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.