Part 2 (2/2)

Upon the educational side, we note first that the realization of a form of social life in which interests are ress, 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 faoverne 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 deovern, 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 keptthe full import of their activity These reater 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 pohich re as the incitations to action are partial, as they roup which in its exclusiveness shuts outof 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 developration, and intercommunication which flowed froreater 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 overwhelnificance or connections they do not perceive The result will be a confusion in which a feill appropriate to themselves the results of the blind and externally directed activities of others

3 The Platonic Educational Philosophy Subsequent chapters will be devoted toexplicit the implications of the de 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 froht the world But conditions which he could not intellectually control led hiot any conception of the indefinite plurality of activities which roup, and consequently limited his view to a lieanization of society depends ultie of the end of existence If we do not know its end, we shall be at the ood, we shall have no criterion for rationally deciding what the possibilities are which should be proements 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 per with this question we coe is not possible save in a just and harmonious social order Everywhere else the mind is distracted and anized 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 claiht astray It puts a pres and slurs over others, and creates aunity is forced and distorted Education proceeds ultimately from the patterns furnished by institutions, custoive the right education; and only those who have rightly trainedprinciple of things We seeested 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 forulations could be preserved An education could be given which would sift individuals, discovering what they were good for, and supplying aeach to the work in life for which his nature fits hi, the order and unity of the whole would be maintained

It would be iht a nificance of social arrangee 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 s 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 liress

In some individuals, appetites naturally do 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 lirasp the universal Those who possess this are capable of the highest kind of education, and becoislators 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 inco that a society e 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 hie hasof individuals and their original powers into a few sharply inal 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 becoanization 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 aie would subsequently have no place The final end of life is fixed; given a state framed with this end in view, not even ht not be inherently important, yet if pere, and hence be dissolving and anarchic The breakdown of his philosophy is radual i 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 wisdo 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 anization; 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 extreeht of as mere external expedients by which these nonsocial individuals reater amount of private happiness for themselves Nevertheless, these statenificance of the ress and in social progress The see antisocial philosophy was a somewhat transparent mask for an impetus toward a wider and freer society-toward cosmopolitanism The positive ideal was humanity In membershi+p in humanity, as distinct from a state,political organizations his poere 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 ofa scope as wide as huan and agent of a coressive 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 ofTheir impassioned devotion to emancipation of life from external restrictions which operated to the exclusive advantage of the class to whoned power, found intellectual forive ”nature” full sas to replace an artificial, corrupt, and inequitable social order by a new and better kingdom of humanity Unrestrained faith in Nature as both a thened 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 systen of natural laas a scene of wonderful harmony, where every force balanced with every other Natural laould accoet 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 liht 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 extree which was current derived itself froinally passive and e 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 beca 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 soan, so on the process of instruction The ”co as its social counterpart an enlightened and progressive huanization for its realization Private individuals here and there could proclaiospel; they could not execute the work A Pestalozzi could try experi 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 nificance for subsequent ht 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 huave 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 syste and rity and power Externally they eak and divided Under the leadershi+p of Prussian statesmen they made this condition a stirounded systee in practice necessarily brought about a change in theory The individualistic theory receded into the background The state furnished not only the instruoal When the actual practice was such that the school systeh 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 co and more or less hostile states, it was equally iue cosmopolitan humanitarianisnty required subordination of individuals to the superior interests of the state both in les 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 foranic” character of the state The individual in his isolation is nothing; only in and through an absorption of the aianized institutions does he attain true personality What appears to be his subordination to political authority and the demand for sacrifice of himself to the co 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 idealiselian philosophy) was just such a deliberate effort to combine the two ideas of co ”disciplinary” subordination to existing institutions The extent of the transformation of educational philosophy which occurred in Gerainst Napoleon for national independence, athered from Kant, ell expresses the earlier individual-cos of lectures given in the later years of the eighteenth century, he defines education as the process by which ed in nature-not as Man who is a creature of reason, while nature furnishes only instinct and appetite Nature offers sierms 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 toThis creative effort is carried on by the educational activities of slow generations Its acceleration depends uponto educate their successors not for the existing state of affairs but so as to reat 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 huet on; princes educate their subjects as instruments of their own purposes

Who, then, shall conduct education so that huhtened ins with private h 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 si as will make their subjects better tools for their own intentions” Even the subsidy by rulers of privately conducted schools uarded For the rulers' interest in the welfare of their own nation instead of in what is best for huive money for the schools, wish to draw their plans We have in this view an express statehteenth century individualistic cosmopolitanism The full development of private personality is identified with the airess In addition we have an explicit fear of the haulated education upon the attainment of these ideas But in less than two decades after this tiel, 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 co froh the university, and to subulation 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 e, 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 forenerous social ideal: that of a society organized to include hu for the indefinite perfectibility of mankind The idealistic philosophy of Gerain 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 ani principle with equal truth either in the classic terms of ”harmonious development of all the powers of personality” or in the y of ”social efficiency” All this reinforces the statement which opens this chapter: The conception of education as a social process and function has no definiteuntil 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 cosueness and froencies of administration In Europe, in the Continental states particularly, the new idea of the iress was captured by national interests and harnessed to do a hose social aim was definitely narrow and exclusive The social aim of education and its national ai of theof a social ai situation of human intercourse On the one hand, science, coely international in quality andthe peoples inhabiting different countries At the santy 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 ith its neighbors Each is supposed to be the supree 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 theof ”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 soher culture of others Externally, the question is concerned with the reconciliation of national loyalty, of patriotiss which unite men in common ends, irrespective of national political boundaries Neither phase of the probleh 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 fae of them, but also such modification of traditional ideals of culture, traditional subjects of study and traditionaland 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 deic 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 eether in cooperative huraphical limitations The secondary and provisional character of national sovereignty in respect to the fuller, freer, and s with one anotherdisposition of mind If these applications seem to be remote from a consideration of the philosophy of education, the i 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 forroup are shared by all its members, and the fullness and freedoroups 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 ood of all its members on equal terms and which secures flexible readjusth interaction of the different forms of associated life is in so far deives individuals a personal interest in social relationshi+ps and control, and the habits ofdisorder Three typical historic philosophies of education were considered from this point of view The Platonic was found to have an ideal formally quite si out bya class rather than an individual the social unit The so-called individualishtenment was found to involve the notion of a society as broad as huan But it lacked any agency for securing the develop back upon Nature The institutional idealistic philosophies of the nineteenth century supplied this lack bynarrowed the conception of the social aim to those ere members of the same political unit, and reintroduced the idea of the subordination of the individual to the institution 1 There is aintellectually in this direction He opposed the existing state of affairs on the ground that it for conditions, he preferred to try for the latter rather than for the fors of his which point to the forher, and which indicate that his own endeavor, as embodied in the Emile, was simply the best makeshi+ft the corruption of the tiht: Aims in Education

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

Our first question is to define the nature of an ai furnished from without We approach the definition by a contrast of y has results The wind blows about the sands of the desert; the position of the grains is changed Here is a result, an effect, but not an end For there is nothing in the outcome which completes or fulfills ent before it There is ood as any other Consequently there is no basis upon which to select an earlier state of affairs as a beginning, a later as an end, and to consider what intervenes as a process of transformation and realization

Consider for exaes in the sands when the wind blows them about The results of the bees' actions ned or consciously intended, but because they are true terather pollen and make wax and build cells, each step prepares the way for the next When cells are built, the queen lays eggs in thes are laid, they are sealed and bees brood them and keep them at a temperature required to hatch the till they can take care of themselves Noe are so familiar with such facts, that we are apt to disround that life and instinct are a kind ofanyway Thus we fail to note what the essential characteristic of the event is; nanificance of the temporal place and order of each element; the way each prior event leads into its successor while the successor takes up what is furnished and utilizes it for soe, until we arrive at the end, which, as it were, summarizes and finishes off the process Since ai to look to when it is a question of ained possesses intrinsic continuity Or is it aand then another? To talk about an educational aim when approximately each act of a pupil is dictated by the teacher, when the only order in the sequence of his acts is that which co of directions by another, is to talk nonsense It is equally fatal to an aim to permit capricious or discontinuous action in the name of spontaneous self-expression An aim implies an orderly and ordered activity, one in which the order consists in the progressive co a tiroithin the tiht in advance of the end or possible termination If bees a