How to Teach - Naomi Norsworthy

Скачать книгу

who knows the meaning of duty and who gladly recognizes his obligations to a social group which is growing larger with each new experience and each new opportunity.

       Table of Contents

      1. Why would you not be satisfied with a statement of the aim of education which was expressed in terms of the harmonious development of an individual's abilities and capacities?

      2. Suggest any part of the courses of study now in force in your school system the omission of which would be in accordance with the social aim of education.

      3. Name any subjects or parts of subjects which might be added for the sake of realizing the aim of education.

      4. How may a teacher who insists upon having children ask permission before they move in the room interfere with the realization of the social aim of education?

      5. Can you name any physical habits which may be considered socially undesirable? Desirable?

      6. What is the significance of pupil participation in school government?

      7. How does the teacher who stands behind his desk at the front of the room interfere with the development of the right social attitude upon the part of pupils?

      8. Why is the desire to excel one's own previous record preferable to striving for the highest mark?

      9. In one elementary school, products of the school garden were sold and from the funds thus secured apparatus for the playground was bought. In another school, children sold the vegetables and kept the money. Which, in your judgment, was the most worth while from the standpoint of the social development of boys and girls?

      10. A teacher of Latin had children collect words of Latin origin, references to Latin characters, and even advertisements in which Latin words or literary references were to be found. The children in the class were enthusiastic in making these collections, and considerable interest was added to the work in Latin. Are you able to discover in the exercise any other value?

      11. Describe some teaching in which you have recently engaged, or which you have observed, in which the methods of work employed by teacher and pupils seemed to you to contribute to a realization of the social purpose of education.

      12. How can a reading lesson in the sixth grade, or a history lesson in the high school, be conducted to make children feel that they are doing something for the whole group?

      13. In what activities may children engage outside of school which may count toward the betterment of the community in which they live?

       Table of Contents

      After deciding upon the aims of education, the goals towards which all teaching must strive, the fundamental question to be answered is, "What have we to work with?" "What is the makeup with which children start in life?" Given a certain nature, certain definite results are possible; but if the nature is different, the results must of necessity differ. The possibility of education or of teaching along any line depends upon the presence of an original nature which possesses corresponding abilities. The development of intellect, of character, of interest, or of any other trait depends absolutely upon the presence in human beings of capacity for growth or development. What the child inherits, his original nature, is the capital with which education must work; beyond the limits which are determined by inheritance education cannot go.

      All original nature is in terms of a nervous system. What a child inherits is not ideas, or feelings, or habits, as such, but a nervous system whose correlate is human intelligence and emotion. Just what relationship exists between the action of the nervous system and consciousness or intellect or emotion is still an open question and need not be discussed here. One thing seems fairly certain, that the original of any individual is bound up in some way with the kind of nervous system he has inherited. What we have in common, as a human race, of imagination, or reason, or tact, or skill is correlated in some fashion to the inheritance of a human nervous system. What we have as individual abilities, which distinguish us from our fellows, depends primarily upon our family inheritance. Certain traits such as interest in people, and accuracy in perception of details, seem to be dependent upon the sex inheritance. All traits, whether racial, or family, or sex, are inherited in terms of a plastic nervous system.

      The racial inheritance, the capital which all normal children bring into the world, is usually discussed under several heads: reflexes, physiological actions, impulsive actions, instincts, capacities, etc., the particular heads chosen varying with the author. They all depend for their existence upon the fact that certain bonds of connection are performed in the nervous system. Just what this connection is which is found between the nerve cells is still open to question. It may be chemical or it may be electrical. We know it is not a growing together of the neurones,[1] but further than that nothing is definitely known. That there are very definite pathways of discharge developed by the laws of inner growth and independent of individual learning, there can be no doubt. This of course means that in the early days of a child's life, and later in so far as he is governed by these inborn tendencies, his conduct is machine-like and blind--with no purpose and no consciousness controlling or initiating the responses. Only after experience and learning have had an opportunity to influence these responses can the child be held responsible for his conduct, for only then does his conduct become conscious instead of merely physiological.

      There are many facts concerning the psychology of these inborn tendencies that are interesting and important from a purely theoretical point of view, but only those which are of primary importance in teaching will be considered here. A fact that is often overlooked by teachers is that these inborn tendencies to connections of various kinds exist in the intellectual and emotional fields just as truly as in the field of action or motor response. The capacity to think in terms of words and of generals; to understand relationships; to remember; to imagine; to be satisfied with thinking,--all these, as well as such special abilities as skill in music, in managing people or affairs, in tact, or in sympathy, are due to just the same factors as produce fear or curiosity. These former types of tendencies differ from the latter in complexity of situation and response, in definiteness of response, in variability amongst individuals of the same family, and in modifiability; but in the essential element they do not differ from the more evident inborn tendencies.

      Just what these original tendencies are and just what the situations are to which they come as responses are both unknown except in a very few instances. The psychology of original nature has enumerated the so-called instincts and discussed a few of their characteristics, but has left almost untouched the inborn capacities that are more peculiarly human. Even the treatment of instincts has been misleading. For instance, instincts have been discussed under such heads as the "self-preservative instincts," "the social instincts," just as if the child had an inborn, mystical something that told him how to preserve his life, or become a social king. Original nature does not work in that way; it is only as the experience of the individual modifies the blind instinctive responses through learning that these results can just as easily come about unless the care of parents provides the right sort of surroundings. There is nothing in the child's natural makeup that warns him against eating pins and buttons and poisonous berries, or encourages him to eat milk and eggs and cereal instead of cake and sweets. He will do one sort of thing just as easily as the other. All nature provides him with is a blind tendency to put all objects that attract his attention into his mouth. This response may preserve his life or destroy it, depending on the conditions in which he lives. The same thing is true of the "social instinct"--the child may become the most selfish egotist imaginable or the most self-sacrificing of men, according as his surroundings and training influence the original tendencies towards behavior to other people in one way or the other. Of course it is very evident that no one has ever consistently lived up to the idea indicated by such a treatment of original nature, but certain tendencies in education are traceable

Скачать книгу