324 



NATURE 



[November 4, 1920 



for the community a far richer return in the case of 

 the super-normal than in the sub-normal. 



At Harvard and elsewhere psychologists have for 

 some time been elaborating psychological tests to 

 select those who are best fitted for different types of 

 vocation. The investigation is still only in its initial 

 stages, but it is clear that if vocational guidance were 

 based, in part at least, upon observations and records 

 made at school instead of being based upon the limited 

 interests and knowledge of the child and his parents, 

 then not only employers, but also employees, their 

 work, and the community as a whole, would profit. 

 A large proportion of the vast wastage involved in the 

 current system of indiscriminate engagement on 

 probation would be saved. 



The influence of sex, social status, and race upon 

 individual differences in educational abilities has been 

 studied upon a small scale. The differences are 

 marked; and differences in sex and social status, 

 when better understood, might well be taken into 

 account both in diagnosing mental deficiency and in 

 awarding scholarships. As a rule, however, those due 

 to sex and race are smaller than is popularly sup- 

 posed. How far these differences, and those associated 

 with social status, are inborn and ineradicable, and 

 how far they are due to differences in training and in 

 tradition can scarcely be determined without a vast 

 array of data. 



II. Teaching Methods. 



The subjects taught and the methods of teaching 

 have considerably changed during recent years. In 

 the more progressive types of schools several broad 

 tendencies may be discerned. All owe their accept- 

 ance in part to the results of scientific investigators. 



(i) Far less emphasis is now laid upon the 

 disciplinary value of subjects, and upon subjects the 

 value of which is almost solely disciplinary. Following 

 in the steps of a series of American investigators. 

 Winch and Sleight in this country have shown very 

 clearly that practice in one kind of activity produces 

 improvements in other kinds of activities only under 

 very limited and special conditions. The whole con- 

 ception of transfer of training is thus chang'ed, or 

 (some maintain) destroyed ; and the earlier notion of 

 education as the strengthening, through exercise, of 

 certain general faculties has consequently been revolu- 

 tionised. There is a tendency to select subjects and 

 methods of teaching rather for their material than 

 for their general value. 



(2) Far less emphasis is now laid upon an advance 

 according to strict logical sequence in teaching a given 

 subject of the curriculum to children of successive 

 ages. The steps and methods are being adapted rather 

 to the natural capacities and interests of the child of 

 each age. This genetic point of view has received 

 great lielp and encouragement from experimental 

 psychology. Binet's own scale of intelligence was 

 intended largely as a study in the mental development 

 of the normal child. The developmental phases of 

 particular characteristics (e.g. children's ideals) and 

 special characteristics of particular developmental 

 phases (e.g. adolescence) have been elaborately studied 

 by Stanley Hall and his lollowers. Psychology, 

 indeed, has done much to emphasise the importance 

 of the post-pubertal period — the school-leaving age, 

 and the years that follow. Such studies have an 

 obvious bearing upon the curriculum and methods for 

 our new continuation schools. But it is, perhaps, 

 in the revolutionary changes in the teaching methods 

 of the infants' schools — changes that are already pro- 

 foundly influencing the methods of the senior depart- 

 ment— triat the influence of scientific study has been 

 most strongly at work. 



NO. 2662, VOL. 106] 



(3) Increasing emphasis is now being laid upon 

 mental and motor activities. Early educational prac- 

 tice, like early psychology, was excessively intel- 

 lectualistic. Recent child-study, however, has em- 

 phasised the importance of the motor and of the 

 emotional aspects the child's mental life. As a con- 

 sequence, the theory and practice of education have 

 assumed more of the pragmatic character which has 

 characterised contemporary philosophy. 



The progressive introduction of manual and prac- 

 tical subjects, both in and for themselves, and as 

 aspects of other subjects, forms the most notable 

 instance of this tendency. The educational process 

 is assumed to start not from the child's sensations (as 

 nineteenth-century theory was so apt to maintain),, 

 but rather from his motor reactions to certain per- 

 ceptual objects — objects of vital importance to him 

 and to his species under primitive conditions, and 

 therefore appealing to certain instinctive impulses. 

 Further, the child's activities in the school should 

 be not, indeed, identical, but continuous, with 

 the activities of his subsequent profession or trade. 

 Upon these grounds handicraft should now find a 

 place in every school curriculum. It will be inserted 

 both for its own sake and for the sake of its con- 

 nections with other subjects, whether they be subjects 

 of school life, of after life, or of human life generally. 



(4) As a result of recent psychological work, more 

 attention is now being paid to the emotional, moral, 

 and aesthetic activities. This is a second instance of 

 the same reaction from excessive intellectualism. 

 Education in this country has ever claimed to form 

 character as well as to impart knowledge. Formerly 

 this aim characterised the public schools rather than 

 the public elementary schools. Recently, however, 

 much has been done to infuse into the latter some- 

 thing of the spirit of the public schools. The principle 

 of •elf-government, for example, has been applied with 

 success not only in certain elementary schools, but 

 also in several colonies for juvenile delinquents. And 

 in the latter case its success has been attributed by 

 the initiators directly to the fact that it is corollary of 

 sound child-psychology. 



Bearing closely upon the subject of moral and 

 emotional training is the work of the psycho-analysts. 

 Freud has shown that many forms of mental in- 

 efficiency in later life — both major (such as hysteria, 

 neurosis, certain kinds of " shell-shock," etc.) and 

 minor (such as lapses of memory, of action, slips of 

 tongue and pen) — are traceable to the repression of 

 emotional experiences in earlier life. The principles 

 themselves may, perhaps, still be regarded as, in part, 

 a matter of controversy. But the discoveries upon 

 which they are based vividly illustrate the enormous 

 importance of the natural instincts, interests, and 

 activities inherited by the child as part of his bio- 

 logical equipment ; and, together with the work done 

 by English psychologists such as Shand and 

 McDougall upon the emotional basis of character, 

 have already had a considerable influence upon educa- 

 tional theory in this country. 



(5) Increasing emphasis is now being laid upon 

 freedom for individual effort and initiative. Here, 

 again, the corollaries drawn from the psycho-analytic 

 doctrines as to the dangers of repression are most 

 suggestive. Already a better understanding of child- 

 nature has led to the substitution of "internal " for 

 "external" discipline; and the predetermined routine 

 demanded of entire classes is giving way to the 

 growing recognition of the educational value of 

 spontaneous edorts initiated by the individual, alone 

 or in social co-operation with his fellows. 



In appealing for greater freedom still, the new 

 psychology is in line with the more advanced educa- 



