How does the thinking of an expert differ from that of other men? Not so much in the processes of thought as in the data upon which he reasons. An ordinary witness may testify as to matters of fact; the expert is supposed to possess extensive knowledge and superior discrimination in a particular branch of learning or practice; hence he may be a witness in matters as to which ordinary observers cannot form just conclusions, and he is held liable for negligence in case he injures another from want of proper qualifications or proper use of the thought-materials necessary to form trustworthy conclusions. From this point of view we can see new force and beauty in the remark of Fitch that teaching is the noblest of the professions, but the sorriest of trades. The aim of a trade is to make something that will sell; its ultimate aim is money, a livelihood. Teaching and the other professions, although they cannot be sundered from money-making, have a nobler aim. This arises out of the thought-materials with which they deal. If a teacher’s mind does not busy itself with these, he sinks to the level of a tradesman. A very keen observer said of the head of a large boarding-school, that he had learned his trade from the principal of a large normal school under whom he had been trained. The remark, if true, was severe, but significant. It was an intimation that the substance of the thinking of these two men was business rather than education; that their conversation about the quality of the beef and mutton served, about the loaves of bread, the pounds of butter, and the bushels of potatoes consumed each week, indicated that they were thinking more of the stomach and the purse than of the things of the mind; that their aim was a large attendance and a large cash-balance at the end of the year rather than the mental growth and professional preparation of their students. Their thinking was efficient and trustworthy in the domain in which it was exercised. It partook of the nature of trade-thinking, and lacked professional quality because it did not concern itself with problems of mental growth and moral training, with the proper sequence of studies, with the educational value of different kinds of knowledge, and with the best methods of economizing the time and effort of their students.
In several aspects teaching is like a trade. Every art has its mysteries, with which those who practise it must be familiar if they would succeed. Teaching is no exception; and if the annual institute or the school of pedagogy fails to clarify these mysteries by putting the teachers in possession of materials for thought and of methods of applying knowledge to beget thinking which are not within the ken of the average parent and the general public, then failure must be written over the outcome. A mystery is a lesson to be learned. A scrutiny of the mysteries which characterize every trade and every art will serve not merely to emphasize the necessity for furnishing proper thought-materials, but will be helpful also in paving the way for the consideration of another essential in training pupils to think. Let us view them in the concrete.
A machinist, who was also a skilled mechanic, was compelled by circumstances to quit his trade and to accept a position as janitor. One day the pipe leading from the sink to the sewer was clogged. The teacher, in conjunction with a carpenter, worked a long time to fix it, but in vain. The janitor was called, who in a few moments overcame the difficulty by the application of a principle in natural philosophy on which the teacher could have talked learnedly, although he knew not how to apply it in the given case. The janitor related how the foreman in a foundry was baffled in the effort to bore a hole through a piece of iron until a workman, trained under a foreign master, suggested the purchase of two things at a drug-store by means of which the hole was easily bored. When the druggist asked about the use that was to be made of these chemicals, he was told that the use was one of the mysteries of the machinist’s trade.
Next, the carpenter fixed the mortise lock of a door which needed attention, and the others lauded the skill with which he handled his tools and applied his knowledge. Before the three separated, the janitor’s son came with a word which he could not find in his lexicon. With the aid of chalk and black-board and grammar, the teacher showed how to dig out the roots of a Greek verb and what beautiful changes occur in its conjugation. The turn had come for the tradesmen to admire the mysterious skill and power of the teacher.
In applying the principle of natural philosophy, the janitor made skilful use of one or two tools which the teacher and the carpenter had never seen. He could express thought through the tools of his own handicraft, in ways that they could not. Each one of the three men knew the tools and the mysteries of his own vocation. During the entire scene there was not a logical flaw in the thinking of any one of them. Probably there was little difference in their native ability; certainly none in the fundamental nature of their thought-processes. The practical difference resulted from the data at their command and from the tools they were using to express the thoughts peculiar to their several vocations.
The power to use tools, instruments, and machinery lifts man above the brute creation. There is labor-saving machinery in thinking as well as in manual labor. The more perfect the tools with which we work the greater the results we can achieve without waste of effort. In thinking as well as in working we must use the best tools in order to attain the greatest facility and efficiency. Yonder are two wheat-fields. In one of them a giant is wielding the sickle of our forefathers; in the other a youth, not yet out of his teens, is at work. At the close of the day the work of the giant will not bear comparison with that of the lad, because the latter was sitting upon a self-binder. They had the same material to work upon, yet, in spite of his superior strength, the giant could not cope with his weaker though better-equipped competitor. In like manner, the youth who has mastered the algebraic equation, or the symbols and formulas of chemistry, is in many respects the superior of a much brighter man who is not in possession of these tools or instruments of thought. A boy of average capacity who goes through a good high school thereby acquires certain fundamental ideas and the accompanying instruments of thought by which he is enabled to solve problems entirely beyond the power of a much brighter boy who never studies beyond the grammar grade.
The instruments of thought are generally spoken of as symbols, whilst the materials of thought are the things for which the symbols stand. In thinking, the mind may employ the ideas which correspond to the things in the external world; or it may employ the symbols by which science indicates things that have been definitely fixed or quantified. Failure to distinguish the sign from the thing signified, the symbol from its reality, leads to confusion in thought and to the most disastrous results in mental development. Loss of appetite for knowledge must inevitably result from methods of teaching by which the pupil is expected to learn the sounds of the letters from their names, or musical sounds from the notation on the staff, or the ideas of number from the arabic notation, or a knowledge of flowers from the technical terms of a text-book, or a knowledge of chemical elements and substances from the definitions, descriptions, and formulas of a scientific treatise. The symbol is indispensable in advanced thinking; but to expect the learner to get the fundamental ideas of a science from words, symbols, and definitions is evidence that the teacher does not understand the nature of thinking. It may, therefore, be helpful to set forth clearly the important distinction between thinking in things and thinking in symbols; to point out their relative value in mental development; and to fix their place in a rational system of education.
II
THINKING IN THINGS AND IN SYMBOLS
The rote system, like other systems of its age, made more of forms and symbols than of the things symbolized. To repeat the words correctly was everything, to understand the meaning nothing; and thus the spirit was sacrificed to the letter.
Herbert Spencer.
Words are men’s daughters, but God’s sons are things.
Johnson.
For words are wise men’s counters,—they do but reckon by them,—but they are the money of fools.
Hobbes.
It is only by the help of language (or some other equivalent set of signs) that we can think in the strict sense of the word; that is to say, consider things under their general or common aspects.
Sully.
II
THINKING IN THINGS AND IN SYMBOLS
Within half a mile of the Susquehanna River a teacher was asking the class, “Of what is the earth’s surface composed?” “Of land and water,” was the reply. In answer to a question by the superintendent concerning the earth’s surface, one boy declared that he had never seen the earth. He had been acquiring words without the corresponding ideas. Turning to another boy, this official said, “Will you please show me water?” With a gleam of satisfaction on his face, the lad raised his atlas, pointed to the blue coloring around the map of North America, and said, “That is water.” “Will you please drink it?” The expression on the faces of teacher and pupils indicated that all felt as if some one had committed a blunder. Where did the blunder lie? Had the teacher taught what should not be learned? Surely, every child should learn how water is indicated on a map. Did the boy use language wrong in idiom? By no means; for, as every student who has handled a lexicon well knows, many words have both a literal and a tropical, or figurative, meaning. If, pointing to an object, the teacher says, “This is a desk,” he uses the word is in its literal sense. On the other hand, if he points to a division on the map of the United States, and says, “This is Pennsylvania,” he does not mean that the colored surface to which he is pointing is the real State of Pennsylvania (if it were, a political boss could pocket it, and carry it the rest of his days without further trouble). What is meant is, that a given space on the map indicates or represents Pennsylvania, the word is being used, in the latter instance, in a figurative sense. Whether the word is, in the expression, “This is my body,” should be understood in a literal or in a figurative sense has been discussed for ages in the Christian church. In the answer of the boy we strike a distinction in thought that lies at the basis of good teaching in all grades of schools, from the kindergarten to the university,—namely, the distinction between thinking in things and thinking in symbols. In one sense of the word, all thinking is symbolic; for the percepts, concepts, and images of external objects which the mind employs in the thinking process are symbolic of the things for which they stand. But in advanced thinking, and especially in scientific investigations, objective symbols, such as words, signs, letters, equations, formulas, technical terms and expressions, are utilized to facilitate the thinking process. Take the age questions in mental arithmetic that have been prematurely inflicted upon so many pupils in the public schools. So long as the mind consciously carries A’s age and the wife’s age, using the clumsy instruments of arithmetical analysis, the thinking is difficult indeed. As soon as x is made the symbol of A’s age, and y the symbol of the wife’s age, so that the conditions of the problem can be thrown into algebraic equations, the difficulty vanishes. In the algebraic solution the mind drops all thought of A’s age and the wife’s age while manipulating the signs and symbols of the equation, and restores the meaning of the symbols only when their value in figures has been found. The algebraic solution is a genuine specimen of thinking in symbols, and illustrates the labor-saving machinery which the human mind employs, more or less, in all the most difficult scientific investigations.
What is a symbol? It is a mark, sign, or visible representation of an idea. The mathematician uses the symbol to represent quantities, operations, and relations. The chemist uses the symbol to indicate elements and their groupings or combinations. The theologian applies the term symbol to creeds and abstract statements of doctrine. The grips, countersigns, and passwords of a secret society may be spoken of as symbols of the ideas, aims, and principles of the organization. Often the symbol is chosen on account of some supposed resemblance between it and that for which it stands, as when black is made the symbol of mourning, white of purity, the oak of strength, and the sword of slaughter. “A symbol,” says Kate Douglass Wiggin, “may be considered to be a sensuous object which suggests an idea, or it may be defined as the sign or representation of something moral or intellectual by the images or properties of natural things, as we commonly say, for instance, that the lion is the symbol of courage, the dove the symbol of gentleness. It need not be an object any more than an action or an event, for the emerging of the butterfly from the chrysalis may be a symbol of the resurrection of the body, or the silver lining of the cloud typify the joy that shines through adversity.” Frequently the symbol is chosen arbitrarily, or because it is the first letter of the word which denotes the quality, substance, thing, or idea for which the symbol stands. Generally the symbol is a visible representation, but it may also address the other senses, notably the ear and the sense of touch. The Standard Dictionary excludes the portrait from the extent or scope of the symbol, and confines it to the representation of that which is not capable of portraiture, as an idea, state, quality, or action. It is well to bear this limitation in mind during the present discussion.
A few illustrations will serve to fix the sense of the word symbol. In some parts of America the tramps have a system of symbols of their own, a given mark on the front gate indicating a good place to ask for a meal, another indicating a cross dog in the rear yard. That which the tramp fears or likes is not the mark which he sees, but a very real thing which that mark suggests to his mind. A number of the apostles were fishermen by trade. The fish became a very significant symbol in the days of early Christianity. The letters in the Greek name for fish are the initial letters of the expression, Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Saviour. It is one of many instances showing how the human mind delights in heaping symbol upon symbol to conceal precious meanings from the uninitiated.
What was the mental condition of the lad spoken of at the beginning of this chapter? The boy knew the real thing long before he knew the first symbol for water. Without doubt he had tasted it, played in it against his mother’s will, been washed in it against his own will, for months before he learned the first symbol for water used in common by him and others, which was probably the spoken word. Up to that time he thought of water in some mental picture or image which had been formed upon the eye and then upon mind somewhat as the picture is formed through the art of the photographer. Up to the time that he learned the spoken word for water this liquid suggested mental pictures which constituted a thinking in things[1] rather than in symbols, using the latter term according to the limitation set by the Standard Dictionary. On entering school he was taught to read; he added to the ear-symbol the eye-symbol,—that is, the written or printed word, which he may have associated at first with the real thing, or with the spoken word; of course, very soon with both, if correct methods of teaching were followed. Next, he was taught the map-symbol. The blunder which the teacher on the banks of the Susquehanna had committed consisted not in teaching how water is indicated on a map, but in not pointing to the majestic river near the school-house, and associating the water in its channel with the representations of water on a map. If the boy studied Latin or Greek, he was taught new symbols for water in the corresponding words of these languages. If he studied chemistry, he early learned the composition of water, and was thenceforth taught to write it H₂O, a symbol enshrining a new truth and lifting him to higher planes of thought by giving him a new instrument as well as new materials of thought.
Half the errors in teaching arise from the fact that the teacher does not constantly bear in mind the distinction between the symbol and the thing for which the symbol stands, thus giving rise to confusion in the mind of the learner. A class was bounding the different States of the Union. At the close of the recitation the superintendent suggested that the class bound the school-house. It was bounded on the north by the roof, on the south by the cellar, on the east and west by walls. The geography classes of an entire city were caught in that way. Either the pupils had not been taught, or else they had forgotten the difference between the real directions and the ordinary representation of them on the surface of a wall map. Sometimes the confusion exists in the mind of the teacher as well as in the minds of the pupils. Then he expects them to learn one thing while he teaches them another. By the methods formerly in vogue the pupil was expected to learn the sounds of the letters from their names; the pronunciation of the word from the names of the letters which compose it; the names, forms, and sounds of letters from the word taught as a whole; the musical sounds from the notation on a musical staff; the ideas of number, of fractions, from the corresponding symbols; the units of denominate numbers and of the metric system from the names used in the tables of weights and measures; the flowers of the field from the nomenclature of the botany; the substances and experiments in chemistry from the descriptions and pictures of a text-book. Such teaching has given rise to endless lectures, editorials, and discussions upon the use of the concrete in teaching, upon the value of thinking in things, upon the importance of object-lessons, laboratory methods, and the like.
But there is another side to the question. There comes a time in the development of the pupil when he must rise above the sticks and shoe-pegs and blocks of the elementary arithmetic, and learn to think in the symbols of the Arabic notation. Later he must learn to think in the more comprehensive symbols of the algebraic notation. He must learn to think the abstract and general concepts of science, and, in thinking these, to use the devices, technical terms, and other symbols which the scientists have invented to facilitate their thinking.
Hear a parable. A teacher sat down to dinner. The waiter handed him the bill of fare. The proprietor followed the waiter to the kitchen, directed him to cut out the names of the eatables which had been ordered, and to carry these names on plates to the dining-room. “It is not these words,” exclaimed the guest, “that I desire to eat, but the things in the kitchen for which these words stand.” “Isn’t that what you pedagogues are doing all the time, expecting children to make an intellectual meal on words such as are found in the columns of the spelling-book and attached on maps to the black dots which you call cities? My boy gravely informs me that every State capital has its ring, because on his map there is always a ring around the dot called the capital of a country.” The teacher was forced to admit that there is, alas! too much truth in the allegation. In the afternoon he took revenge. Knowing that the proprietor had a thousand-dollar draft to be cashed, he arranged with the banker to have it paid in silver coin. When the landlord saw the growing heap of coin, he exclaimed, “If I must be paid in silver, can you not give me silver certificates?” “Did you not intimate to me,” said the teacher, tapping him on the shoulder, “that it is the real things we want, and not words and symbols which stand for realities?” The landlord was obliged to admit that in the larger transactions of the mercantile world it saves time and is far more convenient to use checks, drafts, and other symbols for money than it would be to use the actual cash. In elementary transactions, like the purchase of a necktie, it is better to use the cash, to think and deal in real money, but when it comes to the distribution of five and one-half million dollars among the school districts of Pennsylvania, it is better to draw warrants upon the State Treasurer, to use checks and drafts, and to think in figures, than it would be to count so much coin, and send the appropriation in that form all over a great commonwealth.
The parable hardly needs an interpretation. Its lesson points in two directions. On the one hand, it shows in the true light every species of rote teaching, of parrot-like repetition of definitions, statements, and lists of words which give a show of knowledge without the substance. It puts the seal of condemnation on most forms of pure memory work. It sounds the note of warning to all teachers who are trying to improve the memory by concert recitations. The boy whose class was taught to define a point as position without length, breadth, or thickness, and who, when asked to recite alone, gave the definition, “A point has a physician without strength, health, or sickness,” is but one of many specimens of class-teaching condemned by the parable. It says in unmistakable terms that all elementary instruction must start in the concrete, taking up the objects or things to be known, and resolutely refusing to begin with statements and definitions which to the children are a mere jargon of words.
On the other hand, the parable indicates how too long-continued use of the concrete may arrest development, and hinder the learner from reaching the stages of advanced thinking. It hints that the too constant use of blocks, however valuable at first, ultimately begets blockheads, instead of intelligences capable of the higher life of thought and reflection. A rational system of pedagogy involves proper attention to the materials of thought and proper care in furnishing the instruments by which advanced thinking is made easy and effective. In one respect the parable does not set forth the whole truth. It makes no account of differences in thinking due to heredity and mental training. The differences in native ability are, however, not as great as is generally supposed (unless the feeble-minded enter into the comparison); the differences due to correct training, or the neglect of it, are far more striking. The work expected of the pupil should, of course, tally with his capacity; otherwise it will force him to resort to pernicious helps, beget in him wrong habits of study, rob him of the sense of mastery and the joy of intellectual achievement, and destroy his self-reliance, his power of initiative, and his ability to grapple with difficult problems and perplexing questions. The power to think grows by judicious exercise. Here better than anywhere else in the whole domain of school work can we distinguish the genuine coin from its counterfeit, and discriminate between true skill and quackery, between the artist and the artisan. It is at this point that most help can be given to young teachers by a good course of lectures on learning to think and on the difficult art of stimulating others to think.
III
THE MATERIALS OF THOUGHT
A vast abundance of objects must lie before us ere we can think upon them.
Goethe.
The young have a strong appetite for reality, and the teacher who does not make use of that appetite is not wise.
J. S. Blackie.
The child’s restless observation, instead of being ignored or checked, should be diligently ministered to, and made as accurate as possible.
Herbert Spencer.
You have an exchequer of words, and I think no other treasure.
Two Gentlemen of Verona.
III
THE MATERIALS OF THOUGHT
The hotel man was right in his criticism of teachers who expect their pupils to make an intellectual meal on mere words. For three hundred years educational reformers have been hurling their epithets against this abuse. Has it been banished from the schools? By no means. It crops out anew with every generation of teachers and in every grade of instruction from the kindergarten to the university. During the years in which a child acquires several languages without difficulty, if it hears them spoken, the mind is eager for words and often appropriates them regardless of their meaning. The child learns rhymes and phrases for the sake of the jingle that is in them, and cares very little for clearly defined ideas and thoughts. So strong and retentive is the memory for words that the child finds it easier to learn by heart entire sentences than to think the thoughts therein expressed. Like a willing and obedient slave, the verbal memory can be made to do the work of the other mental powers. The merest glimpse at a picture may recall all the sentences on the same page, so that the pupil can repeat them with the book closed or the back turned towards the reading chart. The recollection of what the ear has heard may thus relieve the eye of its function in seeing words, degrade the child to the level of a parrot, and thereby greatly hinder progress in learning to read. Very frequently the memory is required to perform work belonging to the reflective powers, because the learner is thereby saved the trouble of comprehending the lesson and expressing its substance in his own language. Moreover, the accurate statement of a truth is apt to be accepted as evidence of knowledge and correct thinking. The average examination tests very little more than the memory. If the answers are given in the language of the text-book or the teacher, the examiner seldom supplements the written work by an oral examination. Thus there is a constant tendency on the part of teachers and pupils to rest satisfied with correct forms of statement; and the pernicious custom of feeding the mind on mere words is encouraged and perpetuated. Exposed in plain terms, this abuse of words is condemned by everybody; yet it is as easy at this point to slide into the wrong practice as it is to fall into the sins forbidden by the decalogue. Like Proteus, this abuse assumes diverse and unexpected forms; instance after instance is needed to put young teachers on their guard and to expose its pernicious effect upon methods of instruction and habits of study. To cry “words, words, nothing but words,” will not suffice to correct the evil, for words must be used in the best kind of instruction. Line upon line, precept upon precept, example after example is needed to expose the folly of learning words without corresponding ideas, of teaching symbols apart from the things for which they stand. No apology is needed for citing laughable and flagrant instances in point; ridicule sometimes avails where good counsel fails.
A superintendent who advocates spelling-bees and magnifies correct orthography out of all proportion to its real value startled a class in the high school by asking for the spelling of a word of five syllables. Not receiving an immediate answer, he referred to the Greek. This made the spelling easy for at least one pupil. A year later he accosted this pupil, saying, “You are the only person that ever spelled psychopannychism for me.” “What does it mean?” was the question flashed back at him in return for his compliment. He could not tell, because he did not know. For years he had worried teachers and pupils with the spelling of a word whose meaning he had failed to fix accurately in his own mind.[2] What more effective method could be devised for destroying correct habits of thinking?
There is a time in the life of the child when it is hungry for new words. The habit of seeing words accurately and learning their spelling at first sight is then easily acquired, provided there is no defect in the pupil’s eyes. In cases of defective eyesight the first step towards the solution of the spelling problem, as well as the first condition in teaching the pupil to think accurately, is to send him to a skilled oculist (not to a so-called graduate optician or doctor of refraction, who must make his living out of the spectacles he sells, and whose limited training does not enable him to make a correct diagnosis in critical cases). Correct vision will assist the pupil not merely in learning the exact form of the words which he uses in writing, but also in forming correct ideas of the things with which the mind deals in the thought-processes. Although great stress should be laid upon the orthography of such words in common use as are frequently misspelled,—daily drill upon lists of these should not be omitted at school while the child’s word-hunger lasts,—yet it is vastly more important to acquire an adequate knowledge of the ideas, concepts, and relations for which the words stand. To spend time upon the spelling of words which only the specialist uses, and which are easily learned in connection with the specialty by a student possessing correct mental habits, is a form of waste that cannot be too severely condemned. It is far better to spend time in building concepts of things met with in real life.
The meaning of very many words is, of course, learned from the connection in which they occur. This, however, is not true of sesquipedalian words like the one mentioned above, nor of the technical terms by which science designates the things that have been accurately defined or quantified.
Technical terms are used to denote the ideas which lie at the basis of science. These fundamental ideas are appropriately called basal concepts. Since basal concepts cannot be transferred from the teacher’s mind to the pupils’ minds by merely teaching the corresponding technical terms, they must be developed by appropriate lessons. If this be neglected, there may be juggling with words and a show of knowledge; but close, accurate thinking is impossible. This seems to be so self-evident that one would hardly expect to meet violations of such a simple rule in the art of teaching. And yet it is related of the professor of physics in one of our largest universities that he began his course of lectures in this wise: “A rearrangement of the courses of study deprived you of the usual instruction in elementary physics. That is your misfortune, and not my fault.” Thereupon, he began his lectures on advanced physics as if the preparation of his class to think the concepts at the foundation of his science could be ignored without detriment to the progress of the student, as if confused minds and unsatisfactory thinking were not the inevitable outcome of juggling with technical terms apart from the concepts which they denote. A master in the art of teaching would have started on the plane occupied by the students. By development lessons he would have lifted them to the plane of thought on which he intended to move. He would have considered their mental progress of more consequence than the course of lectures which he was in the habit of delivering. The student, and not the study, should have held the chief place in his professional horizon.
In another State university the professor of physics applied to an influential member of the board of trustees for an appropriation for apparatus. “Teach what is in the text-book; then you will not need apparatus,” was the reply. It seems almost incredible that a trustee of a modern university should fail to see the difference between an experiment actually performed and a description of the experiment in a text-book. More incredible still does it seem when we hear of professors who see no difference between an experiment made in the presence of a student and an experiment made by the student himself.
Pictures of apparatus and descriptions of experiments should, of course, not be despised or neglected. They are helpful in forming concepts of that which cannot be brought before a class. When made by the learner himself, as a result of his own work, they serve to clarify his thinking, and furnish a sure test of the pupil’s progress and of the teacher’s skill as a guide and instructor. A drawing, or even a statement in the pupil’s own words, is often an astonishing revelation of the crude notions which pictures give. The city lad who said that a cow was no bigger than a finger-nail because he had often measured its size in the First Reader is a typical example. The ability to interpret pictures and descriptions comes from actual knowledge of things similar to what is depicted or described. The noted teacher, Agassiz, made a difference in his directions to beginners and advanced students. To the former he would give specimens, with directions to study them without referring to a book. Having taught them how to use their eyes, he would gradually lead them to the method of interpreting and verifying the statements of an author. And when the advanced student was set to work at original investigations, he was told to study certain books, as it would save much valuable time. One of his pupils writes, “I shall never forget a forceful lesson given me by the great Agassiz, when I studied with him in the Museum of Cambridge. I worked near a young man from Cleveland, Ohio, who has since achieved distinction as a teacher of biology. I was comparatively a beginner, however, while he was well advanced in his studies. On a certain day Agassiz came sauntering by, and stopped long enough to tell me not to use the library so much, but to confine myself to observations of the specimens on hand and the writing of my observations and comments. Passing on a little farther, he spoke to my friend and said, ‘Albert, when you go home, this summer, to Cleveland, I wish you would make a special study of a certain kind of fish found in the harbor there. It is not found plentifully anywhere else in the world. Take a row-boat and go three hundred yards northeast of the point of the breakwater, and you will find them in abundance. Before going home, get the only three books ever written on this fish from the library here and read them. It will save your time to read them before beginning to study the fish itself.’”[3] Agassiz was as anxious to teach the right use of books as is the professor of literature; but he adapted his directions to the degree of advancement which his students had attained, and did not neglect the formation of the basal concepts and the habits of study needful in the sciences he taught.
How little the exhortations of our educational reformers have been taken to heart by some teachers is evident from the recent experiences of a normal school principal, who had great difficulty in finding a satisfactory teacher of botany. The students could invariably answer the questions of the State Board of Examiners by filling pages of manuscript with technical terms. In the field they could not distinguish one plant from another. In despair, the principal said to his teacher of psychology, “Why can we not apply common sense to the teaching of botany? Can we not plant seeds, watch their growth, and study the growing specimens instead of the pictures in a text-book?” “If you will give me the class in botany, I will try it,” was the reply. Before the next class took up botany, every chalk-box was emptied and every flower-pot utilized in the planting of seeds. In no long time there appeared on the fences of neighboring farms sign-boards with the inscription, “Trespassing on these fields is forbidden, under penalty of the law.” The members of the class were traversing the country, studying the real flowers, the growing plants, instead of the technical terms of a text-book. At the next final examination, the herbarium which each one had prepared, together with the accompanying analysis and drawings of parts which could not be described, including colorings in imitation of the actual colors of the flowers, gave evidence of real knowledge, and served to satisfy the examiners, although the array of technical terms was far less formidable.
If violations of the fundamental laws of teaching occur in our higher institutions of learning, what may we not expect in the lower schools where the teaching is intrusted to young people of limited education? Nevertheless, it is a notorious fact that the worst forms of teaching are found in our higher institutions of learning, where many of the professors seem to know as little of the science of education as the motorman knows of the science of electricity; otherwise they would make impossible the use of “ponies, coaches, and keys,” by means of which the student taxes the memory rather than the understanding, and ultimately loses all power of independent thought and investigation. Such helps arrest mental development, destroy the power of original thinking, and do more harm than the practice of feeding the mind with mere verbal statements which in course of time may acquire content and meaning. The study of the sciences which classify minerals, plants, insects, birds, fishes, and other animals may degenerate into a mere study of words, even when the student acquires some familiarity with the specimens to be classified. The scientific name is the one thing about a flower with which the Creator has had nothing to do, and if the recognition of the scientific name is the chief or sole aim of the student of botany, it is a genuine case of feeding the mind on words.
By those who are fond of scientific pursuits the dead languages are sometimes despised as though the study of them were learned playing with mere words. Among people who begin their education somewhat late in life there is a strong temptation to estimate linguistic studies very far below their true value as a means for disciplining the reasoning faculty. When pursued in the right way, the study of the classical languages furnishes as much good material for thought as the natural sciences. Huxley may charm an audience by a lecture on a piece of chalk; the philologist can excite equal interest by a lecture on the word chalk. Words grow and undergo changes according to well-defined laws which furnish as much food for thought as the laws governing the union of atoms or the motions of the heavenly bodies. The words of a lexicon contain as much of precious interest in the sight of man as the manufactured gases or the plucked leaves and dissected flowers of the laboratory. Greek and Latin roots have more vitality in them than the collections of stones, stuffed birds, and transfixed bugs in the museum. The endings of nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and verbs furnish ample opportunity for observation, comparison, and reflection; their functions in the syntax of the sentence furnish splendid exercises in formal and qualitative thinking. If, however, the time of the pupil is entirely consumed in mastering the hundreds of exceptions to the rules of gender and case, of declensions and conjugations, of syntax and prosody, it is another sad instance of feeding the mind on mere words. The pupil who begins the study of any foreign language before he has reached his teens should acquire the power to read the language at sight; otherwise there has been something faulty in the methods of teaching or of study, or in both. A man is as many times a man as he knows languages; and the comparison of the idioms of two or more languages furnishes most excellent material for careful and accurate thinking. In translating an author like Plato the student must think the thoughts of a master mind, weigh words so as to detect the finer shades of meaning, and arrange them in sentences that shall adequately express the meaning of the original. The value of pure mathematics, especially the Euclidian geometry, as a means for the cultivation of thinking, lies in the limited number of fundamental concepts which must be clearly fixed and in the nature of the reasoning by which the truth of the theorems is established. The axioms are few in number and easily grasped; the quantities to be defined can, without difficulty, be set in a clear light before the understanding; the chain of proof compels the mind to join ideas by their logical nexus, and if the learner persists in memorizing the demonstration, he is at once detected. And yet when, as sometimes happens, he goes over several books of geometry without clearly perceiving the difference between an angle and a triangle, it must be a genuine specimen of acquiring words without the corresponding ideas.
The words of S. S. Greene deserve the attention of every teacher anxious to prevent the formation of vicious habits of thought by the pupils in our schools and colleges. Years ago he wrote as follows: “While an external object may be viewed by thousands in common, the idea or image of it addresses itself only to the individual consciousness. My idea or image is mine alone,—the reward of careless observation, if imperfect; of attentive, careful, and varied observation, if correct. Between mine and yours a great gulf is fixed. No man can pass from mine to yours, or from yours to mine. Neither, in any proper sense of the word, can mine be conveyed to you. Words do not convey thoughts; they are not vehicles of thought in any true sense of that term. A word is simply a common symbol which each associates with his own idea or image. Neither can I compare mine with yours, except through the mediation of external objects. And, then, how do I know that they are alike; that a measure called a foot, for instance, seems as long to you as to me? My idea of a new object, which you and I observe together, may be very imperfect. By it I attribute to the object what does not belong to it, take from it what does, distort its form, and otherwise pervert it. Suppose, now, at the time of observation we agree upon a word as a sign or symbol of the object or the idea of it. The object is withdrawn; the idea only remains,—imperfect in my case, complete and vivid in yours. The sign is employed. Does it bring back the original object? By no means. Does it convey my idea to your mind? Nothing of the kind; you would be disgusted with the shapeless image. Does it convey yours to me? No; I should be delighted at the sight. What does it effect? It becomes the occasion for each to call up his own image. Does each now contemplate the same thing? What multitudes of dissimilar images instantly spring up at the announcement of the same symbol!—dissimilar not because of anything in the one source whence they are derived, but because of either an inattentive and imperfect observation of that source, or some constitutional or habitual defect in the use of the perceptive faculty.”