I. THE SYSTEM OF EDUCATION FROM THE VIEWPOINT OF THE INDIVIDUAL. CHAPTER LVII. Introductory. 1. We have seen that there are three factors that assist the individual in acquiring an education: first, on a large scale, the organization of the content of education which finds expression in the curriculum; secondly, the adaptation of the single studies to the whole course; and, thirdly, the instruction and its technique, i. e., the teacher's activity. Thus the educative process of the individual is continually assisted and directed by the co-operation of other, individuals, for it is they who instruct, who adapt the single branches, and who outline the whole curriculum. However, the individuals co-operate in this way not as individuals, but as banded together into more or less regular groups. It is a plurality of teachers that instruct; and the adaptation of the single branches, though the work, perhaps, of an individual, is still based on the common practice of the schools; and any course of study, worthy of the name, is conditioned on the teaching and learning of previous generations. We shall now take up the study of this collective and social side of the educative process, and shall preface it with a preliminary survey of the whole field. The aggregate of the agencies devoted to the work of education and conditioned on collective activity we shall term the system of education. The core of the system of education is represented by the institutions that give collective instruction, and these are comprised under the term school system. These terms, educational system and school system, are often used without distinction, and under certain circumstances this is admissible, as is the case with every denomination a priori; yet it is not an exact use of the words. In point of fact, the system. of education comprises certain agencies besides the regular school system; and to discover these will be the first object of our inquiry. To this end we shall again take up the disjunction employed above' between the regular educational agencies and the sources of informal education. The system of education must be varied enough to allow the individuals to obtain the ends of education, and so we should recall what has been stated concerning the ends and aims of education. These ends and aims are many in number and admit of various interrelations among themselves, thus bringing about that differentiation of education which finds expression in the different kinds of schools. Thus we have found the second object of our inquiry. This second object clearly suggests our third object also; for each of the different kinds of education implies a plurality of steps; and the school corresponding respectively to each kind of education, comprises a plurality of courses. When dealing with this third subject, the grading of schools, we must likewise recall what has been said. (in ch. XXXIX.) concerning the adjustment of education to the different age periods. After having in this way examined from various viewpoints the agencies of education, we shall have to look at the subject in its entirety; and this will serve the purpose of showing the system of education in its composition, differentiation, grading, and unity. 2. So far, however, the subject of social educational activity has been examined from the viewpoint of the individual only; but it must be studied from the viewpoint of society also. The content of education is not evaluated properly by being considered merely as an educational instrument, i. e., as a help to the individual (for it must be regarded as a content of teaching).3 And similarly, the educational agencies are not justly appraised, if they be adjudged merely for what they do for the individual, to the neglect of what they mean to the community by reason. of the independent value of those intellectual treasures that are committed to the schools. But this just evaluation is impossible unless the viewpoint be that of the community; and so we have occasion to acknowledge again the truth of Aristotle's saying, "What is to be done for a single part, must naturally be determined according to what is to be done for the whole." Political economy views the demand and supply, the buying and selling as the ebb and tide of economic values. And, analogously, the offering and receiving, the giving and taking of intellectual values in education, may truly appear, if looked at from the social viewpoint, as an interchange and transmission of intellectual treasures (geistige Güterbewegung). The schools will then appear to be a system of canals, or rather a network of interlacing arteries, which carry the life-sustaining elements to the different parts of the social body and thus renew continuously its various textures. After this process has been dealt with, we shall have to take up the study of these textures, i. e., the units whose interrelation constitutes the whole of the social body. These units must be examined, first, as representing the places where the intellectual treasures are produced, therefore, as the agencies of the system of education; and, secondly, as representing the termini in the interchange and transmission of these intellectual treasures, therefore, as the objective points of the social process of education. 3. Having arrived at this stage of our inquiry, we may regard the system of education as the organ of the social body; and the way will then be open for viewing it as an organism also, a conception utterly impossible from the individual standpoint, since from it one can not see beyond the school system. In this doctrine that the system of education is an organism, all the threads that extend from the various subjects dealt with in our science of education, are seen to meet. This doctrine is the capstone of our synthetic presentation, as being the last σúverov, which should, at the same time be a Lov, just as it would have to be the starting-point in a purely analytical inquiry. The activities of all social units should meet in the system of education as in an organic whole. It is the arterial system of the interchange and transmission of intellectual treasures, for these it distributes organically and systematically among the classes of human society, and to the individual it affords an opportunity for realizing his own educational ideals. In the system of education we see the educative process condensed and the system of studies realized. It is the ground of didactic, formative, and technical activity, and the place for evolving the methods and for fixing the rules of the art of teaching. Even the historical inquiry, upon which we have grounded our investigation, contributes to the system of education, for the 1 Vol. I, Introduction, I, 2. |