factors in the problem are the formation of ideas, acting upon ideas, observation of the conditions, which result, and organization of facts and ideas for future use. Neither the ideas, nor the activities, nor the observations, the organization are the same for a person six years old as they are for one twelve or eighteen years old, to say nothing of the adult scientist. But at every level there is an expanding development of experience if experience is educative in effect. Consequently, whatever the level of experience, we have no choice but either to operate in accord with the pattern it provides or else to neglect the place of intelligence in the development and control of a living and moving experience.
Chapter 8
Experience--The Means and Goal of Education
In what I have said I have taken for granted the sound- ness of the principle that education in order to accomplish its ends both for the individual learner and for society must be based upon experience--which is always the actual life-experience of some individual. I have not argued for the acceptance of this principle nor attempted to justify it. Conservatives as well as radicals in education are profoundly discontented with the present educational situation taken as a whole. There is at least this much agreement among intelligent persons of both schools of educational thought. The educational system must move one way or another, either backward to the intellectual and moral standards of a pre-scientific age or forward to ever greater utilization of scientific method in the development of the possibilities of growing, expanding experience. I have but endeavored to point out some of the conditions, which must be satisfactorily fulfilled if education takes the latter course.
For I am so confident of the potentialities of education when it is treated as intelligently directed development of the possibilities inherent in ordinary experience that I do not feel it necessary to criticize here the other route nor to advance arguments in favor of taking the route of experience. The only ground for anticipating failure in taking this path resides to my mind in the danger that experience and the experimental method will not be adequately conceived. There is no discipline in the world so severe as the discipline of experience subjected to the tests of intelligent development and direction. Hence the only ground I can see for even a temporary reaction against the standards, aims, and methods of the newer education is the failure of educators who professedly adopt them to be faithful to them in practice. As I have emphasized more than once, the road of the new education is not an easier one to follow than the old road but n more strenuous and difficult one. It will remain so until it has attained its majority and that attainment will require many years of serious co-operative work on the part of its adherents. The greatest danger that attends its future is, I believe, the idea that it is an easy way to follow, so easy that its course may be improvised, if not in an impromptu fashion, at least almost from day to day or from week to week. It is for this reason that instead of extolling its principles, I have confined myself to showing certain conditions which must be fulfilled if it is to have the successful career which by right belongs to it.
I have used frequently in what precedes the words "progressive" and "new" education. I do not wish to close, however, without recording my firm belief that the fundamental issue is not of new versus old education nor of progressive against traditional education but a question of what anything whatever must be to be worthy of the name education. I am not, I hope and believe, in favor of any ends or any methods simply because the name progressive may be applied to them. The basic question concerns the nature of education with no qualifying adjectives prefixed. What we want and need is education pure and simple, and we shall make surer and faster progress when we devote ourselves to finding out just what education is and what conditions have to be satisfied in order that education may be a reality and not a name or a slogan. It is for this reason alone that I have emphasized the need for a sound philosophy of experience.
END
Democracy and Education:
An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education
Chapter One: Education as a Necessity of Life
Summary. It is the very nature of life to strive to continue in being
Chapter Two: Education as a Social Function
Summary. The development within the young of the attitudes and
Chapter Three: Education as Direction
Summary. The natural or native impulses of the young do not agree with
Chapter Four: Education as Growth
Summary. Power to grow depends upon need for others and plasticity
Chapter Five: Preparation, Unfolding, and Formal Discipline
Summary. The conception that the result of the educative process is
Chapter Six: Education as Conservative and Progressive
Summary. Education may be conceived either retrospectively or
Chapter Seven: The Democratic Conception in Education
Summary. Since education is a social process, and there are many kinds
Chapter Eight: Aims in Education
Summary. An aim denotes the result of any natural process brought to
Chapter Nine: Natural Development and Social Efficiency as Aims
Summary. General or comprehensive aims are points of view for surveying
Chapter Ten: Interest and Discipline
