Hence one of the
weightiest evils with which the attitude of teaching has to cope is the method
of custody a proper balance between the informal and the formal, the incidental
and the intentional, modes of education. When the acquiring of in order and of
technical intellectual skill do not influence the formation of a social
disposition, ordinary vital experience fails to gain in meaning, while
schooling, in so far, creates only "sharps" in learning -- that is,
egoistic specialists. To avoid a split between what men deliberately know
because they are aware of having learned it by a specific job of learning, and
what they unconsciously know because they have engrossed it in the
configuration of their characters by intercourse with others, becomes an
increasingly delicate task with every development of special schooling. It is
the very nature of life to strive to continue in being. Since this continuance
can be protected only by steady renewals, life is a self-renewing process. What
nutrition and reproduction are to physiological life, education is to social
life? This education consists primarily in transmission through communication.
Message is a process of sharing experience till it becomes a common control. It
modifies the disposition of both the parties who partake in it. That the
ulterior significance of every mode of human friendship lies in the
contribution which it makes to the improvement of the quality of experience is
a fact most easily recognized in dealing with the immature. That is to say,
while every social arrangement is educative in effect, the educative effect
first becomes an important part of the reason of the association in connection
with the association of the older with the younger. As societies become more
multifaceted in structure and resources, the need of formal or intentional
teaching and learning increases. As formal teaching and training grow in
extent, there is the hazard of creating an undesirable tear between the
experience gained in more direct associations and what is acquired in school.
This danger was never greater than at the present time, on account of the rapid
growth in the last few centuries of knowledge and technical modes of skill.
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