GENERAL NOTES ON THE EDUCATION OF THE SENSES
I do not claim to have brought to perfection the method of sense
training as applied to young children. I do believe, however, that it
opens a new field for psychological research, promising rich and
valuable results.
Experimental psychology has so far devoted its attention to _perfecting
the instruments by which the sensations are measured_. No one has
attempted the _methodical_ preparation _of the individual for the
sensations_. It is my belief that the development of psychometry will
owe more to the attention given to the preparation of the _individual_
than to the perfecting of the _instrument_.
But putting aside this purely scientific side of the question, the
_education of the senses_ must be of the greatest _pedagogical_
interest.
Our aim in education in general is two-fold, biological and social. From
the biological side we wish to help the natural development of the
individual, from the social standpoint it is our aim to prepare the
individual for the environment. Under this last head technical education
may be considered as having a place, since it teaches the individual to
make use of his surroundings. The education of the senses is most
important from both these points of view. The development of the senses
indeed precedes that of superior intellectual activity and the child
between three and seven years is in the period of formation.
We can, then, help the development of the senses while they are in this
period. We may graduate and adapt the stimuli just as, for example, it
is necessary to help the formation of language before it shall be
completely developed.
All education of little children must be governed by this principle--to
help the natural _psychic_ and _physical development_ of the child.
The other aim of education (that of adapting the individual to the
environment) should be given more attention later on when the period of
intense development is past.
These two phases of education are always interlaced, but one or the
other has prevalence according to the age of the child. Now, the period
of life between the ages of three and seven years covers a period of
rapid physical development. It is the time for the formation of the
sense activities as related to the intellect The child in this age
develops his senses. His attention is further attracted to the
environment under the form of passive curiosity.
The stimuli, and not yet the reasons for things, attract his attention.
This is, therefore, the time when we should methodically direct the
sense stimuli, in such a way that the sensations which he receives shall
develop in a rational way. This sense training will prepare the ordered
foundation upon which he may build up a clear and strong mentality.
It is, besides all this, possible with the education of the senses to
discover and eventually to correct defects which to-day pass unobserved
in the school. Now the time comes when the defect manifests itself in an
evident and irreparable inability to make use of the forces of life
about him. (Such defects as deafness and near-sightedness.) This
education, therefore, is physiological and prepares directly for
intellectual education, perfecting the organs of sense, and the
nerve-paths of projection and association.
But the other part of education, the adaptation of the individual to his
environment, is indirectly touched. We prepare with our method the
infancy of the _humanity of our time_. The men of the present
civilisation are preeminently observers of their environment because
they must utilise to the greatest possible extent all the riches of this
environment.
The art of to-day bases itself, as in the days of the Greeks, upon
observation of the truth.
The progress of positive science is based upon its observations and all
its discoveries and their applications, which in the last century have
so transformed our civic environment, were made by following the same
line--that is, they have come through observation. We must therefore
prepare the new generation for this attitude, which has become necessary
in our modern civilised life. It is an indispensable means--man must be
so armed if he is to continue efficaciously the work of our progress.
We have seen the discovery of the Roentgen Rays born of observation. To
the same methods are due the discovery of Hertzian waves, and vibrations
of radium, and we await wonderful things from the Marconi telegraph.
While there has been no period in which thought has gained so much from
positive study as the present century, and this same century promises
new light in the field of speculative philosophy and upon spiritual
questions, the theories upon the matter have themselves led to most
interesting metaphysical concepts. We may say that in preparing the
method of observation, we have also prepared the way leading to
spiritual discovery.
The education of the senses makes men observers, and not only
accomplishes the general work of adaptation to the present epoch of
civilisation, but also prepares them directly for practical life. We
have had up to the present time, I believe, a most imperfect idea of
what is necessary in the practical living of life. We have always
started from ideas, and have _proceeded thence_ to _motor activities_;
thus, for example, the method of education has always been to teach
intellectually, and then to have the child follow the principles he has
been taught. In general, when we are teaching, we talk about the object
which interests us, and then we try to lead the scholar, when he has
understood, to perform some kind of work with the object itself; but
often the scholar who has understood the idea finds great difficulty in
the execution of the work which we give him, because we have left out of
his education a factor of the utmost importance, namely, the perfecting
of the senses. I may, perhaps, illustrate this statement with a few
examples. We ask the cook to buy only 'fresh fish.' She understands the
idea, and tries to follow it in her marketing, but, if the cook has not
been trained to recognise through sight and smell the signs which
indicate freshness in the fish, she will not know how to follow the
order we have given her.
Such a lack will show itself much more plainly in culinary operations. A
cook may be trained in book matters, and may know exactly the recipes
and the length of time advised in her cook book; she may be able to
perform all the manipulations necessary to give the desired appearance
to the dishes, but when it is a question of deciding from the odor of
the dish the exact moment of its being properly cooked, or with the eye,
or the taste, the time at which she must put in some given condiment,
then she will make a mistake if her senses have not been sufficiently
prepared.
She can only gain such ability through long practice, and such practice
on the part of the cook is nothing else than a _belated education_ of
the senses--an education which often can never be properly attained by
the adult. Thia is one reason why it is so difficult to find good cooks.
Something of the same kind is true of the physician, the student of
medicine who studies theoretically the character of the pulse, and sits
down by the bed of the patient with the best will in the world to read
the pulse, but, if his fingers do not know how to read the sensations
his studies will have been in vain. Before he can become a doctor, he
must gain a _capacity for discriminating between sense stimuli_.
The same may be said for the _pulsations_ of the _heart_, which the
student studies in theory, but which the ear can learn to distinguish
only through practice.
We may say the same for all the delicate vibrations and movements, in
the reading of which the hand of the physician is too often deficient.
The thermometer is the more indispensable to the physician the more his
sense of touch is unadapted and untrained in the gathering of the
thermic stimuli. It is well understood that the physician may be
learned, and most intelligent, without being a good practitioner, and
that to make a good practitioner long practice is necessary. In reality,
this _long practice_ is nothing else than a tardy, and often
inefficient, _exercise_ of the senses. After he has assimilated the
brilliant theories, the physician sees himself forced to the unpleasant
labor of the semiography, that is to making a record of the symptoms
revealed by his observation of and experiments with the patients. He
must do this if he is to receive from these theories any practical
results.
Here, then, we have the beginner proceeding in a stereotyped way to
tests of _palpation_, percussion, and auscultation, for the purpose of
identifying the throbs, the resonance, the tones, the breathings, and
the various sounds which _alone_ can enable him to formulate a
diagnosis. Hence the deep and unhappy discouragement of so many young
physicians, and, above all, the loss of time; for it is often a question
of lost years. Then, there is the immorality of allowing a man to follow
a profession of so great responsibility, when, as is often the case, he
is so unskilled and inaccurate in the taking of symptoms. The whole art
of medicine is based upon an education of the senses; the schools,
instead, _prepare_ physicians through a study of the classics. All very
well and good, but the splendid intellectual development of the
physician falls, impotent, before the insufficiency of his senses.
One day, I heard a surgeon giving, to a number of poor mothers, a lesson
on the recognition of the first deformities noticeable in little
children from the disease of rickets. It was his hope to lead these
mothers to bring to him their children who were suffering from this
disease, while the disease was yet in the earliest stages, and when
medical help might still be efficacious. The mothers understood the
idea, but they did not know how to recognise these first signs of
deformity, because they were lacking in the sensory education through
which they might discriminate between signs deviating only slightly from
the normal.
Therefore those lessons were useless. If we think of it for a minute,
we will see that almost all the forms of adulteration in food stuffs are
rendered possible by the torpor of the senses, which exists in the
greater number of people. Fraudulent industry feeds upon the lack of
sense education in the masses, as any kind of fraud is based upon the
ignorance of the victim. We often see the purchaser throwing himself
upon the honesty of the merchant, or putting his faith in the company,
or the label upon the box. This is because purchasers are lacking in the
capacity of judging directly for themselves. They do not know how to
distinguish with their senses the different qualities of various
substances. In fact, we may say that in many cases intelligence is
rendered useless by lack of practice, and this practice is almost always
sense education. Everyone knows in practical life the fundamental
necessity of judging with exactness between various stimuli.
But very often sense education is most difficult for the adult, just as
it is difficult for him to educate his hand when he wishes to become a
pianist. It is necessary to begin the education of the senses in the
formative period, if we wish to perfect this sense development with the
education which is to follow. The education of the senses should be
begun methodically in infancy, and should continue during the entire
period of instruction which is to prepare the individual for life in
society.
AEsthetic and moral education are closely related to this sensory
education. Multiply the sensations, and develop the capacity of
appreciating fine differences in stimuli, and we _refine_ the
sensibility and multiply man's pleasures.
Beauty lies in harmony, not in contrast; and harmony is refinement;
therefore, there must be a fineness of the senses if we are to
appreciate harmony. The aesthetic harmony of nature is lost upon him who
has coarse senses. The world to him is narrow and barren. In life about
us, there exist inexhaustible fonts of aesthetic enjoyment, before which
men pass as insensible as the brutes seeking their enjoyment in those
sensations which are crude and showy, since they are the only ones
accessible to them.
Now, from the enjoyment of gross pleasures, vicious habits very often
spring. Strong stimuli, indeed, do not render acute, but blunt the
senses, so that they require stimuli more and more accentuated and more
and more gross.
_Onanism_, so often found among normal children of the lower classes,
alcoholism, fondness for watching sensual acts of adults--these things
represent the enjoyment of those unfortunate ones whose intellectual
pleasures are few, and whose senses are blunted and dulled. Such
pleasures kill the man within the individual, and call to life the
beast.
[Illustration: _S_--Sense, _C_--Nerve centre, _M_--Motor.]
Indeed from the physiological point of view, the importance of the
education of the senses is evident from an observation of the scheme of
the diagrammatic arc which represents the functions of the nervous
system. The external stimulus acts upon the organ of sense, and the
impression is transmitted along the centripetal way to the nerve
centre--the corresponding motor impulse is elaborated, and is
transmitted along the centrifugal path to the organ of motion, provoking
a movement. Although the arc represents diagrammatically the mechanism
of reflex spinal actions, it may still be considered as a fundamental
key explaining the phenomena of the more complex nervous mechanisms.
Man, with the peripheral sensory system, gathers various stimuli from
his environment. He puts himself thus in direct communication with his
surroundings. The psychic life develops, therefore, in relation to the
system of nerve centres; and human activity which is eminently social
activity, manifests itself through acts of the individual--manual work,
writing, spoken language, etc.--by means of the psychomotor organs.
Education should guide and perfect the development of the three periods,
the two peripheral and the central; or, better still, since the process
fundamentally reduces itself to the nerve centres, education should give
to psychosensory exercises the same importance which it gives to
psychomotor exercises.
Otherwise, we _isolate_ man from his _environment_. Indeed, when with
_intellectual culture_ we believe ourselves to have completed education,
we have but made thinkers, whose tendency will be to live without the
world. We have not made practical men. If, on the other hand, wishing
through education to prepare for practical life; we limit ourselves to
exercising the psychomotor phase, we lose sight of the chief end of
education, which is to put man in direct communication with the external
world.
Since _professional work_ almost always requires man to make _use of his
surroundings_, the technical schools are not forced to return to the
very beginnings of education, sense exercises, in order to supply the
great and universal lack.