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wholly left to gather and organise his experiences upon the incentive of
any innate or acquired interest that may for the time engage his will.
The various agencies of society--the home, the school, the shop and
yard--are ever constantly seeking to establish such or such systems of
ideas, and to prevent the formation of other systems. Hence it follows
that education is not a mere natural process--not a process of acquiring
experience in response to the demands of this or that natural need, but
that it is a regulated process, controlled with the view of finally
leading the child to acquire certain experiences, to organise certain
systems of means for the attainment of such or such ends.

Moreover, at various periods in history, the end or ends of education,
the kinds of experience thought necessary and valuable for the child to
acquire have varied, and still vary, and must vary according to the
nature of the civilisation into which the child is born and to which his
education must somehow or other adjust him; _i.e._, there is no one
type of experience, no one kind of education, which is equally suited to
meet the needs of the child born in a modern industrial State and the
child whose education must fit him hereafter to fulfil his duties as a
member of a savage tribe.

Further, in determining the nature of the experiences useful to acquire,
we must take into account not only the civilisation to which the child
is to be adjusted, but we must also take note of the nature of the
services which the given society requires of its adult members. These
services vary in character, and there can be no one kind of education
which equally fits the individual to perform efficiently any and every
service. To postulate this would be to affirm that there is a kind of
experience useful for the realisation indifferently of any and every
purpose of adult life, and to affirm that a system of knowledge acquired
and organised for the attainment of certain definite ends can be used
for the furtherance of ends different in character and having no
intrinsic connection with each other. Further, to assert that there is
one type of education equally suited to train and to develop the
reason-activity of the individual in every direction is to neglect the
fact that individuals differ in innate capacity. These differences are
due in part to differences in the extent and character of the receptive
powers of individuals, and are to be traced, proba