CHAPTER XXVIII

GENERAL DISCIPLINE AND EDUCATIONAL VALUES

Meaning of General Discipline.-How do the various special educational activities which a child undergoes affect his general powers? This is a question of vital importance in determining educational practice. The popular mind has always had a ready reply. The answer is substantially that exercise is the sine qua non of growth, and the further assumption is made that the effects produced are not confined to the special organs or powers involved. It is held that the effects of training are general and that whatever is gained by any organ or power through a given kind of activity will increase the efficiency of all other organs or powers and can be utilized in all other situations in life. The strength and skill derived through pitching hay, swinging Indian clubs, and rowing, for example, can be used in skating, swimming, constructing watches, or in resisting fatigue when under strain in professional duties.

Analogous reasonings are followed out concerning mental growth and exercise. Each subject is assumed to be a sort of mental grindstone upon which the wits are sharpened. We are told that the study of arithmetic, grammar, etc., will develop general strength of mind-a sort of mental muscle-which can be drawn upon in any emergency. It is assumed that the one who is strong in arithmetic will be equally proficient in geometry, botany, or foreign languages, because of the power gained through the exercise in arithmetic. The traditional subject most recommended for strengthening the reasoning powers is arithmetic. Robert Recorde was the author of a book on algebra published in 1557, called The Whetstone of Witte, evidently because he regarded it as a sovereign means of sharpen

ing the faculties. Nature study is supposed to train "the power of observation," and grammar has maintained its place largely because of its general "disciplinary" value. It is said to develop keenness of perception, to strengthen the memory, make one logical, give one insight, etc., etc. While some argue the superior efficacy of this or that subject, there is a prevailing impression, even among many teachers, that it does not matter very much what one studies provided it is difficult. The exercise required by hard work and the "discipline" resulting therefrom are the chief considerations. The how is thought to be a much more important consideration than the what.

The exponent of general discipline speaks, for example, of training the senses, meaning thereby the exercise of seeing, hearing, or touching for the sake of the exercise alone. What is seen, heard, or touched is regarded as of minor consequence. The exercise is considered the important thing. By the process the senses are supposed to have taken on additional power so that they may see, hear, or touch anything and everything the better. Primary teachers often give exercises in what they term “sense training." It consists in presenting various colors, forms, and objects to be seen and identified, sounds to be heard and remembered or reproduced, various muscular activities to be witnessed and reproduced, etc. By this means it is supposed that the senses are "trained" for any situation in life. The exercises are certainly good as far as they go, but the reasons ascribed are bad pedagogy.

Great stress has been placed upon the assumed principle that the mind is a sort of homogeneous organ or power which proper gymnastics or grooming can awaken to activity. Through this activity it is supposed to have gained strength, and this strength is further supposed to be applicable in any direction. It is assumed that mental power is something perfectly general and may be applied to any specific problem. As Dr. De Garmo has stated the theory (in repudiating it), it assumes "that the mind can store up mechanical force in a few subjects, like grammar and mathematics, which can be used with efficiency in any de

partment of life." "That is," observes Dr. Hinsdale,' "the process that formal discipline assumes may be likened to the passage of energy from the fires of the sun, first to vegetation, and then to the coal beds and subterranean reservoirs of oil and gas, whence it is again drawn forth to cook a breakfast, to warm a drawing-room, to light a city, or to propel a steamship across the ocean."

Prevalence of the Theory of General Discipline.-Although many will admit that elementary school studies are largely those that are needed for practical purposes and for general information, yet when the high school is considered it will not be so readily conceded. The high school and the college are considered chiefly as institutions affording mental discipline and the cultivation of mental power. When I entered the university as a student the distinguished president in his address to new students held that the great aim of education is the acquisition of mental power instead of facts. He stated that he had ranked high in mathematics once, but felt sure he could not then pass a freshman entrance examination in mathematics. He regarded the derived power, however, as a permanent possession which he had turned to account in every mental feat in later life. He was a great man, but he had a faulty psychology. His interpretation of the processes of acquisition, of forgetting, and of mental growth and development was entirely

erroneous.

In the schools pupils frequently hear the faulty notions of mental growth and development dinned into their ears. When they inquire concerning the relation of their studies to life they are often put off with the answer that their minds are becoming developed, that the pursuit of the subject is for their good, and that though they will never use the knowledge gained in that subject, the hard work will develop their perception, their memory, their imagination, their reason, etc. Platform speakers at the opening exercises emphasize the thought that if the pupils will only submit patiently to the prescribed exercises, 1 Studies in Education, p. 46.

later in life they will be armored for any sort of mental fray. In their commencement orations the fledglings echo the refrain about the paramount importance of mental discipline, though what they mean by it is still more hazy and undefined in their minds than in the minds of their elders.

Thorndike in discussing the same question says: "It is clear that the common view is that the words accuracy, quickness, discrimination, memory, observation, attention, concentration, judgment, reasoning, etc., stand for some real and elemental abilities which are the same no matter what material they work upon; that these elemental abilities are altered by special disciplines to a large extent; that they retain those alterations when turned to other fields; that thus in a more or less mysterious way learning to do one thing well will make one do better things that in concrete appearance have absolutely no community with it.

"The mind is regarded as a machine of which the different faculties are parts. Experiences being thrown in at one end, perception perceives them, discrimination tells them apart, memory retains them and so on. By training the machine is made to work more quickly, efficiently and economically with all sorts of experiences. Or in a still cruder type of thinking the mind is a storage battery which can be loaded with will-power or intellect or judgment, giving the individual ‘a surplus of mind to expend.' General names for a host of individual processes such as judgment, precision, concentration are falsely taken to refer to pieces of mental machinery which we can once for all get into working order, or still worse to amounts of some thing which can be stored up in bank to be drawn on at leisure."

The doctrine of educational gymnastics has gained an alarming hold. Teachers are told that "mental power is a more valuable result of teaching than mere knowledge, and hence the process of acquiring becomes more important than the knowledge acquired. Power abides; facts are forgotten."

1 Educational Psychology, p. 84.

Objections.-The theory has gained most of its support from the fact that many of the best trained minds down to the present have taken certain traditional courses and it is thereby argued that being the best trained and having had certain courses they must have derived their power through those courses. It is forgotten that those scholastic courses have been taken by those individuals because they were the best individuals at the start and therefore became students and continued as such. Modern education is demonstrating that entirely different courses may attract the best individuals, and that these individuals at the close of the pursuit of such courses are still among the best. It is being clearly demonstrated as fallacious to assume that the best individuals are best because of a particular course of study. It is equally fallacious to assume that the wide variety of powers necessary to place an individual among the great or distinguished have all been developed through a narrow range of experiences.

A further fallacy comes from likening the mind to the muscles of the body, which by specific exercise can develop strength that can be utilized in a variety of ways. Even in this physical analogy there is much fallacy. Dr. Hinsdale says: "The force engendered by any defined exertion of physical power is fully available for all like kinds of exercise, but only partially so for unlike kinds. Thus, the power or skill engendered by driving nails can all be used in driving nails, but only partially in shoving a plane. . . . Activity tends, first, to invigorate the whole body to tone it up,' as we say-and, secondly, to overflow into new channels lying near to the one in which it was created. ... The facts do not prove that a reservoir of power can be accumulated by any one kind of effort that can be used indifferently for any and all purposes. There is no such thing as a formal physical discipline. Energy created by activity flowing in one channel cannot be turned at will into any other channel. A boxer is not perforce a fencer. A pugilist in training does not train promiscuously, but according to certain strict methods that experience has approved."

1 Studies in Education, p. 46.