Special attention to these elements makes them more obvious
to perception (letting other factors recede for the time being from
conspicuous recognition). Getting an idea of how the experience proceeds
indicates to us what factors must be secured or modified in order that
it may go on more successfully. This is only a somewhat elaborate way
of saying that if a man watches carefully the growth of several plants,
some of which do well and some of which amount to little or nothing, he
may be able to detect the special conditions upon which the prosperous
development of a plant depends. These conditions, stated in an orderly
sequence, would constitute the method or way or manner of its growth.
There is no difference between the growth of a plant and the prosperous
development of an experience. It is not easy, in either case, to seize
upon just the factors which make for its best movement. But study of
cases of success and failure and minute and extensive comparison, helps
to seize upon causes. When we have arranged these causes in order, we
have a method of procedure or a technique.

A consideration of some evils in education that flow from the isolation
of method from subject matter will make the point more definite.

(I) In the first place, there is the neglect (of which we have spoken)
of concrete situations of experience. There can be no discovery of
a method without cases to be studied. The method is derived from
observation of what actually happens, with a view to seeing that it
happen better next time. But in instruction and discipline, there is
rarely sufficient opportunity for children and youth to have the direct
normal experiences from which educators might derive an idea of method
or order of best development. Experiences are had under conditions
of such constraint that they throw little or no light upon the normal
course of an experience to its fruition. "Methods" have then to be
authoritatively recommended to teachers, instead of being an expression
of their own intelligent observations. Under such circumstances, they
have a mechanical uniformity, assumed to be alike for all minds. Where
flexible personal experiences are promoted by providing an environment
which calls out directed occupations in work and play, the methods
ascertained will vary with individuals--for it is certain that each
individual has something characteristic in his way of going at things.

(ii) In the second place, the notion of methods is