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Page 11
Of the various systems of manual training, so far as woodwork is
concerned, the Swedish Sloyd system, if I may have an opinion on such
matters, seems to me by far the best, psychologically considered. Manual
training methods, fortunately, are being slowly but surely introduced
into all our large cities. But there is still an immense distance to
traverse before they shall have gained the extension which they are
destined ultimately to possess.
* * * * *
No impression without expression, then,--that is the first pedagogic
fruit of our evolutionary conception of the mind as something
instrumental to adaptive behavior. But a word may be said in
continuation. The expression itself comes back to us, as I intimated a
moment ago, in the form of a still farther impression,--the impression,
namely, of what we have done. We thus receive sensible news of our
behavior and its results. We hear the words we have spoken, feel our own
blow as we give it, or read in the bystander's eyes the success or
failure of our conduct. Now this return wave of impression pertains to
the completeness of the whole experience, and a word about its
importance in the schoolroom may not be out of place.
It would seem only natural to say that, since after acting we normally
get some return impression of result, it must be well to let the pupil
get such a return impression in every possible case. Nevertheless, in
schools where examination marks and 'standing' and other returns of
result are concealed, the pupil is frustrated of this natural
termination of the cycle of his activities, and often suffers from the
sense of incompleteness and uncertainty; and there are persons who
defend this system as encouraging the pupil to work for the work's sake,
and not for extraneous reward. Of course, here as elsewhere, concrete
experience must prevail over psychological deduction. But, so far as our
psychological deduction goes, it would suggest that the pupil's
eagerness to know how well he does is in the line of his normal
completeness of function, and should never be balked except for very
definite reasons indeed.
Acquaint them, therefore, with their marks and standing and prospects,
unless in the individual case you have some special practical reason for
not so doing.
VI. NATIVE REACTIONS AND ACQUIRED REACTIONS
We are by this time fully launched upon the biological conception. Man
is an organism for reacting on impressions: his mind is there to help
determine his reactions, and the purpose of his education is to make
them numerous and perfect. _Our education means, in short, little more
than a mass of possibilities of reaction,_ acquired at home, at school,
or in the training of affairs. The teacher's task is that of supervising
the acquiring process.
This being the case, I will immediately state a principle which
underlies the whole process of acquisition and governs the entire
activity of the teacher. It is this:--
_Every acquired reaction is, as a rule, either a complication grafted on
a native reaction, or a substitute for a native reaction, which the same
object originally tended to provoke._
_The teacher's art consists in bringing about the substitution or
complication, and success in the art presupposes a sympathetic
acquaintance with the reactive tendencies natively there_.
Without an equipment of native reactions on the child's part, the
teacher would have no hold whatever upon the child's attention or
conduct. You may take a horse to the water, but you cannot make him
drink; and so you may take a child to the schoolroom, but you cannot
make him learn the new things you wish to impart, except by soliciting
him in the first instance by something which natively makes him react.
He must take the first step himself. He must _do_ something before you
can get your purchase on him. That something may be something good or
something bad. A bad reaction is better than no reaction at all; for, if
bad, you can couple it with consequences which awake him to its badness.
But imagine a child so lifeless as to react in _no_ way to the teacher's
first appeals, and how can you possibly take the first step in his
education?
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