7. PROBLEMS IN OBSERVATION AND INTROSPECTION
1. Watch your own thinking for examples of each of the four types described. Observe a class of children in a recitation or at study and try to decide which type is being employed by each child. What proportion of the time supposedly given to study is given over to chance or idle thinking? To assimilative thinking? To deliberative thinking?
2. Observe children at work in school with the purpose of determining whether they are being taught to think, or only to memorize certain facts. Do you find that definitions whose meaning is not clear are often required of children? Which should come first, the definition or the meaning and application of it?
3. It is of course evident from the relation of induction and deduction that the child's natural mode of learning a subject is by induction. Observe the teaching of children to determine whether inductive methods are commonly used. Outline an inductive lesson in arithmetic, physiology, geography, civics, etc.
4. What concepts have you now which you are aware are very meager? What is your concept of mountain? How many have you seen? Have you any concepts which you are working very hard to enrich?
5. Recall some judgment which you have made and which proved to be false, and see whether you can now discover what was wrong with it. Do you find the trouble to be an inadequate concept? What constitutes "good judgment"? "poor judgment"? Did you ever make a mistake in an example in, say, percentage, by saying "This is the base," when it proved not to be? What was the cause of the error?
6. Can you recall any instance in which you made too hasty a generalization when you had observed but few cases upon which to base your premise? What of your reasoning which followed?
7. See whether you can show that validity of reasoning rests ultimately on correct perceptions. What are you doing at present to increase your power of thinking?
8. How ought this chapter to help one in making a better teacher? A better student?
