July 7, 1911] 



SCIENCE 



react just as gastric juice is stingy of its 

 flow when food is unattractive. Whether, 

 in this apparently unequal contest with 

 native impulses, educative ideas may be 

 aided in other ways than by relieving the 

 mind of what may be called the school con- 

 sciousness, and by giving it freedom of 

 action, remains to be discussed. 



The growing point in elementary and 

 secondary education is the special schools 

 for delinquents, and reformative institu- 

 tions. The reason for this is that the boys 

 in these schools are so much the primitive 

 man that the traditional plan of education 

 breaks down completely when applied to 

 them. On this account, the experimental 

 method, which until recently was regarded 

 as so heretical as to justify the excom- 

 munication of its advocates from the com- 

 munion of righteous pedagogues, was 

 forced upon those in charge. The result is 

 that delinquents have the best schools. 

 And they secured them by refusing to 

 submit to the traditional method. 



Not the least curious thing about these 

 disciplinary schools is that they require less 

 discipline than the ordinary school. Of 

 course, a dose of disciplinary medicine is 

 sometimes necessary at the beginning. It 

 has much the same value as that which 

 David Harum attributed to fleas on a dog. 

 Too sudden a break with one's past is 

 likely to prove disastrous. 



It should be remembered that disciplin- 

 ary schools and reformative institutions 

 deal with youngsters who can not be eon- 

 trolled in the ordinary school. To be able, 

 under these circumstances, to produce in 

 the majority of the boys a condition of 

 consciousness attentive to study, and to 

 develop a mental attitude responsive to 

 social incentives is certainly remarkable. 

 Instances of unusual influence have been 

 often noticed, but the success is generally 

 explained by the vague term personality. 



The method of these teachers, however, is 

 strikingly similar. They secure attention 

 to their ideas by identifying them with the 

 racial instincts characteristic of boys. 



Efficiency in education reduces itself 

 largely to the attitude of the learner to- 

 ward instruction. In the more mature, 

 many derived interests cluster around de- 

 sire for success, but in children these con- 

 trol elements only occasionally exist. With 

 them, the problem is to capture a purpose- 

 less, wayward attention often enough, and 

 to hold it long enough, to impress the mind 

 with the significance of a few derived in- 

 terests which may serve as a new base of 

 operations from which to push on to fur- 

 ther development. One's attitude toward 

 knowledge depends upon the mental con- 

 tent. The ideas and activities of children 

 are the stuff out of which their thoughts 

 are made. In early life, this material is 

 social, and it is social because it is racial. 



The force of this social instinct is seen 

 in the number of clubs formed by boys 

 without the assistance of adults. Sheldon 

 found- that seventy-two societies were rep- 

 resented among one hundred and seven- 

 teen boys of eight and nine years of age, 

 and six hundred and twenty-five societies 

 among seven hundred and forty-eight boys 

 from ten to thirteen, inclusive. This in- 

 vestigation included three New England 

 cities and two on the Pacific coast. 

 Clearly, the social instinct is a tremendous 

 educational force. 



Johnson says^ that the children in his 

 vacation school preferred "to submit to a 

 flogging as evidence that they sincerely 

 intended to resist temptation" to disobey, 

 "rather than to stay away from school." 

 "Nearly every species of butterfly to be 

 found in Andover, Mass., during the sea- 



- American Journal of Psychology, Vol. 9, p. 

 425. 



^Pedagogical Seminary, Vol. 6, p. 516. 



