individual and social organization.

But how is the

knowledge of the final and permanent good to be
achieved? In dealing with this question, we come upon the
seemingly insuperable obstacle that such knowledge is
not possible save in a just and harmonious social order.
Everywhere else the mind is distracted and misled by false
valuations and false perspectives. A disorganized and
factional society sets up a number of different models
and standards. Under such conditions it is impossible for
the individual to attain consistency

perfunctory and superficial where there is no interest.

Parents and teachers often complain andcorrectly-that
children "do not want to hear, or want to understand." Their
minds arenotupon the subject precisely because it does not
touch them; it doesnot enterinto their concerns. Thisis astate
ofthings that needs to beremedied, butthe remedy is not in the
use of methods which increase indifference and aversion. Even
punishing a child for inattention is one way of tryingtomake
him realize that the matter is not a thing of complete
unconcem; it is one way of arousing "interest," or bringing
about a sense of connection. In the long run, its value is
measured bywhetherit suppliesa mere physicalexcitation to

actin the way desired by the adult or whether itleads the child

"to think"- that is, to reflectupon hisacts andimpregna te them

with aims.
The fuller one's conception of possible future achievements, the
less his present activity is tied down to a small number of
alternatives. If one knew enough, one could start almost
anywhere and sustain his activities continuously and fruitfully.

Understanding then the term general or comprehensive aim

simply in the sense of a broad survey of the field of present
activities, we shall take up some of the larger ends which
have currency in the educational theories of the day, and
consider what light they throw upon the immediate concrete
and diversified aims which are always the educator's real
concern. We premise (as indeed immediately follows from
what has been said) that there is no need of making a choice
among them or regarding them as competitors. When we
come to act in a tangible way we have to select or choose a
particular act at a particular time, but any number of
comprehensive ends may exist without competition, since
they mean simply different ways of looking at the same
scene. One cannot climb a number of different mountains
simultaneously, but the views had when different mountains
are ascended supplement one another: they do not setup
incompatible, competing worlds. Or, putting the matter in a
slightly different way, one statement of an end may suggest
certain questions and observations, and another
mechanical) are

"Nature" may be said to utter is that there are

conditions of educational efficiency, and that till we
have learned what these conditions are and have
learned to make our practices accord with them, the
noblest and most ideal of our aims are doomed to suffer
—are verbal and sentimental rather thanefficacious.

(2) The aim of natural development translates into the aim

of respect for physical mobility. In Rousseau's words:
"Children are always in motion; a sedentary life is
injurious." When he says that "Nature's intention is to
strengthen the body before exercising the mind" he hardly
states the fact fairly. But if he 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.
(3) The general aim translates into the aim of regard for
individual differences among children. 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. The difference applies not
being, enslaved to his appetites and to circumstances
unless he submits voluntarily to the educative discipline
of state institutions and laws. In this spirit, Germany was
the first country to undertake a public, universal, and
compulsory system of education extending from the
primary school through the university, and to submit to
jealous state regulation and supervision all private
educational enterprises. Two results should stand out
from this brief historical survey. The first is that such
terms as the individual and the social conceptions of
education are quite meaningless taken at large, or apart
from their context. Plato had the ideal of an education
which should equate individual realization and social
coherency and stability. His situation forced his ideal into
the notion of a society organized in stratified classes,
losing the individual in the class. The eighteenth-century
educational philosophy was highly individualistic in form,
but this form was inspired by a noble and generous social
ideal: that of a society organized to include humanity,
and providing for the indefinite perfectibility of mankind
The idealistic philosophy of Germany in the early
nineteenth century endeavored again to equate the ideals
of a free and complete development of cultured
participate and that the progress of one member has
worth for the experience of other members -it is
readily communicable - and that the family is not an
isolated whole, but enters intimately into relationships
with business groups, with schools, with all the
agencies of culture, as wellas with other similar groups,
andthatitplays a due part in the political organization
and in return receives support from it. In short, there are
many interests consciously communicated and shared:
and there are varied and free points of

1. Education as Formation. We now come to a type of

theory which denies the existence of faculties and
emphasizes the unique role of subject matter in the
development of mental and moral disposition. According to
it, education is neither a process of unfolding from within
nor is it a training of faculties resident in mind itself. Itis
rather the formation of mind by setting up certain
associations or connections of content by means of a subject
matter presented from without. Education proceeds by
instruction taken in a strictly literal sense, a building into the
mind from without. That education is formative of mind is
not questioned; it is the conception already propounded. But
formation here has a technical meaning dependent upon the
idea of something operating from without. Herbart is the best
historical representative of this type of theory. He denies
absolutely the existence of innate faculties
light gets burned Henceforth he knows that a certain
act of touching in connection with a certain act of
vision (and vice-versa) means heat and pain: or, a
certain light means a source of heat. The acts by
which a scientific man in his laboratory learns more
about flame differ no whit in principle. By doing certain
things, he makes perceptible certain connections of heat
with other things, which had been previously ignored
Thus his acts in relation to these things get more
meaning; he knows better what he is doing or "is about"
when he has to do with them: he can intend
consequences instead of just letting them happen-all
synonymous ways of saying the same thing. At the
same stroke, the flame has gained in meaning; all that
is known about combustion, oxidation, about light
and temperature, may become an intrinsic part of its
intellectual content.

(2) The other side of an educative experience is an

added power of subsequent direction or

greater reliance upon the recognition of mutual interests as a

factor in social control. The second means not only freer
interaction between social groups (once isolated so far as
intention could keep up a separation) but change in social
habit its continuous readjustment through meeting the new
that opportunity for development of distinctive capacities
be afforded all. The separation of the two aims in
education is fatal to democracy; the adoption of the
narrower meaning of efficiency deprives it of its essential
justification.

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. Results in the way
of commodities which may be the outgrowth of an
efficient personality are, in the strictest sense, by-
products of education: by-products which are
inevitable and important, but nevertheless by-products.
To set up an external aim strengthens by reaction the
false conception of culture which identifies it with
something purely "inner." And the idea of perfecting
an "inner" personality is a sure sign of social divisions.
Whatiscalledinnerissimplythat which does not connect
with others - which is not capable of free and full
communication. What is termed spiritual culture has
usually been futile, with something rotten about it, just
because it has been conceived as a thing which a man
might have internally - and therefore exclusively. What
one is as a person is what one is as associated with
later. Educational concern with the early years of life —as
distinct from inculcation of useful arts —dates almost entirely
from the time of the emphasis by Pestalozzi and Froebel,
following Rousseau, of natural principles of growth. The
irregularity of growth and its significance is indicated in the
following passage of a student of the growth of the nervous
system. "While growth continues, things bodily and mental are
lopsided, for growth is never general, but is accentuated now at
one spot, now at another. The methods which shall recognize
in the presence of these enormous

1. Nature as supplying the Aim. We have just pointed out

the futility of trying to establish the aim of education—
some one final aim which subordinates all others to
itself. We have indicated that since general aims are but
prospective points of view from which to survey the
existing conditions and estimate their possibilities, we
might have any number of them, all consistent with one
another. As matter of fact, a large number have been
stated at different times, all having great local value.
For the statement of aim is a matter of emphasis at a
given time. And we do not emphasize things which do
not require emphasis—that is, such things as are taking
care of themselves fairly well. We tend rather to frame
But the idea which underlies it is that education is
essentially retrospective; that it looks primarily to the
past and especially to the literary products of the past,
and that mind is adequately formed in the degree in
which it is patterned upon the spiritual heritage of
the past. This idea has had such immense influence
upon higher instruction especially, that it is worth
examination in its extreme formulation.

In the first place, its biological basis is fallacious.

Embryonic growth of the human infant preserves, without
doubt, some of the traits of lower forms of life. But in no
respect is it a strict traversing of past stages. If there were
any strict "law" of repetition, evolutionary development
would dearly not have taken place. Each new generation
would simply have repeated its predecessors’ existence.
Development, in short, has taken place by the entrance of
shortcuts and alterations in the prior scheme of growth.
And this suggests that the aim of education is to facilitate
such short-circuited growth. The great advantage of
immaturity, educationally speaking, is that it enables us to
emancipate the young from the need of dwelling in an
outgrown past. The business of education is rather to
liberate the young from reviving and retraversing the past
than to lead them to a recapitulation of it. The social
environment of the young is constituted by the presence
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.

Education. Interest represents the moving force of

objects -— whether perceived or presented in
imagination —in any experience having a purpose. 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.
Attitudes and methods of approach and response vary
with the specific appeal the same material makes, this
appeal itself varying with difference of natural
aptitude, of past experience, of plan of life, andso on. But
the facts of interest also supply considerations of general
value to the philosophy of education. Rightly
understood, they put us on our guard against certain
conceptions of mind and of subject matter which have
accomplishment of our purposes depends. Stated thus
broadly, the formula may appear abstract. Translated into
details, it means that 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.

3. Some Social Aspects of the Question. While the

theoretical errors of which we have been speaking have
their expressions in the conduct of schools, they are
themselves the outcome of conditions of social life. A
change confined to the theoretical conviction of educators
will not remove the difficulties, though it should render
more effective efforts to modify social conditions. Men's
fundamental attitudes toward the world are fixed by the
scope and qualities of the activities in which they partake.
The ideal of interest is exemplified in the artistic attitude.
Artis neither merely internal nor merely external; merely
mental nor merely physical. Like every mode of action,
it brings about changes in the world The changes made
by some actions (those which by contrast may be called
(11) That interest is requisite for executive persistence is
even more obvious. Employers do not advertise forworkmen
who are not interested in what they are doing. If one were
engaging a lawyer ora doctor, it would never occur to one to
reason that the person engaged would stick to his work more
conscientiously if it was so uncongenial to him that he did
it merely from a sense of obligation. Interest measures-or
rather isthe depth of the grip which the foreseen end has

upon one, moving one to act forits realization.

2. The Importance of the Idea of Interest in

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
ofa given activity is to be. In the next place the aim as a
foreseen end gives direction to the activity; it is not an idle
view of a mere spectator, but influences the steps taken to
reach the end The foresightfunctionsinthree ways. Inthe 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. It facilitates an economical selection and
arrangement. In the third place, it makes choice of
alternatives possible. If we can predict the outcome of acting
of mind. Only a complete whole is fully self-consistent.
A society which rests upon the supremacy of some factor
over another irrespective of its rational or proportionate
claims, inevitably leads thought astray. Itputs a premium
on certain things and slurs over others, and creates a
mind whose seeming unity is forced and distorted.
Education proceeds ultimately from the patterns furnished
by institutions, customs, and laws. Only in a just state
will these be such as to give the right education; and only
those who have rightly trained minds will be able to
recognize the end, and ordering principle of things. We
seem to be caught in a hopeless circle. However, Plato

suggested a way out. A few men, philosophers or lovers

of wisdom — or truth— may by study learn at least in

outline the proper patterns of true existence. If a powerful

ruler should form a state after these patterns, then its
regulations could be preserved. An education could be
given which would sift individuals, discovering what
they were good for, and supplying a method of assigning
each to the work in life for which his nature fits him.
Each doing his own part, and never transgressing, the
order and unity of the whole would be maintained.

It would be impossible to find in any scheme of

philosophic thought a more adequate recognition on one
hand of the educational significance of social
arrangements and, on the other, of the
through the uses to which they are put. And the office of

the social medium is, as we have seen, to direct growth

through putting powers to the best possible use. The

1. The Meaning of the Terms. We have already noticed the

difference in the attitude of a spectator and of an agent or
participant. The former is indifferent to what is going on; one
result is just as good as another, since each is just something
to look at. The latter is bound up with what is going on; its
outcome makes a difference to him. His fortunes are more or
less at stake in the issue of events. Consequently, he does
whatever he can to influence the direction present occurrences
take. One is like a man in a prison cell watching the rain out
of the window; it is all the same to him. The other is like a
man who has planned an outing for the next day which
continuing rain will frustrate. He cannot, to be sure, by his
present reactions affect to-morrow's weather, but he may take
some steps which will influence future happenings, if only to
postpone the proposed picnic. If a man sees a carriage coming
which may run over him, if he cannot stop its movement, he
can at least get out of the way if he foresees the consequence
in time. In many instances, he can intervene even more
directly. 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,
not there; neither can the educator. In this sense,
heredity is a limit of education. Recognition of this fact
prevents the waste of energy and the irritation that
ensue from the too prevalent habit of trying to make by
instruction something out of an individual which he is
not naturally fitted to become. But the doctrine does not
determine what use shall be made of the capacities
which exist. And, except in the case of the imbecile,
these original capacities are much more varied and
potential, even in the case of the more stupid, than
we as yet know properly how to _ utilize.
Consequently, while a careful study of the native
aptitudes and deficiencies of an individual is always a
preliminary necessity, the subsequent and important
step is to furnish an environment which will adequately
function whatever activities are present. Therelation of
heredity and environment is well expressed in the case
of language. If a being had no vocal organs from
which issue articulate sounds, if he had no auditory or
other sense-receptors and no connections between the
two sets of apparatus, it would bea sheer waste of time
to try to teach him to converse. He is born short in that
respect, and education must accept the limitations. But
if he has this native equipment, its possession in no
way guarantees that he will ever talk any language or
what language he will talk. The environment in which
connection with one another. Before the time of Rousseau
educational reformers had been inclined to urge the
importance of education by ascribing practically unlimited
power to it. All the differences between peoples and between
classes and persons among the same people were said to be
due to differences of training, of exercise, and practice.
Originally, mind, reason, understanding 1s, for all practical
purposes, the same in all. This essential identity of mind
means the essential equality of all and the possibility of
bringing them all to the same level. As a protest against this
view, the doctrine of accord with nature meant a much less
formal and abstract view of mind and its powers. It
substituted specific instincts and impulses and
physiological capacities, differing from individual to
individual (just as they differ, as Rousseau pointed out,
even in dogs of the same litter), for abstract faculties of
discernment, memory, and generalization. Upon this side,
the doctrine of educative accord with nature has been
reinforced by the development of modern biology, physiology,
and psychology. It means, in effect, that great as is_ the
significance of nurture, of modification, and transformation
through direct educational effort, nature, or unlearned
capacities, affords the foundation and ultimate resources
for such nurture. On the other hand, the doctrine of
had great vogue in philosophic thought in the past,
and which exercise a serious hampering influence upon
the conduct of instruction and _ discipline. Too
frequently mind is set over the world of things and
facts to beknown; it is regardedas something existing in
isolation, with mental states and operations that exist
independently. Knowledge is then regarded as an
external application of purely mental existences to the
things to be known, or else as a result of the
impressions which this outside subject matter makes
on mind, or as a

from all inquiry. It has not been enough to show that they
were of no use in life or that they did not really contribute to
the cultivation of the self. That they were "disciplinary"
stifled every question, subdued every doubt, and removed
the subject from the realm of rational discussion. By its
nature, the allegation could not be checked up. Even when
discipline did not accrue as matter of fact, when the pupil
even grew in laxity of application and lost power of
intelligent self direction, the fault lay with him, not with the
study or the methods of teaching. His failure was but proof
that he needed more discipline, and thus afforded a reason
for retaining the old methods. The responsibility was
transferred from the educator to the pupil because the
material did not have to meet specific tests; it did not have
to be shown that it fulfilled any particular need or served any
specific end It was designed to discipline in general, and if
reluctance to criticize ends which present themselves than
it does in persistence and energy in use of means to
achieve the end The really executive man is a man who
ponders his ends, who makes his ideas of the results of his
actions as clear and full as possible. The people we called
weak-willed or selfindulgent always deceive themselves
as to the consequences of their acts. They pick out some
feature which is agreeable and neglect all attendant
circumstances. When they begin to act, the disagreeable
results they ignored begin to show themselves. They are
discouraged, or complain of being thwarted in their good
purpose by a hard fate, and shift to some other line of
action. 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

(ii) There is, of course, such a thing as a speculative tracing

out of results. Ends are then foreseen, but they do not lay
deep hold of a person. They are something to look at and
for curiosity to play with rather than something to achieve.
There is no such thing as over intellectuality, but there is
such a thing as a one sided intellectuality. A person "takes it
out" as we say in considering the consequences of proposed
certain things to do, certain resources with which to do,
and certain obstacles with which to contend. The
conditions with which the farmer deals, whether as

obstacles or resources, have their own structure and

operation independently of any purpose of his.

situation of human intercourse. On the one hand, science,

commerce, and art transcend national boundaries. They are
largely international in quality and method They involve
interdependencies and cooperation among the peoples
inhabiting different countries. At the same time, the idea of
national sovereignty has never been as accentuated in politics
as itis at the present time. Each nation lives in a state of
suppressed hostility and incipient war with its neighbors.
Each is supposed to be the supreme judge of its own
interests, and it is assumed as matter of course that each has
interests which are exclusively its own. To question this is to
question the very idea of national sovereignty which is
assumed to be basic to political practice and political science.
This contradiction (for it is nothing less) between the wider
sphere of associated and mutually helpful social life and the
narrower sphere of exclusive and hence potentially hostile
pursuits and purposes, exacts of educational theory a clearer
conception of the meaning of "social" as a function and test
of education than has yet been attained Is it possible for an
educational system to be conducted by a national state and
yet the full social ends of the educative process not be
restricted, constrained, and corrupted? Internally, the
philanthropically inclined persons having wealth and
power to follow his example. But even Pestalozzi saw
that any effective pursuit of the new educational ideal
required the support of the state. The realization of the
new education destined to produce a new society was,
after all, dependent upon the activities of existing states.
The movement for the democratic idea inevitably became
a movement for publicly conducted and administered
schools.

So far as Europe was concerned, the historic

situation identified the movement for a state supported
education with the nationalistic movement in political
life - a fact of incalculable significance for subsequent
movements. Under the influence of German thought in
particular, education became a civic function and the
civic function was identified with the realization of the

personality 1Arith social discipline and __ political

subordination. It made the national state an intermediary
between the realization of private personality on one side
and of humanity on the other. Consequently, it is equally
possible to state its animating principle with equal truth either
in the classic terms of "harmonious development of all the
powers of personality" or in the more recent terminology
of "social efficiency." All this reinforces the statement which
sounds will be selected and coordinated. This illustration
may be applied to the entire range of the educability
of any individual. It places the heritage from the past
in its right connection with the demands and
opportunities of the present.

(2) The theory that the proper subject matter of instruction

is found in the culture-products of past ages (either in
general, or more specifically in the particular literatures
which were produced in the culture epoch which is
supposed to correspond with the stage of development
of those taught) affords another instance of that divorce
between the process and product of growth which has
been criticized. To keep the process alive, to keep it alive
in ways which make it easier to keep it alive in the future,
is the function of educational subject matter. But an
individual can live only in the present. The present is
not just something which comes after the past; much
less something produced by it. Itis what life is in leaving

the past behind it. The study of past products will not
help us understand the present, because the present is

of the state is educational; that in particular the

regeneration of Germany is to be accomplished by an

education carried on in the interests of the state, and that
the private individual is of necessity an egoistic, irrational
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.

It remains only to point out (what will recerve more ample

attention later) that the reconstruction of experience may be
social as well as personal. For purposes of simplification,
we have spoken in the earlier chapters somewhat as if the
education of the immature which fills them with the spirit of
the social group to which they belong, were a sort of catching
up of the child with the aptitudes and resources of the adult
group. In static societies, societies which make the
maintenance of established custom their measure of value,
this conception applies in the main. But not in progressive
communities. They endeavor to shape the experiences of the
young so that instead of reproducing current habits, better
habits shall be formed, and thus the future adult society be
an improvement on their own. Men have long had some
intimation of the extent to which education may be
consciously used to eliminate obvious social evils through
starting the young on paths which shall not produce these ills,
and some idea of the extent in which education may be
made an instrument of realizing the
others, in a free give and take of intercourse. This
transcends both the efficiency which consists in
supplying products to others and the culture

against the prevalent notion of the total depravity of innate

human nature, and has had a powerful influence in
modifying the attitude towards children's interests. But it is
hardly necessary to say that primitive impulses are of
themselves neither good nor evil, but become one or the other
according to the objects for which they are employed That
neglect, suppression, and premature forcing of some
instincts at the expense of others, are responsible for many
avoidable ills, there can be no doubt. But the moral is not
to leave them alone to follow their own "spontaneous
development," but to provide an environment which shall
organize them.

Returning to the elements of truth contained in Rousseau's

statements, we find that natural development, as an aim,
enables him to point the means of correcting many evils in
current practices, and to indicate a number of desirable
specific aims. (I) Natural development as an aim fixes
attention upon the bodily organs and the need of health
and vigor. The aim of natural development says to parents
and teachers: Make health an aim; normal development
cannot be had without regard to the vigor of the body-an
obvious enough fact and yet one whose due recognition in
conditions develop. The aim, in short, is experimental, and
hence constantly growing as it is testedin action.

(3) The aim must always represent a freeing of

activities. The term end in view is suggestive, for it puts
before the mind the termination or conclusion of some
process. The only way in which we can define an
activity is by putting before ourselves the objects in
which it terminates —as one's aim in shooting is the
target. But we must remember that the object is only a
mark or sign by which the mind specifies the activity
one desires to carry out. Strictly speaking, not the target
but hitting the target is the end in view; one takes aim
by means of the target, but also by the sight on the gun.
The different objects which are thought of are means of
directing the

of intelligence in foresight, and contriving, is then

discounted: we are just to get out of the way and allow nature
to do the work. Since no one has stated in the doctrine both
its truth and falsity better than Rousseau, we shall turn to him.

"Education," he says, "we receive from three sources —

Nature, men, and things. The spontaneous development of
our organs and capacities constitutes the education of Nature.
The use to which we are taught to put this development
constitutes that education given us by Men. The acquirement
instead of with the spirit and meaning of activity, culture
is opposed to efficiency. Whether called culture or
complete development of personality, the outcome is
identical with the true meaning of social efficiency
whenever attention is given to what is unique in an
individual — and he would not be an individual if there
were not something incommensurable about him. Its
opposite is the mediocre, the average. Whenever
distinctive quality is developed, distinction of
personality results, and with it greater promise for a
social service which goes beyond the supply in quantity
of material commodities. For how can there be a society
really worth serving unless it is constituted of
individuals of significant personal qualities?

The fact is that the opposition of high worth of

personality to social efficiency is a product of a
feudally organized society with its rigid division of
inferior and superior. The latter are supposed to have
time and opportunity to develop themselves as human
beings: the former are confined to providing external
products. 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
and action of the habits of thinking

fail to call out a protest. The opposing emphasis took the form
of a doctrine that the business of education is to supply
precisely what nature fails to secure; namely, habituation of
an individual to social control; subordination of natural
powers to social rules. It is not surprising to find that the value
in the idea of social efficiency resides largely in its protest
against the points at which the doctrine of natural
development went astray; while its misuse comes when it is
employed to slur over the truth in that conception. It is a fact
that we must look to the activities and achievements of
associated life to find what the development of power - that is
to say, efficiency means. The error is in implying that we must
adopt measures of subordination rather than of utilization to
secure efficiency. 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. (1) Translated into
specific aims, social efficiency indicates the importance
of industrial competency. Persons cannot live without means
of subsistence; the ways in which these means are employed
and consumed have a profound influence upon all the
relationships of persons to one another. If an individual is
not able to earn his own living and that of the children
perverting them — and supposing that they have a
normal development apart from any use, which
development furnishes the standard and norm of all
learning by use. To recur to our previous illustration,
the process of acquiring language isa practically perfect
model of proper educative growth. The start is from
native activities of the vocal apparatus, organs of
hearing, etc. But it is absurd to suppose that these have
an independent growth of their own, which left to
itself would evolve a perfect speech. Taken literally,
Rousseau's principle would mean that adults should
accept and repeat the babblings and noises of children
not merely as the beginnings of the development of
articulate speech-which they are — but as furnishing
language itself — the standard for all teaching of

language.

The point may be summarized by saying that Rousseau

was right, introducing a much-needed reform into
education, in holding that the structure and activities of
the organs furnish the conditions of all teaching of the use
of the organs; but profoundly wrong in intimating that
they supply not only the conditions but also the ends of
their development. As matter of fact, the native activities
develop, in contrast with random and capricious exercise,
our statement on the basis of the defects and needs of
the contemporary situation; we take for granted, without
explicit statement which would be of no use, whatever is
right or approximately so. We frame our explicit aims in
terms of some alteration to be brought about. It is, then,
DO paradox requiring explanation that a given epoch or
generation tends to emphasize in its conscious
projections just the things which it has least of in actual
fact. A time of domination by authority will call out as
response the desirability of great individual freedom; one
of disorganized individual activities the need of social
control as an educational aim.

The actual and implicit practice and the

least the merit of protecting us from the notion of a training of

mental power at large. It calls attention to the fact that power must
be relative to doing something, and to the fact that the things
which most need to be done are things which involve one's
relationships with others.

Here again we have to be on guard against understanding the aim

too narrowly. An over definite interpretation would at certain
periods have excluded scientific discoveries, in spite of the fact
that in the last analysis security of social progress depends upon
them. For scientific men would have been thought to be mere
theoretical dreamers, totally lacking in social efficiency. It must
be borne in mind that ultimately social efficiency means neither
his activities occur and by which they are carried into
execution settles these things. If he

assimilation of new presentations, their character is all

important. The effect of new presentations is to reinforce
groupings previously formed. The business of the
educator is, first, to select the proper material in order to
fix the nature of the original reactions, and, secondly, to
arrange the sequence of subsequent presentations on the
basis of the store of ideas secured by prior transactions.
The control is from behind, from the past, instead of, as in
the unfolding conception, in the ultimate goal.

(3) Certain formal steps of all method in teaching may be

laid down. Presentation of new subject matter is obviously
the central thing, but since knowing consists in the way in
which this interacts with the contents already submerged
below consciousness, the first thing is the step of
“preparation,” —that is, calling into special activity and
getting above the floor of consciousness those older
presentations which are to assimilate the new one. Then
after the presentation, follow the processes of interaction
of new and old; then comes the application of the newly
formed content to the performance of some task.
Everything must go through this course; consequently,
there is a perfectly uniform method in instruction in all
subjects for all pupils of all ages.
Identified their experience with rigid adherence to their past
customs. On such a basis it is wholly logical to fear
intercourse with others, for such contact might dissolve
custom. It would certainly occasion reconstruction. It is a
commonplace that an alert and expanding mental life depends
upon an enlarging range of contact with the physical
environment. But the principle applies even more significantly
to the field where we are apt to ignore it — the sphere of
social contacts. Every expansive era in the history of
mankind has coincided with the operation of factors which
have tended to eliminate distance between people and classes
previously hemmed off from one another. Even the alleged
benefits of war, so far as more than alleged, spring from the
fact that conflict of peoples at least enforces intercourse
between them and thus accidentally enables them to learn
from one another, and thereby to expand their horizons.
Travel, economic and commercial tendencies, have at
present gone far to break down external barriers; to bring
peoples and classes into closer and more perceptible
connection with one another. It remains for the most part to
secure the intellectual and emotional significance of this
physical annihilation of space.

2. The Democratic Ideal. The two elements in our

criterion both point to democracy. The first signifies not
only more numerous and more varied points of shared
common interest but