Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/856

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840 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

mathematics for the training of the reasoning faculties ; history and allied branches to promote the mental power which we call the judgment." The naively mediaeval psychology behind all this would be humorous if it were not tragical. I need not label the pedagogical philosophy with which my sociology allies itself when I declare that sociology, in common with the most intelli- gent pedagogy of today, refuses to classify educational material along these lines. In the first place education is not an affair of perception, reflection, and judgment alone. Education connotes the evolution of the whole personality, not merely of intelli- gence. In the second place, if I am not mistaken, a consensus is rapidly forming, both in pedagogy and in sociology, to the effect that action in contact with reality, not artificial selection of abstracted phases of reality, is the normal condition of maxi- mum rate and symmetrical form of personal development. Soci- ology consequently joins with pedagogy in the aim to bring persons, whether in school or out of school, into as direct con- tact as possible with the concrete conditions in which all the functions of personality must be applied and controlled. In these conditions alone is that balanced action possible which is the desideratum alike of pedagogical and of social culture.

Once more, the Committee of Ten was content to remain in the dismal shadows of the immemorial misconception that dis- jecta membra of representative knowledge are the sole available resource for educational development. I do not find among the fundamental concepts of the report any distinct recognition of the coherence of the things with which intelligent pedagogy aims to procure personal adaptation. The report presents a classified catalogue of subjects good for study, but there is no apparent conception of the cosmos of which these subjects are abstracted phases and elements. Nowhere in the report do I find recognition that education when it is finished is conscious conformity of individuals to the coherent cosmic reality of which they are parts. Until our pedagogy rests upon a more intelli- gent cosmic philosophy, and especially upon a more complete synthesis of social philosophy, we can hardly expect curricula to