onnection with subject matter: method
having to do with the manner and sequence of presenting new subject
matter to insure its proper interaction with old.

The fundamental theoretical defect of this view lies in ignoring the
existence in a living being of active and specific functions which are
developed in the redirection and combination which occur as they are
occupied with their environment. The theory represents the Schoolmaster
come to his own. This fact expresses at once its strength and its
weakness. The conception that the mind consists of what has been
taught, and that the importance of what has been taught consists in
its availability for further teaching, reflects the pedagogue's view
of life. The philosophy is eloquent about the duty of the teacher in
instructing pupils; it is almost silent regarding his privilege of
learning. It emphasizes the influence of intellectual environment
upon the mind; it slurs over the fact that the environment involves a
personal sharing in common experiences. It exaggerates beyond reason
the possibilities of consciously formulated and used methods, and
underestimates the role of vital, unconscious, attitudes. It insists
upon the old, the past, and passes lightly over the operation of the
genuinely novel and unforeseeable. It takes, in brief, everything
educational into account save its essence,--vital energy seeking
opportunity for effective exercise. All education forms character,
mental and moral, but formation consists in the selection and
coordination of native activities so that they may utilize the subject
matter of the social environment. Moreover, the formation is not only a
formation of native activities, but it takes place through them. It is a
process of reconstruction, reorganization.

2. Education as Recapitulation and Retrospection. A peculiar combination
of the ideas of development and formation from without has given rise
to the recapitulation theory of education, biological and cultural. The
individual develops, but his proper development consists in repeating in
orderly stages the past evolution of animal life and human history. The
former recapitulation occurs physiologically; the latter should be made
to occur by means of education. The alleged biological truth that the
individual in his growth from the simple embryo to maturity repeats the
history of the evolution of animal life in the progress of forms
from the simplest to the most complex (or expressed