There may be two extreme views on this subject——the one tending towards
the negative extreme of requiring the teacher to do everything for the
pupil, substituting his will for that of the pupil, and the other view
tending to the positive extreme, and leaving everything to the pupil,
even before his will is trained into habits of self-control, or his mind
provided with the necessary elementary branches requisite for the
prosecution of further study.
§ 47. (1) The subjective limit of education (on the negative side) is to
be found in the individuality of the pupil——the limit to his natural
capacity.
§ 48. (2) The objective limit to education lies in the amount of time
that the person may devote to his training. It, therefore, depends
largely upon wealth, or other fortunate circumstances.
§ 49. (3) The absolute limit of education is the positive limit (see §
46), beyond which the youth passes into freedom from the school, as a
necessary instrumentality for further culture.
§ 50. The pre-arranged pattern-making work of the school is now done,
but self-education may and should go on indefinitely, and will go on if
the education of the school has really arrived at its "absolute"
limit——_i.e._, has fitted the pupil for self-education. Emancipation
from the school does not emancipate one from learning through his
fellow-men. Man's spiritual life is one depending upon coöperation with
his fellow-men. Each must avail himself of the experience of his
fellow-men, and in turn communicate his own experience to the common
fund of the race. Thus each lives the life of the whole, and all live
for each. School-education gives the pupil the instrumentalities with
which to enable him to participate in this fund of experience——this
common life of the race. After school-education comes the still more
valuable education, which, however, without the school, would be in a
great measure impossible.
ERRATA.
§ 26. Last two paragraphs should be within quotation marks, being from
an English author.
§ 29. The second and third paragraphs belong to § 30.——the numbering
being omitted.
§ 33. Line four——"instructive" should be "intuitive."
SECOND PART.
The Special Elements of Education.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account