Foundations of Education [Reprint 2016 ed.] 9781512816501

Table of contents :
The Martin G. Brumbaugh Lectures in Education
Contents
The 1956 Brumbaugh Lecturers
Editor's Preface
The Instrument Maker
A Psychological Basis for Learning
Dimensions of Social Stratification
Building A Philosophy Of Education

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The Martin G. Brumbaugh Lectures in Education First Series

FOUNDATIONS OF EDUCATION

Foundations of Education edited by

FREDERICK C. GRUBER Associate Professor of Education University of Pennsylvania

PHILADELPHIA UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS

© 1957 by the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania Published in Great Britain, India, and Pakistan by the Oxford University Press London, Bombay, and Karachi Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number 56-12796

Printed in the United States of America American Book-Stratford Press, Inc., New York

The Martin G. Brumbaugh Lectures in Education G. B R U M B A U G H , 1862-1930, in whose honor the present series of lectures is named, was the first professor of pedagogy at the University of Pennsylvania, occupying the chair from 1895 to 1905. He was a man of great energy and competence, and carried on pedagogical courses of much influence. In 1900 he interrupted his lectures to serve as Commissioner of Education in Puerto Rico, to which post he was appointed by President McKinley. He is credited with having established the first American public school system on the island, not only in the principal cities but also in the rural areas. He lectured at teachers' institutes in Pennsylvania and Ohio, and published a number of readers for elementary schools. Other important posts held by Dr. Brumbaugh were Superintendent of Schools of Philadelphia, Governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and President of Juniata College. MARTIN

In the summer of 1955 the Trustees of the University set aside a sum to provide for a series of conferences on education. Accordingly, a distinguished series of talks and panel discussions was arranged to consider "America's Resources of Specialized T a l e n t " based on the findings reported under that title by the Commission on Human Resources and Advanced Training, created by the Conference Board of Associated Research Councils. T h e success 5

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T H E MARTIN G. BRUMBAUGH LECTURES IN EDUCATION

of these conferences caused the Trustees to set aside a similar sum for the 1956 summer session. There is great need for the educational practitioner constantly to receive fresh insights into the fundamental reasons for what takes place in the classroom. The present series of lectures has been arranged to meet this need. The series also brings outstanding scholars in various disciplines from other universities to our campus so that our students and as many members of the general public as wish to avail themselves of the opportunity may benefit from the expression of different points of view. The present vloume makes these four brilliant essays available to a larger reading public. It is the first in a series of projected publications dealing with the foundations upon which present-day educational practice must be built if it is to attain the high hopes that the American people hold for it. Thanks is hereby given to authors and publishers for permission to quote from their published works and to all who have contributed to the success of the series.

Contents PAGE

T h e Martin G. Brumbaugh Lectures in Education

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T h e 1956 Brumbaugh Lecturers

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Editor's Preface

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T h e Instrument Maker by Thomas Woody

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A Psychological Basis for Learning by J. W. Tilton

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Dimensions of Social Stratification by August B. Hollingshead

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Building a Philosophy of Education by J. Donald Butler

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The 1956 Brumbaugh Lecturers T H O M A S W O O D Y is Professor of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a graduate of Indiana University, taught German in the public high school at Warsaw, Indiana, and pursued graduate study at Columbia University, where he took the doctorate. He has traveled in Great Britain, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, the Scandinavian countries, and the Soviet Union. A Guggenheim Fellowship was awarded him for study in the Soviet Union which resulted in publication of New Minds: New Men? The Emergence of the Soviet Citizen. He has contributed to numerous professional reference works and periodicals and is the author of several books, among them A History of Women's Education in the United States, Life and Education in Early Societies, and Liberal Education for Free Men. He received an award for his historical work by the American Academy of Physical Education (1952) and was elected Associate Member of the American Academy of Physical Education in 1956.

J O H N W A R R E N T I L T O N is Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at Yale University. He holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania and the doctorate from Teachers College, Columbia University. Before coming to his present position he had wide experience as teacher and administrator in the public schools and as a

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member of the staff of Teachers College, Columbia University. His best-known work is An Educational Psychology of Learning. AUGUST DE B E L M O N T H O L L I N G S H E A D is Professor of Sociology at Yale University. He took his A.B. at the University of California and his Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska. He was Social Research Council Fellow at the University of Chicago from 1941 to 1943 and served as First Lieutenant USAAF from 1943 to 1945. Among his principal writings are Principles of Human Ecology and Elmtown's Youth. J . D O N A L D B U T L E R is Professor of the History and Philosophy of Education at Princeton Theological Seminary. He received his bachelor's degree from the University of Omaha and the doctorate from New York University. He is also an ordained minister of the Presbyterian Church. Before coming to his present position, he taught philosophy at New York University and served with the Office of Civilian Defense during World War II. He is a Fellow of the Philosophy of Education Society and the author of the widely used text, Four Philosophies and Their Practice in Education and Religion.

Editor's Preface often quoted line, "the child is father of the man," suggests the unfolding of the human potential. In a real sense, then, what the next generation will be is implicit in childhood and youth. T h e future of America is largely fashioned in its public school which is the institution American society has chosen to support from public funds and has charged specifically with the responsibility for the formal education of all its people. T h e role of the teacher in American society is, therefore, a most responsible and exacting one, for he must discover and guide this potential in its development toward selfrealization and competent democratic living. WORDSWORTH'S

George Herbert Palmer has described the ideal teacher as one who has an aptitude for vicariousness, an accumulated wealth of knowledge, the ability to invigorate life through knowledge, and a readiness to be forgotten. Humility and love of humanity are desirable virtues for all, but especially are they necessary in teaching. T h e y are of slow growth and are the product of many factors. Knowledge and the ability to invigorate life through knowledge are characteristics of the teacher which lie particularly within the province of university schools of education to develop. Like the training of the physician, the training of the educationist must include the acquisition of many skills and the practice of them in order to put knowledge to use, to make it come alive for the student, or 11

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EDITOR'S PREFACE

in Palmer's phrase "to invigorate life through knowledge." This is the professional side of teacher-training. It is the basis for the art of teaching. It is what makes the educational practitioner. Knowledge is the basis upon which the whole structure of education rests, for in truth the teacher cannot invigorate life through knowledge for others if he does not possess it himself. T h e verb "to teach" takes two objects, the person and the thing, so that to teach requires knowledge of what is taught and who is taught. T h e former represents, in part, the cultural heritage; the latter, those to whom it will be transmitted as a living thing and whose responsibility it will be to increase and to use it. There is the jewelbox type of knowledge, knowing for its own sake, and there is knowledge which is operational in society. Both are important because they increase the individual's quality of living, his personal satisfaction, and his social competence. T h u s the educationist needs to draw upon many disciplines for the foundations of his practice. Aside from a thorough knowledge of his subject and of the human material with which he works, he should understand the place of education in present-day society and the steps by which it has developed. This background comprises five general areas: man, society, history, philosophy, and methods of research. T h e study of man in his anthropological, biological, and psychological aspects is essential for an understanding of the complex nature of the human beings with whom the teacher works. T h e study of society places man in the social setting in which he operates. T h e history and the philosophy of education complete the picture, the one by examining the record of the past, the other by formulating a rational construct for the determination of

EDITOR'S PREFACE

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aims, values, and the future direction of education. Methods of research provide instruments for the measurement and critical evaluation of educational practice and for the accumulation of objective data for the further development of educational procedures. These then are the foundations of education. In his penetrating essay, " T h e Instrument Maker," Professor Woody examines man's record in the development of one of his unique characteristics, the making of instruments. Over the centuries man has developed mechanical instruments, the instruments of thought, and instruments of social organization. It is in the development and operation of instruments of government that man has often met frustration and failure, he maintains, for neither has he had the breadth of vision and the courage to take a world view of human brotherhood, nor has he disciplined himself in the use of the meager instruments which he has fashioned. " T h e instrument maker," says Dr. Woody, "may well find the answer . . . by dealing with concrete matters and situations, rather than universals." In " A Psychological Basis for Learning" Professor Tilton deals specifically with the psychological phenomena upon which learning is based. In a masterly treatment of this complex subject he points out the general tendency in the last quarter-century toward a greater consensus of opinion among psychologists with regard to learning theory. On the one hand he is critical of the educational psychologist who has a tendency to develop a psychological system to fit a preconceived theory of education, and on the other he remarks that the experimental psychologist in dealing with simpler forms of animal life has a tendency to overlook the complexity and the variety of situations in which responses are required in social situations.

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Professor Hollingshead in his "Dimensions of Social Stratification" carries on from this point in his examination of our society in the light of the American creed that "all men are born free and equal." He points out that our culture, being largely British, places members of other nationality groups at a disadvantage. He mentions the persistency of caste and class systems in American society and goes on to discuss the kinds of power systems operative therein. He illustrates the tremendous struggle and sometimes frustrating experiences of those who seek to attain status higher than their own and concludes that "people in a given social stratum have intimate personal ties with one another," and that "classes constitute effective social systems within a community." In the final essay of the series, "Building a Philosophy of Education," Professor Butler sketches some of the bases upon which a philosophy of education should be built. He is critical of the casual consideration of the value aspects of life and existence, and suggests that a formulation of objectives for education should be based upon a systematic world view including metaphysics, epistemology, and axiology. In conclusion, he remarks, "We are not being responsible educators if we hold unexamined world views and are not self-consciously critical of the views we hold." The first essay examines the record of mankind. It suggests a humanistic approach and the application of the scientific method. The second and third essays accept the empiricism of the first, and present observable data regarding human learning and the status of our society in one aspect of its organization, the social group on the community level. The writer of the final essay believes that man cannot form an adequate world view upon the basis of empiricism alone. He maintains that a proper value sys-

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EDITOR'S P R E F A C E

tern in education must be epistemologically and metaphysically grounded and consistent. He examines a number of value systems, among them Christian idealism, to which he subscribes. T o be a teacher, then, a man must be a person of parts. Almost twenty-five hundred years ago Confucius remarked that the art of being a teacher is the art of learning to be a ruler of men, and therefore, he continues, one cannot be too careful in choosing one's teacher. In twentieth-century America the problem is even more complex, for as the most experienced learner and leader in the group, the teacher must see in each less experienced learner the potentialities which make each man at once not only a follower, but more important a ruler of himself and others. FREDERICK C .

Philadelphia, 1956

GRUBER

FOUNDATIONS OF EDUCATION

The Instrument Maker THOMAS

WOODY

i A life-long investigator of human nature once remarked wryly that man, by virtue of modern scientific inquiry, was first bereft of his ideas, then of his faculties, and finally lost his mind. Let us, just for the moment, as we contemplate the "instrument maker," assume that this once valued domain has been restored to us! A small brass bowl, with the proud name Bida cut upon its base, stands before me. How long the artisan ancestors of its craftsman author had made bowls I do not know. A bronze samovar, nearby, proclaims its origin in far-famed Tula. T h e bowl and samovar stir a train of memories: a miller grinding corn in a curious, crude contraption, turned laboriously by a sluggishly moving stream; a potter dreamily fashioning a vase upon his wheel; a peasant with an ox and high-wheeled arba threading slowly the narrow, meandering streets which pass the monumental ruins of Tamerlane; Jan Zizka's "battle wagon," in a fortress cave of old Tabor; Tycho Brahe's crypt in the Tyn Church and the crude and curious instruments which he made, in order that he might fulfill his keen desire to catalogue a thousand stars. This mélange of memories set me thinking of the most dynamic aspect of man's historic record: his growing skill 19

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in devising instruments of infinite variety and ends. By these he has transformed nature and made her subservient to his desire. He is the only being who can do so, for he alone makes instruments; and he grows by making them. If reverie be thinking, as poets tell, then dogs can think; for all have seen their favorite friend revel in sleep in feats imagined, yet not done. But dogs and other highly intelligent animals make no instruments, and they remain the same. Cleverness in using instruments made by others they often do exhibit in great degree—even as do humans, male and female. A troublesome, long-standing argument is recalled by the foregoing observations on thinking and making, and the difference between man and animal in such activities. Which came first, idea or act? We shall not attempt in twenty minutes to cut this knot of ages past, but merely taking note of opposed positions may provide a frame of reference in which the instrument maker may be best observed. Plato boldly gave idea (i5ia) priority.1 Aristotle demurred upon this point. 2 Christian theologians found Plato's concept acceptable, with emendations; after twelve centuries they made up with Aristotle and found him useful, too. But the ambivalent argument ran on and on and on. Echoes of it are heard in Faust trying to translate the New Testament into German, where it stands written: "In the beginning was the Word." But he cannot value "Word" so highly. Truly enlightened, one might better write: "In the beginning was the mind." But not so fast! Is it truly "mind" which works and creates all things? l Cratylus, 389; Meno, 81-86; Parmenides, 132; The Dialogues of Plato, trans, by B . Jowett, 5 vols. (Oxford University Press, New York, 1892). iEthica, Bk. I, 6; The Works of Aristotle, trans, under the editorship of J . A. Smith and W. D. Ross, 11 vols. ( T h e Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1908-1931).

T H E INSTRUMENT MAKER

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Rather, it should stand: "In the beginning was not mind but power." Yet, even as he writes it down, something tells him it is not so. At length, inspired, he writes, content: "In the beginning was the act." Goethe's final translation, giving act priority, is symbolic of the dawning day of science and technology. Blind and about to die, Faust still dreams of doing. We leave the argument a question still: Did he, or did he not, think first; was thought at first the mere reflection of an act?

II

In the life of the instrument maker four orders of his product may be examined briefly. T h e high-wheeled arba, the potter's wheel, and Zizka's armored wagon suggest the first category, tools of a concrete order, his manufactures: ax, spear, arrow, scraper, awl, fire-drill, hoe, and the crude cross section of a tree. With them he conquered nature and other men. With these and kindred tools he became competent, even distinguished, as an agriculturist, and his exploits in warfare grew. With wheel and tamed wild horse he became the first Blitz-krieger, as the record shows. From these first crude instruments their maker moved, slowly, haltingly, then after millenniums with a burst of speed, to the air marvels of our time. But the wheel, so quickly out of sight, is still a prime necessity in taking off, and a great convenience and comfort, to say the least, in landing! True, one may take flight from water, as some birds do, but even the Navy likes plenty of broad decks and sturdy wheels. Instruments of the Air Age serve life and death equally

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FOUNDATIONS OF EDUCATION

well, even as did those of ruder times. The plane sows seed, and sprays and dusts the succeeding crop with insecticide; it can scatter as readily machine-gun bullets, bombs, gas, and germs for genocide. The instrument makers still choose their target: shall it be men or grasshoppers? William James called for a moral equivalent for war. One primary element in warfare is marksmanship, whether with spear or spitfire. Man gets a thrill from accuracy in the use of instruments, reading the tally of things done. Consult the chronicle of any day of war: so many lives taken, so many towns, cities, depots destroyed. Now, hitting a grasshopper or a boll weevil is something of a challenge to the accuracy of the gunner, and a test of the excellence of his instruments. Perhaps demonstrated superiority in this, and in allied performances, merits a crux honoris—let us say, crossed stalks of wheat in a circlet of cotton blossoms. With instruments, even the simplest, came training in their use—an apprenticeship to the act, whether of peace or of war, long or short, as the difficulty of its mastery dictated. Children watched the making and use of scraper, shuttle, loom, flail, and pestle, and practiced in play with miniature bow and arrow, or made mimic warfare with hatchet, knife, or spear and shield. Pindar portrayed the skillful, youthful Achilles: Aloft, like wind, his little javelin flew: The lion and the brinded boar he slew. . . . Homer tells of mastery of the instruments of war: His sharpened spear let every warrior wield, And every warrior fix his brazen shield; Let all excite the fiery steeds of war, ~/ind all for combat fit the rattling car.

THE INSTRUMENT MAKER

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As for the distaff side of life, Penelope wove by day and unraveled by night. Hesiod's rustic woman's "nimble hand" must, on weaving day, Throw first the shuttle and the web expand. . . . These poetic figures doubtless learned the use of instruments by an informal apprenticeship; but more perfected instruments and processes required formal training under the eye of a master, and for an extended time, to make man a shoemaker, mason, carpenter, sculptor, painter, weaver. T h u s artistic remains and scattered early documents testify. 8

hi

T h e scope and character of the instrument maker's output altered when nomadism gave way to life in long-settled communities. W h e n he roamed the woods for berries, roots, and game, and led in every way a life extremely precarious, his store of goods was slight. But in the new permanent habitat, accumulation of personal possessions, land and its produce, grew to great proportions, population increased numerically, labor became specialized, and its products were perfected. Records became a necessity. W r i t i n g developed, various forms of it, in widely separated centers in the Tigris-Euphrates, Nile, Indus, and Yellow River valleys. These early written records of things and events, and increasingly of man's thought and feeling about himself and them, lie at the basis of human history, * Thomas Woody, Life and Education in Early Societies (The Macmillan Company, New York, 1949), pp. 328-29.

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extending vastly what is told by mute remains of artifacts of what are often called prehistoric times. Precisely who first employed this graphic instrument, and where, no one can say and prove it first. Egypt was long reputedly the earliest home of letters. Aristotle, in the Metaphysica* traced the liberal arts to Egyptian priests, who had the leisure to cultivate them. Henri Frankfort, in The Birth of Civilization in the Near East,9 recently offered evidence pointing to a Mesopotamian origin, whence Egyptians borrowed certain forms and then improved them, developing a system of their own. C. J . Ball, in Chinese and Sumerian* showed the marked similarity in over a hundred Chinese and Sumerian characters. But whether writing came from one place or several, so great was the appreciation of this instrument that it was credited imaginatively to mythical benefactors, gods or men: Oannes, Thot, Ts'ang Kie, archivist to Huang T i . Cadmus brought them letters, the Greek legend said. Though such high authorship suggests unbounded approval of the birth of letters, such was not the case. As some once professed doubt whether women should have learned the alphabet, Amnion of Egypt condemned as unwise the gift to men of writing, so Plato says in the Phaedrus/ for reliance upon letters would destroy memory and would lead to pretended knowledge, the semblance of truth rather than the reality. An element of truth lay in the tale. Each gain may entail a compensatory loss. What was gained by letters was a lengthening record and, given time and the criticism ultimately applied to it, increased accuracy of our knowledge of the instrument maker «Bk. A, 1. 5 Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1951, pp. 106/. • Oxford University Press, London, 1913, pp. 55 ff. * 274-75.

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and all his works. Pre-literate man's memory was indeed well stored, as epic tales, long told by generation after generation of wandering rhapsodes before they were written down, remind us. But literate man's mind, in effect, came to be possessed of an artificial memory, measured in millenniums and filled with far more than mere traditional lore could keep alive. By letters, moreover, he had within his reach, just for the effort, a similarly enlarged account of his literate neighbor's culture. Cross-fertilization of men's minds became imminent. How this instrument came to be, we may say with some assurance, even though the first place be uncertain and the author of it remain anonymous. "Fair writing," of which men still spoke with evident feeling of admiration till typewriters were invented—and some still dream of, yet seldom find, reveals the artist and suggests the source. Look at Chinese characters, the instrument used to make them, and the close kin of art and writing, as now understood, is clear. When primitive men, pre-literate as we call them more precisely, drew or cut pictures of animals or other elements of their environment on cavern wall or boulder, they left a record—a written record, an artistic record, a pictorial tale. T h e Greeks had a word for it (Ypdqxo), useful to our understanding of this original relationship between what we came to differentiate as aesthetic art and the art of writing. Originally, the term meant to scrape, or scratch, and later to represent by lines drawn, to express by written characters, or to write. Now mastery of this new instrument that was to add many a cubit to man's intellectual stature, required apprenticeship to the act, even as had mastery of other instruments. T h e discipline of that apprenticeship must be directed by those to whom it was already a familiar skill.

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On occasion it might be informally acquired, but the difficulty of its intricacies, the fact that few had knowledge of them and found their distinctive skill a valuable asset, favored the growth of formal apprenticeship, especially when the subject matter wrapped up in letters grew to a considerable volume, often with a holy halo hanging oveT it. Hence schools arose. Curiously enough, faithful to the old, established habit of keeping mental possessions by repetition, the text, although now written down, was apt to be learned by heart. Ultimately, however, the folly and futility of the practice became evident and it declined. T h e most sacred texts, once written, could not be readily altered, neither a jot nor tittle of a line. Only Plato was bold enough to purge Homer, even though Homer's text and theme were secular, not sacred. Translation was clearly a hazardous enterprise. Puritan divines declared that it had been a chief design "of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men from a knowledge of Scriptures" by keeping them in an unknown tongue.

IV

Matters obvious to everyone have been dealt with in the foregoing, so as to set in proper perspective a third instrument man has fashioned: government. It, too, like mechanical inventions and literary arts, has often been credited as an institution of the gods. Such a conception haj been favored from time to time by those to whom it was eminently serviceable; for, obviously, if set up and sanctioned by superhuman authority and wisdom, then lesser beings in whose interest such authority had functioned should not tamper with it.

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Government is an instrument, the chief instrument, of collective man. From the simplest, smallest primitive groups (family, phratry, tribe, city) to the larger and more complex (nations and empires), this instrument in some form functions in some fashion. It is the chief, the most important, social instrument, for all lesser, subsidiary instruments fulfill their ends effectively only as government performs its proper functions well. Now it is an arresting fact that though, as noted, man contrived formal systematic apprenticeships to train artisans in the mastery of mechanical operations, government, despite its difficult intricacies and the importance of its successful operation, has been left less studied, less perfected than the construction and operation of mechanical instruments. Indeed, in the ascending hierarchy of instrumental constructions which man has fashioned, he has given less attention to the more important and more attention to the less. He was, for ages, far less a master in the realm of letters and their teaching than in industrial arts; and letters and the teaching of them outsped his meandering pace in arts of government. This does not imply that he studied them not at all. Aristotle, Confucius, Plato, Locke, Rousseau, and others refute any such notion. But man has scarcely begun to make government the business of those who have studied it, who have been disciplined therein, making marriage of theory and practice. Rather, in this pre-eminently important domain, man has relied on experience. Now experience, we know, is a good teacher, but it has its limitations. It keeps a dear school, as has been said by a wise man, who added, but "fools will learn in no other." How frequently we find ourselves in this category! Experience is necessary for action, and politics requires

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action. Those who have experience, as Aristotle noted in the Metaphysical are more successful than those with theoretical knowledge, but who lack experience. One who knows theory has an understanding of matters in a general, over-all, or universal sense, but he does not know particulars, has not "know-how," as we sometimes say, and so he fails. Observing the wreck and ruin of governments throughout the ages, one may infer that thorough, scientific study of this most important instrument of his wellbeing needs to be yoked with equal attention to the practice of political action. No problem of today matches in importance that of mastering the most important instrument of collective life which man fashions. He sets up governments, but they are never self-operating, going on and on, once set in motion, as Deists fancied the universe had done ever since God started the clockwork. Franklin was wise: the government he had helped to fashion, even though imperfect as an instrument, would he thought function very well as long as there were good men to operate it. Touche. These good men are not ready-made by nature; she gives men natural talent but in this, as in other matters, education must perfect nature's offering. Politics, like other arts, requires the union of idea and act. The engineers of states need schooling: they need a quick intelligence, fitted for their tasks by nature and perfected by training and by basic study of their instrument; these they need not less but more than those who pilot, equip, and keep in condition the latest marvels of the air. Training a pilot costs heavily in time and money. What heads of states have had a comparable education for their responsible positions? Herbert Spencer noted this curious and quite pos« B k . A, 1.

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sibly fatal discrepancy in man's preparation, in The Man versus the State: Although one might think men would enter upon law making with "greatest hesitation . . . in this more than anything else do they show a confident readiness. Nowhere is there so astounding a contrast between the difficulty of the task and the unpreparedness of those who undertake it. Unquestionably among monstrous beliefs one of the most monstrous is that while for a simple handicraft, such as shoemaking, a long apprenticeship is needful, the sole thing which needs no apprenticeship is making the nation's laws!" 9 Can the instrument maker fashion and control a mechanism equal to the task of government in the world today? There is neither ground for unqualified optimism nor for complete despair. History is replete with records of momentary victories and ultimate defeat; yet, after a fashion, and with many a period of regression, man has muddled through, and emerged with key in hand to unlock the door of his defeat. Particular civilizations collapsed, but man survived and saved something from the wreckage; elsewhere, and on altered principles, he began to build anew. Long ago I saw an etching by an obscure artist. In the foreground were mighty walls, fresh-built and strong; behind them, trailed off into the distant background a long series of moldering, crumbling ruins, the most remote all but covered by nature's hands. He called it: Civilization. It brought to memory Goethe's summary of human history: Walls I see thrown down, walls I see erected, Here prisoners, there also prisoners, many. Is, perhaps, the world only a giant prison? . . . » T h e Caxton Printers, Caldwell, Idaho, 1940, pp. 117-18.

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Mutation is the law of life, in man himself, and in the human collective. States, as Hannibal observed, 10 cannot stand still; there must be either progression or regression. Man directs the process, often has directed it successfully to a certain point; there, for some reason, mind failed, constructive integration ended, and disintegration gained the upper hand. Greek cities, individually, formed an integrated whole of surrounding villages and towns, but they themselves never learned to unite. Even Greek philosophers sought only a better city-state. T h e practical man, Pericles, had "know-how," but his schemes were open to suspicion of selfish ends. T h e Latin city pushed its own interests forward successfully enough to form an imposing empire. But Scipio, one of those who helped to build Rome's power, saw prefigured in the fate of mighty Carthage the destiny that would one day be her own. 11 In fact the magnificent structure, seemingly fit to last forever, as Romans fancied, already suffered from internal weaknesses which increased rather than diminished. Presumably the political problems of Greece and Rome were not unsusceptible of solution. But minds fashioned by city-state experience were not competent to cope with the problems of a larger, more complicated structure. And formal education gave no constructive aid. Indeed, the excellence it once had—its close relation to the life men led—gave place to linguistic niceties and the pursuit of fables. For good reason: teachers who dared to deal with political realities were banned, the others intimidated. T e l l me what you want done, a master draftsman said to me, and I shall design a machine to do it. T h e r e is no 10 Livy, X X X , 44, trans, by B. O. Foster et al., IS vols. (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1919—). " Polybius, The Histories, X X X V I I I , 21-22; Appian, Punic Wars, 132, trans, by W. R. Paton, 6 vols. (Heinemann, London, 1922-1927).

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comparable political competence. As political instrument maker, modern man has not shown himself overly bold or successful in his inventions. Though nations today dwarf city-states of old, the principles of their foundation are in many respects the same. "How do fish live in the sea?" asks a landsman of a fisherman, in Oppian's Haliéutica. "Just as men do upon the land," replies the fisherman, "the stronger swallowing the weaker." Cleon, recommending heavy penalties on Mitylenaeans, would have the strong levy all they can and the weak give what they must. 12 Such a peace lasts just as long as the weak remain so; once they recover, the process is repeated and victor and vanquished exchange roles. And as a peace thus established is unstable, so too are states. You may conquer the world on horseback, said a Chinese philosopher, but you cannot govern it on horseback. There is too much truth for comfort in the words of the philosopher and the fisherman's tale. Man must muster more sense than a fish! He needs intelligence surpassing that of empire builders. T h a t he has strength and courage, the virtues serviceable in war, we know. These are good; but they are not enough. For the problems of his world are social and economic and they can be solved only by political intelligence. War could only make them worse, not solve them. Indeed, considering that man's mechanical devices have so far oútstripped his political instruments, his atom and hydrogen bombs, his armies and navies, backed by prodigious technological industries, could even end the experiment of civilization so auspiciously begun. " Thucydides,

Bk. I l l , 37, trans, by B. Jowett (Boston, 1883).

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V

Whatever else it be, man's mind is an instrument—the greatest of instruments he has fashioned, the contriver of all instruments. Something is given by nature: man is able to use symbols; these he has made and altered from time to time in important ways. Primitive Christians refashioned the mind of pagan Europe. T h e mind of thirteenthcentury Christians differed sharply from its primitive form. Both are difficult for us to fathom, and become a field for experts to explore. Mind today is an instrument fashioned since the sixteenth century, but it is not complete. Plus ça change, plus la même chose is proverbial wisdom. But the change transforms man's world. In the beginning man had no scientific understanding of his universe, but by the discipline of scientific method he remade his mind and thereby brought the universe within his grasp. T o accomplish this grand project, Bacon stressed the necessity of throwing out old idols of the mind, thus beginning its reconstitution. T h e importance of this mental renovation is generally recognized by scientists. But students of the social domain are still plagued by numerous idols of the mind; these are not readily disposed of. T h e greatest barriers to useful political innovation are in the mind of the instrument maker. T h e nationalistic mind, fashioned and furnished by centuries of successful wars which built the great nations of the earth, continues to think and act in terms of power and cunning that can outwit and outweigh all others. That national mind, at its peak of perfection, is arrogant, boastful, competitive, self•

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ish, and provincial. Such traits one would not want in a next-door neighbor; they would promote unpleasant brawls, to say the least. We condemn these characteristics in national neighbors, apparently oblivious of them in ourselves. When nations become next-door neighbors—as geography and technology have made them—the same traits in them make wars probable, if not inevitable, whenever serious problems and conflicts of interest arise. "Wars begin in the minds of men"; 18 so runs a thesis which has found wide acceptance. If this is not the total truth of the matter, it is a substantial part of it. Having in reality "one world," as Wendell Willkie noted years ago, it is highly important that the instrument maker refashion his mind to fit and to be serviceable thereto. T h a t remade mind will be marked, in contrast to the old, by certain traits we often praise but fail to exhibit: modesty in regard to our own attainments, co-operativeness and generosity in regard to others; a world-wide universality in outlook and attitude. This is no easy task for present man. In all ages, remaking his own mind has been the most difficult of undertakings. There is the crust of customary habit to be broken; there is the jeering crowd, saying you can't change nature; there is the subtle, insinuating doubt of the goodness of nature and of reason itself expressed by Mephisto: Man nennt's Vemunft, doch braucht's allein Nur thierischer als jedes Thier zu sein. But man's is the spirit of affirmation: we can fashion a mind which can solve the crucial problems of our time, if we will and act accordingly. T h e potentialities of the mental instrument are infinitely varied; we have scarcely is The Defenses of Peace, Documents Relating to Unesco, Pt. 1, Department of State (U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1946).

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tested them as yet. Mind was made a subtle instrument for penetrating myth, for exploring the mysteries of a life to come, and for unlocking the secrets of the book of the material universe; it is on the eve of a conquest, the most difficult of undertakings, the mastery of the social domain. As the character of soils in our western prairies demanded certain improvements of the plowshare; as mind that delved into myth expertly was specially sharpened for its task; as minds of Schoolmen were made extraordinarily acute within their realm of operations; and as the mind of chemist, geologist, physicist is specially disciplined to cope with its respective problems, the instrument of the social scientist must be disciplined for its task by being focused on the crucial problems involved. Robert S. Lynd nudged social scientists years ago, in Knowledge for Whatf 14 T h e problems which matter most involve the instrument of government on the intranational and the international levels. Central among them are: how to establish and maintain freedom of communication, the basic consideration in human enlightenment; how to transfer international use of force to police departments, even as criminal acts of individuals and gangs have been transferred within the state; and how to contrive distribution of material goods so as to still the gnawing hunger which afflicts the world despite a productive technology that could provide plenty. In these and in other areas one might name, it is obvious that we have already great funds of knowledge, but implementation of what we know falls short We need a marriage of idea and act. A world that knows and is able to act, yet does not act accordingly, is surely doomed. " Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1939.

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Most potent and far-reaching in its implications is the threat to free communications that rest upon assembly, speech, publication, and freedom of the air waves. Of this area, so boldly and devastatingly assaulted in the past ten years in the name of preserving liberty, Zechariah Chafee, Jr., a long-time student of this aspect of American life, finds grounds for a qualifiedly optimistic appraisal in The Blessings of Liberty,16 despite the subtleties of suppression practiced and a certain weakening of resistance to their use. Less optimistic is the outlook for integration of a world economy. In his recently published work, An International Economy,1* Gunnar Myrdal came to the disturbing yet scarcely surprising conclusion that with respect to the problems of economic integration we are simply drifting, and neither governments nor parties are actually confronting the issues. We have knowledge, but to act effectively a drastically altered mental outlook is required. How is this to be accomplished? The instrument maker may well find the answer (whether the question is one of communications, goods, or war) by dealing with concrete matters and situations rather than universals—those idols which have so often obstructed human understanding and stirred emotions to the boiling point. Every farmer the world round knows a pig's a pig, and that a fat pig is better than a razorback. But even the most astute of philosopher-farmers may get overheated if they try to determine the pig's place in the universe, or how to control him in this best of worlds at our command. w J . B. Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1956. 1« Harper & Brothers, New York, 1956, pp. 299 ff.

A Psychological Basis for Learning J . W . TILTON

i Appreciable progress has been made in Psychology in the description of learning. Thirty years ago when Perrin and Klein 1 reviewed the situation with regard to theories of learning, they found it necessary to list eight different points of view. T h e labels and proponents were as follows: Theory

Label

Proponent

Intensity Confirmation—Inhibition Congruity Completeness of Response Conditioned Reflex Modified Pleasure—Pain Frequency—Recency Drive (or Motor Set)

Carr Hobhouse Holmes Peterson Smith and Guthrie Thorndike Watson Woodworth (and Tolman)

Early this year, the second edition of Hilgard's Theories of Learning 2 appeared. In spite of the growth of the field i F. A. C. Perrin and D. B. Klein, Psychology: its Methods and Principles (Henry Holt, New York, 1926), pp. 218-43. s E. R. Hilgard, Theories of Learning, 2nd edition (Appleton-CenturyCrofts, 1956). 36

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and the many psychologists referred to in this book, and in spite of Hilgard's determination to avoid oversimplification, it is apparent that today's differences are between the Guthrie, Hull, and Skinner varieties of conditioning theory (sometimes referred to as stimulus-response theory) and the Tolman type of theory commonly referred to as sign learning, but sometimes referred to as expectancy theory or as cognitive theory. Thorndike's views, now usually referred to as connectionism, are described in an early chapter of the Hilgard book, but only because they were such influential antecedents of current views. T h e views of Koffka and Koehler in gestalt psychology, of Lewin in field theory, and of Freud on psychodynamics are given due exposition, but with the recognition that these men were not primarily interested in the problem of learning. Looking back at the thirty-year period between the Perrin and Klein description in 1926 and his own review in 1956, Hilgard sees clearly a progressive tendency to want to settle differences in the laboratory and a corresponding decrease in the tendency to resort to heated argument. Hilgard notes 8 that "because of its more precise formal structure, stimulus-response theory has guided more research and theory construction in recent years than cognitive theory." But, he then points out, "many of the problems set for stimulus-response psychologists . . . were posed by those from the other camp." In other words, "As stimulus-response experimentation and theorizing have become more developed, many of the challenging problems which cognitive theorists first called attention to have taken on new interest for the stimulusresponse theorists. For example, instead of denying latent * Ibid.,

p. 445.

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learning, new stimulus-response derivations are required to account for i t . . . . " Hilgard concludes * that "progress is being made, and there is reason to hope that we are moving toward the unification of theory." In the March, 1956, issue of the Psychological Review, Seward 5 was less restrained in characterizing the progress which has been made. His paper was a description of the present status of reinforcement and expectancy theories as exemplified by Hull's last revision and by Mac Corquodale and Meehl's recent formalization of Tolman's view. Seward not only described the two approaches as "converging toward a common set of principles," but expressed the opinion that "major controversial issues will undoubtedly become harder to find." In the same issue of the Review is a paper by Mowrer 8 who began as a reinforcement theorist in the Hull tradition, but who later took the position that there are two kinds of learning, only one of which requires reinforcement, the other, as Guthrie maintains, being satisfactorily accounted for by contiguity. Now Mowrer has again revised his views, taking the position that "all learning is sign learning." T h e r e are indeed, signs of progress toward a unification of learning theory. Is it appropriate at this point for an educational psychologist to evaluate the theory about which there are increasing signs of agreement? It would seem at first thought that if the theory has developed out of much experimentation and if experimental psychologists show signs of basic agree* Ibid., p. 456. 5 J . P. Seward (University of California at Los Angeles), "Reinforcement and Expectancy," Psychological Review, March, 1956, 63:105-13. «O. H. Mowrer (University of Illinois), "Two-Factor Learning Theory Reconsidered," Psychological Review, March, 1956, 63:114-28.

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merit, that would settle thj: matter. It might seem that if the theory fits the facts, then as the saying goes, we had jolly well better like the theory.

II

There is however another consideration. Evaluation from the point of view of the consumer is still in order. It is appropriate for the educational psychologist, standing as a middleman between the psychologist and the educationist, to evaluate psychology against the need for educational application. This is appropriate in the same sense that the engineer may say to the physicist, these are our problems, physic» is adequate in this respect but not in that. I therefore ask you to consider with me what education needs in a psychology of learning. Let us consider the full educational effort in terms of the various psychological areas involved. Just as we have used the various areas of living known as the cardinal principles of education to check the fullness of our educational effort, so let us now ask whether learning theory provides adequately for all the various psychological areas in which learning needs direction. We would find considerable agreement, I think, that the educational task is psychologically very complex, involving to an important degree the development of memory, perception, meaning, understanding, intelligence, transfer, problem solving, interests, attitudes, appreciations, values and ideals, as well as the development of habits and skills. May we feel confident that present-day

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learning theory is adequate for this psychologically complex task? Has it been derived from adequate interest and experimentation in all these areas? T h e answer is "No." None of the areas have been ignored, but impressive as is the progress made between 1926 and 1956 the theory of learning which has emerged is still basically a habit psychology. I would not have you belittle the progress made. As a psychologist I am proud of it, but as an educationist I think it is only a beginning, and that the development of learning theory has not kept pace with the rate at which education has grown away from the possibility of being adequately served by a habitcentered psychology. It is questionable whether psychology can ever come to grips with the phenomena of creative intelligence by starting from a concept of habit. Psychologists made the decision that they would have to start with the simplest phenomena, progressing gradually toward an explanation of the human behavior associated with the higher mental processes. But perhaps this cannot be done. It is quite possible that what we have called habit can be better described in terms of intelligence, than that intelligence can be described in terms of the concept of habit. T h e answer depends upon what kind of a world we live in. Thirty years ago many people made a sharp distinction between habit and intelligence. They divided man's behavior into two categories, repetitive and creative, because they thought we face two kinds of situations, familiar and novel. I do not know how many people still make this distinction, but I have come to the belief that the situations we face fall on a continuum from the most familiar to the most novel; that the most familiar are in minor respects novel, and that the most novel are in minor respects fa-

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miliar. This is, I repeat, a matter of belief, but I think many people share it. Now if situations are as believed, then every situation is to some extent a situation calling for transfer, and what we need is an understanding of how we use our experience in somewhat new situations, and how we may do so to the best advantage. T h e psychology of learning which we need is an adequate understanding of transfer. Our knowledge of the responses which are almost repetitive will then be more valid because such responses will be understood as limiting cases of intelligent behavior.

in I am convinced that when such a theory is firmly grounded and generally accepted, learning will more commonly be thought of in qualitative terms and with reference to a single experience. In other words, it will less frequently be thought of as by necessity a gradual long-drawnout affair. E. L. Thorndike took two steps in this direction when, twenty-five years ago, he dropped what he had called the Law of Use, and also described the role of punishment as not being that of a "weakener." Thorndike's revised views were soon generally accepted. As a matter of fact, not all theorists needed to follow Thorndike's lead concerning punishment. From the outset, Guthrie had contended that punishment played no lawful role in learning, its value depending upon what punishment made the learner do. If you're trying to teach a dog to jump through a hoop, he said, the effectiveness of punishment even depends on where it's applied, front or

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rear. Guthrie would have liked it better if Thorndike had discarded his whole "Law of Effect." But reward remained in Thorndike's thinking a gradual strengthener of connections. And, even though he dropped the Law of Use, forgetting conceived of as a slow function of disuse apparently remained unchanged in his thinking. On the whole, in his later work, Thorndike did not develop the theory of learning in the needed directions, although there were starting points for such a development as early as in his 1913 text. More recently, in Clark Hull's thinking, as in Thorndike's, strengthening was a key concept and as it is today in the thinking of those whose theorizing has been most influenced by Hull. I sometimes wonder if the prestige attached to the fitting of curves to laboratory data has not slowed the development of learning theory in the direction I have indicated as needed while advancing it in other directions. In this situation educational psychologists are either neglecting learning theory (a phenomenon which I shall consider later) or they are doing their best with insufficient help from learning theorists. Finding a poor foundation for education in the dominant "habit-strength" theory of learning, educational psychologists if they are to teach learning theory at all must either teach a very limited psychology of learning simply because it is well formulated of try by themselves to meet the need more appropriately. They frequently choose the latter course, and in doing so, are of necessity depending to an unfortunate degree upon their own observation and analysis of human development. * E. R. Guthrie, The Psychology of Learning (Harper & Brothers, New York, 1935), p. 154.

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IV

But I wish to defer comment upon educational psychology until the inadequacy of learning theory as formalized by experimental psychologists has been more fully considered. Within their own ranks some are quite aware that current theory is inadequate. For instance the editor 8 of the Journal of Experimental Psychology, Arthur Melton, thinks learning theory suffers because so frequently the learning studied is that of rats: " T o me, one obvious criticism of what has happened in the last 25 years is the domination of theories of learning by the rat. As I see it this is a matter of emphasis, rather than a matter of right or wrong. T h e defenders of the rat can, with justification, point to use of an animal with limited symbolic capabilities as having real advantages for the abstraction of the fundamental laws of learning—of a kind." T o Melton, to quote another sentence, " I t seems as though the science of rat learning is becoming an end in itself rather than a means to the end of understanding behavior in general, including the richest form of behavior variation which is found in human beings." I do not think these remarks by Melton will be as influential as they need to be. Psychologists are used to being criticized for studying rat-psychology. They are unimpressed because they are convinced that there are human counterparts to the rat-behavior they are studying. Melton might have accomplished more by criticizing the theory«Arthur W. Melton, "Present Accomplishment and Future Trends In Problem Solving and Learning Theory," American Psychologist, June, 1956, 11:278-81.

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makers for not doing justice to the intelligence of the rat. In other words, my contention is that what is so obviously needed as a psychological foundation for the direction of human learning is even needed for the full explanation of the behavior of the lower animals. T h e need is for a theory of learning which provides recognition at the outset of the creative nature of behavior; a need for a theory that first and foremost is designed to describe the most intelligent behavior of the organism. My belief is that when learning is so described, the theory can then be extended satisfactorily to cover the more habitual aspects of behavior. Present theory is limited or restricted because it is conceived as an attempt to understand the gradual formation of habits. It may be very adequate in a limited sphere of behavior, but conceived as it is, it cannot be satisfactorily extended to cover the highest forms of human learning. In expressing the need for a theory of learning keyed to transfer and intelligence and yielded by a single experience, I do not want to give the impression that I think there is no need in education for practice. Such a position would be like that taken by the proverbial ostrich. What I do say is that there is not one kind of need for practice, but several and that in each case the kind of need should be specified. Improvement in the efficiency of teaching in those areas in which practice is necessary must come by asking " W h y is practice necessary?" "Why is such learning usually slow?" V

I'd like to suggest several answers to these questions, realizing as I do so, and as an educational psychologist is often obliged to do, that I am proceeding at a confidence

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level upon which a laboratory psychologist would refrain from operating. T h e first answer, that is, the first reason why learning comes slowly with practice is that not one but many learnings are required. Probably the chief reason why we find it easy to think of learning as a slow long-drawn-out process is the frequency with which we speak of psychologically very complicated objectives as if they were psychologically simple units. W e speak of learning to play the piano, learning to spell, learning the addition facts, learning to write, memorizing a poem, learning the meaning of a list of new words. If a person from a desert region were to go on a trip to a region of ice and snow and to rent a strange car to use there, the situation would make a severe demand upon the person by reason of the fact that many things are strange at the same time. Taken singly no one aspect of this adjustment would offer much difficulty. It is the same way with learning. If you need to remember the names of all the people you meet at a reception, learning is difficult because of the confusion and interference introduced by the multiplicity of learnings involved. No one by itself would offer any difficulty, nor with adequate interest and attention would it require practice. When boy meets girl, for instance, he doesn't need practice to remember her name. There are two functions which teachers need to perform in order to reduce the need for practice in complicated learning tasks. One is to break up the task in order to reduce interference between the parts, the other is to make sure that the need for prior learnings does not unnecessarily complicate the new learning, as is the case when a child is asked to learn to subtract with an inadequate

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control of the processes of addition. These situations do not prove that learning is a slow process of strengthening bonds. T h e slowness involved is introduced by the complexity of the demand made upon the learner. Let us consider next two kinds of situation in which the apparent need for a great deal of practice may be due to faulty attention. T h e first is composed of all those situations in which the learner is shown how to do a task or in which the learner is trying to copy a model, or to imitate a performance. Such a task is of course often a complicated one and therefore in need of simplification as already indicated. But there is a further aspect worthy of note. It is that the process is one of trial and error. T h e teacher's function here is to note the errors and to direct the learner's attention to the aspect of the correct performance which has so far escaped his attention. Without good diagnosis on the part of the instructor and especially without skill on his part in directing the learner's attention, practice can be wasted so far as learning is concerned. It is necessary only in the sense that, lacking expert guidance, the learner may watch many times before he happens to notice what he needs to see. Another situation in which correct direction of attention is important is when the objective is a smooth continuity of performance, as in the swift addition of a column of figures, or running up the stairs three at a time, or memorizing a key in scoring objective tests, or memorizing a piano selection. At this point the atomism that still prevails among learning theorists when they think of a unit of behavior, is no contribution to efficiency. Instead of taking their cue from theorists who think in terms of psychological minutiae, teachers and learners had better note that at times amazingly long sequences take on a

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unitary character, and quickly. It seems as if preoccupation with the details, that is step-by-step attention to the parts, prevents the whole sequence from taking on its unified character. Here then, in order to achieve the objective with less practice, the need seems to be for an attention to the whole-character rather than a piecemeal attention to the parts. Another kind of learning situation in which there is an apparent need for many repetitions is in part a need for good timing. One punishment of a young child following closely upon the inception of the misbehavior is worth many at various intervals after the event. It appears that many admonitions are necessary to make an impression. It may be that the many are very unequally effective because of their various time relations to the punished behavior and that many punishments are necessary only because the planning of the timing is poor. If so, many are needed so that out of the many, some may be by chance well timed. Finally there are the situations in which the need is what some psychologists have referred to as a need for overlearning. By this term they mean that learning can be adequate for immediate recitation but inadequate for retention. Even here, where a theory of gradually strengthened habits seems not only appropriate but necessary, better implications for the direction or guidance of learning may be had from an otherwise more useful conception of learning, namely, one which identifies the learning outcome of each experience primarily in qualitative terms. From this point of view what is needed for so-called overlearning is additional learnings rather than more reinforcement of the qualitatively same learning. T h e need may be either of two kinds. In both cases, the

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same response is wanted, in both cases it is wanted under different conditions. What is it that is required when we want a response to be so well learned that it may be depended upon under any and all circumstances? In the first place what is required is the cueing of the response not merely to one aspect of the situations in which it will be needed but to any one of such aspects. In the second place what is required is the cueing of the response to these aspects not only when the learner is well primed to expect the test but with a minimum of attention. Practice for this so-called overlearning will be provided more efficiently and effectively if it is realized why it is needed. In brief, when practice is needed teachers should know the reasons why it is needed so that the right kind of practice may be provided. Generally, to recapitulate, the reasons are: to provide adequate opportunity for the necessary direction of attention, to provide opportunities for good timing, and with respect to responses which one wants to be sure of without fail, opportunity to cue the response to many aspects of the situations in which the response will be needed, and opportunity to permit the cueing of such responses to these many aspects not only under favorable conditions but under conditions of marginal attention. Teachers should reduce the need for practice so far as possible by simplifying the task in order to minimize the confusion and interference which results from the learner being required to attend to too many things at the same time or from being asked to take an advanced step before all the necessary prior learnings are well "overlearned." Furthermore, teachers should know that basically, learning is not of necessity a slow process. Whenever teachers find learning is progressing slowly and with difficulty, but not for the reasons just indicated, teachers should guard against

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being reconciled to the slowness. They should suspect it as evidence of unfavorable learning conditions and should be challenged by it to discover more effective methods of direction.

VI

Up to this point I have been criticizing learning-theory because it is based on a conception of learning as the gradual strengthening of habits, claiming not only that it is inadequate for use in the direction of the higher phases of human learning but that it does not even provide the help needed for the direction of the more habitual aspects of development. This criticism has been directed not at such theorizing as is found in the literature of educational psychology but at the most formalized theorizing concerning experimental data. It was an evaluation of experimental psychology by an educational psychologist. Now I wish to describe a common fault in educational psychology. It is the extent to which an educational philosophy is allowed to influence the product. This we might say is a criticism of educational psychology from the standpoint of a psychologist. Froni that standpoint educational psychology while being as useful as possible should at the same time be as scientific as possible. Science has no favorites. It describes and informs as best it can and as objectively as it can. T h e results are there for all to use, to whatever ends their several philosophies dictate. Too great an identification with a prevailing philosophy of education has caused some educational psychologists to neglect their role as scientists. A full consideration of this

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charge oinnot be given here. Your attention is directed only to two respects in which it bears upon our topic, the psychological foundation for the direction of learning. The first bias to be noted is the implication, if not the explicit statement that no learning can come about other than that which the student does because of his own felt needs. That such things are apt to be best understood, best remembered, and most likely to be of use to the learner is one thing; but to claim that learning can only take place under such circumstances is another. No learning theorist has thought that motivation is unimportant. But the nature of the relationship between motivation and learning has not yet been clarified. Within recent years there seems to be a trend toward a separation of the problem of learning from the problem of performance. Hilgard 9 says "Learning must always remain an inference from performance, and only confusion results if performance and learning are identified." With this distinction in mind, motivation may be in one way related to whether or not we use what we have learned and in another way if at all related to whether or not we have learned. There are learning theorists who still think of drivereduction as an essential condition for learning, but experimental data have so forced them to extend the concept of drive that their views lend little support for the extreme educational emphasis here questioned. Many years ago, R. S. Woodworth observed that sometimes interest develops out of required activity. In other words, in the course of such activity, proficiency may be discovered and liking developed. His observation is as sound today as it was then. Many people can testify to valued learnings which came from activities originally par• Hilgard, op. at., p. 5.

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ticipated in only because they were required. T h a t such requirenent was, to say the least, wasteful, is probably the case. Exception is not taken to the educational cause which prompts the lack of objectivity being criticized. T h e contention is rather that if educational psychologists must plead a cause, they should be careful not to base the plea upon biased observation. T h e second biased observation which is implied in the writing of some educational psychologists and against which I'd like to warn you is related to the first, in that it grows cut of the same educational theory. It is that learning is an educationally less important concept, than it was though: to be before the child-centered emphasis in education. Because of this bias, education is often described as a growth process rather than as a learning process, and the text may make little reference to the. psychology of learning. This is done presumably because the word "learning" implies adult control over development and the manipulation of the environment in order that the desired or predetermined learnings may take place. Such a concept is rejected presumably because it is associated with a former period of objectionable imposition in education. T h e word "growth" on the other hand implies that the direction of development comes from within the child, that this direction is to be valued and fostered. T h e teacher is there to help as needed, and one of his important functions is to preserve for the child the free atmosphere within which his potential development may unfold. I too value highly many of the outcomes which the advocates of the growth philosophy seek. When an educational psychologist develops his philosophy and calls it psychology, it isn't his values I'm criticizing, it's the validity of his psychological perspective. Less biased observers find

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less justification for seeing child development as an unfolding than they find for seeing it as an acculturation. As a matter of fact, to describe it as one or the other is a mistake because it is both. Because we had the evils of one extreme in education is no reason for promoting the other extreme. It is no service to society to bolster irresponsibility on the part of parent or teacher by giving them false information as to the extent to which nature may or must be depended upon to give direction to development. Development is so much a process of acculturation that when a parent or teacher hesitates to try to direct development, he is simply choosing to allow this development to be otherwise directed. I can find nothing in psychology to discourage those who hold their values dearly and want to disseminate them, from doing their best to do so. Children are going to learn most of their likes and dislikes, their absorbing interests or lack of them, their ambitions or lack of them, their ideals or the lack of them. How much this is left to accident, how much and by whom it is to be planned is a choice which parents and teachers individually and collectively must make.

VII

And now, having emphasized that a feeling of adult responsibility for the direction of education is psychologically defensible, I close with a brief summary. A survey was made of progress during the last thirty years toward supplying an adequate psychological foundation for the direction of learning. It was noted that to a gratifying degree wordy argument has given way to experimental ac-

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tivity and rapid revision of theory. The opinion was expressed that there is a considerable degree of agreement among those most active in the formalization of learning theory. Concern was expressed however over the extent to which learning theory has continued to be based upon a concept of learning as being typically the gradual strengthening of habits. The question was raised whether learning theory so conceived is not basically ill-conceived and hence fundamentally ill-designed to provide the psychological foundation needed for the direction of education. The opinion was expressed that for the same reason current theory does not even adequately contribute to the improvement of the efficiency of teaching in those situations in which practice seems to be most needed. In the face of this inadequacy, it was pointed out that those educational psychologists are to be commended who try to provide a more educationally useful psychology of learning, who choose to teach a speculative theory which may prove to be valid in preference to teaching a too limited theory because it is highly formalized. Finally, you were asked to be on your guard in reading educational psychology, against a tendency on the part of writers to be more concerned to make a case for certain educational values than to be objective observers. This tendency was mentioned because of the belief that two aspects of learning theory suffer because of the tendency. In the first place educational psychologists may be unduly influenced by educational theory in what they write about the dependence of learning upon the existence of so-called genuine problems on the part of the learner, and in the second place and for the same reason, they may underemphasize the importance of an understanding of the learning process. In choosing to be critical in this paper it was definitely

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not intended to present a pessimistic picture. During the thirty-year period to which I have referred, progress has been appreciable. Furthermore, within educational psychology and within experimental psychology there are the potentialities out of which a more valid and a more educationally useful conception of learning can emerge.

Dimensions of Social Stratification AUGUST B .

HOLLINGSHEAD I

A number of you may wonder why the subject of social stratification is currently of interest to educators. This is a legitimate question, because the cardinal principle of the American creed is that "all men are born free and equal." Therefore, if we hold to its ideals there are no strata in our society. Others among you may observe, however, with equal cogency that the American creed and the American reality are two different things. This fact has been pointed out on numerous occasions by distinguished European students of American life. A half century ago, Lord Bryce in his astute analysis of American society put the problem succinctly when he said: There is no rank in America, that is to say, no external and recognized stamp, marking a man as entitled to any special privileges, or to deference or respect from others. No man is entitled to think himself better than his fellows. . . . T h e total absence of rank and universal acceptance of equality do not, however, prevent the existence of grades and distinctions which, though they find no tangible expression, are sometimes as sharply drawn as in Europe. 65

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In more recent years, the noted Swedish economist Myrdal summed up the disparity between what we profess publicly, as members of a democratic society, and how we act in private life, as T h e American Dilemma. He reached the conclusion that our society has many features of a caste and class system. The observations of these discerning Europeans have been supported by the researches of American social scientists for well over a half century. In 1882, Sumner completed his famous book, What Social Classes Owe to One Another. In the following twenty-five years a number of sociologists and economists dealt with the problem from many facets. T h e principal writers in those years were Veblen, Giddings, Patten, Small, Cooley, and Ross. Some twenty-five years ago, the Lynds in their widely acclaimed books on Middletown supported these earlier theorists' conclusions with concrete data. In more recent years, a large number of historians and social scientists have published additional evidence that American society is stratified. T h e conclusions of social scientists on social stratification have been popularized through the writings of such men as Russell Lynes in Harper's and Life magazines. Lynes' characterizations of social differences in terms of Brows—High Brow, Low Brow, Middle Brow—are now part of American folklore. In short, the difference between what we think American society is when viewed from the perspective of the American Dream, and what it is when viewed from the facet of our social behavior, poses the problem under discussion.

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II OUR C U L T U R A L H E R I T A G E

T h e answer to the question of why our society is stratified in fact but not in ideals must be sought in an analysis of our cultural heritage. T h e principal historical components that have a bearing on this issue are: First, its European rootage, second, its racial and ethnic diversity, and third, its status system. Cultural Rootage. Our cultural heritage is European; basically it is British. In the colonial era, predominantly English settlers transported their institutions to this continent. Here they took new root and became the framework for our legal, religious, economic, familial, and educational systems. T h e governmental system was changed fundamentally by the American Revolution, but the new government was erected in large part upon English foundations. Our legal system is still based upon the English common law. Our language, our family system, our conceptions of property, and the Protestant religion are essentially British. The greatest changes in our culture have been in the field of technology. Here we have gone from the horse and wagon to the jet-propelled airplane, but can you think of a comparable series of changes in our other institutions? Racial and Ethnic Diversity. T h e racial and ethnic composition of the population is of prime importance in the comprehension of stratification in our society. T h e division of the population into whites and blacks is as old as European settlement in North America. As our history

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has unfolded, other racial elements have been added to the population, so that today the original division into whites and blacks has been complicated by Spanish-Americans and a number of different Oriental groups. As these latter racial elements have entered the population, traditional white attitudes and values toward Negroes and Indians have been applied, in good measure, to them. T h e Civil War altered the legal position of the Negro but, as you know well, it did not wipe out social differences between the races. The immigration of millions of Europeans into the United States in the last century has given rise to many ethnic groups in the population. As the years have passed, they have been partially acculturated to the older core of American culture, but most have kept their identity. Thus, we have numerous hyphenated Americans in our midst: Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans, German-Americans, Polish-Americans, and so on. In our eastern cities welldefined ethnic groups compose the majority of the population. For instance, in New Haven, persons of Italian descent make up at least one-third of the community's population. Some 12 per cent of the population is composed of East European-Jewish immigrants, their children and grandchildren. We also have large Polish, Irish and German groups. The "Yankee" with a pre-Revolutionary War ancestry is a "vanishing American"; not more than 1 to 2 per cent of the community's population is in this category. The third important historical facet of American society pertinent to this discussion is its status system. The feudal status system of classes and castes was brought to our shores originally from Europe along with the rest of our culture, and it was an official part of the social structure until after the American Revolution. Status

System.

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In the colonial era, all dimensions of the social system were articulated officially one with another. Power and status were integrated legally into a way of life for each caste and class in the population. For example, in the Colony of Connecticut a Standing Order in which every man had a defined place dominated the social system as late as 1820. Some of you may remember an item in Ripley's "Believe It Or Not" that appeared recently. It recalled how Ursula Wolcott (1724-1788) was the daughter of a governor, sister of a governor, wife of a governor, and mother of a governor. In addition she was related to sixteen governors and fifty-six judges. In the colonial era, the man with a high economic position possessed great political power and enjoyed social rank. T h e poor man had little political power and his social rank was low; for the vast majority, their legal disabilities were so great that they did not possess the rights of citizens. Until 1818, not more than 2 per cent of all adult white males in Connecticut had the right to vote. A triumph of the American Revolution was the abolition of all titles of rank. Citizenship for the non-slave portion of the population was much easier to attain than previously, but many civic disabilities were retained within the several states. Gradually, vested property rights were separated from political rights by the extension of suffrage to most white men, and by the prohibition of hereditary succession to office. However, the privileges associated with vested rights in property were retained. The specific denial of titles to any citizen, and the separation of economic rights from political rights were designed to eliminate the colonial class and caste system from official life. Nothing, however, was said about social differences in the private arena of men's lives. T h e Bill of Rights, in fact, protected

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private life from invasion by many instrumentalities of the state. As time passed, this became the bastion behind which a new system of social stratification developed. Today, the old European class system, based upon the idea of the inequality of individuals, does not exist officially in our society. This is why one often hears the statement, "There are no classes in America." Nevertheless, very strong residual elements of the traditional status system are a vital part of our private culture. Because the official admission of an unequal status system is taboo, there is a sharp cleavage between what is professed publicly and what is done privately. In our public life, we adhere to the Declaration of Independence and assert that all men are created equal; in private practice, we rely upon traditional axioms of the differential worth of men. In sum, the traditional stratification system represents a very incongruous area of our culture when what is professed is compared with what is done. With this brief historical introduction we will turn now to the consideration of some analytical phases of the problem of stratification in our society.

ill DIMENSIONS O F SOCIAL STRATIFICATION

Viewed analytically social stratification is a specific aspect of the general structure of a society. It may be defined as the differential ranking of the people within the society, particularly in their relations to one another, as superior or inferior. The most extreme form of stratification is found in a caste system where an individual's life chances

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are determined on the basis of his birth and cannot be changed during his lifetime. A class system is less rigid in its structure than a caste system for an individual can change his status through his own efforts. Stratification in the United States exhibits certain characteristics of both class and caste. In the South, Southwest, and along the Pacific Coast, particularly, the principles of caste and class operate in the structuring of race relations. In these areas the races are separated socially, and within each race, Negro, Spanish-American, Japanese, Filipino, and Chinese, there is a further differentiation in terms of class. T h e stratification structure is so organized that the colored races cannot advance through their own efforts and abilities into membership within the white segment of the society. In this sense each racial group occupies a caste-like position in the social structure. However, within each racial group the stratificational structure allows for social mobility. In this sense, a class system exists within the confines of the caste-like system that revolves around racial identities. Race is one of the most important criteria of status rank in the United States, but there are many other factors such as occupation, size of income, education, religion, ethnic origin, and associations. These specific criteria to have meaning theoretically need to be considered in the larger context of the culture. Three other dimensions of the culture relevant to this discussion are power, status, and cohesive group life. These dimensions, or criteria of stratification, all rest upon the historical foundation I sketched briefly in the introduction. Power, status, and cohesive group life are functionally and structurally related to each other, as well as to the stratificational system of our society. Their separation in this discussion is purely for analytical reasons.

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Power. The power dimension of stratification is concerned with the actions of men in relation to other men, ideas, and things. Power is what some men possess to control the acts and thoughts of other men. Thus, it is a relation that exists between the controllers and the controlled in society. In this sense, power is the regulative dimension of social structure. Power for our purposes has two facets: economic and social. Economic power. I want to make three points about the relationship economic power bears to stratification in contemporary American society: First, economic power is a product of the values that are associated with the maintenance functions individuals perform in the society. As you all know, differential social and pecuniary rewards are assigned to separate occupational functions. The most highly valued occupations are associated with financial, legal, managerial, and medical functions. Consequently, the banker, the corporation executive, the corporation lawyer, and the medical specialist are rewarded most highly, socially and pecuniarily, for the functions they perform. Teaching, sales and clerical work, carry lower pecuniary and social rewards. Such functions as bootblacking, scavenging, or common labor carry the lowest pecuniary and social rewards. There are many gradations between these examples. The second point I want to make about economic power is that individuals tend to be identified socially with their occupational pursuits. In this process the prestige value associated with the function is transferred directly to the individual who performs it. Indirectly the identification of the individual with the occupation is carried over to the members of his immediate family, especially his wife and children. Residual elements of this process may be

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transmitted to grandchildren and even great-grandchildren. This applies particularly to property that is transferred from generation to generation through inheritance. The third point relative to economic power is that the money derived from the job, for the mass of men, is translated into goods and services. The easiest way to express this principle is that our informal, but elaborate, evaluational system grades the quantity and quality of goods and services individuals buy into a level of living. Individuals in our society who perform different occupational functions, and receive different incomes, occupy different social position. The generic relationship between occupation, pecuniary reward, and level of living results in the socio-economic groups so widely recognized in our society. Social power. Analysis of social power is a neglected aspect of stratification studies because the departmentalization of academic subjects has tended to place this topic in political science departments. Political scientists tend to focus their attention on political power. However, Professor Floyd Hunter in his Community Power Structure made a careful sociological analysis of the interrelations of economic power, political power, and the phenomena of stratification. He found, in a large southern city, that the greater the economic power of individuals, the higher their status positions, the more influence they exert over political decisions in the community and the region. His data show there is a direct and meaningful relation between economic and political power and class position.

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IV STATUS

Status is the prestige dimension of social stratification. Like power it is a function of the value system of the society. Americans differentially evaluate cultural objects, ideas, and persons in relation to other objects, ideas, and persons. T h e evaluation associated with a given object tends to be graded in relation to other similar objects. For example, automobiles possess a status value that is independent of their function as vehicles of transportation. Cadillacs are highly esteemed; Fords and Chevrolets carry a different, and lower, status value. Status values of objects, ideas, and persons become symbolized in the society. As this occurs, the status value of a given cultural object is associated with its owner. Thus, a man may have prestige ascribed to him because he owns, for example, a "fishtailed" Cadillac. If the owner has other cultural attributes associated with the Cadillac symbol he will occupy a very high station in the status system. T h e symbolic value of the Cadillac acts as a status stimulus of many people. That is, it stands symbolically for the cultural configuration we assume its owner represents. We react to the stimulus, and assign an individual status on the basis of our evaluation of the symbol. I will illustrate the symbolic aspects of status by a study I made of three young men during their college careers. These men lived in the same entry of a dormitory of an Ivy League college. I will call them Albert, Benny, and Sam.

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Albert's family lived on a large estate in Locust Valley, L o n g Island, New York. His life had revolved around his ancestral home, private schools, European trips, exclusive clubs, sailboats, sports cars, and other attributes of this particular way of life. Albert was the fourth generation of his father's line to graduate from "St. Grottlesex School." Benny came from a second-generation Polish family in the Middle West. H e attended Omaha Central High School; made excellent grades, played on the basketball team, and was a good mixer. A high school teacher urged him to "go E a s t " to college. In his senior year of high school he read in the social columns of an Omaha newspaper that a boy he knew slightly and admired highly, who had "gone East to college," while home for the holidays had attended a party in the home of a high-status O m a h a family. From this point on Benny became interested in "going East to college." Benny, with the aid of his teachersponsor, applied for a scholarship, received one, and in due time lived in the same entry with Albert. Benny was impressed by Eastern College. H e always vividly remembered a statement from an orientation address to the freshman class. " A l l of you are equal here. W h a t you do here depends upon you, and you alone." Sam was the son of a small-town, old Yankee New England lawyer. H e attended the local high school for two years, then he transferred to a preparatory school near his home town. H e entered college on a small scholarship, and eventually became a dormitory neighbor of Albert and Benny. Benny was only vaguely conscious of status in Omaha Central High School; he became acutely aware of it after he came into direct association for the first time with boys from eastern preparatory schools. Both Benny and A l b e r t

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were conscious of the status differences between them, and between themselves and other students. Sam was aware of the status differences that existed between him and Albert on the one hand, and Benny on the other, but it did not bother him for he was able to bridge the gap between the two in the few social relations he had with them. He knew the background of both men and he ascribed to Albert the high status he had been taught to respect by his family. He was condescending to Benny, because he knew he was the son of a Polish immigrant who packed meat into boxes in a South Omaha plant. Thus, Benny was the recipent of the low status ascribed to Poles in Sam's home town. T h e ambition of Benny's life, in his freshman year, was to be invited into a fraternity. Fraternity membership symbolized for him an achieved status that would compensate, in part at least, for the ascribed status he suffered under as a Polish immigrant's son. As the excitement of the rush season gripped his class in the fall of his sophomore year, Benny became anxious. He was worried about his grades and his background. T h e fact that he was on a work scholarship appeared to worry him most. He felt all of these things would count against him. He became very tense as the weeks passed and this goal seemed to be beyond his grasp. His grades dropped, he doubled his smoking, he could not sleep, and his scholarship work became poor. He developed diarrhea and other somatic symptoms of his anxiety state. I infer he translated his feelings of status inferiority into physical symptoms as he internalized his anxiety. His anxiety was relieved when he was invited to a beer party by a low-ranking fraternity composed mainly of high school graduates. Benny worked hard to be accepted in

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this fraternity for he knew it was his one chance to become a "fraternity man." He felt his limitations, and he hoped to overcome them by cultivating three men in this group. He was happy when he was invited to a second beer party by this fraternity for he knew this meant he was being considered seriously. Albert and Sam showed little interest in rushing. Albert knew he would be taken into "The Club," because his father and grandfather had belonged. "The Club" was the most esteemed organization on the campus; it was not a fraternity with national connections, but a young gentlemen's club, comparable in its own way to the Rittenhouse in Philadelphia, or the Racquet Club in New York. Albert attended rushing parties at one fraternity, because most of his friends went. Sam attended a number of different fraternity beer parties, but made no effort to cultivate members of any one fraternity. He was invited to second parties by two fraternities. Both invited him to become a member. When the fraternity and club lists were published, Albert's name was on "The Club's" list; Sam's name was on his chosen fraternity's list. Benny's name was not included on any list: Benny reported to the infirmary with a severe headache and a stomach upset. After a few days he rationalized his failure in terms of his lack of money and the small part fraternities played in college life. He convinced himself that "you do not have to be in a frat to get along." T h e second act of this status drama occurred during their senior year when these men began to think about jobs after college. Albert showed no concern about a job. He made plans in November to sail the day after Commencement for a four months' European tour. He knew he would not be expected to go to work until he returned.

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Sam majored in economics, and he planned to enter the securities business. Benny majored in history, and he was not sure what he was going to do until he enrolled in a course in finance in the first semester of his senior year. About halfway through this course he decided investment appealed to him. Shortly after this decision was made, he enrolled at the college placement service, and listed his qualifications and interests. Albert was so engaged in the activities of New York society he had little time or interest to think about what he would do after college. One week end during the winter his father suggested that he might visit some of the investment houses on "the Street" and see if one of them needed a young man, but he did nothing about this hint. Early in February, Albert received a note on engraved stationery from a senior partner in a famous private banking firm. T h e older man invited Albert to have lunch with him in his Wall Street club. Albert recognized the man's name and recalled he had been a young associate of his greatgrandfather when "the old gentleman put National Chemical and Carbide together" years ago. He accepted the invitation, and before the long lunch was over the older man suggested that Albert join the bank's Trust Department when he returned from his European trip. Albert thought this over and wrote his acceptance in a few days. When he told his father the news, he stressed the point he had obtained this post through his own efforts. Sam and his father discussed Sam's plans during the Thanksgiving holiday. His father gave him several good leads to follow up about positions in brokerage houses and banks. He talked with some of his friends, and one of them wrote a letter in Sam's behalf to a partner in a large brokerage house with many branches. Early in February, Sam

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completed his interviews and accepted a job with his father's friend's firm. Benny haunted the college placement office. He was interviewed once by the representative of a securities firm, but he heard nothing more. During the spring vacation he went to New York City and contacted one investment firm after another. He was not able to pass the receptionist at the private firm where Albert was to be employed. At one office he talked with the assistant personnel officer, and filled out an application blank. At other places he was told kindly, but firmly: "Business is low this year. There may not be any openings; lay-offs are the rule." Late in April Benny accepted a soap manufacturer's offer of a place in his sales training program. These three young men had different ascribed status positions. Albert and Sam were satisfied with theirs. Benny was not, and he struggled to achieve a status more satisfying than the one ascribed to him because of his name and background. Latent status factors drew Albert into the investment house; they were not a barrier to the entrance of Sam into the brokerage business. They operated against Benny when he tried for the fraternity and a job in an investment house. In sum, Benny tested the status system and was defeated by its requirements. As I pointed out earlier, our society has been divided along racial lines since early colonial days. As a consequence, there is probably no clearer or stronger symbol of status in the culture than a person's racial identification. And it is extremely important to remember that a person cannot avoid racial status symbols ascribed to him by his society. Ethnic origin is not as clear-cut a status symbol as race. Nevertheless, many persons with South and East European origins feel that they are handicapped in the competitive

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struggle for favorable status in American society. In their inner lives, they believe their chances for success are limited by their cultural origins. "Keeping up with the Joneses" symbolizes the competitive struggle of many Americans to attain favorable status in their own eyes and in the eyes of their associates. This is but one facet of the American Dream that all men must succeed if they are to achieve their destiny. But members of ethnic groups have to catch up with the Joneses in self-esteem before they can compete with them for social esteem. Sometimes, felt ethnic status is so humiliating to an individual who desires to achieve success, that he turns his back upon his ethnic heritage and like Pygmalion walks through the looking-glass. He then tries to rebuild his life in the image of the status symbols he admires. In such a case the personality conflict is severe; the individual makes a choice between his past and his aspirations for the future. In short, he sacrifices his past in his needs for a future. As in a second marriage, hope triumphs over experience. I shall illustrate this process by the case of a rising young doctor. Both the doctor and his wife are American-born children of Greek immigrants. While this man was an undergraduate in a middle-western state university he decided that his family name carried the wrong ascribed status for the social acceptance he craved. When he was twenty-one years old he changed his name legally to an esteemed English one. He was admitted to medical school under his new name. While he was an interne in Chicago he married his wife who was a graduate student at the university. While they were in Chicago they dropped close ties with their families, and refused to admit their ethnic origin to their fellow students. T h e couple came East to

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complete the young doctor's training in his chosen specialty. Since they have lived in the East, they have guarded their secret carefully. In recent years they have joined the Episcopal Church, and they are raising their children as Episcopalians. They live in the best residential area of their town, and they are making every effort to identify with non-ethnic professional and business families. Recently a friend of mine was invited to a party in their home. Five of the seven guest couples were doctors and their wives. T h e remaining couples were an assistant to a vice president of a large manufacturing concern and his wife; my friend and his wife. During the course of the evening my co-worker casually remarked to the hostess that her party was the best he had attended in a long time. She feelingly replied, "Our parties have to be good, we have got to get into the High Meadow Club." Acceptance in this club means one has arrived socially in their town. This couple has worked for this goal for some fifteen years. They will realize it in the next two or three years if all goes according to their plans. T o summarize, the most important factors determining social status are: race, occupation, education, ethnic origin, religion, and membership in community groups. Certain combinations of these factors will open doors to some precisely defined status positions in the community's social system. Other combinations will bar them to individuals who present a disesteemed configurational stimulus. For example, Jews and descendants of South and East Europeans are excluded from most private clubs, even though they may possess all status values accepted members have, except ethnic origin.

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V GROUP

LIFE

T h e last dimension of stratification analysis is group life. I mean by group life that a pattern of life characterizes the members of a social class and holds them together socially and emotionally. Individuals and groups have most of their meaningful, intimate social relations within these groups. T h e final question we will discuss is: How can the four dimensions of cultural heritage, power, status, and group life be put together so that they will have meaning? I will show how this can be done by outlining how we envisage the stratificational structure of the New Haven community. This community of some 250,000 people includes the city of New Haven and five adjacent towns, East Haven, North Haven, Hamden, West Haven, and Woodbridge. T h e social structure is differentiated horizontally by a series of social classes. It is divided vertically by racial, ethnic, and religious factors. Around the sociobiological axis of race two social worlds have evolved—a Negro world and a white world. T h e white world is divided by ethnic origin and religion into Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish contingents. Within these divisions there are numerous ethnic schisms. T h e Irish hold aloof from the Italians, and the Italians move in different circles from the Poles. T h e Jews maintain a religious and social life separate from the Gentiles. T h e horizontal classes that transect each of these vertical structures are based upon the social values that are attached to occupation, education, place of residence in the community, and associations.

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Thus ethnic origin, occupation, education, and residence are combined into a complicated social system that takes into account cultural heritage, power, status, and a group's way of life. The vertically differentiating factors of race, religion, and ethnic origin, when combined with the horizontally differentiating ones of occupation, education, place of residence and so on, produce a social structure that is highly compartmentalized. T h e integrating factors in this complex are twofold. First, each stratum of each vertical division is similar in its cultural characteristics to the corresponding stratum in the other divisions. Second, the cultural pattern for each stratum or class was set by the "Old Yankee" core group. T h e "Old Yankee" provided the master cultural mold that shaped the class system of each racial, religious, and ethnic group. A major trend in the social structure of the New Haven community during the last half century has been the development of parallel class structures within the limits of race, ethnic origin, and religion. This development may be illustrated by the fact that there are seven different Junior Leagues in the white segment of the community for appropriately affiliated upper-class young women. T h e top-ranking organization is the Junior League of New Haven which draws its membership from "Old Yankee" Protestant families whose daughters have been educated in private schools. The Catholic Charity League is next in rank and age—its membership is drawn mainly from IrishAmerican families. In addition to this organization there are Italian and Polish Junior Leagues within the Catholic division of the society. The Swedish and Danish Junior Leagues are for properly connected young women in these ethnic groups, but they are Protestant. Then too, the

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upper-class Jewish families have their counterpart of the Junior League. The Negroes have a Junior League for their young women of high status. This principle of parallel structure for a given class level, by religious, ethnic, and racial groups, proliferates throughout the community. The impact of this structure on the lives of individuals may be assessed, in some measure, by who is marrying whom. We have interviewed during the last seven years a 50 per cent random sample of couples who were married in New Haven during 1948, 1949, and 1950. Some 1,500 couples are in our sample. All couples were stratified by the use of my Index of Social Position into classes. When the data on these couples were analyzed in the light of the concept of parallel social structures it was found that 91 per cent of all white marriages were within the same religious group, and that 93 per cent were within the same social class. When we analyzed the data these couples gave us on their intimate friends we found that from 80 to 95 per cent of their friends before marriage were in the same class as themselves. Within five years after marriage the percentage increased to some 90 to 97 per cent. The conclusion we have drawn from these data is this: people in a given social stratum have intimate personal ties with one another; they have very few close personal associations with people outside of their class. Viewed in this way, classes constitute effective social systems within a community.

Building a Philosophy of Education J . DONALD B U T L E R

In trying to advise you how to build a philosophy of education, I will not be able, of course, to hide my own philosophy from you, nor would I want to do this; to attempt it would no doubt be dishonest and might betray a lack of conviction. My primary concern today will not be however to give you the substance of my own or any other particular philosophy of education. Instead, I would like to philosophize with you about education, in the hope that in so doing I may be of some help to you, more or less directly, in building or refining your own educational philosophy. I shall deal with five subjects in the following order: the aims of education, the role of the school as a social institution, theory of value, theory of reality, and theory of knowledge.

I It is common when teachers, administrators, boards education, parents' groups or groups of citizens start think about education that they begin with objectives. trying to be responsible about the work of the school 75

of to In it

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makes sense for them to ask, "Just what is it that education is trying to do or should be trying to do? What do we wish to accomplish in the elementary grades, or in the secondary school?" Or more specifically, as I have witnessed, a committee of the board of education may ask the teachers at each grade level just what their objectives are for each subject-matter area. No doubt you will all recall a document of national significance which attempted this sort of thing in 1938. It w^s the statement of the Educational Policies Commission entitled, The Purposes of Education in American Democracy.1 It set forward four major objectives for American education: self-realization, human relationship, economic efficiency, and civic responsibility. Attempt was made in this document to elaborate these in terms of a set of specific objectives constituting each of the four. Unfortunately this publication was conceived only at the level of aims and was guided by the intention to build a statement of objectives which would be acceptable to all segments of the body politic. These conditions made it necessarily superficial and resulted in the simultaneous attempt to say too much and too little. Aims are commonly stated in terms of the skills it is expected that the pupil should have mastered at a given grade level and the knowledges which he should possess. At this level of philosophizing about education—and to my chagrin those who are engaged in it are quite free in referring to it as philosophy—we can have heated discussions among ourselves and controversies in the press as to whether Johnny can read and why not. Nevertheless, there are, it seems to me, two justifications for this level of educational thinking which is concerned in pin-pointing aims. 1

Educational Policies Commission, Washington, D.C., 1938.

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T h e first is that if it is carefully done and fully g r o u n d e d in more fundamental thinking, it can give very helpful and concrete guidance to classroom teaching. T h e second justification for it is that if it is undertaken with responsibility and intellectual penetration, it will disclose the need for philosophizing of another sort. By this I mean to say that to think responsibly about the aims of education will lead to the recognition that aims can not just be pulled out of a hat, but must be derived from more fundamental and general thinking about value, reality, and knowledge. I want to go on to these more fundamental subjects from which I believe light can be gained for the formulation of educational aims. But before I do, I would like to discuss another way of philosophizing about the school which is somewhat parallel to the formulation of objectives.

II

What is education about? and What should education try to do? are questions which can be asked collectively as well as individually. T o philosophize concerning aims in a social sense, and not just in terms of what the school should do for the individual, is to ask for a rationale for the school as an institution. T h i s is not an u n c o m m o n theme in the literature of educational philosophy. Plato in The Republic considered, at least speculatively, the possibility of taking children away from the corrupt society which had given them birth, and in some separate place by means of an expurgated literature, to give m a n k i n d a fresh start through a proper education, and also thereby to build an ideal State. J o h n Amos Comenius, in the seven-

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teenth century, regarded education equal to physical procreation as a necessity in making man. He had come across reports of instances in which human infants had been reared by animals, and as a result followed a pattern of life closer to that of the animals with which they had lived than to human patterns. He argued therefore that the culture of man has to lend form to the human potentialities with which we are born, in order for us to be men. And this is the task of education. This is why he characterized education as " a true forging place of men." 2 John Dewey, in our own century, has argued that the school exists to provide a special environment for the formative years of human life. Such a special environment is needed in part because civilization is too complex to provide an economical setting for learning. A special environment such as the school can also eliminate the unworthy features of human society as it is. And further, the school as a special environment can provide a balance of influence which society itself will not give, providing greater breadth from other cultures and avoiding parochialism. 8 Theodore M. Greene, writing in the Fifty-fourth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, published last year, tried to work out a division of labor among the institutions of society according to which the school is the " m i n d " of the body politic; the state being the "sword and shield," the family the "heart," the church the "soul," and business the "hands." I am sure we would all agree with him that these are risky metaphors. 4 ' J o h n Amos Comenius, The Great Didactic, trans, and ed. by M. W. Keatinge (Adam a n d Charles Black, London, 1907), Part II, p. 228. ' J o h n Dewey, Democracy a n d Education ( T h e Macmillan C o m p a n y , New York, 1916), cf. p p . 22-26. * T h e o d o r e M. Greene, " A L i b e r a l Christian Idealist Philosophy of E d u c a t i o n , " in Nelson B. Henry, Modern Philosophies and Education (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1955).

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T h e big question is of course, On what grounds can roles or tasks be assigned to the school or any other institution? Can we say that we prefer to think of the school in this or that particular way, and just leave it there? Or must we not have some validation for assigning functions? It seems to me that we come up against the same necessity here as in our attempts to formulate aims. We cannot say that aims should be thus and so, nor that the function of education as an institution is such and such, except quite superficially, until our thinking has gone deeper and taken on a larger perspective in which to state aims and assign institutional roles. This more profound thinking and larger perspective, I wish to reiterate, will come from responsible thought concerning value, reality, and knowledge. It is to the first of these three that I will now turn.

ill My argument is that responsible thinking about the aims of education necessarily involves a somewhat more than casual consideration of the value aspect of life and existence. Such consideration may very well include a catalogue of values which man should seek, such as contained in the Educational Policies Commission's 1951 publication, Moral and Spiritual Values in the Public Schools.8 Or this may even be structured as an hierarchy of values. But to be of much worth it must go beyond this to'ask some rather general questions concerning value; logically this is necessarily prior to the listing of those values which s

Educational Policies Commission, Washington, D.C., 1951.

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are desired. I will attempt to state some of these questions and indicate the significance of them. One important question which needs to be asked, possibly the most important, is this: What is the status of values in existence? Are all values purely transient, as some say, and only exist because there is some human sentient subject who enjoys them? And will all values cease to be when mankind has passed from the scene, or has blasted himself out of existence by his achievements in nuclear physics? Or, are there some values which are permanent and abiding? Are there values which exist independently of man, and are good and to be desired whether man desires and possesses them or not? And if there are such abiding values, do they exist, as it were, under their own power, as Platonic ideas are supposed to exist, or as the law of gravity and mathematical relations are alleged to exist? Or instead, do these abiding values have permanence because they are attributes or qualities of character which God has, and are of and dependent upon One Being who alone has ultimate existence? / A second value question has to do with the manner in which human subjects come into the possession and enjoyment of values. Are values ready-made and do they simply pass into the experience of their possessors, who are assumed to be perfectly passive recipients? Or must the human subject somehow put himself out, as we say, exert effort, or participate in some way in order to embrace value in his experience? If value experiences come to us without any reference to our actions in relation to them, then it would appear that there is no significance for education in value theory. It might even be that education itself has no significance, and that value experience would be ours whether we are educated or not. On the other

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hand, if effort is involved in value experience, as I happen to believe, then it becomes clear that the growth and development of the human individual together with the teaching thrust of human cultures, in their institutions of education, both reflect a profound aspect of value, namely that implicit in the nature of value is the necessity for education. I will select one other major value question for mention in addition to the two I have just discussed; it is the whether-or-not of a root value from which all other values stem, and what it may be. N o w , if all values are transitory and contingent solely upon the sentient life of man, individual and collective, then human society and the individual man's relation to it become of prime importance. If I want to enter into the fullest possible value that I can have in my short span of living, then it is imperative that I maintain unbroken relation with the social process. T h e r e is nothing but nothingness to be gained by withdrawing into an ivory tower, or escaping into my own private world. Education in such a value context must necessarily be social: education in society and for social relationships. T h i s is the imperative stressed by John Dewey and those who have followed him; and imperative which has stemmed from the value assumptions just stated, that all value has its existence in the human social process, and all value for the individual arises from relation to this social source of value. But, however, if some values exist independently of man and if they have their existence as qualities of O n e who alone has Being, then the source of value for man is quite different. T h e importance of human society is not made less, only it is n o longer the exclusive source of value. Individual man is still a unit of mankind, he is still a socius,

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an individuation of society. But God is the source of value both for individual and social man. A n d accordingly some kind of effectual relation to God becomes the gateway to value and value experience, at least to ultimate value. Education in such a value context should be no less social, but it will face the difficult fact that man's value experience is contingent upon theological concerns as well as social concerns. It will recognize that the full import of man's value experience is not understood unless it is viewed as having a horizon beyond which there is an abiding value experience with which it has some connection.

IV

T o raise such value questions as these clearly discloses that their answers involve some beliefs about existence. T o assume that values have no existence other than in the human subjects who enjoy them, or to assume that values have existence which is permanent, is to venture in either case a belief concerning the nature of reality. Similarly, to assume either that it is imperative for individual man to be related to the social process, because it is the soil in which all values grow, or to assume that both individual and social man must be related to God, because permanent values are permanent by virtue of their rootage in His nature, is again to venture belief about the nature of reality. Of course, we should no more load our value considerations with implied beliefs such as these, than we should load our consideration of educational aims with implicit assumptions concerning the nature of value. W e need to consider such beliefs openly and for their own

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sake. This means that to build a philosophy of education will not only involve a formulation of educational objectives, or even a theory of value, but will also lay upon us the responsibility of making explicit a theory of reality, more technically a metaphysic. This will involve the consideration of forthright questions both about reality in the large, as in the cosmos or the totality of whatever is, and questions concerning reality in the more immediate and concrete as represented in man and in ourselves as individuals. There have been of course many views of the nature of reality. There is a simple or naive naturalism, not so common today among people of learning but still very prevalent, according to which reality and Nature are made identical and fondly thought of in the likeness of a perpetual-motion machine, operating with perfect efficiency and obeying implicitly such laws as gravitation and causeand-effect. In this simple order of things, values as we enjoy them in our human experience just grow; they can be as rich and refined as any one's taste would prefer, but they are still just a garden variety which grows in the soil of Nature. Education has a place in this kind of order as guide and augmentation of natural maturation. Its function of course is to harmonize the life of the individual with Nature and reduce to a minimum the artificialities by which human society so easily complicates things and pulls man's roots out of the soil of Nature. In the twentieth century, there has arisen a more refined naturalism which does far more justice to the complexities of our experience and expresses more confidence in the social process. This kind of naturalism is found in the thought of John Dewey and many of those who have been influenced by him. It has been variously called by

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such names as pragmatism, experimentalism, instrumentalism, and now more recently in a slight variation, reconstructionism. According to it, Nature is no simple machine nor does it operate according to fixed laws. Nature is rather a process in which all things are flowing and changing. Within its process is a kind of mother-like matrix in which normal life as we know it is the usual occurrence and abnormality is at a minimum. In this fluid order of natural events, man, and society, the values which we enjoy arise and have their normal habitat. Here is the range for all the enrichment and refinement possible to human experience; but again, the values are a garden variety which just grow in the soil of the natural-human order. Education in this metaphysical context has the task of representing the social process to children and youth in the manner depicted earlier in the first reference to Dewey. T h e task of the school is to provide a special environment for the young which will simplify, purify, and balance the environment of man as it grows naturally. T h e purpose to which the school is directed is that of equipping children to cope with the emergencies of a changing order and to keep them in relationship throughout with the humansocial process. Another view of reality, quite different from either of these but which may be just as naturalistic, is that whatever reality is, it is real. By this it is meant that reality is what it is in spite of man's knowledge of it, his relation with it, or any manipulations of it which he may attempt. Reality, according to this view, is completely objective and independent of man. According to some who hold this realist metaphysics, reality is just as naturalistic and devoid of any fundamentally spiritual quality as in either of the two views just described. According to other realists,

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however, reality is spiritual at the same time that it is physical, or it is fundamentally spiritual in a sense prior to the physical, or even it is positively supernatural. But being spiritual in essence, in any of these ways, it is still independent and objective as far as man is concerned, if not completely external to man and wholly other as compared to him. In such a world view, knowledge is of consummate importance. If we are to adjust our living as men in ways determined by the nature of reality as it is independently of us, we must have dependable knowledge of it. We must have accurate, precise, and impersonal science. We must know all that we can know about the history of the world, man's past, his cultures and civilizations. T h e school in such a context is primarily the medium of transmission of dependable knowledge, and of the conforming of individuals and new generations to reality as it is. T h e remaining world view which I will mention has been implied by some of the questions I have raised earlier. It is the view that reality, when all of its temporary wrappings are torn away, is One Being Who Is, and Who is implied in all the various orders of being we observe in the cosmos, as well as in the stages of being to be seen in the processes of generation and decay. According to this view, to be, in the last analysis, is to be One Being. This of course is a theistic, or theological, view of reality. According to it also, man reflects, however imperfectly, this One Being. Man as a soul or spirit, as well as a Body, is made in the image of this One Being who is ultimate. In this view, the work of education can never be complete, however well it accomplishes its task in terms of human relationship, until it makes it at least possible that man can become related to God and is oriented toward a life which is eternal as well as to a life of human relationships.

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I will stop now this scanning of world views, trusting that I have done two things in this survey. First, I believe that the four philosophies, for which I have sketched views of reality, fairly well represent the range of metaphysical possibilities. But what is more important, I trust that as I have gone over these views, it has become somewhat evident that we can not pick and choose among them just as we wish. For I believe we can not be guided by caprice or even by genuine desire in determining which is true among them. At this point we face a further but final responsibility in the task of building a philosophy of education: this is the task of considering knowledge questions forthrightly and trying to determine how truth is validated to us. But before moving on to this final consideration, we must look at man for a moment as he may represent reality to us. There are two disparate elements in any complete conception of man. T h e first of these is the essential nature of man, an answer to the question, What is it that constitutes him? And the second is the moral condition of man, an appraisal of his ethical status and potential as compared to what he may become. T h e views of the essential nature of man range from a description of him as a physical organism to an understanding of him as a soul made in the image of God. One view is that man is a highly developed animal, purely a child of Nature, but one for whom ageless antcedents of evolutionary development have prepared the way; an organism with such a highly developed nervous system that he has highly refined powers for responding to the stimuli around him. Another view is that man is a social-vocal organism, an abstraction unless he is in social relationship, but having unprecedented powers for communications and

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thereby equipped for group life at a level far beyond that of animals. A third view, and the last to be mentioned, is that man is a creation of God into whom has been breathed a soul having potentialities for the life of the Spirit. According to this way of looking at man, he has powers of freedom and self-determination which animals do not have and is therefore not only equipped for group life but also has potentiality for an eternal life of the Spirit. There is of course an equal variety of views regarding the moral condition of man. For some, consideration of the moral status of man is irrelevant, because they assume that man is a nonmoral species in a nonmoral universe where morality has nothing to do with existence. There are many, however, for whom this concern is an exceedingly relevant one, and they offer differing specific answers as to what the moral stature of man is. There are those who say that man is fundamentally good, the child of a reality which is fundamentally good, his evils being the result of mistakes, or of blocks standing in the way of his natural goodness. Another view is that man is a mixture of good and evil, not purely one or the other. Some of his acts are good and some of them bad, and so we have a world in which good and evil are intermixed. There is also the view of man's moral stature according to which he is a morally sick creature who needs to be healed. While he is fundamentally good in intention and always seeks good in everything he does, there is an ailment in his judgment and sometimes in his will which makes him choose evil when it is really good he assumes his choice will bring. Finally, there are also those who, viewing man's moral condition, say that there is more wrong with him morally than a sickness of judgment and will which need healing. He has gone through a change since his original creation which is so

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radical as to amount to a fall from original goodness to a sinful state. He is therefore described by the adjective "depraved" and is regarded as being corrupt in his entire nature, unable to make right judgments, good choices, or even to have fully valid knowledge of truth, until he is restored, at least in part, to his original condition. The consequence of views of man for education is quite as direct as views of the cosmos. For views of man are also assumptions concerning the one who is to be educated, paralleling the context a world view provides for the task of education.

V

In turning to knowledge theory now, the first question we confront is, Where shall we begin? Do we begin with reality? Do we begin with the self that wants the knowledge? Or is this a false antithesis, as John Dewey has argued, because the theory of evolution has shown that man and Nature are one, there being fundamentally no knowledge problem? T h e question actually needs to be rephrased, I believe. Instead of asking, Where do we begin? we should ask, Where must we begin? How can we begin with reality, when it is we ourselves who are making the beginning and asking for knowledge of reality? And how can we begin with the continuity of man and Nature, when this is a point of beginning at least once removed from selfhood, namely an assumption about a relationship which is at least partly outside of ourselves? My questions show quite clearly where I stand, so I might as well acknowledge that there is a point of view implicit

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in them. T h e explicit position is that the self is the most immediate fact in the experience of each of us and this is the necessary point of departure in the knowledge process, if not also the point of return. T h e second question has to do with the kind of relation we find ourselves to have with the world which is beyond us. Does the world make no sense to us whatsoever? That is, is it so completely disparate with selfhood that there is no harmony, no communication, no trace of synchronization between the patterns of the world and the patterns of the self? Is this what we find in our experience of the world? Or do we instead find that there is some degree of correspondence between the experience of the self and its environment, that there is some communication, that man has some native psychological sense of being at home in the world? Our recognition of what we observe concerning the relation of the self to the world is of utmost significance. For if there is complete disparity and disjointedness, that is no effective relation at all. T h e n we have the conditions of insanity and no way of knowing anything beyond our own subjective inclosure. But if the latter set of questions more closely suggests our relation with the world, then we can rather certainly say that man is an interpreter who lives in a world that lends itself to interpretation. And if man is an interpreter in an interpretable world, the implication is that in essence reality partakes of the nature of selfhood and not of an essence which is entirely foreign to it, as a cause-and-effect machine or an impersonal process of events and relations. In this connection something may be said as to the meaning of proof. We have a propensity as humans apparently for demonstration such as was possible in the old formalized structures of the geometric theorem. At the end of it

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we could write Q. E. D. and confidently rest assured that the matter was settled. T h e syllogism of Aristotle captured the confidence of the human race for centuries. T h e induction of Francis Bacon took hold centuries later as a welcome supplement to deductive logic. In our century, John Dewey has questioned both of these as being adequate, and attempted to give us in their place a logic which is a generalization on scientific method. But the question may be asked if any of these are proof. May there not be as legitimate a pattern of logic found in the relation between the human self and its world? May not proof be that which is tested by selfhood being in the fullest living and working relation with the world of not-self, rather than that which passes the test of the laws of deduction or induction, or a logic of symbols?. Such a logic has not been attempted as yet, but it might prove very enlightening. It might go beyond the classical arguments for the existence_of God in answering the almost equally classic arguments for the nonexistence of God. And it might more closely approximate the patterns of revelation, as found in religion, than the patterns of proof common to science. I would therefore say one final word in this section on knowledge theory, and it concerns the subject of openness to the possibility of revelation as having a place in the building of a philosophy of education. Education has been hindered in the past, and is not infrequently assailed today, by religious bigotry which can not avoid operating as a vested interest as it confronts the organized educational institution of society. At the same time, however, today we are as frequently bound in the thralldom of a loyalty to secularism which is just as much an impediment to truthseeking as is domination by religion. T r u e religion, I believe, is opposed to both of these tyrannies. It opposes

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totalitarianism in ideas regardless of whether the controlling authority is religious or secular. And it favors the kind of openness to investigation of which secularism at its best has been a champion. How can the truth be known unless we are willing to know it? Openness to the truth and willingness to know it, means among other things, openness to the possibility of revelation. And, if God is, He certainly must be able to reveal Himself. T h e critical question as to whether or not God has revealed Himself in history, and whether He continues to reveal Himself, is a further question which may be beyond the subject of my paper. In volume, it is certainly beyond the scope of it. I may say that for my answer to this consummately decisive question I turn to the Christian Faith. In final summation, let me sketch in retrospect what I have tried to do in this lecture. I made a beginning in suggesting a pattern for building a philosophy of education by considering the questions of educational aims and the role of the school in human society. I began at this point because I believe that in experience this is the subject with which most people begin to think somewhat seriously about education. I have argued that it is impossible to deal responsibly with the aims of education and the function of the school, unless theory of value is taken very seriously as the. necessary rootage for educational aims. In dealing with value theory, I have made the observation that value thinking necessarily involves conceptions of reality; and so I have led on to a brief discussion of representative world views. In addition to this succession of steps, I have proposed that an added and final step must be taken by any one who will be responsible in building a philosophy of education. T h i s added step is to address one's self to

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theory of knowledge and thereby determine how a world view is known to be true, on which a value theory can be based, and within the context of which educational aims can be soundly formulated. What this has amounted to, in my judgment, is a psychological approach to the task of building an educational philosophy. The structure can now be rephrased in logical form, as I close, in the following way. Epistemology, or knowledge theory is the decisive crux of philosophical thought because it examines the means by which we come by our alleged truths, and thereby helps us to test them. Metaphysics, or theory of reality, is the broad inclusive context within which we consciously or unconsciously do our work as educators. We are not being responsible educators if we hold unexamined world views and are not self-consciously critical of the views we hold. Furthermore, we can scarcely have a value theory which is of any merit unless we forthrightly recognize the metaphysical assumptions implicit in it and hold these beliefs critically. But we must have a value theory if in turn we are to embrace aims for education and a role for the school which will stand up against the ravages of time and the challenge of the uneducated of all levels and ages.