The complaints
of educators that learning does not enter into character and
affect conduct; the protests against memoriter work, against
cramming, against gradgrind preoccupation with "facts," against
devotion to wire-drawn distinctions and ill-understood rules and
principles, all follow from this state of affairs. Knowledge
which is mainly second-hand, other men's knowledge, tends to
become merely verbal. It is no objection to information that it
is clothed in words; communication necessarily takes place
through words. But in the degree in which what is communicated
cannot be organized into the existing experience of the learner,
it becomes mere words: that is, pure sense-stimuli, lacking in
meaning. Then it operates to call out mechanical reactions,
ability to use the vocal organs to repeat statements, or the hand
to write or to do "sums."
To be informed is to be posted; it is to have at command the
subject matter needed for an effective dealing with a problem,
and for giving added significance to the search for solution and
to the solution itself. Informational knowledge is the material
which can be fallen back upon as given, settled, established,
assured in a doubtful situation. It is a kind of bridge for mind
in its passage from doubt to discovery. It has the office of an
intellectual middleman. It condenses and records in available
form the net results of the prior experiences of mankind, as an
agency of enhancing the meaning of new experiences.
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