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.
