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Theory of Course of Study (1911)
- Southern Illinois University Press
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Theory of Course of Study (1911) THE COURSE OF STUDY MAY be considered from two quite distinct points of view. On the one hand, we may accept the curriculum as it obtains at a given time, and consider how each constituent study may be treated so as to make it most effective; what materials are available and what methods of presentation and enforcement are most successful. Arithmetic, geography, history, reading, spelling, and all the studies may be thus treated. The results constitute a very important part of pedagogy or educational doctrine. Treatment from this practical point of view may also be extended to take into account the arrangement of these studies from the standpoint of the working school program, their proper grouping simultaneous and successive, the allotment of time to each study, the alternation of study and recitation periods appropriate to each subject, etc. On the other hand, there is the philosophical theory of the Course of Study. From this standpoint, the problem does not grow out of accepting the currently established curriculum and asking how it may be perfected in efficiency, but centres about the ground and justification of any body of subject-matter, and the reason for being of each constituent ingredient as a special means, or division of labor, for fulfilling the function of subject-matter as a whole. However, it is neither necessary nor advisable to draw a sharp line between the more concrete or practical point of view and the more theoretical problem. In a transitional time like the present there is no absolutely fixed and established body of subject-matter. From the practical standpoint certain subjects are relatively retiring from the field; new subjects are being introduced or are clamoring for recognition. A generalized conception of the function to be served by the subject-matter of education, of the various phases and factors of this function, and of the relation of various types of study to these different factors, can 107 First published in A Cyclopedia of Education, ed. Paul Monroe (New York: Macmillan, 1911), 2:218–22. 108 The School Curriculum hardly fail to throw some light on the problems of the conflict and respective claims of various studies. Questions of the practical adjustment and sequence of studies and topics also run into problems of correlation, concentration, and isolation, which have some philosophic basis and bearing. In this article, the philosophic aspect of the course of study is considered, and with reference to the following problems: (1) the significance of subject-matter in general; (2) its relation to experience; (3) its classification. 1. Viewed externally, the various studies present many independent collections of facts and general principles, each of these collections having its own distinctive logical basis and organization. Some of the studies represent forms of skill or of special ability to be acquired,—reading, writing, drawing, etc. Regarded in this external way, there is a great gap between the experience of the pupil and the subject-matter which he studies. Three points of contrast may be noted. The child’s experience is intensely social and personal. Every parent and every teacher knows that children naturally respond with a personal association to any incident or fact; what cannot be translated into terms of something which they themselves have done, or something that is connected with the activities of their friends, is not comprehended, or leaves them cold and indifferent. Experience centres about persons; things that are noted and recalled are things that play some part in the lives of persons. The material of studies, on the other hand, is impersonal and objective. It extends beyond the little world of persons with which the child is acquainted; it ignores all that is peculiar and precious to each individual. Over against the limited but social field of familiar friends, studies introduce the external world, infinite in space and time. In the second place, there is a striking contrast between the fluid continuity of children’s experience and the hard-and-fast subjects of the curriculum. The child passes quickly and readily from one incident, one place, one idea, to another and each blends insensibly into the other. He is absorbed in the present, and the present melts vaguely in indefinite vistas. His world is too fluid to permit of sharp separations or isolations. There is not even a dividing line between man and nature, to say nothing of between various phases of man’s activities and various aspects of nature. The specific studies that form...