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Page 33
Now I can only repeat here what I said to you when treating of
attention: man is too complex a being for light to be thrown on his real
efficiency by measuring any one mental faculty taken apart from its
consensus in the working whole. Such an exercise as this, dealing with
incoherent and insipid objects, with no logical connection with each
other, or practical significance outside of the 'test,' is an exercise
the like of which in real life we are hardly ever called upon to
perform. In real life, our memory is always used in the service of some
interest: we remember things which we care for or which are associated
with things we care for; and the child who stands at the bottom of the
scale thus experimentally established might, by dint of the strength of
his passion for a subject, and in consequence of the logical association
into which he weaves the actual materials of his experience, be a very
effective memorizer indeed, and do his school-tasks on the whole much
better than an immediate parrot who might stand at the top of the
'scientifically accurate' list.
This preponderance of interest, of passion, in determining the results
of a human being's working life, obtains throughout. No elementary
measurement, capable of being performed in a laboratory, can throw any
light on the actual efficiency of the subject; for the vital thing about
him, his emotional and moral energy and doggedness, can be measured by
no single experiment, and becomes known only by the total results in the
long run. A blind man like Huber, with his passion for bees and ants,
can observe them through other people's eyes better than these can
through their own. A man born with neither arms nor legs, like the late
Kavanagh, M.P.--and what an icy heart his mother must have had about him
in his babyhood, and how 'negative' would the laboratory-measurements of
his motor-functions have been!--can be an adventurous traveller, an
equestrian and sportsman, and lead an athletic outdoor life. Mr. Romanes
studied the elementary rate of apperception in a large number of persons
by making them read a paragraph as fast as they could take it in, and
then immediately write down all they could reproduce of its contents. He
found astonishing differences in the rapidity, some taking four times as
long as others to absorb the paragraph, and the swiftest readers being,
as a rule, the best immediate recollectors, too. But not,--and this is
my point,--_not_ the most _intellectually capable subjects_, as tested
by the results of what Mr. Romanes rightly names 'genuine' intellectual
work; for he tried the experiment with several highly distinguished men
in science and literature, and most of them turned out to be slow
readers.
In the light of all such facts one may well believe that the total
impression which a perceptive teacher will get of the pupil's condition,
as indicated by his general temper and manner, by the listlessness or
alertness, by the ease or painfulness with which his school work is
done, will be of much more value than those unreal experimental tests,
those pedantic elementary measurements of fatigue, memory, association,
and attention, etc., which are urged upon us as the only basis of a
genuinely scientific pedagogy. Such measurements can give us useful
information only when we combine them with observations made without
brass instruments, upon the total demeanor of the measured individual,
by teachers with eyes in their heads and common sense, and some feeling
for the concrete facts of human nature in their hearts.
Depend upon it, no one need be too much cast down by the discovery of
his deficiency in any elementary faculty of the mind. What tells in life
is the whole mind working together, and the deficiencies of any one
faculty can be compensated by the efforts of the rest. You can be an
artist without visual images, a reader without eyes, a mass of erudition
with a bad elementary memory. In almost any subject your passion for the
subject will save you. If you only care enough for a result, you will
almost certainly attain it. If you wish to be rich, you will be rich; if
you wish to be learned, you will be learned; if you wish to be good, you
will be good. Only you must, then, _really_ wish these things, and wish
them with exclusiveness, and not wish at the same time a hundred other
incompatible things just as strongly.
One of the most important discoveries of the 'scientific' sort that have
recently been made in psychology is that of Mr. Galton and others
concerning the great variations among individuals in the type of their
imagination. Every one is now familiar with the fact that human beings
vary enormously in the brilliancy, completeness, definiteness, and
extent of their visual images. These are singularly perfect in a large
number of individuals, and in a few are so rudimentary as hardly to
exist. The same is true of the auditory and motor images, and probably
of those of every kind; and the recent discovery of distinct brain-areas
for the various orders of sensation would seem to provide a physical
basis for such variations and discrepancies. The facts, as I said, are
nowadays so popularly known that I need only remind you of their
existence. They might seem at first sight of practical importance to the
teacher; and, indeed, teachers have been recommended to sort their
pupils in this way, and treat them as the result falls out. You should
interrogate them as to their imagery, it is said, or exhibit lists of
written words to their eyes, and then sound similar lists in their ears,
and see by which channel a child retains most words. Then, in dealing
with that child, make your appeals predominantly through that channel.
If the class were very small, results of some distinctness might
doubtless thus be obtained by a painstaking teacher. But it is obvious
that in the usual schoolroom no such differentiation of appeal is
possible; and the only really useful practical lesson that emerges from
this analytic psychology in the conduct of large schools is the lesson
already reached in a purely empirical way, that the teacher ought
always to impress the class through as many sensible channels as he can.
Talk and write and draw on blackboard, permit the pupils to talk, and
make them write and draw, exhibit pictures, plans, and curves, have your
diagrams colored differently in their different parts, etc.; and out of
the whole variety of impressions the individual child will find the most
lasting ones for himself. In all primary school work this principle of
multiple impressions is well recognized, so I need say no more about it
here.
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