70 The Concept of Method 



the following: (i) Is the need of a standard instinctive? Is 

 it a category of the possibility of progressive activity? (2) Does 

 the realisation of the idea or concept of standard grow up as a 

 distinction within experience, or is it imported from outside, and 

 imposed by maturer persons or by society? (3) Is the standard 

 a material thing, — a form? or is it a spiritual idea by means of 

 which one interprets the material? (4) Is the problem to be re- 

 garded from the functional point of view as a process of stand- 

 ardising the experience of the individual? (5) Are judgments 

 of value one aspect, conscious or unconscious, of every phase of 

 experience, or are they a special phase of the operation of the 

 mind? 



The solution of these questions will be implied in the considera- 

 tion which follows, rather than explicitly stated. They are 

 problems which rise to consciousness when the function of stand- 

 ard is first consciously realised as part of the method of educa- 

 tion. The character of the solution offered has varied alike with 

 the time and the prevailing temper of the age in which the prob- 

 lem has suggested itself. At the present day in America, where 

 the method of education is one of the loci critici of both Sociology 

 and Philosophy, an analysis of the elements involved seems to be 

 required, especially since tot homines tot sententiae still remains 

 true of education. 



Standards concern themselves with three aspects of our ex- 

 perience : 



(i) They deal in the first place with the problem of itfhat 

 we do. Certain things are to be done ; others are not to be done. 

 The sphere of activity, moral or educational is more or less defi- 

 nitely marked off and bounded ; a list of habitual acts and of 

 conventional activities is prescribed ; penalties of varying de- 

 grees are attached to faults of omission or of direct violation. 

 There are unwritten laws, codes of laws which an older psychol- 

 ogy would see graven on the tablets of the mind ; there are vague 

 popular ideas of better and worse, higher and lower, right and 

 wrong; there are group standards and the consciousness of cer- 

 tain " things no fellow can do " ; and there is a constantly 

 fluctuating process of adjustment between material and ideal in- 

 terests. Such problems come within the scope of Ethics, So- 

 ciology, and Education. 



