Educational Theory As Theory of Conduct : title: From Aristotle to Dewey author: Chambliss, J. J. publisher: State University of New York Press isbn10 | asin: 0887064647 print isbn13: 9780887064647 ebook isbn13: 9780585063331 language: English Education--Philosophy--History, Education- subject -Aims and objectives, Conduct of life. publication date: 1987 lcc: LB41.C49 1987eb ddc: 370/.1 Education--Philosophy--History, Education- subject: -Aims and objectives, Conduct of life. Page iii Educational Theory As Theory of Conduct From Aristotle to Dewey J.J. Chambliss State University of New York Press Page iv Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 1987 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations em-bodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address State University of New York Press, State University Plaza, Albany, N.Y., 12246 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Chambliss, J.J. (Joseph James), 1929- Educational theory as theory of conduct. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. EducationPhilosophyHistory. 2. Education Aims and objectives. 3. Conduct of life. I. Title. LB41.C49 1987 370'.1 86-14540 ISBN 0-88706-463-9 ISBN 0-88706-464-7 (pbk.) 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 Page v Contents PREFACE vii 1. Introduction 1 2. Aristotle's Predecessors 7 3. Aristotle's Poliscraft 23 4. Oratory as Conduct in Cicero and Quintilian 37 5. Conduct in Jewish and Christian Thought 47 6. John of Salisbury's Defense of the Arts 63 7. John Locke and Isaac Watts: Understanding as Conduct 71 8. Vico: Human Beings Make Themselves 87 9. Rousseau: Human Nature and the Necessity in Things 101 10. Condillac's Natural Logic 117 11. John Dewey: Empiricism and Humility in Conduct 125 12. Making Our Nature: A Necessity in Conduct 133 Notes 139 Bibliographic Note 165 Index 169 Page vii Preface This essay is in no sense an attempt to provide a comprehensive history of educational theory from Aristotle to Dewey. Its aim is a more modest one, to show the nature of an idea that has endured in that history. The idea that educational theory is a theory of conduct is one from which we cannot escape. Yet we neglect it all too often. We ignore it when we try to direct education into paths laid out by measures that quantify conduct, or when we use Graduate Record Examination scores as a device to determine who should be educated. Just because conduct is made of certainty and uncertainty, of rationality and irrationality, of the measured and the immeasurable, it resists efforts to settle its nature in terms of the certain, measured, and rational. The certain, the measured, the rational are dimensions of conduct which educate us, but they are not the only ones; the uncertain, the irrational, and the immeasurable educate us also. Each dimension has its limitations and its possibilities and needs to be taken into account in determining what we do in educating ourselves. The idea that educational theory is a theory of conduct is an argument against scientism in its various forms. Conduct, like love, must find its ways despite the efforts of scientism to computerize it or to fix the stages through which it passes. My chief intellectual debts are to the writers whose ideas make up the Page viii subject matter of the essay. There are other debts to acknowledge, some of an intellectual kind, and some that are more personal. An enormous debt is owed to students in the course "Educational Classics," where the ideas in this essay have been presented, developed, tolerated, and discussed. My friend and colleague, James M. Giarelli, has been a sympathetic listener to the idea that educational theory is a theory of conduct. Margaret Nolan helped in the typing of an earlier draft. Sandra Chubrick typed the present version. And Marie Bograd knows that she had a special part in it. The material in two chapters follows closely articles already published. My gratitude is to the editors of their respective journals for permission to include the following: "Oratory as Conduct in Cicero and Quintilian," Journal of the Midwest History of Education Society, XIV (1986), 6878, is Chapter IV; and "The Educational Significance of 'Nature' and 'Conduct' in Condillac's Logic," Paedagogica Historica, XVII (June, 1977), 5061, is Chapter X. Page 1 Chapter 1 Introduction The Oxford English Dictionary provides the following definition of the verb conduct: "To guide or direct in a certain course of action; to bring to a place, a particular condition or situation, a conclusion, etc.; to lead, bring." 1 Education involves courses of action, in which teachers aim to act together with their students to bring about certain conditions. Teachers attempt to bring students to places where they have not been. Teachers sometimes say that they are "bringing" their students "along." Even without the Oxford English Dictionary, it is obvious that to conduct ourselves or others is to act. Now look at the first definition of action in the Oxford English Dictionary: "The process or condition of acting or doing (in the widest sense), the exertion of energy or influence; working, agency, operation."2 To take conducting as a course of action, and to take acting as a synonym of doing, lead us to this definition of the verb do: ''To produce, make, bring into existence by one's action."3 This meaning of doing suggests a feature in action that takes us beyond certain places, conditions, or situations. It suggests making something, bringing something into existence by one's actions. In one sense, of course, if teachers succeed in bringing students along to points where they had not been, something has been brought into existence: e.g., a person now knows what a proof in geometry is, another has developed a sense of history, another can balance Page 2 equations. In another sense, students learn to bring paintings, sculptures, poetry into existence. In yet another sense, students working together bring into existence a shared responsibility for their actions. Each sense is an example of conduct; conduct is action; and to act is to do. Each example of conduct is a way of educating. The idea that ways of thinking about education are ways of thinking about conduct is the point of departure for the present essay. As we have seen in the examples of terms defined in the Oxford English Dictionary, the idea points to something so familiar in our experience that it seems almost unnecessary to discuss it. It is clear that it would be difficult to find anything about either education or conduct that would enable us to deny the truth of the idea that educational theory is a theory of conduct. Even so, being familiar with an idea is one thing; knowing it is another. As Hegel wrote, "What is familiar is not known simply because it is familiar." 4 For this reason we need to discuss the idea. In the history of ideas that have shaped educational theory, two traditions have endured from classical antiquity to the present time. In one tradition, we find the tendency to write of education and conduct in ways such that theories of education are theories about conduct. Thinkers who stand in this tradition hold that principles of conduct exist in the nature of things, and the aim of educational theory is to know the principles. Once they are known, however, principles stand apart from human conduct and are held to determine conduct. Principles are taken to be the standards for which human beings exist, and take on an existence of their own apart from conduct. There is no single source of principles in this tradition. Three sources, however, stand out. (1) One source is reason. Geometry, with its axioms and postulates as unprovable premises of proof, has served as a standard against which all thinking may be judged. If only the human mind could come to understand a rational system of conduct with axioms and postulates of its own, then human conduct might be shaped as are theorems in geometry. The idea has taken various forms in the thinking of Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, and others. (2) There are otherworldly sources of principles of conduct, where the source is literally beyond and superior to human experience, and thus capable of evaluating it. For example, believers in otherworldly standards set forth in the word of God hold that they have no need of human conduct. Again the standards for human conduct stand apart from that conduct. (3) Another source is science, not primarily rational as geometry is, but an inductive one whose principles are derived from experience. Some advocates of this conception of science treat its principles as if they are about conduct rather than of conduct. For example, certain attempts to develop a science of human development first hold that development takes place by stages, then treat the stages as if they