John Dewey - Ultimate Collection: 40+ Works on Psychology, Education, Philosophy & Politics. Джон Дьюи
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R’s, were to be taught because of their utility. They were needed to make individuals capable of self-support, of “getting on” better, and so capable of rendering better economic service under changed commercial conditions. It was assumed that the greater number of pupils would leave school as soon as they had mastered the practical use of these tools.
No better evidence could be found that primary education is still regarded with respect to the larger number of pupils, as a practical social necessity, not as an intrinsic educative measure, than the fact that the greater number of pupils leave school about the fifth grade—that is, when they have acquired rudimentary skill in reading, writing and figuring. The opposition of influential members of the community to the introduction of any studies, save perhaps geography and history, beyond the three R’s, the tendency to regard other things as “frills and fads,” is evidence of the way in which purely elementary schooling is regarded. A fuller and wider culture in literature, science and the arts may be allowed in the case of those better off, but the masses are not to be educatively developed so much as trained in the use of tools needed to make them effective workers. Elementary instruction to a larger extent than we usually admit, is a substitute, under the changed circumstances of production and distribution of goods, for the older apprenticeship system. The latter was never treated as educational in a fundamental sense; the former is only partially conducted as a thoroughly educational enterprise.
In part the older ideals of a predominantly literary and “intellectual” education invaded and captured the new elementary schools. For the smaller number of pupils who might go on to a higher and cultural education, the three R’s were the tools of learning, the only really indispensable tools of acquiring knowledge. They are all of them concerned with language, that is, with symbols of facts and ideas, a fact which throws a flood of light upon the prevailing ideas of learning and knowledge. Knowledge consists of the ready-made material which others have found out, and mastery of language is the means of access to this fund. To learn is to appropriate something from this ready-made store, not to find out something for one’s self. Educational reformers may go on attacking pouring-in methods of teaching and passive reception methods of learning; but as long as these ideas of the nature of knowledge are current, they make little headway. The separation of the activity of the mind from the activity of the senses in direct observation and from the activity of the hand in construction and manipulation, makes the material of studies academic and remote, and compels the passive acquisition of information imparted by textbook and teacher.
In the United States there was for a long time a natural division of labor between the book-learning of the schools and the more direct and vital learning of out-of-school life. It is impossible to exaggerate the amount of mental and moral training secured by our forefathers in the course of the ordinary pursuits of life. They were engaged in subduing a new country. Industry was at a premium, and instead of being of a routine nature, pioneer conditions required initiative, ingenuity, and pluck. For the most part men were working for themselves; or, if for others, with a prospect of soon becoming masters of their own affairs. While the citizens of old-world monarchies had no responsibility for the conduct of government, our forefathers were engaged in the experiment of conducting their own government. They had the incentive of a participation in the conduct of civic and public affairs which came directly home to them. Production had not yet been concentrated in factories in congested centers, but was distributed through villages. Markets were local rather than remote. Manufacturing was still literally hand-making, with the use of local water-power; it was not carried on by big machines to which the employed “hands” were mechanical adjuncts. The occupations of daily life engaged the imagination and enforced knowledge of natural materials and processes.
Children as they grew up either engaged in or were in intimate contact with spinning, weaving, bleaching, dyeing, and the making of clothes; with lumbering, and leather, saw-mills, and carpentry; with working of metals and making of candles. They not only saw the grain planted and reaped, but were familiar with the village grist-mill and the preparation of flour and of foodstuffs for cattle. These things were close to them, the processes were all open to inspection. They knew where things came from and how they were made or where they went to, and they knew these things by personal observation. They had the discipline that came from sharing in useful activities.
While there was too much taxing toil, there was also stimulus to imagination and training of independent judgment along with the personal knowledge of materials and processes. Under such conditions, the schools could hardly have done better than devote themselves to books, and to teaching a command of the use of books, especially since, in most communities, books, while a rarity and a luxury, were the sole means of access to the great world beyond the village surroundings.
But conditions changed and school materials and methods did not change to keep pace. Population shifted to urban centers. Production became a mass affair, carried on in big factories, instead of a household affair. Growth of steam and electric transportation brought about production for distant markets, even for a world market. Industry was no longer a local or neighborhood concern. Manufacturing was split up into a very great variety of separate processes through the economies incident upon extreme division of labor. Even the working-men in a particular line of industry rarely have any chance to become acquainted with the entire course of production, while outsiders see practically nothing but either the raw material on one hand or the finished product on the other. Machines depend in their action upon complicated facts and principles of nature which are not recognized by the worker unless he has had special intellectual training. The machine worker, unlike the older hand worker, is following blindly the intelligence of others instead of his own knowledge of materials, tools, and processes. With the passing of pioneer conditions passed also the days when almost every individual looked forward to being at some time in control of a business of his own. Great masses of men have no other expectation than to be permanently hired for pay to work for others. Inequalities of wealth have multiplied, so that demand for the labor of children has become a pressing menace to the serious education of great numbers. On the other hand, children in wealthy families have lost the moral and practical discipline that once came from sharing in the round of home duties. For a large number there is little alternative, especially in larger cities, between irksome child labor and demoralizing child idleness. Inquiries conducted by competent authorities show that in the great centers of population opportunities for play are so inadequate that free time is not even spent in wholesome recreations by a majority of children.
These statements do not begin, of course, to cover the contrasts between present social conditions and those to which our earlier school facilities were adapted. They suggest, however, some of the obvious changes with which education must reckon if it is to maintain a vital connection with contemporary social life, so as to give the kind of instruction needed to make efficient and self-respecting members of the community. The sketch would be even more incomplete, however, if it failed to note that along with these changes there has been an immense cheapening of printed material and an immense increase in the facilities for its distribution. Libraries abound, books are many and cheap, magazines and newspapers are everywhere. Consequently the schools do not any longer bear the peculiar relation to books and book knowledge which they once did. While out of school conditions have lost many of the educative features they once possessed, they have gained immensely in the provision they make for reading matter and for stimulating interest in reading. It is no longer necessary or desirable that the schools should devote themselves so exclusively to this phase of instruction. But it is more necessary than it used to be that the schools shall develop such interest in the pupils as will induce them to read material that is intellectually worth while.
While merely learning the use of language symbols and of acquiring habits of reading is less important than it used to be, the question of the use to which the power and habits shall be put is much more important. To learn to use reading matter means that schools shall arouse in pupils problems and interests that lead students both in school and after they leave school to seek that subject-matter of history, science, biography, and literature which is inherently valuable, and not to waste themselves upon the trash which is so abundantly provided. It is absolutely impossible to secure this result when schools devote themselves to the formal sides of language instead of to developing deep and vital interest in subject-matter. Educational theorists and school authorities who attempt to remedy the deplorable