Our pupils : psychology for church school teachers

Front matter

is By te eyes

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BY E. LEIGH MUDGE

Introduction

Tris textbook is designed particularly for the use of teachers and those in training to become teachers in the church school. It is hoped that it may be used also by leaders in other types of religious work with children and young people, and may be a profitable handbook for parents and all others interested in religious education. You who will read this book are probably interested in some specific pupil or group of pupils. These may be in the kindergarten, or in any elementary or secondary grade, and, of course, you are interested in learning all you can about boys and girls of that particular age. Before you make a special study of your kindergarten children, high-school students, ,or whatever your group may be, it is important to have as much knowledge as possible of characteristics that are relatively common to all pupils. This book is planned to lead the student to some general knowledge of human personality, and to furnish a foundation for the later study that is provided in the leadership training series for teachers of special age groups.

It must not be forgotten, however, that your pupils cannot be treated merely as a group. They must be studied individually, and such a study will make clear that there are wide individual differences with which every teacher should be familiar. While we attempt to discover those characteristics that are relatively common to human nature, we must recognize the facts that constitute the personality of each individual.

In this book we shall discuss some of the traits and elements of human psychology that are most common and general with special reference to the use of this information in the teaching of religion. The teacher in the church school must utilize the very same intellectual and emotional elements of personality that are recognized by the teacher in the public school. It is the same pupil who goes to the public school on week-days and who comes to us on Sunday, or on the other days in which we have an opportunity to train his religious life. Let us become acquainted, so far as is possible, with the nature of our pupils, their native powers, interests, ambitions, fears, and hopes, and let us interpret the more general facts of psychology in terms of the lives of our own boys and, girls.

After having read this book, the author hopes that you will read more advanced books on this subject. For this purpose, selected bibliographies have been placed at the ends of the chapters. It is also desired that as soon as possible you follow this course with a specialization course dealing with the limited age group to which as a faithful teacher you may devote yourself.

Chapter I What Our Pupils Are

Ir you are to become thoroughly prepared to participate in a manufacturing process, particularly if you are to have some supervisory responsibility for other workers, it is important that you become acquainted with raw materials and with all stages of the process of manufacture. If this is true of the maker of shoes, or clothing, or steel rails, or textbooks, how much more important that the teacher who is engaged in the development of character and efficient personality shall know the nature of his pupils and be familiar with the various stages of their development! He is working with living material rather than with metal, or paper, or wood. The problem of understanding the human material with which he is dealing is therefore much more complex than are the problems of the factory worker.

The centrality of personality.—In religious education, as in all worthy education, persons are central. The Christian motive for education centers in the life, the nature and the possibilities of the pupil himself. When the Christian church follows the example,and spirit of its Master and places the child in the midst, it does so from no ulterior motive. The welfare of the child himself and his development into his higher possibilities are the ends to be achieved. It is, therefore, necessary that we become familiar with the nature of personality and with the traits and characteristics that are common to all persons, and that we learn how to apply this knowledge in the interest of the physical, intellectual, moral, and spiritual development of our pupil.

The church-school teacher or prospective teacher who reads this book must learn many things in order to be efficient in his work. He must study not only books but children and young people. There are many things that he must learn by actual firsthand contact with pupils in the classroom. He needs to learn methods of teaching; he must be familiar with the administrative problems of the school, know how to organize a class, a department, or an entire school for effectual educational work. But his most fundamental and primary task will be that of becoming familiar with his pupils, their nature, their interests, their needs, and their possibilities. Eventually he must become familiar with the psychology of the age group with which he works, but before entering this specialized field it is important to know some of the general traits and | capacities of all normal pupils.

Pupils are cifferent.—In the public schools and the church schools of our own and other lands there are many millions of pupils, and each of them is different in some particulars from all the others. They differ in age, in mental capacity, in social opportunity, and in numberless other relationships that deeply affect the nature of their personalities. . Therefore, when we discuss “the pupil,’ it must be understood that we are concerned with those elements in personality that are relatively common ‘rather than with the full round of life and expej riences of any individual person or group of persons. ,

Unitary personality.—It will profit us greatly in our study of our pupils to realize that there is a practical unity of personality that blends together the different phases and elements of life. An earlier psychology which is now generally abandoned laid great emphasis upon certain separate and distinct attributes, such as memory, reverence, imagination, reasoning, and many others, each of which was considered to be relatively independent and subject to training apart from other phases of personality. Psychologists now are generally agreed that although the human personality is exceedingly complex and characterized by a wide variety of phases and conditioning factors, it is to be considered as fundamentally a unit. To be sure, as a student in a classroom a pupil has developed a certain type of behavior that is quite different from his behavior in the bleachers of the athletic field or in a worship service, but this does not mean that the same pupil is three different persons in these three different situations. There is nothing inconsistent in at one time being a studious member of a class, at another time an excited, hilarious member of a football team, and at still another time a quiet and reverent participant in an experience of worship.

Life is growth.—Please keep in mind in your study throughout this book the central fact that life is growth. No single picture is sufficient to describe a developing personality. Your pupils are changing before your eyes. They must undergo a constant process of development in that most interesting journey from infancy to adult life. There are normal developments in the lives of adult men and women, but after the personality is shaped at the end of adolescence the ways of life are less adventurous. There are fewer changes, and the amazing growth of earlier years can never be duplicated. Child life is a period of fairy-tale romance. Adolescence sees the world aflame with a new glory, and we must always take account of the shifting, changing, growing, developing nature of our pre-adult students.

How to classify our pupils.—The student of the nature and training of pupils is always subject to a temptation to make conclusions that are too general and hence too simple. It is easy to grade and classify our pupils by some fixed and perhaps arbitrary system of grouping. Of course there is value in classification. In working with numbers of persons it becomes necessary to devise some system of measurement whereby we may assemble them into convenient and fairly homogeneous groups. The easiest method is based upon chronological age. There are other factors, however, that should be considered. Boys and girls of the same chronological age often differ widely in their mental abilities or in what is sometimes termed “mental age.” There are also variations due to different rates of physiological development, and this gives rise to the term, “physiological age.” In practice it is frequently necessary to determine the interests and abilities of the average pupil of a given chronological age and base our classification upon such averages.

While it is essential for study that we divide the developmental period beginning with birth and continuing to adult life into certain periods, let us remember that in growing up no one suddenly leaps from one period into another. A child grows to adolescence and adult life by a continuous process. A tree does not greatly change its nature when its trunk reaches the diameter of two inches. The following day it is very similar to what it was before, but it differs considerably from a tree with a diameter of four inches. So a child is little different on the day after his birthday from what he was the day before, but a child of three years differs quite decidedly from what he will be at the age of six and there are noticeable changes as he grows older.

A working classification.—There are certain relatively distinct natural divisions in the process of development. Puberty at the beginning of adolescence is such a division point. At the age of about twelve or thirteen, differing in individuals and differing quite noticeably between boys and girls, are certain definite and important developments in the physical and mental nature. These developments appear gradually, but are relatively rapid and distinct as compared with the developments of other periods. So we may divide the growth of our pupil into two major parts—childhood and adolescence. Experience with boys and girls has led to certain subdivisions of these major periods into shorter periods. It is the work of education to direct the natural activities of our pupils in such a way as to encourage continual well-balanced growth. In order to accomplish this end with large numbers of pupils we find it practically necessary to group them in departments and classes. Using the chronological age as a rough, approximate measure of average growth, these subdivisions are commonly given as follows: 3

Infancy, from birth to 3.

Early Childhood, 4 and 5.

Middle Childhood, 6 to 8.

Later Childhood, 9 to 11.

Early Adolescence, 12 to 14.

Middle Adolescence, 15 to 17.

Later Adolescence, 18 to about 24.

MIND AND CONSCIOUSNESS

The term “mind” is commonly used in a somewhat different sense from the term “consciousness.” Consciousness means that part of the personality of which one is aware at any given instant, while mind includes the mass of experiences, past and present, \ which affect consciousness and make its widely — varied experiences possible. The mind, however, should not be considered a mere mass, whether of ideas, thoughts, nervous impulses, or any other simple and settled combination of things. It is always essentially a process. It is alive. It is moving. Our mental processes have often been described as a stream of experiences. The entire stream may be called mind. The term “consciousness” may be used for a cross section of the stream at any particular point or at least for that part of a cross section of which we are clearly aware at any particular time.

The complexity of mental life—-The content of the mind is always exceedingly complex. There are no simple mental experiences. Even one so apparently simple as the pain of a pin prick is combined with the memory of previous pains and with other memories, causing feelings that may be distinct from the actual physical sensation. Perhaps there are related attitudes of fear, and other elements that make the total experience really very complicated. When one considers that all the facts of our knowledge, all the elements of truth in our experiences, all of the marvelous, complex mass of information about anything in the universe that one can recall, is in some mysterious way present in our minds, the complex nature of mind becomes apparent.

The relation of mind and body.—A complex mind is affected by the complicated physical organism that we call the body. Every part of the body has its effect upon mental life. Emotional experiences, for example, are very closely related to the functions of the digestive and circulatory systems. All the major organs of the body, the heart, the liver, the lungs, the kidneys, and many other organs influence mental experiences and are influenced by them. In recent years there has been considerable study of the remarkable effects of the endocrine or so-called ductless glands. These glands include the thyroid, parathyroid, thymus, adrenal, sex glands, and the pituitary bodies. They are vitally related to all sorts of mental experiences.?

1For example, the adrenal glands throw into the blood a secretion called adrenalin. This substance has a stimulating or tonic effect upon the heart and the general muscular system and at the same time a depressing or inhibiting effect upon the digestive tract. Intense emotions such as anger or fear, stimulate the adrenal glands, causing them to pour increased amounts of adrenalin into the blood. The immediate effect of this is the whipping up of the heart to unaccustomed effort and the stimulation of the larger muscles. This explains, in part, why, under the influence of anger or fear, men have often been able, to

The nature of the mind and the body.—What the mind may be apart from the body is a problem we must leave to philosophy rather than to science. What we are to consider in this book is that the personality as we know it reacts to various stimulations and influences. The essential fact is that the entire personality is capable of training or education, and we need not separate one element of the personality from another. Perhaps both mind and body are phases of the same ultimate reality. Certainly both phases must be considered. The mind and the body must be trained together and the nature of our pupils must be studied both through our knowledge of ourselves by introspection and through the knowledge of our pupils which we may gain by experiment and careful observation of their behavior.

Tin SUBCONSCIOUS

Consciousness, in the sense of awareness, is a very small island in the great ocean of mental experiences of which we are unconscious. The nature — of the subconscious elements of our personality we | need not consider at this time. We need only recognize that there are a vast number of elements with which the student of psychology is concerned that accomplish what otherwise seem to be impossible feats of physical strength. The effect of this same gland on the digestive tract is illustrated by the following experiment. From the body of a sheep just killed a section of the small intestine is taken and is immediately suspended in a solution of salt water of the temperature of the sheep’s body. The rings of muscles about the intestines will continue for some time the rhythmic contractions and relaxations called the peristaltic movements. Now let a drop of adrenalin be added to the warm salt water and immediately these movements cease.

are not always in the focus of our conscious recognition. Various figures of speech have been used in the endeavor to describe the relation of the subconscious to the conscious. Some use the word “threshold” to indicate the point where consciousness begins and below which lies the mass of subconscious experiences. The word “fringe” has also been used to describe the area which seems to surround our consciousness, shading off into unconsciousness. It is probable, at any rate, that there is, remaining in your mind or treasured in some mysterious way in your nervous system, a record of a vast number of apparently wholly forgotten ideas, experiences, feelings, and sensations of your past life, that could, if the proper associations were established, be brought into consciousness. The distinction that we shall use between the subconscious and the conscious is merely a distinction in awareness.

When we are thoroughly conscious of a given thing or idea, we hold it in the focus of attention. Anything that is near this focus or center of attention may be said to be conscious, while those mental processes that are so far from the focus of attention that we are not aware of them may be called sub- : conscious. Included in subconscious states will be dreams and similar states and the whole mass of associations or conditions by which we treasure our _ memories of the past and out of which these _ Memories may be brought into clear consciousness. _ The character of your pupils depends upon the ideas and ideals, the principles and habits of thought and action that they have gradually stored up as subconscious elements in their minds. The subconscious is not a separate part of the mind. It is the content of the mind itself which is at any moment beneath the threshold of consciousness.

Tun SocraL NATURE

In order to understand your pupil you must know that he is a social personality. There is no such thing as absolutely individual psychology, in the sense of a single personality without reference to other personalities. It is the nature of all persons to behave with reference to other persons. “No man liveth to himself.”

It is necessary for the teacher constantly to realize that the individual pupil must be studied with relation to various social groups. In order to understand our pupils we must know something of their homes, their activities in the public school, their various play groups, and all the other social groupings in which they find themselves. Their behavior differs according to these social situations. The work of the church school is chiefly to develop in our pupils a wholesome social life, so that they will become increasingly useful to the world about them and will participate in that serving of humanity to which our Christian faith summons us all. Wholesome religious experience must be social.

As children come into the world their interests are primarily individualistic rather than social. The infant cares chiefly about the satisfaction of his own appetites and desires. His interest in other people is at first centered in their ability to satisfy these desires. For example, his affection for his mother is of a very different, more primitive type than the affection of his mother for him. The mother loves her child disinterestedly and to the point of self-sacrifice. The child loves the mother in proportion to what she does for the child.

However, there is in the infant the beginning of a social nature. He gradually becomes interested in persons, first in his mother, then in other members of his family. Soon he develops a special interest in other children and from this point his social development is relatively rapid. Normally there should be a constant development in social interest throughout childhood and adolescence until the altruistic spirit that thinks first of the needs and desires of others shall be uppermost. This does not mean that all egoistic impulses must be eliminated. It is normal and legitimate for any person to desire and seek for certain personal advantages. As one approaches adult life, however, the dominating motives should be social interest in others and a desire to help them rather than the motives of egoism and self-seeking. Religious education does not seek to destroy the individualistic impulses, but to bring them into harmony with a growing and eventually dominant altruism. Religion may be considered a harmonizing agency.

HEREDITY

What our pupil is depends fundamentally in very great degree upon his parents and more remote ancestors. From them he inherits such physical features as stature, coloration, and the relative sizes of the various parts of the body. He inherits also wide variations in the structure of glands, of the nervous system, and of other bodily organs; and there are, in fact, very wide hereditary differences in all the physical elements of his being. Many elements in his personality are absolutely fixed by heredity. “Man cannot by taking thought add one cubit to his stature” nor change the color of his — eyes. It has been observed also that special abilities for painting, or music, or mechanics, seem to be transmitted from parent to child. While it cannot be said that musical skill is transmitted, there are doubtless elements of fundamental musical ability, such as the tendency to distinguish variations in pitch or to produce a given musical tone with the voice, that are fixed by heredity. It seems that certain mental characteristics, such as slowness or quickness of thinking, or a tendency to be industrious or moody, are transmitted as hereditary elements in life.

ENVIRONMENT

If heredity told the whole story of the nature of the pupil, if all the elements of his life were fixed by the fundamental, normal laws of heredity, there would be no need for teachers and no chance for improvement. But the surroundings of a child, those influences coming from other persons with _ whom he associates, have a powerful influence upon his nature. We may consider heredity as the basis or foundation of the structure of life. We must build upon the foundation which nature has given to our pupil. If he is feeble-minded, we can educate only with reference to this native defect. If, on the other hand, he is unusually intelligent and quick to respond to training, we havea very different foundation upon which to build. What structure we shall build upon the foundation depends on training and

Hen sere eiaevere Gee environment. A little study of a given pupil and of the environmental surroundings of his life will illustrate this point clearly. Our pupil has a native tendency to speech, but whether this tendency results in clear enunciation and intelligible expression or in careless pronunciation habits or in inelegant language depends in very great degree upon the speech which he has heard.

HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT IN EDUCATION

It is vastly important in the development of all phases of life that a child shall have a wholesome environment, even in his infancy. The first few years of life are vitally important in establishing attitudes and habits, and have a great part in determining the intellectual, moral, esthetic, and religious nature of later years. It is important that an infant shall experience gentle touches, soft colors, musical sounds, rather than harsh and unpleasant sensations. It is important also that throughout childhood and adolescence boys and girls be surrounded by influences of culture, character, and religion.

Education is the process of developing the native powers and possibilities of our pupils through the modification of their environment, surrounding them by influences that are wholesome and in all possible ways influencing toward the desirable changes. Education cannot take the place of heredity, but whatever may be our pupil’s native equipment, through educational influences, it can be used, developed and guided to his great profit and improvement. The importance of the teacher in character training can hardly be overestimated.

1. What differences have you observed between brothers and sisters in the same family?

2. Are you acquainted in any close and intimate degree with all your pupils?

3. What plans can you make for getting better acquainted with the members of your class?

4, Do you know any “identical twins’? What differences between them can you discover?

5. Make lists of the interests of:

(a) Children of six. (6) Boys of ten. (c) Girls of ten.’ (d) Boys of fifteen. (ce) Girls of fifteen.

6. What do your pupils do at a party or a basketball game? In a session of your class? In a worship service?

7. Are there pupils in your class who are of. too low a mental age for their grade? Have you any especially bright or “supra-normal” pupils?

8. Describe your feelings and actions when you have been frightened.

Books ror FurtHer READING

A Social Theory of Religious Education, Coe, Chapter X.

Psychology, Woodworth, Chapter X XI.

Introduction to Psychology, Seashore, Chapter XIV.

Psychology for Teachers, LaRue, Chapter II.

Personality and Social Adjustment, Groves.

The Practical Psychology of Babyhood, Fenton.

Psychology of Infancy and Early Childhood, Arlitt.

The Psychology of Early Childhood Up to Sia Years, Sterne.

The Psychology of the FE ARE tt NEY Child, Pechstein and Jenkins.

Wholesome Childhood, Groves and Groves.

The Psychology of Childhood, Nar RAE and Whitley.

A Study of the Little Child, A Study of the Primary Child, A Study of the Junior Child, Whitley.

The Junior, Chave.

The Child, His Nature and His Needs, The Valparaiso Foundation.

The Normal Growth of the Pre-school Child, Gessell.

Chapter II The Native Endowment Of Our Pupils

Tum fact that certain traits in parents are transmitted to their children has been recognized since very early times. Adam is described in Genesis as begetting a son “after his image,” and the resemblances of personal appearance and perhaps also of other personal traits have been observed from far antiquity. When in the Ten Commandments the iniquity of the fathers is described as being “visited upon the children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation,” there is probably some element of heredity in mind. The careful observation and study of hereditary elements in personality are, however, of modern date.

HEREDITY

It is important that we understand just what our pupil inherits. There have been many errors, some of them serious, at this point. He does not inherit the character of his parents or other ancestors or their personal habits or experience. What he does inherit, not merely from parents, but from his more remote forebears, is certain tendencies, some relatively simple and others very complex, affecting bodily structure and growth, mental potentialities and dispositions, and a vast organization of tendencies some held in common with all humanity, some determining his individual personality and temperament. Early Calvinism, including the

Puritanism of the American colonies, held that all humanity inherits the guilt of the first man.

“In Adam’s fall We sinned all,”

declared the New England Primer. The effect of this extreme doctrine was for a long time a chief hindrance to religious education. There is little encouragement for training children if they are born with the depravity of native guilt in their natures. The saying of Jesus, “to such belongeth the kingdom of God,” indicates a better attitude. This does not mean that children are born with developed characters. They are born neither moral nor immoral but, rather, non-moral, with the possibilities of good or evil qualities, depending upon their training and environment.

Principles of heredity.—Probably the most important discoveries concerning heredity were those made by Gregor Mendel about the middle of the nineteenth century. These discoveries were not recognized or generally known by scientists until about 1900, when they were rediscovered and their Significance was appreciated. As Mendel discovered, the traits or characteristics that are transmitted (the biologist calls them “characters”) are not blends or mixtures of the traits of earlier generations, but rather are transmitted from one parent or the other as units. Thus the child of a dark-haired mother and a light-haired father does not necessarily have hair of an intermediate brown. More likely his hair will resemble that of one of his parents. It may, however, be different from that of either parent, resembling that of some grandparent or great-grandparent who had red hair. The fundamental peculiarities that distinguish a race or a family are inherited, and heredity is stubborn and fixed. The Ethiopian cannot change his color. The royal family of Hapsburg is marked by a characteristic shape of the nose and the general facial contour. We are all familiar with noticeable resemblances in families of our acquaintance. Notice them in the families represented in your class. Our complex heredity.—A certain appreciation of one’s family connections is wholesome and proper. Frequently what we most value in the families of which we are proud of being members \are not the biological elements transmitted to us so ‘much as the social customs and habits that have developed in the family environment. While we may well maintain our sense of family connection, we should not overrate the importance of the hereditary factors involved. Our family heredity is not a simple matter of the transmission of the blood of a worthy line of ancestors. It involves a wide variety of strains, each of which may have its part in determining what our native endowment may be. Suppose you are a member of the family of Goodname. You are properly gratified that you are a descendant of a notable ancestry and bear some resemblance to your distinguished forefathers. But you are not merely a son of John Goodname; you inherit perhaps as many traits from your mother, who was of another family. You are really only half Goodname. But your heredity may be affected as much by the second generation back as by your own parents, and by the measure of your grandparents you are only one fourth Goodname.

Another generation back and you are one eighth Goodname, and so on. Going back six generations you have a total of 126 ancestors, only six of whom were Goodnames. The rest were a mixture of Smiths, Browns, and many other family strains.

A few years ago a scientist traced many lines of descent from a certain noble lady named Isabelle de Vermandois and found that many of the distinguished men of England and America during the past century or two were descended from the same ancestress. Probably we should be near the truth if we were to assert that all the people of British stock have common elements in their ancestry, being descended not only from Isabelle de Vermandois, but from many others of her time, princes and paupers, kings and criminals. A study of family trees is a wholesome antidote for overweening family pride.