Abstract
THIS book is the reply to a request for ten lessons to professional teachers and parents which should embody what Dr. Toulouse's experience as a psychologist and a medical man has taught him to think essential to “the cultivation of an intelligence.” He starts, from a position with which critics of educational institutions on this side of the Channel have made us familiar; “we teach everything in school to-day except how to think and how to act.” His remedy is, also familiar—education should aim at teaching us not so much to know as how to apply knowledge to the regulation of the important affairs of life. To achieve this end it must train us, in accordance with sound principles of “method” (in the Cartesian sense), to observe, to judge, to feel, to act. The author's discussion of these methodical principles is broad-minded and suggestive, but it is too brief and schematic to be of much direct service to the teacher in the class-room or the parent in the home. His recommendations have much more value when they either express the practical wisdom of a man who has managed his life successfully or deal with specific-topics on which his experience as a medical psychologist gives him authority. Under the latter heading attention may be directed to a vigorous argument for the frank instruction of boys and girls in “the phenomena of life.”
Comment Former un Esprit.
By Dr. Toulouse. Deuxième Édition. Pp. x + 260. (Paris: Librairie Hachette et Cie., 1908.)
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Comment Former un Esprit . Nature 81, 394 (1909). https://doi.org/10.1038/081394c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/081394c0