Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education

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=Interest versus Interests.=--On account of the evident connection of
interest and attention, the teacher may easily err in dealing with the
young pupil. It is allowable, as pointed out above, that the teacher
should take advantage of any native interest to secure the attention
and effort of the child in his school work. This does not mean, however,
that children are to be given only problems in which they are naturally
interested. It must be remembered, as seen in a former paragraph, that,
according to the interest of custom, any line of school work, when
intelligently followed, may soon build up a centre of interest for
itself. For this reason a proper study of arithmetic should develop an
interest in arithmetic; a study of history, an interest in history; and
a study of geography, an interest in geography. The saying that school
work should follow a child's interest might, therefore, be better
expressed by saying that the child's interests should follow the school
work. It is only, in fact, as any one becomes directly interested in his
pursuits, that the highest achievement can be reached. It is not the
workman who is always looking forward to pay-day, who develops into an
artist, or the teacher who is waiting for the summer holiday, who is a
real inspiration to her pupils. In like manner, it is only as the child
forms centres of interest in connection with his school work, that his
life and character are likely to be affected permanently thereby.

=Development of Interests.=--The problem for the educator is, therefore,
not so much to follow the interest of the child, as it is to develop in
him permanent centres of interest. For this reason the following facts
concerning the origin and development of interests should be understood
by the practical educator. First among these is the fact that certain
instinctive tendencies of early childhood may be made a starting-point
for the development of permanent valuable interest. The young child has
a tendency to collect or an instinct of ownership, which may be taken
advantage of in directing him to make collections of insects, plants,
coins, stamps, and thus prove of permanent educative value. His
constructive tendencies, or desire to do with what comes into his hand,
as well as his imitative instincts, may be turned to account in building
up an interest in various occupations. His social instinct, also,
provides a means for developing permanent emotional interests as
sympathy, etc. In like manner, the character of the child's surroundings
tends to create in him various centres of interest. The young child, for
instance, who is surrounded with beautiful objects, is almost sure to
develop an interest in works of art, while the child who is early
provided with fable and story will develop an interest in history.

=When to Develop Interests.=--It is to be noted further concerning many
of these forms of interest, that youth is the special period for their
development. The child who does not, during his early years, have an
opportunity to develop his social tendencies, is not likely later in
life to acquire an interest in his fellow-men. In the same manner, if
youth is spent in surroundings void of aesthetic elements, manhood will
be lacking in artistic interests. It is in youth also that our
intellectual interests, such as love of reading, of the study of nature,
of mathematics, must be laid.

=Interests Must be Limited.=--While emphasizing the importance of
establishing a wide range of interests when educating a child, the
teacher must remember that there is danger in a child acquiring too wide
a range. This can result only in a dissipation of effort over many
fields. While this prevents narrowness of vision and gives versatility
of disposition, it may prevent the attainment of efficiency in any
department, and make of the youth the proverbial "Jack-of-all-trades."

A study of the feeling of interest has been made at this stage on
account of its close connection with the problem of attention, and in
fact with the whole learning process. An examination of the other
classes of feeling will be made at a later stage in the course.

CHAPTER XXV

SENSE PERCEPTION

=Sensation and Perception Distinguished.=--Sensation and perception are
two terms applied usually without much distinction of meaning to our
recognition of the world of objects. When, for instance, a man draws
near to a stove, he may say that it gives him a _sensation_ of heat, or
perhaps that he _perceives_ it to be hot. In psychology, however, the
term sensation has been used in two somewhat different meanings. By some
the term is used to signify a state of consciousness conditioned merely
upon the stimulation of a sense organ, as the eye, ear, etc., by its
appropriate stimulus. To others, however, sensation signifies rather a
mental image experienced by the mind as it reacts upon and interprets
any sensory impression. Perception, on the other hand, signifies the
recognition of an external object as presented to the mind here and now.

=Sensation Implies Externality.=--When, however, a sensory image, such
as smooth, yellow, cold, etc., arises in consciousness as a result of
the mind reacting when an external stimulus is applied to some sense
organ, it is evident that, at least after very early infancy, one never
has the image without at once referring it to some external cause. If,
for instance, a person is but half awake and receives a sound sensation,
he does not ask himself, "What mental state is _this_?" but rather,
"What is _that_?" This shows an evident tendency to refer our sensations
at once to an external cause, or indicates that our sensations always
carry with them an implicit reference to an external object. Leaving,
therefore, to the scientific psychologist to consider whether it is
possible to have a pure sensation, we shall treat sensation as the
recognition of a quality which is at least vaguely referred to an
external object. In other words, sensation is a medium by which we are
brought into relation with real things existing independently of our
sensations.

=Perception Involves Sensation Element.=--Moreover, an object is
perceived as present here and now only because it is revealed to us
through one or more of the senses. When, for instance, I reach out my
hand in the dark room and receive a sensation of touch, I perceive the
table as present before me. When I receive a sensation of sound as I
pass by the church, I perceive that the organ is being played. When I
receive a colour sensation from the store window, I say that I perceive
oranges. Perception, therefore, involves the referring of the sensuous
state, or image, to an external thing, while in adult life sensation is
never accepted by our attention as satisfactory unless it is referred to
something we regard as immediately presenting itself to us by means of
the sensation. It is on account of this evident interrelation of the two
that we speak of a process of sense perception.

=Perception an Acquired Power.=--On the other hand, however,
investigation will show that this power to recognize explicitly the
existence of an external object through the presentation of a sensation,
was not at first possessed by the mind. The ability thus to perceive
objects represents, therefore, an acquirement on the part of the
individual. If a person, although receiving merely sensations of colour
and light, is able to say, "Yonder is an orange," he is evidently
interpreting, or giving meaning to, the present sensations largely
through past experience; for the images of colour and light are
accepted by the mind as an indication of the presence of an external
thing from which could be derived other images of taste, smell, etc.,
all of which go to make up the idea "orange." An ordinary act of
perception, therefore, must involve not merely sensation, but also an
interpretation of sensation through past experience. It is, in fact,
because the recognition of an external object involves this conscious
interpretation of the sensuous impressions, that people often suffer
delusion. When the traveller passing by a lone graveyard interprets the
tall and slender shrub laden with white blossoms as a swaying ghost, the
misconception does not arise from any fault of mere vision, but from the
type of former knowledge which the other surroundings of the moment call
up, these evidently giving the mind a certain bias in its interpretation
of the sensuous, or colour, impressions.

=Perception in Adult Life.=--In our study of general method, sense
perception was referred to as the most common mode of acquiring
particular knowledge. A description of the development of this power to
perceive objects through the senses should, therefore, prove of
pedagogical value. But to understand how an individual acquires the
ability to perceive objects, it is well to notice first what takes place
in an ordinary adult act of perception, as for instance, when a man
receives and interprets a colour stimulus and says that he perceives an
orange. If we analyse the person's idea of an orange we find that it is
made up of a number of different quality images--colour, taste, smell,
touch, etc., organized into a single experience, or idea, and accepted
as a mental representation of an object existing in space. When,
therefore, the person referred to above says that he perceives an
orange, what really happens is that he accepts the immediate colour and
light sensation as a sign of the whole group of qualities which make up
his notion of the external object, orange, the other qualities essential
to the notion coming back from past experience to unite with the
presented qualities. Owing to this fact, any ordinary act of perception
is said to contain both presentative and representative elements. In the
above example, for instance, the colour would be spoken of as a
presentative element, because it is immediately presented to the mind in
sensuous terms, or through the senses. Anything beyond this which goes
to make up the individual's notion orange, and is revived from past
experience, is spoken of as representative. For the same reason, the
sensuous elements involved in an ordinary act of perception are often
spoken of as immediate, and the others as mediate elements of knowledge.

=Genesis of Perception.=--To trace the development of this ability to
mingle both presentative and representative elements of knowledge into a
mental representation, or idea, of an external object, it is necessary
to recall what has been noted regarding the relation of the nervous
system to our conscious acts. When the young child first comes in
contact with the world of strange objects with which he is surrounded,
the impressions he receives therefrom will not at first have either the
definite quality or the relation to an external thing which they later
secure. As a being, however, whose first tendencies are those of
movement, he grasps, bites, strokes, smells, etc., and thus goes out to
meet whatever his surroundings thrust upon him. Gradually he finds
himself expand to take in the existence of a something external to
himself, and is finally able, as the necessary paths are laid down in
his nervous system, to differentiate various quality images one from the
other; as, touch, weight, temperature, light, sound, etc. This will at
once involve, however, a corresponding relating, or synthetic, attitude
of mind, in which different quality images, when experienced together as
qualities of some vaguely felt thing, will be organized into a more or
less definite knowledge, or idea, of that object, as illustrated in the
figure below. As the child in time gains the ability to _attend_ to the
sensuous presentations which come to him, and to discriminate one
sensation from another, he discovers in the vaguely known thing the
images of touch, colour, taste, smell, etc., and finally associates them
into the idea of a better known object, orange.

[Illustration: A. Unknown thing. B. Sensory stimuli. C. Sensory images.
D. Idea of object.]

=Control of Sensory Image as Sign.=--Since the various sense impressions
are carried to the higher centres of the brain, they will not only be
interpreted as sensory images and organized into a knowledge of external
objects, but, owing to the retentive power of the nervous tissue, will
also be subject to recall. As the child thus gains more and more the
ability to organize and relate various sensory images into mental
representations, or ideas, of external objects, he soon acquires such
control over these organized groups, that when any particular sensation
image out of a group is presented to the mind, it will be sufficient to
call up the other qualities, or will be accepted as a sign of the
presence of the object. When this stage of perceptual power is reached,
an odour coming from the oven enables a person to perceive that a
certain kind of meat is within, or a noise proceeding from the tower is
sufficient to make known the presence of a bell. To possess the ability
thus to refer one's sensations to an external object is to be able to
perceive objects.

=Fulness of Perception Based on Sensation.=--From the foregoing account
of the development of our perception of the external world, it becomes
evident that our immediate knowledge, or idea, of an individual object
will consist only of the images our senses have been able to discover
either in that or other similar objects. To the person born without the
sense of sight, for instance, the flower-bed can never be known as an
object of tints and colours. To the person born deaf, the violin cannot
really be known as a _musical_ instrument. Moreover, only the person
whose senses distinguish adequately variations in colour, sound, form,
etc., is able to perceive fully the objects which present themselves to
his senses. Even when the physical senses seem equally perfect, one man,
through greater power of discrimination, perceives in the world of
objects much that totally escapes the observation of another. The result
is that few of us enter as fully as we might into the rich world of
sights, sounds, etc., with which we are surrounded, because we fail to
gain the abundant images that we might through certain of our senses.

FACTORS INVOLVED IN SENSATION

Passing to a consideration of the senses as organs through which the
mind is made aware of the concrete world, it is to be noted that a
number of factors precede the image, or mental interpretation, of the
impression. When, for instance, the mind becomes cognizant of a musical
note, an analysis of the whole process reveals the following factors:

1. The concrete object, as the vibrating string of a violin.

2. Sound waves proceeding from the vibrating object to the sense organ.

3. The organ of sense--the ear.

[Illustration]

4. The nerves--cells and fibres involved in receiving and conveying the
sense stimulus.

5. The interpreting cells.

6. The reacting mind, which interprets the impression as an image of
sound.

The different factors are somewhat arbitrarily illustrated in the
accompanying diagram, the arrows indicating the physical stimulation and
the conscious response:

Of the six factors involved in the sensation, 1 and 2 are purely
physical and belong to the science of acoustics; 3, 4, and 5 are
physiological; 6 is conscious, or psychological. It is because they
always involve the immediate presence of some physical object, that the
sensation elements involved in ordinary perception are spoken of as
immediate, or presentative, elements of knowledge.

CLASSIFICATION OF SENSATIONS

Our various sensations are usually divided into three classes as
follows:

1. Sensations of the special senses, including: sight, sound, touch
(including temperature), taste, and smell.

2. Motor, or muscular, sensations.

3. Organic sensations.

=Sensations of the Special Senses.=--As a study of the five special
senses has been made by the student-teacher under the heading of
physiology, no attempt will be made to explain the structure of these
organs. It must be noted, however, that not all senses are equally
capable of distinguishing differences in quality. For example, it seems
quite beyond our power to recall the tastes and odours of the various
dishes of which we may have partaken at a banquet, while on the other
hand we may recall distinctly the visual appearance of the room and the
table. It is worthy of note, also, that in the case of smell, animals
are usually much more discriminative than man. Certain of our senses
are, therefore, much more intellectual than others. By this is meant
that for purposes of distinguishing the objects themselves, and for
providing the mind with available images as materials for further
thought, our senses are by no means equally effective. Under this
heading the special senses are classified as follows:

Higher Intellectual Senses: sight, hearing, touch.

Lower Intellectual Senses: taste and smell.

=Muscular Sensations.=--Under motor, or muscular, sensations are
included the feelings which accompany consciousness of muscular
exertion, or movement. In distinction from the other sense organs, the
muscles are stimulated by having nervous energy pass outward over the
motor nerves to the muscles. As the muscles are thus stimulated to
movement, sensory nerves in turn convey inward from the muscles sensory
impressions resulting from these movements. The important sensations
connected with muscular action are those of strain, force, and
resistance, as in lifting or pushing. By means of these motor
sensations, joined with the sense of touch, the individual is able to
distinguish especially weight, position, and change of position. In
connection with the muscular sense, may be recalled that portion of the
Montessori apparatus known as the weight tablets. These wooden tablets,
it will be noted, are designed to educate the muscular sense to
distinguish slight differences in weight. The muscular sense is chiefly
important, however, in that delicate distinctions of pressure, movement,
and resistance must be made in many forms of manual expression. The
interrelation between sensory impression and motor impulse within the
nervous system, as illustrated in the figures on page 200, is already
understood by the reader. For an adequate conscious control of
movements, especially when one is engaged in delicate handwork, as
painting, modelling, wood-work, etc., there must be an ability to
perceive slight differences in strain, pressure, and movement. Moreover,
the most effective means for developing the muscular sense is through
the expressive exercises referred to above.

=Organic Sensations.=--The organic sensations are those states of
consciousness that arise in connection with the processes going on
within the organism, as circulation of the blood, digestion; breathing,
or respiration; hunger; thirst; etc. The significance of these
sensations lies in the fact that they reveal to consciousness any
disturbances in connection with the vital processes, and thus enable the
individual to provide for the preservation of the organism.

EDUCATION OF THE SENSES

=Importance.=--When it is considered that our general knowledge must be
based on a knowledge of individuals, it becomes apparent that children
should, through sense observation, learn as fully as possible the
various qualities of the concrete world. Only on this basis can they
build their more general and abstract forms of knowledge. For this
reason the child in his study of objects should, so far as safety
permits, bring all of his senses to bear upon them and distinguish as
clearly as possible all their properties. By this means only can he
really know the attributes of the objects constituting his environment.
Moreover, without such a full knowledge of the various properties and
qualities of concrete objects, he is not in a position to turn them
fully to his own service. It is by distinguishing the feeling of the
flour, that the cook discovers whether it is suited for bread-making or
pastry. It is by noting the texture of the wood, that the artisan can
decide its suitability for the work in hand. In fine, it was only by
noting the properties of various natural objects that man discovered
their social uses.

=How to be Effected.=--One of the chief defects of primary education in
the past has been a tendency to overlook the importance of giving the
child an opportunity to exercise his senses in discovering the
properties of the objects constituting his environment. The introduction
of the kindergarten, objective methods of teaching, nature study, school
gardening, and constructive occupations have done much, however, to
remedy this defect. One of the chief claims in favour of the so-called
Montessori Method is that it provides especially for an education of the
senses. In doing this, however, it makes use of arbitrarily prepared
materials instead of the ordinary objects constituting the child's
natural environment. The one advantage in this is that it enables the
teacher to grade the stimulations and thus exercise the child in making
series of discriminations, for instance, a series of colours, sounds,
weights, sizes, etc. Notwithstanding this advantage, however, it seems
more pedagogical that the child should receive this needful exercise of
the senses by being brought into contact with the actual objects
constituting his environment, as is done in nature study, constructive
exercises, art, etc.

=Dangers of Neglecting the Senses.=--The former neglect of an adequate
exercise of the senses during the early education of the child was
evidently unpedagogical for various reasons. As already noted, other
forms of acquiring knowledge, such as constructive imagination,
induction, and deduction, must rest primarily upon the acquisitions of
sense perception. Moreover, it is during the early years of life that
the plasticity and retentive power of the nervous system will enable the
various sense impressions to be recorded for the future use of the mind.
Further, the senses themselves during these early years show what may be
termed a hunger for contact with the world of concrete objects, and a
corresponding distaste for more abstract types of experience.

=Learning Through all the Senses.=--In recognizing that the process of
sense perception constitutes a learning process, or is one of the modes
by which man enters into new experience, the teacher should further
understand that the same object may be interpreted through different
senses. For example, when a child studies a new bird, he may note its
form and colour through the eye, he may recognize the feeling and the
outline through muscular and touch sensations, he may discover its song
through the ear, and may give muscular expression to its form in
painting or modelling. In the same way, in learning a figure or letter,
he may see its form through the eye, hear its sound through the ear,
make the sound and trace the form by calling various muscles into play,
and thus secure a number of muscular sensations relative to the figure
or letter. Since all these various experiences will be co-ordinated and
retained within the nervous system, the child will not only know the
object better, but will also be able to recall more easily any items of
knowledge concerning it, on account of the larger number of connections
established within the nervous system. One chief fact to be kept in mind
by the teacher, therefore, in using the method of sense perception, is
to have the pupil study the object through as many different senses as
possible, and especially through those senses in which his power of
discrimination and recall seems greatest.

=Use of Different Images in Teaching.=--The importance to the teacher of
an intimate knowledge of different types of imagery and of a further
acquaintance with the more prevailing images of particular pupils, is
evident in various ways. In the first place, different school subjects
may appeal more especially to different types of imagery. Thus a study
of plants especially involves visual, or sight, images; a study of
birds, visual and auditory images; oral reading and music, auditory
images; physical training, motor images; constructive work, visual,
tactile, and motor images; a knowledge of weights and measures, tactile
and motor images. On account of a native difference in forming images,
also, one pupil may best learn through the eye, another through the ear,
a third through the muscles, etc. In learning the spelling of words, for
example, one pupil may require especially to visualize the word, another
to hear the letters repeated in their order, and a third to articulate
the letters by the movement of the organs of speech, or to trace them in
writing. In choosing illustrations, also, the teacher will find that one
pupil best appreciates a visual illustration, a second an auditory
illustration, etc. Some young pupils, for instance, might best
appreciate a pathetic situation through an appeal to such sensory images
as hunger and thirst.

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