Part 5 (1/2)

2 Available Occupations A bare catalogue of the list of activities which have already found their way into schools indicates what a rich field is at hand There is ith paper, cardboard, wood, leather, cloth, yarns, clay and sand, and the , cutting, pricking,and cooling, and the operations characteristic of such tools as the ha, sewing, printing, book-binding, weaving, painting, drawing, singing, dra as active pursuits with social ai skill for future use), in addition to a countless variety of plays and ganate some of the modes of occupation

The problee pupils in these activities in such ways that while ained and iether with preparation for later usefulness, these things shall be subordinated to education-that is, to intellectual results and the fornify? In the first place, the principle rules out certain practices Activities which follow definite prescription and dictation or which reproduce without ive muscular dexterity, but they do not require the perception and elaboration of ends, nor (what is the saspecifically so called but arten exercises have erred here Moreover, opportunity formistakes is an incidental requirement Not because mistakes are ever desirable, but because overzeal to select material and appliances which forbid a chance for ment to a minimum, and compels the use of methods which are so reained is of little availability It is quite true that children tend to exaggerate their powers of execution and to select projects that are beyond thes which has to be learned; like other things, it is learned through the experience of consequences The danger that children undertaking too complex projects will simply muddle and mess, and produce not merely crude results (which is a minor matter) but acquire crude standards (which is an ireat But it is the fault of the teacher if the pupil does not perceive in due season the inadequacy of his performances, and thereby receive a stimulus to attempt exercises which will perfect his powers Meantime it is more important to keep alive a creative and constructive attitude than to secure an external perfection by engaging the pupil's action in too ulated pieces of work Accuracy and finish of detail can be insisted upon in such portions of a complex work as are within the pupil's capacity

Unconscious suspicion of native experience and consequent overdoing of external control are shown quite as much in the material supplied as in the matter of the teacher's orders The fear of rawshop, Froebelian kindergarten, and Montessori house of childhood The demand is forwork of mind: a demand which shows itself in the subject matter of active occupations quite as well as in acade That such material will control the pupil's operations so as to prevent errors is true The notion that a pupil operating with such inally to its shaping is fallacious Only by starting with crude ain the intelligence embodied in finished material In practice, overeeration of mathematical qualities, since intellect finds its profit in physical things from matters of size, form, and proportion and the relations that flow from them But these are known only when their perception is a fruit of acting upon purposes which require attention to them The more human the purpose, or the more it approximates the ends which appeal in daily experience, the e When the purpose of the activity is restricted to ascertaining these qualities, the resulting knowledge is only technical

To say that active occupations should be concerned primarily holes is another statement of the same principle Wholes for purposes of education are not, however, physical affairs Intellectually the existence of a whole depends upon a concern or interest; it is qualitative, the coerated devotion to formation of efficient skill irrespective of present purpose always shows itself in devising exercises isolated from a purpose Laboratory work is made to consist of tasks of accurate e of the fundamental units of physics, irrespective of contact with the problened to afford facility in the manipulation of experimental apparatus The technique is acquired independently of the purposes of discovery and testing which alone give it ive infor cubes, spheres, etc, and to for must always be done ”just so”), the absence ofsupposedly coed sy is reduced to a series of ordered assignments calculated to secure the mastery of one tool after another and technical ability in the various eleued that pupils ,-assu Pestalozzi's just insistence upon the active use of the senses, as a substitute forwords, left behind it in practice schemes for ”object lessons” intended to acquaint pupils with all the qualities of selected objects The error is the same: in all these cases it is assuently used, their properties must be known In fact, the senses are norent (that is, purposeful) use of things, since the qualities perceived are factors to be reckoned with in accomplish, say, a kite, with respect to the grain and other properties of wood, the les, and proportion of parts, to the attitude of a pupil who has an object-lesson on a piece of wood, where the sole function of wood and its properties is to serve as subject matter for the lesson

The failure to realize that the functional development of a situation alone constitutes a ”whole” for the purpose of mind is the cause of the false notions which have prevailed in instruction concerning the si a subject, the si is his purpose-the use he desires to make of material, tool, or technical process, no matter how complicated the process of execution may be The unity of the purpose, with the concentration upon details which it entails, confers simplicity upon the elements which have to be reckoned with in the course of action It furnishes each with a singleon the whole enterprise After one has gone through the process, the constituent qualities and relations are ele of its own The false notion referred to takes the standpoint of the expert, the one for whom elements exist; isolates theinners as the ”sis But it is time for a positive statement Aside fros to do, not studies, their educational significance consists in the fact that they may typify social situations Men's funda, household furnishi+ngs, and the appliances connected with production, exchange, and consu both the necessities of life and the adornments hich the necessities have been clothed, they tap instincts at a deep level; they are saturated with facts and principles having a social quality

To charge that the various activities of gardening, weaving, construction in wood, , etc, which carry over these fundamental human concerns into school resources, have a merely bread and butter value is to miss their point If the mass of mankind has usually found in its industrial occupations nothing but evils which had to be endured for the sake ofexistence, the fault is not in the occupations, but in the conditions under which they are carried on The continually increasing importance of economic factors in contemporary life makes it the more needed that education should reveal their scientific content and their social value For in schools, occupations are not carried on for pecuniary gain but for their own content Freed froe-earning, they supply modes of experience which are intrinsically valuable; they are truly liberalizing in quality

Gardening, for exa future gardeners, or as an agreeable way of passing tie of the place far and horticulture have had in the history of the race and which they occupy in present social organization Carried on in an environ a study of the facts of growth, the cheht, air, and moisture, injurious and helpful ani in the elementary study of botany which cannot be introduced in a vital way in connection with caring for the growth of seeds Instead of the subjectto a peculiar study called botany, it will then belong to life, and will find, moreover, its natural correlations with the facts of soil, anirow mature, they will perceive problems of interest which may be pursued for the sake of discovery, independent of the original direct interest in gardening-probleermination and nutrition of plants, the reproduction of fruits, etc, thus ations

The illustration is intended to apply, of course, to other school occupations,-orking, cooking, and on through the list It is pertinent to note that in the history of the race the sciences grew gradually out from useful social occupations Physics developed slowly out of the use of tools and machines; the important branch of physics known as inal associations The lever, wheel, inclined plane, etc, were areat intellectual discoveries of mankind, and they are none the less intellectual because they occurred in the course of seeking for reat advance of electrical science in the last generation was closely associated, as effect and as cause, with application of electric agencies toof cities and houses, and oods These are social ends, moreover, and if they are too closely associated with notions of private profit, it is not because of anything in them, but because they have been deflected to private uses:-a fact which puts upon the school the responsibility of restoring their connection, in the eneration, with public scientific and social interests In like ways, che, , etc, and in recent times has found innumerable new uses in industry

Matheeo: the practical use of nu is even more important to-day than in the times when it was invented for these purposes Such considerations (which could be duplicated in the history of any science) are not arguments for a recapitulation of the history of the race or for dwelling long in the early rule of thureater to-day than ever before-of using active occupations as opportunities for scientific study The opportunities are just as great on the social side, whether we look at the life of collective humanity in its past or in its future The most direct road for elementary students into civics and economics is found in consideration of the place and office of industrial occupations in social life Even for older students, the social sciences would be less abstract and formal if they were dealt with less as sciences (less as fore) and more in their direct subject-roups in which the student shares

Connection of occupations with the method of science is at least as close as with its subject es when learned men had contempt for the material and processes of everyday life, especially for those concerned with e out of general principles-alical reasons It see should co acid on a stone to see ould happen, as that it should coh a piece of leather But the rise of experiiven control of conditions, the latter operation is ical reasonings Experi centuries and beca when men's interests were centered in the question of control of nature for huht to bear upon physical things with the intention of effecting useful changes is the most vital introduction to the experimental method

3 Work and Play What has been termed active occupation includes both play and work In their intrinsic , play and industry are by no means so antithetical to one another as is often assu due to undesirable social conditions Both involve ends consciously entertained and the selection and adaptations of ned to effect the desired ends The difference between the the directness of the connection of means and ends In play, the interest isthat in play the activity is its own end, instead of its having an ulterior result The statement is correct, but it is falsely taken, if supposed tono ele, for example, is one of the coht and the direction of present activity by what one is watching for are obvious When an activity is its own end in the sense that the action of the moment is co (See p 77) The person is either going through motions quite blindly, perhaps purely imitatively, or else is in a state of excite to mind and nerves Both results ahly symbolic that only the adult is conscious of it Unless the children succeed in reading in some quite different idea of their own, they move about either as if in a hypnotic daze, or they respond to a direct excitation

The point of these re idea which gives point to the successive acts Persons who play are not just doing so to do or effect so, an attitude that involves anticipatory forecasts which stimulate their present responses The anticipated result, however, is rather a subsequent action than the production of a specific change in things Consequently play is free, plastic Where some definite external outcome is wanted, the end has to be held to with some persistence, which increases as the conte series of intermediate adaptations When the intended act is another activity, it is not necessary to look far ahead and it is possible to alter it easily and frequently If a child is le end and direct a considerable nu boat” he e the material that serves as a boat alests The iination makes what it will of chairs, blocks, leaves, chips, if they serve the purpose of carrying activity forward

Froe, however, there is no distinction of exclusive periods of play activity and work activity, but only one of e children desire, and try to bring to pass Their eager interest in sharing the occupations of others, if nothing else, accomplishes this Children want to ”help”; they are anxious to engage in the pursuits of adults which effect external changes: setting the table, washi+ng dishes, helping care for animals, etc In their plays, they like to construct their own toys and appliances With increasing ible and visible achieve and if habitually indulged in is de Observable results are necessary to enable persons to get a sense and a nized to beobjects in fancy alone is too easy to stimulate intense action One has only to observe the countenance of children really playing to note that their attitude is one of serious absorption; this attitude cannot be s cease to afford adequate stimulation

When fairly remote results of a definite character are foreseen and enlist persistent effort for their acconifies purposeful activity and differs not in that activity is subordinated to an external result, but in the fact that a longer course of activity is occasioned by the idea of a result The deencemeans To extend this account would be to repeat what has been said under the caption of ai It is pertinent, however, to inquire why the idea is so current that work involves subordination of an activity to an ulterior material result The extreery, offers a clew Activity carried on under conditions of external pressure or coercion is not carried on for any significance attached to the doing The course of action is not intrinsically satisfying; it is asome reward at its conclusion What is inherently repulsive is endured for the sake of averting soain hitched on by others Under unfree economic conditions, this state of affairs is bound to exist Work or industry offers little to engage the eination; it is a more or less mechanical series of strains Only the hold which the co But the end should be intrinsic to the action; it should be its end-a part of its own course Then it affords a sti fro to do with the intervening action As already mentioned, the absence of economic pressure in schools supplies an opportunity for reproducing industrial situations of mature life under conditions where the occupation can be carried on for its own sake If in sonition is also a result of an action, though not the chief nificance of the occupation Where so externally imposed tasks exists, the demand for play persists, but tends to be perverted The ordinary course of action fails to give adequate stiination So in leisure time, there is an ia, drink, etc, may be resorted to Or, in less extre which passes tireeableness Recreation, as the word indicates, is recuperation of energy No deent or less to be escaped The idea that the need can be suppressed is absolutely fallacious, and the Puritanic tradition which disallows the need has entailed an enormous crop of evils If education does not afford opportunity for wholeso it, the suppressed instincts find all sorts of illicit outlets, soination Education has noadequate provision for enjoyment of recreative leisure; not only for the sake of immediate health, but stilleffect upon habits of ain the answer to this demand

Summary In the previous chapter we found that the pri is that contained in learning how to do things of a fairly direct sort The educational equivalent of this principle is the consistent use of simple occupations which appeal to the powers of youth and which typify general modes of social activity Skill and infory are acquired while activities are carried on for their own sake The fact that they are socially representative gives a quality to the skill and knowledge gained which makes them transferable to out-of-school situations It is iical distinction between play and ith the econo characteristic of play is not amuseht of ascontinuity of action in reference to results produced Activities as they grow reater attention to specific results achieved Thus they pass gradually into work Both are equally free and intrinsically motivated, apart from false economic conditions which tend to make play into idle exciteenial labor for the poor Work is psychologically siard for consequences as a part of itself; it becomes constrained labor when the consequences are outside of the activity as an end to which activity is merely a means Work which remains permeated with the play attitude is art-in quality if not in conventional designation

Chapter Sixteen: The Significance of Geography and History

1 Extension of Meaning of Pri than the difference between an activity as s which the saazing through a telescope is like a sh the salass and ht in the distance Yet at a critical ht be concerned with the birth of a world, and have whatever is known about the starry heavens as its significant content Physically speaking, what ery is a mere scratch on its surface, not perceptible at a distance which is slight in comparison with the reaches even of the solar syste what has been accomplished ery Although the activities, physically viewed, have changed soht in co to the activities There is no li which an action may come to possess It all depends upon the context of perceived connections in which it is placed; the reach of i connections is inexhaustible The advantage which the activity of selse than theof an aninificance The final educational importance of such occupations in play and work as were considered in the last chapter is that they afford theSet going under adequate conditions they arean indefinitely wide scope of intellectual considerations They provide vital centers for the reception and assimilation of information When information is purveyed in chunks simply as information to be retained for its own sake, it tends to stratify over vital experience Entering as a factor into an activity pursued for its own sake-whether as aof the content of the aiained fuses hat is told Individual experience is then capable of taking up and holding in solution the net results of the experience of the group to which he belongs-including the results of sufferings and trials over long stretches of time And such media have no fixed saturation point where further absorption is ireater capacity there is for further assimilation New receptiveness follows upon new curiosity, and new curiosity upon infors hich activities becoed, concern nature andwhen translated into educational equivalents So translated, it signifies that geography and history supply subject round and outlook, intellectual perspective, to what ht otherwise be narrow personal actions or mere forms of technical skill With every increase of ability to place our own doings in their tinificant content We realize that we are citizens of nothe scene in space of which we are denizens, and the continuous manifestation of endeavor in time of which we are heirs and continuers Thus our ordinary daily experiences cease to be things of the raphy and history are taught as ready-made studies which a person studies simply because he is sent to school, it easily happens that a large nus remote and alien to everyday experience are learned Activity is divided, and two separate worlds are built up, occupying activity at divided periods No transed inits connections; what is studied is not ani into immediate activity Ordinary experience is not even left as it was, narrow but vital Rather, it loses soestions It is weighed down and pushed into a corner by a load of unassimilated information It parts with its flexible responsiveness and alert eagerness for additionalof information apart from the direct interests of life makes mind wooden; elasticity disappears

Nored in for its own sake reaches out beyond its immediate self It does not passively wait for infor; it seeks it out Curiosity is not an accidental isolated possession; it is a necessary consequence of the fact that an experience is aall kinds of connections with other things Curiosity is but the tendency to make these conditions perceptible It is the business of educators to supply an environ out of an experience may be fruitfully rewarded and kept continuously active Within a certain kind of environ which accrues is of its direct and tangible isolated outco consequences may not take the , and walking in the literal-or physical-sense But nevertheless the consequences of the act re To walk involves a displace earth, whose thrill is felt wherever there is matter It involves the structure of the limbs and the nervous system; the principles of e the che upon the assirowth of the body The utmost that the most learned y is not enough to make all these consequences and connections perceptible The task of education, once more, is to see to it that such activities are performed in such ways and under such conditions as render these conditions as perceptible as possible To ”learn geography” is to gain in power to perceive the spatial, the natural, connections of an ordinary act; to ”learn history” is essentially to gain in power to recognize its huraphy as a formulated study is simply the body of facts and principles which have been discovered in other men's experience about the natural medium in which we live, and in connection hich the particular acts of our life have an explanation So history as a formulated study is but the body of known facts about the activities and sufferings of the social groups hich our own lives are continuous, and through reference to which our own customs and institutions are illuminated

2 The Coraphy-including in the latter, for reasons about to be mentioned, nature study-are the information studies par excellence of the schools Examination of the materials and the method of their use will make clear that the difference between penetration of this infor up in isolated heaps depends upon whether these studies are faithful to the interdependence of man and nature which affords these studies their justification Nowhere, however, is there greater danger that subject matter will be accepted as appropriate educational material simply because it has become customary to teach and learn it The idea of a philosophic reason for it, because of the function of the material in a worthy transformation of experience, is looked upon as a vain fancy, or as supplying a high-sounding phraseology in support of what is already done The words ”history” and ”geography” suggest simply the matter which has been traditionally sanctioned in the schools The e an attempt to see what it really stands for, and how it can be so taught as to fulfill its mission in the experience of pupils But unless the idea that there is a unifying and social direction in education is a farcical pretense, subjects that bulk as large in the curriculueneral function in the development of a truly socialized and intellectualized experience The discovery of this functionthe facts taught and the raphical subject matter has been stated; it is to enrich and liberate thetheir context, their background and outlook While geography emphasizes the physical side and history the social, these are only emphases in a common topic, namely, the associated life of men For this associated life, with its experiments, its ways and o on in the sky nor yet in a vacuu of nature does not bear to social activities the relation that the scenery of a theatrical performance bears to a dramatic representation; it enters into the very s that form history Nature is the inal stimuli; it supplies obstacles and resources Civilization is the progressive ies When this interdependence of the study of history, representing the hu the natural, is ignored, history sinks to a listing of dates with an appended inventory of events, labeled ”important”; or else it becomes a literary phantasy-for in purely literary history the natural environraphy, of course, has its educative influence in a counterpart connection of natural facts with social events and their consequences The classic definition of geography as an account of the earth as the home of ive this definition than it is to present specific geographical subject s The residence, pursuits, successes, and failures of raphic data their reason for inclusion in the ether requires an inforraphy presents itself as that hodge-podge of unrelated frag of intellectual odds and ends: the height of a mountain here, the course of a river there, the quantity of shi+ngles produced in this town, the tonnage of the shi+pping in that, the boundary of a county, the capital of a state The earth as the ho and unified; the earth viewed as a inatively inert Geography is a topic that originally appeals to iination It shares in the wonder and glory that attach to adventure, travel, and exploration The variety of peoples and environments, their contrast with familiar scenes, furnishes infinite stimulation The mind is moved froraphy is the natural starting point in the reconstructive development of the natural environ out into the unknown, not an end in itself When not treated as a basis for getting at the large world beyond, the study of the horaphy becomes as deadly as do object lessons which simply summarize the properties of faination is not fed, but is held down to recapitulating, cataloguing, and refining what is already known But when the fae proprietors are signs that introduce an understanding of the boundaries of great nations, even fences are lighted withwater, inequality of earth's surface, varied industries, civil officers and their duties-all these things are found in the local environan and ended in those confines, they are curious facts to be laboriously learned As instru within its scope peoples and things otherwise strange and unknown, they are transfigured by the use to which they are put Sunlight, wind, stream, cohts afar To follow their course is to enlarge theit with additional infor of as previously a matter of course