Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/87

 SOME DEMANDS OF EDUCATION UPON ANTHROPOLOGY 7I

synthetic treatment from many standpoints, those of social and industrial development in particular. The syntheses made by Morgan, Spencer, Ward, Giddings, and others, are of great value to all, but to sociology in particular, because written on the basis of a sociological interest. But while such a synthesis is funda- mental, and hence of general value to education, a further synthesis is needed, within the organization already effected, of such data as have a direct bearing upon education. What has been done meets a general need ; the specific need remains to be met by a synthesis of anthropological data from the educa- tional standpoint so arranged as to show their educational signifi- cance. To indicate what these specific needs are, with some suggestions as to how they may be met, as a result of personal experience in directing elementary school work, is the purpose of this paper.

Thus far, anthropological investigation has been confined almost wholly to the phenomena of adult life, the child in race history being left practically out of consideration. Where child life has received any attention it has been in connection with some phase of adult life, such as the status of woman, or tribal customs, and but seldom from an interest in the facts of child life in themselves. Since the adult in the early stages of race development is in many respects comparable to a child, and the general progress from savagery to civilization has been a progress from mental and moral infancy to maturity, the facts of adult life among the people in the different ethnic stages are of great value to the educator, as a means of giving an insight both into the nature of developmental processes, and into the natural sequence of interests and intellectual and emotional attitudes. A brief but reliable history of race development from the edu- cational standpoint is greatly needed.

But this is not enough for educational purposes. Childhood has usually been considered as something static — the same in savagery and in civilization. But a little reflection will show that the activities and psychical processes of the primitive child must have been as much simpler than those of the child of modern culture as the activities and processes of the adult in savagery