Superstition and education...

Front matter

SMITHSONIAN DEPOSIT.

*

.

Introduction

The matter set forth in this volume has to do with that mental tendency in humanity which finds satisfaction in retaining superstitions and in believing in them. It is an attempt to peep into that darkly veiled but interesting mental realm which holds the best preserved remnants of our psychic evolution, as well as those ethnic impulses which are responsible for much of our present behavior.

The material upon which the discussions are based was gathered directly from the minds of young people during the time of their professional preparation for the work of teaching. It was collected in such a way as to avoid entirely the possibility of mutual help or suggestion. Blank slips of paper were passed to students, after they had taken their seats for class work, and they were asked unexpectedly to write out carefully all the superstitions they knew, each relying entirely on his own memory. No suggestive communication with each other or with the teacher was allowed. Each slip of paper was to bear but one superstition and the writer’s honest expression of belief or non-belief in it. They were told that their belief was to be recorded in one of three different forms. If a student was convinced he had no belief in a given specimen which he had written, he was directed to write on the margin of the slip recording it: “No belief.” If he felt that he could not honestly say “I have no belief in it,” and yet was conscious that an expression of full belief in it would over-state his faith, he was directed to mark it: “Partial Belief.” Those in which he had full belief were to be so marked. It is necessary, for a proper appreciation of the expressions of belief, to say that the students, from whom these returns were collected, were earnestly urged to give honest reports, and told that they would be shielded from individual publicity in the results. There is not the least doubt in the mind of the writer concerning the honesty of the reports. And it is worth while to say here that three

Dresslar. — S uperstition and Education.

classes of belief were chosen instead of two for the sake of helping them to tell the truth. Partial belief means that “one would rather be on the right side / 7 that there was a “feeling of belief” but it would be difficult to decide as to its exact strength. It must be borne in mind, however, that “partial belief” is belief. It is an indefinite and conditional belief to be sure, but it may be as persistent and as thoroughly superstitious as “full belief . 77 Moreover, the conditions under which these superstitions were gathered were most favorable to calm and rational judgment. Those who gave them were all students, as we have said, seated in a class-room, in the daytime, under the supervision of critical teachers, and wholly undisturbed by anv distracting emotional stimulus.

In this connection I wish to remark that those writers on superstition who have collected their material by going about soliciting from all classes, and frequently asking those interviewed to match specimens furnished by the questioner, have offered chances for the vitiation of their material not consistent with later scientific treatment. The plan adopted in the collection of the material here given will, I believe, commend itself, to those who seek to prevent suggestion, as a method free from any possible unconscious or other bias on the part of the questioner. It gave each individual the same opportunity to express his personal superstitious holdings and the faith that he had come to attach to them. And this is just what we are seeking to know. There is no set of superstitions which will appeal with exactly equal force to each individual of any large group of people ; and for just the same reason that there is no set of religious doctrines which command the same degree of implicit faith from any great number of devotees. For this reason we will always get nearer to human nature, in such things as we have under consideration, when we get an honest, unhindered expression of personal attitudes.

After records were taken, it often happened that individual members of the class volunteered to express their appreciation of the opportunity to record “partial belief” instead of being compelled to decide between no belief and full belief. They explained that while they really believed in an example they could not feel

University of California Publications in Education. I v °l. 5 as if the belief were “full belief. ” This last remark is a significant one and deserves the most careful consideration. A “feeling to believe” antedates, and often takes precedence of any sort of “will to believe,” or intellectual compulsion to believe.

The specimens given in the classified lists were gathered from eight hundred and seventy-five students between the ages of sixteen and twenty-eight years. The average age was about nineteen years. The large majority of them were women. The exact proportion of the sexes cannot be given. The failure to be exact in these particulars is due to the fact that, unintentionally, the returns of a few groups were prematurely mixed. But if 80 per cent, be taken to represent the number of women and 20 per cent, the number of men, the truth will not suffer materially. Besides all evidence collected goes to show that the returns from the men differed very slightly, if at all, from those of the women. Still I am inclined to believe that, if returns from the same number of men representing the same class of students were collected, expressions of belief would vary somewhat from those in hand. And yet • it is only fair to say that on the basis of the returns gathered no such definite tendency is observable. I believe, however, that men, under favorable conditions, are less ready to believe in superstitions than are women. But history makes it very plain to us, that when men become excited and wrought up in their emotional natures, they are guided far more by emotional and superstitious reactions than by reason. Besides we only need to look about us today to see on every hand evidences of their belief in luck, in fortune telling, in clairvoyance, and superstitious influences of various sorts, even during the hours of sober life. Were it not for this weakness, the great flare of advertisements which daily appear in our newspapers, regarding lotteries, “occult guidance in finding hidden mines,” “Psychic Power which will give you control over all things,” etc., etc., would prove utterly useless and wasteful, instead of the good investments they now undoubtedly are to those who prey upon the weaknesses of humanity. It will help us in this general estimate, too, to recall that although history makes mention of more witches than wizards, men have been the accusers and the prosecutors; and perhaps they are almost entirely responsible for the great number of legal butcheries, of

Dresslar. — Superstition and Education.

so-called witches, which have been committed in all lands in the name of religion and civil liberty. Moreover, men have written the books in behalf of witchcraft, as can be seen bv reference to any list on this subject. Some of these have been men occupying positions of the highest judicial and religious importance, and they wrote from an earnest purpose to present the truth as they conceived it.

I have seen many men “ locating veins” of water in the earth by means of a forked stick, and recentlv I came across a new book on “Water Witching,” written by two Englishmen, and commended by men of high scientific authority, if we may believe the publishers. The authors are apparently intelligent men and make a show of scientific treatment of their subject. But when these and others of their belief insist that “it won’t work” save for a favored few, we can feel pretty sure that there is a dangerous error somewhere. Generally speaking, men are more loth to express their superstitious faith than are women, but this does not necessarily argue that the latter have more of it to express. I believe it is not far from the truth to say that if women were given the same practical experience in life as men, and if they were so conditioned as to acquire an equal breadth and variety of experience, what now seems to some as such a wide and fundamental difference in this regard would be greatly lessened. When we recall that a student 1 of education discovered a few years ago, in the office of a “broker,” more than half a million of letters, which had been written chiefly by young men to quack doctors for advice and treatment, we realize something of the potency of emotional suggestion, and the willingness of our men to believe in spite of knowledge.

From the point of view of method the material is uniform in that it was gathered from a classified body of students and therefore admits of direct statistical treatment. On the other hand, the material represents, perhaps, as wide a geographical distribution as any collection which could be gotten together from the same number of young people so uniformly classified. It was gathered from the students of two normal schools working under the same entrance requirements, though separated from each

1 See Lancaster, Pedagogical Seminary , Yol. 5, p. 124 f.

other by more than six hundred miles. Furthermore, these were all California students whose parents for the most part came from all states and nearly all countries. While, therefore, they typify a special and somewhat limited class, they represent in a definite way a general mental attitude.

The method used in the classification and arrangement of the specimens collected needs a few words of explanation in order to facilitate a study of the lists. In the first place it will be seen that they have been grouped under general headings which were determined by the nature of the data which the superstitions themselves claimed to interpret. It was found after much study and many attempts that no other method offered the same freedom of grouping and at the same time an equal amount of suggestive comparison. For example, all that refer in a primary way to salt have been grouped under this heading regardless of the varieties of interpretations given to them ; so with horseshoes, birds, dishrags, or any other of the groups given. By this classification the mind of the reader is brought, as it were, into something of the environment of those who developed superstitions. He sees at once what objects and events the folk-mind deemed portentous and ominous, or at least those to which they have attached superstitious interpretations.

In the second place, the specimens in each group are so arranged as to bring together those most alike, always giving precedence to the general or generic. This plan can be understood more readily by taking a group as an illustration. For example, all the specimens collected, which refer in a primary way to salt, have been put together to form a group, and the first example given under this heading represents as nearly as could be determined the most generic form of the salt-superstition found in the group. Those following grow more and more specific and consequently exhibit the changes which they undergo in transmission and in adaptation, though of course it must be understood that the most general form is not often if ever the original form. What is true in regard to the arrangement of this group is true of each succeeding one.

It will be seen also, that nearly all of the groups are introduced by one or more similar specimens gathered from literature,

Dresslar. — Superstition and Education.

other collections, and personal observation, and are here inserted merely for purposes of suggestive comparison.

It should be stated at this point that no liberties whatever have been taken either with the form or language in which the superstitions were presented. They have been recorded just as they were written by the young people from whom they were collected.

I am not a specialist in folk-lore and therefore make no serious attempt to deal in a general way with that subject. The material presented has been gathered and ordered simply in the hope that through it we might arrive at a better understanding of the common mind as it exists amongst us today, in order to know better how to deal with it in matters educational. If, by chance, the material set forth turns out to be suggestive to those who are laboring in the larger field of folk-thought, it will be of course a source of pleasure to me. But the specialist who reads, expecting to find a discussion of current theories of folk-lore, will be disappointed. To all such, let me say, here is a mass of original data which has been carefully collected and honestly wrought into the form it now holds, and if it can be used to advantage in the illustration or elucidation of current theories it is heartily and cheerfully furnished. My chief interest, as I have suggested, lies in the field of practical education. In fact this study grew out of an attempt to discover the reasons why the students furnishing the data seemed unable to look at the problems of life and mind in a scientific way. In working with them I constantly felt that their intellectual grasp and freedom were being hindered by subjective conditions over which neither they nor I seemed to have much control. They were so often unwilling to assent to what seemed to me reasonable interpretations that I felt the need of a better understanding of these unconscious hindrances, and set to work in the way already indicated. And, while I may not have succeeded in pointing out specific methods of dealing with such conditions, I cannot help thinking that all who study the returns carefully will find in them suggestions bearing upon the larger problems of education. It is my conviction that before we can deal with the people most successfully we must know as far as possible their present condition. Before we can with certainty

University of California Publications in Education. IT 01 - 5 expect the appearance of rational freedom as a guiding principle in human behavior, we must calculate the labor and time it will require to eradicate the mental remnants which now delude us and urge us backward instead of forward.

It sometimes happens that an unfounded and an over expectant optimism begets a reaction which ends in an extreme form of pessimism and despair. It is greatly to be hoped that the educational leaders of our country, a country whose future will be determined by the rational and moral enlightenment of its whole people, will not err in underestimating the task we have set for ourselves. All enthusiasts who go about preaching the doctrine that social and intellectual regeneration can be accomplished in a decade or in a century, ought to be called to account, and, if possible, made to realize that such talk is not only silly but dangerous. It is not necessary to be pessimistic in order to be cautious, but it is absolutely essential in things social to be cautious to prevent the calamities incident to a widespread loss of faith in education, and the possibilities of social amelioration.

Dazzled by the present state of material progress, and inclined to fall into the current mistake of looking back upon man’s development as a thing accomplished within a few centuries, we are easily led into an expectation altogether too optimistic and essentially irrational. Either man is yet in his evolutional infancy — if we may judge from his behavior — or else it was never intended that he should conform to the image of his Creator.

In a study of the lists it will be noticed that the figures in the last column, marked 4 ‘ totals, ” represent the number of individuals giving the superstition opposite. The figures in the other columns represent the number of these expressing the sort of belief indicated at the head of these columns. By this arrangement the reader can interpret as he reads.

Acknowledgments are due to Professor J. E. Shepardson of the State Normal School of Los Angeles and to President C. C. Van Liew of the State Normal School at Chico for valuable and critical assistance in collecting the material here presented.

Dresslar. — 8 uperstition and Education.