Educational psychology

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1913. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XVII The Value And Use Of Original Tendencies At the beginning of this volume it was stated that human welfare required that some original tendencies be cherished, that some be redirected or modified, and that others be eliminated outright. Such is the ordinary common-sense view expressed, for example, by Meumann ['07, edition of '11, p. 699 f.] in the following passage:-- Wherever we compare the child who has been relatively left to himself with the child of like age who has been more subjected to training, we see that the more educated child has progressed very, very much farther than the child left more to himself; and further, where our present education as a whole neglects certain functions, these remain far below what the child might achieve. We could also recall such cases as that of Caspar Hauser, who grew up in a pig-pen and reached only the condition of a beast for lack of education, w'hile he proved himself to be a normally endowed human being as soon as training was given him. We do not, however, need such exceptional cases. We see still more in the two phenomena mentioned here, that wherever the development of the child is even only relatively left to itself, the whole mental development has from the start the character of lack of system and imperfection and inadequacy and pure chance in the results attained. . . . From these facts it follows that we cannot leave the child to its natural development; for natural development (1) does not attain what the subject of education can achieve by his organization and his capacities, and (2) does not attain what the subject of education as a grown-up human being must attain. We could make this clear by any examples at random, but let me refer only to the development of speech, which shows the...