tert hn a ae le We ;= - = r~7 a ~ Tm it ah ' W COL OgIGAL Stl 027 ag VB 4 Division ie ; Section _C, Vay A ye TA Gy’ 6 Uae eM aie 194 a , 1s Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2022 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/lawfreedominscho00coeg LAW AND FREEDOM IN THE SCHOOL THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS CHICAGO, ILLINOIS THE BAKER AND TAYLOR COMPANY NEW YORE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA, LIMITED TORONTO THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON THE MARUZEN -KABUSHIKI -KAISHA TOKYO, OSAKA, KYOTO, FUKUOKA, SENDAI THE COMMERCIAL PRESS, LIMITED SHANGHAI LAW AND FREEDOM IN THE SCHOOL “Can and Cannot,” ‘Must and Must Not,” “Ought and Ought Not” in Pupils’ Projects | -——----~ bel Ani Ur Fal, F Antes JAN 21 19 BY ge GEORGE A. COE ae erg tk eabha Abieattoae! Teachers College, Columbia University Ui oT FG 3 Fi Hie hy ei) \ SRY ye) De; Ser THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS CHICAGO ILLINOIS CopyRIGHT 1924 By THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO All Rights Reserved Published March 1924 Second Impression December 1924 Third Impression April 1926 Composed and Printed By The University of Chicago Press Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. PREFACE The theme of this essay is law as a factor in school projects—natural law (the ‘‘cans and cannots”’), com- mon and statute law (the “musts and must nots’’), and moral law (the “oughts and ought nots”). Many pens have discoursed of late upon the educative possi- bilities that reside in the pupil’s own will when it freely develops in an appropriate social environment; let me speak of that within or roundabout every project that conditions his will. Law, then, not merely or chiefly as subject-matter to be studied, but as a dynamic factor in project- situations, and as an actual or possible control therein— this is the field of our study. Purposeful activity on the part of the pupil is the most educative experience in the world, no doubt; but what starts purposes going, what gives them their content, how much of the actual purpose comes to clear definition, and how much is wrought of which neither teacher nor pupil takes account? Again, since the school is a_ purposeful activity of society, pupils’ projects must be thought of as being, at the same time, projects of the larger, encompassing will. What, then, is the actual relation, and what the desirable relation, between these two factors in school experience ? So inveterate is the habit of assuming that free pur- poses, at least in the case of children, are antithetical to law, that to bring law into the foreground, as I am about to do, may seem to imply rejection, distrust, or an v De vi PREFACE intended restriction of the project method. But this would be a misunderstanding. In order that my readers may not mistake any of the points that I am driving at, let me say abruptly and bluntly that I am writing this essay under a conviction that the project method has come into education—has been coming into it for more than a century—to stay there, and to grow until it dominates schools of all grades. It is not a tool that our taste or convenience picks out from several alternatives, but primarily a law of mind and character; therefore, not something to be selected or rejected, trusted or dis- trusted, restricted or extended, but understood and incor- porated into our purposes as teachers just as we incorpo- rate plant physiology into agriculture. I am using the term project, of course, in the sense that makes purposing, and particularly purposing together, its distinctive mark. Not the material worked upon, nor the products that result; not action with accompanying satisfaction; not pleased attention, but purposeful self-guidance. This connotes desire; conflict between desires; selection through discriminating judg- ment; forethought and planning; fitting means to ends; carrying a planned activity through; judging the product and one’s self by means of it, and thus making ready for further self-guided action. Purposing, in this full sense and range, is nothing less than the process—and it alone contains the generative force—whereby one comes to one’s self as a person. Used collectively, it is the democratic process. Our theme represents, therefore, a part of the general problem of how democ- racy can come into existence, and how it can improve itself. PREFACE vii On the other hand, I am sure that we have only begun to comprehend the educative project. Some factors in it are obscure and even elusive; the relative isolation of the school from what is called ‘‘the world’s work” conceals various factors; some factors, as I shall show, actually produce illusory interpretations of experi- ence. What I hope to do, then, is to bring such facts to light in order that a fuller and more effective use of the principle may be made. I, for a time, limitations of the project as it is commonly conceived are made much of, and if barriers to the use of it seem to be in process of erection, in the end the project-approach will be shown to be capable of solving its own difficulties. The prin- ciple will exhibit its vitality, not by proving that it can tolerate exceptions, not by going around obstacles, but by going through them in the strength of its inherent truth and value. GEORGE A. CoE THE GLENDORA FOOTHILLS SCHOOL GLENDORA, CALIFORNIA March, 1923 a A iee aie We = TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER I. THE DEPENDENCE OF PROJECTS UPON LAW .. . II. Naturat LAw BotH OPENS AND CLosES Doors. . III. THE PRoJECT AS THE METHOD OF NATURE... IV. NATURAL LAW AND TEACHER-LAW IN THE PROJECT . V. THE WILL OF THE PUPIL AND THE WILL OF SOCIETY . VI. How THE YounG AssImMILATE Morat Law VII. Morar LAw AND MorRAL CREATIVITY IN THE SCHOOL VIII. THe ScHoor AND Economic LAW IX. THE HEALTHY SCHOOL IN A SICK SOCIETY . be “ ‘5 La, } URW ey as SRN iM, a | ¥ oy ue OO oe Phy et, bf “iy par I } ; Dees if r 4 if AUT 9 me ; te My a CHAPTER I THE DEPENDENCE OF PROJECTS UPON LAW That the best-laid plans of mice and men depend for their outcome upon something else than planning; that law besets us behind and before; that our freedom, though it be worth all the world to us, is at most but a pearl within an ocean; yes, that our freedom is achieved only in and through obedience to law—all this is a com- monplace comment upon life. We hear it over and over. That it holds for school projects, and must needs be one determinant of what we are to mean by project method, should require no argument. Yet, in our eagerness to free the teacher and the pupil from hampering, largely artificial, laws imposed by the school of yesterday, we thus far in the project movement have been interested in freedom and the consequences thereof rather than in the conditions and the limitations of freedom. Therefore, it may be worth while to contemplate pupils’ projects from this neglected angle. In the present chapter an endeavor will be made to bring to clear consciousness what we ordinarily overlook. We shall for the most part pass in review teaching situations and processes of familiar types, merely noting factors that, in subsequent chapters, will be subjected to analysis in order to ascertain the bearing that such facts have upon the whole theory of the project. I 2 LAW AND FREEDOM IN THE SCHOOL Probably no type of project received so early, dis- tinguished, and nearly unanimous approval by eminent educators as college athletics. Here we have initiative on the part of students; team work; self-imposed dis- cipline; management that requires continuity and perseverance; consequences that count, and student judgment upon achievement. Who has not heard college presidents speak glowingly of the educational values of this experience, particularly of the development of rigid self-control on the part of individuals, and of training in social unity and co-operation? But some consequences occurred that were not “denominated in the bond.” What happened when the football team “broke training’? for good at the end of the season was not in the educational spotlight; only rarely did the sort of business training acquired in competitive, gate- receipt games come before the footlights; none but a few inquisitive scientific minds stopped to find out what physiological after-effects might be expected. “I cannot dive in my old form,” said a ‘‘grad’’ to me when we were swimming together some five years after he had finished his football career; ‘‘I supposed that I was through with my knee injury when I left the university, but I find that I was not.” A single glance like this at unplanned-for by-products of students’ projects in athletics should be sufficient to remind us that ordinary natural laws, physiological and psychological, grind out results, good and bad, on their own account—that is, without regard to the good intentions of the students or of their faculty advisers. A boy who had conceived the project of making a hammock spent a considerable amount of his Saturday THE DEPENDENCE OF PROJECTS UPON LAW 3 time sawing and whittling out the necessary “needle.” When his labor seemed about to be rewarded by the possession of a tool ready for use, the frail timber that he had chosen to work with split, and the whole project, for the time at least, was frustrated. Very likely this experience was more valuable for this boy than easy success would have been, but in any case what happened to him educationally was determined not merely by the fact that he purposed something and proceeded to execute it, but in part by conditioning natural-law factors that did their work entirely apart from his purpose. The obverse of this case may be seen in children whose projects, though well defined as to the product desired and as to the material to be wrought, turn awry because muscular strength, or muscular co-ordination, or mental continuity, is insufficient for the task. Any one or more of several consequences may ensue, as the breaking-up of a co-operating group because one member cannot do his share, yet insists upon doing something; discourage- ment of initiative; a habit of self-depreciation or of fretting; “‘faking.’’ One is justified in wondering what really happens, educationally, by reason of the unfinished jobs that strew the path of such organizations as Boy Scouts. ‘‘Yes, I know how to do it,”’ said one of them to me. “Show me, then,” said I. It turned out that his project of acquiring one of the Scout skills had been carried through in his imagination only. Doubtless, under some conditions the experience of failure can be highly educative, but the conditions need to be carefully scrutinized. Again, many projects require a succession of decisions, of which the first is likely to be the easiest. Suppose a pupil is simply incapable of sustaining his 4 LAW AND FREEDOM IN THE SCHOOL interest in the face of increasing and unforeseen diffi- culties. He has started, he is willing to do his part, but nature prevents him from going on, and the educa- tive results are determined partly by this fact. Some city boys start to make “pushmobiles”’ for themselves out of grocers’ boxes and old roller skates. Here, one would say, is a project that may be made educationally valuable. But the teacher happens to know that the ‘‘pushmobile,” by exercising the two legs unequally and unsymmetrically, produces deformities.” The teacher’s experience proves, too, the practical impos- sibility of inducing children systematically to change sides with this plaything so as to exercise both legs alike. Therefore, the making of ‘‘pushmobiles” in the school shop is not permitted. For the moment let us postpone the question how a teacher might best handle a situation like this; let us simply contemplate the fact that the future welfare of the child, as determined by natural laws, becomes through the teacher a “‘Thou shalt not,” which no urgency of the pupil’s purpose can revoke. Perhaps all children aspire to grow up and be strong, but the conditions of doing so, much more the conditions of symmetry, may fail to make a strong appeal. The effects of present causes are so distant that they do not seem real and unavoidable. Therefore, whatever the pupil’s ability or lack of ability to form and carry out projects directed toward health, strength, and symmetry, the teacher must not swerve from the known require- ments of what might be called the laws of future welfare. As scientific research increases our knowledge of these laws, the area that we are under obligation to * The fact has been communicated to me by an eminent orthopedist. THE DEPENDENCE OF PROJECTS UPON LAW 5 control grows larger, and the number of processes that are necessary, even though the young can have little knowledge or appreciation of them, increases. A certain private school causes every pupil to be examined period- ically with reference to the physical factors that deter- mine health, growth, and symmetry of body. The pupil who comes nearest of all the group to fulfilling the ideal of physical perfection is found, nevertheless, to be using one foot in such a way as to create danger of “flat-foot”’ in later life. The staff, therefore, decides that this child, for the sake of her future, must take corrective exercises now. How the required exercises in this instance were related to the project principle I shall tell after a little; at the present moment let us contemplate simply the fact that children whom we are accustomed to think of as so healthy and normal that they need no attention or control may in reality require much. Law is as minute, and as implacable, in the psycho-physical organism as it is in an explosives factory. When certain boys became interested in guinea pigs, many phases of the educative project were promptly in evidence. Here was a self-chosen end, and here were forethought; planning and construction of pens; the daily routine of feeding the pets and cleaning the pens; discrimination of strains as to color, weight, and form; breeding for a particular type, with resulting knowledge of sex and of heredity; co-operation in study and in exe- cution of plans. At the height of the interest the boys were certain that there was “money in it.” Didn’t fancy pigs bring as much as a dollar and a half? For days one boy insisted that he must have one of them for 6 LAW AND FREEDOM IN THE SCHOOL breeding purposes; he could easily get the money back by selling the offspring. But suddenly the bottom dropped out. ‘“‘We’re going to stop raising guinea pigs,” said one of the boys. “The fad is over [in the towns ’round about], and there’s no money in it any longer.” How slow children are to realize the force of economic laws, and yet how important it is that these laws should have a right part in educational projects. To get up early, climb to the hilltop, build a campfire, see the sun rise, and in this setting talk over some of their shortcomings with a _ teacher-leader—this was the spontaneous project of ‘“‘the dormitory.’”? When the eastern sky began to turn from gray to gold, ‘“‘Boom, boom, boom’? went the tom-tom as the procession of happy penitents started—happy because they had found a pleasing way to right a wrong that they had committed. But alas, how tangled together are right and wrong! Near by were families and small children who had a right to their morning sleep. This right had been recognized in a school rule against making noise before the regular rising hour, but the rule was for- gotten, and so a second wrong had to be righted. This “had to be’? was an educational imperative. For the sake of the offenders even more than for the sake of a handful of persons who might lose a half-hour of sleep, it was essential that law, in the form of a school regula- tion, should find a place in pupil projects. A troop of youngsters goes into a forest bent upon the laudable educative purpose of building a log cabin. Selecting a fit site upon rising ground close to a brook, they begin to fell the necessary trees. Hereupon the owner appears and strenuously objects to their pro- THE DEPENDENCE OF PROJECTS UPON LAW 7 ceeding. They argue, perhaps truly, that he has more trees than he needs, that the forest will be benefited by thinning out, and that it is important to them to become masters of woodcraft. But the owner—unreasonably, perhaps—invokes his right under the law, and by threat of compulsion he puts an end to their project. Here a law of the state rather than the purpose of the young determines the course of the project, and thereby com- pulsion of this type becomes the most important educa- tive factor in the situation—the most important as measured by effectiveness, not necessarily by whole- someness, for there is no doubt that the first conscious contacts of the young with common and statute law often train them in lawlessness. A sixth-grade class was discussing a proposal to take part with the rest of the school in helping a neighboring day nursery. Some of the children argued that they had heard ‘‘day nursery” until they were tired of it; their parents were helping, anyway, and something more interesting could be found to do. “But,” said one little debater, “‘somebody’s got to do it, for the nursery really needs more income. It lacks this, and this, and this.” Seeing that they could not agree, the children turned to the teacher for guidance. He suggested that a committee be appointed for further study of the situation in the hope that some action might be suggested that all could accept. The little chairman appointed as one member of the committee the boy who had most strenuously opposed doing anything for the nursery. On a subsequent day the committee reported substantially as follows: “Of t This supposititious case arises out of my observation of the grue- some maiming and destruction of trees by boys’ axes in public woodlands and privately owned groves in and near New York City. 8 LAW AND FREEDOM IN THE SCHOOL course we’ve got to do something, and if we’re going to do anything it ought to be large enough to do credit to the class. We recommend an appropriation of $5.00.” The report was unanimously adopted, and thereby the class did more for the nursery than the teacher himself would have advised. Let us consider for a moment what is indicated by the words of the committee: ‘‘Of course we've got to do something.” What is this “got to,” this law that is enforceable only through the free consent of those whom it commands? Let us call it, broadly, moral law. The obligation was brought home in this instance by two main processes: Contemplation of the situation at the nursery, which aroused intelligent sympathy and brought into action a habit already formed of helping neighbors who needed help, and the pressure of opinion in the immediate school environment. Now, these two phases of moral law—appreciation of ends, and the force of social customs, standards, and opinions—do not bear any constant ratio to each other in conduct. Some- times the directly felt value of something passes over into action without reinforcement from social sentiment; sometimes a standard enforces itself almost entirely through imitation and other forms of suggestion, so that one acts morally, and forms habits of so acting, with next to no satisfactions except those that arise from social approval and disapproval. At a later point we shall have to wrestle with the significance of this distinction for educational theory. What is the relative value, we shall ask, of projects in which morally good action arises in response to a perceived and appreciated need or possible value, as compared with projects in THE DEPENDENCE OF PROJECTS UPON LAW 9 which moral action consists in conforming to a social standard without fresh contacts with the ends that justify it ? A knot of boys was conversing in a moderate tone when one spoke up vehemently: “But, is it fair?” He had encountered law in still another sense, the law of the ideal. Another instance is that of a youngster who had been doing a certain duty reluctantly, often receiving pay for doing it. On one occasion he suddenly said to his mother: ‘‘I’ll do it, and you needn’t pay me for it.” In his Sunday school he had caught a glimpse of an ideal relationship of boys to mothers, and the ideal had taken hold of him. as a law. Did you ever observe a group of pupils deliberating upon the question of adopting the “honor system” in examinations? If so, probably you witnessed a struggle between the claims of an ideal and the counter-claims of the actual, between “‘as it should be” and ‘“‘it is too difficult.” We do not stretch the proprieties of language when we speak of the ideal as law, for persistent idealizing marks the strivings of humanity as truly as does legis- lation. We are summoned from within to a sensitive and generous living that outruns all formal rules and regulations. It outruns public opinion, too, being more fine in its discriminations and exacting in its expectations; it outruns even what goes under the name of morality. This paradox, that we recognize a higher law within and yet beyond our laws, a higher self within yet above the self of each of us, a something more moral than morality, is interpreted by religion in the thought that God is a morally creative will working within humanity through- out its evolution, Io LAW AND FREEDOM IN THE SCHOOL This is not the place to press this or any other inter- pretation, but it is the place to contemplate the fact of law in the form of ideals. It is true that injurious things have been done in the name of idealism, or of moral authority, or of religion, but let us not offset error by folly—the folly of ignoring and doing nothing about one of the great areas of human motivation. It is true that the nature of ideals has been mistakenly conceived, and that we need on all accounts to realize that they arise out of the actual, that they are historically conditioned, that they require revision, and that sometimes they stand in the way of vigorous grappling with actualities; but the fact that ideals are thus human proves, not their powerlessness, but their power. If realism should forget this, it would be insufficiently realistic; if pragmatism should forget, it would be insufficiently pragmatic. The point of this for us teachers just now is not that we should choose appropriate ideals and proceed to ‘impress’? them upon the minds of the young; not that we should put the name of God into the Constitution, and the Bible and worship into tax-supported schools; not that we should slacken the pace of our movement to bring education closer to the practical requirements of life; but first of all that we should recognize the plain fact that pupils do form ideals of great import whether with or without our help, and that ideals represent a species of motivation, an actual or possible inner law in projects. An adolescent girl’s journal intime that I was per- mitted to read in manuscript sometime ago revealed this situation: She was the daughter of a widow in straitened circumstances. She loved her mother with the same THE DEPENDENCE OF PROJECTS UPON LAW 11 intensity with which she loved a certain young man— no, with greater intensity. For she not only dreamed of projects for earning money that should relieve her mother from the necessity of grinding labor, but she assisted her mother in this labor, and in addition carried through the project of secretly writing a story for publication. The details of her prolonged labor under cover of night, and of the crushing disillusionment when her manuscript was rejected, form a human document of rarely moving interest. The intermixture of reals and ideals, of dreams and hard work, is remarkable. Yet it does but paint in unusually vivid colors factors that enter into the experience of all of us. And not least among the practical idealists is he who seeks to awaken society from an illusory idealism, to bring experience down to solid ground, to induce men to see whatever is seeable and then ask themselves: “In this situation, what doTI really want?” To insist that the good is not static, and that the idea and the expectation of change be incor- porated into morals, religion, and education is as much as to say that ideals are the proper masters of the actual, and that they are of the very essence of the project. We have now glanced at six phases of law as an actual factor in the projects of the young, whether we will or no, and whether either pupil or teacher is aware of it or not. They, alongside of definitely conscious purposes, are so many determiners of the educational outcome of school projects. These six are: 1. Natural laws.—They represent what can or cannot be, and hence determine success or failure, either because of the nature of materials or because of the nature and condition of the pupil. These laws determine, likewise, 12 LAW AND FREEDOM IN THE SCHOOL by-products in body and mind, desirable or not, and whether aimed at or not. 2. Teacher-laws——Based upon insight (which the pupil may or may not possess) into the conditions of present and future welfare, teacher-laws see to it that these conditions shall prevail in the situations in which the pupil is placed. 3. Economic laws.—They apply within a considerable range of the motivation and conduct even of small children; often determine success or failure; and like- wise affect many human relations. 4. Common and statute law.—It is a compulsory factor in the experience of young and old, and the con- scious contacts of the young with it determine important social attitudes. 5. Moral law.—It appears in the two forms of the good, or values that depend upon me, and obligation, or the pressure within me of the demands or expectations of others, whether human or divine. In both forms it is, of course, a factor in the purposes of the young. 6. Ideals as laws—Being most completely self- imposed, ideals may be regarded as the last steps in self-assertion, but as they actually are imposed, and as they cost labor and even what men call self-sacrifice, they may well be called laws. CHAPTER II NATURAL LAW BOTH OPENS AND CLOSES DOORS Sometimes it is necessary to utter a truism in order to give the right setting to what is not truistic. In the present instance the truism is that within every purpose- ful act of teacher or pupil, natural law is a co-determinant of all that occurs. Needless to say, perhaps, I am now using the term “natural law”’ in the popular sense that permits one to distinguish men as thinking, free-acting beings from nature as a mechanism. The laws of this mechanism appear within our very own activities in the material in which one works (my own act adjusting itself to the nature and processes of the material); in the tool that one uses; in the energies that one turns to account— the weight of the hammer, the heat of the forge, the actinic rays of the sun; and in environing conditions that affect the human organism, as atmosphere, tempera- ture, illumination, bacteria, and distracting sights and sounds. These things obviously have much to do with what shall be wrought in the materials and in the child. For short, we may say that natural law prescribes the extent to which a given desire is attainable; if attainable at all, the cost in terms of materials consumed, labor, risks of failure of the project, and risks of pain, sickness, or deformity; and, whether attainable or not, what the educational gains and losses will be, not only in the way of intelligence and skill, but also in the way of mind- sets. ‘This is the truism. 13 14 LAW AND FREEDOM IN THE SCHOOL What is not a truism is that society and the school are facing a part of this truth about law less squarely than another part. Let us note the ways in which, in child- hood as well as in maturity, we consciously encounter the something that in maturity we call ‘natural law.” Nature often presents herself as a blank ‘‘Thou canst not” that paralyzes the project attitude. Who has not seen a child weep over the refractoriness of some material, or over the recurrence of an obnoxious event, or over the inco-ordination of his own muscles? On the other hand, nature invites us with a “Thou canst,’”’ her laws appearing now not as a restriction upon the project attitude, but as a stimulus of it. Have you ever seen a boy discover the water-wheel possibility of a brook, or even the echo- possibility of a hill? But, in the third place, natural laws are so intertwined with one another that whenever we accept nature’s invitation to form a project we invari- ably become subject to some further law that henceforth restricts the scope of our effective choices. Whenever we enter an open door, some door closes. ‘There is set before us, say, a varied table from which we eat and drink what we will, but the food and drink, once taken into the body, become subject to chemical changes, and we ourselves inevitably become subject to them. A child can saw a board in two, or divide a length of cloth, but he can never thereafter recover the board or the length of cloth—they are gone forever. This third aspect of law is the one to which we give the least attention. The experience of free activity in a project leads on, then, to experience of restriction and limitation that otherwise would not exist for us. We never can reverse NATURAL LAW OPENS AND CLOSES DOORS 15 any process so as to go back and “‘begin all over again.” Yet, under the illusion that we can at any time make a fresh start by merely reversing something that we call our own will, we consume materials that cannot be replaced, repel personalities that never come our way again, make psychic wounds that leave a scar even if they heal, reduce our own power to achieve, or even put to sleep our desire to do so. Thus, though we are fairly aware, in our projects, of the “Thou canst”’ and of the “Thou canst not,’”’ we do not with clearness recognize the “Thou canst, but. .... ‘fs This sounds, perhaps, like a homily upon adult life. But in fact there is no break in this respect between childhood and maturity. It is strictly true that ‘we pass this way but once.’’ The better we know the psy- chology of childhood the more certain it becomes that early experiences are important determinants of the whole course of one’s life. Anything like this was hidden from the old rationalistic psychology of ideas. It allowed one to think (whether or not this was directly asserted) that the essential activities of mind are those that appear in its ideas; that ideas, though they originate in sense experience, detach themselves from their sense basis and become, as it were, free-floating entities, and that, therefore, one might at any time become any sort of person by having the appropriate thoughts, and might thus take advantage of any resource that nature contains. Hence, child experience, whether in health or in disease, was not regarded as significant. The play of children, their contacts with nature and with people, their likes and dislikes, their pains and pleasures, their emotional up- heavals, their enterprises and achievements, even their 16 LAW AND FREEDOM IN THE SCHOOL curiosity, were regarded as temporary matters, all to be left behind in the journey toward manhood. We are now recovering from this disastrous error, just as we are recovering from the parallel notion that certain diseases, as measles, are to be expected in child- hood, and are nothing more than an inconvenience of the period. The parallel is remarkably close. Just as measles may have after-effects that were unsuspected, so the whole psycho-physical process in the early years produces mind-sets that later in life are designated as bent, peculiarity, disposition, idiosyncrasy, gift, natural aversion, ‘‘complex,”’ genius for, character, personality. We know that childish whims, fears, tantrums, sex- interests and reactions, social attachments and repulsions, sense of success or of failure, sense of strength or of weakness, satisfied or baffled curiosity, feeling of freedom or of restraint—we know that all these have after- effects of great importance. ‘Thus, when nature entices us to enter any open door—to enter it either voluntarily or impulsively—she closes doors the instant we enter. Any act, any experience, limits the remaining alterna- tives in some specific manner. / Of natural law as opening doors of opportunity, of the wonders of control that are rapidly coming to view, so much has been said that little needs to be added here. ‘This little, however, is by no means unimportant. It is twofold. First, who is to wield this enormously increasing control of natural resources that the sciences are making possible? Second, to what ends are these resources to be applied? As yet we have only a partial answer to either of these questions. It is evident that direct control of natural resources by individuals and NATURAL LAW OPENS AND CLOSES DOORS 17 small aggregations of men is passing into indirect and diminished control by the many and enormously in- creased control by the few who manage the ever more organized industries and businesses. The ends to which our augmented powers are being directed are in major degree the increase of power on the part of those who already have the most, and in minor degree the improve- ment of human life. This is reflected in an interesting manner in the federal income-tax law, which exempts from taxation gifts for religious, philanthropic, and educational purposes to the extent of only 15 per cent of one’s income. That is, if one gives away 30 per cent of one’s income instead of 15 per cent, the second 15 per cent is not exempted, because this would increase the tax of those who give away a smaller proportion of their income. To him that withholdeth, more withholding; from him that giveth most generously, a second giving in the form of taxation is required. Law as invitation to power is bound to play a great role in school projects. Rightly so. The fascinated child of the future school is to be, not the amused child, not the passively appreciative child, but the child who experiences increase of power through scientific laws and processes. What, then, shall he experience as to the distribution of power, and what shall he experience as to the ends to be served by it? Natural law opens doors, but doors to what? It is certain that pupil projects will give some answer to this question. The answer will come whether teachers plan for it or not. It will come from the customs of society, from the common speech of men, from examples of men of power. Therefore, it is essential that teachers should definitely assume responsibility for 18 LAW AND FREEDOM IN THE SCHOOL this inevitable phase of school projects. Upon this point more will be said when we reach our discussion of eco- nomic laws as factors of projects. In view of the restrictive and door-closing aspect of natural law, one would naturally assume that the whole movement from infancy through childhood and adoles- cence into maturity should include, project-fashion, the discipline of self-restriction—better, perhaps, self- organization and self-balance—as well as the discipline of self-expansion and outward achievement. Surely, one would say, any people that enjoys even a moderate measure of schooling will be schooled in this respect. Yet a dispassionate survey of our society will show that this is not the case. Here is a suggestion toward such a survey: We know far better how to heap up resources than how to increase our joys even were our resources unlimited. We are so absorbed in the machinery of life that, instead of running it, we are run by it. We are increasing the speed of life, but we do not know whither we are actually going, or whither we really care to go. Men live wastefully. They strive to make ends meet by increasing their income far more than by regulating their expendi- tures. Men live disproportionately, not seeing great things as great and small thingsassmall. For the most part they do not even look to see. Men live below their capacity. On the whole they do not shirk work, but they neglect the prior choices upon which the level and the meaning of work depend. Most of us violate the plain dictates of hygiene, and as a consequence rarely maintain for long a reasonably high physio- logical level. In spite of the rudimentary knowledge of eugenics that is within everybody’s reach, almost unregulated preference controls NATURAL LAW OPENS AND CLOSES DOORS 1g mating, good stocks are constantly diluted, and society is burdened with defectives. Marital happiness is sought where, in the nature of the case, it cannot be found. Most parents bring up their children by impulse and guess- work, yet believe that they really love their offspring. Day by day the old, old story of self-indulgence that is self- defeating and self-destroying repeats itself. Multitudes of young persons, though they are desirous of success in their occupations, constantly do the very things that prevent or restrict success. The country is sprinkled over with investment schemes into which intelligent men and women—some of them teachers—are pouring money that will never return. In industrial relations, and in international matters, our great men are desperately engaged in gathering figs from thistles. Thus, untold mental and bodily vigor, and untold natural resources are being expended upon what the “gentle pessimist”’ of the Old Testament calls ‘“‘vanity, and a striving after wind.” One might ask whether men really know that two plus two equals four, or believe that ‘“‘Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”’ For, in every one of these items knowledge adequate to show a better way is somewhere available. Educative processes of the right sort could prevent a large proportion of this waste of opportunity, of happi- ness, of vigor, and of resources. The young drift into permanently injurious, or permanently inferior habits; they do it without evil intent, and indeed often at the very time that they are strenuously pursuing educational or occupational ends. Men fail to grasp the good that life holds out to them, not in any large measure because they deliberately or even consciously turn aside from any wisdom that they ever possessed, but chiefly because, 20 LAW AND FREEDOM IN THE SCHOOL in childhood and youth, they had too few of the experi- ences that could start them on the road to wisdom. Either a habit of thinking of life as within natural law is not formed, or natural law is presented too exclusively under the aspect of opportunity for satisfying desires— as matters most commonly stand, opportunity for con- trolling things and men so as to increase our income, and thereby increase our ability to get what we want. Of law as pitilessly defeating our desires, of law as pre- venting us from having desirable desires, and of law as imposing undesirable by-consequences even when we get, what we think we want—of this how little do we learn until too late! Here is an unsolved problem of teaching. If we may distinguish between a narrow positive wisdom that is concerned with how to achieve a few obvious ends, and negative wisdom (what desires not to follow, either because they cannot achieve their objects, or because achievement is too costly), then we may say that educa- tion is far better developed in the direction of narrow positive wisdom than in the direction of even the broadest and most important negative wisdom. Our most effective teaching concerns the tools and processes for achieving the conventional ends of life—the ends toward which one moves with the least demand for discrimination. That negative wisdom, however vitally needed, lags behind conventional positive wisdom is due to an inherent difficulty that has a psychological basis. The restrictive aspect of law is the one that children and adults, too, least readily appreciate. To a child a jack-knife is a tool that cuts sticks; that it cuts fingers also is in the shadowy background of thought if it is there at all. To NATURAL LAW OPENS AND CLOSES DOORS 21 adults automobiles are things with which one can “get there’; how slow we are to take in the fact that they slay and maim as in a battle. To a child a deep pool in a stream means fishing or swimming, not possible drowning. To adults a big pool or lake is a thing toward which water flows, therefore a convenient destina- tion for sewage, but likewise a reservoir whence water can be procured, and hence a convenient source for the water supply of a town. How long it takes even intelli- gent citizens, in spite of abundant knowledge of typhoid, to make up their minds not to drink dilute sewage. Anyone who thinks that the necessary work of educa- tion in respect to negative wisdom can be done by saying “Don’t do this” and ‘Don’t do that” is welcome to his thoughts. Less unwise are teachers who rely upon abstract scientific intelligence to solve our problem. For genuine intelligence—which is not to be confused with correct concatenation of words in an examination— is surely handy in emergencies. But wisdom implies more than this, even a habit of seeing what is needed, and a habit of thinking of the sciences in their relation to needs. The problem for the school, then, is that of producing cultivated repulsions as well as attractions— cultivated in the sense that seeds of likes and dislikes are sown and watered and the resulting plants weeded; attractions and repulsions cultivated in the further sense that they are brought into relation to known causes and effects. In a word, our schools must do more than they are now doing in the way of negative—that is to say, self-restrictive—discipline of the project type. But we have to face the fact that some things that are in intimate causal relations to our desires must not 22 LAW AND FREEDOM IN THE SCHOOL be learned by children through their own experience of the effects. Being poisoned by poison ivy is an effective, but too costly, way for a Boy Scout to learn how to care for himself on a “hike” into the hills. Rattlesnake fangs can teach, after a fashion, but the fashion is not a. good one. What not to eat is not to be learned by eating it, for unwholesome diet creates an appetite for itself, and besides it reduces the physical tone that is required for education generally. There are fields into which the pupil should be induced, as far as possible through his own conviction, never to enter. As in diet, so in respect to the sex appetite, it is important to go right the first time and every time. The eyes need very early to be protected from misuse, even misuse suggested and urged by worthwhile motives, such as interest in good literature. — For the sake of protecting myself and others from infec- tion, it is necessary not to trifle or dally even a single time with this or that attractive and innocent-looking situation. These samples are selected from the field of hygiene. If we understood mental and moral causation as well as we understand the body, we should possibly find parallel acts and experiences, usually called mental, that likewise maim and destroy. What is the effect of the first success in deliberate and planned cribbing in an examination? Let us ignore for the moment the little deceptions into which pupils impulsively slip; let us consider only real projects in deception. Satisfactions of various kinds ensue upon success—escape from a disagreeable study by finishing it; the social standing and the opening doors guaranteed by a good mark; approbation of parents; mastering, or at least defeating, NATURAL LAW OPENS AND CLOSES DOORS 23 a teacher who thinks himself the master; the sense of power that comes from doing a difficult thing; admira- tion from fellow-pupils for one’s adroitness. From a single experience of this kind a serious, permanent set might result. Are we as sure of the effect of any counter- education that we know how to provide as we are of this set? Even if such a case is not quite parallel to the permanent injury of a bodily organ, should not schools fortify pupils, through projects anti, against the first temptation to crib? Wide-awake teachers know that in various parts of the country most of the pupils of certain grades acquire subterranean information about facts and methods of cribbing, and are subject to the influence of subterranean standards ad hoc. Whether it is similarly important to forestall all experience of gambling is worth considering. A parent said, ‘‘My son of fourteen is absorbed in a form of poker that is played by boys in our neighborhood. What will be the effect ?”’ The stakes were not money, or anything of value beyond the fun of the moment and the satisfac- tions that arise from the possession of skill. But the well-known mental processes of the grown-up poker- gambler were cultivated, the technic of a gambling game was learned, and certain of the grown-up gambler’s joys were had. This suggests the following question: If the natural laws of habit-formation are what we take them to be, and if gambling, as most of us believe, is a social evil, is there any way to keep the young from ever falling into it unless education includes projects anit ? What is to be the relation of school projects to the failures of adults—the foolishness or the wickedness, 24 LAW AND FREEDOM IN THE SCHOOL the tragedy or the emptiness, of misguided or unguided individual lives, and the wastes, the futilities, and the injustices of social organizations? ‘Thus far the school activities to which the name project is approvingly given are those that typify, and if possible participate in, the worthwhile activities of adults. Examine specimen projects almost anywhere, and you will find plans for enabling children to have the satisfying experience of success in doing something that is inherently worth doing. Such positive projects should undoubtedly form the main staple of school procedure, but they should contain or be supplemented by project factors specifically directed toward the avoidance or prevention of ills. It is true that in the execution of positive projects dissatisfactions are bound to occur, with the result of teaching some negative wisdom. Inaccurate measure- ments, haste, carelessness with tools, untidiness, social friction, unfavorable judgment upon the product passed by teacher and fellow-pupils—all these help to steady a pupil’s will. Yet such defeats, pains, and negative wis- dom as these are altogether minor and accessory; the end here aimed at by the pupils does not touch even the borderline of the false conventional aims or the uneco- nomical and destructive processes that these same pupils will encounter in adult life when they engage in the same sort of positive activity. Instances in point might be gathered from many parts of our economic, political, and social life. Take, for example, our wasteful exploitation of natural resources. Wood-working projects in the school are likely to take timber for granted; it is one of nature’s open doors. Yet timber, looked at soberly and socially, means that NATURAL LAW OPENS AND CLOSES DOORS) 25 our wonderful forests, once a public domain existing for the benefit of the people, are being destroyed for private profit. How many of us know how long it takes patient nature to make a pine tree? Once I counted the rings of a smallish Norway pine that was about to be used for temporary piling in connection with the elevation of a railroad track. They numbered 175. A nearby maple of similar size had only a hundred less rings. The larger white pine trees are found to have 250 to 300 rings. A board, then, according to the way you look at it, may be either a potential shelf, or a specimen of nature’s artistry, or a summons to stop the waste, rapidly approaching exhaustion, of our forests. It is easy for school projects to awaken admiration for works of man that are only partly admirable. Our tall buildings may serve as a convenient example. The coming of steel seems at first sight to give us a solution (in part) for the problem of rising ground-rents in our cities. For, by increasing the height of our buildings from four or six stories to twenty, we multiply several fold the amount of business that can be done upon a given number of square feet of land. Yet, in city after city, streets and sidewalks that accommodated the people under the old conditions can do so no longer— the capacity of the tall buildings outruns the capacity of the streets. So, we build subways; but at one end of them we erect more tall buildings, at the other end of them more apartment houses, so that shortly the sub- ways and the streets both are congested. Then we build more subways, only to repeat the problem. Yes, great) is") stéel;: buts)! Magnificently impressive are our tall buildings, but..... 26 LAW AND FREEDOM IN THE SCHOOL A century or more ago the westward-moving popula- tion came upon a river that offered wondrous water- power. Here were three water-falls, two of them of great height. What should be done with such a river but build mills and mill-races along its banks and in its gorges? Result, a large and thriving city, but the magnificent old river flows, sewage-laden, between the repulsive back walls of factories and storehouses, while the populace pants for open spaces and natural beauty. Natural law opens doors, but whenever we enter she closes some door. Here, then, in a nutshell, is the educational situation and the resulting problem: Both nature and the con- ventions of society in its dealing with natural resources invite and urge us, both children and adults, into projects that are either impracticable or too costly—projects that first yield satisfaction but afterward restrict, impoverish, overburden, or injure us. Saying “Don’t” is not an effective way to counteract the readiness of children and youth to respond to such allurement, or to prevent them from admiring unduly human works whose size and glitter conceal the revenges of law upon man’s projects. Some help, but not enough, comes from knowledge of the causal relations involved. Therefore something in the nature of projects anti, or at least contra-conventional, appears to be required, or possibly projects that are two-edged, both pro and anti. An early task of progressive teachers might well be some exploration in this direction. CHAPTER III THE PROJECT AS THE METHOD OF NATURE Thus far we have treated natural law as popular thought treats it, namely, as playing a part alongside of the human will. That we have not completely or consistently adhered to this point of view, however, is in the nature of things. For law is within us as well as around about us, and the laws that are within connect our activities with the whole system of nature. The project itself is a natural phenomenon. An ancient one, too, not a flower that has just bloomed for the first time. A child’s persistent exploration of objects with hands and eyes; his insistent questions; his climbing, running away, doing something to see what will happen; his fondness for making things, and his pride in his products; his desire to have a part in the doings of his elders; his impulse to accumulate, sort, and classify things; his efforts to master animals, other children, and adults; his emulation of skill and prowess—this is a partial indication of how the sap of human nature con- stantly thrusts out project buds. That project method in teaching depends upon and carries out this project impulse in our nature has been sufficiently said by others. But insufficient attention has been given to the fact that education as such selects between what I have called project buds, predestining some of them to free development and others to arrest 27 28 LAW AND FREEDOM IN THE SCHOOL or extirpation. Now, the situations in which pupils are to be placed are far more minutely and continuously scrutinized by project teaching than by the methods that it is displacing. Hence we might say that in the project method nature turns upon herself more discriminatingly than before, and grows cautious even of her own project impulses. We have just seen that nature, as well as the conventions and customs of society, often urges us into disastrous projects, sometimes miseducating us and then leaving us incapable of re-education. As a conse- quence, the suggestion was made that we should have in the schools projects anti as well as pro. ‘This conclu- sion rests securely upon the grounds already adduced. But the grounds are broader and deeper still, and they require something still more radical. This I shall endeavor to show in the present chapter. Taking for granted the beneficent training that nature provides through our multitude of project impulses, let us squarely face once more the inherently and inevitably injurious activities, purposeful as well as impulsive, into which she leads us, and then ask what significance they have for the theory of the project. Using the term ‘‘nature” in the broad sense that includes the whole of human nature, we may say that the misdirected energies of men, the monumental failures of individuals and of societies, the wrongs that groan their way through history and still cry to heaven for redress, all are natural expressions of men in natural environ- ments, all are phases of the project in developed form. In a scientific age these things glare at us with hot scorn. For, apart from the shortness of life, the major woes of mankind are no longer those occasioned by THE PROJECT AS THE METHOD OF NATURE 29 natural calamities—storms, earthquakes, avalanches, droughts, inescapable plagues—but those occasioned by us men through our failure to apply our knowledge where it will do the most good. And our curse is not inactivity, for we are full of action, such as itis. A vast proportion of our activity is organized, too, systematized, and directed to desired ends. Human life is not chaos, it is not anarchy, it is not beastlike obedience to instinct; it is, on the whole, project life. But something is wrong, or many things are wrong, with our projects. Millions of children are undernourished in countries that are rich and resourceful; they are undernourished not because we cannot feed them, but because we are busy with projects that do not include their welfare. The pitiful education that the public schools are offering to most of the children of this country is not due to inability to provide better education, but to preoccupation with projects that seem more important. So with municipal misrule. We could have honest administration of our cities if we wanted it intensely—we surely know enough —but we do not make it a part of our business, that is, our project. And what shall we say of the mountainous failure that is now in the minds of all of us? Consider, for a moment, the significance of war merely as a project— as a whole-hearted, purposeful, social activity—without regard to its justification or lack of justification. Never did human beings guide the forces of nature into thought- determined channels upon such a scale, with such rapid- ity, and with such precision, as in the Great War. Never did the capacity of men to work together in great masses so clearly reveal itself. Here, measured by the natural 30 LAW AND FREEDOM IN THE SCHOOL forces and the men involved, is the greatest demonstra- tion we have ever had of the project capacity of men. Never again let it be said that intelligence that can wage war in this manner cannot put an end to war! The reason why the end of war does not come is that men are engaged in projects that seem more important than insurance against international conflict. ‘‘While thy servant was busy about many things, behold, he was gone.” Nay, this is only the lesser part of the truth. The secret, formerly known to the few, became a pos- session of the many during the Great War, that modern wars do not happen chiefly because we are absent- mindedly employed upon something entirely unrelated thereto, but because we carry on industry and commerce by a species of minor war that leads on toward major conflicts between nations. Our everyday projects are themselves infected with the virus. The popular excuse for ancient man-made evils is that strong and ineradicable impulses of human nature obstruct and defeat reason. That is, the impulses of the other fellow, of course! Said Mr. A to Mr. B: “Human nature being what it is, war is inevitable.” Said Mr. B to Mr. A: ‘‘You yourself are able and willing to live at peace with all mankind, aren’t you?” “QO, yes!” replied Mr. A. “How does it happen, Mr. A,” rejoined B, ‘‘that you consider yourself so much better than the rest of mankind?” Thus do we excuse the shortcomings of our projects, our definitely purposed activities, by alleging some weakness of human nature in the rest of the world! But this self-deception, too, is a part of nature’s way of starting projects and making them go. Her versatility THE PROJECT AS THE METHOD OF NATURE 31 is astonishing. ‘Through our natural interests she teaches us to sow and reap; then she adds a farm tractor to the processes of wheat-growing; and then she devises a sub- marine to destroy the wheat. One and the same subtle sex interest teaches now how to make faces bloom by intelligently directed diet and exercise, then how to make them bloom by intelligently directed powder-puffs and lip-sticks. Doubtless nature is bent upon teaching, and she does it by the project method, but what is her curriculum ? A striking phase of this situation is the fact, already touched upon, that adults as well as children are more responsive to opportunities for action than experience warrants them in being. The likelihood of discomfort at the end of a project does not control our conduct as much as equal likelihood of success and satisfaction. The action’s the thing. A well-known example is the slowness of men to submit to control by their own reason in matters of sanitation and hygiene. We are so busy, so full of projects, that we do not have time to make ourselves either safe or comfortable! Other examples are “‘get-rich-quick”’ schemes, and . . . . well, our whole economic fever. For surely we are not in the business of manufacturing human happiness or character. In human conduct, then, plus A and minus A do not cancel each other. Equal magnitudes, placed in oppo- site scale pans, do not leave the beam horizontal. Some irrational factor, we infer, must infest the project atti- tude as such, a factor that pulls us toward action per se rather than toward rational good. This over-readiness is reinforced, or revealed, by three interlacing psychic processes: (1) There is the fact, long 32 LAW AND FREEDOM IN THE SCHOOL recognized under other names, that we now call ‘“‘ration- alization.” We initiate courses of action, we know not why, or only half know, and then find reasons for them. Having found reasons for them, we stiffen them, syste- matize them, and pursue them dogmatically—and sincerely. Whatever we are voluntarily engaged in, and much that is involuntary, we tend to “‘rationalize.” (2) Everyone who is not morbidly depressed represents the past in his memory, not just as it was experienced, but with modifications in the interest of his self-esteem. The errors of our memory are not hit-and-miss; they are like loaded dice. And the tendency of this irrational factor is to the justification and hence continuance of courses of action already entered upon. (3) Precisely in line with this is the experimentally known fact that we forget unpleasant (or restraining) experiences more readily than pleasant (or stimulating) ones. Our “‘forgettery”’ as well as our memory favors action more than it favors discrimination. Thus does the human mind gaze with a magnifying glass upon its successes, both past and prospective, and with a reversed lens upon its failures, both past and prospective. Our nature has a skew; we are bent first toward irrational risks, and then away from clear con- sciousness of the losses that our foolish conduct brings upon us. Let us speak more literally. Action as such is satis- fying whenever the organism is in fit condition for action. This is one of the constants that deflect the scales in which we weigh our projects, whether they are already accomplished, or in progress, or merely contemplated. Again, this satisfaction in the mere fact that our powers THE PROJECT AS THE METHOD OF NATURE 33 are in exercise is enhanced when the realization is brought home that these powers are my own, or that J am con- trolling something or somebody. Milton’s hero, Satan, would rather rule in hell than serve in heaven. Just so, ,. a child will weep over an act that he feels is forced upon him, but glory in the same act when he feels that it is an achievement of his own. Thus it is that sometimes, paradoxically, children experiment to see how much they can endure, and even adults not seldom certify to them- selves their own strength by voluntarily creating hard- ships. If we were to reinstate the old hedonistic cal- culus, we should say that the immediate satisfaction of action as such (favorable organic conditions being granted), and especially the immediate satisfaction of self-activity, is sufficient to overcome an appreciable amount of immediate discomfort, a large amount of remote discomfort even though it be certain, and an almost unlimited amount of remote discomfort if it is only probable, not certain. All this obviously tends to introduce an illusory factor into our projects. The explanation of this peculiar, deep-seated weight- ing of action as such is found in nature’s primordial method of sustaining, perpetuating, and evolving species. Action, abundant and varied, though it means death to many members of a species, is the way in which nature makes sure that at least some members shall hit upon the means of sustenance and strength. She makes good the enormous losses that are incident to this process by a compensating fecundity. It is true that the evolu- tion of specialized organs and instincts is accompanied by reduction in the range of the risks taken, and by corresponding reduction in fecundity; but the method 34 LAW AND FREEDOM IN THE SCHOOL of hitting the mark now and then by firing a great many shots in a general direction remains in operation in every species. Even in the human species, which has the advantage of insurance by means of analysis and fore- sight, the older and more expensive sort of insurance is still in operation. It operates unless it is resisted ‘‘head on,” that is, by rational self-control. The marks of rational living all center around a certain checking of ourselves. Thus: (1) We postpone action while we analyze a situation so as to determine upon a more specific objective. (2) We rearrange the causal factors, both outside ourselves and within ourselves. (3) We reorganize our habits so as to utilize the right causes with the least deflection by irrelevant impulses, and so as to keep us going right even when we do not stop to think. (4) We protect from themselves individuals, as children, who are not yet capable of this self-checking. (5) We perpetuate the controls thus resulting by incorporating them into sys- tems of education. In our species, this, the latest-developed method of adjustment, exists side by side with the primordial biological method. ‘To some extent they can be harmon- ized, as in supervised play. Yet they do not coalesce. Far from it; they are so antithetical to each other that one of the chief functions of reason and of education is to displace the wasteful and painful adjustment processes of pre-rational nature by the more economical processes of nature-become-rational in man. This brings it to pass that rational living is possible only at the cost of internal strains. Plato is not exactly popular at present; nevertheless his figure of the unruly THE PROJECT AS THE METHOD OF NATURE 35 steeds and the stiff reins that have to be held upon them seems made to fit modern conditions. And it fits other conditions than the overabundant sex urge that makes us so much trouble. It holds, likewise, for the group of impulsions that underlie, first, the securing of food, and then the accumulation of possessions. Whatever the part played by native greed, rivalry, and the instinct of mastery, on the one hand, and by desire for food and for the security of self and offspring, or by the play impulse (business is a game) on the other, our economic activity is clearly not adjusted to our needs, is not guided by foresight of them in any such measure as would necessitate the judgment that we are rational creatures. The chief sign of growing rationality in our economic order is not its enormous and complicated organization of resources and of human power, but the internal strain that it is beginning to feel with respect to its own motives and results. Our economic system is an unruly steed just as truly as sex. For our whole civilization is taking as a self-evident good economic processes, privileges, and results that mix good and bad, justice and injustice, more abundant life and impoverished life. If, then, we desire to educate through projects that involve economic consciousness, we must incorporate in these projects a critique of the economic order. Rational economic living is possible only at the cost of internal economic strains. There is an old and popular belief that parental impulse in and of itself is wise. Especially the mother- heart is by nature endowed with insight, or with instinct that takes the place of insight. The mother, even without scientific study of children or of education, is 36 LAW AND FREEDOM IN THE SCHOOL held to be the best possible nurse and teacher. The grain of gold that this popular opinion contains makes one loath to attack it. There is, undoubtedly, moral value, primal social constructiveness, in the experience of family affection, especially if it issues in a genuinely co-operative scheme of living. But this “if” is a large one, and the possibilities of unwise and ineffective affec- tion are legion. If parental affection were wise, it would give the parent no rest until he learned what science has to say as to the nutrition and physical care of the child; as to how habits are formed, and what habits need to be formed or avoided in childhood; how to instruct children of different ages concerning sex; how to co-operate with the day school and the church school in their work of teaching; how to develop self-guidance in the child, and how at last to emancipate him from parental control. If parental affection were wise! What we see in most families is action, often genuinely planned action, based upon the fallacy that what I feel strongly must be so, especially if I act from affection. The result? Ask any teacher who knows intimately the life of children! Here, again, the project as the method of nature requires cautious scrutiny and deliberate checking. Yet there is a certain amount of justice in the present reaction against the interpretation that Plato and a long line of Christian teachers have given to the division that is within us—the division that makes us human. They ascribed our trouble to the existence of a lower or sense stratum in our nature. Reason they thought of as a supernal essence against which sense is in constant rebel- lion. On the other hand, modern science finds in human nature no such break as this. Senses and intellect, THE PROJECT AS THE METHOD OF NATURE 37 instinct and reason, bodily desires and spiritual aspira- tions, all are phases of one whole. There is continuity of process and—what is more important for our present discussion—there is continuity of a dynamic sort. No such thing as unmotived thought, passionless reason, or self-evolved spiritual aspiration exists. We are creatures with interests, and our interests envelop and suffuse all that we are. We think not only with our brain, but also with the autonomic system, and with our glands of internal secretion. Out of this sense-rooted endowment grows the best that we are in science, art, morals, and religion as truly as the various degradations that we fain would cover up. This truth has consequences that our culture generally has not perceived or desired to investigate. They would shock a Plato. One of them is that, since the blood that flows in science, invention, art, religion, and morals is the very same blood that flows through our most untamed impulses, even our superior guides for conduct are never quite competent. This is true both of propositions or maxims as guides and of men as guides. For the meaning of a proposition or maxim never resides in the words, but in the way they are taken, the setting they have in a given order of society. ‘Thou shalt not steal” means any one of several different and sometimes conflicting standards. Think of the possible meanings of neighbor- love that have scarcely begun to dawn upon those who confess allegiance to the second great commandment. As to men as guides for men, they cannot quite achieve competence because they are swayed within themselves by the very forces that they think to control. All our superior men are influenced by what is temporary and 38 LAW AND FREEDOM IN THE SCHOOL passing in the life about them. There are styles in science itself; art, as it is, is largely fashion; if you will give a concrete description of any moral or religious sys- tem, social psychology will tell you what stage or type of society it represents. As we have “‘period furniture”’ so also we have period culture even where we strive to achieve the fixed and eternal. A second consequence is that we ‘“‘rationalize” even reason itself wherever it anywhere concretely operates. We are overfond of our best, not merely of our worst! Our systematic overreadiness for action, and our over- readiness to persist in action that 1s once started, espe- cially action that heightens our sense of self (individual or social), spreads through our higher as well as our lower projects. Hence, the project principle contains within tiself a tendency to trust illusory hopes and to accept illusory successes. But it is equally true that there is no insurance against such illusions except a deliberate insurance project, or rather, insurance factor in our projects. An insur- ance factor in the projects, not of some few leaders, but of all who form and execute any projects whatever. The need of checks and restrictions upon the generality of mankind has been recognized for thousands of years, and priests, philosophers, kings, and statesmen have been set apart as specialists in this work. Under this scheme, to speak broadly rather than exactly, the characteristic project of the common man is to control some part of the forces of nature, while the project of those set apart is to control the common man. Latterly the chief figure among the guides and shepherds of men has been the modern capitalist. Not only has his control of the THE PROJECT AS THE METHOD OF NATURE 39 means of life for the multitude carried with it corre- sponding control of men, but it has begotten in him a naive certainty that he is a competent guide for the masses. His naiveté is a capital example of the inherent tendency to illusion in the project as such. Indeed, this whole division of labor between the leader and the led is saturated with it. Even if the division should be found to rest upon some necessity in a historical situation, the necessity does not alter the character of the fact, nor lessen the need for relief from the remedy. In the nature of the case, those whose project it is to guide the masses overestimate their own wisdom and become victims even of their own virtues. They are overready to guide, and, having entered upon a policy, they ‘‘rationalize” it. On the other hand, the masses who are thus con- trolled, as soon as they are inured to the habit of it, likewise ‘‘rationalize” their situation, and therefore overestimate the wisdom of their guides. Amazing is the strength of this self-deluding drive within both the leaders and the led. Behold whither the guides of civilization have conducted us—the capital- ists, the statesmen, the men of science, the priests! Yet these men show no signs of repentance, no lack of confidence that the men and the principles that have brought us to our present tragic pass will get us out of it. ‘The masses, meantime, hug to themselves the thorns that are lacerating them. ‘‘We are uncomfortable,” they say, ‘‘so we will shift our position, or go a little faster in the’same direction; we will get out of one social class into another, or we will swap one political party for another.”’ No isolated project, no spasm of reform or series of such spasms, no mere revolution, no benevolence in our 40 LAW AND FREEDOM IN THE SCHOOL leaders, will suffice in a situation like this. For it is a general human-nature situation. The human nature that is within us must turn critically upon itself, or we shall be lost. We shall be lost because, in the first place, the enormous forces that the sciences make available are of such kinds, and the habits and massed sentiments the ‘world over are of such kinds, that conflict and destruc- tion are in the air. They are not merely in the air; they are integral to the supposed wisdom of our leaders and to the uncritical assumptions of the led. We shall be lost because, in the second place, the impulses that have created the present conflict and destruction are permanent, not incidental and temporary. We have to wrestle with the project as a method of nature—nothing less than this. The conclusion is, first, that an essential mark—nay, the most clearly distinguishing mark—of educational projects is the purposed and habitual inclusion within the activities of pupils as well as teachers of free criticism of human life and of human nature; second, that this free criticism, and the action necessary to give it effect, are functions of all persons, not merely of those who (through any cause whatever) may be in positions of special influence. Thus, the culmination of project method will be a continuous project in the never-ending democratic re-construction of life. CHAPTER IV NATURAL LAW AND TEACHER-LAW IN THE PROJECT Probably no question connected with the project movement has created more difficulty than this: If the pupil is to be educated through his own purposeful acts, through decisions made and executed by himself, what is the function of the teacher? Does the project imply abnegation of control, or rather a more subtle way of “putting over” predetermined designs? Is the pupil to have real initiative and control, or is he merely to think so and be happy over it? The answer has to be sought in several directions. In a later chapter we shall see that much depends upon our conception of the most desirable social order, for example. But a part, an important part, of the answer grows directly out of natural laws that determine the changes that take place in children. The functions of the teacher are being settled for us by advances in our understanding of physiological and psychological facts. Here, at least, definite knowledge, rather than opinion or adherence to any contested social ideal, is decisive. The evidence for this proposition is near at hand. It is a historical fact that the more we study children, even by unprecise methods, the more we trust their spontaneities. An experienced leader of boys said: “There may be bad boys, but I have never known one.” Out of long experience in the junior department of the 41 42 LAW AND FREEDOM IN THE SCHOOL Sunday school a trained leader and keen observer remarked: ‘‘I have never known a class of junior chil- dren to make a wrong decision after they really under- stood the case.”” When analysis of child life grows more precise, so does our confidence. We cease to think that we need to teach a child to walk; we slough off the super- stition that small children must be kept amused; we learn that many child impulses that we used to regard as troublesome are really great educational assets; we are convinced that in the normal child there are at work likewise certain checks and balances that tend to keep activity wholesome and to promote rest and other recuperative processes. From all this the inference appears to be direct that wherever the capacities of normal pupils for initiative and self-guidance are utilized, there control by the teacher diminishes. This inference is drawn from experience with nor- mal children under normal conditions. Abnormality, whether congenital or merely incidental, seems to reverse the rule. A disturbance of digestion can put out of action the appetite for wholesome food; such a disturb- ance can likewise prevent the social reactions upon which the value of school contacts largely depends. Mouth- breathing lessens the capacity for responses to certain sorts of stimuli. Chronic irritation in a bodily organ may obstruct organized thinking, and so render continu- ity of purpose in a project difficult or impossible. But why heap up examples? Granted that the discovery and correction of such defects wherever possible are functions of the school; granted merely that teaching must adapt itself to such conditions, it follows that increased scien- tific acquaintance with the abnormal child enlarges NATURAL LAW AND TEACHER-LAW 43 the teacher’s sphere of action and increases his control of the pupil. Now, this experience with abnormalities has reacted in a remarkable manner upon our whole notion of normality and upon our handling of it. When scien- tifically guided schooling was first provided for delin- quents and defectives, the remark was common that they were better looked after than normal children. Then, when medical examinations, school nurses, school dietetics, tests of intelligence, and special classes began to be accepted as normal parts of school administration, there was an awakening to the wide range of differences contained within the normal group. Gifted children were found to be suffering from educational neglect just as truly as children of retarded intelligence. Old methods of classifying pupils were found to be crude and even obstructive. Then, too, not all the important differences are comprised under the heads of physical health and native intelligence. Temperament, of which we shall probably learn something practical from the new studies of glandular secretions, is unquestionably a fun- damentally determining factor in any child’s educative experience. Even the cumulative effects of living in a given home environment, the ingrained ‘‘sets,” necessi- tate differentiated treatment. Facts like these have made some persons skeptical of the whole custom of teaching children in masses. After all, is not the “normal child” an abstraction, practically a fiction, being merely the middle part of a measuring stick? As observation broadens and deepens, ‘‘the normal child” and even ‘‘the child” tend to fade from living thought. 44 LAW AND FREEDOM IN THE SCHOOL The result of scientific analysis, then, is to extend the area of the teacher’s control, and to refine it, with both normal and abnormal pupils. There is less of vagueness, guesswork, and generality when one starts a thing going, and there is closer scrutiny of results. The schoolmaster of yesterday, who deduced his method from educational dogmas, and then defended the product on the ground that it must be good because the dogmas were true, made a great show of control. He was strict; he could keep children quiet in their seats for hours at a time; he could make them define an improper fraction, and recite fifty dates. But tnis was a relatively external control; it missed altogether a hundred areas, physio- logical and psychical, in which important reactions were occurring and important habits forming. Indeed, the degree of control that is achieved in abnormality becomes a standard and a guiding light for the education of chil- dren whose impulses are the healthiest, whose capacity for self-control is the greatest. Just as the dulness or refractoriness that nullified the teacher’s plans before adenoids, tonsils, and diet were attended to gave way, after treatment, to active docility, so the pupil of superior capacity who was ‘‘bad”’ simply because he needed some- thing to do became willingly obedient to school require- ments when his load was regulated by scientific knowledge of his strength. Thus, increased knowledge of normal children as well as abnormal has the following effects: We differ- entiate pupils from one another; we identify the par- ticular need of each under particular conditions; we refine and differentiate the stimuli that we employ; our control, becoming more refined, covers also more NATURAL LAW AND TEACHER-LAW 45 points; and so, finally, the range and the depth of the control exercised by the teacher increase. But notice, now, that this is the route whereby we achieve the project method. While this extension of the teacher’s mastery has been going on, the pupil’s freedom has been increasing. Not only does he feel fewer restraints and get along more comfortably, he actually initiates more of his own activities, and makes and executes decisions over a wider range of his conduct. Whether it is paradoxical or not, it is a fact that through one and the same process both the teacher’s control of the pupil and the pupil’s control of himself have increased. This point is so important that an example or two, even from commonplace experience, may not be out of order. Let us take, first, a change in baseball games that was wrought through supervision of a certain playground. In the old days, when the boys were left to themselves, they were unable to organize the game so as to make it run smoothly. They did not know how to deal effec- tively with violation of rules, unfair playing, or deception. Such conduct, on the part of even one boy, could cause friction sufficient to break up a game. But with the coming of a supervisor the boys acquired—voluntarily and gladly—ability to handle such cases, and a settled habit and custom of doing so. The rules were better understood and better enforced; the satisfaction of contest and of conquest was increased, while chagrin at defeat was lessened, and withal the boys were proud of their heightened ability to control themselves. A second example is the freeing of fettered wills by the teacher-controlled experience of learning how to study. Much of what was formerly called inattention, 46 LAW AND FREEDOM IN THE SCHOOL self-will, and obstinacy was really an obstructed will. And the teacher’s will was obstructed at the same point until, through analysis of the thought process, he learned how to free both himself and his pupils. It thus appears that when we are most faithful to the project principle, when we observe most strictly the conditions under which a pupil’s energies become freely effective, we increase, not decrease the teacher’s living authority. His decisions determine more of the pupil’s activities, and the pupil consciously leans upon the teacher’s wisdom more than before. Project method does not at all signify laissez faire. This suggests that a fallacy has influenced much of our customary thinking concerning the relation between the teacher’s authority and the pupil’s freedom. The fallacy is that freedom or control or authority is a definite quantum, so that, in any social situation, if one member of the group possesses more the others have less. So bound are we, Bergson might say, to space-derived categories even when we endeavor to think the non- spatial. Freedom is like joy; sharing with my friend may double my own portion. We deal here not with a mechanical law, but with a spiritual law, that is, a law of relations between persons. A little later we shall see how the same law makes possible an increase of freedom through obedience to the social will. At the present moment, when our interest is in the significance of natural law for the project, we may tentatively formulate the principle as follows: Mutual submission by teacher and pupil to conditions known by both to be imposed by natural laws tends to release the powers of both teacher and pupil, and thus tends to enfranchise both. NATURAL LAW AND TEACHER-LAW 47 This principle furnishes a corrective for two half- truths that are widely believed. The first is that the most educative experience is had through living one’s present life, not by preparing for the future. The cor- rection is that living one’s present life upon the basis of natural law not only does prepare for the future, but does it consciously. One might argue this upon the entirely general ground that foresight and prearrangement of one’s experience is of the inmost nature of rational human living. ‘To be human isto be foresighted. What science does is to make prevision specific and accurate, and the more this is done the more free we are. To recognize causal relations in one’s activities, as project method requires, is per se to prepare for future living. The other half-truth is the current assertion that pupils learn most effectively when they do not think about the fact that they are learning. This dogma represents, not a law of the mind, but unfortunate condi- tions of learning that prevailed in the old-fashioned school. ‘There, indeed, to be conscious that one was engaged in the learning process was to be reminded of the school or of the teacher or of schooling as something imposed upon one; it was to experience discomfort and an impulse to escape. In a situation like this there is undoubted gain when a pupil forgets the school, the teacher, and educational standards, and becomes absorbed in subject-matter. But the situation is pro- foundly reversed when school life means, not imposition by teacher and submission by pupil, but mutual sub- mission to law, or fellowship in the scientific spirit. Pupils who are accustomed to witness the scientific 48 LAW AND FREEDOM IN THE SCHOOL approach everywhere in the school, constantly learning why this or that measure is taken with respect to heat, light, ventilation, dust, colds, food, body-weight, and much more, easily and happily learn to look forward, with the teacher, to gains in the learning process. As underweight children ambitiously drink milk (I heard one of them boast that he had drunk five glasses in one day), watch the scales and record their gains or losses in avoirdupois, so also interest arises in intellectual and social abilities, and in the processes whereby these abili- ties are increased. Then we see children imposing drill upon themselves, and keeping a record of their own progress. They do not feel that the teacher assigns marks to them, but that nature herself does. Under such conditions not only instinctive curiosity, and enjoyment in exercising one’s powers are set free, but the natural desire to be a part of the world in which grown-ups live is indulged. It is indulged, not imita- tively, or parrot-like, not by concealing the difficulties of growth, but by facing them and ane over- coming them. When we clearly realize that through mutual sub- mission to natural laws the teacher’s control of pupils can be enlarged at the same time that their own freedom is increased, we may possibly pluck up courage to face the need of increased control of the young. There is truth in the frequently heard wail that the children of today are uncontrolled; lawless; lacking in respect for elders and for the past; lacking in reverence for the ideal and the holy; that they are subjected to too many excit- ing stimuli; that they are frittering away their powers upon worthless if not harmful pleasures; and that no NATURAL LAW AND TEACHER-LAW 49 sufficient barrier shields their minds from contamination from the sinful ways of adults. The truth in this complaint is so great and so por- tentous that if there were in sight no better controls than those of the schools of yesterday (and, for the most part, of today), not only would this dejected wail be justified but settled pessimism also. The pre-project type of schooling fails to meet the need because it is weak precisely where the deleterious influences are strong, namely, in invitations to self-determination. Under the conditions of today most pupils who during school hours feel that they are subject to teacher-law pass, after school hours, into a world of apparent freedom. With this outside experience of apparent freedom school experience of the pre-project sort cannot successfully compete. It cannot do so either by compulsion, or by appeal, or by sugar-coated indirection—the pupil cannot unify the two worlds. Our only rational hope is that we may draw educative materials and processes directly from the stimuli that create the problem; that is, the school must enter, project-fashion, into the extra-school experiences of the pupil. It must face with him—that is, lead him to face, along with the teacher—the very situations that make the trouble. Now, the teacher’s anxiety is based in part upon scientific foresight. He knows that this or that conduct will lead, under physio- logical or psychological laws, to an undesirable outcome. As a rule teachers do not fully share with pupils this scientific insight. ‘The present suggestion is that projects (not preaching, but projects) directed toward securing whatever good the out-of-school environment has to offer, but guided by scientific insight into causes and 50 LAW AND FREEDOM IN THE SCHOOL effects—projects, that is, in which teacher and pupil alike submit to natural law—contain our only rational hope for a solution of the problem that confronts us. This sort of approach to some community matters, as the use of libraries and museums, is already coming into vogue, and in a few instances the “movies” have been evaluated and improved. Why should not the pupil, with the teacher’s help, travel thus the entire round of his environment in an endeavor to find “what there is in it for him”? Let him subject to real tests wholesome and unwholesome factors, and thus let teacher-law be transformed into something more per- suasive, even clear foresight of natural-law consequences. Some of the points at which increased control of children appears to be essential may be enumerated. The following list is not exhaustive, but it should be suggestive. A few of the items are included in this natural-law group because of the prominence of the natural law of habit-formation. Habits of diet. The soda fountain. Habits of rest. Cleanliness. Sanitation. The use of stimulants and of narcotics. Plays and games. Commercialized sports, and in general the sports of adults. Frequency of attendance at moving-picture shows. Safety of moving-picture houses. Sanitary and hygienic condi- tions therein. Social conditions and influences incident to attendance at moving pictures. Character of moving pictures presented in the community. NATURAL LAW AND TEACHER-LAW 5i Billboard advertising. The newspaper habit, with respect to discrimination of important news from unimportant, and with respect to the extent and the character of “comics,” sporting news, and descriptions of vice and crime. The acquisition, possession, and use of money by children and youth. The habit of “going somewhere.” Under this head I include not only the psychic effects of motoring as it is practiced, but also all the current methods of obtaining a rapid succession of sense stimuli. The amusement park belongs here. Standards of dress and of personal adornment. Habits and ideas connected with sex and the family. Gambling, both by children and by adults. The mutual submission of teacher and pupil to natural law helps to solve still other problems that concern the teacher’s functions and authority. The following con- ditions have frequently to be met: First, because of the rapidity and inexorableness of natural law, the teacher is under obligation to decide some things in advance of all thinking and deciding by the pupil; second, for similar reasons, sometimes the teacher must vigorously take the initiative in a project, and yet lead students to make it their very own; third, a part of the scientific truth and a part of the teacher’s purpose must sometimes be withheld from the pupil fora time. In the atmosphere of science all three of these can be done without weaken- ing the project attitude and habit of the pupil. How the matter works may be illustrated by children, counted as normal, who nevertheless need a new dietary habit or corrective muscular exercises. The number ot such children is far greater than was dreamed of in the educational philosophy of yesterday; how great it is 82 LAW AND FREEDOM IN THE SCHOOL will not be known until thorough pediatric and ortho- pedic examinations are the rule rather than, as now, the exception. Let us take, first, the overactive, underweight, and undersize child who tends toward nervousness. His name is legion, and he is frequently found among those whose IQ is high. He is not sick or deformed; he needs neither medicine nor surgery; his is a case for education. Therefore, he is led to compare his weight with a scale of normal age-weights; the weight-producing foods are explained, and he is led into the project of increasing his weight. Nothing is said about his being undersize, lest a sense of inferiority should arise. Next, on the playground the supervisor, with the least possible show of control, sees to it that this child, in any game that is played, has one of the less strenuous parts. Yet it is found experimentally that even very ambitious boys, once they have adopted the project of increasing their weight, will submit to rigorous prohibitions with every appearance of conviction. A similar attitude can be developed in children who need exercises that will correct faults of posture and carriage. The girl referred to in the first chapter is an example. Her school is one in which, because scientific care in such matters is an established and fully understood part of the administration, the pupils themselves get the spirit of it. The teachers, for their part, say little about defects, but much about gains and conquests, and as far as practicable they devise games or contests of appropriate sorts instead of formal gym- nastics. Hence we see the pupils, with jolly enthusiasm, taking as their own the teacher’s project-in-general; NATURAL LAW AND TEACHER-LAW 53 we see this general project dividing and subdividing, every part having meaning for the pupils, but not neces- sarily the whole meaning that the teacher has in mind; and in every part we witness an intelligent leaning upon the wisdom of the physical director. This leaning deserves careful scrutiny. It is not subservience to authority in the fashion of the schools of yesterday; it is not blind attachment to an attractive personality; it is the acceptance of guidance by science recognized as such. It reaches its maximum when the pupils realize that the director himself is not subservient to a mere tradition or custom, but is studying, learning, and modifying his own procedures in response to increasing scientific insight. When natural law, apprehended by scientific pro- cesses, becomes a pervasive factor in the school conscious- ness, a guide in the whole ongoing of the school and not merely something that is studied in classes in “‘science,”’ it acts as a bond of union between the personalities involved, a bond between pupil and pupil, and between pupil and teacher. Then the whole school experience tends to assume the project character, and in the process, though what has been known as the teacher’s “authority” wanes, his prevision and real control increase just as the pupil’s prevision and real control also increase. CHAPTER V THE WILL OF THE PUPIL AND THE WILL OF SOCIETY The project principle asserts that the educative process goes forward with the greatest power where the pupil forms and executes purposes of his very own. When, then, is one’s will one’s very own? Was the purpose of Jean Valjean his own, or that of his masters, when, a convict slave, his muscles strained at the oars of the galley? Was the purpose of Othello his own, or Iago’s? When the Roman rabble,.excited by Antony’s speech, made up what it thought was its own mind, and proceeded to work what it thought was its own will, did it really work its own will or that of another? When an American citizen enters a polling booth and secretly marks a ballot as he will, how far does he himself deter- mine how he shall mark it, and how far is he an instru- ment of a party or of a class in society? When a teacher, with canny forethought, places illustrated story books within the reach of young children, and reads samples of the stories to show what is inside the books, whose will really determines matters when the children, at their own request, are permitted to learn to read? When a history project, or a civics project eventuates in an enthusiastic conviction that ours is “‘the best govern- ment on earth,” who does the real thinking in the case? How much, then, do we really say, and what do we precisely mean, when we advocate education of the 54 THE WILL OF THE PUPIL AND SOCIETY 55 young through decisions that they themselves make and execute? Even when I am under compulsion my act may be in some sense my own, and when I am least restrained my decision may be less mine than that of surrounding persons. A part of the answer to this question has been given by Professor Kilpatrick in his analysis of the difference between choosing a painful thing because the alternative is still more painful, and choosing something that is not only relatively satisfying, but inherently so. The difference (educationally) is in the concomitant learning and in the mind-sets that are produced.