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From Laws of Learning to a Science of Values Efficiency and Morality in Thorndike's Educational Psychology

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From Laws of Learning to a Science of Values Efficiency and Morality in Thorndike's Educational Psychology From Laws of Learning to a Science of Values Efficiency and Morality in Thorndike's Educational Psychology Barbara Beatty Wellesley College Edward L. Thorndike's educational psychology was the of human thought and action. Despite these intellectual beginning of an American behavioristic tradition that and cultural tensions, most turn-of-the-century psycholo- sought efficient, scientific solutions to educational, gists continued to do research on both intellect and char- moral and social problems. Thorndike used empirical acter and to see them as interrelated topics. methodology to explain behavior, intellect, and character. Psychologists in the Progressive Era were con- After rejecting developmentaIism, he combined laws of fronted with enormously difficult, contentious social is- learning derived from his experiments on animals with sues. Rapid industrialization, urbanization, immigration, quantitative measurement of individual differences in hu- poverty, violent labor disputes, changing relations both mans to construct a psychology of education. He applied between the sexes and within the family, and growing this educational psychology commercially and developed global unrest caused great dislocations and instability. many widely used tests and texts. Thorndike then pro- Psychology was pulled out of philosophy to help explain, posed a science of values that he hoped might be used contain, cure, and control these social ills, especially in as a guide for moral assessment and social policy. education (Danziger, 1990). Educators looked to psychol- ogists for assistance in categorizing, socializing, and in- structing the flood of immigrant and poor children enter- n the first sentence of the expanded 1911 edition of ing urban schools (Brown, 1992; Chapman, 1988). Edu- Animal Intelligence Edward L. Thorndike listed "in- cational psychology arose in response to these practical ~ educational needs, and as a means of professionalizing tellect" and "character" (Thorndike, 1911, p. 1)as the two topics of behavioristic psychology. Thorndike education and expanding the profession of psychology. researched and reworked these themes throughout the Thorndike's project of creating a science of educa- successive phases of his long career. Following his path- tion was not new. Earlier nineteenth-century attempts had breaking animal experiments, he found employment in included deriving pedagogy from classroom practice; teacher education. He briefly explored G. Stanley Hall's from psychological philosophy, especially that of Herbert child study, but rejected developmentalism on intellec- Spencer and Alexander Bain; and from European peda- tual, methodological, and moral grounds and began mea- gogical theories such as those of Pestalozzi, Froebel, and suring individual differences. In the years before World Herbart (Roberts, 1968). G. Stanley Hall amassed survey War I, Thorndike combined learning theory, psychomet- data that he claimed constituted a scientific approach to rics, and applied research on school-related subjects to the study of children and education (Ross, 1972; White, form a psychology of education. In the 1920s, he helped 1990; Zenderland, 1990). Psychological methods were turn educational psychology into a mass-market industry also being used by educators outside of academia. But and produced numerous commercially successful tests some psychologists, such as William James, were skepti- and textbooks. In the final phase of his career in the cal as to whether education could become a science 1930s, Thorndike proposed a science of values and devel- (James, 1899; and see Beatty, 1996; Brown, 1992; Ca- oped quantitative indices of moral and social goodness. han & White, 1992; Cuban, 1993; Danziger, 1990; Klie- Thorndike's positing of intellect and character as bard, 1986; O'Donnell, 1985; White, 1991). the dual themes of behavioristic psychology reflected the unified view of truth and morality characteristic of nine- teenth-century educational philosophy. Character educa- Research for this article was supported in part by a grant from the tion was one of the main goals of public schooling (Ty- Spencer Foundation. I am especially grateful for the encouragement ack & Hansot, 1982). Religious and intellectual knowl- and suggestions of Geraldine Jonqich Clifford, whose definitiveb iogra- phy of Thorndike provided the groundwork for this article. The com- edge were linked in higher education as well (Reuben, ments of Emily Cahan, Bennett Galef, Ken Hawes, Richard yon Mayr- 1996). Darwin's theory of evolution threatened this unity hauser, and Sheldon H. White, and the secretarial skills of Adele Rosen- of knowledge and morality, though Darwin was also in- thal were very helpful. Any errors of interpretation are, of course, my terested in explaining altruism (see Curti, 1980; Fancher, o w n . Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to 1996; Richards, 1987; Ross, 1991; Sulloway, 1998). The Barbara Beatty, Departmento f Education, WellesleyC ollege, 106 Cen- construction of an empirical science of psychology posed tral Street, Wellesley, MA 02181. Electronic mail may be sent to a particular challenge to traditional religious explanations bbeatty@ wellesley.edu. October 1998 • American Psychologist 1145 Copyright 1998 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0003-066X/98/$2.00 Vol. 53, No. 10, I145-1152 However different psychologists in the Progressive transmitting.., thought and feelings, which might exist Era conceived of the relationship of science, education, apart, but as light penetrates through transparent sub- and morality, most equated science and efficiency. They stances, so might they appear in connection with . believed their research would aid in the creation of a human brains" (Thorndike, 1901a, p. 210). The debate more rational, orderly, beneficent society (see Callahan, concludes with the passage from Plato's Apologia in 1963; Kloppenburg, 1986; Wiebe, 1967). G. Stanley Hall which Socrates goes to his death saying that whether or used developmentalism to guide educational, moral, and not there is an afterlife one must act on the basis of social decision making (Ross, 1972). John Dewey was conscience (Thorndike, 1901a, pp. 212-213). also concerned with preventing waste and building intel- G. Stanley Hall's child study methodology was the lect and character and attempted to merge education, mo- topic of Thorndike's next major publication, and of some rality, and society through metaphors of organic growth of his courses at Teachers College, where he was hired and democratic community (Cahan, 1992; Ryan, 1995). in 1899 as an instructor in genetic psychology. Notes on Thorndike used connectionist learning theory to opera- Child Study, which appeared in 1901, contained criti- tionalize the relationship of education, morality, and soci- cisms of Hall but sounded some typically Hallian moral ety. How did Thorndike deal with intangible issues in and social themes. Thorndike recommended the morally morality and social policy? How did Thorndike attempt beneficial effects of fresh air, exercise, and healthy com- to maximize both efficiency and morality? How did panions. But he advocated athletic "games and social Thorndike evolve from thinking science was separate c l u b s . , for girls as well as boys" (Thorndike, 1901b, from human ideals to believing that science should help p. 127), unlike Hall, who was notoriously anxious about set moral and social goals? preserving masculinity. Thorndike was particularly criti- Studying Children and Rejecting cal of Hall's untrammeled developmentalism. For Thorn- dike, the interesting aspect of studying children was not Developmentalism how they were developmentally the same, but how they Thorndike was initially drawn from animal psychology were individually different. General statements about into education for professional reasons. Like other young children "must be false," Thorndike wrote, "for no two psychologists who received doctorates around the turn of children are alike mentally" (Thorndike, 1901b, p. 14). the century, he encountered a dearth of academic posi- All statements about children were probabilities, Thorn- tions in psychology (Jon~ich, 1968). Psychology enroll- dike asserted, probabilities which could be stated with a ments grew more rapidly in the 1890s than did the de- level of statistical accuracy. mand for psychologists. As Hugo Mtinsterberg wrote in Thorndike knew that children were different from 1898 to James McKeen Cattell, "my elementary psychol- adults and included in his work a chart of children's ogy c o u r s e . , has 360 students---what will this country developmental stages (Thorndike, 1901b, p. 13), but he do with all these psychologists?" (quoted in Brown, thought these differences were incremental. Even reason- 1992, p. 65). The answer was that many of them, like ing, which Charles Judd championed as a qualitatively Thorndike, would find jobs in child study and teacher different kind of higher order process, was essentially education programs (Dewsbury, 1992; O'Donnell, 1985). incremental for Thorndike. Thorndike asserted that all Thorndike' s early publications, after Animal Intelli- the rudiments of rational thought were present by the gence, showed the influence of William James and G. time a child entered school "and in fact long before Stanley Hall, two older psychologists who had written then" (Thorndike, 1901b, p. 86). The great importance about education and morality. James's well-known inter- of schooling was that it
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