Part 8 (1/2)

In the course of two or three generations such questions were cut loose fro upon education and were discussed on their own account; that is, as matters of philosophy as an independent branch of inquiry But the fact that the streaht arose as a theory of educational procedure remains an eloquent witness to the intimate connection of philosophy and education ”Philosophy of education” is not an external application of ready- a radically different origin and purpose: it is only an explicit forht mental and moral habitudes in respect to the difficulties of conte definition of philosophy which can be given is, then, that it is the theory of education in its eneral phases

The reconstruction of philosophy, of education, and of social ideals and o hand in hand If there is especial need of educational reconstruction at the present tient a reconsideration of the basic ideas of traditional philosophic systee in social life acco the advance of science, the industrial revolution, and the developes cannot take place without de an educational refor men to ask what ideas and ideals are ies, and what revisions they require of the ideas and ideals which are inherited frohout the whole book, explicitly in the last few chapters, we have been dealing with just these questions as they affect the relationshi+p of mind and body, theory and practice, man and nature, the individual and social, etc In our concluding chapters we shall sum up the prior discussions with respect first to the philosophy of knowledge, and then to the philosophy ofout the philosophic issues

implicit in the previous discussions, philosophy was defined as the generalized theory of education Philosophy was stated to be a forin in what is uncertain in the subject matter of experience, which aims to locate the nature of the perplexity and to fra up to be tested in action Philosophic thinking has for its differentia the fact that the uncertainties hich it deals are found in widespread social conditions and aianized interests and institutional clai about a harh a modification of emotional and intellectual disposition, philosophy is at once an explicit for of points of view and h which a better balance of interests h which the needed transformation may be accomplished and not remain a mere hypothesis as to what is desirable, we reach a justification of the statement that philosophy is the theory of education as a deliberately conducted practice

Chapter Twenty-five: Theories of Knowledge

1 Continuity versus Dualis have been criticized in the previous pages In spite of their differences froree in one fundamental respect which contrasts with the theory which has been positively advanced The latter assumes continuity; the former state or imply certain basic divisions, separations, or antitheses, technically called dualisin of these divisions we have found in the hard and fast walls which roup: like those between rich and poor, men and women, noble and baseborn, ruler and ruled These barriers mean absence of fluent and free intercourse This absence is equivalent to the setting up of different types of life-experience, each with isolated subject matter, aim, and standard of values Every such social condition must be formulated in a dualistic philosophy, if philosophy is to be a sincere account of experience When it gets beyond dualism-as many philosophies do in for found in experience, by a flight to so duality in name such theories restore it in fact, for they end in a division between things of this world as mere appearances and an inaccessible essence of reality

So far as these divisions persist and others are added to them, each leaves its mark upon the educational system, until the scheme of education, taken as a whole, is a deposit of various purposes and procedures The outcoated factors and values which has been described (See Chapter XVIII) The present discussion is siy of philosophy, of various antithetical conceptions involved in the theory of knowing In the first place, there is the opposition of e The first is connected with everyday affairs, serves the purposes of the ordinary individual who has no specialized intellectual pursuit, and brings his wants into so connection with the i is depreciated, if not despised, as purely utilitarian, lacking in cultural significance Rational knowledge is supposed to be so which touches reality in ultimate, intellectual fashi+on; to be pursued for its own sake and properly to terht, not debased by application in behavior Socially, the distinction corresponds to that of the intelligence used by the working classes and that used by a learned class re Philosophically, the difference turns about the distinction of the particular and universal Experience is an aggregate of more or less isolated particulars, acquaintance with each of which eneral principles, with lahich lie above the welter of concrete details In the educational precipitate, the pupil is supposed to have to learn, on one hand, a lot of ite by itself, and upon the other hand, to becoeneral relationshi+ps Geography, as often taught, illustrates the for, the latter For all practical purposes, they represent two independent worlds

Another antithesis is suggested by the two senses of the word ”learning” On the one hand, learning is the sum total of what is known, as that is handed down by books and learned nitions as one ht store material commodities in a warehouse Truth exists ready-made somewhere Study is then the process by which an individual draws on what is in storage On the other hand, learningwhich the individual does when he studies It is an active, personally conducted affair The dualis external, or, as it is often called, objective, and knowing as so purely internal, subjective, psychical There is, on one side, a body of truth, ready-made, and, on the other, a ready--if it only wills to exercise it, which it is often strangely loath to do The separation, often touched upon, between subject matter and method is the educational equivalent of this dualism Socially the distinction has to do with the part of life which is dependent upon authority and that where individuals are free to advance Another dualis Purely es are often supposed to be known by receiving is somehow stamp themselves upon the mind or convey theans Rational knowledge and knowledge of spiritual things is supposed, on the contrary, to spring from activity initiated within the mind, an activity carried on better if it is kept re touch of the senses and external objects The distinction between sense training and object lessons and laboratory exercises, and pure ideas contained in books, and appropriated-so it is thought-by soy, is a fair expression in education of this distinction Socially, it reflects a division between those who are controlled by direct concern with things and those who are free to cultivate themselves

Another current opposition is that said to exist between the intellect and the emotions The emotions are conceived to be purely private and personal, having nothing to do with the work of pure intelligence in apprehending facts and truths,-except perhaps the single eht; the e heat The mind turns outward to truth; the ee and loss Thus in education we have that systematic depreciation of interest which has been noted, plus the necessity in practice, with most pupils, of recourse to extraneous and irrelevant rewards and penalties in order to induce the person who has a mind (much as his clothes have a pocket) to apply that mind to the truths to be known Thus we have the spectacle of professional educators decrying appeal to interest while they uphold with great dignity the need of reliance upon examinations, marks, promotions and emotions, prizes, and the time-honored paraphernalia of rewards and punish the teacher's sense of humor has not received the attention which it deserves

All of these separations cul, theory and practice, between an and means We shall not repeat what has been said about the source of this dualis with their muscles for material sustenance and a class which, relieved from economic pressure, devotes itself to the arts of expression and social direction Nor is it necessary to speak again of the educational evils which spring from the separation We shall be content to summarize the forces which tend to make the untenability of this conception obvious and to replace it by the idea of continuity (i) The advance of physiology and the psychology associated with it have shown the connection of mental activity with that of the nervous systenition of connection has stopped short at this point; the older dualism of soul and body has been replaced by that of the brain and the rest of the body But in fact the nervous syste all bodily activities working together Instead of being isolated froans of an by which they interact responsively with one another The brain is essentially an organ for effecting the reciprocal adjustment to each other of the stimuli received from the environ is reciprocal; the brain not only enables organic activity to be brought to bear upon any object of the environment in response to a sensory stimulation, but this response also determines what the next stimulus will be See what happens, for example, when a carpenter is at work upon a board, or an etcher upon his plate-or in any case of a consecutive activity While each motor response is adjusted to the state of affairs indicated through the sense organs, thatthis illustration, the brain is theof activity so as to maintain its continuity; that is to say, to make such modifications in future action as are required because of what has already been done The continuity of the work of the carpenter distinguishes it from a routine repetition of identically the sa cumulative What makes it continuous, consecutive, or concentrated is that each earlier act prepares the way for later acts, while these take account of or reckon with the results already attained-the basis of all responsibility No one who has realized the full force of the facts of the connection of knoith the nervous syste of activity continuously tohas to do with reorganizing activity, instead of being so isolated from all activity, complete on its own account

(ii) The developy clinches this lesson, with its discovery of evolution For the philosophic significance of the doctrine of evolution lies precisely in its eanic forins with structures where the adjustanis which can be called mind is at a reater nuence plays a er span of the future to forecast and plan for The effect upon the theory of knowing is to displace the notion that it is the activity of a oes with the idea of knowing as soanic develop creature is a part of the world, sharing its vicissitudes and fortunes, anditself secure in its precarious dependence only as it intellectually identifies itself with the things about it, and, forecasting the future consequences of what is going on, shapes its own activities accordingly If the living, experiencing being is an intimate participant in the activities of the world to which it belongs, then knowledge is a ree in which it is effective It cannot be the idle view of an unconcerned spectator

(iii) The develop knowledge and of e, and not mere opinion-the reat force in bringing about a transfore The experimental method has two sides (i) On one hand, it e except where our activity has actually produced certain physical changes in things, which agree with and confires, our beliefs are only hypotheses, theories, suggestions, guesses, and are to be entertained tentatively and to be utilized as indications of experiments to be tried (ii) On the other hand, the experi is of avail; that it is of avail in just the degree in which the anticipation of future consequences is h observation of present conditions Experi Such surplus activity-a surplus with reference to what has been observed and is now anticipated-is indeed an unescapable factor in all our behavior, but it is not experiment save as consequences are noted and are used to make predictions and plans in si of the experi out of a certain way of treating the material resources and obstacles which confront us eic ith respect to e; but for him to try was to try his luck, not his ideas The scientific experimental method is, on the contrary, a trial of ideas; hence even when practically-or immediately-unsuccessful, it is intellectual, fruitful; for we learn frohtful

The experimental method is new as a scientific resource-as a systeh as old as life as a practical device Hence it is not surprising that nized its full scope For theto certain technical andtime to secure the perception that it holds equally as to the for of ideas in social and ma, of beliefs fixed by authority, to relieve the and the responsibility of directing their activity by thought They tend to confine their own thinking to a consideration of which one ama they will accept Hence the schools are better adapted, as John Stuart Mill said, to make disciples than inquirers But every advance in the influence of the experi the literary, dialectic, and authoritative overned the schools of the past, and to transfer their prestige to s and persons, directed by aie of things in space In ti must be derived froe; and then that theory will be employed to improve the methods which are less successful

2 Schools of Method There are various systems of philosophy with characteristically different conceptions of theSome of them are named scholasticism, sensationalism, rationalismatism, etc Many of them have been criticized in connection with the discussion of some educational proble deviations fro knowledge, for a consideration of the deviations e in experience In brief, the function of knowledge is to make one experience freely available in other experiences The word ”freely” e and that of habit Habit h an experience, which modification forms a predisposition to easier and more effective action in a like direction in the future Thus it also has the function ofone experience available in subsequent experiences Within certain limits, it perfore, does not e of conditions, for novelty Prevision of change is not part of its scope, for habit assumes the essential likeness of the new situation with the old Consequently it often leads astray, or comes between a person and the successful performance of his task, just as the skill, based on habit alone, of theunexpected occurs in the running of the machine But a man who understands the machine is the man who knohat he is about He knows the conditions under which a given habit works, and is in a position to introduce the changes which will readapt it to new conditions

In other words, knowledge is a perception of those connections of an object which deteriven situation To take an extre comet as they are accustomed to react to other events which threaten the security of their life Since they try to frighten wild anis, brandishi+ng of weapons, etc, they use the same methods to scare away the comet To us, the method is plainly absurd-so absurd that we fail to note that savages are si back upon habit in a hich exhibits its lious fashi+on is because we do not take the comet as an isolated, disconnected event, but apprehend it in its connections with other events We place it, as we say, in the astronomical system We respond to its connections and not simply to the immediate occurrence Thus our attitude to it is much freer We les provided by its connections We can bring into play, as we deem wise, any one of the habits appropriate to any one of the connected objects Thus we get at a new event indirectly instead of ienuity, resourcefulness An ideally perfect knowledge would represent such a network of interconnections that any past experience would offer a point of advantage froet at the problem presented in a new experience In fine, while a habit apart frole fixed e e of habits

Two aspects of this eneral and freer availability of foruished (See ante, p 77) (i) One, the ible, is increased power of control What cannot be ed directly may be handled indirectly; or we can interpose barriers between us and undesirable consequences; or we e has all the practical value attaching to efficient habits in any case (ii) But it also increases theto an experience A situation to which we respond capriciously or by routine has only ae co a new experience there isthe needed control we have the satisfaction of experiencing aphysically

While the content of knowledge is what has happened, what is taken as finished and hence settled and sure, the reference of knowledge is future or prospective For knowledge furnishes the oing on and what is to be done The knowledge of a physician is what he has found out by personal acquaintance and by study of what others have ascertained and recorded But it is knowledge to him because it supplies the resources by which he interprets the unknown things which confront hiested phenomena, foresees their probable future, and e is cut off fro, it drops out of consciousness entirely or else becomes an object of aesthetic contemplation There is much emotional satisfaction to be had froe, and the satisfaction is a legitimate one But this contemplative attitude is aesthetic, not intellectual It is the sa a finished picture or a well composed landscape It would make no difference if the subject matter were totally different, provided it had the saanization Indeed, it would make no difference if it holly invented, a play of fancy Applicability to the world one-that is out of the question by the nature of the case; iton, what is still unsettled, in thescene in which we are implicated The very fact that we so easily overlook this trait, and regard statee is because we assume the continuity of past and future We cannot entertain the conception of a world in which knowledge of its past would not be helpful in forecasting and giving nore the prospective reference just because it is so irretrievably implied

Yet many of the philosophic schools ofinto a virtual denial They regard knowledge as so co hat is yet to be And it is this omission which vitiates them and which makes them stand as sponsors for educational e condemns For one has only to call to mind what is soe to realize how lacking it is in any fruitful connection with the ongoing experience of the students-how largely it seems to be believed that the mere appropriation of subject matter which happens to be stored in books constitutes knowledge No matter how true what is learned to those who found it out and in whose experience it functioned, there is nothing which ht as well be so about Mars or about some fanciful country unless it fructifies in the individual's own life

At the time when scholastic method developed, it had relevancy to social conditions It was arational sanction to material accepted on authority This subjectand systeht to bear upon it Under present conditions the scholasticwhich has no especial connection with any particular subjectdistinctions, definitions, divisions, and classifications for thetheht as a purely physical activity having its own forms, which are applied to any material as a seal may be stamped on any plastic stuff, the viehich underlies what is tereneralized The doctrine of formal discipline in education is the natural counterpart of the scholastictheories of the o by the name of sensationalism and rationalism correspond to an exclusive eeneral respectively-or upon bare facts on one side and bare relations on the other In real knowledge, there is a particularizing and a generalizing function working together So far as a situation is confused, it has to be cleared up; it has to be resolved into details, as sharply defined as possible Specified facts and qualities constitute the eleh our sense organs that they are specified As setting forth the problementary Since our task is to discover their connections and to recombine theivenwhich is to be knohosehas still to be made out, offers itself as particular But what is already known, if it has been worked over with a view tonew particulars, is general in function Its function of introducing connection into what is otherwise unconnected constitutes its generality Any fact is general if we use it to giveto the elements of a new experience ”Reason” is just the ability to bring the subject nificance of the subject ree in which he is habitually open to seeing an event which i but in its connection with the common experience of mankind

Without the particulars as they are discrians, there is no rowth Without placing these particulars in the context of the er experience of the past-without the use of reason or thought-particulars are mere excitations or irritations The mistake alike of the sensational and the rationalistic schools is that each fails to see that the function of sensory sti experience in applying the old to the new, therebythe continuity or consistency of life The theory of the es matic Its essential feature is towith an activity which purposely e in its strict sense of so possessed consists of our intellectual resources-of all the habits that render our action intelligent Only that which has been organized into our disposition so as to enable us to adapt the environment to our needs and to adapt our aims and desires to the situation in which we live is really knowledge Knowledge is not just so which we are now conscious of, but consists of the dispositions we consciously use in understanding what now happens Knowledge as an act is bringing sohtening out a perplexity, by conceiving the connection between ourselves and the world in which we live

Summary Such social divisions as interfere with free and full

intercourse react toof members of the separated classes one-sided Those whose experience has to do with utilities cut off froer end they subserve are practical empiricists; those who enjoy the contes in whose active production they have had no share are practical rationalists Those who cos and have to adapt their activities to them immediately are, in effect, realists; those who isolate the ious or so-called spiritual world aloof froress, who are striving to change received beliefs, e; those whose chief business it is to withstand change and conserve received truth emphasize the universal and the fixed-and so on Philosophic systee present an explicit formulation of the traits characteristic of these cut-off and one-sided segments of experience-one-sided because barriers to intercourse prevent the experience of one fro enriched and supplemented by that of others who are differently situated

In an analogous way, since dee, for social continuity, it e thedirection and y, and the logic of the experimental sciences supply the specific intellectual instrumentalities demanded to work out and formulate such a theory Their educational equivalent is the connection of the acquisition of knowledge in the schools with activities, or occupations, carried on in a medium of associated life

Chapter Twenty-six: Theories of Morals