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o v e r lo o k i n g t h e v i s u a l
Descartes’ drawing of the coordination of muscle and visual mechanisms
clarifying the distinction thought to exist between body and mind (c.1664).
Overlooking the visual
Demystifying the art of design

Kathryn Moore
First published 2010
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Routledge
270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2011.

To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.

© 2010 Kathryn Moore

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or

utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.

Every effort has been made to contact copyright-holders. Please advise

the publisher of any errors or omissions, and these will be corrected in
subsequent editions

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Moore, Kathryn (Kathryn J.)
Overlooking the visual : demystifying the art of design /
Kathryn Moore.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Design—Philosophy. I. Title.
NK1505.M66 2009
745.401—dc22
2009018054
ISBN 0-203-16765-1 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN10: 0-415-30869-0 (hbk)

ISBN10: 0-415-30870-4 (pbk)
ISBN10: 0-203-16765-1 (ebk)

ISBN13: 978-0-415-30869-4 (hbk)

ISBN13: 978-0-415-30870-0 (pbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-203-16765-6 (ebk)
contents

Foreword vii

Preface x

Acknowledgements xii

one Introduction 1

two The sensory interface and other myths and legends 17

three Teaching the unknowable 35

four Aesthetics: the truth, the whole truth and universal truth 45

five Objectivity without neutrality 71

six Studied ignorance 105

seven Seeing is believing 153

eight Theory into practice 197

Bibliography 237

Subject index 245

Name index 249

contents

Image credits 253

v
foreword

When I first talked to Kathryn Moore about this book, she was in the
middle of writing it. She was teaching at the university in Birmingham,
and she was also at that time the president of the Landscape Institute,
the professional body for British Landscape Architects – so she was pretty
busy. In one snatched meeting at a cafe in Euston Station, she drew a line
down the middle of a piece of paper and started listing idealisms on one
side and the opposing materialisms on the other. At the bottom, under
the line, she wrote the word experience. The oppositional dialectics of
the philosophers are misleading, she was saying. Everything we do and
know and think about the world comes from our experience of it.

Now everyone knows that the opposite of experience is innocence. I was

at the time in the middle of writing my own book, a work I was calling
How to Like Everything: and being mindful of my small son’s wide-eyed
appreciation of everything around him, which seemed to me some sort
of key as to how to like everything, I said to her, but what about the little
children? What about innocence?

‘No, no, no’, she said. ‘Little children aren’t innocent, that’s metaphysical
rubbish. Little children are ignorant.’

Ignorance! That’s what the opposite of experience is. Not innocence. The
remark was so startling it has stayed with me ever since. It echoed when
I read Milan Kundera’s joke about the Czech dictator who liked having
photographs of himself with children – because children are the future. Of
course they are, says Kundera, because the state keeps its people in such
ignorance they might as well be children. It echoed again when I came across
foreword

W. H. Auden’s idea that childhood is a trap, and growing up is learning to

spring the locks and escape. And again, a slightly different thought, my own
this time, is that ignorance is another word for hope – we are all ignorant
vii

of our future, because if not, how would we continue to live?

 But there I am straying into metaphysical territory again. This is not the
viii foreword

place to do that. The substance of this book is a sustained reassessment

of the conditions for creative activity. Moore’s resource for her anti-
metaphysical, anti-rationalist stance is the writings of the Pragmatists.
William James, who coined the term in America at the beginning of the
last century, was explicitly critical of both rationalism on one hand, and
materialism on the other. Materialism then was not the subtle tracking of
emergent structures it has become; it was the implacable logic of modern
science, for which all things are atomistic. He called that approach Tough
Minded. And rationalism was, as it still is, the idealist heritage of ancient
Greece made transcendent by Christianity and hammered into the great
dialectic of mind and body by Descartes. James called all that Tender
Minded. And how is rationalism idealistic? How tender? Because, in my
words again, rationalists believe in absolute truth, in the laws of nature.
And for that absolute to prevail there must be a foundation. For which
we have, and since nature went dynamic with the theory of evolution we
only have, the very ancient concept of God.

I want to be clear about the words because pragmatism in the demotic

sense means what politicians do; they compromise and self serve and
horse trade in whatever way suits the problem at hand. So with rationalism
– not tender at all, those are the guys who steamroller solutions through,
who operate outside human emotion and passion, cold and clinical.
And materialists? They only think about money and status. This is the
common view. It sounds like the view of the inhabitants of a fallen world.
But still, the gulf between these everyday perceptions of the terms and
what philosophers mean by them is huge – as is the gulf of perception
between the philosophers themselves. Especially in the case of the design
philosophers, who write for an audience of each other so particular, so
jumpy, that when you try to engage them you think you have fallen in with
gladiators. On one side the growls of the philosophers of emergence and
on the other the barbs of the critical theorists. From the gallery, the sigh
of the phenomenologists. And in there still, as soothing as aspirin, the
traditional idealists. ‘When Nietzsche says there is no truth, he is asking
you not to believe him’, they say. ‘So don’t.’ But Nietzsche was one of the
engines of contemporary relational thought. He was not asking you to
believe him. He was showing you how to believe yourself.
To step into the gymnasium emphasising plain speaking and personal
interpretation as this book does is a big departure. The great thing is
that Moore comes not with a broom to sweep the rubbish away, but with
a floodlight that shows the complexities as fragments of one thing. She
is not a fundamentalist, she is a radical. Again and again she insists;
abandon the distinction between seeing and thinking, between reason and
feeling, between form and function, and anything becomes possible. After
a century of clashing dialectics, of difficulties and contradictions, and of
the continual dismantling of failed utopias, this is good news. The Truth,
Beauty and Goodness of the idealists are abstractions, immaterialities
that don’t exist. What does is action. You pursue truth, you find beauty
and you do goodness. All of which is so nearly the subject of art and
architecture pedagogy that it is surprising that Pragmatism should not
have figured more strongly in that field. This alone would be enough
to make Overlooking the visual significant; it is all the more so because
it rescues design philosophy and aesthetics from the ivory tower and
reintroduces them to everyday practice.

Pragmatism was constructed to explain the abyss between what we know

and what we want. There is the mundane world, which contains all we
have to work with. We are impelled by our frailties and desires to make
changes to it, but can only do so on the ground of our experience, which
is complex, fallible, mutable and difficult to communicate. How to proceed
in these confusing circumstances is what this book is about. It is for all
designers, all artists, but Moore is a landscape designer by profession,
so I’ll add one more thing. Pragmatism’s fit with the subject of landscape
is convincing. It was probably clear as a spring morning a hundred years
ago when human relations with the land were so intimate; now, even
though we take such enormous pleasure in abstractions and virtualities,
landscape design is the nearest thing we have to the possibility of a
comprehensive discipline, the best placed to anticipate the dire changes
forecast for the world. It is a discipline of combination, of history and,
geography, of space and time, dynamic, natured. Overlooking the visual
is an invitation to take part.
foreword

Paul Shepheard
Architect and Author
London, June 2009
ix
 preface
x preface

After studying art and design in Brighton, I gained degrees in geography

and landscape architecture at Manchester University. When I started
work at Salford City Council in the north west of England, working for
the derelict land reclamation team, the area was a real mess. There was
so much derelict land it was almost thought of as a job for life. After six
years I became responsible for the council’s large and busy landscape
group. We had a range of projects, mainly urban regeneration and inner
city land reclamation, including massive housing refurbishment schemes
and large-scale visionary projects like Salford Quays and a 47 hectare
woodland management scheme where burnt out cars were the problem
rather than rabbits, deer and brambles. When I first took over the group
I was determined to shift the priority away from spending the money
by the end of the financial year and focus on design quality. It made
a difference and this was one of the primary reasons I took the job at
Birmingham City University (BCU) because it seemed to me that the only
way to really address the issue of design quality was through education.
At BCU I couldn’t find any books on how to teach design and I was curious.
We can teach maths and English, why not a spatial, perceptual visual
skill? I got a research grant from the Leverhulme Trust and pestered all
the leading practitioners and educators of design I knew. I then pestered
their colleagues and friends and I’d like to thank them all for taking my
calls and giving their time as well as their encouragement.

Recognising the need to radically redefine the relationship between

the senses and intelligence was the outcome of the Leverhulme Trust
grant. An initial paper questioning the existence of the concept of visual
thinking was presented at the 1999 ECLAS (European Council of Landscape
Architecture Schools) meeting in Berlin. It led to invitations to examine the
implications of this premise for the role of drawing at the ‘Art Materials’
conference, Graduate College at the University of Arts, Berlin, February
2000, the studio as research for the New Zealand publication Landscape
Research in 2002, the role of aesthetics in design at the Academy of
Architecture, Amsterdam and the House of Lords in 2005, and the role
of aesthetics and nature in the city at the International Federation of
Housing and Planning conference in Copenhagen 2007. In the meantime
papers relating to these topics and more, addressing aspects such as the
design process, the genius loci, design expertise and the art of design in
academic, professional and educational contexts have been presented
extensively in the UK and abroad, including at the National Congress on
Urban Greenspace and Landscape on Kish Island, Iran, at the University of
Virginia during my tenure as the Thomas Jefferson Visiting Professor and at
the Graduate School of Design, Harvard as part of the Department Lecture
Series during Fall 2008. As President of the Landscape Institute UK from
2004–06, I had the invaluable opportunity to present the ideas to a wide
range of non-academic, professional and non-specialist audiences. Most
significantly, all of this research informs and develops from my teaching
and the design of courses on undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate
degrees and diplomas in Landscape architecture at Birmingham City
University, other workshops and courses taught in the UK and abroad.

preface
xi
 acknowledgements
xii acknowledgements

Thanks to the Leverhulme Trust, the Landscape Foundation and the

Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts Chicago for
funding periods of research to write this book. In addition there are many,
many individuals who have played a part in making this happen. I’d like
to thank Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe, Hilary Putnam and Richard Rorty for their
words of encouragement and support.

Those involved in the initial research project included Glyn Thomas,

Birmingham University, Ken Baynes, Loughborough University, Ian
Richards, Aston University and Bryan Lawson, Sheffield University.
Interviewees included Martha Schwartz, Gary Hilderbrand, Beth Meyer,
George Hargreaves and Alistair McIntosh, all then at the Graduate School
of Design, Harvard University, Harry Porter, Warren Byrd, Nancy Takahashi
and Elissa Rosenberg from the University of Virginia, Charlottesville,
James Corner and Anuradha Mathur, University of Philadelphia, Fernando
Magallanes and Art Rice from North Carolina State University, Leonard
Newcombe, Rhode Island School of Design, Doug Patterson and Moura
Quayle, University of British Colombia, Chip Sullivan, University of
California, Berkeley, Elias Torres (Martínez Lapeña-Torres Arquitectos),
Enric Batlle (Battle y Roig), Enric Miralles (EMBT), Robert Camlin (Camlin
Lonsdale), and Bridget Baines and Marcy Eaton (Edinburgh College of Art).
Heartfelt thanks to those who have continued to play an active role in
supporting me over the years and who have contributed to this book.

In addition, thanks to Atelier Carajoud, Claude Cormier, Hal Moggridge

(Colvin Moggridge), Scott Dyde (GALA), Benedetta Tagliabue (EMBT),
Beth Gali (BB + GG Arquitectes), Brian Goodey, Andrew Grant (Grant
Associates), Bridget Baines and Elco Hooftman (Gross Max), Kathryn
Gustafson (Gustafson Porter), Jeppe Aagard Andersen (JAA), Juul | Frost,
Juurlink [+] Geluk, Andy Williams and James Harrison (Capita Lovejoy,
Birmingham), James Hayter, Oxygen, Frits Palmboom, (Palmboom & van
den Bout Stedenbouwkundigen bv.), David Patten, Kim Wilkie (Kim Wilkie
Associates), Beata Corcoran (Michael Vergason Landscape Architects) and
Thijs Verburg (VHA). I have not been able to use all of the images and all
the text, I have reduced and paraphrased as I thought necessary, so any
mistakes are mine and mine alone. Thanks also to Malcolm Nugent, John
Hawes and Nick Harrison for their photographs, to Dave Woodward at
Adept Scientific, Norman Ashfield at BCU, and to Alex Lazarou.

Thanks to Martha Schwartz Inc, Capita Lovejoys, Birmingham and

Carlos Jankilevich at the University of Costa Rica for the opportunities
to investigate the consequences of these ideas in practice. Special thanks
to Matilda Palmer, Ruth Morrow, Richard Weston and Paul Shepheard for
their insights and friendship. At BCU I’d like to thank in particular David
Tidmarsh, Peter Knight, Phil Walkling, Jim Low and Tom Jefferies for
supporting my research and each and every one of the great students I’ve
taught over the years. Particular thanks go to Alan Middleton for supporting
me through thick and thin, to Jennifer Corcoran and to Birmingham City
Council, especially Philip Singleton and Bharat Patel.

Thanks to my patient friends and family and finally to Lol. Without his
scrutiny, patience and humour … for everything. Couldn’t have happened
without you.

acknowledgements
xiii
To Lol
over look ing the visual
The sea changes with the weather, the tide and
the moon, daily, hourly, minute-by-minute ...
chapter one

Introduction

Pragmatism, a termite ‘undermining foundations, collapsing

distinctions, and deflating abstractions’.
(Menand 1997: pxxxi)

B O R N O U T O F a passionate desire to improve design quality and a

recognition that this can only happen through education, the main premise
of this book is that a radical redefinition of the relationship between
the senses and intelligence is long overdue. Written primarily from my
perspective as an experienced teacher and practitioner of landscape
architecture, the problems are not specific to this discipline alone, but are
equally relevant to architecture, urban design and other art and design
disciplines, as well as philosophy, aesthetics and education more generally.
Deliberately crisscrossing the carefully demarcated boundaries and borders
between philosophy, theory and practice, it aims to demonstrate the very
real practical consequences of philosophical ideas and the philosophical
lessons that can be learned from practice. The argument it puts forward
helps clarify and resolve the great design riddle: why it is still largely
considered to be unteachable and how we can dismantle this antiquated
supposition, constructing in its place a means of dealing with spatial,
visual information that is artistically and conceptually rigorous.

One of the main preoccupations of contemporary cultural discourse has

been the argument for and against the existence of universal truth. By
introduction

carrying this argument into the perceptual realm and adopting a pragmatic
line of inquiry which questions the very nature of foundational belief, it
becomes possible to offer an alternative, interpretative view of perception.
With this one pivotal adjustment, the whole metaphysical edifice built on
1
2 introduction

… the sun is a clock,

letting you know what time of day it is …

the flawed conception of a sensory mode of thinking comes tumbling

down. Constructed in its place is a means of dealing with spatial, visual
information that is artistically and conceptually rigorous. This book
examines some of the implications of this paradigm shift for design
theory and education.

Although rarely articulated, the concept of the sensory interface is

hugely pervasive, affecting almost every facet of Western culture. It
lies at the heart of a common assumption that art involves a different
conceptual framework from science, a different mode of thinking. It also
underpins the idea that art is a pleasurable pastime whereas science is
a serious endeavour, that it is possible, indeed preferable, to forget all
you know in order to fully appreciate a piece of music, a painting or
the landscape, embracing the sensuality of the experience with a clean
slate, uncontaminated by knowledge or rationality. Why, despite so much
evidence to the contrary, we still characterise scientists as cool, detached,
unencumbered by emotion and artists as passionate, subjective and
slightly deranged. Why we think decisions can be made on the one hand
intuitively, without knowledge and on the other objectively, without value
judgements. That language is linear and the emotions irrational and that
… and the force of the wind gives you
an unmistakable sense of exactly where you are …

theory is separate from practice. At the centre of aesthetic experience, the

sensory mode of thinking is what those learning to design are expected to
reap the benefits of, if they are to be in any way successful. It distances
nature from culture and makes it practically impossible to develop a
holistic view or vision of the landscape.

Growing concern about the destruction of the environment in the name

of development and the potentially dire consequences of climate change
have at last pricked our collective consciousness. Cities across the world
have strategies for sustainability, creativity and cultural identity. There
is at last, a tangible recognition that the physical, cultural and social
condition of our environment has a profound effect on the quality of
life and is a vital component of sustainable economic growth. We know
that good-looking quality places lift the spirit and have a dramatic
effect on people’s morale, confidence and self-worth. Dreary, unkempt,
dysfunctional places make people feel unvalued and resentful. It’s common
introduction

sense really, a statement of the obvious. It’s just a pity it’s taken some
of us so long to realise it. Now, it has become a political reality and we
all have a responsibility.
3
4
introduction

Design for the gardens of the Grand Trianon at Versailles by André le Notre (1694).
pen and ink , brush and water colour 986 x 663 mm .
stockholm national museum of fine art . © erik cornelius / national museum .
le notre : thc 22.
So what do we mean by the art of design? I first saw this remarkable
design at an exhibition of landscape drawings from 1600–2000 currently
on display at Het Loo in Appledoorn. I remarked to my colleagues that it
would be wonderful if a student handed in a drawing like that. Wondering
who had designed it we peered at the text and found it was by le Notre;
it was his design for the gardens of the Grand Trianon at Versailles,
accompanied by eight pages of manuscript connecting image and concept,
ideas and form.

It is remarkable for many reasons. It exhibits astonishing skill and

confidence in the expression of ideas in form, through technology,
with elegance and panache. Far from being a slave to the geometry
of the plan, the asymmetrical design is an imaginative manipulation
of the spatial structure of the landscape, intensifying perspectives,
foreshortening views, skewing natural crossfalls and creating vistas,
connecting seamlessly with the landscape beyond. It is responsive to the
topography and context, culture and time. Extraordinarily knowledgeable,
skilfully exploiting the full range of the medium, this design is there to
manipulate the emotions, express power and control movement. This is
what the art of design is about. There is no mistaking its brilliance – if
you know what to look for.

A powerful cultural force is currently undermining any serious attempt

to develop the kind of expertise le Notre exhibits. It is, of course,
possible to teach many aspects of design. There are books on design
theory, criticism, history, its technology and modes of communication.
There are guides on collaboration, team building and how to carry
out design reviews. But large chunks of the actual design process,
the real nitty-gritty of the discipline, are clouded by subjectivity and
therefore thought to be beyond teaching. Design is often characterised
as a highly personal, mysterious act, almost like alchemy, adding
weight to the dangerous idea that it is possible, even preferable,
to hide behind the supposed objective neutrality implied by more
‘scientific’, technology-based, problem-solving approaches. Talking
introduction

about excellence is actually considered somehow undemocratic and

elitist. It is this kind of dogmatism that impacts so negatively on our
thinking about design.
5
6
introduction

… as does the constant noise of the waves …

The crux of the problem is that an intractable rationalist paradigm

dominates our thinking to such a degree we no longer give it much
thought. All manner of assumptions, suppositions and tall tales have
moved beyond question and become self-evident, obvious and largely
taken for granted. It is this philosophical tradition that actually prevents
us from having informed discussions about the significance of the way
things look, the material, physical qualities of what we see. Reinforced by
a host of beliefs and suppositions it exiles materiality to a metaphysical
wilderness where it languishes, separated from intelligence, safely hidden
out of sight, out of mind.

This paradigm is manifested in the interface thought to exist between us

‘in here’, and the real world ‘out there’, apparently helping to correlate,
crystallise, process or structure our sensory impressions to serve
intelligence. It’s called many things – a sensory modality, visual thinking,
the aural or tactile modality, the experiential, the haptic – the latest I have
come across is unfocused peripheral vision. Whatever it’s called, however
it’s characterised, it is there to pick up the really important stuff. It sifts the
wheat from the chaff, sorts out the things worth noticing. Discriminating
on our behalf, it helps us understand the world. Dig deep enough however
and all you find are value judgements masquerading as universal truth,
the ‘real’ truth that exists ‘out’ there if only we look hard enough, or are
lucky enough to be clever enough, or sensitive enough to find it.

No one knows how all this really works. The actual mechanics of it remain
a mystery, or as Jay puts it ‘somewhat clouded’ (Jay 1994: 7). From a
pragmatic point of view, this perceptual whodunit is insoluble because the
entire plot is based on a rationalist belief in different modes of thinking
and pre-linguistic starting points of thought, a set of assumptions that
have been with us so long they have become part of common sense.
Ironically, despite all the post-modern rhetoric, concepts such as visual
thinking, intuition, language, emotions, artistic sensibility and design
expertise remain imbued with the fundamental Cartesian distinction
between body and mind, between facts and values, real truth and mere
opinions. It is a metaphysical duality that slips under the intellectual
radar, disguised in visual and perceptual theories.

The consequences for those studying to become designers and ultimately

for the places they create are potentially devastating. Nullifying any
educational rationale for substantial areas of decision-making, within
the arts there is instead a misguided dependence on concepts such as
creativity, the genius loci, ideation or the mind’s eye, delving into the
subconscious or sharpening intuitive responses. This causes a good deal
of confusion and bewilderment often reducing design education to an
arbitrary second-guessing of what the tutor likes or otherwise leaving
students either hoping they can somehow pick ‘it’ up as they go along,
or left wondering what on earth ‘it’ is all about.

Whilst this makes what designers do seem rather mysterious and intriguing,
it is, in fact, deeply questionable. The scant regard for materiality it
engenders in design theory can only serve to obfuscate the understanding
of any spatial, visual medium. But the implications of an imagined sensory
interface are far more wide reaching. Responsible for the continuing
distinction made between theory and practice, the separation of ideas
from form, emotions and intelligence and a host of other misconceptions,
introduction

it thwarts design pedagogy, fuelling the myth that anything other than
the purely practical or neutrally functional is a bit iffy, too subjective, a
matter of taste really and best avoided. Giving the impression that concepts
such as artistic rationality, aesthetic sensibility and design expertise are
7
8 introduction

… the smell of the sea …

contradictions in terms rather than credible educational objectives, it

baulks any attempt to provide a convincing rationale for art education, still
generally regarded as ‘nice but not necessary’ as Eisner reluctantly admits
(Eisner 2002: xi). The prevalence of this dogma explains why a premium
is out on reading or writing rather than drawing. We are not learning to
be aware of our surroundings, to recognise our responses to place and
space, and are rarely shown why things look like they do given the time,
place or context. All things aesthetic remain firmly off limits. It is just not
polite to use the ‘A’ word. More generally, it skews the way intelligence
is defined or what counts as valid knowledge and gives a prejudicial and
narrow view of the role of language. The same implacability militates
against arguments for resources, space, time or money in competition with
more so-called ‘rational’ disciplines. The upshot is that many theorists and
those who are not practising designers can find it very difficult to imagine
the effort, knowledge and skill it takes to work out the spatial qualities
of a design. An eminent academic specialising in the role of drawing and
design for example, asked why architects spend all that time drawing – why
don’t they just draw what they see in their heads and forget about all that
sketching business? University administrators, struggling to understand
why studios, expensive in terms of real estate, are necessary, ask why
design can’t be taught like mathematics or business studies with lecture
rooms crammed full of students, as well as asking why all that expensive
tutorial time is wasted hunched over a drawing board. It plays havoc with
the academic and research standing of art and design disciplines and makes
it difficult to mount hard-nosed political arguments about the social and
economic value of good quality environments. Pervasive and insidious,
the rationalist paradigm disregards a rich and complex lost horizon of
design. It really is that big a deal.

In order to ensure the education we offer is convincing and therefore

sustainable, we need to up our game, rethink a good many presumptions
we have about design, the bad habits, if you like, that we’ve gotten
ourselves into. Addressing these issues also gives us the opportunity
to have a sensible discussion about the art of design. This is not art in
the landscape or art in front of or attached to the building, but artistic
practice; the elegant, expressive and imaginative transformation of ideas
in a particular medium. This is the only truly effective way to achieve
design excellence.

It is not a question of rethinking how to design. There are plenty of

brilliant designers around today who know how to do this only too
well. It is more about re-evaluating the way we think about design. The
conceptual void at the heart of the design process, the vast differences
separating what it is that designers actually do from the way design is
represented in both design and educational theory, how we talk and
think of ourselves as designers when we reflect on our work, is fashioned
by an almost inviolable mythology of innate skills, arcane traditions
and deep-seated universal archetypes. To properly demystify the art
of design we have to recognise that there is no choice but to engage
with ideas at every stage of the design process and in order to develop
artistic practice we need to express these ideas and feelings in space,
words, shadow, light and form to manipulate and shape the quality of
experience. The understanding that even the most intimate, seemingly
magical elements of the design process are based on knowledge and
knowledge alone, prepares the ground for a fresh artistic and conceptual
introduction

approach to design, as well as establishing it as a holistic, critical

endeavour. It has radical implications in the studio, setting a new agenda
for tutors and students alike. It also offers an entirely different way of
addressing design matters beyond the studio, providing a mechanism
9
10 introduction

… and the taste of salt spray on your tongue …

both to appreciate and work cohesively with the richness and significance
of the social, physical and cultural context of our lives. More than
anything else, it extends design right into the political/social arena,
putting it at the heart of development and change as well as at the top
of the quality of life agenda. A philosophical argument based on the
recognition that consciousness, the landscape and the design process
are not separate, fragmented issues, allows for the development of a
more holistic approach. In turn, this challenges the deep-seated hostility
towards design, excellence and expertise.

Any assault on the accepted order of things, the rationalist status quo,
naturally attracts antipathy and criticism. Rorty, clearly no stranger to
controversy, wearily explains that pragmatists are accused of being
relativists or irrationalists, even ‘enemies of reason and common sense’
(Rorty 1999: xvii). To argue that the challenge is not directed at what
might be seen as an obvious, universally accepted truth, but at ‘antiquated,
specifically philosophical dogmas’ doesn’t help much either, because
he explains, ‘what we call dogmas are exactly what our opponents call
common sense. Adherence to these dogmas is what they call being
rational’ (Rorty 1999: xvii). James remarking on the cost of querying
the metaphysical basis of disciplines, declares, ‘A pragmatist turns his
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
 In a class in nature study in a fourth grade a boy told a wonderful
story of the activities of a squirrel. Ordinarily the teacher might have
been expected to tell the boy that the story was untrue and that she
did not want that kind of stories. In this class, however, the children
felt responsible for the contributions which were made. The story had
no sooner been told than the narrator was plied with questions.
Where had he seen the squirrel? On what kind of a tree? What was
the color of the squirrel? Just when did the events related happen?
The boy could not answer these questions satisfactorily, and finally
admitted that his story had a very slight basis in fact. The rebuke
thus administered by his classmates probably did more toward giving
this boy respect for truth than a dozen statements by the teacher that
his contribution was unsatisfactory.
In an eighth-grade class the children were discussing the panic of
’73. One of the boys maintained that the causes of panics were, in
general, the same, regardless of the activities of a few individuals
occupying important positions in government or in the commercial
world. His contention was mainly that it was unfair to charge a
president or a political party with the distress occasioned by a panic,
when in reality the cause was to be found in economic conditions
over which neither president nor party had control. One of the girls in
the class objected, and cited as proof the panic of ’37, which she
claimed was caused by President Jackson. The teacher could have
settled the question immediately by an authoritative statement, which
most classes of children would have accepted. In this class,
however, the teacher encouraged the class to participate in the
discussion. In the end the members of the class consulted textbooks
and other more complete histories, and reached their own decision
with comparatively little help from the teacher. The value of this work
in history consisted mainly in the fact that the children, having once
discovered the problem, felt responsible for its solution. They were
engaged in the liveliest kind of thinking and discussion. They were
learning where to go, and what materials to use in the solution of this
kind of problem.
Possibly work in the industrial arts offers the very best chance for
group work. At every turn in work of this kind there is the demand for
careful planning involving discussion of ways and means, and for
coöperation in the execution of the plan. A group of second-grade
children were occupied most profitably with the partial furnishing and
daily care of the teacher’s rest room. They had first of all to decide
what they could do to make the room more comfortable or more
beautiful. They decided that they could make pillow, table, and couch
covers, and window curtains, and that they could keep the room
clean. In determining materials and design, as well as in the
execution of the work itself, there was need for coöperation. The
children gained not only in appreciation of some of the elements of
home-making, but also in ability to plan and to work together. They
were being socialized both by the content of their work and by the
method employed in executing it. Another group of children, fifth
grade, spent a number of weeks working together in planning and
building a playhouse for the first grade. A wide-awake teacher
enlisted the coöperation of three grades in the making and selling of
candy in order to get money enough to buy pictures for the school.
The preparation of a picnic luncheon, or meal for guests invited by
the cooking class, the making of a large rug from many smaller rugs
woven in such a way as to contribute to the pattern of the final
product, the building of window boxes, the writing of the account of
an excursion or other school exercise in order that the best results
may be brought together in the final account which is to be used in a
school paper, are examples of the kind of work which may involve
the kind of activity which makes for present social efficiency, and,
therefore, for that social efficiency which it is the ultimate purpose of
education to achieve.
One of the best ways to transform the recitation from a place
where lessons are heard to an active social group is to plan definitely
for a variety of contributions from the individual members or small
groups of the class. When each member of the class studies the
same pages of the same book, there is little incentive either to try to
tell well what the book contributes to the problem in hand, or to listen
to the recitation of one’s classmates. If, however, one group of
children have been referred to one book, another to a second book,
and still another to a magazine article, to pictures, or other objective
representation, there is some reason why each should do his best in
reporting, and a genuine motive for following closely the contribution
of each member of the class during the recitation is provided. Work
of this sort is easily available in history, geography, nature study, or
manual training.
In the subjects which seem to lend themselves less easily to
variety in assignment, many possibilities will be found by the teacher
who is anxious to prove the efficiency of this method. The best
reading that the writer has ever seen in a third grade was done by
children who read to each other. They used the readers in the school
and books from home and from the public library. Each child was
permitted to make a selection and submit it to the teacher for
approval. Then came the period of preparation, extending often over
two or three days or even a week. During this time the child was
supposed to study the selection carefully, learn the pronunciation of
difficult words, and practice reading the selection so that he might
give pleasure to those for whom the reading was done. The one
good reason for reading aloud is to read to an audience who cares to
hear what you have to offer. These children were participating in a
social situation which demanded much of them, and they enjoyed
the hard work which was necessary because the motive back of it all
was genuine. In arithmetic, if arithmetic deals with the quantitative
aspect of the experiences which the children are having, it will be
possible to allow for some variety in the work which is assigned. If
the problems are real, there will be a considerable interest
manifested by the children in the solution of the problem and the
results which are secured. Suppose a class were given a list of the
articles which are to be put in a Thanksgiving basket, with
instructions to find the cost of the basket so that a friend may pay for
one of the donations which the class plans to distribute. In such a
situation the children will be most eager to compare prices and total
cost when the class next meets for the arithmetic lesson. Of course
the carping critic will say that it is easy to devise a few cases of the
sort listed above, but that in real school work you haven’t time to
make such plans. The only answer is that the difference between
superior teaching and the kind that one sees all too commonly is
found in the ability and willingness of the artistic teacher to be more
nearly true to her ideals than are others. Any teacher, who is
sufficiently interested, can find many situations in which she can vary
the work of the class in such a way that the recitation period shall
become a place where each member of the class brings his
individual contribution.
Possibly the greatest need in our schools to-day is for more
purposeful work for children. We are so much concerned about the
many things which children ought to know that we are tempted to
spend most of the time drilling children on facts which have very little
meaning for them. The demand that the school be socialized is only
another way of saying that the work of school children should
function in the school itself and in their lives outside of school. It has
seemed possible, in a few schools, to give children opportunity in the
industrial arts to work at making something which they really want for
themselves, or upon a project which may involve the welfare of the
group, as, for example, when they work upon school apparatus or
furniture. An eighth-grade group of boys made the furniture for the
principal’s office; the children at Hyannis, Massachusetts, make
baskets, brooms, hammocks, raise vegetables, build a boat or a
fence, as occasion demands.[18] At Tuskegee the more mature
students have even burnt the bricks and constructed the buildings for
the school.
If a significant project in the industries is undertaken, it may furnish
the motive for doing work along many lines. The raising of
vegetables may involve arithmetic in the measuring of beds and the
buying of seeds, in finding the value of the product, and, if the
product be sold, in the keeping of a bank account. The study of
dairying might very well involve a visit to a farm; the measuring of an
acre; the estimating of the cost of production of milk and butter; and
the return from the investment. The cost and means of transportation
might be studied; a churn, butter bowl, and paddle might be
constructed; and finally a complete account of these many
experiences might be written and printed. If children are engaged in
activities of this sort, there will be no question of socializing the
school. By the very nature of their activities children will be led to
question each other and their teachers; they will of necessity
coöperate in those phases of the work which involve team work.
 But it is not in the industrial arts alone that school work may deal
with genuine situations. A good teacher finds a hundred situations in
which children can write for an audience. The writer recently
attended the closing exercises of an elementary school where the
graduating class had composed a play which they presented. The
main plot of the story centered in a prize essay contest, and, as
might be inferred, the essays which were read were those which the
children had written during the regular class work. In geography the
members of a sixth-grade class prepared talks to accompany
pictures thrown on the screen from a lantern. In history certain
incidents of the period which a class was studying were dramatized
and presented to the whole school.
The president of a water company in a middle-western city told the
writer that they kept things in better shape at the water works since
they had agreed to allow the children to come to visit the waterworks
whenever a teacher chose to bring a class. In the same city there is
an unusual number of pianos in the schools, school playgrounds are
being established, parents’ associations are active in coöperation
with the teachers to improve school conditions. If one were asked to
explain why the schools in this city are better, why they are so loyally
supported and so proudly spoken of by all classes of people, the
answer would be found, I believe, in the fact that there is a closer
relationship between the school and activities outside the school in
home and city than in most other places. If teachers more commonly
had in mind the needs of the children during the time they are not in
the school, it would be easier to find situations in which the school
activities would be significant because of the genuine needs which
are felt by the children.
If there were nothing gained toward socializing children through
activities involving the coöperation of the whole group, the fact would
remain that the best type of intellectual activity can be secured only
with this most genuine of all incentives. Most people, even as adults,
think better when they have some one with whom to discuss the
problem in hand. It is true, too, that often the best teacher is one
whose experience is somewhat similar to our own and whose
attitudes and difficulties are similar to ours. Children can often
interpret where teachers fail. It cannot be too often reiterated that it is
the chief business of every teacher to render her services
unnecessary. If the children taught are not at the end of any term’s
work better able to work for themselves, more ready to take the
initiative, more capable in defining their problems, in gathering data,
and in finding solutions than they were at the beginning of the period,
then the work has been a failure. Creative work[19] is not done when
some one stands over the child and dictates his every step, nor does
thinking consist in answering the questions which a teacher may put
concerning the facts recorded in a text. There is entirely too much
truth in the charge which is sometimes brought against our schools,
that they fail to keep alive the intellectual activity which is natural to
childhood.
We must never lose sight of the fact that a child who is vigorous
intellectually, actively sympathetic with those causes which make for
the general welfare, and able and willing to work in coöperation with
others, even though this may mean that he subordinate himself to
others for the time being, is the type of individual upon which our
democracy depends for its perpetuation and for its future progress. It
is necessary to emphasize the social side of school life because we
have, in our anxiety to impart information and form habits, neglected
this aspect of school life. The pity of it all is that in neglecting the
child’s social development we have done less efficient work in the
fields we sought to emphasize because of the lack of genuine
motive. Whether we are concerned with habits, with the acquisition
of knowledge, with development in clear thinking, or in fixing ideals,
the maximum of return will be secured in the genuinely social
situation. Children working together on real problems are being
socialized through participation in social activities. There is no other
way in which the school can contribute so certainly to the
accomplishment of the aim of all education.

For Collateral Reading

John Dewey, Moral Principles in Education, and The School and Society.

Exercises.
 1. What are the advantages to be derived from teaching a group rather than an
individual?
2. What is the ideal relationship between teacher and pupils?
3. Why should a pupil face his classmates when he recites?
4. How could you provide for class discussions with the pupils you teach?
5. Name class projects which your class has undertaken which involve
coöperation and end in a product which children consider worth working for.
6. Why do the household and industrial arts lend themselves especially well to
the development of the social phases of the recitation?
7. When should it be wrong for one pupil to help another? Name as many
occasions as you can where you would encourage coöperation and helpfulness.
8. Give an illustration of one project which may furnish an adequate motive for
work in several school subjects.
9. Of what value are associations of parents and teachers from the standpoint of
increasing the efficiency of school work?
10. Why is a genuinely social situation the best for the development of
intellectual vigor?
11. Do you think children ought to accept any social responsibility outside of the
school and home?
12. How may we hope to develop in children the desire to serve, the willingness
to work for the general good?
13. How would you change your work in order to accomplish the most possible
for the development of children who are now socially efficient?
14. Ought we to expect all children to accept the same social responsibilities,
either as to kind or degree, in the school or in their out-of-school life?
15. If children do not work together for common ends in our schools, if the spirit
of coöperation and service is not present there, ought we to be surprised at the
non-social or anti-social attitude and practice of adults?
 CHAPTER XIII

T H E P H Y S I C A L W E L FA R E O F C H I L D R E N

Intellectual development, and more especially intellectual

efficiency, are conditioned in no mean degree by one’s physical
condition. Schools have too frequently, and with justice, been
accused of producing physical defects in children. It is coming to be
recognized that we must in increasing measure take account of the
hygienic conditions under which school work is done, as well as
provide for the elimination or amelioration of physical defects. We
now have open-air schools for consumptives, medical inspection,
and dental clinics. There are some schools which provide school
lunches at a nominal price or without cost to the pupils. Corrective
physical training is coming to be recognized, along with special
playground work. Everywhere appreciation of the importance of
physical health as a condition prerequisite to intellectual vigor is
leading those who have the welfare of the community at heart to
demand that active measures be taken to protect and nourish the
bodies of school children. It is the purpose of this chapter to indicate
briefly the relation of teachers to this movement for physical well-
being.
The demand that light be sufficient and that it come from the right
direction is familiar to all teachers. It may be argued that teachers
cannot control the lighting of their rooms. The author has known
teachers who have had blinds properly placed, walls and ceilings
painted or papered with respect to proper distribution of light. Some
teachers have even been instrumental in securing alterations in
buildings or the erection of new buildings. Teachers who know that
the area of windows should be one fourth of the floor space, that the
light should be admitted from one side of the room, and that it should
come over the children’s left shoulders, may not be able to meet all
of these conditions; but they can do all that is possible to ameliorate
defects, and can call attention to the dangers which the situation
possesses for their pupils’ eyesight by giving or having given tests
and making known the results.
Modern school buildings are built with artificial ventilating systems.
The success with which any system works depends in no
inconsiderable measure upon the teacher. By opening windows in
one room the efficiency of the ventilation of all other rooms in the
building may be impaired. Failure to note the temperature may mean
that children and teacher are suffering from a condition easily
remedied by the janitor or engineer. Every teacher should have the
temperature of her room recorded on the blackboard, where every
one can see it, at least twice during each school session. Needless
to say, the thermometer should be accurate, and, if possible, hung in
the center of the room, not more than four or five feet from the floor.
Teachers are responsible for right habits of posture. If seats need
to be adjusted, the teacher should note the fact and notify the
principal. Although special cases may demand expert advice and
care, the teacher must hold herself responsible for the posture of the
majority of the class. Defects of vision may be either the cause or the
effect of improper position of the body, and should bring from the
teacher an urgent appeal for careful examination and correction.
Frequent rest periods should be provided, the habit of correct
posture insisted upon, and simple corrective exercises given by the
teacher.
Schoolrooms are not infrequently the center of infection for the
community. Any teacher can insist upon separate drinking cups, if
sanitary fountains are not provided in the building. When a child
appears with a rash, with an abnormal temperature, and not
infrequently with only a cough, the teacher should appeal to the
principal, the health inspector, or others in authority for the
elimination of the child from the group. The author has been in
schoolrooms where two or three children in the incipient stages of
whooping cough were allowed to infect the whole class. A school
superintendent was distressed with what proved to be a veritable
scourge of scarlet fever in one of his schools. Upon visiting the
school he found one child on the playground proudly showing the
other children how he could take flakes of skin from his arm. No one
expects teachers to be expert diagnosticians, but any teacher should
acquaint herself with the more common indications of childish
diseases, and should act promptly when her suspicion is aroused,
even though she prove to be wrong in half the cases. If anything is
wrong, eliminate the child from the group, suggest that a physician
be consulted, and await developments: this is the only safe rule.
In addition to her activity in eliminating contagious diseases, the
teacher may often be the first to detect deficiencies in sight or
hearing. Children who are inattentive and apparently dull may often
be found to hear indistinctly. A very simple test for hearing is to tap a
pencil against a desk out of sight of the child, and ask him to tell how
many taps he hears. Headaches, squinting, the position in which the
book is held, often indicate to the teacher eye deficiency which
parents have not suspected. Any child who gives indications of eye
trouble should be tested by teacher or principal, and, if any
indications of difficulty are found, the parents should be urged to
consult a competent oculist.
Dr. William H. Allen gives the following suggestions to teachers
who would discover cases of adenoids and enlarged tonsils:[20]
“1. Inability to breathe through the nose.
“2. A chronically running nose, accompanied by frequent nosebleeds and a
cough to clear the throat.
“3. Stuffy speech and delayed learning to talk. ‘Common’ is pronounced
‘cobbed,’ ‘nose,’ ‘dose,’ and ‘song,’ ‘sogg.’
“4. A narrow upper jaw and irregular crowding of the teeth.
“5. Deafness.
“6. Chorea or nervousness.
“7. Inflamed eyes and conjunctivitis.”
 Any one who has known a child with a bad case of adenoids or
enlarged tonsils, and who has followed the progress of the same
child after the removal of the defect, will not think it too much trouble
to insist that suspected cases receive the attention of a physician. In
these cases, and where the child is suffering because of the ills
superinduced by bad teeth, the teacher must work with the parents.
Often through mothers’ clubs or parents’ associations, addressed by
a physician and by teacher, the necessity for action, from a purely
economic point of view, if from no other, can be impressed upon
parents. It is possible that we shall have to resort to an appeal to
private charity to save the child, or perhaps we shall in time have
free compulsory dental, surgical, and medical clinics.
The children are society’s greatest asset, from whatever point of
view we consider them, and teachers should be most active in all
movements which make for child welfare. There is no other group of
people better acquainted with the needs of children, none other
which stands in so strategic a position with relation to parents and
the community at large. Parents should be taught the necessity of
plenty of sleep, wholesome food, and clean skins for children. Better
devote time and energy to this education of parents than attempt to
teach children handicapped by the lack of proper living conditions.
The anti-tuberculosis campaign, the pure milk crusade, the demand
for medical inspection, should be earnestly supported, if not
instituted, by the teachers of children. Health is not an individual
matter. The welfare of the whole group is bound up in conditions
which spell disaster for the individual.
Finally the teacher has a right to good health. Living under bad
hygienic conditions, with children who are unclean and diseased,
should not be demanded of any teacher. The efficiency of the work
which the teacher does, no less than that of the children, is
conditioned by her health. If it is true that the teacher may suffer
because of diseased children, it is none the less true that a teacher
in poor physical condition injures all of the children she is pledged to
help. Happy, healthful lives for children and teachers is a condition
which will be brought to pass when all teachers work for this end.
 For Collateral Reading
S. H. Rowe, The Physical Nature of the Child.

Exercises.
1. How may the school superinduce physical defects in children?
2. Why are schoolroom floors oiled and swept rather than scrubbed and swept?
3. What suggestions for the improvement of all schoolrooms do you gather from
the establishment of open-air schools for the anemic and tubercular?
4. What would you do to provide relaxation and plenty of fresh air on a day so
stormy that children could not go out of doors for recess?
5. What could a teacher do to help a near-sighted boy or girl?
6. Is it safe to trust your feeling that it is too warm or too cold in regulating the
temperature of the room?
7. When do you get your best work, when it is too warm, or when the
thermometer is between 65° and 68° Fahrenheit? (If there is sufficient moisture in
the air, a temperature as low as 65° will not seem colder than a temperature of 70°
when the air carries very little moisture.)
8. What is the reason for using only pencils with large, soft lead or crayons for
writing during the first year?
9. What can a teacher do to protect the community against contagious
diseases?
10. If the school has no playground, what provision would you make for
recreation in the schoolroom?
11. A large percentage of children have decayed teeth; how would you hope to
provide that proper treatment should be given?
12. Why may we not consider health as an individual matter?
13. Why has the teacher a right to demand hygienic conditions in the
schoolroom?
14. Why has the community a right to demand good health as a prerequisite for
teaching?
15. How might teachers hope to secure hygienic conditions for children in their
homes?
16. If a schoolroom needs redecorating on account of improper lighting, or a
new heating and ventilating plant, and the school board does not supply these
necessities, how would you hope to secure such improvements?
 CHAPTER XIV

MORAL TRAINING

Character building must always be recognized as a most important

function of the school. It is a mistake to divorce the intellectual
training of children from growth in morality. If our country demands
increased industrial intelligence, the training of men and women for
leadership in manufacture, trade, and commerce, much more must it
demand citizens of sterling character. Industrial and intellectual
supremacy can mean nothing to a nation unless righteousness
prevails both in public and in private life. The idea that the schools of
our democracy are to train for citizenship has always been
interpreted to mean an education which will fit for a life of service to
the best interests of humanity. The fact that religious instruction, as
such, is barred from our schools, does not mean that we are as a
people irreligious, much less that we undervalue the significance of
the moral training of our children.
School conditions offer advantages for moral training, even though
the overemphasis on intellectual attainments may at times seem to
give the teacher little opportunity for work in this direction. The fact of
a group of children who may learn to work together, to help each
other, to respect each other’s rights, to serve the best interests of the
whole group, in fact a situation which demands just those virtues
which are demanded in society outside the school, makes the school
in some respects an ideal situation for training in morality. Of course
it is possible that the demand for intellectual attainment may so
occupy the mind of the teacher that she will resort to repression in
order to get results in habits and knowledge. It is true, too, that the
curriculum may be so narrow as to give less opportunity than might
be desired for the type of activity which best lends itself to the
development of social virtues. But if adverse conditions hinder
somewhat the work of the teacher, they cannot deny a very
important place to the school in the formation of character.
The increased responsibility of the school for the moral training of
children becomes apparent at once when the influence of the home
and the church of to-day are contrasted with the strength which
these institutions once possessed. Regret it as much as we may,
neither home nor church is as potent in the development of morality
as they once were. Before the dominance of the factory system the
boy or girl who participated in the activities of the home gained in
appreciation of necessity for coöperation and in understanding of his
responsibility to the group in a way that is denied the modern child.
To be a party to those industries through which food was secured,
clothing obtained, and shelter provided meant the exercise of all of
the social virtues. It was fitting under such a régime that the school
should devote itself largely to the tools of learning. But under our
present conditions the demand is insistent that the school provide, in
some measure, through its curriculum, its organization, and by
means of its methods of instruction, for the development of the
attitude of responsibility, and that positive morality which places a
premium upon doing good.
Let us inquire still more closely concerning the conditions under
which moral training must be effected in the school. First of all there
is the fact of heredity. The children with whom we work are different
by nature, and nothing that we can do will make them all alike. Then,
too, there is the added factor of training before the school age. Many
children come to school with bad habits and low ideals. The one
thing that every teacher ought to realize as fundamental in moral
training is the fact that differences in children must be met by a
corresponding difference of appeal on the part of the teacher.
Over against the differences due to heredity and previous training,
there is to be found the common instinctive equipment. Children
instinctively imitate, construct, collect, inquire, emulate, sympathize,
contest, wonder, are proud, and the like. This instinctive equipment
furnishes the basis for actions which in turn become habits. The
problem of the teacher is to use these instincts in securing desirable
responses. Of course, undesirable responses have their basis in
instinct. Here it is the business of the teacher to make the
undesirable response result in discomfort, or, better, to substitute a
desirable response. To be too proud of one’s attainment as
contrasted with others may be unlovely, but to be proud of work
better done to-day than yesterday is a positive virtue resting upon
the same instinctive foundation. The teacher may be worried
because of the imitation of that which is socially undesirable, but she
may use this same tendency to react to produce the social graces.
There are cases in which the attempt to substitute may fail, and the
necessity for inhibition by accompanying the undesirable response
by unpleasant results arise. The important thing is not to neglect this
instinctive equipment. The tendencies shown in childhood furnish the
one basis for moral development, and their neglect may result in lack
of moral strength throughout the life of the individual.
Besides the differences among individuals, there are differences
corresponding roughly to stages of development. The authority
which is accepted without question by children of six will be seriously
questioned by the adolescent. Children grow not only in their ability
to judge of the right action, but also in their demand that authority be
amenable to reason. There can be no doubt but that rational morality
is the type which the school should attempt to develop. To this end it
is essential that the responsibility of children for their own actions
and for the welfare of the whole group should increase as they pass
through the school. There is a possibility of controlling little children
through fear, but the time comes when threats no longer avail. It is a
sorry spectacle to see a mature individual who must still be
controlled by fear of the results which will follow misconduct. It may
be questioned whether the continued use of corporal punishment
may not result in arrested development in morality. The desire for
social approval develops throughout the school period. When
children or adults fail to see the reasonableness of a demand, this
appeal to approval of the group may be most effective in securing
desirable responses. The rule which the teacher must follow is never
to appeal to a lower motive when a higher may be used. Fear,
respect for authority, faith in the wisdom of the one directing, desire
for social approval, ability to pick out the essentially moral element in
the situation, and desire to act in accordance with one’s best
judgment,—thus runs the hierarchy of motives which control. In any
group some children can be appealed to by one motive and some by
another. The teacher who is developing moral strength in the group
will constantly seek to appeal to the children on a plane just higher
than that which they have hitherto occupied.
Another factor which plays an important part in conditioning the
work of the school in developing morality is the generally accepted
standards of the community. Social heredity furnishes the basis for
belief in the continued development of society. The progress that has
been made, the standards once established, become the common
heritage of the members of the group. Drunkenness is no longer
considered gentlemanly; we do not lie to our enemies when they
have a right to know the truth; our ideal of civic righteousness
demands that a man be as honest when he serves the whole people
as he is when he deals with individuals. The importance of this factor
of environment in determining the moral life of the individual is
admitted even by those who emphasize most strongly the
importance of original nature. For the school it gives hope because
of the influences which may there be brought to bear upon the child;
and it adds a problem, because the school may not ignore the home
or the street from which the child comes. It does not seem
unreasonable to expect that teachers will at no far distant day
become most active in all activities which make for better, cleaner,
more worthy surroundings for the children whom they attempt to train
during a relatively small part of their waking hours.
The physical condition of children and teacher has much to do with
the possibility of effective school work, and training in morality is not
an exception to the rule. There is not much use in trying to form
moral habits, nor in asking children to form moral judgments, in a
room filled with foul air, with the temperature above seventy-five.
Poor physical condition on the part of the teacher is often
responsible for lack of control on the part of children. A nervous,
worn-out teacher is apt to nag, is almost sure to magnify insignificant
acts, and by virtue of her lack of control of herself is in no position to
control or instruct children. It would seem at times that we need
medical care for teachers even more than for children. One child in
poor physical condition may be hard to manage, and may fail to gain
much either intellectually or morally from the school; but one teacher
in poor physical condition may do positive injury to a roomful of
children. A few days with a dyspeptic teacher may mean the
formation of bad habits which it will take weeks or even months to
eradicate.
We are beginning to realize that there is a direct relation between
hygiene and morality. The underfed, overworked, physically unfit are
so frequently immoral that we had almost charged their condition to
their immorality. In doing so we were often confusing cause and
effect. However the problem may be solved so far as adults are
concerned, we are satisfied that children of school age are entitled to
happy, healthful lives in so far as it is possible to achieve this result.
The work done to secure better physical conditions, both in school
and at home, is probably as significant for the morality of children as
is any instruction that is given; and such care for the physical welfare
of children is the condition without which we have no right to expect
them to grow morally strong.
While all are agreed as to the necessity for moral training in our
schools, there is a difference of opinion concerning the method to be
used. One school advocates direct moral instruction by means of
fairy tales, history, and other stories, and by moral precepts. The
advocates of this form of instruction believe that they can in this way
make children understand clearly what is right, and because of the
emotional reaction produced by tale or story the children will not only
know the right, but will also want to do right. Those who believe in
indirect instruction find in the regular work of the school, in the
teaching of all subjects, as well as in the control of the children in
school, the best opportunity for moral instruction.
With regard to the direct method, it seems to the writer that it is
assumed that “to know right is to do right.” So far as the emotion
aroused by a story of bravery, or honesty, or temperance is
concerned, the chances are that it will have entirely evaporated
before any occasion for action is found. And right here is one very
great danger in this sort of instruction. To have the emotions aroused
without any outlet in the corresponding action may result in
developing individuals who are entirely satisfied with the emotion.
They learn to delight in emotions, and lack efficiency in action. The
time to tell the story of bravery is when bravery is actually
demanded; or for the child who knows the story simply as a story
and without any attempt to use it to teach morality, the story may be
referred to when this virtue is demanded. Likewise with the moral
precept. For one who has had some experience in acting in
accordance with his best moral judgment, the precept may be used
as a significant generalization. Honesty may be the best policy after
you have won in the struggle and have the approval of conscience,
and of those whose judgment you value. You may be ashamed to be
designated by the name of the unlovely character in the story, when
you are really guilty of his weakness of character. It would seem
safer, from what we know of the emotions, to assume that actions
are responsible for emotions rather than to expect the emotion to
produce the corresponding action.
In support of the indirect method of teaching morality, it may be
argued that the school presents continually a situation in which moral
action is demanded.[21] It is possible, of course, to deny to children
any considerable responsibility for their actions. Children who are
hedged about by rules and regulations, who are constantly directed
and commanded by the teacher, will grow little in power to form
correct moral judgments. But the ideal school is in fact a society, and
the demand for moral activity, and consequently the chance to grow
in morality, is as great as in any other life situation. It must be
remembered, too, that the main purpose of the moral training which
the school gives is to make moral growth continuous. New situations
will demand new adjustments, and it is not possible to supply the
child with a morality which will be sufficient for his future needs. The
one preparation which will certainly be effective in making possible
later growth is to be found in the moral action of to-day.
The subjects of instruction lend themselves to moral training.
Moral strength depends upon interest in those activities which make
for social welfare, in the exercise of judgment in determining the
course of action which will contribute most to the general welfare,
and in action in accordance with the judgment rendered. Our course
of study contains much which should result in increased appreciation
and sympathy in the activities which characterize our modern
society. Geography, history, nature study, literature, all deal with men
in their relationship with one another in a common environment. If
teaching means anything more than gaining knowledge, the method
employed in school subjects cannot be without moral significance.
Teachers who demand accuracy, who are more interested in the
truth of history than in a moral tale, who are open-minded rather than
dogmatic, who seek to exalt the intellect and to hold the emotions
under control, are doing more effective moral teaching than those
who preach by the hour.
As has already been indicated,[22] the ordinary school work lends
itself to the development of positive moral virtues. To work together,
to contribute to the welfare of the whole group, to determine conduct
in view of the possible effect on others, is to exercise those virtues
which are demanded in all social situations. Pride and joy in one’s
work and contempt for the shirker are as natural in school as in any
other situation. The so-called school virtues of punctuality, regularity,
obedience, and industry are virtues outside of schools by virtue of
the same sanction which gives them validity in the school society. It
is important to realize that many of these virtues must be reduced to
the basis of habit in order to be most effective. Acts of kindness,
courtesy, punctuality, repeated often enough, become second
nature. They need no longer to be thought about.
In the field which requires judgment, it is also true that one’s
attitude may become habitual. Much which we call morality can be
accounted for by taste. Many boys and girls have been saved the
struggle through which others pass by ideals and contempts which
they have derived from their associates. Fortunate, indeed, is the
boy or girl who can say: “The members of our set do not frequent
saloons, do not lie or cheat, play fair, work hard, dare to do right.” All
of us tend to derive our moral code from the group of people with
whom we are constantly associated. There is honor even among
thieves, because they have a code which they respect. The teacher
who secures the coöperation of the leaders of the group can modify,
indeed transform, the moral attitude of a class by this appeal to the
code which the whole group accepts and upon which the leaders
insist.
The highest type of moral action is that which involves judgments
of worth. When one asks himself the question, is this right, will it be
for the general welfare, and then acts in accordance with that
judgment, he has performed an essentially moral act. Training for
this sort of action is of the same sort that is demanded wherever the
judgment is involved. The child must be taught to analyze the
situation and to pick out the essentially moral element. The writer
once knew a high school class who habitually cheated in
examinations. They said that they were getting ahead of the teacher.
The principal explained that they were dishonest, that cheating was
stealing. The attitude of the class changed. They responded to this
analysis of the situation which pointed out the moral element. What
we call thoughtlessness and the sowing of wild oats is often to be
explained by the lack of analysis which makes prominent the moral
significance of the contemplated action. The school should give
opportunity whenever possible, whether in ordinary schoolroom
work, on the playground, or with reference to extra-school activities,
for the exercise of the moral judgment. Power to analyze new
situations and to act morally depends entirely upon previous
judgments and actions.
Any discussion of moral training would be incomplete which did
not take account of the reformation of the wrong doer through school
punishments or discipline. “Discipline and punishment are teaching
processes as much as are grammar or arithmetic lessons, and when
we remember that conduct and behavior is the whole of life, we must
welcome the occasions for discipline, and even for punishment. No
sane person is glad that a child’s instincts, impulses, and habits have
taken wrong forms, but the real teacher is glad that these forms
manifest themselves, so that they may be worked over into correct
reactions.”[23] The key to the situation is found in placing the
responsibility with the child. If a wrong has been committed, either he
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