e to employ manual
and constructive activities in a physical way, as means of getting just
bodily skill; or they may be used almost exclusively for "utilitarian,"
i.e., pecuniary, ends. But the disposition on the part of upholders of
"cultural" education to assume that such activities are merely physical
or professional in quality, is itself a product of the philosophies
which isolate mind from direction of the course of experience and hence
from action upon and with things. When the "mental" is regarded as
a self-contained separate realm, a counterpart fate befalls bodily
activity and movements. They are regarded as at the best mere external
annexes to mind. They may be necessary for the satisfaction of bodily
needs and the attainment of external decency and comfort, but they do
not occupy a necessary place in mind nor enact an indispensable role
in the completion of thought. Hence they have no place in a liberal
education--i.e., one which is concerned with the interests of
intelligence. If they come in at all, it is as a concession to the
material needs of the masses. That they should be allowed to invade
the education of the elite is unspeakable. This conclusion follows
irresistibly from the isolated conception of mind, but by the same
logic it disappears when we perceive what mind really is--namely, the
purposive and directive factor in the development of experience. While
it is desirable that all educational institutions should be equipped so
as to give students an opportunity for acquiring and testing ideas and
information in active pursuits typifying important social situations, it
will, doubtless, be a long time before all of them are thus furnished.
But this state of affairs does not afford instructors an excuse for
folding their hands and persisting in methods which segregate school
knowledge. Every recitation in every subject gives an opportunity for
establishing cross connections between the subject matter of the lesson
and the wider and more direct experiences of everyday life. Classroom
instruction falls into three kinds. The least desirable treats each
lesson as an independent whole. It does not put upon the student the
responsibility of finding points of contact between it and other lessons
in the same subject, or other subjects of study. Wiser teachers see to
it that the student is systematically led to utilize his earlier lessons
to help understand the present one, and also to use the present to
throw a