Part 9 (1/2)
It is my aim in this chapter to indicate some of the variations which are shown by different children; and on the basis of such facts to endeavour to arrive at a more definite idea of what variations of treatment are called for in the several cla.s.ses into which the children are divided. I shall confine myself at first to those differences which are more hereditary and const.i.tutional.
_First Period--Early Childhood._--The first and most comprehensive distinction is that based on the division of the life of man into the two great spheres of reception and action. The ”sensory” and the ”motor” are becoming the most common descriptive terms of current psychology. We hear all the while of sensory processes, sensory contents, sensory centres, sensory attention, etc.; and, on the other hand, of motor processes, motor centres, motor ataxy, motor attention, motor consciousness, etc. And in the higher reaches of mental function, the same ant.i.thesis comes out in the contrast of sensory and motor aphasia, alexia, sensory and motor types of memory and imagination, etc. Indeed the tendency is now strong to think that when we have a.s.signed a given function of consciousness to one or other side of the nervous apparatus, making it either sensory or motor, then our duty to it is done. Be that as it may, there is no doubt that the distinction is throwing great light on the questions of mind which involve also the correlative questions of the nervous system. This is true of all questions of educational psychology.
This first distinction between children--as having general application--is that which I may cover by saying that some are more active, or motile, while others are more pa.s.sive, or receptive. This is a common enough distinction; but possibly a word or two on its meaning in the const.i.tution of the child may give it more actual value.
The ”active” person to the psychologist is one who is very responsive to what we have called Suggestions. Suggestions may be described in most general terms as any and all the influences from outside, from the environment, both physical and personal, which get a lodgment in consciousness and lead to action. A child who is ”suggestible” to a high degree shows it in what we call ”motility.” The suggestions which take hold of him translate themselves very directly into action. He tends to act promptly, quickly, unreflectively, a.s.similating the newer elements of the suggestions of the environment to the ways of behaviour fixed by his earlier habits. Generally such a person, child or adult, is said to ”jump” at conclusions; he is anxious to know in order to act; he acts in some way on all events or suggestions, even when no course of action is explicitly suggested, and even when one attempts to keep him from acting.
Psychologically such a person is dominated by habit. And this means that his nervous system sets, either by its hereditary tendencies or by the undue predominance of certain elements in his education, quickly in the direction of motor discharge. The great channels of readiest out-pouring from the brain into the muscles have become fixed and pervious; it is hard for the processes once started in the sense centres, such as those of sight, hearing, etc., to hold in their energies. They tend to unstable equilibrium in the direction of certain motor combinations, which in their turn represent certain cla.s.ses of acts. This is habit; and the person of the extreme motor type is always a creature of habit.
Now what is the line of treatment that such a child should have? The necessity for getting an answer to this question is evident from what was said above--i. e., that the very rise of the condition itself is due, apart from heredity, oftener than not to the fact that he has not had proper treatment from his teachers.
The main point for a teacher to have in mind in dealing with such a boy or girl--the impulsive, active one, always responsive, but almost always in error in what he says and does--is that here is a case of habit. Habit is good; indeed, if we should go a little further we should see that all education is the forming of habits; but here, in this case, what we have is not habits, but habit. This child shows a tendency to habit _as such_: to habits of any and every kind. The first care of the teacher in order to the control of the formation of habits is in some way to bring about a little inertia of habit, so to speak--a short period of organic hesitation, during which the reasons pro and con for each habit may be brought into the consciousness of the child.
The means by which this tendency to crude, inconsiderate action on the part of the child is to be controlled and regulated is one of the most typical questions for the intelligent teacher. Its answer must be different for children of different ages. The one thing to do, in general, however, from the psychologist's point of view, is in some way to bring about greater complications in the motor processes which the child uses most habitually, and with this complication to get greater inhibition along the undesirable lines of his activity.
Inhibition is the damming up of the processes for a period, causing some kind of a ”setback” of the energies of movement into the sensory centres, or the redistribution of this energy in more varied and less habitual discharges. With older children a rational method is to a.n.a.lyze for them the mistakes they have made, showing the penalties they have brought upon themselves by hasty action. This requires great watchfulness. In cla.s.s work, the teacher may profitably point out the better results reached by the pupil who ”stops to think.” This will bring to the reform of the hasty scholar the added motive of semi-public comparison with the more deliberate members of the cla.s.s.
Such procedure is quite un.o.bjectionable if made a recognised part of the cla.s.s method; yet care should be taken that no scholar suffer mortification from such comparisons. The matter may be ”evened up” by dwelling also on the merit of promptness which the scholar in question will almost always be found to show.
For younger pupils as well as older more indirect methods of treatment are more effective. The teacher should study the scholar to find the general trend of his habits. Then oversight should be exercised over both his tasks and his sports with certain objects in view. His habitual actions should be made as complicated as his ability can cope with; this in order to educate his habits and keep them from working back into mere mechanism. If he shows his fondness for drawing by marking his desk, see that he has drawing materials at hand and some intelligent tasks in this line to do; not as tasks, but for himself.
Encourage him to make progress always, not simply to repeat himself.
If he has awkward habits of movement with his hands and feet, try to get him interested in games that exercise these members in regular and skilful ways.
Furthermore, in his intellectual tasks such a pupil should be trained, as far as may be, on the more abstract subjects, which do not give immediate openings for action. Mathematics is the best possible discipline for him. Grammar also is good; it serves at once to interest him, if it is well taught, in certain abstract relations.h.i.+ps, and also to send out his motor energies in the exercise of speech, which is the function which always needs exercise, and which is always under the observation of the teacher. Grammar, in fact, is one of the very best of primary-school subjects, because instruction in it issues at once in the very motor functions which embody the relations.h.i.+ps which the teacher seeks to impress. The teacher has in his ear, so to speak, the evidence as to whether his instruction is understood or not. This gives him a valuable opportunity to keep his instruction well ahead of its motor expression--thus leading the pupil to think rather than to act without thinking--and at the same time to point out the errors of performance which follow from haste in pa.s.sing from thought to action.
These indirect methods of reaching the impulsive pupil should never be cast aside for the direct effort to ”control” such a scholar. The very worst thing that can be done to such a boy or girl is to command him or her to sit still or not to act; and a still worse thing--to make a comparative again on the head of the superlative--is to affix to the command painful penalties. This is a direct violation of the principle of Suggestion. Such a command only tends to empty the pupil's mind of other objects of thought and interest, and so to keep his attention upon his own movements. This, then, amounts to a continual suggestion to him to do just what you want to keep him from doing. On the contrary, unless you give him suggestions and interests which lead his thought away from his acts, it is impossible not to aggravate his bad tendencies by your very efforts. This is the way, as I intimated above, that many teachers create or confirm bad habits in their pupils, and so render any amount of well-intended positive instruction abortive. It seems well established that a suggestion of the negative--that is, not to do a thing--has no negative force; but, on the contrary, in the early period, it amounts only to a stronger suggestion in the positive sense, since it adds emphasis, to the thing which is forbidden. The ”not” in a prohibition is no addition to the pictured course to which it is attached, and the physiological fact that the attention tends to set up action upon that which is attended to comes in to put a premium on disobedience. Indeed, the philosophy of all punishment rests in this consideration, i. e., that unless the penalty tends to fill the mind with some object other than the act punished, it does more harm than good. The punishment must be actual and its nature diverting; never a threat which terminates there, nor a penalty which fixes the thought of the offence more strongly in mind.
This is to say, that the permanent inhibition of a movement at this period is best secured by establis.h.i.+ng some different movement.
The further consideration of the cases of great motility would lead to the examination of the kinds of memory and imagination and their treatment; to that we return below. We may now take up the instances of the sensory type considered with equal generality.
The sensory children are in the main those which seem more pa.s.sive, more troubled with physical inertia, more contemplative when a little older, less apt in learning to act out new movements, less quick at taking a hint, etc.
These children are generally further distinguished as being--and here the ant.i.thesis to the motor ones is very marked--much less suggestible. They seem duller when young. Boys often get credit for dulness compared with girls on this account. Even as early as the second year can this distinction among children be readily observed in many instances. The motor child will show sorrow by loud crying and vigorous action, while the sensory child will grieve in quiet, and continue to grieve when the other has forgotten the disagreeable occurrence altogether. The motor one it is that asks a great many questions and seems to learn little from the answers; while the sensory one learns simply from hearing the questions of the other and the answers given to them. The motor child, again, gets himself hurt a great many times in the same way, without developing enough self-control to restrain himself from the same mistake again and again; the sensory child tends to be timid in the presence of the unknown and uncertain, to learn from one or a few experiences, and to hold back until he gets satisfactory a.s.surances that danger is absent.
The former tends to be more restless in sitting, standing, etc., more demonstrative in affection, more impulsive in action, more forgiving in disposition.
As to the treatment of the sensory child, it is a problem of even greater difficulty and danger than that of his motor brother. The very nature of the distinction makes it evident that while the motor individual ”gives himself away,” so to speak, by constantly acting out his impressions, and so revealing his progress and his errors, with the other it is not so. All knowledge that we are ever able to get of the mental condition of another individual is through his movements, expressive, in a technical sense, or of other kinds, such as his actions, att.i.tudes, lines of conduct, etc. We have no way to read thought directly. So just in so far as the sensory individual is less active, to that degree he is less expressive, less self-revealing. To the teacher, therefore, he is more of an enigma. It is harder to tell in his case what instruction he has appreciated and made his own; and what, on the other hand, has been too hard for him; what wise, and what unwise. Where the child of movement speaks out his impulsive interpretations, this one sinks into himself and gives no answer. So we are deprived of the best way of interpreting him--that afforded by his own interpretation of himself.
A general policy of caution is therefore strongly to be recommended.
Let the teacher wait in every case for some positive indication of the child's real state of mind. Even the directions given the child may not have been understood, or the quick word of admonition may have wounded him, or a duty which is so elementary as to be a commonplace in the mental life of the motor child may yet be so vaguely apprehended that to insist upon its direct performance may cost the teacher all his influence with the pupil of this type. It is better to wait even at the apparent risk of losing valuable days than to proceed a single step upon a mistaken estimate of the child's measure of a.s.similation. And, further, the effect of wrong treatment upon this boy or girl is very different from that of a similar mistake in the other case. He becomes more silent, retired, even secretive, when once an unsympathetic relations.h.i.+p is suggested between him and his elder.
Then more positively--his instruction should be well differentiated.
He should in every possible case be given inducements to express himself. Let him recite a great deal. Give him simple verses to repeat. Keep him talking all you can. Show him his mistakes with the utmost deliberation and kindliness of manner; and induce him to repeat his performances in your hearing after the correction has been suggested. Cultivate the imitative tendency in him; it is the handmaid to the formation of facile habits of action. In arranging the children's games, see that he gets the very active parts, even though he be backward and hesitating about a.s.suming them. Make him as far as possible a leader, in order to cultivate his sense of responsibility for the doing of things, and to lead to the expression of his understanding of arrangements, etc. In it all, the essential thing is to bring him out in some kind of expression; both for the sake of the improved balance it gives himself, and as an indication to the observant teacher of his progress and of the next step to be taken in his development.
It is for the sensory child, I think, that the kindergarten has its great utility. It gives him facility in movement and expression, and also some degree of personal and social confidence. But for the same reasons the kindergarten over-stimulates the motor scholars at the corresponding age. There should really be two kindergarten methods--one based on the idea of deliberation, the other on that of expression.
The task of the educator here, it is evident, is to help nature correct a tendency to one-sided development; just as the task is this also in the former case; but here the variation is on the side of idiosyncrasy ultimately, and of genius immediately. For genius, I think, is the more often developed from the contemplative mind, with the relatively dammed-up brain, of this child, than from the smooth-working machine of the motor one. But just for this reason, if the damming-up be liberated, not in the channels of healthy a.s.similation, and duly correlated growth, but in the forced discharges of violent emotion, followed by conditions of melancholy and by certain unsocial tendencies, then the promise of genius ripens into eccentricity, and the blame is possibly ours.
It seems true--although great caution is necessary in drawing inferences--that here a certain distinction may be found to hold also between the s.e.xes. It is possible that the apparent precocious alertness of girls in their school years, and earlier, may be simply a predominance among them of the motor individuals. This is borne out by the examination of the kinds of performance in which they seem to be more forward than boys. It resolves itself, so far as my observation goes, into greater quickness of response and greater agility in performance; not greater constructiveness, nor greater power of concentrated attention. The boys seem to need more instruction because they do not learn as much for themselves by acting upon what they already know. In later years, the distinction gets levelled off by the common agencies of education, and by the setting of tasks requiring more thought than the mere spontaneities of either type avail to furnish. Yet all the way through, I think there is something in the ordinary belief that woman is relatively more impulsive and more p.r.o.ne to the less reflective forms of action.
What has now been said may be sufficient to give some concrete force to the common opinion that education should take account of the individual character at this earliest stage. The general distinction between sensory and motor has, however, a higher application in the matter of memory and imagination at later stages of growth, to which we may now turn.
_Second Period._--The research is of course more difficult as the pupil grows older, since the influences of heredity tend to become blurred by the more constant elements of the child's home, school, and general social environment. The child whom I described just above as sensory in his type is constantly open to influences from the stimulating behaviour of his motor companion, as well as from the direct measures which parent and teacher take to overcome his too-decided tendencies and to prevent one-sided development. So, too, the motor child tends to find correctives in his environment.