Teacher-Training Helps

Teacher-Training Helps Written for the General Church Board of Education by L. John Nuttall Brigham Young University Emotion To accompany Lesson 14, "How We Learn," Teacher-Training Text, 1923. Learning is achieved hy means of all of the processes discussed so far. The senses bring to consciousness the qualities of the world outside. To these stimuli we sometimes respond because of ready formed instincts and sometimes by random movement of some form. Gradually we build up around the objects stimulating us definite appropriate responses and feelings of acquaintanceship through the process of perception. These ideas so formed, become related one to another and remain in the mind in such a way as to be recalled through memory in the order in which they arc associated. Sometimes the recall assumes new forms as in imagination. Sometimes the facts are recalled and arranged systematically in the solution of a problem in thinking. All of these processes are accompanied by feeling. Each experience is either pleasant or unpleasant. Just what these feelings are is hard to determine but that they exist is the experience of all. Sweet taste is generally pleasant. The tuning up of an orchestra is generally unpleasant, while to hear the same instruments playing in harmony is pleasant. We enjoy looking at certain color combinations but not others. Tbe sensations that signify fatigue are unpleasant, we shudder even at the idea of pain. We like to be praised. Severe criticism is generally unpleasant. The feeling accompaniment of mental acts is not constant but what may be experienced pleasantly one time may not be pleasant on another occasion. This pleasant feeling varies in degree from almost indifference to the highest quality of desirableness or undesirableness. In learning, these feelings are very important because as we have discussed before, we tend to repeat or do over the pleasant acts and tend not to repeat the unpleasant ones. In all of this part of our study we have limited our discussion to that part of mental life which concerns itself with activity in the central nervous system. Under ordinary conditions we are not aware of the movements of the heart beat, of the digestive tract, or of breathing. But certain experiences, such as seeing a snake, or cruelty to a child have the effect of making these internal muscles contract, of causing the heart to beat faster, making the breath more hurried and causing glandular and other activities. The sensations of these unusual movements react consciousness resulting in a "complex of sensations" called an emotional state such as fear or anger. These emotions differ from the complex organic sensations such as hunger or fatigue in that they are more complex and less well localized. We locate hunger in the stomach or fatigue in the muscles but we are angry or afraid or excited or enthusiastic all over. There is a marked increase in the tendency to muscular activity and each emotion seems to have its characteristic means of expression. We can tell from one's movements and facial expression generally what the emotional state is. The face alone generally will express disgust, anxiety, terror, elation and others. There is a very close connection between this extra muscular activity and the activity of the glands especially the adrenal glands near the kidneys.

THEACHER-TRAINING HELPS 1029 Certain of the emotions, "anger, fear, lust, the comfortable state appropriate to digestion, grief (the state of the weeping child) mirth or amusement, disgust, curiosity, the 'tender emotion' (felt most strongly by a mother towards her baby) and probably a few others," are primary emotions. These are native and seem closely related to the instincts. Danger gives rise to the tendency to flee but is nearly always accompanied by the emotion of fear. Opposition gives rise to an instinctive impulse to attack but is nearly always accompanied by anger. The sight of the child causes the mother instinctively to fondle and care for it and this is generally accompanied by love or the tender emotion. A strange object gives rise to examination and manipulation, but curiosity is generally aroused as emotion. In each case there are the characteristic organic responses of cessation of digestion, stimulated adrenal activity, stimulated heart beat, deepened breathing, rise of blood pressure to the muscles which make it seem a preparatory step to every strong muscular activity. Herein lie the chief educational values of the emotions. "When great exertion is needed as in an athletic contest, the emotions of excitement and anger seem to aid strength. But the general effect on mental life is to confuse thought, lessen the efficiency in skilled movement and reduce the ability to learn. The emotions may be developed and used. Some people lose then ability to be affected in this way, but generally the emotions are satisfying. Some of us lose our ability to properly express these tendencies. Wood- worth (page 133) says: "Primary emotions become refined, first by modifications of the motor responses, by which socially acceptable reactions are substituted for the primitive crying, screaming, biting, and scratching, guffawing, dancing up and down in excitement, etc; second by new attachments on the side of the stimulus, such that the emotion is no longer called out by the original simple type of situation (it takes a more serious danger, a subtler bit of humor, to arouse the emotional response;) and third by a combination of one emotion with another." In this refining process together with a gradual building up on the teaching side of pleasurable experiences with beautiful surroundings we build up the aesthetic or higher emotions. These are not merely complexes of sensations from the organs of the body but are complexes of sensation or ideas with feelings of composure, satisfaction and joy which either cause or are caused by an organic state almost the opposite of that found in the coarser primary emotions. We need to associate the beautiful with the pleasurable. This is done largely by means of lessons of appreciation in teaching when stories are told, poems are studied, nature is observed, music is heard, pictures are looked at, just to be felt and not to become symbols only of intellectual analysis and criticism. As teachers we can work with the emotions in this high realm. We probably should not stimulate nor encourage the expression of strong primary emotions but should consciously try to control the expression of these by intellectual development and by attaching them to higher ethical situations. For example anger should be separated from mere selfishness and be stimulated by community wrong. Laughter should not come from the discomfort or suffering of another but should be attached to the ludicrous situations found in pleasant surroundings. Jealousy should be aroused for another's welfare as well as for our own. In this way we can use the emotions in teaching. For Lesson 13 see Juvenile Instructor.