Democracy and Education · Chapter
The Modern Theory of Experience and Knowledge explained
This chapter contrasts the ancient and modern views of experience and knowledge.
What happens
This chapter contrasts the ancient and modern views of experience and knowledge. In the 17th and 18th centuries, experience shifted from a practical, habitual concept to an intellectual, cognitive one, emphasizing sensory impressions and receptivity. The chapter critiques sensationalistic empiricism, especially its educational implications, noting its historical value as a critical tool but its inadequacy for constructive education due to its neglect of active, motor factors and its limited, mechanical approach to learning.
Themes in this chapter
Experience and Learning by Doing
The chapter critiques sensationalistic empiricism for neglecting the active, motor factors of experience, arguing that true experience involves activities and interactions with things.
Critique of Traditional Curriculum
Empiricism is shown to protest against mere book learning and verbal symbols, but its own limitations (e.g., mechanical object lessons) are also critiqued.
Environment and Indirect Education
The chapter discusses how direct sense-impressions from the environment can aid learning but warns against their overemphasis, which can hinder conceptual growth.
Characters to notice
- Plato
Plato's view of experience as habituation and reason as reform is contrasted with the modern reversal.
- Francis Bacon
Bacon is cited for his critique of 'anticipating nature' and his call to resort to experience.
- John Locke
Locke's empiricism, including the tabula rasa and mental faculties, is discussed as a mitigated form of sensationalism.
Key passages
“To Plato experience meant habituation, or the conservation of the net product of a lot of past chance trials. Reason meant the principle of reform, of progress, of increase of control.”
For Plato, experience was about preserving the results of past trials, while reason was the force for improvement and progress.
This contrast sets up the historical shift in the meaning of experience.
“Experience lost the practical meaning which it had borne from the time of Plato. It ceased to mean ways of doing and being done to, and became a name for something intellectual and cognitive.”
Experience changed from a practical concept involving actions and interactions to an intellectual one focused on knowing.
This highlights the key transformation in the modern theory of experience.
“The emptier the mind to begin with, the more it may be made anything we wish by bringing the right influences to bear upon it.”
If the mind starts as a blank slate, it can be shaped entirely by external influences.
This summarizes the extreme sensationalist view that education could be all-powerful.