A history of social thought

by Emory S. Bogardus

Imitation, to Dr. Dewey, is a less useful term than many social psychologists believe. What objectively is a process of imitation is subjectively a process of like response to like stimuli. The term imitation does not explain; it simply describes—objectively. The fundamental fact that the sociological student needs to keep in mind is that “persons being alike in structure respond in the same way to like stimuli.”[XXV-5] This conception is similar to ideas that Professors Giddings and Cooley have elaborated. The societal significance of this interpretation can be stated best in terms of social control. The highest type of social control is that which plans for a common mental disposition, a common way of understanding objects, events, and acts, common sets of socially constructive stimuli.

Professor Dewey argues for a school life which fully connects theory and practice. While pragmatic, he emphasizes the necessity for a correct theory, but more particularly the combining of theory and practice—in the school life itself. In other words, anything which sets school life apart from actual life is a disutility; it is educationally harmful. Hence school life must include the actual occupations, nature study, and the like. It must relegate formal education to a secondary position. The moral atmosphere of the schoolroom must change from one primarily of discipline, even formal discipline, to one of co-operation.

School life, in other terms, is properly an embryonic community life. It is the business of the school to train each child into membership of a little community that is a counterpart of society at large, “saturating him with the spirit of service, and providing him with the instruments of effective self-direction.”[XXV-6] Professor Dewey would make the school a miniature society, fitting its members by their daily activities in the schools for normal membership in “a larger society which is worthy, lovely, and harmonious.”

The literature on educational sociology is growing rapidly. Within recent years several books on educational sociology have appeared. In the list of the authors of these works are the names of O’Shea, Snedden, Smith, King, Clow, Betts, Dutton, and others of equal importance.[XXV-7] Professor Walter R. Smith, for example, in applying sociological principles to educational work, contends that normal school graduates have been taught to look to psychology alone for the key to sound pedagogy, whereas sociology is perhaps an equally important key to effective teaching. Education is not entirely a matter of training the mind of the individual; it is also a process of acquainting the individual with the needs of society and of helping him to participate in improving the quality of societary life. Dr. Smith urges training not for citizenship, but training into citizenship.[XXV-8]

Inasmuch as men and women live and develop and work as members of groups, it is vital, according to Dr. Snedden, that children be taught as integral units of group life. It is sociology that must determine the aims of education.[XXV-9] By sociological standards it has been proved that existing curricula in the United States are excessively individualistic in aim as well as in method. Their purpose has been to encourage the individual to win against, rather than with, his fellows. Our curricula provide self-culture studies and self-development studies, but few social culture and social development studies. The former are indispensable, but if not properly balanced by the latter they are positively dangerous.

The responsibilities of individuals for collective thinking and acting have never been taught to any degree in the schools, and yet these responsibilities, not only in time of war, but increasingly so in time of peace, must be assumed widely, else democracy itself will collapse. By training pupils in the principles of individual success primarily, the schools have turned out a generation of persons who are unready to meet the new world problems that are at hand, and who are unable to promote “constructive programs making for international co-operation and friendliness.”[XXV-10]

Custom, not social needs, has too often controlled school curricula. The Anabasis and Caesar’s Commentaries, although splendid bits of literary composition, “are about as significant to the realities of a nineteenth or twentieth century as bows and arrows would be in modern warfare, or Roman galleys in the naval contests of tomorrow.”[XXV-11] The study of forgotten tongues and antiquated fragments of literature falls far short of training twentieth century youths for the conscious co-operative direction of the social forces of the future.

Vocational education is not all-sufficient. Youth must be taught to be socially and morally efficient—no less than physically and vocationally.[XXV-12] In addition to the current emphasis upon vocational education, attention must be given to a moral education in the schools that can produce in individuals the moral character required to meet the needs of a highly developed democracy.

Educational sociology has viewed with alarm certain recent tendencies in vocational guidance. It has supported heartily the plans for giving every child an occupational training and of enabling him to earn his own living. On the other hand, it has deplored the idea that a vocation or earning a living is an end in itself. It has insisted that the main reason for teaching a boy a trade is that the boy may have a larger opportunity for developing his personality and for serving society.

Likewise, educational sociology has often looked askance at scientific management, or the movement for educating all workingmen to the point of highest productive efficiency. Such a training has frequently produced a maximum increase in profits for those who have promoted it and a minimum of increase in wages for the workers, besides tending to turn the latter into mere machines, instead of into human leaders with increased capacities for enjoyment and spiritual service.