Teachers' Problems and how to Solve Them Author:Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. Specialization, the Basis of Tertiary Education. PRIMITIVE EDUCATION. Absence of the second or habit-step of education, limiting man to mere i... more »mitation, might be called savagery. Man then becomes primitive by passing through an initiation of some sort into a customary or habitual condition. Civilization may be said to be reached when arises effort, inventiveness, specialization, expertness, will—the third, combining or "finishing" process of an education. It may indeed not appear self-consciously in primitive times, yet it must ever have been present, however implicitly, in any distinctively human activity. It will be noticed that the first development of primitive education, Oriental education, is characterized by entire repression of the individuality; primitive education must therefore have been a socializing education of the impulses before individuality even appeared on the scene. Moreover, the character and content of the training was directed to producing a useful member of the tribe, rather than an international personality; the learning was tribal, and taught with tribal formalities. ORIENTAL EDUCATION. If China is the best possible example of the application of the principle of secondary education, habit, wemust not be misled into supposing that the principle of tertiary education—individuality, would be entirely absent. Man is incurably human; and, even at his first appearance, showed some trace, however slight, of all his powers. We saw that even in primitive education, the medicine men must have used some little individuality; and the Chinese also certainly used a great deal more of it: the adoption of so morally exalted a standard as Confucius originated; the inventions of so complicated a hieroglyphic system; printing; spectacles; and m...« less