There is an endless, and perhaps worldwide, controversy as to what
constitutes the "essentials" of education; and as to the steps to
be taken in the teaching of these essentials. The safe plan for
constructive workers appears to be to avoid personal educational
philosophies and to read all the essentials of education within the
needs and processes of the community itself. Since we are using this
social point of view in making curriculum suggestions for Cleveland,
it seems desirable first to explain just what we mean. Some of the
matters set down may appear so obvious as not to require expression.
They need, however, to be presented again because of the frequency
with which they are lost sight of in actual school practice.
Children and youth are expected as they grow up to take on by easy
stages the characteristics of adulthood. At the end of the process it
is expected that they will be able to do the things that adults do; to
think as they think; to bear adult responsibilities; to be efficient
in work; to be thoughtful public-spirited citizens; and the like.
The individual who reaches this level of attainment is educated, even
though he may never have attended school. The one who falls below this
level is not truly educated, even though he may have had a surplus of
schooling.
To bring one's nature to full maturity, as represented by the best of
the adult community in which one grows up, is true education for life
in that community. Anything less than this falls short of its purpose.
Anything other than this is education misdirected.
In very early days, when community life was simple, practically all
of one's education was obtained through participating in community
activities, and without systematic teaching. From that day to this,
however, the social world has been growing more complex. Adults
have developed kinds of activities so complicated that youth cannot
adequately enter into them and learn them without systematic teaching.
At first these things were few; with the years they have grown very
numerous.
One of the earliest of these too-complicated activities was written
language--reading, writing, spelling. These matters became necessities
to the adult world; but youth under ordinary circumstances could not
participate in them as performed by adults sufficiently to master
them. They had to be taught; and the school thereby came into
existence. A second thing developed about the same time was the
complicated number system used by adults. It was too difficult for
youth to master through participation only. It too had to be taught,
and it offered a second task for the schools. In the early schools
this teaching of the so-called Three R's was all that was needed,
because these were the only adult activities that had become so
complicated as to require systematized teaching. Other things were
still simple enough, so that young people could enter into them
sufficiently for all necessary education.
As community vision widened and men's affairs came to extend far
beyond the horizon, a need arose for knowledge of the outlying world.
This knowledge could rarely be obtained sufficiently through travel
and observation. There arose the new need for the systematic teaching
of geography. What had hitherto not been a human necessity and
therefore not an educational essential became both because of changed
social conditions.
Looking at education from this social point of view it is easy to see
that there was a time when no particular need existed for history,
drawing, science, vocational studies, civics, etc., beyond what one
could acquire by mingling with one's associates in the community.
These were therefore not then essentials for education. It is just
as easy to see that changed social conditions of the present make
necessary for every one a fuller and more systematic range of ideas in
each of these fields than one can pick up incidentally. These things
have thereby become educational essentials. Whether a thing today is
an educational "essential" or not seems to depend upon two things:
whether it is a human necessity today; and whether it is so complex
or inaccessible as to require systematic teaching. The number of
"essentials" changes from generation to generation. Those today who
proclaim the Three R's as the sole "essentials" appear to be calling
from out the rather distant past. Many things have since become
essential; and other things are being added year by year. The normal
method of education in things not yet put into the schools, is
participation in those things. One gets his ideas from watching others
and then learns to do by doing. There is no reason to believe that as
the school lends its help to some of the more difficult things, this
normal plan of learning can be set aside and another substituted. Of
course the schools must take in hand the difficult portions of the
process. Where complicated knowledge is needed, the schools must teach
that knowledge. Where drill is required, they must give the drill. But
the knowledge and the drill should be given in their relation to the
human activities in which they are used. As the school helps young
people to take on the nature of adulthood, it will still do so by
helping them to enter adequately into the activities of adulthood.
Youth will learn to think, to judge, and to do, by thinking, judging,
and doing. They will acquire a sense of responsibility by bearing
responsibility. They will take on serious forms of thought by doing
the serious things which require serious thought.
It cannot be urged that young people have a life of their own which is
to be lived only for youth's sake and without reference to the adult
world about them. As a matter of fact children and youth are a part
of the total community of which the mature adults are the natural
and responsible leaders. At an early age they begin to perform
adult activities, to take on adult points of view, to bear adult
responsibilities. Naturally it is done in ways appropriate to
their natures. At first it is imitative play, constructive play,
etc.--nature's method of bringing children to observe the serious
world about them, and to gird themselves for entering into it.
The next stage, if normal opportunities are provided, is playful
participation in the activities of their elders. This changes
gradually into serious participation as they grow older, becoming at
the end of the process responsible adult action. It is not possible
to determine the educational materials and processes at any stage of
growth without looking at the same time to that entire world of which
youth forms a part, and in which the nature and abilities of their
elders point the goal of their training.
The social point of view herein expressed is sometimes characterized
as being utilitarian. It may be so; but not in any narrow or
undesirable sense. It demands that training be as wide as life itself.
It looks to human activities of every type: religious activities;
civic activities; the duties of one's calling; one's family duties;
one's recreations; one's reading and meditation; and the rest of the
things that are done by the complete man or woman.