DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION
by John Dewey
Transcriber’s Note:
I have tried to make this the most accurate text possible but I am sure
that there are still mistakes.
I would like to dedicate this etext to my mother who was a elementary
school teacher for more years than I can remember. Thanks.
David Reed
CONTENTS
Chapter One: Education as a Necessity of
LifeSummary. It
is the very nature of life to strive to continue in being.Chapter Two: Education as a Social Function
Summary. The
development within the young of the attitudesChapter Three: Education as Direction
Summary. The
natural or native impulses of the young do not agreeChapter Four: Education as Growth
Summary.
Power to grow depends upon need for others and plasticity.Chapter Five: Preparation, Unfolding, and
Formal DisciplineSummary. The
conception that the result of the educative processChapter Six: Education as Conservative and
ProgressiveSummary.
Education may be conceived either retrospectivelyChapter Seven: The Democratic Conception in
EducationSummary.
Since education is a social process, and there are many kindsChapter Eight: Aims in Education
Summary. An
aim denotes the result of any natural processChapter Nine: Natural Development and Social
Efficiency as AimsSummary.
General or comprehensive aims are points of view for surveyingChapter Ten: Interest and Discipline
Summary.
Interest and discipline are correlative aspects of activityChapter Eleven: Experience and Thinking
Summary. In
determining the place of thinkingChapter Twelve: Thinking in Education
Summary.
Processes of instruction are unified in the degreeChapter Thirteen: The Nature of Method
Summary.
Method is a statement of the way the subject matterChapter Fourteen: The Nature of Subject
MatterSummary. The
subject matter of education consists primarilyChapter Fifteen: Play and Work in the
CurriculumSummary. In
the previous chapter we found that the primary subjectChapter Sixteen: The Significance of
Geography and HistorySummary. It
is the nature of an experience to have implicationsChapter Seventeen: Science in the Course of
StudySummary.
Science represents the fruition of the cognitive factorsChapter Eighteen: Educational Values
Summary.
Fundamentally, the elements involved in a discussion of valueChapter Nineteen: Labor and Leisure
Summary. Of
the segregations of educational valuesChapter Twenty: Intellectual and Practical
StudiesSummary. The
Greeks were induced to philosophizeChapter Twenty-one: Physical and Social
Studies: Naturalism and HumanismSummary. The
philosophic dualism between man and nature is reflectedChapter Twenty-two: The Individual and the
WorldSummary.
True individualism is a product of the relaxation of the gripChapter Twenty-Three: Vocational Aspects of
EducationSummary. A
vocation signifies any form of continuous activityChapter Twenty-four: Philosophy of Education
Summary.
After a review designed to bring out the philosophic issuesChapter Twenty-five: Theories of Knowledge
Summary.
Such social divisions as interfere with free and fullChapter Twenty-six: Theories of Morals
Summary. The
most important problem of moral education in the school
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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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.
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 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 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 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 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
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.
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.
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
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 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 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 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 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
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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 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 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.
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.
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 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 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 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, 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 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 manifestation of power. Why an unequal measure
for child and man?
Taken absolutely, instead of comparatively, immaturity designates a
positive force or ability,—the power 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 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.
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 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 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,
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. 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 “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. 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
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 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 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.
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 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 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 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 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
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-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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.
(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 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 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 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 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
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 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 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 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 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 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.
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.)
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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-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 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 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
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.
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 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 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, 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, 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.
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 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
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 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
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
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 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 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 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 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.
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
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.
(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.
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 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 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 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 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 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
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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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. 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.
(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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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
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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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.
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 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 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 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. 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 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.
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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.
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 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, 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, 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 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.
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 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 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
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 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 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.”
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.
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 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 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
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 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.
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 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 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 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 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. 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
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 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 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 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 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 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 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.
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. 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.
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. 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 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.
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.
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 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 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 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 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, 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.
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 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 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 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 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 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.
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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 it 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 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 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, 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
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 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, 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 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 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 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 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
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 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, 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 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.
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 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 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. 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 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
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.
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 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 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.
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 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 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
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 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 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.
(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. 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 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 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 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 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.
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 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 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 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 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 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
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 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 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 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 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 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
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 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. 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 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 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 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.
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 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 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 we have pointed out that these problems originate in the conflicts
and difficulties of social life. The problems are such things as the
relations of mind and matter; body and soul; humanity and physical
nature; the individual and the social; theory—or knowing, and
practice—or doing. The philosophical systems which formulate these
problems record the main lineaments and difficulties of contemporary
social practice. They bring to explicit consciousness what men have come
to think, in virtue of the quality of their current experience, about
nature, themselves, and the reality they conceive to include or to
govern both.
As we might expect, then, philosophy has generally been defined in ways
which imply a certain totality, generality, and ultimateness of both
subject matter and method. With respect to subject matter, philosophy
is an attempt to comprehend—that is, to gather together the varied
details of the world and of life into a single inclusive whole, which
shall either be a unity, or, as in the dualistic systems, shall reduce
the plural details to a small number of ultimate principles. On the
side of the attitude of the philosopher and of those who accept his
conclusions, there is the endeavor to attain as unified, consistent,
and complete an outlook upon experience as is possible. This aspect is
expressed in the word ‘philosophy’—love of wisdom. Whenever philosophy
has been taken seriously, it has always been assumed that it signified
achieving a wisdom which would influence the conduct of life. Witness
the fact that almost all ancient schools of philosophy were also
organized ways of living, those who accepted their tenets being
committed to certain distinctive modes of conduct; witness the intimate
connection of philosophy with the theology of the Roman church in the
middle ages, its frequent association with religious interests, and, at
national crises, its association with political struggles.
This direct and intimate connection of philosophy with an outlook upon
life obviously differentiates philosophy from science. Particular facts
and laws of science evidently influence conduct. They suggest things to
do and not do, and provide means of execution. When science denotes not
simply a report of the particular facts discovered about the world but
a general attitude toward it—as distinct from special things to do
—it merges into philosophy. For an underlying disposition represents an
attitude not to this 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.
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 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 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 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 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.
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 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
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
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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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. 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. 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.
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 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 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; 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.
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 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 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 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. 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 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 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.