speech and written words, the sign-language of deaf mutes is sufficient
to compel an affirmative answer to the question. Moreover, there are
modes of thinking and of expressing thought other than by the use of
words. Of the means of expressing thought without words, symbols like the
ten digits and the sigma of the new psychology are well-known examples.
The player in a game of chess, croquet, or billiards thinks movements
in advance of making them, and generally without describing the same in
words. The drawings and plans by means of which the architect designs a
new building, the mental images of mechanical contrivances which precede
the invention and construction of machines, the mental pictures used in
designing, engineering, and sketching, in original geological thought,
prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that thinking may go forward without
words and sentences, and may find expression in ways better adapted to
the needs of the artisan. The graphic method of presenting to the eye
the results of an investigation is less cumbersome than any description
in words. Some men depend so much upon mental pictures in their thinking
that they assert they cannot think at all without them. In some kinds
of gymnastic drill the movement is described in words, then conceived by
the mind, and finally executed. This exercise has a different educational
value from the exercise in which the student simply imitates the
movements of the teacher, the latter being an instance of thinking and
expressing thought without the help of words. The speed with which many
movements must be executed, as in fencing, legerdemain, athletic sports,
the manipulation of the lever in the hands of the engineer, requires
thinking without the intermediate agency of words and sentences. The time
it takes for an idea to pass into words, and through them into actions,
is measurably greater than the time required for the direct translation
of thought into action. Although the difference in specific instances is
measured by the fraction of a second, it would involve serious loss of
time as well as energy in the handicrafts if thoughts could only pass
into action through speech or written language.
[Sidenote: Superfluity of words.]
[Sidenote: Thought and action.]
[Sidenote: Francis Galton.]
Some persons run to mouth; others lack in this respect. To the former
class belong those whose lips move in study; those who talk to
themselves; and many whose paucity of ideas does not justify their
superfluity of words. Let such a man be elected as a delegate to a synod
or a convention, and the sessions will be prolonged beyond the usual
time. As a rule, the energy of such men is exhausted in speech; they
are not noted for getting things done. On the other hand, the men of
great executive ability are oftentimes men of few words; their thought
is translated into doing rather than talking. The man of deeds is always
estimated above the man of words, the general above the orator, Cæsar
the commander above Cæsar the orator. Sometimes the men of original
turn of mind find that their thinking outstrips their power to express
thought. Francis Galton says of himself, “It is a serious drawback to
me in writing that I do not so easily think in words as otherwise.
It often happens that after being hard at work and having arrived at
results that are perfectly clear and satisfactory to myself, when I try
to express them in language I feel that I must begin by putting myself
on quite a different intellectual plane; I have to translate my thoughts
into a language that does not run evenly with them. I therefore waste a
great deal of time in seeking for appropriate words and phrases, and am
conscious, when required to speak on a sudden, of being often obscure
through mere verbal maladroitness, and not through want of clearness
of perception. This is one of the small annoyances of my life. I may
add that often while engaged in thinking out something I hatch an
accompaniment of nonsense-words, just as notes of a song might accompany
the thought. Also, that after I have made a mental step, the appropriate
word frequently follows as an echo; as a rule, it does not accompany it.”
[Sidenote: Knowing and telling.]
This throws a new light upon one phase of school work. The boy who has
a notion of the content of a lesson sometimes stops in the midst of a
recitation and, without premeditation, exclaims, “I know it, but cannot
say it.” The teacher retorts, “You do not know what you cannot express.”
Both are right and both are wrong. There is, probably, a measure of
truth in what each claims. If the pupil had mastered the text, he
would not only have a clear idea of the lesson, but he would also have
acquired from the book or from the teacher the words to express the idea.
Nevertheless, if there is reason for thinking that the pupil has devoted
reasonable time to the lesson, his linguistic powers should be developed
by questions and other appropriate help. The good sense and native
instincts of most teachers lead them to give this help. The teacher whose
captious disposition issues in remarks calculated to repress a backward
pupil’s powers of expression should find employment outside of the
school-room.
[Sidenote: Foreign-born children.]
The child of foreigners may outstrip native children and astonish the
school by unprecedented progress because, being already familiar with
the ideas of the lesson, it is compelled simply to acquire the language
by which the ideas are expressed. By reason of their inability at first
to tell what they know, such children are often classified with those
less mature, and the mastery of the new language in their case is not as
difficult as the mastery of new ideas for which brain-growth may be the
essential condition. To ignore the fact that such children often know
more than they can tell is pedagogic folly in the highest degree.
[Sidenote: Language clarifies thought.]
[Sidenote: Literary societies.]
Courses of study are sometimes mapped out so as to cause inequality in
the pace with which ideas are accumulated and language is developed.
Undue stress on grammar, rhetoric, and belles-lettres may cause abnormal
development in the direction of flowery language, a verbose style, an
ornate diction. It is a fault difficult to correct. To insist that such a
student shall have something to say, to force him into studies that will
bring him face to face with great questions as yet unsettled, to beget
in him a state of mind in which he is troubled with ideas, to compel him
to work over and over what he writes until his sentences are as clear
as crystals, seems necessary to counteract the one-sided development
of such students. The curriculum of study may err on the other side.
The graduates in the various courses of engineering (civil, electrical,
mechanical, and mining) sometimes develop technical, to the neglect of
linguistic, skill. In the presence of a body of capitalists they are
made deeply conscious of the difference between the ability to think and
the ability to express thought.[14] In one large school of technology the
graduates established prizes in English composition and endowed chairs
of the English language and literature, so that future students might
acquire the power to state in clear and intelligible language the results
of their work as specialists. In no long time it was discovered that
for this purpose they also needed training in an art similar to that of
the teacher,—namely, the art of developing the ideas and thoughts which
underlie and condition the engineering project under consideration. For
him who would be a leader among men, the ability to express thought is
quite as important as the ability to think. Moreover, there is a vast
difference between ability to express thought on one’s feet in the
presence of an audience and ability to express it on paper in the privacy
of the home. J. J. Rousseau and Washington Irving could write well, but
neither of them could make a speech. Patrick Henry’s eloquence before an
audience was unsurpassed; he never could write a satisfactory report.
Power in both directions may be acquired in a college course through the
exercises of a good debating society. The student who, during four years,
carefully writes out his thoughts, then discards his manuscript while
speaking, and studies how he can best convince his hearers and how he can
prune himself of the defects pointed out by the merciless criticism of
his fellows, can feel sure of ultimate success. President Barnard says
of one of our largest institutions that half its glory departed when
its literary societies were killed through the influence of the Greek
letter fraternities. A public speaker who is a slave to his manuscript is
deserving of pity. College authorities may well exercise their ingenuity
in finding a substitute for the drill and practice which the literary
societies of by-gone days afforded in learning to think and to express
thought in the face of opposition, criticism, and other unfavorable
conditions.
[Sidenote: Influence of language upon thinking.]
[Sidenote: Teaching English.]
Thought and language exercise a reciprocal influence. Thought is
stimulated and clarified by the effort to express it. Often it is shaped
by the limitations of one’s vocabulary and the range of the words with
which one’s hearers or readers are familiar. The faded metaphors of
language betray us into fallacies. Phrases like the witness of the
spirit, total depravity, have led to extravagant expectations and
unwarranted conclusions. People sometimes have a religious phraseology
without a corresponding religious experience, and hence deceive
themselves and others. Everywhere we see instances that go to show how
important it is that the development of the power to think should keep
pace with the growth of the power to express thought. Very much is said
in these days about the use of good English. As Adam threw the blame
upon Eve, and Eve cast it upon the Serpent, so every one blames some
one else for the poor English used at school and college. In the end
the teachers are usually made to bear most of the blame: the college
professor blames the teachers in the high school; these, in turn, blame
the teachers in the lower grades; and when the matter is cast up to the
primary teacher, she throws the blame upon the street and the home. A
professor in the college department of a university gave many ludicrous
specimens of English in the work handed to him by students. He was asked
of what college class he had charge, and when he replied the sophomore, a
high-school teacher suggested that the specimens reflected quite as much
upon the teachers of the freshman class as upon the schools below the
university.
[Sidenote: The committee.]
A women’s society in one of our large cities sent a committee to the
superintendent to complain of the poor English used by the children in
the schools. He agreed that strenuous efforts should be made to provide
a remedy. He added, “If you will take care of the English in the homes
and on the streets, I will get the teachers to look after the English in
the schools.” Instead of throwing blame upon others, it were far more
sensible for each educated person to ask wherein he is to blame for
setting others a bad example and wherein he can help the teachers of
English to accomplish the desired result.
[Sidenote: Aim.]
The aim in teaching English is twofold,—first, to get the student to
appreciate good English and good literature; secondly, to get him to use
it in speaking and writing. The latter end cannot be reached by mere
practice in essay-writing. Ability to think is a condition of ability
to express thought. Too many of the subjects assigned lay stress upon
the forms of speech and not upon the content of language. When pupils
think in words and disconnected phrases rather than sentences, when
they violate the rules for capitals, punctuation, and paragraphs, the
teachers of English may be solely to blame; but, in so far as the use
of good English depends upon good thinking, the blame for the use of
faulty language rests upon all who teach. If the ability to think is not
developed in proportion to the use of language, the school will produce
stylists who exalt the forms of speech above their content, slaves of
beautiful and flowery language who resemble the fops and dudes of social
life. To emancipate from such slavery requires more than an emancipation
proclamation from the president of a college association.
[Sidenote: Linguistic studies.]
[Sidenote: Language tributary to thinking.]
The labors of the brothers Grim, Max Müller, and others have reduced
the knowledge of language to a science. Linguistic studies have become
as interesting as any branch of natural science. They shed new light
upon the history of mankind. In furnishing material for thought, as well
as mental discipline, they are not inferior to any other study in the
curriculum. It would, however, be a mistake to suppose that philological
studies are superior to other disciplines as means for developing power
to think and power to express thought. The professor of any language
is apt to regard that language as an end, and not as means to an end.
Primarily, language is a medium of communication. It distinguishes man
from the brute creation, and furnishes him the instruments of thought by
which he carries forward processes of reasoning beyond the reach of the
lower animals. At the university language in general, or any particular
language, may be studied as a specialty, and can thus be made an end in
itself as appropriately as any other subject which is studied for its
own sake. In the lower schools language should always be made tributary
to the art of thinking. It should be employed to embody thought, and
to convey thought, without intruding itself upon our attention as the
thing of chief value. Any phase of linguistic study may be lifted by
an enthusiastic teacher into the chief place in the course of study.
Orthography has sometimes been taught as if it were the chief end of man
to spell correctly. Grammar has been taught as if a faulty sentence
were one of the sins forbidden by the Decalogue, and as if the fate
of the republic depended upon parsing, analysis, and diagramming. The
pronunciation of words may be emphasized until the lips of teacher and
pupil smack of an overdose of dictionary, until the overdoing of obscure
vowels draws attention away from the thought to the manner of utterance.
A sensible man articulates his words in such a manner as readily to be
understood, but never in such a way as to excite remark or draw the mind
of the listener from the subject-matter of the discourse.
In educational practice, the manner of expressing the thought should
not supplant the more important art of making the pupil think. Getting
and begetting thought are of more consequence than the expression of
thought; in fact, they condition the correct use of language. All talk
about English, or German, or Spanish, or Latin, or Greek, as if any
one of these languages were an end in itself for the average pupil,
is wide of the mark. Correct sentences, beautiful expressions, and
rhetorical phrases can never make a nation great or perpetuate its free
institutions. Flowery language can never save a dying sinner or console
the widow who is following the bier of a son, her only child and support.
Fine words never win a battle by land or by sea. The most eloquent
orations against Philip of Macedon did not keep him from destroying the
liberties of Greece.
Correct and forceful language is a gift to be coveted, a prize worth
striving for; but it should never be made the all-absorbing aim of
education. The teacher of any phase of language must for a time make his
instruction the object of chief concern; but he should never ignore the
fact that language is and ever should be an aid to thought, a stimulus to
thinking, an embodiment of ideas, a medium of communication, a means to
an end.
VIII
THE STIMULUS TO THINKING
Good methods of teaching are important, but they cannot supply
the want of ability in the teacher. The Socratic method is
good; but a Socrates behind the teacher’s desk to ask questions
is better.
THOMAS M. BALLIET.
Of all forms of friendship in youth, by far the most effective
as a means of education is that species of enthusiastic
veneration which young men of loyal and well-conditioned minds
are apt to contract for men of intellectual eminence in their
own circles. The educating effect of such an attachment is
prodigious; and happy the youth who forms one. We all know
the advice given to young men to “think for themselves;” and
there is sense and soundness in the advice; but if I were
to select what I account perhaps the most fortunate thing
that can befall a young man during the early period of his
life,—the most fortunate, too, in the end, for his intellectual
independence,—it would be his being voluntarily subjected for a
time to some powerful intellectual slavery.
DAVID MASSON.
VIII
THE STIMULUS TO THINKING
[Sidenote: Thought stimulus.]
Whilst the distinction between thinking in things and thinking in
symbols should never be ignored or lost sight of by the teacher, it need
not be brought to the attention of the learner,—at least not in the
elementary stages of instruction. It is more profitable for the learner
to be absorbed in gathering the materials of thought and in learning
by practice how the educated man uses the instruments of thought for
drawing correct conclusions by the most effective methods. If the eye of
consciousness is turned inward upon the mental processes too early, the
flow of thought is interrupted and turned away from its logical trend.
The teacher, on the other hand, is expected to watch the growth of the
mind, to awaken its powers, and to rouse these into vigorous activity.
It is essential not merely that he furnish the pupils with the proper
materials and the best instruments of thought, but it is necessary also
to stimulate and direct their thinking; otherwise that which is given
them may overload the memory, lie undigested in the mind, exhaust the
energy of the intellect in the effort at retention, and ultimately cause
mental dyspepsia.
[Sidenote: Competition.]
[Sidenote: Socratic question.]
Men engaged in the struggle for existence or preferment usually find
ample stimulus to their thinking faculties in the competition which real
life affords. If the merchant does not think accurately and effectively,
the consequences make themselves visible in his bank-account. The desire
for gain is the stimulus to thought in the commercial world. An appeal
to the same motive is often made through the offer of prizes and
fellowships. The competition of maturer years finds an adumbration in
the competition for class-standing and for superiority in field sports.
The teacher who employs no higher stimulus to thought must be a stranger
to the mysteries of the art which he professes to practise. The best
device for stimulating thought has come down to us hallowed by the ages.
It bears the name of the greatest teacher of ancient Athens. It is the
question as employed in the Socratic method. Not every question is the
Socratic question. A man who has lost his way may ask a question, but it
is for the sake of getting information. The teacher may be striving to
fix in the memory the salient points of the lesson: he asks questions,
the answers to which the pupils are expected to have at their tongue’s
or fingers’ end. A question thus used for purposes of drill is often
called a categorical question. It is not the Socratic question. Yonder
sits a boy who for half an hour has been wrestling with a problem. Unable
to find a clue to the solution, he asks the teacher for help. Instead
of telling him directly what he wishes to know, the Socrates behind the
teacher’s desk asks a question which causes the pupil to put side by side
in his mind two ideas never before linked together in his thought. Upon
the learner’s face is seen an expression as if light had broken in from
on high. He goes back to his seat, and ere five minutes have elapsed
he is rejoicing in the glory of a triumph. The teacher did not do the
pupil’s thinking; he simply asked the Socratic question, which aims to
make the pupil think for himself.
[Sidenote: Substitute teachers.]
This stimulus to thought is employed by every master in the art of
teaching. The question may be used to badger and confuse a pupil,
especially if the teacher is not fully acquainted with the ideas and
thoughts already in the learner’s mind. To cause each pupil to place
side by side in his mind ideas and concepts whose relation he had not
before perceived, it is necessary that the teacher be familiar with the
intellectual storehouse of every member of the class. At this point the
substitutes who occasionally supply the places of regular teachers are
at a serious disadvantage. Not knowing what the pupils have mastered,
they must often waste time in finding out where the new should be linked
to the old, and where it is necessary to clarify and develop ideas with
which the members of the class are only partially familiar. Often these
lose interest in the recitation while the new teacher quizzes them on
things that have grown stale by repetition.
[Sidenote: The living teacher.]
[Sidenote: The dead line.]
[Sidenote: Knowledge and teaching power.]
[Sidenote: The course of study.]
[Sidenote: Difficulties.]
Back of the Socratic method must be a Socrates to ask the questions.
Education results not from highly differentiated methods, but primarily
from the play of mind upon mind, heart upon heart, will upon will. In
the difficult art of making others think the most important factor is
the teacher himself. Thinking begets thinking. In this connection one
cannot forbear contrasting the living teacher with other educational
forces. Treatises on education are in the habit of printing nature with
a capital letter, whilst words like teacher, humanity, unless they
stand at the beginning of the sentence, begin with a small letter. Are
lifeless rocks, dead leaves, stuffed birds, and transfixed bugs more
potent in begetting thought than the teacher himself? If nature were
such a wonderful teacher, then the savage, who is in daily contact with
nature, and who knows little or nothing of the artificial life of our
great cities and great seats of learning, should be the best thinker. A
teacher whose power to stimulate thought is not superior to dead leaves
and bugs and butterflies must have reached the dead line. Teachers may be
divided into two classes,—those who have ceased to grow and those who
are still alive and growing. Under the tuition of the former the boy soon
loses interest in study, and seldom acquires the power to think. From
a dead tree you cannot propagate life. Ingraft a lifeless teacher upon
the school; the most skilful devices of school management and recitation
serve only to intensify the dull routine, the mechanical iteration and
repetition which Bishop Spalding declares to be the most radical defect
in our systems of education. It takes life to beget life. A growing mind
is required to beget growth in other minds. A good thinker begets habits
of close and careful thinking in those whom he moulds. Some minds are
more gifted in this respect than others. Without doubt the reader can
recall the difference between knowledge and teaching power which he felt
while under several instructors at the same time. From those gifted with
stimulating power he came away with a mind full of interrogation points,
and with the attention riveted upon problems calling for investigation.
Under their tuition the commonest things acquired new interest and
became food for thought. The thinking seemed to spring out of that upon
which the mind was feeding. Without the stimulating influence which
comes from a live teacher, contact with nature, access to libraries and
laboratories, may amount to very little. The chief trouble in our schools
is not that the courses of study are too crowded, but the teachers are
too empty. There is not enough fuel in their minds to keep alive the
glow of thought. A course of study in the hands of a skilful instructor
is like a good bill of fare under the direction of a skilful caterer.
The latter does not expect every guest to eat his way through the entire
bill of fare; he so manages the succession of dishes as to stimulate
the appetite to the end of the feast; he sends the guests away without
the feeling of satiety,—in fact, anxious for the next banquet. The wise
teacher does not expect the pupils to assimilate everything in the course
of study; he aims so to feed and stimulate their minds that they find
genuine pleasure in thinking, and go away from him with a desire not
only for more knowledge, but also for things that give suitable exercise
to the reflective powers. Watch a boy at work upon a puzzle, and you
will be convinced that he finds genuine delight in thinking that which
is difficult. The most popular teachers are not they who smooth away
every difficulty in the pathway of the student, but they who stimulate
his thinking and help him to a sense of mastery over intellectual
difficulties. The quickening, stimulative influence of the Socratic
question lies in its content rather than its form; and both form and
content derive their vivifying power from the personality of the teacher.
[Sidenote: Conscious and unconscious influences.]