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.
[Sidenote: Symbol defined.]
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.
[Sidenote: Examples.]
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.
[Sidenote: Symbols for water.]
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.
[Sidenote: Sources of error.]
[Sidenote: Elementary instruction.]
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.
[Sidenote: More advanced instruction.]
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.
[Sidenote: A parable.]
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.
[Sidenote: Its interpretation.]
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.
[Sidenote: Making blockheads.]
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.
What do you read, my lord?
Words, words, words.
HAMLET.
You have an exchequer of words, and I think no other treasure.
TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA.
III
THE MATERIALS OF THOUGHT
[Sidenote: Words without thoughts.]
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.
[Sidenote: Spelling.]
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?
[Sidenote: Eyesight.]
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.
[Sidenote: Fundamental ideas.]
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.
[Sidenote: Abuse of text-books.]
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.
[Sidenote: Apparatus and experiments.]
[Sidenote: Agassiz.]