Liberal Educational Implications of Deweyan Objections to the Concept of Reflex Arc

Abstract

The term ‘reflex arc’ is used in psycho-physiological theory such that the sensory-motor mechanism has a shape of an arc from the sensory nervous system to the motor nervous system via the brain and spinal cord. As experimental psychology has emerged and developed, such a reflex arc mechanism has come to be seen as an extremely basic explanation model of explaining the sensory-motor process. Thorndike had positively theorized the reflex arc model by applying it to the field of educational psychology, while Dewey objected thereto. The reflex arc theory of Thorndike was largely accepted by educators during the middle and later periods of twentieth century, but Dewey’s objections thereto did not exert any touchable practical effect. Here, pro and con positions to the reflex arc model will be presented, particularly in the field of education, by citing Thorndike and Dewey, respectively. Deep consideration will be given to what implications such reflex arc-related pro and con positions have as to education as such, while the way and the results of building the education as science on the model of reflex arc being tested and evaluated. The genuine science of education turns out to conform in purpose to that of liberal education as such, so that in-situ educators of liberal education serve important roles in realizing such a science, and act as a specialist-practitioner. This study argues that the improper implications of the reflex arc model to education could be dissolved or removed by understanding and encouraging holistic transactions between the teacher-learners as well as between the peers.