ABSTRACT
Educational theory is, then, at once plunged into a sea of multiplicity. Wherever, in human experience, we find a group of people who are linked together by a common custom of approvals and disapprovals, there we have the materials out of which a distinct scheme of education may be made. When patterns of behavior confuse us by their multiplicity, when they shift and change beneath our feet, when by their conflicts they break down their own certainties and validities, we are sometimes stirred to this other, noncustomary activity. Human beings have undertaken the task of setting up over against, or supplementary to, or critical of, the authority of habit and custom as seen in accepted codes and patterns, a new form of control—that of reason or intelligence. The authority of custom, of the accepted "pattern of culture", is confronted with a rival authority—that of reason or critical intelligence.
