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.
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 be 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 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 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. If 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 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 purposeful activity controlled by perception of
facts and their relationships to one another. To have a mind to do a
thing is to foresee a future possibility; it is to have a plan for its
accomplishment; it is to note the means which make the plan capable of
execution and the obstructions in the way,--or, if it is really a mind
to do the thing and not a vague aspiration--it is to have a plan which
takes account of resources and difficulties. Mind is capacity to refer
present conditions to future results, and future consequences to present
conditions. And these traits are just what is meant by having an aim
or a purpose. A man is stupid or blind or unintelligent--lacking in
mind--just in the degree in which in any activity he does not know what
he is about, namely, the probable consequences of his acts. A man is
imperfectly intelligent when he contents himself with looser guesses
about the outcome than is needful, just taking a chance with his luck,
or when he forms plans apart from study of the actual conditions,
including his own capacities. Such relative absence of mind means to
make our feelings the measure of what is to happen. To be intelligent we
must "stop, look, listen" in making the plan of an activity.
To identify acting with an aim and intelligent activity is enough to
show its value--its function in experience. We are only too given to
making an entity out of the abstract noun "consciousness." We forget
that it comes from the adjective "conscious." To be conscious is to
be aware of 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 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 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 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, is
his end. 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 fulfilling 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; it is something to be
attained and possessed. When one has such a notion, activity is 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 is 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
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 blocked. 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. 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 surely
do if imposed from without or accepted on authority) it does harm.
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, there is a disposition to take considerations which are dear
to the hearts of adults and set them up as 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 construction of specific procedures, and
unless these procedures test, correct, and amplify the aim, the latter
is worthless. Instead of helping the specific task of teaching, it
prevents the use of ordinary judgment in observing and sizing up the
situation. It operates to exclude recognition of everything except what
squares up with the fixed end in view. Every rigid aim just because
it is rigidly given seems to render it unnecessary to give careful
attention to concrete conditions. Since it must apply anyhow, what is
the use of noting details which do not count?
The vice of externally imposed ends has deep roots. Teachers receive
them from superior authorities; these authorities accept them from what
is current in the community. The teachers impose them upon children. As
a first consequence, the intelligence of the teacher is not free; it is
confined to receiving the aims laid down from above. Too rarely is
the individual teacher so free from the dictation of authoritative
supervisor, textbook on methods, prescribed course of study, etc., that
he can let his mind come to close quarters with the pupil's mind and
the subject matter. This distrust of the teacher's experience is then
reflected in lack of confidence in the responses of pupils. The latter
receive their aims through a double or treble external imposition,
and are constantly confused by the conflict between the aims which are
natural to their own 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. 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 in a 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 statement another set of
questions, calling for other observations. Then the more general ends we
have, the better. One statement will emphasize what another slurs over.
What a plurality of hypotheses does for the scientific investigator, a
plurality of stated aims may do for the instructor.
Summary. An aim denotes the result of any natural process brought to
consciousness and made a factor in determining present observation
and choice of ways of acting. It signifies that an activity has
become intelligent. Specifically it means foresight of the alternative
consequences attendant upon acting in a given situation in different
ways, and the use of what is anticipated to direct observation and
experiment. A true aim is thus opposed at every point to an aim which is
imposed upon a process of action from without. The latter is fixed and
rigid; it is not a stimulus to intelligence in the given situation, but
is an externally dictated order to do such and such things. Instead of
connecting directly with present activities, it is remote, divorced from
the means by which it is to be reached. Instead of suggesting a
freer and better balanced activity, it is a limit set to activity. In
education, the currency of these externally imposed aims is responsible
for the emphasis put upon the notion of preparation for a remote future
and for rendering the work of both teacher and pupil mechanical and
slavish.