Child and Educational Psychology
REVIEWS AND CRITICISM.
Tlie Psychological Bulletin. Vol. Ill, No. 2, Nov. 15, 1907. Edited by M. V. O’Shea.
The leading article of this number of the “Psychological Bulletin” is a critical and historical survey of recent work in education and child psychology from the pen of its editor, the Professor of the Science and Art of Education in the University of Wisconsin.
Speaking for educationists in this country, Professor O’Shea says: “The belief is growing very strong among us that education can and ought to be treated as a phase of biological and psychological science, and this attitude is manifest in much of the current American literature on the theory of education and the principles of teaching.”
In commenting upon the importance of the direct observation and study of the developmental processes in children, he continues: “Educationists are convinced that they cannot discover the thoughts, emotions, attitudes, and impulses of a boy of five, say, by simply turning their vision in upon themselves. The boy must be observed as a natural object in all his reactions; and he must also be subjected to special stimulations, so that his responses can be accurately determined. Most educationists among us are now students to some extent of children or of the theories of child development, and educational writing is to a constantly increasing degree reflecting the developmental attitude.” While emphasizing the importance of child psychology to the teacher, O’Shea observes with favor the disappearance of the spectacular element in the child study movement. Undoubtedly this represents an early phase of the development of child psychology. Let us hope that child psychology is now ready to enter upon a strictly scientific stage with a more adequate terminology. It is disappointing to find O’Shea constantly using the silly expression “child study” in the body of his article, although he employs the more appropriate “child psychology” in its title. Children in the elementary grades are supposed to pay some attention to “nature study”; an important group of scientists are also students of Nature, but they commonly refer to their branch of inquiry as Biology. Even a child may pursue “nature study,” and the entirely untrained mother or teacher may pursue “child study.” Let us hope we have reached the end of the “child study” period and have advanced to the stage of a scientific child psychology, for the prosecution of which adequate training and experience will be required. It will be interesting reading for Dr Stanley Hall, who has filled the “American Journal of Psychology” and the “Pedagogical Seminary” for many years with the results of the syllabus method, to learn that although “there is some of this sort of thing yet … no one pays much heed to it.”
It is also news to some of us to learn that the study of children has been carried on almost wholly by educationists and teachers actually in service. We have been under the impression that child psychology had been developed in this country by those who were primarily psychologists, going out from laboratories of experimental psychology into the laboratories of experimental pedagogy,?the school rooms of the country. O’Shea’s review gives in this respect an entirely wrong idea of the history of work in child psychology, unless he desires to restrict child psychology to the diluted article that is practiced under the title of child study in many parts of this country. It is true he emphasizes the necessity of skilled observers, but the only line of investigation which meets his hearty approval is that which follows an individual child or a group of children for several years from day to day or week to week. As a matter of fact, biographies and autobiographies are the least scientific of records, and this method has been least productive in accurate results of all the methods of child psychology. While Professor O’Shea is right in emphasizing the relation that subsists between the psychology of the individual and the education of classes or groups of children, he mistakes the problem of public education, which is not how most successfully to educate an individual child, but how to teach groups of forty or more children. The psychology of the individual differs from the psychology of the mass, and methods that are found eminently successful m the training of an individual child are not necessarily successful when applied in class work. On this account, the scientific study of the psychology and pedagogy of groups of children should be of equal if not more importance to the teacher than the psychology and pedagogy of the individual.
With Professor O’Shea, we view with favor the passing of formal psychology as an introduction to the study of education, and we hope it is true,?though we doubt it,?that this formal psychology is being restricted “to the mechanical type of normal schools where nothing will be tolerated which is not perfectly systematized and formal and easily memorized.” As Professor O’Shea points out, the only psychology worth while to the teacher is that which brings him to the point where he can actually see his psychological principles illustrated in the activities of the pupils about him.
But this is no reason for minimizing the importance of the experimental method, nor can we see any justification for the contention that Thorndike in his “Principles of Teaching” abandons the exact methods which Thorndike in his “Educational Psychology” proposes for 1he purpose of measuring mental traits and changes as affected by educational processes. The “Principles of Teaching” does not lay the same stress as the “Educational Psychology” upon the experimental method, simply because it was written with a different object. It deals, as the author says, with the “How” of actual teaching, not with the “Why,” or the What.” Nevertheless, even in the “Principles of Teaching” teachers are given the benefit of the results of applied experimental studies. The argument in the chapter on “Individual Differences,” for example, is based entirely upon exact results obtained by tests in spelling and arithmetic, and presented in the form of a series of tables and curves. Instead of turning away from the exact experimental method, Thorndike’s most recent book raises the method to a more important place by demonstrating its practical necessity as a basis for a rational system of teaching. He is very insistent that all special methods of teaching should be subjected to exact scientific experimentation. Only when this is done can a final result be reached in demonstrating which of a number of methods is the most successful. In this manner he proposes to reach certainty as to the most effective method of teaching spelling, grammar, or arithmetic. As typical of such study of methods, he cites Rice’s and Cornman’.s investigations of spelling in the elementary schools. We fail to see in all this where Thorndike abandons his exact methods.
Professor O’Shea fires a blank cartridge at physiological psychology. He says that the principles of physiological psychology and of the study of the nervous system are useless to the teacher. As a matter of fact, the psycho-physiological standpoint in psychology is more securely established to-day than ever, and education is compelled to give increasing heed to its teachings. How, for example, will Professor O’Shea explain to his students the function of the senses, and the relation of sensation to the development of memory and imagination; how will he make clear to them the nature of the instincts and emotions; how will he interpret the phenomena of impulse and will; how will he even make attention an intelligible problem; and, finally, how will he treat education as a “phase of biological science” and yet make no reference to the anatomy and physiology of the sense organs and brain, and to the developmental relation of complex psychical reactions to inherited instincts and reflexes ? Physiological psychology, Professor O’Shea thinks, may help in some particular situations, as in understanding and dealing with abnormal manifestations, for example, in fatigue, etc. In this admission alone he has sufficiently acknowledged its importance to educational psychology. Abnormal mental manifestations are not restricted to children in schools for defectives. There are few classes of first, second, or third year children that do not contain a number of children who manifest some form of abnormal mental functioning. Without an intimate knowledge of the close relation between physical and mental conditions, a teacher may fail to discover a defect that is retarding or will later retard the child’s progress. The oft reiterated appeal of a teacher to the children in her class to “pay attention” is in most cases amusing, in some cases pathetic to those who know the psychological antecedents and the physiological conditions of the state of attention. If the teacher has some knowledge of physiological psychology, and knows the relation between the power of attention and such physical conditions as digestive disturbances, nasopharyngeal obstructions, eye and ear defects, and temporary or permanent nervous disability, she will substitute for the appeal to “pay attention” an examination of her children, and on finding defects of vision or hearing she will place the “inattentive dullard” nearer to the blackboard and herself, and if necessary endeavor to secure medical assistance. Work of this kind is being carried on in our schools to-day to a greater extent than ever before, and through this work physiological psychology is making itself increasingly felt in the educational field. The syllabus method, the method of exact experimentation, and the methods of physiological psychology are in reality those methods which are responsible for most that is of value in the educational psychology of to-day, and they may be expected to give rise to such a treatment of education as, in the words of Professor O’Sliea, “can and ought to be made,” i. e., the treatment of education “as a phase of biological and psychological science.”
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