单项选择题

The phrase "progressive education" is one, if not of protest, at least of contrast, of contrast with an education which was predominantly static in subject-matter, authoritarian in methods, and mainly passive and receptive from the side of the young. But the philosophy of education must go beyond any idea of education that is formed by way of contrast, reaction and protest. For it is an attempt to discover what education is and how it takes place. Only when we identify education with schooling does it seem to be a simple thing to tell what education actually is, and yet a clear idea of what it is gives us our only criterion for judging and directing what goes on in schools. 　　It is sometimes supposed that it is the business of the philosophy of education to tell what education should be. But the only way of deciding what education should be, at least, the only way which does not lead us into the clouds, is discovery of what actually takes place when education really occurs. And before we can formulate a philosophy of education we must know how human nature is constituted in the concrete; we must know about the working of actual social forces; we must know about the operations through which basic raw materials are modified into something of greater value. The need for a philosophy of education is thus fundamentally the need for finding out what education really is. We have to take those cases in which we find there is a real development of desirable powers, and then find out how this development took place. Then we can project what has taken place in these instances as a guide for directing our other efforts. The need for this discovery and this projection is the need for a philosophy of education. 　　What then is education when we find actual satisfactory specimens of it in existence In the first place, it is a process of development, of growth. And it is the process and not merely the result that is important. A truly healthy person is not something fixed and completed. He is a person whose processes and activities go on in such a way that he will continue to be healthy. Similarly, an educated person is the person who has the power to go on and get more education. 　　In any case, development, growth, involve change, modification, and modification in definite directions. It is quite possible for a teacher, under the supposed sanction of the idea of cultivating individuality, to fixate a pupil more or less at his existing level. Respect for individuality is primarily intellectual. It signifies studying the individual to see what is there to work with. Having this sympathetic understanding, the practical work then begins, for the practical work is one of modification, of changing, of reconstruction continued without end. The change must at least be towards more effective techniques, towards greater self-reliance, towards a more thoughtful and inquiring disposition, one more capable of persistent effort in meeting obstacles. In the author’’s view, the philosophy of education