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From A Cyclopedia of Education, edited by Paul Monroe, Ph.D. (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1911, vol. II, pp. 243-4).

Custom is for social life what habit is for individual life, namely a principle of organization, continuity, and efficiency. The problem of the relation of custom to habit is similar to the general problem of the relation of society and the individual. The individualistic philosophy starts with habit as built up in an individual, and treats customs as due to the spreading of this habit by example, inculcation, etc., to other individuals. If a sufficiently large number of individuals acquire the habit we have a custom. This view accounts without doubt for some of the facts, but is very one-sided. Most of the important habits of the individual are dependent for their origin and growth upon prior customs in society, i,e. language, polite manners, and social conventions, and a large part of the content of morality. Hence the fundamental position of custom in educational practice. Not only does the individual teacher tend to form his own habits of teaching on the basis of the models to which he has himself become accustomed, but the materials and ideals of instruction are derived in the main from the customs of the social group of which he is a member. In savage and barbarian societies and in some types of civilized societies (e.g. China and Ancient Egypt) the entire educational procedure falls within the scope of this category. The whole aim of education is to reproduce as a habit of the individual the customs of the group to which he belongs; all deviations are looked upon as immoral or even sacrilegious. As a result (to quote Grote) "Nomos (Law and Custom) 'King of all' (to borrow the phrase which Herodotus cites from Pindar) exercises plenary power, spiritual and temporal, over individual minds; moulding the emotions as well as the intellect, according to the local type . . . and reigning under the appearance of habitual, self-suggested tendencies."

Even when, as in progressive modern states, custom loses its complete supremacy, it remains one of the chief standards, or norms, of educational practice. As socially handed on from generation to generation, it becomes tradition; and our tendency to ignore the inf1uenee of tradition as a controlling factor is itself very largely due to the fact that when we begin to reflect, to invent, and to project new methods and aims, tradition has already done its work so completely that we take it for granted without thinking about it, so that we deliberate and project within limits set by custom. At the same time, individual variations from custom must be encouraged in a society which has progress as one of its ideals. One of the most delicate problems of school organization and of individual teaching is the adjustment to each other of the two factors of social habit and individualistic departures. Variations are encouraged by the contact of groups of different traditions and customs; where, as in the United States, pupils represent different races, nationalities, religious and social conventions, the attrition of custom is very great. While the situation is favorable to growth of independence and initiative, and doubtless counts as a large factor in the versatility, ingenuity, and adaptability of the American habit of mind, there is also danger of loss of all regulative standards and of the development of lawlessness and caprice. The public school, more than any one agency, has to solve the crucial problem of promoting genuine individuality and at the same time conserving the factors of continuity and coherence of action and belief that are supplied by custom.

J. D.