Humanistic Critique of Education. Группа авторов
although one would be as fair as possible in thus helping all positions to say their say, a mere cult of “fair play” would not be the reason. Rather, one hopes for ways whereby the various voices, in mutually correcting one another, will lead toward a position better than any one singly. That is, one does not merely want to outwit the opponent, or to study him, one wants to be affected by him, in some degree to incorporate him, to so act that his ways can help perfect one’s own—in brief, to learn from him.
This fourth principle of education is the most mature of the lot, and the one that would surely be aimed at, in an ideal world of civilized and sophisticated people. But for that very reason, it is very difficult to maintain, except in glimpses and at happy moments. What actually happens in education is that, to varying degrees, all four of these emphases fluctuantly prevail. And if each were signalized by a different light that came on when it happened to be the dominant educational motive in the classroom and went off, to be replaced by the glow of whatever light signalized the motive that next took over, doubtless during a typical session the four would be flashing on and off continually. And though the one signalizing the fourth rung would certainly wear out last, it would have its moments, too.
Though a linguistic approach to education could somewhat fit the needs of all four emphases (naturally being most cramped when used for rung one, which might be called the “Us über Alles” rung), it is not quite identical with any of them. Nor could we arrogate to it a rung still higher than the fourth. Rather, there is a sense in which, as we said regarding “free” subjects taught in the lowest rung, it would in principle deflect attention from any social philosophy. For social philosophies are partisan philosophies, and the study of man as symbol-using animal would deal with universal traits of the symbol-using species. (We shall later discuss reasons why such a principle cannot in all purity prevail.)
Thus, whether confronting a “conservative” philosophy or a progressive” one, we should set out dramatistically to analyze the structure of its statements, considered as symbolic acts. We’d ask what terministic devices are used here, how they combine, etc.
In this sense, a linguistic point of view would be not so much a step “up” or “down” as a step to one side. It offers a technique for stopping to analyze an exhortation precisely at the moment when the exhortation would otherwise set us to swinging violently. It confronts a practical use of language for rhetorical effect by a theoretical study of such usage.
A linguistic approach to human relations would probably be happiest with democracy, of all political systems, since democracy comes nearest to being the institutionalized equivalent of dialectical processes (with such hopes of maturing an opinion as we discussed in connection with the ideal dialogue of education at rung four). But Plato, greatest master of the dialogue form, has warned us that democracy is liable to degenerate into tyranny, owing to an unmanageable excess of liberty. And in practice, democratic states move toward a condition of partial tyranny to the extent that the channels of expression are not equally available to all factions in important public issues. Thus we see democracy being threatened by the rise of the enormous “policy-making” mass media that exert great rhetorical pressure upon their readers without at the same time teaching how to discount such devices; and nothing less than very thorough training in the discounting of rhetorical persuasiveness can make a citizenry truly free, so far as linguistic tests are concerned. But we can say that ideal democracy does allow all voices to participate in the dialogue of the state, and such ideal democracy is the nearest possible institutional equivalent to the linguistic ideal.
As for the question whether schools should be leaders or followers of social change, the linguistic approach confronts us with some paradoxes, which are due in part to the fact that the labels on social philosophies can rarely be accurate. For one can never be quite sure how a doctrine will perform, once it enters into combination with many other factors in life that are beyond its control, and even beyond its ken. We can always expect “unintended byproducts.” Think how many determined Marxists have been produced by anti-Marxism, while Marxism has produced quite an army of determined ex-Marxists. And sometimes an unreasonable teacher in a grade school can serve as an object-lesson more effective than precepts for teaching students how not to be unreasonable. Nothing is more unforeseeable than the fate of a doctrine at the hands of its disciples.
There is a sense in which the study of man as symbol-using animal can be tied to as many different local faiths as can the view that there is or is not a personal God. The analysis of language quickly teaches us the importance of combinations. A thinker can start with an unpromising term but can surround it with good ones, while another person can start with an excellent term and surround it very dismally indeed.
But secondarily, a linguistic approach involves us in a social philosophy because of its accidental relation to certain social forces that may happen to favor or hinder it. It must be secular, for instance; for though it is not antagonistic to religious doctrine, it must approach such doctrine formally (“morphologically”) rather than as doctrinally true or false. Accordingly, churchmen themselves can admit of such a formal approach, and often have done so; but where they would not do so, the linguistic approach would find itself accidentally allied with a secular “social philosophy.” Or, if pressure groups who are so minded and can exert sufficient influence objected to the stress upon linguistic sophistication, then “dramatism” would find itself allied with a liberal social philosophy, even in a militant sense. And, of course, the position is uncompromisingly liberal in the sense that its first principle must be the systematic distrust of any social certainties as now set (our position here necessarily reaffirms the Deweyite prizing of the experimental attitude, backed by experimental method).
Naturally, we identify such a program with both patriotism and international co-operation. It should be an aid to patriotism by helping to make demagoguery more difficult and by fostering an attitude that would make international co-operation easier. It would sharpen our sense of the fact that all men, as symbol-users, are of the same substance, in contrast with naïve views that in effect think of aliens as of a different substance. Dramatism thus, by its very nature, implies respect for the individual. Again, we should recognize that our stress upon the major importance of the negative may seem “reactionary” to some Liberals, particuIar1y those who have striven valiantly to find ways of “not saying no” to children.
Perhaps we might best indicate the nature of our social philosophy by referring to the kind of “linguistic exercising” that we think wholly in keeping with the spirit of this project:
If one should read in a newspaper some “factual” story that obviously produced a pronounced attitude for or against something, while reading it one would try to imagine how the same material might have been presented so as to produce other attitudes, It is not, thus, a matter of deciding about the “factual accuracy” of the story, a matter about which in most cases you will not be equipped to make a decision. You will permit yourself speculatively a wider range of freedom as regards its stylization. That is, you counteract “slanting,” not by trying to decide whether the reporter is honest or a liar, or even whether he is fair or unfair, but by leaving unquestioned the facts as given and merely trying to imagine different ways of presenting them, or by trying to imagine possible strategic omissions.
Or, were the earlier pedagogic practice of debating brought back into favor, each participant would be required, not to uphold just one position but to write two debates, upholding first one position and then the other. Then, beyond this, would be a third piece, designed to be a formal transcending of the whole issue, by analyzing the sheerly verbal maneuvers involved in the placing and discussing of the issue. Such a third step would not in any sense “solve” the issue, not even in the reasonable, sociological sense of discovering that, “to an extent, both sides are right.” Nor would we advise such procedures merely as training in the art of verbal combat. For though such experience could be applied thus pragmatically, the ultimate value in such verbal exercising would be its contribution toward the “suffering” of an attitude that pointed toward a distrustful admiration of all symbolism, and toward the attempt systematically to question the many symbolically-stimulated goads that are now accepted too often without question.
Or a student might write an essay analyzing the modes of utterance in two previous essays he had written, one of which traced man’s progress