18.
CHAPTER XVIII
EDUCATIONAL VALUES:
The considerations involved in a discussion of educational values have
already been brought out in the discussion of aims and interests. The
specific values usually discussed in educational theories coincide with
aims which are usually urged. They are such things as utility, culture,
information, preparation for social efficiency, mental discipline or
power, and so on. The aspect of these aims in virtue of which they are
valuable has been treated in our analysis of the nature of interest, and
there is no difference between speaking of art as an interest or concern
and referring to it as a value. It happens, however, that discussion of
values has usually been centered about a consideration of the various
ends subserved by specific subjects of the curriculum. It has been a
part of the attempt to justify those subjects by pointing out the
significant contributions to life accruing from their study. An
explicit discussion of educational values thus affords an opportunity
for reviewing the prior discussion of aims and interests on one hand and
of the curriculum on the other, by bringing them into connection with
one another.
1. The Nature of Realization or Appreciation.
—Much of our experience is indirect; it is dependent upon signs
which intervene between the things and ourselves, signs which stand for
or represent the former. It is one thing to have been engaged in war,
to have shared its dangers and hardships; it is another thing to hear or
read about it. All language, all symbols, are implements of an indirect
experience; in technical language the experience which is procured by
their means is "mediated." It stands in contrast with an immediate,
direct experience, something in which we take part vitally and at first
hand, instead of through the intervention of representative media. As
we have seen, the scope of personal, vitally direct experience is very
limited. If it were not for the intervention of agencies for
representing absent and distant affairs, our experience would remain
almost on the level of that of the brutes. Every step from savagery to
civilization is dependent upon the invention of media which enlarge the
range of purely immediate experience and give it deepened as well as
wider meaning by connecting it with things which can only be signified
or symbolized. It is doubtless this fact which is the cause of the
disposition to identify an uncultivated person with an illiterate person
—so dependent are we on letters for effective representative or
indirect experience.
At the same time (as we have also had repeated occasion to see) there is
always a danger that symbols will not be truly representative; danger
that instead of really calling up the absent and remote in a way to make
it enter a present experience, the linguistic media of representation
will become an end in themselves. Formal education is peculiarly
exposed to this danger, with the result that when literacy supervenes,
mere bookishness, what is popularly termed the academic, too often comes
with it. In colloquial speech, the phrase a "realizing sense" is used
to express the urgency, warmth, and intimacy of a direct experience in
contrast with the remote, pallid, and coldly detached quality of a
representative experience. The terms "mental realization" and
"appreciation" (or genuine appreciation) are more elaborate names for
the realizing sense of a thing. It is not possible to define these
ideas except by synonyms, like "coming home to one" "really taking it
in," etc., for the only way to appreciate what is meant by a direct
experience of a thing is by having it. But it is the difference between
reading a technical description of a picture, and seeing it; or between
just seeing it and being moved by it; between learning mathematical
equations about light and being carried away by some peculiarly glorious
illumination of a misty landscape.
We are thus met by the danger of the tendency of technique and other
purely representative forms to encroach upon the sphere of direct
appreciations; in other words, the tendency to assume that pupils have a
foundation of direct realization of situations sufficient for the
superstructure of representative experience erected by formulated school
studies. This is not simply a matter of quantity or bulk. Sufficient
direct experience is even more a matter of quality; it must be of a sort
to connect readily and fruitfully with the symbolic material of
instruction. Before teaching can safely enter upon conveying facts and
ideas through the media of signs, schooling must provide genuine
situations in which personal participation brings home the import of the
material and the problems which it conveys. From the standpoint of the
pupil, the resulting experiences are worth while on their own account;
from the standpoint of the teacher they are also means of supplying
subject matter required for understanding instruction involving signs,
and of evoking attitudes of open-mindedness and concern as to the
material symbolically conveyed.
In the outline given of the theory of educative subject matter, the
demand for this background of realization or appreciation is met by the
provision made for play and active occupations embodying typical
situations. Nothing need be added to what has already been said except
to point out that while the discussion dealt explicitly with the subject
matter of primary education, where the demand for the available
background of direct experience is most obvious, the principle applies
to the primary or elementary phase of every subject. The first and
basic function of laboratory work, for example, in a high school or
college in a new field, is to familiarize the student at first hand with
a certain range of facts and problems—to give him a "feeling" for
them. Getting command of technique and of methods of reaching and
testing generalizations is at first secondary to getting appreciation.
As regards the primary school activities, it is to be borne in mind that
the fundamental intent is not to amuse nor to convey information with a
minimum of vexation nor yet to acquire skill,—though these results
may accrue as by-products,—but to enlarge and enrich the scope of
experience, and to keep alert and effective the interest in intellectual
progress.
The rubric of appreciation supplies an appropriate head for bringing out
three further principles: the nature of effective or real (as distinct
from nominal) standards of value; the place of the imagination in
appreciative realizations; and the place of the fine arts in the course
of study.
1.
The nature of standards of valuation. Every adult has acquired, in the
course of his prior experience and education, certain measures of the
worth of various sorts of experience. He has learned to look upon
qualities like honesty, amiability, perseverance, loyalty, as moral
goods; upon certain classics of literature, painting, music, as
aæsthetic values, and so on. Not only this, but he has learned certain
rules for these values—the golden rule in morals; harmony,
balance, etc., proportionate distribution in aæsthetic goods;
definition, clarity, system in intellectual accomplishments. These
principles are so important as standards of judging the worth of new
experiences that parents and instructors are always tending to teach
them directly to the young. They overlook the danger that standards so
taught will be merely symbolic; that is, largely conventional and
verbal. In reality, working as distinct from professed standards depend
upon what an individual has himself specifically appreciated to be
deeply significant in concrete situations. An individual may have
learned that certain characteristics are conventionally esteemed in
music; he may be able to converse with some correctness about classic
music; he may even honestly believe that these traits constitute his own
musical standards. But if in his own past experience, what he has been
most accustomed to and has most enjoyed is ragtime, his active or
working measures of valuation are fixed on the ragtime level. The
appeal actually made to him in his own personal realization fixes his
attitude much more deeply than what he has been taught as the proper
thing to say; his habitual disposition thus fixed forms his real "norm"
of valuation in subsequent musical experiences.
Probably few would deny this statement as to musical taste. But it
applies equally well in judgments of moral and intellectual worth. A
youth who has had repeated experience of the full meaning of the value
of kindliness toward others built into his disposition has a measure of
the worth of generous treatment of others. Without this vital
appreciation, the duty and virtue of unselfishness impressed upon him by
others as a standard remains purely a matter of symbols which he cannot
adequately translate into realities. His "knowledge" is second-handed;
it is only a knowledge that others prize unselfishness as an excellence,
and esteem him in the degree in which he exhibits it. Thus there grows
up a split between a person's professed standards and his actual ones.
A person may be aware of the results of this struggle between his
inclinations and his theoretical opinions; he suffers from the conflict
between doing what is really dear to him and what he has learned will
win the approval of others. But of the split itself he is unaware; the
result is a kind of unconscious hypocrisy, an instability of
disposition. In similar fashion, a pupil who has worked through some
confused intellectual situation and fought his way to clearing up
obscurities in a definite outcome, appreciates the value of clarity and
definition. He has a standard which can be depended upon. He may be
trained externally to go through certain motions of analysis and
division of subject matter and may acquire information about the value
of these processes as standard logical functions, but unless it somehow
comes home to him at some point as an appreciation of his own, the
significance of the logical norms—so-called—remains as much
an external piece of information as, say, the names of rivers in China.
He may be able to recite, but the recital is a mechanical rehearsal.
It is, then, a serious mistake to regard appreciation as if it were
confined to such things as literature and pictures and music. Its scope
is as comprehensive as the work of education itself. The formation of
habits is a purely mechanical thing unless habits are also
tastes—habitual modes of preference and esteem, an effective
sense of excellence. There are adequate grounds for asserting that the
premium so often put in schools upon external "discipline," and upon
marks and rewards, upon promotion and keeping back, are the obverse of
the lack of attention given to life situations in which the meaning of
facts, ideas, principles, and problems is vitally brought home.
2.
Appreciative realizations are to be distinguished from symbolic or
representative experiences. They are not to be distinguished from the
work of the intellect or understanding. Only a personal response
involving imagination can possibly procure realization even of pure
"facts." The imagination is the medium of appreciation in every field.
The engagement of the imagination is the only thing that makes any
activity more than mechanical. Unfortunately, it is too customary to
identify the imaginative with the imaginary, rather than with a warm and
intimate taking in of the full scope of a situation. This leads to an
exaggerated estimate of fairy tales, myths, fanciful symbols, verse, and
something labeled "Fine Art," as agencies for developing imagination and
appreciation; and, by neglecting imaginative vision in other matters,
leads to methods which reduce much instruction to an unimaginative
acquiring of specialized skill and amassing of a load of information.
Theory, and—to some extent—practice, have advanced far
enough to recognize that play-activity is an imaginative enterprise.
But it is still usual to regard this activity as a specially marked-off
stage of childish growth, and to overlook the fact that the difference
between play and what is regarded as serious employment should be not a
difference between the presence and absence of imagination, but a
difference in the materials with which imagination is occupied. The
result is an unwholesome exaggeration of the phantastic and "unreal"
phases of childish play and a deadly reduction of serious occupation to
a routine efficiency prized simply for its external tangible results.
Achievement comes to denote the sort of thing that a well-planned
machine can do better than a human being can, and the main effect of
education, the achieving of a life of rich significance, drops by the
wayside. Meantime mind-wandering and wayward fancy are nothing but the
unsuppressible imagination cut loose from concern with what is done.
An adequate recognition of the play of imagination as the medium of
realization of every kind of thing which lies beyond the scope of direct
physical response is the sole way of escape from mechanical methods in
teaching. The emphasis put in this book, in accord with many tendencies
in contemporary education, upon activity, will be misleading if it is
not recognized that the imagination is as much a normal and integral
part of human activity as is muscular movement. The educative value of
manual activities and of laboratory exercises, as well as of play,
depends upon the extent in which they aid in bringing about a sensing of
the meaning of what is going on. In effect, if not in name, they are
dramatizations. Their utilitarian value in forming habits of skill to
be used for tangible results is important, but not when isolated from
the appreciative side. Were it not for the accompanying play of
imagination, there would be no road from a direct activity to
representative knowledge; for it is by imagination that symbols are
translated over into a direct meaning and integrated with a narrower
activity so as to expand and enrich it. When the representative
creative imagination is made merely literary and mythological, symbols
are rendered mere means of directing physical reactions of the organs of
speech.
3.
In the account previously given nothing was explicitly said about the
place of literature and the fine arts in the course of study. The
omission at that point was intentional. At the outset, there is no
sharp demarcation of useful, or industrial, arts and fine arts. The
activities mentioned in Chapter XV contain within themselves the factors
later discriminated into fine and useful arts. As engaging the emotions
and the imagination, they have the qualities which give the fine arts
their quality. As demanding method or skill, the adaptation of tools to
materials with constantly increasing perfection, they involve the
element of technique indispensable to artistic production. From the
standpoint of product, or the work of art, they are naturally defective,
though even in this respect when they comprise genuine appreciation they
often have a rudimentary charm. As experiences they have both an
artistic and an æsthetic quality. When they emerge into activities
which are tested by their product and when the socially serviceable
value of the product is emphasized, they pass into useful or industrial
arts. When they develop in the direction of an enhanced appreciation of
the immediate qualities which appeal to taste, they grow into fine arts.
In one of its meanings, appreciation is opposed to depreciation. It
denotes an enlarged, an intensified prizing, not merely a prizing, much
less—like depreciation—a lowered and degraded prizing. This
enhancement of the qualities which make any ordinary experience
appealing, appropriable—capable of full assimilation—and
enjoyable, constitutes the prime function of literature, music, drawing,
painting, etc., in education. They are not the exclusive agencies of
appreciation in the most general sense of that word; but they are the
chief agencies of an intensified, enhanced appreciation. As such, they
are not only intrinsically and directly enjoyable, but they serve a
purpose beyond themselves. They have the office, in increased degree,
of all appreciation in fixing taste, in forming standards for the worth
of later experiences. They arouse discontent with conditions which fall
below their measure; they create a demand for surroundings coming up to
their own level. They reveal a depth and range of meaning in
experiences which otherwise might be mediocre and trivial. They supply,
that is, organs of vision. Moreover, in their fullness they represent
the concentration and consummation of elements of good which are
otherwise scattered and incomplete. They select and focus the elements
of enjoyable worth which make any experience directly enjoyable. They
are not luxuries of education, but emphatic expressions of that which
makes any education worth while.
2. The Valuation of Studies.
—The theory of educational values involves not only an account of
the nature of appreciation as fixing the measure of subsequent
valuations, but an account of the specific directions in which these
valuations occur. To value means primarily to prize, to esteem; but
secondarily it means to apprise, to estimate. It means, that is, the
act of cherishing something, holding it dear, and also the act of
passing judgment upon the nature and amount of its value as compared
with something else. To value in the latter sense is to valuate or
evaluate. The distinction coincides with that sometimes made between
intrinsic and instrumental values. Intrinsic values are not objects of
judgment, they cannot (as intrinsic) be compared, or regarded as greater
and less, better or worse. They are invaluable; and if a thing is
invaluable, it is neither more nor less so than any other invaluable.
But occasions present themselves when it is necessary to choose, when we
must let one thing go in order to take another. This establishes an
order of preference, a greater and less, better and worse. Things
judged or passed upon have to be estimated in relation to some third
thing, some further end. With respect to that, they are means, or
instrumental values.
We may imagine a man who at one time thoroughly enjoys converse with his
friends, at another the hearing of a symphony; at another the eating of
his meals; at another the reading of a book; at another the earning of
money, and so on. As an appreciative realization, each of these is an
intrinsic value. It occupies a particular place in life; it serves its
own end, which cannot be supplied by a substitute. There is no question
of comparative value, and hence none of valuation. Each is the specific
good which it is, and that is all that can be said. In its own place,
none is a means to anything beyond itself. But there may arise a
situation in which they compete or conflict, in which a choice has to be
made. Now comparison comes in. Since a choice has to be made, we want
to know the respective claims of each competitor. What is to be said
for it? What does it offer in comparison with, as balanced over against,
some other possibility? Raising these questions means that a particular
good is no longer an end in itself, an intrinsic good. For if it were,
its claims would be incomparable, imperative. The question is now as to
its status as a means of realizing something else, which is then the
invaluable of that situation. If a man has just eaten, or if he is well
fed generally and the opportunity to hear music is a rarity, he will
probably prefer the music to eating. In the given situation that will
render the greater contribution. If he is starving, or if he is
satiated with music for the time being, he will naturally judge food to
have the greater worth. In the abstract or at large, apart from the
needs of a particular situation in which choice has to be made, there is
no such thing as degrees or order of value.
Certain conclusions follow with respect to educational values. We
cannot establish a hierarchy of values among studies. It is futile to
attempt to arrange them in an order, beginning with one having least
worth and going on to that of maximum value. In so far as any study has
a unique or irreplaceable function in experience, in so far as it marks
a characteristic enrichment of life, its worth is intrinsic or
incomparable. Since education is not a means to living, but is
identical with the operation of living a life which is fruitful and
inherently significant, the only ultimate value which can be set up is
just the process of living itself. And this is not an end to which
studies and activities are subordinate means; it is the whole of which
they are ingredients. And what has been said about appreciation means
that every study in one of its aspects ought to have just such ultimate
significance. It is true of arithmetic as it is of poetry that in some
place and at some time it ought to be a good to be appreciated on its
own account—just as an enjoyable experience, in short. If it is
not, then when the time and place come for it to be used as a means or
instrumentality, it will be in just that much handicapped. Never having
been realized or appreciated for itself, one will miss something of its
capacity as a resource for other ends.
It equally follows that when we compare studies as to their values, that
is, treat them as means to something beyond themselves, that which
controls their proper valuation is found in the specific situation in
which they are to be used. The way to enable a student to apprehend the
instrumental value of arithmetic is not to lecture him upon the benefit
it will be to him in some remote and uncertain future, but to let him
discover that success in something he is interested in doing depends
upon ability to use number.
It also follows that the attempt to distribute distinct sorts of value
among different studies is a misguided one, in spite of the amount of
time recently devoted to the undertaking. Science for example may have
any kind of value, depending upon the situation into which it enters as
a means. To some the value of science may be military; it may be an
instrument in strengthening means of offense or defense; it may be
technological, a tool for engineering; or it may be commercial—an
aid in the successful conduct of business; under other conditions, its
worth may be philanthropic—the service it renders in relieving
human suffering; or again it may be quite conventional—of value in
establishing one's social status as an "educated" person. As matter of
fact, science serves all these purposes, and it would be an arbitrary
task to try to fix upon one of them as its "real" end. All that we can
be sure of educationally is that science should be taught so as to be an
end in itself in the lives of students—something worth while on
account of its own unique intrinsic contribution to the experience of
life. Primarily it must have "appreciation value." If we take something
which seems to be at the opposite pole, like poetry, the same sort of
statement applies. It may be that, at the present time, its chief value
is the contribution it makes to the enjoyment of leisure. But that may
represent a degenerate condition rather than anything necessary. Poetry
has historically been allied with religion and morals; it has served the
purpose of penetrating the mysterious depths of things. It has had an
enormous patriotic value. Homer to the Greeks was a Bible, a textbook
of morals, a history, and a national inspiration. In any case, it may
be said that an education which does not succeed in making poetry a
resource in the business of life as well as in its leisure, has
something the matter with it—or else the poetry is artificial
poetry.
The same considerations apply to the value of a study or a topic of a
study with reference to its motivating force. Those responsible for
planning and teaching the course of study should have grounds for
thinking that the studies and topics included furnish both direct
increments to the enriching of lives of the pupils and also materials
which they can put to use in other concerns of direct interest. Since
the curriculum is always getting loaded down with purely inherited
traditional matter and with subjects which represent mainly the energy
of some influential person or group of persons in behalf of something
dear to them, it requires constant inspection, criticism, and revision
to make sure it is accomplishing its purpose. Then there is always the
probability that it represents the values of adults rather than those of
children and youth, or those of pupils a generation ago rather than
those of the present day. Hence a further need for a critical outlook
and survey. But these considerations do not mean that for a subject to
have motivating value to a pupil (whether intrinsic or instrumental) is
the same thing as for him to be aware of the value, or to be able to
tell what the study is good for.
In the first place, as long as any topic makes an immediate appeal, it
is not necessary to ask what it is good for. This is a question which
can be asked only about instrumental values. Some goods are not good
for anything; they are just goods. Any other notion leads to an
absurdity. For we cannot stop asking the question about an instrumental
good, one whose value lies in its being good for something, unless
there is at some point something intrinsically good, good for itself. To
a hungry, healthy child, food is a good of the situation; we do not have
to bring him to consciousness of the ends subserved by food in order to
supply a motive to eat. The food in connection with his appetite is
a motive. The same thing holds of mentally eager pupils with respect to
many topics. Neither they nor the teacher could possibly foretell with
any exactness the purposes learning is to accomplish in the future; nor
as long as the eagerness continues is it advisable to try to specify
particular goods which are to come of it. The proof of a good is found
in the fact that the pupil responds; his response is use. His
response to the material shows that the subject functions in his life.
It is unsound to urge that, say, Latin has a value per se in the
abstract, just as a study, as a sufficient justification for teaching it.
But it is equally absurd to argue that unless teacher or pupil can point
out some definite assignable future use to which it is to be put, it
lacks justifying value. When pupils are genuinely concerned in learning
Latin, that is of itself proof that it possesses value. The most which
one is entitled to ask in such cases is whether in view of the shortness
of time, there are not other things of intrinsic value which in addition
have greater instrumental value.
This brings us to the matter of instrumental values—topics studied
because of some end beyond themselves. If a child is ill and his
appetite does not lead him to eat when food is presented, or if his
appetite is perverted so that he prefers candy to meat and vegetables,
conscious reference to results is indicated. He needs to be made
conscious of consequences as a justification of the positive or negative
value of certain objects. Or the state of things may be normal enough,
and yet an individual not be moved by some matter because he does not
grasp how his attainment of some intrinsic good depends upon active
concern with what is presented. In such cases, it is obviously the part
of wisdom to establish consciousness of connection. In general what is
desirable is that a topic be presented in such a way that it either have
an immediate value, and require no justification, or else be perceived
to be a means of achieving something of intrinsic value. An
instrumental value then has the intrinsic value of being a means to an
end.
It may be questioned whether some of the present pedagogical interest in
the matter of values of studies is not either excessive or else too
narrow. Sometimes it appears to be a labored effort to furnish an
apologetic for topics which no longer operate to any purpose, direct or
indirect, in the lives of pupils. At other times, the reaction against
useless lumber seems to have gone to the extent of supposing that no
subject or topic should be taught unless some quite definite future
utility can be pointed out by those making the course of study or by the
pupil himself, unmindful of the fact that life is its own excuse for
being; and that definite utilities which can be pointed out are
themselves justified only because they increase the experienced content
of life itself.
3. The Segregation and Organization of Values.
—It is of course possible to classify in a general way the various
valuable phases of life. In order to get a survey of aims sufficiently wide
(See ante, p. 128)
to give breadth and flexibility to the enterprise of education, there is
some advantage in such a classification. But it is a great mistake to
regard these values as ultimate ends to which the concrete satisfactions
of experience are subordinate. They are nothing but generalizations, more
or less adequate, of concrete goods. Health, wealth, efficiency, sociability,
utility, culture, happiness itself are only abstract terms which sum up a
multitude of particulars. To regard such things as standards for the
valuation of concrete topics and process of education is to subordinate
to an abstraction the concrete facts from which the abstraction is derived.
They are not in any true sense standards of valuation; these are found, as
we have previously seen, in the specific realizations which form
tastes and habits of preference. They are, however, of significance as
points of view elevated above the details of life whence to survey the
field and see how its constituent details are distributed, and whether
they are well proportioned.
No classification can have other than a provisional validity. The
following may prove of some help. We may say that the kind of
experience to which the work of the schools should contribute is one
marked by executive competency in the management of resources and
obstacles encountered (efficiency); by sociability, or interest in the
direct companionship of others; by aæsthetic taste or capacity to
appreciate artistic excellence in at least some of its classic forms; by
trained intellectual method, or interest in some mode of scientific
achievement; and by sensitiveness to the rights and claims of
others—conscientiousness.
And while these considerations are not standards of
value, they are useful criteria for survey, criticism, and better
organization of existing methods and subject matter of instruction.
The need of such general points of view is the greater because of a
tendency to segregate educational values due to the isolation from one
another of the various pursuits of life. The idea is prevalent that
different studies represent separate kinds of values, and that the
curriculum should, therefore, be constituted by gathering together
various studies till a sufficient variety of independent values have
been cared for. The following quotation does not use the word value,
but it contains the notion of a curriculum constructed on the idea that
there are a number of separate ends to be reached, and that various
studies may be evaluated by referring each study to its respective end.
"Memory is trained by most studies, but best by languages and history;
taste is trained by the more advanced study of languages, and still
better by English literature; imagination by all higher language
teaching, but chiefly by Greek and Latin poetry; observation by science
work in the laboratory, though some training is to be got from the
earlier stages of Latin and Greek; for expression, Greek and Latin
composition comes first and English composition next; for abstract
reasoning, mathematics stands almost alone; for concrete reasoning,
science comes first, then geometry; for social reasoning, the Greek and
Roman historians and orators come first, and general history next.
Hence the narrowest education which can claim to be at all complete
includes Latin, one modern language, some history, some English
literature, and one science."
There is much in the wording of this passage which is irrelevant to our
point and which must be discounted to make it clear. The phraseology
betrays the particular provincial tradition within which the author is
writing. There is the unquestioned assumption of "faculties" to be
trained, and a dominant interest in the ancient languages; there is
comparative disregard of the earth on which men happen to live and the
bodies they happen to carry around with them. But with allowances made
for these matters (even with their complete abandonment) we find much in
contemporary educational philosophy which parallels the fundamental
notion of parceling out special values to segregated studies. Even when
some one end is set up as a standard of value, like social efficiency or
culture, it will often be found to be but a verbal heading under which a
variety of disconnected factors are comprised. And although the general
tendency is to allow a greater variety of values to a given study than
does the passage quoted, yet the attempt to inventory a number of values
attaching to each study and to state the amount of each value which the
given study possesses emphasizes an implied educational disintegration.
As matter of fact, such schemes of values of studies are largely but
unconscious justifications of the curriculum with which one is familiar.
One accepts, for the most part, the studies of the existing course and
then assigns values to them as a sufficient reason for their being
taught. Mathematics is said to have, for example, disciplinary value in
habituating the pupil to accuracy of statement and closeness of
reasoning; it has utilitarian value in giving command of the arts of
calculation involved in trade and the arts; culture value in its
enlargement of the imagination in dealing with the most general
relations of things; even religious value in its concept of the infinite
and allied ideas. But clearly mathematics does not accomplish such
results, because it is endowed with miraculous potencies called values;
it has these values if and when it accomplishes these results, and not
otherwise. The statements may help a teacher to a larger vision of the
possible results to be effected by instruction in mathematical topics.
But unfortunately, the tendency is to treat the statement as indicating
powers inherently residing in the subject, whether they operate or not,
and thus to give it a rigid justification. If they do not operate, the
blame is put not on the subject as taught, but on the indifference and
recalcitrancy of pupils.
This attitude toward subjects is the obverse side of the conception of
experience or life as a patchwork of independent interests which exist
side by side and limit one another. Students of politics are familiar
with a check and balance theory of the powers of government. There are
supposed to be independent separate functions, like the legislative,
executive, judicial, administrative, and all goes well if each of these
checks all the others and thus creates an ideal balance. There is a
philosophy which might well be called the check and balance theory of
experience. Life presents a diversity of interests. Left to
themselves, they tend to encroach on one another. The ideal is to
prescribe a special territory for each till the whole ground of
experience is covered, and then see to it each remains within its own
boundaries. Politics, business, recreation, art, science, the learned
professions, polite intercourse, leisure, represent such interests.
Each of these ramifies into many branches: business into manual
occupations, executive positions, bookkeeping, railroading, banking,
agriculture, trade and commerce, etc., and so with each of the others.
An ideal education would then supply the means of meeting these separate
and pigeon-holed interests. And when we look at the schools, it is easy
to get the impression that they accept this view of the nature of adult
life, and set for themselves the task of meeting its demands. Each
interest is acknowledged as a kind of fixed institution to which
something in the course of study must correspond. The course of study
must then have some civics and history politically and patriotically
viewed: some utilitarian studies; some science; some art (mainly
literature of course); some provision for recreation; some moral
education; and so on.
And it will be found that a large part of current agitation about
schools is concerned with clamor and controversy about the due meed of
recognition to be given to each of these interests, and with struggles
to secure for each its due share in the course of study; or, if this
does not seem feasible in the existing school system, then to secure a
new and separate kind of schooling to meet the need. In the multitude
of educations education is forgotten.
The obvious outcome is congestion of the course of study, overpressure
and distraction of pupils, and a narrow specialization fatal to the very
idea of education.
But these bad results usually lead to more of the same sort of thing as
a remedy. When it is perceived that after all the requirements of a
full life experience are not met, the deficiency is not laid to the
isolation and narrowness of the teaching of the existing subjects, and
this recognition made the basis of reorganization of the system. No,
the lack is something to be made up for by the introduction of still
another study, or, if necessary, another kind of school. And as a rule
those who object to the resulting overcrowding and consequent
superficiality and distraction usually also have recourse to a merely
quantitative criterion: the remedy is to cut off a great many studies as
fads and frills, and return to the good old curriculum of the three R's
in elementary education and the equally good and equally old-fashioned
curriculum of the classics and mathematics in higher
education.
The situation has, of course, its historic explanation.
Various epochs of the past have had their own characteristic struggles
and interests. Each of these great epochs has left behind itself a kind
of cultural deposit, like a geologic stratum. These deposits have found
their way into educational institutions in the form of studies, distinct
courses of study, distinct types of schools. With the rapid change of
political, scientific, and economic interests in the last century,
provision had to be made for new values. Though the older courses
resisted, they have had at least in this country to retire their
pretensions to a monopoly. They have not, however, been reorganized in
content and aim; they have only been reduced in amount. The new
studies, representing the new interests, have not been used to transform
the method and aim of all instruction; they have been injected and added
on. The result is a conglomerate, the cement of which consists in the
mechanics of the school program or time table. Thence arises the scheme
of values and standards of value which we have mentioned.
This situation in education represents the divisions and separations
which obtain in social life. The variety of interests which should mark
any rich and balanced experience have been torn asunder and deposited in
separate institutions with diverse and independent purposes and methods.
Business is business, science is science, art is art, politics is
politics, social intercourse is social intercourse, morals is morals,
recreation is recreation, and so on. Each possesses a separate and
independent province with its own peculiar aims and ways of proceeding.
Each contributes to the others only externally and accidentally. All of
them together make up the whole of life by just apposition and addition.
What does one expect from business save that it should furnish money,
to be used in turn for making more money and for support of self and
family, for buying books and pictures, tickets to concerts which may
afford culture, and for paying taxes, charitable gifts and other things
of social and ethical value? How unreasonable to expect that the pursuit
of business should be itself a culture of the imagination, in breadth
and refinement; that it should directly, and not through the money which
it supplies, have social service for its animating principle and be
conducted as an enterprise in behalf of social organization! The same
thing is to be said, mutatis mutandis, of the pursuit of art or science
or politics or religion. Each has become specialized not merely in its
appliances and its demands upon time, but in its aim and animating
spirit. Unconsciously, our course of studies and our theories of the
educational values of studies reflect this division of
interests.
The point at issue in a theory of educational value is then the unity or
integrity of experience. How shall it be full and varied without losing
unity of spirit? How shall it be one and yet not narrow and monotonous
in its unity? Ultimately, the question of values and a standard of
values is the moral question of the organization of the interests of
life. Educationally, the question concerns that organization of
schools, materials, and methods which will operate to achieve breadth
and richness of experience. How shall we secure breadth of outlook
without sacrificing efficiency of execution? How shall we secure the
diversity of interests, without paying the price of isolation? How shall
the individual be rendered executive in his intelligence instead of at
the cost of his intelligence? How shall art, science, and politics
reënforce one another in an enriched temper of mind instead of
constituting ends pursued at one another's expense? How can the
interests of life and the studies which enforce them enrich the common
experience of men instead of dividing men from one another? With the
questions of reorganization thus suggested, we shall be concerned in the
concluding chapters.
Summary.
—Fundamentally, the elements involved in a discussion of value
have been covered in the prior discussion of aims and interests. But
since educational values are generally discussed in connection with the
claims of the various studies of the curriculum, the consideration of
aim and interest is here resumed from the point of view of special
studies. The term "value" has two quite different meanings. On the one
hand, it denotes the attitude of prizing a thing finding it worth while,
for its own sake, or intrinsically. This is a name for a full or
complete experience. To value in this sense is to appreciate. But to
value also means a distinctively intellectual act—an operation of
comparing and judging—to valuate. This occurs when direct full
experience is lacking, and the question arises which of the various
possibilities of a situation is to be preferred in order to reach a full
realization, or vital experience.
We must not, however, divide the studies of the curriculum into the
appreciative, those concerned with intrinsic value, and the
instrumental, concerned with those which are of value or ends beyond
themselves. The formation of proper standards in any subject depends
upon a realization of the contribution which it makes to the immediate
significance of experience, upon a direct appreciation. Literature and
the fine arts are of peculiar value because they represent appreciation
at its best—a heightened realization of meaning through selection
and concentration. But every subject at some phase of its development
should possess, what is for the individual concerned with it, an
aæsthetic quality.
Contribution to immediate intrinsic values in all their variety in
experience is the only criterion for determining the worth of
instrumental and derived values in studies. The tendency to assign
separate values to each study and to regard the curriculum in its
entirety as a kind of composite made by the aggregation of segregated
values is a result of the isolation of social groups and classes. Hence
it is the business of education in a democratic social group to struggle
against this isolation in order that the various interests may
reënforce and play into one another.
