ARTICLE I--What Education Is
I believe that all education proceeds by the participation
of the individual in the social consciousness of the race. This process
begins unconsciously almost at birth, and is continually shaping the
individual's powers, saturating his consciousness, forming his habits,
training his ideas, and arousing his feelings and emotions. Through
this unconscious education the individual gradually comes to share
in the intellectual and moral resources which humanity has succeeded
in getting together. He becomes an inheritor of the funded capital
of civilization. The most formal and technical education in the world
cannot safely depart from this general process. It can only organize
it or differentiate it in some particular direction.
I believe that the only true education comes through
the stimulation of the child's powers by the demands of the social
situations in which he finds himself. Through these demands he is
stimulated to act as a member of a unity, to emerge from his original
narrowness of action and feeling, and to conceive of himself from
the standpoint of the welfare of the group to which he belongs. Through
the responses which others make to his own activities he comes to
know what these mean in social terms. The value which they have is
reflected back into them. For instance, through the response which
is made to the child's instinctive babblings the child comes to know
what those babblings mean; they are transformed into articulate language
and thus the child is introduced into the consolidated wealth of ideas
and emotions which are now summed up in language.
I believe that this educational process has two
sides-one psychological and one sociological; and that neither can
be subordinated to the other or neglected without evil results following.
Of these two sides, the psychological is the basis. The child's own
instincts and powers furnish the material and give the starting point
for all education. Save as the efforts of the educator connect with
some activity which the child is carrying on of his own initiative
independent of the educator, education becomes reduced to a pressure
from without. It may, indeed, give certain external results, but cannot
truly be called educative. Without insight into the psychological
structure and activities of the individual, the educative process
will, therefore, be haphazard and arbitrary. If it chances to coincide
with the child's activity it will get a leverage; if it does not,
it will result in friction, or disintegration, or arrest of the child
nature.
I believe that knowledge of social conditions,
of the present state of civilization, is necessary in order properly
to interpret the child's powers. The child has his own instincts and
tendencies, but we do not know what these mean until we can translate
them into their social equivalents. We must be able to carry them
back into a social past and see them as the inheritance of previous
race activities. We must also be able to project them into the future
to see what their outcome and end will be. In the illustration just
used, it is the ability to see in the child's babblings the promise
and potency of a future social intercourse and conversation which
enables one to deal in the proper way with that instinct.
I believe that the psychological and social sides
are organically related and that education cannot be regarded as a
compromise between the two, or a superimposition of one upon the other.
We are told that the psychological definition of education is barren
and formal--that it gives us only the idea of a development of all
the mental powers without giving us any idea of the use to which these
powers are put. On the other hand, it is urged that the social definition
of education, as getting adjusted to civilization, makes of it a forced
and external process, and results in subordinating the freedom of
the individual to a preconceived social and political status.
I believe that each of these objections is true
when urged against one side isolated from the other. In order to know
what a power really is we must know what its end, use, or function
is; and this we cannot know save as we conceive of the individual
as active in social relationships. But, on the other hand, the only
possible adjustment which we can give to the child under existing
conditions, is that which arises through putting him in complete possession
of all his powers. With the advent of democracy and modern industrial
conditions, it is impossible to foretell definitely just what civilization
will be twenty years from now. Hence it is impossible to prepare the
child for any precise set of conditions. To prepare him for the future
life means to give him command of himself; it means so to train him
that he will have the full and ready use of all his capacities; that
his eye and ear and hand may be tools ready to command, that his judgment
may be capable of grasping the conditions under which it has to work,
and the executive forces be trained to act economically and efficiently.
It is impossible to reach this sort of adjustment save as constant
regard is had to the individual's own powers, tastes, and interests-say,
that is, as education is continually converted into psychological
terms.
In sum, I believe that the individual who is to
be educated is a social individual and that society is an organic
union of individuals. If we eliminate the social factor from the child
we are left only with an abstraction; if we eliminate the individual
factor from society, we are left only with an inert and lifeless mass.
Education, therefore, must begin with a psychological insight into
the child's capacities, interests, and habits. It must be controlled
at every point by reference to these same considerations. These powers,
interests, and habits must be continually interpreted--we must know
what they mean. They must be translated into terms of their social
equivalents--into terms of what they are capable of in the way of
social service.
ARTICLE II--What the School Is
I believe that the school is primarily a social
institution. Education being a social process, the school is simply
that form of community life in which all those agencies are concentrated
that will be most effective in bringing the child to share in the
inherited resources of the race, and to use his own powers for social
ends.
I believe that education, therefore, is a process
of living and not a preparation for future living.
I believe that the school must represent present
life-life as real and vital to the child as that which he carries
on in the home, in the neighborhood, or on the playground.
I believe that education which does not occur through
forms of life, or that are worth living for their own sake, is always
a poor substitute for the genuine reality and tends to cramp and to
deaden.
I believe that the school, as an institution, should
simplify existing social life; should reduce it, as it were, to an
embryonic form. Existing life is so complex that the child cannot
be brought into contact with it without either confusion or distraction;
he is either overwhelmed by the multiplicity of activities which are
going on, so that he loses his own power of orderly reaction, or he
is so stimulated by these various activities that his powers are prematurely
called into play and he becomes either unduly specialized or else
disintegrated.
I believe that as such simplified social life,
the school life should grow gradually out of the home life; that it
should take up and continue the activities with which the child is
already familiar in the home.
I believe that it should exhibit these activities
to the child, and reproduce them in such ways that the child will
gradually learn the meaning of them, and be capable of playing his
own part in relation to them.
I believe that this is a psychological necessity,
because it is the only way of securing continuity in the child's growth,
the only way of giving a back-ground of past experience to the new
ideas given in school.
I believe that it is also a social necessity because
the home is the form of social life in which the child has been nurtured
and in connection with which he has had his moral training. It is
the business of the school to deepen and extend his sense of the values
bound up in his home life.
I believe that much of present education fails
because it neglects this fundamental principle of the school as a
form of community life. It conceives the school as a place where certain
information is to be given, where certain lessons are to be ]earned,
or where certain habits are to be formed. The value of these is conceived
as lying largely in the remote future; the child must do these things
for the sake of something else he is to do; they are mere preparation.
As a result they do not become a part of the life experience of the
child and so are not truly educative.
I believe that the moral education centers upon
this conception of the school as a mode of social life, that the best
and deepest moral training is precisely that which one gets through
having to enter into proper relations with others in a unity of work
and thought. The present educational systems, so far as they destroy
or neglect this unity, render it difficult or impossible to get any
genuine, regular moral training.
I believe that the child should be stimulated and
controlled in his work through the life of the community.
I believe that under existing conditions far too
much of the stimulus and control proceeds from the teacher, because
of neglect of the idea of the school as a form of social life.
I believe that the teacher's place and work in
the school is to be interpreted from this same basis. The teacher
is not in the school to impose certain ideas or to form certain habits
in the child, but is there as a member of the community to select
the influences which shall affect the child and to assist him in properly
responding to these influences.
I believe that the discipline of the school should
proceed from the life of the school as a whole and not directly from
the teacher.
I believe that the teacher's business is simply
to determine on the basis of larger experience and riper wisdom, how
the discipline of life shall come to the child.
I believe that all questions of the grading of
the child and his promotion should be determined by reference to the
same standard. Examinations are of use only so far as they test the
child's fitness for social life and reveal the place in which he can
be of the most service and where he can receive the most help.
ARTICLE III--The Subject-Matter of Education
I believe that the social life of the child is
the basis of concentration, or correlation, in all his training or
growth. The social life gives the unconscious unity and the background
of all his efforts and of all his attainments.
I believe that the subject-matter of the school
curriculum should mark a gradual differentiation out of the primitive
unconscious unity of social life.
I believe that we violate the child's nature and
render difficult the best ethical results, by introducing the child
too abruptly to a number of special studies, of reading, writing,
geography, etc., out of relation to this social life.
I believe, therefore, that the true center of correlation
on the school subjects is not science, nor literature, nor history,
nor geography, but the child's own social activities.
I believe that education cannot be unified in the
study of science, or so called nature study, because apart from human
activity, nature itself is not a unity; nature in itself is a number
of diverse objects in space and time, and to attempt to make it the
center of work by itself, is to introduce a principle of radiation
rather than one of concentration.
I believe that literature is the reflex expression
and interpretation of social experience; that hence it must follow
upon and not precede such experience. It, therefore, cannot be made
the basis, although it may be made the summary of unification.
I believe once more that history is of educative
value in so far as it presents phases of social life and growth. It
must be controlled by reference to social life. When taken simply
as history it is thrown into the distant past and becomes dead and
inert. Taken as the record of man's social life and progress it becomes
full of meaning. I believe, however, that it cannot be so taken
excepting as the child is also introduced directly into social life.
I believe accordingly that the primary basis of
education is in the child's powers at work along the same general
constructive lines as those which have brought civilization into being.
I believe that the only way to make the child conscious
of his social heritage is to enable him to perform those fundamental
types of activity which make civilization what it is.
I believe, therefore, in the so-called expressive
or constructive activities as the center of correlation.
I believe that this gives the standard for the
place of cooking, sewing, manual training, etc., in the school.
I believe that they are not special studies which
are to be introduced over and above a lot of others in the way of
relaxation or relief, or as additional accomplishments. I believe
rather that they represent, as types, fundamental forms of social
activity; and that it is possible and desirable that the child's introduction
into the more formal subjects of the curriculum be through the medium
of these activities.
I believe that the study of science is educational
in so far as it brings out the materials and processes which make
social life what it is.
I believe that one of the greatest difficulties
in the present teaching of science is that the material is presented
in purely objective form, or is treated as a new peculiar kind of
experience which the child can add to that which he has already had.
In reality, science is of value because it gives the ability to interpret
and control the experience already had. It should be introduced, not
as so much new subject-matter, but as showing the factors already
involved in previous experience and as furnishing tools by which that
experience can be more easily and effectively regulated.
I believe that at present we lose much of the value
of literature and language studies because of our elimination of the
social element. Language is almost always treated in the books of
pedagogy simply as the expression of thought. It is true that language
is a logical instrument, but it is fundamentally and primarily a social
instrument. Language is the device for communication; it is the tool
through which one individual comes to share the ideas and feelings
of others. When treated simply as a way of getting individual information,
or as a means of showing off what one has learned, it loses its social
motive and end.
I believe that there is, therefore, no succession
of studies in the ideal school curriculum. If education is life, all
life has, from the outset, a scientific aspect, an aspect of art and
culture, and an aspect of communication. It cannot, therefore, be
true that the proper studies for one grade are mere reading and writing,
and that at a later grade, reading, or literature, or science, may
be introduced. The progress is not in the succession of studies but
in the development of new attitudes towards, and new interests in,
experience.
I believe finally, that education must be conceived
as a continuing reconstruction of experience; that the process and
the goal of education are one and the same thing.
I believe that to set up any end outside of education,
as furnishing its goal and standard, is to deprive the educational
process of much of its meaning and tends to make us rely upon false
and external stimuli in dealing with the child.
ARTICLE IV--The Nature of Method
I believe that the question of method is ultimately
reducible to the question of the order of development of the child's
powers and interests. The law for presenting and treating material
is the law implicit within the child's own nature. Because this is
so I believe the following statements are of supreme importance
as determining the spirit in which education is carried on:
1. I believe that the active side
precedes the passive in the development of the child nature; that
expression comes before conscious impression; that the muscular development
precedes the sensory; that movements come before conscious sensations;
I believe that consciousness is essentially motor or impulsive;
that conscious states tend to project themselves in action.
I believe that the neglect of this principle is
the cause of a large part of the waste of time and strength in school
work. The child is thrown into a passive, receptive, or absorbing
attitude. The conditions are such that he is not permitted to follow
the law of his nature; the result is friction and waste.
I believe that ideas (intellectual and rational
processes) also result from action and devolve for the sake of the
better control of action. What we term reason is primarily the law
of orderly or effective action. To attempt to develop the reasoning
powers, the powers of judgment, without reference to the selection
and arrangement of means in action, is the fundamental fallacy in
our present methods of dealing with this matter. As a result we present
the child with arbitrary symbols. Symbols are a necessity in mental
development, but they have their place as tools for economizing effort;
presented by themselves they are a mass of meaningless and arbitrary
ideas imposed from without.
2. I believe that the image is
the great instrument of instruction. What a child gets out of any
subject presented to him is simply the images which he himself forms
with regard to it.
I believe that if nine tenths of the energy at
present directed towards making the child learn certain things, were
spent in seeing to it that the child was forming proper images, the
work of instruction would be indefinitely facilitated.
I believe that much of the time and attention now
given to the preparation and presentation of lessons might be more
wisely and profitably expended in training the child's power of imagery
and in seeing to it that he was continually forming definite, vivid,
and growing images of the various subjects with which he comes in
contact in his experience.
3. I believe that interests are
the signs and symptoms of growing power. I believe that they
represent dawning capacities. Accordingly the constant and careful
observation of interests is of the utmost importance for the educator.
I believe that these interests are to be observed
as showing the state of development which the child has reached.
I believe that they prophesy the stage upon which
he is about to enter.
I believe that only through the continual and sympathetic
observation of childhood's interests can the adult enter into the
child's life and see what it is ready for, and upon what material
it could work most readily and fruitfully.
I believe that these interests are neither to be
humored nor repressed. To repress interest is to substitute the adult
for the child, and so to weaken intellectual curiosity and alertness,
to suppress initiative, and to deaden interest. To humor the interests
is to substitute the transient for the permanent. The interest is
always the sign of some power below; the important thing is to discover
this power. To humor the interest is to fail to penetrate below the
surface and its sure result is to substitute caprice and whim for
genuine interest.
4. I believe that the emotions
are the reflex of actions.
I believe that to endeavor to stimulate or arouse
the emotions apart from their corresponding activities, is to introduce
an unhealthy and morbid state of mind.
I believe that if we can only secure right habits
of action and thought, with reference to the good, the true, and the
beautiful, the emotions will for the most part take care of themselves.
I believe that next to deadness and dullness, formalism
and routine, our education is threatened with no greater evil than
sentimentalism.
I believe that this sentimentalism is the necessary
result of the attempt to divorce feeling from action.
ARTICLE V-The School and Social Progress
I believe that education is the fundamental method
of social progress and reform.
I believe that all reforms which rest simply upon
the enactment of law, or the threatening of certain penalties, or
upon changes in mechanical or outward arrangements, are transitory
and futile.
I believe that education is a regulation of the
process of coming to share in the social consciousness; and that the
adjustment of individual activity on the basis of this social consciousness
is the only sure method of social reconstruction.
I believe that this conception has due regard for
both the individualistic and socialistic ideals. It is duly individual
because it recognizes the formation of a certain character as the
only genuine basis of right living. It is socialistic because it recognizes
that this right character is not to be formed by merely individual
precept, example, or exhortation, but rather by the influence of a
certain form of institutional or community life upon the individual,
and that the social organism through the school, as its organ, may
determine ethical results.
I believe that in the ideal school we have the
reconciliation of the individualistic and the institutional ideals.
I believe that the community's duty to education
is, therefore, its paramount moral duty. By law and punishment, by
social agitation and discussion, society can regulate and form itself
in a more or less haphazard and chance way. But through education
society can formulate its own purposes, can organize its own means
and resources, and thus shape itself with definiteness and economy
in the direction in which it wishes to move.
I believe that when society once recognizes the
possibilities in this direction, and the obligations which these possibilities
impose, it is impossible to conceive of the resources of time, attention,
and money which will be put at the disposal of the educator.
I believe that it is the business of every one
interested in education to insist upon the school as the primary and
most effective interest of social progress and reform in order that
society may be awakened to realize what the school stands for, and
aroused to the necessity of endowing the educator with sufficient
equipment properly to perform his task.
I believe that education thus conceived marks the
most perfect and intimate union of science and art conceivable in
human experience.
I believe that the art of thus giving shape to
human powers and adapting them to social service, is the supreme art;
one calling into its service the best of artists; that no insight,
sympathy, tact, executive power, is too great for such service.
I believe that with the growth of psychological
service, giving added insight into individual structure and laws of
growth; and with growth of social science, adding to our knowledge
of the right organization of individuals, all scientific resources
can be utilized for the purposes of education.
I believe that when science and art thus join hands
the most commanding motive for human action will be reached; the most
genuine springs of human conduct aroused and the best service that
human nature is capable of guaranteed.
I believe, finally, that the teacher is engaged,
not simply in the training of individuals, but in the formation of
the proper social life.
I believe that every teacher should realize the
dignity of his calling; that he is a social servant set apart for
the maintenance of proper social order and the securing of the right
social growth.
I believe that in this way the teacher always is
the prophet of the true God and the usherer in of the true kingdom
of God.
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