Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education - Ontario. Department of Education

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problems connected with his geometric environment; as, for example, to discover the sum of the interior angles of a triangle.

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      The examples of adjustment taken from school-room practice, are found, however, to differ in one important respect from the previous example taken from practical life. This difference consists in the fact that in the recovery of the coin the modification of experience took place wholly without control or direction other than that furnished by the problem itself. Here the problem—the recovery of the coin—presents itself to the child and is seized upon as a motive by his attention solely on account of its own value; secondly, this problem of itself directs a flow of relative images which finally bring about the necessary adjustment. In the examples taken from the school, on the other hand, the processes of adjustment are, to a greater or less extent, directed and regulated through the presence of some type of educative agent. For instance, when a student goes through the process of learning the relation of the exterior angle to the two interior and opposite angles, the control of the process appears in the fact that the problem is directly presented to the student as an essential step in a sequence of geometric problems, or adjustments. The same direction or control of the process is seen again in the fact that the student is not left wholly to himself, as in the first example, to devise a solution, but is aided and directed thereto, first, in that the ideas bearing upon the problem have previously been made known to the student through instruction, and secondly, in that the selecting and adjusting of these former ideas to the solution of the new problem is also directed through the agency of either a text-book or a teacher. A conscious adjustment, therefore, which is brought about without direction from another, implies only a process of learning on the part of the child, while a controlled adjustment implies both a process of learning on the part of the child and a process of teaching on the part of an instructor. For scientific treatment, therefore, it is possible to limit formal education, so far as it deals with conscious adjustment, to those modifications of experience which are directed or controlled through an educative agent, or, in other words, are brought about by means of instruction.

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      Formal education being an attempt to direct the development of the child by controlling his stimulations and responses through the agency of an instructor, we may now understand in general the necessary qualifications and offices of the teacher in directing the educative process.

      1. The teacher must understand what constitutes the worthy life; that is, he must have a definite aim in directing the development of the child.

      2. He must know what stimulations, or problems, are to be presented to the child in order to have him grow, or develop, into this life of worth.

      3. He must know how the physical, intellectual, and moral nature of the child reacts upon these appropriate stimulations.

      4. He must have skill in presenting the stimuli, or problems, to the child and in bringing its mind to react appropriately thereon.

      5. He must, in the case of conscious reactions, see that the child not only acquires the new experience, but that he is also able to apply it effectively. In other words, he must see that the child acquires not only knowledge, but also skill in the use of knowledge.

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      Valuable Experience: Race Knowledge.—Since education aims largely to increase the effectiveness of the moral conduct of the child by adding to the value of his experience, the science of education must decide the basis on which the educator is to select experiences that possess such a value in directing conduct. Now a study of the progress of a nation's civilization will show that this advancement is brought about through the gradual interpretation of the resources at the nation's command, and the turning of these resources to the attainment of human ends. Thus there is gradually built up a community, or race, experience, in which the materials of the physical, economic, political, moral, and religious life are organized and brought under control. By this means is constituted a body of race experience, the value of which has been tested in its direct application to the needs of the social life of the community. It is from the more typical forms of this social, or race, experience that education draws the experience, or problems, for the educative process. In other words, through education the experiences of the child are so reconstructed that he is put in possession of the more typical and more valuable forms of race experience, and thus rendered more efficient in his conduct, or action.

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      Represents Race Experiences.—So far as education aims to have the child enter into typical valuable race experiences, this can be accomplished only by placing these experiences before him as problems in such form that he may realize them through a regular process of learning. The purpose of the school curriculum is, therefore, to provide such problems as may, under the direction of the instructor, control the conscious reactions of the child, and enable him to participate in these more valuable race experiences. In this sense arithmetic becomes a means for providing the child with a series of problems which may give him the experiences which the race has found valuable in securing commercial accuracy and precision. In like manner, constructive work provides a series of problems in which the child experiences how the race has turned the materials of nature to human service. History provides problems whose solution gives the experience which enables the pupil to meet the political and social conditions of his own time. Physics shows how the forces of nature have become instruments for the service of man. Geography shows how the world is used as a background for social life; and grammar, what principles control the use of the race language as a medium for the communication of thought.

      Classifies Race Experience.—Without such control of the presentation of these racial experiences as is made possible through the school and the school curriculum, the child would be likely to meet them only as they came to him in the actual processes of social life. These processes are, however, so complex in modern society, that, in any attempt to secure experience directly, the child is likely to be overwhelmed by their complex and unorganized character. The message boy in the dye-works, for example, may have presented to him innumerable problems in number, language, physics, chemistry, etc., but owing to the confused, disorganized, and mingled character of the presentation, these are not likely to be seized upon by him as direct problems calling for adjustment. In the school curriculum, on the other hand, the different phases of this seemingly unorganized mass of experiences are abstracted and presented to the child in an organized manner, the different phases being classified as facts of number, reading, spelling, writing, geography, physics, chemistry, etc. Thus the school curriculum classifies for the child the various phases of this race experience and provides him with a comprehensive representation of his environment.

      Systematizes Race Experience.—The school curriculum further presents each type of experience, or each subject, in such a systematic order that the various experiences may develop out of one another in a natural way. If the child were compelled to meet his number facts altogether in actual life, the impressions would be received without system or order, now a discount experience, next a problem in fractions, at another time one in interest or mensuration. In the school

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