Talks To Teachers On Psychology
Talks To Teachers On PsychologyTALKS TO TEACHERSI. PSYCHOLOGY AND THE TEACHING ARTII. THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESSIII. THE CHILD AS A BEHAVING ORGANISMIV. EDUCATION AND BEHAVIORV. THE NECESSITY OF REACTIONSVI. NATIVE REACTIONS AND ACQUIRED REACTIONSVII. WHAT THE NATIVE REACTIONS AREVIII. THE LAWS OF HABITIX. THE ASSOCIATION OF IDEASX. INTERESTXI. ATTENTIONXII. MEMORYXIII. THE ACQUISITION OF IDEASXIV. APPERCEPTIONXV. THE WILLTALKS TO STUDENTSI. THE GOSPEL OF RELAXATIONII. ON A CERTAIN BLINDNESS IN HUMAN BEINGSIII. WHAT MAKES A LIFE SIGNIFICANTCopyright
Talks To Teachers On Psychology
J. William
TALKS TO TEACHERS
I. PSYCHOLOGY AND THE TEACHING ART
In the general activity and uprising of ideal interests which
every one with an eye for fact can discern all about us in American
life, there is perhaps no more promising feature than the
fermentation which for a dozen years or more has been going on
among the teachers. In whatever sphere of education their functions
may lie, there is to be seen among them a really inspiring amount
of searching of the heart about the highest concerns of their
profession. The renovation of nations begins always at the top,
among the reflective members of the State, and spreads slowly
outward and downward. The teachers of this country, one may say,
have its future in their hands. The earnestness which they at
present show in striving to enlighten and strengthen themselves is
an index of the nation's probabilities of advance in all ideal
directions. The outward organization of education which we have in
our United States is perhaps, on the whole, the best organization
that exists in any country. The State school systems give a
diversity and flexibility, an opportunity for experiment and
keenness of competition, nowhere else to be found on such an
important scale. The independence of so many of the colleges and
universities; the give and take of students and instructors between
them all; their emulation, and their happy organic relations to the
lower schools; the traditions of instruction in them, evolved from
the older American recitation-method (and so avoiding on the one
hand the pure lecture-system prevalent in Germany and Scotland,
which considers too little the individual student, and yet not
involving the sacrifice of the instructor to the individual
student, which the English tutorial system would seem too often to
entail),—all these things (to say nothing of that coeducation of
the sexes in whose benefits so many of us heartily believe), all
these things, I say, are most happy features of our scholastic
life, and from them the most sanguine auguries may be
drawn.Having so favorable an organization, all we need is to
impregnate it with geniuses, to get superior men and women working
more and more abundantly in it and for it and at it, and in a
generation or two America may well lead the education of the world.
I must say that I look forward with no little confidence to the day
when that shall be an accomplished fact.No one has profited more by the fermentation of which I
speak, in pedagogical circles, than we psychologists. The desire of
the schoolteachers for a completer professional training, and their
aspiration toward the 'professional' spirit in their work, have led
them more and more to turn to us for light on fundamental
principles. And in these few hours which we are to spend together
you look to me, I am sure, for information concerning the mind's
operations, which may enable you to labor more easily and
effectively in the several schoolrooms over which you
preside.Far be it from me to disclaim for psychology all title to
such hopes. Psychology ought certainly to give the teacher radical
help. And yet I confess that, acquainted as I am with the height of
some of your expectations, I feel a little anxious lest, at the end
of these simple talks of mine, not a few of you may experience some
disappointment at the net results. In other words, I am not sure
that you may not be indulging fancies that are just a shade
exaggerated. That would not be altogether astonishing, for we have
been having something like a 'boom' in psychology in this country.
Laboratories and professorships have been founded, and reviews
established. The air has been full of rumors. The editors of
educational journals and the arrangers of conventions have had to
show themselves enterprising and on a level with the novelties of
the day. Some of the professors have not been unwilling to
co-operate, and I am not sure even that the publishers have been
entirely inert. 'The new psychology' has thus become a term to
conjure up portentous ideas withal; and you teachers, docile and
receptive and aspiring as many of you are, have been plunged in an
atmosphere of vague talk about our science, which to a great extent
has been more mystifying than enlightening. Altogether it does seem
as if there were a certain fatality of mystification laid upon the
teachers of our day. The matter of their profession, compact enough
in itself, has to be frothed up for them in journals and
institutes, till its outlines often threaten to be lost in a kind
of vast uncertainty. Where the disciples are not independent and
critical-minded enough (and I think that, if you teachers in the
earlier grades have any defect—the slightest touch of a defect in
the world—it is that you are a mite too docile), we are pretty sure
to miss accuracy and balance and measure in those who get a license
to lay down the law to them from above.As regards this subject of psychology, now, I wish at the
very threshold to do what I can to dispel the mystification. So I
say at once that in my humble opinion thereisno 'new psychology' worthy of the
name. There is nothing but the old psychology which began in
Locke's time, plus a little physiology of the brain and senses and
theory of evolution, and a few refinements of introspective detail,
for the most part without adaptation to the teacher's use. It is
only the fundamental conceptions of psychology which are of real
value to the teacher; and they, apart from the aforesaid theory of
evolution, are very far from being new.—I trust that you will see
better what I mean by this at the end of all these
talks.I say moreover that you make a great, a very great mistake,
if you think that psychology, being the science of the mind's laws,
is something from which you can deduce definite programmes and
schemes and methods of instruction for immediate schoolroom use.
Psychology is a science, and teaching is an art; and sciences never
generate arts directly out of themselves. An intermediary inventive
mind must make the application, by using its
originality.The science of logic never made a man reason rightly, and the
science of ethics (if there be such a thing) never made a man
behave rightly. The most such sciences can do is to help us to
catch ourselves up and check ourselves, if we start to reason or to
behave wrongly; and to criticise ourselves more articulately after
we have made mistakes. A science only lays down lines within which
the rules of the art must fall, laws which the follower of the art
must not transgress; but what particular thing he shall positively
do within those lines is left exclusively to his own genius. One
genius will do his work well and succeed in one way, while another
succeeds as well quite differently; yet neither will transgress the
lines.The art of teaching grew up in the schoolroom, out of
inventiveness and sympathetic concrete observation. Even where (as
in the case of Herbart) the advancer of the art was also a
psychologist, the pedagogics and the psychology ran side by side,
and the former was not derived in any sense from the latter. The
two were congruent, but neither was subordinate. And so everywhere
the teaching mustagreewith the
psychology, but need not necessarily be the only kind of teaching
that would so agree; for many diverse methods of teaching may
equally well agree with psychological laws.To know psychology, therefore, is absolutely no guarantee
that we shall be good teachers. To advance to that result, we must
have an additional endowment altogether, a happy tact and ingenuity
to tell us what definite things to say and do when the pupil is
before us. That ingenuity in meeting and pursuing the pupil, that
tact for the concrete situation, though they are the alpha and
omega of the teacher's art, are things to which psychology cannot
help us in the least.The science of psychology, and whatever science of general
pedagogics may be based on it, are in fact much like the science of
war. Nothing is simpler or more definite than the principles of
either. In war, all you have to do is to work your enemy into a
position from which the natural obstacles prevent him from escaping
if he tries to; then to fall on him in numbers superior to his own,
at a moment when you have led him to think you far away; and so,
with a minimum of exposure of your own troops, to hack his force to
pieces, and take the remainder prisoners. Just so, in teaching, you
must simply work your pupil into such a state of interest in what
you are going to teach him that every other object of attention is
banished from his mind; then reveal it to him so impressively that
he will remember the occasion to his dying day; and finally fill
him with devouring curiosity to know what the next steps in
connection with the subject are. The principles being so plain,
there would be nothing but victories for the masters of the
science, either on the battlefield or in the schoolroom, if they
did not both have to make their application to an incalculable
quantity in the shape of the mind of their opponent. The mind of
your own enemy, the pupil, is working away from you as keenly and
eagerly as is the mind of the commander on the other side from the
scientific general. Just what the respective enemies want and
think, and what they know and do not know, are as hard things for
the teacher as for the general to find out. Divination and
perception, not psychological pedagogics or theoretic strategy, are
the only helpers here.But, if the use of psychological principles thus be negative
rather than positive, it does not follow that it may not be a great
use, all the same. It certainly narrows the path for experiments
and trials. We know in advance, if we are psychologists, that
certain methods will be wrong, so our psychology saves us from
mistakes. It makes us, moreover, more clear as to what we are
about. We gain confidence in respect to any method which we are
using as soon as we believe that it has theory as well as practice
at its back. Most of all, it fructifies our independence, and it
reanimates our interest, to see our subject at two different
angles,—to get a stereoscopic view, so to speak, of the youthful
organism who is our enemy, and, while handling him with all our
concrete tact and divination, to be able, at the same time, to
represent to ourselves the curious inner elements of his mental
machine. Such a complete knowledge as this of the pupil, at once
intuitive and analytic, is surely the knowledge at which every
teacher ought to aim.Fortunately for you teachers, the elements of the mental
machine can be clearly apprehended, and their workings easily
grasped. And, as the most general elements and workings are just
those parts of psychology which the teacher finds most directly
useful, it follows that the amount of this science which is
necessary to all teachers need not be very great. Those who find
themselves loving the subject may go as far as they please, and
become possibly none the worse teachers for the fact, even though
in some of them one might apprehend a little loss of balance from
the tendency observable in all of us to overemphasize certain
special parts of a subject when we are studying it intensely and
abstractly. But for the great majority of you a general view is
enough, provided it be a true one; and such a general view, one may
say, might almost be written on the palm of one's
hand.Least of all need you, merelyas
teachers, deem it part of your duty to become
contributors to psychological science or to make psychological
observations in a methodical or responsible manner. I fear that
some of the enthusiasts for child-study have thrown a certain
burden on you in this way. By all means let child-study go on,—it
is refreshing all our sense of the child's life. There are teachers
who take a spontaneous delight in filling syllabuses, inscribing
observations, compiling statistics, and computing the per cent.
Child-study will certainly enrich their lives. And, if its results,
as treated statistically, would seem on the whole to have but
trifling value, yet the anecdotes and observations of which it in
part consist do certainly acquaint us more intimately with our
pupils. Our eyes and ears grow quickened to discern in the child
before us processes similar to those we have read of as noted in
the children,—processes of which we might otherwise have remained
inobservant. But, for Heaven's sake, let the rank and file of
teachers be passive readers if they so prefer, and feel free not to
contribute to the accumulation. Let not the prosecution of it be
preached as an imperative duty or imposed by regulation on those to
whom it proves an exterminating bore, or who in any way whatever
miss in themselves the appropriate vocation for it. I cannot too
strongly agree with my colleague, Professor Münsterberg, when he
says that the teacher's attitude toward the child, being concrete
and ethical, is positively opposed to the psychological observer's,
which is abstract and analytic. Although some of us may conjoin the
attitudes successfully, in most of us they must
conflict.The worst thing that can happen to a good teacher is to get a
bad conscience about her profession because she feels herself
hopeless as a psychologist. Our teachers are overworked already.
Every one who adds a jot or tittle of unnecessary weight to their
burden is a foe of education. A bad conscience increases the weight
of every other burden; yet I know that child-study, and other
pieces of psychology as well, have been productive of bad
conscience in many a really innocent pedagogic breast. I should
indeed be glad if this passing word from me might tend to dispel
such a bad conscience, if any of you have it; for it is certainly
one of those fruits of more or less systematic mystification of
which I have already complained. The best teacher may be the
poorest contributor of child-study material, and the best
contributor may be the poorest teacher. No fact is more palpable
than this.So much for what seems the most reasonable general attitude
of the teacher toward the subject which is to occupy our
attention.
II. THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS
I said a few minutes ago that the most general elements and
workings of the mind are all that the teacher absolutely needs to
be acquainted with for his purposes.Now theimmediatefact
which psychology, the science of mind, has to study is also the
most general fact. It is the fact that in each of us, when awake
(and often when asleep),some kind of
consciousness is always going on. There is a
stream, a succession of states, or waves, or fields (or of whatever
you please to call them), of knowledge, of feeling, of desire, of
deliberation, etc., that constantly pass and repass, and that
constitute our inner life. The existence of this stream is the
primal fact, the nature and origin of it form the essential
problem, of our science. So far as we class the states or fields of
consciousness, write down their several natures, analyze their
contents into elements, or trace their habits of succession, we are
on the descriptive or analytic level. So far as we ask where they
come from or why they are just what they are, we are on the
explanatory level.In these talks with you, I shall entirely neglect the
questions that come up on the explanatory level. It must be frankly
confessed that in no fundamental sense do we know where our
successive fields of consciousness come from, or why they have the
precise inner constitution which they do have. They certainly
follow or accompany our brain states, and of course their special
forms are determined by our past experiences and education. But, if
we ask justhowthe brain
conditions them, we have not the remotest inkling of an answer to
give; and, if we ask just how the education moulds the brain, we
can speak but in the most abstract, general, and conjectural terms.
On the other hand, if we should say that they are due to a
spiritual being called our Soul, which reacts on our brain states
by these peculiar forms of spiritual energy, our words would be
familiar enough, it is true; but I think you will agree that they
would offer little genuine explanatory meaning. The truth is that
we reallydo not knowthe
answers to the problems on the explanatory level, even though in
some directions of inquiry there may be promising speculations to
be found. For our present purposes I shall therefore dismiss them
entirely, and turn to mere description. This state of things was
what I had in mind when, a moment ago, I said there was no 'new
psychology' worthy of the name.We have thus fields of consciousness,—that is the first general fact; and the second general fact
is that the concrete fields are always complex. They contain
sensations of our bodies and of the objects around us, memories of
past experiences and thoughts of distant things, feelings of
satisfaction and dissatisfaction, desires and aversions, and other
emotional conditions, together with determinations of the will, in
every variety of permutation and combination.In most of our concrete states of consciousness all these
different classes of ingredients are found simultaneously present
to some degree, though the relative proportion they bear to one
another is very shifting. One state will seem to be composed of
hardly anything but sensations, another of hardly anything but
memories, etc. But around the sensation, if one consider carefully,
there will always be some fringe of thought or will, and around the
memory some margin or penumbra of emotion or
sensation.In most of our fields of consciousness there is a core of
sensation that is very pronounced. You, for example, now, although
you are also thinking and feeling, are getting through your eyes
sensations of my face and figure, and through your ears sensations
of my voice. The sensations are thecentreorfocus, the thoughts and feelings
themargin, of your actually
present conscious field.On the other hand, some object of thought, some distant
image, may have become the focus of your mental attention even
while I am speaking,—your mind, in short, may have wandered from
the lecture; and, in that case, the sensations of my face and
voice, although not absolutely vanishing from your conscious field,
may have taken up there a very faint and marginal
place.Again, to take another sort of variation, some feeling
connected with your own body may have passed from a marginal to a
focal place, even while I speak.The expressions 'focal object' and 'marginal object,' which
we owe to Mr. Lloyd Morgan, require, I think, no further
explanation. The distinction they embody is a very important one,
and they are the first technical terms which I shall ask you to
remember.In the successive mutations of our fields of consciousness,
the process by which one dissolves into another is often very
gradual, and all sorts of inner rearrangements of contents occur.
Sometimes the focus remains but little changed, while the margin
alters rapidly. Sometimes the focus alters, and the margin stays.
Sometimes focus and margin change places. Sometimes, again, abrupt
alterations of the whole field occur. There can seldom be a sharp
description. All we know is that, for the most part, each field has
a sort of practical unity for its possessor, and that from this
practical point of view we can class a field with other fields
similar to it, by calling it a state of emotion, of perplexity, of
sensation, of abstract thought, of volition, and the
like.Vague and hazy as such an account of our stream of
consciousness may be, it is at least secure from positive error and
free from admixture of conjecture or hypothesis. An influential
school of psychology, seeking to avoid haziness of outline, has
tried to make things appear more exact and scientific by making the
analysis more sharp.The various fields of consciousness, according to this
school, result from a definite number of perfectly definite
elementary mental states, mechanically associated into a mosaic or
chemically combined. According to some thinkers,—Spencer, for
example, or Taine,—these resolve themselves at last into little
elementary psychic particles or atoms of 'mind-stuff,' out of which
all the more immediately known mental states are said to be built
up. Locke introduced this theory in a somewhat vague form. Simple
'ideas' of sensation and reflection, as he called them, were for
him the bricks of which our mental architecture is built up. If I
ever have to refer to this theory again, I shall refer to it as the
theory of 'ideas.' But I shall try to steer clear of it altogether.
Whether it be true or false, it is at any rate only conjectural;
and, for your practical purposes as teachers, the more unpretending
conception of the stream of consciousness, with its total waves or
fields incessantly changing, will amply suffice.[A][A]In the light of some of the expectations
that are abroad concerning the 'new psychology,' it is instructive
to read the unusually candid confession of its founder Wundt, after
his thirty years of laboratory-experience:"The service which it [the experimental method] can yield
consists essentially in perfecting our inner observation, or
rather, as I believe, in making this really possible, in any exact
sense. Well, has our experimental self-observation, so understood,
already accomplished aught of importance? No general answer to this
question can be given, because in the unfinished state of our
science, there is, even inside of the experimental lines of
inquiry, no universally accepted body of psychologic
doctrine...."In such a discord of opinions (comprehensible enough at a
time of uncertain and groping development), the individual inquirer
can only tell for what views and insights he himself has to thank
the newer methods. And if I were asked in what for me the worth of
experimental observation in psychology has consisted, and still
consists, I should say that it has given me an entirely new idea of
the nature and connection of our inner processes. I learned in the
achievements of the sense of sight to apprehend the fact of
creative mental synthesis.... From my inquiry into time-relations,
etc.,... I attained an insight into the close union of all those
psychic functions usually separated by artificial abstractions and
names, such as ideation, feeling, will; and I saw the
indivisibility and inner homogeneity, in all its phases, of the
mental life. The chronometric study of association-processes
finally showed me that the notion of distinct mental 'images'
[reproducirten Vorstellungen]
was one of those numerous self-deceptions which are no sooner
stamped in a verbal term than they forthwith thrust non-existent
fictions into the place of the reality. I learned to understand an
'idea' as a process no less melting and fleeting than an act of
feeling or of will, and I comprehended the older doctrine of
association of 'ideas' to be no longer tenable.... Besides all
this, experimental observation yielded much other information about
the span of consciousness, the rapidity of certain processes, the
exact numerical value of certain psychophysical data, and the like.
But I hold all these more special results to be relatively
insignificant by-products, and by no means the important
thing."—Philosophische Studien, x. 121-124. The whole passage should be read. As I
interpret it, it amounts to a complete espousal of the vaguer
conception of the stream of thought, and a complete renunciation of
the whole business, still so industriously carried on in
text-books, of chopping up 'the mind' into distinct units of
composition or function, numbering these off, and labelling them by
technical names.
III. THE CHILD AS A BEHAVING ORGANISM
I wish now to continue the description of the peculiarities
of the stream of consciousness by asking whether we can in any
intelligible way assign itsfunctions.
It has two functions that are obvious: it leads to knowledge,
and it leads to action.
Can we say which of these functions is the more
essential?
An old historic divergence of opinion comes in here. Popular
belief has always tended to estimate the worth of a man's mental
processes by their effects upon his practical life. But
philosophers have usually cherished a different view. "Man's
supreme glory," they have said, "is to be arationalbeing, to know absolute and
eternal and universal truth. The uses of his intellect for
practical affairs are therefore subordinate matters. 'The theoretic
life' is his soul's genuine concern." Nothing can be more different
in its results for our personal attitude than to take sides with
one or the other of these views, and emphasize the practical or the
theoretical ideal. In the latter case, abstraction from the
emotions and passions and withdrawal from the strife of human
affairs would be not only pardonable, but praiseworthy; and all
that makes for quiet and contemplation should be regarded as
conducive to the highest human perfection. In the former, the man
of contemplation would be treated as only half a human being,
passion and practical resource would become once more glories of
our race, a concrete victory over this earth's outward powers of
darkness would appear an equivalent for any amount of passive
spiritual culture, and conduct would remain as the test of every
education worthy of the name.
It is impossible to disguise the fact that in the psychology
of our own day the emphasis is transferred from the mind's purely
rational function, where Plato and Aristotle, and what one may call
the whole classic tradition in philosophy had placed it, to the so
long neglected practical side. The theory of evolution is mainly
responsible for this. Man, we now have reason to believe, has been
evolved from infra-human ancestors, in whom pure reason hardly
existed, if at all, and whose mind, so far as it can have had any
function, would appear to have been an organ for adapting their
movements to the impressions received from the environment, so as
to escape the better from destruction. Consciousness would thus
seem in the first instance to be nothing but a sort of super-added
biological perfection,—useless unless it prompted to useful
conduct, and inexplicable apart from that consideration.
Deep in our own nature the biological foundations of our
consciousness persist, undisguised and undiminished. Our sensations
are here to attract us or to deter us, our memories to warn or
encourage us, our feelings to impel, and our thoughts to restrain
our behavior, so that on the whole we may prosper and our days be
long in the land. Whatever of transmundane metaphysical insight or
of practically inapplicable æsthetic perception or ethical
sentiment we may carry in our interiors might at this rate be
regarded as only part of the incidental excess of function that
necessarily accompanies the working of every complex
machine.
I shall ask you now—not meaning at all thereby to close the
theoretic question, but merely because it seems to me the point of
view likely to be of greatest practical use to you as teachers—to
adopt with me, in this course of lectures, the biological
conception, as thus expressed, and to lay your own emphasis on the
fact that man, whatever else he may be, is primarily a practical
being, whose mind is given him to aid in adapting him to this
world's life.
In the learning of all matters, we have to start with some
one deep aspect of the question, abstracting it as if it were the
only aspect; and then we gradually correct ourselves by adding
those neglected other features which complete the case. No one
believes more strongly than I do that what our senses know as 'this
world' is only one portion of our mind's total environment and
object. Yet, because it is the primal portion, it is thesine qua nonof all the rest. If you
grasp the facts about it firmly, you may proceed to higher regions
undisturbed. As our time must be so short together, I prefer being
elementary and fundamental to being complete, so I propose to you
to hold fast to the ultra-simple point of view.
The reasons why I call it so fundamental can be easily
told.
First, human and animal psychology thereby become less
discontinuous. I know that to some of you this will hardly seem an
attractive reason, but there are others whom it will affect.
Second, mental action is conditioned by brain action, and
runs parallel therewith. But the brain, so far as we understand it,
is given us for practical behavior. Every current that runs into it
from skin or eye or ear runs out again into muscles, glands, or
viscera, and helps to adapt the animal to the environment from
which the current came. It therefore generalizes and simplifies our
view to treat the brain life and the mental life as having one
fundamental kind of purpose.
Third, those very functions of the mind that do not refer
directly to this world's environment, the ethical utopias, æsthetic
visions, insights into eternal truth, and fanciful logical
combinations, could never be carried on at all by a human
individual, unless the mind that produced them in him were also
able to produce more practically useful products. The latter are
thus the more essential, or at least the more primordial
results.
Fourth, the inessential 'unpractical' activities are
themselves far more connected with our behavior and our adaptation
to the environment than at first sight might appear. No truth,
however abstract, is ever perceived, that will not probably at some
time influence our earthly action. You must remember that, when I
talk of action here, I mean action in the widest sense. I mean
speech, I mean writing, I mean yeses and noes, and tendencies
'from' things and tendencies 'toward' things, and emotional
determinations; and I mean them in the future as well as in the
immediate present. As I talk here, and you listen, it might seem as
if no action followed. You might call it a purely theoretic
process, with no practical result. But itmusthave a practical result. It cannot
take place at all and leave your conduct unaffected. If not to-day,
then on some far future day, you will answer some question
differently by reason of what you are thinking now. Some of you
will be led by my words into new veins of inquiry, into reading
special books. These will develop your opinion, whether for or
against. That opinion will in turn be expressed, will receive
criticism from others in your environment, and will affect your
standing in their eyes. We cannot escape our destiny, which is
practical; and even our most theoretic faculties contribute to its
working out.
These few reasons will perhaps smooth the way for you to
acquiescence in my proposal. As teachers, I sincerely think it will
be a sufficient conception for you to adopt of the youthful
psychological phenomena handed over to your inspection if you
consider them from the point of view of their relation to the
future conduct of their possessor. Sufficient at any rate as a
first conception and as a main conception. You should regard your
professional task as if it consisted chiefly and essentially
intraining the pupil to behavior; taking behavior, not in the narrow sense of his manners,
but in the very widest possible sense, as including every possible
sort of fit reaction on the circumstances into which he may find
himself brought by the vicissitudes of life.
The reaction may, indeed, often be a negative
reaction.Notto speak,notto move, is one of the most
important of our duties, in certain practical emergencies. "Thou
shalt refrain, renounce, abstain"! This often requires a great
effort of will power, and, physiologically considered, is just as
positive a nerve function as is motor discharge.
IV. EDUCATION AND BEHAVIOR
In our foregoing talk we were led to frame a very simple
conception of what an education means. In the last analysis it
consists in the organizing ofresourcesin the human being, of powers
of conduct which shall fit him to his social and physical world. An
'uneducated' person is one who is nonplussed by all but the most
habitual situations. On the contrary, one who is educated is able
practically to extricate himself, by means of the examples with
which his memory is stored and of the abstract conceptions which he
has acquired, from circumstances in which he never was placed
before. Education, in short, cannot be better described than by
calling itthe organization of acquired habits of
conduct and tendencies to behavior.To illustrate. You and I are each and all of us educated, in
our several ways; and we show our education at this present moment
by different conduct. It would be quite impossible for me, with my
mind technically and professionally organized as it is, and with
the optical stimulus which your presence affords, to remain sitting
here entirely silent and inactive. Something tells me that I am
expected to speak, and must speak; something forces me to keep on
speaking. My organs of articulation are continuously innervated by
outgoing currents, which the currents passing inward at my eyes and
through my educated brain have set in motion; and the particular
movements which they make have their form and order determined
altogether by the training of all my past years of lecturing and
reading. Your conduct, on the other hand, might seem at first sight
purely receptive and inactive,—leaving out those among you who
happen to be taking notes. But the very listening which you are
carrying on is itself a determinate kind of conduct. All the
muscular tensions of your body are distributed in a peculiar way as
you listen. Your head, your eyes, are fixed characteristically.
And, when the lecture is over, it will inevitably eventuate in some
stroke of behavior, as I said on the previous occasion: you may be
guided differently in some special emergency in the schoolroom by
words which I now let fall.—So it is with the impressions you will
make there on your pupil. You should get into the habit of
regarding them all as leading to the acquisition by him of
capacities for behavior,—emotional, social, bodily, vocal,
technical, or what not. And, this being the case, you ought to feel
willing, in a general way, and without hair-splitting or farther
ado, to take up for the purposes of these lectures with the
biological conception of the mind, as of something given us for
practical use. That conception will certainly cover the greater
part of your own educational work.