The account of education given in our earlier chapters virtually anticipated the results reached in a

discussion of the purport of education in a democratic community. For it assumed that the aim of
education is to enable individuals to continue their education-or that the object and reward of
learning is continued capacity for growth. Now this idea cannot be applied to all the members of a
society except where intercourse of man with man is mutual, and except where there is adequate
provision for the reconstruction of social habits and institutions by means of wide stimulation arising
from equitably distributed interests. And this means a democratic society. In our search for aims in
education, we are not concerned, therefore, with finding an end outside of the educative process to
which education is subordinate. Our whole conception forbids. We are rather concerned with the
contrast which exists when aims belong within the process in which they operate and when they are
set up from without. And the latter state of affairs must obtain when social relationships are not
equitably balanced. For in that case, some portions of the whole social group will find their aims
determined by an external dictation; their aims will not arise from the free growth of their own
experience, and their nominal aims will be means to more ulterior ends of others rather than truly
their own.

Our first question is to define the nature of an aim so far as it falls within an activity, instead of being
furnished from without. We approach the definition by a contrast of mere results with ends. Any
exhibition of energy has results. The wind blows about the sands of the desert; the position of the
grains is changed. Here is a result, an effect, but not an end. For there is nothing in the outcome
which completes or fulfills what went before it. There is mere spatial redistribution. One state of
affairs is just as good as any other. Consequently there is no basis upon which to select an earlier
state of affairs as a beginning, a later as an end, and to consider what intervenes as a process of
transformation and realization.

Consider for example the activities of bees in contrast with the changes in the sands when the wind
blows them about. The results of the bees' actions may be called ends not because they are
designed or consciously intended, but because they are true terminations or completions of what
has preceded. When the bees gather pollen and make wax and build cells, each step prepares the
way for the next. When cells are built, the queen lays eggs in them; when eggs are laid, they are
sealed and bees brood them and keep them at a temperature required to hatch them. When they
are hatched, bees feed the young till they can take care of themselves. Now we are so familiar with
such facts, that we are apt to dismiss them on the ground that life and instinct are a kind of
miraculous thing anyway. Thus we fail to note what the essential characteristic of the event is;
namely, the significance of the temporal place and order of each element; the way each prior event
leads into its successor while the successor takes up what is furnished and utilizes it for some other
stage, until we arrive at the end, which, as it were, summarizes and finishes off the process.

Since aims relate always to results, the first thing to look to when it is a question of aims, is whether
the work assigned possesses intrinsic continuity. Or is it a mere serial aggregate of acts, first doing
one thing and then another? To talk about an educational aim when approximately each act of a
pupil is dictated by the teacher, when the only order in the sequence of his acts is that which comes
from the assignment of lessons and the giving of directions by another, is to talk nonsense. It is
equally fatal to an aim to permit capricious or discontinuous action in the name of spontaneous self-
expression. An aim implies an orderly and ordered activity, one in which the order consists in the
progressive completing of a process. Given an activity having a time span and cumulative growth
within the time succession, an aim means foresight in advance of the end or possible termination. If
bees anticipated the consequences of their activity, if they perceived their end in imaginative
foresight, they would have the primary element in an aim. Hence it is nonsense to talk about the aim
of education or any other undertaking-where conditions do not permit of foresight of results, and do
not stimulate a person to look ahead to see what the outcome of a given activity is to be.

In the next place the aim as a foreseen end gives direction to the activity; it is not an idle view of a
mere spectator, but influences the steps taken to reach the end. The foresight functions in three
ways. In the first place, it involves careful observation of the given conditions to see what are the
means available for reaching the end, and to discover the hindrances in the way. In the second place,
it suggests the proper order or sequence in the use of means. It facilitates an economical selection
and arrangement. In the third place, it makes choice of alternatives possible. If we can predict the
outcome of acting this way or that, we can then compare the value of the two courses of action; we
can pass judgment upon their relative desirability. If we know that stagnant water breeds
mosquitoes and that they are likely to carry disease, we can, disliking that anticipated result, take
steps to avert it. Since we do not anticipate results as mere intellectual onlookers, but as persons
concerned in the outcome, we are partakers in the process which produces the result. We intervene
to bring about this result or that.

Of course these three points are closely connected with one another. We can definitely foresee
results only as we make careful scrutiny of present conditions, and the importance of the outcome
supplies the motive for observations. The more adequate our observations, the more varied is the
scene of conditions and obstructions that presents itself, and the more numerous are the
alternatives between which choice may be made. In turn, the more numerous the recognized
possibilities of the situation, or alternatives of action, the more meaning does the chosen activity
possess, and the more flexibly controllable is it. Where only a single outcome has been thought of,
the mind has nothing else to think of; the meaning attaching to the act is limited. One only steams
ahead toward the mark. Sometimes such a narrow course may be effective. But if unexpected
difficulties offer themselves, one has not as many resources at command as if he had chosen the
same line of action after a broader survey of the possibilities of the field. He cannot make needed
readjustments readily.

The net conclusion is that acting with an aim is all one with acting intelligently. To foresee a terminus
of an act is to have a basis upon which to observe, to select, and to order objects and our own
capacities. To do these things means to have a mind-for mind is precisely intentional purposeful
activity controlled by perception of facts and their relationships to one another. To

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what we are about; conscious signifies the deliberate, observant, planning traits of activity.
Consciousness is nothing which we have which gazes idly on the scene around one or which has
impressions made upon it by physical things; it is a name for the purposeful quality of an activity, for
the fact that it is directed by an aim. Put the other way about, to have an aim is to act with meaning,
not like an automatic machine; it is to mean to do something and to perceive the meaning of things
in the light of that intent.

2. The Criteria of Good Aims. We may apply the results of our discussion to a consideration of the
criteria involved in a correct establishing of aims. (1) The aim set up must be an outgrowth of
existing conditions. It must be based upon a consideration of what is already going on; upon the
resources and difficulties of the situation. Theories about the proper end of our activities-
educational and moral theories-often violate this principle. They assume ends lying outside our
activities; ends foreign to the concrete makeup of the situation; ends which issue from some outside
source. Then the problem is to bring our activities to bear upon the realization of these externally
supplied ends. They are something for which we ought to act. In any case such "aims" limit
intelligence; they are not the expression of mind in foresight, observation, and choice of the better
among alternative possibilities. They intelligence because, given ready-made, they must be imposed
by some authority external to intelligence, leaving to the latter nothing but a mechanical choice of
means.

(2) We have spoken as if aims could be completely formed prior to the attempt to realize them. This
impression must now be qualified. The aim as it first emerges is a mere tentative sketch. The act of
striving to realize it tests its worth. If it suffices to direct activity successfully, nothing more is
required, since its whole function is to set a mark in advance; and at times a mere hint may suffice.
But usually at least in complicated situations-acting upon it brings to light conditions which had been
overlooked. This calls for revision of the original aim; it has to be added to and subtracted from. An
aim must, then, be flexible; it must be capable of alteration to meet circumstances. An end
established externally to the process of action is always rigid. Being inserted or imposed from
without, it is not supposed to have a working relationship to the concrete conditions of the situation.
What happens in the course of action neither confirms, refutes, nor alters it. Such an end can only be
insisted upon. The failure that results from its lack of adaptation is attributed simply to the
perverseness of conditions, not to the fact that the end is not reasonable under the circumstances.
The value of a legitimate aim, on the contrary, lies in the fact that we can use it to change
conditions. It is a method for dealing with conditions so as to effect desirable alterations in them. A
farmer who should passively accept things just as he finds them would make as great a mistake as he
who framed his plans in complete disregard of what soil, climate, etc., permit. One of the evils of an
abstract or remote external aim in education is that its very inapplicability in practice is likely to react
into a haphazard snatching at immediate conditions. A good aim surveys the present state of
experience of pupils, and forming a tentative plan of treatment, keeps the plan constantly in view
and yet modifies it as conditions develop. The aim, in short, is experimental, and hence constantly
growing as it is tested in action.

(3) The aim must always represent a freeing of activities. The term end in view is suggestive, for it
puts before the mind the termination or conclusion of some process. The only way in which we can
define an activity is by putting before ourselves the objects in which it terminates as one's aim in
shooting is the target. But we must remember that the object is only a mark or sign by which the
mind specifies the activity one desires to carry out. Strictly speaking, not the target but hitting the
target is the end in view; one takes aim by means of the target, but also by the sight on the gun. The
different objects which are thought of are means of directing the activity. Thus one aims at, say, a
rabbit; what he wants is to shoot straight: a certain kind of activity. Or, if it is the rabbit he wants, it
is not rabbit apart from his activity, but as a factor in activity; he wants to eat the rabbit, or to show
it as evidence of his marksmanship he wants to do something with it. The doing with the thing, not
the thing in isolation, is his end. The object is but a phase of the active end, continuing the activity
successfully. This is what is meant by the phrase, used above, "freeing activity."

In contrast with fulfilling some process in order that activity may go on, stands the static character of
an end which is imposed from without the activity. It is always conceived of as fixed; it is something
to be attained and possessed. When one has such a notion, activity is a mere unavoidable means to
something else; it is not significant or important on its own account. As compared with the end it is
but a necessary evil; something which must be gone through before one can reach the object which
is alone worth while. In other words, the external idea of the aim leads to a separation of means
from end, while an end which grows up within an activity as plan for its direction is always both ends
and means, the distinction being only one of convenience. Every means is a temporary end until we
have attained it. Every end becomes a means of carrying activity further as soon as it is achieved. We
call it end when it marks off the future direction of the activity in which we are engaged; means
when it marks off the present direction. Every divorce of end from means diminishes by that much
the significance of the activity and tends to reduce it to a drudgery from which one would escape if
he could. A farmer has to use plants and animals to carry on his farming activities. It certainly makes
a great difference to his life whether he is fond of them, or whether he regards them merely as
means which he has to employ to get something else in which alone he is interested. In the former
case, his entire course of activity is significant; each phase of it has its own value. He has the
experience of realizing his end at every stage; the postponed aim, or end in view, being merely a
sight ahead by which to keep his activity going fully and freely. For if he does not look ahead, he is
more likely to find himself blocked. The aim is as definitely a means of action as is any other portion
of an activity.

3. Applications in Education. There is nothing peculiar about educational aims. They are just like
aims in any directed occupation. The educator, like the farmer, has certain things to do, certain
resources with which to do, and certain obstacles with which to contend. The conditions with which
the farmer deals, whether as obstacles or resources, have their own structure and operation
independently of any purpose of his.

Seeds sprout, rain falls, the sun shines, insects devour, blight comes, the seasons change. His aim is
simply to utilize these various conditions; to make his activities and their energies work together,
instead of against one another. It would be absurd if the farmer set up a purpose of farming, without
any reference to these conditions of soil, climate, characteristic of plant growth, etc. His purpose is
simply a foresight of the consequences of his energies connected with those of the things about him,
a foresight used to direct his movements from day to day. Foresight of possible consequences leads
to more careful and extensive observation of the nature and performances of the things he had to
do with, and to laying out a plan-that is, of a certain order in the acts to be performed.

It is the same with the educator, whether parent or teacher. It is as absurd for the latter to set up his
"own" aims as the proper objects of the growth of the children as it would be for the farmer to set
up an ideal of farming irrespective of conditions. Aims mean acceptance of responsibility for the
observations, anticipations, and arrangements required in carrying on a function-whether farming or
educating. Any aim is of value so far as it assists observation, choice, and planning in carrying on
activity from moment to moment and hour to hour; if it gets in the way of the individual's own
common sense (as it will surely do if imposed from without or

And it is well to remind ourselves that education as such has no aims. Only persons, parents, and
teachers, etc., have aims, not an abstract idea like education. And consequently their purposes are
indefinitely varied, differing with different children, changing as children grow and with the growth
of experience on the part of the one who teaches. Even the most valid aims which can be put in
words will, as words, do more harm than good unless one recognizes that they are not aims, but
rather suggestions to educators as to how to observe, how to look ahead, and how to choose in
liberating and directing the energies of the concrete situations in which they find themselves. As a
recent writer has said: "To lead this boy to read Scott's novels instead of old Sleuth's stories; to teach
this girl to sew; to root out the habit of bullying from John's make-up; to prepare this class to study
medicine, these are samples of the millions of aims we have actually before us in the concrete work
of education." Bearing these qualifications in mind, we shall proceed to state some of the
characteristics found in all good educational aims.

(1) An educational aim must be founded upon the intrinsic activities and needs (including original
instincts and acquired habits) of the given individual to be educated. The tendency of such an aim as
preparation is, as we have seen, to omit existing powers, and find the aim in some remote
accomplishment or responsibility. In general, there is a disposition to take considerations which are
dear to the hearts of adults and set them up as ends irrespective of the capacities of those educated.
There is also an inclination to propound aims which are so uniform as to neglect the specific powers
and requirements of an individual, forgetting that all learning is something which happens to an
individual at a given time and place. The larger range of perception of the adult is of great value in
observing the abilities and weaknesses of the young, in deciding what they may amount to. Thus the
artistic capacities of the adult exhibit what certain tendencies of the child are capable of; if we did
not have the adult achievements we should be without assurance as to the significance of the
drawing, reproducing, modeling, coloring activities of childhood. So if it were not for adult language,
we should not be able to see the import of the babbling impulses of infancy. But it is one thing to use
adult accomplishments as a context in which to place and survey the doings of childhood and youth;
it is quite another to set them up as a fixed aim without regard to the concrete activities of those
educated.

(2) An aim must be capable of translation into a method of cooperating with the activities of those
undergoing instruction. It must suggest the kind of environment needed to liberate and to organize
their capacities. Unless it lends itself