ON THE ACTIVITY OF THE SUBJECT IN LEARNING AS A FORM OF COGNITIVE ACTIVITY

G. I. PETROVA

(Presented by the scientific seminar of the Department of Scientific Communism)

The historically increasingly complex process of cognition has as its natural consequence the growth of the active, creative principle of the subject. Cognition through learning, being one of the forms of cognitive activity, at the present stage of social and scientific-technological progress must necessarily reflect this regularity. The movement for educational reform that at present aims to develop not merely new means and methods of instruction, but to transform the entire content of the existing system of education, is explained, on the one hand, by the constantly and rapidly increasing volume of scientific information that must be translated into an academic subject, and, on the other hand, by the growing active role of the subject in all forms of cognitive activity, and therefore in learning as well. The observed gap between the requirements of life, of modern science and production, and the ability of a person who has received an education to satisfy them is due to a significant extent to the latter’s lack of preparedness in terms of cognitive activity, to the inability to learn after graduation from an educational institution, which ultimately truly does not correspond to the modern deepening specialization and differentiation of production. The principal task of the present work is to substantiate the necessity of a different approach to the content of education, taking into account the growing active role of the subject of cognition through learning. The questions touched upon in the article concern primarily the field of higher education.

The active nature of the human being as a fundamental philosophical principle is the aspect in which the exposition will proceed. We proceed from the Marxist proposition concerning the elementary “cell” of social э

being—the unity of objectifying and de-objectifying processes in human activity. The pivotal point in this aspect is the question of the activity of the personality.

Proceeding from the actively reflective nature of consciousness, it should be said that any cognition, including cognition organized through the processes of teaching and upbringing, must have as its psychological-social basis a general theory of reflection. The theory of active reflection reveals and defines the laws that determine the process of formation of the personality and its consciousness.

The activity of the personality, in its most general definitions, has been worked out with sufficient precision in contemporary philosophical and psychological literature. However, the concrete specificity of active reflection as a general property of living nature at the human level has not yet been of interest for any special investigation. The posing of this question is found in the works of V. I. Kremyansky and M. F. Vedenov, G. S. Batishchev, S. L. Rubinstein, and others.¹)

The philosophical substantiation of the activity of the personality is determined by the subjectivity of the human being as one of his generic properties. Personality arises as a result of the human being’s emergence from parallel objective relations and his creation of subject-object relations. The qualitative determinacy of the activity of the personality as subject consists in its object-activity form, in activity as not merely the interaction of the personality, the subject, with things and objects of the world, but their re-creation within itself. The substantiality of the personality, characterized by the re-creation within it of the objective world, determines the coincidence of the processes by which a human being creates the world of the surrounding civilization and culture and creates himself.

Activity, as activity-re-creation of the objective world, endows the human being and every concrete personality with the property of being an epistemological subject, which determines, in the process of cognition, the relation in each case of the object being cognized, first, to socio-historical knowledge and, second, to the concrete context of one’s own personal culture. Accordingly, there may be different levels and degrees of activity in cognition, depending on the personality’s assimilation of social knowledge, depending on its general cultural development. That is, a person’s cognition of the world is carried out in the forms of his active activity, while consciousness and intellect appear as a moment of interiorized activity.

The sociological explanation of the activity of the personality and of its consciousness is supplemented and reinforced by an explanation of a purely psychological character as well. The law of the psychological and general development of the personality, which presupposes the determination of determinants through the dialectical unity of external influences and the internal conditions of the personality, reflects and emphasizes its activity. The principle of determinism in its dialectical-materialist understanding, operating with a definite specificity at the level of the personality, conditions all mental processes from sensation to thinking, abilities, acquired knowledge, experience, motivation—the entire structure of the personality in its non-univocal conditioning by external influences alone.

¹) See, for example, V. I. Kremyansky, Structural Levels of Living Matter. Moscow, 1969; V. I. Kremyansky, “Toward an Analysis of the Concept of the Activity of Systems,” Problems of Philosophy, No. 10, 1969; G. S. Batishchev, “The Active Essence of Man as a Fundamental Philosophical Principle,” in: The Problem of Man in Contemporary Philosophy. Moscow, 1969; S. L. Rubinstein, “Man and the World,” Problems of Philosophy, 1969, No. 7.

The identification of internal conditions is a personal analysis of a person’s psychic life, determining the degree and form of his activity. Internal conditions depend on the concrete circumstances of a person’s life, which also characterizes his active, selective, creative attitude toward external influences.

Essentially the same law characterizes J. Piaget’s system in the doctrine of intellect and intellectual activity as an active, organized process of assimilating the new on the basis of already existing knowledge and adapting the old to the new. New cognitive structures always arise on the basis of already existing schemas.

The specificity of human activity is determined by the fact that it acquires the quality of creativity. From this point of view, the question of the possibility of creativity in one of the forms of human cognitive activity—cognition through learning—is of interest.

In the contemporary literature there is no single view of the definition of creativity as a phenomenon and a category. The most widespread point of view on this question is the correlation of creativity with the creation of something new, previously unknown, acquiring social significance. However, the contemporary level of philosophical and psychological science, which develops questions of dialectical-materialist teaching on the structures and structural levels of matter, opens the possibility of a more comprehensive interpretation of this problem and of investing the concept of creativity with broader content. In this respect, the concept of creativity in the literature is connected with the mechanism of the emergence of a new quality, with the appearance of a new structural level of matter¹. Thus understood, creativity is a universal property of matter at the inorganic, biological, and social levels. It is impossible to agree with this assertion, although such an approach makes it possible to see a property, common to all levels of matter, which in human society, that is, at the social level, can acquire the quality of creativity. Such a property is activity. The qualitative specificity of activity at lower levels allows the inorganic and biological levels of matter to be regarded as the soil where the elements, the rudiments of social human creativity appear. The development of activity into creative capacity is determined by transitions from the capacity for mechanical resistance (the inorganic level) to biological behavior and from it to human practice. Consequently, in society human practice is creative activity².

Creativity is determined by the “openness” of the system of man and his activity. The boundless capacity of man to know and transform the world, to “go out” into it, to take ever new steps in the process of discovering truth and, conversely, to enrich, create, and make himself in this very same process, to transform the objective world and truth into his own new capacities, is nothing other—

as creativity. Creative activity is a generic property of man.

Under the conditions of each concrete personality, however, this property manifests itself in that person’s concrete activity, in new results achieved for the first time in that person’s life. In such a case it is obvious that the new, as a criterion of creativity, need not necessarily acquire social significance. On the other hand, the ability not to imitate, to act and behave in a new way, the ability to discover something new for oneself, is developed to different degrees in different people. And therefore in the concrete activity of a concrete personality one must see, first, creative and noncreative aspects and, second, it is apparently reasonable to speak of different refractions of creativity as a generic property of man through the inner structure of the personality. Then the question arises of levels of creativity, which are determined by the different social position of the personality, by the conditions of his work and everyday life, by the different content and character of labor, and so on.

Cognition through learning is one of the kinds of human activity. Consequently, this form of cognitive activity can also be characterized as creative in the case of the personality’s striving independently to master and reflect upon the object being cognized. For the person, this form of activity undoubtedly brings novelty, something new, previously unknown to him. S. L. Rubinstein wrote on this point: “When it is said that man as an individual does not discover, but merely assimilates already acquired human knowledge, this, strictly speaking, means only that he does not discover it for humanity, but personally, for himself, he must nevertheless discover it.”³

It is also clear that the degree of creativity in this form of activity may vary. The character and content of cognition through learning as a variety of mental activity leaves no doubt as to the possibility of the manifestation of creativity. The realization of this possibility is conditioned here, on the one hand, by the degree of creative activity of the subject of cognition through learning, and on the other, by the content of the system of education.

As for creative activity, as we have established, it may characterize different people to different degrees, and even in one and the same personality it is developed to different degrees at different periods of life. Consequently, a subjective orientation toward forming the creative side of the personality in the process of learning must take this point into account; that is, the figure of the learner at different stages must receive from outside influences of different character, which would take into account the already formed, already existing level in the personality, or a definite degree of its activity. From this point of view, a pupil in school and a student in a higher educational institution are different figures, and a student in different years of study embodies an unequal measure of activity.

The growth of the student’s activity in the higher educational institution is influenced by the sharp change in his social position in comparison with his preceding state. Student activity is a new form of social practice, which determines the special importance of this period in the socialization of the personality. The conditions of student life pose practically the question of the independence of actions. A higher educational institution, ideally and in striving toward this ideal, is no longer only an educational but an educational-scientific institution, which places the student not only in the position

of the learner, but also in one who is independently mastering knowledge, compels him to enter into the scientific atmosphere and life and thereby, through science, to feel and experience the connection with production. University life also provides other channels of connection with production: industrial practice, economic work, the third labor semester, etc. All this contributes to the development of his independence and activity. A change in family status, separation from the family, and in other cases the creation of one’s own family, likewise compel the student to take a critical-creative independent position. The age-specific features of the student period are connected with the most complete and conscious assimilation of a complex of norms and roles for the formation of convictions and a stable system of social orientations and attitudes. The real specificity, in this period of the socialization of the personality, makes the question of the activity of the student’s personality especially urgent.

In theoretical and practical terms, in pedagogy, didactics, and sociology this has been noted⁴, in connection with which it is proposed either to replace the term “instruction” as applied to higher education⁵, or to supplement it, or even to give a definition of the content of education in higher education different from the traditional definition.

The traditional system of higher education historically developed on the basis of the specificity of the subject of instruction, proceeding from his active role and independent creativity in cognition through instruction. This concerns not only practical and laboratory classes, where the student is indeed independent in his judgments and actions; it concerns not only scientific work as students’ scientific creativity, but also the lecture system, designed for the active assimilation of the lecturer’s thought, and the credit and examination system of control, when the gap between the communication of material and the verification of its assimilation can be filled by the students’ active consciousness. Certainly, this specificity should not be exaggerated, for creative activity is not always sufficiently developed in everyone; it does not always prove to be at the level that was intended when methods of instruction in higher education were defined and formed. Nevertheless, shortcomings in learning and the costs of teaching do not negate the fact that the higher educational institution is a social institute where the system of education presupposes an active-creative figure of the learner.

Under conditions of social and scientific-technical progress, when the exponential growth of science increases information, the mass and totality of knowledge, and at the same time conceals within itself the greatest possibility of their convenient and easy assimilation in the form of logically coherent generalized knowledge, this question becomes especially urgent. The content of education under these new conditions has ceased to reflect the increasing complexity of the process of cognition and the growth of the active role of the subject in all forms of cognitive activ—

…ness. This, as well as other points to which our literature points, explains the necessity of reforming the modern system of education.

The content of any phenomenon is determined by the goal toward the realization of which it is directed, which it includes within itself. From these positions we approach the content of education. The category of the goal, being one of the social characteristics of the individual and of society, requires a social approach for its determination. Consequently, it, too, must be considered from the standpoint of class character and of the nature of the social and state system, as well as in the setting of quite definite historical conditions. As for questions of teaching knowledge—education—here the goal should be determined both in dependence, first, on the place and role of a given educational institution in the system of social life and, second, on the definition of knowledge as a problem and a category.

The main goal of instruction in higher education is determined by its mediating position between science and production⁶, by its active influence on the condition of the social structure, and by its social characteristics as a whole. All the proposed changes concerning the goals of instruction in the higher educational institution—the question now being raised by didactics, pedagogy, and the sociology of higher education—concern one point: instruction here presupposes not the simple assimilation of ready-made results of knowledge worked out by humanity, but their living, creative appropriation. Such appropriation rests on the principle of the activity of instruction, which has long been known. Therefore the so-called new formulation of the question of the goal of instruction is not, in essence, new. Rather, it may be a matter of the divergence between theory and practice in instruction, for the principle of activity is precisely oriented toward the development of the creative function of consciousness in the process of instruction, whereas established practice has considered it necessary to put into the learner as large a sum of knowledge as possible in the form of a ready-made, congealed result.

As for the definition of knowledge, this problem may be approached from two points of view. In knowledge one may see the result accumulated by humanity, a ready-made culture, congealed in certain things, phenomena, or signs. But knowledge is also an active process of discovery, production, activity, understood as objectified active capacities of the human being that are in a constant process of de-objectification. The traditional system of education took shape on the basis of a view of knowledge not as a unity of objectifying (that is, the embodiment of a person’s properties in a certain discovery, both for oneself and for others) and de-objectifying (its use by a person for the purpose of the emergence in him of new capacities, the embodiment of knowledge and discoveries in the person) processes, but on the basis of, and taking into account, only the second pole. Consequently, the traditional system of education does not see in knowledge knowledge-activity, and therefore regards as “ready-made” all the conclusions of a known doctrine, so that the reader “does not have to chew, but only to swallow this gruel.”⁷

Orientation toward instruction in knowledge in its first or second defi—

division characterizes various social systems, in connection with which, in the latter, the question arises in different ways both of the character of education and of the goals of instruction. Moreover, these questions acquire particular urgency for the system of higher education, since it is closely connected with social conditions and directly influences the social structure of society. In addition, as was indicated, higher education has as its subject the active-creative figure of the learner.

It is entirely natural that socialist society, at the stage of overcoming the social division of labor, raises the question of the character of the traditional system of education, of the ultimate goals of instruction, since this is required by the task of the all-round and harmonious development of the personality. Instruction, like all other social phenomena, must act as a means of the general development of the personality, for only then will it be able to reflect the necessity embedded in the basic law of the communist formation. At the stage of posing the task of the all-round development of the personality, knowledge must be considered above all as knowledge-process, and the system of education must contribute to education—in the true sense—to the creation of the integral human I, the personality. Education as a social institution is a product of the social division of labor. The overcoming of the social forms of the latter must change the system of education. Hence, too, comes the effective movement that has unfolded recently for the reform of education.

In this movement one can see especially clearly two directions which, in the final analysis, coincide. The first is subordinated to increasing the effectiveness of the immediate cognitive elements, to the intensification of cognition through instruction. The second is connected with the problem of the unity of upbringing and instruction, of instruction and development, with educative instruction.

The problem of intensification, of cognition through instruction, is proposed to be solved by proceeding from an increase in the so-called “reliability of instruction”⁸ or by restoring the connections of pedagogy with logic, by introducing logic, along with psychology and sociology, into the foundations of pedagogy. “Reliability of instruction” presupposes, under contemporary concrete-historical conditions, not only the acquisition and assimilation of profound knowledge, but also the development of the student’s thinking, which is a consequence of the development of the active-creative function of consciousness. The logicization of the instructional process is instruction in the methodology and methods of cognition, and therefore is part of the problem of the “reliability of instruction.” The logicization of instruction ensures the formation in individuals of activities in accordance with models represented in the sphere of culture, and using various material and sign formations⁹ of activity, which is also the reflection of the logic, the essence, the general in every phenomenon and object being cognized.

The introduction of logic into pedagogy follows from the coincidence of dialectics, logic, and the theory of knowledge. The logical foundations of pedagogy ensure:

1. The rejection of the methods of formal logic in the presentation of educational material and their replacement by the methods of dialectical logic.

2. Liberation from the descriptive character of the academic subject and the empirical theory of generalization, and their replacement by substantive generalization.

3. The coincidence of the historical and the logical in the process of presentation. The presentation of knowledge not as a finished result, but as knowledge and truth-as-process, as a result of which the course of scientific discovery is cognized.

4. The formation of an abstract dialectical type of thinking, reflecting the internal connections of objects and the laws of their motion. Only in this case will psychology recognize the true structure of thinking as a generic activity, for in logic as the theory of cognition, thinking is understood as a generic capacity of man¹⁰.

The introduction of dialectical logic into pedagogy ensures the coincidence of the methods of research, the methods of abstraction and substantive generalization that underlie the formation of a scientific concept, with the methods of presentation.

The second direction in the reform of education coincides with the first, since increasing the effectiveness of cognition through teaching proves to be dependent on the general development of the personality. Both are determined by the necessity of teaching knowledge as a form of activity, by the necessity of teaching how to work out, obtain knowledge and, accordingly, use it.

In the knowledge that constitutes the content of an academic subject, one must see a methodically reworked subject of science. But science itself is not so much a gigantic aggregate of knowledge. Its chief task consists in the constant creation of ever new and new knowledge. Therefore, such pedagogical reworking must not turn the academic subject into dead, congealed material that would be inserted into the student. Knowledge in teaching is a process of creative, research activity; therefore, in the methodical reworking of the subject of science into an academic subject, one should proceed from thinking not only as fixed knowledge, but from thinking as activity. The teaching of knowledge as living human activity—education—has as its result also the development of thinking as activity. Dialectical thinking makes it possible to transform assimilated culture and knowledge into new capacities of the personality, into its “objectified body.”

Such a system of education will make the task of the all-round development of the personality genuinely realizable. The higher educational institution must prepare for labor, which is genuine activity as the assimilation of all those capacities and possibilities of man as a species that are embedded in its object. Such labor is the de-objectification of culture as a whole with the aim of objectifying it in the personality itself, of the emergence of new capacities and the development of its old ones. And only in this case is labor genuinely filled with human meaning and social creative content, genuinely the assimilation of the social, activity-based essence of man. Man, however—

...truly proves to be a human being in his social essence. In this, and only in this, lies the essence of the humanization of social life. Education that contributes to the resolution of this question forms a genuinely human, active mode of being.

1. A. Akhiezer. Creativity in Nature and Society. (From the Simplest Forms of Movement to Practice). In: Transactions of the Institute of the Moscow Order of the Red Banner of Labor G. V. Plekhanov Institute of the National Economy. Issue 47, 1967. ↩

2. See the works on the heuristics of P. Engelmeier. The initial Machist positions prevented the author from fully and correctly understanding the essence of creativity, its tasks and goals in various areas of human activity. However, one can fully agree with the assertion concerning the creative character of human practice. ↩

3. S. L. Rubinstein, Voprosy psikhologii, 1955, No. 7, p. 34. ↩

4. See, for example, S. I. Zinoviev, “Topic for Discussion: The Scientific Organization of the Educational Process. (Meeting of the Higher-Education Activists of Moscow),” Vestnik vysshei shkoly, 1967, No. 10, p. 35: “There are, after all, comparatively few instructional moments as such in higher education; the educational process as a whole here has a scientific, creative, educational character.” ↩

5. S. I. Zinoviev writes in the indicated work: “It seems to us that its (the term ‘instruction’ in higher education.—G. P.) use here is incorrect... Apparently, it makes sense to work on creating or searching for a term that fully corresponds to the features of higher education.” Vestnik vysshei shkoly, 1967, No. 10, p. 35. ↩

6. L. A. Gorbunova, “On the Question of the Methodological Basis for the Organization of Students’ Research Work in a Higher Technical School,” in: Social Questions of the Development of Science and Higher Education. Izvestiya TPI, No. 220, p. 31, Tomsk, 1970. ↩

7. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 5, pp. 358–359. ↩

8. S. I. Zinoviev. “Theme of the discussion: the scientific organization of the educational process. (Meeting of the higher-school activists of Moscow).” Vestnik vysshei shkoly, 1967, No. 10. ↩

9. See: G. P. Shchedrovitsky. “On the system of pedagogical research.” In: Optimization of the Process of Instruction in Higher and Secondary School, ed. V. V. Davydov and D. I. Feldshtein. Dushanbe, 1970. ↩

10. These thoughts are expressed in the works: V. V. Davydov, “The Absolutization of Discursive-Empirical Thinking in Pedagogical Psychology and Didactics,” in Optimization of the Learning Process in Higher and Secondary School, Dushanbe, 1970; G. P. Shchedrovitsky, cited work; V. V. Davydov, “On the Possibility of Applying Dialectical Logic in Solving Psychological-Didactic Problems,” in Optimization of the Learning Process in Higher and Secondary School, Dushanbe, 1970. ↩