ctors
of the disposition it is wished to develop; purifying and idealizing
the existing social customs; creating a wider and better balanced
environment than that by which the young would be likely, if left to
themselves, to be influenced.

Chapter Three: Education as Direction

1. The Environment as Directive.

We now pass to one of the special forms which the general function of
education assumes: namely, that of direction, control, or guidance.
Of these three words, direction, control, and guidance, the last best
conveys the idea of assisting through cooperation the natural capacities
of the individuals guided; control conveys rather the notion of an
energy brought to bear from without and meeting some resistance from the
one controlled; direction is a more neutral term and suggests the
fact that the active tendencies of those directed are led in a certain
continuous course, instead of dispersing aimlessly. Direction expresses
the basic function, which tends at one extreme to become a guiding
assistance and at another, a regulation or ruling. But in any case, we
must carefully avoid a meaning sometimes read into the term "control."
It is sometimes assumed, explicitly or unconsciously, that an
individual's tendencies are naturally purely individualistic or
egoistic, and thus antisocial. Control then denotes the process by which
he is brought to subordinate his natural impulses to public or common
ends. Since, by conception, his own nature is quite alien to this
process and opposes it rather than helps it, control has in this view
a flavor of coercion or compulsion about it. Systems of government
and theories of the state have been built upon this notion, and it has
seriously affected educational ideas and practices. But there is no
ground for any such view. Individuals are certainly interested, at
times, in having their own way, and their own way may go contrary to
the ways of others. But they are also interested, and chiefly interested
upon the whole, in entering into the activities of others and taking
part in conjoint and cooperative doings. Otherwise, no such thing as
a community would be possible. And there would not even be any one
interested in furnishing the policeman to keep a semblance of harmony
unless he thought that thereby he could gain some personal advantage.
Control, in truth, means only an emphatic form of direction of powers,
and covers the regulation gained by an individual through his own