Psychologic Foundations of Education: An Attempt to Show the Genesis of the Higher Faculties of the Mind

William Torrey Harris

Jan 1898 · D. Appleton

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"In offering this book to the educational public, I feel it necessary to explain its point of view. Psychology is too frequently only an inventory of certain so-called "faculties of the mind," such as the five senses, imagination, conception, reasoning, etc. And teachers have been offered such an inventory under the name of "educational psychology." It has been assumed that education has to do with "cultivating the faculties." Perhaps the analogy of the body has been taken as valid for the soul, and, inasmuch as we can train this or that muscle, it is inferred that we can cultivate this or that faculty. The defect of this mode of view is that it leaves out of sight the genesis of the higher faculties from the lower ones. Muscles are not consecutive, the one growing out of another and taking its place, but they are co-ordinate and side by side in space, whereas in mind the higher faculties take the place of the lower faculties and in some sort absorb them. Conception, instead of existing side by side with perception, like the wheels of a clock, contains the latter in a more complete form of activity. Sense-perception, according to the definition, should apprehend individual things, and conception should take note of classes or species. But conception really transforms perception into a seeing of each object as a member of a class, so that the line between perception and conception has vanished, and we can not find in consciousness a mere perception of an individual object, but only that kind of perception which sees the object in its process of production. This book is an attempt to show the psychological foundations of the more important educational factors in civilization and its schools. Special stress is laid on the evolution of the higher activities or faculties, and on the method of it"--Preface. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).