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conduct and to a much larger extent that of the lower animals. The outcomes of learning and teaching-habits, skills, ideas, ideals, attitudes, and interests, may be classified with respect to the ways they affect behavior. Controls may be fixed or adaptive. While fixed and adaptive controls are interrelated, they need to be distinguished. Fixed responses to specific, definite, unchanging, and recurrent situations and needs that children will meet in later life and for which the school can prepare them should be built by the school. Since the conditions of civilized life are continually changing, the school must prepare each generation for the solution of problems that cannot now be foreseen. The school must develop both specific and definite controls of conduct, and what is still more important, it must make him far more adaptable to new and unpredictable situations. That is, some outcomes are relatively fixed, while others are essentially adaptive in their character and in the influence they exert.

Habits and skills are fixed outcomes, while ideas, concepts, and principles are adaptive. There are many specific habits that must be built by the school, such as linguistic habits, health habits, etc. Skills may be distinguished from habits in that they are more or less elaborate combinations of specific habits.

Ideas, concepts, and meanings are conscious controls which serve to guide conduct in situations not controlled in a more mechanical way by habit. Ideals are to be conceived as more comprehensive controls which determine large patterns of conduct. An ideal also differs from an idea by being surcharged with value that has an emotional as well as an intellectual basis. An ideal is appreciated as well as understood and comprehended. There are two large groups of ideals: terminal and regulative.

Ambitions, broad aims, comprehensive purposes and the like are terminal ideals; standards of conduct, moral standards, virtues, etc., are regulative ideals. The building of worthy ideals and desirable attitudes constitutes one of the most important problems of the school.

Attitudes, such as one's "point of view," one's "mental

set," "tastes," "prejudices," etc., are powerful controls of conduct. Early training is one of the most significant sources of attitudes that will have a determining influence on one's behavior. Consequently, the pre-school and the earlier school years are second to none in importance.

12. Development of Critical Thinking Habits

[DEARBORN, Ned Harland, An Introduction to Teaching, pp. 71-72. New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1925.]

Among the many problems of the teacher, it appears that an outstanding one is that of developing critical thinking habits. Critical is used here in the sense of meaning analysis, reflection, and judgment in a given situation. It cannot be easily refuted that this type of activity, namely critical thinking, is the most strenuous of all human behavior. Perhaps this explains the prevailing lack of it among people in general. In any event the explanation scarcely justifies the condition. Analysis means breaking the whole into its component parts. In other words, analysis means a thorough understanding of relationships. Upon the possession of sufficient data the relationships are weighed one against another. This is reflection. And this evaluation of data forms the basis for judgment. Such a procedure in problematical situations should become habitual. In the opinion of every educator consulted the teachers are the logical agents to realize such an aim. What the results would be is not to be anticipated from the standpoint of speculation. Certainly among the desired results could be listed (1) the questioning of wide generalizations so prevalent at the present time, (2) a lessening tendency to take too much for granted, (3) a scientific attitude toward all problems, new and old, (4) a more thorough knowledge of current conditions, and (5) an increasing assurance of more equitable settlement of controversial problems. The day has passed when we can expect a formal subject-matter course effectively to promote reasoning power. To state the same problem in another way, we may say that critical thinking can scarcely become a fixed entity as a result of arbitrarily placing somewhere in an educational program the subject of logic, as an example. On the contrary, right thinking habits may be effectively developed by skillful guidance from the very beginning of the learning process. This cannot be realized immediately, for to be consistent we must admit the need for increasingly more adequate thinking habits on the

part of the teacher. It is here as a group we have, in developing critical thinking as an habitual activity, a very keen responsibility. It is only through such an ability that our aims of teaching may be completely realized.

13. Appreciation

[DEARBORN, Ned Harland, An Introduction to Teaching, pp. 72-73. New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1925.]

The psychologist might seriously question a discussion of the cultivation of appreciations as an objective in teaching because of the intangible meanings of the term. Just what appreciations are, we are unable to state in precise language. Yet no one will deny that children can be taught to appreciate music, literature, water coloring, oil paintings, statuary, dramatic skill, fine workmanship, and a variety of such material forms. It is known, too, that the more abstract qualities of life, such as kindness, fairness, beauty, virtue, honesty, and the like stimulate appreciation. In fact, it seems that for a full enjoyment of life true appreciations are essential.

In the first classification, justification can be found in the fact that those who contribute most to life are those who do appreciate one or more of the items mentioned. It is the appreciation of the better things in art that keeps art bridled; it is the appreciation of superior craftsmanship that encourages the artisan to better effort; it is the ability to appreciate properly that functions so well in the leisure hours which in this period of industrial progress have been considerably lengthened. But what may be of even greater importance, if such were possible, is the appreciation of kindness, fairness, beauty, etc. By such means human relationships become more ideal. We understand each other better because we understand motives and the conditions underlying these motives. In appreciating our interrelationships we enjoy a more ordered coöperative and efficient life. Once more the burden of responsibility rests upon the one directing the learning process.

14. Habits and Skills

[DEARBORN, Ned Harland, An Introduction to Teaching, pp. 73–74. New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1925.]

A general analysis of teaching must include specific skills as important outcomes. Skill is dependent upon habit, and habits are results of repetition. It must be obvious to all that

certain skills must be attained in order that the individual may take his proper place as an active integral part of any progressive community. We have been reminded earlier in a general way of the significance of the invention of writing. Writing may be considered in two senses. It may refer to the art of expressing thought, or it may mean merely penmanship. As either, it involves a highly developed skill when fully realized. How important it is in the realization of a "socially efficient" person is difficult to determine. The conditions change with individuals, occupations, and places. There is little room for doubt, however, that in a nation of 110,000,000 people intercommunication through writing (newspapers, periodicals, magazines, etc.) is essential to progress. Hence the skill of writing needs attention somewhere if only in a highly vocationalized curriculum. As for penmanship it may be safely said that legibility is probably the most that can be demanded and possibly more than can be defended since instance after instance can be shown of extremely successful careers from practically every occupation of life in which the individual concerned could not "read his own writing." It should be stated, parenthetically, that success in such cases came in spite of, not because of, poor penmanship. At least we may say that legibility in handwriting is highly desirable. It remains, in any case, a skill of greater or less degree.

Arithmetical processes, such as the four fundamentals; vocalization, either in the speaking or singing voice; playing a musical instrument; athletic activities, involving superior performance; typewriting, shorthand, bookkeeping, cost accounting, and auditing; diagnosis and surgery; stage presence; oral and silent reading; critical thinking; all these and more illustrate skills of various types and degrees. In most cases cited the teacher is held responsible by the public and by the pupils or their parents for the successful development of the several skills which are absolutely essential for either a general or a specific life requirement.

15. Ideals and Attitudes

[DEARBORN, Ned Harland, An Introduction to Teaching, pp. 75-76. New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1925.]

Like appreciations, ideals and attitudes are elusive terms. If specific applications are made to everyday activities of human beings an understanding of both is possible.

process of education is revealed it becomes apparent that the child enters this life devoid of ideas. But as growth proceeds and situations arise ideas are formed. Ideas are based upon perceptions or are concepts founded upon percepts and imagination. As ideas develop the child begins to test them and then ensues the elimination or rejection of some and the growth or confirmation of others. Upon a basis of further experiences an ideal emerges. The idea has been elevated to a place of greater importance in the individual's life of greater importance because its potency has been materially augmented by reason of this transformation. To illustrate-a boy in his association with others like him on the playground or street obtains an idea through experience, imagination, or observation that a falsehood may be more productive of satisfaction to himself than a truth. By the same means he gains an idea that veracity is preferable or that discreet silence is the wisest course to pursue. By testing these ideas, either imaginatively or actually, let us assume that his conclusion is that truth is in the long run, the best of the three. This becomes an ideal and the fact is that as soon as the ideal becomes firmly established it becomes virtually a rule of action. And in proportion to the strength of the conviction so will the child measure his daily actions because of his accepted principles. An ideal serves him as a guide in an immediate situation.

Attitudes operate in a very real sense in the acceptance or rejection of new ideas or in the formation of ideals. The reader can readily recall his attitude toward Latin upon entering high school. He had been told repeatedly that Latin was a difficult subject or that the instructor was very exacting. Whatever the cause he approached the problem in all probability with an unfavorable predisposition toward Latin. The results of such performance need no explanation.

Imagine some one going to a new situation in a strange city. He is told that the business men are "up to date," that the people are unusually friendly, that, in short, life there will be very pleasant. Again, the consequences need no elaboration.

The point of emphasis is that attitudes, whatever they are or are not, are real and that they operate advantageously or otherwise with equal facility. It is also to be remembered definitely that attitudes can be created through the influence of teaching (what we teach and how we teach it) and because of the importance of attitudes in success or failure no school program can afford to disregard them.

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