3. EDUCATION AND THE TRAINING OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM
Fortunately, many of the best opportunities for sensory and motor training do not depend on schools or courses of study. The world is full of stimuli to our senses and to our social natures; and our common lives are made up of the responses we make to these stimuli,—the movements, acts and deeds by which we fit ourselves into our world of environment. Undoubtedly the most rapid and vital progress we make in our development is accomplished in the years before we have reached the age to go to school. Yet it is the business of education to see that we do not lack any essential opportunity, to make sure that necessary lines of stimuli or of motor training have not been omitted from our development.
Education to Supply Opportunities for Stimulus and Response.—The great problem of education is, on the physical side, it would seem, then, to provide for ourselves and those we seek to educate as rich an environment of sensory and social stimuli as possible; one whose impressions will be full of suggestions to response in motor activity and the higher thought processes; and then to give opportunity for thought and for expression in acts and deeds in the largest possible number of lines. And added to this must be frequent and clear sensory and motor recall, a living over again of the sights and sounds and odors and the motor activities we have once experienced. There must also be the opportunity for the forming of worthy plans and ideals. For in this way the brain centers which were concerned in the original sensation or thought or movement are again brought into exercise, and their development continued. Through recall and imagination we are able not only greatly to multiply the effects of the immediate sensory and motor stimuli which come to us, but also to improve our power of thinking by getting a fund of material upon which the mind can draw.
Order of Development in the Nervous System.—Nature has set the order in which the powers of the nervous system shall develop. And we must follow this order if we would obtain the best results. Stated in technical terms, the order is from fundamental to accessory. This is to say that the nerve centers controlling the larger and more general movements of the body ripen first, and those governing the finer motor adjustments later. For example, the larger body muscles of the child which are concerned with sitting up come under control earlier than those connected with walking. The arm muscles develop control earlier than the finger muscles, and the head and neck muscles earlier than the eye muscles. So also the more general and less highly specialized powers of the mind ripen sooner than the more highly specialized. Perception and observation precede powers of critical judgment and association. Memory and imagination ripen earlier than reasoning and the logical ability.
This all means that our educational system must be planned to follow the order of nature. Children of the primary grades should not be required to write with fine pencils or pens which demand delicate finger adjustments, since the brain centers for these finer coördinations are not yet developed. Young children should not be set at work necessitating difficult eye control, such as stitching through perforated cardboard, reading fine print and the like, as their eyes are not yet ready for such tasks. The more difficult analytical problems of arithmetic and relations of grammar should not be required of pupils at a time when the association areas of the brain are not yet ready for this type of thinking. For such methods violate the law of nature, and the child is sure to suffer the penalty.
4. IMPORTANCE OF HEALTH AND VIGOR OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM
Parallel with opportunities for proper stimuli and response the nervous system must possess good tonicity, or vigor. This depends in large degree on general health and nutrition, with freedom from overfatigue. No favorableness of environment nor excellence of training can result in an efficient brain if the nerve energy has run low from depleted health, want of proper nourishment, or exhaustion.
The Influence of Fatigue.—Histologists find that the nuclei of nerve cells are shrunk as much as fifty per cent by extreme fatigue. Reasonable fatigue followed by proper recuperation is not harmful, but even necessary if the best development is to be attained; but fatigue without proper nourishment and rest is fatal to all mental operations, and indeed finally to the nervous system itself, leaving it permanently in a condition of low tone, and incapable of rallying to strong effort. For rapid and complete recuperation the cells must have not only the best of nourishment but opportunity for rest as well.
Extreme and long-continued fatigue is hostile to the development and welfare of any nervous system, and especially to that of children. Not only does overfatigue hinder growth, but it also results in the formation of certain toxins, or poisons, in the organism, which are particularly harmful to nervous tissue. It is these fatigue toxins that account for many of the nervous and mental disorders which accompany breakdowns from overwork. On the whole, the evil effects from mental overstrain are more to be feared than from physical overstrain.
The Effects of Worry.—There is, perhaps, no greater foe to brain growth and efficiency than the nervous and worn-out condition which comes from loss of sleep or from worry. Experiments in the psychological laboratories have shown that nerve cells shrivel up and lose their vitality under loss of sleep. Let this go on for any considerable length of time, and the loss is irreparable; for the cells can never recuperate. This is especially true in the case of children or young people. Many school boys and girls, indeed many college students, are making slow progress in their studies not because they are mentally slow or inefficient, not even chiefly because they lose time that should be put on their lessons, but because they are incapacitating their brains for good service through late hours and the consequent loss of sleep. Add to this condition that of worry, which often accompanies it from the fact of failure in lessons, and a naturally good and well-organized nervous system is sure to fail. Worry, from whatever cause, should be avoided as one would avoid poison, if we would bring ourselves to the highest degree of efficiency. Not only does worry temporarily unfit the mind for its best work, but its evil results are permanent, since the mind is left with a poorly developed or undone nervous system through which to work, even after the cause for worry has been removed and the worry itself has ceased.
Not only should each individual seek to control the causes of worry in his own life, but the home and the school should force upon childhood as few causes for worry as may be. Children's worry over fears of the dark, over sickness and death, over prospective but delayed punishment, over the thousand and one real or imaginary troubles of childhood, should be eliminated so far as possible. School examinations that prey on the peace of mind, threats of failure of promotion, all nagging and sarcasm, and whatever else may cause continued pain or worry to sensitive minds should be barred from our schoolroom methods and practice. The price we force the child to pay for results through their use is too great for them to be tolerated. We must seek a better way.
The Factors in Good Nutrition.—For the best nutrition there is necessity first of all plenty of nourishing and healthful food. Science and experience have both disproved the supposition that students should be scantily fed. O'Shea claims that many brain workers are far short of their highest grade of efficiency because of starving their brains from poor diet. And not only must the food be of the right quality, but the body must be in good health. Little good to eat the best of food unless it is being properly digested and assimilated. And little good if all the rest is as it should be, and the right amount of oxidation does not go on in the brain so as to remove the worn-out cells and make place for new ones. This warns us that pure air and a strong circulation are indispensable to the best working of our brains. No doubt many students who find their work too hard for them might locate the trouble in their stomachs or their lungs or the food they eat, rather than in their minds.
5. PROBLEMS FOR INTROSPECTION AND OBSERVATION
1. Estimate the mental progress made by the child during the first five years and compare with that made during the second five years of its life. To do this make a list, so far as you are able, of the acquisitions of each period. What do you conclude as to the importance of play and freedom in early education? Why not continue this method instead of sending the child to school?
2. Which has the better opportunity for sensory training, the city child or the country child? For social training? For motor development through play? It is said by specialists that country children are not as good players as city children. Why should this be the case?
3. Observe carefully some group of children for evidences of lack of sensory training (Interest in sensory objects, skill in observation, etc.). For lack of motor training (Failure in motor control, awkwardness, lack of skill in play, etc.). Do you find that general mental ability seems to be correlated with sensory and motor ability, or not?
4. What sensory training can be had from (1) geography, (2) agriculture, (3) arithmetic, (4) drawing? What lines of motor training ought the school to afford, (1) in general, (2) for the hand, (3) in the grace and poise of carriage or bearing, (4) in any other line? Make observation tests of these points in one or more school rooms and report the results.
5. Describe what you think must be the type of mental life of Helen Keller. (Read "The World I Live In," by Helen Keller.)
6. Study groups of children for signs of deficiency in brain power from lack of nutrition. From fatigue. From worry. From lack of sleep.
CHAPTER V
HABIT
Habit is our "best friend or worst enemy." We are "walking bundles of habits." Habit is the "fly-wheel of society," keeping men patient and docile in the hard or disagreeable lot which some must fill. Habit is a "cable which we cannot break." So say the wise men. Let me know your habits of life and you have revealed your moral standards and conduct. Let me discover your intellectual habits, and I understand your type of mind and methods of thought. In short, our lives are largely a daily round of activities dictated by our habits in this line or that. Most of our movements and acts are habitual; we think as we have formed the habit of thinking; we decide as we are in the habit of deciding; we sleep, or eat, or speak as we have grown into the habit of doing these things; we may even say our prayers or perform other religious exercises as matters of habit. But while habit is the veriest tyrant, yet its good offices far exceed the bad even in the most fruitless or depraved life.
1. THE NATURE OF HABIT
Many people when they speak or think of habit give the term a very narrow or limited meaning. They have in mind only certain moral or personal tendencies usually spoken of as one's "habits." But in order to understand habit in any thorough and complete way we must, as suggested by the preceding paragraph, broaden our concept to include every possible line of physical and mental activity. Habit may be defined as the tendency of the nervous system to repeat any act that has been performed once or many times.
The Physical Basis of Habit.—Habit is to be explained from the standpoint of its physical basis. Habits are formed because the tissues of our brains are capable of being modified by use, and of so retaining the effects of this modification that the same act is easier of performance each succeeding time. This results in the old act being repeated instead of a new one being selected, and hence the old act is perpetuated.
Even dead and inert matter obeys the same principles in this regard as does living matter. Says M. Leon Dumont: "Everyone knows how a garment, having been worn a certain time, clings to the shape of the body better than when it was new; there has been a change in the tissue, and this change is a new habit of cohesion; a lock works better after having been used some time; at the outset more force was required to overcome certain roughness in the mechanism. The overcoming of this resistance is a phenomenon of habituation. It costs less trouble to fold a paper when it has been folded already. This saving of trouble is due to the essential nature of habit, which brings it about that, to reproduce the effect, a less amount of the outward cause is required. The sounds of a violin improve by use in the hands of an able artist, because the fibers of the wood at last contract habits of vibration conformed to harmonic relations. This is what gives such inestimable value to instruments that have belonged to great masters. Water, in flowing, hollows out for itself a channel, which grows broader and deeper; and, after having ceased to flow, it resumes when it flows again the path traced for itself before. Just so, the impressions of outer objects fashion for themselves in the nervous system more and more appropriate paths, and these vital phenomena recur under similar excitements from without, when they have been interrupted for a certain time."2
All Living Tissue Plastic.—What is true of inanimate matter is doubly true of living tissue. The tissues of the human body can be molded into almost any form you choose if taken in time. A child may be placed on his feet at too early an age, and the bones of his legs form the habit of remaining bent. The Flathead Indian binds a board on the skull of his child, and its head forms the habit of remaining flat on the top. Wrong bodily postures produce curvature of the spine, and pernicious modes of dress deform the bones of the chest. The muscles may be trained into the habit of keeping the shoulders straight or letting them droop; those of the back, to keep the body well up on the hips, or to let it sag; those of locomotion, to give us a light, springy step, or to allow a shuffling carriage; those of speech, to give us a clear-cut, accurate articulation, or a careless, halting one; and those of the face, to give us a cheerful cast of countenance, or a glum and morose expression.
Habit a Modification of Brain Tissue.—But the nervous tissue is the most sensitive and easily molded of all bodily tissues. In fact, it is probable that the real habit of our characteristic walk, gesture, or speech resides in the brain, rather than in the muscles which it controls. So delicate is the organization of the brain structure and so unstable its molecules, that even the perfume of the flower, which assails the nose of a child, the song of a bird, which strikes his ear, or the fleeting dream, which lingers but for a second in his sleep, has so modified his brain that it will never again be as if these things had not been experienced. Every sensory current which runs in from the outside world; every motor current which runs out to command a muscle; every thought that we think, has so modified the nerve structure through which it acts, that a tendency remains for a like act to be repeated. Our brain and nervous system is daily being molded into fixed habits of acting by our thoughts and deeds, and thus becomes the automatic register of all we do.
The old Chinese fairy story hits upon a fundamental and vital truth. These celestials tell their children that each child is accompanied by day and by night, every moment of his life, by an invisible fairy, who is provided with a pencil and tablet. It is the duty of this fairy to put down every deed of the child, both good and evil, in an indelible record which will one day rise as a witness against him. So it is in very truth with our brains. The wrong act may have been performed in secret, no living being may ever know that we performed it, and a merciful Providence may forgive it; but the inexorable monitor of our deeds was all the time beside us writing the record, and the history of that act is inscribed forever in the tissues of our brain. It may be repented of bitterly in sackcloth and ashes and be discontinued, but its effects can never be quite effaced; they will remain with us a handicap till our dying day, and in some critical moment in a great emergency we shall be in danger of defeat from that long past and forgotten act.
We Must Form Habits.—We must, then, form habits. It is not at all in our power to say whether we will form habits or not; for, once started, they go on forming themselves by day and night, steadily and relentlessly. Habit is, therefore, one of the great factors to be reckoned with in our lives, and the question becomes not, Shall we form habits? but What habits we shall form. And we have the determining of this question largely in our own power, for habits do not just happen, nor do they come to us ready made. We ourselves make them from day to day through the acts we perform, and in so far as we have control over our acts, in that far we can determine our habits.
2. THE PLACE OF HABIT IN THE ECONOMY OF OUR LIVES
Habit is one of nature's methods of economizing time and effort, while at the same time securing greater skill and efficiency. This is easily seen when it is remembered that habit tends towards automatic action; that is, towards action governed by the lower nerve centers and taking care of itself, so to speak, without the interference of consciousness. Everyone has observed how much easier in the performance and more skillful in its execution is the act, be it playing a piano, painting a picture, or driving a nail, when the movements involved have ceased to be consciously directed and become automatic.
Habit Increases Skill and Efficiency.—Practically all increase in skill, whether physical or mental, depends on our ability to form habits. Habit holds fast to the skill already attained while practice or intelligence makes ready for the next step in advance. Could we not form habits we should improve but little in our way of doing things, no matter how many times we did them over. We should now be obliged to go through the same bungling process of dressing ourselves as when we first learned it as children. Our writing would proceed as awkwardly in the high school as the primary, our eating as adults would be as messy and wide of the mark as when we were infants, and we should miss in a thousand ways the motor skill that now seems so easy and natural. All highly skilled occupations, and those demanding great manual dexterity, likewise depend on our habit-forming power for the accurate and automatic movements required.
So with mental skill. A great portion of the fundamentals of our education must be made automatic—must become matters of habit. We set out to learn the symbols of speech. We hear words and see them on the printed page; associated with these words are meanings, or ideas. Habit binds the word and the idea together, so that to think of the one is to call up the other—and language is learned. We must learn numbers, so we practice the "combinations," and with 4×6, or 3×8 we associate 24. Habit secures this association in our minds, and lo! we soon know our "tables." And so on throughout the whole range of our learning. We learn certain symbols, or facts, or processes, and habit takes hold and renders these automatic so that we can use them freely, easily, and with skill, leaving our thought free for matters that cannot be made automatic. One of our greatest dangers is that we shall not make sufficiently automatic, enough of the necessary foundation material of education. Failing in this, we shall at best be but blunderers intellectually, handicapped because we failed to make proper use of habit in our development.
For, as we have seen in an earlier chapter, there is a limit to our mental energy and also to the number of objects to which we are able to attend. It is only when attention has been freed from the many things that can always be thought or done in the same way, that the mind can devote itself to the real problems that require judgment, imagination or reasoning. The writer whose spelling and punctuation do not take care of themselves will hardly make a success of writing. The mathematician whose number combinations, processes and formulæ are not automatic in his mind can never hope to make progress in mathematical thinking. The speaker who, while speaking, has to think of his gestures, his voice or his enunciation will never sway audiences by his logic or his eloquence.
Habit Saves Effort and Fatigue.—We do most easily and with least fatigue that which we are accustomed to do. It is the new act or the strange task that tires us. The horse that is used to the farm wearies if put on the road, while the roadster tires easily when hitched to the plow. The experienced penman works all day at his desk without undue fatigue, while the man more accustomed to the pick and the shovel than to the pen, is exhausted by a half hour's writing at a letter. Those who follow a sedentary and inactive occupation do not tire by much sitting, while children or others used to freedom and action may find it a wearisome task merely to remain still for an hour or two.
Not only would the skill and speed demanded by modern industry be impossible without the aid of habit, but without its help none could stand the fatigue and strain. The new workman placed at a high-speed machine is ready to fall from weariness at the end of his first day. But little by little he learns to omit the unnecessary movements, the necessary movements become easier and more automatic through habit, and he finds the work easier. We may conclude, then, that not only do consciously directed movements show less skill than the same movements made automatic by habit, but they also require more effort and produce greater fatigue.
Habit Economizes Moral Effort.—To have to decide each time the question comes up whether we will attend to this lecture or sermon or lesson; whether we will persevere and go through this piece of disagreeable work which we have begun; whether we will go to the trouble of being courteous and kind to this or that poor or unlovely or dirty fellow-mortal; whether we will take this road because it looks easy, or that one because we know it to be the one we ought to take; whether we will be strictly fair and honest when we might just as well be the opposite; whether we will resist the temptation which dares us; whether we will do this duty, hard though it is, which confronts us—to have to decide each of these questions every time it presents itself is to put too large a proportion of our thought and energy on things which should take care of themselves. For all these things should early become so nearly habitual that they can be settled with the very minimum of expenditure of energy when they arise.
The Habit of Attention.—It is a noble thing to be able to attend by sheer force of will when the interest lags, or some more attractive thing appears, but far better is it so to have formed the habit of attention that we naturally fall into that attitude when this is the desirable thing. To understand what I mean, you only have to look over a class or an audience and note the different ways which people have of finally settling down to listening. Some with an attitude which says, "Now here I am, ready to listen to you if you will interest me, otherwise not." Others with a manner which says, "I did not really come here expecting to listen, and you will have a large task if you interest me; I never listen unless I am compelled to, and the responsibility rests on you." Others plainly say, "I really mean to listen, but I have hard work to control my thoughts, and if I wander I shall not blame you altogether; it is just my way." And still others say, "When I am expected to listen, I always listen whether there is anything much to listen to or not. I have formed that habit, and so have no quarrel with myself about it. You can depend on me to be attentive, for I cannot afford to weaken my habit of attention whether you do well or not." Every speaker will clasp these last listeners to his heart and feed them on the choicest thoughts of his soul; they are the ones to whom he speaks and to whom his address will appeal.
Habit Enables Us to Meet the Disagreeable.—To be able to persevere in the face of difficulties and hardships and carry through the disagreeable thing in spite of the protests of our natures against the sacrifice which it requires, is a creditable thing; but it is more creditable to have so formed the habit of perseverance that the disagreeable duty shall be done without a struggle, or protest, or question. Horace Mann testifies of himself that whatever success he was able to attain was made possible through the early habit which he formed of never stopping to inquire whether he liked to do a thing which needed doing, but of doing everything equally well and without question, both the pleasant and the unpleasant.
The youth who can fight out a moral battle and win against the allurements of some attractive temptation is worthy the highest honor and praise; but so long as he has to fight the same battle over and over again, he is on dangerous ground morally. For good morals must finally become habits, so ingrained in us that the right decision comes largely without effort and without struggle. Otherwise the strain is too great, and defeat will occasionally come; and defeat means weakness and at last disaster, after the spirit has tired of the constant conflict. And so on in a hundred lines. Good habits are more to be coveted than individual victories in special cases, much as these are to be desired. For good habits mean victories all along the line.
Habit the Foundation of Personality.—The biologist tells us that it is the constant and not the occasional in the environment that impresses itself on an organism. So also it is the habitual in our lives that builds itself into our character and personality. In a very real sense we are what we are in the habit of doing and thinking.
Without habit, personality could not exist; for we could never do a thing twice alike, and hence would be a new person each succeeding moment. The acts which give us our own peculiar individuality are our habitual acts—the little things that do themselves moment by moment without care or attention, and are the truest and best expression of our real selves. Probably no one of us could be very sure which arm he puts into the sleeve, or which foot he puts into the shoe, first; and yet each of us certainly formed the habit long ago of doing these things in a certain way. We might not be able to describe just how we hold knife and fork and spoon, and yet each has his own characteristic and habitual way of handling them. We sit down and get up in some characteristic way, and the very poise of our heads and attitudes of our bodies are the result of habit. We get sleepy and wake up, become hungry and thirsty at certain hours, through force of habit. We form the habit of liking a certain chair, or nook, or corner, or path, or desk, and then seek this to the exclusion of all others. We habitually use a particular pitch of voice and type of enunciation in speaking, and this becomes one of our characteristic marks; or we form the habit of using barbarisms or solecisms of language in youth, and these cling to us and become an inseparable part of us later in life.
On the mental side the case is no different. Our thinking is as characteristic as our physical acts. We may form the habit of thinking things out logically, or of jumping to conclusions; of thinking critically and independently, or of taking things unquestioningly on the authority of others. We may form the habit of carefully reading good, sensible books, or of skimming sentimental and trashy ones; of choosing elevating, ennobling companions, or the opposite; of being a good conversationalist and doing our part in a social group, or of being a drag on the conversation, and needing to be "entertained." We may form the habit of observing the things about us and enjoying the beautiful in our environment, or of failing to observe or to enjoy. We may form the habit of obeying the voice of conscience or of weakly yielding to temptation without a struggle; of taking a reverent attitude of prayer in our devotions, or of merely saying our prayers.
Habit Saves Worry and Rebellion.—Habit has been called the "balance wheel" of society. This is because men readily become habituated to the hard, the disagreeable, or the inevitable, and cease to battle against it. A lot that at first seems unendurable after a time causes less revolt. A sorrow that seems too poignant to be borne in the course of time loses some of its sharpness. Oppression or injustice that arouses the fiercest resentment and hate may finally come to be accepted with resignation. Habit helps us learn that "what cannot be cured must be endured."