We now pass to one of the special forms which the general function of
education assumes: namely, that of direction, control, or guidance.
Of these three words, direction, control, and guidance, the last best
conveys the idea of assisting through cooperation the natural capacities
of the individuals guided; control conveys rather the notion of an
energy brought to bear from without and meeting some resistance from the
one controlled; direction is a more neutral term and suggests the
fact that the active tendencies of those directed are led in a certain
continuous course, instead of dispersing aimlessly. Direction expresses
the basic function, which tends at one extreme to become a guiding
assistance and at another, a regulation or ruling. But in any case, we
must carefully avoid a meaning sometimes read into the term "control."
It is sometimes assumed, explicitly or unconsciously, that an
individual's tendencies are naturally purely individualistic or
egoistic, and thus antisocial. Control then denotes the process by which
he is brought to subordinate his natural impulses to public or common
ends. Since, by conception, his own nature is quite alien to this
process and opposes it rather than helps it, control has in this view
a flavor of coercion or compulsion about it. Systems of government
and theories of the state have been built upon this notion, and it has
seriously affected educational ideas and practices. But there is no
ground for any such view. Individuals are certainly interested, at
times, in having their own way, and their own way may go contrary to
the ways of others. But they are also interested, and chiefly interested
upon the whole, in entering into the activities of others and taking
part in conjoint and cooperative doings. Otherwise, no such thing as
a community would be possible. And there would not even be any one
interested in furnishing the policeman to keep a semblance of harmony
unless he thought that thereby he could gain some personal advantage.
Control, in truth, means only an emphatic form of direction of powers,
and covers the regulation gained by an individual through his own
efforts quite as much as that brought about when others take the lead.
In general, every stimulus directs activity. It does not simply excite
it or stir it up, but directs it toward an object. Put the other way
around, a response is not just a re-action, a protest, as it were,
against being disturbed; it is, as the word indicates, an answer. It
meets the stimulus, and corresponds with it. There is an adaptation of
the stimulus and response to each other. A light is the stimulus to the
eye to see something, and the business of the eye is to see. If the
eyes are open and there is light, seeing occurs; the stimulus is but a
condition of the fulfillment of the proper function of the organ, not an
outside interruption. To some extent, then, all direction or control is
a guiding of activity to its own end; it is an assistance in doing fully
what some organ is already tending to do.
This general statement needs, however, to be qualified in two respects.
In the first place, except in the case of a small number of instincts,
the stimuli to which an immature human being is subject are not
sufficiently definite to call out, in the beginning, specific responses.
There is always a great deal of superfluous energy aroused. This energy
may be wasted, going aside from the point; it may also go against the
successful performance of an act. It does harm by getting in the way.
Compare the behavior of a beginner in riding a bicycle with that of the
expert. There is little axis of direction in the energies put forth;
they are largely dispersive and centrifugal. Direction involves
a focusing and fixating of action in order that it may be truly a
response, and this requires an elimination of unnecessary and confusing
movements. In the second place, although no activity can be produced in
which the person does not cooperate to some extent, yet a response may
be of a kind which does not fit into the sequence and continuity of
action. A person boxing may dodge a particular blow successfully, but in
such a way as to expose himself the next instant to a still harder
blow. Adequate control means that the successive acts are brought into
a continuous order; each act not only meets its immediate stimulus but
helps the acts which follow.
In short, direction is both simultaneous and successive. At a given
time, it requires that, from all the tendencies that are partially
called out, those be selected which center energy upon the point of
need. Successively, it requires that each act be balanced with those
which precede and come after, so that order of activity is achieved.
Focusing and ordering are thus the two aspects of direction, one
spatial, the other temporal. The first insures hitting the mark; the
second keeps the balance required for further action. Obviously, it is
not possible to separate them in practice as we have distinguished them
in idea. Activity must be centered at a given time in such a way as to
prepare for what comes next. The problem of the immediate response is
complicated by one's having to be on the lookout for future occurrences.
Two conclusions emerge from these general statements. On the one hand,
purely external direction is impossible. The environment can at most
only supply stimuli to call out responses. These responses proceed from
tendencies already possessed by the individual. Even when a person
is frightened by threats into doing something, the threats work only
because the person has an instinct of fear. If he has not, or if, though
having it, it is under his own control, the threat has no more influence
upon him than light has in causing a person to see who has no eyes.
While the customs and rules of adults furnish stimuli which direct
as well as evoke the activities of the young, the young, after all,
participate in the direction which their actions finally take. In the
strict sense, nothing can be forced upon them or into them. To overlook
this fact means to distort and pervert human nature. To take into
account the contribution made by the existing instincts and habits
of those directed is to direct them economically and wisely. Speaking
accurately, all direction is but re-direction; it shifts the activities
already going on into another channel. Unless one is cognizant of the
energies which are already in operation, one's attempts at direction
will almost surely go amiss.
On the other hand, the control afforded by the customs and regulations
of others may be short-sighted. It may accomplish its immediate effect,
but at the expense of throwing the subsequent action of the person
out of balance. A threat may, for example, prevent a person from
doing something to which he is naturally inclined by arousing fear of
disagreeable consequences if he persists. But he may be left in the
position which exposes him later on to influences which will lead him
to do even worse things. His instincts of cunning and slyness may be
aroused, so that things henceforth appeal to him on the side of evasion
and trickery more than would otherwise have been the case. Those engaged
in directing the actions of others are always in danger of overlooking
the importance of the sequential development of those they direct.
2. Modes of Social Direction. Adults are naturally most conscious of
directing the conduct of others when they are immediately aiming so
to do. As a rule, they have such an aim consciously when they find
themselves resisted; when others are doing things they do not wish them
to do. But the more permanent and influential modes of control are those
which operate from moment to moment continuously without such deliberate
intention on our part.
1. When others are not doing what we would like them to or are
threatening disobedience, we are most conscious of the need of
controlling them and of the influences by which they are controlled. In
such cases, our control becomes most direct, and at this point we are
most likely to make the mistakes just spoken of. We are even likely to
take the influence of superior force for control, forgetting that while
we may lead a horse to water we cannot make him drink; and that while we
can shut a man up in a penitentiary we cannot make him penitent. In
all such cases of immediate action upon others, we need to discriminate
between physical results and moral results. A person may be in such a
condition that forcible feeding or enforced confinement is necessary for
his own good. A child may have to be snatched with roughness away from
a fire so that he shall not be burnt. But no improvement of disposition,
no educative effect, need follow. A harsh and commanding tone may be
effectual in keeping a child away from the fire, and the same desirable
physical effect will follow as if he had been snatched away. But there
may be no more obedience of a moral sort in one case than in the other.
A man can be prevented from breaking into other persons' houses by
shutting him up, but shutting him up may not alter his disposition to
commit burglary. When we confuse a physical with an educative result,
we always lose the chance of enlisting the person's own participating
disposition in getting the result desired, and thereby of developing
within him an intrinsic and persisting direction in the right way.
In general, the occasion for the more conscious acts of control should
be limited to acts which are so instinctive or impulsive that the one
performing them has no means of foreseeing their outcome. If a person
cannot foresee the consequences of his act, and is not capable of
understanding what he is told about its outcome by those with more
experience, it is impossible for him to guide his act intelligently. In
such a state, every act is alike to him. Whatever moves him does move
him, and that is all there is to it. In some cases, it is well to permit
him to experiment, and to discover the consequences for himself in order
that he may act intelligently next time under similar circumstances. But
some courses of action are too discommoding and obnoxious to others to
allow of this course being pursued. Direct disapproval is now resorted
to. Shaming, ridicule, disfavor, rebuke, and punishment are used. Or
contrary tendencies in the child are appealed to to divert him from his
troublesome line of behavior. His sensitiveness to approbation, his hope
of winning favor by an agreeable act, are made use of to induce action
in another direction.
2. These methods of control are so obvious (because so intentionally
employed) that it would hardly be worth while to mention them if it were
not that notice may now be taken, by way of contrast, of the other more
important and permanent mode of control. This other method resides in
the ways in which persons, with whom the immature being is associated,
use things; the instrumentalities with which they accomplish their own
ends. The very existence of the social medium in which an individual
lives, moves, and has his being is the standing effective agency of
directing his activity.
This fact makes it necessary for us to examine in greater detail what
is meant by the social environment. We are given to separating from
each other the physical and social environments in which we live. The
separation is responsible on one hand for an exaggeration of the moral
importance of the more direct or personal modes of control of which
we have been speaking; and on the other hand for an exaggeration, in
current psychology and philosophy, of the intellectual possibilities of
contact with a purely physical environment. There is not, in fact, any
such thing as the direct influence of one human being on another apart
from use of the physical environment as an intermediary. A smile, a
frown, a rebuke, a word of warning or encouragement, all involve some
physical change. Otherwise, the attitude of one would not get over to
alter the attitude of another. Comparatively speaking, such modes of
influence may be regarded as personal. The physical medium is reduced to
a mere means of personal contact. In contrast with such direct modes of
mutual influence, stand associations in common pursuits involving the
use of things as means and as measures of results. Even if the mother
never told her daughter to help her, or never rebuked her for not
helping, the child would be subjected to direction in her activities
by the mere fact that she was engaged, along with the parent, in the
household life. Imitation, emulation, the need of working together,
enforce control.
If the mother hands the child something needed, the latter must reach
the thing in order to get it. Where there is giving there must be
taking. The way the child handles the thing after it is got, the use
to which it is put, is surely influenced by the fact that the child
has watched the mother. When the child sees the parent looking for
something, it is as natural for it also to look for the object and to
give it over when it finds it, as it was, under other circumstances, to
receive it. Multiply such an instance by the thousand details of daily
intercourse, and one has a picture of the most permanent and enduring
method of giving direction to the activities of the young.
In saying this, we are only repeating what was said previously
about participating in a joint activity as the chief way of forming
disposition. We have explicitly added, however, the recognition of the
part played in the joint activity by the use of things. The philosophy
of learning has been unduly dominated by a false psychology. It is
frequently stated that a person learns by merely having the qualities of
things impressed upon his mind through the gateway of the senses. Having
received a store of sensory impressions, association or some power of
mental synthesis is supposed to combine them into ideas--into things
with a meaning. An object, stone, orange, tree, chair, is supposed to
convey different impressions of color, shape, size, hardness, smell,
taste, etc., which aggregated together constitute the characteristic
meaning of each thing. But as matter of fact, it is the characteristic
use to which the thing is put, because of its specific qualities, which
supplies the meaning with which it is identified. A chair is a thing
which is put to one use; a table, a thing which is employed for another
purpose; an orange is a thing which costs so much, which is grown in
warm climes, which is eaten, and when eaten has an agreeable odor and
refreshing taste, etc.
The difference between an adjustment to a physical stimulus and a mental
act is that the latter involves response to a thing in its meaning;
the former does not. A noise may make me jump without my mind being
implicated. When I hear a noise and run and get water and put out a
blaze, I respond intelligently; the sound meant fire, and fire meant
need of being extinguished. I bump into a stone, and kick it to one side
purely physically. I put it to one side for fear some one will stumble
upon it, intelligently; I respond to a meaning which the thing has. I am
startled by a thunderclap whether I recognize it or not--more likely, if
I do not recognize it. But if I say, either out loud or to myself, that
is thunder, I respond to the disturbance as a meaning. My behavior has
a mental quality. When things have a meaning for us, we mean (intend,
propose) what we do: when they do not, we act blindly, unconsciously,
unintelligently.
In both kinds of responsive adjustment, our activities are directed or
controlled. But in the merely blind response, direction is also blind.
There may be training, but there is no education. Repeated responses to
recurrent stimuli may fix a habit of acting in a certain way. All of us
have many habits of whose import we are quite unaware, since they were
formed without our knowing what we were about. Consequently they possess
us, rather than we them. They move us; they control us. Unless we become
aware of what they accomplish, and pass judgment upon the worth of the
result, we do not control them. A child might be made to bow every time
he met a certain person by pressure on his neck muscles, and bowing
would finally become automatic. It would not, however, be an act of
recognition or deference on his part, till he did it with a certain end
in view--as having a certain meaning. And not till he knew what he was
about and performed the act for the sake of its meaning could he be said
to be "brought up" or educated to act in a certain way. To have an idea
of a thing is thus not just to get certain sensations from it. It is
to be able to respond to the thing in view of its place in an inclusive
scheme of action; it is to foresee the drift and probable consequence of
the action of the thing upon us and of our action upon it. To have the
same ideas about things which others have, to be like-minded with them,
and thus to be really members of a social group, is therefore to attach
the same meanings to things and to acts which others attach. Otherwise,
there is no common understanding, and no community life. But in a shared
activity, each person refers what he is doing to what the other is doing
and vice-versa. That is, the activity of each is placed in the same
inclusive situation. To pull at a rope at which others happen to be
pulling is not a shared or conjoint activity, unless the pulling is
done with knowledge that others are pulling and for the sake of either
helping or hindering what they are doing. A pin may pass in the course
of its manufacture through the hands of many persons. But each may do
his part without knowledge of what others do or without any reference
to what they do; each may operate simply for the sake of a separate
result--his own pay. There is, in this case, no common consequence to
which the several acts are referred, and hence no genuine intercourse
or association, in spite of juxtaposition, and in spite of the fact
that their respective doings contribute to a single outcome. But if each
views the consequences of his own acts as having a bearing upon what
others are doing and takes into account the consequences of their
behavior upon himself, then there is a common mind; a common intent
in behavior. There is an understanding set up between the different
contributors; and this common understanding controls the action of each.
Suppose that conditions were so arranged that one person automatically
caught a ball and then threw it to another person who caught and
automatically returned it; and that each so acted without knowing where
the ball came from or went to. Clearly, such action would be without
point or meaning. It might be physically controlled, but it would not be
socially directed. But suppose that each becomes aware of what the
other is doing, and becomes interested in the other's action and thereby
interested in what he is doing himself as connected with the action of
the other. The behavior of each would then be intelligent; and socially
intelligent and guided. Take one more example of a less imaginary kind.
An infant is hungry, and cries while food is prepared in his presence.
If he does not connect his own state with what others are doing, nor
what they are doing with his own satisfaction, he simply reacts with
increasing impatience to his own increasing discomfort. He is physically
controlled by his own organic state. But when he makes a back and forth
reference, his whole attitude changes. He takes an interest, as we say;
he takes note and watches what others are doing. He no longer reacts
just to his own hunger, but behaves in the light of what others are
doing for its prospective satisfaction. In that way, he also no
longer just gives way to hunger without knowing it, but he notes, or
recognizes, or identifies his own state. It becomes an object for him.
His attitude toward it becomes in some degree intelligent. And in such
noting of the meaning of the actions of others and of his own state, he
is socially directed.
It will be recalled that our main proposition had two sides. One of them
has now been dealt with: namely, that physical things do not influence
mind (or form ideas and beliefs) except as they are implicated in action
for prospective consequences. The other point is persons modify one
another's dispositions only through the special use they make of
physical conditions. Consider first the case of so-called expressive
movements to which others are sensitive; blushing, smiling, frowning,
clinching of fists, natural gestures of all kinds. In themselves, these
are not expressive. They are organic parts of a person's attitude. One
does not blush to show modesty or embarrassment to others, but because
the capillary circulation alters in response to stimuli. But others
use the blush, or a slightly perceptible tightening of the muscles of
a person with whom they are associated, as a sign of the state in
which that person finds himself, and as an indication of what course
to pursue. The frown signifies an imminent rebuke for which one must
prepare, or an uncertainty and hesitation which one must, if possible,
remove by saying or doing something to restore confidence. A man at some
distance is waving his arms wildly. One has only to preserve an attitude
of detached indifference, and the motions of the other person will be on
the level of any remote physical change which we happen to note. If we
have no concern or interest, the waving of the arms is as meaningless
to us as the gyrations of the arms of a windmill. But if interest is
aroused, we begin to participate. We refer his action to something we
are doing ourselves or that we should do. We have to judge the meaning
of his act in order to decide what to do. Is he beckoning for help? Is
he warning us of an explosion to be set off, against which we should
guard ourselves? In one case, his action means to run toward him; in the
other case, to run away. In any case, it is the change he effects in
the physical environment which is a sign to us of how we should conduct
ourselves. Our action is socially controlled because we endeavor to
refer what we are to do to the same situation in which he is acting.
Language is, as we have already seen (ante, p. 15) a case of this joint
reference of our own action and that of another to a common situation.
Hence its unrivaled significance as a means of social direction. But
language would not be this efficacious instrument were it not that
it takes place upon a background of coarser and more tangible use of
physical means to accomplish results. A child sees persons with whom he
lives using chairs, hats, tables, spades, saws, plows, horses, money in
certain ways. If he has any share at all in what they are doing, he is
led thereby to use things in the same way, or to use other things in a
way which will fit in. If a chair is drawn up to a table, it is a sign
that he is to sit in it; if a person extends his right hand, he is to
extend his; and so on in a never ending stream of detail. The prevailing
habits of using the products of human art and the raw materials of
nature constitute by all odds the deepest and most pervasive mode
of social control. When children go to school, they already have
"minds"--they have knowledge and dispositions of judgment which may
be appealed to through the use of language. But these "minds" are the
organized habits of intelligent response which they have previously
required by putting things to use in connection with the way
other persons use things. The control is inescapable; it saturates
disposition. The net outcome of the discussion is that the fundamental
means of control is not personal but intellectual. It is not "moral" in
the sense that a person is moved by direct personal appeal from others,
important as is this method at critical junctures. It consists in
the habits of understanding, which are set up in using objects in
correspondence with others, whether by way of cooperation and assistance
or rivalry and competition. Mind as a concrete thing is precisely
the power to understand things in terms of the use made of them; a
socialized mind is the power to understand them in terms of the use to
which they are turned in joint or shared situations. And mind in this
sense is the method of social control.
3. Imitation and Social Psychology. We have already noted the defects of
a psychology of learning which places the individual mind naked, as
it were, in contact with physical objects, and which believes that
knowledge, ideas, and beliefs accrue from their interaction. Only
comparatively recently has the predominating influence of association
with fellow beings in the formation of mental and moral disposition been
perceived. Even now it is usually treated as a kind of adjunct to an
alleged method of learning by direct contact with things, and as merely
supplementing knowledge of the physical world with knowledge of persons.
The purport of our discussion is that such a view makes an absurd and
impossible separation between persons and things. Interaction with
things may form habits of external adjustment. But it leads to activity
having a meaning and conscious intent only when things are used to
produce a result. And the only way one person can modify the mind of
another is by using physical conditions, crude or artificial, so as
to evoke some answering activity from him. Such are our two main
conclusions. It is desirable to amplify and enforce them by placing them
in contrast with the theory which uses a psychology of supposed direct
relationships of human beings to one another as an adjunct to the
psychology of the supposed direct relation of an individual to physical
objects. In substance, this so-called social psychology has been built
upon the notion of imitation. Consequently, we shall discuss the nature
and role of imitation in the formation of mental disposition.
According to this theory, social control of individuals rests upon the
instinctive tendency of individuals to imitate or copy the actions of
others. The latter serve as models. The imitative instinct is so strong
that the young devote themselves to conforming to the patterns set by
others and reproducing them in their own scheme of behavior. According
to our theory, what is here called imitation is a misleading name for
partaking with others in a use of things which leads to consequences of
common interest. The basic error in the current notion of imitation is
that it puts the cart before the horse. It takes an effect for the
cause of the effect. There can be no doubt that individuals in forming a
social group are like-minded; they understand one another. They tend
to act with the same controlling ideas, beliefs, and intentions, given
similar circumstances. Looked at from without, they might be said to
be engaged in "imitating" one another. In the sense that they are doing
much the same sort of thing in much the same sort of way, this would be
true enough. But "imitation" throws no light upon why they so act; it
repeats the fact as an explanation of itself. It is an explanation of
the same order as the famous saying that opium puts men to sleep because
of its dormitive power.
Objective likeness of acts and the mental satisfaction found in being in
conformity with others are baptized by the name imitation. This social
fact is then taken for a psychological force, which produced the
likeness. A considerable portion of what is called imitation is simply
the fact that persons being alike in structure respond in the same way
to like stimuli. Quite independently of imitation, men on being insulted
get angry and attack the insulter. This statement may be met by citing
the undoubted fact that response to an insult takes place in different
ways in groups having different customs. In one group, it may be met by
recourse to fisticuffs, in another by a challenge to a duel, in a third
by an exhibition of contemptuous disregard. This happens, so it is said,
because the model set for imitation is different. But there is no need
to appeal to imitation. The mere fact that customs are different means
that the actual stimuli to behavior are different. Conscious instruction
plays a part; prior approvals and disapprovals have a large influence.
Still more effective is the fact that unless an individual acts in the
way current in his group, he is literally out of it. He can associate
with others on intimate and equal terms only by behaving in the way in
which they behave. The pressure that comes from the fact that one is
let into the group action by acting in one way and shut out by acting
in another way is unremitting. What is called the effect of imitation
is mainly the product of conscious instruction and of the selective
influence exercised by the unconscious confirmations and ratifications
of those with whom one associates.
Suppose that some one rolls a ball to a child; he catches it and rolls
it back, and the game goes on. Here the stimulus is not just the
sight of the ball, or the sight of the other rolling it. It is the
situation--the game which is playing. The response is not merely rolling
the ball back; it is rolling it back so that the other one may catch and
return it,--that the game may continue. The "pattern" or model is not
the action of the other person. The whole situation requires that each
should adapt his action in view of what the other person has done and is
to do. Imitation may come in but its role is subordinate. The child has
an interest on his own account; he wants to keep it going. He may then
note how the other person catches and holds the ball in order to improve
his own acts. He imitates the means of doing, not the end or thing to be
done. And he imitates the means because he wishes, on his own behalf, as
part of his own initiative, to take an effective part in the game. One
has only to consider how completely the child is dependent from his
earliest days for successful execution of his purposes upon fitting his
acts into those of others to see what a premium is put upon behaving as
others behave, and of developing an understanding of them in order that
he may so behave. The pressure for likemindedness in action from this
source is so great that it is quite superfluous to appeal to imitation.
As matter of fact, imitation of ends, as distinct from imitation of
means which help to reach ends, is a superficial and transitory affair
which leaves little effect upon disposition. Idiots are especially apt
at this kind of imitation; it affects outward acts but not the meaning
of their performance. When we find children engaging in this sort of
mimicry, instead of encouraging them (as we would do if it were an
important means of social control) we are more likely to rebuke them
as apes, monkeys, parrots, or copy cats. Imitation of means of
accomplishment is, on the other hand, an intelligent act. It involves
close observation, and judicious selection of what will enable one to do
better something which he already is trying to do. Used for a purpose,
the imitative instinct may, like any other instinct, become a factor in
the development of effective action.
This excursus should, accordingly, have the effect of reinforcing the
conclusion that genuine social control means the formation of a certain
mental disposition; a way of understanding objects, events, and acts
which enables one to participate effectively in associated activities.
Only the friction engendered by meeting resistance from others leads
to the view that it takes place by forcing a line of action contrary to
natural inclinations. Only failure to take account of the situations
in which persons are mutually concerned (or interested in acting
responsively to one another) leads to treating imitation as the chief
agent in promoting social control.
4. Some Applications to Education. Why does a savage group perpetuate
savagery, and a civilized group civilization? Doubtless the first answer
to occur to mind is because savages are savages; being of low-grade
intelligence and perhaps defective moral sense. But careful study
has made it doubtful whether their native capacities are appreciably
inferior to those of civilized man. It has made it certain that native
differences are not sufficient to account for the difference in culture.
In a sense the mind of savage peoples is an effect, rather than a cause,
of their backward institutions. Their social activities are such as to
restrict their objects of attention and interest, and hence to limit
the stimuli to mental development. Even as regards the objects that come
within the scope of attention, primitive social customs tend to arrest
observation and imagination upon qualities which do not fructify in the
mind. Lack of control of natural forces means that a scant number of
natural objects enter into associated behavior. Only a small number of
natural resources are utilized and they are not worked for what they are
worth. The advance of civilization means that a larger number of natural
forces and objects have been transformed into instrumentalities of
action, into means for securing ends. We start not so much with superior
capacities as with superior stimuli for evocation and direction of
our capacities. The savage deals largely with crude stimuli; we have
weighted stimuli. Prior human efforts have made over natural conditions.
As they originally existed they were indifferent to human endeavors.
Every domesticated plant and animal, every tool, every utensil, every
appliance, every manufactured article, every esthetic decoration,
every work of art means a transformation of conditions once hostile
or indifferent to characteristic human activities into friendly and
favoring conditions. Because the activities of children today are
controlled by these selected and charged stimuli, children are able to
traverse in a short lifetime what the race has needed slow, tortured
ages to attain. The dice have been loaded by all the successes which
have preceded.
Stimuli conducive to economical and effective response, such as our
system of roads and means of transportation, our ready command of heat,
light, and electricity, our ready-made machines and apparatus for every
purpose, do not, by themselves or in their aggregate, constitute a
civilization. But the uses to which they are put are civilization,
and without the things the uses would be impossible. Time otherwise
necessarily devoted to wresting a livelihood from a grudging environment
and securing a precarious protection against its inclemencies is
freed. A body of knowledge is transmitted, the legitimacy of which
is guaranteed by the fact that the physical equipment in which it is
incarnated leads to results that square with the other facts of nature.
Thus these appliances of art supply a protection, perhaps our chief
protection, against a recrudescence of these superstitious beliefs,
those fanciful myths and infertile imaginings about nature in which so
much of the best intellectual power of the past has been spent. If we
add one other factor, namely, that such appliances be not only used,
but used in the interests of a truly shared or associated life, then
the appliances become the positive resources of civilization. If Greece,
with a scant tithe of our material resources, achieved a worthy and
noble intellectual and artistic career, it is because Greece operated
for social ends such resources as it had. But whatever the situation,
whether one of barbarism or civilization, whether one of stinted control
of physical forces, or of partial enslavement to a mechanism not yet
made tributary to a shared experience, things as they enter into action
furnish the educative conditions of daily life and direct the formation
of mental and moral disposition.
Intentional education signifies, as we have already seen, a specially
selected environment, the selection being made on the basis of materials
and method specifically promoting growth in the desired direction. Since
language represents the physical conditions that have been subjected
to the maximum transformation in the interests of social life--physical
things which have lost their original quality in becoming social
tools--it is appropriate that language should play a large part compared
with other appliances. By it we are led to share vicariously in past
human experience, thus widening and enriching the experience of the
present. We are enabled, symbolically and imaginatively, to anticipate
situations. In countless ways, language condenses meanings that record
social outcomes and presage social outlooks. So significant is it of
a liberal share in what is worth while in life that unlettered and
uneducated have become almost synonymous.
The emphasis in school upon this particular tool has, however, its
dangers--dangers which are not theoretical but exhibited in practice.
Why is it, in spite of the fact that teaching by pouring in, learning by
a passive absorption, are universally condemned, that they are still so
entrenched in practice? That education is not an affair of "telling"
and being told, but an active and constructive process, is a principle
almost as generally violated in practice as conceded in theory. Is not
this deplorable situation due to the fact that the doctrine is itself
merely told? It is preached; it is lectured; it is written about. But
its enactment into practice requires that the school environment be
equipped with agencies for doing, with tools and physical materials, to
an extent rarely attained. It requires that methods of instruction and
administration be modified to allow and to secure direct and continuous
occupations with things. Not that the use of language as an educational
resource should lessen; but that its use should be more vital and
fruitful by having its normal connection with shared activities. "These
things ought ye to have done, and not to have left the others
undone." And for the school "these things" mean equipment with the
instrumentalities of cooperative or joint activity.
For when the schools depart from the educational conditions effective in
the out-of-school environment, they necessarily substitute a bookish, a
pseudo-intellectual spirit for a social spirit. Children doubtless go to
school to learn, but it has yet to be proved that learning occurs most
adequately when it is made a separate conscious business. When treating
it as a business of this sort tends to preclude the social sense which
comes from sharing in an activity of common concern and value, the
effort at isolated intellectual learning contradicts its own aim. We may
secure motor activity and sensory excitation by keeping an individual by
himself, but we cannot thereby get him to understand the meaning which
things have in the life of which he is a part. We may secure technical
specialized ability in algebra, Latin, or botany, but not the kind of
intelligence which directs ability to useful ends. Only by engaging in
a joint activity, where one person's use of material and tools is
consciously referred to the use other persons are making of their
capacities and appliances, is a social direction of disposition
attained.
Summary. The natural or native impulses of the young do not agree with
the life-customs of the group into which they are born. Consequently
they have to be directed or guided. This control is not the same thing
as physical compulsion; it consists in centering the impulses acting
at any one time upon some specific end and in introducing an order of
continuity into the sequence of acts. The action of others is always
influenced by deciding what stimuli shall call out their actions. But
in some cases as in commands, prohibitions, approvals, and disapprovals,
the stimuli proceed from persons with a direct view to influencing
action. Since in such cases we are most conscious of controlling the
action of others, we are likely to exaggerate the importance of this
sort of control at the expense of a more permanent and effective method.
The basic control resides in the nature of the situations in which the
young take part. In social situations the young have to refer their
way of acting to what others are doing and make it fit in. This directs
their action to a common result, and gives an understanding common to
the participants. For all mean the same thing, even when performing
different acts. This common understanding of the means and ends of
action is the essence of social control. It is indirect, or emotional
and intellectual, not direct or personal. Moreover it is intrinsic to
the disposition of the person, not external and coercive. To achieve
this internal control through identity of interest and understanding
is the business of education. While books and conversation can do much,
these agencies are usually relied upon too exclusively. Schools require
for their full efficiency more opportunity for conjoint activities in
which those instructed take part, so that they may acquire a social
sense of their own powers and of the materials and appliances used.