The child's mind : its growth and training being a short study of some processes of learning and teaching / by W.E. Urwick.

  • Urwick, W. E. (William Eddowes)
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The child's mind : its growth and training being a short study of some processes of learning and teaching / by W.E. Urwick. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    35/306 (page 19)
    Yet the young child of to-day is as helpless at birth as the child of primitive times. There is no evidence whatever to justify the assumption that his adaptations are greater; it is doubtful even whether his store of adaptability in any direction, physical or mental, is larger. The wonderful achievements in bygone ages of minds which escaped from the narrowing social pressure, and found, in some monastic establishment, leisure and oppor- tunity to develop in a different direction from that possible in society, are evidence to the contrary. It is equally open to doubt whether, despite modern conditions, the normal physique has much altered. If, however, there is no ground for believing that the modern child possesses more either of adapta- tions or of adaptability than the child of the same race under more primitive conditions, we are forced to fall back on environment to account for the difference in the full-grown man. But though our present society is so different from the primitive and tribal society, it is yet true that its demands upon the younger generation are none the less exacting. The needs, if more manifold, are none the less real and pressing. Compared with the simple primitive society men- tioned above, the chief distinction between the two environments appears at the outset to be this—in primitive society the practical needs are so simple and so pressing that next to no scope for choice is left to the individual, whereas in modern society the choice of direction of development is varied practi- 2—2.