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Edgar Rice Burroughs - "The People That Time Forgot"

Thornton W. Burgess - "The Burgess Animal Book for Children"

Sir Walter Scott - "Ivanhoe, by Sir Walter Scott"

Jane Austen - "Pride and Prejudice"

Democracy and Education

J >> John Dewey >> Democracy and Education




In brief, the environment consists of those conditions that
promote or hinder, stimulate or inhibit, the characteristic
activities of a living being. Water is the environment of a fish
because it is necessary to the fish's activities -- to its life.
The north pole is a significant element in the environment of an
arctic explorer, whether he succeeds in reaching it or not,
because it defines his activities, makes them what they
distinctively are. Just because life signifies not bare passive
existence (supposing there is such a thing), but a way of acting,
environment or medium signifies what enters into this activity as
a sustaining or frustrating condition.

2. The Social Environment. A being whose activities are
associated with others has a social environment. What he does
and what he can do depend upon the expectations, demands,
approvals, and condemnations of others. A being connected with
other beings cannot perform his own activities without taking the
activities of others into account. For they are the
indispensable conditions of the realization of his tendencies.
When he moves he stirs them and reciprocally. We might as well
try to imagine a business man doing business, buying and selling,
all by himself, as to conceive it possible to define the
activities of an individual in terms of his isolated actions.
The manufacturer moreover is as truly socially guided in his
activities when he is laying plans in the privacy of his own
counting house as when he is buying his raw material or selling
his finished goods. Thinking and feeling that have to do with
action in association with others is as much a social mode of
behavior as is the most overt cooperative or hostile act.

What we have more especially to indicate is how the social medium
nurtures its immature members. There is no great difficulty in
seeing how it shapes the external habits of action. Even dogs
and horses have their actions modified by association with human
beings; they form different habits because human beings are
concerned with what they do. Human beings control animals by
controlling the natural stimuli which influence them; by creating
a certain environment in other words. Food, bits and bridles,
noises, vehicles, are used to direct the ways in which the
natural or instinctive responses of horses occur. By operating
steadily to call out certain acts, habits are formed which
function with the same uniformity as the original stimuli. If a
rat is put in a maze and finds food only by making a given number
of turns in a given sequence, his activity is gradually modified
till he habitually takes that course rather than another when he
is hungry.

Human actions are modified in a like fashion. A burnt child
dreads the fire; if a parent arranged conditions so that every
time a child touched a certain toy he got burned, the child would
learn to avoid that toy as automatically as he avoids touching
fire. So far, however, we are dealing with what may be called
training in distinction from educative teaching. The changes
considered are in outer action rather than in mental and
emotional dispositions of behavior. The distinction is not,
however, a sharp one. The child might conceivably generate in
time a violent antipathy, not only to that particular toy, but to
the class of toys resembling it. The aversion might even persist
after he had forgotten about the original burns; later on he
might even invent some reason to account for his seemingly
irrational antipathy. In some cases, altering the external habit
of action by changing the environment to affect the stimuli to
action will also alter the mental disposition concerned in the
action. Yet this does not always happen; a person trained to
dodge a threatening blow, dodges automatically with no
corresponding thought or emotion. We have to find, then, some
differentia of training from education.

A clew may be found in the fact that the horse does not really
share in the social use to which his action is put. Some one
else uses the horse to secure a result which is advantageous by
making it advantageous to the horse to perform the act -- he gets
food, etc. But the horse, presumably, does not get any new
interest. He remains interested in food, not in the service he
is rendering. He is not a partner in a shared activity. Were he
to become a copartner, he would, in engaging in the conjoint
activity, have the same interest in its accomplishment which
others have. He would share their ideas and emotions.

Now in many cases -- too many cases -- the activity of the
immature human being is simply played upon to secure habits which
are useful. He is trained like an animal rather than educated
like a human being. His instincts remain attached to their
original objects of pain or pleasure. But to get happiness or to
avoid the pain of failure he has to act in a way agreeable to
others. In other cases, he really shares or participates in the
common activity. In this case, his original impulse is modified.
He not merely acts in a way agreeing with the actions of others,
but, in so acting, the same ideas and emotions are aroused in him
that animate the others. A tribe, let us say, is warlike. The
successes for which it strives, the achievements upon which it
sets store, are connected with fighting and victory. The
presence of this medium incites bellicose exhibitions in a boy,
first in games, then in fact when he is strong enough. As he
fights he wins approval and advancement; as he refrains, he is
disliked, ridiculed, shut out from favorable recognition. It is
not surprising that his original belligerent tendencies and
emotions are strengthened at the expense of others, and that his
ideas turn to things connected with war. Only in this way can he
become fully a recognized member of his group. Thus his mental
habitudes are gradually assimilated to those of his group.

If we formulate the principle involved in this illustration, we
shall perceive that the social medium neither implants certain
desires and ideas directly, nor yet merely establishes certain
purely muscular habits of action, like "instinctively" winking or
dodging a blow. Setting up conditions which stimulate certain
visible and tangible ways of acting is the first step. Making
the individual a sharer or partner in the associated activity so
that he feels its success as his success, its failure as his
failure, is the completing step. As soon as he is possessed by
the emotional attitude of the group, he will be alert to
recognize the special ends at which it aims and the means
employed to secure success. His beliefs and ideas, in other
words, will take a form similar to those of others in the group.
He will also achieve pretty much the same stock of knowledge
since that knowledge is an ingredient of his habitual pursuits.

The importance of language in gaining knowledge is doubtless the
chief cause of the common notion that knowledge may be passed
directly from one to another. It almost seems as if all we have
to do to convey an idea into the mind of another is to convey a
sound into his ear. Thus imparting knowledge gets assimilated to
a purely physical process. But learning from language will be
found, when analyzed, to confirm the principle just laid down.
It would probably be admitted with little hesitation that a child
gets the idea of, say, a hat by using it as other persons do; by
covering the head with it, giving it to others to wear, having it
put on by others when going out, etc. But it may be asked how
this principle of shared activity applies to getting through
speech or reading the idea of, say, a Greek helmet, where no
direct use of any kind enters in. What shared activity is there
in learning from books about the discovery of America?

Since language tends to become the chief instrument of learning
about many things, let us see how it works. The baby begins of
course with mere sounds, noises, and tones having no meaning,
expressing, that is, no idea. Sounds are just one kind of
stimulus to direct response, some having a soothing effect,
others tending to make one jump, and so on. The sound h-a-t
would remain as meaningless as a sound in Choctaw, a seemingly
inarticulate grunt, if it were not uttered in connection with an
action which is participated in by a number of people. When the
mother is taking the infant out of doors, she says "hat" as she
puts something on the baby's head. Being taken out becomes an
interest to the child; mother and child not only go out with each
other physically, but both are concerned in the going out; they
enjoy it in common. By conjunction with the other factors in
activity the sound "hat" soon gets the same meaning for the child
that it has for the parent; it becomes a sign of the activity
into which it enters. The bare fact that language consists of
sounds which are mutually intelligible is enough of itself to
show that its meaning depends upon connection with a shared
experience.

In short, the sound h-a-t gains meaning in precisely the same way
that the thing "hat" gains it, by being used in a given way. And
they acquire the same meaning with the child which they have with
the adult because they are used in a common experience by both.
The guarantee for the same manner of use is found in the fact
that the thing and the sound are first employed in a joint
activity, as a means of setting up an active connection between
the child and a grownup. Similar ideas or meanings spring up
because both persons are engaged as partners in an action where
what each does depends upon and influences what the other does.
If two savages were engaged in a joint hunt for game, and a
certain signal meant "move to the right" to the one who uttered
it, and "move to the left" to the one who heard it, they
obviously could not successfully carry on their hunt together.
Understanding one another means that objects, including sounds,
have the same value for both with respect to carrying on a common
pursuit.

After sounds have got meaning through connection with other
things employed in a joint undertaking, they can be used in
connection with other like sounds to develop new meanings,
precisely as the things for which they stand are combined. Thus
the words in which a child learns about, say, the Greek helmet
originally got a meaning (or were understood) by use in an action
having a common interest and end. They now arouse a new meaning
by inciting the one who hears or reads to rehearse imaginatively
the activities in which the helmet has its use. For the time
being, the one who understands the words "Greek helmet" becomes
mentally a partner with those who used the helmet. He engages,
through his imagination, in a shared activity. It is not easy to
get the full meaning of words. Most persons probably stop with
the idea that "helmet" denotes a queer kind of headgear a people
called the Greeks once wore. We conclude, accordingly, that the
use of language to convey and acquire ideas is an extension and
refinement of the principle that things gain meaning by being
used in a shared experience or joint action; in no sense does it
contravene that principle. When words do not enter as factors
into a shared situation, either overtly or imaginatively, they
operate as pure physical stimuli, not as having a meaning or
intellectual value. They set activity running in a given groove,
but there is no accompanying conscious purpose or meaning. Thus,
for example, the plus sign may be a stimulus to perform the act
of writing one number under another and adding the numbers, but
the person performing the act will operate much as an automaton
would unless he realizes the meaning of what he does.

3. The Social Medium as Educative. Our net result thus far is
that social environment forms the mental and emotional
disposition of behavior in individuals by engaging them in
activities that arouse and strengthen certain impulses, that have
certain purposes and entail certain consequences. A child
growing up in a family of musicians will inevitably have whatever
capacities he has in music stimulated, and, relatively,
stimulated more than other impulses which might have been
awakened in another environment. Save as he takes an interest in
music and gains a certain competency in it, he is "out of it"; he
is unable to share in the life of the group to which he belongs.
Some kinds of participation in the life of those with whom the
individual is connected are inevitable; with respect to them, the
social environment exercises an educative or formative influence
unconsciously and apart from any set purpose.

In savage and barbarian communities, such direct participation
(constituting the indirect or incidental education of which we
have spoken) furnishes almost the sole influence for rearing the
young into the practices and beliefs of the group. Even in
present-day societies, it furnishes the basic nurture of even the
most insistently schooled youth. In accord with the interests
and occupations of the group, certain things become objects of
high esteem; others of aversion. Association does not create
impulses or affection and dislike, but it furnishes the objects
to which they attach themselves. The way our group or class does
things tends to determine the proper objects of attention, and
thus to prescribe the directions and limits of observation and
memory. What is strange or foreign (that is to say outside the
activities of the groups) tends to be morally forbidden and
intellectually suspect. It seems almost incredible to us, for
example, that things which we know very well could have escaped
recognition in past ages. We incline to account for it by
attributing congenital stupidity to our forerunners and by
assuming superior native intelligence on our own part. But the
explanation is that their modes of life did not call for
attention to such facts, but held their minds riveted to other
things. Just as the senses require sensible objects to stimulate
them, so our powers of observation, recollection, and imagination
do not work spontaneously, but are set in motion by the demands
set up by current social occupations. The main texture of
disposition is formed, independently of schooling, by such
influences. What conscious, deliberate teaching can do is at
most to free the capacities thus formed for fuller exercise, to
purge them of some of their grossness, and to furnish objects
which make their activity more productive of meaning.

While this "unconscious influence of the environment" is so
subtle and pervasive that it affects every fiber of character and
mind, it may be worth while to specify a few directions in which
its effect is most marked. First, the habits of language.
Fundamental modes of speech, the bulk of the vocabulary, are
formed in the ordinary intercourse of life, carried on not as a
set means of instruction but as a social necessity. The babe
acquires, as we well say, the mother tongue. While speech habits
thus contracted may be corrected or even displaced by conscious
teaching, yet, in times of excitement, intentionally acquired
modes of speech often fall away, and individuals relapse into
their really native tongue. Secondly, manners. Example is
notoriously more potent than precept. Good manners come, as we
say, from good breeding or rather are good breeding; and breeding
is acquired by habitual action, in response to habitual stimuli,
not by conveying information. Despite the never ending play of
conscious correction and instruction, the surrounding atmosphere
and spirit is in the end the chief agent in forming manners. And
manners are but minor morals. Moreover, in major morals,
conscious instruction is likely to be efficacious only in the
degree in which it falls in with the general "walk and
conversation" of those who constitute the child's social
environment. Thirdly, good taste and esthetic appreciation. If
the eye is constantly greeted by harmonious objects, having
elegance of form and color, a standard of taste naturally grows
up. The effect of a tawdry, unarranged, and over-decorated
environment works for the deterioration of taste, just as meager
and barren surroundings starve out the desire for beauty.
Against such odds, conscious teaching can hardly do more than
convey second-hand information as to what others think. Such
taste never becomes spontaneous and personally engrained, but
remains a labored reminder of what those think to whom one has
been taught to look up. To say that the deeper standards of
judgments of value are framed by the situations into which a
person habitually enters is not so much to mention a fourth
point, as it is to point out a fusion of those already mentioned.
We rarely recognize the extent in which our conscious estimates
of what is worth while and what is not, are due to standards of
which we are not conscious at all. But in general it may be said
that the things which we take for granted without inquiry or
reflection are just the things which determine our conscious
thinking and decide our conclusions. And these habitudes which
lie below the level of reflection are just those which have been
formed in the constant give and take of relationship with others.

4. The School as a Special Environment. The chief importance of
this foregoing statement of the educative process which goes on
willy-nilly is to lead us to note that the only way in which
adults consciously control the kind of education which the
immature get is by controlling the environment in which they act,
and hence think and feel. We never educate directly, but
indirectly by means of the environment. Whether we permit chance
environments to do the work, or whether we design environments
for the purpose makes a great difference. And any environment is
a chance environment so far as its educative influence is
concerned unless it has been deliberately regulated with
reference to its educative effect. An intelligent home differs
from an unintelligent one chiefly in that the habits of life and
intercourse which prevail are chosen, or at least colored, by the
thought of their bearing upon the development of children. But
schools remain, of course, the typical instance of environments
framed with express reference to influencing the mental and moral
disposition of their members.

Roughly speaking, they come into existence when social traditions
are so complex that a considerable part of the social store is
committed to writing and transmitted through written symbols.
Written symbols are even more artificial or conventional than
spoken; they cannot be picked up in accidental intercourse with
others. In addition, the written form tends to select and record
matters which are comparatively foreign to everyday life. The
achievements accumulated from generation to generation are
deposited in it even though some of them have fallen temporarily
out of use. Consequently as soon as a community depends to any
considerable extent upon what lies beyond its own territory and
its own immediate generation, it must rely upon the set agency of
schools to insure adequate transmission of all its resources. To
take an obvious illustration: The life of the ancient Greeks and
Romans has profoundly influenced our own, and yet the ways in
which they affect us do not present themselves on the surface of
our ordinary experiences. In similar fashion, peoples still
existing, but remote in space, British, Germans, Italians,
directly concern our own social affairs, but the nature of the
interaction cannot be understood without explicit statement and
attention. In precisely similar fashion, our daily associations
cannot be trusted to make clear to the young the part played in
our activities by remote physical energies, and by invisible
structures. Hence a special mode of social intercourse is
instituted, the school, to care for such matters.

This mode of association has three functions sufficiently
specific, as compared with ordinary associations of life, to be
noted. First, a complex civilization is too complex to be
assimilated in toto. It has to be broken up into portions, as it
were, and assimilated piecemeal, in a gradual and graded way.
The relationships of our present social life are so numerous and
so interwoven that a child placed in the most favorable position
could not readily share in many of the most important of them.
Not sharing in them, their meaning would not be communicated to
him, would not become a part of his own mental disposition.
There would be no seeing the trees because of the forest.
Business, politics, art, science, religion, would make all at
once a clamor for attention; confusion would be the outcome. The
first office of the social organ we call the school is to provide
a simplified environment. It selects the features which are
fairly fundamental and capable of being responded to by the
young. Then it establishes a progressive order, using the
factors first acquired as means of gaining insight into what is
more complicated.

In the second place, it is the business of the school environment
to eliminate, so far as possible, the unworthy features of the
existing environment from influence upon mental habitudes. It
establishes a purified medium of action. Selection aims not only
at simplifying but at weeding out what is undesirable. Every
society gets encumbered with what is trivial, with dead wood from
the past, and with what is positively perverse. The school has
the duty of omitting such things from the environment which it
supplies, and thereby doing what it can to counteract their
influence in the ordinary social environment. By selecting the
best for its exclusive use, it strives to reinforce the power of
this best. As a society becomes more enlightened, it realizes
that it is responsible not to transmit and conserve the whole of
its existing achievements, but only such as make for a better
future society. The school is its chief agency for the
accomplishment of this end.

In the third place, it is the office of the school environment to
balance the various elements in the social environment, and to
see to it that each individual gets an opportunity to escape from
the limitations of the social group in which he was born, and to
come into living contact with a broader environment. Such words
as "society" and "community" are likely to be misleading, for
they have a tendency to make us think there is a single thing
corresponding to the single word. As a matter of fact, a modern
society is many societies more or less loosely connected. Each
household with its immediate extension of friends makes a
society; the village or street group of playmates is a community;
each business group, each club, is another. Passing beyond these
more intimate groups, there is in a country like our own a
variety of races, religious affiliations, economic divisions.
Inside the modern city, in spite of its nominal political unity,
there are probably more communities, more differing customs,
traditions, aspirations, and forms of government or control, than
existed in an entire continent at an earlier epoch.

Each such group exercises a formative influence on the active
dispositions of its members. A clique, a club, a gang, a Fagin's
household of thieves, the prisoners in a jail, provide educative
environments for those who enter into their collective or
conjoint activities, as truly as a church, a labor union, a
business partnership, or a political party. Each of them is a
mode of associated or community life, quite as much as is a
family, a town, or a state. There are also communities whose
members have little or no direct contact with one another, like
the guild of artists, the republic of letters, the members of the
professional learned class scattered over the face of the earth.
For they have aims in common, and the activity of each member is
directly modified by knowledge of what others are doing.

In the olden times, the diversity of groups was largely a
geographical matter. There were many societies, but each, within
its own territory, was comparatively homogeneous. But with the
development of commerce, transportation, intercommunication, and
emigration, countries like the United States are composed of a
combination of different groups with different traditional
customs. It is this situation which has, perhaps more than any
other one cause, forced the demand for an educational institution
which shall provide something like a homogeneous and balanced
environment for the young. Only in this way can the centrifugal
forces set up by juxtaposition of different groups within one and
the same political unit be counteracted. The intermingling in
the school of youth of different races, differing religions, and
unlike customs creates for all a new and broader environment.
Common subject matter accustoms all to a unity of outlook upon a
broader horizon than is visible to the members of any group while
it is isolated. The assimilative force of the American public
school is eloquent testimony to the efficacy of the common and
balanced appeal.

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