3. The Educational Bearings of the Conception of Development.
—We have had so far but little to say in this chapter about
education. We have been occupied with the conditions and implications
of growth. If our conclusions are justified, they carry with them,
however, definite educational consequences. When it is said that
education is development, everything depends upon how development
is conceived. Our net conclusion is that life is development, and that
developing, growing, is life. Translated into its educational
equivalents, that means (i) that the educational process has no end
beyond itself; it is its own end; and that (ii) the educational process
is one of continual reorganizing, reconstructing, transforming.
1.
Development when it is interpreted in comparative terms, that is, with
respect to the special traits of child and adult life, means the
direction of power into special channels: the formation of habits
involving executive skill, definiteness of interest, and specific
objects of observation and thought. But the comparative view is not
final. The child has specific powers; to ignore that fact is to stunt
or distort the organs upon which his growth depends. The adult uses his
powers to transform his environment, thereby occasioning new stimuli
which redirect his powers and keep them developing. Ignoring this fact
means arrested development, a passive accommodation. Normal child and
normal adult alike, in other words, are engaged in growing. The
difference between them is not the difference between growth and no
growth, but between the modes of growth appropriate to different
conditions. With respect to the development of powers devoted to coping
with specific scientific and economic problems we may say the child
should be growing in manhood. With respect to sympathetic curiosity,
unbiased responsiveness, and openness of mind, we may say that the adult
should be growing in childlikeness. One statement is as true as the
other.
Three ideas which have been criticized, namely, the merely privative
nature of immaturity, static adjustment to a fixed environment, and
rigidity of habit, are all connected with a false idea of growth or
development,—that it is a movement toward a fixed goal. Growth is
regarded as having an end, instead of being an end. The
educational counterparts of the three fallacious ideas are first, failure
to take account of the instinctive or native powers of the young; secondly,
failure to develop initiative in coping with novel situations; thirdly,
an undue emphasis upon drill and other devices which secure automatic
skill at the expense of personal perception. In all cases, the adult
environment is accepted as a standard for the child. He is to be
brought up to it.
Natural instincts are either disregarded or treated as
nuisances—as obnoxious traits to be suppressed, or at all events
to be brought into conformity with external standards. Since conformity
is the aim, what is distinctively individual in a young person is
brushed aside, or regarded as a source of mischief or anarchy.
Conformity is made equivalent to uniformity. Consequently, there are
induced lack of interest in the novel, aversion to progress, and dread
of the uncertain and the unknown. Since the end of growth is outside of
and beyond the process of growing, external agents have to be resorted
to to induce movement toward it. Whenever a method of education is
stigmatized as mechanical, we may be sure that external pressure is
brought to bear to reach an external end.
2.
Since in reality there is nothing to which growth is relative save more
growth, there is nothing to which education is subordinate save more
education. It is a commonplace to say that education should not cease
when one leaves school. The point of this commonplace is that the
purpose of school education is to insure the continuance of education by
organizing the powers that insure growth. The inclination to learn from
life itself and to make the conditions of life such that all will learn
in the process of living is the finest product of schooling.
When we abandon the attempt to define immaturity by means of fixed
comparison with adult accomplishments, we are compelled to give up
thinking of it as denoting lack of desired traits. Abandoning this
notion, we are also forced to surrender our habit of thinking of
instruction as a method of supplying this lack by pouring knowledge into
a mental and moral hole which awaits filling. Since life means growth,
a living creature lives as truly and positively at one stage as at
another, with the same intrinsic fullness and the same absolute claims.
Hence education means the enterprise of supplying the conditions which
insure growth, or adequacy of life, irrespective of age. We first look
with impatience upon immaturity, regarding it as something to be got
over as rapidly as possible. Then the adult formed by such educative
methods looks back with impatient regret upon childhood and youth as a
scene of lost opportunities and wasted powers. This ironical situation
will endure till it is recognized that living has its own intrinsic
quality and that the business of education is with that quality.
Realization that life is growth protects us from that so-called
idealizing of childhood which in effect is nothing but lazy indulgence.
Life is not to be identified with every superficial act and interest.
Even though it is not always easy to tell whether what appears to be
mere surface fooling is a sign of some nascent as yet untrained power,
we must remember that manifestations are not to be accepted as ends in
themselves. They are signs of possible growth. They are to be turned
into means of development, of carrying power forward, not indulged or
cultivated for their own sake. Excessive attention to surface phenomena
(even in the way of rebuke as well as of encouragement) may lead to
their fixation and thus to arrested development. What impulses are
moving toward, not what they have been, is the important thing for
parent and teacher. The true principle of respect for immaturity cannot
be better put than in the words of Emerson: "Respect the child. Be not
too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude. But I hear the
outcry which replies to this suggestion: Would you verily throw up the
reins of public and private discipline; would you leave the young child
to the mad career of his own passions and whimsies, and call this
anarchy a respect for the child's nature? I answer,—Respect the
child, respect him to the end, but also respect yourself.... The two
points in a boy's training are, to keep his naturel and
train off all but that; to keep his naturel, but stop
off his uproar, fooling, and horseplay; keep his nature and arm it with
knowledge in the very direction in which it points." And as Emerson goes
on to show this reverence for childhood and youth instead of opening up
an easy and easy-going path to the instructors, "involves at once, immense
claims on the time, the thought, on the life of the teacher. It requires
time, use, insight, event, all the great lessons and assistances of God;
and only to think of using it implies character and profoundness."
