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, 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 their 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 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. 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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. It 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 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
from 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 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 connections and continuities of the
activities in which we are engaged. The activity begins in an impulsive
form; that is, it is blind. It 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 burned. 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 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 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 "skill" 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 involved, but hitherto unperceived.
The later outcome thus reveals the meaning of the earlier, while the
experience as a whole establishes a bent or disposition toward the
things possessing this meaning. Every such continuous experience
or activity is educative, and all education resides in having such
experiences.
It remains only to point out (what will receive more ample attention
later) that the reconstruction of experience may be social as well as
personal. For purposes of simplification we have spoken in the earlier
chapters somewhat as if the education of the immature which fills them
with the spirit of the social group to which they belong, were a sort of
catching up of the child with the aptitudes and resources of the adult
group. In static societies, societies which make the maintenance of
established custom their measure of value, this conception applies in
the main. But not in progressive communities. They endeavor to shape the
experiences of the young so that instead of reproducing current habits,
better habits shall be formed, and thus the future adult society be
an improvement on their own. Men have long had some intimation of the
extent to which education may be consciously used to eliminate obvious
social evils through starting the young on paths which shall not produce
these ills, and some idea of the extent in which education may be made
an instrument of realizing the better hopes of men. But we are doubtless
far from realizing the potential efficacy of education as a constructive
agency of improving society, from realizing that it represents not only
a development of children and youth but also of the future society of
which they will be the constituents.
Summary. Education may be conceived either retrospectively or
prospectively. That is to say, it may be treated as process of
accommodating the future to the past, or as an utilization of the past
for a resource in a developing future. The former finds its standards
and patterns in what has gone before. The mind may be regarded as a
group of contents resulting from having certain things presented. In
this case, the earlier presentations constitute the material to which
the later are to be assimilated. Emphasis upon the value of the early
experiences of immature beings is most important, especially because of
the tendency to regard them as of little account. But these experiences
do not consist of externally presented material, but of interaction of
native activities with the environment which progressively modifies both
the activities and the environment. The defect of the Herbartian theory
of formation through presentations consists in slighting this constant
interaction and change. The same principle of criticism applies to
theories which find the primary subject matter of study in the cultural
products--especially the literary products--of man's history. Isolated
from their connection with the present environment in which individuals
have to act, they become a kind of rival and distracting environment.
Their value lies in their use to increase the meaning of the things with
which we have actively to do at the present time. The idea of education
advanced in these chapters is formally summed up in the idea of
continuous reconstruction of experience, an idea which is marked off
from education as preparation for a remote future, as unfolding, as
external formation, and as recapitulation of the past.