Part 10 (1/2)

First, in all the teaching of the type of mind now in question, pursue a method which proceeds from the particular to the general. The discussion of pedagogical method with all its ins and outs needs to take cognizance of the differences of students in their type. The motor student should never, in normal cases, be given a general formula and told to work out particular instances; that is too much his tendency already--to approach facts from the point of view of their resemblances. What he needs rather is a sense of the dignity of the single fact, and of the necessity of giving it its separate place, before hastening on to lose it in the flow of a general statement. So whether the teacher have in hand mathematics, grammar, or science, let him disclose the principles only gradually, and always only so far as they are justified by the observations which the boy has been led to make for himself. For the reason that such a method is practically impossible in the descriptive sciences, and some other branches, as taught in the schoolbooks--botany, zoology, and, worse than all, history and geography--we should restrict their part in the discipline studies of such a youth. They require simple memory, without observation, and put a premium on hasty and temporary acquisition.

As I have said, algebra should be subordinated to geometry. Algebra has as its distinctive method the principle of subst.i.tution, whereby symbols of equal and, for the most part, absolute generality are subst.i.tuted for one another, and the results stand for one fact as well as for another, in disregard of the worth of the particular in the scheme of nature. For the same reason, deductive logic is not a good discipline for these students; empirical psychology, or political economy, is a better introduction to the moral sciences for them when they reach the high school. This explains what was meant above in the remark as to the method of teaching grammar. As to language study generally, I think the value of it, at this period, and later, is extraordinarily overrated. The proportion of time given to language study in our secondary schools is nothing short of a public crime in its effect upon students of this type--and indeed of any type. This, however, is a matter to which we return below. The average student comes to college with his sense of exploration, his inductive capacity, stifled at its birth. He stands appalled when confronted with the una.s.similated details of any science which does not give him a ”key” in the shape of general formulas made up beforehand. Were it not that his enlarging experience of life is all the while running counter to the trend of his so-called education, he would probably graduate ready for the social position in which authority takes the place of evidence, and imitation is the method of life.

Second, the teacher should be on the lookout for a tendency which is very characteristic of a student of this type, the tendency, i. e., to fall into elaborate guessing at results. Take a little child of about seven or eight years of age, especially one who has the marks of motor heredity, and observe the method of his acquisition of new words in reading. First he speaks the word which his habit dictates, and, that being wrong, he rolls his eyes away from the text and makes a guess of the first word that comes into his mind; this he keeps up as long as the teacher persists in asking him to try again. Here is the same tendency that carries him later on in his education to a general conclusion by a short cut. He has not learned to interpret the data of a deliberate judgment, and his attention does not dwell on the necessary details. So with him all through his training; he is always ready with a guess. Here, again, the teacher can do him good only by patiently employing the inductive method. Lead him back to the simplest elements of the problem in hand, and help him gradually to build up a result step by step.

I think in this, as in most of the work with these scholars, the a.s.sociation with children of the opposite type is one of the best correctives, provided the companions.h.i.+p is not made altogether one-sided by the motor boy's perpetual monopolizing of all the avenues of personal expression. When he fails in the cla.s.s, the kind of social lesson which is valuable may be taught him by submitting the same question to a pupil of the plodding, deliberate kind, and waiting for the latter to work it out. Of course, if the teacher have any supervision over the playground, similar treatment can be employed there.

Coming to consider the so-called ”sensory” youth of the age between eight, let us say, and sixteen--the age during which the training of the secondary school presents its great problems--we find certain interesting contrasts between this type and that already characterized as ”motor.” The study of this type of youth is the more pressing for reasons which I have already hinted in considering the same type in the earlier childhood period. It is necessary, first, to endeavour to get a fairly adequate view of the psychological characteristics of this sort of pupil.

The current psychological doctrine of mental ”types” rests upon a great ma.s.s of facts, drawn in the first instance from the different kinds of mental trouble, especially those which involve derangements of speech--the different kinds of Aphasia. The broadest generalization which is reached from these facts is that which marks the distinction, of which I have already said so much, between the motor and the sensory types. But besides this general distinction there are many finer ones; and in considering the persons of the sensory type, it is necessary to inquire into these finer distinctions. Not only do men and children differ in the matter of the sort of mental material which they find requisite, as to whether it is pictures of movements on the one hand, or pictures from the special senses on the other hand; but they differ also in the latter case with respect to which of the special senses it is, in this case or that, which gives the particular individual his necessary cue, and his most perfect function. So we find inside of the general group called ”sensory” several relatively distinct cases, all of which the teacher is likely to come across in varying numbers in a cla.s.s of pupils. Of these the ”visual” and the ”auditory” are most important.

There are certain aspects of the case which are so common to all the cases of sensory minds, whether they be visual, auditory, or other, that I may set them out before proceeding further.

First, in all these matters of type distinction, one of the essential things to observe is the behaviour of the Attention. We have already seen that the attention is implicated to a remarkable degree--in what I called ”fluid attention” above--in the motor scholar. The same implication of the attention occurs in all the sensory cases, but presents very different aspects; and the common fact that the attention is directly involved affords us one of the best rules of judgment and distinction. We may say, generally, of the sensory children, that the attention is best, most facile, most interest-carrying for some one preferred sense, leading for this sense into preoccupation and ready distraction. This tendency manifests itself, as we saw above, in the motor persons also, taking effect in action, speed, vivacity, hasty generalization, etc.; but in the sensory one it takes on varying forms. This first aspect of our typical distinction of minds we may call ”the relation of the 'favoured function' to the attention.”

Then, second, there is another and somewhat contrasted relation which also a.s.sumes importance when we come to consider individual cases; and that is the relation of the ”favoured function”--say movement, vision, hearing, etc.--to Habit. It is a common enough observation, that habit renders functions easy, and that habits are hard to break; indeed, all treatment of habits is likely to degenerate into the commonplace. But, when looked at as related to the attention, certain truths emerge from the consideration of habit.

In general, we may say that habit bears a twofold relation to attention: on the one hand, _facile attention shows the reign of habit_. The solid acquisitions are those with which attention is at home, and which are therefore more or less habitual. But, on the other hand, it is equally true that _attention is in inverse ratio to habit_. We need to attend least to these functions which are most habitual, and we have to attend most to those which are novel and only half acquired. We get new acquisitions mainly, indeed, by strained attention. So we have a contrast of possible interpretations in all cases of sharp and exclusive attention by the children: _does the attention represent a Habit in this particular action of the child_?--or, _does it represent the breaking up of a habit, an act of Accommodation_? In each case these questions have to be intelligently considered. The motor person, usually, when uninstructed and not held back, uses his attention under the lead of habit. It is largely the teacher's business in his case, as we saw, to get him to hold, conserve, and direct his attention steadily to the novel and the complex. The sensory person, on the other hand, shows the attention obstructed by details, hindered by novelties, unable to pa.s.s smoothly over its acquisitions, and in general lacking the regular influence of habit in leading him to summarize and utilize his mental store in general ways.

The third general aspect of the topic is this: the person of the sensory type is more likely to be the one in whom positive derangement occurs in the higher levels, and in response to the more refined social and personal influences. This, for the reason that this type represents brain processes of greater inertia and complexity, with greater liability to obstruction. They are slower, and proceed over larger brain areas.

With these general remarks, then, on the wider aspects of the distinction of types, we may now turn to one of the particular cases which occurs among sensory individuals. This is all that our s.p.a.ce will allow.

_The Visual Type._--The so-called ”visuals,” or ”eye-minded” people among us, are numerically the largest cla.s.s of the sensory population.

They resort to visual imagery whenever possible, either because that is the prevailing tendency with them, or because, in the particular function in question in any special act, the visual material comes most readily to mind. The details of fact regarding the ”visuals” are very interesting; but I shall not take s.p.a.ce to dwell upon them. The sphere in which the facts regarding the pupil of this type are important to the teacher is that of language, taken with the group of problems which arise about instruction in language. The question of his symbolism, and its relations to mathematics, logic, etc., is important. And finally, the sphere of the pupil's _expression_ in all its forms. Then, from all his discoveries in these things, the teacher is called upon to make his method of teaching and his general treatment suitable to this student.

The visual pupil usually shows himself to be so predominately in his speech and language functions; he learns best and fastest from copies which he sees. He delights in ill.u.s.trations put in terms of vision, as when actually drawn out on the blackboard for him to see. He understands what he reads better than what he hears; and he uses his visual symbols as a sort of common coin into which to convert the images which come to him through his other senses. In regard to the movements of attention, we may say that this boy or girl ill.u.s.trates both the aspects of the attention-function which I pointed out above; he attends best--that is, most effectively--to visual instruction provided he exert himself; but on the other hand, it is just here that the drift of habit tends to make him superficial. As attention to the visual is the most easy for him, and as the details of his visual stock are most familiar, so he tends to pa.s.s too quickly over the new matters which are presented to him, a.s.similating the details to the old schemes of his habit. It is most important to observe this distinction, since it is a.n.a.logous to the ”fluid attention” of the motor scholar; and some of the very important questions regarding correlation of studies, the training of attention, and the stimulation of interest depend upon its recognition. _Acquisition best just where it is most likely to go wrong_; that is the state of things. The voluntary use of the visual function gives the best results; but the habitual, involuntary, slipshod use of it gives bad results, and tends to the formation of injurious habits.

For example, I set a strongly visual boy a ”copy” to draw. Seeing this visual copy he will quickly recognise it, take it to be very easy, dash it off quickly, all under the lead of habit; but his result is poor, because his habit has taken the place of effort. Once get him to make effort upon it, however, and his will be the best result of all the scholars, perhaps, just because the task calls him out in the line of his favoured function. The same ant.i.thesis comes out in connection with other varieties of sensory scholars.

We may say, therefore, in regard to two of the general aspects of mental types--the relation of the favoured function to attention, on the one hand, and to habit, on the other--that they both find emphatic ill.u.s.tration in the pupil of the visual type. He is, more than any other sensory pupil, a special case. His mental processes set decidedly toward vision. He is the more important, also, because he is so common. Statistics are lacking, but possibly half of the entire human family in civilized life are visual in their type for most of the language functions. This is due, no doubt, to the emphasis that civilization puts upon sight as the means of social acquisition generally, and to our predominantly visual methods of instruction.

The third fact mentioned is also ill.u.s.trated by this type; the fact that mental instruction and derangement may come easily, through the stress laid upon vision in the person's mental economy. I need not enlarge upon the different forms of special defect which come through impairment of sight by central lesion or degeneration of the visual centers and connections. Suffice it to say that they are very common, and very difficult of recovery. The visual person is often so completely a slave to his sight that when that fails either in itself or through weakness of attention he becomes a wreck off the sh.o.r.e of the ocean of intellect. When we consider the large proportion just mentioned of pupils of this type, the care which should be exercised by the school authorities in the matter of favourable conditions of light, avoidance of visual fatigue, proper distance-adjustments in all visual application as regards focus, symmetry, size of objects, copies, prints, etc., becomes at once sufficiently evident to the thoughtful teacher, as it should be still earlier to the parent. There should be a medical examination, by a competent oculist, before the child goes to school, and regular tests afterward. School examiners and boards should have qualifications for reporting on the hygienic conditions of the school as regards lighting. The bright glare of a neighbouring wall before a window toward which children with weak eyes face when at their desks may result not only in common defects of vision but also in resulting mental and moral damage; and the results are worse to those who depend mainly on vision for the food, drink, and exercise, so to speak, of their growing minds.

As to the methods of teaching these and also the other sensory pupils, the indications already given must suffice. The statement of some of these far-reaching problems of educational psychology, and of the directions in which their answers are to be sought, exhausts the purpose of this chapter. In general it may be said that the recommendations made for the treatment of sensory children at the earlier stage may be extended to later periods also, and that the treatment should be, for the most part, in intelligent contrast to that which the motor pupils receive.

_Language Study._--From this general consideration of the child's training it becomes evident that the great subjects which are most useful for discipline in the period of secondary education are the mathematical studies on the one hand, which exercise the faculty of abstraction, and the positive sciences, which train the power of observation and require truth to detail. If we should pursue the subject into the collegiate period, we should find mental and moral science, literature, and history coming to their rights. If this be in the main psychological, we see that language study, as such, should have no great place in secondary education. The study of grammar, as has been already said, is very useful in the early periods of development if taught vocally; it brings the child out in self-expression, and carries its own correctives, from the fact that its results are always open to social control. These are, in my mind, the main functions of the study of language.

What, then, is the justification for devoting ten or twelve years of the youth's time to study of a dead language, as is commonly done in the case of Latin? The utility of expression does not enter into it, and the discipline of truth to elegant literary copy can be even so well attained from the study of our own tongue, which is lamentably neglected. In all this dreary language study, the youth's interest is dried up at its source. He is fed on formulas and rules; he has no outlet for invention or discovery; lists of exceptions to the rules destroy the remnant of his curiosity and incentive; even reasoning from a.n.a.logy is strictly forbidden him; he is shut up from Nature as in a room with no windows; the dictionary is his authority as absolute and final as it is flat and sterile. His very industry, being forced rather than spontaneous, makes him mentally, no less than physically, stoop-shouldered and near-sighted. It seems to be one of those mistakes of the past still so well lodged in tradition and cla.s.s rivalry that soundness of culture is artificially identified with its maintenance. Yet there is no reason that the spirit of cla.s.sical culture and the durable elements of Greek and Roman life should not be as well acquired--nay, better--from the study of history, archaeology, and literature. For this language work is not study of literature. Not one in one hundred of the students who are forced through the periodical examinations in these languages ever gets any insight into their aesthetic quality or any inspiration from their form.

But more than this. At least one positively vicious effect follows from language study with grammar and lexicon, no matter what the language be. The habit of intellectual guessing grows with the need of continuous effort in putting together elements which go together for no particular reason. When a thing can not be reasoned out, it may just as well be guessed out. The guess is always easier than the dictionary, and, if successful, it answers just as well. Moreover, the teacher has no way of distinguis.h.i.+ng the pupil's replies which are due to the guess from those due to honest work. I venture to say, from personal experience, that no one who has been through the usual cla.s.sical course in college and before it has not more than once staked his all upon the happy guess at the stubborn author's meaning.

This shallow device becomes a subst.i.tute for honest struggle. And it is more than shallow; to guess is dishonest. It is a servant to unworthy inertia; and worse, it is a cloak to mental unreadiness and to conscious moral cowardice. The guess is a bluff to fortune when the honest gauntlet of ignorance should be thrown down to the issue.

The effects of this show themselves in a habit of mind tolerated in persons of a literary bent, which is a marked contrast to that demanded and exemplified by science. I think that much of our literary impressionism and sentimentalism reveal the guessing habit.

Yet why guess? Why be content with an impression? Why hint of a ”certain this and a certain that” when the ”certain,” if it mean anything, commonly means the uncertain? Things worth writing about should be formulated clearly enough to be understood. Why let the personal reaction of the individual's feeling suffice? Our youth need to be told that the guess is immoral, that hypothesis is the servant of research, that the private impression instructs n.o.body, that presentiment is usually wrong, that science is the best antidote to the fear of ghosts, and that the reply ”I guess so” betrays itself, whether it arise from bravado, from cowardice, or from literary finesse! I think that the great need of our life is honesty, that the bulwark of honesty in education is exact knowledge with the scientific habit of mind, and, furthermore, that the greatest hindrance to these things is the training which does not, with all the sanctions at its command, distinguish the real, with its infallible tests, from the shadowy and vague, but which contents itself with the throw of the intellectual dice box. Any study which tends to make the difference between truth and error pa.s.s with the throwing of a die, and which leads the student to be content with a result he can not verify, has somewhat the function in his education of the puzzle in our society amus.e.m.e.nts or the game of sliced animals in the nursery.

CHAPTER IX.

THE INDIVIDUAL MIND AND SOCIETY--SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY.