Principles of TeachingBennion, Adam S. (Adam Samuel)
Religion
Principles of Teaching
Bennion, Adam S. (Adam Samuel)
Religious education
"There are many other activities, not so obviously vital as these,
for which nature winds him up quite as thoroughly--yes, and sets him
to go off at the proper time for each. He will suck when brought to
the breast as unfailingly as his lungs will begin to work upon
contact with the air. He will cry from hunger or discomfort, clasp
anything that touches his fingers or toes, carry to his mouth
whatever he can grasp, in time smile when smiled at, later grow
afraid when left alone or in the dark, manifest anger and affection,
walk, run, play, question, imitate, collect things, pull things
apart, put them together again, take pleasure in being with friends,
act shy before strangers, find a chum, belong to a 'gang' or 'bunch,'
quarrel, fight, become reconciled, and some day fall in love with one
of the opposite sex. These, and many more, are just his natural human
ways. He does not of purpose initiate them any more than he initiates
breathing or heart-beat. He does these things because he is so born
and built. They are his instincts."
As Norsworthy and Whitley point out, we are not especially concerned
with the boundary lines between automatic actions, reflexes, and
instincts--we are rather concerned with the fact that human beings
possess native tendencies to act in particular ways. Some psychologists
stress them as instincts; others as capacities, but they have all pretty
generally agreed that under certain stimuli there are natural tendencies
to react.
These tendencies begin to manifest themselves at birth--they are all
potentialities with the birth of the child--and continue to develop in
turn, certain ones being more pronounced in the various stages of the
child's life. Colvin in his _The Learning Process_, runs through the
complete list of possibilities. According to him man, in a lifetime, is
characterized by the following tendencies: Fear, anger, sympathy,
affection, play, imitation, curiosity, acquisitiveness,
constructiveness, self-assertion (leadership), self-abasement, rivalry,
envy, jealousy, pugnacity, clannishness, the hunting and predatory
instincts, the migratory instinct, love of adventure and the unknown,
superstition, the sex instincts, which express themselves in sex-love,
vanity, coquetry, modesty; and, closely allied with these, the love of
nature and of solitude, and the aesthetic, the religious, and the moral
emotions.
Sisson, in a little book that every teacher ought to know, _The
Essentials of Character_, emphasizes the importance for teaching of ten
tendencies: bodily activity, sense-hunger and curiosity, suggestibility,
tastes and aesthetic appreciation, self-assertion, love, joy, fear, the
growing-up impulse, the love of approbation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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