THE SELECTION OF THE SUBJECT-MATTER.
The kind of content proper to early childhood is determined by the nature of the child himself. It is the child that is to be educated. The teacher must take him as he is, with full trust that the strengthening of those powers at present active will result in his highest good. All attempts to improve on nature has been abortive. Every normal child is active in those ways which the race experience has embedded in him. His activities are echoes of those by which the race has been successful. The conception of the child standing over against the real subject matter of education and in direct antagonism to it, between which and him there is no intrinsic relation and into which he must be introduced by external means, is not in harmony with an optimistic philosophy or with a correct understanding of pedagogical principles.
There must be, in the nature of things, a relation between the activities already functioning in the child and the material the assimilation of which will constitute him not only a thoroughly equipped individual but also a socially efficient factor. It is a mistaken view to suppose that the exercise and the development of the activities dominant in early childhood will lead away from the best interests of the individual or endanger his efficiency as a member of society. It is anomalous to assume that the impulses and interests of childhood must be suppressed or eradicated in order to fit him for participation in social life. These impulses have been implanted in his nature by actual participation in a social life on the part of his ancestry, and they are the possibilities of a worthy social development.
While this is true, while the determining factor in the selection and arrangement of the subject-matter of education is the child himself, yet the undoubted parallelism between his growth and that of the race widens the scope and furnishes the broader basis for such selection and arrangement. It matters little to what extent such a parallelism is accepted. The principle once established makes it a matter of indifference whether we proceed from the individual or from the broader standpoint of the psychological history of the race. This psychological history is made out by a study of the literature products left behind in the ascent from the lower levels of development to the higher, as represented in modern civilization.