2.
An occupation is a continuous activity having a purpose. Education
through occupations consequently combines within itself more of the
factors conducive to learning than any other method. It calls instincts
and habits into play; it is a foe to passive receptivity. It has an end
in view; results are to be accomplished. Hence it appeals to thought;
it demands that an idea of an end be steadily maintained, so that
activity cannot be either routine or capricious. Since the movement of
activity must be progressive, leading from one stage to another,
observation and ingenuity are required at each stage to overcome
obstacles and to discover and readapt means of execution. In short, an
occupation, pursued under conditions where the realization of the
activity rather than merely the external product is the aim, fulfills
the requirements which were laid down earlier in connection with the
discussion of aims, interest, and thinking. (See Chapters VIII, X,
XII.)
A calling is also of necessity an organizing principle for information
and ideas; for knowledge and intellectual growth. It provides an axis
which runs through an immense diversity of detail; it causes different
experiences, facts, items of information to fall into order with one
another. The lawyer, the physician, the laboratory investigator in some
branch of chemistry, the parent, the citizen interested in his own
locality, has a constant working stimulus to note and relate whatever
has to do with his concern. He unconsciously, from the motivation of
his occupation, reaches out for all relevant information, and holds to
it. The vocation acts as both magnet to attract and as glue to hold.
Such organization of knowledge is vital, because it has reference to
needs; it is so expressed and readjusted in action that it never becomes
stagnant. No classification, no selection and arrangement of facts,
which is consciously worked out for purely abstract ends, can ever
compare in solidity or effectiveness with that knit under the stress of
an occupation; in comparison the former sort is formal, superficial, and
cold.
