Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of EducationDewey, John
Philosophy
Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education
Dewey, John
Education -- Philosophy; Education -- Social aspects
When fairly remote results of a definite character are foreseen and
enlist persistent effort for their accomplishment, play passes into
work. Like play, it signifies purposeful activity and differs not in
that activity is subordinated to an external result, but in the fact
that a longer course of activity is occasioned by the idea of a result.
The demand for continuous attention is greater, and more intelligence
must be shown in selecting and shaping means. To extend this account
would be to repeat what has been said under the caption of aim,
interest, and thinking. It is pertinent, however, to inquire why the
idea is so current that work involves subordination of an activity to an
ulterior material result. The extreme form of this subordination,
namely drudgery, offers a clew. Activity carried on under conditions
of external pressure or coercion is not carried on for any significance
attached to the doing. The course of action is not intrinsically
satisfying; it is a mere means for avoiding some penalty, or for gaining
some reward at its conclusion. What is inherently repulsive is endured
for the sake of averting something still more repulsive or of securing a
gain hitched on by others. Under unfree economic conditions, this state
of affairs is bound to exist. Work or industry offers little to engage
the emotions and the imagination; it is a more or less mechanical series
of strains. Only the hold which the completion of the work has upon
a person will keep him going. But the end should be intrinsic to the
action; it should be its end--a part of its own course. Then it affords
a stimulus to effort very different from that arising from the thought
of results which have nothing to do with the intervening action. As
already mentioned, the absence of economic pressure in schools supplies
an opportunity for reproducing industrial situations of mature life
under conditions where the occupation can be carried on for its own
sake. If in some cases, pecuniary recognition is also a result of an
action, though not the chief motive for it, that fact may well increase
the significance of the occupation. Where something approaching drudgery
or the need of fulfilling externally imposed tasks exists, the demand
for play persists, but tends to be perverted. The ordinary course of
action fails to give adequate stimulus to emotion and imagination. So in
leisure time, there is an imperious demand for their stimulation by any
kind of means; gambling, drink, etc., may be resorted to. Or, in less
extreme cases, there is recourse to idle amusement; to anything which
passes time with immediate agreeableness. Recreation, as the word
indicates, is recuperation of energy. No demand of human nature is more
urgent or less to be escaped. The idea that the need can be suppressed
is absolutely fallacious, and the Puritanic tradition which disallows
the need has entailed an enormous crop of evils. If education does
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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