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Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education by Ontario Ministry of Education
page 26 of 377 (06%)
desirable apart from its immediate application to conduct. Although, for
instance, there is no immediate physical need that one should learn how
to resuscitate a drowning person, he is nevertheless prepared to make of
it a problem, because he feels that such knowledge regarding his
environment may enter into the solution of future difficulties. Thus the
value of new experience, or knowledge, is often remote and intellectual,
rather than immediate and physical, and looks to the acquisition of
further experience quite as much as to the directing of present physical
movement. Beyond the value they may possess in relation to the removal
of present physical difficulty, therefore, experiences may be said to
possess a secondary value in that they may at any time enter into the
construction of new experiences.

=Its Growth: A. Learning by Direct Experience.=--The ability to recall
and use former experience in the upbuilding of an intelligent new
experience is further valuable, in that it enables a person to secure
much experience in an indirect rather than in a direct way, and thus
avoid the direct experience when such would be undesirable. Under direct
experience we include the lessons which may come to us at first hand
from our surroundings, as when the child by placing his hand upon a
thistle learns that it has sharp prickles, or by tasting quinine learns
that it is bitter. In this manner direct experience is a teacher,
continually adjusting man to his environment; and it is evident that
without an ability to retain our experiences and turn them to use in
organizing a new experience without expressing it in action, all
conscious adjustments would have to be secured through such a direct
method.

=B. Learning Indirectly.=--Since man is able to retain his experiences
and organize them into new experiences, he may, if desirable, enter into
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