The Learning Process: Or Education Theory Implied in Theory of Knowledge

From the Preface. Education as a conscious effort towards human evolution involves the most difficult problems of life. The school, like other institutions, has arisen out of practical needs, at first narrowly conceived, and the idea of its aim and methods has been of gradual development. The meaning of a thing is its relations (p. 44) and naturally the narrow abstract relations involved in immediate ends and rule of thumb methods have been made prominent in educational theory, and often have been perpetuated by tradition long after their usefulness has been outgrown in the progressive discovery of remoter needs involving wider relations. The true meaning of education and consequently its aims and methods will be understood only when its fullest and completest relations to the life process have been discovered. It is the purpose of this essay to discover in the light of epistemology some of these wider relations and in them to find some formal principle or norm that may be of value in selecting from a confusion of educational aims and methods those which are more in harmony with the evolutionary progress. The discussion in the first eight chapters presupposes on the part of the reader some familiarity with the theories of knowledge concerned. While an attempt has been made to develop the essay as an organic whole, some, who may not be especially interested in the critical discussion in the first eight chapters, may wish to begin with the constructive theory given in chapter nine, while others may wish to read only the educational implications discussed in the tenth chapter. The last chapter contains a brief summary of the whole. Acknowledgements should be made both for inspiration and guidance to the writer's teachers, including Professors MacVannel, Dewey, Thorndike and McMurry in Columbia University; Professors Hanus, Munsterberg and Royce in Harvard University; and Professor Gordy in Ohio State University. Especial acknowledgement is due Professor MacVannel, under whose supervision this dissertation was written, the beneficent influence of whose personality and teaching cannot be forgotten. Owing to the nature of the problem, much that is here given must be faulty. Life as a self-differentiating unity ever presents more and more complex relations, so that thought, which must take them into account, can only progressively approximate the truth. Indeed, most of one's activities must be guided by theory, or opinion, which consists of hypotheses in process of becoming facts, and ever subject to modification. It is hoped that what is here given will be suggestive to the reader, and the correction of error, where he can discover it, is left to him. The solution of the educational problem will have to be done over many times, each time more closely approximating the truth and becoming a more definite guide in the most difficult of all activities, the progressive realization of human nature.