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The following points highlight the three main theories of learning. The theories are: 1. The Mental Discipline Theory of Learning 2. Natural Unfoldment Learning Theory 3. Apperceptive Mass Theory of Learning.
1. The Mental Discipline Theory of Learning:
According to the doctrine of mental discipline, education is a process of discipline or training minds. Proponents of the doctrine believe that in this process mental faculties are strengthened through exercise. Choice of learning materials is of some importance but always is secondary of the nature of minds which supposedly undergo the disciplinary process. Persons are thought to be composed of two kinds of basic substances or realities-mental and physical. That which is disciplined or trained is mind substance.
Mental discipline has roots which extend to antiquity. Its manifestations continue to be quite evident in present-day school practices.
Mental reality often is called mind substance and usually is assigned the dominant position in mind-body dualism. The mind substance theory means that mind is just as real as anything physical. It has a nature of its own and operated in its own distinctive fashion. Physical substance-rocks, buildings, plants, and animals is characterized by extension; it has length, breadth, thickness and mass.
Mind substance, on the other hand, is not extended; it has no length, no breadth, no thickness, and no mass, but it is real as anything can be. In a sense, man is considered a mental and physical whole. However, body and mind supposedly are of such nature as to be mutually exclusive of one another, they have no common characteristic.
The mind substance concept has been with us so long and is so deeply embedded in present-day cultures that quite often it is assumed to be a self-evident truth. However, the concept of a mental substance with its own unique characteristics is one which man has developed gradually through the ages. It has grown through the experiences of primitive and early generation to generation. The familiar has come to appear self-evident.
Explanation of the Mental Discipline Theory of Learning:
Plato believed that mental training or discipline in mathematics and philosophy was the best preparation for participation in the conduct of public affairs. Once trained, by having his faculties developed, a philosopher-king was ready to solve problems of all kinds. Aristotle described at least five different faculties, the greatest and the one unique to man being that of reason.
According to Aristotle, faculties which man had in common with lower animals were the vegetative, appetitive, sensory and locomotive. The learning was considered as a process of firm self-discipline, it consisted of harmonious development of all of one’s inherent powers so that no faculty was overdeveloped at the cost of the others.
Forms of Mental Discipline:
The theory of mental discipline has at least two versions:
(i) Classicism, and
(ii) Faculty psychology.
Each is an outgrowth of different cultural traditions. Classicism stems from ancient Greece. It operated on the assumption that the mind of man is an active agent in relation to its environment and also that man is morally neutral at birth.
The psychology known as ‘faculty psychology’ more often is associated with the bad-active principle. Because of differences in underlying assumptions concerning the basic nature of man, we find deference between the kinds of education prescribed by classicists and by faculty psychologists. Let us examine this difference in more detail.
i. Mental Discipline within the Classical Tradition:
Within the classical tradition a human mind is assumed to be of such nature that, with adequate cultivation, it can know the world as it really is. Man, being a rational animal, is free within limits to act as he chooses, in the light of what he understands. Instead of being a creature of instinct, he enjoys a complex and delicate faculty of apprehension whose basic aspect is reason.
This capacity resides in every normal human individual. It enables human beings to gain understanding of their needs and their environment, and to communicate this understanding of their group. Thus, it is assumed that the human mind is of such nature that, if it has been properly exercised and it has an opportunity, it will reduce truth; it will develop outward manifestations of its innate potential.
Within the classicist frame of reference, knowledge assumes the character of a fixed body of true principles which are to be handed down as a heritage of the race. These principles have been discovered by the great thinkers of human history and have been set down in the great books. Hence, a classicist takes the basic content of the school curriculum from philosophical and literary classics. To him, not only training the mind, but also studying the eternal truth contained in certain ‘great’ books is important.
ii. Faculty Psychology:
Although faculty psychology had been implicit in the classical tradition and in virtually every early scheme of education proposed, it did not appears an explicit, formalized psychological doctrine until the eighteenth century. The mind at times enters into particular activates in much the same way that the whole body at different times takes part in widely different acts. According to Wolff, the basic general faculties know feeling and willing. The knowing faculty is divided into several others, which include perception, imagination, memory and pure reason. The reasoning faculty is the ability to draw distinctions and from judgements.
Faculty psychologists have held that if a person pursues any type of unpleasant work long enough his will is strengthened.
Under faculty psychology, the takes of a teacher is to find the kind of mental exercises that will train the various faculties most efficiently. Emphasis is not on acquiring knowledge, but rather on strengthening faculties. A consistent faculty psychologist would not be especially interested in teaching “great truths” or the ‘heritage of the past’ or any other type of subject-matter excepting so far as it is a good medium for exercising the faculties.
The special attention given by faculty psychology to the development of the will has led to the notion that school work is better for a child if it is distasteful. When faculty psychology is a dominant influence in a school, teachers deliberately keep their assignments both difficult and dull and use force if necessary to insure that students complete them. Use of severe punishment, including ridicule and sometimes even whipping, is likely to be found in common use in such a school.
Contributions of Mental Discipline Theory to Education:
The following are the major contributions of this theory to education:
a. Mental discipline exponents generally have held that learning theory, curriculum construction, teaching methods, and educational practices cannot be evaluated scientifically; they are derived philosophically and hence can only be evaluated philosophically. However, by the early twentieth-century period an imposing array of psychologists and educators had become entranced by the potentiality of scientific processes, particularly objective and statistical procedures as exemplified in such fields as physics and chemistry.
b. Whereas on the one hand mental disciplinarians insisted that science could not be applied in such a human enterprise as education, on the other hand scientifically oriented educators and psychologists instead that science count and must be used in education, increasingly, scientific-minded persons come to view exponents of mental discipline as conservatives or reactionaries who opposed progress in education.
c. Within humanism, the Socratic Method was popular as a teaching procedure. A teacher’s function was to help students recognize what already was in their minds. An environmental influence was considered of little consequence. “The Socratic Method implies that the teacher has no knowledge, or at least professes to impart no information; instead, he seeks to draw the information from his students be means of skillfully directed questions. The method is predicted on the principle that knowledge in inborn, but we cannot recall it without expert help”.
d. In the history of education, the nineteenth century could be characterized as the century of mental discipline. Rooted in European traditions of idealistic and rationalistic philosophy, the idea of mental discipline had some currency in the early part of the century and it gained great popularity in the middle and later decades. A Yale faculty report of (1828) established mental discipline as the supreme aim of education.
Study of the classics and mathematics was considered the best means of achieving it. A prominent English scholar, Mathew Arnold, wrote in (1867). “It is vital and formative knowledge to know the most powerful manifestations of the human spirit’s activity, for the knowledge of them greatly feeds and quickens our own activity; and they are very imperfectly known without knowing ancient Greece and Rome”.
e. Mental discipline placed little stress upon the acquisition of useful knowledge and information as such. Rather, it emphasized the training of mental faculties and the cultivation of intellectual powers apart from any specific application to practical problems. Since mental discipline was especially popular in liberal arts colleges, it was advocated for the college preparatory curriculums of academies and high schools.
f. In the late nineteenth century most secondary schools and colleges offered a curriculum limited mainly to the classical liberal arts. These subjects were regarded as valuable for a twofold reason: they were excellent tools for mind training and they incorporated the great truths of human experience.
A curriculum based on traditional philosophy and the liberal arts may not seem very practical to most persons today. However, mental disciplinarians deliberately made a distinction between knowledge of immediate usefulness and practically, and essential matters grounded in eternal standards of truth, goodness, and beauty. Mental disciplinarians are convinced that knowledge of immediate practical value is of little importance.
2. Natural Unfoldment Learning Theory:
This theory on the nature of learning stems logically form the theory that man is naturally good and at the same time active in relation to his environment. Early development of this point of view is usually associated with Jean J. Rousseau (1712-1772). Later, the Swiss educational reformer Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746-1827) and the German philosopher, educator, and founder of the kindergarten movement, Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852), used this outlook as a basis for their pedagogical thinking. The over-all philosophical framework of the natural-unfoldment position often is labeled romantic naturalism.
Rousseau’s position was that everything in nature is basically good. Since man’s hereditary nature is good, it need only be permitted to develop in a natural environment free from corruption. Rousseau qualified his interpretation of human nature as an active, self-directing agent by conceding that a bad social environment could make bad human beings; to in social conditions are not natural. Thus, his rejection of environmentalism was not complete. However, his constant emphasis was on natural, active self-determination.
Learning, in the usual sense of the term, generally is conceived as some form of imposition of ideas or standards upon a persons or organism. Within romantic naturalism there is little need for this kind of learning, instead, a child learns through the prompting of his own interests. There should be no coercion or prescription. A mind and its growth may be considered analogous to an egg in the process of hatching. Its growth is a natural operation which, without imposition from any outside source, carries its own momentum.
Since romantic naturalists depreciate the value of learning as such, they give a prominent place to the concept of needs. Needs are considered child-centred, as contrasted with environment or situation-centred. As an organism or mind naturally unfolds through a series of stages, each stage is assumed to have it unique needs. Such child-centred needs have much in common with instincts; they supposedly are innate determining tendencies or permanent trends of human nature which underlie behaviour from birth to death under all circumstances in all kinds of societies.
Rousseau urged teacher to permit students to live close to nature, so that they might indulge freely in their natural impulses, instincts, and feelings. He emphasized that in rural areas children need practically no schooling or tutoring. An example which he gave related to the learning of speech. A country boy, he said, ordinarily did not need instruction of speech.
He called to his parents and playmates from considerable distances and thus practiced making himself heard; consequently, without tutoring, he developed an adequate power of speech. It was only the city boy, growing up in close quarters with no opportunity to exercise his voice in a natural way, who had need for speech instruction. Thus, he recommended that in teaching city boys, teachers should, in so far as possible; adopt the method through which country boys learn.
Since, according to the good-active definition of human nature, a child grows up unfolding that which nature has enfolded within him, devotees of this position tend to place great emphasis on the study of child growth and development and to minimize the study of learning. When they allude to learning, they seem to assume or imply that it, too, is little more than a process of growth and development.
3. Apperceptive Mass Theory of Learning:
The third major theory toward learning which we describe apperception-is far more complicated than faculty psychology or learning as unfoldment. Apperception is idea-centred. An idea we apperceived when it appears in consciousness and is assimilated to other conscious ideas. Thus, apperception is a process of associating new ideas with old ones.
Adherents of both mental discipline and natural unfoldment assume or imply the existence of an inborn human nature, some aspects of which are common to all men. Although, in their treatment of learning, supporters of both theories sharply differ from one another, they agree that the ‘furniture of minds’ is innate. Whereas romantic naturalists in their emphasis upon natural unfoldment expound instinctive natural development of persons, mental disciplinarians often agree that knowledge in inborn, but insists that students need expert help to enable them or recall it.
Apperception, in contrast to both mental discipline and natural unfoldment, is a dynamic mental associationism based upon the fundamental premise that there are no innate ideas; everything a person knows comes to him from outside himself. This means that mind is wholly a matter of content-it is a compound of elemental impressions bound together by association, and it is formed when subject-matter is presented from without and makes certain associations or connections with prior content.
Meaning of Apperception:
John Friedrich Herbart (1776-1841) developed the first modern systematic psychology of learning of harmonize with a tabula rasa theory of mind. Herbart was an eminent German philosopher and a skilled teacher from 1809 to 1833 her succeeded Sammual Kant in the world’s most distinguished chain of philosophy, at Konigsberg Germany. His speculative thinking developed from his dealing with problems of education to him, morality was the supreme objective of education; wanted to make children good. Thus, he developed a psychology to achieve this goal.
A Herbartian approach regards a mind as a battle ground of contending ideas. Each idea in the mind of a person has once been in the center of his consciousness and it strives to return. It seeks self-preservation. It tries to conserve itself and to enter into relations with other ideas. Having once held the center of consciousness and subsequently lost it, each presentation, like a disposed king, keeps trying to occupy the throne once again. Compatible ideas may operate as teams, helping each other to remain in conscious mind. When two ideas are incompatible, however, one is likely to be submerged.
To Herbartians, all perception is apperception; it is a process of relating new ideas-presentations-to the store of old mental states. A mind is like an iceberg in that most of it is submerged below the level of consciousness. Memories stored in the sub-conscious enable one to interpret experience of the moment. Without a background of experience, any new sensation would man almost nothing at all.
In picturing a mind, Herbart introduced the idea of threshold of consciousness. Objects occupying consciousness are constantly changing. At any moment several ideas may occupy the consciousness. One will be at the focus of attention, some will be sinking below the threshold, and others will be striving to rise into consciousness.
In Figure, mental state is at the center of the figure indicates the three components of mind.
a. These should of consciousness,
b. The range of consciousness, and
c. The range of sub-consciousness.
The sub-conscious aspect of mind contains the store of dynamic perceptions and images that have been accumulated during all post experiences of an individual is known as apperception any of these experiences are ready to go back into consciousness whenever an opportunity occurs. The content of consciousness at any moment is the result of interplay of many ideas. Apperception is a process not only of becoming consciously aware of an idea but also of assimilating it into a totality of conscious ideas.
Within apperceptive process Herbart saw the principles of frequency and association in operation. The principle of frequency holds that the more often an idea or concept has been brought into consciousness, the easier becomes its return, The principle of association had that, when a number of presentations or ideas associate or form a mass, the combined powers of the mass determine the ideas which will enter consciousness.
Herbart recognized three levels or stages of learning, first is the stage of predominately sense activity. This is followed by the stage of memory; this second stage is characterized by exact reproductions of previously formed ideas. The third and highest level is that of conceptual thinking or understanding. Understanding occurs when the common, or shared, attributes of a series of ideas are seen it involves generalization-deriving rules, principles, or laws from a study of specifics. Thus, there are three stages of learning.
I Stage- Predominantly sense activity,
II Stage- Reproducing the previously formed ideas or stage of memory and
III Stage- Conceptual thinking or understanding Generalization.
The Herbartian Five Steps in Learning:
Herbart and his followers have been convinced that the learning process proceeds through an ordered series of steps which a teacher should understand and follow. Effective teaching requires that, regardless of obstacles, the proper succession of steps be followed. Herbart’s four steps clearness, association, system and method, were expanded to five by American Herbartians.
Clearness became:
(i) Preparation
(ii) Presentation; association became
(iii) Comparison and abstraction; system become
(iv) Generalization; and method become, and
(v) Application.
Use of these steps came to be regarded as the general method to be followed in all teaching. The steps may be demonstrated by the following example, which involves teaching students the generalization that may object will float in liquid or in air if it weighs less than an equal volume of the air or liquid which it is suspended.
i. Preparation:
To bring into consciousness relevant ideas, the teacher reminds students of certain experiences they have had with floating objects. The students will recall the floating of boats, balloons, bubbles, and the like.
ii. Presentation:
The teacher presents new facts about floating, perhaps through means of demonstrations. For example, he might demonstrate how oil floats on water, or how a steel ball will float on mercury.
iii. Comparison and Abstraction:
If the teacher has performed the first two steps properly, students will see that the new facts have similarities with those already known. Hence, in the student’s consciousness, the new and old ideas associate. They are welded together because of their natural affinity for each other. Furthermore, students at this point should see the nature of the common elements which give the two sets of facts their mutual attractiveness. Sorting out this common element is what is meant by abstraction.
iv. Generalization:
In this step, students attempt to name the common elements of the two sets of facts as a principles or generalization. They arrive at the principle of floatation the stated objective of instruction.
v. Application:
The newly learned principle then is used to explain further facts or solve problems relating to floatation. This is done through assigned tasks or problems. The teacher might ask students to explain why boats can be made successfully from steel. Or he might give them a problem which requires them to determine whether a certain object world float in a certain medium. For example, he might ask, “Given freight large of specified weight and displacement, how much weight could be placed in it without causing it to sink?”
Contributions of Apperception of Education:
1. According to apperception, right thinking will produce right action; volition or willing has its roots in thought. If a teacher builds up the right sequence of ideas, the right conduct follows. Hence, the real work of instruction is implantation not only of knowledge, but also of inner discipline or will be means of presented ideas. Psychologically, students are made by the world of ideas which is presented to them from without.
2. In apperception, there is no substantive mind to be developed, it could no longer be said that learning has to do with the formation of an apperceptive mass. Thus, the task of education is to cause present appropriate experiences to combine with a background. The problem of education is to select the right materials for forming the backgrounds or apperceptive masses of students. The concept of apperceptive mass implied that teachers must start with the experiences which pupils already have had and enlarge and enrich these experiences.
3. To Herbartians, the art of teaching consists of bringing to the attention of students those ideas which a teacher would like to have dominated their lives. Through controlling experiences of children, an instructor builds up masses of ideas which develop by assimilation of new ideas to them. Thus, by manipulating ideas the constructs a student “circle of thought”. The goal is a comprehensive circle of thought closely connected or integrated in all its parts. A teacher is the architect and builder of the minds, and hence the characters, of his students.
4. According to Herbart, at no time should a teacher enter into debate with his students on any matter. “Cases may arise when the impetuosity of the pupils challenges the teacher to a kind of combat. Rather, than accept such a challenge, he will usually find it sufficient at first to reprove calmly, to look on quietly, and to wait until fatigue sets in.”
5. The importance of student interest held a prominent place in the theory of apperception. Present-day policy of “making subject-matter interesting” probably has an important root in apperception. Whereas a follower of faculty psychology saw no point in interest-event saw it as a deterrent to developing will power—a Herbartian gave it a central place in his system.
6. Since, to a Herbartian, formation of mind was wholly a matter of presenting the proper educational materials, the task of a teacher was to select the proper subject-matter and arrange its presentation on the basis of the current store of ideas in the student’s mind. If the new material involved ideas with a natural affinity for those already present, the student would feel interest.
7. One area in which Herbartian influence is still frequently seen is that of lesson-plans. In the Herbartian system, actual teaching was always preceded by construction of a formal lesson plan, built around the “five steps.” Teacher followed these plans, more or less rigidly, on the assumption that the thinking of students could be made to conform to the formal steps.
Today, many professors in teacher’s colleges still insist that there is a fixed order of steps for teaching and learning. They require their students to write lesson-plans in which the material to be taught is arranged according to these steps, and in supervising student teachers they insist that lesson-plans be followed. Each lesson plan includes the answer as well as questions. Herbert’s influence on 20th century American education has been great.
Conclusions for Herbartianism:
Modern Herbartianism has some weaknesses nevertheless it has made important contributions to education. Greatest of all has been its attack upon the doctrine of mental discipline and faculty psychology. Further, it emphasized a psychological approach to teaching and learning, which implied a need for sound methods of teaching based upon knowledge of man and his mental functions. It directed attention to a need for adequate teachers and an enriched curriculum. Preparation of teachers was made an important business. It made ‘interest’ a significant idea. It emphasized the importance of a background of experience in the process of perception.
Furthermore, Herbart, in developing a scientific if not experimental psychology, pointed the way for the later experimental scientific movement in psychological named structuralism. Structuralism was developed in the nineteenth century by Wundt in Germany and Titchener in the United States. It subject-matter was the content of consciousness. Consciousness, however, was studied by introspection. Structuralism was highly important in hat it helped pave the way for modern psychologies which focus on mental processes and at the same time are experimental in the best scientific sense.
Although apperception preceded behaviourism and connectionism on the psychological and educational scenes, a strong case may be made for its superiority over the later physicalistic psychologies that challenged it. Contemporary Gestalt-field theories, including cognitive-field theory, have deeper roots in Herbartian apperception that in behaviourism, reinforcement or connectionism the S-R associationisms.