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<h2> Chapter Nineteen: Labor and Leisure </h2>
<h3> 1. The Origin of the Opposition. </h3>
<p>The isolation of aims and values which we have been considering leads to
opposition between them. Probably the most deep-seated antithesis which
has shown itself in educational history is that between education in
preparation for useful labor and education for a life of leisure. 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. And while it
might be found that some materials of instruction chiefly accomplished one
result and other subject matter the other, it would be evident that care
must be taken to secure as much overlapping as conditions permit; that is,
the education which had leisure more directly in view should indirectly
reinforce as much as possible the efficiency and the enjoyment of work,
while that aiming at the latter should produce habits of emotion and
intellect which would procure a worthy cultivation of leisure. These
general considerations are amply borne out by the historical development
of educational philosophy. The separation of liberal education from
professional and industrial education goes back to the time of the Greeks,
and was formulated expressly on the basis of a division of classes into
those who had to labor for a living and those who were relieved from this
necessity. The conception that liberal education, adapted to men in the
latter class, is intrinsically higher than the servile training given to
the latter class reflected the fact that one class was free and the other
servile in its social status. The latter class labored not only for its
own subsistence, but also for the means which enabled the superior class
to live without personally engaging in occupations taking almost all the
time and not of a nature to engage or reward intelligence.</p>
<p>That a certain amount of labor must be engaged in goes without saying.
Human beings have to live and it requires work to supply the resources of
life. Even if we insist that the interests connected with getting a living
are only material and hence intrinsically lower than those connected with
enjoyment of time released from labor, and even if it were admitted that
there is something engrossing and insubordinate in material interests
which leads them to strive to usurp the place belonging to the higher
ideal interests, this would not—barring the fact of socially divided
classes—lead to neglect of the kind of education which trains men
for the useful pursuits. It would rather lead to scrupulous care for them,
so that men were trained to be efficient in them and yet to keep them in
their place; education would see to it that we avoided the evil results
which flow from their being allowed to flourish in obscure purlieus of
neglect. Only when a division of these interests coincides with a division
of an inferior and a superior social class will preparation for useful
work be looked down upon with contempt as an unworthy thing: a fact which
prepares one for the conclusion that the rigid identification of work with
material interests, and leisure with ideal interests is itself a social
product. The educational formulations of the social situation made over
two thousand years ago have been so influential and give such a clear and
logical recognition of the implications of the division into laboring and
leisure classes, that they deserve especial note. According to them, man
occupies the highest place in the scheme of animate existence. In part, he
shares the constitution and functions of plants and animals—nutritive,
reproductive, motor or practical. The distinctively human function is
reason existing for the sake of beholding the spectacle of the universe.
Hence the truly human end is the fullest possible of this distinctive
human prerogative. The life of observation, meditation, cogitation, and
speculation pursued as an end in itself is the proper life of man. From
reason moreover proceeds the proper control of the lower elements of human
nature—the appetites and the active, motor, impulses. In themselves
greedy, insubordinate, lovers of excess, aiming only at their own satiety,
they observe moderation—the law of the mean—and serve
desirable ends as they are subjected to the rule of reason.</p>
<p>Such is the situation as an affair of theoretical psychology and as most
adequately stated by Aristotle. But this state of things is reflected in
the constitution of classes of men and hence in the organization of
society. Only in a comparatively small number is the function of reason
capable of operating as a law of life. In the mass of people, vegetative
and animal functions dominate. Their energy of intelligence is so feeble
and inconstant that it is constantly overpowered by bodily appetite and
passion. Such persons are not truly ends in themselves, for only reason
constitutes a final end. Like plants, animals and physical tools, they are
means, appliances, for the attaining of ends beyond themselves, although
unlike them they have enough intelligence to exercise a certain discretion
in the execution of the tasks committed to them. Thus by nature, and not
merely by social convention, there are those who are slaves—that is,
means for the ends of others. 1 The great body of artisans are in one
important respect worse off than even slaves. Like the latter they are
given up to the service of ends external to themselves; but since they do
not enjoy the intimate association with the free superior class
experienced by domestic slaves they remain on a lower plane of excellence.
Moreover, women are classed with slaves and craftsmen as factors among the
animate instrumentalities of production and reproduction of the means for
a free or rational life.</p>
<p>Individually and collectively there is a gulf between merely living and
living worthily. In order that one may live worthily he must first live,
and so with collective society. The time and energy spent upon mere life,
upon the gaining of subsistence, detracts from that available for
activities that have an inherent rational meaning; they also unfit for the
latter. Means are menial, the serviceable is servile. The true life is
possible only in the degree in which the physical necessities are had
without effort and without attention. Hence slaves, artisans, and women
are employed in furnishing the means of subsistence in order that others,
those adequately equipped with intelligence, may live the life of
leisurely concern with things intrinsically worth while.</p>
<p>To these two modes of occupation, with their distinction of servile and
free activities (or "arts") correspond two types of education: the base or
mechanical and the liberal or intellectual. Some persons are trained by
suitable practical exercises for capacity in doing things, for ability to
use the mechanical tools involved in turning out physical commodities and
rendering personal service. This training is a mere matter of habituation
and technical skill; it operates through repetition and assiduity in
application, not through awakening and nurturing thought. Liberal
education aims to train intelligence for its proper office: to know. The
less this knowledge has to do with practical affairs, with making or
producing, the more adequately it engages intelligence. So consistently
does Aristotle draw the line between menial and liberal education that he
puts what are now called the "fine" arts, music, painting, sculpture, in
the same class with menial arts so far as their practice is concerned.
They involve physical agencies, assiduity of practice, and external
results. In discussing, for example, education in music he raises the
question how far the young should be practiced in the playing of
instruments. His answer is that such practice and proficiency may be
tolerated as conduce to appreciation; that is, to understanding and
enjoyment of music when played by slaves or professionals. When
professional power is aimed at, music sinks from the liberal to the
professional level. One might then as well teach cooking, says Aristotle.
Even a liberal concern with the works of fine art depends upon the
existence of a hireling class of practitioners who have subordinated the
development of their own personality to attaining skill in mechanical
execution. The higher the activity the more purely mental is it; the less
does it have to do with physical things or with the body. The more purely
mental it is, the more independent or self-sufficing is it.</p>
<p>These last words remind us that Aristotle again makes a distinction of
superior and inferior even within those living the life of reason. For
there is a distinction in ends and in free action, according as one's life
is merely accompanied by reason or as it makes reason its own medium. That
is to say, the free citizen who devotes himself to the public life of his
community, sharing in the management of its affairs and winning personal
honor and distinction, lives a life accompanied by reason. But the
thinker, the man who devotes himself to scientific inquiry and philosophic
speculation, works, so to speak, in reason, not simply by *. Even the
activity of the citizen in his civic relations, in other words, retains
some of the taint of practice, of external or merely instrumental doing.
This infection is shown by the fact that civic activity and civic
excellence need the help of others; one cannot engage in public life all
by himself. But all needs, all desires imply, in the philosophy of
Aristotle, a material factor; they involve lack, privation; they are
dependent upon something beyond themselves for completion. A purely
intellectual life, however, one carries on by himself, in himself; such
assistance as he may derive from others is accidental, rather than
intrinsic. In knowing, in the life of theory, reason finds its own full
manifestation; knowing for the sake of knowing irrespective of any
application is alone independent, or self-sufficing. Hence only the
education that makes for power to know as an end in itself, without
reference to the practice of even civic duties, is truly liberal or free.
2. The Present Situation. If the Aristotelian conception represented just
Aristotle's personal view, it would be a more or less interesting
historical curiosity. It could be dismissed as an illustration of the lack
of sympathy or the amount of academic pedantry which may coexist with
extraordinary intellectual gifts. But Aristotle simply described without
confusion and without that insincerity always attendant upon mental
confusion, the life that was before him. That the actual social situation
has greatly changed since his day there is no need to say. But in spite of
these changes, in spite of the abolition of legal serfdom, and the spread
of democracy, with the extension of science and of general education (in
books, newspapers, travel, and general intercourse as well as in schools),
there remains enough of a cleavage of society into a learned and an
unlearned class, a leisure and a laboring class, to make his point of view
a most enlightening one from which to criticize the separation between
culture and utility in present education. Behind the intellectual and
abstract distinction as it figures in pedagogical discussion, there looms
a social distinction between those whose pursuits involve a minimum of
self-directive thought and aesthetic appreciation, and those who are
concerned more directly with things of the intelligence and with the
control of the activities of others.</p>
<p>Aristotle was certainly permanently right when he said that "any
occupation or art or study deserves to be called mechanical if it renders
the body or soul or intellect of free persons unfit for the exercise and
practice of excellence." The force of the statement is almost infinitely
increased when we hold, as we nominally do at present, that all persons,
instead of a comparatively few, are free. For when the mass of men and all
women were regarded as unfree by the very nature of their bodies and
minds, there was neither intellectual confusion nor moral hypocrisy in
giving them only the training which fitted them for mechanical skill,
irrespective of its ulterior effect upon their capacity to share in a
worthy life. He was permanently right also when he went on to say that
"all mercenary employments as well as those which degrade the condition of
the body are mechanical, since they deprive the intellect of leisure and
dignity,"—permanently right, that is, if gainful pursuits as matter
of fact deprive the intellect of the conditions of its exercise and so of
its dignity. If his statements are false, it is because they identify a
phase of social custom with a natural necessity. But a different view of
the relations of mind and matter, mind and body, intelligence and social
service, is better than Aristotle's conception only if it helps render the
old idea obsolete in fact—in the actual conduct of life and
education. Aristotle was permanently right in assuming the inferiority and
subordination of mere skill in performance and mere accumulation of
external products to understanding, sympathy of appreciation, and the free
play of ideas. If there was an error, it lay in assuming the necessary
separation of the two: in supposing that there is a natural divorce
between efficiency in producing commodities and rendering service, and
self-directive thought; between significant knowledge and practical
achievement. We hardly better matters if we just correct his theoretical
misapprehension, and tolerate the social state of affairs which generated
and sanctioned his conception. We lose rather than gain in change from
serfdom to free citizenship if the most prized result of the change is
simply an increase in the mechanical efficiency of the human tools of
production. So we lose rather than gain in coming to think of intelligence
as an organ of control of nature through action, if we are content that an
unintelligent, unfree state persists in those who engage directly in
turning nature to use, and leave the intelligence which controls to be the
exclusive possession of remote scientists and captains of industry. We are
in a position honestly to criticize the division of life into separate
functions and of society into separate classes only so far as we are free
from responsibility for perpetuating the educational practices which train
the many for pursuits involving mere skill in production, and the few for
a knowledge that is an ornament and a cultural embellishment. In short,
ability to transcend the Greek philosophy of life and education is not
secured by a mere shifting about of the theoretical symbols meaning free,
rational, and worthy. It is not secured by a change of sentiment regarding
the dignity of labor, and the superiority of a life of service to that of
an aloof self-sufficing independence. Important as these theoretical and
emotional changes are, their importance consists in their being turned to
account in the development of a truly democratic society, a society in
which all share in useful service and all enjoy a worthy leisure. It is
not a mere change in the concepts of culture—or a liberal mind—and
social service which requires an educational reorganization; but the
educational transformation is needed to give full and explicit effect to
the changes implied in social life. The increased political and economic
emancipation of the "masses" has shown itself in education; it has
effected the development of a common school system of education, public
and free. It has destroyed the idea that learning is properly a monopoly
of the few who are predestined by nature to govern social affairs. But the
revolution is still incomplete. The idea still prevails that a truly
cultural or liberal education cannot have anything in common, directly at
least, with industrial affairs, and that the education which is fit for
the masses must be a useful or practical education in a sense which
opposes useful and practical to nurture of appreciation and liberation of
thought. As a consequence, our actual system is an inconsistent mixture.
Certain studies and methods are retained on the supposition that they have
the sanction of peculiar liberality, the chief content of the term liberal
being uselessness for practical ends. This aspect is chiefly visible in
what is termed the higher education—that of the college and of
preparation for it. But is has filtered through into elementary education
and largely controls its processes and aims. But, on the other hand,
certain concessions have been made to the masses who must engage in
getting a livelihood and to the increased role of economic activities in
modern life. These concessions are exhibited in special schools and
courses for the professions, for engineering, for manual training and
commerce, in vocational and prevocational courses; and in the spirit in
which certain elementary subjects, like the three R's, are taught. The
result is a system in which both "cultural" and "utilitarian" subjects
exist in an inorganic composite where the former are not by dominant
purpose socially serviceable and the latter not liberative of imagination
or thinking power.</p>
<p>In the inherited situation, there is a curious intermingling, in even the
same study, of concession to usefulness and a survival of traits once
exclusively attributed to preparation for leisure. The "utility" element
is found in the motives assigned for the study, the "liberal" element in
methods of teaching. The outcome of the mixture is perhaps less
satisfactory than if either principle were adhered to in its purity. The
motive popularly assigned for making the studies of the first four or five
years consist almost entirely of reading, spelling, writing, and
arithmetic, is, for example, that ability to read, write, and figure
accurately is indispensable to getting ahead. These studies are treated as
mere instruments for entering upon a gainful employment or of later
progress in the pursuit of learning, according as pupils do not or do
remain in school. This attitude is reflected in the emphasis put upon
drill and practice for the sake of gaining automatic skill. If we turn to
Greek schooling, we find that from the earliest years the acquisition of
skill was subordinated as much as possible to acquisition of literary
content possessed of aesthetic and moral significance. Not getting a tool
for subsequent use but present subject matter was the emphasized thing.
Nevertheless the isolation of these studies from practical application,
their reduction to purely symbolic devices, represents a survival of the
idea of a liberal training divorced from utility. A thorough adoption of
the idea of utility would have led to instruction which tied up the
studies to situations in which they were directly needed and where they
were rendered immediately and not remotely helpful. It would be hard to
find a subject in the curriculum within which there are not found evil
results of a compromise between the two opposed ideals. Natural science is
recommended on the ground of its practical utility, but is taught as a
special accomplishment in removal from application. On the other hand,
music and literature are theoretically justified on the ground of their
culture value and are then taught with chief emphasis upon forming
technical modes of skill.</p>
<p>If we had less compromise and resulting confusion, if we analyzed more
carefully the respective meanings of culture and utility, we might find it
easier to construct a course of study which should be useful and liberal
at the same time. Only superstition makes us believe that the two are
necessarily hostile so that a subject is illiberal because it is useful
and cultural because it is useless. It will generally be found that
instruction which, in aiming at utilitarian results, sacrifices the
development of imagination, the refining of taste and the deepening of
intellectual insight—surely cultural values—also in the same
degree renders what is learned limited in its use. Not that it makes it
wholly unavailable but that its applicability is restricted to routine
activities carried on under the supervision of others. Narrow modes of
skill cannot be made useful beyond themselves; any mode of skill which is
achieved with deepening of knowledge and perfecting of judgment is readily
put to use in new situations and is under personal control. It was not the
bare fact of social and economic utility which made certain activities
seem servile to the Greeks but the fact that the activities directly
connected with getting a livelihood were not, in their days, the
expression of a trained intelligence nor carried on because of a personal
appreciation of their meaning. So far as farming and the trades were
rule-of-thumb occupations and so far as they were engaged in for results
external to the minds of agricultural laborers and mechanics, they were
illiberal—but only so far. The intellectual and social context has
now changed. The elements in industry due to mere custom and routine have
become subordinate in most economic callings to elements derived from
scientific inquiry. The most important occupations of today represent and
depend upon applied mathematics, physics, and chemistry. The area of the
human world influenced by economic production and influencing consumption
has been so indefinitely widened that geographical and political
considerations of an almost infinitely wide scope enter in. It was natural
for Plato to deprecate the learning of geometry and arithmetic for
practical ends, because as matter of fact the practical uses to which they
were put were few, lacking in content and mostly mercenary in quality. But
as their social uses have increased and enlarged, their liberalizing or
"intellectual" value and their practical value approach the same limit.</p>
<p>Doubtless the factor which chiefly prevents our full recognition and
employment of this identification is the conditions under which so much
work is still carried on. The invention of machines has extended the
amount of leisure which is possible even while one is at work. It is a
commonplace that the mastery of skill in the form of established habits
frees the mind for a higher order of thinking. Something of the same kind
is true of the introduction of mechanically automatic operations in
industry. They may release the mind for thought upon other topics. But
when we confine the education of those who work with their hands to a few
years of schooling devoted for the most part to acquiring the use of
rudimentary symbols at the expense of training in science, literature, and
history, we fail to prepare the minds of workers to take advantage of this
opportunity. More fundamental is the fact that the great majority of
workers have no insight into the social aims of their pursuits and no
direct personal interest in them. The results actually achieved are not
the ends of their actions, but only of their employers. They do what they
do, not freely and intelligently, but for the sake of the wage earned. It
is this fact which makes the action illiberal, and which will make any
education designed simply to give skill in such undertakings illiberal and
immoral. The activity is not free because not freely participated in.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, there is already an opportunity for an education which,
keeping in mind the larger features of work, will reconcile liberal
nurture with training in social serviceableness, with ability to share
efficiently and happily in occupations which are productive. And such an
education will of itself tend to do away with the evils of the existing
economic situation. In the degree in which men have an active concern in
the ends that control their activity, their activity becomes free or
voluntary and loses its externally enforced and servile quality, even
though the physical aspect of behavior remain the same. In what is termed
politics, democratic social organization makes provision for this direct
participation in control: in the economic region, control remains external
and autocratic. Hence the split between inner mental action and outer
physical action of which the traditional distinction between the liberal
and the utilitarian is the reflex. An education which should unify the
disposition of the members of society would do much to unify society
itself.</p>
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<h2> Summary. Of the segregations of educational values discussed in the </h2>
<p>last chapter, that between culture and utility is probably the most
fundamental. While the distinction is often thought to be intrinsic and
absolute, it is really historical and social. It originated, so far as
conscious formulation is concerned, in Greece, and was based upon the fact
that the truly human life was lived only by a few who subsisted upon the
results of the labor of others. This fact affected the psychological
doctrine of the relation of intelligence and desire, theory and practice.
It was embodied in a political theory of a permanent division of human
beings into those capable of a life of reason and hence having their own
ends, and those capable only of desire and work, and needing to have their
ends provided by others. The two distinctions, psychological and
political, translated into educational terms, effected a division between
a liberal education, having to do with the self-sufficing life of leisure
devoted to knowing for its own sake, and a useful, practical training for
mechanical occupations, devoid of intellectual and aesthetic content.
While the present situation is radically diverse in theory and much
changed in fact, the factors of the older historic situation still persist
sufficiently to maintain the educational distinction, along with
compromises which often reduce the efficacy of the educational measures.
The problem of education in a democratic society is to do away with the
dualism and to construct a course of studies which makes thought a guide
of free practice for all and which makes leisure a reward of accepting
responsibility for service, rather than a state of exemption from it.</p>
<p>1 Aristotle does not hold that the class of actual slaves and of natural
slaves necessarily coincide.</p>
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