Nature Study: Its Psychology, Method and Matter (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

Inhaltsangabe

Excerpt from Nature Study: Its Psychology, Method and Matter

The process of remaking experience is inseparably united with expression. This process is from the vague to the definite, from real to ideal. This latter expression is apt to be misinterpreted unless restated in other words. We mean by it here that education is a process by which the individual becomes more and more independent of material things as a stimulus to thought and in expressing thought. Thought and expression cannot be divorced. The power of expres sion, though conditioned by thought, is yet the means by which thought is made definite, and is thus communicated to others.

The growth of mind is a process of analysis followed by synthesis. A child should not be allowed to analyze anything without following up that mental process by an act of synthesis, i. E., expression. The expression is the visible Sign by which we can value the thought, and it determines the nature and the extent of analysis of the material of study.

This correlation of analysis and synthesis is so fundamentally important that the psychology of any subject is necessarily dependent upon it. A basket may be analyzed and if so, one should be made like it. Natural objects are analyzed, often the only possible synthesis is a drawing of the object, but this form of expression is possible to any great extent, only after eight years of age. To determine the extent of the analysis which may be made at any age, we have only to determine the power of expression possible at that age. A child is quite able to analyze, that is, to tear to pieces, mechanically, a delicate flower, but if he is unable to represent this analysis, either by a drawing, by a model, or by words, the analysis is a waste of time; nay, worse, it gives the destructive bent of the mind an impetus, which, unbalanced as it is by constructive ability, can lead only to mental dissipation.

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