Mind in the Making
A Study in Mental Development. REVIEWS AND CRITICISM. :Author: Edgar James Swift. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1908. Pp. x, 329.
This book deals with many important problems of mental and moral development during the formative period of childhood. It is a striking example of the application of psychological methods of investigation to a new field. It is the product of a method of work set going by G. Stanley Hall, and developed by a group of modern psychologists who owe their inspiration and to a large extent their training also to President Hall and his associates at Clark University. It is a book that should be read by every teacher, parent, or social worker interested in the welfare of the child. It is a popular treatise in the best sense of the word, easily read by anyone, presenting material that makes a broad appeal to many human interests, and yet dictated by a spirit of scientific deliberation and reserve.
It would be impossible within the range of a brief review to give a satisfactory notion of the contents of the book and of the conclusions reached by the author. In one chapter on “Standards of Human Power,” Professor Swift will give many a reader pause, who is inclined to think that facility in mastering school subjects is an indication of mental power. Professor Swift marshals a long array of men who were slow at their school work or indifferent to instruction, and who yet even during the school period showed latent talents which escaped the notice of their school masters. “All children,” says Professor Swift, “are exceptional, and it is this varying personality that makes the life of the educator alike so fascinating and so perplexing.” He does not tell us,?nor could we justly require of him that he should solve the problem of ministering to the exceptional individuality of each child in class rooms of fifty and sixty. It is sufficient at the present time to have clearly stated the problem, and to have indicated the probable great waste of good material through the ignorance of teachers and the inadequacy of the modern curriculum.
No chapter in. the book is more timely than the one dealing with the “Criminal Tendencies of Boys.” There can be no doubt that the study of the instincts will lead to an entirely new psychology of development. The foundations of this psychology are scarcely laid. It will take at least fifteen years of further inquiry before it will be possible to write a satisfactory treatise from the genetic standpoint. Such text-books as have been written dealing with genetic psychology are largely delusions.
They are written by the student of a static psychology, who recognizes the necessity of a dynamic or genetic psychology, and who proceeds to evolve one by reflection from his inner consciousness. This is not Professor Swift’s method. He deals with facts, with the actual phenomena of boy life. He puts before us the instincts of the truant, of anger and fighting, the instincts that lead to theft and depredations of various kinds, and other tendencies which we have been led to consider as criminal. Dr. Stoddard, in a recent address before the American Neurological Association, presented the view that the insane manifest the same mental characteristics that are common to the sane mind. Every form of insanity finds its prototype in the sane mind. Similarly, we may say that every form of criminality is found to exist in some normal boys,? boys who show their normality by developing into a normal manhood of standard morality.
The chapters on “Reflex Neuroses and their Relation to Development,” and on “Some Nervous Disturbances of Development,” are the best statement of the subject matter of these chapters available to the teacher. They should form the point of departure for further investigation on the part of every teacher and superintendent. In the chapter on “The Psychology of Learning,” Professor Swift presents the results of an experimental investigation of several types of learning,?(1) physical: the acquisition of skill in a complex muscular act, tossing and catching balls; (2) physical and mental; the acquisition of skill in typewriting; and (3) mental: the acquisition of knowledge in beginning a language. Another chapter on “Experimental Pedagogy,” presents the striking results of some experiments made in the St. Louis schools and elsewhere. The later chapters of the book are devoted to an interesting critique of educational method with a view to applying the lubricant of new ideas to the stiff joints in the machinery of the school master’s mind. The book is from one point of view all the more interesting because it is so largely the product of Professor Swift’s own work and thought. It loses somewhat in not adequately presenting the results of other investigators in the same and cognate fields.
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