The psychology of learning / by Edward L. Thorndike.

  • Edward Thorndike
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The psychology of learning / by Edward L. Thorndike. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    “These identical elements may be in the stuff, the data concerned in the training, or in the attitude, the method taken with it. The former kind may be called identities of sub- stance and the latter, identities of procedure. “Identity of Substance.—Thus special training in the ability to handle numbers gives an ability useful in many acts of life outside of school classes because of identity of sub- stance, because of tbe fact that the stuff of the world is so often to be numbered and counted. The data of the scientist, the grocer, the carpenter and the cook are in important features the same as the data of the arithmetic class. So also the ability to speak and write well in classroom exercises in English influences life widely because home life, business and pro- fessional work are all in part talking and writing. . . . “Identity of Procedure.—The habit acquired in a labora- tory course of looking to see how chemicals do behave, instead of guessing at the matter or learning statements about it out of a book, may make a girl’s methods of cooking or a boy’s methods of manufacturing more scientific because the attitude of distrust of opinion and search for facts may so possess one as to be carried over from the narrower to the wider field. Difficulties in studies may prepare students for the difficulties of the world as a whole by cultivating the attitudes of neglect or discomfort, ideals of accomplishing what one sets out to do, and the feeling of dissatisfaction with failure.” [Thorndike, ’06, pp. 243-245, passim] “Mental discipline is the most important thing in edu- cation, but it is specific, not general. The ability developed by means of one subject can be transferred to another subject only in so far as the latter has elements in common with the former. Abilities should be developed in school only by means of those elements of subject-matter and of method that are common to the most valuable phases of the outside en- vironment. In the high school there should also be an effort to work out general concepts of method from the specific methods used.” [Heck, ’09, Edition of Ti, p. 198] “. . . No study should have a place in the curriculum for which this general disciplinary characteristic is the chief recommendation. Such advantage can probably be gotten in some degree from every study, and the intrinsic values of each study afford at present a far safer criterion of edu-
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