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2022年4月20日研究生德育原理课

提要

教育中的道德原则（节译）

杜威 著

黄向阳译

What holds in the illustration of this particular definition of education holds good from whatever point of view we approach the matter. Only as we interpret school activities with reference to the larger circle of social activities to which they relate do we find any standard for judging their moral significance.

无论我们从什么观点看待教育这件事，在阐明教育的这一特殊定义中所主张的东西仍然是有效的。只有当我们参照与学校活动有关的更大范围的社会活动来解释学校活动时，我们才能找到评判学校活动道德意义的标准。

The school itself must be a vital social institution to a much greater extent than obtains at present。 I am told that there is a swimming school in a certain city where youth are taught to swim without going into the water, being repeatedly drilled in the various movements which are necessary for swimming。 When one of the young men so trained was asked what he did when he got into the water, he laconically replied, “Sunk。” The story happens to be true; were it not, it would seem to be a fable made expressly for the purpose of typifying the ethical relationship of school to society。

The school cannot be a preparation for social life excepting as it reproduces, within itself, typical conditions of social life。 At present it is largely engaged in the futile task of Sisyphus。 It is endeavoring to form habits in children for use in a social life which, it would almost seem, is carefully and purposely kept away from vital contact with the child undergoing training。 The only way to prepare for social life is to engage in social life。 To form habits of social usefulness and serviceableness apart from any direct social need and motive, apart from any existing social situation, is, to the letter, teaching the child to swim by going through motions outside of the water。 The most indispensable condition is left our account, and the results are correspondingly partial。

学校本身必须是一种远甚于当前所达到的程度上的至关重要的社会机构。有人告诉我，某市有一所游泳学校，那所学校不下水教年轻人游泳，反复训练游泳必需的各种不同动作。当一个受过这种训练的年轻人被问及他进到水里做了什么时，他干脆利落地回答说：“沉没。”这个故事碰巧是真的；要不然，它看起来像是有人特意编造出来的一则意在象征学校与社会之伦理关系的寓言。学校除非在其内部再造社会生活的典型环境，否则就不能成为社会生活的预备。当前它主要从事西西弗斯的徒劳工作。它正在努力形成儿童种种习惯以备社会生活之用，可是看来几乎都是小心翼翼地故意地避免训练中的儿童与社会生活有生动的接触。为社会生活做准备的唯一途径就是参与社会生活。脱离直接的社会需要和社会动机，脱离现存的社会情境，去形成具有社会有用性和耐用性的习惯，不折不扣就是在通过完成水外动作教儿童游泳。最必不可少的条件不加考虑，其结果相应地就是片面的。

The much lamented separation in the schools of intellectual and moral training, of acquiring information and growing in character, is simply one expression of failure to conceive and construct the school as a social institution, having social life and value within itself。 Except so far as the school is an embryonic typical community life, moral training must be partly pathological and partly formal。 Training is pathological when stress is laid upon correcting wrong-doing instead of upon forming habits of positive service。

Too often the teacher’s concern with the moral life of pupils takes the form of alertness for failures to conform to school rules and routine。 These regulations, judged from the standpoint of development of the child at the time, are more or less conventional and arbitrary。 They are rules which have to be made in order that the existing modes of school work may go on; but the lack of inherent necessity in these school modes reflects itself in a feeling, on the part of the child, that the moral discipline of the school is arbitrary。

Any conditions that compel the teacher to take note of failures rather than healthy growth give false standards and result in distortion and perversion。 Attending to wrong-doing ought to be an incident rather than a principle。 The child ought to have a positive consciousness of what he is about, so as to judge his acts from the standpoint of reference to the work which he has to do。 Only in this way does he have avital standard, one that enables him to turn failures to account for thefuture。

学校中理智训练与道德训练的可悲分离，获取信息与品格成长的可悲分离，仅仅是未能把学校看成是并构建为本身具有社会生活和社会价值的社会机构的一种表现。除非学校是一种雏形的典型共同体生活，道德训练必定部分是病态的，部分是形式的。如果重点放在矫正错误行为上，而不放在形成积极服务的习惯上，训练就是病态的。教师往往采取警惕学生不遵守学校规则和常规的方式，去关心学生的道德生活。从当时儿童发展的立场上评判，这些规章多少是习俗的和专断的。它们是为了现存的学校工作方式可以进行下去而不得不订立的规则；但是，这种学校方式内在必要性的缺失反映在儿童一方的一种感觉上，即感觉学校的道德规训是专断。凡是迫使教师注意失败而不注意健康成长的情况，都会给出错误的标准，结果导致扭曲和倒错。注意错误行为，应当是是一种偶然事件，而不应当是一条原则。儿童应当对他要做什么有一种积极意识，以便从自己必须从事的工作的立场出发判断自身的行为。只有这样，他才有一个至关重要的标准，一个使他能够为了将来而利用失败的标准。

By saying that the moral training of the school is formal, I mean that the moral habits currently emphasize by the school are habits which are created, as it were, ad hoc。 Even the habits of promptness, regularity, industry, non-interference with the work of others, faithfulness to tasks imposed, which are specially inculcated in the school, are habits that are necessary simply because the school system is what it is, and must be preserved intact。 If we grant the inviolability of the schoolsy stem as it is, these habits represent permanent and necessary moral ideas; but just in so far as the school system is itself isolates and mechanical, insistence upon these moral habits is more or less unreal, because the ideal to which they relate is not itself necessary。

The duties, in other words, are distinctly school duties, not life duties。 If we compare this condition with that of the well-ordered home, we find that the duties and responsibilities that the child has there to recognize do not belong to the family as as pecialized and isolated institution, but flow from the very nature of the social life in which the family participates and to which it contributes。 The child ought to have the same motive for right doing and to be judged by the same standard in the school, as the adult in the wider social life to which he belongs。

Interest in community welfare, an interest that is intellectual andpractical, as well as emotional – an interest, that is to say, in perceiving whatever makes for social order and progress, and in carrying these principles into execution – is the moral habit to which all the special school habits must be related if they are to be animated by the breath of life。

所谓学校道德训练是形式的，我指的是学校当下强调的道德习惯可以说是特地制造的习惯。即使是及时、整齐、勤勉、不干扰他人工作、忠于布置的任务这些学校特别灌输的习惯，其所以是必需的习惯，仅仅是因为学校制度就是如此而且必须维持其完好无损。假使我们承认现在这个样子的学校制度是神圣不可侵犯的，这些习惯就代表永久的和必需的道德观念；可是，只要学校制度本身是孤立的和机械的，坚持这些道德习惯就或多或少是不切实际的，因为与它们有关的理想本身就不是必需的。换言之，那些义务分明是学校的义务，而不是生活的义务。假如我们拿这种情况和井然有序的家庭作比较，就会发现，儿童在家里必须承认的义务和责任，并不属于作为一个专门的孤立机构的家庭，而来自家庭参与其中并为之作贡献的社会生活的真正本性。儿童在学校里对于正当行为应当怀有和成人在他所属的更为广泛的社会生活中一样的动机，而且应该用和成人在他所属的更为广泛的社会生活中一样的标准去评判。对共同体福利的兴趣，是一种情感的兴趣，也是一种理智的和实践的兴趣——就是说，是一种感知一切有助于社会秩序和社会进步的事物并将这些原则付诸实施的兴趣——这种兴趣是道德习惯。一切特殊的学校习惯如果要靠生活的气息而变得生机勃勃的话，就必须与这种道德习惯联系起来。