RS SS NS WS y SNS WON SN SSS : SS SO ee SV \ WS ~ . c Son Ss ae SSS SS \\ ~ SASS SRR SSS SRS SSS : : ey) SS ~ SNS SN SS =. Sats SSN ASS SS ES SS AN S SS SS SSS aN SASS SAA SS SES CERRY SSN SON SSNS SE SOS * S S C _ RA SS AS Se SSE A S a 4 r PSOE tie Jeane Put THE CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION BY WILLIAM CLAYTON BOWER PROFESSOR OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN THE COLLEGE OF THE BIBLE, LEXINGTON, KENTUCKY OCT 10 1972 PRINCETON TEDkGeta! SUMINART NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 1928 CopyricuT, 1925, sy CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS Printed in the United States of America TO TROAS HEMRY BOWER MY WIFE WHOSE COMPANIONSHIP AND COUNSEL HAVE BEEN A CONSTANT SOURCE OF INSPIRATION AND SUSTAINING HELP IN ALL MY WORK PREFACE Next to the child, the curriculum lies nearest the centre of the educative process. Every change in the conception of the end and nature of education has registered its influence in the curriculum more profoundly than in any other factor. This is in- creasingly apparent in modern educational theory. The problems arising out of objectives, method of procedure, the organization of the institution, and the function of the teacher lead, in one way or an- other, to the central problem of the curriculum. At no point does the present reconstruction through which education is passing necessitate a more thoroughgoing readjustment of educational theory and procedure than in the field of the cur- riculum. In the present discussion the author has taken account of the more recent significant move- ments in the theory and practice of education and has attempted to carry out their implications as they bear upon the curriculum in religious educa- tion. The curriculum is here conceived in terms of en- riched and controlled experience. This view is at the farthest possible remove from that which has domi- nated traditional education. The traditional view has placed materials at the centre of the process; the view here presented places experience at the centre. Knowledge has been dominantly thought of as an end in itself; it is here thought of as an in- strument for the enrichment and control of experi- ence. vil Vili PREFACE Fundamental as is the problem of the relation of knowledge to experience in any field of education, it is particularly fundamental in moral and religious education. If moral and religious education are to be effective in their influence upon human life, they must enter experience as factors of control. That is to say, morals and religion cannot be taught apart from experience. As bodies of ideas and precepts dissociated from every-day relations and functions there is no assurance that they will function in the redirection of conduct in conformity with the high- est ethical and spiritual ideals of the race. Until a way can be found for the teaching of morals and religion as a part of the experience of normal life there must remain a doubt as to the practicability of teaching morals or religion at all. Whatever view secular education may take regarding the procedure appropriate to the teaching of those matters that are deemed necessary for the preparation of imma- ture persons to take their part in the secular state, religious education has no choice but to press its theory and practice through to a point where they begin and end in experience. How this may be ac- complished seems to the present writer to offer the most immediate and pressing problem now before the religious educator and the most promising field for his research. The curriculum of religious education is at the present moment in a state of transition. There is general agreement that existing curriculum materials are not satisfactory, especially in the light of the new demands that are being made upon religious education. There is also a wide-spread conviction that the creation of new curriculum materials must proceed upon an entirely new basis. Already ex- PREFACE ix periments on new materials based upon new ap- proaches to the problem of curriculum-building are under way, but these materials are for the most part not yet available. Any confident creation of cur- riculum materials on the new basis must be preceded by patient research and wide-spread experimenta- tion. In view of the status of the curriculum prob- lem in religious education it has seemed best to limit the present discussion to a statement of a theory of the curriculum, believing that the first step in the creation of a new curriculum should be a clear understanding of the problems involved and as clear a statement as possible of the principles upon which the new curriculum should rest. The author wishes to acknowledge his indebted- ness to those who have discussed the problem of the curriculum in recent years, especially to Professor Franklin Bobbitt, Professor Junius L. Meriam, Pro- fessor W. W. Charters, and Professor John Dewey. He wishes also to express his appreciation of the constructive criticisms that members of the Com- mittee on The International Curriculum of Religious Education, a subcommittee of the International Les- son Committee, and that members of its Advisory Committee, have given to a brief statement of a theory of the curriculum which he, as chairman of the subcommittee, submitted to it as a working basis for the construction of a new integrated cur- riculum to cover week-day, vacation, and Sunday instruction. W. CB. Lexineton, Kentucky, April 6, 1925. ay * DNR re ee ais PEA) Ka. CONTENTS PREFACE CHAPTER I. Tue Curricutum AS DISCIPLINE Il. Tue Curricutum AS KNOWLEDGE Ill. Ture Curricutum As RECAPITULATION IV. Tue Curricutum AS ENRICHED AND Con- TROLLED EXPERIENCE VY. Tue WortsH or PRESENT EXPERIENCE VI. Tur Nature or EXPERIENCE . Vil. How EXpsEriIENcE 18s ENRICHED AND Con- TROLLED VIII. Tue Oricin anp Function or KNOWLEDGE IX. Tue Princrpie or REALITY X. THE PRINCIPLE oF CONTINUITY XI. Wuat Constitutes THE CURRICULUM XII. Tue ANAtysis or EXPERIENCE XIII. Huistoricay Sussect-Mattrer . XIV. Meruop as Wipeninc EXPERIENCE Xi 120 134 147 163 180 194 207 CONTENTS Reuicious Epucation TurovucH Socran PARTICIPATION Tue Princiete oF ADAPTATION A Dynamic CuRRICULUM BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX . y : if x ‘ A PAGE THE CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION eg eae Brae ROA Rab Halt & halts fi ists ve A she OO ye Wh Ait ie Kt ae My » oh 4 to Ph RE } ue age Ni Ae Ae i Atty THE CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION I THE CURRICULUM AS DISCIPLINE MopeErRN education, like all social functions, is the result of development through a long historical process. Education is as old as the race. It began when primitive men initiated the immature mem- bers of their group into the practical processes by which their life was sustained and into the sacred mysteries of the tribe. At the beginning the proc- ess was scarcely conscious. There was no differen- tiated teaching class. There were no consciously formulated objectives. There was no technic that called for special preparation and professional skill. There was no specialized teaching institution corre- sponding to the modern school. Since there could be no considerable body of cumulative experience because there was as yet no written language, there could be no considerable body of recorded and or- ganized historical subject-matter. Notwithstanding, education went on in a simple but very real way through the participation of the immature in the practical activities of the group. Because the re- corded racial experience was extremely meagre, being limited to custom and oral tradition, only in the most limited sense can it be said to have been backward-looking, since it had only a meagre past; 1 2 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION because it had not as yet learned the secret of con- trol through the understanding of the forces and processes of the world about it, it could not yet be- come forward-looking. Consequently, primitive edu- cation was bound to a relatively unchanging present. From these simple and crude beginnings until now the mature members of society have been assisting the immature members in making their adjustment to the world in which they are to live in the interest of a happy, effective, and satisfying life. Modern education has become a highly conscious, complex, and purposive undertaking. Its objectives are be- coming increasingly clearly and definitely defined, both from the standpoint of the individual and of society. It has developed an elaborate technic that requires for its successful administration the ser- vices of a highly trained professional class. Through writing and printing it has accumulated a vast store of historical subject-matter that is a faithful record of man’s expanding experience in countless areas of tireless exploration. Man has had sufficient expe- rience in dealing with the forces and processes around and within him to acquire some understanding of these forces and processes and thereby to bring them under a measure of control. In this way he has built up a confidence in himself that he can, in a measure, anticipate the course of future expe- rience and within certain limits control it. With the birth within man of this confidence, education has become forward-looking. A self-conscious and self- directing society erects goals for itself and deliber- ately sets about attempting to realize them. Under the impulsion of these ideas education has become the most fundamental undertaking of modern so- ciety. Upon it society places its chief dependence THE CURRICULUM AS DISCIPLINE 3 as an instrument for social direction, and as the fundamental method of securing progress. In the course of its development from its simple and primitive to its complex and modern character education has passed through countless changes. Now its objectives have been restated to correspond to the changing values of the social group. Now its procedure has been reconstructed to meet the de- mands of a developing technic. Now its emphasis has shifted from the learner to materials and from materials to method in its search for the permanent centre of the educative process. However great these historic changes have been, there has never been a period in which education has passed through a more thoroughgoing reconstruction than it is passing through at the present time. Its aims, pro- cedure, materials, and organization—all these are undergoing a searching process of revaluation in the light of the demands which the modern social, in- tellectual, and spiritual necessities of our times are making upon it. Of the factors that constitute the educative proc- ess, none so completely registers changes in the the- ory and practice of education as the curriculum. So true is this that it would be all but possible to write the history of education in terms of the changing conception, content, and organization of the cur- riculum. Modern education has come to regard the child as the permanent centre of the educative proc- ess. The child is the one factor that, through all changes that have modified the other factors, re- mains relatively stable. But when it comes to the actual formulation and management of educational procedure, each of the problems, in one way or an- other, leads straight to the curriculum. One is not 4 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION surprised, therefore, to discover that at the very centre of the present reconstruction through which education is passing lies the problem of the cur- riculum. It will be helpful, therefore, to orient ourselves to the problem of the curriculum as it stands in mod- ern religious education by a brief sketch of the more outstanding features of the historical theories of the curriculum. Speaking quite broadly, it may be said that these conceptions fall into a rough historical sequence, though there is much chronological over- lapping. For the most part the conscious and ra- tional elaboration of these theories falls within the modern period, though they have many antecedents in the ancient and medieval worlds. For this reason it will serve the present purpose if the survey is for the most part limited to the period since the Renais- sance. The first of these historical theories to receive our attention will be the conception of the curriculum as discipline. 5 ~ The theory of the curriculum as discipline had its origin in the social and intellectual backgrounds of the seventeenth century. One of the phenomena with which the student of the history of education is early impressed is the way in which social ideals, relations, and processes become articulate in educa- tion. The Europe of the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries inherited many of its pattern ideas and its social structure from the Middle Ages. The spirit of the Middle Ages in religion, in thought, and in social organization had been authoritative and re- pressive. The signature of the period from the fifth to the fifteenth centuries had been authority and discipline. Notwithstanding the fact that the Re- THE CURRICULUM AS DISCIPLINE 5 naissance and the Reformation were at bottom re- actions against that authority, the old attitudes and structures continued to survive with persistent stub-: bornness. The opportunity for the common man to exist, to think, and to act in his own right is a late achievement of the modern world. That right has not yet been completely won. In the autocratic social organization of Europe, for a long time after the Renaissance, the few by a jealously guarded au- thority imposed their will from above upon the many. The qualities of mind that befitted such a political state, such a church, and such an intellec- tual life were submission, obedience, resignation. And these were precisely those qualities of mind that a disciplinary education of an authoritative state and church obtained. On the intellectual side, a number of factors con- tributed to the rational elaboration of the theory. For one thing, the Renaissance had developed two fundamental interests—an interest in persons and an interest in nature. The first of these gave rise to humanism, the latter to naturalism. Humanism was the first to emerge. It developed an intense inter- est in the life of the ancients as revealed in the classical literatures. At first the classics were studied for the sake of their rich and satisfying content and for the light they were capable of throwing upon the life of the ancients. Presently, however, a formal- izing tendency settled down upon the movement, and it became narrow and rigid. Interest was shifted from the content of the classics to the languages themselves. It became an enthusiasm with the classicists to speak and write in the exact forms of the ancient masters. The schools became devoted wholly to a study of the form of the classics. 6 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION In the meantime the naturalistic tendency began to emerge. It was slightly preceded by the so-called ‘realistic’? movement that protested against the exclusively formal study of the classics. The earli- est realists still adhered to the classics as the media of education, but they insisted that the classics should be studied for the value of their content. Some realists, Montaigne for instance, even went so far as to repudiate the classics altogether. But it was the sense-realists who broke completely with the classicists. Chief among these were Francis Bacon and Comenius. Bacon was the precursor of the scientists. His interest centred wholly in na- ture—in its phenomena, forces, processes. He even dreamed that sometime man would be able to con- trol nature. The work of Bacon necessitated a new philosophy of knowledge and a new method of edu- cation. Comenius was quick to seize upon these implications and elaborated a theory of knowledge based upon sense-perception and a philosophy of education which called for the use of concrete ob- jects and natural processes in teaching. He com- pletely discarded the classics as instruments of in- struction, and worked out a system of instruction by means of concrete objects from nature and by means of pictures. Neither was the impact of real- ism upon the prevalent education slight. It got it- self expressed in the so-called “‘real schools” of Germany, and later made its influence distinctly felt in America. At the same time profound social changes were taking place in Europe. While the Renaissance in the south of Europe had been aristocratic, the Ref- ormation, which was a continuation of the same general movement in the north of Europe, was so- THE CURRICULUM AS DISCIPLINE 4 cial and democratic. Its interest centred more in the life of the common man. In religion it affirmed the competency of the individual soul, irrespective of an authoritative institution, to stand before God and its fellows in its own right. It made the indi- vidual reason the judge of truth and the individual conscience the arbiter of conduct. In the interest of these social and democratic ideals the Reforma- tion established state systems of schools and made attendance upon them compulsory. This brought the rights and privileges of education to every man. With the emergence of the common man a rich life sprang up among the common people which ex- pressed itself in a literature in the vernacular. In time Latin ceased to be universally used as the Jan- guage of religion, and French became the official language of the court and of diplomatic circles. Against these powerful movements the traditional education found it necessary to defend its insecure position. It was forced to formulate a philosophy of education that would justify the continuance of the disciplinary methods of education and the ex- clusive use of the classics. It found its chief rational exponent in John Locke, the English philosopher, who formulated the conception of the curriculum as discipline in the latter part of the seventeenth century. The disciplinary conception of the curriculum was founded upon a view of human nature that required the thwarting of its natural desires. The virtue of virtues was self-denial. If a thing was hard or dis- tasteful because it ran counter to the impulses of original nature, that was sufficient reason for doing it; if it was easy or agreeable, that in itself was sufficient reason for avoiding it. Original nature 8 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION must be thwarted at every point by a subordinating and hardening process. Only thus could it be brought under the rule of reason and authority. It is not difficult, of course, to trace the roots of this concep- tion. They lie embedded in the historic doctrine of original sin, which had its origin in the attitude of world- and self-renunciation in the negative re- action of Christianity to the Greco-Roman world. This was the conception that dominated the point of view of the Middle Ages. Human nature was essentially wrong and must be subjected to a process of radical reconstruction. The disciplinary theory was based upon the tra- ditional “‘faculty”’ psychology. According to this view, the mind was made up of a number of isolated *‘faculties,’ such as perception, memory, imagina- tion, and reasoning. In any given activity only its corresponding faculty was supposed to be engaged, and no other. Thus, if one were engaged in perceiv- ing the form or color of an object, only the faculty of perception would be engaged. Consequently it was believed that if one faculty were trained in any given activity it would, by exercise, acquire a cor- responding ability when turned to any other ac- tivity. In this way it was held, for example, that if the faculty of perception were trained in discern- ing noun or verb endings in declension or conjuga- tion it would acquire skill in detecting the symp- toms of disease or in discriminating between differ- ences of form or color. Similarly, if memory were trained in mastering word forms or a vocabulary it would profit by that training in remembering names or localities; or if the reason were trained in the solving of mathematical problems it would be better able to meet the practical problems of life. It was THE CURRICULUM AS DISCIPLINE 9 also believed that in addition to a carry-over of training from one field to another there was built up through the exercise of one faculty, or a few faculties, a general store of mental energy that would make the mind more effective in any form of activity whatsoever. From this point of view it followed that the value of education consisted, not in the worth of the thing learned, but in the process of learning it. It also followed that the highest benefit from education came from training within a very narrow field of activity, since such limited training could be more intense and thorough. The training of specific facul- ties in specialized directions could be trusted to carry over into other activities, and the mental energy created by the exercise of a limited number of faculties could be trusted to diffuse itself over the other faculties of the entire mind. There was no need, therefore, that the training given should have any relation whatsoever to the relations and func- tions of real life or that it should be diversified in order to anticipate those divergent needs. Educa- tion had performed its function when it had devel- oped within the mind that energy that might be drawn upon for any need. The president of a great American university who held this view of the cur- riculum likened education to a workman grinding his axe. Since the value of education consisted in the proc- ess of learning rather than in the thing learned, the subjects that were judged most valuable were the formal and difficult subjects. If a subject was dis- tasteful as well as difficult, it was particularly ap- propriate. The effect of the disciplinary theory upon the cur- 10 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION riculum was thoroughgoing. During the period of its dominance nothing else was taught in the schools that were brought under its influence but Latin and Greek grammar and composition and, in many instances, mathematics. Moreover, this extremely narrow curriculum was rigidly prescribed. The prin- ciple of election is based upon individual interests and the bearing of certain subjects upon the ex- pected future activities of the student. But from the disciplinary point of view, interest should be repressed, and nothing was to be gained by diffused training in relation to future activities, since the narrow and more intense training was believed to be more effective in creating a fund of mental energy. The effect of the disciplinary theory upon the spirit of the school was no Jess thoroughgoing. The atmosphere of the school was harsh and repressive. Learning became a formal, external, and authorita- tive process with no vital and intrinsic interest. Consequently, the motivation of learning had to be sought in the external incentives of reward and pun- ishment, the latter often being carried to the limits of cruelty. Owing largely to the fact that the traditional edu- cation was in possession of the technic and machin- ery of education and to the inertia of custom, the classicists prevailed. The disciplinary conception of the curriculum dominated the schools of England, the Continent, and America through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Remnants of its influence continued well on into the twentieth century. Until the middle of the nineteenth century nothing was taught in the English public schools, such as Eton, Rugby, and Winchester, but Latin and Greek gram- mar and composition; only then was mathematics THE CURRICULUM AS DISCIPLINE li added. Oxford and Cambridge have remained throughout rigidly disciplinary institutions. On the Continent the German gymnasium, the central and most typical school in the German system, was, as its name suggests, wholly under the domination of this conception. The German universities were slow to yield to the influence of realism. The Latin Grammar School of the early colonies embodied this point of view in America. Until very recently the elementary schools in America were dominated by disciplinary ideals. In both Europe and America such content subjects as history, literature, and the natural and social sciences have had to win their way by a patient and persistent struggle in the face of the strong entrenchment of the disciplinary sub- jects. There were fundamental weaknesses in the disci- plinary conception of the curriculum that have led to its decay in modern education. For one thing, modern scientific psychology has cut the ground from beneath the “faculty” conception of the mind. It finds that the mind is a unit and that it operates as a unit in the different directions of its activity. Modern psychology thinks in terms of capacities and functions. With the disappearance of isolated faculties the disciplinary conception of the curric- ulum falls to the ground. Furthermore, modern psychology has come to disbelieve in the doctrine of the transfer of training. Laboratory experiments have demonstrated that training in one activity improves ability in another activity only under three well-defined conditions. The first condition is that there must be common elements of content in the two types of activity, as in the learning of Latin and French. The second is 12 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION that there must be common elements of procedure between the two activities, as in mastering a cer- tain technic in memorizing, such as learning by wholes, the proper distribution of practice periods, and the use of recall. The third condition is that the element that is to be carried over must be raised clearly into consciousness so that it will be reflected upon. Under these conditions the modern educator is not sure that there is any carry-over as such, but only the direct training of capacities in their respec- tive lines of activity. If there is a carry-over, it is upon precisely the opposite grounds from that as- sumed by the disciplinarian. Such carry-over as may exist depends upon the widening of the range of training and the relation of training to the pres- ent and future activities of the learner. Thus the conception of the curriculum as dis- cipline, which emerged from the social and intellec- tual backgrounds of the seventeenth century and fastened itself upon education until its decay under the influence of modern social ideals and scientific psychology, placed the supreme emphasis, in the historical development of education, upon the proc- ess of learning as distinguished from subject-matter or the child. if THE CURRICULUM AS KNOWLEDGE NOTWITHSTANDING the fact that we owe the rational formulation of the conception of the curriculum as knowledge to Herbart during the latter part of the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth cen- turies, it is the oldest of all the historical concepts of the curriculum, as it is also the most persistent. This is obviously due to the fact that the curriculum in any case deals largely with a knowledge content, and both theory and practice have shown a ten- dency to gravitate toward that centre. The conception of the curriculum as knowledge goes back, historically, to the beginning of the ex- perience of the race. Circumscribed as primitive man’s experience was, he nevertheless learned by a crude trial-and-error method many useful things as a result of his dealing with such situations as his material and social world presented to him. It was long before primitive man developed the art of writing through the use of symbols. In the mean- time, such practical knowledge as he learned about hunting, hut-building, the making of clothing, and weapons was passed on from generation to genera- tion by example and oral tradition. In time, by the use of pictograph signs, inscribed at first upon the bones or skins of animals, primitive man devised a written language by means of which he could re- cord his experience and communicate with his fel- lows without being present with them. In this way 13 14 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION there was gradually accumulated a store of perma- nent knowledge. The effect of written language upon the curric- ulum was fundamental and far-reaching. In the earliest education the curriculum consisted of the elements that entered into the practical processes of food-getting, providing shelter, and conducting warfare as these were learned from participating with the mature members of the group in these ac- tivities, together with what the old men of the tribe communicated to the young regarding religious ceremonies and the sacred mysteries of the tribe. With the invention of written language this knowl- edge was recorded and preserved for future genera- tions. As a result, as time passed, the learner was directed to these records for knowledge. In this way education developed into a more or less formal © process. There was gradually differentiated a teach- ing class that was versed in this lore and capable of imparting it to others. Schools sprang up, at first in the temple areas and in the private houses of the teachers, where pupils congregated for the purposes of learning. Experience in the impartation of knowl- edge gave rise to a teaching technic. For a consid- erable time the subject-matter was practical and professional, as in Egypt. In some instances it be- came exclusively literary, as in China. In any case, education became, on the part of the teacher, a transmission of the inheritance of the past and, on the part of the learner, an assimilation of that inheritance. Education had become instruction. The reaction of this growing body of knowledge upon the earlier historic forms of education was profound and characteristic. It had the effect of placing an almost exclusive emphasis upon the past. THE CURRICULUM AS KNOWLEDGE 15 Society became backward-looking. Progress was slow and uncertain and was achieved for the most part in spite of education. This result was well illus- trated in the Egyptian civilization, which, under the influence of its growing traditional inheritance, be- came formulaic, authoritative, and bound to its past. Its supreme expression was to be found in China, where for centuries education became ex- clusively literary, formal, and backward-looking. China’s extreme reverence for the past furnished the most conspicuous instance in history of the power of education to render a society resistant to change and therefore incapable of the progressive achievement of progress. Its reaction upon the na- tional mind was to destroy initiative and develop the attitudes of appreciation and dependence upon precedent. As has been suggested, the conception of the cur- riculum as knowledge owes its rational formulation to Herbart and his disciples in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The earlier concep- tion of the curriculum as knowledge rested upon a wholly empirical basis. Not so with Herbart and his followers. Herbart himself was thoroughly trained in the university, and was later a professor of philosophy. His whole approach to the problem was that of the best philosophical and psychological learning of his day. Herbart had the advantage of being acquainted with the ideas and experience of Pestalozzi. Pes- talozzi’s educational work was all done on a purely empirical basis. Herbart took over Pestalozzi’s ex- periments in education and reduced them to a con- scious psychological procedure. At the same time he carried them to a higher level than his prede- 16 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION cessor in that he lifted the process from the level of sense-perception to the realm of ideas. Herbart broke completely with the traditional “faculty”? psychology upon which the disciplinary conception of the curriculum had been formulated. He saw the mind as a unity, functioning as a whole in different directions. That is, when one is en- gaged in solving a mathematical problem, the entire mind is engaged at that moment in that particular act. So also when one engages in a game of golf or tennis or in delivering a lecture or in selling mer- chandise, it is the whole mind functioning as a unit that is involved, and not an isolated “faculty” such as memory, reason, or imagination. In this respect Herbart anticipated the findings of modern scientific psychology. In this way Herbart laid the groundwork of theory for much of the modern thinking regarding the ends and means of education. The distinctive psychological position of Herbart consisted in the fact that he saw in the mind a prod- uct to be formed as the result of the operation of factors external to the learner. To him the mind at birth was a blank sheet of paper upon which nothing had yet been written. The character of the mind, therefore, was determined by what was later written thereon, and by the manner in which it was written. This was the basic psychological assumption upon which he erected his theory of education. In Herbart’s view, the process by which the mind was formed was through the proper presentation of subject-matter. Mind consisted of an indefinite number of connections between bits of knowledge. Both the content and the pattern of the mind, in consequence, depended upon the amount and char- acter of presentations of subject-matter. It would THE CURRICULUM AS KNOWLEDGE Ly: be impossible to imagine a conception that would place more emphasis upon knowledge as such. It amounted to the complete shifting of emphasis from the child, so far as the child had up to that time been considered, to subject-matter. This replace- ment of emphasis necessitated the complete recon- struction of the technic of instruction as far as the Herbartian influence extended. The formation of mind was thus reduced to a matter of content. For his subject-matter Herbart went to two fundamental sources—nature and social relations. Thus in him the two fundamental interests of the Renaissance— humanism and naturalism—were united. There was no restriction of the area from which knowledge suitable for educational purposes could be drawn. Since the manner of the presentation of subject- matter was of such fundamental importance, an emphasis second only to that placed upon content was placed upon method. The primary basis of this emphasis arose out of Herbart’s doctrine of inter- est, which rested, in his view, upon the apperceptive function of the mind, by which new experience is assimilated with the old. With Herbart, that only can be interesting to the learner ‘which is in some way connected with knowledge already in his mind. A correlative of this conception was the doctrine that the result of education should be the creation of certain organized and permanent interests. It was out of the doctrine of interest that he formu- lated his technic of the effective presentation of subject-matter. This technic consisted in his “‘five formal steps in teaching.” According to this formula, — the first step in instruction consisted in the prepara- ( tion of the mind for the reception of the new knowl ~ edge. This preparation consisted in calling up the 1) 18 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION knowledge already in the mind that was related to the new material about to be presented. This old experience he called the “apperceptive mass.’”’ The second step consisted in the clear and impressive presentation of the new knowledge. The third step required the working of the new material thoroughly into the knowledge already present in the mind through a sort of kneading process. The fourth step consisted in the arriving of the learner at correct generalizations and the attachment thereto of their appropriate definitions. The final step consisted in - the application of the newly acquired knowledge in new and unfamiliar situations. This latter step is the basis of the so-called “‘expressional” work in modern teaching. It gave rise to the dictum, “No impression without expression.’’ So perfectly was this method worked out by Herbart that experience in using it through a long period of time has added no new step, unless perhaps it might be that of veri- fication, between generalization and application, if it is assumed that the business of education is to transmit knowledge from teacher to pupil. A second basis upon which the Herbartian method rested was the doctrine of correlation. Since the mind was formed through the presentation of in- teresting subject-matter and the building up of permanent interests, it followed that these inter- ests must be harmonized. This Herbart sought to accomplish through the presentation of subject- matter from related and complementary fields. It fell out, therefore, that the subject-matter that was appropriate to any particular learner would be de- termined, not by an unrestricted range of knowledge, but by the selection of those bodies of knowledge that were capable of harmoniously relating them- selves to each other. THE CURRICULUM AS KNOWLEDGE 19 From the Herbartian point of view, human nature can be neither good nor bad, since its quality is de- pendent upon the presentations of subject-matter that are made to it. Furthermore, since these pres- entations are made from without, the primary re- sponsibility for character formation rests with those who are responsible for the selection and presenta- tion of knowledge. In keeping with these fundamental viewpoints, those who have followed the lead of Herbart have characteristically placed the primary emphasis in education upon subject-matter. President Nicholas Murray Butler, one of the leading living represen- tatives of this conception of education, has defined education as the gradual adjustment of the immature to the spiritual possessions of the race. He classifies the spiritual inheritance of the race under the cate- gories of the scientific, literary, sesthetic, institu- tional (politico-social), industrial, and religious. Partly because of the thoroughness and exactness with which the theory was worked out on a psycho- logical basis, and partly because of the tendency of the curriculum to gravitate toward subject-matter, the influence of the Herbartian ideals was very wide-spread. They have increasingly displaced the disciplinary conception of the curriculum. One after another of the content subjects has won its way into the curriculum until at the present time the curriculum is embarrassed by a wealth and scope of subject-matter. Under the elective system, which, among other things, is one of the outgrowths of the enrichment of the curriculum, the curriculum has shown a tendency toward diffusion and scattering to the point of disorganization and superficiality. The reaction from the results of free election has 20 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION followed in some measure the principle suggested by Herbart—the selection of a general field of corre- lated and homogeneous studies out of the growing mass of modern knowledge, which it is impossible for one mind to master in a lifetime. Current edu- cation is predominantly Herbartian. Great as were the contributions of the Herbar- tians in displacing the “faculty” psychology with a sounder view of the character of the mind and in working out on a psychological basis a technic for the impartation of knowledge, the conception of the curriculum that derives from them is open to serious criticism in the light of scientific psychology and the increasing demands of modern life. For one thing, it places knowledge at the centre of the learning process. This has amounted to the identification of education with instruction. For this reason, while it speaks in terms of adjustment, its focus of attention is wrongly centred. It would make education consist in adjustment to the in- heritance of the race. But this is precisely what education ought not to be. Education should be an adjustment to the present situations which the ma- terial and social world presents through the aid of the past experience of the race, and to the future that springs from the present as consequent from antecedent. The adjustment which this conception of the curriculum seeks is to materials, whereas it should be an adjustment to the actual situations of an ongoing human life. _ It has also given undue emphasis to the teacher with his technic as the representative of the adult members of society. This unduly weights the prog- ress of the race with tradition, precedent, fixed ideas, custom. It tends to close the avenues to fresh and THE CURRICULUM AS KNOWLEDGE 21 vital experience, by means of which the life of the race is kept open and dynamic. On the whole it may be said that the influence of | this conception has been to create a backward-look- ing type of mind. The mental attitudes that it has developed have been those of passivity, authority, appreciation—the receptive qualities of the mind. Scientific psychology, however, insists upon the active, dynamic, creative character of the mind. The task that confronts society and its particular institutions is to build its own future by placing direction into the process of human living. This calls for the dynamic spirit and the creative and respon- sible mind. In keeping with this result, those func- tions of the mind that this view of education has especially developed are those that centre around memory at the expense of thinking and responsible experimentation with the possibilities of life. The conception of the curriculum as knowledge has received great impetus since the middle of the nineteenth century from the natural and the social sciences. This influence began as far back as the early seventeenth century with Francis Bacon. Bacon formulated many of the fundamental view- points and approaches of science. As we have seen, from the realism of Bacon there arose a new theory of knowledge and a new philosophy of education. It is significant that as a result of this earliest emergence of the scientific method in modern times there was born a Utopian dream that through the new method of learning it would be possible for the common man to know in a brief time all the useful knowledge in the possession of the race. It is also significant that the same movement of sci- ence that gave rise to the “‘pansophic”’ ideal has 22 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION since then added to the store of verified knowledge in countless realms vaster volumes of material than any one individual or any one generation can hope to master. The movement of modern natural science has only accentuated the spirit of its precursor, realism. Into one after another of the areas of human expe- rience science has ventured far. Science, as its name suggests, has its beginning and end in knowledge. As a result, the total influence of science, except perhaps within recent years in the field of psychol- ogy, has been to accentuate the importance of knowledge, not only for its own sake, but for its serviceability, through the applied sciences, in min- istering to the needs and desires of mankind. The influence of the social sciences has, in the main, been in the same direction. The whole ten- dency of the social sciences has been to place a new value upon knowledge as an instrument of social living. Social thinkers have been inclined to value those forms of knowledge that make for survival— health, economic efficiency, and effective citizen- ship. After these more useful bodies of knowledge have been acquired, if time and energy remain, at- tention may be devoted to such knowledge as makes for enjoyment and culture. In consequence, the social determinants have crowded the curriculum with civic, vocational, economic, and health edu- cation. In this respect the effects of the natural and the social sciences fused. This fusion is well represented in Herbert Spencer, who united in himself the scien- tific terest and the social interest. It was he who first in the history of education specifically raised _ the question: “What knowledge is of most worth?” THE CURRICULUM AS KNOWLEDGE 23 In answer to this question he arranged the subjects | of the curriculum in a hierarchy of values. In the order of first importance he placed a knowledge of physiology, hygiene, physics, and chemistry, for the , reason that these contribute directly to self-preser- vation. In the second order he placed a knowledge of how to secure food, clothing, and shelter, because they indirectly contribute to self-preservation. In the third order he placed such knowledge as has to do with the rearing of children. In the fourth order he placed a knowledge of social and political life, leaving for the last place literature, art, zesthetics, and foreign languages. Clearly we have here not only an emphasis upon knowledge that surpasses any that has presented itself in educational history, but a thoroughgoing utilitarian conception of knowl- edge. : Thus we see that from the beginning until the present time the conception of the curriculum as knowledge has persisted throughout in one form or another. At first it was the result of the unreflecting adherence of the group to the experience of the past as that experience was preserved in literary forms. In its later development it was the result of a philo- sophic and psychological interest that elaborated a philosophy of education and a careful technic for transmitting the accumulated inheritance of the past. In its latest development it is the result of the discovery of important scientific data that are also useful for the prosecution of the enterprise of individual and social living. And this conception is the conception that on the whole dominates both secular and religious education at the present time. III THE CURRICULUM AS RECAPITULATION TuE two outstanding contributions of the nineteenth century to civilization were the emergence of sci- ence and the industrialization of society. During this period the groundwork was laid for the modern natural and social sciences. The elaboration of the sciences resulted not only in the organization of vast bodies of verified knowledge but in the working out of a new attitude toward the facts of life and a new method of dealing with them, to be known hence- forth as the scientific attitude and the scientific method. Though the sciences began with the ob- servation, classification, and interpretation of facts through processes of induction and verification, they presently carried the application of these principles into the field of practical enterprises for the ameliora- tion and improvement of the conditions of human living. By far the most dynamic of these sciences in its influence upon the intellectual patterns of the mod- ern world was that of. biology. This science raised the question as to the origin of species and the processes involved in their continuation and devel- opment. It was from biology that the doctrine of evolution emerged as a hypothesis to account for the origin and development of life. Geology came to the aid of biology in offering its evidence of the changes that have taken place in the structure of the earth and in yielding up its faithful record of the history of organic changes in its fossil remains. 24 THE CURRICULUM AS RECAPITULATION 25 Once the doctrine of evolution had established it- self in the area of organic life, it was not long until its implications began to appear in cosmic relations. The universe itself was conceived in terms of de- velopment, and Herbert Spencer went so far as to venture a formula of cosmic evolution. Closely connected with these broader implica- tions of the theory of evolution was a new interest in man himself—his origin, his distribution over the earth’s surface, his ideas, his institutions, his cul- ture, his achievements. This interest gave rise to the science of anthropology, with its various special- ized branches. His historic career fell into rough categories of savagery, barbarism, civilization, and culture. Man’s interest and achievements were studied on these various culture levels. Moreover, his pattern ideas, his customs, and his social organ- ization assumed fairly characteristic forms on these levels. At the opposite extreme from cosmic evolution arose an interest in the development of the individual organism, particularly in its earlier stages of growth. This gave rise to the science of embryology. Thus the individual organism, as well as the cosmos and the race, was found to pass through a process of development whose stages could be accurately traced. It is not to be wondered at that three of these lines of thought—the development of the race, the development of its culture, and the development of the individual organism—should meet and fuse in the educational theory of the period. The resem- blance between the prehuman development of the race and the development of the human embryo was striking and suggestive. The resemblance be- 26 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION tween the developing interests of the race and the developing interests of the individual person were no less suggestive. An easy solution seemed to be at hand for a difficult educational problem—the discovery of a key to the order of human growth and to the materials appropriate for use in those stages that human growth passed through. The re- sult of the fusion of these dominant trends of cur- rent thought in education was the recapitulation theory. According to the recapitulation theory, “‘ontogeny repeats phylogeny.” That is to say, the individual person in the course of his own life-history passes through the successive stages, in abbreviated form, through which the race has passed before him dur- ing a long period of time. This rehearsal of racial ex- perience passes through two distinct stages. It was assumed that during his prenatal development the person passes through all the stages of organic evo- lution through which life had passed on its way from the lowest forms of living organisms to the human level. Similarly, it was assumed that subsequent to birth the person passes through, one after the other in ordered sequence, the stages of social evolution through which the human race had passed. These stages of human social development were designated “culture epochs.” From the recapitulary point of view, the child is born with an equipment of inner native tendencies. These are the result of the operation of the factor of heredity. Moreover, these characteristics are deter- mined at birth, so that human nature consists of given qualities. It follows that they are unchange- able. In this assumption, the will neither of the in- dividual nor of society has any appreciable modifying THE CURRICULUM AS RECAPITULATION 27 effect upon human nature. Its characteristics and its future are predetermined. As the inner tendencies of human nature are de- termined by heredity, so also is the order of the ap- pearance, the functioning, and the waning of these tendencies. At all stages of growth these qualities are either active or potential. Not all of them func- tion at any given stage of development. Now some lie slumbering within the depths of the potential self. Now some are in the full action of their ma- turity. Now some are waning or have completely atrophied. Their proper functioning depends not only upon their being stimulated but upon their being stimulated at the proper time; therefore, the utmost importance of discovering the time of the normal appearance of each of these tendencies and of applying the proper stimuli at precisely the proper time. On the negative side the repression of these natu- ral tendencies that have been implanted within hu- man nature by age-old tendencies of the race must result in the formation of complexes and _ perver- sions that will disarrange the mind, interfere with the natural order of development, and erupt in later years in undesirable, sometimes even criminal, forms of behavior. In this respect the theory of recapitula- tion, though on entirely different grounds, had some- thing in common with the Freudian psychology. According to this view, therefore, it was of the great- est importance, in order to avoid complications, that these impulses, welling up out of profound racial depths, should not be obstructed in their free flow but that at their predetermined time they should find their normal expression. The recapitulation theory offered a fertile soil for 28 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION the recrudescence of the ancient Greek theory of catharsis. Not all the tendencies that the racial urge has crowded into human nature are desirable in modern life. Some of them are selfish, deceitful, cruel, beastly. The doctrine of the negative result of the curbing of these tendencies would prevent their being safely repressed. The only method of elimination of undesirable tendencies that remained was through catharsis. Since the emergence of the more elemental tendencies is likely to be transitory, it was assumed that the best method of dealing with them was not through inhibition, but by allowing them to find expression in the earlier years, so that they would have run their course and become atro- phied by the time maturity was reached. It was assumed that their more unsocial and repulsive ex- pression might be effectively modified by redirec- tion. It was also assumed that the same desirable result might be obtained by having them indulged only in the imagination. In this way it was pro- posed that human nature should be purged of its grosser elements that were left-overs from its animal ancestry, through controlled expression. Thus human nature and human character were matters of development through the emergence and receding of natural, hereditary tendencies. Of this fact of growth education must take full account and shape its procedure accordingly. In this proce- dure the right development depends not only upon stimulation and expression but equally upon the use of the right stimuli. Tendency and stimulus must exactly correspond to each other. It was, in consequence, of the utmost importance that the educator know of a certainty the predetermined order in which that development takes place and THE CURRICULUM AS RECAPITULATION 29 also that he know the right sort of materials to use for each interest at the time of its proper function- ing. To the holder of the recapitulation view, recapit- ulation seemed to offer the key to the order of growth. Would one know when to expect the emer- gence of any given capacity or interest? Let him search the history of the development of the race. At the point where a given interest emerged in racial history, that was the point at which it would certainly emerge in the history of the developing individual. Would he know when an interest would cease functioning? Let him search the history of the race for the disappearance of that interest. In this way the educator would be able to chart the development of the individual, to provide for the appearance and decline of each tendency, and to formulate in advance a policy of procedure. So also did it seem to offer a key to the selection of the nature of the materials to be used in educa- tion and the time of their presentation. Man at the various levels of culture has engaged in certain ac- tivities and has achieved certain results in the form of ideas, customs, and institutions. These activities, ideas, and customs are the storehouse to which the educator must go for the materials suitable for the education of youth. When a child is passing through the savage stage, the proper materials to present to him are the activities and ideas of savages. When he reaches the barbaric stage, let him be occupied with the pursuits and ideas of the race at its level of barbaric culture. When he reaches the time of civilization and becomes interested in laws and the reflective problems of life, let him be occupied with the codes, the philosophies, and the institutions of 30 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION civilized man. In the final stage of culture, let him be introduced to the deeper insights and appreci- ations of life, the good and the beautiful, the reality of things, the meaning and worth of life, its higher expression in literature and art, its ethics, and its religion. | For a considerable period the conception of the curriculum as recapitulation had a great vogue, es- pecially in Germany and America. Aside from a few lonely voices, there no longer remain many ad- vocates of the view. But while the vogue lasted, it had a decided effect upon the curriculum as far as its influence extended. Its appeal to those who en- thusiastically adhered to this view is easily. accounted for by the fascinating parallelism between cosmic, racial, cultural, and personal development. The points of resemblance appeared to be so clear that they carried conviction. It must also be remem- bered that modern experimental psychology was only in its beginnings. History is not wanting in plentiful instances where the mind in other fields of thought has leaped from striking analogies to con- clusions—sometimes to dogmas, in science as well as in religion. An evaluation of the conception of the curriculum as recapitulation must list a number of gains to its credit. Among them must be listed a partial shifting of the focus of attention from materials to the child. It is true that this shift was far from being complete. The attention was primarily upon the life-history of the race, but always as it related itself to the child. At any rate, education was emancipating it- self from the age-old and persistent conception that education must be thought of in terms of a body of THE CURRICULUM AS RECAPITULATION 31 knowledge with its deadening traditionalism, to be passed on from one generation to another. Perhaps its greatest constructive contribution con- sisted in the fact that it placed its primary emphasis upon growth in the individual. It even arrived at a charting of the stages of growth. It is true that these stages were extremely faulty and that they can no longer be defended. But it was something that the idea of growth should have been established and that any sort of charting should have been at- tempted. The conception of growth has become central in the modern conception of education, and the charting of growth by means of objective record and experimentation is one of the major tasks with which educational psychology is confronted at the present time. Among the constructive contributions of this con- ception must be listed the fact that it placed great emphasis upon the grading of the materials of edu- cation. The Herbartians had moved to the position of grading upon the basis of apperception. But here the basis is shifted to the fact of a growing person, growing from within through the maturing of the capacities of original nature. No longer is the mind thought of as being “formed” from without; it carries its patterns within its own native equipment. Such growth as there is is growth from within. The decay of the conception of the curriculum as recapitulation in modern educational thinking was due to its own inherent defects. The most funda- mental of these was the fact that it rested upon a faulty psychology. It is true that there is a most striking and fascinating parallelism between the bi- ological development of the human organism and the development of organic life. But that there is 32 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION any causal relation between the two series of phe- nomena modern biologists refuse to affirm. That is to say, the fundamental doctrine of the concep- tion rests upon a mere assumption which is unsup- ported by scientific facts. Once, of course, doubt was cast upon this basic assumption, the entire framework of the theory crumbled. In addition to this insecure assumption, the con- ception of the curriculum as recapitulation heavily weighted the hereditary factor to the practical ex- clusion of all other factors. Modern psychology does not minimize the factor of heredity, as is evidenced by the great importance that is attached to the original nature of man as the basic element in all education. But it comes far short of making it the exclusive factor. Modern education looks upon heredity as affording the raw material of human nature upon which education works, but it assumes that original nature is only the starting point in education, the function of which is to produce de- sirable changes through the wise use of the environ- mental factor and the factor of inner control. A direct outgrowth of this adherence to heredity was the binding of the present irrevocably to the past. It is always the past of the race that is finding expression in the present generation. The practical effect of this view was not significantly different from the influence of knowledge in this respect. Knowledge bound the present to the social inheri- tance; recapitulation bound it to the biological in- heritance. This was not only true as regards human nature itself. It was also true as regards the ma- terials that were used in the curriculum. These ma- terials were always limited to the past experience of the race. The forward look was wholly wanting. THE CURRICULUM AS RECAPITULATION = 33 So also was any creative attitude toward life. A human nature hopelessly weighted down by a heredi- tary past was also hopelessly weighted down by what men in the past felt and did, irrespective of its value for the present. Manifestly such a past-laden type of curriculum could not advance the interests of a race that has begun to think in terms of the future and the as-yet-unrealized values toward which it is moving. Such a view of human nature assumes that it is always right and therefore to be followed without attempt at change. This view modern education cannot approve. It sees in human nature a group of unorganized capacities that may be good or bad, depending upon whether they are developed in one direction or another and whether they are inte- grated into a unified body of impulses, attitudes, and habits. Finally, education, under this conception, was shut up to a rigid, given, unchangeable human na- ture. There was no room for modification of 1m- pulses. Blind tendencies, rather than conscious, or- ganized, and changing values, became the centre of human endowment. With such an endowment, edu- cation had its task set for it as a following rather than an anticipating and directing enterprise. The future conduct of human beings could be predicted from the beginning. All that was left for education to do was to submit to the inevitable. It is evident from the foregoing survey of the his- toric conceptions of the curriculum that there is a definite movement away from the external and the traditional and the formal in the direction of the experience of the learner. The centre of the process has shifted from process to materials, from materials 34 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION to human nature. History has prepared the way for modern education to think of the curriculum in terms of the human person who, together with his social group, is seeking for a fuller, more meaningful, and more satisfying life. IV THE CURRICULUM AS ENRICHED AND CONTROLLED EXPERIENCE Tue view of the curriculum that is taking form in the current theory and practice of education is that of the curriculum as enriched and controlled experi- ence. In this view, the centre of education has shifted completely from the learning process and subject- matter to persons. Moreover, attention seizes upon a particular aspect of personal life—upon that of personality in the process of realizing itself. Modern education sees personality, not as a given or com- pleted thing, but at all times as a potential self—a process, a growth, a becoming. It sees personality as the dynamic and organizing centre of a continuum of experience that is constantly undergoing recon- struction as it moves forward with increasing clear- ness and richness of meaning and certainty of con- trol toward the progressive realization of a set of organized values. For this reason it sees self-realiza- tion taking place in and through a meaningful, in- tegrated, and controlled experience. Furthermore, it sees these self-realizing persons, not in isolation, but in association with other selves in a society that is also moving forward with increasing self-conscious- ness toward the progressive realization of socially determined values. It follows that, since persons realize themselves in and through meaningful, integrated, and controlled 35 86 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION experience, the approach to the assistance of per- sons in the attainment of an effective and satisfying individual life must be through the continuous re- construction of individual and social experience. Such redirection of experience will assume, on the whole, two aspects: enrichment, on the one hand, and self-conscious and self-directive control, on the other. Enrichment will be accomplished by assist- ing the growing person to give meaning to his ex- perience and range and depth to its content, and by causing it to contribute to the realization of his chosen ends. Control will be accomplished by as- sisting the growing person clearly to define his ob- jectives, to organize his values, and to bring his experience under the influence of an organized and dominant purpose. The concepts of persons, ex- perience, enrichment, adjustment, and control are of such fundamental importance to the present dis- cussion that they must be considered later in greater detail. It will suffice in this connection to state the general point of view in each instance. From this point of view, the curriculum has its beginning, its continuance, and its end in a forward- moving and worthful experience. Its content is determined by the content of experience. Its or- ganization is determined by the way in which expe- rience moves forward toward the objectives of self- realizing persons. That is to say, the curriculum 7s expervence under intelligent and purposive control. As in the case of each of the historic theories of the curriculum, the concept of the curriculum as enriched and controlled experience has its own in- tellectual and social backgrounds. Out of that back- ground emerge two fundamental ideas. On the in- tellectual side, the dominating philosophical concept THE CURRICULUM AS EXPERIENCE 37 is that of self-realization. On the social side, the dominating concept is that of democracy, the only form of social organization thus far developed within which a self-realizing life is possible for the many. These two concepts appear to be interdependent and inseparable and, together, constitute the signa- ture of the modern world. They are the central concepts around which our intellectual life and our social programmes are being organized. The movement of modern social thinking toward democracy is the result, in part, of profound changes in economic function and structure. The most thor- oughgoing of these was the industrialization of so- ciety through the introduction of the machine into the productive process in the eighteenth century. Though for a time the machinizing of industry has resulted in the domination of the machine over the human factor in production, it is having the effect of bringing the masses from whose ranks labor has been recruited into self-consciousness and into a position of fundamental importance in the social economy. Gradually, rights and privileges have been wrested from a powerful aristocracy on the ground of the indispensable place which labor has come to occupy in modern social life. Gradually, these rights and opportunities have been extended from the privilege of franchise to more human conditions under which labor does its work, such as shorter hours, living wages, sanitary working conditions, the protection of the worker against dangerous machin- ery, and, increasingly, the participation of the worker in the management of the business. Increasingly, leisure and the opportunities for culture are being universalized. The right of the common man to have desires and to realize them is gradually becoming 88 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION more and more recognized. The conviction that his destiny and the destiny of society itself are inter- dependent, if not one, is gaining ground in social theory and is making itself felt in practical political and industrial programmes. In this way it would seem that industry carries within its own bosom factors that in time will humanize both its ends and its processes and ultimately subordinate machines and products and processes to persons. It is not yet by any means wholly clear what is involved in the concept of democracy. As a form of social organization it is still in the experimental stage. Certain details of the idea, however, are be- coming quite well defined. It has already become clear that, essentially, democracy is not so much a form of the political state or even of industrial or- ganization as it is a mode of social living. As such it involves not only such ideas as equality of rights and opportunity for each member of society to make the most of his life within the limits of his capacities, but a sharing of the relations, functions, responsibilities, and destiny of a common human life. It is clear, then, that democracy has to do with self-realizing persons as they live out their lives in a shared social situation. Whatever the details that ultimately may be involved in a philosophy of de- mocracy, the placement of fundamental emphasis must rest upon persons as such—upon human values as over against all other values whatsoever. And that aspect of persons upon which it must focus its attention in the criticism of existing processes and in the creation of new processes is precisely that upon which education focuses its attention—upon the ends and means by which persons realize them- THE CURRICULUM AS EXPERIENCE 39 selves. The ultimate criterion by which every in- stitution and process, be it industrial, political, so- cial, or religious, must be judged is its effect upon the self-realization of persons. Consequently, the philosophy that will furnish the intellectual support of democracy as a form of associated living will be a philosophy that will start from a centre of persons and purposes rather than mechanisms and will think its way through all peripheral problems in the light of these values. And since democracy is a shared experience, it is not enough that individual persons achieve the en- richment and control of their experiences in isola- tion from their fellows. They must acquire the ability to give meaning and depth to common social experience and to bring it under the direction of a shared purpose. Only so can there be social self- consciousness and self-direction. Only so can an adequate secial medium be achieved within which, and within which alone, individual personality can be achieved. For even the individual self does not appear from the beginning as a set up and self- sufficient entity adjusting itself to other equally completed selves. The self is quite as much a social as an individual product. The I-thou consciousness arises out of the process of adjustment of selves that are in process of becoming to other selves that are also in the process of becoming, just as the I-it consciousness arises out of the adjustment of the growing person to things. Moreover, these social backgrounds have their intellectual accompaniments. As has already been pointed out, simultaneously with the emergence of the social concept of democracy and inseparable from it there appeared in philosophy the idea of 40 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION free self-realization as the highest goal of individual and social living. In addition to this fundamental philosophical concept there are several aspects of this intellectual background. Undoubtedly foremost among these is modern science. Science has not only taken an objective attitude toward the facts of experience but has sought by its technic of investigation to establish correlations between one fact in experience and an- other or between one group of facts and another. When it appears that one fact follows another with some degree of regularity, science formulates a hy- pothesis, which is only a guess that some correlation exists between them. When, through repeated anal- ysis and experiment, science succeeds in removing all irrelevant factors and finds that one fact or group of facts is followed invariably by another fact or group of facts, it formulates a generalization, or “law,” by which it becomes possible to control the second fact by modifying the first. The methods of science are observation, analysis, and experimenta- tion. In its crowning method, experimentation, re- sults are first evaluated. The attention is then fo- cused upon the process by which the results have been obtained. The process is then reconstructed in order to secure the desired results. In this way attention shunts from end to process and from proc- ess to end until, through the supplying and with- drawing of factors, the desired ends are secured. By the use of the methods of observation, analysis, and experimentation, with faithful records of findings, all the great sciences of the modern world have been built up. At the beginning science limited its re- search to discovering the “‘laws”’ that govern man’s physical environment. More recently it has ven- THE CURRICULUM AS EXPERIENCE 41 tured into the realms of man’s mental life and his social relations only to discover that the same uni- formity that obtains in the relation of physical phenomena also obtains in psychical and _ social phenomena, except that the factors in the latter cases are so complex and variable that their relation is much more difficult to discover and control. The spirit and the method of science chiefly determine the major patterns of the modern intellectual world. A second intellectual accompaniment of democ- racy has been the introduction of knowledge and intelligent control into the commonplace activities of human life. Under the aristocratic forms of social organization, thinking and activity were dissociated. Thought was elaborated in an isolated realm of ab- stract ideas, while the practical activities of life went on blindly as menial necessities. Thought be- came identified with leisure, while the practical processes called forth only unintelligent physical activity. Among no people was this tendency more pronounced than among the ancient Greeks. With them thinking was confined not only to the free one-tenth of the total population but to those only who engaged in no occupation which involved “prac- tical’’ activities. From the élite class even the artists were excluded because they handled the materials of their art with their hands. Intellectual activity found its expression in a philosophy which moved in a realm of abstract ideas. In pre-revolutionary China one of the badges of the scholar was the long finger-nails, a token of physical inactivity and of devotion to intellectual pursuits. A striking instance of this tendency in modern times was to be found in imperialistic Germany, where there not only existed a wide gulf between the élite and the masses, but 42 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION where a characteristic idealistic philosophy was elaborated apart from the concrete problems and situations of practical social and political life. It is not so in democracy. The needs and satisfactions of the common man have lifted physical activity from the level of menial service to be rendered to social superiors to the level of mutual service in the interest of a more effective and satisfying life for the many. The first outstanding service of science to humanity was the introduction of intelligence into the processes that support life. Increasingly has the movement of scientific thought been from the technical laboratory out into the practical activi- ties that minister to the well-bemg of human social life. In this way the food supply of the race has been increased through the introduction of intelli- gence into agriculture, the death-rate has been con- tinuously reduced through the introduction of in- telligence into the understanding of the causes of disease and the conditions that make for health, and the burdens of life that before were borne upon the bent bodies of human slaves have been shifted to tireless machines through the practical appliances of modern life. So absolutely transforming have been these ideals that one who now fails to contribute his share to the comfort and well-being of his fellows is looked upon as a social parasite. In this way the experience of the common man has come to have significance, both because it has been immersed in intelligence and because through it indispensable service is rendered to society in a shared life. Meantime there has emerged a new approach to the discovery and the validation of truth. Pragma- tism may be popularly defined as a practical way of looking at truth. It sees truth emerging from the THE CURRICULUM AS EXPERIENCE 48 warm and moving current of experience. It judges the truthfulness of ideas and convictions by the manner in which they fit into experience and, in particular, by the effect they have upon experience. If ideas do not square with experience, and especially if they do not effect any changes in experience, grave doubts attach to their validity. It is characteristic of the pragmatic attitude toward truth that it sees in truth a vital, growing, changing thing that changes as experience changes, so that even truth, waiting as it does upon an expanding and deepening experi- ence, is a becoming. Similarly, truth that no longer corresponds to reality as reality manifests itself in the living tissues of experience, ceases to be truth. From this point of view truth is a discovery. As such, all truth is essentially experimental. In its highest form it is an instrument for the control of experience. When, therefore, ideas and convictions cease to function in the furthering of experience, they fall into desuetude and decay. In this way the belief that the world is flat no longer fits into the facts of experience. Least of all does it further and sustain the changing needs of mankind in the enlarged and complex conditions of modern living. One is not surprised, therefore, that this conception of the earth has lost its grip upon the modern mind. In addition to clashing violently with other known facts of science, it is an utterly un- workable assumption in the conduct of such prac- tical activities as navigation, commerce, and com- munication. In a similar way ideas of God that emerged from the social and intellectual milieu of other and past situations, and that functioned ser- viceably in those situations, have had to be aban- doned because the rich and expanding experience of 44 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION the race has moved beyond them, and they have become desiccated, formal, and meaningless. Thus the limited conception of God as a tribal deity seems to have filled to its capacity the religious thinking of primitive peoples passing through the tribal stage of social organization. But when life moved to the higher levels of intergroup, interracial, and inter- national outlook and relations, the tribal con- ception of God appeared to be too small and inadequate, and was replaced by a more adequate disclosure of God as the only true and living God— the God not only of the whole world and of all men everywhere but of an outreaching universe whose limits modern science has not yet been able to dis- cover. It is not without its significance that prag- matism has had its rise and development thus far in those countries in which the experiment in de- mocracy has been going forward. Pragmatism takes account not only of experience but of the experi- ence of the common man. It sees truth working in and through human life as a whole. It is essen- tially a democratic philosophy and seems to require democratic conditions within which to make head- way. Simultaneously with the emergence of pragmatism in philosophy there has emerged a fresh point of view from which to approach the study of mental life. The most significant development in current psychology has been its tendency in the direction of an objective study of behavior and in the direc- tion of a functional view of the mind in its relation to behavior. The modern psychologist sees in the behavior of the organism an adjustment process by which the organism is either adapting the environ- ment to itself or adapting itself to the environment. THE CURRICULUM AS EXPERIENCE 45 From the functional point of view, the mind is the instrument through which that adjustment is in- telligently effected. Im this respect the mind is re- lated to the organism as are the other organs. Thus the hand has been developed as a prehensile organ by means of which it is possible for man to seize upon and manipulate objects in his environment. Similarly, the foot has been developed as an organ of locomotion, the eye of vision, and the ear of hearing. In the same way the mind has been devel- oped as a central directive instrument whereby the adaptive function of all the other organs is made more effective, because more intelligent, in the in- terest of the survival, the well-being, and the effec- tiveness of the organism. The earliest development of the behavioristic movement in psychology has been in the direction of a mechanistic view of the mind, which view has generally been assimilated to the term ‘“‘behavior- ist.”” According to this view, behavior is the result of a psychological mechanism whereby a stimulus sets off a response that runs through to a completed unit of behavior, somewhat after the fashion of a nickel-in-the-slot machine. Because behavior is secured by and through a mechanism, it is always possible, given a complete knowledge of the situa- tion, accurately to predict the response. From this viewpoint, consciousness may virtually be ignored as a determining factor in behavior and regarded at most as nothing more than an accompaniment of the response. From the same general point of view, the drive of behavior is to be found in the tendency of the response mechanism, once it is set off, to run through to the completion of the re- sponse. In complex and sustained behavior one 46 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION response sets off another, and so on until an in- tegrated response is completed. A more recent tendency, however, has been a movement in the direction of interpreting behavior in terms of purpose, consciousness, reflective thought, and deliberate choice. From this viewpoint, all be- havior is seen as fundamentally conative; that is, as moving toward ends through an act of impulse or will. On the lower levels of behavior, this outreach- ing toward ends is unconscious and blind, and there is little or no delay between the situation and the response. This type of response is characteristic of most animal behavior and of some of the lower forms of human behavior, as in the case of food and sex behavior or such complex processes as the mak- ing of combs for the storing of honey or the build- ing of specific types of nests by different species of wasps. On the higher levels of behavior there occurs a delay between the situation and the response which is filled with consciousness, reflective thought, the criticism of ends and means, evaluation, delib- erate choice, and the exercise of a determining will. As contrasted with mechanistic behaviorism, this view is decidedly a purposive behaviorism. But when psychology deals with ends that are consciously conceived, desired, criticised, organized, and striven for, it has invaded the realm of persons who are engaged in the process of realizing them- selves. Though personality appears as a continuum of experience that is moving toward the realization of values, the psychology of persons sees at the centre of experience an active, outreaching, growing self that is in the process of becoming. There is still another element of the greatest im- portance in the background of the conception of the THE CURRICULUM AS EXPERIENCE 47 curriculum as experience. It is the significant fact that, through deepening insights into the nature of experience and some ventures in managing it, man has come to assume a forward-looking attitude toward experience and a growing confidence in his ability to control it. Area after area of his material and social world he has brought in some measure under his purposive control. He has come to believe that his control can be greatly extended and that he can anticipate experience and, in a large measure, determine what it shall be. Man is coming to be- lieve that, in time, with a more adequate knowledge of himself he will be able to accomplish as much in the control of his own personal and social expe- rience as he has in the realm of the applied physical sciences, such as chemistry or physics, or in the realm of the applied biological sciences, such as agri- culture, animal husbandry, or horticulture. When he has mastered this technic, personality will be far more an achievement than it is now, when, with his lack of knowledge, it is largely the result of the fortuitous operation of factors largely external to himself. He begins to hope that when he shall have acquired something like an adequate understanding of the functions and processes of social living he will be able to effect as great results in the building of society as he has accomplished in the applied physical sciences. Then he may be able to erect a social order whose institutions and structures will furnish a medium wherein human life may go for- ward toward self-realization under conditions that will stimulate and free the best of man’s capacities. This amounts to a creative attitude on his part toward his world and toward himself. It is becom- ing increasingly clear, as we shall later see, that, 48 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION within the limits of his knowledge and capacity, the adaptive process is not primarily that of persons to environment, but of environment to persons in order to realize their desires. Only beyond the lim- its of his ability to control his world does man adapt himself to it. Under the impulse of these ideas man is no longer a merely passive observer of what is going on around and within him. In these processes he is coming to have a creative part. In one form or another the antecedents of the conception of the curriculum as experience are very old. In its oldest and simplest form it derives from primitive education. The education of primitive man consisted of two sets of activity. One was occu- pied with a few practical processes such as hut- building, food-getting, and the occupations of war- fare. The other consisted of the performance of certain activities of a religious nature that were de- signed to control the spirits that were believed to possess the objects of nature. There was no formal process of education, with schools, teachers, technic, or course of study. The control of these activities constituted the curriculum. The method consisted, for the most part, of an unconscious participation of the immature in the activities, functions, and re- lations of the group. Learning was reduced to the simplest forms of actual living under guidance. So completely was education merged with living that it was not thought of as a process at all. The conception of the curriculum in terms of ex- perience found conscious and rational expression among the Athenian Greeks of the earlier period. The objective of Greek education at its best was to create a many-sided person—physically, intellec- tually, essthetically, morally, and socially. Up to the seventh year the Greek boy received an in- THE CURRICULUM AS EXPERIENCE 49 formal education through participation in the ac- tivities and relations of the family. In the palestra, which he entered at seven, he acquired physical health, grace, and strength through participation with his fellows in the games. In the music school, so called because it introduced him to those activi- ties over which the muses presided—literature, his- tory, and the fine arts—he was thrown back upon his own self-activity and creativeness. Instead of re- quiring the learner to commit an ode to memory, the Greek teacher chanted an ode while he required the boy to improvise an accompaniment on the lyre. The greater part of his knowledge he acquired through listening to and participating in the con- versation of his elders in the agora. The primary educational institution among the Greeks was the small city state, in the determination of which every citizen took a creative and responsible part. The Greek’s most closely regulated military training was completed in the gymnasium and in camp and on campaigns. This will explain how, with the Greek, education was a continuous process that lasted through his entire life. The results of this type of education furnish one of the luminous plateaus in the history of man’s career. The Greeks developed a type of mind that was active, versatile, forward- looking, dynamic, creative. At no period in history has the human spirit flowered into more beautiful and significant forms of intellectual insight, esthetic attainment or civic creativeness. It was when the later Greek period destroyed the city state, through which this rich creative experience found expression, and acquired a course of formal study and a formal method that Greek education lost its creativeness and became a process. The realists of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- 50 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION turies contributed much to the conception of the curriculum as experience. In their reaction against the rigid and narrow formalism of later humanism. they insisted upon the value of the content of edu- cation. With Montaigne, however, there was a com- plete break with all literary forms of education. The social realists sought for the instrument of edu- cation in social experience. Social contacts, especially through travel under the direction of a tutor, were substituted for books. The sense realists as rep- resented by Francis Bacon and Comenius placed their emphasis upon experience, but upon experience in direct contact with nature, its objects and proc- esses. ‘There was always in the forefront of the thinking of these realists the idea of control, as is evidenced by Bacon’s Utopia of scientific achieve- ment as set forth in his New Atlantis. They, too, put aside literature as such as the substance of the curriculum. The books that they devised, such as the Orbis Pictus, were intended to introduce the learner to direct contacts with the world of nature. As the modern period is approached Rousseau, as the leading exponent of naturalism in the eighteenth century, gave the concept of the curriculum as ex- perience a powerful and lasting impetus. The natu- ralism expounded by Rousseau was a powerful reac- tion against the authoritative and repressive spirit of the eighteenth century, not only in the state and church and in society in general but also in educa- tion. In the state the few ruled and the many obeyed. In the church theological dogma and the ecclesiastical institution were imposed from above upon the submissive masses. In education the adult point of view and the information that adults considered important were imposed upon passive THE CURRICULUM AS EXPERIENCE 51 and receptive learners in a thoroughly disciplinary scheme of instruction. Against all this Rousseau revolted with all the energy of his passionate nature. His plea for a return to a natural state in politics was largely responsible for the French Revolution. His plea for a return to a natural education based upon the experience of the child was, in a large measure, the beginning of the modern reconstruc- tion of education. Rousseau insisted on the innate goodness of human nature unmodified by culture. With Rousseau whatever was natural was right. Formal education was a positive interference with nature. Consequently, the less formal education there was, the better. Before the age of twelve he would have the child know nothing of books and teachers. These early years were the time for the child to build a strong and healthy body through intimate and unafraid contact with nature and through play. To his mind two years were sufficient for the child to master all the imtellectual knowl- edge that the child would need. As was consistent with this view, Rousseau made much of the emo- tions, an element in traditional education that had been almost entirely omitted. With him, the best teacher in all fields, but especially in morals, was experience, working through natural consequences. In these ways Rousseau gave to education a new point of view and a new outlook. He not only placed the child at the centre of the educative proc- ess; he restated education in terms of experience. He may stand as the representative of that line of educational reformers from Pestalozzi down through Froebel and Montessori to Dewey, who would state education in terms of the activity of the child. Undoubtedly the outstanding exponent of the 52 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION theory of education in terms of the experience of the child in modern times is John Dewey. He has carried the implications of pragmatic philosophy and functional psychology over into the field of edu- cation. With him education is the conscious, pur- posive, and continuous reconstruction of experience. The function of intelligence through the use of the accumulated experience of the race 1s to put un- derstanding into experience and to bring it under purposive control. The school is a specialized insti- tution within which objectives that are socially as well as individually determined, may be set up and experiences selected and placed in an order of se- quence with reference to those objectives. The method of education is to immerse responsible thinking in the practical activities by which the common, shared life of society is supported. With him the school is a society in which children, living in conscious and intelligent social relations, carry forward enterprises that are typical of the funda- mental activities of the larger society of which the school is a part. Purposive, constructive experience that is full of problematical situations is the basis of the learning process. To this ongoing experience knowledge is related as source material to which the learner goes in order to find the data he needs for accurate and creative thinking in connection with those crucial points in experience. The new schools which he would substitute for old are schools in which the learning process is grounded in the actual experience of growing persons. It is around this conception that modern educa- tion is undergoing its present reconstruction. And it is in the curriculum that this reconstruction is finding its most fundamental expression. From this THE CURRICULUM AS EXPERIENCE 53 point of view, the curriculum is coming to be thought of as an enriched and controlled experience. It be- gins and ends in the experience of the learner. Knowledge arises out of experience as meaning and re-enters experience as an instrument of control. It places emphasis upon the worth of present expe- rience, though it sees in the significance of present experience the antecedent of future experience, as the present is the consequent of the past. Education is not, therefore, a thing that can be carried on apart from life. It is life bemg lived under the counsel and guidance of the mature members of society who are assisting the immature to make their adjustment to the material and social world in which they will live and thus to realize themselves. It consists in sharing the continuing purpose of the race and its experience in the great adventure of living with those who are to assume the responsi- bility for the further working out of its enterprises. While the conception of the curriculum as en- riched and controlled experience constitutes a radi- cal departure from the traditional views of educa- tion, in reality the fact that it is grounded in experi- ence makes it possible for it to conserve the valuable and permanent elements in the historic conceptions of the curriculum. As a matter of fact, the severest discipline is that which the purposive and persistent carrying forward of experience requires. It has been wrongly and hastily assumed by some that the subordination of knowledge to experience leads to a soft and flabby education. On the contrary, the discipline that is required when experience is being brought under purposive control is the most rigid and exacting discipline known to human nature. Moreover, it is vastly more effective in that it is $4 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS’ EDUCATION not imposed from without but springs up from within in the form of self-control in the presence of dis- tractions and obstructions. Similarly, knowledge acquires a much more pro- found importance when it becomes an instrument for the understanding and control of experience. It then becomes indispensable to the progress of human living. It becomes living and dynamic and creative. The historic experience of the race springs into liv- ing forms when it is perceived that in it the race is living through its problems and reaching out after satisfactory solutions and vantage points from which to face its own future. Knowledge as content is dead; knowledge as the record of striving, of think- ing, of points of view, of values that have at some time been the indispensable supports of persons who, like ourselves, have faced for the first time the great adventure of living, with all the risk and romance that such an adventure holds, is instinct with throb- bing life. So also as respects the concept of personal growth. Growth is the first necessity, of education, as it is its chief end. From the viewpoint of experience, growth is to be judged, not for what it is not, but for what it is becoming. As was pointed out at the beginning of the chapter, it is just this quality of growth, of becoming, that makes progressive self- realization possible. It is growth that makes a place for the continuous reconstruction of expe- rience. From the standpoint of education as instruc- tion, it is difficult for the educator to be patient with growth, for the reason that he of necessity judges it for what it is not. But from the standpoint of education as the reconstruction of experience, the educator finds his opportunity in growth, for the RRICULUM AS EXPERIENCE 55 reason that he sees it for what it is—a becoming which makes possible the continuous redirection of experience by the learner himself. The educator who sees growth as a process of becoming finds one of his chief problems to be to carry growth forward into adult life and thus to keep that life responsive to fresh situations so that learning may continue throughout life. Thus it would appear that in the growing expe- rience of living persons we have a mediating centre that is capable of gathering up into itself those per- manent values that education has developed through a partial emphasis placed upon less central and fundamental factors at the various stages of its historic career. Significant as these implications are for education of any sort whatsoever, they are especially urgent in moral and religious education for the reason that these have to do directly with conduct. The question is sharply raised whether it is possible to teach morality and religion apart from the actual situa- tions in which one is called upon to live his life morally and religiously. From the point of view of the present discussion the answer is an emphatic negative. If morality and religion are to be taught effectively, that is, so that they will function in the conscious and purposive direction of experience from within, they must be taught as an integral part of the responses that are made to day-by-day actual, concrete, and typical situations that life presents to the learner, with the relations, functions, and responsibilities that they involve. At the level of controlled experience moral and religious ideas and motives can be taught as effectively as any other ideas, attitudes, or motives. But the religious THE C 56 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION educator must not deceive himself in thinking that he has arrived until he has penetrated through all considerations that have to do with materials, meth- od, concepts, or organization to experience itself. V THE WORTH OF PRESENT EXPERIENCE Tue conception of the curriculum as enriched and controlled experience is based upon the worth of present experience for its own sake and not simply as a preparation for some future experience. ‘This, it must be admitted, is a very modern view of ex- perience, and one that has yet for the most part to win its way in the modern theory and practice of education. The point of view that dominated the Middle Ages was that the only life that was of real value was the life after death. This other-worldly view of life was the direct outgrowth of the powerful re- action of Christianity against the materialism and immorality of the Greco-Roman world of the first century. The affirmation of the spiritual values of life by Christianity under these historic conditions resulted in the practical negation of the present life as being a hindrance to the attainment of spiritual and ethical character. From this point of view the de- sires and satisfactions of normal life were considered evil and therefore to be denied. It was against these backgrounds of practical negation that the Augus- tinian doctrine of the total depravity of human na- ture emerged as the rationalization of a practical attitude toward life. Such a theology, of course, called for the complete reconstruction of man’s na- ture through the operation of spiritual forces en- 57 58 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION tirely external to him, working in cataclysmic fash- ion rather than through the normal processes of growth. It was out of this negative view of the worth of present life that asceticism, which gave its signa- ture to the Middle Ages, arose. The ascetic re- nounced the world and by self-denial and penance set about preparing himself for the only real life— the life to come. By the monastic vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience he severed, one after an- other, the ties that bound him to the social order of the present world—to the family, to the economic order, and to the political state. In the East the ascetic sought renunciation in solitude; in the West he sought it in the companionship of his brother monks in the monastery. By whichever method he — sought it, his exclusive affirmation of the worth of the life to come led him to a complete renunciation of the life that now is. The Renaissance and the Reformation profoundly modified this view. The Renaissance in the south of Europe was a profound reaction from the author- ity, the repression, and the meagre life of the Mid- dle Ages. It was, at heart, a rediscovery of the meaning and worth of the present world. Out of this new attitude there were developed two funda- mental interests, as has already been suggested—an interest in nature and an interest in human life. These are the root ideas of the modern world with its increasing sense of the worth of present life. Out of the interest in nature emerged in time modern science; out of the interest in human life emerged literature, the social sciences, and all those activities that centre in the life of man. The enthusiasm of the men of the Renaissance for the classics is to be THE WORTH OF PRESENT EXPERIENCE — 59 explained, not by their interest in the classics as such, but by their interest in the rich and satisfy- ing life which they found reflected in the classics and in the light which these were capable, on that account, of throwing upon the meaning of their own new-found life. Never has the joyful appreciation of the worth of present life found more abundant and varied expression than among the many-sided men of the Renaissance in the court life of the Italian cities—Florence, Milan, Naples, Venice—of the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries. The total effect of the Renaissance was to shift attention from the life after death to the life that now is with its own satisfying experience. This radical shift of focus was largely due to the fact that the spirit of the Renaissance in the south of Europe was dominantly secular. While the Reformation in the north of Europe exerted its influence in the same general direction, being a part of the same movement, its specific re- sults were somewhat different. ‘The Reformation was strongly religious, social, and reformatory. Its strong religious interest focused attention upon sal- vation, which then, much more than now, was con- ceived in terms of life after death. However, with all its emphasis upon the saved life in terms of the world to come, the Reformation carried with it a profound interest in the present life. It emphasized the necessity of universal and free education for the masses in order to prepare them for effective living in the present world, including a strong emphasis upon economic efficiency, as well as in order to enable them to read the Scriptures so that they might learn the way of salvation. In this way the Reformation set the present life in eternity. In this 60 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION way the Reformation offered a somewhat mediating view between the exclusive negation of the present life by the Middle Ages and the all but exclusive affirmation of it by the Renaissance. The total effect of the Renaissance and the Ref- ormation was to place a supreme value upon adult life. For adult life childhood was a preparation, as adult life was, in large measure, a preparation for the life after death. It was, consequently, judged for what it was not, rather than for what it was be- coming. Childhood had no standing in its own right as being of significance or worth. This is the view that dominated Europe and America for centuries. It is the view that still dominates educational prac- tice. Before the days of Pestalozzi little children were dressed precisely like their elders and were supposed to have the same attitudes and experiences, the only difference being quantitative. The sole significance of growth lay in the fact that it was a movement away from an undesirable immaturity in the direction of a maturity that was alone worth while. Even now we are just beginning to perceive that childhood is qualitatively as well as quantita- tively different from adulthood and that its char- acteristic experiences are of intrinsic worth on their own account. It was from backgrounds such as these that there emerged the conception of education as preparation. In keeping with these more fundamental movements of thought, the emphasis was placed exclusively upon the worth of some future experience. The sense of values migrated, under this influence, from con- crete, actual present experience and found its lo- calization in a vague, elusive, far-off future ex- perience. Education was conceived, not in terms of THE WORTH OF PRESENT EXPERIENCE 61 actual living, but in terms of preparation to live in some future time. The negative results of this view upon education were many and grave. ‘The first and most serious re- sult was to withdraw education from the warm and meaningful current of present life and reduce it to an isolated and formal process of instruction. Going to school was equivalent to going apart from real life for a time in order to prepare really to live at some future time. The school became a highly specialized institution with its own content, organ- ization, teachers, and technic, whose patterns were determined by the authoritative interest of adults rather than by the ongoing and worthful experience of the child. In this way the bond of interrelation between education and the rest of life was dis- solved. No sooner had education become separated from actual, present, ongoing experience than it lost its intrinsic motivation. Experience, for the most part, is dynamic and active—an outreaching after the at- tainment of ends that are felt to be of worth to the person having the experience. The sense of worth in objects arises out of the ability of those objects to bring satisfaction to persons. It is this sense of worth that gives rise to desire in persons. Rather, worth and desire are only different aspects of the . same process of outreaching that unites persons and the ends that they seek. It is this fusion of worth in ends, on the one hand, and desires in persons, on the other hand, that furnishes the basis of interest. Active experience is, in consequence, motivated by interest that binds persons to objects. A child at play, let us say at building bridges or digging tun- nels in a sand pile, offers a complete exhibition of 62 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION the identification of the person with the end in view. The child at interested play becomes so com- pletely absorbed in the attainment of ends that are immediately before him, namely, completing the tunnel or the bridge, that persons or objects about him fail to attract his attention. He even loses his sense of the passing of time and is only with the most insistent persuasion induced to leave his un- finished task at mealtime or bedtime. The enthu- siast in any field of professional activity, let us say the artist who is painting or composing or the re- search expert who thinks that he has found a clue to the solution of his problem, may become so com- pletely absorbed in his work as to become oblivious to what else is going on about him—to time or even to important personal engagements that for the time have been entirely shunted from the field of con- sciousness by the dominating interest. It follows, of course, that in order to grip the per- son and release energy for its attainment, an end must be sufficiently near and of a sufficiently prac- tical character to bridge the gap of time and effort necessary to its attainment. When ends are too re- mote or become too generalized or indefinite they lose their grip upon the person, and his attitude lapses from one of keenness and suspense to one of apathy. The invitation of a friend to visit him ““sometime”’ is too general and indefinite to evoke a clear purpose that is likely to make any material change in one’s plans. But if the invitation is to dine at a certain hour and place, or to spend an evening of a certain day or a week-end, the proposal receives immediate and definite attention. The pro- posal of a trip to Europe or the Orient that is pos- sible only in an indefinite future, or that is, for THE WORTH OF PRESENT EXPERIENCE _ 63 financial reasons, entirely out of the question, re- ceives only passive attention and is quickly and easily dismissed from the mind. But if the proposed journey abroad is entirely possible and is practicable within a relatively near future, it becomes a matter of deep concern, and activities are likely to be re- leased that will consummate the arrangements and arrange the details of itinerary, equipment, letters of credit, passports, and all other necessary pre- requisites. Any practical activity that helps to fill the round of the day exhibits this quality, according to which ends that are attainable within reasonable limits of time and energy lay hold upon one, and those that are so far removed as to appear extremely doubtful or hopeless, or that involve too great effort, are abandoned or pursued by a definite putting forth of wearying and unwilling effort. The span between persons and ends differs greatly with the degree of maturity. Children are unable to bridge any considerable gap of delay; adults by prevision can greatly lengthen the span. This is true of all our practical, every-day activities. In the same way that happens which is psychologically inevi- table when learning is lifted out of its natural setting in experience—the disappearance of a warm, moti- vating interest. As a result, motivation for the un- welcome and boresome task has to be sought in external incentives. In this situation resort has always been had to reward, punishment, or rivalry. As in all such situations, the practice has been ra- tionalized by resort to a doctrine of “effort,” accord- ing to which it has been made to appear that a large part of the virtue of education consists in forcing one’s self to persist in the doing of distaste- ful tasks in spite of all ennuz. Learning that was 64 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION attended with interest has been frowned upon as “soft”? and unworthy of serious education. Closely related to the loss of vital interest was the loss of effective retention of such knowledge as was imparted to passive learners. As soon as knowl- edge is dissociated from concrete experience, learn- ing becomes a process of imparting fragments of knowledge. Instruction takes the form, so familiar in traditional education, of formal “assignments,” according to which the content of subject-matter is parceled out in bits and fitted into a schedule of ‘recitations,’ weeks, months, terms, and sessions. In this view the “‘assignment” takes the form of mastering a certain number of pages or paragraphs for a given “‘recitation.”’ When experience is made the basis of learning, it itself determines the char- acter and the amount of knowledge that is required to further it, and also the time at which it should be available. But when it becomes a matter of impart- ing knowledge apart from experience, teaching be- comes a process of “‘dosings,”’ the size and frequency of the dose being determined by a time schedule— so much to be learned in this period of schedule time and so much in that. Moreover, between these fragments of information there is little or no con- necting tissue, and such as there is is more likely to be logical than genetic. As a result, the assimilative power of the mind is reduced to its lowest capacity. The retention of knowledge becomes a dead load upon the memory. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that information acquired apart from the living process is most uncertain in its grip upon the mind, whereas knowledge that is built into the very structure of experience and functions there, like a cell in a living organism, is not easily or quickly lost. THE WORTH OF PRESENT EXPERIENCE _ 65 Moreover, experience has a way of being partic- ular. When, therefore, education lifts away from immediate personal experience it begins at once to lose something of that individual quality that be- longs to persons. That is to say, there is no expe- rience as such, just as there is no honesty as such, apart from such particular situations as those in which the truth is told or full measure is given. Experience is always the experience of persons and, even then, of persons in particular situations. When, therefore, learning is dissociated from the concrete experience of the learner, it at once concerns itself with persons in general, which is the equivalent of saying with no persons in particular. In this way the rich, personal, varied experience of individuals is lost sight of and specific ends dissolve into the vaguest of generalities, with the inevitable consequence that they lose all grip upon the learner, as has just been suggested. Finally, it may be said that, on the findings of modern experimental psychology, the education that was supposed to prepare for some future life turned out, paradoxically enough, to be questionable prepa- ration for real life. That preparation for life is the best preparation that prepares the learner directly in line with his future activities and through those activities themselves; that is to say, through the direction and expansion of his present experience in continuity with the expected activities of the future. It is in recognition of this fact that technical and professional education is coming to insist upon ac- tual experience in the line of future activity under expert supervision. The physician and surgeon must have actual hospital experience and demonstrate their ability to handle actual typical cases before 66 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION they are certificated as practitioners. Increasingly, the law schools are using the case method with typ- ical court-room procedure. Few States will now grant certificates to prospective teachers unless they have had practice teaching under expert super- vision. A considerable part of the training of social workers consists of actual field service under super- vision. These movements in professional education have followed upon the breakdown of the doctrine of the transfer of training. And yet, strangely enough, moral and religious education have been tardy in the recognition of this necessity. Moral and religious educators have, on the whole, assumed that a knowl- edge of the facts of the Bible, or of ethical principles, would carry over into the conduct of life. This un- warranted assumption must now be abandoned, and, instead, actual experience in living morally and re- ligiously must be given under the intelligent super- vision of moral and religious persons. As against this inherited view of the relative worth of present and future experience, the modern edu- cator is coming to look upon all of life as a continu- ous process. As an integral part of that process each and every moment has meaning and worth in and of itself. To be sure, each increment of experience takes on a depth and range of meaning and worth otherwise impossible when it is perceived that it is the outgrowth of the past and that the future, in turn, will be the outgrowth of the present. The act by which a child makes a public and decisive com- mitment of his life to the ideals and purposes of Christ, and thereby unequivocally identifies himself with the movement of the kingdom of God, will be found, upon tracing its antecedents, to emerge out of a background of growing Christian attitudes and THE WORTH OF PRESENT EXPERIENCE 67 purposes that have been in process of formation in a Christian home or religious school, or both, or in association with persons who possessed Christian attitudes. On the other hand, that single overt act will have the most far-reaching results upon the future experience of the child by determining his decision in details of conduct and in shaping his whole range of values and attitudes in his relation to his material and social world. But when every allowance has been made for the weighting of the present by its connection with the past and the future, it still remains that, when life is viewed as a process, the most significant moment is the present moment, with its own freightage of meaning and worth. The present is the forward-moving point that binds the past and the future into one continuous and expanding movement. Life is life whenever it is lived, and each moment of it has its own underived value for that and for no other reason. Life and the present are one. There is no other segment of the process in which it can be lived. These are the insights into the nature of expe- rience that have led to the discovery of the child in the modern world. From this viewpoint, growth is to be valued, not according to what it is not but according to what it is becoming. Growth is a posi- tive, not a negative, quality. In a changing, dy- namic world it even turns out that growth is an in- valuable characteristic of life at any stage. The danger of adult life lies precisely in this, that it shall lose its capacity for adaptation and readjust- ment in an infinitely complex and changing world. The loss of this capacity is the beginning of the end and marks a sharp descent to a cold and level plateau of unintelligent and fixed habit. One of the major 68 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION problems of education is how to create the conditions of continuous growth so as to carry it forward into the conduct of adult life; that is, to carry forward the attitude of the child into adult life rather than bring the attitude of adult life forward into child- hood. It was this insight that seems to have led the Great Teacher to advance the view, as one of the fundamental requirements of the order that He came to establish, that unless the adult should be- come as the child he could not hope to enter the Kingdom of God. This is also the reason why the programmes of social improvement have come to locate their centre in child life. In the thinking of the modern world the growing child has come to have standing in his own right, and not by any retroactive quality of adulthood that projects its worth back over the barren foothills of its approaches. From the viewpoint of present worthful expe- rience, education becomes what Professor Dewey has significantly called the “‘reconstruction of expe- rience.” According to this concept as distinguished from the unfolding of latent inner powers, on the one hand, or the formation of the mind from with- out through instruction, on the other, experience is continuously moving forward toward the realization of ends. Through the perception of meaning in ex- perience whereby the connection between one bit of experience and another is perceived it becomes possible to reorganize experience in such a way that it leads directly to the attainment of ends that are consciously held before the mind, evaluated, and striven for. That is, experience becomes telic, and telic experience is experience under control. Telic experience, because it is selective, is constantly un- dergoing qualitative change. Those aspects of it THE WORTH OF PRESENT EXPERIENCE _ 69 are selected and stressed that further it in the direc- tion of the goal; those are neglected or rejected that lead away from the goal or hinder movement toward the goal. The thinking through and adoption of policies in order to meet practical situations, the prescription of the physician in the light of certain symptoms for the restoring of health, or the accep- tance or rejection of certain ideals in order to attain a certain type of personal character—all these are instances of the qualitative reconstruction of expe- rience in order to the realization of selected ends. The affirmation of the worth of present expe- rience by no means implies that experience is to be accepted without criticism and evaluation. Certain types of experience are more valuable than others. One criterion by which they may be judged is the acceptance of certain standards of value. To the cultivated taste that has come to a thorough appre- ciation of the classical forms of music, jazz is worse than useless; it is destructive of the finer qualities of appreciation. A satisfying appreciation of the great forms of literature renders much of the ephem- eral periodical literature worthless or negative as a basis for one’s reading interests. To one who has formed certain attitudes of reverence, profanity be- comes repulsive or even an impossible form of ex- pression. This is the meaning and function of ideals. They are highly selective. Persons holding to certain bodies of ideals deliberately avoid certain types of experience that are not in keeping with these ideals or that are destructive of them while at the same time they deliberately seek those types of experience that are in keeping with these ideals. More particularly is the criterion to be found in the ebjectives toward which the individual and society 70 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION are moving. Ends are extremely selective. Im- mediately an end is set up, those experiences are selected that further experience in the direction of that end, and those experiences that deter from it are rejected. The learner who is seeking to perfect himself in the technic of music, be it on the violin or the piano, deliberately sets apart a large section of each day for practice on his chosen instrument. It is even possible that the pursuit of this pur- pose may run straight across other impulses that call for other types of experience—the reading of a book, participation in social functions, seeking amusement or recreation, or perhaps lying in bed. But when impulses and desires conflict in this man- ner, there can be but one outcome—the dominant purpose that is determined by the chosen end must have the right of way. The function of education is to produce desirable changes. The function of education, therefore, is continuously to reconstruct present experience. Present experience furnishes not only the starting point in the reconstructive process but the materials upon which reconstruction may work. As must be apparent, the conception of the worth of present experience on its own account does not in the least preclude the value of present experience as a preparation for future experience. The error of the inherited view has been one of over-emphasis upon the future. It would be as fundamental an error to over-emphasize the present at the expense of either the past or the future. In human life, as in all vital processes, the present is the nexus between the past and the future. On the one hand, the present is the present of the past. On the other hand, the present will become the past of the future. The THE WORTH OF PRESENT EXPERIENCE 71 past, present, and future are not separate elements, except in thought. They are nothing more than different aspects of the same undifferentiated process of the forward movement of life. The present can be the present of no other past; neither can it be the past of any other future. It follows, therefore, that the present derives much of its value from the future, to which it leads through the concatenation of antecedent and consequent. The detailed con- sideration of the significance of this continuum be- tween the past, present, and future must be de- ferred until a later chapter. It is sufficient at this point to guard ourselves against the costly error of the past which may arise through placing such an exclusive emphasis upon either the past, the present, or the future as to isolate them from the continuing whole of which each is an integral part, with a value all its own and yet a value that cannot be exclusively affirmed in total isolation from the whole. VI THE NATURE OF EXPERIENCE Wuen the curriculum is conceived in terms of en- riched and controlled experience, the primary con- cern that at once confronts the educator is an in- quiry into the nature of experience and the technic of its control. He must determine what is involved in personality. He must acquaint himself with the manner in which the experience which persons have arises; he must analyze it for its factors; he must ascertain how far it is a mechanism with predeter- mined outcomes or how far: conscious purpose can enter into its redirection, and how; he must take account of the immediate and permanent outcomes of experience. As was suggested in the opening paragraphs of Chapter IV, the approach to the understanding of personality is through seeing it as a continuum of experience—a succession from moment to moment of particular experiences that arrange themselves in a sequence in such a way that one experience leads directly to another in a genetic process. But personality is more than a bare continuum of experience. At the centre of this continuum is a self that gives organization and continuity to ex- perience. It reaches out toward its world in an effort to adapt the resources of that world to its needs. That is to say, its activity is directed toward ends that it seeks to realize. These needs are set by the needs and desires of the self, and are concerned 72 THE NATURE OF EXPERIENCE 73 with its survival or well-being. It is this telic nature of the self that gives experience its movement, direc- tion, and drive. Certain types of experience bring the self satisfaction while others bring it annoyance or pain. Those experiences are satisfying that lead toward and are consummated in the realization of desired ends. Those experiences are annoying that delay or frustrate experience in its movement toward desired ends. But what is even more significant, especially for education, this self is not an entity that is given or complete. It is at all times a becoming. As a result of this process of growth, personality is the outcome of a process of self-realization. As a consequence, personality is constantly undergoing change as it moves forward increasingly toward the realization of its objectives. To be sure, the self may quite as readily undergo disintegration and deterioration as it may advance, according to the quality and the organization of the ends or the precision and energy with which it moves toward them. It is even pos- sible for a self to become deranged or fall in pieces when its ends become disorganized or confused. It is in and through meaningful experience that persons realize themselves. The self is not expe- rience. It is that active, perceiving, and organizing something that has experiences. Without a self to which events are present and for which they have meaning there can be no experience. It is this self- realizing something that binds events together and gives them meaning and purpose. An event is not an experience until it has meaning and significance for a self Moreover, its meaning and significance are to be sought in the bearing, either immediate or remote, of the event upon the self-realization of a 74 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION person—its relation to values that give worth to a person’s existence. Experience may, therefore, be said to consist of that body of meanings that emerge from events as they appear in perception and that hover over the stream of activity, by which it is possible to perceive the connection of one event with another, particularly as antecedent and consequent, so that the consequences of an event may be dis- cerned, especially as they bear upon the welfare of the self. In this way experience is subordinated to self, and it is possible for the self-conscious and self- directing person to reconstruct his experience with reference to outcomes that to him are worthful. It is clear, therefore, that experience is the out- growth of the process of the adjustment of the self- realizing person to his world. In terms of adjust- ment, experience may be defined as the response of persons to their world, with meaning. In this adjustment process it is the self-realizing person who makes the response. By native inheri- tance the potential self is endowed with impulses that form the basis of its desires and that lead it to assume a preferential, evaluating set toward its world. This gives it an active and adaptive attitude toward its world. On the lower levels of activity these native impulses are blind and unconscious. They appear simply as predispositions to adaptive activity. On the higher levels they rise into con- sciousness, get themselves reflected upon and criti- cised, and are organized into a body of desires. That is to say, desire becomes conscious and rational and centred in an organized set of values. It is in and through the satisfaction of their desires, and particularly of their criticised and organized desires, that persons realize themselves. The highest level THE NATURE OF EXPERIENCE 75 of personal self-realization is reached when persons desire to have certain kinds of desire. By this proc- ess of higher self-criticism desires tend to become socialized, ethicized, and spiritualized. The world to which persons respond is both ma- terial and social. The material world consists of the objects, forces, and processes of nature. It involves such items as food, climate, soil, elevation, and natu- ral resources. This aspect of the adjustment process lies in the field of the natural sciences and of those practical activities that have to do with such needs as food, shelter, clothing, and with the manipulation of raw materials in the various stages of their fabri- cation. It constitutes a world of things. On the other hand, the social environment con- sists of other persons, of the social inheritance of custom, tradition, knowledge, and institutions, and of the innumerable traces that man has left upon material things. The person-to-be is born into a social medium. From the very beginning he finds himself in the presence of other persons. Moreover, these other persons are in the process of realizing themselves as he is. His own sense of self as dis- tinguished from other persons grows up out of the process by which he adjusts himself to other grow- ing selves. This relation of persons to other persons is largely mediated through their common use of their material world. Self is, therefore, a creation, . a product not only of the potential self reacting upon its material environment but of one self re- acting upon other selves. The social environment is much greater, however, than appears in the actual presence of otber persons. The results of persons having lived in the past in relation to their material environment and to each 76 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION other are preserved in what has come to be called the “‘social inheritance.”’ This consists of an accu- mulation of the thoughts, ideals, points of view, traditions, institutions, and customs that have been handed on to the present generation by generations that have lived and thought and labored since a forgotten past. As a matter of fact, this social in- heritance determines to a very large extent one’s material environment, because of its highly selective influence upon the surrounding world of things. It directs attention to certain aspects of that world while at the same time it diverts attention from other aspects. It gives to each mind that is born into it a certain “set”? which causes it to become vividly conscious of certain elements in its environment while at the same time it is wholly oblivious to others. The effect of this influence is seen, in large measure, in the food and dress habits of different peoples. It is especially evident in such matters as discoveries and inventions where the race through countless generations has lived in the physical pres- ence of such substances as radium or such forces as electricity without perceiving them or their signifi- cance until a certain volume of social experience had been accumulated that served to focus attention upon them. Thus it turns out that such a matter as a discovery or an invention which on the surface appears to be the result of individual insight and genius is, in reality, fundamentally a social process. Precisely the same thing is true of intellectual in- sight or of the formulation of social policies. A closer scrutiny discloses the fact that the outstand- ing thinker or creative statesman who seems at first glance to stand out in utter isolation from his fel- lows is, in reality, the outcropping into clear con- THE NATURE OF EXPERIENCE 77 sciousness of deep-lying and wide-extending strata of social thought, feeling, and purpose. Even when one scrutinizes his “material” envi- ronment it becomes extremely difficult to distinguish between that which is purely material and that which is human and social. The desk on which I write these lines is far from being a purely ma- terial “thing.” Its materials, having been felled by human hands from some distant forest and mined from the depths of the mountains, have been trans- ported by human intelligence and energy working through material forces. It has been fabricated by human hands skilled in their craft. Its appoint- ments of compartments are the result of many years of experience in meeting the needs of men of my profession. Similarly, my pen seems, on second thought, to contain less of the “thing” element than of the human. ‘The rubber of its barrel was gathered by persons of another race in a far distant continent. Its gold and iridium have been mined by others of my fellows in distant parts of my own or other continents. Its design gathers up into itself the race-long history of man’s invention of writing and of his search for an instrument to record his thought. So also with the telephone at my elbow. At first glance it seems to be an inanimate “thing.” But upon reflection I see over it the countless mem- bers of a race that through millenniums have been communicating their thoughts, feelings, and pur- poses to each other. Back of it is the long history of human speech. It gathers up into itself as a sym- bol the history of man’s methods of communication. It stands at the end of a long line of inventions that have given wings to thought. While I contemplate it, it may become alive at the summons of its bell. 78 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION That summons is the call of another person some- where in my outlying world. When I take down my receiver there is the voice of another person at the other end of the wire. As he speaks, the instrument pulsates with thought, friendship, baffling personal problem, joy, or the pathos of suffering, defeat, tragedy. From this secluded study with its friendly grate and shelves of books I may, through this in- strument, reach out at will across great distances and speak with my friends. Who will attempt to place his finger upon the sharp line that separates that which is “thing” from that which is “person” in that instrument? Would one journey by rail? Would he ride in his car in the open country along the white ribbons of road that stretch across the green fields? Would he voyage upon the sea? It is all the same. There now remains practically no spot where he can go without finding himself in the pres- ence of the transforming and humanizing touch of man upon his material environment. This is true because man and nature develop reciprocally. In a remote, forgotten past a crude and undeveloped race of primitive men faced an equally crude and undeveloped material world. In man were the capacities of growth—intelligence, de- sires, impulses to action. Over against him in nature reposed the resources and the obstacles which man would use or overcome in his effort to satisfy his de- sires. The forests were there with their uncut, unfash- ioned timbers; the mountains contained their rich de- posits of minerals; the plains and valleys stretched before him with their fertile soil; watercourses and passes led away into the unknown. With the coming of man, the forests were felled and the timbers fash- ioned into dwellings or the keels of ships; the ores THE NATURE OF EXPERIENCE 79 were mined and fashioned into tools; the valleys were covered with grains and fruits; watercourses and passes became trails and highways; cities rose from the plains; custom was written into constitu- tions and laws; knowledge and achievement flowed into the moulds of culture; civilization was attained. As man developed, nature developed. Only it was at the initiative of man that the transformation of both himself and his material world took place. Moreover, it was in and through man’s reaction upon his material world, which, as the process of de- velopment went on, became more and more satu- rated with the human element, that man’s capaci- ties of thought, feeling, criticism, valuation, choice, and sustained purpose were evoked. At the present moment in man’s career intelligent, spiritual, devel- oped man faces a transformed world—a world that has yielded to his purpose and will, and yet a world that has inflicted upon him the marks of submis- sion, sometimes defeat, sometimes tragedy. Man is in part what he is at this stage of his career, be- cause he has had to adapt himself beyond certain limits of necessity to the stubborn, unyielding forces about him. Judging from what has come to pass thus far, one would be a venturesome soul who would attempt to predict what further qualities of the human, the ethical, the social, and the spiritual that may be resident in man’s capacities may yet be evoked by his dealing with a world that has at its centre personal and spiritual forces. Nor would it take a less courageous soul to predict what latent but undiscovered qualities In what we have called the “‘natural’’ world lie waiting to spring into action at his touch. In any case, this much is clear, that God has not yet finished His creation, for the proc- 80 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION ess is going on under our very eyes at every out- reach of the human spirit after the yielding sub- stances of “‘the enveloping whole.” As has been suggested, the initial aspect of the adjustment process arises out of the dynamic and con- trol activities of the person. It assumes the form of adapting the environment to the self in an effort to meet its needs and to satisfy its desires. But there are limits to the ability of persons to adapt their environment to themselves. It is at the point of the limit of control that experience takes on another aspect. Since the person can no longer adapt his world to himself, he must adapt himself to the re- quirements of his world. Thus, up to certain limits man can adapt his climate to his requirements by the use of warm shelter, fuel, and clothing. But even so, seventy-five per cent of the American people live between the isotherms of forty-five and sixty de- grees. So also an individual person may change to a certain extent the customs of society and its way of looking at things; beyond these limits he must conform or suffer the consequences that society ad- ministers to those who differ too widely from its approved modes of thought and action. For this reason experience assumes two aspects—the active and the passive, the controlling and the submissive. It may be said, therefore, that one’s world is the world of experience. That and that only is one’s world wherein these adjustments to things and per- sons, and what persons have thought, felt, and done, is going on. Its extent and meaning are determined wholly by the number and variety of one’s adjust- ments to that world. The expansion of one’s world can be measured by the increase in the number and variety of his adjustments. It is just this matter of THE NATURE OF EXPERIENCE 81 the number and range of the points of adjustment of the organism to its world that determines its position on an ascending scale of life as measured by its richness and meaning. The amoeba has the fewest possible contacts at which it makes an adjust- ment to its world. Its functions are limited to secur- ing nutrition, reproduction, and a minimum amount of locomotion. Its habitat is limited to an extremely circumscribed area, and the span of its life to a brief period of time. Its bony, nervous, muscular, digestive, and circulatory systems are almost wholly undifferentiated. Its meagre range of adjustment limits it to the lowest orders of life. As organic life advances, however, the number and range of con- tacts and points of adjustment with the surrounding world increases. The structure is differentiated into skeleton, musculature, nervous system, circulatory system, respiratory system, digestive system, and the various highly specialized organs. In man there is sensitivity to all sorts of stimuli and the capacity to make all sorts of responses. Man’s habitat is ex- tended to the entire planet, while his delicate instru- ments of science enable him to form contacts with such minute particles as the electron and to extend his intelligent relations into an infinite expanse of space. Through his records the past is made to live in the present and he has the power to project his purposes and projects into a future that has not yet been realized. It follows that, while the adjustments that are socially shared predominate, no two persons or groups live in precisely the same world. Thus a scientist and an artist, living in the same community and surrounded by the same material and social en- vironment, actually live in measurably different 82 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION worlds because they are adjusted to different com- binations of stimuli. The scientist may be inter- ested in the fauna or flora of the region and make a careful study of the origin, characteristics, and dis- tribution of various forms of organic life. Or he may be interested in the geological formations or mineral deposits of the region. The artist, on the other hand, responds to the configuration of the landscape, the masses of mountains rising in impres- sive grandeur, or the lovely expanse of sea sweep- ing away to the horizon. The world of each is his world of experience, and his experience rests back upon the combinations of stimuli to which he makes response. In less obvious but not less real ways, the world in which each person lives is his own par- ticular world arising out of the selectiveness of his sensitivity and response. As the activity arising out of the adjustment process by which persons relate themselves to their world, experience conforms to the situation-bond- response pattern. Under analysis experience breaks up into three primary factors. The first is what the psychologist calls the “situation.” By a situation the psychologist means a more or less definitely or- ganized set of stimuli that are capable of evoking a response from persons. Thus a situation may pre- sent only a single stimulus, as when light of a cer- tain intensity causes the opening or contraction of the pupil of the eye, or when the falling of an object creates a sound that attracts the attention of an otherwise engaged person. On the other hand, the situation may present a number of highly complex stimuli, as when one listens to an orchestra with its many instruments, or when one is confronted with a problem involving a moral decision or the deter- THE NATURE OF EXPERIENCE 83 mination of a question of practical policy. Similarly, the stimuli themselves may vary in character over a wide range. They may be purely physical, as in the case of food; they may be social, as when one responds to the presence of other persons, whether in the primary or the secondary social groups; they may consist of ideas, suggestions, customs, public opinion, or ideals. As not infrequently happens, a situation may present a combination of many or all of these varieties of stimuli. Thus, for example, the presence of food before a hungry person constitutes the core of a situation; but into that elemental situa- tion may be drawn a wide variety of accompanying elements such as the presence of other persons at table, the entire milieu of social custom regulating the etiquette of dining, and the presence of enjoy- able and stimulating conversation. But in whatever form these situations may present themselves, the adjustment process consists in meeting, one after another, the situations put forward by the material and the social environment. The second factor in experience is the response which the person makes to the situations he en- counters. Responses vary through a wide range of qualitative differences. A response may be merely motor, as when the hand is withdrawn from contact with a sharp object. It may be predominantly emo- tional, as in the case of a paroxysm of grief which a mother may have upon receiving news of the death of her son. It may be almost entirely intellectual, as when a scientist formulates a hypothesis that seems most satisfactorily to account for a series of phenomena. Or it may combine all these elements of motor reaction, emotion, and critical intelligence, as is the case, in rational and purposive conduct, 84 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION when there is sustained effort directed toward the attainment of ends that have been criticised ac- cording to a standard of organized values or in car- rying to completion a programme of social re- form. Purposive activity is the highest form of experience of which human nature is capable. Such activity centres in the will, is directed by intelli- gence, and is accompanied and warmed by emotion, particularly when it involves fundamental instincts or Is accompanied by a degree of delay, uncertainty, or effort. It follows, therefore, that responses may take place on three more or less definite levels. If the response is to a situation that is definite and recurrent and involves only a minor part of the organism, it will take place on the basis of a reflex, as in the case of the quick closing of the eye when irritated by a particle of dust or an insect. If the response is to a relatively definite situation that has been recurrent during the history of the race and the race’s ancestors, and involves the entire organ- ism, it will take place on the instinctive level, as in the case of food, sex, and defense activities. The patterns of reflexive and instinctive responses are determined before birth. Instinctive responses, as in the case of reflexive responses, are mechanical and for the most part unconscious, except that they are accompanied by emotion and reflection in some cases but are not determined by them. In fact, con- scious reflection tends to disarrange the response mechanism in these cases. If, on the other hand, the situation is complex, especially if it is novel and involves alternatives among which choice must be made, the response is made on the level of reflec- tive intelligence and sustained will. This is the highest type of response of which human nature is THE NATURE OF EXPERIENCE 85 capable. It is the matrix from which emerges the highest form of human experience, weighted as it is with critical judgment, intelligent choice, ideals, and evaluated purposes. It is the type of experience of which human nature alone is capable. This is not to affirm that reflexes and instincts do not form the pattern of a large part of human behavior, for they do. But distinctively human experience lifts away from the low-lying levels of mechanical behavior to the higher plateaus of intelligent and purposive be- havior. When discrimination, critical judgment, choice, and purpose enter into behavior, it is trans- formed into conduct. It becomes responsible. The third factor in experience is the bond that unites the situation and the response into one con- tinuous process which may be designated as a unit of behavior. The bond is that something that takes place within the nervous system that provides that when the situation is presented it will normally be followed by its appropriate response. In the mechan- istic responses, namely reflexes and instincts, the bond is so definite and fixed that, given the same conditions in the environment and the responding organism, the response will always be the same and is, therefore, predictable. This is not true in anything like the same degree when the bond con- sists of reflective choice. By their very nature, re- flexive and instinctive responses have to do with recurrent situations to which there is only one gen- eral outcome; by its nature the situation that evokes reflection and deliberate choice is extremely inde- finite and_is capable of more than one, and often of many outcomes. It is, on that account, impossible to predict with anything like certainty what the outcome of any given reflective response may be. 86 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION It is only after certain attitudes, habits, and con- trolling purposes have been built up that it is pos- sible to forecast within reasonable limits of confi- dence what course the conduct of a given person may take. Owing to the nature of the bonds that unite situa- tions and responses, namely the mechanistic and what we may call the purposive-reflective, each type yields vastly different educational possibilities. Be- cause the mechanistic bond is so definite and fixed, its educability is relatively limited. On the other hand, because the purposive-reflective bond is so indefinite and modifiable by many factors, its edu- eability is relatively very great. Education by means of the mechanistic bonds tends in the direc- tion of training; education by means of the modifica- tion of the purposive-reflective bond tends in the direction of conscious, reflective, and purposive re- direction of experience through the choice of alter- natives that are in keeping with the highest ideals of the race and the ongoing purposes of the Kingdom of God. Education through the mechanistic bonds lies chiefly in control by factors outside the learner, first in the determination of hereditary tendencies, and second in their manipulation through pleasur- able or painful consequences and the building up of permanent habits. Education through the purpo- sive-reflective bond lies chiefly m inner control whereby the learner, in co-operation with the mature members of the group, redirects his own experience in view of certain selected objectives. It is clear that while certain forms of education are best ac- complished through the mechanistic bonds, moral and religious education in particular must be accom- plished chiefly through the purposive-reflective bond. THE NATURE OF EXPERIENCE 87 In the light of the preceding paragraph it is scarcely necessary to add a word concerning the relative merits of the mechanistic and the purposive interpretation of behavior. Experience in any case has to do with behavior of one sort or another. It is sufficient, doubtless, to direct attention to the fact that a mechanistic conception by no means exhausts the meaning of experience or accounts for it. It is equally true that indiscriminate insistence upon the purposive character of experience over- accounts for it. An analysis of the bond that unites situation and response in experience discloses the fact that there are different types of bonds that unite situations and responses on the different levels of experience. The mechanistic bonds are an inheritance from man’s animal ancestry; the pur- posive bond appears to be an achievement of human nature, and makes possible the distinctively human elements in experience. It is with the latter bond that the future of the advancement of the race lies as it moves away from racial habits and precedents into the unexplored frontiers of experience and achievement. It operates in the realm of ideals, of motives, of organized values, of purposes. It is m this field that the remaking of human nature is pos- sible. It is to this point that religion, with its ob- jective in the radical and continuous reconstruction of human nature, addresses itself. Mechanism is hopeless as an instrument for such a creative under- taking as religion attempts. The objective of re- ligious education is the creation of a type of person whose behavior is brought under the control of Christian ideals and purposes. The only instru- ments that will serve at this level of creative expe- rience are choice and purpose. This is by no means 88 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION to be interpreted as suggesting that the inner ten- dencies which are basic in all education shall be undervalued or neglected; it does mean that they shall be subordinated to the higher and distinctively human factors of experience. It will be apparent from what has been said thus far that human experience is active, dynamic, con- trolling. As a matter of fact, all experience on what- ever level is predominantly that. It is an outreach- ing after ends whose ability to bring satisfaction is determined by the urgency of inner tendencies. All activity tends to gravitate toward the conative type. But in human experience, especially in human ex- perience of the higher sort, this is pre-eminently so. Experience is predominantly telic. That is to say, it moves, on the whole, in the realm of values. Psy- chologically, value is that worth which attaches to objects in the environment that are desired. They possess value because they have the capacity to give satisfaction to man’s original nature. Thus desire and value are merely different aspects of the same undifferentiated process of outreaching toward our world in an effort to possess it or to control it. Desire exists in persons; it is subjective. Value at- taches to objects; it is objective. It is the desire- value relation to our world that causes persons to put forth effort in an attempt to control it or to realize upon it. It is characteristic of experience that when satis- faction follows the response the bond between the situation and the response tends to be strengthened, whereas when the response is followed by annoy- ance the bond between the situation and the re- sponse tends to be destroyed. In the case of the instinctive bond, satisfaction comes when the ap- THE NATURE OF EXPERIENCE 89 propriate unit in the nervous system is “ready” to ‘“conduct”’ the impulse from the situation to the response, and when the “conducting” actually takes place. A response is annoying when the conduction unit is not “ready” but is forced to “conduct.” It is also annoying when the conduction unit is “ready” and begins to “‘conduct,’’ but is unable to complete the conducting. In the case of the purposive-reflec- tive bond, the response that brings satisfaction is the one that is in conformity with a certain organ- ized set of desires and values, and that furthers one in the direction of the attainment of those values. That response is painful that is out of keep- ing with approved desires or that obstructs the attainment of worthy ends. The highest reach of human nature is the capacity to organize desires and values into coherent systems, so that certain desires are subordinated to other desires. In this process certain desires are disapproved, so that it turns out that their realization brings the keenest regret to the one who indulges them. Similarly, cer- tain desires are set above all others, so that their attainment at whatever cost brings the highest satis- faction known to man, and that can only be ex- pressed by the terms “‘peace” and “‘joy.” Through the strengthening of the bond that unites situation and response, experience tends to fall into certain modes of activity. Habits are formed. A response becomes established so firmly that when- ever the situation appears the response is almost cer- tain to appear. Attitudes are built up. Ideals are formulated: Continuing purposes are organized. In this way experience exercises a selective influence upon situations. Once this preferential attitude has been set up, the person or group becomes insensible 909 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION to some situations while it becomes exceedingly sen- sitive to others. Thus a person who has come to re- gard intemperance as degrading and unworthy of his organized ideals and purposes becomes insensible to situations that would have the effect of bringing one to the condition of an inebriate. While this is especially true, in the first instance, of the instinc- tive bond, it is, in the second instance, no less true of the purposive bond. One cannot be forever re- deciding issues in situations that offer alternative courses of conduct. Once he has thought his prob- lem through and reached a decision that is approved by his ideals and purposes, it 1s better, in the inter- est of efficient and economical living, that the re- sponse be reduced to habit. Thus, if a boy decides that it is better to tell the truth under all circum- stances, it will be better if thereafter he expends his energy in discovering what the truth in a given situation is and proceeds to tell 1t without reopen- ing the fundamental problem of ethical duty. In this way conduct tends to fall into certain fairly well-marked grooves of habit that give it steadiness and that, in themselves, constitute certain modes of control. Only it should be added that in the higher forms of conduct it is imperative that habits should main- tain a certain degree of flexibility, so that they may be departed from at any moment when the judg- ment ceases to approve the course of action which they indicate as being no longer in fullest con- formity to reality or the highest ideals. Allowance must be made in education for this flexibility and growth of experience. In fact, this should be one of the objectives at which education aims—a capa- city for ready readjustment to the changing condi- 0 a THE NATURE OF EXPERIENCE 91 tions and demands of actual life. Whenever habits are allowed to become so completely rigid that they interfere with a ready readjustment of conduct to new facts in experience, they become a hindrance rather than a help in the building of a stable and dependable character. In these ways experience leaves a certain deposit that is permanent and cumulative. All experience in its first state is more or less a trial-and-error ap- proach to our world. Some ways of responding prove successful, while others are failures. As a re- sult of the trial-and-error approach we learn things through experience. This constitutes a body of ideas, of knowledge, of technic, that is handed down from one generation to another. Customs, which are nothing more than social habits, are built up and passed on to those who come after. Attitudes are assumed that are communicated to others and be- come control factors in the lives of individuals and groups. As a matter of fact, once these attitudes and customs are established, one who is born into them takes them over unconsciously but acts ac- cording to them none the less surely. Sets of values are set up and inherited also, as are certain points of view and certain ways of doing things. These, in their cumulative form, furnish the substance of civilization. Vil HOW EXPERIENCE IS ENRICHED AND CONTROLLED Ir is evident from an inquiry into the nature of ex- perience that experiences differ greatly in their rich- ness of meaning and content and in their educational possibilities. Some experiences are meagre and their possibilities are quickly exhausted; others are rich in content and are capable of sustaining a large range of intellectual, social, ethical, and spiritual values over long periods of time. Some experiences arise out of responses to situations that are rela- tively simple and fixed and that are capable of evoking only a single and simple response; others arise out of multiple situations that are rich in stimuli, any one of which is capable of evoking its own response, thus yielding multiple responses that involve choice among alternatives. Some experi- ences arise out of situations that are recurrent and therefore quickly fall into well-worn and smooth grooves of habit; others are novel and constantly changing and call for thought and open-mindedness toward one’s world. Some experiences are almost entirely confined to the present situation; others possess a quality of expansiveness that causes them to fray out into an infinite number of relations and implications which set other experiences going in manifold directions. Some experiences are almost wholly individual; others are rich in social relations and functions. The enrichment of experience is a concept that relates itself immediately to the self-realization of 92 ENRICHED AND CONTROLLED EXPERIENCE 93 persons. It is only when an experience, which in itself cannot exist apart from persons, is referred to persons that its richness or poverty appears. For this reason what is a rich experience for one person may be thin, disappointing, or repulsive for another. The same is true of the social experience of groups which are aggregations of like-minded persons with shared thoughts, desires, and purposes. Further- more, since it is in and through their experiences that persons realize themselves, those experiences further self-realization most that are, to particular persons and groups, rich in content. The enrichment of experience takes place in two primary directions. One is through the range and depth of meaning which an experience carries. Meaning, in turn, arises from two aspects of an ex- perience—its interrelatedness with other types of experience and its relation to its own past and future through antecedent and consequent. So funda- mental is this conception of the continuity of expe- rience that it must receive detailed discussion under the origin and function of knowledge in Chapter VIII, and under the principles of the continuity of experience in Chapter X. But for the purpose of making clear the concept of enrichment the most general statement of the principle is made in this connection. Meaning arises primarily out of the perception of antecedents and consequents in expe- riences. That is to say, a present experience means something because it is perceived to be the outcome of previous-experiences. In like manner a present experience means something because it will have consequences for the future; that is, it will lead to something else. It is this continuity of antecedent and consequent in experience that gives to expe- 94 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION rience movement, direction, momentum. And it is because of this movement and direction that it has immediate bearing upon the self-realization of per- sons. As a result of this movement and direction persons not only find themselves in new situations as experience moves forward, but they themselves are changed: they are not the same persons. It is just this insight into the nature of experience as a moving and changing thing that makes it possible, through perceiving its meaning, to redirect it by changing the ends toward which it moves. A second source for the enrichment of experience is its worth. The worth of any experience is deter- mined by the satisfaction which it brings to persons. Whether or not an experience is satisfying depends upon whether or not it results m the satisfaction of desires through the attainment of the ends toward which the yearning outreach of the person is ex- tended. That experience is satisfying which closes the gap between desire and the end toward which it reaches. That is, the attainment of the end is the satisfaction of desire. Ends, however, are intensely personal. What, therefore, is a satisfying experience to one may be uninteresting or even repulsive to another. The inebriate finds satisfaction in the stimulation that comes from drink. To the moral idealist such an experience, even when observed in another, is repulsive. To have such an experience would, for him, be disgusting and degrading in the extreme. His satisfaction comes from the gratifica- tion of higher desires through the realization of their corresponding ends. Thus, any given experience, let us say of listening to a noble bit of music, will have the widest possible ranges of worth to different persons: one will be utterly bored by it; another ENRICHED AND CONTROLLED EXPERIENCE 95 will see in it nothing worth spending time or money upon; still another will be thrilled by its harmonies and will feel that his whole being has been refined and inspired as by an intangible spiritual influence. Thus the worth of an experience to different persons swings through a wide arc from that which is neu- tral to that which is negative and destructive, on the one hand, and to that which is positive and cre- ative, on the other. The same thing is true with reference to social groups with their more or less organized sets of values. Thus a social programme that would satisfy a proletarian group would be utterly unacceptable to a capitalistic group, or con- versely, for the reasons that the ends which each desires to see accomplished are directly antagon- istic to the ends which the other desires to see re- alized. An enriched experience may be said, then, to be an experience that is meaningful and satisfy- ing. But what an experience “means” or “is worth” depends entirely upon the values held by a person or group of persons. At this point there emerges the second concept in this discussion. What is to be understood by the concept of control? Control may mean, on the one hand, the compul- sion, by the use of forces external to the person controlled, of one person or group of persons by another. It may assume the form of the coercion of one individual by another, of the individual by the institution or the social group, or of the masses by a powerful leader or minority. It assumes, in most instances, the control of the individual by the social group. In any case, the one who is under control is passive and obedient, while the one con- _ trolling is active and domineering. Always it con- 96 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION sists of the imposition of the will and purposes of one upon another. The instruments for the securing of external con- trol have been many and varied. In its crudest aspect control has assumed the form of physical force. It is in this way that the state enforces its sovereignty upon its unwilling members by force to the utter- most, ultimately through military power. Another direct method of control has been through laws and regulations. These external devices have, in the last resort, depended upon an appeal to force to secure obedience to them, though advanced peoples ac- quire a legal attitude which renders an appeal to force less frequent. Physical force, however, is by no means the most effective instrument of external social control. Beyond certain limits force becomes self-limiting. Even more powerful instruments of control may be found among psychological influences. Among these are the various forms of social pressure of a non-preinstituted character which are made effective through various forms of approval or dis- approval. Onc of the most effective forms of social control is prejudice, created by the withholding of facts, or the casting of the mind’s action into the grooves of class, racial, partisan, or religious pre- suppositions. These prejudices form a kind of smooth rim around the mind from which thought rebounds inwardly upon itself. As a result, persons, without suspecting it, are slavishly bound to their group and to its ways of looking at things. No less effective is the obedience and conformity secured by the forming of rigid and unintelligent habits by the mature members of the group in the young dur- ing the period of their helpless immaturity, when they have neither the capacity nor the experience ENRICHED AND CONTROLLED EXPERIENCE 97 necessary to make an intelligent choice of the per- manent habits that are to dominate their later de- velopment, thus preventing a free and continuous personal growth. Not infrequently has education itself been used to coerce the minds of the young through selected information, mental bias, or fixed prejudices. Because of its very effectiveness in de- termining the minds of the young, education lends itself in an unusual manner to purposes of propa- ganda in the hands of powerful and interested lead- ers. Among all the instruments of external control none has historically proven more effective, and at the same time more destructive, than fear. At the opposite extreme from external control is guidance. Guidance works from within. In it the initiative is shared by both the teacher and the learner. Both are active. (Guidance is secured through understanding, through the sharing of ex- periences and purposes, and through friendly coun- sel. The objective of guidance is not to weight, least of all to overbear, the judgment and will of the learner. The function of mature guidance is to help the immature to understand the situation in which he finds himself, to break it up into its constituent factors without overlooking important elements, to help him feel and understand the problems involved, to stimulate the suggestion of possible outcomes, to assist him in discovering relevant sources of in- formation, to assist him in arriving at a choice after he has thought its consequences through, and to encourage him to overcome obstacles and to per- sist until he has seen his decision through. That is to say, guidance is co-operative control. In it there is a meeting of minds and purposes. In it there is the desire on the part of the learner to understand 98 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION sympathetically and appreciatively the inherited points of view and processes of the mature members of society, and an equal desire on the part of the mature members ot the group that these inherited points of view and processes should be freshly eriti- cised and modified to meet the requirements of the oncoming generation. In this way racial experience is steadied and given continuity and at the same time room is made for continuous reconstruction and improvement. : It thus appears that the concept of self-realization through the enrichment of experience and the concept of social control are not irreconcilable. They are me- diated in and through guidance that passes on to the learner the ideals, possessions, and purposes of the group, that socializes him, and that at the same time assists him in securing a firmness and certainty in his control over his own experience. The continuity of the interests of society is guaranteed by the presence within society of individuals who have attained the highest degree of self-realization, but who are, at the same time, thoroughly socialized in their attitudes and motives. On the other hand, as was pointed out in the discussion concerning the nature of per- sonality, it is impossible to achieve a sense of self- hood, much less to arrive at the highest degree of self-realization, except within ‘a free social medium in which persons are reacting upon persons. We must, consequently, add to our two initial sources for the enrichment of experience, namely, meaning and worth, a third—the control of expe- rience in the form of guidance. From the viewpoint of a self-realizing person as well as of the social group, an experience that is not under control is capricious, unreliable, dangerous, unsatisfying. Leading no- ENRICHED AND CONTROLLED EXPERIENCE 99 where in particular, it is impossible that such an experience should further the person toward the realization of his purposes. An experience not under control is even much more likely to defeat his pur- poses than to further them. Great as is the necessity of evaluating experiences from any point of view, it is especially urgent from the viewpoint of the educator. He may well give a minimum of attention to those types of experience that are slender in their educational resourcefulness and select those types that, because they are rich in possibilities, lend themselves to enrichment and the higher forms of co-operative control. Especially will he seize upon those multiple situations that are capable of evoking multiple responses because, in addition to carrying a proportionately large freight- age of values, they provide the conditions that are necessary for reflective thinking, require that choices be made, and call for the exercise of a sustained and disciplined. will. We are prepared, from what has been said, to un- derstand why it is that, given these experiences with large possibilities, the factors that lead to the en- richment of experience are also the same factors that lead to its intelligent and purposive direction. The basic factor in the enrichment and control of experience is discrimination. As has already been suggested, the higher orders of experience arise from responses to multiple situations. And yet, no matter how varied and rich in stimuli a given situation may be, the effectiveness of the response will depend upon the mental approach of the person responding. The uncritical mind is likely to fall into one of three errors. It may see the situation as a confused mass without distinguishing among its separate elements, 100 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION with the result that the response is a generalized and confused response, as though the situation were simple. Or it may fail to distinguish between the relevant and irrelevant elements in the situation, in which case the response may be entirely beside the mark and futile. Or still further, it may seize upon the wrong element, with the result that the response gives a totally wrong outcome and leads the person astray. Thus, in translating a foreign language it is necessary that the learner break up the situation into its essential elements. If this is not done, the learner merely guesses at the meaning of the con- fused sentence. If he fails to distinguish the essen- tial forms of verb and noun endings that indicate mood and tense and person and case, his translation will be inaccurate and misleading. Precisely the same discrimination is required for accuracy in de- termining practical courses of action or in arriving at sound moral judgments. If the situation has been mentally fumbled through failure to break it up and seize upon the essential factor, the outcome in experience will not correspond to reality. The critical mind analyzes the situation by breaking it up into its constituent elements. It carefully scru- tinizes each factor in order to judge whether it is relevant or irrelevant and whether the relevant factor will lead to a right or a wrong outcome as judged by the end to be attained. Having reached a clear judgment on this point, the critical mind seizes upon the essential factor and proceeds im- mediately to seeing the issue through. This is pre- cisely the difference between the fuzzy-minded thinker and the person with a clear and dependable judgment. It is also, more than we have been wont to think, a fundamental quality of moral action. : ENRICHED AND CONTROLLED EXPERIENCE 101 The moral quality of actions goes back to this be- ginning point in conduct. It is not enough that one’s intentions be good. It is morally incumbent upon normal persons that they think morally by thinking clearly and accurately. The foundations for all effective action as well as for moral action are laid in a mental attitude of critical analysis of situa- tions and an accurate discrimination as to the rele- vancy of the factors involved. This is also the sound and necessary basis for precise scientific thinking, for all esthetic judgment and appreciation, for the discernment and fulfilment of all social relations, and for an effective religious experience. Discrimination with reference to the elements of situations and discrimination with reference to out- comes are inseparably united. What is relevant in the situation depends upon the direction of experi- ence toward certain outcomes. It is quite as essen- tial that the mind run forward from the situation to the analysis of the alternatives that it involves as that it should analyze the elements in the situation itself. In fact, it is the outcome that gives signifi- cance to the situation. All the preliminary acts of a man who has purposed to take a journey are deter- mined by the outcome of his journey, his destina- tion. The amount and character of his baggage will depend upon the length of his stay and whether or not his activities at the end of the journey will include business, professional, or social functions. The amount of money he will take from his bank and whether it will be in the form of currency, trav- eller’s checks, or letters of credit will depend upon the distance of the journey and whether it will carry him beyond the borders of his own country. His destination and the time at his disposal will de- 102 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION termine the selection of the mode of travel, whether by rail, steamship, automobile, or airplane. If he travels by rail, his destination will determine the train he will take and the car he will occupy. Simi- larly and no less specifically, the outcomes in char- acter will determine the minute criticism and selec- tion of a person’s recreational activities. If his dominant purpose is in the direction of the construc- tive refinement and spiritualization of life, he will select those forms of recreation that appeal to the more delicate and refined urges of his nature, he will select those stimuli that are more light and spiritual as distinguished from those that are heavy and gross, he will avoid those situations that place him under extreme forms of emotion, and he will search out those forms of activity that further the main drift of his continuous and organized ideals of gentle and constructive behavior. In this way the analysis of outcomes is an inseparable counterpart of the anal- ysis of the situation. The analysis of outcomes in- volves both the clear perception of what alternatives are possible and a critical evaluation of those out- comes in the light of the general drift of one’s pur- poses and his organized ideals. The second factor in the enrichment and control of experience is reflective thinking. Reflective think- ing can arise only in a situation that presents a problem. The problem arises when there is a break in the activity between the stimulus and the re- sponse. This break may be caused by delay, by the creation of uncertainty that arises when there are present two or more alternatives between which choice must be made or when there is frustration of one form or another. Thinking is evoked by the break that is occasioned by the presence of alterna- ENRICHED AND CONTROLLED EXPERIENCE 103 tives. In order to evoke thinking, the situation must be new, since choices that have been thought through tend to be reduced to habit. The steps involved in thinking have been best analyzed by Professor Dewey. First, there is aware- ness of the problem. The presence of the problem does not evoke thinking unless the person is more or less keenly aware of the problem. It is the break in activity that thrusts the problem up into con- sciousness. Free-flowing activity is for the most part unconscious, being accompanied at best by a more or less vague sense of awareness of what is gomg on. But the break in ongoing activity forces the situa- ' tion up into clear awareness. The second step in the thinking process is a clear definition of the problem. This step consists largely of what we have been discussing under the head of analysis and dis- crimination. It involves the taking into account of all the factors involved, the clear perception of the precise location of the difficulty. The third step consists in the suggestion of possible solutions. These have to do with the possible outcomes of the situation. They arise directly out of the fertility of the mind. The fourth step consists in the elabora- tion of the suggested solutions. The mind quickly runs through each of these in the light of the facts it possesses and passes upon the availability of each in solving the problem. Some of the possible solu- tions that have been suggested are immediately can- celled because they hold out little promise of offering a way out. The most likely one is selected and elab- orated in the mind by a process of running through its implications to a successful issue. The final step consists in the actual trying out in the situation of the most promising suggestion. If the solution has been 104 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION satisfactory, the problem is at an end and activity resumes its uninterrupted flow. If the solution fails, the process of suggestion, elaboration, and trial is repeated until a solution is found or the situation is abandoned as insoluble. For example, a new owner of an automobile is driving on the highway in re- laxed satisfaction in the sensations of undulating motion. Without warning the car is without mo- tive power and presently comes to a stop. His ac- tivity has suffered interruption. His problem is clearly to locate the cause of the trouble and get forward on his way. It is manifest that the problem lies somewhere in the motive power. A number of possible solutions suggest themselves to him. He may be out of fuel; it might be that his ignition has failed him through an exhausted battery or a faulty connection; there might be an obstruction in his feed-pipe; there might be a stoppage in the car- buretor. In his mind he quickly elaborates each of these possible solutions in turn. It could scarcely be his fuel supply, since he started with a full load- ing; it is not probable that his ignition is at fault, since he had the system thoroughly gone over be- fore starting; the way out must lie in the carburetor or the feed-pipe. Since obstruction in the feed-pipe is more likely than a defect in a carburetor that has been giving uniformly dependable service, he decides that the trouble must be in the feed-pipe. Acting upon the suggestion, he finds that this is the diffi- culty. Upon clearing the feed-pipe the engine runs smoothly, and the autoist is on his way. The situa- tion is the more baffling to the inexperienced motor- ist because he does not know how to interpret cer- tain symptoms and because he is unfamiliar with the parts of his machine. The problem is very simple ENRICHED AND CONTROLLED EXPERIENCE 105 for the expert mechanic because he instantly dis- criminates between the relevant and the irrelevant and seizes upon the essential factor. The working of the mind in meeting a situation of the problematical sort in a mechanical situation is perfectly apparent; but this is precisely the same process through which the mind passes in resolving the most intricate and difficult problems of intellectual, social, and ethical behavior. It is clear that thinking enters experience from the beginning not only as a factor of enrichment but as a factor of control. The mechanisms of reflex and instinct are useless in these involved problematical situations upon which so many of the richer and more meaningful experiences rest. Thinking is for- ward-looking because its attention is focused upon outcomes. In this way it anticipates the future course of experience. It is controlling because it deliberately sets about rearranging factors for the specific purpose of bringing to pass certain desired ends. The educator needs to make a clear distinction between reflective thinking in this creative sense as a factor of control and thinking in the form of ra- tionalizing. Rationalizing is backward-looking. It is an attempt to account on rational grounds for be- havior otherwise determined. The motive for such behavior may be the instinctive urges of original nature or the inertia of habit or tradition. Ration- alizing unconsciously attempts to give a rational ground for action or belief. Thus the origin of such a doctrine as the divine right of kings is to be sought, not in an effort of the mind to arrive at a conclusion based upon concrete social facts and a critical judg- ment concerning them, but in an attempt on the 106 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION part of an aristocratic and authoritative social or- der to justify by a process which has a show of reason an assumption that was basic to such an order of society. One of the classical illustrations of this tendency of the mind is to be found in the scholasticism of the Middle Ages. Scholasticism had its origin in the challenge of the theological dogmas of the medizval church. Most of these dogmas were uncriticised and unverified assumptions. In the face of the attack upon them by William of Occam and his successors, the schoolmen resorted to deductive logic in order to support by a show of reason the accepted and traditional dogmas of the church. As a matter of fact, the reasoning of the scholastics proved nothing. It merely rationalized beliefs al- ready accepted as fundamental assumptions of medizval life. In like manner, persons in the every- day activities of life who on other grounds wish very much to pursue certain courses of action or satisfy certain desires find reasons for doing so that seem to them to justify the act. On this account, in the study of the history of human thought, one needs to examine carefully into the economic processes, the social structure, and the prejudices that lie be- neath the surface of life at any given period of its development. Very much of what is called philos- ophy, and also of what is called theology, is the re- sult, not of creative thinking, but of unconscious rationalizing. Many of the reasons assigned for practical activities are of the same origin. Rational- izing is of very little educational value, because it follows experience and adds little to its meaning. Reflective thinking is of the greatest importance in education, because it anticipates experience and gives it intelligent direction. ENRICHED AND CONTROLLED EXPERIENCE 107 A third factor in the enrichment and control of experience is valuation. All value, in the final anal- ysis, rests back upon man’s original nature, as was pointed out in Chapter VI. It rests in the capacity of certain ends to bring satisfaction. The reason why men toil to the limits of their strength at the cost of immense effort and sacrifice in building up a vast business enterprise is to be sought, not only in the gains that will accrue from the business, but, perhaps primarily, in the tendencies of man’s orig- inal nature to be restlessly active, to construct, to acquire. Similarly, man’s interest in art springs from the satisfaction that form, proportion, color, and tone yield to his native yearning for these quali- ties in the objects about him. But the higher forms of value, namely rational, criticised, organized values, arise out of the same general psychological situation that gives rise to thinkmg. Rational value arises in the interval of de- lay between the stimulus and the response when activity is broken. If it were not for this break, de- sire would continue to move on the lower level of blind, unconscious yearning. The break in activity not only raises the object sought into clear con- sciousness but renders desire conscious also. Thus, as long as the organs of the body are functioning smoothly and harmoniously, only in the remotest sense 1s one conscious of his health. But if a break- down of one of the organs or functions occurs, not only is the organ or function involved raised sharply into consciousness but health itself moves to the centre of consciousness and assumes proportions of primary importance. The psalms of lament and yearning over Jerusalem were not written by the ancient Hebrews in Jerusalem when its affairs ran 108 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION smoothly in the accustomed channels of social, eco- nomic, and religious activity and its streets re- sounded with the joyful tides of its life. They were written in a strange land, by the rivers of a conquer- ing people who had separated them from its familiar scenes by exile, broken down its walls, and destroyed the splendor of its temple. So also countless experi- ences of every-day life attest the fact that the funda- mental and commonplace goods without which life would be colorless, if not impossible, are little thought of, much less valued highly, until one’s re- lation to them is rendered uncertain or completely severed. Once the continuity of activity between the per- son and the end sought is broken, the gap tends to be filled with delay, uncertainty, or effort, or all of them combined. It is when health eludes one through a long illness, when its recovery becomes uncertain, when one has to submit to a dangerous operation, or when it is necessary for one to abandon a life- long business or profession in order to seek health in another climate, that one comes to value it most. It is a notorious fact that an education is not most highly appreciated by the sons and daughters of wealth and culture, for whom it is at all times within easy grasp, but by the sons and daughters of pov- erty, for whom education is an uncertain oppor- tunity made possible only by prolonged struggle and heroic sacrifice. It may be said that the sense of value that attaches to any end is in direct pro- portion to the delay, uncertainty, or effort that fills up the interval of delay between the person and the end sought. Only the delay must not be too pro- longed, the uncertainty too great, or the effort too excessive. In that event the end loses its grip upon ENRICHED AND CONTROLLED EXPERIENCE 109 the person and is abandoned as impossible of attain- ment. In that case the invalid abandons himself to despair because his malady is hopeless, or he resigns himself to a life of suffering because he has not the necessary means to employ the professional skill necessary to the curing of his disease. Likewise, crushing poverty or the care of dependents may blight the upreach of the underprivileged after an education. Even the mere factor of delay itself may cool the ardors of desire. Not only is the sense of value created in the situa- tions in which delays and alternatives are present, but, having been rendered conscious and having been brought into relation with competing desires and ends, values become subject to criticism. Through the process of comparative criticism, values are judged according to a scale of values according to which some values are given the place of highest positive worth while others are given a position at the negative end of the scale as being destructive of the highest interests of life. Between these posi- tive and negative extremes fall all manner of de- grees of positive or negative differences. In such a simple process as purchasing a watch this criticism of competing values is brought into play. A rather rough timepiece can be bought at a minimal cost. By the use of such a crude timepiece one’s engage- ments can be met and a general working schedule followed satisfactorily. But if a more reliable time- piece is desired one must buy a jeweled watch at a considerably increased cost. And if one seeks ex- treme accuracy, such as is necessary in following railroad schedules or keeping precise scientific rec- ords, he must be prepared to pay a very much greater price for a finely constructed and delicately 110 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION adjusted mechanism. If to accuracy of time one desires to add elegance, he must expect to pay the price of beautifully wrought precious metals. But somewhere on this ascending scale of values this particular scale of values comes into competition with other scales of desires and values. One must have a house to live in, food to eat, and clothing to wear. The interests of health, culture, and benev- olence must also be taken into account. On a lim- ited income one must balance accuracy and elegance in a timepiece with the other needs of life. He must, consequently, be content with reasonable accuracy and elegance in his timepiece in order that he may live in a respectable house, have sufficient and nour- ishing food to eat, and durable and pleasing clothing to wear, besides leaving room for the cultural and spiritual requirements of life. To exceed that point of balance would be to exercise bad judgment and taste and to sacrifice other .and perhaps higher values. A violation of the adjustment of all the values of life in the interest of any one value quickly becomes a moral problem. Precisely the same prin- ciple is involved in the balancing of spiritual desires. The problem of the moral and spiritual life is not so much the affirmation of some desires or the repu- diation of others as it is a matter of redirecting all desires by bringing them into relation with each other. The result of this process of criticism, when it is carried forward to its normal consummation, is the organization of a set of values through the subor- dination of certain values to certain other values and through the emergence of a dominant purpose in life. Once this set of organized desires is created, every new desire is brought into relation to it and evaluated accordingly. If it is negative, it is set ENRICHED AND CONTROLLED EXPERIENCE 111 aside as hindering the main drift of experience or as frustrating its purposes. If it is in keeping with the dominant desires, it is approved and built into the structure of values. The outcome of this process of the evaluation of desire is what Professor Coe has happily designated as “the desire to have desires”’ of an approved sort. That is, man’s attitude toward his desires becomes controlling and creative. Without doubt the control and creation of desire is the highest achievement of which human nature is capable. Taking into account the fact that man’s experience is on the whole active, dynamic, and out- reaching toward worthful ends, the motivation of experience is to be located in desire. Whatever man does in the field of controlling and creating his desires affects his total experience, and therefore modifies his total personality more fundamentally than any other effort of which he is capable. Here, if any- where, lies the possibility of the remaking of human nature. Here is the locus of that rebirth from above without which one cannot enter the Kingdom of God. This factor in the enrichment and control of ex- perience is of particular interest to the religious educator. It is in the world of values that religion centres. Each specialized activity, such as the in- tellectual, the ethical, the sesthetic, and the social, has its own set of values, and experience in each field of activity is measurable, in large part, by the degree in which it is conscious of these values and brings itself into conformity to them. But religion does not deal with specialized values. The trend of thinking in the psychology of religion is to discover religion in the fusion and idealization of all values whatsoever in what may be termed a total funda- mental meaning and worth of life at the religious 112 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION level. It would furthermore appear that at the point where experience rises to the level of evaluation, re- ligion has a fundamental function to render in the control of experience. If, on the one hand, all the departmentalized groups of values feed meaning and worth into religious experience, religion, on the other hand, feeds back into all of these specialized groups of values a something that no one of them can possibly possess—the bringing to bear upon a particular experience of the total meaning and worth of life. Thus, to select but one illustration, the patterns of religious concepts and practices are profoundly modified by the economic interest, ac- tivities, and processes of society. Religion draws into itself the richness and fullness of these economic values. But when, in turn, religion feeds its influ- ence back into the economic relations and functions it feeds back not only the economic values but the social, the ethical, the zsthetic, and the intellectual values; and, over and above all these in and of themselves, religion supplies that something that is not to be found in any one of them, or in all of them acting separately—that total meaning and worth of life that gives significance and sanction to each of these fields of experience and relates them in some manner to the destiny of the whole. From the view- point of departmentalized and isolated economic values, it may seem to the advantage of a manufac- turer to increase his dividends by paying the lowest wage that will secure labor in a highly competitive market, by economizing on the cost of operation by carrying on his work in a poorly lighted and un- sanitary building, by leaving dangerous machinery exposed, by speeding up the process by forcing men to work through a long-hour day, or by substituting ENRICHED AND CONTROLLED EXPERIENCE 113 the Jabor of women and children for that of men. And this is precisely what does happen in an indus- try conducted on an unsocial and unchristian basis. But when the same manufacturer brings his process under the influence of Christian ideals, a profound change is brought about in his point of view and motive. His relation to his factory is lifted out of its isolation and brought into relation with all his other values. It is socialized by his seeing in his employees human beings with wants and aspirations like his own, who cannot be subordinated to goods and profits, and by giving to his industry a new meaning as a means of serving the wants of society. It is made ethical by the clear perception of the rights of others and by a compelling sense of justice, even, perhaps, to the point of giving the workman a part in the management of the industry as a part of his right of self-determination. It is softened by his sense of the esthetic so that the plant, set in beautiful surroundings, is made architecturally satis- fying, and opportunities for improvement, cultural enjoyment, and recreation are provided. Over and above these influences of particular sets of values, the whole process is lifted into a new, broad, and spiritual setting that cannot be accounted for in terms of any one of them. The Christian industrial- ist feels himself responsible to his fellows in indus- try because he, with them, is responsible to God as the ground and centre of the whole of existence. This is why religion, having derived a part of its meaning from economic functions, cannot re-enter economic functions with only the same set of values. The relations and functions of the economic life are henceforth brought under the searching scrutiny of social attitudes which subordinate things to persons, 114 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION and of ethical attitudes that will not suffer injustice in the interest of either efficiency or dividends. And besides all this, there is the reference of all values and purposes to that fundamental wholeness of things, that ground of all being, which the Christian mind represents to itself in terms of a personal God who is Himself a Creator of values and a bringer of pur- poses to pass on a cosmic scale. No immediate nor particular nor departmental value can be lifted up into relation with the values and purposes that cen- tre in God without undergoing profound modification. Of this social function of religion, religious educa- tion, it must be confessed, has thought all too little. With the deeper insights into the nature of religion that are coming with modern psychology and so- ciology, there is emerging a conviction on the part of many careful thinkers that modern society re- quires for its soundness, its integration, and its mo- tivation that which only religion can give. These demands of the modern world lay upon religious education an urgent responsibility which it must recognize and accept to the full. The rational and psychological basis fer its approach to the problem of control in individual and social conduct will lie somewhere in the field of valuation in its relation to experience. A fourth factor in the enrichment and control of experience 1s knowledge. The beginning of control of any sort in any field of experience is understand- ing. One is helpless in the presence of disease until he understands its cause. The isolation of the cause is the first step in cure or prevention. It is for that reason that the medical profession is helpless as yet in the presence of such diseases as cancer, whose ravages are constantly on the increase. The elimi- ENRICHED AND CONTROLLED EXPERIENCE 115 nation of yellow fever is one of the most fascinating achievements of modern science. Its history is re- corded in the patient search for the cause and rapid progress in the control of the disease thereafter. Society is helpless in the presence of such a natural force as electricity until it comes to know its nature and the ways in which it behaves; after that, elec- tricity becomes one of its most obedient and useful servants. So also in the case of the great social problems such as poverty, crime, and insanity. The function of knowledge is to give understand- ing of experience by helping one to interpret it and know the factors that enter into it as well as to pre- dict its outcomes. Without knowledge one works blindly and helplessly. This is well illustrated in the futile efforts of primitive man to control his expe- rience. He knows next to nothing of the forces of the material world about him or of the manner in which they operate. He is forced, on that account, to rely upon coincidences and analogies that more often lead him astray than help him. He becomes a prey of superstitions. At most his procedure in dealing with his world rests upon vague and uncer- tain guesses. On the other hand, the progress of modern man lies in his knowledge of the world about him. Just in proportion to the precision of his knowl- edge has his control become certain and uniform and confident. It is so in the experience of each indi- vidual. Unenlightened experience is blind, uncer- tain, ineffective. It eventuates in nothing significant. It does not get far from the point at which it started. Experiences differ greatly in their ability to ab- sorb knowledge. The simpler forms of experience pass immediately from situation to response with- out the intervening steps of interpretation and con- 116 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION scious direction, as in the case of food activities or going to and from one’s place of business. Problem- atical situations, on the other hand, that demand thinking are absolutely dependent upon a wide range of dependable knowledge for their solution, as in choosing a life vocation or in deciding how to vote on an international issue. Knowledge is the material the mind works with in thinking. If the mind is lacking in abundant and reliable knowledge, the analysis of the situation into its essential ele- ments is impossible, suggestions as to alternatives do not arise out of its impoverished backgrounds, and outcomes cannot be effectively projected in the imagination. The more knowledge an experience is capable of carrying, the greater the contribution it is capable of making to the whole of experience and the more certain and easy is its control. The last factor in the enrichment and control of experience is a disciplined will. The presence of al- ternatives in outcomes shifts the responsibility for the determination of conduct from the mechanism of the situation and the automatic bond to the intelli- gent purpose of the responding person. The delayed response that is occasioned by the presence of com- peting outcomes and that furnishes the matrix from which thinking and values emerge is the same situa- tion that forces deliberate choice and is capable of giving rise to an organized purpose. Choice, in any case, involves the presence of stan- dards of value. In the higher forms of conduct these are represented by organized ideals that express not only the best impulses and judgments of the indi- vidual but the best judgment of the race. Ideals are the expression of one’s standards of value as applied to the various aspects of conduct. To affirm ENRICHED AND CONTROLLED EXPERIENCE 117 that a person has ideals is to say that he is in the habit of applying certain standards of conduct which he has taken over from others, or has worked out for himself, to his responses to the situations that life presents to him. Thus in deciding such a matter of personal conduct as to whether or not one shall engage in war there are involved not less than three factors. One finds himself caught up in a temporary movement of the social mind such as is involved in time of war that brings to bear upon him a tre- mendous social pressure. Everywhere about him his fellows are taking up arms, a propagandist press is inflaming the popular mind with stories of atrocities, and it is made to appear to him from sources that he respects that if he fails to throw himself whole- heartedly into war activities he is not patriotic. On the other hand, he finds himself consulting his own personal ideals as these have grown up into something like an organized and consistent view of one’s relations to his fellows and to the social order as based upon good will and co-operation and a conviction of the sacredness of human life. These lead him personally to revolt against the wholesale slaughter of his fellowmen. He furthermore finds himself holding up his problem in the light of the best that men have thought and felt in the long and ascending experience of the race with reference to the brotherly relations of men to each other. What- ever his decision may be, if he is acting intelligently and morally, he is criticising and comparing these three standards of value and bringing his final de- cision as to what his attitude shall be into conform- ity with a standard of conduct that he has made his own. In any case, it is this reaction of personal criticism upon the current temper of mind and upon 118 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION the traditional standards of conduct that yields the finer forms of personal morality. In the higher orders of experience, both paividnel and collective, the realization of purposes is fre- quently long delayed. The person or group must have the capacity to visualize the distant goal and hold it vividly before the imagination as a motivator to effective action. Life presents rigorous aspects to those who would attain its supreme goods. Ob- stacles, not infrequently of the most difficult and stubborn sort, have to be overcome. Against these baffling delays and obstacles the will must sustain itself. The graphs of elimination from the public school, for example, reveal with impressive eloquence the competition of many interests with the securing of an education on the part of the vast majority of American youth. Given a certain degree of mental ability, the completion of a programme of education, even through the high school; can only be accom- plished by steadfastly adherig to this purpose in the face of the temptation to drop out of school to earn money, to be swayed by the example of others, to yield to the highly commendable desire to con- tribute to the work of the world, or to give way to the boredom that inevitably follows the continued pursuit of a purpose through a long period of time and effort after the impetus that arises from nov- elty has disappeared. Even more exacting is the attainment of certain qualities of character that can only be brought about through the redirection of certain native tendencies that are stubbornly per- sistent or through the patient building up of per- manent attitudes that do not spring directly from the impulses of original nature. Such personal quali- ties as self-restraint, geniality, a quality of judg- ENRICHED AND CONTROLLED EXPERIENCE 119 ment in practical matters that is based upon fact and self-criticism are achievements that result from long-continued and purposeful effort. Personal char- acter in the highest sense is not the result of blind impulse; it is the creative product of sustained pur- pose and will. Education through experience demands a disci- pline of the most rigorous character. In fact, by the side of the older type of artificial “discipline” that rested upon the psychology of formal discipline, the self-discipline of education through experience is in- comparably more exacting. It is as exacting as the frustrations, delays, and distractions of life itself. But on the higher plateaus of experience, they who attain to the realm of the spiritual, which may be defined as experience interpreted in terms of the highest values of life, must endure as seeing Him who is invisible. It is out of the stuff of resolution and sustained effort in the face of the immediate, the irrelevant, and the diverting that all great per- sonalities have been made. Firmness and toughness of fibre can be given to character in no other way. This is not the discipline that is imposed from with- out; it is the discipline that comes from the welter of the daily task and the undaunted courage and unflagging effort of the years. Experience in driving a purpose through to its proper outcome in spite of all distractions and interruptions and in holding one’s self steadily to his unfinished undertaking—this is the best possible preparation for the demands that life will make upon the patience and the will. Virl THE ORIGIN AND FUNCTION OF KNOWLEDGE Since the curriculum in any case is concerned to such a large degree with knowledge, one of the most fundamental problems connected with the curric- ulum centres in the origin and function of knowledge. From what source and under what conditions does knowledge arise? By what method is knowledge validated? What place does knowledge have in the furthering of experience? What shall be the criteria for judging what knowledge is of most worth? These are inquiries that immediately confront the student of the curriculum as enriched and controlled expe- rience. Not only do these considerations profoundly affect the content and organization of the curriculum, but they uncover the intrinsic connections between subject-matter, method, and organization. Before inquiring, therefore, into what constitutes the cur- riculum, we must pause to inquire into the origin and function of knowledge. The significant movement of modern thinking on this problem, as was pointed out in Chapter IV, is toward the view that knowledge arises out of ex- perience as meaning. This is increasingly seen to be true when knowledge is viewed in its larger social and historical setting as an affair of the race; it is equally true when viewed in the more limited setting of individual experience. The cumulative insights, understandings, scientific formulas, and recorded achievements of the race that together constitute 120 ORIGIN AND FUNCTION OF KNOWLEDGE 121 the substance of civilization are those organized bodies of meaning that hover over the tortuous stream of historical experience. They are the more or less permanent records of what man has thought and felt about himself and his world as his thought and feeling have grown out of the process of his adjustment to his world. Similarly, knowledge for the individual is that more or less stable body of meaning that emerges from the milieu of experiences and that continues on after the experiences have passed. In either case, the roots of knowledge lie embedded deep in the fertile soil of experience. Meaning, as we have already had occasion to note in connection with the concept of enrichment and as we shall have occasion to consider in greater detail under the principle of continuity, consists, funda- mentally, in the perception of the interrelatedness of experience, especially in the form of antecedent and consequent. Thus the meaning of an experience, looking backward, is to be found in its relation as consequence to some prior experience. The present experience is what it is because a former experience was what it was. Similarly, when the forward look is taken, the meaning of the present experience is to be found in the effect which it will have upon the future course of experience. Because knowledge derives as meaning from ex- perience, and experience arises out of the adjust- ment process by which persons relate themselves to their world, knowledge is from the beginning essen- tially active. The fundamental character of the ad- justment process, as we have seen, is an outreach- ing after valued ends in an effort to use and control one’s environment... It follows that meaning, on the whole, has its origin in the use of objects, forces, 122 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION and persons. The identification as well as the nam- ing of objects originates in use. When the child learns and uses the names of the objeets about it, including, for example, its mother, it is that it may use these objects in satisfying its desires. “‘Mamma”’ means “‘I want my mother to take me up or fondle me or come to my assistance.” “Bottle” means “T am hungry and want my food.” “Bed” means “I am tired and want to be tucked in my bed.” In the same manner, on a racial scale, the naming of things by primitive man was in order that he might identify them to himself and to his fellows and bring them into his service. While patterns of this process of meaning are simple in the case of the little child who is taking his first lessons in the ad- venture of life, or of the race that is facing a strange world for the first time, they are precisely the same for both individuals and the race in the case of all new experiences. This origin of knowledge on why it is im- possible for any one to “tell”? another anything un- less there has been some common experience upon which meaning may rest. This is impressively ap- parent when one runs upon a totally unfamiliar word in conversation or on the printed page. It awakens absolutely no response. The unlettered says “‘’ That is Greek to me,” meaning that it belongs to another world and another race. And it will continue to be- long to another world until some basis of shared experience is discovered, even in a roundabout way. This search for a shared experience is precisely what the dictionary accomplishes for us. ‘“‘Gamboge” may awaken no meaning for the learner. In that case the learner brings to his aid the dictionary, which proceeds by defining the word in terms of expe- ORIGIN AND FUNCTION OF KNOWLEDGE 123 riences with which he is familiar. “‘Gamboge,”’ the dictionary tells him, “‘is a resinous substance of a canary yellow color, used for dyeing or medicinal purposes.” If the learner has had experience with resin and canary yellow and dyeing and medicine he has discovered the meaning of “‘gamboge’’; if he has not, he will search for the meaning of “‘resin”’ and “canary yellow” and “dyeing” and ‘“‘medicine” until the meaningless abstract symbol has been thrown down into concrete forms of his own ex- perience. This fundamental quality of knowledge is of the utmost importance to educators. One of the most misleading assumptions of education has been that it is possible to “tell” the learner what he does not know, being assured that if the learner can repeat back the formula, that is evidence that he has “learned”’ it. No greater illusion could exist. Only in the degree that there is an overlapping of expe- rience on the part of the teacher and the learner can there be communication. It may be said, therefore, that all learning, at least in its initial aspects, is for the most part by the trial-and-error method. This is manifestly true of the learning of primitive men and of the child. It is the knowledge that secures results that is selected; that which fails to secure results is abandoned as worthless. If “bottle”? does not get the hungry child food but reproving looks and gestures instead, it is omitted from his growing vocabulary and another substituted that does get results. The magical formulas of the savage maintain their standing in his thinking because they seem to secure results. If they prove unsuccessful they are abandoned and more effective ones are sought. It is precisely the 124 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION same in ordinary experience. “‘Experience,”’ we say, ‘“‘is the best teacher,’ because we feel more certain of the things that we have learned by the trial-and- error method. It is in science, however, that we have the utmost refinement of the trial-and-error method of learning. In that case the process is brought under conscious and rigid control. Conditions are arranged as far as possible so that all irrelevant factors are excluded. Single factors are introduced into the process or withdrawn, and a precise record made of the results. This process is carried on to almost endless lengths until a formula that works is discovered or the en- terprise is abandoned as hopeless. The course of scientific discovery is literally marked by the wreck- age of discarded hypotheses. The result of the suc- cessful trials is a generalization or a formula. In every case the generalization or formula is a brief symbolic description of causal relations. Thus a formula for making explosives, let us say TNT, is an accurate and dependable statement of the rela- tions into which certain chemical elements may be brought in order to produce a high explosive of cer- tain qualities. A formula in the field of biology, let us say the Mendelian law, is a record of the observation of the relation of certain factors of heredity to certain results in the transmission of characteristics. Knowledge may be said, therefore, to be not only active in its basic character, but experimental. It represents that restless attitude of man toward his world that seeks for understanding, and for an un- derstanding that has been tested out in experience and that will not fail him in the exigencies that life presents. ORIGIN AND FUNCTION OF KNOWLEDGE 125 But, if knowledge arises out of experience as meaning, it re-enters experience as an instrument of control. In the search for the factors in the control of experience in Chapter VII, it was found that the first step in the control of experience itself was an understanding of the nature of experience. The same thing is true in the control of one’s world. The first step is an accurate and clear understanding of the factors involved and their causal relations. But the active and experimental nature of knowledge does not let it rest with mere understanding. It quickly passes into the realm of conscious, purposive con- trol. The discussion of knowledge as meaning car- ried us to the beginnings of control. To be sure, the control attitude is, in the earlier forms of knowledge, unconscious. But in its higher forms it becomes definitely conscious and purposive. Every symbol in the form of words is in some measure an instrument of control, from the baby calling for his bottle to the command of the military strategist. But it is in the field of science that the attempt at control becomes more clearly purposive. Back of every scientific formula is the assumption that it can produce changes in the world that now exists. The objec- tive of the medical prescription is not simply the understanding of the causes of disease but the cure and prevention of disease. The formula for TNT is evolved in order that the characteristic qualities of that explosive may be utilized in the furthering of human desires. Out of the understanding of the Mendelian laws of inheritance emerges the eugenic proposal for the continuous improvement of the human stock. The science of “‘pure”’ sociology, which studies society for its structure and processes, passes over into “‘applied” sociology in its effort to organ- 126 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION ize society in the interest of a richer and more effective human life. Psychology, which starts with an inquiry into the nature and function of mind, ends by a conscious and intelligent effort at the creation of superior personalities and the direction of human experience. The scientific study of re- ligion issues in an attempt to organize religious ex- perience according to the ideals and purposes of the prophets and of Jesus and for the furthering of the enterprises of the Kingdom of God. That is, for- mulas are sought for the specific purpose of controlling our world, including ourselves, which, when achieved, marks the highest attainment of man. It is out of this belief of modern man in the pos- sibility of intelligent control that there has emerged in modern times the concept of progress. Increas- ingly the attention of the race is fixed upon the future. With increasing extensions of the areas of his control man has come to believe that it is pos- sible to secure a continuous improvement in the racial stock, better conditions of social living, an increase of human understanding and sympathy, and a more spiritual and ethical life. The sum of these achievements he calls progress, and progress is the dominant passion of the modern mind. Knowledge serves as a factor of control by placing at the disposal of each individual and of each gen- eration the experience of the race. The experience of any single person, or even of any single genera- tion, is too limited to afford the needed control. Through knowledge he may bring to bear upon his personal problems the experience which men under widely varying conditions of life have had in dealing with the same or similar problems. This enables the person not only to understand his own experience ORIGIN AND FUNCTION OF KNOWLEDGE 127 but to bring to its control the experiments that others have made in dealing with such experiences. This is why it is not necessary for each genera- tion and each individual to return always to the be- ginning and learn over again the lessons that ex- perience teaches. Knowledge enables the learner to capitalize the experience of the past and to begin where others have left off. In this way knowledge is cumulative and its outreach is ever into new areas of experience. In this way experience main- tains a kind of frontier that is progressively en- croaching upon the hinterlands of unexplored real- ity. It is in this way that every science has been built up from the first discovered law to an elaborate system of control. It is in this way also that the way has been prepared for each invention, which, like the engine, has moved away from the first crude use of steam to the monsters of railway and ocean power plants and to the supple and swift portable gas-engine. The reason certain inventions could not be achieved sooner lies in this simple fact that the groundwork of previous knowledge and experience had not been laid for them. Clearly, the lead of these considerations is in the direction of a functional view of knowledge. In the interest of the greater well-being of the human race, the hand, as we have seen, has been developed as an organ of manipulation and construction. Simi- larly, the eye has been developed as an organ of wider and more accurate adjustment through vision, as the ear has been developed as an organ of adjust- ment through sound. So intelligence has been de- veloped as an organ of more effective adjustment to a complex and changing and meaningful world. Knowledge, in turn, which is a product of intelli- 128 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION gence in its reflection upon experience, assumes a functional réle in experience in that it makes it possible through intelligence to understand experi- ence, to forecast probable outcomes, and to rearrange the factors so as to reconstruct outcomes. Without knowledge intelligence would be helpless and ex- perience would hurtle on through situations and re- sponses, the blind, fortuitous result of a blind and irresponsible mechanism. If, on the one hand, knowledge arises out of ex- perience as meaning and re-enters it as a factor of control, it is also validated in experience. Under the more dynamic view of experience as the result of the adjustment process, we are increasingly coming to think of truth, not so much in terms of fixed formulations that remain intact from one genera- tion to another, as of convictions and tentative working conclusions. As working instruments they are held tentatively because they are constantly subject to verification by fresh experience. As in- struments of control they are convincing and satis- factory as long as they seem to correspond to expe- rience and get results. Once they fail to give a rational explanation of experience, or prove ineffec- tive in affecting the course of experience, we re- examine them and revise them to suit the new facts, or, if they are hopelessly unresponsive to the de- mands of experience, discard them altogether. All knowledge begins as a hypothesis—by venturing certain guesses in the light of suggestive and signifi- cant experience. These hypotheses are used as as- sumptions in conduct. If the action turns out to be successful the conviction concerning the truth of the assumption is confirmed and it is repeatedly used as long as it works. If, however, the assumption does . ORIGIN AND FUNCTION OF KNOWLEDGE 129 not work satisfactorily, it is either modified or dis- carded. Notwithstanding the survival power of be- liefs and opinions, no belief can stand in the face of repeated breakdowns in the control of experience. Thus, as was suggested in recording this tendency in modern thought in Chapter IV, the assumption that the world is flat simply did not “work” in our practical dealings with the facts of life, and especially in carrying on its activities. It was inevitable, there- fore, that in time the assumption should decay. Scientific, philosophical, and religious thought has threaded its onward way through the wreckage of discarded concepts and dogmas that, in spite of all our theories of knowledge, have had to be abandoned as useless luggage simply because they have not fit- ted in with the exigencies of an expanding experi- ence. All such ideas are beset with a nemesis of de- cay that, in spite of our darling prejudices, finally breaks them down and destroys them. To be sure, the element of time is a matter of great consideration in the validation of truth. So also is the range of experience. A meagre span of experience, to say nothing of single and isolated ex- periences, furnishes too slender a basis for a sound judgment upon the validity of a conclusion. Re- ality is vastly more intricate and complicated than that. It is like a vast continent which requires the united efforts of many generations to survey, map, subdue, and develop. Even individual experience, however varied, is inadequate to exhaust it. The social experience of many races and cultures through long periods of time is alone adequate to furnish a reliable witness to reality. And even so, our con- ceptions of reality must ever wait upon fresh ap- proaches of experience, new insights, and the re- 130 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION examination of our dearest convictions in the light of new needs as life advances. It is this wider base of changing individual and social experience that furnishes the medium through which fundamental reality discloses itself. Here also is to be found the criterion for judging what knowledge is of most worth. This problem has arisen afresh with each changing conception of the curriculum. If the curriculum is thought of in terms of discipline, then that knowledge is of most worth that is most formal and difficult of mastery. If the curriculum is thought of in terms of knowl- edge, then that knowledge is of most worth that furnishes instruction with the widest range of use- ful information. If the curriculum is thought of in terms of recapitulation, then that knowledge is of most worth that arises out of the culture epochs of the race and is capable of stimulating the emerging | interests and capacities of the developing person. But if the curriculum is thought of in terms of an enriched and controlled experience, then the knowl- edge that is of most worth is that which furthers present experience by throwing light upon it and enabling the learner to direct it toward consciously selected ends. This introduces a highly selective factor into the evaluation of knowledge. To be of worth, it must have a more or less direct bearing upon present on- going experience. And because experience is con- stantly undergoing change, this means that knowl- edge that is useful to one generation may not be useful to another, because the needs of each are utterly different. Furthermore, the highly individual character of experience may render knowledge that is of great worth to one individual completely use- ORIGIN AND FUNCTION OF KNOWLEDGE 131 less to another whose experience lies in quite another direction. The same thing is true of different social groups with their social, economic, and intellectual backgrounds. Knowledge that is suitable to one may not at all be suitable to another differently situated with reference to racial, cultural, or national backgrounds. This relevancy of knowledge to pres- ent experience may be considered the first criterion of the worth of knowledge. The second criterion of the worth of knowledge consists in the relevancy of knowledge to the ex- pected future experience of individuals and groups. The permanent value of certain types of knowledge cannot be judged by the needs of the passing mo- ment. Experience is constantly moving forward into fresh experiences. The educator must take his posi- tion midway in the developing process and have in mind those needs toward which experience is mov- ing as well as those that are current in the more limited experience of the learner. From this point of view, that knowledge is of most worth that con- ducts the learner in the direction of his likely future experience. This is not intended to suggest that it is possible definitely to predict that future, for such is not the case. But it is possible to discern direc- tions and probabilities. In fact, this is one of the functions of education, to give direction to the expe- rience of the learner. That knowledge is of most worth from this point of view that contributes cu- mulatively to the forward movement of experience toward chosen objectives. It is even possible that there are some future needs that the immature learner cannot foresee and the value of which makes no present appeal to him. These also must be taken into account in judging 1382 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION the worth of certain types of knowledge. There are certain types of skills, for example, such as the learn- ing of the multiplication table and the mastery of movements involved in playing the violin or the piano, that are absolutely necessary to the carrying on of the simplest business calculations in mature life or the mastery of the technic of an art, the value of which in the present moment it is very difficult to help the learner to appreciate. On the basis of the limited experience of the child it is even more difficult to enable him to appreciate fundamental ideals and choices in the realm of moral conduct for the reason that it is impossible for him to foresee the remote outcomes of these ideals and choices. In situations such as these there must be mutual co-operation be- tween the learner and the educator in selecting cer- tain bodies of knowledge the worth of which the immature learner with his limited foresight cannot fully appreciate, but which the educator with his long Jook ahead does appreciate fully. Is knowledge, then, of value for its own sake? It is clear from the foregoing considerations that the primary value of knowledge consists in the fact that, having emerged from experience, it 1s capable of re-entering experience as a factor of control. Its fundamental worth consists in the fact that it is a means toward an end. As in the case of most, if not all, means, however, that which in its origin was a means toward an end comes, in time, to be an end in itself and to be valued for its own sake rather than for the end toward which it leads. It is so with knowledge. Once the meanings of experience have been brought together and organized into a stable body of knowledge, knowledge itself comes to be sought for its own sake. This is particularly true ORIGIN AND FUNCTION OF KNOWLEDGE 183 in the field of “pure” science. Much of the incentive for scientific discovery is the restless desire to add to the growing sum of human knowledge some in- crement of truth without any thought of its bear- ing upon the practical conduct of life. In the same way the artist creates in the realm of painting, sculp- ture, architecture, or music for the sheer joy of the product without any thought as to how the enjoy- ment of color or form or tone will further the well- being of life. In no area of human experience does this process operate more effectively or apparently than im religious experience where a ceremony, let us say, which had its origin in the service it was felt to render in securing certain ends loses in part, or in whole, its original significance and is punctili- ously observed for its own sake. And yet, after all this has been said, the crowning glory of knowledge lies in the fact that it has work to do, a function to perform, a high end to serve in the liberation, the enrichment, and the self-direction of the human spirit. 1X THE PRINCIPLE OF REALITY Tue religious educator is not called upon to deal with any problem that is more fundamental or diffi- cult than the making of religious ideas, emotions, attitudes, and motives vital in the lives of persons. This is due in part to the tendency which educa- tion has shown to become a formal and meaning- less process. It is due in part to the tendency of all spiritual movements to become traditional and in- stitutional. It is also due in part to the tendency of religion to draw apart from the rest of life and be- come departmentalized with its own set of ideas, emotions, and values. This is a problem which all educators face; m the very nature of morals and re- ligion, giving vitality to ideas presents a special problem of unusual difficulty to the religious edu- eator. If religious education is to be effective, it must be kept vital and close to life. The vitality of religious ideas, emotions, and atti- tudes rests primarily upon a vivid and compelling sense of their reality. They must have the feel of substantiality, of resistance, of permanence. In fact, since the religious attitude has to do with the funda- mental meaning and worth of life, there must be a feeling of certainty beyond that which attaches to the temporary and incidental concerns of life. Lacking these elements, religion lacks something that goes into its making as religion and the ground is cut from beneath its effective functioning as a 134 THE PRINCIPLE OF REALITY 135 spiritualizing and motivating power in human expe- rience. Second only to a vivid sense of the reality of these religious elements in experience is a vivid sense of their worth. They must seem to rank in importance above the most fundamental concerns of the eco- nomic, social, and intellectual life. Here again, aris- ing out of the fact of the very nature of religion, concerned as it is with the total worth and destiny of things, religion must seem to be the most im- portant of all the matters with which man is con- cerned. As religion, it is that or nothing at all. When one thinks of religious education as a pro- cedure, it is clear that, whatever else happens, it must not be allowed to become an isolated, formal process. It must be kept real and vital and im- mersed in the processes of actual life. Since, then, the religious educator must work for the sense of reality and worth in all matters that pertain to religion, he must seek for the grounds upon which the sense of reality and worth rest. The primary ground of the sense of reality and worth in religious ideas, emotions, and attitudes is to be found in immediacy of experience. It is a signifi- cant fact that the great periods of original and dynamic power in religion have been those periods in which there has been fresh access to experience. In contrast with such creative periods have been those times of spiritual poverty and weakness when the contacts with reality have been clogged by tradition, dogma, institution, ceremonial. Ideas, ideals, and convictions that emerge from such creative periods never derive their convincing power from arguments. They move at a level far above the reach of argu- ment. They carry in their own bosoms their own 136 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION validation. This is why great creative religious leaders like Paul and Luther have seldom depended primarily upon argument for the support of their views. They for the most part merely announce their insights into reality in the form of compelling convictions that, because of their immediate relation to experience, seem to be self-evident. This was pre-eminently true of the Founder of Christianity. All prophets are essentially reporters; when they argue their case they cease to be convincing. This also explains the propulsive power of the eonvictions of creative leaders. Their convictions have a way of projecting themselves with tremendous carrying power through long periods of time. Sue- cessive generations, lifting up their own problems in the light of these convictions, find them vibrant with appeal because they answer to the reality that wells up in their own experience. This also explains the power of self-renewal that resides in these con- victions. Creative ideas find themselves conditioned and modified by the social and intellectual back- grounds of different racial groups or by the changes in thought-patterns that come with the movement of time. And yet, as Christianity in particular has demonstrated, creative ideas have a way of freeing themselves from the immediate and the temporal and of reasserting their essential character. On the contrary, ideas that are handed down through tradition—that are “told” to passive learn- ers through a process of instruction apart from ex- perience—are utterly lacking in convincing or carry- ing power. There is no life in them. Nor is this all. Themselves subject to the forces of spiritual decay, they set up mental and spiritual decay in the lives of those who learn them. They destroy the delicate THE PRINCIPLE OF REALITY 137 fibre of the intellectual life. They undermine the integrity of moral judgment and spiritual discern- ment. They make religionists, but not religious per- sons. Religion is shunted off into desert regions of dogma, ceremonial, and Pharisaism and lost there. The religionist may even lose all sense of moral and spiritual values. There is no more striking recorded insight into this fact than that found in one of the addresses of the prophet-statesman Isaiah, in Isaiah 29. The prophet confronted the political leaders of Jerusalem with the announcement that in a little more than a year the city would be besieged by its powerful enemy, Sennacherib. To him it was a moral event, with tremendous moral issues. To him the issues were so clear as to seem self-evident and inevitable. But when he confronted the national leaders with the announcement of the impending siege he met only with stolid and stupid indifference. Astonished at such moral and practical insensibility, he sought for a reason. With marvellous insight he arrived at the conviction that the moral and spiritual insensibility of the nation was due to the fact that its religion consisted only in forms and traditions—a religion that had been “taught them by rote.’? Here in sharpest outlines are set forth the soul of a religious person whose convictions well up out of immediate experience and the soul of the religionist who has “learned by rote” his religion but has never related it to the warm and moving current. of his practical life. And here likewise is a warning to religious educators that religion cannot be “‘learned”’ from precepts or materials or any of the mechanics of in- struction; it must enter life through the avenues of experience. 1388 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION The sense of reality in religious ideas, emotions, and attitudes lies, secondly, in the integral relation of religion to the whole of life. Normal experience tends, on the whole, to centre in some sort of unity, in some organized whole. In this respect ideas are not unlike cells in the tissues of the body. They derive their life from the vitality and energy of the whole organism. Ideas, emotions, and attitudes that become split off from the rest of experience tend, normally, to decay. This is why ideas that are vital at one time lose all grip at another time; the main current of experience has simply moved on and left them isolated and stranded. No idea or attitude can hope to maintain its vital energy or its moving in- fluence upon experience which is not related in a direct and intimate manner td the main move- ment of one’s experience. Religion not infrequently exhibits a tendency to become departmentalized, to move from the centre of experience to its margins, where it takes its place beside the other departmentalized bodies of experi- ence. Its centre then becomes, not the whole of life, but its own specialized beliefs, ceremonies, institu- tions. An increasingly sharp line appears between the “‘sacred’”’ and the “secular.” It assents to such formulas as “‘Business is business and religion is religion.”” Less and less are religious beliefs and practices modified by the economic, social, political, zesthetic, and intellectual concerns of society. Cor- respondingly less and less do the ideas and beliefs of religion exert any effective influence upon the conduct of life. But this is contrary to the essential nature of religion, which, at its best, centres in the whole of life. The first step of isolation is followed by a series THE PRINCIPLE OF REALITY 139 of consequences that sap the life out of religion. Convictions become dogmas. Religious activities de- generate into meaningless and worthless forms. The institutions of religion which were the organs through which it found much of its expression and got much of its work done, become extraneous overhead or- ganizations that lay a deadening hand upon the spirit. Finally, religion loses its moral and spiritual sensitiveness. The soul of religion is dead. In the name of God it fastens its dead weight upon prog- ress, opposing the discovery of truth, stoning the prophets, and standing as the arch-champion of things as they are. And so it turns out that imstitu- tionalized, dogmatic, anti-social, and unethical “‘re- ligion”’ becomes an obstacle in the way of God, cru- cifying His Son and defeating His purpose, so that God has had to set aside repeatedly in the course of history institutionalized forms of religion and their overzealous custodians in order to make way for the prophets of reality and the religion of the spirit. Religion, as the psychologist and, increasingly, the sociologist are coming to see clearly, belongs to the whole of life. When it becomes less than that the nemesis of decay overtakes it, and it ceases to be religion. In this relation of religion to the whole of life or its isolation from the whole of life, as nowhere else, lie the hope and the peri! of religion. A third source of the sense of reality lies in the fact that ideas and ideals “‘work”’ when applied to the actual situations of life. To be sure, the basis of the test must extend over a wide range of social experience and over considerable periods of time. But, as we have had occasion to observe in our con- sideration of the origin and function of knowledge, ideas and ideals arise out of experience. It follows 140 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION that in the degree that they correspond to reality they will also fit back into experience in so far as the new experience is substantially the same as the one from which the ideas arose. This continuous and smooth working of ideas in the field of expe- rience gives to them a feel of firmness and reliability that begets confidence in them, much as one comes to have confidence in the dependability of a motor that never fails to perform smoothly under all con- ditions. It is in the realm of the physical sciences that the relation of the sense of reality attaching to an idea and its smooth working in experience is most apparent. Through a coimcidence of circumstances, the scientist is led to suspect that certain sequential relations between elements, let us say physical or chemical, exist. On this more or less slender basis he erects a hypothesis which, at the beginning, is nothing more than a guess. As long as the idea re- mains nothing more than a guess it carries with it a fringe of uncertainty as to its correspondence to reality. But in dealing with a physical science the factors remain relatively constant. The scientist tests his idea by proceeding to put it into operation as though it were true. All verification is nothing more nor less than putting the hypothesis to the test of experience. And since in the physical sci- ences the factors are constant, if they are perfectly understood one or two trials are usually sufficient to establish or to destroy the claims of the idea to reality. If, for example, the combination of certain chemical elements yields the expected results on the first test, that will usually be considered sufficient proof. It is not so easy to test ideas in the biological sciences because the factors are much more variable and it is exceedingly difficult to understand all of THE PRINCIPLE OF REALITY 141 them perfectly. A large time element enters in. As a consequence, one testing does not suffice to estab- lish the reliability of a hypothesis. There must be many experiments over long periods of time and under varied circumstances. For these reasons the “laws”? governing the appearance of characteristics in species retain a persistent fringe of uncertainty and continue to remain only hypotheses. They will doubtless yield in time to certainty. But it is when one comes to social and spiritual phenomena that the reality of ideas is established with greater diffi- culty. The reason is that the factors involved are so complex and variable. The time element assumes an extremely important rdle. Experimentation in these fields becomes very difficult. One can never be wholly certain that other factors that escape ob- servation are not operating. It is necessary, there- fore, that the test of the validity of ideas in the realm of the higher ethical and spiritual values extend over a wide range of individual and social experience and over very considerable periods of time. Some of the loftiest moral and spiritual ideals have seemed, when viewed in a narrow setting and with reference to immediate outcomes, to be highly impractical but, when given time and a wide range of experience, to be fundamentally sound. The teaching of Jesus re- garding non-resistance has seemed to many an ut- terly impracticable doctrine. But a wider experience has begun to demonstrate its validity in individual relations, and recent movements in international affairs are continually pointing to the conclusion that it may be the only way out for a war-burdened and war-destroyed society. Here, however, we have in mind not so much the validation of knowledge as the effect of experience 142 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION upon ideas. The point of view in this instance is educational, not philosophical. The problem of the educator is to discover the way in which the sense of reality may be given to the ideas, ideals, and atti- tudes that the immature should acquire for the or- dering of their experience. But it turns out that the way in which the sense of reality attaches to ideas is the way in which they are validated to the philos- opher—in and through experience. All of which means to the religious educator that if the concepts of religion are to be real and vital in the life of the growing religious person they cannot come to him through formal and external instruction or precepts, but through the process of actual living under the influence of religious ideals. Furthermore, religious ideas should be looked upon in no sense differently from other ideas in their re- lation to the control of experience. As the highest function of any knowledge is control, so the highest function of religious ideas and motives is not sim- ply that they should be understood and accepted, but that they should be put into practice in the day-by-day relations and activities of life. These ideas should have the power fo make a difference in the lives of individual persons and of society. In fact, precisely that is the mission of Christianity. It has a work to do in the gradual transformation of human lives and human society. The religious educator can scarcely be true to the genius of the Christian religion unless he begets in the learner this dynamic, experimental attitude toward Christian truth. He should be led to think of Christian truth as a power to be administered. This means that he should be given the attitude of experimenting with it in an effort to remake himself and society on a THE PRINCIPLE OF REALITY 143 Christian basis. Nothing can possibly give to ideas the sense of their reality and worth like getting re- sults from them in the conduct of human life. All of which is to say that when ideas are put to the test on the highest personal and social plane, that which gives to them the firmest sense of reality is the fact that they either further or frustrate the dominant purpose of the individual or of the group. If the outreach of life is toward that fullness of a self-realized life which it is the function of religion to give, then the fact that certain ideas, ideals, and motives lead toward freer, more spiritual, more brotherly, more serviceable persons and a social order of the same type, clothes them not only with reality but with a profound sense of worth. The greatest consequence, therefore, which re- ligious education suffers when it attempts to impart religious concepts and virtues apart from actual experience is the loss of the sense of reality. The feel of firmness and substantiality, if there ever was any, gives place to a feel of illusion. This danger is the greater because religion deals with intangible, not material and obtrusive, values. Or, if the feel of illusion is not present, there is merely the failure of religious ideas to make themselves felt. They be- come neutral and ineffective, A religious idea can no more hope to be kept alive apart from religious experience than a mathematical formula apart from mathematical calculations or a political programme that has become doctrinaire apart from the outcomes of concrete and practical political situations. Is it any marvel that some persons wonder whether “there is anything in religion” when they have never felt the tug of its ideas and motives as these ideas and mo- tives have taken hold of experience and transformed 144 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION it, but have been “‘taught”’ by memoriter methods what others have thought and felt about religion? A second consequence is the loss of interest. This is only another way of saying that religious ideals have ceased to have worth for the learner, if they ever had any worth. Desire is the outreach of per- sons toward ends that are felt by them to possess worth. Interest is that bond that unites the desir- ing person and the desired end in one continuous process. It follows that in order to awaken interest in persons ends must be concrete, specific, and not so remote as to lose all gripping and moving power upon the person. This explains why formal subjects in school awaken no interest in the learner. Such bearing as they have upon practical conduct, if they have any at all, is so remote as to evoke no forth- reaching on the part of the learner. This also ex- plains why abstract virtues lifted out of their normal setting in practical life become formal and uninter- esting. As a result, recourse must be had to ex- traneous motives to stimulate interest in religion— rewards from buttons and badges up, contests, all the mechanical devices that put “pep” into religion. One of the most lamentable consequences is the split mind. When religious ideas and habits are built up without relation to experience and the rest of life, religion not only becomes sterile and ineffec- tive in its influence upon life, but it results in a dual set of standards, values, and motives. Religion as a thing apart gets itself organized into a separate body of beliefs and practices limited to sacred days and sacred places. One’s secular interests are equally organized as a system within themselves. As a re- sult the person is at home in either system and his thinking and conduct within that system are wholly THE PRINCIPLE OF REALITY 145 consistent. But between the systems there is a great gulf fixed, and there is no commerce between his religious ideals and his secular ideals. The result is a destructive dualism of life, not to say inconsistency between religious idealism and practical conduct. This may be more the fault of a defective religious education than of the unfortunate person himself. Professor Thorndike tells of a girl in New York who had studied about the lordly Hudson River out of a book on geography and was later very much sur- prised to discover that the river that daily flowed by Riverside Drive was the Hudson. Much of the failure of religious idealism to carry over into the practical conduct of life is due to the fact that no mental asso- ciation has ever been made between religious ideals and practical conduct. A special word should be said in this connection concerning religious emotions. Because the emo- tions are shifty and are frequently accompanied by reactions in proportion to their intensity, they con- stitute a special problem in connection with the sense of reality in religion. By reason of its very nature, religion is heavily charged with emotion. This arises from the fact that it centres in values, and in a par- ticular sort of values—those that gather up into themselves all the worth and meaning of life. In the gap that we have described within which the sense of value arises, emotions also arise. In fact, in the value situation the most powerful emotions are generated that are known to man. This fact has sometimes misled students of religion into con- ceiving it in terms of the emotions, as others have done with equal error in conceiving it in terms of the intelligence. The presence of delay, uncertainty, and effort—all these powerfully heighten the accompany- 146 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION ing emotions. The point here is, however, that emo- tions, especially the more pronounced emotions, not infrequently lead to a misgiving sense of unreality in experience, especially after the emotion has sub- sided. Modern psychology is less certain than it might be concerning the constructive value of the emotions. They warm experience and give tone to the will, provided they are not too violent. Beyond a certain limit they derange the mechanism of re- sponse and interfere with clear and accurate think- ing. Considering the fact that emotion plays a very large part in the mass mind, it does make ideas and programmes effective with the many. But whatever modern psychology may come to judge the function of the emotions to be, it is the more important that they be kept wholesome in religion by causing them to hover close to a sound religious experience that is centred, not in emotional upheavals and _ senti- mental vaporings, but in the steady, consistent, pur- posive bringing to bear of the ideals and purposes of the Kingdom of God upon the practical outcomes of personal and social living. x THE PRINCIPLE OF CONTINUITY UNLEss experience is built together nto an inte- grated whole, it tends to fall apart into unrelated fragments. One of the basic considerations in the achievement of a sound and effective personality emerges at just this point. Personality, we have seen, consists of a continuum of organized expe- rience. In the lower orders of personality experience is more or less loosely organized. In the higher or- ders it is definitely and coherently organized. More- over, the centre of organization is a set of values which, when viewed subjectively, appear as a group of desires and, when viewed objectively, as a group of valued ends toward which experience is moving. In the highest forms of personality these values are consciously organized and held before the self as ends to be consciously striven for. It sometimes happens that more than one organizing centre arises within a self, in which case there results a dual or split personality. There may be even more than two personalities. In the event of this split, one organized continuum comes to the fore and the other is retired, or conversely. Thus at one moment the self is person number one, and at another moment person number two. Each set of values and its cor- responding continuum of experience constitute a complete system within themselves. As long as the active centre of experience moves within one or the other of these parallel systems of values, ideas, and motives, the behavior of. the person is consistent with 147 148 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION itself. But each system is inconsistent with the other system. It is thus possible, as in the case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, for the same self to act in exactly opposite and irreconcilable ways. Two or more potential personalities are in process of organization, any one of which may be counted upon to act consistently with itself. The higher types of personality are absolutely impossible apart from an integrating process. The chief mark of low-grade personality, as in the case of the sub- normal and the insane, is the inability of persons to relate their experiences in such a way that they will hold together in some sort of unitary and con- sistent pattern. In the absence of an integrating bond, experiences just happen; that is, persons re- spond promiscuously to all'sorts of situations in- volving the attention, the emotions, and the will. As a result, activity has neither meaning, worth, nor effectiveness. More than that, promiscuous expe- rience loses its dynamic quality. Having no organ- ized end toward which it is moving, it becomes static. It possesses neither movement nor direction. It arrives nowhere and effects nothing. Moreover, the integrating bond is in the mind. It consists of the perception of the connections that bind experience together. Two persons may have the same experience, as far as the external elements are concerned, but its meaning will be utterly differ- ent in the two instances. Two workmen may be employed in the same factory and may work side by side in the manufacture of the same kind of article, let us say of shoes. To one the experience begins and ends with the handling of certain materials, the running of them through a machine process, and the passing on of the unfinished article to the work- THE PRINCIPLE OF CONTINUITY 149 man who is to add the next increment of utility. His work is wholly mechanical and routine. It finds and leaves the particular thing he is doing isolated and meaningless. His companion, on the other hand, perceives the relation which his work sustains to the remainder of the whole process in- volved in the manufacture of the article, the rela- tion of the particular process in which he is engaged to the whole industrial system, and the relation of industry to the entire social order. He perceives the connection between his present act and the events that have led up to it in the raising of cattle, perhaps in foreign lands, in the transportation of the hides from the place of origin to the factory, in the increments of utility other fellow-workmen have imparted to the process before it reached his hands, in the sharing of his labor with fellow-work- men who will come after him, and in the service which his labor renders to the comfort and well- being of society. Similarly, he perceives the relation of his productive labor to his personal and domestic life, to the education of his children, to the enrich- ment or the impoverishment of his own personality. In this way his productive labor becomes integrated into the whole range of his own personal experience and into the relations that reach out into the intri- cate texture of social life and bind him to his fellows in an ongoing common life. The integrating bond in this, as in all other instances, is not to be found in the external aspects of the experience, but within the mind itself. The reason the bond is not formed in the case of the subnormal or the insane is because the mind is defective and is incapable of perceiving the connections. No amount of effort, except in certain types of mental dislocation, can remedy this 150 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION defect. Even in the case of normal persons it is en- tirely gratuitous to assume that the connections will automatically be made. They are the result, for the most part, of intelligent and purposive effort. Consequently, the securing of integration, of con- tinuity, in experience should be one of the primary eoncerns of the educator. In fact, the function of education could be stated in terms of organizing ex- periences in such a way that they will not only be ordered and cumulative, but that the connection between them will be made so obtrusive that they will not escape the learner. To the religious educator this consideration is of unique Importance. Because religion consists in the fusion of all values into a fundamental meaning and worth of life, one of its fundamental contributions to experience is the capacity of religion to unify experience. Historically, it has furnished one of the most effective social bonds. It is true that the bond it has furnished has too often consisted of an external and authoritative sanction. But that fact does not at all arise out of the character of religion. Religion is Just as capable of working from within. In fact, religion, when truest to its essential nature, has always worked from within, through a vital and in- trinsic sanction. It is normally the organizing centre around which all specialized values relate them- selves to the whole of life. The farther society advances the greater its need for a unifying factor becomes. The normal movement of all developing societies is in the direction of dif- ferentiation and specialization. Perhaps no insti- tution better illustrates this tendency than the fam- ily in the transformations it has undergone. As an economic unit, the older type of household provided THE PRINCIPLE OF CONTINUITY 151 for all its needs. It raised its own grain, fruits, vegetables, meats, and fibres, and prepared them for consumption through simple processes of plant- ing, cultivating, harvesting, grinding, preserving, spinning, and weaving in which all the members of the family participated. In a similar way the health of the family was cared for by the use of simple home-made remedies. The education of the chil- dren consisted of some formal instruction by the parents and of participation in the practical activi- ties of the group. Religion and morals were taught both by precept and example and by the carrying on of religious activities by the entire group. In a developed society, however, one after another of these functions and activities has been taken over by an outside specialized agency. Food is bought in an already partially prepared state from the grocery, the meat shop, the dairy; clothing is bought ready- made at the clothier’s; health is cared for by a highly specialized medical profession; education is pro- vided for almost exclusively by the school; religious activities and training are taken over for the most part by the church; amusement and recreation are provided by commercialized agencies that have no organic relation to the family; the living itself is made in a factory or commercial concern that has no immediate connection with the home. In the same way, the earliest societies themselves are sim- ple and homogeneous. But as civilization advances they become highly differentiated and stratified on the basis of specialized interests and activities. In time this process proceeds so far as to threaten the disruption of society. Increasingly the students of society are becoming conscious of finding in this need for some unifying influence one of the most 152 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION urgent problems of the modern world. The speciali- zation of interests, activities, and social classes, to- gether with a rapidly growing individualism, has so far dissolved the social bond that society itself is in danger of falling to pieces. The religious educator owes it to the integrating resource which he has in his possession in religion and to the social order to enlarge and deepen his conception of the unifying function of religion. Within the more limited range of individual life, the religious educator must come to a new appre- ciation of the integrating and unifying function of religion in experience. It is in religious experience that personal life finds its integrating centre. In personal life religion can effect what philosophy cannot hope to accomplish. Philosophy, which also looks at life and existence from the standpoint of its wholeness and total meaning, approaches it from the standpoint of intellectual interpretation. Re- ligion, on the other hand, approaches it from the standpoint of fundamental values. Religion finds its expression in the will and its field of operation in the practical activities of life. What, therefore, philosophy contemplates and criticises religion is, by its nature, competent to bring to pass. Perhaps history offers no more striking instance of the rela- tive effectiveness of philosophy and religion than in their relation to Greeco-Roman life in the first cen- tury A. D. Philosophy, notwithstanding its insights and its theoretical systems of ethics, was powerless to stay the onrush of materialism and sensualism that was about to engulf civilization in utter ruin. This result Christianity effected by offering a way of life grounded in fundamental social, ethical, and spiritual values fused in the passion of love. THE PRINCIPLE OF CONTINUITY 153 Where, then, is the religious educator to seek for the bonds that secure the continuity of experience? The first bond is to be found in the interrelated- ness of all experience. Professor Basil Lanneau Gil- dersleeve is said once to have remarked that, no matter at what point one made a beginning, if he would follow out the implications of that experience through all its ramifications and relations, he would, in time, become a liberally educated man. This re- mark shows a clear and penetrating insight into the nature of experience. It rests upon that infinite number of relations that bind each unit of experience to every other unit, provided the relation is per- ceived in the mind of the learner. The agriculturist, to lift an illustration from a field in which activity has been too often blind, may take his point of de- parture from the raising of the commonest grain, let us say wheat. If he is sensitive to the connec- tions of his apparently menial act with the whole sweep of experience, he finds himself working in a chemical laboratory transforming chemical sub- stances in the soil and atmosphere and moisture into new and living forms. He is manipulating forces that introduce him to the whole realm of physics. In dealing with living organisms he finds himself at the centre of the science of biology. The seasons through which he plants and reaps bring him into relation with the astronomical uni- verse. The distribution of his product brings him into relation with geography, the means of trans- portation and communication, and the entire eco- nomic process of exchange. In the consumer is rep- resented an entire social order whose needs he is helping to supply. If only those connections that lie immediately at hand are mentioned, they are 154 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION sufficient to make it clear that the universe of things and persons comes to a focus in his humble, every- day activity. When one moves from these so-called “practical”? activities into the fields of the various sciences, the interrelation of experience becomes more consciously apparent. The psychologist finds himself confronted with the necessity of knowing the general facts of biology, physiology, and soci- ology. The sociologist can accomplish nothing of moment until he understands biology, psychology, and the various special social sciences. In the practical activities of the social engineer one is brought promptly and vigorously into con- tact with an infinite number of contributing fac- tors. Does one attack the problem of delinquency? Then he runs immediately into heredity, education, incomes, standards of living, unemployment, na- tionality, race, associations. Does he attack disease or poverty or war? In every instance he finds himself caught up in an intricate mesh of biological, eco- nomic, social, and intellectual factors that ramify throughout the whole range of human relations and functions. The older psychologists found the study of man’s mental life comparatively easy as they traced its movement through perception, memory, imagination, concepts, and judgments. But the modern psychologist finds. his task much more diffi- cult and complicated as he studies the influence of the glands and finds himself confronted with social determinants of an almost infinite variety in the formation of the mental patterns and the mental content of the individual person. A new and surprising light has been thrown upon the whole matter of the interconnections of various types of experience through the study of the sub- THE PRINCIPLE OF CONTINUITY 155 conscious. Of the processes that go on in these hid- den depths psychology knows as yet all too little. They come to light in such mental phenomena as dreams and defense activities; and the psycho- analyst has been successful in tracing through the dark mazes unsuspected connections that bind ex- periences together in the most unexpected manner. However great the work of exploration that needs to be done in this shadowy realm of mental life, the little that is known bears testimony to the uncon- scious interrelatedness of experience. The second bond that gives continuity to expe- rience is that of antecedent and consequent. By this bond the past, the present, and the future are bound together into one continuous process. The present experience is the direct outgrowth of past experience as the future, in its turn, will be the direct outgrowth of present experience. In such a matter as choosing a vocation, the present choice has its roots in past decisions, environmental influences, and sets of mind. A current drift in the group of which one is a member in the direction of a certain occu- pation or profession, the counsel of an interested and trusted friend, the reading of an impressive biog- raphy—all these previous experiences weight the choice of the present moment, perhaps to the point of effecting a permanent decision. Once the choice has been made, it colors all future choices and courses of action—the extent and character of one’s edu- cation, his place of residence, his standards of living, the companionships he will form, the professional associations he will join, the kind of journals he will read, perhaps even his success or failure in life. In this way no experience exists in isolation, but is set within a series of forward-moving experiences. 156 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION It is this quality of experience that gives it an outlook in two directions. On the one hand, it is retrospective. As a consequence, its antecedents lie in the past. Consequently, it can only be accounted for in terms of the past. To understand the factors — that in the past gave rise to it is to understand the present experience. Moreover, the understanding of the past waits upon the issues of the present mo- ment. The clearest foresight can never be quite certain what the outcomes of the present will be. It is this quality of uncertainty that gives to expe- rience its risks and adventure. On the other hand, experience is anticipatory. The direction which ex- perience is given in the present moment will result in certain consequences in the future. It is at this point that the element of control enters into expe- rience. As a result, the more intelligent and pur- posive experience is, the more its outlook shifts from retrospect to prospect; to the bringing of certain de- sired ends to pass through the intelligent ordering of present experience. It is the fact that the present experience is the consummation of the past and at the same time the point of departure for the future that gives to the present moment its intense meaning and significance. Science has been most keenly and clearly aware of these relations of antecedents and consequents. In its older terminology it spoke of them as “causes” and “effects.” It is more content now to speak of them in terms of antecedents and consequents. The central interest of science is focused on this relation. As in no other department of human activity, science has perfected a technic for dealing with these factors, whereby irrelevant factors are eliminated and the field of investigation is narrowed until a correlation is THE PRINCIPLE OF CONTINUITY 157 discovered between a specific antecedent and a spe- cific consequent. When the correlation is sufficient- ly established, the relation is reduced to a formula, and the formula is used thereafter as a method of control, as in applied physics, chemistry, biology. Thus far the greatest progress in science has been in the field of material processes. Only recently has man turned his scientific technic in the direction of the factorizing of his own experience, either in its personal or social aspects. But it is to be hoped that as he acquires more and more of insight into the nature of experience he will be able to factorize it and bring it under more and more certain control. It is this bond that furnishes the psychological ground for the conception of education as a continu- ous reconstruction of experience. According to this conception the experimental approach to experience is the most promising one. ‘This approach focuses the attention upon the outcomes of the present ac- tivity. Attention shifts alternately from the results achieved to the process and from process to results. This is the method that has yielded the greatest re- sults in science and in all forms of practical activity where the process has been brought under the direc- tion of intelligence. From this point of view, the chief function of education is to create in the learner that attitude of mind that runs forward from the present activity to its outcomes, criticises them, and constantly readjusts its activity with reference to desirable outcomes. It is this bond also that offers the opportunity for training in intellectual, moral, and social responsi- bility. The sense of responsibility can only be cre- ated in persons when they perceive that their think- ing, purposes, and acts have far-reaching conse- 158 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION quences that affect not only their personal lives but the lives of others, the cause which they represent, and society in general. The responsible person is one who has learned to scrutinize his acts for the antecedents that they contain, to run forward m his mind to the probable outcomes in their bearing upon himself and others, and to abide by the con- sequences of his decisions in the light of these con- siderations. The third bond that gives continuity to experience is an organized and dominant purpose. This domi- nant purpose sets the objective toward which expe- rience is moving. The unification of desire can come only through the subordination of certain desires to certain other desires. Once life begins to take on a central purpose, that purpose becomes the regulator of all other purposes. A dominant purpose accomplishes four functions in experience. For one thing, it gives it direction and momentum. It makes experience active; dy- namic, creative. It eventuates in an achieved end rather than a haphazard result. The inventor who is in pursuit of a project tends to become thoroughly engrossed in it. Its grip upon him may become so great as to cause him to turn aside from social en- gagements, recreation, or convenience in the inter- est of the task in hand. One distinguished worker is said to have become so engrossed in his enterprise that he entirely overlooked the hour of his wedding and had to be reminded of it. Such turning aside from competing interests works no hardship, be- cause the dominant interest subordinates all other interests. Activity gathers drive and momentum as the worker gets further into his enterprise and es- pecially as he nears his goal. It is so with all reform- THE PRINCIPLE OF CONTINUITY 159 ers, and with those who seek to make ideals effective in personal and social life. All clearly perceived ends that are striven for tend to set up a trend of forward- moving activity that organizes around itself com- peting interests and purposes into a unified move- ment of experience. In the second place, it exerts a highly selective in- fluence upon experience. Once a central and moving objective is set up, it at once determines what expe- riences further that purpose and what experiences frustrate it and what experiences are indifferent to it. It exerts the same influence upon experience that the purpose for which a building is to be used exerts upon an architect’s plan and upon the materials that will be used in its construction. If the building is to be a public library its structure is at once de- termined by the fact that books are to be housed im convenient stack-rooms, by the fact that provi- sions must be made for a reading-room, by the fact that arrangements must be made for a magazine section, and by the need for a central office. Its de- sign will be stately and the building will preferably be of stone, well set in an ample, landscaped site. If it is to be an office building the structure will be radically different. Provisions must be made for rooms and suites of rooms suitable to office use, with one floor above another to an indefinite height, with corridors and elevators. The materials are likely to be of brick, reinforced cement, or stone. Owing to the exigencies of business space, the skyscraper will be crowded into a street solidly with other similar business buildings. If the building is to be a private dwelling it will provide for a reception-room, library, dining-room, kitchen, sleeping-apartments, and all the conveniences of a home. Its materials will in- 160 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION clude the widest range of variation to suit the taste of the persons who are to live in it. In a no less de- termining way does the adoption of a stable pur- pose in the achievement of character affect the selec- tion of experiences that persons will have. Once one has accepted for himself a certain character ideal, let us say the Christian life, certain attitudes, mo- tives, and habits of life at once become appropriate, while others at once become equally inappropriate. Those are definitely selected that fit into a Christian body of ideals and that further them; those are neglected that have little or no relation to, them, while those are positively rejected that are inimical to their realization. In like manner a business or professional man who adopts a code of ethics for his craft at once rejects certain methods that are out of keeping with that code, while he consciously and definitely adopts those that are consistent with it. He may even devise new methods and procedures that will seem to him to bring his practice into greater conformity with what he conceives to be professional under his adopted code. In the third place, it determines the sequence of experience. Under the influence of a dominant pur- pose experiences do not fall together in a hit or miss pattern. Each becomes a step in the progressive realization of an end. To revert to our architect’s plan, there is a starting point and a consummation of the process. The erection of the building begins with the laying of the foundation and proceeds with the building of the walls, the placing of the pillars of the facade, the finishing of the exterior and interior decorations. It is so with any experience that is mov- ing toward a dominant purpose. Such experience is genetic in character. THE PRINCIPLE OF CONTINUITY 161 Finally, experience that moves toward a dominant purpose is cumulative. Its insights are constantly deepening insights. The knowledge that it accu- mulates is a growing body of organized knowledge. The skills that it develops grow in certainty and pre- cision. Its technic is ever growing more refined and effective. It is like the cumulative knowledge, tech- nic, and skill of the expert as distinguished from that of the amateur. In order to become an expert in any given field of practical activity one must give himself chiefly to the lifetime pursuit of his specialty. To become an authority in any given field of knowl- edge the scholar must devote his career to patient research. No less is it true in the achievement of a moral and spiritual personality that one must de- vote to his enterprise untiring energy in the pro- gressive building up of permanent ideals, attitudes, motives, and habits. The same accumulation of in- sights, knowledge, and skills that makes one an ex- pert in the field of the practical arts, a master in the fine arts, or an authority in a chosen field of research is requisite in the development of the technic of moral and spiritual living. In this way a dominant and organized purpose will gather about itself the unwasted results of patient and arduous effort through long periods of time. What has been said of the individual purpose is also true of the social purpose. It is the ongoing purpose of a great cause that binds the thinking and achievements of many generations together into a progressive achievement. In a supreme sense is this true of the enterprises of the Kingdom of God. In the nature of the case the bringing of human life under the dominance of Christian ideals and motives cannot be accomplished for once and then regarded 162 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION as a finished undertaking. In each generation it is a progressive achievement, and, because human life is lived generation by generation, the enterprise must be taken up anew with each renewal of the life of the race. With the unfinished task each generation passes on to its successors the experience of the past and its own experience in dealing with it. In this way the tides of human life may ebb and flow, but there abides as a continuum through it all the unfinished task of human reconstruction and the progressive realization of the Kingdom of God. One of the major objectives of religious education should be the effective initiation of the immature into that continuing purpose and the priceless inheritance of experience that it carries with it. XI WHAT CONSTITUTES THE CURRICULUM ? In the light of the foregoing considerations, we are now prepared to come directly to the question: What constitutes the curriculum as enriched and controlled experience ? Manifestly, the effect of this conception upon the content and organization of the curriculum will be as thoroughgoing as have been the historical con- ceptions of the curriculum as discipline, as knowl- edge, or as recapitulation. Furthermore, because the conception is so completely different from the historical conceptions, there are few precedents to guide one. This means that the whole problem of curriculum construction must for the most part be thought through from the beginning and the expe- rience curriculum constructed upon a new psychologi- cal basis. One thing is perfectly obvious—the ex- perience curriculum will be utterly different from the traditional curricula. Neither will it be possible, no matter how clear the basic principles may be, to set up out of hand the newer type of curriculum without a great number of tentative approaches and a vast amount of careful and wide-spread experi- mentation. Some beginnings in this direction have _ been made here and there, and all these attempts are of great value. But before anything like satisfac- tory results can be attained a broad foundation must be laid in research and wide-spread experimentation. Notwithstanding this fact, however, the main out- lines of the curriculum as enriched and controlled 163 164 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION experience are perfectly clear. Manifestly, the first step in the construction of the experience curriculum is to bring together in a whole and consistent view the fundamental principles upon which such a cur- riculum will rest. Out of the statement of funda- mental principles it is easy to discern the main out- lines of the structural framework of the curriculum. The fundamental element in the curriculum as en- riched and controlled experience will consist of a selected and organized body of actual experiences of children, young people, and adults. These expe- riences will be lifted clearly into consciousness, in- terpreted, and brought under control in the light of worthy ideas, ideals, and purposes through a co- operation of the mature and immature members of the social group. In this way educational experience will not take its pattern from the school, but from real life as ut is actually in process of being lived. Since, as we have seen, not all experiences are of equal value or of educational resourcefulness, there must be some criteria by which this body of expe- riences designed for curriculum use may be selected. These criteria grow directly out of the discussions in the preceding chapters. Since they have there been discussed in detail, they may be entered here with- out lengthy elaboration. The first consideration is that these experiences shall be real. Ii religion is to enter life as a factor of enrichment and control, it must enter it through the responses to the actual situations which present themselves in one’s response to his material and so- cial world. The religious educator dare not be mis- led by the fiction of a carry-over of training. The fundamental weakness of so much that has gone under the name of moral and religious education is WHAT CONSTITUTES THE CURRICULUM? 165 that it has consisted of abstract precepts taught out of relation to real life or of training in biblical knowledge or other knowledge derived from books. Much of this instruction in later years has consisted of “expressional’’ work which has followed instruc- tion and which has seldom carried the ‘‘application”’ of moral and religious truth beyond artificial activi- ties. If moral and religious education is to effect changes in human life it cannot be carried on with this sort of procedure. The procedure is based upon a faulty psychology, inherited from the older types of traditional education. Activity, as the analysis of the nature of experience clearly demonstrates, is not the end of the learning process; it is the beginning of it. It would be better to say that activity and learning are different aspects of one and the same thing, which integrated thing, in normal life, con- stitutes experience. Experience is activity with meaning; but when activity takes on meaning, it is educative. In this respect modern education is ap- proximating the insight of the Great Teacher who laid it down as a fundamental characteristic of His method that he who would know the teaching must first do it. With Him, learning centred in values in- volving the will and was experimental. That is, with Jesus religion was a way of life, and the only way one could become religious was by actually living life religiously. A second consideration is that curriculum experi- ences should be typical. Two items are involved in this respect. One is that they should be typical with reference to the actual situations with which one is confronted in real life. That is, they should lift the essential relations, functions, and responsibilities of life into consciousness, get them reflected upon in 166 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION the light of Christian ideals and motives, and acted upon in a Christian way. The second item is that they should be typical of the relations, functions, and responsibilities of the Christian community. It is assumed that some form of institutional, commu- nity life is essential to the continued and effective | promotion of Christian ideals, purposes, and under- takings. This organized community, the church in its ideal character, is necessary to the carrying on of these functions. The objectives of religious educa- tion, therefore, are not only to bring Christian mean- ing and control into the practical conduct of life but also to prepare the immature to take their places effectively and intelligently in the Christian com- munity. As in the practical conduct of life, the best preparation for living in the Christian community is through experience in living in it, which means that if that participation is to be effective, its essen- tial relations, functions, and responsibilities must be brought into consciousness, reflected upon, and acted upon. A third consideration is that those experiences should be selected in particular that present alter- natives and involve choices. The greatest educational results will not be derived from situations to which one can respond in but one way. Least of all will they be derived from a type of education in which one is told, apart from real and concrete situations, what he is expected to do. Learning proceeds to the highest advantage when the learner is confronted with a situation in which he may do several possible things but in which, after deliberation, he chooses to do the one that is in keeping with the established purpose and movement of his life. Instead of telling a child of the generous attitude that Abraham took WHAT CONSTITUTES THE CURRICULUM? 167 toward Lot in offering him the better section of Palestine many generations ago, and urging upon him to take the same generous attitude in his relations to his fellows, it would be far better for the purposes of education to lift experiences out of the child’s every- day life, in which personal adjustments have to be made in the family, on the playground, and at school, to help him see that there are open to him selfish and unselfish ways of dealing with his fellows, and to help him choose an unselfish course of action because it is in keeping with Christian ideals. The educational value of the choice of Abraham under similar circumstances lies in the fact that it is capable of stimulating an unselfish choice in the learner and of suggesting ways in which the unselfish Christian attitude may be carried out in the child’s own situa- tion. To be sure, in the presence of such alternatives there is always the possibility that a wrong choice may be made. But this is an inevitable part of the risk that is always involved where choices must be made. As we have seen under the enrichment and control of experience, this is the type of experience that forces the situation and the response sharply into consciousness and secures reflection upon them. It is the only situation in which creative and respon- sible thinking is possible. It is the situation that lifts the response away from the mechanical bonds of reflex and instinct into the clear light of intelli- gence and choice. Substantial progress in character formation cannot proceed upon a lower basis. In the fourth place, experiences should be chosen that are continuous. Here again the selection must be made with two considerations in view. They involve the interrelatedness of all experience, on the one hand, and the antecedent-consequent relation in the on- 168 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION going of any particular kind of experience—both considerations whose import has been before us in the discussion of the principle of continuity. In the light of this principle, the experiences that are se- lected as the basis of the curriculum should ramify into related fields of experience, and these ramifying implications should be made obvious. Continuity in this direction is of particular importance for religious education inasmuch as one of its objectives should be consciously to relate its ideals and motives to all experience. Similarly, attention must be given to the unfolding of experience whereby the present ex- perience has its outcomes in future experience. The learner should be led to make his choices in the conduct of life in the light of their consequences for the future. Crucial choices, such as the deciding of one’s vocation, choices regarding education, the se- lection of a life companion, the selection of one’s associates—any one of these may radically affect the whole future direction of one’s life. The appar- ently less crucial choices, such as taking a slight advantage in a game, cheating in an examination, or withholding material facts, may mark the beginning of an attitude toward others that will ripen in later life into sharp bargaining, undercutting a competitor, or defaulting. It is through the actual making of choices of this kind that the attitude of responsi- bility is created through the discernment of what issues are involved in the present situation and seeing these issues through to their consummation. It is this continuity that gives cumulative meaning to experience and an increasing precision and cer- tainty to its purposive direction. A fifth consideration lies in the fact that, other things being equal, those experiences should be se- WHAT CONSTITUTES THE CURRICULUM? 169 lected that are capable of absorbing the largest amount of knowledge. Knowledge is at once the product and the instrument of intelligence. It fol- lows, therefore, that the greater the content of knowledge that experience carries, the clearer and more penetrating the intelligence that directs it will be. Furthermore, it is not to be thought for a moment that the grounding of education in expe- rience implies in the slightest degree a lessening of emphasis upon knowledge. Quite the contrary is true, as the analysis of the factors in the enrichment and control of experience has shown. Knowledge liberates by affording detachment from immediate and concrete experience through understanding by placing the present in a wider setting and by bring- ing it under control. This was a fundamental doc- trine in the assumptions of the Great Teacher. “Ye shall know the truth,” He said, “and the truth shall make you free.” Without the wider outlook which knowledge gives, experience, like Samson, is bound, blind, to the treadmill of the immediate and the concrete. In the sixth place, the experiences selected for curricular purposes should be capable of indefinite expansion. At the beginning, they must be so simple that they will fit into the limited world of the little child. As life advances toward maturity, they must fray out into all the relations, functions, and responsi- bilities which men and women who are caught up in the complex and difficult duties of life sustain. Expe- riences involving living and playing according to rules in the interest of the group and that are lifted for educational purposes out of the situations of the home, the school, and the playground, are continuous with and lead to those adjustments to other persons, 170 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION to institutions, and to society in general that are the basis of law and order. Experiences involving fair play in the same situations lead to justice in the economic and social life of mature men and women. So also with experiences involving attitudes of good will, co-operation, and service as these move forward toward the larger and more complicated class, social, and international adjustments and the service which the privileged groups can render the underprivileged or retarded groups. To find through research and experimentation a core of experience that satisfies this demand of the curriculum is one of the first con- cerns of curriculum builders. In the seventh place, those experiences should be selected that are social and shared. Human life, as is becoming more and more apparent, is a social affair. Its ideas, customs, moral standards, ideals, attitudes are socially created. As life advances to higher levels its enterprises are increasingly co- operative undertakings. The learner is being pre- pared to take his place in a social life. The basis for understanding, sympathy, and co-operation, which are the essentials required in all associated living, is common experience and co-operation in shared enterprises. One of the great objectives of all edu- cation, whether secular or religious, is to afford a basis for these social attitudes. Growing out of the very nature of religion, it is of absolutely funda- mental concern that religion should accentuate these social appreciations and attitudes. One of the great- est weaknesses of traditional education is that it has regarded the learning process as an individual affair of building up perceptions through memory, imagina- tion, and concepts to judgments. This is precisely what learning is not. It is, through and through, a WHAT CONSTITUTES THE CURRICULUM? 171 social process, and can only be carried on to the best advantage in a social situation. Instead of competition, education should aim at co-operation. Instead of cultivating attitudes of rivalry and antagonism it should cultivate attitudes of help- fulness. None of the attitudes of honesty are sacri- ficed by encouraging co-operation. Honesty may function just as effectively and vastly more humanly in situations involving mutual assistance. Finally, the experiences should be selected with reference to their requirement of the disciplined will. Real life is filled with situations that call for patience, perseverance, ability to turn aside from all distrac- tions, and a resolute, self-denying purpose to see things through. The discipline of the will will best take place in real situations of the delayed and frus- trating type. Real life has them in plenty. It is not necessary to resort to artificial situations in which to give the will gymnastic training. It is enough that in building the curriculum these actual and representative experiences shall find their normal place. The concern of the curriculum builders should be that these experiences be not overlooked or minimized. Here will spring up the most exacting discipline of all, and it will be the more rigid because it is self-imposed by persons who are deeply im- pressed with the value of certain outcomes in expe- rience. Once this body of actual experiences has been se- lected, the next step in building the curriculum will consist in the determination of the approaches in dealing with these experiences. The curriculum builder will need to return to the analysis of expe- rience and the factors that enter into its enrichment and control. When he does this he will find that the 172 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION subject-matter of the curriculum will consist of three elements. The first of these will consist of the elements that enter inio the situation rtself. If the response is to be discriminating, the learner will break the situa- tion up into its constituent factors. He must culti- vate the attitude of not responding to situations by wholes, as though they were simple. As a part of his analysis of the situation he will also factorize the response to discover what outcomes are possible, together with his decision as to which outcomes are desirable and which undesirable. He will seek to discover the essential factors and will neglect those that are irrelevant. Thus, one who is learning to drive an automobile must first familiarize himself with the elements in the situation which the mechanism of the automo- bile presents. In addition to the larger elements of chassis, power plant, body, and running gear, he will need to study with the utmost care the details of the control mechanism. He will take note of the steering apparatus, and the effect upon the wheels of the movement of the steering wheel in one direc- tion or the other. He will note the mechanism of the gear shift and what movements are required to place the motor in reverse, first speed, second speed, high speed, or neutral. He will scrutinize the pedals, noting that one is the clutch and the other is the brake. He will note the manner in which the pedals operate to throw the motor in gear and out of gear, and the tension and distance required to bring the brakes into operation. He will identify the accelera- tor. He will note the emergency brake, the direction, distance, and tension of its motion. He will study his instrument board in order to familiarize himself with WHAT CONSTITUTES THE CURRICULUM? 173 the indicators that inform him as to his ignition, battery, supply of oil, speed, and time of day. Perhaps in no other type of learning is it more neces- sary that the learner should use the utmost discrimi- nation in identifying each factor of the situation and in seizing upon the essential factor. And per- haps in no other type of situation are the conse- quences of right or wrong identifications and selec- tions more apparent—sometimes disastrously so. The second element in subject-matter will consist of the past experience of the learner. In the course of his own personal experience he has acquired certain knowledge and ideas through responding to identi- cal or similar situations, He has also built up cer- tain attitudes and habits in dealing with similar situations. If the new situation has much in com- mon with past situations, these habits will greatly further his adjustment to the new situation. If, on the other hand, the new situation is totally different from anything he has experienced in the past, the habits he possesses may be entirely useless to him, or they may even interfere with effective action in the present situation. A valuable part of past expe- rience, if it has been organized, is the development of certain purposes and points of view. How past experience functions in mastering the new situation is very apparent in the case of the person who is learning to drive the automobile. It is more than likely that he has seen automobiles before. He knows their main parts from having been around automobiles and having seen them handled. He may have ridden in them and seen them oper- ated. He has seen how they behave under the con- trol of a driver. Perhaps he himself has driven a car of another make. In that case everything he 174 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION has learned about an automobile through previous experience is all to his advantage. If he has never had any experience with an automobile, the learn- ing process has to begin at the bottom. If he has learned to drive another automobile with a different gear shift, his old habits will for a time interfere with his learning the new control. But if he has had experience with automobiles, his learning to drive the new machine is comparatively easy, be- cause his attention may be directed entirely to those few factors that are entirely new. The third element in subject-matter will be the experience of others. His own knowledge and expe- rience are limited. But through the accumulation of knowledge that has arisen out of the experience of a vast number of other persons dealing with similar situations his own knowledge is infinitely enriched and extended. While the learner may avail himself of the direct experience of his contemporaries who are passing through similar experiences, the greater part of the assistance he will derive from this source will come from the accumulated experience of the past. Owing to this fact, this element in the cur- riculum may be called, for the most part, historical subject-matter. It represents that focus of insight and meaning which the available experience of all time is capable of throwing upon the problem of the present situation. This is the point at which knowl- edge will, for the most part, enter into experience. The use of the experience of others is admirably illustrated in the case of our novice learning to run an automobile. Learning to drive is too difficult and slow and dangerous to be undertaken without an instructor. The learner, therefore, makes his first attempt at learning under the instruction of WHAT CONSTITUTES THE CURRICULUM? 175 an expert. The value of the instruction of the expert lies in the fact that he places at the disposal of the learner all of his exact and complete knowledge of automobile mechanisms. Before the learner takes the wheel, the expert points out to him the leading features of the mechanism so as to give a basis of understanding to the technic. He points out each factor of the situation—the wheel, the ignition con- trol, the gear shifts, the pedals, the starter, the ac- celerator, the emergency brake. Then, before the learner takes the wheel, the expert shows him how it is done. He answers every question the learner may wish to ask where there are points of unclear- ness. If the learner has an inquiring mind and is in the habit of going to the bottom of things he may have read any number of books on the history and construction of the gas engine and the various forms of locomotion. If so, he brings to his new experience a wealth of insight and understanding that adds meaning and zest to his taking over of the control of his own machine. In this respect his knowledge may equal that of the expert and his first attempts at control may be attended with unerring success. There is no point at which the employment of his- torical subject-matter may cease this side of all that is to be known about the various forms of locomo- tion and its history and function in an advancing civilization. In any case, however, the initiative begins and ends with the learner. Perhaps no illustration could better bring to light the experimental nature of learning. He must try out his analysis, the knowl- edge his own past experience has given him, and the knowledge that he has derived from others, including the experience that is recorded in books. In learn- 176 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION ing, absolutely nothing can take the place of trial and error. With repetition comes habit, which is only another word for executive skill. With the at- tainment of a reasonable amount of dexterity in handling the situation the process may be said to be mastered, and the mind moves on to some new ex- perience that waits for understanding and mastery. And so on from experience to experience, until a rich and meaningful life under the control of intelli- gence and purpose is attained. While the mastering of a mechanical process such as learning to drive an automobile, because it is relatively simple, makes obvious the character of the content of the curriculum and the steps involved in the learning process, precisely the same categories of content and the same procedure obtain in learn- ing how to respond in a Christian way to the situa- tions presented by personal, economic, and social life. How, for example, does one learn how to con- duct an industry according to the ideals of Jesus? Clearly, by taking account of the elements involved in the industry itself, by appealing to his own past experience, and by going to such historical sources as may be afforded by the experience that others have had in dealing with the problem of industry in a Christian way. The first step will consist in a discriminatmg anal- ysis of the industry itself. It will be perceived as a social process that supplies one of the fundamental needs of society by working raw materials into the usable forms of the finished product. As the learner analyzes the situation, he will perceive that two fun- damental factors are involved in the conduct of the industry—capital and labor. As he proceeds with his analysis he will note that capital contributes the WHAT CONSTITUTES THE CURRICULUM? 177 land, the plant, the machinery, and the raw materials. He will also note that labor contributes the human energy that is necessary to keep the plant in opera- tion, to feed the raw materials to the machines, and to take the finished product from them. As he presses his analysis from the Christian point of view further, he will discover that even underlying the economic factors of capital and labor are the still more funda- mental elements of the human factor and the material factor, each with its corresponding set of values. From such an analysis he will be able to deter- mine the possible outcomes in his conduct of the in- dustry. On the basis of the contribution of both labor and capital he will be able to determine whether or not the laborer as well as the capitalist should have a responsible share in the management of the in- dustry. On the same basis he will determine how the rewards of the industry in the form of profits and wages should be distributed among the various groups that contribute to the industry. On the basis of the function of the industry in society he will be able to decide whether the business shall be conducted as a service to society or as a means of exploiting society in the interest of private wealth. He will also be able to decide whether material values or human values shall be dominant in the conduct of the industry. This decision will materially affect his policy as to whether the plant shall be run for quan- tity production, with low wages, unsanitary work- ing conditions, unprotected machinery, and long hours, or whether the plant shall be run in the in- terest of the health, happiness, and improvement of the persons engaged in the business. Perhaps in no type of learning does the previous experience of the learner operate more effectively 178 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION than in learning how to conduct an industry in a Christian way. If the learner belongs to a highly class-conscious capitalistic group, immediately his prejudices and class interests come into play. He may bring to the situation fixed habits of economic thought and a more or less inflexible point of view. These attitudes may have been sharpened and made bitter by such struggles as are involved in strikes and lockouts. The fact that he has inherited the plant and great wealth besides may accentuate his interest in maintaining the status of things as they are. If, on the other hand, he has emerged from the labor group and has lived and worked under con- ditions that have outraged his sense of justice, free- dom, and the right of self-determination, he may bring to the situation a highly developed class-con- sciousness and wish to foment a revolution against the owners of the plant and the entire existing social order. Or, in either case, if capitalist or laborer has been brought under the influence of the Christian point of view and motive, he may see in the situation an opportunity to reorganize that particular seg- ment of industry on the basis of good will, co-opera- tion, mutual understanding, and service to society. Certainly, in such a situation the Christian indus- trialist will wish to search the historical experience of others in dealing with this or similar industrial problems. As a Christian he will search the life of Jesus for His explicit pronouncements and assump- tions regarding these fundamental human and ma- terial factors. He will acquaint himself with the sci- ence of economics in its various branches, since this problem lies in its specific field of scientific thought. He will search history for social and economic the- ories of improvement and for experiments that have WHAT CONSTITUTES THE CURRICULUM? 179 been made in the Christian reconstruction of various industries. He may even call in experts to make a survey of his plant and give him professional advice as to how he can reconstruct his business in such a way as make it more serviceable to society and a source of enrichment to the human beings who are associated with him in it. The experience curriculum will, then, consist of a body of carefully selected and organized experiences lifted out of the actual, ongoing life of the person or of the social group; of a critical study of the situa- tions themselves for their essential factors and their possible outcomes; of the ideas, ideals, attitudes, and habits that have emerged from the past experience of the learner and of the vast stores of historical sub- ject-matter that have descended from generation to generation and that contain in organized and avail- able forms the best that the race has thought and felt and purposed. One will miss the time-honored text-books and schedules of things to be learned. Instead one will find a body of experience that is feel- ing its way from point to point of meaning and con- trol as it moves out into the uncharted areas that skirt its ever-widening frontiers, and a rich body of source material in which the learner may see his own experience reflected and interpreted, and by the aid of which he may deepen his own insights into reality, widen the range of his own outlook upon life, and bring his own experience under conscious and certain control in the light of the most dependable knowledge, the worthiest ideals, and the highest purposes of the race. XII THE ANALYSIS OF EXPERIENCE Since the curriculum consists in bringing the actual experience of the learner under conscious and pur- posive direction, the first step in the construction of the curriculum will be an analysis of that experience. This is true of experience in general; and, since growth is a primary characteristic of persons, es- pecially in the earlier period of life, there must be an analysis of experience at each of the various stages of growth. The discovery and analysis of the experience of growing persons is a problem of research. Significant fragmentary studies have been made in this field; but for the most part, so far as the experiences of the learner have been taken into account, the un- checked assumptions of persons dealing with chil- dren and young people have been relied upon. Manifestly, this is an inadequate basis for a thor- oughgoing procedure in curriculum-making based upon the conception of the curriculum as redirected and enriched experience. What is needed is a com- plete listing of a sufficient number of experiences to give an accurate picture of the experience of grow- ing persons, the analysis of these experiences, and their statistical mterpretation for curricular use. This is an extremely difficult task, and one that can only be successfully managed by the use of the pre- cise procedure of technical research. There are several methods of approach, of widely differing value. By far the least useful is the ques- 180 THE ANALYSIS OF EXPERIENCE 181 tionnaire method. The questionnaire is highly se- lective because the persons to whom it is likely to be sent are those who for one reason or another are likely to be more or less conspicuous on account of the characteristic that the investigator seeks to study. The selection is further accentuated by the fact that of the persons to whom questionnaires are addressed only those of a certain type are likely to reply, and that for the reason that they are particularly inter- ested in the characteristic which the search is de- signed to discover. Many persons shrink from anal- yzing their experiences, especially if these experiences are to pass under the scrutiny of others. It is almost certain that types of experience, particularly those of an intimate personal character or those that are likely to invite disapproval, will not be reported. Even the Census Report is subject to very consid- erable sources of error on matters respecting age or such abnormalities as feeble-mindedness or insanity. The result is that data collected by means of the questionnaire method are certain to be heavily weighted with certain types of experience, while whole masses of experience are likely to be omitted altogether. In addition to its being highly selective both as respects the persons to whom it is addressed and the persons replying, it is loaded with sugges- tion. The inquiries of the questionnaire are likely to take the form of more or less direct questions. These are likely to have the result of giving a set of mind to the correspondent that causes him un- consciously to overlook equally significant, and in some cases even more significant, experiences. It is extremely difficult for the investigator not uncon- sciously to betray his own assumptions so as to sug- gest certain types of reply. The result is that the is CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION investigator is more likely to get the information he is looking for than the objective data. Besides, the use of the questionnaire is limited to the upper age- . groups. In addition to being physically unable to record their experiences, children do not sufficiently understand their experiences to record them. This difficulty increases as the investigator approaches the early years until the method becomes wholly unusable. The personal interview is somewhat more reliable, since it gives opportunity for the investigator to ask questions and to follow up leads that appear promis- ing, as well as to verify reports concerning which he may be in doubt. But it also is subject to the limita- tions of a high degree of selection and suggestion, for the reasons outlined above, in addition to being limited to the higher age-groups. If the question- naire is used, it should be accompanied by the per- sonal interview, where possible. Introspection is of limited value for this purpose. Only persons of mature years can use it at all, and then only safely when they have had training in laboratory technic. This method becomes espe- cially misleading when an attempt is made on the part of the mature persons to recall the experiences of childhood. It invariably happens under these circumstances that childhood experiences are colored by the intervening experience, so that one reads back into the earlier experience meanings and motives that can only come with years of maturity. There is, however, an approach appropriate to persons of relatively mature years that uses one form of the introspective method—the personal diary. Where such diaries exist, especially if they have been written with another object in mind, they may well THE ANALYSIS OF EXPERIENCE 183 serve as an invaluable source of knowledge of expe- rience and particularly of the subjective elements that enter into it—what one thinks and how one feels about it. But here again the factor of selection is particularly operative, since very few people are given to keeping diaries, and these are likely to be per- sons who, in addition to having unusual experiences, are given to dwelling upon their subjective attitudes and interpretations. Consequently, the few diaries that are kept would furnish an utterly insufficient basis for an accurate and complete picture of normal experience among the many. The method upon which almost sole dependence must be placed is that of wide-spread objective re- cording of situations and responses. This method has the advantage of being appropriate for all ages, from the youngest child that is wholly unconscious of his acts or their meanings to the aged for whom experience is freighted with memory, insight, and reflection. If properly organized, research conducted on this basis will be unselective. It will furnish a body of data that can be dealt with according to reliable statistical procedure. It will have the ad- vantage of identifying specific situations with spe- cific responses, which furnishes the data most usable by modern psychological technic. It comes near- est to eliminating assumptions and interpretations that unconsciously tend to make the record an obser- vation of the observer rather than of the observed. The greatest care must be taken to see that the observations extend over the whole range of the learner’s experience. For this reason the observa- tions of the same children and young people should be made by different competent groups, such as parents, teachers in the secular school, teachers in 184 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION the school of religion, playground supervisors, and librarians, as well as by special investigators. Another form of record that yields great promise in this field is that used with success by Professor W. W. Charters in his job-analysis technic. By this method some unit of experience is lifted out and carefully analyzed by a study of each activity in- volved. In this way an hour-by-hour analysis is made of the things done by a sales clerk, a private secretary, the manipulator of a machine, or an execu- tive, and the results recorded. A detailed record of the activities involved in any one of these occupa- tions is made the basis for technical training for that occupation. Just as the activities that are involved in the pursuit of a vocation are analyzed, so the home activities of the child may be broken up and analyzed into their constituent units. So also with secular school activities, playground activities, church ac- tivities, and the entire round of the learner’s expe- rience. In order to secure a dependable account of the experience of growing persons, three types of study need to be made. The first is a study of the ex- periences of homogeneous groups. Homogeneity is a necessary consideration, since experiences will fall into certain more or less definite types. The experi- ences of children and young people in a community composed entirely of native-born of native parents will differ very materially from the experiences of children of foreign-born parents in the Italian quarter or in the ghetto of a large city or of children of a mixed population where race contacts and frequently race conflicts are ever-present facts. The children of the poorer sections of a metropolitan centre will have decidedly different experiences from the chil- THE ANALYSIS OF EXPERIENCE 185 dren who live in the affluence of the avenues and the boulevards. Children who live in the open country will have widely different experiences from those who live in the crowded streets of urban centres. Homogeneity is of great educational significance, since within certain ranges of like-mindedness group education can be carried on successfully. If, how- ever, experience is too heterogeneous, it breaks up into more than one type or, worse still, shows no type at all. Where the range of heterogeneity is too great, there can be no group education. This con- sideration was much less important when the cur- riculum was thought of in terms of materials. But when experience is made the basis of the curriculum, there must be a sufficient basis of common experience if persons are to be taught together. Given homogeneity, there are distinct advantages to be derived from studies of groups. For one thing, they give a sufficiently broad basis for statistical treatment, which ceases to be reliable when the num- bers are small. Secondly, group data furnish under better conditions than are otherwise possible the two basic facts that are necessary for the conduct of edu- cation from any point of view, namely, resemblance and individual difference. The former furnishes the basis of the common elements of experience that are the prerequisites of like-mindedness, understanding, and co-operation; the latter provides for the unique elements in education that are essential for the devel- opment of originality and the particular qualities of individual persons. The chief danger to be guarded against in the study of groups is that the common elements of experience may obscure the individual elements, so that the selection of the experiences for curricular use will move on the dead level of averages. 186 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION The second type of investigation is the intensive and continuous study of normal individuals. There are several unique advantages of this method. For one thing, the record will be much more inclusive and representative as far as the individual is con- cerned. It also gives a continuity of record that no other form of investigation can supply. By reason of this continuity of record it is possible to trace with much greater clearness the relation of ante- cedents and consequents in an unfolding experience. A much greater familiarity with the whole of the subject’s life makes it possible to take account of the accompanying and conditioning factors, such as back- grounds and temperament. In such studies it is also much easier to detect attitudes and motives than in cases where the contacts are less personal and con- tinuous. The thing to be guarded against in such in- vestigations is that the findings should be allowed to be unduly weighted on the personal side of experience as distinguished from its common aspect. This latter consideration, however, is considerably compensated for by the statistical fact that if the individual is normal his experience will, as the term suggests, be representative, when proper allowances are made for variation, of the group of which he is a member. In this way, if the person’s studies are selected for their representative qualities, the intensive study of types may yield more important results for the curriculum than any other type of approach. The continuous type consisting of the observation of growing per- sons is a long-time undertaking. It involves a faith- ful record covering many stages of personal develop- ment. It is the sort of recording that can probably best be done by intelligent parents who have such a keen appreciation of the value of such records as THE ANALYSIS OF EXPERIENCE 187 will keep them at the task over a long period of years. | A third type of investigation is the unrestricted, promiscuous type. The experiences that it records will be chosen without any reference to continuity, backgrounds, accompanying circumstances, or the membership of the subject in any group. Its method of sampling will be based wholly on chance. There are some distinct advantages in this approach. It very greatly broadens the base of observation. If the number of observations is sufficiently large it will tend to reveal the larger, more fundamental prob- lems that are common to persons living in different groups and under widely varying conditions. Its limitations are equally obvious. It is impossible in promiscuous observations to know the social and intellectual and cultural backgrounds of the person observed. It is equally impossible to form any judg- ment as to how far a response is modified by well- marked trends in disposition. It is next to impossible to be sure of any attitudes or motives that may enter into the response. It is impossible to trace the con- nections between antecedents and their consequents beyond a very narrow range. In this type of study the observation is practically limited to the situation and the response. And, considering the source of error that is present the moment the observer at- tempts to deal with attitudes and motives, there is something to be said for this procedure. It is clear that the most reliable results will be de- rived from the use of all three types of investigation. Each has its advantages and its limitations. The most satisfactory results will be obtained when each is used as a supplement to and check upon the other two. 188 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION The foregoing considerations as to what consti- tutes the curriculum indicate the items for which investigation into the experience of growing persons should seek. First. It should secure an adequate listing and description of the situations which normal life pre- sents and the responses that persons make to them. The description should be accurate, inclusive of all the factors, and wholly objective. In recording a situation no attempt should be made by the observer to interpret it or to suggest an appropriate response. The observer should record accurately and fully the response made to the situation, without interpreta- tion or evaluation of the response. Where it is possi- ble, any delayed result of the experience should be recorded, though the observer should be careful that there is a sequential bond between the situation and the delayed result. The record of situations and their responses should include, as far as possible, the contributory factors, such as the home life of the subject, his school envi- ronment, his playground associates, and such other group relations as he may sustain. It should record his social, economic, racial, educational, and health conditions, together with any other factors that may have any bearing upon the situation. The record should take account of temperamental factors— whether the subject is active or passive, alert or list- less, quick or slow in his reactions, and whether his reactions are emotionally strong or weak. As far as possible, the record should take account of any ma- terial antecedent factors. These, together with the remote outcomes, take on increasing significance in view of the importance which modern psychology attaches to psychoanalysis. The outcome of some THE ANALYSIS OF EXPERIENCE 189 present experiences may have its explanation in some remote experience that has long remained hid- den in the depths of the subconscious. Here again, the observer should be on his guard against reading into the record his own interpretation. Particularly in such items, no matter what their laboratory value may be, the record should rigidly adhere to the prin- ciple of objectivity. Second. It should seek for central tendencies and individual differences. Under laboratory treatment it will be found that these data will conform to well-established statistical laws. In so far as the persons observed are normal and are members of homogeneous groups, their experiences will tend to cluster around certain well-defined types. This ten- dency will reveal the common elements in experience. Upon these common elements the procedure in deal- ing with groups must be based. On the other hand, their experiences will tend to scatter away from the central tendency. This will reveal the extent and the character of individual differences. Upon these differ- ences the flexibility of the curriculum will depend. The details of this item must be deferred until a later chapter. It must at least be recorded here as one of the primary items for which the research laboratory will seek. Third. The laboratory treatment of situations should disclose the possible alternatives in the out- comes of situations selected for curriculum use. The recorded outcomes themselves will afford a good be- ginning in this discovery. But the determination of outcomes will, on the whole, be the result of expert opinion. To the research expert, situations may hold out any number of possible outcomes that might not at all be apparent to the immature person actually 199 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION making the response. The curriculum-builder will wish to know what the possible outcomes are, not only that they may be made apparent to the learner when these situations are set in the curriculum, but also in order that negative reactions may be had, when thought advisable, to undesirable outcomes as well as positive reactions to desirable outcomes. While, no doubt, the central emphasis should be placed upon the positive aspects of conduct, real life presents continual necessity of forming negative judgments and purposes. Fourth. The laboratory will need to determine what, on the whole, the Christian outcome would be in each of the selected situations. It is not intended to suggest that this can be done in anything like a fixed sense by one person for another. But in the greater number of the typical situations which actual life presents it is quite possible to determine the gen- eral outlines of what the Christian outcome should be. These outcomes would be determined chiefly by the consensus of expert opinion. That judgment, it is needless to remark, should rest upon the more evi- dent teachings of Jesus and his historic interpreters. Obviously, any attempt to formulate outcomes of situations will necessitate a complete shift from the theological to the practical point of view. The last thing which religious educators should wish to do would be to impose traditional theological dogmas upon growing persons. But to fit the ideals of Jesus as determinants into the practical conduct of life and to develop certain fundamental convictions is to rediscover the Christianity of Jesus as a way of life. Fifth. The statistical treatment of the data re- sulting from observation should reveal the specific points at which emphasis needs to be placed in re- THE ANALYSIS OF EXPERIENCE 191 ligious education. This should be determined by the principle of frequency. Two considerations emerge at this point. One is that, other things being equal, the frequency with which certain types of experience appear should determine the relative amount of time and energy that should be devoted to bringing those types of experience into clear understanding and under direction. The second is that the points at which the greatest difficulty appears or errors in judgment or choice occur most frequently should receive a proportionate amount of emphasis. The proper distribution of emphasis will result from the reconciliation of these two considerations. The fact that an experience appears with great frequency does not necessarily mean that it should receive a great amount of emphasis in the curriculum, if the choice is clear and likely usually to be rightly made. It is sufficient that such situations be raised clearly into consciousness, be reflected upon, and be re- sponded to in a Christian way, and then be reduced as quickly as possible to habit. If the response is rightly made, the frequency of the recurrence of the situation in experience will itself insure its permanent fixation in conduct. Not so with the difficult, unclear, or uncertain situations. These will need to be held in consciousness, repeatedly reflected upon, and re- sponded to until a reliable and permanent bond has been formed between the situation and a Christian response. Finally, the research laboratory will need to inves- tigate the whole range of historical subject-matter for suitable source materials to which the learner may go for the understanding and control of his expe- riences. ‘This will include not only biblical material, but materials from nature, literature, the sciences, 192 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION social relations, history, art—in fact the whole sweep of the record of human experience. The experiences that he would interpret religiously are no longer ac- tivities limited to ecclesiastical occasions and insti- tutions; they are the experiences of his total, every- day life. For the understanding of these exneriences he will need all the light he can get from whatever source. But, of course, he will derive most assistance from those rich deposits of religious experience that he will find in the Bible, in the history of the King- dom of God, and in the rich biography of men and women in whose lives the spiritual values have been the deepest and most enduring realities. The curriculum itself will be most useful in that it will offer suggestions and stimulate the resourcefulness of both learner and teacher. The selection of situa- tions, source material, and approaches will be some- thing like a road map that will enable the learner and the teacher to get their bearings. The curriculum will serve its highest purpose if it helps the teacher to search out the learner’s own experiences and lift them up into the light of available sources and help him get the mastery over them. The danger is that teachers will take over suggestions that are intended to stimulate and guide and will use them as the older types of materials have been used—as more or less rigid and formal prescriptions. This danger can only be avoided by bringing teachers to a vital conception of the curriculum and by developing in them a technic for handling real life-situations through an adequate programme of teacher-training. What is here pro- posed is not that existing materials shall be made more interesting and vital by revamping the method of handling those materials. The problem cuts more deeply than that. Any improvement in method that THE ANALYSIS OF EXPERIENCE 198 would vitalize existing materials would, to be sure, be a definite gain. But what is here proposed is a complete shift in fundamental approach that calls for a fresh procedure in the selection and handling of materials. This procedure begins and ends in the experience of the learner. XI HISTORICAL SUBJECT—MATTER SUBJECT-MATTER, as we have seen under the discus- sion of what constitutes the curriculum, consists of three elements—the elements in the situation itself, the past experience of the learner, and the cumulative experience of the race. The last of these was desig- nated as historical subject-matter. The supreme emphasis that has been placed upon historical sub- ject-matter in traditional education, and the relative place of importance that it must occupy in any kind of educational procedure, require that 1t receive more detailed consideration. The essential character of historical subject-matter lies in the fact that it is a record of racial experience. At one time every bit of historical subject-matter belonged to the first or second elements in subject- matter; namely, to the factors in the situations them- selves or to the past experience of persons in respond- ing to those situations. Knowledge, however, that proved successful in the satisfactory completion of responses was seized upon, communicated to others, and handed down from one generation to another. At first these traditions were wholly oral; later, when writing was invented, they became permanent in the form of literary records. In time the invention of printing not only rendered these traditions perma- nent but increased their accuracy and facilitated their use on a wide-spread scale. It has been by the gradual process of accretion that the content of every one of the present bodies of science has been built up. 194, HISTORICAL SUBJECT-MATTER 195 Text-books on science are, in reality, note-books recording observations and experiments, with results and procedures. History is nothing more than a record of those significant experiences through which various human groups and the race itself have passed. Literature and art are the accumulated expression in forms of enduring beauty of the best that men have thought and felt. Philosophy is an articulate record of man’s intellectual struggle to find meaning and consistency in his world. Institutions are, for the most part, inarticulate records of social experiments in the conduct of life. It is this origin of knowledge that gives to it its value in helping persons or groups to understand their own experience and to gain control of it. The experience of the individual or the isolated group is too narrow to enable them to deal most successfully with the ever-new problems with which they are con- fronted. But when the problem of the individual or the group is held up in the light of the experience of other individuals or groups, the present problem lends itself much more easily to understanding and solution. A youth is much less likely to blunder in the solution of a problem that involves a moral issue if he is made aware by the experience of others of how different decisions have worked out and of the atti- tude of worthy men who have thought upon these outcomes and have expressed their judgment in the form of ideals and standards of conduct, just as a man is much less likely to go astray in his judgment on an economic issue if he is thoroughly familiar with the science of economics. For the same reason it is only when this racial knowledge is immersed in present experience that it proves effective in the enrichment and control of experience. As long as 196 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION knowledge remains dissociated from actual life-situ- ations it tends to remain formal. It is when it enters into experience as understanding and control that it makes a difference in the conduct of life. A man may have a perfectly orthodox, catechetically derived doctrine that God is his father and all men are his brothers without its affecting in the remotest degree his practical relations with his fellow men in business, in industry, or in politics. But when the idea arises in his mind as a compelling conviction and becomes a working principle with him, it conditions and motivates all his relations with his fellow men. The form in which historical subject-matter exists varies in the greatest possible degree from the knowl- edge of current experience. The knowledge of current experience is genetic; that is, one experience leads immediately to another in such a way that the latter is a direct outcome of the former or is in some way im- mediately related to it. In this way the knowledge that is derived from current experience comes to the learner bit by bit im a series of sequences determined by the nature of the experience itself. The child’s knowledge of geography is normally the result of a process of discovery. It begins with the spot where he lives. I first expansion is out through the immediately surrounding neighborhood. Trips into the country bring him into contact with fields and woodlands and, perhaps, with small bodies of water. A railway journey may acquaint him with valleys, plains, and rivers. A vacation with his parents may acquaint him with the mountains or the sea. His reading may introduce him to distant parts of his own or other lands, as also may his interest in learn- ing the sources of the articles offered for sale in the stores of his community. But, whether by excursion HISTORICAL SUBJ ECT-MATTER 197 or reading or inquiry into the sources of food and clothing or by interest in manners and customs, he comes upon his physical world bit by bit by a proc- ess of discovery. So also by a process of exploration he comes upon one aiter another of the facts of his natural world—the habits of pets, bird lore, the va- riations of plant life, the habits of insects. Historical subject-matter, on the contrary, exists in cumulative form. All the fragments of knowledge that have been abstracted from experience have been brought forward in a total and growing mass of knowledge. Through accretions it has grown from a meagre content to an immense volume. It is sym- bolized by the modern library where there is assem- bled in one place all that is known about the world in which we live, including ourselves. Rapid as has been the growth of knowledge in the past, it is overwhelm- ingly rapid under modern conditions. Into this store- house of knowledge there are constantly pouring streams of books and magazines that report the latest findings in science or the creations of literature and art. So great has become the accumulation of knowl- edge that it has become a hopeless undertaking for any one mind to attempt to master any considerable specialized field of it, to say nothing of the whole. To the immature learner this accumulated knowledge presents a bewildering mass. Historical subject-matter exists in systematized form. It is minutely classified under logical categor- ies, divisions, and subheads, so that it is possible to locate every fragment of human knowledge under its appropriate heading. This logical arrangement is symbolized by the organization of a modern library with its card index, its departments and subdivi- sions, in which each record of knowledge is easily 198 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION accessible. Or it is like the department store which takes the articles of sale from the receiving depart- ment and distributes them according to floors, de- partments, aisles, and counters so that the floor- walker can easily and quickly direct the prospective purchaser to the specific article he wishes to find. Furthermore, historical subject-matter exists for the most part, in symbols. Some of this inheritance is preserved in monuments, like the pyramids of Egypt; some of it is embodied in works of art, like the Parthenon or the Greek pediments; some of it exists in institutions, like the English system of government; some of it consists In impressive and influential customs and ways of looking at things which are handed down as intangible possessions from generation to generation. But for the most part we are dependent upon written records for these treasures. Writing, as nothing else has done, has made possible a record of racial experience that is un- failing in its accuracy and permanency. For this rea- son the vastly greater portion of the knowledge that has descended from the past is accessible in books. It is out of the form in which historical subject- matter for the most part exists that there has arisen one of the most fundamental and difficult problems of education. The way in which the immature mind comes upon knowledge in experience and the way in which knowledge exists in books are utterly different. Knowledge for the learner arises out of experience as discovery; as a racial inheritance it is found in ac- cumulated and logical form in books. Education has properly shown its dependence upon these rich stores of racial knowledge. But it has historically been extremely difficult for education to recognize the knowledge of books for what it is—a faithful \ HISTORICAL SUBJECT-MATTER 199 record of the experience of the past. The tendency has proven all but irresistible to substitute the record for the thing itself. It has happened repeatedly and consistently that educators have fallen into the view that it is the function of education to transmit these inheritances to the learner, or, as one of the foremost exponents of this view puts it, gradually to adjust those who are being educated to these spiritual inher- itances o the race. But this is precisely what the function of education in the highest sense should not be. Education should seek to adjust the immature to their material and social world by the aid of these inheritances from the past. Historical subject-matter is a means, not an end. The result. of substituting books for experience has uniformly been the removal of education from life and the consequent formalizing of learning into an institutional process of instruction. This lays upon the educator the problem of how to make and keep education a vital experience. This can only be accomplished successfully when the rich stores of historical subject-matter are thrown down into the forms of experience from which they arose; that is, when the approach to them has its origin in the vital experience of the learner and assumes the form of going to them as rich storehouses of source material for the interpretation and direction of present expe- rience. It should be understood that the problem is not one of vitalizing historical materials as materials. The entire point of view needs to be reconstructed so that its focus will rest, not upon materials of any sort whatsoever, but upon furthering the experience of the learner. When the shift of viewpoint has been wholly accomplished, the materials will be promptly and completely vitalized. 200 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION Historical subject-matter varies in the greatest de- gree in educational value. It must, therefore, be se- lected with reference to its availability for educa- tional uses. The primary consideration that determines its edu- cational value, apart from its archeological interest as a record of the past, 1s the degree of correspondence between the experience of the past and present expe- rience. The psychological basis for this selective fac- tor was discussed in connection with the origin and function of knowledge. This means that experience is not valuable educationally just because it is experience. It must have arisen out of a situation that has common elements with the present situa- tion if it is to throw light upon the present situation and assist the learner in getting control of it. This criterion at once renders a considerable amount of human experience worthless except as a log of the human voyage. As such, no experience can cease to have value as a historical record of human thought, feeling, or achievement. And that, under certain circumstances, may be a perfectly good reason for becoming familiar with it. But the business of edu- cation is so pressing, the time is so limited, and the requirements of current experience are so exacting that it will be wiser to erect educational policies upon the use of those forms of past experience that are capable of furthering present experience. A second consideration consists in the fact that historical subject-matter varies in value in religious education according to the social, ethical, and spirit- ual levels upon which it orginated. While this is true of all historical subject-matter whatsoever, it is particularly true of those sources that are to be found in the literatures of the Hebrew and Chris- \ HISTORICAL SUBJECT-MATTER 201 tian religions, since these literatures are preemi- nently the source materials for Christian education. The religion of the Old Testament passed through a long historical development. When the Hebrews began their career they were a nomadic tribal group passing through the characteristic kinship social organization. In no historical source material is there to be found a more perfect illustration of the tribal organization of society than among the early He- brews. In an unbroken historical sequence they passed through the nomadic stage of culture, through a period of migration and conquest, through a period of settlement upon a land whose people they had dispossessed, through the period of nation-building, and finally through the period of national disintegra- tion. In no religion whose literature affords a con- tinuous history of its development do we possess a more perfect record of the changes that came over its spiritual concepts and its ethical ideals through all these stages of national development than in the religion of the Hebrews. As the result of these changes in the economic and social functions of the nation there are present at the various levels of Old Testament religion widely vary- ing conceptions of God. During the nomadic life of the Hebrews, Jehovah was thought of as a tribal God, following the tribe as it moved from place to place in search of better pasturage and taking his place among the gods of other tribes, whose existence they never questioned. The extremely primitive concep- tion of God is naively reflected in the utter astonish- ment of Jacob that he should find Jehovah at distant Bethel as well as in Beer-sheba, the habitat of his tribe. During this period the Hebrews thought of Jehovah as possessing those attributes that fitted in 202 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION with the life of a wandering and shepherd people. During the period of migration and conquest Jehovah assumed in their thought a militaristic character. It was during this time that he acquired the name “Je- hovah of Hosts,” meaning the God of the army in bat- tle. The Ark of the Covenant was carried into battle as a symbol of the presence of Jehovah. Campaigns were waged in his name and the spoils of victory de- voted to him. When the Hebrews settled on the land they had conquered, a profound change came over their conception of God. The thing happened with them that has always happened in the case of a con- quering people—the God of the victorious Hebrews assimilated the characteristics and functions of the deities of the dispossessed peoples. The God of the herdsmen and the God of battle now assumed the func- tions of agriculture and the vineyard. His functions as an agricultural deity are beautifully celebrated in the 65th Psalm. Numerous items in the ritual of worship had their origin in this period as others had their origin in the nomadic and militaristic periods. When, in the eighth century, the Hebrews were caught up in international relations that arose from their being situated between Babylonia and Egypt, the two dominant world powers, and became in- volved in their conflicts, the concept of God was universalized and ethicized and spiritualized. With the writing prophets God was the only true and living God and the God of the whole world, ruling in righteousness. In the period of national disin- tegration, when the political structure and the re- ligious cultus fell into ruins, the individual emerged in personal and responsible relations before God. The God of Jesus was a Heavenly Father in whom resided the loftiest qualities of ethical love. Out of HISTORICAL SUBJECT-MATTER 203 this historic development emerges, for the religious educator, the problem: which of these changing and enlarging conceptions of God shall be made available to the immature learner of the Christian way of life? Shall it be the God of the nomadic tribe, the mili- taristic God of the conquering Hebrews, or the God of the prophets and of Jesus? Or shall he present them all in such a way that the historic process in the enlargement of the conception of God will be apparent ? The religious educator encounters the same kind of a problem when he undertakes to evaluate the ethical ideals of the Old Testament. The morality of the early Hebrews bore the unmistakable character- istics of tribal morality. It was at first customary and unreflecting. Moral obligations were binding within the kinship group; outside the group no obligations were recognized. Well on in their history polygamous domestic relations that would not be tolerated in a modern Christian community were accepted without protest or even comment. The ruthlessness with which the victorious Hebrews treated their van- quished enemies either by destroying the males and marrying the females or reducing them to the status of concubines or by enslaving the conquered, can be paralleled in the annals of militarism throughout all history. Some of the vindictive psalms manifest a spirit of revenge that Jesus explicitly and emphati- cally condemned. Jesus Himself was very careful to discriminate between these ethical standards of the older and of the newer order. The religious educator dare not be less discriminating. What shall be his attitude toward these obsolete ethical standards? Shall they be presented to the immature mind at all? If they are presented, shall it be m order to secure 204 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION negative reactions to them? Or shall it be in order to convey to the learner the lifting of Christian standards of conduct away from these more primitive levels? What has been said concerning the various levels of spiritual ideas and ethical ideals is equally applica- ble to the differing spiritual outlook of certain por- tions of the Old Testament. The narrow nationalism, the selfish exclusiveness, and the haughty superiority of the Hebrew contrast in the most striking manner with the universal spirit of the author of the Book of Jonah and the loving and serving outlook of Jesus upon the whole life of mankind. In these days of expanded human relationships that call for the widening outlook, the deepening of understanding and brotherly sympathy, and the humanizing of in- ternational relations it ought not to be difficult to determine the relative value of these types of source material for religious educational use. A third consideration lies in the fact that the religious ideas, the ethical ideals, and the spirit- ual outlook of source material must be evaluated with reference to the needs of the type of social organization they are intended to serve. This also is true in a particular sense of biblical sources. The religious ideas and ethical ideals of a primitive tribal folk or of a militaristic autocracy are scarcely suitable for the spiritualization and motivation of a society that is in process of being organized upon a democratic basis. Democracy calls for different mental patterns. Equally important for the modern mind is the emergence on so large a scale of in- ternational relations and common interests that cut straight across the older national and racial boundaries. Society is daily presenting new sets of HISTORICAL SUBJECT-MATTER 205 relations and problems that arise out of these en- larged relations. They call for the reorganization of loyalties by which the smaller and secondary loyal- ties that united men into smaller conflicting groups shall give place to the larger and more fundamental loyalties that unite men into comprehensive groups that are capable of mutual understanding and co- operation in the interest of the highest ends of social living on a world scale. New forms of sin that were never dreamed of in the relatively simple pastoral life of ancient Israel have emerged in the new social situations and interracial and international relations of human groups. The industrialization of society, the socialization of practically every aspect of human life, the drag of materialistic achievement and technic upon spiritual. ideals, the frightful and staggering problem of war—these are some of the unspeakably larger demands that modern society is making upon religious concepts and spiritual ideals. A religious education that will function in the life of modern man must be thought through in terms of these larger and more intricate social situations. Nothing short of the universal outlook, the lofty spiritual idealism, and the searching ethics of Jesus and the prophets can effectively set religion as a dynamic force in the midst of modern life. It is true that the mere fact of historic development in the content and outreach of religious experience has very great educative value. But in the use of these materials it must be made clear to the learner that there has been this ethical and spiritual advance from the lower toward the higher religious levels. One of the things to be avoided in religious education is a static view of religious experience. The clear conviction that God has been creating the higher 206 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION values of life in and through the experience of men is one of the chief ways of arriving at a vital under- standing of God and of opening up the unlimited possibilities of religious experience in and through which God is still working. The supreme criterion for the evaluation of all historical subject-matter in religious education is the degree in which it approximates the mind of Jesus and furthers the progressive realization of the ideals of the Kingdom of God in the larger and more difficult human situations of our times. The expe- rience of Jesus represents the highest reach of the spirit in its attainment of ethical, social, and religious values. It may, therefore, be accepted as the norm of religious experience in those who are committed to the Christian way of life. He lived His life on the basis of certain assumptions. These were not only valid for His own experience; they are valid for all who would live as He lived. That historical subject- matter, therefore, is of the highest value that helps the learner to discover the assumptions and convic- tions upon which He lived His life and did His work, His interpretations of the relations and functions of life, and the motives that impelled Him to action. Next in value to that which enables the learner to discover the mind of Jesus in relation to the funda- mental problems of life is that which records those adventures in living that have been made by men who have acted upon motives and convictions that approximated those upon which He grounded His career. Valuable as is the record of religious experi- ence of any sort whatever, it is its approximation to the experience of Jesus that gives it its distinctively Christian quality. XIV METHOD AS WIDENING EXPERIENCE WHEN the curriculum is conceived in terms of en- riched and controlled experience the traditional sharp distinction between subject-matter and method tends to become indistinct and entirely to disappear. To be sure, subject-matter and method continue to remain distinguishable in thought; in practice they merge into different aspects of the same situation- response process. Each becomes meaningless and insignificant without the other. Subject-matter and method are inseparable. Method is determined by the relation of knowledge to experience. Under the discussion of the origin and function of knowledge we discovered that there are two aspects to that relation. On the one hand, knowledge arises as meaning out of experience. It is from that source that all the great bodies of his- torical subject-matter have come. On the other hand, knowledge re-enters experience as a factor of control. It is through the use of knowledge as an in- strument of interpretation and control that the indi- vidual or the group comes to understand experience and seize upon the factors that direct it. That is to say, method is determined by the manner in which persons meet and respond to situations. Since these two processes have been before us in detail as proc- esses it remains only to point out in this connection their evident implications for method in the practice of education. When the viewpoint regarding the curriculum is shifted from materials to be taught to the experience 207 208 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION of the learner that is to be brought under his own conscious direction, the traditional “steps” in teach- ing immediately undergo a complete reconstruction. The ‘“‘five formal steps in teaching” that were elaborated by the Herbartians rested upon a three- fold point of view. They were designed for use in transmitting effectively the accumulated knowledge of the past. As a consequence, they had their be- ginning and end in subject-matter, and subject- matter of a particular sort—historical subject-matter. As a corollary of this first consideration, they were designed primarily for the use of the teacher, not for the learner. Furthermore, and in conformity with both of these considerations, they were designed for the guidance of a process that was authoritative and entirely external to the learner. The theory that was back of the procedure was that the mind of the learner was being “formed” by forces and processes entirely outside himself and in which he had no part. Under this approach the initiative lay wholly with the instructor. Objectives were set for the learner, materials were selected entirely without reference to his choice, and responsibility rested in other hands than his. His part in the whole procedure was a passive and memoriter response. The “five formal steps’? that grew out of these viewpoints determined the traditional procedure in instruction. They were: (1) preparation, by which the instructor called up knowledge already present in the mind of the learner as an apperceptive basis for the new knowledge; (2) presentation, by which the instructor presented the new knowledge in a clear and impressive manner; (3) assimilation, by which the new knowledge was interrelated with the other bodies of knowledge already present in the mind; (4) METHOD AS WIDENING EXPERIENCE 209 generalization, by which the learner was led to form accurate concepts and attach correct definitions to them; and (5) application, by which the newly acquired knowledge was applied in new situations. This last step is the basis for the slogan of the older methodologist, ““No impression without expression.” It is the basis for the so-called “‘expressional work”’ that has been and is now so widely used in religious education. This Herbartian methodology has dominated for a long time, and still dominates, the practice of edu- cation, both secular and religious. Around it has been developed a technic of teaching that has been unusually successful in imparting knowledge. Around it has grown up a standardized type of school archi- tecture with its desk for the teacher, who presides in authority over the classroom, and its formal rows of seats in which pupils learn their lessons and from which they recite back to the teacher. When the focus of attention is shifted to the re- direction of experience, the Herbartian methodology becomes practically useless. Dealing at first hand with experience requires that a new set of “‘steps”’ be formulated. The assumptions and viewpoint that govern the nature and order of these steps have been set forth in the discussions in the foregoing chapters. These steps rest upon the nature of experience and the technic of its control. When these findings are trans- lated into procedure they yield the following steps: (1) the analysis of the situation which confronts the learn- er, with a view to discovering its essential elements; (2) a search for the possible outcomes of the response, with an evaluation of each outcome; (8) a search of the past experience of the learner for the ideas, atti- tudes, ideals, and habits that have any bearing upon 210 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION the present situation; (4) a search of historical sub- ject-matter for the experience of others that is capable of throwing any light upon the present situa- tion; (5) a choice of the outcome that is in accord with the best ideals of the person and of the race; (6) the actual trying out of the chosen outcome; (7) the reduction of the chosen outcome to a dependable habit. These steps have yet to acquire a smooth technic and to build around themselves a school or- ganization, including a physical plant, within which the management of actual life experience can go on effectively. When related to experience, the distinction be- tween “‘general’’ method and “special”? method tends to disappear. The steps just outlined con- stitute the fundamental procedure in dealing with all types of situations. They also furnish the technic of approach to any particular situation. The unique quality of the response to any given situation will depend upon the factors involved in the situation, the number and character of possible outcomes, the unique elements in the past experience of the learner as respects knowledge, attitudes, and ideals, the avail- able source materials in historical subject-matter, and the approach, resourcefulness, and skill of the learner in executing each of these steps. Thus method may be said to consist of a widening experience in meeting and responding to situations. Perfection in the use of method will come only through an increasing mastery of the technic of breaking situations up into their factors, of seizing upon the essential elements, of suggesting outcomes and subjecting them to criticism and evaluation, of making intelligent choices, and of carrying out pur- poses to their consummation. It follows also that METHOD AS WIDENING EXPERIENCE 211 this mastery will best be attained through dealing, not with more or less fictitious situations that are lifted out of real life and set down im a formal insti- tution, but with the actual situations that real life presents in the concrete connections i which they normally occur. When the curriculum is conceived in terms of con- trolled experience, there arises, however, a sharp dis- tinction between the method of the learner and the method of the teacher. For the learner, method con- sists in acquiring skill through widening experience in meeting and responding to situations. The outlook of the learner, especially in the earlier stages of the learning process, is quite narrowly limited to situa- tions that are more or less immediate and gripping because their worth is apparent to him. For the teacher, on the contrary, method consists in assist- ing the learner to make his responses wisely and effectively. It is the function of the teacher to see! that the learner does not overlook important factors | in the analysis of the situation, to help him exhaust ° the possible outcomes, to help him search his own | experience for light, to direct him to the most sig- ) nificant source materials that will help him in the’ solution of his problem, and to encourage him to— persevere in the face of all obstacles and distractions © until he has accomplished his chosen end. The out- look of the teacher is over a much longer span of time. He has in mind the whole learning process and sees, in a rough way, the end from the begining. He is constantly mindful of the final and total outcome of the immediate experiences. These ultimate goals are to him the most important, though in his emphasis upon these in his own mind he does not minimize the immediate ends that bulk so large in the thinking 212 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION of the learner. Standing midway in the process, the teacher sees the direction in which experience is mov- ing. The difference between pupil experience and teacher experience may be illustrated in the case of a person learning to adjust himself in a Christian way to the member of another, let us say the colored, race. The problem which the situation presents is this: what attitude shall the learner, as a Christian, assume toward this particular colored person and toward the colored race in general? The first step for the learner in solving this problem is to analyze, as far as he may be able, the situation into its constituent elements. When he does so, he finds himself a member of a developed and favored race. He finds that this person to whom he must ad- just himself in play, in the schoolroom, on the street, or in an occupation has a different color of skin, different shape of head, different physiognomy, dif- ferent dialect, and different cultural backgrounds and ideas. Moreover, the person to whom he must adjust himself is a member of a race that his own race for the most part looks down upon as an inferior race. If he mingles freely with colored persons he is made to feel the disapprobation of his own race. This general social disapproval is registered by ex- cluding the colored person from hotels, forcing him to ride in separate compartments in public convey- ances, frowning upon his taking a seat in a public assembly where the privileged race is present except it be in a restricted section, depriving him on one ground or another of the power of the ballot, or sub- jecting him to various forms of economic discrimi- nation. And yet itis apparent that this member of the “inferior” race is a person and is living out his METHOD AS WIDENING EXPERIENCE ~ 218 life ina democratic society that has accepted, in theory at least, as its fundamental ideals equality of opportunity, privilege, and responsibility within the limits of each person’s capacity. When he turns his attention from the analysis of the situation to the possible outcomes of his own conduct, several courses of action suggest themselves. He may assume an attitude of hatred toward the negro. Or he may treat him with irritated or pitying contempt. Or he may ignore his presence and seek in every way to shunt the problem on one side or de- lay it by avoiding all contacts. Or he may assume an attitude of respect toward the negro as a person whose personality is sacred, and seek in every way to assist his less privileged fellow citizen to find an un- obstructed opportunity to live out his life in the circumstances in which he finds himself, in the spirit of justice, brotherhood, and mutual good-will. When he turns from the situation to his own past experience the learner will find his attitude condi- tioned by many considerations. The section of the country in which he has been reared will have much to do with shaping his personal attitude as being friendly and helpful or indifferent or antagonistic. lf his family belonged to the Abolitionists, and espe- cially if they helped to conduct an “underground railway”? for the escape of negroes from the South during the Civil War, or if his ancestors fought in the Civil War with the idea that they were fighting to liberate the slaves, his attitude is likely to be friendly and helpful, even to the point of idealizing the negro. If, on the other hand, he chances to live in a section of the country where the colored popula- tion outnumbers the white and where there has been continual race antagonism, he is more than likely to 214 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION assume a condescending or antagonistic attitude, holding to the accepted idea that the colored race should “be taught to know its place and keep it.” Whether he has been reared in the North or the South, if he has been reared under highly social and Christian influences, if he has been accustomed to hearing the race problem discussed from a social and a Christian point of view, he is likely to assume the attitude of wishing to understand the conditions under which the negro lives, of respecting him, and of endeavoring to assist him toward a more satisfactory situation as he himself would wish to be understood and assisted were he in the negro’s place. In his effort to understand his problem he will take the third step—a search through available his- torical source material for a full and accurate knowl- edge of the facts involved. He will consult history and learn that the negro did not come to America on his own initiative, but was herded here against his will in slave ships to do the menial tasks of a power- ful and dominant race. He will consult biology and anthropology and learn that all races, his own in- cluded, sprang from one original stock and were dif- ferentiated into the several races under the modify- ing influence of different environments in which they have lived for millenniums. He will discover that the criteria of race, such as cephalic index, physiognomy, color of skin and hair, shape of the hair, and stature, are only superficial characteristics and probably do not radically affect essential human nature. He will discover [that language and culture are simply ac- cumulations of customs, habits, and ways of look- ing at things. He will consult psychology and find that mental capacity differs much less widely among races than is commonly supposed, a few authorities METHOD AS WIDENING EXPERIENCE 215 to the contrary notwithstanding, and that when allowance is made for status and previous experience there may be no essential differences at all. He will search the social sciences and find that all races normally pass through a process of development and that society is now experimenting with a democratic form of social living that involves the sacredness of all persons, the equal opportunity for all to make the most of themselves within the limits of their capacity, and a shared responsibility for the welfare of the whole. He will see that in such a society the presence of an underprivileged race without opportunity or a sense of social responsibility is a source of injustice to the underprivileged race and a menace to the entire social order. As a Christian he will search the teachings of Jesus for His declarations and assump- tions on the worth of persons, the relation of persons to each other as respects justice, co-operation, and service in the interests of a Christian society. With this ampler knowledge the learner will choose the outcome that seems to him to be Christian and will proceed to carry out his conclusions in practical courses of action, thus completing the steps involved in this particular piece of learning. It is when viewed in contrast with this experience of the learner that the experience of the teacher be- comes clear. The function of the teacher consists in assisting the learner so to analyze his situation that he will not overlook any material factors, to stimu- late him by suggestion to exhaust the possible out- comes in conduct, to search and criticise his own past experience with a view to discovering what light it is capable of throwing upon the present situation, and to help him to discover the significant sources of historical subject-matter in the experience of others 216 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION that will afford him adequate understanding of the problem involved. The danger in the case of the immature learner is that he will overlook or misin- terpret significant factors in the situation, that he will not feel or properly understand the problem that the situation presents, that he will not suffi- ciently criticise and check his own past experience, or that he will act with imperfect knowledge of what others have discovered, thought, felt, or done with respect to this particular problem. Thus, for example, as is very likely to happen in the case of the adjustment of a member of one race to a member of another race, especially to a member of the colored race, it is quite possible that it may not occur to the learner to see in this colored alien a person, with feelings, aspirations, and a destiny like his own. He might easily overlook the fact that the criteria of race are, after all, only superficial differ- ences. Without guidance it might quite escape him that the concept of democracy is involved in this particular problem. When it comes to the analysis of outcomes, without stimulation or suggestion, his failure to perceive all the elements that are involved'in the situation or his prejudices might easily prevent him from seeing more than one or two outcomes. Least of all might it occur to him to admit the colored person to his feelings of brotherhood and justice or to entertain a sense of helpfulness on his part. The teacher will be of great assistance in helping the learner to manage his own past experience. He will warn him against sectional feeling or race preju- dice. He will point out to him the influence which social and economic status have upon one’s thinking. He will help him to understand and appreciate the METHOD AS WIDENING EXPERIENCE 217 colored man’s place by understanding the conditions under which he lives, the sense of humiliation caused by status, and his sense of injustice at finding one after another of the doors of opportunity swing shut against him, as well as help him to put himself in the other’s place. In dealing with source materials, the teacher will assist the learner by making their existence known to the learner, by pointing out to him where they may be found, and by helping him to come into pos- session of all the facts available. He will help him to discover social experiments in dealing with the race problem and their outcomes and will stimulate in him the desire to know the best that the most socially and Christian minded leaders of both races have thought on the problem. He will stimulate the learner to inquire into the social and economic backgrounds out of which have emerged the dis- crimination and disapproval that he is made to feel. The function of guidance will be to help the learner to take a factual] attitude toward his problem, to criticise his own attitudes and viewpoints and those of society as well, to act in the light of full knowledge, and to accept responsibility for his decisions, once they have been reached. Not least of the services the teacher will render the learner will be to help him carry out to its complete issue the decision he has reached in the light of full and unprejudiced knowledge, to point out sources of danger or difficulty in the course of the experiment, to help the learner to understand the causes of defeat and to help him keep his purpose from lagging until it is carried through. Throughout this relation of pupil experience to teacher experience the function of the teacher will be that of a companion, counsellor, and guide. | His 218 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION task is to help the learner to arrive at Christian out- comes in a free experience that is moving forward in a developing world. His greatest problem is, on the one hand, to supply that counsel and guidance with- out violating the freedom of the learner’s experience and, on the other hand, to make available to the learner the significant experience of the past without closing the experience of the learner to the new ave- nues and qualities of experience that have not yet appeared. As the representative of adult society, the teacher may not impose his authority, sanctioned by social pressure and tradition, upon the learner, who stands as the representative of the future, which holds within itself, yet to be revealed, those fresh and original elements of experience that will make it dif- ferent from that which has gone before. Neither may he, because he has superior knowledge and a better understanding of how experience may be controlled, withhold material aspects of the situations that life presents so that the learner may respond only to manipulated and loaded situations. Neither may he manipulate the response by withholding material knowledge so that the learner’s choices are made in the light of partial and selected facts in the interest of maintaining class status or traditional points of view. The learner, as the representative of the future, has a right to see life whole and in all its aspects and to possess all the facts without manipulation. Neither has the teacher the right, because of his knowledge of the laws of response, to take advantage of the learner by fixing upon him rigid habits that the learner himself does not approve. To violate these fundamental necessities of free experience is to make education propaganda in behalf of class inter- ests or points of view or an instrument for keeping METHOD AS WIDENING EXPERIENCE ~ 219 things as they are—the dead hand of the past upon present and future. How to guarantee Christian outcomes for a free experience in a moving world is an extremely delicate and difficult problem. Perhaps there can be no cer- tain guarantee. Obviously, as has been pointed out elsewhere in this discussion, the approach must be through understanding, the sharing of points of view and purposes, and a sense of responsibility for an un- finished undertaking. The adult generation may not do less than to see to it that the oncoming generation is initiated into the ideals, objectives, and methods of the Kingdom of God as these emerge from the past, with sympathy and understanding. Beyond that point the present generation must trust the future generation to work out its problems in perfect freedom. Once the teacher, who represents the past, has placed the learner, who represents the unexplored future, in possession of all the facts and helped him to think through and around his problem, the teacher must respect the judgment and choice of the learner as a trustworthy basis for future action. The guaran- tee that the learner will not ruthlessly break with the ideals and purposes of the past will have to be sought in his being led to understand that the present is the outgrowth of the past through a historical process of antecedent and consequent and that the present will sustain precisely the same rela- tion to the future as the past sustains to the present. A clear preception of this continuity, an understand- ing and appreciation of objectives, and a sense of responsibility can be trusted as far as any sanction can be trusted to evoke what the learner judges, from his point of view, to be a Christian response. And if we remind ourselves of the risk m this procedure that 220 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION arises from the learner making his own choices, we must also remind ourselves that there can be neither freedom nor progress without just this risk. Even so trustworthy a generation as our own may have made mistakes ! The procedure of the classroom is not less affected by this conception of method. The whole attitude and atmosphere of the class meeting is changed. Recitations are no longer conducted by the teacher. The recitation is based upon assignments from text- books and collateral readings or upon lectures. These bodies of material the learner is expected to master ° and repeat back to the teacher with varying degrees of accuracy or completeness, the remainder of the class remaining the while more or less interested spec- tators. Under skillful teachers the interest of the other members of the class may be kept taut by a skillful use of the order and method of questioning or by requiring the residue of the pupils to supple- ment or correct incomplete or imaccurate answers. But at best the fundamental alignment of the recita- tion follows the teacher-reciter pattern, in which for the moment the individual emerges from the group in an attitude of responsibility to an authoritative teacher. While this teacher-reciter relation is sus- tained, the attitude of the other members of the class toward the reciter is critical, competitive, and, all too frequently, unsocial. Under these conditions assist- ance of any sort is dishonest and dishonorable, not- withstanding the fact that in real life co-operation and helpfulness are set forth as Christian virtues of the highest order. Under the procedure of the recita- tion, the class can only in the most limited sense be- come a social group. The whole psychological situa- tion is in the direction of making and keeping the METHOD AS WIDENING EXPERIENCE — 221 class an aggregation of individuals in competition with each other. In such a situation, only in the most limited sense can there arise a sense of social solidarity and a sense of social responsibility among the various members of the group itself. But when method is shifted from materials to experience, expecially to significant social experience, the class session becomes a meeting of like-minded persons for the carrying forward of worthful enter- prises or the conducting of experiments or the under- taking of lines of investigation. The physical pattern of the room is changed. Instead of the teacher’s desk and the formal rows of seats, the room assumes the character of a laboratory or a conference room, ac- cording to the enterprise that is under way. If an experiment is being conducted, there may be work- tables, files, materials, unfinished pieces of work. If an investigation is being conducted in one of the major fields of human experience, the room may have its conference table, around which the members of the group gather, after the pattern of the directors’ room of a corporation or of a committee room. The fundamental alignment of the group will follow a person-person pattern that will bind all the members of the company into a coherent, co-operating social group. The basic sense of responsibility is to the social group rather than to any isolated individual. The bond is social and human, not authoritative. The relation of the members of the group is a give- and-take relation. The position of the teacher in this group is that of a responsible member of the group. Responsibility centres in the group itself. The teacher has only such influence in determining policies and procedures as his personality, experience, maturity, and superior 222 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION knowledge and skill may justify. His function is to counsel the group so that its efforts will be expended in worth-while undertakings, so that its progress will be cumulative, and so that it will arrive at some clear and complete goal. His status in the group will be determined by the quality and amount of service he ean render. The status of every other member will be determined in precisely the same way. Self-determination within the group itself is the only way in which responsible self-control in the di- rection of experience can be acquired. To be sure, the degree to which complete self-direction is shifted to the learners must depend upon maturity and ex- perience of the learners. The shift must be a progres- sive shift. Immature persons do not yet possess enough capacity or experience safely to be intrusted with so much responsibility. But, beginning with so much of self-direction as children can safely assume, there should be a progressive shifting of direction to the learners themselves until complete self-direction is possible. Neither can this self-determination be a fictitious make-believe. It must be genuine, and the learners must understand it to be genuine. Matters to be decided upon should be submitted for discus- sion and a consensus of judgment arrived at. If they are to be real, decisions arrived at in this way must affect the actual conduct of the affairs of the group. The following may be considered an example of the form which a class meeting may assume. Hav- ing blocked out the main outlines of the major prob- lems involved in the understanding of a selected field of experience, the first step in classroom proce- dure may well take the form of laying out one of the major lines of investigation to be pursued by the METHOD AS WIDENING EXPERIENCE —§ 223 group. This process will consist in thinking through the problem and determining the specific constituent elements that enter into it. After laying out the lines of investigation, the group will adjourn to the library or such other sources of information as may be accessible. The teacher will have suggested significant sources from which knowledge may be secured. These suggestions will differ as widely as possible from assignments. They will have to do with sources and then will be only suggestive. They will only be useful to the student in stimulating him and in giving him some direction in locating and using relevant source materials. They will accustom him to the use of sources in the way in which he will need to use them when he has no experienced counsellor to guide him in his search. It will be better if they are not exhaustive, so that the student himself may discover other seurces and add them to the list of the group. They will not be specific in length; the student will need to acquire the attitude of pursuing his sources as far as is necessary to give him possession of the data he needs and the varying points of view of those who have dealt with the data. After the search of sources has been made, the group will reassemble to bring its findings together. These will be reported in the class meeting. Each student becomes an investigator and a reporter of findings. If one investigator has erred in his choice of data or has arrived at a wrong interpretation of their meaning, the other members of the group will check his error. If he has failed in the discovery of significant data, the other members of the group will supply them. These individual findings will be worked through a welter of free discussions until a collective 224 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION judgment is arrived at. In discussion there should be the utmost freedom for the expression of personal judgments, as there should be developed a corre- sponding attitude of critical analysis of every posi- tion that is advanced. Those who advance opinions should be expected to sustain them with adequate reasons. Reported points of view should be assigned to their authors and the essential points of difference made clear, with evaluations. The collective findings of the group may well be recorded. The record should be made by one of the members of the group for a particular line of investi- gation. The record should include not only the find- ings but the significant movement of the discus- sion and the basis upon which the findings rest. It should record significant positions that were ad- vanced and held by individuals in the group whom the discussion failed to convince. It will be well if the findings are read at a subsequent meeting of the group after an interval of time has elapsed, and adopted as the responsible findings of the body after such amendments have been made as will make the report an accurate record. These findings should be preserved in a permanent record that will represent the finished work of the group. It is only in some such situation as this that there can be developed those attitudes of mind that are the absolute prerequisites of the intelligent manage- ment of experience. In this sort of an atmosphere initiative can be developed. The emphasis is shifted to thinking as the heart and centre of the technic of control, rather than memory. Memory does not suffer from this replacement of emphasis. Facts that are mastered in vital situations are more permanent possessions of the mind than those that are acquired METHOD AS WIDENING EXPERIENCE = 225 through formal drill. One of the most invaluable gains of such a procedure is the acquiring of an ability to do co-operative thinking in the pursuit of common purposes. This is the sort of situation within which the responsible mind can be developed, a mind that is willing to assume initiative and to abide by the consequences of its thinking and decisions. Above all, it is the situation within which the active quali- ties of mind emerge—the dynamic mind that passes beyond the limits of appreciation and assimilation and rises to the creative level. Upon such a type of mind the progressive realization of the Kingdom of God depends. XV RELIGIOUS EDUCATION THROUGH SOCIAL PARTICIPATION In the same way that subject-matter is inseparable from method it is inseparable from the organization of the school. Subject-matter, as we have seen, is inseparable from situations. It consists, in part, of the elements that make up the situation itself; it consists, in part, of the products of responses to former situations that are capable of assisting the learner in responding to the present situation. Subject-matter could not arise, therefore, except as meaning out of situations; situa- tions, in turn, would remain unintelligible apart from subject-matter. The school is a selective and controlled environ- ment in which education is going forward. Were it not for the school, experience would remain for the most part haphazard and aimless. The school makes it possible to select out of real life those situa- tions that are educationally resourceful, to arrange them in a proper sequence with reference to approved objectives, and to assist the learner in a systematic manner in mastering the technic of responding to these situations in intelligent, purposeful, moral, and spiritual ways. Because subject-matter, method, and organization are inseparable, not only does the organization of the school take on fundamental educational significance, but it is at once apparent that the character of the organization is profoundly involved. It is the clear 226 SOCIAL PARTICIPATION 227 implication of the foregoing discussion that the school must be a community of persons in which actual and significant experience is going forward. In education of any kind the school must be a miniature society in which are not only included, but made obvious, the typical relations, functions, and responsibilities of the larger social group. In religious education this means that the school of religion should be a minia- ture religious society organized on the basis of the fundamental ideals, purposes, and motives of the Kingdom of God. The organization of the school of religion as a re- ligious community rests upon four fundamental considerations. The first is the social nature of the learning process. Knowledge, as we have already seen, is primarily a social creation. In its cumulative form it is the result of the co-operation not only of many persons living together in a social situation, but of many genera- tions, each adding its increment to the growing mass. It is in this way that every science has grown up. One’s ideas, attitudes, and beliefs are not so much the result of his own original and critical thinking as they are the result of his having been born into a social inheritance of ideas, attitudes, customs, and directive interests. An age possesses its own peculiar pattern ideas, which give bent to the thinking of each” individual who lives in that age. It is upon these social attitudes and beliefs that the individual mind reacts. They serve as a foundation and starting point for all originality and creativeness on the part of indi- viduals. Such variants in point of view or discovery of new truth as may arise from the criticism of inherited ideas by men of creative originality are absorbed into the mass of social ideas and thus are preserved and 228 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION handed on. New inventions, as a rule, assume the form of improvements on devices that are already in existence and, furthermore, as the result of experience in the use of these devices. The distance in the matter of mechanical perfection between the first crude steam-engine and the latest type of swift pas- senger locomotive or between the first horseless car- riage and the latest model of the automobile is as great as could be imagined. The significant thing, however, is the fact that the gap between these wide extremes of crudity and smoothly running and ele- gant perfection is filled up with gradual and minute improvements in existing forms. No less does this process obtain in the realms of social organization and ideas. Progress in government has assumed the form of improvement in existing forms of govern- ment whereby rights, privileges, and responsibility are gradually extended downward to the masses. Universally these reforms begin in a criticism of the existing social order. Even when these movements have been revolutionary, their points of departure have been defects in the existing order. The his- tory of man’s intellectual life, let us say in the field of science or philosophy, can be written in the terms of the criticism of traditional ideas by thinkers of re- sourcefulness and insight. No less than in the field of invention is the gap between one intellectual era and another filled by evolving ideas. So true is this pro- cedure in the intellectual life that one cannot account for, or even fully understand, the intellectual life of any period without knowing its backgrounds and antecedents. Learning itself, as we have also seen, is an enlarge- ment and enrichment of shared experience. Not only ¥ can communication of ideas take place only when SOCIAL PARTICIPATION 229 there is a basis of shared experience, but the social situations in which mind reacts upon mind is the soil in which fertile and creative ideas arise. The adage, “As steel sharpeneth steel, so mind sharpeneth mind,” rests upon a perfectly sound psychology. This is particularly true when the higher forms of mental activity, namely, thinking and evaluation, rather than memory and assimilation, are sought for. The higher the mental activity, the greater is its sensi- tivity to social influence. This is why science, phil- osophy, ethics, religion are all so heavily loaded with social content, reflecting as each does in the most remarkable manner the total background life of a people and, in turn, reacting upon that total life. If learning is to go forward in the most economical and effective way, it must take place in the give-and- take relation of associated life, where the reactions of mind upon mind, of persons upon persons, of pur- poses upon purposes stimulate thinking and creative- ness in the forwarding of social enterprises. The second consideration is the social character of the Christian religion. All religion, in the generic sense, is fundamentally social. This has become so apparent under psychological analysis that some psy- chologists and some sociologists completely identify religion with the consciousness of and desire to real- | ize social values. Those who would not go so far as to identify religion with social values do not hesitate to affirm that religion is thoroughly saturated with social meaning. This social quality that is implicit in all religion whatsoever is specifically and explicitly articulate in the Christian religion. The prophets conceived religion in terms of right relations to God and men expressing themselves in righteous and brotherly conduct. “What,” demands Micah, “doth > 230 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION Jehovah require of thee, but to do justly, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with thy God ?”’? When asked to define religion, Jesus seized upon love to God and to one’s fellow men as the heart and soul of the Christian life and found in this ethical-social relation the fulfilment of all that was implied in the law and the prophets of the Old Testament. The messages of both Jesus and the prophets glow with a social passion. The objective of Jesus was the inaugura- tion of a new order of social living whose ideals and purposes were embodied in the phrase that was al- ways upon his lips—“‘the Kingdom of God.” In the mind of Jesus this new social order could only come to pass through the ethicizing, socializing, and spiri- tualizing of human relations in every area of life. A third consideration lies in the fact that immature persons are being prepared to take their places in a specialized Christian institution, a social community of like-minded persons, known as the church. This institution is, In a special sense, the custodian of the ideals and purposes of the Kingdom of God. Not by any means that all the ethical and social virtues, or even all the Christian virtues, are to be found exclusively within that institution. But the church — is a community of like-minded persons who are de- voted to the same ways of looking at life, who are actuated by common motives, and who are collec- tively responsible for the promotion in human society of the ideals of the Christian religion. It is the con- tinuing body that should give expression to the Christian programme of life and should assume re- sponsibility for the promotion of its ideals. But the church, like all other institutions, is a social institu- tion. It has its characteristic points of view, rela- tions, and functions. If these attitudes and purposes SOCIAL PARTICIPATION 231 are to be continuous and vital, the institution must see to it that each new generation is initiated into them. In the light of the drift of this entire discus- sion, the best preparation for living in a Christian community will come through actual experience in - living the Christian life and carrying on Christian enterprises in co-operation with the community that * is devoted to this way of life and to these enterprises; that is, through social participation in the relations, functions, and responsibilities of the Christian church. A final consideration lies in the fact that the Chris- tian religion has a social function and a social respon- sibility. The function of the Christian church is to spiritualize and motivate the social relations of men in every department of hfe—in industry, politics, business, international relations. But the cutting edge where Christian ideals and motives make them- selves effective in these areas of human experience is where Christian persons and Christian groups touch the relations and functions of actual every-day life. If, therefore, the Christian religion is to become effective in the conduct of human life, it must find expression through the relations and functions of Christian persons at the points where they are caught up into the intricate pattern of social living. But here, again, these relations and functions can- not be learned in isolation from real life in the hope that through a transfer of training they will be effec- tive in actual social living. The Christian mastery of these experiences can only come from experience in dealing with them in actual situations; that is, through the participation of growing persons in the relations, functions, and responsibilities of the larger social world. Otherwise there can be no assurance 232, CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION that religious education will have any appreciable effect upon the struggle of society with its industrial problems, its problems of crime and illiteracy, its problems of race adjustments, the problems cen- tring in the modern family, or its most colossal and urgent problem of war. Enough has been said about the uncertain transfer of training and the necessity of training in the direction of specific future activities to make it more than doubtful that formal training apart from actual participation in the solution of these specific problems can have any measurable effect upon them. What is here proposed is that these very situations that constitute the major social problems of our age shall be lifted up and placed at ~the centre of the school community or, better still, that the school shall actually go out into the larger social world and come to grips with these problems in their immediate and concrete forms. Training for an attitude of “‘brotherliness,”’ like all other so-called “virtues,” is too generalized and abstract. Thinking in terms of abstract “virtues”? smacks of a lingering faith in the dogma of formal discipline. For the Christian learner, if brotherliness is to become effec- tive in the outworking of the Christian ideal in these central problems of the Great Society, it must actu- ally invade these specific fields of relationships and spend itself in bringing to realization within them the ideals and motives of the Kingdom of God. It is a matter of securing Christian responses to concrete situations—to the actual problems of industry, the family, race relations, and war. Being begun and earried forward in working through these relations and functions, there is as much certainty that re- ligious education will effect changes in the Great Society as there is doubt that it will when it thinks SOCIAL PARTICIPATION 233 in terms of “virtues” and “attitudes” apart from_ concrete situations. As there is no “honesty” apart « from telling the truth or square dealing between persons with reference to specific acts, so there is no “good-will’’ apart from persons involved in concrete | situations, whether personal, industrial, interracial, ) or international. That is to say, if these attitudes are } to function in concrete situations as they will arise in { the Great Society, they must be built up within these ( situations. It may be said that the ultimate test ( of any programme or organization of religious educa- | tion is just this—that it actually makes a difference, not only in personal living but in the major problems of the Great Society. Clearly, what is called for by these necessities of the learning process, the nature of the Christian re- ligion, the institutional life of the religious move- ment, and the function of religion in the life of society itself is the organization of the school of religion as a religious community—a miniature society whose re- lations, functions, and activities are selected with reference to these ends, in which they are made ob- vious to the mind of the learner, and in which the learner actually has experience in living life religi- ously through a gradual and responsible participa- tion in social living. What, then, shall be the organizing centre around which the school as a religious community shall be built ? In view of the fundamentally active, dynamic character of experience and in view of the dynamic function of religion in human life, it would seem that such a centre can best be found in the carrying for- ward of typically Christian enterprises. In the selec- tion of these enterprises a threefold objective should nad — 234 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION be held in mind. These enterprises will need to present such situations as will lead to the Christian interpretation of life and to the acquisition of depend- able skill in perceiving and fulfilling its relations and functions. They will also need to present the activi- ties that are involved in carrying on the work of the church as a specialized institution in such a way as to produce a churchman and religious leader who will be capable of rightly interpreting the message and function of religion in the modern world. It will need to embody in its programme those enterprisés that bring sharply to the consciousness of the learner the larger problems of social life that are involved in the forward movement of civilization itself and which furnish the arena in which religion is to justify its career by unifying, idealizing, spiritualizing, social- izing, and motivating human effort in its struggle for the highest ends of life. The core around which these enterprises should be built is manifestly the manifold social relations in which the learner and the Christian community are involved. These experiences will satisfy the criteria for selection discussed under the constituent elements of the curriculum. They are real. They are typical. In every instance they involve a choice between possi- ble alternative outcomes. They have the advantage of being continuous, both with the other areas of the learner’s experience and with his future experience. They have the capacity for absorbing worthful knowledge; in fact, there is almost no knowledge that these relations are not capable of carrying. They have in a unique way the quality of expansiveness that leads from the simplest and smallest beginnings to the remotest reaches of human life. They empha- size the human quality of experience and lead straight SOCIAL PARTICIPATION 235 to values of the highest type. They lie in the very soil from which religion itself springs. They bring before the learner the major fields in which religion is to fulfill its career. The possibilities of enterprises erected upon social relations, together with the relations and functions which they involve, are at once apparent when one traces these relations through their endless ramifica- tions. The little child is born into a complex of social relations and duties. His earliest relations are with his parents and brothers and sisters in the home. Gradually these relations extend to include the play- mates of the neighborhood, the guests in the home, and the immediate community environment. All these relations call for definition and fulfilment in the simple ways which a little child can understand and fulfill. When the child enters the formal school his circle of relationships and duties greatly ex- pands. It now includes his teachers, schoolmates, the playground, the larger community which he en- counters on the way to and from school, the press, the moving-picture house, the “‘tone”’ of the com- munity. Through his studies his world is greatly en- larged. He becomes familiar with the best that man has thought and felt about his relations in literature and art, with the broader sweep of human relations through history, with man’s increasing mastery over his material resources through science. As maturity advances he finds himself caught up in the complex and tangled relations and functions of modern eco- nomic life. He finds himself facing the problems and responsibilities of founding his own home and assum- ing the functions of parenthood. He is caught up in the whole economic and industrial process. Through his political relations as a citizen he is drawn into the 236 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION larger adjustments of national and international poli- cies. Through the policies of voluntary relief and assistance of the less fortunate peoples of the world he finds himself a debtor because of his superior privi- leges. In this way, from the small beginnings that make up the interests and activities of the little child he moves out and forward into the more universal and complex relations and functions that spring up out of his adjustments to his fellows until his life touches in a responsible way the whole range of human relations. Here seems to be at hand a thread of continuity, lifted out of the actual forward move- ment of experience, that will serve as a core for the enterprises of the religious community into which, by a process of gradual social participation, he is being initiated, and precisely in the same way in which he will be called upon to define and fulfill the functions of mature life. By selecting social relationships as the pattern for the enterprises that are to be set up, provision is made for the use of numerous small enterprises that feed into the larger, unified, and forward-moving enter- prise. In this way the principle of integration is taken care of without doing violence to the necessity of that degree of flexibility which normal experience requires. In fact, while the main pattern of expe- rience follows, on the whole, these expanding social relations as experience moves forward from the smaller to the larger world, its details consist largely of small pieces of activity involved in social relations. Thus, while the world statesman moves consistently in the orbit of diplomatic relations that touch every phase of political and national life, he dines with his friends, plays golf with members of his club, vaca- tions with a select group of friends on his yacht or in SOCIAL PARTICIPATION 237 the primeval forests of South America. So, while the main pattern of the child’s expanding life follows the bold figures of home, school, and community relations, around these larger central activities play all sorts of incidental short-time interests and ac- tivities. Participation in the life of a religious community opens a way for making real to the child his rela- tion to God. From this community of persons will emerge for him those qualities that will enter into his conception of God as the Supreme Person. But in such a community God is more than the Supreme Person—He is a member of the group. In this way the child’s relation to God is grounded, not in theo- logical dogmas, but in living and loving personal relations. His thought of God grows up in connec- tion with the commonplace activities of life. Since to him God is a member of the community, all his relations to his fellows are tempered and spiritualized by the participation of God in the life of the com- munity. As a member of the community God shares in the ideals, purposes, and decisions of the group, as do its other members. Contrariwise, the decisions of the group are made with reference to what are be- lieved to be the ideals and purposes of the Supreme Member. In such a situation prayer as communion between himself and God becomes as normal as communion between himself and other members of the group. As the central experience of the Christian life, prayer rises to the level of associated desire and effort in the attainment of desires that are shared by the community. In such a sharing of life as is here proposed the ma- ture have quite as much to gain as have the imma- ture. If youth needs to learn the ways of life by par- 238 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION ticipating in its worthful enterprises as it may have capacity and experience, adults need to keep open within themselves the fountains of youth. They need to retain the buoyancy of spirit, the optimism and the freshness of experience that are the heritage of youth. Youth and age need to be able to share each other’s viewpoint. We have touched upon co- operation in the control of experience elsewhere. The only way through which that co-operation can be possible is through understanding. And understand- ing rests upon shared experience. In the immediate present this constitutes no small problem in educa- tion and social control. At the present moment there has come a widening breach between the youth of the world and its adult life. The youth movement throughout the world is a movement of revolt against authority imposed from above by the older members of society that, for them, represents the outreach of the dead past upon the ambitions and hopes of the future. On the other hand, the older members of society are dismayed at the consciousness that for the most part they do not understand youth. The way out will come only through understanding and sympathy. This understanding can never come be- tween the old and the young until the old and the young have learned to live a shared life of common purposes and effort. The ultimate implications of this discussion are far- reaching. They are that when society has become deeply conscious of the fact that its fundamental responsibility is to the child who is learning to live his life and to carry forward the continuing enter- prises of the race through participation in the enter- prises that are going on about him, it will need con- sciously to organize its total life around the interests SOCIAL PARTICIPATION 239 of the child. As matters now stand, social enterprises are pursued without reference to the education of the child. Would we be willing for the child to get his interpretation of the meaning and worth of life from the basic ideals and motives that are the work- ing principles of industry as it is now for the most part carried forward? Would it be best for him to take his measure of life and learn his attitude toward his fellows from the present militaristic basis upon which national policies are conducted? Are the ideals of a child safe in the commercialized places of amusement? Can he safely derive his values of life from the crass materialism that too frequently domi- nates vocational and social life? Is the world the child sees through the scandal-purveying, commer- cialized press the world of reality that we wish him to build for himself? Is much of the home life of western civilization, brutalized by material stan- dards of value and irresponsible sex relations, the sort of home life in which a child may safely par- ticipate? To ask questions like these is to set the larger edu- cational task for modern society. The task of moral and religious education is much larger than can suc- cessfully be undertaken by any single institution or by any partial group of institutions. It is the task of society. To ask such questions is to reveal the staggering immensity of the undertaking. But, diffi- cult or not, it is something like an organization of our whole social life around the educational interests of the child that is necessary before we can be safely en- trusted with the directing of young life. No matter what its particular technic may be, in the final analy- sis all education comes about through the initiation of the young into the life of the group. A foremost 240 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION American educator has put it thus strongly, “‘Chil- dren are educated in spite of the schools.” Be that as it may, this statement goes straight to the heart of the larger problem. Whether society is conscious of it or not, the education of its youth is an initiation into what society itself is, good or bad. Is it hoping too much that society in its larger community aspects shall be made conscious of this responsibility and be led to organize its processes and functions in such a way that, through participating in its life, childhood may come into an appreciation of that which is beautiful and good and worthy of the high destiny of the human spirit? But upon this larger movement moral and re- ligious education may not wait. The agencies that are responsible for religious education must begin by organizing themselves into a community of religious life wherein the young may form constructive atti- tudes toward life, with positive reactions to those things that are wholesome and with negative reac- tions to those things that are destructive of the finer qualities of personal and social living. XVI THE PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION ONE of the most significant discoveries of modern psychology has been the nature and extent of indi- vidual differences. Social groups as well as indi- viduals exhibit the same tendency to vary. A curriculum, therefore, that is based upon experience must make due allowance for the wide range of dif- ferences in original nature and experience both as respects individuals within the group and as respects groups themselves. Individual differences are both quantitative and qualitative. The quantitative difference in the abil- ity of persons to respond to situations accurately and effectively is very great. On the basis of actual measurements, Professor Edward L. Thorndike esti- mates that the most gifted child in a grade in school, counting only those who are able to do passing work, will do six times as much work as the least gifted and that he will do it with less than one-sixth as many errors. If all the children were taken into account, the difference would be very much greater. This is probably a fair estimate of the difference in the performance of normal persons in the practical affairs of every-day life. Quite as significant as the range of difference is the fact that the differences between members of a normal group are small and continuous. The dif- ference between the most able and the least able is merely a matter of the sum of all the differences that lie between when a sufficient number of persons are 241 242 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION involved. This distribution of differences has a ten- dency to show a larger number of small differences than of great differences. So characteristic is this tendency that, if the group is homogeneous and its number sufficiently large, the differences tend to lie close to a norm in what the statistician calls the “surface of frequency,” a bell-shaped figure with a thick and high centre and with edges shading off in both directions to points on the base line. The qualitative differences of persons are quite as great as their quantitative differences. Persons have different capacities, different interests, different ways of doing things. To take but one example, some minds are particularly well organized for dealing suc- cessfully with abstract ideas and symbols. Persons having such minds show unusual ability in learning languages and solving mathematical problems. It not infrequently happens, however, that such persons are correspondingly unable to manage things and persons in the so-called “practical”? activities of every-day life. Other minds are unusually successful in dealing with things and persons in concrete situations but are correspondingly unable to deal with abstract ideas. It is difficult to say which has the more useful con- tribution to make to society. It is not a question of deciding which is the “better” type of mind, but of recognizing each for what it can do best and of developing in each person those unique qualities that make him a distinctive person. Unfortunately, the traditional school has been organized for the most part on the basis of the capacities of the abstract- minded learner. For this reason it has not infre- quently happened that concrete-minded persons could not get on well in school and have been eliminated, notwithstanding the fact that some of THE PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION 243 them have been among the most useful men society has ever possessed. These differences run through all sorts of qualities. Some persons are thoughtful and critical, while others are superficial and undiscrim- inating. Some react with strong emotions, while others are emotionally indifferent. Some are quick and decisive in their reactions, while others are slow and hesitant. Some are persistent, while others are easily led aside from their purpose or are easily dis- couraged. Groups differ quite as widely as individuals. Their differences ure qualitative, however, rather than quantitative. It is the opinion of anthropologists that differences in the degree of ability among different racial groups are less than has frequently been sup- posed, though there are some psychologists who hold that some races are vastly superior in capacity to others. Within any large area, especially in America, there will be included many divergent groups. In America, the natural tendency of modern society to become more and more highly differentiated into specialized classes, such as the industrial and the agricultural or the industrial and the capitalistic classes, is immensely complicated by the fact of im- migration that brings together many divergent racial stocks and as many divergent racial cultures. Thus we have in America radically divergent racial groups. The more fundamental differences involve the white race, the negroes, who have been specially localized in the South but are increasingly being diffused throughout the nation, the Indians on the several reservations, and the Orientals, who are espe- cially localized on the western coast but are present in all the larger population centres. In addition to these larger racial divisions, we have a multiplicity 244 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION of European stocks, ranging from the more or less homogeneous stocks that come from the north and west of Europe to the widely divergent stocks from the south and east of Europe. The problem is further complicated by the fact that some of these groups are encysted in the social organization and re- sist the forces of assimilation. Similarly, there are widely divergent occupational groups. The most fundamental cleavage is between those persons who dwell in the rural sections and those who dwell in cities. Those who live in the country are devoted to agricultural pursuits, while those who dwell in the cities are engaged almost exclusively in industrial pursuits or commerce in its various forms. Within recent years, as a result of the tremendous increase in the relative growth of industry, there has been a pronounced drift toward the cities. At the present time more than one-half of the people of America live in cities. Distributed throughout the nation are such special occupational groups as the miners, those engaged in lumbering, coke-burners, those who work in oil fields, and the various migra- tory groups devoted to seasonal occupations, to say nothing of the various professional groups and those engaged in a multitude of minor occupations. To these must be added what may be designated as special geographical groups, such as the mountain- eers in the South who, because of their isolation, form a special problem in education, religion, and citizenship. The city slum presents its own particular problem. Literacy groups correlate with others of these divisions and present their own problems. A special problem in religious education is pre- sented by the religious differences that cut across most of these other alignments. In America there is THE PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION 245 the fundamental cleavage between the Christians and the Jews. The Christians, in turn, are widely separated into Protestant and Catholic groups. And, to complicate the problem to the last degree, Protestantism itself is subdivided into an innumer- able number of sects, each having its own particular body of religious beliefs, ecclesiastical polity, and programme of work. The causes of individual and group differences are three in number. Back of all of them lie differences in original nature. According to this factor persons tend to vary from, as well as to conform to, biological lines of inheritance. These differences include men- tal and moral as well as physical characteristics. The members of the same race tend to have the same physical characteristics, such as stature, cephalic index, physiognomy, and color of skin, eyes, and hair. In this way certain well-defined racial types are developed, such as the Norwegian, the African, the Japanese, and the Italian. As in the case of individuals, races differ in their mental and moral characteristics as a result of original nature. The Greeks were versatile, active, reflective, creative. The South European peoples are imaginative, warm with feeling, and ssthetic. The English are character- istically practical and matter-of-fact. The German mind is characteristically ponderous. In fact, know- ing these characteristics of different races, it is possi- ble to trace certain qualities in mixed populations like our own to their racial sources. A second factor in individual and group differences is the environment to which the individual or the group responds. In fact, the greater number of racial criteria have been developed in this way. Pigmenta- tion is the result of the adjustment of a race through 246 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION long periods of time to climatic conditions. The same may be said of stature, hair formation, and cephalic index. Professor Franz Boas found that the cephalic index of the children of immigrant Jews differed per- ceptibly from that of their parents. From what we have seen concerning the nature of experience, we would expect to find decided differences arising out of the adjustment process, through the building up of certain characteristic responses to certain types of situations into permanent modes of behavior. These permanent slants that experience gives rise to include ways of looking at things, prejudices, ways of doing things. As a result, it is scarcely more difficult to identify the group to which a person belongs than it is to identify the race to which he belongs. The mountaineer, the farmer, the prospector, the high- powered captain of industry—all these persons bear the type-marks of the groups to which they belong as the result of long and continued reaction to rather definitely organized sets of stimuli. The third factor in determining individual and group difference is social heredity. Each person is born into a slightly different social background. From this background he takes over unconsciously the inherited traditions, customs, and viewpoints of his group. In this way he learns, without conscious choice, his mother tongue. In his dress he uncon- sciously follows the dress of his people. The char- acter of his food, his manner of eating, his social forms—all these are for the most part taken over. So also are his beliefs to a very large extent. Most persons are members of their political parties, not because they have thought through the matters of economic or political policy, but because of sec- tional, class, or family tradition. Most persons are THE PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION Q47 members of their religious communions for the same reason. Racial prejudice, intellectual bias, class an- tagonisms — these are all more or less the results of social-mental attitudes into which one is born. In like manner, each group has its own social, cultural, and intellectual background. These atti- tudes and appreciations are passed on from one generation to another within the group, with the re- sult that the mental outlook of the group is deter- mined by its own organized habits of thought and feeling. These individual and group differences present a difficult problem to curriculum-builders, especially when the curriculum sets as its objective the enrich- ment and direction of experience. The difficulty of the problem is complicated by three considerations. The first is that if the curriculum is to enrich and control experience, it must be directly related to the experience of the individual or the group. This means that the curriculum must be sufficiently flexible to take care of both the quantitative and qualitative differences in the experience of individuals within a homogeneous group. Learners who are quick in their responses, energetic, and capable should find it possible to press on in the pursuit of their enterprises as rapidly as their own capacities may determine, while those who are slow and uncertain should find it possible to linger over the difficult places until the experience has cleared. Each person should find it possible also to pursue those enterprises that well up out of his own unique experience and follow out their implications in ways that may have most meaning and worth to him. Manifestly, even in a homogeneous group, this calls for a group of enterprises that are under way at the same moment, 248 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION in which different persons or smaller groups com- posed of persons of similar interests and capacities are engaged. Perhaps in an even higher degree is this true of different social groups. Experiences that would be characteristic of one group might not, and in many instances certainly would not, be characteristic of other groups. Thus, a curriculum for the school of religion in the rural community will need to be cen- tred in the interests, processes, and activities of agri- culture. The source materials upon which the learner will draw will be determined by their ability to throw light upon rural activities. On the other hand, the curriculum for the urban school of religion will be based upon the interests and activities of the city dweller, and the source material will be such as to throw light upon the experiences of city life. In the same way each type of industrial centre, each occu- pational group, each racial group will require a cur- riculum that is based upon a study of the character- istic experiences of that group. Otherwise, religious ideals and attitudes will be matters apart from real life and will not, on that account, function in the conduct of life. The problem of adaptation is especially acute in the matter of building curricula for mission lands. In this case the racial, cultural, and religious backgrounds demand the most careful consideration. This is-par- ticularly true of the religious backgrounds. The task of replacing one set of religious ideas and attitudes with another wholly foreign to the soil and civiliza- tion of a people is in any case a delicate and difficult process. Much of the background of non-Christian peoples is of permanent religious value, and, accord- ing to one of the fundamental principles of Jesus, THE PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION 249 ought to be preserved. He announced it as His fundamental approach to the religion which His own superseded that He came, not to destroy, but to ful- fill. The task of religious education in mission lands is to bring the religious experience of non-Christian peoples under the direction of Christian ideals and motives. In order to accomplish this delicate adjust- ment safely, religious education must move close to the religious backgrounds of the people whose re- ligion is to be replaced. It is manifestly impossible for any alien group to construct curricula for the growing Christian communities in mission lands in the atmosphere and against the backgrounds of Kuropean and American religion. The utmost that the alien can do is to assist trained native Christians in constructing their own curricula in the light of the particular needs of their own people. Under no other conditions can the Christian religion become indige- nous to the life of these peoples. The second consideration is that the curriculum must provide some basis for a social, shared experi- ence. Life is quite as social as it is individual. As we have already seen in the course of this discussion, democracy, toward the ideals of which we are rapidly tending throughout the world, is at bottom a form of associated living—a living of life in give-and-take relations. An absolute necessity for a form of social living that involves a sharing of privileges, of func- tions, and of responsibilities is a common body of experience that eventuates in common points of view, common purposes, and the ability of persons to think and act together effectively. These necessities have been greatly enlarged since the World War. The sharing of life has by that event been lifted upon an infinitely broader basis, involving the adjustment of 250 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION national groups, international classes, and races on a world basis. Consequently, whether it wills it or not, religion finds itself placed in this larger setting. At the very moment when a democratic ideal of life calls for an attitude of good-will and co-operation and a mastery of the technic of living together, modern society 1s showing marked tendencies to fall in pieces. Civilization itself is imperiled by these forces of social disintegration. Does not this situation call for the conscious organization of experience in social directions? Does it not place an emphasis upon those rich and satis- fying common elements of experience that support our social life and bind it into a living, organic whole? The approach to the solution of this problem of the modern world is not chiefly through the me- chanics of agreements and covenants; it is through the building up, through the patient methods of edu- cation, of social attitudes. In the very field where re- ligion is, by its very nature, able to contribute most to this problem the religious educator dare not be unaware of his opportunity or responsibility. His central approach to this problem is through the cur- riculum. If the curriculum has erred in the past through failing to emphasize individual and group differences, it must not swing to the opposite radical extreme of building on the principle of individualism without a constructive balancing emphasis upon its social content. A third consideration lies in the fact that the curriculum must arrive somewhere. A theory of the curriculum that commits itself to a thoroughgoing individualism in the selection of experiences for educational purposes will lead to a fragmentariness of experience something like that which characterizes THE PRINCIPLE OF ADAPTATION 251 so much of the informal experience out of school. By following exclusively the lead of piecemeal, de- tached interests, the curriculum could easily present a mass of unorganized experiences that would fall in pieces. Integration, as we have seen, is an abso- lute necessity of sound experience. Education is an active, purposive process. Its function is to produce desirable changes. Its primary responsibility is to erect goals that are socially as well as individually worthful. As society’s fundamental method of prog- ress, education should assume a constructive, direc- tive, and creative attitude toward the future. It is just as necessary, therefore, that the curricu- lum shall arrive in the end at an organized, consistent, forward-moving social experience as that it should take its departure from such fragmentary and unre- lated experience as it may find in individuals or groups. Without neglecting persons or groups, it must seek in the end to build a Christian society that rests upon shared Christian ideals and purposes. Only so can the Kingdom of God, in which persons are the while finding a rich and abundant life, be realized. In the reconciliation of this threefold necessity the curriculum-builder will find one of his most difficult undertakings. And here, as in other prob- lems connected with the curriculum as experience, the way out will not come through the first attempts on the basis of theory. The approach must be experi- mental. But to see clearly these fundamental neces- sities is the first step in the working out of the pro- gramme. XVIi A DYNAMIC CURRICULUM Ir is impossible for a curriculum built upon experi- ence ever to be completed. In its very nature it must be a changing, growing, forward-moving thing. Con- sequently, those who work in the field of the cur- riculum must hold themselves always in readiness to modify their objectives, shift their point of view, and reconstruct the materials with which they work. For one thing, the experience upon which the cur- riculum rests is complex. The process of adjustment from which experience emerges is to a world of reality that possesses infinite possibilities. Man and his world develop in reciprocal relations. Through re- sponding to his world man has developed an increas- ingly penetrating intelligence; as his intelligence in- creases, his insight into his world reveals relations that before had been unsuspected. Man’s amazing scientific discoveries in recent years lead one to be- lieve, not that the possibilities of his world are near- ing exhaustion, but that he has only begun his expe- dition of exploration. This is particularly true respecting man’s under- standing of himself and of his human relations. Up to this time man’s chief discoveries have been in the area of material phenomena and forces. He has only made the barest beginning of the exploration of his own spirit. What is there to come to the light of clear knowledge one can only conjecture. A whole uni- verse will be added to his experience when he comes to understand himself even as he now imperfectly 252 A DYNAMIC CURRICULUM 253 understands the electron. His understanding of human relations and the technic of living together in groups or in intergroup association is limited to the sketchiest outlines. What will happen when he masters his racial, international, and class relations will be worthy of a Utopian dreamer. But if these as yet relatively unexplored areas yield as great possi- bilities as they promise, and if man’s insights are commensurate with the reality which they reveal, it is certain that his experience is bound to become en- riched and deepened beyond measure. All that has been said thus far might be true of a perfectly static world that is undergoing discovery. But the modern mind has introduced into its con- ception of reality the idea of development. It sees in its world, not a static blue-print of things as they have been and ever will be, but movement, change, becoming. It sees the past emerging from millenni- ums of becoming; it sees its present as a movement toward an undefinable and unpredictable future. The highest upreach of this conception 1s the idea of progress, which is the hope of transforming change into achievement. This hope is born of man’s confi- dence, based upon initial successes in this direction, in his ability to produce changes in his world that are in keeping with his desires and purposes. The far- thest reach of this confidence is his hope that some- time, through an understanding of the processes that are involved in the creation of personality and a social order, he will be able to change his own nature through the remaking of his own desires and purposes. A complex and changing experience carries with it a continuous reorganization of values. Not only do these values change from group to group, but within the same group they change from time to 254 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION time. Thus, some values are constantly undergoing a process of decay while others, entirely new, are putting in their appearance. All of which means that so far as we can now see the stream of human experience will continually change, that out of it new values will emerge while old values pass away, and that new meanings will at- tach themselves to man’s activities. If the curricu- lum is to be based upon that changing experience and is to introduce the element of co-operative con- trol into it, it must be subject to continuous change and incompleteness. But it is not enough that in a world of change and becoming the curriculum should be dynamic in its content and organization; its function within expe- rience must be dynamic. The curriculum as a factor of direction becomes an instrument in the hands of the religious community for preparing persons to live religiously in a complex and rapidly changing world. The dynamic curriculum must be more than a fol- lower of experience; it must anticipate experience and give it constructive direction. Its attention must be fixed upon the unrealized future. It must seek its function in giving substance to things hoped for. Above all, it will find its highest function when it becomes an instrument in the hands of a forward- looking and creative church for deliberately building the Kingdom of God, and in the hands of individual Christians for the realization of the “new creation” of a Christlike character. One of the ways in which a dynamic curriculum will achieve these results will be through creating the conditions that lead to continuous growth. When the curriculum is thought of in terms of an enriched and controlled experience it ceases to be limited to A DYNAMIC CURRICULUM Q55 any period of life. The highest attainment of the learning process is learning how to learn. All too easily has the religious educator assumed the in- educability of the adult. The result has been that he has concentrated his attention almost exclusively upon the periods of childhood and youth. Modern psychology does not accord its sanction to such a limited view of learning. Learning, which, in the light of the present discussion, is only another word for acquiring an increasing mastery of the technic of managing experience, should continue as long as experience continues and presents new aspects. A serious limitation to the service which traditional religious education has rendered has been just this failure to provide against those rigid adjustments of experience that can only fit in with a static world. The builder of the curriculum based upon experience should see to it that through dealing with experience an attitude of mind is created that will carry the learning process throughout life. A second function of the dynamic curriculum should be to create a vital conception of truth. It should lead the growing person to seek the sources of truth, not in an authoritative institution or litera- ture, but in the warm and moving current of life itself. It should lead him to discover it in gripping convictions rather than in dogmas or theological formulations. It should lead him to think of truth as a function of life and therefore a living and grow- ing thing. It should lead him to see that all truth of whatever sort is one, and there can be no conflict between so-called “scientific”? truth and “religious” truth. Only so can religious education avoid the destructive alternative between fanaticism without intelligence on the one hand or critical intelligence 256 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION without reverence on the other. Perhaps religious leaders face no more fundamental problem than just this in the period that is now upon them—the har- monizing of the scientific and the religious attitude in an intelligent faith. A vital view of truth will look to the future with even more confidence than to the past for the fresh discoveries of the spirit that await those who can keep open their contacts with reality, and who will not only hospitably receive new truth, but seek after it as the chief quest of a devoted life. The dynamic curriculum will educate for the tol- erant mind. This is the necessary correlate of that open-mindedness that makes continuous learning possible. The tolerant mind is quite content that the truth itself should be its own defender. It looks upon an attempt to defend the truth as a naive and uncon- scious confession of doubt. Instead, what the truth calls for is, not defense, but understanding. The tol- erant mind finds the most effective method of ex- tending truth through neither propaganda nor force, but through clear and convincing exposition. The tolerant mind is more concerned that it should under- stand the viewpoint of others than that it should im- pose its own viewpoint upon them. It is full of sym- pathy and brotherliness. For this reason it respects loyalty to conviction wherever it may find convic- tion as one of the most priceless virtues of the good life. It looks upon prejudice and exclusive sectarian- ism of every form as a yielding to weakness in the human spirit. The curriculum should furnish the basis for appreciation and understanding and should build up the attitudes and habits of respect for the convictions of others. It should direct attention to the vastly greater common elements of faith that unite persons rather than to the minor and often A DYNAMIC CURRICULUM 257 superficial differences that separate them. In this way the dynamic curriculum will stress the larger loyalties that unite men into the larger and more fundamental groups rather than the secondary loyal- ties that separate them into antagonistic groups. A fourth objective toward which the dynamic cur- riculum should strive is the responsible mind. This attitude on the part of persons is one of the primary necessities of any form of social living or co-operative thinking and effort. In the earliest movements of thought toward democracy, the emphasis was first placed upon opportunity and privilege. Only slowly is there developing a consciousness of the fact that democracy involves a sharing of responsibility as well. Religious thought has shown the same ten- dency. Much of the thought of religious persons is still centred in the consideration of the advantages that religion can confer. Not infrequently this atti- tude never rises above that which is crassly selfish. The more the ideals of democracy take possession of the religious life the more the consciousness of social responsibility must be developed. This is one of the great contributions which religion is in a position to make to the social order if it is organized so as to do so effectively. The responsible Christian mind will thoroughly scrutinize the consequences of its thinking and acting, not only upon the future direc- tion of one’s own experience, but upon the Christian cause and the social order. Its sense of freedom in thought and choice will be sobered by a balancing sense of accountability. A fifth objective of the dynamic curriculum will be the creation of a forward-looking type of religious experience. Historically, religion has developed two distinct types—the backward-looking and the for- 258 CURRICULUM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION ward-looking. Not only have these points of view been characteristic of certain religions, but they have grown up side by side in the same religion. This was true in the Hebrew religion, with the priestly and scribal religion on the one hand and the religion of the prophets on the other. It has always been true of historic Christianity. A sharp divergence of these types is clearly in evidence in the literature of the New Testament. Wherever these two points of view have appeared together, they have always existed in sharp antagonism. Backward-looking religion lives in the past, bound by tradition, dogma, and the institution. It is legalistic, ritualistic, and authorita- tive. Forward-looking religion has its aspirations fixed upon the unrealized possibilities of life. It lives close to experience and is warm with vital and social meaning. Whether religion is backward- looking or forward-looking will depend entirely upon the values around which it is organized. If it is organized around the values of the past, it will be backward-looking, static. If it is organized around the unrealized values of the future it will be forward- looking. How it shall be organized is primarily the function of religious education to determine. The experience curriculum is fitted to organize the re- ligion of the present and future around the great ideals and values that, when realized, will mean the realization of the Kingdom of God. It is the only curriculum that can realize this objective so well. Finally, the highest objective of the curriculum as experience is the creation, in religious persons and in the collective religious community, of a creative atti- tude toward life. Religion is a fundamental and irre- ducible aspect of human experience. The discovery of its origin in the highest functions of the mind is a A DYNAMIC CURRICULUM 259 comparatively recent achievement of the psycholo- gist. In religion society possesses a resource of the highest value for the making of human life effective. The religious educator can rise to no higher concep- tion of his task than the organization of religious experience as a factor for the enrichment and ad- vancement of human life. To come to a clear under- standing of what the function of religion is and then intelligently to organize it for these ends lifts the _ function of the religious educator to the level of spiritual engineering. At this level of creative effort the religious educator comes into fellowship with God as the Creator of values in an age-long enterprise of building a social order founded upon spiritual ideals. BIBLIOGRAPHY The following bibliography is in no sense intended to be exhaustive. It is merely suggestive of the more significant sources and background discussions for the fundamental concepts presented in the text. For the convenience of students, the bibliography has been arranged under a few of the major topics. ON THE CURRICULUM IN GENERAL Artman, J. M. ‘Evaluation of Curricula for Week-Day Re- ligious Education,” art. Religious Education. April, 1922. ——, ‘Scientific Method as a Scheme for Evaluating Curricula,” art. Religious Education. Ballantyne, William C. Religious Education for the Coming So~ cial Order. Boston, 1917. Betts, George H. The Curriculum of Religious Education. New York, 1924. Blashfield, F. W. ‘‘Expanding the Curriculum,” art. Church School. June, 1923. Bobbitt, Franklin. The Curriculum. Boston, 1918. , How to Make a Curriculum. Boston, 1924. Bower, William C. ‘‘The Proposed Programme of the Inter- national Curriculum of Religious Education,” art. Church School. November, 1923. -——, *‘A Suggestive Approach to the Reconstruction of the Cur- riculum of the School of Religion,” art. Religious Educa- tion. June, 1917. , The Educational Task of the Local Church. St. Louis, 1921. Charters, W. W. Curriculum Construction. New York, 1923. Coe, George A. “‘Opposing Theories of the Curriculum,” art. Religious Education. April, 1922. ——, ‘‘Week-Day Curricular Material,” art. Church School. September, 1922. Dewey, John. The Child and the Curriculum. Chicago, 1902. ——, The School and Society. Chicago, 1900. 261 262 BIBLIOGRAPHY ‘Findings of the Forest Hills Conference on the Correlation of Programmes,” report. Church School. October, 1923. Hartshorne, Hugh. “A School of the Christian Life—Courses of Study,” art. Church School. January, 1923. . “A School of the Christian Life—The Curriculum,” art. Church School. November, 1922. Haslett, Samuel B. The Pedagogical Bible School. New York, 1908. Hill, Patty Smith, et al. A Conduct Curriculum for the Kinder- garten and First Grade. New York, 1923. Meriam, Junius L. Child Life and the Curriculum. Yonkers- on-Hudson, 1921. Meyers, A. J. W. “‘A Critical Review of Current Lesson Ma- terial,” art. Religious Education. August, 1917. Norton, John K. ‘‘A General Survey of the Curriculum Situa- tion,’ art. Journal of Educational Research. September, 1924. Pease, George W. Outline of a Bible School Curriculum. Chi- cago, 1904. Sampey, John R. The Iniernational Lesson System. New York, 1911. Shaver, Erwin L. The Project Principle in Religious Education. Chicago, 1924. ‘Statement of a Theory of the Curriculum,” prepared by the Committee on International Curriculum of Religious Edu- cation and issued by the International Lesson Committee. January 25, 1924. Wells, Margaret A. A Project Curriculum. Philadelphia, 1921. Winchester, Benjamin S. “‘The Church School Curriculum,” art. Church School. January, 1921. HISTORICAL BACKGROUNDS AND DEVELOPMENT OF EDUCATIONAL CONCEPTS Adams, George B. Civilization During the Middle Ages. New York, 1899. Adams, John. The Herbartian Psychology Applied to Teaching. Boston, 1906. Archer, R. L. Rousseau on Education. London, 1912. Bolton, Frederick. Prinetples of Education. New York, 1910. Compayré, G. Herbart and Education by Instruction. New York, 1907. BIBLIOGRAPHY 263 Cubberley, Ellwood P. History of Education. Boston, 1922. ——, Public Education in the United States. Boston, 1919. Davidson, J. New Interpretation of Herbart’s Psychology. Edin- burgh, 1906. De Garmo, G. Herbart and Herbartians. New York, 1895. Drever, J. Greek Education. Cambridge, 1912. Eckoff, W. J. Pestalozz1’s Idea of an ABC of Sense-perception and Minor Pedagogical Works of Herbart. New York, 1896. Emerson, Mabel I. The Evolution of the Educational Ideal. Bos- ton, 1914. Encyclopedia of Education. (Paul Monroe, editor.) New York, 1919. Fletcher, S. S. T., and Welton, J. Froebel’s Chief Educational Writings. New York, 1912. Graves, Frank P. A History of Education. 3 vols. New York, 1914. Green, J. (editor). Pestalozzi’s Educational Writings. New York, 1916. Hall, G. Stanley. Adolescence. 2 vols. New York, 1905. Herbart, J. F. Allgemeine Pddagogie. 1806. , Outlines of Educational Doctrine. New York, 1901. ——, Umriss Pédagogischer Vorlesungen. 1835. Hughes, James L. Froebel’s Educational Laws. New York, 1904. Keatinge, M. W. The Great Didactic of Comenius. London, 1896. Laurie, 8. S. John Amos Comenius. Syracuse, 1892. Lindsay, T. M. A History of the Reformation. 2 vols. New York, 1906, 1907. Locke, John. Educational Writings. (J. W. Adamson, editor.) New York, 1912. Monroe, Paul. Source-Book in the History of Education. New York, 1919. , Text-Book in the History of Education. New York, 1912. Monroe, W.S. Comenius and the Beginnings of Educational Re- form. New York, 1900. National Herbart Society. Yearbook. 1895, 1896, articles by C. C. VanLiew, J. Dewey, E. E. Brown, C. H. Galbreath, B. A. Hinsdale, C. A. McMurry. Quick, R. H. Essays on Educational Reformers. New York, 1896. Rein, W. Outline of Pedagogy. London, 1898. Robinson, James H. Medieval and Modern Times. New York, 1919. 264 BIBLIOGRAPHY Spedding, J. Account of the Life and Times of Francis Bacon. London, 1879. Spencer, Herbert. Education. New York, 1860. **A Statement of Recent Tendencies in Education,” prepared by the Committee on International Curriculum of Religious Education and issued by the Internatiénal Lesson Commit- tee. January 25, 1924. Taylor, Henry O. The Medieval Mind. 2 vols. New York, 1914. Twentieth Century Yearbook, the National Society for the Study of Education, various numbers of Part I. Woodward, W. H. Vittorino da Feltre and Other Humanist Edu- eators. Cambridge, 1912. ON A FUNCTIONAL VIEW OF THE MIND Angell, J. R. Psychology. New York, 1904. Baldwin, J. Mark. Mental Development. New York, 1915. Calkins, M. W. A First Book in Psychology. New York, 1910. Dewey, John. Democracy and Education. New York, 1916. , Essays in Experimental Logic. Chicago, 1916. , Human Nature and Conduct. New York, 1922. Ellwood, Charles A. An Introduction to Social Psychology. New York, 1917. Freud, Sigmund. General Introduction to Psychoanalysis. New York, 1920. Hobhouse, L. Mind in Evolution. London, 1901. Holt, E. B. The Freudian Wish and Its Place in Ethics. New York, 1915. James, William. The Principles of Psychology. 2 vols. New York, 1905. Jastrow, Joseph. The Subconscious. Boston, 1905. Judd, Charles H. ‘“‘Evolution of Consciousness,” art. Psy- chological Review, XVII, ‘77-97. ——, “‘Motor Processes in Consciousness,” art. Journal of Philosophy, VI, 85-91. » Psychology. New York, 1907. McDougall, William. Body and Mind: A History and a Defense of Animism. New York, 1913. ——, An Introduction to Social Psychology. Boston, 1918. , Outline of Psychology. New York, 1923. Marshall, Henry R. Mind and Conduct. New York, 1920. Pierce, Frederick. Our Unconscious Mind. New York, 1922. BIBLIOGRAPHY 265 Pillsbury, W. B. Essentials of Psychology. New York, 1911. Prince, M. The Unconscious. New York, 1914. — Robinson, James H. Mind in the Making. New York and Lon- don, 1921. Stout, G. F. Groundwork of Psychology. New York, 1903. , Manual of Psychology. New York, 1899. Tansley, A. G. The New Psychology and Its Relation to Life. New York, 1920. Thompson, W. Hanna. Brain and Personality. New York, 1916. Thorndike, Edward L. The Original Nature of Man. New York, 1913. Watson, John B. Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist. Philadelphia, 1919. Woodworth, Robert S. Dynamic Psychology. New York, 1918. , Psychology. New York, 1921. ON PERSONS AND SELF-REALIZATION Bowne, Borden P. Personalism. Boston, 1908. Dewey, John, and Tufts, J. H. Ethics. New York, 1909. Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology. (J. Mark Baldwin, editor.) 2 vols. New York, 1918, 1920. Groves, Ernest R. Personality and Social Adjustment. New York, 1923. Hobhouse, L. Mind in Evolution. London, 1901. Leighton, Joseph A. The Field of Philosophy. Columbus, 1919. ON THE CONCEPT OF ADJUSTMENT Coe, George A. Psychology of Religion. Chicago, 1916. ——, A Social Theory of Religious Education. New York, 1917. O’Shea, M. V. Education as Adjustment. New York, 1908. Thorndike, Edward L. The Psychology of Learning. New York, 1913. ON THE NATURE OF EXPERIENCE Dewey, John. Democracy and Education. New York, 1916. , Essays in Experimental Logic. Chicago, 1916. , German Philosophy and Politics. New York, 1915. ——, How We Think. Boston, 1910. ——, Human Nature and Conduct. New York, 1922. ——, The Reconstruction of Philosophy. New York, 1920. 266 BIBLIOGRAPHY Dewey, John, et al. Creative Intelligence. New York, 1917. James, William. Pragmatism. New York, 1914. , The Principles of Psychology. 2 vols. New York, 1905. Thorndike, Edward L. The Original Nature of Man. New York, 1913. ——, The Psychology of Learning. New York, 1913. ON THE ORIGIN AND FUNCTION OF KNOWLEDGE Bawden, H. Heath. Principles of Pragmatism. Boston, 1910. Bradley, F. N. Essays on Truth and Reality. Oxford, 1914. Dewey, John. Essays in Experimental Logic. Chicago, 1916. , German Philosophy and Politics. New York, 1915. ——, How We Think. Boston, 1910. —, The Influence of Darwinism on Philosophy. New York, 1910. , The Reconstruction of Philosophy. New York, 1920. Dewey, John, et al. Creative Intelligence. New York, 1917. James, William. Pragmatism. New York, 1914. Kilpatrick, William H. ‘‘ Meaning and Thinking,” art. Journal of Educational Method. April, 1925. Sturt, Henry (editor). Personal Idealism, esp. Chapter II. New York, 1902. ON VALUES Ames, Edward 8. Psychology of Religious Experience. Boston, 1910. Coe, George A. The Psychology of Religion. Chicago, 1916. Judd, Charles H. ‘(Doctrine of Attitudes,” art. Journal of Philosophy, V, 676-684. ——, “Evolution of Consciousness,” art. Psychological Review, XVII, 77-97. King, Irving. The Development of Religion. New York, 1910. Urban, W. M. Valuation: Its Nature and Laws. London, 1919. » “Worth,” art. Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology. ON THE CONCEPT OF DEMOCRACY Blackmar, F, W., and Gillin, J. L. Outlines of Sociology. New York, 1915. Bryce, James. Modern Democracies. 2 vols. New York, 1921. Carver, Thomas N. Essays in Social Justice. Cambridge, 1915. BIBLIOGRAPHY 267 Dealey, J. Q. Sociology: Its Development and Application. New York, 1920. ' De Toqueville, A. Democracy in America. New York, 1898. Dewey, John. Democracy and Education. New York, 1916. Erskine, John. Democracy and Ideals. New York, 1920. Follett, M. P. The New State. New York, 1920. Giddings, Franklin H. The Responsible State. Boston, 1918. Mallock, W. H. The Inmits of Pure Democracy. New York, 1917. Park, R. E., and Burgess, E. W. Introduction to the Science of Sociology. Chicago, 1921. Ross, E. A. Principles of Sociology. New York, 1920. ON THE CONCEPT OF PROGRESS Bury, J. B. The Idea of Progress. New York, 1920. Inge, Wiliam R. Outspoken Essays. New York, 1922. Todd, Arthur J. Theories of Social Progress. New York, 1918. ON MOTIVATION Bower, William C. ‘An Approach to the Reconstruction of the Curriculum of the School of Religion,” art. Religious Edu- cation. June, 1917. Dewey, John. Interest and Effort. Boston, 1913. Galloway, Thomas W. The Use of Motives in Teaching Moral? and Religion. Boston, 1918. Ikenberry, Charles S. Motives and Expression in Religious Euu- cation. New York, 1922. Wilson, H. B. and G. M. Motivation of School Work. Boston, 1916. Wilson, G. M. ‘“‘Motivation vs. Fact Method in Teaching Geography,” art. Journal of Educational Method. Febru- ary, 1925. ON SUBJECT-MATTER Barr, A.S. ‘‘ Making the Course of Study,” I, I, arts. Journal of Educational Method. May and June, 1924. Dewey, John. The Child and the Curriculum. Chicago, 1902. , Democracy and Education. New York, 1916. Charters, W. W. Curriculum Construction. New York, 1923. 268 BIBLIOGRAPHY Kilpatrick, William H. ‘How Shall We Select the Subject- Matter for the Elementary Curriculum?” art. Journal of Educational Method. September, 1924. —, “Subject-Matter and the Educative Process,” I, II, arts. Journal of Educational Method. November, 1922, February, 1923. Meriam, Junius L. Child Life and the Curriculum. Yonkers- on-Hudson, 1921. ON METHOD Baltzell, Edna M. ‘Project Method Promotes Original Ideas,” art. Journal of Educational Method. December, 1922. Barbour, Dorothy D. “The Case Against Standardization,” art. Religious Education. June, 1923. Betts, George H. How to Teach Religion. New York, 1919. , The Recitation. Boston, 1910. Coe, George A. A Social Theory of Religious Education. New York, 1917. Chassell, Joseph O. “Criteria for Improving the Educative Process,” art. Journal of Educational Method. April, 1925. Clark, Marion G. “The Direction of Classroom Teaching in the Use of the Project,” art. Journal of Educational Method. April, 1924. Courtis, S. A. “Teaching Through the Use of Projects,” art. Teachers College Record. March, 1920. Crowley, James A. “The Socialization of the School Program: I, The Socialized Recitation,” art. Journal of Educational Method. May, 1924. » “The Socialization of the School Program: II, Extra- curricular Activities,” art. Journal of Educational Method. June, 1924, Dewey, John. Democracy and Education. New York, 1916. Earhart, L. B. Types of Teaching. Boston, 1915. Edwards, Frances R. “The Place of the Project Method in Religious Education,” art. Journal of Educational Method. December, 1921. Goodrich, Bessie B. “Criteria for Judging the Value of Proj- ects,” art. Journal of Educational Method. May, 1922. Hahn, H. H. “The Case for Direct Learning,” art. Journal of Educational Method. December, 1923. Hall-Quest, Alfred L. ‘‘Method and the Educative Process,” art. Journal of Educational Method. November, 1928. BIBLIOGRAPHY 269 Hartley, Gertrude. The Use of Projects in Religious Education. Philadelphia, 1921. Hayward, P. R. “Shall Our Pupils Receive or Participate ?”’ art. Church School. January, 1921. Hosic, James F. “Criteria of Success in Project Teaching,” art. Journal of Educational Method. April, 1923. » ‘The Project Method,” art. Journal of Educational Meth- od. June, 1923. , “The Réle of the Teacher in the Project Method,” I, IT, Ill, arts. Journal of Educational Method. December, 1922, January, February, 1923. ——., “Types of Project and Their Technique,” art. Journal of Educational Method. March, 1923. » “What Is the Project Method?” I, IT, III, arts. Journal of Educational Method. September, October, November, 1922. Hunter, F. M. “The Project Method—What Can Be Accom- plished in the Ordinary Classroom,” art. Journal of Educa- tional Method. November, 1922. Hunter, M. C. “A Self-Directing High-School Department,”’ art. Religious Education. August, 1919. Kilpatrick, William H. “A General View and Evaluation of Present Methods,” art. Religious Education. June, 1919. ——, “Method and Curriculum,” J, II, arts. Journal of Educa- tional Method. April, May, 1922. —, “Mind-Set and Learning,” art. Journal of Educational Method. November, 1921. ——, ‘“‘Psychological and Logical,” art. Journal of Educational Method. March, 1922. ——, “The Wider Study of Method.” Journal of Educational Method. October, 1921. ——, “What Is Method?” art. Journal of Educational Method. September, 1921. ——, The Project Method. New York. Kilpatrick, William H. ef al. “Dangers and Difficulties of the Project Method and How to Overcome Them,” symposium. Teachers College Record. September, 1921. McMurry, Charles A. Elements of General Method. Blooming- ton, 1898, , Teaching by Projects. New York, 1920. McMurry, Charles A. and Frank M. Method of the Recitation. New York, 1911. 270 BIBLIOGRAPHY Mayer, Otto. “‘Developing Initiative in Young People’s Work,” art. Religious Education. April, 1923. Miller, Harry L. Directing Study. New York, 1922. Mudge, E. L. ‘“‘The Project Method in Religious Education,” art. Church School. November, 1922. O’Shea, M. V. Everyday Problems in Teaching. Indianapolis, 1912. Owen, W. B. ‘“‘The Problem Method,” art. Journal of Educa- tional Method. January, 1922. Shaver, Erwin L. The Project Principle in Religious Education. Chicago, 1924. Starch, Daniel. Educational Psychology. New York, 1919. , Experiments in Educational Psychology. New York, 1917. Stevens, Julia D. “The New Method in Education,” art. Church School. October, 1920. Strayer, George D. A Brief Course in the Teaching Process. New York, 1912. Tallman, Lavinia. “New Types of Class Teaching,” art. Re- ligious Education. August, 1917. Thorndike, Edward L. The Principles of Teaching. New York, 1911. » The Psychology of Learning. New York, 1913. ——, Work and Fatigue: Individual Differenees. New York, 1914. Tralle, Henry E. Dynamics of Teaching. New York, 1924. Waring, Ethel B. “The Educative Process in and out of School,” art. Journal of Educational Method. February, 1924. Watson, Goodwin B. “Do Projects Work?” art. Church School. August, 1924. ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION THROUGH SOCIAL PARTICIPATION Bower, William C. The Educational Task of the Local Church. St. Louis, 1921. Coe, George A. A Social Theory of Religious Education. New York, 1917. Cope, Henry F. Organizing the Church School. New York, 1923. Dewey, John. Democracy and Education. New York, 1916. ——, The School and Society. Chicago, 1900. —, Evelyn. New Schools for Old. New York, 1919. BIBLIOGRAPHY 271 Dewey, John and Evelyn. Schools of Tomorrow. New York, 1915. Johnston, Charles H., ef al. The Modern High School. New York, 1914. Maus, Cynthia P. Youth and the Church. Cincinnati, 1923. Meyers, A. J. W. “Plans that Have Promoted Co-operation Between the Home and the Church School,” art. Religious Education. April, 1923. Miller, Harry L. Directing Study. New York, 1922. Perry, A. C. Discipline as a School Problem. Boston, 1915. Reichard, L. F. “The School as a Project,” art. Religious Education. December, 1922. | Stone, Genevieve L. “An Experiment in Democracy,” art. Journal of Educational Method. February, 1923. Welton, J., and Blandford, F.G. Moral Training through School Discipline. Baltimore. ON THE DOCTRINE OF TRANSFER Bagley, W. C. The Educative Process. New York, 1914. Bolton, Frederick. Principles of Education. New York, 1910. Colvin, Stephen 8. The Learning Process. New York, 1914. Ruediger, W. C. The Principles of Education. Boston, 1910. Starch, Daniel. Educational Psychology. New York, 1919. Thorndike, Edward L. The Psychology of Learning. New York, 1913. ON FREEDOM AND CONTROL Baldwin, J. Mark. The Individual and Society. Boston, 1911. Coe, George A. Law and Freedom in the School. Chicago, 1924. , What Ails our Youth? New York, 1924. Dewey, John. Democracy and Education. New York, 1916. Hosic, J. F. “The Réle of the Teacher in the Project Method,”’ I, I, I, arts. Journal of Educational Method. December, 1922, January and February, 1923. ON ANALYSIS OF EXPERIENCE Charters, W. W. Curriculum Construction. New York, 1923. Hartshorne, Hugh. ‘Co-operative Study of the Religious Life of Children,” art. Religious Education. December, 1921. Q72 BIBLIOGRAPHY ON INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES Starch, Daniel. Educational Psychology. New York, 1919. Thorndike, Edward L. Mental and Social Measurements. New York, 1916. ——, Work and Fatigue : Individual Differences. New York, 1924. ON STATISTICAL LAWS Elderton, W. P. and E. M. A Primer of Statistics. London, 1914. King, W. I. Elements of Statistical Method. New York, 1916. Thorndike, Edward L. Mental and Social Measurements. New © York, 1916. ON THE NATURE AND FUNCTION OF RELIGION Ames, Edward 8. The Psychology of Religious Experience. Bos- ton, 1910. Brinton, Daniel G. Religions of Primitive Peoples. New York, 1897. Caird, Edward. The Evolution of Religion. 2 vols. New York, 1893. Coe, George A. The Psychology of Religion. Chicago, 1916. Durkheim, Emile. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (Swain translation). London, 1915. Ellwood, Charles A. The Reconstruction of Religion. New York, 1922. . ——, Religion and Social Science. New York, 1923. » ‘The Social Function of Religion,” art. American Journal of Sociology, XIX, 289-308. Foster, George B. The Function of Religion in Man’s Struggle for Existence. Chicago, 1909. Galloway, George. The Principles of Religious Development. London, 1909. Hocking, William E. The Meaning of God in Human Experience. New Haven, 1912. Hoffding, Harold. Philosophy of Religion. London, 1906. Hopkins, E. W. The History of Religions. New York, 1918. , Origin and Evolution of Religion. New Haven, 1928. Hume, R. E. The World’s Living Religions. New York, 1924. BIBLIOGRAPHY 273 James, William. Varieties of Religious Experience. New York, 1902. Jastrow, Morris. The Study of Religion. New York, 1911. Jevons, F. B. An Introduction to the Study of Comparative Re- ligion. New York, 1912. Kauizsch, E. “The Religion of Israel,” art. Hastings’ Bible Dictionary. Extra volume. King, Irving. The Development of Religion. New York, 1910. Leuba, James H. Psychological Origin and Nature of Religion. London, 1909. —., A Psychological Study of Religion. New York, 1912. Lowie, Robert H. Primitive Religion. New York, 1924. Marett, R. R. Psychology and Folklore. New York, 1920. , The Threshold of Religion. New York, 1914. Martineau, James. A Study of Religion. Oxford, 1900. Menzies, Allen. History of Religion. New York, 1913. Moore, George F. The Birth and Growth of Religion. New York, 1923. , History of Religions. 2 vols. New York, 1913, 1919. Patten, Simon N. The Social Basis of Religion. New York, 1911. Pratt, James B. The Psychology of Religious Belief. New York, 1907. , The Religious Consciousness. New York, 1920. Sabatier, Auguste. Outlines of a Philosophy of Religion. New York, 1916. Starbuck, E. D. Psychology of Religion. New York, 1903. Stratton, George M. Psychology of the Religious Infe. London, 1918. Strickland, Francis L. Psychology of Religious Experience. New York, 1924. Toy, G. H. Introduction to the Study of Religion. New York, 1913. Webb, Clement C. Group Theories of Religion and the Individual. New York, 1916. Wright, W. K. A Student's Philosophy of Religion. New York, 1922. ON THE CONCEPT OF EVOLUTION AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF MAN’S CULTURE Clodd, E. Primer of Evolution. New York, 1897. Dawson, Marshall. Nineteenth Century Evolution and After. New York, 1924. QA : BIBLIOGRAPHY Duckworth, W. L. H. Prehistoric Man. Cambridge, 1912. Haeckel, E. H. P. A. The Evolution of Man. New York, 1887. Haeckel, E. H. P. A., ef al. Evolution and Modern Thought. New York, 1917. Lull, R. S. The Evolution of the Earth. New Haven, 1918. Osborn, H. F. Men of the Old Stone Age. New York, 1919. , The Origin and Development of Infe. New York, 1921. Ratzell, F. History of Mankind. 3 vols. New York, 1898. Thompson, J. Arthur. The Outline of Science. 5 vols. New York, 1922. ON THINKING AND RATIONALIZING Dewey, John. How We Think. Boston, 1910. Robinson, James H. Mind in the Making. New York and Lon- don, 1921. ON EDUCATION AS RECONSTRUCTION Dewey, John. Democracy and Education. New York, 1916. ON THE DOCTRINE OF CATHARSIS Hall, G. Stanley. Adolescence. 2 vols. New York, 1905. Thorndike, Edward L. The Original Nature of Man. New York, 1913. SAMPLE ENTERPRISES In his The Project Principle in Religious Education, Chapter II, E. L. Shaver has described fourteen enterprises as used in the public schools. Part II is devoted entirely to the descrip- tion of seventy-seven enterprises as used in the church school. Experiments in enterprises in the church school are reported from time to time in Religious Education. 'These date, for the most part, from the beginning of 1922. Similar significant experiments in enterprises for the church school were reported from time to time in The Church School during the period of its publication. The most complete source for experiments in enterprises in the public school is to be found in The Journal of Educational Method, dating from the Se of its publication in Sep- tember, 1921. INDEX Adaptation: the form which ad- justment assumes, 80; active and passive, 48, 80; principle of, in curriculum making, 241 ff.; necessitated by individual differ- ences, 241 ff.; necessitated by group differences, 243 ff.; causes of differences, 245 ff.; requires a flexible curriculum, 247 ff. Adjustment: education defined as adjustment to subject-matter, 19; a function of mental life, 44 f.; initiative taken by persons, 48, 74 ff., 80; to natural and so- © cial environment, 75 ff.; recipro- cal relation of man and his world, 78 ff.; determines one’s world, 80 f.; experience the re- sult of, 128 f.; knowledge the re- sult of, 128 f. Adults, 60, 68, 237 f. Alternatives in outcomes, 189 f. Analysis of experience, 180 ff.; a problem of research, 180; meth- ods of, 180 ff.; the questionnaire, 181 f.; the personal interview, 182; introspection, 182 f.; objec- tive observation, 183 ff.; job analysis, 184; types of observa- tion, 184 ff.; items for laboratory research, 188 ff. Annoyance, 88 f., 173. Antecedent and consequent, 53, 98, 121, 155 ff., 219; ground for the reconstruction of experience, 157; basis of responsibility, 157 f.; an integrating bond in experi- ence, 155 ff. Anthropology, 25. Assignments, 64, 220. Attitudes: result of responses, 89; a part of the curriculum, 173, 233, 256. 275 Backward-looking education, 14 f.; result of conceiving education as knowledge, 21; result of reca- pitulation theory, 32 f. Backward-looking religion, 257 f. Bacon, Francis, 6, 21, 50. Behaviorism, 44 ff.; mechanistic, 45 f{., 87; purposive, 45 f., 87; availability of each type for re- ligious education, 87 f. Biology, 24. Bond, between situation and re- sponse, 85 ff.; mechanistic bonds, 85; reflective-purposive, 85 f.; educational possibilities of each type, 86 f.; strengthened by sat- isfaction, 88 f.; weakened by an- noyance, 88 f. Butler, Nicholas Murray, 19. Catharsis, doctrine of, 28. Central tendencies in experience, 189. Charters, W. W., 184. Child, the: centre of educational process, 3; knowledge substitut- ed for, 17; placed at centre by recapitulation theory, 30; has standing in own right, 68; the centre of programmes of social improvement, 68; the centre of community organization, 238 f.; attitude of to be carried into adult life, 68. China, education in, 14 f. Choice: based upon standards of value, 116; a determinant of be- havior, 87; essential to experi- ences for curriculum use, 166 f. Christian outcomes in conduct, 190 f.; how to guarantee them, 219 {, 276 Christian reaction against Greeco- Roman world, 57. Church, the, 230 f. Civilization, 120 f. Classics, the, 5, 6, 7, 58 f. Classroom procedure, 220 ff.; sug- gested type of, 222 ff Comenius, 6, 50. Common experience necessary, 249 Common man, the, 5, 7, 21, 37 f., 4A, Community, the, organized around interests of child, 238 ff. Continuity: principle of, 147 ff.; gives movement to experience, 148; as special significance in re- ligious education, 150; inter- relatedness of experience, 153 ff.; antecedent and consequent in experience, 155 ff.; influence of a dominant purpose upon, 158 ff.; a necessary characteristic of ex- periences used in the curriculum, 167 f., 219. Control: over nature, 2, 36, 40 ff.; of experience, 36, 47, 92 ff.; con- cept of, 95 ff.; external, 96 f.; through force, 96; through social pressure, 96; through prejudice, 96; through habit, 96 f.; through selected facts, 9'7; co-operative, through guidance, 97 f.; not inconsistent with enrichment of experience, 98; factors in the control of experience, 99 ff.; knowledge a control factor, 128; teacher may exercise only through guidance, 218 f. Co-operation, 225; of teacher and learner, 218 f.; of adults and youth, 238. Correlation, Herbart’s doctrine of, Creative attitude of mind, 21, 33, 47, 136, 225, 258 f. Culture epoch theory, 28 fi. Curriculum, the: at the centre of the educative process, 3 f.; changing conceptions of, 4; as discipline, 4 ff.; as knowledge, 13 ff.; of primitive peoples, 14; as INDEX recapitulation, 24 ff.; as enriched and controlled experience, 25 ff.; backgrounds of this view, 36 ff.; antecedents of this view, 48 ff.; of what it consists, 163 ff.; as based upon selected and organ- ized experience, 36, 164 ff., 179; component elements of, 171 ff.; elements i in the situation, 172 f.; experience of the learner, 173 f.; experience of others, 174 f.; should provide basis for social life, 249 f.; should arrive some- where, 250 f.; should be un- dertaken experimentally, 251; should be dynamic, 252 ff.; should prepare for life in a changing world, 254; should create conditions of continuous growth, 254 f.; should take into account individual differences, 247 ff.; objectives of, 254 ff. Customs, 1, 20, 25, 29, 76. Democracy: a dominant concept of modern thinking, 37; back- grounds of the idea, 37 f.; what is Involved in the concept, 38 f.; demands certain types of atti- tude and motive, 204 f. Desire: the right of the common man, 37; attached to ends, 46; repudiated during Middle Ages, 57; a determinant of ends, 72 f.; selective influence upon environ- ment, 74; rational, 74; relation of to value, 74, 88, 94 f., 107 ff.; evaluation of, 74 f.; a motivator of activity, 61, 80, 144; the focal point for the remaking of human nature, 87, 111; the highest achievement of human nature, 76, 111. Dewey, John, 51 f., 68, 103. Diary, personal, as a source for the discovery of experience, 182 f. Differences: individual, 241 ff.; group, 243 fi.; causes of, 245 ff. Disciplinary conception of the cur- riculum, 1 ff.; philosophy of, 7 fic; centred in process of learn- ‘ing, 9, 12; subjects appropriate INDEX to, 9 f.; influence of, 10 f.; de- fects of, 11 ff.; effect on spirit of school, 10. Discipline: involved in the enrich- ment and control of experience, 53 f., 116 ff.; inherent in all pur- posive experience, 119, 171. Discrimination, a factor in the en- richment and control of experi- ence, 99 ff. Education: development of, 1 ff.; most fundamental undertaking in modern society, 2; changes in, 3; passing through reconstruc- tion, 3, 4, 52 f.; primitive, 13 f., 48; as formation, 16 f.; defined as adjustment to subject-matter, 19; as unfolding, 24 ff.; in Egypt, 14 f.; in China, 14 f.; as experi- ence, 51 ff.; as preparation, 60 f., 65 f.; formalizing of, 61; as re- construction of experience, 51 f., 68 f., 157; as propaganda, 218, 256. Effort, education in, 14 f. Embryology, 25. Emotions, a special problem in re- ligious education, 145 f. Ends: activity directed toward, 46, 62, 68, 88; to be gripping, must not be too remote, 62 f.; the ba- sis of reconstructing experience, 68 f.; selective influence of, 69 f.; evoke activity, 72 f. Enrichment of experience: one form of redirection, 36; concept of, 92 ff.; through meaning, 93 f.; through worth, 94 f.; not incon- sistent with control, 98. Enterprises: the basis of school or- ganization, 233 ff.; should centre in expanding social relations and functions, 235 f. Environment: material, 75; the so- cial nature of, 75 ff.; influence of, QA5 f. Evolution, doctrine of, 25 f. Experience: as a basis of the curric- ulum, 35 ff., 164 ff.; antecedents of this view, 48 ff.; fundamental in moral and religious education, 277 55 £.; worth of present, 53, 57 ff.; medizeval view of, 57 f.; Renais- sance view of, 58 ff.; Reformation view of, 59 f.; individual quality of, 65, 81; social nature of, 38 f., 75 £f., 249 ff.; reconstruction of, 52, 54, 68 f£.; evaluation of, 69 f.; nature of, '72 ff.; a function of the self, '73 f£.; defined, 74; subordi- nate to the self, 74; result of ad- justment, 74 f.; determines one’s world, 80 f.; follows a situation- bond-response pattern, 82 ff.; dynamic nature of, 88, 253; ten- dency of to fall into modes, 89 f.; cumulative character of, 91; how enriched and controlled, 92 ff.; evaluation of, 99; types of, 99; factors that lead to its control, 99 ff.; capacity to absorb knowl- edge, 115 f.; immediacy of, 185 ff.; integration of, 147 ff.; inter- relatedness of, 153 ff.; not all of equal value, 164; qualities that render it available for curricu- lum use, 164 ff.; of the learner, a part of the curriculum, 173 f.; of others, a part of the curriculum, 174 ff.; analysis of, 180 ff.; ge- netic, 196; results of substituting books for, 199 ff.; complex char- acter of, 252 f.; continually un- dergoing change, 253 f. Experimental nature of the learn- ing process, 124. Factors in the control of experi- ence, 99 ff.; discrimination, 99 ff.; reflective thinking, 102 ff.; valu- ation, 107 ff.; knowledge, 114 f.; the disciplined will, 116 ff. Faculty psychology: basis of the disciplinary conception of the curriculum, 8f.; displaced by Herbart, 16, 20. “Five formal steps in teaching,” 17 f., 207 ff.; criticism of, 209. Formalizing of education, the, 61. **Formation”’ of the mind, 16, 17, 68. Forward-looking religion, 257 f. Q78 Forward-looking type of mind, 47, Q57 f. Freud, 27. Functional view: of the mind, 44 ff.; of mtelligence, 52; of knowl- edge, 127 f. “General method,” 210. Geology, 24. God: child’s relation to, 237; a member of the Christian com- munity, 237; a Creator of values, 259. Greeks, education of, 48 f. Group differences, 243 ff.; racial, 243 f.; occupational, 244; geo- graphical, 244; sectarian, 244 f.; significance for curriculum, 247 Growth: supposed “key” to, 26; ““stages”’ of, 27, 29, 31; empha- . sized by recapitulatory theory, 28, 31; the necessity of educa- tion, 54; the end of education, 54; makes reconstruction of ex- perience possible, 54; Renais- sance and Reformation views of, 60 f.; to be interpreted posi- tively, 54, 67 f.; results of nega- tive views of, 61 f.; conditions of continuous growth, 68, 254 f. Guidance, 97 f. Habit: the result of strengthening bonds, 89; a form of self-control, 89 f.; need of flexibility of, 67 f., 90 f.; a form of external control, 96 f.; a step in method, 210, 256. Hebrews, the, history of, 200 fi. Herbart: formulator of the concep- tion of the curriculum as knowl- edge, 13; views of, 15 ff.; influ- ence of, 19 f., 209; criticism of position of, 20 f. Heredity: strongly accentuated by recapitulatory theory, 27, $2; in- fluence upon differences, 245. Historical subject-matter: 2, 52, 174 ff., 191 f., 194 ff.; a record of racial experience, 194 f.; its value, 195 f.; its form, 196 ff.; INDEX cumulative character of, 197; systematized, 197 f.; symbolic, 198; gives rise to major educa- tional problem, 198 ff.; a means, 199; source material, 199; vital- izing it, 199; of varying educa- tional value, 200 ff.; correspon- dence with present experience, 200; varies with ethical and re- ligious levels upon which it origi- nated, 200 f., 204 f.; approxima- tion to ideals of Jesus, 206, 214 jae A We 1 History, 195. Human nature: disciplinary views of, 7 f.; Herbart’s view of, 19; re- capitulatory view of, 28 f., 33; reconstruction of, 87, 111. Humanism, 5. Ideals: affect the highest order of bond, 87; determinants in be- havior, 87; selective influence of, 89 f.; an expression of standards of value, 116 f.; a part of the cur- riculum, 173 f. Immediacy of experience, 135 f. Individual differences: to be sought in experience, 189; character of, 241 ff.; range of, 241; distribu- tion of, 242; causes of, 245 ff.; significance of for the curricu- lum, 247 ff. Industrialization of society, 37. Initiative, 175 f., 224. Institutions, 76, 134. Integration of experience: relation of to personality, 147 f.; nature of, 147 ff.; bond of in the mind, 148 ff.; a primary aim in educa- tion, 150; relation of religion to, 150 ff.; bonds of, 153 ff.; a neces- sity, 251. Intelligence: an instrument of ad- justment, 44 f.; the directive fac- ey in experience, 52, 125 ff., 156 Interest: the bond that unites per- sons and ends, 61, 144; loss of _ when learning is dissociated from experience, 61, 144; Her- INDEX bart’s doctrine of, 17; relation to value, 61. Interrelatedness of experience, 153 Introspection as a method of dis- covering experiences, 182 f. Isolation: of learning from experi- ence, effect of, 144, 199; of reli- gion from experience, effect of, 138 f., 143 f. Jesus: His discrimination regard- ing ethical and religious levels, 203 f.; the supreme criterion of historical subject-matter in the curriculum of religious educa- tion, 206. Job analysis, 184. Kingdom of God, 227, 230, 232, 252. Knowledge: curriculum largely concerned with, 13; placed at centre of the curriculum by the Herbartians, 17, 20; conception of the curriculum as knowledge, 13 ff.; antecedents of this view, 13 f.; influence of this concep- tion, 19 f., 23; criticism of this conception, 20 f.; influence of the sciences upon knowledge con- cept of the curriculum, 21 f.; what knowledge is of most worth, 22 f.; relation of to prac- tical activities, 41 f.; relation of to the curriculum, 52, 54; effec- tive retention of, 64 f.; a deposit of experience, 91; a factor of con- trol, 114 f.; origin and function of, 120 ff.; as meaning, 120 ff.; essentially dynamic, 121 f.; can- not be imparted apart from shared experience, 122 f.; chiefly the result of trial and error method, 123 f.; essentially ex- perimental, 124 f.; a factor of control, 125 ff.; leads to progress, 126; makes available the experi- ence of the race, 126 f.; validated in experience, 128 ff., 141 f.; eri- teria for judging worth of, 130 ff.; to what extent of value for its 279 own sake, 132 f.; consequences when imparted apart from ex- perience, 143 ff.; absorbed by experience, 168 f.; genetic, 196. Language, written, effect upon ed- ucation, 1, 14, 143. Learner’s experience, a part of the curriculum, 173 ff., 213 f., 216 f. Learning, a social process, 227 ff. Leisure, 41. Listing of experiences, 188 f. Locke, John, 7. Meaning, 68, 73, 74, 98, 120 ff., 128. Method: in primitive education, 1, 48; of Herbart, 17 f.; emphasis upon, in knowledge curriculum, 20f.; more than improvement of, needed, 192 f.; conceived as widening experience, 207 ff., 210 f.; determined by relation of knowledge to experience, 207 f.; the “five formal steps” of the Herbartians, 17, 207 ff.; a new series of steps required in dealing with experience, 210 ff.; “gen- eral” and “‘special” method, 210; of learner as distinguished from that of teacher, 211 ff.; procedure in classroom, 220 ff. Middle Ages: spirit of, 4 f., 8; ori- gin of general viewpoint of, 57 f.; view of, concerning human nature, 8; view of, concerning the worth of present experience, 57 f.; reaction from, in Renais- sance and Reformation, 58 f. Mind, functional view of, 44 f. Mission lands, curricula for, 248 f. Montaigne, 6, 50. Montessori, 51. Motivation: loss of when learning is dissociated from experience, 61 f., 144; by the use of extrane- ous incentives, 144. Natural sciences, influence of upon the curriculum, 21 ff. Naturalism, an interest of the Ren- 280 aissance, 5, 6; the precursor of modern science, 22. Naturalistic movement in educa- tion, 50 f. Negation of the worth of present experience, 57 ff.; results of, 61 ff. Objective observation as a method of securing experiences, 184 ff.; of homogeneous groups, 184 f.; of typical individuals, 186 f.; of promiscuous experiences, 187. Old Testament, religion of, 201 ff. Openmindedness, 92, 256. Original nature, 8, 26 f., 28, 31, 245. Pansophic ideal, 21 f. Personality: appears as contmuum of experience, 46; as achieve- ment, 47; orders of, 147 f.; rela- tion of integration of experience to, 147 f.; organized around a set of values, 147; dual, 147 f.; realized through experience, 72. Persons: centre of the educative process, 25 f.; result of self-reali- zation, 25 f.; centre of primary emphasis in democracy, 38 f., 46; nature of, 72 ff.; dynamic quality of, 72 f., 74, 80; realize Saray through experience, 73 f. Personal interview as a method of discovering experiences, 182. Pestalozzi, 15, 51, 60. Philosophy, 36, 42, 44, 152, 195. Points of emphasis in the curricu- lum, 190 f. Practical activities in relation to peer and knowledge, 41 f., adie 42 {.; a democratic philosophy, 44, 61. Prayer, 237. Preparation: education viewed as, 60 f.; failure of formal education to secure, 65 f.; not excluded by the conception of the worth of present experience, 70 f.; best secured through training in ex- INDEX pected activities, 65 f., 210 f., 231 ff. Present, the: the focal point in ex- perience, 66 f.; the nexus be- tween the past and the future, 70 f.; worthful on its own ac- count, 57 ff.; its enrichment by reference to past and future, 66, 71. Primitive man: his method of learning, 13 f.; education of, 14, 438 Progress: early, slow, 15; result of experience in control, 126; a dominant passion of the modern mind, 126. Psychoanalysis, 188 f. ose: an approach to the inter- pretation of behavior, 46; an es- sential factor of the higher bond, 85 f.; a determinant of behavior, 87 f., 118 f.; the focal point in the reconstruction of human na- ture, 87; function of in experi- ence, 158 ff.; an integrating bond in experience, 158 ff.; gives direc- tion to experience, 158 f.; is se- lective in its influence, 159; de- termines sequence, 160; renders experience cumulative, 161. Questionnaire, the, as a method of discovering experiences, 181 f. Rationalizing, 105 f. “Readiness,” principle of, 89. Realism: earliest, 6, 22; social, 49 f.; sense, 6, 49 f. Reality: principle of, 134 ff.; grounds of sense of, in religious ideas, 135 ff.; relation to imme- diacy of experience, 135 ff.; rela- tion to the whole of life, 138 f.; relation of, to the effectiveness of ideas, 139 f.; relation of, to domi- nant purpose, 143; loss of the sense of, 143. Recapitulation: recapitulatory theory of the curriculum, 24 ff.; backgrounds of, 24 ff.; the the- -ory stated, 25 ff.; influence of, INDEX 30; criticism of, 30 ff.; view of concerning human nature, 33. Reciprocal relation of man and his world, 78 ff. Recitations: a part of the technic of transmitting knowledge, 64; not appropriate to the experi- ence curriculum, 220 f. Reconstruction of experience: the basis of education, 36, 52, 68 f.; based upon continuity of experi- ence, 155 ff. Reflective thinking: a factor in the control of experience, 102 ff.; the conditions under which it takes place, 103 f. Reformation, the: view of, con- cerning worth of experience, 5, 59 f.; relation of to Renaissance, 6 f., 58; reaction from the Mid- dle Ages, 58 ff.; spirit of, 5, 59. Religion: centres in values, 111 ff.; a unifier of experience, 111 ff., 150 ff.; may become departmen- talized, 130; results of depart- mentalization of, 138 f.; social, 229 fi., 250. Renaissance, the: reaction from Middle Ages, 58; two fundamen- tal interests of, 5, 17, 58 f.; rela- tion of, to the Reformation, 6 f., 58; view of, concerning worth of experience, 58 ff. Repression, results of, 27. Research as a method for the dis- covery of experiences, 180 ff. Response, 83 f. Responsibility: based upon antece- dent-consequent relation of ex- perience, 157 f., 219; developed through self-determination, 222, 225; the responsible mind, 21, 257. Rousseau, 50 f. Satisfaction, 73; effects of upon re- sponse, 88 f.; the basis of values, 88. Schedules in relation to the experi- ence curriculum, 179. School, the: a formal institution, 61; a selective and controlled en- 281 vironment, 52, 226; a society, 52; a religious community, 227 ff., 233; organized around enter- prises, 52, 233 ff. Science: Bacon a precursor of, 6, 21, 22, 58; a nineteenth century phenomenon, 24 ff.; influence of, upon curriculum, 21 f.; methods of, 40 f.; a refined use of the trial and error method, 124; its meth- od of testing reality of coinci- dences, 140 f.; works through antecedent-consequent relation of experience, 156 f. Self, the: potential, 35, 39; a be- coming, 35, 73; the organizing eentre of experience, 35, 72 f.; emerges from the adjustment process, 39; gives meaning and worth to experience, 73 f.; sub- ject to disintegration, 73; takes the initiative in the adjustment process, 74 f., 80; realized through experience, 73 f. Self-realization: its relation to per- sonality, 35, 73; the central fact in the educative process, 35; a dominant modern concept, 37, 39 f.; involved in the concept of democracy, 38 f.; an out- growth of purposive behavior, 46; achieved through experience, 35 {., 73 f., 92 f., 97 f.; achieved in a social medium, 47, 98; achieved through realization of desires, 74; not inconsistent with guidance, 98. Sense-perception, 16. Situation and response: situation defined, 82 f.; response defined, 83 fi.; the nature of the bonds uniting situation and response, 85 ff.; situation a part of the cur- riculum, 172 f., 212 f., 215 f. Social character of Christianity, 229 f.; social function of, 231. Social character of experience, 35, 39, 47, 53, 76, 81, 92, 249 f. Social character of the environ- ment, 75 ff. Social character of the learning process, 53, 227 f. 282 Social inheritance, the, 75 f.; influ- ence of, 246 f. Social participation: as a means of religious education, 226 ff.; in the school as a religious commu- nity, 227 f.; social nature of the learning process, 227 ff.; social character of Christianity, 229 ff.; preparation for life in the church, 230 f.; social function of Christianity, 230. Social relations, the core of the curriculum, 234 ff. Social sciences, their influence upon the curriculum, 21 ff. “Soft pedagogy,” 64. “*Special method,” 210. Spencer, Herbert: brought natural and social sciences together, 22 f.; raised question as to what knowledge is of most worth, 22 f. Spiritual engineering, 259. Split mind, resulting from dissocia- tion of ideas from experience, 144 f. Statistical treatment of experience, 190 f. Steps in teaching: the “five formal steps’”’ of the Herbartians, 17 f., 207 ff.; steps necessary in secur- ing the enrichment and control of experience, 209 f. Subject-matter: Herbart’s idea of, 16 f.; primary place in Herbart’s thinking, 19; historical subject- matter, 2, 52, 174 ff., 191 f., 194 ff.; of what it consists, 194; a record of racial experience, 194 f.; its value, 195 f.; its form, 196 ff.; of varying educational value, 20 ff.; inseparable from situa- tions, 226; inseparable from method and organization, 226 f. Teacher, the: place of in knowledge curriculum, 20; method of as dis- tinguished from that of the learner, 211 ff.; function of, 211 ff., 215, 217; position of in group of learners, 221 f.; Herbartian- INDEX ism placed undue emphasis upon, 20 f. “Telling,” 122 f., 136 f. Text-book, 179, 195, 199. Thinking: conditions that give rise to, 102 ff.; a factor of control, 105; distinguished from ration- alizing, 105 f.; emphasis upon thinking should be central, 21, 52, 224. Thorndike, Edward L., 145, 241. Tolerance, 256. Traditions, weight of in knowledge curriculum, 20 f., 31; deteriorat- ing effect of, 13, 136 f., 194. Transfer of training: doctrine stat- ed, 8 f.; discredited by modern education, 11 f.; conditions un- der which transfer occurs, 11 f.; a false basis of religious educa- tion, 231 f. Trial and error method, character- istic of early experience, 91; method of science, 124; the fun- damental pattern of learning, 123 f. Truth: new approach to discovery of, 42 f.; experimental nature of, 43; an instrument for the control of experience, 43; validated in experience, 42 ff., 128 ff., 141 f.; vital conception of, 43, 141 f., 255 f.; time element in judging, 129. Types of experience, 99. Unity of the mind, the, advocated by Herbart, 16. Valuation, a factor in the control of experience, 107. Value: the source of motivation, 46, 61 f.; standard for criticism of experience, 69; a source of the enrichment of experience, 94 f.; a factor of control, 107; the cen- tre of the reconstruction of hu- man nature, 87; conditions un- der which the sense of value arises, 107 ff.; criticism of, 109; relation to desire, 88, 111 ff.; centre of religion, 111; a ground INDEX 283 of vitality in religious ideas, 185; | Widening experience as method, the organizing centre of person- 210 f. ality, 35, 147; undergoing con- William of Occam, 106. tinuous reconstruction, 253 f. Worth of present experience, 53, 57 Vitality of religious ideas depen- ff.; viewpoint of Middle Ages, 57 dent on reality and worth, 134 f. f.; view of the Renaissance, 58 ff.; view of the Reformation, 58 What knowledge is of most worth, ff.; does not preclude idea of 11, 23; bearing of upon present preparation, 70 f. experience, 130 f.; relevancy to future experience, 131 f. 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