Thinking and learning to think

by Nathan Christ Schaeffer

PREFACE

For a number of years it has been the author’s duty as well as privilege to lecture at county institutes on the difficult art of teaching pupils to think. This led to the request that the lectures be thrown into permanent form for publication. The lecturer who never publishes has no pet theories to defend; he can change his views as often as he sees fit; yet, in spite of this advantage, he cannot always escape or ignore the art of printing. One who gives his thoughts to the public without the use of manuscript and under the limitations of extemporaneous speech, made necessary by the large audiences which gather at teachers’ institutes, especially in Pennsylvania, runs the risk of being misquoted and misunderstood; he pays the penalty of being reported in fragmentary if not distorted forms. This ultimately drives him, in justice to himself and others, to write out his theories on education and to give them to his coworkers in print.

Portions of these lectures were delivered at the annual meeting of the superintendents of New England, before the State teachers’ associations of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Florida, before the Connecticut Council of Education, before the summer schools held under the auspices of the Ohio State University and the University of Wisconsin, and at several of the meetings of the National Educational Association. The favorable hearing accorded on these occasions induces the hope that the lectures will be kindly received by many who teach outside of Pennsylvania, and by some who give instruction in our higher institutions of learning.

Although no one can hope, on so difficult a theme, to say much that will be entirely satisfactory to leading educators, surely no apology is needed from any one who, after spending his best years in educational work, attempts to contribute his mite towards the solution of any of the problems which confront the teacher.

It is assumed that there is a body of educational doctrine well established in the minds of teachers, and that on many school questions we have advanced beyond the border line of first discovery. Those who assert that our educational practice is radically wrong and in need of thorough reformation should hasten to clarify their own views and ideas, to substitute constructive for destructive criticism, and to give definite shape to their reforms; otherwise a whole generation will grow to maturity and the reformers themselves will pass away before any of their reforms will have been accomplished. To give teachers the feeling that what they are doing is all wrong, and to leave them without anything better in place of what is condemned, robs them of joy in their work, makes them victims of worry and neurasthenia, and unfits them for the care of children. It is hoped that these lectures will be found to suggest a better way whenever criticism is bestowed upon existing methods of instruction.

No attempt is made to ridicule the arm-chair psychologists, or the advocates of child study, or those patient and painstaking workers who are honestly seeking to establish the facts of mind through experiments in the laboratory. He who has carefully reflected upon the art of making pupils think will not hesitate to admit that thus far he has received more light from the standard psychology than from the labors of those who claim to be the exponents of the new psychology. The latter can hardly write or talk without using the terms coined by the older students of mind; this shows their indebtedness to those who taught and speculated before laboratories of psychology were established. Sometimes the experiments have only served to test and give a reason for what was already accepted. Often they have brought to our knowledge facts of mind which could never have been discovered by the method of introspection. In either case the experiments have resulted in clear gain. Let the facts of brain and mind, of nervous and mental action, of human growth, maturity, and decay be gathered, questioned, tested, and classified; let their bearing upon educational practice be set forth in the clearest possible light: every resulting step of progress and reform will be hailed with delight by all who have no pet theories to defend.

The lecturer is limited by time, by the kind of audience which he addresses, and by circumstances largely beyond his control. These limitations drop out when he reduces his thoughts to writing, and a rearrangement at many points becomes possible as well as desirable. The expedients for relieving the strain of attention and winning back the listless can be omitted; and omissions that become necessary through the exigencies of the programme must be supplied for the sake of logical sequence. Moreover, the aims which those who engage the lecturer set before him frequently require a modification of the line of discussion, so that a course of lectures on a specific theme cannot always follow the same order of treatment, although substantially the same in content and scope. Hence the division into chapters has been adopted as preferable to the original sequence of lectures. Nevertheless, the style of the rostrum has not been altogether eliminated, because when oral discourse is thrown into new forms, and the phraseology is changed for the sake of publication, the loss in vividness, directness, and simplicity is greater than the gain in diction and fulness of statement.

Lecturing, as well as book-making, has its peculiar temptations. The lecturer must interest his hearers in order to hold them; he is tempted to play to the galleries, and to omit what is beyond the comprehension of the average audience. The book-maker, on the other hand, is tempted to display his learning, to make a show of depth and erudition. The student of pedagogy is supposed to be in search of profound wisdom. Those who write for him often dive so deep that their style becomes muddy. Unfortunately, some of the best treatises on education have been written in the style of the philosopher and wrought out on the plane of the university professor, although intended for undergraduates at normal schools, and for teachers whose meagre salaries do not enable them to pursue courses of study at institutions of higher learning. The lucid style of Spencer’s treatise on “Education” has done much to counteract this tendency. Yet many of the authors of our treatises on pedagogy seem to be haunted by a feeling similar to that of the German professor, who, on reading the opening chapters of a new book, and finding them to be intelligible to his colleagues, exclaimed, “Then I must rewrite these chapters; otherwise nobody will read my book through.”

Huxley has well described the penalty which must be paid by those who speak or write for the purpose of being understood. These are his words: