Two pints it takes to make one quart
And all should give good measure.

Four quarts it takes to make one gallon,
All those who cheat, must fare ill;
Thirty-one gallons and one half

Will fill a common barrel.

Two pipes it takes to make one tun
Of brandy, wine or rum,

These, if men drink, 'twill lead them on,
Until they are undone." (p. 191.)

Infant School Manual (Worcester, Mass., 1830).

CHAPTER XIX

THE EDUCATIVE PROCESS: SUBJECT MATTER
AND CURRICULUM

465. "MR. DOOLEY" ON THE CURRICULUM

"It makes no difference what you teach a boy so long as he doesn't like it."

Quoted in School and Society, 1:625.

466. WISDOM AND KNOWLEDGE

"Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers."

Tennyson, Locksley Hall, Line 141.

467. VALUATION OF SUBJECT MATTER

"If we start from the standpoint of the active powers of the children concerned, we shall measure the utility of the new subject matter and new modes of skill by the way in which they promote the growth of these powers. We shall not insist upon tangible material products, nor upon what is learned being put to further use at once in some visible way, nor even demand evidence that the children have become morally improved in some respect: save as the growth of powers is itself a moral gain."

Dewey, Interest and Effort (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1913), pp. 63-4.

468. THE CHILD AND THE CURRICULUM

"The fundamental factors in the educative process are an immature, undeveloped being; and certain social aims, meanings, values incarnate in the matured experience of the adult. The educative process is the due interaction of these forces. Such a conception of each in relation to the other as facilitates completest and freest interaction is the essence of educational theory.

"But here comes the effort of thought. It is easier to see the conditions in their separateness, to insist upon one at the expense

of the other, to make antagonists of them, than to discover a reality to which each belongs. (p. 7 f). . . . When this happens a really serious practical problem-that of interaction-is transformed into an unreal, and hence insoluble, theoretic problem. Instead of seeing the educative process steadily and as a whole, we see conflicting terms. We get the case of the child vs. the curriculum; of the individual nature vs. social culture. (p. 8.)

"What, then, is the problem? It is just to get rid of the prejudicial notion that there is some gap in kind (as distinct from degree) between the child's experience and the various forms of subject matter that make up the course of study. From the side of the child, it is a question of seeing how his experience already contains within itself elements-facts and truths of just the same sort as those entering into the formulated study; and, what is of more importance, of how it contains within itself the attitudes, the motives, and the interests which have operated in developing and organizing the subject-matter to the plane which it now occupies. From the side of the studies, it is a question of interpreting them as outgrowths of forces operating in the child's life, and of discovering the steps that intervene between the child's present experience and their richer maturity.

"Abandon the notion of subject-matter as something fixed and ready-made in itself, outside the child's experience; cease thinking of the child's experience as also something hard and fast; see it as something fluent, embryonic, vital; and we realize that the child and the curriculum are simply two limits which define a single process. Just as two points define a straight line, so the present standpoint of the child and the facts and truths of studies define instruction. It is a continuous reconstruction, moving from the child's present experience out into that represented by the organized bodies of truth that we call studies." (p. 15 f.)

Dewey, The Child and the Curriculum * (Chicago, University of Chicago, 1902).

469. TECHNIQUE AS AN END

"The interest in technique, in acquiring skill, demands, in order not to lead to arrested development, a sufficient background of actual experience. Even if children of six and seven were psychologically ready for analysis, for attention to form and symbols and rules, very few of them have had the range of vital experience which would make it profitable for them to devote

1

themselves very exclusively to the former at the expense of the latter. Hence, once more, attention must still be directed to positive subject-matter that enlarges and deepens their world of imagination and thought, rather than to analysing an experience they have not yet got, or learning rules for doing things that make no personal appeal to them.

“And, . . . the introduction to technique must come in connection with ends that arise within the children's own experience, that are present to them as desired ends, and hence as motives to effort. The too frequent assumption is that it is enough for the teacher to see the end; and that because, as matter of fact, a child is going to need a certain power, this is sufficient basis upon which to engage him in its acquisition. But the prime psychological necessity is that the child see and feel the end as his own end, the need as his own need, and thus have a motive for making the analysis and mastering the 'rules,' i.e. methods of procedure. This is possible only as the formal work is kept in connection with active, with constructive, and expressive work, which, presenting difficulties, suggests the need of acquiring an effective method of coping with them."

Dewey, in Elementary School Record* 1:51-52 (March, 1900).

470. KANT ON THE EFFECT OF PLAYS

"His interest being absorbed in . . . plays, the boy denies himself other needs, and thus learns gradually to impose other and greater privations upon himself. At the same time he becomes accustomed to continuous occupation; but for this very reason, his plays must not be merely plays; they must be plays having a purpose and an end; for the more his body is strengthened and hardened in this manner the safer is he from the disastrous consequences of pampering."

Buchner, Kant's Educational Theory* (Philadelphia, Lippincott, 1904), p. 162.

471. THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF SOCIAL PLAY

"The second kind of play is the playing of children with children . . . On the play-place [play-ground] they first issue from the speaking and audience hall into the true sphere of action, and begin their human praxis . . . Where then can the child show and mature his governing power, his resistance, his generosity, his gentleness, in short every root and blossom of

society, except in freedom among his equals? Teach children by children! The entrance into their playroom is for them an entrance into the great world, and their mental school of industry is in the child's playroom and nursery."

Richter, Levana (1807 Bohn ed.), p. 157.

472. VALUE OF PLAY

"For years play was looked upon merely as a sort of inevitable waste of time among children, but scientific study of the cultivation of these organisms has shown that play is in most respects the best, the ideal form of the exercise of the powers. Particularly is this true for the younger children, but it is in large measure true as they grow older. Play is the activity which their own natures suggest and guide; it is varied as their diverse budding capabilities require; and when free it is not carried beyond the point where one activity interferes with the development of others. The young child perhaps learns more and develops better through its play than through any other form of activity. Opportunity for varied play under healthful outward conditions is beyond doubt the chief need of children; comparative study of the mental and physical development of children to whom full opportunity for such play is given shows striking superiority, as compared with children to whom such opportunities are denied."

Jennings, in Suggestions of Modern Science Concerning Education (New York, Macmillan, 1917), p. 46 f.

*

473. CRITERIA FOR JUDGING GAMES AND PLAY

The teacher must ask "two questions: Will the proposed mode of play appeal to the child as his own? Is it something of which he has the instinctive roots in himself, and which will mature the capacities that are struggling for manifestation in him? And again: Will the proposed activity give that sort of expression to these impulses that will carry the child on to a higher plane of consciousness and action, instead of merely exciting him, and then leaving him just where he was before, plus a certain amount of nervous exhaustion and appetite for more excitation in the future? . .

"The peculiar problem of the early grades is, of course, to get hold of the child's natural impulses and instincts, and to utilize them so that the child is carried on to a higher plane of