I think in this, as in most of the work with these scholars, the
association with children of the opposite type is one of the best
correctives, provided the companionship is not made altogether
one-sided by the motor boy's perpetual monopolizing of all the avenues
of personal expression. When he fails in the class, the kind of social
lesson which is valuable may be taught him by submitting the same
question to a pupil of the plodding, deliberate kind, and waiting for
the latter to work it out. Of course, if the teacher have any
supervision over the playground, similar treatment can be employed
there.
Coming to consider the so-called "sensory" youth of the age between
eight, let us say, and sixteen--the age during which the training of
the secondary school presents its great problems--we find certain
interesting contrasts between this type and that already characterized
as "motor." The study of this type of youth is the more pressing for
reasons which I have already hinted in considering the same type in
the earlier childhood period. It is necessary, first, to endeavour to
get a fairly adequate view of the psychological characteristics of
this sort of pupil.
The current psychological doctrine of mental "types" rests upon a
great mass of facts, drawn in the first instance from the different
kinds of mental trouble, especially those which involve derangements
of speech--the different kinds of Aphasia. The broadest generalization
which is reached from these facts is that which marks the distinction,
of which I have already said so much, between the motor and the
sensory types. But besides this general distinction there are many
finer ones; and in considering the persons of the sensory type, it is
necessary to inquire into these finer distinctions. Not only do men
and children differ in the matter of the sort of mental material which
they find requisite, as to whether it is pictures of movements on the
one hand, or pictures from the special senses on the other hand; but
they differ also in the latter case with respect to which of the
special senses it is, in this case or that, which gives the particular
individual his necessary cue, and his most perfect function. So we
find inside of the general group called "sensory" several relatively
distinct cases, all of which the teacher is likely to come across in
varying numbers in a class of pupils. Of these the "visual" and the
"auditory" are most important.
There are certain aspects of the case which are so common to all the
cases of sensory minds, whether they be visual, auditory, or other,
that I may set them out before proceeding further.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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