19.
CHAPTER XIX
LABOR AND LEISURE:
1. The Origin of the Opposition.
—The isolation of aims and values which we have been considering
leads to opposition between them. Probably the most deep-seated
antithesis which has shown itself in educational history is that between
education in preparation for useful labor and education for a life of
leisure. The bare terms "useful labor" and "leisure" confirm the
statement already made that the segregation and conflict of values are
not self-inclosed, but reflect a division within social life. Were the
two functions of gaining a livelihood by work and enjoying in a
cultivated way the opportunities of leisure, distributed equally among
the different members of a community, it would not occur to any one that
there was any conflict of educational agencies and aims involved. It
would be self-evident that the question was how education could
contribute most effectively to both. And while it might be found that
some materials of instruction chiefly accomplished one result and other
subject matter the other, it would be evident that care must be taken to
secure as much overlapping as conditions permit; that is, the education
which had leisure more directly in view should indirectly reënforce
as much as possible the efficiency and the enjoyment of work, while that
aiming at the latter should produce habits of emotion and intellect
which would procure a worthy cultivation of leisure.
These general considerations are amply borne out by the historical
development of educational philosophy. The separation of liberal
education from professional and industrial education goes back to the
time of the Greeks, and was formulated expressly on the basis of a
division of classes into those who had to labor for a living and those
who were relieved from this necessity. The conception that liberal
education, adapted to men in the latter class, is intrinsically higher
than the servile training given to the latter class reflected the fact
that one class was free and the other servile in its social status. The
latter class labored not only for its own subsistence, but also for the
means which enabled the superior class to live without personally
engaging in occupations taking almost all the time and not of a nature
to engage or reward intelligence.
That a certain amount of labor must be engaged in goes without saying.
Human beings have to live and it requires work to supply the resources
of life. Even if we insist that the interests connected with getting a
living are only material and hence intrinsically lower than those
connected with enjoyment of time released from labor, and even if it
were admitted that there is something engrossing and insubordinate in
material interests which leads them to strive to usurp the place
belonging to the higher ideal interests, this would not—barring
the fact of socially divided classes—lead to neglect of the kind
of education which trains men for the useful pursuits. It would rather
lead to scrupulous care for them, so that men were trained to be
efficient in them and yet to keep them in their place; education would
see to it that we avoided the evil results which flow from their being
allowed to flourish in obscure purlieus of neglect. Only when a
division of these interests coincides with a division of an inferior and
a superior social class will preparation for useful work be looked down
upon with contempt as an unworthy thing: a fact which prepares one for
the conclusion that the rigid identification of work with material
interests, and leisure with ideal interests is itself a social product.
The educational formulations of the social situation made over two
thousand years ago have been so influential and give such a clear and
logical recognition of the implications of the division into laboring
and leisure classes, that they deserve especial note. According to
them, man occupies the highest place in the scheme of animate existence.
In part, he shares the constitution and functions of plants and animals
—nutritive, reproductive, motor or practical. The distinctively
human function is reason existing for the sake of beholding the
spectacle of the universe. Hence the truly human end is the fullest
possible of this distinctive human prerogative. The life of
observation, meditation, cogitation, and speculation pursued as an end
in itself is the proper life of man. From reason moreover proceeds the
proper control of the lower elements of human nature—the appetites
and the active, motor, impulses. In themselves greedy, insubordinate,
lovers of excess, aiming only at their own satiety, they observe
moderation—the law of the mean—and serve desirable ends as
they are subjected to the rule of reason.
Such is the situation as an affair of theoretical psychology and as most
adequately stated by Aristotle. But this state of things is reflected
in the constitution of classes of men and hence in the organization of
society. Only in a comparatively small number is the function of reason
capable of operating as a law of life. In the mass of people,
vegetative and animal functions dominate. Their energy of intelligence
is so feeble and inconstant that it is constantly overpowered by bodily
appetite and passion. Such persons are not truly ends in themselves,
for only reason constitutes a final end. Like plants, animals and
physical tools, they are means, appliances, for the attaining of ends
beyond themselves, although unlike them they have enough intelligence to
exercise a certain discretion in the execution of the tasks committed to
them. Thus by nature, and not merely by social convention, there are
those who are slaves—that is, means for the ends of others.
[12]
The great body of artisans are in one important respect worse off than
even slaves. Like the latter they are given up to the service of ends
external to themselves; but since they do not enjoy the intimate
association with the free superior class experienced by domestic slaves
they remain on a lower plane of excellence. Moreover, women are classed
with slaves and craftsmen as factors among the animate instrumentalities
of production and reproduction of the means for a free or rational life.
Individually and collectively there is a gulf between merely living and
living worthily. In order that one may live worthily he must first
live, and so with collective society. The time and energy spent upon
mere life, upon the gaining of subsistence, detracts from that available
for activities that have an inherent rational meaning; they also unfit
for the latter. Means are menial, the serviceable is servile. The true
life is possible only in the degree in which the physical necessities
are had without effort and without attention. Hence slaves, artisans,
and women are employed in furnishing the means of subsistence in order
that others, those adequately equipped with intelligence, may live the
life of leisurely concern with things intrinsically worth while.
To these two modes of occupation, with their distinction of servile and
free activities (or "arts") correspond two types of education: the base
or mechanical and the liberal or intellectual. Some persons are trained
by suitable practical exercises for capacity in doing things, for
ability to use the mechanical tools involved in turning out physical
commodities and rendering personal service. This training is a mere
matter of habituation and technical skill; it operates through
repetition and assiduity in application, not through awakening and
nurturing thought. Liberal education aims to train intelligence for its
proper office: to know. The less this knowledge has to do with
practical affairs, with making or producing, the more adequately it
engages intelligence. So consistently does Aristotle draw the line
between menial and liberal education that he puts what are now called
the "fine" arts, music, painting, sculpture, in the same class with
menial arts so far as their practice is concerned. They involve
physical agencies, assiduity of practice, and external results. In
discussing, for example, education in music he raises the question how
far the young should be practiced in the playing of instruments. His
answer is that such practice and proficiency may be tolerated as conduce
to appreciation; that is, to understanding and enjoyment of music when
played by slaves or professionals. When professional power is aimed at,
music sinks from the liberal to the professional level. One might then
as well teach cooking, says Aristotle. Even a liberal concern with the
works of fine art depends upon the existence of a hireling class of
practitioners who have subordinated the development of their own
personality to attaining skill in mechanical execution. The higher the
activity the more purely mental is it; the less does it have to do with
physical things or with the body. The more purely mental it is, the
more independent or self-sufficing is it.
These last words remind us that Aristotle again makes a distinction of
superior and inferior even within those living the life of reason. For
there is a distinction in ends and in free action, according as one's
life is merely accompanied by reason or as it makes reason its own
medium. That is to say, the free citizen who devotes himself to the
public life of his community, sharing in the management of its affairs
and winning personal honor and distinction, lives a life accompanied by
reason. But the thinker, the man who devotes himself to scientific
inquiry and philosophic speculation, works, so to speak, in reason,
not simply by it. Even the activity of the citizen in his civic
relations, in other words, retains some of the taint of practice, of external
or merely instrumental doing. This infection is shown by the fact that
civic activity and civic excellence need the help of others; one cannot
engage in public life all by himself. But all needs, all desires imply,
in the philosophy of Aristotle, a material factor; they involve lack,
privation; they are dependent upon something beyond themselves for
completion. A purely intellectual life, however, one carries on by
himself, in himself; such assistance as he may derive from others is
accidental, rather than intrinsic. In knowing, in the life of theory,
reason finds its own full manifestation; knowing for the sake of knowing
irrespective of any application is alone independent, or self-sufficing.
Hence only the education that makes for power to know as an end in
itself. without reference to the practice of even civic duties, is
truly liberal or free.
2. The Present Situation.
—If the Aristotelian conception represented just Aristotle's
personal view, it would be a more or less interesting historical
curiosity. It could be dismissed as an illustration of the lack of
sympathy or the amount of academic pedantry which may coexist with
extraordinary intellectual gifts. But Aristotle simply described
without confusion and without that insincerity always attendant upon
mental confusion, the life that was before him. That the actual social
situation has greatly changed since his day there is no need to say.
But in spite of these changes, in spite of the abolition of legal
serfdom, and the spread of democracy, with the extension of science and
of general education (in books, newspapers, travel, and general
intercourse as well as in schools), there remains enough of a cleavage
of society into a learned and an unlearned class, a leisure and a
laboring class, to make his point of view a most enlightening one from
which to criticize the separation between culture and utility in present
education. Behind the intellectual and abstract distinction as it
figures in pedagogical discussion, there looms a social distinction
between those whose pursuits involve a minimum of self-directive thought
and aæsthetic appreciation, and those who are concerned more directly
with things of the intelligence and with the control of the activities
of others.
Aristotle was certainly permanently right when he said that "any
occupation or art or study deserves to be called mechanical if it
renders the body or soul or intellect of free persons unfit for the
exercise and practice of excellence." The force of the statement is
almost infinitely increased when we hold, as we nominally do at present,
that all persons, instead of a comparatively few, are free. For when
the mass of men and all women were regarded as unfree by the very nature
of their bodies and minds, there was neither intellectual confusion nor
moral hypocrisy in giving them only the training which fitted them for
mechanical skill, irrespective of its ulterior effect upon their
capacity to share in a worthy life. He was permanently right also when
he went on to say that "all mercenary employments as well as those which
degrade the condition of the body are mechanical, since they deprive the
intellect of leisure and dignity,"—permanently right, that is, if
gainful pursuits as matter of fact deprive the intellect of the
conditions of its exercise and so of its dignity. If his statements are
false, it is because they identify a phase of social custom with a
natural necessity. But a different view of the relations of mind and
matter, mind and body, intelligence and social service, is better than
Aristotle's conception only if it helps render the old idea obsolete in
fact—in the actual conduct of life and education.
Aristotle was permanently right in assuming the inferiority and
subordination of mere skill in performance and mere accumulation of
external products to understanding, sympathy of appreciation, and the
free play of ideas. If there was an error, it lay in assuming the
necessary separation of the two: in supposing that there is a natural
divorce between efficiency in producing commodities and rendering
service, and self-directive thought; between significant knowledge and
practical achievement. We hardly better matters if we just correct his
theoretical misapprehension, and tolerate the social state of affairs
which generated and sanctioned his conception. We lose rather than gain
in change from serfdom to free citizenship if the most prized result of
the change is simply an increase in the mechanical efficiency of the
human tools of production. So we lose rather than gain in coming to
think of intelligence as an organ of control of nature through action,
if we are content that an unintelligent, unfree state persists in those
who engage directly in turning nature to use, and leave the intelligence
which controls to be the exclusive possession of remote scientists and
captains of industry. We are in a position honestly to criticize the
division of life into separate functions and of society into separate
classes only so far as we are free from responsibility for perpetuating
the educational practices which train the many for pursuits involving
mere skill in production, and the few for a knowledge that is an
ornament and a cultural embellishment. In short, ability to transcend
the Greek philosophy of life and education is not secured by a mere
shifting about of the theoretical symbols meaning free, rational, and
worthy. It is not secured by a change of sentiment regarding the
dignity of labor, and the superiority of a life of service to that of an
aloof self-sufficing independence. Important as these theoretical and
emotional changes are, their importance consists in their being turned
to account in the development of a truly democratic society, a society
in which all share in useful service and all enjoy a worthy leisure. It
is not a mere change in the concepts of culture—or a liberal
mind—and social service which requires an educational
reorganization; but the educational transformation is needed to give
full and explicit effect to the changes implied in social life. The
increased political and economic emancipation of the "masses" has shown
itself in education; it has effected the development of a common school
system of education, public and free. It has destroyed the idea that
learning is properly a monopoly of the few who are predestined by nature
to govern social affairs. But the revolution is still incomplete. The
idea still prevails that a truly cultural or liberal education cannot
have anything in common, directly at least, with industrial affairs, and
that the education which is fit for the masses must be a useful or
practical education in a sense which opposes useful and practical to
nurture of appreciation and liberation of thought.
As a consequence, our actual system is an inconsistent mixture. Certain
studies and methods are retained on the supposition that they have the
sanction of peculiar liberality, the chief content of the term liberal
being uselessness for practical ends. This aspect is chiefly visible in
what is termed the higher education—that of the college and of
preparation for it. But is has filtered through into elementary
education and largely controls its processes and aims. But, on the
other hand, certain concessions have been made to the masses who must
engage in getting a livelihood and to the increased rôle of economic
activities in modern life. These concessions are exhibited in special
schools and courses for the professions, for engineering, for manual
training and commerce, in vocational and prevocational courses; and in
the spirit in which certain elementary subjects, like the three R's, are
taught. The result is a system in which both "cultural" and
"utilitarian" subjects exist in an inorganic composite where the former
are not by dominant purpose socially serviceable and the latter not
liberative of imagination or thinking power.
In the inherited situation, there is a curious intermingling, in even
the same study, of concession to usefulness and a survival of traits
once exclusively attributed to preparation for leisure. The "utility"
element is found in the motives assigned for the study, the "liberal"
element in methods of teaching. The outcome of the mixture is perhaps
less satisfactory than if either principle were adhered to in its
purity. The motive popularly assigned for making the studies of the
first four or five years consist almost entirely of reading, spelling,
writing, and arithmetic, is, for example, that ability to read, write,
and figure accurately is indispensable to getting ahead. These studies
are treated as mere instruments for entering upon a gainful employment
or of later progress in the pursuit of learning, according as pupils do
not or do remain in school. This attitude is reflected in the emphasis
put upon drill and practice for the sake of gaining automatic skill. If
we turn to Greek schooling, we find that from the earliest years the
acquisition of skill was subordinated as much as possible to acquisition
of literary content possessed of aæsthetic and moral significance. Not
getting a tool for subsequent use but present subject matter was the
emphasized thing. Nevertheless the isolation of these studies from
practical application, their reduction to purely symbolic devices,
represents a survival of the idea of a liberal training divorced from
utility. A thorough adoption of the idea of utility would have led to
instruction which tied up the studies to situations in which they were
directly needed and where they were rendered immediately and not
remotely helpful. It would be hard to find a subject in the curriculum
within which there are not found evil results of a compromise between
the two opposed ideals. Natural science is recommended on the ground of
its practical utility, but is taught as a special accomplishment in
removal from application. On the other hand, music and literature are
theoretically justified on the ground of their culture value and are
then taught with chief emphasis upon forming technical modes of skill.
If we had less compromise and resulting confusion, if we analyzed more
carefully the respective meanings of culture and utility, we might find
it easier to construct a course of study which should be useful and
liberal at the same time. Only superstition makes us believe that the
two are necessarily hostile so that a subject is illiberal because it is
useful and cultural because it is useless. It will generally be found
that instruction which, in aiming at utilitarian results, sacrifices the
development of imagination, the refining of taste and the deepening of
intellectual insight—surely cultural values—also in the same
degree renders what is learned limited in its use. Not that it makes it
wholly unavailable but that its applicability is restricted to routine
activities carried on under the supervision of others. Narrow modes of
skill cannot be made useful beyond themselves; any mode of skill which
is achieved with deepening of knowledge and perfecting of judgment is
readily put to use in new situations and is under personal control. It
was not the bare fact of social and economic utility which made certain
activities seem servile to the Greeks but the fact that the activities
directly connected with getting a livelihood were not, in their days,
the expression of a trained intelligence nor carried on because of a
personal appreciation of their meaning. So far as farming and the
trades were rule-of-thumb occupations and so far as they were engaged in
for results external to the minds of agricultural laborers and
mechanics, they were illiberal—but only so far. The intellectual
and social context has now changed. The elements in industry due to
mere custom and routine have become subordinate in most economic
callings to elements derived from scientific inquiry. The most
important occupations of today represent and depend upon applied
mathematics, physics, and chemistry. The area of the human world
influenced by economic production and influencing consumption has been
so indefinitely widened that geographical and political considerations
of an almost infinitely wide scope enter in. It was natural for Plato
to deprecate the learning of geometry and arithmetic for practical ends,
because as matter of fact the practical uses to which they were put were
few, lacking in content and mostly mercenary in quality. But as their
social uses have increased and enlarged, their liberalizing or
"intellectual" value and their practical value approach the same limit.
Doubtless the factor which chiefly prevents our full recognition and
employment of this identification is the conditions under which so much
work is still carried on. The invention of machines has extended the
amount of leisure which is possible even while one is at work. It is a
commonplace that the mastery of skill in the form of established habits
frees the mind for a higher order of thinking. Something of the same
kind is true of the introduction of mechanically automatic operations in
industry. They may release the mind for thought upon other topics. But
when we confine the education of those who work with their hands to a
few years of schooling devoted for the most part to acquiring the use of
rudimentary symbols at the expense of training in science, literature,
and history, we fail to prepare the minds of workers to take advantage
of this opportunity. More fundamental is the fact that the great
majority of workers have no insight into the social aims of their
pursuits and no direct personal interest in them. The results actually
achieved are not the ends of their actions, but only of their employers.
They do what they do, not freely and intelligently, but for the sake of
the wage earned. It is this fact which makes the action illiberal, and
which will make any education designed simply to give skill in such
undertakings illiberal and immoral. The activity is not free because
not freely participated in.
Nevertheless, there is already an opportunity for an education which,
keeping in mind the larger features of work, will reconcile liberal
nurture with training in social serviceableness, with ability to share
efficiently and happily in occupations which are productive. And such
an education will of itself tend to do away with the evils of the
existing economic situation. In the degree in which men have an active
concern in the ends that control their activity, their activity becomes
free or voluntary and loses its externally enforced and servile quality,
even though the physical aspect of behavior remain the same. In what is
termed politics, democratic social organization makes provision for this
direct participation in control: in the economic region, control remains
external and autocratic. Hence the split between inner mental action
and outer physical action of which the traditional distinction between
the liberal and the utilitarian is the reflex. An education which
should unify the disposition of the members of society would do much to
unify society itself.
Summary.
—Of the segregations of educational values discussed in the last
chapter, that between culture and utility is probably the most
fundamental. While the distinction is often thought to be intrinsic and
absolute, it is really historical and social. It originated, so far as
conscious formulation is concerned, in Greece, and was based upon the
fact that the truly human life was lived only by a few who subsisted
upon the results of the labor of others. This fact affected the
psychological doctrine of the relation of intelligence and desire,
theory and practice. It was embodied in a political theory of a
permanent division of human beings into those capable of a life of
reason and hence having their own ends, and those capable only of desire
and work, and needing to have their ends provided by others. The two
distinctions, psychological and political, translated into educational
terms, effected a division between a liberal education, having to do
with the self-sufficing life of leisure devoted to knowing for its own
sake, and a useful, practical training for mechanical occupations,
devoid of intellectual and aæsthetic content. While the present
situation is radically diverse in theory and much changed in fact, the
factors of the older historic situation still persist sufficiently to
maintain the educational distinction, along with compromises which often
reduce the efficacy of the educational measures. The problem of
education in a democratic society is to do away with the dualism and to
construct a course of studies which makes thought a guide of free
practice for all and which makes leisure a reward of accepting
responsibility for service, rather than a state of exemption from it.
Footnotes
[[12]]
Aristotle does not hold that the class of actual slaces and natural
slaves necessarily coincide.
