onstitute growing. Active habits involve thought, invention, and
initiative in applying capacities to new aims. They are opposed
to routine which marks an arrest of growth. Since growth is the
characteristic of life, education is all one with growing; it has no
end beyond itself. The criterion of the value of school education is the
extent in which it creates a desire for continued growth and supplies
means for making the desire effective in fact.

1 Intimations of its significance are found in a number of writers, but
John Fiske, in his Excursions of an Evolutionist, is accredited with its
first systematic exposition.

2 This conception is, of course, a logical correlate of the conceptions
of the external relation of stimulus and response, considered in
the last chapter, and of the negative conceptions of immaturity and
plasticity noted in this chapter.

Chapter Five: Preparation, Unfolding, and Formal Discipline

1. Education as Preparation. We have laid it down that the educative
process is a continuous process of growth, having as its aim at every
stage an added capacity of growth. This conception contrasts sharply
with other ideas which have influenced practice. By making the contrast
explicit, the meaning of the conception will be brought more clearly to
light. The first contrast is with the idea that education is a process
of preparation or getting ready. What is to be prepared for is, of
course, the responsibilities and privileges of adult life. Children are
not regarded as social members in full and regular standing. They are
looked upon as candidates; they are placed on the waiting list. The
conception is only carried a little farther when the life of adults
is considered as not having meaning on its own account, but as a
preparatory probation for "another life." The idea is but another form
of the notion of the negative and privative character of growth already
criticized; hence we shall not repeat the criticisms, but pass on to the
evil consequences which flow from putting education on this basis.
In the first place, it involves loss of impetus. Motive power is not
utilized. Children proverbially live in the present; that is not only
a fact not to be evaded, but it is an excellence. The future just as
future lacks urgency and body. To get ready for something, one knows not
what nor why, is to throw away the leverage that exists, and to seek for
motive power in a vague chance. Under such circumstance