LESSON XLII.

THE STUDY OF INDIVIDUALS.

"All the roads

Importance of the Study of Children. in the Roman Empire led to the city of Rome." At every turn and corner in our study of our subject, we have seen that successful teaching demands a close, careful, and systematic study of children. At this stage in the history of the world, men have come to realize clearly the fact that, no matter what happens in the physical world, there is a cause for it. If a watch stops, or a lock refuses to act, we know that there is a cause for it, and that a patient study of the facts of the case may enable us to discover and remove it. That is precisely the attitude which we should take toward our pupils. If they are not interested in any particular subject, if they are inattentive, if they do not like to go to school, there is a cause for it, and it is our business to learn what it is. Let us not be guilty of the stupidity of saying that some boys "naturally" dislike school. That is an easy explanation to which lazy teachers have a great tendency to resort. But it has a painful likeness to some of the explanations of the Middle Ages.

Moving bodies have a natural tendency to stop," said the scholars of that time. "Some boys naturally dislike books," say many of our teachers now. Precisely as a more careful study of the facts has thoroughly discredited

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the former explanation, so I believe a careful study of the facts will thoroughly discredit the latter.

Change in Pedagogical Study. That the importance of the study of children is beginning to be generally recognized is one of the most encouraging signs of the times. In the beginning of the study of Pedagogy in this country, it was confined almost entirely to a study of methods. Later, it was seen that the most fruitful study of Pedagogy includes a study of the principles that underlie methods; that in order to know how to deal with the human mind, we must know why we deal with it thus and so; and that to know the why of our procedure, we must know the laws that govern it. And little by little educators have come to see that, after all, the text-book on Psychology which it is of most importance for teachers to study is one whose pages are ever open before them—the minds of their pupils, and the children with whom they come in Never before in the history of the world was the importance of the study of Psychology to teachers so generally recognized as now. But, suggestive as a knowledge of it is to thoughtful and intelligent teachers, the best result to be expected from it is the development of what Dr. Josiah Royce calls the psychological spirit1. the habit of observing children- and of the power to turn that spirit to the utmost possible account. In the first two chapters, we considered the benefits of the study of Psychology to the teacher. The conclusions there reached were such as seemed evident from the very nature of the case, independently of any special conclusions that our study of the mind would enable us to reach. And while

contact.

1 Educational Review, February, 1891.

I believe that we shall all agree that the claims there made for it are fully borne out by the facts, I think we shall feel that if our study has made us more interested in the growth and development of the minds of children, more disposed to study them, less ready to dogmatize about them, more eager to learn by actual observation what they can do and what they can not do, what they like and what they do not like, the result of our study will be of incomparably greater value than any there insisted on.

Because Psychology un

Psychology and Education. doubtedly underlies the science of education, I have seen what I can not but regard as a disposition to overestimate its importance. The opinion seems to be entertained in some quarters that every teacher should be a specialist in Psychology. If by that is meant that he must keep well abreast of psychological research, or that he should even be especially interested in current psychological literature, I enter my emphatic dissent. Many an excellent teacher undoubtedly reproaches himself for his lack of interest in it, forgetting that it is as impossible for every teacher to have a special interest in Psychology as it is for them all to have a special interest in mathematics or chemistry. By no such criterion should a teacher test his adaptation for his work. But if a teacher finds himself without interest in children, if he has no disposition to investigate the causes of the facts that thrust themselves upon him every day, if he finds himself disposed to be content with merely verbal explanations" stupidity," "prejudice," "natural dislike of the subject," "bad home surroundings," "ugliness," etc., I would respectfully suggest that he carefully consider whether he has not mistaken his vocation. A

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specialist in Psychology every teacher should not be; special and careful students of the minds of their pupils all teachers should be.

I do not, of course, undervalue the study of psychological literature. But I do believe that the greatest practical benefit it can render to the teacher consists in the help it can give him in his study of children.

Doctrine of Apperception Shows the Necessity of Studying Children. — Our study of apperception will enable us to see how indispensable is the study of children. Whether we are perceiving, remembering, imagining, conceiving, judging, or reasoning, we are alike apperceiving. But apperception is the relating activity of the mind, the activity by which a thing the mind is engaged in knowing is brought into relation with something the mind already knows. In order, then, that the event which we call knowledge may take place in the mind, two conditions must be realized: (1) ideas must exist in the mind of the pupil with which the thing to be known can be brought into conscious relation; and (2) the relation to be established by the particular kind of knowledge must be one which the mind is capable of perceiving.

Contents of Children's Minds. No one but a careful student of children will avoid assuming that they know what they do not know, and, therefore, that they can understand what they do not understand. Educational journals have been emphasizing this point to such an extent of late years that it would seem that the bare mention of it ought to be sufficient. Nevertheless, its importance is so great that I beg to quote a summary of the results of

the examination of some children in Germany: "It was found in thirty-three people's schools in the Vogtland, in the examination of the newly entered six-year-old children in June of the year 1878, that of 500 city children questioned, 82 per cent had no idea of 'sunrise,' and 77 per cent none of 'sunset'; 37 per cent had never seen a grainfield, 49 per cent had never seen a pond, 80 per cent a lark, and 82 per cent an oak; 37 per cent had never been in the woods, 29 per cent never on a river bank, 52 per cent never on a mountain, 50 per cent never in a church, 57 per cent never in a village, and 81 per cent had not yet been in the castle of Plauen; 72 per cent could not tell how bread is made out of grain, and 49 per cent knew nothing yet of God. Similar conditions were shown in a factory village in the neighborhood of Reichenbach. In that place of 17 children only two knew any river, and what these called a river was a shallow ditch; only two knew anything of God, and one of these thought of the clouds instead. Relatively much more favorable results were obtained in the examination in the other village schools. Of the 300 elementary scholars in these only 8 per cent had never seen a grainfield, 14 per cent had never seen a pond, 30 per cent a lark, and 43 per cent an oak; only 14 per cent had never been in the woods, 18 per cent on the bank of a creek or river, 26 per cent on a mountain, 51 per cent in a church; only 37 per cent could not tell how bread comes from grain; and 34 per cent knew nothing of God." The investigations of President Hall and Superintendent Greenwood showed the same diversity in the contents of children's minds; the same lack of acquaintance with many things the knowledge of

1 Lange's Apperception, p. 161.