As a matter of fact, accordingly, practically no scheme of
education upon a purely sensory basis has ever been
systematically tried, at least after the early years of infancy.
Its obvious deficiencies have caused it to be resorted to simply
for filling in "rationalistic" knowledge (that is to say,
knowledge of definitions, rules, classifications, and modes of
application conveyed through symbols), and as a device for
lending greater "interest" to barren symbols. There are at least
three serious defects of sensationalistic empiricism as an
educational philosophy of knowledge. (a) the historical value of
the theory was critical; it was a dissolvent of current beliefs
about the world and political institutions. It was a destructive
organ of criticism of hard and fast dogmas. But the work of
education is constructive, not critical. It assumes not old
beliefs to be eliminated and revised, but the need of building up
new experience into intellectual habitudes as correct as possible
from the start. Sensationalism is highly unfitted for this
constructive task. Mind, understanding, denotes responsiveness
to meanings (ante, p. 29), not response to direct physical
stimuli. And meaning exists only with reference to a context,
which is excluded by any scheme which identifies knowledge with a
combination of sense-impressions. The theory, so far as
educationally applied, led either to a magnification of mere
physical excitations or else to a mere heaping up of isolated
objects and qualities.
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