ads:
Democracy and Education
Dewey, John
ads:
Livros Grátis
http://www.livrosgratis.com.br
Milhares de livros grátis para download.
ads:
D
emocracy and Education by John Dewey
Democracy and Education
2
Chapter One: Education as a Necessity of Life
1. R
enewal 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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter One: Education as a Necessity of Life 3
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter One: Education as a Necessity of Life 4
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter One: Education as a Necessity of Life 5
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter One: Education as a Necessity of Life 6
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter One: Education as a Necessity of Life 7
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter One: Education as a Necessity of Life 8
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter One: Education as a Necessity of Life 9
Chapter Two: Education as a Social Function
1. T
he 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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Two: Education as a Social Function 10
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Two: Education as a Social Function 11
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Two: Education as a Social Function 12
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Two: Education as a Social Function 13
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Two: Education as a Social Function 14
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Two: Education as a Social Function 15
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Two: Education as a Social Function 16
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Two: Education as a Social Function 17
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Two: Education as a Social Function 18
Chapter Three: Education as Direction
1. T
he 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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Three: Education as Direction 19
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Three: Education as Direction 20
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Three: Education as Direction 21
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Three: Education as Direction 22
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Three: Education as Direction 23
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Three: Education as Direction 24
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Three: Education as Direction 25
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Three: Education as Direction 26
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Three: Education as Direction 27
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Three: Education as Direction 28
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Three: Education as Direction 29
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Three: Education as Direction 30
Chapter Four: Education as Growth
1. T
he 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 pouter to grow. We do not have to draw out or educe positive activities from a
Democracy and Education
Chapter Four: Education as Growth 31
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Four: Education as Growth 32
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Four: Education as Growth 33
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Four: Education as Growth 34
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Four: Education as Growth 35
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Four: Education as Growth 36
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Four: Education as Growth 37
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Four: Education as Growth 38
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Four: Education as Growth 39
Chapter Five: Preparation, Unfolding, and Formal Discipline
1. E
ducation 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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Five: Preparation, Unfolding, and Formal Discipline 40
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Five: Preparation, Unfolding, and Formal Discipline 41
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Five: Preparation, Unfolding, and Formal Discipline 42
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Five: Preparation, Unfolding, and Formal Discipline 43
«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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Five: Preparation, Unfolding, and Formal Discipline 44
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Five: Preparation, Unfolding, and Formal Discipline 45
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. 2
Democracy and Education
Chapter Five: Preparation, Unfolding, and Formal Discipline 46
(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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Five: Preparation, Unfolding, and Formal Discipline 47
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Five: Preparation, Unfolding, and Formal Discipline 48
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Five: Preparation, Unfolding, and Formal Discipline 49
arrangement occurs.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Five: Preparation, Unfolding, and Formal Discipline 50
Chapter Six: Education as Conservative and Progressive
1. E
ducation 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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Six: Education as Conservative and Progressive 51
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Six: Education as Conservative and Progressive 52
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Six: Education as Conservative and Progressive 53
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Six: Education as Conservative and Progressive 54
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, hut 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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Six: Education as Conservative and Progressive 55
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Six: Education as Conservative and Progressive 56
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Six: Education as Conservative and Progressive 57
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Six: Education as Conservative and Progressive 58
Chapter Seven: The Democratic Conception in Education
F
or 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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Seven: The Democratic Conception in Education 59
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Seven: The Democratic Conception in Education 60
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Seven: The Democratic Conception in Education 61
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Seven: The Democratic Conception in Education 62
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Seven: The Democratic Conception in Education 63
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Seven: The Democratic Conception in Education 64
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Seven: The Democratic Conception in Education 65
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Seven: The Democratic Conception in Education 66
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Seven: The Democratic Conception in Education 67
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Seven: The Democratic Conception in Education 68
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Seven: The Democratic Conception in Education 69
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Seven: The Democratic Conception in Education 70
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Seven: The Democratic Conception in Education 71
Chapter Eight: Aims in Education
1. T
he 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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Eight: Aims in Education 72
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Eight: Aims in Education 73
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Eight: Aims in Education 74
(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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Eight: Aims in Education 75
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Eight: Aims in Education 76
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Eight: Aims in Education 77
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Eight: Aims in Education 78
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Eight: Aims in Education 79
Chapter Nine: Natural Development and Social Efficiency as
Aims
1. N
ature 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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Nine: Natural Development and Social Efficiency as Aims 80
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Nine: Natural Development and Social Efficiency as Aims 81
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Nine: Natural Development and Social Efficiency as Aims 82
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Nine: Natural Development and Social Efficiency as Aims 83
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;
Democracy and Education
Chapter Nine: Natural Development and Social Efficiency as Aims 84
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Nine: Natural Development and Social Efficiency as Aims 85
(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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Nine: Natural Development and Social Efficiency as Aims 86
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Nine: Natural Development and Social Efficiency as Aims 87
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Nine: Natural Development and Social Efficiency as Aims 88
Chapter Ten: Interest and Discipline
1. T
he 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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Ten: Interest and Discipline 89
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Ten: Interest and Discipline 90
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Ten: Interest and Discipline 91
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Ten: Interest and Discipline 92
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 m 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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Ten: Interest and Discipline 93
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Ten: Interest and Discipline 94
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.»
Democracy and Education
Chapter Ten: Interest and Discipline 95
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Ten: Interest and Discipline 96
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Ten: Interest and Discipline 97
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Ten: Interest and Discipline 98
Chapter Eleven: Experience and Thinking
1. T
he 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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Eleven: Experience and Thinking 99
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, socalled 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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Eleven: Experience and Thinking 100
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Eleven: Experience and Thinking 101
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Eleven: Experience and Thinking 102
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Eleven: Experience and Thinking 103
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 difflculty 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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Eleven: Experience and Thinking 104
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Eleven: Experience and Thinking 105
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 refiective 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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Eleven: Experience and Thinking 106
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Eleven: Experience and Thinking 107
Chapter Twelve: Thinking in Education
1. T
he 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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twelve: Thinking in Education 108
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twelve: Thinking in Education 109
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twelve: Thinking in Education 110
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twelve: Thinking in Education 111
«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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twelve: Thinking in Education 112
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twelve: Thinking in Education 113
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twelve: Thinking in Education 114
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twelve: Thinking in Education 115
Chapter Thirteen: The Nature of Method
1. T
he 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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Thirteen: The Nature of Method 116
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Thirteen: The Nature of Method 117
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Thirteen: The Nature of Method 118
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Thirteen: The Nature of Method 119
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Thirteen: The Nature of Method 120
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Thirteen: The Nature of Method 121
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Thirteen: The Nature of Method 122
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Thirteen: The Nature of Method 123
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Thirteen: The Nature of Method 124
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Thirteen: The Nature of Method 125
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Thirteen: The Nature of Method 126
Chapter Fourteen: The Nature of Subject Matter
1. S
ubject 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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Fourteen: The Nature of Subject Matter 127
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Fourteen: The Nature of Subject Matter 128
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Fourteen: The Nature of Subject Matter 129
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Fourteen: The Nature of Subject Matter 130
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Fourteen: The Nature of Subject Matter 131
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Fourteen: The Nature of Subject Matter 132
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 shortvisioned 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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Fourteen: The Nature of Subject Matter 133
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Fourteen: The Nature of Subject Matter 134
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Fourteen: The Nature of Subject Matter 135
Chapter Fifteen: Play and Work in the Curriculum
1. T
he 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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Fifteen: Play and Work in the Curriculum 136
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Fifteen: Play and Work in the Curriculum 137
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Fifteen: Play and Work in the Curriculum 138
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Fifteen: Play and Work in the Curriculum 139
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Fifteen: Play and Work in the Curriculum 140
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Fifteen: Play and Work in the Curriculum 141
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Fifteen: Play and Work in the Curriculum 142
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Fifteen: Play and Work in the Curriculum 143
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Fifteen: Play and Work in the Curriculum 144
Chapter Sixteen: The Significance of Geography and History
1. E
xtension 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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Sixteen: The Significance of Geography and History 145
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Sixteen: The Significance of Geography and History 146
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,
Democracy and Education
Chapter Sixteen: The Significance of Geography and History 147
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Sixteen: The Significance of Geography and History 148
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Sixteen: The Significance of Geography and History 149
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Sixteen: The Significance of Geography and History 150
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Sixteen: The Significance of Geography and History 151
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Sixteen: The Significance of Geography and History 152
Chapter Seventeen: Science in the Course of Study
1. T
he 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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Seventeen: Science in the Course of Study 153
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Seventeen: Science in the Course of Study 154
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Seventeen: Science in the Course of Study 155
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Seventeen: Science in the Course of Study 156
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Seventeen: Science in the Course of Study 157
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,
Democracy and Education
Chapter Seventeen: Science in the Course of Study 158
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Seventeen: Science in the Course of Study 159
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Seventeen: Science in the Course of Study 160
Chapter Eighteen: Educational Values
T
he 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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Eighteen: Educational Values 161
«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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Eighteen: Educational Values 162
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Eighteen: Educational Values 163
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Eighteen: Educational Values 164
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Eighteen: Educational Values 165
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Eighteen: Educational Values 166
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Eighteen: Educational Values 167
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Eighteen: Educational Values 168
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Eighteen: Educational Values 169
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Eighteen: Educational Values 170
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Eighteen: Educational Values 171
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Eighteen: Educational Values 172
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Eighteen: Educational Values 173
Chapter Nineteen: Labor and Leisure
1. T
he 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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Nineteen: Labor and Leisure 174
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Nineteen: Labor and Leisure 175
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Nineteen: Labor and Leisure 176
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Nineteen: Labor and Leisure 177
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 is
has filtered through into elementary education and largely controls its processes and aims.
But, on the other hand, certain concessions have been made to the masses who must engage
in getting a livelihood and to the increased role of economic activities in modern life. These
concessions are exhibited in special schools and courses for the professions, for engineering,
for manual training and commerce, in vocational and prevocational courses; and in the spirit
in which certain elementary subjects, like the three R's, are taught. The result is a system in
which both «cultural» and «utilitarian» subjects exist in an inorganic composite where the
former are not by dominant purpose socially serviceable and the latter not liberative of
imagination or thinking power.
In the inherited situation, there is a curious intermingling, in even the same study, of
concession to usefulness and a survival of traits once exclusively attributed to preparation
for leisure. The «utility» element is found in the motives assigned for the study, the «liberal»
element in methods of teaching. The outcome of the mixture is perhaps less satisfactory than
Democracy and Education
Chapter Nineteen: Labor and Leisure 178
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Nineteen: Labor and Leisure 179
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Nineteen: Labor and Leisure 180
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Nineteen: Labor and Leisure 181
Chapter Twenty: Intellectual and Practical Studies
1. T
he 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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty: Intellectual and Practical Studies 182
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty: Intellectual and Practical Studies 183
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty: Intellectual and Practical Studies 184
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.)
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty: Intellectual and Practical Studies 185
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty: Intellectual and Practical Studies 186
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty: Intellectual and Practical Studies 187
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty: Intellectual and Practical Studies 188
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty: Intellectual and Practical Studies 189
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty: Intellectual and Practical Studies 190
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty: Intellectual and Practical Studies 191
Chapter Twenty−one: Physical and Social Studies: Naturalism
and
H
umanism
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−one: Physical and Social Studies: Naturalism and 192
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−one: Physical and Social Studies: Naturalism and 193
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−one: Physical and Social Studies: Naturalism and 194
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−one: Physical and Social Studies: Naturalism and 195
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−one: Physical and Social Studies: Naturalism and 196
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−one: Physical and Social Studies: Naturalism and 197
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−one: Physical and Social Studies: Naturalism and 198
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−one: Physical and Social Studies: Naturalism and 199
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−one: Physical and Social Studies: Naturalism and 200
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−one: Physical and Social Studies: Naturalism and 201
Chapter Twenty−two: The Individual and the World
1. M
ind 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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−two: The Individual and the World 202
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−two: The Individual and the World 203
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,
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−two: The Individual and the World 204
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−two: The Individual and the World 205
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−two: The Individual and the World 206
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−two: The Individual and the World 207
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−two: The Individual and the World 208
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−two: The Individual and the World 209
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−two: The Individual and the World 210
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−two: The Individual and the World 211
Chapter Twenty−Three: Vocational Aspects of Education
1. T
he 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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−Three: Vocational Aspects of Education 212
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−Three: Vocational Aspects of Education 213
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−Three: Vocational Aspects of Education 214
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−Three: Vocational Aspects of Education 215
(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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−Three: Vocational Aspects of Education 216
(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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−Three: Vocational Aspects of Education 217
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−Three: Vocational Aspects of Education 218
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−Three: Vocational Aspects of Education 219
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−Three: Vocational Aspects of Education 220
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−Three: Vocational Aspects of Education 221
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.)
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−four: Philosophy of Education 222
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 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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−four: Philosophy of Education 223
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−four: Philosophy of Education 224
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−four: Philosophy of Education 225
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−four: Philosophy of Education 226
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−four: Philosophy of Education 227
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−four: Philosophy of Education 228
Chapter Twenty−five: Theories of Knowledge
1. C
ontinuity 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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−five: Theories of Knowledge 229
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−five: Theories of Knowledge 230
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−five: Theories of Knowledge 231
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−five: Theories of Knowledge 232
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,
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−five: Theories of Knowledge 233
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−five: Theories of Knowledge 234
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−five: Theories of Knowledge 235
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−five: Theories of Knowledge 236
with activities, or occupations, carried on in a medium of associated life.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−five: Theories of Knowledge 237
Chapter Twenty−six: Theories of Morals
1. T
he 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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−six: Theories of Morals 238
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−six: Theories of Morals 239
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−six: Theories of Morals 240
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−six: Theories of Morals 241
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−six: Theories of Morals 242
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−six: Theories of Morals 243
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−six: Theories of Morals 244
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
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−six: Theories of Morals 245
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,
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−six: Theories of Morals 246
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.
Democracy and Education
Chapter Twenty−six: Theories of Morals 247
Table Of Content
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
Democracy and Education
Table Of Content 248
Chapter Twenty−one: Physical and Social Studies: Naturalism and
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
Democracy and Education
Table Of Content 249
You are reading a Phoenix Edition:
It was converted from clean and standard xhtml/xml files.
It uses metatags to identify content, and other data.
The available resources specific to each ebook format were used to give the reader a
pleasant reading experience.
More detais available at Phoenix−Library.org website.
Any suggestion that helps us to improve these editions are welcome.
The Phoenix−Library Team
Democracy and Education
You are reading a Phoenix Edition: 250
©2001 Phoenix−Library.org
eBook Version
Phoenix−Library.org
Layout done by Norpheus−Lacombe
___________________
September−2001
Democracy and Education
You are reading a Phoenix Edition: 251
Livros Grátis
( http://www.livrosgratis.com.br )
Milhares de Livros para Download:
Baixar livros de Administração
Baixar livros de Agronomia
Baixar livros de Arquitetura
Baixar livros de Artes
Baixar livros de Astronomia
Baixar livros de Biologia Geral
Baixar livros de Ciência da Computação
Baixar livros de Ciência da Informação
Baixar livros de Ciência Política
Baixar livros de Ciências da Saúde
Baixar livros de Comunicação
Baixar livros do Conselho Nacional de Educação - CNE
Baixar livros de Defesa civil
Baixar livros de Direito
Baixar livros de Direitos humanos
Baixar livros de Economia
Baixar livros de Economia Doméstica
Baixar livros de Educação
Baixar livros de Educação - Trânsito
Baixar livros de Educação Física
Baixar livros de Engenharia Aeroespacial
Baixar livros de Farmácia
Baixar livros de Filosofia
Baixar livros de Física
Baixar livros de Geociências
Baixar livros de Geografia
Baixar livros de História
Baixar livros de Línguas
Baixar livros de Literatura
Baixar livros de Literatura de Cordel
Baixar livros de Literatura Infantil
Baixar livros de Matemática
Baixar livros de Medicina
Baixar livros de Medicina Veterinária
Baixar livros de Meio Ambiente
Baixar livros de Meteorologia
Baixar Monografias e TCC
Baixar livros Multidisciplinar
Baixar livros de Música
Baixar livros de Psicologia
Baixar livros de Química
Baixar livros de Saúde Coletiva
Baixar livros de Serviço Social
Baixar livros de Sociologia
Baixar livros de Teologia
Baixar livros de Trabalho
Baixar livros de Turismo
