3.
CHAPTER III
EDUCATION AS DIRECTION:
1. The Environment as Directive.
—We now pass to one of the special forms which the general
function of education assumes: namely, that of direction, control, or
guidance. Of these three words, direction, control, and guidance, the
last best conveys the idea of assisting through coöperation the natural
capacities of the individuals guided; control conveys rather the notion
of an energy brought to bear from without and meeting some resistance
from the one controlled; direction is a more neutral term and suggests
the fact that the active tendencies of those directed are led in a
certain continuous course, instead of dispersing aimlessly. Direction
expresses the basic function, which tends at one extreme to become a
guiding assistance and at another, a regulation or ruling. But in any
case, we must carefully avoid a meaning sometimes read into the term
"control." It is sometimes assumed, explicitly or unconsciously, that
an individual's tendencies are naturally purely individualistic or
egoistic, and thus antisocial. Control then denotes the process by
which he is brought to subordinate his natural impulses to public or
common ends. Since, by conception, his own nature is quite alien to
this process and opposes it rather than helps it, control has in this
view a flavor of coercion or compulsion about it. Systems of government
and theories of the state have been built upon this notion, and it has
seriously affected educational ideas and practices. But there is no
ground for any such view. Individuals are certainly interested, at
times, in having their own way, and their own way may go contrary to the
ways of others. But they are also interested, and chiefly interested
upon the whole, in entering into the activities of others and taking
part in conjoint and coöperative doings. Otherwise, no such thing
as a community would be possible. And there would not even be any one
interested in furnishing the policeman to keep a semblance of harmony
unless he thought that thereby he could gain some personal advantage.
Control, in truth, means only an emphatic form of direction of powers,
and covers the regulation gained by an individual through his own
efforts quite as much as that brought about when others take the lead.
In general, every stimulus directs activity. It does not simply excite
it or stir it up, but directs it toward an object. Put the other way
around, a response is not just a re-action, a protest, as it were,
against being disturbed; it is, as the word indicates, an answer. It
meets the stimulus, and corresponds with it. There is an adaptation of
the stimulus and response to each other. A light is the stimulus to the
eye to see something, and the business of the eye is to see. If the
eyes are open and there is light, seeing occurs; the stimulus is but a
condition of the fulfillment of the proper function of the organ, not an
outside interruption. To some extent, then, all direction or control is
a guiding of activity to its own end; it is an assistance in doing fully
what some organ is already tending to do.
This general statement needs, however, to be qualified in two respects.
In the first place, except in the case of a small number of instincts,
the stimuli to which an immature human being is subject are not
sufficiently definite to call out, in the beginning, specific responses.
There is always a great deal of superfluous energy aroused. This energy
may be wasted, going aside from the point; it may also go against the
successful performance of an act. It does harm by getting in the way.
Compare the behavior of a beginner in riding a bicycle with that of the
expert. There is little axis of direction in the energies put forth;
they are largely dispersive and centrifugal. Direction involves a
focusing and fixating of action in order that it may be truly a
response, and this requires an elimination of unnecessary and confusing
movements. In the second place, although no activity can be produced in
which the person does not cooperate to some extent, yet a response may
be of a kind which does not fit into the sequence and continuity of
action. A person boxing may dodge a particular blow successfully, but
in such a way as to expose himself the next instant to a still harder
blow. Adequate control means that the successive acts are brought into
a continuous order; each act not only meets its immediate stimulus but
helps the acts which follow.
In short, direction is both simultaneous and successive. At a given
time, it requires that, from all the tendencies that are partially
called out, those be selected which center energy upon the point of
need. Successively, it requires that each act be balanced with those
which precede and come after, so that order of activity is achieved.
Focusing and ordering are thus the two aspects of direction, one
spatial, the other temporal. The first insures hitting the mark; the
second keeps the balance required for further action. Obviously, it is
not possible to separate them in practice as we have distinguished them
in idea. Activity must be centered at a given time in such a way
as to prepare for what comes next. The problem of the immediate response
is complicated by one's having to be on the lookout for future occurrences.
Two conclusions emerge from these general statements.
On the one hand, purely external direction is impossible. The
environment can at most only supply stimuli to call out responses.
These responses proceed from tendencies already possessed by the
individual. Even when a person is frightened by threats into doing
something, the threats work only because the person has an instinct of
fear. If he has not, or if, though having it, it is under his own
control, the threat has no more influence upon him than light has in
causing a person to see who has no eyes. While the customs and rules of
adults furnish stimuli which direct as well as evoke the activities of
the young, the young, after all, participate in the direction which
their actions finally take. In the strict sense, nothing can be forced
upon them or into them. To overlook this fact means to distort and
pervert human nature. To take into account the contribution made by the
existing instincts and habits of those directed is to direct them
economically and wisely. Speaking accurately, all direction is but
re-direction; it shifts the activities already going on into another
channel. Unless one is cognizant of the energies which are already in
operation, one's attempts at direction will almost surely go amiss.
On the other hand, the control afforded by the customs and regulations
of others may be short-sighted. It may accomplish its immediate effect,
but at the expense of throwing the subsequent action of the person out
of balance. A threat may, for example, prevent a person from doing
something to which he is naturally inclined by arousing fear of
disagreeable consequences if he persists. But he may be left in the
position which exposes him later on to influences which will lead him to
do even worse things. His instincts of cunning and slyness may be
aroused, so that things henceforth appeal to him on the side of evasion
and trickery more than would otherwise have been the case. Those
engaged in directing the actions of others are always in danger of
overlooking the importance of the sequential development of those they
direct.
2. Modes of Social Direction.
—Adults are naturally most conscious of directing the conduct of
others when they are immediately aiming so to do. As a rule, they have
such an aim consciously when they find themselves resisted; when others
are doing things they do not wish them to do. But the more permanent
and influential modes of control are those which operate from moment to
moment continuously without such deliberate intention on our part.
1.
When others are not doing what we would like them to or are threatening
disobedience, we are most conscious of the need of controlling them and
of the influences by which they are controlled. In such cases, our
control becomes most direct, and at this point we are most likely to
make the mistakes just spoken of. We are even likely to take the
influence of superior force for control, forgetting that while we may
lead a horse to water we cannot make him drink; and that while we can
shut a man up in a penitentiary we cannot make him penitent. In all
such cases of immediate action upon others, we need to discriminate
between physical results and moral results. A person may be in such a
condition that forcible feeding or enforced confinement is necessary for
his own good. A child may have to be snatched with roughness away from
a fire so that he shall not be burnt. But no improvement of
disposition, no educative effect, need follow. A harsh and commanding
tone may be effectual in keeping a child away from the fire, and the
same desirable physical effect will follow as if he had been snatched
away. But there may be no more obedience of a moral sort in one case
than in the other. A man can be prevented from breaking into other
persons' houses by shutting him up, but shutting him up may not alter
his disposition to commit burglary. When we confuse a physical with an
educative result, we always lose the chance of enlisting the person's
own participating disposition in getting the result desired, and thereby
of developing within him an intrinsic and persisting direction in the
right way.
In general, the occasion for the more conscious acts of control should
be limited to acts which are so instinctive or impulsive that the one
performing them has no means of foreseeing their outcome. If a person
cannot foresee the consequences of his act, and is not capable of
understanding what he is told about its outcome by those with more
experience, it is impossible for him to guide his act intelligently. In
such a state, every act is alike to him. Whatever moves him does move
him, and that is all there is to it. In some cases, it is well to
permit him to experiment, and to discover the consequences for himself
in order that he may act intelligently next time under similar
circumstances. But some courses of action are too discommoding and
obnoxious to others to allow of this course being pursued. Direct
disapproval is now resorted to. Shaming, ridicule, disfavor, rebuke,
and punishment are used. Or contrary tendencies in the child are
appealed to to divert him from his troublesome line of behavior. His
sensitiveness to approbation, his hope of winning favor by an agreeable
act, are made use of to induce action in another direction.
2.
These methods of control are so obvious (because so intentionally
employed) that it would hardly be worth while to mention them if it were
not that notice may now be taken, by way of contrast, of the other more
important and permanent mode of control. This other method resides in
the ways in which persons, with whom the immature being is associated,
use things; the instrumentalities with which they accomplish their
own ends. The very existence of the social medium in which an individual
lives, moves, and has his being is the standing effective agency of
directing his activity.
This fact makes it necessary for us to examine in greater detail what is
meant by the social environment. We are given to separating from each
other the physical and social environments in which we live. The
separation is responsible on one hand for an exaggeration of the moral
importance of the more direct or personal modes of control of which we
have been speaking; and on the other hand for an exaggeration, in
current psychology and philosophy, of the intellectual possibilities
of contact with a purely physical environment. There is not, in fact, any
such thing as the direct influence of one human being on another apart
from use of the physical environment as an intermediary. A smile, a
frown, a rebuke, a word of warning or encouragement, all involve some
physical change. Otherwise, the attitude of one would not get over to
alter the attitude of another.
Comparatively speaking, such modes of influence may be regarded as
personal. The physical medium is reduced to a mere means of personal
contact. In contrast with such direct modes of mutual influence, stand
associations in common pursuits involving the use of things as means and
as measures of results. Even if the mother never told her daughter to
help her, or never rebuked her for not helping, the child would be
subjected to direction in her activities by the mere fact that she was
engaged, along with the parent, in the household life. Imitation,
emulation, the need of working together, enforce control.
If the mother hands the child something needed, the latter must reach
the thing in order to get it. Where there is giving there must be
taking. The way the child handles the thing after it is got, the use to
which it is put, is surely influenced by the fact that the child has
watched the mother. When the child sees the parent looking for
something, it is as natural for it also to look for the object and to
give it over when it finds it, as it was, under other circumstances, to
receive it. Multiply such an instance by the thousand details of daily
intercourse, and one has a picture of the most permanent and enduring
method of giving direction to the activities of the young.
In saying this, we are only repeating what was said previously about
participating in a joint activity as the chief way of forming disposition.
We have explicitly added, however, the recognition of the part played in
the joint activity by the use of things. The philosophy
of learning has been unduly dominated by a false psychology. It is
frequently stated that a person learns by merely having the qualities of
things impressed upon his mind through the gateway of the senses.
Having received a store of sensory impressions, association or some
power of mental synthesis is supposed to combine them into
ideas—into things with a meaning. An object, stone, orange,
tree, chair, is supposed to convey different impressions of color, shape,
size, hardness, smell, taste, etc., which aggregated together constitute
the characteristic meaning of each thing. But as matter of fact, it is
the characteristic use to which the thing is put, because of its
specific qualities, which supplies the meaning with which it is
identified. A chair is a thing which is put to one use; a table, a
thing which is employed for another purpose; an orange is a thing which
costs so much, which is grown in warm climes, which is eaten, and when
eaten has an agreeable odor and refreshing taste, etc.
The difference between an adjustment to a physical stimulus and a mental
act is that the latter involves response to a thing in its meaning;
the former does not. A noise may make me jump without my mind being
implicated. When I hear a noise and run and get water and put out a
blaze, I respond intelligently; the sound meant fire, and fire meant
need of being extinguished. I bump into a stone, and kick it to one
side purely physically. I put it to one side for fear some one will
stumble upon it, intelligently; I respond to a meaning which the thing
has. I am startled by a thunderclap whether I recognize it or
not—more likely, if I do not recognize it. But if I say, either
out loud or to myself, that is thunder, I respond to the disturbance as
a meaning. My behavior has a mental quality. When things have a meaning
for us, we mean (intend, propose) what we do: when they do not,
we act blindly, unconsciously, unintelligently.
In both kinds of responsive adjustment, our activities are directed or
controlled. But in the merely blind response, direction is also blind.
There may be training, but there is no education. Repeated responses to
recurrent stimuli may fix a habit of acting in a certain way. All of us
have many habits of whose import we are quite unaware, since they were
formed without our knowing what we were about. Consequently they
possess us, rather than we them. They move us; they control us. Unless
we become aware of what they accomplish, and pass judgment upon the
worth of the result, we do not control them. A child might be made to
bow every time he met a certain person by pressure on his neck muscles,
and bowing would finally become automatic. It would not, however, be an
act of recognition or deference on his part, till he did it with a
certain end in view—as having a certain meaning. And not till he
knew what he was about and performed the act for the sake of its meaning
could he be said to be "brought up" or educated to act in a certain way.
To have an idea of a thing is thus not just to get certain sensations
from it. It is to be able to respond to the thing in view of its place
in an inclusive scheme of action; it is to foresee the drift and
probable consequence of the action of the thing upon us and of our
action upon it.
To have the same ideas about things which others have, to be like-minded
with them, and thus to be really members of a social group, is therefore
to attach the same meanings to things and to acts which others attach.
Otherwise, there is no common understanding, and no community life. But
in a shared activity, each person refers what he is doing to what the
other is doing and vice-versa. That is, the activity of each
is placed in the same inclusive situation. To pull at a rope at which
others happen to be pulling is not a shared or conjoint activity, unless
the pulling is done with knowledge that others are pulling and for the sake
of either helping or hindering what they are doing. A pin may pass in
the course of its manufacture through the hands of many persons. But
each may do his part without knowledge of what others do or without any
reference to what they do; each may operate simply for the sake of a
separate result—his own pay. There is, in this case, no common
consequence to which the several acts are referred, and hence no genuine
intercourse or association, in spite of juxtaposition, and in spite of
the fact that their respective doings contribute to a single outcome.
But if each views the consequences of his own acts as having a bearing
upon what others are doing and takes into account the consequences of
their behavior upon himself, then there is a common mind; a common
intent in behavior. There is an understanding set up between the
different contributors; and this common understanding controls the
action of each.
Suppose that conditions were so arranged that one person automatically
caught a ball and then threw it to another person who caught and
automatically returned it; and that each so acted without knowing where
the ball came from or went to. Clearly, such action would be without
point or meaning. It might be physically controlled, but it would not
be socially directed. But suppose that each becomes aware of what the
other is doing, and becomes interested in the other's action and thereby
interested in what he is doing himself as connected with the action of
the other. The behavior of each would then be intelligent; and socially
intelligent and guided. Take one more example of a less imaginary kind.
An infant is hungry, and cries while food is prepared in his presence.
If he does not connect his own state with what others are doing, nor
what they are doing with his own satisfaction, he simply reacts with
increasing impatience to his own increasing discomfort. He is
physically controlled by his own organic state. But when he makes a
back and forth reference, his whole attitude changes. He takes an
interest, as we say; he takes note and watches what others are doing.
He no longer reacts just to his own hunger, but behaves in the light of
what others are doing for its prospective satisfaction. In that way, he
also no longer just gives way to hunger without knowing it, but he
notes, or recognizes, or identifies his own state. It becomes an object
for him. His attitude toward it becomes in some degree intelligent.
And in such noting of the meaning of the actions of others and of his
own state, he is socially directed.
It will be recalled that our main proposition had two sides. One of
them has now been dealt with: namely, that physical things do not
influence mind (or form ideas and beliefs) except as they are implicated
in action for prospective consequences. The other point is persons
modify one another's dispositions only through the special use they make
of physical conditions. Consider first the case of so-called expressive
movements to which others are sensitive; blushing, smiling, frowning,
clinching of fists, natural gestures of all kinds. In themselves, these
are not expressive. They are organic parts of a person's attitude. One
does not blush to show modesty or embarrassment to others, but because
the capillary circulation alters in response to stimuli. But others use
the blush, or a slightly perceptible tightening of the muscles of a
person with whom they are associated, as a sign of the state in which
that person finds himself, and as an indication of what course to
pursue. The frown signifies an imminent rebuke for which one must
prepare, or an uncertainty and hesitation which one must, if possible,
remove by saying or doing something to restore confidence.
A man at some distance is waving his arms wildly. One has only to
preserve an attitude of detached indifference, and the motions of the
other person will be on the level of any remote physical change which we
happen to note. If we have no concern or interest, the waving of the
arms is as meaningless to us as the gyrations of the arms of a windmill.
But if interest is aroused, we begin to participate. We refer his
action to something we are doing ourselves or that we should do. We
have to judge the meaning of his act in order to decide what to do. Is
he beckoning for help? Is he warning us of an explosion to be set off,
against which we should guard ourselves? In one case, his action means
to run toward him; in the other case, to run away. In any case, it is
the change he effects in the physical environment which is a sign to us
of how we should conduct ourselves. Our action is socially controlled
because we endeavor to refer what we are to do to the same situation in
which he is acting.
Language is, as we have already seen
(Ante, p. 18)
a case of this joint reference of our own action and that of another to
a common situation. Hence its unrivaled significance as a means of social
direction. But language would not be this efficacious instrument were it
not that it takes place upon a background of coarser and more tangible use
of physical means to accomplish results. A child sees persons with whom
he lives using chairs, hats, tables, spades, saws, plows, horses, money in
certain ways. If he has any share at all in what they are doing, he is
led thereby to use things in the same way, or to use other things in a
way which will fit in. If a chair is drawn up to a table, it is a sign
that he is to sit in it; if a person extends his right hand, he is to
extend his; and so on in a never ending stream of detail. The
prevailing habits of using the products of human art and the raw
materials of nature constitute by all odds the deepest and most
pervasive mode of social control. When children go to school, they
already have "minds"—they have knowledge and dispositions of
judgment which may be appealed to through the use of language. But
these "minds" are the organized habits of intelligent response which
they have previously required by putting things to use in connection
with the way other persons use things. The control is inescapable; it
saturates disposition.
The net outcome of the discussion is that the fundamental means of
control is not personal but intellectual. It is not "moral" in the
sense that a person is moved by direct personal appeal from others,
important as is this method at critical junctures. It consists in the
habits of understanding, which are set up in using objects in
correspondence with others, whether by way of coöperation and
assistance or rivalry and competition. Mind as a concrete thing
is precisely the power to understand things in terms of the use made of
them; a socialized mind is the power to understand them in terms of the
use to which they are turned in joint or shared situations. And mind
in this sense is the method of social control.
3. Imitation and Social Psychology.
—We have already noted the defects of a psychology of learning
which places the individual mind naked, as it were, in contact with
physical objects, and which believes that knowledge, ideas, and beliefs
accrue from their interaction. Only comparatively recently has the
predominating influence of association with fellow beings in the
formation of mental and moral disposition been perceived. Even now it
is usually treated as a kind of adjunct to an alleged method of learning
by direct contact with things, and as merely supplementing knowledge of
the physical world with knowledge of persons. The purport of our discussion
is that such a view makes an absurd and impossible separation between
persons and things. Interaction with things may form habits of external
adjustment. But it leads to activity having a meaning and conscious intent
only when things are used to produce a result. And the only way one person
can modify the mind of another is by using physical conditions, crude or
artificial, so as to evoke some answering activity from him. Such are our
two main conclusions. It is desirable to amplify and enforce them by placing
them in contrast with the theory which uses a psychology of supposed
direct relationships of human beings to one another as an adjunct to the
psychology of the supposed direct relation of an individual to physical
objects. In substance, this so-called social psychology has been built
upon the notion of imitation. Consequently, we shall discuss the nature
and rôle of imitation in the formation of mental
disposition.
According to this theory, social control of individuals rests upon the
instinctive tendency of individuals to imitate or copy the actions of
others. The latter serve as models. The imitative instinct is so
strong that the young devote themselves to conforming to the patterns
set by others and reproducing them in their own scheme of behavior.
According to our theory, what is here called imitation is a misleading
name for partaking with others in a use of things which leads to
consequences of common interest.
The basic error in the current notion of imitation is that it puts the
cart before the horse. It takes an effect for the cause of the effect.
There can be no doubt that individuals in forming a social group are
like-minded; they understand one another. They tend to act with the
same controlling ideas, beliefs, and intentions, given similar
circumstances. Looked at from without, they might be said to be engaged
in "imitating" one another. In the sense that they are doing much the
same sort of thing in much the same sort of way, this would be true
enough. But "imitation" throws no light upon why they so act; it
repeats the fact as an explanation of itself. It is an explanation of
the same order as the famous saying that opium puts men to sleep because
of its dormitive power.
Objective likeness of acts and the mental satisfaction found in being in
conformity with others are baptized by the name imitation. This social
fact is then taken for a psychological force, which produced the
likeness. A considerable portion of what is called imitation is simply
the fact that persons being alike in structure respond in the same way
to like stimuli. Quite independently of imitation, men on being
insulted get angry and attack the insulter. This statement may be met
by citing the undoubted fact that response to an insult takes place in
different ways in groups having different customs. In one group, it may
be met by recourse to fisticuffs, in another by a challenge to a duel,
in a third by an exhibition of contemptuous disregard. This happens, so
it is said, because the model set for imitation is different. But there
is no need to appeal to imitation. The mere fact that customs are
different means that the actual stimuli to behavior are different.
Conscious instruction plays a part; prior approvals and disapprovals
have a large influence. Still more effective is the fact that unless an
individual acts in the way current in his group, he is literally out of
it. He can associate with others on intimate and equal terms only by
behaving in the way in which they behave. The pressure that comes from
the fact that one is let into the group action by acting in one way and
shut out by acting in another way is unremitting. What is called the
effect of imitation is mainly the product of conscious instruction and
of the selective influence exercised by the unconscious confirmations
and ratifications of those with whom one associates.
Suppose that some one rolls a ball to a child; he catches it and rolls
it back, and the game goes on. Here the stimulus is not just the sight
of the ball, or the sight of the other rolling it. It is the situation
—the game which is playing. The response is not merely rolling
the ball back; it is rolling it back so that the other one may catch and
return it,—that the game may continue. The "pattern" or model is
not the action of the other person.
The whole situation requires that each should adapt his action in view
of what the other person has done and is to do. Imitation may come in
but its role is subordinate. The child has an interest on his own
account; he wants to keep it going. He may then note how the other
person catches and holds the ball in order to improve his own acts. He
imitates the means of doing, not the end or thing to be done. And he
imitates the means because he wishes, on his own behalf, as part of his
own initiative, to take an effective part in the game. One has only to
consider how completely the child is dependent from his earliest days
for successful execution of his purposes upon fitting his acts into
those of others to see what a premium is put upon behaving as others
behave, and of developing an understanding of them in order that he may
so behave. The pressure for likemindedness in action from this source
is so great that it is quite superfluous to appeal to
imitation.
As matter of fact, imitation of ends, as distinct from imitation of
means which help to reach ends, is a superficial and transitory affair
which leaves little effect upon disposition. Idiots are especially apt
at this kind of imitation; it affects outward acts but not the meaning
of their performance. When we find children engaging in this sort of
mimicry, instead of encouraging them (as we would do if it were an
important means of social control) we are more likely to rebuke them as
apes, monkeys, parrots, or copy cats. Imitation of means of
accomplishment is, on the other hand, an intelligent act. It involves
close observation, and judicious selection of what will enable one to do
better something which he already is trying to do. Used for a purpose,
the imitative instinct may, like any other instinct, become a factor in
the development of effective action.
This excursus should, accordingly, have the effect of reënforcing the
conclusion that genuine social control means the formation of a certain
mental disposition; a way of understanding objects, events, and acts
which enables one to participate effectively in associated activities.
Only the friction engendered by meeting resistance from others leads to
the view that it takes place by forcing a line of action contrary to
natural inclinations. Only failure to take account of the situations in
which persons are mutually concerned ( or interested in acting
responsively to one another) leads to treating imitation as the chief
agent in promoting social control.
4. Some Applications to Education.
—Why does a savage group perpetuate savagery, and a civilized
group civilization? Doubtless the first answer to occur to mind is
because savages are savages; being of low-grade intelligence and perhaps
defective moral sense. But careful study has made it doubtful whether
their native capacities are appreciably inferior to those of civilized
man. It has made it certain that native differences are not sufficient
to account for the difference in culture.
In a sense the mind of savage peoples is an effect, rather than a
cause, of their backward institutions. Their social activities are such
as to restrict their objects of attention and interest, and hence to
limit the stimuli to mental development. Even as regards the objects
that come within the scope of attention, primitive social customs tend
to arrest observation and imagination upon qualities which do not
fructify in the mind. Lack of control of natural forces means that a
scant number of natural objects enter into associated behavior. Only a
small number of natural resources are utilized and they are not worked
for what they are worth. The advance of civilization means that a
larger number of natural forces and objects have been transformed into
instrumentalities of action, into means for securing ends. We start not
so much with superior capacities as with superior stimuli for evocation
and direction of our capacities. The savage deals largely with crude
stimuli; we have weighted stimuli.
Prior human efforts have made over natural conditions. As they
originally existed they were indifferent to human endeavors. Every
domesticated plant and animal, every tool, every utensil, every
appliance, every manufactured article, every æsthetic decoration, every
work of art means a transformation of conditions once hostile or
indifferent to characteristic human activities into friendly and
favoring conditions. Because the activities of children today are
controlled by these selected and charged stimuli, children are able to
traverse in a short lifetime what the race has needed slow, tortured
ages to attain. The dice have been loaded by all the successes which
have preceded.
Stimuli conducive to economical and effective response, such as our
system of roads and means of transportation, our ready command of heat,
light, and electricity, our ready-made machines and apparatus for every
purpose, do not, by themselves or in their aggregate, constitute a
civilization. But the uses to which they are put are civilization, and
without the things the uses would be impossible. Time otherwise
necessarily devoted to wresting a livelihood from a grudging environment
and securing a precarious protection against its inclemencies is freed.
A body of knowledge is transmitted, the legitimacy of which is
guaranteed by the fact that the physical equipment in which it is
incarnated leads to results that square with the other facts of nature.
Thus these appliances of art supply a protection, perhaps our chief
protection, against a recrudescence of these superstitious beliefs,
those fanciful myths and infertile imaginings about nature in which so
much of the best intellectual power of the past has been spent. If we
add one other factor, namely, that such appliances be not only used, but
used in the interests of a truly shared or associated life, then the
appliances become the positive resources of civilization. If Greece,
with a scant tithe of our material resources, achieved a worthy and
noble intellectual and artistic career, it is because Greece operated
for social ends such resources as it had.
But whatever the situation, whether one of barbarism or civilization,
whether one of stinted control of physical forces, or of partial
enslavement to a mechanism not yet made tributary to a shared
experience, things as they enter into action furnish the educative
conditions of daily life and direct the formation of mental and moral
disposition.
Intentional education signifies, as we have already seen, a specially
selected environment, the selection being made on the basis of materials
and method specifically promoting growth in the desired direction.
Since language represents the physical conditions that have been
subjected to the maximum transformation in the interests of social life
—physical things which have lost their original quality in
becoming social tools—it is appropriate that language should play
a large part compared with other appliances. By it we are led to share
vicariously in past human experience, thus widening and enriching the
experience of the present. We are enabled, symbolically and
imaginatively, to anticipate situations. In countless ways, language
condenses meanings that record social outcomes and presage social
outlooks. So significant is it of a liberal share in what is worth
while in life that unlettered and uneducated have become almost
synonymous.
The emphasis in school upon this particular tool has, however, its
dangers—dangers which are not theoretical but exhibited in
practice. Why is it, in spite of the fact that teaching by pouring in,
learning by a passive absorption, are universally condemned, that they
are still so entrenched in practice? That education is not an affair of
"telling" and being told, but an active and constructive process, is a
principle almost as generally violated in practice as conceded in
theory. Is not this deplorable situation due to the fact that the
doctrine is itself merely told? It is preached; it is lectured; it is
written about. But its enactment into practice requires that the school
environment be equipped with agencies for doing, with tools and physical
materials, to an extent rarely attained. It requires that methods of
instruction and administration be modified to allow and to secure direct
and continuous occupations with things. Not that the use of language as
an educational resource should lessen; but that its use should be more
vital and fruitful by having its normal connection with shared
activities. "These things ought ye to have done, and not to have left
the others undone." And for the school "these things" mean equipment
with the instrumentalities of coöperative or joint activity.
For when the schools depart from the educational conditions effective in
the out-of-school environment, they necessarily substitute a bookish, a
pseudo-intellectual spirit for a social spirit. Children doubtless go
to school to learn, but it has yet to be proved that learning occurs
most adequately when it is made a separate conscious business. When
treating it as a business of this sort tends to preclude the social
sense which comes from sharing in an activity of common concern and
value, the effort at isolated intellectual learning contradicts its own
aim. We may secure motor activity and sensory excitation by keeping an
individual by himself, but we cannot thereby get him to understand the
meaning which things have in the life of which he is a part. We may
secure technical specialized ability in algebra, Latin, or botany, but
not the kind of intelligence which directs ability to useful ends. Only
by engaging in a joint activity, where one person's use of material and
tools is consciously referred to the use other persons are making of
their capacities and appliances, is a social direction of disposition
attained.
Summary.
—The natural or native impulses of the young do not agree with the
life-customs of the group into which they are born. Consequently they
have to be directed or guided. This control is not the same thing as
physical compulsion; it consists in centering the impulses acting at any
one time upon some specific end and in introducing an order of
continuity into the sequence of acts. The action of others is always
influenced by deciding what stimuli shall call out their actions. But
in some cases as in commands, prohibitions, approvals, and disapprovals,
the stimuli proceed from persons with a direct view to influencing
action. Since in such cases we are most conscious of controlling the
action of others, we are likely to exaggerate the importance of this
sort of control at the expense of a more permanent and effective method.
The basic control resides in the nature of the situations in which the
young take part. In social situations the young have to refer their way
of acting to what others are doing and make it fit in. This directs
their action to a common result, and gives an understanding common to
the participants. For all mean the same thing, even when performing
different acts. This common understanding of the means and ends of
action is the essence of social control. It is indirect, or emotional
and intellectual, not direct or personal. Moreover it is intrinsic to
the disposition of the person, not external and coercive. To achieve
this internal control through identity of interest and understanding is
the business of education. While books and conversation can do much,
these agencies are usually relied upon too exclusively. Schools require
for their full efficiency more opportunity for conjoint activities in
which those instructed take part, so that they may acquire a social
sense of their own powers and of the materials and appliances used.
