Helps in Teacher-Training

Helps in Teacher-Training \ Written for the General Church Board of Education by L. John Nuttall, Brigham Young University Habit and Habit Formation (To accompany Lesson 5, How We Learn, Teacher-Training Text, 1923) Why does a mother feel ashamed when the little boy of the home grabs at the food and heaps his plate? She evidently feels that somewhere she1 has not done her duty, that the boy's conduct in some way reflects on her to her social disadvantage. The duty she thus unconsciosly feels is that she should constantly work to direct the instinctive actions of her child into proper habits. The situation is a table full of food set with dishes. Instinct impels him to get plenty. Social propriety says he should control this food getting behavior along so called good-mannered ways. Good manners are habits either formed or forming. As teachers we all face the same duty as this mother. The situation is a beautiful Sunday. What shall the child do? Can we help him form the habit of church at- tendance? The child is at church. How can it be assured that he will be reverent? It is necessary for health that one washes oneself before eating. How can this habit be developed in children? As the outline suggests, habits are good and bad as judged by other people or social standards. To say "it is me," is bad, to say "It is I" is good. When a boy hits his finger with a hammer it is good to say "ouch/' it is bad to say "damn." When we consider how habits begin we are face to face with a condition that is interesting. The habits that are formed are the actions that brought satisfactory results in their beginnings. Babies form the habit of crying for everything because they get things that way. Children longing for attention repeat the action that gets that at- tention. The boy who said "damn" and was rewarded by having his ex- ploit repeated to father by mother and then laughed at is surely happy, so he repeats it. The boy who refrains from Sunday swimming trips to go to Sunday school is laughed at and jeered by other boys and then is bored by a poorly taught lesson at the hands of an irritable teacher and is not praised or noticed. These are illustrations of the famous Law of Effect in habit formation. Reward pleasantly the action you want repeated, punish unpleasantly the action you do not want repeated. If, therefore, you would help pupils form the habits that are desired you should first know what these desired habits are. Many of us don't. A habit is a specific automatic response to a given situation. To func- tion, therefore, an action must be performed under natural conditions. A boy hears a word and spells it. He has formed a habit. He later needs to write that word but misspells it. Why? The habit formed is:

HELPS IN TEACHER-TRAINING 563 "Hear the word — spell it." The habit needed is: "Think the word — write it." This habit has never been formed. A boy grows up safely guarded by his father and by asking the parent spends his money wisely and saves. He later goes out to work alone and be- comes a spendthrift. Why? The habit formed is: "Ask advice — spend well and save." The habit needed is: "Decide what to do — spend well and save." These illustrations serve to make clear a second part of this psychological law which states "Put together the things you want to go together." More specifically, habit i- ■ response to a situation. We should see to it that the natural situation brings out the desired response. Habits that will work cannot be formed by associating a good response to some stimulus other than the one to be met in life. Practically then we may restate the whole principle thus: Put the things together you want together, reward the right response, make wrong actions unpleasant. How can teachers connect with real situations? This is a difficult question, but can be answered largely by saying: Teach from real life problems and true biography so that the situations are as natural as possible. Most habits begin, however, before formal teaching begins. Let us take through our first illustrations. The table is set for a special dinner. What shall the boy do the first time he meets the situation? There are six ways in which the first response will be determined. 1. Instinct may control as suggested above. 2. The hunger may not be strong so that no definite instinctive re- sponse is ready, so the boy just moves at random and docs something, or makes varied movements. 3. Some special mind set on attitude may determine the action. The mother may ponder how the guest will like the salad. The boy watches to find out and therefore sits rather quiet. The mother may ask the boy to be the Inst at the table. This set or attitude may prevail. 4. The boy may respond to only a part of the situation. The novelty may cause him to act more curious than hungry. The guest may be older and the submissive tendency may respond to this factor and the boy be non-aggressive. 5. Perhaps the boy lins ealeu at school and has taken turns. He notes the similarity) of the guest situation and responds accordingly by in- sisting on his turn. 6. He may guide his action by imitation. Whatever the determining factor, he will act and will be acting under natural conditions. If he appears greedy, rude, hasty, noisy, a suggestion or reproof should be given in order to show the displeasure of the re- warding agent and if the) misconduct is very serious some denial of pleas- ure should follow. The boy should not, however, be denied appearance at the table next time. Should the boy act quietly, remain patient and on

564 IMPROVEMENT ERA the whole do well, it should not be forgotten for this then is real habit for- mation. The other is habit prevention. Praise the boy, indirectly at the table, later by compliment and privilege and then give him opportunity to meet the situation again. Whether it be this illustration or others the teacher's place is to suggest right first responses. This can be done by bulding the mind set or attitudes. A story, an example well rewarded, will do this. She may analyze the situation and call attention to parts that will call up proper action, or she may furnish an example for imitation. Don't merely have the pupil begin with a strong initiatve but have him begin right with enthusiasm. The beginning of a habit in this way is a conscious, deliberate process. Many habits begin unconsciously in random activity. Such actions as be- come habits are selected because they worked well and brought satisfactory results. When an act is thus made in a given situation and works, how does it become automatic, definite and sure as a habit? The answer is the second big law contributed by recent psychology: Repeat the response frequently enough and for a long enough period to make the connection in the nervous system between the appearance of the situation to the senses and the proper action by the muscles a permanent pathway. This is the law of frequency or repetition. Just mere repeating will not do, how- ever. The one forming habit must repeat with interest and with the purpose of learning. If a boy is kept after school for some disciplinary reasons and is asked to write a word many times or work one hundred problems his purpose is not to learn but to get out of school. His work will probably be worse at the end than at the beginning. The learner whose purpose it is to improve keeps a record in some form of his progress in the forming of the habit and thus keeps interested and im- proves with practice. What can the teacher do in habit formation? She can provide the situation or help realize it. She can guide the first response to accuracy. She can endeavor by her enthusiasm to make this beginning striking. She can control the rewards for good action. She can insist on practice for improvement. Most of the teachers, however, are thinking of another problem. A child has lived, played and worked, and has formed habits that have served his individual needs very welL The teacher knows the social situations and knows that the child with these habits will have difficulty. She teaches the new principle of right conduct and the child finds himself torn be- tween intellect and habit. Habit generally will prevail unless it is counter- acted by other habit. The new principle is not enough. A child spends every cent he gets for candy. This is a bad habit but is very satisfying. To teach thrift, is not enough. To deny money is not enough. A little bank, a box, a purse, something to do with the money is needed. Money should be given and used properly. Then each time the suggestion or proper use should be made. Breaks should be prevented. A new con- trolled channel for sufficient candy should be provided. In fact habit

HELPS IN TEACHER-TRAINING 565 breaking is a double* process of habit formation and instrcution and is therefore difficult. All of the things a teacher can do will not form the habit in the other. The coopertaion of the pupil must be had. The learner must form the habit. Economy in life's activity demands an habit- ual response to every situation which stays relatively the same through life. Habit is thus a big part of life. All of the instincts are modified by the above process into habits, and this process is part of learning. The Stream of Consciousness (To accompany Lesson 6 How We Learn, Teacher-Training Text Book, 1923) If we stop sometime in our busy life and try to see what has been taking place in our minds for a 6hort period of time we shall study a wonderful process. In a little while one attacks a problem in business, solves it, calls a helper and gives instructions but in so doing he notices the new dress of the office girl, then he recalls his daughter at home, won- ders if the whole family are well, then is suddenly forced to look out of the window because of some unusual noise. After investigating he again comes back to his desk, notices the newspaper for the first time though it has been there all the time, reads, forms a judgment on some phase of the day's public affairs, reads about a fire, recalls an expired insurance policy, goes back to his desk for this and begins his work again. To fol- low step by step would mean to study the processes of thinking, expression, perception, memory, imagination, instinct of responding to unusual noise, judgment thinking. Alle of these mental processes go on, yet the man is not aware of himself very much, if at all, and certainly feels no breaks in the mental life as each act is performed. He is not concerned with the process but all is part of himself and he thinks of it all as meanings of the world about him. In addition to the things of which the man is thus aware there are many other things happening to him. His clothing is touching his body; a radiator may be making a slight noise; there may be noises from other parts of the building. Of these he is not aware or conscious. He may be made to notice them by their becoming more intense or by someone sug- gesting them. So at any one time we are conscious or aware of some of the things happening about us because of activity within us. We are not aware of other things as happening, but consciousness may shift to these. These moves are not by breaks or shifts, but by association or instinct from one thing to another they make up the whole of mental life. This fact of the unity of consciousness and the continuous relations exist- ing between the various phases of mental life is illustrated in all of the lessons of the year. Every day life will convince us all that each of us is an organized unit functioning all together for the accomplishment of our purposes. Thus mental life and consciousness are always going on. Not only is mental life or consciousness going on all the time but it is constantly changing. Because we are blessed with the ability to re-

566 IMPROVEMENT ERA tain the effect of experience when we repeat a conscious act, it is not the same but is accompanied by recognition as known before. James says, "What I wish, to lay stress on is this, that no state once gone can recur and be identical with what it was before. Now we are seeing, now hearing, now reasoning, now willing, now recollecting, now expecting, now loving, now hating; and in a hundred other ways we know our minds to be alternately engaged. But all these are commplex states, it may be said, produced by combinations of simpler ones. — Do not the simpler ones follow a different law? Are not the sensations which we get from the same object, for example, always the same? Does not the same piano- key, struck with the same force, make us hear in the same way? Does not the same grass give us the same feeling of green, the same sky the same feeling of blue, and do we not get the same olfactory sensation no matter how many times we put our nose to the same flask of cologne? It seems a piece of metaphysical sophistry to suggest that we do not; and yet a close attention to the matter shows that there is no proof that an incoming, cur- rent ever gives us just the same bodily sensation twice." Not only this fact but another should be more fully stated. At any one time the objects or acts of which we are conscious are not known with the same degree of clearness. Of sensation, Woodworth says, "Of two stimuli acting at once upon us, we are the more conscious of that one which catches our attention; of two acts that we perform simultaneously, that one is more conscious that is performed attentively. "We need not be entirely unconscious of the act or the stimulus to which we are not attending. We may be dimly conscious of it. There are degrees of consciousness. Suppose, for example, you are looking out of the window while 'lost in thought.' You are most conscious of the matter of your thoughts, but conscious to a degree of what you see out of the window. Your eyesi are focused on some particular object out- side, and you are more conscious of this than of other objects seen in indirect vision, though even of these last you are not altogether unconscious. Consciousness shades off from high light to dim background." In thought we always have a focal element and connected with it is a fringe of related topics. James says, "Consciousness is always interested more in one part of its object than in another; and welcomes and re- jects, or chooses, all the while it thinks." A teacher in a grammar class wrote the sentence on the board, "The large ball was thrown to the boy." She then attempted to analyze the sentence to show the function of the adjective large. When asked what word preceded ball a boy answered, 'basket.' The word ball had driven from the focal part of consciousness all suggestion of grammar and had led the boy to think intensely of game and contest. As teachers we should understand these general characteristics of men- tal life. Largely the determining force in selecting what will be in the focus of consciousness is interest. The focusing is the process or condi- tion of attention,