How to Teach Part 12

There has been considerable discussion during recent years concerning the obligation of the school to teach children concerning matters of s.e.x. Traditionally, our policy has been one of almost entire neglect.

The consequence has been, on the whole, the acquisition upon the part of boys and girls of a large body of misinformation, which has for the most part been vicious. It is not probable that we can ever expect most teachers to have the training necessary to give adequate instruction in this field. For children in the upper grades, during the preadolescent period especially, some such instruction given by the men and women trained in biology, or possibly by men and women doctors who have made a specialty of this field, promises a large contribution to the development of the right att.i.tudes with respect to the s.e.x life and the elimination of much of the immorality which has been due to ignorance or to the vicious misinformation which has commonly been spread among children. The policy of secrecy and ignorance cannot well be maintained if we accept the idea of responsibility and the exercise of judgment as the basis of moral social activity. In no other field are the results of a lack of training or a lack of morality more certain to be disastrous both for the individual and for the social group.

QUESTIONS

1. How satisfactory is the morality of the man who claims that he does no wrong?

2. How is it possible for a child to be unmoral and not immoral?

3. Are children who observe school rules and regulations necessarily growing in morality?

4. Why is it important, from the standpoint of growth in morality, to have children form socially desirable habits, even though we may not speak of this kind of activity as moral conduct?

5. What const.i.tutes growth in morality for the adult?

6. In what sense is it possible for the same act to be immoral, unmoral, and moral for individuals living under differing circ.u.mstances and in different social groups? Give an example.

7. Why have moral reformers sometimes been considered immoral by their a.s.sociates?

8. What is the moral significance of earning a living? Of being prompt?

Of being courteous?

9. What are the instincts upon which we may hope to build in moral training? What instinctive basis is there for immoral conduct?

10. To what extent is intellectual activity involved in moral conduct?

What is the significance of one's emotional response?

11. What stages of development are distinguishable in the moral development of children? Is it possible to cla.s.sify children as belonging to one stage or the other by their ages?

12. Why is it true that one's character depends upon the deliberate choices which he makes among several possible modes or types of action?

13. Why is it important to have positive satisfaction follow moral conduct?

14. How may the conduct of parents and teachers influence conduct of children?

15. What is the weakness of direct moral instruction, e.g. the telling of stories of truthfulness, the teaching of moral precepts, and the like?

16. What opportunities can you provide in your cla.s.s for moral social conduct?

17. Children will do what is right because of their desire to please, their respect for authority, their fear of unpleasant consequences, their careful, thoughtful a.n.a.lysis of the situation and choice of that form of action which they consider right. Arrange these motives in order of their desirability. Would you be satisfied to utilize the motive which brings results most quickly and most surely?

18. In what sense is it true that lapses from moral conduct are the teacher's best opportunity for moral teaching?

19. How may children contribute to the social welfare of the school community? Of the larger social group outside of the school?

20. How may pupil partic.i.p.ation in school government be made significant in the development of social moral conduct?

XII. TRANSFER OF TRAINING

Formal discipline or transfer of training concerns itself with the question as to how far training in one subject, along one line, influences other lines. How far, for instance, training in reasoning in mathematics helps a child to reason in history, in morals, in household administration; how far memorizing gems of poetry or dates in history aids memory when it is applied to learning stenography or botany; how far giving attention to the gymnasium will insure attention to sermons and one's social engagements. The question is, How far does the special training one gets in home and school fit him to react to the environment of life with its new and complex situations? Put in another way, the question is what effect upon other bonds does forming this particular situation response series of bonds have. The practical import of the question and its answer is tremendous. Most of our present school system, both in subject matter and method, is built upon the a.s.sumption that one answer is correct--if it is false, much work remains to be done by the present-day education.

The point of view which was held until recent years is best made clear by a series of quotations.

"Since the mind is a unit and the faculties are simply phases or manifestations of its activity, whatever strengthens one faculty indirectly strengthens all the others. The _verbal_ memory seems to be an exception to this statement, however, for it may be abnormally cultivated without involving to any profitable extent the other faculties. But only things that are rightly perceived and rightly understood can be _rightly_ remembered. Hence whatever develops the acquisitive and a.s.similative powers will also strengthen memory; and, conversely, rightly strengthening the memory necessitates the developing and training of the other powers." (R.N. Roark, Method in Education, p. 27.)

"It is as a means of training the faculties of perception and generalization that the study of such a language as Latin in comparison with English is so valuable." (C.L. Morgan, Psychology for Teachers, p. 186.)

"Arithmetic, if judiciously taught, forms in the pupil habits of mental attention, argumentative sequence, absolute accuracy, and satisfaction in truth as a result, that do not seem to spring equally from the study of any other subject suitable to this elementary stage of instruction." (Joseph Payne, Lectures on Education, Vol. I, p. 260.)

"By means of experimental and observational work in science, not only will his attention be excited, the power of observation, previously awakened, much strengthened, and the senses exercised and disciplined, but the very important habit of doing homage to the authority of facts rather than to the authority of men, be initiated." (_Ibid_., p. 261.)

The view maintained by these writers is that the mind is made up of certain elemental powers such as attention, reasoning, observation, imagination, and the like, each of which acts as a unit. Training any one of these powers means simply its exercise irrespective of the material used. The facility gained through this exercise may then be transferred to other subjects or situations, which are quite different.

The present point of view with regard to this question is very different, as is shown by the following quotations:

"We may conclude, then, that there is something which may be called formal discipline, and that it may be more or less general in character. It consists in the establishment of habitual reactions that correspond to the form of situations.

These reactions foster adjustments, att.i.tudes, and ideas that favor the successful dealing with the emergencies that arouse them. On the other hand, both the form that we can learn to deal with more effectively, and the reactions that we a.s.sociate with it, are definite. There is no general training of the powers or faculties, so far as we can determine."

(Henderson, 10, p. 307 f.)

"One mental function or activity improves others in so far as and because they are in part identical with it, because it contains elements common to them. Addition improves multiplication because multiplication is largely addition; knowledge of Latin gives increased ability to learn French because many of the facts learned in the one case are needed in the other. The study of geometry may lead a pupil to be more logical in all respects, for one element of being logical in all respects is to realize that facts can be absolutely proven and to admire and desire this certain and unquestionable sort of demonstration...." (Thorndike, '06, pp.

243-245, _pa.s.sim_.)

"Mental discipline is the most important thing in education, but it is specific, not general. The ability developed by means of one subject can be transferred to another subject only in so far as the latter has elements in common with the former. Abilities should be developed in school only by means of those elements of subject-matter and of method that are common to the most valuable phases of the outside environment.

In the high school there should also be an effort to work out general concepts of method from the specific methods used."

(Heck, '09, Edition of '11, p. 198.)

"... No study should have a place in the curriculum for which this general disciplinary characteristic is the chief recommendation. Such advantage can probably be gotten in some degree from every study, and the intrinsic values of each study afford at present a far safer criterion of educational work than any which we can derive from the theory of formal discipline." (Angell, '08, p. 14.)

These writers also believe in transfer of training, but they believe the transfer to be never complete, to be in general a very small percentage of the special improvement gained and at times to be negative and to interfere with responses in other fields instead of being a help. They also emphasize the belief that when the transfer does occur, it is for some perfectly valid reason and under certain very definite conditions.

They reject utterly the machine-like idea of the mind and its elemental faculties held by the writers first quoted. They hold the view of mental activity which has been emphasized in the discussion of original tendencies and inheritance from near ancestry, _i.e._, that the physical correlate of all types of mental activity is a definite forming of connections between particular bonds-these connections, of course, according to the laws of readiness exercise, and effect, would be determined by the situation acting as a stimulus and would, therefore, vary as the total situation varied. They believe in a highly specialized human brain, which reacts in small groups of nerve tracts--not in gross wholes. They would express each of the "elemental" powers in the plural and not in the singular.

The basis of this change of view within the last fifteen or twenty years is to be found in experimental work. The question has definitely been put to the test as to how far training in one line did influence others.

For a full description of the various types of experiments performed the reader is referred to Thorndike's "Psychology of Learning," Chapter 12.

Only an indication of the type of work done and the general character of the results can be given here. Experiments in the effect of cross education, in memorizing, in observing and judging sensory and perceptual data, and in forming sensori-motor a.s.sociation habits have been conducted in considerable numbers. A few experiments in special school functions have also been carried out. Investigations in the correlation between various parts of the same subject and between different subjects supposed to be closely allied also throw light upon this subject. The results from these different lines of experiment, although confusing and sometimes contradictory, seem to warrant the belief stated above. They have made it very clear that the question of transfer is not a simple one, but, on the contrary, that it is extremely complex. They make plain that in some cases where large transfer was confidently expected, that little resulted, while, on the other hand, in some cases when little was expected, much more occurred. It is evident that the old idea of a large transfer in some subtle and unexplained way of special improvements to a general faculty is false. But, on the other hand, it would be equally false to say that no transfer occurred. The general principle seems to be that transfer occurs when the same bonds are used in the second situation to the extent that the alteration in these particular connections affects the second response. Both the knowledge of what bonds are used in various responses and to what extent alteration in them will affect different total responses is lacking.

Therefore, all that is at present possible is a statement of conditions under which transfer is probable.

In general, then, transfer of training will occur to the extent that the two responses use the same bonds--to the extent, then, that there is ident.i.ty of some sort. This ident.i.ty which makes transfer possible may be of all degrees of generality and of several different types. First, there may be ident.i.ty of content. For instance, forming useful connections with six, island, and, red, habit, Africa, square root, triangle, gender, percentage, and so on, in this or that particular context should be of use in other contexts and therefore allow of transfer of training. The more common the particular responses are to all sorts of life situations, the greater the possibility of transfer.

Second, the ident.i.ty may be that of method or procedure. To be able to add, to carry, to know the method of cla.s.sifying an unknown flower, to have a definite method of meeting a new situation in hand-work, to know how to use source material in history, to have gained the technique of laboratory skill in chemistry, to know how to study in geography, should be useful in other departments where the same method would serve. Some of these methods are, of course, of much more general service than others. In establis.h.i.+ng skill in the use of these various procedures, two types of responses are needed. The learner must form connections of a positive nature, such as a.n.a.lyzing, collecting material, criticizing according to standard, picking out the essential and so on, and he must also form connections of a negative character which will cause him to neglect certain tendencies. He must learn not to accept the first idea offered, to neglect suggestions, to hurry or to leave half finished, to ignore interruptions, to prevent personal bias to influence criticism, and so on. These connections which result in neglecting certain elements are quite as important as the positive element, both in the production of the particular procedure and in the transfer to other fields. Third, the ident.i.ty may be of still more general character and be in terms of att.i.tude or ideal. To learn to be thorough in connection with history, accurate in handwork, open-minded in science, persistent in Latin, critical in geometry, thorough in cla.s.s and school activities; to form habits of allegiance to ideals of truth, cooperation, fair play, tolerance, courage, and so on, _may_ help the learner to exhibit these same att.i.tudes in other situations in life. Here again the connections of neglect are important. To neglect selfish suggestions, to ignore the escape from consequences that falsehood might make possible, to be dead to fear, to ignore bodily aches and pains, are quite as necessary in producing conduct that is generous, truthful, and courageous as are the positive connections made in building up the ideal.

In the discussion of transfer because of ident.i.ty, it was emphasised that the presence of ident.i.ty of various types explained cases of transfer that exist and made transfer possible. In no case must it be understood, however, that the presence of these identical elements is a warrant of transfer. Transfer _may_ take place under such conditions, but it need not do so. Transfer is most sure to occur in cases of ident.i.ty of substance and least likely in cases of ident.i.ty of att.i.tude or ideals. To have useful responses to six, above, city, quart, and so on, in one situation will very likely mean responses of a useful nature in almost all situations which have such elements present. It is very different with the ideals. A child may be very accurate in handwork, and yet almost nothing of it show elsewhere; he may be truthful to his teacher and lie to his parents; he may be generous to his cla.s.smates and the reverse to his brothers and sisters. Persistence in Latin may not influence his work in the shop, and the critical att.i.tude of geometry be lacking in his science. Transfer in methods holds a middle ground. It seems that the more complex and the more subtle the connections involved, the less is the amount and the surety of the transfer.

In order to increase the probability of transfer when connections of method or att.i.tudes are being formed, first, it should be made conscious, and second, it should be put into practice in several types of situations. There is grave danger that the method will not be differentiated from the subject, the ideal from the context of the situation. To many children learning how to study in connection with history, or to be critical in geometry, or to be scientific in the laboratory, has never been separated from the particular situation. The method or the ideal and the situation in which they have been acquired are one--one response. The general elements of method or att.i.tude have never been made conscious, they are submerged in the particular subject or situation, and therefore the probability of transfer is lessened. If, on the other hand, the question of method, as an idea by itself, apart from any particular subject, is brought to the child's attention; if truth as an ideal, independent of context, is made conscious, it is much more likely to be reacted to in a different situation, for it has become a free idea and therefore crystallized. Then having freed the general somewhat from its particular setting, the learner should be given opportunity to put it in practice in other settings. To simply form the method connections or the att.i.tude responses in Latin and then blindly trust that they will be of general use is unsafe. It is the business of the educator to make as sure as he can of the transfer, and that can only be done by practicing in several fields. These two procedures which make transfer more sure, i.e., making the element conscious and giving practice in several fields, are not sharply divided, but interact.

Practice makes the idea clearer and freer, and this in turn makes fresh practice profitable. It is simply the application of the law of a.n.a.lysis by varying concomitants.