Excerpt from The Educational Bearings of Modern Psychology The reform of the teaching process is a somewhat difficult matter. All who are specially charged with the improvement of classroom practice will testify to the fact. The difficulty is excessive at the present hour because we have arrived at a point where tinkering with the various details of traditional procedure longer gives a considerable result. Educational reconstruction must be made far reaching if it is really to become effective in a fundamental way. It must greatly extend the range of experiences which the school makes personal to the child and provide a more vital foundation for the acquisition of such skills as ate eminently necessary in adult life. The modem program calls for greater vitality and breadth in the education of youth. Success in such an expansion of educational policy involves a radical change in point of view. The needed change in point of view will come more readily if the teacher recognizes the restricted field in which dominant teaching traditions have originated. In function the first schools were exceedingly narrow as compared with modem institutions. There is human necessity for which the present educational system does t aspire to train young men and women. Its scope is as broad as human life; its field has the width of human nature. The earliest schools, those which set the first teaching traditions, were reading and writing schools. They taught only the formal arts associated with the printed or written symbol. The provision of broad and vitalizing first-hand experiences was part of their task. Nor did they teach through an oral exchange of adventures, save in the most incidental way. The ordinary social contacts of the children were supposed to give these. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art techlogy to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.