The trinity of school topics is subject matter, methods, and
administration or government. We have been concerned with the two former
in recent chapters. It remains to disentangle them from the context in
which they have been referred to, and discuss explicitly their nature.
We shall begin with the topic of method, since that lies closest to the
considerations of the last chapter. Before taking it up, it may be well,
however, to call express attention to one implication of our theory; the
connection of subject matter and method with each other. The idea
that mind and the world of things and persons are two separate
and independent realms--a theory which philosophically is known as
dualism--carries with it the conclusion that method and subject matter
of instruction are separate affairs. Subject matter then becomes a
ready-made systematized classification of the facts and principles
of the world of nature and man. Method then has for its province a
consideration of the ways in which this antecedent subject matter may
be best presented to and impressed upon the mind; or, a consideration
of the ways in which the mind may be externally brought to bear upon the
matter so as to facilitate its acquisition and possession. In theory, at
least, one might deduce from a science of the mind as something existing
by itself a complete theory of methods of learning, with no knowledge of
the subjects to which the methods are to be applied. Since many who
are actually most proficient in various branches of subject matter
are wholly innocent of these methods, this state of affairs gives
opportunity for the retort that pedagogy, as an alleged science
of methods of the mind in learning, is futile;--a mere screen for
concealing the necessity a teacher is under of profound and accurate
acquaintance with the subject in hand.
But since thinking is a directed movement of subject matter to a
completing issue, and since mind is the deliberate and intentional phase
of the process, the notion of any such split is radically false. The
fact that the material of a science is organized is evidence that it has
already been subjected to intelligence; it has been methodized, so
to say. Zoology as a systematic branch of knowledge represents crude,
scattered facts of our ordinary acquaintance with animals after
they have been subjected to careful examination, to deliberate
supplementation, and to arrangement to bring out connections which
assist observation, memory, and further inquiry. Instead of furnishing a
starting point for learning, they mark out a consummation. Method means
that arrangement of subject matter which makes it most effective in use.
Never is method something outside of the material.
How about method from the standpoint of an individual who is dealing
with subject matter? Again, it is not something external. It is simply
an effective treatment of material--efficiency meaning such treatment as
utilizes the material (puts it to a purpose) with a minimum of waste of
time and energy. We can distinguish a way of acting, and discuss it by
itself; but the way exists only as way-of-dealing-with-material. Method
is not antithetical to subject matter; it is the effective direction
of subject matter to desired results. It is antithetical to random and
ill-considered action,--ill-considered signifying ill-adapted.
The statement that method means directed movement of subject matter
towards ends is formal. An illustration may give it content. Every
artist must have a method, a technique, in doing his work. Piano playing
is not hitting the keys at random. It is an orderly way of using them,
and the order is not something which exists ready-made in the musician's
hands or brain prior to an activity dealing with the piano. Order is
found in the disposition of acts which use the piano and the hands and
brain so as to achieve the result intended. It is the action of the
piano directed to accomplish the purpose of the piano as a musical
instrument. It is the same with "pedagogical" method. The only
difference is that the piano is a mechanism constructed in advance for
a single end; while the material of study is capable of indefinite uses.
But even in this regard the illustration may apply if we consider the
infinite variety of kinds of music which a piano may produce, and
the variations in technique required in the different musical results
secured. Method in any case is but an effective way of employing some
material for some end.
These considerations may be generalized by going back to the conception
of experience. Experience as the perception of the connection between
something tried and something undergone in consequence is a process.
Apart from effort to control the course which the process takes, there
is no distinction of subject matter and method. There is simply an
activity which includes both what an individual does and what the
environment does. A piano player who had perfect mastery of his
instrument would have no occasion to distinguish between his
contribution and that of the piano. In well-formed, smooth-running
functions of any sort,--skating, conversing, hearing music, enjoying a
landscape,--there is no consciousness of separation of the method of the
person and of the subject matter. In whole-hearted play and work there
is the same phenomenon.
When we reflect upon an experience instead of just having it, we
inevitably distinguish between our own attitude and the objects toward
which we sustain the attitude. When a man is eating, he is eating food.
He does not divide his act into eating and food. But if he makes a
scientific investigation of the act, such a discrimination is the first
thing he would effect. He would examine on the one hand the properties
of the nutritive material, and on the other hand the acts of the
organism in appropriating and digesting. Such reflection upon experience
gives rise to a distinction of what we experience (the experienced) and
the experiencing--the how. When we give names to this distinction we
have subject matter and method as our terms. There is the thing seen,
heard, loved, hated, imagined, and there is the act of seeing, hearing,
loving, hating, imagining, etc.
This distinction is so natural and so important for certain purposes,
that we are only too apt to regard it as a separation in existence and
not as a distinction in thought. Then we make a division between a self
and the environment or world. This separation is the root of the dualism
of method and subject matter. That is, we assume that knowing, feeling,
willing, etc., are things which belong to the self or mind in its
isolation, and which then may be brought to bear upon an independent
subject matter. We assume that the things which belong in isolation to
the self or mind have their own laws of operation irrespective of the
modes of active energy of the object. These laws are supposed to furnish
method. It would be no less absurd to suppose that men can eat without
eating something, or that the structure and movements of the jaws,
throat muscles, the digestive activities of stomach, etc., are not what
they are because of the material with which their activity is engaged.
Just as the organs of the organism are a continuous part of the very
world in which food materials exist, so the capacities of seeing,
hearing, loving, imagining are intrinsically connected with the subject
matter of the world. They are more truly ways in which the environment
enters into experience and functions there than they are independent
acts brought to bear upon things. Experience, in short, is not a
combination of mind and world, subject and object, method and subject
matter, but is a single continuous interaction of a great diversity
(literally countless in number) of energies.
For the purpose of controlling the course or direction which the moving
unity of experience takes we draw a mental distinction between the
how and the what. While there is no way of walking or of eating or of
learning over and above the actual walking, eating, and studying, there
are certain elements in the act which give the key to its more effective
control. Special attention to these elements makes them more obvious
to perception (letting other factors recede for the time being from
conspicuous recognition). Getting an idea of how the experience proceeds
indicates to us what factors must be secured or modified in order that
it may go on more successfully. This is only a somewhat elaborate way
of saying that if a man watches carefully the growth of several plants,
some of which do well and some of which amount to little or nothing, he
may be able to detect the special conditions upon which the prosperous
development of a plant depends. These conditions, stated in an orderly
sequence, would constitute the method or way or manner of its growth.
There is no difference between the growth of a plant and the prosperous
development of an experience. It is not easy, in either case, to seize
upon just the factors which make for its best movement. But study of
cases of success and failure and minute and extensive comparison, helps
to seize upon causes. When we have arranged these causes in order, we
have a method of procedure or a technique.
A consideration of some evils in education that flow from the isolation
of method from subject matter will make the point more definite.
(I) In the first place, there is the neglect (of which we have spoken)
of concrete situations of experience. There can be no discovery of
a method without cases to be studied. The method is derived from
observation of what actually happens, with a view to seeing that it
happen better next time. But in instruction and discipline, there is
rarely sufficient opportunity for children and youth to have the direct
normal experiences from which educators might derive an idea of method
or order of best development. Experiences are had under conditions
of such constraint that they throw little or no light upon the normal
course of an experience to its fruition. "Methods" have then to be
authoritatively recommended to teachers, instead of being an expression
of their own intelligent observations. Under such circumstances, they
have a mechanical uniformity, assumed to be alike for all minds. Where
flexible personal experiences are promoted by providing an environment
which calls out directed occupations in work and play, the methods
ascertained will vary with individuals--for it is certain that each
individual has something characteristic in his way of going at things.
(ii) In the second place, the notion of methods isolated from subject
matter is responsible for the false conceptions of discipline and
interest already noted. When the effective way of managing material
is treated as something ready-made apart from material, there are just
three possible ways in which to establish a relationship lacking by
assumption. One is to utilize excitement, shock of pleasure, tickling
the palate. Another is to make the consequences of not attending
painful; we may use the menace of harm to motivate concern with the
alien subject matter. Or a direct appeal may be made to the person to
put forth effort without any reason. We may rely upon immediate strain
of "will." In practice, however, the latter method is effectual only
when instigated by fear of unpleasant results. (iii) In the third place,
the act of learning is made a direct and conscious end in itself. Under
normal conditions, learning is a product and reward of occupation with
subject matter. Children do not set out, consciously, to learn walking
or talking. One sets out to give his impulses for communication and for
fuller intercourse with others a show. He learns in consequence of his
direct activities. The better methods of teaching a child, say, to read,
follow the same road. They do not fix his attention upon the fact that
he has to learn something and so make his attitude self-conscious
and constrained. They engage his activities, and in the process of
engagement he learns: the same is true of the more successful methods in
dealing with number or whatever. But when the subject matter is not used
in carrying forward impulses and habits to significant results, it is
just something to be learned. The pupil's attitude to it is just that
of having to learn it. Conditions more unfavorable to an alert and
concentrated response would be hard to devise. Frontal attacks are even
more wasteful in learning than in war. This does not mean, however, that
students are to be seduced unaware into preoccupation with lessons. It
means that they shall be occupied with them for real reasons or ends,
and not just as something to be learned. This is accomplished whenever
the pupil perceives the place occupied by the subject matter in the
fulfilling of some experience.
(iv) In the fourth place, under the influence of the conception of the
separation of mind and material, method tends to be reduced to a cut and
dried routine, to following mechanically prescribed steps. No one can
tell in how many schoolrooms children reciting in arithmetic or grammar
are compelled to go through, under the alleged sanction of method,
certain preordained verbal formulae. Instead of being encouraged to
attack their topics directly, experimenting with methods that seem
promising and learning to discriminate by the consequences that accrue,
it is assumed that there is one fixed method to be followed. It is
also naively assumed that if the pupils make their statements and
explanations in a certain form of "analysis," their mental habits will
in time conform. Nothing has brought pedagogical theory into greater
disrepute than the belief that it is identified with handing out to
teachers recipes and models to be followed in teaching. Flexibility and
initiative in dealing with problems are characteristic of any conception
to which method is a way of managing material to develop a conclusion.
Mechanical rigid woodenness is an inevitable corollary of any theory
which separates mind from activity motivated by a purpose.
2. Method as General and as Individual. In brief, the method of teaching
is the method of an art, of action intelligently directed by ends. But
the practice of a fine art is far from being a matter of extemporized
inspirations. Study of the operations and results of those in the past
who have greatly succeeded is essential. There is always a tradition, or
schools of art, definite enough to impress beginners, and often to take
them captive. Methods of artists in every branch depend upon thorough
acquaintance with materials and tools; the painter must know canvas,
pigments, brushes, and the technique of manipulation of all his
appliances. Attainment of this knowledge requires persistent and
concentrated attention to objective materials. The artist studies the
progress of his own attempts to see what succeeds and what fails. The
assumption that there are no alternatives between following ready-made
rules and trusting to native gifts, the inspiration of the moment and
undirected "hard work," is contradicted by the procedures of every art.
Such matters as knowledge of the past, of current technique, of
materials, of the ways in which one's own best results are assured,
supply the material for what may be called general method. There exists
a cumulative body of fairly stable methods for reaching results, a body
authorized by past experience and by intellectual analysis, which an
individual ignores at his peril. As was pointed out in the discussion of
habit-forming (ante, p. 49), there is always a danger that these methods
will become mechanized and rigid, mastering an agent instead of being
powers at command for his own ends. But it is also true that the
innovator who achieves anything enduring, whose work is more than a
passing sensation, utilizes classic methods more than may appear to
himself or to his critics. He devotes them to new uses, and in so far
transforms them.
Education also has its general methods. And if the application of this
remark is more obvious in the case of the teacher than of the pupil, it
is equally real in the case of the latter. Part of his learning, a very
important part, consists in becoming master of the methods which the
experience of others has shown to be more efficient in like cases of
getting knowledge. 1 These general methods are in no way opposed to
individual initiative and originality--to personal ways of doing things.
On the contrary they are reinforcements of them. For there is radical
difference between even the most general method and a prescribed rule.
The latter is a direct guide to action; the former operates indirectly
through the enlightenment it supplies as to ends and means. It operates,
that is to say, through intelligence, and not through conformity to
orders externally imposed. Ability to use even in a masterly way an
established technique gives no warranty of artistic work, for the latter
also depends upon an animating idea.
If knowledge of methods used by others does not directly tell us what to
do, or furnish ready-made models, how does it operate? What is meant by
calling a method intellectual? Take the case of a physician. No mode
of behavior more imperiously demands knowledge of established modes of
diagnosis and treatment than does his. But after all, cases are like,
not identical. To be used intelligently, existing practices, however
authorized they may be, have to be adapted to the exigencies of
particular cases. Accordingly, recognized procedures indicate to the
physician what inquiries to set on foot for himself, what measures to
try. They are standpoints from which to carry on investigations; they
economize a survey of the features of the particular case by suggesting
the things to be especially looked into. The physician's own personal
attitudes, his own ways (individual methods) of dealing with the
situation in which he is concerned, are not subordinated to the general
principles of procedure, but are facilitated and directed by the latter.
The instance may serve to point out the value to the teacher of a
knowledge of the psychological methods and the empirical devices found
useful in the past. When they get in the way of his own common sense,
when they come between him and the situation in which he has to act,
they are worse than useless. But if he has acquired them as intellectual
aids in sizing up the needs, resources, and difficulties of the unique
experiences in which he engages, they are of constructive value. In the
last resort, just because everything depends upon his own methods of
response, much depends upon how far he can utilize, in making his own
response, the knowledge which has accrued in the experience of others.
As already intimated, every word of this account is directly applicable
also to the method of the pupil, the way of learning. To suppose that
students, whether in the primary school or in the university, can
be supplied with models of method to be followed in acquiring and
expounding a subject is to fall into a self-deception that has
lamentable consequences. (See ante, p. 169.) One must make his own
reaction in any case. Indications of the standardized or general methods
used in like cases by others--particularly by those who are already
experts--are of worth or of harm according as they make his personal
reaction more intelligent or as they induce a person to dispense with
exercise of his own judgment. If what was said earlier (See p. 159)
about originality of thought seemed overstrained, demanding more of
education than the capacities of average human nature permit, the
difficulty is that we lie under the incubus of a superstition. We have
set up the notion of mind at large, of intellectual method that is the
same for all. Then we regard individuals as differing in the quantity of
mind with which they are charged. Ordinary persons are then expected to
be ordinary. Only the exceptional are allowed to have originality. The
measure of difference between the average student and the genius is a
measure of the absence of originality in the former. But this notion
of mind in general is a fiction. How one person's abilities compare in
quantity with those of another is none of the teacher's business. It is
irrelevant to his work. What is required is that every individual shall
have opportunities to employ his own powers in activities that have
meaning. Mind, individual method, originality (these are convertible
terms) signify the quality of purposive or directed action. If we act
upon this conviction, we shall secure more originality even by the
conventional standard than now develops. Imposing an alleged uniform
general method upon everybody breeds mediocrity in all but the very
exceptional. And measuring originality by deviation from the mass breeds
eccentricity in them. Thus we stifle the distinctive quality of the
many, and save in rare instances (like, say, that of Darwin) infect the
rare geniuses with an unwholesome quality.
3. The Traits of Individual Method. The most general features of the
method of knowing have been given in our chapter on thinking. They
are the features of the reflective situation: Problem, collection and
analysis of data, projection and elaboration of suggestions or ideas,
experimental application and testing; the resulting conclusion or
judgment. The specific elements of an individual's method or way of
attack upon a problem are found ultimately in his native tendencies and
his acquired habits and interests. The method of one will vary from that
of another (and properly vary) as his original instinctive capacities
vary, as his past experiences and his preferences vary. Those who have
already studied these matters are in possession of information which
will help teachers in understanding the responses different pupils
make, and help them in guiding these responses to greater efficiency.
Child-study, psychology, and a knowledge of social environment
supplement the personal acquaintance gained by the teacher. But methods
remain the personal concern, approach, and attack of an individual, and
no catalogue can ever exhaust their diversity of form and tint.
Some attitudes may be named, however,-which are central in effective
intellectual ways of dealing with subject matter. Among the most
important are directness, open-mindedness, single-mindedness (or
whole-heartedness), and responsibility.
1. It is easier to indicate what is meant by directness through negative
terms than in positive ones. Self-consciousness, embarrassment, and
constraint are its menacing foes. They indicate that a person is not
immediately concerned with subject matter. Something has come between
which deflects concern to side issues. A self-conscious person is partly
thinking about his problem and partly about what others think of his
performances. Diverted energy means loss of power and confusion of
ideas. Taking an attitude is by no means identical with being conscious
of one's attitude. The former is spontaneous, naive, and simple. It is
a sign of whole-souled relationship between a person and what he is
dealing with. The latter is not of necessity abnormal. It is sometimes
the easiest way of correcting a false method of approach, and of
improving the effectiveness of the means one is employing,--as golf
players, piano players, public speakers, etc., have occasionally to give
especial attention to their position and movements. But this need
is occasional and temporary. When it is effectual a person thinks of
himself in terms of what is to be done, as one means among others of the
realization of an end--as in the case of a tennis player practicing to
get the "feel" of a stroke. In abnormal cases, one thinks of himself not
as part of the agencies of execution, but as a separate object--as when
the player strikes an attitude thinking of the impression it will make
upon spectators, or is worried because of the impression he fears his
movements give rise to.
Confidence is a good name for what is intended by the term directness.
It should not be confused, however, with self-confidence which may be a
form of self-consciousness--or of "cheek." Confidence is not a name for
what one thinks or feels about his attitude it is not reflex. It denotes
the straightforwardness with which one goes at what he has to do.
It denotes not conscious trust in the efficacy of one's powers but
unconscious faith in the possibilities of the situation. It signifies
rising to the needs of the situation. We have already pointed out (See
p. 169) the objections to making students emphatically aware of the fact
that they are studying or learning. Just in the degree in which they
are induced by the conditions to be so aware, they are not studying
and learning. They are in a divided and complicated attitude. Whatever
methods of a teacher call a pupil's attention off from what he has to
do and transfer it to his own attitude towards what he is doing impair
directness of concern and action. Persisted in, the pupil acquires a
permanent tendency to fumble, to gaze about aimlessly, to look for some
clew of action beside that which the subject matter supplies. Dependence
upon extraneous suggestions and directions, a state of foggy confusion,
take the place of that sureness with which children (and grown-up people
who have not been sophisticated by "education") confront the situations
of life.
2. Open-mindedness. Partiality is, as we have seen, an accompaniment of
the existence of interest, since this means sharing, partaking, taking
sides in some movement. All the more reason, therefore, for an attitude
of mind which actively welcomes suggestions and relevant information
from all sides. In the chapter on Aims it was shown that foreseen ends
are factors in the development of a changing situation. They are
the means by which the direction of action is controlled. They are
subordinate to the situation, therefore, not the situation to them. They
are not ends in the sense of finalities to which everything must be bent
and sacrificed. They are, as foreseen, means of guiding the development
of a situation. A target is not the future goal of shooting; it is
the centering factor in a present shooting. Openness of mind means
accessibility of mind to any and every consideration that will throw
light upon the situation that needs to be cleared up, and that will help
determine the consequences of acting this way or that. Efficiency in
accomplishing ends which have been settled upon as unalterable can
coexist with a narrowly opened mind. But intellectual growth means
constant expansion of horizons and consequent formation of new purposes
and new responses. These are impossible without an active disposition
to welcome points of view hitherto alien; an active desire to entertain
considerations which modify existing purposes. Retention of capacity
to grow is the reward of such intellectual hospitality. The worst
thing about stubbornness of mind, about prejudices, is that they arrest
development; they shut the mind off from new stimuli. Open-mindedness
means retention of the childlike attitude; closed-mindedness means
premature intellectual old age.
Exorbitant desire for uniformity of procedure and for prompt external
results are the chief foes which the open-minded attitude meets in
school. The teacher who does not permit and encourage diversity of
operation in dealing with questions is imposing intellectual blinders
upon pupils--restricting their vision to the one path the teacher's mind
happens to approve. Probably the chief cause of devotion to rigidity
of method is, however, that it seems to promise speedy, accurately
measurable, correct results. The zeal for "answers" is the explanation
of much of the zeal for rigid and mechanical methods. Forcing and
overpressure have the same origin, and the same result upon alert and
varied intellectual interest.
Open-mindedness is not the same as empty-mindedness. To hang out a sign
saying "Come right in; there is no one at home" is not the equivalent
of hospitality. But there is a kind of passivity, willingness to let
experiences accumulate and sink in and ripen, which is an essential of
development. Results (external answers or solutions) may be hurried;
processes may not be forced. They take their own time to mature. Were
all instructors to realize that the quality of mental process, not
the production of correct answers, is the measure of educative growth
something hardly less than a revolution in teaching would be worked.
3. Single-mindedness. So far as the word is concerned, much that was
said under the head of "directness" is applicable. But what the word is
here intended to convey is completeness of interest, unity of purpose;
the absence of suppressed but effectual ulterior aims for which the
professed aim is but a mask. It is equivalent to mental integrity.
Absorption, engrossment, full concern with subject matter for its own
sake, nurture it. Divided interest and evasion destroy it.
Intellectual integrity, honesty, and sincerity are at bottom not
matters of conscious purpose but of quality of active response.
Their acquisition is fostered of course by conscious intent, but
self-deception is very easy. Desires are urgent. When the demands and
wishes of others forbid their direct expression they are easily driven
into subterranean and deep channels. Entire surrender, and wholehearted
adoption of the course of action demanded by others are almost
impossible. Deliberate revolt or deliberate attempts to deceive others
may result. But the more frequent outcome is a confused and divided
state of interest in which one is fooled as to one's own real intent.
One tries to serve two masters at once. Social instincts, the strong
desire to please others and get their approval, social training, the
general sense of duty and of authority, apprehension of penalty, all
lead to a half-hearted effort to conform, to "pay attention to the
lesson," or whatever the requirement is. Amiable individuals want to do
what they are expected to do. Consciously the pupil thinks he is
doing this. But his own desires are not abolished. Only their evident
exhibition is suppressed. Strain of attention to what is hostile to
desire is irksome; in spite of one's conscious wish, the underlying
desires determine the main course of thought, the deeper emotional
responses. The mind wanders from the nominal subject and devotes
itself to what is intrinsically more desirable. A systematized divided
attention expressing the duplicity of the state of desire is the result.
One has only to recall his own experiences in school or at the present
time when outwardly employed in actions which do not engage one's
desires and purposes, to realize how prevalent is this attitude of
divided attention--double-mindedness. We are so used to it that we take
it for granted that a considerable amount of it is necessary. It may be;
if so, it is the more important to face its bad intellectual effects.
Obvious is the loss of energy of thought immediately available when
one is consciously trying (or trying to seem to try) to attend to one
matter, while unconsciously one's imagination is spontaneously going out
to more congenial affairs. More subtle and more permanently crippling
to efficiency of intellectual activity is a fostering of habitual
self-deception, with the confused sense of reality which accompanies it.
A double standard of reality, one for our own private and more or less
concealed interests, and another for public and acknowledged concerns,
hampers, in most of us, integrity and completeness of mental action.
Equally serious is the fact that a split is set up between conscious
thought and attention and impulsive blind affection and desire.
Reflective dealings with the material of instruction is constrained
and half-hearted; attention wanders. The topics to which it wanders are
unavowed and hence intellectually illicit; transactions with them
are furtive. The discipline that comes from regulating response by
deliberate inquiry having a purpose fails; worse than that, the deepest
concern and most congenial enterprises of the imagination (since they
center about the things dearest to desire) are casual, concealed. They
enter into action in ways which are unacknowledged. Not subject to
rectification by consideration of consequences, they are demoralizing.
School conditions favorable to this division of mind between
avowed, public, and socially responsible undertakings, and private,
ill-regulated, and suppressed indulgences of thought are not hard
to find. What is sometimes called "stern discipline," i.e., external
coercive pressure, has this tendency. Motivation through rewards
extraneous to the thing to be done has a like effect. Everything that
makes schooling merely preparatory (See ante, p. 55) works in this
direction. Ends being beyond the pupil's present grasp, other agencies
have to be found to procure immediate attention to assigned tasks. Some
responses are secured, but desires and affections not enlisted must
find other outlets. Not less serious is exaggerated emphasis upon
drill exercises designed to produce skill in action, independent of any
engagement of thought--exercises have no purpose but the production of
automatic skill. Nature abhors a mental vacuum. What do teachers imagine
is happening to thought and emotion when the latter get no outlet in
the things of immediate activity? Were they merely kept in temporary
abeyance, or even only calloused, it would not be a matter of so much
moment. But they are not abolished; they are not suspended; they are
not suppressed--save with reference to the task in question. They follow
their own chaotic and undisciplined course. What is native, spontaneous,
and vital in mental reaction goes unused and untested, and the habits
formed are such that these qualities become less and less available for
public and avowed ends.
4. Responsibility. By responsibility as an element in intellectual
attitude is meant the disposition to consider in advance the probable
consequences of any projected step and deliberately to accept them: to
accept them in the sense of taking them into account, acknowledging them
in action, not yielding a mere verbal assent. Ideas, as we have seen,
are intrinsically standpoints and methods for bringing about a solution
of a perplexing situation; forecasts calculated to influence responses.
It is only too easy to think that one accepts a statement or believes a
suggested truth when one has not considered its implications; when one
has made but a cursory and superficial survey of what further things one
is committed to by acceptance. Observation and recognition, belief and
assent, then become names for lazy acquiescence in what is externally
presented.
It would be much better to have fewer facts and truths in
instruction--that is, fewer things supposedly accepted,--if a smaller
number of situations could be intellectually worked out to the point
where conviction meant something real--some identification of the self
with the type of conduct demanded by facts and foresight of results. The
most permanent bad results of undue complication of school subjects
and congestion of school studies and lessons are not the worry, nervous
strain, and superficial acquaintance that follow (serious as these are),
but the failure to make clear what is involved in really knowing and
believing a thing. Intellectual responsibility means severe standards
in this regard. These standards can be built up only through practice in
following up and acting upon the meaning of what is acquired.
Intellectual thoroughness is thus another name for the attitude we are
considering. There is a kind of thoroughness which is almost purely
physical: the kind that signifies mechanical and exhausting drill upon
all the details of a subject. Intellectual thoroughness is seeing a
thing through. It depends upon a unity of purpose to which details are
subordinated, not upon presenting a multitude of disconnected details.
It is manifested in the firmness with which the full meaning of the
purpose is developed, not in attention, however "conscientious" it may
be, to the steps of action externally imposed and directed.
Summary. Method is a statement of the way the subject matter of an
experience develops most effectively and fruitfully. It is derived,
accordingly, from observation of the course of experiences where
there is no conscious distinction of personal attitude and manner from
material dealt with. The assumption that method is something separate
is connected with the notion of the isolation of mind and self from the
world of things. It makes instruction and learning formal, mechanical,
constrained. While methods are individualized, certain features of the
normal course of an experience to its fruition may be discriminated,
because of the fund of wisdom derived from prior experiences and because
of general similarities in the materials dealt with from time to time.
Expressed in terms of the attitude of the individual the traits of
good method are straightforwardness, flexible intellectual interest
or open-minded will to learn, integrity of purpose, and acceptance of
responsibility for the consequences of one's activity including thought.
1 This point is developed below in a discussion of what are termed
psychological and logical methods respectively. See p. 219.