Chapter 38

DIVISIONS OF EDUCATIONAL STUDY

CONTROL OF EXPERIENCE

=Significance of Control.=--From our previous inquiry into the nature of education, we may notice that at least two important problems present themselves for investigation in connection with the educative process. Our study of the subject-matter of education, or the school curriculum, has shown that its function as an educational instrumentality is to furnish for the child experiences of greater value, this enhanced value consisting in the greater social significance of the race experiences, or knowledge, embodied within the curriculum, when compared with the more individual experiences of the average child. It has been noted further, however, that the office of education is not merely to have the child translate this race experience into his own mind, but rather to have him add to his social efficiency by gaining an adequate power of control over these experiences. It is not, for instance, merely to know the number combinations, but to be able to meet his practical needs, that the child must master the multiplication tables. Control of experience, however, as we have seen from our analysis of the learning process, implies an ability to hold an aim, or problem, in view, and a further ability to select and arrange the means of gaining the desired end. In relation to the multiplication table, therefore, control of experience implies that a person is able to apprehend the present number situation as one that needs solution, and also that he can bring, or apply, his knowledge of the table to its solution.

=Nature of Growth of Control.=--The young child is evidently not able at first to exercise this power of control over his experiences. When a very young child is aroused, say by the sound proceeding from a bell, the impression may give rise to certain random movements, but none of these indicate on his part any definite experience or purpose. When, however, under the same stimulation, in place of these random movements, the child reacts mentally in a definite way, it signifies on his part the recognition of an external object. This recognition shows that the child now has, in place of the first vague image, a more or less definite idea of the external thing. Before it was vague noise; now it is a bell. But a yet more valuable control is gained by the child when he gives this idea a wider meaning by organizing it as an element into more complex experiences, as when he relates it with the idea of a fire, of dinner, or of a call to school. Before it was merely a bell; now it is an alarm of fire. So far, however, as the child is lacking in the control of his experiences, he remains largely a mere creature of impulse and instinct, and is occupied with present impressions only. This implies also an inability to set up problems and solve them through a regular process of adjustment, and a consequent lack of power to arrange experiences as guides to action. In the educative process, however, as previously exemplified, we find that the child is not a slave to the passing transient impressions of the present, but is able to secure a control over his experience which enables him to set up intelligent aims, devise plans for their attainment, and apply these plans in gaining the end desired. Growth of control takes place, therefore, to the extent to which the child thus becomes able to keep an end in view and to select and organize means for its realization.

=Elements of Control.=--In the growth of control manifested in the learning process, the child, as we have noticed, becomes able to judge the value, or worth, of experience. In other words, he becomes able to distinguish between the important and the trivial, and to see the relative values of various experiences when applied to practical ends. Further, he gains right feeling or an emotional warmth toward that which his intelligence affirms to be worthy, or grows to appreciate the right. Thirdly, he secures a power in execution that enables him to attain to that which his judgment and feeling have set up as a desirable end. In fine, the educative process implies for the child a growth of control by which he becomes able (1) to select worthy ends; (2) to devise plans for their attainment; and (3) to put these plans into successful execution.

THE INSTRUCTOR'S PROBLEMS

The end in any learning process being to set the pupils a problem which may stimulate them to gain such an efficient control of useful experience, or knowledge, we may note two important problems confronting the teacher as an instructor:

1. _Problem of Matter._--The teacher must be so conversant with the subject-matter of the curriculum and with its value in relation to actual life, that he may select therefrom the problems and materials which will enable the child to come into possession of the desirable experiences. This constitutes the question of the subject-matter of education.

2. _Problem of Method._--The teacher must further be conversant with the process by which the child gets command of experience or with the way in which the mind of the child, in reacting upon any subject-matter, selects and organizes his knowledge into new experience and puts the same into execution. In other words, the teacher must fully understand how to direct the child successfully through the four stages of the learning process.

(_a_) _General Method._--In a scientific study of education it is usually assumed that the student-teacher has mastered academically the various subjects of the curriculum. In the professional school, therefore, the subject-matter of education is studied largely from the standpoint of method. In his study of method the student of education seeks first to master the details of the process of education outlined in the opening Chapters under the headings of problem, selecting process, relating process, and application. By this means the teacher comes to understand in greater detail how the mind of the child reacts upon the presented problems of the curriculum in gaining control over his experiences, or, in other words, how the process of learning actually takes place within the consciousness of the child. This sub-division is treated under the head of _General Method_.

(_b_) _Special Methods._--In addition to General Method, the student-teacher must study each subject of the curriculum from the standpoint of its use in setting problems, or lessons, which shall enable the child to gain control of a richer experience. This sub-division is known as _Special Methods_, since it considers the particular problems involved in adapting the matter of each subject to the general purpose of the educative process.

3. _Problem of Management._--From what has been seen in reference to the school as an institution organized for directing the education of the child, it is apparent that in addition to the immediate and direct control of the process of learning as involved in the method of instruction, there is the more indirect control of the process through the systematic organization and management of the school as a corporate institution. These more indirect problems connected with the control of education within the school will include, not only such topics as the organization and management of the pupils, but also the legal ways and means for providing these various educational instrumentalities. These indirect elements of control constitute a third phase of the problem of education, and their study is known as _School Organization and Management_.

4. _An Historic Problem._--It has been noted that the corporate institution known as the school arose as the result of the principle of the division of labour, and thus took to itself duties previously performed under other less effective conditions. Thus the school presents on its organic side a history with which the teacher should be more or less familiar. On its historical side, therefore, education presents a fourth phase for study. This division of the subject is known as the _History of Education_.

SUMMARY

The facts of education, as scientifically considered by the student-teacher, thus arrange themselves under four main heads:

1. General Method

2. Special Methods

3. School Organization and Management

4. History of Education

The third and fourth divisions of education are always studied as separate subjects under the above heads. In dealing with Special Methods, also, it is customary in the study of education to treat each subject of the curriculum under its own head in both a professional and an academic way. There is left, therefore, for scientific consideration, the subject of General Method, to a study of which we shall now proceed.