energies that would otherwise use it up.

Life is a self-renewing
John Dewey process through action upon the environment.
Democracy and Education. An Introduction In all the higher forms this process cannot be kept up indefinitely.
to the Philosophy of Education 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
1916 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
CHAPTER I come into being. Continuity of life means continual readaptation of
EDUCATION AS A NECESSITY OF LIFE: 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
1. Renewal of Life by Transmission. experience, individual and racial. When we see a book called the
-- The most notable distinction between living and inanimate Life of Lincoln we do not expect to find within its covers a treatise
things is that the former maintain themselves by renewal. A stone on physiology. We look for an account of social antecedents; a
when struck resists. If its resistance is greater than the force of the description of early surroundings, of the conditions and occupation
blow struck, it remains outwardly unchanged. Otherwise, it is of the family; of the chief episodes in the development of character;
shattered into smaller bits. Never does the stone attempt to react in of signal struggles and achievements; of the individual's hopes,
such a way that it may maintain itself against the blow, much less so tastes, joys and sufferings. In precisely similar fashion we speak of
as to render the blow a contributing factor to its own continued the life of a savage tribe, of the Athenian people, of the American
action. While the living thing may easily be crushed by superior nation. "Life" covers customs, institutions, beliefs, victories and
force, it none the less tries to turn the energies which act upon it defeats, recreations and occupations.
into means of its own further existence. If it cannot do so, it does We employ the word "experience" in the same pregnant sense.
not just split into smaller pieces (at least in the higher forms of life), And to it, as well as to life in the bare physiological sense, the
but loses its identity as a living thing. principle of continuity through renewal applies. With the renewal of
As long as it endures, it struggles to use surrounding energies in physical existence goes, in the case of human beings, the recreation
its own behalf. It uses light, air, moisture, and the material of soil. of beliefs, ideals, hopes, happiness, misery, and practices. The
To say that it uses them is to say that it turns them into means of continuity of any experience, through renewing of the social group,
its own conservation. As long as it is growing, the energy it is a literal fact. Education, in its broadest sense, is the means of this
expends in thus turning the environment to account is more than social continuity of life. Every one of the constituent elements of a
compensated for by the return it gets: it grows. Understanding the social group, in a modern city as in a savage tribe, is born immature,
word "control" in this sense, it may be said that a living being is one helpless, without language, beliefs, ideas, or social standards. Each
that subjugates and controls for its own continued activity the

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individual, each unit who is the carrier of the life-experience of his epidemic took them all at once. But the graded difference in age, the
group, in time passes away. Yet the life of the group goes on. fact that some are born as some die, makes possible through
transmission of ideas and practices the constant reweaving of the
The primary ineluctable facts of the birth and death of each one
social fabric. Yet this renewal is not automatic. Unless pains are
of the constituent members in a social group determine the
taken to see that genuine and thorough transmission takes place,
necessity of education. On one hand, there is the contrast between
the most civilized group will relapse into barbarism and then into
the immaturity of the new-born members of the group -- its future
savagery. In fact, the human young are so immature that if they
sole representatives -- and the maturity of the adult members who
were left to themselves without the guidance and succor of others,
possess the knowledge and customs of the group. On the other
they could not acquire the rudimentary abilities necessary for
hand, there is the necessity that these immature members be not
physical existence. The young of human beings compare so poorly
merely physically preserved in adequate numbers, but that they be
in original efficiency with the young of many of the lower animals,
initiated into the interests, purposes, information, skill, and
that even the powers needed for physical sustentation have to be
practices of the mature members: otherwise the group will cease its
acquired under tuition. How much more, then, is this the case with
characteristic life. Even in a savage tribe, the achievements of adults
respect to all the technological, artistic, scientific, and moral
are far beyond what the immature members would be capable of if
achievements of humanity!
left to themselves. With the growth of civilization, the gap between
the original capacities of the immature and the standards and 2. Education and Communication.
customs of the elders increases. Mere physical growing up, mere
-- So obvious, indeed, is the necessity of teaching and learning for
mastery of the bare necessities of subsistence will not suffice to
the continued existence of a society that we may seem to be
reproduce the life of the group. Deliberate effort and the taking of
dwelling unduly on a truism. But justification is found in the fact
thoughtful pains are required. Beings who are born not only
that such emphasis is a means of getting us away from an unduly
unaware of, but quite indifferent to, the aims and habits of the social
scholastic and formal notion of education. Schools are, indeed, one
group have to be rendered cognizant of them and actively
important method of the transmission which forms the dispositions
interested. Education, and education alone, spans the gap.
of the immature; but it is only one means, and, compared with other
Society exists through a process of transmission quite as much as agencies, a relatively superficial means. Only as we have grasped the
biological life. This transmission occurs by means of communication necessity of more fundamental and persistent modes of tuition can
of habits of doing, thinking, and feeling from the older to the we make sure of placing the scholastic methods in their true
younger. Without this communication of ideals, hopes, expectations, context.
standards, opinions, from those members of society who are passing
Society not only continues to exist by transmission, by
out of the group life to those who are coming into it, social life could
communication, but it may fairly be said to exist in transmission, in
not survive. If the members who compose a society lived on
communication. There is more than a verbal tie between the words
continuously, they might educate the new-born members, but it
common, community, and communication. Men live in a community
would be a task directed by personal interest rather than social
in virtue of the things which they have in common; and
need. Now it is a work of necessity.
communication is the way in which they come to possess things in
If a plague carried off the members of a society all at once, it is common. What they must have in common in order to form a
obvious that the group would be permanently done for. Yet the community or society are aims, beliefs, aspirations, knowledge -- a
death of each of its constituent members is as certain as if an common understanding -- like-mindedness as the sociologists say.

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Such things cannot be passed physically from one to another, like Not only is social life identical with communication, but all
bricks; they cannot be shared as persons would share a pie by communication (and hence all genuine social life) is educative. To be
dividing it into physical pieces. The communication which insures a recipient of a communication is to have an enlarged and changed
participation in a common understanding is one which secures experience. One shares in what another has thought and felt and in
similar emotional and intellectual dispositions -- like ways of so far, meagerly or amply, has his own attitude modified. Nor is the
responding to expectations and requirements. one who communicates left unaffected. Try the experiment of
communicating, with fullness and accuracy, some experience to
Persons do not become a society by living in physical proximity,
another, especially if it be somewhat complicated, and you will find
any more than a man ceases to be socially influenced by being so
your own attitude toward your experience changing; otherwise you
many feet or miles removed from others. A book or a letter may
resort to expletives and ejaculations. The experience has to be
institute a more intimate association between human beings
formulated in order to be communicated. To formulate requires
separated thousands of miles from each other than exists between
getting outside of it, seeing it as another would see it, considering
dwellers under the same roof. Individuals do not even compose a
what points of contact it has with the life of another so that it may
social group because they all work for a common end. The parts of a
be got into such form that he can appreciate its meaning. Except in
machine work with a maximum of coöperativeness for a common
dealing with commonplaces and catch phrases one has to assimilate,
result, but they do not form a community. If, however, they were all
imaginatively, something of another's experience in order to tell
cognizant of the common end and all interested in it so that they
him intelligently of one's own experience. All communication is like
regulated their specific activity in view of it, then they would form a
art. It may fairly be said, therefore, that any social arrangement that
community. But this would involve communication. Each would
remains vitally social, or vitally shared, is educative to those who
have to know what the other was about and would have to have
participate in it. Only when it becomes cast in a mold and runs in a
some way of keeping the other informed as to his own purpose and
routine way does it lose its educative power.
progress. Consensus demands communication.
In final account, then, not only does social life demand teaching
We are thus compelled to recognize that within even the most
and learning for its own permanence, but the very process of living
social group there are many relations which are not as yet social. A
together educates. It enlarges and enlightens experience; it
large number of human relationships in any social group are still
stimulates and enriches imagination; it creates responsibility for
upon the machine-like plane. Individuals use one another so as to
accuracy and vividness of statement and thought. A man really
get desired results, without reference to the emotional and
living alone (alone mentally as well as physically) would have little
intellectual disposition and consent of those used. Such uses express
or no occasion to reflect upon his past experience to extract its net
physical superiority, or superiority of position, skill, technical
meaning. The inequality of achievement between the mature and
ability, and command of tools, mechanical or fiscal. So far as the
the immature not only necessitates teaching the young, but the
relations of parent and child, teacher and pupil, employer and
necessity of this teaching gives an immense stimulus to reducing
employee, governor and governed, remain upon this level, they
experience to that order and form which will render it most easily
form no true social group, no matter how closely their respective
communicable and hence most usable.
activities touch one another. Giving and taking of orders modifies
action and results, but does not of itself effect a sharing of purposes, 3. The Place of Formal Education.
a communication of interests.
-- There is, accordingly, a marked difference between the
education which every one gets from living with others, as long as

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he really lives instead of just continuing to subsist, and the of education -- that of direct tuition or schooling. In undeveloped
deliberate educating of the young. In the former case the education social groups, we find very little formal teaching and training.
is incidental; it is natural and important, but it is not the express Savage groups mainly rely for instilling needed dispositions into the
reason of the association. While it may be said, without young upon the same sort of association which keeps adults loyal to
exaggeration, that the measure of the worth of any social their group. They have no special devices, material, or institutions
institution, economic, domestic, political, legal, religious, is its effect for teaching save in connection with initiation ceremonies by which
in enlarging and improving experience; yet this effect is not a part the youth are inducted into full social membership. For the most
of its original motive, which is limited and more immediately part, they depend upon children learning the customs of the adults,
practical. Religious associations began, for example, in the desire to acquiring their emotional set and stock of ideas, by sharing in what
secure the favor of overruling powers and to ward off evil the elders are doing. In part, this sharing is direct, taking part in the
influences; family life in the desire to gratify appetites and secure occupations of adults and thus serving an apprenticeship; in part, it
family perpetuity; systematic labor, for the most part, because of is indirect, through the dramatic plays in which children reproduce
enslavement to others, etc. Only gradually was the by-product of the actions of grown-ups and thus learn to know what they are like.
the institution, its effect upon the quality and extent of conscious To savages it would seem preposterous to seek out a place where
life, noted, and only more gradually still was this effect considered nothing but learning was going on in order that one might learn.
as a directive factor in the conduct of the institution. Even today, in
But as civilization advances, the gap between the capacities of the
our industrial life, apart from certain values of industriousness and
young and the concerns of adults widens. Learning by direct
thrift, the intellectual and emotional reaction of the forms of human
sharing in the pursuits of grown-ups becomes increasingly difficult
association under which the world's work is carried on receives
except in the case of the less advanced occupations. Much of what
little attention as compared with physical output.
adults do is so remote in space and in meaning that playful imitation
But in dealing with the young, the fact of association itself as an is less and less adequate to reproduce its spirit. Ability to share
immediate human fact, gains in importance. While it is easy to effectively in adult activities thus depends upon a prior training
ignore in our contact with them the effect of our acts upon their given with this end in view. Intentional agencies -- schools -- and
disposition, or to subordinate that educative effect to some external explicit material -- studies -- are devised. The task of teaching
and tangible result, it is not so easy as in dealing with adults. The certain things is delegated to a special group of persons.
need of training is too evident; the pressure to accomplish a change
Without such formal education, it is not possible to transmit all
in their attitude and habits is too urgent to leave these
the resources and achievements of a complex society. It also opens a
consequences wholly out of account. Since our chief business with
way to a kind of experience which would not be accessible to the
them is to enable them to share in a common life we cannot help
young, if they were left to pick up their training in informal
considering whether or no we are forming the powers which will
association with others, since books and the symbols of knowledge
secure this ability. If humanity has made some headway in realizing
are mastered.
that the ultimate value of every institution is its distinctively human
effect -- its effect upon conscious experience -- we may well believe But there are conspicuous dangers attendant upon the transition
that this lesson has been learned largely through dealings with the from indirect to formal education. Sharing in actual pursuit,
young. whether directly or vicariously in play, is at least personal and vital.
These qualities compensate, in some measure, for the narrowness of
We are thus led to distinguish, within the broad educational
available opportunities. Formal instruction, on the contrary, easily
process which we have been so far considering, a more formal kind

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becomes remote and dead -- abstract and bookish, to use the Summary.
ordinary words of depreciation. What accumulated knowledge
-- It is the very nature of life to strive to continue in being. Since
exists in low grade societies is at least put into practice; it is
this continuance can be secured only by constant renewals, life is a
transmuted into character; it exists with the depth of meaning that
self-renewing process. What nutrition and reproduction are to
attaches to its coming within urgent daily interests.
physiological life, education is to social life. This education consists
But in an advanced culture much which has to be learned is primarily in transmission through communication. Communication
stored in symbols. It is far from translation into familiar acts and is a process of sharing experience till it becomes a common
objects. Such material is relatively technical and superficial. Taking possession. It modifies the disposition of both the parties who
the ordinary standard of reality as a measure, it is artificial. For this partake in it. That the ulterior significance of every mode of human
measure is connection with practical concerns. Such material exists association lies in the contribution which it makes to the
in a world by itself, unassimilated to ordinary customs of thought improvement of the quality of experience is a fact most easily
and expression. There is the standing danger that the material of recognized in dealing with the immature. That is to say, while every
formal instruction will be merely the subject matter of the schools, social arrangement is educative in effect, the educative effect first
isolated from the subject matter of life-experience. The permanent becomes an important part of the purpose of the association in
social interests are likely to be lost from view. Those which have connection with the association of the older with the younger. As
not been carried over into the structure of social life, but which societies become more complex in structure and resources, the need
remain largely matters of technical information expressed in of formal or intentional teaching and learning increases. As formal
symbols, are made conspicuous in schools. Thus we reach the teaching and training grow in extent, there is the danger of creating
ordinary notion of education: the notion which ignores its social an undesirable split between the experience gained in more direct
necessity and its identity with all human association that affects associations and what is acquired in school. This danger was never
conscious life, and which identifies it with imparting information greater than at the present time, on account of the rapid growth in
about remote matters and the conveying of learning through verbal the last few centuries of knowledge and technical modes of skill.
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.

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 CHAPTER II with others; it strengthens some beliefs and weakens others as a
condition of winning the approval of others. Thus it gradually
EDUCATION AS A SOCIAL FUNCTION:
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
1. The Nature and Meaning of Environment.
denote the specific continuity of the surroundings with his own
-- We have seen that a community or social group sustains itself active tendencies. An inanimate being is, of course, continuous with
means of the educational growth of the immature members of the its surroundings; but the environing circumstances do not, save
group. By various agencies, unintentional and designed, a society metaphorically, constitute an environment. For the inorganic being
transforms uninitiated and seemingly alien beings into robust is not concerned in the influences which affect it. On the other hand,
trustees of its own resources and ideals. Education is thus a some things which are remote in space and time from a living
fostering, a nurturing, a cultivating, process. All of these words creature, especially a human creature, may form his environment
mean that it implies attention to the conditions of growth. We also even more truly than some of the things close to him. The things
speak of rearing, raising, bringing up -- words which express the with which a man varies are his genuine environment. Thus the
difference of level which education aims to cover. Etymologically, activities of the astronomer vary with the stars at which he gazes or
the word education means just a process of leading or bringing up. about which he calculates. Of his immediate surroundings, his
When we have the outcome of the process in mind, we speak of telescope is most intimately his environment. The environment of
education as shaping, forming, molding activity -- that is, a shaping an antiquarian, as an antiquarian, consists of the remote epoch of
into the standard form of social activity. In this chapter we are human life with which he is concerned, and the relics, inscriptions,
concerned with the general features of the way in which a social etc., by which he establishes connections with that period.
group brings up its immature members into its own social form.
In brief, the environment consists of those conditions that
Since what is required is a transformation of the quality of promote or hinder, stimulate or inhibit, the characteristic activities
experience till it partakes in the interests, purposes, and ideas of a living being. Water is the environment of a fish because it is
current in the social group, the problem is evidently not one of mere necessary to the fish's activities -- to its life. The north pole is a
physical forming. Things can be physically transported in space; significant element in the environment of an arctic explorer,
they may be bodily conveyed. Beliefs and aspirations cannot be whether he succeeds in reaching it or not, because it defines his
physically extracted and inserted. How then are they activities, makes them what they distinctively are. Just because life
communicated? Given the impossibility of direct contagion or signifies not bare passive existence (supposing there is such a
literal inculcation, our problem is to discover the method by which thing), but a way of acting, environment or medium signifies what
the young assimilate the point of view of the old, or the older bring enters into this activity as a sustaining or frustrating condition.
the young into like-mindedness with themselves.
2. The Social Environment.
The answer, in general formulation, is: By means of the action of
-- A being whose activities are associated with others has a social
the environment in calling out certain responses. The required
environment. What he does and what he can do depend upon the
beliefs cannot be hammered in; the needed attitudes cannot be
expectations, demands, approvals, and condemnations of others. A
plastered on. But the particular medium in which an individual
being connected with other beings cannot perform his own
exists leads him to see and feel one thing rather than another; it
activities without taking the activities of others into account. For
leads him to have certain plans in order that he may act successfully

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they are the indispensable conditions of the realization of his original burns; later on he might even invent some reason to
tendencies. When he moves he stirs them and reciprocally. We account for his seemingly irrational antipathy. In some cases,
might as well try to imagine a business man doing business, buying altering the external habit of action by changing the environment
and selling, all by himself, as to conceive it possible to define the to affect the stimuli to action will also alter the mental disposition
activities of an individual in terms of his isolated actions. The concerned in the action. Yet this does not always happen; a person
manufacturer moreover is as truly socially guided in his activities trained to dodge a threatening blow, dodges automatically with no
when he is laying plans in the privacy of his own counting house as corresponding thought or emotion. We have to find, then, some
when he is buying his raw material or selling his finished goods. differentia of training from education.
Thinking and feeling that have to do with action in association with
A clew may be found in the fact that the horse does not really
others is as much a social mode of behavior as is the most overt
share in the social use to which his action is put. Some one else uses
cooperative or hostile act.
the horse to secure a result which is advantageous by making it
What we have more especially to indicate is how the social advantageous to the horse to perform the act -- he gets food, etc.
medium nurtures its immature members. There is no great But the horse, presumably, does not get any new interest. He
difficulty in seeing how it shapes the external habits of action. Even remains interested in food, not in the service he is rendering. He is
dogs and horses have their actions modified by association with not a partner in a shared activity. Were he to become a copartner,
human beings; they form different habits because human beings are he would, in engaging in the conjoint activity, have the same
concerned with what they do. Human beings control animals by interest in its accomplishment which others have. He would share
controlling the natural stimuli which influence them; by creating a their ideas and emotions.
certain environment in other words. Food, bits and bridles, noises,
Now in many cases -- too many cases -- the activity of the
vehicles, are used to direct the ways in which the natural or
immature human being is simply played upon to secure habits
instinctive responses of horses occur. By operating steadily to call
which are useful. He is trained like an animal rather than educated
out certain acts, habits are formed which function with the same
like a human being. His instincts remain attached to their original
uniformity as the original stimuli. If a rat is put in a maze and finds
objects of pain or pleasure. But to get happiness or to avoid the pain
food only by making a given number of turns in a given sequence,
of failure he has to act in a way agreeable to others. In other cases,
his activity is gradually modified till he habitually takes that course
he really shares or participates in the common activity. In this case,
rather than another when he is hungry.
his original impulse is modified. He not merely acts in a way
Human actions are modified in a like fashion. A burnt child agreeing with the actions of others, but, in so acting, the same ideas
dreads the fire; if a parent arranged conditions so that every time a and emotions are aroused in him that animate the others. A tribe, let
child touched a certain toy he got burned, the child would learn to us say, is warlike. The successes for which it strives, the
avoid that toy as automatically as he avoids touching fire. So far, achievements upon which it sets store, are connected with fighting
however, we are dealing with what may be called training in and victory. The presence of this medium incites bellicose
distinction from educative teaching. The changes considered are in exhibitions in a boy, first in games, then in fact when he is strong
outer action rather than in mental and emotional dispositions of enough. As he fights he wins approval and advancement; as he
behavior. The distinction is not, however, a sharp one. The child refrains, he is disliked, ridiculed, shut out from favorable
might conceivably generate in time a violent antipathy, not only to recognition. It is not surprising that his original belligerent
that particular toy, but to the class of toys resembling it. The tendencies and emotions are strengthened at the expense of others,
aversion might even persist after he had forgotten about the and that his ideas turn to things connected with war. Only in this

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way can he become fully a recognized member of his group. Thus make one jump, and so on. The sound h-a-t would remain as
his mental habitudes are gradually assimilated to those of his group. meaningless as a sound in Choctaw, a seemingly inarticulate grunt,
if it were not uttered in connection with an action which is
If we formulate the principle involved in this illustration, we shall
participated in by a number of people. When the mother is taking
perceive that the social medium neither implants certain desires and
the infant out of doors, she says "hat" as she puts something on the
ideas directly, nor yet merely establishes certain purely muscular
baby's head. Being taken out becomes an interest to the child;
habits of action, like "instinctively" winking or dodging a blow.
mother and child not only go out with each other physically, but
Setting up conditions which stimulate certain visible and tangible
both are concerned in the going out; they enjoy it in common. By
ways of acting is the first step. Making the individual a sharer or
conjunction with the other factors in activity the sound "hat" soon
partner in the associated activity so that he feels its success as his
gets the same meaning for the child that it has for the parent; it
success, its failure as his failure, is the completing step. As soon as
becomes a sign of the activity into which it enters. The bare fact
he is possessed by the emotional attitude of the group, he will be
that language consists of sounds which are mutually intelligible is
alert to recognize the special ends at which it aims and the means
enough of itself to show that its meaning depends upon connection
employed to secure success. His beliefs and ideas, in other words,
with a shared experience.
will take a form similar to those of others in the group. He will also
achieve pretty much the same stock of knowledge since that In short, the sound h-a-t gains meaning in precisely the same way
knowledge is an ingredient of his habitual pursuits. 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
The importance of language in gaining knowledge is doubtless
adult because they are used in a common experience by both. The
the chief cause of the common notion that knowledge may be passed
guarantee for the same manner of use is found in the fact that the
directly from one to another. It almost seems as if all we have to do
thing and the sound are first employed in a joint activity, as a means
to convey an idea into the mind of another is to convey a sound into
of setting up an active connection between the child and a grownup.
his ear. Thus imparting knowledge gets assimilated to a purely
Similar ideas or meanings spring up because both persons are
physical process. But learning from language will be found, when
engaged as partners in an action where what each does depends
analyzed, to confirm the principle just laid down. It would probably
upon and influences what the other does. If two savages were
be admitted with little hesitation that a child gets the idea of, say, a
engaged in a joint hunt for game, and a certain signal meant "move
hat by using it as other persons do; by covering the head with it,
to the right" to the one who uttered it, and "move to the left" to the
giving it to others to wear, having it put on by others when going
one who heard it, they obviously could not successfully carry on
out, etc. But it may be asked how this principle of shared activity
their hunt together. Understanding one another means that objects,
applies to getting through speech or reading the idea of, say, a
including sounds, have the same value for both with respect to
Greek helmet, where no direct use of any kind enters in. What
carrying on a common pursuit.
shared activity is there in learning from books about the discovery
of America? After sounds have got meaning through connection with other
things employed in a joint undertaking, they can be used in
Since language tends to become the chief instrument of learning
connection with other like sounds to develop new meanings,
about many things, let us see how it works. The baby begins of
precisely as the things for which they stand are combined. Thus the
course with mere sounds, noises, and tones having no meaning,
words in which a child learns about, say, the Greek helmet
expressing, that is, no idea. Sounds are just one kind of stimulus to
originally got a meaning (or were understood) by use in an action
direct response, some having a soothing effect, others tending to
having a common interest and end. They now arouse a new

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meaning by inciting the one who hears or reads to rehearse In savage and barbarian communities, such direct participation
imaginatively the activities in which the helmet has its use. For the (constituting the indirect or incidental education of which we have
time being, the one who understands the words "Greek helmet" spoken) furnishes almost the sole influence for rearing the young
becomes mentally a partner with those who used the helmet. He into the practices and beliefs of the group. Even in present-day
engages, through his imagination, in a shared activity. It is not easy societies, it furnishes the basic nurture of even the most insistently
to get the full meaning of words. Most persons probably stop with schooled youth. In accord with the interests and occupations of the
the idea that "helmet" denotes a queer kind of headgear a people group, certain things become objects of high esteem; others of
called the Greeks once wore. We conclude, accordingly, that the use aversion. Association does not create impulses or affection and
of language to convey and acquire ideas is an extension and dislike, but it furnishes the objects to which they attach themselves.
refinement of the principle that things gain meaning by being used The way our group or class does things tends to determine the
in a shared experience or joint action; in no sense does it contravene proper objects of attention, and thus to prescribe the directions and
that principle. When words do not enter as factors into a shared limits of observation and memory. What is strange or foreign (that
situation, either overtly or imaginatively, they operate as pure is to say outside the activities of the groups) tends to be morally
physical stimuli, not as having a meaning or intellectual value. They forbidden and intellectually suspect. It seems almost incredible to
set activity running in a given groove, but there is no us, for example, that things which we know very well could have
accompanying conscious purpose or meaning. Thus, for example, escaped recognition in past ages. We incline to account for it by
the plus sign may be a stimulus to perform the act of writing one attributing congenital stupidity to our forerunners and by assuming
number under another and adding the numbers, but the person superior native intelligence on our own part. But the explanation is
performing the act will operate much as an automaton would unless that their modes of life did not call for attention to such facts, but
he realizes the meaning of what he does. held their minds riveted to other things. Just as the senses require
sensible objects to stimulate them, so our powers of observation,
3. The Social Medium as Educative.
recollection, and imagination do not work spontaneously, but are
Our net result thus far is that social environment forms the set in motion by the demands set up by current social occupations.
mental and emotional disposition of behavior in individuals by The main texture of disposition is formed, independently of
engaging them in activities that arouse and strengthen certain schooling, by such influences. What conscious, deliberate teaching
impulses, that have certain purposes and entail certain can do is at most to free the capacities thus formed for fuller
consequences. A child growing up in a family of musicians will exercise, to purge them of some of their grossness, and to furnish
inevitably have whatever capacities he has in music stimulated, and, objects which make their activity more productive of meaning.
relatively, stimulated more than other impulses which might have
While this "unconscious influence of the environment" is so
been awakened in another environment. Save as he takes an interest
subtle and pervasive that it affects every fiber of character and
in music and gains a certain competency in it, he is "out of it"; he is
mind, it may be worth while to specify a few directions in which its
unable to share in the life of the group to which he belongs. Some
effect is most marked. First, the habits of language. Fundamental
kinds of participation in the life of those with whom the individual is
modes of speech, the bulk of the vocabulary, are formed in the
connected are inevitable; with respect to them, the social
ordinary intercourse of life, carried on not as a set means of
environment exercises an educative or formative influence
instruction but as a social necessity. The babe acquires, as we well
unconsciously and apart from any set purpose.
say, the mother tongue. While speech habits thus contracted may be
corrected or even displaced by conscious teaching, yet, in times of

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excitement, intentionally acquired modes of speech often fall away, education which the immature get is by controlling the
and individuals relapse into their really native tongue. Secondly, environment in which they act, and hence think and feel. We never
manners. Example is notoriously more potent than precept. Good educate directly, but indirectly by means of the environment.
manners come, as we say, from good breeding or rather are good Whether we permit chance environments to do the work, or
breeding; and breeding is acquired by habitual action, in response to whether we design environments for the purpose makes a great
habitual stimuli, not by conveying information. Despite the never difference. And any environment is a chance environment so far as
ending play of conscious correction and instruction, the its educative influence is concerned unless it has been deliberately
surrounding atmosphere and spirit is in the end the chief agent in regulated with reference to its educative effect. An intelligent home
forming manners. And manners are but minor morals. Moreover, in differs from an unintelligent one chiefly in that the habits of life and
major morals, conscious instruction is likely to be efficacious only in intercourse which prevail are chosen, or at least colored, by the
the degree in which it falls in with the general "walk and thought of their bearing upon the development of children. But
conversation" of those who constitute the child's social schools remain, of course, the typical instance of environments
environment. Thirdly, good taste and æsthetic appreciation. If the framed with express reference to influencing the mental and moral
eye is constantly greeted by harmonious objects, having elegance of disposition of their members.
form and color, a standard of taste naturally grows up. The effect of
Roughly speaking, they come into existence when social
a tawdry, unarranged, and over-decorated environment works for
traditions are so complex that a considerable part of the social store
the deterioration of taste, just as meager and barren surroundings
is committed to writing and transmitted through written symbols.
starve out the desire for beauty. Against such odds, conscious
Written symbols are even more artificial or conventional than
teaching can hardly do more than convey second-hand information
spoken; they cannot be picked up in accidental intercourse with
as to what others think. Such taste never becomes spontaneous and
others. In addition, the written form tends to select and record
personally engrained, but remains a labored reminder of what those
matters which are comparatively foreign to everyday life. The
think to whom one has been taught to look up. To say that the
achievements accumulated from generation to generation are
deeper standards of judgments of value are framed by the situations
deposited in it even though some of them have fallen temporarily
into which a person habitually enters is not so much to mention a
out of use. Consequently as soon as a community depends to any
fourth point, as it is to point out a fusion of those already
considerable extent upon what lies beyond its own territory and its
mentioned. We rarely recognize the extent in which our conscious
own immediate generation, it must rely upon the set agency of
estimates of what is worth while and what is not, are due to
schools to insure adequate transmission of all its resources. To take
standards of which we are not conscious at all. But in general it may
an obvious illustration: The life of the ancient Greeks and Romans
be said that the things which we take for granted without inquiry or
has profoundly influenced our own, and yet the ways in which they
reflection are just the things which determine our conscious
affect us do not present themselves on the surface of our ordinary
thinking and decide our conclusions. And these habitudes which lie
experiences. In similar fashion, peoples still existing, but remote in
below the level of reflection are just those which have been formed
space, British, Germans, Italians, directly concern our own social
in the constant give and take of relationship with others.
affairs, but the nature of the interaction cannot be understood
4. The School as a Special Environment. without explicit statement and attention. In precisely similar
fashion, our daily associations cannot be trusted to make clear to the
-- The chief importance of this foregoing statement of the
young the part played in our activities by remote physical energies,
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

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and by invisible structures. Hence a special mode of social to it that each individual gets an opportunity to escape from the
intercourse is instituted, the school, to care for such matters. limitations of the social group in which he was born, and to come
into living contact with a broader environment. Such words as
This mode of association has three functions sufficiently specific,
"society" and "community" are likely to be misleading, for they have
as compared with ordinary associations of life, to be noted. First, a
a tendency to make us think there is a single thing corresponding to
complex civilization is too complex to be assimilated in toto. It has
the single word. As a matter of fact, a modern society is many
to be broken up into portions, as it were, and assimilated piecemeal,
societies more or less loosely connected. Each household with its
in a gradual and graded way. The relationships of our present social
immediate extension of friends makes a society; the village or street
life are so numerous and so interwoven that a child placed in the
group of playmates is a community; each business group, each club,
most favorable position could not readily share in many of the most
is another. Passing beyond these more intimate groups, there is in a
important of them. Not sharing in them, their meaning would not
country like our own a variety of races, religious affiliations,
be communicated to him, would not become a part of his own
economic divisions. Inside the modern city, in spite of its nominal
mental disposition. There would be no seeing the trees because of
political unity, there are probably more communities, more differing
the forest. Business, politics, art, science, religion, would make all at
customs, traditions, aspirations, and forms of government or
once a clamor for attention; confusion would be the outcome. The
control, than existed in an entire continent at an earlier epoch.
first office of the social organ we call the school is to provide a
simplified environment. It selects the features which are fairly Each such group exercises a formative influence on the active
fundamental and capable of being responded to by the young. Then dispositions of its members. A clique, a club, a gang, a Fagin's
it establishes a progressive order, using the factors first acquired as household of thieves, the prisoners in a jail, provide educative
means of gaining insight into what is more complicated. environments for those who enter into their collective or conjoint
activities, as truly as a church, a labor union, a business partnership,
In the second place, it is the business of the school environment
or a political party. Each of them is a mode of associated or
to eliminate, so far as possible, the unworthy features of the existing
community life, quite as much as is a family, a town, or a state.
environment from influence upon mental habitudes. It establishes a
There are also communities whose members have little or no direct
purified medium of action. Selection aims not only at simplifying
contact with one another, like the guild of artists, the republic of
but at weeding out what is undesirable. Every society gets
letters, the members of the professional learned class scattered over
encumbered with what is trivial, with dead wood from the past, and
the face of the earth. For they have aims in common, and the
with what is positively perverse. The school has the duty of
activity of each member is directly modified by knowledge of what
omitting such things from the environment which it supplies, and
others are doing.
thereby doing what it can to counteract their influence in the
ordinary social environment. By selecting the best for its exclusive In the olden times, the diversity of groups was largely a
use, it strives to reënforce the power of this best. As a society geographical matter. There were many societies, but each, within its
becomes more enlightened, it realizes that it is responsible not to own territory, was comparatively homogeneous. But with the
transmit and conserve the whole of its existing achievements, but development of commerce, transportation, intercommunication, and
only such as make for a better future society. The school is its chief emigration, countries like the United States are composed of a
agency for the accomplishment of this end. combination of different groups with different traditional customs.
It is this situation which has, perhaps more than any other one
In the third place, it is the office of the school environment to
cause, forced the demand for an educational institution which shall
balance the various elements in the social environment, and to see
provide something like a homogeneous and balanced environment

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for the young. Only in this way can the centrifugal forces set up by society becomes more complex, however, it is found necessary to
juxtaposition of different groups within one and the same political provide a special social environment which shall especially look
unit be counteracted. The intermingling in the school of youth of after nurturing the capacities of the immature. Three of the more
different races, differing religions, and unlike customs creates for all important functions of this special environment are: simplifying and
a new and broader environment. Common subject matter accustoms ordering the factors of the disposition it is wished to develop;
all to a unity of outlook upon a broader horizon than is visible to the purifying and idealizing the existing social customs; creating a
members of any group while it is isolated. The assimilative force of wider and better balanced environment than that by which the
the American public school is eloquent testimony to the efficacy of young would be likely, if left to themselves, to be influenced.
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

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 CHAPTER III individual through his own efforts quite as much as that brought
about when others take the lead.
EDUCATION AS DIRECTION:
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
1. The Environment as Directive. 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
-- We now pass to one of the special forms which the general
meets the stimulus, and corresponds with it. There is an adaptation
function of education assumes: namely, that of direction, control, or
of the stimulus and response to each other. A light is the stimulus to
guidance. Of these three words, direction, control, and guidance, the
the eye to see something, and the business of the eye is to see. If the
last best conveys the idea of assisting through coöperation the
eyes are open and there is light, seeing occurs; the stimulus is but a
natural capacities of the individuals guided; control conveys rather
condition of the fulfillment of the proper function of the organ, not
the notion of an energy brought to bear from without and meeting
an outside interruption. To some extent, then, all direction or
some resistance from the one controlled; direction is a more neutral
control is a guiding of activity to its own end; it is an assistance in
term and suggests the fact that the active tendencies of those
doing fully what some organ is already tending to do.
directed are led in a certain continuous course, instead of dispersing
aimlessly. Direction expresses the basic function, which tends at one This general statement needs, however, to be qualified in two
extreme to become a guiding assistance and at another, a regulation respects. In the first place, except in the case of a small number of
or ruling. But in any case, we must carefully avoid a meaning instincts, the stimuli to which an immature human being is subject
sometimes read into the term "control." It is sometimes assumed, are not sufficiently definite to call out, in the beginning, specific
explicitly or unconsciously, that an individual's tendencies are responses. There is always a great deal of superfluous energy
naturally purely individualistic or egoistic, and thus antisocial. aroused. This energy may be wasted, going aside from the point; it
Control then denotes the process by which he is brought to may also go against the successful performance of an act. It does
subordinate his natural impulses to public or common ends. Since, harm by getting in the way. Compare the behavior of a beginner in
by conception, his own nature is quite alien to this process and riding a bicycle with that of the expert. There is little axis of
opposes it rather than helps it, control has in this view a flavor of direction in the energies put forth; they are largely dispersive and
coercion or compulsion about it. Systems of government and centrifugal. Direction involves a focusing and fixating of action in
theories of the state have been built upon this notion, and it has order that it may be truly a response, and this requires an
seriously affected educational ideas and practices. But there is no elimination of unnecessary and confusing movements. In the second
ground for any such view. Individuals are certainly interested, at place, although no activity can be produced in which the person
times, in having their own way, and their own way may go contrary does not cooperate to some extent, yet a response may be of a kind
to the ways of others. But they are also interested, and chiefly which does not fit into the sequence and continuity of action. A
interested upon the whole, in entering into the activities of others person boxing may dodge a particular blow successfully, but in such
and taking part in conjoint and coöperative doings. Otherwise, no a way as to expose himself the next instant to a still harder blow.
such thing as a community would be possible. And there would not Adequate control means that the successive acts are brought into a
even be any one interested in furnishing the policeman to keep a continuous order; each act not only meets its immediate stimulus
semblance of harmony unless he thought that thereby he could gain but helps the acts which follow.
some personal advantage. Control, in truth, means only an emphatic
form of direction of powers, and covers the regulation gained by an

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 In short, direction is both simultaneous and successive. At a prevent a person from doing something to which he is naturally
given time, it requires that, from all the tendencies that are partially inclined by arousing fear of disagreeable consequences if he persists.
called out, those be selected which center energy upon the point of But he may be left in the position which exposes him later on to
need. Successively, it requires that each act be balanced with those influences which will lead him to do even worse things. His
which precede and come after, so that order of activity is achieved. instincts of cunning and slyness may be aroused, so that things
Focusing and ordering are thus the two aspects of direction, one henceforth appeal to him on the side of evasion and trickery more
spatial, the other temporal. The first insures hitting the mark; the than would otherwise have been the case. Those engaged in
second keeps the balance required for further action. Obviously, it is directing the actions of others are always in danger of overlooking
not possible to separate them in practice as we have distinguished the importance of the sequential development of those they direct.
them in idea. Activity must be centered at a given time in such a
2. Modes of Social Direction.
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.
-- Adults are naturally most conscious of directing the conduct of
Two conclusions emerge from these general statements. On the others when they are immediately aiming so to do. As a rule, they
one hand, purely external direction is impossible. The environment have such an aim consciously when they find themselves resisted;
can at most only supply stimuli to call out responses. These when others are doing things they do not wish them to do. But the
responses proceed from tendencies already possessed by the more permanent and influential modes of control are those which
individual. Even when a person is frightened by threats into doing operate from moment to moment continuously without such
something, the threats work only because the person has an instinct deliberate intention on our part.
of fear. If he has not, or if, though having it, it is under his own
1.
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 When others are not doing what we would like them to or are
rules of adults furnish stimuli which direct as well as evoke the threatening disobedience, we are most conscious of the need of
activities of the young, the young, after all, participate in the controlling them and of the influences by which they are controlled.
direction which their actions finally take. In the strict sense, In such cases, our control becomes most direct, and at this point we
nothing can be forced upon them or into them. To overlook this fact are most likely to make the mistakes just spoken of. We are even
means to distort and pervert human nature. To take into account likely to take the influence of superior force for control, forgetting
the contribution made by the existing instincts and habits of those that while we may lead a horse to water we cannot make him drink;
directed is to direct them economically and wisely. Speaking and that while we can shut a man up in a penitentiary we cannot
accurately, all direction is but re-direction; it shifts the activities make him penitent. In all such cases of immediate action upon
already going on into another channel. Unless one is cognizant of others, we need to discriminate between physical results and moral
the energies which are already in operation, one's attempts at results. A person may be in such a condition that forcible feeding or
direction will almost surely go amiss. 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
On the other hand, the control afforded by the customs and
not be burnt. But no improvement of disposition, no educative
regulations of others may be short-sighted. It may accomplish its
effect, need follow. A harsh and commanding tone may be effectual
immediate effect, but at the expense of throwing the subsequent
in keeping a child away from the fire, and the same desirable
action of the person out of balance. A threat may, for example,

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physical effect will follow as if he had been snatched away. But there social medium in which an individual lives, moves, and has his being
may be no more obedience of a moral sort in one case than in the is the standing effective agency of directing his activity.
other. A man can be prevented from breaking into other persons'
This fact makes it necessary for us to examine in greater detail
houses by shutting him up, but shutting him up may not alter his
what is meant by the social environment. We are given to
disposition to commit burglary. When we confuse a physical with
separating from each other the physical and social environments in
an educative result, we always lose the chance of enlisting the
which we live. The separation is responsible on one hand for an
person's own participating disposition in getting the result desired,
exaggeration of the moral importance of the more direct or personal
and thereby of developing within him an intrinsic and persisting
modes of control of which we have been speaking; and on the other
direction in the right way.
hand for an exaggeration, in current psychology and philosophy, of
In general, the occasion for the more conscious acts of control the intellectual possibilities of contact with a purely physical
should be limited to acts which are so instinctive or impulsive that environment. There is not, in fact, any such thing as the direct
the one performing them has no means of foreseeing their outcome. influence of one human being on another apart from use of the
If a person cannot foresee the consequences of his act, and is not physical environment as an intermediary. A smile, a frown, a
capable of understanding what he is told about its outcome by those rebuke, a word of warning or encouragement, all involve some
with more experience, it is impossible for him to guide his act physical change. Otherwise, the attitude of one would not get over
intelligently. In such a state, every act is alike to him. Whatever to alter the attitude of another. Comparatively speaking, such
moves him does move him, and that is all there is to it. In some modes of influence may be regarded as personal. The physical
cases, it is well to permit him to experiment, and to discover the medium is reduced to a mere means of personal contact. In contrast
consequences for himself in order that he may act intelligently next with such direct modes of mutual influence, stand associations in
time under similar circumstances. But some courses of action are common pursuits involving the use of things as means and as
too discommoding and obnoxious to others to allow of this course measures of results. Even if the mother never told her daughter to
being pursued. Direct disapproval is now resorted to. Shaming, help her, or never rebuked her for not helping, the child would be
ridicule, disfavor, rebuke, and punishment are used. Or contrary subjected to direction in her activities by the mere fact that she was
tendencies in the child are appealed to to divert him from his engaged, along with the parent, in the household life. Imitation,
troublesome line of behavior. His sensitiveness to approbation, his emulation, the need of working together, enforce control.
hope of winning favor by an agreeable act, are made use of to induce
If the mother hands the child something needed, the latter must
action in another direction.
reach the thing in order to get it. Where there is giving there must
2. 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
These methods of control are so obvious (because so intentionally
has watched the mother. When the child sees the parent looking for
employed) that it would hardly be worth while to mention them if it
something, it is as natural for it also to look for the object and to
were not that notice may now be taken, by way of contrast, of the
give it over when it finds it, as it was, under other circumstances, to
other more important and permanent mode of control. This other
receive it. Multiply such an instance by the thousand details of daily
method resides in the ways in which persons, with whom the
intercourse, and one has a picture of the most permanent and
immature being is associated, use things; the instrumentalities with
enduring method of giving direction to the activities of the young.
which they accomplish their own ends. The very existence of the

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 In saying this, we are only repeating what was said previously responses to recurrent stimuli may fix a habit of acting in a certain
about participating in a joint activity as the chief way of forming way. All of us have many habits of whose import we are quite
disposition. We have explicitly added, however, the recognition of unaware, since they were formed without our knowing what we
the part played in the joint activity by the use of things. The were about. Consequently they possess us, rather than we them.
philosophy of learning has been unduly dominated by a false They move us; they control us. Unless we become aware of what
psychology. It is frequently stated that a person learns by merely they accomplish, and pass judgment upon the worth of the result,
having the qualities of things impressed upon his mind through the we do not control them. A child might be made to bow every time
gateway of the senses. Having received a store of sensory he met a certain person by pressure on his neck muscles, and
impressions, association or some power of mental synthesis is bowing would finally become automatic. It would not, however, be
supposed to combine them into ideas -- into things with a meaning. an act of recognition or deference on his part, till he did it with a
An object, stone, orange, tree, chair, is supposed to convey different certain end in view -- as having a certain meaning. And not till he
impressions of color, shape, size, hardness, smell, taste, etc., which knew what he was about and performed the act for the sake of its
aggregated together constitute the characteristic meaning of each meaning could he be said to be "brought up" or educated to act in a
thing. But as matter of fact, it is the characteristic use to which the certain way. To have an idea of a thing is thus not just to get certain
thing is put, because of its specific qualities, which supplies the sensations from it. It is to be able to respond to the thing in view of
meaning with which it is identified. A chair is a thing which is put its place in an inclusive scheme of action; it is to foresee the drift
to one use; a table, a thing which is employed for another purpose; and probable consequence of the action of the thing upon us and of
an orange is a thing which costs so much, which is grown in warm our action upon it.
climes, which is eaten, and when eaten has an agreeable odor and
To have the same ideas about things which others have, to be
refreshing taste, etc.
like-minded with them, and thus to be really members of a social
The difference between an adjustment to a physical stimulus and group, is therefore to attach the same meanings to things and to
a mental act is that the latter involves response to a thing in its acts which others attach. Otherwise, there is no common
meaning; the former does not. A noise may make me jump without understanding, and no community life. But in a shared activity, each
my mind being implicated. When I hear a noise and run and get person refers what he is doing to what the other is doing and vice-
water and put out a blaze, I respond intelligently; the sound meant versa. That is, the activity of each is placed in the same inclusive
fire, and fire meant need of being extinguished. I bump into a stone, situation. To pull at a rope at which others happen to be pulling is
and kick it to one side purely physically. I put it to one side for fear not a shared or conjoint activity, unless the pulling is done with
some one will stumble upon it, intelligently; I respond to a meaning knowledge that others are pulling and for the sake of either helping
which the thing has. I am startled by a thunderclap whether I or hindering what they are doing. A pin may pass in the course of
recognize it or not -- more likely, if I do not recognize it. But if I its manufacture through the hands of many persons. But each may
say, either out loud or to myself, that is thunder, I respond to the do his part without knowledge of what others do or without any
disturbance as a meaning. My behavior has a mental quality. When reference to what they do; each may operate simply for the sake of a
things have a meaning for us, we mean (intend, propose) what we separate result -- his own pay. There is, in this case, no common
do: when they do not, we act blindly, unconsciously, unintelligently. consequence to which the several acts are referred, and hence no
genuine intercourse or association, in spite of juxtaposition, and in
In both kinds of responsive adjustment, our activities are directed
spite of the fact that their respective doings contribute to a single
or controlled. But in the merely blind response, direction is also
outcome. But if each views the consequences of his own acts as
blind. There may be training, but there is no education. Repeated

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having a bearing upon what others are doing and takes into account blushing, smiling, frowning, clinching of fists, natural gestures of
the consequences of their behavior upon himself, then there is a all kinds. In themselves, these are not expressive. They are organic
common mind; a common intent in behavior. There is an parts of a person's attitude. One does not blush to show modesty or
understanding set up between the different contributors; and this embarrassment to others, but because the capillary circulation alters
common understanding controls the action of each. in response to stimuli. But others use the blush, or a slightly
perceptible tightening of the muscles of a person with whom they
Suppose that conditions were so arranged that one person
are associated, as a sign of the state in which that person finds
automatically caught a ball and then threw it to another person who
himself, and as an indication of what course to pursue. The frown
caught and automatically returned it; and that each so acted without
signifies an imminent rebuke for which one must prepare, or an
knowing where the ball came from or went to. Clearly, such action
uncertainty and hesitation which one must, if possible, remove by
would be without point or meaning. It might be physically
saying or doing something to restore confidence.
controlled, but it would not be socially directed. But suppose that
each becomes aware of what the other is doing, and becomes A man at some distance is waving his arms wildly. One has only
interested in the other's action and thereby interested in what he is to preserve an attitude of detached indifference, and the motions of
doing himself as connected with the action of the other. The the other person will be on the level of any remote physical change
behavior of each would then be intelligent; and socially intelligent which we happen to note. If we have no concern or interest, the
and guided. Take one more example of a less imaginary kind. An waving of the arms is as meaningless to us as the gyrations of the
infant is hungry, and cries while food is prepared in his presence. If arms of a windmill. But if interest is aroused, we begin to
he does not connect his own state with what others are doing, nor participate. We refer his action to something we are doing ourselves
what they are doing with his own satisfaction, he simply reacts with or that we should do. We have to judge the meaning of his act in
increasing impatience to his own increasing discomfort. He is order to decide what to do. Is he beckoning for help? Is he warning
physically controlled by his own organic state. But when he makes a us of an explosion to be set off, against which we should guard
back and forth reference, his whole attitude changes. He takes an ourselves? In one case, his action means to run toward him; in the
interest, as we say; he takes note and watches what others are other case, to run away. In any case, it is the change he effects in the
doing. He no longer reacts just to his own hunger, but behaves in physical environment which is a sign to us of how we should
the light of what others are doing for its prospective satisfaction. In conduct ourselves. Our action is socially controlled because we
that way, he also no longer just gives way to hunger without endeavor to refer what we are to do to the same situation in which
knowing it, but he notes, or recognizes, or identifies his own state. he is acting.
It becomes an object for him. His attitude toward it becomes in
Language is, as we have already seen (Ante, p. 18) a case of this
some degree intelligent. And in such noting of the meaning of the
joint reference of our own action and that of another to a common
actions of others and of his own state, he is socially directed.
situation. Hence its unrivaled significance as a means of social
It will be recalled that our main proposition had two sides. One of direction. But language would not be this efficacious instrument
them has now been dealt with: namely, that physical things do not were it not that it takes place upon a background of coarser and
influence mind (or form ideas and beliefs) except as they are more tangible use of physical means to accomplish results. A child
implicated in action for prospective consequences. The other point sees persons with whom he lives using chairs, hats, tables, spades,
is persons modify one another's dispositions only through the saws, plows, horses, money in certain ways. If he has any share at
special use they make of physical conditions. Consider first the case all in what they are doing, he is led thereby to use things in the
of so-called expressive movements to which others are sensitive; same way, or to use other things in a way which will fit in. If a chair

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is drawn up to a table, it is a sign that he is to sit in it; if a person are used to produce a result. And the only way one person can
extends his right hand, he is to extend his; and so on in a never modify the mind of another is by using physical conditions, crude or
ending stream of detail. The prevailing habits of using the products artificial, so as to evoke some answering activity from him. Such are
of human art and the raw materials of nature constitute by all odds our two main conclusions. It is desirable to amplify and enforce
the deepest and most pervasive mode of social control. When them by placing them in contrast with the theory which uses a
children go to school, they already have "minds" -- they have psychology of supposed direct relationships of human beings to one
knowledge and dispositions of judgment which may be appealed to another as an adjunct to the psychology of the supposed direct
through the use of language. But these "minds" are the organized relation of an individual to physical objects. In substance, this so-
habits of intelligent response which they have previously required called social psychology has been built upon the notion of imitation.
by putting things to use in connection with the way other persons Consequently, we shall discuss the nature and rôle of imitation in
use things. The control is inescapable; it saturates disposition. the formation of mental disposition.
The net outcome of the discussion is that the fundamental means According to this theory, social control of individuals rests upon
of control is not personal but intellectual. It is not "moral" in the the instinctive tendency of individuals to imitate or copy the actions
sense that a person is moved by direct personal appeal from others, of others. The latter serve as models. The imitative instinct is so
important as is this method at critical junctures. It consists in the strong that the young devote themselves to conforming to the
habits of understanding, which are set up in using objects in patterns set by others and reproducing them in their own scheme of
correspondence with others, whether by way of coöperation and behavior. According to our theory, what is here called imitation is a
assistance or rivalry and competition. Mind as a concrete thing is misleading name for partaking with others in a use of things which
precisely the power to understand things in terms of the use made leads to consequences of common interest.
of them; a socialized mind is the power to understand them in terms
The basic error in the current notion of imitation is that it puts
of the use to which they are turned in joint or shared situations.
the cart before the horse. It takes an effect for the cause of the effect.
And mind in this sense is the method of social control.
There can be no doubt that individuals in forming a social group are
3. Imitation and Social Psychology. like-minded; they understand one another. They tend to act with
the same controlling ideas, beliefs, and intentions, given similar
-- We have already noted the defects of a psychology of learning
circumstances. Looked at from without, they might be said to be
which places the individual mind naked, as it were, in contact with
engaged in "imitating" one another. In the sense that they are doing
physical objects, and which believes that knowledge, ideas, and
much the same sort of thing in much the same sort of way, this
beliefs accrue from their interaction. Only comparatively recently
would be true enough. But "imitation" throws no light upon why
has the predominating influence of association with fellow beings in
they so act; it repeats the fact as an explanation of itself. It is an
the formation of mental and moral disposition been perceived. Even
explanation of the same order as the famous saying that opium puts
now it is usually treated as a kind of adjunct to an alleged method of
men to sleep because of its dormitive power.
learning by direct contact with things, and as merely supplementing
knowledge of the physical world with knowledge of persons. The Objective likeness of acts and the mental satisfaction found in
purport of our discussion is that such a view makes an absurd and being in conformity with others are baptized by the name imitation.
impossible separation between persons and things. Interaction with This social fact is then taken for a psychological force, which
things may form habits of external adjustment. But it leads to produced the likeness. A considerable portion of what is called
activity having a meaning and conscious intent only when things imitation is simply the fact that persons being alike in structure

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respond in the same way to like stimuli. Quite independently of days for successful execution of his purposes upon fitting his acts
imitation, men on being insulted get angry and attack the insulter. into those of others to see what a premium is put upon behaving as
This statement may be met by citing the undoubted fact that others behave, and of developing an understanding of them in order
response to an insult takes place in different ways in groups having that he may so behave. The pressure for likemindedness in action
different customs. In one group, it may be met by recourse to from this source is so great that it is quite superfluous to appeal to
fisticuffs, in another by a challenge to a duel, in a third by an imitation.
exhibition of contemptuous disregard. This happens, so it is said,
As matter of fact, imitation of ends, as distinct from imitation of
because the model set for imitation is different. But there is no need
means which help to reach ends, is a superficial and transitory affair
to appeal to imitation. The mere fact that customs are different
which leaves little effect upon disposition. Idiots are especially apt
means that the actual stimuli to behavior are different. Conscious
at this kind of imitation; it affects outward acts but not the meaning
instruction plays a part; prior approvals and disapprovals have a
of their performance. When we find children engaging in this sort
large influence. Still more effective is the fact that unless an
of mimicry, instead of encouraging them (as we would do if it were
individual acts in the way current in his group, he is literally out of
an important means of social control) we are more likely to rebuke
it. He can associate with others on intimate and equal terms only by
them as apes, monkeys, parrots, or copy cats. Imitation of means of
behaving in the way in which they behave. The pressure that comes
accomplishment is, on the other hand, an intelligent act. It involves
from the fact that one is let into the group action by acting in one
close observation, and judicious selection of what will enable one to
way and shut out by acting in another way is unremitting. What is
do better something which he already is trying to do. Used for a
called the effect of imitation is mainly the product of conscious
purpose, the imitative instinct may, like any other instinct, become a
instruction and of the selective influence exercised by the
factor in the development of effective action.
unconscious confirmations and ratifications of those with whom one
associates. This excursus should, accordingly, have the effect of reënforcing
the conclusion that genuine social control means the formation of a
Suppose that some one rolls a ball to a child; he catches it and
certain mental disposition; a way of understanding objects, events,
rolls it back, and the game goes on. Here the stimulus is not just the
and acts which enables one to participate effectively in associated
sight of the ball, or the sight of the other rolling it. It is the
activities. Only the friction engendered by meeting resistance from
situation -- the game which is playing. The response is not merely
others leads to the view that it takes place by forcing a line of action
rolling the ball back; it is rolling it back so that the other one may
contrary to natural inclinations. Only failure to take account of the
catch and return it, -- that the game may continue. The "pattern" or
situations in which persons are mutually concerned ( or interested
model is not the action of the other person. The whole situation
in acting responsively to one another) leads to treating imitation as
requires that each should adapt his action in view of what the other
the chief agent in promoting social control.
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 4. Some Applications to Education.
to keep it going. He may then note how the other person catches
-- Why does a savage group perpetuate savagery, and a civilized
and holds the ball in order to improve his own acts. He imitates the
group civilization? Doubtless the first answer to occur to mind is
means of doing, not the end or thing to be done. And he imitates the
because savages are savages; being of low-grade intelligence and
means because he wishes, on his own behalf, as part of his own
perhaps defective moral sense. But careful study has made it
initiative, to take an effective part in the game. One has only to
doubtful whether their native capacities are appreciably inferior to
consider how completely the child is dependent from his earliest
those of civilized man. It has made it certain that native differences

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are not sufficient to account for the difference in culture. In a sense transmitted, the legitimacy of which is guaranteed by the fact that
the mind of savage peoples is an effect, rather than a cause, of their the physical equipment in which it is incarnated leads to results that
backward institutions. Their social activities are such as to restrict square with the other facts of nature. Thus these appliances of art
their objects of attention and interest, and hence to limit the stimuli supply a protection, perhaps our chief protection, against a
to mental development. Even as regards the objects that come recrudescence of these superstitious beliefs, those fanciful myths and
within the scope of attention, primitive social customs tend to arrest infertile imaginings about nature in which so much of the best
observation and imagination upon qualities which do not fructify in intellectual power of the past has been spent. If we add one other
the mind. Lack of control of natural forces means that a scant factor, namely, that such appliances be not only used, but used in
number of natural objects enter into associated behavior. Only a the interests of a truly shared or associated life, then the appliances
small number of natural resources are utilized and they are not become the positive resources of civilization. If Greece, with a scant
worked for what they are worth. The advance of civilization means tithe of our material resources, achieved a worthy and noble
that a larger number of natural forces and objects have been intellectual and artistic career, it is because Greece operated for
transformed into instrumentalities of action, into means for social ends such resources as it had.
securing ends. We start not so much with superior capacities as
But whatever the situation, whether one of barbarism or
with superior stimuli for evocation and direction of our capacities.
civilization, whether one of stinted control of physical forces, or of
The savage deals largely with crude stimuli; we have weighted
partial enslavement to a mechanism not yet made tributary to a
stimuli.
shared experience, things as they enter into action furnish the
Prior human efforts have made over natural conditions. As they educative conditions of daily life and direct the formation of mental
originally existed they were indifferent to human endeavors. Every and moral disposition.
domesticated plant and animal, every tool, every utensil, every
Intentional education signifies, as we have already seen, a
appliance, every manufactured article, every æsthetic decoration,
specially selected environment, the selection being made on the
every work of art means a transformation of conditions once hostile
basis of materials and method specifically promoting growth in the
or indifferent to characteristic human activities into friendly and
desired direction. Since language represents the physical conditions
favoring conditions. Because the activities of children today are
that have been subjected to the maximum transformation in the
controlled by these selected and charged stimuli, children are able
interests of social life -- physical things which have lost their
to traverse in a short lifetime what the race has needed slow,
original quality in becoming social tools -- it is appropriate that
tortured ages to attain. The dice have been loaded by all the
language should play a large part compared with other appliances.
successes which have preceded.
By it we are led to share vicariously in past human experience, thus
Stimuli conducive to economical and effective response, such as widening and enriching the experience of the present. We are
our system of roads and means of transportation, our ready enabled, symbolically and imaginatively, to anticipate situations. In
command of heat, light, and electricity, our ready-made machines countless ways, language condenses meanings that record social
and apparatus for every purpose, do not, by themselves or in their outcomes and presage social outlooks. So significant is it of a liberal
aggregate, constitute a civilization. But the uses to which they are share in what is worth while in life that unlettered and uneducated
put are civilization, and without the things the uses would be have become almost synonymous.
impossible. Time otherwise necessarily devoted to wresting a
The emphasis in school upon this particular tool has, however, its
livelihood from a grudging environment and securing a precarious
dangers -- dangers which are not theoretical but exhibited in
protection against its inclemencies is freed. A body of knowledge is

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practice. Why is it, in spite of the fact that teaching by pouring in, -- The natural or native impulses of the young do not agree with
learning by a passive absorption, are universally condemned, that the life-customs of the group into which they are born.
they are still so entrenched in practice? That education is not an Consequently they have to be directed or guided. This control is not
affair of "telling" and being told, but an active and constructive the same thing as physical compulsion; it consists in centering the
process, is a principle almost as generally violated in practice as impulses acting at any one time upon some specific end and in
conceded in theory. Is not this deplorable situation due to the fact introducing an order of continuity into the sequence of acts. The
that the doctrine is itself merely told? It is preached; it is lectured; it action of others is always influenced by deciding what stimuli shall
is written about. But its enactment into practice requires that the call out their actions. But in some cases as in commands,
school environment be equipped with agencies for doing, with tools prohibitions, approvals, and disapprovals, the stimuli proceed from
and physical materials, to an extent rarely attained. It requires that persons with a direct view to influencing action. Since in such cases
methods of instruction and administration be modified to allow and we are most conscious of controlling the action of others, we are
to secure direct and continuous occupations with things. Not that likely to exaggerate the importance of this sort of control at the
the use of language as an educational resource should lessen; but expense of a more permanent and effective method. The basic
that its use should be more vital and fruitful by having its normal control resides in the nature of the situations in which the young
connection with shared activities. "These things ought ye to have take part. In social situations the young have to refer their way of
done, and not to have left the others undone." And for the school acting to what others are doing and make it fit in. This directs their
"these things" mean equipment with the instrumentalities of action to a common result, and gives an understanding common to
coöperative or joint activity. the participants. For all mean the same thing, even when
performing different acts. This common understanding of the
For when the schools depart from the educational conditions
means and ends of action is the essence of social control. It is
effective in the out-of-school environment, they necessarily
indirect, or emotional and intellectual, not direct or personal.
substitute a bookish, a pseudo-intellectual spirit for a social spirit.
Moreover it is intrinsic to the disposition of the person, not external
Children doubtless go to school to learn, but it has yet to be proved
and coercive. To achieve this internal control through identity of
that learning occurs most adequately when it is made a separate
interest and understanding is the business of education. While
conscious business. When treating it as a business of this sort tends
books and conversation can do much, these agencies are usually
to preclude the social sense which comes from sharing in an activity
relied upon too exclusively. Schools require for their full efficiency
of common concern and value, the effort at isolated intellectual
more opportunity for conjoint activities in which those instructed
learning contradicts its own aim. We may secure motor activity and
take part, so that they may acquire a social sense of their own
sensory excitation by keeping an individual by himself, but we
powers and of the materials and appliances used.
cannot thereby get him to understand the meaning which things
have in the life of which he is a part. We may secure technical
specialized ability in algebra, Latin, or botany, but not the kind of
intelligence which directs ability to useful ends. Only by engaging
in a joint activity, where one person's use of material and tools is
consciously referred to the use other persons are making of their
capacities and appliances, is a social direction of disposition attained.
Summary.

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 CHAPTER IV tale; and there is excellent adult authority for the conviction that for
certain moral and intellectual purposes adults must become as little
EDUCATION AS GROWTH:
children.
The seriousness of the assumption of the negative quality of the
1. The Conditions of Growth. possibilities of immaturity is apparent when we reflect that it sets
up as an ideal and standard a static end. The fulfillment of growing
-- In directing the activities of the young, society determines its
is taken to mean an accomplished growth: that is to say, an
own future in determining that of the young. Since the young at a
Ungrowth, something which is no longer growing. The futility of
given time will at some later date compose the society of that
the assumption is seen in the fact that every adult resents the
period, the latter's nature will largely turn upon the direction
imputation of having no further possibilities of growth; and so far as
children's activities were given at an earlier period. This cumulative
he finds that they are closed to him mourns the fact as evidence of
movement of action toward a later result is what is meant by
loss, instead of falling back on the achieved as adequate
growth.
manifestation of power. Why an unequal measure for child and
The primary condition of growth is immaturity. This may seem man?
to be a mere truism -- saying that a being can develop only in some
Taken absolutely, instead of comparatively, immaturity
point in which he is undeveloped. But the prefix "im" of the word
designates a positive force or ability, -- the power to grow. We do
immaturity means something positive, not a mere void or lack. It is
not have to draw out or educe positive activities from a child, as
noteworthy that the terms "capacity" and "potentiality" have a
some educational doctrines would have it. Where there is life, there
double meaning, one sense being negative, the other positive.
are already eager and impassioned activities. Growth is not
Capacity may denote mere receptivity, like the capacity of a quart
something done to them; it is something they do. The positive and
measure. We may mean by potentiality a merely dormant or
constructive aspect of possibility gives the key to understanding the
quiescent state -- a capacity to become something different under
two chief traits of immaturity, dependence and plasticity. (1) It
external influences. But we also mean by capacity an ability, a
sounds absurd to hear dependence spoken of as something positive,
power; and by potentiality potency, force. Now when we say that
still more absurd as a power. Yet if helplessness were all there were
immaturity means the possibility of growth, we are not referring to
in dependence, no development could ever take place. A merely
absence of powers which may exist at a later time; we express a
impotent being has to be carried, forever, by others. The fact that
force positively present -- the ability to develop.
dependence is accompanied by growth in ability, not by an ever
Our tendency to take immaturity as mere lack, and growth as increasing lapse into parasitism, suggests that it is already
something which fills up the gap between the immature and the something constructive. Being merely sheltered by others would
mature is due to regarding childhood comparatively, instead of not promote growth. For (2) it would only build a wall around
intrinsically. We treat it simply as a privation because we are impotence. With reference to the physical world, the child is
measuring it by adulthood as a fixed standard. This fixes attention helpless. He lacks at birth and for a long time thereafter power to
upon what the child has not, and will not have till he becomes a make his way physically, to make his own living. If he had to do
man. This comparative standpoint is legitimate enough for some that by himself, he would hardly survive an hour. On this side his
purposes, but if we make it final, the question arises whether we are helplessness is almost complete. The young of the brutes are
not guilty of an overweening presumption. Children, if they could immeasurably his superiors. He is physically weak and not able to
express themselves articulately and sincerely, would tell a different

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turn the strength which he possesses to coping with the physical egoism is simply an egoism which runs counter to an adult's
environment. egoism. To a grown-up person who is too absorbed in his own
affairs to take an interest in children's affairs, children doubtless
1.
seem unreasonably engrossed in their own affairs.
The thoroughgoing character of this helplessness suggests,
From a social standpoint, dependence denotes a power rather
however, some compensating power. The relative ability of the
than a weakness; it involves interdependence. There is always a
young of brute animals to adapt themselves fairly well to physical
danger that increased personal independence will decrease the social
conditions from an early period suggests the fact that their life is
capacity of an individual. In making him more self-reliant, it may
not intimately bound up with the life of those about them. They are
make him more self-sufficient; it may lead to aloofness and
compelled, so to speak, to have physical gifts because they are
indifference. It often makes an individual so insensitive in his
lacking in social gifts. Human infants, on the other hand, can get
relations to others as to develop an illusion of being really able to
along with physical incapacity just because of their social capacity.
stand and act alone -- an unnamed form of insanity which is
We sometimes talk and think as if they simply happened to be
responsible for a large part of the remediable suffering of the world.
physically in a social environment; as if social forces exclusively
existed in the adults who take care of them, they being passive 2.
recipients. If it were said that children are themselves marvelously
The specific adaptability of an immature creature for growth
endowed with power to enlist the coöperative attention of others,
constitutes his plasticity. This is something quite different from the
this would be thought to be a backhanded way of saying that others
plasticity of putty or wax. It is not a capacity to take on change of
are marvelously attentive to the needs of children. But observation
form in accord with external pressure. It lies near the pliable
shows that children are gifted with an equipment of the first order
elasticity by which some persons take on the color of their
for social intercourse. Few grown-up persons retain all of the
surroundings while retaining their own bent. But it is something
flexible and sensitive ability of children to vibrate sympathetically
deeper than this. It is essentially the ability to learn from
with the attitudes and doings of those about them. Inattention to
experience; the power to retain from one experience something
physical things ( going with incapacity to control them) is
which is of avail in coping with the difficulties of a later situation.
accompanied by a corresponding intensification of interest and
This means power to modify actions on the basis of the results of
attention as to the doings of people. The native mechanism of the
prior experiences, the power to develop dispositions. Without it, the
child and his impulses all tend to facile social responsiveness. The
acquisition of habits is impossible.
statement that children, before adolescence, are egotistically self-
centered, even if it were true, would not contradict the truth of this It is a familiar fact that the young of the higher animals, and
statement. It would simply indicate that their social responsiveness especially the human young, have to learn to utilize their instinctive
is employed on their own behalf, not that it does not exist. But the reactions. The human being is born with a greater number of
statement is not true as matter of fact. The facts which are cited in instinctive tendencies than other animals. But the instincts of the
support of the alleged pure egoism of children really show the lower animals perfect themselves for appropriate action at an early
intensity and directness with which they go to their mark. If the period after birth, while most of those of the human infant are of
ends which form the mark seem narrow and selfish to adults, it is little account just as they stand. An original specialized power of
only because adults (by means of a similar engrossment in their day) adjustment secures immediate efficiency, but, like a railway ticket, it
have mastered these ends, which have consequently ceased to is good for one route only. A being who, in order to use his eyes,
interest them. Most of the remainder of children's alleged native ears, hands, and legs, has to experiment in making varied

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combinations of their reactions, achieves a control that is flexible plasticity, or power of acquiring variable and novel modes of
and varied. A chick, for example, pecks accurately at a bit of food in control. Hence it provides a further push to social progress.
a few hours after hatching. This means that definite coordinations
2. Habits as Expressions of Growth.
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 -- We have already noted that plasticity is the capacity to retain
months to be able to gauge with approximate accuracy the action in and carry over from prior experience factors which modify
reaching which will coordinate with his visual activities; to be able, subsequent activities. This signifies the capacity to acquire habits,
that is, to tell whether he can reach a seen object and just how to or develop definite dispositions. We have now to consider the
execute the reaching. As a result, the chick is limited by the relative salient features of habits. In the first place, a habit is a form of
perfection of its original endowment. The infant has the advantage executive skill, of efficiency in doing. A habit means an ability to use
of the multitude of instinctive tentative reactions and of the natural conditions as means to ends. It is an active control of the
experiences that accompany them, even though he is at a temporary environment through control of the organs of action. We are
disadvantage because they cross one another. In learning an action, perhaps apt to emphasize the control of the body at the expense of
instead of having it given ready-made, one of necessity learns to control of the environment. We think of walking, talking, playing
vary its factors, to make varied combinations of them, according to the piano, the specialized skills characteristic of the etcher, the
change of circumstances. A possibility of continuing progress is surgeon, the bridge-builder, as if they were simply ease, deftness,
opened up by the fact that in learning one act, methods are and accuracy on the part of the organism. They are that, of course;
developed good for use in other situations. Still more important is but the measure of the value of these qualities lies in the economical
the fact that the human being acquires a habit of learning. He learns and effective control of the environment which they secure. To be
to learn. able to walk is to have certain properties of nature at our disposal --
and so with all other habits.
The importance for human life of the two facts of dependence and
variable control has been summed up in the doctrine of the Education is not infrequently defined as consisting in the
significance of prolonged infancy. 1 This prolongation is significant acquisition of those habits that effect an adjustment of an individual
from the standpoint of the adult members of the group as well as and his environment. The definition expresses an essential phase of
from that of the young. The presence of dependent and learning growth. But it is essential that adjustment be understood in its
beings is a stimulus to nurture and affection. The need for constant active sense of control of means for achieving ends. If we think of a
continued care was probably a chief means in transforming habit simply as a change wrought in the organism, ignoring the fact
temporary cohabitations into permanent unions. It certainly was a that this change consists in ability to effect subsequent changes in
chief influence in forming habits of affectionate and sympathetic the environment, we shall be led to think of "adjustment" as a
watchfulness; that constructive interest in the well-being of others conformity to environment as wax conforms to the seal which
which is essential to associated life. Intellectually, this moral impresses it. The environment is thought of as something fixed,
development meant the introduction of many new objects of providing in its fixity the end and standard of changes taking place
attention; it stimulated foresight and planning for the future. Thus in the organism; adjustment is just fitting ourselves to this fixity of
there is a reciprocal influence. Increasing complexity of social life external conditions. 2 Habit as habituation is indeed something
requires a longer period of infancy in which to acquire the needed relatively passive; we get used to our surroundings -- to our
powers; this prolongation of dependence means prolongation of clothing, our shoes, and gloves; to the atmosphere as long as it is
fairly equable; to our daily associates, etc. Conformity to the

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environment, a change wrought in the organism without reference The significance of habit is not exhausted, however, in its
to ability to modify surroundings, is a marked trait of such executive and motor phase. It means formation of intellectual and
habituations. Aside from the fact that we are not entitled to carry emotional disposition as well as an increase in ease, economy, and
over the traits of such adjustments (which might well be called efficiency of action. Any habit marks an inclination -- an active
accommodations, to mark them off from active adjustments) into preference and choice for the conditions involved in its exercise. A
habits of active use of our surroundings, two features of habit does not wait, Micawber-like, for a stimulus to turn up so that
habituations are worth notice. In the first place, we get used to it may get busy; it actively seeks for occasions to pass into full
things by first using them. operation. If its expression is unduly blocked, inclination shows
itself in uneasiness and intense craving. A habit also marks an
Consider getting used to a strange city. At first, there is excessive
intellectual disposition. Where there is a habit, there is acquaintance
stimulation and excessive and ill-adapted response. Gradually
with the materials and equipment to which action is applied. There
certain stimuli are selected because of their relevancy, and others
is a definite way of understanding the situations in which the habit
are degraded. We can say either that we do not respond to them
operates. Modes of thought, of observation and reflection, enter as
any longer, or more truly that we have effected a persistent
forms of skill and of desire into the habits that make a man an
response to them -- an equilibrium of adjustment. This means, in
engineer, an architect, a physician, or a merchant. In unskilled
the second place, that this enduring adjustment supplies the
forms of labor, the intellectual factors are at minimum precisely
background upon which are made specific adjustments, as occasion
because the habits involved are not of a high grade. But there are
arises. We are never interested in changing the whole environment;
habits of judging and reasoning as truly as of handling a tool,
there is much that we take for granted and accept just as it already
painting a picture, or conducting an experiment.
is. Upon this background our activities focus at certain points in an
endeavor to introduce needed changes. Habituation is thus our Such statements are, however, understatements. The habits of
adjustment to an environment which at the time we are not mind involved in habits of the eye and hand supply the latter with
concerned with modifying, and which supplies a leverage to our their significance. Above all, the intellectual element in a habit fixes
active habits. the relation of the habit to varied and elastic use, and hence to
continued growth. We speak of fixed habits. Well, the phrase may
Adaptation, in fine, is quite as much adaptation of the
mean powers so well established that their possessor always has
environment to our own activities as of our activities to the
them as resources when needed. But the phrase is also used to mean
environment. A savage tribe manages to live on a desert plain. It
ruts, routine ways, with loss of freshness, open-mindedness, and
adapts itself. But its adaptation involves a maximum of accepting,
originality. Fixity of habit may mean that something has a fixed
tolerating, putting up with things as they are, a maximum of passive
hold upon us, instead of our having a free hold upon things. This
acquiescence, and a minimum of active control, of subjection to use.
fact explains two points in a common notion about habits: their
A civilized people enters upon the scene. It also adapts itself. It
identification with mechanical and external modes of action to the
introduces irrigation; it searches the world for plants and animals
neglect of mental and moral attitudes, and the tendency to give
that will flourish under such conditions; it improves, by careful
them a bad meaning, an identification with "bad habits." Many a
selection, those which are growing there. As a consequence, the
person would feel surprised to have his aptitude in his chosen
wilderness blossoms as a rose. The savage is merely habituated; the
profession called a habit, and would naturally think of his use of
civilized man has habits which transform the environment.
tobacco, liquor, or profane language as typical of the meaning of

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habit. A habit is to him something which has a hold on him, its educational equivalents, that means (i) that the educational
something not easily thrown off even though judgment condemn it. process has no end beyond itself; it is its own end; and that (ii) the
educational process is one of continual reorganizing, reconstructing,
Habits reduce themselves to routine ways of acting, or
transforming.
degenerate into ways of action to which we are enslaved just in the
degree in which intelligence is disconnected from them. Routine 1.
habits are unthinking habits: "bad" habits are habits so severed from
Development when it is interpreted in comparative terms, that is,
reason that they are opposed to the conclusions of conscious
with respect to the special traits of child and adult life, means the
deliberation and decision. As we have seen, the acquiring of habits is
direction of power into special channels: the formation of habits
due to an original plasticity of our natures: to our ability to vary
involving executive skill, definiteness of interest, and specific
responses till we find an appropriate and efficient way of acting.
objects of observation and thought. But the comparative view is not
Routine habits, and habits that possess us instead of our possessing
final. The child has specific powers; to ignore that fact is to stunt or
them, are habits which put an end to plasticity. They mark the close
distort the organs upon which his growth depends. The adult uses
of power to vary. There can be no doubt of the tendency of organic
his powers to transform his environment, thereby occasioning new
plasticity, of the physiological basis, to lessen with growing years.
stimuli which redirect his powers and keep them developing.
The instinctively mobile and eagerly varying action of childhood,
Ignoring this fact means arrested development, a passive
the love of new stimuli and new developments, too easily passes into
accommodation. Normal child and normal adult alike, in other
a "settling down," which means aversion to change and a resting on
words, are engaged in growing. The difference between them is not
past achievements. Only an environment which secures the full use
the difference between growth and no growth, but between the
of intelligence in the process of forming habits can counteract this
modes of growth appropriate to different conditions. With respect
tendency. Of course, the same hardening of the organic conditions
to the development of powers devoted to coping with specific
affects the physiological structures which are involved in thinking.
scientific and economic problems we may say the child should be
But this fact only indicates the need of persistent care to see to it
growing in manhood. With respect to sympathetic curiosity,
that the function of intelligence is invoked to its maximum
unbiased responsiveness, and openness of mind, we may say that the
possibility. The short-sighted method which falls back on
adult should be growing in childlikeness. One statement is as true
mechanical routine and repetition to secure external efficiency of
as the other.
habit, motor skill without accompanying thought, marks a
deliberate closing in of surroundings upon growth. Three ideas which have been criticized, namely, the merely
privative nature of immaturity, static adjustment to a fixed
3. The Educational Bearings of the Conception of Development.
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
-- We have had so far but little to say in this chapter about
end. The educational counterparts of the three fallacious ideas are
education. We have been occupied with the conditions and
first, failure to take account of the instinctive or native powers of
implications of growth. If our conclusions are justified, they carry
the young; secondly, failure to develop initiative in coping with
with them, however, definite educational consequences. When it is
novel situations; thirdly, an undue emphasis upon drill and other
said that education is development, everything depends upon how
devices which secure automatic skill at the expense of personal
development is conceived. Our net conclusion is that life is
development, and that developing, growing, is life. Translated into

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perception. In all cases, the adult environment is accepted as a Then the adult formed by such educative methods looks back with
standard for the child. He is to be brought up to it. impatient regret upon childhood and youth as a scene of lost
opportunities and wasted powers. This ironical situation will endure
Natural instincts are either disregarded or treated as nuisances --
till it is recognized that living has its own intrinsic quality and that
as obnoxious traits to be suppressed, or at all events to be brought
the business of education is with that quality.
into conformity with external standards. Since conformity is the
aim, what is distinctively individual in a young person is brushed Realization that life is growth protects us from that so-called
aside, or regarded as a source of mischief or anarchy. Conformity is idealizing of childhood which in effect is nothing but lazy
made equivalent to uniformity. Consequently, there are induced lack indulgence. Life is not to be identified with every superficial act and
of interest in the novel, aversion to progress, and dread of the interest. Even though it is not always easy to tell whether what
uncertain and the unknown. Since the end of growth is outside of appears to be mere surface fooling is a sign of some nascent as yet
and beyond the process of growing, external agents have to be untrained power, we must remember that manifestations are not to
resorted to to induce movement toward it. Whenever a method of be accepted as ends in themselves. They are signs of possible
education is stigmatized as mechanical, we may be sure that growth. They are to be turned into means of development, of
external pressure is brought to bear to reach an external end. carrying power forward, not indulged or cultivated for their own
sake. Excessive attention to surface phenomena (even in the way of
2.
rebuke as well as of encouragement) may lead to their fixation and
Since in reality there is nothing to which growth is relative save thus to arrested development. What impulses are moving toward,
more growth, there is nothing to which education is subordinate not what they have been, is the important thing for parent and
save more education. It is a commonplace to say that education teacher. The true principle of respect for immaturity cannot be
should not cease when one leaves school. The point of this better put than in the words of Emerson: "Respect the child. Be not
commonplace is that the purpose of school education is to insure the too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude. But I hear the
continuance of education by organizing the powers that insure outcry which replies to this suggestion: Would you verily throw up
growth. The inclination to learn from life itself and to make the the reins of public and private discipline; would you leave the young
conditions of life such that all will learn in the process of living is child to the mad career of his own passions and whimsies, and call
the finest product of schooling. this anarchy a respect for the child's nature? I answer, -- Respect
the child, respect him to the end, but also respect yourself.... The
When we abandon the attempt to define immaturity by means of
two points in a boy's training are, to keep his naturel [sic] and train
fixed comparison with adult accomplishments, we are compelled to
off all but that; to keep his naturel [sic] , but stop off his uproar,
give up thinking of it as denoting lack of desired traits. Abandoning
fooling, and horseplay; keep his nature and arm it with knowledge
this notion, we are also forced to surrender our habit of thinking of
in the very direction in which it points." And as Emerson goes on to
instruction as a method of supplying this lack by pouring
show this reverence for childhood and youth instead of opening up
knowledge into a mental and moral hole which awaits filling. Since
an easy and easy-going path to the instructors, "involves at once,
life means growth, a living creature lives as truly and positively at
immense claims on the time, the thought, on the life of the teacher.
one stage as at another, with the same intrinsic fullness and the
It requires time, use, insight, event, all the great lessons and
same absolute claims. Hence education means the enterprise of
assistances of God; and only to think of using it implies character
supplying the conditions which insure growth, or adequacy of life,
and profoundness."
irrespective of age. We first look with impatience upon immaturity,
regarding it as something to be got over as rapidly as possible. Summary.

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 -- Power to grow depends upon need for others and plasticity. CHAPTER V
Both of these conditions are at their height in childhood and youth.
PREPARATION, UNFOLDING, AND FORMAL
Plasticity or the power to learn from experience means the
DISCIPLINE:
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
1. Education as Preparation.
with the surroundings, and of active capacities to readjust activity
to meet new conditions. The former furnishes the background of -- We have laid it down that the educative process is a continuous
growth; the latter constitute growing. Active habits involve process of growth, having as its aim at every stage an added
thought, invention, and initiative in applying capacities to new aims. capacity of growth. This conception contrasts sharply with other
They are opposed to routine which marks an arrest of growth. Since ideas which have influenced practice. By making the contrast
growth is the characteristic of life, education is all one with explicit, the meaning of the conception will be brought more clearly
growing; it has no end beyond itself. The criterion of the value of to light. The first contrast is with the idea that education is a
school education is the extent in which it creates a desire for process of preparation or getting ready. What is to be prepared for
continued growth and supplies means for making the desire is, of course, the responsibilities and privileges of adult life. Children
effective in fact. are not regarded as social members in full and regular standing.
They are looked upon as candidates; they are placed on the waiting
Footnotes
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
[1] Intimations of its significance are found in a number of writers,
another form of the notion of the negative and privative character of
but John Fiske, in his Excursions of an Evolutionist, is accredited
growth already criticized; hence we shall not repeat the criticisms,
with its first systematic exposition.
but pass on to the evil consequences which flow from putting
[2] This conception is, of course, a logical correlate of the education on this basis.
conceptions of the external relation of stimulus and response,
In the first place, it involves loss of impetus. Motive power is not
considered in the last chapter, and of the negative conceptions of
utilized. Children proverbially live in the present; that is not only a
immaturity and plasticity noted in this chapter.
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

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accrues naturally as an outcome, but a lesser education than if the present possibilities, and thus make individuals better fitted to cope
full stress of effort had been put upon making conditions as with later requirements. Growing is not something which is
educative as possible. A third undesirable result is the substitution completed in odd moments; it is a continuous leading into the
of a conventional average standard of expectation and requirement future. If the environment, in school and out, supplies conditions
for a standard which concerns the specific powers of the individual which utilize adequately the present capacities of the immature, the
under instruction. For a severe and definite judgment based upon future which grows out of the present is surely taken care of. The
the strong and weak points of the individual is substituted a vague mistake is not in attaching importance to preparation for future
and wavering opinion concerning what youth may be expected, need, but in making it the mainspring of present effort. Because the
upon the average, to become in some more or less remote future; need of preparation for a continually developing life is great, it is
say, at the end of the year, when promotions are to take place, or by imperative that every energy should be bent to making the present
the time they are ready to go to college or to enter upon what, in experience as rich and significant as possible. Then as the present
contrast with the probationary stage, is regarded as the serious merges insensibly into the future, the future is taken care of.
business of life. It is impossible to overestimate the loss which
2. Education as Unfolding.
results from the deflection of attention from the strategic point to a
comparatively unproductive point. It fails most just where it thinks -- There is a conception of education which professes to be based
it is succeeding -- in getting a preparation for the future. upon the idea of development. But it takes back with one hand what
it proffers with the other. Development is conceived not as
Finally, the principle of preparation makes necessary recourse on
continuous growing, but as the unfolding of latent powers toward a
a large scale to the use of adventitious motives of pleasure and pain.
definite goal. The goal is conceived of as completion,-perfection.
The future having no stimulating and directing power when
Life at any stage short of attainment of this goal is merely an
severed from the possibilities of the present, something must be
unfolding toward it. Logically the doctrine is only a variant of the
hitched on to it to make it work. Promises of reward and threats of
preparation theory. Practically the two differ in that the adherents
pain are employed. Healthy work, done for present reasons and as a
of the latter make much of the practical and professional duties for
factor in living, is largely unconscious. The stimulus resides in the
which one is preparing, while the developmental doctrine speaks of
situation with which one is actually confronted. But when this
the ideal and spiritual qualities of the principle which is unfolding.
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 The conception that growth and progress are just
may expect, some time in the future, rewards for their present approximations to a final unchanging goal is the last infirmity of
sacrifices. Everybody knows how largely systems of punishment the mind in its transition from a static to a dynamic understanding
have had to be resorted to by educational systems which neglect of life. It simulates the style of the latter. It pays the tribute of
present possibilities in behalf of preparation for a future. Then, in speaking much of development, process, progress. But all of these
disgust with the harshness and impotency of this method, the operations are conceived to be merely transitional; they lack
pendulum swings to the opposite extreme, and the dose of meaning on their own account. They possess significance only as
information required against some later day is sugar-coated, so that movements toward something away from what is now going on.
pupils may be fooled into taking something which they do not care Since growth is just a movement toward a completed being, the
for. final ideal is immobile. An abstract and indefinite future is in control
with all which that connotes in depreciation of present power and
It is not of course a question whether education should prepare
opportunity.
for the future. If education is growth, it must progressively realize

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 Since the goal of perfection, the standard of development, is very child, the Whole, or perfection, sleeping within him, is awakened. A
far away, it is so beyond us that, strictly speaking, it is unattainable. single example may indicate the method. Every one familiar with
Consequently, in order to be available for present guidance it must the kindergarten is acquainted with the circle in which the children
be translated into something which stands for it. Otherwise we gather. It is not enough that the circle is a convenient way of
should be compelled to regard any and every manifestation of the grouping the children. It must be used "because it is a symbol of the
child as an unfolding from within, and hence sacred. Unless we set collective life of mankind in general."
up some definite criterion representing the ideal end by which to
Froebel's recognition of the significance of the native capacities of
judge whether a given attitude or act is approximating or moving
children, his loving attention to them, and his influence in inducing
away, our sole alternative is to withdraw all influences of the
others to study them, represent perhaps the most effective single
environment lest they interfere with proper development. Since that
force in modern educational theory in effecting widespread
is not practicable, a working substitute is set up. Usually, of course,
acknowledgment of the idea of growth. But his formulation of the
this is some idea which an adult would like to have a child acquire.
notion of development and his organization of devices for
Consequently, by "suggestive questioning" or some other
promoting it were badly hampered by the fact that he conceived
pedagogical device, the teacher proceeds to "draw out" from the
development to be the unfolding of a ready-made latent principle.
pupil what is desired. If what is desired is obtained, that is evidence
He failed to see that growing is growth, developing is development,
that the child is unfolding properly. But as the pupil generally has
and consequently placed the emphasis upon the completed product.
no initiative of his own in this direction, the result is a random
Thus he set up a goal which meant the arrest of growth, and a
groping after what is wanted, and the formation of habits of
criterion which is not applicable to immediate guidance of powers,
dependence upon the cues furnished by others. Just because such
save through translation into abstract and symbolic formulae.
methods simulate a true principle and claim to have its sanction
they may do more harm than would outright "telling," where, at A remote goal of complete unfoldedness is, in technical
least, it remains with the child how much will stick. philosophic language, transcendental. That is, it is something apart
from direct experience and perception. So far as experience is
Within the sphere of philosophic thought there have been two
concerned, it is empty; it represents a vague sentimental aspiration
typical attempts to provide a working representative of the absolute
rather than anything which can be intelligently grasped and stated.
goal. Both start from the conception of a whole -- an absolute --
This vagueness must be compensated for by some a priori formula.
which is "immanent" in human life. The perfect or complete ideal is
Froebel made the connection between the concrete facts of
not a mere ideal; it is operative here and now. But it is present only
experience and the transcendental ideal of development by
implicitly, "potentially," or in an enfolded condition. What is termed
regarding the former as symbols of the latter. To regard known
development is the gradual making explicit and outward of what is
things as symbols, according to some arbitrary a priori formula --
thus wrapped up. Froebel and Hegel, the authors of the two
and every a priori conception must be arbitrary -- is an invitation to
philosophic schemes referred to, have different ideas of the path by
romantic fancy to seize upon any analogies which appeal to it and
which the progressive realization of manifestation of the complete
treat them as laws. After the scheme of symbolism has been settled
principle is effected. According to Hegel, it is worked out through a
upon, some definite technique must be invented by which the inner
series of historical institutions which embody the different factors in
meaning of the sensible symbols used may be brought home to
the Absolute. According to Froebel, the actuating force is the
children. Adults being the formulators of the symbolism are
presentation of symbols, largely mathematical, corresponding to the
naturally the authors and controllers of the technique. The result
essential traits of the Absolute. When these are presented to the
was that Froebel's love of abstract symbolism often got the better of

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his sympathetic insight; and there was substituted for development it, the conscious ideas and preference of individuals are impotent.
as arbitrary and externally imposed a scheme of dictation as the Or, rather, they are but the means by which it works itself out.
history of instruction has ever seen. Social progress is an "organic growth," not an experimental
selection. Reason is all powerful, but only Absolute Reason has any
With Hegel the necessity of finding some working concrete
power.
counterpart of the inaccessible Absolute took an institutional, rather
than symbolic, form. His philosophy, like Froebel's, marks in one The recognition (or rediscovery, for the idea was familiar to the
direction an indispensable contribution to a valid conception of the Greeks) that great historic institutions are active factors in the
process of life. The weaknesses of an abstract individualistic intellectual nurture of mind was a great contribution to educational
philosophy were evident to him; he saw the impossibility of making philosophy. It indicated a genuine advance beyond Rousseau, who
a clean sweep of historical institutions, of treating them as had marred his assertion that education must be a natural
despotisms begot in artifice and nurtured in fraud. In his philosophy development and not something forced or grafted upon individuals
of history and society culminated the efforts of a whole series of from without, by the notion that social conditions are not natural.
German writers -- Lessing, Herder, Kant, Schiller, Goethe -- to But in its notion of a complete and all-inclusive end of development,
appreciate the nurturing influence of the great collective the Hegelian theory swallowed up concrete individualities, though
institutional products of humanity. For those who learned the magnifying The Individual in the abstract. Some of Hegel's
lesson of this movement, it was henceforth impossible to conceive of followers sought to reconcile the claims of the Whole and of
institutions or of culture as artificial. It destroyed completely -- in individuality by the conception of society as an organic whole, or
idea, not in fact -- the psychology that regarded "mind" as a ready- organism. That social organization is presupposed in the adequate
made possession of a naked individual by showing the significance exercise of individual capacity is not to be doubted. But the social
of "objective mind" -- language, government, art, religion -- in the organism, interpreted after the relation of the organs of the body to
formation of individual minds. But since Hegel was haunted by the each other and to the whole body, means that each individual has a
conception of an absolute goal, he was obliged to arrange certain limited place and function, requiring to be supplemented by
institutions as they concretely exist, on a stepladder of ascending the place and functions of the other organs. As one portion of the
approximations. Each in its time and place is absolutely necessary, bodily tissue is differentiated so that it can be the hand and the hand
because a stage in the self-realizing process of the absolute mind. only, another, the eye, and so on, all taken together making the
Taken as such a step or stage, its existence is proof of its complete organism, so one individual is supposed to be differentiated for the
rationality, for it is an integral element in the total, which is Reason. exercise of the mechanical operations of society, another for those of
Against institutions as they are, individuals have no spiritual rights; a statesman, another for those of a scholar, and so on. The notion of
personal development, and nurture, consist in obedient assimilation "organism" is thus used to give a philosophic sanction to class
of the spirit of existing institutions. Conformity, not transformation, distinctions in social organization -- a notion which in its
is the essence of education. Institutions change as history shows; educational application again means external dictation instead of
but their change, the rise and fall of states, is the work of the growth.
"world-spirit." Individuals, save the great "heroes" who are the
3.Education as Training of Faculties.
chosen organs of the world-spirit, have no share or lot in it. In the
later nineteenth century, this type of idealism was amalgamated -- A theory which has had great vogue and which came into
with the doctrine of biological evolution. "Evolution" was a force existence before the notion of growth had much influence is known
working itself out to its own end. As against it, or as compared with as the theory of "formal discipline." It has in view a correct ideal;

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one outcome of education should be the creation of specific powers in making and combining simple distinctions, for which, Locke
of accomplishment. A trained person is one who can do the chief thought, mathematics affords unrivaled opportunity.
things which it is important for him to do better than he could
Locke's statements fitted well into the dualism of his day. It
without training: "better" signifying greater ease, efficiency,
seemed to do justice to both mind and matter, the individual and the
economy, promptness, etc. That this is an outcome of education was
world. One of the two supplied the matter of knowledge and the
indicated in what was said about habits as the product of educative
object upon which mind should work. The other supplied definite
development. But the theory in question takes, as it were, a short
mental powers, which were few in number and which might be
cut; it regards some powers (to be presently named) as the direct
trained by specific exercises. The scheme appeared to give due
and conscious aims of instruction, and not simply as the results of
weight to the subject matter of knowledge, and yet it insisted that
growth. There is a definite number of powers to be trained, as one
the end of education is not the bare reception and storage of
might enumerate the kinds of strokes which a golfer has to master.
information, but the formation of personal powers of attention,
Consequently education should get directly at the business of
memory, observation, abstraction, and generalization. It was
training them. But this implies that they are already there in some
realistic in its emphatic assertion that all material whatever is
untrained form; otherwise their creation would have to be an
received from without; it was idealistic in that final stress fell upon
indirect product of other activities and agencies. Being there already
the formation of intellectual powers. It was objective and
in some crude form, all that remains is to exercise them in constant
impersonal in its assertion that the individual cannot possess or
and graded repetitions, and they will inevitably be refined and
generate any true ideas on his own account; it was individualistic in
perfected. In the phrase "formal discipline" as applied to this
placing the end of education in the perfecting of certain faculties
conception, "discipline" refers both to the outcome of trained power
possessed at the outset by the individual. This kind of distribution
and to the method of training through repeated exercise.
of values expressed with nicety the state of opinion in the
The forms of powers in question are such things as the faculties generations following upon Locke. It became, without explicit
of perceiving, retaining, recalling, associating, attending, willing, reference to Locke, a common-place of educational theory and of
feeling, imagining, thinking, etc., which are then shaped by exercise psychology. Practically, it seemed to provide the educator with
upon material presented. In its classic form, this theory was definite, instead of vague, tasks. It made the elaboration of a
expressed by Locke. On the one hand, the outer world presents the technique of instruction relatively easy. All that was necessary was
material or content of knowledge through passively received to provide for sufficient practice of each of the powers. This practice
sensations. On the other hand, the mind has certain ready powers, consists in repeated acts of attending, observing, memorizing, etc.
attention, observation, retention, comparison, abstraction, By grading the difficulty of the acts, making each set of repetitions
compounding, etc. Knowledge results if the mind discriminates and somewhat more difficult than the set which preceded it, a complete
combines things as they are united and divided in nature itself. But scheme of instruction is evolved.
the important thing for education is the exercise or practice of the
There are various ways, equally conclusive, of criticizing this
faculties of the mind till they become thoroughly established
conception, in both its alleged foundations and in its educational
habitudes. The analogy constantly employed is that of a billiard
application. (1) Perhaps the most direct mode of attack consists in
player or gymnast, who by repeated use of certain muscles in a
pointing out that the supposed original faculties of observation,
uniform way at last secures automatic skill. Even the faculty of
recollection, willing, thinking, etc., are purely mythological. There
thinking was to be formed into a trained habit by repeated exercises
are no such ready-made powers waiting to be exercised and thereby
trained. There are, indeed, a great number of original native

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tendencies, instinctive modes of action, based on the original occurs. As we have already noted, the primary reactions, with a very
connections of neurones in the central nervous system. There are few exceptions are too diffused and general to be practically of much
impulsive tendencies of the eyes to follow and fixate light; of the use in the case of the human infant. Hence the identity of training
neck muscles to turn toward light and sound; of the hands to reach with selective response. (Compare p. 30.) (b) Equally important is
and grasp; and turn and twist and thump; of the vocal apparatus to the specific coördination of different factors of response which takes
make sounds; of the mouth to spew out unpleasant substances; to place. There is not merely a selection of the hand reactions which
gag and to curl the lip, and so on in almost indefinite number. But effect grasping, but of the particular visual stimuli which call out
these tendencies (a) instead of being a small number sharply marked just these reactions and no others, and an establishment of
off from one another, are of an indefinite variety, interweaving with connection between the two. But the coordinating does not stop
one another in all kinds of subtle ways. (b) Instead of being latent here. Characteristic temperature reactions may take place when the
intellectual powers, requiring only exercise for their perfecting, object is grasped. These will also be brought in; later, the
they are tendencies to respond in certain ways to changes in the temperature reaction may be connected directly with the optical
environment so as to bring about other changes. Something in the stimulus, the hand reaction being suppressed -- as a bright flame,
throat makes one cough; the tendency is to eject the obnoxious independent of close contact, may steer one away. Or the child in
particle and thus modify the subsequent stimulus. The hand touches handling the object pounds with it, or crumples it, and a sound
a hot thing; it is impulsively, wholly unintellectually, snatched issues. The ear response is then brought into the system of
away. But the withdrawal alters the stimuli operating, and tends to response. If a certain sound (the conventional name) is made by
make them more consonant with the needs of the organism. It is by others and accompanies the activity, response of both ear and the
such specific changes of organic activities in response to specific vocal apparatus connected with auditory stimulation will also
changes in the medium that that control of the environment of become an associated factor in the complex response. 4
which we have spoken (see ante, p. 29) is effected. Now all of our
(3) The more specialized the adjustment of response and stimulus
first seeings and hearings and touchings and smellings and tastings
to each other ( for, taking the sequence of activities into account, the
are of this kind. In any legitimate sense of the words mental or
stimuli are adapted to reactions as well as reactions to stimuli) the
intellectual or cognitive, they are lacking in these qualities, and no
more rigid and the less generally available is the training secured.
amount of repetitious exercise could bestow any intellectual
In equivalent language, less intellectual or educative quality
properties of observation, judgment, or intentional action (volition)
attaches to the training. The usual way of stating this fact is that
upon them.
the more specialized the reaction, the less is the skill acquired in
(2) Consequently the training of our original impulsive activities practicing and perfecting it transferable to other modes of behavior.
is not a refinement and perfecting achieved by "exercise" as one According to the orthodox theory of formal discipline, a pupil in
might strengthen a muscle by practice. It consists rather (a) in studying his spelling lesson acquires, besides ability to spell those
selecting from the diffused responses which are evoked at a given particular words, an increase of power of observation, attention, and
time those which are especially adapted to the utilization of the recollection which may be employed whenever these powers are
stimulus. That is to say, among the reactions of the body in general needed. As matter of fact, the more he confines himself to noticing
3 and the hand in particular which instinctively occur upon and fixating the forms of words, irrespective of connection with
stimulation of the eye by light, all except those which are other things (such as the meaning of the words, the context in
specifically adapted to reaching, grasping, and manipulating the which they are habitually used, the derivation and classification of
object effectively are gradually eliminated -- or else no training the verbal form, etc.) the less likely is he to acquire an ability which

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can be used for anything except the mere noting of verbal visual training of ability to spell which comes from taking visual forms in
forms. He may not even be increasing his ability to make accurate a narrow context and one which takes them in connection with the
distinctions among geometrical forms, to say nothing of ability to activities required to grasp meaning, such as context, affiliations of
observe in general. He is merely selecting the stimuli supplied by descent, etc., may be compared to the difference between exercises
the forms of the letters and the motor reactions of oral or written in the gymnasium with pulley weights to "develop" certain muscles,
reproduction. The scope of coördination (to use our prior and a game or sport. The former is uniform and mechanical; it is
terminology) is extremely limited. The connections which are rigidly specialized. The latter is varied from moment to moment; no
employed in other observations and recollections (or reproductions two acts are quite alike; novel emergencies have to be met; the
) are deliberately eliminated when the pupil is exercised merely coördinations forming have to be kept flexible and elastic.
upon forms of letters and words. Having been excluded, they cannot Consequently, the training is much more "general"; that is to say, it
be restored when needed. The ability secured to observe and to covers a wider territory and includes more factors. Exactly the same
recall verbal forms is not available for perceiving and recalling thing holds of special and general education of the mind.
other things. In the ordinary phraseology, it is not transferable. But
A monotonously uniform exercise may by practice give great skill
the wider the context -- that is to say, the more varied the stimuli
in one special act; but the skill is limited to that act, be it
and responses coordinated -- the more the ability acquired is
bookkeeping or calculations in logarithms or experiments in
available for the effective performance of other acts; not, strictly
hydrocarbons. One may be an authority in a particular field and yet
speaking, because there is any "transfer," but because the wide
of more than usually poor judgment in matters not closely allied,
range of factors employed in the specific act is equivalent to a broad
unless the training in the special field has been of a kind to ramify
range of activity, to a flexible, instead of to a narrow and rigid,
into the subject matter of the other fields.
coördination.
(5) Consequently, such powers as observation, recollection,
(4) Going to the root of the matter, the fundamental fallacy of the
judgment, æsthetic taste, represent organized results of the
theory is its dualism; that is to say, its separation of activities and
occupation of native active tendencies with certain subject matters.
capacities from subject matter. There is no such thing as an ability
A man does not observe closely and fully by pressing a button for
to see or hear or remember in general; there is only the ability to
the observing faculty to get to work (in other words by "willing" to
see or hear or remember something. To talk about training a power,
observe); but if he has something to do which can be accomplished
mental or physical, in general, apart from the subject matter
successfully only through intensive and extensive use of eye and
involved in its exercise, is nonsense. Exercise may react upon
hand, he naturally observes. Observation is an outcome, a
circulation, breathing, and nutrition so as to develop vigor or
consequence, of the interaction of sense organ and subject matter. It
strength, but this reservoir is available for specific ends only by use
will vary, accordingly, with the subject matter employed.
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 It is consequently futile to set up even the ulterior development
than he would if he were weak. But only by employing ball and of faculties of observation, memory, etc., unless we have first
racket, ball and club, sail and tiller, in definite ways does he become determined what sort of subject matter we wish the pupil to become
expert in any one of them; and expertness in one secures expertness expert in observing and recalling and for what purpose. And it is
in another only so far as it is either a sign of aptitude for fine only repeating in another form what has already been said, to
muscular coördinations or as the same kind of coördination is declare that the criterion here must be social. We want the person
involved in all of them. Moreover, the difference between the to note and recall and judge those things which make him an

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effective competent member of the group in which he is associated narrowing as the technical things which the professional upholders
with others. Otherwise we might as well set the pupil to observing of general education strenuously oppose.
carefully cracks on the wall and set him to memorizing meaningless
Summary.
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 -- The conception that the result of the educative process is
observing habits of a botanist or chemist or engineer are better capacity for further education stands in contrast with some other
habits than those which are thus formed, it is because they deal with ideas which have profoundly influenced practice. The first
subject matter which is more significant in life. contrasting conception considered is that of preparing or getting
ready for some future duty or privilege. Specific evil effects were
In concluding this portion of the discussion, we note that the
pointed out which result from the fact that this aim diverts
distinction between special and general education has nothing to do
attention of both teacher and taught from the only point to which it
with the transferability of function or power. In the literal sense,
may be fruitfully directed -- namely, taking advantage of the needs
any transfer is miraculous and impossible. But some activities are
and possibilities of the immediate present. Consequently it defeats
broad; they involve a coördination of many factors. Their
its own professed purpose. The notion that education is an
development demands continuous alternation and readjustment. As
unfolding from within appears to have more likeness to the
conditions change, certain factors are subordinated, and others
conception of growth which has been set forth. But as worked out in
which had been of minor importance come to the front. There is
the theories of Froebel and Hegel, it involves ignoring the
constant redistribution of the focus of the action, as is seen in the
interaction of present organic tendencies with the present
illustration of a game as over against pulling a fixed weight by a
environment, just as much as the notion of preparation. Some
series of uniform motions. Thus there is practice in prompt making
implicit whole is regarded as given ready-made and the significance
of new combinations with the focus of activity shifted to meet
of growth is merely transitory; it is not an end in itself, but simply a
change in subject matter. Wherever an activity is broad in scope
means of making explicit what is already implicit. Since that which
(that is, involves the coordinating of a large variety of sub-
is not explicit cannot be made definite use of, something has to be
activities), and is constantly and unexpectedly obliged to change
found to represent it. According to Froebel, the mystic symbolic
direction in its progressive development, general education is bound
value of certain objects and acts (largely mathematical) stand for the
to result. For this is what "general" means; broad and flexible. In
Absolute Whole which is in process of unfolding. According to
practice, education meets these conditions, and hence is general, in
Hegel, existing institutions are its effective actual representatives.
the degree in which it takes account of social relationships. A person
Emphasis upon symbols and institutions tends to divert perception
may become expert in technical philosophy, or philology, or
from the direct growth of experience in richness of meaning.
mathematics or engineering or financiering, and be inept and ill-
Another influential but defective theory is that which conceives that
advised in his action and judgment outside of his specialty. If
mind has, at birth, certain mental faculties or powers, such as
however his concern with these technical subject matters has been
perceiving, remembering, willing, judging, generalizing, attending,
connected with human activities having social breadth, the range of
etc., and that education is the training of these faculties through
active responses called into play and flexibly integrated is much
repeated exercise. This theory treats subject matter as
wider. Isolation of subject matter from a social context is the chief
comparatively external and indifferent, its value residing simply in
obstruction in current practice to securing a general training of
the fact that it may occasion exercise of the general powers.
mind. Literature, art, religion, when thus dissociated, are just as
Criticism was directed upon this separation of the alleged powers
from one another and from the material upon which they act. The

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outcome of the theory in practice was shown to be an undue CHAPTER VI
emphasis upon the training of narrow specialized modes of skill at
EDUCATION AS CONSERVATIVE AND PROGRESSIVE:
the expense of initiative, inventiveness, and readaptability --
qualities which depend upon the broad and consecutive interaction
of specific activities with one another.
1. Education as Formation.
Footnotes
-- 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,
[3] As matter of fact, the interconnection is so great, there are so
education is neither a process of unfolding from within nor is it a
many paths of construction, that every stimulus brings about some
training of faculties resident in mind itself. It is rather the formation
change in all of the organs of response. We are accustomed however
of mind by setting up certain associations or connections of content
to ignore most of these modifications of the total organic activity,
by means of a subject matter presented from without. Education
concentrating upon that one which is most specifically adapted to
proceeds by instruction taken in a strictly literal sense, a building
the most urgent stimulus of the moment.
into the mind from without. That education is formative of mind is
[4] This statement should be compared with what was said earlier not questioned; it is the conception already propounded. But
about the sequential ordering of responses (p. 25). It is merely a formation here has a technical meaning dependent upon the idea of
more explicit statement of the way in which that consecutive something operating from without.
arrangement occurs.
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

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reënforcement among the independent activities of presentations; be content with vague and more or less mystic generalities about
pain of their pulling different ways, etc. ultimate ideals and speculative spiritual symbols. He abolished the
notion of ready-made faculties, which might be trained by exercise
The concrete character of mind consists, then, wholly of the
upon any sort of material, and made attention to concrete subject
various arrangements formed by the various presentations in their
matter, to the content, all-important. Herbart undoubtedly has had
different qualities. The "furniture" of the mind is the mind. Mind is
a greater influence in bringing to the front questions connected
wholly a matter of "contents." The educational implications of this
with the material of study than any other educational philosopher.
doctrine are threefold. ( 1 ) This or that kind of mind is formed by
He stated problems of method from the standpoint of their
the use of objects which evoke this or that kind of reaction and
connection with subject matter: method having to do with the
which produce this or that arrangement among the reactions called
manner and sequence of presenting new subject matter to insure its
out. The formation of mind is wholly a matter of the presentation of
proper interaction with old.
the proper educational materials. (2) Since the earlier presentations
constitute the "apperceiving organs" which control the assimilation The fundamental theoretical defect of this view lies in ignoring
of new presentations, their character is all important. The effect of the existence in a living being of active and specific functions which
new presentations is to reënforce groupings previously formed. The are developed in the redirection and combination which occur as
business of the educator is, first, to select the proper material in they are occupied with their environment. The theory represents
order to fix the nature of the original reactions, and, secondly, to the Schoolmaster come to his own. This fact expresses at once its
arrange the sequence of subsequent presentations on the basis of the strength and its weakness. The conception that the mind consists of
store of ideas secured by prior transactions. The control is from what has been taught, and that the importance of what has been
behind, from the past, instead of, as in the unfolding conception, in taught consists in its availability for further teaching, reflects the
the ultimate goal. (3) Certain formal steps of all method in teaching pedagogue's view of life. The philosophy is eloquent about the duty
may be laid down. Presentation of new subject matter is obviously of the teacher in instructing pupils; it is almost silent regarding his
the central thing, but since knowing consists in the way in which privilege of learning. It emphasizes the influence of intellectual
this interacts with the contents already submerged below environment upon the mind; it slurs over the fact that the
consciousness, the first thing is the step of "preparation," -- that is, environment involves a personal sharing in common experiences. It
calling into special activity and getting above the floor of exaggerates beyond reason the possibilities of consciously
consciousness those older presentations which are to assimilate the formulated and used methods, and underestimates the role of vital,
new one. Then after the presentation, follow the processes of unconscious, attitudes. It insists upon the old, the past, and passes
interaction of new and old; then comes the application of the newly lightly over the operation of the genuinely novel and unforeseeable.
formed content to the performance of some task. Everything must It takes, in brief, everything educational into account save its
go through this course; consequently there is a perfectly uniform essence, -- vital energy seeking opportunity for effective exercise.
method in instruction in all subjects for all pupils of all ages. All education forms character, mental and moral, but formation
consists in the selection and coördination of native activities so that
Herbart's great service lay in taking the work of teaching out of
they may utilize the subject matter of the social environment.
the region of routine and accident. He brought it into the sphere of
Moreover, the formation is not only a formation of native activities,
conscious method; it became a conscious business with a definite
but it takes place through them. It is a process of reconstruction,
aim and procedure, instead of being a compound of casual
reorganization.
inspiration and subservience to tradition. Moreover, everything in
teaching and discipline could be specified, instead of our having to 2. Education as Recapitulation and Retrospection.

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 -- A peculiar combination of the ideas of development and existence. Development, in short, has taken place by the entrance of
formation from without has given rise to the recapitulation theory shortcuts and alterations in the prior scheme of growth. And this
of education, biological and cultural. The individual develops, but suggests that the aim of education is to facilitate such short-
his proper development consists in repeating in orderly stages the circuited growth. The great advantage of immaturity, educationally
past evolution of animal life and human history. The former speaking, is that it enables us to emancipate the young from the
recapitulation occurs physiologically; the latter should be made to need of dwelling in an outgrown past. The business of education is
occur by means of education. The alleged biological truth that the rather to liberate the young from reviving and retraversing the past
individual in his growth from the simple embryo to maturity than to lead them to a recapitulation of it. The social environment
repeats the history of the evolution of animal life in the progress of of the young is constituted by the presence and action of the habits
forms from the simplest to the most complex ( or expressed of thinking and feeling of civilized men. To ignore the directive
technically, that ontogenesis parallels phylogenesis ) does not influence of this present environment upon the young is simply to
concern us, save as it is supposed to afford scientific foundation for abdicate the educational function. A biologist has said: "The history
cultural recapitulation of the past. Cultural recapitulation says, first, of development in different animals . . . offers to us . . . a series of
that children at a certain age are in the mental and moral condition ingenious, determined, varied but more or less unsuccessful efforts
of savagery; their instincts are vagrant and predatory because their to escape from the necessity of recapitulating, and to substitute for
ancestors at one time lived such a life. Consequently (so it is the ancestral method a more direct method." Surely it would be
concluded) the proper subject matter of their education at this time foolish if education did not deliberately attempt to facilitate similar
is the material -- especially the literary material of myths, folk-tale, efforts in conscious experience so that they become increasingly
and song -- produced by humanity in the analogous stage. Then the successful.
child passes on to something corresponding, say, to the pastoral
The two factors of truth in the conception may easily be
stage, and so on till at the time when he is ready to take part in
disentangled from association with the false context which perverts
contemporary life, he arrives at the present epoch of culture.
them. On the biological side we have simply the fact that any infant
In this detailed and consistent form, the theory, outside of a small starts with precisely the assortment of impulsive activities with
school in Germany (followers of Herbart for the most part), has had which he does start, they being blind, and many of them conflicting
little currency. But the idea which underlies it is that education is with one another, casual, sporadic, and unadapted to their
essentially retrospective; that it looks primarily to the past and immediate environment. The other point is that it is a part of
especially to the literary products of the past, and that mind is wisdom to utilize the products of past history so far as they are of
adequately formed in the degree in which it is patterned upon the help for the future. Since they represent the results of prior
spiritual heritage of the past. This idea has had such immense experience, their value for future experience may, of course, be
influence upon higher instruction especially, that it is worth indefinitely great. Literatures produced in the past are, so far as
examination in its extreme formulation. men are now in possession and use of them, a part of the present
environment of individuals; but there is an enormous difference
In the first place, its biological basis is fallacious. Embyronic
between availing ourselves of them as present resources and taking
growth of the human infant preserves, without doubt, some of the
them as standards and patterns in their retrospective character.
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, ( 1 ) The distortion of the first point usually comes about through
evolutionary development would clearly not have taken place. Each misuse of the idea of heredity. It is assumed that heredity means
new generation would simply have repeated its predecessors' that past life has somehow predetermined the main traits of an

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individual, and that they are so fixed that little serious change can carried into execution settles these things. If he lived in a dumb
be introduced into them. Thus taken, the influence of heredity is unsocial environment where men refused to talk to one another and
opposed to that of the environment, and the efficacy of the latter used only that minimum of gestures without which they could not
belittled. But for educational purposes heredity means neither more get along, vocal language would be as unachieved by him as if he
nor less than the original endowment of an individual. Education had no vocal organs. If the sounds which he makes occur in a
must take the being as he is; that a particular individual has just medium of persons speaking the Chinese language, the activities
such and such an equipment of native activities is a basic fact. That which make like sounds will be selected and coordinated. This
they were produced in such and such a way, or that they are derived illustration may be applied to the entire range of the educability of
from one's ancestry, is not especially important for the educator, any individual. It places the heritage from the past in its right
however it may be with the biologist, as compared with the fact that connection with the demands and opportunities of the present.
they now exist. Suppose one had to advise or direct a person
(2) The theory that the proper subject matter of instruction is
regarding his inheritance of property. The fallacy of assuming that
found in the culture-products of past ages (either in general, or
the fact it is an inheritance, predetermines its future use, is obvious.
more specifically in the particular literatures which were produced
The advisor is concerned with making the best use of what is there -
in the culture epoch which is supposed to correspond with the stage
- putting it at work under the most favorable conditions. Obviously
of development of those taught) affords another instance of that
he cannot utilize what is not there; neither can the educator. In this
divorce between the process and product of growth which has been
sense, heredity is a limit of education. Recognition of this fact
criticized. To keep the process alive, to keep it alive in ways which
prevents the waste of energy and the irritation that ensue from the
make it easier to keep it alive in the future, is the function of
too prevalent habit of trying to make by instruction something out
educational subject matter. But an individual can live only in the
of an individual which he is not naturally fitted to become. But the
present. The present is not just something which comes after the
doctrine does not determine what use shall be made of the capacities
past; much less something produced by it. It is what life is in
which exist. And, except in the case of the imbecile, these original
leaving the past behind it. The study of past products will not help
capacities are much more varied and potential, even in the case of
us understand the present, because the present is not due to the
the more stupid, than we as yet know properly how to utilize.
products, but to the life of which they were the products. A
Consequently, while a careful study of the native aptitudes and
knowledge of the past and its heritage is of great significance when
deficiencies of an individual is always a preliminary necessity, the
it enters into the present, hut not otherwise. And the mistake of
subsequent and important step is to furnish an environment which
making the records and remains of the past the main material of
will adequately function whatever activities are present.
education is that it cuts the vital connection of present and past, and
The relation of heredity and environment is well expressed in the tends to make the past a rival of the present and the present a more
case of language. If a being had no vocal organs from which issue or less futile imitation of the past. Under such circumstances,
articulate sounds, if he had no auditory or other sense-receptors and culture becomes an ornament and solace; a refuge and an asylum.
no connections between the two sets of apparatus, it would be a Men escape from the crudities of the present to live in its imagined
sheer waste of time to try to teach him to converse. He is born short refinements, instead of using what the past offers as an agency for
in that respect, and education must accept the limitation. But if he ripening these crudities.
has this native equipment, its possession in no way guarantees that
The present, in short, generates the problems which lead us to
he will ever talk any language or what language he will talk. The
search the past for suggestion, and which supplies meaning to what
environment in which his activities occur and by which they are
we find when we search. The past is the past precisely because it

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does not include what is characteristic in the present. The moving makes one aware of some of the connections which had been
present includes the past on condition that it uses the past to direct imperceptible. To recur to our simple example, a child who reaches
its own movement. The past is a great resource for the imagination; for a bright light gets burned. Henceforth he knows that a certain
it adds a new dimension to life, but on condition that it be seen as act of touching in connection with a certain act of vision (and vice-
the past of the present, and not as another and disconnected world. versa) means heat and pain; or, a certain light means a source of
The principle which makes little of the present act of living and heat. The acts by which a scientific man in his laboratory learns
operation of growing, the only thing always present, naturally looks more about flame differ no whit in principle. By doing certain
to the past because the future goal which it sets up is remote and things, he makes perceptible certain connections of heat with other
empty. But having turned its back upon the present, it has no way things, which had been previously ignored. Thus his acts in relation
of returning to it laden with the spoils of the past. A mind that is to these things get more meaning; he knows better what he is doing
adequately sensitive to the needs and occasions of the present or "is about" when he has to do with them; he can intend
actuality will have the liveliest of motives for interest in the consequences instead of just letting them happen -- all synonymous
background of the present, and will never have to hunt for a way ways of saying the same thing. At the same stroke, the flame has
back because it will never have lost connection. gained in meaning; all that is known about combustion, oxidation,
about light and temperature, may become an intrinsic part of its
3. Education as Reconstruction.
intellectual content.
-- In its contrast with the ideas both of unfolding of latent powers
(2) The other side of an educative experience is an added power of
from within, and of the formation from without, whether by
subsequent direction or control. To say that one knows what he is
physical nature or by the cultural products of the past, the ideal of
about, or can intend certain consequences, is to say, of course, that
growth results in the conception that education is a constant
he can better anticipate what is going to happen; that he can,
reorganizing or reconstructing of experience. It has all the time an
therefore, get ready or prepare in advance so as to secure beneficial
immediate end, and so far as activity is educative, it reaches that end
consequences and avert undesirable ones. A genuinely educative
-- the direct transformation of the quality of experience. Infancy,
experience, then, one in which instruction is conveyed and ability
youth, adult life, -- all stand on the same educative level in the sense
increased, is contradistinguished from a routine activity on one
that what is really learned at any and every stage of experience
hand, and a capricious activity on the other. (a) In the latter one
constitutes the value of that experience, and in the sense that it is
"does not care what happens"; one just lets himself go and avoids
the chief business of life at every point to make living thus
connecting the consequences of one's act (the evidences of its
contribute to an enrichment of its own perceptible meaning.
connections with other things) with the act. It is customary to
We thus reach a technical definition of education: It is that frown upon such aimless random activity, treating it as willful
reconstruction or reorganization of experience which adds to the mischief or carelessness or lawlessness. But there is a tendency to
meaning of experience, and which increases ability to direct the seek the cause of such aimless activities in the youth's own
course of subsequent experience. (1) The increment of meaning disposition, isolated from everything else. But in fact such activity is
corresponds to the increased perception of the connections and explosive, and due to maladjustment with surroundings. Individuals
continuities of the activities in which we are engaged. The activity act capriciously whenever they act under external dictation, or from
begins in an impulsive form; that is, it is blind. It does not know being told, without having a purpose of their own or perceiving the
what it is about; that is to say, what are its interactions with other bearing of the deed upon other acts. One may learn by doing
activities. An activity which brings education or instruction with it something which he does not understand; even in the most

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intelligent action, we do much which we do not mean, because the make the maintenance of established custom their measure of value,
largest portion of the connections of the act we consciously intend this conception applies in the main. But not in progressive
are not perceived or anticipated. But we learn only because after the communities. They endeavor to shape the experiences of the young
act is performed we note results which we had not noted before. But so that instead of reproducing current habits, better habits shall be
much work in school consists in setting up rules by which pupils are formed, and thus the future adult society be an improvement on
to act of such a sort that even after pupils have acted, they are not their own. Men have long had some intimation of the extent to
led to see the connection between the result -- say the answer -- and which education may be consciously used to eliminate obvious social
the method pursued. So far as they are concerned, the whole thing is evils through starting the young on paths which shall not produce
a trick and a kind of miracle. Such action is essentially capricious, these ills, and some idea of the extent in which education may be
and leads to capricious habits. (b) Routine action, action which is made an instrument of realizing the better hopes of men. But we are
automatic, may increase skill to do a particular thing. In so far, it doubtless far from realizing the potential efficacy of education as a
might be said to have an educative effect. But it does not lead to constructive agency of improving society, from realizing that it
new perceptions of bearings and connections; it limits rather than represents not only a development of children and youth but also of
widens the meaning-horizon. And since the environment changes the future society of which they will be the constituents.
and our way of acting has to be modified in order successfully to
Summary.
keep a balanced connection with things, an isolated uniform way of
acting becomes disastrous at some critical moment. The vaunted -- Education may be conceived either retrospectively or
"skill" turns out gross ineptitude. 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
The essential contrast of the idea of education as continuous
for a resource in a developing future. The former finds its standards
reconstruction with the other one-sided conceptions which have
and patterns in what has gone before. The mind may be regarded as
been criticized in this and the previous chapter is that it identifies
a group of contents resulting from having certain things presented.
the end (the result) and the process. This is verbally self-
In this case, the earlier presentations constitute the material to
contradictory, but only verbally. It means that experience as an
which the later are to be assimilated. Emphasis upon the value of
active process occupies time and that its later period completes its
the early experiences of immature beings is most important,
earlier portion; it brings to light connections involved, but hitherto
especially because of the tendency to regard them as of little
unperceived. The later outcome thus reveals the meaning of the
account. But these experiences do not consist of externally
earlier, while the experience as a whole establishes a bent or
presented material, but of interaction of native activities with the
disposition toward the things possessing this meaning. Every such
environment which progressively modifies both the activities and
continuous experience or activity is educative, and all education
the environment. The defect of the Herbartian theory of formation
resides in having such experiences.
through presentations consists in slighting this constant interaction
It remains only to point out (what will receive more ample and change.
attention later) that the reconstruction of experience may be social
The same principle of criticism applies to theories which find the
as well as personal. For purposes of simplification we have spoken
primary subject matter of study in the cultural products --
in the earlier chapters somewhat as if the education of the immature
especially the literary products -- of man's history. Isolated from
which fills them with the spirit of the social group to which they
their connection with the present environment in which individuals
belong, were a sort of catching up of the child with the aptitudes
have to act, they become a kind of rival and distracting
and resources of the adult group. In static societies, societies which

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environment. Their value lies in their use to increase the meaning of CHAPTER VII
the things with which we have actively to do at the present time.
THE DEMOCRATIC CONCEPTION IN EDUCATION:
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
For the most part, save incidentally, we have hitherto been
remote future, as unfolding, as external formation, and as
concerned with education as it may exist in any social group. We
recapitulation of the past.
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. 24.)

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 The terms society, community, are thus ambiguous. They have whatever, even in a gang of thieves, we find some interest held in
both a eulogistic or normative sense, and a descriptive sense; a common, and we find a certain amount of interaction and
meaning de jure and a meaning de facto. In social philosophy, the coöperative intercourse with other groups. From these two traits
former connotation is almost always uppermost. Society is we derive our standard. How numerous and varied are the interests
conceived as one by its very nature. The qualities which accompany which are consciously shared? How full and free is the interplay
this unity, praiseworthy community of purpose and welfare, loyalty with other forms of association? If we apply these considerations to,
to public ends, mutuality of sympathy, are emphasized. But when say, a criminal band, we find that the ties which consciously hold
we look at the facts which the term denotes instead of confining our the members together are few in number, reducible almost to a
attention to its intrinsic connotation, we find not unity, but a common interest in plunder; and that they are of such a nature as to
plurality of societies, good and bad. Men banded together in a isolate the group from other groups with respect to give and take of
criminal conspiracy, business aggregations that prey upon the the values of life. Hence, the education such a society gives is partial
public while serving it, political machines held together by the and distorted. If we take, on the other hand, the kind of family life
interest of plunder, are included. If it is said that such organizations which illustrates the standard, we find that there are material,
are not societies because they do not meet the ideal requirements of intellectual, aæsthetic interests in which all participate and that the
the notion of society, the answer, in part, is that the conception of progress of one member has worth for the experience of other
society is then made so "ideal" as to be of no use, having no members -- it is readily communicable -- and that the family is not
reference to facts; and in part, that each of these organizations, no an isolated whole, but enters intimately into relationships with
matter how opposed to the interests of other groups, has something business groups, with schools, with all the agencies of culture, as
of the praiseworthy qualities of "Society" which hold it together. well as with other similar groups, and that it plays a due part in the
There is honor among thieves, and a band of robbers has a common political organization and in return receives support from it. In
interest as respects its members. Gangs are marked by fraternal short, there are many interests consciously communicated and
feeling, and narrow cliques by intense loyalty to their own codes. shared; and there are varied and free points of contact with other
Family life may be marked by exclusiveness, suspicion, and jealousy modes of association.
as to those without, and yet be a model of amity and mutual aid
I. Let us apply the first element in this criterion to a despotically
within. Any education given by a group tends to socialize its
governed state. It is not true there is no common interest in such an
members, but the quality and value of the socialization depends
organization between governed and governors. The authorities in
upon the habits and aims of the group.
command must make some appeal to the native activities of the
Hence, once more, the need of a measure for the worth of any subjects, must call some of their powers into play. Talleyrand said
given mode of social life. In seeking this measure, we have to avoid that a government could do everything with bayonets except sit on
two extremes. We cannot set up, out of our heads, something we them. This cynical declaration is at least a recognition that the bond
regard as an ideal society. We must base our conception upon of union is not merely one of coercive force. It may be said,
societies which actually exist, in order to have any assurance that however, that the activities appealed to are themselves unworthy
our ideal is a practicable one. But, as we have just seen, the ideal and degrading -- that such a government calls into functioning
cannot simply repeat the traits which are actually found. The activity simply capacity for fear. In a way, this statement is true. But
problem is to extract the desirable traits of forms of community life it overlooks the fact that fear need not be an undesirable factor in
which actually exist, and employ them to criticize undesirable experience. Caution, circumspection, prudence, desire to foresee
features and suggest improvement. Now in any social group future events so as to avert what is harmful, these desirable traits

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are as much a product of calling the impulse of fear into play as is work. It is a narrow view which restricts the science which secures
cowardice and abject submission. The real difficulty is that the efficiency of operation to movements of the muscles. The chief
appeal to fear is isolated. In evoking dread and hope of specific opportunity for science is the discovery of the relations of a man to
tangible reward -- say comfort and ease -- many other capacities are his work -- including his relations to others who take part -- which
left untouched. Or rather, they are affected, but in such a way as to will enlist his intelligent interest in what he is doing. Efficiency in
pervert them. Instead of operating on their own account they are production often demands division of labor. But it is reduced to a
reduced to mere servants of attaining pleasure and avoiding pain. mechanical routine unless workers see the technical, intellectual,
and social relationships involved in what they do, and engage in
This is equivalent to saying that there is no extensive number of
their work because of the motivation furnished by such perceptions.
common interests; there is no free play back and forth among the
The tendency to reduce such things as efficiency of activity and
members of the social group. Stimulation and response are
scientific management to purely technical externals is evidence of
exceedingly one-sided. In order to have a large number of values in
the one-sided stimulation of thought given to those in control of
common, all the members of the group must have an equable
industry -- those who supply its aims. Because of their lack of all-
opportunity to receive and to take from others. There must be a
round and well-balanced social interest, there is not sufficient
large variety of shared undertakings and experiences. Otherwise,
stimulus for attention to the human factors and relationships in
the influences which educate some into masters, educate others into
industry. Intelligence is narrowed to the factors concerned with
slaves. And the experience of each party loses in meaning, when the
technical production and marketing of goods. No doubt, a very
free interchange of varying modes of life-experience is arrested. A
acute and intense intelligence in these narrow lines can be
separation into a privileged and a subject-class prevents social
developed, but the failure to take into account the significant social
endosmosis. The evils thereby affecting the superior class are less
factors means none the less an absence of mind, and a
material and less perceptible, but equally real. Their culture tends
corresponding distortion of emotional life.
to be sterile, to be turned back to feed on itself; their art becomes a
showy display and artificial; their wealth luxurious; their knowledge II. This illustration (whose point is to be extended to all
overspecialized; their manners fastidious rather than humane. associations lacking reciprocity of interest) brings us to our second
point. The isolation and exclusiveness of a gang or clique brings its
Lack of the free and equitable intercourse which springs from a
antisocial spirit into relief. But this same spirit is found wherever
variety of shared interests makes intellectual stimulation
one group has interests "of its own" which shut it out from full
unbalanced. Diversity of stimulation means novelty, and novelty
interaction with other groups, so that its prevailing purpose is the
means challenge to thought. The more activity is restricted to a few
protection of what it has got, instead of reorganization and progress
definite lines -- as it is when there are rigid class lines preventing
through wider relationships. It marks nations in their isolation from
adequate interplay of experiences -- the more action tends to
one another; families which seclude their domestic concerns as if
become routine on the part of the class at a disadvantage, and
they had no connection with a larger life; schools when separated
capricious, aimless, and explosive on the part of the class having the
from the interest of home and community; the divisions of rich and
materially fortunate position. Plato defined a slave as one who
poor; learned and unlearned. The essential point is that isolation
accepts from another the purposes which control his conduct. This
makes for rigidity and formal institutionalizing of life, for static and
condition obtains even where there is no slavery in the legal sense.
selfish ideals within the group. That savage tribes regard aliens and
It is found wherever men are engaged in activity which is socially
enemies as synonymous is not accidental. It springs from the fact
serviceable, but whose service they do not understand and have no
that they have identified their experience with rigid adherence to
personal interest in. Much is said about scientific management of

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their past customs. On such a basis it is wholly logical to fear The superficial explanation is that a government resting upon
intercourse with others, for such contact might dissolve custom. It popular suffrage cannot be successful unless those who elect and
would certainly occasion reconstruction. It is a commonplace that who obey their governors are educated. Since a democratic society
an alert and expanding mental life depends upon an enlarging range repudiates the principle of external authority, it must find a
of contact with the physical environment. But the principle applies substitute in voluntary disposition and interest; these can be created
even more significantly to the field where we are apt to ignore it -- only by education. But there is a deeper explanation. A democracy is
the sphere of social contacts. more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of
associated living, of conjoint communicated experience. The
Every expansive era in the history of mankind has coincided with
extension in space of the number of individuals who participate in
the operation of factors which have tended to eliminate distance
an interest so that each has to refer his own action to that of others,
between peoples and classes previously hemmed off from one
and to consider the action of others to give point and direction to
another. Even the alleged benefits of war, so far as more than
his own, is equivalent to the breaking down of those barriers of
alleged, spring from the fact that conflict of peoples at least enforces
class, race, and national territory which kept men from perceiving
intercourse between them and thus accidentally enables them to
the full import of their activity. These more numerous and more
learn from one another, and thereby to expand their horizons.
varied points of contact denote a greater diversity of stimuli to
Travel, economic and commercial tendencies, have at present gone
which an individual has to respond; they consequently put a
far to break down external barriers; to bring peoples and classes
premium on variation in his action. They secure a liberation of
into closer and more perceptible connection with one another. It
powers which remain suppressed as long as the incitations to action
remains for the most part to secure the intellectual and emotional
are partial, as they must be in a group which in its exclusiveness
significance of this physical annihilation of space.
shuts out many interests.
2. The Democratic Ideal.
The widening of the area of shared concerns, and the liberation of
-- The two elements in our criterion both point to democracy. a greater diversity of personal capacities which characterize a
The first signifies not only more numerous and more varied points democracy, are not of course the product of deliberation and
of shared common interest, but greater reliance upon the conscious effort. On the contrary, they were caused by the
recognition of mutual interests as a factor in social control. The development of modes of manufacture and commerce, travel,
second means not only freer interaction between social groups ( migration, and intercommunication which flowed from the
once isolated so far as intention could keep up a separation ) but command of science over natural energy. But after greater
change in social habit -- its continuous readjustment through individualization on one hand, and a broader community of interest
meeting the new situations produced by varied intercourse. And on the other have come into existence, it is a matter of deliberate
these two traits are precisely what characterize the democratically effort to sustain and extend them. Obviously a society to which
constituted society. stratification into separate classes would be fatal, must see to it that
intellectual opportunities are accessible to all on equable and easy
Upon the educational side, we note first that the realization of a
terms. A society marked off into classes need he specially attentive
form of social life in which interests are mutually interpenetrating,
only to the education of its ruling elements. A society which is
and where progress, or readjustment, is an important consideration,
mobile, which is full of channels for the distribution of a change
makes a democratic community more interested than other
occurring anywhere, must see to it that its members are educated to
communities have cause to be in deliberate and systematic
personal initiative and adaptability. Otherwise, they will be
education. The devotion of democracy to education is a familiar fact.

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overwhelmed by the changes in which they are caught and whose perspectives. A disorganized and factional society sets up a number
significance or connections they do not perceive. The result will be of different models and standards. Under such conditions it is
a confusion in which a few will appropriate to themselves the results impossible for the individual to attain consistency of mind. Only a
of the blind and externally directed activities of others. complete whole is fully self-consistent. A society which rests upon
the supremacy of some factor over another irrespective of its
3. The Platonic Educational Philosophy.
rational or proportionate claims, inevitably leads thought astray. It
-- Subsequent chapters will be devoted to making explicit the puts a premium on certain things and slurs over others, and creates
implications of the democratic ideas in education. In the remaining a mind whose seeming unity is forced and distorted. Education
portions of this chapter, we shall consider the educational theories proceeds ultimately from the patterns furnished by institutions,
which have been evolved in three epochs when the social import of customs, and laws. Only in a just state will these be such as to give
education was especially conspicuous. The first one to be considered the right education; and only those who have rightly trained minds
is that of Plato. No one could better express than did he the fact will be able to recognize the end, and ordering principle of things.
that a society is stably organized when each individual is doing that We seem to be caught in a hopeless circle. However, Plato
for which he has aptitude by nature in such a way as to be useful to suggested a way out. A few men, philosophers or lovers of wisdom -
others (or to contribute to the whole to which he belongs ); and that - or truth -- may by study learn at least in outline the proper
it is the business of education to discover these aptitudes and patterns of true existence. If a powerful ruler should form a state
progressively to train them for social use. Much which has been said after these patterns, then its regulations could be preserved. An
so far is borrowed from what Plato first consciously taught the education could be given which would sift individuals, discovering
world. But conditions which he could not intellectually control led what they were good for, and supplying a method of assigning each
him to restrict these ideas in their application. He never got any to the work in life for which his nature fits him. Each doing his own
conception of the indefinite plurality of activities which may part, and never transgressing, the order and unity of the whole
characterize an individual and a social group, and consequently would be maintained.
limited his view to a limited number of classes of capacities and of
It would be impossible to find in any scheme of philosophic
social arrangements.
thought a more adequate recognition on one hand of the educational
Plato's starting point is that the organization of society depends significance of social arrangements and, on the other, of the
ultimately upon knowledge of the end of existence. If we do not dependence of those arrangements upon the means used to educate
know its end, we shall be at the mercy of accident and caprice. the young. It would be impossible to find a deeper sense of the
Unless we know the end, the good, we shall have no criterion for function of education in discovering and developing personal
rationally deciding what the possibilities are which should be capacities, and training them so that they would connect with the
promoted, nor how social arrangements are to be ordered. We shall activities of others. Yet the society in which the theory was
have no conception of the proper limits and distribution of activities propounded was so undemocratic that Plato could not work out a
-- what he called justice -- as a trait of both individual and social solution for the problem whose terms he clearly saw.
organization. But how is the knowledge of the final and permanent
While he affirmed with emphasis that the place of the individual
good to be achieved? In dealing with this question we come upon
in society should not be determined by birth or wealth or any
the seemingly insuperable obstacle that such knowledge is not
conventional status, but by his own nature as discovered in the
possible save in a just and harmonious social order. Everywhere else
process of education, he had no perception of the uniqueness of
the mind is distracted and misled by false valuations and false
individuals. For him they fall by nature into classes, and into a very

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small number of classes at that. Consequently the testing and sifting Although his educational philosophy was revolutionary, it was none
function of education only shows to which one of three classes an the less in bondage to static ideals. He thought that change or
individual belongs. There being no recognition that each individual alteration was evidence of lawless flux; that true reality was
constitutes his own class, there could be no recognition of the unchangeable. Hence while he would radically change the existing
infinite diversity of active tendencies and combinations of state of society, his aim was to construct a state in which change
tendencies of which an individual is capable. There were only three would subsequently have no place. The final end of life is fixed;
types of faculties or powers in the individual's constitution. Hence given a state framed with this end in view, not even minor details
education would soon reach a static limit in each class, for only are to be altered. Though they might not be inherently important,
diversity makes change and progress. 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
In some individuals, appetites naturally dominate; they are
philosophy is made apparent in the fact that he could not trust to
assigned to the laboring and trading class, which expresses and
gradual improvements in education to bring about a better society
supplies human wants. Others reveal, upon education, that over and
which should then improve education, and so on indefinitely.
above appetites, they have a generous, outgoing, assertively
Correct education could not come into existence until an ideal state
courageous disposition. They become the citizen-subjects of the
existed, and after that education would be devoted simply to its
state; its defenders in war; its internal guardians in peace. But their
conservation. For the existence of this state he was obliged to trust
limit is fixed by their lack of reason, which is a capacity to grasp the
to some happy accident by which philosophic wisdom should
universal. Those who possess this are capable of the highest kind of
happen to coincide with possession of ruling power in the state.
education, and become in time the legislators of the state -- for laws
are the universals which control the particulars of experience. Thus 4. The "Individualistic" Ideal of the Eighteenth Century.
it is not true that in intent, Plato subordinated the individual to the
-- In the eighteenth-century philosophy we find ourselves in a
social whole. But it is true that lacking the perception of the
very different circle of ideas. "Nature" still means something
uniqueness of every individual, his incommensurability with others,
antithetical to existing social organization; Plato exercised a great
and consequently not recognizing that a society might change and
influence upon Rousseau. But the voice of nature now speaks for the
yet be stable, his doctrine of limited powers and classes came in net
diversity of individual talent and for the need of free development of
effect to the idea of the subordination of individuality.
individuality in all its variety. Education in accord with nature
We cannot better Plato's conviction that an individual is happy furnishes the goal and the method of instruction and discipline.
and society well organized when each individual engages in those Moreover, the native or original endowment was conceived, in
activities for which he has a natural equipment, nor his conviction extreme cases, as nonsocial or even as antisocial. Social
that it is the primary office of education to discover this equipment arrangements were thought of as mere external expedients by
to its possessor and train him for its effective use. But progress in which these nonsocial individuals might secure a greater amount of
knowledge has made us aware of the superficiality of Plato's private happiness for themselves.
lumping of individuals and their original powers into a few sharply
Nevertheless, these statements convey only an inadequate idea of
marked-off classes; it has taught us that original capacities are
the true significance of the movement. In reality its chief interest
indefinitely numerous and variable. It is but the other side of this
was in progress and in social progress. The seeming antisocial
fact to say that in the degree in which society has become
philosophy was a somewhat transparent mask for an impetus
democratic, social organization means utilization of the specific and
toward a wider and freer society -- toward cosmopolitanism. The
variable qualities of individuals, not stratification by classes.

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positive ideal was humanity. In membership in humanity, as distinct sensationalistic theory of knowledge which was current derived
from a state, man's capacities would be liberated; while in existing itself from this conception. To insist that mind is originally passive
political organizations his powers were hampered and distorted to and empty was one way of glorifying the possibilities of education.
meet the requirements and selfish interests of the rulers of the state. If the mind was a wax tablet to be written upon by objects, there
The doctrine of extreme individualism was but the counterpart, the were no limits to the possibility of education by means of the
obverse, of ideals of the indefinite perfectibility of man and of a natural environment. And since the natural world of objects is a
social organization having a scope as wide as humanity. The scene of harmonious "truth," this education would infallibly produce
emancipated individual was to become the organ and agent of a minds filled with the truth.
comprehensive and progressive society.
5. Education as National and as Social.
The heralds of this gospel were acutely conscious of the evils of
-- As soon as the first enthusiasm for freedom waned, the
the social estate in which they found themselves. They attributed
weakness of the theory upon the constructive side became obvious.
these evils to the limitations imposed upon the free powers of man.
Merely to leave everything to nature was, after all, but to negate
Such limitation was both distorting and corrupting. Their
the very idea of education; it was to trust to the accidents of
impassioned devotion to emancipation of life from external
circumstance. Not only was some method required but also some
restrictions which operated to the exclusive advantage of the class
positive organ, some administrative agency for carrying on the
to whom a past feudal system consigned power, found intellectual
process of instruction. The "complete and harmonious development
formulation in a worship of nature. To give "nature" full swing was
of all powers," having as its social counterpart an enlightened and
to replace an artificial, corrupt, and inequitable social order by a
progressive humanity, required definite organization for its
new and better kingdom of humanity. Unrestrained faith in Nature
realization. Private individuals here and there could proclaim the
as both a model and a working power was strengthened by the
gospel; they could not execute the work. A Pestalozzi could try
advances of natural science. Inquiry freed from prejudice and
experiments and exhort philanthropically inclined persons having
artificial restraints of church and state had revealed that the world
wealth and power to follow his example. But even Pestalozzi saw
is a scene of law. The Newtonian solar system, which expressed the
that any effective pursuit of the new educational ideal required the
reign of natural law, was a scene of wonderful harmony, where
support of the state. The realization of the new education destined
every force balanced with every other. Natural law would
to produce a new society was, after all, dependent upon the
accomplish the same result in human relations, if men would only
activities of existing states. The movement for the democratic idea
get rid of the artificial man-imposed coercive restrictions.
inevitably became a movement for publicly conducted and
Education in accord with nature was thought to be the first step administered schools.
in insuring this more social society. It was plainly seen that
So far as Europe was concerned, the historic situation identified
economic and political limitations were ultimately dependent upon
the movement for a state-supported education with the nationalistic
limitations of thought and feeling. The first step in freeing men
movement in political life -- a fact of incalculable significance for
from external chains was to emancipate them from the internal
subsequent movements. Under the influence of German thought in
chains of false beliefs and ideals. What was called social life, existing
particular, education became a civic function and the civic function
institutions, were too false and corrupt to be intrusted with this
was identified with the realization of the ideal of the national state.
work. How could it be expected to undertake it when the
The "state" was substituted for humanity; cosmopolitanism gave
undertaking meant its own destruction? "Nature" must then be the
way to nationalism. To form the citizen, not the "man," became the
power to which the enterprise was to be left. Even the extreme

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aim of education. 5 The historic situation to which reference is made only way in which he can become truly rational. The notion of
is the after-effects of the Napoleonic conquests, especially in development which we have seen to be characteristic of institutional
Germany. The German states felt (and subsequent events idealism (as in the Hegelian philosophy) was just such a deliberate
demonstrate the correctness of the belief ) that systematic attention effort to combine the two ideas of complete realization of
to education was the best means of recovering and maintaining personality and thoroughgoing "disciplinary" subordination to
their political integrity and power. Externally they were weak and existing institutions.
divided. Under the leadership of Prussian statesmen they made this
The extent of the transformation of educational philosophy which
condition a stimulus to the development of an extensive and
occurred in Germany in the generation occupied by the struggle
thoroughly grounded system of public education.
against Napoleon for national independence, may be gathered from
This change in practice necessarily brought about a change in Kant, who well expresses the earlier individual-cosmopolitan ideal.
theory. The individualistic theory receded into the background. The In his treatise on Pedagogics, consisting of lectures given in the
state furnished not only the instrumentalities of public education later years of the eighteenth century, he defines education as the
but also its goal. When the actual practice was such that the school process by which man becomes man. Mankind begins its history
system, from the elementary grades through the university submerged in nature -- not as Man who is a creature of reason,
faculties, supplied the patriotic citizen and soldier and the future while nature furnishes only instinct and appetite. Nature offers
state official and administrator and furnished the means for military, simply the germs which education is to develop and perfect. The
industrial, and political defense and expansion, it was impossible for peculiarity of truly human life is that man has to create himself by
theory not to emphasize the aim of social efficiency. And with the his own voluntary efforts; he has to make himself a truly moral,
immense importance attached to the nationalistic state, surrounded rational, and free being. This creative effort is carried on by the
by other competing and more or less hostile states, it was equally educational activities of slow generations. Its acceleration depends
impossible to interpret social efficiency in terms of a vague upon men consciously striving to educate their successors not for
cosmopolitan humanitarianism. Since the maintenance of a the existing state of affairs but so as to make possible a future better
particular national sovereignty required subordination of humanity. But there is the great difficulty. Each generation is
individuals to the superior interests of the state both in military inclined to educate its young so as to get along in the present world
defense and in struggles for international supremacy in commerce, instead of with a view to the proper end of education: the promotion
social efficiency was understood to imply a like subordination. The of the best possible realization of humanity as humanity. Parents
educational process was taken to be one of disciplinary training educate their children so that they may get on; princes educate their
rather than of personal development. Since, however, the ideal of subjects as instruments of their own purposes.
culture as complete development of personality persisted,
Who, then, shall conduct education so that humanity may
educational philosophy attempted a reconciliation of the two ideas.
improve? We must depend upon the efforts of enlightened men in
The reconciliation took the form of the conception of the "organic"
their private capacity. "All culture begins with private men and
character of the state. The individual in his isolation is nothing;
spreads outward from them. Simply through the efforts of persons
only in and through an absorption of the aims and meaning of
of enlarged inclinations, who are capable of grasping the ideal of a
organized institutions does he attain true personality. What appears
future better condition, is the gradual approximation of human
to be his subordination to political authority and the demand for
nature to its end possible.... Rulers are simply interested in such
sacrifice of himself to the commands of his superiors is in reality but
training as will make their subjects better tools for their own
making his own the objective reason manifested in the state -- the
intentions." Even the subsidy by rulers of privately conducted

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schools must be carefully safeguarded. For the rulers' interest in the humanity on the other. Consequently, it is equally possible to state
welfare of their own nation instead of in what is best for humanity, its animating principle with equal truth either in the classic terms of
will make them, if they give money for the schools, wish to draw "harmonious development of all the powers of personality" or in the
their plans. We have in this view an express statement of the points more recent terminology of "social efficiency." All this reënforces
characteristic of the eighteenth century individualistic the statement which opens this chapter: The conception of
cosmopolitanism. The full development of private personality is education as a social process and function has no definite meaning
identified with the aims of humanity as a whole and with the idea of until we define the kind of society we have in mind.
progress. In addition we have an explicit fear of the hampering
These considerations pave the way for our second conclusion.
influence of a state-conducted and state-regulated education upon
One of the fundamental problems of education in and for a
the attainment of these ideas. But in less than two decades after this
democratic society is set by the conflict of a nationalistic and a
time, Kant's philosophic successors, Fichte and Hegel, elaborated
wider social aim. The earlier cosmopolitan and "humanitarian"
the idea that the chief function of the state is educational; that in
conception suffered both from vagueness and from lack of definite
particular the regeneration of Germany is to be accomplished by an
organs of execution and agencies of administration. In Europe, in
education carried on in the interests of the state, and that the
the Continental states particularly, the new idea of the importance
private individual is of necessity an egoistic, irrational being,
of education for human welfare and progress was captured by
enslaved to his appetites and to circumstances unless he submits
national interests and harnessed to do a work whose social aim was
voluntarily to the educative discipline of state institutions and laws.
definitely narrow and exclusive. The social aim of education and its
In this spirit, Germany was the first country to undertake a public,
national aim were identified, and the result was a marked obscuring
universal, and compulsory system of education extending from the
of the meaning of a social aim.
primary school through the university, and to submit to jealous
state regulation and supervision all private educational enterprises. This confusion corresponds to the existing situation of human
intercourse. On the one hand, science, commerce, and art transcend
Two results should stand out from this brief historical survey.
national boundaries. They are largely international in quality and
The first is that such terms as the individual and the social
method. They involve interdependencies and coöperation among
conceptions of education are quite meaningless taken at large, or
the peoples inhabiting different countries. At the same time, the idea
apart from their context. Plato had the ideal of an education which
of national sovereignty has never been as accentuated in politics as
should equate individual realization and social coherency and
it is at the present time. Each nation lives in a state of suppressed
stability. His situation forced his ideal into the notion of a society
hostility and incipient war with its neighbors. Each is supposed to
organized in stratified classes, losing the individual in the class. The
be the supreme judge of its own interests, and it is assumed as
eighteenth century educational philosophy was highly
matter of course that each has interests which are exclusively its
individualistic in form, but this form was inspired by a noble and
own. To question this is to question the very idea of national
generous social ideal: that of a society organized to include
sovereignty which is assumed to be basic to political practice and
humanity, and providing for the indefinite perfectibility of mankind.
political science. This contradiction (for it is nothing less) between
The idealistic philosophy of Germany in the early nineteenth
the wider sphere of associated and mutually helpful social life and
century endeavored again to equate the ideals of a free and complete
the narrower sphere of exclusive and hence potentially hostile
development of cultured personality with social discipline and
pursuits and purposes, exacts of educational theory a clearer
political subordination. It made the national state an intermediary
conception of the meaning of "social" as a function and test of
between the realization of private personality on one side and of
education than has yet been attained.

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 Is it possible for an educational system to be conducted by a philosophy of education, the impression shows that the meaning of
national state and yet the full social ends of the educative process the idea of education previously developed has not been adequately
not be restricted, constrained, and corrupted? Internally, the grasped. This conclusion is bound up with the very idea of
question has to face the tendencies, due to present economic education as a freeing of individual capacity in a progressive growth
conditions, which split society into classes some of which are made directed to social aims. Otherwise a democratic criterion of
merely tools for the higher culture of others. Externally, the education can only be inconsistently applied.
question is concerned with the reconciliation of national loyalty, of
Summary.
patriotism, with superior devotion to the things which unite men in
common ends, irrespective of national political boundaries. Neither -- Since education is a social process, and there are many kinds of
phase of the problem can be worked out by merely negative means. societies, a criterion for educational criticism and construction
It is not enough to see to it that education is not actively used as an implies a particular social ideal. The two points selected by which to
instrument to make easier the exploitation of one class by another. measure the worth of a form of social life are the extent in which the
School facilities must be secured of such amplitude and efficiency as interests of a group are shared by all its members, and the fullness
will in fact and not simply in name discount the effects of economic and freedom with which it interacts with other groups. An
inequalities, and secure to all the wards of the nation equality of undesirable society, in other words, is one which internally and
equipment for their future careers. Accomplishment of this end externally sets up barriers to free intercourse and communication of
demands not only adequate administrative provision of school experience. A society which makes provision for participation in its
facilities, and such supplementation of family resources as will good of all its members on equal terms and which secures flexible
enable youth to take advantage of them, but also such modification readjustment of its institutions through interaction of the different
of traditional ideals of culture, traditional subjects of study and forms of associated life is in so far democratic. Such a society must
traditional methods of teaching and discipline as will retain all the have a type of education which gives individuals a personal interest
youth under educational influences until they are equipped to be in social relationships and control, and the habits of mind which
masters of their own economic and social careers. The ideal may secure social changes without introducing disorder.
seem remote of execution, but the democratic ideal of education is a
Three typical historic philosophies of education were considered
farcical yet tragic delusion except as the ideal more and more
from this point of view. The Platonic was found to have an ideal
dominates our public system of education.
formally quite similar to that stated, but which was compromised in
The same principle has application on the side of the its working out by making a class rather than an individual the
considerations which concern the relations of one nation to another. social unit. The so-called individualism of the eighteenth-century
It is not enough to teach the horrors of war and to avoid everything enlightenment was found to involve the notion of a society as broad
which would stimulate international jealousy and animosity. The as humanity, of whose progress the individual was to be the organ.
emphasis must be put upon whatever binds people together in But it lacked any agency for securing the development of its ideal as
coöperative human pursuits and results, apart from geographical was evidenced in its falling back upon Nature. The institutional
limitations. The secondary and provisional character of national idealistic philosophies of the nineteenth century supplied this lack
sovereignty in respect to the fuller, freer, and more fruitful by making the national state the agency, but in so doing narrowed
association and intercourse of all human beings with one another the conception of the social aim to those who were members of the
must be instilled as a working disposition of mind. If these same political unit, and reintroduced the idea of the subordination of
applications seem to be remote from a consideration of the the individual to the institution.

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Footnotes CHAPTER VIII
AIMS IN EDUCATION:
[5] There is a much neglected strain in Rousseau tending
intellectually in this direction. He opposed the existing state of
1. The Nature of an Aim.
affairs on the ground that it formed neither the citizen nor the man.
Under existing conditions, he preferred to try for the latter rather -- The account of education given in our earlier chapters virtually
than for the former. But there are many sayings of his which point anticipated the results reached in a discussion of the purport of
to the formation of the citizen as ideally the higher, and which education in a democratic community. For it assumed that the aim
indicate that his own endeavor, as embodied in the Emile, was of education is to enable individuals to continue their education -- or
simply the best makeshift the corruption of the times permitted him that the object and reward of learning is continued capacity for
to sketch. 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

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of affairs as a beginning, a later as an end, and to consider what conditions do not permit of foresight of results, and do not
intervenes as a process of transformation and realization. stimulate a person to look ahead to see what the outcome of a given
activity is to be.
Consider for example the activities of bees in contrast with the
changes in the sands when the wind blows them about. The results In the next place the aim as a foreseen end gives direction to the
of the bees' actions may be called ends not because they are activity; it is not an idle view of a mere spectator, but influences the
designed or consciously intended, but because they are true steps taken to reach the end. The foresight functions in three ways.
terminations or completions of what has preceded. When the bees In the first place, it involves careful observation of the given
gather pollen and make wax and build cells, each step prepares the conditions to see what are the means available for reaching the end,
way for the next. When cells are built, the queen lays eggs in them; and to discover the hindrances in the way. In the second place, it
when eggs are laid, they are sealed and bees brood them and keep suggests the proper order or sequence in the use of means. It
them at a temperature required to hatch them. When they are facilitates an economical selection and arrangement. In the third
hatched, bees feed the young till they can take care of themselves. place, it makes choice of alternatives possible. If we can predict the
Now we are so familiar with such facts, that we are apt to dismiss outcome of acting this way or that, we can then compare the value
them on the ground that life and instinct are a kind of miraculous of the two courses of action; we can pass judgment upon their
thing anyway. Thus we fail to note what the essential characteristic relative desirability. If we know that stagnant water breeds
of the event is; namely, the significance of the temporal place and mosquitoes and that they are likely to carry disease, we can,
order of each element; the way each prior event leads into its disliking that anticipated result, take steps to avert it. Since we do
successor while the successor takes up what is furnished and utilizes not anticipate results as mere intellectual onlookers, but as persons
it for some other stage, until we arrive at the end, which, as it were, concerned in the outcome, we are partakers in the process which
summarizes and finishes off the process. produces the result. We intervene to bring about this result or that.
Since aims relate always to results, the first thing to look to when Of course these three points are closely connected with one
it is a question of aims, is whether the work assigned possesses another. We can definitely foresee results only as we make careful
intrinsic continuity. Or is it a mere serial aggregate of acts, first scrutiny of present conditions, and the importance of the outcome
doing one thing and then another? To talk about an educational aim supplies the motive for observations. The more adequate our
when approximately each act of a pupil is dictated by the teacher, observations, the more varied is the scene of conditions and
when the only order in the sequence of his acts is that which comes obstructions that presents itself, and the more numerous are the
from the assignment of lessons and the giving of directions by alternatives between which choice may be made. In turn, the more
another, is to talk nonsense. It is equally fatal to an aim to permit numerous the recognized possibilities of the situation, or
capricious or discontinuous action in the name of spontaneous self- alternatives of action, the more meaning does the chosen activity
expression. An aim implies an orderly and ordered activity, one in possess, and the more flexibly controllable is it. Where only a single
which the order consists in the progressive completing of a process. outcome has been thought of, the mind has nothing else to think of;
Given an activity having a time span and cumulative growth within the meaning attaching to the act is limited. One only steams ahead
the time succession, an aim means foresight in advance of the end or toward the mark. Sometimes such a narrow course may be effective.
possible termination. If bees anticipated the consequences of their But if unexpected difficulties offer themselves, one has not as many
activity, if they perceived their end in imaginative foresight, they resources at command as if he had chosen the same line of action
would have the primary element in an aim. Hence it is nonsense to after a broader survey of the possibilities of the field. He cannot
talk about the aim of education -- or any other undertaking -- where make needed readjustments readily.

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 The net conclusion is that acting with an aim is all one with -- We may apply the results of our discussion to a consideration
acting intelligently. To foresee a terminus of an act is to have a of the criteria involved in a correct establishing of aims. (1) The aim
basis upon which to observe, to select, and to order objects and our set up must be an outgrowth of existing conditions. It must be
own capacities. To do these things means to have a mind -- for mind based upon a consideration of what is already going on; upon the
is precisely intentional purposeful activity controlled by perception resources and difficulties of the situation. Theories about the proper
of facts and their relationships to one another. To have a mind to do end of our activities -- educational and moral theories -- often
a thing is to foresee a future possibility; it is to have a plan for its violate this principle. They assume ends lying outside our activities;
accomplishment; it is to note the means which make the plan ends foreign to the concrete makeup of the situation; ends which
capable of execution and the obstructions in the way, -- or, if it is issue from some outside source. Then the problem is to bring our
really a mind to do the thing and not a vague aspiration -- it is to activities to bear upon the realization of these externally supplied
have a plan which takes account of resources and difficulties. Mind ends. They are something for which we ought to act. In any case
is capacity to refer present conditions to future results, and future such "aims" limit intelligence; they are not the expression of mind
consequences to present conditions. And these traits are just what is in foresight, observation, and choice of the better among alternative
meant by having an aim or a purpose. A man is stupid or blind or possibilities. They limit intelligence because, given ready-made,
unintelligent -- lacking in mind -- just in the degree in which in any they must be imposed by some authority external to intelligence,
activity he does not know what he is about, namely, the probable leaving to the latter nothing but a mechanical choice of means.
consequences of his acts. A man is imperfectly intelligent when he
(2) We have spoken as if aims could be completely formed prior
contents himself with looser guesses about the outcome than is
to the attempt to realize them. This impression must now be
needful, just taking a chance with his luck, or when he forms plans
qualified. The aim as it first emerges is a mere tentative sketch. The
apart from study of the actual conditions, including his own
act of striving to realize it tests its worth. If it suffices to direct
capacities. Such relative absence of mind means to make our feelings
activity successfully, nothing more is required, since its whole
the measure of what is to happen. To be intelligent we must "stop,
function is to set a mark in advance; and at times a mere hint may
look, listen" in making the plan of an activity.
suffice. But usually -- at least in complicated situations -- acting
To identify acting with an aim and intelligent activity is enough upon it brings to light conditions which had been overlooked. This
to show its value -- its function in experience. We are only too calls for revision of the original aim; it has to be added to and
given to making an entity out of the abstract noun "consciousness." subtracted from. An aim must, then, be flexible; it must be capable
We forget that it comes from the adjective "conscious." To be of alteration to meet circumstances. An end established externally
conscious is to be aware of what we are about; conscious signifies to the process of action is always rigid. Being inserted or imposed
the deliberate, observant, planning traits of activity. Consciousness from without, it is not supposed to have a working relationship to
is nothing which we have which gazes idly on the scene around one the concrete conditions of the situation. What happens in the course
or which has impressions made upon it by physical things; it is a of action neither confirms, refutes, nor alters it. Such an end can
name for the purposeful quality of an activity, for the fact that it is only be insisted upon. The failure that results from its lack of
directed by an aim. Put the other way about, to have an aim is to act adaptation is attributed simply to the perverseness of conditions,
with meaning, not like an automatic machine; it is to mean to do not to the fact that the end is not reasonable under the
something and to perceive the meaning of things in the light of that circumstances. The value of a legitimate aim, on the contrary, lies in
intent. 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.
2. The Criteria of Good Aims.

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A farmer who should passively accept things just as he finds them means from end, while an end which grows up within an activity as
would make as great a mistake as he who framed his plans in plan for its direction is always both ends and means, the distinction
complete disregard of what soil, climate, etc., permit. One of the being only one of convenience. Every means is a temporary end
evils of an abstract or remote external aim in education is that its until we have attained it. Every end becomes a means of carrying
very inapplicability in practice is likely to react into a haphazard activity further as soon as it is achieved. We call it end when it
snatching at immediate conditions. A good aim surveys the present marks off the future direction of the activity in which we are
state of experience of pupils, and forming a tentative plan of engaged; means when it marks off the present direction. Every
treatment, keeps the plan constantly in view and yet modifies it as divorce of end from means diminishes by that much the significance
conditions develop. The aim, in short, is experimental, and hence of the activity and tends to reduce it to a drudgery from which one
constantly growing as it is tested in action. 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
(3) The aim must always represent a freeing of activities. The
to his life whether he is fond of them, or whether he regards them
term end in view is suggestive, for it puts before the mind the
merely as means which he has to employ to get something else in
termination or conclusion of some process. The only way in which
which alone he is interested. In the former case, his entire course of
we can define an activity is by putting before ourselves the objects
activity is significant; each phase of it has its own value. He has the
in which it terminates -- as one's aim in shooting is the target. But
experience of realizing his end at every stage; the postponed aim, or
we must remember that the object is only a mark or sign by which
end in view, being merely a sight ahead by which to keep his
the mind specifies the activity one desires to carry out. Strictly
activity going fully and freely. For if he does not look ahead, he is
speaking, not the target but hitting the target is the end in view;
more likely to find himself blocked. The aim is as definitely a means
one takes aim by means of the target, but also by the sight on the
of action as is any other portion of an activity.
gun. The different objects which are thought of are means of
directing the activity. Thus one aims at, say, a rabbit; what he wants 3. Applications in Education.
is to shoot straight: a certain kind of activity. Or, if it is the rabbit
-- There is nothing peculiar about educational aims. They are just
he wants, it is not rabbit apart from his activity, but as a factor in
like aims in any directed occupation. The educator, like the farmer,
activity; he wants to eat the rabbit, or to show it as evidence of his
has certain things to do, certain resources with which to do, and
marksmanship -- he wants to do something with it. The doing with
certain obstacles with which to contend. The conditions with which
the thing, not the thing in isolation, is his end. The object is but a
the farmer deals, whether as obstacles or resources, have their own
phase of the active end, -- continuing the activity successfully. This
structure and operation independently of any purpose of his. Seeds
is what is meant by the phrase, used above, "freeing activity."
sprout, rain falls, the sun shines, insects devour, blight comes, the
In contrast with fulfilling some process in order that activity may seasons change. His aim is simply to utilize these various
go on, stands the static character of an end which is imposed from conditions; to make his activities and their energies work together,
without the activity. It is always conceived of as fixed; it is instead of against one another. It would be absurd if the farmer set
something to be attained and possessed. When one has such a up a purpose of farming, without any reference to these conditions
notion, activity is a mere unavoidable means to something else; it is of soil, climate, characteristic of plant growth, etc. His purpose is
not significant or important on its own account. As compared with simply a foresight of the consequences of his energies connected
the end it is but a necessary evil; something which must be gone with those of the things about him, a foresight used to direct his
through before one can reach the object which is alone worth while. movements from day to day. Foresight of possible consequences
In other words, the external idea of the aim leads to a separation of leads to more careful and extensive observation of the nature and

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performances of the things he had to do with, and to laying out a general, there is a disposition to take considerations which are dear
plan -- that is, of a certain order in the acts to be performed. to the hearts of adults and set them up as ends irrespective of the
capacities of those educated. There is also an inclination to
It is the same with the educator, whether parent or teacher. It is
propound aims which are so uniform as to neglect the specific
as absurd for the latter to set up his "own" aims as the proper
powers and requirements of an individual, forgetting that all
objects of the growth of the children as it would be for the farmer to
learning is something which happens to an individual at a given
set up an ideal of farming irrespective of conditions. Aims mean
time and place. The larger range of perception of the adult is of
acceptance of responsibility for the observations, anticipations, and
great value in observing the abilities and weaknesses of the young,
arrangements required in carrying on a function -- whether farming
in deciding what they may amount to. Thus the artistic capacities of
or educating. Any aim is of value so far as it assists observation,
the adult exhibit what certain tendencies of the child are capable of;
choice, and planning in carrying on activity from moment to
if we did not have the adult achievements we should be without
moment and hour to hour; if it gets in the way of the individual's
assurance as to the significance of the drawing, reproducing,
own common sense ( as it will surely do if imposed from without or
modeling, coloring activities of childhood. So if it were not for adult
accepted on authority ) it does harm.
language, we should not be able to see the import of the babbling
And it is well to remind ourselves that education as such has no impulses of infancy. But it is one thing to use adult
aims. Only persons, parents, and teachers, etc., have aims, not an accomplishments as a context in which to place and survey the
abstract idea like education. And consequently their purposes are doings of childhood and youth; it is quite another to set them up as
indefinitely varied, differing with different children, changing as a fixed aim without regard to the concrete activities of those
children grow and with the growth of experience on the part of the educated.
one who teaches. Even the most valid aims which can be put in
(2) An aim must be capable of translation into a method of
words will, as words, do more harm than good unless one
coöperating with the activities of those undergoing instruction. It
recognizes that they are not aims, but rather suggestions to
must suggest the kind of environment needed to liberate and to
educators as to how to observe, how to look ahead, and how to
organize their capacities. Unless it lends itself to the construction of
choose in liberating and directing the energies of the concrete
specific procedures, and unless these procedures test, correct, and
situations in which they find themselves. As a recent writer has
amplify the aim, the latter is worthless. Instead of helping the
said: "To lead this boy to read Scott's novels instead of old Sleuth's
specific task of teaching, it prevents the use of ordinary judgment in
stories; to teach this girl to sew; to root out the habit of bullying
observing and sizing up the situation. It operates to exclude
from John's make-up; to prepare this class to study medicine, --
recognition of everything except what squares up with the fixed end
these are samples of the millions of aims we have actually before us
in view. Every rigid aim just because it is rigidly given seems to
in the concrete work of education."
render it unnecessary to give careful attention to concrete
Bearing these qualifications in mind, we shall proceed to state conditions. Since it must apply anyhow, what is the use of noting
some of the characteristics found in all good educational aims. (1) details which do not count?
An educational aim must be founded upon the intrinsic activities
The vice of externally imposed ends has deep roots. Teachers
and needs (including original instincts and acquired habits) of the
receive them from superior authorities; these authorities accept
given individual to be educated. The tendency of such an aim as
them from what is current in the community. The teachers impose
preparation is, as we have seen, to omit existing powers, and find
them upon children. As a first consequence, the intelligence of the
the aim in some remote accomplishment or responsibility. In
teacher is not free; it is confined to receiving the aims laid down

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from above. Too rarely is the individual teacher so free from the currency in the educational theories of the day, and consider what
dictation of authoritative supervisor, textbook on methods, light they throw upon the immediate concrete and diversified aims
prescribed course of study, etc., that he can let his mind come to which are always the educator's real concern. We premise (as indeed
close quarters with the pupil's mind and the subject matter. This immediately follows from what has been said) that there is no need
distrust of the teacher's experience is then reflected in lack of of making a choice among them or regarding them as competitors.
confidence in the responses of pupils. The latter receive their aims When we come to act in a tangible way we have to select or choose
through a double or treble external imposition, and are constantly a particular act at a particular time, but any number of
confused by the conflict between the aims which are natural to their comprehensive ends may exist without competition, since they
own experience at the time and those in which they are taught to mean simply different ways of looking at the same scene. One
acquiesce. Until the democratic criterion of the intrinsic significance cannot climb a number of different mountains simultaneously, but
of every growing experience is recognized, we shall be intellectually the views had when different mountains are ascended supplement
confused by the demand for adaptation to external aims. one another: they do not set up incompatible, competing worlds. Or,
putting the matter in a slightly different way, one statement of an
(3) Educators have to be on their guard against ends that are
end may suggest certain questions and observations, and another
alleged to be general and ultimate. Every activity, however specific,
statement another set of questions, calling for other observations.
is, of course, general in its ramified connections, for it leads out
Then the more general ends we have, the better. One statement will
indefinitely into other things. So far as a general idea makes us
emphasize what another slurs over. What a plurality of hypotheses
more alive to these connections, it cannot be too general. But
does for the scientific investigator, a plurality of stated aims may do
"general" also means "abstract," or detached from all specific
for the instructor.
context. And such abstractness means remoteness, and throws us
back, once more, upon teaching and learning as mere means of Summary.
getting ready for an end disconnected from the means. That
-- An aim denotes the result of any natural process brought to
education is literally and all the time its own reward means that no
consciousness and made a factor in determining present observation
alleged study or discipline is educative unless it is worth while in its
and choice of ways of acting. It signifies that an activity has become
own immediate having. A truly general aim broadens the outlook; it
intelligent. Specifically it means foresight of the alternative
stimulates one to take more consequences (connections) into
consequences attendant upon acting in a given situation in different
account. This means a wider and more flexible observation of
ways, and the use of what is anticipated to direct observation and
means. The more interacting forces, for example, the farmer takes
experiment. A true aim is thus opposed at every point to an aim
into account, the more varied will be his immediate resources. He
which is imposed upon a process of action from without. The latter
will see a greater number of possible starting places, and a greater
is fixed and rigid; it is not a stimulus to intelligence in the given
number of ways of getting at what he wants to do. The fuller one's
situation, but is an externally dictated order to do such and such
conception of possible future achievements, the less his present
things. Instead of connecting directly with present activities, it is
activity is tied down to a small number of alternatives. If one knew
remote, divorced from the means by which it is to be reached.
enough, one could start almost anywhere and sustain his activities
Instead of suggesting a freer and better balanced activity, it is a
continuously and fruitfully.
limit set to activity. In education, the currency of these externally
Understanding then the term general or comprehensive aim imposed aims is responsible for the emphasis put upon the notion of
simply in the sense of a broad survey of the field of present preparation for a remote future and for rendering the work of both
activities, we shall take up some of the larger ends which have teacher and pupil mechanical and slavish.

Dewey, Democracy and Education

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