College Teaching Part 36

Each of the questions mentioned above--and many more will occur in the course of the discussion--furnishes occasion for extended considerations that call upon the student for scholarly gathering of facts, for close thinking, and--not least--for reflection upon his own experiences and volitions. Other problems will suggest themselves. It is obvious how the interest of the student in prison reform, for example, can be employed in like manner as a motive to searching reflection upon questions of moral responsibility. The principle that punishment should be a means of awaking in the offender the consciousness of a self which can and should hold itself to account despite the magnitude of its temptations is of special usefulness, in the years when a broadening altruism (and we might add, a tendency to self-pity) is likely to lead to loose notions of personal obligation.

=Place of the textbook in ethics teaching=

The use of a textbook is a minor matter. To prevent the courses from running off into mere talk--and even ethics cla.s.ses are not averse to "spontaneous" recitation on their own part or to monologues by the teacher--a textbook may be required, with, let us say, monthly reports or examinations. So much depends, however, upon the enthusiasm of the instructor that here particularly recommendations can be only of the most general kind. Some of the most effective work in this subject is being done by teachers who forget the textbook for weeks at a time in order to push home a valuable inquiry suggested by an unforeseen problem raised in the course of the discussion. Others use no textbooks at all. Some outline the year's work in a series of cases or problems with questions to be answered in writing after consulting selected pa.s.sages in the cla.s.sics or in current literature or in both.[52] This method has the advantage of laying out the whole year's work beforehand and of guaranteeing that the student comes to the cla.s.sroom with something more than a facility in unpremeditated utterance. It is generally found to be of greater interest because it follows the lines of his own ordinary thinking--first the problem and then the attempt to find the principles that will help to solve it.

=Moral concepts deepened by partic.i.p.ation in social or philanthropic endeavors=

More important than any of these details of technique is the need of helping the student to clarify his thinking by engaging in some practical moral endeavor. The broadening and deepening of the altruistic interests is a familiar feature of adolescent life. The instructor in ethics, in the very interest of his own subject, is the one who should take the lead in encouraging these expressions, not only because of the general obligation of the college to make the most of apt.i.tudes which, neglected in youth, may never again be so vigorous, but also because of the truth in Aristotle's dictum that insight is shaped by conduct. Hence the work in ethics should be linked up wherever possible with student self-government and other partic.i.p.ation in the management of the college, and with philanthropics like work in settlements or in social reform groups or cosmopolitan societies. For the students of finer grain it is eminently worth the trouble to form clubs to intensify the spirit of the members by activities more pointedly directed to the refining of human relationships. They might engage in activities in which the task of elevating the personality is specially marked, that is, in problems which have to do with mutual interpretation--e.g., black folk and white, foreign and native stocks in America, delinquents and the community, immigrant parents and unsympathetic children. They might organize clubs for one or more of these purposes, for discussing intimately the problems of personal life, for public meetings on the ethics of the vocations and on the more distinctly ethical phases of political and international progress. Such organizations can be made to do vastly more good for their members then the average debating society, with its usual premium on mere forensic skill, or the fraternity, with its encouragement of sn.o.bbishness. The wholesome thing about the spirit of fraternity should be set to work upon some such creative activities as we have mentioned. Not only does the comradeship strengthen faith in right doing, but these practical endeavors offer a notable help to the deepening, extending, and clarifying of that interest in moral progress without which there can be none of the intelligent leadership for which our democracy looks to its colleges.

=Peculiar difficulty of applying usual test to courses in ethics=

To test how far the subject has been of value to the student is unusually difficult. His interest in the discussions is by no means an unfailing index. There are those who may be both eager and skilled in the intellectual combat incidental to the course but whose lives remain untouched for the better. The worthier outcome is hard to trace. It is quite possible for the teacher to take credit for the instilling of an ideal whose generation was due to some agency wholly unknown, perhaps even to the student himself. On the other hand, the best results may take years for overt appearance. In the nature of the case, their more intimate expressions can never be recorded.

Moreover, students vary in the force of character which they bring with them to the study. A lad whose home training has been deficient may take more time than the best teacher can give in order to reach the degree of excellence to which others among his cla.s.smates ascend more quickly. Or a lad whom the course has moved with a desire to take up some philanthropic endeavor may hesitate to pursue it through lack of the necessary gift or failure in self-confidence. The forces which enter into the making of character are so complex, including as they do not only acquisitions of new moral standards, but temperamental qualities, early training, potent example, physical stamina, dozens of accidental circ.u.mstances, that it is unfair to use the tests applicable, let us say, to a course in engineering.

Hence we must be beware of testing the value of the work by immediate results. Something may be gathered by having the students write confidentially what they think the course has done for them and where it could be improved. This they can do both at the end of the course and years later when time has brought perspective. But tests are of minor importance. The ethical shortcomings of our time, the constant need of our students for ever finer standards, convey challenge enough. Even though the obvious results fall short of our hopes, we can make the most of our resources with every a.s.surance that they are amply needed. Are young men more likely to be the better for setting time aside to obtain with the help of an earnest student of life a clearer insight into the principles of the best living? If they are the courses are justified, even though some who take them can show little immediate profit.

HENRY NEUMANN, Ph.D.

_Ethical Culture School, New York_

Footnotes:

[49] See Adler: _The Present World-Crisis and Its Meaning_, chapter on "An Ethical Program of Social Reform": also _An Ethical Philosophy of Life_, Chapters 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.

[50] From this point of view the ethical justification for the war on the slum becomes: (_a_) to make possible for the slum-dweller the better performance of his various duties as parent, worker, citizen; (_b_) to drive home to all concerned the meaning of interdependence; (_c_) to clarify for all of us the ideals to which better living conditions should minister. There is every need today to further the conviction that the highest service we can perform for another is not to make him happier, but to help him make himself a better person through the better performance of his duties.

[51] Note the emphasis placed by modern philosophy upon ethical value as the point of approach to the problem of G.o.dhead.

[52] Professor Sharp of Wisconsin has found this method so serviceable that he has interested many teachers in his state and elsewhere in using it with high school students for purposes of moral instruction.

See "A Course in Moral Instruction for High Schools," by F. C. Sharp; _Bulletin, University of Wisconsin_.

XVI

THE TEACHING OF PSYCHOLOGY

=Place of psychology in the curriculum=

Historically, as an offshoot, and rather a recent offshoot, from philosophy, psychology has been under the care of the department of philosophy in colleges and universities, foreign as well as American, and has been taught by professors concerned in part with the courses in philosophy. Though this state of affairs still obtains to a considerable extent, the tendency is undoubtedly towards allowing psychology an independent position in the organization and curriculum of the college. In recent appointments, indeed, the affiliation of psychology with education has frequently been emphasized instead of its affiliation with philosophy, for the professional applications of psychology lie more in the field of education than elsewhere. As a required study, our science is more likely to find a place in the college for teachers than in the college of arts. But, on the other hand, the applications to medicine, business, and industry are increasing so rapidly in importance as to make it logical to maintain an independent position for the science. Only in an independent position can the psychologist be free to cultivate the central body of his subject, the "pure" as distinguished from the applied science; and, with the multiplication of practical applications, it is more than ever important to center psychological teaching in the person of some one who is simply and distinctively a psychologist.

=The introductory course to be general, not vocationally applied psychology=

For a similar reason, psychologists are wont to insist that the introductory course in their subject, no matter for what cla.s.s of students, with general or with professional aims, should be definitely a course in _psychology_ as distinguished from educational or medical or business psychology. Ill.u.s.trative material may very well be chosen with an eye to the special interests of a cla.s.s of students, but the general principles should be the same for all cla.s.ses, and should not be too superficially treated in the rush for practical applications.

Some years ago, a Committee of the American Psychological a.s.sociation was appointed to make a survey of the teaching of psychology in universities, colleges, and normal schools, and the Report of this Committee (1), still the most important contribution to the pedagogy of the subject, emphasizes the concurrent view of psychologists to the effect just stated, that the study of psychology should begin with a course in the central body of doctrine. The psychological point of view must be acquired before intelligent application can be made, whether to practical pursuits or to other branches of study such as philosophy and the social sciences, to which psychology stands in the relation of an ancillary science.

During the war, the applications of psychology in the testing and selection of men and training them for specified military and naval work, in rating officers, in morale and intelligence work, and in several other lines, became so important that it was decided to give psychology a place as an "allied subject" in the curriculum of the Students' Army Training Corps; and the report of the committee of psychologists that prepared the outline of a course for this purpose deserves attention as a contribution to the pedagogy of the subject.

They proposed a course on "Human Action," to be free from questions of a speculative or theoretical nature and concentrated on matters relevant to military practice and the military uses of psychology. The aim was to enlist the student's practical concern at the very outset, and to give him the psychological point of view as applied to his problems as a member of the Army and a prospective officer. In method, the course was to depend little on lectures, or even on extensive readings, and much on the student's own solution of practical psychological problems. Evidently the psychologists who prepared this plan were driven by the emergency to abandon "academic" prepossessions in favor of a course in pure psychology as the necessary prerequisite to any study of applications; and it is quite possible that courses in psychology for different groups of students could be prepared that should follow this general plan and be intensely practical from the start. It would still remain true that the thorough psychologist should be the one to plan and conduct such courses.

=The psychological point of view must be emphasized in the introductory course=

The psychological point of view means attentiveness to certain matters that are neglected in the usual objective att.i.tude toward things. It is identified by many with introspection, but there is at present considerable dissent from this doctrine, the dissenters holding that an objective type of observation of human behavior is distinctively psychological and probably more significant and fruitful than the introspective att.i.tude. However this may be, both introspection and behavior study require attention to matters that are commonly disregarded. Every one is of course interested in what people do, or at least in the outcome of their activities; but psychology is interested in the activities themselves, in how the outcome is reached rather than in the outcome itself. Ordinarily, we are interested in the fact that an inventor has solved a problem, but regard it as rather irrelevant if he proceeds to tell us the mental process by which he reached the solution. We are interested in the fact that a child has learned to speak, but devote little thought to the question as to how he has learned. It is to bring such psychological questions to light and arouse intelligent interest in them, with some knowledge of the answers that have been found, that the psychologist is chiefly concerned when initiating beginners into his science. This primary aim is accomplished in the case of those students who testify, as some do, that the course in psychology has "opened their eyes" and made them see life in a different light than hitherto.

=Values of the study of psychology--cultural rather than disciplinary=

Whether this primary value of psychology is to be counted among the disciplinary or among the cultural values may be a matter of doubt.

Psychologists themselves have seldom made special claims in behalf of their science as a means of formal discipline, many of them, in fact, taking a very negative position with regard to the whole conception of such discipline. What psychology can give of general value is a point of view, and a habit of attentiveness to the mental factor. The need of some systematic attention to these matters often comes to light in the queer efforts at a psychology made by intelligent but uninstructed persons in the presence of practical problems involving the mental factor.

=The practical value=

Besides this "cultural" value, and besides the special uses of psychology as a preparation for teaching and certain other professions, there is a very real and practical value to be expected from an understanding of the mental mechanism. Since every one works with this mechanism, every one can make practical use of the science of it. Most persons get on pa.s.sably well, perhaps, without any expert knowledge of the machinery which they are running; yet the machine is not entirely "fool proof," by any means, but sometimes comes to grief from what is in essence a lack of psychological wisdom either in the person himself or in his close companions. Mental hygiene, in short, depends on psychology. The college student, looking forward to a life of mental activity, is specially in a position to utilize information regarding the most economical working of the mental machine; and, as a matter of experience, some students are considerably helped in their methods of mental work by what they learn in the psychology cla.s.s.

Among the results of recent investigation are many bearing on economy and efficiency of mental work. This value of psychology, it will be seen, is practical without being professional--except in so far as all educated men can be said to adopt the profession of mental engineer.

Much more emphasis than has been customary might well be laid on this side of the subject in elementary courses.

=Content of the introductory course in psychology=

The content of the first course in psychology is just now undergoing a certain amount of revision. Traditionally the aim has been, not so much, as in most other subjects, to initiate the student into a range of facts lying outside his previous experience, as to bring definitely to his attention facts lying within the experience of all, and to cause him to cla.s.sify these so as to refer any given mental process to the cla.s.s or cla.s.ses where it belongs. This calls for definition, the making of distinctions, the a.n.a.lysis of complex facts, the use of a technical vocabulary, and in general for much more precision of statement than the student has been used to employ in speaking of such matters. Some laws of mental action, verifiable within ordinary experience, are also brought to light in such a course, and some account of the neural mechanisms of mental life is usually included; but its chief accomplishment is in leading the student to attend to mental processes and gain a point of view that may remain his future possession.

With the great expansion of psychological knowledge in recent decades, due to research by experimental and other empirical methods, it has become possible to give a course more informational in character and going quite beyond the range of the student's previous experience; and this new material is finding its way into elementary texts and courses. Many of the results of research are not at all beyond the comprehension of the beginner; indeed, they are often more tangible than the distinctions and a.n.a.lyses that give the stamp to the traditional course. These empirical results also have the advantage, in many cases, of throwing light on the practical problems of mental health and efficiency; and some inclusion of such material is desirable if only to fit the needs of the considerable number of students who cannot become interested in a course of the traditional sort. Practice in this matter is at present quite variable, some teachers basing the introductory course as far as possible on the results of experiment, and others adhering closely to the older plan.

=Methods of teaching psychology--Practical exercises=

There is certainly some advantage in keeping the first course untechnical. The student can then be set to observing for himself, instead of depending on books. Many of the facts of psychology are so accessible, at least in a rough form, as to make the subject a good one for appealing to the spirit of independence in the student. Some teachers are, in fact, accustomed to introduce each part of the subject by exercises, introspective or other, designed to bring the salient facts home to the student in a direct way, before he has become inoculated with the doctrine of the authorities. "The essential point is that the student be led to observe his own experience, to record his observation accurately--in a word, to psychologize; and to make the observation before, not after, discovering from book or from lecture what answers are expected to these questions. Individual experiments should so far as possible be performed in like manner before the cla.s.s discussion of typical results. In all cases the results of these introspections should be recorded in writing; representative records should be read and commented on in cla.s.s; and the discussion based on them should form the starting point for textbook study and for lecture." The plan thus highly recommended by Professor Calkins[53] she found not to be widely used at the time of her inquiry; a commoner practice was the a.s.signment of reading for the student's first introduction to a given topic. This alternative plan is a line of less resistance; and it is also true that exercises in original observation by beginners in psychology are likely to be instructive mostly as evidence of the ineptness of the beginner in psychological observation. Moreover, when the content of the course is informational and based on the results of research, preliminary exercises by the student are of rather limited value, though they still could serve a useful purpose in bringing forcibly to his attention the problems to be studied.

The use of "exercises," somewhat a.n.a.logous to the examples of algebra or the "originals" of geometry, is quite widespread in introductory courses in psychology, and several much-used textbooks offer sets of exercises with each chapter. Several types are in vogue: (1) some call for introspections, as, for example, "Think of your breakfast table as you sat down to it this morning--do you see it clearly as a scene before your mind's eye?" (2) some call for a review and generalization of facts presumably already known, as "Find instances of the dependence of character upon habit;" (3) many consist of simple experiments demanding no special apparatus and serving to give a direct acquaintance with matters treated in the text, such as after-images or fluctuations of attention; and (4) many call for the application of the principles announced in the text to special cases, the object being to "give the student some very definite thing to do"

(Thorndike), in doing which he will secure a firm hold of the principles involved. In general, teachers of psychology aim to "keep the student doing things, instead of merely listening, reading, or seeing them done" (Seash.o.r.e, 1, page 83). In a few colleges, laboratory work of a simple character forms part of the introductory course, and in one or two the laboratory part is developed to a degree comparable with what is common in chemistry or biology. As a rule, however, considerations of time and equipment have prevented the introduction of real laboratory work into the first course in psychology.

=Cla.s.sroom methods--The lecture=

Of cla.s.sroom methods, perhaps all that are employed in other subjects find application also in psychology, some teachers preferring one and some another. The lecture method is employed with great success by some of the leaders, who devote much attention to the preparation of discourse and demonstrations. One professor (anonymous) is quoted[54]

as follows:

"I must here interject my ideas on the lecture system. The lecture has a twofold advantage over the recitation. (1) It is economical, since one man handles a large number of students; the method of recitation is extravagant. This fact alone will mean the retention of the lecture system, wherever it can possibly be employed with success. (2) It is educationally the better method, for the average student and the average teacher. For the reconstruction of a lecture from notes means an essay in original work, in original thinking; while the recitation lapses all too readily into textbook rote and verbal repet.i.tion.

"It is, nevertheless, true that soph.o.m.ore students are on the whole inadequate to a lecture course. They cannot take notes; they cannot tear the heart out of a lecture. (They are also, I may add, inadequate to the reading of textbooks or general literature, in much the same way.) Hence one has to supplement the lecture by syllabi, by lists of questions (indexes, so to speak, to the lectures), and by personal interviews....

"The sum and substance of my recommendations is that you provide a competently trained instructor, and let him teach psychology as he best can. What the student needs is the effect of an individuality, a personality; and the lecture system provides admirably for such effect."

=The recitation=

Though the lecture system is used with great success by a number of professors, the general practice inclines more to the plan of oral recitations on a.s.signed readings in one or more texts, and large cla.s.ses are often handled in several divisions in order to make the recitation method successful. Not infrequently a combination of lectures by the professor and recitations conducted by his a.s.sistants is the plan adopted, the lecturer to add impressiveness to the course, and the recitations to hold the student up to his work. Written exercises, such as those already mentioned, are often combined with the oral recitation; and in some cases themes are to be written by the students. Probably the seminar method, in which the subject is chiefly presented in themes prepared by the students, is never attempted in the introductory course.

=Cla.s.s discussion=

On the other hand, a number of successful teachers reject both the lecture and the recitation methods, and rely for the most part upon cla.s.s discussions, with outside readings in the textbooks, and frequent written recitations as a check on the student's work. A champion of the discussion method writes as follows:[55]