of instruction.
REQUIREMENTS OF THE INSTRUCTOR
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.
CHAPTER IV
THE SCHOOL CURRICULUM
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.
PURPOSES OF CURRICULUM
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 curriculum, on the other hand, the child is in each subject first presented with the simple, near, and familiar, these in turn forming basic experiences for learning the complex, the remote, and the unknown. Thus he is able in geography, for example, on the basis of his simple and known local experiences, to proceed to a realization of the whole world as the background for human life.
Clarifies Race Experience.—Finally, when a child is given problems by means of the school curriculum, the experiences come to him in a pure form. That is, the trivial, accidental, and distracting elements which are necessarily bound up with these experiences when they are met in the ordinary walks of life are eliminated, and the single type is presented. For instance, the child may every day meet accidentally examples of reflection and refraction of light. But these not being separated from the mass of accompanying impressions, his mind may never seize as distinct problems the important relations in these experiences, and may thus fail to acquire the essential principles involved. In the school curriculum, on the other hand, under the head of physics, he has the essential aspects presented to him in such an unmixed, or pure, form that he finds relatively little difficulty in grasping their significance. Thus the school curriculum renders possible an effective control of the experiencing of the child by presenting in a comprehensive form a classified, systematized, and pure representation of the more valuable features of the race experience. In other words, it provides suitable problems which may lead the child to participate more fully in the life about him. Through the subjects of the school curriculum, therefore, the child may acquire much useful knowledge which would not otherwise be met, and much which, if met in ordinary life, could not be apprehended to an equal degree.
DANGERS IN USE OF CURRICULUM
While
