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Although the physical and mental educability of animals when brought into companionship with man is an old subject of remark, and one of the most interesting features which they exhibit, it was not until the doctrine of descent by variation of species from other related forms became established, that we had a chance to see the vast possibilities of accomplishment which are presented to us by our domesticated creatures.
This illustration may be applied to the entire range of the educability of any individual. It places the heritage from the past in its right connection with the demands and opportunities of the present. To keep the process alive, to keep it alive in ways which make it easier to keep it alive in the future, is the function of educational subject matter.
There was no attempt to explain the details of this process of habituation; it was assumed to be a part of the general "educability" of living matter.
Child Welfare in Oklahoma; Child Welfare in Alabama; Child Welfare in North Carolina; Child Welfare in Kentucky; Child Welfare in Tennessee. Also, Children in Agriculture, by Ruth McIntire, and other studies. W. R. Inge: Outspoken Essays: p. 92 Cf. Tredgold: Inheritance and Educability. Eugenics Review, Vol. Xiii, No. I, pp. 839 et seq. Cf. New York Times, June 4, 1921.
We, moreover, verified from experience the belief that the external influences of seduction, might produce premature breaches in the latency period leading as far as the suppression of the same, and that the sexual impulse of the child really shows itself to be polymorphous-perverse; furthermore, that every such premature sexual activity impairs the educability of the child.
But just as the social reference of a dog may be educated until the reference to a pack is completely replaced by a reference to an owner, so on his higher plane of educability the social reference of the civilised man undergoes the most remarkable transformations. But the power and scope of his imagination and the need he has of response sets limits to this process.
It is perhaps the most absurd frailty of our present system of education that it takes almost no account of innate differences in educability. To spend money upon the teaching of these children along lines where they are unteachable is not only waste pure and simple, but crime, for it deprives the educables of their just due.
Every baby, then, is born with a combination of nerve cells and ductless glands which determine its capacity for mental development, that might never be realized, but could never be exceeded. If, in any family, minor differences in educability are observed, they can be put down to disturbance of these two factors occurring after the fertilized germ cell had started to divide and reproduce itself.
These inherent factors explain, too, why children born and bred in virtually the same environment show the most extreme differences in educability. That the differences are inherited was made evident by Galton's finding that the chance of the son of an eminent man exhibiting eminent ability was 500 times as great as that of the son of a man taken at random.
True, it changes spontaneously in due course; but it long remains incapable of receiving ideas or emotions beyond those of simple orders. The child exhibits less rapid variations, intellectual and emotional, while its educability is greater. Inferior human races show us this combination: great rigidity of general character with great irregularity in its passing manifestations.
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