Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

metic, and more of the real studies like nature work, literature and history..

The fourth is, there should be in the curriculum a prescribed culture element for leisure in life and an elective practical element for work in life. As members of society are men as well as workmen, the curriculum should be cultural as well as utilitarian. As the individual's power is developed through pursuit of his interest, such a curriculum will at some one point, or perhaps two, reveal the pupil to himself.

And the fifth is, both formal and real studies must not rely solely on their habit-forming power, but should also aim to give ideas and principles of action. When your habit of promptness will not take you to a committee meeting on time, the principle of respect for the time of others will. Formal logic, to take a typical instance, makes you think clearly in it; it does not as such make your thinking clear everywhere; it does give you the idea that clear thinking is worth striving for everywhere.

2. Doctrine of Formal Discipline: The Transference of Training

[TURNER, E. M., and BETTS, G. H., Laboratory Studies in Educational Psychology, pp. 174–176. New York, D. Appleton and Co., 1924.]

Many people claim that a school subject is valuable not only for its content but also for the mental powers it develops. For example, a study of formal grammar is supposed to give one the power to reason, and this power to reason is supposed to carry over not only to all other school subjects but to the activities of life itself. This doctrine of formal discipline maintains that the mental discipline gained from the study of school subjects carries over to all activities. No educational theory has ever exerted the profound influence upon curricula-making and methods of teaching as this doctrine has done, and it is therefore fitting that we experimentally study it. However, the problem we have set ourselves is a difficult one. Hence we can only begin in a very elementary fashion to attack it; the student then will find the numerous investigations in this field more intelligible to him. . . .

...

We shall attack the problem by testing ourselves in a certain mental trait such as auditory memory span . . . and then shall discipline ourselves by a training in some other trait such as memorizing a Dutch-English vocabulary, and finally shall test

ourselves in memory span to see if we have improved in this trait. Such material as the Dutch-English vocabulary is known as the practice or training series, whereas the memory span material is known respectively as the first-end test and the second-end test. If we know that in the first-end test we have a memory span of 7 digits, and after the practice we have a memory span of 9 digits, we have shown an improved ability of 2 digits or 29 per cent. But how do we know that some improvement did not take place as a result of the practice in the end-tests themselves? We do not know! Therefore, we need a control group in order to isolate the improvement resulting from the practice series. We do this by giving a large group of individuals the first-end test, and on the basis of this test we divide the group into two smaller groups so that each half is of equal ability in the trait. One group is known as the control group and the other as the training, or practicing group.

The control group takes only the two end-tests, and the practicing group takes all of the tests. Now if the practicing group improves two memory-span digits, on the average its apparent improvement is 29 per cent, provided the first-end test gave an average span of 7 and the second-end test gave an average span of 9. But the 29 per cent improvement is not due to the practice series alone; we need to consider the control group. Let us suppose that the first-end test showed an average span of 7 digits, and the second-end test an average span of 8 digits. The improvement for the control group is therefore 14 per cent. The difference between the improvement of the practice group (14 per cent) and the improvement of the control group (14 per cent) gives us the amount of improvement due to the practice or training series. In this case the transfer of training due to the practice series is 2914, or 15 per cent.

3. Transfer of Training: The Problem

[LENNES, N. J., "A Mathematician on the Present Status of the Formal Discipline Controversy," School and Society, January, 1923, Vol. 17, p. 69.]

What would be the effect of four years' earnest effort to excel in classical languages and mathematics upon one's ability to master the intricacies of banking, or upon one's persistence and doggedness in the face of any other complex problem? What is the effect of four years' work in the high school and four years in the university upon the probability that one will continue

to master new problems afterwards-that is, upon the probability that life will be a career instead of merely the holding down of a job? What would be the effect of writing a first class doctor's dissertation, say on education, upon one's ability to organize the advertising department of a great industry? To what extent will prolonged and intensive mental effort tend to inure one to the onerousness of mental effort? Does extensive experimentation in finding solutions of difficult problems tend to make one more enterprising and persistent in casting about for the solutions of other problems?

4. Transfer as Acquiring a Functional Value

[KOFFKA, Kurt, Growth of the Mind, pp. 192–193, translated by R. M. Ogden. New York, Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1925.]

These performances, (of Köhler's apes) like those referred to above, also indicate transfer, and from the instances here described it may confidently be said that transfer can not be explained in the manner suggested by Thorndike. The chimpanzee's perception of the situation is by no means so obscure that, in a purely visual sense, either a handful of straw, or indeed a coverlet-which furthermore had to be fetched from another room, and did not originally belong to the situation at all-is identical with the stick which was first employed, or so like it that the animal cannot apprehend a difference. On the contrary, only one conception of the performance is possible: that the animal has acquired an ability to introduce "tools" into certain situations. Nor is this ability limited to the particular thing with which it was acquired; on the contrary, it is an acquisition of a much more general nature. As Köhler expresses it, the stick as it appears in the field of vision has acquired a definite functional value in certain situations, and this effect is itself carried over to any object which may have certain general characteristics in common with sticks, even though these objects appear otherwise quite differently.

A transfer of learning from one thing to another results, therefore, from the sensible application of a certain principle of configuration. First, sticks, and later other things, come to acquire a place in the situation, and to enter into its configuration as members.

5. Spearman's Two Factors Theory of Transfer [HART, B. and SPEARMAN, C., "Mental Tests of Dementia," Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 1914–1915, Vol. 9, pp. 219–221.]

Like the other theories which purport to explain the facts of transfer, the Theory of Two Factors is highly controversial. This theory holds that any one's ability in any particular form of mental activity is the sum of two factors, one general and common to all mental processes, the other specific and peculiar to that particular activity. Spearman's general ability is very properly named, for it is really general to all activities.

... A person's success in any intellectual performance may be regarded as the joint product of two factors.

The one is "specific ability" for the performance in question, with all its particular features. . . . The second is "general ability."

While the range of the specific factor is exceedingly narrow, that of the general factor is universal; and between these two there appears to be no intermediate.

Suppose, that a schoolboy has surpassed his fellows in the observation of birds' nests. His victory has, no doubt, depended in part on his capacity for the general form of mental activity known as "observation." But it has also depended on his being able to apply this form of activity to the matter of birds' nests; had the question been of tarts in the pastry cook's window, the laurels might well have fallen to another boy. A further influence must have been exercised by the accompanying circumstances; to spy out nests as they lie concealed in foliage is not the same thing as to make observations concerning them in the open light of a natural history museum. Again, to discover nests at leisure is different from doing so under the severe speed limits prescribed by the risk of an interrupting gamekeeper. The boy's rank may even depend largely on the manner of estimating merit; marks may be given either for the gross number or for the rarity of the nests observed; and he who most infallibly notes the obvious construction of the house-sparrow may not be the best at detecting the elusive hole of the kingfisher. Every one of these features of the observation, then,-and their number might be indefinitely extended,-must be considered as capable of influencing the success of our hypothetical boy; one and all constitute elements of the "specific ability" concerned. Any per

formance may have a large or small proportion of such elements in common with another performance; in other words, the specific ability for the one may have much or little overlapping with that for the other. . .

[When specific elements so overlap that two performances are almost identical], a person's success in one of them must give probability of success in the other also, and the two performances must become highly correlated with one another.

6. Transfer in the Light of the Principles of General

Psychology

[ANGELL, J. R., "The Doctrine of Formal Discipline in the Light of the Principles of General Psychology," Educational Review, 1908, Vol. 36, pp. 1-14.]

The address from which this excerpt is taken was one of several grouped in a symposium at a meeting of the Michigan Schoolmasters' Club in Ann Arbor, April 2, 1908. According to Dr. Angell, the problem raised by the doctrine of formal discipline falls into two main divisions, one subordinate to the other. One problem raises the question, Is an intellectual undertaking rendered easier or more efficient by virtue of previous training regardless of the material employed for such training? The other question is, Assuming an affirmative answer to the first question, does the value of the training consist in the drill itself, or is there some residual value in the character of the subject matter studied? In answering these questions Dr. Angell makes appeal to the principles of general psychology. The writer attacks the problem at first from the side of habit and motor learning. Some writers have maintained that all habits are specific, that no habit can be generalized, and conse quently no mental discipline can have the value claimed for it because what is gained from such training is specific habits of performing certain acts in a specific way. Before passing judgment on this view the author examines some of the forms in which habit is actually manifested. A consideration of the intellectual range of habits leads the author to a consideration of the part played by attention, memory, ideals, and other intellectualistic processes, in formal discipline. We shall quote here a summary of the answers given by the author.

« AnteriorContinuar »