A persistent dichotomy: Education for utility versus education for virtue

“ You are spending argument to no purpose. Indulge yourselves in the licence of supposing that to be true which is not, and as well may you suppose that proposition itself to be true, which you wish to prove, as that other whereby you hope to prove it.' Thus continued I unsatisfying, and unsatisfied, till I learnt to see that utility was the test and measure of all virtue; of loyalty as much as any; and that the obligation to minister to general happiness, was an obligation paramount to and inclusive of every other. ”

“ The term virtue expresses the whole purpose of education. Virtue is the idea of inner freedom which has developed into an abiding actuality in an individual. Whence, as inner freedom is a relation between insight and volition, a double task is at once set before the teacher. It becomes his business to make actual each of these factors separately, in order that later a permanent relationship may result. ”

“ The bare terms 'useful labor' and 'leisure' confirm the statement already made that the segregation and conflict of values are not self-inclosed, but reflect a division within social life. Were the two functions of gaining a livelihood by work and enjoying in a cultivated way the opportunities of leisure, distributed equally among the different members of a community, it would not occur to any one that there was any conflict of educational agencies and aims involved. It would be self-evident that the question was how education could contribute most effectively to both. ”

“ It is comparatively easy to urge the addition of narrow vocational training for those who, so it is assumed, are to be the drawers of water and the hewers of wood in the existing economic régime, leaving intact the present bookish type of education for those fortunate enough not to have to engage in manual labor in the home, shop, or farm. ”

“ To spend, as we do yearly, larger and larger sums of money on the elementary education of our children, and then, in a large number of cases, to fail to reach the ends of securing either the social efficiency of the individual or the protection of society against the ignorance of its members, is surely, to say the least, unwise. Again, if we really set before us this aim of the social efficiency of the future individual, we must do something to carry on the education of the children of the poorer classes after the Elementary School stage has been passed. ”

“ Let them ask that the burden of culture studies be put where it belongs, that is, on the shoulders of those who are the sole beneficiaries; and that free popular education be made popular, that is, for all, and not for an elite of society. The public school system was called into existence to do one work, namely, to educate the masses: it was never intended to furnish a college education for the benefit of the rich men's sons at the expense of the poor. ”

“ To say that education is a social function, securing direction and development in the immature through their participation in the life of the group to which they belong, is to say in effect that education will vary with the quality of life which prevails in a group. Particularly is it true that a society which not only changes but which has the ideal of such change as will improve it, will have different standards and methods of education from one which aims simply at the perpetuation of its own customs. ”

“ The spirit of the new education is the spirit of service, the spirit of fair dealing, the spirit of growth for the individual and of advancement for society. Here are individual needs. There are aligned the social obligations and requirements of the age. In so far as it lies within the power of the school, the children who leave its doors shall have their needs supplied, and shall be equipped to play their part as virile, efficient citizens in a greater community. ”

“ With the needs of economic and social development as our compass, we will improve the structure of higher education, act faster to develop world-class universities and world-class disciplines, and support the central and western regions in building universities with character and of high quality. ”

“ The pressing problem of vocational training is not the problem of justification and defense, but of organization and extension.
The kind and number of vocational schools to be established must be settled partly by the economic return for special forms of vocational efficiency. In the long run the social need for efficiency in a trade or profession determines the legitimate rewards of success in that calling. The fact that people will pay well for medical skill is an indication of social need for it. ”

“ In accordance with the law it has established a group of vocational centers to offer systematic education and training in response to a set of urgent needs: to curb frequent terrorist incidents, to eradicate the breeding ground for religious extremism, to help trainees acquire a better education and vocational skills, find employment, and increase their incomes, and most of all, to safeguard social stability and long-term peace in Xinjiang. ”

“ Matters concerning vocational training, lecturing, technical training and technical qualification test to bring up and promote vocational Skills of the workers, and securing of the skilled manpower as required by the industry; Matters concerning employment security, such as the prevention of unemployment, promotion of employment, expansion of employment opportunities for workers, job creation by the employers, adjustments in employment and support for securing manpower ”

“ Eligible trainees who are willing to learn are offered training in more than one skill to ensure they are employable in the jobs market upon completing their study at the centers. The education and training centers combine course learning with practical training to improve the trainees’ operational skills. Practical training is conducted in classes rather than through employment in factories or enterprises, or obligatory labor. ”

“ Already trade schools, technical high schools and technical colleges are answering the demand for vocational training, and proving the existence of the need. Public opinion asks that woman be trained for her work. The one thing needful is that the school, as a public servant, shall come to recognize its true relation to this economic problem. ”

“ After adolescence many pupils lack incentive for an education that has no direct reference to a career. But the demand for vocational training is so overlaid and entangled with economic pressure that selection of candidates for vocational schooling on the ground of individual aptitude and free choice is visionary. While our social system permits comparative poverty to constrain the vast majority of young men and women to go to work at the earliest possible age, we must face the necessity of early specialization in training, whatever their capacity or need for further general culture. ”

“ Vocational training and vocational guidance are a little like intensive farming. They are obvious measures for obvious results; they economize effort; they keep their goal in view. If they “pander to cabbages,” they produce as many and as fine cabbages as [Pg 282] the soil they till can yield. Their exponents are most convincing when they are least imaginative. The Dean of Harvard’s Graduate School of Business Administration says bluntly that it is hard for a young man to see any good in a college education, when he finds he has nothing to offer which business men want. ”

“ Thus not only does the practice of thrift by the poor add to the amount of capital in existence, and thus indirectly increase the demand for labor, but it helps the poor directly and immediately.
Vocational education is of fundamental importance in decreasing the supply of unskilled labor. It renders higher wages economically justified by training individuals away from overcrowded and hence poorly paid jobs, and toward those positions in which men are scarce, and hence highly paid. ”

“ Since the first or major vocation is essential to the general welfare it must always be linked with the second or minor vocation. Therefore no work for woman can be urged or defended which tends to lessen her efficiency in her major occupation.
Yet at this point we neither think nor speak clearly. Vocational training for women would be less complex if their economic contribution as homemakers were fairly considered. A woman is said to “earn her living” only when she works outside her own home, receiving money for her work. ”

“ The college woman as well as her less favored sister must be trained, “not simply to be good, but to be good for something”, not simply to be wise, but to be fully and definitely prepared for service;—and this conception is perhaps the most important contribution of higher education to the advancement of vocational training. ”

“ That was where I caught the connection between a college education and business. I’ve always made it a rule to buy brains, and I’ve learned now that the better trained they are the faster they find reasons for getting their salaries raised. The fellow who hasn’t had the training may be just as [Pg 041] smart, but he’s apt to paw the air when he’s reaching for ideas. ”

“ If the well-spring of truth and love has run dry within himself, he teaches in vain. His words will no more bring forth life than desert winds will clothe arid sands with verdure. Much talking and writing about education have chiefly helped to obscure a matter which is really plain. The purpose of the public school is or should be not to form a mechanic or a specialist of any kind, but to form a true man or woman. Hence the number of things we teach the child is of small moment. Those schools, in fact, in which the greatest number of things are taught give, as a rule, the least education. ”

“ If the chief end of education is virtue; if conduct is three-fourths of life; if character is indispensable, while knowledge is only useful,—then it follows that religion—which, more than any other vital influence, has power to create virtue, to inspire conduct, and to mould character—should enter into all the processes of education. Our school system, then, does not rest upon a philosophic view of life and education. ”

“ Wisdom is a large and spacious thing. It needs plenty of free room. One must learn about things divine and human, the past and the future, the ephemeral and the eternal; and one must learn about Time. ”

“ As the means of making the nearest approach to this ideal, utility would enjoin, first, that laws and social arrangements should place the happiness, or (as speaking practically it may be called) the interest, of every individual, as nearly as possible in harmony with the interest of the whole; and secondly, that education and opinion, which have so vast a power over human character, should so use that power as to establish in the mind of every individual an indissoluble association between his own happiness and the good of the whole ”

“ The moral and the social quality of conduct are, in the last analysis, identical with each other. It is then but to restate explicitly the import of our earlier chapters regarding the social function of education to say that the measure of the worth of the administration, curriculum, and methods of instruction of the school is the extent to which they are animated by a social spirit. And the great danger which threatens school work is the absence of conditions which make possible a permeating social spirit; this is the great enemy of effective moral training. ”

“ Just because the studies of the curriculum represent standard factors in social life, they are organs of initiation into social values. As mere school studies, their acquisition has only a technical worth. Acquired under conditions where their social significance is realized, they feed moral interest and develop moral insight. ”

“ That is to say, public education exists in order to develop human power, and the kinds to be developed by a school are two: social power and personal power. The school must do the most it can to perfect every one of its pupils in the ability to play the largest part possible to him in the life of the community; it must help him, also, to make the most of himself. Of course these two ends of education intertwine; one can not make a boy a good citizen without making him, at the same time, a better man; neither can one make him a good man without producing, concurrently, a better citizen. ”

“ Instruction without religion, is like a ship without a compass. Ignorance is, indeed, a great evil; but of the two evils, it is even better, in some respects, for our children to remain ignorant, than to acquire mere worldly knowledge without any religious training; for without religion they grow up a burden to themselves, and a pest to society.
Human nature is prone to evil; and the rising passions, especially in youth, need religious influence to check them. There is a vast difference between teaching the child's head and forming his heart. ”

“ In education one cannot separate the utilitarian side,—the fitting of the child for the struggle of life,—from its main purpose,—the development of moral character. The moral aspect alone gives to human life its true character, its real value. As there is no morality without religion, the system of education that would debar this essential feature falls short of its full meaning. With this principle in view any fair-minded man will understand how true Christian parents demand a school where their children will receive religious education. ”

“ The man without religion is a slave of the most shameful passions. He tries to prove to the world that man is a brute, in order that he might have the gratification of leading the life of a brute. I ask you, what virtue can that man have who believes that whatever he desires is lawful, who designates the most shameful crimes by the refined name of innocent pleasures? What virtue can that man have who knows no other law than his passions; who believes that God regards with equal eye truth and falsehood, vice and virtue? ”

“ It must be the aim of the rational schools to show the children that there will be tyranny and slavery as long as one man depends upon another, to study the causes of the prevailing ignorance, to learn the origin of all the traditional practices which give life to the existing social system, and to direct the attention of the pupils to these matters. ”

“ One word will suffice to characterise it—Violence. The school dominates the children physically, morally, and intellectually, in order to control the development of their faculties in the way desired, and deprives them of contact with nature in order to modify them as required. This is the explanation of the failure; the eagerness of the ruling class to control education and the bankruptcy of the hopes of reformers. “Education” means in practice domination or domestication. I do not imagine that these systems have been put together with the deliberate aim of securing the desired results. ”

“ The social and educational need for vocational training is equally urgent. Widespread vocational training will democratize the education of the country: (1) by recognizing different tastes and abilities, and by giving an equal opportunity to all to prepare for their lifework; (2) by extending education through part-time and evening instruction to those who are at work in the shop or on the farm. ”

“ Perhaps the seeds of false refinement, immorality, and vanity have ever been shed by the great. Weak, artificial beings raised above the common wants and affections of their race, in a premature unnatural manner, undermine the very foundation of virtue, and spread corruption through the whole mass of society! As a class of mankind they have the strongest claim to pity! the education of the rich tends to render them vain and helpless, and the unfolding mind is not strengthened by the practice of those duties which dignify the human character. ”

“ In the fourth place, the plan carries out throughout the school life the educational truth that learning can only come through doing. The habits and attitudes of careful scientific observation, or purposeful interesting activity which is neither work nor play, the social, democratic, and coöperative background which such a school cultivates, are exactly the qualities we need for our younger generation in American society. ”

“ The growth of the child in the direction of social capacity and service, his larger and more vital union with life, becomes the unifying aim; and discipline, culture and information fall into place as phases of this growth.
I wish to say one word more about the relationship of our particular school to the University. The problem is to unify, to organize education, to bring all its various factors together, through putting it as a whole into organic union with everyday life. ”

“ It forgets that the only true test of knowledge gained lies in the pupil's ability to use it intelligently in the furtherance of some purpose—and of some social purpose, and that the ultimate test of a system of education is the kind of social individual it turns out. If our educational system turns out boys and girls who in after-life become efficient workers, efficient citizens, and men and women who have learned how to use their leisure rightly, then it has fulfilled its function. ”

“ We want an even more intimate union here, so that the University shall put all its resources at the disposition of the elementary school, contributing to the evolution of valuable subject-matter and right method, while the school in turn will be a laboratory in which the student of education sees theories and ideas demonstrated, tested, criticised, enforced, and the evolution of new truths. ”

“ The man is focusing all his mental powers upon the problem of how he shall procure food. The man’s problem is the boy’s problem and each has a right to a solution of his problem. The school’s business is to help the boy solve his problem and not to try to quench his 61desire for food or try to persuade him that no such desire exists. This desire is one of the native dispositions to which the work of the school is to attach itself. Desires are fundamental in the scheme of education, the very tentacles that will lay hold upon the school activities and render them effective. ”

“ Defend the assertion that the cost of ignorance in our country exceeds the cost of education. The total amount spent for public education in 1915 slightly exceeded $500,000,000. How do the typical recitations of your school contribute to the happiness of your pupils? Be specific. How may lack of thoroughness limit freedom? Illustrate. How may education give rise to self-reliance? Self-respect? Show that national and religious freedom depend upon education. ”

“ The social ideal of philosophy and ethics has little to do with the economic law of supply and demand, and much to do with the human law of need and fulfillment. To accomplish this end, to open to each soul the fullest life of which that soul is capable, is manifestly the social purpose of which education is the formal process. ”

“ It is a commonplace to say that education should not cease when one leaves school. The point of this commonplace is that the purpose of school education is to insure the continuance of education by organizing the powers that insure growth. The inclination to learn from life itself and to make the conditions of life such that all will learn in the process of living is the finest product of schooling.
When we abandon the attempt to define immaturity by means of fixed comparison with adult accomplishments, we are compelled to give up thinking of it as denoting lack of desired traits. ”

“ This View Dynamic.—In such an eclectic view of the aim of education, it is to be noted further that society may turn education to its own advancement. By providing that an individual may develop to his uttermost such good tendencies as he may possess, education not only allows the individual to make the most of his own higher nature, but also enables him to contribute something to the advancement, or elevation, of society itself. ”