1. The Place of Active Occupations in Education. In consequence partly
of the efforts of educational reformers, partly of increased interest in
child-psychology, and partly of the direct experience of the schoolroom,
the course of study has in the past generation undergone considerable
modification. The desirability of starting from and with the experience
and capacities of learners, a lesson enforced from all three quarters,
has led to the introduction of forms of activity, in play and work,
similar to those in which children and youth engage outside of school.
Modern psychology has substituted for the general, ready-made faculties
of older theory a complex group of instinctive and impulsive tendencies.
Experience has shown that when children have a chance at physical
activities which bring their natural impulses into play, going to
school is a joy, management is less of a burden, and learning is easier.
Sometimes, perhaps, plays, games, and constructive occupations are
resorted to only for these reasons, with emphasis upon relief from the
tedium and strain of "regular" school work. There is no reason, however,
for using them merely as agreeable diversions. Study of mental life has
made evident the fundamental worth of native tendencies to explore,
to manipulate tools and materials, to construct, to give expression
to joyous emotion, etc. When exercises which are prompted by these
instincts are a part of the regular school program, the whole pupil is
engaged, the artificial gap between life in school and out is reduced,
motives are afforded for attention to a large variety of materials and
processes distinctly educative in effect, and cooperative associations
which give information in a social setting are provided. In short, the
grounds for assigning to play and active work a definite place in
the curriculum are intellectual and social, not matters of temporary
expediency and momentary agreeableness. Without something of the kind,
it is not possible to secure the normal estate of effective learning;
namely, that knowledge-getting be an outgrowth of activities having
their own end, instead of a school task. More specifically, play and
work correspond, point for point, with the traits of the initial stage
of knowing, which consists, as we saw in the last chapter, in learning
how to do things and in acquaintance with things and processes gained
in the doing. It is suggestive that among the Greeks, till the rise
of conscious philosophy, the same word, techne, was used for art and
science. Plato gave his account of knowledge on the basis of an
analysis of the knowledge of cobblers, carpenters, players of musical
instruments, etc., pointing out that their art (so far as it was not
mere routine) involved an end, mastery of material or stuff worked upon,
control of appliances, and a definite order of procedure--all of which
had to be known in order that there be intelligent skill or art.
Doubtless the fact that children normally engage in play and work out
of school has seemed to many educators a reason why they should concern
themselves in school with things radically different. School time seemed
too precious to spend in doing over again what children were sure to do
any way. In some social conditions, this reason has weight. In pioneer
times, for example, outside occupations gave a definite and valuable
intellectual and moral training. Books and everything concerned with
them were, on the other hand, rare and difficult of access; they were
the only means of outlet from a narrow and crude environment. Wherever
such conditions obtain, much may be said in favor of concentrating
school activity upon books. The situation is very different, however,
in most communities to-day. The kinds of work in which the young
can engage, especially in cities, are largely anti-educational. That
prevention of child labor is a social duty is evidence on this point.
On the other hand, printed matter has been so cheapened and is in such
universal circulation, and all the opportunities of intellectual culture
have been so multiplied, that the older type of book work is far from
having the force it used to possess.
But it must not be forgotten that an educational result is a by-product
of play and work in most out-of-school conditions. It is incidental,
not primary. Consequently the educative growth secured is more or less
accidental. Much work shares in the defects of existing industrial
society--defects next to fatal to right development. Play tends to
reproduce and affirm the crudities, as well as the excellencies, of
surrounding adult life. It is the business of the school to set up an
environment in which play and work shall be conducted with reference to
facilitating desirable mental and moral growth. It is not enough just
to introduce plays and games, hand work and manual exercises. Everything
depends upon the way in which they are employed.
2. Available Occupations. A bare catalogue of the list of activities
which have already found their way into schools indicates what a rich
field is at hand. There is work with paper, cardboard, wood, leather,
cloth, yarns, clay and sand, and the metals, with and without tools.
Processes employed are folding, cutting, pricking, measuring, molding,
modeling, pattern-making, heating and cooling, and the operations
characteristic of such tools as the hammer, saw, file, etc. Outdoor
excursions, gardening, cooking, sewing, printing, book-binding, weaving,
painting, drawing, singing, dramatization, story-telling, reading and
writing as active pursuits with social aims (not as mere exercises for
acquiring skill for future use), in addition to a countless variety of
plays and games, designate some of the modes of occupation.
The problem of the educator is to engage pupils in these activities in
such ways that while manual skill and technical efficiency are gained
and immediate satisfaction found in the work, together with
preparation for later usefulness, these things shall be subordinated
to education--that is, to intellectual results and the forming of a
socialized disposition. What does this principle signify? In the first
place, the principle rules out certain practices. Activities which
follow definite prescription and dictation or which reproduce without
modification ready-made models, may give muscular dexterity, but they
do not require the perception and elaboration of ends, nor (what is
the same thing in other words) do they permit the use of judgment in
selecting and adapting means. Not merely manual training specifically
so called but many traditional kindergarten exercises have erred here.
Moreover, opportunity for making mistakes is an incidental requirement.
Not because mistakes are ever desirable, but because overzeal to select
material and appliances which forbid a chance for mistakes to occur,
restricts initiative, reduces judgment to a minimum, and compels the use
of methods which are so remote from the complex situations of life
that the power gained is of little availability. It is quite true that
children tend to exaggerate their powers of execution and to select
projects that are beyond them. But limitation of capacity is one of the
things which has to be learned; like other things, it is learned through
the experience of consequences. The danger that children undertaking
too complex projects will simply muddle and mess, and produce not merely
crude results (which is a minor matter) but acquire crude standards
(which is an important matter) is great. But it is the fault of the
teacher if the pupil does not perceive in due season the inadequacy of
his performances, and thereby receive a stimulus to attempt exercises
which will perfect his powers. Meantime it is more important to keep
alive a creative and constructive attitude than to secure an external
perfection by engaging the pupil's action in too minute and too closely
regulated pieces of work. Accuracy and finish of detail can be insisted
upon in such portions of a complex work as are within the pupil's
capacity.
Unconscious suspicion of native experience and consequent overdoing of
external control are shown quite as much in the material supplied as in
the matter of the teacher's orders. The fear of raw material is shown
in laboratory, manual training shop, Froebelian kindergarten, and
Montessori house of childhood. The demand is for materials which have
already been subjected to the perfecting work of mind: a demand which
shows itself in the subject matter of active occupations quite as
well as in academic book learning. That such material will control the
pupil's operations so as to prevent errors is true. The notion that a
pupil operating with such material will somehow absorb the intelligence
that went originally to its shaping is fallacious. Only by starting with
crude material and subjecting it to purposeful handling will he gain the
intelligence embodied in finished material. In practice, overemphasis
upon formed material leads to an exaggeration of mathematical qualities,
since intellect finds its profit in physical things from matters of
size, form, and proportion and the relations that flow from them. But
these are known only when their perception is a fruit of acting upon
purposes which require attention to them. The more human the purpose, or
the more it approximates the ends which appeal in daily experience, the
more real the knowledge. When the purpose of the activity is restricted
to ascertaining these qualities, the resulting knowledge is only
technical.
To say that active occupations should be concerned primarily with wholes
is another statement of the same principle. Wholes for purposes of
education are not, however, physical affairs. Intellectually the
existence of a whole depends upon a concern or interest; it is
qualitative, the completeness of appeal made by a situation. Exaggerated
devotion to formation of efficient skill irrespective of present purpose
always shows itself in devising exercises isolated from a purpose.
Laboratory work is made to consist of tasks of accurate measurement
with a view to acquiring knowledge of the fundamental units of physics,
irrespective of contact with the problems which make these units
important; or of operations designed to afford facility in the
manipulation of experimental apparatus. The technique is acquired
independently of the purposes of discovery and testing which alone give
it meaning. Kindergarten employments are calculated to give information
regarding cubes, spheres, etc., and to form certain habits of
manipulation of material (for everything must always be done "just so"),
the absence of more vital purposes being supposedly compensated for by
the alleged symbolism of the material used. Manual training is reduced
to a series of ordered assignments calculated to secure the mastery of
one tool after another and technical ability in the various elements of
construction--like the different joints. It is argued that pupils must
know how to use tools before they attack actual making,--assuming that
pupils cannot learn how in the process of making. Pestalozzi's just
insistence upon the active use of the senses, as a substitute for
memorizing words, left behind it in practice schemes for "object
lessons" intended to acquaint pupils with all the qualities of selected
objects. The error is the same: in all these cases it is assumed that
before objects can be intelligently used, their properties must
be known. In fact, the senses are normally used in the course of
intelligent (that is, purposeful) use of things, since the qualities
perceived are factors to be reckoned with in accomplishment. Witness the
different attitude of a boy in making, say, a kite, with respect to
the grain and other properties of wood, the matter of size, angles, and
proportion of parts, to the attitude of a pupil who has an object-lesson
on a piece of wood, where the sole function of wood and its properties
is to serve as subject matter for the lesson.
The failure to realize that the functional development of a situation
alone constitutes a "whole" for the purpose of mind is the cause of the
false notions which have prevailed in instruction concerning the simple
and the complex. For the person approaching a subject, the simple
thing is his purpose--the use he desires to make of material, tool, or
technical process, no matter how complicated the process of execution
may be. The unity of the purpose, with the concentration upon details
which it entails, confers simplicity upon the elements which have to be
reckoned with in the course of action. It furnishes each with a single
meaning according to its service in carrying on the whole enterprise.
After one has gone through the process, the constituent qualities and
relations are elements, each possessed with a definite meaning of its
own. The false notion referred to takes the standpoint of the expert,
the one for whom elements exist; isolates them from purposeful action,
and presents them to beginners as the "simple" things. But it is time
for a positive statement. Aside from the fact that active occupations
represent things to do, not studies, their educational significance
consists in the fact that they may typify social situations. Men's
fundamental common concerns center about food, shelter, clothing,
household furnishings, and the appliances connected with production,
exchange, and consumption.
Representing both the necessities of life and the adornments with which
the necessities have been clothed, they tap instincts at a deep level;
they are saturated with facts and principles having a social quality.
To charge that the various activities of gardening, weaving,
construction in wood, manipulation of metals, cooking, etc., which carry
over these fundamental human concerns into school resources, have a
merely bread and butter value is to miss their point. If the mass of
mankind has usually found in its industrial occupations nothing but
evils which had to be endured for the sake of maintaining existence, the
fault is not in the occupations, but in the conditions under which
they are carried on. The continually increasing importance of economic
factors in contemporary life makes it the more needed that education
should reveal their scientific content and their social value. For in
schools, occupations are not carried on for pecuniary gain but for their
own content. Freed from extraneous associations and from the pressure
of wage-earning, they supply modes of experience which are intrinsically
valuable; they are truly liberalizing in quality.
Gardening, for example, need not be taught either for the sake of
preparing future gardeners, or as an agreeable way of passing time.
It affords an avenue of approach to knowledge of the place farming and
horticulture have had in the history of the race and which they
occupy in present social organization. Carried on in an environment
educationally controlled, they are means for making a study of the facts
of growth, the chemistry of soil, the role of light, air, and moisture,
injurious and helpful animal life, etc. There is nothing in the
elementary study of botany which cannot be introduced in a vital way in
connection with caring for the growth of seeds. Instead of the subject
matter belonging to a peculiar study called botany, it will then belong
to life, and will find, moreover, its natural correlations with the
facts of soil, animal life, and human relations. As students grow
mature, they will perceive problems of interest which may be pursued for
the sake of discovery, independent of the original direct interest in
gardening--problems connected with the germination and nutrition of
plants, the reproduction of fruits, etc., thus making a transition to
deliberate intellectual investigations.
The illustration is intended to apply, of course, to other school
occupations,--wood-working, cooking, and on through the list. It is
pertinent to note that in the history of the race the sciences grew
gradually out from useful social occupations. Physics developed slowly
out of the use of tools and machines; the important branch of physics
known as mechanics testifies in its name to its original associations.
The lever, wheel, inclined plane, etc., were among the first great
intellectual discoveries of mankind, and they are none the less
intellectual because they occurred in the course of seeking for means of
accomplishing practical ends. The great advance of electrical science in
the last generation was closely associated, as effect and as cause,
with application of electric agencies to means of communication,
transportation, lighting of cities and houses, and more economical
production of goods. These are social ends, moreover, and if they are
too closely associated with notions of private profit, it is not because
of anything in them, but because they have been deflected to private
uses:--a fact which puts upon the school the responsibility of restoring
their connection, in the mind of the coming generation, with public
scientific and social interests. In like ways, chemistry grew out of
processes of dying, bleaching, metal working, etc., and in recent times
has found innumerable new uses in industry.
Mathematics is now a highly abstract science; geometry, however, means
literally earth-measuring: the practical use of number in counting to
keep track of things and in measuring is even more important to-day
than in the times when it was invented for these purposes. Such
considerations (which could be duplicated in the history of any science)
are not arguments for a recapitulation of the history of the race or for
dwelling long in the early rule of thumb stage. But they indicate
the possibilities--greater to-day than ever before--of using active
occupations as opportunities for scientific study. The opportunities
are just as great on the social side, whether we look at the life of
collective humanity in its past or in its future. The most direct
road for elementary students into civics and economics is found in
consideration of the place and office of industrial occupations in
social life. Even for older students, the social sciences would be less
abstract and formal if they were dealt with less as sciences (less as
formulated bodies of knowledge) and more in their direct subject-matter
as that is found in the daily life of the social groups in which the
student shares.
Connection of occupations with the method of science is at least as
close as with its subject matter. The ages when scientific progress was
slow were the ages when learned men had contempt for the material and
processes of everyday life, especially for those concerned with manual
pursuits. Consequently they strove to develop knowledge out of general
principles--almost out of their heads--by logical reasons. It seems
as absurd that learning should come from action on and with physical
things, like dropping acid on a stone to see what would happen, as that
it should come from sticking an awl with waxed thread through a piece of
leather. But the rise of experimental methods proved that, given control
of conditions, the latter operation is more typical of the right way of
knowledge than isolated logical reasonings. Experiment developed in the
seventeenth and succeeding centuries and became the authorized way of
knowing when men's interests were centered in the question of control
of nature for human uses. The active occupations in which appliances
are brought to bear upon physical things with the intention of effecting
useful changes is the most vital introduction to the experimental
method.
3. Work and Play. What has been termed active occupation includes both
play and work. In their intrinsic meaning, play and industry are by
no means so antithetical to one another as is often assumed, any sharp
contrast being due to undesirable social conditions. Both involve ends
consciously entertained and the selection and adaptations of materials
and processes designed to effect the desired ends. The difference
between them is largely one of time-span, influencing the directness
of the connection of means and ends. In play, the interest is more
direct--a fact frequently indicated by saying that in play the activity
is its own end, instead of its having an ulterior result. The statement
is correct, but it is falsely taken, if supposed to mean that play
activity is momentary, having no element of looking ahead and none of
pursuit. Hunting, for example, is one of the commonest forms of adult
play, but the existence of foresight and the direction of present
activity by what one is watching for are obvious. When an activity is
its own end in the sense that the action of the moment is complete in
itself, it is purely physical; it has no meaning (See p. 77). The
person is either going through motions quite blindly, perhaps purely
imitatively, or else is in a state of excitement which is exhausting to
mind and nerves. Both results may be seen in some types of kindergarten
games where the idea of play is so highly symbolic that only the adult
is conscious of it. Unless the children succeed in reading in some quite
different idea of their own, they move about either as if in a hypnotic
daze, or they respond to a direct excitation.
The point of these remarks is that play has an end in the sense of a
directing idea which gives point to the successive acts. Persons who
play are not just doing something (pure physical movement); they are
trying to do or effect something, an attitude that involves anticipatory
forecasts which stimulate their present responses. The anticipated
result, however, is rather a subsequent action than the production of
a specific change in things. Consequently play is free, plastic. Where
some definite external outcome is wanted, the end has to be held to with
some persistence, which increases as the contemplated result is complex
and requires a fairly long series of intermediate adaptations. When the
intended act is another activity, it is not necessary to look far ahead
and it is possible to alter it easily and frequently. If a child
is making a toy boat, he must hold on to a single end and direct a
considerable number of acts by that one idea. If he is just "playing
boat" he may change the material that serves as a boat almost at will,
and introduce new factors as fancy suggests. The imagination makes what
it will of chairs, blocks, leaves, chips, if they serve the purpose of
carrying activity forward.
From a very early age, however, there is no distinction of exclusive
periods of play activity and work activity, but only one of emphasis.
There are definite results which even young children desire, and try
to bring to pass. Their eager interest in sharing the occupations of
others, if nothing else, accomplishes this. Children want to "help";
they are anxious to engage in the pursuits of adults which effect
external changes: setting the table, washing dishes, helping care for
animals, etc. In their plays, they like to construct their own toys and
appliances. With increasing maturity, activity which does not give back
results of tangible and visible achievement loses its interest. Play
then changes to fooling and if habitually indulged in is demoralizing.
Observable results are necessary to enable persons to get a sense and
a measure of their own powers. When make-believe is recognized to be
make-believe, the device of making objects in fancy alone is too easy
to stimulate intense action. One has only to observe the countenance of
children really playing to note that their attitude is one of serious
absorption; this attitude cannot be maintained when things cease to
afford adequate stimulation.
When fairly remote results of a definite character are foreseen and
enlist persistent effort for their accomplishment, play passes into
work. Like play, it signifies purposeful activity and differs not in
that activity is subordinated to an external result, but in the fact
that a longer course of activity is occasioned by the idea of a result.
The demand for continuous attention is greater, and more intelligence
must be shown in selecting and shaping means. To extend this account
would be to repeat what has been said under the caption of aim,
interest, and thinking. It is pertinent, however, to inquire why the
idea is so current that work involves subordination of an activity to an
ulterior material result. The extreme form of this subordination,
namely drudgery, offers a clew. Activity carried on under conditions
of external pressure or coercion is not carried on for any significance
attached to the doing. The course of action is not intrinsically
satisfying; it is a mere means for avoiding some penalty, or for gaining
some reward at its conclusion. What is inherently repulsive is endured
for the sake of averting something still more repulsive or of securing a
gain hitched on by others. Under unfree economic conditions, this state
of affairs is bound to exist. Work or industry offers little to engage
the emotions and the imagination; it is a more or less mechanical series
of strains. Only the hold which the completion of the work has upon
a person will keep him going. But the end should be intrinsic to the
action; it should be its end--a part of its own course. Then it affords
a stimulus to effort very different from that arising from the thought
of results which have nothing to do with the intervening action. As
already mentioned, the absence of economic pressure in schools supplies
an opportunity for reproducing industrial situations of mature life
under conditions where the occupation can be carried on for its own
sake. If in some cases, pecuniary recognition is also a result of an
action, though not the chief motive for it, that fact may well increase
the significance of the occupation. Where something approaching drudgery
or the need of fulfilling externally imposed tasks exists, the demand
for play persists, but tends to be perverted. The ordinary course of
action fails to give adequate stimulus to emotion and imagination. So in
leisure time, there is an imperious demand for their stimulation by any
kind of means; gambling, drink, etc., may be resorted to. Or, in less
extreme cases, there is recourse to idle amusement; to anything which
passes time with immediate agreeableness. Recreation, as the word
indicates, is recuperation of energy. No demand of human nature is more
urgent or less to be escaped. The idea that the need can be suppressed
is absolutely fallacious, and the Puritanic tradition which disallows
the need has entailed an enormous crop of evils. If education does
not afford opportunity for wholesome recreation and train capacity
for seeking and finding it, the suppressed instincts find all sorts of
illicit outlets, sometimes overt, sometimes confined to indulgence
of the imagination. Education has no more serious responsibility than
making adequate provision for enjoyment of recreative leisure; not only
for the sake of immediate health, but still more if possible for the
sake of its lasting effect upon habits of mind. Art is again the answer
to this demand.
Summary. In the previous chapter we found that the primary subject
matter of knowing is that contained in learning how to do things of a
fairly direct sort. The educational equivalent of this principle is the
consistent use of simple occupations which appeal to the powers of youth
and which typify general modes of social activity. Skill and information
about materials, tools, and laws of energy are acquired while activities
are carried on for their own sake. The fact that they are socially
representative gives a quality to the skill and knowledge gained which
makes them transferable to out-of-school situations. It is important not
to confuse the psychological distinction between play and work with the
economic distinction. Psychologically, the defining characteristic of
play is not amusement nor aimlessness. It is the fact that the aim
is thought of as more activity in the same line, without defining
continuity of action in reference to results produced. Activities as
they grow more complicated gain added meaning by greater attention to
specific results achieved. Thus they pass gradually into work. Both
are equally free and intrinsically motivated, apart from false economic
conditions which tend to make play into idle excitement for the well
to do, and work into uncongenial labor for the poor. Work is
psychologically simply an activity which consciously includes regard for
consequences as a part of itself; it becomes constrained labor when the
consequences are outside of the activity as an end to which activity is
merely a means. Work which remains permeated with the play attitude is
art--in quality if not in conventional designation.