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In reply to our first question-i.e., whether the serious pursuit of any study whatever may be expected to result in benefits for the subsequent pursuit of any other study—our general psychological principles lead us to the following conclusions, which specific experiment must confirm or disprove: (1) Certain habits gained in the mastery of one study may be appropriated directly in another; they may (2) be slightly modified before such application and still show for their possessor a great gain as compared with the individual who has to start from the beginning. (3) These habits may be incorporated in larger habit groups, either with or without slight modification. (4) They may tend to impede certain antagonistic habits and in turn be impeded by other previously extant and inhibitory habits. (5) But in all these cases, the instances of inhibition as well as those of reinforcement and incorporation, it seems probable that a certain gain in the power to use and sustain attention will accrue from any purposeful and persistent intellectual application. This result may be expected to come in part from the suppressing or disregarding of disagreeable and distracting sensations, and in part from the discipline afforded to the common element in all acts of attention, whether this common element be found in some conditions of the cerebral cortex, or in some motor conditions which are essential concomitants of all attentive attitudes. This principle probably holds true in memory, in reasoning, in observation, and in all the forms of mental activity which common thought and language distinguish. (6) What subjects best reinforce one another; what ones most inevitably conflict with one another; whether these relations are dependent upon the mode of presentation, rather than upon the subject matter itself; these and other similar questions, too numerous to point out, must one and all be answered by experiment and experience.

Although the author does not discuss the subordinate question, Do any particular studies possess a special value for general disciplinary purposes?, he gives some sound advice. His contentions have been proven to be true in recent experimental studies by Thorndike (Reading No. 17). Regarding the general disciplinary value of specific subjects, he says:

It should, however, be remarked that, strictly speaking, there is probably no such thing as a purely disciplinary study. Any study is likely to be robbed of its good name and labeled a

formal discipline, if somebody chances to allege that it is good for something beside that for which it obviously exists. The implication for our deliberations would be that every study has latent in it the possibilities of becoming to some extent a formal or general discipline. Its pursuit may effect intellectual changes not confined to the topic with which it is ostensibly engaged. Meantime, it seems to be a safe and conservative corollary of this doctrine that no study should have a place in the curriculum for which this general disciplinary characteristic is the chief recommendation. Such advantage can probably be gotten in some degree from every study, and the intrinsic values of each study afford at present a far safer criterion of educational worth than any which we can derive from the theory of formal discipline.

7. Generalization

[JUDD, C. H., Psychology of High School Subjects, p. 420. Boston, Ginn & Co., 1915.]

Generalization and Achievement of the Active Mind.There can be only one conclusion drawn from the foregoing discussions: There is no inherent reason in the psychology of the individual mind or in the psychology of any subject of instruction for supposing that experience cannot be generalized. On the other hand, there is no reason to assume that experience of any type will infallibly carry over into any other sphere whatsoever. The generalizing of experience is a qualitatively new fact wherever it appears. Given experience A and experience B, the transfer of effects from A to B is just as much a new psychological process where it occurs, as were A and B when they first appeared in experience. To think of A and B as related because they exist is to fail to understand the psychology of generalization. Everywhere in human experience there are large possibilities of generalizing experience, and everywhere in school there is danger that experience will be narrowly specialized.

8. Formalism Means an Absence of Generalization [JUDD, C. H., Psychology of the High School Subjects, pp. 420-421. Boston, Ginn & Co., 1915.]

This conclusion can be reënforced by studying what is really criticized when one uses the term "formal" as a term of condemnation in describing educational efforts. One goes back, for example, to the period of instruction in the classics when

extreme formalism obtained in that study. What do we mean by the statement that extreme formalism appeared? We mean merely that there was no possibility of utilizing the results of that classical study in the life of the student. The study was a closed domain of experience, useful only in carrying the student around a narrow circle of exercises which terminated in more exercises of exactly the same sort and never stimulated the student to go out in further investigation of the world. A subject which gets itself so organized that it rotates around. its own center immediately becomes formal.

Attention has been drawn to the fact in the discussion of manual training that even a course in handwork may become formal in the same extreme sense in which a course in the classics becomes formal. A course in mathematics may become formal or a course in science may become formal. There is nothing that is more stereotyped than a course in botany taught by an instructor who does not see the opportunity of generalizing the results of this science.

Over against the formalism which is possible in every subject, there is the possibility of generalizing all sorts of training. We may express this in terms of an earlier discussion by saying that every science and every subject taught in the schools may be made productive because of the higher forms of mental activity which are stimulated by the study itself. If one can have his interest in number enlarged by each progressive step of mathematical study he will be carried forward in his mathematical studies, in such a way that he will find new applications for the principles which he has learned. The opposite of formalism is not emphasis on content, but emphasis on application. Any mode of procedure may become formal. . . . Opposed to "formal" is such a word as "vital." That is not formal which moves forward to new applications. Generalized knowledge is not formal. Knowledge which is being used in applications, either in the evolution of higher thought-processes or in the solution of practical problems, is not formal.

9. Generalization the Highest Aim of Instruction [JUDD, C. H., Psychology of High School Subjects, pp. 424-425. Boston, Ginn & Co., 1915.]

Generalization of ideas and extension of any subject to its possible applications is, therefore, a larger and more significant aim in education than mere training in any given particular

subject. Those who have opposed the doctrine of formal discipline by saying that the school subjects at the present time do not give a generalized training are undoubtedly criticizing not the human mind, but our methods of instruction. It is, indeed, possible to find courses in arithmetic and algebra which are so narrowing in their effect upon students' minds that it is doubted whether they ought to be included in the course of study at all. So long as narrow-minded teachers are put in charge of these courses, and especially if teachers become imbued with the idea that their only business is to cultivate a narrow and limited function of mind, we shall have examples of these pedagogical failures which in the statistics show that training has not been transferred.

On the other hand, there has been a very large body of experience which makes for the conclusion that any subject properly taught has a broadening influence upon the student's general experience. The older subjects of the curriculum have so long served the purposes of instruction that they have cultivated a form of treatment and body of material which generation after generation has come to appreciate as a suitable vehicle for the general training of the mind. These older subjects have a distinct advantage over the newer subjects, which are still trying out the subject matter which they utilize and the methods of presenting this subject matter. Until the newer subjects have mastered the problem of selecting material they will never be equal to the older subjects. . . That the newer subjects should be able to impeach the older subjects of frequently lapsing into formalism is not to be wondered at, because it is certain on the simplest calculation of chances that the older subjects which have been widely utilized in the schools will exhibit more pedagogical failures than the newer subjects which have not been tried out. But there is no adequate justification for the loud contention of the newer subjects that the older subjects of the curriculum are inherently formal and of necessity narrow in the effects which they produce on students' minds.

10. Attention to Generalization a Product of Instruction [JUDD, C. H., Psychology of High School Subjects, pp. 434–435. Boston, Ginn & Co., 1915.]

There can be no doubt that all the efforts of the school to induce generalization lead to an attitude of mind which can be described as the generalizing attitude. Wherever a student has

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seen the possibility of analyzing various situations and discovering productive relationships between these different particular situations, he will be stimulated to treat new problems in the same way. He will see the possibility of analyzing everything that comes into his experience for the purpose of discovering general principles. We have here a broad habit of mind which is undoubtedly very largely promoted through the use of language as a generalized mode of reaction upon all situations. The habit of verbal analysis is a general habit dominating all of the detailed habits of mental life. In our discussion of scientific method we have pointed out the fact that there is such a generalized habit of scientific analysis which can be cultivated through the study of all of the sciences. The only additional remark which needs to be made at this point is that the teacher must explicitly cultivate this general habit.

11. Perseverance

[ROYCE, Josiah, Outline of Psychology, pp. 318-319. Copyright, 1903, by the Macmillan Co.] (Adapted.)

Royce believed that the great spontaneous variation of habits could not be altogether explained as due to external stimulation. It can be usually explained, he thought, by our disposition to persevere. The range left to mental initiative is very large. In addition to the forces of heredity and environment operating in determining the conduct of the individual, there seems to be a disposition on the part of the organism to persist in its previous modes of conduct or to repeat such actions as its experience and its docility predetermine. It is this restless search for novelty of environment and conduct that furnishes the foundation for the apparently spontaneous variation in our habits.

12. Early Experimental Investigations of Transfer [MEUMANN, E., The Psychology of Learning, pp. 353-357. New York, D. Appleton and Co., 1913.]

Ebert and Meumann have made an experimental investigation of just this very question, as to whether there is such a thing as a general memory training; and their experimental findings were unequivocal and positive. The following experiment was carried through with six observers. First, in a series of preliminary experiments the existing state of the observer's memory was determined, i.e., a cross-section was made through

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