लोकतंत्र और क्षा: शिक्षा के दर्शन की एक प रि च य

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अ ध् या यआठ: शिक्षा में उद्देश्य

Page 01

The Nature of an Aim. The account of education given in our earlier chapters virtually anticipated the
results reached in a discussion of the purport of education in a democratic community. For it assumed
that the aim of education is to enable individuals to continue their education -- or that the object and
reward of learning is continued capacity for growth. Now this idea cannot be applied to all the members
of a society except where intercourse of man with man is mutual, and except where there is adequate
provision for the reconstruction of social habits and institutions by means of wide stimulation arising
from equitably distributed interests. And this means a democratic society. In our search for aims in
education, we are not concerned, therefore, with finding an end outside of the educative process to
which education is subordinate. Our whole conception forbids. We are rather concerned with the
contrast which exists when aims belong within the process in which they operate and when they are set
up from without. And the latter state of affairs must obtain when social relationships are not equitably
balanced. For in that case, some portions of the whole social group will find their aims determined by an
external dictation; their aims will not arise from the free growth of their own experience, and their
nominal aims will be means to more ulterior ends of others rather than truly their own.

Our first question is to define the nature of an aim so far as it falls within an activity, instead of being
furnished from without. We approach the definition by a contrast of mere results with ends. Any
exhibition of energy has results. The wind blows about the sands of the desert; the position of the grains
is changed. Here is a result, an effect, but not an end. For there is nothing in the outcome which
completes or fulfills what went before it. There is mere spatial redistribution. One state of affairs is just
as good as any other. Consequently there is no basis upon which to select an earlier state of affairs as a
beginning, a later as an end, and to consider what intervenes as a process of transformation and
realization.

Consider for example the activities of bees in contrast with the changes in the sands when the wind
blows them about. The results of the bees' actions may be called ends not because they are designed or
consciously intended, but because they are true terminations or completions of what has preceded.
When the bees gather pollen and make wax and build cells, each step prepares the way for the next.
When cells are built, the queen lays eggs in them; when eggs are laid, they are sealed and bees brood
them and keep them at a temperature required to hatch them. When they are hatched, bees feed the
young till they can take care of themselves. Now we are so familiar with such facts, that we are apt to
dismiss them on the ground that life and instinct are a kind of miraculous thing anyway. Thus we fail to
note what the essential characteristic of the event is; namely, the significance of the temporal place and
order of each element; the way each prior event leads into its successor while the successor takes up
what is furnished and utilizes it for some other stage, until we arrive at the end, which, as it were,
summarizes and finishes off the process. Since aims relate always to results, the first thing to look to
when it is a question of aims, is whether the work assigned possesses intrinsic continuity. Or is it a mere
serial aggregate of acts, first doing one thing and then another? To talk about an educational aim when
approximately each act of a pupil is dictated by the teacher, when the only order in the sequence of his
acts is that which comes from the assignment of lessons and the giving of directions by another, is to
talk nonsense. It is equally fatal to an aim to permit capricious or discontinuous action in the name of
spontaneous self-expression. An aim implies an orderly and ordered activity, one in which the order
consists in the progressive completing of a process. Given an activity having a time span and cumulative
growth within the time succession, an aim means foresight in advance of the end or possible
termination. If bees anticipated the consequences of their activity, if they perceived their end in
imaginative foresight, they would have the primary element in an aim. Hence it is nonsense to talk
about the aim of education - or any other undertaking - where conditions do not permit of foresight of
results, and do not stimulate a person to look ahead to see what the outcome of a given activity is to be.
In the next place the aim as a foreseen end gives direction to the activity; it is not an idle view of a mere
spectator, but influences the steps taken to reach the end. The foresight functions in three ways. In the
first place, it involves careful observation of the given conditions to see what are the means available for
reaching the end, and to discover the hindrances in the way. In the second place, it suggests the proper
order or sequence in the use of means. It facilitates an economical selection and arrangement. In the
third place, it makes choice of alternatives possible. If we can predict the outcome of acting this way or
that, we can then compare the value of the two courses of action; we can pass judgment upon their
relative desirability. If we know that stagnant water breeds mosquitoes and that they are likely to carry
disease, we can, disliking that anticipated result, take steps to avert it. Since we do not anticipate results
as mere intellectual onlookers, but as persons concerned in the outcome, we are partakers in the
process which produces the result. We intervene to bring about this result or that.

Of course these three points are closely connected with one another. We can definitely foresee results
only as we make careful scrutiny of present conditions, and the importance of the outcome supplies the
motive for observations. The more adequate our observations, the more varied is the scene of
conditions and obstructions that presents itself, and the more numerous are the alternatives between
which choice may be made. In turn, the more numerous the recognized possibilities of the situation, or
alternatives of action, the more meaning does the chosen activity possess, and the more flexibly
controllable is it. Where only a single outcome has been thought of, the mind has nothing else to think
of; the meaning attaching to the act is limited. One only steams ahead toward the mark. Sometimes
such a narrow course may be effective. But if unexpected difficulties offer themselves, one has not as
many resources at command as if he had chosen the same line of action after a broader survey of the
possibilities of the field. He cannot make needed readjustments readily.

The net conclusion is that acting with an aim is all one with acting intelligently. To foresee a terminus of
an act is to have a basis upon which to observe, to select, and to order objects and our own capacities.
To do these things means to have a mind - for mind is precisely intentional purposeful activity controlled
by perception of facts and their relationships to one another. To have a mind to do a thing is to foresee a
future possibility; it is to have a plan for its accomplishment; it is to note the means which make the plan
capable of execution and the obstructions in the way, - or, if it is really a mind to do the thing and not a
vague aspiration - it is to have a plan which takes account of resources and difficulties. Mind is capacity
to refer present conditions to future results, and future consequences to present conditions. And these
traits are just what is meant by having an aim or a purpose. A man is stupid or blind or unintelligent -
lacking in mind - just in the degree in which in any activity he does not know what he is about, namely,
the probable consequences of his acts. A man is imperfectly intelligent when he contents himself with
looser guesses about the outcome than is needful, just taking a chance with his luck, or when he forms
plans apart from study of the actual conditions, including his own capacities. Such relative absence of
mind means to make our feelings the measure of what is to happen. To be intelligent we must "stop,
look, listen" in making the plan of an activity.

To identify acting with an aim and intelligent activity is enough to show its value - its function in
experience. We are only too given to making an entity out of the abstract noun "consciousness." We
forget that it comes from the adjective "conscious." To be conscious is to be aware of what we are
about; conscious signifies the deliberate, observant, planning traits of activity. Consciousness is nothing
which we have which gazes idly on the scene around one or which has impressions made upon it by
physical things; it is a name for the purposeful quality of an activity, for the fact that it is directed by an
aim. Put the other way about, to have an aim is to act with meaning, not like an automatic machine; it is
to mean to do something and to perceive the meaning of things in the light of that intent.