Subject (course)

“ This teacher will be told that 100 per cent means perfection. But what is perfection in a subject? Is the student perfect when he tells what is in the textbook, or is there a demand for original thinking? ”

“ The logical presupposition of instruction is the order in which the subject-matter develops for the consciousness. The subject, the consciousness of the pupil, and the activity of the instructor, interpenetrate each other in instruction, and constitute in actuality one whole. ”

“ In the case of the argument for a return to a classical course in a college, this sequence of cause and effect would be very difficult to establish, for here you would be deep down in the most complex and subtle region of human nature. ”

“ If mind means certain powers or faculties existing in themselves and needing only to be exercised by and upon presented subject-matter, the presented subject-matter must mean something complete in its ready-made and fixed separateness. ”

“ CHAPTER I. SLIDE.
Thus far in the student's development, his mind has dealt chiefly with each subject as a Whole. Now he begins to find a new interest in showing his hearers that the discourse is made up of a series of definite Parts. He takes delight in fixing their attention upon each part in succession. ”

“ The power of so mastering a subject as to be able to reproduce any portion of it with accuracy, completeness, and elegance, at a written examination, is the normal result of literary, not of scientific, culture, and the power is of the same order, whether the subject-matter be philology, literature, art, or science. ”

“ Now when we engage in explanations and discussions of principles, theories, broad social topics, and the like—when we expound, moralize, or philosophize,—our subject matter is general. We approach our readers or hearers on the thinking, the rational side of their natures. ”

“ We ask why the scholar is interested in his subject, why he has sought this knowledge? And in most cases we find the right reason when we have found the logical connection and have sought it logically. ”

“ If the subject is difficult, it is desirable, at the time that the lesson is assigned, to lead the class over the text and some of the illustrative sentences in order to open, as it were, the eyes of the pupils. ”

“ Sources of Subjects.+—Thought goes everywhere, and human interest touches everything. The sources of subjects are therefore unlimited; for anything about which we think and in which we are interested may become a suitable subject for a paragraph, an essay, or a book. Such subjects are everywhere—in what we see and do, in what we think and feel, in what we hear and read. We relate to our parents what a neighbor said; we discuss for the teacher an event in history, or a character in literature; we show a companion how to make a kite or work a problem in algebra ”

“ The pupil’s knowledge of a subject may end with the gathering and the understanding of facts, but the teacher’s knowledge must include this and add to it the knowledge of its deeper relations to other subjects and to mind growth. To teach a subject is to learn that subject anew, to see it in a new light, in a deeper and richer significance. ”

“ Certainly you very rightly observe that the forms (which are too often changed by quite respectable people into formulas) "First Subject, Middle Subject, After Subject, etc., may very much grow into a habit, because they must be so thoroughly natural, primitive, and very easily intelligible." ”

“ N any inquiry of a practical nature, intended to lead to some definite course of action, it is obviously necessary to start with a tolerably clear idea of the end in view—the object for which it is proposed to provide. In the case of education, definitions more or less satisfactory have already so often been given, that it might seem superfluous to go into the question again. ”

“ The Development of Subject Matter in the Learner.—It is possible, without doing violence to the facts, to mark off three fairly typical stages in the growth of subject matter in the experience of the learner. In its first estate, knowledge exists as the content of intelligent ability—power to do. This kind of subject matter, or known material, is expressed in familiarity or acquaintance with things. ”

“ To derive full benefit from the Course it is necessary that you should do more than merely understand each sentence as you go along. You must grasp the underlying train of thought. You must perceive the continuity of the argument. ”

“ I shall ask you now—not meaning at all thereby to close the theoretic question, but merely because it seems to me the point of view likely to be of greatest practical use to you as teachers—to adopt with me, in this course of lectures, the biological conception, as thus expressed, and to lay your own emphasis on the fact that man, whatever else he may be, is primarily a practical being, whose mind is given him to aid in adapting him to this world's life. ”

“ In the first place we should select subjects for study that are of real interest because they bear upon some problem that concerns us. Whenever we begin to read a book, or undertake any topic of study, it should be done with a definite purpose in mind. ”

“ It seems better to select one subject, and make it the leading topic, for a time, of our studies and thoughts. It may also be proper to suggest that works of fiction, poetry, and romance, ought not to be read until the mind is well disciplined, and a good foundation of solid learning is laid. ”

“ In such a case philosophy might most advantageously be taken up by the student after the completion of his other studies, in short, at the conclusion of the whole academical course, setting, so to speak, the crown upon it, and forming the last step which the pupil must take before he enters upon the realities of life. ”

“ We need to remind ourselves that there are three distinct types of subject matter that constitute the body of our teaching material. These are, first of all, those lessons which are almost wholly intellectual. Debates are conducted by the hundreds on subjects that lead not to action but to clearer judgment. ”

“ Instead of beginning with the most uninteresting phases of psychology and those most unknown to students, the course takes up concrete experiences of everyday life, relates them to the problems of learning and individual differences, and so develops these two topics. Each general principle is discovered by the student out of his own experience in solving specially organized problems. ”

“ So when we pass from country to character, from character to opportunity, and from opportunity to suggestion, we pass from subjects with which it is comparatively easy to become familiar to subjects which need life-long and careful study. ”

“ For instance, we may say, the subject of conversation was parsley, which is another way of saying the thing we were speaking about was parsley. To sum up such a lesson, the class should learn,—Words put together so as to make sense form a sentence. A sentence has two parts, that which we speak of and what we say about it. That which we speak of is the subject.
Children will probably be slow to receive this first lesson in abstract knowledge, and we must remember that knowledge in this sort is difficult and uncongenial. ”

“ Let me reply at once that all human thinking is of two sorts: the sort which is involved in discovery—learning without the aid of teachers; and the sort which is involved in instruction—learning with the aid of teachers, who already know what the student must learn. ”

“ One thesis, which is, perhaps, new, that Education is the Science of Relations, appears to me to solve the question of curricula, as showing that the object of education is to put a child in living touch as much as may be of the life of Nature and of thought. ”

“ Well, that same need of relating our knowledge, which operates here within the sphere of our knowledge itself, we shall find operating, also, outside that sphere. We experience, as we go on learning and knowing,—the vast majority of us experience,—the need of relating what we have learnt and known to the sense which we have in us for conduct, to the sense which we have in us for beauty. ”

“ THE PURPOSE OF THE COURSE The early question of the old creeds, "What is the chief end of man?" was conceived in a spirit more practical than academic. It was the voice of the constant inquiry as to the purpose of living. ”

“ Now it is true that the concept, or the faculty of understanding, is the object of our study rather than the world outside of it. The faculty of understanding, by the way, is nothing but a collective noun for all concepts, hence simply another name for concept in general. ”

“ The judgment or proposition, which is the characteristic form in which the result of reflection finds its expression, consists, in its most rudimentary shape, of the embodiment of this distinction in the separation of predicate from subject, and the subsequent affirmation of the first about the second. The work of thought or knowledge in making our world more intelligible to us essentially consists in the progressive analysis of a content or what, considered in abstraction from the this to which it belongs. ”

“ The student should study himself, his relations to society, to nature, and to art, and above all, in all, and through all these, he should study the relations of himself, society, nature, and art, to God, the Author of them all. ”

“ The first lesson of philosophic discipline is to wean the student's attention from the degrees of things, which alone form the vocabulary of common life, and to direct it to the kind abstracted from degree. ”

“ What one predominant characteristic do you recognize as being the index of your life? You reply, “I am a student.” Is that all you can say? You have invested brains, are an educated man, but is that all? ”

“ In my education, as in that of everyone, the moral influences, which are so much more important than all others, are also the most complicated, and the most difficult to specify with any approach to completeness. Without attempting the hopeless task of detailing the circumstances by which, in this respect, my early character may have been shaped, I shall confine myself to a few leading points, which form an indispensable part of any true account of my education. ”

“ In the following course of lectures I shall try to suggest, in a fashion suited to the general student, something about the men, the problems, and the issues that seem to me most interesting in a limited, but highly representative portion of the history of modern philosophy. ”

“ IN education there has to be encountered at every turn the play of motives. Now, the theory of motives is the theory of sensation, emotion, and will; in other words, it is the psychology of the sensitive and the active powers. ”

“ Study, therefore, cultivate, and frequent men and women; not only in their outward, and consequently, guarded, but in their interior, domestic, and consequently less disguised, characters and manners. Take your notions of things, as by observation and experience you find they really are, and not as you read that they are or should be; for they never are quite what they should be. ”

“ And the range of topics is very wide; it embraces science and art, history and philosophy; above all, the knowledge of human nature that teaches how the mind he addresses is to be convinced and persuaded, and how a willing ear is to be won to his discourse. ”

“ The degree in which the study of certain subjects cultivates certain faculties is a matter on which we are far from agreeing. Nor is it decided—in fact we have scarcely begun to discuss—what faculties most need cultivation. ”

“ His central thought appears more definitely through the philosophical principles in his famous Essay concerning the Human Understanding, and through the intellectual training suggested in his other educational work, Conduct of the Understanding, which was originally an additional book and application of the Essay. ”

“ They should rather arouse the student to fresh efforts, both to secure the purity of his texts, and to illustrate their meaning by the acquisition of wider knowledge, and the cultivation of critical and accurate habits of thought. ”

“ Problems.—But in the theoretic as well as in the practical life there are interests of a more acute sort, taking the form of definite images of some achievement which we desire to effect. The train of ideas arising under the influence of such an interest constitutes usually the thought of the means by which the end shall be attained. ”

“ Each literary examination is a crisis at which one either becomes a graduate or does not; in either case the result, whether appertaining to the student himself, the pupils whom he has coached, or his own sons, is contemplated purely as a personal and an individual matter. ”

“ These axioms of the understanding, add the psychologists, these fundamental types, by which all our judgments and ideas are inevitably shaped, and which our sensations serve only to illuminate, are known in the schools as categories. ”

“ General Principles.—There is perhaps no other form of composition which is so generally in use as exposition or explanation. If you observe your own conversation and that of the people about you, you will find that a great deal of it is explanation. Every time you say in answer to some question about a remark you have just made, "Why, I mean that—," you are explaining the first remark. In almost all the recitations you make in school you are explaining something—a principle in arithmetic, or in physics, the construction of something in manual training, the meaning of a word, etc. ”

“ There is no branch of study attended to in school which may, by judicious efforts, be made more effectual in accomplishing this object, leading the pupils to see the practical utility and the value of knowledge, than composition. ”