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William Chandler Bagley's Changing Views on the Relationship Between Psychology and Education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Erwin V. Johanningmeier
Erwin V. Johanningmeier*
Affiliation:
University of South Florida
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Extract

In 1938 Michael Demiashkevich, professor of education at the George Peabody College for Teachers, and F. Alden Shaw, principal of the Detroit Country Day School, founded the Essentialist Movement at the annual meeting of the American Association of School Administrators. At that Atlantic City meeting, William Chandler Bagley delivered an address—“An Essentialist's Platform for the Advancement of American Education.” Like any tag, the essentialist tag that has been pinned on Bagley obscures as much as it designates. It has drawn attention away from the greater part of his career as an educationist, obscuring many of the problems he encountered and attempted to resolve.

Type
Research Article
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , Spring 1969 , pp. 3 - 27
Copyright
Copyright © 1969 by New York University 

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References

Notes

1. Borrowman, Merle “Liberal Education and the Professional Preparation of Teachers,“ in Teacher Education in America (New York: Teachers College Press, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1965), p. 12.Google Scholar

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13. See American Journal of Psychology, XII no. 1 (October 1900), 80–130.Google Scholar

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18. Bagley suggested to O'Shea that he read Titchener's articles on functionalism in the Philosophical Review. Bagley to O'Shea, July 16, 1901. Michael Vincent O'Shea Papers, The State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, Wis.Google Scholar

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20. Bagley to O'Shea, December 9, 1904.Google Scholar

21. Bagley, William C. The Educative Process (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1905), p. vi.Google Scholar

22. Colvin, Stephen S. and Bagley, William C., Human Behavior: A First Book in Psychology for Teachers (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1913), p. v.Google Scholar

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24. Ibid., p. vi.Google Scholar

25. Ibid., p. v.Google Scholar

26. Ibid., p. 2.Google Scholar

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28. Ibid., p. 22.Google Scholar

29. Bagley, William C. Classroom Management (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1907), p. v.Google Scholar

30. Ibid., pp. v–vi.Google Scholar

31. Ibid., p. vi.Google Scholar

32. Ibid., p. 16.Google Scholar

33. Bagley, William C. “Optimism in Teaching“ (1908), reprinted in Bagley's Craftsmanship in Teaching (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1911), p. 41.Google Scholar

34. The topic of “educational values” turns out to be a very complicated one, and is, in itself, a topic worthy of another paper. In one sense, it is Bagley's attempt to answer Herbert Spencer's question: “What knowledge is of most worth?” For a discussion of Bagley's “educational values,” see my “A Study of William Chandler Bagley's Educational Doctrines and his Program for Teacher Preparation, 1895–1918” (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois, Urbana, III., 1967), pp. 160–63. Also see Bagley's Educational Values (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1911); and his “Educational Values,” Proceedings of the Pennsylvania State Educational Association (Lancaster, Pa., 1915).Google Scholar

35. Bagley, William C. “The Psychology of School Practice,“ The Psychological Bulletin, VI, no. 3 (March 15, 1909), 78.Google Scholar

36. The method was set forth in Educational Values. Google Scholar

37. Bagley, “Psychology of School Practice,“ p. 79.Google Scholar

38. Ibid. Google Scholar

39. Bagley, William C. and Alexander, Thomas, The Teacher of the Social Studies, Part XIV of the Commission on the Social Studies Reports, American Historical Association (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1937), p. 20. Bagley was credited with that part of the book from which this quotation was taken.Google Scholar

40. Bagley, William C. “Recent Studies on Periodicity in Mental Development,“ The Psychological Bulletin, VI, no. 6 (June 15, 1909), 188–18.Google Scholar

41. Bagley, Educational Values, p. v.Google Scholar

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43. Bagley, William C. “A Plea for the Scientific Study of Educational Problems,“ Kansas School Magazine, I, no. 2 (February 1912), 54.Google Scholar

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45. Ibid., p. 55.Google Scholar

46. For the text of the debate, see David Snedden, “Fundamental Distinctions between Liberal and Vocational Education, I,” NEA Proceedings (1914); and William C. Bagley, “Fundamental Distinctions between Liberal and Vocational Education, II,” ibid. For an account of the debate and others’ reactions to it, see Walter H. Drost, “Social Efficiency and the Curriculum: The Professional Career of David Snedden” (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wis., 1965).Google Scholar

47. Bagley, “Fundamental Distinctions between Liberal and Vocational Education, II,“ p. 164.Google Scholar

48. Ibid. Google Scholar

49. Twenty years before the Snedden-Bagley debate, Bagley was just being graduated from the Michigan Agricultural College and was about to begin his teaching at Garth. As was shown earlier in this paper, in the summer between his two years at Garth, he attended the University of Chicago where he studied psychology and physiology. From Garth, he went on to the University of Wisconsin and Cornell University where he studied psychology, education and the nervous system, and took his advanced degrees. Bagley's first book, The Educative Process (1905), reflected his studies. In it he accepted and built upon Titchener's definition of apperception “as ‘a perception whose character is determined wholly or chiefly by the peculiar tendencies of a nervous system rather than by the nature of the thing perceived’ “ (p. 91). The next book, Classroom Management (1907), was based on the distinction Bagley had made between habit and judgment in his first book. Bagley had also studied the relationship between teaching and periods of mental growth and attempted to give recommendations about the teaching of morality based on that study (see William C. Bagley, “The Pedagogy of Morality and Religion as Related to the Periods of Development,” Religious Education, IV, no. 1 [April 1909]). And he had even tried his hand at teaching genetic psychology at Teachers College, Columbia University in the summer of 1908.Google Scholar

50. Bagley, William C. to Edmund J. James, President, University of Illinois, April 27, 1915, University of Illinois Archives, Urbana, Ill.Google Scholar

51. Bagley, William C. “The Status of the Classroom Teacher,“ NEA Proceedings (1918), pp. 384–38.Google Scholar

52. Ibid., p. 385.Google Scholar

53. Ibid. Google Scholar

54. Bagley, William C. “The Distinction between Academic and Professional Subjects,“ NEA Proceedings (1918), p. 230.Google Scholar

55. Ibid. Google Scholar

56. Ibid. Google Scholar

57. Ibid. Italics are mine.Google Scholar

58. Bagley, William C. “Curricula of the Normal Schools,“ in Learned, William S., Bagley, William C., et. al., The Professional Preparation of Teachers for American Public Schools, Bulletin Number 14 (New York: The Carnegie Foundation, 1920), pp. 179–17.Google Scholar

59. Ibid., p. 180.Google Scholar

60. Ibid. Google Scholar

61. Ibid. Google Scholar

62. Ibid. Google Scholar

63. Ibid., p. 181.Google Scholar

64. In Classroom Management, Bagley told the teacher that, in principle, he was directly responsible to the head of the school system, the superintendent. But in practice the “principal of the building” usually intervened between the teacher and the superintendent. The principal was responsible for the operation and the conduct of the school. To illustrate the power, responsibility and authority of the principal Bagley compared him to the captain of a ship. The captain read his orders—the course of study—and passed them on to the teacher. In turn, the teacher saw to it that the students learned the designated habits, skills, information and ideals. This scheme required a teacher to give his loyalty to the principal. Loyalty meant, Bagley wrote, “unquestioned obedience.” For the teacher who could not offer such obedience, said Bagley, “his resignation is the only alternative” (p. 262; italics are Bagley's).Google Scholar

65. Bagley, “Curricula of the Normal Schools,“ p. 180.Google Scholar

66. Ibid. Google Scholar

67. Ibid., p. 181.Google Scholar

68. Bagley, William C. “School Management,“ Cyclopedia of Education, Paul Monroe, ed. (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1911), V. 282.Google Scholar

69. Bagley, William C. Determinism in Education (Baltimore: Warwick and York, 1925), p. 16.Google Scholar

70. Bagley, William C. Education, Crime, and Social Progress (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1931), p. 121.Google Scholar

71. For a complete account of Bagley's interpretation and use of the hypotheses of emergent evolution, see Thomas David Moore, “Emergent Evolutionism and the Educational Theory of William Chandler Bagley” (Unpublished Ed.D. dissertation, Rutgers—The State University, New Brunswick, N.J., 1966).Google Scholar

72. Bagley, William C. Education and Emergent Man (New York: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1934), p. vii.Google Scholar