has shown that its function as an educational instrumentality is to
furnish for the child experiences of greater value, this enhanced value
consisting in the greater social significance of the race experiences,
or knowledge, embodied within the curriculum, when compared with the
more individual experiences of the average child. It has been noted
further, however, that the office of education is not merely to have the
child translate this race experience into his own mind, but rather to
have him add to his social efficiency by gaining an adequate power of
control over these experiences. It is not, for instance, merely to know
the number combinations, but to be able to meet his practical needs,
that the child must master the multiplication tables. Control of
experience, however, as we have seen from our analysis of the learning
process, implies an ability to hold an aim, or problem, in view, and a
further ability to select and arrange the means of gaining the desired
end. In relation to the multiplication table, therefore, control of
experience implies that a person is able to apprehend the present number
situation as one that needs solution, and also that he can bring, or
apply, his knowledge of the table to its solution.

=Nature of Growth of Control.=--The young child is evidently not able at
first to exercise this power of control over his experiences. When a
very young child is aroused, say by the sound proceeding from a bell,
the impression may give rise to certain random movements, but none of
these indicate on his part any definite experience or purpose. When,
however, under the same stimulation, in place of these random movements,
the child reacts mentally in a definite way, it signifies on his part
the recognition of an external object. This recognition shows that the
child now has, in place of the first vague image, a more or less
definite idea of the external thing. Before it was vague noise; now it
is a bell. But a yet more valuable control is gained by the child when