The Nature of Subject Matter

“The educator's part in the enterprise of education is to furnish the environment which stimulates responses and directs the learner's course. In last analysis, all that the educator can do is modify stimuli so that response will as surely as is possible result in the formation of desirable intellectual and emotional dispositions… The other point is the necessity of a social environment to give meaning to habits formed. In what we have termed informal education, subject matter is carried directly in the matrix of social intercourse. It is what the persons with whom an individual associates do and say. This fact gives a clew to the understanding of the subject matter of formal or deliberate instruction” (p. 188).

“As we have previously noted, probably the chief motive for consciously dwelling upon the group life, extracting the meanings which are regarded as most important and systematizing them in a coherent arrangement, is just the need of instructing the young so as to perpetuate group life. Once started on this road of selection, formulation, and organization, no definite limit exists. The invention of writing and of printing gives the operation an immense impetus. Finally, the bonds which connect the subject matter of school study with the habits and ideals of the social group are disguised and covered up. The ties are so loosened that it often appears as if there were none; as if subject matter existed simply as knowledge on its own independent behoof, and as if study were the mere act of mastering it for its own sake, irrespective of any social values. Since it is highly important for practical reasons to counter-act this tendency (See ante, p. 8) the chief purposes of our theoretical discussion are to make clear the connection which is so readily lost from sight, and to show in some detail the social content and function of the chief constituents of the course of study” (p. 189).

“The material of school studies translates into concrete and detailed terms the meanings of current social life which it is desirable to transmit” (pp. 189-190).

Early in the text Dewey asserts that “we never educate directly, but indirectly by means of the environment” (p. 23) and when he revisits that theme tied deeply to the social environment I think we see the potential that schools and public education can have.  If the only things we wished to pass on to the young so that they could reestablish our society were skills in isolation, it would be far easier and more efficient to employ computerized programs for students to work through.  But we don’t, we want to pass on a degree of civility of how people act with one another and react with one another.  But I think that often this social aim is overlooked, forgotten, or pushed aside as specific content and the dissemination of information takes priority.  In cases where teachers are not encouraged to think, but rather to follow curricula and to cover material (as I believe is the norm in many public schools) we are perhaps doing an even worse service than employing computerized programs; we are teaching obedience without questions, often in the face of coercion, though the way that our teachers are made to teach. 


 “Organized subject matter… does not represent perfection or infallible wisdom; but it is the best at command to further new experiences which may, in some respects at least, surpass the achievements embodied in existing knowledge and works of art” (p. 190).

“From the standpoint of the educator, in other words, the various studies represent working resources, available capital” (p. 190).

I don’t think that there will ever be “the” answer to what students need to learn, something like a list of skills which if learned all students will grow up to create a perfect society.  The lists of “what every kindergarten student should know” are impossible.  But I do think that it is the teacher’s responsibility to use subject matter with critical judgment, Dewey says as “working resources,” so that our young may surpass our achievements.  As resources teachers use subject matter to give students tools to solve problems.  I would add to Dewey’s list that we want our young to surpass our achievements in social aims as well: conflict resolution, international diplomacy, and our ability to respect differences and care for other human beings.


“Failure to bear in mind the difference in subject matter from the respective standpoints of teacher and student is responsible for most of the mistakes made in the use of texts and other expressions of preexistent knowledge” (p. 190).

“When engaged in the direct act of teaching, the instructor needs to have subject matter at his fingers' ends; his attention should be upon the attitude and response of the pupil” (pp. 190-191).

“The child's home is, for example, the organizing center of his geographical knowledge… But the geography of the geographer, of the one who has already developed the implications of these smaller experiences, is organized on the basis of the relationship which the various facts bear to one another… To the one who is learned, subject matter is extensive, accurately defined, and logically interrelated. To the one who is learning, it is fluid, partial, and connected through his personal occupations” (p. 191).

These remind me again of an earlier discussion we had regarding the value of performances in music education.  I was thinking as I prepared with students for a third grade recorder concert last week primarily of the attitude and response of the students.  There were instances when it would have been easy to correct technical mistakes through some kind of coercive measure, and I actually had to discuss with a paraprofessional about the reasons for doing the concert (she was trying to help by yelling at students who were making mistakes.)  I reminded them that we were all learning, that performing as we were was a demonstration of what we have been learning, and that honest mistakes were not something to be ashamed of at all.  For the evening performance we had the highest turn out of students at any concert I have put together.  I think that the overall aim, an appreciation of music and a positive ensemble experience, was achieved.  And at times it actually sounded kind of “good.”

“It is possible, without doing violence to the facts, to mark off three fairly typical stages in the growth of subject matter in the experience of the learner. In its first estate, knowledge exists as the content of intelligent ability -- power to do. This kind of subject matter, or known material, is expressed in familiarity or acquaintance with things. Then this material gradually is surcharged and deepened through communicated knowledge or information. Finally, it is enlarged and worked over into rationally or logically organized material -- that of the one who, relatively speaking, is expert in the subject” (p. 192).

This citation has been very influential for me.  I think the first kind of knowledge comes from raw, trial and error experiences.  I believe Dewey suggests these should be as “unschoolastic” as possible.  So I tried a short experiment with my younger students to move through these three stages, although much faster than what Dewey suggests, and our final product was certainly not expertise.  But I had students start by making noise with instruments, and we described what we heard.  They all of course had the power to do many different sounds, so we identified them with musical vocabulary (piano/forte for example) and we discussed how to write these.  This second step seems to be were many school experiences start and end.  To use this material in logic or with reason, each class wrote their own short piece.  At the next lesson we started with what they wrote, discussed what it meant (discussed how it would sound) and then performed it.  We made some revisions and then performed it again.  I do think it would be possible and very meaningful to approach an entire curriculum in this way.

“When education, under the influence of a scholastic conception of knowledge which ignores everything but scientifically formulated facts and truths, fails to recognize that primary or initial subject matter always exists as matter of an active doing, involving the use of the body and the handling of material, the subject matter of instruction is isolated from the needs and purposes of the learner, and so becomes just a something to be memorized and reproduced upon demand. Recognition of the natural course of development, on the contrary, always sets out with situations which involve learning by doing” (p. 192).

“To have good sense or judgment is to know the conduct a situation calls for; discernment is not making distinctions for the sake of making them, an exercise reprobated as hair splitting, but is insight into an affair with reference to acting. Wisdom has never lost its association with the proper direction of life. Only in education, never in the life of farmer, sailor, merchant, physician, or laboratory experimenter, does knowledge mean primarily a store of information aloof from doing” (p. 193).

That statement, only in education does knowledge mean a store of information aloof from doing, I think is central to the problems with education today.  When the focus is on the memorization of information, what was Dewey’s second way of knowing something, we lose a sense of judgment.  Judgment is I think only possible with reasoning and logic, only when information can be used as a tool towards some other end, rather than as an end for itself.  We don’t allow students many opportunities for making judgments, and as teachers we don’t often model our judgment process.  And I think sound judgment, or critical thinking, is tied deeply to doing things.  If we were to say that we think through language that would be correct, only that by through I mean from experience to logic, not through as in that language is the only medium for thinking. 


“Information is the name usually given to this kind of subject matter. The place of communication in personal doing supplies us with a criterion for estimating the value of informational material in school. Does it grow naturally out of some question with which the student is concerned? Does it fit into his more direct acquaintance so as to increase its efficacy and deepen its meaning? If it meets these two requirements, it is educative” (p. 194).

“The imposing stupendous bulk of this material has unconsciously influenced men's notions of the nature of knowledge itself… The record of knowledge, independent of its place as an outcome of inquiry and a resource in further inquiry, is taken to be knowledge” (p. 195).

“What is known, in a given case, is what is sure, certain, settled, disposed of; that which we think with rather than that which we think about” (p. 196).

“As a part of this intercommunication one learns much from others. They tell of their experiences and of the experiences which, in turn, have been told them. In so far as one is interested or concerned in these communications, their matter becomes a part of one's own experience” (pp. 193-194).

“In so far as we are partners in common undertakings, the things which others communicate to us as the consequences of their particular share in the enterprise blend at once into the experience resulting from our own special doings” (p. 194).

 “Ignorance gives way to opinionated and current error, -- a greater foe to learning than ignorance itself. A Socrates is thus led to declare that consciousness of ignorance is the beginning of effective love of wisdom, and a Descartes to say that science is born of doubting” (p. 197).

I think that in our society today opinionated and current error are spread widely, through news commentary or analysis, and is often presented as knowledge or information.  Our current society makes it even more pressing that we practice thinking critically and making judgments.  We have to think about some of our information before we can think with our information towards hypothesizing and problem solving.


“Without initiation into the scientific spirit one is not in possession of the best tools which humanity has so far devised for effectively directed reflection… For he does not become acquainted with the traits that mark off opinion and assent from authorized conviction. On the other hand, the fact that science marks the perfecting of knowing in highly specialized conditions of technique renders its results, taken by themselves, remote from ordinary experience -- a quality of aloofness that is popularly designated by the term abstract” (pp. 197-198).

“The knowledge of a farmer is systematized in the degree in which he is competent. It is organized on the basis of relation of means to ends -- practically organized” (p. 198).

If I understand this correctly, the thoughtful farmer takes something of a scientific approach (hypothesis, experimentation, conclusions) to the profession and is able to conclusions to be practical rather than abstract.  This happens because farmers are out farming, not because they are discussing text books or other resources on farming.  Of course, when the farmer reaches a problem when she doesn’t have knowledge of, these kinds of resources would be helpful in suggesting hypothesis to test.


“With the wide range of possible material to select from, it is important that education (especially in all its phases short of the most specialized) should use a criterion of social worth” (p. 199).

“The scheme of a curriculum must take account of the adaptation of studies to the needs of the existing community life; it must select with the intention of improving the life we live in common so that the future shall be better than the past” (p. 199).

“A curriculum which acknowledges the social responsibilities of education must present situations where problems are relevant to the problems of living together, and where observation and information are calculated to develop social insight and interest” (p. 200).

These final citations suggest to me a need for schools to get outside of the schoolyard and into the community, to employ students in identifying problems and working to solve them.  This seems like such a far cry from where we are today.  At best students are in the community as interns gaining work experience. 

“The child of three who discovers what can be done with blocks... is really a discoverer, even though everybody else in the world knows it” (p. 166).

voyage

 

One of the most significant facts about us may finally be that we all begin with the natural equipment to live a thousand kinds of life but end in the end having lived only one.

[This]....view of culture begins with the assumption that human thought is basically both social and public—that its natural habitat is the house yard, the marketplace, and the town square. Thinking consists not of "happenings in the head" (though happenings there and elsewhere are necessary for it to occur) but of a traffic in what have been called, by G. H. Mead and others, significant symbols—words for the most part but also gestures, drawings, musical sounds, mechanical devices like clocks, or natural objects like jewels—anything, in fact, that is disengaged from its mere actuality and used to impose meaning upon experience. From the point of view of any particular individual, such symbols are largely given. He finds them already current in the community when he is born, and they remain, with some additions, subtractions, and partial alterations he may or may not have had a hand in, in circulation after he dies. While he lives he uses them, or some of them, sometimes deliberately and with care, most often spontaneously and with ease, but always with the same end in view: to put a construction upon the events through which he lives, to orient himself within "the ongoing course of experienced things," to adopt a vivid phrase of John Dewey's.

Clifford Geertz from "The Impact of the Concept of Culture on the Concept of Man"

Related Expression

 Fog at Gull Heath, Southwest Head, Grand Manan, NB, Canada 

May 25, 2011

"Providence" from Worldly Hopes

To stay

bright as

if just

thought of

earth requires

only that

nothing stay

       
A. R. Ammons 

---------

Discussed in Helen Vendler's The Music of What Happens:  Poems, Poets, Critics.  Harvard UP, 1988.

The title of her book comes from a poem by Seamus Heaney (discussed in Vendler's book).

Of the Ammons poem she writes:  "....Ammons's philosophic emphasis on the "trivial" words "as," "if," "just," "of," and "only" — the sort of words whose insidiousness interested Wittgenstein too."

The Nature of Method

“In brief, the method of teaching is the method of an art, of action intelligently directed by ends” (p. 177).

Morning View from Doublehead Mountain

“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 [of subject matter from method] is radically false” (pp. 171-172)

This is similar to a theme we've discussed quite a bit, that in any communication what is communicated is carried in how it is communicated.  This is true of the arts, in speach, and in teaching.  It is only in reflection or analysis that we seperate these into individual parts.  I remember this theme being argued in Art as Experience and I feel like there are other parallels as well in the next few citations. 

“Method means that arrangement of subject matter which makes it most effective in use. Never is method something outside of the material” (p. 172).

“Method is not antithetical to subject matter; it is the effective direction of subject matter to desired results” (p. 172).

The above citation in particular reminds me of Dewey's discussions on the artistic process.

“When a man is eating, he is eating food. He does not divide his act into eating and food… 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” (p. 173).

“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” (p. 173).

“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” (p. 174).

I like that Dewey reverses the assumed oder of operations here, that we don't have the ability to hear and then apply it to the world, but that the world applies itself to our experience through the avenue of hearing.  This feels related to how Dewey discusses mind, or knowledge, that mind exists because of the objects of our experience, and that knowing doesn't happen on it's own, knowing is making meaning of some-thing.

“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” (p. 174).

“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” (pp. 176-177).

This I think is a major issue today, as there is quite a market for educational programs and the push for aligned curricula.  I think that if teaching were about following recipes computers could do a far better job than people.   Then this also makes me think about the comment you wrote one how we learn to teach, how we think now.  There seems to be such a strong paradigm of how teaching is done, and part of what is assumed I think is that pedagogy is a series of models to be followed.  The ambitious teacher today goes to workshops or takes classes and learns some new recipes (under the guise of practical activities?) but I don't think many teachers assume pedagogy as something similar trying to grow a variety of plants.

“In brief, the method of teaching is the method of an art, of action intelligently directed by ends” (p. 177).

“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” (p. 178).

“How one person's abilities compare in quantity with those of another is none of the teacher's business” (p. 179).

This last citation, sadly, is close to a 180 from the practice of education today.  There is very real pressure to get all students performing tasks on a particular level of achievment.  I've heard people discussing how NCLB reinforces this at the expense of the more giften students, but I have not heard much about changing the current law. 

“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” (p. 182).

“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” (p. 183).

So obviously many of our current issues were identified almost 100 years ago. 

“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” (p. 185).

“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” (p. 186).



Thinking in Education

“The most significant question which can be asked, accordingly, about any situation or experience proposed to induce learning is what quality of problem it involves” (p. 161).

The kitchen in our house when we purchased in 2009.

The Essentials of Method.

“…all which the school can or need do for pupils, so far as their minds are concerned (that is, leaving out certain specialized muscular abilities), is to develop their ability to think” (p. 159).
Since thinking is in itself a risk (chapter 11) and every thinker places some portion of an apparently stable world in jeopardy (E&N) those who wish for the world to remain for the most part as it is (is that the definition of conservatism?) run the risk of being jeopardized if students actually develop the ability to think.  This, I think, is one of Dewey’s core ideas, and possibly the single sentence (when fully realized) which makes this book dangerous to conservative academics.

“And skill obtained apart from thinking is not connected with any sense of the purposes for which it is to be used” (p. 159).
Another core issue, and I think one which is realized by the people who benefit economically from skilled labor, and is therefore lobbied for in public policy.

“The sole direct path to enduring improvement in the methods of instruction and learning consists in centering upon the conditions which exact, promote, and test thinking. Thinking is the method of intelligent learning, of learning that employs and rewards mind” (p. 159).

“…thinking is often regarded both in philosophic theory and in educational practice as something cut off from experience, and capable of being cultivated in isolation” (p. 160).

“What is here insisted upon is the necessity of an actual empirical situation as the initiating phase of thought. Experience is here taken as previously defined: trying to do something and having the thing perceptibly do something to one in return” (p. 160).

“But the first stage of contact with any new material, at whatever age of maturity, must inevitably be of the trial and error sort” (p. 160).

“Hence the first approach to any subject in school, if thought is to be aroused and not words acquired, should be as unscholastic as possible” (pp. 160-161).
Thinking begins before thought, with action and experience.  Unschoolastic experiences have the most potential to be thought about, rather than the “pseudo thought” which we get from words in theory (from text books and learning programs.)  But it seems so engrained in the culture of public school to have objectives and to waste no time in meeting them.  Unschoolastic experiences are hard to explain to administrators, but I think this mostly comes from the top down, say from people who benefit from a class of people who are not thinking, or even worse who have a series of “pseudo thoughts.” 

“And careful inspection of methods which are permanently successful in formal education… will reveal that they depend for their efficiency upon the fact that they go back to the type of the situation which causes reflection out of school in ordinary life. They give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking, or the intentional noting of connections; learning naturally results” (p. 161) [emphasis mine].

“The most significant question which can be asked, accordingly, about any situation or experience proposed to induce learning is what quality of problem it involves” (p. 161).
Giving students something to do which demands thinking is the intentional act of making relevant problems for students, the quality of which curricular planning should be scrutinized.  Dewey offers a good rubric for planned experiences…

“…Is there anything but a problem?... Is it the pupil's own problem, or is it the teacher's or textbook's problem… Is the experience a personal thing of such a nature as inherently to stimulate and direct observation of the connections involved, and to lead to inference and its testing? Or is it imposed from without, and is the pupil's problem simply to meet the external requirement?” (pp. 161-162).
So it becomes difficult to plan for authentic problems for a group of students.  This is partly because…

“The physical equipment and arrangements of the average schoolroom are hostile to the existence of real situations of experience” (p. 162).

“No one has ever explained why children are so full of questions outside of the school (so that they pester grown-up persons if they get any encouragement), and the conspicuous absence of display of curiosity about the subject matter of school lessons” (p. 162).

“The material of thinking is not thoughts, but actions, facts, events, and the relations of things” (p. 163).

“A well-trained mind is one that has a maximum of resources behind it, so to speak, and that is accustomed to go over its past experiences to see what they yield” (p. 164).

“…it is a necessary part of education that one should acquire the ability to supplement the narrowness of his immediately personal experiences by utilizing the experiences of others… Most objectionable of all is the probability that others, the book or the teacher, will supply solutions ready-made, instead of giving material that the student has to adapt and apply to the question in hand for himself” (p. 164).
This citation hints a bit at our earlier discussions of the benefits of a social landscape.  But the caution Dewey gives us is apt: supply material, not solutions.  So often in the interest of “efficiency” we fail to heed this advice, and we don’t become more efficient, we become less intelligent even if more informed. 

“The correlate in thinking of facts, data, knowledge already acquired, is suggestions, inferences, conjectured meanings, suppositions, tentative explanations: -- ideas, in short” (p. 164).

“In this sense, a thought (what a thing suggests but is not as it is presented) is creative, -- an incursion into the novel” (p. 165).

“When Newton thought of his theory of gravitation, the creative aspect of his thought was not found in its materials. They were familiar; many of them commonplaces -- sun, moon, planets, weight, distance, mass, square of numbers. These were not original ideas; they were established facts. His originality lay in the use to which these familiar acquaintances were put by introduction into an unfamiliar context” (pp. 165-166).

“The child of three who discovers what can be done with blocks, or of six who finds out what he can make by putting five cents and five cents together, is really a discoverer, even though everybody else in the world knows it” (p. 166).
These citations illustrate learning as something like an art, creation of new meanings from common material.  They example of Newton’s theory of gravity seems to illustrate this theme perfectly, this type of activity seems to be learning at its best, and is similar to what education should aim for, and its evident in his example of the toddler with blocks.  The citations seem to be core to Dewey’s philosophy of the possibilities in learning and they lead to the passage we have discussed often…

“It is that no thought, no idea, can possibly be conveyed as an idea from one person to another. When it is told, it is, to the one to whom it is told, another given fact, not an idea. The communication may stimulate the other person to realize the question for himself and to think out a like idea, or it may smother his intellectual interest and suppress his dawning effort at thought. But what he directly gets cannot be an idea. Only by wrestling with the conditions of the problem at first hand, seeking and finding his own way out, does he think. When the parent or teacher has provided the conditions which stimulate thinking and has taken a sympathetic attitude toward the activities of the learner by entering into a common or conjoint experience, all has been done which a second party can do to instigate learning. The rest lies with the one directly concerned. If he cannot devise his own solution (not of course in isolation, but in correspondence with the teacher and other pupils) and find his own way out he will not learn, not even if he can recite some correct answer with one hundred per cent accuracy. We can and do supply ready-made "ideas" by the thousand; we do not usually take much pains to see that the one learning engages in significant situations where his own activities generate, support, and clinch ideas -- that is, perceived meanings or connections. This does not mean that the teacher is to stand off and look on; the alternative to furnishing ready-made subject matter and listening to the accuracy with which it is reproduced is not quiescence, but participation, sharing, in an activity. In such shared activity, the teacher is a learner, and the learner is, without knowing it, a teacher -- and upon the whole, the less consciousness there is, on either side, of either giving or receiving instruction, the better” (pp. 166-167).

He concludes this chapter with some valuable suggestions for educators..

“Where schools are equipped with laboratories, shops, and gardens, where dramatizations, plays, and games are freely used, opportunities exist for reproducing situations of life, and for acquiring and applying information and ideas in the carrying forward of progressive experiences” (p. 169).

“Classroom instruction falls into three kinds. The least desirable treats each lesson as an independent whole… Wiser teachers see to it that the student is systematically led to utilize his earlier lessons to help understand the present one, and also to use the present to throw additional light upon what has already been acquired… The best type of teaching bears in mind the desirability of affecting this interconnection [to the reality of everyday life.] It puts the student in the habitual attitude of finding points of contact and mutual bearings (p. 170).



Experience and Thinking

“It also follows that all thinking involves a risk. Certainty cannot be guaranteed in advance” (p. 155).

Young apple tree from graft, possibly surviving.

The Nature of Experience.
“The connection of these two phases of experience [actively trying and passively undergoing] measures the fruitfulness or value of the experience” (p. 146).

“Experience as trying involves change, but change is meaningless transition unless it is consciously connected with the return wave of consequences which flow from it” (p. 146).

“To 'learn from experience’ is to make a backward and forward connection between what we do to things and what we enjoy or suffer from things in consequence” (p. 147).

“Two conclusions important for education follow. ( 1 ) Experience is primarily an active-passive affair; it is not primarily cognitive. But (2) the measure of the value of an experience lies in the perception of relationships or continuities to which it leads up” (p. 147).

This last citation seems to be particularly important and is one that is perhaps missed or misunderstood in some attempts at “progressive” education.  Although active experience is essential for educational experience, so is a perception of relationships.  It’s not thoughtless action or free play, but the role of the school may be something like introducing what Dewey defines as “mind” into those experiences.  Of course, neglecting the first step, active experience, is probably a more common practice, which presents material as preformed conceptual information. 

“[when] The intimate union of activity and undergoing its consequences which leads to recognition of meaning is broken; [instead] we have two fragments: mere bodily action on one side, and meaning directly grasped by "spiritual" activity on the other.

It would be impossible to state adequately the evil results which have flowed from this dualism of mind and body, much less to exaggerate them. Some of the more striking effects, may, however, be enumerated. ( a ) In part bodily activity becomes an intruder ” (p. 147).

“The chief source of the "problem of discipline" in schools is that the teacher has often to spend the larger part of the time in suppressing the bodily activities which take the mind away from its material” (p. 148).

“( b ) Even, however, with respect to the lessons which have to be learned by the application of

"mind," some bodily activities have to be used” (p. 148).

“For the senses and muscles are used not as organic participants in having an instructive experience, but as external inlets and outlets of mind. Before the child goes to school, he learns with his hand, eye, and ear, because they are organs of the process of doing something from which meaning results…His senses are avenues of knowledge not because external facts are somehow

"conveyed" to the brain, but because they are used in doing something with a purpose. The qualities of seen and touched things have a bearing on what is done, and are alertly perceived; they have a meaning” (p. 149).

“( c ) On the intellectual side, the separation of "mind" from direct occupation with things throws emphasis on things at the expense of relations or connections. It is altogether too common to separate perceptions and even ideas from judgments” (p. 150).

“As matter of fact, every perception and every idea is a sense of the bearings, use, and cause, of a thing… A wagon is not perceived when all its parts are summed up; it is the characteristic connection of the parts which makes it a wagon” (p. 150).

“Judgment is employed in the perception; otherwise the perception is mere sensory excitation or else a recognition of the result of a prior judgment, as in the case of familiar objects” (p. 150).

This discussion reminds me of the Lopez essay we’ve used in ED 5010 (Landscape and Narrative) which I credit for getting me to think about the importance of relationships for meaning.  I also feel like that essay led me toward Wittgenstein and the discussions about the relationships between words and meaning.  So in D&E I think we could find some insightful comparisons to Philosophical Investigations.


“Words, the counters for ideals, are, however, easily taken for ideas” (p. 150).

“We get so thoroughly used to a kind of pseudo-idea, a half perception, that we are not aware how half-dead our mental action is, and how much keener and more extensive our observations and ideas would be if we formed them under conditions of a vital experience which required us to use judgment: to hunt for the connections of the thing dealt with” (p. 151).

“The failure arises in supposing that relationships can become perceptible without experience -- without that conjoint trying and undergoing of which we have spoken” (p. 151).

I think these three citations are related with the idea of recognition above, we recognize words to mean things, however when they are employed in theory or to transmit conceptual information they are limited, as I think Wittgenstein argues, and Dewey states, they are only “a kind of pseudo-idea, a half perception.”  Quite often we start schooling experiences with instructions, to explain some concept.  Sometimes that’s where it ends.  Hopefully they are followed with some kind of active experience.  I believe Dewey would reverse the order of operations in his methodology (if we could say that.)  Beginning with raw experience, then finding the words to describe and communicate meanings or concepts (maybe to communicate to our future selves, to remember) seems to give the words we choose specific meanings and avoids limiting perceptions and connections (learning) to the material as presented by the teacher.  The job of the teacher becomes more difficult, involving more intelligence to create and administer experiences which are likely to lead to learning for a particular group.  I connect these citations to the one we use often, something like “no idea can be transmitted from one person to another.  When it is presented it is a fact, not an idea.”


“An ounce of experience is better than a ton of theory simply because it is only in experience that any theory has vital and verifiable significance” (p. 151).

“Because of our education we use words, thinking they are ideas, to dispose of questions, the disposal being in reality simply such an obscuring of perception as prevents us from seeing any longer the difficulty” (p. 151).


Reflection in Experience.

“Thought or reflection, as we have already seen virtually if not explicitly, is the discernment of the relation between what we try to do and what happens in consequence. No experience having a meaning is possible without some element of thought” (p. 151).

 “Thinking, in other words, is the intentional endeavor to discover specific connections between something which we do and the consequences which result, so that the two become continuous” (p. 152).

“All that the wisest man can do is to observe what is going on more widely and more minutely and then select more carefully from what is noted just those factors which point to something to happen” (p. 153).

“…acknowledge responsibility for the future consequences which flow from present action. Reflection is the acceptance of such responsibility” (p. 153).

These suggest to me that an aim of education is to give meaning to experience, which happens when we connect actions and consequences.  I think there is a difference when reflecting on a passive experience, such as observing actions and making connections.  This could be an example of learning from behavior?  But I think more valuable is when we reflect after acting on a hypothesis; we’ve had a problem, made a plan, executed it, and then reflected to see if our actions have the meanings which we had thought.


“To think upon the news as it comes to us is to attempt to see what is indicated as probable or possible regarding an outcome. To fill our heads, like a scrapbook, with this and that item as a finished and done-for thing, is not to think” (p. 153).

“From this dependence of the act of thinking upon a sense of sharing in the consequences of what goes on, flows one of the chief paradoxes of thought. Born in partiality, in order to accomplish its tasks it must achieve a certain detached impartiality… The almost insurmountable difficulty of achieving this detachment is evidence that thinking originates in situations where the course of thinking is an actual part of the course of events and is designed to influence the result” (pp. 154-155).

“The object of thinking is to help reach a conclusion, to project a possible termination on the basis of what is already given… Acquiring is always secondary, and instrumental to the act of inquiring” (p. 155).

I like the differentiation of acquiring and inquiring here, inquiring in reflection leads to acquiring knowledge, perhaps an end of a hypothesis.  It could be as simple as saying “well that didn’t work.”


“It also follows that all thinking involves a risk. Certainty cannot be guaranteed in advance” (p. 155).

This seems related to the E&N citation, something like “every thinker puts some part of an apparently stable world in jeopardy.” But it is approaching thinking from the other end.  When we think, we acquire knowledge, which is an end, which can be a tool.  Tools can be used for many purposes, sometimes destroying an apparently stable object or attitude.  But thinking is not guaranteed to solve our problems; there is no certainty in what thinking will lead to, and sometimes it despite all the effort could still be without meaning.


“Systematic advance in invention and discovery began when men recognized that they could utilize doubt for purposes of inquiry by forming conjectures to guide action in tentative explorations, whose development would confirm, refute, or modify the guiding conjecture” (p. 156).

I connect this theme to E&N when Dewey writes about the beginnings of modern science.


“No matter how great the mathematical probability, the inference is hypothetical -- a matter of probability” (p. 157).

I connect this theme to Wittgenstein’s comments on accuracy and certainty, using “borderless regions” as his analogy, and the series of questions he works with in On Certainty which are things we know to be true… (the sun will rise tomorrow, the earth has existed for a long time before I was born.) 


“So much for the general features of a reflective experience. They are (i) perplexity, confusion, doubt…(ii) a conjectural anticipation -- a tentative interpretation… (iii) a careful survey… (iv) a consequent elaboration of the tentative hypothesis to make it more precise and more consistent… (v)… doing something overtly to bring about the anticipated result, and thereby testing the hypothesis. It is the extent and accuracy of steps three and four which mark off a distinctive reflective experience from one on the trial and error plane. They make thinking itself into an experience” (p. 157).

For the educator I think this could be the outline for a lesson plan.


“Our most elaborate and rationally consistent thought has to be tried in the world and thereby tried out. And since it can never take into account all the connections, it can never cover with perfect accuracy all the consequences” (p. 158).

Wittgenstein wrote something like “there is no rule for how high a tennis player may hit the ball.”  This last citation seems to incorporate a lot of what Dewey wrote about risk, and the problem of limitation when concepts are taught as detached from experience.  In experience, more could always happen, a tennis player could hit the ball high despite the fact that most usually shoot low and fast, a first grader could play a drum with exceptional musicianship, or I think you once asked, “if Jesus was your student, would you know?”

Natural Development, Social Efficiency, Interest and Discipline

“Men's fundamental attitudes toward the world are fixed by the scope and qualities of the activities in which they partake” (p. 142).

Apple tree in bloom, May 21st, 2011.

 Nature as supplying the aim.

“The natural, or native, powers furnish the initiating and limiting forces in all education; they do not furnish its ends or aims” (p. 121).

“The aim of natural development translates into the aim of respect for physical mobility” (p. 122).

“But if he [Rousseau] had said that nature's "intention" (to adopt his poetical form of speech) is to develop the mind especially by exercise of the muscles of the body he would have stated a positive fact. In other words, the aim of following nature means, in the concrete, regard for the actual part played by use of the bodily organs in explorations, in handling of materials, in plays and games” (p. 122).

“Nobody can take the principle of consideration of native powers into account without being struck by the fact that these powers differ in different individuals” (p. 122).

“Observation of natural tendencies is difficult under conditions of restraint” (p. 123).

“…but the conclusion is not to education apart from the environment, but to provide an environment in which native powers will be put to better uses” (p. 125).

I think in a later chapter Dewey writes something like "first we learn to do something."   Walking, tying our shoes, hitting a drum, holding a pencil.  I think that is a fairly concise statement of what Dewey gains from Rousseau and natural aims.   And I think it's often overlooked as we present material to students which has been removed from experience through analysis and presented at conceptual.  In my own case with teaching elementary music I think it's important to remember the value of doing things first.  Making music, or making noise through playing instruments, and then making that into music.  Rather than restraining natural tendencies through presenting a fixed concept of say, rhythm, and then passing out instruments to do that.

Social Efficiency as Aim

“The doctrine is rendered adequate when we recognize that social efficiency is attained not by negative constraint but by positive use of native individual capacities in occupations having a social meaning” (p. 125).

“A democratic criterion requires us to develop capacity to the point of competency to choose and make its own career. This principle is violated when the attempt is made to fit individuals in advance for definite industrial callings, selected not on the basis of trained original capacities, but on that of the wealth or social status of parents” (p. 126).

“It is the aim of progressive education to take part in correcting unfair privilege and unfair deprivation, not to perpetuate them” (p. 126).

I think Apple and Kozol tackle the modern versions of these issues.  They do seem to be at the heart of what democracy is, and where there are cycles of unfair privilege, deprevation, and socio-economic stereotyping we seem to be at our worst.

“When efficiency is identified with a narrow range of acts, instead of with the spirit and meaning of activity, culture is opposed to efficiency” (p. 128).

“When social efficiency as measured by product or output is urged as an ideal in a would-be democratic society, it means that the depreciatory estimate of the masses characteristic of an aristocratic community is accepted and carried over. But if democracy has a moral and ideal meaning, it is that a social return be demanded from all and that opportunity for development of distinctive capacities be afforded all” (pp. 128-129).

“The aim of efficiency (like any educational aim) must be included within the process of experience. When it is measured by tangible external products, and not by the achieving of a distinctively valuable experience, it becomes materialistic” (p. 129).

I think its safe to say that the current era of standardized tests aims for efficiency in what Dewey calls a materialistic way. 

“What one is as a person is what one is as associated with others, in a free give and take of intercourse” (p. 129).

Interest

“The attitude of a participant in the course of affairs is thus a double one: there is solicitude, anxiety concerning future consequences, and a tendency to act to assure better, and avert worse, consequences” (p. 131).

“While such words as affection, concern, and motive indicate an attitude of personal preference, they are always attitudes toward objects -- toward what is foreseen. We may call the phase of objective foresight intellectual, and the phase of personal concern emotional and volitional, but there is no separation in the facts of the situation” (p. 132).

“We say of an interested person both that he has lost himself in some affair and that he has found himself in it” (p. 133).

“In learning, the present powers of the pupil are the initial stage; the aim of the teacher represents the remote limit. Between the two lie means -- that is middle conditions: -- acts to be performed; difficulties to be overcome; appliances to be used. Only through them, in the literal time sense, will the initial activities reach a satisfactory consummation” (p. 134).

“When material has to be made interesting, it signifies that as presented, it lacks connection with purposes and present power: or that if the connection be there, it is not perceived. To make it interesting by leading one to realize the connection that exists is simply good sense; to make it interesting by extraneous and artificial inducements deserves all the bad names which have been applied to the doctrine of interest in education” (p. 134).

Discipline

“That the primary difference between strong and feeble volition is intellectual, consisting in the degree of persistent firmness and fullness with which consequences are thought out, cannot be over-emphasized” (p. 135).

“A person who is trained to consider his actions, to undertake them deliberately, is in so far forth disciplined. Add to this ability a power to endure in an intelligently chosen course in face of distraction, confusion, and difficulty, and you have the essence of discipline. Discipline means power at command; mastery of the resources available for carrying through the action undertaken” (p. 136).

“Even punishing a child for inattention is one way of trying to make him realize that the matter is not a thing of complete unconcern; it is one way of arousing "interest," or bringing about a sense of connection” (p. 136).

“Interest measures -- or rather is -- the depth of the grip which the foreseen end has upon one m moving one to act for its realization” (p. 137).

“In the concrete, the value of recognizing the dynamic place of interest in an educative development is that it leads to considering individual children in their specific capabilities, needs, and preferences. One who recognizes the importance of interest will not assume that all minds work in the same way because they happen to have the same teacher and textbook” (p. 137).

Mind

“Too frequently mind is set over the world of things and facts to be known; it is regarded as something existing in isolation, with mental states and operations that exist independently” (p. 137).

“Subject matter is then regarded as something complete in itself; it is just something to be learned or known, either by the voluntary application of mind to it or through the impressions it makes on mind.

The facts of interest show that these conceptions are mythical. Mind appears in experience as ability to respond to present stimuli on the basis of anticipation of future possible consequences, and with a view to controlling the kind of consequences that are to take place” (p. 137).

“If we recur to the case where mind is not concerned with the physical manipulation of the instruments [typewriter] but with what one intends to write, the case is the same. There is an activity in process; one is taken up with the development of a theme. Unless one writes as a phonograph talks, this means intelligence; namely, alertness in foreseeing the various conclusions to which present data and considerations are tending, together with continually renewed observation and recollection to get hold of the subject matter which bears upon the conclusions to be reached. The whole attitude is one of concern with what is to be, and with what is so far as the latter enters into the movement toward the end” (p. 138)

“If this illustration is typical, mind is not a name for something complete by itself; it is a name for a course of action in so far as that is intelligently directed; in so far, that is to say, as aims, ends, enter into it, with selection of means to further the attainment of aims” (p. 139).

Synthesis in Teaching

“The problem of instruction is thus that of finding material which will engage a person in specific activities having an aim or purpose of moment or interest to him, and dealing with things not as gymnastic appliances but as conditions for the attainment of ends” (p. 139).

“Discovery of typical modes of activity, whether play or useful occupations, in which individuals are concerned, in whose outcome they recognize they have something at stake, and which cannot be carried through without reflection and use of judgment to select material of observation and recollection, is the remedy” (p. 139).

“The counterpart of the isolation of mind from activities dealing with objects to accomplish ends is isolation of the subject matter to be learned. In the traditional schemes of education, subject matter means so much material to be studied” (p. 141).

“Just as one "studies" his typewriter as part of the operation of putting it to use to effect results, so with any fact or truth. It becomes an object of study -- that is, of inquiry and reflection -- when it figures as a factor to be reckoned with in the completion of a course of events in which one is engaged and by whose outcome one is affected” (p. 141).

“…the act of learning or studying is artificial and ineffective in the degree in which pupils are merely presented with a lesson to be learned. Study is effectual in the degree in which the pupil realizes the place of the numerical truth he is dealing with in carrying to fruition activities in which he is concerned. This connection of an object and a topic with the promotion of an activity having a purpose is the first and the last word of a genuine theory of interest in education” (p. 142).

“Men's fundamental attitudes toward the world are fixed by the scope and qualities of the activities in which they partake” (p. 142).

“The changes made by some actions (those which by contrast may be called mechanical) are external; they are shifting things about. No ideal reward, no enrichment of emotion and intellect, accompanies them. Others contribute to the maintenance of life, and to its external adornment and display. Many of our existing social activities, industrial and political, fall in these two classes. Neither the people who engage in them, nor those who are directly affected by them, are capable of full and free interest in their work” (p. 142).

“This state of affairs must exist so far as society is organized on a basis of division between laboring classes and leisure classes” (p. 143).

“To organize education so that natural active tendencies shall be fully enlisted in doing something, while seeing to it that the doing requires observation, the acquisition of information, and the use of a constructive imagination, is what most needs to be done to improve social conditions” (p. 144).

I like how Dewey synthesizes these various themes into a holistic aim of education, which, if I read him correctly, is really of transforming society into one where every person feels qualitative fulfillment.  I feel that in large part qualitative education (education in the arts) can go a long way towards reaching this aim.  Particularly when they enlist natural tendencies to do things which require observation and acquisition of information in constructive and creative ways. 

Aims in Education

“An aim implies an orderly and ordered activity, one in which the order consists in the progressive completing of a process… an aim means foresight in advance of the end or possible termination” (p. 108).

Arthur Kehas climbing in Rumney, NH.

I think if everyone involved in education thought critically about what they do and what Dewey writes in this chapter, that might be enough.  If then we consider the education environment as social/emotional we've got quite a lot to work with.

“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” (p. 107).

“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... 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” (p. 107).

I think we'd be hard pressed to find an educational environment, especially in public schools, which does not involve a contrast in intrinsic aims of students and aims imposed from outside. 


“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” (p. 108).

“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” (p. 108).


“An aim implies an orderly and ordered activity, one in which the order consists in the progressive completing of a process… an aim means foresight in advance of the end or possible termination” (p. 108).

I think, as both Dewey and Greene suggest and we've discussed, the citation above is most evident in education in the arts.  But still that depends on how they are taught and what the aims of teaching the arts are.  Certianly preparing for a concert could also be a sequence of following directions.  The arts are not necessarily THE answer, but they have the potential to be AN answer.

“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” (p. 109).

“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… In the third place, it makes choice of alternatives possible” (p. 109).

“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” (p. 109).

This makes me think of Dewey's notion of the "denotative method."  As we've shared Thoreau is a prime example of at least the first step Dewey mentiones, careful observation. 


“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” (p. 110).

“Consciousness… is a name for the purposeful quality of an activity, for the fact that it is directed by an aim” (p. 110)
Mind and consciousness, perhaps two important general aims in education?

The Criteria of Good 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” (p. 111).

“An aim must, then, be flexible; it must be capable of alteration to meet circumstances” (p. 111).

“The aim, in short, is experimental, and hence constantly growing as it is tested in action” (p. 112).

“(3) The aim must always represent a freeing of activities” (p. 112).

The above criteria do not make me feel optimistic  about the current state of puplic education.


“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” (p. 113).

In the first grade hallway last week was found written in pencil "I hat schoole."


“Aims mean acceptance of responsibility for the observations, anticipations, and arrangements required in carrying on a function -- whether farming or educating” (p. 114).

“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” (p. 114).

I think Dewey's use of the word "responsibility" is interesting.  This reminds me a bit of Greene's use of the word "moral."  Once we are awake to the conditions, how we act in light of intelligence becomes a moral act, we then carry the responsibility for the outcome.  Again I like Dewey's direct analogy to horticulture.


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” (p. 114).

“(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” (p. 115).

“(3) Educators have to be on their guard against ends that are alleged to be general and ultimate” (p. 116).

“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” (p. 116).

“What a plurality of hypotheses does for the scientific investigator, a plurality of stated aims may do for the instructor” (p. 117).