The Dynamics Of Education

A METHODOLOGY OF PROGRESSIVE EDUCATIONAL THOUGHT

Hilda Taba, Taba, Hilda

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136318962
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery

First published in 1999.This is Volume XXX of thirty-two in the Developmental Psychology series. Written in 1932, this book is an effort to present both the meaning and process of education in a new and truer light. The word dynamics in the title suggests the point of view as the author offers a methodology of progressive educational thought in the area of education.

Chapter I
Introduction

IN present day American educational thought a student of educational method is confronted by a great variety of conflicting positions, ill digested ideas, and contradictory practices. Education is a new science, and has borrowed freely from different sources, has adopted concepts and categories from many fields, and is utilizing methods belonging to different—often conflicting—theories. Apart from mere tradition, its original practices emerged from the philosophy of the period of enlightenment, and these are still to be found side by side with procedures and thinking prompted by the application of modern scientific method. More recently have come the theories and practices of the so-called progressives, which, if thoroughly examined, will be found to be fundamentally in opposition to those of both these other tendencies. We can thus observe the paradoxical situation of creative education for a dynamic society operating in conjunction with types of education that aim to drill future generations in the static essentials of culture. Child-centred schools that emphasize the integration of an active personality are trying to foster respect for an integrated personality while often basing their treatment of children on a psychology the method of which dissolves personality into atomistic and mechanistic aggregates of traits, reflexes, and inborn tendencies.

Within this general confusion in current educational thought, there are many phases that seem to arise from mere incidental practice possessing no apparent theoretical basis. However, there is essentially some kind of philosophy, or some kind of general theoretical position behind all educational practice, whether implicitly assumed or explicitly stated, although this is a view that has been repudiated by some recent schools of thought. Absence of explicit statements of theoretical positions, and the contradiction of practices, are due to lack of "thinking through," lack of intelligent reflection, and lack of methodological inquiry. This need of an adequate theoretical background is especially evident in our progressive education. Its assumptions are by no means clear, and its practices often show lack of systematic thought. Our progressive educational thought has reconstructed itself only in part. It continues to cling to viewpoints and practices that spring from an outlook entirely different from the one to which it openly holds.

This situation of antithesis and contradiction is by no means unique in education. It is shared by all humanistic and social sciences. But the issue seems to be sharper in the field of education. Education's function is to guide the thinking of future generations, and consequently it is especially important in this field to guard against tendencies that hamper clearness of thought.

The bulk of our present educational thinking and practice is based on the old view that human life, culture, and moral systems are essentially static and unchanging; that conduct and human experience can be explained and understood in terms of static, substantive concepts; that change and processes are unreal and secondary to the existential unit-realities; and that the role of education is to fix in the minds of the young generation established truths, values, and informations. Recent trends in education have created aims very different from those existing previously; yet withal these new trends have been unable to maintain consistency in their positions, and they still utilize methods of thinking and concepts that belong to the very educational theory they are opposing.

A situation such as this is due primarily to an inadequacy of methodological study. The educational aims of today demand thorough changes in educational thought as a whole, and in its underlying fundamental conceptions. This is true not only of education. It is true of all domains of thought.

Bridgman has pointed out that " each new activity in the domain of thought calls for new reconsideration of some fundamental conceptions."¹ This is precisely what the humanistic sciences need today. The history of thought reveals many such transformations in the field of thinking. The most recent and the most thorough-going has been the one productive of the " scientific method." This method has revolutionized thinking in natural sciences and has freed it from the abstract and fruitless speculations of medieval philosophy. For the last century this method of the exact sciences has had such brilliant results that it has been uncritically accepted by all other sciences, and has coloured our ways of thinking to such an extent that the nineteenth century can rightly be called the era of the scientific method. The fact that such a method might not be suitable for the purposes of the human sciences has been overlooked. Only recently, and also only in part, the social and humanistic sciences have grown aware of the differences of their own subject matter from that of the exact sciences, and have made some attempts towards the construction of a methodology of their own. There have been in this connection efforts to reconsider the assumptions on which the method of the natural sciences is built, because thinkers in the field of human sciences are gradually reaching the conviction that some important aspects of human experience have been consistently neglected or misinterpreted, and that this neglect and misinterpretation is due to some peculiarity in the structure of the scientific method and its assumptions.

In this connection the idea of " method " itself needs clarification. It can be interpreted in two ways. Method may mean a general intelligent and rational way of investigation. Method in this sense includes requirements like the fair and objective observation of facts, the evaluation of data with the best available critical thought, logical and unbiased procedure in their treatment. Method thus understood presents the most general conditions of rational inquiry, but does not limit itself to specific techniques. If method is taken in this wider sense, one can accept the statement that there is a method general and common to all scientific investigation, no matter what the specific field is.

On the other hand, method may refer merely to a certain specific technique, to certain specific devices, certain specific ways of observation and of treatment of data. Method in the first sense can be applied to any type of problem and must be applied to all problems. Method in the latter sense is specific, and is specifically adapted to a certain type of problem only. The scientific method, as it has come to be understood in its applications to education and human sciences in general, is a method in the latter sense. It has identified itself with quantitative measurement, separation of variables, statistical treatment of data, and a laboratory attitude towards human personality and the phenomena of human conduct.

Recent educational thought has in very great measure pinned its faith on the scientific method in such a narrower sense. It has even gone further: it has very largely misinterpreted that method. In many educational theories of today scientific method is taken at its face value as its own standard and as a sure guarantee of scientific results. It is often believed that all that is necessary in order to attain a desired result, is to apply some specific scientific procedure. The application of statistics, for instance, is expected to render adequacy and scientific value to any inadequate research or investigation.

There is one fundamental methodological error in such an attitude, namely, that a method does not carry with itself the criteria for its adequacy. Method is a tool, and its virtue depends on how adequately it helps to form and to solve the problems in the field to which it is applied. Each type of subject matter has its own unique characteristics. To these, method must adapt itself.

In the case of a transfer of a method from one field to another, one first must investigate the structure of phenomena in the respective fields before proceeding to apply certain techniques in dealing with them. In the specific case of the application of the scientific method (in its narrower sense) to the human sciences this precaution has not always been observed because of an uncritical faith in the omnipotence of the method in question. The intimate connection between the scientific method and its original subject matter has been lost sight of, and the method has been regarded not as a tool, not as secondary to the demands of the subject of investigation, but as primary and self-sufficient. Quantitative measurement and laboratory experimentation under artificial and abstract conditions have proved valuable tools in the investigation of physical phenomena. Therefore, it is assumed that the results of such procedure will be of the same scientific value, and of the same adequacy, in dealing with the quite different problem of human conduct. The search for ultimate elementary units has been one of the main aims of the exact sciences. Psychology, in adopting the scientific method, has too often pursued these same aims yet without questioning how valuable and how suitable such procedure is for an adequate dealing with psychic phenomena. The result has been that problems in the humanistic sciences have been formulated and selected by the method rather than by the needs in the field itself. The method has first blurred our view of the subject matter, and then taken upon itself to decide what facts and results are to be regarded as important.

This divorcing of subject matter from its particular method, the uncritical transfer of the method of one field to another field of different type, has proved fatal for research in the human sciences, especially as the subject matter in the latter fields is plastic, yielding to a method of treatment rather than forming or moulding it as in the case of the physical sciences.

The disastrous effects of such transfers are quite apparent today. Frederic A. Ogg has observed that research in humanistic and social sciences is lagging far behind research in exact sciences, and that " studies undertaken are ill-planned, crudely executed, and barren of significant results. Methods of investigation are imperfectly developed and fields capable of contributing richly to one another are not adequately linked up."¹ It is true that this state of research in the humanistic sciences is in large measure due to the complexity of the problems these fields offer; but it is also to a large extent due to an uncritical acceptance of the technique of the exact sciences. Furthermore, method-consciousness on the part of the humanistic sciences, and efforts to construct methodologies of their own, have been curtailed by unquestioning acceptance of what has been borrowed elsewhere.

Another fact ignored by those using the technique of exact sciences in dealing with problems of human conduct is that a method is not an empty vessel which can be filled with new subject matter. Method, in its narrower sense, consists of a certain body of general conceptions, of categories of thinking, and of positive assumptions about matter, existence, processes, interaction, the nature of the world, and so on. Behind each method of research there is a certain philosophy, whether it is explicitly stated or unconsciously assumed and implied in the structure of the method itself. Thus the scientific method indulges in some positive assumptions about reality, about substance and its relation to the phenomena of life and the physical world. It has also certain notions as to the category of inter-relation and interactivity, summarized under its theory of causality. Many of these assumptions, if they were stated explicitly, would be recognized as incompatible with the basic theories held by the human sciences at their present stage. Yet because they are not explicit they are seldom brought to light and subjected to criticism, although they influence thinking indirectly through the methods of research and through certain concepts and categories employed.

Resistance is always encountered to any reconsideration of assumptions that are very deeply ingrained and taken for granted. In the case of the humanistic sciences any attack on these assumptions is complicated by the justifiable prestige scientific technique enjoys in its proper fields. Uncritical acceptance of this technique sup presses questions of reconsideration as unimportant and unnecessary, or holds that the alternative to a particular adopted scientific technique is a technique that is not scientific-that harks back to medievalism. If the scientific method is believed to be utterly devoid of any bias, of any lack of objectivity, of any lack of positive and limiting theories, then it is natural that the consideration of basic assumptions be thought of as an unnecessary and trivial task.

The danger in following the modes of thinking dictated by the method of the exact sciences is that the concepts, the categories, and the ways of formulating problems, as imported from the field of the exact sciences, may not be the best to use in dealing with the subject matter of the human sciences. A difference in the phenomena in humanistic sciences calls for a different set of concepts and categories of thinking, for different methods for finding facts, and for different ways of formulating the problems, all of which can be adequately accomplished only when quite a new start is made in the methodology of these sciences.

The conviction that the theories and the methods of the physical sciences will not do for the humanistic sciences has been voiced quite strongly not only by recent thinkers in the field of the humanistic sciences, but also by those engaged in the exact sciences themselves. Thus Lewis makes the following statement:

" It is indisputable that many of the characteristics of living beings are not only far beyond the reach of existing physical sciences but are not even suggested by the most remote extrapolation of the laws and theories that we have made to fit the inorganic world. We see no limit to the interesting and useful results that will inevitably come from a further application of the methods of physics and chemistry to the physiology of animals and plants. Yet the belief that even an infinite succession of such investigations would ultimately lead to a comprehensive understanding of vital phenomena seems to be one of these illusions which blind our eyes to many interesting trails that should tempt the scientific explorer." ¹

The present discussion is not an attempt to advocate a wholesale rejection of the use of our current scientific methods in the social sciences and in education. There is much to be gained by applying to the social sciences what has been achieved in the way of research methods in the exact sciences. The harm that has come through such application is due primarily to the exclusive and uncritical usage of certain techniques only, to the monopoly of certain specific methods only, and to the lack of criticism of the fundamental assumptions that accompany such applications.

It is precisely because of this uncritical application of the scientific method that we are justified in concentrating attention on it in a discussion of dynamic education, seeing that the scientific method as discussed here-despite its great value to education-has incorporated, and tends to perpetuate, a host of positions and concepts that are definitely unfitted to deal adequately with social life and a changing world. Among these detrimental effects sponsored by an unthinking adoption of the scientific method are the fostering of atomism, separation, fixed one-to-one relationships of cause and effect, mechanistic concepts, and very often a "substantialization" of the fundamental concepts. This incorporation of alien concepts into educational thinking is the natural result of an uncritical reverence for the technique of the scientific method. Education requires emancipation from these dicta in order to give room for new outlooks and provide for the reconstruction and revision of its fundamentals. For this a criticism of the bodily transfer of the techniques of the scientific method from the fields to which they are adapted to those fields to which they are not adapted is imperative.

The present study is attempting, through an extensive excursion into all fields that have shown some evidence of dynamic tendencies, to reconsider certain current concepts used in education and other human sciences, especially those having to do with experience. In the reconsideration of these concepts it is hoped to be able to fill them with content that will be helpful in furthering the dynamic outlook, and especially in directing research in human experience and education to problems more relevant from such a standpoint than many now being studied. An effort will be made to reach the deep-lying bases from which any analysis of experience or of human phenomena must start, and then to apply the characteristics of such a basic concept to a group of working concepts such as experience, environment, concepts dealing with the relation of the individual to his environment, and the elementary functions of the modes of thinking.

Furthermore, an attempt will also be made to state these concepts in operational terms, and, as far as possible, not limit their usage to any fixed positive contents or theories of a closed nature.

As the method or way of interaction of phenomena and of the constituent elements of a complex situation is a basic clue to their understanding, an attempt will be made to look into the laws, modes, and methods involved in the intercourse of phenomena, seeking to provide them with a dynamic interpretation, and make them serve as a guide for the analysis of human experience in the light of dynamic methodological principles.

¹ Logic of Modern Physics, p. 2.

¹ Research in the Humanistic and Social Science, pp. 17-19,

¹ Anatomy of Science, p. 195.

Chapter II
Becoming

I

ALL disciplines, intentionally or unintentionally, are centred around certain elements, certain specific functions and aspects, which can be analysed out of the gross total of the given phenomenon of experience. Even the smallest instance of reality has almost infinite possibilities of being disintegrated into smaller and simpler, or at any rate into different, elements or aspects, corresponding to the purpose of the study.

Thus a piece of steel, for a technologist constructing a bridge, needs to be discriminated from other similar metals as to resistance, weight, durability. The physicist makes a further analysis of the same piece of steel. He will consider the motion of its electrons, its magnetic and electrical properties. A chemist wants to know the chemical elements that enter into the composition of steel. Each studies the same thing from a different point of view, and each, through the corresponding level of analysis, d...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• FOREWORD
• CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER II BECOMING
• CHAPTER III PRINCIPLES OF BECOMING
• CHAPTER IV PURPOSIVE BEHAVIOUR
• CHAPTER V PURPOSIVE BEHAVIOUR AND LEARNING
• CHAPTER VI AIMS OF EDUCATION
• CHAPTER VII CURRICULUM THINKING
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX