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Page 3
TALKS TO STUDENTS.
I. THE GOSPEL OF RELAXATION
II. ON A CERTAIN BLINDNESS IN HUMAN BEINGS
III. WHAT MAKES A LIFE SIGNIFICANT?
* * * * *
TALKS TO TEACHERS
I. PSYCHOLOGY AND THE TEACHING ART
In the general activity and uprising of ideal interests which every one
with an eye for fact can discern all about us in American life, there is
perhaps no more promising feature than the fermentation which for a
dozen years or more has been going on among the teachers. In whatever
sphere of education their functions may lie, there is to be seen among
them a really inspiring amount of searching of the heart about the
highest concerns of their profession. The renovation of nations begins
always at the top, among the reflective members of the State, and
spreads slowly outward and downward. The teachers of this country, one
may say, have its future in their hands. The earnestness which they at
present show in striving to enlighten and strengthen themselves is an
index of the nation's probabilities of advance in all ideal directions.
The outward organization of education which we have in our United States
is perhaps, on the whole, the best organization that exists in any
country. The State school systems give a diversity and flexibility, an
opportunity for experiment and keenness of competition, nowhere else to
be found on such an important scale. The independence of so many of the
colleges and universities; the give and take of students and instructors
between them all; their emulation, and their happy organic relations to
the lower schools; the traditions of instruction in them, evolved from
the older American recitation-method (and so avoiding on the one hand
the pure lecture-system prevalent in Germany and Scotland, which
considers too little the individual student, and yet not involving the
sacrifice of the instructor to the individual student, which the English
tutorial system would seem too often to entail),--all these things (to
say nothing of that coeducation of the sexes in whose benefits so many
of us heartily believe), all these things, I say, are most happy
features of our scholastic life, and from them the most sanguine
auguries may be drawn.
Having so favorable an organization, all we need is to impregnate it
with geniuses, to get superior men and women working more and more
abundantly in it and for it and at it, and in a generation or two
America may well lead the education of the world. I must say that I look
forward with no little confidence to the day when that shall be an
accomplished fact.
No one has profited more by the fermentation of which I speak, in
pedagogical circles, than we psychologists. The desire of the
schoolteachers for a completer professional training, and their
aspiration toward the 'professional' spirit in their work, have led them
more and more to turn to us for light on fundamental principles. And in
these few hours which we are to spend together you look to me, I am
sure, for information concerning the mind's operations, which may enable
you to labor more easily and effectively in the several schoolrooms over
which you preside.
Far be it from me to disclaim for psychology all title to such hopes.
Psychology ought certainly to give the teacher radical help. And yet I
confess that, acquainted as I am with the height of some of your
expectations, I feel a little anxious lest, at the end of these simple
talks of mine, not a few of you may experience some disappointment at
the net results. In other words, I am not sure that you may not be
indulging fancies that are just a shade exaggerated. That would not be
altogether astonishing, for we have been having something like a 'boom'
in psychology in this country. Laboratories and professorships have been
founded, and reviews established. The air has been full of rumors. The
editors of educational journals and the arrangers of conventions have
had to show themselves enterprising and on a level with the novelties of
the day. Some of the professors have not been unwilling to co-operate,
and I am not sure even that the publishers have been entirely inert.
'The new psychology' has thus become a term to conjure up portentous
ideas withal; and you teachers, docile and receptive and aspiring as
many of you are, have been plunged in an atmosphere of vague talk about
our science, which to a great extent has been more mystifying than
enlightening. Altogether it does seem as if there were a certain
fatality of mystification laid upon the teachers of our day. The matter
of their profession, compact enough in itself, has to be frothed up for
them in journals and institutes, till its outlines often threaten to be
lost in a kind of vast uncertainty. Where the disciples are not
independent and critical-minded enough (and I think that, if you
teachers in the earlier grades have any defect--the slightest touch of a
defect in the world--it is that you are a mite too docile), we are
pretty sure to miss accuracy and balance and measure in those who get a
license to lay down the law to them from above.
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