The basis of practical teaching; a book in pedagogy

Preface

More than twenty years' experience as a teacher, half of which has been as a teacher of teachers, has led the author to believe that there are certain fundamental facts of science and principles of education of which all teachers should have a knowledge. The aim in bringing out this volume is to gather together such facts and principles, and put them in readable form. The book is not a pedagogical treatise which assumes a knowledge of psychology, neurology, and child study, neither is it a text on these subjects.

If the author has not failed in his purpose, this volume is a plain statement of certain facts in all these fields interpreted in terms of education. It is hoped that the book will be of special benefit to teachers, students of elementary pedagogy in colleges and normal schools, and to parents.

The author wishes to acknowledge the courtesy of the Pedagogical Seminary and the Educator- Journal, in which portions of certain chapters have previously been published.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Introduction 7

II. Our Inheritance 15

Introduction

There was a time when the branches taught seemed to be the center and end of education. From this extreme view of the subject there has been a gradual transition toward the opposite view, that the child is the center and end of education. This is presumably the most advanced view generally held at the present time. Yet, while it is recognized that the child is the center and end of education, I think we are not resting upon this as an abstract or isolated thought. As the transition from the first view to the second and opposite one has been slow and gradual, so the present movement from the child, as such, to the child in his entire setting will be neither rapid nor always encouraging.

It was seen that arithmetic, for example, is not the reason for the school, but that the child with his limitations and possibilities is the reason. The observance of this fact was the excuse for introducing books on mental science into the teacher's professional reading-course. But the thought that the child is made up of soul, body, and clothes was not grasped in its fullness; and, as we should expect, we find that stress was laid on the most abstract phase of the child, and the one which would seem farthest removed from the old idea of the branch as end and the child as means.

The first so-called strictly professional books, therefore, were metaphysical rather than psychological. There was no discussion of the constitution or nature of the child as such, but almost the entire emphasis was placed upon that phase of the child known as his mind. The professional literature available to the teacher, while in most part it was truthful and sometimes helpful, was always abstract, heavy, and difficult of application.

The chief defect was that we were not viewing the child in his entirety. When it seemed as though the rank and file of the teachers were becoming reconciled to the foregoing programme (although I think they did not feel at home in it), we had brought to our attention a fact which we had always known, but of which

Introduction 9

we were not seemingly conscious — namely, that every child mind that ever came to school came in some kind of body, and that the kind of body in which it came determined, to a great degree, what the mind might accomplish. This, doubtless, is a great step in advance of anything which has gone before, and it would seem that too much emphasis could not be given to the idea that the entire child, body as well as mind, is the subject of education. In fact, from the absolute point of view, I am sure that too much emphasis could not be given it. The time and energy that have been spent studying eyes, ears, noses, skins, feet, and hands, with a view to gaining a clearer and deeper insight into the physical and mental conditions of the child, have been well spent. All the conventions that have been held, all the papers that have been prepared and read, all the speeches that have been made, and all the discussion that has resulted from these things, have been eminently worth while. It is doubtful, however, if more than the first word has been spoken along this particular line of pedagogical research by those who know whereof they speak.

The chief hindrance, so to speak, to the comparatively new movement has been the work of the overio The Basis of Practical Teaching

ardent but untrained and unwise advocates of it. There has been extensive and vigorous opposition to this movement toward the educational laboratory, and some of our most experienced and enthusiastic educational leaders, in the score of years that have just passed, look upon it as a fad which is having its day and will soon cease to inflict itself upon us. That this should be true is by no means strange. The opposition and the doubt manifested toward this new educational truth are no stronger than the opposition and doubt that were shown at the birth of the sacred theories to which these very same people now cling with so much tenacity. The birth pains of ideas are frequently as severe as physical birth pains, and as in physical birth the pains are proportional to the complexity of the individual born and the one giving birth, so also in the world of ideas, he who has all his theories and philosophy worked out and wrapped up and labeled, and who has lived by them in faith for years, must find great hesitancy and mental pain in breaking away from them. In discussing this subject with those whose mental nurture has been largely speculative pap, the point of contention is that it is a low and materialistic way of looking at a human being, to consider him as sub-

Introduction n

ject, to so great an extent, to his body and physical environment — that it would be more pleasant, and much more encouraging, to believe that mind could lift itself above its presumably physical limitations to the realization of any task or ideal which it might set for itself. It must be admitted that this would seem to be a pleasant way, and that there perhaps could be but one possible objection to looking at it in just this way, — which is, that we cannot do it.

We are too much inclined to speculate and to work out fine-spun educational theories, to wrinkle the forehead and overtax the mind and strain the eyes in trying to search out a deep, mysterious, semi- mythical something that will settle things; and we have let the resources at hand and at our disposal go unappropriated. The man who has to study physiology, anatomy, materia medica, and pedagogy to work out and appreciate the grain of truth in this little formula — (i) as you think, so are you; (2) as you eat, so you think; (3) therefore, as you eat, so are you — will never be a power in the earth from the standpoint either of materia medica or pedagogy. And the man who has to leave the halls of any American college for some years of study abroad, to learn that the varying conditions of climate and the varying conditions of pestiferous insect life serve as distinct causes of his varying moods and abilities to do work, has already shown himself so insensible to his copartnership in the solution of life's problem as to render him wholly unfit for pedagogical research.

I have emphasized this point somewhat, that I might not be interpreted as underestimating it in discussing the next phase — one just beginning to dawn upon us, and one in which I so thoroughly believe. Yet surely no one of these or all of them constitute our sine qua non. We must avoid any such attitude toward so great a problem. The day of settlement is not yet at hand ; we are even yet doing pioneer work on the frontier. John Smith thought he had seen America ! But we are all John Smiths on the James River, and have not crossed the Appalachians, much less the Mississippi Valley or the Rockies beyond.

It would seem from what has been said that there can be no rational study of the educational problem in which the body of the child is ignored or passed by with but slight attention. And this truth, born of struggle as it has been, is finding acceptance on the part of a large minority, if not already a majority, of school people and those interested in children. To consent to a theory and to be able to work effectively

Introduction 13

in the light of it are two different things. Having, therefore, the consent of many teachers as to the merits of this view and the need of its application, we will make it the purpose of some of the following chapters to help, in a practical way, in the solution of this particular problem.

Every mind, then, does come to school in a body, and the kind of body in which it comes does determine to some degree, at least, what it will do with itself after it gets to school. But while this is true, it is just as true that every child (I mean, now, the entire child — soul, body, and clothes) who comes to school comes in a crowd, sits with a crowd, studies in a crowd, (and sometimes with a, crowd), recites with a crowd, plays with a crowd, goes home with a crowd, eats with a crowd, and often sleeps with a crowd. So it can be seen that he is a very much crowded individual, and, if possible, should have something to relieve the pressure. I have often thought that if a child could pick up his body and go to some Robinson Crusoe island to live ; if he could have the necessaries of physical life sufficiently supplied; if by some special act of revelation he could have the average measure of school wisdom, as given in the class room, instilled into his mind ; if he were subject to the pains and aches of average humanity, but were entirely isolated from human society; and then we could have written out for us the history of what this child thought and did, — that with all this, we could have but little notion of what the child would have been if reared in human institutions. In other words, if I knew to-day what you would do, and what you would be, in a life of absolute isolation, I should know but very little — although somewhat — of what you really will do, or be, in a life of human environment and institutions.

It may not be easy to induce people to give their consent to the importance of viewing the child, in his physical setting and in his relations to his natural and institutional environment, as the center and end of education, but such consent must be won because, up to date, that is our most comprehensive child. Having gained this point, it will then remain to assist school people and others interested in the welfare of children to some plausible way of rearing such a child.

Chapter II

What a thing is at any stage of its development depends upon two things : what it was when it started — its inheritance ; and what it has done and had done to itself since it started — its experience. This chapter will discuss the more general features of inheritance.

At birth every individual has a given organism for which he is in no sense personally responsible. In most cases this organism is capable of large development in strength, health, and efficiency, and in most cases also it can, through failure to observe and practice the laws of development inherent within it, fail to realize upon its inheritance, and so decline and die. With this given organism are also inherited broad general instincts, or tendencies to action and reaction. The student of psychology and pedagogy should not fail to remember that these instincts are general and not special — upon this fact rests much of the hope for success in training. The individual is not born

i5 with the instinct to make definite specific reactions to definite specific stimuli, but may react in a large number of ways, any one of which may in the first instance be appropriate to the stimulus causing the reaction.

The stimulus which comes to a young child when he first sees a penknife, for example, results in numerous reactions, many of which would not be appropriate in an adult. The child learns through experience what these appropriate adult reactions are and no longer tries to suck or eat the knife handle. But in his first days sucking and biting were the instinctive reactions to the penknife stimulus.

It is a principle of matter and mind that things tend to act as they have previously acted. This is seen in the letter paper that has been folded; in the coat sleeve that has wrinkled; in hair that has been parted in the middle, or on the side; in people who have learned to use ungrammatical forms in youth; in children who have not been taught to control their tempers, and in children who have been taught to do so. It is seen in the story-teller, in the man who exaggerates, in habits of carelessness and habits of accuracy. Whatever an individual does, constitutes in his organism an added excuse for doing it again.

It can be seen, therefore, how important it is that these general instincts of the child should be set going in the right way and not be allowed to shoot off in ways which will prevent his development, and which may result in ruin. Because of improper associates (personal stimuli) during the years of puberty and adolescence, which mark the rise and development of a racial instinct, many a youth has apparently been rendered incapable of ever having a right mental reaction when thinking of the opposite sex. So it is with various instincts during our entire lives. The most important thing that can happen to a child is that he shall have the wisest possible guidance during these early years, when he is making his first reactions to this great world of stimuli — physical, personal, social, and religious — in which he is practically swamped. New light is thus shed upon the importance and sanctity of parenthood, and new emphasis is placed upon the responsibility, the opportunity, and the dignity of the teaching profession. Nothing will be more conducive to thoughtfulness on the part of the teacher in everything he does than the realization of the fact that he is not teaching for a day only; that the child's behavior, his life of activity, his responses to his environment to-day, are blazing the way in which he will

1 8 The Basis of Practical Teachin g in all probability go to-morrow, and all the days that follow to-morrow.

The great length of the period of infancy in the human child is significant. Contrary to the popular thought that man is the least instinctive of animals, he is perhaps at birth the most instinctive. He is not born with so many ready-made specific instincts as are the lower animals, and herein lies his hope of progress. Within a few months after birth the puppy and the kitten are performing practically all the dog and cat activities, and are performing them as well as they ever will. They have in a very true sense inherited these definite modes of activity and they can no more avoid them or outlive them than they can their color. Their period of infancy is very short, for they have little to learn. With the human child this is not true. Twenty- five or thirty years are required to bring him to adulthood. At birth or soon afterward he is not able to perform numerous activities with precision and accuracy as are the lower animals. For years he is incapable of doing anything with precision and accuracy. But he starts with an organism and with broad general instincts that are capable, by proper training during his long childhood, of being developed into specific skills heretofore unrealized in the race.

The human nervous system is no exception to the tendency of all things to act again as they have previously acted. As a consequence most of the adult human activities are the results of habits which have been formed in the life of the individual. The general instinct with which the child started, in manifesting itself in certain definite ways at the beginning, instead of certain other definite ways which were just as possible and just as appropriate, has developed into specific habits, and has done so by losing its general possibilities. This can be illustrated if we liken the possibilities of the young nervous system and its general instinctive tendencies to the possibilities of new milk. The new milk has butter possibilities, cheese possibilities, and doubtless many others. Now if it goes through the processes which result in butter, it loses its cheese possibilities. The price it pays for being butter is that it shall never be cheese. So it is in the development upon the basic human instincts: the possibilities at the beginning are numerous and untold, and in the adult they are less numerous and more specific. As a rule the' price we pay for certain skills is our inability to be skillful in certain other lines. The Jack-of-all-trades can only be such at the price of being master of none, and the master of one trade io The Basis of Practical Teaching

can be such only by surrendering the original possibility of shallow versatility.

It seems to be pretty generally recognized that the child inherits the religious instinct, but he does not inherit the Methodist or the Presbyterian instinct. He does not inherit the Protestant or Catholic instinct. In all probability he does not inherit the Christian or Mohammedan instinct. But he is by nature religious, and which way he shall go will be determined more by his early personal stimulations than by all other things combined. The importance of the character of the child's associates cannot from this standpoint be overestimated. It is not at all strange, psychologically, that the children of Methodists should be Methodists ; the children of Catholics, Catholics ; and the children of Mohammedans, Mohammedans. The strange thing would be if they were not. We find exactly what, from the standpoint of the psychologist, we should expect to find. The child inherits the potentialities for a social life, — a life of organization, — but he does not inherit the specific tendency to organize as the Democrats do or as the Republicans do. But here again we see what we should expect, that the children of Democrats are Democrats, and the children of Republicans are Republicans. Any violation of this rule is exceptional. The effect of personal stimuli, from childhood up, is here plainly seen.

The child doubtless has the language instinct, but in all probability he does not start with the English language instinct, or the German language instinct, or the French or Spanish language instinct. In which direction this language instinct shall manifest itself depends upon the specific language stimuli which come to the child. The conditions for speaking the Spanish language fluently are that the child shall be continually surrounded by people who speak it fluently, and the price he pays for such attainment through such personal stimuli (social environment) is his inability to speak many or any of the other languages so well. Or, again, the child is not born with a good instinct for grammar or a poor instinct for grammar. Whether he shall finally say "had gone" and "between you and me," or shall be doomed to say "had went" and "between you and I," depends primarily and almost entirely upon the language stimuli to which he is subjected during his first years. The child is born with the instinct to feed himself, but he is born with neither good table manners nor bad table manners. These are matters of acquisition that are, however, rooted in the general instinct, and result from it under specific stimuli.

The teacher is almost sure to underestimate his magnificent chance and his tremendous responsibility, if he does not realize that the child's inheritance is not special, and that his ready-made reactions are comparatively few; that upon him devolves the task of providing for the child stimuli whose appropriate reactions will make for strength and not for weakness. The wise teacher will see that it is the sum total of such reactions which constitutes behavior, and that behavior is but the expressed side of character. He will then be able to evaluate the different school branches and see the significance of each. He will no more look upon the school course as a thing to be accomplished by the students, but rather as a vast variety of opportunities to stimulate the students to activity. This conception of the child's inheritance will do more to enable the thoughtful teacher to place him where he belongs, at the center of the entire school process, than will any other psychologic conception. It will enable him to see that although through blood relationship it is given to the parent to determine what shall be the range of the child's possibilities, nevertheless through the teacher as the conscious agent of the child's most thoughtful stimulations are his definite, specific attainments realized. A thousand ways the child may go ; it is the teacher's pleasant, though often difficult, task to determine that he shall go in those ways only which lead to life. //

Chapter III

All mental life, so far as we are able to observe, is directly associated with some sort of physical organism, and, so far as we know, this is always an animal organism. There may be a psychology of plants, but the fact has not been established. It is a generally accepted fact that consciousness is more closely associated with and directly dependent upon the nervous system than upon any other part of the organism. This gives us a basis for the study of consciousness in two directions: (i) from the standpoint of neurology — thus ascertaining, as well as may be, the exact relation between neural development, neural complexity and disease, and the mental life, normal and abnormal; and (2) from the standpoint of expression. We know the mental life of another only as we are able, through introspection and observation of his expressive movements and language, to infer what his conscious states are. But his expressive life is subject to nervous

control. The nervous system then serves the double purpose of being the basis of all psychical life and the basis for the expression of it. It is evident, therefore, how important must be a general notion of the nervous system even to the amateur psychologist.

The nervous system is composed of a vast number of neurons, so called, each of which consists of a nerve cell and a nerve fiber or process. The nerve fibers extend into all parts of the body, dividing and subdividing into the smallest conceivable fibrils in the peripheral organs. It is the opinion of the most careful and thoroughgoing students of neurology that these neurons, even in the periphery, never directly connect one with another; however close they may come, and however minutely they may intertwine, they never, so to speak, grow into each other. The transfer of a nervous impulse from one neuron into another is accomplished by a method known in physical science as induction. The constitution of the nervous system as to matter and structure is such as to permit of three possibilities for nervous impulses: (1) Many nervous impulses may be propagated at the same time. (2) A nervous impulse may be modified by the induction of another impulse from a neighboring neuron. (3) A nervous impulse transferred to another neuron may be modified by an impulse already there.

iG The Basis of Practical Teaching

The question of the exact relationship between neurology and psychology, between matter and mind, is a much mooted one, and one which may never be fully answered by science. The discussion of Mercier in his book on " Sanity and Insanity" will help the reader into the latest and most plausible theory on the subject : —

"The relation of mind to nervous processes is very peculiar, and since it is, in fact, very different from that which is vaguely current, and, I will not say accepted, but assumed, by many who have not studied the matter, it will be necessary for the reader to rid himself as far as possible of the preconceived notions of the matter, and to begin its consideration afresh with a perfectly open mind. In the first place, he must discard altogether the notion that mind can work upon, or influence, or produce changes in the nervous system, or in matter of any kind, however arranged; and, in the second place, he must rid himself of the idea that any nervous process, or any movement, or rearrangement of material particles, can ever, under any circumstances, be transferred into mental phenomena — into an idea, or a feeling, or any other state or condition of mind.

"The true connection between nervous and mental phenomena is believed to be this : that when, in the course of its circuit from the organs of sense to the muscles, a nerve current reaches the highest centers, and sets them in action, then this activity of the highest nervous centers is attended, we cannot say why or how, by mental states. Every alteration of nervous tension in these upper centers is attended by a variation in the mental processes. Every fluctuation of nerve currents, in this way and in that, has an accompaniment in a variation of mental states strictly in correspondence with it. The one set of changes takes place in the nervous system, and is an affair of molecules, and discharges, and nerve currents. The other set of changes takes place in the mind, and is an affair of ideas, and feelings, and volitions. The one set of changes accompanies the other set of changes invariably and instantly, just as the movements of the shadow accompany the movements of the man. But the mental changes can no more influence or alter the nervous changes than the shadow can move the man ; and the nervous system, or the body which contains it, can no more act independently and directly upon the mind than the man can pick up his shadow and throw it away. The influence of the body is limited to the changes that it brings about in the working of the higher nervous centers; and when such a change is produced, change of mental processes takes place simultaneously, just as a change of the attitude of the body is accompanied by a change of shape of the shadow. But to suppose that an action on the body can influence the mind without changing the nervous centers is like supposing that a man can alter the shape of his shadow without moving his body."

The theory of the parallelism of neural and psychical states seems the most probable one, and the one fraught with fewest dangers of rank misconception. We know, for example, that as the organisms of conscious beings vary in complexity, so the accompanying consciousnesses vary. We know that the more complex and highly developed nervous system is found in conjunction with the higher and more complex forms of consciousness, — thought, feelings, and volitions, — and that the simple, undifferentiated, unicellular (so to speak) nervous system is paralleled by the simplest and most rudimentary form of consciousness. In man we find the parallelism between the most complex, highly developed nervous system on the one hand, and on the other hand, psychical activities unthought of in connection with any of the lower forms. But so far as is known to science, consciousness does not accompany changes or disturbances in all parts of the nervous system — not even all those in the higher nervous centers. What happens below the threshold, no one is able to say. I have no quarrel with him who says, "A rudimentary consciousness, a consciousness in potentia, accompanies all neural activities." Who affirms and who denies are equally ignorant of the facts. But for all scientific and practical purposes we are authorized by the facts to say that disturbances in the higher brain, the cortex, alone are accompanied by consciousness, and, furthermore, only those disturbances which are sufficiently severe and novel have such accompaniments.

Doubtless every hour thousands of little vegetative and physiological changes are taking place in the cortex, whose mental counterpart, if there be any, never rises into the realm of consciousness. The disturbance must be sufficiently severe, the body casting the shadow — to revert to the figure of Mercier — must be sufficiently opaque, to cast a shadow. The disturbance must also be comparatively novel. Disturbances which were at some former time accompanied by the closest kind of conscious attention and adjustment of movements are no longer thus paralleled by consciousness. The lock has worn smooth and no longer catches or screeches. A complex activity once controlled by the highest conscious centers is, through the force of habit, no longer so controlled. Consciousness has been lost with novelty.

The close relationship existing between our neural and our psychical lives is nowhere more clearly seen than in the field of nervous diseases and mental inefficiency. The shuffling gait, the hanging, characterless hands, the open, uncontrolled mouth of the idiot or the insane person, are typical signs of nervous disorder and mental shortness.