1. The Unity of Subject Matter and Method.
—The trinity of school topics is subject matter, methods, and
administration or government. We have been concerned with the two former
in recent chapters. It remains to disentangle them from the context in
which they have been referred to, and discuss explicitly their nature.
We shall begin with the topic of method, since that lies closest to the
considerations of the last chapter. Before taking it up, it may be well,
however, to call express attention to one implication of our theory; the
connection of subject matter and method with each other. The idea that mind
and the world of things and persons are two separate and independent
realms—a theory which philosophically is known as dualism—carries
with it the conclusion that method and subject matter of instruction are
separate affairs. Subject matter then becomes a ready-made systematized
classification of the facts and principles of the world of nature and
man. Method then has for its province a consideration of the ways in
which this antecedent subject matter may be best presented to and
impressed upon the mind; or, a consideration of the ways in which the
mind may be externally brought to bear upon the matter so as to
facilitate its acquisition and possession. In theory, at least, one
might deduce from a science of the mind as something existing by itself
a complete theory of methods of learning, with no knowledge of the
subjects to which the methods are to be applied. Since many who are
actually most proficient in various branches of subject matter are
wholly innocent of these methods, this state of affairs gives
opportunity for the retort that pedagogy, as an alleged science of
methods of the mind in learning, is futile;—a mere screen for
concealing the necessity a teacher is under of profound and accurate
acquaintance with the subject in hand.
But since thinking is a
directed movement of subject matter to a completing issue, and since
mind is the deliberate and intentional phase of the process, the notion
of any such split is radically false. The fact that the material of a
science is organized is evidence that it has already been subjected to
intelligence; it has been methodized, so to say. Zoology as a
systematic branch of knowledge represents crude, scattered facts of our
ordinary acquaintance with animals after they have been subjected to
careful examination, to deliberate supplementation, and to arrangement
to bring out connections which assist observation, memory, and further
inquiry. Instead of furnishing a starting point for learning, they mark
out a consummation. Method means that arrangement of subject matter
which makes it most effective in use. Never is method something outside
of the material.
How about method from the standpoint of an individual who is dealing
with subject matter? Again, it is not something external. It is simply
an effective treatment of material—efficiency meaning such
treatment as utilizes the material (puts it to a purpose) with a minimum
of waste of time and energy. We can distinguish a way of acting, and
discuss it by itself; but the way exists only as
way-of-dealing-with-material. Method is not antithetical to subject
matter; it is the effective direction of subject matter to desired
results. It is antithetical to random and ill-considered
action,—ill-considered signifying ill-adapted.
The statement that method means directed movement of subject matter
towards ends is formal. An illustration may give it content. Every
artist must have a method, a technique, in doing his work. Piano
playing is not hitting the keys at random. It is an orderly way of
using them, and the order is not something which exists ready-made in
the musician's hands or brain prior to an activity dealing with the
piano. Order is found in the disposition of acts which use the piano
and the hands and brain so as to achieve the result intended. It is the
action of the piano directed to accomplish the purpose of the piano as a
musical instrument. It is the same with "pedagogical" method. The only
difference is that the piano is a mechanism constructed in advance for a
single end; while the material of study is capable of indefinite uses.
But even in this regard the illustration may apply if we consider the
infinite variety of kinds of music which a piano may produce, and the
variations in technique required in the different musical results
secured. Method in any case is but an effective way of employing some
material for some end.
These considerations may be generalized by going back to the conception
of experience. Experience as the perception of the connection between
something tried and something undergone in consequence is a process.
Apart from effort to control the course which the process takes, there
is no distinction of subject matter and method. There is simply an
activity which includes both what an individual does and what the
environment does. A piano player who had perfect mastery of his
instrument would have no occasion to distinguish between his
contribution and that of the piano. In well-formed, smooth-running
functions of any sort,—skating, conversing, hearing music,
enjoying a landscape,—there is no consciousness of separation of
the method of the person and of the subject matter. In whole-hearted
play and work there is the same phenomenon.
When we reflect upon an experience instead of just having it, we
inevitably distinguish between our own attitude and the objects toward
which we sustain the attitude. When a man is eating, he is eating food.
He does not divide his act into eating and food. But if he makes a
scientific investigation of the act, such a discrimination is the first
thing he would effect. He would examine on the one hand the properties
of the nutritive material, and on the other hand the acts of the
organism in appropriating and digesting. Such reflection upon
experience gives rise to a distinction of what we experience (the
experienced) and the experiencing—the how.
When we give names to this distinction we have subject matter and method
as our terms. There is the thing seen, heard, loved, hated, imagined, and
there is the act of seeing, hearing, loving, hating, imagining, etc.
This distinction is so natural and so important for certain purposes,
that we are only too apt to regard it as a separation in existence and
not as a distinction in thought. Then we make a division between a self
and the environment or world. This separation is the root of the
dualism of method and subject matter. That is, we assume that knowing,
feeling, willing, etc., are things which belong to the self or mind in
its isolation, and which then may be brought to bear upon an independent
subject matter. We assume that the things which belong in isolation to
the self or mind have their own laws of operation irrespective of the
modes of active energy of the object. These laws are supposed to
furnish method. It would be no less absurd to suppose that men can eat
without eating something, or that the structure and movements of the
jaws, throat muscles, the digestive activities of stomach, etc., are not
what they are because of the material with which their activity is
engaged. Just as the organs of the organism are a continuous part of
the very world in which food materials exist, so the capacities of
seeing, hearing, loving, imagining are intrinsically connected with the
subject matter of the world. They are more truly ways in which the
environment enters into experience and functions there than they are
independent acts brought to bear upon things. Experience, in short, is
not a combination of mind and world, subject and object, method and
subject matter, but is a single continuous interaction of a great
diversity (literally countless in number) of energies.
For the purpose of controlling the course or direction which the
moving unity of experience takes we draw a mental distinction between the
how and the what. While there is no way of walking or of eating or of
learning over and above the actual walking, eating, and studying, there
are certain elements in the act which give the key to its more effective
control. Special attention to these elements makes them more obvious to
perception (letting other factors recede for the time being from
conspicuous recognition). Getting an idea of how the experience
proceeds indicates to us what factors must be secured or modified in
order that it may go on more successfully. This is only a somewhat
elaborate way of saying that if a man watches carefully the growth of
several plants, some of which do well and some of which amount to little
or nothing, he may be able to detect the special conditions upon which
the prosperous development of a plant depends. These conditions, stated
in an orderly sequence, would constitute the method or way or manner of
its growth. There is no difference between the growth of a plant and
the prosperous development of an experience. It is not easy, in either
case, to seize upon just the factors which make for its best movement.
But study of cases of success and failure and minute and extensive
comparison, helps to seize upon causes. When we have arranged these
causes in order, we have a method of procedure or a technique.
A consideration of some evils in education that flow from the isolation
of method from subject matter will make the point more definite.
(i) In the first place, there is the neglect (of which we have
spoken) of concrete situations of experience. There can be no discovery
of a method without cases to be studied. The method is derived from
observation of what actually happens, with a view to seeing that it
happen better next time. But in instruction and discipline, there is
rarely sufficient opportunity for children and youth to have the direct
normal experiences from which educators might derive an idea of method
or order of best development. Experiences are had under conditions of
such constraint that they throw little or no light upon the normal
course of an experience to its fruition. "Methods" have then to be
authoritatively recommended to teachers, instead of being an expression
of their own intelligent observations. Under such circumstances, they
have a mechanical uniformity, assumed to be alike for all minds. Where
flexible personal experiences are promoted by providing an environment
which calls out directed occupations in work and play, the methods
ascertained will vary with individuals—for it is certain that each
individual has something characteristic in his way of going at things.
(ii) In the second place, the notion of methods isolated from
subject matter is responsible for the false conceptions of discipline
and interest already noted. When the effective way of managing material
is treated as something ready-made apart from material, there are just
three possible ways in which to establish a relationship lacking by
assumption. One is to utilize excitement, shock of pleasure, tickling
the palate. Another is to make the consequences of not attending
painful; we may use the menace of harm to motivate concern with the
alien subject matter. Or a direct appeal may be made to the person to
put forth effort without any reason. We may rely upon immediate strain
of "will." In practice, however, the latter method is effectual only
when instigated by fear of unpleasant results.
(iii) In the third place, the act of learning is made a direct
and conscious end in itself. Under normal conditions, learning is a
product and reward of occupation with subject matter. Children do not
set out, consciously, to learn walking or talking. One sets out to give
his impulses for communication and for fuller intercourse with others a
show. He learns in consequence of his direct activities. The better
methods of teaching a child, say, to read, follow the same road. They
do not fix his attention upon the fact that he has to learn something
and so make his attitude self-conscious and constrained. They engage
his activities, and in the process of engagement he learns: the same is
true of the more successful methods in dealing with number or whatever.
But when the subject matter is not used in carrying forward impulses and
habits to significant results, it is just something to be learned. The
pupil's attitude to it is just that of having to learn it. Conditions
more unfavorable to an alert and concentrated response would be hard to
devise. Frontal attacks are even more wasteful in learning than in war.
This does not mean, however, that students are to be seduced unaware
into preoccupation with lessons. It means that they shall be occupied
with them for real reasons or ends, and not just as something to be
learned. This is accomplished whenever the pupil perceives the place
occupied by the subject matter in the fulfilling of some experience.
(iv) In the fourth place, under the influence of the conception
of the separation of mind and material, method tends to be reduced to a
cut and dried routine, to following mechanically prescribed steps. No
one can tell in how many schoolrooms children reciting in arithmetic or
grammar are compelled to go through, under the alleged sanction of
method, certain preordained verbal formulae. Instead of being
encouraged to attack their topics directly, experimenting with methods
that seem promising and learning to discriminate by the consequences
that accrue, it is assumed that there is one fixed method to be
followed. It is also naively assumed that if the pupils make their
statements and explanations in a certain form of "analysis," their
mental habits will in time conform. Nothing has brought pedagogical
theory into greater disrepute than the belief that it is identified with
handing out to teachers recipes and models to be followed in teaching.
Flexibility and initiative in dealing with problems are characteristic
of any conception to which method is a way of managing material to
develop a conclusion. Mechanical rigid woodenness is an inevitable
corollary of any theory which separates mind from activity motivated by
a purpose.
