PSYCHOLOGY AND CHILD LIFE

New Zealand Tablet, 26 June 1919, Page 33

PSYCHOLOGY AND CHILD LIFE

(Paper Read Before the Auckland Teachers' Conference i by a Sister of Notre Dame des Missions.) j '„ In Psychology as in most other subjects there are, of course, heights and depths; but as these conferences are chiefly for the benefit of primary : school teachers, ; I have thought it % better to confine this paper to what may practically useful, rather than •". elaborate,' fine principles and abstruse arguments which rarely affect or influence our ordinary work. We know Abraham Lincoln's famous saying, when taunted with being only a "comifion fellow;" that God must like common people since He:, makes' so many of them. It f is moreover the opinion of mankind in general; that' it is ever the: com- ■ mon work that does the most common : good. " " ; • ■" ; '| The subjects discussed in most text books of psychology are briefly as follow: —The connection between mind-and body; the general order of mental development ; the . influence on character of heredity, environ - ment; and s social relations ; the nature and function of attention and interest; the senses and their training; memory and its laws instincts and feelings, imagination, judgment, and reason : the great importance of developing good habits ; the training and strengthening of the will. Catholic psychology would add to these a study of the development of the germs of faith, hope, and charity 1 implanted in the soul of every Christian child" by ; 'holy baptism. -"; An elementary study -of; at least the outlines of these topics should form part of the training of every teacher, since before blazing a new track it is always as well to profit by the labors of -others by coursing quickly over the beaten road. The hewer text books on" Psychology, especially those of the. American school—Professor James's Talks to Teacher*, Colvin's Learning Process, O'Shea's

Dynamic Factor* in- Education, and such like —have this practical advantage, that besides giving, in a succinct and entertaining style, a good workable knowledge of the main points of Psychology, they present this subject in its most useful form: that of an experimental science^which is yet, however, in its infancy. We live in an age when science and scientific methods are transforming the world ; but in > spite of all the right ideas and high ideals promulgated for centuries by educational reformers, it is only very slowly that a right method of studying Psychology is beginning to penetrate the schools. The great outstanding trouble and the obstacle that has most hindered progress is that so many teachers are obsessed with the notion that from books alone is to be obtained all their knowledge of the forces underlying their work and "of the powers of mind which make up their raw material. And then, moved by the. same obsession, they spend their time in the arduous and sterilising attempt to make the learning of book lore almost the sum total of their educational endeavor. So long as the students of the other sciences, such as Medicine, Chemistry, or Physics, confined themselves to a mere reproduction of what was's to be found in their text book there was little or no progress. But when at last the long-pro-claimed maxim that learning should be by doing was really given fair trial, actual contact with the almostinexhaustible marvels of living Nature led to newer and ever newer discoveries and as a consequence, synonymous with the age of real scientific method, has come an astounding transformation jqf:? the material world around us. V. ; In like manner the teacher must turn quickly from his study of the text books on Psychology to the study of that most stimulating and .productive book of all the living child. The study of Psychological text books, though absolutely necessary as a starting-point, bears the same I comparison to the study of living children as the alphabet does to the study of the great masterpiecer of literature. As practical teachers, we must

often have been confronted .with. the thought that there ; was something,; wrong, or something wanting, either in the matter or in the method of much of our teaching. Nature s ways, if given full scope, are pleasant, inspiring, and very effective for their purpose. r Now as regards our teaching, we should realise that in so far as it is not 'pleasant/ or inspiring, or effective, it must be deviating from the right and natural course. To take but a few examples in point: how many of us can remember the weariness and lack of objective we felt either as pupils or teachers, when we were ’conrouted with a long hour's lesson on the old-fashioned symmetrica drawing copy? And yet it is only but as yesterday that it was realised that the very fact of its distastefulness was the truest disclaimer of its wrong--fulness ; and at last a natural and therefore pleasuregiving and effective method of teaching drawing has been allowed ■' to take its place. Again, think of the large amount of time we spend in all the classes—each day teaching such a “dry” subject as spelling, merely tor its own sake. Even then our work is not effective we cannot as a rule- boast of the spelling of our pupils unless indeed, we obtain our results at an inordinate price. A reading lesson.- should, of itself s be pleasant and interesting to any child /of ordinary intelligence, but how many of us who have stood up day after day for half an hour or more in a hot, close room with a class of 30 or 40 pupils for a reading lesson,could say that under ordinary instances we or our - pupils have derived an adequate. amount of joy from even this lesson? •• p.-

, A Psychology that comes in real contact ' with school life would lead us to seek a cause for this result and we should find it to be this:— the topic of the leading lesson appeals to the child, and he has the book in his possession, he will' already have more or ■■ less mastered it: or if he has not had the book his eye will quickly run through the paragraph, as we know olten happens with a keen child, and it is a real pain for such a child to mark time, ay we make him do, -, vnile one of the worst readers gets his necessary practice in reading by laboriously hacking to pieces all the beauty of the paragraph: : As a result, however, of the application of the scientific method to the study of Psychology, an almost complete revolution has taken place in the teaching of our ordinary, primary subjects. Many laborers have worked in this field, but the world owes more than it is willing to pay to the. sympathetic and eminently suecessful researches of Madam Moutessori, who has obtained her wonderful success ,by careful.observation and experiment with children themselves. Her work for infant classes is now well known, but she has lately been doing good work, for the upper classes also. A Now Zealand school inspector recently paid a visit to an Australian city school worked on a development of - the Montessori plan. A Standard 11. class, for a reading lesson, were sitting in their places, each one silently reading a book suited to his age, but different in most cases from that of his neighbor. In this? way a variety of books sufficient to keep the class interested and instructed for a long time is obtained at no extra expense. Each child is trained to prepare - himself to write, without the book, an account of what he has been reading, and for this purpose, during his silent reading, copies down words or phrases ; which he thinks he may have difficulty in. remembering, .and thus he learns his spelling easily, since he has a definite and useful object in view. During JJie,.reading lesson itself a child may ask his teacher’s help to'solve any difficulty he comes across, j The teacher asks a pupil here and $ there give an oral account of what he has been read- i ing, which he does with relish. By this means so expert' * do the children become in oral expression that, according to the inspector mentioned above, not only do they.. ' spell decidedly %ett^-.:-and ; take a keener interest in - their reading matter than other children of - the same

age, but their'delivery and pronunciation were beyond expectation while the well-arranged notes taken down were: not the least of. the, pleasant surprises. Now this method,- which has * such effective results, and which cause&:real- pleasure"-to studying methods in connection with '. the children themselves until the most psychologically natural and therefore the most beautiful methods are evolved. ': I shall give only one more instance of the effectiveness of what may be called real Psychology, and that is the case of a public school teacher who a few years ago began her career as a very mediocre teacher, but who after a visit to the Montessori schools _ of Syd'returned to New Zealand so imbued with the possibilities, of making children bright": and happy by the new methods, that she herself has become transformed into: another person; and in her case this happy result seems each year rather to increase than diminish. The gospel of liberty preached by the new Psychology is not a principle of abandonment embodying a permission to do anything or everything according to wh&^folid: fahjcy. It is rather lan attempt to supply the environment and equipment? most conducive ; --to full natural development and, at the same time, to prevent the introduction of obstacles thereto. Why, it is asked, has the specialist in children's diseases a social dignity and authority far superior to those of a schoolmaster, if it be not that while the specialist endeavors to relieve the body of pain, the schoolmaster, as a rule, inflicts pain on,both mind and body. Recent researches into theproblems -of fatigue have proved conclusively the one means 'of minimising the exhausting effects of work of any kind consists not in the elimination of difficulties, but in making the worker so keenly interested in the object of the work, "and so satisfied with the development of his own powers in carrying it out,, that he experiences the truest joy earth can give' the joy which falls to the lot of those whose work appeals to them -and : who: feel they are making a success of it. It has been found, moreover, that bodies called toxines are produced in the blood by fatigue, and that these toxines are abundantly produced during the performance of "wearisome" work, whereas there were only traces of them to be found: when the work ; was interesting. Before leaving the 'topic of fatigue, "it may be as well to mention the part the emotions play in the work of exhaustion. The man who flies into a temper, the woman who "worries," wear themselves out far more this way than any amount of physical or mental labor could do. We come across business men engrossed in most tantalising work, or mothers of families with all the care of a _ household on their hands, who are yet always fresh and bright, and seem to thrive better than many another abounding in this world's good things and very little burdened with. work. The secret is that the former control their feelings and preserve an invigorating | equilibrium, while the '? latter dissipate their energies in useless emotions. It is not, of course, the man without emotions who is the success ■ —the phlegmatic man is- indeed one of the world's great problems—but the real leader of ; men, .the-man who can accomplish", something without losing himself in the endeavor, is the man who has complete mastery. over his emotions. ~™^,l ^^^,.—« - —.,-<-„._..,, -.

Hygiene making its way into the school discovered that the heavy "furniture and unwieldy desks, were a prolific source of spinal curvature v that insufficiency of light, the over-small type common in school books, the use ;■ of a : blackboard at 4 too great-a distance from the majority of the pupils, were the causes of the alarming development of myopia among all classes; that overcrowded and badly ventilated . schoolrooms paved the way for a generation consumptives. ""A great step was supposed to have been made. when it was found that all these evils could be counteracted. To remedy the harm caused by the long hours of sitting still in unsuitable desks, the children would come in turn to undergo" physical treatment on a costly and elaborate apparatus similar to that used in medicine to combat tuberculosis of the vertebral column; their eyes would be tested for glasses; a tendency to consumption should ■?■■■ -' ••-• ' "ini-i n >.- : *t't'ft..."¥. ; !l I:L .

be arrested by liberal doses of cod liver oil, supplied, if necessary, 'by the State ; and now ,a . serum has been ' the toxines produced: by fatigue. But what about the conseryation of nervous-tenergy;: in ~~cMldren''wEo “will .have thus to oscillate, so to'speak, between the frying-pan and the fire, between the. devil and the deep sea? _*. - " ‘ 7 „ . Some have said that the remedy is to commute' the sentence—i.e., abbreviate the hours of study, cut. down the curriculum, and avoid written exercises. Thus there presents itself as a substitute for the spectre of destruction a new spectre——that of; ignorance and the abandonment of the child to its own poor resources for £0 greater part of its time. ... However, there are better remedies at hand. ■ In the first place, the schoolrooms; 1 must be sufficiently large and the furniture so arranged that the children can obtain that freedom of movement so absolutely necessary to them for the development of body and soul. Needless to' say, this does not mean acrobatic exercises with the forms and desks, but sons so. arranged as to give scope for ; freedom and movement. The great . increase; in the dimensions of the best ,s modern schoolrooms was dictated by physical hygiene in the interests of the health of -the body. For the same reason also, lavatories were multiplied, even bath- "■ rooms and washable dadoes were introduced, also central heating; and in many cases the supplying of meals and suitable clothing while extensive gardens or broad terraces are already looked upon as essentials* for* the »f physical well-being of the child. Psychical I hygiene s 5 1.. now takes its turn - and presents itself on the threshold of the school with its precepts ; and though its precepts are economically no more onerous than those of physiol cal hygiene, the outcry for more expenditure on education will not be satisfied merely by increasing the salaries of .the teachers. ! To begin with, if an ideal perfection is to be achieved, we may say that the “psychical ’ classroom should be twice as large as the physical . classroom; and this not in deference to the laws of respiration, but because space is necessary for the liberty of movement which is demanded by the new methods of teaching all the subjects, since' at ' last we are begin- “= ning to put into practice the fundamental principle that learning should be by doing 7 ; and conversely, that there '' 7 is no impression' without expression. , ; Fortunately, physical and psychical hygiene are ■ J at one in postulating scantiness of furniture ; but the latter demands that such furniture as is used should be artistically ~ beautiful' as well as serviceable. In this case beauty is not to be produced by superfluity or luxury, but by grace and harmony of line and color..*-* In the best ■ schools the recommendation how is for - " Plight” furniture, which must of necessity be simple and economical. J Each child, from the youngest to the oldest, should have, besides a chair, a light, portable, and well-balanced table for himself, which he can move ;> about as he needs, | thereby obtaining the necessary freedom and at the same time exercise in quiet and careful movements. If the furniture be washable, so much the better, especially as the children will then . learn “to ; wash it,” thus performing a : pleasing and very instructive 1 exercise. Just as the modern dress of children is, generally speaking, more elegant than that of the past, and- at - the same time simpler ■ and more economical, so must be their furniture. Beauty is a question not of material, but of inspiration, hence,wo v.; must not look to richness of ' material, but to refinement 3 of spirit for these practical reforms. ■'ve-v . (To be concluded next week.)