By
I believe that
- all education proceeds by the participation of the
individual in the social consciousness of the race. This process beginns
unconsciously almost at birth, and is continually shaping the individual’s
powers, saturating his consciousness, forming his habits, training his ideas,
and arousing his feeling and emotions. Through this unconscious education the
individual gradually comes to share in the intellectual and moral resources
which humanity has succeeded in getting together. He becomes an inheritor of
the funded capital of civilization. The most formal and technical education in
the world cannot safely depart from this general process. It can only organize
it or differentiate it in some particular direction.
- the only true education comes through the
stimulation of the child’s powers by the demands of the social situations in
which he finds himself. Through these demands, he is stimulated to act as a
member of a unity, to emerge from his original narrowness of action and
feeling, and to conceive of himself from the standpoint of the welfare of the
group to which he belongs. Through the responses, which others make to his own
activies he comes to know what these mean in social terms. The value, which
they have, is reflected back into them. For instance, through the response
which is made to the child’s instinctive babblings, the child comes to know
what those babblings mean; they are transformed into articulate language, and
thus the child is introduced into the consolidated wealth of ideas and emotions
which are now summed up in language.
- this educational process has two sides – one
psychological and one sociological – and that neither can be subordinated to
the other, or neglected, without evil results following. Of these two sides,
the psychological is the basis. The child’s own instincts and powers furnish
the material and give the starting-point for all education. Save as the efferts
of the educator connect with some activity, which the child is carrying on of
his own initiative independent of the educator, education becomes reduced to a
pressure from without. It may, indeed, give certain external results, but
cannot truly be called educative. Without insight into the psychological structure
and activities of the individual, the educative process will, therefore, be
haphazard and arbitrary. If it chances to coincide with the child’s activity it
will get a leverage; if it does not, it will result in friction, or
disintegration, or arrest of the child nature.
- knowledge of
social conditions, of the present state of civilization, is necessary in order
properly to interpret the child´s powers. The child has his own instincts and
tendencies, but we do not know what these mean until we can translate them into
their social equivalents. We must be able to carry them back into a social past
and see them as the inheritance of previous race activities. We must also be
able to project them into the future to see. what their outcome and end will
be. In the illustration just used, it is the ability to see in the child’s
babblings the promise and potency of a future social intercourse and
conversation, which enables one to deal in the proper way with that instinct.
- the psychological and social sides are organic, and
that education cannot be regarded as a compromise between the two, or a
superimposition of one upon the other.. we are told that the psychological
definition of education is barren and formal – that it gives us only the idea
of a development of all the mental powers without giving us any idea of a
development of all the mental powers without giving us any idea of the use to
which these powers are put. On the other hand, it is urged that the social
definition of education, as getting adjusted to civilization, makes of it a
forced and external process, and results in subordinating the freedom of the
individual to a preconceived social and political status.
- each of these objections is true when urged against
one side isolated from the other. In order to know what a power really is, we
must know what its end, use, or function is, and this we cannot know save as we
conceive of the individual as active in social relationships. But, on the other
hand, the only possible adjustment, which we can give to the child under
existing conditions is that, which arises through putting him in complete
possession of all his powers. With the advent of democracy and modern
industrial conditions, it is impossible to foretell definitely just what
civilization will be twenty years from now. Hence it is impossible to prepare
the child for any precise set of conditions. To prepare him for the future life
means to give him command of himself; it means so to train him that he will
have full and ready use of all his capacaties; that his eye and ear and hand
may be tools ready to command, that his judgement may be capable of grasping
the conditions under which it has to work, and the executive forces be trained
to act economically and efficiently. It is impossible to reach this sort of
adjustment save as constant regard is had to the individual’s own powers,
tastes, and interests – that is, as education is continually converted into
psychological terms.
In sum, I believe that the individual, who is to be
educated, is a social individual, and that society is an organic union of
individuals. If we eliminate the social factor from the child, we are left only
with an abstraction; if we eliminate the individual factor from society, we are
left only with an inert and lifeless mass. Education, therefore, must begin
with a psychological insight into the child’s capacities, interests, and
habits. It must be controlled at every point by reference to these same
considerations. These powers, interests, and habits must be continually
interpreted – we must know what they mean. They must be translated into terms
of their social equivalents – into terms of what they are capable of in the way
of social service.
I believe that
- the school is primarily a social institution.
Education being a social process, the school is simply that form of community
life in which all those agencies are concentrated that will be most effective
in bringing the child to share in the inherited resources of the race, and to
use his own powers for social ends.
- education, therefore, is a process of living and not
a preparation for future living.
- the school must be represent present life – life as
real and vital to the child as that which he carries on in the home, in the
neigbourhood, or on the playground.
- that education which does not occur through forms of
lifes, forms that are worth living for their own sake, is always a poor
substitute for the genuine reality, and tends to cramp and to deaden.
- the school, as an institution, should simplify
existing social life; should reduce it, as it were, to an embryonic form.
Existing life is so complex that the child cannot be brought into contact with
it without either confusion or distrection; he is either overwhelmed by the
multiplicity of activities which are going on, so that he loses his own power
of orderly reaction, or he is so stimulated by these various activities that
his powers are prematurely called into play and he becomes either unduly
specialized or else disintegrated.
- as such simplified social life, the school life
should grow gradually out of the home life; that it should take up and continue
the activities with which the child is already familiar in the home.
- it should exhibit these activities to the child, and
reproduce them in such ways that the child will gradually learn the meaning of
them, and be capable of playing his own part in relation to them.
- this is a psychological necessity, because it is the
only way of securing continuity in the child’s growth, the only way of giving a
background of past experience to the new ideas given in school.
- it is also a social necessity because the home is
the form of social life in which the child has been nurtured and in connection
with which he has had his moral training. It is the business of the school to
deepen and extend his sense of the values bound up in his home life.
- much of
present education fails because it neglects this fundamental principle
of the school as a form of community. It conceives the school as a place where
certain informations are to be given, where certain lessons are to be learned,
or where certain habits are to be formed. The value of these is conceived as
laying largely in the remote future; the child must do these things for the
sake of something else he is to do; they are more preparations. As a result
they do not become a part of the life experience of the child and so are not
truly educative.
- the moral education centres upon this conception of
the school as a mode of social life, that the best and deepest moral training
is precisely that which one gets through having to enter into proper relations
with others in a unity of work and thoght. The present educational systems, so
far as they destroy and neglect this unity, render it difficult or impossible
to get any genuine, regular moral training.
- the child should be stimulated and controlled in his
work through the life of the community.
- under existing conditions far too much of the
stimulus and control proceed from the teacher, because of neglect of the idea
of the school as a form of social life.
- the teacher’s place and work in the school is to be
interpreted from this same basis. The teacher is not in the school to impose
certain ideas or to form certain habits in the child, but is there as a member
of the community to select the influences which shall affect the child and to
assist him in properly responding to these influences.
- the discipline of the school should proceed from the
life of the school as a whole and not directly from the teacher.
- the teacher’s business is simply to determine, on
the basis of larger experience and riper wisdom, how the discipline of life
shall come to the child.
- all questions of the grading of the child and his
promotion should be determined by reference to the same standard. Examinations
are of use only so far as they test the child’s fitness for social life and
reveal the place in which he can be of the most service and where he can
receive the most help.
I believe that
- the social live of the child is the basis of
concentration, or correlation, in all his training or growth. The social life
gives the unconscious unity and the background of all his efforts and of all
his attainments.
- the subject-matter of the school curriculum should
mark a gradual differentiation out of the primitive unconscious unity of social
life.
- we violate the child’s nature and render difficult
the best ethical results by introducing the child too abruptly to a number of
special studies, of reading, writing, geography, etc., out of relation to this
social life.
- the true center of correlation on the school
subjects is not science, nor litterature, nor history, nor geography, but the
child’s own social activities.
- education cannot be unified in the study of science,
or so-called nature study, because apart from human activity, nature itself is
not a unity; nature in itself is a number of diverse objects in space and time,
and to attempt to make it the centre of work by itself is to introduce a
principle of radiation rather than one of concentration.
- literature is the reflex expression and
interpretation of social experience; that hence it must follow upon and not
precede such experience. It, therefore, cannot be made the basis, although it
may be made the summary of unification.
- once more that history is of educative in so far as
it presents phases of social life and growth. It must be controlled by
reference to social life. When taken simply as history it is thrown into the distant
past and becomes dead and inert. Taken as the record of man’s social life and
progress it becomes full of meaning. I believe, however, that it cannot be so
taken excepting as the child is also introduced directly into social life.
- the primary basis of education is in the child’s
powers at work along the same general constructive lines as those which have
brought civilization into being.
- the only way to make the child conscious of his
social heritages is to enable him to perform those fundamental types of
activity which make civilization what it is.
- in the so-called expressive or constructive
activities as the centre of correlation.
- this gives the standard for the place of cooking,
sewing, manual training, etc., in the school.
- there are not special studies which are to be
introduced over and above a lot of others in the way of relaxation or relief,
or as additional accomplishments. I believe rather that they represent, as
types, fundamental forms of social activity; and that it is possible and
desirable that the child’s introduction into the more formal subjects of the
curriculum be through the medium of these activities.
- the study of science is educational in so far as it
brings out the materials and processes which make social life what it is.
- one of the greatest difficulties in the present
teaching of science is that the material is presented in purely objective form,
or is treated as a new peculiar kind of experience which the child can add to
that which he has already had. In reality, science is of value because it gives
the ability to interpret and control the experience already had. It should be
introduced, not as so much new subject.matter, but as showing the factors
already involved in previous experience and as furnishing tools by which that
experience can be more easily and effectively regulated.
- at present we lose much of the value of literature
and language studies because of our elimination of the social element. Language
is almost always treated in the books of pedagogy simply as the expression of
thought. It is true that language is a logical instrument, but it is
fundamentally and primarily a social instrument. Language is the device for
communication; it is the tool through which one individual comes to share the ideas
and feelings of others. When treated simply as a way of getting individual
information, or as a means of showing off what one has learned, it loses its
social motive and end.
- there is, therefore, no succession of studies in the
ideal school curriculum. If education is life, all life has, from the outset, a
scientific aspect, an aspect of art and culture, and an aspect of
communication. It cannot, therefore, be true that the proper studies for one
grade are more reading and writing, and that at a later grade, reading, or
literature, or science, may be introduced. The progress is not in the
succession of studies, but in the development of new attitudes towards, and new
interests in, experience.
- education must be conceived as a continuing
reconstruction of experience; that the process and the goal of education are
one and the same thing.
- to set up any end outside of education, as
furnishing its goal and standard, is to deprive the educational process of much
of its meaning, and tends to make us rely upon false and external stimuli in
dealing with the child.
I believe that
- the question of method is ultimately reducible to
the question of the order of development of the child’s powers and interests.
The law for presenting and treating material is the law implicit within the
child’s own nature. Because this is so I believe the following statements are
of supreme importance as determining the spirit in which education is carried
on:
- the active side precedes the passive in the development
of the child-nature; that expression comes before conscious impression; that
the muscular development precedes the sensory;
that movements come before conscious sensations; I believe that
consciousness is essentially motor or impulsive; that conscious states tend to
project themselves in action.
- the neglect of this principle is the cause of a
large part of the waste of time and strength in school work. The child is
thrown into a passive, receptive, or absorbing attitude. The conditions are such
that he is not permitted to follow the law of his nature; the result is
friction and waste.
- ideas (intellectual and rational processes) also
result from action and devolve for the sake of the better control of action.
What we term reason is primarily the law of orderly or effective action. To
attempt to develop the reasoning powers, the powers of judgement, without reference to the selection and arrangement
of means in action, is the fundamental fallacy in our present methods of
dealing with this matter. As a result we present the child with arbitrary
symbols. Symbols are a necessity in mental development, but they have their
place as tools for economizing effort; presented by themselves they are a mass
of meaningless and arbitrary ideas imposed from without.
- the image is the great instrument of instruction.
What a child gets out of any subject presented to him is simply the images,
which he himself forms with regard to it.
- if nine-tenths of the energy at present directed
towards making the child learn certain things were spent in seeing to it that
the child was forming proper images, the work of instruction would be
indefinitely facilitated.
- much of the time and attention now given to the
preparation and presentation of lessons might be more wisely and profitably
expended in training the child’s power of imagery and in seeing to it that he
was continually forming definite, vived, and growing images of the various
subjects with which he comes in contact in his experience.
- interests are the signs and symptoms of growing
power. I believe that they represent dawning capacities. Accordingly the
constant and careful observation of the interests is of the utmost importance
for the educator.
- these interests are to be observed as showing the
state of development, which the child
has reached.
- the prophesy the stage upon which he is about to
enter.
- only through the continual and sympathetic
observation of childhood’s interests can the adult enter into the child’s life
and see what it is ready for, and upon what material it could work most readily
and fruitfully.
- the interests are either to be humoured or
repressed. To repress interests is to substitute the adult for the child, and
so to weaken intellectual curiosity and alertness, to suppress initiative, and
to deaden interest. To humour the interests is to substitute the transient for
the permanent. The interest is always the sign of some power below; the
important things are to discover this power. To humour the interest is to fail
to penetrate below the surface, and its sure result is to substitute caprice
and whim for genuine interest.
- the emotions are the reflex of actions.
- to endeavour to stimulate or arouse the emotions
apart from their corresponding activities is to introduce an unhealthy and
morbid state of mind.
- if we can only secure right habits of action and
thought, with reference to the good, the true, and the beautiful, the emotions
will for the most part take care of themselves.
- next to deadness and dullness, formalism and
routine, our education is threatened with no greater evil than sentimentalism.
- the sentimantalism is the necessary result of the
attempt to divorce feeling from action.
I believe that
- education is the fundamental method of social
progress and reform.
- all reforms which rest simply upon the enactment of
law, or the threatning of certain penalties, or upon changes in mechanical or
outward arrangements, are transitory and futile.
- education is a regulation of the process of coming
to share in the social consciousness; and that the adjustment of individual
activity on the basis of this social consciousness is the only sure method of
social reconstruction.
- the conception has due regard for both the
individualistic and socialistic ideals. It is duly individual because it
recognizes the formation of a certain character as the only genuine basis of
right living. It is socialistic because it recognizes that this right character
is not to be formed by merely individual precept, example, or exhortation, but
rather by the influence of a certain form of institutional or community life
upon the individual, and that the social organism through the school, as its
organ, may determine ethical results.
- in the ideal school we have the reconciliation of
the individualistic and the institutional ideals.
- the community’s duty to education is, therefore, its
paramount moral duty. By law and punishment, by social agitation and
discussion, society can regulate and form itself in a more or less haphazard
and chance way. But through education society can formulate its own purpose,
can organize its own means and resources, and thus shape itself with
definiteness and economy in the direction in which it wishes to move.
-when society once recognizes the possibilities in
this direction, and the obligations which these possibilities impose, it is
impossible to conceive of the resources of time, attention, and money which
will be put at the disposal of the educator.
- it is the business of every one interested in
education to insist upon the school as the primary and most effective interest
of social progress and reform in order that society may be awakened to realize
what the school stands for, and aroused to the necessity of endowing the
educator with sufficient equipment properly to perform his task.
-education thus conceived marks the most perfect and
intimate union of science and art conceivable in human experience.
- the art of thus giving shape to human powers and
adapting them to social service is the supreme art; one calling into its
service the best of artists; that no insight, symphaty, tact, executive power
is too great for such service.
- with the growth of psychological service, giving
added insight into individual structure and laws of growth; and with growth of
social science, adding to our knowledge of the right organization of the
individuals, all scientific resources can be utilized for the purpose of
education.
-when science and art thus join hands the most commanding
motive for human action will be reached, the most genuine springs of human
conduct aroused, and the best service that human nature is capable of
guaranteed.
- the teacher is engaged, not simply in the training
of individuals, but in the formation of the proper social life.
- every teacher should realize the dignity of his calling; that he is a social servant set apart for the maintenance of proper social order and the securing of the right social growth.
- in this way the teacher always is the prophet of the
true God and the usherer in of the true kingdom of God.