50
Volume XIX, Nos. 1 and 2, 2006
Glenn A. Davis
Irving Babbitt, the Moral Imagination,and Progressive Education
Glenn A. Davis
When
Literature and the American College
, Irving Babbitt’s critiqueof the new educational theories, was first published in 1908, it wasa shot fired across the bow of the ship of progressive reform inAmerican higher education. Babbitt fired a sound shot, but he lostthe war. Since that time, educational reform has run through vari-ous movements, including, but not limited to, the industrial edu-cation movement, the mental testing movement, differentiatedcurriculum, child-centered education, the mental hygiene move-ment, the efficiency movement, constructivism, and education forlife-adjustment, all reform movements advanced under the rubricof “progressive education.”
1
Yet, readers who review educationalpractice and who delve into the voluminous works on educationaltheory over the past century, will recognize that Babbitt’s writingson education as an ethical pursuit remain topical. Now more thanever, Americans argue the purpose and value of education and de-bate the central issues of educational content and methodology, asBabbitt did one hundred years ago.Babbitt’s voice should continue to be heard in the public de-bate because his central concern was with that timeless questionraised by the Greeks and most explicitly put forth by Christ: Forwhat is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose
G
LENN
A. D
AVIS
is head of the Middle School Division, All Saints EpiscopalSchool, in Lubbock, Texas.
1
Diane Ravitch,
Left Back: A Century of Battles Over School Reform
(New York:Touchstone, 2001), 60, 412.
Educationan ethicalpursuit.
H
UMANITAS
• 51
Babbitt, the Moral Imagination, and Progressive Education
his own soul? (Matt. 16:26). The purpose of education, Babbitt em-phatically answered the reformers, was not to train to acquirewealth and power, but rather, in the time-honored tradition of hu-manistic studies, to teach to assimilate the wisdom of the ages, anassimilation that could be fostered primarily through the right useof the imagination. Wisdom and virtue, not wealth and power,lead us to fulfill our deepest human need, genuine communionwith others. Babbitt’s concern for right judgment and communityas the product of imaginative understanding has much to say toour world and indeed has much to offer educators who have refo-cused in recent years on the need for community building.Babbitt’s thesis throughout his works is that the educational re-forms of the early twentieth century inadequately addressed thenature of human imagination and therefore distorted our under-standing of the human endeavor. Under largely utilitarian re-forms, schooling was seriously undermining the human commu-nity because it was distorting the key element in learning: theimagination. According to Babbitt, if healthy community, definedin part as the corporate embodiment of past wisdom, was to grow,schooling had to play a significant role. And schooling means de-veloping the moral imagination. In order for any educational in-stitution to succeed in its purpose of assimilating wisdom, it mustfirst and foremost foster vibrant imaginative qualities of its stu-dents, and imagination is the tool used to pursue the commonstandards inherent in wisdom.Although numerous and diverse reform movements have beenadvanced under the rubric of “progressivism,” they have allshared three fundamental principles: the de-emphasis of the aca-demic curriculum; the desire to make learning more “natural” bytreating each student as a unique individual within the context ofhis or her own biological, social and intellectual development; andthe desire to make knowledge practical and more relevant to thechild’s immediate social situation.
2
The practical result of thesethree principles is that educational institutions have been stronglyencouraged, through teacher training and through political pres-sure, to address two seemingly contradictory goals. The first goal
2
Kieran Egan,
Getting It Wrong from the Beginning: Our Progressive Inheritancefrom Herbert Spencer, John Dewey, and Jean Piaget
(New Haven: Yale UniversityPress, 2002), 5.
Wisdom of the agesfostered byright useof imagination.Communityin part thefulfillment of past wisdom.
52 •
Volume XIX, Nos. 1 and 2, 2006
Glenn A. Davis
is to nurture the innate social, psychological, and intellectual pro-clivities of each student (hence, the vast system of elective coursesoffered to students of all ages), and the second goal is to “adjust”each child to the economic and social needs of society in order toensure an efficient work force. One hundred years ago reformersbelieved that a new century needed new methods and subjects tomeet the challenges posed by a growing industrial and democraticnational polity. As Diane Ravitch writes in her history of educa-tional reform:
Criticism of the academic curriculum came mainly from twosources: business leaders, who wanted economy and efficiency inthe schools, and progressive educators in the nation’s new col-leges of education, who wanted the school curriculum to be moreclosely aligned to the needs of society in the industrial age. Thebusiness community was primarily interested in securing lowtaxes and well-trained workers. Progressive educators wanted so-cially efficient schools that would serve society by training stu-dents for jobs.
3
With foresight, Babbitt was able to see through these seeminglycontradictory aspects of the new reforms (“individualism” versus“social adjustment”) and proffer a cogent response, embedded inhis understanding of the creative imagination. Babbitt conducteda two-front war. The first front was a brief attack against the ma-terialists, Baconian scientists and economists, who were under-mining the concept of the imagination by deemphasizing the sig-nificance of the intuitive and the illusionary. The second front wasthe more significant, since it had more far-reaching implications:This was the war on the theories of Rousseau, who had under-mined the traditional, ethical purpose of education by radically re-defining the concept of the imagination in terms of the indulgentand desire-driven individual. Babbitt was able to link these tworevolutions in Western thought because of what he saw as their“veritable pedantry of originality.” “The scientific pedant who isentirely absorbed in his own bit of research is first cousin to theartistic and literary pedant who is entirely absorbed in his ownsensation.”
4
By privileging the new and original at the expense of
3
Ravitch,
Left Back
, 51-52.
4
Irving Babbitt,
Literature and the American College: Essays in Defense of theHumanities
(Washington, D.C.: National Humanities Institute, 1986; first pub-lished in 1908), 196.
Both Baconand Rousseauunderminedsense of community asan ethicalinstitution.
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