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Summary. In the previous chapter we found that the primary
subject matter of knowing is that contained in learning how to do
things of a fairly direct sort. The educational equivalent of
this principle is the consistent use of simple occupations which
appeal to the powers of youth and which typify general modes of
social activity. Skill and information about materials, tools,
and laws of energy are acquired while activities are carried on
for their own sake. The fact that they are socially
representative gives a quality to the skill and knowledge gained
which makes them transferable to out-of-school situations.
It is important not to confuse the psychological distinction
between play and work with the economic distinction.
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Democracy and Education
157
Psychologically, the defining characteristic of play is not
amusement nor aimlessness. It is the fact that the aim is
thought of as more activity in the same line, without defining
continuity of action in reference to results produced.
Activities as they grow more complicated gain added meaning by
greater attention to specific results achieved. Thus they pass
gradually into work. Both are equally free and intrinsically
motivated, apart from false economic conditions which tend to
make play into idle excitement for the well to do, and work into
uncongenial labor for the poor. Work is psychologically simply
an activity which consciously includes regard for consequences as
a part of itself; it becomes constrained labor when the
consequences are outside of the activity as an end to which
activity is merely a means. Work which remains permeated with
the play attitude is art -- in quality if not in conventional
designation.
Chapter Sixteen: The Significance of Geography and History
1. Extension of Meaning of Primary Activities. Nothing is more
striking than the difference between an activity as merely
physical and the wealth of meanings which the same activity
may assume. From the outside, an astronomer gazing through a
telescope is like a small boy looking through the same tube. In
each case, there is an arrangement of glass and metal, an eye,
and a little speck of light in the distance. Yet at a critical
moment, the activity of an astronomer might be concerned with the
birth of a world, and have whatever is known about the starry
heavens as its significant content. Physically speaking, what
man has effected on this globe in his progress from savagery is a
mere scratch on its surface, not perceptible at a distance which
is slight in comparison with the reaches even of the solar
system. Yet in meaning what has been accomplished measures just
the difference of civilization from savagery. Although the
activities, physically viewed, have changed somewhat, this change
is slight in comparison with the development of the meanings
attaching to the activities. There is no limit to the meaning
which an action may come to possess. It all depends upon the
context of perceived connections in which it is placed; the reach
of imagination in realizing connections is inexhaustible.
The advantage which the activity of man has in appropriating and
finding meanings makes his education something else than the
manufacture of a tool or the training of an animal. The latter
increase efficiency; they do not develop significance. The final
educational importance of such occupations in play and work as
were considered in the last chapter is that they afford the most
direct instrumentalities for such extension of meaning. Set
going under adequate conditions they are magnets for gathering
and retaining an indefinitely wide scope of intellectual
considerations. They provide vital centers for the reception and
assimilation of information. When information is purveyed in
chunks simply as information to be retained for its own sake, it
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Democracy and Education
158
tends to stratify over vital experience. Entering as a factor
into an activity pursued for its own sake--whether as a means or
as a widening of the content of the aim--it is informing. The
insight directly gained fuses with what is told. Individual
experience is then capable of taking up and holding in solution
the net results of the experience of the group to which he
belongs--including the results of sufferings and trials over long
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