Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's IdealsJames, William
Science
Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals
James, William
College students -- Conduct of life; Educational psychology; Teachers -- Professional ethics
Figure 1 shows the paths of the four successive reflexes executed by the
lower or instinctive centres. The dotted lines that lead from them to
the higher centres and connect the latter together, represent the
processes of memory and association which the reactions impress upon the
higher centres as they take place.
[Illustration: FIGURE 2. THE BRAIN-PROCESS AFTER EDUCATION.]
In Figure 2 we have the final result. The impression _see_ awakens the
chain of memories, and the only reactions that take place are the _beg_
and _smile_. The thought of the _slap_, connected with the activity of
Centre 2, inhibits the _snatch_, and makes it abortive, so it is
represented only by a dotted line of discharge not reaching the
terminus. Ditto of the _cry_ reaction. These are, as it were,
short-circuited by the current sweeping through the higher centres from
_see_ to _smile_. _Beg_ and _smile_, thus substituted for the original
reaction _snatch_, become at last the immediate responses when the
child sees a snatchable object in some one's hands.
The first thing, then, for the teacher to understand is the native
reactive tendencies,--the impulses and instincts of childhood,--so as to
be able to substitute one for another, and turn them on to artificial
objects.
* * * * *
It is often said that man is distinguished from the lower animals by
having a much smaller assortment of native instincts and impulses than
they, but this is a great mistake. Man, of course, has not the
marvellous egg-laying instincts which some articulates have; but, if we
compare him with the mammalia, we are forced to confess that he is
appealed to by a much larger array of objects than any other mammal,
that his reactions on these objects are characteristic and determinate
in a very high degree. The monkeys, and especially the anthropoids, are
the only beings that approach him in their analytic curiosity and width
of imitativeness. His instinctive impulses, it is true, get overlaid by
the secondary reactions due to his superior reasoning power; but thus
man loses the _simply_ instinctive demeanor. But the life of instinct
is only disguised in him, not lost; and when the higher brain-functions
are in abeyance, as happens in imbecility or dementia, his instincts
sometimes show their presence in truly brutish ways.
I will therefore say a few words about those instinctive tendencies
which are the most important from the teacher's point of view.
VII. WHAT THE NATIVE REACTIONS ARE
First of all, _Fear_. Fear of punishment has always been the great
weapon of the teacher, and will always, of course, retain some place in
the conditions of the schoolroom. The subject is so familiar that
nothing more need be said about it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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