They
regard knowledge as something complete in itself irrespective of
its availability in dealing with what is yet to be. And it is
this omission which vitiates them and which makes them stand as
sponsors for educational methods which an adequate conception of
knowledge condemns. For one has only to call to mind what is
sometimes treated in schools as acquisition of knowledge to
realize how lacking it is in any fruitful connection with the
ongoing experience of the students -- how largely it seems to be
believed that the mere appropriation of subject matter which
happens to be stored in books constitutes knowledge. No matter
how true what is learned to those who found it out and in whose
experience it functioned, there is nothing which makes it
knowledge to the pupils. It might as well be something about
Mars or about some fanciful country unless it fructifies in the
individual's own life.
At the time when scholastic method developed, it had relevancy to
social conditions. It was a method for systematizing and lending
rational sanction to material accepted on authority. This
subject matter meant so much that it vitalized the defining and
systematizing brought to bear upon it. Under present conditions
the scholastic method, for most persons, means a form of knowing
which has no especial connection with any particular subject
matter. It includes making distinctions, definitions, divisions,
and classifications for the mere sake of making them -- with no
objective in experience.
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