Report of the Consultative Committee on the Primary School / Board of Education.

  • Great Britain. Board of Education. Consultative Committee
Date:
1938
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the Consultative Committee on the Primary School / Board of Education. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    305/336 (page 267)
    Space-relations are more concrete. Embodied in actual objects or diagrams, attention can fix and fasten on them easily; and, even without actual lines or diagrams, such relations can be visualised easily. Hence I would suggest that far more use might be made of simple geometrical reasoning, at any rate, with the nine-year-olds and ten- year-olds. On the other hand, although time is one-dimensional and space is tri-dimensional, problems in time seem more difficult for juniors than equivalent problems expressed in terms of space. Causation can best be taught in the first instance in terms of mechani- cal operations, beginning with working models that the child himself operates. The principle of cause and effect has, until late, been singu- larly neglected in elementary instruction. It will have to be introduced, first of all, in connection with nature study and the physical science of everyday life rather than (as has of late been the tendency) in connection with geography or history. The child’s appreciation of temporal sequence, of cause and effect, and his experience of the interactions of human beings in society, are so limited that much that is at present given to him in the shape of history is really beyond his grasp until a later stage. Similarly geography must still be presented to him rather in its descriptive aspects than in its scientific aspects. This does not mean that the child’s memory is to be burdened with dates, place- names, geographical facts and historical events, which any intelligent adult would search for in a book of reference, not in his own memory. At present the aim is to fill his imagination with ideas, not his memory with facts, and above all to enable him to see the world around with an understanding eye. History, geography, nature study, and informa- tional subjects generally, should start from the concrete things of daily life with which the child is already familiar. (iii) Inductive Reasoning. Because it is usually a more concrete form of reasoning, induction is often easier for the child than deduction, Beyond a doubt, far more use of it should be made in education ; and the child should be taught to apply it to problems of everyday life. Inductive reasoning (including reasoning by elimination of alternative hypotheses) is well within the child’s grasp even at the early age of 8. (iv) Logical Criticism. So far I have discussed what might be termed constructive reasoning. Contrary to what might be anticipated, destructive or critical reasoning develops later in the child than con- structive. The detection of ‘‘ absurdities ’’ does not appear in Binet’s scale of tests until the age of 11. Thus it is not until after the close of the junior period that a boy can point out the inconsequence of short statements like the following: ‘‘ I have three brothers, Jack, Tom, and myself.’’ ‘‘ ] know an easy road to town which is downhill all the way there and downhill all the way back.’”’ Teachers will be greatly surprised if they put this problem to their pupils: ‘‘ Captain Cook made three voyages round the world. In one of these voyages he was killed by savages. Which voyage was it—the first, the second, or the third ? ’’ Dr. Ballard, who has widely applied this test-problem, points out that, even at the age of 13, 40 per cent. of the children fail to give the right answer (of course, with a sufficient explanation to show that the answer is not a blind guess).() (?) P. B. Ballard, Group Tests of Intelligence, page 47.