It seems true--although great caution is necessary in drawing
inferences--that here a certain distinction may be found to hold also
between the sexes. It is possible that the apparent precocious
alertness of girls in their school years, and earlier, may be simply a
predominance among them of the motor individuals. This is borne out by
the examination of the kinds of performance in which they seem to be
more forward than boys. It resolves itself, so far as my observation
goes, into greater quickness of response and greater agility in
performance; not greater constructiveness, nor greater power of
concentrated attention. The boys seem to need more instruction because
they do not learn as much for themselves by acting upon what they
already know. In later years, the distinction gets levelled off by the
common agencies of education, and by the setting of tasks requiring
more thought than the mere spontaneities of either type avail to
furnish. Yet all the way through, I think there is something in the
ordinary belief that woman is relatively more impulsive and more prone
to the less reflective forms of action.
What has now been said may be sufficient to give some concrete force
to the common opinion that education should take account of the
individual character at this earliest stage. The general distinction
between sensory and motor has, however, a higher application in the
matter of memory and imagination at later stages of growth, to which
we may now turn.
_Second Period._--The research is of course more difficult as the
pupil grows older, since the influences of heredity tend to become
blurred by the more constant elements of the child's home, school, and
general social environment. The child whom I described just above as
sensory in his type is constantly open to influences from the
stimulating behaviour of his motor companion, as well as from the
direct measures which parent and teacher take to overcome his
too-decided tendencies and to prevent one-sided development. So, too,
the motor child tends to find correctives in his environment.
The analogy, however, between the more organic and hereditary
differences in individuals, and the intellectual and moral variations
which they tend to develop with advance in school age, is very
marked; and we find a similar series of distinctions in the later
period. The reason that there is a correspondence between the
variations given in heredity and those due in the main to the
educative influences of the single child's social environment is in
itself very suggestive, but space does not permit its exposition here.
The fact is this: the child tends, under the influence of his home,
school, social surroundings, etc., to develop a marked character
either in the sensory or in the motor direction, in his memory,
imagination, and general type of mind.
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