DEPARTMENT OF CHILD STUDY SECRETARY'S MINUTES FIRST SESSION-TUESDAY MORNING, JULY 9, 1907 The department of Child Study met in the First Methodist Church of Los Angeles at 9:30 A. M. In the absence of all of the officers of the department Mr. George L. Leslie, director of science department of the Los Angeles City Schools, was chosen acting president. Miss Laura B. Bennett, of the Los Angeles City Schools, was appointed secretary. A paper was read by J. K. Stableton, superintendent of schools, Bloomington, Ill., on the subject, "The Delinquent and Dependent Child in Its Home Environments." A general discussion followed. Henry Suzzallo, adjunct professor of elementary education, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York City, gave an address upon "The Child's Emotional Life and Its Training." A discussion followed. The department then adjourned. SECOND SESSION-THURSDAY AFTERNOON, JULY II The department was called to order by Acting President Leslie. Professor F. B. Dresslar, of the University of California, read a paper upon "The Contributions of Twenty-five Years of Organized Child Study in America to Educational Theory and Practice." Acting President Leslie addressed the department upon "The Child Study Movement in Los Angeles." The following were elected officers for the department for the ensuing year. For President-William H. Burnham, professor of pedagogy, Clark University, Worcester, Mass. For Vice-President-William L. Bryan, president of State University, Bloomington, Ind. For Secretary-M. V. O'Shea, professor of Science and Art of Education, State University, Madison, Wis. The department then adjourned. LAURA B. BENNETT, Secretary. THE TRAINING OF THE CHILD'S EMOTIONAL LIFE HENRY SUZZALLO, ADJUNCT PROFESSOR OF ELEMENTARY EDUCATION, TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, NEW YORK CITY [CONDENSED STENOGRAPHIC REPORT] A half-century ago it was the belief of the leaders in American education and in American public life that knowledge was, in social affairs, power. It was a firm conviction that if the school gave intellectuality to the citizens of the nation that moral character, efficient in private and social affairs, would be the result. A present-day view of the situation shows less optimism with regard to the force of a merely intellectual education. This lack of optimism is due to the fact that certain discrepancies have been noted between school education and social efficiency. There are college graduates who are criminals in spite of their intellectual training, and there are illiterate men who are useful citizens, strong in their regard for law and order, in spite of their lack of formal knowledge. So long as such examples of the lack of correlation between education and character exist the educator who is trying to control human nature thru the school must take note of a problem which questions the assumption that a mere intellectual training is adequate for character-building. The modern school cannot train for character unless it trains all those qualities or aspects of man's character which influence his conduct. There is clear evidence that in many cases the American public school is a merely intellectual institution. The reaction against such a condition of affairs is indicated in certain new tendencies appearing in our school practice. On the one hand, the school is using expression and action far more than it did a decade or two ago. This is noted in the rise into importance of such subjects as manual training, drawing, music, and composition. On the other hand, the school is more and more taking count of the emotional elements which appear in school life as an opportunity for influencing the child's character. This latter tendency may be noted in the additional use of such incidental influences upon character as schoolroom decorations, exercises for holiday occasions, the organization of clubs, and societies for the athletic, social, literary, and disciplinary interests of the children. Perhaps of the two changes in our recent history, the tendencies that influence the emotional life are less obvious. This is to be expected. The emotions are far more subtle than ideas or actions. In consequence it would be exceedingly valuable to speak of the emotional life, its characteristics, and the methods and opportunities for its control. The modern psychologist recognizes that the emotions play differently upon human life. On the one hand, there are those feelings which have a purely internal significance, which operate as a recreative force in human life. These are the aesthetic emotions, which are everywhere manifest in music, the plastic arts, and literature. On the other hand, there are those emotions the significance of which is mostly external and social. These vital emotions, pride, anger, indignation, ambition, sympathy, jealousy, etc., have usually a direct reference to one's relationships to other human beings. They are the feelings which are at the back of social progress and social order. If the school is to be an instrument of control for the purpose of making good citizens of men and women, the vital or social emotions mentioned are among the most important elements in the school life. It is with these in particular that we are concerned in this discussion. The function of the emotions is to be found in their stimulating quality. They drive the human being into action; they reinforce a line of action already in progress. Without substantial emotions a man is likely to be pale and colorless in the world's affairs. As a man without sympathy, he will not respond with quick sensitiveness to private or public wrong. He will count for little, therefore, in social co-operations. As a man without pride, he will in the face of the obstacles of life fail to maintain those standards of excel lency in behavior which he has assumed in the days of his youth when idealistic dreams builded rapidly under the protective influence of family and school life; as a man without ambition to reach higher things than he now holds, he will contribute little to the world's progress. It is emotion which gives fire and force to human life, which, cultivated above their instinctive basis, drives a human being into world-action, to make him a force for good or a force for evil. If the emotions are the foundation of character, its primitive force, so to speak, the intellectual factors represent the instrumentalities for its direction and control. This is perfectly clear when we realize that sympathy and anger are neither virtuous nor vicious in themselves. A sympathetic man may protect an erring friend to the dissolution of a public law. A man who may be righteously angry at an offense to an unknown fellow may be the means of checking some great social evil. It is necessary that a man's emotional nature be directed to proper ends and to proper means. It must not be assumed, however, that intellectual control as represented in ideas and in human knowledge generally speaking is of much use unless the emotional qualities which are to be controlled by them are present in the human make-up. The analysis of certain literary characters or of certain familiar figures in human history may shed light on the relative part of feeling and thinking in human action. The difference between the Sherlock Holmes of Conan Doyle's creation, and the Raffles of Mr. Hornung's imagination is a difference not so much of intellectual equipment as of emotional devotion. Each has amassed an immense body of knowledge, with regard to the habits and the lives of people of wealth, the police, and the community of crime. Each is quick in the observation of the criminal situations, and rapid in making deductions which are the basis for the next move. Each is trained mentally as well as physically to perform similar deeds under equally trying situations. But in human estimate these men stand at opposite poles: one is a thief living at the expense of society; the other is a public servant giving his support to the agencies of order. One is devoted to the ideas of the criminal class; the other is devoted to the protection of the better ideals of society in general. They are different in devotion, which means they are different in the organization of their respective emotional lives. A Raffles with a different arrangement of prides, ambitions, and sympathies might have been a Sherlock Holmes and a Sherlock Holmes might have been a Raffles. A similar contrast is afforded in the heroic conduct of George Washington and the treason of Benedict Arnold. Both men had been, up to the time of Arnold's treason, men of high executive and military power. Both had suffered somewhat from the unappreciative and perhaps ungrateful attitude of Congress, but in the face of the trying circumstance the devotion of George Washington to the cause of colonial liberty was strong enough to withstand any counter feelings, while the devotion of Benedict Arnold was not sufficient to hold against the petty bitternesses and the pique which made havoc with his loyalty. There were intellectual differences to be sure between these two great figures, but the fundamental differences are to be found in the emotional mainsprings of their respective characters. So the analysis might go further. The instances in our ordinary life of weak human character would only reinforce the importance of the emotional element in human life. Everywhere about us are types of inefficiency which bear out this suggestion. There is the "impulsivist," the man of large and strong emotions with little intellectual control, who is constantly exploding in the face of every obstacle or difficult situation. There is the "sentimentalist," a person of much feeling but with a misdirected control of his sentiments which are constantly being devoted to things which a broad intellectual life would reveal as trivial. There is the intellectual type so similar to Shakspere's Hamlet, who sees so many sides of the truth that every tendency to act is checked by some counter perception. Again, there is "the academic mind" so unendurable to the man of large public affairs, who persists in discussing every fact from the standpoint of its theoretic interest as truth, disregarding the irrelevancy of many facts in a given present and crucial practical situation. All of these are types of weakness in life to be explained by defects in the relationship of emotional and intellectual elements. In the school's business of making men and women who will be sane and wholesome, responsive and vigorous, it is clear that the directions of control must not be restricted to the intellectual but must include the emotional as well. Three things must be done with our fund of feeling: (1) Certain emotions at one time useful in the preservation of individual life must be for the most part inhibited. Envy and jealousy and certain other influences which were once effective in man's primitive time have little place in our modern life, and these the schools should attempt to stamp out irrevocably. (2) Certain emotions not overimportant in our past history which are now becoming more and more dominant in our civilization need to be strengthened. There is a larger place for the development of sympathy and love and the other co-operative emotions than there has ever been before. These the school should aim to develop with all its power. (3) There are certain other emotions which are neither to be completely inhibited nor completely discouraged. They get their value in social life largely in terms of the ideas to which they are attached. Anger is wrong as it is associated with narrow and personal, selfish ideas and situations. It is right as it becomes indignation toward some interference with personal purity and social stability. Here the school's main responsibility is to see that these feelings are rightly connected. In the development of an emotion there are three distinct ways by which it may be fostered: (a) The first and primary means is thru the force of personal example with its resulting suggestion and imitation. Children are the constant imitators of the men and women about them. Fear in the teacher breeds fear in the child. An ambitious child is more likely to be found in an ambitious community. It is at this point that the teacher's personality, |
