Will and Education

According to one prevalent pedagogical theory, the aim of education is the transmission of established 'truths', often presumably 'eternal' ones. Such a theory presupposes that the primary function of Consciousness is data-processing, one which, especially in the case of eternal truths, is not necessarily an embodied process. However, if, as proposed here, the immediate object of Consciousness is always Will, i. e. some motile process, then what is primarily learned in the transmission of information is how to receive, store, and retrieve data. In contrast, in a pedagogical theory which respects the fundamentality of Will in Experience, the substance of education is not information, but method. Still, the inculcation of a universal method always threatens to degenerate into impersonal dogmatism, as most major doctrines have proven over the centuries. One exception is Experimentalism, as pioneered by Dewey, which not only appreciates that every new exercise of Will challenges previously established truths. but draws its validity from such novelty.