Errors in school : their causes and treatment / by John Adams.

  • John Adams
Date:
1927
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Errors in school : their causes and treatment / by John Adams. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    study them merely from the natural history stand¬ point that is content to describe them and classify them. We must go farther, and try to get rid of them. From one point of view, we may be said to have made a bad beginning by starting with the howler. For this form of error is treated from the aesthetic side, and has a popular appeal that is entirely lacking when we come to treat of the ordinary error that is occurring every day in school, and has nothing to commend it to the practising teacher, unless he can get up an interest in it from the professional side. The howler makes an ex¬ cellent opening, but the plain error must form the groundwork of our treatment. Teachers are here liable to a temptation to which doctors, and in particular psycho-analysts, are apt to yield. They are inclined to gloat over symptoms, and to neglect what the public regard as the doctor’s first duty—the cure of the patient. If a doctor comes across a perfect specimen of some disease, one that exemplifies all the characteristics described in “the books,” he has a professional joy that impels him to call in some of his professional brethren to enjoy with him this perfect sample. So the ordinary writer on psycho-analysis finds himself so absorbed in the wonderful way in which a particular case exemplifies his theories, that he is inclined to gloat over it, and work up this aspect, and forget to tell his readers whether the patient recovered or not. In the same way, when teachers get together they sometimes exchange “howlers,” and content them¬ selves with enjoying the humour. The better sort among them, however, are not content unless they
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