FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34  
35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   >>   >|  
ith the second, the practical, our ethical insight will not fail to deepen also. As primarily a student of living nature in evolution, I have naturally approached the city from the side of its geographic and historic survey, its environment and functional change; yet it is but a step from these to the abstract interpretations of the economist or the politician, even of philosopher and moralist. Again, since in everyday practice co-ordinating the literal maps of each civic surveys with even more concretely detailed plans as gardener and builder, I find less danger than may at first appear of ignoring the legitimate demands of the needed practical division of labour in the city's service. When the first mutual unfamiliarity is got over, there is thus also a greatly diminished distance between speculative thinkers and practical men, who at present, in this country especially, stand almost unrelated: the evolutionist student and worker thus begins to furnish the missing link between them. C--THE CITIZEN IN PROCESS OF DEVELOPMENT Leaving now the external survey of the city by help of its material framework, its characteristic buildings and predominant styles, for the deeper psychological survey of the citizens themselves, we may conveniently begin with these also in their process of development--in fact, our method compels us to this course. We enter then a school; and if we bring fresh eyes we may soon be agreed that the extraordinary babel of studies its time-table and curriculum reveal, is intelligible from no single one of the various [Page: 112] geographic or historic points of view we have traversed from mountain to sea, or from past to present. But this unprecedented conflict of studies becomes at once intelligible when viewed apart from any and every definite theory of education yet promulgated by educationists, and even acquires a fresh theory of its own--that of the attempted recapitulation of the survivals of each and all preceding periods in their practical or speculative aspects, particularly the later legends and literatures, their rituals and codes. Thus, the inordinate specialisation upon arithmetic, the exaggeration of all three R's, is plainly the survival of the demand for cheap yet efficient clerks, characteristic of the recent and contemporary financial period. The ritual of examinations with its correlation of memorising and muscular drill is similarly a development of the imperial order, his
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34  
35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

practical

 

survey

 
theory
 

intelligible

 

present

 

studies

 

speculative

 

historic

 

development

 

student


characteristic
 

geographic

 

points

 

mountain

 

traversed

 

conflict

 

unprecedented

 

compels

 

method

 

conveniently


process

 

school

 

curriculum

 

reveal

 

extraordinary

 

agreed

 

single

 

efficient

 

clerks

 
recent

contemporary

 
demand
 

survival

 

exaggeration

 

arithmetic

 

plainly

 

financial

 

period

 

similarly

 

imperial


muscular

 

memorising

 

ritual

 

examinations

 

correlation

 

specialisation

 

promulgated

 
education
 

educationists

 

acquires