What We Think With
Knowledge is a background of consciousness which gives meaning to the stream of sense-impressions that impinge against it.
The quoted material below is from a chapter in Education and Emergent Man, by William C. Bagley, published in 1934.
Bagley was the founder of an educational movement called Essentialism, which saw the purpose of education as "pass[ing] on the accepted [essential] values of the society to the next generation. [He] rejected the 'soft' pedagogical approach advocated by progressive educators, which overemphasized individual interests and freedom, and pointed to the need for discipline and tradition."
Bagley expounds on Essentialism himself in a 1938 paper titled "The Significance of the Essentialist Movement in Educational Theory," which you can access here.
Most students of education, when they discuss the right of this or that item of knowledge to a place in the curriculum, especially of the universal school, make their decisions on the basis of a single criterion; namely, Can this fact or principle be applied to the solution of significant problems?
This criterion refers to the recognized use of knowledge as an instrument in a direct, conscious, overt application, as when one applies one's knowledge of hygienic principles in disinfecting a wound or when one applies one's knowledge of electricity in finding why the engine does not spark or when one applies one's knowledge of geometry in measuring the height of a tree.
In taking this as the sole criterion the tendency is toward a narrow interpretation of utility, and by an easy inference this often leads to the conclusion that facts and principles which are not applicable in the overt solution of problems cannot be justified in an educational program.
As a matter of fact, only a fraction of what one learns, whether directly from one's own personal experience or vicariously from the experience of others, is applied to the solution of problems in this direct, conscious, overt fashion. The other learnings, too, have a profound effect upon one's life. In their totality they constitute an important part of the background of consciousness which gives meaning to the stream of sense-impressions that impinge against it. . . .
One who has lived vicariously through the great episodes of human history; one who has come to understand natural phenomena through the recorded findings of scientific investigation; one who has appreciated vicariously the shades and tints of human nature that Shakespeare was the first to detect;—such a one will have an outlook on the world that an untutored person could not have.
It is this background that determines in many cases whether a given congeries of conditions will gestalt into a problem that demands solution. . . .
What is true of individuals is true of groups. A group of broadly educated persons will be collectively sensitive to problems to which a group of either illiterate or meagerly educated persons would be obtuse.
