Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/861

 SOME DEMANDS OF SOCIOLOGY UPON PEDAGOGY 845

first, to perception by the individual of the relation of part to part in this inclusive reality the life of men in society ; second, that educators, shall perfect influences to promote adjustment of individuals to their appropriate functions within this whole.

The part of the problem which I have at present in mind is the proper direction and organization of the pupil's perceptions. So far as the subject-matter of sociology is concerned, everything knowable and worth knowing is a fact or a relation helping to make up this complexity which we call society or social life. The important claim of sociology in this connection is that this reality, like poverty, we have always with us. This reality as a connected whole, related to the pupil, is always the natural and rational means of education. A sequence of studies, in the sense that the pupil is to be enjoined from intelligent contact with por- tions of reality until other portions have had their turn, is a monstrous perversion of the conditions of education. All reality, the whole plexus of social life, is continually confronting the pupil. No "subject" abstracted from this actual whole is veracious to the pupil unless he is permitted to see it as a part of the whole. It is a misconstruction of reality to think and accordingly to act as though one kind of knowledge belongs to one age and another to another. The whole vast mystery of life, in all its processes and conditions, confronts the child as really as it does the sage. It is the business of the educator to help the child interpret the part by the whole. Education from the beginning should be an initiation into science, language, phi- losophy, art and political action in the largest sense. When we shall have adopted a thoroughly rational pedagogy, the child will begin to learn everything the moment he begins to learn anything.

Am I demanding a pedagogy which presupposes one philoso- pher as teacher and another as pupil ? Certainly. Every teacher ought to be a philosopher. Every child already is one until conventionality spoils him. More than that, he is also scientist, poet, and artist in embryo, and would mature in all these charac- ters if we did not stunt him with our bungling. I would