p38 The Classical Position on Mental Development classicists seem to center around two cardinal notions-the mind as substantive matter, and truth.

The classical tradition holds that the human mind at birth is an intellectual void with a certain degree of potential, and whether or not that mind reaches its potential depends upon how it is educated. The purpose of education, then, according to the classicist, is the training of the mind. Serious contemporary scholars of education would, no doubt, accept this basic classical purpose of education; the fundamental differences between the two positions rests in how that purpose is accomplished.

Adherents to the classical position view the mind as "something" to developed, and, consequently, they accept that such development requires exercise. In other words, the mind, says the classicist, is like a muscle and, as with most muscles, the best method of developing it is with exercise --- Euclidean geometry, Greek, and other such bodies of subject matter are extremely necessary in this form of education because they require the learner to use his best mental - gymnastic ability.

In short, the classical position on mental development is that the mind is a muscle that is developed, strengthened, and toned by mental exercise,
and such mental exercises develop the potential powers of reason which are inherent in every human organism.

The development of the implicit powers of reasoning in the human being represents the first step on the road to achieving true mental discipline. The second step is stocking the mind with definite, unquestionable knowledge that represents absolute and final truth. It is in this second step, and the relationship of this step to the first one, that the classical and modern schools of thought find their primary divergence. But in order to allow ourselves to understand this divergence fully, we must first investigate the point of view of the classicist with respect to what knowledge is to be used for the "mind-stocking" process.

That knowledge which is of the greatest importance, according to the classical position, is metaphysical (intangible, or abstract) rather than empirical. Information gained empirically is useful, says the classicist, but is of considerably less importance than that knowledge which results when the powers of pure reason are applied to abstract problems. The type of knowledge which is best to stock the human mind with is that which is known to be "ultimate truth." The position of the classicist has been summed up succinctly as, "Denigration of sensory experience, empiricism, and empirical knowledge in favor of pure reason, rationalism, and metaphysical knowledge is the bench mark of classicism." Simply stated, the classicist does not feel that man can come to a complete understanding of the world around him by using only his own senses and information gained empirically. There are self-evident truths known to man which are independent of his own ability to reason, and these ultimate truths represent the type of knowledge with which the mind should be stocked. When the well-trained mind (one that has had the proper exercise") is placed in contact with proper knowledge, the person who can function in all types of situations will emerge This is the position taken by college teachers who spend their contact hours with students lecturing them about the generalities of a subject or supervising students who are following cookbook-type directions in a room called the "laboratory." That teacher firmly believes that once the learner has the facts he will be able to remember and use them when he needs them. The classicist's educational philosophy can be summarized as teaching is telling, memorizatation is learning, and being able to repeat something on an examination is evidence of understanding. The primary goal of the traditionalist is the transmission of information.

p41 -- The traditional position on education does not seem to take into account that the development of the mind and the mind-stocking process can go on simultaneously. If the classicist recognized that position, he would be admitting that sensory experience could provide empirical knowledge which represents proper material with which to stock the mind.
This admission would place empirical knowledge on a par with metaphysical knowledge, and this equality the traditionalist is not willing to accept. Some classicists do advance the argument that only a well-developed mind (one that can reason) will know it to use the knowledge with which it is equipped. This deviation from the strict, classic al position places a higher priority on the development of the ability to reason than on the possession of knowledge.

Leyden note:

this would be the "process approach" --- if you learn the process of discovery, first, you'll also learn the content --- as a dessert.

Furthermore, says the left- wing traditionalist, a mind that can reason is capable of attaining knowledge when its utilization becomes desirable or imperative. The majority of adherents to the classical point of view, however, reject this latter position because it emphasizes the means rather than the end of having the human mind contain acceptable products.

The dispute regarding how the human being knows what he knows is not new (that is PRODUCT vs. PROCESS) John Locke, asks: "Let us suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper void of all characters, without any ideas, how come it to be furnished? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge?" The traditionalist, even in Locke's era, would say that the materials of reason had to be put there. Today's traditionalist would say that those materials could be put into the mind only after it had been developed. John Locke took quite a different view. He answered his own question with, "To this I answer in one word, from experience; in that all our knowledge is found, and from that it ultimately derives itself." Locke was presening to traditional education that experience, which produces empirical knowledge, was the essential ingredient in learning. He was not senously listened to in the seventeenth century, and the present-day traditionalist still believes that education is the process of mind-stocking.

In summary, the classical position on mental development is that the human mind must be well disciplined (have acquired the ability to reason) and well stocked with true knowledge.

But of the two components of mental development, the traditionalist believes that the to be developed, such development must be accomplished through possession of the products of pure reason not empirical knowledge) direct, active involvement in those experiences which result in intel should take precedence over the development of reasoning ability. lectual growth. The types of activities which can be used to produce. Perhaps this priority of "product" over "process" partially explains mental development depend upon the age of the learner and the level the popularity of the lecture as a pedagogical tool and encyclopedia of development he occupies.

==== The classicist believes that placing a well-developed mind in proximity with true knowledge is the proper environment for developing a truly educated individual. If the traditionalist does direct his attention to the development of how to reason, he has definite factual material "built into" the learning experience which makes using empirical knowledge either unnecessary. The classical position on mental development does not accept that stocking the mind can occur as a concomitant outcome with developing the ability to think and reason.

To do this the classicist would need to admit that empirical knowl- edge is of a first-order value; he is unwilling to do this, but the mod ern position on learning eagerly embraces that knowledge can be gained from sensory experience and empiricism. Another View of Mental Development

Before the actual position of many contemporary educators on mental development can be fully understood, their most basic disagreement with the classicists must be examined. Because traditionalist believes that the human mind is an object that can be sharpened --- This position is not acceptable to most contemporary thinkers in not only education; in fact, some denounce it vigorously. --- Whithead --- did not only denounce the classical view; he firmly stated what he believed the mind to be when he said, "The mind is never passive; it is a perpetual activity, delicate, receptive, responsive to stimulus. You cannot postpone its life until you sharpen it." axioms The position of most contemporary educators, then, has its roots in - the thesis that the human intellect is active and receptive and, if it is such.

Freedom of Mind

So far, in our discussion of the responsibilities of schools, we have indicated that education must foster mental development and con- currently equip the learner with an understanding of the structure of the disciplines. The fact that goals must be reached simultaneously has also been established. --- Yet they do not provide the specific directions that are necessary if daily classroom teaching is going to accomplish them. Furthermore, we have not taken into account the sociological environment in which the schools must function in achieving these general goals. Let us begin, then, delineating specific objectives from our general-direction statements by freely admitting that the schools of this country must serve all of American life-the schools are for all the children of all the people.

To provide educational experiences for all the children in this country means that those responsible for the curriculum must consider (in addition to the intellectual side of the educational picture) the physical, emotional, vocational, leisure time, and citizenship needs of the school population. Providing curricula that will enable the learner to achieve goals that satisfy his needs (immediate and long term) while in school represents a tremendous undertaking. The schools do not have the facilities and financial resources to provide such a sweeping educational establishment and, if they did, the learner would not have the time to utilize it. Furthermore, if the school attempted to supply preparation for life which provided for each finite need of our future citizens, it would be setting itself up as a foreteller of the future. Today's educators cannot know the specific needs of tomorrow's citizens ---- We define curricula as "all activities provided and supervised by the school."

p47 with the abilities necessary to make him able to cope with every future problem he will face assumes that learning ceases when the learner leaves school. Neither of the foregoing propositions is true. ==== But if John Q. Citizen is going to learn effectively from his day-by-day experiences, learn must have learned how to learn ! ==== But general objectives do not provide the exacting kind of guidance that teachers need in planning pupil learning experiences and when actually engaged in the process of interacting with children, which is teaching. What do you lead the learners to do? Specifically,, in what types of activities should they be engaged? Answering that question is extremely important because it tells you something about your educational philosophy.

Please take time tow write an answer to the foregoing question because only by involving yourself in this discussion can you have your educational beliefs supported or changed.

The answer to the last question asked, from our frame of reference, is: It depends on what you think is important. If you believe that the most important responsibility of an elementary school teacher teaching science is to transmit the facts and generalizations from the subject matter to the children, the activities that your pupils should engage in are quite clear. You must provide the opportunity to hear about and see demonstrated every important fact and generalization from the discipline; a textbook is an excellent guide for this type of activity. You are engaged in the mind-stocking process. The person who works with children in the manner just described believes his primary responsibility is the transmission of information about the discipline.

If, however, you believe that the function of the school is, as was stated earlier, to lead pupils to learn how to learn rather tItan transmit information, you are faced with a different set of responsibilities. Those responsibilities tell you that by using the content of science the children in your classes must learn to live in a free society. Free- p48

dom implies individual liberty to do and think many "things," but perhaps all of these things will be included if we simply say that true freedom provides the individual with freedom of choice. But in order for an individual to be able to exercise freedom of choice responsibly and judiciously he must have developed freedom of mind. Each individual in our society must develop freedom of mind for himself, and the degree,to which our society will prosper depends; upon how well each citizen develops that attribute. ====. What are the criteria which describe a free mind, and to which the school experience can make a direct contribution?

If a mind is free it is able to apply certain definite rational powers to the solution of problems and the making of decisions. Those rational powers have been defined as "recalling and imagining, classifying and generalizing comparing and evaluating, analyzing and synthesizing, and deducing and inferring." The rational powers, then, describe a person who has developed freedom of mind, and they also describe another type of individual because the Educational Policies Commission has defined these rational powers as "the essence of the ability to think." Seeing how studying science can assist in rational power development is not difficult if science is taught as the scientists described in Chapter 1 practiced it and as contemporary scientists practice it, that is, as a form of investigation.

===== There can be no doubt that the individual who is developing his ability to think is moving toward optimum mental development. He will be developing that ability to discriminate between tested beliefs and assertions, guesses and opinions which John Dewey insisted must be developed. He will also be developing that freedom of mind which the citizens of our democracy must have if our culture is to be preserved and propagated. The development of the rational powers of the mind (the development of the ability to think) then represents "the common thread" of education.

Have teachers in the past not striven to develop the ability to think? If one judges by the instructions which are given elementary school children, he would perhaps conclude that "thinking" is a desirable activity in the p49

classroom. One frequently hears such instructions: "Now, think before you answer," or "DonŐt just give me the first answer that comes to your mind, think about the question for a time."

The fact is, however, that teachers simply request logical thinking as if it is an innate ability rather than something to be developed. The development of the ability to think will not be accomplished unless, and until, "the school focuses on it. === Here, then, are the specific guidelines which must guide our daily classroom teaching. The development of the individual rational powers within our; pupils represents the specific objective toward which our teaching must be pointed. But how does a teacher use this specific objective? === == =

=== If we also accept that the ability to think is defined by the rational powers, we then have specific criteria to guide us in selecting curricula, instructional techniques, and teaching materials. When units of study are chosen, learning aids are secured, and classroom procedures are decided on, the rational powers represent an important and valuable standard against which to measure their potential effectiveness. Teaching materials and techniques that stuff the mind of the learner without giving him the opportunity to develop some of his rational powers are nearly valueless. Sometimes using purely information-centered materials can be justified because they provide the learner with information which is "nice to know" or make an enjoyable experience possible. Many of the currently available motion pictures provide the learner with nice-to-know information and are fun to watch. School time spent on using such teaching materials can be justified because they provide a change of pace in a school day and they frequently can be used as a culminating experience for a unit of study which has concentrated upon developing rationality.

p50

A teaching device, such as film, can pull together in a few minutes all information about a discipline which the learner will have acquired in a few weeks or months of investigation. The actual investigation provided the learner with the opportunity to develop his rational powers and gather a great deal of factual information; the film could easily review and summarize the findings of the investigation for him.

We must not, however, delude ourselves into thinking that providing factually centered learning experiences about investigation substitutes for the investigation itself. Our central responsibility is to lead the learner to develop his rational powers, and only actual investigatory experiences can do that. =====

=== ==== ==== If every teacher in every class in this country made the development of the ability to think central to his teaching, the goals of the modern educator would be achieved and, because of the information that the learner would gather (in a meaningful way), the classicist would find less fault with our schools.

Science and the Rational Powers

===. We must then ask whether or not science is a discipline that can contribute to the development of the ability to think.

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In Chapter 1 we saw that science progresses by a special method of investigation and that special method is one in which a problem is analyzed; an experiment is imagined; experimental results are classified, compared, and analyzed, an hypothesis is synthesized and tested and the results of these tests evaluated; generalizations are formed; future results are inferred, and mental models to explain what has been found are imagined. If you will study the mental processes that an investigator must carry on while searching for an answer to a problem, it becomes immediately evident that those mental processes are the rational powers of the free mind.

The structure of science, then, if taught as a form of inquiry, or investigation, a natural vehicle to use when leading the learner to develop his ability to think.

But if the discipline of science is to be used to teach habits of inquiry and develop the child's rational powers, it must be taught as a form of investigation. Acquainting children with the facts of science which have been found by investigation, and asking for those facts to be returned on examinations, does not teach them how to inquire.

p52

What will be learned if fact giving and receiving are emphasized in science teaching is the generalizations that science has developed, and not how those generalizations were established.

Teaching science as a form of investigation demands that each child in the classroom must make individual inquiries for himself. He must be placed in a situation where he will have to observe some type of experimental situation and interpret his observations as he sees them. In short, the learner must be allowed to inquire in his own unique way. When an individual conducts an inquiry he usually does it to find out something he does not know. This is exactly the manner in which the word "inquiry"

Leyden note;

what if the word, inquiry --- was replaced with constructivism? Would this be a 1970's book or a 1990's?"

must be interpreted when it is applied to learning. The inquiries of elementary school children are not expected to find something new to the world-only something new to the child. The entire inquiry process and its relationship to teaching will be closely examined in Chapter 4. === ===it is sufficient to say that if the discipline of science is to be used to develop the rational powers of children, must be taught by a method that fosters inquiry. That teaching method is often called the inquiry ?

The Objectives of Elementary School Science

From what has been said in Chapter 1 and in this chapter, three objectives of elementary school science can be synthesized. Since science is a natural vehicle to use to develop the learner's powers, the first objective

of elementary school science can be stated as: To develop in the learner a command of the rational powers. From what has been said about the relationship between inquiry and rational power development, you have probably concluded that using inquiry fosters rational power development and that the systematic use of the rational powers is inquiry.

The second purpose

of elementary school science, therefore, is to develop in the student the ability and confidence to inquire.

But the vehicle of science must use subject matter to accomplish these objectives.

Thinking and learning do not happen in a vacuum; we think with facts, notions, and ideas. In selecting the curriculum that will allow the learner to develop his ability to think, the notion that learning takes place in terms of those things with which we are already familiar must be kept in mind. This immediately tells us that the content of science selected for study should be related in some way to the learner's environment and those factors which affect his environment. There are, of course, times during the education of a child when he must, in order to develop an understanding of his environment, become acquainted with ideas not directly obtainable from his immediate, direct experiences. These ideas or concepts help the child develop a structure into which new information can be stored and interpreted and from which information can be retrieved. Karplus summarizes these content notions from the teaching frame of reference.

Leyden note:

Karplus (my teacher in california) and Renner (the author of this article and my teacher in oklahoma) -- were instrumental in designing the learning cycle lesson plan concept.

Two aspects of the teaching program should be distinguished from one another: The experiential (Exploration lessons) (Student experience with a wide variety of phenomena . . .) and the conceptual (introduction of the student to the approach which modern Scientists find useful in thinking about phenomena they study) (Concept Introduction Lessons).

=== The third principal objective,

then, which can be listed for elementary school science is: To develop an understanding of the changing nature of the environment in terms of matter, life, energy and their interactions.

Many other objectives for elementary science teaching could be listed. Examples of these are:

To develop scientific literacy,

to develop scientific attitude and open-mindedness,

and to develop skill in the use of the methods and processes of science.

These are perfectly good, sound objectives; but if you study the three general objectives listed here, you will discover that the objectives just expressed will be accomplished if our general objectives are achieved.

So far in our discussion of elementary school science, we have considered the discipline of science and the institution in which it will be taught the school. We have seen that science in its most refined form is an intellectual process and that the schools must concentrate upon developing the rational powers of the free mind (intellectual ability). Science, we have demonstrated, is a natural and logical curriculum vehicle to use in leading the learner to develop his ability to think, and, in addition, the inquiry experiences provided can lead the learner to understand a great deal about his environment.

p54 last page

There is, however, still one element of the content-teaching-learning enterprise which has not been considered. That element is the child.

Are the learning experiences that the study of science can provide, even though they will lead a learner to develop his rational powers, proper experiences for young children to have? (Remember, we are concerned here with children from kindergarten through the sixth grade.) In other words, are science and children "right" for each other? To be able to answer that question, we must briefly refresh ourselves on the fundamental characteristics of children. Those characteristics we shall explore in the next chapter.

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