THE PROBLEM OF MENTAL DISCIPLINE THE notion that education is a process of training the mind, wherein one subject, such as geometry, trains the reason, and another, such as chemistry, trains the memory, has done incalculable mischief in education. This conception of education as mental discipline not only misrepresents the mind and leads to poor teaching, but also takes attention away from the true values of studies. It distorts education, because it makes teacher and pupil alike think of a subject of study as a set of intellectual exercises without real use or meaning in itself, like chestweights or dumb-bells, or artificial memory-systems. A subject ought to appear, on the contrary, as a new means of understanding real problems, a new means of control over facts, a new outlook or angle of apprehension. Its true values should be revealed in its history as a product of the mind, in its inherent uses and delights, and in its applications to life. But if the subject is used for "discipline," these are not emphasized. Only its technicalities are exploited for purposes of mental gymnastics. No one now denies that education has general effects, and that there is some transfer of training. Nor is there any reason to suppose that one subject is as good as another for revealing generally useful intellectual methods, or universal principles, or standards of value, either ethical or æsthetic, or for developing self-confidence or the power to attack problems. But the "discipline of hard work" |