(1) Child Training: a System of Education for the Child under the School Age (2) The Foundations of Normal and Abnormal Psychology

Abstract

(1) TO stimulate educational ideas is a most valuable social service, but the necessity of using the method of trial and error in the application of this or that principle to the teaching process may come hard on the child, who must submit to be a corpus vile for experimentation. The co-operation of teachers and psychologists has produced many futile and even mischievous “theories of education,” and the younger the subject the more dangerous is their practical incidence. But this co-operation has recently begun to justify itself. Teachers with insight, especially in America, have been applying certain approved results of psychology, and their success has been considerable. It is interesting to note that several old-world methods are still found to be among the best; for instance, the two main principles of savage education, imitation and “helping” the parents, and the classical and mediaeval insistence upon drill, are proved foundations of training, especially in the case of the very young. A system like that of Mr. V. M. Hillyer is practical in the best sense, and soundly based on psychological fact. “It aims to avoid the faults so common in child training—sentimentality, effeminacy, emotionalism, mysticism, licence under the guise of freedom, exaggeration of the unimportant or trivial, the attaching of imaginary value to the symbolic.” “The formation of habits, physical, mental, and moral,” by direct drill is the keynote of the system. Mental training, for example, depends on the formation of “brain paths” by repetition, and on their increase in number by increasing associations.

(1) Child Training: a System of Education for the Child under the School Age.

By V. M. Hillyer. Pp. xxxix + 299. (London: Duckworth and Co., 1915.) Price 5s. net.

(2) The Foundations of Normal and Abnormal Psychology.

By Dr. B. Sidis. Pp. 416. (London: Duckworth and Co., 1915.) Price 7s. 6d. net.