Spencer, Herbert

A pioneering English sociologist and popularizer in the United States of Social Darwinism, Herbert Spencer's principal contribution to education came in his influential 1860 book, Education: Intellectual, [Page 951]Moral, and Physical, in which he coined the curriculum question, “What knowledge is of most worth?” and proposed categories of life activity that comprised the sources of educational objectives. Born in Derby, England, Spencer (1820–1903) received his elementary education at home and at day school. His secondary education involved study mostly of scientific, mathematical, and political subjects with little attention to foreign languages or the classics. Spencer received no university education. Upon completing his formal education, Spencer became a civil engineer for the railway, a position he held until 1846. After a disillusioning stint in radical politics, Spencer tried his hand at inventing and at journalism, the latter including work on the staff of The Economist, before becoming a freelance writer. His major works include Social Statics (1851) and Synthetic Philosophy (9 volumes, 1862–1896). After 1860, book sales provided him financial independence. Despite his prolific intellectual work, Spencer had no university affiliation.

Well-known tenets of Spencer's educational thought include a critique of academic formalism or “ornamentation”; an emphasis on education as practical preparation for life; the five categories of life activity (personal health, making a living, child rearing, citizenship, leisure); the importance of science, as both knowledge and method, in the curriculum; and the now famous curriculum question, “What knowledge is of most worth?” Spencer's educational thought, however, is best understood in the context of his Social Darwinism. Spencer argued, for example, that because the development of mind follows the inexorably slow evolutionary process, education can only help humans adapt to existing circumstances and that, therefore, formal education can never significantly impact human progress. In addition, Spencer adamantly opposed statesupported schooling on the grounds that it fostered conformity, encouraged unquestioning acceptance of authority, smacked of totalitarianism, unjustifiably separated taxpayers from their property, and, by supporting those who cannot afford formal education on their own, undermined natural selection. Instead, Spencer supported private education.

What influence did Spencer's educational thought have in the United States? Some American educators derived ideas from Spencer in ways consistent with his original work. William Graham Sumner, for example, favored electives and science as components of the curriculum, doubted the possibility of social progress through education, and opposed public secondary and higher education. Similarly, David Snedden conceived of education as a matter of fitting students into extant social and economic circumstances. Other American educators departed significantly from Spencer's social and educational theory. Both Lester Ward and John Dewey held that unlike the rest of the natural world, humans benefited from the ability to control the environment through the exercise of intelligence and that therefore education, especially publicly supported schools, should function as a vehicle of human progress and social improvement. Policy proposals, as well, both derived and departed from Spencer's theory. The 1893 Committee of Ten report restricted secondary education to a select few adolescents and accorded science parity with literary subjects, but embraced subject matter for its disciplinary, not its practical, value. The 1918 report of the Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education favored a practical preparation for life and categorized educational aims into areas of life activity much like those proposed by Spencer but, unlike Spencer, endorsed universal state-supported secondary education as a means of individual and social growth.

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