Man's supreme inheritance : $b Conscious guidance and control in relation to human evolution in civilizationAlexander, F. Matthias (Frederick Matthias)
Science
Man's supreme inheritance : $b Conscious guidance and control in relation to human evolution in civilization
The foregoing is an example of education in only one sphere of art, but
it serves as an excellent indication of the essential needs of
education, in general, where the child is concerned. We must give the
child of to-day and of the future as a fundamental of education as
complete a command of his or her kinæsthetic systems as is possible, so
that the highest possible standard of “free expression” may be given in
every sphere of life and in all forms of human activity. We must build
up, co-ordinate, and re-adjust the human machine so that it may be _in
tune_. We are all acquainted with the expression “_tune up_” where the
automobile is concerned, and when we wish to command the best expression
of this machine we avail ourselves of the “_tuning up_” process of the
mechanical expert. And as the human organism is, as Huxley says, a
machine, we must remember that if we wish it to express its
potentialities adequately it must be “_in tune_.” This will represent
what we consider to be that satisfactory condition of the child’s
kinæsthetic systems which will enable him to express himself freely and
adequately. It constitutes the “means whereby” of free and full
expression, of adaptability to the ever changing environment of
civilised life, and to all that these two essentials connote.
In this note on race culture and the training of children, I have thus
far dwelt almost exclusively on the earlier years of childhood. But I
have much to say at some future time on the questions of primary and
secondary education, that is, of the boy and girl at school between the
ages of, say, seven and eighteen. No one who has read so far with
attention and has earnestly attempted to comprehend my point of view,
will now be able to urge that the question of education, secular or
religious, is outside my province, for the mental and physical are so
inextricably combined that we cannot consider the one without the other,
but, at the risk of being accused of repetition, I will briefly state my
case in this connexion once again, as follows:
I wish to postulate:
That conscious guidance and control, as a universal, must be the
fundamental of future education.
That civilisation and education, as manifested up to the present, cannot
be said to have compelled man to advance adequately from the lower to
those higher planes of satisfactory evolution, where his savage animal
instincts will not under any circumstances, or in response to any
stimuli, dominate his transcendent tendencies, or put him out of
communication with his reason.
That mankind should progress by slow continuous processes from one stage
of evolution to another. This will be particularly the case when he is
passing from his animal subconscious stage to the higher, reasoned
conscious stages, during which process he will develop a new
subconsciousness (cultivated, not inherited) under the guidance of
consciousness, likewise an increasing control which holds his animal
proclivities in check.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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