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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