is concerned? Does it fit into his more direct acquaintance so as to
increase its efficacy and deepen its meaning? If it meets these two
requirements, it is educative. The amount heard or read is of no
importance--the more the better, provided the student has a need for it
and can apply it in some situation of his own.

But it is not so easy to fulfill these requirements in actual practice
as it is to lay them down in theory. The extension in modern times of
the area of intercommunication; the invention of appliances for securing
acquaintance with remote parts of the heavens and bygone events of
history; the cheapening of devices, like printing, for recording and
distributing information--genuine and alleged--have created an immense
bulk of communicated subject matter. It is much easier to swamp a
pupil with this than to work it into his direct experiences. All too
frequently it forms another strange world which just overlies the world
of personal acquaintance. The sole problem of the student is to learn,
for school purposes, for purposes of recitations and promotions, the
constituent parts of this strange world. Probably the most conspicuous
connotation of the word knowledge for most persons to-day is just the
body of facts and truths ascertained by others; the material found in
the rows and rows of atlases, cyclopedias, histories, biographies, books
of travel, scientific treatises, on the shelves of libraries.

The imposing stupendous bulk of this material has unconsciously
influenced men's notions of the nature of knowledge itself. The
statements, the propositions, in which knowledge, the issue of active
concern with problems, is deposited, are taken to be themselves
knowledge. The record of knowledge, independent of its place as an
outcome of inquiry and a resource in further inquiry, is taken to be
knowledge. The mind of man is taken captive by the spoils of its prior
victories; the spoils, not the weapons and the acts of waging the battle
against the unknown, are used to fix the meaning of knowledge, of fact,
and truth.

If this identification of knowledge with propositions stating
information has fastened itself upon logicians and philosophers, it is
not surprising that the same ideal has almost dominated instruction.
The "course of study" consists largely of information distributed into
various branches of study, each study being subdivided into lessons
presenting in serial cutoff portions of the total store.