Cultural values

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From A Cyclopedia of Education, edited by Paul Monroe, Ph.D. (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1911, vol. II, pp. 238-240).

The term "culture" is used in educational literature with a very wide range of connotations. In its most superficial sense (which perhaps is also its most popular) it means possession of a certain kind of knowledge and ability which marks off the person in question as having had superior educational advantages, together with a certain social ease and grace of speech that enables the person to display this knowledge to good special effect. In this sense culture is the mark of a gentleman in the conventional sense of that word; it includes knowledge and ready use of the refinements of social manners, familiarity with literary and historic allusions, and ability to speak, or at least to read, one or more foreign languages. Culture here means practically a kind of intellectual and artistic polish which may indicate genuine refinement or which may be an external veneer. In either case, it implies a contrast of social classes, not necessarily of rich as distinct from the poor, but at least of superior social opportunities.

A more elevated aspect of a certain portion of the conception of culture just noted is found in Matthew Arnold's famous definition of culture "as acquaintance with the best that has been known and said." Culture in this sense describes the humanistic ideal of education. As opposed to naturalism, humanism insists that the truly educative factors are to be found in contact with the past history of mankind, especially as past humanity has left an expression of itself in literature and art. Natural science is of importance in education, from this point of view, not because it tells us about our present environment, but because certain great discoveries and laws must be known, if we are to be acquainted with the best of what has been said and thought in the past. Politics is profitably studied from this point of view, not so much as having a direct bearing upon the administering of present conditions, but as a testimony and record of the workings of collective human nature.

This conception of culture is historically not so much a direct descendant of the humanism of the Renaissance as a fruit of the German reaction against Rousseau's "return to nature" as a standard of thought and life. While Rousseau's influence in Germany in the latter half of the eighteenth century was tremendous, it took shape not only in the romantic individualism of that day, but also in a deliberate attempt to justify art and science against the attack which Rousseau, in his first prize essay, made upon them. [[Bildung]], the conscious and deliberate formation of human personality through assimilation of the spiritual products of the past, was made the standard and goal of education, as over against the appeal to spontaneous, native, but raw and crude instincts and impulses which, in contrast with Bildung, defined Nature. As Schiller, Goethe, Hegel, and other German writers became influential in England, their main thought as to the nurturing influence of past humanistic products upon present life was embodied in the term "culture." The three chief elements in culture, as summed up by Matthew Arnold, are that it is (1) an inward condition of mind in opposition to dependence upon external and mechanical appliances; (2) a harmonious expansion of all our powers in contrast to one-sidedness of ideas and over-absorption in some special pursuit, and (3) a social conception aiming at the improvement of society as a whole and requiring the subordination of individualistic traditions and aims.

The broadest conception of culture as an educational ideal is reached by developing the last-named factor in the humanistic definition — the social. The questionable point in the humanistic notion, as expressed by Arnold, is not in its end, but in its exclusive reliance upon literature and history as means of reaching this end. The preponderance of the literary factor in the education with which the typical humanist is acquainted blinds him to the fundamental importance of knowledge of nature as a necessary condition of reaching both all-round individual development and an equable social improvement. From the broader point of view, culture may be defined as the habit of mind which perceives and estimates all matters with reference to their bearing on social values and aims. While it is opposed to the purely utilitarian (or practical in its narrow sense), this opposition is in behalf of a more universal use — namely, social sience. While it is opposed to an abstract, one-sided scientific specialism as an educational ideal, culture requires acquaintance with the natural conditions and forces upon which social well-being necessarily depends. In other words, manual and industrial activities at once acquire a cultural value in education when they are appreciated in the light of their social context, in their bearing upon social order and progress. Natural science acquires a like cultural import when it is pursued not simply as a means of getting information about an external world, but insight into the indispensable role of science in general, and natural facts in particular, in the guidance and amelioration of the common social life.

Using this conception of culture as a criterion, we readily place the so-called "culture value" of studies in relation to their information value, their utility value, and their disciplinary value. As these distinctions are usually drawn, they are independent of one another, and apply to different groups of studies, geography, for example, being supposed to have chiefly information value, mathematics chiefly disciplinary value, technical skill (in writing, reading, manual training, etc.) utility value, while literature and history are preeminent for culture value.

On the basis of a true, or social, conception of culture, information, use, and discipline are indispensable ingredients of culture, or else they have no legitimate place in any general educational scheme. Culture is the social insight and spirit to which useful skill, knowledge of fact, and trained mental power must all be made to contribute. Where they are isolated from active participation in culture, utility becomes mechanical routine, or else skill in purely egoistic pursuits; information becomes an accumulation and memorizing of a mass of miscellaneous facts that have no bearing upon conduct, and discipline becomes a formal gymnastic of specialized mental habits or "faculties." On the other hand, culture when isolated tends to become a purely external polish and refinement, a mark of an invidious class distinction. We are not dealing here with an abstract theoretical point; no problem is more urgent in contemporary educational practice than promotion of a curriculum and methods of instruction that shall combine the ideals, separated since the time of Aristotle (see Activity) of a liberalizing nurture of the individual and fitness for a vocation of social service.

J. D.

See Course of study, theory of; Humanism and humanists; Liberal education; Naturalism; Philosophy of education.

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