Habit and its importance in education : An essay in pedagogical psychology / Paul Radestock, F. A. Caspari.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Radestock, Paul, author.

Caspari, F. A., author.

Series:

Heath's pedagogical library.

Heath's pedagogical library

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Educational psychology.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (ix, 117 pages).

Other Title:

Habit and its importance in education

Place of Publication:

Lexington, MA : D.C. Heath, 1894.

Summary:

"Education, the author regards, as progressive habituation, and good habits as even more important than good principles. What makes the novice a master is the power of the brain to lay up earlier stimuli in the form of dispositions. Habit not only lays down the trunk lines of association, and thus gives direction, but it furnishes momentum of mind and will. We have truly learned, not what we can be examined on, but what has become second nature or habit. Memory must lapse to custom, and sometimes to fixed reflex action or "will-memory," before the assimilation of instruction is complete. The stages in this process, from the residual trace left by the first act, which is the germ or point of departure for habitude, the excitation by "organic phosphorescence" or memory of all that favors, and the suppression of all colliding or diverting acts or impressions, the fusing of similars widely scattered in time and space in the sharpest possible focus of attention, till the raw material of memory is summated and gradually digested into faculty, and at-oned in instinct and intuition, --this is the story of these pages. If we assume with Aristotle that the process of habituation may be extremely accelerated by right methods, or retarded by wrong ones, or with this author that more men are made not only bad but ignorant by education or habit than by nature, the practical bearings of a work like this will not be underestimated. Habit steadies and gives strength. Harmonious ideas are reenforced and discordant ones fade out. Character is slowly defined; tact and taste take the place of memory and labored consciousness, as we turn over to our automaton what express volition had to do before. This residuum and deposit of schools and books, and even of experience, is the measure and standard of all educational values, and is even physically transmissible to succeeding generations"-- Introduction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).

Notes:

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