Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education

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THE SOCIAL, OR ECLECTIC, VIEW

Moreover, because, as already noted, the child is by his very nature a
social being, it follows that the good of the individual can never in
reality be opposed to the good of society, and that whenever the child
has in his nature any tendencies which conflict with the good of others,
these do not represent his true, or social, nature. For education to
suppress these, therefore, is not only fitting the child for society but
also advancing the development of the child so far as his higher, or
true, nature is concerned. Thus the true view of the purpose of the
school and of education will be a social, or eclectic, one, representing
the element of truth contained in both the civic and the individualistic
views. In the first place, such a view may be described as a civic one,
since it is only by considering the good of others, that is of the
state, that we can find a standard for judging the value of the child's
tendencies. Moreover, it is only by using the forms of experience, or
knowledge, that the community has evolved, that conditions can be
provided under which the child's tendencies may realize themselves.
Secondly, the true view is equally an individualistic view, for while it
claims that the child is by his nature a social being, it also demands a
full development of the social or moral tendencies of the individual, as
being best for himself as well as for society.

=This View Dynamic.=--In such an eclectic view of the aim of education,
it is to be noted further that society may turn education to its own
advancement. By providing that an individual may develop to his
uttermost such good tendencies as he may possess, education not only
allows the individual to make the most of his own higher nature, but
also enables him to contribute something to the advancement, or
elevation, of society itself. Such a conception of the aim of education,
therefore, does not view the present social life as some static thing to
which the child must be adapted in any formal sense, but as dynamic, or
as having the power to develop itself in and through a fuller
development of the higher and better tendencies within its individual
members.

=A Caution.=--While emphasizing the social, or moral, character of the
aim of education, it is to be borne in mind by the educator that this
implies more than a passive possession by the individual of a certain
moral sentiment. Man is truly moral only when his moral character is
functioning in goodness, or in _right action_. This is equivalent to
declaring that the moral man must be individually efficient in action,
and must likewise control his action from a regard for the rights of
others. There is always a danger, however, of assuming that the
development of moral character consists in giving the child some
passive mark, or quality, without any necessity of having it continually
functioning in conduct. But this reduces morality to a mere sentiment.
In such a case, the moral aim would differ little from the cultural aim
mentioned above.

CHAPTER VII

DIVISIONS OF EDUCATIONAL STUDY

CONTROL OF EXPERIENCE

=Significance of Control.=--From our previous inquiry into the nature of
education, we may notice that at least two important problems present
themselves for investigation in connection with the educative process.
Our study of the subject-matter of education, or the school curriculum,
has shown that its function as an educational instrumentality is to
furnish for the child experiences of greater value, this enhanced value
consisting in the greater social significance of the race experiences,
or knowledge, embodied within the curriculum, when compared with the
more individual experiences of the average child. It has been noted
further, however, that the office of education is not merely to have the
child translate this race experience into his own mind, but rather to
have him add to his social efficiency by gaining an adequate power of
control over these experiences. It is not, for instance, merely to know
the number combinations, but to be able to meet his practical needs,
that the child must master the multiplication tables. Control of
experience, however, as we have seen from our analysis of the learning
process, implies an ability to hold an aim, or problem, in view, and a
further ability to select and arrange the means of gaining the desired
end. In relation to the multiplication table, therefore, control of
experience implies that a person is able to apprehend the present number
situation as one that needs solution, and also that he can bring, or
apply, his knowledge of the table to its solution.

=Nature of Growth of Control.=--The young child is evidently not able at
first to exercise this power of control over his experiences. When a
very young child is aroused, say by the sound proceeding from a bell,
the impression may give rise to certain random movements, but none of
these indicate on his part any definite experience or purpose. When,
however, under the same stimulation, in place of these random movements,
the child reacts mentally in a definite way, it signifies on his part
the recognition of an external object. This recognition shows that the
child now has, in place of the first vague image, a more or less
definite idea of the external thing. Before it was vague noise; now it
is a bell. But a yet more valuable control is gained by the child when
he gives this idea a wider meaning by organizing it as an element into
more complex experiences, as when he relates it with the idea of a fire,
of dinner, or of a call to school. Before it was merely a bell; now it
is an alarm of fire. So far, however, as the child is lacking in the
control of his experiences, he remains largely a mere creature of
impulse and instinct, and is occupied with present impressions only.
This implies also an inability to set up problems and solve them through
a regular process of adjustment, and a consequent lack of power to
arrange experiences as guides to action. In the educative process,
however, as previously exemplified, we find that the child is not a
slave to the passing transient impressions of the present, but is able
to secure a control over his experience which enables him to set up
intelligent aims, devise plans for their attainment, and apply these
plans in gaining the end desired. Growth of control takes place,
therefore, to the extent to which the child thus becomes able to keep
an end in view and to select and organize means for its realization.

=Elements of Control.=--In the growth of control manifested in the
learning process, the child, as we have noticed, becomes able to judge
the value, or worth, of experience. In other words, he becomes able to
distinguish between the important and the trivial, and to see the
relative values of various experiences when applied to practical ends.
Further, he gains right feeling or an emotional warmth toward that which
his intelligence affirms to be worthy, or grows to appreciate the right.
Thirdly, he secures a power in execution that enables him to attain to
that which his judgment and feeling have set up as a desirable end. In
fine, the educative process implies for the child a growth of control by
which he becomes able (1) to select worthy ends; (2) to devise plans for
their attainment; and (3) to put these plans into successful execution.

THE INSTRUCTOR'S PROBLEMS

The end in any learning process being to set the pupils a problem which
may stimulate them to gain such an efficient control of useful
experience, or knowledge, we may note two important problems confronting
the teacher as an instructor:

1. _Problem of Matter._--The teacher must be so conversant with the
subject-matter of the curriculum and with its value in relation to
actual life, that he may select therefrom the problems and materials
which will enable the child to come into possession of the desirable
experiences. This constitutes the question of the subject-matter of
education.

2. _Problem of Method._--The teacher must further be conversant with the
process by which the child gets command of experience or with the way in
which the mind of the child, in reacting upon any subject-matter,
selects and organizes his knowledge into new experience and puts the
same into execution. In other words, the teacher must fully understand
how to direct the child successfully through the four stages of the
learning process.

(_a_) _General Method._--In a scientific study of education it is
usually assumed that the student-teacher has mastered academically the
various subjects of the curriculum. In the professional school,
therefore, the subject-matter of education is studied largely from the
standpoint of method. In his study of method the student of education
seeks first to master the details of the process of education outlined
in the opening Chapters under the headings of problem, selecting
process, relating process, and application. By this means the teacher
comes to understand in greater detail how the mind of the child reacts
upon the presented problems of the curriculum in gaining control over
his experiences, or, in other words, how the process of learning
actually takes place within the consciousness of the child. This
sub-division is treated under the head of _General Method_.

(_b_) _Special Methods._--In addition to General Method, the
student-teacher must study each subject of the curriculum from the
standpoint of its use in setting problems, or lessons, which shall
enable the child to gain control of a richer experience. This
sub-division is known as _Special Methods_, since it considers the
particular problems involved in adapting the matter of each subject to
the general purpose of the educative process.

3. _Problem of Management._--From what has been seen in reference to the
school as an institution organized for directing the education of the
child, it is apparent that in addition to the immediate and direct
control of the process of learning as involved in the method of
instruction, there is the more indirect control of the process through
the systematic organization and management of the school as a corporate
institution. These more indirect problems connected with the control of
education within the school will include, not only such topics as the
organization and management of the pupils, but also the legal ways and
means for providing these various educational instrumentalities. These
indirect elements of control constitute a third phase of the problem of
education, and their study is known as _School Organization and
Management_.

4. _An Historic Problem._--It has been noted that the corporate
institution known as the school arose as the result of the principle of
the division of labour, and thus took to itself duties previously
performed under other less effective conditions. Thus the school
presents on its organic side a history with which the teacher should be
more or less familiar. On its historical side, therefore, education
presents a fourth phase for study. This division of the subject is known
as the _History of Education_.

SUMMARY

The facts of education, as scientifically considered by the
student-teacher, thus arrange themselves under four main heads:

1. General Method

2. Special Methods

3. School Organization and Management

4. History of Education

The third and fourth divisions of education are always studied as
separate subjects under the above heads. In dealing with Special
Methods, also, it is customary in the study of education to treat each
subject of the curriculum under its own head in both a professional and
an academic way. There is left, therefore, for scientific consideration,
the subject of General Method, to a study of which we shall now
proceed.

PART II.--METHODOLOGY

CHAPTER VIII

GENERAL METHOD

=Meaning of Method.=--In the last Chapter it was seen that, in relation
to the child, education involves a gaining of control over experiences.
It has been seen further, that the child gains control of new experience
whenever he goes through a process of learning involving the four steps
of problem, selecting activity, relating activity, and expression.
Finally it has been decided that the teacher in his capacity as an
instructor, by presenting children with suitable problems, may in a
sense direct their selecting and relating activities and thus exercise a
certain control over their learning processes. To the teacher,
therefore, method will mean an ability to control the learning process
in such a way that the children shall, in their turn, gain an adequate
control over the new experience forming the subject-matter of any
learning process. Thus a detailed study by student-teachers of the
various steps of the learning process, with a view to gaining knowledge
and skill relative to directing pupils in their learning, constitutes
for such teachers a study of General Method.

=Subdivisions of Method.=--For the student-teacher, the study of general
method will involve a detailed investigation of how the child is to gain
control of social experiences as outlined above, and how the teacher may
bring about the same through instruction.

Tn such an investigation, he must examine in detail the various steps of
the educative process to discover:

1. How the knowledge, or social experience, contained in the school
curriculum should be presented to the child. This will involve an
adequate study of the first step of the learning process--the problem.

2. How the mind, or consciousness, of the child reacts during the
learning process upon the presented materials in gaining control of this
knowledge. This will embrace a study of the second and third steps of
the process--the selecting and relating activities.

3. How the child is to acquire facility in using a new experience, or in
applying it to direct his conduct. This involves a particular study of
the fourth step of the process--the law of expression.

4. How the teacher may use any outside agencies, as maps, globes,
specimens, experiments, etc., to assist in directing the learning
process. This involves a study of various classes of educational
instrumentalities.

5. How the principles of general method are to be adapted to the
different modes by which the learner may gain new experience, or
knowledge. This will involve a study of the different kinds of lessons,
or a knowledge of lesson types.

METHOD IMPLIES KNOWLEDGE OF MIND

Before we proceed to such a detailed study of the educative process as a
process of teaching, it should be noted that the existence of a general
method is possible only provided that the growth of conscious control
takes place in the mind of the child in a systematic and orderly manner.
All children, for instance, must be supposed to respond in the same
general way in the learning process when they are confronted with the
same problem. Without this they could not secure from the same lesson
the same experiences and the same relative measure of control over
these experiences. But if our conscious acts are so uniform that the
teacher may expect from all of his pupils like responses and like states
of experience under similar stimulations, then a knowledge on the part
of the teacher of the orderly modes in which the mind works will be
essential to an adequate control of the process of learning. Now a full
and systematic account of mind and its activities is set forth in the
Science of Psychology. As the Science of Consciousness, or Experience,
psychology explains the processes by which all experience is built up,
or organized, in consciousness. Thus psychology constitutes a basic
science for educational method. It is essential, therefore, that the
teacher should have some knowledge of the leading principles of this
science. For this reason, frequent reference will be made, in the study
of general method, to underlying principles of psychology. The more
detailed examination of these principles and of their application to
educational method will, however, be postponed to a later part of the
text. Each of the four important steps of the learning process will now
be treated in order, beginning in the next Chapter with the problem.

CHAPTER IX

THE LESSON PROBLEM

=Problem, a Motive.=--The foregoing description and examples of the
educative process have shown that new knowledge necessarily results
whenever the mind faces a difficulty, or need, and adjusts itself
thereto. In other words, knowledge is found to possess a practical value
and to arise as man faces the difficulties, or problems, with which he
is confronted. The basis of conscious activity in any direction is,
therefore, a feeling of _need_. If one analyses any of his conscious
acts, he will find that the motive is the satisfaction of some desire
which he more or less consciously feels. The workman exerts himself at
his labour because he feels the need of satisfying his artistic sense or
of supplying the necessities of those who are dependent upon him; the
teacher prepares the lessons he has to present and puts forth effort to
teach them successfully, because he feels the need of educating the
pupils committed to his care; the physician observes symptoms closely
and consults authorities carefully, because he feels the need of curing
his patients; the lawyer masters every detail of the case he is
pleading, because he feels the need of protecting the interests of his
client. What is true of adults is equally true of children in school.
The pupil puts forth effort in school work because he feels that this
work is meeting some of his needs.

=Nature of Problem.=--It is not to be assumed, however, that the only
problem which will prompt the individual to put forth conscious effort
must be a purely physical need, such as hunger, thirst, or a distinct
desire for the attainment of a definite object, as to avoid danger or to
secure financial gain or personal pleasure. Nor is it to be understood
that the learner always clearly formulates the problem in his own mind.
Indeed, as will be seen more fully later, one very important motive for
mastering a presented problem is the instinct of curiosity. As an
example of such may be noted a case which came under the observation of
the writer, where the curiosity of a small child was aroused through the
sight of a mud-turtle crawling along a walk. After a few moments of
intense investigation, he cried to those standing by, "Come and see the
bug in the basket." Here, evidently, the child's curiosity gave the
strange appearance sufficient value to cause him to make it an object of
study. Impelled by this feeling, he must have selected ideas from his
former experience (bug--crawling thing; basket--incasing thing), which
seemed of value in interpreting the unknown presentation. Finally by
focusing these upon this strange object, he formed an idea, or mental
picture, which gave him a reasonable control over the new vague
presentation. Such a motive as curiosity may not imply to the same
degree as some others a personal need, nor does it mean that the child
consciously says to himself that this new material or activity is
satisfying a specific need, but in some vague way he knows that it
appeals to him because of its attractiveness in itself or because of its
relation to some other attractive object. In brief, it interests him,
and thus creates a tendency on the part of an individual to give it his
attention. In such situations, therefore, the learner evidently feels to
a greater or less degree a necessity, or a practical need, for solving
the problem before him.

NEED OF PROBLEM

=Knowledge Gained Accidentally.=--It is evident, however, that at times
knowledge might be gained in the absence of any set problem upon which
the learner reacts. For example, a certain person while walking along a
road intent upon his own personal matters observed a boy standing near a
high fence. On passing further along the street, he glanced through an
opening and observed a vineyard within the inclosure. On returning along
the street a few minutes later, he saw the same boy standing at a near
by corner eating grapes. Hereupon these three ideas at once co-ordinated
themselves into a new form of knowledge, signifying stealing-of-fruit.
In such a case, the experience has evidently been gained without the
presence of a problem to guide the selecting and relating of the ideas
entering into the new knowledge. In like manner, a child whose only
motive is to fill paper with various coloured crayon may accidentally
discover, while engaged on this problem, that red and yellow will
combine to make orange, or that yellow and blue will combine to make
green. Here also the child gains valuable experience quite
spontaneously, that is, without its constituting a motive, or problem,
calling for adjustment.

=Learning without Motive.=--In the light of the above, a question
suggests itself in relation to the lesson problem, or motive. Granting
that a regular school recitation must contain some valuable problem for
which the learning process is to furnish a solution, and granting that
the teacher must be fully conscious both of the problem and of its mode
of solution, the question might yet be asked whether a problem is to be
realized by the child as a felt need at the beginning of the lesson. For
example, if the teacher wishes his pupils to learn how to compose the
secondary colour purple, might he have them blend in a purely arbitrary
way, red and blue, and finally ask them to note the result? Or again, if
he wishes the pupils to learn the construction of a paper-box or
fire-place, would he not be justified in directing them to make certain
folds, to do certain cutting, and to join together the various sections
in a certain way, and then asking them to note the result? If such a
course is permissible, it would seem that, so far at least as the
learner is concerned, he may gain control of valuable experience, or
knowledge, without the presence of a problem, or motive, to give the
learning process value and direction.

=Problem Aids Control.=--It is true that in cases like the above, the
child may gain the required knowledge. The cause for this is, no doubt,
that the physical activity demanded of the pupil constitutes indirectly
a motive for attending sufficiently to gain the knowledge. But in many
cases no such conditions might exist. It is important, therefore, to
have the pupil as far as possible realize at the outset a definite
motive for each lesson. The advantage consists in the fact that the
motive gives a value to the ideas which enter into the new knowledge,
even before they are fully incorporated into a new experience. For
example, if in a lesson in geometrical drawing, the teacher, instead of
having the child set out with the problem of drawing a pair of parallel
lines, merely orders him to follow certain directions, and then requests
him to measure the shortest distance between the lines at different
points, the child is not likely to grasp the connections of the various
steps involved in the construction of the whole problem. This means,
however, that the learner has not secured an equal control over the new
experience.

=Pupils Feel Its Lack.=--A further objection to conducting a lesson in
such a way that the child may find no motive for the process until the
close of the lesson, is the fact that he is himself aware of its lack.
In school the child soon discovers that in a lesson he selects and gives
attention to various ideas solely in order to gain control over some
problem which he may more or less definitely conceive in advance. For
this reason, if the teacher attempts, as in the above examples, to fix
the child's attention on certain facts without any conception of
purpose, the pupil nevertheless usually asks himself the question: "What
does the teacher intend me to do with these facts?" Indeed, without at
least that motive to hold such disconnected ideas in his mind, it is
doubtful whether the pupil would attend to them sufficiently to organize
them into a new item of knowledge. When, therefore, the teacher proposes
at the outset an attractive problem to solve, he has gone a long way
toward stimulating the intellectual activity of the pupil. The setting
of problems, the supplying of motives, the giving of aims, the awakening
of needs--this constitutes a large part of the business of the teacher.

PUPIL'S MOTIVE

=Pupil's Problem versus Teacher's.=--But it is important that the
problem before the pupil at the beginning of the lesson should really be
the pupil's and not the teacher's merely. The teacher should be careful
not to impose the problem on the pupils in an arbitrary way, but should
try to connect the lesson with an interest that is already active. The
teacher's motive in teaching the lesson and the pupil's motive in
attending to it are usually quite different. The teacher's problem
should, of course, be identical with the real problem of the lesson.
Thus in a literature lesson on "Hide and Seek" (_Ontario Third Reader_),
the teacher's motive would be to lead the pupil to appreciate the music
of the lines, the beauty of the images, and the pathos of the ideas; and
in general, to increase the pupil's capacities of constructive
imagination and artistic appreciation. The pupil's motive might be to
find out how the poet had described a familiar game. In a nature study
lesson on "The Rabbit," the teacher's motive would be to lead the pupil
to make certain observations and draw certain inferences and thus add
something to his facility in observation and inference. The pupil's
motive in the same lesson would be to discover something new about a
very interesting animal. In general, the teacher's motive will be (1) to
give the pupil a certain kind of useful knowledge; (2) to develop and
strengthen certain organs; or (3) to add something to his mechanical
skill by the forming of habitual reactions. In general, the pupil's
motive will be to learn some fact, to satisfy some instinct, or perform
some activity that is interesting either in itself or because of its
relation to some desired end. That is, the pupil's motive is the
satisfaction of an interest or the promotion of a purpose.

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