Teachers, Leaders, and Schools: Essays by John Dewey

The Psychological Aspect of the School Curriculum (1897)

The Psychological Aspect of the School Curriculum (1897) THERE IS A ROUGH AND ready way, in current pedagogical writing, of discriminating between the consideration of the curriculum or subject-matter of instruction and the method. The former is taken to be objective in character, determined by social and logical considerations without any particular reference to the nature of the individual. It is supposed that we can discuss and define geography, mathematics, language, etc., as studies of the school course, without having recourse to principles which flow from the psychology of the individual. The standpoint of method is taken when we have to reckon with the adaptation of this objective given material to the processes, interests, and powers of the individual. The study is there ready-made; method inquires how the facts and truths supplied may be most easily and fruitfully assimilated by the pupil. Taken as a convenient working distinction, no great harm is likely to arise from this parceling out of the two phases of instruction. When pressed, however , into a rigid principle, and made the basis for further inferences, or when regarded as a criterion by reference to which other educational questions may be decided, the view is open to grave objections. On the philosophic side it sets up a dualism which, to my own mind, is indefensible ; and which, from any point of view, is questionable. Moreover, many of the writers who hold this distinction on the practical or pedagogical side would certainly be the last to admit it if it were presented to them as a philosophic matter. This dualism is one between mental operation on one side, and intellectual content on the other—between mind and the material with which it operates; or, more technically, between subject and object in experience. The philosophic presupposition is that there is somehow a gap or chasm between First published in Educational Review 13 (April 1897): 356–69. 71 72 The School Curriculum the workings of the mind and the subject-matter upon which it works. In taking it for granted that the subject-matter may be selected, defined, and arranged without any reference to psychological consideration (that is, apart from the nature and mode of action of the individual), it is assumed that the facts and principles exist in an independent and external way, without organic relation to the methods and functions of mind. I do not see how those who refuse to accept this doctrine as good philosophy can possibly be content with the same doctrine when it presents itself in an educational garb. This dualism reduces the psychological factor in education to an empty gymnastic. It makes it a mere formal training of certain distinct powers called perception, memory, judgment, which are assumed to exist and operate by themselves, without organic reference to the subject-matter. I do not know that it has been pointed out that the view taken by Dr. Harris in the Report of the Committee of Fifteen regarding the comparative worthlessness of the psychological basis in fixing educational values is a necessary consequence of the dualism under discussion. If the subject-matter exists by itself on one side, then the mental processes have a like isolation on the other. The only way successfully to question this condemnation of the psychological standpoint is to deny that there is, as a matter of fact, any such separation between the subject-matter of experience and the mental operations involved in dealing with it. The doctrine, if logically carried out in practice, is even less attractive than upon the strictly theoretical side. The material, the stuff to be learned, is, from this point of view, inevitably something external, and therefore indifferent. There can be no native and intrinsic tendency of the mind toward it, nor can it have any essential quality which stimulates and calls out the mental powers. No wonder the upholders of this distinction are inclined to question the value of interest in instruction, and to throw all the emphasis upon the dead lift of effort. The externality of the material makes it more or less repulsive to the mind. The pupil, if left to himself, would, upon this assumption, necessarily engage himself upon something else. It requires a sheer effort of will power to carry the mind over from its own intrinsic workings and interests to this outside stuff.On the other side, the mental operation being assumed to go on without any intrinsic connection with the material, the question of method is...