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Table of Contents 
Preface
Talks to Teachers on Psychology

1. Psychology and the Teaching Art
    The American educational organization,— What teachers may expect from psychology,— Teaching

    methods must agree with psychology, but cannot be immediately deduced therefrom,— The science of

    teaching and the science of war,— The educational uses of psychology defined,— The teacher’s duty

    toward child-study.

2. The Stream of Consciousness
    Our mental life is a succession of conscious ‘fields,’— They have a focus and a margin, This description  

     contrasted with the theory of ‘ideas,’— Wundt’s conclusions, note.
   

3. The Child as a Behaving Organism
    Mind as pure reason and mind as practical guide,— The latter view the more fashionable one today,— It 

    will be adopted in this work,— Why so?— The teacher’s function is to train pupils to behavior.

4. Education and Behavior
    Education defined,— Conduct is always its outcome,— Different national ideals: Germany and England.
   

5. The Necessity of Reactions
    No impression without expression,— Verbal reproduction,— Manual training,— Pupils should know   

    their  ‘marks’.
   

6. Native Reactions and Acquired Reactions
    The acquired reactions must be preceded by native ones,— Illustration: teaching child to ask instead of 

    snatching,— Man has more instincts than other mammals.
   

7. What the Native Reactions are
    Fear and love,— Curiosity,— Imitation,— Emulation,— Forbidden by Rousseau,— His error,—

    Ambition, pugnacity, and pride. Soft pedagogics and the fighting impulse,— Ownership,— Its educational  

    uses,— Constructiveness,— Manual teaching,— Transitoriness in instincts,— Their order of succession.
   

8. The Laws of Habit
    Good and bad habits,— Habit due to plasticity of organic tissues,— The aim of education is to make   

    useful habits automatic,— Maxims relative to habit-forming: 1. Strong initiative,— 2. No exception,— 3.  

    Seize first opportunity to act,— 4. Don’t preach,— Darwin and poetry: without exercise our capacities 

    decay,— The habit of mental and muscular relaxation,— Fifth maxim, keep the faculty of effort trained,— 

    Sudden conversions compatible with laws of habit,— Momentous influence of habits on character.
   

9. The Association of Ideas
    A case of habit,— The two laws, contiguity and similarity,— The teacher has to build up useful systems of 

    association,— Habitual associations determine character,— Indeterminateness of our trains of  

    association,— We can trace them backward, but not foretell them,— Interest deflects,— Prepotent parts 

    of the field,— In teaching, multiply cues.
  

10. Interest
      The child’s native interests,— How uninteresting things acquire an interest,— Rules for the teacher 

      —‘Preparation’ of the mind for the lesson: the pupil must have something to attend with,— All later 

      interests are borrowed from original ones.  

11. Attention
      Interest and attention are two aspects of one fact,— Voluntary attention comes in beats,— Genius and 

      attention,— The subject must change to win attention,— Mechanical aids,— The physiological   

      process,— The new in the old is what excites interest,— Interest and effort are compatible,—          

      Mind-wandering,— Not fatal to mental efficiency.
  

12. Memory
      Due to association,— No recall without a cue,— Memory is due to brain-plasticity,— Native 

      retentiveness,— Number of associations may practically be its equivalent,— Retentiveness is a fixed 

      property of the individual,— Memory versus memories,— Scientific system as help to memory,— 

     Technical memories,— Cramming,— Elementary memory unimprovable,— Utility of verbal  

     memorizing,— Measurements of immediate memory,— They throw little light,— Passion is the important 

     factor in human efficiency,— Eye-memory, ear-memory, etc.,— The rate of forgetting, Ebbinghaus’s 

     results,— Influence of the unreproducible,— To remember, one must think and connect.
  

13. The Acquisition of Ideas
      Education gives a stock of conceptions,— The order of their acquisition,— Value of verbal material,— 

      Abstractions of different orders: when are they assimilable,— False conceptions of children.
  

14. Apperception
      Often a mystifying idea,— The process defined,— The law of economy,— Old-fogyism,— How many 

      types of apperception?— New heads of classification must continually be invented,— Alteration of the 

      apperceiving mass,— Class names are what we work by,— Few new fundamental conceptions acquired 

      after twenty-five.
  

15. The Will
      The word defined,— All consciousness tends to action,— Ideo-motor action,— Inhibition,— The 

      process of deliberation,— Why so few of our ideas result in acts,— The associationist account of the 

      will,— A balance of impulses and inhibitions,— The over-impulsive and the over-obstructed type,— The 

      perfect type,— The balky will,— What character building consists in,— Right action depends on right 

      apperception of the case,— Effort of will is effort of attention: the drunkard’s dilemma,— Vital 

      importance of voluntary attention,— Its amount may be indeterminate,— Affirmation of free-will,— Two 

      types of inhibition,— Spinoza on inhibition by a higher good,— Conclusion.

      Talks to Students on Some of Life’s Ideals

     1. The Gospel of Relaxation
     2. On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings
     3. What Makes a Life Significant?

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