experiences of life.

If he is not trained in the right use of the products of industry, there is grave
danger that he may deprave himself and injure others in his possession of wealth. No scheme of
education can afford to neglect such basic considerations. Yet in the name of higher and more
spiritual ideals, the arrangements for higher education have often not only neglected them, but looked
at them with scorn as beneath the level of educative concern. With the change from an oligarchical to
a democratic society, it is natural that the significance of an education which should have as a result
ability to make one's way economically in the world, and to manage economic resources usefully
instead of for mere display and luxury, should receive emphasis.

There is, however, grave danger that in insisting upon this end, existing economic conditions and
standards will be accepted as final. A democratic criterion requires us to develop capacity to the point
of competency to choose and make its own career. This principle is violated when the attempt is
made to fit individuals in advance for definite industrial callings, selected not on the basis of trained
original capacities, but on that of the wealth or social status of parents. As a matter of fact, industry at
the present time undergoes rapid and abrupt changes through the evolution of new inventions. New
industries spring up, and old ones are revolutionized.

and feeling of civilized men. To ignore the directive influence of this present environment upon the
young is simply to abdicate the educational function. A biologist has said: "The history of development
in different animals. . . offers to us. ..a series of ingenious, determined, varied but more or less
unsuccessful efforts to escape from the necessity of recapitulating, and to substitute for the ancestral
method a more direct method." Surely it would be foolish if education did not deliberately attempt to
facilitate similar efforts in conscious experience so that they become increasingly successful.

The two factors of truth in the conception may easily be disentangled from association with the false
context which perverts them. On the biological side we have simply the fact that any infant starts with
precisely the assortment of impulsive activities with which he does start, they being blind, and many
of them conflicting with one another, casual, sporadic, and unadapted to their immediate environment.
The other point is that it is a part of wisdom to utilize the products of past history so far as they are of
help for the future. Since they represent the results of prior experience, their value for future
experience may, of course, be indefinitely great. Literatures produced in the past are, so far as men
are now in possession and use of them, a part of the present environment of individuals; but there is
an

connections and continuities of the activities in which we are engaged. The activity begins in an
impulsive form; that is, it is blind. [t does not know what it is about; that is to say, what are Its
interactions with other activities. An activity which brings education or instruction with it makes one
aware of some of the connections which had been imperceptible. To recur to our simple example, a
child who reaches for a bright light gets burnecL Henceforth he knows that a certain act of touching in
connection with a certain act of vision (and vice-versa) means heat and pain; or, a certain light means
a source of heat. The acts by which a scientific man in his laboratory learns more about flame differ
no whit in principle. By doing certain things, he makes perceptible certain connections of heat with
other things, which had been previously ignored. Thus his acts in relation to these things get more
meaning; he knows better what he is doing or "is about" when he has to do with them; he can intend
consequences instead of just letting them happen—all synonymous ways of saying the same thing. At
the same stroke, the flame has gained in meaning; all that is known about combustion, oxidation,
about light and temperature, may become an intrinsic part of its intellectual content.

(2) The other side of an educative experience is an added power of subsequent direction or

greater reliance upon the recognition of mutual interests as a factor in sacial control. The second
means not only freer interaction between social fproups (once isolated so far as intention could keep
up a separation) but change in social habit— its continuous readjustment through meeting the new
situations produced by varied intercourse. And these two traits are precisely what characterize the
democratically constituted society.

Upon the educational side, we note first that the realization of a form of social life in which interests
are mutually interpenetrating, and where progress, or readjustment, is an important consideration,
makes a democratic community more interested than other communities have cause to be in
deliberate and systematic education. The devotion of democracy to education is a familiar fact. The
superficial explanation is that a government resting upon popular suffrage cannot be successful
unless those who elect and who obey their governors are educated. Since a democratic society
repudiates the principle of external authority, it must find a substitute in voluntary disposition and
interest; these can be created only by education. But there is a deeper explanation. A democracy is
more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated
experience. The extension in space of the number of individuals

there is a disposition to take considerations which are dear to the hearts of adults and set them upas
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 cooperating 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

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 blockecL
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.

situation of human intercourse. On the one hand, science, commerce, and art transcend national
boundaries. They are largely international in quality and method. They involve interdependencies and
cooperation among the peoples inhabiting different countries. At the same time, the idea of national
sovereignty has never been as accentuated in politics as it is at the present time. Each nation lives in
a state of suppressed hostility and incipient war with its neighbors. Each is supposed to be the
supreme judge of its own interests, and it is assumed as matter of course that each has interests
which are exclusively its own. To question this is to question the very idea of national sovereignty
which is assumed to be basic to political practice and political science. This contradiction (for it is
nothing less) between the wider sphere of associated and mutually helpful social life and the narrower
sphere of exclusive and_ hence potentially hostile pursuits and purposes, exacts of educational
theory a clearer conception of the meaning of "social" as a function and test of education than has yet
been attained. Is it possible for an educational system to be conducted by a national state and yet the
full social ends of the educative process not be restricted, constrained, and corrupted? Internally, the
question has to face the tendencies, due to present economic conditions, which split society into
classes some of which are made merely tools for the higher

individuals and their original powers into a few sharply marked-off classes; it has taught us that
original capacities are indefinitely numerous and variable. It is but the other side of this fact to say that
in the degree in which society has become democratic, social organization means utilization of the
specific and variable qualities of individuals, not stratification by classes. Although his educational
philosophy was revolutionary, it was none the less in bondage to static ideals. He thought that change
or alteration was evidence of lawless flux; that true reality was unchangeable. Hence while he would
radically change the existing state of society, his aim was to construct a state in which change would
subsequently have no place. The final end of life is fixed; given a state framed with this end in view,
not even minor details are to be altered. Though they might not be inherently important, yet if
permitted they would inure the minds of men to the idea of change, and hence be dissolving and
anarchic. The breakdown of his philosophy is made apparent in the fact that he could not trust to
gradual improvements in education to bring about a better society which should then improve
education, and so on indefinitely. Correct education could not come into existence until an ideal state
existed, and after that education would be devoted simply to its conservation. For the existence of this
state he was obliged to trust to some happy accident by which philosophic wisdom should happen to
because they do not meet the ideal requirements of the notion of society, the answer, in part, is that
the conception of society is then made so "ideal" as to be of no use, having no reference to facts; and
in part, that each of these organizations, no matter how opposed to the interests of other groups, has
something of the praiseworthy qualities of "Society" which hold it together. There is honor among
thieves, and a band of robbers has a common interest as respects its members. Gangs are marked
by fraternal feeling, and narrow cliques by intense loyalty to their own codes. Family life may be
marked by exclusiveness, suspicion, and jealousy as to those without, and yet be a model of amity
and mutual aid within. Any education given by a group tends to socialize its members, but the quality
and value of the socialization depends upon the habits and aims of the group. Hence, once more, the
need ofa measure for the worth of any given mode of social life. In seeking this measure, we have to
avoid two extremes. We cannot set up, out of our heads, something we regard as an ideal society.
We must base our conception upon societies which actually exist, in order to have any assurance that
our ideal is a practicable one. But, as we have just seen, the ideal cannot simply repeat the traits
which are actually found. The problem is to extract the desirable traits of forms of community life
which actually exist, and employ them to criticize undesirable features and

nature was, after all, but to negate the very idea of education; it was to trust to the accidents of
circumstance. Not only was some method required but also some positive organ, some administrative
agency for carrying on the process of instruction. The "complete and harmonious development of all
powers," having as its social counterpart an enlightened and progressive humanity, required definite
organization for its realization. Private individuals here and there could proclaim the gospel; they
could not execute the work. A Pestalozzi could try experiments and exhort philanthropically inclined
persons having wealth and power to follow his example. But even Pestalozzi saw that any effective
pursuit of the new educational ideal required the support of the state. The realization of the new
education destined to produce a new society was, after all, dependent upon the activities of existing
states. The movement for the democratic idea inevitably became a movement for publicly conducted
and administered schools.

So far as Europe was concerned, the historic situation identified the movement for a state- supported
education with the nationalistic movement in political life—a fact of incalculable significance for
subsequent movements. Under the influence of German thought in particular, education became a
civic function and the civic function was identified with the realization of the

personality with social discipline and political subordination. It made the national state an intermediary
between the realization of private personality on one side and of humanity on the other.
Consequently, it is equally possible to state its animating principle with equal truth either in the classic
terms of “harmonious development of all the powers of personality" or in the more recent terminology
of "social efficiency.” All this reinforces the statement which opens this chapter: The conception of
education as a social process and function has no definite meaning until we define the kind of society
we have in mincL These considerations pave the way for our second conclusion. One of the
fundamental problems of education in and for a democratic society is set by the conflict of a
nationalistic and a wider social aim. The earlier cosmopolitan and “humanitarian” conception suffered
both from vagueness and from lack of definite organs of execution and agencies of administration. In
Europe, in the Continental states particularly, the new idea of the importance of education for human
welfare and progress was captured by national interests and harnessed to do a work whose social
aim was definitely narrow and exclusive. The social aim of education and its national aim were
identified, and the result was a marked obscuring of the meaning of a social aim.

This confusion corresponds to the existing

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 purpose’
activity controlled by perception of facts and their relationships to one another. To

that opportunity for development of distinctive capacities be afforded all. The separation of the two
aims in education is fatal to democracy; the adoption of the narrower meaning of efficiency deprives it
of its essential justification.

The aim of efficiency (like any educational aim) must be included within the process of experience.
When it is measured by tangible external products, and not by the achieving of a distinctively valuable
experience, it becomes materialistic. Results in the way of commodities which may be the outgrowth
of an efficient personality are, in the strictest sense, by-products of education: by-products which are
inevitable and important, but nevertheless by-products. To set up an external aim strengthens by
reaction the false conception of culture which identifies it with something purely "inner." And the idea
of perfecting an "inner" personality is a sure sign of social divisions. What is called inner is simply that
which does not connect with others—which is not capable of free and Sail communication. What is
termed spiritual culture has usually been futile, with something rotten about it, just because it has
been conceived as a thing which a man might have internally—and therefore exclusively. What one is
as a person is what one is as associated with others, in a free give and take of intercourse. This
transcends both the efficiency which consists in supplying products to others and the culture

against the prevalent notion of the total depravity of innate human nature, and has had a powerful
influence in modifying the attitude towards children’s interests. But it is hardly necessary to say that
primitive impulses are of themselves neither good nor evil, but become one or the other according to
the objects for which they are employed. That neglect, suppression, and premature forcing of some
instincts at the expense of others, are responsible for many avoidable ills, there can be no doubt. But
the moral is not to leave them alone to follow their own "spontaneous development," but to provide an
environment which shall organize them.

Returning to the elements of truth contained in Rousseau's statements, we find that natural
development, as an aim, enables him to point the means of correcting many evils in current practices,
and to indicate a number of desirable specific aims. (1) Natural development as an aim fixes attention
upon the bodily organs and the need of health and vigor. The aim of natural development says to
parents and teachers: Make health an aim; normal development cannot be had without regard to the
vigor of the body—an obvious enough fact and yet one whose due recognition in practice would
almost automatically revolutionize many of our educational practices. "Nature" is indeed a vague and
metaphorical term, but one thing that

Much which has been said so far is borrowed from what Plato first consciously taught the world. But
conditions which he could not intellectually control led him to restrict these ideas in their application.
He never got any conception of the indefinite plurality of activities which may characterize an
individual and a social group, and consequently limited his view to a limited number of classes of
capacities and of social arrangements. Plato's starting point is that the organization of society
depends ultimately upon knowledge of the end of existence. If we do not know its end, we shall be at
the mercy of accident and caprice. Unless we know the end, the good, we shall have no criterion for
rationally deciding what the possibilities are which should be promoted, nor how social arrangements
are to be ordered. We shall have no conception of the proper limits and distribution of activities—what
he called justice—as a trait of both individual and social organization. But how is the knowledge of the
final and permanent good to be achieved? In dealing with this question we come upon the seemingly
insuperable obstacle that such knowledge is not possible save in a just and harmonious social order.
Everywhere else the mind is distracted and misled by false valuations and false perspectives. A
disorganized and factional society sets up a number of different models and standards. Under such
conditions it is impossible for the individual to attain consistency

perfunctory and superficial where there is no interest. Parents and teachers often complain— and
correctly—that children "do not want to hear, or want to understand.” Their minds are not upon the
subject precisely because it does not touch them; it does not enter into their concerns. This is a state
of things that needs to be remedied, but the remedy is not in the use of methods which increase
indifference and aversion. Even punishing a child for inattention is one way of trying to make him
realize that the matter is not a thing of complete unconcern; it is one way of arousing "interest," or
bringing about a sense of connection. In the long run, its value is measured by whether it supplies a
mere physical excitation to act in the way desired by the adult or whether it leads the child "to think"—
that is, to reflect upon his acts and impregnate them with aims.

(ii) That interest is requisite for executive persistence is even more obvious. Employers do not
advertise for workmen who are not interested in what they are doing. If one were engaging a lawyer
or a doctor, it would never occur to one to reason that the person engaged would stick to his work
more conscientiously if it was so uncongenial to him that he did it merely from a sense of obligation.
Interest measures—or rather is—the depth of the grip which the foreseen end has upon one, moving
one to act for its realization.
2. The Importance of the Idea of Interest in

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. * 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

instinctive activities may be called, metaphorically, spontaneous, in the sense that the organs give a
strong bias for a certain sort of operation,—a bias so strong that we cannot go contrary to it, though
by trying to go contrary we may pervert, stunt, and corrupt them But the notion of a spontaneous
normal development of these activities is pure mythology. The natural, or native, powers furnish the
initiating and limiting forces in all education; they do not furnish its ends or aims. There is no learning
except from a beginning in unlearned powers, but learning is not a matter of the spontaneous
overflow of the unlearned powers. Rousseau's contrary opinion is doubtless due to the fact that he
identified God with Nature; to him the original powers are wholly good, coming directly from a wise
and good creator. To paraphrase the old saying about the country and the town, God made the
original human organs and faculties, man makes the uses to which they are put. Consequently the
development of the former furnishes the standard to which the latter must be subordinated. When
men attempt to determine the uses to which the original activities shall be put, they interfere with a
divine plan. The interference by social arrangements with Nature, God's work, is the primary source
of corruption in individuals.

Rousseau's passionate assertion of the intrinsic goodness of all natural tendencies was a reaction

persons are naturally diverted from a proposed course of action by unusual, unforeseen obstacles, or
by presentation of inducements to an action that is directly more agreeable.

A person who is trained to consider his actions, to undertake them deliberately, is in so far forth
disciplined. Add to this ability a power to endure in an intelligently chosen course in face of distraction,
confusion, and difficulty, and you have the essence of discipline. Discipline means power at
command; mastery of the resources available for carrying through the action undertaken. To know
what one is to do and to move to do it promptly and by use of the requisite means is to be disciplined,
whether we are thinking of an army or a mind Discipline is positive. To cow the spirit, to subdue
inclination, to compel obedience, to mortify the flesh, to make a subordinate perform an uncongenial
task— these things are or are not disciplinary according as they do or do not tend to the development
of power to recognize what one is about and to persistence in accomplishment.

It is hardly necessary to press the point that interest and discipline are connected, not opposed.

(i) Even the more purely intellectual phase of trained power—apprehension of what one is doing as
exhibited in consequences—is not possible without interest. Deliberation will be

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,

In some individuals, appetites naturally dominate; they are assigned to the laboring and trading class,
which expresses and supplies human wants. Others reveal, upon education, that over and above
appetites, they have a generous, outgoing, assertively courageous disposition. They become the
citizen-subjects of the state; its defenders in war; its internal guardians in peace. But their limit is fixed
by their lack of reason, which is a capacity to grasp the universal. Those who possess this are
capable of the highest kind of education, and become in time the legislators of the state—for laws are
the universals which control the particulars of experience. Thus it is not true that in intent, Plato
subordinated the individual to the social whole. But it is true that lacking the perception of the
uniqueness of every individual, his incommensurability with others, and consequently not recognizing
that a society might change and yet be stable, his doctrine of limited powers and classes came in net
effect to the idea of the subordination of individuality. We cannot better Plato's conviction that an
individual is happy and society well organized when each individual engages in those activities for
which he has a natural equipment, nor his conviction that it is the primary office of education to
discover this equipment to its possessor and train him for its effective use. But progress in knowledge
has made us aware of the superficiality of Plato's lumping of

interest, there is not sufficient stimulus for attention to the human factors and relationships in industry.
Intelligence is narrowed to the factors concerned with technical production and marketing of goods.
No doubt, a very acute and intense intelligence in these narrow lines can be developed, but the
failure to take into account the significant social factors means none the less an absence of mind, and
a corresponding distortion of emotional life. I. This illustration (whose point is to be extended to all
associations lacking reciprocity of interest) brings us to our second point. The isolation and
exclusiveness of a gang or clique brings its antisocial spirit into relief. But this same spirit is found
wherever one group has interests "of its own" which shut it out from full interaction with other groups,
so that its prevailing purpose is the protection of what it has got, instead of reorganization and
progress through wider relationships. It marks nations in their isolation from one another; families
which seclude their domestic concerns as if they had no connection with a larger life; schools when
separated from the interest of home and community; the divisions of rich and poor; learned and
unlearned. The essential point is that isolation makes for rigidity and _ formal institutionalizing of life,
for static and selfish ideals within the group. That savage tribes regard aliens and enemies as
synonymous is not accidental. It springs from the fact that they have

industrial, scientific, religious, associations. There are political parties with differing aims, social sets,
cliques, gangs, corporations, partnerships, groups bound closely together by ties of blood, and so on
in endless variety. In many modern states and in some ancient, there is great diversity of populations,
of varying languages, religions, moral codes, and traditions. From this standpoint, many a minor
political unit, one of our large cities, for example, is a congeries of loosely associated societies, rather
than an inclusive and permeating community of action and thought. (See ante, p. 20.)

The terms society, community, are thus ambiguous. They have both a eulogistic or normative sense,
and a descriptive sense; a meaning de jure and a meaning de facto. In social philosophy, the former
connotation is almost always uppermost. Society is conceived as one by its very nature. The qualities
which accompany this unity, praiseworthy community of purpose and welfare, loyalty to public ends,
mutuality of sympathy, are emphasized. But when we look at the facts which the term denotes instead
of confining our attention to its intrinsic connotation, we find not unity, but a plurality of societies, good
and bac. Men banded together in a criminal conspiracy, business aggregations that prey upon the
public while serving it, political machines held together by the interest of plunder, are included. If it is
said that such organizations are not societies

to it laden with the spoils of the past. A mind that is adequately sensitive to the needs and occasions
of the present actuality will have the liveliest of motives for interest in the background of the present,
and will never have to hunt for a way back because it will never have lost connection.

3. Education as Reconstruction. In its contrast with the ideas both of unfolding of latent powers from
within, and of the formation from without, whether by physical nature or by the cultural products of the
past, the ideal of growth results in the conception that education is a constant reorganizing or
reconstructing of experience. It has all the time an immediate end, and so far as activity is educative,
it reaches that end—the direct transformation of the quality of experience. Infancy, youth, adult life—
all stand on the same educative level in the sense that what is really learned at any and every stage
of experience constitutes the value of that experience, and in the sense that it is the chief business of
life at every point to make living thus contribute to an enrichment of its own perceptible meaning.
We thus reach a technical definition of education: It is that reconstruction § or reorganization of
experience which adds to the meaning of experience, and which increases ability to direct the course
of subsequent experience. (1) The increment of meaning corresponds to the increased perception of
the

In conclusion, we note that the early history of the idea of following nature combined two factors
which had no inherent connection with one another. Before the time of Rousseau educational
reformers had been inclined to urge the importance of education by ascribing practically unlimited
power to it. All the differences between peoples and between classes and persons among the same
people were said to be due to differences of training, of exercise, and practice. Originally, mind,
reason, understanding is, for all practical purposes, the same in all. This essential identity of mind
means the essential equality of all and the possibility of bringing them all to the same level. As a
protest against this view, the doctrine of accord with nature meant a much less formal and abstract
view of mind and its powers. It substituted specific instincts and impulses and physiological
capacities, differing from individual to individual (just as they differ, as Rousseau pointed out, even in
dogs of the same litter), for abstract faculties of discernment, memory, and generalization. Upon this
side, the doctrine of educative accord with nature has been reinforced by the development of modern
biology, physiology, and psychology. [It means, in effect, that great as is the significance of nurture, of
modification, and transformation through direct educational effort, nature, or unlearned capacities,
affords the foundation and ultimate resources for such nurture. On the other hand, the doctrine of

reluctance to criticize ends which present themselves than it does in persistence and energy in use of
means to achieve the end The really executive man is a man who ponders his ends, who makes his
ideas of the results of his actions as clear and full as possible. The people we called weak-willed or
self-indulgent always deceive themselves as to the consequences of their acts. They pick out some
feature which is agreeable and neglect all attendant circumstances. When they begin to act, the
disagreeable results they ignored begin to show themselves. They are discouraged, or complain of
being thwarted in their good purpose by a hard fate, and shift to some other line of action. That the
primary difference between strong and feeble volition is intellectual, consisting in the degree of
persistent firmness and fullness with which consequences are thought out, cannot be over-
emphasized.

(ii) There is, of course, such a thing as a speculative tracing out of results. Ends are then foreseen,
but they do not lay deep hold of a person. They are something to look at and for curiosity to play with
rather than something to achieve. There is no such thing as _ over- intellectuality, but there is such a
thing as a one- sided intellectuality. A person "takes it out" as we say in considering the
consequences of proposed lines of action. A certain flabbiness of fiber prevents the contemplated
object from gripping him and engaging him in action. And most

adequate interplay of experiences—the more action tends to become routine on the part of the class
at a disadvantage, and capricious, aimless, and explosive on the part of the class having the
materially fortunate position. Plato defined a slave as one who accepts from another the purposes
which control his conduct. This condition obtains even where there is no slavery in the legal sense. It
is found wherever men are engaged in activity which is socially serviceable, but whose service they
do not understand and have no personal interest in. Much is said about scientific management of
work. It is a narrow view which restricts the science which secures efficiency of operation to
movements of the muscles. The chief opportunity for science is the discovery of the relations of a
man to his work— including his relations to others who take part— which will enlist his intelligent
interest in what he is doing. Efficiency in production often demands division of labor. But it is reduced
to a mechanical routine unless workers see the technical, intellectual, and social relationships
involved in what they do, and engage in their work because of the motivation furnished by such
perceptions. The tendency to reduce such things as efficiency of activity and scientific management
to purely technical externals is evidence of the one-sided stimulation of thought given to those in
control of industry—those who supply its aims. Because of their lack of all-round and well-balanced
social

only get rid of the artificial man-imposed coercive restrictions.

Education in accord with nature was thought to be the first step in insuring this more social society. It
was plainly seen that economic and political limitations were ultimately dependent upon limitations of
thought and feeling. The first step in freeing men from external chains was to emancipate them from
the internal chains of false beliefs and ideals. What was called social life, existing institutions, were
too false and corrupt to be intrusted with this work. How could it be expected to undertake it when the
undertaking meant its own destruction? "Nature" must then be the power to which the enterprise was
to he left. Even the extreme sensationalistic theory of knowledge which was current derived itself from
this conception. To insist that mind is originally passive and empty was one way of glorifying the
possibilities of education. If the mind was a wax tablet to be written upon by objects, there were no
limits to the possibility of education by means of the natural environment. And since the natural world
of objects is a scene of harmonious "truth," this education would infallibly produce minds filled with
the truth.

5. Education as National and as Social. As soon as the first enthusiasm for freedom waned, the
weakness of the theory upon the constructive side became obvious. Merely to leave everything to

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, 1s his enc. 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 fulfillmg 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; itis something to
be attained and possessed. When one has such a notion, activity 1s 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 1s 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

dependence of those arrangements upon the means used to educate the young. It would be
impossible to find a deeper sense of the function of education in discovering and developing personal
capacities, and training them so that they would connect with the activities of others. Yet the society in
which the theory was propounded was so undemocratic that Plato could not work out a solution for
the problem whose terms he clearly saw.

While he affirmed with emphasis that the place of the individual in society should not he determined
by birth or wealth or any conventional status, but by his own nature as discovered in the process of
education, he had no perception of the uniqueness of individuals. For him they fall by nature into
classes, and into a very small number of classes at_ that. Consequently the testing and sifting
function of education only shows to which one of three classes an individual belongs. There being no
recognition that each individual constitutes his own class, there could be no recognition of the infinite
diversity of active tendencies and combinations of tendencies of which an individual is capable. There
were only three types of faculties or powers in the individual's constitution. Hence education would
soon reach a static limit in each class, for only diversity makes change and progress.

instead of with the spirit and meaning of activity, culture is opposed to efficiency. Whether called
culture or complete development of personality, the outcome is identical with the true meaning of
social efficiency whenever attention is given to what is unique in an individual—and he would not be
an individual if there were not something incommensurable about him. Its opposite is the mediocre,
the average. Whenever distinctive quality is developed, distinction of personality results, and with it
greater promise for a social service which goes beyond the supply in quantity of material
commodities. For how can there be a society really worth serving unless it is constituted of individuals
of significant personal qualities?

The fact is that the opposition of high worth of personality to social efficiency is a product of a feudally
organized society with its rigid division of inferior and superior. The latter are supposed to have time
and opportunity to develop themselves as human beings; the former are confined to providing
external products. When social efficiency as measured by product or output is urged as an ideal in a
would-be democratic society, it means that the depreciatory estimate of the masses characteristic of
an _ aristocratic community is accepted and carried over. But if democracy has a moral and ideal
meaning, it is that a social return be demanded from all and

He brought it into the sphere of conscious method; it became a conscious business with a definite
aim and procedure, instead of being a compound of casual inspiration and subservience to tradition.
Moreover, everything in teaching and discipline could be specified, instead of our having to be content
with vague and more or less mystic generalities about ultimate ideals and speculative spiritual
symbols. He abolished the notion of ready-made faculties, which might be trained by exercise upon
any sort of material, and made attention to concrete subject matter, to the content, all-important.
Herbart undoubtedly has had a greater influence in bringing to the front questions connected with the
material of study than any other educational philosopher. He stated problems of method from the
standpoint of their connection with subject matter: method having to do with the manner and
sequence of presenting new subject matter to insure its proper interaction with old.

The fundamental theoretical defect of this view lies in ignoring the existence in a living being of active
and specific functions which are developed in the redirection and combination which occur as they
are occupied with their environment. The theory represents the Schoolmaster come to his own. This
fact expresses at once its strength and its weakness. The conception that the mind consists of what
has been taught, and that the

journalism, or philanthropy, or archaeology, or collecting Japanese prints, or banking.

(ii) By an interest we also mean the point at which an object touches or engages a man; the point
where it influences him. In some legal transactions a man has to prove "interest" in order to have a
standing at court. He has to show that some proposed step concerns his affairs. A silent partner has
an interest in a_ business, although he takes no active part in its conduct because its prosperity or
decline affects his profits and liabilities.

(iii) When we speak of a man as interested in this or that the emphasis falls directly upon his personal
attitude. To be interested is to be absorbed in, wrapped up in, carried away by, some object. To take
an interest is to be on the alert, to care about, to be attentive. We say of an interested person both
that he has lost himself in some affair and that he has found himself in it. Both terms express the
engrossment of the self in an object.

When the place of interest in education is spoken of in a depreciatory way, it will be found that the
second of the meanings mentioned is first exaggerated and then isolated. Interest is taken to mean
merely the effect of an object upon personal advantage or disadvantage, success or failure.
Separated from any objective development of

not due to the products, but to the life of which they were the products. A knowledge of the past and
its heritage is of great significance when it enters into the present, but not otherwise. And the mistake
of making the records and remains of the past the main material of education is that it cuts the vital
connection of present and past, and tends to make the past a rival of the present and the present a
more or less futile imitation of the past. Under such circumstances, culture becomes an ornament and
solace; a refuge and an asylum. Men escape ‘vom the crudities of the present to live in its imagined
refinements, instead of using what the past offers as an agency for ripening these crudities. The
present, in short, generates the problems which lead us to search the past for suggestion, and which
supplies meaning to what we find when we search. The past is the past precisely because it does not
include what is characteristic in the present. The moving present includes the past on condition that it
uses the past to direct its own movement. The past is a great resource for the imagination; it adds a
new dimension to life, but OD condition that it be seen as the past of the present, and not as another
and disconnected world. The principle which makes little of the present act of living and operation of
growing, the only thing always present, naturally looks to the past because the future goal which it
sets up is remote and empty. But having turned its back upon the present, it has no way of returning
differences of endowment the dynamic values of natural inequalities of growth, and utilize them,
preferring irregularity to the rounding out gained by pruning will most closely follow that which takes
place in the body and thus prove most effective.” 1 Observation of natural tendencies is difficult under
conditions of restraint. They show themselves most readily in a child's spontaneous sayings and
doings,—that is, in those he engages in when not put at set tasks and when not aware of being under
observation. It does nat follow that these tendencies are all desirable because they are natural; but it
does follow that since they are there, they are operative and must be taken account of. We must see
to it that the desirable ones have an environment which keeps them active, and that their activity shall
control the direction the others take and thereby induce the disuse of the latter because they lead to
nothing. Many tendencies that trouble parents when they appear are likely to be transitory, and
sometimes too much direct attention to them only fixes a child's attention upon them. At all events,
adults too easily assume their own habits and wishes as standards, and regard all deviations of
children's impulses as evils to be eliminated. That artificiality against which the conception of following
nature is so largely a protest, is the outcome of attempts to force children directly into the mold of
grown-up standards.

Now tor that of discipline. Where an activity takes time, where many means and obstacles lie
between its initiation and completion, deliberation and persistence are required. It is obvious that a
very large part of the everyday meaning of will is precisely the deliberate or conscious disposition to
persist and endure in a planned course of action in spite of difficulties and contrary solicitations. A
man of strong will, in the popular usage of the words, is a man who is neither fickle nor half-hearted in
achieving chosen ends. His ability is executive; that is, he persistently and energetically strives to
execute or carry out his aims. A weak will is unstable as water.

Clearly there are two factors in will. One has to do with the foresight of results, the other with the
depth of hold the foreseen outcome has upon the person.

(1) Obstinacy is persistence but it is not strength of volition. Obstinacy may be mere animal inertia
and insensitiveness. A man keeps on doing a thing just because he has got started, not because of
any clearly thought-out purpose. In fact, the obstinate man generally declines (although he may not
be quite aware of his refusal) to make clear to himself what his proposed end is; he has a feeling that
ifhe allowed himself to get a clear and full idea of it, it might not be worth while. Stubbornness shows
itself even more in

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

lived in a dumb unsocial environment where men refused to talk to one another and used only that
minimum of gestures without which they could not get along, vocal language would be as unachieved
by him as if he had no vocal organs. If the sounds which he makes occur in a medium of persons
speaking the Chinese language, the activities which make like sounds will be selected and
coordinated. This illustration may be applied to the entire range of the educability of any individual. It
places the heritage from the past in its right connection with the demands and opportunities of the
present.

(2) The theory that the proper subject matter of instruction is found in the culture-products of past
ages (either in general, or more specifically in the particular literatures which were produced in the
culture epoch which is supposed to correspond with the stage of development of those taught) affords
another instance of that divorce between the process and product of growth which has been
criticized. To keep the process alive, to keep it alive in ways which make it easier to keep it alive in
the future, is the function of educational subject matter. But an individual can live only in the present.
The present is not just something which comes after the past; much less something produced by it. [t
is what life is in leaving the past behind it. The study of past products will not help us understand the
present, because the present is

of the state is educational; that in particular the regeneration of Germany is to be accomplished by an

education carried on in the interests of the state, and that the private individual is of necessity an
egoistic, irrational being, enslaved to his appetites and to circumstances unless he submits voluntarily
to the educative discipline of state institutions and laws. In this spirit, Germany was the first country to
undertake a_ public, universal, and compulsory system of education extending from the primary
school through the university, and to submit to jealous state regulation and supervision all private
educational enterprises. Two results should stand out from this brief historical survey. The first is that
such terms as the individual and the social conceptions of education are quite meaningless taken at
large, or apart from their context. Plato had the ideal of an education which should equate individual
realization and social coherency and stability. His situation forced his ideal into the notion of a society
organized in stratified classes, losing the individual in the class. The eighteenth century educational
philosophy was highly individualistic in form, but this form was inspired by a noble and generous
social ideal: that of a society organized to include humanity, and providing for the indefinite
perfectibility of mankind. The idealistic philosophy of Germany in the early nineteenth century
endeavored again to equate the ideals of a free and complete development of cultured

of mind Only a complete whole is fully self- consistent. A society which rests upon the supremacy of
some factor over another irrespective of its rational or proportionate claims, inevitably leads thought
astray. It puts a premium on certain things and slurs over others, and creates a mind whose seeming
unity is forced and distortec. Education proceeds ultimately from the patterns furnished by institutions,
customs, and laws. Only in a just state will these be such as to give the right education; and only
those who have rightly trained minds will be able to recognize the end, and ordering principle of
things. We seem to be caught in a hopeless circle. However, Plato suggested a way out. A few men,
philosophers or lovers of wisdom—or truth—may by study learn at least in outline the proper patterns
of true existence. If a powerful ruler should form a state after these patterns, then its regulations could
be preserved. An education could be given which would sift individuals, discovering what they were
good for, and supplying a method of assigning each to the work in life for which his nature fits him.
Each doing his own part, and never transgressing, the order and unity of the whole would be
maintained.

It would be impossible to find in any scheme of philosophic thought a more adequate recognition on
one hand of the educational significance of social arrangements and, on the other, of the

efficiency is confined to the service rendered by overt acts, its chief constituent (because its only
guarantee) is omitted—intelligent sympathy or good will. For sympathy as a desirable quality is
something more than mere feeling; it is a cultivated imagination for what men have in common and
a_ée rebellion at whatever unnecessarily divides them. What Is sometimes called a benevolent
interest in others may be but an unwitting mask for an attempt to dictate to them what their good shall
be, instead of an endeavor to free them so that they may seek and find the good of their own choice.
Social efficiency, even social service, are hard and metallic things when severed from an active
acknowledgment of the diversity of goods which life may afford to different persons, and from faith in
the social utility of encouraging every individual to make his own choice intelligent.

3. Culture as Aim. Whether or not social efficiency is an aim which is consistent with culture turns
upon these considerations. Culture means at least something cultivated, something ripened; it is
opposed to the raw and crude. When the "natural" is identified with this rawness, culture is opposed
to what is called natural development. Culture is also something personal; it is cultivation with respect
to appreciation of ideas and art and broad human interests. When efficiency is identified with a
narrow range of acts,

fact that we rarely make it explicit. We overlook the fact that in growth there is ground to be covered
between an initial stage of process and the completing period; that there is something intervening. In
learning, the present powers of the pupil are the initial stage; the aim of the teacher represents the
remote limit. Between the two lie means—that is middle conditions:—acts to be performed; difficulties
to be overcome; appliances to be usec. Only through them, in the literal time sense, will the initial
activities reach a satisfactory consummation.

These intermediate conditions are of interest precisely because the development of existing activities
into the foreseen and desired end depends upon them. To be means for the achieving of present
tendencies, to be "between" the agent and his end, to be of interest, are different names for the same
thing. When material has to be made interesting, it signifies that as presented, it lacks connection with
purposes and present power: or that if the connection be there, it is not perceived. To make it
interesting by leading one to realize the connection that exists is simply good sense; to make it
interesting by extraneous and artificial inducements deserves all the bad names which have been
applied to the doctrine of interest in education.

So much for the meaning of the term interest.

comcdae with possession Of ruling power in me

state.

4. The "Individualistic" Ideal of the Eighteenth Century. In the eighteenth-century philosophy we find
ourselves in a very different circle of ideas. "Nature" still means something antithetical to existing
social organization; Plato exercised a great induence upon Rousseau. But the voice of nature now
speaks for the diversity of individual talent and for the need of free development of individuality in all
its variety. Education in accord with nature furnishes the goal and the method of instruction and
discipline. Moreover, the native or original endowment was conceived, in extreme cases, as nonsocial
or even as antisocial. Social arrangements were thought of as mere external expedients by which
these nonsocial individuals might secure a greater amount of private happiness for themselves.
Nevertheless, these statements convey only an inadequate idea of the true significance of the
movement. In reality its chief interest was in progress and in social progress. The seeming antisocial
philosophy was a somewhat transparent mask for an impetus toward a wider and freer society—
toward cosmopolitanism. The positive ideal was humanity. In membership in humanity, as distinct
from a state, man’s capacities would be liberated; while in existing political organizations his powers
were hampered and distorted to meet the requirements and selfish interests of the rulers of

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

of intelligence in foresight, and contriving, is then discounted; we are just to get out of the way and
allow nature to do the work. Since no one has stated in the doctrine both its truth and falsity better
than Rousseau, we shall turn to him.
"Education," he says, "we receive from three sources—Nature, men, and_ things. The spontaneous
development of our organs and Capacities constitutes the education of Nature. The use to which we
are taught to put this development constitutes that education given us by Men. The acquirement of
personal experience from surrounding objects constitutes that of things. Only when these three kinds
of education are consonant and make for the same end, does a man tend towards his true goal. If we
are asked what is this end, the answer is that of Nature. For since the concurrence of the three kinds
of education is necessary to their completeness, the kind which is entirely independent of our control
must necessarily regulate us in determining the other two." Then he defines Nature to mean the
capacities and dispositions which are inborn, "as they exist prior to the modification due to
constraining habits and the influence of the opinion of others."

The wording of Rousseau will repay careful study. [t contains as fundamental truths as have been
uttered about education in conjunction with a curious twist. It would be impossible to say

This is equivalent to saying that there is no extensive number of common interests; there is no free
play back and forth among the members of the social group. Stimulation and response are
exceedingly one-sided. In order to have a large number of values in common, all the members of the
group must have an equable opportunity to receive and to take from others. There must be a large
variety of shared undertakings and experiences. Otherwise, the influences which educate some into
masters, educate others into slaves. And the experience of each party loses in meaning, when the
free interchange of varying modes of life-experience is arrested. A separation into a privileged and a
subject-class prevents social endosmosis. The evils thereby affecting the superior class are less
material and less perceptible, but equally real. Their culture tends to be sterile, to be turned back to
feed on itself: their art becomes a showy display and artificial; their wealth Juxurious; their knowledge
overspecialized; their manners fastidious rather than humane.

Lack of the free and equitable intercourse which springs from a variety of shared interests makes
intellectual stimulation unbalanced. Diversity of stimulation means novelty, and novelty means
challenge to thought. The more activity is restricted to a few definite lines—as it is when there are
rigid class lines preventing

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 he 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

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 ina 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

Such a separation could exist only if the personal attitudes ran their course in a world by themselves.
But they are always responses to what is going on in the situation of which they are a part, and their
successful or unsuccessful expression depends upon their interaction with other changes. Life
activities flourish and fail only in connection with changes of the environment. They are literally bound
up with these changes; our desires, emotions, and affections are but various ways in which our
doings are tied up with the doings of things and persons about us. Instead of marking a purely
personal or subjective realm, separated from the objective and impersonal, they indicate the non-
existence of such a separate world. They afford convincing evidence that changes in things are not
alien to the activities of a self, and that the career and welfare of the self are bound up with the
movement of persons and things. Interest, concern, mean that self and world are engaged with each
other in a developing situation.

The word interest, in its ordinary usage, expresses (i) the whole state of active development, (ii) the
objective results that are foreseen and wanted, and (iii) the personal emotional inclination.

(0) An _ occupation, employment, pursuit, business is often referred to as an interest. Thus we say
that a man’s interest is politics, or

they are likely to do to him; and that, on the basis of his expectation or foresight, he is eager to act so
as to give things one turn rather than another. Interest and aims, concern and purpose, are
necessarily connected. Such words as aim, intent, end, emphasize the results which are wanted and
striven for; they take for granted the personal attitude of solicitude and attentive eagerness. Such
words as interest, affection, concern, motivation, emphasize the bearing of what is foreseen upon the
individual's fortunes, and his active desire to act to secure a possible result. They take for granted the
objective changes. But the difference is but one of emphasis; the meaning that is shaded in one set of
words is illuminated inthe other. What is anticipated is objective and impersonal; to-morrow’'s rain; the
possibility of being run over. But for an active being, a being who partakes of the consequences
instead of standing aloof from them, there is at the same time a personal response. The difference
imaginatively foreseen makes a_ present difference, which finds expression in solicitude and effort.
While such words as affection, concern, and motive indicate an attitude of personal preference, they
are always attitudes toward objects—toward what is foreseen. We may call the phase of objective
foresight intellectual, and the phase of personal concern emotional and volitional, but there is no
separation in the facts of the situation.

Education. Interest represents the moving force of objects—whether perceived or presented in

imagination—in any experience having a purpose. In the concrete, the value of recognizing the
dynamic place of interest in an _ educative development is that it leads to considering individual
children in their specific capabilities, needs, and preferences. One who recognizes the importance of
interest will not assume that all minds work in the same way because they happen to have the same
teacher and textbook. Attitudes and methods of approach and response vary with the specific appeal
the same material makes, this appeal itself varying with difference of natural aptitude, of past
experience, of plan of life, and so on. But the facts of interest also supply considerations of general
value to the philosophy of education. Rightly understood, they put us on our guard against certain
conceptions of mind and of subject matter which have had great vogue in philosophic thought in the
past, and which exercise a serious hampering influence upon the conduct of instruction and
discipline. Too frequently mind is set over the world of things and facts to be known; it is regarded as
something existing in isolation, with mental states and operations that exist independently. Knowledge
is then regarded as an external application of purely mental existences to the things to be known, or
else as a result of the impressions which this outside subject matter makes on mind, or as a

from all inquiry. It has not been enough to show that they were of no use in life or that they did not
really contribute to the cultivation of the self. That they were "disciplinary" stifled every question,
subdued every doubt, and removed the subject from the realm of rational discussion. By its nature,
the allegation could not be checked up. Even when discipline did not accrue as matter of fact, when
the pupil even grew in laxity of application and lost power of intelligent self- direction, the fault lay with
him, not with the study or the methods of teaching. His failure was but proof that he needed more
discipline, and thus afforded a reason for retaining the old methods. The responsibility was
transferred from the educator to the pupil because the material did not have to meet specific tests; it
did not have to be shown that it fulfilled any particular need or served any specific end. It was
designed to discipline in general, and if it failed, it was because the individual was unwilling to be
disciplined. In the other direction, the tendency was towards a negative conception of discipline,
instead of an identification of it with growth in constructive power of achievement. As we have already
seen, will means an attitude toward the future, toward the production of possible consequences, an
attitude involving effort to foresee clearly and comprehensively the probable results of ways of acting,
and an active identification with some anticipated consequences. Identification of will, or

4
education, and the narrowly disciplinary or cultural character of most higher education. It accounts for
the tendency to isolate intellectual matters till knowledge is scholastic, academic, and professionally
technical, and for the widespread conviction that liberal education is opposed to the requirements of
an education which shall count in the vocations of life. But it also helps define the peculiar problem of
present education. The school cannot immediately escape from the ideals set by prior social
conditions. But it should contribute through the type of intellectual and emotional disposition which it
forms to the improvement of those conditions. And just here the true conceptions of interest and
discipline are full of significance. Persons whose interests have been enlarged and intelligence
trained by dealing with things and facts in active occupations having a purpose (whether in play or
work) will be those most likely to escape the alternatives of an academic and aloof knowledge and a_
hard, narrow, and merely "practical" practice. To organize education so that natural active tendencies
shall be fully enlisted in doing something, while seeing to it that the doing requires observation, the
acquisition of information, and the use of a_ constructive imagination, is what most needs to be done
to improve social conditions. To oscillate between drill exercises that strive to attain efficiency in
outward doing without the use of intelligence. and

conscious or stated aim thus balance each other. At different times such aims as complete living,
better methods of language study, substitution of things for words, social efficiency, personal culture,
social service, complete development of personality, encyclopedic knowledge, discipline, a esthetic
contemplation, utility, etc, have served. The following discussion takes up three statements of recent
influence; certain others have been incidentally discussed in the previous chapters, and others will be
considered later in a discussion of knowledge and of the values of studies. We begin with a
consideration that education is a process of development in accordance with nature, taking
Rousseau's statement, which opposed natural to social (See ante, p. 91); and then pass over to the
antithetical conception of social efficiency, which often opposes social to natural.

(1) Educational reformers disgusted with the conventionality and artificiality of the scholastic methods
they find about them are prone to resort to nature as a standard. Nature is supposed to furnish the
law and the end of development; ours it is to follow and conform to her ways. The positive value of
this conception lies in the forcible way in which it calls attention to the wrongness of aims which do
not have regard to the natural endowment of those educated. Its weakness is the ease with which
natural in the sense of normal is confused with the physical. The constructive use

For the most part, save incidentally, we have hitherto been concerned with education as it may exist
in any social group. We have now to make explicit the differences in the spirit, material, and method
of education as it operates in different types of community life. To say that education is a social
function, securing direction and development in the immature through their participation in the life of
the group to which they belong, is to say in effect that education will vary with the quality of life which
prevails in a group. Particularly is it true that a society which not only changes but-which has the ideal
of such change as will improve it, will have different standards and methods of education from one
which aims simply at the perpetuation of its own customs. To make the general ideas set forth
applicable to our own educational practice, it is, therefore, necessary to come to closer quarters with
the nature of present social life.
1. The Implications of Human Association. Society is one word, but many things. Men associate
together in all kinds of ways and for all kinds of purposes. One man is concerned in a multitude of
diverse groups, in which his associates may be quite different. It often seems as if they had nothing in
common except that they are modes of associated life. Within every larger social organization there
are numerous minor groups: not only political subdivisions, but

affairs, these are reduced to mere personal states of pleasure or pain. Educationally, it then follows
that to attach importance to interest means to attach some feature of seductiveness to material
otherwise indifferent; to secure attention and effort by offering a bribe of pleasure. This procedure is
properly stigmatized as_ "soft" pedagogy; as a "soup-kitchen" theory of education.

But the objection is based upon the fact—or assumption—that the forms of skill to be acquired and
the subject matter to be appropriated have no interest on their own account: in other words, they are
supposed to be irrelevant to the normal activities of the pupils. The remedy is not in finding fault with
the doctrine of interest, any more than it is to search for some pleasant bait that may be hitched to the
alien material. It is to discover objects and modes of action, which are connected with present
powers. The function of this material in engaging activity and carrying it on consistently and
continuously is its interest. If the material operates in this way, there is no call either to hunt for
devices which will make it interesting or to appeal to arbitrary, semi-coerced effort.

The word interest suggests, etymologically, what is between,—that which connects two things
otherwise distant. In education, the distance covered may be looked at as temporal. The fact that a
process takes time to mature is so obvious a

perverting them—and supposing that they have a normal development apart from any use, which
development furnishes the standard and norm of all learning by use. To recur to our previous
illustration, the process of acquiring language is a practically perfect model of proper educative
growth. The start is from native activities of the vocal apparatus, organs of hearing, etc. But it is
absurd to suppose that these have an independent growth of their own, which left to itself would
evolve a perfect speech. Taken literally, Rousseau's principle would mean that adults should accept
and repeat the babblings and noises of children not merely as the beginnings of the development of
articulate speech—which they are—but as furnishing language itselfi—the standard for all teaching of
language.

The point may be summarized by saying that Rousseau was right, introducing a much-needed reform
into education, in holding that the structure and activities of the organs furnish the conditions of all
teaching of the use of the organs; but profoundly wrong in intimating that they supply not only the
conditions but also the ends of their development. As matter of fact, the native activities develop, in
contrast with random and capricious exercise, through the uses to which they are put. And the office
of the social medium is, as we have seen, to direct growth through putting powers to the best possible
use. The
1. The Meaning of the Terms. We have already noticed the difference in the attitude of a spectator
and of an agent or participant. The former is indifferent to what is going on; one result is just as good
as another, since each is just something to look at. The latter is bound up with what is going on; its
outcome makes a difference to him. His fortunes are more or less at stake in the issue of events.
Consequently he does whatever he can to influence the direction present occurrences take. One is
like a man in a prison cell watching the rain out of the window; it is all the same to him. The other is
like a man who has planned an outing for the next day which continuing rain will frustrate. He cannot,
to be sure, by his present reactions affect to-morrow’'s weather, but he may take some steps which
will influence future happenings, if only to postpone the proposed picnic. If a man sees a carriage
coming which may run over him, if he cannot stop its movement, he can at least get out of the way if
he foresees the consequence in time. In many instances, he can intervene even more directly. The
attitude of a participant in the course of affairs is thus a double one: there is solicitude, anxiety
concerning future consequences, and a tendency to act to assure better, and avert worse,
consequences. There are words which denote this attitude: concern, interest. These words suggest
that a person is bound up with the possibilities inhering in objects; that he is accordingly on the
lookout for what

The whole attitude is one of concern with what is to be, and with what is so far as the latter enters into
the movement toward the enc. Leave out the direction which depends upon foresight of possible
future results, and there is no intelligence in present behavior. Let there be imaginative forecast but
no attention to the conditions upon which its attainment depends, and there is self- deception or idle
dreaming—abortive intelligence.

If this illustration is typical, mind is not a name for something complete by itself; itis a name for a
course of action in so far as that is intelligently directed; in so far, that is to say, as aims, ends, enter
into it, with selection of means to further the attainment of aims. Intelligence is not a peculiar
possession which a person owns; but a person is intelligent in so far as the activities in which he
plays a part have the qualities mentioned. Nor are the activities in which a person engages, whether
intelligently or not, exclusive properties of himself; they are something in which he engages and
partakes. Other things, the independent changes of other things and persons, cooperate and hinder.
The individual's act may be initial in a course of events, but the outcome depends upon the interaction
of his response with energies supplied by other agencies. Conceive mind as anything but one factor
partaking along with others in the production of consequences, and it becomes

their subjects as instruments of their own purposes.

Who, then, shall conduct education so that humanity may improve? We must depend upon the efforts
of enlightened men in their private capacity. "All culture begins with private men and spreads outward
from them. Simply through the efforts of persons of enlarged inclinations, who are capable of
grasping the ideal of a future better condition, is the gradual approximation of human nature to its end
possible. Rulers are simply interested in such training as will make their subjects better tools for their
own intentions." Even the subsidy by rulers of privately conducted schools must be carefully
safeguarded. For the rulers’ interest in the welfare of their own nation instead of in what is best for
humanity, will make them, if they give money for the schools, wish to draw their plans. We have in this
view an express statement of the points characteristic of the eighteenth century individualistic
cosmopolitanism. The full development of private personality is identified with the aims of humanity as
a whole and with the idea of progress. In addition we have an explicit fear of the hampering influence
of a state-conducted and state-regulated education upon the attainment of these ideas. But in less
than two decades after this time, Kant's philosophic successors, Fichte and Hegel, elaborated the
idea that the chief function

Thus interest and mind are either narrowed, or else made perverse. Compare what was said in an
earlier chapter about the one-sided meanings which have come to attach to the ideas of efficiency
and of culture.

This state of affairs must exist so far as society is organized on a basis of division between laboring
classes and leisure classes. The intelligence of those who do things becomes hard in the unremitting
struggle with things; that of those freed from the discipline of occupation becomes luxurious and
effeminate. Moreover, the majority of human beings still lack economic freedom. Their pursuits are
fixed by accident and necessity of circumstance; they are not the normal expression of their own _
powers interacting with the needs and resources of the environment. Our economic conditions - still
relegate many men to a servile status. As a consequence, the intelligence of those in control of the
practical situation is not liberal. Instead of playing freely upon the subjugation of the world for human
ends, it is devoted to the manipulation of other men for ends that are non-human in so far as they are
exclusive.

This state of affairs explains many things in our historic educational traditions. It throws light upon the
clash of aims manifested in different portions of the school system; the narrowly utilitarian character
of most elementary

The problem of instruction is thus that of finding material which will engage a person in specific
activities having an aim or purpose of moment or interest to him, and dealing with things not as
gymnastic appliances but as conditions for the attainment of ends. The remedy for the evils attending
the doctrine of formal discipline previously spoken of, is not to be found by substituting a doctrine of
specialized disciplines, but by reforming the notion of mind and its training. Discovery of typical
modes of activity, whether play or useful occupations, in which individuals are concerned, in whose
outcome they recognize they have something at stake, and which cannot be carried through without
reflection and use of judgment to select material of observation and recollection, is the remedy. In
short, the root of the error long prevalent in the conception of training of mind consists in leaving out
of account movements of things to future results in which an individual shares, and in the direction of
which observation, imagination, and memory are enlisted. It consists in regarding mind as complete in
itself, ready to be directly applied to a present material.

In historic practice the error has cut two ways. On one hand, it has screened and protected traditional
studies and methods of teaching from intelligent criticism and needed revisions. To say that they are
"disciplinary" has safeguarded them

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.

not there; neither can the educator. In this sense, heredity is a limit of education. Recognition of this
fact prevents the waste of energy and the irritation that ensue from the too prevalent habit of trying to
make by instruction something out of an individual which he is not naturally fitted to become. But the
doctrine does not determine what use shall be made of the capacities which exist. And, except in the
case of the imbecile, these original capacities are much more varied and potential, even in the case
of the more stupid, than we as yet know properly how to utilize. Consequently, while a careful study of
the native aptitudes and deficiencies of an individual is always a preliminary necessity, the
subsequent and important step is to furnish an environment which will adequately function whatever
activities are present. The relation of heredity and environment is well expressed in the case of
language. If a being had no vocal organs from which issue articulate sounds, if he had no auditory or
other sense-receptors and no connections between the two sets of apparatus, it would be a sheer
waste of time to try to teach him to converse. He is born short in that respect, and education must
accept the limitation. But if he has this native equipment, its possession in no way guarantees that he
will ever talk any language or what language he will talk. The environment in which his activities occur
and by which they are carried into execution settles these things. If he

assimilation of new presentations, their character is all important. The effect of new presentations is to
reinforce groupings previously formed. The business of the educator is, first, to select the proper
material in order to fix the nature of the original reactions, and, secondly, to arrange the sequence of
subsequent presentations on the basis of the store of ideas secured by prior transactions. The control
is from behind, from the past, instead of, as in the unfolding conception, in the ultimate goal.

(3) Certain formal steps of all method in teaching may be laid down. Presentation of new subject
matter is obviously the central thing, but since knowing consists in the way in which this interacts with
the contents already submerged below consciousness, the first thing is the step of “preparation,'—
that is, calling into special activity and getting above the floor of consciousness those older
presentations which are to assimilate the new one. Then after the presentation, follow the processes
of interaction of new and old; then comes the application of the newly formed content to the
performance of some task. Everything must go through this course; consequently there is a perfectly
uniform method in instruction in all subjects for all pupils of all ages.
Herbart’s great service lay in taking the work of teaching out of the region of routine and accident.

perception, even the © sentiments, = are arrangements, associations, and complications, formed by
the interaction of these submerged presentations with one another and with new presentations.
Perception, for example, is the complication of presentations which result from the rise of old
presentations to greet and combine with new ones; memory is the evoking of an old presentation
above’ the threshold of consciousness by getting entangled with another presentation, etc. Pleasure
is the result of reinforcement among the independent activities of presentations; pain of their pulling
different ways, etc.

The concrete character of mind consists, then, wholly of the various arrangements formed by the
various presentations in thei different qualities. The "furniture" of the mind is the mind. Mind is wholly
a matter of "contents." The educational implications of this doctrine are threefold.

(1) This or that kind of mind is formed by the use of objects which evoke this or that kind of reaction
and which produce this or that arrangement among the reactions called out. The formation of mind is
wholly a matter of the presentation of the proper educational! materials.

(2) Since the earlier presentations constitute the “apperceiving organs" which control the

intellectual opportunities are accessible to all on equable and easy terms. A society marked off into
classes need he specially attentive only to the education of its ruling elements. A society which is
mobile, which is full of channels for the distribution of a change occurring anywhere, must see to it
that its members are educated to personal initiative and adaptability. Otherwise, they will be
overwhelmed by the changes in which they are caught and whose significance or connections they
do not perceive. The result will be a confusion in which a few will appropriate to themselves the
results of the blind and externally directed activities of others.

3. The Platonic Educational Philosophy. Subsequent chapters will be devoted to making explicit the
implications of the democratic ideas in education. In the remaining portions of this chapter, we shall
consider the educational theories which have been evolved in three epochs when the social import of
education was especially conspicuous. The first one to be considered is that of Plato. No one could
better express than did he the fact that a society is stably organized when each individual is doing
that for which he has aptitude by nature in such a way as to be useful to others (or to contribute to the
whole to which he belongs); and that it is the business of education to discover these aptitudes and
progressively to train them for social use.

distinctive temperament. We indiscriminately employ children of different bents on the same

exercises; their education destroys the special bent and leaves a dull uniformity. Therefore after we
have wasted our efforts in stunting the true gifts of nature we see the short-lived and illusory brilliance
we have substituted die away, while the natural abilities we have crushed do not revive."
Lastly, the aim of following nature means to note the origin, the waxing, and waning, of preferences
and interests. Capacities bud and bloom irregularly; there is no even four-abreast development. We
must strike while the iron is hot. Especially precious are the first dawnings of power. More than we
imagine, the ways in which the tendencies of early childhood are treated fix fundamental dispositions
and condition the turn taken by powers that show themselves later. Educational concern with the
early years of life— as distinct from inculcation of useful arts—dates almost entirely from the time of
the emphasis by Pestalozzi and Froebel, following Rousseau, of natural principles of growth. The
irregularity of growth and its significance is indicated in the following passage of a student of the
growth of the nervous system. "While growth continues, things bodily and mental are lopsided, for
growth is never general, but is accentuated now at one spot, now at another. The methods which
shall recognize in the presence of these enormous

1. Nature as Supplying the Aim. We have just pointed out the futility of trying to establish the aim of
education—some one final aim which subordinates all others to itself, We have indicated that since
general aims are but prospective points of view from which to survey the existing conditions and
estimate their possibilities, we might have any number of them, all consistent with one another. As
matter of fact, a large number have been stated at different times, all having great local value. For the
statement of aim is a matter of emphasis at a given time. And we do not emphasize things which do
not require emphasis—that is, such things as are taking care of themselves fairly well. We tend rather
to frame our statement on the basis of the defects and needs of the contemporary situation; we take
for granted, without explicit statement which would be of no use, whatever is right or approximately
so. We frame our explicit aims in terms of some alteration to be brought about. It is, then, DO paradox
requiring explanation that a given epoch or generation tends to emphasize in its conscious
projections just the things which it has least of in actual fact. A time of domination by authority will call
out as response the desirability of great individual freedom; one of disorganized individual activities
the need of social control as an educational aim.

The actual and implicit practice and the

least the merit of protecting us from the notion of a training of mental power at large. It calls attention
to the fact that power must be relative to doing something, and to the fact that the things which most
need to be done are things which involve one's relationships with others.

Here again we have to be on guard against understanding the aim too narrowly. An over- definite
interpretation would at certain periods have excluded scientific discoveries, in spite of the fact that in
the last analysis security of social progress depends upon them. For scientific men would have been
thought to be mere theoretical dreamers, totally lacking in social efficiency. It must be borne in mind
that ultimately social efficiency means neither more nor less than capacity to share in a give and take
of experience. It covers all that makes one's own experience more worth while to others, and all that
enables one to participate more richly in the worthwhile experiences of others. Ability to produce and
to enjoy art, capacity for recreation, the significant utilization of leisure, are more important elements
in it than elements conventionally associated oftentimes with citizenship. In the broadest sense, social
efficiency is nothing less than that socialization of mind which is actively concerned in making
experiences more communicable; in breaking down the barriers of social stratification which make
individuals impervious to the interests of others. When social
external; they are shifting things about. No ideal reward, no enrichment of emotion and intellect,
accompanies them. Others contribute to the maintenance of life, and to its external adornment and
display. Many of our existing social activities, industrial and political, fall in these two classes. Neither
the people who engage in them, nor those who are directly affected by them, are capable of full and
free interest in their work. Because of the lack of any purpose in the work for the one doing it, or
because of the restricted character of its aim, intelligence is not adequately engaged. The same
conditions force many people back upon themselves. They take refuge in an inner play of sentiment
and fancies. They are aesthetic but not artistic, since their feelings and ideas are turned upon
themselves, instead of being methods in acts which modify conditions. Their mental life is
sentimental; an enjoyment of an inner landscape. Even the pursuit of science may become an asylum
of refuge from the hard conditions of life— not a temporary retreat for the sake of recuperation and
clarification in future dealings with the world. The very word art may become associated not with
specific transformation of things, making them more significant for mind, but with stimulations of
eccentric fancy and with emotional indulgences. The separation and mutual contempt of the
"practical" man and the man of theory or culture, the divorce of fine and industrial arts, are indications
of this situation.

enormous difference between availing ourselves of them as present resources and taking them as
standards and patterns in their retrospective character.

(1) The distortion of the first point usually comes about through misuse of the idea of heredity. It is
assumed that heredity means that past life has somehow predetermined the main traits of an
individual, and that they are so fixed that little serious change can be introduced into them. Thus
taken, the influence of heredity is opposed to that of the environment, and the efficacy of the latter
belittled. But for educational purposes heredity means neither more nor less than the original
endowment of an individual. Education must take the being as he is; that a particular individual has
just such and such an equipment of native activities is a basic fact. That they were produced in such
and such a way, or that they are derived from one's ancestry, is not especially important for the
educator, however it may be with the biologist, as compared with the fact that they now exist.
Suppose one had to advise or direct a person regarding his inheritance of property. The fallacy of
assuming that the fact it is an inheritance, predetermines its future use, is obvious. The advisor is
concerned with making the best use of what is there— putting it at work under the most favorable
conditions. Obviously he cannot utilize what is

accomplishment of our purposes depends. Stated thus broadly, the formula may appear abstract.
Translated into details, it means that the act of learning or studying is artificial and ineffective in the
degree in which pupils are merely presented with a lesson to be learned. Study is effectual in the
degree in which the pupil realizes the place of the numerical truth he is dealing with in carrying to
fruition activities in which he is concerned. This connection of an object and a topic with the promotion
of an activity having a purpose is the first and the last word of a genuine theory of interest in
education.

3. Some Social Aspects of the Question. While the theoretical errors of which we have been speaking
have their expressions in the conduct of schools, they are themselves the outcome of conditions of
social life. A change confined to the theoretical conviction of educators will not remove the difficulties,
though it should render more effective efforts to modify social conditions. Men's fundamental attitudes
toward the world are fixed by the scope and qualities of the activities in which they partake. The ideal
of interest is exemplified in the artistic attitude. Art is neither merely internal nor merely external;
merely mental nor merely physical. Like every mode of action, it brings about changes in the world.
The changes made by some actions (those which by contrast may be called mechanical) are

"Nature" may be said to utter is that there are conditions of educational efficiency, and that oll we
have learned what these conditions are and have learned to make our practices accord with them,
the noblest and most ideal of our aims are doomed to suffer—are verbal and sentimental rather than
efficacious.

(2) The aim of natural development translates into the aim of respect for physical mobility. In
Rousseau's words: “Children are always in motion; a sedentary life is injurious." When he says that
"Nature's intention is to strengthen the body before exercising the mind" he hardly states the fact
fairly. But if he had said that nature's "intention" (to adopt his poetical form of speech) is to develop
the mind especially by exercise of the muscles of the body he would have stated a positive fact. In
other words, the aim of following nature means, in the concrete, regard for the actual part played by
use of the bodily organs in explorations, in handling of materials, in plays and games. (3) The general
aim translates into the aim of regard for individual differences among children. Nobody can take the
principle of consideration of native powers into account without being struck by the fact that these
powers differ in different individuals. The difference applies not merely to their intensity, but even
more to their quality and arrangement. As Rouseau said: “Each individual is born with a

contact with other modes of association.

I. Let us apply the first element in this criterion to a despotically governed state. It is not true there is
no common interest in such an organization between governed and governors. The authorities in
command must make some appeal to the native activities of the subjects, must call some of their
powers into play. Talleyrand said that a government could do everything with bayonets except sit on
them. This cynical declaration is at least a recognition that the bond of union is not merely one of
coercive force. It may be said, however, that the activities appealed to are themselves unworthy and
degrading—that such a government calls into functioning activity simply capacity for fear. In a way,
this statement is true. But it overlooks the fact that fear need not be an undesirable factor in
experience. Caution, circumspection, prudence, desire to foresee future events so as to avert what is
harmful, these desirable traits are as much a product of calling the impulse of fear into play as is
cowardice and abject submission. The real difficulty is that the appeal to fear is isolated. In evoking
dread and hope of specific tangible reward—say comfort and ease—many other capacities are left
untouched. Or rather, they are affected, but in such a way as to pervert them. Instead of operating on
their own account they are reduced to mere servants of attaining pleasure and avoiding pain.

better what is said in the first sentences. The three factors of educative development are (a) the
native structure of our bodily organs and their functional activities; (b) the uses to which the activities
of these organs are put under the influence of other persons; (c) their direct interaction with the
environment. This statement certainly covers the ground. His other two propositions are equally
sound; namely, (a) that only when the three factors of education are consonant and cooperative does
adequate development of the individual occur, and (b) that the native activities of the organs, being
original, are basic in conceiving consonance. But it requires but little reading between the lines,
supplemented by other statements of Rousseau, to perceive that instead of regarding these three
things as factors which must work together to some extent in order that any one of them may proceed
educatively, he regards them as separate and independent operations. Especially does he believe
that there is an independent and, as he says, "spontaneous" development of the native organs and
faculties. He thinks that this development can go on irrespective of the use to which they are put. And
it is to this separate development that education coming from social contact is to be subordinated.
Now there is an immense difference between a use of native activities in accord with those activities
themselves—as distinct from forcing them and

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

develops, but his proper development consists in repeating in orderly stages the past evolution of
animal life and human history. The former recapitulation occurs physiologically; the latter should be
made to occur by means of education. The alleged biological truth that the individual in his growth
from the simple embryo to maturity repeats the history of the evolution of animal life in the progress of
forms from the simplest to the most complex (or expressed technically, that ontogenesis parallels
phylogenesis) does not concern us, save as it is supposed to afford scientific foundation for cultural
recapitulation of the past. Cultural recapitulation says, first, that children at a certain age are in the
mental and moral condition of savagery; their instincts are vagrant and predatory because their
ancestors at one time lived such a life. Consequently (so it is concluded) the proper subject matter of
their education at this time is the material—especially the literary material of myths, folk-tale, and
song—produced by humanity in the analogous stage. Then the child passes on to something
corresponding, say, to the pastoral stage, and so on till at the time when he is ready to take part in
contemporary life, he arrives at the present epoch of culture.

In this detailed and consistent form, the theory, outside of a small school in Germany (followers of
Herbart for the most part), has had little currency.
thoroughgoing “disciplinary” subordination to existing institutions. The extent of the transformation of
educational philosophy which occurred in Germany in the generation occupied by the struggle against
Napoleon for national independence, may be gathered from Kant, who well expresses the- earlier
individual- cosmopolitan ideal. In his treatise on Pedagogics, consisting of lectures given in the later
years of the eighteenth century, he defines education as the process by which man becomes man.
Mankind begins its history submerged in nature— not as Man who is a creature of reason, while
nature furnishes only instinct and appetite. Nature offers simply the germs which education is to
develop and perfect. The peculiarity of truly human life is that man has to create himself by his own
voluntary efforts; he has to make himself a truly moral, rational, and free being. This creative effort is
carried on by the educational activities of slow generations. Its acceleration depends upon men
consciously striving to educate their successors not for the existing state of affairs but so as to make
possible a future better humanity. But there is the great difficulty. Each generation is inclined to
educate its young so as to get along in the present world instead of with a view to the proper end of
education: the promotion of the best possible realization of humanity as humanity. Parents educate
their children so that they may get on; princes educate

because after the act is performed we note results which we had not noted before. But much work in
school consists in setting up rules by which pupils are to act of such a sort that even after pupils have
acted, they are not led to see the connection between the result—say the answer—and the method
pursued. So far as they are concerned, the whole thing is a trick and a kind of miracle. Such action is
essentially capricious, and leads to capricious habits. (b) Routine action, action which is automatic,
may increase skill to do a particular thing. In so far, it might be said to have an educative effect. But it
does not lead to new perceptions of bearings and connections; it limits rather than widens the
meaning-horizon. And since the environment changes and our way of acting has to be modified in
order successfully to keep a balanced connection with things, an isolated uniform way of acting
becomes disastrous at some critical moment. The vaunted "shall" turns out gross ineptitude.

The essential contrast of the idea of education as continuous reconstruction with the other one- sided
conceptions which have been criticized in this and the previous chapter is that it identifies the end
(the result) and the process. This Is verbally self-contradictory, but only verbally. It means that
experience as an active process occupies time and that its later period completes its earlier portion; it
brings to light connections

But the idea which underlies it is that education Is essentially retrospective; that it looks primarily to
the past and especially to the literary products of the past, and that mind is adequately formed in the
degree in which it is patterned upon the spiritual heritage of the past. This idea has had such
immense influence upon higher instruction especially, that it is worth examination in its extreme
formulation.

In the first place, its biological basis is fallacious. Embyronic growth of the human infant preserves,
without doubt, some of the traits of lower forms of life. But in no respect is it a strict traversing of past
stages. If there were any strict "law" of repetition, evolutionary development would clearly not have
taken place. Each new generation would simply have repeated its predecessors’ existence.
Development, in short, has taken place by the entrance of shortcuts and alterations in the prior
scheme of growth. And this suggests that the aim of education is to facilitate such short-circuited
growth. The great advantage of immaturity, educationally speaking, is that it enables us to
emancipate the young from the need of dwelling in an outgrown past. The business of education is
rather to liberate the young from reviving and retraversing the past than to lead them to a
recapitulation of it. The social environment of the young is constituted by the presence and action of
the habits of thinking

fail to call out a protest. The opposing emphasis took the form of a doctrine that the business of
education is to supply precisely what nature fails to secure; namely, habituation of an individual to
social control; subordination of natural powers to social rules. It is not surprising to find that the value
in the idea of social efficiency resides largely in its protest against the points at which the doctrine of
natural development went astray; while its misuse comes when it is employed to slur over the truth in
that conception. It is a fact that we must look to the activities and achievements of associated life to
find what the development of power—that is to say, efficiency— means. The error is in implying that
we must adopt measures of subordination rather than of utilization to secure efficiency. The doctrine
is rendered adequate when we recognize that social efficiency is attained not by negative constraint
but by positive use of native individual capacities in occupations having a social meaning. (1)
Translated into specific aims, social efficiency indicates the importance of industrial competency.
Persons cannot live without means of subsistence; the ways in which these means are employed and
consumed have a profound influence upon all the relationships of persons to one another. If an
individual is not able to earn his own living and that of the children dependent upon him, he is a drag
or parasite upon the activities of others. He misses for himself one of the most educative

suggest improvement. Now in any social group whatever, even in a gang of thieves, we find some
interest held in common, and we find a certain amount of interaction and _ cooperative intercourse
with other groups. From these two traits we derive our standard. How numerous and varied are the
interests which are consciously shared? How full and free is the interplay with other forms of
association? If we apply these considerations to, say, a criminal band, we find that the ties which
consciously hold the members together are few in number, reducible almost to a common interest in
plunder; and that they are of such a nature as to isolate the group from other groups with respect to
give and take of the values of life. Hence, the education such a society gives is partial and distorted. If
we take, on the other hand, the kind of family life which illustrates the standard, we find that there are
material, intellectual, aesthetic interests in which all participate and that the progress of one member
has worth for the experience of other members—it is readily communicable—and that the family is
not an isolated whole, but enters intimately into relationships with business groups, with schools, with
all the agencies of culture, as well as with other similar groups, and that it plays a due part in the
political organization and in return receives support from it. In short, there are many interests
consciously communicated and shared; and there are varied and free points of

1. Education as Formation. We now come to a type of theory which denies the existence of faculties
and emphasizes the unique role of subject matter in the development of mental and moral disposition.
According to it, education is neither a process of unfolding from within nor is it a training of faculties
resident in mind itself. It is rather the formation of mind by setting up certain associations or
connections of content by means of a subject matter presented from without. Education proceeds by
instruction taken in a strictly literal sense, a building into the mind from without. That education is
formative of mind is not questioned; it is the conception already propounded. But formation here has
a technical meaning dependent upon the idea of something operating from without. Herbart is the
best historical representative of this type of theory. He denies absolutely the existence of innate
faculties. The mind is simply endowed with the power of producing various qualities in reaction to the
various realities which act upon it. These qualitatively different reactions are _ called presentations
(Vorstellungen). Every presentation once called into being persists; it may be driven below the
"threshold" of consciousness by new and stronger presentations, produced by the reaction of the soul
to new material, but its activity continues by its own inherent momentum, below the surface of
consciousness. What are termed faculties—attention, memory, thinking,

who participate in an interest so that each has to refer his own action to that of others, and to
consider the action of others to give point and direction to his own, is equivalent to the breaking down
of those barriers of class, race, and national territory which kept men from perceiving the full import of
their activity. These more numerous and more varied points of contact denote a greater diversity of
stimuli to which an individual has to respond; they consequently put a premium on variation in his
action. They secure a liberation of powers which remain suppressed as long as the incitations to
action are partial, as they must be in a group which in its exclusiveness shuts out many interests.

The widening of the area of shared concerns, and the liberation of a greater diversity of personal
capacities which characterize a democracy, are not of course the product of deliberation and
conscious effort. On the contrary, they were caused by the development of modes of manufacture
and commerce, travel, migration, and intercommunication which flowed from the command of science
over natural energy. But after greater individualization on one hand, and a broader community of
interest on the other have come into existence, it is a matter of deliberate effort to sustain and extend
them. Obviously a society to which stratification into separate classes would be fatal, must see to it
that

indifferently and miscellaneously to any and every detail. It is centered upon whatever has a bearing
upon the effective pursuit of your occupation. Your look is ahead, and you are concerned to note the
existing facts because and in so far as they are factors in the achievement of the result intended. You
have to find out what your resources are, what conditions are at command, and what the difficulties
and obstacles are. This foresight and this survey with reference to what is foreseen constitute mind.
Action that does not involve such a forecast of results and such an examination of means and
hindrances is either a matter of habit or else it is blind. In neither case is it intelligent. To be vague and
uncertain as to what is intended and careless in observation of conditions of its realization is to be, in
that degree, stupid or partially intelligent.

If we recur to the case where mind is not concerned with the physical manipulation of the instruments
but with what one intends to write, the case is the same. There is an activity in process; one is taken
up with the development of a theme. Unless one writes as a phonograph talks, this means
intelligence; namely, alertness in foreseeing the various conclusions to which present data and
considerations are tending, together with continually renewed observation and recollection to get hold
of the subject matter which bears upon the conclusions to be reached.
one such group of facts; algebra another; geography another, and so on ull we have run through the
entire curriculum. Having a ready- made existence on their own account, their relation to mind is
exhausted in what they furnish it to acquire. This idea corresponds to the conventional practice in
which the program of school work, for the day, month, and successive years, consists of "studies" all
marked off from one another, and each supposed to be complete by itself—for educational purposes
at least.

Later on a chapter is devoted to the special consideration of the meaning of the subject matter of
instruction. At this point, we need only to say that, in contrast with the traditional theory, anything
which intelligence studies represents things in the part which they play in the carrying forward of
active lines of interest. Just as one “studies” his typewriter as part of the operation of putting it to use
to effect results, so with any fact or truth. It becomes an object of study—that is, of inquiry and
reflection—when it figures as a factor to be reckoned with in the completion of a course of events in
which one is engaged and by whose outcome one is affected. Numbers are not objects of study just
because they are numbers already constituting a branch of learning called mathematics, but because
they represent qualities and relations of the world in which our action goes on, because they are
factors upon which the

following nature was a political dogma. It meant a rebellion against existing social institutions,
customs, and ideals (See ante, p. 91). Rousseau's statement that everything is good as it comes from
the hands of the Creator has its signification only in its contrast with the concluding part of the same
sentence: "Everything degenerates in the hands of man." And again he says: "Natural man has an
absolute value; he is a numerical unit, a complete integer and has no relation save to himself and to
his fellow man. Civilized man is only a relative unit, the numerator of a fraction whose value depends
upon its dominator, its relation to the integral body of society. Good political institutions are those
which make a man unnatural." It is upon this conception of the artificial and harmful character of
organized social life as it now exists 2 that he rested the notion that nature not merely furnishes prime
forces which initiate growth but also its plan and goal. That evil institutions and customs work almost
automatically to give a wrong education which the most careful schooling cannot offset is true
enough; but the conclusion is not to education apart from the environment, but to provide an
environment in which native powers will be put to better uses.

2. Social Efficiency as Aim. A conception which made nature supply the end of a true education and
society the end of an evil one, could hardly

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.

Consequently an attempt to train for too specific a mode of efficiency defeats its own purpose. When
the occupation changes its methods, such individuals are left behind with even less ability to readjust
themselves than if they had a less definite training. But, most of all, the present industrial constitution
of society is, like every society which has ever existed, full of inequities. It is the aim of progressive
education to take part in correcting unfair privilege and unfair deprivation, not to perpetuate them.
Wherever social control means subordination of individual activities to class authority, there is danger
that industrial education will be dominated by acceptance of the status quo. Differences of economic
opportunity then dictate what the future callings of individuals are to be. We have an unconscious
revival of the defects of the Platonic scheme (ante, p. 89) without its enlightened method of selection.

(2) Civic efficiency, or good citizenship. It is, of course, arbitrary to separate industrial competency
from capacity in good citizenship. But the latter term may be used to indicate a number of
qualifications which are vaguer’ than vocational ability. These traits run from whatever make an
individual a more agreeable companion to citizenship in the political sense: it denotes ability to judge
men and measures wisely and to take a determining part in making as well as obeying laws. The aim
of civic efficiency has at

combination of the two. Subject matter is then regarded as something complete in itself; it is just
something to be learned or known, either by the voluntary application of mind to it or through the
impressions it makes on mind.

The facts of interest show that these conceptions are mythical. Mind appears in experience as ability
to respond to present stimuli on the basis of anticipation of future possible consequences, and with a
view to controlling the kind of consequences that are to take place. The things, the subject matter
known, consist of whatever is recognized as having a bearing upon the anticipated course of events,
whether assisting or retarding it. These statements are too formal to be very intelligible. An illustration
may clear up their significance. You are engaged in a certain occupation, say writing with a typewriter.
If you are an expert, your formed habits take care of the physical movements and leave your thoughts
free to consider your topic. Suppose, however, you are not skilled, or that, even if you are, the
machine does not work well. You then have to use intelligence. You do not wish to strike the keys at
random and let the consequences be what they may; you wish to record certain words in a given
order so as to make sense. You attend to the keys, to what you have written, to your movements, to
the ribbon or the mechanism of the machine. Your attention is not distributed

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 surelv do if imposed from without or

surrounded by other competing and more or less hostile states, it was equally impossible to interpret
social efficiency in terms of a vague cosmopolitan humanitarianism. Since — the maintenance of a
particular national sovereignty required subordination of individuals to the superior interests of the
state both in military defense and in struggles for international supremacy in commerce, social
efficiency was understood to imply a like subordination. The educational process was taken to be one
of disciplinary training rather than of personal development. Since, however, the ideal of culture as
complete development of personality persisted, educational philosophy attempted a reconciliation of
the two ideas. The reconciliation took the form of the conception of the "organic" character of the
state. The individual in his isolation is nothing; only in and through an absorption of the aims and
meaning of organized institutions does he attain true personality. What appears to be his
subordination to political authority and the demand for sacrifice of himself to the commands of his
superiors is in reality but making his own the objective reason manifested in the state—the only way
in which he can become truly rational. The notion of development which we have seen to be
characteristic of institutional idealism (as in the Hegelian philosophy) was just such a deliberate effort
to combine the two ideas of complete realization of personality and

control. To say that one knows what he is about, or can intend certain consequences, is to say, of
course, that he can better anticipate what is going to happen; that he can, therefore, get ready or
prepare in advance so as to secure beneficial consequences and avert undesirable ones. A genuinely
educative experience, then, one in which instruction is conveyed and _ ability increased, is
contradistinguished from a routine activity on one hand, and a capricious activity on the other. (a) In
the latter one "does not care what happens"; one just lets himself go and avoids connecting the
consequences of one's act (the evidences of its connections with other things) with the act. It is
customary to frown upon such aimless random activity, treating it as willful mischief or carelessness
or lawlessness. But there is a tendency to seek the cause of such aimless activities in the youth's own
disposition, isolated from everything else. But in fact such activity is explosive, and due to
maladjustment with surroundings. Individuals act capriciously whenever they act under external
dictation, or from being told, without having a purpose of their own or perceiving the bearing of the
deed upon other acts. One may learn by doing something which he does not understand; even in the
most intelligent action, we do much which we do not mean, because the largest portion of the
connections of the act we consciously intend are not perceived or anticipated. But we learn only

importance of what has been taught consists in its availability for further teaching, reflects the
pedagogue'’s view of life. The philosophy is eloquent about the duty of the teacher in instructing
pupils; it is almost silent regarding his privilege of learning. It emphasizes the influence of intellectual
environment upon the mind; it slurs over the fact that the environment involves a personal sharing in
common experiences. It exaggerates beyond reason the possibilities of consciously formulated and
used methods, and underestimates the role of vital, unconscious, attitudes. It insists upon the old, the
past, and passes lightly over the operation of the genuinely novel and unforeseeable. It takes, in brief,
everything educational into account save its essence,—vital energy seeking opportunity for effective
exercise. All education forms character, mental and moral, but formation consists in the selection and
coordination of native activities so that they may utilize the subject matter of the social environment.
Moreover, the formation is not only a formation of native activities, but it takes place through them. It
is a process of reconstruction, reorganization.

2. Education as_ Recapitulation and Retrospection. A peculiar combination of the ideas of

development and formation from without has given rise to the recapitulation theory of education,
biological and cultural. The individual

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