Child Training as an Exact Science
REVIEWS AND CRITICISM :Author: George W. Jacoby, M.D. New York and London: Funk and Wagnalls Co., 1914. Pp. xiv+384. Illus.
To physicians Dr Jacoby’s book will doubtless give the satisfaction which it is but human to feel when told, “Ye are the people, and wisdom shall die with you.” To teachers it will prove disappointing because of the author’s failure to grasp pedagogical problems. It may well arouse, by the way, a justifiable resentment at the tone assumed in speaking of the teaching profession. Why, indeed, should Dr Jacoby use continually the term pedagog, while he would not dream of applying to a member of his own profession the equally slighting term medicus? And finally to men of science the title of the book will convey an absurdity. Mathematics, mechanics, perhaps physics and astronomy,?these are the exact sciences. Anything more inexact than child training, or training of any sort whatever, not even a scientist could imagine.
Dr Jacoby opens his preface by declaring, “A treatise on child training as an exact science, based upon principles of modern psychology, has seemed to me to be an urgent necessity.” That modern psychology is the basis for efficient training of teachers, is generally admitted. That it is not the real foundation underlying Dr Jacoby’s treatise, is only too evident. He refers to his book now as “a work on education based on medicine and hygiene,” now as “one dealing with those pedagogic reforms which appear to be necessary from the viewpoint of medicine and hygiene,” and again as “a presentation of that medico-hygienic scientific material which the pedagog cannot forego using in the rational exercise of his profession.” This sort of presentation, if we are not mistaken, has already been amply made. What we would like to see handled by Dr Jacoby is a treatment of those reforms within medical schools which would lead graduated physicians to an understanding of the child’s mental growth and development. A comprehension of the methods of personal hygiene, we venture to say, is becoming more wide-spread among teachers, than is a comprehension of psychology among medical practitioners. Far too often we still hear a physician say of a child with some mental defect which demands prompt educational treatment, “Do not worry, he will outgrow it,” and far too often the parents, in obedience to his advice, allow the time to slip by, until the bad habit is firmly rooted, the deficiency ingrained.
“I have considered it necessary,” Dr Jacoby remarks, “to prelude the actual subject matter of my book by an historical survey.” This occupies sixteen pages, of which four pages are devoted to Seguin and six lines to Dr Maria Montessori, although her portrait shares with Seguin’s the honor of illustrating this chapter and later on in the book fourteen pages are given to a fragmentary discussion of the Montessori method. The only psychologist mentioned is Wilhelm Wundt, who is dismissed in five lines. Most of the great names in the history of training defective children are omitted altogether. This brief “history” forms part first. Part second deals with the pyschology of childhood, part third with the psychic abnormalities of childhood, part fourth with prophylactic training, and part fifth, therapeutic training. The work is rounded out by a poorly made bibliography.
It is an unfortunate commonplace that physicians writing upon subjects not strictly medical, find it impossible to refrain from preaching. Dr Jacoby is no exception, and much of his book is taken up by reflections which the reader might be permitted to make for himself, if he so desired. A great deal of valuable material has been gathered by Dr Jacoby, but it would require the utmost discretion and skill to winnow it from the misleading statements and unsound inferences with which it is mingled. Nearly if not quite all of this scientific material can be found in other works which are trustworthy and easily accessible, and for this reason, if for no other, it would be unwise for psychologists, parents, and above all for teachers, to spend time upon the book. A. T.
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