Herbartianism Made Fun and Easy, Part Ten (last one): Attention!

Part Nine is here.

Chapter Ten of Herbartian Psychology, "The Doctrine of Interest," is over thirty pages long. I don't want to presume on people's interest in this book past ten posts. Some are already shuffling their feet and finding their car keys in anticipation of the benediction. But, on the other hand, it's a good chapter. So, extend the series? No. Write an overly long post? Also no. But I am almost certainly going to miss some worthwhile points, so wander over to archive.org if you'd like to really check out the last chapter.

The most important and practical idea here, especially for those interested in Charlotte Mason's methods, is about attention, both voluntary and involuntary. Most parents know how to invoke young children's involuntary attention, or distract them from something undesirable--the "ooh shiny" idea. But as children get older, we want them "to pass from the purely involuntary to the purely voluntary forms of attention....[yet] in a certain sense, the converse is true, and the function of education may be regarded as the creation of involuntary attention through voluntary attention. By deliberately concentrating our attention upon a certain class of subjects, we may build up such a powerful apperception mass that any fact connected with that mass will at once attract our attention quite irrespective of our will. This produces an alertness to certain classes of facts that may be of the utmost service in our experience, and therefore may be legitimately held up as one of the aims of education."

Adams says that "a thing must find a natural place for itself in the cosmos of the child's mind," and that "teaching consists in finding or forming suitable places among the apperception masses for new ideas." When a new fact or idea comes pinging through the air, up into the dome, and there's a magnet (apperception mass) there to receive it, it's not even a matter of will or of forcing ourselves to pay special attention to that stimulus; the idea just goes where it's supposed to go. This can work, as Adams says, in the area of a child developing skills such as walking or holding a pencil. In the beginning, that new skill takes all his interest and attention; when it's mastered, the act itself naturally becomes less interesting because he's ready to move on to something else. It's like the month or so that it's said we need to establish a new habit; when it's firmly entrenched, you can stop consciously thinking about it.

And then an interesting idea pops up. Adams quotes William James' Principles of Psychology, which would have been quite new at that time, and asks this question: if someone insults you, which do you do first?--clench your fists and contract your brows, or get angry? Don't answer too quickly, think about it for a minute. Does the emotion come first, or the physical response? Does the physical response actually give you a rationalization for becoming angry? For those of you who know Charlotte Mason's story of little Guy and his tantrums, and the other stories in that volume, doesn't that thought make sense? When Guy was about to erupt, his parents learned to watch for the physiological signs before he actually said or did anything else, and tried to divert him at that exact point before there was no going back. For Charlotte Mason, the answer to Adams' question is clear: an undesirable emotional response follows the fist-clenching and brow-contracting, so if we are in tune with our own physical symptoms, we can divert our attention. Or, possibly, that of someone else.

"Every prosy lecturer to the young who urges his dear young friends to count ten before they reply to an angry speech...is a practical supporter of Mr. James."

So there we are, back where we started. But Adams has one more point to make about this attention question, and it relates more directly to teaching.  He claims that "If a boy is allowed to maintain the attitude of inattention, nothing can prevent him from becoming inattentive." If we allow children to act bored, they'll be bored. And what do you do about that?

"In every case attention owes its direction to the emotional states that accompany mental action; in other words, attention follows interest....[but] Interest depends upon the apperception masses that can be brought into relation with the given object. Attention cannot create masses, it can only give masses a chance to rise into consciousness."

So if he knows nothing whatsoever about the subject, he'll be bored; as was said in an earlier chapter, the piece of information will quickly drop out of his consciousness. But if he is given a reason to be interested, if it connects with something he already knows, then he'll pay attention without having to be either forced or deliberately entertained. I read through this entire book about Herbartian psychology without having to be forced to do it and without falling asleep (coffee helped), because even the duller parts connected closely with something I already knew something about and had an interest in. I had a real reason for working through it. (The amusing bits like giving Fagin a teaching award were just a bonus.)

Here is something I think Charlotte Mason would have loved:

"Teachers are fond of talking about creating an interest; but this labour at least is spared them. They have not to create but only to direct interest." 

And one especially for my friend Karen:

"Now we find in wood a delightfully abundant source of carbon [which our bodies need]. Why, then, is there no run upon shavings during a time of famine? Why does sawdust not keep down the price of porridge?...The body insists upon having [its carbon] in decent oatmeal, and other legitimate forms. So with ideas." 

Adams ends the chapter, and the book, by noticing that "if we have drifted somewhat from Herbart, we have drawn nearer to Froebel. That the two opposing systems should tend to meet on common ground is no more than one acquainted with the movement of the Hegelian dialectic would expect." Hegel aside, (and Adams says that that's exactly where practically-minded teachers should put him), it seems to me that the same could be said about Herbart, at least in Adams' interpretation, and Charlotte Mason. They may not agree on all points, but it seems that there is more common ground than we once thought.

"The theory of interest does not propose to banish drudgery, but only to make drudgery tolerable by giving it a meaning. We have seen that what is interesting is by no means necessarily pleasant; but it is something that impels us to exertion....the principle of interest braces [the student] up to endure all manner of drudgery and hard work." ~~ Sir John Adams, The Herbartian Psychology Applied to Education. 

Herbartianism Made Fun and Easy: Eye of the beholder

Did you ever have an illustration for something just handed to you, so obvious that you didn't even have to think about it?

(one of the few videos I could find about The Dress that didn't include profanity)

"Perception of reality is not the same thing as reality." (SciShow, The Science of That Dress)

Chapter Nine of Herbartian Psychology, "Graphic Hypotheses," begins with something that was first mentioned in Chapter Three:

"It is true that in Reid's comfortable dogmatism we are assured that we perceive the outer world exactly as it is, and therefore we all perceive it alike. But Locke admits that the outer world may be modified in certain aspects,--colour, smell, sound, taste,--but in other more fundamental respects remain unchanged. According to this view, man is the measure of colours, smells, sounds and tastes..."

In other words, the size and shape of something may be fairly fixed and common to almost everyone; but on the other aspects, you're on your own. Referring back to his perception games in Chapter Six, Adams says, "Even a simple straight line may mean something slightly different to each new observer, and the greater the number of lines in a drawing, the greater the range within which its interpretation by different observers may vary." However, "when two persons are talking about the drawing that lies before them, there is at least something to go upon, there is a sort of least common denominator of thought, to which all the ideas of each party must be reduced before agreement can be expected." "The fact is that while our mental impressions of a given object are continually changing, they always correspond with each other, and to the given reality."

So there's room for personal interpretation, but there's also the possibility that someone doesn't understand, doesn't have the right information, is just inaccurate. Not everything is relative. The Dress may be seen as white and gold or as blue and black, but nobody has suggested that it's pink and purple, or that it's actually a ski jacket or a pair of boots.

What does this have to do with Herbartianism and education?

First and most practically, teachers can use graphic narrations to evaluate how well students understand something. Hence the value of Charlotte Mason science notebooks. Adams gives the example of student teachers reading Robinson Crusoe, who were asked to make drawings of Crusoe's tent based on the information given in the chapter. The story said that the roof was covered "with flags and large leaves of trees, like a thatch." Apparently some of them took "flags" to mean the Union Jack, and that's what they drew. They weren't stupid, just lacking information.

Second, Adams discusses the non-value of bad or misleading diagrams. If a diagram or an illustration is "an integral part of the idea it illustrates," then it can be worthwhile; otherwise, we might want to reconsider using it.  "Milton has been often praised for his reticence in not fully describing Satan. Can we say as much for the illustrators of The Pilgrim's Progress?" "There are certain things that are better left undrawn."

Third, we are given the detailed description of a "Map Robinson Crusoe's Island" contest.The Boy's Own Paper advertised the contest and offered a prize, and Adams says that over a hundred and fifty maps were submitted. The contest contained a couple of possible snags, although those weren't mentioned in the rules. The biggest one is, obviously, that not everything is given in the story, and some things must just be imagined; but the text also contains a few contradictions and impossibilities regarding the geography of the island, so even a careful mapmaker would have to deal with those. You can read more of the details in Herbartian Psychology at the archive.org site, but for now, the educational question becomes the double difficulty "of communicating an idea from one mind to another....The idea must be dissolved, as it were, in words, and then again crystallized out in the new mind....The concrete of one mind must be reduced to its abstract terms, and then rebuilt into the concrete of the new mind." It's like what happens when you beam somebody up on Star Trek.

And obviously, there's a risk of something misfiring. Words are tricky things. As was said in the last chapter, we have to make sure we're using the "same system" as the person we're talking to; a newer way to phrase it would be "on the same page." But we also have to recognize that our minds are all unique; we're not clones, and we don't see things exactly the same way. Our "apperception masses" are all different; to every lesson or situation, teachers and students all bring who they are, what they know, and their own ways of seeing. White or gold, or blue and black.

As a postscript: If the mind is a spider web, Adams says, a teacher may be seen as "a benevolent spider...whose business is not to make plain the already geometrically clear lines of the web, but to see that guiding apperception masses are so arranged that they shall lead ultimately to the centre, by the way, however crooked it may seem, that is best for each seeker." (I'm not sure whether these seekers are supposed to be younger spiders, or what.)

But oh dear, I don't like to be seen as a benevolent spider, do you? I certainly don't feel qualified to decide which way to the centre is "best for each seeker."

Herbartianism Made Fun and Easy, Part Eight: Get the point?

Part Seven is here.

"Jokes must not be judged by their power to raise a laugh. There are jokes that insist upon our laughing; others are content with a chuckle; some are satisfied with a mere gleam of intelligence. This last class includes those cases in which an idea does not belong to a system in which it is found, but which might belong to that system. There is nothing incongruous between the idea and its new environment, except the fact that this is its first appearance there." ~~ Sir John Adams, The Herbartian Psychology Applied to Education

In Part Six, I included photos from the movie My Cousin Vinny. Why is it funny when New Yorkers Vinny and Lisa drive into Alabama in a red Cadillac? When they get stuck in the mud and are puzzled over grits? Why is it funny when Lisa snaps photos of everything with her pink camera?  Because they so obviously don't belong in this small town, and they know it.

After Adams wanders around a bit in Chapter Eight with the role of jokes in the classroom, he points out that they can actually be useful: they are about trying to get the point of something.

And jokes, riddles, metaphors and similes can work forwards or backwards. You might be given the key to a poem right at the start ("it's about daisies"), and just enjoy the similes; or you might have to figure out for yourself what's being described. Like Sherlock Holmes, quoted in an earlier chapter as one who could "reason backwards," a good riddle-guesser is given "the second part of the simile and [has] to discover the first part, or [is given] the metaphor and [is] required to discover the literal truth." "The mind may have the masses given, and be set to discover the idea which will connect those masses."

For example, in a Latin translation:

"First he reads it over, picking out all the words or idioms that he knows. Each known word or phrase or reference is a centre round which ideas gather. The second step is to make some sort of hypothesis as to the general meaning of the whole passage--a description, a speech, an argument, or what-not. This hypothesis must be such as to fit into all the known words, and must fix the tone of the whole. The third process consists in working backwards from this hypothesis...just as Holmes' proceedings after a case is once started are merely a hunt for verifications."

Adams talks about different "systems" being in operation in any situation, and the confusion that happens when I'm talking about one system and you're talking about another. It's the stuff of classic comedy, as old as the "Grouse in the Gunroom" story, which draws its humour from a confusion of names and is possibly the great-great-grandfather of the Fawlty Towers episode about "putting Basil in the ratatouille." It works in My Cousin Vinny as Vinny, who's never actually tried a case before, has to figure out several unfamiliar systems at once:  the courtroom demeanor the judge expects, the rules about what the prosecutor can or can't reveal ahead of time, and what seems at times to be almost a foreign culture.

The educational point of this is that, first, teachers should try to be as clear as possible about what "system" they're using, if they want students to answer questions not only logically but along the expected line of thinking (without unintended humour from a clash of "systems"). But second, that education should teach you to, so to speak, start with a whole and figure out the parts, because...this is the Herbartian bit...each thing you already know or recognize is like an apperception mass, and that helps you make sense of new ideas. As someone commented about My Cousin Vinny, he shouldn't have thought grits were strange, since they're so much like polenta. I guess his food apperception masses just weren't functioning that day.

But Cousin Vinny ends up defending his cousin in court very logically and successfully, because he starts with one unquestionable fact: his cousin didn't commit the crime. Since he did not commit the crime (the fact), someone else did (the hypothesis), and the people who say they saw it happen must have been mistaken. Or maybe need new glasses.

Do you see the Charlotte Mason idea straining to come out there? Again, it doesn't sound very Herbartian, at least in the view we've generally held of Herbart, but here it is: learning happens when your own mind has to make the connections. Not when somebody else feeds you the answers. And that's how Cousin Vinny won his case.

Part Eight is here.

Herbartianism Made Fun and Easy, Part Seven: Education is making a life dictionary

Part Six is here.

Chapter Seven of Herbartian Psychology is one of the most original in the book, I think. I don't know how much of it is Herbart's idea and how much is John Adams', but anyway it's worth reading. You can, you know--it's right there on Archive.org.

This is how it starts: someone in the 17th century named Isaac Habrecht is quoted (by Simon Somerville Laurie in a book on Comenius) as saying that it would be handy if we could all get tickets to Noah's Ark, because then we could learn all the names of all the animals all at once, without having to go out and learn them bit by bit. (When I first read this chapter, I wondered if "Noah's Ark" might be an early English zoo or menagerie, but apparently Habrecht  did mean the original Noah's Ark.)

Adams, speaking for Herbart, says no, actually, that wouldn't work well at all. In fact, trying to learn all the animals at once, out of their normal habitats and without any other context, would be about as interesting as trying to learn all the words in the dictionary. At once. (He admits that he tried that when he was young...the dictionary, that is...but gave it up.) It's like trying to remember the names of everyone you get introduced to at a meeting or party; again, people there are away from their normal lives and contexts, "not their natural selves, yet Isaac calmly assumes that the animals in the Ark were at their ease."

Yes, the Ark idea is useful if you want to compare one animal with another. But, says Adams, "the great defect of Ark education...[is that it] tears away objects from their natural surroundings, and thus renders them meaningless; then it tries to make up for this loss of meaning by studying with great elaboration the details of the objects thus unnaturally isolated." It reminds me of Mr. Gradgrind's classroom in Dickens, where Bitzer gives the "correct" definition of a horse. Adams criticizes even "school museums," if their aim is "to save the pupil the labour of wandering about to pick up knowledge for himself." I find this fascinating in view of Adams' Herbartian leanings, with his often-repeated phrases about teachers being right on the spot to take care of the apperception masses. This sounds much closer to Charlotte Mason's insistence that the only real education is self-education--which is not a plea for unschooling, but just a different way to say that you really have to learn things for yourself. Adams talks about two dangerous fallacies in education: trying to save the pupils time, and trying to save them trouble.

"It seems eminently sensible, not to say humane, to save children as much labour as possible. But it is necessary for parents and teachers alike to remember that children are not sent to school to be saved trouble, but to be taught how to take trouble. Taking pains is one of the main things to be learnt at school."

But school museums don't bother Adams so much as teachers who are "forever preparing [a] little list of specific gravities, or genders, or constitutional changes, or words sounding the same but spelled differently. These are all little arks, each with its more or less choice selection of animals which can be thus more quickly known than they could be had the pupil to find them out for himself in their natural place." This is a wonderful image, and it can apply to so many not-so-good educational tools: reading textbooks full of facts, dates, and vocabulary lists, for example, instead of allowing that content to appear in the natural context of "many living books."

"For Isaac has not been left without successors who have marched with the times. The short cut to knowledge is not the menagerie or the museum. The Ark of Arks in education is the dictionary."

Dictionaries are bad? Doesn't every schoolroom need a dictionary? Yes, says Adams, but (pay attention!) "we must work up to the Ark, not down from it. We must go to the dictionary to find the meaning of words we have actually met; we must not go to it as to an armoury of words where we may choose what is best suited to our purpose." "The dictionary meaning may be compared to the skeleton of the full meaning; something fixed and definite, to which person who uses it adds his own special flesh and blood."

And then this is the best quote in the chapter:

"May we not, without putting an undue strain upon the words, say that education consists in the making of dictionaries?...The pupil must first learn to use his own private internal dictionary, and then learn to compare and correct it with the standard dictionary."

So a lifetime of learning, in a way, is about making our own mental dictionaries. Or encyclopedias, if you like. As adults, when we want to learn things, we wander. We poke around, we discover, we ask questions, we read, and then we add, line on line. Teachers must also allow students the privilege of wandering, of trouble, of "taking pains." When we require them to learn large amounts of freeze-dried, devitalized information, it shouldn't surprise us at all when they either resist altogether, or obediently try to learn the words without understanding the meaning. There is a right time for "arks," for charts and lists, even (I am sure of it!) for pre-printed timelines! There is definitely a time for seeing how things fit together. But we can't start there. Arks are our ending point, not our beginning.

Part Eight is here.

Herbartianism Made Fun and Easy, Part Six: On observation and interest

Part Five is here.

Quick, what colour are the bottoms of the shoes you're wearing?

If you're not wearing shoes, what colour are your socks?

How much milk is in your refrigerator?

What, exactly, does it say on the front of your computer printer?

How did you do? Don't worry if you did not pass these typical tests of observation skills, because Sir John Adams asserts (in Herbartian Psychology, Chapter VI) that those facts are at present of no consequence. There is no shame in not knowing exactly how many buttons are on a shirt.

But what is observation for? Is the habit itself more important than actual facts? Adams beats around the bush on this one:

"The observationist educationist...wants the pupil to observe everything. He writes books like that tiresome 'Eyes and No Eyes.' He tells us of one-eyed dervishes who see more with their one eye than most of the rest of the world do with two....he points to the marvellous deeds of Sherlock Holmes."

Then he has the temerity to poke fun at nature walks.

"The pupil is supposed to go along with all his senses on the alert. He is to observe the note of the skylark, the scent of the violets, the form of the clouds, the colour of the primroses, the smoothness of the grass, the springiness of the turf. he is to amble along with all the Five Gateways of knowledge wide open, and we know that the mouth is one of them." 

So what's wrong with taking children outdoors to take it all in? The Herbartian answers:

"Interest and knowledge...mutually determine and react upon each other. In view of this, the teacher's first duty is to ascertain the contents of the mind of his pupils, and then to bring within their reach material specially prepared for those minds to react upon. Children can observe only what their apperception masses are prepared to act upon; to all else they are literally blind, deaf, callous."

What do you think Charlotte Mason would say to that? My guess is that she might partially agree, because I don't think her intent in nature walks, or anything else of that sort, was that they should be entirely random. Of course going anywhere is more interesting if you are at least somewhat prepared, if you've been given something ahead of time to look for or look at. Think about an art gallery, Westminster Abbey, a fort, a bird sanctuary. The more real interest and information you bring with you, the more likely it is that you're going to find the visit worthwhile. Think of crowds of children being dragged through museums, with nothing more on their minds than getting a day off school. Of course it's a waste of time. (I'm not so sure about the "specially prepared" material; I think that's where CM and Herbart part company.) You can stare at the night sky with nothing more than the idea that it's very big and that there are a lot of stars, but how much richer your experience would be if you knew a little astronomy. You start to form a relationship with what's out there, make "sense of those first-born affinities."

Back to Herbartian Psychology: Adams then spends several pages on the methods of Sherlock Holmes, and plays a little game with perspective (like those puzzles where the answer is "an elephant on his back in a swimming pool"). What it comes down to, he says, both in what-do-you-see puzzles and in Sherlock Holmes-type stories, is often not observation or even deduction, but specialized knowledge. There is something that the writer or the artist knows, that you don't know, and that makes the whole thing not 100% fair. It's like those maddening Encyclopedia Brown books where the solution is always something like "Encyclopedia knew that those sorts of nickels were not made until 1960, so therefore the dealer was lying."

It helps to be observant, but it also helps to have knowledge, and the Herbartian will say that you can't put knowledge in a mind unless there's already an apperception mass there to stick it to. Charlotte Mason said that it was important to begin with what you know.

Adams ends the chapter with a paragraph that sounds very CMish:

"To cultivate observation, then, is not to train the eye, the ear, the hand, to extreme sensitiveness, but rather to work up well-organized knowledge within the mind itself. If we desire minute observation in a definite direction, we must cultivate special knowledge to correspond. If we wish to encourage general observation, we can only succeed by cultivating wide interests. The reciprocal interaction of interest and knowledge in relation to external facts, is what ought truly to be called observation."

How that well-organized knowledge gets into the mind is another issue, but the point that you have to know something in order to see something or to learn something is well made.

Photos from My Cousin Vinny. 

Part Seven is here.

Herbartianism Made Fun and Easy, Part Five: Don't teach bad things.

Part Four is here.

"There is a prevailing impression amongst teachers, and particularly amongst those who are connected with what is sometimes called a liberal education, that it really does not matter very much what one learns. The culture comes all the same. It is not the what, it is the how." ~~ John Adams, The Herbartian Psychology

There's a shocker for you. Adams is not agreeing with this or saying that it represents Herbartian education; he's refuting it.

Yes, CMers, you may well shake your heads over that one. Isn't that exactly what we have said that Herbartianism is? Does Adams perhaps have it wrong? Did the so-called "Herbartian" teachers miss out on something in their courses?

"In the present war of competing subjects, the main point of discussion is: Which gives the best result in culture,--which is best fitted to cultivate the mind? Classics, Science, Mathematics--each claims pre-eminence. It is left for the Herbartian to sweep aside all claims alike, and raise the preliminary question: Do any of them train the mind at all; can the mind be trained? The question resolves itself into the problem of the possibility of what is called formal education; that is, the possibility of training a mind irrespective of the materials upon which it is exercised."

Adams gives the example of three educated men who have specialized in different areas. He asks how they would respond to particular common questions and problems, for instance in finding a lost will (certainly something we come up against every day, no?). How would each one approach the task? Who would be the most successful? Adams, amusingly, backs the classically-educated man "because his studies have brought to him greater acquaintance with human nature," so therefore "he has a bigger and better-arranged lost-will apperception mass." For the Herbartians, those apperception masses are the key to educational success.

And then Adams' chapter on "Formal Education" takes an unexpectedly funny turn, as the question of potentially useful subject matter moves from a formal education based on, say, cricket, to Mr. Fagin's School for Young Criminals. Fagin, according to Adams, should get the teacher-of-the-year award. He's hands-on, he's concrete, he knows just how to get a lesson across, he can deal with reluctant students; and Bill Sikes knows how to present a good object-lesson too (involving a pistol). So does it really matter what the subject is, as long as the student develops his mind? Herbart, via Adams, says yes, it certainly does.

"Given the same first-class mind, we may turn out an Artful Dodger or a James Watt; given the same third-rate mind, and we may develop it into a Bill Sikes or a more than respectable artisan."

 Check this out, towards the end of the chapter:

"It is enough if it has been shown that the choice of subjects is important; that a subject must be chosen for its own sake, not for the sake of its general effect in training the mind. This is no base utilitarian conclusion...So far from opposing culture, the Herbartian theory is the strongest supporter of the fine arts and belles-lettres. The increase in intension and extension of interest is the gauge of the development of a soul. We must lose ourselves in our subjects, not seek to keep them outside of us."

So what about that idea that an education in the finer points of crime would at least serve to sharpen a child's wits, to develop perhaps an interest in chemistry or electronics, perhaps even to give him a sense of professional pride? To bring this into the current century, is it admirable to become a genius computer hacker, or to be a teacher of such?

"Crime as an educational organon is condemned, not because it fails to develop intelligence, but because it develops it in a wrong direction. We cancel Fagin's [teaching] certificate not because he is a bad teacher, but because he teaches bad things."

Herbartianism Made Fun and Easy, Part Four: If it's to be, it's up to...?

Part Three is here.

"On Froebelian principles it is certainly very irrational to hang a master because his pupil has committed a murder; but if Herbart is to be followed, the case for the master is not so clear....since the master can choose the ideas to be presented, and can modify and arrange them, there seems to be a prima facie case, for those who wish to hang the teachers of bad men." ~~ Sir John Adams, The Herbartian Psychology

A Froebelian teacher is "but a benevolent superintendent of the process of development which he allows to follow its own course." But if you want to be a Herbartian, you have to consider the idea that doing nothing for a child may be as harmful as doing something wrong. Adams goes on in this vein, saying that a teacher could be held directly responsible for the character of the adult she turns out, for either his success or failure. That's an awful burden to put on one human being.  But in fact, he says, it's virtually impossible for any adult, whether teacher or parent, to dominate a child's mind to that extent; really, you would have to be breathing down his neck 24/7, from birth to maturity.

It reminds me of a Ruth Rendell novel, The Crocodile Bird, which spends the first few chapters telling about a mother who, for reasons of her own, raises her daughter in isolation, away from all contemporary influences and media. The books they read together are all pre-twentieth-century. You might think that, farfetched as the story is, it does give an example of what Adams says is impossible: one person as "sole influence." You could quibble even with that and say that Shakespeare and the other classic authors were actually outside influences, but it doesn't matter much because even this mother's best-laid plans get thwarted. Her daughter accidentally turns on a television set in their employer's house, and it's all downhill from there.

Anyway...so, according to Adams, Herbartian educators may not shrink from their perceived responsibility for being The Ones to develop children's minds, but at least they don't want to turn out machines or monsters. Still, says, Adams, even if teachers do not play Dr. Frankenstein but just work very hard at supplying the proper ideas at the proper times, why doesn't our advanced education turn out adults who are all "honest, true, happy and clever?"

Oh. Well, says Adams, teachers don't always know the proper ideas or the proper times. We can believe in the theory without being, as he puts it, omniscient. Besides (and this takes up a good part of the chapter), what about the problem that some students are just smarter than others? Or is that just a fallacy? And are they born with intelligence, or is it environment? You've heard it all before, but the Adams/Herbart answer may surprise you.

"Tastes, dispositions, and will being eliminated, it is clear that what is left may be called, in a popular sense at least, pure intellect. That this intellect, considered apart from all the other elements of the soul, is equal among all men can hardly be denied, is hardly worth denying. When the process of elimination has been completed, we find that the intellect we have left does not amount to very much; to no more, indeed, than the simple undifferentiated being which represents the soul of the Herbartian Psychology."

And again:

"The conclusion of the whole matter is that we do not know whether all souls are equal at birth, and that after all it does not matter; for by the time the pupil makes his appearance in school, his soul is different from the other souls in his class. On the other hand, there is a sort of common lowest level of thinking. So far as we can reduce thinking to what is described in the old-fashioned Formal Logic Books, our minds may be regarded as equal." 

The first quote may leave us thinking that Herbart, via Adams, really doesn't think much of children's innate abilities (the Froebelian educator quoted in Part One said that too). You might even read it to say that we're all rather stupid until the teacher gets her hands on us. But the second quote says that, first, we do all have something unique that we're born with or that develops in the first few years of life; but that our learning processes, fast or slow, all follow the same patterns, and it really doesn't matter if you read early or late, or whether you take a long time to learn the times tables. This supports the idea of mastery learning: you get an "A" when you've completed the work or learned the skill, no matter how many times you have to try or how long it takes. But here is the point: that the same actual experience of learning will apply to everyone, whether we're slow in one area or quick in another. Though we may disagree about how much influence and indoctrination is acceptable, we can at least see how the principles of teaching and learning are true for each child; and that education means working with the way humans are made, not against it.

And on that point, Johann Friedrich Herbart and Charlotte Mason agree.

Part Five is here.

Herbartianism Made Fun and Easy, Part Three: Like a surgeon

Part One is here. Part Two is here.

After his previous zinger about the omniscience and omnipotence of the teacher, Adams continues:

"It is difficult to overestimate the importance of this view from the teacher's standpoint. If the mind must wait till the right idea comes along, what an enormous importance must be attached to the theory of apperception masses. If the idea that the soul ought to choose is not there to choose, what can the soul do but choose amiss? Here Herbartianism appears to great advantage. During the process of education when the soul happens to be on the lookout for a certain idea, the teacher, knowing what is going on in the soul, and the laws according to which its mechanism work, can readily increase the presentative activity of the idea in question and send it right up to the dome..."

Do you notice any, perhaps, slightly fuzzy logic in that paragraph? This is what strikes me: that there is one and only one idea out there today, or at this minute, that you are supposed to grab onto. Like a surgeon asking for a particular retractor or Mr. Fixit asking for a certain size of drill bit, there is one and only one choice, with implied disaster if the tool is missing or you take the wrong one. You've missed your chance at the brass ring; your life will never be the same.

In response, I will quote Colonel Potter:

"Pony Pucks."

Learning is not a midway game of Lucky Duck, where you either win a prize or go home with nothing. And doesn't it make it sound like your chances are even slimmer if it all depends on whether a teacher is standing by, ready to fire the right idea at you at just the right second?

Charlotte Mason suggested that education should put the focus on the student rather than the teacher, the learning rather than the teaching. That is, not in the above sense where the hypothetical teacher seems to hover like an anxious ICU nurse, attention fixated on the student's mental vital signs; but in the sense of letting the child take what he needs from the feast that is spread. Yes, you can say with Herbart that what he ingests may join his apperception masses and head up to the top of the dome. But the point is that there are many good ideas, many opportunities to learn, and most of them won't come around just once. If you choose an apple instead of a banana for lunch today, you probably haven't missed your only chance ever to taste bananas.

Photo of antique surgical tools found here.

Part Four is here.

Herbartianism Made Fun and Easy, Part Two: Let's talk about a sheep

Part One is here.

In the Part One post, I mentioned that Sir John Adams (the author of The Herbartian Psychology) saw Froebelian education as the opposite of Herbartian. He says that Froebel brought education as far as recognizing the importance of the individual learner; but that his theory lacked any real means of explaining or working with that individuality, that it didn't go far enough. "Almost every teacher thinks that when he has shown a thing to his class, he has done the highest, the best, the ultimate, in teaching....[but] the average child does not see what the master is showing him...[it] does not ensure that teacher and pupil shall speak of the same idea, when they talk of a sheep."

Adams says, "[Froebelian theory] suggests the immense importance of knowing [the student]; which is much, [but] It leaves to others the task of supplying this knowledge." (emphasis mine)  Yes, we see that each child is unique, that each one learns a little differently; but we aren't given much help in knowing what to do about that.

So here we have a problem set up, with Adams' assumption that Herbart found an answer or at least came closer to it. Adams says that so far "we have failed to explain ideas by the mind; how about explaining the mind by ideas?" What if the ideas are like critters we should be hunting down, and the mind (or soul, in Herbart's terms) is more like a ranch or a zoo where they can be corralled?

Herbart said that ideas "have a vitality all their own"; that they are the only thing that can affect the soul (mind); and that when "a soul has reacted upon an idea, it can no longer be the same soul that it was before." "The ideas really make up the mind," in the same way as it is the writing that holds the meaning, not the paper or the computer screen. But if Herbart (via Adams) was looking for practical results rather than theory, what might these ideas suggest to the teacher? Is the teacher then a sort of cowpoke, rounding up and organizing all the stray little dogies? A question that doesn't seem to bother Adams, at this point, is asking who really owns the "critters," or has final say over which ones come in or where they belong.

Adams' interpretation of Herbart in response to this is a little different from what CMers might assume. "The popular notion is that knowledge has to be carefully prepared beforehand by the teacher, and then judiciously stuffed into a suitable place in the pupil's mind, a sort of mental left-luggage office, there to be left till called for." If that is our only understanding of Hebartianism, and it might well be, then according to Adams we have missed something. One of my reasons for writing these posts is to try and be fair to Herbart; he wasn't always wrong.

But though Adams is a most genial guide to Herbart, he occasionally throws in a jaw-dropping pronouncement and then moves on. One such is this (page 73):

"On this view, the function of the teacher becomes clear; for, unlike most Psychologies, Herbart's has an obvious and immediate bearing upon education. The soul is in the teacher's hands, inasmuch as the apperception masses can be made and modified by the teacher....Every idea in that little head is a force with which the teacher must reckon. His first duty is obviously to discover as much as possible about the contents of John's soul. Only so far as he succeeds in this is he able to understand the reaction of John's soul upon any given idea. The very inevitableness of the soul's reaction is the teacher's chief aid. Here he finds the fulcrum for his lever. The rest of his work is actual building up, edification."

It's at that point where we start to see the true gap between Herbart and Charlotte Mason. Do we want to let even a well-intentioned teacher pry into our heads? CM is about not only recognizing that we have our own thoughts, but that they are between us and God; that we have the right and the responsibility to corral our own critters.

Part Three is here.

Herbartianism Made Fun and Easy, Part One

Here's an opening to a post which is sure to scare most people off:

Most of what I have read about Herbartian educational psychology has been through the lens of Charlotte Mason. I've posted what I know about him, and some still-useful links. I've even written an impertinent story about Herbartian teachers.  But it's only recently that I've had the chance to dig a little deeper and find out not only where CM and Herbart clashed, but where they agreed.

And you're probably wondering why you should even care about that.

Life is short. We're busy homeschooling or doing whatever else we do. Sir John Adams (1857-1934) says the same thing, at the beginning of The Herbartian Psychology Applied to Education (1899). Teachers, as he knows, don't have a lot of time. They also like practical things they can use. They may be forced to read a book on Herbartian theory as part of an education course, or maybe they are just keeners who want to be able to talk educationese, but in any case they are probably not interested in Herbart per se, they are interested in teaching and in finding out if Herbart has any useful information that applies to them. So Adams' book is the late-Victorian equivalent of a Dummies' Guide to Johann Friedrich Herbart.

In Adams' view, at the turn of the last century educators could be either Froebelian or Herbartian. He confessed to being Herbartian, not so much because Herbart converted him but because that's what his educational sense told him was true. What is the difference between them? An American (Froebelian) educator of the same period wrote this:  "The great difference between Froebel and Herbart may be found in the difference of appreciation of children and child life. Herbart's greatest mistake was his lack of recognition of the instincts and spontaneous activities of the child. To fail to understand the child is a fundamental failure.To fail to appreciate the action of the child's mind up to the school age, is a great mistake." Froebel just sounds nicer, doesn't he? Besides, he started kindergartens, and they're nice and friendly and child-centered.

So why bother with Herbart? Why did Adams find himself in that camp? What do Herbart and Adams have to offer present-day CMers?

Herbart is all about ideas: where they come from, how we access them, sort them, prioritize them; and what the best way is of acquiring more of them, or, if we're teaching, getting more of the important ones into the minds of students. He has a couple of images that he likes to use. One, familiar to those who have read Charlotte Mason's criticism, is that ideas like to form themselves into clumps, or "apperception masses." In a way, it's like "science of relations": you can make more of information that connects with something you already know, and if there is no prior connection, the idea is meaningless and sinks into oblivion. Adams suggests, as an example, "hiro." It's a nonsense word, or at least one that, to most people, seems meaningless (it's actually a Mohawk word). No connection, no reason to remember it, at least until he tells you how the word became part of the French and then the English language. After that, the word has an "'apperception mass" to hang on to. For instance, I didn't even have to go back and look that word up in Adams' book; I actually remembered it because of his explanation.

The other Herbartian image is that of your conscious mind being a sort of dome shape, with ideas, that, once they're admitted, go floating up through the air (with their proper apperception masses), jostling for position towards the top of the dome. The floor of the dome is like the threshold of your consciousness; there are many ideas below that threshold at any one time, and they go back and forth between the levels. The biggest apperception masses, and the ideas spending the most time near the top, represent your main interests. Adams, for example, had a great big apperception mass labelled "educational theory" that took up a large part of his mind space, a large part of his time.

Charlotte Mason appears to have had no big argument with the idea of ideas, even of their needing to find other compatible ideas to hang out with. She says that she thinks Herbart's mind theory is more lacking in the application of habit: you have the ideas, but what do you do with them? She also has a different and important thought about how ideas get in there in the first place, and particularly the teacher's role in that. But so far, so good?

Part Two is here.

I have to throw this one in: process vs. product in teaching

"It is true that some of the kindergarten paper work and drawings are in themselves pretty enough, in their childish way, to deserve attention on their own merits. But with regard to such objects two things must be observed. First, that the beauty of the result has no relation whatever to the value of the work which produces it. Secondly and chiefly, that a consideration of the results in themselves gives rise to a strong temptation to neglect the most profitable ways of attaining results, and to adopt easy methods of producing striking but uneducative results." ~~ Sir John Adams, The Herbartian Psychology

Take that, Ontario EQAO testing, and all the rest of your kind.

Quote for the day: A Double Accusative

"'Verbs of teaching govern two accusatives, one of the person, another of the thing; as, Magister Johannem Latinam docit--the master taught John Latin.'  Thus far the Latin rudiments. When the master seeks to apply the principle in real life, he finds that he can manage his double accusative only by the possession of a double knowledge; he must know Latin; and he must know John. Not so long ago...to know Latin was regarded as all-sufficient. John was either taken for granted or held to be not worth knowing." ~~ Sir John Adams, The Herbartian Psychology

From the antiques market

We went to the antiques market, for some fun on Family Day. A lot of the booths had special sales on, so the place was pretty crowded. Ponytails bought records. Lydia found a teacup. Mr. Fixit bought a Polaroid camera. I was searching for one book but didn't find a copy there; but I did bring home a 1940's Pilgrim's Progress, and Herbartian Psychology by John Adams. You can read Herbartian Psychology on archive.org; it's a book that Charlotte Mason quotes in Chapter VII of her Philosophy of Education.

And two of us won free coffees when we "rolled up the rim to win" at Tim Horton's afterward. So all in all it was a worthwhile trip!

Education is a discipline: to a point.

"That the discipline of the habits of the good life, both intellectual and moral, forms a good third of education, we all believe. The excess occurs when we imagine that certain qualities of character and conduct run out, a prepared product like carded wool, from this or that [i.e. from any one particular] educational machine, mathematics or classics, science or athletics; that is, when the notion of the development of the so-called faculties takes the place of the more physiologically true notion of the formation of intellectual habits." ~~ Charlotte Mason, "A Master Thought," School Education

We can make the educational mistake of thinking of and treating students as machines or as objects, as computers to be programmed or clay to be shaped.

But we can equally make the mistake of thinking of education itself as a sort of machine. If we put in the right ingredients, plug it in, crank it up, out comes the product, whatever flavour we want.

What, more explicitly, is this mistake that Charlotte Mason says we might be making? First, she says that a certain amount of discipline is obvious and necessary; fine, we agree. But when the belief creeps in that certain subjects are important because they create disciplined thinking, and when we think that the discipline of studying mathematics or science will strengthen not only those lagging parts of our brains but also the lagging parts of our character--there we have the big misconception.  Practicing the discipline of one subject area will not make you an overall good thinker, or a better person. It will not keep you from building a little cat door for the little cat and a big cat door for the big cat.

One night when Pa was greasing the traps he watched Black Susan come in, and he said:"There was once a man who had two cats, a big cat and a little cat." 

Laura and Mary ran to lean on his knees and hear the rest. 

"He had two cats," Pa repeated, "a big cat and a little cat. So he made a big cat-hole in his door for the big cat. And then he made a little cat-hole for the little cat." 

There Pa stopped.

"But why couldn't the little cat--”" Mary began. 

"Because the big cat wouldn't let it," Laura interrupted. 

"Laura, that is very rude. You must never interrupt," said Pa."But I see," he said, "that either one of you has more sense than the man who cut the two cat-holes in his door."

The Herbartian belief, in Charlotte Mason's day, was that certain studies would develop "the faculties." Mason argued that the human brain showed no evidence of such faculties, but that what neuroscientists were beginning to see was the physiological effect of mental habits. Neuroscience continues to advance today, and with fascinating results, for instance with stroke victims whose brains demonstrate an amazing ability to create new patterns and habits.

So as Mason says right after the passage that I quoted, there's sometimes a very fine distinction, but a very great difference in effect, between two types of thought and practice.  Like the right amount of yeast that raises a bowlful of dough, discipline is a necessary part of education.  But only in its proper proportion, used for its proper function.

(The pizza dough story is from The Daily Mail.)