Talks To Teachers On Psychology

erbal reproduction — Manual training

orism emerges which ought by logical right to dominat

thout correlative expression — this is the grea

pression, it fails to produce its proper effect upon the memory; for, to remain fully among the acquisitions of this latter faculty, it must be wrought into the whole cycle of our operations. Its motor consequences are what clinch it. Some effect du

tracts the weakest possible adhesion in the mind. Verbal recitation or reproduction is thus a highly important kind of reactive behavior on our impressions; and it is to be feared that, in the

his fashion what is often laughed at by outsiders when it appears in prospectuses under the title of ‘original work,’ but what is really the only possible training for the doing of original work thereafter. The most colossal improvement which recent years have seen in secondary education lies in the introduction of the manual training schools; not because they will give us a people more handy and practical for domestic life and better skilled in trades, but because they will give us citizens with an entirely different intellectual fibre. Laboratory work and shop work engender a habit of observation, a knowledge of the difference between accur

s to me by far the best, psychologically considered. Manual training methods, fortunately, are being slowly but surely introduced into all our large

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s, as I intimated a moment ago, in the form of a still farther impression — the impression, namely, of what we have done. We thus receive sensible news of our behavior and its results. We hear the words we have spoken, feel our own blow as we

pupil is frustrated of this natural termination of the cycle of his activities, and often suffers from the sense of incompleteness and uncertainty; and there are persons who defend this system as encouraging the pupil to work for the work’s sake, and not for extraneous reward. Of course, here as elsewhe

nd prospects, unless in the individual case you have some