3. The Present Educational Problem.
—In truth, experience knows no division between human concerns and
a purely mechanical physical world. Man's home is nature; his purposes
and aims are dependent for execution upon natural conditions. Separated
from such conditions they become empty dreams and idle indulgences of
fancy. From the standpoint of human experience, and hence of
educational endeavor, any distinction which can be justly made between
nature and man is a distinction between the conditions which have to be
reckoned with in the formation and execution of our practical aims, and
the aims themselves. This philosophy is vouched for by the doctrine of
biological development which shows that man is continuous with nature,
not an alien entering her processes from without. It is reënforced by
the experimental method of science which shows that knowledge accrues in
virtue of an attempt to direct physical energies in accord with ideas
suggested in dealing with natural objects in behalf of social uses.
Every step forward in the social sciences—the studies termed
history, economics, politics, sociology—shows that social
questions are capable of being intelligently coped with only in the
degree in which we employ the method of collected data, forming
hypotheses, and testing them in action which is characteristic of
natural science, and in the degree in which we utilize in behalf of the
promotion of social welfare the technical knowledge ascertained by
physics and chemistry. Advanced methods of dealing with such perplexing
problems as insanity, intemperance, poverty, public sanitation, city
planning, the conservation of natural resources, the constructive use of
governmental agencies for furthering the public good without weakening
personal initiative, all illustrate the direct dependence of our
important social concerns upon the methods and results of natural
science.
With respect then to both humanistic and naturalistic studies, education
should take its departure from this close interdependence. It should
aim not at keeping science as a study of nature apart from literature as
a record of human interests, but at cross-fertilizing both the natural
sciences and the various human disciplines such as history, literature,
economics, and politics. Pedagogically, the problem is simpler than the
attempt to teach the sciences as mere technical bodies of information
and technical forms of physical manipulation, on one side; and to teach
humanistic studies as isolated subjects, on the other. For the latter
procedure institutes an artificial separation in the pupils' experience.
Outside of school pupils meet with natural facts and principles in
connection with various modes of human action.
(See ante, p. 36.)
In all the social activities in which they have shared they have had to
understand the material and processes involved. To start them in school
with a rupture of this intimate association breaks the continuity of
mental development, makes the student feel an indescribable unreality in
his studies, and deprives him of the normal motive for interest in
them.
There is no doubt, of course, that the opportunities of education should
be such that all should have a chance who have the disposition to
advance to specialized ability in science, and thus devote themselves to
its pursuit as their particular occupation in life.
But at present, the pupil too often has a choice only between beginning
with a study of the results of prior specialization where the material
is isolated from his daily experiences, or with miscellaneous nature
study, where material is presented at haphazard and does not lead
anywhere in particular. The habit of introducing college pupils into
segregated scientific subject matter, such as is appropriate to the man
who wishes to become an expert in a given field, is carried back into
the high schools. Pupils in the latter simply get a more elementary
treatment of the same thing, with difficulties smoothed over and topics
reduced to the level of their supposed ability. The cause of this
procedure lies in following tradition, rather than in conscious
adherence to a dualistic philosophy. But the effect is the same as if
the purpose were to inculcate an idea that the sciences which deal with
nature have nothing to do with man, and vice versa. A large part of the
comparative ineffectiveness of the teaching of the sciences, for those
who never become scientific specialists, is the result of a separation
which is unavoidable when one begins with technically organized subject
matter. Even if all students were embryonic scientific specialists, it
is questionable whether this is the most effective procedure.
Considering that the great majority are concerned with the study of
sciences only for its effect upon their mental habits—in making them
more alert, more open-minded, more inclined to tentative acceptance and
to testing of ideas propounded or suggested,—and for achieving a
better understanding of their daily environment, it is certainly
ill-advised. Too often the pupil comes out with a smattering which is
too superficial to be scientific and too technical to be applicable to
ordinary affairs.
The utilization of ordinary experience to secure an advance into
scientific material and method, while keeping the latter connected with
familiar human interests, is easier to-day than it ever was before. The
usual experience of all persons in civilized communities to-day is
intimately associated with industrial processes and results. These in
turn are so many cases of science in action. The stationary and
traction steam engine, gasoline engine, automobile, telegraph and
telephone, the electric motor enter directly into the lives of most
individuals. Pupils at an early age are practically acquainted with
these things. Not only does the business occupation of their parents
depend upon scientific applications, but household pursuits, the
maintenance of health, the sights seen upon the streets, embody
scientific achievements and stimulate interest in the connected
scientific principles. The obvious pedagogical starting point of
scientific instruction is not to teach things labeled science, but to
utilize the familiar occupations and appliances to direct observation
and experiment, until pupils have arrived at a knowledge of some
fundamental principles by understanding them in their familiar practical
workings.
The opinion sometimes advanced that it is a derogation from the "purity"
of science to study it in its active incarnation, instead of in
theoretical abstraction, rests upon a misunderstanding. AS matter of
fact, any subject is cultural in the degree in which it is apprehended
in its widest possible range of meanings. Perception of meanings
depends upon perception of connections, of context. To see a scientific
fact or law in its human as well as in its physical and technical
context is to enlarge its significance and give it increased cultural
value. Its direct economic application, if by economic is meant
something having money worth, is incidental and secondary, but a part of
its actual connections. The important thing is that the fact be grasped
in its social connections—its function in life.
On the other hand, "humanism" means at bottom being imbued with an
intelligent sense of human interests. The social interest, identical in
its deepest meaning with a moral interest, is necessarily supreme with
man. Knowledge about man, information as to his past, familiarity with
his documented records of literature, may be as technical a possession
as the accumulation of physical details. Men may keep busy in a variety
of ways, making money, acquiring facility in laboratory manipulation, or
in amassing a store of facts about linguistic matters, or the chronology
of literary productions. Unless such activity reacts to enlarge the
imaginative vision of life, it is on a level with the busy work of
children. It has the letter without the spirit of activity. It readily
degenerates itself into a miser's accumulation, and a man prides himself
on what he has, and not on the meaning he finds in the affairs of life.
Any study so pursued that it increases concern for the values of life,
any study producing greater sensitiveness to social well-being and
greater ability to promote that well-being is humane study.
The humanistic spirit of the Greeks was native and intense but it was
narrow in scope. Everybody outside the Hellenic circle was a barbarian,
and negligible save as a possible enemy. Acute as were the social
observations and speculations of Greek thinkers, there is not a word in
their writings to indicate that Greek civilization was not self-inclosed
and self-sufficient. There was, apparently, no suspicion that its
future was at the mercy of the despised outsider. Within the Greek
community, the intense social spirit was limited by the fact that higher
culture was based on a substratum of slavery and economic
serfdom—classes necessary to the existence of the state, as
Aristotle declared, and yet not genuine parts of it. The development of
science has produced an industrial revolution which has brought
different peoples in such close contact with one another through
colonization and commerce that no matter how some nations may still look
down upon others, no country can harbor the illusion that its career is
decided wholly within itself. The same revolution has abolished
agricultural serfdom, and created a class of more or less organized
factory laborers with recognized political rights, and who make claims
for a responsible rôle in the control of industry—claims which
receive sympathetic attention from many among the well-to-do, since they
have been brought into closer connections with the less fortunate
classes through the breaking down of class barriers.
This state of affairs may be formulated by saying that the older
humanism omitted economic and industrial conditions from its purview.
Consequently, it was one sided. Culture, under such circumstances,
inevitably represented the intellectual and moral outlook of the class
which was in direct social control. Such a tradition as to culture is,
as we have seen
(Ante, p. 304),
aristocratic; it emphasizes what marks off one class from another,
rather than fundamental common interests. Its standards are in the past;
for the aim is to preserve what has been gained rather than widely to
extend the range of culture.
The modifications which spring from taking greater account of industry
and of whatever has to do with making a living are frequently condemned
as attacks upon the culture derived from the past. But a wider
educational outlook would conceive industrial activities as agencies for
making intellectual resources more accessible to the masses, and giving
greater solidity to the culture of those having superior resources. In
short, when we consider the close connection between science and
industrial development on the one hand, and between literary and
aæsthetic cultivation and an aristocratic social organization on the
other, we get light on the opposition between technical scientific
studies and refining literary studies. We have before us the need of
overcoming this separation in education if society is to be truly
democratic.
