Summary. The subject matter of education consists primarily of
the meanings which supply content to existing social life. The
continuity of social life means that many of these meanings are
contributed to present activity by past collective experience.
As social life grows more complex, these factors increase in
number and import. There is need of special selection,
formulation, and organization in order that they may be
adequately transmitted to the new generation. But this very
process tends to set up subject matter as something of value just
by itself, apart from its function in promoting the realization
of the meanings implied in the present experience of the
immature. Especially is the educator exposed to the temptation
to conceive his task in terms of the pupil's ability to
appropriate and reproduce the subject matter in set statements,
irrespective of its organization into his activities as a
developing social member. The positive principle is maintained
when the young begin with active occupations having a social
origin and use, and proceed to a scientific insight in the
materials and laws involved, through assimilating into their more
direct experience the ideas and facts communicated by others who
have had a larger experience. 1 Since the learned man should
also still be a learner, it will be understood that these
contrasts are relative, not absolute. But in the earlier stages
of learning at least they are practically all-important.
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