DISCUSSION

The aim of this department of the REVIEW is to supply our teachers with practical suggestions for the conduct of classroom exercises. Experienced and successful teachers may, through these pages, extend a helping hand to the army of faithul workers in the field of education. Brief discussions of practical points are invited. As far as practicable, brief answers to teachers' questions will be given by the editors.

ACTION AND THE TEACHING OF LANGUAGE

How can action work and motor training in general be rendered serviceable in the teaching of language?*

Action work and motor training can be made serviceable in the teaching of language because both bring the child into actual contact with things. In this way the sensations and perceptions are made clear and strong; the paths of the nerve currents are deepened; the apperception masses enriched and completed. Action work is especially helpful in developing the imagination and in improving the memory. The more perfect the mental picture thus produced the more readily and surely will the child learn the necessary symbols, since they bring back memories of past actions, and, in accordance with the principle "the presence in consciousness of appropriate feeling is indispensable to mental assimilation," these pleasant memories aid the child in incorporating into his mental life the new materials and render expression in some form imperative. The child is rarely willing to express himself on any subject until his knowledge is ready to overflow and then he will recite, write, draw, or make anything that will give expression to his mental content. This points to the necessity of giving the mind material on which to work, which is normally accom

*The answers to this and the following question were submitted as part of the correspondence work on Lesson XXI (Expression Through Action), of the Psychology of Education.

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plished through the functioning of the senses. Shields tells us that "sentient phenomena, transfigured by the intellect, issues in the arts, in articulate speech, and in moral conduct," and Professor Baldwin says that "every sensation or incoming process tends to bring about action or outgoing process."

While it is true that the normal and immediate motor path of sensation in general leads to expression through action, nevertheless, much of the sentient phenomena that holds the interest of the child is of a linguistic nature and therefore finds its immediate channel of expression terminating in oral or written language. The value of teaching language in this way lies not only in the fact that it is more pleasant and fruitful but in the further fact that it gives many opportunities for simultaneous sense-training and muscular exercise. According to Professor O'Shea, the younger the child the greater the need of giving him an opportunity to freely use hands, feet and voice in educative ways. "When the child begins to study language, his natural activities are apparently unlimited-he wants to see everything, hear everything, handle everything. These activities, under wise guidance, will give him clear, definite and effective ideas of the world, which all psychologists say can be best done through muscular experience. The knowledge thus acquired gives him a good foundation for his language work. It gives and coordinates thought without which there is no logical expression." Not only during the early years of the child's life are his physical activities great. "The demand for motor expression," says Dr. Shields, "is most urgent during the years of physical development. The strength of heart and brain, of lung and muscle, in the adult depends, in large measure, upon the healthful exercise of these organs in the running games of childhood."

Psychology is making it clearer every day that language should not be taught to children as a thing separate and aloof from the thoughts which the child should express through language. The organization of the thought material should hold a central place in the child's endeavor and in his consciousness, and through the organization of the thought-material the child should learn to organize his language. Now, psychologists tell us that the child's thought is never dissociated from his muscles; that every idea has a motor aspect; that mind in one sense is a middle term between the senses and the muscles; that the mind functions for the purpose of governing conduct; that an idea is not complete until it is realized in action. We see these principles embodied in the work done in the Massachusetts School of Technology. According to Sir Joshua Fitch, "The student is required, as soon as he knows anything, to do something which requires the application of the knowledge," and, speaking of the Yorkshire College of Science, he says, "in one room you may see a group of students, each before his own table, manipulating his apparatus and making his own experiments in the application of different coloring matters to different fabrics. Each student makes a written statement of the nature of the material on which he works, the chemical composition of his pigments, the time occupied by the process, the phenomena of change observable while it lasted. Then he places his memoranda with a specimen of the colored piece of cloth in a book as a permanent record of the experiment for future reference." What can be more serviceable in teaching language than these and like exercises? Through them thought is developed, the vocabulary is proportionately enlarged, while the demand for correct and systematic expression stimulates the pupil to use the best and clearest forms.

English literature presents many a sad picture of the old-time boarding school where many a small boy's heart ached and his spirit sank while he tried to conjugate the Latin verb. The room cold and bare, the master stern, the boy oft' times hungry and longing for home, while vainly striving to keep his attention fixed on a word that brought no image to his mind unless, perhaps, that of the master's ever-ready rod for those who failed to remember its modes and tenses. Under this treatment a few boys grew up to be great men, but what became of the many who had their minds starved, their emotions repressed, and their muscles stunted? Contrast this picture with that presented by the leading schools of to-day where the needs of the whole child, soul and body, are seriously considered and where the teacher endeavors to meet all the demands of both. Here the child's cognitive, affective, and creative powers receive their fullest development. Here every reasonable means of expression is afforded to the children whose mental assimilation is promoted by the presence of appropriate feeling in consciousness and whose successes are made stepping-stones to new and greater achievements. The static method of teaching language produced some good writers, or, may it not be more correctly stated that these men, following some happy inspiration, became great in spite of the method?

Modern psychology is demanding a modification of the old-time method of language work. It is insisting on putting the natural development of the thought materials and association of ideas, together with appropriate affective states, in place of much of the former drills in the memorizing of unrelated forms. If the suggestions of psychology should prove operative in our schools, every exercise in every branch taught will, in the near future, become the means of perfecting the language of the pupils.

ACTION AND THE TEACHING OF RELIGION

How can the line of thought developed in the chapter, "Expression Through Action," in the Psychology of Education, be applied to the teaching of religion and of morality in our schools?

One of the grave questions in the field of education to-day is concerned with the preservation of the balance in the spiritual inheritance of the child. This inheritance is generally conceded by educators to be at least fivefold, viz., scientific, institutional, literary, aesthetic and religious. "A secure development along any one of these lines," Dr. Shields tells us, "demands a proportionate development along the other four. It is therefore apparent that, apart altogether from the consideration of the hereafter, no one can be considered an educated man who is ignorant of the nature of religious phenomena and of the role it has played in the history of the race. The early literature of all peoples is inseparably associated with their religion. Ignorance of religion, therefore, is prima facie evidence of incompetence along many other lines.''*

To the Christian religion means much more than a department of science or an element of culture. It is associated with eternity and furnishes the only means through which the end for which man was created may be attained. Since, therefore, the matter is of such paramount importance for both time and eternity, it evidently should be taught in the most effective way. Within the past few years great strides have been made in the methods employed in teaching various subjects in the school curriculum. But, strange to say, in many of those schools which have been characterized by progressive methods in teaching all the secular branches but little progress is noticeable in the teaching of the all-important subject of re*Psychology of Education, p. 120.