PREFACE 



There is in much of the philosophical writing of the present 

 day a tendency to indulge in a sophisticated consideration of the 

 minutiae of various aspects of experience, rather than an attempt 

 to attain an organic view of the method of experience itself. 

 The somewhat sudden introduction of scientific method into 

 educational work and its widespread application to the phe- 

 nomena of the school have necessarily involved a corresponding 

 temporary neglect of the great body of intellectual and spiritual 

 tradition which, after all, is the life of the school as an institu- 

 tion. The fundamental problem of education must always be, 

 in its broadest terms, the character of the process of interaction 

 between an immature developing individual on the one hand and 

 a more or less permanent organisation of social ideals and habits 

 on the other hand. Historically the tendency has been to em- 

 phasise either of what we may call these " terminal aspects " 

 of the educational process to the comparative exclusion of the 

 other; and the problem of the educational theory of the present 

 day, if it is to take advantage of current conceptions of organic 

 unity and of functional activity, will be to examine more closely 

 this process of interaction between children, with all their in- 

 finite promises and their unrealised potencies, and the social 

 media through which alone they can reach their fullest and 

 highest development. It is this interaction which is the method 

 of education. 



With regard to the spirit in which the problem is to be ap- 

 proached, a word or two of explanation may not be out of 

 place. Children themselves draw near to the multiplicity of 

 their juvenile experiences with the unconscious though implicit 

 purpose of developing and of organising their little world. 

 What they seek to do this consideration also attempts: the 

 organisation and the interpretation of the method of experience; 



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