Educational psychology

“ They do not make the child. They do not give it memory or attention or imagination. But they are creators of tendencies, prejudices, religions, politics, and other habits unnumbered. So that in a very real sense, the school, with all the other educational influences, makes the man. We do not give a child the capacity to learn, but we can determine what he shall learn. We do not give him memory, but we can select what he shall remember. We do not make the child as he is at the beginning, but we can, in large measure, determine the world of influences which complete the task of making. ”

“ Educational psychology has revealed the qualitative significance of many of the single elements in the very complex procedure that we have called a ‘method of teaching,’ and this new type of research aims to determine the quantitative significance of each of these several elements of method as factors in the production of abilities. ”

“ The power of education must be neither over- nor under-estimated. The educator should, indeed, try to see how much may be done; but he must always expect that the outcome will warn him to confine his attempts within reasonable bounds. In order not to neglect anything essential, he needs to keep in view the practical bearings of the whole theory of ideas; in order to understand and interpret correctly the data furnished by observation of the child, the teacher must make constant use of psychology. ”

“ The science of psychology has revolutionized educational theory. When those of us who have arrived at middle life look back and survey the tedious and toilsome path along which we were unwillingly driven in our schoolboy days, and then see how smooth and pleasant it has been made since, we are impelled to honor all who have contributed to this result. ”

“ The dispute concerning the place of psychology in the scheme of philosophical instruction has its cause in differences of view concerning the aims, nature, and methods of that subject. Philosophers ask for an introductory course in psychology which shall serve as a propaedeutic to the philosophical studies, while teachers of education wish to have it treated in a way to throw light upon educational methods and theory. "Some biologists treat mental phenomena as mere correlates of physiological processes.... ”

“ The influence of the development of the sciences upon educational method also constitutes part of the psychological movement. The sciences demanded entirely different methods of teaching from the traditional procedure. These innovations were worked out slowly by experimentation, and when they proved to be more in keeping with psychology, they reacted upon the teaching of the older subjects and came to be utilized in history, politics, philology, and other studies. ”

“ Yet even from the standpoint of practice, we should come at once into difficulties, and indeed much of the superficiality of practical sciences to-day results from the hasty tendency to consider them as applied sciences only, and thus to be determined by the points of view of the theoretical discipline which is to be applied. Then, for instance, pedagogy becomes simply applied psychology, and the psychological point of view is substituted for the educational one. ”

“ Educational Corollaries.—First, to strengthen attention in children who care nothing for the subject they are studying and let their wits go wool-gathering. The interest here must be 'derived' from something that the teacher associates with the task, a reward or a punishment if nothing less internal comes to mind. If a topic awakens no spontaneous attention it must borrow an interest from elsewhere. But the best interest is internal, and we must always try, in teaching a class, to knit our novelties by rational links on to things of which they already have preperceptions. ”

“ We can build up moral maxims, we can establish permanent interests, we can reveal the unfolding of whole developments of thought and effort, we can fix the time order of studies and parts of studies; in short, we can apply our pedagogical insight with some degree of success to actual school problems. Though empirical psychology has in the last fifty years had as rapid a development as any other department of science, it has never departed essentially from the direction fixed by Herbart. ”

“ Instincts are inherited tendencies to specific actions. They fall under the heads: individualistic, socialistic, environmental, adaptive, sexual or mating instincts. These inherited tendencies are to a large extent the foundation on which we build education. The educational problem is to control and guide them, suppressing some, fostering others. In everything we undertake for a child we must take into account these instincts. ”

“ Such a theory of education, which need not be careful to call itself a system of psychology, must be in harmony with the thought movements of the age; must regard education, not as a shut off compartment, but as being as much a part of life as birth or growth, marriage or work; and it must leave the pupil attached to the world at many points of contact. It is true that educationalists are already eager to establish such contact in several directions, but their efforts rest upon an axiom here and an idea there, and there is no broad unifying basis of thought to support the whole. ”

“ But next after this, psychology will furnish important considerations that will largely determine the methods of instruction, the order of taking up the several topics so as to adapt the school work to the growth of the pupil’s capacity, and the amount of work so as not to overtax his powers by too much, or arrest the development of strength by too little. ”

“ In the first case the science of pedagogy is a psycho-technical discipline which makes education mechanical and deprives the teacher of the teleological attitude of inner understanding; in the second case it is a science of real education far removed from psychology. ”

“ These considerations furnish a sufficient ground for extolling the science of psychology, and for insisting that studies in it should form some part of the education of a teacher. But why should the rest of us care for such studies?
To this one may answer, in the first place, that nearly all of us have, or ought to have, some responsibility for the education of children; and, in the second, that we deal with the minds of others every day in every walk in life, and it can certainly do no harm to have our attention called to the way in which minds function. ”

“ But most school children, if they are to learn the facts on which the conception of intellectual conduct depends, must learn them even more directly. I myself believe that a very simple course on the well-ascertained facts of psychology would, if patiently taught, be quite intelligible to any children of thirteen or fourteen who had received some small preliminary training in scientific method. ”

“ Studies that look to the possibility of the student becoming a teacher are preeminent in the development of mentality. The science of psychology is the foundation of the art of pedagogy, and every woman, particularly one who may some day be required to teach, should know the operations of the mind, how it receives, retains, and may best apply knowledge. ”

“ Applying this principle to the work of the schoolroom, we see that no subject should be studied merely for the discipline it may be supposed to give. The old theory that the school should cultivate the senses, the memory, and the reasoning powers of pupils, means nothing as a matter of pure discipline; in the light of modern psychology we must understand that the only way to secure this cultivation is in special directions determined by the peculiar nature of the material upon which the mind is exercised. ”

“ So little is known about the behaviour of mind that it is open to anyone to make discoveries in this terra incognita. I speak, not of psychology, of which we hear a great deal and know very little, but of mind itself, whose ways are subtle and evasive; nevertheless that education only is valid which has mind for its objective. The initial difficulty is the enormous field of knowledge to which a child ought to be introduced in right of his human nature and of those “first born affinities” which [254] he lives to make good. ”

“ In all pedagogy the great thing is to strike the iron while hot, and to seize the wave of the pupil's interest in each successive subject before its ebb has come, so that knowledge may be got and a habit of skill acquired—a headway of interest, in short, secured, on which afterward the individual may float. ”

“ Throughout the book the discussion of the art of teaching is always modified by an acceptance upon the part of the writers of the social purpose of education. The treatment of each topic will be found to be based upon investigations and researches in the fields of psychology and education which involve the measurement of the achievements of children and of adults under varying conditions. ”

“ Then shall mother and teacher sweetly lisp of the "fringe of apperception," "the stream of consciousness," "inhibition," "ideal motor action," and "the tabula raza." Psychology has, I am aware, an unappealing sound. But let no one imagine that it is not or, rather, cannot be made interesting. We cannot always catch a bird, find a flower, or unearth a social evil; but every one, under all conditions and at all times, has a psychology [19] in full working order concealed about him, and the art of teaching in its last analysis is applied psychology. ”

“ Least of all need you, merely as teachers, deem it part of your duty to become contributors to psychological science or to make psychological observations in a methodical or responsible manner. I fear that some of the enthusiasts for child-study have thrown a certain burden on you in this way. By all means let child-study go on,—it is refreshing all our sense of the child's life. There are teachers who take a spontaneous delight in filling syllabuses, inscribing observations, compiling statistics, and computing the per cent. ”

“ While the psychological theory would guide and illuminate the practice, acting upon the theory would immediately test it, and thus criticise it, bringing about its revision and growth. In the large and open sense of the words, psychology becomes a working hypothesis, instruction is the experimental test and demonstration of the hypothesis; the result is both greater practical control and continued growth in theory. ”

“ If we would have a sound condition of Philosophy, it must, in intellectual Education, refer to the conception of mind which has been unfolded in Psychology; and it must appear as a defect in scientific method if Psychology, or at least the conception of the theoretical mind, is treated again as within Pedagogics. We must take something for granted. Psychology, then, will be consulted no further than is requisite to place on a sure basis the pedagogical function which relates to it. ”

“ No pure psychology is studied, but school subjects are taken up one by one, and their facts and methods of treatment are used to illustrate psychological principles. The history of education is studied side by side with this applied psychology; but not much time is given to this subject in class. The lives and works of the chief educators only are taken, and private reading is much encouraged as accessory to the class work. ”

“ The attempts made to remedy this fatal weakness by the desultory reading of a volume or two in a voluntary reading-circle course do not serve the purpose. The teacher needs a thorough course of instruction in general and applied psychology, under the tutelage of an enthusiastic expert who not only knows his subject, but also understands the problems of the teacher. ”

“ The educational aim should be, not merely to pave the pupil's way to future success, not merely to make of his mind a perfect instrument of thought, a kind of intellectual loom, capable of turning out the most complicated intellectual patterns. ”

“ The exact relation between the two is not easy to define, even with all the aid afforded by recent advances in psychology; but, in former times, it was the opinion of the most advanced educationists, that a certain routine of teaching afforded the best discipline for the growing brain, and that this routine, when aided by good abilities, was certain to produce the highest attainable results — so that men of moderate or inferior performance, who had received "a good education," were considered to be the failures of Nature, and not of the preceptor. ”

“ Education as we know it is admirably designed to ‘develop the faculties’; but if “All that’s an exploded idee,” if there be no faculties to develop, but only mind,—alert, self-active, discriminating, logical, capable alike of great flights and of minute processes—we must necessarily alter our educational tactics. Mind is benefitted by occasional gymnastics just as is ‘Brother Body,’ but cannot subsist on [256] these any more than ‘Body’ can live on Swedish drill.
As I have said, knowledge, that is, roughly, ideas clothed upon with facts, is the proper pabulum for mind. ”

“ What we have to do is to gather together and order our resources; to put the first thing foremost and all things in sequence, and to see that education is neither more nor less than the practical application of our philosophy. Hence, if our educational thought is to be sound and effectual, we must look to the philosophy which underlies it, and must be in a condition to trace every counsel of perfection for the bringing up of children to one or other of the two schools of philosophy of which it must needs be the outcome. ”

“ Thinking Principles.—In addition to the subject-matter, the teacher should know something of the laws of thought, and the best way to use knowledge as an agency in forming these laws of thought. All these laws are scheduled in any elementary treatise on psychology, and the best method of using knowledge to train the soul is set forth in any good treatise on pedagogy. Thus to a knowledge of the subject-matter the teacher must add a knowledge of psychology and of pedagogy. Scholarship alone is not the test of a good teacher. ”