I 
 
 OCKTION ? 
 
 MOOR] 
 
 
Hnok ^ ^ JQ 
 Copyright})^ 
 
 COPYRIGHT DEPOSnV 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 BY 
 
 ERNEST CARROLL MOORE 
 
 PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION, HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
 
 GINN AND COMPANY 
 
 BOSTON • NEW YORK • CHICAGO • LONDON 
 ATLANTA • DALLAS • COLUMBUS • SAN FRANCISCO 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1915, liV ERNEST CARROLL MOORE 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ^ 
 
 315.12 
 
 ^i. 
 
 / 
 
 /l^ 
 
 GINN AND COMPANY • PRO- 
 PRIETORS • BOSTON • U.S.A. 
 
 m 25 ISI6 
 
 
TO 
 
 D. M. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 This volume owes its inception to my efforts to teach 
 college students and teachers how to study. As I have 
 attempted year after year to discuss with my classes the 
 ways and means of performing the student's work, the con- 
 viction has grown upon me that one of the greatest needs 
 both of teachers and of students at present is an elemen- 
 tary knowledge of the philosophy of education. Two con- 
 clusions have shaped themselves from this conviction, which 
 stand out above all the rest. The first is that education is 
 one and the same process in all grades of schools, and 
 that the activities which we learn to perform with the help 
 and guidance of teachers are the very activities which we 
 shall have to continue to perform until we die. The second 
 is that the confusion as to the nature of their undertaking, 
 which hangs like a thick cloud about the efforts of teachers 
 and students, cannot be dissipated save by an attempt to 
 answer the question, What is knowledge ? The theory of 
 knowledge has long been the battle ground of contending 
 philosophical armies. It was the vital question of the great 
 apostles of education, Socrates and Plato, before it became 
 the private property of highly technical philosophical schools. 
 It must once more, I believe, become one of the chief 
 concerns of educators. 
 
 [V] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 This book, therefore, is an attempt to discuss some of 
 the fundamental presuppositions of education. It is a series 
 of essays, somewhat closely related, upon a few of the sub- 
 jects which I believe that we who follow the profession of 
 teaching must perpetually keep turning over in our minds 
 in order that clear ideas upon them may shape and control 
 our work. 
 
 I have attempted not only to set forth my own views 
 upon these problems, but, when opportunity offered, to re- 
 enforce them by the statements of other men. '' Have you 
 ever observed that we pay more attention to a wise passage 
 when it is quoted than when we read it in the original 
 author.?" writes Hamerton. I have felt that I had a duty 
 to attempt to secure for some wise passages which bear 
 very immediately upon the theory of education as much 
 attention as I can. 
 
 The notions of education which I have attempted to out- 
 line I have learned chiefly from Socrates and Plato. My 
 indebtedness to two living teachers. Professor John Dewey 
 and Professor Frank McMurry, I gratefully acknowledge ; 
 it will be apparent to everyone who may do me the honor 
 to turn the leaves of this book. 
 
 ERNEST C. MOORE 
 
 Cambridge, Massachusetts 
 
 [vi] 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. What is Education? i 
 
 II. What is Knowledge? 30 
 
 III. The Doctrine of General Discipline 59 
 
 IV. Education as World Building 104 
 
 V. The Kinds of Education 142 
 
 i/VI. Learning by and for Doing 170 
 
 VII. The Place of Method in Education 195 
 
 VIII. Learning by Problem Getting 233 
 
 IX. Organization by Selection 258 
 
 \ X. Diagnostic Education 282 
 
 XI. Learning to Work with Concepts 323 
 
 INDEX 351 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
Hamlet. . . . Will you play upon this pipe ? 
 
 Guildenstern. My lord, 1 cannot. 
 
 Hamlet. I pray you. 
 
 Guildeiistem. Believe me, I cannot. 
 
 Hamlet. I do beseech you. 
 
 Guildenstern. I know no touch of it, my lord. 
 
 Hamlet. It is as easy as lying : govern these ventages with your fingers 
 and thumb, give it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse most 
 eloquent music. Look you, these are the stops. 
 
 Guildenstern. But these cannot I command to any utterance of har- 
 mony ; I have not the skill. 
 
 Hamlet. Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me. 
 You would play upon me ; you would seem to know my stops ; you would 
 pluck out the heart of my mystery ; you would sound me from my lowest 
 note to the top of my compass ; and there is much music, excellent voice, 
 in this little organ ; yet cannot you make it speak. 'Sblood ! do you think 
 I am easier to be played on than a pipe ? Call me what instrument you 
 will, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me. — Shakespeare, 
 Hamlet, III, ii 
 
 " All architecture," said Whitman, " is what you do to it when you look 
 upon it . . . all music is what awakes from you when you are reminded 
 by the instruments." — Quoted in the article, " Railway Junctions " in The 
 Unpopular Revieiv, Vol. II, No. 3 
 
 Beloved Pan, and all ye other gods who haunt this place; give me 
 beauty in the inward soul ; and may the outward and inward man be at 
 one. — Plato, Phaedrus, 279 '>*' 
 
 For, behold, the kingdom of God is within you. — Luke xvii, 21 
 
 Agesilaus was once asked what he thought most proper for boys to 
 learn. What they ought to do when men, was the reply. — Montaigne 
 
 [^] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 Years ago, while a student in New York City, I 
 attended a meeting of the Graduate Club of Colum- 
 bia, which was addressed by some three or four of 
 the leading professors of the University upon the 
 subject, " How I came to choose the work which I 
 am now doing." I remember that on that occasion 
 Professor Brander Matthews told us how, as a 
 student living in a garret in Paris, he made the 
 acquaintance of the French drama; and Professor 
 Franklin Giddings, how he came to devote his life 
 to sociology; and that Professor, now President, 
 Nicholas Murray Butler gave an account somewhat 
 like this, of how he came to ^udy education. He 
 said : " I was a junior in Columbia College when 
 one day, as I was passing President Barnard's door, 
 he called me into his office and said, ' Butler, what 
 do you mean to do when you get out of college ? ' 
 I replied : 'Mr. President, I have not decided, but I 
 shall probably study law.' Then President Barnard 
 
 [I] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 replied : ' Butler, do not do it There are plenty of 
 lawyers already. Study education. In this country 
 it is an unbroken field. There is no subject which 
 so much merits study or which will yield larger 
 return in point of opportunities for service to him 
 who makes himself an authority in it than this sub- 
 ject of education.' I replied, in a more or less vague 
 way, that I did not know what he meant by educa- 
 tion in that sense. He replied by giving me Ludwig 
 Wiese's ' German Letters on English Education,' 
 and asked me to read it, and after I had read it to 
 come back and talk it over with him. I did read 
 this book and became greatly interested in the 
 whole field of reflection and study which it opened 
 up. As a result, I read under President Barnard's 
 guidance, during my next summer holiday, Karl 
 von Raumer's ' Geschichte der Padagogik.' He 
 pointed out that I must be sure to study philosophy 
 in order to have a basis upon which to build any 
 genuine knowledge of educational theory and prac- 
 tice. With this, I was launched on what proved to 
 be my professional career." 
 
 The advice which President Barnard gave is not 
 often given by university men to their students, yet 
 his reasons for giving it are as sound to-day as when 
 he uttered them. There is no subject which so much 
 deserves study, or which offers larger opportunities 
 for service to mankind than this. 
 
 [2] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 Education is one of the major concerns of the 
 race. The chiefs of the philosophers have regarded 
 it a^ the one thing needful for the perfecting of 
 states and the improving of lives. Civilized nations 
 have taken its claims so seriously that giving in- 
 struction and attending upon instruction is now the 
 occupation in which the largest numbers of their 
 people are engaged. "^ What was formerly the privi- 
 lege of the few is now compulsory for all. The very 
 magnitude of this undertaking puts it above the 
 plane of indifference. The seriousness of the issues 
 involved is such as to give the most unimaginative 
 person who for a moment contemplates them a sense 
 of responsibility almost too great for mortals to bear. 
 Other occupations work with things or with human 
 interests taken singly. This occupation assumes a 
 guardianship over the generations which affects all 
 that they do. The directors of schools, the makers 
 of courses of study, and the teachers of the young 
 are engaged in " choosing experiences for people," 
 not for a day or an hour but for life. The study of 
 education is the effort to put intelligence into that 
 high task. " Nothing is worth doing, which is not 
 worth thinking about." The world, even the edu- 
 cated world, is quick to see that education is worth 
 doing, but slow to admit that it is worth thinking 
 about. Gradually it is being won over from its re- 
 liance upon the customary and the traditional, and 
 
 [3] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 hesitatingly it begins to examine the hfe which it 
 prescribes for the young. The first fruits of intelH- 
 gence applied to education are better laws and admin- 
 istrative devices. These produce a better teaching 
 personnel. Yet this is but a beginning of reforms. 
 Those who teach must think about the experiences 
 which they choose for those who are taught. 
 
 One of the earliest books written in this country 
 upon the work of the teacher begins with the 
 question, " Why is it that there is such a ' singu- 
 lar contrariety of opinion in regard to the pleasant- 
 ness of the business of teaching ? ' " Some teachers 
 regard their daily task as intolerable drudgery, 
 others never cease to think and to talk of " their 
 delightful labors." The answer is that " every mind 
 is so constituted as to take a positive pleasure in 
 the exercise of ingenuity, in adapting means to an 
 end, and in watching their operation." ^ Those who 
 do this find pleasure in their work, those who do 
 not, regard it as drudgery. This continuous adapt- 
 ing of means to ends is not only the sole expedient 
 for vitalizing the teacher, it is the sole method of 
 vitalizing the school and of vitalizing education 
 itself. This is the thinking which is enjoined upon 
 all who work at anything which is worth doing. 
 Theory and practice must go hand in hand, for 
 theory is nothing but thinking about practice, and 
 
 1 Jacob Abbott, The Teacher. Boston, 1834. 
 
 [4] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 the practice which is worth while must be thought 
 about, that is, must grow out of theory. The notion 
 that theory and practice should work together in 
 education is older even than Socrates, for the first 
 of the culture teachers of the Greeks, the gr^at 
 Protagoras, left the world these two conclusions 
 from his reflection upon education: the first, 
 "teaching requires natural disposition and exercise, 
 and must be begun in youth " ; the second, " neither 
 theory without practice nor practice without theory 
 avails at all." ^ 
 
 Some tcses of theory. Without theory, practice 
 must be a blind doing of what somebody else — 
 tradition, authority, or accident — has directed. 
 Rational purpose is lacking, there is no selecting 
 of aims, no turning over of plans to decide which 
 is best, and little checking up to find out the 
 real w^orth of what has been accomplished. The 
 individual situation is slighted. The authorities do 
 the thinking, if indeed any is done. Other members 
 of the undertaking are only hands to carry out their 
 orders. " Tell us" exactly what should be done in a 
 high school, and we will go and do it," say our stu- 
 dents sometimes to us. The teacher can no more 
 maintain himself on such a basis than the physician 
 can. The principles of medicine are not rule-of- 
 thumb recipes which tell him exactly what to do in 
 
 1 Gomperz, Greek Thinkers, i-p. 441. 
 
 [5] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 every given case. They are laws and rules which 
 he must use to interpret his patients' needs. No 
 one can fit the rules to the given case who does 
 not know them and their advisory character. They 
 are not guide-board directions; instead they call 
 for application, since they always take the hypo- 
 thetical form : if, in your practice, you find these 
 conditions, it is best to proceed thus or thus. To 
 attempt to work out the details of the procedure 
 of education, apart from its concrete situations, 
 results only in mechanizing instruction. 
 
 The kind of practice which has value. Teachers 
 when seeking a situation, frequently offer their 
 long experience as an inducement to prospective 
 employers to engage them. But it is not quantity 
 of practice but quality of practice which determines 
 expertness. Practice w^iich has not led to reflec- 
 tion or been thought about atrophies intelligence. 
 The merest beginner who brings his mind to his 
 work is incalculably superior to such a routine in- 
 structor. A wholesome doubt as to the sufficiency 
 of what we are doing makes improvement possible. 
 The race has not yet found out how to educate 
 its children, though it has been trying for many 
 years. Let us have theories, plenty of theories, the 
 more the better, since we can hardly have too 
 many minds at work upon this most difficult and 
 urgent of problems. None but the mind saturated 
 
 [6] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 with knowledge and well stocked with visions of 
 the possibilities of education can detect the short- 
 comings of its procedure. None but the theorist 
 can discriminate its strength from its weakness, 
 or actually see what is being done. None but the 
 theorist can introduce experiments, devise stand- 
 ards, suggest alternatives, or predict the probable 
 outcome of a given course of action. "It is highly 
 probable," writes Professor Baldwin, '' that two in 
 every three children are more or less damaged or 
 hindered in their mental and moral development in 
 the school ; but," he adds, " I am not at all sure 
 that they would fare any better if they stayed at 
 home ! " There are plenty of problems to be solved. 
 
 The wisely practical educator and the practical 
 theorist are the only persons who can solve them ; 
 the mere theorist, or the mere taker of orders, is 
 as useless in education as he is everywhere else. 
 
 Three grades of hiow ledge. There are three 
 grades of knowledge which one may have of any 
 given subject matter. They are usually distin- 
 guished as ordinary, or common-sense, knowledge, 
 scientific knowledge, and philosophic knowledge. 
 Each of these grades of knowledge is due to a 
 grouping, or classification, of experiences, and in 
 each of them we take a present or a past experi- 
 ence as the sign of a future one w^hich we seek \ 
 to bring into being or to escape from. These 
 
 [7] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 three grades of knowledge deal with the same 
 phenomena, but from different standpoints. They 
 are throughout one in kind. Difference of subject 
 matter to w^hich they apply is not the mark which 
 distinguishes them. It is commonly believed that 
 ordinary knowledge does not enable one to predict, 
 whereas scientific knowledge does. Yet every boy 
 who drops a stone into the water knows before- 
 hand that it will sink, as certainly as the scientist 
 does. And every time one strikes a match, dis- 
 charges a gun, or puts fire beneath water, seeds into 
 the ground, or food on the table, he does so be- 
 cause he predicts that certain results will happen. 
 Human action of the most ordinary kind is based 
 upon this power to predict. Wherein, then, does 
 the superiority of scientific knowledge to common- 
 sense knowledge lie? The boy cannot tell how fast 
 the stone will fall. The scientist can. The man 
 who discharges the gun cannot follow the series 
 of changes which drive the bullet forward, or 
 trace its course, or calculate the force of its impact. 
 Science consists in the minuter examination of ex- 
 perience. It seeks quantitative precision, where 
 common sense reckons with a vague more-or-less. It 
 coordinates remote happenings and traces relations 
 among them which common sense had not sus- 
 pected, as between the fall of an apple and the 
 movement of a world, the death of a man from 
 
 [8] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 yellow fever and the prevalence of a certain insect, 
 etc. Common-sense knowledge tends to be per- 
 sonal. Its facts are conceived in relation to a self, 
 while science strives to be impersonal and to relate 
 its facts to the body of facts which surround them. 
 In order to trace relations between wide ranges 
 of facts, science disengages the identities, which it 
 traces, from the particularities which attend them, 
 and states its results as abstract laws and systems 
 of laws. Rub a board with a bit of sandpaper, or 
 a piece of brass with a rag. The board or the piece 
 of brass becomes hot. The common-sense fact is 
 that this board, when rubbed, became hot. Science 
 omits the details of the experience and fixes its 
 attention upon the relations. " Friction produces 
 heat " is the fact which it gathers. 
 
 " If you want to know anything about education 
 in the United States, ask the first man you meet 
 on the street " is the advice which Superintendent 
 McClymonds gave to Professor John Adams when 
 he visited America. There is, however, a difference 
 between common-sense knowledge of education and 
 scientific knowledge of it, though the man in the 
 street may not recognize it. There is a scientific 
 knowledge of school legislation, of the way to build 
 a schoolhouse, of school administration, of selecting 
 the subjects for a course of study, and a scientific 
 knowledge of children and of the procedure which 
 
 [9] 
 
WHAT IS. EDUCATION? 
 
 must be employed in instructing them. This knowl- 
 edge, though by no means as exact as it is certain 
 to become, is very considerable in extent and sig- 
 nificant in value. Though as yet it is only to a 
 slight degree quantitative in character, it is never- 
 theless definitely scientific, in the same sense that 
 comparative anatomy is scientific. School adminis- 
 tration is a branch of government. It has been 
 studied rather more intensively than most of the 
 problems of government. Comparative methods 
 have been employed, and conclusions of great 
 directive value have been reached. It does not de- 
 tract in the slightest degree from the worth and 
 validity of these systematized conclusions that they 
 are not commonly consulted when plans for ad- 
 ministering school systems are being devised, just 
 as it does not detract from the reality of a science 
 of medicine for one who is sick to consult a quack 
 rather than a scientific physician. The fact remains 
 that in both cases minute and careful study has 
 developed a body of knowledge more thorough- 
 going and reliable than uncritical experience pro- 
 vides, which stands ready for use by anyone who 
 will use it. 
 
 Genetic psychology likewise offers parents and 
 teachers the rich results of its tireless researches 
 into the nature and growth of the child. General 
 psychology outlines the principles which govern 
 
 [lO] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 the behavior of mind. Ethics, sociology, biology, 
 and medicine contribute their quota of principles 
 to be reduced to practice. The history of education 
 outlines the experiments which the race has made 
 in preparing the young for their life work, and the 
 sufficiency or insufficiency of the social aims and 
 methods which directed that preparation. The lan- 
 guages, literatures, and sciences which provide the 
 subject matter of instruction have been reduced 
 to teachable form. The comparative study of the 
 provisions for education w^hich progressive nations 
 have made furnishes a systematized knowledge of 
 educational pragtice throughout the civilized world. 
 
 Though education is among the last of human 
 institutions to invoke the aid of scientific method, 
 it will thus be seen that scientific method has 
 entered it, and that no one engaged in it is limited 
 to rule-of-thumb knowledge. There is a science 
 of education whose rich resources are available to 
 anyone who will use them. 
 
 PJiilosophic knoiuledge versus scientific knowledge. 
 The science of education, like every other science, 
 deals only with the coexistences and sequences of 
 its particular field of facts. It is one among many 
 sciences, each of which studies the world from 
 its own standpoint. As yet it has made only a 
 beginning, but even if it succeeds in tilling its 
 field, like the other sciences it will possess only a 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 fragment of knowledge. Ask the astronomer what 
 the universe is, and he will describe it in terms of 
 astronomy. Ask the geologist, and he will answer 
 in terms of geology. Ask the student of politics, 
 and he will describe it in terms of organizations 
 of government. And ask the educator, and he 
 will answer in terms of schools and teaching. Is 
 there no form of knowledge which relates all 
 these different sciences together, which can answer 
 such a question in terms common to them all — no 
 science of things in general which can give us a 
 picture of the universe as it is ? Education must 
 become one of the sciences. Is there no science 
 of sciences to unify its w^ork with theirs, to corre- 
 late its truths with the whole body of truth? That 
 function belongs to philosophy. Its work begins 
 where science leaves off. It concerns itself with a 
 critical examination of the hypotheses and assump- 
 tions which the sciences make in order to solve 
 their problems. It examines their foundation princi- 
 ples, criticizes their concepts, and pieces together 
 their systematizations. It is an unusually persistent 
 effort to think matters down to their roots and out 
 to their conclusions. While, in its criticism of the 
 categories and systematization of the results of 
 other forms of knowledge, it does not add to the 
 facts wdiich the sciences amass, it does endeavor to 
 determine their meaning, and the knowledge which 
 
 [12] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 it supplies is knowledge rendered more exact and 
 usable through consistency of interpretation. 
 
 One frequently hears the statement that philoso- 
 phy is of little worth. Quite recently it has been 
 pointed out that, since it is theoretical, the practical 
 business man has no need for it — unless he is a 
 very practical man. The strangest thing about it 
 is that no one can get along without it. As soon 
 as we begin to think at all, each one of us sets 
 about making a philosophy for himself, and never 
 leaves off the work of constructing it until he dies. 
 The difference between a common-sense philosophy 
 and a critical and systematic one is somewhat 
 analogous to the difference between common-sense 
 knowledge and scientific knowledge ; that is, the 
 latter is more thorough than the former, is made 
 more carefully, its parts articulate better, it gives 
 us a larger world which has more depth and 
 steadfastness in it. 
 
 Whether one's philosophy is homemade or aca- 
 demically constructed, we must agree with Mr. 
 Chesterton that the view of the universe which 
 he keeps is the most practical and important 
 thing about him. "We think that for a landlady 
 considering a lodger it is important to know his 
 income, but still more important to know his phi- 
 losophy. We think that for a general about to fight 
 an enemy, it is important to know the enemy's 
 
 [13] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 numbers, but still more important to know the 
 enemy's philosophy. We think the question is not 
 whether the theory of the cosmos affects matters, 
 but whether in the long run anything else affects 
 them." ^ And to us it seems that by far the most 
 important thing about a teacher is the kind of phi- 
 losophy of education which he carries about with 
 him. How one couples up his notions of education 
 with the scheme of things seems to us to be the 
 most illuminating item that can be known about 
 him. Indeed, so thoroughly do basic conceptions 
 determine conduct that if he will tell us definitely 
 and clearly what he thinks education is, we, on our 
 part, will undertake to tell what methods he uses 
 and what success attends his work. Can a teacher 
 who has a wrong notion of what education is be a 
 good teacher? Not if teaching is a conscious proc- 
 ess. Can a teacher who has worked out a sound 
 philosophy of education be a poor teacher? Not 
 if ideas shape and determine practice. On the other 
 hand, it seems to us that the teacher who lacks 
 a sound philosophy of education is like a ship with- 
 out a compass; he may pursue any course, or go 
 anywhere, for he has no means of determining 
 where he is or in what direction he is moving. 
 What is education ? seems to us, therefore, to be 
 the most fundamental of all the questions which 
 
 ^ G. K. Chesterton, Heretics. 
 
 [14] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 condition the teachers work. It cannot be an- 
 swered dogmatically. A merely verbal reply to it, 
 committed for purposes of ready reference, will not 
 do. I Out of the fullness of his own inner conviction 
 each one must answer it in terms of his philosophy 
 of life, and, like the other features of our philosophy 
 of life, it is one of the fundamental problems which 
 we should carry about with us and be constantly 
 turning over in mind in an unceasing effort to allow 
 no opportunity of revising our knowledge of it to 
 escape us. There is no other way to work out a 
 philosophy of education. 
 
 Two typical definitiojis of education. There are 
 a great many definitions which profess to tell us 
 what education is. Let us consider two of them 
 which are somewhat typical. The first is that edu- 
 cation is the imparting of knowledge. While edu- 
 cation undoubtedly has something to do with 
 knowledge, it is hardly its function to impart it. It 
 is not good form to say, " I learned him geometry 
 or reading." The verb to learn will not bear that 
 meaning. I may teach him geometry or reading, 
 but he must do his learning of them for himself. 
 Is it not just as wrong to use the verb teach in the 
 sense in which we are forbidden to use the verb 
 learji, and to say, " I taught him geometry or read- 
 ing," meaning by that, " I imparted them to him "? I 
 may keep a confectioner s shop and hand out candy 
 
 [15] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 to you when you come to buy, or a coal yard and 
 shovel coal into your cellar when you give me an 
 order, but I cannot hand out knowledge or shovel 
 it into the minds of students, no matter how willing 
 they may be to get it in that fashion. Knowledge 
 is not that sort of thing, and whatever schools may 
 be, they are not knowledge shops. ^~ 
 
 There is another sort of definition of education 
 which, in attempting to escape the crudities of the 
 one just given, involves itself in an even greater 
 absurdity. The upholders of this view reason some- 
 what like this: "Minds are very imperfect things at 
 birth. If left to themselves, they grow up quite 
 incomplete. It is the business of education to com- 
 plete them. Its object is not to supply knowledge 
 to them, for that indeed it cannot do, but it must 
 discipline them, exercise them, build them up, draw 
 them out, and form them. A mind which has not 
 been drawn out will never come out of itself. No 
 one should think of using so crude and dull an 
 instrument as mind is before it is sharpened. It is 
 the business of education to perfect the mind." 
 
 I am profoundly convinced that, wiiatever else the 
 teacher must do, he is never called upon to get 
 inside the mind and do any burnishing or repair 
 work there. We use a figure of speech when we 
 talk of the gardener causing the plant to grow, 
 and surely we use a figure of speech, and a very 
 
 [i6] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 misleading one, when we speak of education as the 
 process of molding, sharpening, forming, or perfect- 
 ing minds. Much as it may contribute to our pride 
 to think of ourselves as performing such a service, 
 the thing is inconceivable. We have no such cre- 
 ative power. In the Harvard Club in Boston there 
 is one room set apart for the use of the graduates 
 of the Medical School, and over the fireplace in 
 that room there is an inscription, a motto, which 
 states in a sentence the philosophy of the medical 
 profession. It reads, " We dress the w^ound, God 
 heals it." If a devoted student of education should 
 attempt to construct a similar motto which would 
 in like manner set forth the object of his profession, 
 what form ought it to take ? This, I think : " We 
 feed the mind, God makes it." 
 
 W/iai is education ? When we teach we do not 
 " learn " our students anything ; they must do that 
 for themselves. The notion that language conveys 
 thought or vehicles thought is the root of the error 
 that education exists to impart thought. And when 
 we teach we do not make minds or strengthen 
 minds or draw them out. The mistake of deriv- 
 ing the word edttcatiou from the wrong Latin root 
 was, from the point of view of its consequences, 
 one of the most serious mistakes that the race has 
 yet made. What do we do? Let us see. When 
 a feeble-minded child comes to school, the wise 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 teacher does not attempt to supply him with the 
 regulation stock of knowledge, and she does not 
 attempt to make his mind over. Neither of these 
 things is possible. But there are certain things 
 which even a feeble-minded child can learn to do 
 that are socially useful and individually profitable. 
 The wise teacher gives him a chance to do these 
 things ; that is, to use his mind, not to exercise it 
 merely, and not to take knowledge, but, by com- 
 prehending what he can comprehend, to make 
 knowledge. The pathological case supplies the in- 
 sight we require concerning the normal one. Edu- 
 cation must everywhere proceed in the same fashion. 
 ! I From the standpoint of the learner, it is the process 
 lof using one's own mind in socially profitable ways 
 in the making of knowledge. From the standpoint 
 of the school, it is the process of providing the con- 
 ditions which necessitate the child's using his own 
 mind in socially profitable ways in the making of 
 knowledge. The teacher cannot supply knowledge 
 and cannot make mind ; his function is to provide 
 the environment — to direct the child to the facts 
 and methods of handling them which have been 
 found to be socially useful, and to leave the rest 
 to him. 
 
 Three kinds of schools. There are three kinds of 
 schools which grow out of these three conceptions 
 of education. According to the first kind, the great 
 
 [18] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 thing is knowledge. It is stored up in books, in 
 courses of study, and in the minds of teachers and 
 other learned folks. Schools exist to retail it to 
 young people, to pass it on from the places where 
 it is to the places where it is not. That it may bci 
 passed on easily, it must be prepared in little care-! 
 fully molded cubes or accurately weighed doses. 
 That is the work of textbook makers and of manu- 
 facturers of methods. Teaching, according to this 
 view, consists in seeing to it that the learner takes 
 the proper number of pellets of knowledge each 
 day, and the object of the recitation is to find out 
 whether or not he has done so. Since what he has 
 taken is knowledge in its essential form, he must 
 retain it in the form in which he took it. To see 
 that he has done this and is continuing to do it, 
 there must be periodical inspections of his stock 
 of knowledge. These are called examinations. They 
 occur at regular intervals, since the amassing of a 
 fixed amount of knowledge and the retention of it 
 in its original condition is thought to be necessary 
 before one can safely amass further knowledge. 
 
 The object of education according to this view 
 is knowledge. The business of teaching is to put 
 it where it is not. Textbooks are to provide it. 
 Recitations are to find out whether or not it has 
 been taken. Memory must retain it, and examina- 
 tions must be given to test the knowledge state of 
 
 [■9] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 pupils. Since knowledge is the one thing needful, 
 the quantity of knowledge which can be compressed 
 into the memory of a school child becomes a matter 
 of vast importance. Courses of stud}^ are w^-itten 
 chiefly, in many cases, to indicate the quantity which 
 every good retailer of knowledge must succeed in 
 lodging in the memory of each child. To cover the 
 prescribed amount of work is the mark toward 
 which the teacher is made to press and toward 
 which she is usually, in such a system, overpressed. 
 That the directing authorities may know that 
 teacher and pupils are handling the required stint 
 of knowledge, that teachers may know that pupils 
 are stocking themselves with it and retaining it in 
 undiminished state, that parents may know that 
 their children are amassing the fixed heaps of pre- 
 scribed facts, that the children themselves may 
 know how much they know, great reliance is placed 
 on examinations. They are given with great regu- 
 larity. Their results are carefully tabulated. Chil- 
 dren are weighed and measured by them, are 
 encouraged or discouraged, are promoted or de- 
 moted by them. As soon as one is over, everybody 
 settles down to prepare for the next one. This is 
 called an examination system of schools. 
 
 It is conceivable that either a university or a 
 kindergarten might be conducted in this way. 
 Fortunately they are not, but elementary schools, 
 
 [20] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 secondary schools, and colleges, not a few, are. The 
 method is of long standing. Dr. McLean, formerly 
 the head of the Pacific Theological School, once 
 told me how he was taught theology at Princeton 
 fifty years ago. He said : " Each day the professor 
 brought our meat into the classroom cut up into 
 neatly prepared little cubes, all of the same size. 
 He then proceeded to insert the proper number 
 of these into the stomach of each one of us. Two 
 days after he looked into our stomachs to see if we 
 were retaining them in the exact form in which he 
 had given them to us." 
 
 The second kind of school tends to regard knowl- 
 edge as something common and unclean. It claims 
 a loftier mission. It sets out to sharpen and perfect 
 the mind by putting it to work not on matters that 
 it will have to work on as long as its possessor 
 lives, but on special teaching disciplines, valuable 
 not because of the opportunities for knowledge- 
 getting which they provide, but for the mental ex- 
 ercises which one can perform in pursuing them. 
 What you manipulate, they say, does not count. 
 That you manipulate is the great thing. The best 
 mental exercises are those which have been used so 
 long that a perfect technique of using them has 
 been developed. There are certain studies which 
 are made much of in this type of school because 
 they train the students not in the object matter 
 
 [21] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 with which they profess to deal but in ratiocination 
 in general. They provide hard work and plenty of 
 it. They demand exactness. They enable teachers 
 to assign fixed lessons of graduated difficulty, to 
 require a system of recitations and examinations 
 which tell exactly whether the student is meeting 
 the requirements of the assignment or no. It makes 
 little difference that the student after six or seven 
 years of such labor will seem to himself to have 
 learned nothing. The fact is that his mind will be 
 a much more flexible and ready instrument because 
 of this gymnastic. These are the mind-training 
 schools. They make use of all the machinery which 
 the others employ except the important element 
 of knowledge. 
 
 The third kind of school believes both in knowl- 
 edge and in mental training, but it holds that they 
 go together and cannot possibly be separated. It 
 asserts that knowledge is inner conviction, organiz- 
 ing experience in terms of vital need, and that, 
 while mind can be trained specifically to organize 
 experiences, since different experiences call each for 
 its appropriate form of reaction, mind cannot be 
 trained in general to make them. This school looks 
 upon knowledge not as a fixed and immutable thing 
 but as a useful tool which men have shaped to 
 meet their needs in living. It is not at all finished 
 or final. Men made it by thinking, and men will 
 
 [22] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 improve it by thinking, and before anyone can use 
 it, or any part of it, he must remake it through his 
 own thinking for himself. What Moses thought or 
 Plato thought or Euclid thought will never do me 
 any good until I succeed in thinking it for myself. 
 VThe great thing then for this school is not knowl- 
 edge, but learning to use one's own mind upon 
 matters which men have found to be important 
 by using their minds upon them. Textbooks are 
 important because they suggest to us some things 
 which the race has found it important for us to 
 think about. Teachers are important because they 
 stimulate us to think by surrounding us with prob- 
 lems and reasons for solving them and such help 
 in going about the matter in profitable ways as we 
 stand in need of. They help us to look at things 
 and study things and talk about things and repeat 
 things and memorize things which can best be 
 thought about in these ways. And from time to 
 time, to make both us and themselves better ac- 
 quainted with the success which we are achieving 
 in our thinking, they set specific pieces of work 
 for us to perform and examine our performance of 
 them with somewhat greater care than they can 
 give to our day-by-day thinking. It is not the 
 amount of ground which we cover or the number 
 of courses which we " take " which decides whether 
 or no we are getting an education, according to this 
 
 [23] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 conception. Education is determined by what the 
 student does. A single subject which has been 
 pursued in such a way that he has learned to 
 stand on his own feet and use his own mind in 
 the getting and solving of its problems provides a 
 more real education than a whole college course 
 in which one has merely endeavored to appropri- 
 ate the thoughts of other men or tried to become 
 a thinker without thinking about anything which 
 seemed to require thought. The first kind of school 
 seeks to put its students in possession of results 
 without allowing them to go through the processes 
 of getting them. The second kind of school seeks 
 to develop processes apart from the context of 
 reality which gives them meaning. Its instruction 
 goes on in a vacuum. It produces "thoughtless 
 thinkers " ; while the first kind does not set out 
 to make thinkers at all, and is rarely disappointed 
 by having them develop. 
 
 What can education do? No one of these kinds 
 of schools exists in a pure state ; as we know them, 
 they are only tendencies. Usually a keen discrimi- 
 nator of educational practices — such as students 
 themselves commonly are — finds all three kinds 
 living under the same roof. Their presence makes 
 for variety. Like certain religiously considerate 
 communities of old, institutions of learning con- 
 sciously practice the habit of erecting altars to all 
 
 [24] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 of them, because they are unwilHng to take any 
 chance of not worshiping the true God. This 
 procedure is rather harder upon the students than 
 upon the teachers, for "free trade in learning," 
 which is dear to teachers, involves much com- 
 pulsory miseducation which is destructively costly 
 to students. 
 
 If schools exist to feed the minds of students, 
 and in the nature of the case they can do nothing 
 else, they must regard their function as that of pur- 
 veying the raw materials of knowledge.^ Bread and 
 meat are not food until the individual who would 
 get nourishment from them has himself reduced 
 them to chyle. At that point they enter the blood 
 and provide nourishment; that is, these raw mate- 
 rials must be digested before they become available. 
 To digest means to " tear apart," or separate the 
 nutritious part from the innutritions part. When 
 our private digestive laboratories have done this the 
 human system, through its circulatory department, 
 sets about reorganizing the chyle which it has pre- 
 pared, by building human tissue out of it. In its 
 main features the learning process is quite analo- 
 gous. What is commonly called knowledge is only 
 the raw material of knowledge — merely the oppor- 
 tunity for the making of knowledge. Before it can 
 be converted into vitalizing knowledge, it must be 
 mentally digested and reorganized into personal 
 
 [25] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 feeling, conviction, and action. Wlicn we speak of 
 knowledge as a something stored up in books or 
 records ready to be drawn off by anyone who will 
 but open them, we must remember, as Bacon has 
 told us, that "words are generally framed and ap- 
 plied according to the conception of the vulgar, and 
 draw lines of separation according to such differ- 
 ences as the vulgar can follow." Knowledge has 
 no such existence. It is always personal, though not 
 necessarily private. It resides nowhere but in the 
 mind which organizes it. Between the raw materials 
 of food and muscular fitness for work there goes 
 a long process of organic construction. Between 
 the raw materials of knowledge and mental readi- 
 ness to use it a similar intricate process of selection 
 and organization intervenes. Education can do 
 nothing but prepare the way for this process. The 
 student himself must carry it on. Like pure reli- 
 gion and undefiled, knowledge is ever a function 
 of the consciousness of the believer. There are no 
 educational sacraments which impart a saving grace. 
 Mechanical education is easy, but it accomplishes 
 only that which should not be accomplished. Real 
 education is hard, for it is a spiritual ministration. 
 The temptation to substitute mere physical manipu- 
 lation for living interest, spiritual insight, and com- 
 prehension ripening into action is the sin which 
 besets us. 
 
 [26] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 Edtication a life work. According to this view, 
 education is a life process. The individual begins 
 to organize his experience at birth and continues 
 to organize it until he dies. At first the solicitous 
 care of parents attends him; after that comes a long 
 period of watchful direction on the part of teachers. 
 The purpose of this entire ministration is to fit 
 him progressively to undertake this responsibility for 
 himself. The question is sometimes asked, How are 
 the several stages of his education related ? As he 
 passes from the elementary school to the secondary 
 school, and from that to the higher school, and 
 thence into life, how shall we image the journey 
 which he is making or conceive the course which 
 he pursues? In this way, I think: 
 
 Let the diagram represent the ladder of life from 
 birth to death ; since education is a life process it 
 
 [27] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 may also represent the ladder of education. The 
 space below the first rung is one's preschool experi- 
 ence. Above it conies the elementary-school course, 
 then the secondary-school, and above that the train- 
 ing of the university. The teacher-student relation 
 is common to all these, and if we left the diagram 
 as it stands there would be nothing to indicate a 
 progressive growth in fitness to assume the unaided 
 direction of one's own learning. But draw a diag- 
 onal from the bottom of the ladder at the left to 
 the point where the teacher-student relation is 
 represented as ceasing: 
 
 Let the spaces to the right of the diagonal repre- 
 sent what the teacher must do and the spaces on 
 the left w^iat the student must do. The student's 
 responsibility grows, and the teacher's directive 
 control gradually disappears. The teacher makes 
 
 [28] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 himself progressively unnecessary. The student 
 little by little learns the process of learning and is 
 at length able to apply it for himself. He has not 
 mastered the omne scibile of his day and generation. 
 " All that is knowable " he will never master. That 
 is like the gold at the foot of the rainbow, a pleasing 
 fancy of youth. No one ever searches for it. But 
 to learn to order one's own experiences is a vital 
 necessity and the workable purpose of education. 
 
 [29 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE? 
 
 Mind is " a survival agency^ We bring a mind 
 with us when we come here at birth. By it we 
 become aware of our own states and of the world 
 of men and things about us. It seems to exist in 
 order to guide us on our course through life, to be 
 a sort of pilot to help us to make a safe journey. 
 Consequently our awareness has been called " a 
 survival agency." In perfect health one is not 
 reminded that he has internal organs, and in per- 
 fect adjustment one is but slightly conscious of 
 an external world. When difficulties arise and this 
 vegetable-like calm is broken, a condition of rela- 
 tively keen awareness sets, which lasts in some 
 form until the difficulty is disposed of and peace 
 is restored again. This awareness seems to exist to 
 enable the organism to locate its difficulties and 
 to put an end to them — to be valuable in its 
 struggle for life by enabling it to lay hold of or 
 apprehend its world of objects. 
 
 We seem also to be born into a world of ready- 
 made things — the earth, the sky, the stars, time and 
 space, the soil, rocks, trees, plants and animals, and, 
 
 [30] 
 
WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE? 
 
 most wonderful of all, our fellow men. All these we 
 find here when we come. To live we must learn 
 to avoid such of them as are harmful, and to lay 
 fast hold upon those which are helpful. Knowl- 
 edge, then, is necessary because some things in the 
 universe menace death and others promise life. 
 
 Is kiiozv ledge contributed by things? But what 
 sort of a thing is knowledge ? And how do we 
 come to have it ? The easiest and at the same 
 time the most dangerous answer is that knowledge 
 is due to things making pictures of themselves 
 upon our minds ; that perfect knowledge or truth 
 exists when this picturing is complete — when there 
 is perfect agreement between the idea and the ob- 
 ject or thing. According to this theory mind is only 
 a rather intricate picture-making device — a kind 
 of sensitive plate. It gets the images of things be- 
 cause they stamp their images upon it. All knowl- 
 edge is due to the impressions of things. Mind is 
 a tabula rasa, upon which the senses write the 
 images of the outer world. To be sure, it is differ- 
 ent from a camera with which we take photographs, 
 in that it remembers its past photographs of things 
 and is constantly combining them in strange new 
 ways, so that it is sometimes difficult to tell just 
 which of its pictures are due to the impressions of 
 outer things and which are due to the liberties it 
 has taken in combining them. There are, however, 
 
 [31] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 two kinds of true pictures : the direct and the in- 
 direct — those which I take myself through the im- 
 pressions which things make upon my own senses 
 and those which others take and tell me about in 
 some way or other, so that I am able in some meas- 
 ure to copy their copy of the original and make for 
 myself some sort of a picture of it. To be sure, the 
 first-hand knowledge of the world of things is best ; 
 but since it is impossible for each one of us to 
 get as much of it as life requires us to have, we 
 must be content to take a large part of it at second 
 hand. This we do by means of books, papers, pic- 
 tures, maps, music, conversation, instruction, lectures, 
 sermons, etc. 
 
 The essence of this theory is that knowledge is 
 given to us by things. They are out there ; mind 
 is shut up in here. The senses are the apertures 
 through which they communicate their images. 
 Mind must be passive to get the clearest and truest 
 pictures from outer things. It must present itself 
 clean to the truth w^iich comes to it from outside, 
 or it will mix this truth up and blur it with its 
 own past pictures. Strangely enough, both of the 
 traditional schools of philosophy — realism and abso- 
 lute idealism — define reality as eternally made ex- 
 istence, and for both of them knowledge-getting can 
 be nothing more than the copying of the object 
 by the idea. Truth is something whose parts are 
 
 [32] 
 
WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE? 
 
 eternally complete. Knowledge is its phantom, its 
 shadow in our minds. 
 
 If we have copies only, how can we tell when they 
 are true? Knowledge-getting is thus for these 
 philosophies not a making but a receiving. Truth 
 is an outer something which must come to us. 
 The learner must simply hold the mirror up to the 
 objective world. But if our minds are limited to 
 copies of objects which are outside of them, if all 
 truth is outside and nothing but copies inside the 
 mind, how can it ever find out whether its copies 
 agree with their originals or not ? How can we 
 possibly tell when the picture corresponds with 
 the reality which it professes to picture ? On this 
 theory we are forever limited to the picture only; 
 the original is at all times beyond our reach. To 
 tell whether our copy, or picture, is adequate or 
 inadequate, true or false, we must compare it with 
 the thing which it professes to picture, but when 
 we try to do that we get only another copy of the 
 object, not the thing itself. To compare reality with 
 its appearance, we should somehow have to know 
 reality apart from every appearance ; and this we 
 cannot do. A true mental picture, or idea, claims to 
 correspond with its object. But so also does a false 
 one. How shall we tell which is which? If knowl- 
 edge is merely the copying of the object to be 
 known by the idea which knows it, we never can tell. 
 
 [33] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 What do we know of objects outside of experience ? 
 This theory of what knowledge is will not work, 
 and we must backtrack a bit to find the right path. 
 What right have we to talk about things and truths 
 which are outside of awareness ? Can we say any- 
 thing or think anything about the things that no 
 one in any way knows — the things that are alto- 
 gether outside of experience ? If I say the air is 
 peopled with myriads of spirits, you immediately 
 reply : " Not so, for no one has seen them or heard 
 them or in any way communicated with them. 
 Since they have not made themselves known, they 
 are not." But perhaps if you are not a dogmatist 
 you will add the proviso that if they do make 
 themselves known we shall then have to revise 
 this judgment. At any rate, they are not until 
 they are known. It is exactly the same with every- 
 thing. When my friend tells me that the Washing- 
 ton Elm is no longer standing, I reply, " I saw it 
 but a moment ago as I passed the spot, and I am 
 confident that it is still there and that you are 
 mistaken." If a shipmaster comes into port and 
 announces that an immense island has arisen in 
 a certain quarter of the sea, and other shipmasters 
 who were in the same latitude and longitude at 
 the same time report that they saw no island, we 
 shall have to believe that the first shipmaster is 
 deceiving us and perhaps himself, for the weight 
 
 [34] 
 
WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE? 
 
 of experience would seem to prove that there is no 
 island. When Bishop Berkeley startled mankind by 
 announcing that objects exist only in so far as they 
 are known, it is said that Dr. Johnson vigorously de- 
 nounced the doctrine ; and while arraigning it with 
 his usual vehemence in the presence of a group of 
 friends one day, he strode majestically up to a stone 
 wall and kicked it, saying as he did so, " This is the 
 way I refute the Bishop's error." But did he refute 
 it ? Did he not instead completely prove the Bishop's 
 contention ? It is only a stone wall that one can kick 
 and feel the kick back from that can really be said 
 to exist. If a man opens his purse to show me that 
 he has a hundred dollars in it and discloses nothing 
 there, I become convinced that his hundred dollars 
 were imaginary. The real hundred dollars must be 
 distinguished from the imaginary hundred dollars, 
 said Immanuel Kant, by the fact that they can be 
 touched and seen, or that we can pass them at the 
 bread shop or the clothing store. Thus experience is 
 the measure of all things, of those that are that they 
 are and of those that are not that they are not, and it 
 is impossible in any way to get outside of experience 
 to find out whether its reports agree with objects, or 
 things-in-themselves, or not. The only world which 
 is or can be is the world within experience.^ No one 
 
 1 " What all think we say />," Aristotle, Ethics, Bk. X, Sect. II (Chase's 
 translation). 
 
 [35] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 can get outside the world of experience to find out 
 whether his ideas accord with things-as-they-are-in- 
 themselves or not. The harder one tries to beHeve 
 in things-in-themselves, the more certain he be- 
 comes that Betsey Prig disposed of them when she 
 uttered '' those memorable and tremendous words " 
 to Mrs. Gamp concerning the existence of Mrs. 
 Harris : " I don't believe there 's no sich a person." 
 T/ie objects we are concerned with are objects as 
 they are experienced. The object of knowledge is 
 not " absolute truth." Our ideas cannot possibly 
 get into correspondence with things-in-themselves. 
 We are experience-bound and can know things 
 only as they are for mind. Everything that is 
 must enter the subject-object relation. " We can 
 think of matter only in terms of mind," says Her- 
 bert Spencer, and Huxley likewise maintained that 
 " all the phenomena of nature are known to us only 
 as facts of consciousness." But this is no doctrine 
 of despair. Just as the dollars that we can heft and 
 see and count and trade for bread and coats are 
 the only real dollars, and the dollars that we cannot 
 pass either upon ourselves or other folks are the 
 imaginary ones, so is it with all the facts and exist- 
 ences of the world. I say there is a study table in 
 my room because I find it there and work upon it. 
 Just at the moment that I do not find it there I 
 shall be compelled to say that it is there no longer, 
 
 [36] 
 
WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE? 
 
 What is truth ? Truth is a relation which exists 
 between the parts of experience, between idea and 
 idea, and not between idea and thing. It is an ex- 
 perienceable and not an inexperienceable relation. 
 And yet not all experiences are true, and only a 
 small part of those which may assume the truth 
 relation furnish or can furnish knowledge. I repeat 
 the letters of the alphabet, or I pull a rose to 
 pieces. Is either experience true or not true? You 
 hear me sound the letters and you say, " You have 
 not named them in their order." " But," I reply, 
 " their order was indifferent to me. I am not try- 
 ing to name them in order." As soon as I try to 
 name them in their order and succeed or fail, the 
 quality of truth or falsity attaches to my act. The 
 clock ticks, the table supports my paper, the ink 
 flows, the temperature of the room remains equable, 
 the rain beats against the windows, a thousand 
 things are going on about me, and yet they are 
 neither true nor false. They are just happenings. 
 They simply are. How shall I name them ? There 
 is one word by which they are commonly desig- 
 nated, though this word has other and very con- 
 fusing uses. It is the woxdi facts. Because they are 
 so utterly useless, these mere happenings have a 
 very singular quality — they are eternally the same. 
 That a fly buzzed, or the clock ticked, or the table 
 was hard, or the temperature was 68 degrees just 
 
 [37] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 now, is an eternal fact. But taken without a con- 
 text it has not the shghtest significance and no 
 truth whatever. But let the ticking of the clock 
 stop or the room become cold, and very soon atten- 
 tion fastens upon these parts of experience for con- 
 sideration. Has the clock stopped? Is it too cold 
 here ? These are experiences which are either true 
 or false. We listen for the familiar tick. We look at 
 the pendulum. Yes, it is true that the clock has 
 stopped. And the thermometer shows that the 
 temperature is now but 6i degrees. Our surmise 
 is verified. Our belief was true. 
 
 Facts^ truths^ and knowledge. Facts are very 
 profitless things until we use them. When w^e re- 
 late them to purposes they take on meaning and 
 become immensely important. But if it is plain 
 that facts as facts are not truths, is it equally clear 
 that truths as truths are not knowledge? It was 
 true that the clock had stopped and that the room 
 was too cold. Are these truths knowledge ? I have 
 already closed the window and wound the clock. 
 I shall most likely never have occasion to refer to 
 these particular experiences again. Can they then 
 in any legitimate sense be said to furnish knowl- 
 edge? Knowledge is a high and dignified word, 
 with which spells are worked and lives are bought 
 and sold. Would it not be well to attempt to give 
 it a more vital meaning than this? Let us see. 
 
WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE? 
 
 I have just moved into a new house. There are 
 five thousand books upon the floor and they must 
 all be arranged on the bookshelves in the library. 
 In how many possible ways can w^e arrange them? 
 We can arrange them according to size, the color 
 of their bindings, the names of their authors, ac- 
 cording to subjects or size of type, according to 
 the number of times the word the or any other 
 word appears in each, by the number of commas, 
 semicolons, and periods, the number of lines on a 
 page or words in a line, according to weight or the 
 number of times the letter a or any other letter 
 is used in each. It seems likely that there are an 
 infinite number of ways in which the books in a 
 library^ can be arranged. Which of these will be 
 the right or the true way? Is there any one 
 eternally fixed and divinely instituted sole-and-only- 
 correct way of arranging the books in a library? 
 If there is, does any man yet know what it is ? 
 If my books are of various sizes and my shelves 
 of but two or three, I shall have to arrange them 
 according to size. If I bought the books for their 
 bindings, I should undoubtedly arrange them ac- 
 cording to a color scheme. But if I use my books 
 by repeatedly consulting them, I must arrange 
 them in such a way that I can find them quickly 
 and easily when I want them. It is certain that I 
 shall not be able to make this arrangement offhand, 
 
 [39] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 and very likely, no matter how well I know my 
 books, I shall need to consider the experience 
 that other people who have arranged libraries have 
 put at my disposal in books in which they have 
 recounted it. At any rate, I shall have to arrange 
 and rearrange my books ; and it is not likely that 
 I shall ever get them so perfectly classified that 
 the advent of new books and the arising of new 
 needs will not force me to rearrange them. What 
 seems very clear in this undertaking is that the 
 true arrangement is the one which most nearly 
 answers my need — that I find out whether it is 
 true or not only by trying it out, and that in the 
 nature of the case it must constantly undergo re- 
 vision. It must be noted that our arrangement of 
 the books cannot be a fanciful or purely subjective 
 one. It is in the strictest sense determined by 
 relating the nature of the books to our purpose or 
 need. Now is this true only of books or is it true 
 of all our mentally recorded forms of knowledge ? 
 I think it is true of all of them. Take any object 
 — a chair, a table, the sun, a rock, or a man. In 
 how many ways is it possible to view it or take 
 it ? Here again the answer is that its abstractly 
 possible relations are infinite in number. Is it one 
 or is it many ? That altogether depends upon your 
 point of view. For the physicist each of these ob- 
 jects is a mass of whirling atoms and each of its 
 
 [40] 
 
WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE? 
 
 constituent atoms again is infinitely divisible. " If, 
 as we shall see," says Professor John Cox in his 
 little book " Beyond the Atom," " the mass of an 
 electron is wholly electrical its diameter can be 
 shown to be of the order lo^'^cm. ; that of an atom 
 is io""^Vm. The electron is thus one hundred thou- 
 sand times smaller than the atom and the spaces 
 between electrons perhaps one hundred million 
 times the diameter of an electron. This suggests 
 inevitably an arrangement like a planetary system." 
 " Let us consider a ball lying on the ground. In 
 what sense is that ball individuated? Our main 
 reason for calling it so is its capacity for satisfying 
 our athletic propensities; but whatever else may 
 pertain to matter-in-itself it is clear enough that 
 this quality is not relevant. The ball, however, can 
 be easily lifted from the earth, whereas the molehill 
 near it, resembling it in appearance, would require 
 a spade, if separation is to be effected. This is 
 merely a question of degree of cohesive force. To 
 the Lilliputian the ball would be as completely a 
 part of the earth as the molehill. Imagine also a 
 giant whose body stretched from the Solar System 
 to Sirius and who regarded our whole solar system 
 as a single body; if he were possessed of sufficient 
 analytic power and provided with sufficiently deli- 
 cate analytical instruments, he might then distin- 
 guish sun, earth, and other planets as constituent 
 
 [41] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 factors of that single body. If his sensational ap- 
 paratus were proportionately coarser than ours from 
 the point of view of their perceptive powers, he 
 would not even appreciate the solar heat as such." ^ 
 Why then do we call things one when they are 
 many ? Physical individuation is due to purpose. 
 Whether a thing is one or many depends upon our 
 intention. The word one is in our name for the 
 whole — the universe. The lowest term to which we 
 at present reduce it, the electron, is also one, and 
 everything that comes between is either one or 
 many to suit our purpose. Nor is this all. Every 
 one of these ones of our making has some sort of 
 relation to everything else in existence. It is larger 
 or smaller, heavier or lighter, brighter or darker, 
 more active or passive, eastward or westward, simi- 
 lar or dissimilar to everything else there is. The 
 possible relations which any one thing can bear 
 to the rest of existence are infinite in number. If 
 we are for a moment tempted to define knowledge 
 as the comprehension of that which is, we are at 
 once appalled by the absurd presumption of such 
 a notion. The field of possible knowledge lies in- 
 finitely extended before the mind, but we are under 
 no temptation to apply the word to any and every 
 relation which consciousness may note in existence. 
 Even the most enthusiastic devotee of original 
 
 1 Arnold, Scientific Fact and Metaphysical Reality, p. 71. London, 1904. 
 
 [42] 
 
WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE? 
 
 research is not likely to set about examining, de- 
 scribing, and comparing the sands of the seashore 
 for the same reason that he is not likely to set 
 about arranging his books according to the number 
 of times the word tJie is used in each volume. The 
 notion that just any kind of description or classi- 
 fication is science does not work. The realm of 
 knowledge is much smaller than the realm of fact. 
 Take for example this table ; from how many dif- 
 ferent points of view may I look at it? No one 
 can count them ; but if they could be compassed, the 
 table could conceivably be drawn from every one of 
 them, and every single picture of the table, if it 
 checked up with subsequent pictures of it from the 
 same point of view, would be a true picture of it. 
 Now which one of this infinite number of appear- 
 ances or aspects of the table is the real table? Is 
 there any one and only true way to draw a table ? 
 May not one sketch it from above or below, from 
 north, northeast, or south, southwest, and still make 
 a true picture of it? Abstractly one aspect of the 
 table is just as true as another, but not so con- 
 cretely. Concretely a table is for use, and that 
 aspect of it which presents its use relations the 
 crystallized experience of the race has voted to re- 
 gard as the preferred aspect, the real table. If you 
 are buying one, you must be careful to get one 
 which fits your intention ; if you are drawing one, 
 
 [43] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 you must be careful to draw one which fits your 
 intention also. I am not saying that you can draw 
 it as you please any more than you can arrange 
 your books in any way you may fancy. To be sure 
 you can do both these things, only neither the draw- 
 ing nor the arrangement will be true. When you 
 come to check them up, you will find that future 
 need will not be realized in them ; that is, they 
 will not work out the test of truth. 
 
 Is there any object in existence which has always 
 the same color no matter what light may play upon 
 it, always the same shape no matter from what 
 angle or at w^iat distance we may behold it, always 
 the same smoothness no matter how many times 
 we may magnify its surface, always the same re- 
 sistance no matter what the force that opposes it, 
 which has the same weight at the center of the 
 earth, at its surface, and on a mountain top ? Is there, 
 in short, anything whose qualities do not change 
 with our changing relation to it ? If there is any- 
 where such unchanging thing, to know it will be 
 to think of it in but one way; but in the case of 
 the things that change w4th our relation to them 
 we must take our choice of the many possible ways 
 of thinking of them, and in that choice we shall be 
 constrained by our need to single out that aspect 
 of them which will give us the largest measure of 
 control over them. 
 
 [44] 
 
WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE? 
 
 What is it that zue name? A noun, accord- 
 ing to the grammar definition, is the name of a 
 particular thing, but this definition is incorrect — 
 there are no words in language which are the 
 names of particular things. All words, whether 
 verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, or conjunc- 
 tions, are nouns in the sense of being names, but 
 no one of them is the name of a percept or a pres- 
 ent particular experience. They are all names of 
 kinds of things, of classes or concepts. We might 
 have one name for John when he is young and 
 another when he is old ; one when he is angry and 
 another for him when he is happy; one name for 
 him when he is asleep and another for him when 
 he is awake ; one for him when he is in health and 
 another when he is sick. He is a different per- 
 son to my different perceptions of him. But for 
 him in all his different moods and conditions I 
 have just one name. Why is this? Would it not 
 be better to give him one name when he is angry 
 and another when he is not angry? He is so very 
 different in the two conditions that I am sometimes 
 led to say that he is two different persons. If 
 language existed for the sake merely of describ- 
 ing happenings, I should have at least two names 
 for him. If knowledge about him consisted merely 
 in the notation of facts, I should have to give a 
 separate name to each different and eternally true 
 
 [45] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 particular fact about him. Is it, then, for mere 
 economy of utterance that I do not do this, but 
 instead give him one name ? Naming is not for 
 purposes of fact-designating. In a sense it is for 
 purposes of fact-obscuring. We give him one name, 
 which he carries with him through Hfe, which en- 
 ables us to forget that he is young or old, rich or 
 poor, sick or well, stooped or straight, angry or not 
 angry, honest or dishonest, honorable or dishonor- 
 able. Would it not be better if we named noble 
 men by noble names and ignoble ones by ignoble 
 names, so that the whole world would at once know 
 how to take them ? Not so. That one aspect which 
 the whole world must note in dealing with them 
 is just that they are human beings, and as such 
 they must be taken, so we give them proper names, 
 the names proper to human beings, which of them- 
 selves indicate nothing as to the facts of their past 
 lives, nothing as to what we must expect of them 
 except the greatest fact of all — that they are just 
 human beings, the particulars of whose action we 
 can anticipate best, not by being at once made 
 aware of what they have done or what so-called 
 traits of character they possess, but just by approach- 
 ing them with the uncertainty and expectancy which 
 belongs only to undiscovered but generally known 
 objects. When conditions arise under which all the 
 members of a human group must be treated alike, 
 
 [46] 
 
WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE? 
 
 as in a prison or for certain purposes in the army, 
 their proper names arc for these purposes over- 
 looked, and they are all reduced to the level of 
 numbers. It is conceivable that we shall grow in 
 grace to the extent of disregarding nationality and 
 ancestral religious differences in our naming of 
 human beings, and that difference of sex may in 
 time not be regarded as so fundamental a human 
 consideration as to require a separate form of 
 proper name for its indication. At any rate, real 
 sex equality can hardly exist until human equality 
 registers itself as the more fundamental fact in our 
 scheme of formulating our anticipations. 
 
 Have pi^oper names always belonged to hiiinan 
 animals? The first act or work that Adam is 
 represented as performing was the naming of the 
 animals. " And out of the ground the Lord God 
 formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of 
 the air ; and brought them unto Adam to see what 
 he would call them : and whatsoever Adam called 
 every living creature, that was the name thereof." 
 Yet it is certain that these Adamic names did not 
 stick, and that the first and the continuing social 
 work which every child of Adam has ever since 
 had to perform is to rename the animals and all 
 the objects in his world of experience. What kinds 
 of names did Adam give them ? Proper names or 
 common names .^ It is certain that for perhaps 
 
 [47] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 thousands of years only tlic men of power and 
 their associates had particular, or proper, names ; the 
 insignificant ones had none. In historic and even 
 in very recent days slaves had no proper names. 
 In exceptional cases, that is, when in some way or 
 other expectation singled them out for peculiar 
 attention, they earned names. To the oft-repeated 
 query " What 's in a name ? " we must reply, there- 
 fore, "A whole philosophy and much of the history 
 of the race." An object is named not because it is 
 an object or a fact, but because of our expectation 
 as to its future — because of our anticipation of 
 further experience of it. The name we give it is 
 only our designation of our intention with regard 
 to it, our indication of our plan to use it or act 
 toward it in the way the name indicates. Relatively 
 few of the animals attain proper names, and inani- 
 mate objects seldom are honored with them. But 
 sometimes they secure such a hold upon our atten- 
 tion that we can no longer treat them adequately 
 if we refer to them merely as instances of their 
 kind. They must be promoted to something like an 
 equality of consideration with ourselves. Thus, by 
 a strange inversion, human beings are under certain 
 conditions deprived of proper names, and animals 
 and even inanimate objects are given them; but it 
 is our desire to accord special treatment to both 
 of them, not only now but during the prospective 
 
 [48] 
 
WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE? 
 
 period of our contact with them that causes us to 
 give or take away their individual names. Like the 
 king or the college, we confer a title not merely 
 to register the fact that we conceive that the re- 
 cipient has deserved it, but at the same time we 
 call upon all mankind, and most especially pledge 
 ourselves, to accord to them all the privileges, rights, 
 immunities, honors, to which they are entitled. Thus 
 names are primarily scaffoldings from which we 
 would build our future acts. 
 
 Why do we name kinds of things rather than 
 things taken ijidividually ? Most animals and inani- 
 mate objects we do not find ourselves constrained 
 to honor with particular names. We act and react 
 to them best, both mentally and muscularly, by 
 naming them by their kinds. This dog, this gun, 
 this bird, this circle, this wagon, as an existence, to 
 be sure, is different from every other existence of its 
 kind ; but every dog is an object to beware of or pet 
 and make friends with, and every gun is an object 
 to shoot with and to handle carefully; hence one 
 name wall do for them all. Sensory experience is 
 wide and full of variety, but motor reactions are 
 narrow in range, and repetition is their character- 
 istic. We name these things whose particularity is 
 nothing to us, not for what they are but for what 
 we do or can do with them. "It is evident," says 
 Professor Baldwin, " that the ' general ' or ' abstract ' 
 
 [49] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 is not a content at all. It is an attitude, an expec- 
 tation, a motor tendency. It is the possibility of a 
 reaction which will answer equally for a great many 
 particular experiences." " All general ideas," says 
 Professor Royce, " are the mental aspects of habits 
 of response in presence of those general characters 
 of things to which the ideas in question relate. 
 Without motor habits, no ideas." The sensory sys- 
 tem is like the mouth of the funnel ; the motor 
 system is its narrow neck. Hence the value of re- 
 ducing things to kinds. It is what we do with the 
 object that we name. Knowledge comes through 
 conceptualizing, through locating meanings, but to 
 get it we must disregard all particularity of facts 
 about the object and cleave fast to its significance. 
 Again, it is our purpose which determines which of 
 its many possible meanings we shall choose. When- 
 ever our purpose involves more than casual dealings 
 with dogs, guns, or automobiles, we must handle 
 them under subclasses. The breeder's knowledge 
 of dogs must be different from the veterinarian's; 
 the maker's knowledge of the automobile must be 
 different from the user's. 
 
 Does knowiiig anything 7nean tJie ability to tisc 
 it in all possible ways? It has various meanings; 
 we must choose those that minister to our needs. 
 Here is an object which I picked up from the 
 ground near the Pyramid of the Sun in Mexico. 
 
 [50] 
 
 I 
 
WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE? 
 
 As nearly as I can tell, no one knows what it is, 
 though such objects are common in that country. 
 It is made of burnt clay, is round and of about two 
 inches in diameter, is ornamented, and has a small 
 hole in the center. It has a certain weight, which I 
 can determine. I can also learn many other things 
 about it. But still I say I do not know w^hat it is. 
 If I knew the name of the ancient Indian who 
 made it or the process by which he made it, I should 
 still be dissatisfied wdth my knowledge about it. 
 What is it I want to know before I can say that I 
 know it t Simply its use. Professor James divided 
 knowledge into two kinds — knowledge about things 
 and knowledge of things. The knowledge of things 
 is knowledge of use. Without it the rest is mere 
 description. It alone enables me in imagination to 
 sit down in the seat of the ancient Indian and take 
 this object in my hand, and in thought to refer it 
 to its place in • a possible scheme of things. It 
 alone has the forward look — the relation to pur- 
 pose that all real knowledge must have to distin- 
 guish it from merely mental lumber out of which 
 homes could be built if we only had plans with 
 which to shape them. Use alone furnishes the 
 organizing principle which gives the related facts 
 significance and welds them into a system. 
 
 What is the cause of anything? We sometimes 
 say that to know things is to know their causes, 
 
 [51] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 but the causes of things are numerous. " The whole 
 state of the universe is ultimately responsible for 
 any given result." The real cause of anything is 
 the sum total of existence, and Tennyson was 
 speaking literally as well as poetically when he 
 declared to the flower in the crannied wall that to 
 know it is to know what God and man is. Yet 
 we shall save our souls from scholasticism on the 
 one hand and from whatever bargains we may 
 make with the devil on the other by learning at 
 last, as Faust did, that life and mind find the satis- 
 faction of reality only in helping the peasants to 
 save their fields. 
 
 What we denominate the cause of anything is 
 inextricably mixed up with our own purposes and 
 suffused with our own energies. It is that phase 
 of the sum total of the conditions of its existence 
 which we select because of its future reference, not 
 to the reenactment of the thing, but as affording 
 us the peculiar form of control over the thing that 
 we are for the time being seeking. Causes, like 
 every other form of knowledge, are therefore full 
 of relativity. Here is a case of typhoid fever. What 
 caused it ? The whole state and condition of the 
 patient, together with his past acts and a chain of 
 ancestral conditions stretching out to infinity, have 
 conspired together to bring this particular person 
 just at this particular moment to his sick bed. 
 
 [52] 
 
WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE? 
 
 Why do we dismiss all the rest and say that the 
 typhoid fever is undoubtedly due to his drinking 
 polluted water or milk? Other members of his 
 family have partaken of the same water or the 
 same milk; yet they are not sick. It must be, there- 
 fore, that his sickness is due to the fact that he 
 was in a depressed condition of being, that his 
 bodily resistance was low and theirs perhaps was 
 not. His organism was hospitable to the bacteria 
 that are ever seeking guest privileges from us, and 
 theirs w^ere not. Why do we not say, then, that 
 typhoid fever is caused by a poor condition of re- 
 sistance on the part of the human organism and 
 not by polluted water or milk? The answer would 
 seem to be that bodily resistance is by no means so 
 controllable a factor or so removable a condition as 
 the purification of the water or the milk. We name 
 them the cause rather than it, for the reason that 
 we can take hold by that particular handle and 
 lift the burden more easily than we can by any 
 other of its innumerable handles. Right here we 
 have an excellent illustration of the fact that what 
 we call the cause of a happening is a function of our 
 activity and not of the thing in itself — that causes 
 are unitable with experience and not preexistent 
 and forever fixed, and that our obligation to them 
 is to find them in terms of control and not in terms 
 of their absolute being. It is this: Inoculation 
 
 [53] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 is now employed as a preventive of typhoid fever. 
 Suppose that of a group of say six soldiers or 
 six travelers, five have taken the precaution to be 
 inoculated before setting out on the campaign or 
 on the journey. They drink of the same water and 
 the same milk, and the sixth one contracts typhoid 
 fever. The others do not. What shall we say catised 
 his typhoid fever? The polluted water or milk? 
 or a low general state of resistance ? or the fact 
 that he had not taken the precaution which the 
 others took? Undoubtedly the last; and if, in the 
 development of medical experience of this disease, 
 it shall be found that this precaution works, then 
 failure to employ it, and not the taking of polluted 
 water or milk, or a low general state of bodily resist- 
 ance, will be singled out as the catise of the disease. 
 This same human partiality as determined by pur- 
 pose operates in the singling out of causes in every 
 other field of experience. A stone falls and hits the 
 earth. Why did it fall ? The force of gravitation 
 caused it to. But no ; the force of gravitation has 
 been acting upon it for centuries, and it fell but 
 now. Someone must have thrown it. That may be, 
 but there is no one whom I can find near. Then 
 its fall must have been caused by the fact that it 
 was insecurely propped up above the earth's surface. 
 And under like conditions it will fall again. Thus 
 we work through all the range of experienceable 
 
 [54] 
 
WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE? 
 
 possibility until we come upon the reenactable fac- 
 tor which would produce the result we seek, and, 
 having found it, we say it is the cause. As a matter 
 of fact, it is not tJie cause. The causes are so many 
 that, if we attempt to describe them, we shall be 
 utterly lost in bewilderment and confusion. But 
 it is the cause that we are seeking, for our seeking 
 is a singling and orders the confusion. 
 
 Plato s doctrine that knowledge is not descriptioii 
 bnt the pursuit of that which snakes men better. It 
 is the definiteness of purpose which the seeker 
 brings that results in knowledge. And this is a 
 very old, though a commonly disregarded, doctrine. 
 Do you remember how, in the tenth book of Plato's 
 " Republic," having worked out the principles of 
 comprehension, he returns to a consideration of the 
 poets and his reasons for denying that they should 
 be the educators of mankind ? They hold the 
 mirror up to nature, and that is an easy way to get 
 the seeming images of things, but they are satisfied 
 with appearances only. " Hence we must inquire 
 whether the poets are mere imitators, who have so 
 far imposed upon the spectators that when they 
 behold their performances, they fail to perceive that 
 these productions are twice removed from reality, 
 and easily worked out by a person unacquainted 
 with the truth because they are phantoms, and not 
 realities." " Concerning those grandest and most 
 
 [55] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 beautiful subjects which Homer undertakes to treat, 
 such as war, and the conduct of campaigns, and the 
 administration of cities, and the education of man, 
 it is surely just to institute an inquiry, and ask the 
 question, thus: 'My dear Homer, if you are really 
 only once removed from the truth, instead of being 
 twice removed and the manufacturer of a phantom, 
 according to our definition of an imitator; and if 
 you used to be able to distinguish between the pur- 
 suits which make men better or worse, in private 
 and public ; tell us what city owes a better constitu- 
 tion to you, as Sparta owes hers to Lycurgus, and 
 as many cities, great and small, owe theirs to other 
 legislators ? What state attributes to you the bene- 
 fits derived from a good code of laws ? ' . . . Does 
 the story go that any war in Homer's time was 
 brought to a happy termination under his com- 
 mand, or by his advice ? Is he reputed to have 
 been . . . the author of a number of ingenious 
 inventions bearing upon the useful arts or other 
 practical matters, which would show that he was 
 a man of wisdom in the affairs of life ? . . . Or did 
 he personally conduct the education of disciples 
 who benefited society and teach mankind a way 
 of life ? " "... Does the painter understand how 
 the bit and bridle ought to be shaped? Is it not 
 the case that even the makers, the smith and the 
 saddler, are ignorant on this subject, and only the 
 
 [56] 
 
WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE? 
 
 rider who knows how to use the things in question 
 knows and understands it? . . . The imitative per- 
 son knows nothing of importance about the things 
 which he imitates, and therefore imitation is an 
 amusement and not a serious business." Knowing, 
 then, for Plato arises from use and is for use. 
 
 But the heart of Plato's pragmatism is found in 
 a passage in the Euthydemus: '''And what knowl- 
 edge ought we to acquire ? ' May we not answer 
 with absolute truth — ' A knowledge which will do 
 us good ' ? ' Certainly,' he said. 
 
 " And should we be any the better if we went 
 about having a knowledge of the places where 
 most gold was hidden in the earth ? ' Perhaps 
 we should,' he said. 
 
 " ' But have we not already proved,' I said, ' that 
 we should be none the better off, even if without 
 trouble and digging all the gold which there is 
 in the earth were ours ? And if we knew how to 
 convert stones into gold the knowledge would 
 be of no value to us, unless we knew how to use 
 the gold ? Do you not remember ? ' I said, ' I quite 
 remember,' he said. 
 
 " ' Nor would any other knowledge, whether of 
 money-making, or of medicine, or of any other art 
 which knows only how to make a thing, and not 
 to use it when made, be of any good to us. Am I 
 not right ? ' He agreed. 
 
 [57] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 " * And if there were a knowledge which was able 
 to make men immortal, without giving them the 
 knowledge of the way to use the immortality, 
 neither would there be any use in that, if we may 
 argue from the analogy of the previous instances ? ' 
 To all this he agreed. 
 
 " ' Then, my dear boy,' I said, * the knowledge 
 which we want is one that uses as well as makes.' " ^ 
 
 1 Plato, Euthydemus (Jowett's translation), 288, 289. 
 
 [58] 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF GENERAL DISCIPLINE^ 
 
 What this doctrine has cost and why it sticks. If 
 knowledge-getting is the wise and purposeful selec- 
 tion from the infinity of facts and relations which 
 exist of those which make a serious difference to 
 life, it would seem that education owes its greatest 
 duty to that process. But no, says one army of 
 educators ; education's first duty is to form and 
 not to inform the mind. This is the centuries-old 
 doctrine of formal discipline. Of it we are indeed 
 justified in complaining, as did John of Salisbury of 
 the Nominalist-Realist controversy which absorbed 
 the scholars of his day, that " more time has been 
 consumed [by it] than the C^sars gave to the 
 conquest and dominion of the globe, more money 
 wasted than Croesus counted in all his wealth." 
 
 We are told in the Scriptures that we should 
 not put new wine into old wine skins, lest the wine 
 skins burst and the wine be spilled, but there is 
 another and even a better reason — the old wine 
 
 1 For an extended discussion of this subject, see Thorndike, Educa- 
 tional Psychology, Vol. II (Teachers College, New York), and Heck, 
 Mental Discipline (John Lane Company, New York). 
 
 [59] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 skins are not sanitary. They contain the elements 
 of decay. The new wine that goes into them will be 
 poisoned, and we who drink of it will die. Never- 
 theless, this pouring of new wine into old bottles 
 is one of the chief activities of education. This is 
 due, it would seem, to the fact that those w^ho so 
 zealously pour their life work in the service of edu- 
 cation into the old and time-infected wine skins of 
 formal discipline have no other bottles into which 
 to pour it. Strangely enough, even that hardy com- 
 pany of critics who a few years ago set about 
 liberating the spirit of youth from the contamina- 
 tion of this process did its work so imperfectly that 
 the more unthinking lovers of the old bottles still 
 conceive themselves to be justified in using them. 
 Indeed, they are reassured by a belief that " recent 
 careful investigations have shown that there is 
 much in the doctrine of formal discipline." Nothing 
 could be farther from the truth. But the critics of 
 the doctrine, rather than its friends, are to blame 
 for this, for they have stated their findings in such 
 a way as to invite just this misuse of them. When 
 Herbart undertook to reform psychology by cast- 
 ing out the hypostatized entities called faculties of 
 the mind, which scholastic ignorance, traditionalized 
 by centuries, had erected to explain mental life, he 
 made the mistake of continuing to use the old 
 terminology of faculties to designate the new-found 
 
 [60] 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF GENERAL DISCIPLINE 
 
 activities which came to Hght when he tore away the 
 scholastic rubbish. The result of his thus putting 
 his new wine into old words was that it took the 
 learned world half a century to discover that the 
 wine was new, it tasted so like the old ; and though 
 nearly a century has now elapsed, the bulk of man- 
 kind has not yet discovered that it tastes and is 
 different. Old words and phrases do not work well 
 as provokers of new ideas. We shall not learn to 
 think clearly about the behavior of mind until we 
 cease to use such phrases as the intellect, the will, 
 the emotions, the observation, the imagination, the 
 vte^nory, the reason, etc. in our discussions, and be- 
 gin with one accord to talk about knowing, willing, 
 feeling, imagining, remembering, reasoning, instead. 
 The acts we know and can recognize, but that 
 there are mental organs set apart for the perform- 
 ance of each one of them, as the eyes are for seeing, 
 the ears for hearing, and the teeth for chewing, 
 though it is an old doctrine, is not a true one. And 
 now nearly a hundred years after it was found out 
 to be untrue by the psychologists, this phrenology 
 of mind is still a ruling superstition of education, 
 and the implicit basis of a very large and important 
 part of current educational theory and practice. We 
 shall not learn to think clearly about education 
 until we cease to becloud ourselves by using the 
 word discipline. 
 
 [6i] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 What is the doctrine of formal discipline? It 
 seems to be an exceedingly elusive and slippery 
 affirmation — a series of running changes to escape 
 its critics, and of shifting meanings assumed one 
 after the other to withstand the attacks which have 
 been made upon it. There is no way to corner it 
 and make it tell what it means and what it does not 
 mean save by quoting the documents which discuss 
 it. Writing in 1867, Professor Youmans has this to 
 say about it : " The friends of educational improve- 
 ment maintain that the system of culture which 
 prevails in our higher institutions of learning, and 
 which is limited chiefly to the acquisition of the 
 mathematics, and of the ancient languages and 
 literature, w^as shaped years ago in a state of things 
 so widely different from the present that it has 
 become inadequate to existing requirements. . . . 
 As man is a being of action, it is demanded that 
 his education shall be a preparation for action. As 
 the highest use of knowledge is for guidance, it is 
 insisted that our collegiate establishments shall give 
 a leading place to those subjects of study which 
 will afford a better preparation for the duties and 
 work of the age in which we live. The adherents 
 of the traditional system reply that all this is but 
 the unreasoning clamor of a restless and innovating 
 age, which wholly misconceives the true aim of 
 higher culture and would reduce everything to the 
 
 [62] 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF GENERAL DISCIPLINE 
 
 standard of a low and sordid utility. They maintain 
 that knowledge is to be acquired not on account 
 of its capability of useful application, but for its 
 own intrinsic interest ; that the purpose of a liberal 
 education is not to prepare for a vocation or pro- 
 fession, but to train the intellectual faculties. They 
 therefore hold that Me^ital Disciplme is the true ob- 
 ject of a higher culture, and that for its attainment 
 the study of the ancient classics and mathematics 
 is superior to all other means." ^ " Throughout our 
 discussion thus far," writes Dr. Noah Porter in his 
 "American Colleges and the American Public,"^ 
 " we have assumed that certain studies may be of 
 the greatest value for discipline which possess no 
 other obvious and direct utility." And again : " But 
 even on the theory that many studies are valuable 
 chiefly as a gymnastic — ' the grindstone theory,' as 
 Mr. Atkinson calls it — it deserves to be considered 
 whether the mathematics are not carried too far 
 for their highest efficiency in a general course; 
 whether excessive tediousness and painful drudgery 
 are not sometimes the effect of driving a class into 
 too minute calculations or vexing them with mani- 
 fold problems." But Dr. Porter's enthusiasm for 
 " the grindstone theory " as applied to the clas- 
 sics shows no such abatement. " Unless it can be 
 
 1 Youmans, The Culture demanded by Modern Life, p. 2. New York, 1S67. 
 
 2 New Haven, 1870. 
 
 [63] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 decisively proved that the so-called useful studies are 
 as efficient in their disciplinary capacity and effect, 
 it forms no objection to a study that its acquisitions 
 cannot be used." There is competent testimony as 
 to its presence in Germany also, for the present em- 
 peror in speaking of the defenders of the existing 
 program in the classical gymnasia in 1892 said, " If 
 anyone enters into a discussion with these gentle- 
 men on this point and attempts to show him that 
 a young man ought to be prepared, to some extent 
 at least, for life and its manifest problems, they will 
 tell him that such is not the function of the school, 
 its principal aim being the discipline, or gymnastic, 
 of the mind, and that if this gymnastic were prop- 
 erly conducted, the young man would be capable 
 of doing all that is necessary in life." ^ That this 
 particular claim for certain studies has not been 
 abandoned by our present-day molders of educa- 
 tional opinion is made plain by Professor Shorey in 
 the volume entitled " Latin and Greek in American 
 Education " ^ : " Throughout this discussion I have 
 taken for granted the general belief of educators, 
 statesmen, and the man in the street, from Plato 
 and Aristotle to John Stuart Mill, Faraday, Lincoln, 
 President Taft, and Anatole France, that there is 
 such a thing as intellectual discipline, and some 
 
 1 Henderson, Principles of Education, p. 2S9. New York, 1910. 
 
 2 The Macmillan Company. New York, 191 1. 
 
 [64] 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF GENERAL DISCIPLINE 
 
 studies are a better mental gymnastic than others. 
 This, hke other notions of ' common sense ' is sub- 
 ject to all due qualifications and limitations. But 
 it is now denied altogether, and the authority of 
 Plato, Mill, Faraday, or Lincoln is met by the 
 names of O'Shea, Bagley, Home, Thorndike, Bolton, 
 and De Garmo. Tastes in authorities differ." This 
 is a singular, and by no means an edifying, method 
 of arriving at a proper understanding of the point at 
 issue. Would that Professor Shorey had confined 
 himself to a discussion of " the due qualifications 
 and limitations" to which this common-sense notion 
 must be subjected. 
 
 The harm that the doctrine works. The tragic 
 aspect of the doctrine of formal discipline is that 
 it is handed down by the colleges to the lower 
 schools, and infects pretty completely all forms of 
 education. Little children in the elementary grades 
 are required to study much arithmetic that is ar- 
 chaic, much grammar that is useless, much history 
 that they do not understand, and much spelling 
 that they will never again have occasion for, for the 
 reason that these things forsooth develop and dis- 
 cipline the mind. One by one in high schools and 
 colleges this doctrine takes the new studies into its 
 net, and little by little transforms them into apathy- 
 breeding, mind-destroying treadmills. It is not an 
 adjective that belongs to studies; it is a false use 
 
 [65] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 to which studies are put. Any body of knowledge 
 may be taught from the standpoint of formal dis- 
 cipline. Its real human worth may be largely neg- 
 lected, and a use which quite obscures its value may 
 be sought in it. Some of the earlier champions of 
 science as a school study made the mistake of com- 
 mending it on the ground that it disciplines the 
 mind as genuinely as the classics or mathematics 
 do, and as a result science is very generally taught 
 as formal discipline. So is manual training, so is 
 literature, and so may history, commercial branches, 
 domestic science, and even shop work be taught, 
 unless we guard against this debasing of them. The 
 statement is frequently made that it makes no dif- 
 ference what you study so long as you study it well. 
 If the content is of no significance whatever, as this 
 statement implies, it must be the mental discipline 
 and nothing else which gives the study value. Is it, 
 then, any wonder that Mr. Dooley was constrained 
 to reword this position to the effect that " it makes 
 no difference what you study so long as you 
 hate it"? 
 
 The history of this doctrine. Let us glance at the 
 history of this doctrine. As nearly as I can discover, 
 it was Plato who first began to talk of principles 
 in the soul, and in one place in the *' Republic " he 
 defines faculties as " powers in us, and in all other 
 things, by which we do as we do. Sight and hearing 
 
 [661 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF GENERAL DISCIPLINE 
 
 I should call faculties. ... In speaking of a faculty 
 I think only of its sphere and its result." ^ Plato 
 throughout his writings is struggling with the im- 
 possibility of making an old language lend itself 
 to the needs of radically new ways of thinking, and 
 must by no means be held to that literal definite- 
 ness of imagery and meaning which subsequent 
 thinkers have put into his conceptions. There is 
 nothing, however, that I can find in his writings 
 that leads to the belief that the book which Rous- 
 seau called '* the finest treatise on education ever 
 written " in any sentence propounds the doctrine 
 of formal discipline. On the contrary, Plato's whole 
 energy is devoted to emphasizing the overwhelming 
 importance of the content of instruction. It is for 
 that reason and for none other that he calls for the 
 reediting of the poets. It is for that reason that 
 he describes the perfect literary education after this 
 fashion : " Even so, as I maintain, neither we nor 
 our guardians whom we have to educate, can ever 
 become musical until we and they know the essen- 
 tial forms of temperance, courage, liberality, magni- 
 ficence, and their kindred, as well as the contrary 
 forms in all their combinations, and can recognize 
 them and their images wherever they are found, not 
 slighting them either in small things or in great, 
 but believing them all to be within the sphere of 
 
 1 Republic (Jowett's translation), 477. 
 
 [67] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 one art and study. " ^ By essential forms ^ Plato 
 means the " ideas." The Platonic ideas are the 
 clear concepts or definitions which Plato's master, 
 Socrates, had spent his life in searching for. Here, 
 at any rate, they are concepts or ideas of the mind. 
 In this and the other dialogues he defines them 
 from the standpoint of mental content, as, for exam- 
 ple : Courage is the preserving '' under all circum- 
 stances that opinion about the nature of things 
 to be feared and not to be feared in which our 
 legislator educated them." ^ " Temperance ... is 
 the ordering or controlling of certain pleasures and 
 desires." ^ "It would seem, Adeimantus, that the 
 direction in which education starts a man, will 
 determine his future life." ^ " To the rulers, then, 
 it is the first and greatest commandment of God, 
 that there shall be nothing of which they shall be 
 such good guardians and which they shall watch so 
 intensely as the children, for what they find to be 
 mingled in their souls." ^ " Then you are to con- 
 ceive that we, too, were doing something like this, 
 so far as we were able, when we were selecting our 
 
 1 Republic (Jowett's translation), 402. 
 
 2 What Plato means by this alphabet of life which he declares we must 
 know as thoroughly as our A B C's, is I think made clear by answering the 
 question, What are the essential forms of geometry ? 
 
 2 Republic (Jowett's translation), 429. 
 
 * Ibid. 430. 
 5 Ibid. 425. 
 
 * Republic (Bosanquet's translation), 415. 
 
 [68] 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF GENERAL DISCIPLINE 
 
 soldiers and training them in music and gymnastic ; 
 you must suppose that we were devising nothing 
 else than how with full conviction our men might 
 best take the color of the laws, like a dye, in order 
 that their opinion both about terrors and about all 
 else, might turn out indelible, because their quality 
 and their nurture had been appropriate ; and that 
 the detergents of the soul, however fatal in their 
 operation, might never wash away their dye, whether 
 pleasure, more tremendous in its efficiency than any 
 niter or alkali, or pain and fear and desire, stronger 
 than all other detergents. It is this faculty, a safe- 
 keeping through everything of the right and lawful 
 opinion with regard to what is terrible and what 
 is not, which I name and set down as courage, 
 unless you say something against it." ^ 
 
 Plato's theory of crime is " that the most gifted 
 minds, when they are ill educated, become preemi- 
 nently bad. Do not great crimes and the spirit of 
 pure evil spring out of a fullness of nature ruined by 
 education rather than from any inferiority, whereas 
 weak natures are scarcely capable of any very great 
 good or very great evil ? " ^ Education has no need 
 to strengthen or develop or form such minds ; they 
 are strong by nature ; but the " classical education 
 which the Greeks got by the study of Homer and 
 
 1 Republic (Bosanquet's translation), 430. 
 
 2 Republic (Jowett's translation), 491. 
 
 [69] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 Hesiod " is not sufficient to put their feet in the 
 way of Hfe. The whole burden of Plato's criticism 
 is that the content of the instruction upon which 
 the Greeks relied was unsatisfactory. Even the 
 idea of the good, the loftiest of all the mind's 
 conceptions, is a mental content. " And the soul 
 is like the eye ; when resting upon that on which 
 truth and being shine, the soul perceives and 
 understands and is radiant with intelligence." ^ 
 
 But, you are perhaps saying, that is all very well ; 
 nevertheless, when Plato came to outline his scheme 
 of higher education he chose his subjects of study 
 not for the sake of their content but because of 
 their disciplinary value. It is true that he speaks 
 of education many times as the process of directing 
 the mind to " that upon which truth and being 
 shine," that he would have Homer banished be- 
 cause his ideas are so misinforming, that he would 
 supervise every kind of artist and image maker so 
 that only the breezes of beauty and health should 
 blow over the children ; but see if he does not work 
 out another conception of education than that it 
 is the process of bringing the mind into contact 
 with a profitable environment, when he discusses 
 the subjects of the higher course of study. That 
 course begins when the youth is twenty years of 
 age. It lasts for fifteen years, the first ten of which 
 
 1 Republic (Jowett's translation), 50S. 
 
 [70] 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF GENERAL DISCIPLINE 
 
 are to be spent upon arithmetic, geometry, astron- 
 omy, and music, and the last five in the study of 
 dialectic. Why does Plato want them to study 
 these subjects? 
 
 First, there are four degrees of knowledge, and 
 they form a ladder by which the soul may climb 
 to the comprehension of the highest form of being 
 — the comprehension of the good. We are invited 
 to take a line and divide it into two unequal 
 parts, thus : 
 
 The invisible 
 world 
 
 The visible 
 world 
 
 then to divide each of these parts in the same 
 proportion ; and to suppose that these main divisions 
 represent one the world of sense, or the visible 
 world, and the other the world of intelligence, or 
 the invisible world. Then we are asked to compare 
 the subdivisions of each in respect to their clear- 
 ness or want of clearness. We may know the things 
 
 [71] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 of the visible world either directly by seeing and 
 sensing them ourselves, or indirectly by seeing 
 pictures of them, reflections of them in mirrors, 
 or in maps, descriptions, etc. This second kind of 
 knowledge is less clear than the first, so it must 
 be put below it in the first of the subdivisions of 
 our diagram. Let us speak of this lowest kind of 
 knowledge as the perception of shadows or copies. 
 Above it will come the world of visible objects 
 which we know by faith. In the lower form of 
 knowledge of the invisible world we are concerned 
 with things not seen, such as lines, points, circles, 
 numbers, etc. These thoughts are suggested by 
 things, but we get them only by abstracting one 
 aspect from out the mass of qualities which unite 
 to make up any object. These studies teach us to 
 make those abstractions, to think about thoughts, 
 not in general but in connection with a particular 
 subject matter. The peculiarity of this kind of 
 knowledge is that it assumes that there are lines 
 and points and numbers, and proceeds to draw such 
 inferences as it can from the assumption that they 
 exist. The highest kind of knowledge inquires into 
 the nature of these assumptions. It refuses to be 
 hypothetical, but starting from certainty it advances 
 to certainty through certainty. The hypothetical 
 knowledge of geometry and arithmetic and such 
 like studies is the work of understanding. And 
 
 [72] 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF GENERAL DISCIPLINE 
 
 pure science unaided by hypothesis is the work 
 of reason. Now we may fill the several spaces in 
 our diagram : 
 
 The invisible 
 world 
 
 Reason 
 
 Understanding 
 
 The visible 
 world 
 
 Faith 
 
 Perception 
 
 Science or knowledge 
 
 Hypothetical knowledge 
 
 Objects or things 
 
 Shadows 
 
 The training in music and gymnastic has in- 
 formed us concerning the knowledge of the visible 
 world. It remains for the higher education to 
 inform us concerning the intelligible world. We 
 begin with arithmetic, which is " a something which 
 all the arts and sciences and intelligences use 
 in common and which everyone first has to learn 
 among the elements of education." ^ It is a study 
 which leads to reflection. " Its true use is simply 
 to draw the soul towards being." ^ " We must 
 endeavor to persuade those who are to be the prin- 
 cipal men of our state to go and learn arithmetic, 
 
 1 Republic (Jowett's translation), 522. 
 
 2 Ibid. 523. 
 
 [73] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 not as amateurs, but they must carry on the study 
 until they see the nature of numbers with the 
 mind only." ^ Some of the things of sense do 
 not invite us to think, while in the case of other 
 objects the senses give us such untrustworthy re- 
 ports that further inquiry is imperatively necessary. 
 Sight cannot adequately perceive greatness and 
 smallness, thickness and thinness, hardness and 
 softness. Sense reports the same thing now asi 
 hard, now as soft, now as light, now as heavy; the 
 soul must summon intelligence and calculation that 
 she may know whether the several objects an- 
 nounced to her are two or one. When some contra- 
 diction is " always present, and one is the reverse of 
 one, and involves the conception of plurality, then 
 thought begins to be aroused within us, and the 
 soul, perplexed and wanting to arrive at a decision, 
 asks ' What is absolute unity ? ' This is the way in 
 which the study of the one has a power of draw- 
 ing and converting the mind to the contemplation 
 of true being." ^ Arithmetic compels the soul to 
 reason about abstract numbers. For that reason 
 it has a great and elevating effect. The mental 
 operations which it invites us to perform are 
 valuable forms of learning, but they must be 
 supplemented by practice in learning the specific 
 
 1 Republic (Jowett's translation), 525. 
 
 2 Ibid. 524 (absolute unity = unity itself), 
 
 [74] 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF GENERAL DISCIPLINE 
 
 operations of geometry, which are different, as well 
 as those of astronomy and of music. Plato does 
 not claim for any one of these that they teach us 
 to think, but only that they teach us to think 
 arithmetically, geometrically, astronomically, and 
 concerning music. No one of them is enough, and 
 taken all together they are by no means enough. 
 " All this is but the prelude to the actual strain 
 that we have to learn. For you surely would not 
 regard the skilled mathematician as a dialectician ? 
 Assuredly not, he said : I have hardly ever known 
 a mathematician who was capable of reasoning."^ 
 Dialectic, then, which is the art of asking and 
 answering questions, must be pursued for five years ; 
 and even this is not enough, for those who study 
 it must keep on educating themselves as long as 
 they live. 
 
 But if the pursuit of each of these studies con- 
 tributes only its quotum of specific knowledge, 
 what about such statements as that " even the dull, 
 if they have had an arithmetical training, although 
 they may derive no other advantage from it, always 
 become much quicker than they would otherwise 
 have been," ^ and " as experience proves, anyone 
 who has studied geometry is infinitely quicker of 
 apprehension than one who has not " ? ^ Are 
 
 1 Republic (Jowett's translation), 531. 
 
 2 Ibid. 526. 3 Ibid. 527. 
 
 [75] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 they quickened because their minds have been 
 sharpened and they have been trained to think? 
 But Plato himself employs the statement, " I 
 have hardly ever known a mathematician who 
 was capable of reasoning." It must therefore 
 be that they have been quickened in some other 
 way. In what other way could they have been 
 quickened ? My little girl does not know how to 
 read, but she studies reading. I notice a great 
 change in her. Before, when I asked her to look 
 at a book she did so indifferently; now she takes 
 it with alacrity. She has learned a new thought of 
 herself; she is one who can find out things from 
 books. Her alacrity is not there because her mind 
 as a mind has been developed and is now a more 
 perfect mind than it was before. It is due to the 
 fact that she has found a specific method of attack, 
 that she has learned how to use her mind and 
 in one way found out that she can accomplish 
 something by using it.^ 
 
 Plato does not leave us so uncertain as this even 
 as to what he regards as the task of education and 
 
 ^ That this is Plato's conception is, I think, borne out by the passage 
 in 411 of the " RepubHc," in which he describes the ill effect of an educa- 
 tion in gymnastic alone as follows : " And what happens if he do nothing 
 else, and holds no converse with the Muses, does not even that intelli- 
 gence which there may be in him, having no taste of any sort of learning 
 or inquiry or thought or culture, grow feeble and dull and blind, his mind 
 never waking up or receiving nourishment and his senses not being 
 purged of their mists?" (Jowett's translation). 
 
 [76] 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF GENERAL DISCIPLINE 
 
 what his definition of education is. He is very 
 definite about it. Hear him: "But then, if I am 
 right, certain professors of education must be wrong 
 when they say that they can put a knowledge into 
 the soul which was not there before," as one might 
 speak of inserting sight into eyes which have it 
 not. " Whereas our argument shows that the 
 power and capacity of learning exists in the soul 
 already." ^ Shall we consider in what way our 
 guardians are to be produced ? " The process, 
 I said, ... is the turning round of a soul passing 
 from a day which is little better than night to 
 the true day of being." ^ That is, neither knowledge 
 nor powers nor capacities which are not there 
 already can be inserted in the soul from outside. 
 The whole and sole business of education con- 
 sists in directing the mind or turning it to the 
 consideration of that which is important. 
 
 Now though Aristotle, the great classifier, crystal- 
 lized the different kinds of functioning of the soul 
 into a somewhat more hard and fast doctrine of facul- 
 ties, he did not speak of education as existing to form 
 or develop them. He did say in the " Psychology " 
 that " if imagination means the power whereby 
 what we call a phantasm is awakened in us, and 
 if our use of language is not merely metaphorical, 
 
 1 Republic (Jowett's translation), 518. 
 
 2 Ibid. 521. 
 
 [77] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 then imagination is one of those faculties or men- 
 tal forces in us by virtue of which we judge and 
 are capable of truth and error. And those facul- 
 ties include sensation, opinion, scientific knowledge, 
 and reasoning." ^ But when he discusses educa- 
 tion, his emphasis is wholly upon the impressions 
 which play upon us in our earliest years. He 
 agrees with his master, Plato, that the selection of 
 the environment is education's main task. " Virtue," 
 for him, " consists in rejoicing and loving and hat- 
 ing aright"^; that is, in knowing what things 
 to love and what things to hate. " The virtues we 
 get by first performing single acts of working, 
 which, again, is the case of other things, as the 
 arts for instance ; for what we have to make when 
 we have learned how, these we learn how to make 
 by making. ... In one word, the habits are pro- 
 duced from the acts of working like to them: and 
 so what we have to do is to give a certain char- 
 acter to these particular acts, because the habits 
 formed correspond to the differences of these. So 
 then, whether we are accustomed this way or 
 that straight from childhood, makes not a small 
 but an important difference, or rather I would say 
 it makes all the difference." ^ 
 
 1 Aristotle, Psychology, in Rand's The Classical Psychologists, p. 68. 
 
 2 Politics, VIII, 5. 
 
 * Aristotle^ Ethics (Chase's translation), Bk. II, Sect. I. 
 
 [78] 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF GENERAL DISCIPLINE 
 
 Even the Romans, who did so much to pervert 
 the wisdom of the Greeks, seem to have taken the 
 Greek notion of education as the process of bring- 
 ing the mind of the learner into contact with the 
 body of usable knowledge and letting him master 
 it for himself as the proper conception of the 
 teacher's function. In one place in the " Institutes 
 of Oratory" Ouintilian distinctly refers to the doc- 
 trine of formal discipline only to turn his back to 
 it and to find other and better reasons for the prac- 
 tice which he recommends. This is the passage : 
 " As to geometry, people admit that some atten- 
 tion to it is of advantage in tender years ; for they 
 allow that the thinking powers are excited, and the 
 intellect sharpened by it and that a quickness of 
 perception is thence produced; but they fancy that 
 it is not like other sciences profitable after it has 
 been acquired, but only whilst it is being studied. 
 Such is the common opinion respecting it. But it 
 is not without reason that the greatest men have 
 bestowed extreme attention on this science ; for as 
 geometry is divided between numbers and figures, 
 the knowledge of numbers assuredly is necessary 
 not only to an orator, but to everyone who has 
 been initiated even in the rudiments of learning. . . . 
 The knowledge of linear figures, too, is frequently 
 required in causes ; for law-suits occur concerning 
 boundaries and measures. But geometry has a still 
 
 [79] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 greater connection with the art of oratory Geom- 
 etry proves what follows from what precedes, what 
 is unknown from what is known ; and do we not 
 draw similar conclusions in speaking? ... Of all 
 proofs, the strongest are what are called geomet- 
 rical demonstrations, and what does oratory make 
 its object more indisputably than proof ? " ^ 
 
 As nearly as I can discover, this view held 
 throughout the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages, 
 and even when scholasticism flourished with all its 
 metaphysical refinements it was usable know^ledge, 
 or what passed for usable knowledge, which was 
 the object of all instruction. Such was certainly 
 the case in the Renaissance and in its Germanized 
 child — the Reformation. The knowledge of the 
 languages was necessary for the sake of purified 
 religion. " They are the scabbard which holds the 
 sword of the spirit." 
 
 But when the Renaissance and the Reformation 
 had been accomplished and new conditions brought 
 new needs, the practice of education could not 
 change rapidly enough to meet them. And so bad 
 reasons had to be found for continuing to do that 
 which w^as nevertheless done from habit and tradi- 
 tion. The schools of the Jesuits may have done 
 something to shape the new justification which 
 was found for continuing the old studies, but Latin 
 
 1 Quintilian (Watson's translation), Institutes of Oratory, Bk. I, chap. x. 
 
 [80] 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF GENERAL DISCIPLINE 
 
 was to them the language of a Hving rehgion, and 
 they were under no such need to find reasons for 
 their devotion to it as were Protestant school- 
 masters. When Luther and his co-reformers sought 
 to give the people of Germany a new religion by 
 breaking away from the Latin Church, why did 
 they not also break away from the Latin language 
 and the traditional education? By doing so they 
 would have made their separation more complete. 
 The answer is found in the words of Melancthon, 
 the organizer of the reformation school system: 
 " Upon the parents, therefore, and upon the com- 
 munity falls the common obligation of the educa- 
 tion of the youth of your city. In the first place, 
 they must take care that religion be rightly taught, 
 and this implies as a necessary condition sound 
 instruction in letters." ^ 
 
 The Reformation rode in on the great wave 
 of humanism. The reformers were humanists and 
 were bitterly opposed to the medieval education 
 whose chief study was logic. Scholastic Latin, 
 scholastic disputing, and scholastic theology, in 
 short the studies and methods of the scholastics, 
 were all hateful to them. Not the Latin spoken 
 by clerks, which had kept itself alive through the 
 Dark Ages by adapting itself as a living language 
 
 1 Melancthon, Inaugural Address at Nuremberg, 1526, in Woodward's 
 Contributions to the History of Education, p. 224. Cambridge, 1906. 
 
 [81] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 to the needs of men, but Latin of classical purity 
 and a learning that enabled the scholar to leap 
 over the ages of confusion back to the pure doc- 
 trine contained in the source books of Christianity, 
 became their ideal of education. Indeed, we may 
 say that it was the Reformation which by refusing 
 to have anything to do with the living Latin which 
 had grown up through the ages of the Church 
 made Latin a dead language. 
 
 Humanistic Latin it continued to study because 
 of its value to religion, since a large part of the 
 literature of early Christianity had been written 
 in it. But the growth of the native language, the 
 rapid institutionalizing of the new religion, the 
 claims of everyday life, and the increasing pressure 
 of new studies which began to be shaped by vital 
 interests took the heart out of the reformers' rea- 
 sons for studying the classics. Luther and Melanc- 
 thon had urged these studies upon the people in 
 words which indicate that they aspired to make 
 every man his own reformer of religion. This 
 ambitious use of the classics in time ceased to 
 be the active hope of the schoolmasters, and about 
 the middle of the eighteenth century the German 
 teachers of the old subjects begin to defend their 
 work against the attacks upon it by the exponents 
 of the new realistic studies, by the justification 
 that they train the faculties of the mind. 
 
 [82] 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF GENERAL DISCIPLINE 
 
 Thomas Aquinas, Hobbes, and Christian Wolff 
 in their writings made frequent reference to the 
 faculties of the soul. Francis Bacon, in Section 974 
 of the Natural History, says that " the brains of 
 some creatures, when their heads are roasted, taken 
 in wine, are said to strengthen the memory: as 
 the brains of hares, brains of hens, brains of deers, 
 etc." And speaking of the lack which he found 
 in the exercises used in the universities, he wrote, 
 "It is ever a true rule in exercises that they be 
 framed as near as may be to the life of practice, for 
 otherwise they do pervert the motions and faculties 
 of the mind, and not prepare them." ^ 
 
 Among the impediments to natural philosophy 
 he notes the promises with which " light and vain 
 men partly from credulity, partly from craft, have 
 loaded the human race, offering promulgation of 
 life, delay of infirmity, relief from pain, supply of 
 natural defects, deceptions of the senses, the bind- 
 ing or inciting of the affections, illuminations of 
 the mental powers, ecstasies, transmuting of sub- 
 stances, etc." ^ 
 
 John Locke (1632- 1704) is sometimes referred 
 to as the chief exponent of the theory that the true 
 function of education is to develop the powers or 
 faculties of the mind. " The business of education 
 
 1 Bk. II, The Advancement of Learning. 
 
 2 The Interpretation of Nature. 
 
 [83] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 . . . is not, as I think, to make them perfect in any 
 one of the sciences, but so to open and dispose 
 their minds, as may best make them capable of 
 any, when they shall apply themselves to it. If men 
 are, for a long time, accustomed to one sort or 
 method of thoughts, their minds grow stiff in it, 
 and do not readily turn to another. It is there- 
 fore to give them this freedom, that I think they 
 should be made to look into all sorts of knowledge. 
 But I do not propose it as a variety and stock of 
 knowledge, but a variety and freedom of thinking; 
 as an increase of the powers and activity of the 
 mind, not an enlargement of its possessions." ^ 
 " We should always remember that the faculties 
 of our souls are improved and made useful to us, 
 just after the same manner as our bodies are. 
 Would you have a man write or paint, dance or 
 fence well, or perform any other manual operation 
 dextrously and with ease ? Let him have ever so 
 much vigor and activity, suppleness and address 
 naturally, yet nobody expects this from him unless 
 he has been used to it, and has employed time and 
 pains in fashioning and forming his hand, or out- 
 ward parts, to these motions. Just so it is in the 
 mind ; would you have a man reason well, you must 
 use him to it betimes, exercise his mind in observ- 
 ing the connection of ideas, and following them in 
 
 1 Conduct of the Understanding, 19. 
 
 [84] 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF GENERAL DISCIPLINE 
 
 train. Nothing does this better than mathematics; 
 which therefore I think should be taught all those 
 who have the time and opportunity; not so much 
 to make them mathematicians as to make them 
 reasonable creatures." ^ Note that the question is 
 begged here, for it is quite evident that one learns 
 to fence only by practice in fencing and that that 
 practice will not teach him to box or play tennis. 
 Whereas Locke draws the conclusion that exercise 
 in mathematical reasoning will make a man reason 
 well, not only in mathematics but in all things. If 
 we remember that the activities of mind " are im- 
 proved and made useful to us just after the same 
 manner as our bodies are," we will arrive at a con- 
 clusion very different from his. Locke himself goes 
 back on his own theory, for in his " Thoughts on 
 Education " (176) he writes: " I hear it is said that 
 children should be employed in getting things by 
 heart to exercise and improve their memories. I 
 could wish this were said with as much authority 
 of reason as it is with forwardness of assurance, 
 and that this practice were established upon good 
 observation more than old custom. For it is evi- 
 dent that strength of memory is owing to a happy 
 constitution and not to any habitual improvement 
 got by exercise. Is it not the same with the other 
 faculties ? " 
 
 1 Conduct of the Understanding, 6. 
 
 [85] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 But every philosopher of that clay wrote about 
 the "faculties of the soul." Charles Bonnet (1720- 
 1 793) even named his book " An Analytical Essay 
 upon the Faculties of the Soul." Thomas Reed 
 (1710-1796) wrote on "The Intellectual Powers 
 of Man," and Condillac's (17 15-1780) treatise was 
 full of that doctrine. Nothing was more inevitable 
 than that German Protestant schoolmasters when 
 pressed for a reason for teaching the classics by 
 their opponents, the philanthropists, — newly arrived 
 champions of the practical studies, who succeeded 
 indeed in discrediting the teaching of the old lan- 
 guages, — should have lighted upon this one and 
 speedily made it the chief defense of their practice. 
 In this way a doctrine persistently rejected for 
 hundreds of years by the great teachers of man- 
 kind began to shape and preside over the educa- 
 tional practice of the western world. The theory 
 upon which it is founded that the mind is divided 
 into faculties is relatively very old, but the use of 
 the doctrine in education is new, going back no 
 farther than the eighteenth century. 
 
 When Friedrich August Wolf (i 759-1824), the 
 founder of the science of philology, began to go to 
 school, he found that he could not bear a teacher 
 more than three days together. Yet his precocity 
 was so great that before he was two years old he 
 knew a number of Latin words, and by the time 
 
 [86] 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF GENERAL DISCIPLINE 
 
 he was eight, could read an easy Latin author 
 and had made a beginning of Greek and French. 
 As long as his father taught him, all went well, 
 but as soon as school-teachers began to instruct 
 him, his troubles began. As long as he lived he 
 was possessed by the conviction that he had been 
 mistaught. He devoted his life to reforming the 
 teaching of the classics. They had been studied 
 as a preparatory qualification for the study of law 
 and theology. To him this was the meanest view 
 that could be taken of them. They are supposed to 
 be the road to literature and learning. This is a 
 traditional superstition, though there was a time 
 when it was true. He proposes a different reason 
 for studying them. They afford the "knowledge of 
 human nature as exhibited in antiquity." ^ 
 
 But Wolfs successors have not taught the classics 
 for the reason that Wolf taught and believed in 
 them. They have made of them an instrument for 
 another purpose than that with which he sought to 
 check the rise of the new-found realistic studies. 
 They have resorted to " the grindstone theory " 
 and not the knowledge theory to justify their use 
 of them. 
 
 Is gy77tnastic training general or specific ? As we 
 have seen, a warrant for this procedure is sought 
 in the physical training of the gymnasium. The 
 
 1 See Mark Pattison, Essay on F. A. Wolf. 
 
 [87] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 mind must be exercised as the body is. Its powers 
 must be developed as the powers of the body are 
 developed. This is surely a justification by confu- 
 sion. Has the physical trainer any exercises that 
 train the body as a whole? In the " Banquet" of 
 Xenophon, Socrates is made to say that " those 
 who have accustomed themselves to long foot races 
 have thick legs and narrow shoulders, while on the 
 contrary the wrestlers have broad shoulders and 
 small legs. Now instead of producing such an 
 effect, in the exercise of dancing, the feet, the legs, 
 the neck, and indeed the whole body, are in action, 
 and whoever would have his body supple, easy, and 
 healthful, should learn to dance." Again, we find 
 him saying in the " Memorabilia," " Do you not 
 know that those who are by nature the weakest be- 
 come, by exercising their bodies, stronger in those 
 things in which they exercise them than those who 
 neglect them, and bear the fatigue of exercise with 
 greater ease ? " The physical trainer exercises spe- 
 cial muscles and combinations of muscles. He has 
 no single exercises which develop all forms of skill, 
 nor has he any single exercises which will develop 
 the single organs in more than particular ways. 
 One man he teaches to box, another to row, an- 
 other to work on the rings or the horse. But one 
 who has learned boxing has not thereby learned 
 to play tennis or to row. It may even be that 
 
 [88] 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF GENERAL DISCIPLINE 
 
 knowing how to perform one of these feats is a 
 hindrance to learning another. The so-called gen- 
 eral exercises are only selected groups of particular 
 exercises, and train the special muscles involved in 
 them to work together in the particular ways that 
 they require. All-round athletes are rare, and the 
 feats which an all-round athlete is expected to per- 
 form — the pentathlon and the dekathlon — are by 
 no means exhaustive tests of muscular ability. To 
 anyone who goes in for this sort of thing it is 
 quite apparent that physical education leads only 
 to the acquirement of special forms of muscular 
 skill. It is true that the exercising of any com- 
 bination of muscles calls for a correspondingly 
 rapid blood flow to build up the broken-down 
 tissue. The blood must be more rapidly aerated, 
 and quickened breathing is the result. These in 
 some measure benefit the whole body if the exer- 
 cises are taken in moderation, though they may 
 greatly injure the heart or the digestive and secre- 
 tory systems if they are not. If any part of the 
 brain is specially engaged in mental work, it would 
 seem possible that a correspondingly rapid blood 
 supply is distributed to that organ. Just what the 
 details of the effects of physical training are is 
 by no means clear, as the subject is exceedingly 
 intricate and demands much more attention than 
 has yet been given it. This much seems to be 
 
 [89] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? ' 
 
 plain, that there is really no such thing as general 
 strength of body or even of any one of the organs 
 of the body. Strength varies in proportion to habit- 
 uation of muscles in working together to perform 
 the different feats of skill. If one is to be a pianist 
 or a surgeon, it is conceivable that he should not 
 engage in perfecting the work of his larger mus- 
 cles, as they might get in his w^ay and become 
 not contributory but rival forms of skill, as walking 
 is to an adult who tries to learn to swim. Physical 
 skill is specific, and its variations are the more or 
 less of specific activities. What we call general 
 physical training is training in several specific 
 forms of activity, and only by a figure of speech 
 is it all-round training. 
 
 Are there any faculties of the "inind? Let us 
 look now at the faculties of the mind and inquire 
 concerning the possibility of training or developing 
 the judgment, the will, the imagination, the observa- 
 tion, or the memory, each in general, that is, formally. 
 Taking the last one first because the facts in re- 
 gard to it are matters of everyday knowledge, we 
 must first note that the psychologists tell us there 
 is no such thing as a single organ or faculty of 
 memory which can be trained as a whole. We have 
 a different memory for everything we remember. 
 Familiar experience tells the same thing. Some 
 of us remember faces but not names, and some 
 
 [90] 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF GENERAL DISCIPLINE 
 
 remember names but not faces ; some the names of 
 books, but not their contents, others the contents 
 and not the names ; some remember the words of 
 foreign languages, but others forget them as soon 
 as learned. We know that we do not remember 
 all things equally well, that our memories insist 
 upon being partial and particular. We see the same 
 thing in other people. I used to go from San Fran- 
 cisco to Berkeley daily on " the racing boat," the 
 ferry boat which took the crowds that followed the 
 races over to the track. My neighbors were inter- 
 esting folk, for they represented a high degree of 
 specialization in education. They were people with 
 marvelous memories for the names, the pedigrees, 
 the performances, and the selling prices of run- 
 ning horses. They seemed to recall all there was 
 to be recalled about jockeys, weights, conditions of 
 the track, etc. Their going-and-coming conversa- 
 tion was so thickly charged with facts of that sort 
 as to put to shame the sievelike memory of a poor 
 student which at times seemed to refuse to hold 
 anything at all. But suppose these same people, 
 with their marvelously developed memories, had 
 been thrust into a theological school and required 
 to commit St. John's Gospel, the deeds of the 
 saints, and the hymns of the Church, would they 
 have succeeded any better than the rest of us ? Yet 
 their memories were highly trained. 
 
 [91] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 There were two students in the University of 
 CaHfornia who set out to train their memories by 
 committing the whole of Milton's " Paradise Lost," 
 and one recent student at Cambridge, England, is 
 said to have committed the whole of the Iliad. Do 
 men who do these things remember the calculus, or- 
 ganic chemistry, or the facts in Blackstone's " Com- 
 mentaries " better because of forcing themselves in 
 this fashion? John Locke thought not. Cardinal 
 Newman thought not and spoke of having known 
 men "who could without effort run through the suc- 
 cession of days on which Easter fell for years back ; 
 or could say where they w^ere, or what they were 
 doing, on a given day in a given year ; or could recol- 
 lect the Christian names of friends and strangers; 
 or could enumerate in exact order the names of all 
 the shops from Hyde Park corner to the Bank ; 
 or had so mastered the University Calendar as to 
 be able to bear an examination in the academical 
 history of any M.A., taken at random. And I be- 
 lieve in most of these cases the talent, in its excep- 
 tional character, did not extend beyond several 
 classes of subjects. There are a hundred memories 
 as there are a hundred virtues." ^ Pathological cases 
 have shown that the memory of one sense may be 
 lost without that of the others being impaired. Pro- 
 fessor James determined to test the matter. He 
 
 1 Richardson, The Choice of Books, p. 79. New York, 1905. 
 
 [92] 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF GENERAL DISCIPLINE 
 
 first committed 158 lines of Victor Hugo's " Satyr." 
 It took some part of eight days and a total time 
 of 1 3 if minutes. He then trained his memory 
 by working twenty minutes a day in committing 
 " Paradise Lost," and finally committed the first 
 book. He then went back to Victor Hugo's 
 "Satyr" and found that to commit 158 additional 
 lines 15 1 J minutes were required, or twenty min- 
 utes more than before training his memoiy by 
 committing the " Paradise Lost." He admits that 
 during the second test he was fatigued by other 
 work. But four of his students repeated the test. 
 Two of them showed considerable gain after prac- 
 tice, and two none at all. Professor James stated 
 it as his conviction that the native retentiveness 
 which we bring with us at birth cannot be changed. 
 ''All improvement of the memory lies in the line 
 of elaboratinor the associates of each of the several 
 kinds of things to be remembered. No amount of 
 culture would seem capable of modifying a man's 
 general retentiveness."^ Every so-called method of 
 training the memory is simply a method of study- 
 ing the facts to be remembered — a better method 
 of going to work to associate them with other facts 
 etc. " When schoolboys improve by practice in ease 
 of learning by heart, the improvement will, I am 
 sure, be always found to reside in the mode of study 
 
 1 James, Psychology, Briefer Course, pp. 296-298. New York, 1900. 
 
 [93] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 of the particular piece (due to the greater interest, 
 the greater suggestiveness, the generic similarity 
 with other pieces, the more sustained attention, 
 etc.), and not at all to any enhancement of the 
 brute retentive power." ^ This distinction helps us 
 materially to locate the kind of discipline of the 
 memory which is impossible and tells us definitely 
 what we should attempt to do instead. We are to 
 let the memory alone and to bend our energies to 
 the proper comprehension of facts which are worth 
 remembering. It is the content and not the form 
 of memory which is to be trained. 
 
 Ca7t the memory be trained? Now come the 
 critics of Professor James's view who, though their 
 investigations have not materially changed his re- 
 sults, have sometimes talked and written of them 
 as though they had and, by so doing, have brought 
 confusion instead of clearness and lent an unwar- 
 ranted degree of comfort to the enemy. In 1905 
 Ebert and Meumann published the results of elab- 
 orate and seemingly thoroughgoing tests of eight 
 subjects who were first measured by being required 
 to commit a miscellaneous assortment of letters, 
 numbers, nonsense syllables, words, Italian words, 
 strophes of poetry, and bits of prose. Next they 
 undertook to determine which methods of learning 
 were most economical. In the investigation they 
 
 1 James, Psychology, Briefer Course, pp. 296-298. 
 
 [94] 
 
THE DOCTRINE OE GENERAL DISCIPLINE 
 
 learned thirty-two series of nonsense syllables, ordi- 
 narily learning two series of syllables on one day 
 and testing the retention of two more. This went 
 on for sixteen days, at the end of which time the 
 first material was relearned and the results before 
 and after training were compared. Four of the sub- 
 jects went through a further period of training by 
 means of sixteen additional series and the original 
 condition was then again compared. The tables show 
 that there was a gain in each case. " The results," says 
 Professor Pillsbury, " fell out entirely in favor of the 
 view that special training gives a general effect."^ 
 Professor Dearborn, who repeated Meumann's ex- 
 periments with great care, found no evidence of 
 general memory training in his results. Professor 
 Pillsbury also quotes the experiments of Winch on 
 school children in Great Britain, in which about 
 one hundred children learned selections from a 
 historical reader and were then divided into two 
 groups, one group being trained for four mornings 
 by committing about one hundred words of poetry, 
 while the members of the other did sums. On the 
 fifth morning each group committed a second test 
 passage, and it was found that the members of 
 the group which had been trained did this on 
 the average about ten per cent better than those 
 who had worked the sums. But what do these tests 
 
 ^ Latin and Greek in American Education, p. 367. New York, 191 1. 
 
 [95] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 show? Do they not show improvement in memo- 
 rizing a particular kind of material by learning a 
 particular method of study and increasing one's in- 
 terest in doing a particular kind of thing, rather 
 than improvement of the me7nory in general} The 
 percentage of gain reported by Meumann in the 
 third test over the first is 59 in the case of num- 
 bers, 42 in the case of nonsense syllables, and only 
 29 in the case of prose words. This does not seem to 
 mean that " general strength " of memory has been 
 developed, but rather that several particular interests 
 have been improved markedly, and independently, 
 by training. If " general strength " is developed by 
 training a given faculty or function, have we not 
 a right to demand that that " strength " shall be 
 general, that is, available in nearly equal measure 
 for all related kinds of use ? All the experiments 
 show that it is not, and in them all we have what 
 seems very much more like a readaptation of a 
 method than the repetitive functioning of a de- 
 veloped organ. Again, what are claimed as general 
 results are of so little value that, even if they were 
 clearly made out, education could not consider 
 them as of any importance whatever, and certainly 
 would not be warranted in shaping its work to 
 get them. The results seem to confirm Professor 
 James's view that all so-called improvement of the 
 memory is improvement in method of studying. 
 
 [96] 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF GENERAL DISCIPLINE 
 
 Dr. Fracker found that practice in committing the 
 order of four tones led to improvement in the com- 
 mitting of poetry. So did committing the order 
 of presentation of four shades of gray, of nine 
 shades of gray, of nine geometrical figures, of nine 
 numbers, and of the extent of arm movements. His 
 conclusion is that his results accord with those of 
 Professor James, " inasmuch as all the factors we 
 have discovered have to do with methods," that is, 
 with ways of learning that are specific and com- 
 mon to both the test and the practice operations. 
 
 The questio7i of the tra7isferability of training is 
 not the question of formal discipline. The question 
 as to whether or not a method of study or mental 
 action learned in one context can be applied to a 
 recognizably similar problem is not the question 
 of formal discipline. The mind is a generalizer. 
 We are never called upon to apply what we have 
 learned to just the same conditions as those in 
 which we learned it. If the method called for is 
 the same and the context in which it was learned 
 is sufficiently like the context which presents the 
 problem to call it forth, there will undoubtedly be 
 a transferring of what was learned in the old situa- 
 tion to what is required in the new. The whole 
 theory of habit supports this view. We tend to 
 repeat the motions we have already learned, when- 
 ever the situation is not too confusing to allow us 
 
 [97] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 to do so; but let the situation be very novel, and 
 even our most deep-seated habits refuse to function 
 well in it. I can walk a ten-inch plank with ease 
 on the ground ; but let it be put fifty feet in the 
 air, and I find it nearly impossible to walk along 
 it. Undoubtedly much is transferred from my prac- 
 tice of walking on the ground to the new situation 
 in which I find myself compelled to walk high in 
 air; but he would indeed be a foolish thinker who 
 would maintain that the art of walking is one and 
 of such a kind that, having once learned it, one can 
 walk anywhere. While there are common elements 
 in all walking, they do not of themselves help me 
 to walk along a wire. To master that situation I 
 must be specifically trained for that kind of walk- 
 ing. It is the same with talking. It is one thing 
 to talk well in the bosom of one's family, and quite 
 another to talk well in the presence of strangers, 
 and still a third thing to talk well in making a 
 public speech. And so different are these arts that 
 few orators have been conversationalists and few 
 conversationalists orators. 
 
 The numerous psychological experiments which 
 have attempted to determine the limits within 
 which what is learned in one context can be 
 applied to another are valuable as showing the 
 conditions under which the mind functions as a 
 generalizer. But have not the men who reported 
 
 [9B] 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF GENERAL DISCIPLINE 
 
 them confused two questions which ought to be 
 kept clearly separated — the first, Is there such a 
 thing as a general, or wholesale, training of the 
 faculties or functions of the mind ? and the second, 
 To what extent is what is learned in one context 
 applied in a similar one ? The first question is 
 answered not by finding out to what extent gen- 
 eralization goes on, but by finding out whether it 
 can go on at all without faculties and without com- 
 mon contexts to call it forth. In other words, the 
 acceptance of the fundamental doctrine of modern 
 psychology, that there are no faculties in the mind, 
 of itself necessitated the abandonment of the doc- 
 trine of formal training in education. The coming 
 of the day when no teacher uses this hoary super- 
 stition to justify his teaching has actually been 
 postponed by experiments undertaken to show to 
 w^iat extent a common element may function in 
 different fields of learning. 
 
 Is judgment one? It is hardly necessary to apply 
 a similar criticism to the training of each of the 
 so-called faculties. If judgment were one, it could 
 perhaps be trained as one. But men who think 
 equally well upon all kinds of subjects are not to 
 be found. "It is said," writes Professor Angell, 
 " that education ought to train one's ability to exe- 
 cute analyses, to make accurate inferences, and to 
 detect essential relations, as though analyses and 
 
 [99] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 inferences and relations were names for perfectly 
 homogeneous, uniform processes. The futility of 
 this conception in the form in which it is often 
 advocated requires no psychology more recondite 
 than that afforded by common observation and a 
 very modest type of common sense. If the world 
 were built in a neat snug-fitting box, with all parts 
 interchangeable, the scheme ought to work admira- 
 bly. Unhappily the type of analysis and inference 
 which is valid in mathematics, for instance, is prac- 
 tically very different from that which is valid in 
 linguistics and history. A similar discontinuity of 
 inferential procedure marks off from one another 
 sundry other fields of knowledge. Surely from this 
 side the most that educational doctrine can ask or 
 urge is that the mind shall be brought into con- 
 tact with all of the great characteristic divisions of 
 human thought and that the processes in each of 
 these domains shall be made familiar. . . . Psy- 
 chologically, of course, the various forms of reason- 
 ing process reduce to one or two simple types 
 with their variants. But practically the content of 
 the ideas with which thought has to deal is often 
 so diverse as to render discipline gained on this 
 score in one direction of only the most remote 
 consequence in another." ^ Reasoning, then, is a 
 specific rather than a general activity. 
 
 1 Pillsbury, Latin and Greek in American Education, p-357- New York, 191 1. 
 
 [100] 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF GENERAL DISCIPLINE 
 
 Is there a facility of observation or of hnagina- 
 tion ? The observation is another faculty which 
 we are urged to train, but good observation seems 
 always to be a function of the particular content 
 that one has been habituated to observe. Take 
 three trained observers out to observe the same 
 landscape. Let one be a real-estate dealer, one a 
 railroad-constructing engineer, and one a landscape 
 artist. Can they possibly see the same things in 
 the landscape ? Yet each is a trained observer. 
 One sees with the ideas which are in his mind, 
 with his apperceptive system, and it is only by 
 developing that that his eyes can learn to see 
 what they should see. 
 
 Imagination also cannot be trained as one. It too 
 is a function of the content. First, it is divided into 
 rather well-marked types, which are by no means 
 interchangeable, so that a person of a markedly 
 audile type is hardly warranted in attempting to 
 substitute another type by training. Then within 
 each type we have a different imagination for each 
 thing that we image. Here again the counsel of 
 psychology to education would seem to be to let 
 the imagination alone and put its efforts upon secur- 
 ing clear pictures of those matters and concerns 
 which should be clearly registered in the mind. 
 
 It is the same with attention. It is primarily 
 selective. We attend to those things which interest 
 
 [lOl] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 us, which are problems for us, which belong to the 
 line of goods we carry. It is, in each of us, not one 
 but many, and always the result not of an abstract 
 but of a series of concrete developments. To quote 
 Professor Angell again : " So far as these several 
 forms of attention have divergent elements in them 
 (and certainly there are many such divergences both 
 of sensory content and of motor attitude) we shall 
 hardly be entitled to look for beneficial effects in 
 the use of one form of attention as a result of dis- 
 cipline in another form of it." And so with all the 
 other mental and moral virtues. They are not gen- 
 eral but obstinately particular. What, then, is the 
 net result of all this? What but that we must 
 abandon all talk and claim of general mind-forming, 
 and gladly accept the more humble task of mind- 
 informing. The several studies provide not oppor- 
 tunities for general training, but each of them its 
 own peculiar opportunities for special training. 
 The opposite of formal training is content training. 
 Each study offers its content of facts profitable to 
 be known, and its content of methods of dealing 
 with those facts. But both its methods and its facts 
 belong to its content and are valuable only when 
 taken together. We may teach them broadly or we 
 may teach them narrowly, and, unless our pupils are 
 inventive geniuses of the rare sort, they will not 
 get from our teaching much more than we invite 
 
 [I02] 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF GENERAL DISCIPLINE 
 
 them to get. To my mind the most suggestive of 
 all the experiments upon this subject which have 
 been reported is the modest effort of Professor 
 Bagley, which showed that the children who were 
 instructed to hand in neat arithmetic papers did 
 so, but did not improve their geography and lan- 
 guage papers a bit. But when Professor Ruediger 
 enlarged the lesson and took pains to impress upon 
 similar children the need for neatness in preparing 
 all their papers, neatness began to characterize 
 them all. Must we not teach concretely what we 
 would have our students learn, and abandon all 
 confidence in the mystical power of studies? 
 
 [103] 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 EDUCATION AS WORLD BUILDING 
 
 Our worlds are different. The world of the man 
 who is born bHnd must be strikingly different from 
 the world of the person who sees. The same land- 
 scape stretches before him that stretches before 
 us, but he lacks something. Other folks experience 
 the infinitely varied play of light and shade, but he 
 cannot know them nor objects as defined by them. 
 Others cannot by verbal descriptions, even the most 
 perfect, impart their experience to him. How it 
 feels to see he can never know, and how one gets 
 along without the aid of visual images with which 
 to define a world of things will be an incompre- 
 hensible mystery to us as long as we have them. 
 The world of the deaf must be a queer, still world, 
 which we who love the sound of voices and of 
 music cannot know. The deaf and the blind make 
 their world out of another sort of stuff than that 
 which we build into ours. Yet when we think of it 
 they are but striking cases of a common law. All 
 our experiences are private and particular. My see- 
 ings, hearings, touchings, tastings, smellings, are 
 my own ; the ether vibrations which stimulate them 
 
 [104] 
 
EDUCATION AS WORLD BUILDING 
 
 in mc have not reached your retina ; the sound 
 waves which fall upon my ear have not broken 
 upon your tympanum. Your seeings and hearings 
 are yours ; mine are mine. Though we do have 
 similar senses we do not have the same sense 
 material, and the worlds which we construct from 
 it differ accordingly. It is a commonplace that the 
 soldier's world is different from the sailor's, the 
 farmer's from the lawyer's, the Eskimo's from that 
 of the dweller in the tropics, the Chinaman's from 
 the American's, the youth's from the man's, the 
 child's from the adult's. The experience stuff with 
 which each one builds is peculiar to himself, and 
 the scheme of things which each of us carries 
 about with him is different from the scheme of 
 things which every other man possesses. 
 
 Our feeliJigs are not transferable. My world may 
 have points of identity with other people's worlds. 
 How thoroughgoingly we view matters in the same 
 way is nevertheless very hard for us to tell. We 
 are each of us shut off by ourselves. Our feelings 
 are not interchangeable; there is no process of 
 telepathy by which you can pass your weariness, 
 or hunger, or suffering, or conviction, or joy to me. 
 In this horrible year (191 5) when more individuals 
 are in agony than ever before in the history of men 
 one sometimes wakes with a start of astonishment 
 that his own body does not quiver with pain from 
 
 [105] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 their gunshot wounds or their gnawing hunger. 
 It is true their suffering makes us suffer, but our 
 suffering is not of Hke kind with theirs. When 
 they are struck down we do not feel the flash of 
 agony that shoots through them. 
 
 This relentless privacy of experience in which we 
 are shut up forces us to struggle desperately to 
 make our inner being known. But all our efforts at 
 direct communication are unavailing. I can never 
 be sure when you say the stone is hard or the 
 toothache hurts that you have quite the same kind 
 of feeling when you strike the stone or suffer from 
 the toothache that I have. I can never sample 
 your pain and match it with my own. I can only 
 watch your acts and from them reason — if I acted 
 so it would be because I felt thus. If my nearest 
 friend tells me that he believes in a certain course 
 of action, I can only watch to see what he does 
 to find out if his belief is real. If he avows that 
 he is convinced by the proof which I show him, I 
 must wait to see how he acts before I can be sure 
 whether he is or no. The evidence that we have 
 experience in common is always indirect, is our 
 community of action. Oneness of thought does not 
 manifest itself in any other way. We may agree in 
 words, yet there would be a marked decrease in the 
 number of lawsuits which are brought to trial if our 
 minds had actually united in the understandings 
 
 [106] 
 
EDUCATION AS WORLD BUILDING 
 
 concerning which they were in nominal accord. One 
 can hardly have Hved through the events of the 
 last year without having had his faith in community 
 of human intentions when evidenced by a common 
 language wrested away. Speech is a very inexact 
 revealer of our feelings, convictions, and purposes. 
 Our words go out; our thoughts remain with us. 
 
 Our common world a social construct. We talk 
 about the world as though it were an existence 
 which had revealed itself in the same way and 
 almost to the same extent to each one of us. Yet 
 our personal experiences of it are various, frag- 
 mentary, confusing, and fall far short of that one- 
 ness of objectivity to which our words seem to 
 refer. Two persons who look at the same object, 
 or listen to the same music, or read the same book, 
 do not have the same experience of them though 
 they may talk as though they had. Each one takes 
 the matter as it appears to him and attaches to it 
 the significance or meaning which his past expe- 
 riences enable him to supply. " No two persons 
 have quite the same experience even of a rose- 
 bud," says Professor Lloyd Morgan in his lectures 
 on " The Interpretation of Nature." We do not 
 start with one fixed world of objects which each of 
 us finds ready-made and mirrors perfectly, carrying 
 about thereafter a little film or image of it in his 
 mind, the same kind of an offprint of it which his 
 
 [107] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 neighbor has. Knowledge-getting is not a process 
 of copying. It is a process of constructing. The 
 consternation-making fact is that we do not start 
 with a common world of things, the perfect mirror- 
 ing of which by our minds would make each of us 
 know one and the same world. We start with see- 
 ings, hearings, touchings, tastings, smellings, which 
 are peculiarly our own, dissimilar to those of others 
 to a degree, wholly nontransferable ; and out of 
 this manyness of feeling we proceed to construct 
 common centers of reference, and cooperative ways 
 of procedure which we name by common names 
 and come to regard as demanding of us a more or 
 less common and established system of reactions. 
 Our own experiences have a reality which is imme- 
 diate and compelling. Other people's experiences 
 exist for us only in so far as w^e can put ourselves 
 in their places, interpreting their acts in terms of 
 our own feelings. The world which we speak of 
 as common to us all is a social construct, the world 
 of our discourse, of. our common action, a unity of 
 operation. It is a part of the world which our own 
 private feelings tell us about, but they tell of much 
 more than it. We start with diversified experiences 
 and work toward the identities of objects mutually 
 understood, not from the unity of one and the 
 same set of objects to the diversity of conflicting 
 individual interpretations of them. 
 
 [108] 
 
EDUCATION AS WORLD BUILDING 
 
 Mechanical education due to a false philosophy. 
 Nothing can be more devastating to the work of 
 education than false notions of what the process of 
 knowledge-getting is. Most teachers assume that 
 the universe of ready-made objects is given, that 
 we must start from it. Knowledge-getting consists 
 in allowing such parts of it as we want to know 
 to impress themselves upon the receptive mind. 
 "Here is the world," they say, "look at it"; or 
 " Here is wisdom — learn to repeat its words." 
 The whole dreary soul-destroying business of me- 
 chanical education, which has existed century after 
 century and in most of the schools of every coun- 
 try of the world, is due to this mistaken philosophy 
 of knowledge. We are active beings, it conceives 
 us as passive ; we are made to see with our own 
 eyes and hear with our own ears and understand 
 and construct with our own understandings, but 
 this philosophy of education robs us of our birth- 
 right by hindering us from using our own senses 
 in gathering experiences and our own minds in 
 constructing these sense feelings into a self-made 
 world, for it attempts to substitute for these natural 
 and meaningful experiences of the self, familiarity 
 with the words of other men. 
 
 How does the child 7nake his world? Let us go 
 back to the child and ask him how he builds his 
 world. He is born, as each one of us was, with 
 
 [ 109 ] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 that mysterious power of awareness which tells us 
 all that we know or ever shall know about the 
 existence of anything. All that we say is or is 
 not has revealed its existence or its nonexistence 
 to men through this medium. Whatever we talk 
 about, think about, hope, fear, and expect, whether 
 it belongs to the past, to the present, or the future, 
 comes to us in this guise. To say that a thing — 
 anything — is is merely to employ a shortened form 
 of expression for the thought that someone is aware 
 of it, that it has revealed its being to some mind. 
 
 The child, we say, brings into the world with 
 him this marvelous potency of having experiences 
 and a nervous system with its complement of sense 
 organs, eyes, ears, organs of touch and smell, and 
 nerve endings for tasting. He is born among men 
 who have been living a long time and who have 
 learned to distinguish the various kinds of feelings 
 which they have had, to separate hard from soft, 
 harmful from helpful, safe from dangerous, to draw 
 a thousand other lines of division between the parts 
 of their awareness, to combine these parts into 
 clusters of feelings and to project them into a 
 world of ordered things, and thereupon, by using 
 the feeling of a single sense as the evidence of 
 associated feelings which have been grouped with 
 it, they have learned to order their anticipations 
 accordingly. He is born with the same potency to 
 
 [no] 
 
 1 
 
EDUCATION AS WORLD BUILDING 
 
 have experiences that they started with; he must 
 learn to make distinctions in the same way that 
 they did. He must experiment for himself and out 
 of his own experience build up his own notions of 
 things. Their greater knowledge enables them in 
 some degree to select experiences for him, that is, 
 to put him in the way of having them; but their 
 experience will not stand proxy for his any more 
 than their health releases him from the necessity 
 of maintaining his own. If we were scrupulously 
 careful we would not, I think, say of this child that 
 he must learn to live in the world \ we would say 
 instead that he must learn to live the world. 
 
 Of all this as yet he knows nothing. If we place 
 a lighted candle in front of him, put a bitter sub- 
 stance in his mouth, or make a loud sound near 
 him, he will not seem to note them, for when new- 
 born he responds but feebly to all kinds of stimuli. 
 The feelings which we call smell, taste, touch, hear- 
 ing, and sight, and which to us are the signs of 
 things, seem in him to be quite dull and vague at 
 first. His lips and tongue are the most sensitive 
 parts of his body. He is quite helpless to keep his 
 arms from moving and utterly unable to control 
 his muscles. But by the twenty-third day Preyer's 
 son followed a moving candle with his eyes and 
 turned his head in order to do so. The organism 
 now begins to be mature enough to start upon that 
 
 [III] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 seemingly most exciting of all careers, the reach- 
 ing for what one sees, the tasting of what one 
 touches, and the tearing and flinging about of all 
 that one's hands fall upon that the mouth refuses. 
 The senses now are wdde-awake. There is endless 
 agitation of eyes, hands, and mouth in carrying on 
 their awkward sampling of surroundings. What a 
 curious jumbled awareness must that be of which 
 they are the bodily counterpart! Professor James 
 has described it as " one big blooming buzzing 
 confusion." " That confusion," he declares, " is the 
 baby's universe; and the universe of all of us is 
 still to a great extent such a confusion, potentially 
 resolvable, and demanding to be resolved, but not 
 yet actually resolved into parts." The process of 
 learning, therefore, which we each begin at birth 
 and are bound to continue until we die is a process 
 of bringing order out of the chaos of our own con- 
 fused impressions, of noting distinctions in feelings 
 which at first were only vague and indeterminate, 
 and of systematizing these reports of feeling into 
 a world of articulated things. We always start with 
 a vague experience, and out of it step by step we 
 carve the parts which need demands — an order 
 of procedure just the opposite of that process of 
 beginning with clear-cut things and elementary 
 parts and putting them together into wholes which 
 education is commonly conceived to be. 
 
 [112] 
 
EDUCATION AS WORLD BUILDING 
 
 He must make his notions of all that exists. The 
 child does not start with things which he finds 
 ready-made and has only to look upon and men- 
 tally photograph ; things of that well-defined sort 
 exist only for adult minds and are the results, not 
 the beginnings, of a long process of experience. 
 The things of our world are unknown to him. He 
 has to begin at the beginning and make his notions 
 of all that exists. You and I know that the candle 
 flame will burn us if we touch it. He has to burn 
 his finger to find out what sort of a thing it is. 
 Hold up an orange before him. It is the first time 
 that he has ever seen one. What will an orange be 
 to him? He will be aware of yellow, though he will 
 not know it by that name or distinguish it clearly 
 from other experiences of color. The outline he 
 will hardly get. To be aware of its shape, weight, 
 and texture he must take it in his hand. He can- 
 not have a feeling of its taste until he bites into it. 
 He is so set up when he comes into the world 
 that he binds together the reports of these different 
 senses and makes one thing out of them. Hence- 
 forth the look of the orange will suggest the taste, 
 the shape, the weight, and the texture which he 
 has found can be gotten from a thing with that 
 sort of a look. 
 
 Lang2cage not a substitute for experience. There 
 are two points to be noted : first, the thing which 
 
 [113] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 ever after he will know as an orange he has built 
 up out of his own several kinds of experience of 
 it — no amount of verbal description of it could 
 possibly have given him this knowledge. Language 
 cannot impart experiences ; that, perhaps, is the 
 reason why we do not name things. But language 
 can call up within us experiences which we have 
 already had and can help us to understand their 
 meaning and organize them in such ways as to 
 anticipate coming experiences and so control them. 
 Language is all conceptual, and concepts as we 
 have seen are not existences but workings which 
 we perform upon existences. " Percepts without 
 concepts are blind, and concepts without percepts 
 are empty." Facts, information, and information 
 studies are useless because we have learned to do 
 nothing with them. They report what once existed 
 but is now dead. The knowledge of them does not 
 help us to get ready for anything like them which 
 we must expect will come again and must get ready 
 for. But principles, laws, kinds, are recurring ex- 
 periences, and knowledge of them will help us to 
 get ready to handle instances of them when they 
 arise. 
 
 The second point is that if language cannot give 
 us experiences but can only help us to work with 
 or interpret those we already have, we must each of 
 us go on building up our notions of the particular 
 
 [114] 
 
EDUCATION AS WORLD BUILDING 
 
 things which make up our world as long as we live 
 in just the same way that the child builds up his 
 notion of the orange. Sense experience gives us the 
 only knowledge which we have of individual things. 
 To know them we must handle them, turn them 
 over, pull them to pieces, and work with them, as well 
 as look at them. If we once get this experience 
 of them, we can apply it to everything else of that 
 kind, but without it our knowledge of kinds is only 
 empty words. Language enables us to work with 
 experiences — it is not a substitute for them. No 
 one can make either percepts or concepts for 
 another person. Each of us must work them out 
 for himself. But others can aid us immensely by 
 putting us in the way of doing that and by chal- 
 lenging us to do it. The necessities and the oppor- 
 tunities with which they surround us in order that 
 we may learn to use our own minds must provide 
 opportunities for both perceptual and conceptual 
 experience and construction on our part — oppor- 
 tunities both for learning the nature of concrete 
 things at first hand and for organizing our expe- 
 rience of them by classifying them into kinds, and 
 working out summary statements, principles, rules 
 or laws concerning their behavior. Object lessons 
 in which the student makes the acquaintance of 
 real things either in the classroom or by means 
 of excursions, workshops, laboratories, practice 
 
 [115] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 work, or investigations privately undertaken are as 
 indispensable a feature of education as the lessons 
 which assume a concrete knowledge of a subject 
 and proceed to help the student to systematically 
 conceptualize the percepts which he already has. 
 
 The world otitside and the world iJiside, It is 
 interesting, I think, to go back for a moment to 
 the child and to ask him for some further details 
 of the process by which he builds his world. In 
 the first place we must repeat that all that either he 
 or anyone else ever knows about himself or about 
 anything else is by means of his awareness. Noth- 
 ing exists either for him or for anyone except as 
 it reveals itself in his consciousness. It is not 
 things but things experienced that make up our 
 world. Is the grass green, the apple sour, the rose 
 red, the night dark each to itself? Before there 
 can be any color there must be an eye upon whose 
 retina ether waves are vibrating at rates of from 
 392,000,000,000 to 757,000,000,000 per second. The 
 lower are the red rays, the upper the violet rays, of 
 the spectrum. But these rays do not penetrate to 
 the brain ; they stop at the retina. To it they com- 
 municate some kind of change, and this in turn it 
 communicates to the brain and produces a feeling 
 which we call seeing. Air waves vibrating at rates 
 of from 16 to 40,000 per second break upon the 
 tympanum and communicate their motion to the 
 
 [1.6] 
 
EDUCATION AS WORLD BUILDING 
 
 fluids of the auditory canal. They do not penetrate 
 to the brain, but the changes in our feehng which 
 ensue we call hearing. The sense of touch too pro- 
 vides its quota of feelings of a peculiar quality. It 
 begins to be active almost as soon as the eye is, 
 and like the eye each of these senses produces at 
 first but vague, suffused, and nonlocalized feelings. 
 
 Awareness as yet is not separated into two parts 
 — awareness of self and awareness of things. The 
 world which begins as a blur must be dichotomized 
 into internal and external, subjective and objective. 
 This distinction is introduced within experience by 
 a slow and never completely effective process. The 
 instincts which the child brings w^ith him make 
 his eyes partial to moving things. The hand is a 
 moving thing ; the eye follows it in its explorative 
 movements and sees it as it touches the object. 
 They learn to work together. Touchings and see- 
 ings now are related. This leads to an expectation 
 that when one of them is experienced the other 
 will be. The look of things can now make us aware 
 of their hardness or softness, their weight, shape, 
 size, and probable distance from us. 
 
 But when one touches any part of his body the 
 feeling is very unlike that which attends the touch- 
 ing of things which are not his own body. When 
 one's hand touches his body the hand reports a 
 feeling of touching and the body one of being 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 touched. These are called the feelings of active 
 and of passive touch. The eye of the child sees the 
 hand touch the object and at the same time feels the 
 touch ; but when the eye sees it touching the body 
 the hand feels what it touches and what is touched 
 also feels that it is being touched. Henceforth 
 whatever feels the hand when it touches belongs 
 to myself, and whatever does not is different. Thus 
 the vague of feeling is split in two — into internal, 
 or my own body's feelings, and external, or things 
 experienced without letting me know in the same 
 way that they are being experienced. In this way 
 our awareness begins to be divided into two great 
 irreconcilable hemispheres which no matter how far 
 we incline to thrust them apart are but distinctions 
 introduced within our total awareness. 
 
 Each sense furnishes 7naterial for construction. 
 The other sense feelings are in the conspiracy from 
 the first. If we but stop to count out all the things 
 which our world would not contain had we been 
 born stone deaf, we begin to appreciate how large 
 a part of it we make out of the feelings which we 
 call our experience of sound. Smell also provides 
 material for construction into things. Mr. Bradley 
 conceives it to be the sense which supplies experi- 
 ences of reality to the dog; so that, he thinks, the 
 dog's logic can be written in one sentence — " What 
 smells is real, what does not smell is nothing." It 
 
 [Ii8] 
 
EDUCATION AS WORLD BUILDING 
 
 would seem that these feehngs have a diminishing 
 usefulness to man, though it is quite unlikely that 
 he will ever be able to get along without them. 
 The poet who wrote 
 
 Smells are surer than sounds or sights 
 To make your heartstrings crack. 
 They start those awful voices o' nights 
 That whisper, " Old man, come back." 
 
 refers to a fact in us which is as deep-seated even 
 as our animal nature. We make a peculiarly vital 
 part of our world out of these feelings, and their 
 recurrences recall to us the most poignant and 
 penetrating of experiences. That taste also supplies 
 bricks for our world building is shown by the fact 
 that this word has become a general designation for 
 experiences which are acceptable and which when 
 it is coupled with the adjective bad are regarded 
 as unfit for human use. 
 
 Our experiences of temperature furnish us a 
 basis for dividing the earth into zones and for 
 determining the desirability of its parts for human 
 habitation. They also shape our very anticipations 
 of the future world. Our philosophies of conduct 
 and our schemes of punishment and reward we 
 construct in terms of pleasure and pain. If our 
 nature were different how different a world we 
 would know ! With other sense organs we should 
 have a different universe. 
 
 [119] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 We arrange our experiences in a temporal ajid 
 spatial order. Time and space we seem simply to 
 find, not at all to make. Yet if awareness lasted 
 but for an instant, and each instant then passed 
 utterly away so that no trace of it remained, and 
 a completely new instant took its place, would 
 there be any such thing as time ? If our minds 
 were like a camera in which one plate is exposed 
 for a moment and shut off, and a new plate is 
 then exposed, would there be any experience of 
 time ? Is there any such thing as time for the 
 camera plates ? My clock is ticking on the mantel- 
 piece. I call it a timekeeper. Does it really keep 
 time? Every tick vanishes before the next one 
 begins. It must be that they do not know each 
 other, that it is I who keep the tick that has gone, 
 and the one that is going, and the one that is com- 
 ing, and the one that will follow it, in mind. It is 
 I who hold the parts of the series together and 
 make them a series, just as I hold the tones of 
 the instruments together and make music possible. 
 Without this remembering of the past after it is 
 past, and this relating of it to the present and of 
 both of these to the future, there would be no such 
 a thing as the time we know. 
 
 It is one thing to have this peculiar kind of 
 awareness and quite another to employ it in con- 
 structing an elaborate time-ordered world. Men 
 
 [I20] 
 
EDUCATION AS WORLD BUILDING 
 
 experienced time perhaps for what we now call 
 hundreds of thousands of years before they ar- 
 ranged events by time tables, or had a care to dis- 
 criminate the seasons or retain the order of the 
 years. Even the eager-minded Greeks do not seem 
 to have had much success in constructing a calen- 
 dar, and the greatest historian of antiquity, Thucyd- 
 ides "avoided dates as far as he could, and made 
 his years consist merely of a long summer and a 
 short winter." ^ If it were possible to look into the 
 minds of men to see what kind of a world they 
 have constructed for themselves, it is likely that 
 in no respect would such shocking diversity be 
 found to obtain as in their arranging of experiences 
 in time. Beyond a narrow immediate present to 
 which we relate the recent past and the close com- 
 ing future, events of which we are aware do not 
 tend to organize themselves in a well-outlined time 
 series. The work of making a world whose past 
 is articulate calls for a difficult constructive effort 
 which the student himself must undertake. He 
 must make his own organization of history or 
 suffer the penalty of living in a world with very 
 narrow horizons and of confused and disorderly 
 happenings. 
 
 1 See the very interesting article on " The Discovery of Time," by 
 James T. Shotwell in The Joiir^ial of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific 
 Methods, under date of April 15, 191 5. 
 
 [121] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 It is not otherwise with space. If we arc con- 
 strained to think of it as something we see and do 
 not construct, let us ask what our experience of 
 space would be if the horizon-bounded picture 
 which spreads before us whenever we look out upon 
 the world were to disappear utterly from conscious- 
 ness as soon as we turned away from it to look at 
 another object; if through life one visual picture 
 succeeded another, but always the first one com- 
 pletely passed away so that we never knew but one. 
 Would such a notion of space as we now have be 
 possible then? Do not our minds make it by put- 
 ting beside the visual field of our perception the 
 visual field of our memories and on the other side 
 the visual field of our anticipation ? And is it not 
 necessary for the child to build up his notion of a 
 space world by persistent efforts of the same sort 
 as he must employ in making for himself a world 
 whose parts are arranged according to a time order ? 
 In all of this we must remember that no matter 
 what things are about him, nor what historical 
 facts have preceded him, nor how widely the uni- 
 verse stretches out before the gaze of those who 
 have already constructed a well-ordered image of 
 it, that none of these things will avail him at all 
 until he himself can experience them. Education 
 concerns itself not with things but with our experi- 
 ences of things. If in any single case the learner 
 
 [122] 
 
EDUCATION AS WORLD BUILDING 
 
 fails to experience the thing which it sets before 
 him as needful for him to know, the instruction 
 has in so far been a failure. 
 
 How persons are distinguished from things. As 
 yet we have said nothing of the world of persons, 
 but have been calling all the groupings which his 
 feeling enables the child to make " things." It is 
 time to make a distinction, a distinction which even 
 little children are led by their feelings to begin to 
 make as soon as they are two or three months old. 
 Something different goes on inside the small child 
 when a stranger comes into the room and takes 
 him in his arms from what goes on when his 
 mother or nurse handles him, and something very 
 different goes on inside him when his mother or 
 nurse comes into the room and takes him in her 
 arms from that which went on before when no 
 person was in the room and the cradle was hold- 
 ing him. The smallest infant but a few days old 
 gives clear evidence of having one awareness for 
 persons and another awareness for things. Its feel- 
 ing of hunger gives place to contentment, of chill 
 to warmth, of fixity in one position to the relief of 
 changed positions, when mother or nurse comes 
 in. A social sense may not be necessary to explain 
 its awareness of persons; if it exists it would but 
 help the other changes in its feelings to group 
 themselves about their cause. This first stage, in 
 
 [123] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 which awareness is more aware of persons than of 
 surrounding things, Professor Baldwin has called 
 " the projective stage in the growth of the child's 
 personal consciousness." In its cradle the baby 
 watches its mother and singles out her goings and 
 comings for special attention. Little by little he 
 is getting control of his muscles and teaching his 
 hands and mouth, and eyes and hands, and finally 
 his eyes and legs to work together. What is so 
 natural as that he should continue this process by 
 making his hands, his face, and finally his legs 
 repeat or imitate the movements that he sees ; and 
 so when the ministering body smiles at him he 
 smiles back, when she waves her hand he tries to 
 do so, too. Finally he begins to imitate the copy 
 by standing erect and walking. But all these new 
 acts bring new stresses and strains, and each in- 
 volves new feelings which are particularly vivid 
 when he thus tries to perform a new act. 
 
 How he makes the notion of self. This purposive 
 striving makes him aware of himself, and thus we 
 reach the subjective stage in the growth of the 
 self-notion. But the feeling of waving my hands, 
 of trying to make sounds like the sounds I hear, 
 of walking like other folks, which lead me first to 
 know myself, must be like the feeling which that 
 other body has when it waves its hands, makes the 
 sounds which I try to make, and walks as I try to 
 
 [124] 
 
EDUCATION AS WORLD BUILDING 
 
 walk. So " the subjective becomes cjcctivc ; that is, 
 other people's bodies, says the child to himself, 
 have experiences in tJicni such as mine has. . . . 
 The ' ego ' and the ' alter ' are thus born together. 
 Both arc crude and unreflective, largely organic, 
 and the two get purified and clarified together by 
 this twofold reaction between project and subject 
 and between subject and eject. My sense of myself 
 grows by imitation of you, and my sense of your- 
 self grows in terms of my sense of myself." ^ 
 
 IVe make ourselves in the image of our cnviron- 
 vient. The truly remarkable thing is the thorough- 
 ness with which we make ourselves out of the 
 experiences which we have of the people around 
 us. Young cocks, it is said, do not learn to crow, or 
 young dogs to bark well, or young canary birds to 
 sing well, if they are prevented from hearing their 
 elders perform these feats. And so very plastic is 
 the young child that, in the very few cases in which 
 he has been brought up by animals, it is said that 
 he became an animal, going on four feet, eating 
 raw meat, and clawing and tearing his way through 
 life, much as his foster parents had done while he 
 was among them. Be this as it may, Plato, Aris- 
 totle, and Quintilian were quite justified in believ- 
 ing that speech is shaped and character largely 
 
 1 Baldwin, Social and Ethical Interpretations in Mental Development, 
 p. 15. New York, 1906. 
 
 [125] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 formed in the earliest years, and upon the model 
 which mother or nurse provides. And Freud and 
 Jung seem amply warranted in believing that it 
 is the experiences of our earliest years that give 
 the character a permanent bent throughout life. 
 At any rate, though we continue to make ourselves 
 in the image of the persons with whom we are 
 familiar, and to return the compliment by making 
 them in our image as long as we live, this is the 
 period in which we go about it most vigorously, 
 the period when it comes nearest being the sole 
 business of life. After these years we tend to put 
 our capital to work to buy and sell experiences 
 with it, and later on to live on the interest which 
 it brings. 
 
 The struggle with iizstitutions for existence. The 
 child then is born into a world of persons, and sent 
 into life so made up that he constructs his acts 
 and, consequently, his feelings upon the models 
 which they furnish him. But not only does he in- 
 herit the racial instincts of the human family; he 
 inherits also the racial environment which his for- 
 bears have been preparing for thousands, perhaps 
 even for millions, of years before his coming. Was 
 it not Napoleon who said, "It is not man who 
 lives, but institutions " ? At any rate, it is not true ; 
 for it is only men that live, though they may indeed 
 allow the dead hand of their ancestors to shape 
 
 [126] 
 
EDUCATION AS WORLD BUILDING 
 
 their lives for them to the extent of becoming 
 mere phantoms of the past. Thus Hfe is not only 
 a struggle for food, clothing, and shelter, but a 
 never-ending struggle to determine whether men 
 themselves shall live or institutions shall live for 
 them. 
 
 One of the chiefest of these institutions is lan- 
 guage. The child is caught up into its network 
 of ready-made distinctions and racially established 
 meanings almost before he leaves his cradle. Up 
 to this time he has been busily engaged in mak- 
 ing his world out of his own feelings. Now he 
 perforce becomes a nominalist and is invited to 
 name things instead of experiencing them. Thus 
 language tends to substitute ready-made sounds for 
 felt experiences, knowledge about things for knowl- 
 edge of them. It turns us over to a world of hard- 
 and-fast things which are not to us meanings, but 
 every one of which has been constructed by our 
 ancestors out of their feelings in just the same way 
 that the child has thus far constructed so much 
 of a world as he has succeeded in making. But 
 language opens to him a new world of meanings, 
 we say; it helps to make thought definite. Yes, 
 that is true, but there is grave danger in it also. 
 The child who is merely told about things cannot be 
 said to experience them ; he is not getting the race's 
 knowledge of them. Indeed, "because concepts 
 
 [127] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 without percepts are empty," he is being kept 
 from a knowledge of them. This process becomes 
 the more destructive when the relatively imperish- 
 able memory of written and printed books pre- 
 vents the normal death of tradition. By their 
 means definitions are kept alive, meanings have 
 force, and conventions and traditions rule long 
 after the occasion for their existence has disap- 
 peared. It is thus that the letter killeth and only 
 the spirit which makes the letter is alive. Recall 
 that remarkable story which Plato tells in the 
 "Phcedrus." It contains a warning. " At the Egyp- 
 tian city of Naucratis, there was a famous old god 
 whose name was Theuth; the bird which is called 
 the Ibis is sacred to him, and he was the inventor 
 of many arts, such as arithmetic and calculation 
 and geometry and astronomy and draughts and 
 dice, but his great discovery was the use of letters. 
 Now in those days the god Thamus was the king 
 of the whole country of Egypt ; and he dwelt in 
 that great city of upper Egypt which the Hel- 
 lenes call Egyptian Thebes, and the god himself 
 is called by them Ammon. To him came Theuth 
 and showed his inventions, desiring that the other 
 Egyptians might have the benefit of them ; he 
 enumerated them and Thamus inquired about 
 their several uses, and praised some of them and 
 censured others, as he approved or disapproved of 
 
 [128] 
 
EDUCATION AS WORLD BUILDING 
 
 them. It would take a long time to repeat all that 
 Thamus said to Theuth in praise or blame of the 
 various arts. But when they came to letters, This, 
 said Theuth, will make the Egyptians wiser and 
 give them better memories ; it is a specific both 
 for the memory and for the wit. Thamus replied, 
 O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor 
 of an art is not always the best judge of the utility 
 or inutility of his own inventions to the users of 
 them. And in this instance you, who are the father 
 of letters, from a paternal love of your own children 
 have been led to attribute to them a quality which 
 they cannot have ; for this discovery of yours will 
 create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because 
 they will not use their memories; they w411 trust 
 to the external written characters and not remem- 
 ber of themselves. The specific which you have 
 discovered is an aid not to memory, but to remi- 
 niscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but 
 only the semblance of truth ; they will be hearers 
 of many things and wall have learned nothing; 
 they will be a tiresome company, having the show 
 of wasdom without the reality." -^ 
 
 The functio7i of language. Now, whatever edu- 
 cation may do, it must provide the reality of wis- 
 dom, not its husk merely. It must recognize the 
 fact that know^ledge of the word is not knowledge 
 
 1 Plato, Phsedrus (Jowett's translation), 274, 275. 
 [129] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 of the thing, and that to know the word is a 
 matter quite other tlian to experience its meaning. 
 Neither spoken nor written language can convey 
 perceptions or thought, and neither in conversation, 
 speeches, lectures, nor books do we impart them 
 to each other. They cannot be handed about any 
 more than toothaches or headaches can. Each 
 person must make his own thought for himself; 
 no one else can make it for him. I open a book. 
 Is there any thought there ? Not a bit, there are 
 only little black marks upon a white page. If I 
 am unfamiliar with that particular system of marks 
 I can make nothing out of them. I cannot even 
 make them into sounds. I go to a lecture. Does 
 any wisdom pass from speaker to listener there? 
 No ; sound waves are vibrating the air. They fall 
 upon my ear and I may be able to make some- 
 thing significant out of them, but if they are parts 
 of a sound system which I do not know, I cannot. 
 Again, the words may be familiar but the thought 
 be strange. The speaker may be talking about 
 the geometry of ^^-dimensional space, and, while I 
 can make something out of every separate word, 
 I can make no clear meaning out of his sentences 
 or his discourse as a whole. I could, of course, 
 learn to repeat his words after him, but I would 
 still not know his meanings because I cannot make 
 them in terms of my own experience. 
 
 [130] 
 
EDUCATION AS WORLD BUILDING 
 
 No, language does not convey thought, and in- 
 struction cannot convey or supply knowledge. 
 Plato was right. It is not something which can be 
 thrust into the mind from outside like turnips into 
 a turnip barrel. Conversation, lectures, and books 
 may challenge us to think, provoke, invite to, or 
 occasion thought, but they cannot supply it. Yes, 
 you perhaps are saying, we admit that one must 
 keep his eyes open and his ears attentive or he 
 can appropriate nothing. While that is true, that 
 is not what I mean. 
 
 Knowledge getting is not appropriating. I am 
 trying to say that knowledge-getting can never be 
 an appropriating any more than health or skill in 
 boxing can be. One cannot learn to box unless he 
 himself parries and gives the blows. One cannot 
 have health except as health results from what he 
 himself does. Just so, one cannot have knowledge 
 unless he makes it for himself. You converse with 
 me. I hear your w^ords, but I must supply mean- 
 ings for them out of my stock of experiences. I 
 study Euclid's geometiy. It is simply an occasion 
 for me to make my own geometry. I must con- 
 ceive a point, a line, a plane, a solid. I must be 
 persuaded of the unprovable truth of the axioms 
 and must postulate the postulates. I must appre- 
 ciate the force of geometrical proof. I must feel 
 the necessity of regarding the sum of the angles 
 
 [131] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 of a triangle as two right angles. I must make all 
 the truths of geometry out of my own conviction. 
 
 The process is the same in kind but not in 
 degree in the case of every form of learning. It is 
 sometimes said that Shakespeare shares his truth 
 and Raphael and Bellini their religious and poetic 
 insight with us, that the meaning of history and 
 geography we do not make, but simply take. Can 
 this be true ? If Shakespeare shares his meaning 
 with us, w4iy do some say that Hamlet was mad 
 and others that he was not mad ? To Shakespeare 
 he must either have been mad, or not mad, or 
 both together, and if we simply take Shakespeare's 
 meaning it must be only one of these three that 
 we can hold, and Hamlet should mean the same 
 definite personality to us that he did to Shake- 
 speare. There would be no room for scholars' quar- 
 rels if truth were handed down to us in that way. 
 But note that in the case even of Bible truth 
 making so overshadows taking that the sects of 
 Christianity are almost as numerous as those who 
 ate of the loaves and the fishes. Again, if we do 
 not make, but only share Shakespeare's perception 
 of the truth of Hamlet, how does it happen that 
 every actor who essays that great role gives us 
 his own interpretation of it ? It must be that each 
 makes his own conception of Hamlet out of the 
 signs which Shakespeare set down to serve as 
 
 [132] 
 
EDUCATION AS WORLD BUILDING 
 
 material for our construction. What Shakespeare's 
 Hamlet was we shall never know, for the lines do 
 not provide us enough clues to enable us to answer 
 all our questions. The far greater service that he 
 has rendered, the service every artist, inventor, 
 lawgiver, and teacher renders, is just the one that 
 my friend renders when he converses with me; 
 namely, that of providing materials of experience 
 for me to interpret, not with the hope that our 
 meanings will coincide, but that starting upon some- 
 what the same quest and each using the appercep- 
 tive material which past experience has enabled 
 him to acquire, we shall each of us create a mean- 
 ing which will be of value to us. The artist, ac- 
 cording to Tolstoy, is one who can so use his 
 material as to beget in the spectator the conscious- 
 ness or awareness that he himself desired the spec- 
 tator to experience. He comes to each one with 
 a challenge, " See in this, if you can, the meaning 
 which I see in it." Thus the interpreter is a poet 
 no less certainly than the poet whose words he in- 
 terprets. Their difference is in degree of creative 
 ability and not that one is a taker and the other 
 a giver. 
 
 History is what we inake of the past. When we 
 come to history the same truth holds. What is 
 the history of Greece? Is it a something that we 
 merely find ready-made and which therefore we 
 
 [133] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 must take and keep just as we found it, or is it a 
 quarry to which each of us may go for many blocks 
 of marble from which to shape the edifice of expe- 
 rience w^hich he is building? Grote went to it for 
 one purpose, Shelley for another, and Keats for a 
 third. Professor Porson's purpose was very differ- 
 ent from theirs. Each selected what he would, and 
 each tells us what the Greeks were in terms of his 
 interest. The absolute history of the Greeks can 
 never be written. We shall have to be satisfied 
 with the relativists' account, which is only another 
 way of saying that the wn-iting of history, like the 
 studying of history, is a form of human creating. 
 The student knows that to answer the question, 
 Wherein were the Romans a different kind of 
 people from the Greeks ? he must first compre- 
 hend the import of the question and must then 
 hunt for and select the passages in history w^iich 
 suggest the answer, and not only must he read his 
 own meaning into the print which he finds in the 
 library but he must assemble particular experiences 
 of contrasting types of people. All of which leads 
 him to shape some sort of more or less definite 
 images, which he clothes, the one with one set of 
 meanings and the other with the other, and calls 
 the one the Greeks and the other the Romans. 
 
 In our study of geography it is particularly plain 
 that each of us is engaged in building a world 
 
 [134] 
 
EDUCATION AS WORLD BUILDING 
 
 image. The notion that we must, for the sake of 
 comprehension, begin with the famiHar experiences 
 of home geography verifies that statement of our 
 process. 
 
 Education is world building. Education, then, 
 we may regard as the process by which w^e make 
 the " big blooming buzzing confusion " of feehng 
 with which we started into an arranged world of 
 things, each of which is a grouping of more or 
 less definite feelings, a " permanent possibility of 
 sensations." 
 
 This process has been going on for years when 
 the child first comes to school. He has been ex- 
 periencing at first hand both things and persons, 
 and his feelings of them have already been pretty 
 well schematized. Perceptual experience he has 
 had in abundance, and from the first he has been 
 grouping it into kinds or concepts. What must 
 now be done? A number of things. His first-hand 
 perceiving must go on to the end of his days, and 
 his classifying of his experiences into kinds must 
 go on, too. But now he must learn to analyze his 
 percepts and pick out those parts of them which 
 will give him most control over his experience 
 getting. The letters which he sees are black have 
 a certain size as well as a certain shape and order; 
 but he must learn to neglect their color and their 
 size and fix his seeing upon their shape and their 
 
 [135] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 grouping in order to learn to read. The objects 
 which he numbers, too, have size, weight, color, 
 smoothness, or roughness. But he must learn to 
 disregard these aspects of them in order to see 
 them as ones and deal with them from the stand- 
 point of numbers. He must learn to think about 
 things in new and usable ways, and he must learn 
 to think about thoughts. But in all this it is out 
 of his own feeling that his world is to be built, 
 and he only can do the building. We are prone 
 to think that textbooks and teachers and schools, 
 if they are but good enough, can do that work 
 for him — that his learning can be conferred upon 
 him from the outside. Forsooth, does not Shake- 
 speare give us our poetry, Euclid our geometry, 
 Darwin our biology, and somewhat less distin- 
 guished men our other forms of knowledge ? The 
 notion is a popular one, and the view opposed to it 
 has clothed itself in such thought-obscuring phrases 
 as that education is a process of self-activity or 
 of self-realization, with the result that the crude 
 mistaken notion almost holds the field. 
 
 The function of the school. But if each one of 
 us must do his own w^orld building for himself, 
 must see with his own eyes, hear with his own 
 ears, image with his own imagination, classify 
 according to his own purposes, and be convinced 
 of logical necessity through his own feeling of 
 
 [136] 
 
EDUCATION AS WORLD BUILDING 
 
 conviction, can the school do anything that is really 
 worth while for him ? If he must do all his learn- 
 ing for himself, why send him to school at all? 
 The answer, and so far as I can see, the only answer 
 which can be given to this question, is that the 
 school can do only one thing — it can offer a care- 
 fully selected environment in reaction to which the 
 learner will use his owm mind in socially profitable 
 ways. The teacher is the chief factor in this social 
 environment. He represents society's insistence 
 upon order, w^ork, and accomplishment. He is by 
 no means there as a purveyor of knowledge but 
 as a fellow worker in the search for socially profit- 
 able ways to use the mind. It is repeated over and 
 over again that the teacher must be a model to the 
 child, and by this is usually meant that the teacher's 
 moral conduct must be a model ; but what the 
 phrase really means is that the teacher must fur- 
 nish an example of interest in knowledge-making 
 and in the use of mind in solving the problems 
 of human life. If he would have his students use 
 their minds in the developing of their bodies, in 
 the shaping of their conduct or in the making of 
 other forms of knowledge, he must lead the way. 
 Again, the subjects of study upon which teacher 
 and pupils are engaged are only a series of chal- 
 lenges to think out the social experience which 
 they formulate and to find out, each by the use 
 
 [137] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 of his own apperceiving experience, if what they 
 declare is not so. They present social experience 
 through the medium of textbooks, each of which 
 is nothing but a book of texts, presented in sym- 
 bols for which the students are to make meanings 
 and about which they are to weave their own 
 texture of experience, both sensory and motor, in 
 much the same way as does the preacher in his 
 efforts to expound his theme. 
 
 The use of workshops, laboratories, problems, the 
 preparation of papers, the taking of examinations, 
 together wdth devices for student self-government, 
 etc. — all are but efforts to provide an environ- 
 ment in which the student shall work out his own 
 experience into more usable capitalized forms. 
 
 According to this conception "education is not 
 for life, but it is life." It cannot be a preparation 
 for life without being life. A specially selected en- 
 vironment the school must be, but an environment 
 selected from life itself and not made out of another 
 kind of needs, problems, surroundings, and demands 
 than life itself presents. Artificial to a degree it 
 must be, but artificial in the same sense that the 
 family and the state are artificial ; that is, that they 
 are human arrangements for doing the real work of 
 the world and not devices for superfluous tasks 
 which could just as well be done without. 
 
 From this standpoint the school is the " green 
 [138] 
 
EDUCATION AS WORLD BUILDING 
 
 meadow " wherein there are " samples of lives," and 
 the teachers are the guardians of the " samples of 
 lives." The generations, as they are born, advance 
 to the meadow and, with the assistance of the 
 teachers, each one selects the life which appeals 
 to him most and goes upward " to live it a hundred 
 years." But it is his own life that he selects, his 
 own world of meanings that he here is allowed 
 special opportunities to reflectively interpret. De 
 te fabula narrahir is the form in which every 
 discourse must be addressed to him. And what 
 is sought must ever be his own interpretation, his 
 own insight, his own making of values. 
 
 Education, then, is the process by which the in- 
 dividual continues the preschool activity of getting 
 experience and working it over by reflection into 
 terms of social utility. It is a process which he 
 does not begin in the school and cannot end 
 when he leaves the school. It is essentially the 
 life process and the work of life. Plato was right, 
 therefore, when he spoke of education as a life 
 work. Experience must continue to function in 
 the getting of new experience, and old experience 
 must continually be reinterpreted to meet new 
 experience. The process of learning must be kept 
 up ; without that, even the capitalized experience 
 of facts and methods of handling them, which 
 we have thus far succeeded in accumulating, will 
 
 [139] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 slip away, for one cannot acquire any form of 
 skill and discontinue it without in large measure 
 losing it. It is not surprising, therefore, that some 
 young people forget how to read four or five years 
 after leaving school, that others forget how to add, 
 and still others how to write or to spell. There 
 is no known way of teaching any form of action 
 so that the person who has once learned it will 
 continue, without further effort, to be able to 
 perform it as long as he lives. There is only one 
 form of insurance against the lapsing of one's ac- 
 quirements, no matter what they are. They cannot 
 be wrapped in the napkin of forgetfulness and 
 carefully laid away. They must be put to use. The 
 schools which regard education as a result and not 
 as a process raise false hopes in the minds of their 
 students. In reality they have to do only with the 
 apprentice stages of each of the forms of activity 
 with which they are concerned. They have a duty 
 to make it particularly clear to all who come under 
 their instruction that they cannot enable one to 
 acquire permanent habits, or a knowledge which 
 will not run away, if special efforts are not made 
 to continue the process of interpreting experience 
 which the student has only begun. 
 
 On the other hand, one cannot be a master 
 workman in any field without engaging himself 
 in a constant effort to enlarge his knowledge of 
 
 [140] 
 
EDUCATION AS WORLD BUILDING 
 
 that field. My professor of ethics used to say that 
 " the good man who merely repeats his goodness 
 of the day before is not a good man, but a bad 
 man." The good teacher or the good physician or 
 the good carpenter who merely repeat their good- 
 ness of the day before are not good but bad work- 
 men. Why? Because every day is a new day with 
 its new demands upon us, and we must grow in 
 grace and likewise in knowledge in order to meet 
 them. There is no form of knowledge so complete 
 and final that it cannot be improved, no single 
 human art so perfect that it cannot be made better, 
 no form of human endeavor that does not call for 
 further effort. For this philosophy, life is a perfect- 
 ing, not an arriving at perfections, and the joy is 
 in the process, not in reaching and remaining at 
 a goal. 
 
 [141] 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE KINDS OF EDUCATION 
 
 The only kind of education. If our analysis is 
 correct the only kind of education that there is 
 is self-education. It is not a thing of fixed sub- 
 jects of instruction. No one study and no partic- 
 ular group of studies is indispensable. Neither is 
 attendance at any particular kind of school, though 
 the likelihood is a bit greater that if one has sur- 
 rounded himself with inducements to study he will 
 be a little more certain to study because of them 
 than in their absence. It is a true saying, how- 
 ever, and worthy of general credence, that "many 
 are exposed to an education but few take it." 
 
 Education is the process by which each individual 
 out of his own awareness builds his world. No one 
 can see, hear, taste, touch, smell, walk, or talk for 
 the child. He must do all these things for himself. 
 Just so, no one can image for him, remember 
 for him, think for him, will for him. But human 
 beings have been so busily engaged in doing these 
 things before he came, and have so successfully 
 recorded the experiences which they have had in 
 doing them, that he seems to be surrounded by 
 
 [142] 
 
THE KINDS OF EDUCATION 
 
 a world of ready-made existences and meanings 
 which require no building up through constructive 
 experience on his part, but only appropriation. Just 
 what images are in the minds of those who advance 
 the notion that education is appropriation it is hard 
 to make out. Yet educators do sometimes talk 
 as though they believed the child was freed from 
 the necessity of learning to walk because the race 
 has walked, or the necessity of seeing, handling, 
 and experimenting with what the race has, out of 
 such experience, learned to call objects because it 
 has given them names, or by trial and error to find 
 out how to conduct himself because the race has 
 already learned by experimenting how to conduct 
 itself. This conception of education views it as 
 a body of results to be imparted without going 
 through the processes which lead to them. When- 
 ever education is conceived in that fashion, an 
 impossible task is undertaken, and an outcome of 
 no profit but of positive harm, both to the learner 
 and to society which attempts to teach him thus, 
 is inevitable. 
 
 The nature of our social inheritance. Must each 
 learner then begin at the very beginning just as the 
 race did and rediscover all that it has discovered 
 for himself? Is it of no advantage to him to be 
 born late in the course of civilization ? Shall he 
 not profit by what has already been found out? 
 
 [143] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 Certainly he will profit and profit greatly, yet not by 
 appropriating results merely but by appropriating 
 results through their processes. 
 
 Our social inheritance is an inheritance of meth- 
 ods. The wise invite us not to see with their eyes 
 or to think with their minds, but to look with our 
 own eyes and to think with our own minds upon 
 those matters of great concern to men with which 
 they busied themselves and in their experimenting 
 found profitable ways of treating them, standpoints 
 of advantage, and methods which may lead to con- 
 trol. Professor Baldwin has made a distinction of 
 first-rate importance in designating the world which 
 we are born into as our social inheritance. To be 
 born into a German family does not mean that one 
 brings with him a structural tendency to learn the 
 German language, but it does mean that he inherits 
 an environment in which he must learn to com- 
 municate in German. His situation provides a par- 
 ticular form of activity for his mind to work in. 
 German does not come to him without his laying 
 hold of it w^ord by word and sentence by sentence. 
 He is the inheritor of a way of speaking. He can- 
 not well escape communicating with those about 
 him in the words which they use, but to do so he 
 must reinvent the language because of their occa- 
 sioning him to do so. He inherits the race's knowl- 
 edge in the same way. It is to him but a language 
 
 [144] 
 
THE KINDS OF EDUCATION 
 
 which he must learn to use if he would communi- 
 cate with his fellow men and have their help in 
 living. It comes to him not as a fixed body of 
 ready-made truth which he can take without cre- 
 ating. It is only an occasion, an opportunity, and, 
 to an extent, a necessity for his own mental activity. 
 His mother spoke in German, and showed him the 
 way and put him under the necessity of developing 
 a system of meanings for her sound symbols and of 
 himself using a similar system of sounds. Instruc- 
 tion in language, literature, science, history, or phi- 
 losophy can do nothing more ; they are simply 
 invitations to him to perfect his own awareness, 
 suggestions as to problems that the race has met 
 in its course and which he will most likely meet in 
 his, and intimations of ways in which he will find 
 it profitable to attack them. He may learn this 
 language of the sciences just as he may learn Ger- 
 man with degrees of mastery. He may be able to 
 repeat its words without feeling their meanings. 
 He may be able to read it without being able to 
 write it, or to understand it without uttering it. He 
 may collect a great store of curious and interest- 
 ing facts about it and not be able to use it, or he 
 may be able to think in it and to speak it. But 
 the prime fact about the language is that it was 
 made to think by and to speak with, and this is 
 the prime fact about all forms of human learning. 
 
 [H5] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 They are tools. They were made for use. That is 
 their reason for being. No matter how much cus- 
 tom and convention may overload them with other 
 meanings, use is their sole reality. 
 
 What the task of the educator is. The task of the 
 educator is a strange one. He must so act upon 
 others that they will feel, think, and act for them- 
 selves. What he himself does, no matter how per- 
 fectly, is never the end which he seeks. The 
 instruments with which he works — the knowledge 
 which the race has already attained — are not the 
 end either. Like himself and his acts they are 
 but means also. The feeling, the conviction, the 
 reaction of the man inside the learner, is the one 
 thing needful, is the aim of all our striving. 
 
 Are studies elemejitary and higher? We are 
 prone to think of studies as having other objects 
 than these. Convention has divided them into 
 higher and lower forms, and taught the world to 
 regard some kinds of knowledge as noble with a 
 nobility not their own and others as base with 
 a baseness which does not belong to them. The 
 same unthinking convention has led teachers and 
 students alike to treat certain studies as concerns 
 only of the early years of life, and other studies 
 as belonging only to the later years. Teachers are 
 apt to take pride in the fact that they teach " the 
 higher studies " and the lack of it in the fact that 
 
 [146] 
 
THE KINDS OF EDUCATION 
 
 they teach the "lower" ones. If our pride is a 
 product of our service, should it not be just the 
 other way round ? The so-called elementary studies 
 are elementar}^ to human activity, not to our school 
 years. All the great arts represent the chief in- 
 terests of the race and must be begun in early 
 years and continued through life. The teacher of 
 reading and writing thinks perhaps that hers is 
 a menial task. But " with the art of writing," says 
 Carlyle, " the true reign of miracles for mankind 
 commenced. If we think of it, all that a university 
 can do for us is still what the first school began 
 doing — teach us to read." And every university 
 teacher is constantly engaged in finding out whether 
 or no his students can make for themselves the 
 meaning which they are challenged to make by 
 the printed page. Surely that is a process which 
 cannot end on their part when they leave the 
 university, but one which they must continue as 
 long as they live. The problem of instruction in 
 reading is not to teach people how to read but to 
 read — a very different undertaking and one which 
 lasts a lifetime. Writing too is much more than 
 the shaping of letters. That is only its beginning. 
 " Writing maketh an exact man," said Bacon. We 
 misconceive its character when we take it in its 
 lowest terms. No w^onder the business man finds 
 fault with handwriting unrelated to composition 
 
 [147] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 and unspecialized by purpose. Our students have 
 learned to copy copies or to write a write, but 
 rarely to write a letter or a bill of sale or a set of 
 accounts. If the psychologists are correct in say- 
 ing that adolescence disorganizes even this aspect 
 of the handwriting of children, it would seem that 
 the study of penmanship also cannot successfully 
 be completed in the elementary school. When 
 we begin mathematics w^e must deal with the 
 most abstract of all the aspects of reality. We 
 must look away from the stuff of the objects which 
 we count in order to count them. We are ever 
 more concerned with quality than with quantity. 
 For this reason William T. Harris regarded arith- 
 metic as a relatively unfruitful study. " What is 
 the habit of thought worth which is trained to 
 neglect the quality, that is, the essential nature of 
 objects?"^ he asks. Plainly habituation in quanti- 
 tative reckoning will not of itself make us expert 
 discriminators of qualities. To distinguish food 
 from poison, silk from cotton, truth from falsity, 
 right from wrong, we must have learned by ex- 
 perience the many degrees and the marks of each 
 of these things. Mathematics does not profess 
 to deal with real things in their concreteness, but 
 it does guide us to real things by considering 
 aspects which they always present in such uniform 
 
 1 Annual Report of the Board of Education, p. 29, St. Louis, 1910. 
 
 [148] 
 
THE KINDS OF EDUCATION 
 
 ways as to open up pathways of experience. It 
 is a language which tells us of experiences which 
 we may have in the future in terms of the ex- 
 periences which we have already had. Because 
 it makes a very small part stand for the whole, 
 that is, prefigures experiences by very dim aspects 
 which are correspondingly easy to isolate, its ap- 
 plication is the most far-reaching of all the phases 
 of scientific method. 
 
 We cannot regard our first lessons in the use 
 of this difficult language of abstractions as easy. 
 The mere mnemonic jugglery of symbols may not 
 be difficult, but that is only the superficial part 
 of the operation. These concepts have been formu- 
 lated to enable us to dip up experiences. To know 
 arithmetic does not mean merely to know how 
 to use it, but to know to use it, just as to have 
 learned reading means not to know how to read 
 but to read. Such a laying hold of one of the 
 chief tools w^iich mind has shaped for its work 
 cannot be accomplished in the few short years of 
 the elementary-school course. It requires a life- 
 time of effort. Facility in even the simplest oper- 
 ations slips away unless what is acquired in the 
 primary school is continued in the college. If we 
 would remember poetry, we must not only commit 
 it, but we must continue to repeat it. The musician 
 and the athlete must train for each performance. 
 
 [149] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 The marksman may be able to hit the bull's-eye 
 this year, but unless he keeps in practice he will 
 be but an indifferent shot some months hence. 
 Like these, facility in numbering is an art that can- 
 not be acquired once for all so as to last a lifetime. 
 Spelling, too, is an accomplishment that requires 
 the persistent use of the dictionary. History and 
 geography are life interests. Our knowledge of 
 them should expand in after-school years, but even 
 the elements run away from us unless we keep 
 renewing them. Language we are ever learning. 
 The lower school begins the analysis of these 
 great racial activities; the higher schools but 
 continue w^hat it has begun. 
 
 Are studies properly classified as instrumental 
 and cultural? Studies are sometimes divided into 
 instrumental and cultural. It is difficult to com- 
 prehend the reason for such a classification. The 
 theory which is behind it is that some studies con- 
 tain and supply knowledge while others are but 
 tools which we must use in getting it. But knowl- 
 edge, as we have seen, cannot reside in books or 
 be transmitted by one person to another. Books, 
 schools, teachers, even sciences themselves, are 
 only its raw materials, opportunities for the activity 
 of the learner to develop a living awareness. From 
 this standpoint every study is only a path for him 
 to walk in, a road so marked out and signboarded 
 
 [150] 
 
THE KINDS OF EDUCATION 
 
 by the experience of his fellow men that he need 
 not make the wasteful preliminary explorations 
 and chartings which they were compelled to make 
 but in which he must do his own walking for him- 
 self, for neither they nor anyone else can carry him 
 upon their shoulders. Every study, then, is a series 
 of standpoints to be taken, of problems to be solved, 
 of experiences to be relived. Why? Because the 
 experience which is to come is going to be like 
 the experience which the learner has in pursuing it. 
 He must use the experience which he already has 
 in interpreting it, and the life which he lives and 
 the experience which he gets in pursuing it, in the 
 interpretation of new experience and the conse- 
 quent reinterpretation of old experience as long as 
 he is alive. He learns to read, but no matter how 
 much we may congratulate ourselves upon his lit- 
 eracy, unless his knowledge is of such a sort that 
 it puts itself into practice neither he nor we will 
 be the better for it. It is a favorite saying of the 
 philosophers nowadays that reality is that which 
 makes a difference to the systematic procedure of 
 human nature. Education must be measured by 
 the same foot rule. Unless it makes a difference, a 
 very real difference, in the systematic procedure of 
 human nature, it is not education. True education 
 intends to make men producers of a certain kind 
 of life. 
 
 [151] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 Is history an instruvicntal study ? Reading, writ- 
 ing, and arithmetic are regarded as instrumental 
 studies. They present a series of acts to be per- 
 formed. But history, it is said, is not a tool. It is 
 a cultural study. Through it we are led to con- 
 template the growth of the concept of liberty, the 
 forming of the nation, the battles for its preserva- 
 tion, the development of its industries, the whole- 
 some ordering of its life. We must look upon 
 these things because the spectacle will be pleasing 
 to us and will do us good. But if this were all or 
 nearly all which came from this or any other study, 
 it would be a profaning of opportunity to rob youth 
 of its years for so trifling a purpose. What is real 
 makes a difference, but this is taken as though it 
 made no difference. If we are taught the traditions 
 of the nation, — not forsooth because there happen 
 to be traditions and we happen to be learners and 
 because convention has said to our otherwise un- 
 occupied teachers that this is as good a way as any 
 to fill an idle hour, but for the reason that Niceratus' 
 father caused him to get every line of Homer by 
 heart, that is, to make a moral man of him, — it 
 would seem that history is an instrumental and not 
 a cultural study. If it teaches us the use of tools, 
 our country, her necessities, our citizenship, what 
 the master workmen who made her thought of her, 
 hoped for her, and did for her, then surely this 
 
 [•52] 
 
THE KINDS OF EDUCATION 
 
 knowledge is as practical as that of copying letters 
 or pronouncing words. Our country is not an out- 
 side entity which exists apart from the conscious- 
 ness of its people. It is and always has been a life, 
 a human arrangement, unescapable to be sure, but 
 having the particular form which it has because of 
 the intentions of men. It is essentially a social tool, 
 a partnership which everyone must enter, and, to do 
 so, must be taught the objects of the partnership 
 and what has been accomplished by it to date. 
 I sometimes ask my students to answer the ques- 
 tion. Where is the United States ? Is it the land 
 bounded by the Atlantic on the east, the Pacific on 
 the west, Canada on the north, and Mexico on the 
 south ? No, that is the territory of the United 
 States. That was all here before Columbus came, 
 and not one inch of it can pass away, though the 
 United States may pass away. Perhaps then the 
 United States is at Washington where the Presi- 
 dent, the Supreme Court, and the Congress are? 
 No, that is the government of the United States. 
 The United States is in the hearts of its people. 
 It is a thought, a hope, a resolution. It is always 
 becoming, it never is. It is recreated anew when 
 each one of its people catches the vision. That is 
 the reason why the foreigner from another birth- 
 place may become as real a citizen as the native 
 born. It is a unity of minds to realize a common 
 
 [153] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 purpose, a great cooperative undertaking. Can 
 what it has been when reflected upon be other than 
 a means for what it shall be? History is our initia- 
 tion into the guild of citizens. Every part of the 
 liturgy has meaning and cries to us to hearken 
 to its significance. It must deal with facts and 
 nothing but facts, but its facts are meanings. 
 
 What is science? Science also is a human institu- 
 tion. It is only a specially persistent attempt to 
 use past and present experience to anticipate com- 
 ing experience, due to the conviction that the ex- 
 perience of the future will be like that of the past. 
 We reduce our experience up to date to formulas, 
 concepts, laws, dropping out its time-and-placeness 
 and omitting all such particularity from it in these 
 general statements. We face forward. " Belief in 
 a general statement," says W. K. Clifford,^ "is an 
 artifice of our mental constitution, whereby infi- 
 nitely various sensations and groups of sensations 
 are brought into connection with infinitely various 
 actions and groups of actions. . . . The important 
 point is that science, though apparently transformed 
 into pure knowledge, has yet never lost its charac- 
 ter of being a craft \ and that it is not the knowl- 
 edge itself which can rightly be called science, but 
 a special way of getting and using knowledge. 
 Namely, science is the getting of knowledge from 
 
 1 Clifford, Lectures and Essays, Vol. II, p. 77. London, 1901. 
 
 [154] 
 
THE KINDS OF EDUCATION 
 
 experience on the assumption of uniformity in 
 nature, and the use of such knowledge to guide 
 the actions of men. And the most abstract state- 
 ments or propositions in science are to be regarded 
 as bundles of hypothetical maxims packed into 
 portable shape and size. Every scientific fact is 
 a shorthand expression for a vast number of prac- 
 tical directions : if you want so and so, do so 
 and so." 
 
 Of like tenor is the statement of Professor W. S. 
 Franklin, quoted by Professor James: " I think that 
 the sickliest notion of physics, even if a student 
 gets it, is that it is ^the science of masses, mole- 
 cules, and the ether,' and I think that the healthiest 
 notion, even if a student does not wholly get it, 
 is that physics is the science of the ways of taking 
 hold of bodies and pushing them."^ 
 
 Is literahire an instrumental study? When we 
 come to the classics, pragmatic education meets a 
 stiff bulwark. Shall immemorial dignity be forced 
 to give the countersign of the market place ? Shall 
 that which is ancient and established take its place 
 along with the provisional, the temporary, the in- 
 strumental ? Surely here, if anywhere, is art for 
 art's sake, knowledge for knowledge's sake. '* That 
 ideal ' professor of education,' " Matthew Arnold, 
 made a careful analysis of their value, which is 
 
 ^ Science, January 2, 1903. 
 
 [155] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 all too much neglected. " Meanwhile neither our 
 humanists nor our realists adequately conceive the 
 circle of knowledge, and each party is unjust to 
 all that to which its own aptitudes do not carry it. 
 The humanists are loath to believe that man has 
 any access to vital knowledge except by knowing 
 himself, — the poetry, philosophy, history which his 
 spirit has created ; the realists, that he has any ac- 
 cess except by knowing the world, — the physical 
 sciences, the phenomena and laws of nature. I, like 
 so many others who have been brought up in the 
 old routine, imperfectly as I know letters, — the work 
 of the human spirit itself, — know nothing else, and 
 my judgment therefore may fairly be impeached. 
 But it seems to me that so long as the realists 
 persist in cutting in two the circle of knowledge, 
 so long do they leave for practical purposes the 
 better portion to their rivals, and in the govern- 
 ment of human affairs their rivals will beat them. 
 And for this reason. The study of letters is the 
 study of the operation of human force, of human 
 freedom and activity; the study of nature is the 
 study of the operation of non-human forces, of 
 human limitation and passivity. The contemplation 
 of human force and activity tends naturally to 
 heighten our own force and activity; the contempla- 
 tion of human limits and passivity tends rather to 
 check it. Therefore the men who have had the 
 
 [•56] 
 
THE KINDS OF EDUCATION 
 
 humanistic training have played, and yet play, so 
 prominent a part in human affairs, in spite of their 
 prodigious ignorance of the universe ; because their 
 training has powerfully fomented the human force 
 in them. And in this way letters are indeed runes, 
 like those magic runes taught by the Valkyrie 
 Brynhild to Sigurd, the Scandinavian Achilles, 
 which put the crown to his endowment and made 
 him invincible. 
 
 "Still, the humanists themselves suffer so much 
 from the ignorance of physical facts and laws, and 
 from the inadequate conception of nature, and of 
 man as a part of nature, — the conduct of human 
 affairs suffers so much from the same cause, — that 
 the intellectual insufficiency of the humanities, con- 
 ceived as the one access to vital knowledge, is per- 
 haps at the present moment yet more striking than 
 their power of practical stimulation ; and we may 
 willingly declare wath the Italians that no part of 
 the circle of knowledge is common or unclean, none 
 is to be cried up at the expense of another. . . . All 
 the historical part of this volume has shown that 
 the great movements of the human spirit have 
 either not got hold of the public schools, or not 
 kept hold of them. What reforms have been made 
 have been patchwork, the work of able men who, 
 into certain departments of school study which 
 were dear to them, infused reality and life, but who 
 
 [157] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 looked little beyond these departments and did not 
 concern themselves with fully adjusting instruction 
 to the wants of the human mind. There is, there- 
 fore, no intelligent tradition to be set aside in our 
 public schools; there is only a routine, arising in 
 the way we have seen, and destined to be super- 
 seded as soon as ever that more adequate idea of 
 instruction, of which the modern spirit is even now 
 in travail, shall be born. 
 
 " That idea, so far as one can already forecast 
 its lineaments, will subordinate the matter and 
 methods of instruction to the end in view ; — the 
 end of conducting the pupil, as I have said, through 
 the means of his special aptitudes to a knowledge 
 of himself and the world. The natural sciences are 
 a necessary instrument of this knowledge ; letters 
 and Alterthumswissenschaft are a necessary instru- 
 ment of this knowledge. But if school instruction 
 in the natural sciences has almost to be created, 
 school instruction in letters and Alterthumswis- 
 senschaft has almost to be created anew. The 
 prolonged philological discipline, which in our pres- 
 ent schools guards the access to Alterthumswissen- 
 schaft, brings to mind the philosophy of Albertus 
 Magnus, the mere introduction to which — the 
 logic, — was by itself enough to absorb all the stu- 
 dent's time of study. . . . But many people have 
 even convinced themselves that the preliminary 
 
 [158] 
 
THE KINDS OF EDUCATION 
 
 philological discipline is so extremely valuable as to 
 be an end in itself; and, similarly, that the mathe- 
 matical discipline preliminary to a knowledge of 
 nature is so extremely valuable as to be an end 
 in itself. It seems to me that those who profess 
 this conviction do not enough consider the quantity 
 of knowledge inviting the human mind and the 
 importance to the human mind of really getting 
 to it. No preliminary discipline is to be pressed at 
 the risk of keeping minds from getting at the main 
 matter, a knowledge of themselves and the world. . , . 
 No doubt it is indispensable to have exact habits of 
 mind, and mathematics and grammar are excellent 
 for the promotion of these habits; and Latin, be- 
 sides having so large a share in so many modern 
 languages, offers a grammar which is the best of 
 all grammars for this promotion. Here are valid 
 reasons for making every schoolboy learn some 
 Latin and some mathematics, but not for turning 
 the preliminary matter into the principal, and sacri- 
 ficing every aptitude except that for the science 
 of language or of pure mathematics. A Latin 
 grammar of thirty pages and the most elementary 
 treatise of arithmetic and of geometry, would amply 
 suffice for the uses of philology and mathematics 
 as a universally imposed preparatory discipline. 
 By keeping within these strict limits, absolute 
 exactness of knowledge, — the habit which is here 
 
 ['59] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 our professed aim, — might be far better attained 
 than it is at present. But it is well to insist, 
 besides, that all knowledge may and should, when 
 we have got fit teachers for it, be so taught as 
 to promote exact habits of mind ; and we are not 
 to take leave of these when we pass beyond our 
 introductory discipline. But it is sometimes said 
 that only through close philological studies and 
 the close practice of Latin and Greek composition 
 can Alterthumswissenchaft itself, the science of the 
 ancient world, be truly reached. It is said to be 
 only through these that we get really to know 
 Greek and Latin literature. For all practical pur- 
 poses this proposition is untrue, and its untruth 
 can be easily tested. ... I cannot help thinking, 
 therefore, that the modern spirit. will deprive Latin 
 and Greek composition and verbal scholarship 
 of their present universal and preponderant appli- 
 cation in our secondary schools, and will make 
 them as practiced in their present high scale, 
 Privatstiidien, as the Germans say, for boys with 
 an eminent aptitude for them."^ 
 
 Is this educatio7i for efficiency! The object of 
 education of all sorts, then, w^ould seem to be to 
 enable the student to get such a grip upon himself 
 and the world of men and of things that he can use 
 
 1 Arnold, Higher Schools and Universities in Germany, chap, viii, 
 pp. 172-181. London, 1874. 
 
 ri6oi 
 
THE KINDS OF EDUCATION 
 
 what he has learned in making his hfe function. 
 Is this education for efficiency? That altogether 
 depends on how you define efficiency. It is one 
 thing to strive to equip a mind to function well 
 in its present environment and as long as that 
 environment remains static, and quite another 
 to equip it to make over its environment and to 
 make over its own responses to meet a rapidly 
 changing social life. The doctrine of evolution has 
 taught us to say that education is adjustment to 
 environment, but it is still too often ' overlooked 
 that environment itself grows, is dynamic, and ever 
 running away from us. Education must not only 
 fit the individual to it but to keep up with it. 
 It must not only enable him to adjust himself as 
 nearly perfectly as may be but to readjust himself 
 and keep readjusting himself as long as he lives. 
 Besides, he must do his part in remaking it to fit 
 his own and the needs of his fellows. Like the 
 Athenian ephebe he must be solemnly dedicated 
 to the task of leaving his country and the world 
 greater and better than they were when committed 
 to him. Each one must be trained to pull his own 
 weight and not to prevent his fellow from pulling 
 his ; that is, each one must be able to buy his 
 living from society and must not interfere with his 
 neighbor as he buys his, and in addition, each one 
 must by his effort raise the standard of living both 
 
 [i6i] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 for himself and for his group. That he may have 
 inherited wealth or position docs not exempt him. 
 His active nature and his membership in the group 
 both require him to work his way by performing 
 his share of service. 
 
 Liberal versus illiberal editcation. There is one 
 ancient distinction which a slaveholding civilization 
 introduced into education, which society based upon 
 a caste system has retained, but which a people 
 that takes democracy seriously is sure to banish. 
 It is the distinction which Aristotle bequeathed to 
 the ages when he wrote, " There can be no doubt 
 that children should be taught those useful things 
 which are really necessary, but not all things ; for 
 occupations are divided into liberal and illiberal ; 
 and to young children should be imparted only 
 such kinds of knowledge as will be useful to them 
 without vulgarizing them. And any occupation, art, 
 or science which makes the body or soul or mind 
 of the freeman less fit for the practice or exercise 
 of virtue, is vulgar; wherefore, we call those arts 
 vulgar which tend to deform the body, and likewise 
 all paid employments, for they absorb and degrade 
 the mind. There are also some liberal arts quite 
 proper for a freeman to acquire, but only in a cer- 
 tain degree, and if he attend to them too closely, 
 in order to attain perfection in them, the same evil 
 effects will follow. The object also which a man 
 
 [162] 
 
THE KINDS OF EDUCATION 
 
 sets before him makes a great difference: if he 
 does or learns anything for his own sake, or for the 
 sake of his friends, or with a view to excellence, 
 the action will not appear illiberal ; but if done for 
 the sake of others, the very same action will be 
 thought menial and servile."^ The necessity of 
 preserving status by learning nothing in the way 
 that a slave would learn it sticks out in every 
 sentence of this distinction. 
 
 Stoic reflection attempted to give the notion of 
 liberal education another meaning. It strove to 
 revise the import of the phrase "liberal studies." 
 To the objection that a slave should not pursue 
 philosophy Seneca replies, " Is he a slave ? but 
 perchance a freeman in mind. Is he a slave ? 
 Show me one who is not."^ "Studies are called 
 liberal because they are worthy of a free man. But 
 there is one study which is liberal indeed, which 
 maketh a man free, and that is wisdom, high, 
 valiant and magnanimous ; the others are petty 
 and childish things. . . . The mind is made perfect 
 by one thing only, by the unchanging knowledge 
 of good and evil which philosophy imparts."^ The 
 phrase " a liberal education " still keeps a trace of 
 the connotation which Aristotle gave it. It means 
 not merely a liberalizing education, but also that 
 
 1 Aristotle, Politics (Jowett's translation), 1337 f. 
 
 2 Seneca, Epistle 47. ^ Ibid. Epistle 88. 
 
 [163] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 kind of education which most becomes the proud 
 children of those who claim to be the nobler class. 
 It is a question begging designation. If we describe 
 one kind of education as liberal, we do not dare to 
 say that another kind is illiberal, for no education 
 can be that. We do not say it, but our phrase 
 implies it. Even if the phrase did not have this 
 backhanded tendency, its denotation is so indefinite 
 as to make it worthless. All real education is lib- 
 eral, for all real education makes men free, and all 
 real education is for service. The phrase " a lib- 
 eral education " has an historic significance, but no 
 present-day applicability. It is too outworn and 
 defective a bottle to hold the new wine of demo- 
 cratic endeavor. 
 
 Is education properly classified as vocational and 
 avocatiojial ? Since education is for service, it is 
 throughout vocational. Half the ills of mankind 
 come from the misuse of words, according to 
 Socrates. In recent years an effort has been made 
 to give this good old word vocation a narrow 
 technical meaning, which neither its history, its 
 etymology, nor the needs of the science of educa- 
 tion will bear. " Vocational education," we are 
 told, " is any education the controlling purpose of 
 which is to fit for a gainful occupation." Etymo- 
 logically, one's vocation is one's calling. When 
 the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews saluted 
 
 [164] 
 
THE KINDS OF EDUCATION 
 
 those to whom he wrote as " partakers of the 
 heavenly calhng," and St. Paul urged the men of 
 Corinth each to " abide in the same calling wherein 
 he w^as called," they were speaking to them about 
 their vocations. When Fichte wrote on " The 
 Vocation of Man " and Emerson gave his famous 
 address on the " Vocation of the Scholar," they 
 were not using that word in the sense of " a gain- 
 ful occupation." One's profession is not a vocation 
 until it invites his whole energy and takes posses- 
 sion of his spirit. That is the meaning which the 
 word has in literature. It signifies the purpose to 
 which one devotes his life. There can be no ques- 
 tion that the gaining of a livelihood is an essential 
 part of the vocation of everyone. But there are 
 other parts just as essential, or perhaps even more 
 essential, in the vocation of the human being. 
 Those who seek to restrict the meaning of this 
 word to trade training, industrial teaching, or spe- 
 cial instruction, which prepares for a gainful occu- 
 pation, divide education into tw^o kinds with it 
 — vocational education and avocational education. 
 Vocational education is that education which pre- 
 pares for a gainful occupation. All the rest is 
 avocational, they say — which is a short and easy 
 way of using words to discredit the importance of 
 all other forms of instruction. Human activity 
 cannot be exhaustively classified as vocational and 
 
 [1^5] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 avocational without making one's avocation more 
 important than one's vocation. One's avocation 
 calls him away from his regular duties. It is that 
 secondary purpose which is pursued from sheer 
 interest without the constraint of necessity. Is 
 citizenship vocational or avocational ? Is being a 
 good neighbor, a good member of a family? In 
 one sense one is called to these things more im- 
 peratively than he is called to make a living, for 
 the state removes him from society if he fails to 
 prepare himself to meet its requirements in these 
 directions, while it provides him a living and lets 
 him go free, if he is unable to make it for himself. 
 Again " no man would choose the possession of 
 all goods in the world on the condition of solitari- 
 ness, man being a social animal and formed by 
 nature for living with others." ^ Preparation for 
 these life interests is essentially vocational, for they 
 are constituent parts of the vocation of man. It is 
 a preparation for necessary human working, but 
 not for money-gaining working merely. 
 
 Recognition of the fact that vocational education 
 must be wider than trade training is furnished by 
 the action of the school authorities of Edinburgh, 
 Scotland, who combine four elements in their 
 scheme of vocational training: (i) training for 
 occupation, (2) training in the English language, 
 
 1 Aristotle, Ethics, Bk. IX, Sect. XI. 
 
 [166] 
 
THE KINDS OF EDUCATION 
 
 (3) training in citizenship, (4) physical training. 
 " Education for a calling," says Dr. Kerschensteiner, 
 "offers us the very best foundation for the general 
 education of a man. We are far too much inclined 
 to assume both in the old world and in the new, 
 that it is possible to educate a man without refer- 
 ence to some special calling. . . . Yet it lies in our 
 power to make an education for a calling as many 
 sided as any education can be. . . . Industry is not 
 the aim of human society. The aim of society 
 is the increase of justice and culture. . . . The 
 schools are not merely technical or trade schools. 
 They only make use of the pupil's trade as the 
 basis of their educational work. The trade training 
 which they give is not the object of the school. 
 However thorough this training in a continuation 
 school, for instance, in Munich, is, it is only the 
 starting point for the wider general training for 
 the education in practical and theoretical thinking, 
 in consideration for others, in devotion to common 
 interests, in social service for the state and com- 
 munity." ^ A definite terminology is highly impor- 
 tant for education, but arbitrary usage must not 
 be allowed to transform words which have had a 
 vital significance through the ages into narrowly 
 
 1 Three Lectures on Vocational Training by Dr. Georg Kerschen- 
 steiner, published by the Commercial Club of Chicago, 191 1. Lecture I, 
 pp. 2-9. 
 
 [167] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 technical terms. There are other terms which have 
 been used to designate gainful labor, such as trades, 
 industries, occupations, etc. The education which 
 prepares specifically for them is properly desig- 
 nated as trade, industrial, or occupational training. 
 Of itself it does not constitute vocational education, 
 though it forms a necessary part of it. That term 
 should be saved to designate the pui-posive training 
 for human living which all real education seeks to 
 develop. Our contention, however, is not for the 
 word but for the meaning. Genuine education of 
 all sorts is either specifically preparatory or must 
 become so. Trade instruction has no monopoly 
 of this quality and must not be allowed to seem 
 to have. 
 
 One must be trained to make a living ; that does 
 not mean that he can live by bread alone, and 
 assuredly it does not mean that he can live without 
 it. Much of the so-called industrial education has 
 no other purpose than the making of boys and 
 girls into hands. Much of the so-called cultural 
 education makes dependents. Real education is 
 satisfied with neither of these results. It strives 
 to make self-sustaining persons. We may name its 
 parts by distinctive names such as cultural instruc- 
 tion and technical or trade training, but they are 
 all parts of one indispensable whole of preparation, 
 not alternative species of education. 
 
 [i68] 
 
THE KINDS OF EDUCATION 
 
 According to this analysis, we should recognize 
 but one kind and various degrees of education, the 
 broad and the narrow, or, when looked at from the 
 standpoint of time, the long course and the short 
 one. The object is the same for everyone, that is, 
 the conscious reorganizing of experience in order 
 to shape it into the best possible tool with which 
 to anticipate and meet the future. There is none 
 too much wisdom in our forefathers' outlook, none 
 too much first-hand experience which we ourselves 
 can have with men and things, none too much 
 stocking of our minds with the insight and the 
 plans which the race has worked out in its efforts 
 to meet the needs of life and which we may make 
 our own by reliving them. Conditions of aptitude 
 and opportunity force some of us to be satisfied 
 with the narrower course, and others to demand 
 the wider training, but the difference is in degree, 
 not in kind. 
 
 [169] 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 LEARNING BY AND FOR DOING 
 
 Learning for doing. The student lives in three 
 tenses. Behind him and about him is the world 
 which his fellow men have learned to harness more 
 or less successfully to their needs. About him and 
 in front of him is the world which he must harness 
 more successfully than they did. For he must not 
 merely repeat their achievements of the days 
 before ; in him the race must grow in grace to meet 
 the ever new demands of a living universe. For our 
 purposes we may image life as one vast shop with 
 the raw stuff which is to be worked into more 
 serviceable shapes lying all about and the tools 
 with which it is to be worked hanging in profusion 
 from the walls. The master workman is busy at his 
 task, and his apprentices beside him are learning 
 their trade by helping him. They must acquire it 
 not merely by rule of thumb, though, for the ways 
 of working iron which are employed are imperfect 
 and better ways must be found out; besides there 
 are better metals than iron for many of the pur- 
 poses for which we use it. Ohe must master the 
 
 [170] 
 
LEARNING BY AND FOR DOING 
 
 craft in such a way as to find out what they are 
 and devise and adopt the requisite methods of 
 working them. 
 
 Thus education throughout is a doing on the 
 part of the learner. But what he learns to do 
 as an apprentice is different from what he will 
 do later as a master workman — different, but yet 
 recognizably and functionally the same, for while 
 both the sensory content and the motor response 
 of his action will change, the new action will 
 be only a readaptation of the old content and 
 response which he learned to make when a similar 
 sensory content presented itself. It is a taking 
 of the most useful tools in the race's workshop 
 by the student into his own hands and by his own 
 trial and effort learning to use them, but in such a 
 way that he will go on perfecting his skill in their 
 use as long as he lives. Education, that is, seeks 
 the impossible. It is forever engaged in help- 
 ing each student to become a perpetual-motion 
 machine, to start a process in such a way that it 
 will continue itself to the end of the student's days. 
 
 Some forms of teacJiing in which the sttidents 
 doing is clearly the end sought. Fortunate are those 
 teachers whose task is plain, who do not have to 
 fight their way through a well-nigh impenetrable 
 thicket of contradictory conceptions as to just what 
 they are employed to do before they can set about 
 
 [171] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 doing it. For what can be more despairing than 
 to labor at an undefined task with the conviction 
 heavy upon one that in spite of the fact that he 
 does not know what must be done, the work upon 
 which he is engaged is nevertheless the most 
 serious thing in the world? Is it any wonder that 
 the teacher's task is a consuming one ! If he fails 
 to understand it and falls back upon conventional 
 notions of his duty, he does not educate ; and if he 
 strives to educate, he does not produce a conven- 
 tional product. In either case he is ground between 
 the millstones of dissatisfaction. 
 
 Happy indeed are those teachers of physical 
 training whose task is simply to teach their 
 students to do the things which bring health and 
 bodily efficiency. When they give instruction in 
 breathing, it is plain that the one object which 
 they have is not to give their students a knowledge 
 about breathing, but to get each one of them to use 
 his own lungs in a health-giving fashion. When 
 they teach them to sit and to stand and to walk, 
 it is not merely a knowledge of how to do these 
 things, but an actual doing of them that they must 
 aim at. And when they teach them the setting-up 
 exercises or to dance, to run, to swim, to wrestle, to 
 box, to fence, to work on the bars, the rings, the 
 horse, or with the weights, it is a doing on the part 
 of the student that they seek — not a knowing 
 
 [172] 
 
LEARNING BY AND FOR DOING 
 
 merely, but a doing accompanied, if possible, by 
 such a comprehension of purpose, by such an 
 interest in the process and such an awareness of 
 increasing skill that the work will not be given up 
 until habits of functioning shall have established 
 themselves which may be relied upon to contribute 
 their share to the physical well-being of the 
 individual as long as he exists. It is difficult to 
 think of a knowledge of physical training which 
 could have any other function than to direct 
 physical doing. 
 
 The aim of the teacher of the fine arts is almost 
 equally clear. If he gives instruction in painting, 
 singing, or the playing of an instrument, it is plain 
 that the instructor must guide, but the student 
 must perform ; that no matter how much the 
 master may know about the theory of the art, 
 that knowledge will have meaning for the stu- 
 dent and can be imparted to him only in connec- 
 tion with his own doing; that all formal lessons 
 such as learning to read the score, finger exercises, 
 the manipulation of the stops, the tuning of the 
 instrument, etc. are but the necessary parts of a 
 larger process and without significance by them- 
 selves. The skill which is sought is a habit, and 
 not a habit in general, but a particular doing con- 
 ditioned by its own particular body of sensory ele- 
 ments. This habit will not come as a by-product of 
 
 [173] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 general aimless familiarity with an instrument, but 
 only by day-by-day striving to master its use. That 
 mastery is never so complete that after any definite 
 number of years of preparation the great pianist 
 is at last able to play anything without any pre- 
 liminary practice whatever, but even in the period 
 of his greatest virtuosity he must still practice a 
 number of hours each day to keep in form. 
 
 What is a general knoiu ledge of music or atJiletics? 
 Education has much to learn from those who train 
 themselves consciously to marked degrees of skill. 
 They are not confused by obscurity of purpose, 
 there is little delusion among them as to what the 
 teacher must do and what the pupil, they do not 
 make the error of assuming that the best way to 
 learn to play upon the piano is to begin with the 
 violin, the relation of theory to practice is fairly 
 plain to them, and there is but little mistaking of 
 the procedure of habit forming or of the place and 
 function of interest in learning. They do not split 
 the sensory-motor arc by saying that the purpose 
 of instruction is to acquire methods of working 
 with one subject matter in order to apply them to 
 another. With them every subject matter calls for 
 its own series of reactions, and every series of motor 
 activities is called forth by its own unique percep- 
 tual series. To be sure, there are general terms, 
 common elements in athletics as well as in music, 
 
 [174] 
 
LEARNING BY AND FOR DOING 
 
 but what kind of a knowledge of music does any- 
 one possess who has only a general and no particu- 
 lar knowledge of it? And what kind of an athlete 
 is he who has a general knowledge of athletics but 
 no particular form of athletic skill? The general 
 grows out of the particular and cannot exist apart 
 from it. A general training is either a combination 
 of several particular forms of training such as would 
 enable a musician to play upon several different 
 instruments, or an athlete to contest in several dif- 
 ferent kinds of athletic events, or it is such a non- 
 descript and puerile knowledge about these fields 
 as to be synonymous merely with a vague acquaint- 
 ance with them. A general education is sometimes 
 spoken of as an all-round training. An all-round 
 athlete is one who is proficient in several forms of 
 athletic skill, and an all-round musician is one who 
 is proficient in several kinds of musical skill. But 
 in what forms of skill is the man w^io has pursued 
 an all-round education proficient ? 
 
 Knowmg comes from doing. It will not do to say 
 that he knows many things but cannot do them. 
 Awareness and doing cannot be separated thus. 
 The sensory-motor arc is one. Neither function can 
 exist without the other. Wherever there is sensory 
 experience there is motor action, and wherever 
 there is doing it brings its quota of awareness. 
 If the knowledge is poor and mean, that is because 
 
 [175] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 the doing has been poor and mean which precon- 
 ditioned it. To know anything without being able 
 to do it is to know it poorly. One does not have to 
 be a sugar planter to know that sugar tastes sweet, 
 but he does have to taste it. One does not have to 
 play in the orchestra to know that its music is voic- 
 ing the unutterable, but he does have to listen to it, 
 not once but many times until he begins to compre- 
 hend its language. There is a difference between 
 appreciation and production, but it does not lie in 
 the fact that appreciation is a passive state while 
 production is a doing. Both are active states; 
 their difference is in degree of comprehension 
 rather than in kind. All knowledge is precon- 
 ditioned by a doing on the part of the learner. 
 The text of the New Testament — " If any man will 
 do his wall, he shall know of the doctrine " — might 
 well be used as a motto to indicate what is required 
 in all forms of education. 
 
 One's knowledge grows in proportion to one's 
 doing. The sugar planter knows sugar more thor- 
 oughly than the merchant who sells it or the per- 
 son who consumes it, for he also sells and consumes 
 it. The person who merely reads about it does 
 something that gives him an experience of it, but 
 his relation to it is so remote that unless his aw^are- 
 ness can take on an intenser form it can hardly be 
 called knowledge. It is " experience " which " makes 
 
 [176] 
 
LEARNING BY AND FOR DOING 
 
 the days of men to proceed according to art and 
 inexperience according to chance, and different 
 persons in different ways are proficient in different 
 arts." 
 
 It is the accumulated purposive doings of the 
 race which have defined the problems, shaped the 
 hypotheses, collected the evidence to prove and 
 disprove them, and formulated the provisional con- 
 clusions which we call science. Its doctrines, no 
 matter how seemingly conclusive, still wait upon 
 the further experience of the race to reedit and 
 revise them. They are not final and unchangeable 
 truth, for there is no science so perfect that it is 
 not subject to improvement. 
 
 What then is the relation of theory to practice? 
 The answer must be that theory or thinking grew 
 out of practice ; that problems came out of doing ; 
 that if doing could go on smoothly and unfailingly, 
 without any jolts or jars, there would be no prob- 
 lems and no mental straining to solve them. Do- 
 ing would automatically reach its goal, and thinking 
 or theorizing would be wholly uncalled for. What 
 reason could it possibly have for existing? It would 
 be the merest of shadows — an ineffective epiphe- 
 nomenon in a universe in which everything else 
 makes a difference and, because it does, is real. 
 
 Percepts come from doings. Knowledge, then, is 
 not an adventitious thing. It has no being for itself. 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 It grew out of defeated purpose, it exists to redeem 
 action. By purpose only can it be generated, and 
 purposive action alone will correct its defects and 
 make it grow beyond its present stature. This 
 means that the race as well as every individual in 
 it is leading the experimental life. No one of them 
 can get wisdom by merely being receptive. Even 
 sensations do not come to us of themselves, but are 
 internally aroused by the bodily defeats which we 
 suffer. The suit that fits does not feel. The one 
 that feels impedes. I can walk on the ground and 
 hardly know that I am walking, but in walking a 
 plank high up in the air a thousand sensations 
 that I never noticed before make themselves felt. 
 Sensation is due to the breakdown of habit, to 
 the buckling up of action. The very word percep- 
 tion indicates that it is fundamentally not a receiv- 
 ing but a taking, an outreaching, a seizing. Why 
 was it that the Greeks did not discover the world 
 of physical forces, gravitation, steam, electricity, 
 radium, and the gas engine? Their world was like 
 ours, these forces were working all about them. 
 Their senses were as keen as ours. Their curi- 
 osity was as great, and as for their talent, Mr. 
 Galton has declared "that the average ability of 
 the Athenian race was on the lowest possible es- 
 timate very nearly two grades higher than our own 
 [the English], that is, about as much as our race 
 
 [178] 
 
LEARNING BY AND FOR DOING 
 
 is above the African negro." If the forces were 
 there and the keenness of intelhgence to discern 
 them was there, why were they not found out ? The 
 answer must be that the discovery of facts is not 
 due to their presence nor to the possession of a 
 mind capable of grasping them, but rather to the 
 using of mind in the direction in which the facts 
 he. The Greeks were not looking for the forces 
 of physical nature — that is why they did not see 
 them. Inventions and discoveries are remarkably 
 simple after they have been made, but it is only 
 the person who is hunting for something of that 
 sort who makes them. 
 
 One who would learn anything must put himself 
 in the way of learning it. He must do that which 
 will make him feel the problem. If he once gets 
 that, his mind will work out the answer; but if he 
 goes about getting answers to questions which he 
 has never asked and solutions for problems which 
 he has never raised, he will be performing only lip 
 service to knowledge, and instead of fitting himself 
 by getting a rich and full experience and ordering 
 it to go on mastering experience and to help others 
 to do so, he will be engaged in unfitting himself 
 and in unfitting those who give and take with him. 
 
 The fu7ictio7i of the teacher. The wise teacher 
 is immensely helpful in this process of learning, 
 but his influence must all be indirect like the 
 
 [179] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 gardener's. If I want to learn to swim, someone 
 must show me what the best strokes are and stand 
 by and tell me whether I am succeeding in moving 
 my arms and legs in the w^ay he has done, as I try 
 to take these strokes in the air. Even if he tells 
 me that I am succeeding, I have as yet done noth- 
 ing which deserves to be called learning to swim. 
 I cannot possibly develop the method in one me- 
 dium and apply it with any degree of success in 
 another. I can only get a merest beginning of the 
 idea of w4iat must be done by striking out in the 
 air, and then I must get into the water and practice 
 the stroke persistently for many days in the very 
 medium in which it can be made to accomplish 
 my purpose. It is the same stroke in both cases, 
 but the difference between the air and the water 
 is so great that it wall not carry over to any consid- 
 erable extent. The new sensations which I get 
 when I leap into the water are so disconcerting 
 that the old reaction is nearly unavailable in con- 
 trolling them. I must, as it were, begin all over 
 again. The teacher is still of the greatest value 
 to me. He tells me what I must do, and he can 
 see whether I do it or not, whereas my eyes are 
 in the water and my attention is upon other things. 
 He keeps me at my task ; and just because he sur- 
 rounds me with the necessity of trying to do the 
 thing in what his experience has taught him is 
 
 ri8o1 
 
LEARNING BY AND FOR DOING 
 
 a good way, and keeps me at it and hopeful that 
 I will learn, in time I may learn to swim. 
 
 How very different is his procedure from that 
 of my regular teacher in school or college! In 
 learning to swim I know from the first what it is 
 that I want to do. I also know that I must myself 
 do it. My teacher knows that he can help me, 
 but he also knows that he can help me only a 
 very little, and he does not for a moment make 
 the mistake of supposing that any amount of verbal 
 knowledge which he may try to give me about 
 swimming, or any body of directions which I may 
 strive to master in the air, will take the place of 
 long-continued practice in the water. To the water, 
 then, I must go, though he goes with me to help 
 me find out what to do and to see that I do it. 
 
 Shoicld verbal study be allozved to take the place of 
 doing? Suppose the master workman in the shop, 
 which is the world, should say to his apprentices: 
 "It is true that you have come here to learn how 
 to use the best of these tools in the working of 
 iron, but that is a tedious and illiberal process. It 
 will be more profitable to you if I should tell you 
 some of the more important facts about them, and 
 then we will spend the remainder of the time that 
 you are to be here in analyzing the language which 
 I shall have been compelled to employ in describ- 
 ing them to you. After all, language is the most 
 
 [i8i] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 important of human concerns. Some say it is a tool 
 just like all these others here, but I think it is so 
 much more than that that I am convinced that if 
 you will only take the trouble, not indeed to learn 
 to use it — for that is the least important thing 
 about it — but to learn all the curious facts and 
 distinctions that subtle minds have found out about 
 it, and to recognize them when you meet instances 
 of them, you will be better prepared to use both it 
 and all these other tools than any amount of work- 
 ing with them under my direction could make 
 you." Was it not Gorgias, the sophist, who said 
 that rhetoric was so superior an art that if anyone 
 wants to learn anything, say medicine, or the use of 
 weapons, or philosophy, he should not study them 
 but should study rhetoric instead in order to learn 
 them ? Our master workman has turned sophist 
 and is unduly neglecting the efforts which Socrates, 
 Plato, and Aristotle made to persuade the Athe- 
 nians to a better way of thinking. His apprentices 
 are there to learn the major arts by which "experi- 
 ence has taught men to make their days proceed " 
 rather than "by chance." They have not come to 
 acquire a knowledge about thc7?z merely, so that 
 they may appreciate something of their significance 
 when they see others employ them. They want if 
 possible to learn at least the beginnings of their 
 use for themselves. It is not the lore of highly 
 
 [182] 
 
LEARNING BY AND FOR DOING 
 
 specialized scholarship, whatever that may mean, 
 that they seek, but such a mastery of the elements 
 of a process which the race has found indispensable 
 that they may practice it in an unspecialized way 
 for themselves. Has their teacher any right to con- 
 fine them to a merely descriptive acquaintance with 
 these tools or to a dismembering of languages ? 
 
 Does each study require the pupil to learn to per- 
 form its particular kind of doing? There is a 
 definite something to be done by the pupil when 
 he learns to read, to write, or to number. Is there 
 not an equally definite something to be done by 
 him when he studies history, geography, science, 
 language, or literature ? Merely to amass knowl- 
 edge, we have seen, cannot be the object of his 
 striving. There is far too much of it, and it is of 
 all possible degrees of worth. There must be a 
 principle of selection by which that which is most 
 worth while is picked out from that which is less 
 worth while. It is only the knowledge which works 
 that the race cares for. It is that kind only which 
 it is bent upon preserving. Science is a craft — 
 literature, a rune. Language is to the mind what 
 the abacus is to the Chinese merchant — a tool 
 pure and simple. Logic and mathematics are spe- 
 cial forms of thinking. Geography is each one's 
 mental picture of the world. Their principles, their 
 facts, their beauty, exist solely to be recreated by 
 
 [183] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 us in terms of our own conviction because they 
 are useful, nay even indispensable, to us in steering 
 a truly human course through life. Shall we then 
 attempt to take them over without paying for them 
 by the doing which alone will make us possessors 
 of them ? Shall we try to get profit from them by 
 dislocating their facts from their meanings and tak- 
 ing the facts only? Or shall we study language as 
 a tool, science as a craft, literature as a rune, and 
 thinking as a practice ? Here are definite things 
 to be done — things as definite and as instrumental 
 as reading, writing, and numbering. We must re- 
 member that doing is mental as well as manual. 
 
 The knowledge which each science offers is a body 
 of hypothetical directions. Our argument has pro- 
 ceeded on the assumption that knowledge is not 
 an end in itself but a means for the rectification 
 of experience; that it is a body of practical direc- 
 tions which we must follow if we want to attain 
 certain results. It takes the form of a hypothetical 
 injunction : " if you want to make pig iron, treat 
 your ore together with this fuel and this limestone 
 flux " ; " if you want to be a citizen of the United 
 States, remember that the principles upon which 
 the men who made it organized your government 
 are as follows " ; " if you want to be a good man, 
 you must not forget that the ethical judgment is 
 due to reflection upon conduct." When expanded, 
 
 [184] 
 
LEARNING BY AND FOR DOING 
 
 the scientific statement reveals its directive charac- 
 ter. It seems to have nothing of the guideboard 
 in it as long as it reads : " pig iron is a combi- 
 nation of iron with from 2 to 4.75 per cent of 
 carbon, existing partly in a state of chemical com- 
 bination with the iron and partially as mechanically 
 distributed uncombined or graphitic carbon " ; or 
 "the declaration of principles upon which the 
 government of the United States was founded 
 reads as follows " ; or " the ethical judgment is one 
 whose content is conduct." Knowledge has been 
 reported in the third person so long that it has 
 almost lost its real character of a message to the 
 reader. It has gained the abstractness of imper- 
 sonality, but in freeing itself from prejudice and 
 private desire it has almost lost its meaning. 
 
 Should we strive foi^ knowledge for the sake of 
 knozvledge? Is there room for any doubt about its 
 practical character? Yes, it would seem there is, 
 for there is a well-worn maxim which presidents 
 of colleges and teachers of conventionally valued 
 studies are continually dinning into the ears of 
 students to the effect that " knowledge exists for 
 its own sake. The true student seeks knowledge 
 for the sole reason that it is knowledge." As a final 
 philosophy, this doctrine can have little meaning. 
 As a generalization from histor^^ it is not warranted 
 by facts, and when tried by the test of psychology 
 
 [185] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 it necessitates the severance of intelligence from 
 action or volition. It cannot be true. 
 
 What has happened is that a counsel as to 
 method of procedure to be followed in the getting 
 of knowledge has been expanded into a philosophy 
 as to its meaning. The attention of the investigator 
 must not be diverted from the investigation which 
 he has in hand either to count its cost or to count 
 its probable income. A mind divided against itself 
 cannot observe accurately or devote itself to such 
 patient waiting upon the facts as they demand 
 before they will disclose themselves. Singleness 
 of purpose is requisite. Since the purpose of the 
 investigator is knowledge, it must be his sole aim. 
 But when the facts are discovered, they must be 
 tried out by another attitude. They pass out of the 
 hands of the investigator into the hands of his 
 fellow men. They may accept his discovery, but they 
 ask now not, Is it so ? but What does it signify to our 
 purposes? What is it worth? If the discoverer re- 
 plies, " This is knowledge and you must consider it 
 just because it is so," they reply quite scornfully 
 that many things are so which are of no concern 
 to them, that it is not truth but the truth which 
 must be taken account of that they care for. And 
 they are right. If we were pure intelligences only, 
 knowing would be our sole concern ; but we are 
 life conservers instead, which means that the will 
 
 [186] 
 
LEARNING BY AND FOR DOING 
 
 to live selects the forms of knowing which are vital, 
 and as soon as it can rectify the tendency of mind 
 to delusion, it discards the rest. 
 
 Why " knowledge for the sake of knowledge " has 
 become a slogan of the schools. But there is a special 
 reason why " knowledge for the sake of knowledge " 
 has become a slogan of the schools and is more 
 than a methodological motto to them. It is not 
 that the investigator must keep from confusing 
 himself by attempting to determine the question 
 of utility before he has found out what it is which 
 may or may not be useful, and in so doing has 
 deserted his function to busy himself with passing 
 a final judgment, which is the function of society as 
 a whole and one which^ it can perform only when 
 he has found what the facts are. It is that it is 
 so much easier to repeat the teaching of the day 
 before that old studies and teaching habits have 
 a peculiar sense of fitness, and rather than discard 
 them after their utility has gone out of them, 
 because the conditions in which they functioned 
 have quite changed, we take the course of least 
 resistance and develop a bad philosophy to justify 
 the inertia which retains them. But to do so we 
 make our students suffer and ourselves become 
 blind leaders of the blind. 
 
 Is all kjiow ledge instriimental? Are all studies 
 instrumental ? Professor Keyser, in his brilliant 
 
 [187] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 paper on mathematics,-^ says " no." " Not in the 
 ground of need, not in bent and painful toil, but in 
 the deep-centred play-instinct of the world, in the 
 joyous mood of the eternal Being, which is always 
 young, science has her origin and root ; and her 
 spirit, which is the spirit of genius in moments of 
 elevation, is but a sublimated form of play, the 
 austere and lofty analogue of the kitten playing 
 with the entangled skein or of the eaglet sporting 
 w^ith the mountain winds." But it must not be 
 forgotten that there is method in this playfulness. 
 There is the most intimate relation between play 
 and work. Both the eaglet and the kitten, as they 
 play, are rehearsing their ancestors' work and 
 getting ready for their own. If the same is not 
 true of the human playfulness which Professor 
 Keyscr is convinced that science is, why do the 
 activities of this play stick so close to the interests 
 which we define as work ? To be sure science is 
 exploratory. It endeavors to run ahead of human 
 need and to anticipate its problems before they 
 arise, to lay up a treasure of knowledge before it 
 is called for, but that is by no micans the same 
 thing as solving puzzles just because there is 
 nothing more serious to do. If it be said that 
 knowledge is due to two instincts, — curiosity and 
 self-preservation, — it must be noted that, racially 
 
 1 Cassius J. Keyser, Mathematics. The Columbia University Press, 1907. 
 
 [188] 
 
LEARNING BY AND FOR DOING 
 
 speaking, these are at bottom one. The eye is 
 ever moving up and down, to the right and to the 
 left, searching out the field before it, seeking to 
 light upon an object of its interest. Thus curiosity, 
 like the hunter's dog beating the bush to raise 
 whatever game there may be for the hunter, scours 
 the plain in the service of self-preservation. If 
 science is held to be the product of the play spirit 
 because, forsooth, if she were a daughter of work 
 she would be less beautiful and holy, it need only 
 be pointed out that all that she gains in poetical 
 freedom by this genealogy she loses in seriousness. 
 At any rate, there is another point of view as to 
 her function. One of the greatest of modern 
 thinkers, Immanuel Kant, has stated it: "I am 
 myself a student by inclination, I feel the whole 
 thirst for knowledge, and the covetous restlessness 
 that demands to advance in it, and again the satis- 
 faction of every step of progress. There was a time 
 when I believed that all this might constitute the 
 honor of humanity, and I despised the crowd that 
 knows nothing. It was Rousseau who set me right. 
 That dazzling privilege disappeared, and I should 
 think myself far less useful than common artisans, 
 if I did not believe that my line of study might 
 impart value to all others in the way of establishing 
 the rights of humanity." -^ 
 
 1 Kant, Werke, 8, p. 624. Hartenstein. 
 
 [189] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 What should education attempt to do ? Now if 
 education should leave off its " inveterate human 
 trick of turning names into things," give over its 
 word worship, and ask what can I do for all these 
 hopeful young people who trust their lives to me, 
 what form should the answer take? This, I think. 
 One cannot walk for another, speak for another, or 
 digest for another. No more can he feel for another, 
 have problems for another, think for another, or be 
 wise or good for another. Education in the last 
 analysis is a peculiarly personal affair. It has to 
 do almost wholly with the man within. From the 
 objective standpoint it is the process in which the 
 young, surrounded by specially prepared oppor- 
 tunities, make their own knowledge and their own 
 conduct each for himself. Since knowledge and 
 conduct are but the two parts of the same sensory- 
 motor arc, what they themselves do makes their 
 knowledge, and this knowledge again shapes their 
 conduct, which again brings further knowledge and 
 is followed by correspondingly enlarged conduct. 
 This reciprocal relation constitutes the warp and 
 the woof of their ever-weaving experience. As it 
 is with them, so it has been with the race since the 
 beginning. From its doings the race has learned, 
 and by its learning its doings have been reshaped. 
 By many times taking the wrong road and some- 
 times the right one, it has accumulated a kind of 
 
 [190] 
 
LEARNING BY AND FOR DOING 
 
 geography of life which it puts at the service of the 
 new travelers who are setting out upon the journey. 
 As each one of them must choose the course he 
 will take and as each one will choose a course 
 which is different from that of his fellows, these 
 directions are not put in the imperative form, — 
 " Take this baggage and march ten parasangs to 
 the west, then four to the south, and you will come 
 to the city of Delight," — but are stated declara- 
 tively, — " Two and two make four," " Blankets 
 keep out the cold," " The very principle of ethics 
 lies in the effort to think well." Though these 
 things are not said in the imperative form, there is 
 no value in saying them unless those to whom they 
 are addressed hear them, feel their force, and shape 
 their conduct accordingly. They are indeed hypo- 
 thetical injunctions, carefully tested systems of 
 advice worked out by our elders in the hope that 
 we will use them. They do not ask us merely to 
 acknowledge the existence of their experience, but 
 to feel it and, having an inward persuasion of its 
 force, to use it. 
 
 Now of all this stored-up experience of the race, 
 some parts are so indispensable that all must learn 
 to use them no matter what the particular form 
 their lives may take. These are the elementary 
 doings of the race — using language, reading, writ- 
 ing, numbering, building up a notion of the space 
 
 [191] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 relations in which men exist, and of the time rela- 
 tions which have conditioned and limited them and 
 those who went before them, and learning how to 
 live with their fellows by both outer and self- 
 imposed control. Every one of these elementary 
 subjects is a doing on the part of the student. The 
 so-called higher courses of the secondary school, 
 the college, and the university are only further 
 doings, longer apprenticeships undertaken for a 
 more complete mastery of these same racial tools. 
 Having acquired some degree of skill in using 
 these tools which all must use, the student goes 
 in most cases from the elementary school, in some 
 from the high school, and in a few from the col- 
 lege, either to the trade school or into an appren- 
 tice grade in life to acquire a special degree of skill 
 in performing the work of some one occupation, 
 the product of which has an exchange value. But 
 doing is no less his object in the case of the funda- 
 mental arts than in the case of the trade which he 
 learns. When I was a student in the law school, 
 the professor used to say : " Our object is not to 
 teach you the law so that you will know it. There 
 is far too much of it for that. Our task is simply 
 to help you to learn how to find it." So is that of 
 the teacher of reading, spelling, numbering, history, 
 literature, science, and philosophy. We cannot be 
 taught any of these subjects in their completeness. 
 
 [192] 
 
LEARNING BY AND FOR DOING 
 
 In fact no one of them is complete, but we can be 
 given such a familiarity with them that we shall 
 find them indispensable henceforth and by means 
 of this familiarity with them go on finding them 
 out for ourselves as the need for them arises. 
 
 Even culture is a doing. " Culture or education 
 is, as we may thus conclude," says Hegel, " in its 
 ultimate sense a liberation, and that of a high kind. 
 Its task is to make possible the infinitely subjective 
 substantiality of the ethical life. ... In the indi- 
 vidual agent this liberation involves a struggle 
 against mere subjectivity, immediate desire, sub- 
 jective vanity, and capricious liking. The hardness 
 of the task is in part the cause of the disfavor 
 under which it falls. None the less it is through 
 the labor of education that the subjective will wins 
 possession of the objectivity, in which alone it is 
 able and worthy to be the embodiment of the 
 idea."^ And again: "Culture is certainly an in- 
 definite expression. It has, however, this meaning, 
 that what free thought is to attain must come out 
 of itself and be personal conviction ; it is then no 
 longer believed but investigated. ... In culture 
 it is requisite that men should be acquainted with 
 the universal points of view which belong to a 
 transaction, event, etc., that this point of view, and 
 thereby the thing, should be grasped in a universal 
 
 1 Hegel, Philosophy of Right (Dyde's translation), sect. 187 note. 
 [193] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 way, in order to afford a present knowledge of 
 what is in question. A judge knows the various 
 laws, that is, the various legal points of view under 
 which a thing is to be considered. ... A man of 
 culture thus knows how to say something of 
 everything, to find points of view in all." ^ 
 
 Education, then, is the process by which the 
 learner in his own person comes to take the uni- 
 versal points of view and begins by their aid to 
 investigate his experience and to shape it to fit 
 his need. The circle of knowledge through which 
 he is led to the universal viewpoints by which the 
 race has found it profitable to take and organize its 
 experience of inorganic and organic nature, and 
 the thinking, willing, and aesthetic activity of the 
 human spirit, is but a guide to help him to exercise 
 this same mastery for himself. 
 
 1 Hegel, History of Philosophy, Vol. I, p. 356. London, 1892. 
 
 [194] 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE PLACE OF METHOD IN EDUCATION 
 
 Comprchensibility a test of hiow ledge. Professor 
 Keyser begins his illuminating discussion of mathe- 
 matics ^ by citing the conviction of the French 
 mathematician, Gergonne, that a given scientific 
 theory cannot be said to have been perfected 
 until it is comprehensible to the man in the street. 
 Plato seems to have reached this same conclusion, 
 for he regarded dialectic as the coping stone of 
 the sciences and described it as the art of asking 
 and answering questions ; and in the " Thesetetus " 
 he made Socrates say : "And is it not shameless 
 when we do not know what knowledge is, to be 
 explaining the verb, ' to know ' ? The truth is, 
 Thesetetus, that we have long been infected with 
 logical impurity. Thousands of times, have we 
 repeated the words 'we know' and Mo not know' 
 and *we have or have not science or knowledge,' 
 as if we could understand what we are saying to 
 one another, so long as we remain ignorant about 
 knowledge ; and at this moment we are using the 
 
 1 Cassius J. Keyser, Mathematics. The Columbia University Press, 
 1907. 
 
 [195] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 words ' we understand,' ' we are ignorant,' as though 
 we could still employ them when deprived of 
 knowledge or science. 
 
 " The^.tetus. But if you avoid these expressions, 
 Socrates, how will you ever argue at all ? 
 
 " Socrates. I could not, being the man I am. 
 The case would be different if I were a true hero 
 of dialectic ; and O that such an one were present ! 
 for he would have told us to avoid the use of these 
 terms ; and at the same time he would not have 
 spared in you and me the faults which I have 
 noted." 
 
 Dialectic, then, or the art of asking and answer- 
 ing questions, is the process of stripping the verbal 
 mask from truth and producing conviction unob- 
 scured by language in the mind of the inquirer. 
 To so thoroughly convince himself that his words 
 will indubitably generate a similar conviction in 
 others is the task of the " true hero of dialectic." 
 There are a number of terms to be made compre- 
 hensible before education can be such a science. 
 
 The importance of method. If education is the 
 growth of the kingdom which is within, not the 
 communication of dogma from without but a con- 
 stant appeal to the inner reference of feeling, 
 thought, and action, the method to be employed 
 would seem to be the most important of all the 
 considerations which attach to it. Like true religion 
 
 [196] 
 
THE PLACE OF METHOD IN EDUCATION 
 
 and undefiled it calls for something more than lip 
 service in the temple of knowledge, something 
 more than the memorizing of words or even of 
 the thoughts of other men. If the only real edu- 
 cation is the self-education of the student, how 
 he is taught science, literature, languages, history, 
 mathematics, and even the three fundamental arts 
 makes all the difference between real education 
 and make-believe, which is a great deal worse than 
 no education at all. It is not hard for anyone who 
 will consider these things seriously for a moment 
 to convince himself that geometry, for example, 
 may be the most fruitful of studies or the most 
 empty of comprehension on the part of the learner, 
 depending wholly upon the standpoint from which 
 he approaches it. Mr. Herbert Spencer darec' to 
 " doubt if one boy in five hundred . . . knows 
 his Euclid otherwise than by rote." Does the prop- 
 osition read the other way to-day ? Yet mathe- 
 maticians have pointed out that it is no more 
 profitable or educative to commit the theorems 
 and demonstrations of geometry than it is to 
 commit the names in the city directory. Has our 
 teaching of science, from which so much was 
 expected, engendered the scientific mood in our 
 students ? Does it lead to a scientific habit of 
 mind ? Do those who pursue it acquire scientific 
 method and learn to systematize knowledge, or do 
 
 [197] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 they instead merely learn a few facts which have 
 been systematized ? Professor Mann has declared 
 his conviction that better results will not come 
 from the teaching of physics until its teachers 
 have a better philosophy of the teaching of that 
 subject and in a recent number of Science^ he has 
 indicated quite clearly what he means by that. 
 
 Take the venerable subject of Latin, which in 
 the days of its larger functioning furnished such 
 profitable opportunities to be active-minded to the 
 students who pursued it. It is my duty to see 
 a good deal of high-school instruction, and what 
 I have seen of the teaching of this study is not 
 reassuring. I once entered a classroom while the 
 class was engaged upon that passage of the oration 
 for Archias in which Cicero attempts to make 
 the thoughts of his auditors rise to the nature of 
 the poet's mission. To do so he refers to " our 
 Ennius," the author of the " Annals," the father 
 of Latin poetry, "who calls the poets holy, for 
 they seem, as it were, to be approved to us by a 
 special gift and favor of the gods." This is a tre- 
 mendous saying, and I waited with eagerness to 
 hear what sort of a question the teacher would ask 
 on such a passage. It came, "Why is videantur in 
 the subjunctive mood ? " I visited another classroom 
 in another school while the class was reading the 
 
 1 Science, March 7, 1913. 
 
 [198] 
 
THE PLACE OF METHOD IN EDUCATION 
 
 fourteenth chapter of that first book, in which 
 Caesar tells of a conference which the German 
 chieftain Divico and his retainers attended and 
 how Cassar addressed them, urging them to be 
 peaceable and to send him hostages as a guaranty 
 that they would be. Whereat the German chieftain 
 arose and gave expression to but one sentiment, 
 " Our fathers have taught us to receive and not to 
 give hostages," and with that broke up the confer- 
 ence. I waited intently for the question that the 
 teacher would ask, for from that German love of 
 liberty which would not submit to be crushed 
 out by mighty Rome herself, much that we hold 
 dear has come down to us, and there in that remote 
 forest two majestic conflicting forces in civilization 
 faced each other for a moment and expressed their 
 opposing ideals; and the question came, What 
 mood follows titP. I went into still another class- 
 roorti in still another school where students who 
 were just beginning their study of the Latin gram- 
 mar were engaged in writing a synopsis of the 
 verb upon the blackboard. All went well until 
 one student committed the mistake of attempting 
 to write a perfect imperative, that disturbed the 
 peace of the occasion. When the teacher saw it 
 her reproof took the form : " You know that there 
 is no such form in the book. You must follow 
 your authority. Watch it closely and don't let this 
 
 [ 199 ] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 happen again." There was no calHng attention 
 to the impossibiHty of giving an order to-day and 
 having it carried out yesterday. Like Mr. Spencer's 
 committing of geometry and Professor Manns 
 verbal repeating of the definitions of physics, what 
 I have seen in many places leads me to believe 
 that these are examples of the typical teaching of 
 Latin. They tend to convince one that we get 
 poor results because we do not go after better ones. 
 Methods are wrong because ptirposes are not clear. 
 It is much the same in the elementary schools. We 
 teach our pupils a kind of word sounding which 
 we call reading, but we do not often teach them to 
 read. We teach them letter shaping, but we do not 
 see that they carry the process into effect in their 
 compositions and examination books, and we usu- 
 ally give up instructing them in handwriting before 
 adolescence has changed their penmanship, very 
 much as it changes the voice. They spend weary 
 hours in performing processes in arithmetic which 
 no longer find their counterpart in business calcula- 
 tions, and much of that which is taught them which 
 is usable is put in such an abstract form that when 
 the occasion for its use arises it is unrecognizable 
 by them. We teach a schoolroom manipulation of 
 language, called grammar, but it does not seem to 
 function beyond the schoolroom. Our geography 
 tends to be an exercise with very confusing and 
 
 [ 200 ] 
 
THE PLACE OF METHOD IN EDUCATION 
 
 difficult names, while history is a dry study which 
 students commonly get by heart. The defects which 
 we have noted in the teaching of geometry, physics, 
 and Latin are to be found also in the teaching of 
 English, modern languages, chemistry, and in most 
 of the other studies of the secondary school and 
 the college. Either we have been aiming at the 
 wrong results or we have not aimed carefully 
 enough to hit what we are aiming at. Only a pro- 
 founder study of the method which education must 
 employ in order to be education will tell us what 
 the results are which we should be aiming at and 
 how we should set about getting them. This word, 
 method, has come into undeserved disrepute be- 
 cause it has been used to designate the rule-of- 
 thumb devices and the teaching tricks with which 
 badly conducted normal schools have sought to 
 equip their students for the work of teaching. But 
 it is much too significant a term to be harmed by 
 such association for any but the thoughtless. 
 
 What is educational 7nethod? Method is a some- 
 what formidable word but its meaning is very sim- 
 ple — it is always a way of going to work to get 
 certain results which we want. What we want to 
 do determines how we shall go at it, so in order 
 that one may go at anything methodically he must 
 first determine what he wants to do. That is his 
 aim, his purpose, or his undertaking. It is only 
 
 [20I] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 when he has found out quite definitely what he 
 wants to do that he is ready to consider methods of 
 doing it. When one knows that he wants to go to 
 Chicago, he must next pick out the route and the 
 train. When one knows what kind of a house he 
 wants to build, he is ready to have a detailed plan 
 made, and after that to employ a contractor or a 
 carpenter to construct it for him. Method is noth- 
 ing more nor less than the orderly routine to be 
 followed in seeking to accomplish definite results. 
 It is an outline of the steps to be taken, a plan 
 indicating what we must do first, and what next, 
 and what after that. Everyday speech has words 
 and phrases for many different kinds of methods. 
 Men talk as though there were one way of setting 
 to work to build a house, another way of preparing 
 to fight a battle, another way to go about governing 
 a city, and other ways of going to work to make 
 experiments, teach children, study lessons, etc. The 
 fact is that all of these things call for much the same 
 sort of planning. First the person who would do 
 them must determine what he is setting out to do. 
 Next he must collect the materials w^hich are avail- 
 able for his purpose. Then he must allow his mate- 
 rials to redefine his purpose, for when he gets them 
 together he usually finds that they will not permit 
 him to do just what he originally planned, that is, 
 they set a new problem very much more concrete 
 
 [ 202 ] 
 
THE PLACE OF METHOD IN EDUCATION 
 
 and definite than that with which he started, and 
 frequently they give it a quite unexpected turn. He 
 must now proceed to work out this new problem 
 and shape or formulate his results. These are the 
 stages, or steps, in what is called scientific method. 
 It is nothing mysterious, but an orderly, or sys- 
 tematic, way of going to work with any subject 
 matter whatever. Scientists with almost one ac- 
 cord, claiming no special property in it, have insisted 
 that men should use it in all their undertakings. 
 They declare that the first step in any conscious 
 process is to find out what is to be done, that the 
 second step is to examine one's materials, that the 
 third step is to decide what they seem to tell him, 
 to organize them tentatively, that the fourth step is 
 to find out if this thought of them will stand the 
 test, and that the fifth step is to act accordingly. 
 Educational method, like scientific method in 
 general, is nothing more nor less than a system- 
 atic consideration of the task which education 
 undertakes in the conviction that nothing short of 
 such an investigation will lay bare its real pur- 
 poses and the steps which are to be taken. A 
 methodic examination of its work classifies it under 
 the two great headings " ends " and '' means." It 
 assumes that an undertaking which takes so many 
 of the years of the young, so much of the wealth 
 of the land, and which makes so vast a difference 
 
 [203] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 to the future is much too serious to be shaped by 
 the dead hand of tradition or by unexamined opin- 
 ions, no matter who may hold them. So responsible 
 a task requires study. But through a strange per- 
 versity Plato's warning, that the ills of mankind 
 cannot be expected to cease until the thinker 
 becomes the director of human affairs, has hardly 
 been more completely disregarded in any calling 
 than in education. Our makers of educational opin- 
 ion have employed the doctrine of formal discipline 
 to justify themselves with a vengeance. Before 
 assuming educational leadership, they found it nec- 
 essary to make themselves expert in the work 
 of their several callings and have trusted to that 
 specialized expertness in some mysterious way to 
 qualify them as authorities upon education. Under 
 their guidance education has become institution- 
 alized, repeating its virtues of the days before, and 
 its vices, too, for not many of those who direct it 
 have been trained to expertness in it. 
 
 Yet surely the education of the young is not so 
 light a thing that a man has but to wush for knowl- 
 edge about it to have it. If " the art of shaping 
 human powers and fitting them to social uses " ^ 
 is " the supreme art," it assuredly calls for the best 
 and not the most indifferent of artists. No one 
 nowadays thinks of offering himself as an authority 
 
 1 John Dewey, My Educational Creed. 
 [204] 
 
THE PLACE OF METHOD IN EDUCATION 
 
 in medicine who has not taken pains to study medi- 
 cine, yet the art of education is more difficult than 
 that of medicine. To be sure, medicine now has 
 a respectable body of tested, conceptualized experi- 
 ences which everyone who would practice it must 
 assimilate before he is allowed to begin, but educa- 
 tion, too, is not without its tested experiences which 
 should be consulted by everyone who professes to 
 follow its calling seriously. These two sciences have 
 much in common ; they are both clearly practical. 
 Both borrow heavily from other sciences ; yet 
 neither is content to take these contributions 
 without reshaping them to its own use. In each 
 a definite organizing principle determines what 
 must be undertaken and what is pertinent. This 
 is only another way of saying that method is the 
 chief concern of each of them. 
 
 What method mtist do. Method must determine 
 the course of the educational journey, for if it is 
 indifferent how one shall travel, it is indifferent 
 whether one shall go at all. Everyone knows in a 
 general way what that is. There is the individual, 
 on the one hand, and the world in which he must 
 live, on the other. Men have been living here a 
 long time and have accumulated a great deal of 
 knowledge which somehow or other must guide 
 each new traveler. But how shall these two terms 
 of the educational equation be brought together.? 
 
 [ 205 ] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 Just what is the result which we seek? Again, 
 what parts of this knowledge shall we make the 
 child take account of? There is a lot of it — some 
 of it is vastly important and some is not. Is there 
 any principle by which we may select it ? Does 
 it make any difference what kind of a mind the 
 learner has ? 
 
 His own doing must be directed to the doing of 
 those acts which the race has found indispensable 
 to its well-being. Science, religion, literature, gov- 
 ernment must be born again in him. That part of 
 the directive knowledge which the race puts at his 
 disposal which he can use, he must master not 
 statically but dynamically. Not all that passes for 
 knowledge is directive, but unless it works it is not 
 knowledge. So out with that part of it which be- 
 longs only to erudition or with that large part which 
 is professional only to the scholar. The student 
 need not concern himself with that until he begins 
 to prepare for the special calling to which it per- 
 tains. The land which is common to untechnical 
 pursuits is, however, vast in extent. He must pre- 
 empt no more of it than he can till. It is uneco- 
 nomical for society to allow him to claim title to 
 more of this field than he can make produce. 
 
 The airn of education. But what kind of a crop 
 must he grow? A social crop. Education is to 
 make him into a social factor. " Pedagogy," says 
 
 [ 206 ] 
 
THE PLACE OF METHOD IN EDUCATION 
 
 Hegel, " is the art of making men ethical. It looks 
 upon man as natural and points out the way in 
 which he is to be born again. His first nature 
 must be converted into a second spiritual nature in 
 such a manner that the spiritual becomes in him 
 a habit." ^ The particular must be universalized. 
 One's private instincts, desires, emotions, thoughts, 
 and deeds must be rationalized. His instincts must 
 be socialized, his desires must be civilized, his 
 emotions must learn to love and hate aright, his 
 thoughts must be ordered, and in his deeds it must 
 be not his private self but the good which worketh. 
 In other words, he must learn to do as he would 
 be done by, think from the standpoint of the race, 
 "have sound social feeling if his doings are to be 
 deeds, not misdeeds," make his desires wholesome, 
 and regulate his instincts to social ends. In short, 
 he must become a person. This we are told is 
 the highest aim of man. Individuality is only its 
 possibility. It is not until the individual learns to 
 want what God wants, to will the will of God, that 
 he becomes free. " The very essence of personality 
 is our implicit or explicit identification of ourselves 
 with some particular traits of mind, for the weakest 
 personality is that which possesses no particular 
 psychical traits at all." The development of per- 
 sonality, then, is the object of education. And this 
 
 1 Hegel (Uyde's translation), Philosophy of Right, 151. 
 [207] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 development consists in the conscious building up 
 within the learner of certain racially useful traits 
 of mind. He must direct his will to their attain- 
 ment. He must make himself the owner of the 
 personality which he would have. Though social 
 achievement furnishes the model, he himself must 
 paint the picture. The origin of the word is sig- 
 nificant of the method by which personality is 
 acquired. It comes from the Latin personare^ 
 meaning " to sound through," and referring to the 
 actor's habit of speaking through a mask. A per- 
 sonality is the result of personating. To put on 
 Christian personality means to personate a Chris- 
 tian ; to put on moral personality, to personate a 
 moral man ; to put on intellectual personality, to 
 personate an intellectual man. In the Roman law 
 a person is a human being invested with legal 
 rights and liable for the performance of corre- 
 sponding duties, a being who can do and does 
 certain things. Therefore a child, an insane person, 
 or a slave, who could not under the law perform 
 these acts, were not persons. The individual puts 
 on personality by personating or identifying himself 
 with the preferred traits of the species. Though 
 an individual he learns to live the life of his kind. 
 By this personating of the social part, individuality 
 is transformed into personality. 
 
 If this inwrought personality is our ideal of 
 
 [208] 
 
THE PLACE OF METHOD IN EDUCATION 
 
 education, must not all that is learned be in- 
 wrought in order that this may be its culmination ? 
 We cannot strive for an autonomy of conscience 
 without an autonomy of consciousness. The moral 
 personality is only the mental personality function- 
 ing in one direction. It is the mental personality 
 that we must seek to develop, and it can be 
 brought to being only by the individual identify- 
 ing himself with, or making his own, certain spe- 
 cific social traits of mind. When we speak of 
 a moral personality we intend to refer to the fact 
 that the person who has developed it has made 
 his instincts and desires to act under all cir- 
 cumstances in certain systematic ways. When we 
 speak of a mental personality we intend to refer 
 to a similar achievement in mental organization, to 
 the fact that capacities have learned to work in 
 socially approved, specifically useful ways. The man 
 with a trained body is one who has learned both 
 how to use it and to use it to accomplish certain 
 social ends, such as health, work, pleasure, self- 
 defense. He has wrought out for himself a certain 
 physical attitude or temper and can be depended 
 upon to act regularly according to it. The man 
 whom we think of as a moral personality has estab- 
 lished no less definitely organized moral reactions. 
 He has certain traits of character. We say of such 
 an one we always know where to find him. He has 
 
 [209] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 identified himself with a specific type of conduct. 
 Through all the shifts of circumstance he preserves 
 a steady demeanor, maintaining in the midst of trials 
 and temptations the right opinion of things to be 
 feared and not to be feared, for the man within 
 him has chosen to value and to do in these ways. 
 Just so the mental personality has learned specific 
 methods of attack, of deliberating, of searching, of 
 conjecturing, of trying out his conjectures, and of 
 formulating his conclusions. He does not differ 
 from other men in the things which concern him, 
 for human interests are common to us all ; but he 
 does differ from them in the way he goes to work — 
 in that he converts his experience into questions or 
 problems which he does not dismiss with a word, 
 but toward which he maintains the suspended judg- 
 ment, ceaselessly collecting information which has 
 a bearing upon them and, in the light of what he 
 finds, recasting his problem and testing what seems 
 to be the answer until he is quite sure that he 
 has reached it. '' The typically scientific mind may 
 be described as one which stands in a definite rela- 
 tion to as-yet-unknown Truth, and especially to that 
 portion of the as-yet-unknown which is just below 
 the horizon of knowledge," says Mrs. Boole. " In 
 proportion as a mind is non-scientific, the occur- 
 rence of an unfamiliar phenomenon stimulates it 
 to form some immediate classification or judgment. 
 
 [2IO] 
 
THE PLACE OF METHOD IN EDUCATION 
 
 A new statement is hailed at once as ' true ' or 
 ' false ' ; a new fact is classified as * good ' or ' bad,' 
 ' nice ' or ' nasty ' ; an unfamiliar action is ' right ' or 
 'wrong.' In proportion as a mind is scientific, the 
 occurrence of a new phenomenon tends to set it 
 vibrating with a consciousness of coming revelation 
 and to start a certain cycle of mental attitudes, a 
 cycle of the following kind, homage, attention, ob- 
 servation, analysis, antithesis, synthesis, contempla- 
 tion, effacement, repose, judgment or classification. 
 The cycle varies in duration ; each phase may 
 occupy a few seconds or many months, or even 
 years; but the tendency to fall into some such 
 sequence as that above described at the touch of a 
 new fact is what constitutes the essentially scientific 
 condition. " ^ 
 
 The mental personality is one which has learned 
 to work in a certain effective way. Like the phys- 
 ical or the moral, it is an inwrought mode of action. 
 How can it be developed? Professor Thomson 
 italicizes his answer, " T/ie scientific temper must be 
 wrought out by each one for himself. " ^ 
 
 It is of much more importance that one should 
 develop the scientific mood than that he should 
 amass the facts of chemistry, physics, or biology, 
 
 1 M. E. Boole, Preparation of the Child for Science, p. 15. The 
 Clarendon Press, 1904. 
 
 2 Thomson, Introduction to Science, p. 33. Home University Library. 
 
 [211] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 and it is of very much more importance that one 
 should develop the emotional mood than that he 
 should know all that there is to be known about 
 the poetry of Shelley or Shakespeare. 
 
 Superiority of ^"^ knozu ledge of to ^^ kuow ledge 
 abouty If the organizing of this kind of a person- 
 ality within himself on the part of each student is 
 the aim of education, Professor James's distinction 
 between the two kinds of knowledge is vitally 
 important. It is the knowledge of science, lan- 
 guages, literature, history, mathematics, philosophy, 
 and the other socially profitable ways of dealing 
 with human experience which we must strive for, 
 for while knowledge of them requires knowl- 
 edge about them, knowledge aboiit them does not 
 necessarily include knowledge of them. Pine wood 
 is a social fact of importance perhaps to everyone 
 at some time or other in his existence. One may 
 know a great deal about it, but only the boy who 
 has split it and broken it into kindling lengths, who 
 has planed it and sawed it, has a knowledge of it. 
 Just so, it is one thing to know about English and 
 quite another thing to know it. The same is true 
 of French or geography or physics, indeed of every 
 subject which we study. Knowledge is personal, 
 it is the identification of the self with the traits 
 of experience which they present. And knowledge 
 of them every student can have if his teacher has 
 
 [212] 
 
THE PLACE OF METHOD IN EDUCATION 
 
 but once considered its superiority to knowledge 
 about them and has organized his work to make it 
 possible. But, it will be said, to get a knowledge 
 of pine is easy since one can take it into his own 
 hands and manipulate it to his own purposes, while 
 one cannot take history or geography into his own 
 hands and manipulate them. Not so. It is just as 
 easy to work with literature or history or geography 
 as it is with pine wood. The working is no less 
 working because in the case of the pine wood there 
 is a larger manual element than in the other. It 
 is mental working that the race chiefly values, and 
 that each student may learn to perform it in a satis- 
 factory manner for himself is the reason for his 
 being sent to school. It is easy to see that when 
 he studies reading, writing, and arithmetic it is 
 what he learns to do that concerns us. It is not 
 so clear that when he studies history our chief aim 
 is to train him to historize, or geography to geogra- 
 phize, or geology to geologize. Yet, as we have 
 seen, these several studies are only ways in which 
 the race has learned to handle its experience, and 
 our study of them is a challenge to us to begin 
 handling our experience in their ways. It may 
 seem that it is much easier to identify oneself with 
 that racially profitable trait which is the practice 
 of numbering and calculating than with those 
 other racially profitable traits which we have called 
 
 [213] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 historizing or geographizing, because when we study 
 arithmetic we ourselves solve problems and come 
 to think of ourselves as problem solvers while in 
 history or geography we only take instead of doing. 
 That is due to the way we teach these studies, not 
 to the studies themselves. They come to us just as 
 the pine wood does — as something given. They 
 challenge us to work with them, to ask questions of 
 them, to search in them for the answers to our own 
 questions, to rearrange their material, to learn to 
 handle their concepts, to make our own generaliza- 
 tions, and then to try them out for ourselves. 
 When one studies history he does so in order to 
 make his own historic interpretation, to construct 
 his own outline of the way events have succeeded 
 events in time ; when geography, to make his own 
 picture of the way the conditions of human life 
 affect each other in space. He learns to think 
 historically and to think geographically. Just so, 
 '' poetry," we are told, " exists only in the reflective 
 consciousness." ^ " The poem, like the picture and 
 the sonata, is no copy of nature ; its appeal is to the 
 imagination which is contemplative, and not to that 
 which is merely reproductive." ^ To study them one 
 must use his own mind, and every science as well 
 as every art seems to have that same challenge to 
 
 1 Haldane, The Pathway to ReaHty, Vol. II, 183. New York, 1905. 
 
 2 Ibid. 185. 
 
 [214] 
 
THE PLACE OF METHOD IN EDUCATION 
 
 us as its chief reason for existing. If it could speak 
 it would say to us, " Learn how to handle my sub- 
 ject matter, learn how to work with my concepts, 
 see if you can frame questions like those which the 
 man wiio shaped me framed, see if you can search 
 out their answers, see if you can organize and 
 reorganize my material and solve problems with 
 my aid." 
 
 Importance of the context in co7i7iection with 
 which processes are acquired. One cannot develop 
 the mood by itself; he must have a content about 
 which he may develop it. It makes a difference 
 what that particular content is in connection with 
 which he attempts to develop his personal system 
 of reactions. It must not be one which makes the 
 habitual attitudes we seek to engender in him 
 impossible. On the other hand, it must contain 
 plenty of middle terms or elements common to it 
 and to the subsequent experience to which it is 
 intended that the same methods of reaction shall 
 be applied. For unless the new situation is recog- 
 nizably identical with the old familiar one, it cannot 
 call for a similar response. The learning which 
 would provide methods of handling it must be kin- 
 dred to it. The concepts without their normally 
 experienced percepts are empty, and blind as well. 
 This is perhaps the greatest fallacy of modern 
 education, that it seeks to set up the reactions 
 
 [215] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 which it values in connection with a content which 
 is nonrepresentative and leaves the student with 
 the conviction that he has learned nothing that 
 is applicable to anything outside of school. The 
 subject matter of the course of study cannot be 
 selected because it lends itself most readily to class- 
 room manipulation. To choose it for that reason is 
 to consider only the advantage of the teacher. It is 
 not teaching which must be made easy, but learn- 
 ing, and to empty it of intelligible meaning which 
 the student can lay hold of is to make it to him 
 a vain, conventional thing. What is taught in the 
 school is just as valuable there as it is in the world 
 outside the school and no more valuable. It is for 
 their world value and not for any abstract school 
 value that studies must be selected. The content, 
 then, makes an enormous difference to the learner 
 in terms of interest and comprehension when he 
 is learning, and in terms of usability in after days. 
 Futurity is not only the great concern of mankind ; 
 it is peculiarly the concern of youth. It is toward 
 things to come that education must face. The 
 several disciplines are tools which the race has 
 found it as necessary to use as the hammer, the 
 oar, and the skinning knife. They are valuable 
 just in so far as they serve. But institutionalized 
 education being only a part of a whole process, 
 that part which instructs but does not try out 
 
 [216] 
 
THE PLACE OF METHOD IN EDUCATION 
 
 the results of its instruction has cut itself away 
 from its own corrective. One body of men teaches ; 
 another body tries out the results of their teaching. 
 The educational producer is rarely the consumer. 
 If he were he could be trusted, for he would apply 
 the pragmatic test to his own work. As he is not, 
 the sufficiency of what he does is not tested by 
 its outcome but by the traditions which support it. 
 As a result, education tends to remain uncritical 
 and irrational. It does not strive for a clear com- 
 prehension of its end, and it exhibits an undue 
 love for a merely traditional course of study. 
 
 What sJwuld be studied? The object of the 
 course of study is undoubtedly to put at the dis- 
 posal of the student that body of concepts, methods, 
 and reports of percepts which, when made his own 
 by use, will enable him to shape his conduct with 
 a minimum of wasteful experimenting, .in ways 
 which the race has found to bring profitable results. 
 Every subject in it gained its place there because 
 of its manifest utility at the time it was admitted. 
 But the changing universe has run away from some 
 of the studies. They have lost their utility, but 
 they still keep their place in the course as though 
 they retained it. Consequently the course of study 
 has become ritualistic — the spirit of life has, in 
 a measure, gone out of it. If it were framed with 
 forethought and design, would it contain just that 
 
 [217] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 which it now contains? In this connection certain 
 queries constantly recur to me which I find that 
 I cannot answer. The Greek word logos means 
 "word," and it also means "idea" or "thought." 
 Why is it that education limits its interest so 
 largely to the word and neglects the thought ? 
 Education, we are told over and over again, is pri- 
 marily linguistic. Should this be so ? Was it not 
 John Milton who said, " And though a linguist 
 should pride himself to have all the tongues that 
 Babel cleft the world into, yet if he have not studied 
 the solid things in them as well as the words and 
 lexicons, he were nothing so much to be esteemed 
 a learned man, as any yeoman or tradesman com- 
 petently wise in his mother dialect only " ? Why 
 in place of studying the Greek grammar or even 
 the Greek language do we not read the "solid 
 things " in the literature of that remarkable people ? 
 If Rome's great contribution to civilization was law 
 and orderly administration, why does our study of 
 Latin not undertake to lead us to some knowledge 
 of the nature of Rome's greatest gift to the world ? 
 Why instead of confining our students to English 
 literature do we not first make them acquainted 
 with the first-class literature of mankind ? Is there 
 any really good and sufiicient reason why the stu- 
 dent in the general courses should not know his 
 Homer, his Plato, his Dante, and Cervantes as well 
 
 [218] 
 
THE PLACE OF METHOD IN EDUCATION 
 
 as his Shakespeare ? Why in place of the more re- 
 mote aspects of mathematics do not such homely 
 and commonly used matters as the theory and prac- 
 tice of statistics, graphs, simple projective geometry, 
 and mechanical drawing come in for general atten- 
 tion ? Why do we not give as much attention to 
 physical training as the Greeks did? We know that 
 it is more necessary than they did, and we know 
 more about scientific ways of instructing in it. 
 Why do we not teach each person the elements of 
 health protection ? Why, though we say that the 
 object of education is preparation for intelligent 
 citizenship, do we not teach each person the ele- 
 ments of law? Why, when we say that the object 
 of education is morality, do we trust to incidental 
 and indirect instruction to generate clear notions of 
 what morality is ? Why, when we say that one of 
 our chief objects is to teach scientific method, do 
 we not from his very beginning in the elementary 
 school involve each student in a critical search for 
 the reasons for common things ? Why when we 
 study the languages, do we not learn to use them ? 
 Why is not everyone taught shorthand, type- 
 writing, and the elements of accounting? Why is 
 it not part of our theory of general education to 
 teach everyone a trade, as Locke and Rousseau 
 recommended ? Why do we not teach every student 
 how to study? 
 
 [219] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION ? 
 
 Fittincr studies to stttdcnts. But the course of 
 study is not the only feature of education which 
 calls for the application of method ; the selection of 
 the students who should be allowed to pursue the 
 several studies is no less important. " Not more 
 than half the students in my class in geometry 
 could study the subject otherwise than by rote," 
 says a very skillful teacher. " What am I to do 
 with the others ? " Custom says, " Teach them by 
 rote and give them a passing mark at the end of the 
 term " ; but custom is not critical. Is it fair to de- 
 lude them or to delude ourselves into believing that 
 they are profiting by pursuing geometry when they 
 cannot learn it otherwise than by rote? Assuming 
 that these are the facts, does it not follow that we 
 have a duty to keep them out of the geometry class 
 and other classes in which the same thing happens, 
 and to direct them to studies which they can pur- 
 sue to advantage ? This is a large subject and one 
 with which education is only beginning to concern 
 itself seriously. Each one is born with natural apti- 
 tudes. Fortunately we cannot all follow the same 
 calling. Cooperative social life is made possible by 
 the fact that nature equipped us in some measure 
 to be specialists. Plato, who was the first to exam- 
 ine education profoundly, advised the use of thor- 
 oughgoing trials and tests to determine what sort 
 of studies each one was fitted to pursue. For him 
 
 [ 220] 
 
THE PLACE OF METHOD IN EDUCATION 
 
 the education which the individual required could 
 not be decided by birth or the occupation of his 
 father. He must himself be consulted as to his fit- 
 ness, and having proved it, the state could not 
 neglect to give him adequate opportunity. Educa- 
 tion could not afford to be a hit-or-miss affair. 
 There can be no doubt that he was wiser in this 
 respect than subsequent educational practice has 
 been. His wisdom is beginning to be put into 
 effect. The way to proceed is by no means clear. 
 Yet scientific methods of fitting studies to students 
 must somehow be found. 
 
 The wise and enlightened selection of studies on 
 the basis of their social value is one phase of edu- 
 cation which calls for the elaboration of method. 
 The no less wise and enlightened selection of the 
 students whose aptitudes enable them to pursue 
 these several studies with advantage to themselves 
 and society is another. All this, however, though 
 indispensable, is preliminary to the real work of 
 teaching. When the subject has been determined 
 and the class is there ready to begin its work, 
 does it make any difference how the teacher pro- 
 ceeds? The fact is that it does. We may spend 
 millions in erecting school palaces ; we may gather 
 the youth of the nation together in them ; we may 
 employ an army of teachers to teach them just 
 what they should know; but unless they are given 
 
 [221] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 an opportunity to learn, the undertaking will be 
 in vain. The test of teaching then is learning. 
 That must be done by the students. 
 
 Methods of instruction. Two methods and their 
 variations are open to us. Both are very old, and 
 both are Greek in their origin. The one is the 
 method of Pythagoras, which enjoins the student 
 to a long and awesome silence and requires that he 
 sit outside the veil and only listen to the master's 
 wisdom ; the other is the method of Socrates, " who 
 spoke less than his scholars " and so wrought upon 
 them that they discussed everything. The one is 
 the service of the letter, which killeth; the other, 
 the unlocking of the spirit, which is life. 
 
 The recitation method. The modern master, before 
 whose invisible presence we learn to maintain an 
 awesome mental silence in our early years, is the 
 maker of the textbook. To get our lesson means 
 to get his words by heart. What is committed in 
 the seats is repeated in the recitation. The teacher 
 assigns the pages and hears the lesson " said." This 
 is the recitation method. The word is used in a 
 special sense — a recitation is a selected bit of 
 poetry or prose committed to memory and recited 
 aloud, but except that it has not to do with spe- 
 cially selected poetry or prose, the ordinary recita- 
 tion is just like the extraordinary one. I remember 
 that when I began to study geometry, I was in 
 
 [ 222 ] 
 
THE PLACE OF METHOD IN EDUCATION 
 
 doubt what was expected of me and decided at a 
 venture to memorize the theorems which were 
 printed in itaHcs. When the teacher called for the 
 proof of the theorem, I found that something more 
 must be committed, though it seemed to me an un- 
 just burden to put upon anyone to require him to 
 memorize not only what someone else had found 
 out to be true but the steps by which he had come 
 to his conclusion. This makes a deadly dull busi- 
 ness of studying. If drudgery, which is so forbid- 
 ding that all men quite rightly seek to escape it, 
 is work robbed of its meaning, this kind of work is 
 drudgery, for the student sees no glimmer of mean- 
 ing in it. Moreover it is equally devitalizing to 
 the teacher, for it reduces him to a lesson-hearing 
 machine. There are several degrees in this process. 
 That one which employs memoriter learning most 
 completely is called the examination method. The 
 lesson is assigned. The pupils must prepare them- 
 selves to recite it verbatim. The teacher calls them 
 up in turn. Each one attempts to repeat the lesson. 
 The teacher puts down a mark in a book when he 
 has finished and signals to the next one to proceed. 
 It is possible in this way to hear a whole class 
 recite without saying a word. 
 
 The ordinary recitation is a slight variation from 
 this one. The main thing is still the repeating of 
 the lesson, but the teacher sometimes gives a cue 
 
 [223] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 when it has been forgotten, and once in a while 
 cross-questions the students to see if they have 
 the proper degree of familiarity with that which 
 they have been learning. Quiz methods and review 
 methods are usually only more elaborate forms of 
 the recitation. It is distinguished from every other 
 method by the fact that the class exercise is a 
 recitation, that is, a rehearsal of what has been 
 learned before the class exercise takes place. There 
 are some studies, for example, history, geography, 
 spelling, grammar, Latin, algebra, modern lan- 
 guages, literature, etc. which many teachers believe 
 admit of no other treatment. So commonly is the 
 memoriter method employed that its prevalence 
 has called forth the aphorism that " the German 
 teacher teaches but the American teacher hears 
 lessons." 
 
 The lecture method. The recitation method is 
 widely used in elementary and secondary schools. 
 It is used, also, in colleges and sometimes in uni- 
 versity teaching, but the more advanced instruction 
 is given chiefly by lectures. The verb to lecttire 
 means "to read." That method of instructing came 
 into vogue in the medieval universities because 
 books were scarce then and there was no other 
 way in which the students might be put into pos- 
 session of them so easily as by the teacher dictating 
 their contents to them. Nowadays many lecturers 
 
 [224] 
 
THE PLACE OF METHOD IN EDUCATION 
 
 read, but some discourse upon their subject from 
 brief written notes or discuss it extempore. To 
 lecture is exceedingly profitable to the teacher, 
 for it involves the systematizing to a high degree 
 of his own knowledge upon the subject. It is a 
 skillful, attractive, dignified, exceedingly stimulating, 
 and irresponsive method of teaching. To present 
 matters which must be brought together from 
 many authorities, to rearrange outlines, to formulate 
 conclusions or submit the results of one's own in- 
 vestigations, perhaps, requires one to lecture. But 
 It is a peculiarly unsuccessful method of teaching. 
 Orators and lecturers, like books, can neither ask 
 nor answer questions. They are monologists all. 
 
 What is spoken cannot be reperused unless it 
 is taken down, and only a part of it can be taken 
 down. The student must become a copyist while 
 the lecture is proceeding. If he studies his notes 
 afterward, he studies only fragments of what the 
 lecturer has said. The attitude which he is invited 
 to take, and which he gets into the habit of taking, 
 is passive and receptive. He is there to take knowl- 
 edge, not to doubt, inquire, and investigate. He 
 is not put into a position where he must think for 
 himself. The only thing he must do is to memorize, 
 but " to know by heart is not to know at all." 
 
 Professor Osborn calls this " afferent, or inflow- 
 ing mediaeval, and oriental kind of instruction in 
 
 [225] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 which the student is rarely if ever forced to do 
 his own thinking, the 'centripetal system.'" He 
 declares himself an insurgent in education, al- 
 together opposed to the '' overfeeding which stuffs, 
 crams, pours in, spoon-feeds, and as a sort of death- 
 bed repentance institutes creative work after grad- 
 uation." He asks the students, "Is your idea of 
 a good student that of a good * receptacle ' ? " " You 
 should know that not a five foot shelf of books, 
 not even the ardent reading of a fifty foot shelf 
 aided by prodigious memory, will give you that 
 enviable thing called culture, because the yard 
 stick of this precious quality is not what you take 
 in but what you give out, and this from the subtle 
 chemistry of your brain must have passed through 
 a mental metabolism of your own so that you have 
 lent something to it."^ 
 
 The trouble with both the recitation and the 
 lecture method is that they are based upon a wrong 
 theory of knowledge. No one can make knowledge 
 for another any more than he can breathe for an- 
 other. It is no ready-made thing which can be 
 stored up in books and handed on in lectures. 
 Each one out of his own awareness must build 
 his world. The raw materials of knowledge, books, 
 lectures, laboratories, and schools may provide, but 
 
 1 Osborn/Huxley and Education, 26-28. Charles Scribner's Sons, New 
 York, 19 ID. 
 
 [226] 
 
THE PLACE OF METHOD IN EDUCATION 
 
 there are subtle processes of questioning, feeling, 
 thinking, assuming, testing, and using which each 
 one must apply for himself in order to reduce these 
 raw materials to essential parts of his own system. 
 
 What determines zuhetJier a method is good or 
 bad? I think we may say that methods of teach- 
 ing are good just in the degree that they make 
 the student a partner in the enterprise of learning. 
 If he merely sits still and listens, he learns some- 
 thing, but not much. If he reads his book and 
 memorizes it, he learns more because he does 
 more for himself. Can we not surround him with 
 conditions which will involve him profoundly in 
 the process of distinguishing, valuing, selecting, 
 arranging, and using knowledge ? If the crown 
 and fulfillment of education is the ability to do 
 research work, at w^hat age must the student begin 
 the work of searching ? The notion that searching 
 is a method which can profitably be employed 
 only in postgraduate instruction is completely 
 disproved by what goes on in every kindergarten 
 in the land. The comforting thing about that 
 method is that it can be used in some degree 
 in the teaching of practically every subject and 
 in every grade of instruction. It requires simply 
 that the learner shall be allowed to discover truth 
 for himself, that he shall be put into the way of 
 having his own experiences, formulating his own 
 
 [227] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 concepts, and learning their meaning and how to 
 use them by using them. How shall the student be 
 induced to think for himself? How are the states 
 of feeling out of which sensations and opinions 
 arise to be generated ? 
 
 The Socratic method. Fortunately the inventor 
 and the most successful of all the users of the 
 method, Socrates himself, has supplied the answer. 
 Thinking " is the conversation which the soul 
 holds with herself in considering of anything. I 
 speak of what I scarcely understand ; but the 
 soul when thinking appears to me to be just 
 talking — asking questions of herself and answer- 
 ing them, affirming and denying. And when she 
 has arrived at a decision, either gradually or by 
 a sudden impulse, and has at last agreed, and does 
 not doubt, this is called her opinion. I say then 
 that to form an opinion is to speak, and opinion 
 is a word spoken — I mean to one's self and in 
 silence, not aloud to another."^ But if thinking 
 is speaking to one's self silently, does not audible 
 speaking under conditions which do not supply 
 the words or call for " mere conversation," but 
 require us to hunt for what we should say, involve 
 thinking also ? Was it not for this very reason that 
 Socrates and Plato employed the conversational, 
 or dialogue, method in their teaching? And was 
 
 1 Plato, Theaetetus, 190. 
 
 [228] 
 
THE PLACE OF METHOD IN EDUCATION 
 
 it not that method as surely as the lofty character 
 of the subjects which they led their students to 
 investigate by it which made their instruction 
 the most fruitful which has ever been given by 
 teacher to pupil ? Their use of question and an- 
 swer was due to the conviction that truth is a 
 thing to be found out, not a thing which can be 
 imparted. It is a singular circumstance in the 
 history of culture that as soon as men abandoned 
 their method and began to try to impart truth 
 as something preestablished which has only to be 
 handed down from teacher to student, the great 
 age of intellectual discovery came to a close. 
 
 The heuristic method. The Socratic method, 
 then, shorn of the necessity which required the 
 teacher' of mankind at Athens to prepare the 
 way for it by first taking the conceit out of some 
 of the men upon whom he used it, seems to be 
 the one which makes real teaching possible. The 
 heuristic method, the adoption of which has been 
 so vigorously pleaded for in recent days, is nothing 
 but the Socratic method modernized. The essence 
 of this method is that the pupil must be the dis- 
 coverer. All that is known which he is to learn 
 must be rediscovered by him. To teach by this 
 method does not mean to tell, but to ask. When 
 difficulties paralyze the learner, he may be given 
 a cue by a suggestion or a question which will 
 
 [229] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 put him into action, but the teacher is there to 
 occasion the problems, not to supply answers before 
 questions have been raised within the learner's 
 mind. Professor Meiklejohn contended " that the 
 permanent and universal condition of all method 
 in education is that it be heuristic." ^ In every 
 subject the student must do his own mental walk- 
 ing. The teacher may pick him up when he 
 stumbles, and when he is lost should show him 
 the way, but must not carry him. The method 
 assumes that the student can think. Every kinder- 
 gartner knows that this is true even of the smaller 
 learners. It strives to put each student upon his 
 own feet and to keep him from leaning unduly 
 upon his fellows. Each individual must develop 
 his own understanding. 
 
 The genetic method. The genetic method differs 
 from the heuristic method in the respect that the 
 subject is developed by the class under the guid- 
 ance of the teacher. The questions are directed 
 to the class as a whole. Each one makes an effort 
 to answer them or asks such questions as arise 
 in him. The teacher is a chairman presiding over 
 a discussion. The textbook serves as an outline 
 of topics to be considered. Every lesson is opened 
 by a discussion in the class, is then studied in 
 
 1 See Armstrong, The Teaching of Scientific Method, p. 237. London, 
 1910. 
 
 [230] 
 
THE PLACE OF METHOD IN EDUCATION 
 
 the textbook and in as many other books as 
 are available, and then rediscussed in the class. 
 Individual work, recitations, examinations, and lec- 
 tures all have a place in this scheme of teaching, 
 but the class discussion is the main thing. It 
 converts the recitation period into a thinking 
 period, in which each student does his best 
 studying under the stimulus of his fellows and 
 of the teacher. In certain subjects, say mathe- 
 matics, physics, laboratory chemistry, and com- 
 position, in which the work that each one should 
 perform for himself can be clearly indicated, the 
 heuristic method would seem to be best, but in 
 other subjects, like literature, languages, history, 
 and philosophy, where the give and take from 
 the teacher and from one's fellow students is 
 perhaps of greater value, the genetic method is 
 more serviceable. Learners cannot, to be sure, 
 find out everything for themselves, but they can 
 at any rate employ the methods of fact finding 
 and the methods by which facts are classified 
 and conclusions from them deduced and tried out. 
 These methods of teaching have been sufficiently 
 tested to warrant the conclusion that the learner 
 learns by them, that his interest grows instead 
 of dwindling under them, that those schools are 
 good schools which are talking schools, and those 
 are poorer than they should be in which the 
 
 [231] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 students merely attempt to imbibe knowledge. The 
 school must become a workshop in which students 
 work at definite tasks, and by their own efforts 
 under the master's eye learn to use the great tools 
 with which the race has by the same process 
 learned to do its work. To give a child a con- 
 ception instead of inducing him to find it seemed 
 to the saintly Pestalozzi to be a wicked act. It 
 robs the child of opportunity. Does it not rob 
 society as well ? 
 
 [232] 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 LEARNING BY PROBLEM GETTING 
 
 Docs 7ncre observing teach us ? How many years 
 of sitting beside a chauffeur and watching him 
 guide the machine must one put in before he can 
 learn how to drive himself, if he never takes the 
 wheel? How many years of careful observation 
 of the work of a carpenter will teach the trade, 
 provided one does not take the tools into his own 
 hands? In cities, wherever men are engaged in 
 difficult work which can be seen from the streets, 
 a crowd gathers to watch them. Do the persons 
 in these crowds learn to perform the work which 
 they observe so intently? How long would one 
 have to watch a company of experts play tennis 
 or baseball in order to become a qualified player 
 himself? The answer to all of these questions is 
 that no amount of watching of itself will enable 
 one to do any of these things. One may grow 
 gray as a baseball fan without learning how 
 to catch or throw a ball ; and one may ride 
 beside a skillful chauffeur all his days without 
 acquiring any skill in driving the machine. Mere 
 looking and listening will not teach. To learn to 
 
 [233] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 drive, one must take the wheel ; to learn to ham- 
 mer, one must hammer; and to learn to work 
 with concepts, one must work with concepts. So 
 marvelously does action sharpen our looking and 
 listening that the mere beginnings of doing, on 
 our own part, convert our seeings and hearings 
 into values. The person who has tried to drive 
 the machine learns something by watching the 
 expert. The embryo baseball player profits • by 
 watching the game. I watch men skate and see 
 every movement they make, but the instant I 
 myself put on the skates, I begin to see that 
 there is much more to skating than my observation 
 had told me. Indeed, even the prospect of taking 
 the wheel as soon as we come to an easy piece 
 of road converts my desultory attention into the 
 closest interest, and I now become all eyes and 
 ears for what is being done. 
 
 We are motor-ideo beings. The new school of 
 psychologists contends that, since behavior is the 
 characteristic of living things, the only way to 
 study consciousness is by studying behavior. Con- 
 sciousness is motor — every sensory state tends to 
 become an appropriate muscular movement. Ideas 
 produce action. We are ideo-motor beings. The 
 inverse has been neglected, but it is equally true. 
 We are motor-ideo beings. Action produces ideas. 
 It is the striving to attain an end which develops 
 
 [234] 
 
LEARNING BY PROBLEM GETTING 
 
 knowledge. Consciousness is conative. Mind is 
 a problem solver. It is perplexity, doubt, conflict, 
 and not the even tenor of an untroubled mind 
 which causes reflection. Where there is no ques- 
 tion, there can be no searching for an answer. 
 Where there is no problem, there is no occasion 
 for the mind to converse with " herself." Seeings, 
 hearings, feelings, thinkings, and doings follow 
 each other at random. We are not concerned 
 about anything in particular, our minds go wool- 
 gathering, we daydream. A purpose to be served, 
 an undertaking to be accomplished, keeps the 
 flow of ideas within bounds. What I read or 
 heard or saw but a moment ago, while purpose- 
 lessly daydreaming, flitted by in a mist, but now^ 
 parts of what I read, see, or hear, which are 
 congruent with my purpose, bite themselves into 
 my awareness. Now I learn, for I hunt, I select, 
 I reject, I scheme, plan, fit, and am satisfied or 
 dissatisfied with my own state of mind. To be 
 active minded is to be acting — not taking things 
 as they come, but making them come our way. But 
 this is no hit-or-miss affair. We cannot think by 
 commanding ourselves to think, neither can we 
 feel by telling ourselves that the occasion calls 
 for feeling. There are certain preliminaries which 
 must be attended to before one can command 
 his own mind. Learning to use one's own mind, 
 
 [235] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 however, in such ways that he will go on using 
 it to advantage as long as he lives is the one, great, 
 supreme object of education. Now that psychology 
 has defined itself as the study of behavior, education 
 must follow suit by conceiving its mission as that 
 of training the student to profitable behavior — 
 that is, to do the things that the situations which 
 he will meet in life call for. Our contention is 
 that these social doings are definite responses to 
 concrete situations, and that the learning which 
 will fit us to make them must be the learning 
 of definite doings, not that vague thing which is 
 called general training. One definite reaction which 
 all must learn is how to set about learning any- 
 thing. What are the outlines of that process? 
 
 What the psychology of atte7ition tells us as to 
 how to go to work. If one would thread a needle, 
 there is one spot where he should keep his eye. 
 If one is shooting at a mark, it will not do to let 
 his eyes wander up and down, looking now upon 
 the muzzle of the gun, now upon the trigger. If 
 one is trying to drive a nail, he should not fix his 
 gaze upon his fingers which hold the nail, nor yet 
 upon the hammer. Golf players who give raw 
 beginners their preliminary lessons insist that they 
 should fix their eyes upon a certain object. Ball 
 players are told to keep their eyes not upon the 
 bat, but on the ball. Boxers are taught to watch 
 
 [236] 
 
LEARNING BY PROBLEM GETTING 
 
 the eyes of their antagonist. The strange thing 
 about all this is that, if one will only keep his 
 eyes fastened to the right spot, his muscles will 
 do about what is required of them, whereas no 
 amount of urging will make them respond in 
 other than a fumbling way unless he does keep 
 his eyes upon the proper object. 
 
 Why is this? Why cannot one thread a needle 
 just as well by keeping his eyes fixed upon the 
 point of the needle as upon its eye, or drive a 
 nail just as well by looking at the head of the 
 hammer as by looking at the head of the nail ? 
 The thread must be put through the eye of the 
 needle. It must be the focus of attention in order 
 that the coordinations may be directed to it. Of 
 themselves they center upon it just so long as 
 it is specially sensed. As soon as we begin to 
 examine the sharpness of its point, its weight, its 
 length, or other sensation aspects of it, our muscu- 
 lar system shapes itself to these ends. Everyone 
 has had the experience of thinking ahead of the 
 word he was writing to the word he meant to write 
 next, and finding that his pen had written the word 
 which he was thinking about, not the word which 
 he had set it to write. If the sensation is clear 
 enough the motor activity comes of itself. In 
 learning to ride a bicycle or to drive an auto- 
 mobile, the beginner sees an object which he must 
 
 [237] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 steer away from, and the next instant finds that he 
 has steered right up to it. The sensory content 
 sets off the motor response. To steer in the right 
 way, one must keep his eye upon the course which 
 he should follow, not upon the one which he must 
 not take. This is as true in morals as it is in driv- 
 ing a machine. And in acquiring all forms of skill 
 the proper focusing of attention, or looking where 
 one should look, would seem to be much more 
 than half the battle. Training to do anything, 
 then, would seem to be largely a matter of learn- 
 ing to keep one's eye to the right spot and to let 
 one's doings shape themselves accordingly. It is 
 the business of sensory experience to define the 
 problem, set the task, or locate the end. Motor 
 responses immediately fall upon it, and in so far 
 as habitual doings can handle it, it is already 
 solved. If they fail to respond in the proper degree, 
 their failure must be looked at and a try-try-again 
 process must ensue, each new effort providing a 
 new object to be looked at before a new and 
 better doing is attempted. Thus even try-try-again 
 learning is a process of redefining what must be 
 done, and not making the first response over and 
 over again blindly. 
 
 Where mtcst one keep his eye in studying? If one 
 cannot learn to shoot at a mark, or to thread a 
 needle, or to bat a ball, without learning to keep 
 
 [238] 
 
LEARNING BY PROBLEM GETTING 
 
 his eye on the right spot, is it Hkely that he can 
 learn to read or to write, to think geometry or 
 logic, to use scientific method, or to make history 
 or literature function in the life which he leads, 
 without learning what to look for before his nerv- 
 ous system can make the responses which he wants 
 it to make ? Studying is conscious learning. Con- 
 sciousness is conative. It exists to define problems 
 for organic responses to close in upon and solve. 
 When the problem is sufficiently defined, the solu- 
 tion seems to come of itself. I desire to learn to 
 shoot at a mark so as to hit the bull's-eye. There 
 is nothing w^hich I can do but to keep redefining 
 my aim. My nervous system will have to catch the 
 knack of responding better and better for itself. 
 I can only see what is wanted and trust it to 
 comply. Everyone who has practiced a long time 
 at anything, knows how mysteriously the skill 
 finally comes. More and more clearly he sees what 
 must be done, but somehow the muscles refuse 
 to do it. Yet let him but keep on asking and re- 
 asking them to make the response w^iich he seeks, 
 and one day, all of a sudden, they will supply it, 
 if it is in their power. " It 's dogged that does it," 
 said Darwin. The mathematician who carries his 
 problem about with him month after month, per- 
 haps even year after year, at last sees the solution 
 staring him in the face. He does not know just 
 
 [239] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 how it came, but because he had the problem and 
 kept the problem, it came. " Seek and ye shall 
 find " is the law. But how can skill in shooting 
 come to those who do not aim at the bull's-eye, but 
 are content to discharge the gun only in its general 
 direction? Is there any profit at all in cultivating 
 that kind of marksmanship? It may serve a casual 
 interest to know in a general way how the thing 
 is done, should one ever want to do it, and what 
 degree of skill others have attained in it, but 
 that sort of knowledge seems so trifling and 
 dehumanizing that one longs once more to hear 
 the Spartan cry, " Strip or leave the gymnasium." 
 
 Setting the learner on the track of inve7itio7i. 
 " I am convinced that the method of teaching 
 which approaches most nearly to the methods 
 of investigation is incomparably the best " ; wrote 
 Edmund Burke, " since not content with serving 
 up a few barren and lifeless truths, it leads to the 
 stock on which they grew; it tends to set the 
 learner himself on the track of invention, and to 
 direct him into those paths in which the author 
 has made his own discoveries."^ 
 
 Let us go then to the inventors, and ask them 
 how they found out what they did not know before, 
 in order that we may learn the process of discov- 
 ery from them. First we must note that even the 
 
 1 Quoted in Armstrong, The Teaching of Scientific Method, p. 237, 
 [240] 
 
LEARNING BY PROBLEM GETTING 
 
 greatest of them did not create something out of 
 nothing. "Imagination is constructive, not creative." 
 John Ruskin points out that man with all his 
 genius has not succeeded in creating a new kind 
 of animal. In his most unhampered dreaming he 
 has simply rearranged in new ways the parts of 
 the animals which he found here. Every inven- 
 tion is that sort of a variation of what has been 
 experienced. But how did men come to vary their 
 experiences in novel and highly beneficial ways ? 
 Did they accidentally stumble upon these vari- 
 ations? Did the images and thoughts with which 
 their minds were filled by chance coagulate into 
 new forms, so that mind, by a sort of spontaneous 
 generation, developed new and profitable ideas? 
 It is not in that way that men have made inven- 
 tions. Casual interest, reverie, and daydreaming 
 do not produce discoveries. If they did, indif- 
 ference w^ould not save them. There is, to be 
 sure, an element of accident in all invention, but 
 the invention itself is not a lucky accident. We 
 undertake something. That undertaking calls up 
 remembered images, free images, and thoughts in 
 new relations. Our effort sharpens attention. We 
 are searching for means to ends. Our trying makes 
 the parts of experience fall into new combinations. 
 An unexpectedly apt variation tumbles out before 
 us. We did not know what it might be before it 
 
 [241] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 disclosed itself. It presented itself accidentally, but 
 we were hunting for something along that line. 
 Newton's description of his own method was that 
 he pondered again and again on a question. " The 
 combinatory law of the images " is not under con- 
 trol. Purpose brings hosts of them under the eye 
 of attention. One after the other they are dismissed 
 as unsatisfactory. " Suddenly that particular form 
 arises to the light which harmonizes perfectly with 
 the ruling idea, mood or design." ^ Was its coming, 
 then, due to chance or to the insistence of the 
 ruling idea, mood, or design ? " The same relation 
 that a word solving a riddle bears to that riddle 
 is born by the modern conception of light to the 
 facts discovered by Grimaldi, Romer, Huygens, 
 Newton, Malus, and Fresnel, and only by the help 
 of this slowly developed conception is our mental 
 vision enabled to embrace the broad domain of 
 facts in question."^ 
 
 How inventions are made. Uniquely pernicious 
 is the popular theory as to how inventions are 
 made, for it does irreparable damage to the minds 
 of the young. A myth tells us that the moving 
 teakettle lid directed James Watt to his valuable 
 discovery. But note the genealogy of that inven- 
 tion. Hero of Alexandria, about 130 B.C., described 
 
 1 Mach, Scientific Lectures, p. 279. Chicago, 1898. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 278. 
 
 [242] 
 
LEARNING BY PROBLEM GETTING 
 
 a device by which the air in a hollow altar, when 
 heated by a fire upon it, drove water from a ves- 
 sel below it into a suspended bucket, causing it 
 to descend and open the attached temple doors. 
 Gerbert of Aurillac (d. 1002) and Leonardo da 
 Vinci both seem to have tried to make steam do 
 mechanical work. Delia Porta in 1601 anticipated 
 the steam engine which Savery a century later 
 made. In 1663 the Marquis of Worcester proposed, 
 if he did not indeed make, the first useful steam 
 engine. In 1698 Savery obtained a patent for a 
 water-raising engine. In 1705 Newcomen made 
 the piston engine a success. In 1763 James Watt, 
 " an instrument maker in Glasgow, while engaged 
 by the university in repairing a model of New- 
 comen's engine, was struck by the waste of steam 
 to which the alternate chilling and heating of the 
 cylinder gave rise. He saw that the remedy, in his 
 own words, would lie in keeping the cylinder as hot 
 as the steam which entered it. With this view he 
 added to the engine a new organ — an empty vessel 
 separate from the cylinder, into which the steam 
 should be allowed to escape from the cylinder to be 
 condensed there by the application of cold water 
 either outside or as a jet."^ Working to this end 
 Watt perfected his patent in 1769. He then pro- 
 ceeded to work out further improvements. 
 
 1 Encyclopedia Britannica, article, " Steam Engine." 
 [243] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 How docs a scientist work ? These men, one after 
 the other, were seeking the right word to solve a 
 riddle ; that is, they were trying to solve a problem 
 which had been handed on to them by men who 
 went before them. Their efforts were not purpose- 
 less; they were directed to an end. But how does 
 a scientist work ? How did Charles Darwin set 
 about making his marvelous discovery? As natu- 
 ralist, he accompanied the Beagle on its famous 
 voyage from 183 1 to 1836. " I have always felt that 
 I owe to the voyage the first real training or educa- 
 tion of my mind," ^ he wrote, referring to the riddles 
 he had to solve in puzzling out the geological struc- 
 ture of new and unknown districts. After returning 
 home, in 1837, he wrote: "In July opened first 
 note-book on Transmutation of Species. Had been 
 greatly struck from about the month of previous 
 March on character of South American fossils and 
 species on Galapagos Archipelago. These facts 
 (especially latter) origin of all my views." ^ In his 
 " Autobiography " and his " Naturalists' Voyage 
 around the World " he explains the mental per- 
 plexity, which was the origin of all his views, in this 
 fashion : " During the voyage of the Beagle I had 
 been deeply impressed by discovering in the Pam- 
 pean formations great fossil animals covered with 
 
 1 Life and Letters, p. 6i. 
 
 2 Poulton, Charles Darwin, p. 26. New York, 1896. 
 
 [244] 
 
LEARNING BY PROBLEM GETTING 
 
 armour, like that on existing armadillos. . . ." " This 
 wonderful relationship in the same continent be- 
 tween the dead and the living, will, I do not doubt, 
 hereafter throw more light on the appearance of or- 
 ganic beings on our earth and their disappearance 
 from it, than any other class of facts." 
 
 Now he had his problem. The next step was 
 to find a theory for its solution. In a letter to 
 his cousin in June, 1838, he writes, "It is my 
 prime hobby, and I really think some day I shall 
 be able to do something in that most intricate 
 subject — species and varieties." He gathers facts 
 — " all kinds of facts " — about species and varie- 
 ties. In October, 1838, he read " Malthus on Popu- 
 lation." " Being well prepared to appreciate the 
 struggle for existence which everywhere goes on 
 from long continued observation of the habits of 
 animals and plants, it at once struck me that under 
 these circumstances favorable variations would tend 
 to be preserved, and unfavorable ones to be de- 
 stroyed. The result of this would be the forma- 
 tion of new species. Here then I had a theory 
 by which to work." 
 
 The hypothesis is only the redefining of the 
 problem. First, one must examine the facts that 
 seem to bear upon the problem he started with. 
 That examination tells us that some of these facts 
 bear upon it more intimately than others, and that 
 
 [245] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 its answer seems to lie in their particular direc- 
 tion. They must be interrogated specifically. The 
 hypothesis is the question, or rather the series of 
 questions, which we must put to them. Darwin 
 now had his hypothesis, or theory, by which to 
 work. Then came the years of patient collection 
 of facts in the trying out, both negatively and 
 positively, of the conclusions deduced from the 
 hypothesis. At last the theory seemed to its author 
 to be proved, but he could not trust his own judg- 
 ment. He must now formulate and publish it, for 
 publishing it or submitting it to the judgment of 
 his fellow workers in the same field is as impor- 
 tant as any of the steps of scientific method, since, 
 as Professor Minot has said, " Science consists in 
 the discoveries made by individuals, afterwards 
 confirmed and correlated by others, so that they 
 lose their personal character."^ 
 
 All are agreed that Darwin possessed that pre- 
 cious human quality which we call " an open mind." 
 But did he simply open his mind and let Nature 
 write her truth upon it ? Would it not be much 
 more correct to say that Darwin had a vastly 
 better quality, namely, an inquiring mind, or a 
 mind that worked? He himself said, "It's dogged 
 that does it," but would " dogged " have done it 
 
 1 See Royce, The Problem of Christianity, Vol. II, p. 225. New York, 
 [246] 
 
LEARNING BY PROBLEM GETTING 
 
 without a question? In other words, is it not the 
 systematic way in which he worked, rather than his 
 persistence, which brought the great result? 
 
 Discoveries are not made by tJie aimless accumu- 
 lation of facts. It is popularly supposed that dis- 
 coveries are made in another fashion, and that 
 this is neither the way that the great masters 
 work nor the way that the apprentices should take 
 in their preparation. It is Francis Bacon who is 
 chiefly responsible for misleading mankind in re- 
 gard to this very important matter. Repelled by 
 the scholastic logic, he described the process of 
 discovery as consisting first in the accumulating 
 of facts, and subsequently abstracting their identi- 
 ties and differences, and so deriving laws or general 
 principles from them. " The value of this method," 
 writes Professor Jevons, " might be estimated his- 
 torically by the fact that it has not been followed 
 by any of the great masters of science." ^ Not the 
 blind accumulation of facts but the putting of ques- 
 tions to nature is the essence of scientific method. 
 The discoverer is the man who is perplexed, who 
 has a problem which has set him to guessing how 
 it may be solved. The problem must be his prob- 
 lem, not a merely abstract one. When it is his 
 problem, it keeps turning itself over in his mind, 
 until he finally hits upon some notion as to how to 
 
 ^ Jevons, Principles of Science, Vol. II, p. 134. London, 1874. 
 
 [247] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 solve It. Now It has reached the hypothesis stage, 
 it has redefined Itself and become a manageably 
 concrete question. This hypothesis may not work. 
 Then he must discard it and find a better one. " I 
 liave steadily endeavored to keep my mind free so 
 as to give up any hypothesis however much beloved 
 (and I cannot resist forming one on every subject) 
 as soon as facts are opposed to it," wrote Darwin. 
 Wherein is the process of finding things out the 
 first time different from the process of finding them 
 out the secoiid ti7ne? The state of mind which 
 makes discoveries, then, is that which asks ques- 
 tions, which has theories, which anticipates. Learn- 
 ing is not the accumulation of facts, but the 
 purposeful accumulation of facts. Mind is primarily 
 not analytical, but constructive. Analysis or defini- 
 tion is for synthesis and cannot profitably go on 
 by itself. It Is motive, purpose, and plan which 
 build the work of the great scientist, as they do 
 the work of the great artist. Liebig, Indeed, 
 declared that there w^as no essential difference 
 between them. Not blind labor but working by 
 a plan gains the end. Now wherein is the process 
 of finding things out the first time different from 
 the process of finding them out the second time ? 
 Human discoveries have not, as a rule, been made 
 by chance ; they have been made by the minds 
 which set problems before themselves and labored 
 
 [248] 
 
LEARNING BY PROBLEM GETTING 
 
 persistently to solve them. It was not by accumu- 
 lating facts blindly that the steam engine was 
 invented. Is it possible for the student to redis- 
 cover it simply by accumulating facts about it.f* 
 Must he not put himself somewhat in the posi- 
 tion of the inventor, ask himself similar questions, 
 supply himself, at least in thought, with similar 
 materials, and construct a result ? 
 
 Must not the stude7it prefer the search for truth 
 to truth bestowed? The story is told of one of the 
 early philosophers that when a student at one of 
 the great philosophical schools of Athens he 
 asked his teacher to direct him to the problems, 
 saying that he preferred to find the solution for 
 them himself. He was a young Greek Lessing, 
 who preferred to search for truth to having truth 
 bestowed. Were not he and Lessing right ? Has 
 the student, indeed, any choice in the matter .^^ 
 Must he not insist upon undertaking the search 
 for truth for himself, if he is ever to get it? 
 Neither an intellectual, a moral, nor an aesthetic 
 character can be formed otherwise than by a man 
 persistently presenting to himself the objects which 
 belong to it as his good. Passive observation will 
 not make them his. Nature provides him with 
 instructive curiosity and personal needs. Out of 
 that each man must create his own entire body 
 of comprehension and appreciation. 
 
 [249] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 That process should be a systematic one. Merely 
 to tell a person what pictures are good will not 
 make him appreciate them. Neither will telling 
 him why they are good. He must first want to 
 know^ and himself ponder about them. The reason 
 why the didactic teaching of morals fails, and the 
 didactic teaching of science, history, literature, or 
 any other subject, is because it tries to impart 
 results instead of striving to direct processes. 
 
 What is the value of answers zuhich have not 
 been preceded by qtiestions? Mind works by focal- 
 ization. Attention is a name for the fact that 
 experience has a center and a margin. Whatever 
 occupies the center is the object of acutest 
 awareness. Marginal matters shade off into ob- 
 scurity. Self-protection keeps my affairs, my un- 
 dertakings, my interests in the center. The rest 
 are negligible, these must ever have the right of 
 way. If I ask a question and you give an answer, 
 I seize upon your answer and try to interpret it in 
 terms of my scheme of meanings. I make it mine. 
 But textbooks and teachers are by no means so 
 thoughtful. They do not wait for us to ask ques- 
 tions — they at once begin to supply answ^ers and 
 are not usually polite enough to ask preliminary 
 questions in order to enlist our interest in what 
 they are trying to answer. If attention were differ- 
 ent from what it is, if everything that passed before 
 
 [250] 
 
LEARNING BY PROBLEM GETTING 
 
 the mind produced a uniformly vivid impression, if 
 there were no picking out or focaHzing whatever, 
 instruction which supphed answers without ques- 
 tions would perhaps be as good as any other kind. 
 Then Bacon's notion of discovery would be correct. 
 Learning of all sorts would be just the accumula- 
 tion of facts, for the function of mind would be to 
 mirror nature. 
 
 But attention does not work that way. Potential 
 answers to questions may be all about us, but until 
 we ask the questions they will not reveal them- 
 selves. We cannot expect to find without seeking, 
 nor to arrive at a destination without first taking 
 precaution to set out for it. The chief difference 
 between the great discoverers and lesser men 
 seems to be that the discoverers learned how to 
 put their minds to work, while the others did not. 
 It is the business of education to teach that lesson. 
 It must shift its attention from things to be known 
 and minds which know them to the relations which 
 are to be set up between the experiencing subject 
 and the experienced objects. 
 
 If mind is a problem solver what must teachers 
 do? If mind is a problem solver and works by 
 focalization of attention, what does this principle 
 require of teachers ? Not to teach blindly, and not 
 to allow their children to study blindly. " Children 
 fear the dark," says Herbart, and by that he means 
 
 [251] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 that they shrink and withdraw from that which 
 they cannot comprehend and lay hold of. They are 
 naturally eager to learn, but obscurity repels them. 
 They are naturally active, but they cannot act in a 
 given way without some anticipation of what they 
 are to do. Professor Dewey has suggested that per- 
 haps in no other way could so great an improve- 
 ment be brought about in education as by teachers 
 with one accord seeing to it that children should 
 never set about studying any lesson without first 
 having a clear notion as to just what it is that they 
 are undertaking to learn, and what they are to 
 do in order to learn it. Each single lesson upon 
 a given subject is an organic member of a series. 
 The purposes of the separate lessons must interact 
 to form one scheme of purpose. The teacher who 
 directs the students to the comprehension of the 
 parts must comprehend the purpose of the whole. 
 As a precondition to the reform which Professor 
 Dewey suggests, another reform is necessary. The 
 teacher must know the purpose of each study which 
 he teaches, in order to know how to shape instruc- 
 tion to attain the desired result. Unless education 
 is an irrational proceeding, there must be such a 
 purpose behind the teaching of each subject. The 
 teacher is there to guide the student to socially 
 profitable experiences which will come to him if 
 he will consider this particular body of problems in 
 
 [252] 
 
LEARNING BY PROBLEM GETTING 
 
 the light of certain suggestions as to methods of 
 handhng them. He cannot act as a guide unless 
 he knows what it is most profitable for us to see. 
 He must plan the journey before we set out. Is it 
 suflficient if he alone plan the journey? 
 
 M2ist not the student have a general aim in pur- 
 suing each study ? Should not the student from the 
 outset know w^iere he is going, or should he be led 
 by faith ? It is customary to say that he is too im- 
 mature to comprehend the purposes which the dif- 
 ferent studies serve. He must take them on trust. 
 
 His not to reason why, 
 His but to do and die. 
 
 To be sure, he has his questions about their value, 
 and since he is to work at them for some time, he 
 would like to know^ before he begins w^hat they are 
 for and what the outcome is to be. Those who 
 think it unwise to encourage the doubts of youth 
 would suppress all this and demand unquestioning 
 acceptance which, by a curious metastasis, they call 
 docility. Ought w^e not to proceed in just the oppo- 
 site way.f* Must not the student know what he is 
 to aim at in order to learn to shoot .^ The more 
 definite and purposeful his undertaking can be from 
 the beginning, the greater the energy which it will 
 call forth from him. If his mind is to attend school 
 as well as his body, he must find his own purposes 
 
 [253] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 there. To be sure, he cannot be made aware of the 
 full meaning of the subject before he has studied it. 
 No more can the traveler anticipate in detail what 
 he will see in a strange country before he has set 
 foot in it. Yet, unless he prepares his mind for his 
 journey, the meaning of the objects which his guide 
 bids him look at will escape him, and he will not 
 even see what is there to be seen. The student 
 must have a general aim if his work is not to be 
 merely haphazard. He must face each study he 
 takes up as an opportunity to perfect himself in 
 the particular kind of skill which it represents. 
 Without this general aim he may make the mis- 
 take of trying to learn to skate by diligently w^atch- 
 ing others skate and committing descriptions of 
 how it is done, without once putting on the 
 skates himself. 
 
 And must not the stiident have also a specific aim 
 to make possible the studying of each lesson ? Must 
 he not also have a specific problem to solve in the 
 learning of each lesson ? Theoretically each lesson 
 has a reason of its own. It has been chosen to 
 teach some particular part of the whole process 
 which is to be mastered. To master this phase 
 of the process, it is just as necessary to proceed by 
 a plan as it is in striving to master the subject as 
 a whole. The essence of scientific method, as we 
 have seen, is the location of the problem. When 
 
 [254] 
 
LEARNING BY PROBLEM GETTING 
 
 it has been found, mind has an end to which to 
 work and can bring its resources to bear upon it. 
 The clearer the anticipation of the end, the more 
 definite the responses which it calls forth. "The 
 nature of the mental life," says Professor Dewey, 
 " may be illustrated as follows : Suppose an indi- 
 vidual in a dark room, with which he is wholly 
 unacquainted, and which is lighted up at brief in- 
 tervals by an electric spark; at the first spark the 
 individual will perceive next to nothing, and that 
 little indistinctly. At the next spark he has, how- 
 ever, this vague basis of expectation upon which 
 to work, and the result is that he apperceives 
 somewhat more. This apperception enables him 
 to form a more perfect anticipation of what is com- 
 ing, and thus enables him to adjust his mind more 
 perfectly. This process of apperception through 
 anticipation, and reaction of the apperceived con- 
 tent upon the completeness of the anticipation, 
 continues until during some flash he has a pretty 
 definite and perfect idea of the scene before him, 
 although the spark lasts no longer than the first, 
 and there is no more material sensuously present. 
 The sole difference is in the adjusting power of 
 the mind, due to its ability to anticipate.-^ As a 
 further illustration of the fact that attention faces 
 the future and works best when preadjusted, he 
 
 1 Dewey, Psychology, p. 139. New York, 1S96. 
 
 [255] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 cites the fact that, though the average time which 
 elapses before a sense stimulus, say of light, can 
 be recognized as such is one eighth to one fifth 
 of a second, that if a signal is given before the 
 coming of the sense stimulus, so that the mind 
 can prepare itself, the time may be reduced to one 
 thirteenth of a second. 
 
 Working by the problem is employing tJie psy- 
 chology of attention. Working by the problem is 
 nothing more than employing the psychology of 
 attention. But who must have the problem? It is 
 not enough that the teacher have it and work by it. 
 Each student must have it also. The teacher can- 
 not supply it to them. He can only arouse it within 
 them — it must come out of their past experience. 
 When the teacher states his problem the most that 
 his words can do is to make the learner conscious 
 of a problem already latent in his own mind. 
 It may not be the same as the teacher's. It may, 
 indeed, be of slight worth ; but the ability to find 
 out what it is, to postpone one's own problem, and 
 to assist the person whose question it is to find 
 a satisfactory answer for it, is that which makes 
 teaching a fine art. 
 
 According to this view the preparation for the 
 study of the lesson is more important than any 
 other phase of study. Every prospective lesson 
 should be resolved into its definite problems before 
 
 [256] 
 
LEARNING BY PROBLEM GETTING 
 
 anything else is attempted. It is only by acquiring 
 a conscious method of attacking our work that we 
 may really be said to learn anything. The method 
 is applicable to every study and to every lesson. 
 It involves nothing more nor less than for each 
 student to get into the way of asking himself 
 before he attempts to do anything further, " Now 
 just what is it that I am trying to do ? " 
 
 " The use of the problem as the form of edu- 
 cating the reason," says Professor Henderson, ". . . 
 may be said to be the largest outcome of educa- 
 tional reform in the direction of method." ^ There 
 remains much to be done to bring this new-old 
 method into general use. Not the least of the 
 changes it involves concern the textbooks. Most 
 of them have a list of questions at the end of each 
 chapter. The student comes upon them after he 
 has diligently tried to learn the answers of the 
 text, without having had the attention-fixing, force- 
 gathering questions to help him. Should they not 
 come at the beginning, rather than at the end, 
 of the chapter ? 
 
 1 Henderson, Principles of Education, p. 273. New York, 1910. 
 
 257] 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 ORGANIZATION BY SELECTION 
 
 The part that the students take in the work of the 
 classroom diminishes progressively as they advance. 
 Why is this? A person who goes from a kinder- 
 garten or a primary classroom to the exercises of 
 an eighth grade, a high school, or a college class 
 is pretty certain to note that little children take a 
 much more active part in the work of learning than 
 do the youths and maidens of the advanced classes. 
 The little fellows are full of questions, which 
 neither time nor place can keep them from asking. 
 The older ones can hardly be prevailed upon to ask 
 a question or to express a doubt as to the suffi- 
 ciency of that which they read or of what has been 
 told them. The disease is progressive. The most 
 unresponsive of all grades of students are college 
 students. To get them to speak out their minds 
 freely upon the subject under discussion is nearly 
 impossible. They prefer to sit clamlike and non- 
 committal, to receive and not to give. Yet every 
 one of them, when he first came to school, w^as as 
 eagerly expressive as the children of the kinder- 
 garten now are. Something has happened to them 
 
 [258] 
 
ORGANIZATION BY SELECTION 
 
 as they journeyed from the first grade to the last 
 which has made them spectators and not participants 
 in the game of knowledge. Neither mental habits 
 nor life interests can be successfully cultivated in this 
 passive way. If it is what one does that teaches 
 him, not what one hears, one question raised by 
 a student is more effective than a dozen unasked 
 ones answered by the teacher or the textbook. 
 
 Alaki: your schools talking schools. There is no 
 way to make the problem a common possession 
 save by making the school a talking school. As 
 soon as one can be brought to say something upon 
 the subject under discussion, he has committed 
 himself to think about it further. He has defined 
 his own views and become responsible for them 
 to his group. Now he must either support them 
 or renounce them. We may be quite sure that the 
 exercise w^hich he performs just because it is set, 
 without seeing any meaning in it or looking ahead 
 to solve any problem of his own through it, is just 
 " busy work " to him, no matter how old he may be. 
 Merely to be engaged upon a subject matter which, 
 when properly handled, has value is no guaranty 
 that its value is being gotten. Unless the student 
 is searching, we may be sure he is not finding, and 
 what he does when he is not searching, but should 
 be, is deintellectualizing to him. So important, 
 then, is the problem as a means of teaching that it 
 
 [259] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 is not easy to make it too prominent. In short it is 
 the problem, and not the answer, for which the 
 teacher is chiefly responsible. Somewhere in his 
 " Autobiography " Herbert Spencer recognizes this 
 by making the sage remark that a good teacher will 
 constantly be raising questions which he will not 
 attempt to answer, but will leave his students to 
 puzzle out entirely for themselves. Such questions 
 as, Does dew fall or rise? What is the difference 
 between walking and running? How does the sap 
 pass from the roots to the branches of a tree ? 
 Wherein was Abraham Lincoln a great man ? What 
 is the spirit of our country? W^hat did St. Paul 
 mean when he said " I am a Roman citizen"? Is it 
 true that the most tragic utterance in Shakespeare 
 is "Othello's occupation 's gone " ? Why did Socrates 
 insist that he knew nothing ? 
 
 But the use of the conversation method in teach- 
 ing has other very great advantages in addition to 
 allowing learning to proceed as problem getting. 
 It permits the student to comprehend the meaning 
 of his own activity from the first and to employ 
 intelligently the methods of discovery and classi- 
 fication. Where it is thoroughgoingly followed, it 
 banishes didacticism altogether. 
 
 Education as the learning of definitions. The doc- 
 trine of real predicates. Nothing is more astonish- 
 ing, when we look at it critically, than the curious 
 
 [260] 
 
ORGANIZATION BY SELECTION 
 
 kind of thing which has at times passed for knowl- 
 edge and been retailed as such in the schools. The 
 part which the learning of definitions has played 
 and still plays is so great that many teachers seem 
 to hold the view that truth resides in definitions. 
 This doctrine goes back to Aristotle's notion that 
 theoretical knowledge is the contemplation of truth 
 independent of volition. To know anything we 
 must know what it is, not what it does. There are 
 fixed divisions in nature. When we define anything 
 we do not state our own purposes with regard to it. 
 We tell what it is\ we state its essence. When 
 asked, " What is Socrates ? " we may not say that 
 he is a philosopher, or a marble cutter, or the great- 
 est of the Greeks ; we must reply, "He is a man," 
 for that is the real predicate to which he belongs. 
 As long as one holds to this theory of real predi- 
 cates, to know anything is to know to what natural 
 kind it belongs and how it differs from other 
 groups or species wdiich belong to that kind or 
 genus. Learning, then, consists in acquiring the 
 definitions of things, for the definition explains and 
 unfolds the nature of the thing which it defines. 
 
 But take anything — this sheet of paper, for 
 example. What is it? It is something to w^rite 
 upon, a thing to read from, kindling to start the 
 fire with, material to make car w^heels out of, stuff 
 to make into pulp from which to manufacture other 
 
 [261] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 kinds of paper, etc., etc. Is it light or heavy, hard 
 or soft, destructible or indestructible ? That de- 
 pends on what you compare it with. He who 
 would define paper as it is in itself will have a hard 
 task. Which one of the relations into which it 
 enters is the real paper ? As an existing thing it is 
 lighter or heavier, larger or smaller, to the right or 
 to the left of everything else in existence. To ex- 
 plain its total significance is impossible. And no 
 one proposition which we can frame in regard to it 
 states its nature any more truly than do a number 
 of other assertions which can equally well be made 
 about it. In short, it has as many definitions as it 
 has properties, and no one of them is to be pre- 
 ferred to another save as it ministers to purpose 
 and leads to valuable results. That is, the business 
 of definition and of classification is not to explain 
 the nature of things, but to set forth their uses. 
 
 As long as the doctrine of 7ral predicates 
 obtained, strange services were performed in the 
 name of education. Men forgot the form which 
 Aristotle had taught them to follow, but they clung 
 religiously to the notion that truth could be taught 
 only in definitions. Instruction became a very revel 
 of definition-presenting on the part of teachers and 
 definition-acquiring on the part of students. Alcuin, 
 the Saxon teacher, at the court of Charles the 
 Great, does not know his Aristotle well enough to 
 
ORGANIZATION BY SELECTION 
 
 define by genus and species, but he has inherited 
 the scholastic tradition that trutli must be pre- 
 sented in the form of definitions, so he goes about 
 it thus, in one of the dialogues which he wrote for 
 the instruction of young people : 
 
 Pepin. What is water ? 
 
 Albinus. a supporter of life ; a cleanser of filth. 
 
 Pepin. What is fire ? 
 
 Albinus. Excessive heat; the nurse of growing things; the 
 ripener of crops. 
 
 Pepin. What is cold ? 
 
 Albinus. The febricity of our members. 
 
 Pepin. What is frost ? 
 
 Albinus. The persecutor of plants ; the destruction of leaves ; 
 the bond of the earth ; the source of waters. 
 
 Pepin. What is snow ? 
 
 Albinus. Dry water. 
 
 Pepin. What is the winter ? 
 
 Albinus. The exile of summer. 
 
 Pepin. What is the spring ? 
 
 Albinus. The painter of the earth. 
 
 Pepin. What is the autumn ? 
 
 Albinus. The barn of the year. 
 
 The scholasticism of later centuries was so 
 thoroughly convinced as to the finality of Aris- 
 totle's doctrine of ultimate differences in nature 
 that it set up an elaborate theory of substantial 
 forms or entities by which to distinguish things. 
 '' Fire differs from water," they said, " not only 
 through the position of its parts but through an 
 
 [263] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 entity which belongs to it, quite distinct from the 
 materials. When a body changes its condition 
 there is no change in the parts, but one form is 
 supplanted by another." The relations into which 
 things enter and the qualities which they disclose 
 in those relations are their accidents, which are 
 quite different from the bodies to which they 
 attach. To know things now meant to know their 
 substantial forms. The revel of distinguishing, de- 
 fining, and classifying, unhindered by considera- 
 tions of the relations of things, speeded up to a 
 furious rate. To define anything meant to state its 
 essence, not its action. Opium produces sleep be- 
 cause it has a virtus dormativa. " The substantial 
 form of fire," said Toletus, " is an active principle 
 by which fire with heat for an instrument produces 
 fire." ^ It does not seem possible for a student 
 to increase his knowledge by acquiring definitions 
 such as these. 
 
 The doctrine of real predicates to-day. But how 
 do matters stand at present? Is knowledge-getting 
 still conceived to be the learning of definitions ? 
 Professor Mann in his valuable book " The Teach- 
 ing of Physics " offers the following as illustrations 
 of the method employed to introduce the student to 
 that subject in a text published in 1902: 
 
 1 Janet, Introduction to Leibniz' Discourse on Metaphysics. Chicago, 
 1902. 
 
 [ 264 ] 
 
ORGANIZATION BY SELECTION 
 
 Physics. Physics is the science which treats of the changes 
 which take place in the physical universe. 
 
 The Physical Universe. The physical universe is that part of 
 the universe which is, so far as we know, made up of the two 
 fundamental existences, matter and energy. 
 
 Matter. No complete definition of matter is possible. We may 
 learn of the properties of material bodies, but the essential nature 
 of matter is entirely unknown to us. The name is generally under- 
 stood to mean the indestructible substance of all bodies which 
 are appreciable by our senses. 
 
 Energy. The essential nature of energy is likewise unknown. 
 We can measure its quantity, but we know nothing of its descrip- 
 tive qualities. It may be provisionally defined as the capacity for 
 doing work. 
 
 Work. The term work, as used in physics, may be defined as 
 the producing of such changes in the relative positions or relative 
 motions of material bodies as would require an effort on our part 
 to produce. 
 
 Now how much more does the student know 
 after he has committed these definitions than he 
 knew before ? Just as much as he can supply 
 meanings for out of his own past experience. That 
 is not much, for the list is formidable. This method 
 of study does not articulate closely with life and 
 does not contribute much which the student can 
 use either mentally or physically. Yet everything 
 which is talked about here is in some sense a 
 matter of everyday experience which every reader 
 of the text already knows something about. Is there 
 any reason why learning more about these things 
 
 [265] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 should be made so difficult, by abstract definitions, 
 as to be nearly impossible? Is this cyclopedic sys- 
 tem of definitions and theories the best approach 
 to this or any other subject? Is there not a better 
 way? Professor Mann thinks there is, and this is 
 his illustration of it. 
 
 A better way than that of learning definitions. 
 Since mind is a problem solver, if we want it to go 
 to work, we should start with a problem. Here are 
 some which will set every mind to thinking: Is it 
 more work to climb to the third floor up a verti- 
 cal fire escape or to walk up stairs to the same 
 height ? Why ? Does it require more work to slide 
 a cake of ice up an inclined plane into an ice house 
 than it does to lift it vertically to the same height ? 
 Why? What do you call the lifting, pushing, and 
 pulling which these jobs require? Can you give 
 other examples of work? Work is a very familiar 
 experience, and to extend its concept is not difficult. 
 The great advantage of this method is that the stu- 
 dent has the idea and does the thinking. To go up 
 stairs is work ; to climb up the ladder or fire escape 
 is work. WHiich requires the more work? Almost 
 everyone is ready with an answer, but the immedi- 
 ate answer will not do. For the surest mark of an 
 unscientific mind, as Mrs. Boole has pointed out, 
 is that it does not wait to find out what the truth 
 of a situation which confronts it is, but judges 
 
 [ 266 ] 
 
ORGANIZATION BY SELECTION 
 
 and classifies it right off ; while the possessing of a 
 scientific mind is evidenced by the fact that we do 
 not make our judgments instantly, but delay them 
 until we can gather the evidences, apply tests, and 
 study the matter out. It is the suspended judg- 
 ment and not the judgment which drops instantly 
 upon any subject which should come through train- 
 ing, and here we have a splendid opportunity to 
 present its claims as an ideal of scientific method. 
 Does it require more work to slide ice up an inclined 
 plane into an ice house or to lift it in ? How can 
 we find out the facts and make sure about this? 
 If one wanted to know the exact distance to the 
 wall, he would measure it ; and if he wanted to 
 know how much he could lift, he would have to 
 weigh the load. Is it not possible to measure the 
 work done when the ice is pulled into the ice 
 house, and the work done when it is lifted in, and 
 compare them ? To lift a brick one foot requires a 
 certain amount of work, to lift it two feet twice 
 as much, and to lift three bricks two feet requires 
 six times as much. That is, if we multiply the 
 weight by the distance, we shall find the amount 
 of work which has been done in either case and 
 can then compare them. 
 
 But a block of ice and an inclined plane up which 
 to slide it into an ice house are not easy to get for 
 our experiment. We cannot wait until ice forms to 
 
 [267] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 make it. We want to try out the facts now. How 
 can we? It is for just such a case as this that men 
 have devised laboratories. There is absolutely noth- 
 ing magical about them — they are handy arrange- 
 ments for helping one to find out what he wants to 
 know, without waiting for conditions to be favorable 
 outside. In the laboratory we can attach a spring 
 balance to a rope and with it pull a block of wood 
 to the top of an inclined plane, and the balance 
 will weigh the pull of the block. Then we can 
 measure the distance and multiply the weight by 
 the distance. Then we can pull the same block up 
 vertically, multiplying the weight by the distance as 
 before, and compare the two products. The result 
 is a surprise. What shall we say now about the 
 relative work involved in going upstairs or climb- 
 ing up a vertical ladder ? Have we found out any- 
 thing about what a machine does ? 
 
 Most of the steps of scientific method have been 
 employed in solving this problem. They are very 
 simple and very useful methods of going about our 
 work. The student has learned a little about using 
 them and has a much firmer grip upon the begin- 
 nings of science than the repeating of a definition 
 could possibly give him. Now he is in a position to 
 make an attempt at framing his own notion of 
 what work is. Definitions are necessary, but not all 
 definitions. " What is a good definition ? " asks 
 
 [268] 
 
ORGANIZATION BY SELECTION 
 
 Poincare. " For the philosopher or the scientist it 
 is a definition which appHes to all the objects de- 
 fined, and only those; it is one satisfying the rules 
 of logic. But in teaching, it is not that ; a good 
 definition is one understood by the scholars." ^ 
 This understanding comes after certain preliminary 
 steps. It must be led up to. It is not an original 
 point of departure. 
 
 SJiall the student's experience be tised in school? 
 Each student brings his own experience to school. 
 Shall it be used there, or shall an abstract body of 
 definitions and textbook principles be made to take 
 its place ? No matter what is done, we may be sure 
 that it is the familiar experience that he will con- 
 tinue to live by. Either the new learning which he 
 is there to get must provide an occasion for the 
 reorganization of his familiar experience and must 
 be grasped by means of it, or it will hardly react or 
 affect him at all. When the classroom is changed 
 into a deliberative assembly for the systematic dis- 
 cussion and testing of the problems which are the 
 crux of all intellectual work, and the teacher pre- 
 sides as the chairman of the discussion, the attitude 
 of the students changes. They collect their own 
 past experiences, they tell them, they draw conclu- 
 sions from them and try them out, they reword the 
 statements of the textbook, they supply illustrations 
 
 1 Poincare, The Foundations of Science, p. 430. New York, 1913. 
 
 [269] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 of its principles, they furnish percepts to fill its 
 concepts, and they work out homely applications of 
 its lessons and furnish its teaching with the signifi- 
 cance of use. In all this, they disclose their own 
 difficulties of comprehension and point their fellows 
 and the teacher to furtlier problems for considera- 
 tion, which but for their outspokenness would have 
 been neglected. 
 
 Hoiv shall the textbook be used? The textbook, as 
 its name indicates, is a book of texts. Who shall 
 interpret their meaning and make the necessary 
 applications? The answer, I think, must be that 
 the students must do it for themselves; the teacher 
 cannot do it for them. If one attempts to absorb 
 the textbook without interpreting its answers, with- 
 out indeed first having the questions to which they 
 are answers, without supplementing what it has to 
 offer by what his own experience tells him upon 
 the same subject, and without considering the sig- 
 nificance of what he learns in terms of out-of-class 
 doing, is he not subjecting himself to the letter 
 which kills and missing the spirit which gives life ? 
 " Who shall deliver me from the body of this 
 death ? " asks St. Paul. And it seems that he 
 meant this death in life which results from literal- 
 ism. Is there any way for the student to escape it, 
 save by relying upon the inward man in his learn- 
 ing in the same way that St. Paul did .f* 
 
 [270] 
 
ORGANIZATION BY SELECTION 
 
 The student must collect inaterials with which to 
 solve his problems. There is one other emancipation 
 which the student must actively claim. He must 
 not only have his own problems and use his own 
 experience in finding a solution for them. He must 
 learn to consult the experience of other persons 
 than the teacher and other books than the text- 
 book. If his task is simply to learn set lessons, this 
 need not be done, and he will not be taught the 
 wider mastery of the tools of knowledge. Yet as 
 there can hardly be two opinions about the fact that 
 he is in school chiefly to learn how to learn, it follows 
 that he must from the first to the last be taught to 
 use the implements or means of knowledge, and 
 among them books, not textbooks merely, and as- 
 suredly not the one textbook with which he is pro- 
 vided. If his lessons are learned only from that, a 
 condition of mental bondage and paralysis of effort 
 will result. The school library and its supplemen- 
 tary books must be used. Even these are not 
 enough. The student must form the habit of find- 
 ing books for himself at home, in the public library, 
 in other folks' bookcases, anywhere that they can 
 be had, and gathering from them material which 
 bears upon his problems in school. As soon as his 
 learning is approached as a series of problems, his 
 studying gets a new definition. It is now the hunt- 
 ing down of subjects. Instead of a committer of a 
 
 [271] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 few paragraphs or pages assigned as a lesson, he 
 undertakes to hunt for all he can find on a given 
 question. He thus becomes a searcher for knowl- 
 edge ; and by having mental difficulties and defin- 
 ing them as problems, by hunting for facts which 
 are pertinent to them, by organizing these facts to- 
 gether and finding out whether or no they will 
 solve the difficulty, he learns to make his own 
 knowledge — he learns how to learn. 
 
 The st2ident mtist become an active selector of the 
 i77ip or taut from the unimportant. There are certain 
 corollaries to this demonstration. The first is that 
 the student must become self-reliant. Passive study- 
 ing will not make him so. Only by acting on his 
 own initiative can he become a doer. Working by 
 the problem puts him in a position in which he 
 must consciously organize his knowledge by select- 
 ing the important from the unimportant, and the 
 true from the false. 
 
 Take any lesson — twenty words to be spelled, 
 a column of map questions to be answered, a dozen 
 problems to be solved. Do all the words require 
 the same amount of study ? Are the map questions 
 of the same worth ? Are the arithmetic problems 
 all equally important ? Take any paragraph or any 
 page of a book. Is each of its sentences of the 
 same value? Book study has a tendency to leave 
 the conviction that they are. Teaching must 
 
 [272] 
 
ORGANIZATION BY SELECTION 
 
 correct this error. The head of a large office of 
 my acquaintance tells me that he employs as clerks 
 a few graduates of colleges and a good many gradu- 
 ates of high schools ; that almost without exception 
 no one of them, when he comes from the school, can 
 take a letter and summarize its contents in a sen- 
 tence or two ; that the ability to seize the main 
 point has not been developed in them. But the 
 ability to take a part of the morning's mail and 
 digest each letter in a sentence or two annotated in 
 pencil upon it is the form of skill which he requires. 
 Another employer of whom I know decfares that it 
 is next to impossible to find a secretary who can 
 take a sentence or two of direction and frame a 
 letter to embody it. Yet precis-writmg and letter 
 construction are not particularly difficult forms of 
 skill, and they are kinds of ability which education 
 of every grade should foster. The habit of finding 
 the main point and distinguishing it from subordi- 
 nate matter w^ill not come as a by-product of study. 
 Yet every school exercise has a main point and 
 calls for a fixation of attention upon it. The little 
 child in the reading class who does not know what 
 he is reading about, the high-school student who 
 does not know why he is studying this particular 
 lesson and w^hat he is to learn from it, and the col- 
 lege student w^ho tries to put down in his notebook 
 all that the lecturer says, can hardly be said to be 
 
 [273] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 distinguishing values. They are being trained to be 
 " thoughtless thinkers." Only by persistent effort 
 to find the main point and stick to it can that 
 wholesome tendency be established. This natural 
 motive is seldom encouraged in textbooks. 
 
 He must separate the trite from the false. The 
 student must not only solve his own problems with 
 the assistance of teachers and books, but in doing 
 so he must learn that much that passes for knowl- 
 edge is not knowledge, and that he is responsible 
 for separating the true from the false. The road to 
 knowledge *lies through doubt. The student must 
 become a doubter in order to " prove all things ; 
 hold fast that w^iich is good." Descartes begins 
 his " Principles of Philosophy " with the statement 
 " that in order to seek truth, it is necessary once in 
 the course of our life to doubt, as far as possible, of 
 all things." He resolves to make it a rule of life 
 never to assent to anything which he does not 
 clearly and distinctly perceive. A matter is clear 
 when it " is present and manifest to the mind 
 giving attention to it." It is distinct when it is pre- 
 cise and different from all other objects. It is well 
 known that the senses sometimes deceive us. The 
 dipper handle in the bucket of water seems to be 
 bent. Objects which are far off seem to be near. 
 We do not always hear what is said, and sometimes 
 we seem to hear what is not said. Memory too is 
 
 [274] 
 
ORGANIZATION BY SELECTION 
 
 a very unsafe guide. Misunderstandings abound. 
 Hearsay testimony is not worth much, though the 
 tendency of the untaught to beheve it without -ques- 
 tioning is very great. Men are, many of them, un- 
 trustworthy. Much that is printed in papers and in 
 books is not so. Seeing is not beHeving, hearing is 
 not beHeving, reading is not beheving. Even think- 
 ing, if it is not carefully checked up and rendered 
 mistake-proof, may result in error. Mind has a 
 peculiar proneness to delusion. Education does not 
 perform its work unless it makes the learner a keen 
 discriminator between truth and falsehood. 
 
 The student must be taught to collect and 
 weigh evidence, to verify statements, to compare 
 authorities, to go to the sources for information 
 in doubtful matters. Where it is possible, he must 
 get into the habit of proving his work. Sufficient 
 unto the day is the exactness thereof, but even little 
 children are able to begin to distinguish truth from 
 falsehood and to pass upon the probability or im- 
 probability of the stories they read. Make-believe 
 they love, but they do distinguish it from believe, 
 and upon the continuous fostering of that distinction 
 rests the effectiveness of teaching. 
 
 The major ideals of the race are developed by 
 acts of conscious selection called for and persisted 
 in in the work of the everyday studies. To add a 
 column of figures and then to check up one's result 
 
 [275] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 is quite a different operation from summing them 
 once and being satisfied that the answer is correct. 
 To try to get the point of view of the British as 
 well as that of the colonists, or of the South as well 
 as that of the North in the great w^ar, teaches a 
 better lesson than to take the one without the 
 other. The student of geometry should consider 
 carefully what proving a proposition means, for if 
 the process is but an arbitrary series of statements 
 to him, he will learn nothing. The same is true if 
 he stops short of seeing the reason for anything 
 wdiich he is asked to comprehend. Above all, he 
 has a right to be convinced that w^iat passes for 
 truth is founded upon evidence, and he must be 
 encouraged to doubt and to insist upon doubting 
 that which does not convince him. The centuries- 
 old notion that doubt on the part of young people 
 or of adults is sinful must give way to the better 
 doctrine that doubt fosters belief and is its precious 
 precursor. 
 
 What should be memorized? While to commit to 
 memory all that one seeks to learn is a bad thing, 
 since it makes comprehension impossible, some part 
 of that which one studies should be memorized. It 
 is a safe rule that nothing should be memorized 
 until it is first comprehended. Most of our learning 
 should remain in that form, but some parts of 
 it must be committed verbally. It is perhaps as 
 
 [276] 
 
ORGANIZATION BY SELECTION 
 
 certainly wrong not to memorize what should be 
 memorized as it is to memorize what should only 
 be comprehended, but it is hardly so likely to 
 happen. Memorizing has a place in education, 
 though it is hard to keep it in its place. What 
 would happen if we remembered everything, if the 
 events of yesterday persisted in their completeness ? 
 There would be no to-day. It is only by forgetting 
 the happenings of yesterday that I can give atten- 
 tion to the events of to-day. Forgetting, then, is 
 highly important. Without it there would be no 
 new experiences at all. Yet if it were complete, 
 there w^ould be no new experiences either, for it 
 is through our old experiences that we get our 
 new ones. For the most part, the old ones keep 
 themselves alive. Certain parts of them disappear, 
 but their core remains. Significant experience is 
 rarely completely forgotten. To make it a perma- 
 nent possession one has only to see to it that its 
 meaning is clearly grasped and a strong wish to 
 retain it developed. Memorizing w^ords is a differ- 
 ent matter. Normal forgetting drops the details 
 and retains the significant substance of a matter. 
 Verbal memory strives to retain the detail of 
 language. 
 
 The first question to be asked about any matter 
 which should be retained is. Is this something 
 which interest and understanding will keep alive 
 
 1^77 ^ 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 and reasoning restore at will, or are its details so 
 important that it would be valueless if only the 
 substance of it were recalled ? Wherever the letter 
 is indispensable the letter must be remembered, 
 and special efforts will have to be put forth to 
 establish the associations which will fix it in mind. 
 The multiplication table must be recalled not in 
 substance but in exact detail ; so must the formula 
 for finding the diameter or the circumference of 
 a circle. Certain grammatical rules and exceptions 
 call for the same treatment. Quotations which get 
 their value not from their thought but from the 
 perfection and significance of its expression must 
 also be recalled literally. Formulas and formularies, 
 poetry and hymns, the basic dates of history, place 
 names and the names of significant personages, 
 are the sort of content which should be committed 
 verbally.^ As a rule, not enough attention is given 
 to fixing them in mind, and far too much to devel- 
 oping a verbal mastery of rational matters which 
 comprehension alone will take care of. 
 
 What should beco77ie automatic^ and how can it 
 be made so ? Certain parts of experience make still 
 heavier demands upon us. All that we strive to 
 learn must be comprehended. Some part of it 
 must be committed to memory and a part must 
 
 1 See the excellent discussion of this subject in Fitch's Lectures on 
 Teaching, p. 121. E. L. Kellogg & Co., New York. 
 
 [278] 
 
ORGANIZATION BY SELECTION 
 
 be reduced to habit. Habit means " having " ; but it 
 is a having which has become organic and nearly 
 automatic. We said a moment ago that the multi- 
 pHcation table should be committed — that is really 
 only a stage in the process of its mastery. The 
 person who, when called upon to multiply seven 
 by nine, has to stop and say over " seven times 
 nine " in order to get their product has only partly 
 learned the combination. The result should come 
 instantly with automatic precision. One does not 
 have to stop to recall the name of a letter nor how 
 to form it when he has need for it in writing. It 
 comes of itself. In shaking hands the right hand 
 presents itself instantly, and in walking, while we 
 may watch where we are stepping, the step comes 
 of itself. Yet all these acts were learned. It is 
 perhaps impossible to indicate in detail just what 
 parts of our learning should become automatic, just 
 as it was impossible to state in detail what parts 
 should be memorized. Examples of what is meant 
 may be given. Working by the problem should 
 become a habit with each student ; so should hunt- 
 ing for material to supplement the textbook dis- 
 cussion and volunteering to take part in the class; 
 so should asking questions, stating diflficulties, inter- 
 posing doubts, and insistence upon being convinced. 
 Courtesy should become habitual, and with it the 
 cardinal virtues. A correct bodily carriage and the 
 
 [279] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 proper position for work should become organic. 
 The sounding of combinations of letters, the shap- 
 ing of writing, the spelling of commonly used 
 words, the correct use of speech, and a thousand 
 other details of instruction must become habitual. 
 In forming any habit, it is well to launch one's self 
 with as much momentum as possible. This means 
 that the student must know what he is undertaking 
 and why, and with what expectation he is to go 
 about it. A lively initial interest must drive him 
 forward. It is commonly supposed that repetition 
 will do the rest. This is an error. Repetition, 
 except of a certain kind, is worse than useless. 
 Doing the same thing over and over again com- 
 monly results in doing it worse and worse instead 
 of better and better. You and I walk a great deal, 
 and we shall walk a great deal more before we 
 die, but will our walking improve by that practice ? 
 We write a great deal, but shall we write better 
 and better as the days go by because of our much 
 repeating of that act? No, merely doing a thing 
 over and over again does not help us to do it 
 better. There is an old story, which deserves to be 
 taken much to heart, of a boy who persisted in say- 
 ing, " I have went," until his teacher's patience 
 could bear it no longer. Whereupon he was com- 
 manded to stay after school and write the correct 
 form one hundred times. He did so, and in the 
 
 [280] 
 
ORGANIZATION BY SELECTION 
 
 absence of the teacher at the moment that he had 
 finished, he left this note for her, " Dear Teacher: 
 I have done my lesson and have went home." 
 Repetition without the effort to improve does not 
 make our walking or our writing any better than 
 it was before, and repetition without the effort to 
 improve is of small benefit to any student. 
 
 [281] 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 DIAGNOSTIC EDUCATION 
 
 An outline history of examinations. When the 
 Emperor Antoninus Pius created the first public 
 professorship at Athens, he unintentionally institu- 
 tionalized one feature of instruction which has ex- 
 acted rather a larger tribute of human energy than 
 is its due. For the practice came into being that 
 the teacher who was to be paid out of the imperial 
 treasury should be selected from the whole number 
 of candidates for the post, by means of an examina- 
 tion. And the professors, having learned how impor- 
 tant examinations were to themselves, quickly passed 
 them on to their students. Education had gone on 
 for some six hundred years or more in Greece with- 
 out them, and it had been able to do its work well, 
 as the results of the Socratic age show. Neverthe- 
 less they became an essential part of its procedure, 
 and in the eyes of many students and teachers the 
 determining feature in its work. 
 
 An apprentice must be able to use the tools of 
 his trade before he can be employed as a journey- 
 man. In medieval days he had to be tried out be- 
 fore he was admitted into the trade gild. The first 
 
 [282] 
 
DIAGNOSTIC EDUCATION 
 
 universities were nothing but gilds or unions of 
 teachers. They adopted the gild method of apply- 
 ing technical tests to the students who sought 
 admission into their company as masters. And ex- 
 aminations grew greatly in importance. Since their 
 trade was to teach, the student apprentice was 
 invested with the insignia and the rights of the 
 teacher only after he had given formal proof of his 
 ability to do the work of the gild. With him 
 '' Commencement " was a literal beginning of his 
 life work. It consisted of certain private exami- 
 nations, a sample lecture or the maintaining of 
 a thesis, and his solemn inception into the gild. 
 This academic ceremony tested the ability of the 
 candidate to do what he was henceforth to do, 
 namely, teach certain books according to certain 
 established methods. It was an ordeal made neces- 
 sary by its object. 
 
 The modern examination has preserved almost 
 every feature of the medieval one save its object. 
 That older one was employed to find out whether 
 a man was fit to do a certain thing that he aspired 
 to do. The modern examination exists primarily to 
 determine whether the student knows what it is 
 conceived that he should know. This change in 
 purpose made it possible for the examination to 
 take the form of written answers to written ques- 
 tions, the first written examinations in Europe 
 
 [283] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 having been given, as it seems, at Cambridge in the 
 year 1702. Written examinations having been in- 
 vented quickly commended themselves as an easily 
 workable device which every teacher of no matter 
 what subject should apply early and often. 
 
 Are exammations trustworthy? No thoughtful 
 teacher can frame the questions, read the students' 
 answers, and endeavor to mark their standing on 
 the basis of one or two examinations without 
 gravely questioning the finality and even the worth 
 of this procedure. 
 
 Undoubtedly society must protect itself by de- 
 manding that the person who invites its confidence 
 as a practitioner of medicine, law, or teaching shall 
 first be required to submit evidence of the validity 
 of his claims to technical expertness to some com- 
 petent authority. Such examinations should have 
 no other purpose than to establish the trustworthi- 
 ness of the person who seeks an opportunity to use 
 his skill in the service of folks who are not in 
 a position, before engaging him, to test it. Their 
 object is to find out whether he can do what he 
 offers himself as being able to do. 
 
 But the examinations which are repeated with 
 such frequency in schools are not of this sort. 
 Yet they are often a bar to the future work which 
 the student desires to do. The assumption which 
 is behind the practice of exacting them seems to 
 
 [ 284 ] 
 
DIAGNOSTIC EDUCATION 
 
 be that they are a necessary method of testing the 
 student's fitness and furnish a more rehable gauge 
 of his abihty than any other which can be devised. 
 
 Are they necessary? The teacher who gives the 
 examination and reads the paper is usually the 
 person who has given the instruction. He has 
 met his classes daily ; he can give as many review 
 lessons and exact as much written work from his 
 students as he requires to make him thoroughly 
 familiar with their progress. Why should not his 
 estimate of their fitness be based upon this day-by- 
 day knowledge of them ? " But they must be given 
 a chance to show what they can do in an ordeal." 
 Then the examination is not intended to test their 
 ability, but rather to test their self-control, and it is 
 unfair to them to rate their ability by it. If this is 
 admitted, the defender of formal examinations will 
 most likely take refuge in the statement that the 
 teacher who is not required to hold them at fixed 
 intervals will not, w^ien left to himself, demand 
 sufficient written work to train his pupils in exact- 
 ness. The examinations are required on this view 
 in order to regulate the teacher, and to mark the 
 students' standing by them is again unfair. Private 
 colleges, as well as school systems, have an un- 
 doubted right to attempt thus to supervise the 
 work of teachers both within and beyond their juris- 
 diction if they want to, but they must remember 
 
 [285] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 that they make the students pay dearly for the 
 arbitrary uniformity which they thus try to exact. 
 
 Are they reliable? The teacher who estimates 
 a student's famiHarity with a subject by his abihty 
 to answer six or ten examination questions is judg- 
 ing him by means of a sample. He may fail to 
 answer this list of questions, but may pass another 
 list with distinction. In his preparation for the 
 examination he may have worked on the very pas- 
 sages which he is asked to render, or he may have 
 prepared others which have no place in the paper. 
 " But he should be prepared for anything which 
 may come." No, he cannot be prepared for every- 
 thing which may come, for frequently questions are 
 asked which only a minutely technical interest sug- 
 gests. Again, the sample performance, by which 
 the student's term's work is valued, may be taken 
 on a day on which he is much below par. There is 
 perhaps as much variation in setting papers as in 
 marking them. If there is, the student has but a 
 slight chance to be adequately judged, for carefully 
 conducted tests have shown a variation of as many 
 as seventy points in the reading of the same papers 
 by members of the same staff of teachers. Uniform- 
 ity in grading the same papers, even when the 
 teachers of the subject attempt beforehand to agree 
 upon a standard of marking, seems to be quite 
 unattainable. Few school systems and few colleges 
 
 [286] 
 
DIAGNOSTIC EDUCATION 
 
 have made an effort to standardize their marking. 
 An A grade may mean from go to loo to one in- 
 structor, and from gj to loo to another; a B from 
 80 to gy to one and from jo to go to another. One 
 man may mark handwriting, spelHng, composition, 
 facts memorized and constructive abiHty shown, all 
 with the same care ; another may disregard every- 
 thing but the substance of the thought. 
 
 Yet the school judges its students, and the 
 students judge each other and, worst of all, them- 
 selves by these marks. 
 
 They reduce the sciences to features of an examina- 
 tion system. The greatest harm which the examina- 
 tion works is not this gross misjudging of students, 
 but its tendency to reduce the sciences which are 
 taught and the teachers and students who study 
 them to servants of an examination system. Knowl- 
 edge is not primarily a body of exact answers to 
 exact questions. It cannot profitably be put into 
 the form of a catechism. To emphasize its exami- 
 nable features is to make it arid and jejune. The 
 information test is an appeal to memory. What is 
 committed in order to prepare for it is soon forgot- 
 ten, and unless the examination is an incident and 
 not the organizing principle in what is done, per- 
 manent interests are not developed, the free play of 
 intelligence is not stimulated, and the social utility 
 of learning is obscured. The student studies for the 
 
 [287] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 examination. His scheme of values gets out of per- 
 spective. Instead of mastering his subject, he 
 learns to " size up " his teacher in an effort to 
 anticipate the questions which he will probably be 
 asked in the examination, and in place of studying, 
 he adopts the method of " cramming." What is per- 
 haps even worse is that after measuring himself once 
 or twice, he becomes satisfied that he can hope for 
 nothing more than the mark which he has already 
 obtained, and henceforth aims at the degree of effi- 
 ciency which it represents. Over and over again 
 the students confess, " Oh, I am only a C student." 
 The influences that play upon them instead of lift- 
 ing them above mediocrity confirm them in it. 
 When a mark has once been recorded both the 
 teacher and the student are almost certain to forget 
 that it was arrived at so carelessly that it has but 
 a temporary value. It imposes upon both of them. 
 It is only a most inexact estimate of the student's 
 accomplishment of a particular task, but they take it 
 as an indication of what he can do in a given sub- 
 ject and commonly enlarge it into a registration of 
 his general intelligence. 
 
 Realizable reforms. Teachers are much too con- 
 firmed in the examination habit to give it up, 
 though a large sized experiment like that of con- 
 ducting a university or a school system for a term 
 of years without a single formal examination would 
 
 [288] 
 
DIAGNOSTIC EDUCATION 
 
 be of immense service to the cause of learning. 
 The abnormal dislocation of interest which they 
 involve would at least have a chance to right itself ; 
 and that would perhaps give an opportunity for the 
 making of a course of study on the basis of reason 
 instead of tradition. But such an overhauling of 
 educational machinery is perhaps out of the ques- 
 tion. Yet certain reforms are possible. One of 
 them consists in making the school examination a 
 test of what the student can do, rather than of what 
 he knows. The information test is a memory test. 
 It can be met by "cramming." It is a false incen- 
 tive to work, and it does not lead to normally 
 organized activity on the part of the student. The 
 doing or capacity test has an altogether different 
 value. It calls for knowledge of what is being 
 learned, not knowledge about it. Questions about 
 isolated facts have no place in such a paper. The 
 student is given a piece of work to perform. He 
 must show his mastery of the facts involved by 
 organizing them to solve his problem. The test 
 is constructive ; it is like the demands which life 
 makes. It calls for analysis, but only as a means 
 to construction ; thus it organizes knowledge by 
 keeping its parts in place. 
 
 The kind of examinations the Chinese noiv employ. 
 Yet not every problem is a vital problem, and the 
 danger which this kind of an examination runs is 
 
 [289] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 of becoming merely a scholastic exercise. The peo- 
 ple of China have had rather more experience with 
 examinations than any other body of educators. 
 There is a significant difference in the kind of 
 problems which they now set from those they 
 formerly employed. "In 1828," says Mr. Williams, 
 " the acumen of four thousand eight hundred candi- 
 dates was exercised during the first day on these 
 themes : Tsang-tsz' said : ' To possess ability, and 
 yet ask of those who do not ; to know much, and 
 yet inquire of those w^io know little ; to possess, 
 and yet appear not to possess ; to be full, and yet 
 appear empty.' — 'He took hold of things by the 
 two extremes and in his treatment of the people 
 maintained the golden medium.' — ' A man from 
 his youth studies eight principles, and when he 
 arrives at manhood, he wishes to reduce them to 
 practice.' — The fourth essay, to be written in pen- 
 tameters, had for its subject, ' The sound of the oar, 
 and the green of the hills and water.' Among the 
 themes given out in 1843 were these: 'He who is 
 sincere will be intelligent, and the intelligent man 
 will be faithful.' — 'In carrying out benevolence 
 there are no rules.' In 1835 one was, ' He acts as 
 he ought, both to the common people and official 
 men, receives his revenue from Heaven, and by 
 it is protected and highly esteemed.' Among other 
 more practical texts are the following : ' Fire-arms 
 
 [290] 
 
DIAGNOSTIC EDUCATION 
 
 began with the use of rockets in the Chan dynasty. 
 In what book do we first meet with the word for 
 cannon ? Is the defense of Kaifung fu its first 
 recorded use ? Kublai Khan, it is said, obtained 
 cannon of a new kind ; from whom did he obtain 
 them ? Wlien the Ming Emperors, in the reign of 
 Yungloh, invaded Cochinchina, they obtained a 
 kind of cannon called the weapons of the gods ; 
 can you give an account of their origin?'"^ 
 
 Now compare with these the list of questions^ 
 submitted in the year 1903: 
 
 HoNAN. What improvements are to be derived from the study 
 of foreign agriculture, commerce, and postal systems ? 
 
 KiANG-su and An-huei. What are the chief ideas underlying 
 Austrian and German prosperity ? How do foreigners regulate 
 the press, post office, commerce, railways, banks, bank notes, com- 
 mercial schools, taxation, and how do they get faithful men? 
 Where is the Caucasus, and how does Russia rule it? 
 
 KiANG-si. How many sciences, theoretical and practical, are 
 there ? In what order should they be studied ? Explain free trade 
 and protection. What are the military services of the world ? 
 What is the bearing of the Congress of Vienna, the Treaty of 
 Berlin, and the Monroe Doctrine on the Far East ? W^herein lies 
 the naval supremacy of Great Britain ? What is the bearing of the 
 Siberian Railway and Nicaragua Canal on China ? 
 
 1 Williams, The Middle Kingdom, Vol. I, p. 552. New York, 1883. 
 
 2 Quoted in Brown's " New Forces in Old China " from the Report of the 
 Society for the Diffusion of Christian and General Knowledge among the 
 Chinese, Shanghai, 1903. I am indebted for these very significant refer- 
 ences to Mr. D. M. Beers of the class of 191 5 of Harvard University. 
 
 [291] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 Shantung. What is Herbert Spencer's philosophy of sociology? 
 Define the relations of land, labor, and capital. State how best to 
 develop the resources of China by mines and railway ; how best 
 to modify our civil and criminal laws to regain authority over 
 those now under extraterritoriality privileges ; how best to guard 
 land and sea frontiers from the advance of foreign Powers. 
 
 FuKiEN. Which Western nations have paid most attention to 
 education, and what is the result? State the leading features of 
 the military systems of Great Britain, Germany, Russia, and 
 France. Which are the best colonizers ? How should tea and silk 
 be properly cultivated ? What is the government, industries, and 
 education of Switzerland, which, though small, is independent of 
 surrounding great powers? 
 
 KwANG-TUNG (Canton). What should be our best coinage — 
 gold, silver, and copper like other Western countries, or what ? 
 How could the workhouse system be started throughout China? 
 How fortify Kwang-tung province ? How get funds and profes- 
 sors for the new education ? How promote Chinese international 
 commerce, new industries, and savings banks versus the gambling 
 houses of China ? 
 
 Hunan. What is the policy of Japan — only following other 
 nations, or what ? How choose competent diplomatic men ? 
 Why does China feel its small national debt so heavy, while Eng- 
 land and France with far greater debts do not feel it ? 
 
 HuPEH. State the educational systems of Sparta and Athens. 
 What are the naval strategic points of Great Britain, and which 
 should be those of China ? Which nation has the best system of 
 stamp duty ? State briefly the geological ages of the earth and 
 the bronze and iron ages. Trace the origin of Egyptian, Baby- 
 lonian, and Chinese writings. 
 
 Standardizing examinations. But reform our sys- 
 tem of examinations as we may, the feeling has 
 
 [292] 
 
DIAGNOSTIC EDUCATION 
 
 become general that even at their best they will 
 not afford sufficient knowledge of what is actually 
 being accomplished by instruction. Educators, as 
 President Lowell has pointed out, are too much 
 given to " relying on formulas." The conviction 
 is fast gaining ground that the claims which arc 
 made by them must be submitted to objective 
 measurement. It is necessary that personal opinion 
 should count for less in determining the value of 
 studies, the procedure of instruction, and the worth 
 of the product, and that verifiable methods which 
 any competent observer may employ should be 
 devised to gauge and rectify what is being done. 
 This is so large a program that several generations 
 will be required to carry it out. In fact, there is no 
 end to such an undertaking. What it really means 
 is that those who follow the calling of the teacher 
 must set themselves resolutely to get a more exact 
 knowledge of what they are doing than educators 
 have had hitherto. 
 
 Quantitative exactness comes from counting. 
 Mathematics is not more certain than logic, but 
 where logic must answer with a bare Yes or No, 
 mathematics can tell how much. Whatever can be 
 reduced to a common denominator can be counted, 
 and whatever can be counted can be compared, and 
 this comparing of group with group, condition with 
 condition, discloses principles which may be applied 
 
 [293] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 to produce the results which arc desired. Counting 
 offers the very great advantage of enabhng one to 
 become acquainted with the significance of facts 
 without being overwhehiied by direct contact with 
 them. By fixing attention upon aggregates, empiri- 
 cal laws are discovered which the study of indi- 
 vidual cases would not reveal. Besides, the study of 
 aggregates enables us to supplement and verify the 
 hypotheses of deductive reasoning. 
 
 In view of these very great advantages, it is not 
 strange that a social science such as education, with 
 limited opportunities for experimental research, 
 should call to its aid the resources of statistical 
 investigation. 
 
 Measuring some of the results of instructio7i. 
 The application of statistical methods is indeed 
 not new in education, for studies of cost and at- 
 tendance have long been made. What is proposed 
 and attempted now is a much more thoroughgoing 
 distribution of these figures and the numerical 
 coordination of many more facts. It is possible to 
 measure cost per student hour of instruction, and 
 in that way prevent disproportionate expenditure. 
 It is possible to measure the efiiciency of a school 
 system in terms of the success and failure of its 
 students to meet the requirements of the different 
 grades, and it is possible to measure the effective- 
 ness of a school system in terms of its power to 
 
 [294] 
 
DIAGNOSTIC EDUCATION 
 
 attract and hold its students after the compulsory 
 attendance law has set them free to decide whether 
 or no they shall continue in its classes. 
 
 Is it possible to measure the quality of the 
 product ? The examination fails to do that. Its 
 questions are not weighted, the same credit usually 
 being given for correct answers to each of them. 
 There is no objective standard of accomplishment. 
 The markers vary greatly in the value which they 
 put upon the papers. Is there any way by which 
 standards can be established and degrees of approxi- 
 mation to them distinguished and counted ? 
 
 It was not possible to know the amount of land 
 that one man sold to another, or the distance from 
 one place to another, until a unit of linear measure 
 had been adopted. It w^as not possible to determine 
 the amount of oil or wine a man sold to his neigh- 
 bor until a standard of liquid measure had been 
 devised. And it was not possible to fix the value of 
 commodities which were offered for exchange until 
 a unit of exchange value was established. Just so 
 the discovery of the principle of specific gravity and 
 the invention of the thermometer made possible 
 exactness of distinctions which had been vague and 
 uncertain before. 
 
 If the results of instruction are to be determined 
 with exactness, they must be measured, and before 
 they can be measured, scales must be devised with 
 
 [295] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 which to measure them. A great deal of energy 
 has ah'eady gone into the effort to make such 
 scales. Professor Thorndike was the first to attempt 
 to develop one for measuring handwriting. The 
 unit of his scale equals approximately one tenth 
 of the difference between the best and the worst 
 of the formal writings of one thousand children in 
 grades five to eight. The differences represent 
 equal fractions of merit, as determined by the judg- 
 ments of from twenty-three to fifty-five competent 
 judges, who graded the samples of writing into 
 groups according to their estimate of general merit. 
 This scale, then, is as much more exact than a 
 single individual's judgment of the degrees of ex- 
 cellence in writing as the judgment of fifty-five 
 competent judges of general merit in handwriting 
 is more reliable than the judgment of one. But 
 what is general merit in handwriting? Is it an 
 arbitrary pronouncement of the persons who act as 
 judges, or is it itself measured by a principle ? The 
 chief requirement in a standard measure is that 
 men will adopt it. For them to adopt it, it must 
 commend itself to them. Dr. Leonard P. Ayres 
 thought it better to measure handwriting by legi- 
 bility than by general merit, since legibility can 
 itself be evaluated in terms of the differences in 
 time required to read the several grades of hand- 
 writing ; and by means of elaborate experiments, he 
 
 [ 296 ] 
 
DIAGNOSTIC EDUCATION 
 
 constructed a scale for measuring legibility. It must 
 be noted that this scale measures only that one 
 aspect of writing. It does not enable us to deter- 
 mine what slant should be used, for though it shows 
 that the most legible writing is the vertical slant, 
 instruction in the use of that slant has been aban- 
 doned in the schools for other reasons. Speed, 
 which is an essential element in handwriting, is not 
 measured by this scale. 
 
 Hillegas developed a scale for measuring the 
 degrees of merit in English composition. Ballou 
 has endeavored to perfect it. Buckingham has 
 sought a measure of spelling ability. Hanus has 
 devised a scale for measuring work in the trans- 
 lation of Latin. Elliott has endeavored to provide a 
 measure of teaching capacity. But the most elabo- 
 rate effort of all which have yet been made in this 
 direction is Courtis's series of tests in arithmetic. 
 
 Mr. Courtis says that '* educational measurements 
 are sharply differentiated from ordinary examina- 
 tions in many ways. The purpose of examinations 
 is to measure the efficiency of individuals ; that of 
 educational measurements, to determine the effi- 
 ciency of the teaching process itself. Examinations 
 are varied from grade to grade and from topic to 
 topic, but if the results from standard tests are to 
 have meaning, exactly the same tests must be given 
 under rigidly uniform conditions to all — whether 
 
 [297] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 men, women, or children, and without regard to 
 their ages, grades, or types. Under uniform con- 
 ditions the men, women, or children may be meas- 
 ured with respect to any single mental ability 
 covered by a test just as truly as they may be 
 measured in respect to any single physical trait, 
 as length by the use of a single standard unit. 
 We do not hesitate to measure both the new baby 
 and his grandfather with the same foot rule, or to 
 weigh them both on the same scales. Further, an 
 examination once used can seldom be repeated. 
 But results from repeated trials of a mental test 
 may have the same general significance, from the 
 point of view of growth, that repeated measure- 
 ments of the weight of an individual may have. 
 In educational measurements, repeated tests not 
 only may, but must be, made." ^ 
 
 What these scales do and do not tell. While the 
 ideal of scientific or exact measurement is greatly 
 to be commended, there is grave danger that the 
 weighing and measuring apparatus may not be as 
 scientifically correct as they should be, and that 
 they may be used in ways for which they were not 
 intended. The yardstick will not tell you whether 
 or no you ought to buy carpet, but if your room 
 needs it, it will help you to determine the quantity 
 which you require. The scale will not tell you how 
 
 1 Proceedings of the Harvard Teachers' Association, 191 3, p. 32. 
 
 [298] 
 
DIAGNOSTIC EDUCATION 
 
 many pounds you ought to weigli, but only how 
 much you do weigh. The foot rule will not tell you 
 how large a house you should build, but it will help 
 you to make an intelligible plan. Moralists are in 
 the habit of distinguishing the criterion from the 
 standard. The criterion is an " ideal " ; the stand- 
 ard is a measure. Whether it is well for a man to 
 own his own home or not is one question. How 
 large the lot is which he has bought is another. 
 The first one cannot be answered by counting or 
 measuring. The second one can. " Science," says 
 Mr. Balfour, "depends on measurement, and things 
 not measurable are therefore excluded or tend to be 
 excluded from its attention." But life and beauty 
 and happiness are not measurable. " If there could 
 be a unit of happiness, politics might begin to be 
 scientific." ^ Certain results of instruction can be 
 measured, as, for example, the degree of legibility of 
 handwriting, when matched with the corresponding 
 sample on the Ayres scale ; or accuracy and speed 
 in adding or subtracting numbers when tried by the 
 Courtis test. These standards help us to know a 
 great deal more exactly than we can know without 
 their aid the value of the results which we are 
 getting — in terms of the standard. But there are 
 very important features of the learning process 
 which they do not measure and do not attempt to 
 
 1 Quoted by Sir Oliver Lodge, Science, September 19, 1913. 
 [299] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 measure. One of these is the interest which stu- 
 dents take in the process which they are acquiring ; 
 another is the value which they are learning to at- 
 tach to it ; a third is the obstacles which they are 
 overcoming; and a fourth, the degree of momentum 
 with which they are likely to carry these processes 
 on after leaving school. One trouble with the ex- 
 amination as a test of learning w^as that it got 
 results only on the day of the examination. If re- 
 sults only are measured, will not processes be neg- 
 lected ? The main object of education is not to 
 mature results, but to develop processes in such a 
 way that the growth of after years will perfect them. 
 It is not the business of the elementary school to 
 impart that degree of skill in calculation, in pen- 
 manship, and in the use of language, which only 
 the maturer years and the specialized training 
 of the higher commercial schools render possible. 
 If the work of the elementary school is tested by 
 standards which may be used to measure its work as 
 well as the finished work of professionals, will not 
 the inevitable result be to foster a professionalizing 
 of its product ? 
 
 Another kind of scale which we need. Sit down 
 with a package of forty specimens of children's 
 handwriting in front of the Ayres scale for meas- 
 uring penmanship. What will it tell you about 
 them? It will help you to find out what each 
 
 [ 300 ] 
 
DIAGNOSTIC EDUCATION 
 
 specimen is worth, as you compare it with the scale, 
 in terms of handwriting. That, precisely, is never 
 a problem which the working teacher has to solve. 
 His question is essentially different. It always 
 takes the form, What is this bit of writing worth, 
 as coming from a ten-year-old or a twelve-year- 
 old child ? An abstract measuring of handwriting 
 or arithmetic is one thing. It requires a positive 
 standard. But the measuring of a given child's 
 performance must be in terms of the child as well 
 as in terms of the subject matter. For this purpose 
 we need a relative scale. One might as well attempt 
 to measure the manhood or womanhood of little 
 children as to measure any other developing quality 
 which they possess in terms of a positive standard. 
 
 The scales thus far worked out enable us to 
 distinguish degrees in arithmetic, writing, com- 
 position, etc. They also measure deficiency from 
 an absolute standard. They not only tell us how 
 much we have, but they tell us how much we ought 
 to have — how much we fall short of perfection. 
 That is, they are both standard measures and 
 standards of performance. But the carpenter's foot 
 rule does not tell him how high to build the build- 
 ing; he must consult his plans for that. The bal- 
 ance will not tell you how much you should weigh, 
 but only how much you do weigh. These two con- 
 cepts must be kept apart. The standard measure of 
 
 [301] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 instruction should be a device by which to measure 
 the stages of instruction, not a statement of an ideal 
 to be attained in it. Why can we not have scales 
 which establish the norms of attainment and the 
 degrees of variation from them of children in the 
 first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and 
 eighth grades? The scales which we have do not 
 measure increments of growth ; they measure defi- 
 ciency from an absolute standard. When the Ayres 
 handwriting scale is tacked up on the wall of a 
 schoolroom, the children bring their exercises and 
 compare them with the one in the upper right-hand 
 corner, for that they think stands for perfection. 
 And frequently the teachers think so too. A scale 
 which would show the normal results in penman- 
 ship for children of their age, with the subnormal 
 and the supernormal arranged by degrees above 
 and below it, would not be so discouraging and 
 would enable both the teacher and the pupils to 
 measure their work. " We do not hesitate to meas- 
 ure both the new baby and his grandfather with the 
 same foot rule, or to weigh them both on the same 
 scales." Quite true, but to say that a child is fifty 
 inches high and weighs seventy-seven pounds is not 
 to know anything scientifically about him. Such 
 facts are only the " substratum of everyday judg- 
 ments " upon which scientific measurements and 
 coordinations are based. How old is he, and how 
 
 [302] 
 
DIAGNOSTIC EDUCATION 
 
 do his present height and weight compare with the 
 norms of height and weight which have been estab- 
 Hshed, or are being estabhshed for children of his 
 age ? The scientific physician weighs and measures 
 him in pounds and inches that he may weigh and 
 measure him in norms. That is, he weighs and 
 measures him quantitatively that he may weigh 
 and measure him qualitatively. Why does he want 
 to compare his condition with norms of growth? 
 Not that he may record an interesting fact in the 
 child's natural history, but that he may, if possible, 
 find out what there is to be done to better control 
 and direct his future. That is, his weighing and 
 measuring of the child is for diagnostic purposes. 
 
 Right here we come upon three very helpful 
 considerations. The first is that science employs 
 and coordinates two kinds of measurement to get 
 such results as educators are trying to get by one. 
 The second is that the process of establishing 
 norms is different from the process of measuring 
 actual conditions. And the third is that these 
 actual conditions, when coordinated with the norms 
 of development, serve only to direct a search for 
 matters which must be adjusted to bring about the 
 results which are desired ; that is, they furnish an 
 aid to diagnosis. 
 
 The scales which have been devised seem to con- 
 fuse the criterion and the standard. They attempt 
 
 [ 303 ] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 to measure quality and quantity on one and the 
 same yardstick. This is due to their borrowing 
 the nomenclature of the percentage system of 
 designations ^ of merit from the scheme of marking 
 examination papers, and applying it in a way in 
 which it is never employed in that system. On 
 the Ayres writing scale go means the most legible 
 sample of wTiting which was submitted, but a 
 teacher of wTiting frequently marks a third-grade 
 paper go, meaning by that only that the w^ork con- 
 forms to her conception of what third-grade work 
 near its best should be, and in so far as her con- 
 ception is correct, she is right. If the scales are 
 intended to measure quantitative differences only, 
 their distinctions should be designated by neutral 
 symbols which leave no implication that they fur- 
 nish a standard of what is to be done. The samples 
 in the right-hand columns might be called x degree 
 writing, those in the next one y degree, and so on. 
 Thus the scale would be a standard measure of 
 recognizable degrees of difference in writing and 
 w^ould run no risk of being mistaken for an exem- 
 plification of the kind of writing that children 
 should be doing. If a given child's exercise, when 
 measured by the standard, is found to be v degree 
 
 1 This criticism does not apply to Thorndike's scale for measuring 
 handwriting, which has a distinct advantage over some of the others 
 in this respect. 
 
 [304] 
 
DIAGNOSTIC EDUCATION 
 
 writing, the teacher's next step is the same as that 
 of the physician, when told that the child weighs 
 50 pounds, namely, to find out what the age of that 
 child is, and then to compare that result with the 
 norms which have been established for children of 
 that age. In scientific knowledge the fact is con- 
 ceived " in relation to the facts by which it is sur- 
 rounded." It is one thing to distinguish degrees of 
 perfection in handwriting or arithmetic, and quite 
 another thing to put the proper value upon a given 
 child's accomplishment in handwriting or arithmetic. 
 The standards which we have judge arithmetic, but 
 not the child-learning-arithmetic. 
 
 Norms of growth cannot be established by statistics 
 alone. How shall we establish in the several subjects 
 the norms of growth with which it is necessary 
 to coordinate the positive results attained in order 
 to measure the relative efiiciency of the child ? 
 Statistics alone will not furnish them to the edu- 
 cator any more than they will to the physician. 
 Statistics furnish facts — the norm is a realizable 
 ideal. The normal health of a given locality may be 
 very different from the average or mean condition 
 of health of its people, as the norm of healthfulness 
 which Colonel Gorgas followed in cleaning up the 
 city of Havana was very different from the average 
 of the conditions as he found them. The norm is 
 a model, something to work toward, an available 
 
 [305] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 optimum, an ideal which is attainable when the 
 causal connections are properly controlled, and not 
 merely a registration of the effects of conditions as 
 they now are. Just as it is the function of every 
 development in the science of medicine to con- 
 tribute its quota to the ever-growing conception of 
 what health may be, so it is the function of every 
 genuine discovery in the field of education to play 
 its part in shaping the realizable norms of instruc- 
 tion. The science is a practical one, and every 
 method of discovery which yields results must be 
 employed to inform us concerning its possibilities. 
 What is being done may conceivably fall far short 
 of what should be done, in which case a statistical 
 study of it will not be of great directive value. Up to 
 1870, reading was almost everywhere taught by the 
 alphabet method. The most thoroughgoing tabula- 
 tion of what was being accomplished by that prac- 
 tice would not of itself have established the normal 
 way to teach reading. Advance in every line comes 
 by studying its defects intensively rather than by 
 establishing a consensus. 
 
 Psychology, child study, medicine, and the logical 
 criticism of concepts which belongs to the princi- 
 ples of education must evaluate the results which 
 the statistical and experimental study of education 
 furnish. Only by such a coordination is a science 
 of education possible. 
 
 [306] 
 
DIAGNOSTIC EDUCATION 
 
 Grave danger that statistical methods may be 
 applied where they do not belong. There is grave 
 danger that statistical results may assume to fur- 
 nish the ideals of education and determine courses 
 of study just as systems of accounting have at- 
 tempted to organize the administration of cities. 
 One might as well attempt to make a school sys- 
 tem with a pickax as by the results established 
 by a system of accounting only. The mariner's 
 compass does not tell you where to sail, but only 
 where you are. You must consult your charts, the 
 winds, the weather, and the seaworthiness of your 
 craft, to find out whether you are in danger, and 
 your destination and your log to find out how to 
 port your helm. The statistical study of results 
 tells what has been done ; but other considerations, 
 among them the nature of the undertaking and the 
 nature of the child, must be combined with it to 
 determine what should be done. 
 
 An illustration of this tendency. A specific illus- 
 tration of a possible misdirection of educational 
 effort through the power of the tests which are im- 
 posed is the following from the Annual Report of 
 the Superintendent of Schools of New York City for 
 191 3: "As every school man knows, examinations 
 largely determine the character of teaching. What 
 the examiner calls for, that the teacher will teach. 
 Now, the Courtis tests in arithmetic constituted an 
 
 [307] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 examination, and this examination I fear may lead, 
 in the minds of inexperienced teachers, to a wrong 
 conception of their aims. These tests laid unusual 
 stress on speed in the manipulation of numbers. 
 
 " We all know that speed in the manipulation of 
 numbers is an important intellectual asset in the 
 business world, and that it is well worth a serious 
 effort to attain. I submit, however, that accuracy is 
 much more important. What will it profit a busi- 
 ness man to have his clerk add up a column of 
 figures in thirty seconds if the resulting sum is 
 incorrect ? The commercial and manufacturing 
 world demand accuracy as the first qualification in 
 figures, and accuracy should be our first aim in 
 teaching arithmetic. 
 
 " Now the Courtis tests lead in precisely the 
 opposite direction. In that examination the chil- 
 dren were driven at top speed throughout. They 
 were allowed no time for checking or verification 
 of results. If our teachers should follow the ex- 
 ample set in that examination, they w^ould do an 
 irreparable injury to our pupils. 
 
 " Some years ago I advised our principals and 
 teachers that in their practice w^ork in addition, 
 children should be required to verify the result for 
 each line of figures before proceeding to the next 
 line. The method suggested was to add each line 
 first up and then down, and as often as necessary 
 
 [ 308 ] 
 
DIAGNOSTIC EDUCATION 
 
 until a uniform result was obtained. I advised 
 similar precautions in the other fundamental rules. 
 I still cling to this theory — not speed at the ex- 
 pense of accuracy, as in the Courtis tests ; but 
 accuracy first and speed afterward should be the 
 aim of the New York schools. 
 
 " Some such notion seems to have occurred to 
 Mr. Courtis since the New York tests were given, 
 as he writes me that he has since somewhat 
 modified them." 
 
 The power to test is the power to control. The 
 nature of the test shapes the work which is given 
 and the scheme of values which is set up. This 
 new device is a two-edged sword in education. 
 It must be handled with care. The very effort to 
 measure results instead of processes seems to shift 
 the focal point unwarrantably. 
 
 A truer measure of results. Those who devised 
 the tests have no such intention. We can measure 
 process only in terms of results. What they desire, 
 doubtless, is a means of checking up processes. 
 But the burden of our whole discussion has been 
 to show that education is to be measured by its 
 success in setting up vital processes in such a 
 way that they will be indispensable to the person 
 who has once learned to use them as long as he 
 may live. According to this view, the true test of 
 the efficiency of a school is not to be found in an 
 
 [309] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 examination, no matter how carefully devised, which 
 would determine whether an eighth-grade student 
 can read, write, add figures, spell the words he 
 should spell, pass in history, or what not. The true 
 test of the school's efficiency consists in finding 
 out whether or not that student, thirty years after 
 graduation, say, is still a man who reads, who writes 
 and spells w^ell, who uses scientific methods, who is 
 historically minded and still in particular, not in 
 general, shows that in his youth he began to learn 
 a way of life. It seems next to impossible to devise 
 and apply a system of tests of this kind. Yet these 
 are the features of education which determine its 
 worth, and until we can gather the measurable 
 ri^sults of this great experiment for a number of 
 years we shall still be in the land of vagueness and 
 uncertainty. In charity work it has become cus- 
 tomary to follow up the case that has been helped, 
 through a term of years. The good home follows 
 its sons and daughters, taking account of their suc- 
 cesses and failures through life. In these days of 
 eugenic inquiries, extending back over a number 
 of generations, a scientifically devised examination 
 of its students, by a school, after they have had 
 thirty years in which to deepen or forget w^hat they 
 learned in it, does not seem unw^orthy of repeated 
 trial. The results of all other examinations would 
 speedily sink into insignificance beside this. 
 
 [310] 
 
DIAGNOSTIC EDUCATION 
 
 The proper way to use rules and standards. But 
 there is another kind of examination with which 
 education is beginning to concern itself in a very 
 Hvely fashion. It is the systematic effort to fit his 
 work to the student, not the student to the work. 
 The principles which science formulates are short- 
 hand expression of facts, each of them " a type 
 of a series of possible facts." ^ The well-founded 
 distrust of uniformity of procedure as based upon 
 such generalizations, rules, or laws, can be met only 
 by remembering their nature and learning how to 
 use them. It is the misuse of the standard, not the 
 standard, which must be fought. No general princi- 
 ple can embrace all particulars. We have a system 
 of courts to fit the laws to particular cases ; a body 
 of practicing physicians to fit the principles of 
 medicine to the conditions of their patients. It is 
 not by establishing uniformities that education will 
 become a science, but by establishing uniformities 
 in connection with the particulars out of which they 
 grow, and to minister to which is the sole reason 
 for their existence. 
 
 It is said that no two engines made from the 
 same pattern consume the same amount of fuel, 
 develop the same power, require the same amount 
 of lubricating oil, disclose the same structural weak- 
 nesses, nor last in service for the same number of 
 
 1 Enriques, Problems of Science, p. 8i. Chicago, 1914. 
 
 [311] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 days. An engineer who attempted to treat them 
 in exactly the same way would destroy, in part, at 
 least, the usefulness of one of them. This prin- 
 ciple of dissimilarity is deep seated in nature. 
 It impressed the philosopher Leibniz so profoundly 
 that he regarded it as a fundamental fact in the 
 make-up of the universe, pointing out that no two 
 leaves on the same tree are alike, and no two beings 
 have exactly the same nature. Some folks believe 
 that there is only one right way to do a thing, and 
 all the other ways are wrong. Mr. Kipling did not 
 agree with them when he wrote : 
 
 There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays 
 And every single one of them is right. 
 
 It is altogether likely that there is no one uniform 
 and eternally right way of doing anything, that the 
 right which is not merely an abstraction is always a 
 function of a situation which is individual, and will 
 never repeat all its details in any other situation. 
 
 The trtie place of uniformity i7i edtication. But 
 while situations are different in details, and indi- 
 viduals and even machines are different, and call 
 for differences in treatment, situations are also like 
 other situations, and individuals like other indi- 
 viduals, and machines like other machines. There 
 are uniformities in them all, and if we take these 
 uniformities as part of what we are dealing with, 
 
 [312] 
 
DIAGNOSTIC EDUCATION 
 
 not the whole, we shall find them useful. The 
 United States Government finds it useful to uni- 
 form its soldiers, but if it attempted to put a uni- 
 form amount of cloth into each soldier's dress, the 
 result would be unhappy. It applies the principle of 
 uniformity where it belongs and finds it serviceable. 
 Just so in education, school systems ought not to 
 be alike, or to expect to be alike, in the details of 
 their administration, their courses of study, their 
 methods of teaching, or the objective results which 
 they get. The principles of education must be 
 applied, which means that they must be interpreted 
 in terms of the situation. Within the system the 
 same application to individual conditions must be 
 made, or life-killing regimentation will usurp the 
 place of education. Those schools therefore are the 
 best which are doing their utmost for the individual 
 child. Since it is vastly more important to have a 
 mentally alive child in a schoolroom than a dead 
 subject of study, we must not make the mistake of 
 defining education in terms of a fixed quantum of 
 knowledge or even of rigidly prescribed studies to 
 be pursued. What we seek primarily is to help 
 each child to use his own mind. To get and keep 
 a living and expanding interest, a searching, re- 
 flecting, organizing, using, mental activity, going on 
 in young children, it will be necessary to meet them 
 where they live. Instruction must adapt itself to 
 
 [313] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 the interests of the place in which it is given, to the 
 traditions and culture of the homes from which the 
 children come, to their age and advancement, and 
 to their mental variations. Uniform courses of 
 study, uniform textbooks, uniform methods of teach- 
 ing, and uniform results must go the way of out- 
 worn shibboleths. Their uniformities must vary to 
 meet individual cases. 
 
 Clinical psychology and educatio7u The very prac- 
 tical science of clinical psychology has for its object 
 the studying and diagnosing of individual mental 
 behavior, in order to find out how to minister to 
 its needs. This science has not developed so far as 
 to lead the men engaged in it to regard themselves 
 as the servants of a body of theoretical distinctions 
 which are of value in themselves. They are keenly 
 practical in what they are doing, and the classifi- 
 cations which they make are diagnostic merely. 
 Professor Wallin distinguishes two general classes 
 of cases — those in which the mental variations are 
 primary and the physical disabilities accessoiy, and 
 those in which physical deviations are primary and 
 mental variations sequential. Under the first class 
 he groups feeble-minded children^ insisting that the 
 bettering of their condition is essentially an edu- 
 cational problem ; retardates, of whom he believes 
 there are not less than 6,000,000 in the schools of 
 the United States, some of whom are retarded 
 
 [314] 
 
DIAGNOSTIC EDUCATION 
 
 simply because the curriculum is abnormal, others 
 because of arrested development, others because 
 their environment handicaps them, and others be- 
 cause of physical defects ; the sicpernormals, who 
 need only special opportunities for work, but with- 
 out them develop a kind of enforced mediocrity; 
 speech defectives such as stutterers, lispers, etc. ; and 
 incipiejit psychotics, or children who show the be- 
 ginnings of mental disorders. The second class is 
 made up of cases of malnutrition, rickets, tuber- 
 culosis, heart trouble, chorea, etc. Here the treat- 
 ment called for is primarily medical ; in the first 
 class it is primarily educational.^ 
 
 Here is a tremendous engine of discovery, whose 
 significance to parents, children, and teachers is 
 beyond estimation. It provides a knowledge not 
 of groups or of attainments in studies, but of the 
 individuals to be educated. For the hit-or-miss 
 methods of a more or less arbitrary objective pro- 
 cedure, this practice w^ould substitute a basic prin- 
 ciple of organization, the diagnosis of the child 
 himself. When we measure in order to determine 
 regulative principles, we must in the last resort 
 measure the primary reality with which we have 
 
 1 Wallin, " Clinical Psychology," Science, June 13, 1913. See also the 
 Psychological Clinic, edited by Professor Witmer ; The Training School, 
 published by the New Jersey Training School, Vineland, New Jersey; 
 and the publications of the Psychopathic Institute of Chicago ; particularly 
 Dr. Healy's recent book, " The Individual Delinquent." 
 
 [315] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 to deal. That primary reality in education is the 
 individual child. Courses of study we may change, 
 for the demands of society are conventions which 
 can be made or unmade, but the nature of the 
 individual child is given. Everything else must be 
 related to it. 
 
 Guidance based upon diagnosis. Another appli- 
 cation of diagnosis to education is the important 
 activity known as vocational guidance. Its func- 
 tion is to help young people to find the callings 
 for which they are fit. To help them in this way 
 demands an elaborate study of the distinctive re- 
 quirements of the several occupations, and a care- 
 ful investigation of the traits and capacities of the 
 given individual who seeks advice as to what occu- 
 pation his talents indicate he should follow. The 
 problems which this procedure present are so very 
 difficult that only a beginning has been made in 
 solving them. That there are individual traits that 
 should serve as indexes of the specific functioning 
 which a young person can reasonably hope to per- 
 form, no one perhaps will deny ; but what these 
 distinguishing traits are remains to be found out. 
 A number of men and women are at work upon 
 this problem. Much has already been done to col- 
 lect and distribute information as to the require- 
 ments which a number of occupations make. The 
 literature of vocational guidance is already large 
 
 [316] 
 
DIAGNOSTIC EDUCATION 
 
 and is growing rapidly. There is need for a similar 
 fitting of studies to mental aptitudes while education 
 is going on. 
 
 The most significant statement which I find in 
 Mr. Courtis's reports of the vast and important work 
 which he has performed is this : " My thesis is that 
 we must practice what we preach; the teaching 
 of children is a far more complex task than even 
 the wisest of our leaders have realized ; that we 
 must begin over again and evolve new methods, 
 new courses of study, new ideals of education 
 generally, and that all must be based upon the 
 central idea of determining and ministering ade- 
 quately to individual needs. At present, our school 
 products are uniform from city to city, because a 
 certain degree of development is easily secured by 
 any method ; because, also, even a very great in- 
 crease in time and effort produces only slightly 
 greater results. That is, the benefit of class instruc- 
 tion is limited, and the limits are quickly reached. 
 Improvement can come only by the adoption of 
 methods and opportunities for supplementing class 
 instruction with work with individuals." ^ 
 
 A thoroughgoing reconstruction of class teaching. 
 By far the most thoroughgoing reconstruction of 
 class teaching of which I know has been going on 
 since the beginning of the year 191 2 in the State 
 
 1 Proceedings of the Harvard Teachers' Association, 1913, p. 44. 
 [317] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 Normal School located in San Francisco. Dr. Fred- 
 eric Burk, the president of the school, has recently 
 issued a bulletin setting forth an outline of their 
 plan and results, under the title " Lock-step School- 
 ing and a Remedy." The considerations which led 
 them to abandon the class system of instruction 
 were: first, admitted failure of that system to pro- 
 duce creditable results ; and second, the fact that 
 from one third to one half the pupils remaining in 
 the schools in a large number of typical cities are 
 above the age which is normal for their grades. 
 This condition seems to be common to schools, no 
 matter how well they are administered or taught. 
 Accordingly, the cause must be some common 
 feature which lies behind teaching and adminis- 
 tration. They began to suspect the class system as 
 the enemy of the child for the reason that though 
 children are different, the class system required 
 them to take a lesson of the same length each day 
 and to learn it with the same degree of thorough- 
 ness. It assumes the same degree of simultaneous 
 attention in all, in spite of illnesses, absences, wor- 
 ries, and all kinds of personal ups and downs. It as- 
 sumes that all will progress and be promoted at the 
 same rate. It measures a pupil's work not in terms 
 of his own ability, but by comparing it with that 
 of a fictitious average pupil who has no flesh-and- 
 blood existence but is merely a dividing line to 
 
 [318] 
 
DIAGNOSTIC EDUCATION 
 
 separate those who are above the average from 
 those below it. The class system does permanent 
 violence to all the pupils; for those who could travel 
 faster than the average are shackled to it, and those 
 who should go more slowly must seem to keep up 
 with it. This required keeping of the step robs 
 both kinds of pupils of natural inducement to work 
 and prevents the normal growth of individuality. 
 It makes the brighter pupils dawdle and the slower 
 ones it discourages. Indeed, it does much more harm 
 than this, for it perverts instruction. For, take two 
 children who are set to learn the same lesson — let 
 it be the combination of eight plus five ; assume 
 that one boy learns it and the other does not. What 
 should the next lesson be for each? It should be 
 different, but under class teaching it is not. 
 
 The prime fact is the pupil. He is different from 
 his fellows in motives, speed of comprehension, 
 difficulties, and firmness of grip. But it is he, and 
 not the nonexistent "average pupil," whom the 
 schools must put in the way of becoming a self- 
 reliant pupil-thinker. How to get every student to 
 put all his talents at interest is the problem. 
 
 The faculty of the normal school resolved to cut 
 away obstructions. The first one which it met was 
 the textbook. Its language is incomprehensible, 
 hence its words are memorized. It provides lessons 
 of the same length for pupils who require lessons of 
 
 [319] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 different lengths. Current texts are made up for 
 the most part of facts and definitions to be memo- 
 rized. They contain no adequate provision for re- 
 views. " Knowledge," the faculty said, " does not con- 
 sist in learning definitions, nor in committing state- 
 ments about facts. It consists in using them." 
 They set out to teach each student to write a sen- 
 tence and to use the multiplication table, rather than 
 to define a sentence without being able to write it, or 
 to recite the multiplication table without being able 
 to multiply numbers correctly. For this purpose 
 flexible texts ^ had to be produced, providing many 
 varied exercises on the same principle for the stu- 
 dent who required much familiarity with it to make 
 it stick, and few for the pupil who mastered it quickly, 
 and supplying a wide range of work from which a 
 selection could be made to fit the needs of each. 
 
 The makers of these lessons sought to omit all 
 abstract explanations from them, to make each 
 lesson begin as the learning of a doing set forth in 
 it so simply that each pupil can master the prob- 
 lem by his own effort. Difficulties are introduced 
 one at a time. There are duplicate exercises in 
 plenty, making the lesson sufficiently long to de- 
 velop accuracy where it is slow in growing, or to 
 allow a few trials only and a quick advance to the 
 
 1 Such texts suitable for individual work have been published by Ginn 
 and Company under the title " Minimum Essentials." 
 
 [320] 
 
DIAGNOSTIC EDUCATION 
 
 next lesson to the person who masters the principle 
 at once. Reviews are automatically provided by 
 being embodied in subsequent lessons. 
 
 The results, " We are astonished at our imme- 
 diate results, in changed spirit, in reawakened 
 young ambitions and energy, in rapidity of pupils' 
 progress, and in our own enthusiasm," writes 
 Dr. Burk. The individual classroom is a workshop 
 where each student is busy with his own work. It 
 is the function of the teacher to learn what each 
 one can do and the motives which prompt his 
 doing. She is there to help him to his work, and 
 to give him the encouragement of approval and 
 assistance when he needs it. Going from desk to 
 desk to help pupils who perhaps did not need it, 
 these teachers soon found to be debilitating to their 
 scholars, for " substantial learning " can be secured 
 only by the pupil " putting his own mind through 
 the given process." The familiar recitation is com- 
 pletely abandoned, but when, by individual doing 
 of work, a group of pupils have familiarized them- 
 selves with an epoch of history, a geographical 
 area, some problem of industry, or other unit of 
 study in a given field, the classroom becomes a 
 forum in which they are brought together for a 
 " Socratic discussion," for the mutual clarifying of 
 their ideas upon it. Such deliberations have a 
 regular place in the weekly program. 
 
 [321] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 An effort is now being made to work out a 
 course of study to cover eight years, the allotment 
 of work in each year to be determined by what the 
 slowest pupils can reasonably accomplish in that 
 time. Since each one advances as rapidly as he 
 can, the others will complete the w^ork in a shorter 
 period. No one is demoted, or turned back to re- 
 peat a grade. Promotion by a card is a merely 
 nominal recognition of what has been accomplished. 
 The school day is divided into short work periods, 
 and each child's work is regulated in such a way 
 as to vary his activities according to his need. 
 Home study is entirely abolished. From twenty-five 
 to thirty per cent of the pupils are advancing much 
 more rapidly than the usual class rate. From ten to 
 twenty per cent are going more slowly than under 
 the class system, but they are doing thorough work, 
 and not giving an appearance of keeping up only. 
 
 This plan differs from earlier forms of individual 
 instruction in that it abolishes the individual reci- 
 tation of a memorized lesson. A teacher guides 
 the work of as many pupils as under the class 
 system. The correction of written work is the real 
 difficulty. But the pupils do that, for " the prin- 
 ciple is sound that, as a means of learning in most 
 subjects, there is no exercise quite so productive 
 and thorough as the correction of errors." 
 
 [322] 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 LEARNING TO WORK WITH CONCEPTS 
 
 The essential thing in education. As long as 
 schools exist the most important thing about them 
 will be not their budget, nor their buildings, nor 
 their administration, nor their teachers, nor their 
 examinations, nor even the branches of learning 
 which make up their course of study; the most 
 important thing about them will be what their 
 students do. These other things are necessary that 
 the work of schools may go on, but they are only 
 means to that end, that end, their work, being a 
 doing on the part of their students, a doing of such 
 a kind that the students will have to go on repeat- 
 ing it as long as they live, a doing therefore which 
 the experimenting of the ages has found to be 
 necessary and which their fellow men in days to 
 come will require from them. But these other 
 things — the money needed for the maintenance of 
 the schools, the buildings needed to house them, 
 the corporation or the board of education, the presi- 
 dent of the college, the master or superintendent of 
 schools, the professors or the teachers who " give the 
 instruction," and, most of all, perhaps, the subjects 
 
 [323] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 which they study — keep getting in the way of the 
 students' work and arrogating to themselves by 
 turns a kind of monopoly of attention which keeps 
 the nature of the educational undertaking sadly 
 obscured. However, experienced teachers of teach- 
 ers are not at all uncertain as to the relative impor- 
 tance of these elements in the educational process. 
 When they send their apprentices to visit the work- 
 shops of other teachers they charge them above 
 everything to watch what the students are doing, 
 and after that to give attention to what the teacher 
 is doing to facilitate the students' w^ork. When 
 they inspect schools themselves they keep their 
 eyes upon that aspect of them. For what the 
 learner does is the essential thing. 
 
 What should the student do? To find out what 
 the learner should do one must hunt down the 
 meaning of a good many very familiar words — 
 words whose meaning their very familiarity has 
 tended to confuse and obscure. Concerning them 
 one must ask himself the Socratic questions : What 
 is education ? What is knowledge ? What is mind ? 
 What is truth? What is science? What is litera- 
 ture ? What is culture ? What is a vocation ? What 
 is personality? etc. In short, he must criticize the 
 concepts of education. The human endeavor which 
 goes at matters in that way is called philosophy. 
 It forces one to trace the connections and relations 
 
 [324] 
 
LEARNING TO WORK WITH CONCEPTS 
 
 of things which the sciences take for granted and 
 study separately. One who studies chemistry is not 
 required to study the philosophy of chemistry, and 
 one who studies physics or biology may neglect to 
 criticize the assumptions of these sciences, but one 
 who studies education must not neglect to work 
 out his own philosophy of education in the light of 
 what men have already thought about its meaning 
 and its purposes, for education is an integrating 
 process, and to make wholes or personalities it must 
 proceed from the knowledge of the whole. All real 
 philosophy has education for its object, and all real 
 education must ground itself in philosophy. 
 
 A superseded theory of educatio7i. There was a 
 theory of mind which maintained that human expe- 
 rience was built up by impressions. David Hume 
 was its prophet. " An impression first strikes upon 
 the senses and makes us perceive heat or cold, 
 thirst or hunger, pleasure or pain, of some kind or 
 other. Of this impression there is a copy taken by 
 the mind which remains after the impression ceases; 
 and this we call an idea. . . . To give a child an 
 idea of scarlet or orange, of sweet or bitter, I pre- 
 sent the objects, or in other words convey to him 
 these impressions ; but proceed not so absurdly, as 
 to endeavor to produce the impressions by exciting 
 the ideas. . . . This priority of the impressions is an 
 equal proof that our impressions are the cause of 
 
 [325] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 our ideas, not our ideas of our impressions." ^ These 
 isolated or separate impressions associate them- 
 selves into complexes by a sort of spontaneous gen- 
 eration, and mind Hume describes as a "bundle or 
 collection " of these single impressions " in a per- 
 petual flux of movement." Though he begins with 
 the impressions and expressly disclaims any impli- 
 cation as to their source, he constantly implies that 
 they are, as in the case of scarlet or orange, 
 presented by objects. 
 
 We have here, therefore, the basis of a simple 
 and generally accepted theory of education. Im- 
 pressions and ideas, which are their copies, come 
 to us from objects. To give the learner the impres- 
 sions the teacher must present the objects. If they 
 are only presented, the impressions will come of 
 themselves and the ideas, or copies, will remain. 
 Spontaneous, or natural, association will do the rest. 
 The whole process of education is synthetic, a 
 building up of single impressions one after another 
 within the mind, and a trusting to their spontaneous 
 fusion to organize them. 
 
 The theory which has superseded it. This psycho- 
 logical doctrine reigned with nearly undisputed 
 authority until Professor James published his " Prin- 
 ciples of Psychology" in 1890. Even Immanuel 
 Kant, who gave Hume the credit of having roused 
 
 1 Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Bk. I, sections I and II. 
 
 [ 326 ] 
 
LEARNING TO WORK WITH CONCEPTS 
 
 him from his dogmatic slumber, accepted Hume's 
 notion that experience starts with a manifold of 
 impressions, clear cut, distinct, and separate, though 
 he proceeded to show that mind does not allow 
 them to bundle themselves as they please, but 
 organizes them according to certain principles of 
 its own nature. Experience getting was for him 
 still a synthetic process, a putting together of bits 
 or units of experience into the mosaics into which 
 mind, because of its organizing nature, insisted 
 upon building it. 
 
 But Professor James announced a radically dif- 
 ferent view, and knowledge getting took on a cor- 
 respondingly different definition. The most obvious 
 thing about consciousness, he said, is that it is a 
 stream. We start not with separate and distinct 
 impressions. We start w^ith a confusion, with a 
 vague, onrushing, unbroken flux of feeling. We 
 see nothing clearly at first, we hear nothing clearly, 
 we feel nothing clearly. Experience is not built up 
 out of separate impressions at all. Education is not 
 a building up of such impressions by the presenting 
 of things to deposit them and their copies in the 
 mind. " Out of this aboriginal sensible muchness 
 attention carves out objects, which conception then 
 names and identifies forever — in the sky ' con- 
 stellations,' on the earth 'beach,' 'sea," cliff,' 'bushes,' 
 'grass.' Out of time we cut 'days' and 'nights,' 
 
 [327] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 'summers' and 'winters.' We say what each part of 
 the sensible continuum is, and all these abstracted 
 ivJiats are concepts. The intellectual life of man 
 consists almost wholly in his substitution of a con- 
 ceptual order for the perceptual order in which his 
 experience originally comes ^ ^ 
 
 This doctrine reverses the problem of education. 
 According to Hume and his successors its task was 
 that of presenting impressions. According to James 
 its task is that of carving out objects from the con- 
 tinuum of feeling. The teacher is no longer a com- 
 pounder of impressions — his duty is not to objects, 
 but to what goes on inside the mind of the learner. 
 
 How does this carviiig out of objects proceed? We 
 bring with us certain instinctive, selective tenden- 
 cies w^hich force the aboriginal flux of feeling into 
 consolidations or clusters w^hich we call things. But 
 very strangely, as we have seen, we do not name 
 these separate or isolated things. Our naming is 
 all of classes or kinds of things. If we would name 
 a thing as it is experienced at a given moment, we 
 must employ a phrase such as " this table, " " the 
 book there," or " that horse." Our names are all 
 class symbols or devices for dealing with recurring 
 experiences of similar kinds. They indicate past 
 experiences and expectations as well as the present 
 particulars to which we apply them. 
 
 1 James, Some Problems of Philosophy, p. 50. New York, 191 1. 
 
 [328] 
 
LEARNING TO WORK WITH CONCEPTS 
 
 It used to be thought that these general names 
 or concepts grew out of particulars or percepts; 
 that one must have had a certain number of expe- 
 riences of men before he could by abstraction arrive 
 at the notion of man. But psychologists now teach 
 us that the concept and the percept arise together. 
 " The child begins with what seems to be a ' general' 
 His earliest experiences, carried over into memory, 
 become general copies which stand as assimilation 
 nets for every new event or object. All men are 
 'papa,' all colors are 'wed,' all food 'mik.' ... It is 
 only partially true that the concept arises from the 
 percept at all. It is rather true that the two arise 
 together, by the same mental movement, which is 
 apperception or motor synthesis. Going back again 
 to that neglected period, infancy, we may ask, as a 
 matter of fact, what takes place. 
 
 " Suppose, after the very common method of the 
 day, a single presentation. A, in the infant con- 
 sciousness ; then suppose it removed. The child 
 is now ready to germinate forward and backward, 
 future-ward and past-ward. He remembers and he 
 expects. Viewed as memory, his experience. A, is 
 particular, a sensation, after a time a percept. But 
 it includes more than his simple receptive state. 
 He reacts to it, and so stands ready to react to it 
 again. This readiness is his expectatioji, — the tend- 
 ency he has to a definite reaction; and as the only 
 
 [329] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 one it stands ready to 'go off' on any kind of stim- 
 ulus which is locally near enough to discharge that 
 way. His memory has become schematic of the 
 future viewed as expectation, it is the whole of the 
 child's reality; it is what will happen, for it is all 
 that can happen ; he knows nothing else. What- 
 ever then actually does happen is at first reacted to 
 as A, and remains A, by this active confirmation, if 
 it is possible for the child's consciousness to keep 
 it A." ^ Thus mind by its own inherent nature 
 selects what is vital to its necessities from the sen- 
 sory continuum, and from it constructs its world. 
 It organizes its surroundings in accordance with its 
 own constitution just as the tree or the plant does. 
 From concepts of the first degree it proceeds to 
 concepts of the second degree, and in due order 
 to concepts of the third degree, by progressive con- 
 solidation distinguishing new particulars within the 
 sensory flux and operating with them as anticipa- 
 tions, differentiating and classifying as long as con- 
 sciousness continues in this state of existence. For 
 it is not only the baby's immediate sensory life, but 
 every man's at every age, which is a big, blooming, 
 buzzing confusion from which his mind must select 
 its own materials of objects and processes according 
 to his vital needs. The instrument with which he 
 
 1 Baldwin, Mental Development, Methods, and Processes, pp. 309-310. 
 New York, 1906. 
 
 [330] 
 
LEARNING TO WORK WITH CONCEPTS 
 
 makes this ever-continuing selection is his reaction 
 system, his system of concepts, his body of ways 
 of anticipating and sorting the sensory flow. The 
 problem of education then, like the problem of phi- 
 losophy, concerns the nature and use of concepts. 
 They are the vessels with which the water of life 
 may be dipped from the stream of consciousness 
 and applied to human uses. 
 
 The nature and uses of concepts. The thinker, 
 says Plato, is one who is able to distinguish the 
 one from the many and to recognize the one in its 
 various combinations with actions and things. The 
 knowledge which he seeks is knowledge of the one, 
 is knowledge of the nature of things. These are 
 hard sayings and have been persistently misunder- 
 stood. The one of which Plato is speaking is the 
 circle as distinct from circles, the triangle as dis- 
 tinct from triangles, the truth as distinct from 
 truths, justice as distinct from particular acts of 
 justice, goodness as distinct from this, that, and the 
 other good deed. The thinker is one who is able 
 to discern the circle or the triangle in the shaped 
 things he must work with, and thereby determine 
 their character and the uses which he can make of 
 them, or who, having the pattern of truth or jus- 
 tice in his soul, can and will shape his deeds and 
 the whole ordering of his affairs accordingly. And 
 knowledge is of the one because he who would 
 
 [331] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 know and work with circles must know the circle ; 
 he who would serve truth must know what truth 
 is; he who would establish justice on earth or his 
 corner of earth must know what justice is ; and 
 he who would grow plants must have a concept of 
 plant life to organize his deeds. The words which 
 we use always express more than the facts which 
 they seem to designate. When we talk of a point, 
 or line, or circle we are talking about things which 
 we cannot draw or visibly represent. When we 
 speak of the truth, or of equality, justice, humanity, 
 plant life, etc., we speak of existences which eye 
 hath not seen nor ear heard, but which it has en- 
 tered into the mind of man to conceive. They are 
 not things, but thoughts which order and arrange 
 things; they are ideals by which we organize the 
 perceptual stuff of existence. The concept is the 
 way we relate the parts of experience, the principle 
 or law, the meaning or significance of the things 
 with which we work. The things with which we 
 work pass away, they flow by us, they are in cease- 
 less change, but their meanings do not change. 
 This round column will in time be broken up, 
 the lie which was told a moment ago will be 
 forgotten, the acts of barbarity which that nation 
 committed will be blotted out from the book of 
 human remembrance, but how long will circles 
 be circles? How long will truth be truth? How 
 
 [332] 
 
LEARNING TO WORK WITH CONCEPTS 
 
 long will justice be justice ? Here are life interests 
 which do not pass away. 
 
 The relation of concepts to tilings. Let us illus- 
 trate the relation of concepts to percepts in a 
 figure. Let the lines A B and C D represent the 
 ladder of life, or the course through which one 
 
 A C 
 
 passes from birth to death. At every moment in 
 that course he is surrounded by an infinity of par- 
 ticular things, some very few of which his necessi- 
 ties force him to take note of and to use. One 
 after another, as occasion arises for them, he picks 
 them out from the vague which surrounds him 
 
 [333] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 and names his anticipations of them. This group is 
 bread, that is clothing, that is shelter. This body 
 of related facts is geometry, that is religion; this is 
 morals, that is knowledge. The vertical lines which 
 cross the moments of existence are our life interests 
 or ways of organizing the incessant flow of particu- 
 lars. They are our concepts, or principles by which 
 we thread our way through this maze. Since they 
 are our life interests and the interests of the race, 
 they have a much greater permanence and import 
 than the quickly vanishing facts or particulars 
 which stream by so ceaselessly. Yet while they are 
 vastly more important than the facts of any single 
 moment, we must remember that their sole func- 
 tion is to harness this flux of things, that their only 
 value is that they bring facts to us and take us to 
 the facts or experiences which we desire. 
 
 The kind of knowledge which we seek. We con- 
 ceptualize only a small part of our experience. We 
 might, as w^e have seen, name and classify the many 
 appearances and reappearances of the table, the 
 chairs, the books, and of every other object which 
 we see, hear, smell, touch, or taste, at every possi- 
 ble distance and from every possible point of rela- 
 tion, just as we might classify the books in our 
 libraries by the number of times the letter a or 
 the word the or any other letter, word, mark, or 
 discernible difference appears in each. But we do 
 
 [334] 
 
LEARNING TO WORK WITH CONCEPTS 
 
 not, and the reason why we do not is that the con- 
 ceptuahzing of such percepts would be of no pos- 
 sible use to us. What we seek is a reality which 
 will help us in our work, not a reality which we 
 can only describe. The notion that knowledge is 
 the description of reality takes no account of human 
 purposes, and leaves us rudderless victims of a 
 horizonless sea of facts. While it is true that con- 
 cepts are not the sensible equivalents of sensations, 
 they are the changes which we bring about in per- 
 cepts to organize them into activities. History may 
 be described as a faithful account of what hap- 
 pened in time past. The history of the Civil War 
 then would be a full report of the events of the 
 war. But these events were infinite in number. 
 They not only cannot be found out and described, 
 but most of them would be of no significance even 
 if they could be. The first thing which the histo- 
 rian must do is to select from this mass of happen- 
 ings that very small part which had significance. 
 He schematizes these into a systematic whole and 
 offers us this as the history of the period. Dead 
 facts he endeavors to omit, but living facts, that is, 
 events and considerations which the bulk of folks 
 to whom he addresses himself must still take ac- 
 count of and reckon with, he seeks to incorporate 
 into his story. Because the facts which are perti- 
 nent to the vital interests of one generation are 
 
 [335] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 not always those which were pertinent to the in- 
 terests of the generation which preceded it, each 
 generation must rewrite the history of the past from 
 its own standpoint. The sensory experiences which 
 the men of the past had and the records which they 
 made of them have not of course changed, but our 
 interest in these events has changed. So through 
 the nets of contemporary interest we strain the 
 ancient happenings over and over again, and the 
 result of this straining we call history. Each new 
 generation thinks that it has at last succeeded in 
 writing the definitive account of antiquity, but the 
 next generation is as unwilling to accept its inter- 
 pretation as final as it was the interpretation of the 
 men who went before it. 
 
 This same process of selection and interpretation 
 determines the content of science. The known 
 facts do not change, but the questions which we put 
 to them are kaleidoscopic in their variety. Even 
 geometry, which was long held to be the perfect 
 specimen of absolute knowledge, has recently under- 
 gone surprising development. There was a time 
 when men looked upon " an eye for an eye " and 
 " the divine right of kings " as unchanging princi- 
 ples of social knowledge. We look upon them now 
 as almost inexplicably self-imposed limitations of 
 human intelligence. In this way the final truths 
 of past generations are outgrown. 
 
 [336] 
 
LEARNING TO WORK WITH CONCEPTS 
 
 Knowledge cannot be given. It comes only from 
 searching. Since knowledge seems to insist upon 
 being not what we find but what we take, not what 
 is given but what is hewn out of an infinity of 
 possibiHties, what goes on inside the mind of the 
 learner is more important than what was in the 
 mind of the textbook maker when he wrote his 
 textbook or of the teacher who explains it. Since 
 they cannot communicate their thoughts any more 
 than they can communicate their toothaches or 
 their 'headaches, they must help their students to 
 find ways to generate similar thoughts within them- 
 selves. They must give up the effort to present 
 knowledge ready-made and content themselves with 
 the humbler, but much more exciting, task of sur- 
 rounding their disciples with inducements and ne- 
 cessities to make it, each out of his own experience. 
 A school conducted on this principle is in the 
 active, not the passive voice. Its students are en- 
 gaged in asking their own questions and in defin- 
 ing their own purposes. So far as they can they 
 carry out their own plans ; they bring up from their 
 own observation and past experience whatever they 
 already know that has a bearing upon the problem 
 whose solution they are seeking; they question 
 folks both inside and outside of school to get the 
 information that their specific undertaking requires 
 them to get; they consult books and libraries. In 
 
 [337] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 all this they are learning to work by purposes, to 
 put two and two together to accomplish what they 
 want, to hunt in many ways for what is needed but 
 is not at hand, to pick out that which has much im- 
 port from that which has little import, to make up 
 their own minds as to the value of the materials 
 and statements which they find, to frame their 
 own projects, to use their own language, to doubt, 
 to question, and to prove. 
 
 Such a school is a workshop as certainly as a 
 manual-training room or a foundry is. In it one 
 learns to work with mental tools and acquires skill 
 in using his own mind. The tools which he learns 
 to use are concepts, and the materials which he 
 learns to work up by their aid (just as he learns to 
 shape lumber with the plane and saw to the plans 
 of boxes and boats which he has formed) are his 
 own sensations, percepts, and thoughts. 
 
 The best description of the process of edtication 
 which I have fotuid. Strangely enough the best 
 description of the process of education which I 
 have found is in one of the books which have 
 begun to circulate widely since the war. It is the 
 work of a Frenchman, M. Georges Bourdon, and is 
 devoted to setting forth the views of certain repre- 
 sentative Germans whom M. Bourdon interviewed 
 concerning their own country, its ideals and plans 
 of development, both within the limits of Germany 
 
LEARNING TO WORK WITH CONCEPTS 
 
 and in relation to their neighbors. This book was 
 pubhshed in France before the war began. Among 
 the representative Germans whom M. Bourdon in- 
 terviewed was the principal of an elementary school 
 at Neukolln near Berlin, Herr Samuleit, whose 
 statement of the aims of instruction is as follows : 
 "It is, indeed, customary in all our primary schools 
 that the lessons should consist nearly entirely of 
 conversations between master and pupils. We 
 make of instruction an exchange of ideas, and avoid 
 wearying and saturating minds that are still fresh 
 and untrained. We consider it as a kind of heresy 
 to teach for hours with pupils ranged before us 
 who listen but do not speak. All the efforts of 
 our actual system are, on the contrary, directed to 
 awakening the pupils' interest and mental energy 
 during the class. We wish, as we say, to replace as 
 much as possible the * study school ' {^LernscJmle) 
 by the 'working school' {Ardeitsc/iule), that is to 
 say, a school in which the pupil, through personal 
 experience, instructs himself. I mean that we de- 
 sire to substitute for the passive absoqDtion of the 
 master's teaching, the active research of the pupil. 
 We would have the former gradually disappear in 
 favor of the latter." ^ If such a conception of teach- 
 ing as this had obtained in the gymnasiums and 
 
 1 Bourdon, The German Enigma, p. 263. London, J. M. Dent & Sons 
 Ltd., 1914. 
 
 [339] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 universities as well as in certain elementary schools 
 of Germany, the present " over-drilled " condition 
 of the German mind with its awful consequences 
 could hardly have been. 
 
 What leanmig to luork with concepts means. 
 Learning to work with concepts is a very different 
 process from that which goes on in many schools 
 of elementary, secondary, and college grade. One 
 does not sit quietly and pore over books or listen 
 to lectures or recite what has been committed. He 
 does not approach knowledge timidly as a thing 
 let down from above, which exists in itself and for 
 its own sake and whose parts were eternally per- 
 fected before he came here. To him it is not like 
 that prevailing German notion of the state, a thing 
 apart from and above the individual men and women 
 who compose it. To such an ejective idolatry he is 
 not under bondage, for it is not fostered within him. 
 He learns from the first that knowledge is man- 
 made; that its purpose is not to describe what is, 
 but to help folks in doing what they want to do; 
 that since it is an instrument the only way to 
 master it is to use it; that every subject which we 
 study is an enumeration of certain important human 
 facts, the attitudes which men have learned to take 
 toward them, the processes by which men have 
 learned to handle them, thus far, most successfully, 
 and an invitation to the student to go and do 
 
 [340] 
 
LEARNING TO WORK WITH CONCEPTS 
 
 likewise with them. The states of which we read 
 are ways of Hving together, from which we have to 
 choose that one which most appeals to us and in 
 our thoughts and acts to give it being. The truth 
 of which we are told is a process of searching out 
 meanings which we must learn to employ; the logic 
 which we study is a series of safeguards which each 
 of us must learn to observe ; the ethics which we 
 discuss has for its object the bringing of each one 
 of us to select his own point of view and method 
 of thinking and acting in order to embody them in 
 conduct ; the literature which we read is a series 
 of runes which have charmed the race and some 
 of which will charm us if we but pick them out 
 carefully and let them say themselves over and 
 over again in our souls. 
 
 The origin of the idolatry of knowledge. Every 
 educational discussion before Aristotle w^as on some 
 aspect or other of the question, What shall a man do 
 in order to live well ? ^ Every educational discussion 
 
 1 Isocrates, like his master Socrates and his fellow student Plato, 
 thought of education as learning to do what man must learn to do in this 
 world, not as learning to know. He states his position in these words : 
 
 " Whom, then, do I call educated, since I refuse this name to those 
 who have learned only certain trades, or certain sciences, or have had 
 only certain faculties developed ? First, those who manage well the daily 
 affairs of life as they arise, and whose judgment is accurate and rarely errs 
 when aiming at the expedient. Then, those who associate in dignified and 
 honorable fashion with all with whom they come in contact, bearing easily 
 and good-naturedly what is unpleasant or offensive in others, and soften- 
 ing, as much as possible, their own asperities of manner. Further, those 
 
 [341] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 since Aristotle has more or less consciously im- 
 plied the query, What subjects shall a man study 
 in order to be educated ? ^ The great classifier had 
 no intention to substitute names for acts, but ever 
 since he compartmented the field of human endeavor 
 subjects of study have tended to appear as ends in 
 themselves rather than as means to action. When 
 my boy comes home from school and is asked what 
 he studied to-day, he replies that he studied history 
 or geography. But when I ask what history or 
 what geography he studied, he is at a loss for an 
 answer. Indeed, the question seems to him to be 
 irreverent. Like him, most young learners and a 
 good many old ones personify and attribute real 
 
 who never become the slaves of pleasure, and who by misfortunes are not 
 unduly cast down — bearing themselves in their presence manfully and in 
 a manner worthy of our common nature. Fourthly, and most important of 
 all, those who are uncorrupted by good fortune and do not lose their heads 
 and become arrogant, but, retaining control of themselves as intelligent 
 beings, rejoice not less in the goods they have acquired at their birth by 
 their own nature and intelligence than in the benefits that have been 
 cast in their way by chance. Those whose souls are in permanent and 
 harmonious accord, not with one of these things, but with all of them, 
 these, I say, are wise and perfect men, possessed of all the virtues. This 
 is my opinion with regard to educated men." — Isocrates, Panath. 30, ff. 
 (Walden's translation in " The Universities of Ancient Greece ") 
 
 1 It was Aristotle's division of knowledge into theoretical and practical, 
 and his description of theoretical knowledge as due to contemplation in- 
 dependent of volition and as existing to enable us to know and only to 
 know, that supplanted the sounder teaching of Socrates and Plato and 
 introduced confusion into the world. This ancient error must be corrected 
 and the sounder view of Socrates and Plato must be accepted once more, 
 or education shall never have an organizing principle. 
 
 [342] 
 
LEARNING TO WORK WITH CONCEPTS 
 
 existence to the subjects which they study, and 
 then perform lituaHstic ceremonies before the idols 
 which they have reared. Some worship philosophy 
 and long to serve her; others venerate literature 
 and would spend their lives in adoring her; others 
 objectify science and talk of her as a goddess; 
 others speak of the study of Greek as though heal- 
 ing could be had by the touching of these gar- 
 ments. This is the false use of concepts. That 
 mystical element must be dispelled from studies 
 ere they can sei*ve us or we each other by means 
 of them. We must get on speaking terms with 
 them, we must make them articulate with every- 
 day affairs. The question is not what philosophy 
 or literature will make out of me, but what I 
 can make out of philosophy or literature. Knowl- 
 edge does not consist of committing the labels 
 which have been attached to things and trusting 
 to their magical virtues to produce effects. Man's 
 proneness to attribute independent efficacy to the 
 creations of his own hands is indeed a dangerous 
 phase of the human tendency to delusion. Sciences, 
 literatures, conventions, and institutions when they 
 have once been shaped exact a tribute of respect 
 quite out of keeping with their nature and their 
 origin. We treat them as things ; they are col- 
 lections of uses, meanings, practices — verbs, not 
 nouns. No amount of veneration for, or nominalistic 
 
 [343] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 familiarity with, the several branches of knowledge 
 which we have hypostatized will persuade them to 
 impart their grace. The folks who invented them 
 intended them to be ways of acting — means but 
 not ends in themselves. 
 
 A renaming of the sciences is needed. They are 
 noun substantives, they should be nouns participial. 
 Reading, writing, spelling, numbering, drawing, 
 forging, weaving, cooking, painting, when we study 
 them, have an immense advantage over physics, 
 chemistry, mathematics, history, logic, ethics, and 
 literature, just because their names end in -ing, 
 leaving no doubt as to their nature and the kind 
 of service which they undertake to perform for us. 
 The other studies do not invite us to take them by 
 the hand. Their -ic and -ry endings intimate to us 
 that they are not of our world and that their perfec- 
 tion has long since been accomplished. Every child 
 finds the alphabet and printed books here when he 
 comes; his duty is to use them, and the process 
 is called reading. He finds numerous songs and 
 musical instruments ; the acts to which they invite 
 him are singing or playing or listening. The word 
 music is a name for the songs which the race has 
 sung and the instruments which it has formed for 
 its playing. It also connotes the singing or playing 
 or listening which each newcomer to the planet is 
 invited to take part in ; that is, it is the name of a 
 
 [344] 
 
LEARNING TO WORK WITH CONCEPTS 
 
 process as well as of an achieved thing. When we 
 hear the word music we are more apt to think of 
 singing and playing or listening than we are of the 
 ready-made historic contribution which has to be 
 rendered or interpreted. The -ic of this word is 
 really an -ing. It signifies something to be done, an 
 activity to be undertaken. But the connotation of 
 ethics^ logic, history, literature, mathematics, biology, 
 geography, chemistry, physics, rhctojHc, stresses the 
 ready-made-thing aspect of these studies and leaves 
 their functional purpose quite obscure. If our view 
 of them is correct, their prime value does not lie on 
 their factual side, but in their directive uses. They 
 are not things, they are socially profitable w^ays of 
 acting, and when we study them our primary pur- 
 pose must be to learn to use their processes. If they 
 are present-day activities rather than historically fash- 
 ioned objects, we should think of them accordingly, 
 and, to assist ourselves in doing so, should employ 
 words ending in -iiig to indicate their meaning and 
 their value to us. Instead of referring to ethics, we 
 would talk about the study of doing or behaving; 
 logic would be most commonly spoken of as the 
 study of thinking or reasoning; history would be 
 searching, substantiating, or constructing the out- 
 line of the past; literature, appreciating or criticiz- 
 ing; mathematics might be mathematizing; biology, 
 thinking about life ; geography, the imaging of the 
 
 [345] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 earth; chemistry, compounding; physics, moving; 
 rhetoric, persuading ; composition, composing, etc. 
 
 The advantage of such a facing about in lan- 
 guage would be an immediate and nearly universal 
 clarification of thought, which would very shortly 
 effect radical changes in educational practice. The 
 most significant change of all, perhaps, would be in 
 the attitude of the students. Instead of being con- 
 fused and uncertain, as they now are, as to why 
 they are invited to pursue certain studies or how 
 they are to study them and what they are to try to 
 get out of them, their w^ay would be reasonably 
 clear before them. Just as no child is ever very 
 uncertain as to what he is expected to do in the 
 activities which we call reading and writing, so they 
 would not be uncertain as to the part which they 
 are to take and the results for which they are to 
 strive in each subject which they study. 
 
 Learning according to this view is aliuays specific. 
 It is always an effort on the part of the learner 
 to himself acquire skill in handling socially profit- 
 able material in socially profitable ways. The skill 
 which he acquires, the habits which he forms, the 
 reactions which he learns to make, are always keyed 
 off or called forth by situations recognizably similar 
 to those in connection with which they were ac- 
 quired. Some of these situations are rare ; some 
 are nearly universal. When one form of efiiciency 
 
 [346] 
 
LEARNING TO WORK WITH CONCEPTS 
 
 enters as an element into the handling of a great 
 variety of situations, the only caution necessary to 
 make it available in all of them is to see that the 
 context in which it is developed is sufficiently wide 
 to make it consciously connectible with all of them. 
 As the purpose of developing the reaction in school 
 is that it may not only be used in school but 
 throughout life, it is necessary that school practice 
 should be built up about life situations, that school 
 learning, in so far as it can, should take the life 
 form. This principle limits mere exercise work, and 
 offers a test by which profitable studies and parts 
 of studies can be distinguished from those which 
 are merely conventional and profitless. 
 
 Nothing can be clearer, it seems to us, than 
 that the purpose of education is to develop certain 
 specific attitudes, expectations, reactions, ways of 
 going to work or comporting himself in the varied 
 situations of life, on the part of the student. What 
 we seek in all that we do with him is a certain self- 
 initiated doing on his own part. He is an appren- 
 tice who comes to us to learn the elements of certain 
 highly valuable and humanly indispensable trades. 
 These trades all have to do with the shaping of 
 human experience. Their content has resulted from 
 the accumulated efforts of men in past days. It 
 is a series of standpoints, attitudes, rememberings, 
 methods of reckoning, ways of attacking, etc. which 
 
 [347] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 have been found to minister to human purposes. 
 When the apprentice comes he is initiated into 
 them in the hope that they will produce in him 
 similar feelings and that, having seen their signifi- 
 cance, he will learn to employ them in shaping the 
 affairs of his own life. His apprenticeship is spent 
 in learning to control human experiences by means 
 of concepts. A typical subject matter is given him 
 just as the alphabet is given him, and he is required 
 to learn to work by means of it. Every study which 
 he pursues is not only a body of results of which 
 he must become mindful but a system of processes 
 which he must learn to employ for himself as long 
 as he lives; for the subject matter of the study 
 in connection with which he learns them is only a 
 typical sample of the subject matter of life. When 
 he studies economics, or history, or literature, or 
 any other subject, he is learning how to use their 
 regulative concepts in ordering his own goings 
 and comings, both mental and physical. If this is 
 so, the results which he produces and should be 
 expected to produce must not be measured by an 
 altogether objective standard ; they must be taken 
 in terms of his own capacity, past opportunity, pres- 
 ent health, encouragement, distractions, etc. The one 
 vital question at all stages of his progress will be 
 not Does he conform to our preconceived notions 
 of uniform results to be attained as determined by 
 
 [34S] 
 
LEARNING TO WORK WITH CONCEPTS 
 
 examinations, grades, standards, scales, etc.? but 
 Does he use his own mind in the degree that he 
 can in mastering the processes upon which he is 
 engaged ? 
 
 Concepts miist not be misused. One final word of 
 warning is necessary. If intelligence works with 
 concepts and education has for its task the teaching 
 of men to work with concepts, the legitimate use of 
 concepts must be distinguished from the illegiti- 
 mate. The uniformities which we construct are 
 devices to assist us in interpreting experience, 
 guides to tell us what to watch out for, not final 
 statements of what we are certain to find in every 
 case to which we apply them. The doctor who 
 diagnoses a case and decides that it is pneumonia 
 treats it accordingly, but watches to find out 
 whether the reactions which follow confirm his 
 diagnosis, and revises his judgment accordingly. 
 His application of the concept is tentative and 
 ministerial. A child of ten who delights in setting 
 grass afire is labeled a pyromaniac. The men and 
 women in charge of him when he is twelve con- 
 tinue to refer to him as a pyromaniac, at twenty 
 or forty he may still be referred to as a pyroma- 
 niac, and his chance to reestablish himself as a 
 trustworthy individual may by this classification 
 be denied him entirely. Likewise, an institution 
 child may be robbed of his birthright of equal 
 
 [349] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 opportunity because his teacher has decided that all 
 institution children are faikires. A first-grade child 
 who has been taught to read by one system and is 
 then transferred to a school where a different sys- 
 tem is in use may be so helpless in the face of his 
 new difficulties as to be named and treated as a 
 dullard, to his irreparable loss. The student who 
 does not produce the fixed results in a given form 
 or subject may indeed be able to produce highly 
 creditable results under other conditions. If he is 
 classified finally on the basis of the symptoms 
 which he exhibits at any given time, great wrong 
 will be done him. The concept is always a sum- 
 mary of experience up to date, it may not fit the 
 facts of to-morrow ; its function is to lead or guide. 
 It does not claim to furnish an infallible statement 
 of what will happen. To use it as though it were 
 more than tentative is to misuse it. 
 
 [350 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abbott, Jacob, on the business of 
 teaching, 4 
 
 Adams, John, 9 
 
 Adolescence, effect of, on hand- 
 writing, 148, 200 
 
 Alterthumsiinssenschaft, 1 58 
 
 Angell, J. R., on judgment, 99-100 ; 
 on attention, 102 
 
 Aquinas, Thomas, and faculties of 
 the soul, 83 
 
 Aristotle, philosophy of, 35 ; on 
 education, 77-78, 182; on speech, 
 125; on liberal education, 162; 
 division of knowledge by, 342 
 
 Arithmetic, a reflective study, ']'i^, 
 74; training for the dull, 75; 
 W. T. Harris on study of, 148 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, on the study of 
 literature, 155-160 
 
 Arnold, R, B., on scientific fact and 
 metaphysical reality, 41-42 
 
 Artist, the, Tolstoy on, 133 
 
 Athletics, a knowledge of, 174 
 
 Attention, selective, 101-102 ; psy- 
 chology of, 236-240 
 
 Avocational education, 164-169 
 
 Ayres, L. P., measuring standards 
 of, 296, 299, 300, 302, 304 
 
 Bacon, Francis, 26, 83, 147, 247 
 Bagley, W. C, experiments of, 103 
 Baldwin, J. M., 7, 124, 144 
 Barnard, Henry, on the study of 
 
 education, 1-2 
 Behavior, studying consciousness 
 
 through, 234-236 
 Bellini, sharing the poetic insight 
 
 of, 132 
 Berkeley, Bishop, on knowledge, 35 
 Bonnet, Charles, 86 
 
 Bourdon, M. G., on process of edu- 
 cation, 338-340 
 
 Burk, Frederic, 318 
 
 Butler, N. M., on the study of edu- 
 cation, 1-2 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, on the art of 
 writing, 147 
 
 Causes, relation to knowledge, 51- 
 55; real, 52; unitable with ex- 
 perience, 53 
 
 Chesterton, G. K., 13 
 
 Child, the, and knowledge-getting, 
 109-113, 116; and the stranger, 
 123 ; in the subjective stage, 124- 
 125 ; his struggle with institutions, 
 126-129 
 
 Class teaching, reconstruction in, 
 317-322 
 
 Classics, reform in teaching, 86-87 
 
 Clifford, W. K., on science, 154-155 
 
 Clinical psychology, 314 
 
 College, formal discipline in, 65 
 
 Common-sense knowledge, ex- 
 plained, ']-% ; tendency to be 
 personal, 9 
 
 Comprehensibility a test of knowl- 
 edge, 195-196 
 
 Concepts in education, 323-350 ; 
 the essential thing, 323 ; human 
 experience and impressions, 325- 
 328 ; making impressions, 328- 
 331 ; nature and uses of, 331-333 ; 
 kind of knowledge sought, 334- 
 336 ; knowledge the result of 
 search, 337-338 ; learning to work 
 with, 340-341; false, 341-344; re- 
 naming of the sciences needed, 
 344-346 ; specific learning, 346- 
 349 ; misuse of, 349-350 
 
 [351] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 Condillac, E. B., 86 
 Consciousness studied through be- 
 havior, 234-236 
 Content training vs. formal training, 
 
 102-103 
 Conversation and oratory, 98 
 Conversational method in teaching, 
 
 260 
 Courtis tests, 297, 299, 307-309, 317 
 Cox, John, on the electron, 41 
 Crime, Plato's theory of, 69 
 Cultural vs. instrumental education, 
 
 150-160 
 Culture, and doing, 193-194; and 
 
 reading, 226 
 Curiosity a cause of knowledge, 
 188 
 
 Darwin, Charles, as the giver of 
 biology, 136; on persistence, 
 239 ; as a discoverer, 244-246, 
 248 
 
 Dearborn, G. V. N., on the memory, 
 
 95 
 Definitions and education, 260-264 
 Description, relation to knowledge, 
 
 55 
 
 Dewey, John, on the '' supreme 
 art," 204 
 
 Diagnostic education, 282-322 ; ex- 
 aminations, 282-293 ; measuring 
 I results of instruction, 294-312; 
 1 true place of uniformity, 3 1 2-3 1 4 ; 
 clinical psychology, 314-316; vo- 
 ; cational guidance, 316-317 ; re- 
 construction of class teaching, 
 317-322 
 
 Doctrine of general discipline, 59- 
 103. See also General discipline 
 
 Doctrine of real predicates, 260-266 
 
 Doing, learning for, 1 70-1 71 ; the 
 end sought, 1 71-174; ways of, 
 in music and athletics, 174-175; 
 knowing from, 175-179; the 
 teacher's attitude toward, 179- 
 184; verbal study and, 181-183; 
 relation of each study to, 183- 
 184 ; education and, 190-193 ; cul- 
 ture and, 193-194 
 
 Ebert, F. A., on memorizing, 94 
 Education, importance of study of, 
 1-5 ; major concern of the race, 
 3 ; study of, defined, 3 ; signifi- 
 cance of history of, 1 1 ; teacher's 
 attitude toward, 14, 23; two typi- 
 cal definitions of, 15-17; as the 
 perfecting of the mind, 16-17; 
 how knowledge is gained, 17-18; 
 knowledge as the object of, 19- 
 20; place of examinations in, 20; 
 place of textbooks in, 23 ; me- 
 chanical vs. real, 26 ; a life work, 
 27-29, 139; nomenclature of, 61 ; 
 purpose of a liberal, 63 ; the 
 " grindstone theory," 63 ; relation 
 of crime to, 69 ; sole business of, 
 77 ; Aristotle on meaning of, 77- 
 78 ; Greek and Roman notions 
 of, 79-80 ; Quintilian on, 79-80 ; 
 views held in Middle Ages, 80 ; 
 in the Reformation and Renais- 
 sance, 80-85 ; as world building, 
 104-141 ; feehngs not transfer- 
 able, 105-107; our common world, 
 107-108 ; the child making his 
 world, 109-116; outside and in- 
 side worlds, 116-119; experiences 
 tabulated, 120-123; the world of 
 persons, 123-126; the struggle 
 with institutions, 126-129; knowl- 
 edge-getting, 131-135 ; functions 
 of the school, 136-141 ; and doing, 
 190-193 ; adapting experiences, 
 194 ; as the learning of definitions, 
 260-261 ; clinical, 314; the essen- 
 tial thing in, 323 ; through im- 
 pressions, 325-331 
 Educator, the, task of, 146 
 Efficiency, education for, 160-162 
 Elementary grades, formal disci- 
 pline in, 65 
 " Elementary" studies, 146-150 
 Emerson, R. W., on a liberal edu- 
 cation, 165 
 Environmentand education, 125-126 
 Euclid, as the giver of geometry, 136 
 Evolution, theory of, and education, 
 161 
 
 [352] 
 
INDEX 
 
 Examination method in education, 
 223 
 
 Examinations, history of, 282-284 ; 
 untrustworthy, 284 ; unnecessary, 
 285 ; unreliable, 286-287 ; result 
 of "cramming," 287-288; possible 
 reforms in, 288-289 ; Chinese, 
 2S9-292 ; standardizing, 292-294 ; 
 vs. educational measurements, 
 297 ; Bourdon's description of 
 process of, 338-340 
 
 Experience, the measure of all 
 things, 35 ; objects as the prod- 
 uct of, 36; relation of, to truth, 
 37 ; causes unitable with, 53 ; re- 
 lentless privacy of, 106; Lloyd 
 Morgan on, 107 ; language can- 
 not impart, 11 3-1 16, temperature 
 and, 119 ; relation of, to time and 
 space, 120-123; use of, in school, 
 269-270 
 
 Facts, relation to truths and knowl- 
 edge, 38-44 
 Faculties of the mind, formal de- 
 velopment of, 90-94 ; general 
 training of, 99 ; judgment, 99- 
 100; observation, 101-103 
 Feeble-minded children, 314 
 Feelings not transferable, 105-107 
 Fichte, J. G., on a liberal education, 
 
 165 
 Forgetting, importance of, 277 
 Formal discipline, doctrine of, 62 ; 
 in Germany, 64 ; vs. content train- 
 ing, 102 
 Fracker, on improving the memory, 
 
 97 
 Franklin, W. S., on science, 155 
 Freud, on early experiences, 126 
 
 General discipline, doctrine of, 59- 
 103 ; its cost, 59-61 ; formal disci- 
 pline, 62-65 ; harmfulness of, 65- 
 66 ; history of, 66-87 ; Plato and, 
 66-78 ; Rousseau and, 67 ; Aris- 
 totle and, 77 ; Quintilian and, 79; 
 the Renaissance and Reforma- 
 tion, 80-82; Luther and, 81-82; 
 
 Melancthon and, 81-82 ; Bacon 
 and, 83 ; Locke and, 83-85 ; Wolf 
 and, 86-87 ; gymnastic training, 
 87-90 ; faculties of the mind, 90- 
 94 ; training the memory, 94-97 ; 
 transferability of training, 97-99 ; 
 judgment, 99-100 ; observation 
 and imagination as faculties, loi- 
 103 
 
 General education defined, 175 
 
 Genetic method, 230-232 
 
 Genetic psychology in the study of 
 education, 10 
 
 Geography, study of, 134-135; a life 
 interest, 1 50 ; defined, 183 ; a con- 
 fusing exercise, 200 
 
 Gergonne, 195 
 
 Germany, formal discipline in, 64 ; 
 over-drilling in, 338-340 
 
 Gomperz, on theory and practice 
 in education, 5 
 
 Gorgias, on rhetoric, 182 
 
 Grammar, study of, 1 59 ; outside 
 the schoolroom, 200 ^ 
 
 Greek, failure of modern method 
 of studying, 218 
 
 Greek notion of education, 79 
 
 Greeks, history of, 133-134; igno- 
 rance of physics, 178-179 
 
 " Grindstone theory " of discipline, 
 63,87 
 
 Habit forming, 278-280 
 
 Hamlet, various conceptions of, 
 
 132-133 
 Hanus, P. H., 297 
 Harris, W. T., on arithmetic, 148 
 Hegel, on culture, 193-194 
 Henderson, E. N., on the use of 
 
 the problem, 257 
 Herbart, J. F., a reformer of psy- 
 chology, 60-61 
 Heuristic method, the, 229-230 
 " Higher" education, 146-150 
 History, as a relative account, 133- 
 134; a life interest, 150; as an 
 instrumental study, 152-154; a 
 dry study, 201 
 Hobbes, Thomas, 83 
 
 [353] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 Humanists, the, 156 
 
 Hume, David, 328 
 
 Huxley, T. II., on consciousness, 36 
 
 Imagination, Aristotle on, 77-78; 
 
 faculty of, 101-103 
 Incipient psychotics, 315 
 Industrial education, 168 
 Inherited knowledge, 143-146 
 Instrumental and cultural studies, 
 
 150-160 
 Invention, learning through, 240-242 
 Inventions a gradual development, 
 
 242-243 
 Isocrates, on education, 341 
 
 James, William, on two kinds of 
 knowledge, 51 ; on training the 
 memory, 93-94, 96, 97 ; on a 
 baby's sensations, 112 
 
 Jevons, F. 11, 247 
 
 John of Salisbury, on the Nominal- 
 ist-Realist controversy, 59 
 
 Johnson, Samuel, doctrine of, as 
 to knowledge, 35 
 
 Judgment, 99-100 ; a specific ac- 
 tivity, 100 
 
 Jung, on early experiences, 126 
 
 Kant, Immanuel, on knowledge, 35 ; 
 
 on function of science, 189 
 Keyser, C. J., on comprehensibility, 
 
 195 
 
 Kinds of education, 142-169; self- 
 education, 142-143 ; what we 
 inherit, 143-146; task of the 
 educator, 146; "elementary" and 
 "higher" classification, 146-150; 
 instrumental and cultural classifi- 
 cation, 1 50-1 5 1 ; history, 1 52-1 54 ; 
 science, 154-155; education for 
 efficiency, 160- 161 ; liberal and 
 illiberal education, 162-164; vo- 
 cational and avocational educa- 
 tion, 164-169 
 
 Kipling, R., 312 
 
 Knowledge, three grades of, 7-1 1; 
 common-sense, 7-10; scientific, 
 7, 8, 9-10, 11-15; philosophic. 
 
 7, 11-15; quantity in the. educa- 
 tional scheme, 20 ; scorned by 
 one school of education, 21-22; 
 relation of, to mental training, 
 22-24; what it really is, 25-26, 
 30-58 ; awareness " a survival 
 agency," 30; a necessity, 30-31; 
 contributed by things, 31-33 ; ob- 
 tained by copying, 33 ; of objects 
 outside of experience, 34-36; re- 
 lation of, to facts and truths, 38- 
 44 ; inexactness in naming things, 
 45-49 ; gained through concep- 
 tualizing, 50 ; ability to use, 50- 
 51 ; Professor James on the two 
 kinds of, 51 ; Plato's doctrine of, 
 55-58; the process of getting, 
 108, 109, 131-136; comes from 
 doing, 175-179; offered by sci- 
 ence, 184-1S5; for its own sake, 
 185-187 ; as an instrument, 187- 
 190; two kinds of, 212; obtained 
 from searching, 337-338; idolatry 
 of, 341-344 
 
 Language, not a substitute for ex- 
 perience, 1 1 3-1 16; an institution, 
 127-129; function of, 129-131 ; 
 and inheritance, 144-145; a con- 
 tinuous study, 150; defined, 183 
 
 Latin, place of, in school, 1 59 ; wrong 
 method in teaching, 198-200, 218 
 
 Learning, by problem getting, 233- 
 257 ; through observation, 233- 
 234 ; by studying behavior, 
 234-236; relation of attention 
 to, 236-240, 256-257 ; through 
 invention, 240-243 ; the scien- 
 tific method of, 244-249; purpose- 
 ful accumulation of facts, 24S ; 
 searching for truth, 249-251 ; 
 teaching and, 251-253; students' 
 aim in, 253-256; by definitions, 
 260-267 ; specific, 346-349 
 
 Lecture method of teaching, 224- 
 227 
 
 Leibniz, 312 
 
 Liberal education, purpose of, 63 ; 
 vs. illiberal education, 162-164 
 
 [354 
 
INDEX 
 
 Literature, as an instrumental study, 
 
 155-160; defined, 183 
 Locke, John, on the function of 
 
 education, 83-S4, 85 ; on training 
 
 the memoi'y, 92 
 Logic characterized, 1S3 
 Lowell, A. L., 293 
 Luther, Martin, 81, 82 
 
 McClymonds, J. \V., on education 
 
 in the United States, 9 
 Mann, C. R., on teaching physics, 
 
 198; on learning definitions, 
 
 264-266 
 Mathematics, in plan of education, 
 
 148, 149, 159; characterized, 183; 
 
 heuristic method in, 231 ; and 
 
 logic, 293 
 Measurements in education, 294-314 
 Meiklejohn, Alexander, 230 
 Melancthon, Si, 82 
 Memorizing, Locke on value of, 85 ; 
 
 matter for, 276-278 ; material for, 
 
 276-278 
 Memory, as a single faculty, 90-91 ; 
 
 tests of, 92-93, 94-97 ; Locke on, 
 
 92 ; Newman on, 92 ; Professor 
 
 James on, 92-93 ; retentiveness 
 
 unchangeable, 93 ; improving, 
 
 93-94 
 Method, place in education, 195- 
 232 ; the test of comprehensi- 
 bility, 195-196; importance of, 
 196-199; wrong, 200-201; edu- 
 cational, 201-205 ; ^^ outline, 
 202 ; what it must do, 205-206 ; 
 and aim of education, 206-212; 
 knowledge 0/ vs. knowledge 
 aboict^ 212-215; relation of con- 
 tent to, 215-217; the course of 
 study, 217-219; fitting studies 
 to students, 220-222 ; the reci- 
 tation method, 222; the exami- 
 nation method, 223 ; the lecture 
 method, 224-227 ; testing a, 227- 
 228; the Socratic method, 228- 
 229; the heuristic method, 
 229-230; the genetic method, 
 
 Meumann, on training the memory, 
 
 94 
 Milton, John, on the shortcomings 
 
 of the linguist, 218 
 Mind, " a survival agency," 30 ; a 
 
 picture-making device, 31 ; a 
 
 generalizer, 97 ; a problem solver, 
 
 266 
 Music, learning, 174 
 
 Naming things, 49-50 
 
 Napoleon, 126 
 
 Newman, John, on training the 
 memory, 92 
 
 Noun, incorrectly defined by gram- 
 mar, 45; the evolution of the 
 proper, 47-49 
 
 Observation, faculty of, 101-103; 
 
 place of, in education, 233-234 
 Oratory and conversation, 98 
 
 Penmanship, 147-148, 200, 296-297, 
 
 299, 300, 302, 304 
 Percepts, source of, 177-178 
 Persons distinguished from things, 
 
 123-124 
 Pillsbury, on training the memory, 
 
 95 
 
 Philosophic knowledge vs. scien- 
 tific knowledge, 11-15 
 
 Philosophy, the basis of educational 
 theory and practice, 2 ; the func- 
 tion of, 12; practical value of, 
 13; of the individual, 13; object 
 of all real, 325 
 
 Physical training, specific rather 
 than general, 88-90 ; need of 
 more attention to, 219 
 
 Plato, on knowledge, 55-56; on 
 formal discipline, 66-78 ; theory 
 of crime, 69; on speech, 125; 
 the story of Theuth, 128-129; 
 the definition of education, 139; 
 method of, 182 ; on comprehen- 
 sibility, 195; on educational test, 
 220 ; and the Socratic method, 
 228 ; on the thinker, 331 
 
 Poetry, the study of, 214 
 
 [355] 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 Porter, Noah, on formal discipline, 
 
 63 
 Practice, vs. theory in education, 
 
 4-6; the valuable kind of, 6-7 
 Proper names, the evolution of, 
 
 47-49 
 Protagoras, on theory and practice 
 
 in education, 5 
 Pythagorean method, 222 
 
 Question method in education, 250 
 Quintilian, on education, 79-80 ; on 
 speech, 125 
 
 Raphael, 132 
 Raumer, von, Karl, 2 
 Reading, 147 ; and culture, 226 
 Real predicates, doctrine of, 260- 
 
 266 
 Realists, belief of, 156 
 Reality defined, 32 
 Recitation method of learning, 222- 
 
 224 
 Reed, Thomas, 86 
 Reformation, education influenced 
 
 by, 80-S5 
 Renaissance, education influenced 
 
 by, 80-85 
 Retardates, 314 
 Romans, attitude toward education, 
 
 79 ; history of, 134 
 Rousseau, on Plato's " Republic," 
 
 67 
 Royce, Josiah, on motor habits and 
 
 ideas, 50 
 Ruediger, W, C, 103 
 
 San Francisco State Normal School 
 experiment, 318-322 
 
 Schools, administration of, a branch 
 of government, 10; three kinds 
 of, 18-24; place in education, 
 136; function of, 136-141 ; talk- 
 ing, 259-260 
 
 Science, as an instrumental study, 
 154-160; defined, 154, 155, 183; 
 function of, 189 
 
 Sciences, renaming of, needed, 344- 
 346 
 
 Scientific knowledge, what it is, 7- 
 1 1 ; compared with philosophic 
 knowledge, 11-15; not merely 
 classified knowledge, 40-43 
 
 Scientist, the, his method of work, 
 244-247 
 
 Self-education the true education, 
 142-143, 197 
 
 Self-preservation, relation to knowl- 
 edge, 188-189 
 
 Seneca, 163 
 
 Sensations, world of, 104-105; how 
 they come to us, 178 
 
 Senses, world of, 116-119 
 
 Shakespeare, William, sharing the 
 truth of, 132-133; poetry, 136 
 
 Shorey, Paul, on formal discipline, 
 64-65 
 
 Smell, sense of, relation to experi- 
 ence, 118-1 19 
 
 Social inheritance, 143-146 
 
 Social utility a product of educa- 
 tion, 139 
 
 Socrates, on physical training, 88 ; 
 on method, 182 
 
 Socratic method of instruction, 222, 
 228-229 
 
 Space, sense of, 122 
 
 Speech defectives, 315 
 
 Spelling, 1 50 
 
 Spencer, Herbert, on consciousness, 
 36; learning by rote, 197; on 
 question method, 260 
 
 Statistical method, shortcomings and 
 dangers of, 305-309 
 
 Steam engine, invention of, 242-243 
 
 Studies, selection of, 220-222 
 
 Studying, general aim in, 253-254; 
 specific aim in, 254-256 
 
 Supernormals, 315 
 
 Teacher, the, philosophy of educa- 
 tion and, 14-15; function of, 18, 
 179-184; place of, in education, 
 23, 136; how he should teach, 
 251-252 
 Tennyson, Alfred, on causes, 52 
 Textbooks, place in education, 19- 
 20, 23, 136, 230, 270 
 
 [356] 
 
INDEX 
 
 Theory, some uses of, 5-6 ; and 
 
 practice, 6 
 Things distinguished from persons, 
 
 123-124 
 Thinker, the, Plato's definition of, 
 
 Thorndil^e, E. L., 59, 296 
 
 Thucydides, 121 
 
 Time sense, 1 20-121 
 
 Tolstoy, on the artist, 133 
 
 Trade education, 168 
 
 Transferability of training, 97-99 
 
 Truth, its relation to experience, 
 27 ; as facts, 37-38 ; its relation 
 to facts and knowledge, 38-44 
 
 Uniformity in education, 311, 312 
 
 Verbal study, 181 
 
 Vocation, relation to a liberal edu- 
 cation, 63 
 Vocational education, 164-169 
 Vocational guidance, 316^317 
 
 Wallin, J. E. W., 314 
 
 Watt, James, 242 
 
 Wiese, Ludwig, 2 
 
 Winch, W. H., experiments of, in 
 
 testing memory, 95-96 
 Wolf, F. A., 8^87 
 Wolff, Christian, 83 
 Writing, art of, 147 
 
 Youmans, E. L., on doctrine of 
 formal discipline, 62-64 
 
 [357] 
 

 
 .">%. 
 
 
 
 
 \0 ^^ ■ 
 
 
 
 .x'J 
 
 ^ • : f 
 
 
 
 nO°- 
 
 
 
 
 
 V 
 
 
 |: ^^^^'' .* 
 
 
 
 
 
 "■♦' \ 
 
 '■^^ 4 
 
 "*^, 
 
 
 ^^ v'\ 
 
 
 
 
 -:^0 
 
 c^- 
 
 % 
 
 
 V- 
 

 
 
 o^ -''^^ 
 
 "bo^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Oc 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 %•;