process of determining action. Or, if they are situations studied in history, biography, or literature, they must be situations into which the pupil is capable of injecting himself and in which he mentally lives and acts for the time being. Feeling should normally grow out of a concrete situation of some sort and return into that situation to inhibit or to reënforce processes which are going on there. In this way sentiment is developed as over against mere sentimentality. Mr. James very aptly says: "When a resolve or a fine glow of feeling is allowed to evaporate without bearing practical fruit it is worse than a chance lost; it works so as positively to hinder future resolutions and emotions from taking the normal path of discharge. There is no more contemptible type of human character than that of the nerveless sentimentalist and dreamer, who spends his life in a weltering sea of sensibility and emotion, but who never does a manly concrete deed."1 (3) Isolation of the will aspect. The functional point of view shows the fallacy of the culture of will as a matter of sheer effort. There is necessary an intellectual appreciation of ends, together with feeling in the form of interest. It is not necessarily true that the harder anything is to master the better it is for training the will. If the arbitrary element in the task has been prominent, the net result of the effort put forth may be the acquisition of hatred for the subject. Training of will is concerned with the proper development of ideals more even than it is with giving formal practice in the putting forth of effort. But these ideals must be so developed that they cannot be held off as cold intellectual propositions recognized as valid by the individual while at the same time making no vital appeal to him as having value for the self. We must develop ideals under 1 1 James, Psychology, Briefer Course, pp. 147-148. such conditions that they will become warmed through with the feeling element. This wil ideals dynamic, and effort will follow naturally a matter of sheer force. The training of th large part a question of the dynamism of ideals, proper union of feeling and intellectual element impetus and guidance of which acts are con reference to the realization of ends. 6. THE UNITY AND CONTINUITY OF CHILD ADULT MIND. As one result of the child-study movement m made of the differences between the child an both on the physical and on the mental side upon the mental differences between children is of very great service to educational thoug it is clearly seen just wherein those differences there has been some tendency, while recognizi ferences, to let the fundamental unity and mind throughout all the stages of its develop obscured. (1) The principle of unity and continuity. The doctrine of the organic circuit has ma the differentiation and organization of consci phase of an evolving experience of adjustment In this respect the child's mind is in its essenti same sort of a mind as that of the adult. H that of the adult, is functional to the core. T applies to both. Conscious processes are called certain conditions, and they function to meet While we recognize that the mental acti adult are normally called forth only to meet con make their functioning necessary, we sometin we thought that those of the child responded that we desired merely upon our demand. O we too often assume that if he imitates and forms in which our mental activities express themselves, he is actually being trained in their use. Educators talk a great deal about the self-activity of the child. The only self-activity that is worth anything is that in which the conscious processes are called forth in situations in which they are relevant to felt needs of some sort. In this respect, the law of self-activity is the same for child and adult. (2) Difference within unity. We have seen that on the side of function child mind and adult mind are the same,- -a device for the variation and reconstruction of reactions to meet more adequately the needs of adjustment. But as the child's experience in organizing and controlling activities is more limited in extent and is simpler in character than that of the adult, we should expect to find corresponding differences in his mental make-up. From the functional point of view there must be a difference in the degree of the development and perfection of the specialized processes, or technique,1 by means of which the function is exercised in the two cases. The child on the whole deals with simpler problems, which do not demand the more highly specialized technique of consciousness for their control. Also, he has had a more limited experience and there has been less opportunity for the differentiation and organization of consciousness in the actual process of controlling action. Functional psychology may properly contend that there is essential unity and continuity of child mind and adult mind and at the same time insist that the child's mind be studied and interpreted in terms of itself rather than in terms of the adult mind and what we know of its highly specialized modes of activity. The child's mental processes can be understood only in terms of his stage of development and in terms of the experiences which lie back of, and are involved in, that stage of development. No amount of 1 See Chapter IX for further explanation of the use of the term technique. 1 study of the adult mind can show us just what are the precise mental processes of the child. For the determination of these we must study the child himself, particularly the nature and degree of control which he has attained over action, control not resulting from the process of mere physical growth and development. Yet the full interpretation of the child cannot be given without reference to the nature of the adult consciousness. This thought must now be developed. Child psychology reveals the process of growing control; adult psychology shows that control in its more highly perfected form. In child psychology we are studying mind in the making; in adult psychology we are taking more the point of view of the finished product. The conscious processes of the adult represent the normal goal of achievement in the perfection of the machinery of consciousness for exercising control over the world in which we live. A study of them gives an idea of the nature and the value of the various specializations, or elements of technique, which are developing in the mind of the child for effecting varied and efficient adjustment. It is the business of teachers and parents not merely to call forth the conscious processes of the child but to call them forth by supplying the conditions which shall secure their normal functioning and lead to the goal of their normal development. This requires a knowledge not alone of child psychology but also of adult psychology. Putting this thought in other terms, we may say that the teacher needs to know what are the fundamental impulses developing in the child at any particular period in order to make these the basis of appeal and under normal motivation secure the self-expression on which mental growth and motor control must depend. But he also needs to keep his eye on the remote goal of adult development, or the normal outcome of the educative process, in order to know what impulses and tendencies need checking and what others need stimulating. Thus he will not merely indulge the present impulses of the child but will guide and direct them along the line of development which shall be of greatest value. The present moment of child life, with all its wealth of concrete tendencies, must not be ignored. It is the dynamic center on which all future growth and development depends. But, at the same time, this present moment must be viewed as continuous with a larger whole, of which the remote but more perfectly developed future is a part. Supplementary Readings for Chapter VI Angell, Psychology, pp. 301-2. James, Psychology, Briefer Course, pp. 117-18, 370-2, 147-8. Stout, Manual of Psychology, pp. 56-68. Sully, Teacher's Handbook of Psychology, pp. 44-51. The references to Dewey, Stout, and Sully just given are especially fine discussions of the distinction of intellect, feeling, and will from one another and their mutual interrelations with one another as phases of a single consciousness. O'Shea, Education as Adjustment, pp. 69-73, 135-7, Chs. 13 and 14. Bagley, The Educative Process, Ch. 14. O'Shea and Bagley have given the best recent discussions of the "Doctrine of Formal Discipline" of which I know. They should be supplemented by the papers of Angell, Pillsbury, and Judd in the Educational Review, June, 1908. O'Shea, Dynamic Factors in Education, pp. 74-6. |