individual conceives the existence within his environment of a difficulty which demands adjustment, or which serves as a problem calling for solution.
2. A Selecting Process.—With this problem as a motive, there takes place within the experience of the individual a selecting of ideas felt to be of value for solving the problem which calls for adjustment.
3. A Relating Process.—These relevant ideas are associated in consciousness and form a new experience believed to overcome the difficulty involved in the problem. This new experience is accepted, therefore, mentally, as a satisfactory plan for meeting the situation, or, in other words, it adjusts the individual to the problem in hand.
4. Expression.—This new experience is expressed in such form as is requisite to answer fully the need felt in the original problem.
EDUCATION AS ADJUSTMENT
Example from Writing.—An examination of any ordinary educative process taken from school-room experience will show that it involves in some degree the factors mentioned above.
As a very simple example, may be taken the case of a young child learning to form capital letters with short sticks. Assuming that he has already copied letters involving straight lines, such as A, H, etc., the child, on meeting such a letter as C or D, finds himself face to face with a new problem. At first he may perhaps attempt to form the curves by bending the short thin sticks. Hereupon, either through his own failure or through some suggestion of his teacher, he comes to see a short, straight line as part of a large curve. Thereupon he forms the idea of a curve composed of a number of short, straight lines, and on this principle is able to express himself in such forms as are shown here.
In this simple process of adjustment there are clearly involved the four stages referred to above, as follows:
1. The Problem.—The forming of a curved letter by means of straight sticks.
2. A Selecting Process.—Selecting of the ideas straight and curved and the fixing of attention upon them.
3. A Relating Process.—An organization of the selected ideas into a new experience in which the curve is viewed as made up of a number of short, straight lines.
4. Expression.—Working out the physical expression of the new experience in the actual forming of capitals involving curved lines.
Example from Arithmetic.—An analysis of the process by which a child learns that there are four twos in eight, shows also the following factors:
1. The Problem.—To find out how many twos are contained in the vaguely known eight.
2. A Selecting Process.—To meet this problem the pupil is led from his present knowledge of the number two, to proceed to divide eight objects into groups of two; and, from his previous knowledge of the number four, to measure the number of these groups of two.
3. A Relating Process.—Next the three ideas two, four, and eight are translated into a new experience, constituting a mental solution of the present problem.
4. Expression.—This new experience expresses itself in various ways in the child's dealings with the number problems connected with his environment.
Example from Geometry.—Taking as another example the process by which a student may learn that the exterior angle of a triangle is equal to the two interior and opposite angles, there appear also the same stages, thus:
1. The Problem.—The conception of a difficulty or problem in the geometrical environment which calls for solution, or adjustment—the relation of the angle a to the angles b and c in Figure 1.
|
|
|
|
| Fig. 1 | Fig. 2 | Fig. 3 |
2. A Selecting Process.—With this problem as a motive there follows, as suggested by Figure 2, the selecting of a series of ideas from the previous experiences of the pupil which seem relative to, or are considered valuable for solving the problem in hand.
3. A Relating Process.—These relative ideas pass into the formation of a new experience, as illustrated in Figure 3, constituting the solution of the problem.
4. Expression.—A further applying of this experience may be made in adjusting the pupil to other problems connected with his geometric environment; as, for example, to discover the sum of the interior angles of a triangle.
EDUCATION AS CONTROL OF ADJUSTMENT
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
