8.
CHAPTER VIII
AIMS IN EDUCATION:
1. The Nature of an Aim.
—The account of education given in our earlier chapters virtually
anticipated the results reached in a discussion of the purport of education in
a democratic community. For it assumed that the aim of education is to enable
individuals to continue their education—or that the object and reward of
learning is continued capacity for growth. Now this idea cannot be applied to
all the members of a society except where intercourse of man with man is
mutual, and except where there is adequate provision for the reconstruction of
social habits and institutions by means of wide stimulation arising from
equitably distributed interests. And this means a democratic society.
In our search for aims in education, we are not concerned, therefore,
with finding an end outside of the educative process to which education
is subordinate. Our whole conception forbids. We are rather concerned
with the contrast which exists when aims belong within the process in
which they operate and when they are set up from without. And the
latter state of affairs must obtain when social relationships are not
equitably balanced. For in that case, some portions of the whole social
group will find their aims determined by an external dictation; their
aims will not arise from the free growth of their own experience, and
their nominal aims will be means to more ulterior ends of others rather
than truly their own.
Our first question is to define the nature of an aim so far as it falls
within an activity, instead of being furnished from without. We
approach the definition by a contrast of mere results with ends.
Any exhibition of energy has results. The wind blows about the sands of
the desert; the position of the grains is changed. Here is a result, an
effect, but not an end. For there is nothing in the outcome which
completes or fulfills what went before it. There is mere spatial
redistribution. One state of affairs is just as good as any other.
Consequently there is no basis upon which to select an earlier state of
affairs as a beginning, a later as an end, and to consider what
intervenes as a process of transformation and realization.
Consider for example the activities of bees in contrast with the changes
in the sands when the wind blows them about. The results of the bees'
actions may be called ends not because they are designed or consciously
intended, but because they are true terminations or completions of what
has preceded. When the bees gather pollen and make wax and build cells,
each step prepares the way for the next. When cells are built, the
queen lays eggs in them; when eggs are laid, they are sealed and bees
brood them and keep them at a temperature required to hatch them. When
they are hatched, bees feed the young till they can take care of
themselves. Now we are so familiar with such facts, that we are apt to
dismiss them on the ground that life and instinct are a kind of
miraculous thing anyway. Thus we fail to note what the essential
characteristic of the event is; namely, the significance of the temporal
place and order of each element; the way each prior event leads into its
successor while the successor takes up what is furnished and utilizes it
for some other stage, until we arrive at the end, which, as it were,
summarizes and finishes off the process.
Since aims relate always to results, the first thing to look to when it
is a question of aims, is whether the work assigned possesses intrinsic
continuity. Or is it a mere serial aggregate of acts, first doing one
thing and then another? To talk about an educational aim when
approximately each act of a pupil is dictated by the teacher, when the
only order in the sequence of his acts is that which comes from the
assignment of lessons and the giving of directions by another, is to
talk nonsense. It is equally fatal to an aim to permit capricious or
discontinuous action in the name of spontaneous self-expression. An aim
implies an orderly and ordered activity, one in which the order consists
in the progressive completing of a process. Given an activity having a
time span and cumulative growth within the time succession, an aim means
foresight in advance of the end or possible termination. If bees
anticipated the consequences of their activity, if they perceived their
end in imaginative foresight, they would have the primary element in an
aim. Hence it is nonsense to talk about the aim of education—or
any other undertaking—where conditions do not permit of foresight
of results, and do not stimulate a person to look ahead to see what the
outcome of a given activity is to be.
In the next place the aim as a foreseen end gives direction to the
activity; it is not an idle view of a mere spectator, but influences the
steps taken to reach the end. The foresight functions in three ways.
In the first place, it involves careful observation of the given
conditions to see what are the means available for reaching the end, and
to discover the hindrances in the way. In the second place, it suggests
the proper order or sequence in the use of means. It facilitates an
economical selection and arrangement. In the third place, it makes
choice of alternatives possible. If we can predict the outcome of
acting this way or that, we can then compare the value of the two
courses of action; we can pass judgment upon their relative
desirability. If we know that stagnant water breeds mosquitoes and that
they are likely to carry disease, we can, disliking that anticipated
result, take steps to avert it. Since we do not anticipate results as
mere intellectual onlookers, but as persons concerned in the outcome, we
are partakers in the process which produces the result. We intervene to
bring about this result or that.
Of course these three points are closely connected with one another. We
can definitely foresee results only as we make careful scrutiny of
present conditions, and the importance of the outcome supplies the
motive for observations. The more adequate our observations, the more
varied is the scene of conditions and obstructions that presents itself,
and the more numerous are the alternatives between which choice may be
made. In turn, the more numerous the recognized possibilities of the
situation, or alternatives of action, the more meaning does the chosen
activity possess, and the more flexibly controllable is it. Where only
a single outcome has been thought of, the mind has nothing else to think
of; the meaning attaching to the act is limited. One only steams ahead
toward the mark. Sometimes such a narrow course may be effective. But
if unexpected difficulties offer themselves, one has not as many
resources at command as if he had chosen the same line of action after a
broader survey of the possibilities of the field. He cannot make needed
readjustments readily.
The net conclusion is that acting with an aim is all one with acting
intelligently. To foresee a terminus of an act is to have a basis upon
which to observe, to select, and to order objects and our own
capacities. To do these things means to have a mind—for mind is
precisely intentional purposeful activity controlled by perception of
facts and their relationships to one another. To have a mind to do a
thing is to foresee a future possibility; it is to have a plan for its
accomplishment; it is to note the means which make the plan capable of
execution and the obstructions in the way,—or, if it is really a
mind to do the thing and not a vague aspiration—it is to
have a plan which takes account of resources and difficulties. Mind is
capacity to refer present conditions to future results, and future
consequences to present conditions. And these traits are just what is
meant by having an aim or a purpose. A man is stupid or blind or
unintelligent—lacking in mind —just in the degree in which
in any activity he does not know what he is about, namely, the probable
consequences of his acts. A man is imperfectly intelligent when he
contents himself with looser guesses about the outcome than is needful,
just taking a chance with his luck, or when he forms plans apart from
study of the actual conditions, including his own capacities. Such
relative absence of mind means to make our feelings the measure of what
is to happen. To be intelligent we must "stop, look, listen" in making
the plan of an activity.
To identify acting with an aim and intelligent activity is enough to
show its value—its function in experience. We are only too given
to making an entity out of the abstract noun "consciousness." We forget
that it comes from the adjective "conscious." To be conscious is to be
aware of what we are about; conscious signifies the deliberate,
observant, planning traits of activity. Consciousness is nothing which
we have which gazes idly on the scene around one or which has
impressions made upon it by physical things; it is a name for the
purposeful quality of an activity, for the fact that it is directed by
an aim. Put the other way about, to have an aim is to act with meaning,
not like an automatic machine; it is to mean to do something and to
perceive the meaning of things in the light of that intent.
2. The Criteria of Good Aims.
—We may apply the results of our discussion to a consideration of
the criteria involved in a correct establishing of aims. (1) The aim
set up must be an outgrowth of existing conditions. It must be based
upon a consideration of what is already going on; upon the resources and
difficulties of the situation. Theories about the proper end of our
activities—educational and moral theories—often violate this
principle. They assume ends lying outside our activities; ends foreign
to the concrete makeup of the situation; ends which issue from some
outside source. Then the problem is to bring our activities to bear
upon the realization of these externally supplied ends. They are
something for which we ought to act. In any case such "aims" limit
intelligence; they are not the expression of mind in foresight, observation,
and choice of the better among alternative possibilities. They limit
intelligence because, given ready-made, they must be imposed by some
authority external to intelligence, leaving to the latter nothing but a
mechanical choice of means.
(2) We have spoken as if aims could be completely formed prior to the
attempt to realize them. This impression must now be qualified. The
aim as it first emerges is a mere tentative sketch. The act of striving
to realize it tests its worth. If it suffices to direct activity
successfully, nothing more is required, since its whole function is to
set a mark in advance; and at times a mere hint may suffice. But
usually—at least in complicated situations—acting upon it
brings to light conditions which had been overlooked. This calls for
revision of the original aim; it has to be added to and subtracted from.
An aim must, then, be flexible; it must be capable of alteration to meet
circumstances. An end established externally to the process of action
is always rigid. Being inserted or imposed from without, it is not
supposed to have a working relationship to the concrete conditions of
the situation. What happens in the course of action neither confirms,
refutes, nor alters it. Such an end can only be insisted upon. The
failure that results from its lack of adaptation is attributed simply to
the perverseness of conditions, not to the fact that the end is not
reasonable under the circumstances. The value of a legitimate aim, on
the contrary, lies in the fact that we can use it to change conditions.
It is a method for dealing with conditions so as to effect desirable
alterations in them. A farmer who should passively accept things just
as he finds them would make as great a mistake as he who framed his
plans in complete disregard of what soil, climate, etc., permit. One of
the evils of an abstract or remote external aim in education is that its
very inapplicability in practice is likely to react into a haphazard
snatching at immediate conditions. A good aim surveys the present state
of experience of pupils, and forming a tentative plan of treatment,
keeps the plan constantly in view and yet modifies it as conditions
develop. The aim, in short, is experimental, and hence constantly
growing as it is tested in action.
(3) The aim must always represent a freeing of activities. The term
end in view is suggestive, for it puts before the mind the
termination or conclusion of some process. The only way in which we
can define an activity is by putting before ourselves the objects in
which it terminates—as one's aim in shooting is the target. But
we must remember that the object is only a mark or sign by which
the mind specifies the activity one desires to carry out. Strictly
speaking, not the target but hitting the target is the end in view;
one takes aim by means of the target, but also by the sight on the gun.
The different objects which are thought of are means of directing
the activity. Thus one aims at, say, a rabbit; what he wants is to shoot
straight: a certain kind of activity. Or, if it is the rabbit he wants, it
is not rabbit apart from his activity, but as a factor in activity; he wants
to eat the rabbit, or to show it as evidence of his marksmanship—he
wants to do something with it. The doing with the thing, not the thing
in isolation, is his end. The object is but a phase of the active end,
—continuing the activity successfully. This is what is meant by
the phrase, used above, "freeing activity."
In contrast with fulfilling some process in order that activity may go
on, stands the static character of an end which is imposed from without
the activity. It is always conceived of as fixed; it is something
to be attained and possessed. When one has such a notion, activity is a
mere unavoidable means to something else; it is not significant or important
on its own account. As compared with the end it is but a necessary
evil; something which must be gone through before one can reach the
object which is alone worth while. In other words, the external idea of
the aim leads to a separation of means from end, while an end which
grows up within an activity as plan for its direction is always both
ends and means, the distinction being only one of convenience. Every
means is a temporary end until we have attained it. Every end becomes a
means of carrying activity further as soon as it is achieved. We call
it end when it marks off the future direction of the activity in which
we are engaged; means when it marks off the present direction. Every
divorce of end from means diminishes by that much the significance of
the activity and tends to reduce it to a drudgery from which one would
escape if he could. A farmer has to use plants and animals to carry on
his farming activities. It certainly makes a great difference to his
life whether he is fond of them, or whether he regards them merely as
means which he has to employ to get something else in which alone he is
interested. In the former case, his entire course of activity is
significant; each phase of it has its own value. He has the experience
of realizing his end at every stage; the postponed aim, or end in view,
being merely a sight ahead by which to keep his activity going fully and
freely. For if he does not look ahead, he is more likely to find
himself blocked. The aim is as definitely a means of action as is any
other portion of an activity.
3. Applications in Education.
—There is nothing peculiar about educational aims. They are just
like aims in any directed occupation. The educator, like the farmer,
has certain things to do, certain resources with which to do, and
certain obstacles with which to contend. The conditions with which the
farmer deals, whether as obstacles or resources, have their own
structure and operation independently of any purpose of his. Seeds
sprout, rain falls, the sun shines, insects devour, blight comes, the
seasons change. His aim is simply to utilize these various conditions;
to make his activities and their energies work together, instead of
against one another. It would be absurd if the farmer set up a purpose
of farming, without any reference to these conditions of soil, climate,
characteristic of plant growth, etc. His purpose is simply a foresight
of the consequences of his energies connected with those of the things
about him, a foresight used to direct his movements from day to day.
Foresight of possible consequences leads to more careful and extensive
observation of the nature and performances of the things he had to do
with, and to laying out a plan—that is, of a certain order in the
acts to be performed.
It is the same with the educator, whether parent or teacher. It is as
absurd for the latter to set up his "own" aims as the proper objects of
the growth of the children as it would be for the farmer to set up an
ideal of farming irrespective of conditions. Aims mean acceptance of
responsibility for the observations, anticipations, and arrangements
required in carrying on a function—whether farming or educating.
Any aim is of value so far as it assists observation, choice, and
planning in carrying on activity from moment to moment and hour to hour;
if it gets in the way of the individual's own common sense ( as it will
surely do if imposed from without or accepted on authority ) it does
harm.
And it is well to remind ourselves that education as such has no aims.
Only persons, parents, and teachers, etc., have aims, not an abstract
idea like education. And consequently their purposes are indefinitely
varied, differing with different children, changing as children grow and
with the growth of experience on the part of the one who teaches. Even
the most valid aims which can be put in words will, as words, do more
harm than good unless one recognizes that they are not aims, but rather
suggestions to educators as to how to observe, how to look ahead, and
how to choose in liberating and directing the energies of the concrete
situations in which they find themselves. As a recent writer has said:
"To lead this boy to read Scott's novels instead of old Sleuth's
stories; to teach this girl to sew; to root out the habit of bullying
from John's make-up; to prepare this class to study
medicine,—these are samples of the millions of aims we have
actually before us in the concrete work of education."
Bearing these qualifications in mind, we shall proceed to state some of
the characteristics found in all good educational aims.
(1) An educational aim must be founded upon the intrinsic activities
and needs (including original instincts and acquired habits) of the
given individual to be educated. The tendency of such an aim as
preparation is, as we have seen, to omit existing powers, and find the
aim in some remote accomplishment or responsibility. In general, there
is a disposition to take considerations which are dear to the hearts of
adults and set them up as ends irrespective of the capacities of those
educated. There is also an inclination to propound aims which are so
uniform as to neglect the specific powers and requirements of an
individual, forgetting that all learning is something which happens to
an individual at a given time and place. The larger range of perception
of the adult is of great value in observing the abilities and weaknesses
of the young, in deciding what they may amount to. Thus the artistic
capacities of the adult exhibit what certain tendencies of the child are
capable of; if we did not have the adult achievements we should be
without assurance as to the significance of the drawing, reproducing,
modeling, coloring activities of childhood. So if it were not for adult
language, we should not be able to see the import of the babbling
impulses of infancy. But it is one thing to use adult accomplishments
as a context in which to place and survey the doings of childhood and
youth; it is quite another to set them up as a fixed aim without regard
to the concrete activities of those educated.
(2) An aim must be capable of translation into a method of coöperating
with the activities of those undergoing instruction. It must suggest
the kind of environment needed to liberate and to organize their
capacities. Unless it lends itself to the construction of specific
procedures, and unless these procedures test, correct, and amplify the
aim, the latter is worthless. Instead of helping the specific task of
teaching, it prevents the use of ordinary judgment in observing and
sizing up the situation. It operates to exclude recognition of
everything except what squares up with the fixed end in view. Every
rigid aim just because it is rigidly given seems to render it
unnecessary to give careful attention to concrete conditions. Since
it must apply anyhow, what is the use of noting details which
do not count?
The vice of externally imposed ends has deep roots. Teachers receive
them from superior authorities; these authorities accept them from what
is current in the community. The teachers impose them upon children.
As a first consequence, the intelligence of the teacher is not free; it
is confined to receiving the aims laid down from above. Too rarely is
the individual teacher so free from the dictation of authoritative
supervisor, textbook on methods, prescribed course of study, etc., that
he can let his mind come to close quarters with the pupil's mind and the
subject matter. This distrust of the teacher's experience is then
reflected in lack of confidence in the responses of pupils. The latter
receive their aims through a double or treble external imposition, and
are constantly confused by the conflict between the aims which are
natural to their own experience at the time and those in which they are
taught to acquiesce. Until the democratic criterion of the intrinsic
significance of every growing experience is recognized, we shall be
intellectually confused by the demand for adaptation to external aims.
(3) Educators have to be on their guard against ends that are alleged to
be general and ultimate. Every activity, however specific, is, of
course, general in its ramified connections, for it leads out
indefinitely into other things. So far as a general idea makes us more
alive to these connections, it cannot be too general. But "general"
also means "abstract," or detached from all specific context. And such
abstractness means remoteness, and throws us back, once more, upon
teaching and learning as mere means of getting ready for an end
disconnected from the means. That education is literally and all the
time its own reward means that no alleged study or discipline is
educative unless it is worth while in its own immediate having. A truly
general aim broadens the outlook; it stimulates one to take more
consequences (connections) into account. This means a wider and more
flexible observation of means. The more interacting forces, for
example, the farmer takes into account, the more varied will be his
immediate resources. He will see a greater number of possible starting
places, and a greater number of ways of getting at what he wants to do.
The fuller one's conception of possible future achievements, the less
his present activity is tied down to a small number of alternatives. If
one knew enough, one could start almost anywhere and sustain his
activities continuously and fruitfully.
Understanding then the term general or comprehensive aim simply in the
sense of a broad survey of the field of present activities, we shall
take up some of the larger ends which have currency in the educational
theories of the day, and consider what light they throw upon the
immediate concrete and diversified aims which are always the educator's
real concern. We premise (as indeed immediately follows from what has
been said) that there is no need of making a choice among them or
regarding them as competitors. When we come to act in a tangible way we
have to select or choose a particular act at a particular time, but any
number of comprehensive ends may exist without competition, since they
mean simply different ways of looking at the same scene. One cannot
climb a number of different mountains simultaneously, but the views had
when different mountains are ascended supplement one another: they do
not set up incompatible, competing worlds. Or, putting the matter in a
slightly different way, one statement of an end may suggest certain
questions and observations, and another statement another set of
questions, calling for other observations. Then the more general ends
we have, the better.
One statement will emphasize what another slurs over. What a plurality
of hypotheses does for the scientific investigator, a plurality of
stated aims may do for the instructor.
Summary.
—An aim denotes the result of any natural process brought to
consciousness and made a factor in determining present observation and
choice of ways of acting. It signifies that an activity has become
intelligent. Specifically it means foresight of the alternative
consequences attendant upon acting in a given situation in different
ways, and the use of what is anticipated to direct observation and
experiment. A true aim is thus opposed at every point to an aim which
is imposed upon a process of action from without. The latter is fixed
and rigid; it is not a stimulus to intelligence in the given situation,
but is an externally dictated order to do such and such things. Instead
of connecting directly with present activities, it is remote, divorced
from the means by which it is to be reached. Instead of suggesting a
freer and better balanced activity, it is a limit set to activity. In
education, the currency of these externally imposed aims is responsible
for the emphasis put upon the notion of preparation for a remote future
and for rendering the work of both teacher and pupil mechanical and
slavish.
