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
If the topic be highly abstract, show its nature by concrete examples.
If it be unfamiliar, trace some point of analogy in it with the known.
If it be inhuman, make it figure as part of a story. If it be
difficult, couple its acquisition with some prospect of personal gain.
Above all things, make sure that it shall run through certain inner
changes, since no unvarying object can possibly hold the mental field
for long. Let your pupil wander from one aspect to another of your
subject, if you do not wish him to wander from it altogether to
something else, variety in unity being the secret of all interesting
talk and thought. The relation of all these things to the native genius
of the instructor is too obvious to need comment again.
One more point, and I am done with the subject of attention. There is
unquestionably a great native variety among individuals in the type of
their attention. Some of us are naturally scatterbrained, and others
follow easily a train of connected thoughts without temptation to swerve
aside to other subjects. This seems to depend on a difference between
individuals in the type of their field of consciousness. In some persons
this is highly focalized and concentrated, and the focal ideas
predominate in determining association. In others we must suppose the
margin to be brighter, and to be filled with something like meteoric
showers of images, which strike into it at random, displacing the focal
ideas, and carrying association in their own direction. Persons of the
latter type find their attention wandering every minute, and must bring
it back by a voluntary pull. The others sink into a subject of
meditation deeply, and, when interrupted, are 'lost' for a moment before
they come back to the outer world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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