On SPENCER's Education Thought

The most conspicuous characteristics of Spencer's educational thought is the consistent adaptation of the evolutional theory to it. In the intellectual, moral, and physical education, it is the vital principal that the educational method must follow the natural development which the evolutional theory made clear. Spencer restated scientifically the ideas of the modern education, “the natural development,” “the innate human nature,” and “the indivi duality”, which his predecessors, Rousseau and Pestalozzi demonstrated rather intuitively. About the aim of education, he argued from the evolutional and utilitarian point of view He said, it is “a complete living,” a complete adaptation to the environment, which must be a happy, therefore, a good life as well. As scientific knowledge, after all, can only give the real guidance for this adaptation, so it is of most worth to teach, and it must be consequently the core of the curricdlum instead of the Humanities which has predominated in Englrnd since 17th century. In this assertion Spencer represented accurately the necessity of the 19th-century society of the Free Trade and the Industrial Revolutin for sciences especially the want for the scientific studies by the middle class which was getting the leadership of the society. That his educational thought implicitly reflected the meddle class standpoint, becomes much more clear, when Spencer defended the rejection of the public education for the poor and labouring classes. He contended it logically by the “laissez faire” principle and the law of “the survival of the fittest.” So long as he insisted on the 19th-century Liberalism and contended “all socialism involves slavery,” he stood ageinst the democratic idea of education