How to Teach - Naomi Norsworthy

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embryo and that of lower animals by postulating a general order of development followed by nature as the easiest or most economical, traces of which must then be found in all animal life. When it comes to the actual test of the theory, that of finding actual cases of recapitulation in behavior, it fails. No one has been able to point out just when a child passes through any stage of racial development, and any attempt to do so has resulted in confusion. There is no clear-cut marking off into stages, but, instead, overlapping and coexistence of tendencies characterize the development of the child. The infant of a few days old may show the swimming movements, but at the same time he can support his own weight by clinging to a horizontal stick. Which stage is he recapitulating, that of the fishes or the monkeys? The nine-year-old boy loves to swim, climb trees, and hunt like a savage all at the same period, and, what is more, some of these same tendencies characterize the college man. The late maturing of the sex instinct, so old and strong in the race, and the early appearing of the tendencies towards vocalization and grasping, both of late date in the race, are facts that are hard to explain on the basis of the theory of recapitulation.

      As has been already suggested, one of the most important characteristics of all these tendencies is their modifiability. The very ease with which they can be modified suggests that this is what has most often to be done with them. On examination of the lists of original tendencies there are none which can be kept and fixed in the form in which they first appear. Even the best of them are crude and impossible from the standpoint of civilized society. Take as an illustration mother-love; what are the original tendencies and behavior? "All women possess originally, from early childhood to death, some interest in human babies, and a responsiveness to the instinctive looks, calls, gestures, and cries of infancy and childhood, being satisfied by childish gurglings, smiles, and affectionate gestures, and moved to instinctive comforting acts of childish signs of pain, grief, and misery." But the mother has to learn not to cuddle the baby and talk to it all the time it is awake and not to run to it and take it up at every cry, to steel her heart against the wheedling of the coaxing gurgles and even to allow the baby to hurt himself, all for his own good. This comes about only as original nature is modified in line with knowledge and ideals. The same need is evidenced by such a valuable tendency as curiosity. So far as original nature goes, the tendency to attend to novel objects, to human behavior, to explore with the eyes and manipulate with the hands, to enjoy having sensations of all kinds merely for their own sakes, make up what is known as the instinct of curiosity. But what a tremendous amount of modification is necessary before these crude responses result in the valuable scientific curiosity. Not blind following where instinct leads, but modification, must be the watchword.

      On the other hand, there are equally few tendencies that could be spared, could be absolutely voted out without loss to the individual or the race. Bullying as an original tendency seems to add nothing to the possibilities of development, but every other inborn tendency has its value. Jealousy, anger, fighting, rivalry, possessiveness, fear, each has its quota to contribute to valuable manhood and womanhood. Again, not suppression but a wise control must be the attitude of the educator. Inhibition of certain phases or elements of some of the tendencies is necessary for the most valuable development of the individual, but the entire loss of any save one or two would be disastrous to some form of adult usefulness or enjoyment. The method by which valuable elements or phases of an original tendency are fixed and strengthened is the general method of habit formation and will be taken up under that head in Chapter IV. When the modification involves definite inhibition, there are three possible methods,--punishment, disuse, and substitution. As an example of the use of the three methods take the case of a child who develops a fear of the dark. In using the first method the child would be punished every time he exhibited fear of the dark. By using the second method he would never be allowed to go into a dark room, a light being left burning in his bedroom, etc., until the tendency to fear the dark had passed. In the third method the emotion of fear would be replaced by that of joy or satisfaction by making the bedtime the occasion for telling a favorite story or for being allowed to have the best-loved toy, or for being played with or cuddled. The situation of darkness might be met in still another way. If the child were old enough, the emotion of courage might replace that of fear by having him make believe he was a soldier or a policeman.

      The method of punishment is the usual one, the one most teachers and parents use first. It relies for its effectiveness on the general law of the nervous system that pain tends to weaken the connections with whose activity it is associated. The method is weak in that pain is not a strong enough weapon to break the fundamental connections; it is not known how much of it is necessary to break even weaker ones; it is negative in its results--breaking one connection but replacing it by nothing else. The second method of inhibition is that of disuse. It is possible to inhibit by this means, because lack of use of connections in the nervous system results in atrophy. As a method it is valuable because it does not arouse resistance or anger. It is weak in that as neither the delayedness nor the transitoriness of instincts is known, when to begin to keep the situation from the child, and how long to keep it away in order to provide for the dying out of the connections, are not known. The method is negative and very unsure of results. The method of substitution depends for its use upon the presence in the individual of opposing tendencies and of different levels of development in the same tendency. Because of this fact a certain response to a situation may be inhibited by forming the habit of meeting the situation in another way or of replacing a lower phase of a tendency by a higher one. This method is difficult to handle because of the need of knowledge of the original tendencies of children in general which it implies as well as the knowledge of the capacities and development of the individual child with whom the work is being done. The amount of time and individual attention necessary adds another difficulty. However, it is by far the best method of the three, for it is sure, is economical, using the energy that is provided by nature, is educative, and is positive. To replace what is poor or harmful by something better is one of the greatest problems of human life--and this is the outcome of the method of substitution. All three methods have their place in a system of education, and certain of them are more in place at certain times than at others, but at all times if the method of substitution can be used it should be.

      The instinct of physical activity is one of the most noticeable ones in babyhood. The young baby seems to be in constant movement. Even when asleep, the twitchings and squirmings may continue. This continued muscular activity is necessary because the motor nerves offer the only possible path of discharge at first. As higher centers in the brain are developed, the ingoing currents, aroused by all sense stimuli, find other connections, and ideas, images, trains of thoughts, are aroused, and so the energy is consumed; but at first all that these currents can do is to arouse physical activity. The strength of this instinct is but little diminished by the time the child comes to school. His natural inclination is to do things requiring movement of all the growing muscles. Inhibition, "sitting still," "being quiet," takes real effort on his part, and is extremely fatiguing. This instinct is extremely valuable in several ways: it gives the exercise necessary to a growing body, provides the experience of muscle movements necessary for control, and stimulates mental growth through the increase and variety of experiences it gives.

      The tendency to enjoy mental activity, to be satisfied with it for its own sake, is peculiarly a human trait. This capacity shows itself in two important ways--in the interest in sensory stimuli, usually discussed under the head of curiosity, and in the delight in "being a cause" or mental control. The interest in tastes, sounds, sights, touches, etc., merely for their own sake, is very evident in a baby. He spends most of his waking time in just that enjoyment. Though more complex, it is still strong when the child enters school, and for years any object of sense which attracts his attention is material which arouses this instinct. The second form in which the instinct for mental ability shows itself is later in development and involves the secondary brain connections. It is the satisfaction aroused by results of which the individual is the cause. For example, the enjoyment of a child in seeing a ball swing or hearing a whistle blown would be a manifestation of curiosity, while the added interest which is always present when the child not only sees the ball swing but swings it, not only hears the whistle but blows it himself, is a result of the second tendency, that of joy in being a cause. As the child grows older the same tendency shows itself on a higher level when the materials dealt with, instead of being sensations or percepts, are images or ideas. The interest in following out a train of ideas to a logical

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