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Democracy and Education

J >> John Dewey >> Democracy and Education




2. The Opposition of Duty and Interest. Probably there is no
antithesis more often set up in moral discussion than that
between acting from "principle" and from "interest." To act on
principle is to act disinterestedly, according to a general law,
which is above all personal considerations. To act according to
interest is, so the allegation runs, to act selfishly, with one's
own personal profit in view. It substitutes the changing
expediency of the moment for devotion to unswerving moral law.
The false idea of interest underlying this opposition has already
been criticized (See Chapter X), but some moral aspects of the
question will now be considered. A clew to the matter may be
found in the fact that the supporters of the "interest" side of
the controversy habitually use the term "self-interest." Starting
from the premises that unless there is interest in an object or
idea, there is no motive force, they end with the conclusion that
even when a person claims to be acting from principle or from a
sense of duty, he really acts as he does because there "is
something in it" for himself. The premise is sound; the
conclusion false. In reply the other school argues that since
man is capable of generous self-forgetting and even
self-sacrificing action, he is capable of acting without
interest. Again the premise is sound, and the conclusion false.
The error on both sides lies in a false notion of the relation of
interest and the self.

Both sides assume that the self is a fixed and hence isolated
quantity. As a consequence, there is a rigid dilemma between
acting for an interest of the self and without interest. If the
self is something fixed antecedent to action, then acting from
interest means trying to get more in the way of possessions for
the self -- whether in the way of fame, approval of others, power
over others, pecuniary profit, or pleasure. Then the reaction
from this view as a cynical depreciation of human nature leads to
the view that men who act nobly act with no interest at all. Yet
to an unbiased judgment it would appear plain that a man must be
interested in what he is doing or he would not do it. A
physician who continues to serve the sick in a plague at almost
certain danger to his own life must be interested in the
efficient performance of his profession -- more interested in
that than in the safety of his own bodily life. But it is
distorting facts to say that this interest is merely a mask for
an interest in something else which he gets by continuing his
customary services -- such as money or good repute or virtue;
that it is only a means to an ulterior selfish end. The moment
we recognize that the self is not something ready-made, but
something in continuous formation through choice of action, the
whole situation clears up. A man's interest in keeping at his
work in spite of danger to life means that his self is found in
that work; if he finally gave up, and preferred his personal
safety or comfort, it would mean that he preferred to be that
kind of a self. The mistake lies in making a separation between
interest and self, and supposing that the latter is the end to
which interest in objects and acts and others is a mere means.
In fact, self and interest are two names for the same fact; the
kind and amount of interest actively taken in a thing reveals and
measures the quality of selfhood which exists. Bear in mind that
interest means the active or moving identity of the self with a
certain object, and the whole alleged dilemma falls to the
ground.

Unselfishness, for example, signifies neither lack of interest in
what is done (that would mean only machine-like indifference) nor
selflessness--which would mean absence of virility and character.
As employed everywhere outside of this particular theoretical
controversy, the term "unselfishness" refers to the kind of aims
and objects which habitually interest a man. And if we make a
mental survey of the kind of interests which evoke the use of
this epithet, we shall see that they have two intimately
associated features. (i) The generous self consciously
identifies itself with the full range of relationships implied in
its activity, instead of drawing a sharp line between itself and
considerations which are excluded as alien or indifferent; (ii)
it readjusts and expands its past ideas of itself to take in new
consequences as they become perceptible. When the physician
began his career he may not have thought of a pestilence; he may
not have consciously identified himself with service under such
conditions. But, if he has a normally growing or active self,
when he finds that his vocation involves such risks, he willingly
adopts them as integral portions of his activity. The wider or
larger self which means inclusion instead of denial of
relationships is identical with a self which enlarges in order to
assume previously unforeseen ties.

In such crises of readjustment -- and the crisis may be slight as
well as great -- there may be a transitional conflict of
"principle" with "interest." It is the nature of a habit to
involve ease in the accustomed line of activity. It is the
nature of a readjusting of habit to involve an effort which is
disagreeable -- something to which a man has deliberately to hold
himself. In other words, there is a tendency to identify the
self -- or take interest -- in what one has got used to, and to
turn away the mind with aversion or irritation when an unexpected
thing which involves an unpleasant modification of habit comes
up. Since in the past one has done one's duty without having to
face such a disagreeable circumstance, why not go on as one has
been? To yield to this temptation means to narrow and isolate the
thought of the self -- to treat it as complete. Any habit, no
matter how efficient in the past, which has become set, may at
any time bring this temptation with it. To act from principle in
such an emergency is not to act on some abstract principle, or
duty at large; it is to act upon the principle of a course of
action, instead of upon the circumstances which have attended it.
The principle of a physician's conduct is its animating aim and
spirit -- the care for the diseased. The principle is not what
justifies an activity, for the principle is but another name for
the continuity of the activity. If the activity as manifested in
its consequences is undesirable, to act upon principle is to
accentuate its evil. And a man who prides himself upon acting
upon principle is likely to be a man who insists upon having his
own way without learning from experience what is the better way.
He fancies that some abstract principle justifies his course of
action without recognizing that his principle needs
justification.

Assuming, however, that school conditions are such as to provide
desirable occupations, it is interest in the occupation as a
whole -- that is, in its continuous development -- which keeps a
pupil at his work in spite of temporary diversions and unpleasant
obstacles. Where there is no activity having a growing
significance, appeal to principle is either purely verbal, or a
form of obstinate pride or an appeal to extraneous considerations
clothed with a dignified title. Undoubtedly there are junctures
where momentary interest ceases and attention flags, and where
reinforcement is needed. But what carries a person over these
hard stretches is not loyalty to duty in the abstract, but
interest in his occupation. Duties are "offices" -- they are the
specific acts needed for the fulfilling of a function -- or, in
homely language -- doing one's job. And the man who is genuinely
interested in his job is the man who is able to stand temporary
discouragement, to persist in the face of obstacles, to take the
lean with the fat: he makes an interest out of meeting and
overcoming difficulties and distraction.

3. Intelligence and Character. A noteworthy paradox often
accompanies discussions of morals. On the one hand, there is an
identification of the moral with the rational. Reason is set up
as a faculty from which proceed ultimate moral intuitions, and
sometimes, as in the Kantian theory, it is said to supply the
only proper moral motive. On the other hand, the value of
concrete, everyday intelligence is constantly underestimated, and
even deliberately depreciated. Morals is often thought to be an
affair with which ordinary knowledge has nothing to do. Moral
knowledge is thought to be a thing apart, and conscience is
thought of as something radically different from consciousness.
This separation, if valid, is of especial significance for
education. Moral education in school is practically hopeless
when we set up the development of character as a supreme end, and
at the same time treat the acquiring of knowledge and the
development of understanding, which of necessity occupy the chief
part of school time, as having nothing to do with character. On
such a basis, moral education is inevitably reduced to some kind
of catechetical instruction, or lessons about morals. Lessons
"about morals" signify as matter of course lessons in what other
people think about virtues and duties. It amounts to something
only in the degree in which pupils happen to be already animated
by a sympathetic and dignified regard for the sentiments of
others. Without such a regard, it has no more influence on
character than information about the mountains of Asia; with a
servile regard, it increases dependence upon others, and throws
upon those in authority the responsibility for conduct. As a
matter of fact, direct instruction in morals has been effective
only in social groups where it was a part of the authoritative
control of the many by the few. Not the teaching as such but the
reinforcement of it by the whole regime of which it was an
incident made it effective. To attempt to get similar results
from lessons about morals in a democratic society is to rely upon
sentimental magic.

At the other end of the scale stands the Socratic-Platonic
teaching which identifies knowledge and virtue--which holds that
no man does evil knowingly but only because of ignorance of the
good. This doctrine is commonly attacked on the ground that
nothing is more common than for a man to know the good and yet do
the bad: not knowledge, but habituation or practice, and motive
are what is required. Aristotle, in fact, at once attacked the
Platonic teaching on the ground that moral virtue is like an art,
such as medicine; the experienced practitioner is better than a
man who has theoretical knowledge but no practical experience of
disease and remedies. The issue turns, however, upon what is
meant by knowledge. Aristotle's objection ignored the gist of
Plato's teaching to the effect that man could not attain a
theoretical insight into the good except as he had passed through
years of practical habituation and strenuous discipline.
Knowledge of the good was not a thing to be got either from books
or from others, but was achieved through a prolonged education.
It was the final and culminating grace of a mature experience of
life. Irrespective of Plato's position, it is easy to perceive
that the term knowledge is used to denote things as far apart as
intimate and vital personal realization, -- a conviction gained
and tested in experience, -- and a second- handed, largely
symbolic, recognition that persons in general believe so and so
-- a devitalized remote information. That the latter does not
guarantee conduct, that it does not profoundly affect character,
goes without saying. But if knowledge means something of the
same sort as our conviction gained by trying and testing that
sugar is sweet and quinine bitter, the case stands otherwise.
Every time a man sits on a chair rather than on a stove, carries
an umbrella when it rains, consults a doctor when ill -- or in
short performs any of the thousand acts which make up his daily
life, he proves that knowledge of a certain kind finds direct
issue in conduct. There is every reason to suppose that the same
sort of knowledge of good has a like expression; in fact "good"
is an empty term unless it includes the satisfactions experienced
in such situations as those mentioned. Knowledge that other
persons are supposed to know something might lead one to act so
as to win the approbation others attach to certain actions, or at
least so as to give others the impression that one agrees with
them; there is no reason why it should lead to personal
initiative and loyalty in behalf of the beliefs attributed to
them.

It is not necessary, accordingly, to dispute about the proper
meaning of the term knowledge. It is enough for educational
purposes to note the different qualities covered by the one name,
to realize that it is knowledge gained at first hand through the
exigencies of experience which affects conduct in significant
ways. If a pupil learns things from books simply in connection
with school lessons and for the sake of reciting what he has
learned when called upon, then knowledge will have effect upon
some conduct -- namely upon that of reproducing statements at the
demand of others. There is nothing surprising that such
"knowledge" should not have much influence in the life out of
school. But this is not a reason for making a divorce between
knowledge and conduct, but for holding in low esteem this kind of
knowledge. The same thing may be said of knowledge which relates
merely to an isolated and technical specialty; it modifies action
but only in its own narrow line. In truth, the problem of moral
education in the schools is one with the problem of securing
knowledge -- the knowledge connected with the system of impulses
and habits. For the use to which any known fact is put depends
upon its connections. The knowledge of dynamite of a safecracker
may be identical in verbal form with that of a chemist; in fact,
it is different, for it is knit into connection with different
aims and habits, and thus has a different import.

Our prior discussion of subject-matter as proceeding from direct
activity having an immediate aim, to the enlargement of meaning
found in geography and history, and then to scientifically
organized knowledge, was based upon the idea of maintaining a
vital connection between knowledge and activity. What is learned
and employed in an occupation having an aim and involving
cooperation with others is moral knowledge, whether consciously
so regarded or not. For it builds up a social interest and
confers the intelligence needed to make that interest effective
in practice. Just because the studies of the curriculum
represent standard factors in social life, they are organs of
initiation into social values. As mere school studies, their
acquisition has only a technical worth. Acquired under
conditions where their social significance is realized, they feed
moral interest and develop moral insight. Moreover, the
qualities of mind discussed under the topic of method of learning
are all of them intrinsically moral qualities. Open-mindedness,
single-mindedness, sincerity, breadth of outlook, thoroughness,
assumption of responsibility for developing the consequences of
ideas which are accepted, are moral traits. The habit of
identifying moral characteristics with external conformity to
authoritative prescriptions may lead us to ignore the ethical
value of these intellectual attitudes, but the same habit tends
to reduce morals to a dead and machinelike routine. Consequently
while such an attitude has moral results, the results are morally
undesirable -- above all in a democratic society where so much
depends upon personal disposition.

4. The Social and the Moral. All of the separations which we
have been criticizing -- and which the idea of education set
forth in the previous chapters is designed to avoid -- spring
from taking morals too narrowly, -- giving them, on one side, a
sentimental goody-goody turn without reference to effective
ability to do what is socially needed, and, on the other side,
overemphasizing convention and tradition so as to limit morals to
a list of definitely stated acts. As a matter of fact, morals
are as broad as acts which concern our relationships with others.
And
potentially this includes all our acts, even though their social
bearing may not be thought of at the time of performance. For
every act, by the principle of habit, modifies disposition -- it
sets up a certain kind of inclination and desire. And it is
impossible to tell when the habit thus strengthened may have a
direct and perceptible influence on our association with others.
Certain traits of character have such an obvious connection with
our social relationships that we call them "moral" in an emphatic
sense -- truthfulness, honesty, chastity, amiability, etc. But
this only means that they are, as compared with some other
attitudes, central: -- that they carry other attitudes with them.
They are moral in an emphatic sense not because they are isolated
and exclusive, but because they are so intimately connected with
thousands of other attitudes which we do not explicitly
recognize -- which perhaps we have not even names for. To call
them virtues in their isolation is like taking the skeleton for
the living body. The bones are certainly important, but their
importance lies in the fact that they support other organs of the
body in such a way as to make them capable of integrated
effective activity. And the same is true of the qualities of
character which we specifically designate virtues. Morals
concern nothing less than the whole character, and the whole
character is identical with the man in all his concrete make-up
and manifestations. To possess virtue does not signify to have
cultivated a few namable and exclusive traits; it means to be
fully and adequately what one is capable of becoming through
association with others in all the offices of life.

The moral and the social quality of conduct are, in the last
analysis, identical with each other. It is then but to restate
explicitly the import of our earlier chapters regarding the
social function of education to say that the measure of the worth
of the administration, curriculum, and methods of instruction of
the school is the extent to which they are animated by a social
spirit. And the great danger which threatens school work is the
absence of conditions which make possible a permeating social
spirit; this is the great enemy of effective moral training. For
this spirit can be actively present only when certain conditions
are met.

(i) In the first place, the school must itself be a community
life in all which that implies. Social perceptions and interests
can be developed only in a genuinely social medium--one where
there is give and take in the building up of a common experience.
Informational statements about things can be acquired in relative
isolation by any one who previously has had enough intercourse
with others to have learned language. But realization of the
meaning of the linguistic signs is quite another matter. That
involves a context of work and play in association with others.
The plea which has been made for education through continued
constructive activities in this book rests upon the fact they
afford an opportunity for a social atmosphere. In place of a
school set apart from life as a place for learning lessons, we
have a miniature social group in which study and growth are
incidents of present shared experience. Playgrounds, shops,
workrooms, laboratories not only direct the natural active
tendencies of youth, but they involve intercourse,
communication, and cooperation, -- all extending the perception
of connections.

(ii) The learning in school should be continuous with that out of
school. There should be a free interplay between the two. This
is possible only when there are numerous points of contact
between the social interests of the one and of the other. A
school is conceivable in which there should be a spirit of
companionship and shared activity, but where its social life
would no more represent or typify that of the world beyond the
school walls than that of a monastery. Social concern and
understanding would be developed, but they would not be available
outside; they would not carry over. The proverbial separation of
town and gown, the cultivation of academic seclusion, operate in
this direction. So does such adherence to the culture of the
past as generates a reminiscent social spirit, for this makes an
individual feel more at home in the life of other days than in
his own. A professedly cultural education is peculiarly exposed
to this danger. An idealized past becomes the refuge and solace
of the spirit; present-day concerns are found sordid, and
unworthy of attention. But as a rule, the absence of a social
environment in connection with which learning is a need and a
reward is the chief reason for the isolation of the school; and
this isolation renders school knowledge inapplicable to life and
so infertile in character.


A narrow and moralistic view of morals is responsible for the
failure to recognize that all the aims and values which are
desirable in education are themselves moral. Discipline, natural
development, culture, social efficiency, are moral traits --
marks of a person who is a worthy member of that society which it
is the business of education to further. There is an old saying
to the effect that it is not enough for a man to be good; he must
be good for something. The something for which a man must be
good is capacity to live as a social member so that what he gets
from living with others balances with what he contributes. What
he gets and gives as a human being, a being with desires,
emotions, and ideas, is not external possessions, but a widening
and deepening of conscious life -- a more intense, disciplined,
and expanding realization of meanings. What he materially
receives and gives is at most opportunities and means for the
evolution of conscious life. Otherwise, it is neither giving nor
taking, but a shifting about of the position of things in space,
like the stirring of water and sand with a stick. Discipline,
culture, social efficiency, personal refinement, improvement of
character are but phases of the growth of capacity nobly to share
in such a balanced experience. And education is not a mere means
to such a life. Education is such a life. To maintain capacity
for such education is the essence of morals. For conscious life
is a continual beginning afresh.

Summary. The most important problem of moral education in the
school concerns the relationship of knowledge and conduct. For
unless the learning which accrues in the regular course of study
affects character, it is futile to conceive the moral end as the
unifying and culminating end of education. When there is no
intimate organic connection between the methods and materials of
knowledge and moral growth, particular lessons and modes of
discipline have to be resorted to: knowledge is not integrated
into the usual springs of action and the outlook on life, while
morals become moralistic -- a scheme of separate virtues.

The two theories chiefly associated with the separation of
learning from activity, and hence from morals, are those which
cut off inner disposition and motive -- the conscious personal
factor -- and deeds as purely physical and outer; and which set
action from interest in opposition to that from principle. Both
of these separations are overcome in an educational scheme where
learning is the accompaniment of continuous activities or
occupations which have a social aim and utilize the materials of
typical social situations. For under such conditions, the school
becomes itself a form of social life, a miniature community and
one in close interaction with other modes of associated
experience beyond school walls. All education which develops
power to share effectively in social life is moral. It forms a
character which not only does the particular deed socially
necessary but one which is interested in that continuous
readjustment which is essential to growth. Interest in learning
from all the contacts of life is the essential moral interest.

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