Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

roundings of the Eskimo and the New Englander, the Briton and the Abyssinian, and what inversions of character might have ensued. Indeed we may say that the chance environment surrounding one's birthplace to a large extent determines whether one is to be a dreamer or a doer, an idler or a producer, a savage or a progressive citizen. In fact, a few weeks only of a particular environment at a critical time frequently decides whether one will become an upright citizen or a perverted sinner.

The real

As will be shown more fully in the discussion of heredity, only slight modifications of physical and mental characters can be produced in a single generation. Heredity is a great conservative force. In sociology natural selection plays only a secondary rôle, while artificial selection is the dominant factor. problem of higher human education is to discover a desirable ideal life for each individual and then to shape his environment so as to contribute best to development in harmony with that ideal. This should not be a matter of chance, but a work demanding the brightest intelligence and highest wisdom.

Human Adaptations. (b) Biological. The first weeks of life of all human beings and their entire ante-natal existence offer a close parallelism to the adaptations accomplished by lower organisms. The conditions of existence must be tolerably uniform or extinction is the penalty. That the babe is at first powerless to acquire any great range of activities or much dexterity is well known. Microcephalous and other idiotic children always remain in bondage to a circumscribed range of life and are powerless to initiate new things or to acquire them if instructed. It will readily be granted that it is a long stride between education of this sort and post-graduate university education, but the difference is one of degree. The processes are similar.

In childhood, and in fact throughout life, the main adaptations, as is true of the protozoans, are concerned with the every-day problems of existence. As in the case of the micro-organisms, the human being learns to avoid or inhibit that which is harmful or disadvantageous, to repeat that which is pleasurable or bene

ficial. Thus many activities become stereotyped and largely a matter of routine. Not only does an individual follow grooves which have been established by experience-by education-but the same is true of the race. Instinct, as will be explained more fully later, is simply a race habit, or the standardized results of race education. The individual and the race virtually become "repeaters." This is not the whole of education. To progress much there must be independence of thought, initiative, inhibition, resistance, deliberation, voluntary variation from stereotyped action. But all of these higher depend upon the lower, and, as will be shown, are even more efficient when the lower are best developed. In fact, it must not be forgotten that conservation is equally as important in life as are variations. It is even as important for progress. The frog which climbs out of the well ever so fast makes no progress if he slips back with equal rapidity and regularity.

The School-master Should Imitate Nature.-It is a part of nature's great plan to fix immediately every advantageous acquisition. The successful school-master must again consider her ways and be wise. All learning must be put into some vital relation to the every-day thoughts and actions of life, otherwise the child is ever acquiring but never conserving. Nature builds absolutely sure foundations by fixing "for keeps" everything acquired that is worth while. In our hot-house educational methods our tendency is forever to sample new things and never grow a single process into the texture of muscles, brains, and minds. At the close of such an education the individual is as limp as a squash vine-possesses no real fibre physically, mentally, or morally. This is especially true of much present-day moral and intellectual education. Intellectual and moral truths are learned, not to be put into effective relations, but to be given a mere kaleidoscopic exhibition on examination day. Obsolete arithmetic problems are learned for the examinations, not for their every-day value; children babble a catalogue of the bones, but fail to learn and practise a single, real, hygienic principle like deep breathing or temperate eating. They tattle proverbs, mum

ble words of morality, sing hymns-even say prayers—in a perfunctory way with no thought of the application to their own lives. Such teaching cannot produce the results we claim for education. Formal educative acquisitions should become integrated with every thought, every feeling, and every proposed action of our every-day existence in exactly the same manner as the racial educational experiences have become integrated. Otherwise they disappear like the dew before the morning sun, and there persist only the oft-repeated, manifoldly related impressions and processes that are gained through the school of experience. Every impulse is a resultant of thousands of experiences repeated in manifold variations.

CHAPTER III

DEVELOPMENT AND SPECIALIZATION OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM AND THE SIGNIFICANCE

FOR EDUCATION

Beginnings of Self-Activity and Sensitivity.-Among inanimate substances like the rocks, minerals, water, and the clod of earth, we observe no evidences of sensitivity or of active response to the influences of environment. To be sure, chemical changes take place, but the substances are apparently inert and passive unless brought into contact with other substances for which they have affinities.

But in the plant world we observe a very definite reaction to certain stimuli. In the spring, under the influence of heat, light, and moisture, plants put forth buds, leaves, and shoots; the sap circulates, and they increase in size, extend their roots, develop blossoms and finally fruit. Although outside conditions must be favorable, yet we notice that the plants of their own energy attack the surrounding atmosphere and the soil and appropriate what is necessary for their growth. So great is the energy put forth that small roots work their way through large pieces of wood, pierce crevices of the rocks, and sometimes even rend stone walls. Fruits like the pumpkin, when harnessed, will lift hundreds of pounds, and delicate plants will under certain conditions lift many times their own weight. Dr. Harris writes: "One may admit that the environment acts on the plant, but he must contend for the essential fact that the plant reacts on its environment, meeting and modifying external influences." That plants turn toward the light or bend in certain ways is not because of any purposive force within the plant, but 1 Psychologic Foundations of Education, p. 27.

1

1

merely because of heliotropism or geotropism. There are only a few cases in which plants seem to exhibit sensitivity, powers of locomotion, and definite reaction in securing some end. The sensitive plant and the Venus fly-trap seem to respond to touch by certain movements. In spirogyra the process of conjugation seems to be accompanied by purposive movements on the part of the plant cell. But it is quite possible that these cases are also merely tropisms of some sort brought about by outside forces.

No Nervous System in Plants.-Although plants manifest such definite evidence of self-activity and even crude sensitivity and power of response, yet there is no evidence of that wonderful mechanism the nervous system. Not only is the nervous system lacking, but biologists do not generally concede the possession of nervous tissue. But if there is sensitivity and power of response even in the slightest degree, does this not suggest, at any rate, some substance capable of receiving stimuli and transmitting impulses?

Homogeneity in Protozoans: Educational Suggestions.-Not even all animals possess a system of nervous mechanisms. Protozoans, of which the classi

FIG. 1.-Amaba princeps, x 150.
The same animal in various shapes.
(From Orton.)

cal little amœba (see Fig. 1) is a good representative, are practically undifferentiated in structure. The amoeba is composed of a cell-wall enclosing a body of almost homogeneous protoplasm. Occasionally a few granules. whose structure and function are unknown are present. This little animal possesses the powers of digestion, respiration, a certain crude sensitivity, and locomotion. In a certain sense it remembers, imitates, and learns. All of these functions are carried on by means of the single undifferentiated cell. In other words, a single homogeneous organ performs several functions, performing each as well as any other, no one in a superior manner, but all most crudely. In education we have

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »