ter represents the ripe
fruitage of experiences like theirs, experiences involving the same
world, and powers and needs similar to theirs. It does not represent
perfection or infallible wisdom; but it is the best at command to
further new experiences which may, in some respects at least, surpass
the achievements embodied in existing knowledge and works of art.

From the standpoint of the educator, in other words, the various studies
represent working resources, available capital. Their remoteness from
the experience of the young is not, however, seeming; it is real. The
subject matter of the learner is not, therefore, it cannot be, identical
with the formulated, the crystallized, and systematized subject matter
of the adult; the material as found in books and in works of art, etc.
The latter represents the possibilities of the former; not its existing
state. It enters directly into the activities of the expert and the
educator, not into that of the beginner, the learner. Failure to bear in
mind the difference in subject matter from the respective standpoints of
teacher and student is responsible for most of the mistakes made in the
use of texts and other expressions of preexistent knowledge.

The need for a knowledge of the constitution and functions, in the
concrete, of human nature is great just because the teacher's attitude
to subject matter is so different from that of the pupil. The teacher
presents in actuality what the pupil represents only in posse. That is,
the teacher already knows the things which the student is only learning.
Hence the problem of the two is radically unlike. When engaged in the
direct act of teaching, the instructor needs to have subject matter
at his fingers' ends; his attention should be upon the attitude and
response of the pupil. To understand the latter in its interplay with
subject matter is his task, while the pupil's mind, naturally, should be
not on itself but on the topic in hand. Or to state the same point in
a somewhat different manner: the teacher should be occupied not with
subject matter in itself but in its interaction with the pupils' present
needs and capacities. Hence simple scholarship is not enough. In
fact, there are certain features of scholarship or mastered subject
matter--taken by itself--which get in the way of effective teaching
unless the instructor's habitual attitude is one of concern with
its interplay in the pupil's own experience. In the first place,
his k