19. Rationality: a Universally-Relating Activity of Mind [ELLWOOD, Charles A., The Psychology of Human Society, pp. 101-102. New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1925.] By rationality or reasoning we mean the power of abstract thought, of conceptual thinking, of mental exploration, which enables man to see relationships which exist between facts and to put facts into new relationships. . . . Man's power of abstraction, his power of imagination and reasoning, therefore, gives him a device for controlling behavior and dealing with the environment such as no other animal possesses. Man through imagination and reasoning may evaluate activity, not simply with reference to his present environment, but also with reference to any possible future environment. By means of this superior development of his intelligence his mind is able to take account of facts neither present nor tangible to the senses, remote perhaps in both space and time. In this way he reaches judgments regarding these facts and forms social and moral ideals to guide him. Thus this highest level of intelligence and of behavior enables man to do many things which the simpler cognitive processes, such as sensation, perception, and recognition, could not possibly do. Reason and imagination are the two universally-relating activities of the mind and their goal seems to be nothing less than to adapt man to the universe itself. 20. Training to Think [DEWEY, John, How We Think, pp. 27-28. New York, D. C. Heath & Co., 1910.] While it is not the business of education to prove every statement made, any more than to teach every possible item of information, it is its business to cultivate deep-seated and effective habits of discriminating tested beliefs from mere assertions, guesses, and opinions; to develop a lively, sincere, and open-minded preference for conclusions that are properly grounded, and to ingrain into the individual's working habits methods of inquiry and reasoning appropriate to the various problems that present themselves. No matter how much an individual knows as a matter of hearsay and information, if he has not attitudes and habits of this sort, he is not intellectually educated. He lacks the rudiments of mental discipline. And since these habits are not a gift of nature (no matter how strong the aptitude for acquiring them); since, moreover, the casual circumstances of the natural and social environment are not enough to compel their acquisition, the main office of education is to supply conditions that make for their cultivation. The formation of these habits is the Training of Mind. 21. The Trained Mind [DEWEY, John, How We Think, p. 78. New York, D. S. Heath & Co., 1910.] The disciplined, or logically trained, mind-the aim of the educative process-is the mind able to judge how far each of these steps needs to be carried in any particular situation. No cast-iron rules can be laid down. Each case has to be dealt with as it arises, on the basis of its importance and of the context in which it occurs. To take too much pains in one case is as foolish-as illogical-as to take too little in another. At one extreme, almost any conclusion that insures prompt and unified action may be better than any long delayed conclusion; while at the other, decision may have to be postponed for a long period-perhaps for a lifetime. The trained mind is the one that best grasps the degree of observation, forming of ideas, reasoning, and experimental testing required in any special case, and that profits the most, in future thinking, by mistakes made in the past. What is important is that the mind should be sensitive to problems and skilled in methods of attack and solution. 22. Training Pupils in Reflective Problem-Solving [PARKER, S. C., Types of Elementary Teaching and Learning, pp. 310311. Boston, Ginn & Co., 1923.] (Adapted.) To understand the thinking processes needed in problemsolving, we need: 1. Bold guessing as the basis of fertile suggesting 2. Erroneous guessing-"All who discover truths must have reasoned upon many errors to discover each truth" 3. Skill in devising means of testing the truth of guesses 4. Willingness to abandon an erroneous guess or an untenable hypothesis. A pupil may be a very competent thinker and, in the long run, very successful in solving problems, and yet be very slow and laborious in his method of criticism and verification. We have uncritical thinking and the minimum of reflection, according to Professor Dewey, if the suggestion that occurs is at once accepted. To turn the thing over in the mind, to reflect, means to hunt for additional evidence. The easiest way is to accept any suggestion that seems plausible and thereby bring an end to the condition of mental uneasiness. Reflective thinking is always more or less troublesome. It involves willingness to endure a condition of mental unrest. To maintain the state of doubt and to carry on systematic and protracted inquiry-these are the essentials of thinking. Rules for training pupils in reflective problem-solving are: 1. A problem should be adapted to the pupils' maturity and experience 2. Pupils should have analogous previous experience and related information needed for the solution or should know how to proceed to get this information. 3. An interesting quandary or dilemma should be created from some puzzling situation. The teacher's task is illustrated by Thorndike when he compares it to assisting a child to discover the road to grandpa's house instead of taking him by the hand and leading him there. He says you must make sure: 1. That the youngster knows what place he is to try to reach 2. That he keeps the destination in mind 3. He should know that to get to a place (or to solve a problem) you must keep going and not lie down and go to sleep 4. He must have some knowledge of the direction in which the house lies and of the roads, and woods and valley in the neighborhood Five specific rules for conducting problem-solving lessons are given: 1. Aid the pupils to define the problem clearly 2. Help them to keep the problem clearly in mind. 3. Stimulate suggestions by having them analyze the problem into parts each of which may suggest a solution, recall previously experienced cases or general rules and formulate from vague guesses definite hypotheses or tentative plans 4. Encourage pupils to evaluate suggestions by maintaining a state of doubt, by criticizing all suggestions thoroughly and by verifying all suggestions or conclusions by reference to facts in ordinary experience, by experiments or by standard treatises 5. Have pupils organize the material by a blackboard outline, diagrams and graphs 23. The Relationship Between Method and Thinking [DEWEY, John, Democracy and Education, p. 192. Copyright, 1916, by the Macmillan Co. Reprinted by permission.] Processes of instruction are unified in the degree in which they center in the production of good habits of thinking. While we may speak, without error, of the method of thought, the important thing is that thinking is the method of an educative experience. The essentials of method are therefore identical with the essentials of reflection. They are first that the pupil have a genuine situation of experience that there be a continuous activity in which he is interested for its own sake; secondly, that a genuine problem develop within this situation as a stimulus to thought; third, that he possess the information and make the observations needed to deal with it; fourth, that suggested solutions occur to him which he shall be responsible for developing in an orderly way; fifth, that he have opportunity and occasion to test his ideas by application, to make their meaning clear and to discover for himself their validity. 24. Teachers Often Fail to Appreciate the Necessity of Particulars [JAMES, William, Principies of Psychology, Vol. II, pp. 369–370. New York, Henry Holt & Co., 1890.] As the art of reading (after a certain stage in one's education) is the art of skipping, so the art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook. The first effect on the mind of growing cultivated is that processes once multiple get to be performed by a single act. Lazarus has called this the progressive 'condensation' of thought. But in the psychological sense it is less a condensation than a loss, a genuine dropping out and throwing overboard of conscious content. Steps really sink from sight. An advanced thinker sees the relations of his topics in such masses and so instantaneously that when he comes to explain to younger minds, it is often hard to say which grows the more perplexed, he or the pupil. In every university there are admirable investigators, who are notoriously bad lecturers. The reason is that they never spontaneously see the subject in the minute articulate way in which the student needs to have it offered to his slow reception. They grope for the links, but the links do not come. QUESTIONS AND PROBLEMS 1. What is reflective thinking? 2. When do we reason? 3. Analyze a typical instance of solving a problem. What were the different steps in the process? 4. How do inductive and deductive reasoning differ? When would the teacher make most use of the inductive type? the deductive type? 5. What is meant by generalization? 6. What are the causes of inaccurate thinking in children and adults? What is the remedy? 7. Do young children think? Give some illustrations that support your view. 8. What will training in reasoning involve? 9. How should the teacher organize her subject-matter in order to secure the maximum of reasoning outcomes on the part of her pupils? 10. Only in so far as an individual thinks does he "understand," see relationship, organize his knowledge or experiences. Cite instances that would tend to prove the assertion. 11. How should children acquire the terms, rules, and generalizations which he must use in successful thinking? 12. Abstraction and generalization are the crowning achievements of human behavior. Explain fully. 13. Psychologists tell us that ideas may be clarified by definition and by classification. (a) Try to "manufacture" definitions for each of the following terms: charity, personality, school spirit, ambition, patriotism. (b) Undertake to classify your available stock of ideas that would group themselves under one of the following: 1 Convenient kinds of transportation 2 Safety regulations in our county or city 3 The best tests of good citizenship 4 Provisions for public recreation 14. Try to recall some act of reasoning of your own which was ineffective because you were deficient in one or more of the essentials of good reasoning listed below: 1 A sufficient quantity of ideas 2 A prompt command of those ideas 3 Ideas pertinent to the problem 4 Ideas clear and orderly in arrangement 15. Read or skim Introduction to Reflective Thinking, by Columbia Associates in Philosophy, or some good text in Logic for ex |