ded to what has already been said except
to point out that while the discussion dealt explicitly with the
subject matter of primary education, where the demand for the available
background of direct experience is most obvious, the principle applies
to the primary or elementary phase of every subject. The first and basic
function of laboratory work, for example, in a high school or college in
a new field, is to familiarize the student at first hand with a certain
range of facts and problems--to give him a "feeling" for them.
Getting command of technique and of methods of reaching and testing
generalizations is at first secondary to getting appreciation. As
regards the primary school activities, it is to be borne in mind that
the fundamental intent is not to amuse nor to convey information with a
minimum of vexation nor yet to acquire skill,--though these results
may accrue as by-products,--but to enlarge and enrich the scope of
experience, and to keep alert and effective the interest in intellectual
progress.

The rubric of appreciation supplies an appropriate head for bringing out
three further principles: the nature of effective or real (as distinct
from nominal) standards of value; the place of the imagination in
appreciative realizations; and the place of the fine arts in the course
of study.

1. The nature of standards of valuation. Every adult has acquired, in
the course of his prior experience and education, certain measures of
the worth of various sorts of experience. He has learned to look upon
qualities like honesty, amiability, perseverance, loyalty, as moral
goods; upon certain classics of literature, painting, music, as
aesthetic values, and so on. Not only this, but he has learned certain
rules for these values--the golden rule in morals; harmony, balance,
etc., proportionate distribution in aesthetic goods; definition,
clarity, system in intellectual accomplishments. These principles are
so important as standards of judging the worth of new experiences that
parents and instructors are always tending to teach them directly to the
young. They overlook the danger that standards so taught will be merely
symbolic; that is, largely conventional and verbal. In reality, working
as distinct from professed standards depend upon what an individual has
himself specifically appreciated to be deeply significant in concrete
situations. An individual may have learned that certain characteristics
are conventionally estee