ge and lose one's own self is as awful a fate in
education as in religion. Moreover, subject-matter never can be got into
the child from without. Learning is active. It involves reaching out
of the mind. It involves organic assimilation starting from within.
Literally, we must take our stand with the child and our departure from
him. It is he and not the subject-matter which determines both quality
and quantity of learning.

The only significant method is the method of the mind as it reaches
out and assimilates. Subject-matter is but spiritual food, possible
nutritive material. It cannot digest itself; it cannot of its own
accord turn into bone and muscle and blood. The source of whatever
is dead, mechanical, and formal in schools is found precisely in the
subordination of the life and experience of the child to the curriculum.
It is because of this that "study" has become a synonym for what is
irksome, and a lesson identical with a task.

This fundamental opposition of child and curriculum set up by these
two modes of doctrine can be duplicated in a series of other terms.
"Discipline" is the watchword of those who magnify the course of study;
"interest" that of those who blazon "The Child" upon their banner. The
standpoint of the former is logical; that of the latter psychological.
The first emphasizes the necessity of adequate training and scholarship
on the part of the teacher; the latter that of need of sympathy with the
child, and knowledge of his natural instincts. "Guidance and control"
are the catchwords of one school; "freedom and initiative" of the other.
Law is asserted here; spontaneity proclaimed there. The old, the
conservation of what has been achieved in the pain and toil of the ages,
is dear to the one; the new, change, progress, wins the affection of the
other. Inertness and routine, chaos and anarchism, are accusations
bandied back and forth. Neglect of the sacred authority of duty is
charged by one side, only to be met by counter-charges of suppression
of individuality through tyrannical despotism.

Such oppositions are rarely carried to their logical conclusion.
Common-sense recoils at the extreme character of these results. They
are left to theorists, while common-sense vibrates back and forward
in a maze of inconsistent compromise. The need of getting theory and
practical common-sense into closer connection suggests a return to our
original thesis: that we have here conditions which are necessar