[287.] Where the goal to be reached is technical knowledge and multiformity of scholarship, each branch of study asserts its claims to thoroughness without regard to the rest. Such is the attitude of the state, which requires many men with special training, together constituting an efficient whole. Hence it disseminates knowledge and establishes institutions of learning, without inquiring, save with reference to future official appointments, who the individuals are that avail themselves of the offered opportunities.
[288.] The family, on the other hand, interested as it is in the individual, must take the pedagogical point of view, according to which every human being is to realize the best he is capable of. It is essential that families should grasp this distinction, and accordingly concern themselves, not with greatness of particular achievements, but with the totality of culture possible for the individual.
[289.] Closely connected with the foregoing is the difference between interest and skill. Skill of various sorts can be obtained by force; but it is of no value to general culture when the corresponding interest is lacking.
Insistence on this distinction is a sufficient answer to much uncalled-for criticism and much unwarrantable assumption of superior knowledge concerning the results of early stages of instruction. These results, it is charged, are inadequate; if this or that had been converted earlier into ability to do, greater progress would have been made. But when interest has not been aroused, and cannot be aroused, compulsory acquisition of skill is not only worthless, leading as it does to soulless mechanical activity, but positively injurious, because it vitiates the pupil’s mental attitude and disposition.
[290.] Whether the pupil’s individuality will endure without injury the pressure which drill in skilful performance would necessitate, is a question which at times cannot be decided except by trial. Reading, arithmetic, grammar, are familiar instances.
[291.] The more perfect the instruction, the greater the opportunity it affords for comparing the excellences and faults of the individuals receiving it simultaneously. This point is of importance both to the continuation of instruction and to training; to the latter, because the teacher’s insight into the causes of the faults which training has to combat is deepened.
[292.] The ethical life may attach itself to views embracing the universe; it may, on the contrary, move within a very narrow range of thought. Now while it is true that external circumstances will usually set limits to instruction, its scope should nevertheless not be narrower, but in every way wider than the realm of necessary, everyday prudence. Otherwise the individual will always be in danger of exaggerating his own importance and that of persons closely related to him.
[293.] It is more difficult, as a rule, to extend the mental horizon in the direction of the past, than within the present. In teaching girls, therefore, and children from the lower classes, greater prominence is given to geography and whatever can be grouped about it than to historical studies. Again, in cases where a shortening of the course of study becomes necessary, it becomes well-nigh necessary to take account of the difference in question. But, conversely, where the scope of instruction is to be wide, the historical side, because more difficult, must receive increased attention.