Abstract
William Heard Kilpatrick's educational concept of 'cooperation' has been harshly criticized for the alleged effect of reinforcing conformity to industrial society and to 'other-directedness.' However, by claiming that education must be based, not on individualization, but on the 'cooperative purpose activity, ' Kilpatrick in fact criticized individualized methods of instruction and exerted influence on Helen Parkhurst.
Parkhurst, originator of the Dalton Plan, argued for the necessity for each student to share the minimal essentials to live a cooperative community life. She proposed an individualized method of instruction in which she gave students assignments individually in view of greater attention to social efficiency. Kilpatrick has warned that, by presupposing that the basic knowledge thus taught by the individualized instruction had priority over social activities, Parkhurst unintentionally made 'cooperation' so static and exclusive that it could even be seen as a form of conformity or social control. In Parkhurst's scheme, the individual was treated as a passive organism.
Being partly based on George Herbert Mead, Kilpatrick's theory claimed that 'cooperation' cannot be established simply by a unified linguistic community, but only by locating 'common ways of cooperating, ' which emerge from diverse points of view in which the self and others interact reciprocal ly, or, the 'self-other process.' According to Mead, Kilpatrick had asserted that 'cooperation' was the reciprocal relationship of the individual and society.
