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.
