Economy and Technique of Learning
- Author:
William F. Book. Boston: D. C. Heath and Co. 1932. Pp. x + 534, $2.00.
This book is a thorough and effective presentation of the various phases of the learning process from the point of view of education. “The book is intended primarily to serve as a text for teacher-training courses in colleges and in schools or departments of education.”
The five divisions of the book indicate its scope. They are: (1) General Nature of the Learning Process, (2) When and Why Learning Occurs, (3) How Learning Takes Place, (4) Levels on Which Learning May Take Place and (5) How to Make Learning Most Economical and Efficient. The author recognizes six elements in the learning process: A, The strengthening of old S E linkages; B, The elimination or weakening of old S E linkages; C, The establishment of new habits by the action of conditioning stimuli; D, The linking of a variety of familiar responses to the same stimulus-situation; E, Originating new adaptive responses and linking them to an old problem-situation; F, Originating new adaptive responses and linking them to a new problem-situation.
Six levels of learning are stressed: “(1) racial learning, or evolution, (2) learning on the purely physiological, or chemical, level, (3) learning on the conditioning, or purely sensory-motor, level, (4) learning on the perceptual, or observational, level, (5) learning on the representative, or ideational, level and (6) learning how to learn.” In the treatment of economical learning, individual differences, fatigue, and transfer of training are stressed.
From the point of view of the experimental psychology of the learning process, the book claims and attains no thoroughness. The educational point of view leads to an omission of much experimental data and to an abbreviated presentation of some of the rest. Such classical names in the field of learning as Ebbinghaus and G. E. Miiller are not mentioned. The work of Bryan and Harter is given as ” the first scientific study of the learning process.” The author’s viewpoint seems to be eclectic. He has, however, stuck fairly closely to the work of such men as Thorndike, McDougall and Watson. He speaks of the transfer of identical elements, of drainage and of conditioning. He mentions the newer Gestalt approach but seems largely to have failed to comprehend its dynamic functionalism. To this reviewer the viewpoint seemed too mechanical. Win slow N. Hallett Cedar Crest College
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