Target practice

“ Otherwise guidance must rest, as it now largely does in democratic communities, on the broad knowledge of opportunity afforded by industrial and pre-vocational training, the encouragement of thorough and systematic self-scrutiny, and the method of repeated trials. ”

“ A good aim surveys the present state of experience of pupils, and forming a tentative plan of treatment, keeps the plan constantly in view and yet modifies it as conditions develop. The aim, in short, is experimental, and hence constantly growing as it is tested in action.
(3) The aim must always represent a freeing of activities. The term end in view is suggestive, for it puts before the mind the termination or conclusion of some process. The only way in which we can define an activity is by putting before ourselves the objects in which it terminates—as one's aim in shooting is the target. ”

“ This book comes from the reflections and experience of more than forty years spent in court. Aside from the practice of my profession, the topics I have treated are such as have always held my interest and inspired a taste for books that discuss the human machine with its manifestations and the causes of its varied activity. ”

“ The examples we have already given of great workers in various branches of industry, art, and science, render it unnecessary further to enforce the importance of persevering application in any department of life. It is the result of every-day experience that steady attention to matters of detail lies at the root of human progress; and that diligence, above all, is the mother of good luck. Accuracy is also of much importance, and an invariable mark of good training in a man. ”

“ More particularly, standards of organization, control and achievement, that have been accepted as an habitual matter of course in the conduct of business will, by force of habit, in good part reassert themselves as indispensable and conclusive in the conduct of the affairs of learning. ”

“ Scientific Management Realizes the Importance of Training the Will. — The most necessary, and most complex and difficult part of Scientific Management, is the training of the will of all members of the organization. ”

“ In idea, at least, no other purpose restricts or compromises the dominance of the single purpose. Such is not the case in business, politics, and the professions. All these have upon their surface, taken directly, other ends to serve. ”

“ We follow this plan, because the laws of organization require the direct practice of the organs concerned, and we feel instinctively that we can succeed only by obeying these laws. The purely mental faculties are connected during life with material organs, and are hence subjected to precisely the same laws. ”

“ Policy of Action.—Vision resolves itself into action. When the mind sees deep and clear, the heart feels warm and generous, the will acts promptly and decisively. As the spark leaps bright and sharp from the silent battery, ignites the fuel and drives the piston, so will a broad vision give a generous impulse to action. You readily see the value of an educational policy, and its intimate connection with that of action. ”

“ The remedy for the evils attending the doctrine of formal discipline previously spoken of, is not to be found by substituting a doctrine of specialized disciplines, but by reforming the notion of mind and its training. Discovery of typical modes of activity, whether play or useful occupations, in which individuals are concerned, in whose outcome they recognize they have something at stake, and which cannot be carried through without reflection and use of judgment to select material of observation and recollection, is the remedy. ”

“ Adoption of the principles just cited into commanding rank in our standards of social action will assure steady approach to more worthy conditions. The details of progressive adjustment must come from experiments, just as in the case of improvements in printing presses or in dynamos. ”

“ If an educated man is, as I said, a group of organized tendencies to conduct, what prompts the conduct is in every case the man's conception of the way in which to name and classify the actual emergency. The more adequate the stock of ideas, the more 'able' is the man, the more uniformly appropriate is his behavior likely to be. When later we take up the subject of the will, we shall see that the essential preliminary to every decision is the finding of the right names under which to class the proposed alternatives of conduct. ”

“ In that period you and I will have had time to become intimate with the needs, prejudices, deficiencies, as well as with the sterling good qualities of the operative class, so as to be able to take such practical steps as lie within our scope to remedy the former, and I trust we shall be able to interest and engage others in the same work. What is wanted is to set the ball rolling, not to kick it into the goal. ”

“ In the conduct of life we select, or have assigned, certain measures of activity upon which we rely for our support and the self-respect that follows the doing of our part. This we call our business, and if we are wise we attend to it and prosecute it with due diligence and application. ”

“ Of course, to arrange and systematize these actions, to establish the true relations between all these various faculties and powers, and to regulate the obligations and duties by which the exercise of them should be limited and controlled, is a work of time, and is to be effected, not by the operation of any instinct or early intuition, but by a course of development—effected mainly by the progress of growth and experience, though it is to be aided and guided by assiduous but gentle training and instruction. ”

“ The substitution of action based on knowledge for action based on feeling is made possible in the individual and in society by the development of higher centers of control and the power of choice through inhibition and legislation. ”

“ If we are to intervene with success in the course of events, that course must, as we have already seen, be capable of being regarded as approximately uniform, otherwise we can have no security that our intervention according to rule and precedent will have a uniform and unambiguous result. ”

“ But when, at an early stage, I had to manage serious enterprises and to deal with men, and when each mistake would lead at once to heavy consequences, I began to appreciate the difference between acting on the principle of command and discipline, and acting on the principle of common understanding. ”

“ Therefore, the rule of our conduct, in these pursuits, should be to watch the operations of nature with the closest attention, and assist her when languid, and control her when too violent; that is, by spurring in one instance, and bridling in the other, and accurately and undeviatingly apply the means proposed in the manner recommended, until experience enables us to improve it ”

“ You must practise and practise the expected together and disseminate all available knowledge through all ranks, so that when the unexpected comes, as it must in battle, every man knows the situation and the probable conduct of his neighbours, and can act on his own initiative without throwing the whole plan into irremediable confusion. ”

“ Discipline is not merely preservation of order, faithful performance of duty, and prevention of offenses—in other words, discipline is not merely compliance with a set of rules and regulations drawn up for the purpose of preserving order in an organization. ”

“ These principles the Professor goes on contentedly to investigate, never appearing to contemplate for an instant the possibility of the first principle in the whole business—the maintenance, by force, of the possession of land obtained by force, being ever called in question by any human mind. ”

“ Conformity of Teaching to Psychological Laws Proof of Worth of Scientific Management. — The fact that teaching under Scientific Management does conform, as will be shown, to the laws of Psychology, is an added proof of the value of Scientific Management. ”

“ The operation would begin by disseminating knowledge among the people; from this act no shock or injury can be apprehended; knowledge, by being generally cultivated, would produce wisdom—wisdom would give energy to the will, and this being universal, would prevent all concussion, or injurious shock, but would claim the privilege of partaking in the legislation of its own society. ”

“ Each class as we defined it in behavioristic terms turned out to imply an action-tendency that played an important part in the behavior of human beings while in the pursuit of the objects they desire, or in the attainment of their ends, however variously conceived or projected. Let us, then, bring the whole matter to a focus by saying that whenever we [Pg 115] describe a behavior situation in which the dominant feature is the controlling and directing of human energies, the employment of technique to further man’s purposes, or the attaining of any good whatsoever, the critical word is “right.” ”

“ What we are all forced to do is to choose a field of action which for some reason we look upon as specially interesting or important, and exercise 34our choice in that; in other matters protecting ourselves, for the most part, by some sort of mechanical control—some accepted personal authority, some local custom, some professional tradition, or the like. ”

“ Instead of training the mind to rely upon method, books and authorities as rules, it should be encouraged to form methods of its own. The mind should be questioned, and its answers listened to, instead of being furnished by the teacher. ”

“ The other is a challenge to make clear just what we mean by discipline and task and duty.
To take the latter first, is it not true that one part of our object is in the form of acquired knowledge and acquired skill? Practising the scales, or studying the multiplication table is not an end in itself. We require study and practice because we believe that the knowledge or the skill is worth having. Now it has been shown over and over again that what is learned with satisfaction sticks; and what is learned with pain is thrown overboard the first minute the watchman is off his guard. ”

“ Standards Lead to Right Methods of Thinking and Acting. — The standards of Scientific Management, as presented to the worker in the instruction card, lead to good habits, in that they present the best known method of doing the work. They thus aid the beginner, in that he need waste no time searching for right methods, but can acquire right habits at once. They aid the worker trained under an older, supplanted method, in that they wage a winning war against old-time, worn-out methods and traditions. ”

“ They seek for guidance and assurance, if guidance and assurance there may be, on matters you have made a special study, and instead of showing them how to be sure, you only tell them that you are sure. ”

“ Perfect discipline is the foundation upon which the organization is built, and the recruit must learn discipline and subordination to authority first of all. But he must learn those things without losing his self-reliance, for he will be constantly called on to act on his own responsibility. ”

“ The effect of custom on habit, and of habit upon thought is enough to prove this statement. When we [pg 317] begin to forecast consequences, the consequences that most stand out are those which will proceed from other people. The resistance and the cooperation of others is the central fact in the furtherance or failure of our schemes. Connections with our fellows furnish both the opportunities for action and the instrumentalities by which we take advantage of opportunity. All of the actions of an individual bear the stamp of his community as assuredly as does the language he speaks. ”

“ Those who have experienced the difficulty in a single case, it may be that of a relative or friend, will find it hard to believe that chance comers can be inspired wholesale with morale in public training establishments. Yet otherwise the whole policy falls to the ground. ”

“ To carry into effect the purposes of the testator, the plan of organization should evidently embrace two objects,—one, the increase of knowledge by the addition of new truths to the existing stock; the other, the diffusion of knowledge thus increased, among men. ”

“ The truly preventive activity consists not in an abstract seclusion from the world, all of whose elements are innate in each individual, but in the activity of knowledge and discipline, modified according to age and culture. ”

“ But as this theory of "training" is for the moment so generally adopted, and as so much depends upon it, it is necessary that we should examine it very closely. The "technique," say the Minority, is not yet developed. ”

“ When children or adults fail to see the reasonableness of a demand, this appeal to approval of the group may be most effective in securing desirable responses. The rule which the teacher must follow is never to appeal to a lower motive when a higher may be used. Fear, respect for authority, faith in the wisdom of the one directing, desire for social approval, ability to pick out the essentially moral element in the situation, and desire to act in accordance with one’s best judgment,—thus runs the hierarchy of motives which control. ”

“ No, the only safe and effectual method is to bring all your business habits, all the practices of the counter and the counting-house, under the searching eye of the All-seeing One. Unless you realize that He sees and knows, and unless you humbly submit everything to His judgment, you are sure to go wrong ”

“ Intervention is, and will remain, an act of physical, material force, and history largely teaches that Intervention, even for higher moral purposes, was always exercised by the strong against the weak, the strong always invoking "higher motives." ”

“ Under Scientific Management, functionalization, as will be shown, provides for the utilization of all idiosyncrasies and efficient deviations from class, and promotion is so planned that a man may develop along the line of his chief ability. Thus initiative is encouraged and developed constantly. ”