—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.
