Since real concentration is practically a new educational undertaking, it involves a number of unsolved subordinate problems; for instance, how far shall science lessons, grammar, and geography follow their own principles of selection, based on the nature and scientific arrangement of their materials, while keeping up the dependence upon and connections with the central subject. But if concentration is a true principle of education, it is evident that none of these problems can be solved until concentration has been agreed upon and made fundamental. In this case those teachers who are trying to lay out courses of study in geography, natural science, or history, without regard to the relation of studies to each other, will have most of their work to do over again.
A little reflection will convince us, perhaps, that a year's work thus concentrated will produce a much more powerful and lasting impression upon children than the loose aggregation of facts which is usually collected during a year's work. Not only will the moral effect be intensified, but the close dependence of each study upon the others will be perceptibly felt as valuable and stimulating to the children.
If now we can conceive of the eight grades of the common school as eight stages passing naturally from one to another, each a unit composed of a net-work of well related facts, but the epochs closely related to each other in a rising series, from childhood almost to maturity, or from the beginning of history up to the present state of culture, we shall be able also to think of education as a succession of powerful culture influences, that will bring the child to our present standpoint fully conscious of his duties and surroundings.
NOTE.—A careful criticism of the theory of the culture epochs is found in Lange's Apperception translated by the Herbart club, published by D. C. Heath, p. 110, etc.
CHAPTER V.
INDUCTION.
We are now prepared to inquire into the mind's method of approach to any and all subjects. We have considered the aim of education, the value of different subjects as helping toward that aim, the natural interests which give zest to studies, and finally the general plan of combining and relating topics so as to bring about unity of purpose and unity of matter in the mind. As a child enters upon the work of acquisition are there any regulatives to guide the process of learning?
Induction, or the concept-bearing process, shows the tendency of our minds to advance from the inspection of particular objects and actions to the understanding of general notions or concepts. The study and analysis of this process casts us forthwith into the midst of psychology, and calls for a knowledge of that succession and net-work of mental activities discussed in all the psychologies; sensation, discrimination, perception, analysis and synthesis, comparison, judgment, generalization or concept, reasoning. An inquiry into these mental activities, which are among the most important in psychology, is necessary as a basis of induction and of general method.
But even the more profound study of psychology does not necessarily give insight into correct methods of teaching. Many great psychologists have had little or no interest in teaching. Even eminent specialists in electricity and chemistry have not often been those to draw the immediate practical benefit from their studies. The application of psychology to the work of instruction constitutes a distinct field of inquiry and experiment. The output of the best experimental thinking in this direction may be called pedagogy.
The process of induction or concept-building leads the mind, as above indicated, through a series of different acts. We may first observe how far the mind is unnaturally inclined to follow this process, and whether it is a mark of healthy mental action in children and in adults. Later we may examine more closely the successive stages in the process itself.