The Farmington times. (Farmington, St. Francois County, Mo.) 1905-1926, 1910-02-03

Ire ms Is great advantage In abstract Thinking II
Is however distinct hndrance In apprecatjon NJ cl
ture and art II wish to train our children 70 ,tii
accurately and ahstracty we must train tbom no tho
SCHOOLS evidently are now training them in the dlrec.
tion Of verbal imagery. IT, however we wish IN do.
Yeop artists poets men Of letters inventors and those
with technical skill in the various professions o ret
see to 1t that this imagery is not ost for :,
this loss takes place II will mean tremondo,,, -
disaster for
The experiments further showed that those children
who thought in visual terms were best abIo IN NOM
orze material with visual and that those who
thought IN auditory or motor terms able 70
learn material with auditory or motor content This
of course means far the application Of results to
school work Is concerned that the material which the
child learns must be In some way adapted To his dea
uohai type II the best results are to be accomplished
This, perhaps is not vital fact with the average
child who has many ways It may be- in which he can
imagine his experience but there are ALWAYS I'm every
schooroom numbers Of exceptional children who are
very slow to get on in certain fields and who ncverthe
less IRE far from being mental detectives To take a
concrete Illustration, there children who have great
difficulty In learning to read and yet who are often
bright In other school subjects II is probable that such
children have not developed the type OF verbal visual
imagery The printed word fails TO carry It's proper
Significance Such child obviously must be treated
differently from the average individual In the first
place, he may be helped in his reading by being in.
structed to spell and pronounce words The method
Of showing him words and having him graap them as
visual sgns will be hopeless method procedure in
his case. Further the child may be aided by n sys.
There Is ample evidence that children can be trained
In any type Of imagery and is the Of educa
ton to that those who defective In an essential
type are trained to overcome this defect
We cannot think for moment of demanding the
sort Of thing from the child eyesght is poor
that demand from the child normal visual acuitv
1t IL just foolish to expect the child who defective
in certain ideationa type to do the work of normal
child is expect the child who is defective in his
visual sensibty to accomplish the same results under
the conditions that the child of normal sensiblty
accompishes.
Another important problem which has been under
taken by the psychological laboratory at the university
ia to discover the most advantageous conditions besides
those relating to the deationa type. under which GER
tain kinds of school material may be memorized. At
the outset of such investigation the psychologist Is
confronted with the difficulty of selecting the sort of
material for memorlzing which will be sufficiently uni
form to be tried many children and the same child
ut various times is quite evident that II we use the
ordinary materials Of the schoolroom as the child
has had In his reading, geography and history ROOM
that this material will not be of the uniformity desired
1t to avoid this difficulty that the psychologist Eb.
binghaus, nearly 25 years ago tried memory expert.
ment in which he used for material nonsense syabes
that u.s. certain syabes which could be pronounced and
which yet had significance syllabes, for example
like secdo2hux. Here have relatively uniform
material that has, for the part little or no sgnh.
canoe
Using this kind of material several thousand school