such special classes for districts not so favorably situated as cities are. The relative money cost of thus educating the most stupid children produced in our population is great, and the returns upon the investment are uncertain. We need careful studies of the cost of educating the dull, as compared with the cost of educating the superior, in the light of the returns from education, both to the public and to the individuals taught. The complexity of such study calls for much patience and ingenuity.
Special classes for children of very superior general intelligence, who are as far above the average as the feeble-minded are below, are at present much discussed by American educators. Such classes have actually been established in a few school systems. These are still considered to be experimental, but it surely will not be very long before official administrative recognition will be widely given to the needs of pupils whose natural rate of progress is over twice as rapid as that of the average child. Abroad, Germany has already undertaken education for gifted children as a special project of the public schools, in recognition, no doubt, of the extent to which national rehabilitation will be dependent on the training of the able. Contrary to pre-war policy, German educators are now seeking, by the method of mental tests, for superior mental endowment regardless of social-economic status, and even to some extent regardless of sex.
In general it is true that the provisions in the United States are for deviates so extreme in all capacities that their maladjustment to typical procedure creates a troublesome school problem on the one hand, and on the other a burden to the conscience of those who administer education. Classroom teachers demand that special attention be given to those who are chronically unpromotable and out of order, while educational psychologists insist upon the waste of ability that ensues from allowing gifted children to idle through the curriculum. For deviates of less degree there is not much provision. A few cities, of which Oakland, California, may be mentioned as an outstanding example, have adopted a three-rates-of-progress system, in which the children of typical ability (the great majority) proceed at a median rate, the lowest quartile (exclusive of the very lowest percentile) proceeding more slowly, and the highest quartile more rapidly. The system provides a flexibility far in advance of the ordinary one-rate-of-progress system, allowing for individual differences in general intelligence.
Little attention has been given as yet to the matter of individualizing public education for children who show special talents or defects. Some years ago the superintendent of schools in Munich requested the teachers of certain grades throughout the city, to ask each child to draw two sketches: one from a model, and the other a free sketch. These were sorted for the purpose of finding exceptional talent in drawing. A certain per cent of the children showing this special gift were sought out and encouraged. Particular attention was given to the development of their talents.
Similar instances of official attempts to gauge and foster special talents are extremely rare. The experiment at Winnetka, Illinois, is of this order. In Winnetka there is a flexible promotion system, wherein pupils “pass” in a subject whenever they have completed the work therein. A pupil may be in different grades in different subjects. His whole school career need not be jeopardized by a single weakness, and if he has a special strength he is permitted to develop it as original nature would dictate.
At first thought it might seem that a public school system would be thrown into confusion by such a scheme. In Winnetka there are thirty to thirty-five pupils in a classroom. How can programs be arranged to suit the needs of deviating children, without much extra equipment?
Here it is necessary to recall that the majority of these children are typical. The middle 50 per cent of all children born deviate but slightly from the type of the race, in all their mental functions. They do not call for special adjustments. On either side of these, deviating more widely toward less and greater, run the remainder of the children, in very rapidly decreasing frequencies. Those who need a very wide latitude in school organization constitute possibly 20 per cent of all, the highest 10 per cent, and the lowest 10 per cent, in general or special capacity. The problem does not seem so vast, when we recall the shape of the curve of distribution; and the comparative infrequency of extremely unusual children.
VI. THE COST OF FOSTERING INDIVIDUALITY
The cost of individualizing education acts as a deterrent, even when the desirability is fully recognized. Compulsory education for all the children of all the people is expensive. A nation must be wealthy in order to carry it through. To maintain every child born into the social order for fourteen to sixteen years without earnings, and to pay from public taxation for his education for eight to ten or more of those years, is an enterprise upon which few societies of any time have ventured. Nevertheless, if democracy is to survive, and especially if it is to improve, as a form of government, universal education on a large scale is basic. Self-government, in the highly complicated environment which has been evolved, depends on literacy and other knowledge, requiring long instruction, even for youth of average ability.
What then of the great numbers of those who deviate in various degrees below the average in capacity for learning? The social order needs and will utilize their services. The economics of their presence in the republic is not a much more difficult problem than under other forms of government. It is the politics of their presence that causes concern under a democracy; for they are enfranchised, yet without learning they are political dependents. They stand at the mercy of any catch word tossed at them, with results which have raised on every hand an earnest searching of democracy.
For example, this question has been raised: Is it possible for education to prepare the lower half of the distribution curve for self-government? Considering recent discoveries as to the mental capacity which characterizes the lower half of the population when adult, is it possible that education will ever be able to nullify the charlatan influence of demagogues, whose appeal is to prejudice and cupidity? These questions remain unanswered. In the meantime the great experiment of compulsory education is under way. The expense of it is kept down by teaching the children in large groups of thirty to fifty or over, the same lessons, in the same way, at the same time.
What would be the actual money cost of providing for individual differences in capacities, general and special? Few data to answer this question have been furnished. In Winnetka the cost of education is reported as not increased. This condition is doubtless exceptional. As previously stated, the money cost of individualizing education for the feeble-minded has been considerable. We have the figures from Cincinnati, and we derive from them that the cost of educating a feeble-minded child (one falling into the lowest one or two per cent in the distribution of general intelligence) in a special class, is over twice as great per annum as is the cost of educating an average child in the regular grades. For a feeble-minded child in a special class in Cincinnati, during the year 1917 to 1918, the money cost per annum was $83, while for a typical child in the regular grades it was $35.
The increased cost results from the fact that when education is individualized, the number of pupils occupying a room and taught by a teacher is about fifteen, instead of the regular number of thirty to fifty. If, roughly, 20 per cent of all pupils deviate from the typical so extremely as to require a considerable amount of individual instruction for their welfare, it is difficult to see how they may be well served without a considerable increase in the money cost of education.
Can the public afford to pay more than it now does? Investigations to answer this question are under way on a large scale. We need to know what our country can now pay, in order that we as educators may not commit the folly on the one hand of urging unwarrantable expenditure, nor on the other hand of failing to ask the appropriation of all that can be spared for the development of individual capacity in the nation’s children.
VII. THE PROBABLE REWARDS OF INDIVIDUALIZING EDUCATION
Even the money returns from scientifically differentiated education would probably be great, aside from the increase in children’s happiness, in teachers’ enjoyment, and in adults’ satisfaction. The tangible values of individualized training might be nearly as great as its intangible values.
When we reflect closely upon the source of wealth, we see that it comes from the attack of intellect upon the environment. Apes have no wealth. Man has wealth only in so far as he acts upon selective thinking in regard to his environment. A society gains wealth only in so far as it permits and encourages the use of innate capacities for attack upon the environment, which lie unequally distributed throughout the juvenile population. Any theory of wealth that fails to ground itself upon this fact will but destroy those who seek to practice it.
No nation has ever yet shown what the full reward might be of adapting education to individual differences. Such a demonstration has been impossible hitherto, if for no other reason than that there was no known method of gauging children’s abilities scientifically.
In the older social orders, where education was or is caste-bound, it is highly probable that on the whole education was and is more fairly adapted to individual differences than it is with us. Those barbarians who had much capacity for abstract thinking achieved by trial and success high-caste status, of which they ultimately became conscious. The aristocracy of older countries was not established by forces outside of human nature. The nobles were in the first place those who rose to power because they were stronger, more enduring, and more capable of thinking than average men. Caste grew out of human nature itself. The majority of the nobles’ children were capable by heredity of abstract thinking, and of acquiring the education, which came finally through centuries to be provided for them. The majority of those who failed to achieve high-caste status before it became recognized as such were doubtless chiefly individuals who produced descendants, on the average ill adapted to profit from the kind of education established for the children of the higher castes.
In Great Britain, for example, where social organization was and is frankly based in theory and practice on caste (upper-caste status being, however, constantly kept open to adults of unusual achievement), Burt found that boys of upper-caste family, attending an exclusive high-class school, surpassed in all respects, in mental tests, sons of middle-class parents, of equal age, attending common schools. It is necessary, though outrageous to our prejudices, to face the fact that, in our own country (where caste is despised in theory and to some extent in practice), the median capacity of pupils in expensive private schools is well above the average of the juvenile population at large.
Caste-bound education in older civilizations recognizes innate individual differences to a considerable extent. Its injustice is that it does not recognize them completely. Caste takes account of individual differences due to heredity, but it does not regard those due to variation. Caste neglects to provide for the overlapping which occurs among the children of parents of different achievement levels. In a society founded formally on caste, there is no way provided for the appropriate education of gifted variants who occur in the lower castes, and for those of inferior ability born into the higher castes. Artificial barriers to natural achievement have arisen, because the consciousness of superior status was accompanied by jealousy of it as well. Revolt against this injustice to the minority (not recognized, however, as minority by the rebels) led to the opposite injustice, which we see practiced in the schools of our own democracy.
In the United States the theory was adopted that all men are created equal. All children must, therefore, be required to take the same education. Such a system violates individuality even more painfully and wastefully than the despised caste system of the older countries does.
As scientific psychology improves the methods of testing for individual differences in children, it will become possible to educate each one according to his capacity for learning. It will be possible to conserve and develop the special aptitudes of every child, regardless of race, sex, or circumstance. The humiliation and despair of chronic failure at prescribed tasks unsuited to capacity may be spared every child.
Thus we come again to consider tests of innate educability in The Republic: “We must watch them from their youth upwards, and make them perform actions in which they are most likely to forget or to be deceived, and he who remembers and is not deceived is to be selected.” That will be the way.
REFERENCES
Cameron, E. H.—Psychology and the School; The Century Co., New York, 1921.
Clark, E.—“The Growth of Cities and Their Indebtedness for Schools”; Elementary School Journal, 1918.
Elliott, C. H.—Variations in Achievements of Pupils; Teachers College, Columbia University, 1915.
Franzen, R.—The Accomplishment Ratio; Teachers College, Columbia University, 1922.
Judd, C. H.—“Analysis of Learning Processes and Specific Teaching”; Elementary School Journal, 1921.
Mayberry, L. W.—“Individualizing Problems for Pupils”; Elementary School Journal, 1917.
Rugg, H. O.—“School Costs and Business Management”; Elementary School Journal, 1917.
Spaulding. F. E.—“A Million a Year”; Monograph No. 1, Board of Education, Minneapolis, 1916–17.
Spaulding, F. E.—“Financing the Minneapolis Schools”; Monograph No. 2; Board of Education, Minneapolis, 1916–17.
Terman, L. M.—The Intelligence of School Children; Houghton Mifflin Co., 1919.
Thorndike, E. L.—“Education for Initiative and Originality”; Teachers College Record, 1916.
Washburn, C.—“The Individual System in Winnetka”; Elementary School Journal, 1920.
Woolley, H. T.—Feeble-minded Ex-School Children; Helen S. Trounstine Foundation, Cincinnati, 1921.
Zirbes, L.—“Diagnostic Measurement as a Basis for Procedure”; Elementary School Journal, 1918.