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.
