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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 852 ***
+
+
+
+
+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. Please feel free
+to email me any errors or mistakes that you find. Citing the Chapter
+and paragraph. Haradda@aol.com and davidr@inconnect.com are my email
+addresses for now. David Reed
+
+I would like to dedicate this etext to my mother who was a elementary
+school teacher for more years than I can remember. Thanks.
+
+
+
+
+Contents:
+
+     Chapter One: Education as a Necessity of Life
+     Chapter Two: Education as a Social Function
+     Chapter Three: Education as Direction
+     Chapter Four: Education as Growth
+     Chapter Five: Preparation, Unfolding, and Formal Discipline
+     Chapter Six: Education as Conservative and Progressive
+     Chapter Seven: The Democratic Conception in Education
+     Chapter Eight: Aims in Education
+     Chapter Nine: Natural Development and Social Efficiency as Aims
+     Chapter Ten: Interest and Discipline
+     Chapter Eleven: Experience and Thinking
+     Chapter Twelve: Thinking in Education
+     Chapter Thirteen: The Nature of Method
+     Chapter Fourteen: The Nature of Subject Matter
+     Chapter Fifteen: Play and Work in the Curriculum
+     Chapter Sixteen: The Significance of Geography and History
+     Chapter Seventeen: Science in the Course of Study
+     Chapter Eighteen: Educational Values
+     Chapter Nineteen: Labor and Leisure
+     Chapter Twenty: Intellectual and Practical Studies
+     Chapter Twenty-one: Physical and Social Studies: Naturalism and
+             Humanism
+     Chapter Twenty-two: The Individual and the World
+     Chapter Twenty-Three: Vocational Aspects of Education
+     Chapter Twenty-four: Philosophy of Education
+     Chapter Twenty-five: Theories of Knowledge
+     Chapter Twenty-six: Theories of Morals
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 852 ***