JOSEPH J. SCHWAB SCIENCE, CURRICULUM, AND LIBERAL EDUCATION Selected Essays Edited by TAN WESTBURY and NEIL J. WILKOF The University of Chicago Press CHICAGO & LONDON WHE106 On Liberal Education and Science staff member would be un¢ for the students. And liber te a situation in which—in respect to one subj Jeast—each the same liberal training intended ining is infectious. Eros and Education: A Discussion of One Aspect of Discussion Discussion, by itself, does not constitute an education, Thsre are many things it cannot cannot teach the whole art of reading well. It cannot do much toward teaching a student to write with clarity and to the poi fact or the experience with concrete things whi dom must sooner of later include. Tt cannot substitute labor of organization and memory which underlies knowledge. Nor is it the place for the work of lonely creation which crowns knowledge if one is lucky. th others or with one’s ispensable to a good liberal education. For in tre last analy- also the experience of moving toward and possessing ur derstanding, and a liberal education is concerned with the arts and skills of under. in which discussion has specific understandings of is useful and dé they mark the successful traverse, originally by a scholar or a researcher and now by a student, of a pathway toward understanding, Tn cur. lum concerned primarily with specific understanding: of ‘specific objects, discussion as a device of instruction may be defended as a peculiarly powerful teaching instrument ww of the depth of under- iding and the greater degree of retention which chi Itis merely one of several usable T-or-worse which must be settled in terms of greater and lesser costliness. This chapter was previously publi ton 8 (1954): 54-71, ed in the Journal of General Educa106 On Liberal Education and Science Ina curriculum, however, which aims to impart intellectual arts and skills and habits and attitudes, as well as bodies of information, discus- iply efficient or powerful but indispensable, for the same reason that the act of swimming is indispensable to teaching that art and practice on the piano indispensable to learning that. Discussion is an engagement in and a practice of the activities of thought and com- ‘munication. The to evoke an image of large eyes behind horn-rimmed glasses, of arms too thin and voice too rich. Or, again, the eyes behind the lenses may be alertly malicious rather than innocent, and the mouth shaped to smile at the coarse antics of the human monkeys on the other side of the pale. There is truth in these fantasies. No greater injury has been done the intellectual than by some of his proponents, In the upper reaches of American education, some teachers have misconceived the intellectual as standing in contrariety to the physical and material and upon this misconception have built courses and coteries which encouraged in stu- dents already pi lated from realty contempt for the concrete, the impulsive, and the earthy. In the face of these and similar conse- quences, itis no wonder that some of us have grown uncompromisingly suspicious, if not of the intellect, at least of people who talk about it apart from other aspects of human kind. | Our suspicions are well founded. There are neither biological, psycho- In this view the “intellect and physical. Another view sets the intellectual apar' excluding the aesthetic and practical, and, in this form, intellectual is frequent enough in our Eros and Education 107 “anal- int, om the other. The con- istic effect seem 10 be tossed ‘These are, however, not the consequences of employment of the in- but @ corruption of it by education which arises when reason is ‘das opposed to other constituent ferentiation of the intellective, active, and aesthetic has its Philosophical analysis and as a heuristic ground for psycho- ical research, but it is a dangerous doctrine for the liber:l educator. leads to an incomplete curriculum wi ided only by the hopeful assertion that ll supply enough and to spare of the ‘The di femming from pcor observa~ ree-scale error of conception, arising logy and carrying over into logic, concerning the meaning and nn of genus and species and applied to the notion of man as ge- nerically animal and specifically rational. The error assumes that the generic and specific exist as separate, insulated, determinixg agencies in the organism, each having its appropriate effect on the finished prod- uct, but none upon each other. The specific is conceived as merely superimposed upon the generic. It is as if sodium chloride were con ceived as an inclosis a sodium atom has acted to produce some of fe stufl, and a chlorine atom the remainder, rather thé itself arising from the interaction and coexistence of At the least, zenus is to species as matter is to form: the specific is a modifier and modulator of the generic. An isosceles triangle is not triangle and isoszeles, but a figure whose triangularity is of a particular kind, Indeed, the relation- ship may go farther, to become one of mutual determina‘ion, In an adolescent gang not only d adolescence of its memers confer inginess” of the organization, but, con- nn modifies and specializes the attributes of adolescence in the persons so involved. As an educational doctrine, the isolationist error is exemplified by the dictum (sponsored by at least two educators of note) that “the aim of man should be to destroy the mammal within us." It is assumed that e mammal dead can leave the man alive—and better. The suggestion ific rationality has simply been stacked upon his ge- and that, so situated, each competes with the other for man’s time and energy. That either of these const of human behavior, It is108 On Liberal Edueation and Science may dispossess the other is assumed. That the existence of each is con~ tingent upon and coextensive with the other is not dreamed of. Yet this is the case. Man is no more rational and mammal than a snub nose is snub and nose, Snub is a modifier and modulator of nose. Reason is a ‘modifier and modulator of mammalarity. A snub nose is a special kind of nose. A man is a special kind of mammal, Snub noses do not provide passage for air in quite the same way as do other kinds of noses, and human females suckle their young with concomitants and consequences not found ther mammals, Man's actions and emotions are rife ‘with reasonings (some good, some bad with consequences of his actions and emoti Education cannot, therefore, separate off the intellectual from feeling and action, whether in the interest of the one or of the other. Training of the intellect must take place (“‘must” in the sense of “unavoidably") in a milieu of feelings and must express itself in actions, either symbolic or actual. We may employ the emotional and active factors existent in student and teacher as means for intensifying and facilitating the process jectual education—or ignore them and suffer at the least a loss of them as effective aids, and possibly an alienation which places them in active opposi One sees pre se the emotional and active are considered propensities toward action on the part of the student are attached to the extracurricular. The curriculum becomes a bore, an unpleasant di fa necessary evil, and, consequently, the recipient only of energies left over from the more compelling a ‘of campus life. Thereupon, wwe the teachers develop the legend of wayward youth wherein only the exceptional or the sick young person has inteliectual interest. By this ourselves from a view of our failure as teachers. The legend is a legend. Sub spe the young are poten- capable of a vast and omnivorous appetite for learning, for delib- crate as opposed to capricious action, and for aes experience. It is the legend, reflected to each generation of students by upperclassmen, by campus tradition, by the weary skepticism of some professors, and by cynical indulgences by clowns among the faculty, which the young, respectful of their elders, hear, accept as true, and try to realize, thus conferring upon the legend a semblance of re This is a reversible trend. The findings of modern psychiatry and psychology amply evidence the merely local and cultural determi of normal campus youth toward indifference or tual, ‘The same sciences join hands with older fi Eros and Education 109 us a sense of the nature of the person and of proclivity for pursuit of solutions to problems, of consequenti y, and of aesthetic enjoyment, And sense, the educator of ordinary se , reasonable matur- energy can reverse the trend, create the kind of social terest, and affection. Appetite, emotion, and reason, then, can be abstracted “rom one or means. Eros, the energy of wanting, is as much the energy soure pursuit of truth as i or power. Any means or method of education taps this energy source to the extent that the method is at all effective, and the best neans of education will be one which taps it most effectively. educational means must be measured against other Not only the means, however, but aso the ends involve the Eros. For the end includes not only knowledge geined but knowledge desired and knowledge sought. The outcome of sieeesfal eral curriculum is actively intelligent people. They like good pictures, 10d music, good movies. They find pleasure in planning ves and carrying out the planned action, They hanker to make, to create, whether the object is knowledge mastered, a°t appre- ciated, or actions patterned and directed. In short, @ curriculum is not complete which does not move the Eros, as well as the mind of the young, from where it is to where it might better be. Enquiry into the means of then seek answers ya. To what practice which fulfils these two con | means by which the Eros may be moved to more enduring objects. It is also to initiate and energize highly efficient process by which the student may learn to discr these enduring objects from others, to master the arts or s|110 On Liberal Education and Science necessary to their pursuit, and to digest the knowledge which bases these arts and skills, It is, in short, to initiate the climate in which lib- eral education can take place effectively. The usable object of the youthful Eros as so defined can be described ns of instruction, and certain char- its effects may be channeled toward the envisaged outcomes of the cut- riculum, ‘The central factor is establishment of a distinctly interpersonal rela- tion between the teacher and the members of a group of students, the effect of which, in the student, will be to evoke those propensities toward action which are conventionally known as liking and respect. It may be the rion of liking and respect moved appearance and manner appropriate to evo and to play the determined role so effe to the desired response. It is my impression, however, that the best teachers, and the majority of teachers, cannot rely on a merely con- scious and deliberate determination of manner and appearance, Rather, the manner and appearance which will evoke liking end respect in the student will arise only as the teacher does, in fact, respond to the per- sons before him. (It is the reciprocity of evocation and response which constitutes a genuine interpersonal relationship.) Ii, in the first moments of the first meeting of a new class, the teach- er’s gaze wanders first to one, then to another and another of the anonymous faces before him, those faces which are not readable yet as to promise and performance, and if, in this wandes pectic or three students answer his regard in a way which signals to him their curious awareness of him as a person, a start has been made. The per- son who is thus aware of me is a person of whom I become aware, The wandering movement of my eyes is stopped. They return to him or her. (From an anonymous sea of faces, from the mere collective, individu- ation has begun; “the class” is beginning to be “persons.”) The teacher thus answers the awareness he feels in the student; he examines more closely the person who has signaled interest in him. In reciprocity, this new inspection is no longer felt by the student as mere curious aware- Eros and Education 1 ‘ness, but as awareness of himself as a person. More, the student feels his own movement from item to in jorymity to per- appears in its most obvious guise as « hankering a deeper analysis, a regard for self, a desire for selfhood. To experience another's recognition of one's sel’ is to receive reassurance of that selfs s one more phase to the cycle which establis ies our inter- ionship. The grateful warmth in the student is felt by the teacher. And for this, he in turn is grateful. At that insiant, liking is bor. His gratitude is not for the self's assurance which comes from recognition, for he has not suffered from anonymity in these moments, (There is only one of him, whereas the students are muny.) Rather, he is grateful for that reassurance which atises from notice of usefulness, of needeciness. In a sense, he is grateful for the student’ gra the sign that he has been useful. ergo sum. have affected, It may be objected thi the cycle, liking and respect are that respect founded on the teacher's maturity and competence, and that maturity in the teacher disallows grateful response to an adolescent. One answer, 1 think, is that no man's self, however full his life, is ever so complete fon this last phase of that this species of assurance is no longer welcome, It is true that ma- is kind of assurance turity is partly measured by decreasing need for and increased emphasis on the maturity of him wi decrease of its welcome. (That is why, wi love can emerge more and more serviceat teacher for whom the aver the teacher is not being in the student but what is «dolese sense—what is growing up. It is the in the young—germinal maturit maturity of respond, And this should not be shameful to any man. Tris complex but nearly instantaneous transa place with every student, nor necessarily in the class. In fact, were it attempted with most students and al at on would f of the fact that the young are as much aware as adults that not everybody is as much a person as everybody else. The automatic assumption of pea-in-pod equality leads to the false-hearty,YOSEPR OR ie eee tio ad OScusad oF ene A Pel OF DISeUG Sod” 1M MS Cgdeg, CURAICULUM pry) D 12 On Liberal Education and Science Eros and Education prehension of the group as a whole. of to broody-hen behavior, which the student mn to the student of the teacher's awareness of the questionable usefulness of the proffered contribution. This response is not always easy, for it must take form does not reject the student along with his offer. It should not t him, in common justice, since he is not wholly aware of the ‘meaning of his action, and its origin is not malice but need. Tt mast not reject him, if the “erotic” aims of this phase of discussion are to be achieved, for a rebuff at this early stage will be interpreted as of a specific weakness in the teacher, a self-doubt conce as authority. iplest and most successive students respond by revealing one or another qualit viduality, it is to be honored in as the teacher fe ‘Thus a further level of individuati jot only are persons individuated from the amorphous ferent individual qualities, each is honored in its own way and degree. Respect arises out of liking when the teacher successfully traverses the straight road between the extremes suggested above. On one ex- treme he may be overanxious and overstate a wish to respond or in this case, respect cold, or perhaps to tion’ and response; cd, good studer After the earliest establishment of interpersonal relations, almost every student will engage in an active, personal test of the teacher's judgment, This can occur in a tremendous variety of ways, but the essence remains the sam ists of presenting for possible approval behavior which is false (i.e., manufactured), qualities which are irrel vant to the real business of the moment, or behavior designed to disrupt or impede the felt intention of the instructor, These are to be under- stood by the teacher as provocative. They are designed to seduce him, Pretended cagerness, fake interest, manufactured questions, tes! teacher's capacity to irrelevant or inapptop needs for warmth, for the young, for instance, he will respond despite the in tues shown. Ti who responds to the sexual attractiveness of a pretty girl ears a lively interest which is not liking ot respect but a measure of contempt. Or imagine a student who learns of a che interest in music, is himself an able musician, and in a discussion of a chemical problem manages to intrude the fact of his musical competence (eg, by using a far-fetched analogy). The teacher who responds to this provocation has also earned contempt—and, than has a mal as a powerful drive, difficult to cor ¢ normal student engage the range of behavior is levant bits of knowledge and irrelevant capacit stence upon intruding into the discussion expres opinion, and preference, and questions of meaning ot apy materials under discussion, which are tangential to the detectable main line of discussion, or beyond or beside the range of interest and co oatient waiting out of its iple return to the business in hand without communic expression or bodily poise of con- tempt, of impatience, or of patronizing patience. Or one can repeat ‘what the student has said and indicate its connection with an aspect of the problem other than the aspect under discussion, in a way wiich does not, blame him for its present irrelevance. (This mus briefly, however, since to spend much time upon suscumb to the student’s seduction.) Too, one can simply ask the student s per- mission to postpone c ce of thorou in the student’s subsequc igh success in meeting these small crises lies behavior: in the first place, he continues to success, as indicated by continuing and by prompt presentation of the teacher's promissory not or no success at all, as indicated by cont : may characterize one’s efforts with particular students. There is no general remedy for this situation. In some cases the stud satisfied by two or three further provocative tests met as the Such cases are not necessarily failures on the part of the teacher—in the sense that had he done otherwise, the outcome would have been cure. In any student body there are some individuals for whom =stab- lishment of @ working relation with what is to him an authority-figurem4 On Liberal Education and Science is.a task which rouses great anxiety. Such a young person cannot re- spond to this teacher, this class, this moment, for all these are bound up with past adults, past moments, and past relations, and his responses are to the unhappy mixture. Two possibilities exist for the improvement of such @ young person, One is psychotherapy in the strictest and mo: exclusive sense. For this task, the teacher is both incompetent and irre. sponsible. The other lies simply in the student's discovery and repeated rediscovery of profit, of pleasure, and of the absence of injury in rela- tionship with an adult. For this “therapy,” the good teacher is pre- eminently qualified and responsible. His role and respor relative to it is to be a good teacher and a just and responsible person, and these he is, or should be. By so being, he constitutes himself a curative experience. ion to provocative behavior, the characteristic quality of inappropriateness, there is another kind of testing action which form of an expressed eagerness to talk, to contribute to the ns of the earliest class meetings, or in some other way to attract rather than the teacher's capaci ‘To be recognized as awkward, to be caught apply his int ful for the young The young person's self is far from individual existence is not great. He doubts not only his competence to cope with the real world but even whether he, as independent of controlling parents and copied manners and mores, does in fact exist, To the extent that successful and accepted actions give him the kind of reassurance that permits to him a new unit of self-growth, to the same extent failure and nonacceptance incite regression or postponement of new growth. These conditions of his self appear to the young person in the guise of a need to be assured that attempts at doing and thinking will be accepted as attempts, as, and practices, and not as definitive measures of his powers or tions. ‘The young student has not often had that reassurance in the teaching situation, The common run of instructors at the college level aze un- aware of this condition of the young, or indifferent to its magnitude, and consequently hold the student to the kind of respons words, toward choices and decisions, which is appropriate to adults. A. surprising number of teachers go even further and employ instances of 2 Eros and Education 15 this nonresponsible condition of the young student as oceasions and Excise for a destructiveness toward the students efforts which wholly Sratuitous in its intensity. Occasional tructor will, through this Seeuctveness, reduce an entire ciass to silence in a mater ogee few Mowrt; id thereafter, of course, resent even more the students in iss to his aggression. Still other teachers, at the capone extreme, frustrate the young student's attempts st 1 by accepting any contri '. In view of these altogether too commor unset- many students feel compelled to discover the le. the group that one of the gre future participation may secur, The uncer ‘this early moment a response to Bi testing which is “wrong” for him may not again open his mouth reanigindet strong provocation of interest or welfare, The right" and charitable awareness of the rei which is conferred by the com The teacher must feel, or at tke least ipulses, part bravado, part appe Secure hesitancy, engendered by t mand must comprehend the form behavior arising from such a conflict of of empathy, the teacher's response is les likely to higher potential of teaching effectiveness for the group This empathy and the sensi uli which is likely to flow from bbe preserved. ly measured response to student stim- be replaced by a genecalized ‘ance of student offer iveness." The student iccepted.” He wants that the teacher must teach, se pretense that he is co.n ‘Spects what is unpretentiously able and competent. “Testing” behavior, then, is designed to estimate the teache for the student, his charity. Tm i teacher's strength. If any person hands of another, he must have ass his strength and competence. ThisOSS SSE “EEE in Liberal Education and Science Eros and Education Pacities of the teacher. The student learn: Drought, originally, to like th: 17 S to like them (through being Possessor) because they are good, to isceed. The later are done in the hope that ‘frst hope is betrayed, the stud setond hope is betrayed, if the provoca ‘he person betrayed will take his reveng. teacher-student relations wavering uncertainty whieh ls are peremptory judgment, issiveness, on the other, Pro- teacher past the first set of pit im past the second. If these ic teacher any device or means is cap; rd a good end is likel volved, Respect ripens as the prove liking and is satisfied. At the rate of ‘mally heterogeneous group of approximately tw planned cur is absence of spectacular external diver- sions (e.g, a Bame) will have completed phase in the establishment of dis the teacher has in his hands a potent trument for good influence or bad. As the next stage in the Eros aspect of discussion, he is now to use to evoke in students a drive to emt Test and a desire for his approbat convert liking and respect for his person into pleasure in practi What he is and does as a liberally educated person. This is to say ultimately, the student's Exos is disengaged from the person of the teacher and fastened upon th which make any man compl last state, is attached to the quali- ties and the capacities in their own right, and not as qualities and ea. the relationship ion offers us an analo; ain respect I conditions, a By 10 that of student and can guide our examination of ad- ind curriculum. By ordinary custom teacher which, | Ministration, ph118 On Liberal Education and Science end into sws he tach, ke he aes i sma se or program, assigns en @inguistorHe establishes the couse ofr ct Gerves, probes and examines. At best, therfore, hei obeyed when ts conveie, evaded with all the Ingenuity of whish he elie: Iesent i capable, isthe recipient of mastery instances of dis and pretense, At worst, he : astre of aera tad emotional elle Ie the ger oF Wit Holer at aproel in the form of pass or al, gh grade oF lo. He must be ced. Fr on ie ping pace he enderraune fe Continuation of his student satss—ither throu ter grade many an Eros and Education ego of superior capability, i is guaranteed as poss person, the child’s ego rot merely of its existence, bu capacity for increase. A second condition is required for emotional accessibility. There must be no demand upon the child other than participation, no insistence cn right methods or standards which would change the child’s view of its incom Pleteness from capacity for growth to mere incompetence, Thus the elder ego can function as bridge, taking the child by one hhand and the task of creation by the other. Since accessible model, its competence is not a threat to the chi a Promise of aid; and the task, which is really beyond the imriediate capabilities of the child alone, seems possible of achievement. Mea. while, the competence of the elder ego guarantees to the child the worth of the selected task. Thus the persuaded to stretch, to extend assured, is an emotional adolescent is dependent inte same 92 ts the chip dependent for emotional well-being on the approval of into being when a series of transactions between cbild and adult have their origin and direction given by a task in which they are jointly en- haut the tsk real tat iy embodies creation of someting others, the experience involved becomes the most capable, The feeling experienced can, be atomized into a sense of the smooth flow of muscle and movement, lements are required in the relat n of teacher an ; fusion is different). There is the young studen [certain potentialities to be developed; there must be'a teacher tudent as competent in the first place and as an ‘accessible model—in the second; there must be a task ‘whose end is admirable and whose difficulty is such as to challenge the f cepacity of the student and employ the competence of the teacier to y Such @ degree that his participation with the student in the work to be done will not be mistaken for patronizing or contemptuous bending of giant to pygmy, of adult to child, {The systematic difference between the “friend” re child and the analogous relation of teacher to studen Sonu. That “someting” growth ofthe peron; the Body translates this to consciousness ‘The experience comes as @ smooth flow of creative voli the makers, the object being made, and te a act comme one organic and unfolding whole. 2 oid of he earth capacity fot Eros. It is of iis growth of sl 4 tudent does not admit, however, to an inevi shness; consequently, he cannot accept mere the teacher as the eq contrary, if he is to part ida brid ‘The elder ego functions as a catalyst an ‘marshals the capabilities of the young ego. This catal from union in the elder ego of factual and emotional accssbiity as 84 model, Its factually ¢ mode it it owns powers possesable but not yt possessed by the child, It is emotionally accessible as a model if it has @ invited the child to be like itself. Because the evasion and pretense, with some pleasure in the tasks whic ac- {crue to him in the role of enforced recipient. Under such circumstances,120 On Liberal Education and Science to include the Eros.) the roles which are mere handicaps to the parent become much greater obstacles to the teacher. The roles of taskmaster and inguisitor, of giver and withholder of marks of progress and success, not only adulterate the quality of the experience of conjoint action to a desirable end but make ‘emotional growth is Jin the usual scho primarily in ‘calling the rol the examining function, and the vestiture of course-planning exclusively in the person of The first of these may apps nowhere else in the teachi set so definitely at tone of proceedings we and obedi- questionable whether entirely voluntary attendance at all ages or years in the college Program is the solution to this difficulty. Students com colleges at different mean ages and at even more vat dom is optimal. Several schemes are possible. Attendance may be re- guired in the freshman year, or the firs Performance in the second, and voluntary thereafter. It voluntary after that, In any event, be divorced from the teaching fu: be removed from the teacher. created by i ing function.) It arises because it puts the teacl student to participate in tasks wl ly, by an action which asserts {and independent quality of a student's two years, and made voluntary, thereafter. It may be required in the first year, made contingent on ight be re- quired in the first few weeks of each semester or quarter and made that the police function he and only he has set! for them, The only reason the student has for accepting the invitation Eros and Education 121 to articipate in the work ofthe course isthe reason of fore, the power : teacher by his offal po impressive sign of student tolerance ahd Perform as well as they do on tasks without reason, * ask This condition is most simply ameliorated of 8 corporate staff or committee which the students 10 be respons Part ofthe student tha uch a comics coos of his work has two desi I for the plannin, the fst place (ant most ime it what he is asked to do has of minds, by discussion, by B different opinions cf wi ture of the course front tasks imposed through the whit tures a divorce between the giver of tasks and doing of tasks sufficiently to permit the ‘eacher to * function without handicap from the former. Tt need not be argued, I suppose, that the common exami tem of the American school is, in general, a vicious one, ing work is of any co 0 the teacher. Phe work cannot, by the farthest sretch ofthe wend eg is done perforce under the iner, has been renoved in the teaching staff so combine thi difficulty Breat, Tt does not consist in the esta examining body, (Indeed, a wholly ind: in |, a wholly independent not desirable for many reasons.) It consis's rather122 On Liberal Education and Science before him, not as inquisitor but as the source of aid which is required for conjoint action toward the aims of the program. The quality of this change is further enhanced if the examining function is exercised through the corporate staff or committee by a technical assistant, the Examiner whose primary duty it is, but whose work is constantly checked as wel as planned in conjunction with the staf. Through these admit .—the removal of the police func~ tion and divorce of the teaching function from planning and examining —the teacher is freed from the roles which handicap his function as a teacher, It remains to discuss briefly the physical conditions of discus- sion, and the materials of the curriculum through whic tion of liking and respect can be teacher and student on a epitome of the teachi As trivial as the that the worn tradition of teaching as dictation is emb room structure and arrangement which virtually forbids students to see ‘one another and requires them to look as steadfastly at the teacher as a subject is required to eye a hypnotist. Chairs are arranged in serried ranks. The students gaze at teacher or at the backs of one another’ heads. To sneak a tum of the eye to right or left is to catch a glimpse of an evasive profile and to feel g jon to the authority at the front of the room. These are not the conditions under which casual conversation, much less serious discussion, can take place. face” communication is more than a metaphor. It is a des the conditions under which words and s subject in hand, whether science or politics or ‘made to carry a second meaning, the emotionally laden communication by which a person signals to another his interest in and attitude toward that other person. It is the condition under which as empty a salutation as “Hello” can carry to a communicant the full sense of the speaker’ good will, indifference, dislike, or resentment. Discussion, then, even to be discussion, much more to be affectively energized take place face to face. ‘The most obvious means of achieving of chairs in a rough oval. This resul ily protection and ego-security. The seated person exposed to the gaze of nakedness, which of others feels a peculiar sense of vulnerabi inhibits free exchange of thoughts and feeling. If, howeve bers of our potential group are placed around a table, the sense vulnerability and its consequent hesitancy disappear. to lie in the secrecy the table affords for movements of the hands, the body, and of the legs as means by which each person is able Eros and Education 123 express for and to hinseit responsive fing he i not prepared to Comuncat to his neighbors, Lats, when the group has conto know one another, and when'a mimiber of relationships bind mente of the group to oe anther, tis cautionary doves * no longer neces td eiscusion wil occur icely unde any cco communicants can see one another’ faces An vel th seating twenj-fve In comfort, seems to be the opimal arg and sal bls have ben ied, The ger tends‘ crete + se of great distance and of psye emotenss beta tho it the farthest points of the 7 Ar mates bles ae aaprepnne whee the number inthe classi smaller, ‘When css are larger thea tventy-fve, the table which ets twenty fv is sil appropriate. Chale paced back of those a the tube ae thea occupied by students who chaote them. They ate aot imprspely ee cluded from a sense of membership in the group by thelr soconerow position. On the contrary, this second row logical bay, a second than thei fellows can test out the they find most conforta posure I moving and important act ° lsractn ibe Cat reson eised te ro ing and rept for the teacher om the part othe tnd organization ofthe Eros. nis fist condition, the Ease thes oe fain, engender a ish forte tah potion, tion, the student is to discover, arises from his effective us power he posts upon tic wot it hand Ca i yao ak the eater nib cond stage eto aver hough ihe sen care hin is spcton he greater peas ihe pases St cnt work wih ahes, Adie cen she remembered experi earned and the organiz surmount the competi epare feeling toward peers he originally experiences124 On Liberal Education and Science in the presence of the liked and respected elder ego and to try the experience of conjoint work , the Eros is then take place, the possibility of the instructor toward an admirable goal must necessary that some parts of t of the curriculum be materials which offer as much chal instructor as they do to the instructed, for otherwise there nothing in which the teacher may genuinely participate; there will only be opportunity for condescension and consequent increase rather than decrease of the psychological distance between student and teacher. In the case of music appreciation, for example, some of the works em- ployed can be sh , or vulgar, but attention to these materials of sufficient stature problems or reports of researches which bear the stamp of authenticity and which are clearly seen by the student to pose to the teacher as wel as to him challenging problems of comprehension and understanding. tis precisely these conditions which discussion function is designed to fulfil. Discussion is, therefore, in one sense only systematization, a conscious and controlled development, of what tends to do and what he would want to do, had he function and a curriculum provided the necessary raw ion—problems to di, dignified occasions for deliberation on policy and action, and i occasions for apprehension of works of art. He wants something more for his students than the capacity to give back to him a report of what he himself has said, He wants them to possess a knowi- edge or a skill in the same way that he possesses it, as a part of his loved self. He does not want his teaching to be mete phonog- for a valued object. the fire he feel then, a great deal Discussion in its liberally educative function has in Eros and Education 125 »pkins on one end of a log, but it is a Mark Hopkins with something in his hand, a Mark Hopkins with something to impa:t other than his mere self. His controlled and conscious purpose is to liberate, Rot to captivate, the student. The log is not his home. Education can no more afford to separate the intellectual from the active and affective as objectives of the curriculum than it can to s rate them as means. The effect of a curriculum whose of the intel ind his actions are aimless. Rather, is one who, while he enjoys a “life of the minci,” Teads an active life in which zest and impulse restore, instead of ex. haust themselves by having aims given them by thought. Si educated man’s response to music and works of other arts is to evanescent nostalgias and maudlin feelings of power, Oceanic escape. Thanks to his mind, he appreciates the stead of depreciating it. Rather than reduce it to a mere springboard or occasion, he gives Power to affect through his knowledgeable eye and ear, the the ordered structure and meaningfulness ut in it in the first place. ‘matters, but intellectual as to quality. They which confer cogency upon situations and actions , OF humanistic, general and abs or particular and concrete. The liberal arts, however formulated, are to be understood as the best statement of our present knowledge of the human make, of the various means—some special to specific subject matters, some general—by which the under frees us from submission to impressions, beliefs, and impulse us critical and organizing power and del respect to ends as well as to means, then, the aim of a liberal is lestroy the mammal within us.” Tt is to Larness ig reins of reasonableness in order that w2 may the Eros, which the instructor moves to atta iation of discuss energizing of discussion and its attendanOn Liberal Education and Science ind throughout the weeks of work. But Eros fun the curriculum, not only as a means, but in its own right as w ‘education becomes liberal only if the Eros is moved from one successive object to another until it comes at last to the objects of the curriculum, If discussion is to achieve this purpose, it must do more than impart specifi . It must take cognizance of its intellectual must take action in respect to them together. The movement of Eros and the movement of the mind cannot take place separately, converging only at the end. In the person, the student, they interact and interpenetrate. They must be treated so in transactions with a person. They must be moved together. Consequently, the quality of effective discus: I reflect The qu every discussion, and every segment of discussion, will serve, (It is not practically possible, of course, that every query and every hour of discussion will serve equally three functions. It is enough if the three show a proper balance in the long run.) First, each query or discussion must serve as an elli- ‘ent means of arriving at a specific, intended understanding of some specified object of knowledge. This is the function of discussion which is most commonly understood. Second, each query or discussion must function as an instance of movement toward understanding. It must represent that kind of attack upon the problem at hand which would be found appropriate and proper, defensible as a part of the of the field in question, by a master of that field. We are tryi Part, not only knowledge, but a species of activity (“method,” if you Will) as well. We are concerned that the knowledge we impart be sound, We must be equally concerned that the activity be sound; and the ac. tivity which matters in the teaching of it is not the “method” we talk about but the method we actually employ in the sight of our students and persuade our students to employ. Third, each query or discussion ‘must function as a stimulus to the student to try the activ the activity which can eventuate in the It is this function which most obviously involves the Eros. The three functions of discussion may be restated as three criteria by Which the instructor may judge the efficacy of a proposed plan or query. He asks: (a) whether it is an efficient means of arriving at a specific, planned goal; (5) whether it is a defensible instance of movement to- ward that kind of understa in view of the bent and interests of his students, or three of them so to move, We may call these, for convenience, the substantive, the exem- platy, and the stimulative functions of discussion. Taken together, they of these, the teacher may locate the mean for himsel , tion, theory, or view which the instructor had in mind, It will be four, | theory, @ conception, view, or what-not which is to Eros and Education 127 represent the three conj ories of the aims of liberal education: knowledge, power, and affection, Xt is important not only that these three functions be served by the long run of discussion but also that they be served in a proper balance. ‘Yet the balanced functioning cannot be descri s from group to group, from instructor t ime in the course of discussion. or of scattered signals of achievement; and cert much of the exemplary, in order Tush toward the substantive whi 's anxiety motivates, i jons, whether about e criterion of exemplariness than to the substan- ive. Conversely, the teacher in whom sircumstance has created remoteness from the young needs to be mos i the problems of the stimulative With respect to the time factor also, the balance point is variable, For an average student group with a well-balanced teacher, for exam. le, the stimulative will exceed the other functions, and thw substantive in the course of discussicn. But soon fe exemplary must be introduced more and more until it the substantive and, later, the stimulative aspect of the situation. The mean or balance cannot, then, be given bo‘h a general and a precise formulation. The extremes, however, can; and in terms The tendency to plan a discussion as a dramatic dialogue with begin- iddle, and triumphant end epitomizes the tendency to bury the ive functions of discussion under its role as ‘means to a specified understanding. The end is reached in the a time, as a rule and the stunt seems to move to and grasp the concep- d, that at best the student moves from one carefi persists in the mind of the student. In fact, the goal can reached only if it be taken as a decidedly illiberal o128 On Liberal Education and Science authoritatively given rather than understood in terms of the argument, evidence, or usefulness which warrants it. For even if the elements of the dramatic dialogue are in fact exemplary of steps in the argument, deliberation, or treatment of evidence which warrants the end-point of not be understood as such nor, in fact, under- function simply as the stones which, having got fone across the creek, are forgotten. ‘The exclusively exemplary discussion is as seductive under some cumstances as the dramatic tendency is in others, but it is not a tempta- tion to which one is likely to succumb unawares. The consequences are too obviously an abandonment of discussion to pass unnoticed. The teacher assigns a reading. When the class reassembles, a brief period is given over to student questions, Then the teacher takes over. If the work is a scientific paper, he formulates the background of the problem, exhibits the les of attack, analyzes the evidence presented, and shows the cogency of the conclusions drawn. In dealing with tragedy or the novel, the teacher sets forth the details of character, plot, and scene, exposes their beautiful appropriateness to one another, and ex- hibits own person the aesthetic pleasure evoked by the artistry his sensitivity and analytic powers have detected and disclosed. Overemphasis on the exemplary function can occur in a different way. It may arise from the teacher’s mistaking himself for the curriculum. He may treat himself as the object to be taught. In the social sciences, for example, the teacher may make each class period a time for exhibition of himself as the Objective Social Scientist, superbly nonethnocentric, indeed with no center at all, sticking to The Facts, eschewing all mere Value-Judgments. Or he may prefer the role of Emancipated Soul, owing nothing to Class and Caste, or be the antithesis of the Assertive, Aggressive, and Competitive member of a Vertically Mobile Society. ‘The teacher who teaches himself is more than a joke. He points up the danger of pure Mark Hopkinsism, the educational theory which makes the “good” (ie., “fascinating”) teacher so much of an educa- tional principle that nothing else matters much. The danger of this view rests, not in the occasional exaggerated spectacle of the one-eyed lead- ing the blind, but in the fact that none of us is entirely two-eyed. No teacher constitutes in himself @ liberal education. That is why itis desir- able that we function as the agents of education, not as its subject matter. That is why, too, it is desirable that the content of the curricu- lum be the product of staffwork, arising out of debate and discussion, not of individual choice. That is also why it is desirable that the cur. riculum comprise, in part, materials not of our own making, What we Produce, or what is produced by our equivalents in other institutions, can reflect only what we are and what our times make prominent. A liberal curriculum needs more than that. More is needed for our own Eros and Education 129 continued education, for a check against presumption, and ns additional sources for our students, The recent textbook and the hgmegrown syila- bus are important, are practically indispensable, but are not sufficient. ‘What is wanted, in addition, is materials outside of and, if possible, beyond ourselves. Such materials act to check the tendency in us, the teachers, to mistake our own incomplete learning for eteraal wisdom. They enable the student to be not quite so blind to our ore-eyedness. In the case of overemphasis of the stimulative, there is a threefold mistaking of part for whole, The activity of Eros is mistaken for its organization and development. Powers of communicatior with the larger set of powers involved in the objectives of lixeral tion. And that amount of knowledge which can be drawn {rom limited experience is mistaken for enlightenment. By omission of the substantive funetion, only the students’ experience remains as a subject matter and as a ground of discussion. By omission of the exemplary, what little is available for subject matter is treated only by means of the limited terms and methods already familiar to the participants, The combined comission of both has as its consequence increase of a drig-addictive taste for talk itself. Discussion is corrupted into bull session. ‘The largely stimulative discussion becomes druglike in its fascination, but it reveals its hollowness after the fact. When one leaves it traditional bull session, reaction sets in. The sense of comradeship fades; disgust displaces one’s former sense of special competence and st:ength; able thought and apt expression are seen as self-display. The similar hollow- ness of the overstimulative discussion does not reveal itself as readily because of the disparate status of student and instructor. Tte instructor may know that he has not taught, for nothing new has been constructed by him with and for the students. But he can believe that :he students stand looking with new eyes: at experiences they had formerly taken with only a portion of their signification. He assures himself that his possessing no new thing is because he was the midwife only, The stu- dents had the baby. In part, of course, he is right. The organization ot reorganization of experience already possessed is an essential part of a liberal education. It is the way one weaves the web which binds past experience and new capacities for experience, by which new terms, new “frames of reference” are moved from the status of a mere equation to that of a formula (a flexible one) with which real ingredients may be compounded into meaningful experience. Itis the means by which, quite literally, theoretical knowledge may be realized. But its erlightenment is limited to the little knowledge and experience which the student al- ready possesses. It is a gross corruption of Dewey's “grovith is grow- ing.” ‘Omission of the exemplary and substantive components of discussion necessarily restrict discussion to the resources immediately accessible130 On Liberal Education and Science Eros and Education in the student group. Omission of a substantive component means re- striction of the content of discussion to what the student already knows. Omission of an exemplary component means that what will be done to and with the subject matter by way of understanding and evaluation is confined within the means already at the dis With regard to the Eros the exclusively st each student’s attention on himself: his knowledge, powers, and opin- ions. Consequently, the effect is to confirm complacent self-love as the proper condition of the Eros. imulative discus and desirable ends but becomes pos —reintegration of opinion and of experience—are distorted in charac- ter and consequence by jon from substantive and exemplary components. It tends to in the student the view that his par- ticular store of knowledge and his particular habits of thought are to nt. Even though opinio Jenged only in terms of their dissdonee hen nn ier mene (m8 Of thee disidence from other is rendered sophistical not only a privation of possible ly miseducative, Its very virtues tnd common knowledge i already « prevatng atte in our siege oie ae eeslzatin tat common oovlge nd common sen aco lon, of what was ence speci special sense is obscured, That common nosed eo be defended in their status quo rather enlarged and reordered, ‘on of what is currently special knowled ze and Since the prevailing climate i e discussion is one of de~ clenied. Rather, they ate placed in oppcsition, at peculiarly normative meaning in ach pa rragement his own and for attack upon the opinions, organi- zations, and treatments of others. In such a climate, errors of fact, of logic, or of principle discovered in one’s own position take on the character of weaknesses to be hidden from an enemy. Admission of them is equated to defeat. On the other side, devices of ad hominem 4 and confusion which succeed in obscuring a cogent an “opponent's” position take on the character of | da Knowledge as "good" scare ofp it of view, orosed (ed in any situation by the prevailing activ. ity and the prevailing sanctions of a group is put squarely in opposition lectual growth. Such growth, consisting of the assis of new knowledge and new principles and their reintegration into the body of opinion previously hel the polemical contest, | face. Second, orga of the Eros is diverted. ease in rhetorical and expressive skill as accrues from the | exercise is corrupted from its potential character as a means; ms differing and differing in the data the the problem. On s na rc a ay ions of the data relevant to the P0b- tience in the art of verbal warfare and tenets of eS Fonte132 On Liberal Education and Science toward grasp of the emphases and omissions which characterize each ” discussion would be brought to bear upon practice of the arts by which the terms, “frames,” and meth- ods employed in a given work are identified and their effect upon scope and Science and Civil Discourse The Uses of. Diversity tutions. The rewards, however, are great, Neither disdain of the specialist and glorification of common sense, on the one hand, nor enslavement of the layman by the unexamined authorit on the other, would come pote les act fhe ey eh Je enquiry end is fruts have come first describe what I ‘dot ; fecent years, T shal acter of enquiry. T sh f both character and role the liberal curriculum, Enquiry is partly const constructive, in the sense iples—must be invented or adapted by : ct mi gation can properly begi F# choice of some ps [0 be torn from context a P study, a complete and s. fn determinative conn: tween layman and specis other and was confident ciety in which he part his own role and value to the so- where common prob- the relation would tend that concept ons—prin- he investigator ia order to the complex of ind studied as if it were, for the rurpo: supporting whole, In fact, of cx Eros is firmly set on attachment to conjoint work with others toward, an admirable objective, there is a little-used classic term which dey scribes the temp mn, Tt is the contrary of “poler word “irenic.” Etymologict des of peace, who was sister to Prometheus. is made @ taken incomple eness and a would noeml alter and that the postion or relocly of sted oly nf ape ate of wha cisely boca or iavesizntion, isto some extent ar ‘Not only the wha bet the peace of sleep, of quietude, of the suppression of of strife because of the absence of life. Her peace is the peace of wo of activity, of doing and making made orderly and rewarding by aim, Her father, Zeus, is the god of moral law and order. Her moth Themis, is the goddess of the law and harmony of the physical univer Irene’s half-brother, Prometheus, is the giver to man of fire and of the arts, Irene, then, is the goddess of those activities of men which, ¢ i for knowledge and mastery of true of a1 eng has been made a ie increase as their goal mi