【杜威诞辰150年之际经典重读】儿童与课程（英文原版）

1902 THE CHILD AND CURRICULUM by John Dewey "THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS The R. W.B.Jackson I Library OISE LIBRARY THE ONTARiO INSTITUTE FOR STUD'E CATION TORONTO C A DA V / " D5I1 AUG 9 1356 * THE CHILD AND THE CURRICULUM by John Dewey THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS CHICAGO & LONDON THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS, CHICAGO & LONDON The University of Toronto Press, Toronto 5, Canada Copyright 1902 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. Published 1902. Twenty-eighth Impression 1966 Printed in the United States of America THE CHILD AND THE CURRICULUM THE CHILD AND THE CURRICULUM The Child and the Curriculum Profound differences in theory are never gratuitous or invented. They grow out of conflicting elements in a genuine problem a problem which is genuine just because the elements, taken as they stand, are conflicting.jAny significant problem involves con ditions that for the moment contradict each other. Solution comes only by getting away from the meaning of terms that is already fixed upon and coming to see the conditions from an- The Child and the Curriculum other point of view, and hence in a fresh light. But this recon struction means travail of thought. Easier than thinking with sur render of already formed ideas and detachment from facts already learned is just to stick by what is already said, looking about for something with which to buttress it against attack. Thus sects arise: schools of opinion. Each selects that set of conditions that appeals to it; and then erects them into a com plete and independent truth, instead of treating them as a factor in a problem, needing adjustment. The fundamental factors in the educative process are an im mature, undeveloped being; and certain social aims, meanings, values incarnate in the matured experience of the adult. The educative process is the due interaction of these forces. Such a conception of each in relation to the other as facilitates com- pletest and freest interaction is the essence of educational theory. > But here comes the effort of thought. It is easier to see the conditions in their separateness, to insist upon one at the expense of the other, to make antagonists of them, than to discover a reality to which each belongs. The easy thing is to seize upon something in the nature of the child, or upon something in the developed consciousness of the adult, and insist upon that as the key to the whole problem. When this happens a really serious practical problem that of interaction is transformed into an unreal, and hence insoluble, theoretic problem. Instead of seeing The Child and the Curriculum the educative steadily and as a whole, we see conflicting terms. We get the case of the child vs. the curriculum; of the individual nature vs. social culture. Below all other divisions in pedagogic opinion lies this opposition. The child lives in a somewhat narrow world of personal con tacts. Things hardly come within his experience unless they touch, intimately and obviously, his own well-being, or that of his family and friends. His world is a world of persons with their personal interests, rather than a realm of facts and laws. Not truth, in the sense of conformity to external fact, but affection and sympathy, is its keynote. As against this, the course of study met in the school presents material stretching back indefinitely in time, and extending outward indefinitely into space. The child is taken out of his familiar physical environment, hardly more than a square mile or so in area, into the wide world yes, and even to the bounds of the solar system. His little span of personal memory and tradition is overlaid with the long centuries of the history of all peoples. Again, the child's life is an integral, a total one. He passes quickly and readily from one topic to another, as from one spot to another, but is not conscious of transition or break. There is no conscious isolation, hardly conscious distinction. The things that occupy him are held together by the unity of the personal and social interests which his life carries along. Whatever is 5 The Child and the Curriculum uppermost in his mind constitutes to him, for the time being, the whole universe. That universe is fluid and fluent; its contents dissolve and re-form with amazing rapidity. But, after all, it is the child's own world. It has the unity and completeness of his own life. He goes to school, and various studies divide and fractionize the world for him. Geography selects, it abstracts and analyzes one set of facts, and from one particular point of view. Arith metic is another division, grammar another department, and so on indefinitely. Again, in school each of these subjects is classified. Facts are torn away from their original place in experience and rearranged with reference to some general principle. Classification is not a matter of child experience; things do not come to the individual pigeonholed. The vital ties of affection, the connecting bonds of activity, hold together the variety of his personal experiences. The adult mind is so familiar with the notion of logically ordered facts that it does not recognize it cannot realize the amount of separating and reformulating which the facts of direct experience have to undergo before they can appear as a "study," or branch of learning. A principle, for the intellect, has had to be distin guished and defined; facts have had to be interpreted in relation to this principle, not as they are in themselves. They have had to be regathered about a new center which is wholly abstract and ideal. All this means a development of a special intellectual in- The Child and the Curriculum terest. It means ability to view facts impartially and objectively; that is, without reference to their place and meaning in one's own experience. It means capacity to analyze and to synthe size. It means highly matured intellectual habits and the com mand of a definite technique and apparatus of scientific inquiry. The studies as classified are the product, in a word, of the science of the ages, not of the experience of the child. These apparent deviations and differences between child and curriculum might be almost indefinitely widened. But we have here sufficiently fundamental divergences: first, the narrow but > personal world of the child against the impersonal but infinitely extended world of space and time; second, the unity, the single wholeheartedness of the child's life, and the specializations and divisions of the curriculum; third, an abstract principle of logical classification and arrangement, and the practical and emotional bonds of child life. From these elements of conflict grow up different educational sects. One school fixes its attention upon the importance of the subject-matter of the curriculum as compared with the contents of the child's own experience. It is as if they said: Is life petty, narrow, and crude? Then studies reveal the great, wide universe with all its fulness and complexity of meaning. Is the life of the child egoistic, self-centered, impulsive? Then in these studies is found an objective universe of truth, law, and order. Is his ex- The Child and the Curriculum perience confused, vague, uncertain, at the mercy of the mo ment's caprice and circumstance? Then studies introduce a world arranged on the basis of eternal and general truth; a world where all is measured and defined. Hence the moral: ignore and mini mize the child's individual peculiarities, whims, and experiences. They are what we need to get away from. They are to be obscured or eliminated. As educators our work is precisely to substitute for these superficial and casual affairs stable and well-ordered realities; and these are found in studies and lessons. Subdivide each topic into studies; each study into lessons; each lesson into specific facts and formulae. Let the child proceed step by step to master each one of these separate parts, and at last he will have covered the entire ground. The road which looks so long when viewed in its entirety is easily traveled, considered as a series of particular steps. Thus emphasis is put upon the logical subdivisions and consecutions of the subject-matter. Problems of instruction are problems of procuring texts giving logical parts and sequences, and of presenting these portions in class in a simi lar definite and graded way. Subject-matter furnishes the end, and it determines method. The child is simply the immature be ing who is to be matured; he is the superficial being who is to be deepened; his is narrow experience which is to be widened. It is his to receive, to accept. His part is fulfilled when he is ductile and docile. 8 The Child and the Curriculum J I Not so, says the other sect. The child is the starting-point, the * center, and the end. His development, his growth, is the ideal. It alone furnishes the standard. To the growth of the child all stud ies are subservient; they are instruments valued as they serve the needs of growth. Personality, character, is more than subject- matter. Not knowledge or information, but self-realization, is the goal. To possess all the world of knowledge and lose one's own self is as awful a fate in education as in religion. Moreover, sub ject-matter never can be got into the child from without. ^Learn ing is active. It involves reaching out of the mind. It involves organic assimilation starting from within. Literally, we must take our stand with the child and our departure from him. It is he and not the subject-matter which determines both quality and quantity of learning. The only significant method is the method of the mind as it reaches out and assimilates. Subject-matter is but spiritual' food, possible nutritive material. It cannot digest itself; it cannot of its own accord turn into bone and muscle and blood. The source of .j whatever is dead, mechanical, and formal in schools is found pre cisely in the subordination of the life and experience of the child to the curriculum. It is because of this that "study" has become a synonym for what is irksome, and a lesson identical with a taski. This fundamental opposition of child and curriculum set up by these two modes of doctrine can be duplicated in a series of The Child and the Curriculum other terms. "Discipline*' is the watchword of those who mag nify the course of study; "interest" that of those who blazon "The Child" upon their banner. The standpoint of the former is logical; that of the latter psychological. The first emphasizes the necessity of adequate training and scholarship on the part of the teacher; the latter that of need of sympathy with the child, and knowledge of his natural instincts. "Guidance and control" are the catchwords of one school; "freedom and initiative" of the other. Law is asserted here; spontaneity proclaimed there. The old, the conservation of what has been achieved in the pain and toil of the ages, is dear to the one; the new, change, progress, wins the affection of the other. Inertness and routine, chaos and an archism, are accusations bandied back and forth. Neglect of the sacred authority of duty is charged by one side, only to be met by counter-charges of suppression of individuality through tyranni cal despotism. Such oppositions are rarely carried to their logical conclusion. Common-sense recoils at the extreme character of these results. They are left to theorists, while common-sense vibrates back and forward in a maze of inconsistent compromise. The need of get ting theory and practical common-sense into closer connection suggests a return to our original thesis: that we have here condi tions which are necessarily related to each other in the educative process, since this is precisely one of interaction and adjustment. 10 The Child and the Curriculum What, then, is the problem? It is just to get rid of the preju dicial notion that there is some gap in kind (as distinct from degree) between the child's experience and the various forms of subject-matter that make up the course of study. From the side of the child, it is a question of seeing how his experience already contains within itself elements facts and truths of just the same sort as those entering into the formulated study; and, what is of more importance, of how it contains within itself the attitudes, the motives, and the interests which have operated in developing and organizing the subject-matter to the plane which it now oc cupies. From the side of the studies, it is a question of interpret ing them as outgrowths of forces operating in the child's life, and of discovering the steps that intervene between the child's pres ent experience and their richer maturity. ^ Abandon the notion of subject-matter as something fixed and ready-made in itself, outside the child's experience; cease think ing of the child's experience as also something hard and fast; see it as something fluent, embryonic, vital; and we realize that the child and the_oirriculum_are simply two limits which define a single process. Just as two points define a straight line, so the present standpoint of the child and the facts and truths of stud ies define instruction. It is continuous reconstruction, moving/ from the child's present experience out into that represented by the organized bodies of truth that we call studies. 11 The Child and the Curriculum On the face of it, the various studies, arithmetic, geography, language, botany, etc., are themselves experience they are that of the race. They embody the cumulative outcome of the efforts, the strivings, and the successes of the human race generation after generation. They present this, not as a mere accumulation, not as a miscellaneous heap of separate bits of experience, but in some organized and systematized way that is, as reflectively formu lated. Hence, the facts and truths that enter into the child's present experience, and those contained in the subject-matter of studies, are the initial and final terms of one reality. To oppose one to the other is to oppose the infancy and maturity of the same growing life; it is to set the moving tendency and the final result of the same process over against each other; it is to hold that the nature and the destiny of the child war with each other. If such be the case, the problem of the relation of the child and the curriculum presents itself in this guise: Of_ what use, ed ucationally speaking, is it to be able to see the end in the begin ning? How does it assist us in dealing with the early stages of growth to be able to anticipate its later phases? The studies, as we have agreed, represent the possibilities of development inher ent in the child's immediate crude experience. But, after all, they are not parts of that present and immediate life. Why, then, or how, make account of them? 12 The Child and the Curriculum Asking such a question suggests its own answer. To see the outcome is to know in what direction the present experience is moving, provided it move normally and soundly. The far-away point, which is of no significance to us simply as far away, be comes of huge importance the moment we take it as defining a present direction of movement. Taken in this way it is no remote and distant result to be achieved, but a guiding method in deal ing with the present. The systematized and defined experience of the adult mind, in other words, is of value to us in interpreting the child's life as it immediately shows itself, and in passing on to guidance or direction. Let us look for a moment at these two ideas: interpretation and guidance. The childXpresent experience is in no way self- explanatory. It is not final, but transitional. It is nothing com plete in itself, but just a sign or index of certain growth-tenden cies. As long as we confine our gaze to what the child here and now puts forth, we are confused and misled. We cannot read its meaning. Extreme depreciations of the child morally and intel lectually, and sentimental idealizations of him, have their root in a common fallacy. Both spring from taking stages of a growth or movement as something cut off and fixed. The first fails to see the promise contained in feelings and deeds which, taken by themselves, are uncompromising and repellent; the second fails to see that even the most pleasing and beautiful exhibitions are but 13 The Child and the Curriculum signs, and that they begin to spoil and rot the moment they are treated as achievements. What we need is something which will enable us to interpret, to appraise, the elements in the child's present puttings forth and fallings away, his exhibitions of power and weakness, in the light of some larger growth-process in which they have their place. Only in this way can we discriminate. If we isolate the child's present inclinations, purposes, and experiences from the place they occupy and the part they have to perform in a developing experience, all stand upon the same level; all alike are equally good and equally bad. But in the movement of life different ele ments stand upon different planes of value. Some of the child's deeds are symptoms of a waning tendency; they are survivals in functioning of an organ which has done its part and is passing out of vital use. To give positive attention to such qualities is to arrest development upon a lower level. It is systematically to maintain a rudimentary phase of growth. Other activities are signs of a culminating power and interest; to them applies the maxim of striking while the iron is hot. As regards them, it is perhaps a matter of now or never. Selected, utilized, emphasized, they may mark a turning-point for good in the child's whole ca reer; neglected, an opportunity goes, never to be recalled. Other acts and feelings are prophetic; they represent the dawning of flickering light that will shine steadily only in the far future. As 14 The Child and the Curriculum regards them there is little at present to do but give them fair and full chance, waiting for the future for definite direction. Just as, upon the whole, it was the weakness of the "old educa tion" that it made invidious comparisons between the immatu rity of the child and the maturity of the adult, regarding the for mer as something to be got away from as soon as possible and as much as possible; so it is the danger of the "new education" that it regard the child's present powers and interests as something finally significant in themselves. In truth, his learnings and achievements are fluid and moving. They change from day to day and from hour to hour. It will do harm if child-study leave in the popular mind the impression that a child of a given age has a positive equipment of purposes and interests to be cultivated just as they stand. In terests in reality are but attitudes toward possible experiences; ^^ they are not achievements; their worth is in the leverage they af ford, not in the accomplishment they represent. To take the phe- .nomena presented at a given age as in any way self-explanatory or self-contained is inevitably to result in indulgence and spoiling, j Any power, whether of child or adult, is indulged when it is takea ' on its given and present level in consciousness. Its genuine mean- >, ing is in the propulsion it affords toward a higher level. It is just something to do with. Appealing to the interest upon the present plane means excitation; it means playing with a power so as con- 15 The Child and the Curriculum tinually to stir it up without directing it toward definite achieve ment. Continuous initiation, continuous starting of activities that do not arrive, is, for all practical