Abstract
The standard histories of educational ideas have very little to say about Darwin.1 Where he does receive a mention, it is almost invariably in the context of general observations about the conflict between science and religion in the mid-nineteenth century2 or about the impact of scientific thinking on wider social fields, including education.3 At a slightly more practical level, a few commentators refer to Darwin in relation to arguments for the inclusion of science in the school curriculum and a corresponding diminution in the importance of classics.4 All this, however, is highly predictable. What is required is a sustained and systematic attempt to trace the influence of evolutionary thinking on the various fields which contributed to the shaping of educational theory and practice in the second half of the nineteenth century. This paper represents a first, tentative effort to map the territory. It will, inevitably, be a rough, working sketch rather than a finely-drawn piece of cartography, but it is hoped that others will be stimulated to refine and improve it.
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Notes
Paul Nash Models of Man: Explorations in the Western Educational Tradition (New York, 1968), p. 283.
Merle Curti, The Social Ideas of the American Educators ( Totowa, New Jersey, 1971 ), pp. 207–208.
On Darwin as a psychologist, see Howard E. Gruber, Darwin on Man: A Psychological Study of Scientific Creativity (London, 1974), pp. 218–242.
Robert Thomson, The Pelican History of Psychology (Harmondsworth, 1968), p. 108.
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species ed. J. W. Burrow (Harmondsworth, 1968, 1st edn, 1859).
See Robert C. Bannister, Social Darwinism: Science and Myth in Anglo-American Social Thought (Philadelphia, 1979), pp. 9–14–15.
J. D. Y. Peel, Herbert Spencer: The Evolution of a Sociologist (London, 1971), pp. 141–142.
Herbert Spencer, Education: Intellectual, Moral, and Physical (London, 1949; 1st edn, 1861 ).
Alexander Bain, Education as a Science (London, 1879), passim
David Wardle, English Popular Education 1780-1975 (Cambridge, 1976), p. 1.
A good recent study of Huxley’s evolutionary ideas is James G. Paradis, T. H. Huxley: Man’s Place in Nature ( Lincoln, Nebraska, 1978 ).
See, for example, his ‘Speech at the Royal Society Dinner’ (1894) in: Charles Darwin and T. H. Huxley, Autobiographies ed. Gavin de Beer (London, 1974), pp. 110–112.
The School Boards: What They Can Do, and What They May Do’ (1870) in T. H. Huxley, op. cit. (Note 35), Vol. Ill, pp. 374 - 403.
On the general climate of ideas, see Bernard Mehl, ‘Education in American History’, in: Foundations of Education ed. George F. Kneller (New York, 1963 ), pp. 1–42.
Darwin’s paper is included in The Collected Papers of Charles Darwin ed. Paul H. Barrett (Chicago and London, 1977), Vol. II, pp. 191-200.
Dorothy Ross, G. Stanley Hall: The Psychologist as Prophet (Chicago and London, 1972), p. 124.
On the influence of Preyer on G. Stanley Hall, see R. J. W. Selleck, The New Education 1870–1914 (London, 1968), p. 277.
Francis Galton, Memories of My Life (London, 1908), p. 287.
Francis Galton, Hereditary Genius (London, 1869), p. 1.
F. Galton, ‘Psychometric Experiments’, Brain II, 1879, pp. 149–162.
See Walter M. Humes, ‘Alexander Bain and the Development of Educational Theory’ in: The Meritocratic Intellect: Studies in the History of Educational Research ed. James V. Smith and David Hamilton (Aberdeen, 1980 ), pp. 15–29.
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© 1983 D. Reidel Publishing Company
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Humes, W. (1983). Evolution and Educational Theory in the Nineteenth Century. In: Oldroyd, D., Langham, I. (eds) The Wider Domain of Evolutionary Thought. Australasian Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-6986-5_2
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