The Vitality of Teaching
The Psychological Clinic Copyright, 1913, by Lightner Witmer, Editor. Vol. VII, No. 1. March 15, 1913.
- Author:
Franklin Jones, Ph.D.,
Head of Department of Education, University of South Dakota, Vermillion, S. D.
A few years ago I asked three of my critic teachers to select from a senior class of seventy-six teachers the best twenty-five teachers and the poorest twenty-five. Then out of each twenty-five so selected, I asked them to select the best ten and the poorest ten. When these lists were in hand, I asked my critic teachers to make a study of these fifty selected teachers and to report, after due study of each teacher, on the following questions:
1. Is discipline an evident problem, and is this end secured through tight rein or through interest?
2. Do the students work, and is the work imposed or does it seem to suit the child’s own impulses? 3. What direct memory work is done, and is the memory end reached through formal drill or through use? 4. Is the subject matter organized and handled from the adult point of view or from the child’s point of view? 5. Does the teacher seem to spend the class hour with subject matter or with students? 6. Is the subject matter handled as book records or as experience?
When each critic teacher had submitted her report for each of the teachers (grade teachers), I undertook to compile the reports for the purpose of discovering whether or not I could find any fundamental conceptions or laws on which the decisions could be directly or indirectly based. I found two, and only two, such laws; and neither of these was a conscious guide in the judgment of any of the critic teachers. These two laws may be stated as follows:
I. The highest success is found in those teachers who work from the child’s standpoint; and the poorest success comes from teachers who work from the logical or adult standpoint. ‘Read at meeting of Heads of Departments of Education of the Middle Northwest, held fci Lincoln, Nebraska, Dec. 19-21, 1912.
II. The poorer the teaching the more the work is imposed; and the better the teaching the more the work seems to satisfy the child’s own impulses.
Now I am offering this to you as mere human opinion, even though it is the combined opinion of three skilled critic teachers. I have been studying and analyzing these data for three years, and I have arrived at a number of conclusions which I am now ready to offer you: 1. The nearer we come to a science of teaching, the more and more clear it becomes that the child has a manifold of feeling, impulse, instinct, that constitutes the real moving power in all education. 2. We have been spending most of our time in studying and organizing subject matter so that the child can “take it in;” and our technical speech is to-day full of such betraying terms as “grasping,” “comprehending,” “absorbing,” “inculcating,” “implanting,” “giving,” etc. Our view of the educational field has been largely from the standpoint of what we have to give. Thus we have paid much attention to subject matter, and we have looked upon subject matter as a kind of social inheritance that the child is to receive, willingly or unwillingly.
But as we come nearer to a science of education we find the child bristling with little impelling forces that work in their own way, and we now come to admit that these impelling forces refuse to hold our social inheritance sacred. Our subject matter, our course of study, which represents a selection seemingly of the most valuable experiences of the race, from the adult point of view, is not taken seriously by the child; and while we offer it to him as a carefully arranged logical whole, he breaks it as a mere plaything and takes to himself only the little attractive particles here and there that meet his favor. This suggests what I am ready to call the Teaching Comedy: here stands the teacher anxious to give to every child the richest gift that can be bequeathed to any human being, namely, the most valuable experiences of the race, and no child is willing to become so wealthy!
3. I believe it is time that we had grown a bit ashamed of the Herbartian word “interest,” since it is a word hardly dynamic enough to express our teaching prowess to-day. We have found a new term that is a little more powerful than the word “interest,” meaning indeed that we propose to control interest; and this new word, big with educational promise, is our word, motivation. Told briefly, the big word in education to-day is motivation.
Now our new word indicates that interest is no longer a final term, but that we have found the mass of rootlets that nourish and grow and determine interest; and the big problem of education to-day is (1) the identification and naming of each of these determinants of interest, and (2) the development of a technique of handling these determinants so that we can lead interest where we will. Here is the most vital process in all Schoolcraft, for the reason that only through it can we touch the life of the student; and motivation must not be looked upon as a mere process of winning the student, as I fear some have already conceived it, but as our means of calling out initiative, personality, self-expression. Motivation means laying hands on the deep-seated springs of action, to the end of controlling conduct. What are the Determinants of Interest?
We have known for some years that the squirrel is interested in the nut but not in the earthworm. We have known that the robin is interested in the earthworm but not in the nut that reveals the squirrel. We have observed that the cat is interested in the mouse, the rat-dog in the rat, and the Irish setter in the prairiefowl; but we never happened to seize and make use of the fact that all these interests are racial and ultimately inherited. We have known that one squirrel lives essentially as every other squirrel lives; that the interests of one squirrel are the interests of the squirrel race. We have known that cats kill mice, and we have reared cats with the definite expectation that each new brood, and each cat in the brood, would be interested in mice; and yet we did not call in the educator and tell him that the vital thing on which we built our expectation was instinct.
Now if you will take away the mouse-killing instinct of the cat, you will at the same time have destroyed the cat’s interest in mice. If you will take away the rat-killing instinct of the rat-dog, you will no longer have a rat-dog, for the dog’s interest in rats will be gone. Therefore, 4. If we could take away all impulse (this ultimately means all instinct) from any creature, that creature could have no use for anything, hence could be interested in nothing. Interest is simply the feeling of usefulness of objects;- and since no creature can have any use for any object unless that object promises to satisfy an impulse, an instinct, we are face to face with the fact that the ultimate determinants of interest are the impelling forces which we call instincts.
The interests of the twentieth century squirrel are essentially the interests of the squirrels of all history. The interests of the twentieth century cat are essentially the historic cat interests; and the interests of the twentieth century man are essentially and fundamentally the interests of historic man. Were it not so, then we should need no history, no literature, etc., since nothing is eternal in the doings of men. But the fact is, the essentials of my life are the essentials of yours; indeed they are the essentials of all human life, and so the great problems of history, the great human interests, never die; and history is a living study. The eternal things of life do not die with the individual, but pass on to the next generation; and the vitality of the race is revealed to us in the racial habits, the inherited tendencies, the instincts.
Now, subject matter comes and goes; it is ever changing, and we cannot predict it. I do not pretend to know what will be the course of study of the elementary school in the next century. But the child who is to react upon that subject matter I can predict, for with all his manifold of feeling, impulse, instinct, attitude, he will certainly reveal his race when he comes to act. I can tell more or less definitely what any given squirrel will do, because I know the squirrel race,?its impulses, instincts, attitudes. I can predict more or less definitely what any given cat will do, because I know its racial impulses. So, too, we can know a child and predict his response if we know the stock of impulses that constitute his real racial inheritance.
5. The most vital need, and the most enduring thing, in all education is a working knowledge of the human impulses, human instincts (all impulse is instinct at root); for they are the eternal determinants of human interests; and when we have learned these racial impulses and have developed a technique of handling them, we shall have solved the biggest problem that has ever confronted the educator; namely, the problem of controlling human interests. We already know and have named many of these human impulses; and we seem to know that there are more of them yet to be known. There is the ownership impulse, the curiosity impulse, the impulses of expression, experimentation, construction, exploration, play, communication, rivalry, manipulation, imitation, secretiveness, anger, fear, pride, affection, sex, sympathy, sociability, jealousy, envy, pugnacity, emulation, physical activity, mental activity, independence, reverence, shyness, collecting, hunting, hunger and thirst, cleanliness, and modesty.
The lines of demarkation among these impulses are not well drawn. There is more or less overlapping, and there are apparently gaps here and there. But our study is young, and our first great problem, I may repeat, is the identification and naming of all of the racial impulses.
Now some of you may be about to say that this is a problem for the “pure psychologist”; but my reply is, the pure psychologist (whatever this may mean) has no problems. If he belongs to the human race, his neutral mechanism, brain and all, has been fashioned to suit the very impulses which we are seeking; namely, the impulses that are common to us all and which make him and all of us human. I may briefly say in passing that anything bids for interest and attention just in the degree that it promises to satisfy impulse; and this is the meaning of what we call “need”. Just in the degree that anything does satisfy impulse, it is useful; and so our “culturists,” our “useless education” brethren, are about to disappear along with the old notions of use and interest.
The second part of our great problem is the development of a technique of handling the human impulses, to the end of controlling the human interests. We are hardly to assume to change the human impulses. We have heard much in recent years about “killing off” and “starving out” the “bad instinct”; but the fact is, my brethren, we have no bad instincts. Had there been any bad instincts, their defeat would have eliminated them ages ago. All our racial impulses are valuable .as springs to action. They represent activities that have proven so thoroughly valuable that our forefathers have repeated them consistently through the years until they have become reflex to the nth. power. Every instinct is good at root, and we have none to spare; and the very attempt to kill some of them is what I may call the Teaching Tragedy. Because the ownership impulse impels the child to steal, is no sensible argument for killing off the ownership impulse. We need only to control the impulse by guiding it on to a better end. Because the impulse of fear impels the child to lie, is no sensible argument for killing off the impulse of fear. Now we have no impulses but may go out toward undesirable ends, hence the need of controlling them; but there is no one of them but may be made to go out toward good ends; that is, toward ends that are good for the race; and this is the ultimate test of all morality. These racial impulses represent modes of reaction that have been extremely good for the race, so good, indeed, that they have become the eternal life of the race. Here then is part two of our great problem; namely, the development of a technique of handling the impulses so that they may be guided by experience.
6. We get our driving force out of the racial impulses, the strength of our fathers raised to the nth power; but we want this accumulated energy guided by twentieth century intelligence. The modern world must guide the accumulated energy of the ages. Such is the ground of progress; and let no man say that we should destroy any of the forces, any of the impulse that has accumulated through all the years of man’s history.
Now we have a name for this process of directing impulse away from an impure end and toward a pure end. We have called it sublimation. This name, which was first applied to the effort to direct the sex impulse to pure ends, is now to stand for the process of directing any and all impulse to moral ends. We may therefore restate part two of our great educational problem, and say it is the development of a technique of sublimation.
One does not have to go far in the study of the sublimating process in education before one may discover that this process has already been carried quite far in teaching; but it has been carried on accidentally and non-consciously. Now we are to make it an overt, conscious, and purposive tool in education. Our schools have been utilizing the constructive impulse, the play impulse, the manipulating impulse, and so on, it is true; but now we are utilize these impulses as the only vital means of realizing our educational aims. In no other way can we touch the life of an individual; and so this linking together of subject matter and impulse, of experience and the pathways of racial expression, of knowing and the deep seated tendencies of doing, is in reality the vitality of teaching. Now I have given thought to the application of the sublimating process to some of the problems of the teacher; and for the purpose of illustration here I have chosen to apply it to the hardest problem that I have ever discovered in education; namely, the problem of developing the moral will.
A moral will, as I see it, may be briefly defined as the will to serve the good of the race. When an individual is confronted with two or more possible lines of conduct, and he chooses any given one because he believes it will be best for all men, that will is moral. To develop such a will, I may repeat, is the hardest problem I know in education. The fact is, we are making men tremendously intellectual in nearly every field of human knowledge to-day; but I have not found an educator who is satisfied with our handling of the moral problem. We know how to sharpen a man’s wits, and we are sure that we can train men up to do almost anything except one thing, and that is the right thing, the moral thing. It is still altogether too easy for a man to seek his own selfish ends in the world, to the injury of society. Now the trouble with our moral teaching is, it does not reach the real life of the individual; and if morality is ever to be anything more than skin deep, if it is ever to be a genuine, vital, living morality, it must lay hold of the deep-seated springs to action, the racial impulses. But here arises a problem within a problem. Every impulse is self-centered, self-satisfying, that is, selfish. How, then, can impulse ever be made to realize ends that are good for others? Exactly this is the point at which our moral teaching has always broken down. We have assumed that morality demands that the individual must deny self and give his life to the service of his fellow men. Were this the actual meaning of morality, then we could have no moral will, since we have no self-annihilating impulse. Indeed if we could succeed in locating a man’s moral center of gravity anywhere outside of himself, he would become at once an unstable moral creature, fit only for the insane asylum. But the fact is, morality does not call for self-abnegation, but for community of interests. Briefly and plainly told, the problem of developing the moral will is the problem of enabling the individual to see clearly that only that which is good for everyone is ultimately good for him; that there is in reality no conflict between the highest personal interests and the interests of the race. The moral center of gravity is therefore within and not without the self; and thus morality is self-centered and stable, fixed in the welfare of the individual self. This puts every impulse at the service of morality, and we can never have a moral will, indeed we can never have any will, without impulse. With this orientation toward the moral problem, I see how we can handle the problem, and that is, by sublimation; and in order that I may make my meaning clear, I will apply the process to that point in school education where moral training has the feeblest hold; namely, the primary school. May I say in passing that childhood should be a busy time for sublimation, and that with a morality based on community of interests and not on self-abnegation, we can lay in the primary school a moral foundation that may astonish not only the modern Rousseau but the modern optimist.
The Sublimation Technique as Developed for the Play Impulse. A teacher has planned to use a game, say the bean bag game, ostensibly for a number drill, but primarily as a tool for developing moral will. Here then we have the play impulse, a strong impulse in childhood, called into moral service. Perhaps ten children are to compete, thus adding the powerful and dangerous rivalry impulse. Now in this game, in this little play world, the serious business, as the child probably sees it, is winning the game. Under the strong impulse to win (rivalry, in the main), when the competition is at white heat, it is easy for children to stoop to cheating in order to win. But the teacher’s purpose is to develop the moral will, and that means here, the will to play fairly. If this end is to be realized each child in our little world of players must meet three requirements, namely, (1) he must know the bill of rights, the rules of the game; (2) he must feel the need of these rules as the guarantee of rights, of every player’s rights; and finally, (3) he must will these rules and be ever ready to champion them and stand his ground when the bill of rights is trampled upon. Here then is a magnificent opportunity to develop moral backbone. Here we may teach the validity of law, the respect for law, the love of law, the will for law, that guarantees to everyone his rights.
The teacher introduces the game with the definite purpose of stirring up the play impulse just as thoroughly as she can, since she will need this impulse in full strength. She draws the concentric circles on the floor, then marks off the thrower’s line, then toes the line and turns to the players and says, “Ready”. She throws the first bag and every child leans forward to see what she has scored. Then she throws the remaining bags, and every child makes the count. Now the teacher says, “I like this game because we can all play it together; and I can be happier when I know we are all happy.” Then she inquires, “Do you wish to leave anyone out of the game? or can you be happier when each one has a chance to enjoy our new game?” (Here the teacher uses her skill in calling into play a new impulse, namely, sympathy. It is largely on this impulse that she is to base the community of interests). The rules are now reviewed and each child is allowed one trial throw to see if he knows how to play the game. The teacher then says, “We can’t play our game (pauses to give the play impulse a chance to react) unless we all play according to the rules. What shall we do, then, with anyone who breaks a rule?” They vote to rule out anyone who breaks a rule. Then comes the trying question addressed to each one in turn: “John, what shall we do with you if you break the rules that we must have in order to play the game?” Each accepts the penalty for himself as fully just. This is a vital step, for nowhere in the world is law safe until accepted by the individual as his own law.
We now have a double motive at work, namely, the will to play, and the will to have everyone play in order that all may be happy together (impulses of play and sympathy). Other impulses no doubt are, and still others will be, at work. The game starts with the teacher assured that this double motive may be successfully played against cheating, bad temper, etc. The first player toes the line, turns to the class, and according to rule says, “Ready.” This is his overt notice to the world that he is ready to begin and is willing for the whole world to see that he stands for fair play. He throws, makes his count (indeed all make the count), and writes the amount of his earnings opposite his name in the tabulum on the board. The next player toes the line, forgets to say “Ready”, and makes his first throw. He is quickly called to account by any one, for this is a world of law. Then the teacher says, ” We are all sorry that James broke our rule. What does James wish to do because he broke a rule? ” James votes to take the penalty in order that the game may go on, and he writes a cipher after his name in the tabulum.
The game continues; and the teacher allows the competitive (rivalry) impulse to come in and, in time, grow to white heat, while all the time she is cautiously playing the.impulses of play and sympathy in the foreground. She commends the manly play (appeal to pride impulse), appoints a jury of manly players to settle close decisions (pride, construction, independence, etc.), allows the players to feel that they are running the game (independence), yet all the time she is watching for opportunities to drive home the moral values by linking them to the impulse of play and sympathy and pride and so on. A game can serve no higher purpose than this. Even rivalry may be played in trying to outdo in the nobleness of playing fairly. The moral values are reached just in the degree that the master hand of the teacher quietly builds up a little world spirit that loves and wills nothing less than equal rights and fair play. I would that all men were trained in such a moral world, a world that knows keen competition and yet wills the square deal. The spirit of such a world is sorely needed to-day, for it can cure fraud and graft and greed, can cure all immorality indeed, and thus it solves our needy problem of moral teaching.
Such is the possible prowess of schoolcraft; such is the vitality of teaching. A teacher calls into service a little handful of childish impulses, and manipulates them by combining or opposing them in such ways as to avoid impure ends and realize such pure ends as moral will. Gradually the child may be weaned away from ends purely selfish, and he comes to love and will ends that make a better world for all of us to live in. This is the essence of sublimation. By way of brief summary, I may restate (1) that the biggest word in education to-day, rightly understood, is motivation; (2) that the most vital element in motivation is the manipulation and control of the student’s impulses to the end of calling out the deep10 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC. est personality fully expressed in a moral will; and (3) that the most vital problem in education to-day is (a) the identification and naming of each and every one of our race-making impulses, and (6) the development of a technique of handling these impulses in order that we may control human interests in accordance with our most advanced ideals.
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