Democracy+and+Education+Chapter+3

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 * Democracy and Education Chapter 3**


 * Summary: This section speaks of how natural impulses of young individuals does not always agree with the life customs in which they are born in. All young need to be guided or directed. There is a strong need for control, direction and guidance. Though all three of these things are capable of showing an individual the way, they each have slightly different connotations and intentions and to each an individual may have a different reaction.**


 * Key Passages:**


 * "...direction is both simultaneous and successive.... //Focusing and ordering are thus two aspects of direction, one spatial, the other temporal.// The first insures hitting the mark; the second keeps the balance required for further action." pg 22**


 * Pages 26-27 numbers 1 & 2:**

In general, the occasion for the more conscious acts of control should be limited to acts which are so instinctive or impulsive that the one performing them has no means of foreseeing their outcome. If a person cannot foresee the consequences of his act, and is not capable of understanding what he is told about its outcome by those with more experience, it is impossible for him to guide his act intelligently. In such a state, every act is alike to him. Whatever moves him does move him, and that is all there is to it. In some cases, it is well to permit him to experiment, and to discover the consequences for himself in order that he may act intelligently next time under similar circumstances. But some courses of action are too discommoding and obnoxious to others to allow of this course being pursued. Direct disapproval is now resorted to. Shaming, ridicule, disfavor, rebuke, and punishment are used. Or contrary tendencies in the child are appealed to to divert him from his troublesome line of behavior. His sensitiveness to approbation, his hope of winning favor by an agreeable act, are made use of to induce action in another direction."
 * 1.**" When others are not doing what we would like them to or are threatening disobedience, we are most conscious of the need of controlling them and of the influences by which they are controlled. In such cases, our control becomes most direct, and at this point we are most likely to make the mistakes just spoken of. We are even likely to take the influence of superior force for control, forgetting that while we may lead a horse to water we cannot make him drink; and that while we can shut a man up in a penitentiary we cannot make him penitent. In all such cases of immediate action upon others, we need to discriminate between physical results and moral results. A person may be in such a condition that forcible feeding or enforced confinement is necessary for his own good. A child may have to be snatched with roughness away from a fire so that he shall not be burnt. But no improvement of disposition, no educative effect, need follow. A harsh and commanding tone may be effectual in keeping a child away from the fire, and the same desirable physical effect will follow as if he had been snatched away. But there may be no more obedience of a moral sort in one case than in the other. A man can be prevented from breaking into other persons' houses by shutting him up, but shutting him up may not alter his disposition to commit burglary. When we confuse a physical with an educative result, we always lose the chance of enlisting the person's own participating disposition in getting the result desired, and thereby of developing within him an intrinsic and persisting direction in the right way.

This fact makes it necessary for us to examine in greater detail what is meant by the social environment. We are given to separating from each other the physical and social environments in which we live. The separation is responsible on one hand for an exaggeration of the moral importance of the more direct or personal modes of control of which we have been speaking; and on the other hand for an exaggeration, in current psychology and philosophy, of the //intellectual// possibilities of contact with a purely physical environment. There is not, in fact, any such thing as the direct influence of one human being on another apart from use of the physical environment as an intermediary. A smile, a frown, a rebuke, a word of warning or encouragement, all involve some physical change. Otherwise, the attitude of one would not get over to alter the attitude of another. Comparatively speaking, such modes of influence may be regarded as personal. The physical medium is reduced to a mere means of personal contact. In contrast with such direct modes of mutual influence, stand associations in common pursuits involving the use of things as means and as measures of results. Even if the mother never told her daughter to help her, or never rebuked her for not helping, the child would be subjected to direction in her activities by the mere fact that she was engaged, along with the parent, in the household life. Imitation, emulation, the need of working together, enforce control."
 * 2.** "These methods of control are so obvious (because so intentionally employed) that it would hardly be worth while to mention them if it were not that notice may now be taken, by way of contrast, of the other more important and permanent mode of control. This other method resides in the ways in which persons, with whom the immature being is associated, //use things//; the instrumentalities with which they accomplish their own ends. The very existence of the social medium in which an individual lives, moves, and has his being is the standing effective agency of directing his activity.


 * "In all such cases of immediate action upon others, we need to discriminate between physical results and moral reults.... When we confuse a physical with an educative result, we always lose the chance of enlisting the person's own participating disposition in getting the result desired, and thereby of developing within him an intrinsic and persisting direction in the right way." pages 26-27**


 * "The philosophyof learning has been unduly dominated by a false psychology. It is frequently stated that a person learns by merely having the qualities of things impressed upon his mind through the gateway of the senses....But as a matter of fact, it is the characteristic use to which the thing is put, because of its specific qualities, which supplies the meaning with which it is identified." pages 28-29**

page 33 and top of 34 bottom of 34 till first papragraph of 35

"The difference between an adjustment to a physical stimulus and a //mental act// is that the latter involves response to a thing in its //meaning//; the former does not. A noise may make me jump without my mind being implicated. When I hear a noise and run and get water and put out a blaze, I respond intelligently; the sound meant fire, and fire meant need of being extinguished. I bump into a stone, and kick it to one side purely physically. I put it to one side for fear some one will stumble upon it, intelligently; I respond to a meaning which the thing has. I am startled by a thunderclap whether I recognize it or not -- more likely, if I do not recognize it. But if I say, either out loud or to myself, that is thunder, I respond to the disturbance as a meaning."

"Intentional education signifies, as we have already seen, a specially selected environment, the selection being made on the basis of materials and method specifically promoting growth in the desired direction. Since language represents the physical conditions that have been subjected to the maximum transformation in the interests of social life-it is appropriate that language should play a large part compared with other appliances." page 38

"Why is it, in spite of the fact that teaching by pouring in, learning by a passive absorption, are universally condemned, that they are still so intrenched in practice? That education is not an affair of "telling" and being told, but an active and constructive process, is a principle almost as generally violated in practice as conceded in theory. Is not this deplorable situation due to the fact that the doctrine is itself merely told? It is preached; it is lectured; it is written about. But its enactment into practice requires that the school environment be equipped with agencies for doing, with tools and physical materials, to an extent rarely attained." page 38

"This common understanding of the means and ends of action is the essence of social control. It is indirect, or emotional and intellectual, not direct or personal. Moreover it is intrinsic to the disposition of the person, not external and coercive. To achieve this internal control through identity of interest and understanding is the business of education." pages 39-40


 * Important Terminology:**
 * Control - means only an emphatic form of direction of powers, and covers the regulation gained by an individual through his own efforts quite as much as that brought about when others take the lead.** **Control is an aggressive approach, in which resistance is often met and an individual's normal way of doing things could be negatively disturbed.**


 * Direction- a neutral approach in which a person can point an individual towards the right path, but does take any further involvement in their journey towards that path; i.e. you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink or you can lock up a criminal for burglarizing a home, but you can't erase their tendency to burglarize. Often, young will base their actions on the reactions of what others do and compromise/modify their action to make it fit in.**


 * Guidance- assisting through cooperation, the natural capacities of an individual.** **A parent cooking may guide a child through the process of using certain cooking tools or ask for the child's assistance while doing the chore, and the child picks up on the process and may take interest in the activity.**


 * Discussion Guiding Questions:**
 * Do you feel that the ideas defined are completely universal? Or do these situations cover most of the situations we find in life?**
 * Of guidance, direction and control, which approach do you think is best and why?**
 * Does the book portray any evidence of reversal of roles in teaching?(student teaches the teacher) If so, which of the three methods(control, guidances, or direction) would be used in this reversal of roles?**
 * Which of the three methods usually face the most resistance between the two parties?**
 * Do you think that most teachers utilize all three methods today?**
 * If you could only use one method listed, which one would you put the most value on and why?**