We want children to grow up to be good men and women; and we want to know how the school can assist in this process. First, we must define goodness; and I shall suggest the rough outline of such a definition, which we must presently fill up in detail, by saying that goodness is living a really civilized3 life. And as one’s conduct is not to be measured or judged except as it affects others, we may say that goodness is a matter of civilized relationships between persons. And furthermore, as the two most important things in life are its preservation4 and perpetuation5, the two fields of conduct in which it is most necessary to be civilized are Work and Love. Let us first[Pg 159] deal with Work and find out what constitutes civilized conduct in that field.
We all exist, as we are accustomed to remind ourselves, in a world where one must work in order to live. That, in a broad sense, is true; but there are certain classes of persons exempt6 from any such actual compulsion; and with respect to almost any specific individual outside of those classes, it is generally possible for him to escape from that compulsion if he chooses. Take any one of us here; you, for instance. If you really and truly did not want to work, you could find a way to avoid it; you could get your wife or your mother to support you by taking in washing or doing stenography—or, if they refused, you could manage to become the victim of some accident which would disable you from useful labor7 and enable you to spend your days peacefully in an institution. But you prefer to work; and the fact is that you like work. You are unhappy because you don’t get a chance to do the work you could do best, or because you have not yet found the work you can do well; but you have energies which demand expression in work. And if you turn to the classes which are exempt from any compulsion to work, you find the rich expending8 their energies either in the same channels as everybody[Pg 160] else, or organizing their play until its standards of effort are as exacting9 as those of work; you find women who are supported by their husbands rebelling against the imprisonment10 of the idle home, and seeking in all directions for employment of their energies; and as for the third class of those who do not have to work in order to live, we find that even idiots are happier when set at basket-weaving.
If we attempt to moralize upon the basis of these facts, we arrive at a conclusion something like this: it is right to use one’s energies in organized effort—the more highly organized the better. And if we ask what is the impulse or trait or quality which makes people turn from an easy to a hard life, from loafing to sport, from sport to work, and which makes them contemptuous of each other and of themselves if they neglect an opportunity or evade11 a challenge to go into something still harder and more exacting—if we ask what it is that despite all our pretensions12 of laziness pushes us up more and more difficult paths of effort, we are obliged to call it Enterprise.
And when we face the fact that Enterprise is a love of difficulties for their own sake, we realize that the normal human being has, within certain limits, a pleasure in pain: for it is painful to run[Pg 161] a race, to learn a language, to write a sonnet13, to put through a deal—and pleasurable precisely14 because it is, within these limits, painful. If it is too easy, there is no fun in it. The extremer sorts of enterprise we call courage and heroism15. But though we admire the fireman who risks his life in a burning building, we would not admire the man who deliberately16 set fire to his own bed in order to suffer the pangs17 of torture by fire; nor, although we admire the airmen who come down frozen from high altitudes, would we applaud a man who locked himself in a refrigerator over the week-end in order to suffer the torture of great cold. We would feel, in both these hypothetical cases, that there was no relevancy of their action to the world of reality. But upon this point our emotions are after all uncertain. We do not begrudge18 applause to the football-star who is carried from the field with a broken collar-bone, or to the movie-star who drives a motor-car off a cliff into the sea, though it is quite clear that these actions are relevant to and significant in the world of fantasy rather than the world of reality. What it comes down to is the intelligibility19 of the action. Does it relate to any world, of reality or of fantasy, which we can understand, which has any significance for us?
[Pg 162]When we turn to the child, we find that normally he has no lack of enterprise. But his enterprise is relevant to a world of childish dreaming to which we have lost the key. His activities are largely meaningless to us—that is why we are so annoyed by them. And, in the same way, our kinds of enterprise are largely meaningless to him. That is why he usually objects so strongly to lessons and tasks. They interrupt and interfere20 with the conduct of his own affairs. He is as outraged21 at having to stop his play to put a shovelful22 of coal on the furnace, as a sober business man would be at being compelled, by some strange and tyrannical infantile despotism, to stop dictating23 letters and join, at some stated hour, in a game of ring-around-the-rosy. Most of what we object to as misconduct in children is a natural rebellion against the intrusion of an unimaginative adult despotism into their lives.
Nevertheless, it is our adult world that they are going to have to live in, and they must learn to live in it. And it is true, moreover, that much of their enterprise is capable of finding as satisfactory employment in what we term the world of reality as in their world of dreams. What we commonly do, however, is to convince them by punishment and scolding that our world of reality[Pg 163] is unpleasant. What we ought to do is to make it more agreeable, more interesting, more fascinating, than their world of dreams. Our friend the Artist has already told us how this may be done, and our friend the Philosopher has given some oblique24 hints on the same subject. I merely note here that the school is the place in which the transition from the world of dreams to the world of realities may be best effected.
But there are various kinds of enterprise in our adult world. It is undoubtedly25 enterprising to hold up a pay-train, a la Jesse James. But though when the act involves real daring, we cannot withhold26 an instinctive27 admiration28, yet we know that it is wrong. Why wrong? Because such acts disorganize and discourage, and if unchecked would ruin, the whole elaborate system of enterprise by which such trains are despatched and such money earned. It is obvious that train-robbery and wage-labor cannot fairly compete with one another; that if train-robbery goes on long enough, nobody will do wage-labor, and there will eventually cease to be pay-trains to rob. The law does not take cognizance of these reasons, but punishes train-robbery as a crime against property. Yet if we look into the matter for a moment, we realize that loyalty29 to any property[Pg 164] system ultimately rests upon the conviction that its destruction would result in the total frustration30 of the finer sorts of human enterprise; it is for this reason that conservative people always persuade themselves that any change in the economic arrangements of society, from a new income-tax to communism, is a kind of train-robbery, bound to end in universal piracy31 and ruin. And this moral indignation, whether in any given instance appropriate or not—or whether, as in the case of many piratical kinds of business enterprise, left for long in abeyance—is the next step in our human morality. If we ask ourselves, why should not human enterprise turn into a welter of primitive32 piracy, with all the robbers robbing each other, we are compelled to answer that in the long run it would not be interesting. For, although destruction is temporarily more exciting, it is only construction that is permanently33 interesting. And if we ask why it is more interesting, we find that it is because it is harder. It is too easy to destroy. Destruction may be occasionally a good thing, as a tonic34, something to give to individuals or populations a sense of power; but their most profound instinct is toward creation.
But the child, by reason of the primitive stage[Pg 165] of his development, tends to engage rather more enthusiastically in destruction as a mode of enterprise than in creation. He tires of building, and it is a question whether or not the pleasure he takes in knocking over his houses of blocks does not exceed his pleasure in building them. He prefers playing at hunting and war to playing at keeping house. And his imagination responds more readily to the robber-exploits of Robin35 Hood36 than to the Stories of Great Inventors. This is a fact, but it need not discourage us. What is necessary is for him to learn the interestingness of creation. If what he builds is not a house of blocks on the nursery floor, but a wigwam in the woods, his destructive energies are likely to be satisfied in cutting down the saplings with which to build it. This simply means that his destructive energies have become subordinated to his constructive37 ones, as they are in adult life. But they cannot become so subordinated until what he constructs is wholly the result of his own wishes, and until moreover it is more desirable as the starting-point of new creative activities than as something to destroy. Those conditions are fulfilled whenever a group of children play together and have free access to the materials with which[Pg 166] to construct. And that is what the school is for—to provide the materials, and the freedom, and be the home of a process by which children learn that it is more fun to create than to destroy.
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1
shuffling
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| adj. 慢慢移动的, 滑移的 动词shuffle的现在分词形式 | |
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2
reverence
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| n.敬畏，尊敬，尊严；Reverence:对某些基督教神职人员的尊称；v.尊敬，敬畏，崇敬 | |
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civilized
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| a.有教养的，文雅的 | |
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preservation
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| n.保护，维护，保存，保留，保持 | |
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perpetuation
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| n.永存，不朽 | |
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6
exempt
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| adj.免除的；v.使免除；n.免税者，被免除义务者 | |
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7
labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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expending
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| v.花费( expend的现在分词 )；使用（钱等）做某事；用光；耗尽 | |
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exacting
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| adj.苛求的，要求严格的 | |
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10
imprisonment
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| n.关押，监禁，坐牢 | |
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11
evade
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| vt.逃避，回避；避开，躲避 | |
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12
pretensions
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| 自称( pretension的名词复数 )； 自命不凡； 要求； 权力 | |
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13
sonnet
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| n.十四行诗 | |
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14
precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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15
heroism
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| n.大无畏精神，英勇 | |
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16
deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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17
pangs
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| 突然的剧痛( pang的名词复数 )； 悲痛 | |
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18
begrudge
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| vt.吝啬，羡慕 | |
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19
intelligibility
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| n.可理解性，可理解的事物 | |
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interfere
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| v.(in)干涉，干预；(with)妨碍，打扰 | |
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21
outraged
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| a.震惊的，义愤填膺的 | |
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22
shovelful
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| n．一铁铲 | |
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23
dictating
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| v.大声讲或读( dictate的现在分词 )；口授；支配；摆布 | |
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24
oblique
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| adj.斜的，倾斜的，无诚意的，不坦率的 | |
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25
undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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26
withhold
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| v.拒绝，不给；使停止，阻挡 | |
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27
instinctive
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| adj.(出于)本能的；直觉的；(出于)天性的 | |
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28
admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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29
loyalty
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| n.忠诚，忠心 | |
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30
frustration
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| n.挫折，失败，失效，落空 | |
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31
piracy
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| n.海盗行为，剽窃，著作权侵害 | |
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32
primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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33
permanently
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| adv.永恒地，永久地，固定不变地 | |
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34
tonic
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| n./adj.滋补品，补药，强身的，健体的 | |
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35
robin
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| n.知更鸟，红襟鸟 | |
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36
hood
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| n.头巾，兜帽，覆盖；v.罩上，以头巾覆盖 | |
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37
constructive
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| adj.建设的，建设性的 | |
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