Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/750

678 of the mind, the ability to exercise which keenly and readily was the thing most to be coveted in life, it was a natural result that mathematics should have formed the backbone of school studies. And since we are still in that period when reasoning is regarded by most people as the highest attribute of man, we of necessity must have arithmetic as the most important subject in the elementary school curriculum.

It will not be possible within the limits imposed upon us here to examine in detail the theories of this "faculty" psychology: it will suffice to say, although perhaps in a dogmatic manner, that in our own day students of the mind are breaking away from these old notions, and establishing what seems to be a much more rational and simple system of psychology; and following upon this there must come a different appraisal of educational materials, and a consequent change in the subjects taught in our schools. To be very brief, one important general conception of modern educational psychology is that the mind is a unit, and develops as a unity. As an inference from this it can be seen that the material of instruction in the school must be chosen with a view to train the whole individual—his perceiving, remembering, imagining, judging, and reasoning faculties, so called, and not any one of them singled out from all the others. And not only must this material train one intellectually as a unity, but it must affect him emotionally and volitionally as well—that is, it must develop character. We have had in the past, as every one knows, a kind of educational philosophy which declared that there should be one subject to train one faculty, another subject another faculty, and so on throughout the list of faculties and subjects; and there should also and particularly be special material to cultivate the emotions and furnish proper incentives to the will. The error of this sort of thing must be plainly apparent to any one who will study the problem concretely, by observing and interpreting the activities of his own mind, and looking into the various types of mind in his environment. If one will become introspective for a little time he will see that his perceptions are not divorced from his memory and reason along the lines that he is perceiving; and he will also discover that what he perceives, remembers, or reflects upon has its effect upon his emotions and will in leading him to some sort of action, immediate or in the future. One never sees a physician who is keen and ready in his perceptions of things relating to the practice of medicine who can not and does not remember, reason, and imagine equally well in regard to those matters; nor is his character, his personality free from the shaping influences of his system of thought. The same may, of course, be said of the lawyer, the merchant, or any other type of individual. The truthful view of the case seems to be that