[杜威]教育中的道德原则

0) m CO I John Ethical principles underlying education ISM THE THIRD YEARBOOK ETHICAL PRINCIPLES UNDERLYING EDUCATION. By J o H N D E w E Y, PH.D., The University of Chicago. IT is quite clear that there cannot be two sets of ethical principles, or two forms of ethical theory, one for life in the school, and the other for life outside of the school. As conduct is one, the principles of conduct are one also. The frequent tendency to discuss the morals of the school, as if the latter were an institution by itself, and as if its morale could be stated without reference to the general scientific prin ciples of conduct, appears to me highly unfortunate. Principles are the same. It is the special points of contact and application which vary with different conditions.^ I shall make no apology, accordingly, for commencing with statements which seem to me of universal valid ity and scope, and afterwards considering the moral work of the school as a special case of these general principles.// I may be forgiven also for adding that the limits of space forbid much in the way of amplifi cation and qualification, and that, so far as form is concerned, the mate rial will therefore be presented in somewhat dogmatic shape. I hope, however, it will not be found dogmatic in spirit, for the principles stated are all of them, in my judgment, capable of purely scientific justification. All ethical theory is two faced. It requires to be considered from two different points of view, and stated in two different sets of terms. These are the social and the psychological. We do not have here, however, a division, but simply a distinction. Psychological ethics does not cover part of the field, and then require social ethics to include the territory left untouched. Both cover the entire sphere of conduct. Nor does the distinction mark a compromise, or a fusion, as if at one point the psychological view broke down, and needed to be supple mented by the sociological. Each theory is complete and coherent 7 i 8 THE THIRD YEARBOOK within itself, so far as its own end or purpose is concerned. But con duct is of such a nature as to require to be stated throughout from two points of view. How this distinction happens to exist may perhaps be guessed at by calling to mind that the individual and society are neither opposed to each other nor separated from each other. ^ociet is a soci ety of individuals and the individual is always a social individual. He has no existence by himself. He lives in, for, and by society, just as society has no existence excepting in and through the individuals who constitute it/^But we can state one and the same process (as, forexam- ple, telling the truth) either from the standpoint of what it effects in society as a whole, or with reference to the particular individual con cerned. The latter statement will be psychological ; the former, social as to its purport and terms. If, then, the difference is simply a point of view, we first need to find out what fixes the two points of view. Why are they necessary ? Because conduct itself has two aspects. On one side conduct is a form of activity. It is a mode of operation. It is something which some body does. There is no conduct excepting where there is an agent. From this standpoint conduct is a process having its own form or mode, having, as it were, its own running machinery. That is, it is something which the agent does in a certain way ; something which is an outcome of the agent himself, and which effects certain changes within the agent considered as an agent or doer. Now when we ask how conduct is carried on, what sort of a doing it is, when, that is to say, we discuss it with reference to an agent from whom it springs, and whose powers it modifies, our discussion is necessarily psycholog ical. Psychology thus fixes for us the how of conduct, the way in which it takes place. Consideration from this standpoint is necessary because it is obvious that modifications in results or products must flow from changes in the agent or doer. If we want to get different things done, we must begin with changing the machinery which does them. I hope the term "machinery" here will not be misunderstood by being taken in too dead and mechanical a sense. All that is meant here is that the mode of action of the individual agent controls the product, or what is done, just as the way in which a particular machine works controls the output in that direction. The individual agent has a certain structure, and certain ways of operating. It is simply this which is referred to as machinery. But conduct has a what as well as a how. There is something ETHICAL PRINCIPLES 9 v, ^ V done as well as a way in which it is done. There are ends, outcomes, results, as well as ways, means, and processes. Now when we consider conduct from this standpoint (with reference, that is to say, to its actual filling, content, or concrete worth) we are considering conduct from a social standpoint from the place which it occupies, not simply with reference to the person who does it, but with reference to the whole living situation into which it enters. The psychological view of conduct has to do, then, with the ques tion of agency, of how the individual operates ; the social, with what the individual does and needs to do, considered from the standpoint of his membership in a whole which is larger than himself. We may illustrate by reference to business life. A man starts in a business of manufacturing cotton cloth. Now this occupation of his may be considered from two standpoints. The individual who makes the cloth does not originate the demand for it. Society needs the cloth, and thereby furnishes the end or aim to the individual. It needs a certain amount of cloth, and cloth of certain varying qualities and patterns. It is this situation outside the mere operations of the manufacturer which fixes the meaning and value of what he does. If it were not for these social needs and demands, the occupation of the ,,. y- manufacturer would be purely formal. He might as well go out into the wilderness and heap up and tear down piles of sand. But on the other side society must have its needs met, its ends real ized, through the activities of some specific individual or group of indi viduals. The needs will forever go unsatisfied unless somebody takes it as his special business to supply them. So we may consider the manufactory of cotton cloth, not only from the standpoint of the posi tion which it occupies in the larger social whole, but also as a mode of operation which simply as a mode is complete in itself. After the manu facturer has determined the ends which he has to meet (the kinds and amounts of cloth he needs to produce) he has to go to work to con- f sider the cheapest and best modes of producing them, and of getting them to the market. He has to transfer his attention from the ends to the means. He has to see how to make his factory, considered as a mode of activity, the best possible organized agency within itself. No amount of reflection upon how badly society needs cloth will help him here. He has to think out his problem in terms of the number and kind i of machines which he will use, the number of men which he will employ, how much he will pay them, how and where he will buy his raw i! 10 THE THIRD YEARBOOK material, and through what instrumentalities he will get his goods to the market. Now while this question is ultimately only a means to the larger social end, yet in order that it may become a true means, and accomplish the work which it has to do, it must become, for the time being, an end in itself. It must be stated, in other words, in terms of the factory as a working agency. I think this parallelism may be applied to moral conduct with out the change of a single principle. It is not the mere individual as an individual who makes the final demand for moral action, who establishes the final end, or furnishes the final standards of worth. It is the constitution and development of the larger life into which he enters which settles these things. But when we come to the question of how the individual is to meet the moral demands, of how he is to realize the values within himself, the question is one which concerns the individual as an agent. Hence it must be answered in psycholog ical terms. . Let us change the scene of discussion to the school\\The child who is educated there is a member of society and must be instructed and cared for as such a member. The moral responsibility of the school, and of those who conduct it, is to society. The school is funda mentally an institution erected by society to do acertain specific work to exercise acertain specific function in maintaining the life and advanc ing the welfare of society. The educational system which does not recognize this fact as entailing upon it an ethical responsibility is derelict and a defaulter.//It is not doing what it was called into exist ence to do, and what it pretends to do.^ Hence the necessity of dis cussing the entire structure and the specific workings of the school system from the standpoint of its moral position and moral function to society. ^ The above is commonplace. But the idea is ordinarily taken in too limited and rigid a way. The social work of the school is often limited to training for citizenship, and citizenship is then interpreted in a narrow sense as meaning capacity to vote intelligently, a disposi tion to obey laws, etc. But it is futile to contract and cramp the eth ical responsibility of the school in this way. The child is one, and he must either live his life as an integral unified being or surfer loss and create friction. To pick out one of the manifold social relations which the child bears, and to define the work of the school with relation to that, is like instituting a vast and complicated system of physical exercise ETHICAL PRINCIPLES 1 1 which would have for its object simply the development of the lungs and the power of breathing, independent of other organs and functions. The child is an organic whole, intellectually, socially, and morally, as well as physically. The ethical aim which determines the work of the school must accordingly be interpreted in the most comprehensive and organic spirit. We must take the child as a member of society in the broadest sense and demand whatever is necessary to enable the child to recognize all his social relations and to carry them out. The child is to be not only a voter and a subject of law; he is also to V"* a TTT^flabfir O f n farcy 1 } , himself responsible, in all probability, in turn, for rearing and training of future children, and thus maintaining the continuity of society. He is to be a worket, engaged in some occu pation which will be of use to society, and which will maintain his own independence and self-respect. He is to be a member of some partic ular neighborhood and community, and mu>t contribute to the values: of life, add to the decencies and graces of civilization wherever he is. These are bare and formal statements, but if we let our imagination translate them into their concrete details we have a wide and varied scene. For the child properly to take his place with reference to these various functions means training in science, in art, in history; com mand of the fundamental methods of inquiry and the fundamental tools of intercourse and communication ; it means a trained and sound body, skillful eye and hand; habits of industry, perseverance, and, above all, habits of serviceableness. To isolate the formal relationship of citizenship from the whole system of relations with which it is actu ally interwoven ; to suppose that there is any one particular study or mode of treatment which can make the child a good citizen ; to sup pose, in other words, that a good citizen is anything more than a thor oughly efficient and serviceable member of society, one with all his powers of body and mind under control, is a cramped superstition which it is hoped may soon disappear from educational discussion. One point more. The society of which the child is to be a member is, in the United States, a democratic and progressive society. The child must be educated for leadership as well as for obedience. He must have power of self-direction and power of directing others, powers of administration, ability to assume positions of responsibility. This necessity of educating for leadership is as great on the industrial as on the political side. The affairs of life are coming more and more under the control of insight and skill in perceiving and effecting combinations. 12 THE THIRD YEARBOOK Moreover, the conditions of life are in continual change. We are in the midst of a tremendous industrial and commercial development. New inventions, new machines, new methods of transportation and intercourse are making over the whole scene of action year by year. It is an absolute impossibility to educate the child for any fixed station in life. So far as education is conducted unconsciously or consciously on this basis, it results in fitting the future citizen for no station in life, but makes him a drone, a hanger-on, or an actual retarding influence in the onward movement. Instead of caring for himself and for others, he becomes one who has himself to be cared for. Here, too, the ethical responsibility of the school on the social side must be inter preted in the broadest and freest spirit; it is equivalent to that training of the child which will give him such possession of himself that he may take charge of himself; may not only adapt himself to the changes which are going on, but have power to shape and direct those changes. | It is necessary to apply this conception of the child s membership* in society more specifically to determining the ethical principles of education. Apart from the thought of participation in social life the school hasX no end nor aim. As long as we confine ourselves to the school as an I isolated institution \ve have no final directing ethical principles, because I we have no object or ideal. But it is said the end of education may be / / stated in purely individual terms. For example, it is said to be the C harmonious development of all the powers of the individual. Here we \ have no apparent reference to social life or membership, and yet it is \ argued we have an adequate and thoroughgoing definition of what the goal of education is. But if this definition is taken independently of / social relationship we shall find that we have no standard or criterion / for telling what is meant by any one of the terms concerned. We do / not know what a power is ; we do not know what development is ; we do not know what harmony is ; a power is a power with reference to the use to which it is put, the function it has to serve. There is noth ing in the make-up of the human~BeTng, taken in an isolated way, which furnishes controlling ends and serves to mark out powers. If we leave out the aim supplied from social life we have nothing but the old "faculty psychology" to fall back upon to tell what is meant by power in general or what the specific powers are. The idea reduces itself to enumerating a lot of faculties like perception, memory, reasoning, etc., and then stating that each one of these powers needs to be developed. ETHICAL PRINCIPLES 13 But this statement is barren and formal. It reduces training to an empty gymnastic. Acute powers of observation and memory might be developed by studying Chinese characters ; acuteness in reasoning might be got by discussion of the scholastic subtleties of the Middle Ages. The simple fact is that there is no isolated faculty of observation, or memory, or reasoning any more than there is an original faculty of blacksmithing, carpentering, or steam engineering. These faculties simply mean that j particular impulses and habits have been coordinated and framed with / reference to accomplishing certain definite kinds of work. Precisely the same thing holds of the so-called mental faculties. They are not powers in themselves, but are such only with reference to the ends to which they are put, the services which they have to perform. Hence they cannot be located nor discussed as powers on a theoretical, but only on a practical basis. We need to know the social situations with reference to which the individual will have to use ability to observe, recollect, imagine, and reason before we get any intelligent and con crete basis for telling what a training of mental powers actually means either in its general principles or in its working details. We get no moral ideals, no moral standards for school life except ing as we so interpret in social terms. To understand what the school is actually doing, to discover defects in its practice, and to form plans for its progress means to have a clear conception of what society requires and of the relation of the school to these requirements. It is high time, however, to apply this general principle so as to give it a some what more definite content. What does the general principle signify when we view the existing school system in its light ? What defects does this principle point out ? What changes does it indicate ? The fundamental conclusion is that the school must be itself made into a vital social institution to a very much greater extent than obtains at present. I am told that there is a swimming school in the city of Chicago where youth are taught to swim without going into the water, being repeatedly drilled in the various movements which are necessary for swimming. When one of the young men so trained was asked what he did when he got into the water, he laconically replied, "Sunk." The story happens to be true ; if it were not, it would seem to be a fable made expressly for the purpose of typifying the prevailing status of the school, as judged from the standpoint of its ethical relationship | to Lociety. The school cannot be a preparation for social life excepting Jill THE THIRD YEARBOOK 1as it reproduces, within itself, the typical conditions of social life. The school at present is engaged largely upon the futile task of Sisyphus. It is endeavoring to form practically an intellectual habit in children for use in a social life which is, it would almost seem, carefully and purposely kept away from any vital contact with the child who is thus undergoing training. The only way* to prepare for social life is to engage in social life. To form habits of social usefulness and service- ableness apart from any direct social need and motive, and apart from any existing social situation, is, to the letter, teaching the child to swim by going through motions outside of the water. The most indispen sable condition is left out of account, and the results are correspond ingly futile. ^) The much and commonly lamented separation in the schools between intellectual and moral training, between acquiring informa tion and growth of character, is simply one expression of the failure to conceive and construct the school as a social institution, having social life and value within itself. x Excepting in so far as the school is an embryonic yet typical community life, moral training must be partly pathological and partly formal, ft It is pathological inasmuch as the stress comes to be laid upon correcting wrongdoing instead of upon forming habits of positive service. The teacher is necessarily forced into a position where his concern with the moral life of the pupils takes largely the form of being on the alert for failures to conform to the school rules and routine. These regulations, judged from the standpoint of the development of the child at the time, are more or less conventional and arbitrary. They are rules which have to be made in order that the existing m