The imposing stupendous bulk of this material has unconsciously
influenced men's notions of the nature of knowledge itself. The
statements, the propositions, in which knowledge, the issue of
active concern with problems, is deposited, are taken to be
themselves knowledge. The record of knowledge, independent of
its place as an outcome of inquiry and a resource in further
inquiry, is taken to be knowledge. The mind of man is taken
captive by the spoils of its prior victories; the spoils, not the
weapons and the acts of waging the battle against the unknown,
are used to fix the meaning of knowledge, of fact, and truth.
If this identification of knowledge with propositions stating
information has fastened itself upon logicians and philosophers,
it is not surprising that the same ideal has almost dominated
instruction. The "course of study" consists largely of
information distributed into various branches of study, each
study being subdivided into lessons presenting in serial cutoff
portions of the total store. In the seventeenth century, the
store was still small enough so that men set up the ideal of a
complete encyclopedic mastery of it. It is now so bulky that the
impossibility of any one man's coming into possession of it all
is obvious. But the educational ideal has not been much
affected. Acquisition of a modicum of information in each branch
of learning, or at least in a selected group, remains the
principle by which the curriculum, from elementary school through
college, is formed; the easier portions being assigned to the
earlier years, the more difficult to the later.
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