On Thu, 07 Jun 2012 06:20:34 -0700, Christopher Green wrote: >On 2012-06-07, at 8:14 AM, Michael Palij wrote: >> Back to the original point, it is amusing to see courses in physiological >> psychology and/or "physiological pedagogics" being offered in the early >> bulletins of the School of Pedagogy because one has to wonder what >> possible interest would these courses have to pupils who, for the most >> part, were interested in an advanced degree in education in order to get >> a higher level post in administration. > >It would be interesting to know what the exact content of these courses was.
The following course descriptions are from the "CATALOGUE AND CIRCULAR FOR THE TENTH ANNUAL TERM, BEGINNING SEPTEMBER 30, 1896, AND ENDING MAY I5, I897" for the School of Pedagogy at NYU (a copy is available in PDF on the HathiTrust website). | ll. PHYSIOLOGICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY. | Study of the physical basis of mental life, structure and |function of the central nervous system, and the end organs of |sense. Summary of the known relations between physical |and mental phenomena. | | Psychological experiments and measurements. Experi- |ments on the senses-taste, smell, touch, pressure, temperature, |muscle sense, hearing, sight, with special reference to |methods of psychological measurement; upper and lower |limits, minimum variation, right and wrong answers, handling |figures, computing averages, estimating accuracy of work, and |expressing results in tabular and graphic form. | | Experimental study of time relations of mental phenomena ; |association of ideas; memory, attention, force of suggestion, |aesthetic judgments; motor energy, voluntary and involuntary; |steadiness, accuracy, rhythm, habit, fatigue, pain. |Growth of mind, variation in accuracy of senses and higher |mental powers with age, sex, nationality, environment. Introduction |to the literature of the various subjects, with |thorough examination of investigations which have had direct |bearing on pedagogical practice. | | Two hours a week will be occupied with lectures and dem- |onstrations covering the whole field, presenting the principal |methods of investigation and the results thus far obtained. |The other two hours will be devoted to experiments by the |class. A comparatively small number of problems will be |undertaken with a view to making the work exact and reaching |definite results. Reports upon the literature of the subject |and reports upon experiments made independently will |be expected. | | The aim of the course is to enable the student to understand |the rapidly increasing literature of child-study and of psychological |investigation, as applied to educational problems, to |distinguish the ·worthless from that which has value, to recognize |the limits and possibilities of this line of work, and to |enable him to make future investigations which shall be of |value to psychology and to pedagogy. | | The psychological laboratory was established in 1894. It |occupies two commodious rooms, and is supplied with the |ordinary psychological apparatus, the equipment having special |reference to problems which have a direct bearing on |pedagogy. |Professor Bliss. 4 hours a week. There is no textbook identified with the course but I assume that he may have materials by Scripture at Yale where he had come from. The course in "Descriptive Psychology" mentions a Ladd's "Descriptive and Explanatory Psychology" and the course on "Physiological Pedagogics" focuses on medical issues relevant to education (e.g., malnution, training of the "mentally defificient", etc.). It is my contention that it is likely that most students would not have considered such a course relevant to teaching and/or desire to achieve a high administrative level. Then again, Hugo Munsterberg thought that this type of course for teachers was pretty useless. Ludy Benjamin wrote an article about the "Munsterberg Incident" concerning Munsterberg's (1898) article in the "Atlantic Monthly" which expressed these views and which evoked responses from various psychologists (e.g., Cattell 1898 in Psychological Review and Bliss 1898 in "Forum"). Quoting Munsterberg from Benjamin's (2006) article: |In his 1898 Atlantic Monthly magazine article entitled “The |Danger from Experimental Psychology,” he warned school |teachers: | | This rush toward experimental psychology is an absurdity. Our laboratory | work cannot teach you anything which is of direct use to you | in your work as teachers . . . You may collect thousands of experimental | results with the chronoscope and kymograph, but you will not | find anything in our laboratories which you could translate directly | into a pedagogical prescription. (Munsterberg, 1898a, p. 166) | | Munsterberg had been a vocal critic of child study in numerous |public addresses in the mid-1890s, adding his voice to other |colleagues who were critical (a) of the questionnaire (“syllabus”) |method of data collection (see Baldwin, 1898), (b) of the use of |teachers as data collectors who were neither well-trained for the |task nor objective with regard to the children they were assessing, |and (c) of the general lack of a systematic strategy or theory |guiding child study research, that is, of an approach that encouraged |the studying of anything from children’s ideas about Santa |Claus to the nature of tickling, with little or no regard for why such |information might be important. Benjamin, L. T. (2006). Hugo Münsterbergs attack on the application of scientific psychology. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91(2), 414-425. doi:10.1037/0021-9010.91.2.414 -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: arch...@jab.org. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=18232 or send a blank email to leave-18232-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
