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J MADE FROM THE PRACTICAL PRACTICAL HOW SHALL THE TRANSITION BE r CAL TO THE INTELLECTUAL ATTITUDE A F y LEARNING IN x xA 1 lj i A re report of lectures given by Prof John ohn Dewey during the summer term of Chicago University The natural conditions for experience are an impulse within and something something something some some- thing external which is a stimulus It is there as soon as the child If not he is an imbecile The childs child's body does not wait for stimulus of light or sound The impulse to hear sound reaches out to find it If it does not find it the impulse gradually dies away If the child never finds the light the impulse will be abortive The stimulus is just as important as the impulse but it is secondary in time It is too common to consider mind as passive Activity is there The child is hungry and searches for food All other impulses impulses impulses im im- pulses act in the same way That is all there is to learning in the first stage There is the he impulse of the organs to assert themselves As the impulse finds its appropriate stimulus it becomes differentiated it is richer it gets fuller play The child does not know why he wants food he simply wants it and differentiates his modes of activity In the same way the eye the ear and the hand become more rich more fitted for a special work The process forms an organic circuit The movement is first outward from impulse to stimulus The stimulus reacts so as to encourage e the impulse Each side is continually reacting upon the other Only recently has conscious learning had an important part in the development develop develop- ment of civilization The race has had practical work to do and has come comein comein in contact with objects and the laws which govern them The race has not been animated by any purely intellectual or speculative motive With the development development development de de- of science however conscious learning comes in When we reflect that experimental methods are but four hundred years old we see that humanity has learned most of what it has in a practical way After the scientific method became developed pro progress ress became more controlled controlled con con- trolled and more rapid The fact that this method is so much surer accounts i for the undue prominence given it in the education of the young The race having found that it could make progress faster with it used it with children It is a good method when the time is ripe for it when it when there is a proper background background background back back- ground of experience There has been a tendency to force it upon the child too soon Probably 75 per cent of the work in the elementary school is the mastery of methods symbols etc which the race has found to be of use in conscious work As taught reading writing and arithmetic are not modes of d' d direct experience They are taught for the sake of information Information j j I deserves an important place but the other factor deserves a place too The balance must be kept The question which has been led up to thus far is the following tollo What are the psychological signs and symptoms which show a readiness for the change from the practical to the intellectual attitude of mind in learning A brief resume of child psychology will indicate the answer to the above In early infancy there is no learning for the sake of learning The infant shows its inquiring disposition very early From six months on it shows a 2 T positive desire to get hold of things and to handle them It performs a multitude multitude multitude multi multi- tude of apparently trivial experiments This is real investigation The motive is not intellectual The child is urged on by an impetus impetus impetus-by by hunger which impels him to act in this way What we have in this period from six months to one year is the master mastery of the fundamental acts which are necessary to all subsequent experience the experience the mastery of sense organs and the ordinations co-ordinations of muscles The child needs to master these tools If nature had not embodied these impulses all development would have been arrested There has been a premium placed on the mastery of these fundamental fundamental funda funda- mental powers These are sometimes regarded as physical or material but if looked at from the childs child's point of view they are his highest expression of spiritual life That the life of the child should be absorbed in his own sensations sensations sensations sensa sensa- and movements means a fact which we at once see is inevitable The mastery of the tools must precede the experience which d depends upon them A child learns to perform the simplest acts of seeing and he has to learn these He then begins to make references cross he learns to connect seeing with ith hearing He soon learns to control these muscles so as to fix them to some end he learns to co When he sees he reaches he looks Each stimulates the other The mental reinforcement of each by hy the other gives a clue to the organic circuit Technically it is co The eye impulse carries carrie itself out through the hand If the childs child's impulse were simply transferred there would be no learning It would be nothing but brute knowledge The eye gets the benefit vicariously of what the hand does and so all reinforce each The eye activity i is enriched and enlarged by what it has stimulated the hand to do The principle of substitution is the root and center of all growth The fact that each organ can absorb and represent in itself all of the other powers is the result of an organic process The eye is a nest of experiences reached through other organs organs If we look at an envelope it is really nothing but a blur of light which presents itself to our eyes yet it means many things on account of the connections previously made The significance is the suggested activities which we might perform but which we do cio not In the first stage the whole activity would be carried out but later the representative power is sufficient TO BE BU CONTINUED i. i f |