Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education Part 7

1. Instinctive, reflex, and impulsive action 2. Consciously controlled, or directed action 3. Habitual action.

NATURE OF EXPRESSION

=Implies Intelligent Control.=--It is evident that as a stage in the learning process, expression must deal primarily with the second cla.s.s of actions, since its real purpose is to correlate the new conscious knowledge with action. Expression in education, therefore, must represent largely consciously produced and consciously directed action.

=Conscious Expression may Modify A. Instinctive Acts.=--While this is true, however, expression, as a stage in the educative process, will also have a relation to the other types of action. As previously noted, the expression stage of the learning process may be used as a means to bring instinctive and impulsive acts under conscious control. This is indeed an important part of a child's education. For instance, it is only by forming ideas of muscular movements and striving to express them that the child can bring his muscular movements under control. It is evident, therefore, that the expressive stage of the lesson can be made to play an important part in bringing many instinctive and impulsive acts under conscious direction. By expressing himself in the games of the kindergarten, the child's social instinct will come under conscious control. By directing his muscular movements in art and constructive work, he gains the control which will in part enable him to check the impulse to strike the angry blow. These points will, however, be considered more fully in a study of the inherited tendencies in Chapter XXI.

=B. Habits.=--Further, many of our consciously directed acts are of so great value that they should be made more permanent through habituation.

Expression must, therefore, in many lessons be emphasized, not merely to test and render clear present conscious knowledge, but also to lead to habitual control of action, or to create skill. This would be especially true in having a child practise the formation of figures and letters.

Although at the outset we must have him form the letter to see that he really knows the outline, the ultimate aim is to enable him to form these practically without conscious direction. In language work, also, the child must acquire many idiomatic expressions as habitual modes of speech.

TYPES OF EXPRESSION

Since the tendency to express our impressions in a motor way is a law of our being, it follows that the school, which is constantly seeking to give the pupil intelligent impressions, or valuable knowledge, should also provide opportunity for adequate expression of the same. The forms most frequently adopted in schools are speech and writing. Pupils are required to answer questions orally or in writing in almost every school subject, and in doing so they are given an opportunity for expression of a very valuable kind. In fact, it would often be much more economical to try to give pupils fewer impressions and to give them more opportunities for expression in language. But written or spoken language is not the only means of expression that the school can utilize. Pupils can frequently be required to express themselves by means of manual activity. In art, they represent objects and scenes by means of brush and colour, or pencil, or crayon; in manual training, they construct objects in cardboard and wood; in domestic science, they cook and sew.

The primary object of these so-called "new" subjects of the school programme is not to make the pupils artists, carpenters, or house-keepers, but partly to acquaint them with typical forms of human activity and partly to give them means of expression having an educative value. In arithmetic, the pupils express numerical facts by manipulating blocks and splints, and measure quant.i.ties, distances, surfaces, and solids. In geography, they draw maps of countries, model them in sand or clay, and make collections to ill.u.s.trate manufactures at various stages of the process. In literature, they dramatize stories and ill.u.s.trate scenes and situations by a sketch with pencil or brush. In nature study, they ill.u.s.trate by drawings and make mounted collections of plants and insects.

VALUE OF EXPRESSION

=A. Influences Conduct.=--In nature study, history, and literature, the most valuable kind of expression is that which comes through some modification of future conduct. That pupil has studied the birds and animals to little purpose who needlessly destroys their lives or causes them pain. He has studied the reign of King John to little purpose if he is not more considerate of the rights of others on the playground. He has gained little from the life of Robert Bruce, Columbus, or La Salle, if he does not manfully attack difficulties again and again until he has overcome them. He has not read _The Heroine of Vercheres_, or _The Little Hero of Haarlem_ aright, if he does not act promptly in a situation demanding courage. He has learned little from the story of Damon and Pythias if he is not true to his friends under trying circ.u.mstances, and he has not imbibed the spirit of _The Christmas Carol_ if he is not sympathetic and kindly toward those less fortunate than himself. From the standpoint of the moral life, therefore, right knowledge is valuable only as it expresses itself in right action.

=B. Aids Impression.=--Apart from the fact that it satisfies a demand of our being, expression is most important in that it tests the clearness of the applied knowledge. We often think that our impression is clear, only to discover its vagueness when we attempt to express it in some form. People often say that they understand a fact thoroughly, but they cannot exactly express it. Such a statement is usually incorrect. If the impression were clear, the expression under ordinary circ.u.mstances would also be clear. In this connection a danger should be pointed out. Pupils sometimes express themselves in language with apparent clearness, when in reality they are merely repeating words that they have memorized and that are quite meaningless to them. The alert teacher can, however, by judicious questioning, avoid being deceived in this regard.

=C. Adds to Clearness of Knowledge.=--Not only does expression test the clearness of the apperceived new knowledge, but at the same time it gives the knowledge greater clearness. We learn to know by doing. A pupil realizes a story more fully when he has reproduced it for somebody else. He images a scene described in a poem more clearly when he has drawn it. He has a clearer idea of the volume of a cord when he has actually measured out a cord of wood. He has a more accurate conception of the difficulties attending the discoveries of La Salle when he has drawn a map and traced the routes of his various expeditions. There is much truth in the statement that one never fully knows some things until he has taught them to somebody else. The teacher in grammar and geography will often have occasion to realize this. Greater clearness of impression means, of course, greater permanence. We remember best those facts of which our impression was most vivid.

DANGERS OF OMITTING EXPRESSION

=A. Knowledge not Practical.=--It is apparent, then, that if the pupil is not given opportunity for expression, his ideas are vague and evanescent. Further than this, his capacities for _knowing_ will be developed but his capacities for _doing_ ignored. His _intellectual_ powers will be exercised and his _volitional_ powers neglected. The pupil is thus likely to develop into a mere _theorist_; and as the tendencies of childhood are accentuated in later life, he becomes an _impractical_ man. There are many men in the world who apparently know a great deal, but who, through inability to make practical application of their knowledge, are unsuccessful in life. It is, however, seriously to be doubted whether knowledge is ever _real_ until it has been worked out in practice and conduct. To avoid the danger of becoming impractical, a pupil should have every opportunity for expression.

=B. Feelings Weakened.=--A second serious danger of neglecting expression lies in the field of the emotions. To have generous emotions continually aroused and never to act upon them, to have one's sympathies frequently stirred and never to perform a kindly act, to experience feelings of love and never to express them in acts of service, is to cultivate a weakness of character. A cla.s.sic instance of this is that of the lady who wept bitterly over the imaginary sorrows of the heroine in the play while her coachman was freezing to death outside the theatre.

If worthy emotions are ever to be of the slightest moral value to us, they must be expressed in action. The pupil frequently has his emotions stirred in the lessons in literature, history, and nature study, and there are situations constantly arising in the school room, on the playground, on the street, and in the home, that afford opportunity for expression. To give a single instance, there is a story in the _Ontario Third Reader_ by Elizabeth Phelps Ward, called "Mary Elizabeth." No pupil could read that story without being stirred with a deep pity and yet profound admiration for the pathetic figure of poor little Mary Elizabeth. The natural expression for such emotions would be a more kindly and sympathetic att.i.tude towards some unfortunate child in the school.

RELATION OF EXPRESSION TO IMPRESSION

=Knowledge Tends Toward Expression.=--On account of the evident connection between knowledge and action, the law of expression has formulated itself into a well-known pedagogical law of method--no impression without expression. Like many other educational maxims, however, this law may be interpreted in too wide a sense. The law of expression in education claims only that valuable experiences, or valuable forms of new knowledge, should not be built up in the child's mind without adequate accompanying expression. In the first case, as already seen, many impressions come to us which are never seized upon sufficiently by our consciousness to become intelligent rules for conduct, or action. It is true, of course that, so far as such impressions stimulate us, they tend toward expression, and to that extent the maxim is true. For instance, when a child is impressed, say, by a sudden strange sound, he has a tendency to express himself by straining his attention, and when the man imagines an enemy is before him, he finds his arms and fists a.s.suming the fighting att.i.tude.

=Expression at Times Inhibited.=--It is to be noted that the child should early learn to form intelligent plans of action and postpone or even condemn them as forms of expression. In other words, a child should early learn to select and co-ordinate ideas into an orderly system independently of their actual expression in physical action.

Without this power to suppress, or inhibit, expression, the child would be unable adequately to weigh and compare alternative courses of action and suppress such as seem undesirable. Such indeed is the weakness of the man who possesses an impulsive nature. Although, therefore, it is true that all knowledge is intended to serve in meeting actual needs, or to function in the control of expression, it is equally true that not every organized experience should find expression in action. Part at least of man's efficiency must consist in his ability to organize a new experience in an indirect way and condemn it as a rule of action. While, therefore, we emphasize the importance, under ordinary conditions, of having the child's knowledge function as directly as possible in some form of actual expression, it is equally important to recognize that in actual life many organized plans should not find expression in outer physical action. This being the case, the divorce between organized experience, or knowledge, and practical expression, which at times takes place in school work, is not necessarily unsound, since it tends to make the child proficient in separating the mental organizing of experience from its immediate expression, and must, therefore, tend to make him more capable of weighing plans before putting them into execution. This will in turn habituate the child to taking the necessary time for reflection between "the acting of a thing and the first purpose." This question will be considered more fully in Chapter x.x.x, which treats of the development of voluntary control.

It should be noted in conclusion that the law of expression as a fourth stage of the learning process differs in purpose from the use of physical action as a means of creating interest in the problem, as referred to on page 62. When, for instance, we set a pupil who has no knowledge of long measure to use the inch in interpreting the yard stick, expressive action is merely a means of putting the problem before the child in an interesting form on account of his liking for physical action. When, on the other hand, the child later uses the foot or yard as a unit to measure the perimeter of the school-room, he is applying his knowledge of long measure, which has been acquired previously to this expressive act.

CHAPTER XIII

FORMS OF LESSON PRESENTATION

The chief office of the teacher, in controlling the pupils' process of learning, being to direct their self-activity in making a selection of ideas from their former knowledge which shall stand in vital connection with the problem, and lead finally to its solution, the question arises in what form the teacher is to conduct the process in order to obtain this desired result. Three different modes of directing the selecting activity of the student are recognized and more or less practised by teachers. These are usually designated the lecture method, the text-book method, and the developing method.

THE LECTURE METHOD

=Example of Lecture Method.=--In the lecture method so-called, the teacher tells the students in direct words the facts involved in the new problem, and expects these words to enable the pupils to call up from their old knowledge the ideas which will give the teacher's words meaning, and thus lead to a solution of the problem. For example, in teaching the meaning of alluvial fans in geography, a teacher might seek to awaken the interpreting ideas by merely stating in words the characteristic of a fan. This would involve telling the pupils that an alluvial fan is a formation on the floor of a main river valley, resulting from the depositing of detritus carried down the steep side of the valley by a tributary stream and deposited in the form of a fan, when the force of the water is weakened as it enters the more level floor of the valley. To interpret this verbal description, however, the pupil must first interpret the words of the teacher as sounds, and then convert these into ideas by bringing his former knowledge to bear upon the word symbols. If we could take it for granted that the pupil will readily grasp the ideas here signified by such words as, formation, main river valley, depositing, detritus, steep side, etc., and at once feel the relation of these several ideas to the more or less unknown object--alluvial fan--this method would undoubtedly give the pupil the knowledge required.

=The Method Difficult.=--To expect of young children a ready ability in thus interpreting words would, however, be an evident mistake. To translate such sound symbols into ideas, and immediately adjust them to the problem, demands a power of language interpretation and of reflection not usually found in school children. The purely lecture method, therefore, has very small place with young children, whatever may be its value with advanced students. Pupils in the primary grades have not sufficient power of attention to listen to a long lecture on any subject, and no teacher should think of conducting a lesson by that method alone. The purpose of the lecture is merely to give information, and that is seldom the sole purpose of a lesson in elementary cla.s.ses.

There the more important purposes are to train pupils to acquire knowledge by thinking for themselves, and to express themselves, both of which are well-nigh impossible if the purely lecture method is followed.

=Does not Insure Selection.=--The weakness of such a method is well ill.u.s.trated in the case of the young teacher who, in giving her cla.s.s a conception of the equator, followed the above method, and carefully explained to the pupils that the equator is an imaginary line running around the earth equally distant from the two poles. When the teacher came later to review the work with the cla.s.s, one bright lad described the equator as a menagerie lion running around the earth. Here evidently the child, true to the law of apperception, had interpreted, or rather misinterpreted, the words of the teacher, by means of the only ideas in his possession which seemed to fit the uttered sounds. It is evident, therefore, that too often in this method the pupils will either thus misinterpret the meaning of the teacher's words, or else fail to interpret them at all, because they are not able to call up any definite images from what the teacher may be telling them.

=When to be Used.=--It may be noted, however, that there is some place for the method in teaching. For example, when young children are presented with a suitable story, they will usually have no difficulty in fitting ideas to words, and thus building up the story. It requires, in fact, the continuity found in the telling method to keep the children's attention on the story, the tone of voice and gesture of the reciter going a long way in helping the child to call up the ideas which enable him to construct the story plot. Moreover, some telling must be done by the teacher in every lesson. Everything cannot be discovered by the pupils themselves. Even if it were possible, it would often be undesirable. Some facts are relatively unimportant, and it is much better to tell these outright than to spend a long time in trying to lead pupils to discover them. The lecture method, or telling method, should be used, then, to supply pupils with information they could not find out for themselves, or which they could find out only by spending an amount of time disproportionate to the importance of the facts. The teacher must use good judgment in discriminating between those facts which the pupils may reasonably be expected to find out for themselves and those facts which had better be told. Many teachers tell too much and do not throw the pupils sufficiently on their own resources. On the other hand, many teachers tell too little and waste valuable time in trying to "draw" from the pupils what they do not know, with the result that the pupils fall back upon the pernicious practice of guessing. The teacher needs to be on his guard against "the toil of dropping buckets into empty wells, and growing old in drawing nothing up."

It may be added further that, in practical life, man is constantly required to interpret through spoken language. For this reason, therefore, all children should become proficient in securing knowledge through spoken language, that is, by means of the lecture, or telling, method.

THE TEXT-BOOK METHOD

=Nature of Text-book Method.=--In the text-book method, in place of listening to the words of the teacher, the pupil is expected to read in a text-book, in connection with each lesson problem, a series of facts which will aid him in calling up, or selecting, the ideas essential to the mastery of the new knowledge. This method is similar, therefore, in a general way, to the lecture method; since it implies ability in the pupil to interpret language, and thus recall the ideas bearing upon the topic being presented. Although the text-book method lacks the interpretation which may come through gesture and tone of voice, it nevertheless gives the pupil abundance of time for reflecting upon the meaning of the language without the danger of losing the succeeding context, as would be almost sure to happen in the lecture method.

Moreover, the language and mode of presentation of the writer of the text-book is likely to be more effective in awakening the necessary old knowledge, than would be the less perfect descriptions of the ordinary teacher. On the whole, therefore, the text-book seems more likely to meet the conditions of the laws of apperception and self-activity, than would the lecture method.

=Method Difficult for Young Children.=--The words of the text-book, however, like the words of the teacher, are often open to misinterpretation, especially in the case of young pupils. This may be ill.u.s.trated by the case of the student, who upon reading in her history of the mettle of the defenders of Lacolle Mill, interpreted it as the possession on their part of superior arms. An amusing ill.u.s.tration of the same tendency to misinterpret printed language, in spite of the time and opportunity for studying the text, is seen in the case of the student who, after reading the song ent.i.tled "The Old Oaken Bucket," was called upon to ill.u.s.trate in a drawing his interpretation of the scene.

His picture displayed three buckets arranged in a row. On being called upon for an explanation, he stated that the first represented "The old oaken bucket"; the second, "The iron-bound bucket"; and the third, "The moss-covered bucket." Another student, when called upon to express in art his conception of the well-known lines:

All at once I saw a crowd, A host of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze;

represented on his paper a bed of daffodils blooming in front of a platform, upon which a number of female figures were actively engaged in the terpsich.o.r.ean art.

=Pupil's Mind Often Pa.s.sive.=--As in the lecture method, also, the pupil may often go over the language of the text in a pa.s.sive way without attempting actively to call up old knowledge and relate it to the problem before him. It is evident, therefore, that without further aid from a teacher, the text-book could not be depended upon to guide the pupil in selecting the necessary interpreting ideas. As with the lecture method, however, it is to be recognized that, both in the school and in after life, the student must secure much information by reading, and that he should at some time gain the power of gathering information from books. The use of the text-book in school should a.s.sist in the acquisition of this power. The teacher must, therefore, distinguish between the proper _use_ of the text-book and the _abuse_ of it. There are several ways in which the text-book may be effectively used.

USES OF TEXT-BOOK

1. After a lesson has been taught, the pupils may be required by way of review to read the matter covered by the lesson as stated by the text-book. This plan is particularly useful in history and geography lessons. The text-book strengthens and clarifies the impression made by the lesson.

2. Before a.s.signing the portion to be read in the text-book, the teacher may prepare the way by presenting or reviewing any matter upon which the interpretation of the text depends. This preparatory work should be just sufficient to put the pupils in a position to read intelligently the portion a.s.signed, and to give them a zest for the reading. Sometimes in this a.s.signment, it is well to indicate definitely what facts are sufficiently important to be learned, and where these are discussed in the text-book.

3. The mastery of the text by the pupils may sometimes be aided by a series of questions for which answers are to be found by a careful reading. Such questions give the pupils a definite purpose. They const.i.tute a set of problems which are to be solved. They are likely to be interesting, because problems within the range of the pupils'

capacity are a challenge to their intelligence. Further, these questions will emphasize the things that are essential, and the pupils will be enabled to grasp the main points of the lesson a.s.signed. Occasionally, to avoid monotony, the pupils should be required, as a variation of this plan, to make such a series of questions themselves. In these cases, the pupil with the best list might be permitted, as a reward for his effort, to "put" his questions to the cla.s.s.

4. In the more advanced cla.s.ses, the pupils should frequently be required to make a topical outline of a section or chapter of the text-book. This demands considerable a.n.a.lytic power, and the pupil who can do it successfully has mastered the art of reading. The ability is acquired slowly, and the teacher must use discretion in what he exacts from the pupil in this regard. If the plan were followed persistently, there would be less time wasted in cursory reading, the results of which are fleeting. What is read in this careful way will become the real possession of the mind and, even if less material is read, more will be permanently retained.

The facts thus learned from the text-book should be discussed by the teacher and pupils in a subsequent recitation period. This may be done by the question and answer method, the teacher asking questions to which the pupils give brief answers; or by the topical recitation method, the pupils reporting in connected form the facts under topics suggested by the teacher. The teacher has thus an opportunity of emphasizing the important facts, of correcting misconceptions, and of amplifying and ill.u.s.trating the facts given in the text-book. Further, the pupils are given an opportunity of expressing themselves, and have thus an exercise in language which is a valuable means of clarifying their impressions.