by intercourse with others,
becomes an increasingly delicate task with every development of special
schooling.
Summary. It is the very nature of life to strive to continue in being.
Since this continuance can be secured only by constant renewals, life
is a self-renewing process. What nutrition and reproduction are to
physiological life, education is to social life. This education consists
primarily in transmission through communication. Communication is a
process of sharing experience till it becomes a common possession. It
modifies the disposition of both the parties who partake in it. That
the ulterior significance of every mode of human association lies in
the contribution which it makes to the improvement of the quality
of experience is a fact most easily recognized in dealing with the
immature. That is to say, while every social arrangement is educative
in effect, the educative effect first becomes an important part of the
purpose of the association in connection with the association of the
older with the younger. As societies become more complex in structure
and resources, the need of formal or intentional teaching and learning
increases. As formal teaching and training grow in extent, there is the
danger of creating an undesirable split between the experience gained in
more direct associations and what is acquired in school. This danger was
never greater than at the present time, on account of the rapid growth
in the last few centuries of knowledge and technical modes of skill.
Chapter Two: Education as a Social Function
1. The Nature and Meaning of Environment. We have seen that a community
or social group sustains itself through continuous self-renewal, and
that this renewal takes place by means of the educational growth of the
immature members of the group. By various agencies, unintentional and
designed, a society transforms uninitiated and seemingly alien beings
into robust trustees of its own resources and ideals. Education is thus
a fostering, a nurturing, a cultivating, process. All of these words
mean that it implies attention to the conditions of growth. We also
speak of rearing, raising, bringing up--words which express the
difference of level which education aims to cover. Etymologically, the
word education means just a process of leading or bringing up. When
we have the outcome of the process in mind, we speak of education as
shaping, forming, molding activity--that is, a shaping into the standa
|