Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/165

 THE ELEMENTA R Y-SCHOOL C URRIC UL UM I 5 3

As the child develops, the materials of the curriculum should change to keep pace with the change in his attitudes and powers. To assume that the materials derived from the study of anthro- pology are of equal importance at all times during the ele- mentary-school period would be a mistake. It would likewise be a mistake to assume that all other considerations should yield place to the establishment of a course of study based upon anthropology. The social factor is but one phase of the educa- tional process, and anthropology at no time represents the whole of the social factor. Unless anthropological material is so used as to function with reference to the present and the future, it falls short of its real mission. It is an essential factor in the educational process only when it represents a stimulus that appeals to the child more powerfully and more fruitfully than social stimuli selected from other stages in the development of society. A technique founded upon the nature of the child and upon the successive achievements of the race along cumulative lines is a safer one to follow than one which is an abstraction from various processes related only in respect to technique. It has the advantage of a more pronounced individuality than a purely logical course can ever have ; and, in addition, it has associations which cannot fail to stimulate the inquiring atti- tude along lines fundamental in the development of the sciences and arts.

Anthropology is of service, also, in arousing an interest in public works. Its simplest beginnings may be illustrated in the improvement made in such natural means of protection as trees, islands, rocky peninsulas, and marshes ; the erection of pile dwellings in lakes ; the protection of springs and quarries ; the building of roads and bridges, and the digging of canals and irrigating ditches. Such activities furnish the child basal con- cepts of service in interpreting the public works in his own city. Anthropology presents to the child a simple society. Its social forces are clear and well defined. Motives are evident. Pro- cesses are simple and fairly direct. Technique is simple, and its relation to the process is evident. The child is thus able to per- ceive the need, and, the need once realized, the child is alert in inventing ways of meeting it.