Introducing the Philosophy of Education and Pedagogy of Chauncey Wright

Lucio Angelo Privitello Introducing the Philosophy of Education and Pedagogy of Chauncey Wright Proper modesty does not forbid that I should try myself by a little experiment in teaching, with the possibility in view that I may prevail against the hosts of the enemy ...' In this paper I will introduce the philosophy of education and pedagogy of Chauncey Wright (1830-1875). Though much work has been done on the philosophy of Wright, none of the many commentators have provided a detailed analysis of his philosophy of education and pedagogy.2 This is unfortunate since Wright himself was a crucial figure in the discussions concerning the relative merits of the classical view of pedagogy, while complementing Harvard's president Eliot's desire to widen the curriculum and to introduce the elective system that became the dominant view in American universities. Though Wright's experiments in teaching met with less than glowing reviews, especially at Harvard College, and less so at Agassiz's School for young ladies in Cambridge, he was a brilliant conversationalist, a generous letter writer, and a catalyst for forming intellectual communities.3 Notwithstanding the lack of formal treatises or sustained employment as lecturer at a university, Wright's philosophical investigations of education and pedagogy through his articles and letters challenge, inspire and serve as a worthy prototype of a philosophy of pedagogy.4 I. Wright's Pedagogical Counter-movements It is an interesting question, how much injury may be done by the influence of false views of philosophy, in the aims and methods of education now-a-days.5 Wright's "The Conflict of Studies," originally entitled "Todhunter's Conflict of Studies" appeared in The North American Review, vol. 121, no. 248, July 1875.6 His article was a response to Isaac Todhunter's (1820-1884) The Conflict of Studies, and Other Essays on Subjects connected with Education (London: Macmillan, 1873). Wright's review can be seen as part of the Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society Summer, 2005, Vol. XLI, No. 3 628 Lucio Angelo Privitello ongoing debate on American educational reform recorded in a flurry of articles in The Nation, Atlantic Monthly, and Harpers during the mid-nineteenth century, especially between 1865 and 1910.7 Wright focused on the first essay of Todhunter's collection, a thirty-three page essay that also gives the tide to Wright's review, "The Conflict of Studies." Todhunter's text also includes five other essays of which Wright mentions three, if not by tide, certainly by subject matter. These essays are "Competitive Examination," "Academical Reform," and "Elementary Geometry." It is with the later that Wright begins his review, specifically with the mention of the use of Euclid's elements of geometry, and its superiority to any recent textbook on elementary geometry, a position held by the conservative Todhunter, who in 1873 was a principle mathematical lecturer at St. John's College, Cambridge. Before proceeding with Wright's critique of Todhunter's text, it is important to note in a brief way the state of American education around the time of Wright's review. The benefits of the early growth of American colleges have been admirably recorded by Thelin (2004), who provides the reader with administrative, economic, and literary examples of the growing pains of American higher education. In colonial America, and more so after the Revolution, the Oxford-Cambridge structure of academic governance, or faculty control over colleges (and in England for the university itself), was shifted to the appointment of a dean for undergraduate studies, a board of trustees ("the Corporation"), and a president appointed by the Overseers.8 This administrative change was modeled on Scottish universities, and in the States, saw a gain in the corporate powers, funding, and ultimately the academic reform towards the Elective System. What the American system did not adopt from the Scottish and English universities was the fixed curriculum, where students needed to devote themselves to a single subject.9 The American university (especially at Johns Hopkins) found an example in the German university, minus its state control of education, where students were able to attend lectures outside their own fields. The elective system, applicable to a candidate's first degree, and...