16. Subject Matter and the Educative Process [KILPATRICK, W. H., "Subject Matter and the Educative Process," Journal of Educational Method, Vol. 2, pp. 98-100.]

Subject-matter (1) means that we study so as to make the contemplated advance (in living), and (2) implies what we are to learn in order to facilitate that advance. Thus does subject-matter function in the educative experience and through it for the enrichment of life. . . .

... Getting back of the term subject-matter to the actuality, we may then conclude: (1) it enters experience while a new step is being taken (this is the process of learning); (2) being learned, it remains as a character deposit, awaiting an opportunity to act; (3) as a character constituent it normally and properly helps to determine succeeding experiences. . . . The more of the learner put in play in the learning experience, the deeper and wider the learning effect, and the sooner and broader is the resulting modification of experience. Subject-matter as

here seen is thus of the very stuff of which each advance in life is made. Its original entry served to carry forward life at that point. It serves properly and normally to raise all subsequent life...

17. Science versus Opinion

[THORNDIKE, E. L., Principles of Teaching, pp. 265-266.

A. G. Seiler, 1916.]

New York,

Mathematical Precision.-Science seeks precise quantitative measures of facts by which changes and correspondences may be properly weighed; opinion is content to guess at amounts of difference and likeness, to talk in the vague terms of more or less, much and little, to rate a method as better or worse without taking the pains to find out just how much better or worse it is.

Objectivity.-Science pays no heed to anything but the facts which it has already made sure of; it puts nothing in the scales but objective evidence. Opinion trusts its personal impressions. Verifiability.-Science reveals the sources of its evidence and the course of its arguments, so that any properly equipped thinker can verify for himself the facts asserted to be true. Opinion offers itself to be accepted or rejected, but not to be verified.

Expertness.-Science is the work of minds specialized to search after truth. . . . Opinion is the occasional thought of

those who, though important and capable people, are yet only amateurs in the work of getting truth [in the field in which their opinions may be offered].

Impartiality.-Science knows or should know no favorites, and cares for nothing in its conclusions but their truth. Opinion is often misled by the 'unconscious logic of its hopes and fears,' by prepossessions for or against this or that book or method or result.

18. Experience and Its Four Factors

[DUNLAP, Knight, The Elements of Scientific Psychology, pp. 23–24. St. Louis, C. V. Mosby Co., 1922.]

That which is properly included under the term psychology to-day is a very definite thing, and has a very definite foundation and course of development. It starts from the empirical situation . . . in which there is conscious adjustment of an organism to the environment. This total situation, in which there is conscious adjustment, is best designated by the term experience. When we consider in detail such a situation, in which we have experience, we find that there are four factors which are to be taken into account. Three of these factors are immediately given as essential parts of the experience, and the fourth is inferred or discovered as a condition of experience. These four factors are:

1. Something of which we are conscious. That "something" is called content.

2. Consciousness, or awareness of the content.

3. I, or the ego, which is conscious, or has the consciousness. 4. Bodily or organic activity.

Physical science includes among its data only observable facts. Psychological science includes in addition two other facts, the second and third in our list above, neither of which are observable, but which are nevertheless empirical data, in that they are given in experience itself and are not inferences. The inclusion of these data is the only point in which psychology fundamentally differs from physical science, and if we ignore these data, we thereby abandon psychology completely, and go over to strictly physical science.

19. The Old and the New Psychology Contrasted [DEWEY, John, "The Psychology of the Elementary Curriculum," The Elementary School Record, Vol. 1, No. 9, pp. 222-25. 1900.]

Chicago,

While the great principles of psychology remain essentially the same from year to year, and generation to generation, the viewpoint is constantly shifting. It is hardly fair to the facts to speak of the old psychology and the new. Yet, Professor Dewey, who is the foremost interpreter of the social and industrial changes in a century in terms of social psychology, makes a very useful contrast. He has given us a new social psychology for the educational process. While at the University of Chicago, he conducted an experimental school, the important results of which were published in 1900, in nine monographs, under the title of The Elementary School Record. In the last of the series he contrasted the old and the new psychology, as it applies to the education of the child, in the following words:

What, then, are the chief working hypotheses that have been adopted from psychology? What educational counterparts have been hit upon as in some degree in line with the adopted psychology?

The discussion of these questions may be approached by pointing out a contrast between contemporary psychology and the psychology of former days. The contrast is a triple one. Earlier psychology regarded mind as a purely individual affair in direct and naked contact with an external world. The only question asked was of the ways in which the world and the mind acted upon each other. The entire process recognized would have been in theory exactly the same if there were one mind living alone in the universe. At present the tendency is to conceive the individual mind as a function of social life,-as not capable of operating or developing by itself, but as requiring continual stimulus from social agencies, and finding its nutrition in social supplies. The idea of heredity has made familiar the notion that the equipment of the individual, mental as well as physical, is an inheritance from the race: a capital inherited by the individual from the past and held in trust by him for the future. The idea of evolution has made familiar the notion that mind cannot be regarded as an individual monopolistic possession, but represents the outworkings of the endeavor

and thought of humanity; that it is developed in an environment which is social as well as physical, and that social needs and aims have been most potent in shaping it, that the chief difference between savagery and civilization is not in the naked nature which each faces, but the social heredity and social medium.

In the second place, the older psychology was a psychology of knowledge, of intellect. Emotion and endeavor occupied but an incidental and derivative place. Much was said about sensations,-next to nothing about movements. There was discussion of ideas and of whether they originated in sensations or in some innate mental faculty; but the possibility of their origin in and from the needs of action was ignored. Their influence upon conduct, upon behavior, was regarded as an external attachment.

The third point of contrast lies in the modern conception of the mind as essentially a process-a process of growth, not a fixed thing. According to the older view, mind was mind, and that was the whole story. Mind was the same throughout, because fitted out with the same assortment of faculties, whether in child or adult. If any difference was made it was simply that some of these ready-made faculties-such as memory-came into play at an earlier time, while others, such as judging and inferring, made their appearance only after the child, through memorizing drills, had been reduced to complete dependence upon the thought of others. The only important difference that was recognized was one of quantity, of amount. The boy was a little man and his mind was a little mind,-in everything but size the same as that of the adult, having its own readyfurnished equipment of faculties, of attention, memory, etc. Now we believe in the mind as a growing affair, and hence as essentially changing, presenting distinctive phases of capacity and interest at different periods. These are all one and the same in the sense of continuity of life, but all different in that each has its own distinctive claims and offices. "First the blade, then the ear, and then the full corn in the ear.”

20. The Field of Educational Psychology

Psychological principles furnish the foundation for the technique of teaching. Consequently, the field of educational psychology includes two large divisions, the native equipment

of human beings and the psychology of learning. An analysis of these two large divisions reveals a number of spe cific problems which constitute the subject-matter of educational psychology. Original nature includes a study of the nature of the individual's unlearned equipment, individual differences and the measurement of general and special mental abilities and disabilities.

The psychology of learning includes the psychology of learning in general, and the learning of school subjects in particular. The former division is concerned with learning by observation and perception, trial and error, association, and reasoning; the transfer of training and the rate and progress of learning. The psychology of school subjects includes the psychology of learning the different subjects, the rate of progress, the mental processes involved in learning each subject, special abilities and disabilities in the different branches, most economical way of learning the subjects, etc.

21. What Is Consciousness?

[COLVIN, S. S., The Learning Process, pp. 5-6. Copyright, 1911, by the Macmillan Co.] (Adapted.)

In his now famous chapter on The Stream of Consciousness, James pointed out in a very clear manner that consciousness is not a thing but a process. Therefore, in order to understand its nature, it cannot be studied as something static. As a process, it is constantly changing and flowing on toward a more or less definite goal under the dominance of certain laws. Consciousness is made up of a series of related events, harmoniously associated and leading to a final conclusion.

Consciousness may be considered from the viewpoint of the law of purpose. This law differentiates the psychic world from the material world. The material world can be explained in terms of cause and effect, but in the mental world purpose, design, and aim are necessary for any ade quate interpretation. A satisfactory account of the appearance and grouping of mental states can be shown only by reference to the end, aim, or purpose toward which the mental processes are moving.