1 The problem of
teaching is to keep the experience of the student moving in the
direction of what the expert already knows. Hence the need that
the teacher know both subject matter and the characteristic needs
and capacities of the student.
2. The Development of Subject Matter in the Learner. It is
possible, without doing violence to the facts, to mark off three
fairly typical stages in the growth of subject matter in the
experience of the learner. In its first estate, knowledge exists
as the content of intelligent ability -- power to do. This kind
of subject matter, or known material, is expressed in familiarity
or acquaintance with things. Then this material gradually is
surcharged and deepened through communicated knowledge or
information. Finally, it is enlarged and worked over into
rationally or logically organized material -- that of the one
who, relatively speaking, is expert in the subject.
I. The knowledge which comes first to persons, and that remains
most deeply ingrained, is knowledge of how to do; how to walk,
talk, read, write, skate, ride a bicycle, manage a machine,
calculate, drive a horse, sell goods, manage people, and so on
indefinitely. The popular tendency to regard instinctive acts
which are adapted to an end as a sort of miraculous knowledge,
while unjustifiable, is evidence of the strong tendency to
identify intelligent control of the means of action with
knowledge.
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