WORLDVIEW FOUNDATIONS

OF BOURGEOIS CONCEPTS OF EDUCATION

G. I. PETROVA

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

Turning to bourgeois theories of education shows that the very existence of a multitude of them—the theory of disciplining mental activity, the theory of free education, Herbartianism, intellectualism, Gestalt theory, behaviorism, cybernetic theories, etc.—speaks of the weakness of their worldview foundation, for there is ground here for vacillation, for replacing one set of orientations with another, for moving from some positions to their opposites. Bourgeois scholars themselves, bearing in mind the present situation in the system of education and training, emphasize that these institutions are infected by a general spontaneity and crisis¹. The crisis of education is at the same time both a product of the crisis of bourgeois thought as a whole and one of its causes. Among bourgeois authors, F. Coombs openly acknowledges the existence of a crisis in teaching and education—he even entitles his monograph The Crisis of Education in the Modern World (A Systems Analysis)—as do J. Bruner, Margaret Mackie, and F. Machlup². A discussion devoted to the problem of education, held in the pages of the bourgeois journal Saturday Review in 1970,³ and conferences in Williamsburg (State

Virginia) in October 1967 and in California in April 1969. Problems connected with a rethinking of the structure of knowledge in the school subject were also the theme of discussion at two symposia held in the United States in the last few years.

Naturally, in the materials of the discussions and conferences, and in the literature as a whole on the present questions, there are attempts to analyze the situation that has arisen. Among the causes of the crisis in teaching are named the demographic “explosion” after the Second World War, the information explosion under the conditions of the scientific and technological revolution, and the short duration of schooling in comparison with what is necessary for the assimilation and reflection of all those processes that characterize scientific and technological progress. As a rule, in the search for ways out of the crisis, attention is directed only to the pedagogical problems of teaching and education.

It must be noted that certain propositions in this area are of great interest, reflecting new currents in the philosophy and psychology of thinking. The social and pedagogical consequences of the scientific and technological revolution compel bourgeois scholars to turn their attention to the logical and psychological side of the process of cognition in learning. However, the interpretation of these questions is not always consistent and often leads to the solving of administrative and organizational problems. Thus, James Cass, in the article mentioned, reports on a host of measures being undertaken by the state jointly with private firms to improve the pedagogical system: the creation of individualized programs, teacher training, work with parents, the stimulation of students by prizes, etc.

The searches of bourgeois scholars are entirely justified. Individual proposals cannot be dismissed: they play a rather important role in teaching, reflecting a pedagogical approach to the problem. But the point is that pedagogy itself always has definite worldview foundations, which, as a metatheory, condition the process and structure of teaching. It is precisely these fundamental problems in the analysis of the crisis in education that are not touched upon by bourgeois researchers. Moreover, the connection between education and philosophy is sometimes directly denied. “I regard as unsuitable the approach that attempts to connect the philosophy of education with recognized schools of thought in epistemology, with, for example, realism, idealism, or pragmatism. There is no difference between the interpretation of education by those who believe that only ideas are real (idealism) and those who acknowledge that what is real is the world of sensory experience (realism).”^4

Bourgeois scholars themselves, in some cases, are forced to admit that the solution of pedagogical problems is not quite what should lead education out of the crisis, that the “fundamental point of departure lies somewhere else.”^5 “The world of education has become so complex, and its condition so serious, that this world cannot be characterized using only pedagogical terminology,”^6 writes F. Coombs.

The sources and causes that have conditioned the present state of the system of education and instruction in the bourgeois world are determined by social—

^4 M. Mackay. Cited work, p. 12. Further M. Mackay writes: “Both—the realist and the idealist—may either use the traditional content or reject it... Religious idealism does not differ from atheistic realism in the interpretation of education...” (p. 13).

^5 J. Cass. Cited article, p. 40.
^6 F. Coombs. Cited work, p. 5.

by reasons, they must be sought in worldview, in the philosophical problems of education. A contemporary analysis of the problem of education assumes, as the active figure in this process, the knowing personality. It is therefore entirely natural that the worldview foundations of any theory of education must be determined by conceptions of personality, of the human being, first of all, and by the theory of knowledge, second. The worldview problems lie in comprehending the problem of human activity, of human consciousness, in any form of cognitive activity, including education. Cognition in education is based on the theory of reflection, and therefore the main context of the worldview foundations of education is determined by the problem of the relation between the activity and the determinacy of cognitive activity in education.

One can trace two lines in contemporary bourgeois philosophy in the formulation and solution of the question of the subject’s activity in cognition. Despite all their differences, both lie within the channel of an agnostic interpretation that denies the objective conditionedness of cognitive activity. Their difference, however, comes down to the metaphysical emphasis that each of them places, in the problem of the relation between the activity and the determinacy of the process of cognition, either on the first or on the second moment. This is no novelty in contemporary bourgeois philosophy, but is a continuation of the agnostic thesis of the idealist philosophy of Kant, Berkeley, and Hume. However, the successes of the natural sciences and the argumentation of dialectical materialism created the necessity, on the one hand, for contemporary bourgeois philosophers to search for some new methodology that could serve to a greater degree the purposes of camouflage; on the other, for the emergence of a whole series of currents that are critical of traditional idealism, though not always consistent, limited (neorealism, critical realism), and “bashfully” materialistic (naturalism).

As for the first circumstance, the new methodology was found in the biological interpretation of human consciousness, in anthropomorphism, in contrast to the first agnostics, who subjectively, perhaps, were not to such a degree connected with class aims and who usually tried to substantiate agnosticism by gnoseological arguments. Now, however, thought is deprived of the capacity to reflect objective reality independent of it, and its nature is reduced merely to the biological function of adaptation. Precisely for this reason, most currents of contemporary bourgeois philosophy are characterized by bowing before those biologists and philosophers in biology who approach the human being, society, one-sidedly: only from the standpoint of their biological determination and of a metaphysical analysis of the human being merely as a part of nature.

In biology, conceptions of the human being, in their foundation and tradition, are connected with organismic theories in their numerous varieties and with theories of the integrative levels of living nature. The former appeared as a reaction to mechanistic views that reduced the higher forms of the motion of matter to the lower and identified the laws of human vital processes with the laws of physico-chemical organization. Proceeding from Leibniz’s monadology, the organismists, by contrast, defined as subject-monad not only the human being but absolutely all organisms possessing inner activity and surrounded by their own field, whether society or another external environment.

The criticism of organicism by representatives of theories of integrative levels often concerned concrete biological, but not worldview-

ical and philosophical questions of biology. It is conducted from metaphysical positions and therefore returns, albeit somewhat from another side, to the assumptions of organismic theories⁴. However, the development in biology of conceptions of the integrative levels of living nature provided grounds for criticizing the vulgar-materialist point of view and led scholars to the idea that the human being is a qualitatively distinctive part of nature. Especially characteristic in this respect was the discussion that took place in 1945 in the pages of the journal Science between A. B. Novikoff and A. E. Emerson and R. W. Gerard. In the article “The Concept of Integrative Levels in Biology,” A. B. Novikoff emphasizes “a level of man higher than the biological,” his “remarkable structure, …for it is subject to social and cultural influence.” “Socio-economic or cultural forces dominate over biological factors in the direction of human actions”⁵.

Emerson and Gerard spoke out against this understanding of human nature. They begin their article replying to Novikoff with the following words: “We show that, insofar as societies constitute a living system, they obey the most general laws that are applicable to all living systems. It should be said that both social and biological evolution can be defined by the term ‘evolution’ in general; they do not represent two independent types, but are identical”⁶.

Thus, the biologizing interpretation of the human being in bourgeois biological literature is a tendency that has particular force in our day, for it is being transferred into the sphere of sociology, history, and philosophy. At the present stage it is precisely the conception of integrative levels that appears not only as a theory, but also as a methodology of biological and social research. This is determined both by the fact that biologization has “social outlets” convenient for the stage of imperialism, and by its external resemblance to science. Bourgeois researchers, in support of their ideas, not infrequently refer to F. Engels, who wrote that if consciousness is considered “in advance as opposed to being, to nature,” then “it may seem extremely astonishing that consciousness and nature… agree with one another. But if the further question is asked, what thought and consciousness are, …then we shall see that they are products of the human brain and that man himself is a product of nature”⁷. V. I. Lenin also noted this circumstance in the words: “Reason is a particle of nature, one of its highest products”⁸.

However, in Marxism the propositions cited are initial, abstract principles in defining the essence of man. Here, as always, the abstract expresses that which plays the leading role only at the lowest stage of the evolutionary ladder. To stop at this, without passing from the abstract to the concrete essence of man—

of the century means determining only the general element which is of necessity the lower one. The human level does not entirely discard the properties dominant at the preceding biological stage, but neither is it reduced to them. Here a new dominant appears—the social—which subordinates to itself all biological elements. The biological at the human level and at previous levels is not one and the same: it proves to be subordinated to different laws.

The biologization of man ignores or wrongly interprets the problem of social activity, the problem of the relation between human activity and its objective determinacy. Human behavior and social roles are analyzed outside their objective correlation and conditioning by the character and structure of social relations—ultimately, by production and economic relations. A substantive analysis of man presupposes above all an analysis of his determinacy, an explanation of the structure of his personality, an explanation of the process of his formation and development. The denial of social determinacy leads either to an introspectionist or to a behaviorist understanding of man and his activity. Nevertheless, the biologization of man creates the appearance of science, the logical conclusion of which is its excellent service both to philosophical idealism and to “shamefaced” materialism (naturalism), the struggle between which is characteristic of contemporary bourgeois philosophy.

For its preservation and survival, such a worldview must necessarily permeate the social institution that ensures social inheritance, that is, the institution of instruction and education. On the basis of a biologizing interpretation of man, bourgeois concepts of instruction distort the problem of man’s social activity by denying the relation between creative activity and its reflective nature. Some of them place emphasis on the spontaneous activity of man and of human consciousness (neo-positivism, pragmatism, and, in contemporary conditions, especially existentialism). Others define activity as wholly dependent on stimuli coming from outside (neo-Thomism and Protestantism). Attempts at a correct solution of this problem are found among representatives of naturalism (Sellars, Brown, and the direct methodologists of instruction—J. Bruner, W. Sawyers, M. Mackay, D. Poya, and others). Within the framework of idealism, activity at the human level turns out to be understood either introspectionistically, as creation from within without external determination, or only as a reaction to external conditions in the spirit of behaviorism. Both of these tendencies, in the final analysis, converge in the denial of the genuine nature of social activity, in the conception of man as a being helpless in practice and cognition. This, in turn, determines the fact that even when introspective psychology is preached, concepts of instruction nevertheless all proceed from a behaviorist basis. On the soil of behaviorism there also arose all the leading principles of positivism, which then penetrated into other idealist tendencies of bourgeois philosophy that became the methodology of contemporary concepts of instruction. B. Skinner first stated this openly and clearly in the article “The Science of Learning and the Art of Teaching.”⁹ In another work B. Skinner develops this proposition, defining three types of theory in the field of instruction. “All of them proceed from psychological and physiological foundations and deal with processes occurring in the nervous system when the organism learns—

are.” “They consist of references to mental events, as to assertions that the organism learns in order to behave in a certain way because it finds something pleasant, or because it expects that something will happen.” Skinner’s behaviorist view compels him to pay attention to such definitions of the process of learning as “learning is regulation or adaptation to a situation”; “learning is the restoration of equilibrium”; “learning is problem-solving,” etc. All these definitions do not emphasize the main essence of the human process of learning; they are not based on the specificity of man’s social activity. This, in turn, accounts for Skinner’s attention to experiments on pigeons, rats, and monkeys, which subsequently prove to be laid down as facts at the basis of Skinner’s theory of learning. The theory of learning itself is reduced to individual reinforcing responses to definite influences. The consistent application of such an approach, and the kinship of behaviorism with positivism, lead to a denial of the significance of any theory in general, since any theory presupposes knowledge of regularities, of an essence hidden from the direct observation of external behavior. It is precisely for this reason that B. Skinner answers negatively the question posed in the title of his work, “Are theories of learning necessary?” He denies the possibility of predicting the character of an organism’s response to stimuli. “The sciences can testify that probabilities are not so easy to manage. We want to make a statement about the probability of a future response, but after all we have data in the form of recurring responses that have already taken place. The problem of the ‘response class’ is a painful ‘problem.’ Are the responses we shall analyze entirely certain to be in agreement with those predicted? Owing to the fundamental impossibility of generalizing and predicting the reactions of the organism, ‘we can feel little need for a theoretical construction. We possess data that are various... and therefore we least of all resort to theoretical entities supporting the concept of a possible response’”^13.

As a consequence of this position of behaviorism, in the analysis of bourgeois theories of learning the word “theory” can be used only by tradition, to designate certain initial propositions. Behaviorist conceptions are based on the empirical verification of the effectiveness of stimuli. Theoretical generalization is rejected in principle, and the sole unifying principle of all conceptions is only the reduction of all processes of learning to the “stimulus–response” schema. F. George also speaks of behaviorism as the basis of the theory and process of learning in his work The Brain as a Computing Machine. He convincingly shows that all existing definitions of learning derive from J. Watson and differ from one another only in inessential subtleties in the interpretation of one and the same basic propositions. In recent times this has been shown especially clearly in the preparation of programs under conditions of programmed instruction. The formalization of the basic elements of various theories leads to very similar algorithms, which testifies to the similarity of the theories themselves^14.

^13 B. Skinner. “Are theories of learning necessary?” (in English). — Psychological Review, 1950, vol. 57, No. 4, pp. 198–199.

^14 “Existing theories of learning... do not differ so greatly from one another; in many cases the differences concern interpretation and not the process itself, which is what is at issue,” writes F. George. F. George. The Brain as a Computing Machine. Moscow, 1968, pp. 233–234.

The contradiction consists in the fact that subjective idealism and activism coexist perfectly well with the behaviorist foundations of theories of learning. In particular cases, introspectionism and subjectivism are also carried over into the realm of psychological assumptions in learning. This is clearly reflected, for example, in the position of D. Miller, J. Galanter, and K. Pribram in their joint work Plans and the Structure of Behavior, where the authors call themselves “subjective behaviorists.” In the work there is an honest attempt to affirm the activity of the subject in learning; therefore, as intermediate variables, they place “plans” and “images” within the behaviorist “stimulus–response” scheme and hold that man possesses spontaneous activity, independent of stimulation coming from outside.^15

Behaviorist theories of learning, in their terminology, make use exclusively of the concept “organism.” This is emphasized by one of the leading progressive psychologists, G. Allport, in his critique of the biological theory of personality. Personality in this theory, Allport says, is identified with the organism, with “organic needs, which are the sole motivating stimulus for action.” “The conclusion must warn against accepting a narrow biological terminology, owing to its superficial conception of learning,” for it does not reveal “what constitutes the essence of the process of learning and growth from the organic desires of childhood to the cultural needs of the adult state.”^16

Cognitive activity is characteristic of learning. Therefore bourgeois concepts of learning, proceeding as a whole from the biologization of man, have as their immediate worldview basis a theory of knowledge in the form in which it reflects the essence of these biologizing assertions. The immediate soil on which bourgeois concepts of learning grow consists of the basic principles of the positivist theory of knowledge, which bind neopositivism, pragmatism, neothomism, and other trends of bourgeois philosophy by ties of blood. In all these trends one can clearly trace the thesis of the impossibility of correlating, of combining, the active and reflective functions of human consciousness and cognition. The principles of activity and of the adequacy of reflection are directly opposed to one another. Activity that is not objectively determined turns into activism as a spontaneous quality of man. In neopositivism such subjectivism appears in the assertion of the irrational possibility of constructing reality according to one’s own principles, in the construction (as distinct from the true cognition of “facts”) of “concepts.”^17 In pragmatism, relativism and the pluralism of truth are openly asserted.^18

^15 D. Miller, J. Galanter, K. Pribram. Plans and the Structure of Human Behavior. Moscow, 1965, pp. 235, 2, 30, 21, 111.

^16 G. W. Allport. Personality: A Psychological Interpretation (in English). New York, 1937, p. 121.

^17 The positivist principle of empirical verification presupposes that those objects of the surrounding world which can be qualified as facts turn out to be genuinely known. For example, G. Margenau, in the work Open Vistas, names as elements-facts: “the seeing of this form—a ‘writing table’; the hearing of a sound; the knowledge of pain; or, finally, a combination of such immediate feelings, which we may observe in science.” G. Margenau, Open Vistas (Philosophical Perspectives of Modern Science) (in English). New Haven, 1961, p. 5. “The genesis of concepts is best described by the term construction. I propose to call them constructions in order to indicate the active role that our reason plays in their creation.” G. Margenau, ibid., p. 5.

^18 Sidney Hook writes: “The philosophy of pragmatism may be called objective relativism.” Sidney Hook. “The Philosophy of American Pragmatism.” — America, 1963, No. 80, p. 10.

However, subjectivistically motivated activity in fact, both in neopositivism and in pragmatism, is a denial of human activity. Activism always turns into dogma. “Concepts remain unknowable, despite the ‘active role of our reason,’” and in the assertion of the pluralism of truth there is discernible the thought of man’s powerlessness before science, the denial of scientificity. Activism, manifested in subjectivist cognition, in the construction in each separate case of one’s own reality according to one’s own principles,^19 passes over into its extreme opposite: its reverse side is man’s helplessness in cognition. And neothomism already openly asserts dogmatic truths, having constructed an all-embracing system that claims to provide answers to all the most important questions of practical and theoretical life. Thomists attempt to give man exhaustive instructions as to how he should live and how he should conduct himself in this world. The dogmatic thinking of Thomism strives to include any discoveries in a once-and-for-all given a priori scheme. The active-creative function of consciousness is openly denied, and human reason is regarded as an auxiliary technical instrument for adducing arguments that substantiate positions given in advance.

The contradictions of the worldview foundations determined the circumstance that in bourgeois concepts of education two, not always consistent, lines can be traced. In some of them the personality of the learner is considered in terms of spontaneous activism, and then the question arises of the unnecessariness of external influence, of the unnecessariness of the teacher, of “freedom” in teaching and upbringing, of the “innate qualities” of man that are destined to develop in the process of instruction. In others the learner is an empty box that can be filled with anything whatsoever. Thus arises the contrived problem of the contradiction between teaching and learning. This contradiction proceeds on the whole from the correct distinction (it is also made in bourgeois literature^20) between learning as the assimilation of new forms of behavior, achieved, first, throughout the entire life of the individual and, second, through a social institution specially created for this purpose (learning through the system of education). But at its basis it is a reflection of the contradiction between introspectionism and behaviorism, causality and reflection, determinacy and the activity of the subject in cognition, when these phenomena and categories are being attempted to be joined together, creating a theory of cognition. In the final analysis, the real contradiction is resolved (with a masking through the assertion of activism) by denying the genuine activity of the subject of cognition in learning. Such a methodology is fully shared by theorists in the field of the problem of education. For this is one of the basic social institutions where there is the possibility of purposeful influence. The ideologues of this institution did not fail to take that philosophy and that worldview which deny critical thinking.

^19 “Using certain principles, each person can give a conception of reality,” writes the contemporary neopositivist H. Zansttra. “Every person has and always should try to formulate these principles... Their use is embodied in schemes of reality.” H. Zansttra, The Construction of Reality (in English). Oxford, 1957, p. 2.

^20 See the cited works of D. Miller, J. Galanter, and K. Pribram; the work of F. George; H. Pask, Teaching Thinking. — Systems Research, yearbook, Moscow, 1969, and others. The authors note that learning may be understood in the broadest sense as “learning,” “teaching,” and in the sense of “memorization.”

The practical consequence of such a methodology proved to be an orientation of instruction toward the learner’s “innate” practical impulses, the adaptation of the educational system exclusively to the needs of industry¹⁰, an underestimation of the role of theory, and the preaching of the necessity of genuine intellectual development only for the elite. Recently, however, such a methodology of instruction has ceased to justify itself. This was expressed precisely in the condition that bourgeois scholars themselves defined as a crisis of education. The state of science and production under the conditions of the scientific-technological revolution gave rise in the bourgeois world to the problem of technological unemployment and to the growth of unmet demand for a qualified labor force. New processes in contemporary science and production determined the need for quantitative and qualitative growth in education. Qualitative growth necessarily had to reflect the new social position of science, the processes of the fusion of science and production, the new scientific style of thinking that rejects the principle of rigid determination, the integration of the sciences, the information explosion, and so on. All this determined the fact that the full acceptance, as a methodology of instruction, of idealist pragmatism has now been replaced by the sharpest theoretical struggle. This struggle is a reflection of the two lines existing in bourgeois philosophy: philosophical idealism and naturalism.

The forced modification was expressed, first of all, in the emergence of two main tendencies: existentialism, which had already formed its own conception of instruction, and naturalism, which was only just beginning to declare itself with sufficient clarity in the field of pedagogical theory. Thus, contemporary bourgeois methodology of instruction cannot be simplistically presented as proceeding entirely from subjective idealism. Social conditions determined an intensification of the struggle between idealism and materialism, which is a symptom of the serious crisis of philosophical idealism as the methodology of bourgeois pedagogy.

But under the conditions of monopoly capitalism, not all the tendencies of the scientific-technological revolution and their social influence on the sphere of education can be fully satisfied. Modifications in the bourgeois methodology of instruction therefore affected only particular, partial questions, while fully preserving its social essence. The biologization of man and behaviorism as initial premises remained intact, with only the difference that in existentialism—and in naturalism as well—they are presented with greater subtlety.

Existentialism opposes the depersonalization of the individual in pragmatism and stands for the individual’s uniqueness. But the uniqueness of the individual is understood as the uniqueness of his personal experience. As a result, here too there is an excessive emphasis on the spontaneous activism of the individual, who, in cognition, for example, creates his own unique truth. But such a truth cannot be taught in instruction; the learner must arrive at it himself. What is this, if not the pragmatic pluralism of truth and objectless activism affirmed in this position of existentialism? Pluralism and activism in epistemology have always been the forerunners and necessary causes of the apologetics of irrationalism. And existentialism

with its assertion of a unique, socially undetermined personality belittles the logical and the scientific in epistemology, like the earlier trends, and mystifies the intuitive and the spontaneous. The existentialist boom in education is thus conditioned by the proclamation of the same pragmatist truths in their more subtle presentation, adapted to the contemporary conditions of scientific and social life.

Serious attention is drawn by a trend that has recently arisen in bourgeois philosophy and has taken the name “naturalism.” The epistemological basis of naturalism is the position of “shamefaced” materialism. The left wing of this current speaks out against positivism and behaviorism. “Viewed from the outside, man does not so much know as act... It has proved not easy to introduce consciousness and reliability into a conception in which the meaning attained by observing only external signs dominates”¹¹. Yet here, too, criticism of idealism in its theory of knowledge is often conducted from metaphysical positions. Thus, R. W. Sellars abstracts in epistemology the sensory stage of perception from the social side of human life and therefore, like the earlier currents, confines himself only to its biological and physiological basis. The same biological foundations, to a certain degree, bring naturalism close to pragmatism. This limitation leads the naturalists only to a half-hearted recognition of the theory of reflection as the basis of the theory of knowledge. The shortcoming of naturalism in the aspect of the question being analyzed manifests itself, on the one hand, in the affirmation of the activity of cognition, of causality in the determination of consciousness, and in the denial of the activity of reflection—on the other. Therefore, in epistemology a concession is made to agnosticism, and materialism proves to be only “shamefaced.”

However, what is important are the materialist positions of the naturalists in explaining nature, their recognition of the reality of the objective world. It is precisely on this ground that new conceptions of teaching are now beginning to take shape. Naturalism draws attention to the specific interaction of science, education, and production, and to the distinctive refraction of the structure of scientific knowledge in the school subject. In this question the positivist and pragmatist principle of verification is rejected. The structure of scientific knowledge and of the school subject is determined by the object of cognition that is determined. Science is adequate to the object, and the school subject reflects science. Consequently, the structure of an academic discipline reflects the logic of the real object.

The new processes connected with the scientific and technological revolution posed anew the question of the activity and determinacy of the subject of cognition in teaching. The objectless activism of pragmatism, positivism, and existentialism was replaced in naturalism by a detailed analysis of the determination of scientific knowledge: after all, in many aspects it accepts Lenin’s theory of reflection.¹² Naturalism therefore determines the need to orient teaching not toward the spontaneous activity of the learner, not toward his “innate qualities,” but toward the logic of the subject taught, which reflects the regularities of the objective world. The rejection of psychology as the sole basis on which teaching should be grounded, and a profound analysis of logic, of the logical—

...of educational problems in the teaching process represents a progressive materialist tendency in contemporary bourgeois methodology of instruction.

Scholars who take the standpoint of naturalism are, in many respects, correct in resolving the question of the relation between the activity and the determinacy of the subject of cognition in learning. They have assimilated new currents in philosophy, psychology, and the logic of thought; they recognize the active nature of cognition and make use of the ideas of the most prominent progressive scholars of the Western world, such as J. Piaget and A. Wallon. Naturalism’s recognition of ontological problematics, of the determinacy of cognition by the external world, has directed attention to the theoretical level of education, to the development of the logical capacities of the individual. The cognitive activity of learners has come to be viewed not only as a specific biological, hereditary capacity inherent in an intellectual elite with “theoretical impulses,” but also as a general property of the personality, capable of development in the process of learning. “Learning is an application of efforts in order to foster and shape development. In learning it would be unreasonable to ignore what is known about development, its obstacles, difficulties, and conveniences. And a theory of instruction... is the result of a theory of growth and development, which various measures assist,” writes J. Bruner in Toward a Theory of Instruction.^24 At the center of the problems of J. Bruner’s theory of instruction is the human being in his generic essence,^25 and, consequently, in logic he sees above all dialectical thinking. The assertion that the logic of the object is reflected in the school subject determined the need to develop methods of instruction. And since the connection of the elements of knowledge is seen by naturalism as based on dialectical rather than formal (positivist) logic, the chief attention in methods of instruction is devoted to the formation of substantive generalizations through grasping and understanding the structure of the subject.

In this respect, the position, for example, of J. Bruner is closely connected with J. Piaget’s teaching on the schemas of cognitive activity. A schema is a cognitive structure that unites a set of similar actions (“a mobile framework,”—J. Piaget). To form schemas (Piaget) or the structure of a subject (Bruner) means to form dialectical, substantive generalizations leading to mastery of the method of cognition, to develop cognitive activity, a worldview, and a culture of thinking.

The turn from the hypertrophying of psychology (pragmatism) in instruction toward its logical foundations entails naturalism’s attention to many other practical questions of the theory of instruction as well. Thus, methods of instruction are being actively developed on the basis of teaching a unified logical structure of knowledge, which reflects a unified scientific picture of the world. In naturalism, a question also being raised that is urgent for instruction is the correspondence between methods of discovering knowledge and methods of assimilating it. The structure of the school subject is therefore oriented to an ever greater degree toward the logic of the discovery of knowledge by scientists,^26 toward the development of intuitive thinking, conjecture,^27 and understanding.^28

^24 J. Bruner. Toward a Theory of Instruction. Cambridge, 1966, p. 2 (in English).

^25 “The content of the course is man, his nature as a species, his powers, which have created and continue to create humanity.” J. Bruner. Ibid., p. 74.

^26 See: W. Sawyer. Prelude to Mathematics. Moscow, 1965; J. Bruner. The Process of Education. Moscow, 1962.

^27 R. L. Wilder. “Axiomatics and the Development of Creative Talent.” In: The Axiomatic Method, with Special Reference to Geometry and Physics (in English). Interna-

However, naturalism holds that the logical structure of the academic subject must at the same time take into account the psychological structure of the personality, in which knowledge is individually refracted. But the psychological element is understood by naturalists not in the sense of the “innate qualities” of the individual, but in the meaning in which it is developed by leading psychologists of the Western world, such as G. Allport. Allport assigns decisive significance in the formation of the psychology of personality not to its “innate capacities,” but to the surrounding environment. The personality never reaches equilibrium or rest with the environment, but “is a dynamic organization within the individual, ...and the psychological system determines his unique adaptation to the environment”^29. On this basis naturalism rejects behaviorism as the psychological foundation of the theory of instruction. “Moreover, adaptation must not be viewed only as reactive adjustment, as in plants or animals. Human adaptation contains much that is spontaneous, creative in its relation to the environment”^30.

Attention to the psychological factor in naturalistic conceptions of instruction does not mean an analysis of an immutable human nature, but presupposes the age-related, developing maturity of the intellect, which curricula must take into account so as not to alter the logical and theoretical orientation of the course. Any knowledge is always assimilated by the personality only in accordance with its resolving capacities, in accordance with the already existing stock of scientific knowledge. Therefore naturalism turns both to psychology and to logic as the basic disciplines of instruction, without hypertrophying either the one (pragmatism) or the other (positivism).

The struggle of subjective idealism in the form of pragmatism and existentialism against naturalism in the bourgeois methodology of instruction is a reflection of the present social conditions of monopoly capitalism and of scientific and technological progress. Its intensification today is a symptom of the serious crisis of philosophical idealism, which from time immemorial has served as the methodology of instruction.

people’s symposium, Amsterdam, 1959; J. Pólya. Mathematics and Plausible Reasoning. Moscow, 1957.
^28 M. McKay. Cited work.
^29 G. W. Allport. Personality: A Psychological Interpretation (in English), New York, 1937, p. 48.
^30 G. W. Allport. Ibid., p. 50.

1. See: John Nichols. Letters to the editor of the education section (in English), Saturday Review, no. 15, 1970, p. 44: “During a fundamental crisis in all aspects of social life... there is nevertheless still one area where society retains directed influence. This area is education. But it too is gradually slipping out from under social influence.”
   See also: M. Mackie. Education in a Research Society (Introduction to the Philosophy of Education). X., 1966 (in English), where on pp. 5–12 the author speaks of a “rich society” in which education is undergoing a crisis. ↩

2. F. Coombs. The Crisis of Education in the Modern World (A Systems Analysis). Moscow, 1970; J. Bruner. The Process of Education. Moscow, 1962; J. Bruner. Toward a Theory of Instruction (in English). Cambridge, 1966; M. Mackie. Cited work; F. Machlup. The Production and Distribution of Knowledge in the United States. Moscow, 1966. ↩

3. See, for example, the articles: J. Cass. Benefits and Losses in Education (in English). — Saturday Review, no. 15, 1970, pp. 39–40; V. V. Stretch. The Rise of the “Free School” (in English). — Saturday Review, no. 20, 1970; article by Beatrice and Ronald Gross. The Rise of the “Free School” (in English). — Saturday Review, no. 16, 1970.
   J. Cass, in the article cited, quotes the words of school-board president A. Holliday: “The basic reason for the contact between the state and private firms lies in gross miscalculations, losses in the field of education... The preservation of a complex of problems is the cause of today’s concern over the process of education.” ↩

4. See: W. E. Ritter and E. W. Bailey, “The Organismic Conception. Its Place in Science and Its Meaning for Philosophy” (Publications in Zoology of the University of California) (in English), vol. 31, no. 14, 1928, p. 353, where the authors define man as a “phenomenon of two fundamental relations to the external world: relations of stimulus and reaction and of nutritive relations.” ↩

5. A. B. Novikoff, “The Concept of Integrative Levels and Biology” (in English).—Science, vol. 101, no. 2618, 1945, pp. 211–212. ↩

6. R. W. Gerard and A. E. Emerson, “Extrapolation of Biology into Society” (in English).—Science, vol. 101, no. 2632, 1945, p. 582. ↩

7. K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. 20, pp. 34–35. ↩

8. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 18, p. 166. ↩

9. B. Skinner, “The Science of Learning and the Art of Teaching,” in: Programmed Instruction Abroad, Moscow, 1968, p. 33. ↩

10. See: G. W. Hutchinson, “The Place of Fundamental and Applied Sciences in Scientific Education,” Mir nauki, 1970, No. 1, where the author criticizes Suyin’s report presented to the commission, which expresses a similar pragmatic point of view. ↩

11. R. W. Sellars, “Three Stages of Materialism,” Voprosy filosofii, 1962, No. 8, p. 133. ↩

12. In our literature it has been noted that in R. W. Sellars’s recent works he recognizes certain aspects of Lenin’s theory of reflection. See: A. S. Bogomolov, “Roy Wood Sellars on the Materialist Theory of Knowledge,” Voprosy filosofii, 1962, No. 8. ↩