resentation
will become an end in themselves. Formal education is peculiarly exposed
to this danger, with the result that when literacy supervenes, mere
bookishness, what is popularly termed the academic, too often comes
with it. In colloquial speech, the phrase a "realizing sense" is used
to express the urgency, warmth, and intimacy of a direct experience
in contrast with the remote, pallid, and coldly detached quality of
a representative experience. The terms "mental realization" and
"appreciation" (or genuine appreciation) are more elaborate names for
the realizing sense of a thing. It is not possible to define these ideas
except by synonyms, like "coming home to one" "really taking it
in," etc., for the only way to appreciate what is meant by a direct
experience of a thing is by having it. But it is the difference between
reading a technical description of a picture, and seeing it; or between
just seeing it and being moved by it; between learning mathematical
equations about light and being carried away by some peculiarly glorious
illumination of a misty landscape. We are thus met by the danger of the
tendency of technique and other purely representative forms to encroach
upon the sphere of direct appreciations; in other words, the tendency to
assume that pupils have a foundation of direct realization of situations
sufficient for the superstructure of representative experience erected
by formulated school studies. This is not simply a matter of quantity or
bulk. Sufficient direct experience is even more a matter of quality; it
must be of a sort to connect readily and fruitfully with the symbolic
material of instruction. Before teaching can safely enter upon conveying
facts and ideas through the media of signs, schooling must provide
genuine situations in which personal participation brings home the
import of the material and the problems which it conveys. From the
standpoint of the pupil, the resulting experiences are worth while on
their own account; from the standpoint of the teacher they are also
means of supplying subject matter required for understanding instruction
involving signs, and of evoking attitudes of open-mindedness and concern
as to the material symbolically conveyed.

In the outline given of the theory of educative subject matter, the
demand for this background of realization or appreciation is met by
the provision made for play and active occupations embodying typical
situations. Nothing need be ad