Part 4 (2/2)

Some attitudes may be named, however,-which are central in effective intellectual ways of dealing with subjectthe le-mindedness (or whole-heartedness), and responsibility

1 It is easier to indicate what is ative terms than in positive ones Self-consciousness, e foes They indicate that a person is not i has come bethich deflects concern to side issues A self-conscious person is partly thinking about his problem and partly about what others think of his perforyan attitude is by noconscious of one's attitude The forn of whole-souled relationshi+p between a person and what he is dealing with The latter is not of necessity abnor a falsethe effectiveness of the olf players, piano players, public speakers, etc, have occasionally to give especial attention to their position and movements But this need is occasional and temporary When it is effectual a person thinks of hi others of the realization of an end-as in the case of a tennis player practicing to get the ”feel” of a stroke In abnorencies of execution, but as a separate object-as when the player strikes an attitude thinking of the impression it will make upon spectators, or is worried because of the iive rise to

Confidence is a good name for what is intended by the term directness It should not be confused, however, with self-confidence which may be a form of self-consciousness-or of ”cheek” Confidence is not a name for what one thinks or feels about his attitude it is not reflex It denotes the straightforwardness hich one goes at what he has to do It denotes not conscious trust in the efficacy of one's powers but unconscious faith in the possibilities of the situation It signifies rising to the needs of the situation We have already pointed out (See p 169) the objections tostudents e or learning Just in the degree in which they are induced by the conditions to be so aware, they are not studying and learning They are in a divided and complicated attitude Whatever methods of a teacher call a pupil's attention off from what he has to do and transfer it to his own attitude towards what he is doing impair directness of concern and action Persisted in, the pupil acquires a peraze about aimlessly, to look for some clew of action beside that which the subject estions and directions, a state of foggy confusion, take the place of that sureness hich children (and grown-up people who have not been sophisticated by ”education”) confront the situations of life

2 Open-mindedness Partiality is, as we have seen, an accompani, partaking, taking sides in some movement All the more reason, therefore, for an attitude of estions and relevant information from all sides In the chapter on Aims it was shown that foreseen ends are factors in the develop situation They are the means by which the direction of action is controlled They are subordinate to the situation, therefore, not the situation to them They are not ends in the sense of finalities to which everything uiding the developoal of shooting; it is the centering factor in a present shooting Openness of mind means accessibility of ht upon the situation that needs to be cleared up, and that will help deter this way or that Efficiency in acco ends which have been settled upon as unalterable can coexist with a narrowly opened rowth means constant expansion of horizons and consequent formation of new purposes and new responses These are impossible without an active disposition to welcome points of view hitherto alien; an active desire to entertain considerations which row is the reward of such intellectual hospitality The worst thing about stubbornness of mind, about prejudices, is that they arrest development; they shut the mind off from new stimuli Open-mindedness means retention of the childlike attitude; closed-e

Exorbitant desire for uniformity of procedure and for prompt external results are the chief foes which the open-minded attitude e diversity of operation in dealing with questions is i their vision to the one path the teacher's mind happens to approve Probably the chief cause of devotion to rigidity of method is, however, that it seems to promise speedy, accurately measurable, correct results The zeal for ”answers” is the explanation ofand overpressure have the sain, and the same result upon alert and varied intellectual interest

Open- out a sign saying ”Coht in; there is no one at home” is not the equivalent of hospitality But there is a kind of passivity, willingness to let experiences accumulate and sink in and ripen, which is an essential of development Results (external answers or solutions) may be hurried; processes may not be forced They take their own time to mature Were all instructors to realize that the quality of mental process, not the production of correct answers, is thehardly less than a revolution in teaching would be worked

3 Single-mindedness So far as the word is concerned, much that was said under the head of ”directness” is applicable But what the word is here intended to convey is completeness of interest, unity of purpose; the absence of suppressed but effectual ulterior aims for which the professed airity Absorption, engrossment, full concern with subject matter for its own sake, nurture it Divided interest and evasion destroy it

Intellectual integrity, honesty, and sincerity are at bottom not matters of conscious purpose but of quality of active response Their acquisition is fostered of course by conscious intent, but self-deception is very easy Desires are urgent When the demands and wishes of others forbid their direct expression they are easily driven into subterranean and deep channels Entire surrender, and wholehearted adoption of the course of action demanded by others are almost impossible Deliberate revolt or deliberate attempts to deceive others may result But the more frequent outcome is a confused and divided state of interest in which one is fooled as to one's own real intent One tries to serve twodesire to please others and get their approval, social training, the general sense of duty and of authority, apprehension of penalty, all lead to a half-hearted effort to conform, to ”pay attention to the lesson,” or whatever the requirement is Amiable individuals want to do what they are expected to do Consciously the pupil thinks he is doing this But his own desires are not abolished Only their evident exhibition is suppressed Strain of attention to what is hostile to desire is irkso desires deterht, the deeper emotional responses The mind wanders from the nominal subject and devotes itself to what is intrinsicallythe duplicity of the state of desire is the result One has only to recall his own experiences in school or at the present tie one's desires and purposes, to realize how prevalent is this attitude of divided attention-double-ranted that a considerable amount of it is necessary It may be; if so, it is the more important to face its bad intellectual effects Obvious is the loss of energy of thought i to seem to try) to attend to one ination is spontaneously going out to enial affairs More subtle andto efficiency of intellectual activity is a fostering of habitual self-deception, with the confused sense of reality which accompanies it A double standard of reality, one for our own private and more or less concealed interests, and another for public and acknowledged concerns, harity and completeness of mental action Equally serious is the fact that a split is set up between conscious thought and attention and is with the material of instruction is constrained and half-hearted; attention wanders The topics to which it wanders are unavowed and hence intellectually illicit; transactions with the response by deliberate inquiry having a purpose fails; worse than that, the deepest concern and ination (since they center about the things dearest to desire) are casual, concealed They enter into action in hich are unacknowledged Not subject to rectification by consideration of consequences, they are de

School conditions favorable to this division of mind between avowed, public, and socially responsible undertakings, and private, ill-regulated, and suppressed indulgences of thought are not hard to find What is sometimes called ”stern discipline,” ie, external coercive pressure, has this tendency Motivation through rewards extraneous to the thing to be done has a like effect Everything thatmerely preparatory (See ante, p 55) works in this direction Ends being beyond the pupil's present grasp, other agencies have to be found to procure ined tasks Some responses are secured, but desires and affections not enlisted erated ened to produce skill in action, independent of any engageht-exercises have no purpose but the production of automatic skill Nature abhors a ht and es of immediate activity? Were they merely kept in temporary abeyance, or even only calloused, it would not be a matter of so much moment But they are not abolished; they are not suspended; they are not suppressed-save with reference to the task in question They follow their own chaotic and undisciplined course What is native, spontaneous, and vital in oes unused and untested, and the habits formed are such that these qualities become less and less available for public and avowed ends

4 Responsibility By responsibility as an element in intellectual attitude is meant the disposition to consider in advance the probable consequences of any projected step and deliberately to accept the the a mere verbal assent Ideas, as we have seen, are intrinsically standpoints andsituation; forecasts calculated to influence responses It is only too easy to think that one accepts a stateested truth when one has not considered its implications; when one has made but a cursory and superficial survey of what further things one is conition, belief and assent, then become names for lazy acquiescence in what is externally presented

It would be much better to have fewer facts and truths in instruction-that is, fewer things supposedly accepted,-if a smaller number of situations could be intellectually worked out to the point where convictionreal-some identification of the self with the type of conduct deht of results The most permanent bad results of undue coestion of school studies and lessons are not the worry, nervous strain, and superficial acquaintance that follow (serious as these are), but the failure toa thing Intellectual responsibility ard These standards can be built up only through practice in following up and acting upon the hness is thus another na There is a kind of thoroughness which is alnifiesdrill upon all the details of a subject Intellectual thoroughness is seeing a thing through It depends upon a unity of purpose to which details are subordinated, not upon presenting a multitude of disconnected details It isof the purpose is developed, not in attention, however ”conscientious” it may be, to the steps of action externally imposed and directed

Summary Method is a statement of the way the subject matter of an

experience develops ly, from observation of the course of experiences where there is no conscious distinction of personal attitude and manner fromseparate is connected with the notion of the isolation of s Itformal, mechanical, constrained While methods are individualized, certain features of the normal course of an experience to its fruition may be discriminated, because of the fund of wisdoeneral similarities in the materials dealt with from time to time Expressed in terood htforwardness, flexible intellectual interest or open-rity of purpose, and acceptance of responsibility for the consequences of one's activity including thought

1 This point is developed below in a discussion of what are terical methods respectively See p 219

Chapter Fourteen: The Nature of Subject Matter

1 Subject Matter of Educator and of Learner So far as the nature of subjectto add to what has been said (See ante, p 134) It consists of the facts observed, recalled, read, and talked about, and the ideas suggested, in course of a develop a purpose This state it with the materials of school instruction, the studies which nificance of our definition in application to reading, writing, , physics, chees, and so on? Let us recur to two of the points made earlier in our discussion The educator's part in the enterprise of education is to furnish the environment which stimulates responses and directs the learner's course In last analysis, all that the educator can do is modify stimuli so that response will as surely as is possible result in the formation of desirable intellectual and emotional dispositions Obviously studies or the subject matter of the curriculu an environment The other point is the necessity of a social environ to habits formed In e have termed informal education, subject matter is carried directly in the matrix of social intercourse It is what the persons hoives a clew to the understanding of the subjectlink is found in the stories, traditions, songs, and liturgies which accoroup They represent the stock of s which have been precipitated out of previous experience, which are so prized by the group as to be identified with their conception of their own collective life Not being obviously a part of the skill exhibited in the daily occupations of eating, hunting, s, pottery, and baskets, etc, they are consciously i; often, as in the initiation ceremonies, with intense emotional fervor Even ends, and sacred verbal forroup than to transroup just because they cannot be picked up, as the latter can be in the ordinary processes of association

As the social group grows reater number of acquired skills which are dependent, either in fact or in the belief of the group, upon standard ideas deposited froets more definitely formulated for purposes of instruction As we have previously noted, probably the chief roup life, extracting the arded as e so as to perpetuate group life Once started on this road of selection, foranization, no definite liives the operation an immense impetus Finally, the bonds which connect the subject matter of school study with the habits and ideals of the social group are disguised and covered up The ties are so loosened that it often appears as if there were none; as if subject e on its own independent behoof, and as if study were theit for its own sake, irrespective of any social values Since it is highly important for practical reasons to counter-act this tendency (See ante, p 8) the chief purposes of our theoretical discussion are to ht, and to show in some detail the social content and function of the chief constituents of the course of study

The points need to be considered from the standpoint of instructor and of student To the for far beyond the present knowledge of pupils, is to supply definite standards and to reveal to him the possibilities of the crude activities of the immature (i) The material of school studies translates into concrete and detailed ters of current social life which it is desirable to transredients of the culture to be perpetuated, in such an organized form as to protect hie in if the e of the ideas which have been achieved in the past as the outcome of activity places the educator in a position to perceive thei, and to provide the stimuli needed to direct the The more the educator knows of music the more he can perceive the possibilities of the inchoate anized subject e of experiences like theirs, experiences involving the same world, and powers and needs similar to theirs It does not represent perfection or infallible wisdom; but it is the best at command to further new experiences which may, in some respects at least, surpass the achievee and works of art

From the standpoint of the educator, in other words, the various studies represent working resources, available capital Their re is not, however, see; it is real The subject matter of the learner is not, therefore, it cannot be, identical with the formulated, the crystallized, and systematized subject matter of the adult; the material as found in books and in works of art, etc The latter represents the possibilities of the for state It enters directly into the activities of the expert and the educator, not into that of the beginner, the learner Failure to bear in mind the difference in subject matter from the respective standpoints of teacher and student is responsible for most of the mistakes made in the use of texts and other expressions of preexistent knowledge

The need for a knowledge of the constitution and functions, in the concrete, of hureat just because the teacher's attitude to subject matter is so different from that of the pupil The teacher presents in actuality what the pupil represents only in posse That is, the teacher already knows the things which the student is only learning Hence the probleed in the direct act of teaching, the instructor needs to have subject ers' ends; his attention should be upon the attitude and response of the pupil To understand the latter in its interplay with subject matter is his task, while the pupil's mind, naturally, should be not on itself but on the topic in hand Or to state the same point in a somewhat different manner: the teacher should be occupied not with subject matter in itself but in its interaction with the pupils' present needs and capacities Hence sih In fact, there are certain features of scholarshi+p or et in the way of effective teaching unless the instructor's habitual attitude is one of concern with its interplay in the pupil's own experience In the first place, his knowledge extends indefinitely beyond the range of the pupil's acquaintance It involves principles which are beyond the i and interest In and of itself, itworld of the pupil's experience than the astronoe of Mars represents a baby's acquaintance with the rooanization of the material of achieved scholarshi+p differs froinner It is not true that the experience of the young is unorganized-that it consists of isolated scraps But it is organized in connection with direct practical centers of interest The child's horaphical knowledge His own movements about the locality, his journeys abroad, the tales of his friends, give the ties which hold his iterapher, of the one who has already developed the ianized on the basis of the relationshi+p which the various facts bear to one another-not the relations which they bear to his house, bodily movements, and friends To the one who is learned, subject ically interrelated To the one who is learning, it is fluid, partial, and connected through his personal occupations 1 The proble in the direction of what the expert already knows Hence the need that the teacher know both subject matter and the characteristic needs and capacities of the student

2 The Development of Subject Matter in the Learner It is possible, without doing violence to the facts, to rowth of subject matter in the experience of the learner In its first estate, knowledge exists as the content of intelligent ability-power to do This kind of subject matter, or known material, is expressed in faradually is surcharged and deepened through coed and worked over into rationally or logically organized , is expert in the subject

I The knowledge which corained, is knowledge of how to do; hoalk, talk, read, write, skate, ride a bicycle, e people, and so on indefinitely The popular tendency to regard instinctive acts which are adapted to an end as a sort of e, while unjustifiable, is evidence of the strong tendency to identify intelligent control of the e When education, under the influence of a scholastic conception of knowledge which ignores everything but scientifically fornize that primary or initial subjectthe use of the body and the handling of material, the subject matter of instruction is isolated from the needs and purposes of the learner, and so beco to be nition of the natural course of development, on the contrary, always sets out with situations which involve learning by doing Arts and occupations for as they do to knowing how to go about the accoe have always retained the connection with ability in action lost by academic philosophies Ken and can are allied words Atte