The power to grow depends upon the need for others and plasticity. Both of these conditions are at their height in childhood and youth. Plasticity or the power to learn from experience means the formation of habits. Habits give control over the environment, and power to utilize it for human purposes. Habits take the form […]
Education as Growth Read More »
We have had so far but little to say in this chapter about education. We have been occupied with the conditions and implications of growth. If our conclusions are justified, they carry with them, however, definite educational consequences. When it is said that education is development, everything depends upon how development is conceived. Our net
The Educational Bearings of the Conception of Development Read More »
We have already noted that plasticity is the capacity to retain and carry over from prior experience factors which modify subsequent activities. This signifies the capacity to acquire habits or develop definite dispositions. We have now to consider the salient features of habits. In the first place, a habit is a form of executive skill,
Habits as Expressions of Educational Growth Read More »
In directing the activities of the young, society determines its own future in determining that of the young. Since the young at a given time will at some later date compose the society of that period, the latter’s nature will largely turn upon the direction children’s activities were given at an earlier period. This cumulative
The Conditions of Educational Growth Read More »
I said a few minutes ago that the most general elements and workings of the mind are all that the teacher absolutely needs to be acquainted with for his purposes. Now the immediate fact which psychology, the science of mind, has to study is also the most general fact. It is the fact that in each of
THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS Read More »
In the general activity and uprising of ideal interests which every one with an eye for fact can discern all about us in American life, there is perhaps no more promising feature than the fermentation which for a dozen years or more has been going on among the teachers. In whatever sphere of education their
PSYCHOLOGY AND THE TEACHING ART Read More »
1. The Environment as Directive. We now pass to one of the special forms which the general function of education assumes: namely, that of direction, control, or guidance. Of these three words, direction, control, and guidance, the last best conveys the idea of assisting through cooperation the natural capacities of the individuals guided; control conveys
Education as Direction Read More »
1. The Nature and Meaning of Environment. We have seen that a community or social group sustains itself through continuous self-renewal, and that this renewal takes place by means of the educational growth of the immature members of the group. By various agencies, unintentional and designed, a society transforms uninitiated and seemingly alien beings into
Education as a Social Function Read More »
1. Renewal of Life by Transmission. The most notable distinction between living and inanimate things is that the former maintain themselves by renewal. A stone when struck resists. If its resistance is greater than the force of the blow struck, it remains outwardly unchanged. Otherwise, it is shattered into smaller bits. Never does the stone
Education as a Necessity of Life Read More »
