Teaching manual and industrial arts, a textbook for normal schools and colleges

Preface

Teaching Manual and Industrial Arts is intended as a text for use in normal schools and colleges. Its primary aim is to assist in the making of necessary connections between the more general courses in educational psychology and theory of teaching and the special work of practice teaching in manual and industrial arts.

While the discussions of the text largely presuppose a knowledge of psychology as a prerequisite, mature students and experienced teachers of the manual or industrial arts who have had no psychology may be expected to pursue the reading of the text successfully by devoting somewhat more time and attention to the reference readings suggested at the close of each chapter. Some experience with manual or industrial arts subject-matter is necessary for an appropriate appreciation of the discussions of the text.

Lest the author be accused of inconsistency in the matter of his choice of philosophical bases for the various discussions, he would state that he has intentionally made use of both the analogies of dualism and of the conception of contiguity and continuity. (Cf. Dewey's "Democracy and Education," especially Chapter XXV.) The accompanying charts should make clear the grounds for justification assumed by the author in the matter of bases. Why there should of necessity be considered any lack of contiguity and continuity in the conception of dualism, and vice versa, philosophy has not been able to prove. (Cf. "Dualism," The New International Encyclopaedia for a brief statement.) Given permission to select the experience or interval under consideration, and there is no reason in experience why this permission should not be granted, one may with every propriety consider all opposites as having continuity and contiguity as charted, and in every situation in which there is continuity and contiguity he may, with equal propriety, take into consideration the opposites. To use Mr. Dewey's own illustration for induction and deduction, it is as if one were to look at a stream of running water; looking in one direction we get one set of implications, looking

InfellectU j5.

Intellect i+j

Direction of movement - ■Configuiiy, Continuity -

Rectangle of an experience ideally conditioned.

in the other direction we get another opposite set ; withal, there is contiguity and continuity. We may speak of the river in terms of opposites, namely, the source and the mouth; we may speak of it in terms of contiguity and continuity.

The balance, or mean, or harmony which the author urges as an ideal toward which to work does not imply there can or must be a perfect balance in all things at all times irrespective of the interval or experience selected. Rather, it is a balance in life of the individual or of the social group only for predetermined intervals or experiences selected for discussion, with each of these intervals or experiences considered as a whole. Such a balance is represented in the accompanying chart by the diagonal of the upper figure. The second charting represents what happens when a selected experience or

PREFACE interval is not free to develop into such idealism, but is conditioned at the period or interval under consideration thru such factors as natural development, economic or social necessity, or otherwise. While only instincts and intellect, manipulative

Manipulative skill {+-}

5^

Configuify; Confmuify

Rectangle of an experience conditioned thru nature, economic or social necessity, or otherwise.

skill and intellectual activity are charted here, it is possible to chart in a similar manner other opposites. For example, we might have charted empirical concretes and theoretic abstractions ; or, Froebel's (1) spontaneity and (2) instruction in conventional methods of procedure; and, in turn, his (2) instruction in conventional methods of procedure and (3) creative effort. In every case there are implications of extremes but with contiguity and continuity and opportunity for thinking in terms of balance when the experience selected is considered as a whole.

Two methods of procedure are common in the preparation of teachers. One, most common in colleges and universities, stresses theory of teaching, emphasis upon principles or generalized information. The other, most common in normal schools, emphasizes the mechanics of teaching, subject-matter and devices. Each method has its advantages and its disadvantages. Those trained by the first method are slow in attaining efficiency in the art of teaching because they lack knowledge and experience in the mechanics of teaching. They have the theory but not the art. Those trained in the mechanics or details of subject-matter. and method get under way quickly, but too often fail to show marked professional growth in the long run because their training has failed to give them the ability to see the teaching process as a science. The plan of this book is one of balance upon the theoretical and the practical. The discussions in the main body of the text are intended to be practically helpful to manual and industrial arts teachers by giving them a basis in science for their teaching practice. The suggestions in the appendices are no less important. Appendix I suggests a type of experience which may well be extended by additional lessons until it shall occupy an amount of time equal to that devoted to the main body of the text. It provides opportunity for attention to what we have chosen to call the mechanics of teaching, attention to details of subject-matter and to devices.

A reasonable requirement of a student engaged in such work might well be that of analysis and classification of teachable content, its selection in terms of functional needs of the group, r.nd its arrangement into the larger groups or blocks for effective instruction. However, it has seemed best to postpone this to a later course, one in Organization and Administration, thus allowing him time to concentrate in this present course upon the problems of methods of teaching and daily lesson plans, with only such organization and administration problems as have to do with the successful presentation of the lesson, such, for example, as sequence of operations in a given problem or job, materials and tools immediately necessary as a part of the work of the given lesson. In the working out of daily lesson plans, the general outline for which has been worked out by a supervisor, to be given to the student-teacher, there will be provided a better preparation for the organization problem

PREFACE 7

in the large in this later course than otherwise would be. The present course provides all the information needed for the practice teaching that the student-teacher will be called upon to do. Practice teaching must be based upon a supervisor's course outline rather than the student-teacher's, if the work of the pupils is to be well ordered and progressive. Later, the student-teacher may be taught to think of the supervisor's outline in terms of his own planning.

Acknowledgments are due Dr. W. W. Charters, Director of Educational Research, Carnegie School of Technology, for valuable criticism and suggestions as to the general form and content of the text; also, to Miss Ella V. Dobbs, Assistant Professor of Manual Arts, University of Missouri, for permission to use certain photographic illustrations pertaining to elementary handwork. Other acknowledgments will be found in the main text in connection with materials loaned.

I. S. G.

Contents

Preface ..... 3

Chapter I. Introduction 13

1. Conflicting aims in Education ; 2 Connections in the nervous system of man; 3. Significance of connections in the nervous system of man in determining certain aims in education ; 4. Connections a basis for method; 5. Social, economic, and other factors influence aims and practices; 6. Summary. Reference reading. Class discussion.

Chapter II. Classification and Differentiation of the Manual Arts 2?

1. Classificption and differentiation of the manual arts; 2. Technical manual arts; 3. Expressional manual arts; 4. Relation of expressional to technical manual arts ; 5. Harmonization of conflicting aims ; 6. Summary. Reference reading. Class discussion.

Chapter III. Industrial Arts .47

1. Introduction; 2. Three types of reactive need in industrial arts education ; types evaluated ; 3. Basis of awards in industry; 4. Industrial education must provide opportunity for individual specialization along any one of these three types of reaction ; 5. Fundamental principles of teaching applicable to industrial arts; 6. Effect of emphasizing efficiency in execution, or skill, in industrial arts education; 7. Industrial arts education and cultural values; 8. Dangers to be avoided; 9. Summary. Reference reading. Class discussion.

Chapter IV. Instincts and Capacities 63

1. Instincts and capacities; 2. The law of association as it applies to the utilization of instincts ; 3. Instincts need control; 4. Means used to control connections between instincttive and more remote connections ; 5. Conflict of aims in utilizing instincts; 6. Effect of delayed capacities; 7. The teacher's problem ; 8. Summary. Reference reading. Class discussion.

10 CONTENTS

Chapter V. Application of the Principle of Apperception to Manual and Industrial Arts Teaching 75

1. Apperception; 2. The learning process; 3. The law of association applicable to the learning process; 4. Some seeming violations of the principle of apperception; S. Logical sequence; 6. Drill or frequency as an essential factor in assimilation; 7. Summary. Reference reading. Class discussion.

Chapter VI. Interest and Attention 85

1. Interest and attention the indispensable basis of every method of education; 2. The law of association applied to interest and attention; 3. Feeling of zest versus effort; 4. Mental assimilation a matter of consciousness; 5. Abstract exercises versus useful projects; 6. Drill and feeling of zest; 7. Logical arrangement of subject-matter versus psychological development of the individual ; 8. Summary. Reference reading. Class discussion.

Chapier VII. Individual Differences; The Group System . 96 1. The law of probability; 2. Practical significance of individual differences ; 3. The group system ; 4. The group system applied to the manual and industrial arts; 5. Grouping for classification and grading; 6. Grouping for developing initiative ; 7. Summary. Reference reading. Class discussion.

Chapter VIII. Correlation and Association 115

1. Correlation ; 2. Correlation another name for association ; 3. Two types of correlation ; 4. Advantages and limitations in immediate correlations; 5. Conflicting aims; 6. Practical difficulties and 'aids in correlation ; 7. Summary. Reference reading. Class discussion.

Chapter IX. The Doctrine of Discipline 124

1. The problem of discipline stated ; 2. Early revised view ;

3. The present view of generalized and specialized training;

4. Effect of present view of discipline upon subject-matter and method — logical basis; 5 Modification of choice of subject-matter due to child nature — psychological basis; 6. Summary. Reference reading. Class discussion.

^CON TENTS 11

Chapter X. Types of Thinking Inherent in the Manual Arts 136 1. Introduction; 2. Three types of thinking; 3. Evaluation of types of thinking; 4. Instruction on the lower plane and the higher plane— storage of knowledge and acquisition of mechanical skill ; 5. The danger in extreme emphasis upon manual and industrial arts as a means of developing so-called generalized habits of reaction— the necessity of associative thinking as a preliminary to selective thinking; 6. The danger of extreme emphasis upon associative thinking to the neglect of selective; 7. Harmonization of conflicting aims in associative and selective thinking; 8. Modification in practice due to variation in aims ; 9. Summary. Reference reading. Class discussion.

Chapter XI. Teaching Methods in Manual and Industrial Arts

1. Teaching methods; 2. The deductive or imitative method; 3 The inductive or heuristic method; 4. The complete method ; 5. Modification in method due to variation in aims ; 6. Summary. Reference reading. Class discussion.

Chapter XII. The Lesson; Its Component Parts . . . .162 1. The necessity for carefully matured plans; 2. The six formal steps; 3. The six formal steps not always inductive; 4. Not every lesson needs to be inductive; 5. Modern conception of method; 6. Instructive question rather than directive statement; 7. Intermediate plan form; 8. Daily lesson plan; 9. Summary. Reference reading. Class discussion.

Chapter XIII. Class Management; Discipline 176

1. Maintaining order or discipline a matter of instinct as well as of training; 2. Successful discipline, to a large degree, the- result of thoughtful management; 3. The law of association applicable to control of conduct ; 4. General causes for an unruly school; 5. Specific problems of control; 6. Summary. Reference reading. Class discussion.

Chapter XIV. Standards and Tests 183

1. Teacher standards; 2. Standards of pupil accomplishment in manual arts by grades; 3. Specific standards and tests;

12 CONTENTS

4. Standards for form and technic; 5. Tests for form and technic; 6. Standards and tests for skill in execution; 7. Illustrating a method of attack in establishing pupil standards for accuracy in execution in a given specific project; 8. Summary. Reference reading. Class discussion.

Chapter XV. Conditions Which Make for Progress . . . 200 1. Conflicting aims in education ; 2. Manual and industrial arts an attempt to provide a better balance between the abstract and the concrete in education — between theory and practice; 3. Need for a scientific treatment of subject-matter; 4. Limitations which arise from undue emphasis upon theory or science; 5. The place of texts; 6. Race progress demands that a balance be maintained between conflicting aims; 7. Summary. Reference reading. Class discussion.

Appendix I Special Method Procedure 213

1 Sped"! method aims ; Directions for observation ; type lessons.

Appendix II. Type Outlines 221

Introduction

1. Conflicting Aims in Education. In no other line of

human endeavor has there been less unanimity and more debate as to aims and practice than in the field of education. Aims have been defined and redefined and practice has passed thru an equally wide range of repeated experiments. For example, one century, or part of a century, has emphasized natural or instinctive tendencies, such as may be found in Rousseau's first teachings; nearly every century at one time or another has tended to stress the intellectual at the expense of the manual ; the present sees a wide-spread effort to emphasize automatic connections in the form of trade or vocational education highly specific in character. Not infrequently educators have failed to appreciate that certain very important aims in education conflict one with another and have unwisely sought to condemn every practice which failed to stress the particular educational need which they themselves saw. One educator holds up his hands in horror and exclaims, "What are our schools coming to ! We have painting, and sewing, and cooking, and blacksmithing ! What next ?" Another wants his school so organized that it will rival real life conditions, even to the extent of having a factory system in which boys are to be made so skillful they may turn out a product that will make the system self-supporting, or even profitable. One proclaims education a preparation for living. Another insists that education is teaching children to do better those things children normally like to do.

Educational theory and practice of today is tending more and more toward the recognition of the legitimacy of a variety of aims in education based upon the more common characteristics of individual and social differences in pupils. For example, schools are being builded and equipped for the especial training of boys and girls who, because of economic or other reasons, do not enter the traditional or general high school. These schools are stressing vocational information and voca-- tional training. This is as it should be. It is well to remember, however, that such vocational training meets the need of a particular group and can no more lay claim to being possessed of the aim of education than can a college preparatory school. What is more, the aim of such a training may be such as to conflict with other equally legitimate educational aims so that time so spent is useless in so far as these other needs are concerned.

The homely story of the blind men and the elephant well illustrates the attitude one is likely to assume with reference to the beliefs of others educationally, unless he studies discerningly. The reader will recall that the blind man who happened to grasp the elephant's ear concluded that elephants were like palm leaf fans ; the one who touched the elephant's side concluded that an elephant was like the side of a wall; the one who grasped the elephant's tail thought elephants were like rope ; while the one who happened to clasp his arms about the elephant's leg was certain elephants were like tree trunks. Each was right in so far as he had informed himself of a part of the body ; he was wrong in his hasty or impartial generalization as to the likeness of the whole body. In education we shall do well to refrain from hasty generalizations that the whole body of educational need is like that with which we have informed ourselves and like that alone.

2. Connections in the Nervous System of Man. Before

the place and the method of the manual and industrial arts in education can be discussed with intelligence, it will be necessary to review some of our psychology.

For the sake of clearness and convenience we may classify connections in the nervous system of human beings as:

1. Connections between impression or sensation on the one hand and consequent muscular reaction on the other.

2. Connections between impression or sensation and thought or consciousness.

3. Connections between one thought and another thought.

4. Connections between thought and bodily action or reaction.

An example of the first type of connection is found in the crying of the infant because of hunger or pain, or the feeding of the infant in its earliest hours before intelligence has arisen. The touch of the lips of the infant to the mother's breast suggests the appropriate reaction or feeding movement. Such connections are known as instinctive or unlearned. Intelligence or thought or consciousness is absent in these early manifestations.

Connections of the second type are later in their appearance and are the result of many conflicting manifestations of connections number one. A familiar illustration of the development of such connections is that of the very young child at a window before which hangs a brightly colored ball. In the course of its random arm movements, making connections as in number one, it accidentally strikes the ball or its supporting string. At first the noise resultmg from the ball's striking the glass goes unnoticed. In the course of a number of such accidental strikings of the ball against the glass thru such random movements of the arms of the child, there begin to form in the mind of the child connections between the idea noise and the bright object. In other words, consciousness is beginning to make its appearance in respect to these particular connections.

In primitive man, and in the earlier periods of the childhood of civilized man, such connections as that just described for number two, Fig. 1., almost immediately take the form of connections between thought and action, connection number four. The child no sooner connects the impression made by the brightly colored ball with the idea of noise resulting from his moving arms than he tries to produce the noise thru moving

5ensaiion.s

or impressions

mainly thru

moi/emcnt

Native or

instinctive rt-

\actionJ controlled]

by feeling

Reactions once controlled^

by infeilect

now by feeling

or habit

Fig. 1. Connections of Mind and Bod}-.

the arms. Such connections between thought and action may, however, be postponed, taking the form of connections number three. Fig. 1., connections between one thought and another thought — all the while delaying action or reaction.

Connections number five, Fig. 1., dififer from connections number one only as to origin. In connections number one, reactions result from unlearned feelings of relationship; in number two they find their origin in intellect.

3, Significance of Connections in the Nervous System of Man in Determining Certain Aims in Education. Aims in education, as has been previously stated, have been variously given, and educational practice correspondingly modified at different periods of educational development. Of the variations which have come, probably none have had greater significance than those which have come thru the changing emphasis placed upon the various connections diagrammed in Fig. 1. Since man is not all mind or all body, but one mind so inseparably connected with a body that life ceases at separation, the diagram is true, of course, only as it represents such emphasis.

An examination of a number of current notions of education will serve to point out the significance of the statement just made. For example, we are wont to say "Knowledge is power." Such a notion of education is bound to result in emphasis upon intellect, connections between thought and thought, upon race experience, upon cramming or storage of facts, upon books, upon long rows of desks and bodily inactivity. Again, we are informed that "It is not knowledge that is power, but applied knowledge ; not what is known, but what can be done with what is known." This latter idea places emphasis upon connections number three and number four. Fig. 1. Another educational philosopher tells us that "Education is what one has left after he has forgotten all he ever learned." At first thought we are inclined to ridicule such a notion of education. However, there is truth in the statement. It is merely the placing of extreme emphasis upon automatic connections, path number three, connection number five. Fig. 1. The condition one finds himself in when called upon to explain some method of procedure or position of the hands in some operation which has been performed many times, is an excellent illustration of what this educator is trying to designate as education. One can perform the operation, or he can readily place his hands in position for the required operation, but he finds great difficulty in telling another how it is to be done. Intellect has ceased to function; habit or feeling has taken its place.

It is essential for a proper understanding of the discussions which follow that the student have a clear notion of the distinction which is made between learning thru feeling and learning thru intellect. The student will readily understand what is meant by the term intellect. The term feeling, however, is used in a rather special or uncommon sense. The following extract from a current newspaper article will illustrate the peculiar meaning attached to the word feeling in the discussions which follow : "French instructors," it says, in explaining the method of training aviators, "express no preferences, except for the double control in teaching. It permits the instructor to take his pupils up behind him, and as the entire control is double (like the coupled handlebars of a tandem "bike") the teacher guides the aeroplane, but the pupil, having the same controls in his hands, feels every movement made by his instructor. Little by little he acquires the habit and feels that it is he who is piloting, and the instructor, as he feels the pupil getting the right movement, slackens and lets the pupil do more and more, until, at the end, the original positions are reversed — it is the pupil who pilots the aeroplane and the instructor who feels him thru the double controls as he does it." This type of learning process is designated by Dr. Charles H. Judd*, as learning by direct interpretation — direct in that it does not involve consciousness or intelligence, or at least tends to eliminate these as quickly as possible in favor of learning thru feeling.

The significance of the connections of the nervous system in determining certain educational needs is clearly set forth in Henri Bergson's philosophy of the function and origin of instinct and intelligence when this philosophy has been analyzed

*"Genetic Psychology for Teachers," page 59, et. seq. Appleton, 1903.

in terms of the connections enumerated above and diagrammed in Fig. 1. His discussion serves well to point out the Hmitations of a type of education which would stress intellect to the neglect of feeling and vice versa. "Instinct and intelligence" he says in his Creative Evolution, page 143, "therefore represent two divergent solutions equally fitting, of one and the same problem," namely, the problem of meeting one's environment. "We know," he continues, page 172, in illustration of the strength of instinct or feeling such as is represented by path one, Fig. 1., "that the different species of the hymenoptera that have this paralyzing instinct lay their eggs in spiders, beetles or caterpillars, which, having first been subjected by the wasp to a skillful surgical operation, will go on living motionless a certain number of days, and thus provide the larvae with fresh meat. In the sting which they give the nerve centers of their victim, in order to destroy its power of moving about without killing it, these different species of hymenoptera take into account, so to speak, the different species of prey they respectively attack. The Scolia, which attacks the larva of the rose beetle, stings it in one point only, but in this point the motor ganglia are concentrated and those alone; the stinging of other ganglia might cause death and putrefaction, which must be avoided. The yellow winged Sphex, which has chosen the cricket for its victim, knows that the cricket has three nerve centers which serve its three pairs of legs — or at least it acts as if it knew this. It stings the insect first under the neck, then behind the prothorax, and then where the -thorax joins the abdomen. The Ammophila Hirsuta gives nine successive strokes of its sting upon nine nerve centers of its caterpillar, and then seizes the head and squeezes it in its mandibles, enough to cause paralysis without death. The general theme is "the necessity of paralyzing without killing." * * * "It is in vain that we try to express it in terms of any idea : It must have been originally felt rather than thought." It is an unlearned feeling of relationships, as it were, having nothing to do with intelligence or thought. Its very strength lies in the fact tliat appropriate action follows this feeling of relationships wnthout hesitation and consequent representation resulting in consciousness or intelligence.

The preceding paragraph should make plain the fact that what has, for want of a better name, been called feeling plays no small part in the control of appropriate responses to stimuli, and as such must be given appropriate consideration in any scheme of education. The responses mentioned bave to do with reactions thru feeling not controlled by intellect ; they are of path one. Fig. 1. There are also responses thru feeling which responses at one time were controlled thru intelligence or consciousness or thought. These latter responses are of path number two. Fig. 1., in their beginnings but are translated to path number three thru frequency.

Just what relationsliip intelligence has with feeling m this transformation may be learned from the following quotation in Bergson's Creative Evolution, page 145. "The consciousness of a living being may be defined as an arithmetical difference between potential and real activity. It measures the interval between representation and action. It may be inferred from this that intelligence is likely to point toward consciousness and instinct toward imconsciousness. For where the implement to be used is organized by nature, the material furnished by nature, and the result to be obtained willed by nature, there is little left to choice ; the consciousness inherent in the representation is theref')re counterbalanced, whenever it tends to disengage itself, by the performance of the act, identical with the representation, which forms the counterpart. Where consciousness appears, it does not so much light up instinct itself as the thwartings to which instinct is subject; it is the deficit of instinct, the distance between the act and the idea, that becomes consciousness so that consciousness, here, is only an accident. Essentially, consciousness only emphasizes the starting point of instinct, the point at which the whole series of automatic movement is released. Deficit, on the contrary, is tiie normal state of intelligence. Laboring under difficulties is the very essence."

It should not be hastily concluded from the strength of the plea just made for attention to feeling or direct interpretation in setting situations for educational experiences that there is no place or only a small place for attention to intellect. Whatever man might have gained by a biological evolution along the line of dependence upon instinct alone to the exclusion of intelligence, the fact remains that he has chosen to live more largely thru intellectual control than have hymenoptera and other insect and animal forms, and that consciousness must ever play a large part in the education of his young. Adjustment to environment may be accomplished thru instinct, path number one, Fig. 1.; this same end may be accomplished in the case of man thru the taking of path number tw^o and thru repetition reducing mental efifort until the reaction takes the form of path number three. For example, w^e may take the case of a physician who performs a skillful surgical operation : originally, mental effort was strong ; by repeated operations this is reduced until reaction places almost complete dependence upon feeling or sense-impression. The reaction becomes a matter of habit. Habit accomplishes for the individual what instinct accomplishes for the species : an effective reaction to stimuli without the intervention of thought, or at least it tends to accomplish this.

Professor James says, "An uneducated person is one who is nonplussed by all but the most habitual situations." This negative statement of what education is should remind us that education has a second task. Habit formation in the realm of muscle is but one factor, the development of intelligence, of ability to do selective or original thinking, is of no less importance. What is more, it must be recognized that these two ends or aims, conflicting as they do, can find no setting in the educational scheme wherein one may be emphasized without a consequent sacrifice upon the part of the other. We may choose to emphasize habit in the realm of muscle; we may choose to emphasize intellect ; we may choose to balance one against the other with a consequent lack of effectiveness in each as compared with what might have been secured thru lack of balance. James is stating in another way the fact that the development of intelligence is an essential part of education.