John Dewey
Democracy and Education
[First published in 1916]
Content
Chapter One: Education as a Necessity of Life ...4
Summary. ...13
Chapter Two: Education as a Social Function ...14
Summary. ...27
Chapter Three: Education as Direction ...28
Summary. ...46
Chapter Four: Education as Growth ...47
Summary. ...60
Chapter Five: Preparation, Unfolding, and Formal Discipline ...61
Summary. ...76
Chapter Six: Education as Conservative and Progressive ...77
Summary. ...89
Chapter Seven: The Democratic Conception in Education ...90
Summary. ...109
Chapter Eight: Aims in Education ...110
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Summary. ...122
Chapter Nine: Natural Development and Social Efficiency as Aims
...122
Summary. ...135
Chapter Ten: Interest and Discipline ...137
Summary. ...152
Chapter Eleven: Experience and Thinking ...153
Summary. ...166
Chapter Twelve: Thinking in Education ...167
Summary. ...179
Chapter Thirteen: The Nature of Method ...180
Summary. ...197
Chapter Fourteen: The Nature of Subject Matter ...198
Summary. ...211
Chapter Fifteen: Play and Work in the Curriculum ...212
Summary. ...225
Chapter Sixteen: The Significance of Geography and History ...225
Summary. ...237
Chapter Seventeen: Science in the Course of Study ...238
Summary. ...250
Chapter Eighteen: Educational Values ...251
Summary. ...270
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Chapter Nineteen: Labor and Leisure ...271
Summary. ...282
Chapter Twenty: Intellectual and Practical Studies ...283
Summary. ...298
Chapter Twenty-one: Physical and Social Studies: Naturalism and
Humanism ...300
Summary. ...314
Chapter Twenty-two: The Individual and the World ...315
Summary. ...330
Chapter Twenty-Three: Vocational Aspects of Education ...331
Summary. ...346
Chapter Twenty-four: Philosophy of Education ...347
Summary. ...357
Chapter Twenty-five: Theories of Knowledge ...358
Summary. ...370
Chapter Twenty-six: Theories of Morals ...371
Summary. ...386
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Chapter One: Education as a Necessity of Life
1. Renewal of Life by Transmission. The most notable distinction
between living and inanimate things is that the former maintain
themselves by renewal. A stone when struck resists. If its resistance
is greater than the force of the blow struck, it remains outwardly
unchanged. Otherwise, it is shattered into smaller bits. Never does
the stone attempt to react in such a way that it may maintain itself
against the blow, much less so as to render the blow a contributing
factor to its own continued action. While the living thing may easily
be crushed by superior force, it none the less tries to turn the
energies which act upon it into means of its own further existence.
If it cannot do so, it does not just split into smaller pieces (at least in
the higher forms of life), but loses its identity as a living thing.
As long as it endures, it struggles to use surrounding energies in its
own behalf. It uses light, air, moisture, and the material of soil. To
say that it uses them is to say that it turns them into means of its
own conservation. As long as it is growing, the energy it expends in
thus turning the environment to account is more than compensated
for by the return it gets: it grows. Understanding the word "control"
in this sense, it may be said that a living being is one that subjugates
and controls for its own continued activity the energies that would
otherwise use it up. Life is a self-renewing process through action
upon the environment.
In all the higher forms this process cannot be kept up indefinitely.
After a while they succumb; they die. The creature is not equal to
the task of indefinite self-renewal. But continuity of the life process
is not dependent upon the prolongation of the existence of any one
individual. Reproduction of other forms of life goes on in
continuous sequence. And though, as the geological record shows,
not merely individuals but also species die out, the life process
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continues in increasingly complex forms. As some species die out,
forms better adapted to utilize the obstacles against which they
struggled in vain come into being. Continuity of life means
continual readaptation of the environment to the needs of living
organisms.
We have been speaking of life in its lowest terms--as a physical
thing. But we use the word "Life" to denote the whole range of
experience, individual and racial. When we see a book called the Life
of Lincoln we do not expect to find within its covers a treatise on
physiology. We look for an account of social antecedents; a
description of early surroundings, of the conditions and occupation
of the family; of the chief episodes in the development of
character; of signal struggles and achievements; of the individual's
hopes, tastes, joys and sufferings. In precisely similar fashion we
speak of the life of a savage tribe, of the Athenian people, of the
American nation. "Life" covers customs, institutions, beliefs,
victories and defeats, recreations and occupations.
We employ the word "experience" in the same pregnant sense. And
to it, as well as to life in the bare physiological sense, the principle
of continuity through renewal applies. With the renewal of physical
existence goes, in the case of human beings, the recreation of
beliefs, ideals, hopes, happiness, misery, and practices. The
continuity of any experience, through renewing of the social group,
is a literal fact. Education, in its broadest sense, is the means of this
social continuity of life. Every one of the constituent elements of a
social group, in a modern city as in a savage tribe, is born immature,
helpless, without language, beliefs, ideas, or social standards. Each
individual, each unit who is the carrier of the life-experience of his
group, in time passes away. Yet the life of the group goes on.
The primary ineluctable facts of the birth and death of each one of
the constituent members in a social group determine the necessity
of education. On one hand, there is the contrast between the
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immaturity of the new-born members of the group--its future sole
representatives--and the maturity of the adult members who
possess the knowledge and customs of the group. On the other
hand, there is the necessity that these immature members be not
merely physically preserved in adequate numbers, but that they be
initiated into the interests, purposes, information, skill, and practices
of the mature members: otherwise the group will cease its
characteristic life. Even in a savage tribe, the achievements of adults
are far beyond what the immature members would be capable of if
left to themselves. With the growth of civilization, the gap between
the original capacities of the immature and the standards and
customs of the elders increases. Mere physical growing up, mere
mastery of the bare necessities of subsistence will not suffice to
reproduce the life of the group. Deliberate effort and the taking of
thoughtful pains are required. Beings who are born not only
unaware of, but quite indifferent to, the aims and habits of the social
group have to be rendered cognizant of them and actively
interested. Education, and education alone, spans the gap.
Society exists through a process of transmission quite as much as
biological life. This transmission occurs by means of
communication of habits of doing, thinking, and feeling from the
older to the younger. Without this communication of ideals, hopes,
expectations, standards, opinions, from those members of society
who are passing out of the group life to those who are coming into
it, social life could not survive. If the members who compose a
society lived on continuously, they might educate the new-born
members, but it would be a task directed by personal interest rather
than social need. Now it is a work of necessity.
If a plague carried off the members of a society all at once, it is
obvious that the group would be permanently done for. Yet the
death of each of its constituent members is as certain as if an
epidemic took them all at once. But the graded difference in age, the
fact that some are born as some die, makes possible through
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transmission of ideas and practices the constant reweaving of the
social fabric. Yet this renewal is not automatic. Unless pains are
taken to see that genuine and thorough transmission takes place, the
most civilized group will relapse into barbarism and then into
savagery. In fact, the human young are so immature that if they
were left to themselves without the guidance and succor of others,
they could not acquire the rudimentary abilities necessary for
physical existence. The young of human beings compare so poorly
in original efficiency with the young of many of the lower animals,
that even the powers needed for physical sustentation have to be
acquired under tuition. How much more, then, is this the case with
respect to all the technological, artistic, scientific, and moral
achievements of humanity!
2. Education and Communication. So obvious, indeed, is the
necessity of teaching and learning for the continued existence of a
society that we may seem to be dwelling unduly on a truism. But
justification is found in the fact that such emphasis is a means of
getting us away from an unduly scholastic and formal notion of
education. Schools are, indeed, one important method of the
transmission which forms the dispositions of the immature; but it is
only one means, and, compared with other agencies, a relatively
superficial means. Only as we have grasped the necessity of more
fundamental and persistent modes of tuition can we make sure of
placing the scholastic methods in their true context.
Society not only continues to exist by transmission, by
communication, but it may fairly be said to exist in transmission, in
communication. There is more than a verbal tie between the words
common, community, and communication. Men live in a community
in virtue of the things which they have in common; and
communication is the way in which they come to possess things in
common. What they must have in common in order to form a
community or society are aims, beliefs, aspirations, knowledge--a
common understanding--like-mindedness as the sociologists say.
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Such things cannot be passed physically from one to another, like
bricks; they cannot be shared as persons would share a pie by
dividing it into physical pieces. The communication which insures
participation in a common understanding is one which secures
similar emotional and intellectual dispositions--like ways of
responding to expectations and requirements.
Persons do not become a society by living in physical proximity, any
more than a man ceases to be socially influenced by being so many
feet or miles removed from others. A book or a letter may institute a
more intimate association between human beings separated
thousands of miles from each other than exists between dwellers
under the same roof. Individuals do not even compose a social
group because they all work for a common end. The parts of a
machine work with a maximum of cooperativeness for a common
result, but they do not form a community. If, however, they were all
cognizant of the common end and all interested in it so that they
regulated their specific activity in view of it, then they would form a
community. But this would involve communication. Each would
have to know what the other was about and would have to have
some way of keeping the other informed as to his own purpose and
progress. Consensus demands communication.
We are thus compelled to recognize that within even the most social
group there are many relations which are not as yet social. A large
number of human relationships in any social group are still upon
the machine-like plane. Individuals use one another so as to get
desired results, without reference to the emotional and intellectual
disposition and consent of those used. Such uses express physical
superiority, or superiority of position, skill, technical ability, and
command of tools, mechanical or fiscal. So far as the relations of
parent and child, teacher and pupil, employer and employee,
governor and governed, remain upon this level, they form no true
social group, no matter how closely their respective activities touch
one another. Giving and taking of orders modifies action and
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results, but does not of itself effect a sharing of purposes, a
communication of interests.
Not only is social life identical with communication, but all
communication (and hence all genuine social life) is educative. To be
a recipient of a communication is to have an enlarged and changed
experience. One shares in what another has thought and felt and in
so far, meagerly or amply, has his own attitude modified. Nor is the
one who communicates left unaffected. Try the experiment of
communicating, with fullness and accuracy, some experience to
another, especially if it be somewhat complicated, and you will find
your own attitude toward your experience changing; otherwise you
resort to expletives and ejaculations. The experience has to be
formulated in order to be communicated. To formulate requires
getting outside of it, seeing it as another would see it, considering
what points of contact it has with the life of another so that it may
be got into such form that he can appreciate its meaning. Except in
dealing with commonplaces and catch phrases one has to assimilate,
imaginatively, something of another's experience in order to tell him
intelligently of one's own experience. All communication is like art.
It may fairly be said, therefore, that any social arrangement that
remains vitally social, or vitally shared, is educative to those who
participate in it. Only when it becomes cast in a mold and runs in a
routine way does it lose its educative power.
In final account, then, not only does social life demand teaching and
learning for its own permanence, but the very process of living
together educates. It enlarges and enlightens experience; it stimulates
and enriches imagination; it creates responsibility for accuracy and
vividness of statement and thought. A man really living alone (alone
mentally as well as physically) would have little or no occasion to
reflect upon his past experience to extract its net meaning. The
inequality of achievement between the mature and the immature not
only necessitates teaching the young, but the necessity of this
teaching gives an immense stimulus to reducing experience to that
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order and form which will render it most easily communicable and
hence most usable.
3. The Place of Formal Education. There is, accordingly, a marked
difference between the education which every one gets from living
with others, as long as he really lives instead of just continuing to
subsist, and the deliberate educating of the young. In the former
case the education is incidental; it is natural and important, but it is
not the express reason of the association. While it may be said,
without exaggeration, that the measure of the worth of any social
institution, economic, domestic, political, legal, religious, is its effect
in enlarging and improving experience; yet this effect is not a part
of its original motive, which is limited and more immediately
practical. Religious associations began, for example, in the desire to
secure the favor of overruling powers and to ward off evil
influences; family life in the desire to gratify appetites and secure
family perpetuity; systematic labor, for the most part, because of
enslavement to others, etc. Only gradually was the by-product of the
institution, its effect upon the quality and extent of conscious life,
noted, and only more gradually still was this effect considered as a
directive factor in the conduct of the institution. Even today, in our
industrial life, apart from certain values of industriousness and
thrift, the intellectual and emotional reaction of the forms of
human association under which the world's work is carried on
receives little attention as compared with physical output.
But in dealing with the young, the fact of association itself as an
immediate human fact, gains in importance. While it is easy to
ignore in our contact with them the effect of our acts upon their
disposition, or to subordinate that educative effect to some external
and tangible result, it is not so easy as in dealing with adults. The
need of training is too evident; the pressure to accomplish a change
in their attitude and habits is too urgent to leave these consequences
wholly out of account. Since our chief business with them is to
enable them to share in a common life we cannot help considering
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whether or no we are forming the powers which will secure this
ability. If humanity has made some headway in realizing that the
ultimate value of every institution is its distinctively human effect--
its effect upon conscious experience--we may well believe that this
lesson has been learned largely through dealings with the young.
We are thus led to distinguish, within the broad educational process
which we have been so far considering, a more formal kind of
education--that of direct tuition or schooling. In undeveloped
social groups, we find very little formal teaching and training. Savage
groups mainly rely for instilling needed dispositions into the young
upon the same sort of association which keeps adults loyal to their
group. They have no special devices, material, or institutions for
teaching save in connection with initiation ceremonies by which the
youth are inducted into full social membership. For the most part,
they depend upon children learning the customs of the adults,
acquiring their emotional set and stock of ideas, by sharing in what
the elders are doing. In part, this sharing is direct, taking part in the
occupations of adults and thus serving an apprenticeship; in part, it
is indirect, through the dramatic plays in which children reproduce
the actions of grown-ups and thus learn to know what they are like.
To savages it would seem preposterous to seek out a place where
nothing but learning was going on in order that one might learn.
But as civilization advances, the gap between the capacities of the
young and the concerns of adults widens. Learning by direct sharing
in the pursuits of grown-ups becomes increasingly difficult except
in the case of the less advanced occupations. Much of what adults
do is so remote in space and in meaning that playful imitation is less
and less adequate to reproduce its spirit. Ability to share effectively
in adult activities thus depends upon a prior training given with this
end in view. Intentional agencies--schools--and explicit material--
studies--are devised. The task of teaching certain things is
delegated to a special group of persons.
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Without such formal education, it is not possible to transmit all the
resources and achievements of a complex society. It also opens a
way to a kind of experience which would not be accessible to the
young, if they were left to pick up their training in informal
association with others, since books and the symbols of knowledge
are mastered.
But there are conspicuous dangers attendant upon the transition
from indirect to formal education. Sharing in actual pursuit, whether
directly or vicariously in play, is at least personal and vital. These
qualities compensate, in some measure, for the narrowness of
available opportunities. Formal instruction, on the contrary, easily
becomes remote and dead--abstract and bookish, to use the
ordinary words of depreciation. What accumulated knowledge exists
in low grade societies is at least put into practice; it is transmuted
into character; it exists with the depth of meaning that attaches to
its coming within urgent daily interests.
But in an advanced culture much which has to be learned is stored
in symbols. It is far from translation into familiar acts and objects.
Such material is relatively technical and superficial. Taking the
ordinary standard of reality as a measure, it is artificial. For this
measure is connection with practical concerns. Such material exists
in a world by itself, unassimilated to ordinary customs of thought
and expression. There is the standing danger that the material of
formal instruction will be merely the subject matter of the schools,
isolated from the subject matter of life-experience. The permanent
social interests are likely to be lost from view. Those which have not
been carried over into the structure of social life, but which remain
largely matters of technical information expressed in symbols, are
made conspicuous in schools. Thus we reach the ordinary notion of
education: the notion which ignores its social necessity and its
identity with all human association that affects conscious life, and
which identifies it with imparting information about remote matters
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and the conveying of learning through verbal signs: the acquisition
of literacy.
Hence one of the weightiest problems with which the philosophy
of education has to cope is the method of keeping a proper balance
between the informal and the formal, the incidental and the
intentional, modes of education. When the acquiring of
information and of technical intellectual skill do not influence the
formation of a social disposition, ordinary vital experience fails to
gain in meaning, while schooling, in so far, creates only "sharps" in
learning--that is, egoistic specialists. To avoid a split between what
men consciously know because they are aware of having learned it
by a specific job of learning, and what they unconsciously know
because they have absorbed it in the formation of their characters
by intercourse with others, becomes an increasingly delicate task
with every development of special schooling.
Summary.
It is the very nature of life to strive to continue in being. Since this
continuance can be secured only by constant renewals, life is a self-
renewing process. What nutrition and reproduction are to
physiological life, education is to social life. This education consists
primarily in transmission through communication. Communication
is a process of sharing experience till it becomes a common
possession. It modifies the disposition of both the parties who
partake in it. That the ulterior significance of every mode of human
association lies in the contribution which it makes to the
improvement of the quality of experience is a fact most easily
recognized in dealing with the immature. That is to say, while every
social arrangement is educative in effect, the educative effect first
becomes an important part of the purpose of the association in
connection with the association of the older with the younger. As
societies become more complex in structure and resources, the need
13
of formal or intentional teaching and learning increases. As formal
teaching and training grow in extent, there is the danger of creating
an undesirable split between the experience gained in more direct
associations and what is acquired in school. This danger was never
greater than at the present time, on account of the rapid growth in
the last few centuries of knowledge and technical modes of skill.
Chapter Two: Education as a Social Function
1. The Nature and Meaning of Environment. We have seen that a
community or social group sustains itself through continuous self-
renewal, and that this renewal takes place by means of the
educational growth of the immature members of the group. By
various agencies, unintentional and designed, a society transforms
uninitiated and seemingly alien beings into robust trustees of its
own resources and ideals. Education is thus a fostering, a nurturing,
a cultivating, process. All of these words mean that it implies
attention to the conditions of growth. We also speak of rearing,
raising, bringing up--words which express the difference of level
which education aims to cover. Etymologically, the word education
means just a process of leading or bringing up. When we have the
outcome of the process in mind, we speak of education as shaping,
forming, molding activity--that is, a shaping into the standard form
of social activity. In this chapter we are concerned with the general
features of the way in which a social group brings up its immature
members into its own social form.
Since what is required is a transformation of the quality of
experience till it partakes in the interests, purposes, and ideas current
in the social group, the problem is evidently not one of mere
physical forming. Things can be physically transported in space; they
may be bodily conveyed. Beliefs and aspirations cannot be physically
extracted and inserted. How then are they communicated? Given
the impossibility of direct contagion or literal inculcation, our
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problem is to discover the method by which the young assimilate
the point of view of the old, or the older bring the young into like-
mindedness with themselves. The answer, in general formulation, is:
By means of the action of the environment in calling out certain
responses. The required beliefs cannot be hammered in; the needed
attitudes cannot be plastered on. But the particular medium in
which an individual exists leads him to see and feel one thing rather
than another; it leads him to have certain plans in order that he may
act successfully with others; it strengthens some beliefs and weakens
others as a condition of winning the approval of others. Thus it
gradually produces in him a certain system of behavior, a certain
disposition of action. The words "environment," "medium" denote
something more than surroundings which encompass an individual.
They denote the specific continuity of the surroundings with his
own active tendencies. An inanimate being is, of course, continuous
with its surroundings; but the environing circumstances do not, save
metaphorically, constitute an environment. For the inorganic being
is not concerned in the influences which affect it. On the other
hand, some things which are remote in space and time from a living
creature, especially a human creature, may form his environment
even more truly than some of the things close to him. The things
with which a man varies are his genuine environment. Thus the
activities of the astronomer vary with the stars at which he gazes or
about which he calculates. Of his immediate surroundings, his
telescope is most intimately his environment. The environment of
an antiquarian, as an antiquarian, consists of the remote epoch of
human life with which he is concerned, and the relics, inscriptions,
etc., by which he establishes connections with that period.
In brief, the environment consists of those conditions that promote
or hinder, stimulate or inhibit, the characteristic activities of a living
being. Water is the environment of a fish because it is necessary to
the fish's activities--to its life. The north pole is a significant
element in the environment of an arctic explorer, whether he
succeeds in reaching it or not, because it defines his activities, makes
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them what they distinctively are. Just because life signifies not bare
passive existence (supposing there is such a thing), but a way of
acting, environment or medium signifies what enters into this
activity as a sustaining or frustrating condition.
2. The Social Environment. A being whose activities are associated
with others has a social environment. What he does and what he can
do depend upon the expectations, demands, approvals, and
condemnations of others. A being connected with other beings
cannot perform his own activities without taking the activities of
others into account. For they are the indispensable conditions of the
realization of his tendencies. When he moves he stirs them and
reciprocally. We might as well try to imagine a business man doing
business, buying and selling, all by himself, as to conceive it possible
to define the activities of an individual in terms of his isolated
actions. The manufacturer moreover is as truly socially guided in his
activities when he is laying plans in the privacy of his own counting
house as when he is buying his raw material or selling his finished
goods. Thinking and feeling that have to do with action in
association with others is as much a social mode of behavior as is
the most overt cooperative or hostile act.
What we have more especially to indicate is how the social medium
nurtures its immature members. There is no great difficulty in seeing
how it shapes the external habits of action. Even dogs and horses
have their actions modified by association with human beings; they
form different habits because human beings are concerned with
what they do. Human beings control animals by controlling the
natural stimuli which influence them; by creating a certain
environment in other words. Food, bits and bridles, noises, vehicles,
are used to direct the ways in which the natural or instinctive
responses of horses occur. By operating steadily to call out certain
acts, habits are formed which function with the same uniformity as
the original stimuli. If a rat is put in a maze and finds food only by
making a given number of turns in a given sequence, his activity is
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gradually modified till he habitually takes that course rather than
another when he is hungry.
Human actions are modified in a like fashion. A burnt child dreads
the fire; if a parent arranged conditions so that every time a child
touched a certain toy he got burned, the child would learn to avoid
that toy as automatically as he avoids touching fire. So far, however,
we are dealing with what may be called training in distinction from
educative teaching. The changes considered are in outer action
rather than in mental and emotional dispositions of behavior. The
distinction is not, however, a sharp one. The child might conceivably
generate in time a violent antipathy, not only to that particular toy,
but to the class of toys resembling it. The aversion might even
persist after he had forgotten about the original burns; later on he
might even invent some reason to account for his seemingly
irrational antipathy. In some cases, altering the external habit of
action by changing the environment to affect the stimuli to action
will also alter the mental disposition concerned in the action. Yet
this does not always happen; a person trained to dodge a threatening
blow, dodges automatically with no corresponding thought or
emotion. We have to find, then, some differentia of training from
education.
A clew may be found in the fact that the horse does not really share
in the social use to which his action is put. Some one else uses the
horse to secure a result which is advantageous by making it
advantageous to the horse to perform the act--he gets food, etc.
But the horse, presumably, does not get any new interest. He
remains interested in food, not in the service he is rendering. He is
not a partner in a shared activity. Were he to become a copartner, he
would, in engaging in the conjoint activity, have the same interest in
its accomplishment which others have. He would share their ideas
and emotions.
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Now in many cases--too many cases--the activity of the immature
human being is simply played upon to secure habits which are
useful. He is trained like an animal rather than educated like a
human being. His instincts remain attached to their original objects
of pain or pleasure. But to get happiness or to avoid the pain of
failure he has to act in a way agreeable to others. In other cases, he
really shares or participates in the common activity. In this case, his
original impulse is modified. He not merely acts in a way agreeing
with the actions of others, but, in so acting, the same ideas and
emotions are aroused in him that animate the others. A tribe, let us
say, is warlike. The successes for which it strives, the achievements
upon which it sets store, are connected with fighting and victory.
The presence of this medium incites bellicose exhibitions in a boy,
first in games, then in fact when he is strong enough. As he fights he
wins approval and advancement; as he refrains, he is disliked,
ridiculed, shut out from favorable recognition. It is not surprising
that his original belligerent tendencies and emotions are
strengthened at the expense of others, and that his ideas turn to
things connected with war. Only in this way can he become fully a
recognized member of his group. Thus his mental habitudes are
gradually assimilated to those of his group.
If we formulate the principle involved in this illustration, we shall
perceive that the social medium neither implants certain desires and
ideas directly, nor yet merely establishes certain purely muscular
habits of action, like "instinctively" winking or dodging a blow.
Setting up conditions which stimulate certain visible and tangible
ways of acting is the first step. Making the individual a sharer or
partner in the associated activity so that he feels its success as his
success, its failure as his failure, is the completing step. As soon as
he is possessed by the emotional attitude of the group, he will be
alert to recognize the special ends at which it aims and the means
employed to secure success. His beliefs and ideas, in other words,
will take a form similar to those of others in the group. He will also
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achieve pretty much the same stock of knowledge since that
knowledge is an ingredient of his habitual pursuits.
The importance of language in gaining knowledge is doubtless the
chief cause of the common notion that knowledge may be passed
directly from one to another. It almost seems as if all we have to do
to convey an idea into the mind of another is to convey a sound
into his ear. Thus imparting knowledge gets assimilated to a purely
physical process. But learning from language will be found, when
analyzed, to confirm the principle just laid down. It would probably
be admitted with little hesitation that a child gets the idea of, say, a
hat by using it as other persons do; by covering the head with it,
giving it to others to wear, having it put on by others when going
out, etc. But it may be asked how this principle of shared activity
applies to getting through speech or reading the idea of, say, a Greek
helmet, where no direct use of any kind enters in. What shared
activity is there in learning from books about the discovery of
America?
Since language tends to become the chief instrument of learning
about many things, let us see how it works. The baby begins of
course with mere sounds, noises, and tones having no meaning,
expressing, that is, no idea. Sounds are just one kind of stimulus to
direct response, some having a soothing effect, others tending to
make one jump, and so on. The sound h-a-t would remain as
meaningless as a sound in Choctaw, a seemingly inarticulate grunt, if
it were not uttered in connection with an action which is
participated in by a number of people. When the mother is taking
the infant out of doors, she says "hat" as she puts something on the
baby's head. Being taken out becomes an interest to the child;
mother and child not only go out with each other physically, but
both are concerned in the going out; they enjoy it in common. By
conjunction with the other factors in activity the sound "hat" soon
gets the same meaning for the child that it has for the parent; it
becomes a sign of the activity into which it enters. The bare fact
19
that language consists of sounds which are mutually intelligible is
enough of itself to show that its meaning depends upon connection
with a shared experience.
In short, the sound h-a-t gains meaning in precisely the same way
that the thing "hat" gains it, by being used in a given way. And they
acquire the same meaning with the child which they have with the
adult because they are used in a common experience by both. The
guarantee for the same manner of use is found in the fact that the
thing and the sound are first employed in a joint activity, as a means
of setting up an active connection between the child and a grownup.
Similar ideas or meanings spring up because both persons are
engaged as partners in an action where what each does depends
upon and influences what the other does. If two savages were
engaged in a joint hunt for game, and a certain signal meant "move
to the right" to the one who uttered it, and "move to the left" to the
one who heard it, they obviously could not successfully carry on
their hunt together. Understanding one another means that objects,
including sounds, have the same value for both with respect to
carrying on a common pursuit.
After sounds have got meaning through connection with other
things employed in a joint undertaking, they can be used in
connection with other like sounds to develop new meanings,
precisely as the things for which they stand are combined. Thus the
words in which a child learns about, say, the Greek helmet originally
got a meaning (or were understood) by use in an action having a
common interest and end. They now arouse a new meaning by
inciting the one who hears or reads to rehearse imaginatively the
activities in which the helmet has its use. For the time being, the one
who understands the words "Greek helmet" becomes mentally a
partner with those who used the helmet. He engages, through his
imagination, in a shared activity. It is not easy to get the full meaning
of words. Most persons probably stop with the idea that "helmet"
denotes a queer kind of headgear a people called the Greeks once
20
wore. We conclude, accordingly, that the use of language to convey
and acquire ideas is an extension and refinement of the principle
that things gain meaning by being used in a shared experience or
joint action; in no sense does it contravene that principle. When
words do not enter as factors into a shared situation, either overtly
or imaginatively, they operate as pure physical stimuli, not as having
a meaning or intellectual value. They set activity running in a given
groove, but there is no accompanying conscious purpose or
meaning. Thus, for example, the plus sign may be a stimulus to
perform the act of writing one number under another and adding
the numbers, but the person performing the act will operate much
as an automaton would unless he realizes the meaning of what he
does.
3. The Social Medium as Educative. Our net result thus far is that
social environment forms the mental and emotional disposition of
behavior in individuals by engaging them in activities that arouse
and strengthen certain impulses, that have certain purposes and
entail certain consequences. A child growing up in a family of
musicians will inevitably have whatever capacities he has in music
stimulated, and, relatively, stimulated more than other impulses
which might have been awakened in another environment. Save as
he takes an interest in music and gains a certain competency in it, he
is "out of it"; he is unable to share in the life of the group to which
he belongs. Some kinds of participation in the life of those with
whom the individual is connected are inevitable; with respect to
them, the social environment exercises an educative or formative
influence unconsciously and apart from any set purpose.
In savage and barbarian communities, such direct participation
(constituting the indirect or incidental education of which we have
spoken) furnishes almost the sole influence for rearing the young
into the practices and beliefs of the group. Even in present-day
societies, it furnishes the basic nurture of even the most insistently
schooled youth. In accord with the interests and occupations of the
21
group, certain things become objects of high esteem; others of
aversion. Association does not create impulses or affection and
dislike, but it furnishes the objects to which they attach themselves.
The way our group or class does things tends to determine the
proper objects of attention, and thus to prescribe the directions and
limits of observation and memory. What is strange or foreign (that
is to say outside the activities of the groups) tends to be morally
forbidden and intellectually suspect. It seems almost incredible to us,
for example, that things which we know very well could have
escaped recognition in past ages. We incline to account for it by
attributing congenital stupidity to our forerunners and by assuming
superior native intelligence on our own part. But the explanation is
that their modes of life did not call for attention to such facts, but
held their minds riveted to other things. Just as the senses require
sensible objects to stimulate them, so our powers of observation,
recollection, and imagination do not work spontaneously, but are set
in motion by the demands set up by current social occupations. The
main texture of disposition is formed, independently of schooling,
by such influences. What conscious, deliberate teaching can do is at
most to free the capacities thus formed for fuller exercise, to purge
them of some of their grossness, and to furnish objects which make
their activity more productive of meaning.
While this "unconscious influence of the environment" is so subtle
and pervasive that it affects every fiber of character and mind, it
may be worth while to specify a few directions in which its effect is
most marked. First, the habits of language. Fundamental modes of
speech, the bulk of the vocabulary, are formed in the ordinary
intercourse of life, carried on not as a set means of instruction but
as a social necessity. The babe acquires, as we well say, the mother
tongue. While speech habits thus contracted may be corrected or
even displaced by conscious teaching, yet, in times of excitement,
intentionally acquired modes of speech often fall away, and
individuals relapse into their really native tongue. Secondly, manners.
Example is notoriously more potent than precept. Good manners
22
come, as we say, from good breeding or rather are good breeding;
and breeding is acquired by habitual action, in response to habitual
stimuli, not by conveying information. Despite the never ending play
of conscious correction and instruction, the surrounding
atmosphere and spirit is in the end the chief agent in forming
manners. And manners are but minor morals. Moreover, in major
morals, conscious instruction is likely to be efficacious only in the
degree in which it falls in with the general "walk and conversation"
of those who constitute the child's social environment. Thirdly,
good taste and esthetic appreciation. If the eye is constantly greeted
by harmonious objects, having elegance of form and color, a
standard of taste naturally grows up. The effect of a tawdry,
unarranged, and over-decorated environment works for the
deterioration of taste, just as meager and barren surroundings starve
out the desire for beauty. Against such odds, conscious teaching can
hardly do more than convey second-hand information as to what
others think. Such taste never becomes spontaneous and personally
engrained, but remains a labored reminder of what those think to
whom one has been taught to look up. To say that the deeper
standards of judgments of value are framed by the situations into
which a person habitually enters is not so much to mention a fourth
point, as it is to point out a fusion of those already mentioned. We
rarely recognize the extent in which our conscious estimates of what
is worth while and what is not, are due to standards of which we are
not conscious at all. But in general it may be said that the things
which we take for granted without inquiry or reflection are just the
things which determine our conscious thinking and decide our
conclusions. And these habitudes which lie below the level of
reflection are just those which have been formed in the constant
give and take of relationship with others.
4. The School as a Special Environment. The chief importance of
this foregoing statement of the educative process which goes on
willy-nilly is to lead us to note that the only way in which adults
consciously control the kind of education which the immature get is
23
by controlling the environment in which they act, and hence think
and feel. We never educate directly, but indirectly by means of the
environment. Whether we permit chance environments to do the
work, or whether we design environments for the purpose makes a
great difference. And any environment is a chance environment so
far as its educative influence is concerned unless it has been
deliberately regulated with reference to its educative effect. An
intelligent home differs from an unintelligent one chiefly in that the
habits of life and intercourse which prevail are chosen, or at least
colored, by the thought of their bearing upon the development of
children. But schools remain, of course, the typical instance of
environments framed with express reference to influencing the
mental and moral disposition of their members.
Roughly speaking, they come into existence when social traditions
are so complex that a considerable part of the social store is
committed to writing and transmitted through written symbols.
Written symbols are even more artificial or conventional than
spoken; they cannot be picked up in accidental intercourse with
others. In addition, the written form tends to select and record
matters which are comparatively foreign to everyday life. The
achievements accumulated from generation to generation are
deposited in it even though some of them have fallen temporarily
out of use. Consequently as soon as a community depends to any
considerable extent upon what lies beyond its own territory and its
own immediate generation, it must rely upon the set agency of
schools to insure adequate transmission of all its resources. To take
an obvious illustration: The life of the ancient Greeks and Romans
has profoundly influenced our own, and yet the ways in which they
affect us do not present themselves on the surface of our ordinary
experiences. In similar fashion, peoples still existing, but remote in
space, British, Germans, Italians, directly concern our own social
affairs, but the nature of the interaction cannot be understood
without explicit statement and attention. In precisely similar fashion,
our daily associations cannot be trusted to make clear to the young
24
the part played in our activities by remote physical energies, and by
invisible structures. Hence a special mode of social intercourse is
instituted, the school, to care for such matters.
This mode of association has three functions sufficiently specific, as
compared with ordinary associations of life, to be noted. First, a
complex civilization is too complex to be assimilated in toto. It has
to be broken up into portions, as it were, and assimilated piecemeal,
in a gradual and graded way. The relationships of our present social
life are so numerous and so interwoven that a child placed in the
most favorable position could not readily share in many of the most
important of them. Not sharing in them, their meaning would not
be communicated to him, would not become a part of his own
mental disposition. There would be no seeing the trees because of
the forest. Business, politics, art, science, religion, would make all at
once a clamor for attention; confusion would be the outcome. The
first office of the social organ we call the school is to provide a
simplified environment. It selects the features which are fairly
fundamental and capable of being responded to by the young. Then
it establishes a progressive order, using the factors first acquired as
means of gaining insight into what is more complicated.
In the second place, it is the business of the school environment to
eliminate, so far as possible, the unworthy features of the existing
environment from influence upon mental habitudes. It establishes a
purified medium of action. Selection aims not only at simplifying
but at weeding out what is undesirable. Every society gets
encumbered with what is trivial, with dead wood from the past, and
with what is positively perverse. The school has the duty of omitting
such things from the environment which it supplies, and thereby
doing what it can to counteract their influence in the ordinary social
environment. By selecting the best for its exclusive use, it strives to
reinforce the power of this best. As a society becomes more
enlightened, it realizes that it is responsible not to transmit and
conserve the whole of its existing achievements, but only such as
25
make for a better future society. The school is its chief agency for
the accomplishment of this end.
In the third place, it is the office of the school environment to
balance the various elements in the social environment, and to see to
it that each individual gets an opportunity to escape from the
limitations of the social group in which he was born, and to come
into living contact with a broader environment. Such words as
"society" and "community" are likely to be misleading, for they have
a tendency to make us think there is a single thing corresponding to
the single word. As a matter of fact, a modern society is many
societies more or less loosely connected. Each household with its
immediate extension of friends makes a society; the village or street
group of playmates is a community; each business group, each club,
is another. Passing beyond these more intimate groups, there is in a
country like our own a variety of races, religious affiliations,
economic divisions. Inside the modern city, in spite of its nominal
political unity, there are probably more communities, more differing
customs, traditions, aspirations, and forms of government or
control, than existed in an entire continent at an earlier epoch.
Each such group exercises a formative influence on the active
dispositions of its members. A clique, a club, a gang, a Fagin's
household of thieves, the prisoners in a jail, provide educative
environments for those who enter into their collective or conjoint
activities, as truly as a church, a labor union, a business partnership,
or a political party. Each of them is a mode of associated or
community life, quite as much as is a family, a town, or a state. There
are also communities whose members have little or no direct contact
with one another, like the guild of artists, the republic of letters, the
members of the professional learned class scattered over the face of
the earth. For they have aims in common, and the activity of each
member is directly modified by knowledge of what others are doing.
26
In the olden times, the diversity of groups was largely a geographical
matter. There were many societies, but each, within its own territory,
was comparatively homogeneous. But with the development of
commerce, transportation, intercommunication, and emigration,
countries like the United States are composed of a combination of
different groups with different traditional customs. It is this
situation which has, perhaps more than any other one cause, forced
the demand for an educational institution which shall provide
something like a homogeneous and balanced environment for the
young. Only in this way can the centrifugal forces set up by
juxtaposition of different groups within one and the same political
unit be counteracted. The intermingling in the school of youth of
different races, differing religions, and unlike customs creates for all
a new and broader environment. Common subject matter accustoms
all to a unity of outlook upon a broader horizon than is visible to
the members of any group while it is isolated. The assimilative force
of the American public school is eloquent testimony to the efficacy
of the common and balanced appeal.
The school has the function also of coordinating within the
disposition of each individual the diverse influences of the various
social environments into which he enters. One code prevails in the
family; another, on the street; a third, in the workshop or store; a
fourth, in the religious association. As a person passes from one of
the environments to another, he is subjected to antagonistic pulls,
and is in danger of being split into a being having different
standards of judgment and emotion for different occasions. This
danger imposes upon the school a steadying and integrating office.
Summary.
The development within the young of the attitudes and dispositions
necessary to the continuous and progressive life of a society cannot
take place by direct conveyance of beliefs, emotions, and
27
knowledge. It takes place through the intermediary of the
environment. The environment consists of the sum total of
conditions which are concerned in the execution of the activity
characteristic of a living being. The social environment consists of
all the activities of fellow beings that are bound up in the carrying
on of the activities of any one of its members. It is truly educative
in its effect in the degree in which an individual shares or
participates in some conjoint activity. By doing his share in the
associated activity, the individual appropriates the purpose which
actuates it, becomes familiar with its methods and subject matters,
acquires needed skill, and is saturated with its emotional spirit.
The deeper and more intimate educative formation of disposition
comes, without conscious intent, as the young gradually partake of
the activities of the various groups to which they may belong. As a
society becomes more complex, however, it is found necessary to
provide a special social environment which shall especially look after
nurturing the capacities of the immature. Three of the more
important functions of this special environment are: simplifying and
ordering the factors of the disposition it is wished to develop;
purifying and idealizing the existing social customs; creating a wider
and better balanced environment than that by which the young
would be likely, if left to themselves, to be influenced.
Chapter Three: Education as Direction
1. The Environment as Directive. We now pass to one of the special
forms which the general function of education assumes: namely,
that of direction, control, or guidance. Of these three words,
direction, control, and guidance, the last best conveys the idea of
assisting through cooperation the natural capacities of the
individuals guided; control conveys rather the notion of an energy
brought to bear from without and meeting some resistance from the
one controlled; direction is a more neutral term and suggests the
28
fact that the active tendencies of those directed are led in a certain
continuous course, instead of dispersing aimlessly. Direction
expresses the basic function, which tends at one extreme to become
a guiding assistance and at another, a regulation or ruling. But in any
case, we must carefully avoid a meaning sometimes read into the
term "control." It is sometimes assumed, explicitly or unconsciously,
that an individual's tendencies are naturally purely individualistic or
egoistic, and thus antisocial. Control then denotes the process by
which he is brought to subordinate his natural impulses to public or
common ends. Since, by conception, his own nature is quite alien to
this process and opposes it rather than helps it, control has in this
view a flavor of coercion or compulsion about it. Systems of
government and theories of the state have been built upon this
notion, and it has seriously affected educational ideas and practices.
But there is no ground for any such view. Individuals are certainly
interested, at times, in having their own way, and their own way may
go contrary to the ways of others. But they are also interested, and
chiefly interested upon the whole, in entering into the activities of
others and taking part in conjoint and cooperative doings.
Otherwise, no such thing as a community would be possible. And
there would not even be any one interested in furnishing the
policeman to keep a semblance of harmony unless he thought that
thereby he could gain some personal advantage. Control, in truth,
means only an emphatic form of direction of powers, and covers
the regulation gained by an individual through his own efforts quite
as much as that brought about when others take the lead.
In general, every stimulus directs activity. It does not simply excite it
or stir it up, but directs it toward an object. Put the other way
around, a response is not just a re-action, a protest, as it were,
against being disturbed; it is, as the word indicates, an answer. It
meets the stimulus, and corresponds with it. There is an adaptation
of the stimulus and response to each other. A light is the stimulus to
the eye to see something, and the business of the eye is to see. If
the eyes are open and there is light, seeing occurs; the stimulus is but
29
a condition of the fulfillment of the proper function of the organ,
not an outside interruption. To some extent, then, all direction or
control is a guiding of activity to its own end; it is an assistance in
doing fully what some organ is already tending to do.
This general statement needs, however, to be qualified in two
respects. In the first place, except in the case of a small number of
instincts, the stimuli to which an immature human being is subject
are not sufficiently definite to call out, in the beginning, specific
responses. There is always a great deal of superfluous energy
aroused. This energy may be wasted, going aside from the point; it
may also go against the successful performance of an act. It does
harm by getting in the way. Compare the behavior of a beginner in
riding a bicycle with that of the expert. There is little axis of
direction in the energies put forth; they are largely dispersive and
centrifugal. Direction involves a focusing and fixating of action in
order that it may be truly a response, and this requires an
elimination of unnecessary and confusing movements. In the
second place, although no activity can be produced in which the
person does not cooperate to some extent, yet a response may be of
a kind which does not fit into the sequence and continuity of action.
A person boxing may dodge a particular blow successfully, but in
such a way as to expose himself the next instant to a still harder
blow. Adequate control means that the successive acts are brought
into a continuous order; each act not only meets its immediate
stimulus but helps the acts which follow.
In short, direction is both simultaneous and successive. At a given
time, it requires that, from all the tendencies that are partially called
out, those be selected which center energy upon the point of need.
Successively, it requires that each act be balanced with those which
precede and come after, so that order of activity is achieved.
Focusing and ordering are thus the two aspects of direction, one
spatial, the other temporal. The first insures hitting the mark; the
second keeps the balance required for further action. Obviously, it is
30
not possible to separate them in practice as we have distinguished
them in idea. Activity must be centered at a given time in such a way
as to prepare for what comes next. The problem of the immediate
response is complicated by one's having to be on the lookout for
future occurrences.
Two conclusions emerge from these general statements. On the one
hand, purely external direction is impossible. The environment can
at most only supply stimuli to call out responses. These responses
proceed from tendencies already possessed by the individual. Even
when a person is frightened by threats into doing something, the
threats work only because the person has an instinct of fear. If he
has not, or if, though having it, it is under his own control, the
threat has no more influence upon him than light has in causing a
person to see who has no eyes. While the customs and rules of
adults furnish stimuli which direct as well as evoke the activities of
the young, the young, after all, participate in the direction which
their actions finally take. In the strict sense, nothing can be forced
upon them or into them. To overlook this fact means to distort and
pervert human nature. To take into account the contribution made
by the existing instincts and habits of those directed is to direct
them economically and wisely. Speaking accurately, all direction is
but re-direction; it shifts the activities already going on into another
channel. Unless one is cognizant of the energies which are already in
operation, one's attempts at direction will almost surely go amiss.
On the other hand, the control afforded by the customs and
regulations of others may be short-sighted. It may accomplish its
immediate effect, but at the expense of throwing the subsequent
action of the person out of balance. A threat may, for example,
prevent a person from doing something to which he is naturally
inclined by arousing fear of disagreeable consequences if he
persists. But he may be left in the position which exposes him later
on to influences which will lead him to do even worse things. His
instincts of cunning and slyness may be aroused, so that things
31
henceforth appeal to him on the side of evasion and trickery more
than would otherwise have been the case. Those engaged in
directing the actions of others are always in danger of overlooking
the importance of the sequential development of those they direct.
2. Modes of Social Direction. Adults are naturally most conscious
of directing the conduct of others when they are immediately
aiming so to do. As a rule, they have such an aim consciously when
they find themselves resisted; when others are doing things they do
not wish them to do. But the more permanent and influential modes
of control are those which operate from moment to moment
continuously without such deliberate intention on our part.
1. When others are not doing what we would like them to or are
threatening disobedience, we are most conscious of the need of
controlling them and of the influences by which they are controlled.
In such cases, our control becomes most direct, and at this point we
are most likely to make the mistakes just spoken of. We are even
likely to take the influence of superior force for control, forgetting
that while we may lead a horse to water we cannot make him drink;
and that while we can shut a man up in a penitentiary we cannot
make him penitent. In all such cases of immediate action upon
others, we need to discriminate between physical results and moral
results. A person may be in such a condition that forcible feeding or
enforced confinement is necessary for his own good. A child may
have to be snatched with roughness away from a fire so that he shall
not be burnt. But no improvement of disposition, no educative
effect, need follow. A harsh and commanding tone may be effectual
in keeping a child away from the fire, and the same desirable
physical effect will follow as if he had been snatched away. But there
may be no more obedience of a moral sort in one case than in the
other. A man can be prevented from breaking into other persons'
houses by shutting him up, but shutting him up may not alter his
disposition to commit burglary. When we confuse a physical with an
educative result, we always lose the chance of enlisting the person's
32
own participating disposition in getting the result desired, and
thereby of developing within him an intrinsic and persisting
direction in the right way.
In general, the occasion for the more conscious acts of control
should be limited to acts which are so instinctive or impulsive that
the one performing them has no means of foreseeing their
outcome. If a person cannot foresee the consequences of his act,
and is not capable of understanding what he is told about its
outcome by those with more experience, it is impossible for him to
guide his act intelligently. In such a state, every act is alike to him.
Whatever moves him does move him, and that is all there is to it. In
some cases, it is well to permit him to experiment, and to discover
the consequences for himself in order that he may act intelligently
next time under similar circumstances. But some courses of action
are too discommoding and obnoxious to others to allow of this
course being pursued. Direct disapproval is now resorted to.
Shaming, ridicule, disfavor, rebuke, and punishment are used. Or
contrary tendencies in the child are appealed to to divert him from
his troublesome line of behavior. His sensitiveness to approbation,
his hope of winning favor by an agreeable act, are made use of to
induce action in another direction.
2. These methods of control are so obvious (because so
intentionally employed) that it would hardly be worth while to
mention them if it were not that notice may now be taken, by way
of contrast, of the other more important and permanent mode of
control. This other method resides in the ways in which persons,
with whom the immature being is associated, use things; the
instrumentalities with which they accomplish their own ends. The
very existence of the social medium in which an individual lives,
moves, and has his being is the standing effective agency of
directing his activity.
33
This fact makes it necessary for us to examine in greater detail what
is meant by the social environment. We are given to separating from
each other the physical and social environments in which we live.
The separation is responsible on one hand for an exaggeration of
the moral importance of the more direct or personal modes of
control of which we have been speaking; and on the other hand for
an exaggeration, in current psychology and philosophy, of the
intellectual possibilities of contact with a purely physical
environment. There is not, in fact, any such thing as the direct
influence of one human being on another apart from use of the
physical environment as an intermediary. A smile, a frown, a rebuke,
a word of warning or encouragement, all involve some physical
change. Otherwise, the attitude of one would not get over to alter
the attitude of another. Comparatively speaking, such modes of
influence may be regarded as personal. The physical medium is
reduced to a mere means of personal contact. In contrast with such
direct modes of mutual influence, stand associations in common
pursuits involving the use of things as means and as measures of
results. Even if the mother never told her daughter to help her, or
never rebuked her for not helping, the child would be subjected to
direction in her activities by the mere fact that she was engaged,
along with the parent, in the household life. Imitation, emulation,
the need of working together, enforce control.
If the mother hands the child something needed, the latter must
reach the thing in order to get it. Where there is giving there must
be taking. The way the child handles the thing after it is got, the use
to which it is put, is surely influenced by the fact that the child has
watched the mother. When the child sees the parent looking for
something, it is as natural for it also to look for the object and to
give it over when it finds it, as it was, under other circumstances, to
receive it. Multiply such an instance by the thousand details of daily
intercourse, and one has a picture of the most permanent and
enduring method of giving direction to the activities of the young.
34
In saying this, we are only repeating what was said previously about
participating in a joint activity as the chief way of forming
disposition. We have explicitly added, however, the recognition of
the part played in the joint activity by the use of things. The
philosophy of learning has been unduly dominated by a false
psychology. It is frequently stated that a person learns by merely
having the qualities of things impressed upon his mind through the
gateway of the senses. Having received a store of sensory
impressions, association or some power of mental synthesis is
supposed to combine them into ideas--into things with a meaning.
An object, stone, orange, tree, chair, is supposed to convey different
impressions of color, shape, size, hardness, smell, taste, etc., which
aggregated together constitute the characteristic meaning of each
thing. But as matter of fact, it is the characteristic use to which the
thing is put, because of its specific qualities, which supplies the
meaning with which it is identified. A chair is a thing which is put to
one use; a table, a thing which is employed for another purpose; an
orange is a thing which costs so much, which is grown in warm
climes, which is eaten, and when eaten has an agreeable odor and
refreshing taste, etc.
The difference between an adjustment to a physical stimulus and a
mental act is that the latter involves response to a thing in its
meaning; the former does not. A noise may make me jump without
my mind being implicated. When I hear a noise and run and get
water and put out a blaze, I respond intelligently; the sound meant
fire, and fire meant need of being extinguished. I bump into a stone,
and kick it to one side purely physically. I put it to one side for fear
some one will stumble upon it, intelligently; I respond to a meaning
which the thing has. I am startled by a thunderclap whether I
recognize it or not--more likely, if I do not recognize it. But if I
say, either out loud or to myself, that is thunder, I respond to the
disturbance as a meaning. My behavior has a mental quality. When
things have a meaning for us, we mean (intend, propose) what we
do: when they do not, we act blindly, unconsciously, unintelligently.
35
In both kinds of responsive adjustment, our activities are directed
or controlled. But in the merely blind response, direction is also
blind. There may be training, but there is no education. Repeated
responses to recurrent stimuli may fix a habit of acting in a certain
way. All of us have many habits of whose import we are quite
unaware, since they were formed without our knowing what we
were about. Consequently they possess us, rather than we them.
They move us; they control us. Unless we become aware of what
they accomplish, and pass judgment upon the worth of the result,
we do not control them. A child might be made to bow every time
he met a certain person by pressure on his neck muscles, and
bowing would finally become automatic. It would not, however, be
an act of recognition or deference on his part, till he did it with a
certain end in view--as having a certain meaning. And not till he
knew what he was about and performed the act for the sake of its
meaning could he be said to be "brought up" or educated to act in a
certain way. To have an idea of a thing is thus not just to get certain
sensations from it. It is to be able to respond to the thing in view of
its place in an inclusive scheme of action; it is to foresee the drift
and probable consequence of the action of the thing upon us and
of our action upon it. To have the same ideas about things which
others have, to be like-minded with them, and thus to be really
members of a social group, is therefore to attach the same meanings
to things and to acts which others attach. Otherwise, there is no
common understanding, and no community life. But in a shared
activity, each person refers what he is doing to what the other is
doing and vice-versa. That is, the activity of each is placed in the
same inclusive situation. To pull at a rope at which others happen to
be pulling is not a shared or conjoint activity, unless the pulling is
done with knowledge that others are pulling and for the sake of
either helping or hindering what they are doing. A pin may pass in
the course of its manufacture through the hands of many persons.
But each may do his part without knowledge of what others do or
without any reference to what they do; each may operate simply for
the sake of a separate result--his own pay. There is, in this case, no
36
common consequence to which the several acts are referred, and
hence no genuine intercourse or association, in spite of
juxtaposition, and in spite of the fact that their respective doings
contribute to a single outcome. But if each views the consequences
of his own acts as having a bearing upon what others are doing and
takes into account the consequences of their behavior upon himself,
then there is a common mind; a common intent in behavior. There
is an understanding set up between the different contributors; and
this common understanding controls the action of each. Suppose
that conditions were so arranged that one person automatically
caught a ball and then threw it to another person who caught and
automatically returned it; and that each so acted without knowing
where the ball came from or went to. Clearly, such action would be
without point or meaning. It might be physically controlled, but it
would not be socially directed. But suppose that each becomes
aware of what the other is doing, and becomes interested in the
other's action and thereby interested in what he is doing himself as
connected with the action of the other. The behavior of each would
then be intelligent; and socially intelligent and guided. Take one
more example of a less imaginary kind. An infant is hungry, and
cries while food is prepared in his presence. If he does not connect
his own state with what others are doing, nor what they are doing
with his own satisfaction, he simply reacts with increasing
impatience to his own increasing discomfort. He is physically
controlled by his own organic state. But when he makes a back and
forth reference, his whole attitude changes. He takes an interest, as
we say; he takes note and watches what others are doing. He no
longer reacts just to his own hunger, but behaves in the light of
what others are doing for its prospective satisfaction. In that way, he
also no longer just gives way to hunger without knowing it, but he
notes, or recognizes, or identifies his own state. It becomes an
object for him. His attitude toward it becomes in some degree
intelligent. And in such noting of the meaning of the actions of
others and of his own state, he is socially directed.
37
It will be recalled that our main proposition had two sides. One of
them has now been dealt with: namely, that physical things do not
influence mind (or form ideas and beliefs) except as they are
implicated in action for prospective consequences. The other point
is persons modify one another's dispositions only through the
special use they make of physical conditions. Consider first the case
of so-called expressive movements to which others are sensitive;
blushing, smiling, frowning, clinching of fists, natural gestures of all
kinds. In themselves, these are not expressive. They are organic
parts of a person's attitude. One does not blush to show modesty or
embarrassment to others, but because the capillary circulation alters
in response to stimuli. But others use the blush, or a slightly
perceptible tightening of the muscles of a person with whom they
are associated, as a sign of the state in which that person finds
himself, and as an indication of what course to pursue. The frown
signifies an imminent rebuke for which one must prepare, or an
uncertainty and hesitation which one must, if possible, remove by
saying or doing something to restore confidence. A man at some
distance is waving his arms wildly. One has only to preserve an
attitude of detached indifference, and the motions of the other
person will be on the level of any remote physical change which we
happen to note. If we have no concern or interest, the waving of
the arms is as meaningless to us as the gyrations of the arms of a
windmill. But if interest is aroused, we begin to participate. We refer
his action to something we are doing ourselves or that we should do.
We have to judge the meaning of his act in order to decide what to
do. Is he beckoning for help? Is he warning us of an explosion to be
set off, against which we should guard ourselves? In one case, his
action means to run toward him; in the other case, to run away. In
any case, it is the change he effects in the physical environment
which is a sign to us of how we should conduct ourselves. Our
action is socially controlled because we endeavor to refer what we
are to do to the same situation in which he is acting.
38
Language is, as we have already seen (ante, p. 15) a case of this joint
reference of our own action and that of another to a common
situation. Hence its unrivaled significance as a means of social
direction. But language would not be this efficacious instrument
were it not that it takes place upon a background of coarser and
more tangible use of physical means to accomplish results. A child
sees persons with whom he lives using chairs, hats, tables, spades,
saws, plows, horses, money in certain ways. If he has any share at all
in what they are doing, he is led thereby to use things in the same
way, or to use other things in a way which will fit in. If a chair is
drawn up to a table, it is a sign that he is to sit in it; if a person
extends his right hand, he is to extend his; and so on in a never
ending stream of detail. The prevailing habits of using the products
of human art and the raw materials of nature constitute by all odds
the deepest and most pervasive mode of social control. When
children go to school, they already have "minds"--they have
knowledge and dispositions of judgment which may be appealed to
through the use of language. But these "minds" are the organized
habits of intelligent response which they have previously required
by putting things to use in connection with the way other persons
use things. The control is inescapable; it saturates disposition. The
net outcome of the discussion is that the fundamental means of
control is not personal but intellectual. It is not "moral" in the sense
that a person is moved by direct personal appeal from others,
important as is this method at critical junctures. It consists in the
habits of understanding, which are set up in using objects in
correspondence with others, whether by way of cooperation and
assistance or rivalry and competition. Mind as a concrete thing is
precisely the power to understand things in terms of the use made
of them; a socialized mind is the power to understand them in
terms of the use to which they are turned in joint or shared
situations. And mind in this sense is the method of social control.
3. Imitation and Social Psychology. We have already noted the
defects of a psychology of learning which places the individual
39
mind naked, as it were, in contact with physical objects, and which
believes that knowledge, ideas, and beliefs accrue from their
interaction. Only comparatively recently has the predominating
influence of association with fellow beings in the formation of
mental and moral disposition been perceived. Even now it is usually
treated as a kind of adjunct to an alleged method of learning by
direct contact with things, and as merely supplementing knowledge
of the physical world with knowledge of persons. The purport of
our discussion is that such a view makes an absurd and impossible
separation between persons and things. Interaction with things may
form habits of external adjustment. But it leads to activity having a
meaning and conscious intent only when things are used to produce
a result. And the only way one person can modify the mind of
another is by using physical conditions, crude or artificial, so as to
evoke some answering activity from him. Such are our two main
conclusions. It is desirable to amplify and enforce them by placing
them in contrast with the theory which uses a psychology of
supposed direct relationships of human beings to one another as an
adjunct to the psychology of the supposed direct relation of an
individual to physical objects. In substance, this so-called social
psychology has been built upon the notion of imitation.
Consequently, we shall discuss the nature and role of imitation in
the formation of mental disposition.
According to this theory, social control of individuals rests upon the
instinctive tendency of individuals to imitate or copy the actions of
others. The latter serve as models. The imitative instinct is so strong
that the young devote themselves to conforming to the patterns set
by others and reproducing them in their own scheme of behavior.
According to our theory, what is here called imitation is a misleading
name for partaking with others in a use of things which leads to
consequences of common interest. The basic error in the current
notion of imitation is that it puts the cart before the horse. It takes
an effect for the cause of the effect. There can be no doubt that
individuals in forming a social group are like-minded; they
40
understand one another. They tend to act with the same controlling
ideas, beliefs, and intentions, given similar circumstances. Looked at
from without, they might be said to be engaged in "imitating" one
another. In the sense that they are doing much the same sort of
thing in much the same sort of way, this would be true enough. But
"imitation" throws no light upon why they so act; it repeats the fact
as an explanation of itself. It is an explanation of the same order as
the famous saying that opium puts men to sleep because of its
dormitive power.
Objective likeness of acts and the mental satisfaction found in being
in conformity with others are baptized by the name imitation. This
social fact is then taken for a psychological force, which produced
the likeness. A considerable portion of what is called imitation is
simply the fact that persons being alike in structure respond in the
same way to like stimuli. Quite independently of imitation, men on
being insulted get angry and attack the insulter. This statement may
be met by citing the undoubted fact that response to an insult takes
place in different ways in groups having different customs. In one
group, it may be met by recourse to fisticuffs, in another by a
challenge to a duel, in a third by an exhibition of contemptuous
disregard. This happens, so it is said, because the model set for
imitation is different. But there is no need to appeal to imitation.
The mere fact that customs are different means that the actual
stimuli to behavior are different. Conscious instruction plays a part;
prior approvals and disapprovals have a large influence. Still more
effective is the fact that unless an individual acts in the way current
in his group, he is literally out of it. He can associate with others on
intimate and equal terms only by behaving in the way in which they
behave. The pressure that comes from the fact that one is let into
the group action by acting in one way and shut out by acting in
another way is unremitting. What is called the effect of imitation is
mainly the product of conscious instruction and of the selective
influence exercised by the unconscious confirmations and
ratifications of those with whom one associates.
41
Suppose that some one rolls a ball to a child; he catches it and rolls
it back, and the game goes on. Here the stimulus is not just the sight
of the ball, or the sight of the other rolling it. It is the situation--
the game which is playing. The response is not merely rolling the
ball back; it is rolling it back so that the other one may catch and
return it,--that the game may continue. The "pattern" or model is
not the action of the other person. The whole situation requires that
each should adapt his action in view of what the other person has
done and is to do. Imitation may come in but its role is subordinate.
The child has an interest on his own account; he wants to keep it
going. He may then note how the other person catches and holds
the ball in order to improve his own acts. He imitates the means of
doing, not the end or thing to be done. And he imitates the means
because he wishes, on his own behalf, as part of his own initiative,
to take an effective part in the game. One has only to consider how
completely the child is dependent from his earliest days for
successful execution of his purposes upon fitting his acts into those
of others to see what a premium is put upon behaving as others
behave, and of developing an understanding of them in order that
he may so behave. The pressure for likemindedness in action from
this source is so great that it is quite superfluous to appeal to
imitation. As matter of fact, imitation of ends, as distinct from
imitation of means which help to reach ends, is a superficial and
transitory affair which leaves little effect upon disposition. Idiots are
especially apt at this kind of imitation; it affects outward acts but
not the meaning of their performance. When we find children
engaging in this sort of mimicry, instead of encouraging them (as
we would do if it were an important means of social control) we are
more likely to rebuke them as apes, monkeys, parrots, or copy cats.
Imitation of means of accomplishment is, on the other hand, an
intelligent act. It involves close observation, and judicious selection
of what will enable one to do better something which he already is
trying to do. Used for a purpose, the imitative instinct may, like any
other instinct, become a factor in the development of effective
action.
42
This excursus should, accordingly, have the effect of reinforcing the
conclusion that genuine social control means the formation of a
certain mental disposition; a way of understanding objects, events,
and acts which enables one to participate effectively in associated
activities. Only the friction engendered by meeting resistance from
others leads to the view that it takes place by forcing a line of action
contrary to natural inclinations. Only failure to take account of the
situations in which persons are mutually concerned (or interested in
acting responsively to one another) leads to treating imitation as the
chief agent in promoting social control.
4. Some Applications to Education. Why does a savage group
perpetuate savagery, and a civilized group civilization? Doubtless the
first answer to occur to mind is because savages are savages; being
of low-grade intelligence and perhaps defective moral sense. But
careful study has made it doubtful whether their native capacities are
appreciably inferior to those of civilized man. It has made it certain
that native differences are not sufficient to account for the
difference in culture. In a sense the mind of savage peoples is an
effect, rather than a cause, of their backward institutions. Their
social activities are such as to restrict their objects of attention and
interest, and hence to limit the stimuli to mental development. Even
as regards the objects that come within the scope of attention,
primitive social customs tend to arrest observation and imagination
upon qualities which do not fructify in the mind. Lack of control of
natural forces means that a scant number of natural objects enter
into associated behavior. Only a small number of natural resources
are utilized and they are not worked for what they are worth. The
advance of civilization means that a larger number of natural forces
and objects have been transformed into instrumentalities of action,
into means for securing ends. We start not so much with superior
capacities as with superior stimuli for evocation and direction of our
capacities. The savage deals largely with crude stimuli; we have
weighted stimuli. Prior human efforts have made over natural
conditions. As they originally existed they were indifferent to human
43
endeavors. Every domesticated plant and animal, every tool, every
utensil, every appliance, every manufactured article, every esthetic
decoration, every work of art means a transformation of conditions
once hostile or indifferent to characteristic human activities into
friendly and favoring conditions. Because the activities of children
today are controlled by these selected and charged stimuli, children
are able to traverse in a short lifetime what the race has needed slow,
tortured ages to attain. The dice have been loaded by all the
successes which have preceded.
Stimuli conducive to economical and effective response, such as our
system of roads and means of transportation, our ready command
of heat, light, and electricity, our ready-made machines and
apparatus for every purpose, do not, by themselves or in their
aggregate, constitute a civilization. But the uses to which they are
put are civilization, and without the things the uses would be
impossible. Time otherwise necessarily devoted to wresting a
livelihood from a grudging environment and securing a precarious
protection against its inclemencies is freed. A body of knowledge is
transmitted, the legitimacy of which is guaranteed by the fact that
the physical equipment in which it is incarnated leads to results that
square with the other facts of nature. Thus these appliances of art
supply a protection, perhaps our chief protection, against a
recrudescence of these superstitious beliefs, those fanciful myths
and infertile imaginings about nature in which so much of the best
intellectual power of the past has been spent. If we add one other
factor, namely, that such appliances be not only used, but used in the
interests of a truly shared or associated life, then the appliances
become the positive resources of civilization. If Greece, with a
scant tithe of our material resources, achieved a worthy and noble
intellectual and artistic career, it is because Greece operated for
social ends such resources as it had. But whatever the situation,
whether one of barbarism or civilization, whether one of stinted
control of physical forces, or of partial enslavement to a mechanism
not yet made tributary to a shared experience, things as they enter
44
into action furnish the educative conditions of daily life and direct
the formation of mental and moral disposition.
Intentional education signifies, as we have already seen, a specially
selected environment, the selection being made on the basis of
materials and method specifically promoting growth in the desired
direction. Since language represents the physical conditions that
have been subjected to the maximum transformation in the interests
of social life--physical things which have lost their original quality
in becoming social tools--it is appropriate that language should play
a large part compared with other appliances. By it we are led to
share vicariously in past human experience, thus widening and
enriching the experience of the present. We are enabled,
symbolically and imaginatively, to anticipate situations. In countless
ways, language condenses meanings that record social outcomes and
presage social outlooks. So significant is it of a liberal share in what
is worth while in life that unlettered and uneducated have become
almost synonymous.
The emphasis in school upon this particular tool has, however, its
dangers--dangers which are not theoretical but exhibited in
practice. Why is it, in spite of the fact that teaching by pouring in,
learning by a passive absorption, are universally condemned, that
they are still so entrenched in practice? That education is not an
affair of "telling" and being told, but an active and constructive
process, is a principle almost as generally violated in practice as
conceded in theory. Is not this deplorable situation due to the fact
that the doctrine is itself merely told? It is preached; it is lectured; it
is written about. But its enactment into practice requires that the
school environment be equipped with agencies for doing, with tools
and physical materials, to an extent rarely attained. It requires that
methods of instruction and administration be modified to allow and
to secure direct and continuous occupations with things. Not that
the use of language as an educational resource should lessen; but
that its use should be more vital and fruitful by having its normal
45
connection with shared activities. "These things ought ye to have
done, and not to have left the others undone." And for the school
"these things" mean equipment with the instrumentalities of
cooperative or joint activity.
For when the schools depart from the educational conditions
effective in the out-of-school environment, they necessarily
substitute a bookish, a pseudo-intellectual spirit for a social spirit.
Children doubtless go to school to learn, but it has yet to be proved
that learning occurs most adequately when it is made a separate
conscious business. When treating it as a business of this sort tends
to preclude the social sense which comes from sharing in an activity
of common concern and value, the effort at isolated intellectual
learning contradicts its own aim. We may secure motor activity and
sensory excitation by keeping an individual by himself, but we
cannot thereby get him to understand the meaning which things
have in the life of which he is a part. We may secure technical
specialized ability in algebra, Latin, or botany, but not the kind of
intelligence which directs ability to useful ends. Only by engaging in
a joint activity, where one person's use of material and tools is
consciously referred to the use other persons are making of their
capacities and appliances, is a social direction of disposition
attained.
Summary.
The natural or native impulses of the young do not agree with the
life-customs of the group into which they are born. Consequently
they have to be directed or guided. This control is not the same
thing as physical compulsion; it consists in centering the impulses
acting at any one time upon some specific end and in introducing an
order of continuity into the sequence of acts. The action of others
is always influenced by deciding what stimuli shall call out their
actions. But in some cases as in commands, prohibitions, approvals,
46
and disapprovals, the stimuli proceed from persons with a direct
view to influencing action. Since in such cases we are most
conscious of controlling the action of others, we are likely to
exaggerate the importance of this sort of control at the expense of
a more permanent and effective method. The basic control resides
in the nature of the situations in which the young take part. In social
situations the young have to refer their way of acting to what others
are doing and make it fit in. This directs their action to a common
result, and gives an understanding common to the participants. For
all mean the same thing, even when performing different acts. This
common understanding of the means and ends of action is the
essence of social control. It is indirect, or emotional and intellectual,
not direct or personal. Moreover it is intrinsic to the disposition of
the person, not external and coercive. To achieve this internal
control through identity of interest and understanding is the
business of education. While books and conversation can do much,
these agencies are usually relied upon too exclusively. Schools
require for their full efficiency more opportunity for conjoint
activities in which those instructed take part, so that they may
acquire a social sense of their own powers and of the materials and
appliances used.
Chapter Four: Education as Growth
1. The Conditions of Growth. In directing the activities of the
young, society determines its own future in determining that of the
young. Since the young at a given time will at some later date
compose the society of that period, the latter's nature will largely
turn upon the direction children's activities were given at an earlier
period. This cumulative movement of action toward a later result is
what is meant by growth.
The primary condition of growth is immaturity. This may seem to
be a mere truism--saying that a being can develop only in some
47
point in which he is undeveloped. But the prefix "im" of the word
immaturity means something positive, not a mere void or lack. It is
noteworthy that the terms "capacity" and "potentiality" have a
double meaning, one sense being negative, the other positive.
Capacity may denote mere receptivity, like the capacity of a quart
measure. We may mean by potentiality a merely dormant or
quiescent state--a capacity to become something different under
external influences. But we also mean by capacity an ability, a power;
and by potentiality potency, force. Now when we say that
immaturity means the possibility of growth, we are not referring to
absence of powers which may exist at a later time; we express a
force positively present--the ability to develop.
Our tendency to take immaturity as mere lack, and growth as
something which fills up the gap between the immature and the
mature is due to regarding childhood comparatively, instead of
intrinsically. We treat it simply as a privation because we are
measuring it by adulthood as a fixed standard. This fixes attention
upon what the child has not, and will not have till he becomes a
man. This comparative standpoint is legitimate enough for some
purposes, but if we make it final, the question arises whether we are
not guilty of an overweening presumption. Children, if they could
express themselves articulately and sincerely, would tell a different
tale; and there is excellent adult authority for the conviction that for
certain moral and intellectual purposes adults must become as little
children. The seriousness of the assumption of the negative quality
of the possibilities of immaturity is apparent when we reflect that it
sets up as an ideal and standard a static end. The fulfillment of
growing is taken to mean an accomplished growth: that is to say, an
Ungrowth, something which is no longer growing. The futility of
the assumption is seen in the fact that every adult resents the
imputation of having no further possibilities of growth; and so far
as he finds that they are closed to him mourns the fact as evidence
of loss, instead of falling back on the achieved as adequate
48
manifestation of power. Why an unequal measure for child and
man?
Taken absolutely, instead of comparatively, immaturity designates a
positive force or ability,--the pouter to grow. We do not have to
draw out or educe positive activities from a child, as some
educational doctrines would have it. Where there is life, there are
already eager and impassioned activities. Growth is not something
done to them; it is something they do. The positive and constructive
aspect of possibility gives the key to understanding the two chief
traits of immaturity, dependence and plasticity.
(1) It sounds absurd to hear dependence spoken of as something
positive, still more absurd as a power. Yet if helplessness were all
there were in dependence, no development could ever take place. A
merely impotent being has to be carried, forever, by others. The fact
that dependence is accompanied by growth in ability, not by an ever
increasing lapse into parasitism, suggests that it is already something
constructive. Being merely sheltered by others would not promote
growth. For
(2) it would only build a wall around impotence. With reference to
the physical world, the child is helpless. He lacks at birth and for a
long time thereafter power to make his way physically, to make his
own living. If he had to do that by himself, he would hardly survive
an hour. On this side his helplessness is almost complete. The young
of the brutes are immeasurably his superiors. He is physically weak
and not able to turn the strength which he possesses to coping with
the physical environment.
1. The thoroughgoing character of this helplessness suggests,
however, some compensating power. The relative ability of the
young of brute animals to adapt themselves fairly well to physical
conditions from an early period suggests the fact that their life is not
intimately bound up with the life of those about them. They are
49
compelled, so to speak, to have physical gifts because they are
lacking in social gifts. Human infants, on the other hand, can get
along with physical incapacity just because of their social capacity.
We sometimes talk and think as if they simply happened to be
physically in a social environment; as if social forces exclusively
existed in the adults who take care of them, they being passive
recipients. If it were said that children are themselves marvelously
endowed with power to enlist the cooperative attention of others,
this would be thought to be a backhanded way of saying that others
are marvelously attentive to the needs of children. But observation
shows that children are gifted with an equipment of the first order
for social intercourse. Few grown-up persons retain all of the
flexible and sensitive ability of children to vibrate sympathetically
with the attitudes and doings of those about them. Inattention to
physical things (going with incapacity to control them) is
accompanied by a corresponding intensification of interest and
attention as to the doings of people. The native mechanism of the
child and his impulses all tend to facile social responsiveness. The
statement that children, before adolescence, are egotistically self-
centered, even if it were true, would not contradict the truth of this
statement. It would simply indicate that their social responsiveness is
employed on their own behalf, not that it does not exist. But the
statement is not true as matter of fact. The facts which are cited in
support of the alleged pure egoism of children really show the
intensity and directness with which they go to their mark. If the
ends which form the mark seem narrow and selfish to adults, it is
only because adults (by means of a similar engrossment in their day)
have mastered these ends, which have consequently ceased to
interest them. Most of the remainder of children's alleged native
egoism is simply an egoism which runs counter to an adult's egoism.
To a grown-up person who is too absorbed in his own affairs to take
an interest in children's affairs, children doubtless seem
unreasonably engrossed in their own affairs.
50
From a social standpoint, dependence denotes a power rather than a
weakness; it involves interdependence. There is always a danger that
increased personal independence will decrease the social capacity of
an individual. In making him more self-reliant, it may make him
more self-sufficient; it may lead to aloofness and indifference. It
often makes an individual so insensitive in his relations to others as
to develop an illusion of being really able to stand and act alone--
an unnamed form of insanity which is responsible for a large part
of the remediable suffering of the world.
2. The specific adaptability of an immature creature for growth
constitutes his plasticity. This is something quite different from the
plasticity of putty or wax. It is not a capacity to take on change of
form in accord with external pressure. It lies near the pliable
elasticity by which some persons take on the color of their
surroundings while retaining their own bent. But it is something
deeper than this. It is essentially the ability to learn from experience;
the power to retain from one experience something which is of avail
in coping with the difficulties of a later situation. This means power
to modify actions on the basis of the results of prior experiences,
the power to develop dispositions. Without it, the acquisition of
habits is impossible.
It is a familiar fact that the young of the higher animals, and
especially the human young, have to learn to utilize their instinctive
reactions. The human being is born with a greater number of
instinctive tendencies than other animals. But the instincts of the
lower animals perfect themselves for appropriate action at an early
period after birth, while most of those of the human infant are of
little account just as they stand. An original specialized power of
adjustment secures immediate efficiency, but, like a railway ticket, it
is good for one route only. A being who, in order to use his eyes,
ears, hands, and legs, has to experiment in making varied
combinations of their reactions, achieves a control that is flexible
and varied. A chick, for example, pecks accurately at a bit of food in
51
a few hours after hatching. This means that definite coordinations
of activities of the eyes in seeing and of the body and head in
striking are perfected in a few trials. An infant requires about six
months to be able to gauge with approximate accuracy the action in
reaching which will coordinate with his visual activities; to be able,
that is, to tell whether he can reach a seen object and just how to
execute the reaching. As a result, the chick is limited by the relative
perfection of its original endowment. The infant has the advantage
of the multitude of instinctive tentative reactions and of the
experiences that accompany them, even though he is at a temporary
disadvantage because they cross one another. In learning an action,
instead of having it given ready-made, one of necessity learns to
vary its factors, to make varied combinations of them, according to
change of circumstances. A possibility of continuing progress is
opened up by the fact that in learning one act, methods are
developed good for use in other situations. Still more important is
the fact that the human being acquires a habit of learning. He learns
to learn.
The importance for human life of the two facts of dependence and
variable control has been summed up in the doctrine of the
significance of prolonged infancy. 1 This prolongation is significant
from the standpoint of the adult members of the group as well as
from that of the young. The presence of dependent and learning
beings is a stimulus to nurture and affection. The need for constant
continued care was probably a chief means in transforming
temporary cohabitations into permanent unions. It certainly was a
chief influence in forming habits of affectionate and sympathetic
watchfulness; that constructive interest in the well-being of others
which is essential to associated life. Intellectually, this moral
development meant the introduction of many new objects of
attention; it stimulated foresight and planning for the future. Thus
there is a reciprocal influence. Increasing complexity of social life
requires a longer period of infancy in which to acquire the needed
powers; this prolongation of dependence means prolongation of
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plasticity, or power of acquiring variable and novel modes of
control. Hence it provides a further push to social progress.
2. Habits as Expressions of Growth. We have already noted that
plasticity is the capacity to retain and carry over from prior
experience factors which modify subsequent activities. This signifies
the capacity to acquire habits, or develop definite dispositions. We
have now to consider the salient features of habits. In the first place,
a habit is a form of executive skill, of efficiency in doing. A habit
means an ability to use natural conditions as means to ends. It is an
active control of the environment through control of the organs of
action. We are perhaps apt to emphasize the control of the body at
the expense of control of the environment. We think of walking,
talking, playing the piano, the specialized skills characteristic of the
etcher, the surgeon, the bridge-builder, as if they were simply ease,
deftness, and accuracy on the part of the organism. They are that,
of course; but the measure of the value of these qualities lies in the
economical and effective control of the environment which they
secure. To be able to walk is to have certain properties of nature at
our disposal--and so with all other habits.
Education is not infrequently defined as consisting in the acquisition
of those habits that effect an adjustment of an individual and his
environment. The definition expresses an essential phase of growth.
But it is essential that adjustment be understood in its active sense
of control of means for achieving ends. If we think of a habit
simply as a change wrought in the organism, ignoring the fact that
this change consists in ability to effect subsequent changes in the
environment, we shall be led to think of "adjustment" as a
conformity to environment as wax conforms to the seal which
impresses it. The environment is thought of as something fixed,
providing in its fixity the end and standard of changes taking place
in the organism; adjustment is just fitting ourselves to this fixity of
external conditions. 2 Habit as habituation is indeed something
relatively passive; we get used to our surroundings--to our clothing,
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our shoes, and gloves; to the atmosphere as long as it is fairly
equable; to our daily associates, etc. Conformity to the environment,
a change wrought in the organism without reference to ability to
modify surroundings, is a marked trait of such habituations. Aside
from the fact that we are not entitled to carry over the traits of such
adjustments (which might well be called accommodations, to mark
them off from active adjustments) into habits of active use of our
surroundings, two features of habituations are worth notice. In the
first place, we get used to things by first using them.
Consider getting used to a strange city. At first, there is excessive
stimulation and excessive and ill-adapted response. Gradually certain
stimuli are selected because of their relevancy, and others are
degraded. We can say either that we do not respond to them any
longer, or more truly that we have effected a persistent response to
them--an equilibrium of adjustment. This means, in the second
place, that this enduring adjustment supplies the background upon
which are made specific adjustments, as occasion arises. We are
never interested in changing the whole environment; there is much
that we take for granted and accept just as it already is. Upon this
background our activities focus at certain points in an endeavor to
introduce needed changes. Habituation is thus our adjustment to an
environment which at the time we are not concerned with
modifying, and which supplies a leverage to our active habits.
Adaptation, in fine, is quite as much adaptation of the environment
to our own activities as of our activities to the environment. A
savage tribe manages to live on a desert plain. It adapts itself. But its
adaptation involves a maximum of accepting, tolerating, putting up
with things as they are, a maximum of passive acquiescence, and a
minimum of active control, of subjection to use. A civilized people
enters upon the scene. It also adapts itself. It introduces irrigation; it
searches the world for plants and animals that will flourish under
such conditions; it improves, by careful selection, those which are
growing there. As a consequence, the wilderness blossoms as a rose.
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The savage is merely habituated; the civilized man has habits which
transform the environment.
The significance of habit is not exhausted, however, in its executive
and motor phase. It means formation of intellectual and emotional
disposition as well as an increase in ease, economy, and efficiency of
action. Any habit marks an inclination--an active preference and
choice for the conditions involved in its exercise. A habit does not
wait, Micawber-like, for a stimulus to turn up so that it may get busy;
it actively seeks for occasions to pass into full operation. If its
expression is unduly blocked, inclination shows itself in uneasiness
and intense craving. A habit also marks an intellectual disposition.
Where there is a habit, there is acquaintance with the materials and
equipment to which action is applied. There is a definite way of
understanding the situations in which the habit operates. Modes of
thought, of observation and reflection, enter as forms of skill and
of desire into the habits that make a man an engineer, an architect, a
physician, or a merchant. In unskilled forms of labor, the intellectual
factors are at minimum precisely because the habits involved are not
of a high grade. But there are habits of judging and reasoning as
truly as of handling a tool, painting a picture, or conducting an
experiment. Such statements are, however, understatements. The
habits of mind involved in habits of the eye and hand supply the
latter with their significance. Above all, the intellectual element in a
habit fixes the relation of the habit to varied and elastic use, and
hence to continued growth. We speak of fixed habits. Well, the
phrase may mean powers so well established that their possessor
always has them as resources when needed. But the phrase is also
used to mean ruts, routine ways, with loss of freshness, open-
mindedness, and originality. Fixity of habit may mean that
something has a fixed hold upon us, instead of our having a free
hold upon things. This fact explains two points in a common notion
about habits: their identification with mechanical and external
modes of action to the neglect of mental and moral attitudes, and
the tendency to give them a bad meaning, an identification with
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"bad habits." Many a person would feel surprised to have his
aptitude in his chosen profession called a habit, and would naturally
think of his use of tobacco, liquor, or profane language as typical of
the meaning of habit. A habit is to him something which has a hold
on him, something not easily thrown off even though judgment
condemn it.
Habits reduce themselves to routine ways of acting, or degenerate
into ways of action to which we are enslaved just in the degree in
which intelligence is disconnected from them. Routine habits are
unthinking habits: "bad" habits are habits so severed from reason
that they are opposed to the conclusions of conscious deliberation
and decision. As we have seen, the acquiring of habits is due to an
original plasticity of our natures: to our ability to vary responses till
we find an appropriate and efficient way of acting. Routine habits,
and habits that possess us instead of our possessing them, are habits
which put an end to plasticity. They mark the close of power to
vary. There can be no doubt of the tendency of organic plasticity,
of the physiological basis, to lessen with growing years. The
instinctively mobile and eagerly varying action of childhood, the
love of new stimuli and new developments, too easily passes into a
"settling down," which means aversion to change and a resting on
past achievements. Only an environment which secures the full use
of intelligence in the process of forming habits can counteract this
tendency. Of course, the same hardening of the organic conditions
affects the physiological structures which are involved in thinking.
But this fact only indicates the need of persistent care to see to it
that the function of intelligence is invoked to its maximum
possibility. The short-sighted method which falls back on
mechanical routine and repetition to secure external efficiency of
habit, motor skill without accompanying thought, marks a deliberate
closing in of surroundings upon growth.
3. The Educational Bearings of the Conception of Development.
We have had so far but little to say in this chapter about education.
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We have been occupied with the conditions and implications of
growth. If our conclusions are justified, they carry with them,
however, definite educational consequences. When it is said that
education is development, everything depends upon how
development is conceived. Our net conclusion is that life is
development, and that developing, growing, is life. Translated into
its educational equivalents, that means (i) that the educational
process has no end beyond itself; it is its own end; and that (ii) the
educational process is one of continual reorganizing, reconstructing,
transforming.
1. Development when it is interpreted in comparative terms, that is,
with respect to the special traits of child and adult life, means the
direction of power into special channels: the formation of habits
involving executive skill, definiteness of interest, and specific objects
of observation and thought. But the comparative view is not final.
The child has specific powers; to ignore that fact is to stunt or
distort the organs upon which his growth depends. The adult uses
his powers to transform his environment, thereby occasioning new
stimuli which redirect his powers and keep them developing.
Ignoring this fact means arrested development, a passive
accommodation. Normal child and normal adult alike, in other
words, are engaged in growing. The difference between them is not
the difference between growth and no growth, but between the
modes of growth appropriate to different conditions. With respect
to the development of powers devoted to coping with specific
scientific and economic problems we may say the child should be
growing in manhood. With respect to sympathetic curiosity,
unbiased responsiveness, and openness of mind, we may say that
the adult should be growing in childlikeness. One statement is as
true as the other.
Three ideas which have been criticized, namely, the merely privative
nature of immaturity, static adjustment to a fixed environment, and
rigidity of habit, are all connected with a false idea of growth or
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development,--that it is a movement toward a fixed goal. Growth is
regarded as having an end, instead of being an end. The educational
counterparts of the three fallacious ideas are first, failure to take
account of the instinctive or native powers of the young; secondly,
failure to develop initiative in coping with novel situations; thirdly,
an undue emphasis upon drill and other devices which secure
automatic skill at the expense of personal perception. In all cases,
the adult environment is accepted as a standard for the child. He is
to be brought up to it.
Natural instincts are either disregarded or treated as nuisances--as
obnoxious traits to be suppressed, or at all events to be brought into
conformity with external standards. Since conformity is the aim,
what is distinctively individual in a young person is brushed aside, or
regarded as a source of mischief or anarchy. Conformity is made
equivalent to uniformity. Consequently, there are induced lack of
interest in the novel, aversion to progress, and dread of the
uncertain and the unknown. Since the end of growth is outside of
and beyond the process of growing, external agents have to be
resorted to to induce movement toward it. Whenever a method of
education is stigmatized as mechanical, we may be sure that external
pressure is brought to bear to reach an external end.
2. Since in reality there is nothing to which growth is relative save
more growth, there is nothing to which education is subordinate
save more education. It is a commonplace to say that education
should not cease when one leaves school. The point of this
commonplace is that the purpose of school education is to insure
the continuance of education by organizing the powers that insure
growth. The inclination to learn from life itself and to make the
conditions of life such that all will learn in the process of living is
the finest product of schooling.
When we abandon the attempt to define immaturity by means of
fixed comparison with adult accomplishments, we are compelled to
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give up thinking of it as denoting lack of desired traits. Abandoning
this notion, we are also forced to surrender our habit of thinking of
instruction as a method of supplying this lack by pouring
knowledge into a mental and moral hole which awaits filling. Since
life means growth, a living creature lives as truly and positively at
one stage as at another, with the same intrinsic fullness and the same
absolute claims. Hence education means the enterprise of supplying
the conditions which insure growth, or adequacy of life, irrespective
of age. We first look with impatience upon immaturity, regarding it
as something to be got over as rapidly as possible. Then the adult
formed by such educative methods looks back with impatient regret
upon childhood and youth as a scene of lost opportunities and
wasted powers. This ironical situation will endure till it is recognized
that living has its own intrinsic quality and that the business of
education is with that quality. Realization that life is growth protects
us from that so-called idealizing of childhood which in effect is
nothing but lazy indulgence. Life is not to be identified with every
superficial act and interest. Even though it is not always easy to tell
whether what appears to be mere surface fooling is a sign of some
nascent as yet untrained power, we must remember that
manifestations are not to be accepted as ends in themselves. They
are signs of possible growth. They are to be turned into means of
development, of carrying power forward, not indulged or cultivated
for their own sake. Excessive attention to surface phenomena (even
in the way of rebuke as well as of encouragement) may lead to their
fixation and thus to arrested development. What impulses are
moving toward, not what they have been, is the important thing for
parent and teacher. The true principle of respect for immaturity
cannot be better put than in the words of Emerson: "Respect the
child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude. But
I hear the outcry which replies to this suggestion: Would you verily
throw up the reins of public and private discipline; would you leave
the young child to the mad career of his own passions and
whimsies, and call this anarchy a respect for the child's nature? I
answer,--Respect the child, respect him to the end, but also respect
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yourself... The two points in a boy's training are, to keep his naturel
and train off all but that; to keep his naturel, but stop off his
uproar, fooling, and horseplay; keep his nature and arm it with
knowledge in the very direction in which it points." And as Emerson
goes on to show this reverence for childhood and youth instead of
opening up an easy and easy-going path to the instructors, "involves
at once, immense claims on the time, the thought, on the life of the
teacher. It requires time, use, insight, event, all the great lessons and
assistances of God; and only to think of using it implies character
and profoundness."
Summary.
Power to grow depends upon need for others and plasticity. Both of
these conditions are at their height in childhood and youth. Plasticity
or the power to learn from experience means the formation of
habits. Habits give control over the environment, power to utilize it
for human purposes. Habits take the form both of habituation, or a
general and persistent balance of organic activities with the
surroundings, and of active capacities to readjust activity to meet
new conditions. The former furnishes the background of growth;
the latter constitute growing. Active habits involve thought,
invention, and initiative in applying capacities to new aims. They are
opposed to routine which marks an arrest of growth. Since growth
is the characteristic of life, education is all one with growing; it has
no end beyond itself. The criterion of the value of school education
is the extent in which it creates a desire for continued growth and
supplies means for making the desire effective in fact.
1 Intimations of its significance are found in a number of writers,
but John Fiske, in his Excursions of an Evolutionist, is accredited
with its first systematic exposition.
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2 This conception is, of course, a logical correlate of the
conceptions of the external relation of stimulus and response,
considered in the last chapter, and of the negative conceptions of
immaturity and plasticity noted in this chapter.
Chapter Five: Preparation, Unfolding, and Formal
Discipline
1. Education as Preparation. We have laid it down that the educative
process is a continuous process of growth, having as its aim at every
stage an added capacity of growth. This conception contrasts
sharply with other ideas which have influenced practice. By making
the contrast explicit, the meaning of the conception will be brought
more clearly to light. The first contrast is with the idea that
education is a process of preparation or getting ready. What is to be
prepared for is, of course, the responsibilities and privileges of adult
life. Children are not regarded as social members in full and regular
standing. They are looked upon as candidates; they are placed on the
waiting list. The conception is only carried a little farther when the
life of adults is considered as not having meaning on its own
account, but as a preparatory probation for "another life." The idea
is but another form of the notion of the negative and privative
character of growth already criticized; hence we shall not repeat the
criticisms, but pass on to the evil consequences which flow from
putting education on this basis. In the first place, it involves loss of
impetus. Motive power is not utilized. Children proverbially live in
the present; that is not only a fact not to be evaded, but it is an
excellence. The future just as future lacks urgency and body. To get
ready for something, one knows not what nor why, is to throw away
the leverage that exists, and to seek for motive power in a vague
chance. Under such circumstances, there is, in the second place, a
premium put on shilly-shallying and procrastination. The future
prepared for is a long way off; plenty of time will intervene before it
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becomes a present. Why be in a hurry about getting ready for it?
The temptation to postpone is much increased because the present
offers so many wonderful opportunities and proffers such
invitations to adventure. Naturally attention and energy go to them;
education accrues naturally as an outcome, but a lesser education
than if the full stress of effort had been put upon making
conditions as educative as possible. A third undesirable result is the
substitution of a conventional average standard of expectation and
requirement for a standard which concerns the specific powers of
the individual under instruction. For a severe and definite judgment
based upon the strong and weak points of the individual is
substituted a vague and wavering opinion concerning what youth
may be expected, upon the average, to become in some more or less
remote future; say, at the end of the year, when promotions are to
take place, or by the time they are ready to go to college or to enter
upon what, in contrast with the probationary stage, is regarded as
the serious business of life. It is impossible to overestimate the loss
which results from the deflection of attention from the strategic
point to a comparatively unproductive point. It fails most just where
it thinks it is succeeding--in getting a preparation for the future.
Finally, the principle of preparation makes necessary recourse on a
large scale to the use of adventitious motives of pleasure and pain.
The future having no stimulating and directing power when severed
from the possibilities of the present, something must be hitched on
to it to make it work. Promises of reward and threats of pain are
employed. Healthy work, done for present reasons and as a factor in
living, is largely unconscious. The stimulus resides in the situation
with which one is actually confronted. But when this situation is
ignored, pupils have to be told that if they do not follow the
prescribed course penalties will accrue; while if they do, they may
expect, some time in the future, rewards for their present sacrifices.
Everybody knows how largely systems of punishment have had to
be resorted to by educational systems which neglect present
possibilities in behalf of preparation for a future. Then, in disgust
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with the harshness and impotency of this method, the pendulum
swings to the opposite extreme, and the dose of information
required against some later day is sugar-coated, so that pupils may
be fooled into taking something which they do not care for.
It is not of course a question whether education should prepare for
the future. If education is growth, it must progressively realize
present possibilities, and thus make individuals better fitted to cope
with later requirements. Growing is not something which is
completed in odd moments; it is a continuous leading into the
future. If the environment, in school and out, supplies conditions
which utilize adequately the present capacities of the immature, the
future which grows out of the present is surely taken care of. The
mistake is not in attaching importance to preparation for future
need, but in making it the mainspring of present effort. Because the
need of preparation for a continually developing life is great, it is
imperative that every energy should be bent to making the present
experience as rich and significant as possible. Then as the present
merges insensibly into the future, the future is taken care of.
2. Education as Unfolding. There is a conception of education
which professes to be based upon the idea of development. But it
takes back with one hand what it proffers with the other.
Development is conceived not as continuous growing, but as the
unfolding of latent powers toward a definite goal. The goal is
conceived of as completion,--perfection. Life at any stage short of
attainment of this goal is merely an unfolding toward it. Logically
the doctrine is only a variant of the preparation theory. Practically
the two differ in that the adherents of the latter make much of the
practical and professional duties for which one is preparing, while
the developmental doctrine speaks of the ideal and spiritual qualities
of the principle which is unfolding.
The conception that growth and progress are just approximations to
a final unchanging goal is the last infirmity of the mind in its
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transition from a static to a dynamic understanding of life. It
simulates the style of the latter. It pays the tribute of speaking much
of development, process, progress. But all of these operations are
conceived to be merely transitional; they lack meaning on their own
account. They possess significance only as movements toward
something away from what is now going on. Since growth is just a
movement toward a completed being, the final ideal is immobile. An
abstract and indefinite future is in control with all which that
connotes in depreciation of present power and opportunity.
Since the goal of perfection, the standard of development, is very
far away, it is so beyond us that, strictly speaking, it is unattainable.
Consequently, in order to be available for present guidance it must
be translated into something which stands for it. Otherwise we
should be compelled to regard any and every manifestation of the
child as an unfolding from within, and hence sacred. Unless we set
up some definite criterion representing the ideal end by which to
judge whether a given attitude or act is approximating or moving
away, our sole alternative is to withdraw all influences of the
environment lest they interfere with proper development. Since that
is not practicable, a working substitute is set up. Usually, of course,
this is some idea which an adult would like to have a child acquire.
Consequently, by "suggestive questioning" or some other
pedagogical device, the teacher proceeds to "draw out" from the
pupil what is desired. If what is desired is obtained, that is evidence
that the child is unfolding properly. But as the pupil generally has no
initiative of his own in this direction, the result is a random groping
after what is wanted, and the formation of habits of dependence
upon the cues furnished by others. Just because such methods
simulate a true principle and claim to have its sanction they may do
more harm than would outright "telling," where, at least, it remains
with the child how much will stick.
Within the sphere of philosophic thought there have been two
typical attempts to provide a working representative of the absolute
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goal. Both start from the conception of a whole--an absolute--
which is "immanent" in human life. The perfect or complete ideal is
not a mere ideal; it is operative here and now. But it is present only
implicitly, "potentially," or in an enfolded condition. What is termed
development is the gradual making explicit and outward of what is
thus wrapped up. Froebel and Hegel, the authors of the two
philosophic schemes referred to, have different ideas of the path by
which the progressive realization of manifestation of the complete
principle is effected. According to Hegel, it is worked out through a
series of historical institutions which embody the different factors in
the Absolute. According to Froebel, the actuating force is the
presentation of symbols, largely mathematical, corresponding to the
essential traits of the Absolute. When these are presented to the
child, the Whole, or perfection, sleeping within him, is awakened. A
single example may indicate the method. Every one familiar with the
kindergarten is acquainted with the circle in which the children
gather. It is not enough that the circle is a convenient way of
grouping the children. It must be used "because it is a symbol of the
collective life of mankind in general." Froebel's recognition of the
significance of the native capacities of children, his loving attention
to them, and his influence in inducing others to study them,
represent perhaps the most effective single force in modern
educational theory in effecting widespread acknowledgment of the
idea of growth. But his formulation of the notion of development
and his organization of devices for promoting it were badly
hampered by the fact that he conceived development to be the
unfolding of a ready-made latent principle. He failed to see that
growing is growth, developing is development, and consequently
placed the emphasis upon the completed product. Thus he set up a
goal which meant the arrest of growth, and a criterion which is not
applicable to immediate guidance of powers, save through
translation into abstract and symbolic formulae.
A remote goal of complete unfoldedness is, in technical philosophic
language, transcendental. That is, it is something apart from direct
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experience and perception. So far as experience is concerned, it is
empty; it represents a vague sentimental aspiration rather than
anything which can be intelligently grasped and stated. This
vagueness must be compensated for by some a priori formula.
Froebel made the connection between the concrete facts of
experience and the transcendental ideal of development by
regarding the former as symbols of the latter. To regard known
things as symbols, according to some arbitrary a priori formula--
and every a priori conception must be arbitrary--is an invitation to
romantic fancy to seize upon any analogies which appeal to it and
treat them as laws. After the scheme of symbolism has been settled
upon, some definite technique must be invented by which the inner
meaning of the sensible symbols used may be brought home to
children. Adults being the formulators of the symbolism are
naturally the authors and controllers of the technique. The result
was that Froebel's love of abstract symbolism often got the better
of his sympathetic insight; and there was substituted for
development as arbitrary and externally imposed a scheme of
dictation as the history of instruction has ever seen.
With Hegel the necessity of finding some working concrete
counterpart of the inaccessible Absolute took an institutional, rather
than symbolic, form. His philosophy, like Froebel's, marks in one
direction an indispensable contribution to a valid conception of the
process of life. The weaknesses of an abstract individualistic
philosophy were evident to him; he saw the impossibility of making
a clean sweep of historical institutions, of treating them as
despotisms begot in artifice and nurtured in fraud. In his philosophy
of history and society culminated the efforts of a whole series of
German writers--Lessing, Herder, Kant, Schiller, Goethe--to
appreciate the nurturing influence of the great collective
institutional products of humanity. For those who learned the lesson
of this movement, it was henceforth impossible to conceive of
institutions or of culture as artificial. It destroyed completely--in
idea, not in fact--the psychology that regarded "mind" as a ready-
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made possession of a naked individual by showing the significance
of "objective mind"--language, government, art, religion--in the
formation of individual minds. But since Hegel was haunted by the
conception of an absolute goal, he was obliged to arrange
institutions as they concretely exist, on a stepladder of ascending
approximations. Each in its time and place is absolutely necessary,
because a stage in the self-realizing process of the absolute mind.
Taken as such a step or stage, its existence is proof of its complete
rationality, for it is an integral element in the total, which is Reason.
Against institutions as they are, individuals have no spiritual rights;
personal development, and nurture, consist in obedient assimilation
of the spirit of existing institutions. Conformity, not
transformation, is the essence of education. Institutions change as
history shows; but their change, the rise and fall of states, is the
work of the "world-spirit." Individuals, save the great "heroes" who
are the chosen organs of the world-spirit, have no share or lot in it.
In the later nineteenth century, this type of idealism was
amalgamated with the doctrine of biological evolution.
"Evolution" was a force working itself out to its own end. As
against it, or as compared with it, the conscious ideas and preference
of individuals are impotent. Or, rather, they are but the means by
which it works itself out. Social progress is an "organic growth," not
an experimental selection. Reason is all powerful, but only Absolute
Reason has any power.
The recognition (or rediscovery, for the idea was familiar to the
Greeks) that great historic institutions are active factors in the
intellectual nurture of mind was a great contribution to educational
philosophy. It indicated a genuine advance beyond Rousseau, who
had marred his assertion that education must be a natural
development and not something forced or grafted upon individuals
from without, by the notion that social conditions are not natural.
But in its notion of a complete and all-inclusive end of
development, the Hegelian theory swallowed up concrete
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individualities, though magnifying The Individual in the abstract.
Some of Hegel's followers sought to reconcile the claims of the
Whole and of individuality by the conception of society as an
organic whole, or organism. That social organization is presupposed
in the adequate exercise of individual capacity is not to be doubted.
But the social organism, interpreted after the relation of the organs
of the body to each other and to the whole body, means that each
individual has a certain limited place and function, requiring to be
supplemented by the place and functions of the other organs. As
one portion of the bodily tissue is differentiated so that it can be the
hand and the hand only, another, the eye, and so on, all taken
together making the organism, so one individual is supposed to be
differentiated for the exercise of the mechanical operations of
society, another for those of a statesman, another for those of a
scholar, and so on. The notion of "organism" is thus used to give a
philosophic sanction to class distinctions in social organization--a
notion which in its educational application again means external
dictation instead of growth.
3. Education as Training of Faculties. A theory which has had great
vogue and which came into existence before the notion of growth
had much influence is known as the theory of "formal discipline." It
has in view a correct ideal; one outcome of education should be the
creation of specific powers of accomplishment. A trained person is
one who can do the chief things which it is important for him to do
better than he could without training: "better" signifying greater
ease, efficiency, economy, promptness, etc. That this is an outcome
of education was indicated in what was said about habits as the
product of educative development. But the theory in question takes,
as it were, a short cut; it regards some powers (to be presently
named) as the direct and conscious aims of instruction, and not
simply as the results of growth. There is a definite number of
powers to be trained, as one might enumerate the kinds of strokes
which a golfer has to master. Consequently education should get
directly at the business of training them. But this implies that they
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are already there in some untrained form; otherwise their creation
would have to be an indirect product of other activities and
agencies. Being there already in some crude form, all that remains is
to exercise them in constant and graded repetitions, and they will
inevitably be refined and perfected. In the phrase "formal discipline"
as applied to this conception, "discipline" refers both to the
outcome of trained power and to the method of training through
repeated exercise.
The forms of powers in question are such things as the faculties of
perceiving, retaining, recalling, associating, attending, willing, feeling,
imagining, thinking, etc., which are then shaped by exercise upon
material presented. In its classic form, this theory was expressed by
Locke. On the one hand, the outer world presents the material or
content of knowledge through passively received sensations. On the
other hand, the mind has certain ready powers, attention,
observation, retention, comparison, abstraction, compounding, etc.
Knowledge results if the mind discriminates and combines things as
they are united and divided in nature itself. But the important thing
for education is the exercise or practice of the faculties of the mind
till they become thoroughly established habitudes. The analogy
constantly employed is that of a billiard player or gymnast, who by
repeated use of certain muscles in a uniform way at last secures
automatic skill. Even the faculty of thinking was to be formed into a
trained habit by repeated exercises in making and combining simple
distinctions, for which, Locke thought, mathematics affords
unrivaled opportunity.
Locke's statements fitted well into the dualism of his day. It seemed
to do justice to both mind and matter, the individual and the world.
One of the two supplied the matter of knowledge and the object
upon which mind should work. The other supplied definite mental
powers, which were few in number and which might be trained by
specific exercises. The scheme appeared to give due weight to the
subject matter of knowledge, and yet it insisted that the end of
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education is not the bare reception and storage of information, but
the formation of personal powers of attention, memory,
observation, abstraction, and generalization. It was realistic in its
emphatic assertion that all material whatever is received from
without; it was idealistic in that final stress fell upon the formation
of intellectual powers. It was objective and impersonal in its
assertion that the individual cannot possess or generate any true
ideas on his own account; it was individualistic in placing the end of
education in the perfecting of certain faculties possessed at the
outset by the individual. This kind of distribution of values
expressed with nicety the state of opinion in the generations
following upon Locke. It became, without explicit reference to
Locke, a common-place of educational theory and of psychology.
Practically, it seemed to provide the educator with definite, instead
of vague, tasks. It made the elaboration of a technique of
instruction relatively easy. All that was necessary was to provide for
sufficient practice of each of the powers. This practice consists in
repeated acts of attending, observing, memorizing, etc. By grading
the difficulty of the acts, making each set of repetitions somewhat
more difficult than the set which preceded it, a complete scheme of
instruction is evolved. There are various ways, equally conclusive, of
criticizing this conception, in both its alleged foundations and in its
educational application. (1) Perhaps the most direct mode of attack
consists in pointing out that the supposed original faculties of
observation, recollection, willing, thinking, etc., are purely
mythological. There are no such ready-made powers waiting to be
exercised and thereby trained. There are, indeed, a great number of
original native tendencies, instinctive modes of action, based on the
original connections of neurones in the central nervous system.
There are impulsive tendencies of the eyes to follow and fixate light;
of the neck muscles to turn toward light and sound; of the hands to
reach and grasp; and turn and twist and thump; of the vocal
apparatus to make sounds; of the mouth to spew out unpleasant
substances; to gag and to curl the lip, and so on in almost indefinite
number. But these tendencies (a) instead of being a small number
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sharply marked off from one another, are of an indefinite variety,
interweaving with one another in all kinds of subtle ways. (b)
Instead of being latent intellectual powers, requiring only exercise
for their perfecting, they are tendencies to respond in certain ways
to changes in the environment so as to bring about other changes.
Something in the throat makes one cough; the tendency is to eject
the obnoxious particle and thus modify the subsequent stimulus.
The hand touches a hot thing; it is impulsively, wholly
unintellectually, snatched away. But the withdrawal alters the stimuli
operating, and tends to make them more consonant with the needs
of the organism. It is by such specific changes of organic activities
in response to specific changes in the medium that that control of
the environment of which we have spoken (see ante, p. 24) is
effected. Now all of our first seeings and hearings and touchings
and smellings and tastings are of this kind. In any legitimate sense
of the words mental or intellectual or cognitive, they are lacking in
these qualities, and no amount of repetitious exercise could bestow
any intellectual properties of observation, judgment, or intentional
action (volition) upon them.
(2) Consequently the training of our original impulsive activities is
not a refinement and perfecting achieved by "exercise" as one might
strengthen a muscle by practice. It consists rather (a) in selecting
from the diffused responses which are evoked at a given time those
which are especially adapted to the utilization of the stimulus. That
is to say, among the reactions of the body in general occur upon
stimulation of the eye by light, all except those which are specifically
adapted to reaching, grasping, and manipulating the object
effectively are gradually eliminated--or else no training occurs. As
we have already noted, the primary reactions, with a very few
exceptions are too diffused and general to be practically of much
use in the case of the human infant. Hence the identity of training
with selective response. (Compare p. 25.) (b) Equally important is
the specific coordination of different factors of response which
takes place. There is not merely a selection of the hand reactions
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which effect grasping, but of the particular visual stimuli which call
out just these reactions and no others, and an establishment of
connection between the two. But the coordinating does not stop
here. Characteristic temperature reactions may take place when the
object is grasped. These will also be brought in; later, the
temperature reaction may be connected directly with the optical
stimulus, the hand reaction being suppressed--as a bright flame,
independent of close contact, may steer one away. Or the child in
handling the object pounds with it, or crumples it, and a sound
issues. The ear response is then brought into the system of
response. If a certain sound (the conventional name) is made by
others and accompanies the activity, response of both ear and the
vocal apparatus connected with auditory stimulation will also
become an associated factor in the complex response.
(3) The more specialized the adjustment of response and stimulus
to each other (for, taking the sequence of activities into account, the
stimuli are adapted to reactions as well as reactions to stimuli) the
more rigid and the less generally available is the training secured. In
equivalent language, less intellectual or educative quality attaches to
the training. The usual way of stating this fact is that the more
specialized the reaction, the less is the skill acquired in practicing
and perfecting it transferable to other modes of behavior.
According to the orthodox theory of formal discipline, a pupil in
studying his spelling lesson acquires, besides ability to spell those
particular words, an increase of power of observation, attention,
and recollection which may be employed whenever these powers are
needed. As matter of fact, the more he confines himself to noticing
and fixating the forms of words, irrespective of connection with
other things (such as the meaning of the words, the context in
which they are habitually used, the derivation and classification of
the verbal form, etc.) the less likely is he to acquire an ability which
can be used for anything except the mere noting of verbal visual
forms. He may not even be increasing his ability to make accurate
distinctions among geometrical forms, to say nothing of ability to
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observe in general. He is merely selecting the stimuli supplied by the
forms of the letters and the motor reactions of oral or written
reproduction. The scope of coordination (to use our prior
terminology) is extremely limited. The connections which are
employed in other observations and recollections (or reproductions)
are deliberately eliminated when the pupil is exercised merely upon
forms of letters and words. Having been excluded, they cannot be
restored when needed. The ability secured to observe and to recall
verbal forms is not available for perceiving and recalling other
things. In the ordinary phraseology, it is not transferable. But the
wider the context--that is to say, the more varied the stimuli and
responses coordinated--the more the ability acquired is available for
the effective performance of other acts; not, strictly speaking,
because there is any "transfer," but because the wide range of
factors employed in the specific act is equivalent to a broad range of
activity, to a flexible, instead of to a narrow and rigid, coordination.
(4) Going to the root of the matter, the fundamental fallacy of the
theory is its dualism; that is to say, its separation of activities and
capacities from subject matter. There is no such thing as an ability to
see or hear or remember in general; there is only the ability to see or
hear or remember something. To talk about training a power, mental
or physical, in general, apart from the subject matter involved in its
exercise, is nonsense. Exercise may react upon circulation, breathing,
and nutrition so as to develop vigor or strength, but this reservoir is
available for specific ends only by use in connection with the
material means which accomplish them. Vigor will enable a man to
play tennis or golf or to sail a boat better than he would if he were
weak. But only by employing ball and racket, ball and club, sail and
tiller, in definite ways does he become expert in any one of them;
and expertness in one secures expertness in another only so far as it
is either a sign of aptitude for fine muscular coordinations or as the
same kind of coordination is involved in all of them. Moreover, the
difference between the training of ability to spell which comes from
taking visual forms in a narrow context and one which takes them in
connection with the activities required to grasp meaning, such as
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context, affiliations of descent, etc., may be compared to the
difference between exercises in the gymnasium with pulley weights
to "develop" certain muscles, and a game or sport. The former is
uniform and mechanical; it is rigidly specialized. The latter is varied
from moment to moment; no two acts are quite alike; novel
emergencies have to be met; the coordinations forming have to be
kept flexible and elastic. Consequently, the training is much more
"general"; that is to say, it covers a wider territory and includes more
factors. Exactly the same thing holds of special and general
education of the mind.
A monotonously uniform exercise may by practice give great skill in
one special act; but the skill is limited to that act, be it bookkeeping
or calculations in logarithms or experiments in hydrocarbons. One
may be an authority in a particular field and yet of more than usually
poor judgment in matters not closely allied, unless the training in the
special field has been of a kind to ramify into the subject matter of
the other fields. (5) Consequently, such powers as observation,
recollection, judgment, esthetic taste, represent organized results of
the occupation of native active tendencies with certain subject
matters. A man does not observe closely and fully by pressing a
button for the observing faculty to get to work (in other words by
"willing" to observe); but if he has something to do which can be
accomplished successfully only through intensive and extensive use
of eye and hand, he naturally observes. Observation is an outcome,
a consequence, of the interaction of sense organ and subject matter.
It will vary, accordingly, with the subject matter employed.
It is consequently futile to set up even the ulterior development of
faculties of observation, memory, etc., unless we have first
determined what sort of subject matter we wish the pupil to
become expert in observing and recalling and for what purpose.
And it is only repeating in another form what has already been said,
to declare that the criterion here must be social. We want the person
to note and recall and judge those things which make him an
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effective competent member of the group in which he is associated
with others. Otherwise we might as well set the pupil to observing
carefully cracks on the wall and set him to memorizing meaningless
lists of words in an unknown tongue--which is about what we do
in fact when we give way to the doctrine of formal discipline. If the
observing habits of a botanist or chemist or engineer are better
habits than those which are thus formed, it is because they deal with
subject matter which is more significant in life. In concluding this
portion of the discussion, we note that the distinction between
special and general education has nothing to do with the
transferability of function or power. In the literal sense, any transfer
is miraculous and impossible. But some activities are broad; they
involve a coordination of many factors. Their development
demands continuous alternation and readjustment. As conditions
change, certain factors are subordinated, and others which had been
of minor importance come to the front. There is constant
redistribution of the focus of the action, as is seen in the illustration
of a game as over against pulling a fixed weight by a series of
uniform motions. Thus there is practice in prompt making of new
combinations with the focus of activity shifted to meet change in
subject matter. Wherever an activity is broad in scope (that is,
involves the coordinating of a large variety of sub-activities), and is
constantly and unexpectedly obliged to change direction in its
progressive development, general education is bound to result. For
this is what "general" means; broad and flexible. In practice,
education meets these conditions, and hence is general, in the
degree in which it takes account of social relationships. A person
may become expert in technical philosophy, or philology, or
mathematics or engineering or financiering, and be inept and ill-
advised in his action and judgment outside of his specialty. If
however his concern with these technical subject matters has been
connected with human activities having social breadth, the range of
active responses called into play and flexibly integrated is much
wider. Isolation of subject matter from a social context is the chief
obstruction in current practice to securing a general training of
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mind. Literature, art, religion, when thus dissociated, are just as
narrowing as the technical things which the professional upholders
of general education strenuously oppose.
Summary.
The conception that the result of the educative process is capacity
for further education stands in contrast with some other ideas which
have profoundly influenced practice. The first contrasting
conception considered is that of preparing or getting ready for
some future duty or privilege. Specific evil effects were pointed out
which result from the fact that this aim diverts attention of both
teacher and taught from the only point to which it may be fruitfully
directed--namely, taking advantage of the needs and possibilities of
the immediate present. Consequently it defeats its own professed
purpose. The notion that education is an unfolding from within
appears to have more likeness to the conception of growth which
has been set forth. But as worked out in the theories of Froebel and
Hegel, it involves ignoring the interaction of present organic
tendencies with the present environment, just as much as the notion
of preparation. Some implicit whole is regarded as given ready-
made and the significance of growth is merely transitory; it is not an
end in itself, but simply a means of making explicit what is already
implicit. Since that which is not explicit cannot be made definite use
of, something has to be found to represent it. According to Froebel,
the mystic symbolic value of certain objects and acts (largely
mathematical) stand for the Absolute Whole which is in process of
unfolding. According to Hegel, existing institutions are its effective
actual representatives. Emphasis upon symbols and institutions
tends to divert perception from the direct growth of experience in
richness of meaning. Another influential but defective theory is that
which conceives that mind has, at birth, certain mental faculties or
powers, such as perceiving, remembering, willing, judging,
generalizing, attending, etc., and that education is the training of
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these faculties through repeated exercise. This theory treats subject
matter as comparatively external and indifferent, its value residing
simply in the fact that it may occasion exercise of the general
powers. Criticism was directed upon this separation of the alleged
powers from one another and from the material upon which they
act. The outcome of the theory in practice was shown to be an
undue emphasis upon the training of narrow specialized modes of
skill at the expense of initiative, inventiveness, and readaptability--
qualities which depend upon the broad and consecutive interaction
of specific activities with one another. 1 As matter of fact, the
interconnection is so great, there are so many paths of construction,
that every stimulus brings about some change in all of the organs of
response. We are accustomed however to ignore most of these
modifications of the total organic activity, concentrating upon that
one which is most specifically adapted to the most urgent stimulus
of the moment. 2 This statement should be compared with what
was said earlier about the sequential ordering of responses (p. 25). It
is merely a more explicit statement of the way in which that
consecutive arrangement occurs.
Chapter Six: Education as Conservative and
Progressive
1. Education as Formation. We now come to a type of theory which
denies the existence of faculties and emphasizes the unique role of
subject matter in the development of mental and moral disposition.
According to it, education is neither a process of unfolding from
within nor is it a training of faculties resident in mind itself. It is
rather the formation of mind by setting up certain associations or
connections of content by means of a subject matter presented
from without. Education proceeds by instruction taken in a strictly
literal sense, a building into the mind from without. That education
is formative of mind is not questioned; it is the conception already
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propounded. But formation here has a technical meaning dependent
upon the idea of something operating from without. Herbart is the
best historical representative of this type of theory. He denies
absolutely the existence of innate faculties. The mind is simply
endowed with the power of producing various qualities in reaction
to the various realities which act upon it. These qualitatively
different reactions are called presentations (Vorstellungen). Every
presentation once called into being persists; it may be driven below
the "threshold" of consciousness by new and stronger
presentations, produced by the reaction of the soul to new material,
but its activity continues by its own inherent momentum, below the
surface of consciousness. What are termed faculties--attention,
memory, thinking, perception, even the sentiments, are
arrangements, associations, and complications, formed by the
interaction of these submerged presentations with one another and
with new presentations. Perception, for example, is the complication
of presentations which result from the rise of old presentations to
greet and combine with new ones; memory is the evoking of an old
presentation above the threshold of consciousness by getting
entangled with another presentation, etc. Pleasure is the result of
reinforcement among the independent activities of presentations;
pain of their pulling different ways, etc.
The concrete character of mind consists, then, wholly of the
various arrangements formed by the various presentations in their
different qualities. The "furniture" of the mind is the mind. Mind is
wholly a matter of "contents." The educational implications of this
doctrine are threefold.
(1) This or that kind of mind is formed by the use of objects which
evoke this or that kind of reaction and which produce this or that
arrangement among the reactions called out. The formation of
mind is wholly a matter of the presentation of the proper
educational materials.
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(2) Since the earlier presentations constitute the "apperceiving
organs" which control the assimilation of new presentations, their
character is all important. The effect of new presentations is to
reinforce groupings previously formed. The business of the
educator is, first, to select the proper material in order to fix the
nature of the original reactions, and, secondly, to arrange the
sequence of subsequent presentations on the basis of the store of
ideas secured by prior transactions. The control is from behind,
from the past, instead of, as in the unfolding conception, in the
ultimate goal.
(3) Certain formal steps of all method in teaching may be laid down.
Presentation of new subject matter is obviously the central thing,
but since knowing consists in the way in which this interacts with
the contents already submerged below consciousness, the first thing
is the step of "preparation,"--that is, calling into special activity and
getting above the floor of consciousness those older presentations
which are to assimilate the new one. Then after the presentation,
follow the processes of interaction of new and old; then comes the
application of the newly formed content to the performance of
some task. Everything must go through this course; consequently
there is a perfectly uniform method in instruction in all subjects for
all pupils of all ages.
Herbart's great service lay in taking the work of teaching out of the
region of routine and accident. He brought it into the sphere of
conscious method; it became a conscious business with a definite
aim and procedure, instead of being a compound of casual
inspiration and subservience to tradition. Moreover, everything in
teaching and discipline could be specified, instead of our having to
be content with vague and more or less mystic generalities about
ultimate ideals and speculative spiritual symbols. He abolished the
notion of ready-made faculties, which might be trained by exercise
upon any sort of material, and made attention to concrete subject
matter, to the content, all-important. Herbart undoubtedly has had a
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greater influence in bringing to the front questions connected with
the material of study than any other educational philosopher. He
stated problems of method from the standpoint of their connection
with subject matter: method having to do with the manner and
sequence of presenting new subject matter to insure its proper
interaction with old.
The fundamental theoretical defect of this view lies in ignoring the
existence in a living being of active and specific functions which are
developed in the redirection and combination which occur as they
are occupied with their environment. The theory represents the
Schoolmaster come to his own. This fact expresses at once its
strength and its weakness. The conception that the mind consists of
what has been taught, and that the importance of what has been
taught consists in its availability for further teaching, reflects the
pedagogue's view of life. The philosophy is eloquent about the duty
of the teacher in instructing pupils; it is almost silent regarding his
privilege of learning. It emphasizes the influence of intellectual
environment upon the mind; it slurs over the fact that the
environment involves a personal sharing in common experiences. It
exaggerates beyond reason the possibilities of consciously
formulated and used methods, and underestimates the role of vital,
unconscious, attitudes. It insists upon the old, the past, and passes
lightly over the operation of the genuinely novel and unforeseeable.
It takes, in brief, everything educational into account save its
essence,--vital energy seeking opportunity for effective exercise. All
education forms character, mental and moral, but formation
consists in the selection and coordination of native activities so that
they may utilize the subject matter of the social environment.
Moreover, the formation is not only a formation of native activities,
but it takes place through them. It is a process of reconstruction,
reorganization.
2. Education as Recapitulation and Retrospection. A peculiar
combination of the ideas of development and formation from
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without has given rise to the recapitulation theory of education,
biological and cultural. The individual develops, but his proper
development consists in repeating in orderly stages the past
evolution of animal life and human history. The former
recapitulation occurs physiologically; the latter should be made to
occur by means of education. The alleged biological truth that the
individual in his growth from the simple embryo to maturity repeats
the history of the evolution of animal life in the progress of forms
from the simplest to the most complex (or expressed technically,
that ontogenesis parallels phylogenesis) does not concern us, save as
it is supposed to afford scientific foundation for cultural
recapitulation of the past. Cultural recapitulation says, first, that
children at a certain age are in the mental and moral condition of
savagery; their instincts are vagrant and predatory because their
ancestors at one time lived such a life. Consequently (so it is
concluded) the proper subject matter of their education at this time
is the material--especially the literary material of myths, folk-tale,
and song--produced by humanity in the analogous stage. Then the
child passes on to something corresponding, say, to the pastoral
stage, and so on till at the time when he is ready to take part in
contemporary life, he arrives at the present epoch of culture.
In this detailed and consistent form, the theory, outside of a small
school in Germany (followers of Herbart for the most part), has
had little currency. But the idea which underlies it is that education is
essentially retrospective; that it looks primarily to the past and
especially to the literary products of the past, and that mind is
adequately formed in the degree in which it is patterned upon the
spiritual heritage of the past. This idea has had such immense
influence upon higher instruction especially, that it is worth
examination in its extreme formulation.
In the first place, its biological basis is fallacious. Embyronic growth
of the human infant preserves, without doubt, some of the traits of
lower forms of life. But in no respect is it a strict traversing of past
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stages. If there were any strict "law" of repetition, evolutionary
development would clearly not have taken place. Each new
generation would simply have repeated its predecessors' existence.
Development, in short, has taken place by the entrance of shortcuts
and alterations in the prior scheme of growth. And this suggests
that the aim of education is to facilitate such short-circuited growth.
The great advantage of immaturity, educationally speaking, is that it
enables us to emancipate the young from the need of dwelling in an
outgrown past. The business of education is rather to liberate the
young from reviving and retraversing the past than to lead them to a
recapitulation of it. The social environment of the young is
constituted by the presence and action of the habits of thinking and
feeling of civilized men. To ignore the directive influence of this
present environment upon the young is simply to abdicate the
educational function. A biologist has said: "The history of
development in different animals. . . offers to us. . . a series of
ingenious, determined, varied but more or less unsuccessful efforts
to escape from the necessity of recapitulating, and to substitute for
the ancestral method a more direct method." Surely it would be
foolish if education did not deliberately attempt to facilitate similar
efforts in conscious experience so that they become increasingly
successful.
The two factors of truth in the conception may easily be
disentangled from association with the false context which perverts
them. On the biological side we have simply the fact that any infant
starts with precisely the assortment of impulsive activities with
which he does start, they being blind, and many of them conflicting
with one another, casual, sporadic, and unadapted to their
immediate environment. The other point is that it is a part of
wisdom to utilize the products of past history so far as they are of
help for the future. Since they represent the results of prior
experience, their value for future experience may, of course, be
indefinitely great. Literatures produced in the past are, so far as men
are now in possession and use of them, a part of the present
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environment of individuals; but there is an enormous difference
between availing ourselves of them as present resources and taking
them as standards and patterns in their retrospective character.
(1) The distortion of the first point usually comes about through
misuse of the idea of heredity. It is assumed that heredity means
that past life has somehow predetermined the main traits of an
individual, and that they are so fixed that little serious change can be
introduced into them. Thus taken, the influence of heredity is
opposed to that of the environment, and the efficacy of the latter
belittled. But for educational purposes heredity means neither more
nor less than the original endowment of an individual. Education
must take the being as he is; that a particular individual has just such
and such an equipment of native activities is a basic fact. That they
were produced in such and such a way, or that they are derived from
one's ancestry, is not especially important for the educator, however
it may be with the biologist, as compared with the fact that they now
exist. Suppose one had to advise or direct a person regarding his
inheritance of property. The fallacy of assuming that the fact it is an
inheritance, predetermines its future use, is obvious. The advisor is
concerned with making the best use of what is there--putting it at
work under the most favorable conditions. Obviously he cannot
utilize what is not there; neither can the educator. In this sense,
heredity is a limit of education. Recognition of this fact prevents the
waste of energy and the irritation that ensue from the too prevalent
habit of trying to make by instruction something out of an
individual which he is not naturally fitted to become. But the
doctrine does not determine what use shall be made of the
capacities which exist. And, except in the case of the imbecile, these
original capacities are much more varied and potential, even in the
case of the more stupid, than we as yet know properly how to
utilize. Consequently, while a careful study of the native aptitudes
and deficiencies of an individual is always a preliminary necessity,
the subsequent and important step is to furnish an environment
which will adequately function whatever activities are present. The
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relation of heredity and environment is well expressed in the case of
language. If a being had no vocal organs from which issue articulate
sounds, if he had no auditory or other sense-receptors and no
connections between the two sets of apparatus, it would be a sheer
waste of time to try to teach him to converse. He is born short in
that respect, and education must accept the limitation. But if he has
this native equipment, its possession in no way guarantees that he
will ever talk any language or what language he will talk. The
environment in which his activities occur and by which they are
carried into execution settles these things. If he lived in a dumb
unsocial environment where men refused to talk to one another and
used only that minimum of gestures without which they could not
get along, vocal language would be as unachieved by him as if he
had no vocal organs. If the sounds which he makes occur in a
medium of persons speaking the Chinese language, the activities
which make like sounds will be selected and coordinated. This
illustration may be applied to the entire range of the educability of
any individual. It places the heritage from the past in its right
connection with the demands and opportunities of the present.
(2) The theory that the proper subject matter of instruction is found
in the culture-products of past ages (either in general, or more
specifically in the particular literatures which were produced in the
culture epoch which is supposed to correspond with the stage of
development of those taught) affords another instance of that
divorce between the process and product of growth which has been
criticized. To keep the process alive, to keep it alive in ways which
make it easier to keep it alive in the future, is the function of
educational subject matter. But an individual can live only in the
present. The present is not just something which comes after the
past; much less something produced by it. It is what life is in leaving
the past behind it. The study of past products will not help us
understand the present, because the present is not due to the
products, but to the life of which they were the products. A
knowledge of the past and its heritage is of great significance when
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it enters into the present, but not otherwise. And the mistake of
making the records and remains of the past the main material of
education is that it cuts the vital connection of present and past, and
tends to make the past a rival of the present and the present a more
or less futile imitation of the past. Under such circumstances,
culture becomes an ornament and solace; a refuge and an asylum.
Men escape from the crudities of the present to live in its imagined
refinements, instead of using what the past offers as an agency for
ripening these crudities. The present, in short, generates the
problems which lead us to search the past for suggestion, and which
supplies meaning to what we find when we search. The past is the
past precisely because it does not include what is characteristic in the
present. The moving present includes the past on condition that it
uses the past to direct its own movement. The past is a great
resource for the imagination; it adds a new dimension to life, but
OD condition that it be seen as the past of the present, and not as
another and disconnected world. The principle which makes little of
the present act of living and operation of growing, the only thing
always present, naturally looks to the past because the future goal
which it sets up is remote and empty. But having turned its back
upon the present, it has no way of returning to it laden with the
spoils of the past. A mind that is adequately sensitive to the needs
and occasions of the present actuality will have the liveliest of
motives for interest in the background of the present, and will never
have to hunt for a way back because it will never have lost
connection.
3. Education as Reconstruction. In its contrast with the ideas both
of unfolding of latent powers from within, and of the formation
from without, whether by physical nature or by the cultural products
of the past, the ideal of growth results in the conception that
education is a constant reorganizing or reconstructing of
experience. It has all the time an immediate end, and so far as
activity is educative, it reaches that end--the direct transformation
of the quality of experience. Infancy, youth, adult life,--all stand on
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the same educative level in the sense that what is really learned at
any and every stage of experience constitutes the value of that
experience, and in the sense that it is the chief business of life at
every point to make living thus contribute to an enrichment of its
own perceptible meaning.
We thus reach a technical definition of education: It is that
reconstruction or reorganization of experience which adds to the
meaning of experience, and which increases ability to direct the
course of subsequent experience. (1) The increment of meaning
corresponds to the increased perception of the connections and
continuities of the activities in which we are engaged. The activity
begins in an impulsive form; that is, it is blind. It does not know
what it is about; that is to say, what are its interactions with other
activities. An activity which brings education or instruction with it
makes one aware of some of the connections which had been
imperceptible. To recur to our simple example, a child who reaches
for a bright light gets burned. Henceforth he knows that a certain
act of touching in connection with a certain act of vision (and vice-
versa) means heat and pain; or, a certain light means a source of
heat. The acts by which a scientific man in his laboratory learns
more about flame differ no whit in principle. By doing certain
things, he makes perceptible certain connections of heat with other
things, which had been previously ignored. Thus his acts in relation
to these things get more meaning; he knows better what he is doing
or "is about" when he has to do with them; he can intend
consequences instead of just letting them happen--all synonymous
ways of saying the same thing. At the same stroke, the flame has
gained in meaning; all that is known about combustion, oxidation,
about light and temperature, may become an intrinsic part of its
intellectual content.
(2) The other side of an educative experience is an added power of
subsequent direction or control. To say that one knows what he is
about, or can intend certain consequences, is to say, of course, that
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he can better anticipate what is going to happen; that he can,
therefore, get ready or prepare in advance so as to secure beneficial
consequences and avert undesirable ones. A genuinely educative
experience, then, one in which instruction is conveyed and ability
increased, is contradistinguished from a routine activity on one
hand, and a capricious activity on the other. (a) In the latter one
"does not care what happens"; one just lets himself go and avoids
connecting the consequences of one's act (the evidences of its
connections with other things) with the act. It is customary to frown
upon such aimless random activity, treating it as willful mischief or
carelessness or lawlessness. But there is a tendency to seek the cause
of such aimless activities in the youth's own disposition, isolated
from everything else. But in fact such activity is explosive, and due
to maladjustment with surroundings. Individuals act capriciously
whenever they act under external dictation, or from being told,
without having a purpose of their own or perceiving the bearing of
the deed upon other acts. One may learn by doing something which
he does not understand; even in the most intelligent action, we do
much which we do not mean, because the largest portion of the
connections of the act we consciously intend are not perceived or
anticipated. But we learn only because after the act is performed we
note results which we had not noted before. But much work in
school consists in setting up rules by which pupils are to act of such
a sort that even after pupils have acted, they are not led to see the
connection between the result--say the answer--and the method
pursued. So far as they are concerned, the whole thing is a trick and
a kind of miracle. Such action is essentially capricious, and leads to
capricious habits. (b) Routine action, action which is automatic, may
increase skill to do a particular thing. In so far, it might be said to
have an educative effect. But it does not lead to new perceptions of
bearings and connections; it limits rather than widens the meaning-
horizon. And since the environment changes and our way of acting
has to be modified in order successfully to keep a balanced
connection with things, an isolated uniform way of acting becomes
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disastrous at some critical moment. The vaunted "skill" turns out
gross ineptitude.
The essential contrast of the idea of education as continuous
reconstruction with the other one-sided conceptions which have
been criticized in this and the previous chapter is that it identifies
the end (the result) and the process. This is verbally self-
contradictory, but only verbally. It means that experience as an active
process occupies time and that its later period completes its earlier
portion; it brings to light connections involved, but hitherto
unperceived. The later outcome thus reveals the meaning of the
earlier, while the experience as a whole establishes a bent or
disposition toward the things possessing this meaning. Every such
continuous experience or activity is educative, and all education
resides in having such experiences.
It remains only to point out (what will receive more ample attention
later) that the reconstruction of experience may be social as well as
personal. For purposes of simplification we have spoken in the
earlier chapters somewhat as if the education of the immature
which fills them with the spirit of the social group to which they
belong, were a sort of catching up of the child with the aptitudes
and resources of the adult group. In static societies, societies which
make the maintenance of established custom their measure of
value, this conception applies in the main. But not in progressive
communities. They endeavor to shape the experiences of the young
so that instead of reproducing current habits, better habits shall be
formed, and thus the future adult society be an improvement on
their own. Men have long had some intimation of the extent to
which education may be consciously used to eliminate obvious
social evils through starting the young on paths which shall not
produce these ills, and some idea of the extent in which education
may be made an instrument of realizing the better hopes of men.
But we are doubtless far from realizing the potential efficacy of
education as a constructive agency of improving society, from
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realizing that it represents not only a development of children and
youth but also of the future society of which they will be the
constituents.
Summary.
Education may be conceived either retrospectively or prospectively.
That is to say, it may be treated as process of accommodating the
future to the past, or as an utilization of the past for a resource in a
developing future. The former finds its standards and patterns in
what has gone before. The mind may be regarded as a group of
contents resulting from having certain things presented. In this case,
the earlier presentations constitute the material to which the later are
to be assimilated. Emphasis upon the value of the early experiences
of immature beings is most important, especially because of the
tendency to regard them as of little account. But these experiences
do not consist of externally presented material, but of interaction
of native activities with the environment which progressively
modifies both the activities and the environment. The defect of the
Herbartian theory of formation through presentations consists in
slighting this constant interaction and change. The same principle of
criticism applies to theories which find the primary subject matter
of study in the cultural products--especially the literary products--
of man's history. Isolated from their connection with the present
environment in which individuals have to act, they become a kind of
rival and distracting environment. Their value lies in their use to
increase the meaning of the things with which we have actively to
do at the present time. The idea of education advanced in these
chapters is formally summed up in the idea of continuous
reconstruction of experience, an idea which is marked off from
education as preparation for a remote future, as unfolding, as
external formation, and as recapitulation of the past.
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Chapter Seven: The Democratic Conception in
Education
For the most part, save incidentally, we have hitherto been
concerned with education as it may exist in any social group. We
have now to make explicit the differences in the spirit, material, and
method of education as it operates in different types of community
life. To say that education is a social function, securing direction and
development in the immature through their participation in the life
of the group to which they belong, is to say in effect that education
will vary with the quality of life which prevails in a group.
Particularly is it true that a society which not only changes but-
which has the ideal of such change as will improve it, will have
different standards and methods of education from one which aims
simply at the perpetuation of its own customs. To make the general
ideas set forth applicable to our own educational practice, it is,
therefore, necessary to come to closer quarters with the nature of
present social life.
1. The Implications of Human Association. Society is one word, but
many things. Men associate together in all kinds of ways and for all
kinds of purposes. One man is concerned in a multitude of diverse
groups, in which his associates may be quite different. It often seems
as if they had nothing in common except that they are modes of
associated life. Within every larger social organization there are
numerous minor groups: not only political subdivisions, but
industrial, scientific, religious, associations. There are political parties
with differing aims, social sets, cliques, gangs, corporations,
partnerships, groups bound closely together by ties of blood, and so
on in endless variety. In many modern states and in some ancient,
there is great diversity of populations, of varying languages,
religions, moral codes, and traditions. From this standpoint, many a
minor political unit, one of our large cities, for example, is a
congeries of loosely associated societies, rather than an inclusive and
permeating community of action and thought. (See ante, p. 20.)
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The terms society, community, are thus ambiguous. They have both
a eulogistic or normative sense, and a descriptive sense; a meaning
de jure and a meaning de facto. In social philosophy, the former
connotation is almost always uppermost. Society is conceived as one
by its very nature. The qualities which accompany this unity,
praiseworthy community of purpose and welfare, loyalty to public
ends, mutuality of sympathy, are emphasized. But when we look at
the facts which the term denotes instead of confining our attention
to its intrinsic connotation, we find not unity, but a plurality of
societies, good and bad. Men banded together in a criminal
conspiracy, business aggregations that prey upon the public while
serving it, political machines held together by the interest of
plunder, are included. If it is said that such organizations are not
societies because they do not meet the ideal requirements of the
notion of society, the answer, in part, is that the conception of
society is then made so "ideal" as to be of no use, having no
reference to facts; and in part, that each of these organizations, no
matter how opposed to the interests of other groups, has something
of the praiseworthy qualities of "Society" which hold it together.
There is honor among thieves, and a band of robbers has a
common interest as respects its members. Gangs are marked by
fraternal feeling, and narrow cliques by intense loyalty to their own
codes. Family life may be marked by exclusiveness, suspicion, and
jealousy as to those without, and yet be a model of amity and
mutual aid within. Any education given by a group tends to socialize
its members, but the quality and value of the socialization depends
upon the habits and aims of the group. Hence, once more, the need
of a measure for the worth of any given mode of social life. In
seeking this measure, we have to avoid two extremes. We cannot set
up, out of our heads, something we regard as an ideal society. We
must base our conception upon societies which actually exist, in
order to have any assurance that our ideal is a practicable one. But,
as we have just seen, the ideal cannot simply repeat the traits which
are actually found. The problem is to extract the desirable traits of
forms of community life which actually exist, and employ them to
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criticize undesirable features and suggest improvement. Now in any
social group whatever, even in a gang of thieves, we find some
interest held in common, and we find a certain amount of
interaction and cooperative intercourse with other groups. From
these two traits we derive our standard. How numerous and varied
are the interests which are consciously shared? How full and free is
the interplay with other forms of association? If we apply these
considerations to, say, a criminal band, we find that the ties which
consciously hold the members together are few in number, reducible
almost to a common interest in plunder; and that they are of such a
nature as to isolate the group from other groups with respect to give
and take of the values of life. Hence, the education such a society
gives is partial and distorted. If we take, on the other hand, the kind
of family life which illustrates the standard, we find that there are
material, intellectual, aesthetic interests in which all participate and
that the progress of one member has worth for the experience of
other members--it is readily communicable--and that the family is
not an isolated whole, but enters intimately into relationships with
business groups, with schools, with all the agencies of culture, as
well as with other similar groups, and that it plays a due part in the
political organization and in return receives support from it. In
short, there are many interests consciously communicated and
shared; and there are varied and free points of contact with other
modes of association.
I. Let us apply the first element in this criterion to a despotically
governed state. It is not true there is no common interest in such an
organization between governed and governors. The authorities in
command must make some appeal to the native activities of the
subjects, must call some of their powers into play. Talleyrand said
that a government could do everything with bayonets except sit on
them. This cynical declaration is at least a recognition that the bond
of union is not merely one of coercive force. It may be said,
however, that the activities appealed to are themselves unworthy and
degrading--that such a government calls into functioning activity
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simply capacity for fear. In a way, this statement is true. But it
overlooks the fact that fear need not be an undesirable factor in
experience. Caution, circumspection, prudence, desire to foresee
future events so as to avert what is harmful, these desirable traits are
as much a product of calling the impulse of fear into play as is
cowardice and abject submission. The real difficulty is that the
appeal to fear is isolated. In evoking dread and hope of specific
tangible reward--say comfort and ease--many other capacities are
left untouched. Or rather, they are affected, but in such a way as to
pervert them. Instead of operating on their own account they are
reduced to mere servants of attaining pleasure and avoiding pain.
This is equivalent to saying that there is no extensive number of
common interests; there is no free play back and forth among the
members of the social group. Stimulation and response are
exceedingly one-sided. In order to have a large number of values in
common, all the members of the group must have an equable
opportunity to receive and to take from others. There must be a
large variety of shared undertakings and experiences. Otherwise, the
influences which educate some into masters, educate others into
slaves. And the experience of each party loses in meaning, when the
free interchange of varying modes of life-experience is arrested. A
separation into a privileged and a subject-class prevents social
endosmosis. The evils thereby affecting the superior class are less
material and less perceptible, but equally real. Their culture tends to
be sterile, to be turned back to feed on itself; their art becomes a
showy display and artificial; their wealth luxurious; their knowledge
overspecialized; their manners fastidious rather than humane.
Lack of the free and equitable intercourse which springs from a
variety of shared interests makes intellectual stimulation unbalanced.
Diversity of stimulation means novelty, and novelty means challenge
to thought. The more activity is restricted to a few definite lines--as
it is when there are rigid class lines preventing adequate interplay of
experiences--the more action tends to become routine on the part
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of the class at a disadvantage, and capricious, aimless, and explosive
on the part of the class having the materially fortunate position.
Plato defined a slave as one who accepts from another the purposes
which control his conduct. This condition obtains even where there
is no slavery in the legal sense. It is found wherever men are
engaged in activity which is socially serviceable, but whose service
they do not understand and have no personal interest in. Much is
said about scientific management of work. It is a narrow view which
restricts the science which secures efficiency of operation to
movements of the muscles. The chief opportunity for science is the
discovery of the relations of a man to his work--including his
relations to others who take part--which will enlist his intelligent
interest in what he is doing. Efficiency in production often demands
division of labor. But it is reduced to a mechanical routine unless
workers see the technical, intellectual, and social relationships
involved in what they do, and engage in their work because of the
motivation furnished by such perceptions. The tendency to reduce
such things as efficiency of activity and scientific management to
purely technical externals is evidence of the one-sided stimulation
of thought given to those in control of industry--those who supply
its aims. Because of their lack of all-round and well-balanced social
interest, there is not sufficient stimulus for attention to the human
factors and relationships in industry. Intelligence is narrowed to the
factors concerned with technical production and marketing of
goods. No doubt, a very acute and intense intelligence in these
narrow lines can be developed, but the failure to take into account
the significant social factors means none the less an absence of
mind, and a corresponding distortion of emotional life. II. This
illustration (whose point is to be extended to all associations lacking
reciprocity of interest) brings us to our second point. The isolation
and exclusiveness of a gang or clique brings its antisocial spirit into
relief. But this same spirit is found wherever one group has interests
"of its own" which shut it out from full interaction with other
groups, so that its prevailing purpose is the protection of what it has
got, instead of reorganization and progress through wider
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relationships. It marks nations in their isolation from one another;
families which seclude their domestic concerns as if they had no
connection with a larger life; schools when separated from the
interest of home and community; the divisions of rich and poor;
learned and unlearned. The essential point is that isolation makes
for rigidity and formal institutionalizing of life, for static and selfish
ideals within the group. That savage tribes regard aliens and enemies
as synonymous is not accidental. It springs from the fact that they
have identified their experience with rigid adherence to their past
customs. On such a basis it is wholly logical to fear intercourse with
others, for such contact might dissolve custom. It would certainly
occasion reconstruction. It is a commonplace that an alert and
expanding mental life depends upon an enlarging range of contact
with the physical environment. But the principle applies even more
significantly to the field where we are apt to ignore it--the sphere
of social contacts. Every expansive era in the history of mankind
has coincided with the operation of factors which have tended to
eliminate distance between peoples and classes previously hemmed
off from one another. Even the alleged benefits of war, so far as
more than alleged, spring from the fact that conflict of peoples at
least enforces intercourse between them and thus accidentally
enables them to learn from one another, and thereby to expand their
horizons. Travel, economic and commercial tendencies, have at
present gone far to break down external barriers; to bring peoples
and classes into closer and more perceptible connection with one
another. It remains for the most part to secure the intellectual and
emotional significance of this physical annihilation of space.
2. The Democratic Ideal. The two elements in our criterion both
point to democracy. The first signifies not only more numerous and
more varied points of shared common interest, but greater reliance
upon the recognition of mutual interests as a factor in social
control. The second means not only freer interaction between social
groups (once isolated so far as intention could keep up a separation)
but change in social habit--its continuous readjustment through
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meeting the new situations produced by varied intercourse. And
these two traits are precisely what characterize the democratically
constituted society.
Upon the educational side, we note first that the realization of a
form of social life in which interests are mutually interpenetrating,
and where progress, or readjustment, is an important consideration,
makes a democratic community more interested than other
communities have cause to be in deliberate and systematic
education. The devotion of democracy to education is a familiar
fact. The superficial explanation is that a government resting upon
popular suffrage cannot be successful unless those who elect and
who obey their governors are educated. Since a democratic society
repudiates the principle of external authority, it must find a
substitute in voluntary disposition and interest; these can be created
only by education. But there is a deeper explanation. A democracy is
more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of
associated living, of conjoint communicated experience. The
extension in space of the number of individuals who participate in
an interest so that each has to refer his own action to that of others,
and to consider the action of others to give point and direction to
his own, is equivalent to the breaking down of those barriers of
class, race, and national territory which kept men from perceiving
the full import of their activity. These more numerous and more
varied points of contact denote a greater diversity of stimuli to
which an individual has to respond; they consequently put a
premium on variation in his action. They secure a liberation of
powers which remain suppressed as long as the incitations to action
are partial, as they must be in a group which in its exclusiveness
shuts out many interests.
The widening of the area of shared concerns, and the liberation of
a greater diversity of personal capacities which characterize a
democracy, are not of course the product of deliberation and
conscious effort. On the contrary, they were caused by the
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development of modes of manufacture and commerce, travel,
migration, and intercommunication which flowed from the
command of science over natural energy. But after greater
individualization on one hand, and a broader community of interest
on the other have come into existence, it is a matter of deliberate
effort to sustain and extend them. Obviously a society to which
stratification into separate classes would be fatal, must see to it that
intellectual opportunities are accessible to all on equable and easy
terms. A society marked off into classes need he specially attentive
only to the education of its ruling elements. A society which is
mobile, which is full of channels for the distribution of a change
occurring anywhere, must see to it that its members are educated to
personal initiative and adaptability. Otherwise, they will be
overwhelmed by the changes in which they are caught and whose
significance or connections they do not perceive. The result will be a
confusion in which a few will appropriate to themselves the results
of the blind and externally directed activities of others.
3. The Platonic Educational Philosophy. Subsequent chapters will be
devoted to making explicit the implications of the democratic ideas
in education. In the remaining portions of this chapter, we shall
consider the educational theories which have been evolved in three
epochs when the social import of education was especially
conspicuous. The first one to be considered is that of Plato. No one
could better express than did he the fact that a society is stably
organized when each individual is doing that for which he has
aptitude by nature in such a way as to be useful to others (or to
contribute to the whole to which he belongs); and that it is the
business of education to discover these aptitudes and progressively
to train them for social use. Much which has been said so far is
borrowed from what Plato first consciously taught the world. But
conditions which he could not intellectually control led him to
restrict these ideas in their application. He never got any conception
of the indefinite plurality of activities which may characterize an
individual and a social group, and consequently limited his view to a
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limited number of classes of capacities and of social arrangements.
Plato's starting point is that the organization of society depends
ultimately upon knowledge of the end of existence. If we do not
know its end, we shall be at the mercy of accident and caprice.
Unless we know the end, the good, we shall have no criterion for
rationally deciding what the possibilities are which should be
promoted, nor how social arrangements are to be ordered. We shall
have no conception of the proper limits and distribution of
activities--what he called justice--as a trait of both individual and
social organization. But how is the knowledge of the final and
permanent good to be achieved? In dealing with this question we
come upon the seemingly insuperable obstacle that such knowledge
is not possible save in a just and harmonious social order.
Everywhere else the mind is distracted and misled by false
valuations and false perspectives. A disorganized and factional
society sets up a number of different models and standards. Under
such conditions it is impossible for the individual to attain
consistency of mind. Only a complete whole is fully self-consistent.
A society which rests upon the supremacy of some factor over
another irrespective of its rational or proportionate claims,
inevitably leads thought astray. It puts a premium on certain things
and slurs over others, and creates a mind whose seeming unity is
forced and distorted. Education proceeds ultimately from the
patterns furnished by institutions, customs, and laws. Only in a just
state will these be such as to give the right education; and only those
who have rightly trained minds will be able to recognize the end,
and ordering principle of things. We seem to be caught in a hopeless
circle. However, Plato suggested a way out. A few men,
philosophers or lovers of wisdom--or truth--may by study learn at
least in outline the proper patterns of true existence. If a powerful
ruler should form a state after these patterns, then its regulations
could be preserved. An education could be given which would sift
individuals, discovering what they were good for, and supplying a
method of assigning each to the work in life for which his nature
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fits him. Each doing his own part, and never transgressing, the order
and unity of the whole would be maintained.
It would be impossible to find in any scheme of philosophic
thought a more adequate recognition on one hand of the
educational significance of social arrangements and, on the other,
of the dependence of those arrangements upon the means used to
educate the young. It would be impossible to find a deeper sense of
the function of education in discovering and developing personal
capacities, and training them so that they would connect with the
activities of others. Yet the society in which the theory was
propounded was so undemocratic that Plato could not work out a
solution for the problem whose terms he clearly saw.
While he affirmed with emphasis that the place of the individual in
society should not be determined by birth or wealth or any
conventional status, but by his own nature as discovered in the
process of education, he had no perception of the uniqueness of
individuals. For him they fall by nature into classes, and into a very
small number of classes at that. Consequently the testing and sifting
function of education only shows to which one of three classes an
individual belongs. There being no recognition that each individual
constitutes his own class, there could be no recognition of the
infinite diversity of active tendencies and combinations of
tendencies of which an individual is capable. There were only three
types of faculties or powers in the individual's constitution. Hence
education would soon reach a static limit in each class, for only
diversity makes change and progress.
In some individuals, appetites naturally dominate; they are assigned
to the laboring and trading class, which expresses and supplies
human wants. Others reveal, upon education, that over and above
appetites, they have a generous, outgoing, assertively courageous
disposition. They become the citizen-subjects of the state; its
defenders in war; its internal guardians in peace. But their limit is
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fixed by their lack of reason, which is a capacity to grasp the
universal. Those who possess this are capable of the highest kind of
education, and become in time the legislators of the state--for laws
are the universals which control the particulars of experience. Thus
it is not true that in intent, Plato subordinated the individual to the
social whole. But it is true that lacking the perception of the
uniqueness of every individual, his incommensurability with others,
and consequently not recognizing that a society might change and
yet be stable, his doctrine of limited powers and classes came in net
effect to the idea of the subordination of individuality. We cannot
better Plato's conviction that an individual is happy and society well
organized when each individual engages in those activities for which
he has a natural equipment, nor his conviction that it is the primary
office of education to discover this equipment to its possessor and
train him for its effective use. But progress in knowledge has made
us aware of the superficiality of Plato's lumping of individuals and
their original powers into a few sharply marked-off classes; it has
taught us that original capacities are indefinitely numerous and
variable. It is but the other side of this fact to say that in the degree
in which society has become democratic, social organization means
utilization of the specific and variable qualities of individuals, not
stratification by classes. Although his educational philosophy was
revolutionary, it was none the less in bondage to static ideals. He
thought that change or alteration was evidence of lawless flux; that
true reality was unchangeable. Hence while he would radically
change the existing state of society, his aim was to construct a state
in which change would subsequently have no place. The final end of
life is fixed; given a state framed with this end in view, not even
minor details are to be altered. Though they might not be inherently
important, yet if permitted they would inure the minds of men to
the idea of change, and hence be dissolving and anarchic. The
breakdown of his philosophy is made apparent in the fact that he
could not trust to gradual improvements in education to bring about
a better society which should then improve education, and so on
indefinitely. Correct education could not come into existence until
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an ideal state existed, and after that education would be devoted
simply to its conservation. For the existence of this state he was
obliged to trust to some happy accident by which philosophic
wisdom should happen to coincide with possession of ruling power
in the state.
4. The "Individualistic" Ideal of the Eighteenth Century. In the
eighteenth-century philosophy we find ourselves in a very different
circle of ideas. "Nature" still means something antithetical to
existing social organization; Plato exercised a great influence upon
Rousseau. But the voice of nature now speaks for the diversity of
individual talent and for the need of free development of
individuality in all its variety. Education in accord with nature
furnishes the goal and the method of instruction and discipline.
Moreover, the native or original endowment was conceived, in
extreme cases, as nonsocial or even as antisocial. Social
arrangements were thought of as mere external expedients by which
these nonsocial individuals might secure a greater amount of private
happiness for themselves. Nevertheless, these statements convey
only an inadequate idea of the true significance of the movement.
In reality its chief interest was in progress and in social progress.
The seeming antisocial philosophy was a somewhat transparent
mask for an impetus toward a wider and freer society--toward
cosmopolitanism. The positive ideal was humanity. In membership
in humanity, as distinct from a state, man's capacities would be
liberated; while in existing political organizations his powers were
hampered and distorted to meet the requirements and selfish
interests of the rulers of the state. The doctrine of extreme
individualism was but the counterpart, the obverse, of ideals of the
indefinite perfectibility of man and of a social organization having a
scope as wide as humanity. The emancipated individual was to
become the organ and agent of a comprehensive and progressive
society.
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The heralds of this gospel were acutely conscious of the evils of the
social estate in which they found themselves. They attributed these
evils to the limitations imposed upon the free powers of man. Such
limitation was both distorting and corrupting. Their impassioned
devotion to emancipation of life from external restrictions which
operated to the exclusive advantage of the class to whom a past
feudal system consigned power, found intellectual formulation in a
worship of nature. To give "nature" full swing was to replace an
artificial, corrupt, and inequitable social order by a new and better
kingdom of humanity. Unrestrained faith in Nature as both a model
and a working power was strengthened by the advances of natural
science. Inquiry freed from prejudice and artificial restraints of
church and state had revealed that the world is a scene of law. The
Newtonian solar system, which expressed the reign of natural law,
was a scene of wonderful harmony, where every force balanced with
every other. Natural law would accomplish the same result in human
relations, if men would only get rid of the artificial man-imposed
coercive restrictions.
Education in accord with nature was thought to be the first step in
insuring this more social society. It was plainly seen that economic
and political limitations were ultimately dependent upon limitations
of thought and feeling. The first step in freeing men from external
chains was to emancipate them from the internal chains of false
beliefs and ideals. What was called social life, existing institutions,
were too false and corrupt to be intrusted with this work. How
could it be expected to undertake it when the undertaking meant its
own destruction? "Nature" must then be the power to which the
enterprise was to be left. Even the extreme sensationalistic theory of
knowledge which was current derived itself from this conception.
To insist that mind is originally passive and empty was one way of
glorifying the possibilities of education. If the mind was a wax
tablet to be written upon by objects, there were no limits to the
possibility of education by means of the natural environment. And
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since the natural world of objects is a scene of harmonious "truth,"
this education would infallibly produce minds filled with the truth.
5. Education as National and as Social. As soon as the first
enthusiasm for freedom waned, the weakness of the theory upon
the constructive side became obvious. Merely to leave everything to
nature was, after all, but to negate the very idea of education; it was
to trust to the accidents of circumstance. Not only was some
method required but also some positive organ, some administrative
agency for carrying on the process of instruction. The "complete
and harmonious development of all powers," having as its social
counterpart an enlightened and progressive humanity, required
definite organization for its realization. Private individuals here and
there could proclaim the gospel; they could not execute the work. A
Pestalozzi could try experiments and exhort philanthropically
inclined persons having wealth and power to follow his example.
But even Pestalozzi saw that any effective pursuit of the new
educational ideal required the support of the state. The realization
of the new education destined to produce a new society was, after
all, dependent upon the activities of existing states. The movement
for the democratic idea inevitably became a movement for publicly
conducted and administered schools.
So far as Europe was concerned, the historic situation identified the
movement for a state-supported education with the nationalistic
movement in political life--a fact of incalculable significance for
subsequent movements. Under the influence of German thought in
particular, education became a civic function and the civic function
was identified with the realization of the ideal of the national state.
The "state" was substituted for humanity; cosmopolitanism gave
way to nationalism. To form the citizen, not the "man," became the
aim of education. 1 The historic situation to which reference is
made is the after-effects of the Napoleonic conquests, especially in
Germany. The German states felt (and subsequent events
demonstrate the correctness of the belief) that systematic attention
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to education was the best means of recovering and maintaining their
political integrity and power. Externally they were weak and divided.
Under the leadership of Prussian statesmen they made this
condition a stimulus to the development of an extensive and
thoroughly grounded system of public education.
This change in practice necessarily brought about a change in
theory. The individualistic theory receded into the background. The
state furnished not only the instrumentalities of public education
but also its goal. When the actual practice was such that the school
system, from the elementary grades through the university faculties,
supplied the patriotic citizen and soldier and the future state official
and administrator and furnished the means for military, industrial,
and political defense and expansion, it was impossible for theory not
to emphasize the aim of social efficiency. And with the immense
importance attached to the nationalistic state, surrounded by other
competing and more or less hostile states, it was equally impossible
to interpret social efficiency in terms of a vague cosmopolitan
humanitarianism. Since the maintenance of a particular national
sovereignty required subordination of individuals to the superior
interests of the state both in military defense and in struggles for
international supremacy in commerce, social efficiency was
understood to imply a like subordination. The educational process
was taken to be one of disciplinary training rather than of personal
development. Since, however, the ideal of culture as complete
development of personality persisted, educational philosophy
attempted a reconciliation of the two ideas. The reconciliation took
the form of the conception of the "organic" character of the state.
The individual in his isolation is nothing; only in and through an
absorption of the aims and meaning of organized institutions does
he attain true personality. What appears to be his subordination to
political authority and the demand for sacrifice of himself to the
commands of his superiors is in reality but making his own the
objective reason manifested in the state--the only way in which he
can become truly rational. The notion of development which we
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have seen to be characteristic of institutional idealism (as in the
Hegelian philosophy) was just such a deliberate effort to combine
the two ideas of complete realization of personality and
thoroughgoing "disciplinary" subordination to existing institutions.
The extent of the transformation of educational philosophy which
occurred in Germany in the generation occupied by the struggle
against Napoleon for national independence, may be gathered from
Kant, who well expresses the earlier individual-cosmopolitan ideal.
In his treatise on Pedagogics, consisting of lectures given in the later
years of the eighteenth century, he defines education as the process
by which man becomes man. Mankind begins its history submerged
in nature--not as Man who is a creature of reason, while nature
furnishes only instinct and appetite. Nature offers simply the germs
which education is to develop and perfect. The peculiarity of truly
human life is that man has to create himself by his own voluntary
efforts; he has to make himself a truly moral, rational, and free
being. This creative effort is carried on by the educational activities
of slow generations. Its acceleration depends upon men consciously
striving to educate their successors not for the existing state of
affairs but so as to make possible a future better humanity. But there
is the great difficulty. Each generation is inclined to educate its
young so as to get along in the present world instead of with a view
to the proper end of education: the promotion of the best possible
realization of humanity as humanity. Parents educate their children
so that they may get on; princes educate their subjects as
instruments of their own purposes.
Who, then, shall conduct education so that humanity may improve?
We must depend upon the efforts of enlightened men in their
private capacity. "All culture begins with private men and spreads
outward from them. Simply through the efforts of persons of
enlarged inclinations, who are capable of grasping the ideal of a
future better condition, is the gradual approximation of human
nature to its end possible. Rulers are simply interested in such
training as will make their subjects better tools for their own
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intentions." Even the subsidy by rulers of privately conducted
schools must be carefully safeguarded. For the rulers' interest in the
welfare of their own nation instead of in what is best for humanity,
will make them, if they give money for the schools, wish to draw
their plans. We have in this view an express statement of the points
characteristic of the eighteenth century individualistic
cosmopolitanism. The full development of private personality is
identified with the aims of humanity as a whole and with the idea of
progress. In addition we have an explicit fear of the hampering
influence of a state-conducted and state-regulated education upon
the attainment of these ideas. But in less than two decades after this
time, Kant's philosophic successors, Fichte and Hegel, elaborated
the idea that the chief function of the state is educational; that in
particular the regeneration of Germany is to be accomplished by an
education carried on in the interests of the state, and that the private
individual is of necessity an egoistic, irrational being, enslaved to his
appetites and to circumstances unless he submits voluntarily to the
educative discipline of state institutions and laws. In this spirit,
Germany was the first country to undertake a public, universal, and
compulsory system of education extending from the primary school
through the university, and to submit to jealous state regulation and
supervision all private educational enterprises. Two results should
stand out from this brief historical survey. The first is that such
terms as the individual and the social conceptions of education are
quite meaningless taken at large, or apart from their context. Plato
had the ideal of an education which should equate individual
realization and social coherency and stability. His situation forced his
ideal into the notion of a society organized in stratified classes,
losing the individual in the class. The eighteenth century educational
philosophy was highly individualistic in form, but this form was
inspired by a noble and generous social ideal: that of a society
organized to include humanity, and providing for the indefinite
perfectibility of mankind. The idealistic philosophy of Germany in
the early nineteenth century endeavored again to equate the ideals
of a free and complete development of cultured personality with
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social discipline and political subordination. It made the national
state an intermediary between the realization of private personality
on one side and of humanity on the other. Consequently, it is
equally possible to state its animating principle with equal truth
either in the classic terms of "harmonious development of all the
powers of personality" or in the more recent terminology of "social
efficiency." All this reinforces the statement which opens this
chapter: The conception of education as a social process and
function has no definite meaning until we define the kind of society
we have in mind. These considerations pave the way for our second
conclusion. One of the fundamental problems of education in and
for a democratic society is set by the conflict of a nationalistic and a
wider social aim. The earlier cosmopolitan and "humanitarian"
conception suffered both from vagueness and from lack of definite
organs of execution and agencies of administration. In Europe, in
the Continental states particularly, the new idea of the importance
of education for human welfare and progress was captured by
national interests and harnessed to do a work whose social aim was
definitely narrow and exclusive. The social aim of education and its
national aim were identified, and the result was a marked obscuring
of the meaning of a social aim.
This confusion corresponds to the existing situation of human
intercourse. On the one hand, science, commerce, and art transcend
national boundaries. They are largely international in quality and
method. They involve interdependencies and cooperation among
the peoples inhabiting different countries. At the same time, the idea
of national sovereignty has never been as accentuated in politics as
it is at the present time. Each nation lives in a state of suppressed
hostility and incipient war with its neighbors. Each is supposed to be
the supreme judge of its own interests, and it is assumed as matter
of course that each has interests which are exclusively its own. To
question this is to question the very idea of national sovereignty
which is assumed to be basic to political practice and political
science. This contradiction (for it is nothing less) between the wider
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sphere of associated and mutually helpful social life and the
narrower sphere of exclusive and hence potentially hostile pursuits
and purposes, exacts of educational theory a clearer conception of
the meaning of "social" as a function and test of education than has
yet been attained. Is it possible for an educational system to be
conducted by a national state and yet the full social ends of the
educative process not be restricted, constrained, and corrupted?
Internally, the question has to face the tendencies, due to present
economic conditions, which split society into classes some of which
are made merely tools for the higher culture of others. Externally,
the question is concerned with the reconciliation of national loyalty,
of patriotism, with superior devotion to the things which unite men
in common ends, irrespective of national political boundaries.
Neither phase of the problem can be worked out by merely negative
means. It is not enough to see to it that education is not actively
used as an instrument to make easier the exploitation of one class
by another. School facilities must be secured of such amplitude and
efficiency as will in fact and not simply in name discount the effects
of economic inequalities, and secure to all the wards of the nation
equality of equipment for their future careers. Accomplishment of
this end demands not only adequate administrative provision of
school facilities, and such supplementation of family resources as
will enable youth to take advantage of them, but also such
modification of traditional ideals of culture, traditional subjects of
study and traditional methods of teaching and discipline as will
retain all the youth under educational influences until they are
equipped to be masters of their own economic and social careers.
The ideal may seem remote of execution, but the democratic ideal
of education is a farcical yet tragic delusion except as the ideal more
and more dominates our public system of education. The same
principle has application on the side of the considerations which
concern the relations of one nation to another. It is not enough to
teach the horrors of war and to avoid everything which would
stimulate international jealousy and animosity. The emphasis must
be put upon whatever binds people together in cooperative human
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pursuits and results, apart from geographical limitations. The
secondary and provisional character of national sovereignty in
respect to the fuller, freer, and more fruitful association and
intercourse of all human beings with one another must be instilled
as a working disposition of mind. If these applications seem to be
remote from a consideration of the philosophy of education, the
impression shows that the meaning of the idea of education
previously developed has not been adequately grasped. This
conclusion is bound up with the very idea of education as a freeing
of individual capacity in a progressive growth directed to social
aims. Otherwise a democratic criterion of education can only be
inconsistently applied.
Summary.
Since education is a social process, and there are many kinds of
societies, a criterion for educational criticism and construction
implies a particular social ideal. The two points selected by which to
measure the worth of a form of social life are the extent in which
the interests of a group are shared by all its members, and the
fullness and freedom with which it interacts with other groups. An
undesirable society, in other words, is one which internally and
externally sets up barriers to free intercourse and communication of
experience. A society which makes provision for participation in its
good of all its members on equal terms and which secures flexible
readjustment of its institutions through interaction of the different
forms of associated life is in so far democratic. Such a society must
have a type of education which gives individuals a personal interest
in social relationships and control, and the habits of mind which
secure social changes without introducing disorder. Three typical
historic philosophies of education were considered from this point
of view. The Platonic was found to have an ideal formally quite
similar to that stated, but which was compromised in its working out
by making a class rather than an individual the social unit. The so-
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called individualism of the eighteenth-century enlightenment was
found to involve the notion of a society as broad as humanity, of
whose progress the individual was to be the organ. But it lacked any
agency for securing the development of its ideal as was evidenced in
its falling back upon Nature. The institutional idealistic philosophies
of the nineteenth century supplied this lack by making the national
state the agency, but in so doing narrowed the conception of the
social aim to those who were members of the same political unit,
and reintroduced the idea of the subordination of the individual to
the institution. 1 There is a much neglected strain in Rousseau
tending intellectually in this direction. He opposed the existing state
of affairs on the ground that it formed neither the citizen nor the
man. Under existing conditions, he preferred to try for the latter
rather than for the former. But there are many sayings of his which
point to the formation of the citizen as ideally the higher, and which
indicate that his own endeavor, as embodied in the Emile, was
simply the best makeshift the corruption of the times permitted him
to sketch.
Chapter Eight: Aims in Education
1. The Nature of an Aim. The account of education given in our
earlier chapters virtually anticipated the results reached in a
discussion of the purport of education in a democratic community.
For it assumed that the aim of education is to enable individuals to
continue their education--or that the object and reward of learning
is continued capacity for growth. Now this idea cannot be applied to
all the members of a society except where intercourse of man with
man is mutual, and except where there is adequate provision for the
reconstruction of social habits and institutions by means of wide
stimulation arising from equitably distributed interests. And this
means a democratic society. In our search for aims in education, we
are not concerned, therefore, with finding an end outside of the
educative process to which education is subordinate. Our whole
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conception forbids. We are rather concerned with the contrast
which exists when aims belong within the process in which they
operate and when they are set up from without. And the latter state
of affairs must obtain when social relationships are not equitably
balanced. For in that case, some portions of the whole social group
will find their aims determined by an external dictation; their aims
will not arise from the free growth of their own experience, and
their nominal aims will be means to more ulterior ends of others
rather than truly their own.
Our first question is to define the nature of an aim so far as it falls
within an activity, instead of being furnished from without. We
approach the definition by a contrast of mere results with ends. Any
exhibition of energy has results. The wind blows about the sands of
the desert; the position of the grains is changed. Here is a result, an
effect, but not an end. For there is nothing in the outcome which
completes or fulfills what went before it. There is mere spatial
redistribution. One state of affairs is just as good as any other.
Consequently there is no basis upon which to select an earlier state
of affairs as a beginning, a later as an end, and to consider what
intervenes as a process of transformation and realization.
Consider for example the activities of bees in contrast with the
changes in the sands when the wind blows them about. The results
of the bees' actions may be called ends not because they are
designed or consciously intended, but because they are true
terminations or completions of what has preceded. When the bees
gather pollen and make wax and build cells, each step prepares the
way for the next. When cells are built, the queen lays eggs in them;
when eggs are laid, they are sealed and bees brood them and keep
them at a temperature required to hatch them. When they are
hatched, bees feed the young till they can take care of themselves.
Now we are so familiar with such facts, that we are apt to dismiss
them on the ground that life and instinct are a kind of miraculous
thing anyway. Thus we fail to note what the essential characteristic
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of the event is; namely, the significance of the temporal place and
order of each element; the way each prior event leads into its
successor while the successor takes up what is furnished and utilizes
it for some other stage, until we arrive at the end, which, as it were,
summarizes and finishes off the process. Since aims relate always to
results, the first thing to look to when it is a question of aims, is
whether the work assigned possesses intrinsic continuity. Or is it a
mere serial aggregate of acts, first doing one thing and then
another? To talk about an educational aim when approximately each
act of a pupil is dictated by the teacher, when the only order in the
sequence of his acts is that which comes from the assignment of
lessons and the giving of directions by another, is to talk nonsense.
It is equally fatal to an aim to permit capricious or discontinuous
action in the name of spontaneous self-expression. An aim implies
an orderly and ordered activity, one in which the order consists in
the progressive completing of a process. Given an activity having a
time span and cumulative growth within the time succession, an aim
means foresight in advance of the end or possible termination. If
bees anticipated the consequences of their activity, if they perceived
their end in imaginative foresight, they would have the primary
element in an aim. Hence it is nonsense to talk about the aim of
education--or any other undertaking--where conditions do not
permit of foresight of results, and do not stimulate a person to look
ahead to see what the outcome of a given activity is to be. In the
next place the aim as a foreseen end gives direction to the activity; it
is not an idle view of a mere spectator, but influences the steps
taken to reach the end. The foresight functions in three ways. In the
first place, it involves careful observation of the given conditions to
see what are the means available for reaching the end, and to
discover the hindrances in the way. In the second place, it suggests
the proper order or sequence in the use of means. It facilitates an
economical selection and arrangement. In the third place, it makes
choice of alternatives possible. If we can predict the outcome of
acting this way or that, we can then compare the value of the two
courses of action; we can pass judgment upon their relative
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desirability. If we know that stagnant water breeds mosquitoes and
that they are likely to carry disease, we can, disliking that anticipated
result, take steps to avert it. Since we do not anticipate results as
mere intellectual onlookers, but as persons concerned in the
outcome, we are partakers in the process which produces the result.
We intervene to bring about this result or that.
Of course these three points are closely connected with one
another. We can definitely foresee results only as we make careful
scrutiny of present conditions, and the importance of the outcome
supplies the motive for observations. The more adequate our
observations, the more varied is the scene of conditions and
obstructions that presents itself, and the more numerous are the
alternatives between which choice may be made. In turn, the more
numerous the recognized possibilities of the situation, or
alternatives of action, the more meaning does the chosen activity
possess, and the more flexibly controllable is it. Where only a single
outcome has been thought of, the mind has nothing else to think of;
the meaning attaching to the act is limited. One only steams ahead
toward the mark. Sometimes such a narrow course may be effective.
But if unexpected difficulties offer themselves, one has not as many
resources at command as if he had chosen the same line of action
after a broader survey of the possibilities of the field. He cannot
make needed readjustments readily.
The net conclusion is that acting with an aim is all one with acting
intelligently. To foresee a terminus of an act is to have a basis upon
which to observe, to select, and to order objects and our own
capacities. To do these things means to have a mind--for mind is
precisely intentional purposeful activity controlled by perception of
facts and their relationships to one another. To have a mind to do a
thing is to foresee a future possibility; it is to have a plan for its
accomplishment; it is to note the means which make the plan
capable of execution and the obstructions in the way,--or, if it is
really a mind to do the thing and not a vague aspiration--it is to
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have a plan which takes account of resources and difficulties. Mind
is capacity to refer present conditions to future results, and future
consequences to present conditions. And these traits are just what is
meant by having an aim or a purpose. A man is stupid or blind or
unintelligent--lacking in mind--just in the degree in which in any
activity he does not know what he is about, namely, the probable
consequences of his acts. A man is imperfectly intelligent when he
contents himself with looser guesses about the outcome than is
needful, just taking a chance with his luck, or when he forms plans
apart from study of the actual conditions, including his own
capacities. Such relative absence of mind means to make our
feelings the measure of what is to happen. To be intelligent we must
"stop, look, listen" in making the plan of an activity.
To identify acting with an aim and intelligent activity is enough to
show its value--its function in experience. We are only too given to
making an entity out of the abstract noun "consciousness." We
forget that it comes from the adjective "conscious." To be conscious
is to be aware of what we are about; conscious signifies the
deliberate, observant, planning traits of activity. Consciousness is
nothing which we have which gazes idly on the scene around one or
which has impressions made upon it by physical things; it is a name
for the purposeful quality of an activity, for the fact that it is
directed by an aim. Put the other way about, to have an aim is to act
with meaning, not like an automatic machine; it is to mean to do
something and to perceive the meaning of things in the light of that
intent.
2. The Criteria of Good Aims. We may apply the results of our
discussion to a consideration of the criteria involved in a correct
establishing of aims. (1) The aim set up must be an outgrowth of
existing conditions. It must be based upon a consideration of what
is already going on; upon the resources and difficulties of the
situation. Theories about the proper end of our activities--
educational and moral theories--often violate this principle. They
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assume ends lying outside our activities; ends foreign to the concrete
makeup of the situation; ends which issue from some outside
source. Then the problem is to bring our activities to bear upon the
realization of these externally supplied ends. They are something for
which we ought to act. In any case such "aims" limit intelligence;
they are not the expression of mind in foresight, observation, and
choice of the better among alternative possibilities. They limit
intelligence because, given ready-made, they must be imposed by
some authority external to intelligence, leaving to the latter nothing
but a mechanical choice of means.
(2) We have spoken as if aims could be completely formed prior to
the attempt to realize them. This impression must now be qualified.
The aim as it first emerges is a mere tentative sketch. The act of
striving to realize it tests its worth. If it suffices to direct activity
successfully, nothing more is required, since its whole function is to
set a mark in advance; and at times a mere hint may suffice. But
usually--at least in complicated situations--acting upon it brings to
light conditions which had been overlooked. This calls for revision
of the original aim; it has to be added to and subtracted from. An
aim must, then, be flexible; it must be capable of alteration to meet
circumstances. An end established externally to the process of
action is always rigid. Being inserted or imposed from without, it is
not supposed to have a working relationship to the concrete
conditions of the situation. What happens in the course of action
neither confirms, refutes, nor alters it. Such an end can only be
insisted upon. The failure that results from its lack of adaptation is
attributed simply to the perverseness of conditions, not to the fact
that the end is not reasonable under the circumstances. The value of
a legitimate aim, on the contrary, lies in the fact that we can use it to
change conditions. It is a method for dealing with conditions so as
to effect desirable alterations in them. A farmer who should
passively accept things just as he finds them would make as great a
mistake as he who framed his plans in complete disregard of what
soil, climate, etc., permit. One of the evils of an abstract or remote
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external aim in education is that its very inapplicability in practice is
likely to react into a haphazard snatching at immediate conditions. A
good aim surveys the present state of experience of pupils, and
forming a tentative plan of treatment, keeps the plan constantly in
view and yet modifies it as conditions develop. The aim, in short, is
experimental, and hence constantly growing as it is tested in action.
(3) The aim must always represent a freeing of activities. The term
end in view is suggestive, for it puts before the mind the termination
or conclusion of some process. The only way in which we can
define an activity is by putting before ourselves the objects in which
it terminates--as one's aim in shooting is the target. But we must
remember that the object is only a mark or sign by which the mind
specifies the activity one desires to carry out. Strictly speaking, not
the target but hitting the target is the end in view; one takes aim by
means of the target, but also by the sight on the gun. The different
objects which are thought of are means of directing the activity.
Thus one aims at, say, a rabbit; what he wants is to shoot straight: a
certain kind of activity. Or, if it is the rabbit he wants, it is not
rabbit apart from his activity, but as a factor in activity; he wants to
eat the rabbit, or to show it as evidence of his marksmanship--he
wants to do something with it. The doing with the thing, not the
thing in isolation, is his end. The object is but a phase of the active
end,--continuing the activity successfully. This is what is meant by
the phrase, used above, "freeing activity."
In contrast with fulfilling some process in order that activity may go
on, stands the static character of an end which is imposed from
without the activity. It is always conceived of as fixed; it is
something to be attained and possessed. When one has such a
notion, activity is a mere unavoidable means to something else; it is
not significant or important on its own account. As compared with
the end it is but a necessary evil; something which must be gone
through before one can reach the object which is alone worth while.
In other words, the external idea of the aim leads to a separation of
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means from end, while an end which grows up within an activity as
plan for its direction is always both ends and means, the distinction
being only one of convenience. Every means is a temporary end
until we have attained it. Every end becomes a means of carrying
activity further as soon as it is achieved. We call it end when it marks
off the future direction of the activity in which we are engaged;
means when it marks off the present direction. Every divorce of
end from means diminishes by that much the significance of the
activity and tends to reduce it to a drudgery from which one would
escape if he could. A farmer has to use plants and animals to carry
on his farming activities. It certainly makes a great difference to his
life whether he is fond of them, or whether he regards them merely
as means which he has to employ to get something else in which
alone he is interested. In the former case, his entire course of
activity is significant; each phase of it has its own value. He has the
experience of realizing his end at every stage; the postponed aim, or
end in view, being merely a sight ahead by which to keep his activity
going fully and freely. For if he does not look ahead, he is more
likely to find himself blocked. The aim is as definitely a means of
action as is any other portion of an activity.
3. Applications in Education. There is nothing peculiar about
educational aims. They are just like aims in any directed occupation.
The educator, like the farmer, has certain things to do, certain
resources with which to do, and certain obstacles with which to
contend. The conditions with which the farmer deals, whether as
obstacles or resources, have their own structure and operation
independently of any purpose of his. Seeds sprout, rain falls, the
sun shines, insects devour, blight comes, the seasons change. His
aim is simply to utilize these various conditions; to make his
activities and their energies work together, instead of against one
another. It would be absurd if the farmer set up a purpose of
farming, without any reference to these conditions of soil, climate,
characteristic of plant growth, etc. His purpose is simply a foresight
of the consequences of his energies connected with those of the
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things about him, a foresight used to direct his movements from day
to day. Foresight of possible consequences leads to more careful
and extensive observation of the nature and performances of the
things he had to do with, and to laying out a plan--that is, of a
certain order in the acts to be performed.
It is the same with the educator, whether parent or teacher. It is as
absurd for the latter to set up his "own" aims as the proper objects
of the growth of the children as it would be for the farmer to set up
an ideal of farming irrespective of conditions. Aims mean
acceptance of responsibility for the observations, anticipations, and
arrangements required in carrying on a function--whether farming
or educating. Any aim is of value so far as it assists observation,
choice, and planning in carrying on activity from moment to
moment and hour to hour; if it gets in the way of the individual's
own common sense (as it will surely do if imposed from without or
accepted on authority) it does harm.
And it is well to remind ourselves that education as such has no
aims. Only persons, parents, and teachers, etc., have aims, not an
abstract idea like education. And consequently their purposes are
indefinitely varied, differing with different children, changing as
children grow and with the growth of experience on the part of the
one who teaches. Even the most valid aims which can be put in
words will, as words, do more harm than good unless one
recognizes that they are not aims, but rather suggestions to
educators as to how to observe, how to look ahead, and how to
choose in liberating and directing the energies of the concrete
situations in which they find themselves. As a recent writer has said:
"To lead this boy to read Scott's novels instead of old Sleuth's
stories; to teach this girl to sew; to root out the habit of bullying
from John's make-up; to prepare this class to study medicine,--
these are samples of the millions of aims we have actually before us
in the concrete work of education." Bearing these qualifications in
mind, we shall proceed to state some of the characteristics found in
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all good educational aims. (1) An educational aim must be founded
upon the intrinsic activities and needs (including original instincts
and acquired habits) of the given individual to be educated. The
tendency of such an aim as preparation is, as we have seen, to omit
existing powers, and find the aim in some remote accomplishment
or responsibility. In general, there is a disposition to take
considerations which are dear to the hearts of adults and set them
up as ends irrespective of the capacities of those educated. There is
also an inclination to propound aims which are so uniform as to
neglect the specific powers and requirements of an individual,
forgetting that all learning is something which happens to an
individual at a given time and place. The larger range of perception
of the adult is of great value in observing the abilities and
weaknesses of the young, in deciding what they may amount to.
Thus the artistic capacities of the adult exhibit what certain
tendencies of the child are capable of; if we did not have the adult
achievements we should be without assurance as to the significance
of the drawing, reproducing, modeling, coloring activities of
childhood. So if it were not for adult language, we should not be
able to see the import of the babbling impulses of infancy. But it is
one thing to use adult accomplishments as a context in which to
place and survey the doings of childhood and youth; it is quite
another to set them up as a fixed aim without regard to the concrete
activities of those educated.
(2) An aim must be capable of translation into a method of
cooperating with the activities of those undergoing instruction. It
must suggest the kind of environment needed to liberate and to
organize their capacities. Unless it lends itself to the construction of
specific procedures, and unless these procedures test, correct, and
amplify the aim, the latter is worthless. Instead of helping the
specific task of teaching, it prevents the use of ordinary judgment in
observing and sizing up the situation. It operates to exclude
recognition of everything except what squares up with the fixed end
in view. Every rigid aim just because it is rigidly given seems to
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render it unnecessary to give careful attention to concrete
conditions. Since it must apply anyhow, what is the use of noting
details which do not count?
The vice of externally imposed ends has deep roots. Teachers
receive them from superior authorities; these authorities accept
them from what is current in the community. The teachers impose
them upon children. As a first consequence, the intelligence of the
teacher is not free; it is confined to receiving the aims laid down
from above. Too rarely is the individual teacher so free from the
dictation of authoritative supervisor, textbook on methods,
prescribed course of study, etc., that he can let his mind come to
close quarters with the pupil's mind and the subject matter. This
distrust of the teacher's experience is then reflected in lack of
confidence in the responses of pupils. The latter receive their aims
through a double or treble external imposition, and are constantly
confused by the conflict between the aims which are natural to their
own experience at the time and those in which they are taught to
acquiesce. Until the democratic criterion of the intrinsic significance
of every growing experience is recognized, we shall be intellectually
confused by the demand for adaptation to external aims.
(3) Educators have to be on their guard against ends that are alleged
to be general and ultimate. Every activity, however specific, is, of
course, general in its ramified connections, for it leads out
indefinitely into other things. So far as a general idea makes us more
alive to these connections, it cannot be too general. But "general"
also means "abstract," or detached from all specific context. And
such abstractness means remoteness, and throws us back, once
more, upon teaching and learning as mere means of getting ready
for an end disconnected from the means. That education is literally
and all the time its own reward means that no alleged study or
discipline is educative unless it is worth while in its own immediate
having. A truly general aim broadens the outlook; it stimulates one
to take more consequences (connections) into account. This means
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a wider and more flexible observation of means. The more
interacting forces, for example, the farmer takes into account, the
more varied will be his immediate resources. He will see a greater
number of possible starting places, and a greater number of ways of
getting at what he wants to do. The fuller one's conception of
possible future achievements, the less his present activity is tied
down to a small number of alternatives. If one knew enough, one
could start almost anywhere and sustain his activities continuously
and fruitfully.
Understanding then the term general or comprehensive aim simply
in the sense of a broad survey of the field of present activities, we
shall take up some of the larger ends which have currency in the
educational theories of the day, and consider what light they throw
upon the immediate concrete and diversified aims which are always
the educator's real concern. We premise (as indeed immediately
follows from what has been said) that there is no need of making a
choice among them or regarding them as competitors. When we
come to act in a tangible way we have to select or choose a
particular act at a particular time, but any number of comprehensive
ends may exist without competition, since they mean simply
different ways of looking at the same scene. One cannot climb a
number of different mountains simultaneously, but the views had
when different mountains are ascended supplement one another:
they do not set up incompatible, competing worlds. Or, putting the
matter in a slightly different way, one statement of an end may
suggest certain questions and observations, and another statement
another set of questions, calling for other observations. Then the
more general ends we have, the better. One statement will
emphasize what another slurs over. What a plurality of hypotheses
does for the scientific investigator, a plurality of stated aims may do
for the instructor.
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Summary.
An aim denotes the result of any natural process brought to
consciousness and made a factor in determining present observation
and choice of ways of acting. It signifies that an activity has become
intelligent. Specifically it means foresight of the alternative
consequences attendant upon acting in a given situation in different
ways, and the use of what is anticipated to direct observation and
experiment. A true aim is thus opposed at every point to an aim
which is imposed upon a process of action from without. The latter
is fixed and rigid; it is not a stimulus to intelligence in the given
situation, but is an externally dictated order to do such and such
things. Instead of connecting directly with present activities, it is
remote, divorced from the means by which it is to be reached.
Instead of suggesting a freer and better balanced activity, it is a limit
set to activity. In education, the currency of these externally
imposed aims is responsible for the emphasis put upon the notion
of preparation for a remote future and for rendering the work of
both teacher and pupil mechanical and slavish.
Chapter Nine: Natural Development and Social
Efficiency as Aims
1. Nature as Supplying the Aim. We have just pointed out the futility
of trying to establish the aim of education--some one final aim
which subordinates all others to itself. We have indicated that since
general aims are but prospective points of view from which to
survey the existing conditions and estimate their possibilities, we
might have any number of them, all consistent with one another. As
matter of fact, a large number have been stated at different times, all
having great local value. For the statement of aim is a matter of
emphasis at a given time. And we do not emphasize things which do
not require emphasis--that is, such things as are taking care of
themselves fairly well. We tend rather to frame our statement on the
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basis of the defects and needs of the contemporary situation; we
take for granted, without explicit statement which would be of no
use, whatever is right or approximately so. We frame our explicit
aims in terms of some alteration to be brought about. It is, then,
DO paradox requiring explanation that a given epoch or generation
tends to emphasize in its conscious projections just the things which
it has least of in actual fact. A time of domination by authority will
call out as response the desirability of great individual freedom; one
of disorganized individual activities the need of social control as an
educational aim.
The actual and implicit practice and the conscious or stated aim thus
balance each other. At different times such aims as complete living,
better methods of language study, substitution of things for words,
social efficiency, personal culture, social service, complete
development of personality, encyclopedic knowledge, discipline, a
esthetic contemplation, utility, etc., have served. The following
discussion takes up three statements of recent influence; certain
others have been incidentally discussed in the previous chapters, and
others will be considered later in a discussion of knowledge and of
the values of studies. We begin with a consideration that education
is a process of development in accordance with nature, taking
Rousseau's statement, which opposed natural to social (See ante, p.
91); and then pass over to the antithetical conception of social
efficiency, which often opposes social to natural.
(1) Educational reformers disgusted with the conventionality and
artificiality of the scholastic methods they find about them are
prone to resort to nature as a standard. Nature is supposed to
furnish the law and the end of development; ours it is to follow and
conform to her ways. The positive value of this conception lies in
the forcible way in which it calls attention to the wrongness of aims
which do not have regard to the natural endowment of those
educated. Its weakness is the ease with which natural in the sense of
normal is confused with the physical. The constructive use of
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intelligence in foresight, and contriving, is then discounted; we are
just to get out of the way and allow nature to do the work. Since no
one has stated in the doctrine both its truth and falsity better than
Rousseau, we shall turn to him.
"Education," he says, "we receive from three sources--Nature, men,
and things. The spontaneous development of our organs and
capacities constitutes the education of Nature. The use to which we
are taught to put this development constitutes that education given
us by Men. The acquirement of personal experience from
surrounding objects constitutes that of things. Only when these
three kinds of education are consonant and make for the same end,
does a man tend towards his true goal. If we are asked what is this
end, the answer is that of Nature. For since the concurrence of the
three kinds of education is necessary to their completeness, the kind
which is entirely independent of our control must necessarily
regulate us in determining the other two." Then he defines Nature
to mean the capacities and dispositions which are inborn, "as they
exist prior to the modification due to constraining habits and the
influence of the opinion of others."
The wording of Rousseau will repay careful study. It contains as
fundamental truths as have been uttered about education in
conjunction with a curious twist. It would be impossible to say
better what is said in the first sentences. The three factors of
educative development are (a) the native structure of our bodily
organs and their functional activities; (b) the uses to which the
activities of these organs are put under the influence of other
persons; (c) their direct interaction with the environment. This
statement certainly covers the ground. His other two propositions
are equally sound; namely, (a) that only when the three factors of
education are consonant and cooperative does adequate
development of the individual occur, and (b) that the native
activities of the organs, being original, are basic in conceiving
consonance. But it requires but little reading between the lines,
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supplemented by other statements of Rousseau, to perceive that
instead of regarding these three things as factors which must work
together to some extent in order that any one of them may proceed
educatively, he regards them as separate and independent operations.
Especially does he believe that there is an independent and, as he
says, "spontaneous" development of the native organs and faculties.
He thinks that this development can go on irrespective of the use to
which they are put. And it is to this separate development that
education coming from social contact is to be subordinated. Now
there is an immense difference between a use of native activities in
accord with those activities themselves--as distinct from forcing
them and perverting them--and supposing that they have a normal
development apart from any use, which development furnishes the
standard and norm of all learning by use. To recur to our previous
illustration, the process of acquiring language is a practically perfect
model of proper educative growth. The start is from native activities
of the vocal apparatus, organs of hearing, etc. But it is absurd to
suppose that these have an independent growth of their own, which
left to itself would evolve a perfect speech. Taken literally,
Rousseau's principle would mean that adults should accept and
repeat the babblings and noises of children not merely as the
beginnings of the development of articulate speech--which they
are--but as furnishing language itself--the standard for all teaching
of language.
The point may be summarized by saying that Rousseau was right,
introducing a much-needed reform into education, in holding that
the structure and activities of the organs furnish the conditions of
all teaching of the use of the organs; but profoundly wrong in
intimating that they supply not only the conditions but also the ends
of their development. As matter of fact, the native activities
develop, in contrast with random and capricious exercise, through
the uses to which they are put. And the office of the social medium
is, as we have seen, to direct growth through putting powers to the
best possible use. The instinctive activities may be called,
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metaphorically, spontaneous, in the sense that the organs give a
strong bias for a certain sort of operation,--a bias so strong that we
cannot go contrary to it, though by trying to go contrary we may
pervert, stunt, and corrupt them. But the notion of a spontaneous
normal development of these activities is pure mythology. The
natural, or native, powers furnish the initiating and limiting forces in
all education; they do not furnish its ends or aims. There is no
learning except from a beginning in unlearned powers, but learning
is not a matter of the spontaneous overflow of the unlearned
powers. Rousseau's contrary opinion is doubtless due to the fact that
he identified God with Nature; to him the original powers are
wholly good, coming directly from a wise and good creator. To
paraphrase the old saying about the country and the town, God
made the original human organs and faculties, man makes the uses
to which they are put. Consequently the development of the former
furnishes the standard to which the latter must be subordinated.
When men attempt to determine the uses to which the original
activities shall be put, they interfere with a divine plan. The
interference by social arrangements with Nature, God's work, is the
primary source of corruption in individuals.
Rousseau's passionate assertion of the intrinsic goodness of all
natural tendencies was a reaction against the prevalent notion of the
total depravity of innate human nature, and has had a powerful
influence in modifying the attitude towards children's interests. But
it is hardly necessary to say that primitive impulses are of
themselves neither good nor evil, but become one or the other
according to the objects for which they are employed. That neglect,
suppression, and premature forcing of some instincts at the expense
of others, are responsible for many avoidable ills, there can be no
doubt. But the moral is not to leave them alone to follow their own
"spontaneous development," but to provide an environment which
shall organize them.
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Returning to the elements of truth contained in Rousseau's
statements, we find that natural development, as an aim, enables him
to point the means of correcting many evils in current practices, and
to indicate a number of desirable specific aims. (1) Natural
development as an aim fixes attention upon the bodily organs and
the need of health and vigor. The aim of natural development says
to parents and teachers: Make health an aim; normal development
cannot be had without regard to the vigor of the body--an obvious
enough fact and yet one whose due recognition in practice would
almost automatically revolutionize many of our educational
practices. "Nature" is indeed a vague and metaphorical term, but
one thing that "Nature" may be said to utter is that there are
conditions of educational efficiency, and that till we have learned
what these conditions are and have learned to make our practices
accord with them, the noblest and most ideal of our aims are
doomed to suffer--are verbal and sentimental rather than
efficacious.
(2) The aim of natural development translates into the aim of
respect for physical mobility. In Rousseau's words: "Children are
always in motion; a sedentary life is injurious." When he says that
"Nature's intention is to strengthen the body before exercising the
mind" he hardly states the fact fairly. But if he had said that nature's
"intention" (to adopt his poetical form of speech) is to develop the
mind especially by exercise of the muscles of the body he would
have stated a positive fact. In other words, the aim of following
nature means, in the concrete, regard for the actual part played by
use of the bodily organs in explorations, in handling of materials, in
plays and games. (3) The general aim translates into the aim of
regard for individual differences among children. Nobody can take
the principle of consideration of native powers into account
without being struck by the fact that these powers differ in different
individuals. The difference applies not merely to their intensity, but
even more to their quality and arrangement. As Rouseau said: "Each
individual is born with a distinctive temperament. We
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indiscriminately employ children of different bents on the same
exercises; their education destroys the special bent and leaves a dull
uniformity. Therefore after we have wasted our efforts in stunting
the true gifts of nature we see the short-lived and illusory brilliance
we have substituted die away, while the natural abilities we have
crushed do not revive."
Lastly, the aim of following nature means to note the origin, the
waxing, and waning, of preferences and interests. Capacities bud
and bloom irregularly; there is no even four-abreast development.
We must strike while the iron is hot. Especially precious are the first
dawnings of power. More than we imagine, the ways in which the
tendencies of early childhood are treated fix fundamental
dispositions and condition the turn taken by powers that show
themselves later. Educational concern with the early years of life--
as distinct from inculcation of useful arts--dates almost entirely
from the time of the emphasis by Pestalozzi and Froebel, following
Rousseau, of natural principles of growth. The irregularity of
growth and its significance is indicated in the following passage of a
student of the growth of the nervous system. "While growth
continues, things bodily and mental are lopsided, for growth is never
general, but is accentuated now at one spot, now at another. The
methods which shall recognize in the presence of these enormous
differences of endowment the dynamic values of natural inequalities
of growth, and utilize them, preferring irregularity to the rounding
out gained by pruning will most closely follow that which takes
place in the body and thus prove most effective." 1 Observation of
natural tendencies is difficult under conditions of restraint. They
show themselves most readily in a child's spontaneous sayings and
doings,--that is, in those he engages in when not put at set tasks
and when not aware of being under observation. It does not follow
that these tendencies are all desirable because they are natural; but it
does follow that since they are there, they are operative and must be
taken account of. We must see to it that the desirable ones have an
environment which keeps them active, and that their activity shall
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control the direction the others take and thereby induce the disuse
of the latter because they lead to nothing. Many tendencies that
trouble parents when they appear are likely to be transitory, and
sometimes too much direct attention to them only fixes a child's
attention upon them. At all events, adults too easily assume their
own habits and wishes as standards, and regard all deviations of
children's impulses as evils to be eliminated. That artificiality against
which the conception of following nature is so largely a protest, is
the outcome of attempts to force children directly into the mold of
grown-up standards.
In conclusion, we note that the early history of the idea of
following nature combined two factors which had no inherent
connection with one another. Before the time of Rousseau
educational reformers had been inclined to urge the importance of
education by ascribing practically unlimited power to it. All the
differences between peoples and between classes and persons
among the same people were said to be due to differences of
training, of exercise, and practice. Originally, mind, reason,
understanding is, for all practical purposes, the same in all. This
essential identity of mind means the essential equality of all and the
possibility of bringing them all to the same level. As a protest
against this view, the doctrine of accord with nature meant a much
less formal and abstract view of mind and its powers. It substituted
specific instincts and impulses and physiological capacities, differing
from individual to individual (just as they differ, as Rousseau pointed
out, even in dogs of the same litter), for abstract faculties of
discernment, memory, and generalization. Upon this side, the
doctrine of educative accord with nature has been reinforced by the
development of modern biology, physiology, and psychology. It
means, in effect, that great as is the significance of nurture, of
modification, and transformation through direct educational effort,
nature, or unlearned capacities, affords the foundation and ultimate
resources for such nurture. On the other hand, the doctrine of
following nature was a political dogma. It meant a rebellion against
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existing social institutions, customs, and ideals (See ante, p. 91).
Rousseau's statement that everything is good as it comes from the
hands of the Creator has its signification only in its contrast with
the concluding part of the same sentence: "Everything degenerates
in the hands of man." And again he says: "Natural man has an
absolute value; he is a numerical unit, a complete integer and has no
relation save to himself and to his fellow man. Civilized man is only
a relative unit, the numerator of a fraction whose value depends
upon its dominator, its relation to the integral body of society.
Good political institutions are those which make a man unnatural."
It is upon this conception of the artificial and harmful character of
organized social life as it now exists 2 that he rested the notion that
nature not merely furnishes prime forces which initiate growth but
also its plan and goal. That evil institutions and customs work
almost automatically to give a wrong education which the most
careful schooling cannot offset is true enough; but the conclusion is
not to education apart from the environment, but to provide an
environment in which native powers will be put to better uses.
2. Social Efficiency as Aim. A conception which made nature supply
the end of a true education and society the end of an evil one, could
hardly fail to call out a protest. The opposing emphasis took the
form of a doctrine that the business of education is to supply
precisely what nature fails to secure; namely, habituation of an
individual to social control; subordination of natural powers to
social rules. It is not surprising to find that the value in the idea of
social efficiency resides largely in its protest against the points at
which the doctrine of natural development went astray; while its
misuse comes when it is employed to slur over the truth in that
conception. It is a fact that we must look to the activities and
achievements of associated life to find what the development of
power--that is to say, efficiency--means. The error is in implying
that we must adopt measures of subordination rather than of
utilization to secure efficiency. The doctrine is rendered adequate
when we recognize that social efficiency is attained not by negative
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constraint but by positive use of native individual capacities in
occupations having a social meaning. (1) Translated into specific
aims, social efficiency indicates the importance of industrial
competency. Persons cannot live without means of subsistence; the
ways in which these means are employed and consumed have a
profound influence upon all the relationships of persons to one
another. If an individual is not able to earn his own living and that
of the children dependent upon him, he is a drag or parasite upon
the activities of others. He misses for himself one of the most
educative experiences of life. If he is not trained in the right use of
the products of industry, there is grave danger that he may deprave
himself and injure others in his possession of wealth. No scheme
of education can afford to neglect such basic considerations. Yet in
the name of higher and more spiritual ideals, the arrangements for
higher education have often not only neglected them, but looked at
them with scorn as beneath the level of educative concern. With the
change from an oligarchical to a democratic society, it is natural that
the significance of an education which should have as a result ability
to make one's way economically in the world, and to manage
economic resources usefully instead of for mere display and luxury,
should receive emphasis.
There is, however, grave danger that in insisting upon this end,
existing economic conditions and standards will be accepted as final.
A democratic criterion requires us to develop capacity to the point
of competency to choose and make its own career. This principle is
violated when the attempt is made to fit individuals in advance for
definite industrial callings, selected not on the basis of trained
original capacities, but on that of the wealth or social status of
parents. As a matter of fact, industry at the present time undergoes
rapid and abrupt changes through the evolution of new inventions.
New industries spring up, and old ones are revolutionized.
Consequently an attempt to train for too specific a mode of
efficiency defeats its own purpose. When the occupation changes its
methods, such individuals are left behind with even less ability to
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readjust themselves than if they had a less definite training. But,
most of all, the present industrial constitution of society is, like
every society which has ever existed, full of inequities. It is the aim
of progressive education to take part in correcting unfair privilege
and unfair deprivation, not to perpetuate them. Wherever social
control means subordination of individual activities to class
authority, there is danger that industrial education will be dominated
by acceptance of the status quo. Differences of economic
opportunity then dictate what the future callings of individuals are
to be. We have an unconscious revival of the defects of the Platonic
scheme (ante, p. 89) without its enlightened method of selection.
(2) Civic efficiency, or good citizenship. It is, of course, arbitrary to
separate industrial competency from capacity in good citizenship.
But the latter term may be used to indicate a number of
qualifications which are vaguer than vocational ability. These traits
run from whatever make an individual a more agreeable companion
to citizenship in the political sense: it denotes ability to judge men
and measures wisely and to take a determining part in making as
well as obeying laws. The aim of civic efficiency has at least the
merit of protecting us from the notion of a training of mental
power at large. It calls attention to the fact that power must be
relative to doing something, and to the fact that the things which
most need to be done are things which involve one's relationships
with others.
Here again we have to be on guard against understanding the aim
too narrowly. An over-definite interpretation would at certain
periods have excluded scientific discoveries, in spite of the fact that
in the last analysis security of social progress depends upon them.
For scientific men would have been thought to be mere theoretical
dreamers, totally lacking in social efficiency. It must be borne in
mind that ultimately social efficiency means neither more nor less
than capacity to share in a give and take of experience. It covers all
that makes one's own experience more worth while to others, and all
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that enables one to participate more richly in the worthwhile
experiences of others. Ability to produce and to enjoy art, capacity
for recreation, the significant utilization of leisure, are more
important elements in it than elements conventionally associated
oftentimes with citizenship. In the broadest sense, social efficiency is
nothing less than that socialization of mind which is actively
concerned in making experiences more communicable; in breaking
down the barriers of social stratification which make individuals
impervious to the interests of others. When social efficiency is
confined to the service rendered by overt acts, its chief constituent
(because its only guarantee) is omitted,--intelligent sympathy or
good will. For sympathy as a desirable quality is something more
than mere feeling; it is a cultivated imagination for what men have in
common and a rebellion at whatever unnecessarily divides them.
What is sometimes called a benevolent interest in others may be but
an unwitting mask for an attempt to dictate to them what their good
shall be, instead of an endeavor to free them so that they may seek
and find the good of their own choice. Social efficiency, even social
service, are hard and metallic things when severed from an active
acknowledgment of the diversity of goods which life may afford to
different persons, and from faith in the social utility of encouraging
every individual to make his own choice intelligent.
3. Culture as Aim. Whether or not social efficiency is an aim which
is consistent with culture turns upon these considerations. Culture
means at least something cultivated, something ripened; it is
opposed to the raw and crude. When the "natural" is identified with
this rawness, culture is opposed to what is called natural
development. Culture is also something personal; it is cultivation
with respect to appreciation of ideas and art and broad human
interests. When efficiency is identified with a narrow range of acts,
instead of with the spirit and meaning of activity, culture is opposed
to efficiency. Whether called culture or complete development of
personality, the outcome is identical with the true meaning of social
efficiency whenever attention is given to what is unique in an
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individual--and he would not be an individual if there were not
something incommensurable about him. Its opposite is the
mediocre, the average. Whenever distinctive quality is developed,
distinction of personality results, and with it greater promise for a
social service which goes beyond the supply in quantity of material
commodities. For how can there be a society really worth serving
unless it is constituted of individuals of significant personal
qualities?
The fact is that the opposition of high worth of personality to
social efficiency is a product of a feudally organized society with its
rigid division of inferior and superior. The latter are supposed to
have time and opportunity to develop themselves as human beings;
the former are confined to providing external products. When social
efficiency as measured by product or output is urged as an ideal in a
would-be democratic society, it means that the depreciatory estimate
of the masses characteristic of an aristocratic community is
accepted and carried over. But if democracy has a moral and ideal
meaning, it is that a social return be demanded from all and that
opportunity for development of distinctive capacities be afforded
all. The separation of the two aims in education is fatal to
democracy; the adoption of the narrower meaning of efficiency
deprives it of its essential justification.
The aim of efficiency (like any educational aim) must be included
within the process of experience. When it is measured by tangible
external products, and not by the achieving of a distinctively
valuable experience, it becomes materialistic. Results in the way of
commodities which may be the outgrowth of an efficient
personality are, in the strictest sense, by-products of education: by-
products which are inevitable and important, but nevertheless by-
products. To set up an external aim strengthens by reaction the false
conception of culture which identifies it with something purely
"inner." And the idea of perfecting an "inner" personality is a sure
sign of social divisions. What is called inner is simply that which
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does not connect with others--which is not capable of free and full
communication. What is termed spiritual culture has usually been
futile, with something rotten about it, just because it has been
conceived as a thing which a man might have internally--and
therefore exclusively. What one is as a person is what one is as
associated with others, in a free give and take of intercourse. This
transcends both the efficiency which consists in supplying products
to others and the culture which is an exclusive refinement and
polish.
Any individual has missed his calling, farmer, physician, teacher,
student, who does not find that the accomplishments of results of
value to others is an accompaniment of a process of experience
inherently worth while. Why then should it be thought that one
must take his choice between sacrificing himself to doing useful
things for others, or sacrificing them to pursuit of his own exclusive
ends, whether the saving of his own soul or the building of an inner
spiritual life and personality? What happens is that since neither of
these things is persistently possible, we get a compromise and an
alternation. One tries each course by turns. There is no greater
tragedy than that so much of the professedly spiritual and religious
thought of the world has emphasized the two ideals of self-sacrifice
and spiritual self-perfecting instead of throwing its weight against
this dualism of life. The dualism is too deeply established to be
easily overthrown; for that reason, it is the particular task of
education at the present time to struggle in behalf of an aim in
which social efficiency and personal culture are synonyms instead of
antagonists.
Summary.
General or comprehensive aims are points of view for surveying the
specific problems of education. Consequently it is a test of the
value of the manner in which any large end is stated to see if it will
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translate readily and consistently into the procedures which are
suggested by another. We have applied this test to three general
aims: Development according to nature, social efficiency, and
culture or personal mental enrichment. In each case we have seen
that the aims when partially stated come into conflict with each
other. The partial statement of natural development takes the
primitive powers in an alleged spontaneous development as the end-
all. From this point of view training which renders them useful to
others is an abnormal constraint; one which profoundly modifies
them through deliberate nurture is corrupting. But when we
recognize that natural activities mean native activities which develop
only through the uses in which they are nurtured, the conflict
disappears. Similarly a social efficiency which is defined in terms of
rendering external service to others is of necessity opposed to the
aim of enriching the meaning of experience, while a culture which is
taken to consist in an internal refinement of a mind is opposed to a
socialized disposition. But social efficiency as an educational
purpose should mean cultivation of power to join freely and fully in
shared or common activities. This is impossible without culture,
while it brings a reward in culture, because one cannot share in
intercourse with others without learning--without getting a broader
point of view and perceiving things of which one would otherwise
be ignorant. And there is perhaps no better definition of culture
than that it is the capacity for constantly expanding the range and
accuracy of one's perception of meanings.
1 Donaldson, Growth of Brain, p. 356.
2 We must not forget that Rousseau had the idea of a radically
different sort of society, a fraternal society whose end should be
identical with the good of all its members, which he thought to be
as much better than existing states as these are worse than the state
of nature.
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Chapter Ten: Interest and Discipline
1. The Meaning of the Terms. We have already noticed the
difference in the attitude of a spectator and of an agent or
participant. The former is indifferent to what is going on; one result
is just as good as another, since each is just something to look at.
The latter is bound up with what is going on; its outcome makes a
difference to him. His fortunes are more or less at stake in the issue
of events. Consequently he does whatever he can to influence the
direction present occurrences take. One is like a man in a prison cell
watching the rain out of the window; it is all the same to him. The
other is like a man who has planned an outing for the next day
which continuing rain will frustrate. He cannot, to be sure, by his
present reactions affect to-morrow's weather, but he may take some
steps which will influence future happenings, if only to postpone
the proposed picnic. If a man sees a carriage coming which may run
over him, if he cannot stop its movement, he can at least get out of
the way if he foresees the consequence in time. In many instances,
he can intervene even more directly. The attitude of a participant in
the course of affairs is thus a double one: there is solicitude, anxiety
concerning future consequences, and a tendency to act to assure
better, and avert worse, consequences. There are words which
denote this attitude: concern, interest. These words suggest that a
person is bound up with the possibilities inhering in objects; that he
is accordingly on the lookout for what they are likely to do to him;
and that, on the basis of his expectation or foresight, he is eager to
act so as to give things one turn rather than another. Interest and
aims, concern and purpose, are necessarily connected. Such words
as aim, intent, end, emphasize the results which are wanted and
striven for; they take for granted the personal attitude of solicitude
and attentive eagerness. Such words as interest, affection, concern,
motivation, emphasize the bearing of what is foreseen upon the
individual's fortunes, and his active desire to act to secure a possible
result. They take for granted the objective changes. But the
difference is but one of emphasis; the meaning that is shaded in one
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set of words is illuminated in the other. What is anticipated is
objective and impersonal; to-morrow's rain; the possibility of being
run over. But for an active being, a being who partakes of the
consequences instead of standing aloof from them, there is at the
same time a personal response. The difference imaginatively
foreseen makes a present difference, which finds expression in
solicitude and effort. While such words as affection, concern, and
motive indicate an attitude of personal preference, they are always
attitudes toward objects--toward what is foreseen. We may call the
phase of objective foresight intellectual, and the phase of personal
concern emotional and volitional, but there is no separation in the
facts of the situation.
Such a separation could exist only if the personal attitudes ran their
course in a world by themselves. But they are always responses to
what is going on in the situation of which they are a part, and their
successful or unsuccessful expression depends upon their
interaction with other changes. Life activities flourish and fail only in
connection with changes of the environment. They are literally
bound up with these changes; our desires, emotions, and affections
are but various ways in which our doings are tied up with the doings
of things and persons about us. Instead of marking a purely
personal or subjective realm, separated from the objective and
impersonal, they indicate the non-existence of such a separate
world. They afford convincing evidence that changes in things are
not alien to the activities of a self, and that the career and welfare of
the self are bound up with the movement of persons and things.
Interest, concern, mean that self and world are engaged with each
other in a developing situation.
The word interest, in its ordinary usage, expresses (i) the whole state
of active development, (ii) the objective results that are foreseen and
wanted, and (iii) the personal emotional inclination.
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(I) An occupation, employment, pursuit, business is often referred
to as an interest. Thus we say that a man's interest is politics, or
journalism, or philanthropy, or archaeology, or collecting Japanese
prints, or banking.
(ii) By an interest we also mean the point at which an object touches
or engages a man; the point where it influences him. In some legal
transactions a man has to prove "interest" in order to have a
standing at court. He has to show that some proposed step
concerns his affairs. A silent partner has an interest in a business,
although he takes no active part in its conduct because its prosperity
or decline affects his profits and liabilities.
(iii) When we speak of a man as interested in this or that the
emphasis falls directly upon his personal attitude. To be interested is
to be absorbed in, wrapped up in, carried away by, some object. To
take an interest is to be on the alert, to care about, to be attentive.
We say of an interested person both that he has lost himself in
some affair and that he has found himself in it. Both terms express
the engrossment of the self in an object.
When the place of interest in education is spoken of in a
depreciatory way, it will be found that the second of the meanings
mentioned is first exaggerated and then isolated. Interest is taken to
mean merely the effect of an object upon personal advantage or
disadvantage, success or failure. Separated from any objective
development of affairs, these are reduced to mere personal states of
pleasure or pain. Educationally, it then follows that to attach
importance to interest means to attach some feature of
seductiveness to material otherwise indifferent; to secure attention
and effort by offering a bribe of pleasure. This procedure is
properly stigmatized as "soft" pedagogy; as a "soup-kitchen" theory
of education.
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But the objection is based upon the fact--or assumption--that the
forms of skill to be acquired and the subject matter to be
appropriated have no interest on their own account: in other words,
they are supposed to be irrelevant to the normal activities of the
pupils. The remedy is not in finding fault with the doctrine of
interest, any more than it is to search for some pleasant bait that
may be hitched to the alien material. It is to discover objects and
modes of action, which are connected with present powers. The
function of this material in engaging activity and carrying it on
consistently and continuously is its interest. If the material operates
in this way, there is no call either to hunt for devices which will
make it interesting or to appeal to arbitrary, semi-coerced effort.
The word interest suggests, etymologically, what is between,--that
which connects two things otherwise distant. In education, the
distance covered may be looked at as temporal. The fact that a
process takes time to mature is so obvious a fact that we rarely make
it explicit. We overlook the fact that in growth there is ground to be
covered between an initial stage of process and the completing
period; that there is something intervening. In learning, the present
powers of the pupil are the initial stage; the aim of the teacher
represents the remote limit. Between the two lie means--that is
middle conditions:--acts to be performed; difficulties to be
overcome; appliances to be used. Only through them, in the literal
time sense, will the initial activities reach a satisfactory
consummation.
These intermediate conditions are of interest precisely because the
development of existing activities into the foreseen and desired end
depends upon them. To be means for the achieving of present
tendencies, to be "between" the agent and his end, to be of interest,
are different names for the same thing. When material has to be
made interesting, it signifies that as presented, it lacks connection
with purposes and present power: or that if the connection be there,
it is not perceived. To make it interesting by leading one to realize
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the connection that exists is simply good sense; to make it
interesting by extraneous and artificial inducements deserves all the
bad names which have been applied to the doctrine of interest in
education.
So much for the meaning of the term interest. Now for that of
discipline. Where an activity takes time, where many means and
obstacles lie between its initiation and completion, deliberation and
persistence are required. It is obvious that a very large part of the
everyday meaning of will is precisely the deliberate or conscious
disposition to persist and endure in a planned course of action in
spite of difficulties and contrary solicitations. A man of strong will,
in the popular usage of the words, is a man who is neither fickle nor
half-hearted in achieving chosen ends. His ability is executive; that is,
he persistently and energetically strives to execute or carry out his
aims. A weak will is unstable as water.
Clearly there are two factors in will. One has to do with the
foresight of results, the other with the depth of hold the foreseen
outcome has upon the person.
(I) Obstinacy is persistence but it is not strength of volition.
Obstinacy may be mere animal inertia and insensitiveness. A man
keeps on doing a thing just because he has got started, not because
of any clearly thought-out purpose. In fact, the obstinate man
generally declines (although he may not be quite aware of his
refusal) to make clear to himself what his proposed end is; he has a
feeling that if he allowed himself to get a clear and full idea of it, it
might not be worth while. Stubbornness shows itself even more in
reluctance to criticize ends which present themselves than it does in
persistence and energy in use of means to achieve the end. The
really executive man is a man who ponders his ends, who makes his
ideas of the results of his actions as clear and full as possible. The
people we called weak-willed or self-indulgent always deceive
themselves as to the consequences of their acts. They pick out some
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feature which is agreeable and neglect all attendant circumstances.
When they begin to act, the disagreeable results they ignored begin
to show themselves. They are discouraged, or complain of being
thwarted in their good purpose by a hard fate, and shift to some
other line of action. That the primary difference between strong and
feeble volition is intellectual, consisting in the degree of persistent
firmness and fullness with which consequences are thought out,
cannot be over-emphasized.
(ii) There is, of course, such a thing as a speculative tracing out of
results. Ends are then foreseen, but they do not lay deep hold of a
person. They are something to look at and for curiosity to play with
rather than something to achieve. There is no such thing as over-
intellectuality, but there is such a thing as a one-sided intellectuality.
A person "takes it out" as we say in considering the consequences
of proposed lines of action. A certain flabbiness of fiber prevents
the contemplated object from gripping him and engaging him in
action. And most persons are naturally diverted from a proposed
course of action by unusual, unforeseen obstacles, or by
presentation of inducements to an action that is directly more
agreeable.
A person who is trained to consider his actions, to undertake them
deliberately, is in so far forth disciplined. Add to this ability a power
to endure in an intelligently chosen course in face of distraction,
confusion, and difficulty, and you have the essence of discipline.
Discipline means power at command; mastery of the resources
available for carrying through the action undertaken. To know what
one is to do and to move to do it promptly and by use of the
requisite means is to be disciplined, whether we are thinking of an
army or a mind. Discipline is positive. To cow the spirit, to subdue
inclination, to compel obedience, to mortify the flesh, to make a
subordinate perform an uncongenial task--these things are or are
not disciplinary according as they do or do not tend to the
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development of power to recognize what one is about and to
persistence in accomplishment.
It is hardly necessary to press the point that interest and discipline
are connected, not opposed.
(i) Even the more purely intellectual phase of trained power--
apprehension of what one is doing as exhibited in consequences--is
not possible without interest. Deliberation will be perfunctory and
superficial where there is no interest. Parents and teachers often
complain--and correctly--that children "do not want to hear, or
want to understand." Their minds are not upon the subject precisely
because it does not touch them; it does not enter into their
concerns. This is a state of things that needs to be remedied, but the
remedy is not in the use of methods which increase indifference and
aversion. Even punishing a child for inattention is one way of trying
to make him realize that the matter is not a thing of complete
unconcern; it is one way of arousing "interest," or bringing about a
sense of connection. In the long run, its value is measured by
whether it supplies a mere physical excitation to act in the way
desired by the adult or whether it leads the child "to think"--that is,
to reflect upon his acts and impregnate them with aims.
(ii) That interest is requisite for executive persistence is even more
obvious. Employers do not advertise for workmen who are not
interested in what they are doing. If one were engaging a lawyer or a
doctor, it would never occur to one to reason that the person
engaged would stick to his work more conscientiously if it was so
uncongenial to him that he did it merely from a sense of obligation.
Interest measures--or rather is--the depth of the grip which the
foreseen end has upon one, moving one to act for its realization.
2. The Importance of the Idea of Interest in Education. Interest
represents the moving force of objects--whether perceived or
presented in imagination--in any experience having a purpose. In
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the concrete, the value of recognizing the dynamic place of interest
in an educative development is that it leads to considering individual
children in their specific capabilities, needs, and preferences. One
who recognizes the importance of interest will not assume that all
minds work in the same way because they happen to have the same
teacher and textbook. Attitudes and methods of approach and
response vary with the specific appeal the same material makes, this
appeal itself varying with difference of natural aptitude, of past
experience, of plan of life, and so on. But the facts of interest also
supply considerations of general value to the philosophy of
education. Rightly understood, they put us on our guard against
certain conceptions of mind and of subject matter which have had
great vogue in philosophic thought in the past, and which exercise a
serious hampering influence upon the conduct of instruction and
discipline. Too frequently mind is set over the world of things and
facts to be known; it is regarded as something existing in isolation,
with mental states and operations that exist independently.
Knowledge is then regarded as an external application of purely
mental existences to the things to be known, or else as a result of
the impressions which this outside subject matter makes on mind,
or as a combination of the two. Subject matter is then regarded as
something complete in itself; it is just something to be learned or
known, either by the voluntary application of mind to it or through
the impressions it makes on mind.
The facts of interest show that these conceptions are mythical.
Mind appears in experience as ability to respond to present stimuli
on the basis of anticipation of future possible consequences, and
with a view to controlling the kind of consequences that are to take
place. The things, the subject matter known, consist of whatever is
recognized as having a bearing upon the anticipated course of
events, whether assisting or retarding it. These statements are too
formal to be very intelligible. An illustration may clear up their
significance. You are engaged in a certain occupation, say writing
with a typewriter. If you are an expert, your formed habits take care
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of the physical movements and leave your thoughts free to consider
your topic. Suppose, however, you are not skilled, or that, even if
you are, the machine does not work well. You then have to use
intelligence. You do not wish to strike the keys at random and let the
consequences be what they may; you wish to record certain words in
a given order so as to make sense. You attend to the keys, to what
you have written, to your movements, to the ribbon or the
mechanism of the machine. Your attention is not distributed
indifferently and miscellaneously to any and every detail. It is
centered upon whatever has a bearing upon the effective pursuit of
your occupation. Your look is ahead, and you are concerned to note
the existing facts because and in so far as they are factors in the
achievement of the result intended. You have to find out what your
resources are, what conditions are at command, and what the
difficulties and obstacles are. This foresight and this survey with
reference to what is foreseen constitute mind. Action that does not
involve such a forecast of results and such an examination of means
and hindrances is either a matter of habit or else it is blind. In
neither case is it intelligent. To be vague and uncertain as to what is
intended and careless in observation of conditions of its realization
is to be, in that degree, stupid or partially intelligent.
If we recur to the case where mind is not concerned with the
physical manipulation of the instruments but with what one intends
to write, the case is the same. There is an activity in process; one is
taken up with the development of a theme. Unless one writes as a
phonograph talks, this means intelligence; namely, alertness in
foreseeing the various conclusions to which present data and
considerations are tending, together with continually renewed
observation and recollection to get hold of the subject matter which
bears upon the conclusions to be reached. The whole attitude is one
of concern with what is to be, and with what is so far as the latter
enters into the movement toward the end. Leave out the direction
which depends upon foresight of possible future results, and there
is no intelligence in present behavior. Let there be imaginative
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forecast but no attention to the conditions upon which its
attainment depends, and there is self-deception or idle dreaming--
abortive intelligence.
If this illustration is typical, mind is not a name for something
complete by itself; it is a name for a course of action in so far as that
is intelligently directed; in so far, that is to say, as aims, ends, enter
into it, with selection of means to further the attainment of aims.
Intelligence is not a peculiar possession which a person owns; but a
person is intelligent in so far as the activities in which he plays a part
have the qualities mentioned. Nor are the activities in which a
person engages, whether intelligently or not, exclusive properties of
himself; they are something in which he engages and partakes. Other
things, the independent changes of other things and persons,
cooperate and hinder. The individual's act may be initial in a course
of events, but the outcome depends upon the interaction of his
response with energies supplied by other agencies. Conceive mind as
anything but one factor partaking along with others in the
production of consequences, and it becomes meaningless.
The problem of instruction is thus that of finding material which
will engage a person in specific activities having an aim or purpose
of moment or interest to him, and dealing with things not as
gymnastic appliances but as conditions for the attainment of ends.
The remedy for the evils attending the doctrine of formal discipline
previously spoken of, is not to be found by substituting a doctrine
of specialized disciplines, but by reforming the notion of mind and
its training. Discovery of typical modes of activity, whether play or
useful occupations, in which individuals are concerned, in whose
outcome they recognize they have something at stake, and which
cannot be carried through without reflection and use of judgment
to select material of observation and recollection, is the remedy. In
short, the root of the error long prevalent in the conception of
training of mind consists in leaving out of account movements of
things to future results in which an individual shares, and in the
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direction of which observation, imagination, and memory are
enlisted. It consists in regarding mind as complete in itself, ready to
be directly applied to a present material.
In historic practice the error has cut two ways. On one hand, it has
screened and protected traditional studies and methods of teaching
from intelligent criticism and needed revisions. To say that they are
"disciplinary" has safeguarded them from all inquiry. It has not been
enough to show that they were of no use in life or that they did not
really contribute to the cultivation of the self. That they were
"disciplinary" stifled every question, subdued every doubt, and
removed the subject from the realm of rational discussion. By its
nature, the allegation could not be checked up. Even when discipline
did not accrue as matter of fact, when the pupil even grew in laxity
of application and lost power of intelligent self-direction, the fault
lay with him, not with the study or the methods of teaching. His
failure was but proof that he needed more discipline, and thus
afforded a reason for retaining the old methods. The responsibility
was transferred from the educator to the pupil because the material
did not have to meet specific tests; it did not have to be shown that
it fulfilled any particular need or served any specific end. It was
designed to discipline in general, and if it failed, it was because the
individual was unwilling to be disciplined. In the other direction, the
tendency was towards a negative conception of discipline, instead
of an identification of it with growth in constructive power of
achievement. As we have already seen, will means an attitude toward
the future, toward the production of possible consequences, an
attitude involving effort to foresee clearly and comprehensively the
probable results of ways of acting, and an active identification with
some anticipated consequences. Identification of will, or effort, with
mere strain, results when a mind is set up, endowed with powers
that are only to be applied to existing material. A person just either
will or will not apply himself to the matter in hand. The more
indifferent the subject matter, the less concern it has for the habits
and preferences of the individual, the more demand there is for an
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effort to bring the mind to bear upon it--and hence the more
discipline of will. To attend to material because there is something
to be done in which the person is concerned is not disciplinary in
this view; not even if it results in a desirable increase of constructive
power. Application just for the sake of application, for the sake of
training, is alone disciplinary. This is more likely to occur if the
subject matter presented is uncongenial, for then there is no motive
(so it is supposed) except the acknowledgment of duty or the value
of discipline. The logical result is expressed with literal truth in the
words of an American humorist: "It makes no difference what you
teach a boy so long as he doesn't like it."
The counterpart of the isolation of mind from activities dealing
with objects to accomplish ends is isolation of the subject matter to
be learned. In the traditional schemes of education, subject matter
means so much material to be studied. Various branches of study
represent so many independent branches, each having its principles
of arrangement complete within itself. History is one such group of
facts; algebra another; geography another, and so on till we have run
through the entire curriculum. Having a ready-made existence on
their own account, their relation to mind is exhausted in what they
furnish it to acquire. This idea corresponds to the conventional
practice in which the program of school work, for the day, month,
and successive years, consists of "studies" all marked off from one
another, and each supposed to be complete by itself--for
educational purposes at least.
Later on a chapter is devoted to the special consideration of the
meaning of the subject matter of instruction. At this point, we need
only to say that, in contrast with the traditional theory, anything
which intelligence studies represents things in the part which they
play in the carrying forward of active lines of interest. Just as one
"studies" his typewriter as part of the operation of putting it to use
to effect results, so with any fact or truth. It becomes an object of
study--that is, of inquiry and reflection--when it figures as a factor
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to be reckoned with in the completion of a course of events in
which one is engaged and by whose outcome one is affected.
Numbers are not objects of study just because they are numbers
already constituting a branch of learning called mathematics, but
because they represent qualities and relations of the world in which
our action goes on, because they are factors upon which the
accomplishment of our purposes depends. Stated thus broadly, the
formula may appear abstract. Translated into details, it means that
the act of learning or studying is artificial and ineffective in the
degree in which pupils are merely presented with a lesson to be
learned. Study is effectual in the degree in which the pupil realizes
the place of the numerical truth he is dealing with in carrying to
fruition activities in which he is concerned. This connection of an
object and a topic with the promotion of an activity having a
purpose is the first and the last word of a genuine theory of interest
in education.
3. Some Social Aspects of the Question. While the theoretical errors
of which we have been speaking have their expressions in the
conduct of schools, they are themselves the outcome of conditions
of social life. A change confined to the theoretical conviction of
educators will not remove the difficulties, though it should render
more effective efforts to modify social conditions. Men's
fundamental attitudes toward the world are fixed by the scope and
qualities of the activities in which they partake. The ideal of interest
is exemplified in the artistic attitude. Art is neither merely internal
nor merely external; merely mental nor merely physical. Like every
mode of action, it brings about changes in the world. The changes
made by some actions (those which by contrast may be called
mechanical) are external; they are shifting things about. No ideal
reward, no enrichment of emotion and intellect, accompanies them.
Others contribute to the maintenance of life, and to its external
adornment and display. Many of our existing social activities,
industrial and political, fall in these two classes. Neither the people
who engage in them, nor those who are directly affected by them,
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are capable of full and free interest in their work. Because of the
lack of any purpose in the work for the one doing it, or because of
the restricted character of its aim, intelligence is not adequately
engaged. The same conditions force many people back upon
themselves. They take refuge in an inner play of sentiment and
fancies. They are aesthetic but not artistic, since their feelings and
ideas are turned upon themselves, instead of being methods in acts
which modify conditions. Their mental life is sentimental; an
enjoyment of an inner landscape. Even the pursuit of science may
become an asylum of refuge from the hard conditions of life--not
a temporary retreat for the sake of recuperation and clarification in
future dealings with the world. The very word art may become
associated not with specific transformation of things, making them
more significant for mind, but with stimulations of eccentric fancy
and with emotional indulgences. The separation and mutual
contempt of the "practical" man and the man of theory or culture,
the divorce of fine and industrial arts, are indications of this
situation. Thus interest and mind are either narrowed, or else made
perverse. Compare what was said in an earlier chapter about the
one-sided meanings which have come to attach to the ideas of
efficiency and of culture.
This state of affairs must exist so far as society is organized on a
basis of division between laboring classes and leisure classes. The
intelligence of those who do things becomes hard in the
unremitting struggle with things; that of those freed from the
discipline of occupation becomes luxurious and effeminate.
Moreover, the majority of human beings still lack economic
freedom. Their pursuits are fixed by accident and necessity of
circumstance; they are not the normal expression of their own
powers interacting with the needs and resources of the
environment. Our economic conditions still relegate many men to a
servile status. As a consequence, the intelligence of those in control
of the practical situation is not liberal. Instead of playing freely
upon the subjugation of the world for human ends, it is devoted to
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the manipulation of other men for ends that are non-human in so
far as they are exclusive.
This state of affairs explains many things in our historic educational
traditions. It throws light upon the clash of aims manifested in
different portions of the school system; the narrowly utilitarian
character of most elementary education, and the narrowly
disciplinary or cultural character of most higher education. It
accounts for the tendency to isolate intellectual matters till
knowledge is scholastic, academic, and professionally technical, and
for the widespread conviction that liberal education is opposed to
the requirements of an education which shall count in the vocations
of life. But it also helps define the peculiar problem of present
education. The school cannot immediately escape from the ideals set
by prior social conditions. But it should contribute through the type
of intellectual and emotional disposition which it forms to the
improvement of those conditions. And just here the true
conceptions of interest and discipline are full of significance.
Persons whose interests have been enlarged and intelligence trained
by dealing with things and facts in active occupations having a
purpose (whether in play or work) will be those most likely to
escape the alternatives of an academic and aloof knowledge and a
hard, narrow, and merely "practical" practice. To organize education
so that natural active tendencies shall be fully enlisted in doing
something, while seeing to it that the doing requires observation, the
acquisition of information, and the use of a constructive
imagination, is what most needs to be done to improve social
conditions. To oscillate between drill exercises that strive to attain
efficiency in outward doing without the use of intelligence, and an
accumulation of knowledge that is supposed to be an ultimate end
in itself, means that education accepts the present social conditions
as final, and thereby takes upon itself the responsibility for
perpetuating them. A reorganization of education so that learning
takes place in connection with the intelligent carrying forward of
purposeful activities is a slow work. It can only be accomplished
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piecemeal, a step at a time. But this is not a reason for nominally
accepting one educational philosophy and accommodating ourselves
in practice to another. It is a challenge to undertake the task of
reorganization courageously and to keep at it persistently.
Summary.
Interest and discipline are correlative aspects of activity having an
aim. Interest means that one is identified with the objects which
define the activity and which furnish the means and obstacles to its
realization. Any activity with an aim implies a distinction between an
earlier incomplete phase and later completing phase; it implies also
intermediate steps. To have an interest is to take things as entering
into such a continuously developing situation, instead of taking
them in isolation. The time difference between the given incomplete
state of affairs and the desired fulfillment exacts effort in
transformation, it demands continuity of attention and endurance.
This attitude is what is practically meant by will. Discipline or
development of power of continuous attention is its fruit. The
significance of this doctrine for the theory of education is twofold.
On the one hand it protects us from the notion that mind and
mental states are something complete in themselves, which then
happen to be applied to some ready-made objects and topics so that
knowledge results. It shows that mind and intelligent or purposeful
engagement in a course of action into which things enter are
identical. Hence to develop and train mind is to provide an
environment which induces such activity. On the other side, it
protects us from the notion that subject matter on its side is
something isolated and independent. It shows that subject matter of
learning is identical with all the objects, ideas, and principles which
enter as resources or obstacles into the continuous intentional
pursuit of a course of action. The developing course of action,
whose end and conditions are perceived, is the unity which holds
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together what are often divided into an independent mind on one
side and an independent world of objects and facts on the other.
Chapter Eleven: Experience and Thinking
1. The Nature of Experience. The nature of experience can be
understood only by noting that it includes an active and a passive
element peculiarly combined. On the active hand, experience is
trying--a meaning which is made explicit in the connected term
experiment. On the passive, it is undergoing. When we experience
something we act upon it, we do something with it; then we suffer
or undergo the consequences. We do something to the thing and
then it does something to us in return: such is the peculiar
combination. The connection of these two phases of experience
measures the fruitfulness or value of the experience. Mere activity
does not constitute experience. It is dispersive, centrifugal,
dissipating. Experience as trying involves change, but change is
meaningless transition unless it is consciously connected with the
return wave of consequences which flow from it. When an activity
is continued into the undergoing of consequences, when the change
made by action is reflected back into a change made in us, the mere
flux is loaded with significance. We learn something. It is not
experience when a child merely sticks his finger into a flame; it is
experience when the movement is connected with the pain which he
undergoes in consequence. Henceforth the sticking of the finger
into flame means a burn. Being burned is a mere physical change,
like the burning of a stick of wood, if it is not perceived as a
consequence of some other action. Blind and capricious impulses
hurry us on heedlessly from one thing to another. So far as this
happens, everything is writ in water. There is none of that
cumulative growth which makes an experience in any vital sense of
that term. On the other hand, many things happen to us in the way
of pleasure and pain which we do not connect with any prior
activity of our own. They are mere accidents so far as we are
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concerned. There is no before or after to such experience; no
retrospect nor outlook, and consequently no meaning. We get
nothing which may be carried over to foresee what is likely to
happen next, and no gain in ability to adjust ourselves to what is
coming--no added control. Only by courtesy can such an
experience be called experience. To "learn from experience" is to
make a backward and forward connection between what we do to
things and what we enjoy or suffer from things in consequence.
Under such conditions, doing becomes a trying; an experiment with
the world to find out what it is like; the undergoing becomes
instruction--discovery of the connection of things.
Two conclusions important for education follow. (1) Experience is
primarily an active-passive affair; it is not primarily cognitive. But (2)
the measure of the value of an experience lies in the perception of
relationships or continuities to which it leads up. It includes
cognition in the degree in which it is cumulative or amounts to
something, or has meaning. In schools, those under instruction are
too customarily looked upon as acquiring knowledge as theoretical
spectators, minds which appropriate knowledge by direct energy of
intellect. The very word pupil has almost come to mean one who is
engaged not in having fruitful experiences but in absorbing
knowledge directly. Something which is called mind or
consciousness is severed from the physical organs of activity. The
former is then thought to be purely intellectual and cognitive; the
latter to be an irrelevant and intruding physical factor. The intimate
union of activity and undergoing its consequences which leads to
recognition of meaning is broken; instead we have two fragments:
mere bodily action on one side, and meaning directly grasped by
"spiritual" activity on the other.
It would be impossible to state adequately the evil results which
have flowed from this dualism of mind and body, much less to
exaggerate them. Some of the more striking effects, may, however,
be enumerated. (a) In part bodily activity becomes an intruder.
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Having nothing, so it is thought, to do with mental activity, it
becomes a distraction, an evil to be contended with. For the pupil
has a body, and brings it to school along with his mind. And the
body is, of necessity, a wellspring of energy; it has to do something.
But its activities, not being utilized in occupation with things which
yield significant results, have to be frowned upon. They lead the
pupil away from the lesson with which his "mind" ought to be
occupied; they are sources of mischief. The chief source of the
"problem of discipline" in schools is that the teacher has often to
spend the larger part of the time in suppressing the bodily activities
which take the mind away from its material. A premium is put on
physical quietude; on silence, on rigid uniformity of posture and
movement; upon a machine-like simulation of the attitudes of
intelligent interest. The teachers' business is to hold the pupils up to
these requirements and to punish the inevitable deviations which
occur.
The nervous strain and fatigue which result with both teacher and
pupil are a necessary consequence of the abnormality of the
situation in which bodily activity is divorced from the perception of
meaning. Callous indifference and explosions from strain alternate.
The neglected body, having no organized fruitful channels of
activity, breaks forth, without knowing why or how, into meaningless
boisterousness, or settles into equally meaningless fooling--both
very different from the normal play of children. Physically active
children become restless and unruly; the more quiescent, so-called
conscientious ones spend what energy they have in the negative task
of keeping their instincts and active tendencies suppressed, instead
of in a positive one of constructive planning and execution; they are
thus educated not into responsibility for the significant and graceful
use of bodily powers, but into an enforced duty not to give them
free play. It may be seriously asserted that a chief cause for the
remarkable achievements of Greek education was that it was never
misled by false notions into an attempted separation of mind and
body.
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(b) Even, however, with respect to the lessons which have to be
learned by the application of "mind," some bodily activities have to
be used. The senses--especially the eye and ear--have to be
employed to take in what the book, the map, the blackboard, and
the teacher say. The lips and vocal organs, and the hands, have to be
used to reproduce in speech and writing what has been stowed away.
The senses are then regarded as a kind of mysterious conduit
through which information is conducted from the external world
into the mind; they are spoken of as gateways and avenues of
knowledge. To keep the eyes on the book and the ears open to the
teacher's words is a mysterious source of intellectual grace.
Moreover, reading, writing, and figuring--important school arts--
demand muscular or motor training. The muscles of eye, hand, and
vocal organs accordingly have to be trained to act as pipes for
carrying knowledge back out of the mind into external action. For it
happens that using the muscles repeatedly in the same way fixes in
them an automatic tendency to repeat.
The obvious result is a mechanical use of the bodily activities which
(in spite of the generally obtrusive and interfering character of the
body in mental action) have to be employed more or less. For the
senses and muscles are used not as organic participants in having an
instructive experience, but as external inlets and outlets of mind.
Before the child goes to school, he learns with his hand, eye, and
ear, because they are organs of the process of doing something
from which meaning results. The boy flying a kite has to keep his
eye on the kite, and has to note the various pressures of the string
on his hand. His senses are avenues of knowledge not because
external facts are somehow "conveyed" to the brain, but because
they are used in doing something with a purpose. The qualities of
seen and touched things have a bearing on what is done, and are
alertly perceived; they have a meaning. But when pupils are expected
to use their eyes to note the form of words, irrespective of their
meaning, in order to reproduce them in spelling or reading, the
resulting training is simply of isolated sense organs and muscles. It
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is such isolation of an act from a purpose which makes it
mechanical. It is customary for teachers to urge children to read
with expression, so as to bring out the meaning. But if they
originally learned the sensory-motor technique of reading--the
ability to identify forms and to reproduce the sounds they stand for
--by methods which did not call for attention to meaning, a
mechanical habit was established which makes it difficult to read
subsequently with intelligence. The vocal organs have been trained
to go their own way automatically in isolation; and meaning cannot
be tied on at will. Drawing, singing, and writing may be taught in the
same mechanical way; for, we repeat, any way is mechanical which
narrows down the bodily activity so that a separation of body from
mind--that is, from recognition of meaning--is set up.
Mathematics, even in its higher branches, when undue emphasis is
put upon the technique of calculation, and science, when laboratory
exercises are given for their own sake, suffer from the same evil.
(c) On the intellectual side, the separation of "mind" from direct
occupation with things throws emphasis on things at the expense of
relations or connections. It is altogether too common to separate
perceptions and even ideas from judgments. The latter are thought
to come after the former in order to compare them. It is alleged that
the mind perceives things apart from relations; that it forms ideas of
them in isolation from their connections--with what goes before
and comes after. Then judgment or thought is called upon to
combine the separated items of "knowledge" so that their
resemblance or causal connection shall be brought out. As matter of
fact, every perception and every idea is a sense of the bearings, use,
and cause, of a thing. We do not really know a chair or have an idea
of it by inventorying and enumerating its various isolated qualities,
but only by bringing these qualities into connection with something
else--the purpose which makes it a chair and not a table; or its
difference from the kind of chair we are accustomed to, or the
"period" which it represents, and so on. A wagon is not perceived
when all its parts are summed up; it is the characteristic connection
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of the parts which makes it a wagon. And these connections are not
those of mere physical juxtaposition; they involve connection with
the animals that draw it, the things that are carried on it, and so on.
Judgment is employed in the perception; otherwise the perception is
mere sensory excitation or else a recognition of the result of a prior
judgment, as in the case of familiar objects.
Words, the counters for ideals, are, however, easily taken for ideas.
And in just the degree in which mental activity is separated from
active concern with the world, from doing something and
connecting the doing with what is undergone, words, symbols, come
to take the place of ideas. The substitution is the more subtle
because some meaning is recognized. But we are very easily trained
to be content with a minimum of meaning, and to fail to note how
restricted is our perception of the relations which confer
significance. We get so thoroughly used to a kind of pseudo-idea, a
half perception, that we are not aware how half-dead our mental
action is, and how much keener and more extensive our
observations and ideas would be if we formed them under
conditions of a vital experience which required us to use judgment:
to hunt for the connections of the thing dealt with. There is no
difference of opinion as to the theory of the matter. All authorities
agree that that discernment of relationships is the genuinely
intellectual matter; hence, the educative matter. The failure arises in
supposing that relationships can become perceptible without
experience--without that conjoint trying and undergoing of which
we have spoken. It is assumed that "mind" can grasp them if it will
only give attention, and that this attention may be given at will
irrespective of the situation. Hence the deluge of half-observations,
of verbal ideas, and unassimilated "knowledge" which afflicts the
world. An ounce of experience is better than a ton of theory simply
because it is only in experience that any theory has vital and
verifiable significance. An experience, a very humble experience, is
capable of generating and carrying any amount of theory (or
intellectual content), but a theory apart from an experience cannot
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be definitely grasped even as theory. It tends to become a mere
verbal formula, a set of catchwords used to render thinking, or
genuine theorizing, unnecessary and impossible. Because of our
education we use words, thinking they are ideas, to dispose of
questions, the disposal being in reality simply such an obscuring of
perception as prevents us from seeing any longer the difficulty.
2. Reflection in Experience. Thought or reflection, as we have
already seen virtually if not explicitly, is the discernment of the
relation between what we try to do and what happens in
consequence. No experience having a meaning is possible without
some element of thought. But we may contrast two types of
experience according to the proportion of reflection found in them.
All our experiences have a phase of "cut and try" in them--what
psychologists call the method of trial and error. We simply do
something, and when it fails, we do something else, and keep on
trying till we hit upon something which works, and then we adopt
that method as a rule of thumb measure in subsequent procedure.
Some experiences have very little else in them than this hit and miss
or succeed process. We see that a certain way of acting and a certain
consequence are connected, but we do not see how they are. We do
not see the details of the connection; the links are missing. Our
discernment is very gross. In other cases we push our observation
farther. We analyze to see just what lies between so as to bind
together cause and effect, activity and consequence. This extension
of our insight makes foresight more accurate and comprehensive.
The action which rests simply upon the trial and error method is at
the mercy of circumstances; they may change so that the act
performed does not operate in the way it was expected to. But if we
know in detail upon what the result depends, we can look to see
whether the required conditions are there. The method extends our
practical control. For if some of the conditions are missing, we may,
if we know what the needed antecedents for an effect are, set to
work to supply them; or, if they are such as to produce undesirable
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effects as well, we may eliminate some of the superfluous causes
and economize effort.
In discovery of the detailed connections of our activities and what
happens in consequence, the thought implied in cut and try
experience is made explicit. Its quantity increases so that its
proportionate value is very different. Hence the quality of the
experience changes; the change is so significant that we may call this
type of experience reflective--that is, reflective par excellence. The
deliberate cultivation of this phase of thought constitutes thinking
as a distinctive experience. Thinking, in other words, is the
intentional endeavor to discover specific connections between
something which we do and the consequences which result, so that
the two become continuous. Their isolation, and consequently their
purely arbitrary going together, is canceled; a unified developing
situation takes its place. The occurrence is now understood; it is
explained; it is reasonable, as we say, that the thing should happen as
it does.
Thinking is thus equivalent to an explicit rendering of the intelligent
element in our experience. It makes it possible to act with an end in
view. It is the condition of our having aims. As soon as an infant
begins to expect he begins to use something which is now going on
as a sign of something to follow; he is, in however simple a fashion,
judging. For he takes one thing as evidence of something else, and
so recognizes a relationship. Any future development, however
elaborate it may be, is only an extending and a refining of this
simple act of inference. All that the wisest man can do is to observe
what is going on more widely and more minutely and then select
more carefully from what is noted just those factors which point to
something to happen. The opposites, once more, to thoughtful
action are routine and capricious behavior. The former accepts what
has been customary as a full measure of possibility and omits to
take into account the connections of the particular things done. The
latter makes the momentary act a measure of value, and ignores the
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connections of our personal action with the energies of the
environment. It says, virtually, "things are to be just as I happen to
like them at this instant," as routine says in effect "let things
continue just as I have found them in the past." Both refuse to
acknowledge responsibility for the future consequences which flow
from present action. Reflection is the acceptance of such
responsibility.
The starting point of any process of thinking is something going
on, something which just as it stands is incomplete or unfulfilled. Its
point, its meaning lies literally in what it is going to be, in how it is
going to turn out. As this is written, the world is filled with the clang
of contending armies. For an active participant in the war, it is clear
that the momentous thing is the issue, the future consequences, of
this and that happening. He is identified, for the time at least, with
the issue; his fate hangs upon the course things are taking. But even
for an onlooker in a neutral country, the significance of every move
made, of every advance here and retreat there, lies in what it
portends. To think upon the news as it comes to us is to attempt to
see what is indicated as probable or possible regarding an outcome.
To fill our heads, like a scrapbook, with this and that item as a
finished and done-for thing, is not to think. It is to turn ourselves
into a piece of registering apparatus. To consider the bearing of the
occurrence upon what may be, but is not yet, is to think. Nor will
the reflective experience be different in kind if we substitute
distance in time for separation in space. Imagine the war done with,
and a future historian giving an account of it. The episode is, by
assumption, past. But he cannot give a thoughtful account of the
war save as he preserves the time sequence; the meaning of each
occurrence, as he deals with it, lies in what was future for it, though
not for the historian. To take it by itself as a complete existence is to
take it unreflectively. Reflection also implies concern with the issue
--a certain sympathetic identification of our own destiny, if only
dramatic, with the outcome of the course of events. For the general
in the war, or a common soldier, or a citizen of one of the
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contending nations, the stimulus to thinking is direct and urgent.
For neutrals, it is indirect and dependent upon imagination. But the
flagrant partisanship of human nature is evidence of the intensity
of the tendency to identify ourselves with one possible course of
events, and to reject the other as foreign. If we cannot take sides in
overt action, and throw in our little weight to help determine the
final balance, we take sides emotionally and imaginatively. We desire
this or that outcome. One wholly indifferent to the outcome does
not follow or think about what is happening at all. From this
dependence of the act of thinking upon a sense of sharing in the
consequences of what goes on, flows one of the chief paradoxes of
thought. Born in partiality, in order to accomplish its tasks it must
achieve a certain detached impartiality. The general who allows his
hopes and desires to affect his observations and interpretations of
the existing situation will surely make a mistake in calculation. While
hopes and fears may be the chief motive for a thoughtful following
of the war on the part of an onlooker in a neutral country, he too
will think ineffectively in the degree in which his preferences modify
the stuff of his observations and reasonings. There is, however, no
incompatibility between the fact that the occasion of reflection lies
in a personal sharing in what is going on and the fact that the value
of the reflection lies upon keeping one's self out of the data. The
almost insurmountable difficulty of achieving this detachment is
evidence that thinking originates in situations where the course of
thinking is an actual part of the course of events and is designed to
influence the result. Only gradually and with a widening of the area
of vision through a growth of social sympathies does thinking
develop to include what lies beyond our direct interests: a fact of
great significance for education.
To say that thinking occurs with reference to situations which are
still going on, and incomplete, is to say that thinking occurs when
things are uncertain or doubtful or problematic. Only what is
finished, completed, is wholly assured. Where there is reflection
there is suspense. The object of thinking is to help reach a
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conclusion, to project a possible termination on the basis of what is
already given. Certain other facts about thinking accompany this
feature. Since the situation in which thinking occurs is a doubtful
one, thinking is a process of inquiry, of looking into things, of
investigating. Acquiring is always secondary, and instrumental to the
act of inquiring. It is seeking, a quest, for something that is not at
hand. We sometimes talk as if "original research" were a peculiar
prerogative of scientists or at least of advanced students. But all
thinking is research, and all research is native, original, with him who
carries it on, even if everybody else in the world already is sure of
what he is still looking for.
It also follows that all thinking involves a risk. Certainty cannot be
guaranteed in advance. The invasion of the unknown is of the
nature of an adventure; we cannot be sure in advance. The
conclusions of thinking, till confirmed by the event, are, accordingly,
more or less tentative or hypothetical. Their dogmatic assertion as
final is unwarranted, short of the issue, in fact. The Greeks acutely
raised the question: How can we learn? For either we know already
what we are after, or else we do not know. In neither case is learning
possible; on the first alternative because we know already; on the
second, because we do not know what to look for, nor if, by chance,
we find it can we tell that it is what we were after. The dilemma
makes no provision for coming to know, for learning; it assumes
either complete knowledge or complete ignorance. Nevertheless the
twilight zone of inquiry, of thinking, exists. The possibility of
hypothetical conclusions, of tentative results, is the fact which the
Greek dilemma overlooked. The perplexities of the situation
suggest certain ways out. We try these ways, and either push our way
out, in which case we know we have found what we were looking
for, or the situation gets darker and more confused--in which case,
we know we are still ignorant. Tentative means trying out, feeling
one's way along provisionally. Taken by itself, the Greek argument is
a nice piece of formal logic. But it is also true that as long as men
kept a sharp disjunction between knowledge and ignorance, science
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made only slow and accidental advance. Systematic advance in
invention and discovery began when men recognized that they could
utilize doubt for purposes of inquiry by forming conjectures to
guide action in tentative explorations, whose development would
confirm, refute, or modify the guiding conjecture. While the Greeks
made knowledge more than learning, modern science makes
conserved knowledge only a means to learning, to discovery. To
recur to our illustration. A commanding general cannot base his
actions upon either absolute certainty or absolute ignorance. He has
a certain amount of information at hand which is, we will assume,
reasonably trustworthy. He then infers certain prospective
movements, thus assigning meaning to the bare facts of the given
situation. His inference is more or less dubious and hypothetical.
But he acts upon it. He develops a plan of procedure, a method of
dealing with the situation. The consequences which directly follow
from his acting this way rather than that test and reveal the worth of
his reflections. What he already knows functions and has value in
what he learns. But will this account apply in the case of the one in
a neutral country who is thoughtfully following as best he can the
progress of events? In form, yes, though not of course in content.
It is self-evident that his guesses about the future indicated by
present facts, guesses by which he attempts to supply meaning to a
multitude of disconnected data, cannot be the basis of a method
which shall take effect in the campaign. That is not his problem. But
in the degree in which he is actively thinking, and not merely
passively following the course of events, his tentative inferences will
take effect in a method of procedure appropriate to his situation.
He will anticipate certain future moves, and will be on the alert to
see whether they happen or not. In the degree in which he is
intellectually concerned, or thoughtful, he will be actively on the
lookout; he will take steps which although they do not affect the
campaign, modify in some degree his subsequent actions. Otherwise
his later "I told you so" has no intellectual quality at all; it does not
mark any testing or verification of prior thinking, but only a
coincidence that yields emotional satisfaction--and includes a large
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factor of self-deception. The case is comparable to that of an
astronomer who from given data has been led to foresee (infer) a
future eclipse. No matter how great the mathematical probability,
the inference is hypothetical--a matter of probability. 1 The
hypothesis as to the date and position of the anticipated eclipse
becomes the material of forming a method of future conduct.
Apparatus is arranged; possibly an expedition is made to some far
part of the globe. In any case, some active steps are taken which
actually change some physical conditions. And apart from such steps
and the consequent modification of the situation, there is no
completion of the act of thinking. It remains suspended.
Knowledge, already attained knowledge, controls thinking and
makes it fruitful.
So much for the general features of a reflective experience. They are
(i) perplexity, confusion, doubt, due to the fact that one is implicated
in an incomplete situation whose full character is not yet
determined; (ii) a conjectural anticipation--a tentative interpretation
of the given elements, attributing to them a tendency to effect
certain consequences; (iii) a careful survey (examination, inspection,
exploration, analysis) of all attainable consideration which will
define and clarify the problem in hand; (iv) a consequent elaboration
of the tentative hypothesis to make it more precise and more
consistent, because squaring with a wider range of facts; (v) taking
one stand upon the projected hypothesis as a plan of action which is
applied to the existing state of affairs: doing something overtly to
bring about the anticipated result, and thereby testing the
hypothesis. It is the extent and accuracy of steps three and four
which mark off a distinctive reflective experience from one on the
trial and error plane. They make thinking itself into an experience.
Nevertheless, we never get wholly beyond the trial and error
situation. Our most elaborate and rationally consistent thought has
to be tried in the world and thereby tried out. And since it can never
take into account all the connections, it can never cover with perfect
accuracy all the consequences. Yet a thoughtful survey of conditions
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is so careful, and the guessing at results so controlled, that we have a
right to mark off the reflective experience from the grosser trial and
error forms of action.
Summary.
In determining the place of thinking in experience we first noted
that experience involves a connection of doing or trying with
something which is undergone in consequence. A separation of the
active doing phase from the passive undergoing phase destroys the
vital meaning of an experience. Thinking is the accurate and
deliberate instituting of connections between what is done and its
consequences. It notes not only that they are connected, but the
details of the connection. It makes connecting links explicit in the
form of relationships. The stimulus to thinking is found when we
wish to determine the significance of some act, performed or to be
performed. Then we anticipate consequences. This implies that the
situation as it stands is, either in fact or to us, incomplete and hence
indeterminate. The projection of consequences means a proposed
or tentative solution. To perfect this hypothesis, existing conditions
have to be carefully scrutinized and the implications of the
hypothesis developed--an operation called reasoning. Then the
suggested solution--the idea or theory--has to be tested by acting
upon it. If it brings about certain consequences, certain determinate
changes, in the world, it is accepted as valid. Otherwise it is
modified, and another trial made. Thinking includes all of these
steps,--the sense of a problem, the observation of conditions, the
formation and rational elaboration of a suggested conclusion, and
the active experimental testing. While all thinking results in
knowledge, ultimately the value of knowledge is subordinate to its
use in thinking. For we live not in a settled and finished world, but in
one which is going on, and where our main task is prospective, and
where retrospect--and all knowledge as distinct from thought is
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retrospect--is of value in the solidity, security, and fertility it affords
our dealings with the future.
1 It is most important for the practice of science that men in many
cases can calculate the degree of probability and the amount of
probable error involved, but that does alter the features of the
situation as described. It refines them.
Chapter Twelve: Thinking in Education
1. The Essentials of Method. No one doubts, theoretically, the
importance of fostering in school good habits of thinking. But
apart from the fact that the acknowledgment is not so great in
practice as in theory, there is not adequate theoretical recognition
that all which the school can or need do for pupils, so far as their
minds are concerned (that is, leaving out certain specialized
muscular abilities), is to develop their ability to think. The parceling
out of instruction among various ends such as acquisition of skill
(in reading, spelling, writing, drawing, reciting); acquiring
information (in history and geography), and training of thinking is a
measure of the ineffective way in which we accomplish all three.
Thinking which is not connected with increase of efficiency in
action, and with learning more about ourselves and the world in
which we live, has something the matter with it just as thought (See
ante, p. 147). And skill obtained apart from thinking is not
connected with any sense of the purposes for which it is to be used.
It consequently leaves a man at the mercy of his routine habits and
of the authoritative control of others, who know what they are
about and who are not especially scrupulous as to their means of
achievement. And information severed from thoughtful action is
dead, a mind-crushing load. Since it simulates knowledge and
thereby develops the poison of conceit, it is a most powerful
obstacle to further growth in the grace of intelligence. The sole
direct path to enduring improvement in the methods of instruction
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and learning consists in centering upon the conditions which exact,
promote, and test thinking. Thinking is the method of intelligent
learning, of learning that employs and rewards mind. We speak,
legitimately enough, about the method of thinking, but the
important thing to bear in mind about method is that thinking is
method, the method of intelligent experience in the course which it
takes.
I. The initial stage of that developing experience which is called
thinking is experience. This remark may sound like a silly truism. It
ought to be one; but unfortunately it is not. On the contrary,
thinking is often regarded both in philosophic theory and in
educational practice as something cut off from experience, and
capable of being cultivated in isolation. In fact, the inherent
limitations of experience are often urged as the sufficient ground
for attention to thinking. Experience is then thought to be confined
to the senses and appetites; to a mere material world, while thinking
proceeds from a higher faculty (of reason), and is occupied with
spiritual or at least literary things. So, oftentimes, a sharp distinction
is made between pure mathematics as a peculiarly fit subject matter
of thought (since it has nothing to do with physical existences) and
applied mathematics, which has utilitarian but not mental value.
Speaking generally, the fundamental fallacy in methods of
instruction lies in supposing that experience on the part of pupils
may be assumed. What is here insisted upon is the necessity of an
actual empirical situation as the initiating phase of thought.
Experience is here taken as previously defined: trying to do
something and having the thing perceptibly do something to one in
return. The fallacy consists in supposing that we can begin with
ready-made subject matter of arithmetic, or geography, or whatever,
irrespective of some direct personal experience of a situation. Even
the kindergarten and Montessori techniques are so anxious to get at
intellectual distinctions, without "waste of time," that they tend to
ignore--or reduce--the immediate crude handling of the familiar
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material of experience, and to introduce pupils at once to material
which expresses the intellectual distinctions which adults have made.
But the first stage of contact with any new material, at whatever age
of maturity, must inevitably be of the trial and error sort. An
individual must actually try, in play or work, to do something with
material in carrying out his own impulsive activity, and then note the
interaction of his energy and that of the material employed. This is
what happens when a child at first begins to build with blocks, and it
is equally what happens when a scientific man in his laboratory
begins to experiment with unfamiliar objects.
Hence the first approach to any subject in school, if thought is to be
aroused and not words acquired, should be as unscholastic as
possible. To realize what an experience, or empirical situation,
means, we have to call to mind the sort of situation that presents
itself outside of school; the sort of occupations that interest and
engage activity in ordinary life. And careful inspection of methods
which are permanently successful in formal education, whether in
arithmetic or learning to read, or studying geography, or learning
physics or a foreign language, will reveal that they depend for their
efficiency upon the fact that they go back to the type of the
situation which causes reflection out of school in ordinary life. They
give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the
doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking, or the intentional
noting of connections; learning naturally results.
That the situation should be of such a nature as to arouse thinking
means of course that it should suggest something to do which is not
either routine or capricious--something, in other words, presenting
what is new (and hence uncertain or problematic) and yet
sufficiently connected with existing habits to call out an effective
response. An effective response means one which accomplishes a
perceptible result, in distinction from a purely haphazard activity,
where the consequences cannot be mentally connected with what is
done. The most significant question which can be asked,
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accordingly, about any situation or experience proposed to induce
learning is what quality of problem it involves.
At first thought, it might seem as if usual school methods measured
well up to the standard here set. The giving of problems, the putting
of questions, the assigning of tasks, the magnifying of difficulties, is
a large part of school work. But it is indispensable to discriminate
between genuine and simulated or mock problems. The following
questions may aid in making such discrimination. (a) Is there
anything but a problem? Does the question naturally suggest itself
within some situation or personal experience? Or is it an aloof
thing, a problem only for the purposes of conveying instruction in
some school topic? Is it the sort of trying that would arouse
observation and engage experimentation outside of school? (b) Is it
the pupil's own problem, or is it the teacher's or textbook's problem,
made a problem for the pupil only because he cannot get the
required mark or be promoted or win the teacher's approval, unless
he deals with it? Obviously, these two questions overlap. They are
two ways of getting at the same point: Is the experience a personal
thing of such a nature as inherently to stimulate and direct
observation of the connections involved, and to lead to inference
and its testing? Or is it imposed from without, and is the pupil's
problem simply to meet the external requirement? Such questions
may give us pause in deciding upon the extent to which current
practices are adapted to develop reflective habits. The physical
equipment and arrangements of the average schoolroom are hostile
to the existence of real situations of experience. What is there
similar to the conditions of everyday life which will generate
difficulties? Almost everything testifies to the great premium put
upon listening, reading, and the reproduction of what is told and
read. It is hardly possible to overstate the contrast between such
conditions and the situations of active contact with things and
persons in the home, on the playground, in fulfilling of ordinary
responsibilities of life. Much of it is not even comparable with the
questions which may arise in the mind of a boy or girl in conversing
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with others or in reading books outside of the school. No one has
ever explained why children are so full of questions outside of the
school (so that they pester grown-up persons if they get any
encouragement), and the conspicuous absence of display of
curiosity about the subject matter of school lessons. Reflection on
this striking contrast will throw light upon the question of how far
customary school conditions supply a context of experience in
which problems naturally suggest themselves. No amount of
improvement in the personal technique of the instructor will wholly
remedy this state of things. There must be more actual material,
more stuff, more appliances, and more opportunities for doing
things, before the gap can be overcome. And where children are
engaged in doing things and in discussing what arises in the course
of their doing, it is found, even with comparatively indifferent
modes of instruction, that children's inquiries are spontaneous and
numerous, and the proposals of solution advanced, varied, and
ingenious.
As a consequence of the absence of the materials and occupations
which generate real problems, the pupil's problems are not his; or,
rather, they are his only as a pupil, not as a human being. Hence the
lamentable waste in carrying over such expertness as is achieved in
dealing with them to the affairs of life beyond the schoolroom. A
pupil has a problem, but it is the problem of meeting the peculiar
requirements set by the teacher. His problem becomes that of
finding out what the teacher wants, what will satisfy the teacher in
recitation and examination and outward deportment. Relationship to
subject matter is no longer direct. The occasions and material of
thought are not found in the arithmetic or the history or geography
itself, but in skillfully adapting that material to the teacher's
requirements. The pupil studies, but unconsciously to himself the
objects of his study are the conventions and standards of the school
system and school authority, not the nominal "studies." The thinking
thus evoked is artificially one-sided at the best. At its worst, the
problem of the pupil is not how to meet the requirements of school
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life, but how to seem to meet them--or, how to come near enough
to meeting them to slide along without an undue amount of
friction. The type of judgment formed by these devices is not a
desirable addition to character. If these statements give too highly
colored a picture of usual school methods, the exaggeration may at
least serve to illustrate the point: the need of active pursuits,
involving the use of material to accomplish purposes, if there are to
be situations which normally generate problems occasioning
thoughtful inquiry.
II. There must be data at command to supply the considerations
required in dealing with the specific difficulty which has presented
itself. Teachers following a "developing" method sometimes tell
children to think things out for themselves as if they could spin
them out of their own heads. The material of thinking is not
thoughts, but actions, facts, events, and the relations of things. In
other words, to think effectively one must have had, or now have,
experiences which will furnish him resources for coping with the
difficulty at hand. A difficulty is an indispensable stimulus to
thinking, but not all difficulties call out thinking. Sometimes they
overwhelm and submerge and discourage. The perplexing situation
must be sufficiently like situations which have already been dealt
with so that pupils will have some control of the meanings of
handling it. A large part of the art of instruction lies in making the
difficulty of new problems large enough to challenge thought, and
small enough so that, in addition to the confusion naturally
attending the novel elements, there shall be luminous familiar spots
from which helpful suggestions may spring.
In one sense, it is a matter of indifference by what psychological
means the subject matter for reflection is provided. Memory,
observation, reading, communication, are all avenues for supplying
data. The relative proportion to be obtained from each is a matter
of the specific features of the particular problem in hand. It is
foolish to insist upon observation of objects presented to the senses
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if the student is so familiar with the objects that he could just as well
recall the facts independently. It is possible to induce undue and
crippling dependence upon sense-presentations. No one can carry
around with him a museum of all the things whose properties will
assist the conduct of thought. A well-trained mind is one that has a
maximum of resources behind it, so to speak, and that is
accustomed to go over its past experiences to see what they yield.
On the other hand, a quality or relation of even a familiar object
may previously have been passed over, and be just the fact that is
helpful in dealing with the question. In this case direct observation
is called for. The same principle applies to the use to be made of
observation on one hand and of reading and "telling" on the other.
Direct observation is naturally more vivid and vital. But it has its
limitations; and in any case it is a necessary part of education that
one should acquire the ability to supplement the narrowness of his
immediately personal experiences by utilizing the experiences of
others. Excessive reliance upon others for data (whether got from
reading or listening) is to be depreciated. Most objectionable of all is
the probability that others, the book or the teacher, will supply
solutions ready-made, instead of giving material that the student has
to adapt and apply to the question in hand for himself.
There is no inconsistency in saying that in schools there is usually
both too much and too little information supplied by others. The
accumulation and acquisition of information for purposes of
reproduction in recitation and examination is made too much of.
"Knowledge," in the sense of information, means the working
capital, the indispensable resources, of further inquiry; of finding
out, or learning, more things. Frequently it is treated as an end itself,
and then the goal becomes to heap it up and display it when called
for. This static, cold-storage ideal of knowledge is inimical to
educative development. It not only lets occasions for thinking go
unused, but it swamps thinking. No one could construct a house on
ground cluttered with miscellaneous junk. Pupils who have stored
their "minds" with all kinds of material which they have never put
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to intellectual uses are sure to be hampered when they try to think.
They have no practice in selecting what is appropriate, and no
criterion to go by; everything is on the same dead static level. On
the other hand, it is quite open to question whether, if information
actually functioned in experience through use in application to the
student's own purposes, there would not be need of more varied
resources in books, pictures, and talks than are usually at command.
III. The correlate in thinking of facts, data, knowledge already
acquired, is suggestions, inferences, conjectured meanings,
suppositions, tentative explanations:--ideas, in short. Careful
observation and recollection determine what is given, what is
already there, and hence assured. They cannot furnish what is
lacking. They define, clarify, and locate the question; they cannot
supply its answer. Projection, invention, ingenuity, devising come in
for that purpose. The data arouse suggestions, and only by reference
to the specific data can we pass upon the appropriateness of the
suggestions. But the suggestions run beyond what is, as yet, actually
given in experience. They forecast possible results, things to do, not
facts (things already done). Inference is always an invasion of the
unknown, a leap from the known.
In this sense, a thought (what a thing suggests but is not as it is
presented) is creative,--an incursion into the novel. It involves some
inventiveness. What is suggested must, indeed, be familiar in some
context; the novelty, the inventive devising, clings to the new light in
which it is seen, the different use to which it is put. When Newton
thought of his theory of gravitation, the creative aspect of his
thought was not found in its materials. They were familiar; many of
them commonplaces--sun, moon, planets, weight, distance, mass,
square of numbers. These were not original ideas; they were
established facts. His originality lay in the use to which these familiar
acquaintances were put by introduction into an unfamiliar context.
The same is true of every striking scientific discovery, every great
invention, every admirable artistic production. Only silly folk
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identify creative originality with the extraordinary and fanciful;
others recognize that its measure lies in putting everyday things to
uses which had not occurred to others. The operation is novel, not
the materials out of which it is constructed.
The educational conclusion which follows is that all thinking is
original in a projection of considerations which have not been
previously apprehended. The child of three who discovers what can
be done with blocks, or of six who finds out what he can make by
putting five cents and five cents together, is really a discoverer, even
though everybody else in the world knows it. There is a genuine
increment of experience; not another item mechanically added on,
but enrichment by a new quality. The charm which the spontaneity
of little children has for sympathetic observers is due to perception
of this intellectual originality. The joy which children themselves
experience is the joy of intellectual constructiveness--of
creativeness, if the word may be used without misunderstanding.
The educational moral I am chiefly concerned to draw is not,
however, that teachers would find their own work less of a grind
and strain if school conditions favored learning in the sense of
discovery and not in that of storing away what others pour into
them; nor that it would be possible to give even children and youth
the delights of personal intellectual productiveness--true and
important as are these things. It is that no thought, no idea, can
possibly be conveyed as an idea from one person to another. When
it is told, it is, to the one to whom it is told, another given fact, not
an idea. The communication may stimulate the other person to
realize the question for himself and to think out a like idea, or it
may smother his intellectual interest and suppress his dawning effort
at thought. But what he directly gets cannot be an idea. Only by
wrestling with the conditions of the problem at first hand, seeking
and finding his own way out, does he think. When the parent or
teacher has provided the conditions which stimulate thinking and
has taken a sympathetic attitude toward the activities of the learner
by entering into a common or conjoint experience, all has been
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done which a second party can do to instigate learning. The rest lies
with the one directly concerned. If he cannot devise his own
solution (not of course in isolation, but in correspondence with the
teacher and other pupils) and find his own way out he will not learn,
not even if he can recite some correct answer with one hundred per
cent accuracy. We can and do supply ready-made "ideas" by the
thousand; we do not usually take much pains to see that the one
learning engages in significant situations where his own activities
generate, support, and clinch ideas--that is, perceived meanings or
connections. This does not mean that the teacher is to stand off and
look on; the alternative to furnishing ready-made subject matter and
listening to the accuracy with which it is reproduced is not
quiescence, but participation, sharing, in an activity. In such shared
activity, the teacher is a learner, and the learner is, without knowing
it, a teacher--and upon the whole, the less consciousness there is,
on either side, of either giving or receiving instruction, the better.
IV. Ideas, as we have seen, whether they be humble guesses or
dignified theories, are anticipations of possible solutions. They are
anticipations of some continuity or connection of an activity and a
consequence which has not as yet shown itself. They are therefore
tested by the operation of acting upon them. They are to guide and
organize further observations, recollections, and experiments. They
are intermediate in learning, not final. All educational reformers, as
we have had occasion to remark, are given to attacking the passivity
of traditional education. They have opposed pouring in from
without, and absorbing like a sponge; they have attacked drilling in
material as into hard and resisting rock. But it is not easy to secure
conditions which will make the getting of an idea identical with
having an experience which widens and makes more precise our
contact with the environment. Activity, even self-activity, is too
easily thought of as something merely mental, cooped up within the
head, or finding expression only through the vocal organs.
While the need of application of ideas gained in study is
acknowledged by all the more successful methods of instruction,
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the exercises in application are sometimes treated as devices for
fixing what has already been learned and for getting greater practical
skill in its manipulation. These results are genuine and not to be
despised. But practice in applying what has been gained in study
ought primarily to have an intellectual quality. As we have already
seen, thoughts just as thoughts are incomplete. At best they are
tentative; they are suggestions, indications. They are standpoints and
methods for dealing with situations of experience. Till they are
applied in these situations they lack full point and reality. Only
application tests them, and only testing confers full meaning and a
sense of their reality. Short of use made of them, they tend to
segregate into a peculiar world of their own. It may be seriously
questioned whether the philosophies (to which reference has been
made in section 2 of chapter X) which isolate mind and set it over
against the world did not have their origin in the fact that the
reflective or theoretical class of men elaborated a large stock of
ideas which social conditions did not allow them to act upon and
test. Consequently men were thrown back into their own thoughts
as ends in themselves.
However this may be, there can be no doubt that a peculiar
artificiality attaches to much of what is learned in schools. It can
hardly be said that many students consciously think of the subject
matter as unreal; but it assuredly does not possess for them the kind
of reality which the subject matter of their vital experiences
possesses. They learn not to expect that sort of reality of it; they
become habituated to treating it as having reality for the purposes
of recitations, lessons, and examinations. That it should remain inert
for the experiences of daily life is more or less a matter of course.
The bad effects are twofold. Ordinary experience does not receive
the enrichment which it should; it is not fertilized by school
learning. And the attitudes which spring from getting used to and
accepting half-understood and ill-digested material weaken vigor
and efficiency of thought.
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If we have dwelt especially on the negative side, it is for the sake of
suggesting positive measures adapted to the effectual development
of thought. Where schools are equipped with laboratories, shops,
and gardens, where dramatizations, plays, and games are freely used,
opportunities exist for reproducing situations of life, and for
acquiring and applying information and ideas in the carrying
forward of progressive experiences. Ideas are not segregated, they
do not form an isolated island. They animate and enrich the
ordinary course of life. Information is vitalized by its function; by
the place it occupies in direction of action. The phrase
"opportunities exist" is used purposely. They may not be taken
advantage of; it is possible to employ manual and constructive
activities in a physical way, as means of getting just bodily skill; or
they may be used almost exclusively for "utilitarian," i.e., pecuniary,
ends. But the disposition on the part of upholders of "cultural"
education to assume that such activities are merely physical or
professional in quality, is itself a product of the philosophies which
isolate mind from direction of the course of experience and hence
from action upon and with things. When the "mental" is regarded as
a self-contained separate realm, a counterpart fate befalls bodily
activity and movements. They are regarded as at the best mere
external annexes to mind. They may be necessary for the satisfaction
of bodily needs and the attainment of external decency and
comfort, but they do not occupy a necessary place in mind nor
enact an indispensable role in the completion of thought. Hence
they have no place in a liberal education--i.e., one which is
concerned with the interests of intelligence. If they come in at all, it
is as a concession to the material needs of the masses. That they
should be allowed to invade the education of the elite is
unspeakable. This conclusion follows irresistibly from the isolated
conception of mind, but by the same logic it disappears when we
perceive what mind really is--namely, the purposive and directive
factor in the development of experience. While it is desirable that all
educational institutions should be equipped so as to give students an
opportunity for acquiring and testing ideas and information in active
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pursuits typifying important social situations, it will, doubtless, be a
long time before all of them are thus furnished. But this state of
affairs does not afford instructors an excuse for folding their hands
and persisting in methods which segregate school knowledge. Every
recitation in every subject gives an opportunity for establishing cross
connections between the subject matter of the lesson and the wider
and more direct experiences of everyday life. Classroom instruction
falls into three kinds. The least desirable treats each lesson as an
independent whole. It does not put upon the student the
responsibility of finding points of contact between it and other
lessons in the same subject, or other subjects of study. Wiser
teachers see to it that the student is systematically led to utilize his
earlier lessons to help understand the present one, and also to use
the present to throw additional light upon what has already been
acquired. Results are better, but school subject matter is still isolated.
Save by accident, out-of-school experience is left in its crude and
comparatively irreflective state. It is not subject to the refining and
expanding influences of the more accurate and comprehensive
material of direct instruction. The latter is not motivated and
impregnated with a sense of reality by being intermingled with the
realities of everyday life. The best type of teaching bears in mind
the desirability of affecting this interconnection. It puts the student
in the habitual attitude of finding points of contact and mutual
bearings.
Summary.
Processes of instruction are unified in the degree in which they
center in the production of good habits of thinking. While we may
speak, without error, of the method of thought, the important thing
is that thinking is the method of an educative experience. The
essentials of method are therefore identical with the essentials of
reflection. They are first that the pupil have a genuine situation of
experience--that there be a continuous activity in which he is
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interested for its own sake; secondly, that a genuine problem
develop within this situation as a stimulus to thought; third, that he
possess the information and make the observations needed to deal
with it; fourth, that suggested solutions occur to him which he shall
be responsible for developing in an orderly way; fifth, that he have
opportunity and occasion to test his ideas by application, to make
their meaning clear and to discover for himself their validity.
Chapter Thirteen: The Nature of Method
1. The Unity of Subject Matter and Method. The trinity of school
topics is subject matter, methods, and administration or
government. We have been concerned with the two former in recent
chapters. It remains to disentangle them from the context in which
they have been referred to, and discuss explicitly their nature. We
shall begin with the topic of method, since that lies closest to the
considerations of the last chapter. Before taking it up, it may be well,
however, to call express attention to one implication of our theory;
the connection of subject matter and method with each other. The
idea that mind and the world of things and persons are two separate
and independent realms--a theory which philosophically is known
as dualism--carries with it the conclusion that method and subject
matter of instruction are separate affairs. Subject matter then
becomes a ready-made systematized classification of the facts and
principles of the world of nature and man. Method then has for its
province a consideration of the ways in which this antecedent
subject matter may be best presented to and impressed upon the
mind; or, a consideration of the ways in which the mind may be
externally brought to bear upon the matter so as to facilitate its
acquisition and possession. In theory, at least, one might deduce
from a science of the mind as something existing by itself a
complete theory of methods of learning, with no knowledge of the
subjects to which the methods are to be applied. Since many who
are actually most proficient in various branches of subject matter
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are wholly innocent of these methods, this state of affairs gives
opportunity for the retort that pedagogy, as an alleged science of
methods of the mind in learning, is futile;--a mere screen for
concealing the necessity a teacher is under of profound and accurate
acquaintance with the subject in hand.
But since thinking is a directed movement of subject matter to a
completing issue, and since mind is the deliberate and intentional
phase of the process, the notion of any such split is radically false.
The fact that the material of a science is organized is evidence that it
has already been subjected to intelligence; it has been methodized,
so to say. Zoology as a systematic branch of knowledge represents
crude, scattered facts of our ordinary acquaintance with animals
after they have been subjected to careful examination, to deliberate
supplementation, and to arrangement to bring out connections
which assist observation, memory, and further inquiry. Instead of
furnishing a starting point for learning, they mark out a
consummation. Method means that arrangement of subject matter
which makes it most effective in use. Never is method something
outside of the material.
How about method from the standpoint of an individual who is
dealing with subject matter? Again, it is not something external. It is
simply an effective treatment of material--efficiency meaning such
treatment as utilizes the material (puts it to a purpose) with a
minimum of waste of time and energy. We can distinguish a way of
acting, and discuss it by itself; but the way exists only as way-of-
dealing-with-material. Method is not antithetical to subject matter; it
is the effective direction of subject matter to desired results. It is
antithetical to random and ill-considered action,--ill-considered
signifying ill-adapted.
The statement that method means directed movement of subject
matter towards ends is formal. An illustration may give it content.
Every artist must have a method, a technique, in doing his work.
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Piano playing is not hitting the keys at random. It is an orderly way
of using them, and the order is not something which exists ready-
made in the musician's hands or brain prior to an activity dealing
with the piano. Order is found in the disposition of acts which use
the piano and the hands and brain so as to achieve the result
intended. It is the action of the piano directed to accomplish the
purpose of the piano as a musical instrument. It is the same with
"pedagogical" method. The only difference is that the piano is a
mechanism constructed in advance for a single end; while the
material of study is capable of indefinite uses. But even in this
regard the illustration may apply if we consider the infinite variety
of kinds of music which a piano may produce, and the variations in
technique required in the different musical results secured. Method
in any case is but an effective way of employing some material for
some end.
These considerations may be generalized by going back to the
conception of experience. Experience as the perception of the
connection between something tried and something undergone in
consequence is a process. Apart from effort to control the course
which the process takes, there is no distinction of subject matter
and method. There is simply an activity which includes both what an
individual does and what the environment does. A piano player who
had perfect mastery of his instrument would have no occasion to
distinguish between his contribution and that of the piano. In well-
formed, smooth-running functions of any sort,--skating,
conversing, hearing music, enjoying a landscape,--there is no
consciousness of separation of the method of the person and of
the subject matter. In whole-hearted play and work there is the same
phenomenon.
When we reflect upon an experience instead of just having it, we
inevitably distinguish between our own attitude and the objects
toward which we sustain the attitude. When a man is eating, he is
eating food. He does not divide his act into eating and food. But if
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he makes a scientific investigation of the act, such a discrimination
is the first thing he would effect. He would examine on the one
hand the properties of the nutritive material, and on the other hand
the acts of the organism in appropriating and digesting. Such
reflection upon experience gives rise to a distinction of what we
experience (the experienced) and the experiencing--the how. When
we give names to this distinction we have subject matter and
method as our terms. There is the thing seen, heard, loved, hated,
imagined, and there is the act of seeing, hearing, loving, hating,
imagining, etc.
This distinction is so natural and so important for certain purposes,
that we are only too apt to regard it as a separation in existence and
not as a distinction in thought. Then we make a division between a
self and the environment or world. This separation is the root of
the dualism of method and subject matter. That is, we assume that
knowing, feeling, willing, etc., are things which belong to the self or
mind in its isolation, and which then may be brought to bear upon
an independent subject matter. We assume that the things which
belong in isolation to the self or mind have their own laws of
operation irrespective of the modes of active energy of the object.
These laws are supposed to furnish method. It would be no less
absurd to suppose that men can eat without eating something, or
that the structure and movements of the jaws, throat muscles, the
digestive activities of stomach, etc., are not what they are because of
the material with which their activity is engaged. Just as the organs
of the organism are a continuous part of the very world in which
food materials exist, so the capacities of seeing, hearing, loving,
imagining are intrinsically connected with the subject matter of the
world. They are more truly ways in which the environment enters
into experience and functions there than they are independent acts
brought to bear upon things. Experience, in short, is not a
combination of mind and world, subject and object, method and
subject matter, but is a single continuous interaction of a great
diversity (literally countless in number) of energies.
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For the purpose of controlling the course or direction which the
moving unity of experience takes we draw a mental distinction
between the how and the what. While there is no way of walking or
of eating or of learning over and above the actual walking, eating,
and studying, there are certain elements in the act which give the key
to its more effective control. Special attention to these elements
makes them more obvious to perception (letting other factors
recede for the time being from conspicuous recognition). Getting an
idea of how the experience proceeds indicates to us what factors
must be secured or modified in order that it may go on more
successfully. This is only a somewhat elaborate way of saying that if
a man watches carefully the growth of several plants, some of which
do well and some of which amount to little or nothing, he may be
able to detect the special conditions upon which the prosperous
development of a plant depends. These conditions, stated in an
orderly sequence, would constitute the method or way or manner of
its growth. There is no difference between the growth of a plant
and the prosperous development of an experience. It is not easy, in
either case, to seize upon just the factors which make for its best
movement. But study of cases of success and failure and minute
and extensive comparison, helps to seize upon causes. When we
have arranged these causes in order, we have a method of procedure
or a technique.
A consideration of some evils in education that flow from the
isolation of method from subject matter will make the point more
definite.
(I) In the first place, there is the neglect (of which we have spoken)
of concrete situations of experience. There can be no discovery of
a method without cases to be studied. The method is derived from
observation of what actually happens, with a view to seeing that it
happen better next time. But in instruction and discipline, there is
rarely sufficient opportunity for children and youth to have the
direct normal experiences from which educators might derive an
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idea of method or order of best development. Experiences are had
under conditions of such constraint that they throw little or no light
upon the normal course of an experience to its fruition. "Methods"
have then to be authoritatively recommended to teachers, instead of
being an expression of their own intelligent observations. Under
such circumstances, they have a mechanical uniformity, assumed to
be alike for all minds. Where flexible personal experiences are
promoted by providing an environment which calls out directed
occupations in work and play, the methods ascertained will vary with
individuals--for it is certain that each individual has something
characteristic in his way of going at things.
(ii) In the second place, the notion of methods isolated from subject
matter is responsible for the false conceptions of discipline and
interest already noted. When the effective way of managing material
is treated as something ready-made apart from material, there are
just three possible ways in which to establish a relationship lacking
by assumption. One is to utilize excitement, shock of pleasure,
tickling the palate. Another is to make the consequences of not
attending painful; we may use the menace of harm to motivate
concern with the alien subject matter. Or a direct appeal may be
made to the person to put forth effort without any reason. We may
rely upon immediate strain of "will." In practice, however, the latter
method is effectual only when instigated by fear of unpleasant
results. (iii) In the third place, the act of learning is made a direct
and conscious end in itself. Under normal conditions, learning is a
product and reward of occupation with subject matter. Children do
not set out, consciously, to learn walking or talking. One sets out to
give his impulses for communication and for fuller intercourse with
others a show. He learns in consequence of his direct activities. The
better methods of teaching a child, say, to read, follow the same
road. They do not fix his attention upon the fact that he has to learn
something and so make his attitude self-conscious and constrained.
They engage his activities, and in the process of engagement he
learns: the same is true of the more successful methods in dealing
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with number or whatever. But when the subject matter is not used
in carrying forward impulses and habits to significant results, it is
just something to be learned. The pupil's attitude to it is just that of
having to learn it. Conditions more unfavorable to an alert and
concentrated response would be hard to devise. Frontal attacks are
even more wasteful in learning than in war. This does not mean,
however, that students are to be seduced unaware into
preoccupation with lessons. It means that they shall be occupied
with them for real reasons or ends, and not just as something to be
learned. This is accomplished whenever the pupil perceives the place
occupied by the subject matter in the fulfilling of some experience.
(iv) In the fourth place, under the influence of the conception of
the separation of mind and material, method tends to be reduced to
a cut and dried routine, to following mechanically prescribed steps.
No one can tell in how many schoolrooms children reciting in
arithmetic or grammar are compelled to go through, under the
alleged sanction of method, certain preordained verbal formulae.
Instead of being encouraged to attack their topics directly,
experimenting with methods that seem promising and learning to
discriminate by the consequences that accrue, it is assumed that
there is one fixed method to be followed. It is also naively assumed
that if the pupils make their statements and explanations in a certain
form of "analysis," their mental habits will in time conform.
Nothing has brought pedagogical theory into greater disrepute than
the belief that it is identified with handing out to teachers recipes
and models to be followed in teaching. Flexibility and initiative in
dealing with problems are characteristic of any conception to which
method is a way of managing material to develop a conclusion.
Mechanical rigid woodenness is an inevitable corollary of any theory
which separates mind from activity motivated by a purpose.
2. Method as General and as Individual. In brief, the method of
teaching is the method of an art, of action intelligently directed by
ends. But the practice of a fine art is far from being a matter of
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extemporized inspirations. Study of the operations and results of
those in the past who have greatly succeeded is essential. There is
always a tradition, or schools of art, definite enough to impress
beginners, and often to take them captive. Methods of artists in
every branch depend upon thorough acquaintance with materials
and tools; the painter must know canvas, pigments, brushes, and the
technique of manipulation of all his appliances. Attainment of this
knowledge requires persistent and concentrated attention to
objective materials. The artist studies the progress of his own
attempts to see what succeeds and what fails. The assumption that
there are no alternatives between following ready-made rules and
trusting to native gifts, the inspiration of the moment and
undirected "hard work," is contradicted by the procedures of every
art.
Such matters as knowledge of the past, of current technique, of
materials, of the ways in which one's own best results are assured,
supply the material for what may be called general method. There
exists a cumulative body of fairly stable methods for reaching
results, a body authorized by past experience and by intellectual
analysis, which an individual ignores at his peril. As was pointed out
in the discussion of habit-forming (ante, p. 49), there is always a
danger that these methods will become mechanized and rigid,
mastering an agent instead of being powers at command for his
own ends. But it is also true that the innovator who achieves
anything enduring, whose work is more than a passing sensation,
utilizes classic methods more than may appear to himself or to his
critics. He devotes them to new uses, and in so far transforms them.
Education also has its general methods. And if the application of
this remark is more obvious in the case of the teacher than of the
pupil, it is equally real in the case of the latter. Part of his learning, a
very important part, consists in becoming master of the methods
which the experience of others has shown to be more efficient in
like cases of getting knowledge. 1 These general methods are in no
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way opposed to individual initiative and originality--to personal
ways of doing things. On the contrary they are reinforcements of
them. For there is radical difference between even the most general
method and a prescribed rule. The latter is a direct guide to action;
the former operates indirectly through the enlightenment it supplies
as to ends and means. It operates, that is to say, through intelligence,
and not through conformity to orders externally imposed. Ability to
use even in a masterly way an established technique gives no
warranty of artistic work, for the latter also depends upon an
animating idea.
If knowledge of methods used by others does not directly tell us
what to do, or furnish ready-made models, how does it operate?
What is meant by calling a method intellectual? Take the case of a
physician. No mode of behavior more imperiously demands
knowledge of established modes of diagnosis and treatment than
does his. But after all, cases are like, not identical. To be used
intelligently, existing practices, however authorized they may be,
have to be adapted to the exigencies of particular cases.
Accordingly, recognized procedures indicate to the physician what
inquiries to set on foot for himself, what measures to try. They are
standpoints from which to carry on investigations; they economize a
survey of the features of the particular case by suggesting the things
to be especially looked into. The physician's own personal attitudes,
his own ways (individual methods) of dealing with the situation in
which he is concerned, are not subordinated to the general
principles of procedure, but are facilitated and directed by the latter.
The instance may serve to point out the value to the teacher of a
knowledge of the psychological methods and the empirical devices
found useful in the past. When they get in the way of his own
common sense, when they come between him and the situation in
which he has to act, they are worse than useless. But if he has
acquired them as intellectual aids in sizing up the needs, resources,
and difficulties of the unique experiences in which he engages, they
are of constructive value. In the last resort, just because everything
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depends upon his own methods of response, much depends upon
how far he can utilize, in making his own response, the knowledge
which has accrued in the experience of others. As already intimated,
every word of this account is directly applicable also to the method
of the pupil, the way of learning. To suppose that students, whether
in the primary school or in the university, can be supplied with
models of method to be followed in acquiring and expounding a
subject is to fall into a self-deception that has lamentable
consequences. (See ante, p. 169.) One must make his own reaction
in any case. Indications of the standardized or general methods used
in like cases by others--particularly by those who are already experts
--are of worth or of harm according as they make his personal
reaction more intelligent or as they induce a person to dispense with
exercise of his own judgment. If what was said earlier (See p. 159)
about originality of thought seemed overstrained, demanding more
of education than the capacities of average human nature permit,
the difficulty is that we lie under the incubus of a superstition. We
have set up the notion of mind at large, of intellectual method that
is the same for all. Then we regard individuals as differing in the
quantity of mind with which they are charged. Ordinary persons are
then expected to be ordinary. Only the exceptional are allowed to
have originality. The measure of difference between the average
student and the genius is a measure of the absence of originality in
the former. But this notion of mind in general is a fiction. How one
person's abilities compare in quantity with those of another is none
of the teacher's business. It is irrelevant to his work. What is
required is that every individual shall have opportunities to employ
his own powers in activities that have meaning. Mind, individual
method, originality (these are convertible terms) signify the quality
of purposive or directed action. If we act upon this conviction, we
shall secure more originality even by the conventional standard than
now develops. Imposing an alleged uniform general method upon
everybody breeds mediocrity in all but the very exceptional. And
measuring originality by deviation from the mass breeds eccentricity
in them. Thus we stifle the distinctive quality of the many, and save
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in rare instances (like, say, that of Darwin) infect the rare geniuses
with an unwholesome quality.
3. The Traits of Individual Method. The most general features of
the method of knowing have been given in our chapter on thinking.
They are the features of the reflective situation: Problem, collection
and analysis of data, projection and elaboration of suggestions or
ideas, experimental application and testing; the resulting conclusion
or judgment. The specific elements of an individual's method or
way of attack upon a problem are found ultimately in his native
tendencies and his acquired habits and interests. The method of one
will vary from that of another (and properly vary) as his original
instinctive capacities vary, as his past experiences and his preferences
vary. Those who have already studied these matters are in
possession of information which will help teachers in understanding
the responses different pupils make, and help them in guiding these
responses to greater efficiency. Child-study, psychology, and a
knowledge of social environment supplement the personal
acquaintance gained by the teacher. But methods remain the
personal concern, approach, and attack of an individual, and no
catalogue can ever exhaust their diversity of form and tint.
Some attitudes may be named, however,-which are central in
effective intellectual ways of dealing with subject matter. Among the
most important are directness, open-mindedness, single-mindedness
(or whole-heartedness), and responsibility.
1. It is easier to indicate what is meant by directness through
negative terms than in positive ones. Self-consciousness,
embarrassment, and constraint are its menacing foes. They indicate
that a person is not immediately concerned with subject matter.
Something has come between which deflects concern to side issues.
A self-conscious person is partly thinking about his problem and
partly about what others think of his performances. Diverted energy
means loss of power and confusion of ideas. Taking an attitude is
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by no means identical with being conscious of one's attitude. The
former is spontaneous, naive, and simple. It is a sign of whole-
souled relationship between a person and what he is dealing with.
The latter is not of necessity abnormal. It is sometimes the easiest
way of correcting a false method of approach, and of improving
the effectiveness of the means one is employing,--as golf players,
piano players, public speakers, etc., have occasionally to give especial
attention to their position and movements. But this need is
occasional and temporary. When it is effectual a person thinks of
himself in terms of what is to be done, as one means among others
of the realization of an end--as in the case of a tennis player
practicing to get the "feel" of a stroke. In abnormal cases, one
thinks of himself not as part of the agencies of execution, but as a
separate object--as when the player strikes an attitude thinking of
the impression it will make upon spectators, or is worried because
of the impression he fears his movements give rise to.
Confidence is a good name for what is intended by the term
directness. It should not be confused, however, with self-confidence
which may be a form of self-consciousness--or of "cheek."
Confidence is not a name for what one thinks or feels about his
attitude it is not reflex. It denotes the straightforwardness with
which one goes at what he has to do. It denotes not conscious trust
in the efficacy of one's powers but unconscious faith in the
possibilities of the situation. It signifies rising to the needs of the
situation. We have already pointed out (See p. 169) the objections to
making students emphatically aware of the fact that they are
studying or learning. Just in the degree in which they are induced by
the conditions to be so aware, they are not studying and learning.
They are in a divided and complicated attitude. Whatever methods
of a teacher call a pupil's attention off from what he has to do and
transfer it to his own attitude towards what he is doing impair
directness of concern and action. Persisted in, the pupil acquires a
permanent tendency to fumble, to gaze about aimlessly, to look for
some clew of action beside that which the subject matter supplies.
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Dependence upon extraneous suggestions and directions, a state of
foggy confusion, take the place of that sureness with which children
(and grown-up people who have not been sophisticated by
"education") confront the situations of life.
2. Open-mindedness. Partiality is, as we have seen, an
accompaniment of the existence of interest, since this means
sharing, partaking, taking sides in some movement. All the more
reason, therefore, for an attitude of mind which actively welcomes
suggestions and relevant information from all sides. In the chapter
on Aims it was shown that foreseen ends are factors in the
development of a changing situation. They are the means by which
the direction of action is controlled. They are subordinate to the
situation, therefore, not the situation to them. They are not ends in
the sense of finalities to which everything must be bent and
sacrificed. They are, as foreseen, means of guiding the development
of a situation. A target is not the future goal of shooting; it is the
centering factor in a present shooting. Openness of mind means
accessibility of mind to any and every consideration that will throw
light upon the situation that needs to be cleared up, and that will
help determine the consequences of acting this way or that.
Efficiency in accomplishing ends which have been settled upon as
unalterable can coexist with a narrowly opened mind. But
intellectual growth means constant expansion of horizons and
consequent formation of new purposes and new responses. These
are impossible without an active disposition to welcome points of
view hitherto alien; an active desire to entertain considerations
which modify existing purposes. Retention of capacity to grow is
the reward of such intellectual hospitality. The worst thing about
stubbornness of mind, about prejudices, is that they arrest
development; they shut the mind off from new stimuli. Open-
mindedness means retention of the childlike attitude; closed-
mindedness means premature intellectual old age.
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Exorbitant desire for uniformity of procedure and for prompt
external results are the chief foes which the open-minded attitude
meets in school. The teacher who does not permit and encourage
diversity of operation in dealing with questions is imposing
intellectual blinders upon pupils--restricting their vision to the one
path the teacher's mind happens to approve. Probably the chief
cause of devotion to rigidity of method is, however, that it seems to
promise speedy, accurately measurable, correct results. The zeal for
"answers" is the explanation of much of the zeal for rigid and
mechanical methods. Forcing and overpressure have the same
origin, and the same result upon alert and varied intellectual interest.
Open-mindedness is not the same as empty-mindedness. To hang
out a sign saying "Come right in; there is no one at home" is not the
equivalent of hospitality. But there is a kind of passivity, willingness
to let experiences accumulate and sink in and ripen, which is an
essential of development. Results (external answers or solutions)
may be hurried; processes may not be forced. They take their own
time to mature. Were all instructors to realize that the quality of
mental process, not the production of correct answers, is the
measure of educative growth something hardly less than a
revolution in teaching would be worked.
3. Single-mindedness. So far as the word is concerned, much that
was said under the head of "directness" is applicable. But what the
word is here intended to convey is completeness of interest, unity
of purpose; the absence of suppressed but effectual ulterior aims
for which the professed aim is but a mask. It is equivalent to mental
integrity. Absorption, engrossment, full concern with subject matter
for its own sake, nurture it. Divided interest and evasion destroy it.
Intellectual integrity, honesty, and sincerity are at bottom not matters
of conscious purpose but of quality of active response. Their
acquisition is fostered of course by conscious intent, but self-
deception is very easy. Desires are urgent. When the demands and
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wishes of others forbid their direct expression they are easily driven
into subterranean and deep channels. Entire surrender, and
wholehearted adoption of the course of action demanded by others
are almost impossible. Deliberate revolt or deliberate attempts to
deceive others may result. But the more frequent outcome is a
confused and divided state of interest in which one is fooled as to
one's own real intent. One tries to serve two masters at once. Social
instincts, the strong desire to please others and get their approval,
social training, the general sense of duty and of authority,
apprehension of penalty, all lead to a half-hearted effort to conform,
to "pay attention to the lesson," or whatever the requirement is.
Amiable individuals want to do what they are expected to do.
Consciously the pupil thinks he is doing this. But his own desires are
not abolished. Only their evident exhibition is suppressed. Strain of
attention to what is hostile to desire is irksome; in spite of one's
conscious wish, the underlying desires determine the main course of
thought, the deeper emotional responses. The mind wanders from
the nominal subject and devotes itself to what is intrinsically more
desirable. A systematized divided attention expressing the duplicity
of the state of desire is the result. One has only to recall his own
experiences in school or at the present time when outwardly
employed in actions which do not engage one's desires and
purposes, to realize how prevalent is this attitude of divided
attention--double-mindedness. We are so used to it that we take it
for granted that a considerable amount of it is necessary. It may be;
if so, it is the more important to face its bad intellectual effects.
Obvious is the loss of energy of thought immediately available
when one is consciously trying (or trying to seem to try) to attend to
one matter, while unconsciously one's imagination is spontaneously
going out to more congenial affairs. More subtle and more
permanently crippling to efficiency of intellectual activity is a
fostering of habitual self-deception, with the confused sense of
reality which accompanies it. A double standard of reality, one for
our own private and more or less concealed interests, and another
for public and acknowledged concerns, hampers, in most of us,
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integrity and completeness of mental action. Equally serious is the
fact that a split is set up between conscious thought and attention
and impulsive blind affection and desire. Reflective dealings with the
material of instruction is constrained and half-hearted; attention
wanders. The topics to which it wanders are unavowed and hence
intellectually illicit; transactions with them are furtive. The discipline
that comes from regulating response by deliberate inquiry having a
purpose fails; worse than that, the deepest concern and most
congenial enterprises of the imagination (since they center about the
things dearest to desire) are casual, concealed. They enter into action
in ways which are unacknowledged. Not subject to rectification by
consideration of consequences, they are demoralizing.
School conditions favorable to this division of mind between
avowed, public, and socially responsible undertakings, and private,
ill-regulated, and suppressed indulgences of thought are not hard to
find. What is sometimes called "stern discipline," i.e., external
coercive pressure, has this tendency. Motivation through rewards
extraneous to the thing to be done has a like effect. Everything that
makes schooling merely preparatory (See ante, p. 55) works in this
direction. Ends being beyond the pupil's present grasp, other
agencies have to be found to procure immediate attention to
assigned tasks. Some responses are secured, but desires and
affections not enlisted must find other outlets. Not less serious is
exaggerated emphasis upon drill exercises designed to produce skill
in action, independent of any engagement of thought--exercises
have no purpose but the production of automatic skill. Nature
abhors a mental vacuum. What do teachers imagine is happening to
thought and emotion when the latter get no outlet in the things of
immediate activity? Were they merely kept in temporary abeyance, or
even only calloused, it would not be a matter of so much moment.
But they are not abolished; they are not suspended; they are not
suppressed--save with reference to the task in question. They
follow their own chaotic and undisciplined course. What is native,
spontaneous, and vital in mental reaction goes unused and untested,
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and the habits formed are such that these qualities become less and
less available for public and avowed ends.
4. Responsibility. By responsibility as an element in intellectual
attitude is meant the disposition to consider in advance the probable
consequences of any projected step and deliberately to accept them:
to accept them in the sense of taking them into account,
acknowledging them in action, not yielding a mere verbal assent.
Ideas, as we have seen, are intrinsically standpoints and methods for
bringing about a solution of a perplexing situation; forecasts
calculated to influence responses. It is only too easy to think that
one accepts a statement or believes a suggested truth when one has
not considered its implications; when one has made but a cursory
and superficial survey of what further things one is committed to by
acceptance. Observation and recognition, belief and assent, then
become names for lazy acquiescence in what is externally presented.
It would be much better to have fewer facts and truths in instruction
--that is, fewer things supposedly accepted,--if a smaller number
of situations could be intellectually worked out to the point where
conviction meant something real--some identification of the self
with the type of conduct demanded by facts and foresight of
results. The most permanent bad results of undue complication of
school subjects and congestion of school studies and lessons are not
the worry, nervous strain, and superficial acquaintance that follow
(serious as these are), but the failure to make clear what is involved
in really knowing and believing a thing. Intellectual responsibility
means severe standards in this regard. These standards can be built
up only through practice in following up and acting upon the
meaning of what is acquired.
Intellectual thoroughness is thus another name for the attitude we
are considering. There is a kind of thoroughness which is almost
purely physical: the kind that signifies mechanical and exhausting
drill upon all the details of a subject. Intellectual thoroughness is
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seeing a thing through. It depends upon a unity of purpose to which
details are subordinated, not upon presenting a multitude of
disconnected details. It is manifested in the firmness with which the
full meaning of the purpose is developed, not in attention, however
"conscientious" it may be, to the steps of action externally imposed
and directed.
Summary.
Method is a statement of the way the subject matter of an
experience develops most effectively and fruitfully. It is derived,
accordingly, from observation of the course of experiences where
there is no conscious distinction of personal attitude and manner
from material dealt with. The assumption that method is something
separate is connected with the notion of the isolation of mind and
self from the world of things. It makes instruction and learning
formal, mechanical, constrained. While methods are individualized,
certain features of the normal course of an experience to its fruition
may be discriminated, because of the fund of wisdom derived from
prior experiences and because of general similarities in the materials
dealt with from time to time. Expressed in terms of the attitude of
the individual the traits of good method are straightforwardness,
flexible intellectual interest or open-minded will to learn, integrity of
purpose, and acceptance of responsibility for the consequences of
one's activity including thought.
1 This point is developed below in a discussion of what are termed
psychological and logical methods respectively. See p. 219.
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Chapter Fourteen: The Nature of Subject Matter
1. Subject Matter of Educator and of Learner. So far as the nature
of subject matter in principle is concerned, there is nothing to add
to what has been said (See ante, p. 134). It consists of the facts
observed, recalled, read, and talked about, and the ideas suggested,
in course of a development of a situation having a purpose. This
statement needs to be rendered more specific by connecting it with
the materials of school instruction, the studies which make up the
curriculum. What is the significance of our definition in application
to reading, writing, mathematics, history, nature study, drawing,
singing, physics, chemistry, modern and foreign languages, and so
on? Let us recur to two of the points made earlier in our discussion.
The educator's part in the enterprise of education is to furnish the
environment which stimulates responses and directs the learner's
course. In last analysis, all that the educator can do is modify stimuli
so that response will as surely as is possible result in the formation
of desirable intellectual and emotional dispositions. Obviously
studies or the subject matter of the curriculum have intimately to do
with this business of supplying an environment. The other point is
the necessity of a social environment to give meaning to habits
formed. In what we have termed informal education, subject matter
is carried directly in the matrix of social intercourse. It is what the
persons with whom an individual associates do and say. This fact
gives a clew to the understanding of the subject matter of formal or
deliberate instruction. A connecting link is found in the stories,
traditions, songs, and liturgies which accompany the doings and rites
of a primitive social group. They represent the stock of meanings
which have been precipitated out of previous experience, which are
so prized by the group as to be identified with their conception of
their own collective life. Not being obviously a part of the skill
exhibited in the daily occupations of eating, hunting, making war
and peace, constructing rugs, pottery, and baskets, etc., they are
consciously impressed upon the young; often, as in the initiation
ceremonies, with intense emotional fervor. Even more pains are
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consciously taken to perpetuate the myths, legends, and sacred
verbal formulae of the group than to transmit the directly useful
customs of the group just because they cannot be picked up, as the
latter can be in the ordinary processes of association.
As the social group grows more complex, involving a greater
number of acquired skills which are dependent, either in fact or in
the belief of the group, upon standard ideas deposited from past
experience, the content of social life gets more definitely formulated
for purposes of instruction. As we have previously noted, probably
the chief motive for consciously dwelling upon the group life,
extracting the meanings which are regarded as most important and
systematizing them in a coherent arrangement, is just the need of
instructing the young so as to perpetuate group life. Once started on
this road of selection, formulation, and organization, no definite
limit exists. The invention of writing and of printing gives the
operation an immense impetus. Finally, the bonds which connect the
subject matter of school study with the habits and ideals of the
social group are disguised and covered up. The ties are so loosened
that it often appears as if there were none; as if subject matter
existed simply as knowledge on its own independent behoof, and as
if study were the mere act of mastering it for its own sake,
irrespective of any social values. Since it is highly important for
practical reasons to counter-act this tendency (See ante, p. 8) the
chief purposes of our theoretical discussion are to make clear the
connection which is so readily lost from sight, and to show in some
detail the social content and function of the chief constituents of
the course of study.
The points need to be considered from the standpoint of instructor
and of student. To the former, the significance of a knowledge of
subject matter, going far beyond the present knowledge of pupils, is
to supply definite standards and to reveal to him the possibilities of
the crude activities of the immature. (i) The material of school
studies translates into concrete and detailed terms the meanings of
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current social life which it is desirable to transmit. It puts clearly
before the instructor the essential ingredients of the culture to be
perpetuated, in such an organized form as to protect him from the
haphazard efforts he would be likely to indulge in if the meanings
had not been standardized. (ii) A knowledge of the ideas which have
been achieved in the past as the outcome of activity places the
educator in a position to perceive the meaning of the seeming
impulsive and aimless reactions of the young, and to provide the
stimuli needed to direct them so that they will amount to something.
The more the educator knows of music the more he can perceive
the possibilities of the inchoate musical impulses of a child.
Organized subject matter represents the ripe fruitage of experiences
like theirs, experiences involving the same world, and powers and
needs similar to theirs. It does not represent perfection or infallible
wisdom; but it is the best at command to further new experiences
which may, in some respects at least, surpass the achievements
embodied in existing knowledge and works of art.
From the standpoint of the educator, in other words, the various
studies represent working resources, available capital. Their
remoteness from the experience of the young is not, however,
seeming; it is real. The subject matter of the learner is not,
therefore, it cannot be, identical with the formulated, the
crystallized, and systematized subject matter of the adult; the
material as found in books and in works of art, etc. The latter
represents the possibilities of the former; not its existing state. It
enters directly into the activities of the expert and the educator, not
into that of the beginner, the learner. Failure to bear in mind the
difference in subject matter from the respective standpoints of
teacher and student is responsible for most of the mistakes made in
the use of texts and other expressions of preexistent knowledge.
The need for a knowledge of the constitution and functions, in the
concrete, of human nature is great just because the teacher's attitude
to subject matter is so different from that of the pupil. The teacher
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presents in actuality what the pupil represents only in posse. That is,
the teacher already knows the things which the student is only
learning. Hence the problem of the two is radically unlike. When
engaged in the direct act of teaching, the instructor needs to have
subject matter at his fingers' ends; his attention should be upon the
attitude and response of the pupil. To understand the latter in its
interplay with subject matter is his task, while the pupil's mind,
naturally, should be not on itself but on the topic in hand. Or to
state the same point in a somewhat different manner: the teacher
should be occupied not with subject matter in itself but in its
interaction with the pupils' present needs and capacities. Hence
simple scholarship is not enough. In fact, there are certain features
of scholarship or mastered subject matter--taken by itself--which
get in the way of effective teaching unless the instructor's habitual
attitude is one of concern with its interplay in the pupil's own
experience. In the first place, his knowledge extends indefinitely
beyond the range of the pupil's acquaintance. It involves principles
which are beyond the immature pupil's understanding and interest.
In and of itself, it may no more represent the living world of the
pupil's experience than the astronomer's knowledge of Mars
represents a baby's acquaintance with the room in which he stays. In
the second place, the method of organization of the material of
achieved scholarship differs from that of the beginner. It is not true
that the experience of the young is unorganized--that it consists of
isolated scraps. But it is organized in connection with direct practical
centers of interest. The child's home is, for example, the organizing
center of his geographical knowledge. His own movements about
the locality, his journeys abroad, the tales of his friends, give the ties
which hold his items of information together. But the geography of
the geographer, of the one who has already developed the
implications of these smaller experiences, is organized on the basis
of the relationship which the various facts bear to one another--not
the relations which they bear to his house, bodily movements, and
friends. To the one who is learned, subject matter is extensive,
accurately defined, and logically interrelated. To the one who is
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learning, it is fluid, partial, and connected through his personal
occupations. 1 The problem of teaching is to keep the experience
of the student moving in the direction of what the expert already
knows. Hence the need that the teacher know both subject matter
and the characteristic needs and capacities of the student.
2. The Development of Subject Matter in the Learner. It is possible,
without doing violence to the facts, to mark off three fairly typical
stages in the growth of subject matter in the experience of the
learner. In its first estate, knowledge exists as the content of
intelligent ability--power to do. This kind of subject matter, or
known material, is expressed in familiarity or acquaintance with
things. Then this material gradually is surcharged and deepened
through communicated knowledge or information. Finally, it is
enlarged and worked over into rationally or logically organized
material--that of the one who, relatively speaking, is expert in the
subject.
I. The knowledge which comes first to persons, and that remains
most deeply ingrained, is knowledge of how to do; how to walk,
talk, read, write, skate, ride a bicycle, manage a machine, calculate,
drive a horse, sell goods, manage people, and so on indefinitely. The
popular tendency to regard instinctive acts which are adapted to an
end as a sort of miraculous knowledge, while unjustifiable, is
evidence of the strong tendency to identify intelligent control of the
means of action with knowledge. When education, under the
influence of a scholastic conception of knowledge which ignores
everything but scientifically formulated facts and truths, fails to
recognize that primary or initial subject matter always exists as
matter of an active doing, involving the use of the body and the
handling of material, the subject matter of instruction is isolated
from the needs and purposes of the learner, and so becomes just a
something to be memorized and reproduced upon demand.
Recognition of the natural course of development, on the contrary,
always sets out with situations which involve learning by doing. Arts
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and occupations form the initial stage of the curriculum,
corresponding as they do to knowing how to go about the
accomplishment of ends. Popular terms denoting knowledge have
always retained the connection with ability in action lost by
academic philosophies. Ken and can are allied words. Attention
means caring for a thing, in the sense of both affection and of
looking out for its welfare. Mind means carrying out instructions in
action--as a child minds his mother--and taking care of something
--as a nurse minds the baby. To be thoughtful, considerate, means
to heed the claims of others. Apprehension means dread of
undesirable consequences, as well as intellectual grasp. To have good
sense or judgment is to know the conduct a situation calls for;
discernment is not making distinctions for the sake of making them,
an exercise reprobated as hair splitting, but is insight into an affair
with reference to acting. Wisdom has never lost its association with
the proper direction of life. Only in education, never in the life of
farmer, sailor, merchant, physician, or laboratory experimenter, does
knowledge mean primarily a store of information aloof from doing.
Having to do with things in an intelligent way issues in acquaintance
or familiarity. The things we are best acquainted with are the things
we put to frequent use--such things as chairs, tables, pen, paper,
clothes, food, knives and forks on the commonplace level,
differentiating into more special objects according to a person's
occupations in life. Knowledge of things in that intimate and
emotional sense suggested by the word acquaintance is a precipitate
from our employing them with a purpose. We have acted with or
upon the thing so frequently that we can anticipate how it will act
and react--such is the meaning of familiar acquaintance. We are
ready for a familiar thing; it does not catch us napping, or play
unexpected tricks with us. This attitude carries with it a sense of
congeniality or friendliness, of ease and illumination; while the
things with which we are not accustomed to deal are strange,
foreign, cold, remote, "abstract."
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II. But it is likely that elaborate statements regarding this primary
stage of knowledge will darken understanding. It includes practically
all of our knowledge which is not the result of deliberate technical
study. Modes of purposeful doing include dealings with persons as
well as things. Impulses of communication and habits of
intercourse have to be adapted to maintaining successful
connections with others; a large fund of social knowledge accrues.
As a part of this intercommunication one learns much from others.
They tell of their experiences and of the experiences which, in turn,
have been told them. In so far as one is interested or concerned in
these communications, their matter becomes a part of one's own
experience. Active connections with others are such an intimate and
vital part of our own concerns that it is impossible to draw sharp
lines, such as would enable us to say, "Here my experience ends;
there yours begins." In so far as we are partners in common
undertakings, the things which others communicate to us as the
consequences of their particular share in the enterprise blend at
once into the experience resulting from our own special doings. The
ear is as much an organ of experience as the eye or hand; the eye is
available for reading reports of what happens beyond its horizon.
Things remote in space and time affect the issue of our actions
quite as much as things which we can smell and handle. They really
concern us, and, consequently, any account of them which assists us
in dealing with things at hand falls within personal experience.
Information is the name usually given to this kind of subject matter.
The place of communication in personal doing supplies us with a
criterion for estimating the value of informational material in
school. Does it grow naturally out of some question with which the
student is concerned? Does it fit into his more direct acquaintance
so as to increase its efficacy and deepen its meaning? If it meets
these two requirements, it is educative. The amount heard or read is
of no importance--the more the better, provided the student has a
need for it and can apply it in some situation of his own.
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But it is not so easy to fulfill these requirements in actual practice as
it is to lay them down in theory. The extension in modern times of
the area of intercommunication; the invention of appliances for
securing acquaintance with remote parts of the heavens and bygone
events of history; the cheapening of devices, like printing, for
recording and distributing information--genuine and alleged--have
created an immense bulk of communicated subject matter. It is
much easier to swamp a pupil with this than to work it into his
direct experiences. All too frequently it forms another strange world
which just overlies the world of personal acquaintance. The sole
problem of the student is to learn, for school purposes, for
purposes of recitations and promotions, the constituent parts of
this strange world. Probably the most conspicuous connotation of
the word knowledge for most persons to-day is just the body of
facts and truths ascertained by others; the material found in the
rows and rows of atlases, cyclopedias, histories, biographies, books
of travel, scientific treatises, on the shelves of libraries.
The imposing stupendous bulk of this material has unconsciously
influenced men's notions of the nature of knowledge itself. The
statements, the propositions, in which knowledge, the issue of active
concern with problems, is deposited, are taken to be themselves
knowledge. The record of knowledge, independent of its place as
an outcome of inquiry and a resource in further inquiry, is taken to
be knowledge. The mind of man is taken captive by the spoils of its
prior victories; the spoils, not the weapons and the acts of waging
the battle against the unknown, are used to fix the meaning of
knowledge, of fact, and truth.
If this identification of knowledge with propositions stating
information has fastened itself upon logicians and philosophers, it is
not surprising that the same ideal has almost dominated instruction.
The "course of study" consists largely of information distributed
into various branches of study, each study being subdivided into
lessons presenting in serial cutoff portions of the total store. In the
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seventeenth century, the store was still small enough so that men set
up the ideal of a complete encyclopedic mastery of it. It is now so
bulky that the impossibility of any one man's coming into
possession of it all is obvious. But the educational ideal has not
been much affected. Acquisition of a modicum of information in
each branch of learning, or at least in a selected group, remains the
principle by which the curriculum, from elementary school through
college, is formed; the easier portions being assigned to the earlier
years, the more difficult to the later. The complaints of educators
that learning does not enter into character and affect conduct; the
protests against memoriter work, against cramming, against
gradgrind preoccupation with "facts," against devotion to wire-
drawn distinctions and ill-understood rules and principles, all follow
from this state of affairs. Knowledge which is mainly second-hand,
other men's knowledge, tends to become merely verbal. It is no
objection to information that it is clothed in words; communication
necessarily takes place through words. But in the degree in which
what is communicated cannot be organized into the existing
experience of the learner, it becomes mere words: that is, pure
sense-stimuli, lacking in meaning. Then it operates to call out
mechanical reactions, ability to use the vocal organs to repeat
statements, or the hand to write or to do "sums."
To be informed is to be posted; it is to have at command the subject
matter needed for an effective dealing with a problem, and for
giving added significance to the search for solution and to the
solution itself. Informational knowledge is the material which can be
fallen back upon as given, settled, established, assured in a doubtful
situation. It is a kind of bridge for mind in its passage from doubt
to discovery. It has the office of an intellectual middleman. It
condenses and records in available form the net results of the prior
experiences of mankind, as an agency of enhancing the meaning of
new experiences. When one is told that Brutus assassinated Caesar,
or that the length of the year is three hundred sixty-five and one
fourth days, or that the ratio of the diameter of the circle to its
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circumference is 3.1415. . . one receives what is indeed knowledge
for others, but for him it is a stimulus to knowing. His acquisition of
knowledge depends upon his response to what is communicated.
3. Science or Rationalized Knowledge. Science is a name for
knowledge in its most characteristic form. It represents in its degree,
the perfected outcome of learning,--its consummation. What is
known, in a given case, is what is sure, certain, settled, disposed of;
that which we think with rather than that which we think about. In
its honorable sense, knowledge is distinguished from opinion,
guesswork, speculation, and mere tradition. In knowledge, things are
ascertained; they are so and not dubiously otherwise. But experience
makes us aware that there is difference between intellectual certainty
of subject matter and our certainty. We are made, so to speak, for
belief; credulity is natural. The undisciplined mind is averse to
suspense and intellectual hesitation; it is prone to assertion. It likes
things undisturbed, settled, and treats them as such without due
warrant. Familiarity, common repute, and congeniality to desire are
readily made measuring rods of truth. Ignorance gives way to
opinionated and current error,--a greater foe to learning than
ignorance itself. A Socrates is thus led to declare that consciousness
of ignorance is the beginning of effective love of wisdom, and a
Descartes to say that science is born of doubting.
We have already dwelt upon the fact that subject matter, or data, and
ideas have to have their worth tested experimentally: that in
themselves they are tentative and provisional. Our predilection for
premature acceptance and assertion, our aversion to suspended
judgment, are signs that we tend naturally to cut short the process
of testing. We are satisfied with superficial and immediate short-
visioned applications. If these work out with moderate
satisfactoriness, we are content to suppose that our assumptions
have been confirmed. Even in the case of failure, we are inclined to
put the blame not on the inadequacy and incorrectness of our data
and thoughts, but upon our hard luck and the hostility of
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circumstance. We charge the evil consequence not to the error of
our schemes and our incomplete inquiry into conditions (thereby
getting material for revising the former and stimulus for extending
the latter) but to untoward fate. We even plume ourselves upon our
firmness in clinging to our conceptions in spite of the way in which
they work out.
Science represents the safeguard of the race against these natural
propensities and the evils which flow from them. It consists of the
special appliances and methods which the race has slowly worked
out in order to conduct reflection under conditions whereby its
procedures and results are tested. It is artificial (an acquired art), not
spontaneous; learned, not native. To this fact is due the unique, the
invaluable place of science in education, and also the dangers which
threaten its right use. Without initiation into the scientific spirit one
is not in possession of the best tools which humanity has so far
devised for effectively directed reflection. One in that case not
merely conducts inquiry and learning without the use of the best
instruments, but fails to understand the full meaning of knowledge.
For he does not become acquainted with the traits that mark off
opinion and assent from authorized conviction. On the other hand,
the fact that science marks the perfecting of knowing in highly
specialized conditions of technique renders its results, taken by
themselves, remote from ordinary experience--a quality of
aloofness that is popularly designated by the term abstract. When
this isolation appears in instruction, scientific information is even
more exposed to the dangers attendant upon presenting ready-made
subject matter than are other forms of information.
Science has been defined in terms of method of inquiry and testing.
At first sight, this definition may seem opposed to the current
conception that science is organized or systematized knowledge.
The opposition, however, is only seeming, and disappears when the
ordinary definition is completed. Not organization but the kind of
organization effected by adequate methods of tested discovery
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marks off science. The knowledge of a farmer is systematized in the
degree in which he is competent. It is organized on the basis of
relation of means to ends--practically organized. Its organization as
knowledge (that is, in the eulogistic sense of adequately tested and
confirmed) is incidental to its organization with reference to
securing crops, live-stock, etc. But scientific subject matter is
organized with specific reference to the successful conduct of the
enterprise of discovery, to knowing as a specialized undertaking.
Reference to the kind of assurance attending science will shed light
upon this statement. It is rational assurance,--logical warranty. The
ideal of scientific organization is, therefore, that every conception
and statement shall be of such a kind as to follow from others and
to lead to others. Conceptions and propositions mutually imply and
support one another. This double relation of "leading to and
confirming" is what is meant by the terms logical and rational. The
everyday conception of water is more available for ordinary uses of
drinking, washing, irrigation, etc., than the chemist's notion of it.
The latter's description of it as H20 is superior from the standpoint
of place and use in inquiry. It states the nature of water in a way
which connects it with knowledge of other things, indicating to one
who understands it how the knowledge is arrived at and its bearings
upon other portions of knowledge of the structure of things.
Strictly speaking, it does not indicate the objective relations of water
any more than does a statement that water is transparent, fluid,
without taste or odor, satisfying to thirst, etc. It is just as true that
water has these relations as that it is constituted by two molecules of
hydrogen in combination with one of oxygen. But for the particular
purpose of conducting discovery with a view to ascertainment of
fact, the latter relations are fundamental. The more one emphasizes
organization as a mark of science, then, the more he is committed
to a recognition of the primacy of method in the definition of
science. For method defines the kind of organization in virtue of
which science is science.
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4. Subject Matter as Social. Our next chapters will take up various
school activities and studies and discuss them as successive stages in
that evolution of knowledge which we have just been discussing. It
remains to say a few words upon subject matter as social, since our
prior remarks have been mainly concerned with its intellectual
aspect. A difference in breadth and depth exists even in vital
knowledge; even in the data and ideas which are relevant to real
problems and which are motivated by purposes. For there is a
difference in the social scope of purposes and the social importance
of problems. With the wide range of possible material to select
from, it is important that education (especially in all its phases short
of the most specialized) should use a criterion of social worth. All
information and systematized scientific subject matter have been
worked out under the conditions of social life and have been
transmitted by social means. But this does not prove that all is of
equal value for the purposes of forming the disposition and
supplying the equipment of members of present society. The
scheme of a curriculum must take account of the adaptation of
studies to the needs of the existing community life; it must select
with the intention of improving the life we live in common so that
the future shall be better than the past. Moreover, the curriculum
must be planned with reference to placing essentials first, and
refinements second. The things which are socially most
fundamental, that is, which have to do with the experiences in which
the widest groups share, are the essentials. The things which
represent the needs of specialized groups and technical pursuits are
secondary. There is truth in the saying that education must first be
human and only after that professional. But those who utter the
saying frequently have in mind in the term human only a highly
specialized class: the class of learned men who preserve the classic
traditions of the past. They forget that material is humanized in the
degree in which it connects with the common interests of men as
men. Democratic society is peculiarly dependent for its maintenance
upon the use in forming a course of study of criteria which are
broadly human. Democracy cannot flourish where the chief
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influences in selecting subject matter of instruction are utilitarian
ends narrowly conceived for the masses, and, for the higher
education of the few, the traditions of a specialized cultivated class.
The notion that the "essentials" of elementary education are the
three R's mechanically treated, is based upon ignorance of the
essentials needed for realization of democratic ideals. Unconsciously
it assumes that these ideals are unrealizable; it assumes that in the
future, as in the past, getting a livelihood, "making a living," must
signify for most men and women doing things which are not
significant, freely chosen, and ennobling to those who do them;
doing things which serve ends unrecognized by those engaged in
them, carried on under the direction of others for the sake of
pecuniary reward. For preparation of large numbers for a life of this
sort, and only for this purpose, are mechanical efficiency in reading,
writing, spelling and figuring, together with attainment of a certain
amount of muscular dexterity, "essentials." Such conditions also
infect the education called liberal, with illiberality. They imply a
somewhat parasitic cultivation bought at the expense of not having
the enlightenment and discipline which come from concern with the
deepest problems of common humanity. A curriculum which
acknowledges the social responsibilities of education must present
situations where problems are relevant to the problems of living
together, and where observation and information are calculated to
develop social insight and interest.
Summary.
The subject matter of education consists primarily of the meanings
which supply content to existing social life. The continuity of social
life means that many of these meanings are contributed to present
activity by past collective experience. As social life grows more
complex, these factors increase in number and import. There is need
of special selection, formulation, and organization in order that they
may be adequately transmitted to the new generation. But this very
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process tends to set up subject matter as something of value just by
itself, apart from its function in promoting the realization of the
meanings implied in the present experience of the immature.
Especially is the educator exposed to the temptation to conceive his
task in terms of the pupil's ability to appropriate and reproduce the
subject matter in set statements, irrespective of its organization into
his activities as a developing social member. The positive principle is
maintained when the young begin with active occupations having a
social origin and use, and proceed to a scientific insight in the
materials and laws involved, through assimilating into their more
direct experience the ideas and facts communicated by others who
have had a larger experience. 1 Since the learned man should also
still be a learner, it will be understood that these contrasts are
relative, not absolute. But in the earlier stages of learning at least
they are practically all-important.
Chapter Fifteen: Play and Work in the Curriculum
1. The Place of Active Occupations in Education. In consequence
partly of the efforts of educational reformers, partly of increased
interest in child-psychology, and partly of the direct experience of
the schoolroom, the course of study has in the past generation
undergone considerable modification. The desirability of starting
from and with the experience and capacities of learners, a lesson
enforced from all three quarters, has led to the introduction of
forms of activity, in play and work, similar to those in which
children and youth engage outside of school. Modern psychology
has substituted for the general, ready-made faculties of older theory
a complex group of instinctive and impulsive tendencies.
Experience has shown that when children have a chance at physical
activities which bring their natural impulses into play, going to
school is a joy, management is less of a burden, and learning is
easier. Sometimes, perhaps, plays, games, and constructive
occupations are resorted to only for these reasons, with emphasis
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upon relief from the tedium and strain of "regular" school work.
There is no reason, however, for using them merely as agreeable
diversions. Study of mental life has made evident the fundamental
worth of native tendencies to explore, to manipulate tools and
materials, to construct, to give expression to joyous emotion, etc.
When exercises which are prompted by these instincts are a part of
the regular school program, the whole pupil is engaged, the artificial
gap between life in school and out is reduced, motives are afforded
for attention to a large variety of materials and processes distinctly
educative in effect, and cooperative associations which give
information in a social setting are provided. In short, the grounds
for assigning to play and active work a definite place in the
curriculum are intellectual and social, not matters of temporary
expediency and momentary agreeableness. Without something of
the kind, it is not possible to secure the normal estate of effective
learning; namely, that knowledge-getting be an outgrowth of
activities having their own end, instead of a school task. More
specifically, play and work correspond, point for point, with the
traits of the initial stage of knowing, which consists, as we saw in
the last chapter, in learning how to do things and in acquaintance
with things and processes gained in the doing. It is suggestive that
among the Greeks, till the rise of conscious philosophy, the same
word, techne, was used for art and science. Plato gave his account
of knowledge on the basis of an analysis of the knowledge of
cobblers, carpenters, players of musical instruments, etc., pointing
out that their art (so far as it was not mere routine) involved an end,
mastery of material or stuff worked upon, control of appliances,
and a definite order of procedure--all of which had to be known in
order that there be intelligent skill or art.
Doubtless the fact that children normally engage in play and work
out of school has seemed to many educators a reason why they
should concern themselves in school with things radically different.
School time seemed too precious to spend in doing over again what
children were sure to do any way. In some social conditions, this
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reason has weight. In pioneer times, for example, outside
occupations gave a definite and valuable intellectual and moral
training. Books and everything concerned with them were, on the
other hand, rare and difficult of access; they were the only means of
outlet from a narrow and crude environment. Wherever such
conditions obtain, much may be said in favor of concentrating
school activity upon books. The situation is very different, however,
in most communities to-day. The kinds of work in which the young
can engage, especially in cities, are largely anti-educational. That
prevention of child labor is a social duty is evidence on this point.
On the other hand, printed matter has been so cheapened and is in
such universal circulation, and all the opportunities of intellectual
culture have been so multiplied, that the older type of book work is
far from having the force it used to possess.
But it must not be forgotten that an educational result is a by-
product of play and work in most out-of-school conditions. It is
incidental, not primary. Consequently the educative growth secured
is more or less accidental. Much work shares in the defects of
existing industrial society--defects next to fatal to right
development. Play tends to reproduce and affirm the crudities, as
well as the excellencies, of surrounding adult life. It is the business
of the school to set up an environment in which play and work shall
be conducted with reference to facilitating desirable mental and
moral growth. It is not enough just to introduce plays and games,
hand work and manual exercises. Everything depends upon the way
in which they are employed.
2. Available Occupations. A bare catalogue of the list of activities
which have already found their way into schools indicates what a
rich field is at hand. There is work with paper, cardboard, wood,
leather, cloth, yarns, clay and sand, and the metals, with and without
tools. Processes employed are folding, cutting, pricking, measuring,
molding, modeling, pattern-making, heating and cooling, and the
operations characteristic of such tools as the hammer, saw, file, etc.
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Outdoor excursions, gardening, cooking, sewing, printing, book-
binding, weaving, painting, drawing, singing, dramatization, story-
telling, reading and writing as active pursuits with social aims (not as
mere exercises for acquiring skill for future use), in addition to a
countless variety of plays and games, designate some of the modes
of occupation.
The problem of the educator is to engage pupils in these activities
in such ways that while manual skill and technical efficiency are
gained and immediate satisfaction found in the work, together with
preparation for later usefulness, these things shall be subordinated
to education--that is, to intellectual results and the forming of a
socialized disposition. What does this principle signify? In the first
place, the principle rules out certain practices. Activities which
follow definite prescription and dictation or which reproduce
without modification ready-made models, may give muscular
dexterity, but they do not require the perception and elaboration of
ends, nor (what is the same thing in other words) do they permit the
use of judgment in selecting and adapting means. Not merely
manual training specifically so called but many traditional
kindergarten exercises have erred here. Moreover, opportunity for
making mistakes is an incidental requirement. Not because mistakes
are ever desirable, but because overzeal to select material and
appliances which forbid a chance for mistakes to occur, restricts
initiative, reduces judgment to a minimum, and compels the use of
methods which are so remote from the complex situations of life
that the power gained is of little availability. It is quite true that
children tend to exaggerate their powers of execution and to select
projects that are beyond them. But limitation of capacity is one of
the things which has to be learned; like other things, it is learned
through the experience of consequences. The danger that children
undertaking too complex projects will simply muddle and mess, and
produce not merely crude results (which is a minor matter) but
acquire crude standards (which is an important matter) is great. But
it is the fault of the teacher if the pupil does not perceive in due
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season the inadequacy of his performances, and thereby receive a
stimulus to attempt exercises which will perfect his powers.
Meantime it is more important to keep alive a creative and
constructive attitude than to secure an external perfection by
engaging the pupil's action in too minute and too closely regulated
pieces of work. Accuracy and finish of detail can be insisted upon
in such portions of a complex work as are within the pupil's
capacity.
Unconscious suspicion of native experience and consequent
overdoing of external control are shown quite as much in the
material supplied as in the matter of the teacher's orders. The fear
of raw material is shown in laboratory, manual training shop,
Froebelian kindergarten, and Montessori house of childhood. The
demand is for materials which have already been subjected to the
perfecting work of mind: a demand which shows itself in the
subject matter of active occupations quite as well as in academic
book learning. That such material will control the pupil's operations
so as to prevent errors is true. The notion that a pupil operating
with such material will somehow absorb the intelligence that went
originally to its shaping is fallacious. Only by starting with crude
material and subjecting it to purposeful handling will he gain the
intelligence embodied in finished material. In practice, overemphasis
upon formed material leads to an exaggeration of mathematical
qualities, since intellect finds its profit in physical things from
matters of size, form, and proportion and the relations that flow
from them. But these are known only when their perception is a
fruit of acting upon purposes which require attention to them. The
more human the purpose, or the more it approximates the ends
which appeal in daily experience, the more real the knowledge.
When the purpose of the activity is restricted to ascertaining these
qualities, the resulting knowledge is only technical.
To say that active occupations should be concerned primarily with
wholes is another statement of the same principle. Wholes for
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purposes of education are not, however, physical affairs.
Intellectually the existence of a whole depends upon a concern or
interest; it is qualitative, the completeness of appeal made by a
situation. Exaggerated devotion to formation of efficient skill
irrespective of present purpose always shows itself in devising
exercises isolated from a purpose. Laboratory work is made to
consist of tasks of accurate measurement with a view to acquiring
knowledge of the fundamental units of physics, irrespective of
contact with the problems which make these units important; or of
operations designed to afford facility in the manipulation of
experimental apparatus. The technique is acquired independently of
the purposes of discovery and testing which alone give it meaning.
Kindergarten employments are calculated to give information
regarding cubes, spheres, etc., and to form certain habits of
manipulation of material (for everything must always be done "just
so"), the absence of more vital purposes being supposedly
compensated for by the alleged symbolism of the material used.
Manual training is reduced to a series of ordered assignments
calculated to secure the mastery of one tool after another and
technical ability in the various elements of construction--like the
different joints. It is argued that pupils must know how to use tools
before they attack actual making,--assuming that pupils cannot
learn how in the process of making. Pestalozzi's just insistence upon
the active use of the senses, as a substitute for memorizing words,
left behind it in practice schemes for "object lessons" intended to
acquaint pupils with all the qualities of selected objects. The error is
the same: in all these cases it is assumed that before objects can be
intelligently used, their properties must be known. In fact, the senses
are normally used in the course of intelligent (that is, purposeful)
use of things, since the qualities perceived are factors to be
reckoned with in accomplishment. Witness the different attitude of
a boy in making, say, a kite, with respect to the grain and other
properties of wood, the matter of size, angles, and proportion of
parts, to the attitude of a pupil who has an object-lesson on a piece
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of wood, where the sole function of wood and its properties is to
serve as subject matter for the lesson.
The failure to realize that the functional development of a situation
alone constitutes a "whole" for the purpose of mind is the cause of
the false notions which have prevailed in instruction concerning the
simple and the complex. For the person approaching a subject, the
simple thing is his purpose--the use he desires to make of material,
tool, or technical process, no matter how complicated the process
of execution may be. The unity of the purpose, with the
concentration upon details which it entails, confers simplicity upon
the elements which have to be reckoned with in the course of
action. It furnishes each with a single meaning according to its
service in carrying on the whole enterprise. After one has gone
through the process, the constituent qualities and relations are
elements, each possessed with a definite meaning of its own. The
false notion referred to takes the standpoint of the expert, the one
for whom elements exist; isolates them from purposeful action, and
presents them to beginners as the "simple" things. But it is time for
a positive statement. Aside from the fact that active occupations
represent things to do, not studies, their educational significance
consists in the fact that they may typify social situations. Men's
fundamental common concerns center about food, shelter, clothing,
household furnishings, and the appliances connected with
production, exchange, and consumption.
Representing both the necessities of life and the adornments with
which the necessities have been clothed, they tap instincts at a deep
level; they are saturated with facts and principles having a social
quality.
To charge that the various activities of gardening, weaving,
construction in wood, manipulation of metals, cooking, etc., which
carry over these fundamental human concerns into school
resources, have a merely bread and butter value is to miss their
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point. If the mass of mankind has usually found in its industrial
occupations nothing but evils which had to be endured for the sake
of maintaining existence, the fault is not in the occupations, but in
the conditions under which they are carried on. The continually
increasing importance of economic factors in contemporary life
makes it the more needed that education should reveal their
scientific content and their social value. For in schools, occupations
are not carried on for pecuniary gain but for their own content.
Freed from extraneous associations and from the pressure of wage-
earning, they supply modes of experience which are intrinsically
valuable; they are truly liberalizing in quality.
Gardening, for example, need not be taught either for the sake of
preparing future gardeners, or as an agreeable way of passing time.
It affords an avenue of approach to knowledge of the place farming
and horticulture have had in the history of the race and which they
occupy in present social organization. Carried on in an environment
educationally controlled, they are means for making a study of the
facts of growth, the chemistry of soil, the role of light, air, and
moisture, injurious and helpful animal life, etc. There is nothing in
the elementary study of botany which cannot be introduced in a
vital way in connection with caring for the growth of seeds. Instead
of the subject matter belonging to a peculiar study called botany, it
will then belong to life, and will find, moreover, its natural
correlations with the facts of soil, animal life, and human relations.
As students grow mature, they will perceive problems of interest
which may be pursued for the sake of discovery, independent of the
original direct interest in gardening--problems connected with the
germination and nutrition of plants, the reproduction of fruits, etc.,
thus making a transition to deliberate intellectual investigations.
The illustration is intended to apply, of course, to other school
occupations,--wood-working, cooking, and on through the list. It is
pertinent to note that in the history of the race the sciences grew
gradually out from useful social occupations. Physics developed
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slowly out of the use of tools and machines; the important branch
of physics known as mechanics testifies in its name to its original
associations. The lever, wheel, inclined plane, etc., were among the
first great intellectual discoveries of mankind, and they are none the
less intellectual because they occurred in the course of seeking for
means of accomplishing practical ends. The great advance of
electrical science in the last generation was closely associated, as
effect and as cause, with application of electric agencies to means of
communication, transportation, lighting of cities and houses, and
more economical production of goods. These are social ends,
moreover, and if they are too closely associated with notions of
private profit, it is not because of anything in them, but because
they have been deflected to private uses:--a fact which puts upon
the school the responsibility of restoring their connection, in the
mind of the coming generation, with public scientific and social
interests. In like ways, chemistry grew out of processes of dying,
bleaching, metal working, etc., and in recent times has found
innumerable new uses in industry.
Mathematics is now a highly abstract science; geometry, however,
means literally earth-measuring: the practical use of number in
counting to keep track of things and in measuring is even more
important to-day than in the times when it was invented for these
purposes. Such considerations (which could be duplicated in the
history of any science) are not arguments for a recapitulation of the
history of the race or for dwelling long in the early rule of thumb
stage. But they indicate the possibilities--greater to-day than ever
before--of using active occupations as opportunities for scientific
study. The opportunities are just as great on the social side, whether
we look at the life of collective humanity in its past or in its future.
The most direct road for elementary students into civics and
economics is found in consideration of the place and office of
industrial occupations in social life. Even for older students, the
social sciences would be less abstract and formal if they were dealt
with less as sciences (less as formulated bodies of knowledge) and
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more in their direct subject-matter as that is found in the daily life
of the social groups in which the student shares.
Connection of occupations with the method of science is at least as
close as with its subject matter. The ages when scientific progress
was slow were the ages when learned men had contempt for the
material and processes of everyday life, especially for those
concerned with manual pursuits. Consequently they strove to
develop knowledge out of general principles--almost out of their
heads--by logical reasons. It seems as absurd that learning should
come from action on and with physical things, like dropping acid on
a stone to see what would happen, as that it should come from
sticking an awl with waxed thread through a piece of leather. But
the rise of experimental methods proved that, given control of
conditions, the latter operation is more typical of the right way of
knowledge than isolated logical reasonings. Experiment developed
in the seventeenth and succeeding centuries and became the
authorized way of knowing when men's interests were centered in
the question of control of nature for human uses. The active
occupations in which appliances are brought to bear upon physical
things with the intention of effecting useful changes is the most
vital introduction to the experimental method.
3. Work and Play. What has been termed active occupation includes
both play and work. In their intrinsic meaning, play and industry are
by no means so antithetical to one another as is often assumed, any
sharp contrast being due to undesirable social conditions. Both
involve ends consciously entertained and the selection and
adaptations of materials and processes designed to effect the desired
ends. The difference between them is largely one of time-span,
influencing the directness of the connection of means and ends. In
play, the interest is more direct--a fact frequently indicated by
saying that in play the activity is its own end, instead of its having an
ulterior result. The statement is correct, but it is falsely taken, if
supposed to mean that play activity is momentary, having no
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element of looking ahead and none of pursuit. Hunting, for
example, is one of the commonest forms of adult play, but the
existence of foresight and the direction of present activity by what
one is watching for are obvious. When an activity is its own end in
the sense that the action of the moment is complete in itself, it is
purely physical; it has no meaning (See p. 77). The person is either
going through motions quite blindly, perhaps purely imitatively, or
else is in a state of excitement which is exhausting to mind and
nerves. Both results may be seen in some types of kindergarten
games where the idea of play is so highly symbolic that only the
adult is conscious of it. Unless the children succeed in reading in
some quite different idea of their own, they move about either as if
in a hypnotic daze, or they respond to a direct excitation.
The point of these remarks is that play has an end in the sense of a
directing idea which gives point to the successive acts. Persons who
play are not just doing something (pure physical movement); they
are trying to do or effect something, an attitude that involves
anticipatory forecasts which stimulate their present responses. The
anticipated result, however, is rather a subsequent action than the
production of a specific change in things. Consequently play is free,
plastic. Where some definite external outcome is wanted, the end
has to be held to with some persistence, which increases as the
contemplated result is complex and requires a fairly long series of
intermediate adaptations. When the intended act is another activity,
it is not necessary to look far ahead and it is possible to alter it easily
and frequently. If a child is making a toy boat, he must hold on to a
single end and direct a considerable number of acts by that one idea.
If he is just "playing boat" he may change the material that serves as
a boat almost at will, and introduce new factors as fancy suggests.
The imagination makes what it will of chairs, blocks, leaves, chips, if
they serve the purpose of carrying activity forward.
From a very early age, however, there is no distinction of exclusive
periods of play activity and work activity, but only one of emphasis.
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There are definite results which even young children desire, and try
to bring to pass. Their eager interest in sharing the occupations of
others, if nothing else, accomplishes this. Children want to "help";
they are anxious to engage in the pursuits of adults which effect
external changes: setting the table, washing dishes, helping care for
animals, etc. In their plays, they like to construct their own toys and
appliances. With increasing maturity, activity which does not give
back results of tangible and visible achievement loses its interest.
Play then changes to fooling and if habitually indulged in is
demoralizing. Observable results are necessary to enable persons to
get a sense and a measure of their own powers. When make-believe
is recognized to be make-believe, the device of making objects in
fancy alone is too easy to stimulate intense action. One has only to
observe the countenance of children really playing to note that their
attitude is one of serious absorption; this attitude cannot be
maintained when things cease to afford adequate stimulation.
When fairly remote results of a definite character are foreseen and
enlist persistent effort for their accomplishment, play passes into
work. Like play, it signifies purposeful activity and differs not in that
activity is subordinated to an external result, but in the fact that a
longer course of activity is occasioned by the idea of a result. The
demand for continuous attention is greater, and more intelligence
must be shown in selecting and shaping means. To extend this
account would be to repeat what has been said under the caption of
aim, interest, and thinking. It is pertinent, however, to inquire why
the idea is so current that work involves subordination of an activity
to an ulterior material result. The extreme form of this
subordination, namely drudgery, offers a clew. Activity carried on
under conditions of external pressure or coercion is not carried on
for any significance attached to the doing. The course of action is
not intrinsically satisfying; it is a mere means for avoiding some
penalty, or for gaining some reward at its conclusion. What is
inherently repulsive is endured for the sake of averting something
still more repulsive or of securing a gain hitched on by others.
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Under unfree economic conditions, this state of affairs is bound to
exist. Work or industry offers little to engage the emotions and the
imagination; it is a more or less mechanical series of strains. Only
the hold which the completion of the work has upon a person will
keep him going. But the end should be intrinsic to the action; it
should be its end--a part of its own course. Then it affords a
stimulus to effort very different from that arising from the thought
of results which have nothing to do with the intervening action. As
already mentioned, the absence of economic pressure in schools
supplies an opportunity for reproducing industrial situations of
mature life under conditions where the occupation can be carried on
for its own sake. If in some cases, pecuniary recognition is also a
result of an action, though not the chief motive for it, that fact may
well increase the significance of the occupation. Where something
approaching drudgery or the need of fulfilling externally imposed
tasks exists, the demand for play persists, but tends to be perverted.
The ordinary course of action fails to give adequate stimulus to
emotion and imagination. So in leisure time, there is an imperious
demand for their stimulation by any kind of means; gambling, drink,
etc., may be resorted to. Or, in less extreme cases, there is recourse
to idle amusement; to anything which passes time with immediate
agreeableness. Recreation, as the word indicates, is recuperation of
energy. No demand of human nature is more urgent or less to be
escaped. The idea that the need can be suppressed is absolutely
fallacious, and the Puritanic tradition which disallows the need has
entailed an enormous crop of evils. If education does not afford
opportunity for wholesome recreation and train capacity for seeking
and finding it, the suppressed instincts find all sorts of illicit outlets,
sometimes overt, sometimes confined to indulgence of the
imagination. Education has no more serious responsibility than
making adequate provision for enjoyment of recreative leisure; not
only for the sake of immediate health, but still more if possible for
the sake of its lasting effect upon habits of mind. Art is again the
answer to this demand.
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Summary.
In the previous chapter we found that the primary subject matter of
knowing is that contained in learning how to do things of a fairly
direct sort. The educational equivalent of this principle is the
consistent use of simple occupations which appeal to the powers of
youth and which typify general modes of social activity. Skill and
information about materials, tools, and laws of energy are acquired
while activities are carried on for their own sake. The fact that they
are socially representative gives a quality to the skill and knowledge
gained which makes them transferable to out-of-school situations. It
is important not to confuse the psychological distinction between
play and work with the economic distinction. Psychologically, the
defining characteristic of play is not amusement nor aimlessness. It
is the fact that the aim is thought of as more activity in the same
line, without defining continuity of action in reference to results
produced. Activities as they grow more complicated gain added
meaning by greater attention to specific results achieved. Thus they
pass gradually into work. Both are equally free and intrinsically
motivated, apart from false economic conditions which tend to
make play into idle excitement for the well to do, and work into
uncongenial labor for the poor. Work is psychologically simply an
activity which consciously includes regard for consequences as a
part of itself; it becomes constrained labor when the consequences
are outside of the activity as an end to which activity is merely a
means. Work which remains permeated with the play attitude is art
--in quality if not in conventional designation.
Chapter Sixteen: The Significance of Geography and
History
1. Extension of Meaning of Primary Activities. Nothing is more
striking than the difference between an activity as merely physical
and the wealth of meanings which the same activity may assume.
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From the outside, an astronomer gazing through a telescope is like a
small boy looking through the same tube. In each case, there is an
arrangement of glass and metal, an eye, and a little speck of light in
the distance. Yet at a critical moment, the activity of an astronomer
might be concerned with the birth of a world, and have whatever is
known about the starry heavens as its significant content. Physically
speaking, what man has effected on this globe in his progress from
savagery is a mere scratch on its surface, not perceptible at a
distance which is slight in comparison with the reaches even of the
solar system. Yet in meaning what has been accomplished measures
just the difference of civilization from savagery. Although the
activities, physically viewed, have changed somewhat, this change is
slight in comparison with the development of the meanings
attaching to the activities. There is no limit to the meaning which an
action may come to possess. It all depends upon the context of
perceived connections in which it is placed; the reach of imagination
in realizing connections is inexhaustible. The advantage which the
activity of man has in appropriating and finding meanings makes his
education something else than the manufacture of a tool or the
training of an animal. The latter increase efficiency; they do not
develop significance. The final educational importance of such
occupations in play and work as were considered in the last chapter
is that they afford the most direct instrumentalities for such
extension of meaning. Set going under adequate conditions they are
magnets for gathering and retaining an indefinitely wide scope of
intellectual considerations. They provide vital centers for the
reception and assimilation of information. When information is
purveyed in chunks simply as information to be retained for its own
sake, it tends to stratify over vital experience. Entering as a factor
into an activity pursued for its own sake--whether as a means or as
a widening of the content of the aim--it is informing. The insight
directly gained fuses with what is told. Individual experience is then
capable of taking up and holding in solution the net results of the
experience of the group to which he belongs--including the results
of sufferings and trials over long stretches of time. And such media
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have no fixed saturation point where further absorption is
impossible. The more that is taken in, the greater capacity there is
for further assimilation. New receptiveness follows upon new
curiosity, and new curiosity upon information gained.
The meanings with which activities become charged, concern nature
and man. This is an obvious truism, which however gains meaning
when translated into educational equivalents. So translated, it
signifies that geography and history supply subject matter which
gives background and outlook, intellectual perspective, to what
might otherwise be narrow personal actions or mere forms of
technical skill. With every increase of ability to place our own
doings in their time and space connections, our doings gain in
significant content. We realize that we are citizens of no mean city
in discovering the scene in space of which we are denizens, and the
continuous manifestation of endeavor in time of which we are heirs
and continuers. Thus our ordinary daily experiences cease to be
things of the moment and gain enduring substance. Of course if
geography and history are taught as ready-made studies which a
person studies simply because he is sent to school, it easily happens
that a large number of statements about things remote and alien to
everyday experience are learned. Activity is divided, and two
separate worlds are built up, occupying activity at divided periods.
No transmutation takes place; ordinary experience is not enlarged in
meaning by getting its connections; what is studied is not animated
and made real by entering into immediate activity. Ordinary
experience is not even left as it was, narrow but vital. Rather, it loses
something of its mobility and sensitiveness to suggestions. It is
weighed down and pushed into a corner by a load of unassimilated
information. It parts with its flexible responsiveness and alert
eagerness for additional meaning. Mere amassing of information
apart from the direct interests of life makes mind wooden; elasticity
disappears.
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Normally every activity engaged in for its own sake reaches out
beyond its immediate self. It does not passively wait for information
to be bestowed which will increase its meaning; it seeks it out.
Curiosity is not an accidental isolated possession; it is a necessary
consequence of the fact that an experience is a moving, changing
thing, involving all kinds of connections with other things. Curiosity
is but the tendency to make these conditions perceptible. It is the
business of educators to supply an environment so that this
reaching out of an experience may be fruitfully rewarded and kept
continuously active. Within a certain kind of environment, an
activity may be checked so that the only meaning which accrues is
of its direct and tangible isolated outcome. One may cook, or
hammer, or walk, and the resulting consequences may not take the
mind any farther than the consequences of cooking, hammering,
and walking in the literal--or physical--sense. But nevertheless the
consequences of the act remain far-reaching. To walk involves a
displacement and reaction of the resisting earth, whose thrill is felt
wherever there is matter. It involves the structure of the limbs and
the nervous system; the principles of mechanics. To cook is to
utilize heat and moisture to change the chemical relations of food
materials; it has a bearing upon the assimilation of food and the
growth of the body. The utmost that the most learned men of
science know in physics, chemistry, physiology is not enough to
make all these consequences and connections perceptible. The task
of education, once more, is to see to it that such activities are
performed in such ways and under such conditions as render these
conditions as perceptible as possible. To "learn geography" is to gain
in power to perceive the spatial, the natural, connections of an
ordinary act; to "learn history" is essentially to gain in power to
recognize its human connections. For what is called geography as a
formulated study is simply the body of facts and principles which
have been discovered in other men's experience about the natural
medium in which we live, and in connection with which the
particular acts of our life have an explanation. So history as a
formulated study is but the body of known facts about the activities
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and sufferings of the social groups with which our own lives are
continuous, and through reference to which our own customs and
institutions are illuminated.
2. The Complementary Nature of History and Geography. History
and geography--including in the latter, for reasons about to be
mentioned, nature study--are the information studies par excellence
of the schools. Examination of the materials and the method of
their use will make clear that the difference between penetration of
this information into living experience and its mere piling up in
isolated heaps depends upon whether these studies are faithful to
the interdependence of man and nature which affords these studies
their justification. Nowhere, however, is there greater danger that
subject matter will be accepted as appropriate educational material
simply because it has become customary to teach and learn it. The
idea of a philosophic reason for it, because of the function of the
material in a worthy transformation of experience, is looked upon as
a vain fancy, or as supplying a high-sounding phraseology in support
of what is already done. The words "history" and "geography"
suggest simply the matter which has been traditionally sanctioned in
the schools. The mass and variety of this matter discourage an
attempt to see what it really stands for, and how it can be so taught
as to fulfill its mission in the experience of pupils. But unless the
idea that there is a unifying and social direction in education is a
farcical pretense, subjects that bulk as large in the curriculum as
history and geography, must represent a general function in the
development of a truly socialized and intellectualized experience.
The discovery of this function must be employed as a criterion for
trying and sifting the facts taught and the methods used.
The function of historical and geographical subject matter has been
stated; it is to enrich and liberate the more direct and personal
contacts of life by furnishing their context, their background and
outlook. While geography emphasizes the physical side and history
the social, these are only emphases in a common topic, namely, the
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associated life of men. For this associated life, with its experiments,
its ways and means, its achievements and failures, does not go on in
the sky nor yet in a vacuum. It takes place on the earth. This setting
of nature does not bear to social activities the relation that the
scenery of a theatrical performance bears to a dramatic
representation; it enters into the very make-up of the social
happenings that form history. Nature is the medium of social
occurrences. It furnishes original stimuli; it supplies obstacles and
resources. Civilization is the progressive mastery of its varied
energies. When this interdependence of the study of history,
representing the human emphasis, with the study of geography,
representing the natural, is ignored, history sinks to a listing of dates
with an appended inventory of events, labeled "important"; or else
it becomes a literary phantasy--for in purely literary history the
natural environment is but stage scenery.
Geography, of course, has its educative influence in a counterpart
connection of natural facts with social events and their
consequences. The classic definition of geography as an account of
the earth as the home of man expresses the educational reality. But
it is easier to give this definition than it is to present specific
geographical subject matter in its vital human bearings. The
residence, pursuits, successes, and failures of men are the things that
give the geographic data their reason for inclusion in the material of
instruction. But to hold the two together requires an informed and
cultivated imagination. When the ties are broken, geography
presents itself as that hodge-podge of unrelated fragments too
often found. It appears as a veritable rag-bag of intellectual odds
and ends: the height of a mountain here, the course of a river there,
the quantity of shingles produced in this town, the tonnage of the
shipping in that, the boundary of a county, the capital of a state.
The earth as the home of man is humanizing and unified; the earth
viewed as a miscellany of facts is scattering and imaginatively inert.
Geography is a topic that originally appeals to imagination--even to
the romantic imagination. It shares in the wonder and glory that
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attach to adventure, travel, and exploration. The variety of peoples
and environments, their contrast with familiar scenes, furnishes
infinite stimulation. The mind is moved from the monotony of the
customary. And while local or home geography is the natural
starting point in the reconstructive development of the natural
environment, it is an intellectual starting point for moving out into
the unknown, not an end in itself. When not treated as a basis for
getting at the large world beyond, the study of the home geography
becomes as deadly as do object lessons which simply summarize the
properties of familiar objects. The reason is the same. The
imagination is not fed, but is held down to recapitulating,
cataloguing, and refining what is already known. But when the
familiar fences that mark the limits of the village proprietors are
signs that introduce an understanding of the boundaries of great
nations, even fences are lighted with meaning. Sunlight, air, running
water, inequality of earth's surface, varied industries, civil officers
and their duties--all these things are found in the local
environment. Treated as if their meaning began and ended in those
confines, they are curious facts to be laboriously learned. As
instruments for extending the limits of experience, bringing within
its scope peoples and things otherwise strange and unknown, they
are transfigured by the use to which they are put. Sunlight, wind,
stream, commerce, political relations come from afar and lead the
thoughts afar. To follow their course is to enlarge the mind not by
stuffing it with additional information, but by remaking the meaning
of what was previously a matter of course.
The same principle coordinates branches, or phases, of geographical
study which tend to become specialized and separate. Mathematical
or astronomical, physiographic, topographic, political, commercial,
geography, all make their claims. How are they to be adjusted? By an
external compromise that crowds in so much of each? No other
method is to be found unless it be constantly borne in mind that the
educational center of gravity is in the cultural or humane aspects of
the subject. From this center, any material becomes relevant in so
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far as it is needed to help appreciate the significance of human
activities and relations. The differences of civilization in cold and
tropical regions, the special inventions, industrial and political, of
peoples in the temperate regions, cannot be understood without
appeal to the earth as a member of the solar system. Economic
activities deeply influence social intercourse and political
organization on one side, and reflect physical conditions on the
other. The specializations of these topics are for the specialists; their
interaction concerns man as a being whose experience is social.
To include nature study within geography doubtless seems forced;
verbally, it is. But in educational idea there is but one reality, and it is
pity that in practice we have two names: for the diversity of names
tends to conceal the identity of meaning. Nature and the earth
should be equivalent terms, and so should earth study and nature
study. Everybody knows that nature study has suffered in schools
from scrappiness of subject matter, due to dealing with a large
number of isolated points. The parts of a flower have been studied,
for example, apart from the flower as an organ; the flower apart
from the plant; the plant apart from the soil, air, and light in which
and through which it lives. The result is an inevitable deadness of
topics to which attention is invited, but which are so isolated that
they do not feed imagination. The lack of interest is so great that it
was seriously proposed to revive animism, to clothe natural facts
and events with myths in order that they might attract and hold the
mind. In numberless cases, more or less silly personifications were
resorted to. The method was silly, but it expressed a real need for a
human atmosphere. The facts had been torn to pieces by being
taken out of their context. They no longer belonged to the earth;
they had no abiding place anywhere. To compensate, recourse was
had to artificial and sentimental associations. The real remedy is to
make nature study a study of nature, not of fragments made
meaningless through complete removal from the situations in which
they are produced and in which they operate. When nature is treated
as a whole, like the earth in its relations, its phenomena fall into their
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natural relations of sympathy and association with human life, and
artificial substitutes are not needed.
3. History and Present Social Life. The segregation which kills the
vitality of history is divorce from present modes and concerns of
social life. The past just as past is no longer our affair. If it were
wholly gone and done with, there would be only one reasonable
attitude toward it. Let the dead bury their dead. But knowledge of
the past is the key to understanding the present. History deals with
the past, but this past is the history of the present. An intelligent
study of the discovery, explorations, colonization of America, of
the pioneer movement westward, of immigration, etc., should be a
study of the United States as it is to-day: of the country we now live
in. Studying it in process of formation makes much that is too
complex to be directly grasped open to comprehension. Genetic
method was perhaps the chief scientific achievement of the latter
half of the nineteenth century. Its principle is that the way to get
insight into any complex product is to trace the process of its
making,--to follow it through the successive stages of its growth.
To apply this method to history as if it meant only the truism that
the present social state cannot be separated from its past, is one-
sided. It means equally that past events cannot be separated from
the living present and retain meaning. The true starting point of
history is always some present situation with its problems.
This general principle may be briefly applied to a consideration of
its bearing upon a number of points. The biographical method is
generally recommended as the natural mode of approach to
historical study. The lives of great men, of heroes and leaders, make
concrete and vital historic episodes otherwise abstract and
incomprehensible. They condense into vivid pictures complicated
and tangled series of events spread over so much space and time
that only a highly trained mind can follow and unravel them. There
can be no doubt of the psychological soundness of this principle.
But it is misused when employed to throw into exaggerated relief
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the doings of a few individuals without reference to the social
situations which they represent. When a biography is related just as
an account of the doings of a man isolated from the conditions that
aroused him and to which his activities were a response, we do not
have a study of history, for we have no study of social life, which is
an affair of individuals in association. We get only a sugar coating
which makes it easier to swallow certain fragments of information.
Much attention has been given of late to primitive life as an
introduction to learning history. Here also there is a right and a
wrong way of conceiving its value. The seemingly ready-made
character and the complexity of present conditions, their apparently
hard and fast character, is an almost insuperable obstacle to gaining
insight into their nature. Recourse to the primitive may furnish the
fundamental elements of the present situation in immensely
simplified form. It is like unraveling a cloth so complex and so close
to the eyes that its scheme cannot be seen, until the larger coarser
features of the pattern appear. We cannot simplify the present
situations by deliberate experiment, but resort to primitive life
presents us with the sort of results we should desire from an
experiment. Social relationships and modes of organized action are
reduced to their lowest terms. When this social aim is overlooked,
however, the study of primitive life becomes simply a rehearsing of
sensational and exciting features of savagery. Primitive history
suggests industrial history. For one of the chief reasons for going to
more primitive conditions to resolve the present into more easily
perceived factors is that we may realize how the fundamental
problems of procuring subsistence, shelter, and protection have
been met; and by seeing how these were solved in the earlier days of
the human race, form some conception of the long road which has
had to be traveled, and of the successive inventions by which the
race has been brought forward in culture. We do not need to go into
disputes regarding the economic interpretation of history to realize
that the industrial history of mankind gives insight into two
important phases of social life in a way which no other phase of
history can possibly do. It presents us with knowledge of the
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successive inventions by which theoretical science has been applied
to the control of nature in the interests of security and prosperity
of social life. It thus reveals the successive causes of social progress.
Its other service is to put before us the things that fundamentally
concern all men in common--the occupations and values connected
with getting a living. Economic history deals with the activities, the
career, and fortunes of the common man as does no other branch
of history. The one thing every individual must do is to live; the one
thing that society must do is to secure from each individual his fair
contribution to the general well being and see to it that a just return
is made to him.
Economic history is more human, more democratic, and hence
more liberalizing than political history. It deals not with the rise and
fall of principalities and powers, but with the growth of the
effective liberties, through command of nature, of the common
man for whom powers and principalities exist.
Industrial history also offers a more direct avenue of approach to
the realization of the intimate connection of man's struggles,
successes, and failures with nature than does political history--to
say nothing of the military history into which political history so
easily runs when reduced to the level of youthful comprehension.
For industrial history is essentially an account of the way in which
man has learned to utilize natural energy from the time when men
mostly exploited the muscular energies of other men to the time
when, in promise if not in actuality, the resources of nature are so
under command as to enable men to extend a common dominion
over her. When the history of work, when the conditions of using
the soil, forest, mine, of domesticating and cultivating grains and
animals, of manufacture and distribution, are left out of account,
history tends to become merely literary--a systematized romance of
a mythical humanity living upon itself instead of upon the earth.
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Perhaps the most neglected branch of history in general education
is intellectual history. We are only just beginning to realize that the
great heroes who have advanced human destiny are not its
politicians, generals, and diplomatists, but the scientific discoverers
and inventors who have put into man's hands the instrumentalities
of an expanding and controlled experience, and the artists and poets
who have celebrated his struggles, triumphs, and defeats in such
language, pictorial, plastic, or written, that their meaning is rendered
universally accessible to others. One of the advantages of industrial
history as a history of man's progressive adaptation of natural
forces to social uses is the opportunity which it affords for
consideration of advance in the methods and results of knowledge.
At present men are accustomed to eulogize intelligence and reason
in general terms; their fundamental importance is urged. But pupils
often come away from the conventional study of history, and think
either that the human intellect is a static quantity which has not
progressed by the invention of better methods, or else that
intelligence, save as a display of personal shrewdness, is a negligible
historic factor. Surely no better way could be devised of instilling a
genuine sense of the part which mind has to play in life than a study
of history which makes plain how the entire advance of humanity
from savagery to civilization has been dependent upon intellectual
discoveries and inventions, and the extent to which the things which
ordinarily figure most largely in historical writings have been side
issues, or even obstructions for intelligence to overcome.
Pursued in this fashion, history would most naturally become of
ethical value in teaching. Intelligent insight into present forms of
associated life is necessary for a character whose morality is more
than colorless innocence. Historical knowledge helps provide such
insight. It is an organ for analysis of the warp and woof of the
present social fabric, of making known the forces which have woven
the pattern. The use of history for cultivating a socialized
intelligence constitutes its moral significance. It is possible to
employ it as a kind of reservoir of anecdotes to be drawn on to
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inculcate special moral lessons on this virtue or that vice. But such
teaching is not so much an ethical use of history as it is an effort to
create moral impressions by means of more or less authentic
material. At best, it produces a temporary emotional glow; at worst,
callous indifference to moralizing. The assistance which may be
given by history to a more intelligent sympathetic understanding of
the social situations of the present in which individuals share is a
permanent and constructive moral asset.
Summary.
It is the nature of an experience to have implications which go far
beyond what is at first consciously noted in it. Bringing these
connections or implications to consciousness enhances the meaning
of the experience. Any experience, however trivial in its first
appearance, is capable of assuming an indefinite richness of
significance by extending its range of perceived connections.
Normal communication with others is the readiest way of effecting
this development, for it links up the net results of the experience of
the group and even the race with the immediate experience of an
individual. By normal communication is meant that in which there is
a joint interest, a common interest, so that one is eager to give and
the other to take. It contrasts with telling or stating things simply for
the sake of impressing them upon another, merely in order to test
him to see how much he has retained and can literally reproduce.
Geography and history are the two great school resources for
bringing about the enlargement of the significance of a direct
personal experience. The active occupations described in the
previous chapter reach out in space and time with respect to both
nature and man. Unless they are taught for external reasons or as
mere modes of skill their chief educational value is that they
provide the most direct and interesting roads out into the larger
world of meanings stated in history and geography. While history
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makes human implications explicit and geography natural
connections, these subjects are two phases of the same living whole,
since the life of men in association goes on in nature, not as an
accidental setting, but as the material and medium of development.
Chapter Seventeen: Science in the Course of Study
1. The Logical and the Psychological. By science is meant, as already
stated, that knowledge which is the outcome of methods of
observation, reflection, and testing which are deliberately adopted to
secure a settled, assured subject matter. It involves an intelligent and
persistent endeavor to revise current beliefs so as to weed out what
is erroneous, to add to their accuracy, and, above all, to give them
such shape that the dependencies of the various facts upon one
another may be as obvious as possible. It is, like all knowledge, an
outcome of activity bringing about certain changes in the
environment. But in its case, the quality of the resulting knowledge
is the controlling factor and not an incident of the activity. Both
logically and educationally, science is the perfecting of knowing, its
last stage.
Science, in short, signifies a realization of the logical implications of
any knowledge. Logical order is not a form imposed upon what is
known; it is the proper form of knowledge as perfected. For it
means that the statement of subject matter is of a nature to exhibit
to one who understands it the premises from which it follows and
the conclusions to which it points (See ante, p. 190). As from a few
bones the competent zoologist reconstructs an animal; so from the
form of a statement in mathematics or physics the specialist in the
subject can form an idea of the system of truths in which it has its
place.
To the non-expert, however, this perfected form is a stumbling
block. Just because the material is stated with reference to the
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furtherance of knowledge as an end in itself, its connections with
the material of everyday life are hidden. To the layman the bones are
a mere curiosity. Until he had mastered the principles of zoology,
his efforts to make anything out of them would be random and
blind. From the standpoint of the learner scientific form is an ideal
to be achieved, not a starting point from which to set out. It is,
nevertheless, a frequent practice to start in instruction with the
rudiments of science somewhat simplified. The necessary
consequence is an isolation of science from significant experience.
The pupil learns symbols without the key to their meaning. He
acquires a technical body of information without ability to trace its
connections with the objects and operations with which he is
familiar--often he acquires simply a peculiar vocabulary. There is a
strong temptation to assume that presenting subject matter in its
perfected form provides a royal road to learning. What more natural
than to suppose that the immature can be saved time and energy,
and be protected from needless error by commencing where
competent inquirers have left off? The outcome is written large in
the history of education. Pupils begin their study of science with
texts in which the subject is organized into topics according to the
order of the specialist. Technical concepts, with their definitions, are
introduced at the outset. Laws are introduced at a very early stage,
with at best a few indications of the way in which they were arrived
at. The pupils learn a "science" instead of learning the scientific way
of treating the familiar material of ordinary experience. The method
of the advanced student dominates college teaching; the approach
of the college is transferred into the high school, and so down the
line, with such omissions as may make the subject easier.
The chronological method which begins with the experience of the
learner and develops from that the proper modes of scientific
treatment is often called the "psychological" method in distinction
from the logical method of the expert or specialist. The apparent
loss of time involved is more than made up for by the superior
understanding and vital interest secured. What the pupil learns he at
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least understands. Moreover by following, in connection with
problems selected from the material of ordinary acquaintance, the
methods by which scientific men have reached their perfected
knowledge, he gains independent power to deal with material within
his range, and avoids the mental confusion and intellectual distaste
attendant upon studying matter whose meaning is only symbolic.
Since the mass of pupils are never going to become scientific
specialists, it is much more important that they should get some
insight into what scientific method means than that they should
copy at long range and second hand the results which scientific men
have reached. Students will not go so far, perhaps, in the "ground
covered," but they will be sure and intelligent as far as they do go.
And it is safe to say that the few who go on to be scientific experts
will have a better preparation than if they had been swamped with a
large mass of purely technical and symbolically stated information.
In fact, those who do become successful men of science are those
who by their own power manage to avoid the pitfalls of a traditional
scholastic introduction into it.
The contrast between the expectations of the men who a generation
or two ago strove, against great odds, to secure a place for science in
education, and the result generally achieved is painful. Herbert
Spencer, inquiring what knowledge is of most worth, concluded that
from all points of view scientific knowledge is most valuable. But
his argument unconsciously assumed that scientific knowledge could
be communicated in a ready-made form. Passing over the methods
by which the subject matter of our ordinary activities is transmuted
into scientific form, it ignored the method by which alone science is
science. Instruction has too often proceeded upon an analogous
plan. But there is no magic attached to material stated in technically
correct scientific form. When learned in this condition it remains a
body of inert information. Moreover its form of statement removes
it further from fruitful contact with everyday experiences than does
the mode of statement proper to literature. Nevertheless that the
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claims made for instruction in science were unjustifiable does not
follow. For material so taught is not science to the pupil.
Contact with things and laboratory exercises, while a great
improvement upon textbooks arranged upon the deductive plan, do
not of themselves suffice to meet the need. While they are an
indispensable portion of scientific method, they do not as a matter
of course constitute scientific method. Physical materials may be
manipulated with scientific apparatus, but the materials may be
disassociated in themselves and in the ways in which they are
handled, from the materials and processes used out of school. The
problems dealt with may be only problems of science: problems,
that is, which would occur to one already initiated in the science of
the subject. Our attention may be devoted to getting skill in
technical manipulation without reference to the connection of
laboratory exercises with a problem belonging to subject matter.
There is sometimes a ritual of laboratory instruction as well as of
heathen religion. 1 It has been mentioned, incidentally, that scientific
statements, or logical form, implies the use of signs or symbols. The
statement applies, of course, to all use of language. But in the
vernacular, the mind proceeds directly from the symbol to the thing
signified. Association with familiar material is so close that the mind
does not pause upon the sign. The signs are intended only to stand
for things and acts. But scientific terminology has an additional use.
It is designed, as we have seen, not to stand for the things directly in
their practical use in experience, but for the things placed in a
cognitive system. Ultimately, of course, they denote the things of
our common sense acquaintance. But immediately they do not
designate them in their common context, but translated into terms
of scientific inquiry. Atoms, molecules, chemical formulae, the
mathematical propositions in the study of physics--all these have
primarily an intellectual value and only indirectly an empirical value.
They represent instruments for the carrying on of science. As in the
case of other tools, their significance can be learned only by use. We
cannot procure understanding of their meaning by pointing to
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things, but only by pointing to their work when they are employed
as part of the technique of knowledge. Even the circle, square, etc.,
of geometry exhibit a difference from the squares and circles of
familiar acquaintance, and the further one proceeds in mathematical
science the greater the remoteness from the everyday empirical
thing. Qualities which do not count for the pursuit of knowledge
about spatial relations are left out; those which are important for
this purpose are accentuated. If one carries his study far enough, he
will find even the properties which are significant for spatial
knowledge giving way to those which facilitate knowledge of other
things--perhaps a knowledge of the general relations of number.
There will be nothing in the conceptual definitions even to suggest
spatial form, size, or direction. This does not mean that they are
unreal mental inventions, but it indicates that direct physical qualities
have been transmuted into tools for a special end--the end of
intellectual organization. In every machine the primary state of
material has been modified by subordinating it to use for a purpose.
Not the stuff in its original form but in its adaptation to an end is
important. No one would have a knowledge of a machine who
could enumerate all the materials entering into its structure, but only
he who knew their uses and could tell why they are employed as
they are. In like fashion one has a knowledge of mathematical
conceptions only when he sees the problems in which they function
and their specific utility in dealing with these problems. "Knowing"
the definitions, rules, formulae, etc., is like knowing the names of
parts of a machine without knowing what they do. In one case, as in
the other, the meaning, or intellectual content, is what the element
accomplishes in the system of which it is a member.
2. Science and Social Progress. Assuming that the development of
the direct knowledge gained in occupations of social interest is
carried to a perfected logical form, the question arises as to its place
in experience. In general, the reply is that science marks the
emancipation of mind from devotion to customary purposes and
makes possible the systematic pursuit of new ends. It is the agency
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of progress in action. Progress is sometimes thought of as
consisting in getting nearer to ends already sought. But this is a
minor form of progress, for it requires only improvement of the
means of action or technical advance. More important modes of
progress consist in enriching prior purposes and in forming new
ones. Desires are not a fixed quantity, nor does progress mean only
an increased amount of satisfaction. With increased culture and new
mastery of nature, new desires, demands for new qualities of
satisfaction, show themselves, for intelligence perceives new
possibilities of action. This projection of new possibilities leads to
search for new means of execution, and progress takes place; while
the discovery of objects not already used leads to suggestion of new
ends.
That science is the chief means of perfecting control of means of
action is witnessed by the great crop of inventions which followed
intellectual command of the secrets of nature. The wonderful
transformation of production and distribution known as the
industrial revolution is the fruit of experimental science. Railways,
steamboats, electric motors, telephone and telegraph, automobiles,
aeroplanes and dirigibles are conspicuous evidences of the
application of science in life. But none of them would be of much
importance without the thousands of less sensational inventions by
means of which natural science has been rendered tributary to our
daily life.
It must be admitted that to a considerable extent the progress thus
procured has been only technical: it has provided more efficient
means for satisfying preexistent desires, rather than modified the
quality of human purposes. There is, for example, no modern
civilization which is the equal of Greek culture in all respects.
Science is still too recent to have been absorbed into imaginative
and emotional disposition. Men move more swiftly and surely to the
realization of their ends, but their ends too largely remain what they
were prior to scientific enlightenment. This fact places upon
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education the responsibility of using science in a way to modify the
habitual attitude of imagination and feeling, not leave it just an
extension of our physical arms and legs.
The advance of science has already modified men's thoughts of the
purposes and goods of life to a sufficient extent to give some idea
of the nature of this responsibility and the ways of meeting it.
Science taking effect in human activity has broken down physical
barriers which formerly separated men; it has immensely widened
the area of intercourse. It has brought about interdependence of
interests on an enormous scale. It has brought with it an established
conviction of the possibility of control of nature in the interests of
mankind and thus has led men to look to the future, instead of the
past. The coincidence of the ideal of progress with the advance of
science is not a mere coincidence. Before this advance men placed
the golden age in remote antiquity. Now they face the future with a
firm belief that intelligence properly used can do away with evils
once thought inevitable. To subjugate devastating disease is no
longer a dream; the hope of abolishing poverty is not utopian.
Science has familiarized men with the idea of development, taking
effect practically in persistent gradual amelioration of the estate of
our common humanity.
The problem of an educational use of science is then to create an
intelligence pregnant with belief in the possibility of the direction
of human affairs by itself. The method of science engrained
through education in habit means emancipation from rule of thumb
and from the routine generated by rule of thumb procedure. The
word empirical in its ordinary use does not mean "connected with
experiment," but rather crude and unrational. Under the influence
of conditions created by the non-existence of experimental science,
experience was opposed in all the ruling philosophies of the past to
reason and the truly rational. Empirical knowledge meant the
knowledge accumulated by a multitude of past instances without
intelligent insight into the principles of any of them. To say that
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medicine was empirical meant that it was not scientific, but a mode
of practice based upon accumulated observations of diseases and
of remedies used more or less at random. Such a mode of practice
is of necessity happy-go-lucky; success depends upon chance. It
lends itself to deception and quackery. Industry that is "empirically"
controlled forbids constructive applications of intelligence; it
depends upon following in an imitative slavish manner the models
set in the past. Experimental science means the possibility of using
past experiences as the servant, not the master, of mind. It means
that reason operates within experience, not beyond it, to give it an
intelligent or reasonable quality. Science is experience becoming
rational. The effect of science is thus to change men's idea of the
nature and inherent possibilities of experience. By the same token, it
changes the idea and the operation of reason. Instead of being
something beyond experience, remote, aloof, concerned with a
sublime region that has nothing to do with the experienced facts of
life, it is found indigenous in experience:--the factor by which past
experiences are purified and rendered into tools for discovery and
advance.
The term "abstract" has a rather bad name in popular speech, being
used to signify not only that which is abstruse and hard to
understand, but also that which is far away from life. But abstraction
is an indispensable trait in reflective direction of activity. Situations
do not literally repeat themselves. Habit treats new occurrences as if
they were identical with old ones; it suffices, accordingly, when the
different or novel element is negligible for present purposes. But
when the new element requires especial attention, random reaction
is the sole recourse unless abstraction is brought into play. For
abstraction deliberately selects from the subject matter of former
experiences that which is thought helpful in dealing with the new. It
signifies conscious transfer of a meaning embedded in past
experience for use in a new one. It is the very artery of intelligence,
of the intentional rendering of one experience available for
guidance of another.
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Science carries on this working over of prior subject matter on a
large scale. It aims to free an experience from all which is purely
personal and strictly immediate; it aims to detach whatever it has in
common with the subject matter of other experiences, and which,
being common, may be saved for further use. It is, thus, an
indispensable factor in social progress. In any experience just as it
occurs there is much which, while it may be of precious import to
the individual implicated in the experience, is peculiar and
unreduplicable. From the standpoint of science, this material is
accidental, while the features which are widely shared are essential.
Whatever is unique in the situation, since dependent upon the
peculiarities of the individual and the coincidence of circumstance,
is not available for others; so that unless what is shared is abstracted
and fixed by a suitable symbol, practically all the value of the
experience may perish in its passing. But abstraction and the use of
terms to record what is abstracted put the net value of individual
experience at the permanent disposal of mankind. No one can
foresee in detail when or how it may be of further use. The man of
science in developing his abstractions is like a manufacturer of tools
who does not know who will use them nor when. But intellectual
tools are indefinitely more flexible in their range of adaptation than
other mechanical tools.
Generalization is the counterpart of abstraction. It is the
functioning of an abstraction in its application to a new concrete
experience,--its extension to clarify and direct new situations.
Reference to these possible applications is necessary in order that
the abstraction may be fruitful, instead of a barren formalism
ending in itself. Generalization is essentially a social device. When
men identified their interests exclusively with the concerns of a
narrow group, their generalizations were correspondingly restricted.
The viewpoint did not permit a wide and free survey. Men's
thoughts were tied down to a contracted space and a short time,--
limited to their own established customs as a measure of all possible
values. Scientific abstraction and generalization are equivalent to
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taking the point of view of any man, whatever his location in time
and space. While this emancipation from the conditions and
episodes of concrete experiences accounts for the remoteness, the
"abstractness," of science, it also accounts for its wide and free
range of fruitful novel applications in practice. Terms and
propositions record, fix, and convey what is abstracted. A meaning
detached from a given experience cannot remain hanging in the air.
It must acquire a local habitation. Names give abstract meanings a
physical locus and body. Formulation is thus not an after-thought or
by-product; it is essential to the completion of the work of thought.
Persons know many things which they cannot express, but such
knowledge remains practical, direct, and personal. An individual can
use it for himself; he may be able to act upon it with efficiency.
Artists and executives often have their knowledge in this state. But it
is personal, untransferable, and, as it were, instinctive. To formulate
the significance of an experience a man must take into conscious
account the experiences of others. He must try to find a standpoint
which includes the experience of others as well as his own.
Otherwise his communication cannot be understood. He talks a
language which no one else knows. While literary art furnishes the
supreme successes in stating of experiences so that they are vitally
significant to others, the vocabulary of science is designed, in
another fashion, to express the meaning of experienced things in
symbols which any one will know who studies the science. Aesthetic
formulation reveals and enhances the meaning of experiences one
already has; scientific formulation supplies one with tools for
constructing new experiences with transformed meanings.
To sum up: Science represents the office of intelligence, in
projection and control of new experiences, pursued systematically,
intentionally, and on a scale due to freedom from limitations of
habit. It is the sole instrumentality of conscious, as distinct from
accidental, progress. And if its generality, its remoteness from
individual conditions, confer upon it a certain technicality and
aloofness, these qualities are very different from those of merely
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speculative theorizing. The latter are in permanent dislocation from
practice; the former are temporarily detached for the sake of wider
and freer application in later concrete action. There is a kind of idle
theory which is antithetical to practice; but genuinely scientific
theory falls within practice as the agency of its expansion and its
direction to new possibilities.
3. Naturalism and Humanism in Education. There exists an
educational tradition which opposes science to literature and history
in the curriculum. The quarrel between the representatives of the
two interests is easily explicable historically. Literature and language
and a literary philosophy were entrenched in all higher institutions
of learning before experimental science came into being. The latter
had naturally to win its way. No fortified and protected interest
readily surrenders any monopoly it may possess. But the
assumption, from whichever side, that language and literary
products are exclusively humanistic in quality, and that science is
purely physical in import, is a false notion which tends to cripple the
educational use of both studies. Human life does not occur in a
vacuum, nor is nature a mere stage setting for the enactment of its
drama (ante, p. 211). Man's life is bound up in the processes of
nature; his career, for success or defeat, depends upon the way in
which nature enters it. Man's power of deliberate control of his own
affairs depends upon ability to direct natural energies to use: an
ability which is in turn dependent upon insight into nature's
processes. Whatever natural science may be for the specialist, for
educational purposes it is knowledge of the conditions of human
action. To be aware of the medium in which social intercourse goes
on, and of the means and obstacles to its progressive development
is to be in command of a knowledge which is thoroughly
humanistic in quality. One who is ignorant of the history of science
is ignorant of the struggles by which mankind has passed from
routine and caprice, from superstitious subjection to nature, from
efforts to use it magically, to intellectual self-possession. That
science may be taught as a set of formal and technical exercises is
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only too true. This happens whenever information about the world
is made an end in itself. The failure of such instruction to procure
culture is not, however, evidence of the antithesis of natural
knowledge to humanistic concern, but evidence of a wrong
educational attitude. Dislike to employ scientific knowledge as it
functions in men's occupations is itself a survival of an aristocratic
culture. The notion that "applied" knowledge is somehow less
worthy than "pure" knowledge, was natural to a society in which all
useful work was performed by slaves and serfs, and in which
industry was controlled by the models set by custom rather than by
intelligence. Science, or the highest knowing, was then identified
with pure theorizing, apart from all application in the uses of life;
and knowledge relating to useful arts suffered the stigma attaching
to the classes who engaged in them (See below, Ch. XIX). The idea
of science thus generated persisted after science had itself adopted
the appliances of the arts, using them for the production of
knowledge, and after the rise of democracy. Taking theory just as
theory, however, that which concerns humanity is of more
significance for man than that which concerns a merely physical
world. In adopting the criterion of knowledge laid down by a
literary culture, aloof from the practical needs of the mass of men,
the educational advocates of scientific education put themselves at a
strategic disadvantage. So far as they adopt the idea of science
appropriate to its experimental method and to the movements of a
democratic and industrial society, they have no difficulty in showing
that natural science is more humanistic than an alleged humanism
which bases its educational schemes upon the specialized interests
of a leisure class. For, as we have already stated, humanistic studies
when set in opposition to study of nature are hampered. They tend
to reduce themselves to exclusively literary and linguistic studies,
which in turn tend to shrink to "the classics," to languages no longer
spoken. For modern languages may evidently be put to use, and
hence fall under the ban. It would be hard to find anything in
history more ironical than the educational practices which have
identified the "humanities" exclusively with a knowledge of Greek
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and Latin. Greek and Roman art and institutions made such
important contributions to our civilization that there should always
be the amplest opportunities for making their acquaintance. But to
regard them as par excellence the humane studies involves a
deliberate neglect of the possibilities of the subject matter which is
accessible in education to the masses, and tends to cultivate a
narrow snobbery: that of a learned class whose insignia are the
accidents of exclusive opportunity. Knowledge is humanistic in
quality not because it is about human products in the past, but
because of what it does in liberating human intelligence and human
sympathy. Any subject matter which accomplishes this result is
humane, and any subject matter which does not accomplish it is not
even educational.
Summary.
Science represents the fruition of the cognitive factors in
experience. Instead of contenting itself with a mere statement of
what commends itself to personal or customary experience, it aims
at a statement which will reveal the sources, grounds, and
consequences of a belief. The achievement of this aim gives logical
character to the statements. Educationally, it has to be noted that
logical characteristics of method, since they belong to subject matter
which has reached a high degree of intellectual elaboration, are
different from the method of the learner--the chronological order
of passing from a cruder to a more refined intellectual quality of
experience. When this fact is ignored, science is treated as so much
bare information, which however is less interesting and more
remote than ordinary information, being stated in an unusual and
technical vocabulary. The function which science has to perform in
the curriculum is that which it has performed for the race:
emancipation from local and temporary incidents of experience, and
the opening of intellectual vistas unobscured by the accidents of
personal habit and predilection. The logical traits of abstraction,
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generalization, and definite formulation are all associated with this
function. In emancipating an idea from the particular context in
which it originated and giving it a wider reference the results of the
experience of any individual are put at the disposal of all men. Thus
ultimately and philosophically science is the organ of general social
progress. 1 Upon the positive side, the value of problems arising in
work in the garden, the shop, etc., may be referred to (See p. 200).
The laboratory may be treated as an additional resource to supply
conditions and appliances for the better pursuit of these problems.
Chapter Eighteen: Educational Values
The considerations involved in a discussion of educational values
have already been brought out in the discussion of aims and
interests.
The specific values usually discussed in educational theories coincide
with aims which are usually urged. They are such things as utility,
culture, information, preparation for social efficiency, mental
discipline or power, and so on. The aspect of these aims in virtue of
which they are valuable has been treated in our analysis of the
nature of interest, and there is no difference between speaking of
art as an interest or concern and referring to it as a value. It
happens, however, that discussion of values has usually been
centered about a consideration of the various ends subserved by
specific subjects of the curriculum. It has been a part of the attempt
to justify those subjects by pointing out the significant contributions
to life accruing from their study. An explicit discussion of
educational values thus affords an opportunity for reviewing the
prior discussion of aims and interests on one hand and of the
curriculum on the other, by bringing them into connection with one
another.
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1. The Nature of Realization or Appreciation. Much of our
experience is indirect; it is dependent upon signs which intervene
between the things and ourselves, signs which stand for or represent
the former. It is one thing to have been engaged in war, to have
shared its dangers and hardships; it is another thing to hear or read
about it. All language, all symbols, are implements of an indirect
experience; in technical language the experience which is procured
by their means is "mediated." It stands in contrast with an
immediate, direct experience, something in which we take part
vitally and at first hand, instead of through the intervention of
representative media. As we have seen, the scope of personal, vitally
direct experience is very limited. If it were not for the intervention
of agencies for representing absent and distant affairs, our
experience would remain almost on the level of that of the brutes.
Every step from savagery to civilization is dependent upon the
invention of media which enlarge the range of purely immediate
experience and give it deepened as well as wider meaning by
connecting it with things which can only be signified or symbolized.
It is doubtless this fact which is the cause of the disposition to
identify an uncultivated person with an illiterate person--so
dependent are we on letters for effective representative or indirect
experience.
At the same time (as we have also had repeated occasion to see)
there is always a danger that symbols will not be truly representative;
danger that instead of really calling up the absent and remote in a
way to make it enter a present experience, the linguistic media of
representation will become an end in themselves. Formal education
is peculiarly exposed to this danger, with the result that when
literacy supervenes, mere bookishness, what is popularly termed the
academic, too often comes with it. In colloquial speech, the phrase a
"realizing sense" is used to express the urgency, warmth, and
intimacy of a direct experience in contrast with the remote, pallid,
and coldly detached quality of a representative experience. The
terms "mental realization" and "appreciation" (or genuine
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appreciation) are more elaborate names for the realizing sense of a
thing. It is not possible to define these ideas except by synonyms,
like "coming home to one" "really taking it in," etc., for the only way
to appreciate what is meant by a direct experience of a thing is by
having it. But it is the difference between reading a technical
description of a picture, and seeing it; or between just seeing it and
being moved by it; between learning mathematical equations about
light and being carried away by some peculiarly glorious illumination
of a misty landscape. We are thus met by the danger of the
tendency of technique and other purely representative forms to
encroach upon the sphere of direct appreciations; in other words,
the tendency to assume that pupils have a foundation of direct
realization of situations sufficient for the superstructure of
representative experience erected by formulated school studies. This
is not simply a matter of quantity or bulk. Sufficient direct
experience is even more a matter of quality; it must be of a sort to
connect readily and fruitfully with the symbolic material of
instruction. Before teaching can safely enter upon conveying facts
and ideas through the media of signs, schooling must provide
genuine situations in which personal participation brings home the
import of the material and the problems which it conveys. From the
standpoint of the pupil, the resulting experiences are worth while on
their own account; from the standpoint of the teacher they are also
means of supplying subject matter required for understanding
instruction involving signs, and of evoking attitudes of open-
mindedness and concern as to the material symbolically conveyed.
In the outline given of the theory of educative subject matter, the
demand for this background of realization or appreciation is met by
the provision made for play and active occupations embodying
typical situations. Nothing need be added to what has already been
said except to point out that while the discussion dealt explicitly
with the subject matter of primary education, where the demand for
the available background of direct experience is most obvious, the
principle applies to the primary or elementary phase of every
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subject. The first and basic function of laboratory work, for
example, in a high school or college in a new field, is to familiarize
the student at first hand with a certain range of facts and problems
--to give him a "feeling" for them. Getting command of technique
and of methods of reaching and testing generalizations is at first
secondary to getting appreciation. As regards the primary school
activities, it is to be borne in mind that the fundamental intent is not
to amuse nor to convey information with a minimum of vexation
nor yet to acquire skill,--though these results may accrue as by-
products,--but to enlarge and enrich the scope of experience, and
to keep alert and effective the interest in intellectual progress.
The rubric of appreciation supplies an appropriate head for
bringing out three further principles: the nature of effective or real
(as distinct from nominal) standards of value; the place of the
imagination in appreciative realizations; and the place of the fine
arts in the course of study.
1. The nature of standards of valuation. Every adult has acquired, in
the course of his prior experience and education, certain measures
of the worth of various sorts of experience. He has learned to look
upon qualities like honesty, amiability, perseverance, loyalty, as moral
goods; upon certain classics of literature, painting, music, as
aesthetic values, and so on. Not only this, but he has learned certain
rules for these values--the golden rule in morals; harmony, balance,
etc., proportionate distribution in aesthetic goods; definition, clarity,
system in intellectual accomplishments. These principles are so
important as standards of judging the worth of new experiences
that parents and instructors are always tending to teach them
directly to the young. They overlook the danger that standards so
taught will be merely symbolic; that is, largely conventional and
verbal. In reality, working as distinct from professed standards
depend upon what an individual has himself specifically appreciated
to be deeply significant in concrete situations. An individual may
have learned that certain characteristics are conventionally esteemed
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in music; he may be able to converse with some correctness about
classic music; he may even honestly believe that these traits
constitute his own musical standards. But if in his own past
experience, what he has been most accustomed to and has most
enjoyed is ragtime, his active or working measures of valuation are
fixed on the ragtime level. The appeal actually made to him in his
own personal realization fixes his attitude much more deeply than
what he has been taught as the proper thing to say; his habitual
disposition thus fixed forms his real "norm" of valuation in
subsequent musical experiences.
Probably few would deny this statement as to musical taste. But it
applies equally well in judgments of moral and intellectual worth. A
youth who has had repeated experience of the full meaning of the
value of kindliness toward others built into his disposition has a
measure of the worth of generous treatment of others. Without this
vital appreciation, the duty and virtue of unselfishness impressed
upon him by others as a standard remains purely a matter of
symbols which he cannot adequately translate into realities. His
"knowledge" is second-handed; it is only a knowledge that others
prize unselfishness as an excellence, and esteem him in the degree in
which he exhibits it. Thus there grows up a split between a person's
professed standards and his actual ones. A person may be aware of
the results of this struggle between his inclinations and his
theoretical opinions; he suffers from the conflict between doing
what is really dear to him and what he has learned will win the
approval of others. But of the split itself he is unaware; the result is
a kind of unconscious hypocrisy, an instability of disposition. In
similar fashion, a pupil who has worked through some confused
intellectual situation and fought his way to clearing up obscurities in
a definite outcome, appreciates the value of clarity and definition.
He has a standard which can be depended upon. He may be trained
externally to go through certain motions of analysis and division of
subject matter and may acquire information about the value of these
processes as standard logical functions, but unless it somehow
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comes home to him at some point as an appreciation of his own,
the significance of the logical norms--so-called--remains as much
an external piece of information as, say, the names of rivers in
China. He may be able to recite, but the recital is a mechanical
rehearsal.
It is, then, a serious mistake to regard appreciation as if it were
confined to such things as literature and pictures and music. Its
scope is as comprehensive as the work of education itself. The
formation of habits is a purely mechanical thing unless habits are
also tastes--habitual modes of preference and esteem, an effective
sense of excellence. There are adequate grounds for asserting that
the premium so often put in schools upon external "discipline," and
upon marks and rewards, upon promotion and keeping back, are the
obverse of the lack of attention given to life situations in which the
meaning of facts, ideas, principles, and problems is vitally brought
home.
2. Appreciative realizations are to be distinguished from symbolic or
representative experiences. They are not to be distinguished from
the work of the intellect or understanding. Only a personal response
involving imagination can possibly procure realization even of pure
"facts." The imagination is the medium of appreciation in every
field. The engagement of the imagination is the only thing that
makes any activity more than mechanical. Unfortunately, it is too
customary to identify the imaginative with the imaginary, rather than
with a warm and intimate taking in of the full scope of a situation.
This leads to an exaggerated estimate of fairy tales, myths, fanciful
symbols, verse, and something labeled "Fine Art," as agencies for
developing imagination and appreciation; and, by neglecting
imaginative vision in other matters, leads to methods which reduce
much instruction to an unimaginative acquiring of specialized skill
and amassing of a load of information. Theory, and--to some
extent--practice, have advanced far enough to recognize that play-
activity is an imaginative enterprise. But it is still usual to regard this
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activity as a specially marked-off stage of childish growth, and to
overlook the fact that the difference between play and what is
regarded as serious employment should be not a difference between
the presence and absence of imagination, but a difference in the
materials with which imagination is occupied. The result is an
unwholesome exaggeration of the phantastic and "unreal" phases
of childish play and a deadly reduction of serious occupation to a
routine efficiency prized simply for its external tangible results.
Achievement comes to denote the sort of thing that a well-planned
machine can do better than a human being can, and the main effect
of education, the achieving of a life of rich significance, drops by
the wayside. Meantime mind-wandering and wayward fancy are
nothing but the unsuppressible imagination cut loose from concern
with what is done.
An adequate recognition of the play of imagination as the medium
of realization of every kind of thing which lies beyond the scope of
direct physical response is the sole way of escape from mechanical
methods in teaching. The emphasis put in this book, in accord with
many tendencies in contemporary education, upon activity, will be
misleading if it is not recognized that the imagination is as much a
normal and integral part of human activity as is muscular
movement. The educative value of manual activities and of
laboratory exercises, as well as of play, depends upon the extent in
which they aid in bringing about a sensing of the meaning of what
is going on. In effect, if not in name, they are dramatizations. Their
utilitarian value in forming habits of skill to be used for tangible
results is important, but not when isolated from the appreciative
side. Were it not for the accompanying play of imagination, there
would be no road from a direct activity to representative knowledge;
for it is by imagination that symbols are translated over into a direct
meaning and integrated with a narrower activity so as to expand and
enrich it. When the representative creative imagination is made
merely literary and mythological, symbols are rendered mere means
of directing physical reactions of the organs of speech.
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3. In the account previously given nothing was explicitly said about
the place of literature and the fine arts in the course of study. The
omission at that point was intentional. At the outset, there is no
sharp demarcation of useful, or industrial, arts and fine arts. The
activities mentioned in Chapter XV contain within themselves the
factors later discriminated into fine and useful arts. As engaging the
emotions and the imagination, they have the qualities which give the
fine arts their quality. As demanding method or skill, the adaptation
of tools to materials with constantly increasing perfection, they
involve the element of technique indispensable to artistic
production. From the standpoint of product, or the work of art,
they are naturally defective, though even in this respect when they
comprise genuine appreciation they often have a rudimentary
charm. As experiences they have both an artistic and an esthetic
quality. When they emerge into activities which are tested by their
product and when the socially serviceable value of the product is
emphasized, they pass into useful or industrial arts. When they
develop in the direction of an enhanced appreciation of the
immediate qualities which appeal to taste, they grow into fine arts.
In one of its meanings, appreciation is opposed to depreciation. It
denotes an enlarged, an intensified prizing, not merely a prizing,
much less--like depreciation--a lowered and degraded prizing. This
enhancement of the qualities which make any ordinary experience
appealing, appropriable--capable of full assimilation--and
enjoyable, constitutes the prime function of literature, music,
drawing, painting, etc., in education. They are not the exclusive
agencies of appreciation in the most general sense of that word; but
they are the chief agencies of an intensified, enhanced appreciation.
As such, they are not only intrinsically and directly enjoyable, but
they serve a purpose beyond themselves. They have the office, in
increased degree, of all appreciation in fixing taste, in forming
standards for the worth of later experiences. They arouse discontent
with conditions which fall below their measure; they create a
demand for surroundings coming up to their own level. They reveal
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a depth and range of meaning in experiences which otherwise might
be mediocre and trivial. They supply, that is, organs of vision.
Moreover, in their fullness they represent the concentration and
consummation of elements of good which are otherwise scattered
and incomplete. They select and focus the elements of enjoyable
worth which make any experience directly enjoyable. They are not
luxuries of education, but emphatic expressions of that which
makes any education worth while.
2. The Valuation of Studies. The theory of educational values
involves not only an account of the nature of appreciation as fixing
the measure of subsequent valuations, but an account of the
specific directions in which these valuations occur. To value means
primarily to prize, to esteem; but secondarily it means to apprise, to
estimate. It means, that is, the act of cherishing something, holding
it dear, and also the act of passing judgment upon the nature and
amount of its value as compared with something else. To value in
the latter sense is to valuate or evaluate. The distinction coincides
with that sometimes made between intrinsic and instrumental
values. Intrinsic values are not objects of judgment, they cannot (as
intrinsic) be compared, or regarded as greater and less, better or
worse. They are invaluable; and if a thing is invaluable, it is neither
more nor less so than any other invaluable. But occasions present
themselves when it is necessary to choose, when we must let one
thing go in order to take another. This establishes an order of
preference, a greater and less, better and worse. Things judged or
passed upon have to be estimated in relation to some third thing,
some further end. With respect to that, they are means, or
instrumental values.
We may imagine a man who at one time thoroughly enjoys converse
with his friends, at another the hearing of a symphony; at another
the eating of his meals; at another the reading of a book; at another
the earning of money, and so on. As an appreciative realization,
each of these is an intrinsic value. It occupies a particular place in
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life; it serves its own end, which cannot be supplied by a substitute.
There is no question of comparative value, and hence none of
valuation. Each is the specific good which it is, and that is all that
can be said. In its own place, none is a means to anything beyond
itself. But there may arise a situation in which they compete or
conflict, in which a choice has to be made. Now comparison comes
in. Since a choice has to be made, we want to know the respective
claims of each competitor. What is to be said for it? What does it
offer in comparison with, as balanced over against, some other
possibility? Raising these questions means that a particular good is
no longer an end in itself, an intrinsic good. For if it were, its claims
would be incomparable, imperative. The question is now as to its
status as a means of realizing something else, which is then the
invaluable of that situation. If a man has just eaten, or if he is well
fed generally and the opportunity to hear music is a rarity, he will
probably prefer the music to eating. In the given situation that will
render the greater contribution. If he is starving, or if he is satiated
with music for the time being, he will naturally judge food to have
the greater worth. In the abstract or at large, apart from the needs
of a particular situation in which choice has to be made, there is no
such thing as degrees or order of value. Certain conclusions follow
with respect to educational values. We cannot establish a hierarchy
of values among studies. It is futile to attempt to arrange them in an
order, beginning with one having least worth and going on to that
of maximum value. In so far as any study has a unique or
irreplaceable function in experience, in so far as it marks a
characteristic enrichment of life, its worth is intrinsic or
incomparable. Since education is not a means to living, but is
identical with the operation of living a life which is fruitful and
inherently significant, the only ultimate value which can be set up is
just the process of living itself. And this is not an end to which
studies and activities are subordinate means; it is the whole of which
they are ingredients. And what has been said about appreciation
means that every study in one of its aspects ought to have just such
ultimate significance. It is true of arithmetic as it is of poetry that in
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some place and at some time it ought to be a good to be appreciated
on its own account--just as an enjoyable experience, in short. If it is
not, then when the time and place come for it to be used as a means
or instrumentality, it will be in just that much handicapped. Never
having been realized or appreciated for itself, one will miss
something of its capacity as a resource for other ends.
It equally follows that when we compare studies as to their values,
that is, treat them as means to something beyond themselves, that
which controls their proper valuation is found in the specific
situation in which they are to be used. The way to enable a student
to apprehend the instrumental value of arithmetic is not to lecture
him upon the benefit it will be to him in some remote and uncertain
future, but to let him discover that success in something he is
interested in doing depends upon ability to use number.
It also follows that the attempt to distribute distinct sorts of value
among different studies is a misguided one, in spite of the amount
of time recently devoted to the undertaking. Science for example
may have any kind of value, depending upon the situation into
which it enters as a means. To some the value of science may be
military; it may be an instrument in strengthening means of offense
or defense; it may be technological, a tool for engineering; or it may
be commercial--an aid in the successful conduct of business; under
other conditions, its worth may be philanthropic--the service it
renders in relieving human suffering; or again it may be quite
conventional--of value in establishing one's social status as an
"educated" person. As matter of fact, science serves all these
purposes, and it would be an arbitrary task to try to fix upon one of
them as its "real" end. All that we can be sure of educationally is
that science should be taught so as to be an end in itself in the lives
of students--something worth while on account of its own unique
intrinsic contribution to the experience of life. Primarily it must
have "appreciation value." If we take something which seems to be
at the opposite pole, like poetry, the same sort of statement applies.
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It may be that, at the present time, its chief value is the contribution
it makes to the enjoyment of leisure. But that may represent a
degenerate condition rather than anything necessary. Poetry has
historically been allied with religion and morals; it has served the
purpose of penetrating the mysterious depths of things. It has had
an enormous patriotic value. Homer to the Greeks was a Bible, a
textbook of morals, a history, and a national inspiration. In any case,
it may be said that an education which does not succeed in making
poetry a resource in the business of life as well as in its leisure, has
something the matter with it--or else the poetry is artificial poetry.
The same considerations apply to the value of a study or a topic of
a study with reference to its motivating force. Those responsible for
planning and teaching the course of study should have grounds for
thinking that the studies and topics included furnish both direct
increments to the enriching of lives of the pupils and also materials
which they can put to use in other concerns of direct interest. Since
the curriculum is always getting loaded down with purely inherited
traditional matter and with subjects which represent mainly the
energy of some influential person or group of persons in behalf of
something dear to them, it requires constant inspection, criticism,
and revision to make sure it is accomplishing its purpose. Then
there is always the probability that it represents the values of adults
rather than those of children and youth, or those of pupils a
generation ago rather than those of the present day. Hence a further
need for a critical outlook and survey. But these considerations do
not mean that for a subject to have motivating value to a pupil
(whether intrinsic or instrumental) is the same thing as for him to be
aware of the value, or to be able to tell what the study is good for.
In the first place, as long as any topic makes an immediate appeal, it
is not necessary to ask what it is good for. This is a question which
can be asked only about instrumental values. Some goods are not
good for anything; they are just goods. Any other notion leads to an
absurdity. For we cannot stop asking the question about an
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instrumental good, one whose value lies in its being good for
something, unless there is at some point something intrinsically
good, good for itself. To a hungry, healthy child, food is a good of
the situation; we do not have to bring him to consciousness of the
ends subserved by food in order to supply a motive to eat. The food
in connection with his appetite is a motive. The same thing holds of
mentally eager pupils with respect to many topics. Neither they nor
the teacher could possibly foretell with any exactness the purposes
learning is to accomplish in the future; nor as long as the eagerness
continues is it advisable to try to specify particular goods which are
to come of it. The proof of a good is found in the fact that the
pupil responds; his response is use. His response to the material
shows that the subject functions in his life. It is unsound to urge
that, say, Latin has a value per se in the abstract, just as a study, as a
sufficient justification for teaching it. But it is equally absurd to
argue that unless teacher or pupil can point out some definite
assignable future use to which it is to be put, it lacks justifying value.
When pupils are genuinely concerned in learning Latin, that is of
itself proof that it possesses value. The most which one is entitled
to ask in such cases is whether in view of the shortness of time,
there are not other things of intrinsic value which in addition have
greater instrumental value.
This brings us to the matter of instrumental values--topics studied
because of some end beyond themselves. If a child is ill and his
appetite does not lead him to eat when food is presented, or if his
appetite is perverted so that he prefers candy to meat and
vegetables, conscious reference to results is indicated. He needs to
be made conscious of consequences as a justification of the positive
or negative value of certain objects. Or the state of things may be
normal enough, and yet an individual not be moved by some matter
because he does not grasp how his attainment of some intrinsic
good depends upon active concern with what is presented. In such
cases, it is obviously the part of wisdom to establish consciousness
of connection. In general what is desirable is that a topic be
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presented in such a way that it either have an immediate value, and
require no justification, or else be perceived to be a means of
achieving something of intrinsic value. An instrumental value then
has the intrinsic value of being a means to an end. It may be
questioned whether some of the present pedagogical interest in the
matter of values of studies is not either excessive or else too narrow.
Sometimes it appears to be a labored effort to furnish an apologetic
for topics which no longer operate to any purpose, direct or
indirect, in the lives of pupils. At other times, the reaction against
useless lumber seems to have gone to the extent of supposing that
no subject or topic should be taught unless some quite definite
future utility can be pointed out by those making the course of
study or by the pupil himself, unmindful of the fact that life is its
own excuse for being; and that definite utilities which can be
pointed out are themselves justified only because they increase the
experienced content of life itself. 3. The Segregation and
Organization of Values. It is of course possible to classify in a
general way the various valuable phases of life. In order to get a
survey of aims sufficiently wide (See ante, p. 110) to give breadth
and flexibility to the enterprise of education, there is some
advantage in such a classification. But it is a great mistake to regard
these values as ultimate ends to which the concrete satisfactions of
experience are subordinate. They are nothing but generalizations,
more or less adequate, of concrete goods. Health, wealth, efficiency,
sociability, utility, culture, happiness itself are only abstract terms
which sum up a multitude of particulars. To regard such things as
standards for the valuation of concrete topics and process of
education is to subordinate to an abstraction the concrete facts from
which the abstraction is derived. They are not in any true sense
standards of valuation; these are found, as we have previously seen,
in the specific realizations which form tastes and habits of
preference. They are, however, of significance as points of view
elevated above the details of life whence to survey the field and see
how its constituent details are distributed, and whether they are well
proportioned. No classification can have other than a provisional
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validity. The following may prove of some help. We may say that the
kind of experience to which the work of the schools should
contribute is one marked by executive competency in the
management of resources and obstacles encountered (efficiency); by
sociability, or interest in the direct companionship of others; by
aesthetic taste or capacity to appreciate artistic excellence in at least
some of its classic forms; by trained intellectual method, or interest
in some mode of scientific achievement; and by sensitiveness to the
rights and claims of others--conscientiousness. And while these
considerations are not standards of value, they are useful criteria for
survey, criticism, and better organization of existing methods and
subject matter of instruction.
The need of such general points of view is the greater because of a
tendency to segregate educational values due to the isolation from
one another of the various pursuits of life. The idea is prevalent
that different studies represent separate kinds of values, and that the
curriculum should, therefore, be constituted by gathering together
various studies till a sufficient variety of independent values have
been cared for. The following quotation does not use the word
value, but it contains the notion of a curriculum constructed on the
idea that there are a number of separate ends to be reached, and
that various studies may be evaluated by referring each study to its
respective end. "Memory is trained by most studies, but best by
languages and history; taste is trained by the more advanced study
of languages, and still better by English literature; imagination by all
higher language teaching, but chiefly by Greek and Latin poetry;
observation by science work in the laboratory, though some training
is to be got from the earlier stages of Latin and Greek; for
expression, Greek and Latin composition comes first and English
composition next; for abstract reasoning, mathematics stands almost
alone; for concrete reasoning, science comes first, then geometry;
for social reasoning, the Greek and Roman historians and orators
come first, and general history next. Hence the narrowest education
which can claim to be at all complete includes Latin, one modern
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language, some history, some English literature, and one science."
There is much in the wording of this passage which is irrelevant to
our point and which must be discounted to make it clear. The
phraseology betrays the particular provincial tradition within which
the author is writing. There is the unquestioned assumption of
"faculties" to be trained, and a dominant interest in the ancient
languages; there is comparative disregard of the earth on which men
happen to live and the bodies they happen to carry around with
them. But with allowances made for these matters (even with their
complete abandonment) we find much in contemporary educational
philosophy which parallels the fundamental notion of parceling out
special values to segregated studies. Even when some one end is set
up as a standard of value, like social efficiency or culture, it will
often be found to be but a verbal heading under which a variety of
disconnected factors are comprised. And although the general
tendency is to allow a greater variety of values to a given study than
does the passage quoted, yet the attempt to inventory a number of
values attaching to each study and to state the amount of each value
which the given study possesses emphasizes an implied educational
disintegration.
As matter of fact, such schemes of values of studies are largely but
unconscious justifications of the curriculum with which one is
familiar. One accepts, for the most part, the studies of the existing
course and then assigns values to them as a sufficient reason for
their being taught. Mathematics is said to have, for example,
disciplinary value in habituating the pupil to accuracy of statement
and closeness of reasoning; it has utilitarian value in giving
command of the arts of calculation involved in trade and the arts;
culture value in its enlargement of the imagination in dealing with
the most general relations of things; even religious value in its
concept of the infinite and allied ideas. But clearly mathematics does
not accomplish such results, because it is endowed with miraculous
potencies called values; it has these values if and when it
accomplishes these results, and not otherwise. The statements may
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help a teacher to a larger vision of the possible results to be effected
by instruction in mathematical topics. But unfortunately, the
tendency is to treat the statement as indicating powers inherently
residing in the subject, whether they operate or not, and thus to give
it a rigid justification. If they do not operate, the blame is put not on
the subject as taught, but on the indifference and recalcitrancy of
pupils.
This attitude toward subjects is the obverse side of the conception
of experience or life as a patchwork of independent interests which
exist side by side and limit one another. Students of politics are
familiar with a check and balance theory of the powers of
government. There are supposed to be independent separate
functions, like the legislative, executive, judicial, administrative, and
all goes well if each of these checks all the others and thus creates
an ideal balance. There is a philosophy which might well be called
the check and balance theory of experience. Life presents a diversity
of interests. Left to themselves, they tend to encroach on one
another. The ideal is to prescribe a special territory for each till the
whole ground of experience is covered, and then see to it each
remains within its own boundaries. Politics, business, recreation, art,
science, the learned professions, polite intercourse, leisure, represent
such interests. Each of these ramifies into many branches: business
into manual occupations, executive positions, bookkeeping,
railroading, banking, agriculture, trade and commerce, etc., and so
with each of the others. An ideal education would then supply the
means of meeting these separate and pigeon-holed interests. And
when we look at the schools, it is easy to get the impression that
they accept this view of the nature of adult life, and set for
themselves the task of meeting its demands. Each interest is
acknowledged as a kind of fixed institution to which something in
the course of study must correspond. The course of study must
then have some civics and history politically and patriotically viewed:
some utilitarian studies; some science; some art (mainly literature of
course); some provision for recreation; some moral education; and
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so on. And it will be found that a large part of current agitation
about schools is concerned with clamor and controversy about the
due meed of recognition to be given to each of these interests, and
with struggles to secure for each its due share in the course of
study; or, if this does not seem feasible in the existing school
system, then to secure a new and separate kind of schooling to meet
the need. In the multitude of educations education is forgotten.
The obvious outcome is congestion of the course of study,
overpressure and distraction of pupils, and a narrow specialization
fatal to the very idea of education. But these bad results usually lead
to more of the same sort of thing as a remedy. When it is perceived
that after all the requirements of a full life experience are not met,
the deficiency is not laid to the isolation and narrowness of the
teaching of the existing subjects, and this recognition made the basis
of reorganization of the system. No, the lack is something to be
made up for by the introduction of still another study, or, if
necessary, another kind of school. And as a rule those who object to
the resulting overcrowding and consequent superficiality and
distraction usually also have recourse to a merely quantitative
criterion: the remedy is to cut off a great many studies as fads and
frills, and return to the good old curriculum of the three R's in
elementary education and the equally good and equally old-
fashioned curriculum of the classics and mathematics in higher
education.
The situation has, of course, its historic explanation. Various epochs
of the past have had their own characteristic struggles and interests.
Each of these great epochs has left behind itself a kind of cultural
deposit, like a geologic stratum. These deposits have found their way
into educational institutions in the form of studies, distinct courses
of study, distinct types of schools. With the rapid change of
political, scientific, and economic interests in the last century,
provision had to be made for new values. Though the older courses
resisted, they have had at least in this country to retire their
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pretensions to a monopoly. They have not, however, been
reorganized in content and aim; they have only been reduced in
amount. The new studies, representing the new interests, have not
been used to transform the method and aim of all instruction; they
have been injected and added on. The result is a conglomerate, the
cement of which consists in the mechanics of the school program
or time table. Thence arises the scheme of values and standards of
value which we have mentioned.
This situation in education represents the divisions and separations
which obtain in social life. The variety of interests which should
mark any rich and balanced experience have been torn asunder and
deposited in separate institutions with diverse and independent
purposes and methods. Business is business, science is science, art is
art, politics is politics, social intercourse is social intercourse, morals
is morals, recreation is recreation, and so on. Each possesses a
separate and independent province with its own peculiar aims and
ways of proceeding. Each contributes to the others only externally
and accidentally. All of them together make up the whole of life by
just apposition and addition. What does one expect from business
save that it should furnish money, to be used in turn for making
more money and for support of self and family, for buying books
and pictures, tickets to concerts which may afford culture, and for
paying taxes, charitable gifts and other things of social and ethical
value? How unreasonable to expect that the pursuit of business
should be itself a culture of the imagination, in breadth and
refinement; that it should directly, and not through the money which
it supplies, have social service for its animating principle and be
conducted as an enterprise in behalf of social organization! The
same thing is to be said, mutatis mutandis, of the pursuit of art or
science or politics or religion. Each has become specialized not
merely in its appliances and its demands upon time, but in its aim
and animating spirit. Unconsciously, our course of studies and our
theories of the educational values of studies reflect this division of
interests. The point at issue in a theory of educational value is then
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the unity or integrity of experience. How shall it be full and varied
without losing unity of spirit? How shall it be one and yet not
narrow and monotonous in its unity? Ultimately, the question of
values and a standard of values is the moral question of the
organization of the interests of life. Educationally, the question
concerns that organization of schools, materials, and methods
which will operate to achieve breadth and richness of experience.
How shall we secure breadth of outlook without sacrificing
efficiency of execution? How shall we secure the diversity of
interests, without paying the price of isolation? How shall the
individual be rendered executive in his intelligence instead of at the
cost of his intelligence? How shall art, science, and politics reinforce
one another in an enriched temper of mind instead of constituting
ends pursued at one another's expense? How can the interests of
life and the studies which enforce them enrich the common
experience of men instead of dividing men from one another? With
the questions of reorganization thus suggested, we shall be
concerned in the concluding chapters.
Summary.
Fundamentally, the elements involved in a discussion of value have
been covered in the prior discussion of aims and interests. But since
educational values are generally discussed in connection with the
claims of the various studies of the curriculum, the consideration
of aim and interest is here resumed from the point of view of
special studies. The term "value" has two quite different meanings.
On the one hand, it denotes the attitude of prizing a thing finding it
worth while, for its own sake, or intrinsically. This is a name for a
full or complete experience. To value in this sense is to appreciate.
But to value also means a distinctively intellectual act--an operation
of comparing and judging--to valuate. This occurs when direct full
experience is lacking, and the question arises which of the various
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possibilities of a situation is to be preferred in order to reach a full
realization, or vital experience.
We must not, however, divide the studies of the curriculum into the
appreciative, those concerned with intrinsic value, and the
instrumental, concerned with those which are of value or ends
beyond themselves. The formation of proper standards in any
subject depends upon a realization of the contribution which it
makes to the immediate significance of experience, upon a direct
appreciation. Literature and the fine arts are of peculiar value
because they represent appreciation at its best--a heightened
realization of meaning through selection and concentration. But
every subject at some phase of its development should possess,
what is for the individual concerned with it, an aesthetic quality.
Contribution to immediate intrinsic values in all their variety in
experience is the only criterion for determining the worth of
instrumental and derived values in studies. The tendency to assign
separate values to each study and to regard the curriculum in its
entirety as a kind of composite made by the aggregation of
segregated values is a result of the isolation of social groups and
classes. Hence it is the business of education in a democratic social
group to struggle against this isolation in order that the various
interests may reinforce and play into one another.
Chapter Nineteen: Labor and Leisure
1. The Origin of the Opposition. The isolation of aims and values
which we have been considering leads to opposition between them.
Probably the most deep-seated antithesis which has shown itself in
educational history is that between education in preparation for
useful labor and education for a life of leisure. The bare terms
"useful labor" and "leisure" confirm the statement already made that
the segregation and conflict of values are not self-inclosed, but
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reflect a division within social life. Were the two functions of
gaining a livelihood by work and enjoying in a cultivated way the
opportunities of leisure, distributed equally among the different
members of a community, it would not occur to any one that there
was any conflict of educational agencies and aims involved. It would
be self-evident that the question was how education could
contribute most effectively to both. And while it might be found
that some materials of instruction chiefly accomplished one result
and other subject matter the other, it would be evident that care
must be taken to secure as much overlapping as conditions permit;
that is, the education which had leisure more directly in view should
indirectly reinforce as much as possible the efficiency and the
enjoyment of work, while that aiming at the latter should produce
habits of emotion and intellect which would procure a worthy
cultivation of leisure. These general considerations are amply borne
out by the historical development of educational philosophy. The
separation of liberal education from professional and industrial
education goes back to the time of the Greeks, and was formulated
expressly on the basis of a division of classes into those who had to
labor for a living and those who were relieved from this necessity.
The conception that liberal education, adapted to men in the latter
class, is intrinsically higher than the servile training given to the
latter class reflected the fact that one class was free and the other
servile in its social status. The latter class labored not only for its
own subsistence, but also for the means which enabled the superior
class to live without personally engaging in occupations taking
almost all the time and not of a nature to engage or reward
intelligence.
That a certain amount of labor must be engaged in goes without
saying. Human beings have to live and it requires work to supply the
resources of life. Even if we insist that the interests connected with
getting a living are only material and hence intrinsically lower than
those connected with enjoyment of time released from labor, and
even if it were admitted that there is something engrossing and
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insubordinate in material interests which leads them to strive to
usurp the place belonging to the higher ideal interests, this would
not--barring the fact of socially divided classes--lead to neglect of
the kind of education which trains men for the useful pursuits. It
would rather lead to scrupulous care for them, so that men were
trained to be efficient in them and yet to keep them in their place;
education would see to it that we avoided the evil results which flow
from their being allowed to flourish in obscure purlieus of neglect.
Only when a division of these interests coincides with a division of
an inferior and a superior social class will preparation for useful
work be looked down upon with contempt as an unworthy thing: a
fact which prepares one for the conclusion that the rigid
identification of work with material interests, and leisure with ideal
interests is itself a social product. The educational formulations of
the social situation made over two thousand years ago have been so
influential and give such a clear and logical recognition of the
implications of the division into laboring and leisure classes, that
they deserve especial note. According to them, man occupies the
highest place in the scheme of animate existence. In part, he shares
the constitution and functions of plants and animals--nutritive,
reproductive, motor or practical. The distinctively human function is
reason existing for the sake of beholding the spectacle of the
universe. Hence the truly human end is the fullest possible of this
distinctive human prerogative. The life of observation, meditation,
cogitation, and speculation pursued as an end in itself is the proper
life of man. From reason moreover proceeds the proper control of
the lower elements of human nature--the appetites and the active,
motor, impulses. In themselves greedy, insubordinate, lovers of
excess, aiming only at their own satiety, they observe moderation--
the law of the mean--and serve desirable ends as they are subjected
to the rule of reason.
Such is the situation as an affair of theoretical psychology and as
most adequately stated by Aristotle. But this state of things is
reflected in the constitution of classes of men and hence in the
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organization of society. Only in a comparatively small number is the
function of reason capable of operating as a law of life. In the mass
of people, vegetative and animal functions dominate. Their energy
of intelligence is so feeble and inconstant that it is constantly
overpowered by bodily appetite and passion. Such persons are not
truly ends in themselves, for only reason constitutes a final end. Like
plants, animals and physical tools, they are means, appliances, for the
attaining of ends beyond themselves, although unlike them they
have enough intelligence to exercise a certain discretion in the
execution of the tasks committed to them. Thus by nature, and not
merely by social convention, there are those who are slaves--that is,
means for the ends of others. 1 The great body of artisans are in
one important respect worse off than even slaves. Like the latter
they are given up to the service of ends external to themselves; but
since they do not enjoy the intimate association with the free
superior class experienced by domestic slaves they remain on a
lower plane of excellence. Moreover, women are classed with slaves
and craftsmen as factors among the animate instrumentalities of
production and reproduction of the means for a free or rational life.
Individually and collectively there is a gulf between merely living
and living worthily. In order that one may live worthily he must first
live, and so with collective society. The time and energy spent upon
mere life, upon the gaining of subsistence, detracts from that
available for activities that have an inherent rational meaning; they
also unfit for the latter. Means are menial, the serviceable is servile.
The true life is possible only in the degree in which the physical
necessities are had without effort and without attention. Hence
slaves, artisans, and women are employed in furnishing the means of
subsistence in order that others, those adequately equipped with
intelligence, may live the life of leisurely concern with things
intrinsically worth while.
To these two modes of occupation, with their distinction of servile
and free activities (or "arts") correspond two types of education: the
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base or mechanical and the liberal or intellectual. Some persons are
trained by suitable practical exercises for capacity in doing things,
for ability to use the mechanical tools involved in turning out
physical commodities and rendering personal service. This training
is a mere matter of habituation and technical skill; it operates
through repetition and assiduity in application, not through
awakening and nurturing thought. Liberal education aims to train
intelligence for its proper office: to know. The less this knowledge
has to do with practical affairs, with making or producing, the more
adequately it engages intelligence. So consistently does Aristotle
draw the line between menial and liberal education that he puts what
are now called the "fine" arts, music, painting, sculpture, in the same
class with menial arts so far as their practice is concerned. They
involve physical agencies, assiduity of practice, and external results.
In discussing, for example, education in music he raises the question
how far the young should be practiced in the playing of instruments.
His answer is that such practice and proficiency may be tolerated as
conduce to appreciation; that is, to understanding and enjoyment of
music when played by slaves or professionals. When professional
power is aimed at, music sinks from the liberal to the professional
level. One might then as well teach cooking, says Aristotle. Even a
liberal concern with the works of fine art depends upon the
existence of a hireling class of practitioners who have subordinated
the development of their own personality to attaining skill in
mechanical execution. The higher the activity the more purely
mental is it; the less does it have to do with physical things or with
the body. The more purely mental it is, the more independent or
self-sufficing is it.
These last words remind us that Aristotle again makes a distinction
of superior and inferior even within those living the life of reason.
For there is a distinction in ends and in free action, according as
one's life is merely accompanied by reason or as it makes reason its
own medium. That is to say, the free citizen who devotes himself to
the public life of his community, sharing in the management of its
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affairs and winning personal honor and distinction, lives a life
accompanied by reason. But the thinker, the man who devotes
himself to scientific inquiry and philosophic speculation, works, so
to speak, in reason, not simply by *. Even the activity of the citizen
in his civic relations, in other words, retains some of the taint of
practice, of external or merely instrumental doing. This infection is
shown by the fact that civic activity and civic excellence need the
help of others; one cannot engage in public life all by himself. But
all needs, all desires imply, in the philosophy of Aristotle, a material
factor; they involve lack, privation; they are dependent upon
something beyond themselves for completion. A purely intellectual
life, however, one carries on by himself, in himself; such assistance
as he may derive from others is accidental, rather than intrinsic. In
knowing, in the life of theory, reason finds its own full
manifestation; knowing for the sake of knowing irrespective of any
application is alone independent, or self-sufficing. Hence only the
education that makes for power to know as an end in itself, without
reference to the practice of even civic duties, is truly liberal or free.
2. The Present Situation. If the Aristotelian conception represented
just Aristotle's personal view, it would be a more or less interesting
historical curiosity. It could be dismissed as an illustration of the
lack of sympathy or the amount of academic pedantry which may
coexist with extraordinary intellectual gifts. But Aristotle simply
described without confusion and without that insincerity always
attendant upon mental confusion, the life that was before him. That
the actual social situation has greatly changed since his day there is
no need to say. But in spite of these changes, in spite of the
abolition of legal serfdom, and the spread of democracy, with the
extension of science and of general education (in books,
newspapers, travel, and general intercourse as well as in schools),
there remains enough of a cleavage of society into a learned and an
unlearned class, a leisure and a laboring class, to make his point of
view a most enlightening one from which to criticize the separation
between culture and utility in present education. Behind the
intellectual and abstract distinction as it figures in pedagogical
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discussion, there looms a social distinction between those whose
pursuits involve a minimum of self-directive thought and aesthetic
appreciation, and those who are concerned more directly with things
of the intelligence and with the control of the activities of others.
Aristotle was certainly permanently right when he said that "any
occupation or art or study deserves to be called mechanical if it
renders the body or soul or intellect of free persons unfit for the
exercise and practice of excellence." The force of the statement is
almost infinitely increased when we hold, as we nominally do at
present, that all persons, instead of a comparatively few, are free. For
when the mass of men and all women were regarded as unfree by
the very nature of their bodies and minds, there was neither
intellectual confusion nor moral hypocrisy in giving them only the
training which fitted them for mechanical skill, irrespective of its
ulterior effect upon their capacity to share in a worthy life. He was
permanently right also when he went on to say that "all mercenary
employments as well as those which degrade the condition of the
body are mechanical, since they deprive the intellect of leisure and
dignity,"--permanently right, that is, if gainful pursuits as matter of
fact deprive the intellect of the conditions of its exercise and so of
its dignity. If his statements are false, it is because they identify a
phase of social custom with a natural necessity. But a different view
of the relations of mind and matter, mind and body, intelligence
and social service, is better than Aristotle's conception only if it
helps render the old idea obsolete in fact--in the actual conduct of
life and education. Aristotle was permanently right in assuming the
inferiority and subordination of mere skill in performance and mere
accumulation of external products to understanding, sympathy of
appreciation, and the free play of ideas. If there was an error, it lay
in assuming the necessary separation of the two: in supposing that
there is a natural divorce between efficiency in producing
commodities and rendering service, and self-directive thought;
between significant knowledge and practical achievement. We hardly
better matters if we just correct his theoretical misapprehension,
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and tolerate the social state of affairs which generated and
sanctioned his conception. We lose rather than gain in change from
serfdom to free citizenship if the most prized result of the change is
simply an increase in the mechanical efficiency of the human tools
of production. So we lose rather than gain in coming to think of
intelligence as an organ of control of nature through action, if we
are content that an unintelligent, unfree state persists in those who
engage directly in turning nature to use, and leave the intelligence
which controls to be the exclusive possession of remote scientists
and captains of industry. We are in a position honestly to criticize
the division of life into separate functions and of society into
separate classes only so far as we are free from responsibility for
perpetuating the educational practices which train the many for
pursuits involving mere skill in production, and the few for a
knowledge that is an ornament and a cultural embellishment. In
short, ability to transcend the Greek philosophy of life and
education is not secured by a mere shifting about of the theoretical
symbols meaning free, rational, and worthy. It is not secured by a
change of sentiment regarding the dignity of labor, and the
superiority of a life of service to that of an aloof self-sufficing
independence. Important as these theoretical and emotional changes
are, their importance consists in their being turned to account in the
development of a truly democratic society, a society in which all
share in useful service and all enjoy a worthy leisure. It is not a mere
change in the concepts of culture--or a liberal mind--and social
service which requires an educational reorganization; but the
educational transformation is needed to give full and explicit effect
to the changes implied in social life. The increased political and
economic emancipation of the "masses" has shown itself in
education; it has effected the development of a common school
system of education, public and free. It has destroyed the idea that
learning is properly a monopoly of the few who are predestined by
nature to govern social affairs. But the revolution is still incomplete.
The idea still prevails that a truly cultural or liberal education cannot
have anything in common, directly at least, with industrial affairs,
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and that the education which is fit for the masses must be a useful
or practical education in a sense which opposes useful and practical
to nurture of appreciation and liberation of thought. As a
consequence, our actual system is an inconsistent mixture. Certain
studies and methods are retained on the supposition that they have
the sanction of peculiar liberality, the chief content of the term
liberal being uselessness for practical ends. This aspect is chiefly
visible in what is termed the higher education--that of the college
and of preparation for it. But is has filtered through into elementary
education and largely controls its processes and aims. But, on the
other hand, certain concessions have been made to the masses who
must engage in getting a livelihood and to the increased role of
economic activities in modern life. These concessions are exhibited
in special schools and courses for the professions, for engineering,
for manual training and commerce, in vocational and prevocational
courses; and in the spirit in which certain elementary subjects, like
the three R's, are taught. The result is a system in which both
"cultural" and "utilitarian" subjects exist in an inorganic composite
where the former are not by dominant purpose socially serviceable
and the latter not liberative of imagination or thinking power.
In the inherited situation, there is a curious intermingling, in even
the same study, of concession to usefulness and a survival of traits
once exclusively attributed to preparation for leisure. The "utility"
element is found in the motives assigned for the study, the "liberal"
element in methods of teaching. The outcome of the mixture is
perhaps less satisfactory than if either principle were adhered to in
its purity. The motive popularly assigned for making the studies of
the first four or five years consist almost entirely of reading,
spelling, writing, and arithmetic, is, for example, that ability to read,
write, and figure accurately is indispensable to getting ahead. These
studies are treated as mere instruments for entering upon a gainful
employment or of later progress in the pursuit of learning,
according as pupils do not or do remain in school. This attitude is
reflected in the emphasis put upon drill and practice for the sake of
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gaining automatic skill. If we turn to Greek schooling, we find that
from the earliest years the acquisition of skill was subordinated as
much as possible to acquisition of literary content possessed of
aesthetic and moral significance. Not getting a tool for subsequent
use but present subject matter was the emphasized thing.
Nevertheless the isolation of these studies from practical
application, their reduction to purely symbolic devices, represents a
survival of the idea of a liberal training divorced from utility. A
thorough adoption of the idea of utility would have led to
instruction which tied up the studies to situations in which they
were directly needed and where they were rendered immediately and
not remotely helpful. It would be hard to find a subject in the
curriculum within which there are not found evil results of a
compromise between the two opposed ideals. Natural science is
recommended on the ground of its practical utility, but is taught as a
special accomplishment in removal from application. On the other
hand, music and literature are theoretically justified on the ground
of their culture value and are then taught with chief emphasis upon
forming technical modes of skill.
If we had less compromise and resulting confusion, if we analyzed
more carefully the respective meanings of culture and utility, we
might find it easier to construct a course of study which should be
useful and liberal at the same time. Only superstition makes us
believe that the two are necessarily hostile so that a subject is illiberal
because it is useful and cultural because it is useless. It will generally
be found that instruction which, in aiming at utilitarian results,
sacrifices the development of imagination, the refining of taste and
the deepening of intellectual insight--surely cultural values--also in
the same degree renders what is learned limited in its use. Not that it
makes it wholly unavailable but that its applicability is restricted to
routine activities carried on under the supervision of others.
Narrow modes of skill cannot be made useful beyond themselves;
any mode of skill which is achieved with deepening of knowledge
and perfecting of judgment is readily put to use in new situations
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and is under personal control. It was not the bare fact of social and
economic utility which made certain activities seem servile to the
Greeks but the fact that the activities directly connected with getting
a livelihood were not, in their days, the expression of a trained
intelligence nor carried on because of a personal appreciation of
their meaning. So far as farming and the trades were rule-of-thumb
occupations and so far as they were engaged in for results external
to the minds of agricultural laborers and mechanics, they were
illiberal--but only so far. The intellectual and social context has now
changed. The elements in industry due to mere custom and routine
have become subordinate in most economic callings to elements
derived from scientific inquiry. The most important occupations of
today represent and depend upon applied mathematics, physics, and
chemistry. The area of the human world influenced by economic
production and influencing consumption has been so indefinitely
widened that geographical and political considerations of an almost
infinitely wide scope enter in. It was natural for Plato to deprecate
the learning of geometry and arithmetic for practical ends, because
as matter of fact the practical uses to which they were put were few,
lacking in content and mostly mercenary in quality. But as their
social uses have increased and enlarged, their liberalizing or
"intellectual" value and their practical value approach the same limit.
Doubtless the factor which chiefly prevents our full recognition and
employment of this identification is the conditions under which so
much work is still carried on. The invention of machines has
extended the amount of leisure which is possible even while one is
at work. It is a commonplace that the mastery of skill in the form
of established habits frees the mind for a higher order of thinking.
Something of the same kind is true of the introduction of
mechanically automatic operations in industry. They may release the
mind for thought upon other topics. But when we confine the
education of those who work with their hands to a few years of
schooling devoted for the most part to acquiring the use of
rudimentary symbols at the expense of training in science, literature,
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and history, we fail to prepare the minds of workers to take
advantage of this opportunity. More fundamental is the fact that the
great majority of workers have no insight into the social aims of
their pursuits and no direct personal interest in them. The results
actually achieved are not the ends of their actions, but only of their
employers. They do what they do, not freely and intelligently, but for
the sake of the wage earned. It is this fact which makes the action
illiberal, and which will make any education designed simply to give
skill in such undertakings illiberal and immoral. The activity is not
free because not freely participated in.
Nevertheless, there is already an opportunity for an education
which, keeping in mind the larger features of work, will reconcile
liberal nurture with training in social serviceableness, with ability to
share efficiently and happily in occupations which are productive.
And such an education will of itself tend to do away with the evils
of the existing economic situation. In the degree in which men have
an active concern in the ends that control their activity, their activity
becomes free or voluntary and loses its externally enforced and
servile quality, even though the physical aspect of behavior remain
the same. In what is termed politics, democratic social organization
makes provision for this direct participation in control: in the
economic region, control remains external and autocratic. Hence the
split between inner mental action and outer physical action of which
the traditional distinction between the liberal and the utilitarian is
the reflex. An education which should unify the disposition of the
members of society would do much to unify society itself.
Summary.
Of the segregations of educational values discussed in the last
chapter, that between culture and utility is probably the most
fundamental. While the distinction is often thought to be intrinsic
and absolute, it is really historical and social. It originated, so far as
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conscious formulation is concerned, in Greece, and was based upon
the fact that the truly human life was lived only by a few who
subsisted upon the results of the labor of others. This fact affected
the psychological doctrine of the relation of intelligence and desire,
theory and practice. It was embodied in a political theory of a
permanent division of human beings into those capable of a life of
reason and hence having their own ends, and those capable only of
desire and work, and needing to have their ends provided by others.
The two distinctions, psychological and political, translated into
educational terms, effected a division between a liberal education,
having to do with the self-sufficing life of leisure devoted to
knowing for its own sake, and a useful, practical training for
mechanical occupations, devoid of intellectual and aesthetic content.
While the present situation is radically diverse in theory and much
changed in fact, the factors of the older historic situation still persist
sufficiently to maintain the educational distinction, along with
compromises which often reduce the efficacy of the educational
measures. The problem of education in a democratic society is to do
away with the dualism and to construct a course of studies which
makes thought a guide of free practice for all and which makes
leisure a reward of accepting responsibility for service, rather than a
state of exemption from it.
1 Aristotle does not hold that the class of actual slaves and of
natural slaves necessarily coincide.
Chapter Twenty: Intellectual and Practical Studies
1. The Opposition of Experience and True Knowledge. As
livelihood and leisure are opposed, so are theory and practice,
intelligence and execution, knowledge and activity. The latter set of
oppositions doubtless springs from the same social conditions
which produce the former conflict; but certain definite problems of
education connected with them make it desirable to discuss
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explicitly the matter of the relationship and alleged separation of
knowing and doing.
The notion that knowledge is derived from a higher source than is
practical activity, and possesses a higher and more spiritual worth,
has a long history. The history so far as conscious statement is
concerned takes us back to the conceptions of experience and of
reason formulated by Plato and Aristotle. Much as these thinkers
differed in many respects, they agreed in identifying experience with
purely practical concerns; and hence with material interests as to its
purpose and with the body as to its organ. Knowledge, on the other
hand, existed for its own sake free from practical reference, and
found its source and organ in a purely immaterial mind; it had to do
with spiritual or ideal interests. Again, experience always involved
lack, need, desire; it was never self-sufficing. Rational knowing on
the other hand, was complete and comprehensive within itself.
Hence the practical life was in a condition of perpetual flux, while
intellectual knowledge concerned eternal truth.
This sharp antithesis is connected with the fact that Athenian
philosophy began as a criticism of custom and tradition as standards
of knowledge and conduct. In a search for something to replace
them, it hit upon reason as the only adequate guide of belief and
activity. Since custom and tradition were identified with experience,
it followed at once that reason was superior to experience.
Moreover, experience, not content with its proper position of
subordination, was the great foe to the acknowledgment of the
authority of reason. Since custom and traditionary beliefs held men
in bondage, the struggle of reason for its legitimate supremacy
could be won only by showing the inherently unstable and
inadequate nature of experience. The statement of Plato that
philosophers should be kings may best be understood as a statement
that rational intelligence and not habit, appetite, impulse, and
emotion should regulate human affairs. The former secures unity,
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order, and law; the latter signify multiplicity and discord, irrational
fluctuations from one estate to another.
The grounds for the identification of experience with the
unsatisfactory condition of things, the state of affairs represented
by rule of mere custom, are not far to seek. Increasing trade and
travel, colonizations, migrations and wars, had broadened the
intellectual horizon. The customs and beliefs of different
communities were found to diverge sharply from one another. Civil
disturbance had become a custom in Athens; the fortunes of the
city seemed given over to strife of factions. The increase of leisure
coinciding with the broadening of the horizon had brought into ken
many new facts of nature and had stimulated curiosity and
speculation. The situation tended to raise the question as to the
existence of anything constant and universal in the realm of nature
and society. Reason was the faculty by which the universal principle
and essence is apprehended; while the senses were the organs of
perceiving change,--the unstable and the diverse as against the
permanent and uniform. The results of the work of the senses,
preserved in memory and imagination, and applied in the skill given
by habit, constituted experience.
Experience at its best is thus represented in the various handicrafts
--the arts of peace and war. The cobbler, the flute player, the
soldier, have undergone the discipline of experience to acquire the
skill they have. This means that the bodily organs, particularly the
senses, have had repeated contact with things and that the result of
these contacts has been preserved and consolidated till ability in
foresight and in practice had been secured. Such was the essential
meaning of the term "empirical." It suggested a knowledge and an
ability not based upon insight into principles, but expressing the
result of a large number of separate trials. It expressed the idea now
conveyed by "method of trial and error," with especial emphasis
upon the more or less accidental character of the trials. So far as
ability of control, of management, was concerned, it amounted to
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rule-of-thumb procedure, to routine. If new circumstances
resembled the past, it might work well enough; in the degree in
which they deviated, failure was likely. Even to-day to speak of a
physician as an empiricist is to imply that he lacks scientific training,
and that he is proceeding simply on the basis of what he happens to
have got out of the chance medley of his past practice. Just because
of the lack of science or reason in "experience" it is hard to keep it
at its poor best. The empiric easily degenerates into the quack. He
does not know where his knowledge begins or leaves off, and so
when he gets beyond routine conditions he begins to pretend--to
make claims for which there is no justification, and to trust to luck
and to ability to impose upon others--to "bluff." Moreover, he
assumes that because he has learned one thing, he knows others--as
the history of Athens showed that the common craftsmen thought
they could manage household affairs, education, and politics,
because they had learned to do the specific things of their trades.
Experience is always hovering, then, on the edge of pretense, of
sham, of seeming, and appearance, in distinction from the reality
upon which reason lays hold.
The philosophers soon reached certain generalizations from this
state of affairs. The senses are connected with the appetites, with
wants and desires. They lay hold not on the reality of things but on
the relation which things have to our pleasures and pains, to the
satisfaction of wants and the welfare of the body. They are
important only for the life of the body, which is but a fixed
substratum for a higher life. Experience thus has a definitely
material character; it has to do with physical things in relation to the
body. In contrast, reason, or science, lays hold of the immaterial, the
ideal, the spiritual. There is something morally dangerous about
experience, as such words as sensual, carnal, material, worldly,
interests suggest; while pure reason and spirit connote something
morally praiseworthy. Moreover, ineradicable connection with the
changing, the inexplicably shifting, and with the manifold, the
diverse, clings to experience. Its material is inherently variable and
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untrustworthy. It is anarchic, because unstable. The man who trusts
to experience does not know what he depends upon, since it
changes from person to person, from day to day, to say nothing of
from country to country. Its connection with the "many," with
various particulars, has the same effect, and also carries conflict in
its train.
Only the single, the uniform, assures coherence and harmony. Out
of experience come warrings, the conflict of opinions and acts
within the individual and between individuals. From experience no
standard of belief can issue, because it is the very nature of
experience to instigate all kinds of contrary beliefs, as varieties of
local custom proved. Its logical outcome is that anything is good
and true to the particular individual which his experience leads him
to believe true and good at a particular time and place. Finally
practice falls of necessity within experience. Doing proceeds from
needs and aims at change. To produce or to make is to alter
something; to consume is to alter. All the obnoxious characters of
change and diversity thus attach themselves to doing while knowing
is as permanent as its object. To know, to grasp a thing intellectually
or theoretically, is to be out of the region of vicissitude, chance, and
diversity. Truth has no lack; it is untouched by the perturbations of
the world of sense. It deals with the eternal and the universal. And
the world of experience can be brought under control, can be
steadied and ordered, only through subjection to its law of reason.
It would not do, of course, to say that all these distinctions persisted
in full technical definiteness. But they all of them profoundly
influenced men's subsequent thinking and their ideas about
education. The contempt for physical as compared with
mathematical and logical science, for the senses and sense
observation; the feeling that knowledge is high and worthy in the
degree in which it deals with ideal symbols instead of with the
concrete; the scorn of particulars except as they are deductively
brought under a universal; the disregard for the body; the
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depreciation of arts and crafts as intellectual instrumentalities, all
sought shelter and found sanction under this estimate of the
respective values of experience and reason--or, what came to the
same thing, of the practical and the intellectual. Medieval
philosophy continued and reinforced the tradition. To know reality
meant to be in relation to the supreme reality, or God, and to enjoy
the eternal bliss of that relation. Contemplation of supreme reality
was the ultimate end of man to which action is subordinate.
Experience had to do with mundane, profane, and secular affairs,
practically necessary indeed, but of little import in comparison with
supernatural objects of knowledge. When we add to this motive the
force derived from the literary character of the Roman education
and the Greek philosophic tradition, and conjoin to them the
preference for studies which obviously demarcated the aristocratic
class from the lower classes, we can readily understand the
tremendous power exercised by the persistent preference of the
"intellectual" over the "practical" not simply in educational
philosophies but in the higher schools. 2. The Modern Theory of
Experience and Knowledge. As we shall see later, the development
of experimentation as a method of knowledge makes possible and
necessitates a radical transformation of the view just set forth. But
before coming to that, we have to note the theory of experience and
knowledge developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
In general, it presents us with an almost complete reversal of the
classic doctrine of the relations of experience and reason. To Plato
experience meant habituation, or the conservation of the net
product of a lot of past chance trials. Reason meant the principle of
reform, of progress, of increase of control. Devotion to the cause
of reason meant breaking through the limitations of custom and
getting at things as they really were. To the modern reformers, the
situation was the other way around. Reason, universal principles, a
priori notions, meant either blank forms which had to be filled in by
experience, by sense observations, in order to get significance and
validity; or else were mere indurated prejudices, dogmas imposed by
authority, which masqueraded and found protection under august
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names. The great need was to break way from captivity to
conceptions which, as Bacon put it, "anticipated nature" and
imposed merely human opinions upon her, and to resort to
experience to find out what nature was like. Appeal to experience
marked the breach with authority. It meant openness to new
impressions; eagerness in discovery and invention instead of
absorption in tabulating and systematizing received ideas and
"proving" them by means of the relations they sustained to one
another. It was the irruption into the mind of the things as they
really were, free from the veil cast over them by preconceived ideas.
The change was twofold. Experience lost the practical meaning
which it had borne from the time of Plato. It ceased to mean ways
of doing and being done to, and became a name for something
intellectual and cognitive. It meant the apprehension of material
which should ballast and check the exercise of reasoning. By the
modern philosophic empiricist and by his opponent, experience has
been looked upon just as a way of knowing. The only question was
how good a way it is. The result was an even greater
"intellectualism" than is found in ancient philosophy, if that word be
used to designate an emphatic and almost exclusive interest in
knowledge in its isolation. Practice was not so much subordinated to
knowledge as treated as a kind of tag-end or aftermath of
knowledge. The educational result was only to confirm the exclusion
of active pursuits from the school, save as they might be brought in
for purely utilitarian ends--the acquisition by drill of certain habits.
In the second place, the interest in experience as a means of basing
truth upon objects, upon nature, led to looking at the mind as purely
receptive. The more passive the mind is, the more truly objects will
impress themselves upon it. For the mind to take a hand, so to
speak, would be for it in the very process of knowing to vitiate true
knowledge--to defeat its own purpose. The ideal was a maximum
of receptivity. Since the impressions made upon the mind by objects
were generally termed sensations, empiricism thus became a
doctrine of sensationalism--that is to say, a doctrine which
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identified knowledge with the reception and association of sensory
impressions. In John Locke, the most influential of the empiricists,
we find this sensationalism mitigated by a recognition of certain
mental faculties, like discernment or discrimination, comparison,
abstraction, and generalization which work up the material of sense
into definite and organized forms and which even evolve new ideas
on their own account, such as the fundamental conceptions of
morals and mathematics. (See ante, p. 61.) But some of his
successors, especially in France in the latter part of the eighteenth
century, carried his doctrine to the limit; they regarded discernment
and judgment as peculiar sensations made in us by the conjoint
presence of other sensations. Locke had held that the mind is a
blank piece of paper, or a wax tablet with nothing engraved on it at
birth (a tabula rasa) so far as any contents of ideas were concerned,
but had endowed it with activities to be exercised upon the material
received. His French successors razed away the powers and derived
them also from impressions received.
As we have earlier noted, this notion was fostered by the new
interest in education as method of social reform. (See ante, p. 93.)
The emptier the mind to begin with, the more it may be made
anything we wish by bringing the right influences to bear upon it.
Thus Helvetius, perhaps the most extreme and consistent
sensationalist, proclaimed that education could do anything--that it
was omnipotent. Within the sphere of school instruction,
empiricism found its directly beneficial office in protesting against
mere book learning. If knowledge comes from the impressions
made upon us by natural objects, it is impossible to procure
knowledge without the use of objects which impress the mind.
Words, all kinds of linguistic symbols, in the lack of prior
presentations of objects with which they may be associated, convey
nothing but sensations of their own shape and color--certainly not
a very instructive kind of knowledge. Sensationalism was an
extremely handy weapon with which to combat doctrines and
opinions resting wholly upon tradition and authority. With respect
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to all of them, it set up a test: Where are the real objects from which
these ideas and beliefs are received? If such objects could not be
produced, ideas were explained as the result of false associations
and combinations. Empiricism also insisted upon a first-hand
element. The impression must be made upon me, upon my mind.
The further we get away from this direct, first-hand source of
knowledge, the more numerous the sources of error, and the vaguer
the resulting idea.
As might be expected, however, the philosophy was weak upon the
positive side. Of course, the value of natural objects and firsthand
acquaintance was not dependent upon the truth of the theory.
Introduced into the schools they would do their work, even if the
sensational theory about the way in which they did it was quite
wrong. So far, there is nothing to complain of. But the emphasis
upon sensationalism also operated to influence the way in which
natural objects were employed, and to prevent full good being got
from them. "Object lessons" tended to isolate the mere sense-
activity and make it an end in itself. The more isolated the object,
the more isolated the sensory quality, the more distinct the sense-
impression as a unit of knowledge. The theory worked not only in
the direction of this mechanical isolation, which tended to reduce
instruction to a kind of physical gymnastic of the sense-organs
(good like any gymnastic of bodily organs, but not more so), but
also to the neglect of thinking. According to the theory there was
no need of thinking in connection with sense-observation; in fact,
in strict theory such thinking would be impossible till afterwards, for
thinking consisted simply in combining and separating sensory units
which had been received without any participation of judgment.
As a matter of fact, accordingly, practically no scheme of education
upon a purely sensory basis has ever been systematically tried, at
least after the early years of infancy. Its obvious deficiencies have
caused it to be resorted to simply for filling in "rationalistic"
knowledge (that is to say, knowledge of definitions, rules,
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classifications, and modes of application conveyed through
symbols), and as a device for lending greater "interest" to barren
symbols. There are at least three serious defects of sensationalistic
empiricism as an educational philosophy of knowledge. (a) the
historical value of the theory was critical; it was a dissolvent of
current beliefs about the world and political institutions. It was a
destructive organ of criticism of hard and fast dogmas. But the
work of education is constructive, not critical. It assumes not old
beliefs to be eliminated and revised, but the need of building up
new experience into intellectual habitudes as correct as possible
from the start. Sensationalism is highly unfitted for this constructive
task. Mind, understanding, denotes responsiveness to meanings
(ante, p. 29), not response to direct physical stimuli. And meaning
exists only with reference to a context, which is excluded by any
scheme which identifies knowledge with a combination of sense-
impressions. The theory, so far as educationally applied, led either to
a magnification of mere physical excitations or else to a mere
heaping up of isolated objects and qualities.
(b) While direct impression has the advantage of being first hand, it
also has the disadvantage of being limited in range. Direct
acquaintance with the natural surroundings of the home
environment so as to give reality to ideas about portions of the
earth beyond the reach of the senses, and as a means of arousing
intellectual curiosity, is one thing. As an end-all and be-all of
geographical knowledge it is fatally restricted. In precisely analogous
fashion, beans, shoe pegs, and counters may be helpful aids to a
realization of numerical relations, but when employed except as aids
to thought--the apprehension of meaning--they become an
obstacle to the growth of arithmetical understanding. They arrest
growth on a low plane, the plane of specific physical symbols. Just
as the race developed especial symbols as tools of calculation and
mathematical reasonings, because the use of the fingers as numerical
symbols got in the way, so the individual must progress from
concrete to abstract symbols--that is, symbols whose meaning is
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realized only through conceptual thinking. And undue absorption at
the outset in the physical object of sense hampers this growth. (c) A
thoroughly false psychology of mental development underlay
sensationalistic empiricism. Experience is in truth a matter of
activities, instinctive and impulsive, in their interactions with things.
What even an infant "experiences" is not a passively received quality
impressed by an object, but the effect which some activity of
handling, throwing, pounding, tearing, etc., has upon an object, and
the consequent effect of the object upon the direction of activities.
(See ante, p. 140.) Fundamentally (as we shall see in more detail), the
ancient notion of experience as a practical matter is truer to fact
that the modern notion of it as a mode of knowing by means of
sensations. The neglect of the deep-seated active and motor factors
of experience is a fatal defect of the traditional empirical
philosophy. Nothing is more uninteresting and mechanical than a
scheme of object lessons which ignores and as far as may be
excludes the natural tendency to learn about the qualities of objects
by the uses to which they are put through trying to do something
with them.
It is obvious, accordingly, that even if the philosophy of experience
represented by modern empiricism had received more general
theoretical assent than has been accorded to it, it could not have
furnished a satisfactory philosophy of the learning process. Its
educational influence was confined to injecting a new factor into the
older curriculum, with incidental modifications of the older studies
and methods. It introduced greater regard for observation of things
directly and through pictures and graphic descriptions, and it
reduced the importance attached to verbal symbolization. But its
own scope was so meager that it required supplementation by
information concerning matters outside of sense-perception and by
matters which appealed more directly to thought. Consequently it
left unimpaired the scope of informational and abstract, or
"rationalistic" studies.
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3. Experience as Experimentation. It has already been intimated that
sensational empiricism represents neither the idea of experience
justified by modern psychology nor the idea of knowledge
suggested by modern scientific procedure. With respect to the
former, it omits the primary position of active response which puts
things to use and which learns about them through discovering the
consequences that result from use. It would seem as if five minutes'
unprejudiced observation of the way an infant gains knowledge
would have sufficed to overthrow the notion that he is passively
engaged in receiving impressions of isolated ready-made qualities of
sound, color, hardness, etc. For it would be seen that the infant
reacts to stimuli by activities of handling, reaching, etc., in order to
see what results follow upon motor response to a sensory
stimulation; it would be seen that what is learned are not isolated
qualities, but the behavior which may be expected from a thing, and
the changes in things and persons which an activity may be expected
to produce. In other words, what he learns are connections. Even
such qualities as red color, sound of a high pitch, have to be
discriminated and identified on the basis of the activities they call
forth and the consequences these activities effect. We learn what
things are hard and what are soft by finding out through active
experimentation what they respectively will do and what can be
done and what cannot be done with them. In like fashion, children
learn about persons by finding out what responsive activities these
persons exact and what these persons will do in reply to the
children's activities. And the combination of what things do to us
(not in impressing qualities on a passive mind) in modifying our
actions, furthering some of them and resisting and checking others,
and what we can do to them in producing new changes constitutes
experience. The methods of science by which the revolution in our
knowledge of the world dating from the seventeenth century, was
brought about, teach the same lesson. For these methods are
nothing but experimentation carried out under conditions of
deliberate control. To the Greek, it seemed absurd that such an
activity as, say, the cobbler punching holes in leather, or using wax
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and needle and thread, could give an adequate knowledge of the
world. It seemed almost axiomatic that for true knowledge we must
have recourse to concepts coming from a reason above experience.
But the introduction of the experimental method signified precisely
that such operations, carried on under conditions of control, are just
the ways in which fruitful ideas about nature are obtained and
tested. In other words, it is only needed to conduct such an
operation as the pouring of an acid on a metal for the purpose of
getting knowledge instead of for the purpose of getting a trade
result, in order to lay hold of the principle upon which the science
of nature was henceforth to depend. Sense perceptions were indeed
indispensable, but there was less reliance upon sense perceptions in
their natural or customary form than in the older science. They were
no longer regarded as containing within themselves some "form" or
"species" of universal kind in a disguised mask of sense which could
be stripped off by rational thought. On the contrary, the first thing
was to alter and extend the data of sense perception: to act upon the
given objects of sense by the lens of the telescope and microscope,
and by all sorts of experimental devices. To accomplish this in a way
which would arouse new ideas (hypotheses, theories) required even
more general ideas (like those of mathematics) than were at the
command of ancient science. But these general conceptions were no
longer taken to give knowledge in themselves. They were
implements for instituting, conducting, interpreting experimental
inquiries and formulating their results.
The logical outcome is a new philosophy of experience and
knowledge, a philosophy which no longer puts experience in
opposition to rational knowledge and explanation. Experience is no
longer a mere summarizing of what has been done in a more or less
chance way in the past; it is a deliberate control of what is done with
reference to making what happens to us and what we do to things as
fertile as possible of suggestions (of suggested meanings) and a
means for trying out the validity of the suggestions. When trying, or
experimenting, ceases to be blinded by impulse or custom, when it is
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guided by an aim and conducted by measure and method, it
becomes reasonable--rational. When what we suffer from things,
what we undergo at their hands, ceases to be a matter of chance
circumstance, when it is transformed into a consequence of our
own prior purposive endeavors, it becomes rationally significant--
enlightening and instructive. The antithesis of empiricism and
rationalism loses the support of the human situation which once
gave it meaning and relative justification.
The bearing of this change upon the opposition of purely practical
and purely intellectual studies is self-evident. The distinction is not
intrinsic but is dependent upon conditions, and upon conditions
which can be regulated. Practical activities may be intellectually
narrow and trivial; they will be so in so far as they are routine,
carried on under the dictates of authority, and having in view merely
some external result. But childhood and youth, the period of
schooling, is just the time when it is possible to carry them on in a
different spirit. It is inexpedient to repeat the discussions of our
previous chapters on thinking and on the evolution of educative
subject matter from childlike work and play to logically organized
subject matter. The discussions of this chapter and the prior one
should, however, give an added meaning to those results.
(i) Experience itself primarily consists of the active relations
subsisting between a human being and his natural and social
surroundings. In some cases, the initiative in activity is on the side
of the environment; the human being undergoes or suffers certain
checkings and deflections of endeavors. In other cases, the behavior
of surrounding things and persons carries to a successful issue the
active tendencies of the individual, so that in the end what the
individual undergoes are consequences which he has himself tried
to produce. In just the degree in which connections are established
between what happens to a person and what he does in response,
and between what he does to his environment and what it does in
response to him, his acts and the things about him acquire meaning.
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He learns to understand both himself and the world of men and
things. Purposive education or schooling should present such an
environment that this interaction will effect acquisition of those
meanings which are so important that they become, in turn,
instruments of further learnings. (ante, Ch. XI.) As has been
repeatedly pointed out, activity out of school is carried on under
conditions which have not been deliberately adapted to promoting
the function of understanding and formation of effective
intellectual dispositions. The results are vital and genuine as far as
they go, but they are limited by all kinds of circumstances. Some
powers are left quite undeveloped and undirected; others get only
occasional and whimsical stimulations; others are formed into habits
of a routine skill at the expense of aims and resourceful initiative
and inventiveness. It is not the business of the school to transport
youth from an environment of activity into one of cramped study
of the records of other men's learning; but to transport them from
an environment of relatively chance activities (accidental in the
relation they bear to insight and thought) into one of activities
selected with reference to guidance of learning. A slight inspection
of the improved methods which have already shown themselves
effective in education will reveal that they have laid hold, more or
less consciously, upon the fact that "intellectual" studies instead of
being opposed to active pursuits represent an intellectualizing of
practical pursuits. It remains to grasp the principle with greater
firmness.
(ii) The changes which are taking place in the content of social life
tremendously facilitate selection of the sort of activities which will
intellectualize the play and work of the school. When one bears in
mind the social environment of the Greeks and the people of the
Middle Ages, where such practical activities as could be successfully
carried on were mostly of a routine and external sort and even
servile in nature, one is not surprised that educators turned their
backs upon them as unfitted to cultivate intelligence. But now that
even the occupations of the household, agriculture, and
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manufacturing as well as transportation and intercourse are instinct
with applied science, the case stands otherwise. It is true that many
of those who now engage in them are not aware of the intellectual
content upon which their personal actions depend. But this fact only
gives an added reason why schooling should use these pursuits so as
to enable the coming generation to acquire a comprehension now
too generally lacking, and thus enable persons to carry on their
pursuits intelligently instead of blindly. (iii) The most direct blow at
the traditional separation of doing and knowing and at the
traditional prestige of purely "intellectual" studies, however, has
been given by the progress of experimental science. If this progress
has demonstrated anything, it is that there is no such thing as
genuine knowledge and fruitful understanding except as the
offspring of doing. The analysis and rearrangement of facts which
is indispensable to the growth of knowledge and power of
explanation and right classification cannot be attained purely
mentally--just inside the head. Men have to do something to the
things when they wish to find out something; they have to alter
conditions. This is the lesson of the laboratory method, and the
lesson which all education has to learn. The laboratory is a discovery
of the condition under which labor may become intellectually
fruitful and not merely externally productive. If, in too many cases at
present, it results only in the acquisition of an additional mode of
technical skill, that is because it still remains too largely but an
isolated resource, not resorted to until pupils are mostly too old to
get the full advantage of it, and even then is surrounded by other
studies where traditional methods isolate intellect from activity.
Summary.
The Greeks were induced to philosophize by the increasing failure
of their traditional customs and beliefs to regulate life. Thus they
were led to criticize custom adversely and to look for some other
source of authority in life and belief. Since they desired a rational
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standard for the latter, and had identified with experience the
customs which had proved unsatisfactory supports, they were led to
a flat opposition of reason and experience. The more the former
was exalted, the more the latter was depreciated. Since experience
was identified with what men do and suffer in particular and
changing situations of life, doing shared in the philosophic
depreciation. This influence fell in with many others to magnify, in
higher education, all the methods and topics which involved the
least use of sense-observation and bodily activity. The modern age
began with a revolt against this point of view, with an appeal to
experience, and an attack upon so-called purely rational concepts on
the ground that they either needed to be ballasted by the results of
concrete experiences, or else were mere expressions of prejudice
and institutionalized class interest, calling themselves rational for
protection. But various circumstances led to considering experience
as pure cognition, leaving out of account its intrinsic active and
emotional phases, and to identifying it with a passive reception of
isolated "sensations." Hence the education reform effected by the
new theory was confined mainly to doing away with some of the
bookishness of prior methods; it did not accomplish a consistent
reorganization.
Meantime, the advance of psychology, of industrial methods, and
of the experimental method in science makes another conception
of experience explicitly desirable and possible. This theory reinstates
the idea of the ancients that experience is primarily practical, not
cognitive--a matter of doing and undergoing the consequences of
doing. But the ancient theory is transformed by realizing that doing
may be directed so as to take up into its own content all which
thought suggests, and so as to result in securely tested knowledge.
"Experience" then ceases to be empirical and becomes
experimental. Reason ceases to be a remote and ideal faculty, and
signifies all the resources by which activity is made fruitful in
meaning. Educationally, this change denotes such a plan for the
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studies and method of instruction as has been developed in the
previous chapters.
Chapter Twenty-one: Physical and Social Studies:
Naturalism and Humanism
ALLUSION has already been made to the conflict of natural
science with literary studies for a place in the curriculum. The
solution thus far reached consists essentially in a somewhat
mechanical compromise whereby the field is divided between
studies having nature and studies having man as their theme. The
situation thus presents us with another instance of the external
adjustment of educational values, and focuses attention upon the
philosophy of the connection of nature with human affairs. In
general, it may be said that the educational division finds a reflection
in the dualistic philosophies. Mind and the world are regarded as
two independent realms of existence having certain points of
contact with each other. From this point of view it is natural that
each sphere of existence should have its own separate group of
studies connected with it; it is even natural that the growth of
scientific studies should be viewed with suspicion as marking a
tendency of materialistic philosophy to encroach upon the domain
of spirit. Any theory of education which contemplates a more
unified scheme of education than now exists is under the necessity
of facing the question of the relation of man to nature.
1. The Historic Background of Humanistic Study. It is noteworthy
that classic Greek philosophy does not present the problem in its
modern form. Socrates indeed appears to have thought that science
of nature was not attainable and not very important. The chief
thing to know is the nature and end of man. Upon that knowledge
hangs all that is of deep significance--all moral and social
achievement. Plato, however, makes right knowledge of man and
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society depend upon knowledge of the essential features of nature.
His chief treatise, entitled the Republic, is at once a treatise on
morals, on social organization, and on the metaphysics and science
of nature. Since he accepts the Socratic doctrine that right
achievement in the former depends upon rational knowledge, he is
compelled to discuss the nature of knowledge. Since he accepts the
idea that the ultimate object of knowledge is the discovery of the
good or end of man, and is discontented with the Socratic
conviction that all we know is our own ignorance, he connects the
discussion of the good of man with consideration of the essential
good or end of nature itself. To attempt to determine the end of
man apart from a knowledge of the ruling end which gives law and
unity to nature is impossible. It is thus quite consistent with his
philosophy that he subordinates literary studies (under the name of
music) to mathematics and to physics as well as to logic and
metaphysics. But on the other hand, knowledge of nature is not an
end in itself; it is a necessary stage in bringing the mind to a
realization of the supreme purpose of existence as the law of
human action, corporate and individual. To use the modern
phraseology, naturalistic studies are indispensable, but they are in the
interests of humanistic and ideal ends.
Aristotle goes even farther, if anything, in the direction of
naturalistic studies. He subordinates (ante, p. 254) civic relations to
the purely cognitive life. The highest end of man is not human but
divine--participation in pure knowing which constitutes the divine
life. Such knowing deals with what is universal and necessary, and
finds, therefore, a more adequate subject matter in nature at its best
than in the transient things of man. If we take what the
philosophers stood for in Greek life, rather than the details of what
they say, we might summarize by saying that the Greeks were too
much interested in free inquiry into natural fact and in the aesthetic
enjoyment of nature, and were too deeply conscious of the extent
in which society is rooted in nature and subject to its laws, to think
of bringing man and nature into conflict. Two factors conspire in
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the later period of ancient life, however, to exalt literary and
humanistic studies. One is the increasingly reminiscent and
borrowed character of culture; the other is the political and
rhetorical bent of Roman life.
Greek achievement in civilization was native; the civilization of the
Alexandrians and Romans was inherited from alien sources.
Consequently it looked back to the records upon which it drew,
instead of looking out directly upon nature and society, for material
and inspiration. We cannot do better than quote the words of Hatch
to indicate the consequences for educational theory and practice.
"Greece on one hand had lost political power, and on the other
possessed in her splendid literature an inalienable heritage. It was
natural that she should turn to letters. It was natural also that the
study of letters should be reflected upon speech. The mass of men
in the Greek world tended to lay stress on that acquaintance with
the literature of bygone generations, and that habit of cultivated
speech, which has ever since been commonly spoken of as
education. Our own comes by direct tradition from it. It set a
fashion which until recently has uniformly prevailed over the entire
civilized world. We study literature rather than nature because the
Greeks did so, and because when the Romans and the Roman
provincials resolved to educate their sons, they employed Greek
teachers and followed in Greek paths." 1
The so-called practical bent of the Romans worked in the same
direction. In falling back upon the recorded ideas of the Greeks,
they not only took the short path to attaining a cultural
development, but they procured just the kind of material and
method suited to their administrative talents. For their practical
genius was not directed to the conquest and control of nature but to
the conquest and control of men.
Mr. Hatch, in the passage quoted, takes a good deal of history for
granted in saying that we have studied literature rather than nature
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because the Greeks, and the Romans whom they taught, did so.
What is the link that spans the intervening centuries? The question
suggests that barbarian Europe but repeated on a larger scale and
with increased intensity the Roman situation. It had to go to school
to Greco-Roman civilization; it also borrowed rather than evolved
its culture. Not merely for its general ideas and their artistic
presentation but for its models of law it went to the records of alien
peoples. And its dependence upon tradition was increased by the
dominant theological interests of the period. For the authorities to
which the Church appealed were literatures composed in foreign
tongues. Everything converged to identify learning with linguistic
training and to make the language of the learned a literary language
instead of the mother speech.
The full scope of this fact escapes us, moreover, until we recognize
that this subject matter compelled recourse to a dialectical method.
Scholasticism frequently has been used since the time of the revival
of learning as a term of reproach. But all that it means is the
method of The Schools, or of the School Men. In its essence, it is
nothing but a highly effective systematization of the methods of
teaching and learning which are appropriate to transmit an
authoritative body of truths. Where literature rather than
contemporary nature and society furnishes material of study,
methods must be adapted to defining, expounding, and interpreting
the received material, rather than to inquiry, discovery, and
invention. And at bottom what is called Scholasticism is the whole-
hearted and consistent formulation and application of the methods
which are suited to instruction when the material of instruction is
taken ready-made, rather than as something which students are to
find out for themselves. So far as schools still teach from textbooks
and rely upon the principle of authority and acquisition rather than
upon that of discovery and inquiry, their methods are Scholastic--
minus the logical accuracy and system of Scholasticism at its best.
Aside from laxity of method and statement, the only difference is
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that geographies and histories and botanies and astronomies are
now part of the authoritative literature which is to be mastered.
As a consequence, the Greek tradition was lost in which a
humanistic interest was used as a basis of interest in nature, and a
knowledge of nature used to support the distinctively human aims
of man. Life found its support in authority, not in nature. The latter
was moreover an object of considerable suspicion. Contemplation
of it was dangerous, for it tended to draw man away from reliance
upon the documents in which the rules of living were already
contained. Moreover nature could be known only through
observation; it appealed to the senses--which were merely material
as opposed to a purely immaterial mind. Furthermore, the utilities
of a knowledge of nature were purely physical and secular; they
connected with the bodily and temporal welfare of man, while the
literary tradition concerned his spiritual and eternal well-being.
2. The Modern Scientific Interest in Nature. The movement of the
fifteenth century which is variously termed the revival of learning
and the renascence was characterized by a new interest in man's
present life, and accordingly by a new interest in his relationships
with nature. It was naturalistic, in the sense that it turned against the
dominant supernaturalistic interest. It is possible that the influence
of a return to classic Greek pagan literature in bringing about this
changed mind has been overestimated. Undoubtedly the change was
mainly a product of contemporary conditions. But there can be no
doubt that educated men, filled with the new point of view, turned
eagerly to Greek literature for congenial sustenance and
reinforcement. And to a considerable extent, this interest in Greek
thought was not in literature for its own sake, but in the spirit it
expressed. The mental freedom, the sense of the order and beauty
of nature, which animated Greek expression, aroused men to think
and observe in a similar untrammeled fashion. The history of
science in the sixteenth century shows that the dawning sciences of
physical nature largely borrowed their points of departure from the
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new interest in Greek literature. As Windelband has said, the new
science of nature was the daughter of humanism. The favorite
notion of the time was that man was in microcosm that which the
universe was in macrocosm.
This fact raises anew the question of how it was that nature and
man were later separated and a sharp division made between
language and literature and the physical sciences. Four reasons may
be suggested. (a) The old tradition was firmly entrenched in
institutions. Politics, law, and diplomacy remained of necessity
branches of authoritative literature, for the social sciences did not
develop until the methods of the sciences of physics and chemistry,
to say nothing of biology, were much further advanced. The same is
largely true of history. Moreover, the methods used for effective
teaching of the languages were well developed; the inertia of
academic custom was on their side. Just as the new interest in
literature, especially Greek, had not been allowed at first to find
lodgment in the scholastically organized universities, so when it
found its way into them it joined hands with the older learning to
minimize the influence of experimental science. The men who
taught were rarely trained in science; the men who were scientifically
competent worked in private laboratories and through the medium
of academies which promoted research, but which were not
organized as teaching bodies. Finally, the aristocratic tradition which
looked down upon material things and upon the senses and the
hands was still mighty.
(b) The Protestant revolt brought with it an immense increase of
interest in theological discussion and controversies. The appeal on
both sides was to literary documents. Each side had to train men in
ability to study and expound the records which were relied upon.
The demand for training men who could defend the chosen faith
against the other side, who were able to propagandize and to
prevent the encroachments of the other side, was such that it is not
too much to say that by the middle of the seventeenth century the
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linguistic training of gymnasia and universities had been captured by
the revived theological interest, and used as a tool of religious
education and ecclesiastical controversy. Thus the educational
descent of the languages as they are found in education to-day is not
direct from the revival of learning, but from its adaptation to
theological ends.
(c) The natural sciences were themselves conceived in a way which
sharpened the opposition of man and nature. Francis Bacon
presents an almost perfect example of the union of naturalistic and
humanistic interest. Science, adopting the methods of observation
and experimentation, was to give up the attempt to "anticipate"
nature--to impose preconceived notions upon her--and was to
become her humble interpreter. In obeying nature intellectually, man
would learn to command her practically. "Knowledge is power."
This aphorism meant that through science man is to control nature
and turn her energies to the execution of his own ends. Bacon
attacked the old learning and logic as purely controversial, having to
do with victory in argument, not with discovery of the unknown.
Through the new method of thought which was set forth in his new
logic an era of expansive discoveries was to emerge, and these
discoveries were to bear fruit in inventions for the service of man.
Men were to give up their futile, never-finished effort to dominate
one another to engage in the cooperative task of dominating nature
in the interests of humanity.
In the main, Bacon prophesied the direction of subsequent
progress. But he "anticipated" the advance. He did not see that the
new science was for a long time to be worked in the interest of old
ends of human exploitation. He thought that it would rapidly give
man new ends. Instead, it put at the disposal of a class the means to
secure their old ends of aggrandizement at the expense of another
class. The industrial revolution followed, as he foresaw, upon a
revolution in scientific method. But it is taking the revolution many
centuries to produce a new mind. Feudalism was doomed by the
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applications of the new science, for they transferred power from the
landed nobility to the manufacturing centers. But capitalism rather
than a social humanism took its place. Production and commerce
were carried on as if the new science had no moral lesson, but only
technical lessons as to economies in production and utilization of
saving in self-interest. Naturally, this application of physical science
(which was the most conspicuously perceptible one) strengthened
the claims of professed humanists that science was materialistic in
its tendencies. It left a void as to man's distinctively human interests
which go beyond making, saving, and expending money; and
languages and literature put in their claim to represent the moral and
ideal interests of humanity.
(d) Moreover, the philosophy which professed itself based upon
science, which gave itself out as the accredited representative of the
net significance of science, was either dualistic in character, marked
by a sharp division between mind (characterizing man) and matter,
constituting nature; or else it was openly mechanical, reducing the
signal features of human life to illusion. In the former case, it
allowed the claims of certain studies to be peculiar consignees of
mental values, and indirectly strengthened their claim to superiority,
since human beings would incline to regard human affairs as of
chief importance at least to themselves. In the latter case, it called
out a reaction which threw doubt and suspicion upon the value of
physical science, giving occasion for treating it as an enemy to man's
higher interests.
Greek and medieval knowledge accepted the world in its qualitative
variety, and regarded nature's processes as having ends, or in
technical phrase as teleological. New science was expounded so as
to deny the reality of all qualities in real, or objective, existence.
Sounds, colors, ends, as well as goods and bads, were regarded as
purely subjective--as mere impressions in the mind. Objective
existence was then treated as having only quantitative aspects--as so
much mass in motion, its only differences being that at one point in
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space there was a larger aggregate mass than at another, and that in
some spots there were greater rates of motion than at others.
Lacking qualitative distinctions, nature lacked significant variety.
Uniformities were emphasized, not diversities; the ideal was
supposed to be the discovery of a single mathematical formula
applying to the whole universe at once from which all the seeming
variety of phenomena could be derived. This is what a mechanical
philosophy means.
Such a philosophy does not represent the genuine purport of
science. It takes the technique for the thing itself; the apparatus and
the terminology for reality, the method for its subject matter.
Science does confine its statements to conditions which enable us to
predict and control the happening of events, ignoring the qualities
of the events. Hence its mechanical and quantitative character. But
in leaving them out of account, it does not exclude them from
reality, nor relegate them to a purely mental region; it only furnishes
means utilizable for ends. Thus while in fact the progress of science
was increasing man's power over nature, enabling him to place his
cherished ends on a firmer basis than ever before, and also to
diversify his activities almost at will, the philosophy which professed
to formulate its accomplishments reduced the world to a barren and
monotonous redistribution of matter in space. Thus the immediate
effect of modern science was to accentuate the dualism of matter
and mind, and thereby to establish the physical and the humanistic
studies as two disconnected groups. Since the difference between
better and worse is bound up with the qualities of experience, any
philosophy of science which excludes them from the genuine
content of reality is bound to leave out what is most interesting and
most important to mankind.
3. The Present Educational Problem. In truth, experience knows no
division between human concerns and a purely mechanical physical
world. Man's home is nature; his purposes and aims are dependent
for execution upon natural conditions. Separated from such
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conditions they become empty dreams and idle indulgences of
fancy. From the standpoint of human experience, and hence of
educational endeavor, any distinction which can be justly made
between nature and man is a distinction between the conditions
which have to be reckoned with in the formation and execution of
our practical aims, and the aims themselves. This philosophy is
vouched for by the doctrine of biological development which shows
that man is continuous with nature, not an alien entering her
processes from without. It is reinforced by the experimental method
of science which shows that knowledge accrues in virtue of an
attempt to direct physical energies in accord with ideas suggested in
dealing with natural objects in behalf of social uses. Every step
forward in the social sciences--the studies termed history,
economics, politics, sociology--shows that social questions are
capable of being intelligently coped with only in the degree in which
we employ the method of collected data, forming hypotheses, and
testing them in action which is characteristic of natural science, and
in the degree in which we utilize in behalf of the promotion of
social welfare the technical knowledge ascertained by physics and
chemistry. Advanced methods of dealing with such perplexing
problems as insanity, intemperance, poverty, public sanitation, city
planning, the conservation of natural resources, the constructive use
of governmental agencies for furthering the public good without
weakening personal initiative, all illustrate the direct dependence of
our important social concerns upon the methods and results of
natural science.
With respect then to both humanistic and naturalistic studies,
education should take its departure from this close interdependence.
It should aim not at keeping science as a study of nature apart from
literature as a record of human interests, but at cross-fertilizing both
the natural sciences and the various human disciplines such as
history, literature, economics, and politics. Pedagogically, the
problem is simpler than the attempt to teach the sciences as mere
technical bodies of information and technical forms of physical
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manipulation, on one side; and to teach humanistic studies as
isolated subjects, on the other. For the latter procedure institutes an
artificial separation in the pupils' experience. Outside of school
pupils meet with natural facts and principles in connection with
various modes of human action. (See ante, p. 30.) In all the social
activities in which they have shared they have had to understand the
material and processes involved. To start them in school with a
rupture of this intimate association breaks the continuity of mental
development, makes the student feel an indescribable unreality in his
studies, and deprives him of the normal motive for interest in them.
There is no doubt, of course, that the opportunities of education
should be such that all should have a chance who have the
disposition to advance to specialized ability in science, and thus
devote themselves to its pursuit as their particular occupation in life.
But at present, the pupil too often has a choice only between
beginning with a study of the results of prior specialization where
the material is isolated from his daily experiences, or with
miscellaneous nature study, where material is presented at haphazard
and does not lead anywhere in particular. The habit of introducing
college pupils into segregated scientific subject matter, such as is
appropriate to the man who wishes to become an expert in a given
field, is carried back into the high schools. Pupils in the latter simply
get a more elementary treatment of the same thing, with difficulties
smoothed over and topics reduced to the level of their supposed
ability. The cause of this procedure lies in following tradition, rather
than in conscious adherence to a dualistic philosophy. But the effect
is the same as if the purpose were to inculcate an idea that the
sciences which deal with nature have nothing to do with man, and
vice versa. A large part of the comparative ineffectiveness of the
teaching of the sciences, for those who never become scientific
specialists, is the result of a separation which is unavoidable when
one begins with technically organized subject matter. Even if all
students were embryonic scientific specialists, it is questionable
whether this is the most effective procedure. Considering that the
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great majority are concerned with the study of sciences only for its
effect upon their mental habits--in making them more alert, more
open-minded, more inclined to tentative acceptance and to testing
of ideas propounded or suggested,--and for achieving a better
understanding of their daily environment, it is certainly ill-advised.
Too often the pupil comes out with a smattering which is too
superficial to be scientific and too technical to be applicable to
ordinary affairs.
The utilization of ordinary experience to secure an advance into
scientific material and method, while keeping the latter connected
with familiar human interests, is easier to-day than it ever was
before. The usual experience of all persons in civilized communities
to-day is intimately associated with industrial processes and results.
These in turn are so many cases of science in action. The stationary
and traction steam engine, gasoline engine, automobile, telegraph
and telephone, the electric motor enter directly into the lives of
most individuals. Pupils at an early age are practically acquainted
with these things. Not only does the business occupation of their
parents depend upon scientific applications, but household pursuits,
the maintenance of health, the sights seen upon the streets, embody
scientific achievements and stimulate interest in the connected
scientific principles. The obvious pedagogical starting point of
scientific instruction is not to teach things labeled science, but to
utilize the familiar occupations and appliances to direct observation
and experiment, until pupils have arrived at a knowledge of some
fundamental principles by understanding them in their familiar
practical workings.
The opinion sometimes advanced that it is a derogation from the
"purity" of science to study it in its active incarnation, instead of in
theoretical abstraction, rests upon a misunderstanding. AS matter of
fact, any subject is cultural in the degree in which it is apprehended
in its widest possible range of meanings. Perception of meanings
depends upon perception of connections, of context. To see a
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scientific fact or law in its human as well as in its physical and
technical context is to enlarge its significance and give it increased
cultural value. Its direct economic application, if by economic is
meant something having money worth, is incidental and secondary,
but a part of its actual connections. The important thing is that the
fact be grasped in its social connections--its function in life.
On the other hand, "humanism" means at bottom being imbued
with an intelligent sense of human interests. The social interest,
identical in its deepest meaning with a moral interest, is necessarily
supreme with man. Knowledge about man, information as to his
past, familiarity with his documented records of literature, may be as
technical a possession as the accumulation of physical details. Men
may keep busy in a variety of ways, making money, acquiring facility
in laboratory manipulation, or in amassing a store of facts about
linguistic matters, or the chronology of literary productions. Unless
such activity reacts to enlarge the imaginative vision of life, it is on a
level with the busy work of children. It has the letter without the
spirit of activity. It readily degenerates itself into a miser's
accumulation, and a man prides himself on what he has, and not on
the meaning he finds in the affairs of life. Any study so pursued that
it increases concern for the values of life, any study producing
greater sensitiveness to social well-being and greater ability to
promote that well-being is humane study. The humanistic spirit of
the Greeks was native and intense but it was narrow in scope.
Everybody outside the Hellenic circle was a barbarian, and negligible
save as a possible enemy. Acute as were the social observations and
speculations of Greek thinkers, there is not a word in their writings
to indicate that Greek civilization was not self-inclosed and self-
sufficient. There was, apparently, no suspicion that its future was at
the mercy of the despised outsider. Within the Greek community,
the intense social spirit was limited by the fact that higher culture
was based on a substratum of slavery and economic serfdom--
classes necessary to the existence of the state, as Aristotle declared,
and yet not genuine parts of it. The development of science has
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produced an industrial revolution which has brought different
peoples in such close contact with one another through colonization
and commerce that no matter how some nations may still look
down upon others, no country can harbor the illusion that its career
is decided wholly within itself. The same revolution has abolished
agricultural serfdom, and created a class of more or less organized
factory laborers with recognized political rights, and who make
claims for a responsible role in the control of industry--claims
which receive sympathetic attention from many among the well-to-
do, since they have been brought into closer connections with the
less fortunate classes through the breaking down of class barriers.
This state of affairs may be formulated by saying that the older
humanism omitted economic and industrial conditions from its
purview. Consequently, it was one sided. Culture, under such
circumstances, inevitably represented the intellectual and moral
outlook of the class which was in direct social control. Such a
tradition as to culture is, as we have seen (ante, p. 260), aristocratic;
it emphasizes what marks off one class from another, rather than
fundamental common interests. Its standards are in the past; for the
aim is to preserve what has been gained rather than widely to extend
the range of culture.
The modifications which spring from taking greater account of
industry and of whatever has to do with making a living are
frequently condemned as attacks upon the culture derived from the
past. But a wider educational outlook would conceive industrial
activities as agencies for making intellectual resources more
accessible to the masses, and giving greater solidity to the culture of
those having superior resources. In short, when we consider the
close connection between science and industrial development on the
one hand, and between literary and aesthetic cultivation and an
aristocratic social organization on the other, we get light on the
opposition between technical scientific studies and refining literary
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studies. We have before us the need of overcoming this separation
in education if society is to be truly democratic.
Summary.
The philosophic dualism between man and nature is reflected in the
division of studies between the naturalistic and the humanistic with
a tendency to reduce the latter to the literary records of the past.
This dualism is not characteristic (as were the others which we have
noted) of Greek thought. It arose partly because of the fact that the
culture of Rome and of barbarian Europe was not a native product,
being borrowed directly or indirectly from Greece, and partly
because political and ecclesiastic conditions emphasized dependence
upon the authority of past knowledge as that was transmitted in
literary documents.
At the outset, the rise of modern science prophesied a restoration
of the intimate connection of nature and humanity, for it viewed
knowledge of nature as the means of securing human progress and
well-being. But the more immediate applications of science were in
the interests of a class rather than of men in common; and the
received philosophic formulations of scientific doctrine tended
either to mark it off as merely material from man as spiritual and
immaterial, or else to reduce mind to a subjective illusion. In
education, accordingly, the tendency was to treat the sciences as a
separate body of studies, consisting of technical information
regarding the physical world, and to reserve the older literary studies
as distinctively humanistic. The account previously given of the
evolution of knowledge, and of the educational scheme of studies
based upon it, are designed to overcome the separation, and to
secure recognition of the place occupied by the subject matter of
the natural sciences in human affairs.
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1 The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian
Church. pp. 43-44.
Chapter Twenty-two: The Individual and the World
1. Mind as Purely Individual. We have been concerned with the
influences which have effected a division between work and leisure,
knowing and doing, man and nature. These influences have resulted
in splitting up the subject matter of education into separate studies.
They have also found formulation in various philosophies which
have opposed to each other body and mind, theoretical knowledge
and practice, physical mechanism and ideal purpose. Upon the
philosophical side, these various dualisms culminate in a sharp
demarcation of individual minds from the world, and hence from
one another. While the connection of this philosophical position
with educational procedure is not so obvious as is that of the points
considered in the last three chapters, there are certain educational
considerations which correspond to it; such as the antithesis
supposed to exist between subject matter (the counterpart of the
world) and method (the counterpart of mind); such as the tendency
to treat interest as something purely private, without intrinsic
connection with the material studied. Aside from incidental
educational bearings, it will be shown in this chapter that the
dualistic philosophy of mind and the world implies an erroneous
conception of the relationship between knowledge and social
interests, and between individuality or freedom, and social control
and authority. The identification of the mind with the individual self
and of the latter with a private psychic consciousness is
comparatively modern. In both the Greek and medieval periods, the
rule was to regard the individual as a channel through which a
universal and divine intelligence operated. The individual was in no
true sense the knower; the knower was the "Reason" which operated
through him. The individual interfered at his peril, and only to the
detriment of the truth. In the degree in which the individual rather
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than reason "knew," conceit, error, and opinion were substituted for
true knowledge. In Greek life, observation was acute and alert; and
thinking was free almost to the point of irresponsible speculations.
Accordingly the consequences of the theory were only such as were
consequent upon the lack of an experimental method. Without such
a method individuals could not engage in knowing, and be checked
up by the results of the inquiries of others. Without such liability to
test by others, the minds of men could not be intellectually
responsible; results were to be accepted because of their aesthetic
consistency, agreeable quality, or the prestige of their authors. In the
barbarian period, individuals were in a still more humble attitude to
truth; important knowledge was supposed to be divinely revealed,
and nothing remained for the minds of individuals except to work it
over after it had been received on authority. Aside from the more
consciously philosophic aspects of these movements, it never
occurs to any one to identify mind and the personal self wherever
beliefs are transmitted by custom.
In the medieval period there was a religious individualism. The
deepest concern of life was the salvation of the individual soul. In
the later Middle Ages, this latent individualism found conscious
formulation in the nominalistic philosophies, which treated the
structure of knowledge as something built up within the individual
through his own acts, and mental states. With the rise of economic
and political individualism after the sixteenth century, and with the
development of Protestantism, the times were ripe for an emphasis
upon the rights and duties of the individual in achieving knowledge
for himself. This led to the view that knowledge is won wholly
through personal and private experiences. As a consequence, mind,
the source and possessor of knowledge, was thought of as wholly
individual. Thus upon the educational side, we find educational
reformers, like Montaigne, Bacon, Locke, henceforth vehemently
denouncing all learning which is acquired on hearsay, and asserting
that even if beliefs happen to be true, they do not constitute
knowledge unless they have grown up in and been tested by
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personal experience. The reaction against authority in all spheres of
life, and the intensity of the struggle, against great odds, for
freedom of action and inquiry, led to such an emphasis upon
personal observations and ideas as in effect to isolate mind, and set
it apart from the world to be known.
This isolation is reflected in the great development of that branch
of philosophy known as epistemology--the theory of knowledge.
The identification of mind with the self, and the setting up of the
self as something independent and self-sufficient, created such a
gulf between the knowing mind and the world that it became a
question how knowledge was possible at all. Given a subject--the
knower--and an object--the thing to be known--wholly separate
from one another, it is necessary to frame a theory to explain how
they get into connection with each other so that valid knowledge
may result. This problem, with the allied one of the possibility of
the world acting upon the mind and the mind acting upon the
world, became almost the exclusive preoccupation of philosophic
thought.
The theories that we cannot know the world as it really is but only
the impressions made upon the mind, or that there is no world
beyond the individual mind, or that knowledge is only a certain
association of the mind's own states, were products of this
preoccupation. We are not directly concerned with their truth; but
the fact that such desperate solutions were widely accepted is
evidence of the extent to which mind had been set over the world
of realities. The increasing use of the term "consciousness" as an
equivalent for mind, in the supposition that there is an inner world
of conscious states and processes, independent of any relationship
to nature and society, an inner world more truly and immediately
known than anything else, is evidence of the same fact. In short,
practical individualism, or struggle for greater freedom of thought
in action, was translated into philosophic subjectivism.
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2. Individual Mind as the Agent of Reorganization. It should be
obvious that this philosophic movement misconceived the
significance of the practical movement. Instead of being its
transcript, it was a perversion. Men were not actually engaged in the
absurdity of striving to be free from connection with nature and
one another. They were striving for greater freedom in nature and
society. They wanted greater power to initiate changes in the world
of things and fellow beings; greater scope of movement and
consequently greater freedom in observations and ideas implied in
movement. They wanted not isolation from the world, but a more
intimate connection with it. They wanted to form their beliefs about
it at first hand, instead of through tradition. They wanted closer
union with their fellows so that they might influence one another
more effectively and might combine their respective actions for
mutual aims.
So far as their beliefs were concerned, they felt that a great deal
which passed for knowledge was merely the accumulated opinions
of the past, much of it absurd and its correct portions not
understood when accepted on authority. Men must observe for
themselves, and form their own theories and personally test them.
Such a method was the only alternative to the imposition of dogma
as truth, a procedure which reduced mind to the formal act of
acquiescing in truth. Such is the meaning of what is sometimes
called the substitution of inductive experimental methods of
knowing for deductive. In some sense, men had always used an
inductive method in dealing with their immediate practical concerns.
Architecture, agriculture, manufacture, etc., had to be based upon
observation of the activities of natural objects, and ideas about such
affairs had to be checked, to some extent, by results. But even in
such things there was an undue reliance upon mere custom,
followed blindly rather than understandingly. And this
observational-experimental method was restricted to these
"practical" matters, and a sharp distinction maintained between
practice and theoretical knowledge or truth. (See Ch. XX.) The rise
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of free cities, the development of travel, exploration, and
commerce, the evolution of new methods of producing
commodities and doing business, threw men definitely upon their
own resources. The reformers of science like Galileo, Descartes,
and their successors, carried analogous methods into ascertaining
the facts about nature. An interest in discovery took the place of an
interest in systematizing and "proving" received beliefs.
A just philosophic interpretation of these movements would,
indeed, have emphasized the rights and responsibilities of the
individual in gaining knowledge and personally testing beliefs, no
matter by what authorities they were vouched for. But it would not
have isolated the individual from the world, and consequently
isolated individuals--in theory--from one another. It would have
perceived that such disconnection, such rupture of continuity,
denied in advance the possibility of success in their endeavors. As
matter of fact every individual has grown up, and always must grow
up, in a social medium. His responses grow intelligent, or gain
meaning, simply because he lives and acts in a medium of accepted
meanings and values. (See ante, p. 30.) Through social intercourse,
through sharing in the activities embodying beliefs, he gradually
acquires a mind of his own. The conception of mind as a purely
isolated possession of the self is at the very antipodes of the truth.
The self achieves mind in the degree in which knowledge of things
is incarnate in the life about him; the self is not a separate mind
building up knowledge anew on its own account.
Yet there is a valid distinction between knowledge which is objective
and impersonal, and thinking which is subjective and personal. In
one sense, knowledge is that which we take for granted. It is that
which is settled, disposed of, established, under control. What we
fully know, we do not need to think about. In common phrase, it is
certain, assured. And this does not mean a mere feeling of certainty.
It denotes not a sentiment, but a practical attitude, a readiness to act
without reserve or quibble. Of course we may be mistaken. What is
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taken for knowledge--for fact and truth--at a given time may not
be such. But everything which is assumed without question, which is
taken for granted in our intercourse with one another and nature is
what, at the given time, is called knowledge. Thinking on the
contrary, starts, as we have seen, from doubt or uncertainty. It marks
an inquiring, hunting, searching attitude, instead of one of mastery
and possession. Through its critical process true knowledge is
revised and extended, and our convictions as to the state of things
reorganized. Clearly the last few centuries have been typically a
period of revision and reorganization of beliefs. Men did not really
throw away all transmitted beliefs concerning the realities of
existence, and start afresh upon the basis of their private, exclusive
sensations and ideas. They could not have done so if they had
wished to, and if it had been possible general imbecility would have
been the only outcome. Men set out from what had passed as
knowledge, and critically investigated the grounds upon which it
rested; they noted exceptions; they used new mechanical appliances
to bring to light data inconsistent with what had been believed; they
used their imaginations to conceive a world different from that in
which their forefathers had put their trust. The work was a
piecemeal, a retail, business. One problem was tackled at a time. The
net results of all the revisions amounted, however, to a revolution
of prior conceptions of the world. What occurred was a
reorganization of prior intellectual habitudes, infinitely more
efficient than a cutting loose from all connections would have been.
This state of affairs suggests a definition of the role of the
individual, or the self, in knowledge; namely, the redirection, or
reconstruction of accepted beliefs. Every new idea, every
conception of things differing from that authorized by current
belief, must have its origin in an individual. New ideas are doubtless
always sprouting, but a society governed by custom does not
encourage their development. On the contrary, it tends to suppress
them, just because they are deviations from what is current. The
man who looks at things differently from others is in such a
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community a suspect character; for him to persist is generally fatal.
Even when social censorship of beliefs is not so strict, social
conditions may fail to provide the appliances which are requisite if
new ideas are to be adequately elaborated; or they may fail to
provide any material support and reward to those who entertain
them. Hence they remain mere fancies, romantic castles in the air, or
aimless speculations. The freedom of observation and imagination
involved in the modern scientific revolution were not easily secured;
they had to be fought for; many suffered for their intellectual
independence. But, upon the whole, modern European society first
permitted, and then, in some fields at least, deliberately encouraged
the individual reactions which deviate from what custom prescribes.
Discovery, research, inquiry in new lines, inventions, finally came to
be either the social fashion, or in some degree tolerable. However, as
we have already noted, philosophic theories of knowledge were not
content to conceive mind in the individual as the pivot upon which
reconstruction of beliefs turned, thus maintaining the continuity of
the individual with the world of nature and fellow men. They
regarded the individual mind as a separate entity, complete in each
person, and isolated from nature and hence from other minds. Thus
a legitimate intellectual individualism, the attitude of critical revision
of former beliefs which is indispensable to progress, was explicitly
formulated as a moral and social individualism. When the activities
of mind set out from customary beliefs and strive to effect
transformations of them which will in turn win general conviction,
there is no opposition between the individual and the social. The
intellectual variations of the individual in observation, imagination,
judgment, and invention are simply the agencies of social progress,
just as conformity to habit is the agency of social conservation. But
when knowledge is regarded as originating and developing within an
individual, the ties which bind the mental life of one to that of his
fellows are ignored and denied.
When the social quality of individualized mental operations is
denied, it becomes a problem to find connections which will unite
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an individual with his fellows. Moral individualism is set up by the
conscious separation of different centers of life. It has its roots in
the notion that the consciousness of each person is wholly private, a
self-inclosed continent, intrinsically independent of the ideas,
wishes, purposes of everybody else. But when men act, they act in a
common and public world. This is the problem to which the theory
of isolated and independent conscious minds gave rise: Given
feelings, ideas, desires, which have nothing to do with one another,
how can actions proceeding from them be controlled in a social or
public interest? Given an egoistic consciousness, how can action
which has regard for others take place?
Moral philosophies which have started from such premises have
developed four typical ways of dealing with the question. (i) One
method represents the survival of the older authoritative position,
with such concessions and compromises as the progress of events
has made absolutely inevitable. The deviations and departures
characterizing an individual are still looked upon with suspicion; in
principle they are evidences of the disturbances, revolts, and
corruptions inhering in an individual apart from external
authoritative guidance. In fact, as distinct from principle, intellectual
individualism is tolerated in certain technical regions--in subjects
like mathematics and physics and astronomy, and in the technical
inventions resulting therefrom. But the applicability of a similar
method to morals, social, legal, and political matters, is denied. In
such matters, dogma is still to be supreme; certain eternal truths
made known by revelation, intuition, or the wisdom of our
forefathers set unpassable limits to individual observation and
speculation. The evils from which society suffers are set down to the
efforts of misguided individuals to transgress these boundaries.
Between the physical and the moral sciences, lie intermediate
sciences of life, where the territory is only grudgingly yielded to
freedom of inquiry under the pressure of accomplished fact.
Although past history has demonstrated that the possibilities of
human good are widened and made more secure by trusting to a
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responsibility built up within the very process of inquiry, the
"authority" theory sets apart a sacred domain of truth which must
be protected from the inroads of variation of beliefs. Educationally,
emphasis may not be put on eternal truth, but it is put on the
authority of book and teacher, and individual variation is
discouraged.
(ii) Another method is sometimes termed rationalism or abstract
intellectualism. A formal logical faculty is set up in distinction from
tradition and history and all concrete subject matter. This faculty of
reason is endowed with power to influence conduct directly. Since it
deals wholly with general and impersonal forms, when different
persons act in accord with logical findings, their activities will be
externally consistent. There is no doubt of the services rendered by
this philosophy. It was a powerful factor in the negative and
dissolving criticism of doctrines having nothing but tradition and
class interest behind them; it accustomed men to freedom of
discussion and to the notion that beliefs had to be submitted to
criteria of reasonableness. It undermined the power of prejudice,
superstition, and brute force, by habituating men to reliance upon
argument, discussion, and persuasion. It made for clarity and order
of exposition. But its influence was greater in destruction of old
falsities than in the construction of new ties and associations among
men. Its formal and empty nature, due to conceiving reason as
something complete in itself apart from subject matter, its hostile
attitude toward historical institutions, its disregard of the influence
of habit, instinct, and emotion, as operative factors in life, left it
impotent in the suggestion of specific aims and methods. Bare logic,
however important in arranging and criticizing existing subject
matter, cannot spin new subject matter out of itself. In education,
the correlative is trust in general ready-made rules and principles to
secure agreement, irrespective of seeing to it that the pupil's ideas
really agree with one another.
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(iii) While this rationalistic philosophy was developing in France,
English thought appealed to the intelligent self-interest of
individuals in order to secure outer unity in the acts which issued
from isolated streams of consciousness. Legal arrangements,
especially penal administration, and governmental regulations, were
to be such as to prevent the acts which proceeded from regard for
one's own private sensations from interfering with the feelings of
others. Education was to instill in individuals a sense that non-
interference with others and some degree of positive regard for
their welfare were necessary for security in the pursuit of one's own
happiness. Chief emphasis was put, however, upon trade as a means
of bringing the conduct of one into harmony with that of others.
In commerce, each aims at the satisfaction of his own wants, but
can gain his own profit only by furnishing some commodity or
service to another. Thus in aiming at the increase of his own private
pleasurable states of consciousness, he contributes to the
consciousness of others. Again there is no doubt that this view
expressed and furthered a heightened perception of the values of
conscious life, and a recognition that institutional arrangements are
ultimately to be judged by the contributions which they make to
intensifying and enlarging the scope of conscious experience. It also
did much to rescue work, industry, and mechanical devices from the
contempt in which they had been held in communities founded
upon the control of a leisure class. In both ways, this philosophy
promoted a wider and more democratic social concern. But it was
tainted by the narrowness of its fundamental premise: the doctrine
that every individual acts only from regard for his own pleasures and
pains, and that so-called generous and sympathetic acts are only
indirect ways of procuring and assuring one's own comfort. In other
words, it made explicit the consequences inhering in any doctrine
which makes mental life a self-inclosed thing, instead of an attempt
to redirect and readapt common concerns. It made union among
men a matter of calculation of externals. It lent itself to the
contemptuous assertions of Carlyle that it was a doctrine of anarchy
plus a constable, and recognized only a "cash nexus" among men.
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The educational equivalents of this doctrine in the uses made of
pleasurable rewards and painful penalties are only too obvious. (iv)
Typical German philosophy followed another path. It started from
what was essentially the rationalistic philosophy of Descartes and
his French successors. But while French thought upon the whole
developed the idea of reason in opposition to the religious
conception of a divine mind residing in individuals, German
thought (as in Hegel) made a synthesis of the two. Reason is
absolute. Nature is incarnate reason. History is reason in its
progressive unfolding in man. An individual becomes rational only
as he absorbs into himself the content of rationality in nature and in
social institutions. For an absolute reason is not, like the reason of
rationalism, purely formal and empty; as absolute it must include all
content within itself. Thus the real problem is not that of
controlling individual freedom so that some measure of social order
and concord may result, but of achieving individual freedom
through developing individual convictions in accord with the
universal law found in the organization of the state as objective
Reason. While this philosophy is usually termed absolute or
objective idealism, it might better be termed, for educational
purposes at least, institutional idealism. (See ante, p. 59.) It idealized
historical institutions by conceiving them as incarnations of an
immanent absolute mind. There can be no doubt that this
philosophy was a powerful influence in rescuing philosophy in the
beginning of the nineteenth century from the isolated individualism
into which it had fallen in France and England. It served also to
make the organization of the state more constructively interested in
matters of public concern. It left less to chance, less to mere
individual logical conviction, less to the workings of private self-
interest. It brought intelligence to bear upon the conduct of affairs;
it accentuated the need of nationally organized education in the
interests of the corporate state. It sanctioned and promoted
freedom of inquiry in all technical details of natural and historical
phenomena. But in all ultimate moral matters, it tended to reinstate
the principle of authority. It made for efficiency of organization
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more than did any of the types of philosophy previously
mentioned, but it made no provision for free experimental
modification of this organization. Political democracy, with its belief
in the right of individual desire and purpose to take part in
readapting even the fundamental constitution of society, was foreign
to it.
3. Educational Equivalents. It is not necessary to consider in detail
the educational counterparts of the various defects found in these
various types of philosophy. It suffices to say that in general the
school has been the institution which exhibited with greatest
clearness the assumed antithesis between purely individualistic
methods of learning and social action, and between freedom and
social control. The antithesis is reflected in the absence of a social
atmosphere and motive for learning, and the consequent separation,
in the conduct of the school, between method of instruction and
methods of government; and in the slight opportunity afforded
individual variations. When learning is a phase of active
undertakings which involve mutual exchange, social control enters
into the very process of learning. When the social factor is absent,
learning becomes a carrying over of some presented material into a
purely individual consciousness, and there is no inherent reason why
it should give a more socialized direction to mental and emotional
disposition. There is tendency on the part of both the upholders
and the opponents of freedom in school to identify it with absence
of social direction, or, sometimes, with merely physical unconstraint
of movement. But the essence of the demand for freedom is the
need of conditions which will enable an individual to make his own
special contribution to a group interest, and to partake of its
activities in such ways that social guidance shall be a matter of his
own mental attitude, and not a mere authoritative dictation of his
acts. Because what is often called discipline and "government" has
to do with the external side of conduct alone, a similar meaning is
attached, by reaction, to freedom. But when it is perceived that each
idea signifies the quality of mind expressed in action, the supposed
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opposition between them falls away. Freedom means essentially the
part played by thinking--which is personal--in learning:--it means
intellectual initiative, independence in observation, judicious
invention, foresight of consequences, and ingenuity of adaptation to
them.
But because these are the mental phase of behavior, the needed play
of individuality--or freedom--cannot be separated from
opportunity for free play of physical movements. Enforced physical
quietude may be unfavorable to realization of a problem, to
undertaking the observations needed to define it, and to
performance of the experiments which test the ideas suggested.
Much has been said about the importance of "self-activity" in
education, but the conception has too frequently been restricted to
something merely internal--something excluding the free use of
sensory and motor organs. Those who are at the stage of learning
from symbols, or who are engaged in elaborating the implications of
a problem or idea preliminary to more carefully thought-out activity,
may need little perceptible overt activity. But the whole cycle of self-
activity demands an opportunity for investigation and
experimentation, for trying out one's ideas upon things, discovering
what can be done with materials and appliances. And this is
incompatible with closely restricted physical activity. Individual
activity has sometimes been taken as meaning leaving a pupil to
work by himself or alone. Relief from need of attending to what
any one else is doing is truly required to secure calm and
concentration. Children, like grown persons, require a judicious
amount of being let alone. But the time, place, and amount of such
separate work is a matter of detail, not of principle. There is no
inherent opposition between working with others and working as an
individual. On the contrary, certain capacities of an individual are
not brought out except under the stimulus of associating with
others. That a child must work alone and not engage in group
activities in order to be free and let his individuality develop, is a
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notion which measures individuality by spatial distance and makes a
physical thing of it.
Individuality as a factor to be respected in education has a double
meaning. In the first place, one is mentally an individual only as he
has his own purpose and problem, and does his own thinking. The
phrase "think for one's self" is a pleonasm. Unless one does it for
one's self, it isn't thinking. Only by a pupil's own observations,
reflections, framing and testing of suggestions can what he already
knows be amplified and rectified. Thinking is as much an individual
matter as is the digestion of food. In the second place, there are
variations of point of view, of appeal of objects, and of mode of
attack, from person to person. When these variations are suppressed
in the alleged interests of uniformity, and an attempt is made to
have a single mold of method of study and recitation, mental
confusion and artificiality inevitably result. Originality is gradually
destroyed, confidence in one's own quality of mental operation is
undermined, and a docile subjection to the opinion of others is
inculcated, or else ideas run wild. The harm is greater now than
when the whole community was governed by customary beliefs,
because the contrast between methods of learning in school and
those relied upon outside the school is greater. That systematic
advance in scientific discovery began when individuals were allowed,
and then encouraged, to utilize their own peculiarities of response
to subject matter, no one will deny. If it is said in objection, that
pupils in school are not capable of any such originality, and hence
must be confined to appropriating and reproducing things already
known by the better informed, the reply is twofold. (i) We are
concerned with originality of attitude which is equivalent to the
unforced response of one's own individuality, not with originality as
measured by product. No one expects the young to make original
discoveries of just the same facts and principles as are embodied in
the sciences of nature and man. But it is not unreasonable to expect
that learning may take place under such conditions that from the
standpoint of the learner there is genuine discovery. While
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immature students will not make discoveries from the standpoint of
advanced students, they make them from their own standpoint,
whenever there is genuine learning. (ii) In the normal process of
becoming acquainted with subject matter already known to others,
even young pupils react in unexpected ways. There is something
fresh, something not capable of being fully anticipated by even the
most experienced teacher, in the ways they go at the topic, and in
the particular ways in which things strike them. Too often all this is
brushed aside as irrelevant; pupils are deliberately held to rehearsing
material in the exact form in which the older person conceives it.
The result is that what is instinctively original in individuality, that
which marks off one from another, goes unused and undirected.
Teaching then ceases to be an educative process for the teacher. At
most he learns simply to improve his existing technique; he does not
get new points of view; he fails to experience any intellectual
companionship. Hence both teaching and learning tend to become
conventional and mechanical with all the nervous strain on both
sides therein implied.
As maturity increases and as the student has a greater background
of familiarity upon which a new topic is projected, the scope of
more or less random physical experimentation is reduced. Activity is
defined or specialized in certain channels. To the eyes of others, the
student may be in a position of complete physical quietude, because
his energies are confined to nerve channels and to the connected
apparatus of the eyes and vocal organs. But because this attitude is
evidence of intense mental concentration on the part of the trained
person, it does not follow that it should be set up as a model for
students who still have to find their intellectual way about. And even
with the adult, it does not cover the whole circuit of mental energy.
It marks an intermediate period, capable of being lengthened with
increased mastery of a subject, but always coming between an earlier
period of more general and conspicuous organic action and a later
time of putting to use what has been apprehended.
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When, however, education takes cognizance of the union of mind
and body in acquiring knowledge, we are not obliged to insist upon
the need of obvious, or external, freedom. It is enough to identify
the freedom which is involved in teaching and studying with the
thinking by which what a person already knows and believes is
enlarged and refined. If attention is centered upon the conditions
which have to be met in order to secure a situation favorable to
effective thinking, freedom will take care of itself. The individual
who has a question which being really a question to him instigates
his curiosity, which feeds his eagerness for information that will help
him cope with it, and who has at command an equipment which will
permit these interests to take effect, is intellectually free. Whatever
initiative and imaginative vision he possesses will be called into play
and control his impulses and habits. His own purposes will direct his
actions. Otherwise, his seeming attention, his docility, his
memorizings and reproductions, will partake of intellectual servility.
Such a condition of intellectual subjection is needed for fitting the
masses into a society where the many are not expected to have aims
or ideas of their own, but to take orders from the few set in
authority. It is not adapted to a society which intends to be
democratic.
Summary.
True individualism is a product of the relaxation of the grip of the
authority of custom and traditions as standards of belief. Aside
from sporadic instances, like the height of Greek thought, it is a
comparatively modern manifestation. Not but that there have always
been individual diversities, but that a society dominated by
conservative custom represses them or at least does not utilize them
and promote them. For various reasons, however, the new
individualism was interpreted philosophically not as meaning
development of agencies for revising and transforming previously
accepted beliefs, but as an assertion that each individual's mind was
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complete in isolation from everything else. In the theoretical phase
of philosophy, this produced the epistemological problem: the
question as to the possibility of any cognitive relationship of the
individual to the world. In its practical phase, it generated the
problem of the possibility of a purely individual consciousness
acting on behalf of general or social interests,--the problem of
social direction. While the philosophies which have been elaborated
to deal with these questions have not affected education directly, the
assumptions underlying them have found expression in the
separation frequently made between study and government and
between freedom of individuality and control by others. Regarding
freedom, the important thing to bear in mind is that it designates a
mental attitude rather than external unconstraint of movements, but
that this quality of mind cannot develop without a fair leeway of
movements in exploration, experimentation, application, etc. A
society based on custom will utilize individual variations only up to a
limit of conformity with usage; uniformity is the chief ideal within
each class. A progressive society counts individual variations as
precious since it finds in them the means of its own growth. Hence
a democratic society must, in consistency with its ideal, allow for
intellectual freedom and the play of diverse gifts and interests in its
educational measures.
Chapter Twenty-Three: Vocational Aspects of
Education
1. The Meaning of Vocation. At the present time the conflict of
philosophic theories focuses in discussion of the proper place and
function of vocational factors in education. The bald statement that
significant differences in fundamental philosophical conceptions
find their chief issue in connection with this point may arouse
incredulity: there seems to be too great a gap between the remote
and general terms in which philosophic ideas are formulated and the
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practical and concrete details of vocational education. But a mental
review of the intellectual presuppositions underlying the
oppositions in education of labor and leisure, theory and practice,
body and mind, mental states and the world, will show that they
culminate in the antithesis of vocational and cultural education.
Traditionally, liberal culture has been linked to the notions of
leisure, purely contemplative knowledge and a spiritual activity not
involving the active use of bodily organs. Culture has also tended,
latterly, to be associated with a purely private refinement, a
cultivation of certain states and attitudes of consciousness, separate
from either social direction or service. It has been an escape from
the former, and a solace for the necessity of the latter.
So deeply entangled are these philosophic dualisms with the whole
subject of vocational education, that it is necessary to define the
meaning of vocation with some fullness in order to avoid the
impression that an education which centers about it is narrowly
practical, if not merely pecuniary. A vocation means nothing but
such a direction of life activities as renders them perceptibly
significant to a person, because of the consequences they
accomplish, and also useful to his associates. The opposite of a
career is neither leisure nor culture, but aimlessness, capriciousness,
the absence of cumulative achievement in experience, on the
personal side, and idle display, parasitic dependence upon the others,
on the social side. Occupation is a concrete term for continuity. It
includes the development of artistic capacity of any kind, of special
scientific ability, of effective citizenship, as well as professional and
business occupations, to say nothing of mechanical labor or
engagement in gainful pursuits.
We must avoid not only limitation of conception of vocation to the
occupations where immediately tangible commodities are produced,
but also the notion that vocations are distributed in an exclusive way,
one and only one to each person. Such restricted specialism is
impossible; nothing could be more absurd than to try to educate
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individuals with an eye to only one line of activity. In the first place,
each individual has of necessity a variety of callings, in each of
which he should be intelligently effective; and in the second place
any one occupation loses its meaning and becomes a routine
keeping busy at something in the degree in which it is isolated from
other interests. (i) No one is just an artist and nothing else, and in so
far as one approximates that condition, he is so much the less
developed human being; he is a kind of monstrosity. He must, at
some period of his life, be a member of a family; he must have
friends and companions; he must either support himself or be
supported by others, and thus he has a business career. He is a
member of some organized political unit, and so on. We naturally
name his vocation from that one of the callings which distinguishes
him, rather than from those which he has in common with all
others. But we should not allow ourselves to be so subject to words
as to ignore and virtually deny his other callings when it comes to a
consideration of the vocational phases of education.
(ii) As a man's vocation as artist is but the emphatically specialized
phase of his diverse and variegated vocational activities, so his
efficiency in it, in the humane sense of efficiency, is determined by
its association with other callings. A person must have experience,
he must live, if his artistry is to be more than a technical
accomplishment. He cannot find the subject matter of his artistic
activity within his art; this must be an expression of what he suffers
and enjoys in other relationships--a thing which depends in turn
upon the alertness and sympathy of his interests. What is true of an
artist is true of any other special calling. There is doubtless--in
general accord with the principle of habit--a tendency for every
distinctive vocation to become too dominant, too exclusive and
absorbing in its specialized aspect. This means emphasis upon skill
or technical method at the expense of meaning. Hence it is not the
business of education to foster this tendency, but rather to
safeguard against it, so that the scientific inquirer shall not be merely
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the scientist, the teacher merely the pedagogue, the clergyman
merely one who wears the cloth, and so on.
2. The Place of Vocational Aims in Education. Bearing in mind the
varied and connected content of the vocation, and the broad
background upon which a particular calling is projected, we shall
now consider education for the more distinctive activity of an
individual.
1. An occupation is the only thing which balances the distinctive
capacity of an individual with his social service. To find out what
one is fitted to do and to secure an opportunity to do it is the key to
happiness. Nothing is more tragic than failure to discover one's true
business in life, or to find that one has drifted or been forced by
circumstance into an uncongenial calling. A right occupation means
simply that the aptitudes of a person are in adequate play, working
with the minimum of friction and the maximum of satisfaction.
With reference to other members of a community, this adequacy of
action signifies, of course, that they are getting the best service the
person can render. It is generally believed, for example, that slave
labor was ultimately wasteful even from the purely economic point
of view--that there was not sufficient stimulus to direct the
energies of slaves, and that there was consequent wastage.
Moreover, since slaves were confined to certain prescribed callings,
much talent must have remained unavailable to the community, and
hence there was a dead loss. Slavery only illustrates on an obvious
scale what happens in some degree whenever an individual does not
find himself in his work. And he cannot completely find himself
when vocations are looked upon with contempt, and a conventional
ideal of a culture which is essentially the same for all is maintained.
Plato (ante, p. 88) laid down the fundamental principle of a
philosophy of education when he asserted that it was the business
of education to discover what each person is good for, and to train
him to mastery of that mode of excellence, because such
development would also secure the fulfillment of social needs in the
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most harmonious way. His error was not in qualitative principle, but
in his limited conception of the scope of vocations socially needed;
a limitation of vision which reacted to obscure his perception of the
infinite variety of capacities found in different individuals.
2. An occupation is a continuous activity having a purpose.
Education through occupations consequently combines within itself
more of the factors conducive to learning than any other method. It
calls instincts and habits into play; it is a foe to passive receptivity. It
has an end in view; results are to be accomplished. Hence it appeals
to thought; it demands that an idea of an end be steadily
maintained, so that activity cannot be either routine or capricious.
Since the movement of activity must be progressive, leading from
one stage to another, observation and ingenuity are required at each
stage to overcome obstacles and to discover and readapt means of
execution. In short, an occupation, pursued under conditions where
the realization of the activity rather than merely the external
product is the aim, fulfills the requirements which were laid down
earlier in connection with the discussion of aims, interest, and
thinking. (See Chapters VIII, X, XII.)
A calling is also of necessity an organizing principle for information
and ideas; for knowledge and intellectual growth. It provides an axis
which runs through an immense diversity of detail; it causes
different experiences, facts, items of information to fall into order
with one another. The lawyer, the physician, the laboratory
investigator in some branch of chemistry, the parent, the citizen
interested in his own locality, has a constant working stimulus to
note and relate whatever has to do with his concern. He
unconsciously, from the motivation of his occupation, reaches out
for all relevant information, and holds to it. The vocation acts as
both magnet to attract and as glue to hold. Such organization of
knowledge is vital, because it has reference to needs; it is so
expressed and readjusted in action that it never becomes stagnant.
No classification, no selection and arrangement of facts, which is
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consciously worked out for purely abstract ends, can ever compare
in solidity or effectiveness with that knit under the stress of an
occupation; in comparison the former sort is formal, superficial, and
cold.
3. The only adequate training for occupations is training through
occupations. The principle stated early in this book (see Chapter VI)
that the educative process is its own end, and that the only sufficient
preparation for later responsibilities comes by making the most of
immediately present life, applies in full force to the vocational
phases of education. The dominant vocation of all human beings at
all times is living--intellectual and moral growth. In childhood and
youth, with their relative freedom from economic stress, this fact is
naked and unconcealed. To predetermine some future occupation
for which education is to be a strict preparation is to injure the
possibilities of present development and thereby to reduce the
adequacy of preparation for a future right employment. To repeat
the principle we have had occasion to appeal to so often, such
training may develop a machine-like skill in routine lines (it is far
from being sure to do so, since it may develop distaste, aversion, and
carelessness), but it will be at the expense of those qualities of alert
observation and coherent and ingenious planning which make an
occupation intellectually rewarding. In an autocratically managed
society, it is often a conscious object to prevent the development of
freedom and responsibility, a few do the planning and ordering, the
others follow directions and are deliberately confined to narrow and
prescribed channels of endeavor. However much such a scheme
may inure to the prestige and profit of a class, it is evident that it
limits the development of the subject class; hardens and confines
the opportunities for learning through experience of the master
class, and in both ways hampers the life of the society as a whole.
(See ante, p. 260.)
The only alternative is that all the earlier preparation for vocations
be indirect rather than direct; namely, through engaging in those
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active occupations which are indicated by the needs and interests of
the pupil at the time. Only in this way can there be on the part of
the educator and of the one educated a genuine discovery of
personal aptitudes so that the proper choice of a specialized pursuit
in later life may be indicated. Moreover, the discovery of capacity
and aptitude will be a constant process as long as growth continues.
It is a conventional and arbitrary view which assumes that discovery
of the work to be chosen for adult life is made once for all at some
particular date. One has discovered in himself, say, an interest,
intellectual and social, in the things which have to do with
engineering and has decided to make that his calling. At most, this
only blocks out in outline the field in which further growth is to be
directed. It is a sort of rough sketch for use in direction of further
activities. It is the discovery of a profession in the sense in which
Columbus discovered America when he touched its shores. Future
explorations of an indefinitely more detailed and extensive sort
remain to be made. When educators conceive vocational guidance as
something which leads up to a definitive, irretrievable, and complete
choice, both education and the chosen vocation are likely to be rigid,
hampering further growth. In so far, the calling chosen will be such
as to leave the person concerned in a permanently subordinate
position, executing the intelligence of others who have a calling
which permits more flexible play and readjustment. And while
ordinary usages of language may not justify terming a flexible
attitude of readjustment a choice of a new and further calling, it is
such in effect. If even adults have to be on the lookout to see that
their calling does not shut down on them and fossilize them,
educators must certainly be careful that the vocational preparation
of youth is such as to engage them in a continuous reorganization
of aims and methods.
3. Present Opportunities and Dangers. In the past, education has
been much more vocational in fact than in name. (i) The education
of the masses was distinctly utilitarian. It was called apprenticeship
rather than education, or else just learning from experience. The
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schools devoted themselves to the three R's in the degree in which
ability to go through the forms of reading, writing, and figuring
were common elements in all kinds of labor. Taking part in some
special line of work, under the direction of others, was the out-of-
school phase of this education. The two supplemented each other;
the school work in its narrow and formal character was as much a
part of apprenticeship to a calling as that explicitly so termed.
(ii) To a considerable extent, the education of the dominant classes
was essentially vocational--it only happened that their pursuits of
ruling and of enjoying were not called professions. For only those
things were named vocations or employments which involved
manual labor, laboring for a reward in keep, or its commuted money
equivalent, or the rendering of personal services to specific persons.
For a long time, for example, the profession of the surgeon and
physician ranked almost with that of the valet or barber--partly
because it had so much to do with the body, and partly because it
involved rendering direct service for pay to some definite person.
But if we go behind words, the business of directing social
concerns, whether politically or economically, whether in war or
peace, is as much a calling as anything else; and where education has
not been completely under the thumb of tradition, higher schools in
the past have been upon the whole calculated to give preparation for
this business. Moreover, display, the adornment of person, the kind
of social companionship and entertainment which give prestige, and
the spending of money, have been made into definite callings.
Unconsciously to themselves the higher institutions of learning have
been made to contribute to preparation for these employments.
Even at present, what is called higher education is for a certain class
(much smaller than it once was) mainly preparation for engaging
effectively in these pursuits.
In other respects, it is largely, especially in the most advanced work,
training for the calling of teaching and special research. By a
peculiar superstition, education which has to do chiefly with
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preparation for the pursuit of conspicuous idleness, for teaching,
and for literary callings, and for leadership, has been regarded as
non-vocational and even as peculiarly cultural. The literary training
which indirectly fits for authorship, whether of books, newspaper
editorials, or magazine articles, is especially subject to this
superstition: many a teacher and author writes and argues in behalf
of a cultural and humane education against the encroachments of a
specialized practical education, without recognizing that his own
education, which he calls liberal, has been mainly training for his
own particular calling. He has simply got into the habit of regarding
his own business as essentially cultural and of overlooking the
cultural possibilities of other employments. At the bottom of these
distinctions is undoubtedly the tradition which recognizes as
employment only those pursuits where one is responsible for his
work to a specific employer, rather than to the ultimate employer,
the community.
There are, however, obvious causes for the present conscious
emphasis upon vocational education--for the disposition to make
explicit and deliberate vocational implications previously tacit. (i) In
the first place, there is an increased esteem, in democratic
communities, of whatever has to do with manual labor, commercial
occupations, and the rendering of tangible services to society. In
theory, men and women are now expected to do something in
return for their support--intellectual and economic--by society.
Labor is extolled; service is a much-lauded moral ideal. While there
is still much admiration and envy of those who can pursue lives of
idle conspicuous display, better moral sentiment condemns such
lives. Social responsibility for the use of time and personal capacity
is more generally recognized than it used to be.
(ii) In the second place, those vocations which are specifically
industrial have gained tremendously in importance in the last
century and a half. Manufacturing and commerce are no longer
domestic and local, and consequently more or less incidental, but are
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world-wide. They engage the best energies of an increasingly large
number of persons. The manufacturer, banker, and captain of
industry have practically displaced a hereditary landed gentry as the
immediate directors of social affairs. The problem of social
readjustment is openly industrial, having to do with the relations of
capital and labor. The great increase in the social importance of
conspicuous industrial processes has inevitably brought to the front
questions having to do with the relationship of schooling to
industrial life. No such vast social readjustment could occur without
offering a challenge to an education inherited from different social
conditions, and without putting up to education new problems.
(iii) In the third place, there is the fact already repeatedly mentioned:
Industry has ceased to be essentially an empirical, rule-of-thumb
procedure, handed down by custom. Its technique is now
technological: that is to say, based upon machinery resulting from
discoveries in mathematics, physics, chemistry, bacteriology, etc. The
economic revolution has stimulated science by setting problems for
solution, by producing greater intellectual respect for mechanical
appliances. And industry received back payment from science with
compound interest. As a consequence, industrial occupations have
infinitely greater intellectual content and infinitely larger cultural
possibilities than they used to possess. The demand for such
education as will acquaint workers with the scientific and social
bases and bearings of their pursuits becomes imperative, since those
who are without it inevitably sink to the role of appendages to the
machines they operate. Under the old regime all workers in a craft
were approximately equals in their knowledge and outlook. Personal
knowledge and ingenuity were developed within at least a narrow
range, because work was done with tools under the direct command
of the worker. Now the operator has to adjust himself to his
machine, instead of his tool to his own purposes. While the
intellectual possibilities of industry have multiplied, industrial
conditions tend to make industry, for great masses, less of an
educative resource than it was in the days of hand production for
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local markets. The burden of realizing the intellectual possibilities
inhering in work is thus thrown back on the school.
(iv) In the fourth place, the pursuit of knowledge has become, in
science, more experimental, less dependent upon literary tradition,
and less associated with dialectical methods of reasoning, and with
symbols. As a result, the subject matter of industrial occupation
presents not only more of the content of science than it used to,
but greater opportunity for familiarity with the method by which
knowledge is made. The ordinary worker in the factory is of course
under too immediate economic pressure to have a chance to
produce a knowledge like that of the worker in the laboratory. But
in schools, association with machines and industrial processes may
be had under conditions where the chief conscious concern of the
students is insight. The separation of shop and laboratory, where
these conditions are fulfilled, is largely conventional, the laboratory
having the advantage of permitting the following up of any
intellectual interest a problem may suggest; the shop the advantage
of emphasizing the social bearings of the scientific principle, as well
as, with many pupils, of stimulating a livelier interest.
(v) Finally, the advances which have been made in the psychology of
learning in general and of childhood in particular fall into line with
the increased importance of industry in life. For modern psychology
emphasizes the radical importance of primitive unlearned instincts
of exploring, experimentation, and "trying on." It reveals that
learning is not the work of something ready-made called mind, but
that mind itself is an organization of original capacities into
activities having significance. As we have already seen (ante, p. 204),
in older pupils work is to educative development of raw native
activities what play is for younger pupils. Moreover, the passage
from play to work should be gradual, not involving a radical change
of attitude but carrying into work the elements of play, plus
continuous reorganization in behalf of greater control. The reader
will remark that these five points practically resume the main
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contentions of the previous part of the work. Both practically and
philosophically, the key to the present educational situation lies in a
gradual reconstruction of school materials and methods so as to
utilize various forms of occupation typifying social callings, and to
bring out their intellectual and moral content. This reconstruction
must relegate purely literary methods--including textbooks--and
dialectical methods to the position of necessary auxiliary tools in the
intelligent development of consecutive and cumulative activities.
But our discussion has emphasized the fact that this educational
reorganization cannot be accomplished by merely trying to give a
technical preparation for industries and professions as they now
operate, much less by merely reproducing existing industrial
conditions in the school. The problem is not that of making the
schools an adjunct to manufacture and commerce, but of utilizing
the factors of industry to make school life more active, more full of
immediate meaning, more connected with out-of-school experience.
The problem is not easy of solution. There is a standing danger that
education will perpetuate the older traditions for a select few, and
effect its adjustment to the newer economic conditions more or less
on the basis of acquiescence in the untransformed, unrationalized,
and unsocialized phases of our defective industrial regime. Put in
concrete terms, there is danger that vocational education will be
interpreted in theory and practice as trade education: as a means of
securing technical efficiency in specialized future pursuits. Education
would then become an instrument of perpetuating unchanged the
existing industrial order of society, instead of operating as a means
of its transformation. The desired transformation is not difficult to
define in a formal way. It signifies a society in which every person
shall be occupied in something which makes the lives of others
better worth living, and which accordingly makes the ties which bind
persons together more perceptible--which breaks down the barriers
of distance between them. It denotes a state of affairs in which the
interest of each in his work is uncoerced and intelligent: based upon
its congeniality to his own aptitudes. It goes without saying that we
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are far from such a social state; in a literal and quantitative sense, we
may never arrive at it. But in principle, the quality of social changes
already accomplished lies in this direction. There are more ample
resources for its achievement now than ever there have been before.
No insuperable obstacles, given the intelligent will for its realization,
stand in the way.
Success or failure in its realization depends more upon the adoption
of educational methods calculated to effect the change than upon
anything else. For the change is essentially a change in the quality of
mental disposition--an educative change. This does not mean that
we can change character and mind by direct instruction and
exhortation, apart from a change in industrial and political
conditions. Such a conception contradicts our basic idea that
character and mind are attitudes of participative response in social
affairs. But it does mean that we may produce in schools a
projection in type of the society we should like to realize, and by
forming minds in accord with it gradually modify the larger and
more recalcitrant features of adult society. Sentimentally, it may
seem harsh to say that the greatest evil of the present regime is not
found in poverty and in the suffering which it entails, but in the fact
that so many persons have callings which make no appeal to them,
which are pursued simply for the money reward that accrues. For
such callings constantly provoke one to aversion, ill will, and a desire
to slight and evade. Neither men's hearts nor their minds are in their
work. On the other hand, those who are not only much better off in
worldly goods, but who are in excessive, if not monopolistic, control
of the activities of the many are shut off from equality and
generality of social intercourse. They are stimulated to pursuits of
indulgence and display; they try to make up for the distance which
separates them from others by the impression of force and superior
possession and enjoyment which they can make upon others.
It would be quite possible for a narrowly conceived scheme of
vocational education to perpetuate this division in a hardened form.
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Taking its stand upon a dogma of social predestination, it would
assume that some are to continue to be wage earners under
economic conditions like the present, and would aim simply to give
them what is termed a trade education--that is, greater technical
efficiency. Technical proficiency is often sadly lacking, and is surely
desirable on all accounts--not merely for the sake of the
production of better goods at less cost, but for the greater
happiness found in work. For no one cares for what one cannot half
do. But there is a great difference between a proficiency limited to
immediate work, and a competency extended to insight into its
social bearings; between efficiency in carrying out the plans of
others and in one forming one's own. At present, intellectual and
emotional limitation characterizes both the employing and the
employed class. While the latter often have no concern with their
occupation beyond the money return it brings, the former's outlook
may be confined to profit and power. The latter interest generally
involves much greater intellectual initiation and larger survey of
conditions. For it involves the direction and combination of a large
number of diverse factors, while the interest in wages is restricted to
certain direct muscular movements. But none the less there is a
limitation of intelligence to technical and non-humane, non-liberal
channels, so far as the work does not take in its social bearings. And
when the animating motive is desire for private profit or personal
power, this limitation is inevitable. In fact, the advantage in
immediate social sympathy and humane disposition often lies with
the economically unfortunate, who have not experienced the
hardening effects of a one-sided control of the affairs of others.
Any scheme for vocational education which takes its point of
departure from the industrial regime that now exists, is likely to
assume and to perpetuate its divisions and weaknesses, and thus to
become an instrument in accomplishing the feudal dogma of social
predestination. Those who are in a position to make their wishes
good, will demand a liberal, a cultural occupation, and one which
fits for directive power the youth in whom they are directly
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interested. To split the system, and give to others, less fortunately
situated, an education conceived mainly as specific trade
preparation, is to treat the schools as an agency for transferring the
older division of labor and leisure, culture and service, mind and
body, directed and directive class, into a society nominally
democratic. Such a vocational education inevitably discounts the
scientific and historic human connections of the materials and
processes dealt with. To include such things in narrow trade
education would be to waste time; concern for them would not be
"practical." They are reserved for those who have leisure at
command--the leisure due to superior economic resources. Such
things might even be dangerous to the interests of the controlling
class, arousing discontent or ambitions "beyond the station" of
those working under the direction of others. But an education
which acknowledges the full intellectual and social meaning of a
vocation would include instruction in the historic background of
present conditions; training in science to give intelligence and
initiative in dealing with material and agencies of production; and
study of economics, civics, and politics, to bring the future worker
into touch with the problems of the day and the various methods
proposed for its improvement. Above all, it would train power of
readaptation to changing conditions so that future workers would
not become blindly subject to a fate imposed upon them. This ideal
has to contend not only with the inertia of existing educational
traditions, but also with the opposition of those who are entrenched
in command of the industrial machinery, and who realize that such
an educational system if made general would threaten their ability to
use others for their own ends. But this very fact is the presage of a
more equitable and enlightened social order, for it gives evidence of
the dependence of social reorganization upon educational
reconstruction. It is accordingly an encouragement to those
believing in a better order to undertake the promotion of a
vocational education which does not subject youth to the demands
and standards of the present system, but which utilizes its scientific
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and social factors to develop a courageous intelligence, and to make
intelligence practical and executive.
Summary.
A vocation signifies any form of continuous activity which renders
service to others and engages personal powers in behalf of the
accomplishment of results. The question of the relation of vocation
to education brings to a focus the various problems previously
discussed regarding the connection of thought with bodily activity;
of individual conscious development with associated life; of
theoretical culture with practical behavior having definite results; of
making a livelihood with the worthy enjoyment of leisure. In
general, the opposition to recognition of the vocational phases of
life in education (except for the utilitarian three R's in elementary
schooling) accompanies the conservation of aristocratic ideals of
the past. But, at the present juncture, there is a movement in behalf
of something called vocational training which, if carried into effect,
would harden these ideas into a form adapted to the existing
industrial regime. This movement would continue the traditional
liberal or cultural education for the few economically able to enjoy
it, and would give to the masses a narrow technical trade education
for specialized callings, carried on under the control of others. This
scheme denotes, of course, simply a perpetuation of the older social
division, with its counterpart intellectual and moral dualisms. But it
means its continuation under conditions where it has much less
justification for existence. For industrial life is now so dependent
upon science and so intimately affects all forms of social
intercourse, that there is an opportunity to utilize it for development
of mind and character. Moreover, a right educational use of it
would react upon intelligence and interest so as to modify, in
connection with legislation and administration, the socially
obnoxious features of the present industrial and commercial order.
It would turn the increasing fund of social sympathy to constructive
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account, instead of leaving it a somewhat blind philanthropic
sentiment.
It would give those who engage in industrial callings desire and
ability to share in social control, and ability to become masters of
their industrial fate. It would enable them to saturate with meaning
the technical and mechanical features which are so marked a feature
of our machine system of production and distribution. So much for
those who now have the poorer economic opportunities. With the
representatives of the more privileged portion of the community, it
would increase sympathy for labor, create a disposition of mind
which can discover the culturing elements in useful activity, and
increase a sense of social responsibility. The crucial position of the
question of vocational education at present is due, in other words,
to the fact that it concentrates in a specific issue two fundamental
questions:--Whether intelligence is best exercised apart from or
within activity which puts nature to human use, and whether
individual culture is best secured under egoistic or social conditions.
No discussion of details is undertaken in this chapter, because this
conclusion but summarizes the discussion of the previous chapters,
XV to XXII, inclusive.
Chapter Twenty-four: Philosophy of Education
1. A Critical Review. Although we are dealing with the philosophy
of education, DO definition of philosophy has yet been given; nor
has there been an explicit consideration of the nature of a
philosophy of education. This topic is now introduced by a
summary account of the logical order implied in the previous
discussions, for the purpose of bringing out the philosophic issues
involved. Afterwards we shall undertake a brief discussion, in more
specifically philosophical terms, of the theories of knowledge and
of morals implied in different educational ideals as they operate in
practice. The prior chapters fall logically into three parts.
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I. The first chapters deal with education as a social need and
function. Their purpose is to outline the general features of
education as the process by which social groups maintain their
continuous existence. Education was shown to be a process of
renewal of the meanings of experience through a process of
transmission, partly incidental to the ordinary companionship or
intercourse of adults and youth, partly deliberately instituted to
effect social continuity. This process was seen to involve control and
growth of both the immature individual and the group in which he
lives.
This consideration was formal in that it took no specific account of
the quality of the social group concerned--the kind of society
aiming at its own perpetuation through education. The general
discussion was then specified by application to social groups which
are intentionally progressive, and which aim at a greater variety of
mutually shared interests in distinction from those which aim simply
at the preservation of established customs. Such societies were
found to be democratic in quality, because of the greater freedom
allowed the constituent members, and the conscious need of
securing in individuals a consciously socialized interest, instead of
trusting mainly to the force of customs operating under the control
of a superior class. The sort of education appropriate to the
development of a democratic community was then explicitly taken
as the criterion of the further, more detailed analysis of education.
II. This analysis, based upon the democratic criterion, was seen to
imply the ideal of a continuous reconstruction or reorganizing of
experience, of such a nature as to increase its recognized meaning or
social content, and as to increase the capacity of individuals to act as
directive guardians of this reorganization. (See Chapters VI-VII.)
This distinction was then used to outline the respective characters
of subject matter and method. It also defined their unity, since
method in study and learning upon this basis is just the consciously
directed movement of reorganization of the subject matter of
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experience. From this point of view the main principles of method
and subject matter of learning were developed (Chapters XIII-XIV.)
III. Save for incidental criticisms designed to illustrate principles by
force of contrast, this phase of the discussion took for granted the
democratic criterion and its application in present social life. In the
subsequent chapters (XVIII-XXII) we considered the present
limitation of its actual realization. They were found to spring from
the notion that experience consists of a variety of segregated
domains, or interests, each having its own independent value,
material, and method, each checking every other, and, when each is
kept properly bounded by the others, forming a kind of "balance of
powers" in education. We then proceeded to an analysis of the
various assumptions underlying this segregation. On the practical
side, they were found to have their cause in the divisions of society
into more or less rigidly marked-off classes and groups--in other
words, in obstruction to full and flexible social interaction and
intercourse. These social ruptures of continuity were seen to have
their intellectual formulation in various dualisms or antitheses--
such as that of labor and leisure, practical and intellectual activity,
man and nature, individuality and association, culture and vocation.
In this discussion, we found that these different issues have their
counterparts in formulations which have been made in classic
philosophic systems; and that they involve the chief problems of
philosophy--such as mind (or spirit) and matter, body and mind,
the mind and the world, the individual and his relationships to
others, etc. Underlying these various separations we found the
fundamental assumption to be an isolation of mind from activity
involving physical conditions, bodily organs, material appliances, and
natural objects. Consequently, there was indicated a philosophy
which recognizes the origin, place, and function of mind in an
activity which controls the environment. Thus we have completed
the circuit and returned to the conceptions of the first portion of
this book: such as the biological continuity of human impulses and
instincts with natural energies; the dependence of the growth of
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mind upon participation in conjoint activities having a common
purpose; the influence of the physical environment through the uses
made of it in the social medium; the necessity of utilization of
individual variations in desire and thinking for a progressively
developing society; the essential unity of method and subject matter;
the intrinsic continuity of ends and means; the recognition of mind
as thinking which perceives and tests the meanings of behavior.
These conceptions are consistent with the philosophy which sees
intelligence to be the purposive reorganization, through action, of
the material of experience; and they are inconsistent with each of
the dualistic philosophies mentioned.
2. The Nature of Philosophy. Our further task is to extract and
make explicit the idea of philosophy implicit in these considerations.
We have already virtually described, though not defined, philosophy
in terms of the problems with which it deals: and that thing nor
even to the aggregate of known things, but to the considerations
which govern conduct.
Hence philosophy cannot be defined simply from the side of
subject matter. For this reason, the definition of such conceptions
as generality, totality, and ultimateness is most readily reached from
the side of the disposition toward the world which they connote. In
any literal and quantitative sense, these terms do not apply to the
subject matter of knowledge, for completeness and finality are out
of the question. The very nature of experience as an ongoing,
changing process forbids. In a less rigid sense, they apply to science
rather than to philosophy. For obviously it is to mathematics,
physics, chemistry, biology, anthropology, history, etc. that we must
go, not to philosophy, to find out the facts of the world. It is for the
sciences to say what generalizations are tenable about the world and
what they specifically are. But when we ask what sort of permanent
disposition of action toward the world the scientific disclosures
exact of us we are raising a philosophic question.
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From this point of view, "totality" does not mean the hopeless task
of a quantitative summation. It means rather consistency of mode
of response in reference to the plurality of events which occur.
Consistency does not mean literal identity; for since the same thing
does not happen twice, an exact repetition of a reaction involves
some maladjustment. Totality means continuity--the carrying on of
a former habit of action with the readaptation necessary to keep it
alive and growing. Instead of signifying a ready-made complete
scheme of action, it means keeping the balance in a multitude of
diverse actions, so that each borrows and gives significance to every
other. Any person who is open-minded and sensitive to new
perceptions, and who has concentration and responsibility in
connecting them has, in so far, a philosophic disposition. One of
the popular senses of philosophy is calm and endurance in the face
of difficulty and loss; it is even supposed to be a power to bear pain
without complaint. This meaning is a tribute to the influence of the
Stoic philosophy rather than an attribute of philosophy in general.
But in so far as it suggests that the wholeness characteristic of
philosophy is a power to learn, or to extract meaning, from even the
unpleasant vicissitudes of experience and to embody what is learned
in an ability to go on learning, it is justified in any scheme. An
analogous interpretation applies to the generality and ultimateness
of philosophy. Taken literally, they are absurd pretensions; they
indicate insanity. Finality does not mean, however, that experience is
ended and exhausted, but means the disposition to penetrate to
deeper levels of meaning--to go below the surface and find out the
connections of any event or object, and to keep at it. In like manner
the philosophic attitude is general in the sense that it is averse to
taking anything as isolated; it tries to place an act in its context--
which constitutes its significance. It is of assistance to connect
philosophy with thinking in its distinction from knowledge.
Knowledge, grounded knowledge, is science; it represents objects
which have been settled, ordered, disposed of rationally. Thinking,
on the other hand, is prospective in reference. It is occasioned by an
unsettlement and it aims at overcoming a disturbance. Philosophy is
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thinking what the known demands of us--what responsive attitude
it exacts. It is an idea of what is possible, not a record of
accomplished fact. Hence it is hypothetical, like all thinking. It
presents an assignment of something to be done--something to be
tried. Its value lies not in furnishing solutions (which can be
achieved only in action) but in defining difficulties and suggesting
methods for dealing with them. Philosophy might almost be
described as thinking which has become conscious of itself--which
has generalized its place, function, and value in experience.
More specifically, the demand for a "total" attitude arises because
there is the need of integration in action of the conflicting various
interests in life. Where interests are so superficial that they glide
readily into one another, or where they are not sufficiently organized
to come into conflict with one another, the need for philosophy is
not perceptible. But when the scientific interest conflicts with, say,
the religious, or the economic with the scientific or aesthetic, or
when the conservative concern for order is at odds with the
progressive interest in freedom, or when institutionalism clashes
with individuality, there is a stimulus to discover some more
comprehensive point of view from which the divergencies may be
brought together, and consistency or continuity of experience
recovered. Often these clashes may be settled by an individual for
himself; the area of the struggle of aims is limited and a person
works out his own rough accommodations. Such homespun
philosophies are genuine and often adequate. But they do not result
in systems of philosophy. These arise when the discrepant claims of
different ideals of conduct affect the community as a whole, and the
need for readjustment is general. These traits explain some things
which are often brought as objections against philosophies, such as
the part played in them by individual speculation, and their
controversial diversity, as well as the fact that philosophy seems to
be repeatedly occupied with much the same questions differently
stated. Without doubt, all these things characterize historic
philosophies more or less. But they are not objections to philosophy
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so much as they are to human nature, and even to the world in
which human nature is set. If there are genuine uncertainties in life,
philosophies must reflect that uncertainty. If there are different
diagnoses of the cause of a difficulty, and different proposals for
dealing with it; if, that is, the conflict of interests is more or less
embodied in different sets of persons, there must be divergent
competing philosophies. With respect to what has happened,
sufficient evidence is all that is needed to bring agreement and
certainty. The thing itself is sure. But with reference to what it is
wise to do in a complicated situation, discussion is inevitable
precisely because the thing itself is still indeterminate. One would
not expect a ruling class living at ease to have the same philosophy
of life as those who were having a hard struggle for existence. If the
possessing and the dispossessed had the same fundamental
disposition toward the world, it would argue either insincerity or lack
of seriousness. A community devoted to industrial pursuits, active in
business and commerce, is not likely to see the needs and
possibilities of life in the same way as a country with high aesthetic
culture and little enterprise in turning the energies of nature to
mechanical account. A social group with a fairly continuous history
will respond mentally to a crisis in a very different way from one
which has felt the shock of abrupt breaks. Even if the same data
were present, they would be evaluated differently. But the different
sorts of experience attending different types of life prevent just the
same data from presenting themselves, as well as lead to a different
scheme of values. As for the similarity of problems, this is often
more a matter of appearance than of fact, due to old discussions
being translated into the terms of contemporary perplexities. But in
certain fundamental respects the same predicaments of life recur
from time to time with only such changes as are due to change of
social context, including the growth of the sciences.
The fact that philosophic problems arise because of widespread and
widely felt difficulties in social practice is disguised because
philosophers become a specialized class which uses a technical
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language, unlike the vocabulary in which the direct difficulties are
stated. But where a system becomes influential, its connection with
a conflict of interests calling for some program of social adjustment
may always be discovered. At this point, the intimate connection
between philosophy and education appears. In fact, education offers
a vantage ground from which to penetrate to the human, as distinct
from the technical, significance of philosophic discussions. The
student of philosophy "in itself" is always in danger of taking it as
so much nimble or severe intellectual exercise--as something said
by philosophers and concerning them alone. But when philosophic
issues are approached from the side of the kind of mental
disposition to which they correspond, or the differences in
educational practice they make when acted upon, the life-situations
which they formulate can never be far from view. If a theory makes
no difference in educational endeavor, it must be artificial. The
educational point of view enables one to envisage the philosophic
problems where they arise and thrive, where they are at home, and
where acceptance or rejection makes a difference in practice. If we
are willing to conceive education as the process of forming
fundamental dispositions, intellectual and emotional, toward nature
and fellow men, philosophy may even be defined as the general
theory of education. Unless a philosophy is to remain symbolic--or
verbal--or a sentimental indulgence for a few, or else mere arbitrary
dogma, its auditing of past experience and its program of values
must take effect in conduct. Public agitation, propaganda, legislative
and administrative action are effective in producing the change of
disposition which a philosophy indicates as desirable, but only in the
degree in which they are educative--that is to say, in the degree in
which they modify mental and moral attitudes. And at the best, such
methods are compromised by the fact they are used with those
whose habits are already largely set, while education of youth has a
fairer and freer field of operation. On the other side, the business
of schooling tends to become a routine empirical affair unless its
aims and methods are animated by such a broad and sympathetic
survey of its place in contemporary life as it is the business of
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philosophy to provide. Positive science always implies practically the
ends which the community is concerned to achieve. Isolated from
such ends, it is matter of indifference whether its disclosures are
used to cure disease or to spread it; to increase the means of
sustenance of life or to manufacture war material to wipe life out. If
society is interested in one of these things rather than another,
science shows the way of attainment. Philosophy thus has a double
task: that of criticizing existing aims with respect to the existing
state of science, pointing out values which have become obsolete
with the command of new resources, showing what values are
merely sentimental because there are no means for their realization;
and also that of interpreting the results of specialized science in
their bearing on future social endeavor. It is impossible that it
should have any success in these tasks without educational
equivalents as to what to do and what not to do. For philosophic
theory has no Aladdin's lamp to summon into immediate existence
the values which it intellectually constructs. In the mechanical arts,
the sciences become methods of managing things so as to utilize
their energies for recognized aims. By the educative arts philosophy
may generate methods of utilizing the energies of human beings in
accord with serious and thoughtful conceptions of life. Education is
the laboratory in which philosophic distinctions become concrete
and are tested.
It is suggestive that European philosophy originated (among the
Athenians) under the direct pressure of educational questions. The
earlier history of philosophy, developed by the Greeks in Asia
Minor and Italy, so far as its range of topics is concerned, is mainly
a chapter in the history of science rather than of philosophy as that
word is understood to-day. It had nature for its subject, and
speculated as to how things are made and changed. Later the
traveling teachers, known as the Sophists, began to apply the results
and the methods of the natural philosophers to human conduct.
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When the Sophists, the first body of professional educators in
Europe, instructed the youth in virtue, the political arts, and the
management of city and household, philosophy began to deal with
the relation of the individual to the universal, to some
comprehensive class, or to some group; the relation of man and
nature, of tradition and reflection, of knowledge and action. Can
virtue, approved excellence in any line, be learned, they asked? What
is learning? It has to do with knowledge. What, then, is knowledge?
How is it achieved? Through the senses, or by apprenticeship in
some form of doing, or by reason that has undergone a preliminary
logical discipline? Since learning is coming to know, it involves a
passage from ignorance to wisdom, from privation to fullness from
defect to perfection, from non-being to being, in the Greek way of
putting it. How is such a transition possible? Is change, becoming,
development really possible and if so, how? And supposing such
questions answered, what is the relation of instruction, of
knowledge, to virtue? This last question led to opening the problem
of the relation of reason to action, of theory to practice, since
virtue clearly dwelt in action. Was not knowing, the activity of
reason, the noblest attribute of man? And consequently was not
purely intellectual activity itself the highest of all excellences,
compared with which the virtues of neighborliness and the citizen's
life were secondary? Or, on the other hand, was the vaunted
intellectual knowledge more than empty and vain pretense,
demoralizing to character and destructive of the social ties that
bound men together in their community life? Was not the only true,
because the only moral, life gained through obedient habituation to
the customary practices of the community? And was not the new
education an enemy to good citizenship, because it set up a rival
standard to the established traditions of the community?
In the course of two or three generations such questions were cut
loose from their original practical bearing upon education and were
discussed on their own account; that is, as matters of philosophy as
an independent branch of inquiry. But the fact that the stream of
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European philosophical thought arose as a theory of educational
procedure remains an eloquent witness to the intimate connection
of philosophy and education. "Philosophy of education" is not an
external application of ready-made ideas to a system of practice
having a radically different origin and purpose: it is only an explicit
formulation of the problems of the formation of right mental and
moral habitudes in respect to the difficulties of contemporary social
life. The most penetrating definition of philosophy which can be
given is, then, that it is the theory of education in its most general
phases.
The reconstruction of philosophy, of education, and of social ideals
and methods thus go hand in hand. If there is especial need of
educational reconstruction at the present time, if this need makes
urgent a reconsideration of the basic ideas of traditional
philosophic systems, it is because of the thoroughgoing change in
social life accompanying the advance of science, the industrial
revolution, and the development of democracy. Such practical
changes cannot take place without demanding an educational
reformation to meet them, and without leading men to ask what
ideas and ideals are implicit in these social changes, and what
revisions they require of the ideas and ideals which are inherited
from older and unlike cultures. Incidentally throughout the whole
book, explicitly in the last few chapters, we have been dealing with
just these questions as they affect the relationship of mind and
body, theory and practice, man and nature, the individual and social,
etc. In our concluding chapters we shall sum up the prior
discussions with respect first to the philosophy of knowledge, and
then to the philosophy of morals.
Summary.
After a review designed to bring out the philosophic issues implicit
in the previous discussions, philosophy was defined as the
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generalized theory of education. Philosophy was stated to be a form
of thinking, which, like all thinking, finds its origin in what is
uncertain in the subject matter of experience, which aims to locate
the nature of the perplexity and to frame hypotheses for its clearing
up to be tested in action. Philosophic thinking has for its differentia
the fact that the uncertainties with which it deals are found in
widespread social conditions and aims, consisting in a conflict of
organized interests and institutional claims. Since the only way of
bringing about a harmonious readjustment of the opposed
tendencies is through a modification of emotional and intellectual
disposition, philosophy is at once an explicit formulation of the
various interests of life and a propounding of points of view and
methods through which a better balance of interests may be
effected. Since education is the process through which the needed
transformation may be accomplished and not remain a mere
hypothesis as to what is desirable, we reach a justification of the
statement that philosophy is the theory of education as a
deliberately conducted practice.
Chapter Twenty-five: Theories of Knowledge
1. Continuity versus Dualism. A number of theories of knowing
have been criticized in the previous pages. In spite of their
differences from one another, they all agree in one fundamental
respect which contrasts with the theory which has been positively
advanced. The latter assumes continuity; the former state or imply
certain basic divisions, separations, or antitheses, technically called
dualisms. The origin of these divisions we have found in the hard
and fast walls which mark off social groups and classes within a
group: like those between rich and poor, men and women, noble
and baseborn, ruler and ruled. These barriers mean absence of
fluent and free intercourse. This absence is equivalent to the setting
up of different types of life-experience, each with isolated subject
matter, aim, and standard of values. Every such social condition
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must be formulated in a dualistic philosophy, if philosophy is to be a
sincere account of experience. When it gets beyond dualism--as
many philosophies do in form--it can only be by appeal to
something higher than anything found in experience, by a flight to
some transcendental realm. And in denying duality in name such
theories restore it in fact, for they end in a division between things
of this world as mere appearances and an inaccessible essence of
reality.
So far as these divisions persist and others are added to them, each
leaves its mark upon the educational system, until the scheme of
education, taken as a whole, is a deposit of various purposes and
procedures. The outcome is that kind of check and balance of
segregated factors and values which has been described. (See
Chapter XVIII.) The present discussion is simply a formulation, in
the terminology of philosophy, of various antithetical conceptions
involved in the theory of knowing. In the first place, there is the
opposition of empirical and higher rational knowing. The first is
connected with everyday affairs, serves the purposes of the ordinary
individual who has no specialized intellectual
pursuit, and brings his wants into some kind of working connection
with the immediate environment. Such knowing is depreciated, if
not despised, as purely utilitarian, lacking in cultural significance.
Rational knowledge is supposed to be something which touches
reality in ultimate, intellectual fashion; to be pursued for its own
sake and properly to terminate in purely theoretical insight, not
debased by application in behavior. Socially, the distinction
corresponds to that of the intelligence used by the working classes
and that used by a learned class remote from concern with the
means of living. Philosophically, the difference turns about the
distinction of the particular and universal. Experience is an
aggregate of more or less isolated particulars, acquaintance with
each of which must be separately made. Reason deals with
universals, with general principles, with laws, which lie above the
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welter of concrete details. In the educational precipitate, the pupil is
supposed to have to learn, on one hand, a lot of items of specific
information, each standing by itself, and upon the other hand, to
become familiar with a certain number of laws and general
relationships. Geography, as often taught, illustrates the former;
mathematics, beyond the rudiments of figuring, the latter. For all
practical purposes, they represent two independent worlds.
Another antithesis is suggested by the two senses of the word
"learning." On the one hand, learning is the sum total of what is
known, as that is handed down by books and learned men. It is
something external, an accumulation of cognitions as one might
store material commodities in a warehouse. Truth exists ready-made
somewhere. Study is then the process by which an individual draws
on what is in storage. On the other hand, learning means something
which the individual does when he studies. It is an active, personally
conducted affair. The dualism here is between knowledge as
something external, or, as it is often called, objective, and knowing
as something purely internal, subjective, psychical. There is, on one
side, a body of truth, ready-made, and, on the other, a ready-made
mind equipped with a faculty of knowing--if it only wills to
exercise it, which it is often strangely loath to do. The separation,
often touched upon, between subject matter and method is the
educational equivalent of this dualism. Socially the distinction has to
do with the part of life which is dependent upon authority and that
where individuals are free to advance. Another dualism is that of
activity and passivity in knowing. Purely empirical and physical
things are often supposed to be known by receiving impressions.
Physical things somehow stamp themselves upon the mind or
convey themselves into consciousness by means of the sense
organs. Rational knowledge and knowledge of spiritual things is
supposed, on the contrary, to spring from activity initiated within
the mind, an activity carried on better if it is kept remote from all
sullying touch of the senses and external objects. The distinction
between sense training and object lessons and laboratory exercises,
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and pure ideas contained in books, and appropriated--so it is
thought--by some miraculous output of mental energy, is a fair
expression in education of this distinction. Socially, it reflects a
division between those who are controlled by direct concern with
things and those who are free to cultivate themselves.
Another current opposition is that said to exist between the intellect
and the emotions. The emotions are conceived to be purely private
and personal, having nothing to do with the work of pure
intelligence in apprehending facts and truths,--except perhaps the
single emotion of intellectual curiosity. The intellect is a pure light;
the emotions are a disturbing heat. The mind turns outward to
truth; the emotions turn inward to considerations of personal
advantage and loss. Thus in education we have that systematic
depreciation of interest which has been noted, plus the necessity in
practice, with most pupils, of recourse to extraneous and irrelevant
rewards and penalties in order to induce the person who has a mind
(much as his clothes have a pocket) to apply that mind to the truths
to be known. Thus we have the spectacle of professional educators
decrying appeal to interest while they uphold with great dignity the
need of reliance upon examinations, marks, promotions and
emotions, prizes, and the time-honored paraphernalia of rewards
and punishments. The effect of this situation in crippling the
teacher's sense of humor has not received the attention which it
deserves.
All of these separations culminate in one between knowing and
doing, theory and practice, between mind as the end and spirit of
action and the body as its organ and means. We shall not repeat
what has been said about the source of this dualism in the division
of society into a class laboring with their muscles for material
sustenance and a class which, relieved from economic pressure,
devotes itself to the arts of expression and social direction. Nor is it
necessary to speak again of the educational evils which spring from
the separation. We shall be content to summarize the forces which
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tend to make the untenability of this conception obvious and to
replace it by the idea of continuity. (i) The advance of physiology
and the psychology associated with it have shown the connection of
mental activity with that of the nervous system. Too often
recognition of connection has stopped short at this point; the older
dualism of soul and body has been replaced by that of the brain and
the rest of the body. But in fact the nervous system is only a
specialized mechanism for keeping all bodily activities working
together. Instead of being isolated from them, as an organ of
knowing from organs of motor response, it is the organ by which
they interact responsively with one another. The brain is essentially
an organ for effecting the reciprocal adjustment to each other of the
stimuli received from the environment and responses directed upon
it. Note that the adjusting is reciprocal; the brain not only enables
organic activity to be brought to bear upon any object of the
environment in response to a sensory stimulation, but this response
also determines what the next stimulus will be. See what happens,
for example, when a carpenter is at work upon a board, or an etcher
upon his plate--or in any case of a consecutive activity. While each
motor response is adjusted to the state of affairs indicated through
the sense organs, that motor response shapes the next sensory
stimulus. Generalizing this illustration, the brain is the machinery for
a constant reorganizing of activity so as to maintain its continuity;
that is to say, to make such modifications in future action as are
required because of what has already been done. The continuity of
the work of the carpenter distinguishes it from a routine repetition
of identically the same motion, and from a random activity where
there is nothing cumulative. What makes it continuous, consecutive,
or concentrated is that each earlier act prepares the way for later
acts, while these take account of or reckon with the results already
attained--the basis of all responsibility. No one who has realized
the full force of the facts of the connection of knowing with the
nervous system and of the nervous system with the readjusting of
activity continuously to meet new conditions, will doubt that
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knowing has to do with reorganizing activity, instead of being
something isolated from all activity, complete on its own account.
(ii) The development of biology clinches this lesson, with its
discovery of evolution. For the philosophic significance of the
doctrine of evolution lies precisely in its emphasis upon continuity
of simpler and more complex organic forms until we reach man.
The development of organic forms begins with structures where the
adjustment of environment and organism is obvious, and where
anything which can be called mind is at a minimum. As activity
becomes more complex, coordinating a greater number of factors in
space and time, intelligence plays a more and more marked role, for
it has a larger span of the future to forecast and plan for. The effect
upon the theory of knowing is to displace the notion that it is the
activity of a mere onlooker or spectator of the world, the notion
which goes with the idea of knowing as something complete in
itself. For the doctrine of organic development means that the living
creature is a part of the world, sharing its vicissitudes and fortunes,
and making itself secure in its precarious dependence only as it
intellectually identifies itself with the things about it, and,
forecasting the future consequences of what is going on, shapes its
own activities accordingly. If the living, experiencing being is an
intimate participant in the activities of the world to which it belongs,
then knowledge is a mode of participation, valuable in the degree in
which it is effective. It cannot be the idle view of an unconcerned
spectator.
(iii) The development of the experimental method as the method of
getting knowledge and of making sure it is knowledge, and not mere
opinion--the method of both discovery and proof--is the
remaining great force in bringing about a transformation in the
theory of knowledge. The experimental method has two sides. (i)
On one hand, it means that we have no right to call anything
knowledge except where our activity has actually produced certain
physical changes in things, which agree with and confirm the
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conception entertained. Short of such specific changes, our beliefs
are only hypotheses, theories, suggestions, guesses, and are to be
entertained tentatively and to be utilized as indications of
experiments to be tried. (ii) On the other hand, the experimental
method of thinking signifies that thinking is of avail; that it is of
avail in just the degree in which the anticipation of future
consequences is made on the basis of thorough observation of
present conditions. Experimentation, in other words, is not
equivalent to blind reacting. Such surplus activity--a surplus with
reference to what has been observed and is now anticipated--is
indeed an unescapable factor in all our behavior, but it is not
experiment save as consequences are noted and are used to make
predictions and plans in similar situations in the future. The more
the meaning of the experimental method is perceived, the more our
trying out of a certain way of treating the material resources and
obstacles which confront us embodies a prior use of intelligence.
What we call magic was with respect to many things the
experimental method of the savage; but for him to try was to try his
luck, not his ideas. The scientific experimental method is, on the
contrary, a trial of ideas; hence even when practically--or
immediately--unsuccessful, it is intellectual, fruitful; for we learn
from our failures when our endeavors are seriously thoughtful.
The experimental method is new as a scientific resource--as a
systematized means of making knowledge, though as old as life as a
practical device. Hence it is not surprising that men have not
recognized its full scope. For the most part, its significance is
regarded as belonging to certain technical and merely physical
matters. It will doubtless take a long time to secure the perception
that it holds equally as to the forming and testing of ideas in social
and moral matters. Men still want the crutch of dogma, of beliefs
fixed by authority, to relieve them of the trouble of thinking and the
responsibility of directing their activity by thought. They tend to
confine their own thinking to a consideration of which one among
the rival systems of dogma they will accept. Hence the schools are
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better adapted, as John Stuart Mill said, to make disciples than
inquirers. But every advance in the influence of the experimental
method is sure to aid in outlawing the literary, dialectic, and
authoritative methods of forming beliefs which have governed the
schools of the past, and to transfer their prestige to methods which
will procure an active concern with things and persons, directed by
aims of increasing temporal reach and deploying greater range of
things in space. In time the theory of knowing must be derived
from the practice which is most successful in making knowledge;
and then that theory will be employed to improve the methods
which are less successful.
2. Schools of Method. There are various systems of philosophy
with characteristically different conceptions of the method of
knowing. Some of them are named scholasticism, sensationalism,
rationalism, idealism, realism, empiricism, transcendentalism,
pragmatism, etc. Many of them have been criticized in connection
with the discussion of some educational problem. We are here
concerned with them as involving deviations from that method
which has proved most effective in achieving knowledge, for a
consideration of the deviations may render clearer the true place of
knowledge in experience. In brief, the function of knowledge is to
make one experience freely available in other experiences. The word
"freely" marks the difference between the principle of knowledge
and that of habit. Habit means that an individual undergoes a
modification through an experience, which modification forms a
predisposition to easier and more effective action in a like direction
in the future. Thus it also has the function of making one
experience available in subsequent experiences. Within certain limits,
it performs this function successfully. But habit, apart from
knowledge, does not make allowance for change of conditions, for
novelty. Prevision of change is not part of its scope, for habit
assumes the essential likeness of the new situation with the old.
Consequently it often leads astray, or comes between a person and
the successful performance of his task, just as the skill, based on
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habit alone, of the mechanic will desert him when something
unexpected occurs in the running of the machine. But a man who
understands the machine is the man who knows what he is about.
He knows the conditions under which a given habit works, and is in
a position to introduce the changes which will readapt it to new
conditions.
In other words, knowledge is a perception of those connections of
an object which determine its applicability in a given situation. To
take an extreme example; savages react to a flaming comet as they
are accustomed to react to other events which threaten the security
of their life. Since they try to frighten wild animals or their enemies
by shrieks, beating of gongs, brandishing of weapons, etc., they use
the same methods to scare away the comet. To us, the method is
plainly absurd--so absurd that we fail to note that savages are
simply falling back upon habit in a way which exhibits its limitations.
The only reason we do not act in some analogous fashion is because
we do not take the comet as an isolated, disconnected event, but
apprehend it in its connections with other events. We place it, as we
say, in the astronomical system. We respond to its connections and
not simply to the immediate occurrence. Thus our attitude to it is
much freer. We may approach it, so to speak, from any one of the
angles provided by its connections. We can bring into play, as we
deem wise, any one of the habits appropriate to any one of the
connected objects. Thus we get at a new event indirectly instead of
immediately--by invention, ingenuity, resourcefulness. An ideally
perfect knowledge would represent such a network of
interconnections that any past experience would offer a point of
advantage from which to get at the problem presented in a new
experience. In fine, while a habit apart from knowledge supplies us
with a single fixed method of attack, knowledge means that
selection may be made from a much wider range of habits.
Two aspects of this more general and freer availability of former
experiences for subsequent ones may be distinguished. (See ante, p.
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77.) (i) One, the more tangible, is increased power of control. What
cannot be managed directly may be handled indirectly; or we can
interpose barriers between us and undesirable consequences; or we
may evade them if we cannot overcome them. Genuine knowledge
has all the practical value attaching to efficient habits in any case. (ii)
But it also increases the meaning, the experienced significance,
attaching to an experience. A situation to which we respond
capriciously or by routine has only a minimum of conscious
significance; we get nothing mentally from it. But wherever
knowledge comes into play in determining a new experience there is
mental reward; even if we fail practically in getting the needed
control we have the satisfaction of experiencing a meaning instead
of merely reacting physically.
While the content of knowledge is what has happened, what is
taken as finished and hence settled and sure, the reference of
knowledge is future or prospective. For knowledge furnishes the
means of understanding or giving meaning to what is still going on
and what is to be done. The knowledge of a physician is what he
has found out by personal acquaintance and by study of what others
have ascertained and recorded. But it is knowledge to him because it
supplies the resources by which he interprets the unknown things
which confront him, fills out the partial obvious facts with
connected suggested phenomena, foresees their probable future,
and makes plans accordingly. When knowledge is cut off from use
in giving meaning to what is blind and baffling, it drops out of
consciousness entirely or else becomes an object of aesthetic
contemplation. There is much emotional satisfaction to be had from
a survey of the symmetry and order of possessed knowledge, and
the satisfaction is a legitimate one. But this contemplative attitude is
aesthetic, not intellectual. It is the same sort of joy that comes from
viewing a finished picture or a well composed landscape. It would
make no difference if the subject matter were totally different,
provided it had the same harmonious organization. Indeed, it would
make no difference if it were wholly invented, a play of fancy.
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Applicability to the world means not applicability to what is past and
gone--that is out of the question by the nature of the case; it
means applicability to what is still going on, what is still unsettled, in
the moving scene in which we are implicated. The very fact that we
so easily overlook this trait, and regard statements of what is past
and out of reach as knowledge is because we assume the continuity
of past and future. We cannot entertain the conception of a world
in which knowledge of its past would not be helpful in forecasting
and giving meaning to its future. We ignore the prospective
reference just because it is so irretrievably implied.
Yet many of the philosophic schools of method which have been
mentioned transform the ignoring into a virtual denial. They regard
knowledge as something complete in itself irrespective of its
availability in dealing with what is yet to be. And it is this omission
which vitiates them and which makes them stand as sponsors for
educational methods which an adequate conception of knowledge
condemns. For one has only to call to mind what is sometimes
treated in schools as acquisition of knowledge to realize how lacking
it is in any fruitful connection with the ongoing experience of the
students--how largely it seems to be believed that the mere
appropriation of subject matter which happens to be stored in
books constitutes knowledge. No matter how true what is learned to
those who found it out and in whose experience it functioned, there
is nothing which makes it knowledge to the pupils. It might as well
be something about Mars or about some fanciful country unless it
fructifies in the individual's own life.
At the time when scholastic method developed, it had relevancy to
social conditions. It was a method for systematizing and lending
rational sanction to material accepted on authority. This subject
matter meant so much that it vitalized the defining and
systematizing brought to bear upon it. Under present conditions the
scholastic method, for most persons, means a form of knowing
which has no especial connection with any particular subject matter.
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It includes making distinctions, definitions, divisions, and
classifications for the mere sake of making them--with no objective
in experience. The view of thought as a purely physical activity
having its own forms, which are applied to any material as a seal may
be stamped on any plastic stuff, the view which underlies what is
termed formal logic is essentially the scholastic method generalized.
The doctrine of formal discipline in education is the natural
counterpart of the scholastic method.
The contrasting theories of the method of knowledge which go by
the name of sensationalism and rationalism correspond to an
exclusive emphasis upon the particular and the general respectively
--or upon bare facts on one side and bare relations on the other. In
real knowledge, there is a particularizing and a generalizing function
working together. So far as a situation is confused, it has to be
cleared up; it has to be resolved into details, as sharply defined as
possible. Specified facts and qualities constitute the elements of the
problem to be dealt with, and it is through our sense organs that
they are specified. As setting forth the problem, they may well be
termed particulars, for they are fragmentary. Since our task is to
discover their connections and to recombine them, for us at the
time they are partial. They are to be given meaning; hence, just as
they stand, they lack it. Anything which is to be known, whose
meaning has still to be made out, offers itself as particular. But what
is already known, if it has been worked over with a view to making
it applicable to intellectually mastering new particulars, is general in
function. Its function of introducing connection into what is
otherwise unconnected constitutes its generality. Any fact is general
if we use it to give meaning to the elements of a new experience.
"Reason" is just the ability to bring the subject matter of prior
experience to bear to perceive the significance of the subject matter
of a new experience. A person is reasonable in the degree in which
he is habitually open to seeing an event which immediately strikes
his senses not as an isolated thing but in its connection with the
common experience of mankind.
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Without the particulars as they are discriminated by the active
responses of sense organs, there is no material for knowing and no
intellectual growth. Without placing these particulars in the context
of the meanings wrought out in the larger experience of the past--
without the use of reason or thought--particulars are mere
excitations or irritations. The mistake alike of the sensational and
the rationalistic schools is that each fails to see that the function of
sensory stimulation and thought is relative to reorganizing
experience in applying the old to the new, thereby maintaining the
continuity or consistency of life. The theory of the method of
knowing which is advanced in these pages may be termed pragmatic.
Its essential feature is to maintain the continuity of knowing with an
activity which purposely modifies the environment. It holds that
knowledge in its strict sense of something possessed consists of our
intellectual resources--of all the habits that render our action
intelligent. Only that which has been organized into our disposition
so as to enable us to adapt the environment to our needs and to
adapt our aims and desires to the situation in which we live is really
knowledge. Knowledge is not just something which we are now
conscious of, but consists of the dispositions we consciously use in
understanding what now happens. Knowledge as an act is bringing
some of our dispositions to consciousness with a view to
straightening out a perplexity, by conceiving the connection between
ourselves and the world in which we live.
Summary.
Such social divisions as interfere with free and full intercourse react
to make the intelligence and knowing of members of the separated
classes one-sided. Those whose experience has to do with utilities
cut off from the larger end they subserve are practical empiricists;
those who enjoy the contemplation of a realm of meanings in
whose active production they have had no share are practical
rationalists. Those who come in direct contact with things and have
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to adapt their activities to them immediately are, in effect, realists;
those who isolate the meanings of these things and put them in a
religious or so-called spiritual world aloof from things are, in effect,
idealists. Those concerned with progress, who are striving to change
received beliefs, emphasize the individual factor in knowing; those
whose chief business it is to withstand change and conserve
received truth emphasize the universal and the fixed--and so on.
Philosophic systems in their opposed theories of knowledge present
an explicit formulation of the traits characteristic of these cut-off
and one-sided segments of experience--one-sided because barriers
to intercourse prevent the experience of one from being enriched
and supplemented by that of others who are differently situated.
In an analogous way, since democracy stands in principle for free
interchange, for social continuity, it must develop a theory of
knowledge which sees in knowledge the method by which one
experience is made available in giving direction and meaning to
another. The recent advances in physiology, biology, and the logic of
the experimental sciences supply the specific intellectual
instrumentalities demanded to work out and formulate such a
theory. Their educational equivalent is the connection of the
acquisition of knowledge in the schools with activities, or
occupations, carried on in a medium of associated life.
Chapter Twenty-six: Theories of Morals
1. The Inner and the Outer. Since morality is concerned with
conduct, any dualisms which are set up between mind and activity
must reflect themselves in the theory of morals. Since the
formulations of the separation in the philosophic theory of morals
are used to justify and idealize the practices employed in moral
training, a brief critical discussion is in place. It is a commonplace
of educational theory that the establishing of character is a
comprehensive aim of school instruction and discipline. Hence it is
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important that we should be on our guard against a conception of
the relations of intelligence to character which hampers the
realization of the aim, and on the look-out for the conditions which
have to be provided in order that the aim may be successfully acted
upon. The first obstruction which meets us is the currency of moral
ideas which split the course of activity into two opposed factors,
often named respectively the inner and outer, or the spiritual and the
physical. This division is a culmination of the dualism of mind and
the world, soul and body, end and means, which we have so
frequently noted. In morals it takes the form of a sharp demarcation
of the motive of action from its consequences, and of character
from conduct. Motive and character are regarded as something
purely "inner," existing exclusively in consciousness, while
consequences and conduct are regarded as outside of mind, conduct
having to do simply with the movements which carry out motives;
consequences with what happens as a result. Different schools
identify morality with either the inner state of mind or the outer act
and results, each in separation from the other. Action with a
purpose is deliberate; it involves a consciously foreseen end and a
mental weighing of considerations pro and eon. It also involves a
conscious state of longing or desire for the end. The deliberate
choice of an aim and of a settled disposition of desire takes time.
During this time complete overt action is suspended. A person who
does not have his mind made up, does not know what to do.
Consequently he postpones definite action so far as possible. His
position may be compared to that of a man considering jumping
across a ditch. If he were sure he could or could not make it,
definite activity in some direction would occur. But if he considers,
he is in doubt; he hesitates. During the time in which a single overt
line of action is in suspense, his activities are confined to such
redistributions of energy within the organism as will prepare a
determinate course of action. He measures the ditch with his eyes;
he brings himself taut to get a feel of the energy at his disposal; he
looks about for other ways across, he reflects upon the importance
of getting across. All this means an accentuation of consciousness;
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it means a turning in upon the individual's own attitudes, powers,
wishes, etc.
Obviously, however, this surging up of personal factors into
conscious recognition is a part of the whole activity in its temporal
development. There is not first a purely psychical process, followed
abruptly by a radically different physical one. There is one
continuous behavior, proceeding from a more uncertain, divided,
hesitating state to a more overt, determinate, or complete state. The
activity at first consists mainly of certain tensions and adjustments
within the organism; as these are coordinated into a unified attitude,
the organism as a whole acts--some definite act is undertaken. We
may distinguish, of course, the more explicitly conscious phase of
the continuous activity as mental or psychical. But that only
identifies the mental or psychical to mean the indeterminate,
formative state of an activity which in its fullness involves putting
forth of overt energy to modify the environment.
Our conscious thoughts, observations, wishes, aversions are
important, because they represent inchoate, nascent activities. They
fulfill their destiny in issuing, later on, into specific and perceptible
acts. And these inchoate, budding organic readjustments are
important because they are our sole escape from the dominion of
routine habits and blind impulse. They are activities having a new
meaning in process of development. Hence, normally, there is an
accentuation of personal consciousness whenever our instincts and
ready formed habits find themselves blocked by novel conditions.
Then we are thrown back upon ourselves to reorganize our own
attitude before proceeding to a definite and irretrievable course of
action. Unless we try to drive our way through by sheer brute force,
we must modify our organic resources to adapt them to the specific
features of the situation in which we find ourselves. The conscious
deliberating and desiring which precede overt action are, then, the
methodic personal readjustment implied in activity in uncertain
situations. This role of mind in continuous activity is not always
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maintained, however. Desires for something different, aversion to
the given state of things caused by the blocking of successful
activity, stimulates the imagination. The picture of a different state
of things does not always function to aid ingenious observation and
recollection to find a way out and on. Except where there is a
disciplined disposition, the tendency is for the imagination to run
loose. Instead of its objects being checked up by conditions with
reference to their practicability in execution, they are allowed to
develop because of the immediate emotional satisfaction which they
yield. When we find the successful display of our energies checked
by uncongenial surroundings, natural and social, the easiest way out
is to build castles in the air and let them be a substitute for an actual
achievement which involves the pains of thought. So in overt action
we acquiesce, and build up an imaginary world in, mind. This break
between thought and conduct is reflected in those theories which
make a sharp separation between mind as inner and conduct and
consequences as merely outer.
For the split may be more than an incident of a particular
individual's experience. The social situation may be such as to throw
the class given to articulate reflection back into their own thoughts
and desires without providing the means by which these ideas and
aspirations can be used to reorganize the environment. Under such
conditions, men take revenge, as it were, upon the alien and hostile
environment by cultivating contempt for it, by giving it a bad name.
They seek refuge and consolation within their own states of mind,
their own imaginings and wishes, which they compliment by calling
both more real and more ideal than the despised outer world. Such
periods have recurred in history. In the early centuries of the
Christian era, the influential moral systems of Stoicism, of monastic
and popular Christianity and other religious movements of the day,
took shape under the influence of such conditions. The more action
which might express prevailing ideals was checked, the more the
inner possession and cultivation of ideals was regarded as self-
sufficient--as the essence of morality. The external world in which
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activity belongs was thought of as morally indifferent. Everything
lay in having the right motive, even though that motive was not a
moving force in the world. Much the same sort of situation recurred
in Germany in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; it
led to the Kantian insistence upon the good will as the sole moral
good, the will being regarded as something complete in itself, apart
from action and from the changes or consequences effected in the
world. Later it led to any idealization of existing institutions as
themselves the embodiment of reason.
The purely internal morality of "meaning well," of having a good
disposition regardless of what comes of it, naturally led to a
reaction. This is generally known as either hedonism or
utilitarianism. It was said in effect that the important thing morally is
not what a man is inside of his own consciousness, but what he
does--the consequences which issue, the charges he actually effects.
Inner morality was attacked as sentimental, arbitrary, dogmatic,
subjective--as giving men leave to dignify and shield any dogma
congenial to their self-interest or any caprice occurring to
imagination by calling it an intuition or an ideal of conscience.
Results, conduct, are what counts; they afford the sole measure of
morality. Ordinary morality, and hence that of the schoolroom, is
likely to be an inconsistent compromise of both views. On one
hand, certain states of feeling are made much of; the individual must
"mean well," and if his intentions are good, if he had the right sort
of emotional consciousness, he may be relieved of responsibility for
full results in conduct. But since, on the other hand, certain things
have to be done to meet the convenience and the requirements of
others, and of social order in general, there is great insistence upon
the doing of certain things, irrespective of whether the individual
has any concern or intelligence in their doing. He must toe the mark;
he must have his nose held to the grindstone; he must obey; he must
form useful habits; he must learn self-control,--all of these
precepts being understood in a way which emphasizes simply the
immediate thing tangibly done, irrespective of the spirit of thought
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and desire in which it is done, and irrespective therefore of its effect
upon other less obvious doings.
It is hoped that the prior discussion has sufficiently elaborated the
method by which both of these evils are avoided. One or both of
these evils must result wherever individuals, whether young or old,
cannot engage in a progressively cumulative undertaking under
conditions which engage their interest and require their reflection.
For only in such cases is it possible that the disposition of desire
and thinking should be an organic factor in overt and obvious
conduct. Given a consecutive activity embodying the student's own
interest, where a definite result is to be obtained, and where neither
routine habit nor the following of dictated directions nor capricious
improvising will suffice, and there the rise of conscious purpose,
conscious desire, and deliberate reflection are inevitable. They are
inevitable as the spirit and quality of an activity having specific
consequences, not as forming an isolated realm of inner
consciousness.
2. The Opposition of Duty and Interest. Probably there is no
antithesis more often set up in moral discussion than that between
acting from "principle" and from "interest." To act on principle is to
act disinterestedly, according to a general law, which is above all
personal considerations. To act according to interest is, so the
allegation runs, to act selfishly, with one's own personal profit in
view. It substitutes the changing expediency of the moment for
devotion to unswerving moral law. The false idea of interest
underlying this opposition has already been criticized (See Chapter
X), but some moral aspects of the question will now be considered.
A clew to the matter may be found in the fact that the supporters of
the "interest" side of the controversy habitually use the term "self-
interest." Starting from the premises that unless there is interest in
an object or idea, there is no motive force, they end with the
conclusion that even when a person claims to be acting from
principle or from a sense of duty, he really acts as he does because
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there "is something in it" for himself. The premise is sound; the
conclusion false. In reply the other school argues that since man is
capable of generous self-forgetting and even self-sacrificing action,
he is capable of acting without interest. Again the premise is sound,
and the conclusion false. The error on both sides lies in a false
notion of the relation of interest and the self.
Both sides assume that the self is a fixed and hence isolated
quantity. As a consequence, there is a rigid dilemma between acting
for an interest of the self and without interest. If the self is
something fixed antecedent to action, then acting from interest
means trying to get more in the way of possessions for the self--
whether in the way of fame, approval of others, power over others,
pecuniary profit, or pleasure. Then the reaction from this view as a
cynical depreciation of human nature leads to the view that men
who act nobly act with no interest at all. Yet to an unbiased
judgment it would appear plain that a man must be interested in
what he is doing or he would not do it. A physician who continues
to serve the sick in a plague at almost certain danger to his own life
must be interested in the efficient performance of his profession--
more interested in that than in the safety of his own bodily life. But
it is distorting facts to say that this interest is merely a mask for an
interest in something else which he gets by continuing his customary
services--such as money or good repute or virtue; that it is only a
means to an ulterior selfish end. The moment we recognize that the
self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous
formation through choice of action, the whole situation clears up. A
man's interest in keeping at his work in spite of danger to life means
that his self is found in that work; if he finally gave up, and
preferred his personal safety or comfort, it would mean that he
preferred to be that kind of a self. The mistake lies in making a
separation between interest and self, and supposing that the latter is
the end to which interest in objects and acts and others is a mere
means. In fact, self and interest are two names for the same fact; the
kind and amount of interest actively taken in a thing reveals and
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measures the quality of selfhood which exists. Bear in mind that
interest means the active or moving identity of the self with a
certain object, and the whole alleged dilemma falls to the ground.
Unselfishness, for example, signifies neither lack of interest in what
is done (that would mean only machine-like indifference) nor
selflessness--which would mean absence of virility and character.
As employed everywhere outside of this particular theoretical
controversy, the term "unselfishness" refers to the kind of aims and
objects which habitually interest a man. And if we make a mental
survey of the kind of interests which evoke the use of this epithet,
we shall see that they have two intimately associated features. (i) The
generous self consciously identifies itself with the full range of
relationships implied in its activity, instead of drawing a sharp line
between itself and considerations which are excluded as alien or
indifferent; (ii) it readjusts and expands its past ideas of itself to take
in new consequences as they become perceptible. When the
physician began his career he may not have thought of a pestilence;
he may not have consciously identified himself with service under
such conditions. But, if he has a normally growing or active self,
when he finds that his vocation involves such risks, he willingly
adopts them as integral portions of his activity. The wider or larger
self which means inclusion instead of denial of relationships is
identical with a self which enlarges in order to assume previously
unforeseen ties.
In such crises of readjustment--and the crisis may be slight as well
as great--there may be a transitional conflict of "principle" with
"interest." It is the nature of a habit to involve ease in the
accustomed line of activity. It is the nature of a readjusting of habit
to involve an effort which is disagreeable--something to which a
man has deliberately to hold himself. In other words, there is a
tendency to identify the self--or take interest--in what one has got
used to, and to turn away the mind with aversion or irritation when
an unexpected thing which involves an unpleasant modification of
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habit comes up. Since in the past one has done one's duty without
having to face such a disagreeable circumstance, why not go on as
one has been? To yield to this temptation means to narrow and
isolate the thought of the self--to treat it as complete. Any habit,
no matter how efficient in the past, which has become set, may at
any time bring this temptation with it. To act from principle in such
an emergency is not to act on some abstract principle, or duty at
large; it is to act upon the principle of a course of action, instead of
upon the circumstances which have attended it. The principle of a
physician's conduct is its animating aim and spirit--the care for the
diseased. The principle is not what justifies an activity, for the
principle is but another name for the continuity of the activity. If
the activity as manifested in its consequences is undesirable, to act
upon principle is to accentuate its evil. And a man who prides
himself upon acting upon principle is likely to be a man who insists
upon having his own way without learning from experience what is
the better way. He fancies that some abstract principle justifies his
course of action without recognizing that his principle needs
justification.
Assuming, however, that school conditions are such as to provide
desirable occupations, it is interest in the occupation as a whole--
that is, in its continuous development--which keeps a pupil at his
work in spite of temporary diversions and unpleasant obstacles.
Where there is no activity having a growing significance, appeal to
principle is either purely verbal, or a form of obstinate pride or an
appeal to extraneous considerations clothed with a dignified title.
Undoubtedly there are junctures where momentary interest ceases
and attention flags, and where reinforcement is needed. But what
carries a person over these hard stretches is not loyalty to duty in the
abstract, but interest in his occupation. Duties are "offices"--they
are the specific acts needed for the fulfilling of a function--or, in
homely language--doing one's job. And the man who is genuinely
interested in his job is the man who is able to stand temporary
discouragement, to persist in the face of obstacles, to take the lean
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with the fat: he makes an interest out of meeting and overcoming
difficulties and distraction.
3. Intelligence and Character. A noteworthy paradox often
accompanies discussions of morals. On the one hand, there is an
identification of the moral with the rational. Reason is set up as a
faculty from which proceed ultimate moral intuitions, and
sometimes, as in the Kantian theory, it is said to supply the only
proper moral motive. On the other hand, the value of concrete,
everyday intelligence is constantly underestimated, and even
deliberately depreciated. Morals is often thought to be an affair with
which ordinary knowledge has nothing to do. Moral knowledge is
thought to be a thing apart, and conscience is thought of as
something radically different from consciousness. This separation, if
valid, is of especial significance for education. Moral education in
school is practically hopeless when we set up the development of
character as a supreme end, and at the same time treat the acquiring
of knowledge and the development of understanding, which of
necessity occupy the chief part of school time, as having nothing to
do with character. On such a basis, moral education is inevitably
reduced to some kind of catechetical instruction, or lessons about
morals. Lessons "about morals" signify as matter of course lessons
in what other people think about virtues and duties. It amounts to
something only in the degree in which pupils happen to be already
animated by a sympathetic and dignified regard for the sentiments
of others. Without such a regard, it has no more influence on
character than information about the mountains of Asia; with a
servile regard, it increases dependence upon others, and throws
upon those in authority the responsibility for conduct. As a matter
of fact, direct instruction in morals has been effective only in social
groups where it was a part of the authoritative control of the many
by the few. Not the teaching as such but the reinforcement of it by
the whole regime of which it was an incident made it effective. To
attempt to get similar results from lessons about morals in a
democratic society is to rely upon sentimental magic.
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At the other end of the scale stands the Socratic-Platonic teaching
which identifies knowledge and virtue--which holds that no man
does evil knowingly but only because of ignorance of the good.
This doctrine is commonly attacked on the ground that nothing is
more common than for a man to know the good and yet do the bad:
not knowledge, but habituation or practice, and motive are what is
required. Aristotle, in fact, at once attacked the Platonic teaching on
the ground that moral virtue is like an art, such as medicine; the
experienced practitioner is better than a man who has theoretical
knowledge but no practical experience of disease and remedies. The
issue turns, however, upon what is meant by knowledge. Aristotle's
objection ignored the gist of Plato's teaching to the effect that man
could not attain a theoretical insight into the good except as he had
passed through years of practical habituation and strenuous
discipline. Knowledge of the good was not a thing to be got either
from books or from others, but was achieved through a prolonged
education. It was the final and culminating grace of a mature
experience of life. Irrespective of Plato's position, it is easy to
perceive that the term knowledge is used to denote things as far
apart as intimate and vital personal realization,--a conviction gained
and tested in experience,--and a second-handed, largely symbolic,
recognition that persons in general believe so and so--a devitalized
remote information. That the latter does not guarantee conduct, that
it does not profoundly affect character, goes without saying. But if
knowledge means something of the same sort as our conviction
gained by trying and testing that sugar is sweet and quinine bitter,
the case stands otherwise. Every time a man sits on a chair rather
than on a stove, carries an umbrella when it rains, consults a doctor
when ill--or in short performs any of the thousand acts which
make up his daily life, he proves that knowledge of a certain kind
finds direct issue in conduct. There is every reason to suppose that
the same sort of knowledge of good has a like expression; in fact
"good" is an empty term unless it includes the satisfactions
experienced in such situations as those mentioned. Knowledge that
other persons are supposed to know something might lead one to
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act so as to win the approbation others attach to certain actions, or
at least so as to give others the impression that one agrees with
them; there is no reason why it should lead to personal initiative and
loyalty in behalf of the beliefs attributed to them.
It is not necessary, accordingly, to dispute about the proper meaning
of the term knowledge. It is enough for educational purposes to
note the different qualities covered by the one name, to realize that
it is knowledge gained at first hand through the exigencies of
experience which affects conduct in significant ways. If a pupil
learns things from books simply in connection with school lessons
and for the sake of reciting what he has learned when called upon,
then knowledge will have effect upon some conduct--namely upon
that of reproducing statements at the demand of others. There is
nothing surprising that such "knowledge" should not have much
influence in the life out of school. But this is not a reason for
making a divorce between knowledge and conduct, but for holding
in low esteem this kind of knowledge. The same thing may be said
of knowledge which relates merely to an isolated and technical
specialty; it modifies action but only in its own narrow line. In truth,
the problem of moral education in the schools is one with the
problem of securing knowledge--the knowledge connected with
the system of impulses and habits. For the use to which any known
fact is put depends upon its connections. The knowledge of
dynamite of a safecracker may be identical in verbal form with that
of a chemist; in fact, it is different, for it is knit into connection with
different aims and habits, and thus has a different import.
Our prior discussion of subject-matter as proceeding from direct
activity having an immediate aim, to the enlargement of meaning
found in geography and history, and then to scientifically organized
knowledge, was based upon the idea of maintaining a vital
connection between knowledge and activity. What is learned and
employed in an occupation having an aim and involving cooperation
with others is moral knowledge, whether consciously so regarded or
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not. For it builds up a social interest and confers the intelligence
needed to make that interest effective in practice. Just because the
studies of the curriculum represent standard factors in social life,
they are organs of initiation into social values. As mere school
studies, their acquisition has only a technical worth. Acquired under
conditions where their social significance is realized, they feed moral
interest and develop moral insight. Moreover, the qualities of mind
discussed under the topic of method of learning are all of them
intrinsically moral qualities. Open-mindedness, single-mindedness,
sincerity, breadth of outlook, thoroughness, assumption of
responsibility for developing the consequences of ideas which are
accepted, are moral traits. The habit of identifying moral
characteristics with external conformity to authoritative
prescriptions may lead us to ignore the ethical value of these
intellectual attitudes, but the same habit tends to reduce morals to a
dead and machinelike routine. Consequently while such an attitude
has moral results, the results are morally undesirable--above all in a
democratic society where so much depends upon personal
disposition.
4. The Social and the Moral. All of the separations which we have
been criticizing--and which the idea of education set forth in the
previous chapters is designed to avoid--spring from taking morals
too narrowly,--giving them, on one side, a sentimental goody-goody
turn without reference to effective ability to do what is socially
needed, and, on the other side, overemphasizing convention and
tradition so as to limit morals to a list of definitely stated acts. As a
matter of fact, morals are as broad as acts which concern our
relationships with others. And potentially this includes all our acts,
even though their social bearing may not be thought of at the time
of performance. For every act, by the principle of habit, modifies
disposition--it sets up a certain kind of inclination and desire. And
it is impossible to tell when the habit thus strengthened may have a
direct and perceptible influence on our association with others.
Certain traits of character have such an obvious connection with
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our social relationships that we call them "moral" in an emphatic
sense--truthfulness, honesty, chastity, amiability, etc. But this only
means that they are, as compared with some other attitudes, central:
--that they carry other attitudes with them. They are moral in an
emphatic sense not because they are isolated and exclusive, but
because they are so intimately connected with thousands of other
attitudes which we do not explicitly recognize--which perhaps we
have not even names for. To call them virtues in their isolation is
like taking the skeleton for the living body. The bones are certainly
important, but their importance lies in the fact that they support
other organs of the body in such a way as to make them capable of
integrated effective activity. And the same is true of the qualities of
character which we specifically designate virtues. Morals concern
nothing less than the whole character, and the whole character is
identical with the man in all his concrete make-up and
manifestations. To possess virtue does not signify to have cultivated
a few namable and exclusive traits; it means to be fully and
adequately what one is capable of becoming through association
with others in all the offices of life.
The moral and the social quality of conduct are, in the last analysis,
identical with each other. It is then but to restate explicitly the
import of our earlier chapters regarding the social function of
education to say that the measure of the worth of the
administration, curriculum, and methods of instruction of the
school is the extent to which they are animated by a social spirit.
And the great danger which threatens school work is the absence of
conditions which make possible a permeating social spirit; this is the
great enemy of effective moral training. For this spirit can be
actively present only when certain conditions are met.
(i) In the first place, the school must itself be a community life in all
which that implies. Social perceptions and interests can be
developed only in a genuinely social medium--one where there is
give and take in the building up of a common experience.
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Informational statements about things can be acquired in relative
isolation by any one who previously has had enough intercourse
with others to have learned language. But realization of the meaning
of the linguistic signs is quite another matter. That involves a
context of work and play in association with others. The plea which
has been made for education through continued constructive
activities in this book rests upon the fact they afford an opportunity
for a social atmosphere. In place of a school set apart from life as a
place for learning lessons, we have a miniature social group in which
study and growth are incidents of present shared experience.
Playgrounds, shops, workrooms, laboratories not only direct the
natural active tendencies of youth, but they involve intercourse,
communication, and cooperation,--all extending the perception of
connections.
(ii) The learning in school should be continuous with that out of
school. There should be a free interplay between the two. This is
possible only when there are numerous points of contact between
the social interests of the one and of the other. A school is
conceivable in which there should be a spirit of companionship and
shared activity, but where its social life would no more represent or
typify that of the world beyond the school walls than that of a
monastery. Social concern and understanding would be developed,
but they would not be available outside; they would not carry over.
The proverbial separation of town and gown, the cultivation of
academic seclusion, operate in this direction. So does such
adherence to the culture of the past as generates a reminiscent social
spirit, for this makes an individual feel more at home in the life of
other days than in his own. A professedly cultural education is
peculiarly exposed to this danger. An idealized past becomes the
refuge and solace of the spirit; present-day concerns are found
sordid, and unworthy of attention. But as a rule, the absence of a
social environment in connection with which learning is a need and
a reward is the chief reason for the isolation of the school; and this
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isolation renders school knowledge inapplicable to life and so
infertile in character.
A narrow and moralistic view of morals is responsible for the failure
to recognize that all the aims and values which are desirable in
education are themselves moral. Discipline, natural development,
culture, social efficiency, are moral traits--marks of a person who is
a worthy member of that society which it is the business of
education to further. There is an old saying to the effect that it is not
enough for a man to be good; he must be good for something. The
something for which a man must be good is capacity to live as a
social member so that what he gets from living with others balances
with what he contributes. What he gets and gives as a human being,
a being with desires, emotions, and ideas, is not external possessions,
but a widening and deepening of conscious life--a more intense,
disciplined, and expanding realization of meanings. What he
materially receives and gives is at most opportunities and means for
the evolution of conscious life. Otherwise, it is neither giving nor
taking, but a shifting about of the position of things in space, like
the stirring of water and sand with a stick. Discipline, culture, social
efficiency, personal refinement, improvement of character are but
phases of the growth of capacity nobly to share in such a balanced
experience. And education is not a mere means to such a life.
Education is such a life. To maintain capacity for such education is
the essence of morals. For conscious life is a continual beginning
afresh.
Summary.
The most important problem of moral education in the school
concerns the relationship of knowledge and conduct. For unless the
learning which accrues in the regular course of study affects
character, it is futile to conceive the moral end as the unifying and
culminating end of education. When there is no intimate organic
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connection between the methods and materials of knowledge and
moral growth, particular lessons and modes of discipline have to be
resorted to: knowledge is not integrated into the usual springs of
action and the outlook on life, while morals become moralistic--a
scheme of separate virtues.
The two theories chiefly associated with the separation of learning
from activity, and hence from morals, are those which cut off inner
disposition and motive--the conscious personal factor--and deeds
as purely physical and outer; and which set action from interest in
opposition to that from principle. Both of these separations are
overcome in an educational scheme where learning is the
accompaniment of continuous activities or occupations which have
a social aim and utilize the materials of typical social situations. For
under such conditions, the school becomes itself a form of social
life, a miniature community and one in close interaction with other
modes of associated experience beyond school walls. All education
which develops power to share effectively in social life is moral. It
forms a character which not only does the particular deed socially
necessary but one which is interested in that continuous
readjustment which is essential to growth. Interest in learning from
all the contacts of life is the essential moral interest.
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