Excerpt from Laboratory Problems in Civic Biology
I has become the fashion in modern pedagogy to teach by the so-called "Problem Method," that is, to attempt to make the child solve problems from the very beginning of his work in the elementary school. But it is one thing to say to the child, "Here is your problem, solve it," and quite another thing to lead him through the several thought processes necessary to the solution of the problem. A child of six may be taught to think, and think clearly, if he is guided so that he makes a generalization after comparison with what his senses tell him he knows. The mistaken notion of our educational system has been that drill and drill alone, pure memory work, is only fitted for the mental life of our young children. Nothing is further from the actual truth. The mental growth of the child is an evolutionary growth, but it is a development based more upon his reaction to the world than upon the mechanism within his body. The nervous system and its connectives develop early. Our education of the nervous system, based on the theory that the nervous system is not well developed, makes simply for the formation of concepts.
Concept forming and concept enlargement are a necessary part in any scheme of education, but the method and the form of straight thinking are of even greater importance. Problems in life are not solved by knowing dates or facts, no matter how important or interesting these may be. The methods of reaching a conclusion, of weighing evidence, of making decision upon the merits of the facts in a case, of thinking straight from evidence gained from given data, - these are the habits of mind which are worth far more to a child than the actual impact with the subject matter in a textbook.
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