Thinking and learning to think, Nathan C. Schaeffer [each kindness read aloud txt] 📗
- Author: Nathan C. Schaeffer
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Doubt is sometimes the prerequisite of knowledge. To raise a doubt in the mind of a growing youth may cause him to think. It may cause him to explore the grounds of his knowledge, to ascertain the rational basis upon which his beliefs rest, and to reject such as were of the nature of prejudice or of tradition with no sufficient warrant for acceptance. Rational belief is far superior to blind faith.
When the doubt is raised in regard to the verities of one’s religious faith there is grave danger of landing in scepticism or infidelity. What is truth? may be asked in the spirit of Pilate, who turned away from the Great Teacher with a despairing sneer and without waiting for a reply. Pilate had trifled with his own conscience until he could no longer discern truth and righteousness. Some men need better hearts in order that they may think and know the highest truth. The hope can be held out that whenever the truth is earnestly sought by the human heart the soul will ultimately be guided into a knowledge of the truth. To disturb the grounds upon which rest the principles of morality and religion is a dangerous experiment, especially in the case of immature minds. The flood of doubt may sweep away the solid foundations of a pupil’s moral nature and leave him a wreck upon the quicksands of vice or upon the rock of scepticism.
It is the nature of the child to believe, to cherish faith in what others tell him and in what the world presents to his vision. To disturb the fervor and strength of this trust before the understanding is ripe for fuller knowledge may result in life-long injury. The child’s faith in fairyland, in Santa-Claus, should, of course, be kept from becoming a source of terror. The stories of ghosts, spooks, and hobgoblins sometimes employed in the nursery to influence conduct may cause fears, terrors, and horrors from which it is well to emancipate the child as speedily as possible through the light of clearer knowledge.
Better than doubt as a stimulus to thought is the desire to know. St. Augustine was on fire to know. The teacher who kindles and keeps burning this fire in the soul of the pupil has supplied the most powerful incentive to thought; for without thinking knowledge is impossible of attainment.
As we may start our wood flaming by coals hot from another’s fire, so we may kindle a burning desire for knowledge by bringing the mind in contact with minds that are all aglow with the desire to know. A burning fire may soon exhaust its fuel if left to itself. The teacher supplies the fuel, fans the flame, directs its activity for well-defined purposes. Here the analogy breaks. Instead of smoke and ashes we want living products as the result of knowing. As thinking leads to knowing, so knowing should give rise to further thinking. Nowhere is the teacher’s function of guiding more indispensably necessary than in the interplay of these two activities. While the learner is engrossed in the pursuit of knowledge, the teacher is watching the process and the results. He is not satisfied unless the activity of thinking and knowing ends in full cognition. It has been well said that a dog knows his master, but does not cognize him; that to cognize means to refer a perception to an object by means of a conception. The objects of thought must be sorted and arranged in groups; the particular notion must take its place in the general concept; the materials upon which the mind acts must be assimilated and organized into a unity, showing how each has its origin and how it stands in living relation to every other part of the organic whole; otherwise thinking cannot lead to complete cognition.
The incident at the beginning of this chapter shows that some preparation is necessary to interpret sense-impressions and organize the materials of thought for the purpose of cognition. The degree of preparation determines how far the instruction at a given time shall aim to go. To get a clearer idea of the thing to be known may exhaust the learner’s strength. If so, the presentation should stop at that point. But as soon as his power and interest are equal to the task he should be led to analyze the object of thought so as to cognize the constituent elements, the essential attributes, a process whereby he will arrive at distinct knowledge. It may be advisable before dropping the inquiry to institute comparisons between objects of the same class, for the purpose of calling attention to differences and likenesses and evolving general concepts or universal propositions. For many thinkers these are the goal of thinking. If they can resolve the universe to a few simple generalizations, their minds are satisfied. Nothing more barren can well be imagined or conceived.
Cognition is not complete until the knowledge has been or can be applied. At times there may be a division of labor and glory in the discovery and application of truth. The discoveries of Professor Henry which made the electric telegraph possible involved thinking quite as valuable as the invention of Professor Morse. The achievement of Cyrus W. Field in laying the Atlantic cable involved thinking quite as important as the researches and experiments of Lord Kelvin which made the cable successful. Interesting examples of such division of labor in thinking cannot justify neglect of the applications after a general truth has been evolved and stated.
The instruction may sometimes begin with a statement of applications, in order to prepare the mind for the thinking that issues in knowing. The applications of color in the railway service, in navigation, and in the arts will create an interest in the study of color without which the presentation of the fundamental ideas may be in vain. Several lecturers have admitted that they failed, in the presentation of color lessons, to hold the attention of their pupil-teachers until they excited an interest in color by indicating important applications. This statement of applications by way of preparation must, however, not be confounded with the applications which should follow the framing of general propositions and the cognition of general truths.
The hypotheses of the scientist correspond to the general truths and principles which instruction always aims to reach. In all except the most advanced investigations, the pupil should work under the guidance of principles that have risen above the hypothetical stage. He should think under the inspiration of well-established truths. He should master the known in his chosen field before he seeks to enlarge the boundaries of human knowledge by invasions into the realm of the unknown. Sad is the spectacle of a talented mind wasting its strength in fruitless efforts to rediscover what is already well established.
The formulation of truths in mathematical studies is sometimes carried to extremes. The pupil may at times be allowed to work under the guidance of principles which he knows by implication, and which he has never had occasion to formulate in explicit statements. The formulation of the principles of algebra can be carried into the statement of hundreds of general propositions. If the pupil is asked to fix all these in the crystallized or specific form given in the text-book, it may result in a prodigious waste of time. Furthermore, the effort to follow invariably any formal steps in the order of instruction is apt to make the instruction unduly formal and lifeless. No thinker can afford to think in the set forms of the syllogism while evolving a train of thought. Conscious conformity to these hinders progress in the spontaneous evolution of germinal ideas. In like manner, although the student of pedagogy may find a guide in the rules and principles of his science while preparing the subject-matter of a lesson, yet, in giving the instruction, the truth must be the object of chief regard, the centre of attention in consciousness. Constant thought of prescribed steps makes the teaching stiff and formal, and dissipates the joyous interest which accompanies free and spontaneous thinking. Formal rules are very often like hobbles on the feet of the horse. They impede his speed, rob him of half his power and energy, and spoil his enjoyment of the open field. Bearing this in mind, the young teacher will perhaps not be harmed by the advice that in his teaching he should ever seek to lead the learner to clear and distinct perception of likenesses and differences in the subject-matter of each and every lesson. The newer methods of teaching a beginner to read, wisely draw attention to the points of similarity and difference in the shapes and sounds of the letters of the alphabet. They even go to the extreme of comparing sounds with the noises of animals, with which the child in the larger cities is totally unfamiliar. This error is not half so bad as the opposite extreme. Very much of the bad teaching by which the schools are afflicted arises from the assumption that the learner sees the points of agreement and difference which are so very obvious to the mature mind of the teacher. The consequence is mental confusion and loss of the joy of definite thinking. The detection of likeness in objects having many points of diversity gives the mind an agreeable surprise. This emotion is an element in the pleasure afforded by the various forms of wit, metaphor, and allegory. Professor Bain has shown how greatly progress in science and art is indebted to the discovery of similarity in the midst of great diversity.[49] Much of the child’s progress in knowledge must be ascribed to the same principle. Children notice points of similarity that often escape older persons. On seeing the picture of a tiger, they call it a cat. A mother who showed her little daughter, just beginning to talk, the caricature of a man prominent in the public eye, was surprised to hear the child exclaim, “Papa.” It was the child’s word for man, as she afterwards discovered. Where she saw contrast, the child only noticed the points of similarity between one man and another. As the power of discrimination advances, the mind pays more attention to points of difference than to points of likeness. Indistinguishableness gives way to clear and distinct knowledge. With the further growth of intelligence the mind seeks the hidden resemblances in objects far removed from one another in space and time, or by surface appearances. At first sight the bat seems like a bird, because it can fly. Scientific discrimination assigns it to the class of mammals. The identification of the lightning in the clouds with the sparks of the electric machine gave Franklin world-wide reputation as a philosopher. The identification of the force which causes bodies to fall to the earth with the force which holds the moon in its orbit, and with the kind of force by which the sun attracts the bodies of the solar system, has been justly called the greatest example of the power to detect likeness in the midst of diversity. The power of detecting similarity in diversity should be appealed to whenever it is helpful either for purposes of illustration or discovery. Algebra is shorn of half its difficulty as soon as the learner is led to
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