University Extension Lectures Syllabus of a Course of Six Lectures on The Development of Mind or The Psychology of Childhood Second Series By Earl Barnes, A. B., M. S. Lecturer for the American Society for the Extension of University Teaching No. 224 Copyright, 1903, by Price, 10 cents The American Society for the Extension of University Teaching The Class.-At the close of each lecture a class will be held for questions and further discussion. All are urged to attend it and to take an active part. The subjects discussed will ordinarily be those arising from the lecture of the same evening. In centres in which no Students' Association (see below) has been formed, the class will afford opportunity for the lecturer to comment on the papers submitted to him. The Weekly Papers.—Every student has the privilege of writing and sending to the lecturer each week, while the course is in progress, a paper treating any theme from the lists given at the end of each part of the syllabus. The paper should have at the head of the first sheet the name of the writer and the name of the centre. Papers may be addressed to the lecturer, University Extension, III South Fifteenth street, Philadelphia. The Students' Association.-Every lecture centre will be greatly helped in its work by the formation of a club or other body of students and readers desirous of getting the stimulus that working in common affords. This Students' Association will have its own organization and arrange its regular programme, if possible, both before and after as well as during the lecture course. The lecturer will always lend his help in drawing up programmes, and, when the meeting falls on the day of the lecture, will endeavor to attend and take part. Much of the best work of Extension is being done through the Students' Associations. The Examination.-Those students who have followed the course throughout will be admitted at the close of the lectures to an examination under the direction of the lecturer. Each person who passes the examination successfully will receive from the American Society for the Extension of University Teaching a certificate in testimony thereof. LECTURE I. Conception, Judgment and Reasoning or The Elaboration of Knowledge. Conception: Close relation of language and abstraction. Gradual building up of a concept by Mrs. Moore's child. Barnes' study on the concepts, monk, peasant, armor, emperor, nation and school; large "no content" and "wrong content" at seven years; steady change with advancing years; where the children get material for the humanistic terms they use. Judgment: Involved in all perceiving, conceiving, generalizing; early errors largely due to inadequate experience. Inductive reasoning: Results of studies by Mary Sheldon Barnes; main interest in persons and actions, causes and results; personal inferences strong before thirteen; good power of inference developing about the age of thirteen. Study by M. A. Tucker. Deductive reasoning: Difficulties in devising a good test for children. In general, children pass through three stages: From birth to about twelve years old, children largely receptive; rest in authority; accept what they are told. Hence children are partisans; untrustworthiness of children's evidence; occasional exceptions; Helen Keller. About ten or twelve years old a reasoning hunger appears; children long for large views; their unorganized collections become oppressive; causes and effects wanted; sense of evidence appears. Practical life is mainly compromise; few major premises are trusted. Most adults live in childish stages of reasoning. Children's reasoning hunger gathers around: Words and their contents; natural phenomena; theological problems; social conventions. The acquisitive period should not be used for reasoning studies; bearing on number; history; geography; languages. READING. Barnes, Earl. How Words Get Content. Barnes' Studies in Education. 1902. Vol. II, pp. 43-62. Sully, James. Studies of Childhood. Chapter on the Dawn of Reason. Appleton: New York. 1896. Brown, H. W. Some Records of the Thoughts and Reasoning of Children. Pedagogical Seminary. December, 1893. Vol. II, pp. 358 396 Hancock, John A. Children's Ability to Reason. Educational Review. October, 1896. Vol. XII, pp. 261–268. Barnes, Mary Sheldon. Studies in Historical Method. Heath: Boston. 1896. Tracy, Frederick. The Psychology of Childhood. Heath: Boston. 1894. SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY. Keep a record of the questions asked by a child during a week and classify them as to the reasoning processes they involve. Repeat Barnes' study on growth of concepts, and write a critical paper on his work. LECTURE II. Memory and Imagination or Recording, Recalling and Combining Ideas. How images are recorded: Sensation, perception, recording; everything felt, thought or done tends to register itself in the nervous system. Retaining power depends in the first place on quality of nerve substance; drill does not greatly change this quality. Other conditions affecting memory: Strength of sensations, young child especially needs strong impressions; interest; active attention; repetition; logical connection of ideas through association; teacher can control all these factors except attention, and can aid that. Memory through special senses: Eye-memory; ear-memory; muscular sense-memories; generally things done are best remembered; habits; instincts. Peculiarities of memory in childhood: Why we do not remember events of infancy; weak sense of time, place and personality; fragmentary character of memory in infancy; examples; due to unorganized character of child's mind, nonselective. Period of childhood when memory is strongest; how this period should be used; should forms, catechisms, dates, memory gems, be stored for later use? Experimental studies on memory: Bergstrom; Shaw; Jastrow; memory idiots; calculating prodigies. Educational applications: How far can memory be trained? Its neglect in modern education. Does its cultivation weaken judgment? Imagination: Recalling images exactly as recorded is reproductive imagination; the same as memory. Recalling images in new combinations is creative imagination; fancy is random imaging; dreams. Peculiarities of children's imagination: Very active, like |