Intellectual development

“ The object of development is intellect.Now, when we look at the successive phases of individual life, what is it that we find to be their chief characteristic? Intellectual advancement. And we consider that maturity is reached when intellect is at its maximum. ”

“ We would therefore urge upon all who are interested in the education of the young to see to it, as far as they possibly can, that by education is understood the development of the habit of seeking the true relations of things, and of conceiving of human life as a network of relations. Let us banish from education the unrelated word, the unrelated thought; let us proceed according to the principle of evolution, linking step with step, while tending always to a higher unity; and the intellectual progress of the race will proceed with all the rapidity that is desirable or possible. ”

“ They do not question the fact that human history, in the civilized communities, is a history of intellectual development and advancement. They concede the largest claims that can be made as to the growth of knowledge among men ”

“ Is there any one element which communicates the decisive impulse to all the rest,—any predominating agency in the course of social evolution? The answer is that all the other parts of social existence are associated with, andDecisive Importance of Intellectual development. drawn along by, the contemporary condition of intellectual development. ”

“ As the mind, consisting at first of but few active faculties, has its later-completed faculties successively brought into play, and ultimately comes to have all its faculties in simultaneous action; it follows that our teaching should begin with but few subjects at once, and successively adding to these, should finally carry on all subjects abreast. Not only in its details should education proceed from the simple to the complex, but in its ensemble also.
2. The development of the mind, as all other development, is an advance from the indefinite to the definite. ”

“ But the possession of an intellectual and moral nature which responds to appropriate stimulations implies, also, that as man develops intellectually, he will find meaning in human life as realized in himself and others. Thus he becomes able to recognize worth in human life and to determine the conditions which favour its highest growth, or development. ”

“ An education which started by cultivating the natural interests,82 using them for mental development, and only superadding what further knowledge was really requisite for life, would greatly help to eradicate the false and low idea of work which prevails. ”

“ This is the very essence of education, its informing spirit. The student no longer thinks merely of becoming an expert turner; he thinks of becoming a man! All the powers of his mind are roused to vigorous action; imagination illumes the path, and reason, following with firm but cautious step, drives straight to the mark. Rapid development results from the combination of practice with theory—rapid because orderly, or natural. ”

“ If we can change our view of the object of education, the very force of life, working through experience, will adequately determine the forms. It is not therefore as a meticulous and mechanical system that I make the following suggestions as to certain desirable changes, but rather to indicate more exactly what I mean by a scheme of education that will work primarily towards the development of character. ”

“ And as he aspires to exhibit models of education, possessing higher excellencies than mechanical dexterity or mere intellectual acuteness; his anxious aim will be to make instruction in art and science, the culture of the understanding, and of the physical powers, subservient to the nobler intention of fostering and maturing the virtues of the heart. ”

“ Hence it is that what is called a practical education is set above the mere enlargement and enrichment of the mind; and the possession of the material is valued, and the intellectual life is undervalued. ”

“ For, in the name of the simplest of all common sense, how are we to educate to the best, not yet knowing—and that is now acknowledged—what are the FACULTIES of the very minds we are dealing with, nor what are the PROCESSES by which those minds begin and keep up their advance in knowledge? So, also, those who in the most charitable mood could see in education only something too hum-drum and narrow for their better fancies, find it now rising and expanding into a new and large field for intellectual effort, full of interesting problems, and fraught with realizations as yet undreamed of. ”

“ Here is the organic relation of theory and practice; the child not simply doing things, but getting also the idea of what he does; getting from the start some intellectual conception that enters into his practice and enriches it; while every idea finds, directly or indirectly, some application in experience and has some effect upon life. ”

“ Positive Education, adapting itself to the requirements of the Organism with which it has to deal, subordinates intellectual conditions to social. Social conditions are considered as the main object, intellectual as but the means of attaining it. ”

“ But the formation of new intellectual habits in men liberally educated, appeared to promise, ultimately, those larger fruits in the advancement and culture of learning which, in 'the hour-glass' of that first movement, could be, as yet, only prophecy and anticipation. ”

“ We have to get rid of this state of affairs, and we have to provide (i) a substantial mental training which shall lead at last to a broad and comprehensive view of things, and which shall be a training in generalization, abstraction, and the examination of evidence, stimulating and disciplining the imagination and developing the habit of patient, sustained, enterprising and thorough work, and (ii) we have to add a general culture, a circle of ideas about moral, aesthetic, and social matters that shall form a common basis for the social and intellectual life of the community. ”

“ In the same way he must establish human education—that is to say, he must educate intelligence and thought in such a way that they may attain complete development, so that knowledge and science may increase, and the reality of things, the mysteries of beings, and the properties of existence may be discovered; that, day by day, instructions, inventions, and institutions may be improved ”

“ Education, then, is the development of all the powers of man to the culminating point of action. What kind of action? Action in art. What is art? “The power of doing something not taught by nature or instinct; power or skill in the use of knowledge; the practical application of the rules or principles of science.” Again we have the last analysis of education—“skill in the use of knowledge; the application of the rules or principles of science.” And this is tool practice. ”

“ INTELLECTUAL CHARACTER. The desire, the duty, the necessity of the age in which we live is education, or that culture which developes, enlarges, and enriches each individual intelligence, according to the measure of its capacity, by familiarizing it with the facts and laws of nature and human life. ”

“ That the generation which follows us received from us at least, something which is agreed upon: the rational and scientific education, this renewing and liberating education, essentially progressive, of form that can always add and never have anything to unmake.
II
Eliminating imaginary factors as a result of the formula, science approaches the human being in all its solidarity, with an understanding of organs, energies, faculties of a different sort, in which [the many activities] are expressed by this convergence of physical, intellectual and passionate acts which life is made up of. ”

“ My subject, however, does not demand that I consider these general and silent agencies by which life is influenced, but leads me to the discussion of the methods by which man, with conscious purpose, seeks to form and instruct his fellow-man; to the discussion of the special education which brings art to the aid of nature, and becomes the auxiliary and guide of the other forces which contribute to the development of our being. ”

“ He must study the nature of the effect that he is to produce, and of the materials upon which he is to work, and adopt, after mature deliberation, a plan to accomplish his purpose founded upon the principles which ought always to regulate the action of mind upon mind, and adapted to produce the intellectual effect which he wishes to accomplish. ”

“ On all hands people seem constrained to reform education by determining what shall be taught. Let us note, for a moment, the forms of intellectual activity engaged in the acquisition of organized knowledge. These may be phrased as discrimination, detection of identity, and reproduction, both direct and creative. For the natural, proper action of these powers, the material is a matter of comparative indifference. I can analyze, synthesize, and remember, whether I deal with Latin, Greek, mathematics, chemistry, literature, or strictly speculative philosophy. ”

“ When, again, we speak of moral or intellectual progress, we refer to the state of the individual or people exhibiting it; while, when the progress of Knowledge, of Science, of Art, is commented upon, we have in view certain abstract results of human thought and action. ”

“ The theory of development, which is now widely received and applied to all things, from star dust to the latest fashion, is at once a sign and a cause of the almost unlimited confidence which we put in the remedial and transforming power of education. ”

“ In the saying that Education is a life, the need of intellectual and moral as well as of physical sustenance is implied. The mind feeds on ideas, and therefore children should have a generous curriculum.
9. But the mind is not a receptacle into which ideas must be dropped, each idea adding to an 'apperception mass' of its like, the theory upon which the Herbartian doctrine of interest rests. ”

“ I never turned recreant to intellectual culture, or ceased to consider the power and practice of analysis as an essential condition both of individual and of social improvement. But I thought that it had consequences which required to be corrected, by joining other kinds of cultivation with it. The maintenance of a due balance among the faculties, now seemed to me of primary importance. The cultivation of the feelings became one of the cardinal points in my ethical and philosophical creed. ”

“ If the child lacks normal development and has not the apperceiving mind for the various departments of knowledge, create new centres of apperception and interest, cultivate the neglected and stunted powers. The various distinct aspects of the objective world suggest the selection of studies; the nature of the mind suggests the manner in which the elements of knowledge are to be organized. The parts of a subject must be distinctly known before they are correlated; subjects must be distinctly known before they are viewed in a system of philosophy. ”

“ The advances made in all kinds of knowledge in this our age are known to be enormous; and the public desire for instruction, which the intellectual triumphs of the time naturally and inevitably arouse, is commensurate with the growth of knowledge. ”

“ The accumulation of discoveries, the multiplication of inventions, the improvement of the means of comfort, the extension of instruction, and the perfecting of methods, are valuable in the degree in which they contribute to this end. The characteristic of progress is increase of spiritual force. In material progress even, the intellectual and moral element is the value-giving factor. ”

“ If the development of character rather than of faculty is the main work of education, and if people are born, so to speak, ready-made, with all the elements of their after-character in them, certain to be developed by time and circumstances, what is left for education to do? ”

“ Let us train it so that its strength, agility, balance, and all around development shall be able to control all its dependent functions, which can be successfully carried on only on condition that they agree, and collaborate toward common life. And this is what I call philosophy. ”

“ Thus slow and gradual, but permanent, are the progressive steps in the growth and development of true human science, which is founded on experience—the internal as well as external, the higher as well as the lower—and on tradition, language, and revelation. ”

“ Many times, by our guidance, human beings reached high levels of development in the arts and sciences. We taught them and guided their stumbling steps, and released to them such knowledge as we dared trust to them. ”

“ The mental growth of the individual human being is essentially a process of the formation of interests in things. 277Both our formal education, and our informal intellectual and moral training effected by the influence of social tradition and mutual intercourse, are processes consisting of an accumulation of minor modifications which ultimately culminate in the establishment of more or less unique personal interests in different aspects of existence. ”

“ Such a theory of education, which need not be careful to call itself a system of psychology, must be in harmony with the thought movements of the age; must regard education, not as a shut-off compartment, but as being as much a part of life as birth or growth, marriage or work ”

“ To strengthen the intellectual powers, whether for art or for science, whether it be the powers of observation or those of induction and deduction, is, when circumstances allow of their being made available for social purposes, of greater and more extensive importance, than all physical, and, a fortiori than all material improvements. But we know from the fundamental principle laid down in the first chapter of119 this work, that moral progress has even more to do with our well-being than intellectual progress. ”