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
In both kinds of responsive adjustment, our activities are directed or
controlled. But in the merely blind response, direction is also blind.
There may be training, but there is no education. Repeated responses to
recurrent stimuli may fix a habit of acting in a certain way. All of us
have many habits of whose import we are quite unaware, since they were
formed without our knowing what we were about. Consequently they possess
us, rather than we them. They move us; they control us. Unless we become
aware of what they accomplish, and pass judgment upon the worth of the
result, we do not control them. A child might be made to bow every time
he met a certain person by pressure on his neck muscles, and bowing
would finally become automatic. It would not, however, be an act of
recognition or deference on his part, till he did it with a certain end
in view--as having a certain meaning. And not till he knew what he was
about and performed the act for the sake of its meaning could he be said
to be "brought up" or educated to act in a certain way. To have an idea
of a thing is thus not just to get certain sensations from it. It is
to be able to respond to the thing in view of its place in an inclusive
scheme of action; it is to foresee the drift and probable consequence of
the action of the thing upon us and of our action upon it. To have the
same ideas about things which others have, to be like-minded with them,
and thus to be really members of a social group, is therefore to attach
the same meanings to things and to acts which others attach. Otherwise,
there is no common understanding, and no community life. But in a shared
activity, each person refers what he is doing to what the other is doing
and vice-versa. That is, the activity of each is placed in the same
inclusive situation. To pull at a rope at which others happen to be
pulling is not a shared or conjoint activity, unless the pulling is
done with knowledge that others are pulling and for the sake of either
helping or hindering what they are doing. A pin may pass in the course
of its manufacture through the hands of many persons. But each may do
his part without knowledge of what others do or without any reference
to what they do; each may operate simply for the sake of a separate
result--his own pay. There is, in this case, no common consequence to
which the several acts are referred, and hence no genuine intercourse
or association, in spite of juxtaposition, and in spite of the fact
that their respective doings contribute to a single outcome. But if each
views the consequences of his own acts as having a bearing upon what
others are doing and takes into account the consequences of their
behavior upon himself, then there is a common mind; a common intent
in behavior. There is an understanding set up between the different
contributors; and this common understanding controls the action of each.
Suppose that conditions were so arranged that one person automatically
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