The place of communication in personal doing supplies us
with a criterion for estimating the value of informational
material in school. Does it grow naturally out of some question
with which the student is concerned? Does it fit into his more
direct acquaintance so as to increase its efficacy and deepen its
meaning? If it meets these two requirements, it is educative.
The amount heard or read is of no importance--the more the
better, provided the student has a need for it and can apply it
in some situation of his own.
But it is not so easy to fulfill these requirements in actual
practice as it is to lay them down in theory. The extension in
modern times of the area of intercommunication; the invention of
appliances for securing acquaintance with remote parts of the
heavens and bygone events of history; the cheapening of devices,
like printing, for recording and distributing information --
genuine and alleged -- have created an immense bulk of
communicated subject matter. It is much easier to swamp a pupil
with this than to work it into his direct experiences. All too
frequently it forms another strange world which just overlies the
world of personal acquaintance. The sole problem of the student
is to learn, for school purposes, for purposes of recitations and
promotions, the constituent parts of this strange world.
Probably the most conspicuous connotation of the word knowledge
for most persons to-day is just the body of facts and truths
ascertained by others; the material found in the rows and rows of
atlases, cyclopedias, histories, biographies, books of travel,
scientific treatises, on the shelves of libraries.
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