Rossini Meyerbeer.. Abt. .How Brightly, how Serenely. Night's Shade no Longer in Egypt. Inflammatus: Solo and Chorus. [From the Stabat Vale of Rest. [Solo and Chorus.] Mountain Song; Alpine Song; When Morning's Educational Psychology. Intellectual training in the school begins with the habit of attention. In this activity will and intellect are conjoined. The mind in this exercises its first self-determination. It says to the play of sense and idle fancy: Stop, and obey me; neglect that, and notice this. The infinitely manifold objects always present before the senses vanish, and one object engrosses the mind. This is the sine qua non of intellectual culture. All the grades of intellectual power that follow are successive stages of strength to concentrate the mind, and exclude extraneous objects. Hence Attention becomes analysis, and this deepens to reflection, or the perception of other objects implied in the one before the mind. Continued analysis discerns in the isolated object the influence of other objects, and hence its relativity, its connection and interdependence with other things, and this is properly named reflection. Reflection is therefore the ultimatum of analysis, and the beginning of synthesis. The mind, analyzing, abstracts and isolates, but at length discovers the relativity of the isolated object, and finds reflected in it the other objects, and, thus synthesizing, it comes to define the isolated object as a bundle of relations to the rest of the universe. Attention, Analysis and Reflection are succeeded by generalization, which involves several stages, beginning with classification as its lowest and ending with comprehension as its highest. These stages of generalization belong to the faculty of Reason, those of Reflection and Analysis to the Understanding; those of Attention to Perception. Perception deals with isolated properties, the Understanding with abstractions and relations-the realm of relativity; the Reason deals with totalities or wholes. Analysis dominates in the realm of the Understanding, and Synthesis in that of the Reason, but not to the exclusion of the other. Until the introduction of natural science and object lessons, the school culture of Attention was mostly confined to mental arithmetic. In this study, the transition from mere Attention to the stage of Analysis is involved. Analysis is attention, but carried to a higher power. Attention simple should be the concentration of the activity of the mind on an external object. Analysis concentrates the activity on the results of attention, and is thus in a certain sense self-related, or self-activity. Again, in Reflection self-activity concentrates on the results of the self-activity of the stage of Analysis: it perceives relations, and thus retraces its analysis, follows it back to the elements that have been excluded in the act of abstraction. Hence, reflection is a self-activity doubly self-related. Comprehension, again, is a three-fold act of self-relation. In its synthesis-like simple attention-it is conscious of (a) the object; like analysis it is conscious of (b) the results of Attention (obtained by abstraction, which is self-activity of the mind); like Reflection, it perceives (c) in the abstract object the relations to the excluded elements, in other words, its synthetic activity; but (d) it perceives the exhaustiveness and necessity of its synthesis, and this is the mental activity which has for its object the phase of self-activity, which perceives relations. All universal and necessary truths-socalled intuitive truths," or "intuitive ideas," are cognized by this three-fold act of self-relation or self-consciousness. There is the sensuous object (a) abstracted and isolated by the first phase of self-activity; (b) synthetically reunited with its necessary relations by the second phase of self-activity; (c) and the universality and necessity perceived by the third phase of selfactivity, which contemplates its entire scope, and thus takes in at a glance all of its possibilities. This somewhat abstruse psychological analysis is not intended to exhibit the process of arriving at a knowledge of philosophy or metaphysics, but only to show the relation of the different acts of the mind involved in the simple processes of Attention, Analysis, Reflection, and Comprehension (or intuition). The pupil who gives attention to an object in an object lesson, practices self-activity-i. e., his mind acts upon his mind, limiting it to the one object before him, and shutting out its tendency to wander to other subjects. The pupil does not know what such an act is called, nor that it is of the nature I have described. Such knowledge could only be reached by the study of psychology. Physiology and hygiene give one an insight into the processes of digestion aud respiration; they were not necessary, however, to the performance of those functions. One breathes and digests quite as well without a scientific knowledge of the nature of the process. So, too, one pays attention, analyzes, reflects, and reasons without knowing, scientifically, what is involved in such acts. To see the complexity of the physiological process of digestion or respiration astonishes us. Still more does it astonish the psychologist when he, for the first time, traces out the complexity of the most ordinary mental processes. The cumulation of one act upon another, each higher one acting upon the lower one-a continued process of involution, self-relation upon self-relation-is incredible, and, at first, wholly incomprehensible. Fichte was the first among all thinkers who traced out these subtle involutions, and his works form the classics of psychology, defective though they are in ontology. Attention to an object, analysis of its properties, reflection upon its relation to other things, are very ordinary intellectual activities, but they differ, widely, in significance. The lower activity never comprehends the higher; it is limited, but knows not its limit. Things seem to it impossible which are perfectly easy to the stages of thinking above it. ORGANIZATION. The progress of schools in this country is measured at every step by the progress in thorough organization and the establishment of a system of minute supervision. The principle of division of labor is advantageously used. A good supervisor relieves the subordinate teacher of the feeling of responsibility to such an extent that she is able to devote her time more fully to details. The supervising principal is able, by well directed assistance and advice, to strengthen a weak teacher, and in a short time secure good work from her. We have many examples, in our schools, of radical cures of this kind. Teachers who had failed for years have, under careful supervision, developed suddenly into good teachers and remained such. After their reform they have exhibited great skill in the application of their strength. Previously they had wasted what little power they possessed in trying to accomplish results by wrong methods. They had, for example, stood before their scholars and ordered silence, addressing their command to the whole school, and thus paralyzing their own effort. They had undertaken to check gross disorder by wholesale punishment or by scolding the entire school. Their strength not being equal to the task of forcing all the pupils in a mass, they had lost confidence in themselves and settled into a kind of apathy, broken only by spasmodic attempts to secure discipline. The supervisor's first lesson to them was the requirement that they should notice little things and small beginnings; become attentive to minute formalities. Discipline is made up of these minute formalities, and when the teacher has learned how to repress her inclination to scold or punish indiscriminately, and has acquired the habit of noting the manner of performing the smallest formalities, she is on the way toward success. No teacher is strong enough to force a whole school at once-to control it at arm's length. But no teacher is so weak (such is our experience) that she cannot have good discipline by insisting upon the performance of the minute formalities. A wise teacher will conquer the chaos of arbitrariness and caprice by introducing order in little things, continually formulating what is accidental and irrational into the universal and reasonable. The teacher who is strong enough to secure the performance of one of these small formalities can secure everything by persistance. The system of supervising Principalship has done more to equalize and elevate instruction and discipline in our schools than all other things combined. Much has been done in late years throughout the country toward the organization of supervision. At present the links of supervision in our American system of schools embrace the following: I. National Commissioner of Education at Washington, who has charge of the Bureau for the collection and dissemination of educational information. In the reports of that Bureau, as in a a mirror, one may see reflected the actual status of educationits organization and results-not only in the United States but in all parts of the world. II. State Superintendent of Public Instruction, resident at the State Capital, and having charge of the apportionment of the State School fund, the organization of educational institutes, collection of statistics, and a general supervision over the Common Schools so far as the execution of the State laws is concerned. III. County Superintendents having supervision over all schools in their county not organized under special charter (as systems of city schools). IV. Superintendents of city schools. Their jurisdiction extends over systems of schools organized independently of county supervision. V. In large cities the supervision of the Superintendent is supplemented by Assistant Superintendents and Supervising Principals. The latter have charge of large schools and smaller subordinate schools, and spend most of their time in inspection |