44. Self-Activity

[PARKER, S. C., General Methods of Teaching in Elementary Schools. pp. 161-162, Boston, Ginn & Co., 1919.]

The first fact referred to is that a pupil learns through his own responses, reactions, or behavior. Thus he learns to swim through trying to swim; he learns to like simple rhythmic poetry through the rhythmic feelings which it sets up in him and the rhythmic enunciation it induces in him; he learns to exercise self-control through "holding himself in," time and again; he learns to exercise careful judgment by time and again taking the attitude of "Let me see." . . . Only by making these responses himself can the pupil acquire skill in swimming, rhythmic enjoyment of poetry, and habits of exercising self-control and careful judgment. . . . This general fact that the pupil is educated through his own responses, or reactions, or behavior is sometimes called the doctrine of self-activity. . . . Often a child learns much more from other pupils than he does from the teacher, because they call forth more responses from him. . . . Often if he is very bright and the teacher is quite slow, a pupil learns more through surreptitious reading of books or through general mind-wandering than he does through the responses which the teacher stimulates him to make. . . . Slow children may be merely passive or scared observers of rapid-fire teachers.

45. Does the Child Learn by Going from the Simple to the

Complex?

[JAMES, William, Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, Chap. xiii. New York, Henry Holt & Co., 1890.]

Apparently evidence shows, as Koffka maintains, that psychogenesis begins with wholes and with integration. In child psychology, however, the theory still survives that its mental processes begin with a chaos of elements, the child's "big, blooming, buzzing confusion", as James calls it, instead of beginning with nicely separated elements.

That confusion is the baby's universe; and the universe of all of us is still to a great extent such a confusion, potentially resolvable, and demanding to be resolved, but not yet actually resolved into parts. . . .

Experience, from the very first, presents us with concreted objects, vaguely continuous with the rest of the world which en

velops them in space and time, and potentially divisible into inward elements and parts. These objects we break asunder and reunite (pp. 487-488).

46. Parker on "Simple to Complex Theory"

[PARKER, S. C., History of Modern Elementary Education, pp. 372–373. Boston, Ginn & Co., 1912.]

Analysis by the learner is prominent in ordinary learning. As a rule, in the ordinary process of learning, the individual things with which we become acquainted are complex wholes; we recognize, identify, and remember them without completely analyzing them, and may never analyze them unless some practical necessity requires it. . . . In mastering any new situation, or material. . . the following process takes place: The mind begins by apprehending the situation as a vague, unanalyzed whole; proceeds by comparison or selective attention to break this whole. up into its parts (as far as necessary for the practical purpose of the moment); and then reconstructs (synthesizes) these parts into an organized whole in which the relation of the parts is more or less clearly perceived. Hence the natural method of learning involves an initial analysis by the learner (not by the teacher) followed by a synthesis by the learner; that is, it is analytic-synthetic.

47. Learning by Analyzing Complex Wholes

[PARKER, S. C., General Methods of Teaching in the Elementary Schools, pp. 149-151. Boston, Ginn & Co., 1919.]

According to James, a person learns ordinarily by meeting complex situations and analyzing these situations himself, not by being fed the elements of these situations by some one else who has dug them out. In describing the frame of mind of a child in a very new situation, James characterized it as “a big, blooming, buzzing confusion." Examples of such situations from adult life are the following: coming out of a depot in a strange city; being plunged into the water for one's first swimming lesson; trying to draw an unfamiliar object if you have little skill in drawing; trying to solve a difficult original exercise in geometry. The learner clears up such a buzzing confusion by picking out now this phase and now that phase for separate attention. For example, in coming out of the depot you may look the people over and pick out a policeman to ques

tion, or you may look for a street car, or you may watch where the crowd goes and decide to follow it. . . . We usually carry our analysis only as far as is necessary for practical purposes. Hence we are quite familiar with many complex situations or objects, and know just how to behave toward them, although we have never analyzed them into their smallest elements. . . . Similarly, children learn to recognize, name, and use such complex objects as doors, windows, chairs, wagons, automobiles, etc., without first being taught that these have acute or obtuse angles or consist of circles, rectangles, squares, cylinders, or what not. . . . Thus we see that great modern psychologists, such as William James, describe learning not in terms of proceeding from the simple to the complex, but in terms of the learner's meeting more or less complex objects or situations and analyzing these as far as may be necessary for practical behavior. This account of the learning process is having large influence in changing the organization of subject-matter. For example, since children can easily recognize as wholes such statements as "We have two pets" or "They are white mice," such short sentences may be used in beginning reading, instead of beginning with letters or syllables. . . . Similarly in handwriting, the children write whole words or phrases before they are drilled in making meaningless straight lines and curved lines.

48. Symbolism Satirized

[THORNDIKE, E. L., Notes on Child Study, pp. 76–77. New York, Columbia University Press, 1901.]

Thorndike satirizes Froebel's views regarding the use of common things as symbols of abstractions in the following paragraphs:

And what shall I say of those who by a most extraordinary intellectual perversity attribute to children the habit of using common things as symbols of abstractions which have never in any way entered their heads; who tell us that the girl likes to play with her doll because the play symbolizes to her motherhood; that the boy likes to be out of doors because the sunlight symbolizes to him cheerfulness? ..

If we live in houses because they symbolize protection, if we like to see Sherlock Holmes on the stage because he symbolizes to us craft, or Uncle Tom because he symbolizes to us slavery, or a clown from the circus because he symbolizes to us folly; if

we eat apples because they symbolize to us the fall of man, or strawberries because they symbolize to us the scarlet woman, then perhaps the children play with the ball because it symbolizes "infinite development and absolute limitation."

No one has ever given a particle of valid evidence to show any such preposterous associations in children's minds between plain things and these far-away abstractions.

49. Difficulties Involved in General Rules-Simple Rules Desirable

[THORNDIKE, E. L., Principles of Teaching, pp. 186-187. New York, A. G. Seiler, 1916, and JAMES, William, Talks to Teachers, pp. 141– 143. New York, Henry Holt & Co., 1900.]

Avoid making rules involving distinctions which the pupils cannot make. No communication between pupils without especial permission except in the five minutes recesses between periods,' a ten-year old can understand; the distinction between a period and the five minutes recess is easy. But 'No communication between pupils that disturbs the work of the class' will be beyond him. Mr. A. C. Benson relates that a boy who was rebuked for putting a dormouse down the neck of a very easygoing master, asked in all good faith, 'But how was I to know that he drew the line at a dormouse?' Rules which vary in complex ways with attendant circumstances or with the motive for the act are unsuitable for young children and for the duller older children. Moral as well as intellectual progress should be made step by step along clear pathways. . . .

Feelings of Meaning.-[James has shown that although learners had apparently forgotten a memorized poem after the lapse of some time, the fact that they relearned it more easily proved that some considerable effect of the first learning had persisted. Hence, says James:]

"In short, Professor Ebbinghaus's experiments show that things which we are quite unable definitely to recall have nevertheless impressed themselves, in some way, upon the structure of the mind. We are different for having once learned them. The resistances in our systems of brain-paths are altered. Our apprehensions are quickened. Our conclusions from certain premises are probably not just what they would be if those modifications were not there. . .

"The teacher should draw a lesson from these facts. We are all too apt to measure the gains of our pupils by their proficiency

in directly reproducing in a recitation or an examination such matters as they may have learned; and inarticulate power in them is something of which we always underestimate the value. The boy who tells us "I know the answer, but I can't say what it is," we treat as practically identical with him who knows absolutely nothing about the answer at all. But this is a great mistake. It is but a small part of our experience in life that we are ever able articulately to recall. And yet the whole of it has had its influence in shaping our character and defining our tendencies to judge and act. Although the ready memory is a great blessing to its possessor, the vaguer memory of a subject, of having once had to do with it, of its neighborhood and of where we may go to recover it again, constitutes in most men and women the chief fruit of their education. . . .

Be patient, then, and sympathetic with the type of mind that cuts a poor figure in examinations. It may, in the long examination which life sets us, come out in the end in better shape than the glib and ready reproducer, its passions being deeper, its purposes more worthy, its combining power less commonplace, and its total mental output consequently more important.

50. Sensory-Motor Experiences

[HALL, G. Stanley, Adolescence, Vol. I, p. 172. New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1908.]

Of all work-schools, a good farm is probably the best for motor development. This is due to its great variety of occupations, healthful conditions, and the incalculable phyletic reinforcement from immemorial times. I have computed some threescore industries, as the census now classifies them, that were more or less generally known and practised sixty years ago in a little township which not only in this but in other respects has many features of an ideal educational environment for adolescent boys, combining as it does not only physical and industrial, but civil and religious elements in wise proportions and with pedagogic objectivity, and representing the ideal of such a state of intelligent citizen voters as was contemplated by the framers of the Constitution.