PRAGMATISM AND IT’S IMPLICATIONS ON TEACHING AND

LEARNING

Author:
Rachana KM
Asst Prof, Department of Commerce
BMS College for Women
Ph no. +91-99035631881
[email protected]

Co-Authors:
A Sunanda
Asst Prof, Department of Commerce
BMS College for Women
Ph no. +91-9242523096
[email protected]

E Bhuvaneswari
Asst Prof, Department of Commerce
BMS College for Women
Ph no. +91-9740500117

“We do not learn from experience… we learn from reflecting on experience.” - John Dewey

Abstract:
Pragmatism is midway between Naturalism and Idealism. It believes that only those theories
are true which work in practical situations. 'To it problem of the moment is more important
than that of the future. It believes that ideals are to be achieved here and now. It takes one
thing at a time and tries to solve its problems cooperatively. Its aim is to prepare the child for
membership in a modern community. It is against objective information. It believes in the
usefulness and practical utility of subjects. It also stands for the principle of correlation and
integration. It accepts whole-hearted purposeful creative activity proceeding in a social
environment. This paper focuses on the application of Pragmatism in education and its
influence on teaching and learning.

Keywords: Pragmatism, Principles, Implications, Teaching and Learning.

INTRODUCTION

Etymologically the word pragmatism is derived from the Greek word ‘Pragma’ which means
activity or the work done. Some other scholars think that the word pragmatism has been
derived from the word ‘Pragmatikos’ which means practicability or ‘utility’. Thus, according
to this ideology, great importance is laid upon practicability and utility. Pragmatists
tenaciously hold the view that activity or experiment is done first and then on the basis of
results, principles or ideas are derived. Pragmatism is also known as experimentalism or
consequentialism. It is called experimentalism because pragmatists believe experiment
constitutes the only criterion of truth. To them ‘truth’, ‘reality’, ‘goodness’ or ‘badness’ are
all relative terms. These concepts are not predetermined and absolute. They are proved by
man’s own experiences. Moreover, pragmatists believe that truths are many and they are in
the making. Man researches these areas only by means of his own experiments and
experiences. Hence, only those things which can be verified by experiments are regarded to
be true.

Pragmatists hold that whatever was true yesterday; need not to be the same today. Under
these circumstances no definite and determined principle or current use can stop the world
from moving forward on the path of progress. Pragmatism is called consequentialism,
because any human activity is evaluated in terms of its consequences or results. If the activity
results in utility, then it is true. It may be noted that the fundamental start of pragmatism is
“change”. In this sense no truth is absolute and permanent. It is always changing from time to
time, from place to place and from circumstance to circumstance. Thus, those ideas and
values which are useful in certain circumstance, time and place, need not prove to be the
same in changed circumstances, places and times. Hence, pragmatists do not uphold any
predetermined philosophy of life. To them, only those ideals and values are true which result
in utility to mankind in certain circumstances, places and time. It is therefore obvious that
pragmatism is very intimately connected with human life and human welfare. The chief
proponents of pragmatism are C.B. Pearce, William James, Shiller and John Dewey.

LITERATURE REVIEW

1. De, .K.(1972), Tagore’s Contribution to Education for International Understating,

Ph.D. Education, Vishwa Bharti University, West Bengal. He maintained that the
ideal human unity can be realized best and most successfully through educational
activity. This study presents the vision, the thought and the approach of J.
Krishnamurti, to understanding life and the existence of man in a systematic way, and
constitutes a maiden attempt at comprehending the teachings of the ‘world teacher’
exhaustively and succinctly in a simple, non-technical and lucid style.

2. Mehta, D.D.(1985), “Education in Emerging Indian Society”, Tondon Publication,

Ludhiana. In this book Mehta covers almost all topics of educational philosophy.
According to Mehta philosophy is “generalized thinking and relation to its place
function and value in experience”. Mehta discussed some Indian and western
philosopher in this book. According to this book Dewey’s philosophy is “philosophy
ought to make no attempt to save the face of the traditional wisdom, but ought to lease
its work entirely on experimental scientific fact Dewey was really a great
educationist. His educational philosophy proved very useful to the contemporary
social order.
3. Bhattacharya, Srinibas (2000) - “Philosophical Foundation of Education, Atlantic
Publishers and Distributors, B-2, Vishal Enclave, Delhi-27. In this philosophy and
other topics, those are related to education philosophy, philosophy provides a
foundation to determine the objectives of education. According to the author, decision
making is one of the greatest goals of philosophy of education. In this book
Bhattacharya discussed other related issues including freedom and discipline,
democracy in education and its application in classroom teaching etc. Philosophy of
education is a comprehensive area of knowledge with an interdisciplinary approach.

4. Dewey, J, (2004) - “Democracy and Education", Aakar Books, Delhi. In this book
Dewey has discussed the educational philosophy in the context of social environment.
John Dewey has described his view on educational philosophy, under various topics
as Education as Necessity of Life’, Democratic conception in education’, ‘Play and
work in the curriculum’ and other various topics related to educational philosophy.
According to Dewey “Education is a democratic task. The devotion of democracy to
education is a familiar fact. The superficial explanation is that a government resting
upon popular suffrage cannot be successful unless those who elect and who obey their
governors are educated. Since a democratic society repudiates the principles of
external authority. It must find a substitute in voluntary disposition and interest; these
can be created only by education”

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY: It is a study based on the secondary data. The

required data has been collected from various websites, articles and e-newspapers.

OBJECTIVES

1. To study the Principles of Pragmatism.

2. To know the implications of Pragmatism in Education.
3. To emphasize on the methods of Pragmatic Teaching.
4. To measure the influence of Pragmatism on Teaching and Learning.

Principles of Pragmatism:

The term Pragmatism is sometimes called “Progressivism”. “Progress implies Change.

Change further implies novelty”. So education cannot be convenience of as acquired once for
all. Life has become as complex as is subject to rapid modifications that the child has to face
new problems and education should enable the child to learn new techniques and problematic
situations. Problem solving is at the core of all the education. The educative process becomes
empirical, experimental and piecemeal: in a word Pragmatism.

 Pragmatists believe that man is primarily a biological and sociological organism. Past,
for man is dead and go on. Tomorrow would come with its own problems and with
their own problems.
 Human beings are essentially active. Here emphasis is on action and learning by
doing. Action is real and ideas are tools.
 There are no absolute values of life. Values are flexible. They change with time and
circumstances.
 Mind is dynamic process, which functions within a man. The human mind is the
product of change. The growth of personality is the product of action and discovery.
Development of personality is possible only in social context.
 Truth is that which works in practical situations. It is workable.
 Thought and knowledge emerges from search and enquiry.
 Pragmatism makes activity; the basis of all teaching prefers self activity in the context
of co-operative activity.

Implications of Pragmatism in Education:

As far as the pragmatist is concerned, activity is the cornerstone of the educative process.
They adopt an attitude akin to Constructivist thinkers such as Piaget and Vygotsky who
believe that children acquire their own knowledge through a process of experimentation in,
and interaction with their environment (Moore, 2000). Pragmatists regard every activity and
interaction as part of the educative process, which by necessity involves a constant
restructuring of those experiences in order to apply them to different circumstances, thereby
forming new habits (Kivenen and Ristela, 2003). Pragmatists maintain that as society changes
and individuals mature, their views and their experiences will change their existing
knowledge and therefore their potential actions in the future. It is therefore vital to them that
problem-solving is at the core of all education, making the educative process empirical and
experimental in nature (Educational System, 2013).

As far as education is concerned, there are several implications which result from a pragmatic
stance. Pragmatists believe that education should be an ever-evolving process of reviewing,
reconstructing and integrating their experiences as individuals move through life. Having said
that, pragmatists hold the view that it is important to maintain the culture of the past within
societies whilst tackling the situations which occur in the present and to merge the two.
Experimentation and real-life experiences hold the key to real knowledge, in that these
activities bring about growth and change in individuals as well as the societies in which they
live. The child and their needs should be at the centre of the educative process as they need to
have the freedom to discover their specific inherent abilities and their potential, which can be
supported and developed through their schooling.

a. Education as Life

Old and traditional education is lifeless. To them education is a continuous re-

organizing reconstructing, integrating the experience and activities of race. They want to
conserve the worthwhile culture of the past. Real knowledge can be gained only be activity,
experiments and real life experience. Thus in order to develop the child fully that he should
be provided opportunities to participate more in activities and experiments so that he creates
his own values and lead better, richer and happiest life.
b. Education as Growth

The child is to develop and life for the society, so his personality can be best
developed in social environment. If it were not for his contact with other peoples he would
never achieve a personality at all. The person who interacts with others has the ability to
examine one’s needs in an objective way and he has the capacity for reflection and intelligent
action. They are inconceivable without the give and take of the social environment.

Thus education will be useful if it brings about the growth and development of the
individual as well as the society which he lives. Each child is born with inherent capacities,
tendencies and aptitudes which are drawn out through education.

c. Education as a Social Process

In the words of Dewey “Education is the social continuity of life”. To pragmatist

education is life itself and not preparation for life. Thus it wants to clear to the educator that
the four things are inseparable i.e. man and nature, individual and society, mind and body,
and thought and action. In the words of Prof. V. R. Tenaja ‘The pragmatists wish that the
educator should have realisable aims in order to meet the struggle of life in a rational way.

d. Education a Continuous Restructuring of Experience

Education is a process of development. Knowledge changes with circumstances and it

gained by continuous experiments and experiences leads to one to another and so on and the
area of knowledge is widened. The process of reconstruction of experiences goes on and
leads to adjustment and development of the personality. For pragmatists educational process
has no end beyond itself. In addition to the individual it is continuous, reorganising,
reconstructing and integrating the experiences and the activities of the race.

e. Education the Responsibility of State

Education is the birth right of each individual, so the state should shoulder the
responsibility. It is for the state to make the child capable and confident to meet the problems
and challenges of life successfully.

Methods of Pragmatic Teaching:

To the pragmatist — “education is not so much teaching the child things he ought to know, as
encouraging him to learn for himself through experimental and creative activity”. Learning
by doing makes a person creative, confident and cooperative. The pragmatic method is
socialistic in nature. His learning should be thoroughly purposive. He should learn to fulfil
the purpose of his life.

The method employed by the pragmatist teacher is experimental. The pupil is required to
discover the truth for himself. To facilitate this discovery the application of the inductive and
heuristic methods of teaching is necessary. Experiences should, therefore, be planned to
arouse the curiosity of children to acquire knowledge.
 The whole emphasis of method of teaching in Pragmatism is on child, not the book, or
the teacher, or the subject
 The dominant interest of the child is “to do and to make”.
 The duty of the teacher to teach his pupils to do, rather than to know.
 The method should be flexible and dynamic. It must be adaptable and modifiable to
suit the nature of the subject matter and the potentiality of the students.
 The pragmatist’s curriculum provides for creative and purposeful activities in the
teaching-learning process.
 Pragmatism regards teacher as a helper, guide and philosopher.
 Pragmatist’s suggests Project method, consisting of purposeful activity carried out in
a social environment, pupils learns by doing.
 Learning by doing makes the pupil creative, confident and co-operative.
 Methods like problem solving, play-way, experimental and laboratory techniques
which follows the principles of learning by doing.

Influence of Pragmatism on Teaching and Learning:

Pragmatists generally believe that experience is the source of all knowledge. In the same way,
they define education in terms of experience. Education comes as a result of experience, it is
a lesson learnt from experience. But it is not every experience that is education. The
experience that is educative is the type that makes possible other experiences in future. The
experience must be productive and must not be a limiting experience. An experience is
limiting, if it hinders other possible experiences. For example, the armed robber who faced
the firing squad on the Lagos bar-beach was having an experience, but for him it could not be
an educative experience, since the firing terminated any possibility. This could be the reason
John Dewey, as cited by Akinpelu (1981), defined education as the continuous reconstruction
or reorganization of experience which adds to the meaning of experience, and which
increases the ability to direct the course of subsequent experience. Since knowledge comes
through the processing of experience by intelligence, using the problem – solving method, the
aim of education is therefore the development of learner’s ability to deal with future
problems. Education is the process of developing the habit of problem-solving, and there is
no limit to the development of this ability. The more varied and the more complex the
problems that a learner solves, the greater the growth of his intelligence is. Hence teacher
must develop this in the learner. Thus, education is also defined as growth, the growth is not a
biological or physical one, but rather mental, it is the growth in intelligence. Since the
problems to be solved arise in the course of daily living, it means that the child is learning as
he lives from day to day, and each day’s experience, if it is educative, increases his power of
solving his problems. Learning in this sense is not an activity that should take place in a
secluded spot or isolation from the child environment.

Pragmatists attacked also the contents of curriculum that are traditionally the same for every
child. It is their belief that the children are all massed together and uniformly taught as
though they want the same things and are learning at the same rate. What is more, they are all
fed on dead information which, being remote from their life experience, has to be memorized
and absorbed. The dead information is parcelled out in little bits of knowledge in the name of
disciplines. The relevance of these disciplines and life are not clear to the children. The result
is what Akinkuotu (1996) quoting Whitehead described as little bits of knowledge from
which nothing follows. Thus, the experience of the children which is normally an integrated
unit is fragmented for him as he changes from one unrelated subject to another unrelated
subject and switches his thinking from religion to mathematics at the sound of the bell.
Another point is that in that type of school, knowledge is imparted into the students as the
finished product of other people’s experience and students are not allowed to realize that they
too can produce knowledge from processing their own experience.

The method of the teaching itself is not such that can motivate the pupils. The children learn
more from the fear of the teacher who talk to the students rather than with the students. Since
the teacher towers so much above the students and exercises so much an authority, the pupils
have no option but to sit quietly, listen passively and absorb the facts passively as a sponge
absorbs water. What is most important to the teacher in such a school is the presentation of
subject-matter while the psychological conditions of learning, in terms of the child’s interest,
ability and stage of development and the sociological factors in terms of the relevance of the
subject for the social life of the child and the community are of secondary importance. The
child is supposed to see the relevance for his life at some future date, and integrate the
fragmented pieces of learning all on his own. Finally, this type of education naturally breeds
a type of attitude and disposition that is anti-social. This is because the child is made to learn
in isolation and to achieve results only through individual efforts rather than group learning
or co-operative efforts, only his individualistic rather than social nature is fostered. Dewey
(1959) believes that mere absorption of facts and truths is so exclusively individual, an affair
that it tends naturally to pass into selfishness.

The school, therefore, cannot be isolated from the community, nor should it removed the
child from the community in which life, the child is expected to participate. The school is not
only a part of the community; it is a community itself, a mini-community in which the child
is to experience group-living and co-operative learning activity. The school is only to
simplify the existing complex social life so as to make it easy for the child to absorb. The
school cannot directly change society, but it can reform it by equipping the children with
social intelligence, and by holding up the ideas of the life in that society. All these can only
be actualized through a professional teacher. The pragmatist’s position in determining a
professional teacher can be analysed based on the pragmatic principles earlier mentioned.

CONCLUSION

Based on the above principles and practices of the pragmatists, one may conclude that
teaching should pave ways for democratization of ideas in which both the teachers and the
learners would have their interest considered in the classroom activities. This could be seen
as the only means of making teaching a problem-solving activity.

RECOMMEDATION
This paper consequently submits that the pragmatists position that teaching should neither in
totality be teacher centred as idealists recommended nor in extreme sense, child-centred as
postulated by the naturalists. Instead, striking a balance between the two positions looks
more plausible and realistic to meaningful education growth and total involvement of the two
major participants in the educational enterprise.

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