Courses in Psychology at the summer school of the University of Pennsylvania
The Psychological Clinic Copyright, 1911, by Lightner Witmer, Editor. Vol. IV, jSTo. 9. February 15, 1911. :Author: Lioilt xer Witmer, Ph.D.
Philadelphia. c/ Fifteen years ago the students of psychology in even our larger universities were either undergraduates in the college department, candidates for the degree of Bachelor of Arts or Science, or graduates looking forward to obtaining the Doctor of Philosophy diploma as a license to teach psychology at other institutions of learning.
The undergradutes at most institutions took psychology because they were compelled to take it as part of the prescribed course. The powers who decreed in their wisdom that psychology was an essential element of a liberal education, decreed also that this element could be obtained by pursuing a course of two hours a week for one half of the college year. For the most part the students took psychology without having any interest in it, and they left it without acquiring any. jSTo instructor aiming to cover in a brief course the entire field of a modern science like psychology can make his subject either interesting or instructive. Moreover, the psychology taught then and supposed to be suited to the needs of college students was unworthy the attention of young men seriously occupied with the task of fitting themselves for their life’s work.
In the graduate schools the situation from the standpoint of the teacher was, if anything, less favorable than in the college. The students were few in number and, with a few exceptions, of mediocre ability. In many instances they had chosen an academic career because they knew they could not succeed in medicine, law, or business. They determined to become college or university instructors, not because the profession of teaching fired their intel(245) lectual ambition, but because they could seize the pretense of original research as a cloak for mental inferiority, and teaching offered itself as the only means of earning a livelihood. The departments of psychology, like most graduate departments at our chief institutions of learning, were struggling to get and keep the few students available. When these students obtained their Ph.D. degree, their academic sponsors manoeuvered to put them into the few teaching positions which still remained open in the country. Under these conditions it is not surprising to find many instructors of psychology deliberately turning away from the relatively unprofitable task of instruction to absorb themselves in original investigation. Nevertheless, any one who then despaired of the future of psychology would to-day be proved to have lacked prophetic vision. Since 1895 psychology has found itself, not only as a department of instruction in college and graduate school, but also in special courses for teachers, school superintendents, educational experts, school nurses, social workers, school medical inspectors and members of the medical profession generally. The modern science of psychology was brought to this country by G. Stanley Hall, who established a laboratory of psychology at Johns Hopkins University as early as 1883, a laboratory which subsequently went out of existence when Dr Hall became president of Clark University. The laboratory of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania began with the appointment of a lecturer in psyclio-physics November 2, 188G, and is thus the oldest now in existence at an American institution of learning. The organization of laboratory work wTas completed and the equipment of the laboratory begun during the following academic year. On January 1, 1889, a professor of psychology was appointed in charge of the laboratory. This was the first time that a chair specifically entitled a professorship of psychology, was established at any institution in the world. It proclaimed that a new science had finally won its place as an accepted subject among universily and college branches. The years which have since elapsed have seen psychology in the course of its development establish itself in most of our larger institutions of learning and in some of our smaller colleges as an independent department of instruction and research. Divorcing itself from philosophy as all its sister sciences did before it, psychology has formed new alliances,?with education, with sociology and with medicine. Only in our smaller colleges, and in a few of our larger institutions of learning, does psychology still play a minor role in the general department of philosophy. At most institutions a modern type of psychology has come into existence with new content, new methods, and new purposes. In some institutions, notably Clark University, the development of these fifteen years has been not only conspicuous, but distinctive. At the University of Pennsylvania also psychological investigation and teaching have had original and characteristic features, which may be justly said to have resulted in establishing here a school of psychology. For the purpose of making clear the aim and scope of what may fairly he called the Pennsylvania School of Psychology, as well as for the purpose of presenting the opportunities offered here for investigation and TESTING A BOY’S INTELLIGENCE AT TIIE PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC. OX THE TABLE ARE A DYNAMOMETER FOR TESTING THE STRENGTH OF THE HANDS, A PEGGING BOARD FOR TESTING CO-ORDINATION, COLORED WORSTEDS FOR TESTING COLOR SENSE, BLOCKS AND DOMINOES FOR TESTING NUMBER, TOYS TO TEST COMMON KNOWLEDGE AND INSTINCTIVE REACTIONS, AND THE FORM BOARD, WHICH IS ONE OF THE BEST TESTS FOR DISTINGUISHING THE FEEBLE-MINDED CHILD FROM THE CHILD OF NORMAL INTELLIGENCE.
study, I shall give in this article an outline of the present organization of our courses. At this present time, and for reasons which will appear in the course of this article, I shall consider in my statement the courses in psychology to be given at the Summer School. We have always aimed to give our best work at what now amounts to a summer term for so many departments of instruction at the University of Pennsylvania. The courses at the Summer School, therefore, fairly represent the distinctive features of the “psychology” for which our department has come to stand. What has saved the situation at Pennsylvania as elsewhere is the teacher?the kindergarten teacher, the grade teacher, the high school teacher, the principal, the supervisor and the superintendent. The profession of teaching has now entered the path that will lead to its recognition as the greatest of all professions. During the last fifteen years a new element, a new spirit, has come into the teaching profession. It is no longer the text-book and the blackboard, but the child himself who is occupying the center of attention. This plastic human material committed for so many years to the moulding influences of a system?the school system? ?what is it ? Where does it come from ? Out of its heredity what immutable personal traits does it bring ? What traits of character does it acquire ? What of its memory, its reason ? What instincts and impulses drive it blindly onward? What of its spiritual nature ? Has it physical defects ? What of its home life and environment ?
Merely putting these questions, simple and elemental as they are, has started countless investigators upon painstaking efforts toward their solution. Answering them will revolutionize educational theory and procedure. The break between the old and the new is so decided that it is safe to say that a new profession of teaching is about to be born. Stumbling perhaps blindly at first, this re-created profession of teaching will struggle onward enthusiastically to the completion of its task?the humanization of the school system through clinical psychology and the socialization of the schools through an ever clearer perception of the social purpose of education. Meantime, through every grade of the teaching profession, from the kindergartner and grade teacher to the superintendent and commissioner of education, there is manifested a common impulse to realize a higher standard of professional attainment. One of the first fruits of this progressive movement is an insistent demand for the adequate training of teachers of all ranks to be undertaken before and continued after they have entered upon their professional career. Only our colleges and universities and the college preparatory schools have as yet scarcely been stirred by the breath of this new life. In these schools and institutions one is still permitted to teach a specialty without knowing anything whatever of pedagogy or psychology, and professors who sit in academic councils and determine the educational policy of their institutions, often lack even the most rudimentary scientific knowledge of the factors involved in the development of the human mind. The modern college and university will outgrow these conditions, as modern surgery outgrew the barber shop. If education is to become a great profession, and it cannot fail of greatness because greatness will be forced upon it by social necessity, those who enter upon this profession, and certainly those who would seek its higher altitudes, must prepare themselves adequately for the work. If education is to equal, and perhaps surpass the medical profession in scientific accomplishment and in social recognition, the course of preparation for that profession must have the same dignity of aim, and the same solidity of foundation. In any course, of training for the profession of ‘fVRPWHPIWr
? TBBW 18? A SIMPLE DEVICE FOR TESTING INTELLIGENCE. THE FORM BOARD TESTS THE ABILITY OF A CHILD TO PLACE RAPIDLY BLOCKS OF VARIOUS SHAPES INTO RECESSES OF CORRESPONDING FORM. IT VERY QUICKLY GIVES THE EXPERIMENTER A GENERAL IDEA OF THE CHILD’S POWERS OF RECOGNITION, DISCRIMINATION, MEMORY, AND CO-ORDINATION. REPETITION OF THE EXPERIMENT OFTEN LEADS TO A CONCLUSION AS TO HIS ABILITY TO LEARN. 250 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC.
teaching, psychology must play an important role, for psychology is related to education as anatomy, physiology and pathology are related to medicine. It is from psychology we derive our knowledge of the structure of the human mind and of its normal and abnormal functioning. In view of the importance of the subject those who are responsible for the organization of courses in psychology for teachers, should see to it, first and above all else, that the opportunity is given teachers to take a full, complete and systematic course. There is no royal road, 110 short cut to the learning of psychology. More than one year is required to cover the ground, and the second year’s course should find the student not only in possession of the first year’s work, but with a well-digested body of facts at his command, and trained to habits of psychological observation and reflection. Twenty years’ experience of teaching psychology has convinced me that one lecture hour and two hours of laboratory work per week for two academic years of thirty weeks is the minimum requirement for a comprehensive outline. I should like to have two hours more a week for the laboratory work, but I have not as yet felt it advisable to insist upon this increased demand. Our systematic course, therefore, occupies three hours weekly for two University years, or three hours daily for two summer sessions. It is adapted to the needs of the college student, the graduate student preparing for advanced work, and the special student who wishes later on to enter the field of education, child psychology, medicine, or any other field in which psychology is to be used constantly as a foundation on which to build or a tool with which to work. Without this course no one can assume to have a psychological foundation for teaching, and to those who aspire to original research it is indispensable. I have offered to teachers this systematic course on the same terms as to college and graduate students, and have encouraged AN EDUCABLE IMBECILE, AN INSTITUTIONAL CASE. AN EDUCABLE IMBECILE, AN INSTITUTIONAL CASE. BACKWARD BECAUSE UNDERFED AND ILL TREATED AT HOME. BACKWARD BECAUSE UNDERFED AND ILL TREATED AT HOME.
them to take it in preparation for work in child psychology. It is believed by some that only a college degree can equip a student to enter courses offered to graduate students. Owing to the general lack of agreement as to what constitutes a college course in psychology, college students may come to us no better prepared for undertaking tlieit first work in psychology than are many teachers who bring only professional interest and intellectual ability. I have had teachers in my courses who did better work than the average graduate student, better work even than some who have held fellowships in other departments. Many teachers have neither the time nor the inclination to equip themselves with a thorough grounding in psychology. They ask for brief courses on practical topics, and this demand is one which should be met with an offer of the very best that can be supplied from the psychologist’s workshop. With us this naturally means courses dealing with the various phases of child psychology, genetic psychology and clinical psychology, including what may be gleaned from the current literature on these subjects, and more particularly, what we have learned from the study and treatment of individual children at the Psychological Clinic. In March, 1896, the department of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania first undertook the examination and remedial educational treatment of mentally or morally retarded children, and children suffering from physical defects, which result m slow development or prevent normal progress in school. The occasion was given for the inception of this work by a public school teacher, who brought to the laboratory a boy fourteen years of age for advice concerning the best methods of teaching him, in view of his chronic bad spelling. Her assumption was that psychology should be able to discover the cause of this deficiency and advise the means of removing it. Up to that time I could not find that the
ON THE BORDERLAND BETWEEN NORMAL AND IMBECILE. INSTITUTIONAL CASE, TRAINABLE BUT NOT EDUCABLE. INSTITUTIONAL CASE, TRAINABLE BUT NOT EDUCABLE. 252 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC.
science of psychology liad ever attempted to discover the causes and remedial treatment of a deficiency in spelling; yet this is a simple developmental defect of memory, and memory is a process concerning which the science of psychology is supposed to furnish authoritative information. It appeared to me that if psychology were worth anything to me or to others, it should be able to assist the efforts of the teacher in a retarded case of this kind. The absence of any principles to guide me made it necessary to apply myself directly to the study of the mental and physical condition of this child, working out my methods as I went along. I then discovered that the important factor in producing bad spelling in this case was an eye defect. After this defect had been corrected, his teacher and I worked together to instruct him as though he were a mere beginner in the art of spelling and reading. In the spring of 189G, when this case was brought to me, I saw several other cases of children suffering from the retardation of some special function like that of spelling, or from general retardation, and I undertook the training of these children for a certain number of hours each week. Since that time the Laboratory of Psychology has been open for the examination of children who have ‘come chiefly from the public schools of Philadelphia and adjacent cities. This educational dispensary, in effect a laboratory of applied psychology, called the Psychological Clinic, has been maintained since 189G for the scientific study and remedial treatment of defects of development. During the early years of its existence the Psychological Clinic was open for a few hours on one day of each week. As the knowledge of its work grew, the demand increased, and soon the clinic was open three days in each week. Although the experiment of holding a daily clinic was first tried in the summer of 1897, during the six weeks of the Summer School, it was not until October, 1909, that regular daily clinics were instituted. The Psychological Clinic will be open daily during the six weeks of this year’s session of the Summer School.
The number of cases which can receive attention at the clinic is necessarily limited, owing to the fact that the examination of a new case requires much time, and if the case is to be properly treated, the home conditions must be looked into and a social worker employed to follow up the case. The progress of some children has been followed for a term of years. Prom first to last a careful record is made of the child’s history, including all possible hereditary and natal influences, accidents or diseases after birth, its educational history, and its present physical and mental condition. These records are classified and filed for future reference, added to as the case develops, and kept for consultation by students interested in this phase of psychological investigation. A child brought to the Psychological Clinic because of mental retardation is often found to be in need of medical treatment. Such treatment is not given , at the Psychological Clinic, but the child is referred to the dispensaries of the University Hospital, or to other hospitals, and the social worker of the Psychological Clinic sees that the child receives treatment and visits the home to make sure that the prescribed treatment is carried out. If the visit to the home shows, as often happens, that the home conditions are responsible in part for the child’s mental and physical state, an effort is made to rouse the family to the proper care of the child. Where poverty precludes the giving of adequate treatment, the case is referred to the Children’s Aid Society or other charitable organizations. When a suitable course of mental training is determined upon, whether in the home or in a special class, the attempt is made to follow and direct the work. If the child is an institution case, i. e. if its condition requires that it should be cared for in an institution for feebleminded children, the Psychological Clinic gives the parents such assistance as may be necessary to have the child admitted.
My experience with cases referred to the Psychological Clinic had early shown me that it is often impossible to make a satisfactory diagnosis of the mental status of a child after seeing him once, or indeed after, several visits. A child’s mental capacities and failings become apparent only after an attempt is made to teach him something beyond his known acquirements. To do this work efficiently, requires a home, a school and something in the nature of a hospital. A home must be provided for the children where food, baths, sleep, massage, open-air exercise and the entire physical life may be adequately supervised. The best of medical treatment must also be supplied, not only for the examination and treatment of eyes, ears and naso-pharyngeal obstruction, but also for malnutrition and intestinal disorders, which in some cases seriously interfere with the child’s mental progress. A nurse who at the same time is a trainer is needed for the physical care of the children. The training school must provide discipline, motor training through physical exercise and manual work, and intellectual training in the elementary subjects of the school curriculum. This type of school I call a Hospital School, because I wish to draw attention to the fact that it is the object of the school to keep children for a brief period for the purpose of remedying defects and to cure the status of retardation. It is a restoration school, which proposes to restore children to a condition where normal development in ordinary schools and in the home becomes possible. It is also a school of observation, where a child may be kept under training for a month, six months, or a year, for the purpose of discovering his particular defects and the strong and weak points of his character, thus laying secure foundations for subsequent educational treatment.
Less effective than the hospital school, and more effective than occasional visits to the Clinic, is the daily class for backward children, similar to the special classes organized in connection with the public schools in many localities. A special class for backward children is conducted during the six weeks’ session of the Summer School. These children will be selected from those who have been brought from time to time to the Psychological Clinic for examination and treatment. The class will be made up of children who give promise of receiving the largest amount of benefit from six weeks of special training and who at the same time will serve as instructive types of retardation for observation and study. They will remain for the entire day and will be supplied with a luncheon, and a few of them may be boarded in the neighborhood, where their entire life will be under the direction of the Psychological Clinic. Last summer the class was organized for troublesome adolescent boys. During this coming summer it will be organized for boys and girls of the pre-pubescent period. While most of the children come from Philadelphia and adjacent localities, nearly every state in the Union has sent us one or more cases. All strata of society are represented and the sources from which these children are received are equally varied. Many of them are brought by their parents directly from home, where the child has given trouble either on account of mental deficiency or. moral delinquency. Thus, a father brings his boy on account of truancy, bad companionship, and a nascent tendency to steal. The Juvenile Court of Philadelphia and adjacent counties has sent us many cases for examination. By far the largest number of children come from the public schools. Some are sent by parochial schools and others by institutions and agencies for the care of children. It often happens that a public school teacher notices that a pupil is dull below the average. She may even suspect a case of imbecility, but discretion prevents her from stating licr suspicion to the naturally opinionated parents. She therefore refers them to the Clinic, with the statement, “George is backward in his studies and had better be examined at the University.” Such a course relieves the teacher of possible controversy and puts the case into the hands of experts in whom, as experience has shown, the parents will have abundant confidence. For the best disposal of the cases a close relationship must be maintained with all social agencies dealing with these classes of children, as well as with the public schools. The social worker acts as an intermediary between the schools or the managers of institutions and the often ignorant and suspicious father or mother. Parents frequently have not the remotest idea of what is really wrong with their child. When they do know, they are usually completely helpless in obtaining relief. They need sympathetic instruction as to their child’s condition, and practical direction as to the best provision for its future. Both of these functions the Psychological Clinic undertakes to perform, making its conTHREE CIIRONOSCOrES. THE CHRONOSCOPE IS USED FOR MEASURING THE TIME OF MENTAL PROCESSES TO THE THOUSANDTH OF A SECOND. FOR EXAMPLE. THE TIME IT TAKES TO THINK, TO ADD OR MULTIPLY. IT IS USED IN THE STUDY OF BACKWARD CHILDREN AS WELL AS IN OTHER RESEARCH WORK.
tributions on the one band to the science of psychology by a careful study and exact record of each case, and on the other hand to society, by cooperating with the schools and other agencies in making the best possible disposal of each child.
Clinical psychology as a branch of science concerns itself with many kinds of defects, severe and mild, mental, moral and physical. Mental defects range from feeblemindedness to chronic bad spelling; moral defects, from degeneracy or delinquency to simple obstinacy; and physical defects, from an infantile paralysis to lisping. The extension of our field of investigation beyond the laboratory to the schools, for the purpose of determining the number of children suffering from mental or moral defects not constituting feeblemindedness, brought us finally to a definition of retardation under which are included many normal children. Contrary to the general belief, clinical psychology does not concern itself exclusively with feebleminded, defective or otherwise abnormal children. What defines clinical psychology is its method. This method is distinguished by its treatment of children as individuals rather than in groups. Retardation is therefore defined in terms of the individual’s capability to progress. Children and youths of any given age vary greatly in physiological and psychological development. The physiological and psychological ages do not always correspond with the chronological age. What may be retardation for one, may not be retardation for another child of the same age. Indeed, it may easily happen that the child who stands at the head of his class in school is more retarded than the child at the foot. Retardation, therefore, is neither a defect nor a disease. It is a mental status, a stage of mental or moral development. Clinical and statistical investigations of retardation in the schools will necessitate a restatement of the facts of education in the terms of individual development. For this new branch of science I have proposed the name orthogenics, the “science of normal development,” a science which concerns itself with the study and removal of all obstacles to normal development and the employment of all favoring influences of environment, feeding and medical treatment, home discipline and school training. While clinical psychology leads in one direction to educational statistics, in another it leads to laboratory tests and measurements of personal characteristics. In addition, the complete interpretation of a child’s mental status often involves the investigation of home conditions and environment by a social worker. The clinical method, the statistical method, the methods of exact measurement and the methods of social research contribute data of practical value to those engaged in the profession of teaching as well as to students of psychology. Through advanced courses for those who have had the systematic course in psychology or its equivalent, and through practical courses which treat briefly of special topics, we have made available to all classes of students the results of our own experience as well as the investigations of others. These courses, thirteen in all, fall into the following general scheme: Practical Courses.
Educational psychology.
Clinical psychology.
Abnormal psychology.
Mental and physical defects of school children.
5. Social aspects of school work. The Systematic Course. G. General psychology. 7. Genetic psychology. 8. Laboratory Course A. 9. Laboratory Course B. Advanced Courses. 10. Experimental psychology. 11. Child psychology. 12. Social research in clinical psychology. 13. Tests and measurements of children.
These courses are intended to meet the needs of college and graduate students of psychology, whether they seek introductory or advanced work, and to provide an opportunity also for special students to equip themselves for research and practice within the field which I have defined as orthogenics.1 We are confident that we have provided the right kind of instruction, not only for those who intend to become instructors in colleges and normal schools, but also for those who will become clinical psychologists in institutions for the insane and feebleminded, or psychological exjDerts for the public schools and in special training schools. The lecture courses also provide an opportunity for teachers, educators in 1The conditions under which these courses may be taken for college and graduate credit can be learned from the prospectus of the Summer School, which may be obtained from Prof. A. Duncan Yocum, Director of the Summer School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. positions of supervision, grade teachers, special teachers, probation officers, school nurses and visitors, and social workers, to select those courses which contribute most to their professional equipment. Nor do these courses appeal solely to those professionally concerned with schools and school children. Society in a very general way is now alive to everything that promises individual or social betterment. The socialization of education is not more evident than is the socialization of medicine. We need only point to the antituberculosis crusade and the development of school medical inspection to show that the profession is placing its resources at the service of the community. There have always been a number of physicians in attendance upon our courses at the Summer School. It will not be many years before psychology has a place in the medical school side by side with physiology as an essential portion of the curriculum, not only for those interested in the treatment of mental and nervous diseases, but for all students of medicine. The legal profession also is concerned to some extent with this work, particularly with the problems of delinquency and criminality. There is an awakening of interest within the profession as to all the legal, remedial, and orthogenic measures which promise to prevent or diminish crime. The clergyman too is finding that pastoral work under modern conditions requires him to supplement his training with psychology and sociology. Recently the students of a theological seminary rebelled because the faculty refused to give them a course in sociology, which they considered necessary for their professional equipment.
Practical Courses. 1. Educational Psychology. Even elementary courses of instruction in pedagogy must assume some acquaintance on the part of the student with the facts and principles of psychology. A course is needed, primarily, for teachers and other students of education, Avliich will provide a general introduction to modern psychology, by selecting those portions of psychology having an immediate and practical bearing on school work.
The course entitled Educational Psychology is intended to serve this purpose. It is divided into two parts of fourteen lectures each. The first part of the course aims to give the student a working vocabulary, and outlines in a simple way the methods and results of mental analysis and the relation of mental states to one another. It is often helpful in regular school practice for a teacher to determine by proper methods the thought contents of a child’s mind; whether the natural tendency of a child is to motor expression or to expression in auditory, visual or vocal forms. Even a little knowledge of these and other individual differences will often modify a teacher’s methods of presentation, with a consequent gain in efficiency. The teacher should also know something of the psychological processes underlying thought, emotion and action. Without this key to the mental hygiene of a child, periods of fatigue will be allowed to go unnoticed, and many of the automatic and instinctive reactions of the child may he wrongly interpreted as shortcomings or mischievous offenses. A brief statement of purely anatomical and physiological facts will be given in connection with reflex movements, instinctive and habitual behavior, and the mental elements entering into the formation of character and the personal will.
The second half of the course presents the development of the child through the stages of embryonic, foetal, infant, child and adolescent life. By this study the teacher becomes acquainted with the pupil himself, with the mental peculiarities and impulses characteristic of the child in infancy, at the kindergarten age, during the school period and through adolescence. Attention is first given to the problem of heredity, by tracing the individual growth from the remotest period of its genesis in the germ-cell?the physical basis of heredity, in which are focused all the influences, ac2An older brother of this child was brought to the Psychological Clinic because of incorrigibility. He too had had adenoids apparently from birth. Did the adenoids cause incorrigibility? Notice the expression of distress due to difficult breathing. Can suffering and distress cause incorrigibility?
AN ADENOID CASE FOUR MONTHS OLD.2 THE AUDIOMETER. A CLINICAL INSTRUMENT FOR A QUICK TEST OF HEARING. 260 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC.
tual and potential, of remote and immediate ancestry, and from wliicli emerges the future human being. Racial, national, and individual inheritance as factors in education will then be taken up. The last, as typified in the instincts, will receive the large attention they demand as congenital sources of habits and as primary springs of conduct during much of a child’s life. Their origin, nature, variableness and transitoriness present vital problems for the teacher, and will be treated in their psychological aspect as impulses to conduct.
After a consideration of hereditary traits come those due to the environment. Intra-uterine influences due to so-called inherited diseases, maternal impressions, pre-natal malnutrition, toxic effects due to parental indulgence, retardation 011 account of foetal arrest, these are among the environmental factors first to be considered. Next will come a study of infancy, from birth to one year of age, with special reference to the appearance of the reflexes, to dentition, to walking and talking as stages of development often useful in locating the cause of retardation in particular cases. In the period following, from one to five years of age, the home, the neighborhood, and, to some extent, the kindergarten, begin more and more to play their parts in forming habits, chiefly from instincts, but also through repetition of ideational or voluntary acts. Stories begin to charm and continue to grow steadily in interest through the later periods of school life into adolescence, contributing to the true education of a child in a sense and with an importance more and more appreciated by modern educators. The fables, fairy tales, and stories suited to the interest and mental capacity of children and youths, the principles of story-telling and lists of books for boys and girls, will be given consideration. The entrance of a boy or girl into school marks an epoch in life and in training. The mental and intellectual characteristics, the primary interests and the morality of boys and girls from six to twelve are of vital importance to the teacher. By the age of six the child is more or less affected by its environment and by home training. Upon inherited tendencies, habits have been grafted. Modes of speech, attitudes toward education and discipline, ideas of morality, have become more or less fixed. Some of these the teacher must unmake and remake. I11 each individual case she must distinguish what is acquired and what is due to nature; what she can remold, and what will baffle her utmost expert skill. For, during the period of primary school life the task of education is the formation of right habits, chiefly by suppressing, modifying or intensifying instinctive tendencies. To give the teacher this requisite knowledge, the arrangement of studies and the management of games and play according to their psychological significance will receive special attention. Finally, a brief consideration of adolescent life, beginning with the teens, will complete the course. With the period of adolescence the problem of child-training entirely changes. The rise of new instincts and emotions, the struggle for selfhood, rebellion against authority, skepticism, idealism and rationalism, will all be considered as so many forces to be dealt with from the pedagogical point of view. The youth’s interest in vocational training, nature study, literature and art, will next be taken up, and the course will close with a discussion of the moral education of adolescents by religious and other ideals. 2. Clinical Psychology.
In the course entitled Clinical Psychology the student is given an opportunity to observe the actual methods of diagnosis as practiced at the Psychological Clinic with backward and mentally defective children. The importance of such factors as heredity, natal influences, post-natal diseases, falls and injuries, the presence and importance of stigmata, and the methods and tests used in mental examinations, will be illustrated and fully explained. Through this practice, each student is expected to acquire, by the end of the course, sufficient skill to discriminate between the child retarded through merely remediable physical defects and one retarded because of incurable mental defects, and if the latter to classify the degree of mentality. Conjointly with these practical demonstrations of backward cases, a course of lectures dealing with the theoretical side of the subject will be given. The lectures will go fully into the history, definition, classification, diagnosis, training and treatment of backward and mentally defective children, with a study of special schools and their methods in various countries. This will give the student a full and adequate conception of the fundamental principles underlying the whole modem movement for training defectives, and will place the present-day development in this field in its proper historical relationship. 3. Abnormal Psychology.
Racial, national, and family characteristics of mind and their bearing upon the abnormal mentality of offspring will be considered first in order. Next, types of mental diseases will be taken up, involving a study of the insane both individually and in groups. Special consideration will be given to the abnormal manifestations of emotion, memory, judgment, attention and will, as these are exhibited in hysteria, epilepsy, cretinism, phrenasthenia, delinquency, obsession, and other forms of mental deviation or disorder. The psychological processes underlying hallucination, illusion and delusion, the phenomena of double personality, degeneracy, suggestibility, trance and telepathy will be studied in the light of the latest contributions in this field of investigation. The prognostic signs, or the fundamental characteristics which indicate recovery or permanent dementia in all these cases, will be next considered. The course will close with a summary of various methods for treating mental abnormalities, including the most recent developments in psychotherapy, hypnosis, persuasion and re-education of nervous centers. 4. Mental and Physical Defects of Children.
This course equips the teacher with a knowledge of the principles of hygiene, physiology and anatomy sufficient to preserve ordinary rules of health in the schoolroom and to comprehend the relation existing between the growing bodies and developing minds 3Used in Laboratory Course A.
EACH STUDENT IS PROVIDED WITII A SET OF BRAIN MODELS, MODELS OF TIIE EAR AND EYE, A HUMAN AND AN OX BRAIN FOR DISSECTION, AND A SERIES OF BLUE PRINTS SHOWING ELEVEN ASPECTS AND SECTIONS OF THE BRAIN. IN ADDITION, THE STUDENT HAS ACCESS TO A LARGE NUMBER OF DEMONSTRATION MODELS.3
of children. The practical bearing of these principles upon teaching and general pedagogical methods and administration will be elaborated. The causes and prevention of eyestrain, nasopharyngeal obstruction, nervous disorders and kindred defects will naturally come up for full discussion. For the diagnosis and correction of these defects the problems connected with the inauguration and practical administration of medical inspection and hygienic supervision will receive full consideration, with the attendant and special functions of the physician, school nurse, teacher and parent, as far as each one is involved in the prevention and elimination of diseases and defects. 5. Social Aspects of School Work.
In 189-1 there were three cities in the United States with systems of medical inspection in the public schools, and the work was confined to the detection of contagious diseases. Sixteen years later it had extended to 312 cities, and developed qualitatively so as to include an oversight of the hygiene of the school and the complete bodily welfare of every child. In many cases the plan not only provided nurses, but free clinical treatment for those not so fortunate as to have family physicians.
Perhaps this is the best illustration that can be given of the rapidity with which the socialization of the schools is progressing. Examples might be multiplied indefinitely. Classes for backward children, social centers, open-air schools, vocational schools, school lunches?all would show the same striking features of a recent beginning and a swift development beyond the experimental stage. The school is being made over into a new social organization. There is not merely an extension of function, but a change of function.
The effect of the course will be to make clear and real the significance of the modern trend of education by vivid illustrations of the changed and changing function of the school, as this advances beyond its original work of teaching the three “R’s,” to its present ideal of preparation for life in all its aspects. It is not a general theoretical course for the student of sociology, but a practical course to supplement the theoretical course in education, psychology or sociology. It will portray the social factors of mental and moral development in contradistinction to the physiological, psychological and educational. The course will comprise (1) Special Lectures?one hour each week, or six lectures in all, to be given by experts, who will be invited to speak on such topics as “The Wider Use of the School Plant,” “Eyestrain; Its Causes, Effects and Remedies,” “Playground Movement and Playgrounds,” “Open-air Schools,” “Clean Teeth,” “Child Labor Legislation,” “School Lunches,” “The Pure Food Movement,” “The Education of Parents.”
(2) A Seminar?two hours each week, or twelve hours in all of practical work, such as reports of field work and of visits to institutions, abstracts of current literature, bibliographies, discussions, comparisons of expericnces of social workers, etc. Students entering for this work are recommended to volunteer for some social work, but this is not. a requirement. Students who enter definitely for Course 12, Social Research in Clinical Psychology, will report at this seminar the results of their investigations of individual cases. The other students taking this course will, therefore, be able to gain some advantage through acquiring familiarity with social work, even though they may not have time to undertake or volunteer such work themselves. The seminar should also give the students a general idea of the character and make-up of the important child-helping institutions connected with a large city. (3) A General Course of Lectures, ten in number, to be given by the head social worker of the Psychological Clinic on the following topics: 1. The school as a social center. 2. The elementary requirement, a sanitary and hygienic school. 3. What shall the teacher do to insure the discovery and treatment of the physical and mental defects of school children ? 4. Home visiting. 5. Schools and institutions for mentally and morally defective children. 6. Health and hygiene of the pupil. 7. School feeding. 8. Home feeding and home living. 9. Preventive agencies for lessening retardation and delinquency. 10. Elimination from the school and how to meet it.
4Used in Laboratory Course A. THE STUDENT PERIMETER. SIMPLE APPARATUS FOR DETERMINING THE LIMITS OP THE FIELD OP VISION, THE COLOR FIELDS, AND FOR LOCATING THE BLIND SPOT OF THE RETINA.4 The Systematic Course.
Tlie acquisition of facts is not the only important end of a course in psychology. Important as it is, the teaching of psychology must be considered a comparative failure unless the student becomes, as a result of his course, in some measure a ‘’psychologist”. At the end of his training he should have acquired the habit of observing his own mental processes and of interpreting the behavior of others. It is not a question of how much one knows of psychology, but of how much one is able to use in daily life or in one’s profession. Experience has shown that a psychological habit of mind cannot be acquired by means of lecture or text-book courses. The student must experience at first hand the mental states to be studied. The lectures must be supplemented with sufficient laboratory work to furnish material for introspection, observation and analysis. If a laboratory richly equipped with apparatus is not furnished the instructor, he can supplement what he has with very simple devices. We have a well-equipped machine shop, and manufacture most of our apparatus. It has been our aim to equip the student laboratory not only with demonstration apparatus, but also with as many sets of the same apparatus as are necessary to enable all the students taking the course to work on the problems at first hand and at the same time. Students work most advantageously in groups of three, and of some apparatus we have as many as ten sets, so that we can provide for the needs of thirty students working at the same time. Notwithstanding the richness of our laboratory equipment, the student is first introduced to mental processes by very simple means. It is desired to direct his attention, first, to the processes to be observed, and not to the apparatus ; the purpose being to teach him to observe the psychological element in his everyday experience.
The systematic course occupies three hours weekly for two academic years, or three hours daily for two summer sessions, one hour each week or day, respectively, being devoted to a lecture, and two hours to laboratory work. Its object is to develop in the student a sound psychological attitude, and with it the desire to proceed from first-hand material rather than from that gathered from text-books; to ground him in the accepted facts and theories of psychology, and to acquaint him with the general, and also to a certain extent with the specialized, literature of psychology; and, finally, to equip him with enough experimental technique to enable him, without loss of time, to enter upon more advanced laboratory work. This course or its equivalent must, therefore, have been taken by the student as preparation for advanced work in experimental psychology or any of the departments of child psychologyThe First-year Course. The university year is divided into two terms of approximately fifteen weeks each. The first-year course is divided into two term courses. The first term course is announced in the catalogue under two headings, General Psychology in the college, and Analytical Psychology in the graduate school. The second term course is announced as Mind and Body in the college, and as Physiological Psychology in the graduate school. Each course, therefore, comprises fifteen sessions of three hours each, one hour of each session being devoted to a lecture, and two hours to laboratory work. In the Summer School the thirty lectures of the two courses are combined into one course of lectures, entitled General Psychology, and the sixty hours of laboratory work into a single Laboratory Course A. Students at the Summer School may, therefore, take the lectures or the laboratory work independently, but they are not permitted to take advanced work without having had the laboratory work, nor will graduate credit be given for the lecture course alone.
The first half of this course carries the student through a consideration of apperception, perception, attention, and the analysis of the various sensation processes. The first half of the laboratory course supplements the lectures; a given mental state, aroused experimentally, furnishes the starting-point for analysis, the student being then guided and directed in his analysis and introspection. In addition to acquiring the introspective and experi5Used in Laboratory Course A. MUSCLE AND NERVE. GROUPS OF THREE STUDENTS EACH ARE FURNISHED WITH A POWER-DRIVEN KYMOGRAPH, MOIST CHAMBER, STATIF, INDUCTORIUM AND CONTACT KEY, ENABLING THE MEMBERS OP THE GROUP TO MAKE GRAPHIC RECORDS OF THE RESULTS OF STIMULATING MUSCLE AND NERVE, OF FATIGUE, ETC., USING FOR THE PURPOSE THE MUSCLE AND NERVE OF THE FROG.5 COURSES IN PSYCHOLOGY. 267
frequent references to the literature, to articulate accepted facts and theories with his first-hand knowledge. The second half of both the laboratory and lecture courses presents the general relation of mind and body. The student cannot go very far in the field of modern psychology without realizing the urgent necessity of an intimate acquaintance with the physiological processes underlying the various forms of consciousness. Such knowledge requires a fairly comprehensive view of the anatomy and physiology of the nervous system and sense organs. It would be highly gratifying to have students equipped with this knowledge before they begin work in psychology, but it has been found that even graduate students coming from leading psychological laboratories are often lacking in this respect. We therefore have equipped ourselves to give a brief outline of the gross anatomy and physiology of the brain and nervous system. The equipment of the laboratory includes six complete sets of instruments for work with the muscle-nerve preparation, so that eighteen students can be given this work at one time, about the 6U9ed in Laboratory Course B.
i’fZZS SrRIXG OR WEIGHT ERGOGRAPII. THE ERGOGRAPII WITH ARM-REST, FINGER CLAMP AND RECORDING KYMOGRAPH IS PROVIDED FOR GROUPS OF THREE STUDENTS EACH. WITH IT SELECTED MOVEMENTS ARE STUDIED WITH REFERENCE TO THEIR CHARACTER, RHYTHM, FORCE, PERIODS OF FATIGUE AND RECUPERATION, AND THEIR RELATION TO VARIATIONS IN MENTAL STATES.6 268 TIIE PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC.
maximum number that can be properly bandied by a single instructor. For dissection work, the laboratory is equipped with a large number of three-piece brain models, several large demonstration models, photographic prints, and a sufficient supply of human and ox brains to allow each student to do tlie work himself. The laboratory course gives the student a thorough knowledge of the mental functions of the brain, and introduces him to the methods and results of experimental psychology, preparing him admirably for further work in systematic psychology, and providing an absolutely essential basis for specialized work in clinical psychology or any department of child psychology. The laboratory course is taken without the lecture course by many students who have had a course in general psychology, but feel the need of a grounding in the methods and principles of physiological psychology. Both the lecture course, General Psychology, and Laboratory Course A are complete courses in themselves, and may be taken without reference to whether the courses of the second year are to be taken subsequently or not. The Second-year Courses. In the College Department the first term course is entitled Genetic Psychology; the second term course, Character and Conduct. In the Graduate School the year’s course, of one hour lecture and two hours laboratory work each week, is entitled Genetic Psychology. In the Summer School the lectures are separated from the laboratory work and are entitled Genetic Psychology, while the laboratory work for the entire year is entitled Laboratory Course B. These courses will be omitted during the coming session of the Summer School, but are entered here for the sake of completeness. On the completion of the first-year courses the student is presumably ready to undertake a study of the more complex mental processes, which are best approached by the genetic method. The first half of the course considers, in lectures and laboratory experiments, memory, the association of ideas, thinking and the process of reasoning. The second half of the course presents 7Used in the qualitative course in Experimental Psychology, for the study of tone sensations.
QUINCKE TUBES AFTER TWIT.MYER.7 QUINCKE TUBES AFTER TWIT.Ml’EE.7
a study of human behavior and a consideration of the determinants of character. This includes an analysis and classification of the various forms of human behavior and a discussion of their origin and development. The work here assumes a greater interest for the student, bringing before him the moral and other dramatic problems of life. The laboratory work planned for this part of the course deals with the amount, variation and periods of fatigue, recuperation, and other qualities of voluntary and involuntary movement. Exercises with such instruments as the ergograph and plethysmograph furnish much of the elementary data for tlie study of complex human behavior. The laboratory is sufficiently equipped with these instruments to offer the work simultaneously to six groups of three students each. Advanced Courses.
The students who enter for advanced work usually desire to fit themselves for original research in some department of psychology. They must be trained in the technique of modern psychology, not forgetting that the object in view is also to earn a living. Fifteen years ago the only outlet for students who were technically equipped as psychologists, was a college or university appointment. To-day men are earning a living beyond the academic pale and yet making important contributions to science, extending broadcast the knowledge of their results by means of lectures and publications. There is still the same need of training and equipment in straight psychology or pure psychology, but in sUsed in the qualitative course in Experimental Psychology.
APPARATUS FOR THE STUDY OF VISUAL PERCEPTION.8 270 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC. THE RECORDING INSTRUMENT. TIIE PLETIIYSMOGRAril.’ THE SUBJECT PLACES HIS HAND IN THE PLETIIYSMOGRAril ; BY MEANS OF AIR CONDUCTION THROUGH RUBBER TUBING, THE RECORDING INSTRUMENT IN ANOTHER ROOM TRACES A PULSE CURVE AND SHOWS CHANGES IN THE VOLUME OF BLOOD IN THE HAND AND FOREARM.
the future the majority of students will doubtless select some branch of applied psychology as the more promising field of scientific investigation and at the same time the one best calculated to support them after they have qualified as investigators. At the University of Pennsylvania Ave consider that students seeking technical training for original research, fall into three groups: 1. Beginners in experimental psychology; 2. More advanced students who seek a training in the methods of conducting research, collating results, and presenting conclusions; and 3. Research workers who are prepared to carry on original research under guidance.
The selection of the work for the introductory course is largely a pedagogical problem. The instructor must plan a course aimed to equip the student with an important body of facts and to train him in the ordinary experimental methods. The choice of the problems to be employed to train the student in the methods of original research, will be determined in large measure by the special line of interests cultivated by a particular laboratory. In the field of pure psychology, our interests and equipment are specially developed along such lines of investigation, as time measurements, involving the use of the chronoscope, chronograph, and other time recording devices, the methods of psycho-physics, and such psycho-physiological processes as the variations of the patellar reflex, and the vasomotor phenomena best analyzed by means of the plethysmograph.
In applied psychology, our laboratory is distinguished by the application of (1) the clinical method of investigation, and (2) the statistical method, to certain psychological elements of the school problem. An entirely new method of presenting psychological data has been developed,?the clinical method. I believe that this method will best serve to lay the scientific foundation for more exact work in child psychology. It has the additional merit that even a grade teacher may employ it successfully. The greatest laboratories of psychology are the school rooms. No complicated apparatus is required for the investigation of the material to be found there. All that is needed the teachers may supply, i. e. adequate mental equipment and training, combined with an interest and enthusiasm for the study of children. Through The Psychological Clinic, I have been endeavoring to stimulate teachers and others coming in contact with children, to present original reports. Naturally, our advanced courses will afford opportunity for training in the clinical method.
The statistical method is not of less importance. It is by means of tliis method, through our work and the work of the Russell Sage Foundation, that the facts of retardation have been brought home to those occupying administrative positions in the public school system. We are not able to offer at this year’s summer school a definite course of instruction in the statistical method, although the results of this method will be treated in the lecture courses. Two other methods of investigation, however, contributing to child psychology, and both of them supplementing the clinical method, will be offered: one, the laboratory employment of general tests and measurements, and the other, social field work.
Experimental Psychology.
Under this heading are included three different courses:? (a) The introductory course following the experiments outlined in Titchener’s Qualitative Manual and including a selection from the following topics:?Cutaneous sensations and perceptions, visual and auditory sensations and perceptions, memory and association ; (b) The advanced course, presenting the methods of quantitative measurement, and giving practice in the psycho-physical methods, in chronoscopy, and in the use of instruments like the plethysmograph, ergograph, etc.; and (c) The research course for students desiring to prosecute original research under guidance. The laboratory is well equipped with the ordinary apparatus required for psychological investigation and is also prepared to design and construct in its machine shop, such special apparatus as may be needed for research work.
Child Psychology.
This seminar course of one hour each day during the summer school session, must be taken by students who enter either Course 12, Social Research in Clinical Psychology, or Course 13, Tests and Measurements. It is also required of graduate students taking for credit any one of the courses 2, Clinical Psychology, 3, Abnormal Psychology, 4, Mental and Physical Defects, and 5, Social Aspects of School Work. It is not expected that students will enter for this seminar course without taking at the same time, one or more of the courses just mentioned. The seminar course, therefore, is a clearing house for several other courses, receiving and discussing reports of students who are actively engaged in some special field of child psychology. Students entering the seminar course will have the double advantage of specializing in a parCOURSES IN PSYCHOLOGY. 273 ticular field and at the same time acquiring information of methods and results of work in other related fields. Through the reading of reports from the literature, students taking this course will also obtain a general outline of modern investigations in the field of child psychology.
Social Research in Clinical Psychology.
Students entering for this practical course in social field work will act as volunteer social workers of the Psychological Clinic. They will be assigned by the head social worker to cases which have been referred for examination and treatment to the Psychological Clinic. Institutions and the offices of child helping societies will be visited and their methods of treating children studied. Through visiting the families of children, students will learn the orthogenic value of personal hygiene, good food, fresh air, outdoor life and exercise, street conditions, home discipline, social life, etc. The head social worker will aim to give personal direction to each student’s work in addition to instruction during the ordinary office hours of the social service department.
Tests and Measurements of Children.
The course in tests and measurements is designed for those who wish to do advanced laboratory work in child psychology. It will provide for anthropometric measurements and mental tests of various kinds, including the Binet system. These more simple tests will be supplemented by experiments with the chronoscope, ergograph, and other apparatus, in order that the students may become familiar with the use and value of instruments of precision m finer and more accurate diagnoses.
Before concluding this article, I wish to express my indebtedness to Dr Twitmyer and Dr Holmes for assistance in its preparation and for their co-operation, extending in the case of Dr Twitmyer over many years, in bringing these courses to their present stage of development. I am also indebted to Dr Ludlum for the preparation of the course in Abnormal Psychology, and to Dr Cornell for the course in Mental and Physical Defects. In planning for the introduction of instruction in Social Research in Clinical Psychology, I have had the assistance of Miss Campion, in charge of the social service department of the Psychological Clinic, and of Mrs. Bryant, a special investigator for the Russell Sage Foundation, who will be in charge of the social service department after June first.
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