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The democratic
conception in education
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By John Dewey |
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1. The Implications of Human Association. Society is one word, but many things. Men associate
together in all kinds of ways and for all kinds of purposes. One man is
concerned in a multitude of diverse groups, in which his associates may be
quite different. It often seems as if they had nothing in common except that
they are modes of associated life. Within every larger social organization
there are numerous minor groups: not only political subdivisions, but
industrial, scientific, religious, associations. There are political parties
with differing aims, social sets, cliques, gangs, corporations, partnerships,
groups bound closely together by ties of blood, and so on in endless variety.
In many modern states and in some ancient, there is great diversity of
populations, of varying languages, religions, moral codes, and traditions.
From this standpoint, many a minor political unit, one of our large cities,
for example, is a congeries of loosely associated societies, rather than an
inclusive and permeating community of action and thought. (See ante, p. 20.) The terms society, community, are thus ambiguous. They have both a
eulogistic or normative sense, and a descriptive sense; a meaning de jure and
a meaning de facto. In social philosophy, the former connotation is almost
always uppermost. Society is conceived as one by its very nature. The
qualities which accompany this unity, praiseworthy community of purpose and
welfare, loyalty to public ends, mutuality of sympathy, are emphasized. But
when we look at the facts which the term denotes instead of confining our
attention to its intrinsic connotation, we find not unity, but a plurality of
societies, good and bad. Men banded together in a criminal conspiracy, business
aggregations that prey upon the public while serving it, political machines
held together by the interest of plunder, are included. If it is said that
such organizations are not societies because they do not meet the ideal
requirements of the notion of society, the answer, in part, is that the
conception of society is then made so "ideal" as to be of no use,
having no reference to facts; and in part, that each of these organizations,
no matter how opposed to the interests of other groups, has something of the
praiseworthy qualities of "Society" which hold it together. There
is honour among thieves, and a band of robbers has a common interest as
respects its members. Gangs are marked by fraternal feeling, and narrow
cliques by intense loyalty to their own codes. Family life may be marked by
exclusiveness, suspicion, and jealousy as to those without, and yet be a
model of amity and mutual aid within. Any education given by a group tends to
socialize its members, but the quality and value of the socialization depends
upon the habits and aims of the group. Hence, once more, the need of a measure for the worth of any given
mode of social life. In seeking this measure, we have to avoid two extremes.
We cannot set up, out of our heads, something we regard as an ideal society.
We must base our conception upon societies which actually exist, in order to
have any assurance that our ideal is a practicable one. But, as we have just
seen, the ideal cannot simply repeat the traits which are actually found. The
problem is to extract the desirable traits of forms of community life which
actually exist, and employ them to criticize undesirable features and suggest
improvement. Now in any social group whatever, even in a gang of thieves, we
find some interest held in common, and we find a certain amount of
interaction and cooperative intercourse with other groups. From these two
traits we derive our standard. How numerous and varied are the interests
which are consciously shared? How full and free is the interplay with other forms
of association? If we apply these considerations to, say, a criminal band, we
find that the ties which consciously hold the members together are few in
number, reducible almost to a common interest in plunder; and that they are
of such a nature as to isolate the group from other groups with respect to
give and take of the values of life. Hence, the education such a society
gives is partial and distorted. If we take, on the other hand, the kind of
family life which illustrates the standard, we find that there are material,
intellectual, aesthetic interests in which all participate and that the
progress of one member has worth for the experience of other members -- it is
readily communicable -- and that the family is not an isolated whole, but
enters intimately into relationships with business groups, with schools, with
all the agencies of culture, as well as with other similar groups, and that
it plays a due part in the political organization and in return receives
support from it. In short, there are many interests consciously communicated
and shared; and there are varied and free points of contact with other modes
of association. I. Let us apply the first element in this criterion to a despotically
governed state. It is not true there is no common interest in such an
organization between governed and governors. The authorities in command must
make some appeal to the native activities of the subjects, must call some of
their powers into play. Talleyrand said that a government could do everything
with bayonets except sit on them. This cynical declaration is at least a
recognition that the bond of union is not merely one of coercive force. It
may be said, however, that the activities appealed to are themselves unworthy
and degrading -- that such a government calls into functioning activity
simply capacity for fear. In a way, this statement is true. But it overlooks
the fact that fear need not be an undesirable factor in experience. Caution,
circumspection, prudence, desire to foresee future events so as to avert what
is harmful, these desirable traits are as much a product of calling the
impulse of fear into play as is cowardice and abject submission. The real
difficulty is that the appeal to fear is isolated. In evoking dread and hope
of specific tangible reward -- say comfort and ease -- many other capacities
are left untouched. Or rather, they are affected, but in such a way as to
pervert them. Instead of operating on their own account they are reduced to
mere servants of attaining pleasure and avoiding pain. This is equivalent to saying that there is no extensive number of
common interests; there is no free play back and forth among the members of
the social group. Stimulation and response are exceedingly one-sided. In
order to have a large number of values in common, all the members of the
group must have an equable opportunity to receive and to take from others.
There must be a large variety of shared undertakings and experiences.
Otherwise, the influences which educate some into masters, educate others into
slaves. And the experience of each party loses in meaning, when the free
interchange of varying modes of life-experience is arrested. A separation
into a privileged and a subject-class prevents social endosmosis. The evils
thereby affecting the superior class are less material and less perceptible,
but equally real. Their culture tends to be sterile, to be turned back to
feed on itself; their art becomes a showy display and artificial; their
wealth luxurious; their knowledge overspecialized; their manners fastidious
rather than humane. Lack of the free and equitable intercourse which springs from a
variety of shared interests makes intellectual stimulation unbalanced.
Diversity of stimulation means novelty, and novelty means challenge to
thought. The more activity is restricted to a few definite lines -- as it is
when there are rigid class lines preventing adequate interplay of experiences
-- the more action tends to become routine on the part of the class at a
disadvantage, and capricious, aimless, and explosive on the part of the class
having the materially fortunate position. Plato defined a slave as one who
accepts from another the purposes which control his conduct. This condition
obtains even where there is no slavery in the legal sense. It is found wherever
men are engaged in activity which is socially serviceable, but whose service
they do not understand and have no personal interest in. Much is said about
scientific management of work. It is a narrow view which restricts the
science which secures efficiency of operation to movements of the muscles.
The chief opportunity for science is the discovery of the relations of a man
to his work -- including his relations to others who take part -- which will
enlist his intelligent interest in what he is doing. Efficiency in production
often demands division of labour. But it is reduced to a mechanical routine
unless workers see the technical, intellectual, and social relationships
involved in what they do, and engage in their work because of the motivation
furnished by such perceptions. The tendency to reduce such things as
efficiency of activity and scientific management to purely technical
externals is evidence of the one-sided stimulation of thought given to those
in control of industry -- those who supply its aims. Because of their lack of
all-round and well-balanced social interest, there is not sufficient stimulus
for attention to the human factors and relationships in industry.
Intelligence is narrowed to the factors concerned with technical production
and marketing of goods. No doubt, a very acute and intense intelligence in
these narrow lines can be developed, but the failure to take into account the
significant social factors means none the less an absence of mind, and a
corresponding distortion of emotional life. II. This illustration (whose point is to be extended to all
associations lacking reciprocity of interest) brings us to our second point.
The isolation and exclusiveness of a gang or clique brings its antisocial
spirit into relief. But this same spirit is found wherever one group has
interests "of its own" which shut it out from full interaction with
other groups, so that its prevailing purpose is the protection of what it has
got, instead of reorganization and progress through wider relationships. It
marks nations in their isolation from one another; families which seclude
their domestic concerns as if they had no connection with a larger life;
schools when separated from the interest of home and community; the divisions
of rich and poor; learned and unlearned. The essential point is that
isolation makes for rigidity and formal institutionalizing of life, for
static and selfish ideals within the group. That savage tribes regard aliens
and enemies as synonymous is not accidental. It springs from the fact that
they have identified their experience with rigid adherence to their past
customs. On such a basis it is wholly logical to fear intercourse with
others, for such contact might dissolve custom. It would certainly occasion
reconstruction. It is a commonplace that an alert and expanding mental life
depends upon an enlarging range of contact with the physical environment. But
the principle applies even more significantly to the field where we are apt
to ignore it -- the sphere of social contacts. Every expansive era in the history of mankind has coincided with the
operation of factors which have tended to eliminate distance between peoples
and classes previously hemmed off from one another. Even the alleged benefits
of war, so far as more than alleged, spring from the fact that conflict of
peoples at least enforces intercourse between them and thus accidentally
enables them to learn from one another, and thereby to expand their horizons.
Travel, economic and commercial tendencies, have at present gone far to break
down external barriers; to bring peoples and classes into closer and more
perceptible connection with one another. It remains for the most part to
secure the intellectual and emotional significance of this physical
annihilation of space. 2. The Democratic Ideal. The two elements in our criterion both point to democracy. The first
signifies not only more numerous and more varied points of shared common
interest, but greater reliance upon the recognition of mutual interests as a
factor in social control. The second means not only freer interaction between
social groups ( once isolated so far as intention could keep up a separation
) but change in social habit -- its continuous readjustment through meeting
the new situations produced by varied intercourse. And these two traits are
precisely what characterize the democratically constituted society. Upon the educational side, we note first that the realization of a
form of social life in which interests are mutually interpenetrating, and
where progress, or readjustment, is an important consideration, makes a
democratic community more interested than other communities have cause to be
in deliberate and systematic education. The devotion of democracy to
education is a familiar fact. The superficial explanation is that a
government resting upon popular suffrage cannot be successful unless those
who elect and who obey their governors are educated. Since a democratic
society repudiates the principle of external authority, it must find a
substitute in voluntary disposition and interest; these can be created only
by education. But there is a deeper explanation. A democracy is more than a
form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint
communicated experience. The extension in space of the number of individuals
who participate in an interest so that each has to refer his own action to
that of others, and to consider the action of others to give point and
direction to his own, is equivalent to the breaking down of those barriers of
class, race, and national territory which kept men from perceiving the full
import of their activity. These more numerous and more varied points of
contact denote a greater diversity of stimuli to which an individual has to
respond; they consequently put a premium on variation in his action. They
secure a liberation of powers which remain suppressed as long as the
incitations to action are partial, as they must be in a group which in its
exclusiveness shuts out many interests. The widening of the area of shared concerns, and the liberation of a
greater diversity of personal capacities which characterize a democracy, are
not of course the product of deliberation and conscious effort. On the
contrary, they were caused by the development of modes of manufacture and commerce,
travel, migration, and intercommunication which flowed from the command of
science over natural energy. But after greater individualization on one hand,
and a broader community of interest on the other have come into existence, it
is a matter of deliberate effort to sustain and extend them. Obviously a
society to which stratification into separate classes would be fatal, must
see to it that intellectual opportunities are accessible to all on equable
and easy terms. A society marked off into classes need he specially attentive
only to the education of its ruling elements. A society which is mobile,
which is full of channels for the distribution of a change occurring
anywhere, must see to it that its members are educated to personal initiative
and adaptability. Otherwise, they will be overwhelmed by the changes in which
they are caught and whose significance or connections they do not perceive.
The result will be a confusion in which a few will appropriate to themselves
the results of the blind and externally directed activities of others. 3. The Platonic Educational Philosophy. Subsequent chapters will be devoted to making
explicit the implications of the democratic ideas in education. In the
remaining portions of this chapter, we shall consider the educational
theories which have been evolved in three epochs when the social import of
education was especially conspicuous. The first one to be considered is that
of Plato. No one could better express than did he the fact that a society is
stably organized when each individual is doing that for which he has aptitude
by nature in such a way as to be useful to others (or to contribute to the
whole to which he belongs ); and that it is the business of education to
discover these aptitudes and progressively to train them for social use. Much
which has been said so far is borrowed from what Plato first consciously
taught the world. But conditions which he could not intellectually control
led him to restrict these ideas in their application. He never got any conception
of the indefinite plurality of activities which may characterize an
individual and a social group, and consequently limited his view to a limited
number of classes of capacities and of social arrangements. Plato's starting point is that the organization of society depends
ultimately upon knowledge of the end of existence. If we do not know its end,
we shall be at the mercy of accident and caprice. Unless we know the end, the
good, we shall have no criterion for rationally deciding what the possibilities
are which should be promoted, nor how social arrangements are to be ordered.
We shall have no conception of the proper limits and distribution of
activities -- what he called justice -- as a trait of both individual and
social organization. But how is the knowledge of the final and permanent good
to be achieved? In dealing with this question we come upon the seemingly
insuperable obstacle that such knowledge is not possible save in a just and
harmonious social order. Everywhere else the mind is distracted and misled by
false valuations and false perspectives. A disorganized and factional society
sets up a number of different models and standards. Under such conditions it
is impossible for the individual to attain consistency of mind. Only a
complete whole is fully self-consistent. A society which rests upon the
supremacy of some factor over another irrespective of its rational or
proportionate claims, inevitably leads thought astray. It puts a premium on
certain things and slurs over others, and creates a mind whose seeming unity
is forced and distorted. Education proceeds ultimately from the patterns
furnished by institutions, customs, and laws. Only in a just state will these
be such as to give the right education; and only those who have rightly
trained minds will be able to recognize the end, and ordering principle of
things. We seem to be caught in a hopeless circle. However, Plato suggested a
way out. A few men, philosophers or lovers of wisdom -- or truth -- may by
study learn at least in outline the proper patterns of true existence. If a
powerful ruler should form a state after these patterns, then its regulations
could be preserved. An education could be given which would sift individuals,
discovering what they were good for, and supplying a method of assigning each
to the work in life for which his nature fits him. Each doing his own part,
and never transgressing, the order and unity of the whole would be
maintained. It would be impossible to find in any scheme of philosophic thought a
more adequate recognition on one hand of the educational significance of
social arrangements and, on the other, of the dependence of those
arrangements upon the means used to educate the young. It would be impossible
to find a deeper sense of the function of education in discovering and
developing personal capacities, and training them so that they would connect
with the activities of others. Yet the society in which the theory was
propounded was so undemocratic that Plato could not work out a solution for
the problem whose terms he clearly saw. While he affirmed with emphasis that the place of the individual in
society should not be determined by birth or wealth or any conventional
status, but by his own nature as discovered in the process of education, he
had no perception of the uniqueness of individuals. For him they fall by
nature into classes, and into a very small number of classes at that.
Consequently the testing and sifting function of education only shows to
which one of three classes an individual belongs. There being no recognition
that each individual constitutes his own class, there could be no recognition
of the infinite diversity of active tendencies and combinations of tendencies
of which an individual is capable. There were only three types of faculties or
powers in the individual's constitution. Hence education would soon reach a
static limit in each class, for only diversity makes change and progress. In some individuals, appetites naturally dominate; they are assigned
to the labouring and trading class, which expresses and supplies human wants.
Others reveal, upon education, that over and above appetites, they have a
generous, outgoing, assertively courageous disposition. They become the
citizen-subjects of the state; its defenders in war; its internal guardians
in peace. But their limit is fixed by their lack of reason, which is a
capacity to grasp the universal. Those who possess this are capable of the
highest kind of education, and become in time the legislators of the state --
for laws are the universals which control the particulars of experience. Thus
it is not true that in intent, Plato subordinated the individual to the
social whole. But it is true that lacking the perception of the uniqueness of
every individual, his incommensurability with others, and consequently not
recognizing that a society might change and yet be stable, his doctrine of
limited powers and classes came in net effect to the idea of the
subordination of individuality. We cannot better Plato's conviction that an individual is happy and
society well organized when each individual engages in those activities for
which he has a natural equipment, nor his conviction that it is the primary
office of education to discover this equipment to its possessor and train him
for its effective use. But progress in knowledge has made us aware of the
superficiality of Plato's lumping of individuals and their original powers
into a few sharply marked-off classes; it has taught us that original
capacities are indefinitely numerous and variable. It is but the other side
of this fact to say that in the degree in which society has become
democratic, social organization means utilization of the specific and
variable qualities of individuals, not stratification by classes. Although
his educational philosophy was revolutionary, it was none the less in bondage
to static ideals. He thought that change or alteration was evidence of
lawless flux; that true reality was unchangeable. Hence while he would
radically change the existing state of society, his aim was to construct a
state in which change would subsequently have no place. The final end of life
is fixed; given a state framed with this end in view, not even minor details
are to be altered. Though they might not be inherently important, yet if
permitted they would inure the minds of men to the idea of change, and hence
be dissolving and anarchic. The breakdown of his philosophy is made apparent
in the fact that he could not trust to gradual improvements in education to
bring about a better society which should then improve education, and so on
indefinitely. Correct education could not come into existence until an ideal
state existed, and after that education would be devoted simply to its
conservation. For the existence of this state he was obliged to trust to some
happy accident by which philosophic wisdom should happen to coincide with
possession of ruling power in the state. 4. The "Individualistic" Ideal of the Eighteenth Century. In the eighteenth-century
philosophy we find ourselves in a very different circle of ideas.
"Nature" still means something antithetical to existing social
organization; Plato exercised a great influence upon Rousseau. But the voice
of nature now speaks for the diversity of individual talent and for the need
of free development of individuality in all its variety. Education in accord
with nature furnishes the goal and the method of instruction and discipline.
Moreover, the native or original endowment was conceived, in extreme cases,
as non-social or even as antisocial. Social arrangements were thought of as
mere external expedients by which these non-social individuals might secure a
greater amount of private happiness for themselves. Nevertheless, these statements convey only an inadequate idea of the
true significance of the movement. In reality its chief interest was in
progress and in social progress. The seeming antisocial philosophy was a
somewhat transparent mask for an impetus toward a wider and freer society --
toward cosmopolitanism. The positive ideal was humanity. In membership in
humanity, as distinct from a state, man's capacities would be liberated;
while in existing political organizations his powers were hampered and
distorted to meet the requirements and selfish interests of the rulers of the
state. The doctrine of extreme individualism was but the counterpart, the
obverse, of ideals of the indefinite perfectibility of man and of a social
organization having a scope as wide as humanity. The emancipated individual
was to become the organ and agent of a comprehensive and progressive society. The heralds of this gospel were acutely conscious of the evils of the
social estate in which they found themselves. They attributed these evils to
the limitations imposed upon the free powers of man. Such limitation was both
distorting and corrupting. Their impassioned devotion to emancipation of life
from external restrictions which operated to the exclusive advantage of the
class to whom a past feudal system consigned power, found intellectual
formulation in a worship of nature. To give "nature" full swing was
to replace an artificial, corrupt, and inequitable social order by a new and
better kingdom of humanity. Unrestrained faith in Nature as both a model and
a working power was strengthened by the advances of natural science. Inquiry
freed from prejudice and artificial restraints of church and state had
revealed that the world is a scene of law. The Newtonian solar system, which
expressed the reign of natural law, was a scene of wonderful harmony, where
every force balanced with every other. Natural law would accomplish the same
result in human relations, if men would only get rid of the artificial
man-imposed coercive restrictions. Education in accord with nature was thought to be the first step in
insuring this more social society. It was plainly seen that economic and
political limitations were ultimately dependent upon limitations of thought
and feeling. The first step in freeing men from external chains was to
emancipate them from the internal chains of false beliefs and ideals. What
was called social life, existing institutions, were too false and corrupt to
be intrusted with this work. How could it be expected to undertake it when
the undertaking meant its own destruction? "Nature" must then be
the power to which the enterprise was to be left. Even the extreme
sensationalistic theory of knowledge which was current derived itself from
this conception. To insist that mind is originally passive and empty was one
way of glorifying the possibilities of education. If the mind was a wax
tablet to be written upon by objects, there were no limits to the possibility
of education by means of the natural environment. And since the natural world
of objects is a scene of harmonious "truth," this education would
infallibly produce minds filled with the truth. 5. Education as National and as Social. As soon as the first enthusiasm for freedom waned,
the weakness of the theory upon the constructive side became obvious. Merely
to leave everything to nature was, after all, but to negate the very idea of
education; it was to trust to the accidents of circumstance. Not only was
some method required but also some positive organ, some administrative agency
for carrying on the process of instruction. The "complete and harmonious
development of all powers," having as its social counterpart an
enlightened and progressive humanity, required definite organization for its
realization. Private individuals here and there could proclaim the gospel;
they could not execute the work. A Pestalozzi could try experiments and
exhort philanthropically inclined persons having wealth and power to follow
his example. But even Pestalozzi saw that any effective pursuit of the new
educational ideal required the support of the state. The realization of the
new education destined to produce a new society was, after all, dependent
upon the activities of existing states. The movement for the democratic idea
inevitably became a movement for publicly conducted and administered schools. So far as Europe was concerned, the historic situation identified the
movement for a state-supported education with the nationalistic movement in
political life -- a fact of incalculable significance for subsequent
movements. Under the influence of German thought in particular, education
became a civic function and the civic function was identified with the
realization of the ideal of the national state. The "state" was
substituted for humanity; cosmopolitanism gave way to nationalism. To form
the citizen, not the "man," became the aim of education. 1 The historic situation to which
reference is made is the after-effects of the Napoleonic conquests,
especially in Germany. The German states felt (and subsequent events
demonstrate the correctness of the belief ) that systematic attention to
education was the best means of recovering and maintaining their political
integrity and power. Externally they were weak and divided. Under the
leadership of Prussian statesmen they made this condition a stimulus to the
development of an extensive and thoroughly grounded system of public
education. This change in practice necessarily brought about a change in theory.
The individualistic theory receded into the background. The state furnished
not only the instrumentalities of public education but also its goal. When
the actual practice was such that the school system, from the elementary
grades through the university faculties, supplied the patriotic citizen and
soldier and the future state official and administrator and furnished the
means for military, industrial, and political defense and expansion, it was
impossible for theory not to emphasize the aim of social efficiency. And with
the immense importance attached to the nationalistic state, surrounded by
other competing and more or less hostile states, it was equally impossible to
interpret social efficiency in terms of a vague cosmopolitan humanitarianism.
Since the maintenance of a particular national sovereignty required subordination
of individuals to the superior interests of the state both in military
defense and in struggles for international supremacy in commerce, social
efficiency was understood to imply a like subordination. The educational
process was taken to be one of disciplinary training rather than of personal
development. Since, however, the ideal of culture as complete development of
personality persisted, educational philosophy attempted a reconciliation of
the two ideas. The reconciliation took the form of the conception of the
"organic" character of the state. The individual in his isolation
is nothing; only in and through an absorption of the aims and meaning of
organized institutions does he attain true personality. What appears to be
his subordination to political authority and the demand for sacrifice of
himself to the commands of his superiors is in reality but making his own the
objective reason manifested in the state -- the only way in which he can
become truly rational. The notion of development which we have seen to be
characteristic of institutional idealism (as in the Hegelian philosophy) was
just such a deliberate effort to combine the two ideas of complete
realization of personality and thoroughgoing "disciplinary"
subordination to existing institutions. The extent of the transformation of educational philosophy which
occurred in Germany in the generation occupied by the struggle against
Napoleon for national independence, may be gathered from Kant, who well
expresses the earlier individual-cosmopolitan ideal. In his treatise on
Pedagogics, consisting of lectures given in the later years of the eighteenth
century, he defines education as the process by which man becomes man.
Mankind begins its history submerged in nature -- not as Man who is a
creature of reason, while nature furnishes only instinct and appetite. Nature
offers simply the germs which education is to develop and perfect. The
peculiarity of truly human life is that man has to create himself by his own
voluntary efforts; he has to make himself a truly moral, rational, and free
being. This creative effort is carried on by the educational activities of
slow generations. Its acceleration depends upon men consciously striving to
educate their successors not for the existing state of affairs but so as to
make possible a future better humanity. But there is the great difficulty.
Each generation is inclined to educate its young so as to get along in the
present world instead of with a view to the proper end of education: the
promotion of the best possible realization of humanity as humanity. Parents
educate their children so that they may get on; princes educate their
subjects as instruments of their own purposes. Who, then, shall conduct education so that humanity may improve? We
must depend upon the efforts of enlightened men in their private capacity.
"All culture begins with private men and spreads outward from them.
Simply through the efforts of persons of enlarged inclinations, who are
capable of grasping the ideal of a future better condition, is the gradual
approximation of human nature to its end possible.... Rulers are simply
interested in such training as will make their subjects better tools for
their own intentions." Even the subsidy by rulers of privately conducted
schools must be carefully safeguarded. For the rulers' interest in the
welfare of their own nation instead of in what is best for humanity, will
make them, if they give money for the schools, wish to draw their plans. We
have in this view an express statement of the points characteristic of the
eighteenth century individualistic cosmopolitanism. The full development of
private personality is identified with the aims of humanity as a whole and
with the idea of progress. In addition we have an explicit fear of the
hampering influence of a state-conducted and state-regulated education upon
the attainment of these ideas. But in less than two decades after this time,
Kant's philosophic successors, Fichte and Hegel, elaborated the idea that the
chief function of the state is educational; that in particular the
regeneration of Germany is to be accomplished by an education carried on in
the interests of the state, and that the private individual is of necessity
an egoistic, irrational being, enslaved to his appetites and to circumstances
unless he submits voluntarily to the educative discipline of state
institutions and laws. In this spirit, Germany was the first country to
undertake a public, universal, and compulsory system of education extending
from the primary school through the university, and to submit to jealous
state regulation and supervision all private educational enterprises. Two results should stand out from this brief historical survey. The
first is that such terms as the individual and the social conceptions of
education are quite meaningless taken at large, or apart from their context.
Plato had the ideal of an education which should equate individual
realization and social coherency and stability. His situation forced his
ideal into the notion of a society organized in stratified classes, losing
the individual in the class. The eighteenth century educational philosophy
was highly individualistic in form, but this form was inspired by a noble and
generous social ideal: that of a society organized to include humanity, and
providing for the indefinite perfectibility of mankind. The idealistic
philosophy of Germany in the early nineteenth century endeavoured again to
equate the ideals of a free and complete development of cultured personality
with social discipline and political subordination. It made the national
state an intermediary between the realization of private personality on one
side and of humanity on the other. Consequently, it is equally possible to
state its animating principle with equal truth either in the classic terms of
"harmonious development of all the powers of personality" or in the
more recent terminology of "social efficiency." All this reinforces
the statement which opens this chapter: The conception of education as a
social process and function has no definite meaning until we define the kind
of society we have in mind. These considerations pave the way for our second conclusion. One of
the fundamental problems of education in and for a democratic society is set
by the conflict of a nationalistic and a wider social aim. The earlier
cosmopolitan and "humanitarian" conception suffered both from
vagueness and from lack of definite organs of execution and agencies of
administration. In Europe, in the Continental states particularly, the new
idea of the importance of education for human welfare and progress was
captured by national interests and harnessed to do a work whose social aim
was definitely narrow and exclusive. The social aim of education and its
national aim were identified, and the result was a marked obscuring of the
meaning of a social aim. This confusion corresponds to the existing situation of human
intercourse. On the one hand, science, commerce, and art transcend national
boundaries. They are largely international in quality and method. They
involve interdependencies and cooperation among the peoples inhabiting
different countries. At the same time, the idea of national sovereignty has
never been as accentuated in politics as it is at the present time. Each
nation lives in a state of suppressed hostility and incipient war with its
neighbours. Each is supposed to be the supreme judge of its own interests,
and it is assumed as matter of course that each has interests which are
exclusively its own. To question this is to question the very idea of national
sovereignty which is assumed to be basic to political practice and political
science. This contradiction (for it is nothing less) between the wider sphere
of associated and mutually helpful social life and the narrower sphere of
exclusive and hence potentially hostile pursuits and purposes, exacts of
educational theory a clearer conception of the meaning of "social"
as a function and test of education than has yet been attained. Is it possible for an educational system to be conducted by a national
state and yet the full social ends of the educative process not be
restricted, constrained, and corrupted? Internally, the question has to face
the tendencies, due to present economic conditions, which split society into
classes some of which are made merely tools for the higher culture of others.
Externally, the question is concerned with the reconciliation of national
loyalty, of patriotism, with superior devotion to the things which unite men
in common ends, irrespective of national political boundaries. Neither phase
of the problem can be worked out by merely negative means. It is not enough
to see to it that education is not actively used as an instrument to make
easier the exploitation of one class by another. School facilities must be
secured of such amplitude and efficiency as will in fact and not simply in
name discount the effects of economic inequalities, and secure to all the
wards of the nation equality of equipment for their future careers.
Accomplishment of this end demands not only adequate administrative provision
of school facilities, and such supplementation of family resources as will
enable youth to take advantage of them, but also such modification of
traditional ideals of culture, traditional subjects of study and traditional
methods of teaching and discipline as will retain all the youth under
educational influences until they are equipped to be masters of their own
economic and social careers. The ideal may seem remote of execution, but the
democratic ideal of education is a farcical yet tragic delusion except as the
ideal more and more dominates our public system of education. The same principle has application on the side of the considerations
which concern the relations of one nation to another. It is not enough to
teach the horrors of war and to avoid everything which would stimulate
international jealousy and animosity. The emphasis must be put upon whatever
binds people together in cooperative human pursuits and results, apart from
geographical limitations. The secondary and provisional character of national
sovereignty in respect to the fuller, freer, and more fruitful association
and intercourse of all human beings with one another must be instilled as a
working disposition of mind. If these applications seem to be remote from a
consideration of the philosophy of education, the impression shows that the
meaning of the idea of education previously developed has not been adequately
grasped. This conclusion is bound up with the very idea of education as a
freeing of individual capacity in a progressive growth directed to social
aims. Otherwise a democratic criterion of education can only be
inconsistently applied. Summary. Since education is a social process, and there are many kinds of
societies, a criterion for educational criticism and construction implies a
particular social ideal. The two points selected by which to measure the
worth of a form of social life are the extent in which the interests of a
group are shared by all its members, and the fullness and freedom with which
it interacts with other groups. An undesirable society, in other words, is
one which internally and externally sets up barriers to free intercourse and
communication of experience. A society which makes provision for participation
in its good of all its members on equal terms and which secures flexible
readjustment of its institutions through interaction of the different forms
of associated life is in so far democratic. Such a society must have a type
of education which gives individuals a personal interest in social
relationships and control, and the habits of mind which secure social changes
without introducing disorder. Three typical historic philosophies of education were considered from
this point of view. The Platonic was found to have an ideal formally quite
similar to that stated, but which was compromised in its working out by
making a class rather than an individual the social unit. The so-called
individualism of the eighteenth-century enlightenment was found to involve
the notion of a society as broad as humanity, of whose progress the
individual was to be the organ. But it lacked any agency for securing the
development of its ideal as was evidenced in its falling back upon Nature.
The institutional idealistic philosophies of the nineteenth century supplied
this lack by making the national state the agency, but in so doing narrowed
the conception of the social aim to those who were members of the same
political unit, and reintroduced the idea of the subordination of the
individual to the institution. 1 There is a much neglected strain in Rousseau tending intellectually
in this direction. He opposed the existing state of affairs on the ground
that it formed neither the citizen nor the man. Under existing conditions, he
preferred to try for the latter rather than for the former. But there are
many sayings of his which point to the formation of the citizen as ideally
the higher, and which indicate that his own endeavour, as embodied in the
Emile, was simply the best makeshift the corruption of the times permitted
him to sketch. . |
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