the class knew what it meant to make a living," and the teacher discovered the fact by an accidental question. In the case of the response of enjoying a poem, we have even greater difficulty in getting the "inside facts" of the pupil's mental reactions; he may be merely memorizing it, or thinking "I wonder when the bell will ring," or, worse, feeling more or less disgusted with the whole matter. In the case of effective problem solving, we are often at a loss to know whether a pupil is really actively searching in his mind for suggestions and carefully weighing each, or whether he is merely voicing the first idea that pops into his head, or lazily sitting back and thinking "I wonder who will answer this one."

Artistic teacher understands pupil's mental responses and means of changing them.— A skilled teacher must, therefore, be an artist in understanding children's ways of thinking, feeling, and expressing. She must be able to infer skillfully from a pupil's words and outer attitude what are the inside facts. Having inferred his mental condition, she must know just what cue to give, what question to ask, what information to add, what praise or criticism to bestow, in order to start the pupil's mental responses in the desired direction. In order to do this, she must understand the conditions which determine a pupil's response to any situation. These conditions will be taken up in separate chapters. The first condition, namely, the influence of the pupil's previous experience, will be taken up in the next chapter. For a summary of the present chapter, the first on children's learning processes, the reader may return to page 157.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

The references marked with an asterisk are especially recommended to beginners.

* 1. FREEMAN, F. N. How Children Learn. (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1917.) Read the entire volume for an excellent elementary account of all topics in Part II of this text.

* 2. THORNDIKE, E. L. The Principles of Teaching. (A. G. Seiler, 1906.) Pp. 39-41. The discussion printed above is largely a paraphrase of these excellent pages in Thorndike's text.

3. THORNDIKE, E. L. Educational Psychology, Briefer Course. (Teachers College, Columbia University, 1915.) Part II, on the psychology of learning. Technical discussions for advanced students.

CHAPTER VII

BUILDING ON PUPILS' PAST EXPERIENCES

THE DOCTRINE OF APPERCEPTION

Main points of the chapter.1. Varied interpretations of words illustrate the influence of past experiences in determining pupils' responses.

2. Children's correct statements often disguise their real ignorance.

3. Scientific investigations of the contents of children's minds upon entering school reveal their vast ignorance of common objects. 4. Rousseau proposed to correct the parrotlike recitations of meaningless words by introducing object teaching, nature study, measuring, etc.

5. Efforts to carry out these reforms, however, soon degenerated into memorizing books about objects.

6. Even the kindergarten ascribed to children ability to understand abstract ideas that never entered the heads of most of them.

7. Properly taught home geography, which uses local situations, illustrates giving children adequate real experiences. Modeling in sand and clay is widely used to make surface features vivid. * 8. Teachers need thorough specialized training to teach realities instead of meaningless words.

To determine how past experiences influence present responses. The preceding chapter described the way pupils learn through their own mental responses and reactions. It closed with the fact that artistic teachers must be quite skilled in guessing just what are the inner mental responses of each pupil, and in understanding the conditions which determine and influence these responses. The first of these determining conditions will be discussed in this chapter; namely, the influence of the pupil's past experience.

Examples of mental responses to "bay,' bay," "Belgium," "abolition." If we examine a simple illustration from ordinary life we can easily see how a person's past experience influences his response to some present situation. For example, notice what idea or mental response is aroused in your own mind when you now read the word "bay." Then imagine the different mental interpretations that would probably be aroused by the same word in the minds of each of the following persons: a horse dealer, a carpenter, a boy studying geography, a domestic-science student. In your own case and in each of the others it is easy to explain the particular response made by referring to past experiences. Differences in emotional responses to the same word or situation are also partially explained by differences in past experiences; for example, the word "Belgium" now arouses in Americans an entirely different type of feeling from that aroused before the experiences of the Great War. Similarly, during our Civil War the emotional responses aroused in Northerners were quite different from those aroused in Southerners by the words "Lincoln," "Jefferson Davis," "abolition," "states' rights."

Teacher builds on pupils' old experiences and provides necessary new ones. When we turn to the mental responses of children in school, we see the pedagogical significance of such examples. Since the same words may arouse different ideas and feelings in the minds of different persons, depending upon their past experiences, it is very important that a teacher make sure that each pupil does interpret the words used in the ways that she desires. In order to do this, she must understand clearly his past experiences and build her instruction upon these. If he has had the necessary experience she must connect the new teaching with it; if he lacks the necessary real experiences to arouse the proper ideas or feelings, these real experiences must be provided. This is known as the principle of apperception.

Words used as meaningless jingle. Counting. One of the most common violations of the principle of apperception in teaching is found in the tendency to assume that children can count because they can say "one, two, three, four," etc.

Story of the above picture.

The story of this picture is well represented in the following sentences composed by the kindergarten children of The University of Chicago Elementary School and written down by their teacher.

OUR MOTHER HEN AND HER CHICKS

We went to the grocery store and bought a barrel and carried it home. Then we made a nest of straw. The next day Miss Gordon brought us a mother hen and thirteen eggs.

We named her "Brownie Red Head." She is a big hen with feathers on her legs.

We put the eggs in the nest and put the hen on them. We set her April 7, 1916. She sat three weeks. We fed her corn and gave her water. Five chickens hatched on the 27th and the next day the rest hatched. The little chickens were all yellow. Some had black spots on them. We have to feed them every day.