[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
indeterminate. One would not expect a ruling class living at
ease to have the same philosophy of life as those who were having
a hard struggle for existence. If the possessing and the
dispossessed had the same fundamental disposition toward the
world, it would argue either insincerity or lack of seriousness.
A community devoted to industrial pursuits, active in business
and commerce, is not likely to see the needs and possibilities of
life in the same way as a country with high aesthetic culture and
little enterprise in turning the energies of nature to mechanical
account. A social group with a fairly continuous history will
respond mentally to a crisis in a very different way from one
which has felt the shock of abrupt breaks. Even if the same data
were present, they would be evaluated differently. But the
different sorts of experience attending different types of life
prevent just the same data from presenting themselves, as well as
lead to a different scheme of values. As for the similarity of
problems, this is often more a matter of appearance than of fact,
due to old discussions being translated into the terms of
contemporary perplexities. But in certain fundamental respects
the same predicaments of life recur from time to time with only
such changes as are due to change of social context, including
the growth of the sciences.
The fact that philosophic problems arise because of widespread
and widely felt difficulties in social practice is disguised
because philosophers become a specialized class which uses a
technical language, unlike the vocabulary in which the direct
difficulties are stated. But where a system becomes influential,
its connection with a conflict of interests calling for some
program of social adjustment may always be discovered. At this
point, the intimate connection between philosophy and education
appears. In fact, education offers a vantage ground from which
to penetrate to the human, as distinct from the technical,
significance of philosophic discussions. The student of
philosophy "in itself' is always in danger of taking it as so
much nimble or severe intellectual exercise -- as something said
by philosophers and concerning them alone. But when philosophic
issues are approached from the side of the kind of mental
disposition to which they correspond, or the differences in
educational practice they make when acted upon, the
life-situations which they formulate can never be far from view.
If a theory makes no difference in educational endeavor, it must
be artificial. The educational point of view enables one to
envisage the philosophic problems where they arise and thrive,
where they are at home, and where acceptance or rejection makes a
difference in practice. If we are willing to conceive education
as the process of forming fundamental dispositions, intellectual
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Democracy and Education
247
and emotional, toward nature and fellow men, philosophy may even
be defined as the general theory of education. Unless a
philosophy is to remain symbolic -- or verbal -- or a sentimental
indulgence for a few, or else mere arbitrary dogma, its auditing
of past experience and its program of values must take effect in
conduct. Public agitation, propaganda, legislative and
administrative action are effective in producing the change of
disposition which a philosophy indicates as desirable, but only
in the degree in which they are educative -- that is to say, in
the degree in which they modify mental and moral attitudes. And
at the best, such methods are compromised by the fact they are
used with those whose habits are already largely set, while
education of youth has a fairer and freer field of operation. On
the other side, the business of schooling tends to become a
routine empirical affair unless its aims and methods are
animated by such a broad and sympathetic survey of its place in
contemporary life as it is the business of philosophy to provide.
Positive science always implies practically the ends which the
community is concerned to achieve. Isolated from such ends, it
is matter of indifference whether its disclosures are used to
cure disease or to spread it; to increase the means of sustenance
of life or to manufacture war material to wipe life out. If
society is interested in one of these things rather than another, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl exclamation.htw.pl
indeterminate. One would not expect a ruling class living at
ease to have the same philosophy of life as those who were having
a hard struggle for existence. If the possessing and the
dispossessed had the same fundamental disposition toward the
world, it would argue either insincerity or lack of seriousness.
A community devoted to industrial pursuits, active in business
and commerce, is not likely to see the needs and possibilities of
life in the same way as a country with high aesthetic culture and
little enterprise in turning the energies of nature to mechanical
account. A social group with a fairly continuous history will
respond mentally to a crisis in a very different way from one
which has felt the shock of abrupt breaks. Even if the same data
were present, they would be evaluated differently. But the
different sorts of experience attending different types of life
prevent just the same data from presenting themselves, as well as
lead to a different scheme of values. As for the similarity of
problems, this is often more a matter of appearance than of fact,
due to old discussions being translated into the terms of
contemporary perplexities. But in certain fundamental respects
the same predicaments of life recur from time to time with only
such changes as are due to change of social context, including
the growth of the sciences.
The fact that philosophic problems arise because of widespread
and widely felt difficulties in social practice is disguised
because philosophers become a specialized class which uses a
technical language, unlike the vocabulary in which the direct
difficulties are stated. But where a system becomes influential,
its connection with a conflict of interests calling for some
program of social adjustment may always be discovered. At this
point, the intimate connection between philosophy and education
appears. In fact, education offers a vantage ground from which
to penetrate to the human, as distinct from the technical,
significance of philosophic discussions. The student of
philosophy "in itself' is always in danger of taking it as so
much nimble or severe intellectual exercise -- as something said
by philosophers and concerning them alone. But when philosophic
issues are approached from the side of the kind of mental
disposition to which they correspond, or the differences in
educational practice they make when acted upon, the
life-situations which they formulate can never be far from view.
If a theory makes no difference in educational endeavor, it must
be artificial. The educational point of view enables one to
envisage the philosophic problems where they arise and thrive,
where they are at home, and where acceptance or rejection makes a
difference in practice. If we are willing to conceive education
as the process of forming fundamental dispositions, intellectual
Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com
Democracy and Education
247
and emotional, toward nature and fellow men, philosophy may even
be defined as the general theory of education. Unless a
philosophy is to remain symbolic -- or verbal -- or a sentimental
indulgence for a few, or else mere arbitrary dogma, its auditing
of past experience and its program of values must take effect in
conduct. Public agitation, propaganda, legislative and
administrative action are effective in producing the change of
disposition which a philosophy indicates as desirable, but only
in the degree in which they are educative -- that is to say, in
the degree in which they modify mental and moral attitudes. And
at the best, such methods are compromised by the fact they are
used with those whose habits are already largely set, while
education of youth has a fairer and freer field of operation. On
the other side, the business of schooling tends to become a
routine empirical affair unless its aims and methods are
animated by such a broad and sympathetic survey of its place in
contemporary life as it is the business of philosophy to provide.
Positive science always implies practically the ends which the
community is concerned to achieve. Isolated from such ends, it
is matter of indifference whether its disclosures are used to
cure disease or to spread it; to increase the means of sustenance
of life or to manufacture war material to wipe life out. If
society is interested in one of these things rather than another, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]