Psychology and the teacher

Preface

This book hopes to be a source of information for the teacher. It aims to present the essentials of all which modern psychology may offer to the school. Yet this is only one side of its task.

Many signs indicate that a turn in the road of educational progress is near. Important changes seem unavoidable. A pedagogical unrest has set in. It is a time in which the fundamental principles and methods must be discussed with thoroughness and without prejudice.

Hence it is not sufficient simply to report the psychological facts, but more important to examine carefully all the connections between psychology and education. The lack of clearness in this relation has been one of the most damaging sources of confusion in recent years.

Such an inquiry quickly leads to deeper problems. We must examine the purposes of teaching, and these again in reference to the ideals of life. In this way the book aims to be far more than a text-book of specialistic knowledge. It is a book of idealism and reform, aiming toward a better school and a higher valuation of the teacher's calling.

This book on psychology and educatit)n is, in a way, a continuation of my recent volumes, "On the Witness Stand " and " Psychotherapy," the one discussing the relation of psychology to law, the other to medicine. All

vii

PEEFACE

three deal with the practical value of modern laboratory psychology for the daily life. They represent not the only, but the three most important aspects of applied psychology. There will be some who will be proud to discover that this book contradicts earlier utterances of mine. They will point triumphantly to some much-discussed essays in which I earnestly warned against the use of psychology in the schoolroom. But such friends are mistaken. More than ten years ago I did warn against a hasty application of psychology before the psychologists were ready to offer . material which is adjusted to the needs of the teacher. I demanded special psychological studies and experiments in the service of education. Just this demand has been happily fulfilled in the last decade, and therefore the time for a more intimate contact between the laboratory and the school seems to me to have come.

Moreover, even at the time when I urged precaution, I certainly was not unaware of the important service which psychology may offer to the teacher. In my book on methods of psychology, several years before those warning essays, I wrote that every teacher of the future must build up his work on psychology. Thus I have never changed my opinion and have not gone through any pedagogical conversion. But I do hope that my previous expressions of hesitation may suggest to the teachers a certain confidence in the character of my discussion. The problems of the school demand conservative treatment.

The discussion in the first part of the book necessarily sometimes takes a philosophical turn. There are not a few teachers who have an incurable dislike for such abstract problems. They may omit chapters four to eight. On the other hand, to the readers who feel the life importance of these fundamental questions and who are anxious to follow

viii

PREFACE

the inquiry further, I venture to suggest a quiet study of my larger volume, " The Eternal Values.'^ Those who wish to enter more fully into the empirical psychological material will have to turn to the books of Stanley Hall, Judd, Baldwin, James, Sully, Thorndike, Home, Whipple, etc., but above all to the widely scattered publications of the psychological laboratories. Those who master the German will find an abundance of material and suggestion in the experimental studies of Lay, Meumann, Stern, Kraepelin, Liehen, Brahn, etc., and the various magazines for educational psychology.

Hugo Munsterberg.

Harvard University,

September 1, 1909.

Contents

ETHICAL PART

THE AIMS OF THE TEACHER

CHAPTER PAGE

Chapter I The Conflict In Modern Pedagogy

As a teacher I intend to speak to teachers about the teachers' aim and work and mission, and about the means, especially the psychological means, which serve theh* noble ends. The whole world of educational tasks lies before us, and our survey will turn in many directions. We are to consider the child and the community, the quiet home and the whirl of life; we are to discuss the courses of study and the methods of the school, the values of the various subjects, and the help to be gained from psychological experiments; we are to think about play and discipline, work and fatigue, about childhood and adolescence, about the intellect and character, the attention and the ideas, the emotions and the will of boys and girls — but the teachers themselves will remain the center of all for us.

We shall not forget that the teachers are of many types : the primary school and the high school teacher, the teacher young and old, inexperienced and overexperienced ; the half-trained girl who teaches for a few seasons just because she is tired of home, and the university graduate who devotes his life to the profession as the most ideal of all callings; the teacher in the little valley far from the rush of the world, and the teacher in the turmoil of the metropolis; the optimistic teacher and the pessimistic — and yet they have all embarked together. Perhaps the best which they have to know is common to all of them. What really separates them into two classes — the true cabin passenger of the ship and the mere steerage — is the one fundamental difference : whether they have a high ideal of their duty as teachers or are satisfied with a low one; whether they believe in the noble mission of the teacher and serve it with the pride of the inspired soul or merely go through the tricks and are just " teaching " to earn a salary with the smallest effort until the vacation frees them from drudgery.

Whoever speaks about the teacher's work ought to speak clearly and simply. Vagueness is the habitual and yet unpardonable sin of pedagogical literature, and lack of simplicity too often hides lack of straightforwardness. Sound truth, well understood, is always simple and clear. But to be simple must not mean to be trivial, and to make things clear must not mean to cheapen them. Education is a serious matter and demands serious effort from all those who want to master its problems. To talk to teachers in a way that allows them to remain passive listeners without effort or thought on their own part means, indeed, to cheapen and to lower the level of the task. We aim to be clear, but we do not wish the teacher ever to forget that we are discussing a difficult and complex question, and that it is not worth while to discuss it at all if our discourse becomes a monologue; the whole mind of the reader must be ready to respond in self-activity. If the teachers did not forget that so easily they would not so often become the prey of pedagogical fads and fancies, advocated with empty arguments on one day and forgotten with indecent haste the next.

We have no new fad to defend and no pet theory to offer. We have no patent medicine for all educational

THE CONFLICT m MODERN" PEDAGOGY

blundering. We are not hustling with the " yellow '' psychologists, nor do we worship at the bygone shrines of the " Herbartians " — we have no schemes at all for " getting rich quick " in educational wisdom. We feel only the deep conviction that no one deserves to be a teacher who does not know that the teacher's mission is a sacred one. And to devote one's life to a great mission full of responsibilities and of difficulties certainly demands most serious thought. No effort ought to be spared, no helpful study ought to be neglected, no careless go-as-you-please method ought to be excused. The whole community has felt this instinctively. It is no longer willing to suffer the reckless ignorance of the haphazard teacher. Louder and louder arises the cry: The teacher must understand the material with which he works; must know the mind and body of the pupil and the social conditions under which he lives ; must know psychology and sociology and physiology ; must go through child study and the study of adolescence — in short, must study as thoroughly as possible the mental and physical facts, their working and their laws.

And yet — and yet — paradise seems no nearer. Big volumes on psychology, its principles and its laws, stand on the shelves of many teachers to-day, and the natural science of childhood and adolescence seems wonderfully at their command, and yet a pedagogical unrest pervades the whole social community. The pile of interesting facts which the sciences heap up for the teacher's use grows larger and larger, but the teacher seems to stare at it with growing hopelessness. He blames himself and ever makes new efforts to master the facts ; yet he cannot help feeling that they do not tell him what he ought to do. Perhaps he feels more erudite, but he does not feel wiser. He knows so many things that his own teachers did not dream of ; and 8 5 the only thing he does not know is what the use of all that knowledge can be. A wide open sea is suddenly before him, but he feels that he has no compass on board and that no one has told him in what direction land lies or how the next harbor can be reached.

We ought not, indeed, to deceive ourselves. The mere study of psychological facts, of the child's nature and the pupil's biology has too often been followed by sad disappointment. The old naivete has gone; to be sure, it was the naivete of ignorance, and yet there was a safer feeling of guidance than in the new knowledge, which seems insufficient and discouraging. Wider and wider circles, within and without the school, feel to-day as if an inner conflict had arisen, destroying the unity of the work and thus paralyzing the best efforts ; as if there must be something wrong in the new doctrine which tells the teacher that the new education ought to get its aim and guidance from the study of the child's nature.

Such a conflict exists; there is, indeed, something wrong. And while not a single step ought to be taken backward, and while not a single fact ought to be unlearned and not a single effort of this new movement discouraged, yet real progress will never result until the wrong is undone and the conflict which lies below is clearly understood by everyone. To put it in a nutshell, the older times which ignored the scientific knowledge of facts were, for that reason, slow and clumsy in moving toward their educational goal; but, after all, they had a goal; they had purposes and ideals which were set before them by their interests and their traditions, by their moralities and their beliefs. The new times master the facts and would be splendidly prepared to reach the goal, but they deceive themselves with the idea that such a goal can

THE CONFLICT IN MODEKN PEDAGOGY

itself be set by the study of facts. They do not see that no knowledge of facts in the world can ever tell ns what we ought to do, that no science can teach us what our aim and our duty, our purpose and our ideal must be. We want to rely on facts alone and are blind to the fundamental fact that facts have value only in the service of final ends which the will must create and which no knowledge supplies. Lost are the good old times which were sure of their ends but did not know the means of reaching them ; and there is upon us the new order, which supplies us with plenty of means but forgets that means are never substitutes for an end. This is the great conflict which is instinctively felt. We do not want to go back to the old ignorance which neglected the facts, and yet we do not find a real guidance in the new knowledge, because through its mere trust in facts it can never come to a real aim and purpose.

There is only one way to remove this conflict. No mere arbitration in favor of the one or the other side can help us. The belief in ends without the knowledge of the necessary means must be just as unsatisfactory to us as the mere knowledge of possible means without clear insight and full belief in valuable aims and ideals. Neither one can be the demand of the morrow.

Nor can a cheap compromise be in question. It surely would not do to recommend the cramming of some psychological laws, and then simply to add an appendix of moral appeals. Nor would it be better to warm over the old traditional phrases of educational ideals and stuff them with fragments of sociology and child study. What is needed is a really organic union of the aims and the means, a true synthesis; but no one ought to believe that such an ultimate unity can be reached through the arguments of popular discussion. Common sense alone cannot really settle such a dispute, for the common sense of to-day is and always has been merely the echo of the philosophical thoughts of yesterday. What the best thinkers of one generation elaborate by hard work appears to the next century as the common-sense opinion which is at once applicable to the momentous problems of life. No; what previous generations thought cannot help us in the difficulties which are born with our own time. If we want to see clearly and to find the full truth, we have neither the right to evade the task by a one-sided preference or by a superficial compromise nor to settle it by the trivialities of traditional common sense; we must seriously think on our own account ; yes, we must philosophize in the new spirit of our time.

Philosophize! He who feels the pulse of throbbing life and longs for the useful, solid, real facts which knowledge can supply so that he may work and fight and win — he does not want to philosophize! He feels a repelling deadness in the word philosophy; it suggests to him vague, empty generalities, lifeless conceptions, outworn theories — spider webs which science has brushed away. Philosophize ! What can it profij: us to fly to metaphysical regions if, after all, no one can know the last secrets of the beyond? Does not religion satisfy our belief? Our thought and study at least ought to belong to solid reality. We hear all this a thousand times and yet it is the most absurd and the most harmful prejudice, brought about by a complete failure to see the eternal youth of philosophy. No effort of thought comes nearer to real life, no study is nearer the immediate experience, no knowledge more valuable in our practical endeavors. It is just he who seeks life instead of abstract specters who must turn to philoso-

THE COISTFLICT IN MODERN PEDAGOGY

phy; and, whether we like the fact or not, it remains a fact that philosophy alone can lead to the vital problems which lie before us and before everyone who seeks the aims and means of education. Philosophy is the only entrance gate to pedagogical studies.

It cannot be otherwise. Some one may say — and it is just that which ignorance always repeats: No, let us omit all philosophical inquiry and let us begin at once with the facts. But must we not first ask : What facts ? Why do you wish to select just these facts? Why are they important to you? Well, they serve certain purposes and help us to reach certain ends. But why do you care for just these purposes and why do 5^ou prefer these ends to others ? And if we seek the answer to such first questions, if we study the ultimate value and the significance of things, we are already in the midst of philosophy.

The first part of our inquiry must therefore be philosophical in its temper. That part of philosophy which deals with the aims of human actions is ethics; our first discussion thus 'lies in the field of ethics. Only when we know the ends at which we are to aim can we turn to the ways which lead thereto and study the special psychical means. Our second part must therefore be psychological. The application of the means to the end leads finally to the practical questions of actual school life; this gives us the third, the pedagogical part. And now we turn to the ethical problem.

Chapter II Facts And Purposes In Education

We said that it must be our first task to see clearly the difference between means and aims, between facts and purposes. We must recognize and select the aims of education before we can apply the psychological facts in their service. The need of this separation may become more evident if we point at first to a few illustrations. They may indicate by experiences of daily routine how inadequate the facts are to show us the best goals, and how easily commendable movements may cheapen their causes by fallacious arguments which confuse facts and purposes. The student of the child, for instance, knows an abundance of facts with reference to imitation. No one doubts that imitation plays a decisive role in the development of every young mind, hence it is rightly a favorite topic of the modern psychologist. He tries, therefore, to analyze the imitative process; he seeks its elements and studies upon what factors it is dependent, how its working can be improved and strengthened, or how its influence may be suppressed. If all the means of modern psychology are conscientiously used, we may finally come to feel that we know all the facts involved in imitation; but can that possibly include also a knowledge of what the child ought to imitate? Can any study of imitation as a psychical process give the teacher the slightest hint as to what models

FACTS AXD PUEPOSES IN EDUCATION

for imitation ought to be put before the mind of the pupil? Is it more valuable to imitate the hero or the scholar or the martyr or the athlete or the captain of industry? Is it more valuable to imitate unscrupulous success or humble honesty, the life of self-denial or the life of glory? Some model for the imitation of the boys must be in the soul of every teacher — can the psychology or physiology or sociology of imitation decide which model is the right one? To ask the question means to answer it in the negative. It would be absurd to expect it; we might just as well expect that the muscle physiology of our movements in walking could advise us as to the best promenade to take. Whether the boy is to imitate, and thus to choose as his ideal the prize fighter or the millionaire or the faithful school-teacher must be determined by considerations which lie entirely apart from the study of the laws of imitation. Much good psychology too often supports quite pitiable suggestions for pedagogical models, and the ambiguity remains unnoticed as long as the psychological facts seem correct.

Subtler and more misleading is the confusion of facts and purposes in the case of the memory functions. In every classroom memorizing plays an essential role, and therefore no teacher can neglect the mechanism of the pupil's mind which serves the retention of the memory material. He has no right to set his pupils tasks of learning which go beyond the psychical possibilities of the child. The development of memory with years, the individual differences of the learning capacity, the whole structure of the process, will accordingly be of deep interest to the intelligent teacher. He will also gladly consult the psychological books as to the conditions under which " learning by heart " is expedited, or under which the memorized material is more correctly reproduced. He will find out what influences make the memory more receptive or the time of exact recollection longer. In short, he. will study the facts which the psychologist knows not only from careful observation, but from systematic experiments in the psychological laboratory.

But he will have to be very careful if he really wants to separate the facts from the valuations. Too easily will he slip from the one to the other. Without noticing it himself, he will smuggle judgments and purposes into his descriptions, and as soon as he has given them ever so little a foothold, he will be unable to resist the influence of any pet prejudices. Of course, if we should say, These are the laws of memory, therefore the pupil ought to learn poems by Longfellow but not poems by Whittier ; or. These are the conditions for quick and exact learning by heart, therefore the class ought to memorize the dates of American history but not those of English history, everyone would see the absurdity at once. Everyone would object that the structure of memory cannot prescribe what we ought to use it for any more than the knowledge of how a typewriting machine works can tell us what we ought to write with it. Yet all this strikes us as absurd only because the fallacy is so clumsy. As soon as the same principle is applied in a subtler way, it goes unnoticed. We must not forget that we are in the midst of such fallacies, even when we speak of an improvement of memory as if that were a purely psychological problem. The psychologist as such cannot know an improvement of mental faculties, because such a term implies, of course, that one mode of behavior of the mind is better and more valuable than another; and it is just that which can never be a matter of fact.

FACTS AND PURPOSES IN EDUCATION

You may reply that it seems a matter of common agreement that the brilliant mind of a genius is better than that of a stupid fellow, or that a mind which can connect many thoughts is more valuable than one which can hold merely a small number. You may say that a memory which can reproduce the memorized material after a long time is preferable to the one which forgets quickly, and thus that we have a right to take all this for granted and speak of improvement. Well, that may perhaps be true in this case, but the point is that we ought to see clearly that such a judgment is really involved, however common and undisputed it may be. If we do not see the principle, if we carelessly take for granted that the preference is itself given by the facts, then we have no power to resist when the next judgment which is slipped in is not at all common, and perhaps most disputable. And where does the common agreement that we can take for granted really begin and end? That the brilliant mind of the genius is preferable to that of his stupid fellow is surely a common decision, but if we look more sharply at the claim, it becomes clear that the words involve a begging of the question. Brilliancy and stupidity and genius are not really terms which describe only ; already they contain an attitude of preference or disfavor. From the standpoint of facts we know a certain lack of ideas or slowness of association or inability of connection, and so on, but as soon as we designate all that as stupidity, we have gone beyond the facts and have asserted that this combination of mental qualities ought to be rejected as less desirable. We may have a right to do so, but we cannot overlook the fact that we have already settled the question of preference in calling one mind stupid and the other brilliant. And if, finally, a skeptic steps in and perhaps maintains that the stupid people are often more honest or more religious than the brilliant ones, and that from his point of view of life the modest intellect is therefore preferable to the shining one, we see again that we are moving in a sphere of judgments, preferences, convictions, ideals, and that all this is aside from questions of fact.

Still more flimsy is the pretense of common agreement when we say that the mind which holds many thoughts is better than the one which holds few, or that the memory which recollects after a long interval is better than the one which soon forgets. That preference may be entirely justified if we have certain definite purposes before us, but we might as well have different purposes and arrive then at a different valuation. For certain ends it might be better to have a mind which concentrates itself on a few ideas without the ambition and power to master a large number of ideas; the narrow and concentrated mind, with its enthusiastic onesidedness, may be much more effective for many ends than the versatile mind with its distracting richness ; and the memory which is overburdened with dead stuff simply because it has a strong power of recollection may be, for certain ends and purposes in life, much less desirable than the memory which does not retain the insignificant, but continually sifts its matter and holds only the really important.

And, even if there were agreement in such preferences, where is the demarcation line between the valuations that are to be taken for granted and those that demand especial examination? Is a good memory for printed words better than a good memory for the experiences of practical life, and ought we to cultivate the one at the expense of the other? There might be not a little difference of opinion, and in such a dilemma psychology cannot help. And it is

FACTS AND PUBPOSES IN EDUCATION

only another turn of the same thought if we say, that because certain methods of learning make learning easy, therefore we ought to apply such methods, or because certain material is quickly learned, therefore such material is especially fit for the pupil. Who has told us that easy learning is to be our goal ? Have we an inborn knowledge that we are intended to learn without especial effort ? Are we sure that it is our mission to master by memory the greatest possible amount of material, and that the quickest method of cramming is the ideal. Some one might say that, on the contrary, the mere quantity of learning does not count at all ; that to carry a large bag of dead memory stuff on the shoulders rather than a small one does not make one more of a man. Everything depends on the power to master the interplay of ideas, and for this it may be more important to become trained through the learning of difficult material. This may be a wrong view of our duties, but in any case we have to settle such problems and cannot silently take for granted that only one method is right. The quickest way to learn French may be the poorest and least educative one for purposes of life, as a whole, however obvious it may appear that quick, easy acquisition is to be desired.

Still more usual and still more harmful than in the memory problem is the general pedagogical confusion of " is " and " ought " in the question of attention. No set of psychological facts has been more sedulously courted by the pedagogues. To attention in the wider sense of the word belongs everything under the label " apperception/' of which we hear and see so much, and with it goes the whole group of problems which refer to " interest." If all side issues are ignored, the leading train of thought remains as follows: Psychology shows that the interesting thing most easily awakes and holds our attention; attention is necessary for the pupil's work; therefore we ought by all means to prefer the interesting thing. And yet this is not the reasoning of logical thought, but the trick of the logical prestidigitator. A hundred highsounding arguments may hide this naked confusion, but confusion it remains, and it has made havoc of sober education as has no other pedagogical fantasy.

Of course psychology can certainly show that the interesting thing holds the attention, or rather it need not show what is already involved in the definition; we call interesting just that which is the object of our involuntary attention. Whatever attracts the attention without any especial effort of will is interesting to us — from the loud and glaring spectacle on the lower level up to the enchanting work of art on the higher level, from the excitement of our senses up to the excitement of our richest emotions. To keep children, the young ones and the adult ones, quiet with ease there is, indeed, no simpler way than to occupy them with material that is in its nature attractive and interesting — it stops the crying of the baby and the social unrest of the masses. But where is the bridge that leads from such obvious facts to the daring assumption of judgment that education ought to prefer the attractive and to brush aside all that is uninteresting ? Who has the right to determine that the child ought to do just what titillates his taste and attracts his fancy? It may well be possible to plan an eight years' school course or a twenty years' professional course or a fifty years' life course — in which everything is arranged according to the natural interest and no effort will be needed to keep attention afire. But is that really an ideal to be fought for? May it not be that the most important aim of education is just the