“The first contrast is with the idea that education is a process of preparation or getting ready” (p. 59).
“…the principle of preparation makes necessary recourse on a large scale to the use of adventitious motives of pleasure and pain” (p. 60).
“Growing is not something which is completed in odd moments; it is a continuous leading into the future. If the environment, in school and out, supplies conditions which utilize adequately the present capacities of the immature, the future which grows out of the present is surely taken care of… Because the need of preparation for a continually developing life is great, it is imperative that every energy should be bent to making the present experience as rich and significant as possible” (p.61).
Education as unfolding:
“Development is conceived not as continuous growing, but as the unfolding of latent powers toward a definite goal” (p.61).
“But as the pupil generally has no initiative of his own in this direction, the result is a random groping after what is wanted, and the formation of habits of dependence upon the cues furnished by others” (p. 62).
“Conformity, not transformation, is the essence of [this notion of] education” (p. 64).
Education as formal discipline:
“The forms of powers in question are such things as the faculties of perceiving, retaining, recalling, associating, attending, willing, feeling, imagining, thinking, etc., which are then shaped by exercise upon material presented” (p. 66).
“…the supposed original faculties of observation, recollection, willing, thinking, etc., are purely mythological. There are no such ready-made powers waiting to be exercised and thereby trained” (p. 67).
“The more specialized the adjustment of response and stimulus to each other ( for, taking the sequence of activities into account, the stimuli are adapted to reactions as well as reactions to stimuli) the more rigid and the less generally available is the training secured. In equivalent language, less intellectual or educative quality attaches to the training. The usual way of stating this fact is that the more specialized the reaction, the less is the skill acquired in practicing and perfecting it transferable to other modes of behavior” (p.69).
“As matter of fact, the more he confines himself to noticing and fixating the forms of words, irrespective of connection with other things (such as the meaning of the words, the context in which they are habitually used, the derivation and classification of the verbal form, etc.) the less likely is he to acquire an ability which can be used for anything except the mere noting of verbal visual forms… The connections which are employed in other observations and recollections (or reproductions ) are deliberately eliminated when the pupil is exercised merely upon forms of letters and words” (p. 70) – miseducative
“…the fundamental fallacy of the theory is its dualism; that is to say, its separation of activities and capacities from subject matter. There is no such thing as an ability to see or hear or remember in general; there is only the ability to see or hear or remember something” (p. 70).
“If however his concern with these technical subject matters has been connected with human activities having social breadth, the range of active responses called into play and flexibly integrated is much wider” (pp. 72-73).
Education as formation:
“It [education as formation]is rather the formation of mind by setting up certain associations or connections of content by means of a subject matter presented from without” (p. 75).
“The fundamental theoretical defect of this view lies in ignoring the existence in a living being of active and specific functions which are developed in the redirection and combination which occur as they are occupied with their environment… The philosophy is eloquent about the duty of the teacher in instructing pupils; it is almost silent regarding his privilege of learning. It emphasizes the influence of intellectual environment upon the mind; it slurs over the fact that the environment involves a personal sharing in common experiences. It exaggerates beyond reason the possibilities of consciously formulated and used methods, and underestimates the role of vital, unconscious, attitudes. It insists upon the old, the past, and passes lightly over the operation of the genuinely novel and unforeseeable” (p. 77).
“In its contrast with the ideas both of unfolding of latent powers from within, and of the formation from without, whether by physical nature or by the cultural products of the past, the ideal of growth results in the conception that education is a constant reorganizing or reconstructing of experience” (p. 82).
Education as reconstruction
“We thus reach a technical definition of education: It is that reconstruction or reorganization of experience which adds to the meaning of experience, and which increases ability to direct the course of subsequent experience. (1) The increment of meaning corresponds to the increased perception of the connections and continuities of the activities in which we are engaged… ( 2 ) The other side of an educative experience is an added power of subsequent direction or control. To say that one knows what he is about, or can intend certain consequences, is to say, of course, that he can better anticipate what is going to happen…” (pp. 82-83).
“The essential contrast of the idea of education as continuous reconstruction with the other one-sided conceptions which have been criticized in this and the previous chapter is that it identifies the end (the result) and the process. This is verbally self-contradictory, but only verbally. It means that experience as an active process occupies time and that its later period completes its earlier portion; it brings to light connections involved, but hitherto unperceived. The later outcome thus reveals the meaning of the earlier, while the experience as a whole establishes a bent or disposition toward the things possessing this meaning. Every such continuous experience or activity is educative, and all education resides in having such experiences” (p. 84).
The positioning of these chapters immediately after the one called "Education as Growth" is suggestive. (The implications of "as" as in Art as Experience should not be taken lightly). Keeping in mind that at the beginning of D&E there is an unspoken "as" when the biological notion of life is put into an "as" relationship with "experience" and "life".
ReplyDeleteIn an earlier work (1907?) on Darwin and Philosophy.... Dewey suggested that the main impediment to fruitful new ideas was holding onto old ones. This extends to practices like creating static or timeless definitions (or appearance of doing so) and also, asking the same old wrong questions (like What is X?). These in Dewey's view were habits of mind associated with older ways of thinking....(keep in mind Geertz's essay "The Way We Think Now") and that these become impediments to creative engagements with ongoing experiences/environments.
Thus, at the ideational level....Chapters 5/6 are the main difficulties in cultivating growth that Dewey saw. It's not that everyone reads Hegel or Rousseau or Plato. But, Dewey did believe that things we "think" (and then subsequently do, were related to those older ideas...sort of holdovers unexamined. THE event in Dewey's lifetime that brought this home was Darwin. And, on a continuing basis (to today) you can see the impediments that the older ways of thinking present.
So, while Chapter 4 seems largely focused on the idea/ideal of growth without referencing much by way of difficulties? Chapters 5/6 lay out the kinds of thinking that impede growth.
Dewey published a book prior to D&E called "How We Think". It never occurred to me until now that Geertz's essay "The Way We Think Now: Toward an Ethnography of Modern Thought" is possibly referenced to Dewey's title and thinking on this.
In Dewey's statement of "education as reconstruction" I think we get (at the educational level) thoughts that emerge differently in E&N. There is the immediate experience....qualities thereof....then the educational task becomes an meta-cognitive one...."increased perception of the connections and continuities of the activities in which we are engaged." And this offers (styled as "education") the possibilities of increased and enriched meanings (beyond: meta-) the immediate.
The environmental condition of this is, in the human condition, a demand for "continuous reconstruction". Which is Thoreau's call to "always be on the alert" or wide awake.