the teacher's work. For this purpose no expression of opinion can be clearer, stronger, or more emphatic than that of Herbert Spencer. He says (Education, American ed., p. 60.): Grant that the phenomena of intelligence conform to laws; grant that the evolution of intelligence in a child also conforms to laws; and it follows inevitably that education can be rightly guided only by a knowledge of these laws. To suppose that you can properly regulate this process of forming and accumulating ideas without understanding the nature of the process is absurd. How widely, then, must teaching as it is differ from teaching as it should be, when hardly any parents and but few teachers know anything about psychology. As might be expected, the system is grievously at fault, alike in manner and matter. While the right class of facts is withheld, the wrong class isforcibly administered in the wrong way and in the wrong order. With that common limited idea of education which confines it to knowledge gained from books, parents thrust primers into the hands of their little ones years too soon, to their great injury. Not recognizing the truth that the function of the books is supplementary-that they form our indirect means to knowledge when direct means fail-a means of seeing through other men what you can not see for yourself-they are eager to give second-hand facts in place of first-hand facts. Not perceiving the enormous value of that spontaneous education which goes on in the early years-not perceiving that a child's restless observation, instead of being ignored or checked, should be delicately administered to and made as accurate and complete as possiblethey insist on occupying its eyes and thoughts with things that are for the time being incomprehensible and repugnant. Possessed by a superstition which worships the symbols of knowledge instead of the knowledge itself, they do not see that only when his acquaintance with the objects and processes of the household, the streets, and the fields is becoming tolerably exhaustive-only then should a child be introduced to the new sources of information which books supply; and this not only because immediate cognition is of far greater value than mediate cognition, but also because the words contained in books can be rightly interpreted into ideas only in proportion to the antecedent experience of things. Observe next, that this formal instruction, far too soon commenced, is carried on with but little reference to the laws of mental development. Intellectual development is of necessity from the concrete to the abstract. But, regardless of this, highly abstract subjects, such as grammar, which should come quite late, are begun quite early. Political geography, dead and uninteresting to a child, and which should be an appendage of sociological studies, is commenced betimes; while physical geography, comprehensible and comparatively attractive to a child, is in great part passed over. Nearly every subject dealt with is arranged in abnormal order, definitions and rules and principles being put first, instead of being disclosed, as they are in the order of nature, through the study of cases. And then, pervading the whole, is the vicious system of rote learning, a system of sacrificing the spirit to the letter. See the results. What with perceptions unnaturally dulled by early thwarting and a coerced attention to books; what with the mental confusion produced by teaching subjects before they can be understood, and in each of them giving generalizations before the facts of which they are the generalizations; what with making the pupil a mere passive recipient of others' ideas, and not in the least leading him to be an active inquirer or self-instructor; and what with taxing the faculties to excess, there are very few minds that become as efficient as they might be. Examinations being once passed, books are laid aside; the greater part of what has been acquired, being unorganized, soon drops out of recollection; what remains is mostly inert, the art of applying knowledge not having been cultivated, and there is but little power either of accurate observation or independent thinking. To all which add that while much of the information gained is of relatively small value, an immense mass of information of transcendent value is entirely passed over. This indictment is clear, concise, and comprehensive, and for that reason it is quoted with tolerable fullness. What considerations are more familiar to us than those advanced by Mr. Spencer? We have all seen time and time again that curious perversion of judgment which prefers book-knowledge to fact-knowledge-what some one says about a thing to an acquaintance with the thing itself. Happily this false tendency in our education is now being checked, and will in time be replaced by a sounder theory of education values; but a few years ago this was not the case, and superficial book-knowledge was almost everywhere given the first place. Again, a very rudimentary acquaintance with psychology would make clear the fact that imagination and memory can create nothing; they merely combine in forms commonplace or more or less grotesque, the products of our previous sense-given knowledge. Consider what this means in connection with knowledge gained from a book, or at second-hand, instead of from contact with the object itself. The image of the object which is before the mind is not that of the object as it really is, but as it is thought to be according to the description. The description has been given in language, and the words have called up parts of images of objects previously known-it was impossible for them to call up anything else-and the mind has framed for itself a concept which may be wholly untrue and unreliable. And this it is which has to do service for accurate knowledge. I recall an excellent story which illustrates the way in which ignorance of psychology on the part of the teacher brings about confusion in the mind of the pupil in this respect. A primary teacher had been endeavoring to make clear to her arithmetic class what was meant by the word "dozen," and concluded the exercise by calling up each pupil to frame a sentence or a problem in which the word should be correctly used. She was surprisedthough unnecessarily so-when the first child called upon gave as his example, "I dozen know my lesson." The explanation had been given wholly in words, similar sounds had become confused in the child's mind, and this ludicrous example was the result. Had the explanation been illustrated by blocks or marbles or anything visible and tangible in which the child was interested, the instruction would have been valuable instead of valueless. Perhaps these examples will suffice to show the ill results attending education attempted in ignorance of psycological principles. We may now consider a few representative topics in education, the proper treatment of which is at once and only pointed out to us by psychology. The first and most important of these I take to be the conception of mind as an organism which grows and develops. The implications of this conception are numerous and important. Growth and development while allied, are not identical processes. Growth, as increase in size or bulk, may be distinguished from development, as increase in complexity or function. In the order of time, growth must precede development and furnish the latter with new material to be worked over and cast into new forms and combinations. Development comes later, and is of higher intellectual quality. In childhood and early youth growth predominates. There is a continual and continuous accession of new facts which enter the mind as facts simply and not as factors in a thoroughly. digested scheme of knowledge. This comes afterward, and constitutes mental development. Of course both processes, growth and development, go on together, but development only gradually forces its way into the foremost place. This it attains in early manhood, and the adult life is rather a time for digesting and adjusting and co-ordinating into an organized whole the knowledge previously gained, than for the acquirement of new data. Though, just as in early life development in some degree accompanies growth, so in adult life growth accompanies development. Development is only possible to an organism, and the growth of an organic is very different from that of an inorganic body. The latter takes place by accretion, as the snowball grows by being rolled through soft snow, the former by assimilation, as the plant or animal extracting nourishment from its environment, assimilates it and grows. The two growths are entirely different, the one external, mechanical, and artificial, the other from within, organic and natural. The educational significance of this is very great. For we now learn that the mind is not a sort of box or case wholly distinct from its contents, and which may be filled and emptied at will, and into which any sort of knowledge may be placed temporarily and then taken out again if found to be injurious or unpleasant. This is an old conception which is now passing into oblivion. We know mind as an organism, as feeding and living upon the nourishment absorbed by it, and, moreover, determined both as to form and character by that nourishment. Assimilation of nourishment is necessary to mental development. The mind must make what it receives its own. In other words, word-knowledge, whatever form it may take, is not nutritious. The mind is but little better off for being put through a sort of stuffing process, during which mere symbols are forced into it. A slight residuum of real knowledge may remain, but it will be utterly disproportionate to the time and expense of the process. Psychology demands, then, that mind be treated in education as the organism which it is, and not as an inanimate thing which it is not. The development of this organism, mind, is continual and increasingly complex. There is no break, no sudden leap, no astonishing transition. The unfolding is gradual, and the same fundamental powers are evidenced throughout. Some teachers seem to think that the childmind is an entirely different phenomenon from the adult mind. This is a mistake. In each is mind present by virtue of the exercise of the mental powers of discrimination and assimilation. The distinction is that the materials with which these processes are busied grow increasingly complex as the child becomes a youth and the youth a man. Sense-perception, the mental activity predominant in the child's life, is discrimination and assimilation of particular stimuli. Conception is discrimination and assimilation of percepts. Judgment is discrimination and assimilation of concepts. Reasoning is discrimination and assimilation of judgments. It is this increase in the generality of knowledge, in abstraction and complexity, that is indicative of mental development. This psychological truth at once finds application in pedagogics. It warns us that the child must first be brought in contact with singular and easily apprehended objects, that laws and formulas should follow, not precede, examples. So much has been said and written on this subject of late that extended treatment of it is unnecessary. It is to be observed, too, that few violations of this law of mind are any longer to be observed, so far as the general arrangement of studies is concerned. School-masters have learned to place the easy before the difficult, the simple before the complex, the concrete before the abstract. One of the few violations, however, which still exists is so important that it may well be pointed out. That exception is the teaching of geography. It is not too much to say that in the vast majority of schools in Great Britain and the United States geography is not taught at all. To the aver age English-speaking teacher-and I am obliged to use this designation, for happily on the continent of Europe they know better-geogra phy means the stuffing into the pupil's mind a number of isolated facts, such as the height in feet of so many mountains, the length in miles of so many rivers, the names of so many cities and towns, the depth and area of so many lakes. Geographical text-books constructed on this plan have been called "miniature gazetteers," a phrase which describes them excellently, for they are certainly not books on geography. As Dr. Edward Channing has pointed out (Science, Vol. IX, p. 49)— Geography, properly studied, gives one a clear and accurate knowledge of the physical conformation of the earth's surface. [The child] should be taught to observe phenomena. race. * # * * The flora and fauna of each region of the earth's sur- * * * * * face should be properly associated in the child's mind. also to teach the influence of geographic factors upon the development of the human This influence is frequently exaggerated. But the working out of such problems, even on insufficient data, must have a stimulating effect upon the mind. [The aim of geographical education] is to make men understand what is going on around them, [to be able] to converse intelligently upon the present crisis in Bulgaria, or on the economic changes which will be wrought by the Panama Canal, if it is ever opened; to travel abroad with some degree of comfort to one's self, and to one's readers if one writes a book; to read with interest and appreciation articles on campaigns, like those now appearing in the Century Magazine. * * * As we all know very well, geography in this sense-and it is the true one-has but small place in our educational system. Political geography, a subject really meaningless save in connection with the historical and sociological studies, is usually given a prominent place as well as brought very early into the curriculum. This is a direct violation of the psychological law which we are illustrating, and a violation which should be speedily corrected. The spread of sounder educational ideas will correct this in time, in fact is correcting it slowly now, but even to-day it is safe to say that papers like those included in the educational reports of the Royal (English) Geographical Society for 1886 would sound strange enough to the great majority of American teachers. But, as was said above, it is not so much in the general arrangement of studies that psychological laws are overlooked and violated as in the method of teaching the various branches of the school and academic course. Here tradition is lingering longer than anywhere else, and the modern expounders of methods of teaching find a difficult task before them in the removal of what is antiquated and false as a preliminary to the inculcation of what they deem to be timely and true. Now, in so far as these modern methods of teaching mean the basing of pedagogics upon psychology, the insisting upon a study of mind for those who train it, they are to be unreservedly commended. And it is but fair to say that this is what they generally do mean. In some quarters, however, there is a disposition to go too far, and not only to use but to abuse methods of teaching. You will find that over-organization-for there is such a thing--and the pushing of methods too far are usually found together. Some of the French and German books on pedagogy exemplify this. They prescribe how the teacher should look, what he should wear, how every minute detail of the subject with which he is entrusted should be presented. Nothing is left to his judgment; no allowance is made for difficult or exceptional situations; everything must be the same. A dead level of mediocrity is aimed at. The teacher's independence is destroyed and he becomes a pedagogic machine. It was in France, you will remember, that the amusing incident occurred which is related on the authority of Mr. Matthew Arnold, and which illus trates admirably how far organization may be carried. The French minister of public instruction, while engaged in conversation, once drew his watch from his pocket and said, "At this moment in every school in France the children of the same grade are being taught the same subject in the same way." And the last book of instructions to Real-School teachers issued by the Government of Austria indicates an amount of organization and method even surpassing those of the French. These instructions not only provide that all over the Empire pupils of the same grade shall be taught the same lesson at the same time, but they even go so far as to say that the teacher must enter school with a pleasant expression of countenance so as to show that he has his work at heart and to impart a spirit of cheerfulness to his pupils. Such nonsense as this—for it certainly seems to me nonsense-is too artificial and too superficial to accomplish its purpose. The child readily detects the sham, and as a result loses confidence in his teacher's sincerity. In the United States, where our educational organization is not and never can be a bureaucracy, any such excesses as these are out of the question as 882-No. 2- -3 |
