Training and Education A human infant's behavior is constantly 

 being modified by his day-by-day experiences. His impulses and his desires 

 become modified, as well as his ways of carrying out his impulses, his ways 

 of satisfying his desires. But we attend chiefly to what the child does, rather 

 than to what he feels or needs. So we drill children and adults into standard 

 ways of acting in many routine situations, in many types of skills. We try 

 to establish good manners or correct form to cover almost every hour of the 

 day. All these habits and learnings may be useful, but only in repeated 

 situations and relationships. 



No scheme of fixed habits can fit a human individual for an entire life, 

 unless he is to remain an infant or a slave, directed entirely by others. Since 

 each person is himself altering the world for those around him, all of us have 

 constantly to meet new situations, new problems, new relationships with 

 others. In civilized, democratic living, each of us must of course do well what- 

 ever he has to do. We must acquire special skills, master a thousand tricks. 

 But we must also be prepared at any moment to do something we have never 

 done before, to take initiative, to make decisions — to break routines. 



For these reasons, habits must be subordinated to sound attitudes and 

 judgment. In human affairs it is more important for the individual to care, 

 to feel responsible, to be concerned — to care about traffic safety, for example, 

 and not merely fear being caught by the traffic police. It is more important 

 for one to be true to himself, to what he considers of greatest worth, than 

 to be clever in avoiding detection. In educating for human living training 

 is necessary; but more and more is it necessary to develop the feelings in 

 relation to what is desirable or worthy — to develop sound attitudes toward 

 people and things. 



Adjustments Living things adjust themselves to their surroundings 

 in many different ways. Apparently they can tolerate considerable variation 

 in the conditions that surround them — more or less moisture, light, mineral 

 salts, higher or lower temperature. But always there is a point beyond which 

 too much or too little is fatal. The protoplasm adjusts itself by slowing its 

 action or hastening it, or by changing the rate of some processes more than 

 that of others. Among more complex animals the nervous system plays an 

 important role in bringing about particular movements, in retarding or 

 accelerating processes. 



In general, however, life carries on by interacting with the environment. 

 It receives stimuli and it reacts. It receives materials, and it returns other 

 materials. It distributes materials among its own parts; it distributes stimuli 

 and reactions among its own parts. These interchanges of materials and 

 energies are balanced within the organism. And they are balanced as be- 

 tween the organism and the outside world. But the balance is never quite 

 perfect. 



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