10 The Concept of Method 



The greater emphasis in educational thought has hitherto 

 been placed upon the materials of education or upon special 

 details of educational procedure from a purely formal stand- 

 point, rather than upon the materials in their relation to the 

 process. This tendency has manifested itself in two difiterent 

 ways: 



(i) In the course of study, the program, or the curriculum 

 there has been inquiry into the nature of the materials and a 

 reorganisation of these upon the basis of recent psychological 

 study of the needs and capacities of the child. 



(2) There has been an attempt to psychologise material, but 

 in such a way that the point of view of the child has tended to 

 prevail over the social aspect of education, and method has been 

 conceived of as something which the teacher can apply to the 

 material she gives the child, instead of being regarded as the 

 very process of interaction between herself and the child and 

 the material, all in one process of experience. 



There is, however, in educational thought, as in all other 

 branches of scientific and philosophical inquiry, especially when 

 the materials are in process of reorganization, the tendency to 

 overlook characteristic underlying ideas. It is these very ideas 

 which give significance to the materials by showing their or- 

 ganic interrelation as factors in the experience process, be it 

 individual, social, or racial. It is these dominant ideas of prin- 

 ciples which give unity and form to all activity, whether it be 

 in what we call the world of nature or in the world of social 

 action. 



If, then, we take on the one hand the materials that are selected 

 as having educational value in the school course, and on tiie 

 other hand take into consideration the child with his impulses, 

 instincts, and activities or energies, we find that we have what 

 we may call the two terminal aspects in the process of educa- 

 tion. The problem before us is to see how these two elements 

 are related to each other in actual experience. In other words, 

 we have to see how the school affords material for the social 

 direction, distribution, and transmission of the potential energy 

 possessed by the child : how, in a word, education is a method of 

 giving form to the experience of the child. 



