her words, through education the experiences of
the child are so reconstructed that he is put in possession of the more
typical and more valuable forms of race experience, and thus rendered
more efficient in his conduct, or action.
PURPOSES OF CURRICULUM
=Represents Race Experiences.=--So far as education aims to have the
child enter into typical valuable race experiences, this can be
accomplished only by placing these experiences before him as problems
in such form that he may realize them through a regular process of
learning. The purpose of the school curriculum is, therefore, to provide
such problems as may, under the direction of the instructor, control the
conscious reactions of the child, and enable him to participate in these
more valuable race experiences. In this sense arithmetic becomes a means
for providing the child with a series of problems which may give him the
experiences which the race has found valuable in securing commercial
accuracy and precision. In like manner, constructive work provides a
series of problems in which the child experiences how the race has
turned the materials of nature to human service. History provides
problems whose solution gives the experience which enables the pupil to
meet the political and social conditions of his own time. Physics shows
how the forces of nature have become instruments for the service of man.
Geography shows how the world is used as a background for social life;
and grammar, what principles control the use of the race language as a
medium for the communication of thought.
=Classifies Race Experience.=--Without such control of the presentation
of these racial experiences as is made possible through the school and
the school curriculum, the child would be likely to meet them only as
they came to him in the actual processes of social life. These processes
are, however, so complex in modern society, that, in any attempt to
secure experience directly, the child is likely to be overwhelmed by
their complex and unorganized character. The message boy in the
dye-works, for example, may have presented to him innumerable problems
in number, language, physics, chemistry, etc., but owing to the
confused, disorganized, and mingled character of the presentation, these
are not likely to be seized upon by him as direct problems calling for
adjustment. In the school curriculum, on the other hand, the different
phases of this seemingly unorganized mass of experiences a
|