What is education?
All education is carried out through personal participation in human social consciousness.
This process begins unconsciously almost at birth. It continuously develops the individual's abilities, infects his consciousness, forms his habits, exercises his thoughts, and stimulates his feelings and emotions. Due to this unconscious education, individuals gradually share the wealth of wisdom and morality accumulated by mankind. He becomes an inheritor of inherent cultural capital. The most formal and specialized education in the world cannot be separated from this universal process. Education can only organize or differentiate this process in a certain direction.
The only real education comes through the stimulation of children's abilities. This stimulation is caused by the various demands of the social situation in which the child himself feels. These demands stimulate him and make him He acts as a member of a group, which makes him emerge from the original narrow scope of his actions and feelings; and makes him conceive of himself in the interests of the group to which he belongs. Through the reactions of others to his own activities, he knows what these activities mean in social language. The value of these activities is reflected in social language. For example, children gradually understand what the babbling sounds mean due to other people's reactions to their babbling sounds. This babbling sound gradually changes into a language with clear syllables, so the children are guided to use the language they use today. Language summarizes a unified rich set of ideas and emotions.
This educational process has two aspects: one is psychological and the other is sociological. They are of equal importance and no one can be neglected. Otherwise, undesirable consequences will follow. The psychological aspects of these two are fundamental. The child's own instincts and abilities provide the material for all education and point out the starting point. In addition to the fact that the educator's efforts are related to some activities that children do independently without relying on the educator, education becomes an external pressure. Although such education may produce some superficial effects, it cannot really be called education. Therefore, without in-depth observation of the individual's psychological structure and activities, the educational process will become haphazard and arbitrary. If it happens to coincide with the child's activities, it will work; if not, then it will encounter resistance, incongruity, or constrain the child's nature.
In order to correctly describe the abilities of children, we must have knowledge of the state of society and the current state of civilization. Children have their own instincts and tendencies, and until we can translate these into something equivalent to their society, we have no idea what they refer to. We must be able to carry them back to past societies and see them as inheritance from previous generations of human activity. We must also be able to project them into the future to see what their consequences will be. In the previous example, it is precisely in this way that the hope and ability of future social interactions and conversations can be seen in the child's babbling voice, allowing people to treat this instinct correctly.
The psychological and social aspects are organically linked, and education cannot be seen as a compromise between the two or as one over the other. Some people say that the definition of education from the perspective of psychology is empty and formal - it only gives us a concept of developing all mental abilities, but does not give us an idea of ??how to utilize these mental abilities. On the other hand, there are those who strongly believe that the social definition of education (i.e., understanding education as being compatible with civilization) makes education a forced and external process, thereby subordinating individual freedom to a predetermined society. and political conditions.
If one aspect is opposed as being isolated from the other, then both objections are correct. In order to know what a capacity is, we must know what its purpose, use, or function is; and these cannot be known unless we consider individuals to be active in social relationships. But on the other hand, the only adaptation we can give to children under present circumstances is that which results from the full development of their faculties. With the advent of democracy and modern industry, it is impossible to predict with certainty what culture will be like twenty years from now, and therefore to prepare children to fit into a stereotyped situation.
To prepare a child for future life means to enable him to manage himself; to train him to use all his energy fully and at any time; his eyes, ears and hands to become ready to listen. An instrument of command, his judgment is capable of understanding the surrounding circumstances in which it must act, and his powers of action are trained to the extent that they can carry out their activities economically and efficiently. This adaptation is impossible to achieve unless we constantly take note of individual abilities, inclinations and interests - that is, unless we constantly turn education into a psychological term.
In short, I believe that educated individuals are individuals in society, and society is the organic combination of many individuals. If we remove the social element from children, we are left with only an abstraction. If we remove the individual element from society, we are left with a rigid, lifeless collective. Therefore, education must begin with a psychological exploration of children's abilities, interests, and habits. Every aspect of it must be mastered with reference to these considerations.
These abilities, interests, and habits must continually be elucidated—we must understand what they mean. They must be explained in terms of their social equivalents - in terms of what they can do in social affairs.