Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education | Page 9

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the problem itself. Here the problem--the recovery of the coin--presents
itself to the child and is seized upon as a motive by his attention solely
on account of its own value; secondly, this problem of itself directs a
flow of relative images which finally bring about the necessary
adjustment. In the examples taken from the school, on the other hand,
the processes of adjustment are, to a greater or less extent, directed and
regulated through the presence of some type of educative agent. For
instance, when a student goes through the process of learning the
relation of the exterior angle to the two interior and opposite angles, the
control of the process appears in the fact that the problem is directly
presented to the student as an essential step in a sequence of geometric
problems, or adjustments. The same direction or control of the process
is seen again in the fact that the student is not left wholly to himself, as
in the first example, to devise a solution, but is aided and directed
thereto, first, in that the ideas bearing upon the problem have
previously been made known to the student through instruction, and
secondly, in that the selecting and adjusting of these former ideas to the
solution of the new problem is also directed through the agency of
either a text-book or a teacher. A conscious adjustment, therefore,
which is brought about without direction from another, implies only a
process of learning on the part of the child, while a controlled
adjustment implies both a process of learning on the part of the child
and a process of teaching on the part of an instructor. For scientific
treatment, therefore, it is possible to limit formal education, so far as it
deals with conscious adjustment, to those modifications of experience

which are directed or controlled through an educative agent, or, in other
words, are brought about by means of instruction.
REQUIREMENTS OF THE INSTRUCTOR
Formal education being an attempt to direct the development of the
child by controlling his stimulations and responses through the agency
of an instructor, we may now understand in general the necessary
qualifications and offices of the teacher in directing the educative
process.
1. The teacher must understand what constitutes the worthy life; that is,
he must have a definite aim in directing the development of the child.
2. He must know what stimulations, or problems, are to be presented to
the child in order to have him grow, or develop, into this life of worth.
3. He must know how the physical, intellectual, and moral nature of the
child reacts upon these appropriate stimulations.
4. He must have skill in presenting the stimuli, or problems, to the child
and in bringing its mind to react appropriately thereon.
5. He must, in the case of conscious reactions, see that the child not
only acquires the new experience, but that he is also able to apply it
effectively. In other words, he must see that the child acquires not only
knowledge, but also skill in the use of knowledge.
CHAPTER IV
THE SCHOOL CURRICULUM
=Valuable Experience: Race Knowledge.=--Since education aims
largely to increase the effectiveness of the moral conduct of the child
by adding to the value of his experience, the science of education must
decide the basis on which the educator is to select experiences that
possess such a value in directing conduct. Now a study of the progress
of a nation's civilization will show that this advancement is brought

about through the gradual interpretation of the resources at the nation's
command, and the turning of these resources to the attainment of
human ends. Thus there is gradually built up a community, or race,
experience, in which the materials of the physical, economic, political,
moral, and religious life are organized and brought under control. By
this means is constituted a body of race experience, the value of which
has been tested in its direct application to the needs of the social life of
the community. It is from the more typical forms of this social, or race,
experience that education draws the experience, or problems, for the
educative process. In other words, through education the experiences of
the child are so reconstructed that he is put in possession of the more
typical and more valuable forms of race experience, and thus rendered
more efficient in his conduct, or action.
PURPOSES OF CURRICULUM
=Represents Race Experiences.=--So far as education aims to have the
child enter into typical valuable race experiences, this can be
accomplished only by placing these experiences before him as
problems in such form that he may realize them through a regular
process of learning. The purpose of the school curriculum is, therefore,
to provide such problems as may, under the direction of the instructor,