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contemporary life makes it the more needed that education should
reveal their scientific content and their social value. For in
schools, occupations are not carried on for pecuniary gain but
for their own content. Freed from extraneous associations and
from the pressure of wage-earning, they supply modes of
experience which are intrinsically valuable; they are truly
liberalizing in quality.
Gardening, for example, need not be taught either for the sake of
preparing future gardeners, or as an agreeable way of passing
time. It affords an avenue of approach to knowledge of the place
farming and horticulture have had in the history of the race and
which they occupy in present social organization. Carried on in
an environment educationally controlled, they are means for
making a study of the facts of growth, the chemistry of soil, the
role of light, air, and moisture, injurious and helpful animal
life, etc. There is nothing in the elementary study of botany
which cannot be introduced in a vital way in connection with
caring for the growth of seeds. Instead of the subject matter
belonging to a peculiar study called botany, it will then belong
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Democracy and Education
153
to life, and will find, moreover, its natural correlations with
the facts of soil, animal life, and human relations. As students
grow mature, they will perceive problems of interest which may be
pursued for the sake of discovery, independent of the original
direct interest in gardening -- problems connected with the
germination and nutrition of plants, the reproduction of fruits,
etc., thus making a transition to deliberate intellectual
investigations.
The illustration is intended to apply, of course, to other school
occupations, -- wood-working, cooking, and on through the list.
It is pertinent to note that in the history of the race the
sciences grew gradually out from useful social occupations.
Physics developed slowly out of the use of tools and machines;
the important branch of physics known as mechanics testifies in
its name to its original associations. The lever, wheel,
inclined plane, etc., were among the first great intellectual
discoveries of mankind, and they are none the less intellectual
because they occurred in the course of seeking for means of
accomplishing practical ends. The great advance of electrical
science in the last generation was closely associated, as effect
and as cause, with application of electric agencies to means of
communication, transportation, lighting of cities and houses, and
more economical production of goods. These are social ends,
moreover, and if they are too closely associated with notions of
private profit, it is not because of anything in them, but
because they have been deflected to private uses: -- a fact which
puts upon the school the responsibility of restoring their
connection, in the mind of the coming generation, with public
scientific and social interests. In like ways, chemistry grew
out of processes of dying, bleaching, metal working, etc., and in
recent times has found innumerable new uses in industry.
Mathematics is now a highly abstract science; geometry, however,
means literally earth-measuring: the practical use of number in
counting to keep track of things and in measuring is even more
important to-day than in the times when it was invented for these
purposes. Such considerations (which could be duplicated in the
history of any science) are not arguments for a recapitulation of
the history of the race or for dwelling long in the early rule of
thumb stage. But they indicate the possibilities--greater to-day
than ever before -- of using active occupations as opportunities
for scientific study. The opportunities are just as great on the
social side, whether we look at the life of collective humanity
in its past or in its future. The most direct road for
elementary students into civics and economics is found in
consideration of the place and office of industrial occupations
in social life. Even for older students, the social sciences
would be less abstract and formal if they were dealt with less as
sciences (less as formulated bodies of knowledge) and more in
their direct subject-matter as that is found in the daily life of
the social groups in which the student shares.
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Democracy and Education
154 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl ocenkijessi.opx.pl
contemporary life makes it the more needed that education should
reveal their scientific content and their social value. For in
schools, occupations are not carried on for pecuniary gain but
for their own content. Freed from extraneous associations and
from the pressure of wage-earning, they supply modes of
experience which are intrinsically valuable; they are truly
liberalizing in quality.
Gardening, for example, need not be taught either for the sake of
preparing future gardeners, or as an agreeable way of passing
time. It affords an avenue of approach to knowledge of the place
farming and horticulture have had in the history of the race and
which they occupy in present social organization. Carried on in
an environment educationally controlled, they are means for
making a study of the facts of growth, the chemistry of soil, the
role of light, air, and moisture, injurious and helpful animal
life, etc. There is nothing in the elementary study of botany
which cannot be introduced in a vital way in connection with
caring for the growth of seeds. Instead of the subject matter
belonging to a peculiar study called botany, it will then belong
Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com
Democracy and Education
153
to life, and will find, moreover, its natural correlations with
the facts of soil, animal life, and human relations. As students
grow mature, they will perceive problems of interest which may be
pursued for the sake of discovery, independent of the original
direct interest in gardening -- problems connected with the
germination and nutrition of plants, the reproduction of fruits,
etc., thus making a transition to deliberate intellectual
investigations.
The illustration is intended to apply, of course, to other school
occupations, -- wood-working, cooking, and on through the list.
It is pertinent to note that in the history of the race the
sciences grew gradually out from useful social occupations.
Physics developed slowly out of the use of tools and machines;
the important branch of physics known as mechanics testifies in
its name to its original associations. The lever, wheel,
inclined plane, etc., were among the first great intellectual
discoveries of mankind, and they are none the less intellectual
because they occurred in the course of seeking for means of
accomplishing practical ends. The great advance of electrical
science in the last generation was closely associated, as effect
and as cause, with application of electric agencies to means of
communication, transportation, lighting of cities and houses, and
more economical production of goods. These are social ends,
moreover, and if they are too closely associated with notions of
private profit, it is not because of anything in them, but
because they have been deflected to private uses: -- a fact which
puts upon the school the responsibility of restoring their
connection, in the mind of the coming generation, with public
scientific and social interests. In like ways, chemistry grew
out of processes of dying, bleaching, metal working, etc., and in
recent times has found innumerable new uses in industry.
Mathematics is now a highly abstract science; geometry, however,
means literally earth-measuring: the practical use of number in
counting to keep track of things and in measuring is even more
important to-day than in the times when it was invented for these
purposes. Such considerations (which could be duplicated in the
history of any science) are not arguments for a recapitulation of
the history of the race or for dwelling long in the early rule of
thumb stage. But they indicate the possibilities--greater to-day
than ever before -- of using active occupations as opportunities
for scientific study. The opportunities are just as great on the
social side, whether we look at the life of collective humanity
in its past or in its future. The most direct road for
elementary students into civics and economics is found in
consideration of the place and office of industrial occupations
in social life. Even for older students, the social sciences
would be less abstract and formal if they were dealt with less as
sciences (less as formulated bodies of knowledge) and more in
their direct subject-matter as that is found in the daily life of
the social groups in which the student shares.
Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com
Democracy and Education
154 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]