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have as clear an idea as possible of what you wish your pupils to become. If your pupils were everything that you wish them to become, you would not undertake to teach them. What is it that you wish them to become? In what respect do you wish them to change as the result of your teaching? That question, the study of Psychology will help you to answer; and the more you know about Psychology, the more clearly and fully and definitely you can answer it.

Meaning of Development.

Quite likely you think you can answer it now. You say you wish your pupils to have better developed minds at the end of each day than they had at the beginning. But better developed in what direction? The North American Indians had remarkable powers of observation. They could track an enemy through a forest where you could see no trace of a human being. Will you be content to have your pupils acquire powers similar to those possessed by the North American Indians? Is this what you wish them to become? The Chinese have remarkable memories. Many educated Chinamen remember almost word for word the nine classics compiled and edited by Confucius. Do you want your pupils to have minds like the Chinese ?

I do not, of course, mean to imply that you should not aim to cultivate the observing powers of your pupils as well as their memories. But the North American Indians developed their powers of observation at the expense of the higher powers of their minds, and the Chinese their mechanical memory in the same costly way. And yet the Chinese aim at development.

It is evident, there

fore, that when one says that the obiect of education

NECESSITY OF A DEFINITE AIM.

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is development, he has not expressed a very definite idea. The question is, What kind of development? and that question Psychology will help us answer.

So you see that when

Necessity of a Definite Aim. you say you want to help your pupils develop their minds, you have by no means proved that you know precisely what, as an intelligent teacher, you ought to aim at. And unless we know what to aim at, we can not hope to have success. Do you think an architect could build a beautiful house if he began to build it and worked at it from day to day without having in his mind, so to speak, the house he was trying to build? Well, if a carpenter must have a picture in his mind of the kind of house he wishes to build in order to build it, how can we hope to succeed in moulding and forming the minds of our pupils in an intelligent way, unless we have the clearest ideas of what we wish them to become?

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Need of a Criterion of Knowledge. But at any rate, perhaps you think you are clear as to one thing in which you wish your pupils to change; you wish them to become less ignorant you wish them to know more. But to know more of what? We have not got very far when we say that we wish to help our pupils to acquire knowledge, unless we have made up our minds as to what knowledge is worth acquiring. There is a good deal of history in the text-books which is not worth learning, and a good deal out of them which is in the highest degree important, and the same is true of the other subjects we teach. How are we to make up our minds what knowledge is worth acquir. ing? The study of Psychology will help us do that.

It

will help us see the effect which the acquiring of this or that piece of knowledge will have on the mind, and in this way enable us to estimate its worth.

Here again it is evident that it is quite impossible to succeed in teaching unless in some way we are able to decide intelligently what we ought to get our pupils to learn. Until we are able to decide that, we can, in the ́ first place, aim only to get them to learn everything in the text-book. This is bad for two reasons: in the first place, text-books are sometimes written by men who know so little of the subject that they can not tell what is important and what is not important; and in the second place, intelligent men put many things in text-books, not that students may learn them, but that they may be able to refer to them if they have occasion to use them. No one but a fool would commit to memory a railroad guide. And yet railroad guides are very useful; but when any one has occasion for them, he goes to them. He remembers what he finds there just as long as he wants it, and then does not trouble his head with it any longer. Now, intelligent men put many such facts in the books they write-facts which they do not expect any one to learn, but to which they think persons may sometimes have occasion to refer. For these two reasons, it is very unfortunate for a teacher to have to rely entirely upon his text-books in deciding what to teach.

The study of Psychology, then, will help us see what we ought to aim at. It will help us see the kind of development we ought to try to help them get, and the kind of knowledge we ought to try to impart.

QUESTIONS.

QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT.

1. What are the two reasons for studying Psychology?

2. How is any power of the mind developed?

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3. What are the two reasons which make the study of Psychology so useful in developing the power to think?

4. What is teaching?

5. Give two illustrations to show that when you say you wish your pupils to have better developed minds, your statement lacks clearness.

6. Show that you can not succeed as a teacher unless you know what to aim at.

7. Show that when you say you wish to make your pupils less ignorant, your statement lacks clearness.

8. How will the study of Psychology help you in this direction? 9. Why should not a teacher limit himself to teaching what is in the text-books?

10. What is the central thought which this lesson aims to bring out?

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS.

1. Which do you regard as the more important service rendered by the study of Psychology to the teacher-increasing his power to think, or expanding his knowledge of the conditions under which the mind acts?

2. One writer speaks of a certain kind of memory as the "index" memory, and another of another kind as the “mechanical" memory. Can you get from this lesson any idea of what they are?

3. Do you believe that it is possible to train the powers of obser vation in general, i.e., to train them in such a way that their pos bessor will be a good observer of any kind of facts?

LESSON II.

THE BENEFITS OF PSYCHOLOGY TO THE TEACHER.

(Continued.)

Conditions of Success.-To succeed well in any difficult undertaking, three things are necessary: (1) one must see clearly the thing to be done; (2) he must have a clear idea of the best means of doing it; and (3) he must have a strong motive for doing it well. He in whom these conditions meet most perfectly who sees most clearly the thing to be done, who has the clearest perception of the best means of doing it, who has the strongest motive for making strenuous efforts to do it is the person most likely to succeed in any difficult undertaking.

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The study of Psychology can not be urged on the ground that it is likely to do much toward making the teacher interested in his work, and more willing, therefore, to work hard in order to do it well. It is not, indeed, without effect in this direction. The work of teachers who make no study of mind is likely to be mechanical, while the work of teachers who base their efforts on a knowledge of mind is rational. And mechanical work is uninteresting, unattractive — fit only for machines. Anything, therefore, which tends to make a teacher's work rational certainly tends to make it interesting. This was what Fitch meant when he called teaching the noblest of arts and the sorriest of trades. Practiced mechanically,

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