“The self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action.”
If the self is something
fixed antecedent to action, then acting from interest means trying to
get more in the way of possessions for the self--whether in the way
of fame, approval of others, power over others, pecuniary profit, or
pleasure. Then the reaction from this view as a cynical depreciation
of human nature leads to the view that men who act nobly act with no
interest at all. Yet to an unbiased judgment it would appear plain that
a man must be interested in what he is doing or he would not do it. A
physician who continues to serve the sick in a plague at almost certain
danger to his own life must be interested in the efficient performance
of his profession--more interested in that than in the safety of his
own bodily life. But it is distorting facts to say that this interest
is merely a mask for an interest in something else which he gets by
continuing his customary services--such as money or good repute or
virtue; that it is only a means to an ulterior selfish end. The moment
we recognize that the self is not something ready-made, but something
in continuous formation through choice of action, the whole situation
clears up. A man's interest in keeping at his work in spite of danger to
life means that his self is found in that work; if he finally gave up,
and preferred his personal safety or comfort, it would mean that he
preferred to be that kind of a self. The mistake lies in making a
separation between interest and self, and supposing that the latter
is the end to which interest in objects and acts and others is a mere
means. In fact, self and interest are two names for the same fact;
the kind and amount of interest actively taken in a thing reveals
and measures the quality of selfhood which exists. Bear in mind that
interest means the active or moving identity of the self with a certain
object, and the whole alleged dilemma falls to the ground.
Unselfishness, for example, signifies neither lack of interest in
what is done (that would mean only machine-like indifference) nor
selflessness--which would mean absence of virility and character. As
employed everywhere outside of this particular theoretical controversy,
the term "unselfishness" refers to the kind of aims and objects which
habitually interest a man.
“Conflict is the gadfly of thought. It stirs us to observation and memory. It instigates to invention. It shocks us out of sheeplike passivity, and sets us at noting and contriving.”
Intelligent action
is not concerned with the bare consequences of the thing known, but with
consequences _to be_ brought into existence by action conditioned on the
knowledge. Men may use their knowledge to induce conformity or
exaggeration, or to effect change and abolition of conditions. The
quality of these consequences determines the question of better or
worse.
The exaggeration of the harmony attributed to Nature aroused men to note
its disharmonies. An optimistic view of natural benevolence was followed
by a more honest, less romantic view of struggle and conflict in nature.
After Helvetius and Bentham came Malthus and Darwin. The problem of
morals is the problem of desire and intelligence. What is to be done
with these facts of disharmony and conflict? After we have discovered
the place and consequences of conflict in nature, we have still to
discover its place and working in human need and thought. What is its
office, its function, its _possibility_, or use? In general, the answer
is simple. Conflict is the gadfly of thought. It stirs us to observation
and memory. It instigates to invention. It shocks us out of sheep-like
passivity, and sets us at noting and contriving. Not that it always
effects this result; but that conflict is a _sine qua non_ of reflection
and ingenuity. When this possibility of making use of conflict has once
been noted, it is possible to utilize it systematically to substitute
the arbitration of mind for that of brutal attack and brute collapse.
But the tendency to take natural law for a norm of action which the
supposedly scientific have inherited from eighteenth century rationalism
leads to an idealization of the principle of conflict itself. Its office
in promoting progress through arousing intelligence is overlooked, and
it is erected into the generator of progress. Karl Marx borrowed from
the dialectic of Hegel the idea of the necessity of a negative element,
of opposition, for advance. He projected it into social affairs and
reached the conclusion that all social development comes from conflict
between classes, and that therefore class-warfare is to be cultivated.
Hence a supposedly scientific form of the doctrine of social evolution
preaches social hostility as the road to social harmony.
Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking; learning naturally results.
An individual must actually try, in play or work, to do
something with material in carrying out his own impulsive activity,
and then note the interaction of his energy and that of the material
employed. This is what happens when a child at first begins to build
with blocks, and it is equally what happens when a scientific man in his
laboratory begins to experiment with unfamiliar objects.
Hence the first approach to any subject in school, if thought is to be
aroused and not words acquired, should be as unscholastic as possible.
To realize what an experience, or empirical situation, means, we have
to call to mind the sort of situation that presents itself outside of
school; the sort of occupations that interest and engage activity in
ordinary life. And careful inspection of methods which are permanently
successful in formal education, whether in arithmetic or learning to
read, or studying geography, or learning physics or a foreign language,
will reveal that they depend for their efficiency upon the fact that
they go back to the type of the situation which causes reflection out
of school in ordinary life. They give the pupils something to do, not
something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand
thinking, or the intentional noting of connections; learning naturally
results.
That the situation should be of such a nature as to arouse thinking
means of course that it should suggest something to do which is not
either routine or capricious--something, in other words, presenting
what is new (and hence uncertain or problematic) and yet sufficiently
connected with existing habits to call out an effective response. An
effective response means one which accomplishes a perceptible result,
in distinction from a purely haphazard activity, where the consequences
cannot be mentally connected with what is done. The most significant
question which can be asked, accordingly, about any situation or
experience proposed to induce learning is what quality of problem it
involves.
At first thought, it might seem as if usual school methods measured
well up to the standard here set. The giving of problems, the putting of
questions, the assigning of tasks, the magnifying of difficulties, is
a large part of school work.
The goal of education is to enable individuals to continue their education.
The
institutional idealistic philosophies of the nineteenth century supplied
this lack by making the national state the agency, but in so doing
narrowed the conception of the social aim to those who were members of
the same political unit, and reintroduced the idea of the subordination
of the individual to the institution. 1 There is a much neglected strain
in Rousseau tending intellectually in this direction. He opposed the
existing state of affairs on the ground that it formed neither the
citizen nor the man. Under existing conditions, he preferred to try for
the latter rather than for the former. But there are many sayings of his
which point to the formation of the citizen as ideally the higher, and
which indicate that his own endeavor, as embodied in the Emile, was
simply the best makeshift the corruption of the times permitted him to
sketch.
Chapter Eight: 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.
“Education is not a preparation for life; education is life itself.”
“Education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living.”
“Education is a social process; education is growth; education is not a preparation for life but is life itself.”
“Arriving at one goal is the starting point to another.”
“We only think when we are confronted with a problem”
“Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.”
“School is not preparation for life, but school is life”
“We naturally associate democracy, to be sure, with freedom of action, but freedom of action without freed capacity of thought behind it is only chaos”
“To make democracy work, we must be a notion of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.”
“The true democrat is he who with purely nonviolent means defends his liberty and, therefore, his countrys and ultimately that of the whole of mankind”
“Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”
“A sense of curiosity is natures original school of education.”
“Our task is to provide an education for the kind of kids we have... Not the kind of kids we used to have... Or want to have... Or the kids that exist in our dreams.”
There is no such thing as educational value in the abstract. The notion that some subjects and methods and that acquaintance with certain facts and truths possess educational value in and of themselves is the reason why traditional education reduced the material of education so largely to a diet of predigested materials.
Faith in the possibilities of continued and rigorous inquiry does not limit access to truth to any channel or scheme of things. It does not first say that truth is universal and then add there is but one road to it.
