Formal discipline

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From A Cyclopedia of Education, edited by Paul Monroe, Ph.D. (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1911, vol. II, pp. 642-7).

This article is of historical interest for the way it shows how turn-of-the-century empirical research challenged prevailing doctrines about transfer of training. It is not, however, particularly illuminating about how the concept of formal discipline developed or served in the pedagogy of the time.

This expression has been used to indicate the general reaction upon the abilities of a student that is by many supposed to spring from the method of their study rather than from the content which is learned. We may distinguish, in the first place, between the information and the discipline that we may derive from a subject; and again between the specific discipline, or increased power of dealing with similar material, and the general discipline or increased ability to deal with any sort of material, the treatment of which involves somewhat the same general powers of the mind. Although formal discipline, a discipline derived from the form of the study rather than from its content, may be said to include both specific and general results, it is in connection with the latter especially that educational controversy has arisen.

The idea of a general mental discipline to be derived from the form of specific studies becomes especially prominent at times in the history of education when a well-established curriculum begins to have less content value than it had at the time of its foundation. Under these circumstances the schoolmasters who advocate the studies that are becoming a trifle antiquated naturally reply to the attack of practical men who question the usefulness of their teaching by saying that, although the information they give is of little practical value, the discipline that their subjects affords increases the general ability of their students to deal with any sort of material. The students learn to observe, to analyze, compare, and classify, to imagine and remember, to reason and judge, to will, even to create. They acquire habits of punctuality, of attention, of regularity, of application to work. All these accomplishments are useful, no matter what one tries to do. It is far more useful, the disciplinary argument runs, to possess such general training than merely to have in mind certain specific facts, which must of necessity have a very limited application.

The disciplinary argument has been used, not only to defend the classics or mathematics, but newer subjects as well, such as laboratory science for all. It has been employed to defend prescription, because, even though the content of the prescribed subjects may not be worth while for all, yet their disciplinary effects are conceived to be universally valuable. It has also been employed to defend election, on the ground that it does not matter what one studies, since after all the important thing is how the study is carried on. It is evident, therefore, that the argument from formal discipline has done very little to settle what should be studied. It has instead clouded the issue and prevented a decisive conclusion.

On the other hand, it is clear that, if there are general disciplinary effects, these are relatively of such great importance as to outweigh all others. The telling differences between men and brutes, between men of different races, and between men of the same race turn largely on what may be called intellectual power. Now if any sort of training can be said to improve this general power to think, such culture possesses the unusual merit of not simply differentiating its possessor from others less fortunate, but also of elevating him above them. Some facts lead naturally to the assumption that general intellectual power can be increased by education. The most striking is the general mental superiority of the educated class. Although there are marked exceptions, it is unquestionably true that the men who have been well trained according to the educational standards of a period show, on the average, greater intellectual grasp in handling its problems. This fact may, however, be very easily explained by the simple supposition that those who take and succeed in mastering this culture are in the beginning possessed of better minds than the average. Thus their later efficiency may be due not to their training, but to their native ability, of the possession of which the getting of an education is only one among many proofs. For example, although college men may, as compared with others, average greater distinction in life, yet this may not be due to their education, but to the mental ability which enabled them to comply with the severe requirements of the course of study. Thus, when we criticize the foundation of the natural tendency to trace the superiority of the educated to their education, we find that, after we subtract the special advantages of prestige and of specific knowledge and discipline, the margin of general superiority that is left to them seems capable of being accounted for by their initial advantage rather than as a product of their culture.

Undoubtedly the strongest support that the idea of formal discipline has received in the past has come from the practically universal belief in certain abstract mental powers or faculties. The psychologist, in analyzing the processes of the mind, naturally classifies them. Many make the grand divisions of knowing, feeling, and willing. All distinguish between perception, memory, and imagination, reasoning, judgment, will, and the emotions. Now at the very outset of this analysis the psychologist encounters a fact which naturally leads to the theory that these are distinct faculties. He finds that there are many kinds of sensation, and that the impression that any given object makes upon us depends upon which sense it affects. The same object impresses us very differently when we look at it and when we touch it. The qualities of sensation spring from the nature of the sense organs quite as much as from the qualities of the object. The excellence in seeing depends not so much upon what is to be seen, but rather on the eye that sees. And just as the power of sensation is dependent upon the sense organ, so the powers of perception, of memory, of reasoning, etc., are naturally supposed to depend upon the inner organs through the activities of which these forms of consciousness are made possible.

The belief in these various faculties does not of necessity carry with it the conception that they may be generally improved by exercise in specific directions. However, when emphasis is placed on the form of the activity, and when it is assumed that all activities of a certain form depend upon a special inner power that exerts itself equally in connection with whatsoever material, any observed increase in its efficiency in dealing with this or that content will be naturally expected to appear when attention is directed to other content. The older view that mental activity is such an abstract energy functioning independently of the character of the material presented was modified essentially by the Kantian and especially by the {Herbart|Herbartian]] theory of apperception. According to Herbart, we should think of the process of apperception as the assimilation of new ideas by ideas that have already been apperceived, or incorporated into the living content of the mind. He rejected explicitly the faculty theory, regarding it as valid merely as a description of various phases in the process of assimilation or apperception. Thus we are led to think of the mind, not as made up of perceptive, imaginative, rational and volitional powers, but rather of groups of ideas, each of which determine for us a specific power of perceiving, remembering, judging, or desiring ideas of a similar character.

Modern psychology has done much to justify the Herbartian conception of the mind. It has been found that memory is a somewhat specialized power. Certain persons have a better memory for visual experience, others for auditory experience, etc. Moreover, it is recognized that one's powers of discrimination are a function of what he knows. The microscopist may see with his glass significant structures that to the untrained eye are practically invisible, since the attention cannot single them out. The same expert might show a lamentable lack of ability to note the essential features in the style of dress worn by a woman. We see what we expect to see. So, too, one's memory is so largely dependent upon association that his ability will lie especially in those fields in which he already possesses a rich fund of material with which to associate the new fact. In a sense, one's experience, what he has assimilated and therefore remembers and knows, determines what he shall see and remember, and how he shall judge and will.

Thus the Herbartian "content" theory of mind has, at least in the main, constituted the point of view of modern psychology. Ideas, or at any rate the physiological processes with which specific ideas are associated, are conceived to be the forces in mental activity. Now, while the acceptance of the faculty theory, as was said, does not necessarily involve the acceptance of the idea that there is a general effect from specific training, its rejection does go far toward discrediting such an effect, at least as maintained by the extreme disciplinarians. Herbart and the Herbartians have always subordinated discipline to the content of instruction, and either denied the idea of a general formal discipline, or regarded it as properly a mere incident in instruction. However, so far as concerns the course of study, Herbart himself valued so highly on account of their content mathematics and the classics, the defenders of which have made especial use of the disciplinary argument, that his psychology of instruction has not been actively employed to dislodge from the curriculum that which was generally regarded as having principally disciplinary value. When we come to the question of method, on the other hand, his followers have in their development of his steps of instruction and his notions of correlation constantly emphasized the content, and subordinated entirely the form of instruction to its substance. Herbert Spencer, in maintaining that no subject should be taught for its disciplinary effect alone, but that this should be merely incidental, has fallen in with the passive attitude that the followers of Herbart have been wont to assume on this question.

In recent years the issue has again come to the front for various reasons, two of which may be mentioned more specifically. In the first place, the struggle among subjects of study has caused the various arguments advanced for each to be scanned more critically, with the result that the indecisiveness of the argument from formal discipline has become more apparent. Since all subjects seem able to use it equally well, it tends to be abandoned by such as can employ more effective weapons. In the second place, with the rise of psychological experimentation and its application to educational problems, the question of general disciplinary effects has presented itself as one problem of great importance accessible to the new methods. This experimentation has given to the notion of formal discipline the severest blow that it has so far suffered. The experiments bearing on the subject may be organized under the following headings. These are: (1) the effect of training certain muscles and sensory surfaces upon bilaterally symmetrical ones; (2) the effect of special training on the general accuracy and rapidity (a) of discriminations or estimates made by the senses, or (b) of motor adjustments; or (c) of memorizing; (3) the effect of special habits on general behavior.

1. As early as 1858 Volkmann found that training the left arm to discriminate touches that are so close as at first to be felt as one improved somewhat, although not equally, the power of the right arm in such discrimination. Experiments reported in Yale Studies, Vols. 2, 6, and 7, and in Monograph Supplement to the Psychological Review, No. 13, indicate that improvement through training in the grip of one arm, or in its power to lift a weight, or to strike a target accurately with a foil, or to hit a dot, results in some improvement in the power of the other arm to do the same things.

2. (a) The experiments of Thorndike and Woodworth reported in Psychological Review, Vol. VIII, showed that training in discriminating words containing the letters e and s brought a little improvement in the rapidity of discriminating words containing i and t, etc., or misspelled words, or the letter A in a list of letters. Accuracy was also improved, but to a lesser degree. Training in discriminating English verbs brought a scarcely perceptible increase in the ability to discriminate quickly other parts of speech. Moreover, it produced a tendency toward omitting to note many instances of the word to be marked. The development through practice of the power to estimate by the eye the areas of certain rectangles improved considerably the power to estimate the areas of rectangles that were different either in size or shape, or both. So, too, the power to estimate heavier weights accurately was improved by practice with lighter ones; but training in estimating the length of lines did not invariably result in a gain in power to estimate longer or shorter ones. Coover and Angell report in the American Journal of Psychology for 1907 that training in tone discrimination improved the power to discriminate shades of color.

(b) Judd gives an account in the Educational Review of June, 1908, of an experiment in motor adjustment. The assistant in the experiment was placed so that he could not see one of his arms. Certain lines were then exposed to his vision momentarily, and he was required to place a pencil held in the concealed hand in the same direction as each line. After test experiments, he was allowed to observe one line more closely. The result was that he came to place the pencil more accurately than at first. When again the test series was exposed, it was found that errors similar to those originally made in the practice line were lessened. Errors of the opposite sort were increased. Moreover, the fuller exposure of one of this second class of erroneously represented lines failed to result in any improvement in the placing of the pencil. Experiments on geometrical illusions show that when by practice an illusion is corrected, the correction of the opposed illusion is interfered with, provided the experimenter is not aware of his corrections and their reasons. When, however, such knowledge exists, the correction is not hindered, but helped, by the practice.

Bergstrom reported, in the American Journal of Psychology, Vol. VI, an experiment in sorting cards. When by practice the speed of sorting had been improved, the experimenter tried interchanging the positions of the piles of the various kinds of cards. The result was slower sorting than in the original trial. Continued practice in interchanging positions, however, facilitated the shifting from one to the other. This result was also brought out by Munsterberg, who placed two inkwells on his desk, one full, the other empty. Having accustomed himself to the full one in one position, he interchanged them, with the result that the pen was for a time continually thrust into the empty well. In this and similar experiments Munsterberg found that practice in shifting improved the power to change from one habit to the other. Munsterberg's experiment is detailed in Gedächtnisstudien, Teil 1, Beiträge', Heft 4.

Bair reported in Monograph Supplement, No. 19, of the Psychological Review experiments with a typewriter. By using movable caps for the keys he changed the letter represented by any one at will. Practice in copying lists containing only six distinct letters increased the power to copy lists containing six different letters. In this experiment the change in the letters represented by the keys did much to remove any advantage of familiarity with the machine. Bair also found that practice in repeating the alphabet with the letter n spoken after each letter increased the power to repeat it with the letter x or the letter r thus introduced.

(c) Professor James published in Vol. I of the Psychological Review the results of certain experiments on memory. He found that practice in committing to memory certain verses of Paradise Lost did not improve his power to memorize other verses. In his case there was a slight loss, owing possibly to fatigue. With other experimenters there was no significant gain or loss. Ebert and Meuman practiced committing to memory nonsense syllables, noting the method of learning them that seemed most economical. They tested the effects upon the power to learn series of other nonsense syllables, letters, words, and lines of poetry or prose. Improvement was noted that in a general way was proportional to the similarity of test material with the practice material. Their results are published in Archiv für die gesammte Psychologie, Vol. IV. Dr. Fracker gives in Psychological Review, Monograph Supplement, Vol. IX, No.2, the results of practice in remembering the order of four tones. He found that it improved the power to remember poetry, the order of four shades of gray, of nine tones, of nine shades of gray, of nine geometrical figures, of nine numbers, and of the extent of arm movements. Introspection indicated that the improvement was due to the development and mastery of a scheme of imagery by which the series might be held together. Winch experimented with British school children, reporting his work in Vol. II of the British Journal of Psychology. After being tested in power to memorize, a class was divided into two sections of equal ability. One was given practice in committing to memory 100 lines of poetry; a second test revealed that as a result of its practice it showed ten per cent more gain in power than the other section.

3. Bagley, in his Educative Process, Ch. XIII, tells of an experiment in which school children were trained to be neat in arithmetic papers. They showed no tendency to improve the neatness of papers written in connection with other subjects.

On comparing the conclusions of these experiments, a substantial unanimity of opinion is apparent. It is agreed that wherever practice in one exercise leads to improvement in another, certain specific elements in both are identical and call forth identical responses which promote success in both exercises. In the case of the bilaterally symmetrical organs, the movements or discriminations tested were identical in character. This and the close physiological connection of the two parts through the nervous system made very extensive transference of acquired power inevitable. From their experiments in observation and estimate, Thorndike and Woodworth note the transference of such powers as spring from (1) "ideas of method or of general utility" acquired through training, such as the knowledge that one has a tendency to overestimate all areas and should make an allowance for it; or (2) "facility with certain elements that appeared in many other complexes," such as increase in the speed of eye movements. Coover and Angell emphasize the gain in power of concentrating attention by eliminating "useless kinæsthetic, acoustic and motor accompaniments of recognition." Such distracting elements appear when the strain on attention is severe, and ability to suppress them may, Angell thinks, enhance the power of concentration on a variety of difficult tasks in life. Professor James declares that all general improvement in memory arises from improvement in the methods of memorizing. One may account for his own failure to show transference by supposing that he had already mastered his general method of committing to memory, and that particular improvement was in his case due to methods that could be applied only to the practice material. The school children in the experiment of Winch show the converse case of little experience in memorizing and consequent great improvement in general methods. Ebert and Meuman practically agree with James. They trace the improvement in memorizing shown in their experiments to the gradual discovery by each of what was to him the most efficient method of memorizing, and the gradual elimination of other methods. Fracker finds that the improvement in method is due to "the consistent use of some form of imagery," which serves as a scheme for holding the attention and arranging the material to be remembered.

The identical elements that are thus distinguished may be divided into two groups, those of content and those of form. As examples of content elements we may mention sounds, colors, letters, nonsense syllables, words, objects, kinds of geometrical figures, standards of measurement, ideas, etc. As one grows familiar with such elements, the power to remember them, to attend to them when they appear in new situations, and to do what they suggest increases. The elements of form may be said to consist of the characteristics that various situations present as problems for the attacking mind. Thus we recognize one situation as a problem of memorizing, where from the nature of the material a particular method of committing to memory may be especially useful. Again, we may recognize the need of particular adjustments of perception, such as eye movements which we have already practiced. All situations demand adjustments of attention, some of which may invariably be necessary, while others may suit especially specific kinds of material.

We observe that elements of form and elements of content are equally specific, equally capable of definition. Moreover, both are capable of generalization; that is, both may appear in a variety of settings. The problem of general training is then quite as much one of discipline in content as it is of discipline in form. A better division of mental discipline would yield two phases, which we may denominate specific discipline and general discipline. Specific discipline consists in the analysis of the specific elements which are found to be decisive in determining certain reactions, and the practice by which the appropriate reaction is made the habitual response to each element thus discriminated. General discipline consists of training in the recognition of these decisive elements in a variety of situations.

The successful transference of any result of practice or experience depends upon both these phases of discipline. The failure to transfer neatness from arithmetic papers to others in Bagley's experiment is, doubtless, due to some lack of efficiency in both respects. The specific discipline failed in attaching the reactions connected with neatness with elements which in any situation were expected to call forth these reactions. The suggestion which in the practice was associated with neatness was not the thought of any exercise to be presented to the inspection of a teacher, but rather that of an arithmetic paper to be presented to a teacher who insists on neatness . Very naturally, when any of these factors was absent, the children failed to make the response which was associated with the entire group. Or if, as is likely, we may call the command of the teacher in question the critical suggesting stimulus to put forth the effort desired, then the reason for the lack of transference was that the identical element that provoked the desired reactions was absent from all the test material. No child would be neat unless there were some reason for it, and there was no reason for the effort involved in cases where it was not required. In the second place, the experiment illustrates the lack of any attempt to secure general discipline. If the children had been trained to be neat not only in arithmetic papers, but also in many others, and if many teachers had conspired to enforce this demand, it would have been much more likely that the children would have recognized in some new paper that they were required to present an occasion for the exercise of the virtue in question. Such general training would add to the effect of any amount of specific drill on neatness in any one connection.

The experiments on the effect of training motor adjustments brought out especially the fact of interference. This Professor Judd calls a form of transference. The effect of practice in one activity may be either to interfere with or to aid success in another. The causes of interference are twofold. The first is the failure to attach the reaction in question to the stimulus which is alone that to which it should constitute the response. The situation is not analyzed into the factors that make this or that response desirable. This difficulty is illustrated in Judd's experiment. Here the assistant does not realize that he is in his practice correcting mistakes in placing the pencil. Much less does he realize the character of the mistakes thus corrected. Hence the response of correction, which is learned in the practice, extends to cases where the opposite response should be applied. The various cases are not distinguished, and since all seem alike, the same correcting reaction is made to each. The second source of interference is found where in a new situation one should make to a certain stimulus a different reaction than the one originally learned. This is illustrated in the experiments of Bergstrom and Munsterberg. Here the different reactions were arbitrarily fitted to the stimulus. In the practical emergencies of life this form of interference arises because in different conditions the same stimulus should be responded to differently. In such cases one must learn to read according to circumstances. Successful transference depends upon the accurate discrimination of each element in the situation that is critical in reference to the reaction, and either the habit or the mental grasp and judgment that correlates these, and from this complex suggestion initiates the proper response.

From the practical point of view specific discipline resolves itself into the analysis and drill of the schoolroom. It may be said that here the work of our schools is least open to criticism. However, it may well be that the reactions that we wish to have transferred from schoolwork to life are not in the school attached to the same suggestions that should constitute their more universal stimuli in effective conduct. For example, the habit of neatness may be suggested by the merely adventitious suggestions of subject or teacher or schoolroom work, rather than by a sense of the general sort of situation that makes neatness desirable.

But if the school often fails in specific discipline, much more likely is it to fail in that which is general. The habits that it teaches are provoked by suggestions that lie imbedded in a more or less constant set of surroundings. Outside this environment they may not be recognized. The physician who learns his art from a book may well fail to note in the sickroom the specific symptoms to which certain forms of treatment concerning which he has read apply. The strange situation distracts the attention, confuses the analytic power, and the mind fails to single out the specific clews that are associated with the proper therapeutic procedure. Teachers have come to recognize the difficulty, and in a general way the solution proposed is to make the atmosphere of the school resemble as much as possible that of life. When the conditions of learning approximate in nature and variety to those of application, one can be fairly well assured that successful transference will be at the maximum.

In conclusion, it may be said that the analysis and the experiments of psychology have done away with the conception of a vague general improvement associated with mental activity. Disciplinary values, like content values, are specific. They consist in learning the decisive suggestions to action, in associating therewith the proper responses, and in learning to recognize these suggestions in new situations. Thus the school has before it a definite, even though a difficult problem. So far as discipline is concerned, this problem means first the selection of the reactions that have the greatest value, second the determination of what is the true and universal occasion for each reaction, together with modifying or exceptional conditions. Finally, we have the problem of drill and of application, of specific and of general discipline, such as will insure the successful utilization of the habits which the school has elected to teach.

E.N.H.

See Ability, general and special; Drill; Effort; Habit; Values, educational.

• Bennett. C. J. Formal Discipline. (New York, 1905.) Education. Vol. XXIX, May, 1909.
• Educational Review, Vol. LXXXVI, June. 1908.
• Heck, W. H. Mental Discipline and Educational Values. (New York, 1909.)
• O'Shea, M. Y. Education as Adjustment. (New York, 1906.)
• Thorndike, E. L. Educational Psychology. (New York, 1910.)