The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-01-02
HOW FALSE WAYS OF TEACHING

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 HOW FALSE WAYS OF TEACHING
 Cause Arrested Development. Dwarflng | the Thinking Powers and Misusing
 the Memory.
 ! The writer knows a youth almost l fullgrown, apparently healthy in all his bodily functions; yet he talks and acts as if he were but six years old. | Through some unknown cause his
 mental development was arrested at | that stage. For while it was thought | that premature hardening of the skull had interfered with the growth of the brain The surgical operation of tre- banning gave no relief; and human wisdom and skill seem to have reached their limits.
 Other ases of arrested mental developn.ent occur under the eye of an observing superintendent The lowest grade of thinking which the schoolseeks to develop, may be designated as think ing in things. Oftentimes the pupils are thinking when the teacher supposes
 them to be thinking. They are maini-
 pulating things without grasping the ideas enshrined in the combinations and relations of the same, Just as in rote teaching pupils use words without com- pretending their meaning. Later on they count on their fingers use dots and strokes in adding, conceive parts of blocks or other units in solving fractions, and are tied to the concrete in their thinking, when, they are supposed to be thinking in symbols and using the labor saving devices which make arithmetcal calculations easy and rapid Whilst the teacher inn agines that the members of the class are thinking in the 10 digits of the Arabic notation, the superintendent sees fingers moving behind the backs of the pupils
 In fact, the mental eye counts things in inner pictures which the mind forms of absent objects As soon as this visualizing is carried into the funda- mental operation known as multiplica- tion, the absurdity of the process be- comes apparent How does the expert think the product of six times seven? Does he conceive six groups of seven objects in each group and then a re- arrangement in four bundles of 10 each and two stray ones along side, to indl- cate two units aside of four tens? By no means. As soon as the eye sees the symbols 6X7, the mind thinks 42 with out conceiving the objects which these substitute symbols indicate. Collect ions of objects may be used in con- structing the multiplication table or in illustrating it's meaning, but if the mind is not emanicpated from their use in solving problems, 1t presents a genuine case of arrested development For thinking in figures or symbols is a higher grade of intellectual activity than thinking in things. In the domain of the exact sciences substitute symbols serve the same purpose as machinery in our industrial establishments Through them labor is saved and re- suits are reached that would be in- possible in lower stages of development. Tn the labor markets of the world the difference between the two grades of thinking is clearly recognized in the wages paid to the different employees The man whose work does not rise above the handicrafts and manual operations which put thought into things by the use of tools and instru- ments that can be seen and handled gets the lowest wages; whilst the men whose work is based upon computations in figures and mathematical symbols and who determine the motive power of a locomotive, the speed of vessel in a given way, or the carrying power of bridge built of given materials with given curves, receives much higher compensation.
 The development of the pupil may stop with thinking in symbols. In ward school of about 500 pupils, the principal aimed at accuracy and rapid ity in the four fundamental rules. A pupil on going from that school to an- other. was asked how far he had advanced in arithmetic Seventy 2's minute" was his reply. He had been drilled on the figure until he could add it that number of times in minute. He had almost rearhed the point where the drill was to begin upon the figure 8. At the time it was argued that the pupils would gain time in their subsequent work in mathematics and other exact sciences. Out of the entire number of pupils in that school only one ever reached the high school, and she Qlu not stay to RTduudte. Iue whole ward school was a gallery of specimens of arrested development. The drill had deadened the intelligence of the pupils, and their minds never reached the stage of thinking relations, such as lie at the basis of all science.
 Science is the knowledge of things in their causes and involves far more than the manipulation of the disits. Adding can be done by machines such as are used in banks and bureaus of the federal government. Excessive drill in number work may degrade the minds of the children to the level of machines, and their development may he arrested at the stage of thinking in symbols Where is there high school teacher that has not seen children whose development was arrested on the plane of verbal memory? Every class in geometry reveals one or more pupils who learn by heart the exact language of the demonstrations in the book. The teacher proceeds without delay to the learner from the