Scientism and Values.pdf - Ludwig von Mises Institute

Growth) in Biology and in Education 199
easily motivated activities-all this has resulted in depriving children
of the opportunity to learn to work for the sheer sake of fulfilling
necessary obligations and responsibilities.
3. Criteria for the Application of Scientific Concepts to Humans
The headlong rush to apply new facts and new concepts in
the field of education has brought disrepute to professional education
in the eyes of most scholars and in the eyes of many·citizens.
During the last few decades we have seen, for example, the theory
of identical elements and a strongly narrowed concept of utility
used as the bases for discarding the classics, foreign language,
mathematics, and science from the school curricula and from the
curriculum of individual students. We have seen the loose and
unstudied concept of life adjustment used as a basis for inserting
trivia into the regular school hours. Possibly the concept of development
is destined to be used as a basis for the support of
more trivia. I hope not, because it may develop into a concept
of real worth if treated with scholarly rigor, criticism, and
imagination.
We have seen the concept of interest in relation to learning
perverted into a concept of whim and caprice to such an extent
that lack of interest is constantly used by students as a "reason"
for not studying. We have seen a concept of integration of knowledge
used as the basis for disrupting pedagogical and learning efficiency.
This has been done by creating core courses, activity
programs, practical courses, community studies, and the like in
lieu of the study of traditional bodies of knowledge. The traditional
bodies of knowledge exist because there are inherent in
them patterns of multiple reasoned relationships that give the
best order and greatest simplicity so far achieved. They exist also
because they are the most economical way of learning something
of the real breadth and depth of human experience. To disrupt
this order at the teaching level is to take from the teacher variety,
order, and simplicity in presentation; and to take from the student
a wealth of opportunities to explore and rediscover the rea-