Mat 6, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



689 



exercised by the eommuiiity over the ex- 

 pression of childish impulse. 



In the long ceremonies of initiation edu- 

 cation assumed a more conscious and al- 

 most deliberate form. The boy was in- 

 duced into the clan mysteries, into the 

 mythology and social procedure of the 

 community, under an emotional tension 

 which was skilfully aroused and main- 

 tained. He was subjected to tests of en- 

 durance which were calculated not only to 

 fulfil this purpose, but also to identify the 

 ends and interests of the individual with 

 those of the social group. These more 

 general purposes of the initiatory cere- 

 monies were also at times cunningly 

 adapted to enhance the authority of the 

 medicine man or the control over food and 

 women by the older men in the community. 



Whatever opinion one may hold of the 

 interpretation which folk-psychology and 

 anthropology have given of this early 

 phase of education, no one would deny, I 

 imagine, the possibility of studying the 

 education of the savage child scientifically, 

 nor that this would be a psychological 

 study. Imitation, play, emotional ten- 

 sions favoring the acquirement of clan 

 myths and cults, and the formation of 

 clan judgments of evaluation, these must 

 be all interpreted and formulated by some 

 form of psychology. The particular form 

 which has dealt with these phenomena and 

 processes is social psychology. The im- 

 portant features of the situation would be 

 found not in the structure of the idea to 

 be assimilated considered as material of 

 instruction for any child, nor in the lines 

 of association which would guarantee their 

 abiding in consciousness. They would be 

 found in the impulse of the children ex- 

 pressed in play, in the tendency of the 

 children to put themselves in the place of 

 the men and women of the group, i. e., to 

 imitate them in the emotions which con- 



sciousness of themselves in their relation- 

 ship to others evoke, and in the import for 

 the boy which the ideas and cults would 

 have when surcharged with such emo- 

 tions. 



If we turn to our system of education 

 we fiad that the materials of the curricu- 

 lum have been presented as percepts capa- 

 ble of being assimilated by the nature of 

 their content to other contents in con- 

 sciousness, and the manner has been indi- 

 cated in which this material can be most 

 favorably prepared for such assimilation. 

 This type of psychological treatment of 

 material and the lesson is recognized at 

 once as Herbartian. It is an associational 

 type of psychology. Its critics add that it 

 is intellectualistic. In any case it is not a 

 social psychology, for the child is not pri- 

 marily considered as a self among other 

 selves, but as an appei'ceptmismasse. The 

 child's relations to the other members of 

 the group, to which he belongs, have no 

 immediate bearing on the material nor on 

 the learning of it. The banishment from 

 the traditional school work of play and of 

 any adult activities in which the child 

 could have a part as a child, i. e., the ban- 

 ishment of processes in which the child can 

 be conscious of himself in relation to 

 others, means that the process of learning 

 has as little social content as possible. 



An explanation of the different atti- 

 tudes in the training of the child in the 

 primitive and in the modern civilized com- 

 munities is found, in part, in the division 

 of labor between the school on the one side, 

 and the home and the shop or the farm on 

 the other. The business of storing the 

 mind with ideas, both materials and meth- 

 ods, has been assigned to the school. The 

 task of organizing and socializing the self 

 to which these materials and methods be- 

 long is left to the home and the industry 

 or profession, to the playground, the 



