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
In conclusion, I must say a word about the contributions to
our knowledge of memory which have recently come from the
laboratory-psychologists. Many of the enthusiasts for scientific or
brass-instrument child-study are taking accurate measurements of
children's elementary faculties, and among these what we may call
_immediate memory_ admits of easy measurement. All we need do is to
exhibit to the child a series of letters, syllables, figures, pictures,
or what-not, at intervals of one, two, three, or more seconds, or to
sound a similar series of names at the same intervals, within his
hearing, and then see how completely he can reproduce the list, either
directly, or after an interval of ten, twenty, or sixty seconds, or some
longer space of time. According to the results of this exercise, the
pupils may be rated in a memory-scale; and some persons go so far as to
think that the teacher should modify her treatment of the child
according to the strength or feebleness of its faculty as thus made
known.
Now I can only repeat here what I said to you when treating of
attention: man is too complex a being for light to be thrown on his real
efficiency by measuring any one mental faculty taken apart from its
consensus in the working whole. Such an exercise as this, dealing with
incoherent and insipid objects, with no logical connection with each
other, or practical significance outside of the 'test,' is an exercise
the like of which in real life we are hardly ever called upon to
perform. In real life, our memory is always used in the service of some
interest: we remember things which we care for or which are associated
with things we care for; and the child who stands at the bottom of the
scale thus experimentally established might, by dint of the strength of
his passion for a subject, and in consequence of the logical association
into which he weaves the actual materials of his experience, be a very
effective memorizer indeed, and do his school-tasks on the whole much
better than an immediate parrot who might stand at the top of the
'scientifically accurate' list.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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