To present our problem definitely at the outset, I submit the following proposition: The intellectual culture derived through standardized branches of education, as mathematics and Latin, for example, instead of having a general mental economy for the innumerable young men and women who study them, in reality becomes parasitic in the nervous and mental life, and thus is a cause of wasted energy and, possibly, of disease. This proposition has its proper qualification, of course, in all cases where such intellectual culture is so related to the functions of life that it can be utilized. There are two questions that confront us in such a proposition: (1) Is culture, unused for the specific function that called it into being, of no economy in performing other functions? And (2) is such culture, therefore, parasitic and wasteful of human energy? As has already been pointed out in connection with physical culture, it has long been assumed, and is still generally assumed, that culture acquired through any given discipline becomes a general fund of energy or skill, transferable to other organs and functions. And yet there has never been any really critical evidence in support of such an assumption. The belief in a hierarchy of culturevalues, which has standardized the various branches of our academic curricula, like many other beliefs relating to the world of mind and the world of matter, belongs to the category of the naïve, the uncritical and the prejudiced. In most of the learned decisions upon the constitution of this hierarchy, the judge, the advocates, and the jury have merely reflected the nature of their own training, and more especially the interests of their own calling. But we are now in a position to submit this question to the test of exact experiments. This has been done repeatedly within the last few years by experimental psychologists. Among such psychologists may be mentioned James, Gilbert, Fracker, Thorndike, Woodworth, Judd, Bair, Volkmann and Scripture. The net result of these men's studies may be stated in the words of Professor Thorndike, of Columbia University:
A change in one function alters any other only in so far as the two functions have as factors identical elements. The change in the second function is in amount that due to the change in the elements common to it and the first. . . . Improvement in any single mental function need not improve the ability in functions commonly called by the same name. It may injure it. Improvement in any single mental function rarely brings about equal improvement in any other function, no matter how similar, for the working of every mental function-group is conditioned by the nature of the data in each particular case.[1]
This is direct experimental evidence, and it is fairly conclusive against at least much of the indiscriminate championship of the general culture values of special subjects, like mathematics and the classical languages. Neurology, moreover, supplies additional indirect evidence no less conclusive to those familiar with the histology of the brain.
- ↑ "Educational Psychology," Chapter VIII.
