exercise.
The forms of powers in question are such things as the faculties of perceiving, retaining,
recalling, associating, attending, willing, feeling, imagining, thinking, etc., which are then
shaped by exercise upon material presented. In its classic form, this theory was expressed by
Locke. On the one hand, the outer world presents the material or content of knowledge
through passively received sensations. On the other hand, the mind has certain ready
powers, attention, observation, retention, comparison, abstraction, compounding, etc.
Knowledge results if the mind discriminates and combines things as they are united and
divided in nature itself. But the important thing for education is the exercise or practice of
the faculties of the mind till they become thoroughly established habitudes. The analogy
constantly employed is that of a billiard player or gymnast, who by repeated use of certain
muscles in a uniform way at last secures automatic skill. Even the faculty of thinking was to
be formed into a trained habit by repeated exercises in making and combining simple
distinctions, for which, Locke thought, mathematics affords unrivaled opportunity.
Locke's statements fitted well into the dualism of his day. It seemed to do justice to both
mind and matter, the individual and the world. One of the two supplied the matter of
knowledge and the object upon which mind should work. The other supplied definite mental
powers, which were few in number and which might be trained by specific exercises. The
scheme appeared to give due weight to the subject matter of knowledge, and yet it insisted
that the end of education is not the bare reception and storage of information, but the
formation of personal powers of attention, memory, observation, abstraction, and
generalization. It was realistic in its emphatic assertion that all material whatever is received
from without; it was idealistic in that final stress fell upon the formation of intellectual
powers. It was objective and impersonal in its assertion that the individual cannot possess or
generate any true ideas on his own account; it was individualistic in placing the end of
education in the perfecting of certain faculties possessed at the outset by the individual. This
kind of distribution of values expressed with nicety the state of opinion in the generations
following upon Locke. It became, without explicit reference to Locke, a common−place of
educational theory and of psychology. Practically, it seemed to provide the educator with
definite, instead of vague, tasks. It made the elaboration of a technique of instruction
relatively easy. All that was necessary was to provide for sufficient practice of each of the
powers. This practice consists in repeated acts of attending, observing, memorizing, etc. By
grading the difficulty of the acts, making each set of repetitions somewhat more difficult
than the set which preceded it, a complete scheme of instruction is evolved. There are
various ways, equally conclusive, of criticizing this conception, in both its alleged
foundations and in its educational application. (1) Perhaps the most direct mode of attack
consists in pointing out that the supposed original faculties of observation, recollection,
willing, thinking, etc., are purely mythological. There are no such ready−made powers
waiting to be exercised and thereby trained. There are, indeed, a great number of original
native tendencies, instinctive modes of action, based on the original connections of neurones
in the central nervous system. There are impulsive tendencies of the eyes to follow and
Democracy and Education
Chapter Five: Preparation, Unfolding, and Formal Discipline 45