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It says

This is

the Emperor Napoleon III, in behalf of Victor Hugo. exactly what it wishes to say, and with much force. because it is so perfectly adapted to the mind of the person addressed, Napoleon, that one finishes the letter realizing one has not only read a petition, but has also gradually seen a portrait develop before one's eyes.

Indeed, the whole process of making good English unavoidable and desirable tends to make it not conscious but unconscious. Everyone knows that "Travelers' English," like "Travelers' French" or "Travelers' German," is self-conscious. The simple, accurate English I am pleading for must be unavoidable. What we do because we conceive of no alternative desirable, we do habitually. What we desire we do willingly. Yet surely what we do willingly, habitually, is usually unconscious. In the colleges we can do much to maintain habits of writing English already acquired, but it is you, teachers in the secondary schools, who can make the use of accurate English by unliterary youths unconscious because desirable

and unavoidable.

In a Copy of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

W. E. AIKEN

In distant years, on classic soil,
Imperial, he smiled at harm;
His words now sweeten daily toil,
Read on an old New England farm.

He little thought his words would find
A lodgment in the distant years,
That lands unguessed by any mind
Should read his calm repulse of fears.

So let us think when days are cold,
And aimless seems the path we go,
The circle of the light we hold
Perhaps is wider than we know.

The greatest message earth affords
Was told upon a pasture hill
To simple men in simple words-
"Peace upon earth, to men good will."

Accuracy from the Point of View of the

Psychologist

EDWARD L. THORNDIKe, professor of EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY,
TEACHERS' COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

I

66

T would be, perhaps, better for my purpose to define inaccuracies," if one can do it in a moment, as any departure from some standard. Inaccuracies will be of two sorts. You will have what we call in our scientific jargon, a variable error that flickers back and forth around the standard, as if I was to say I shall speak thirteen minutes, and should speak twelve, fourteen and a half, or eleven and a half. That would be a variable error be- . cause it would go round about thirteen. On the other hand, you may have what we would call a constant inaccuracy, aş, for instance, if I should say I will speak for thirteen minutes, and should always speak for about an hour, or an hour and a half; or if I should say I shall speak for thirteen minutes, and should merely stutter a few words and then sit down. We can follow this distinction between a variable and a constant error in our general discussions to reach one interesting point. As a rule, when we get into trouble about inaccuracies, we are most worried by the variable errors by carelessness, by the pupil who says 7 times 9 are 65, then 61, and perhaps in a rash moment says they are 630, but varies it in a moment in a hitor-miss way. A constant error always goes in a certain way, and is, of course, much worse.

I shall say very little about these constant inaccuracies, this general tendency of the mind to go running in one particular way, which shows lack of knowledge and lack of capacity, and which injures the work in schools of all grades and of all degrees. What I shall say will, in part, be relevant to that, but in the main I shall speak more to the commoner acceptation of "inaccuracy," that is, this general failure to hit the mark of the standard quite right; a general tendency, which is so prev

alent, of course, in young people, of doing things not so well as they ought, and not so well as they might. Doing things as well as they might, and as well as they ought, are not, however, absolutely the same. We must remember that the more profoundly we study the whole matter of accuracy or precision, the more we must always make it a matter of approximation. All our measures are by approximation, and the only rule is the rule of Aristotle, given long ago, that we must be as accurate as we can be for the purposes in question. If my purpose is whether I shall jump from this platform—and we are discussing as to how far it is from here to the sun-on the question of the possibility of jumping to the sun, it would only be a question of about fourteen feet. But if I wish to calculate certain facts from the almanac I must get its distance within a few miles; and if I wish to test a hypothesis in astronomy I must get that distance to possibly a few feet.

I may perhaps state here, by way of parenthesis, that I shall not try to give any consecutive account of the psychology of accuracy. It would be impossible, short of an hour or more. I shall take up those particular matters which seem to have a practical bearing, and devote three or four minutes for each

one.

First then, accuracy has its physiological basis in the connections between one neuron and other neurons in the nervous system. Generally what we call accuracy corresponds to the power of making delicate connections. You can roughly estimate the psychological basis of energy and persistence, and some other qualities of the mind. The basis of accuracy is this, and it is markedly hereditary. If you take such matters as spelling, such matters as accuracy in fine details, such matters as accuracy in addition and multiplication in children of eight or nine or ten years of age, in the schools, we find very evidently that those things run in families. You can better tell the accuracy of the individual by finding out what his twin brother does in addition and multiplication, supposing him to have a twin brother, than you can by examining him. A minute's examination of the twin brother will often disclose more than would thirty minutes' examination of the other.

Certain people are limited by nature, with respect to accuracy. There are people who are naturally careless; other people who are naturally more careful. We find in classes in the upper grades of grammar schools, and I presume also in the high schools, that there will be a difference of about two to one, to three to one between the extremes in the class. If you give the children in the higher grade grammar school some work to do you will find some will make three times as many mistakes as others will in the same class. In the matter of spelling, with respect to accuracy, you will find the range to be much greater. A great deal of that discrepancy is due to heredity of the organism for the same reason that some are so short and some so tall. I do not mean this as implying any doctrine of laissez faire or any desirability of using the supposed hereditary incapacity as an excuse for our failures. But I mean, of course, merely the fact that accuracy, like most other things, is in part due to inborn capacity, and it means simply that the results of our work will always be differential. They will vary not only with our methods and our skill and personality, but they will also vary with the person on whom we are working, whom we are teaching and with whom we are experimenting. If we had the best method possible calculated to secure accuracy in spelling, or in English, or in arithmetic, or in anything else you please, if we had the best method possible to secure accuracy it would not secure equal accuracy from all the pupils. If we found such a method which did secure that, a priori it would be a dead method. Variation will always exist. It is, for instance, if one wished to be strictly just and fair, not just to demand that a boy should spell as well as a girl does. The mere matter of sex differs. There is a greater capacity for nosing out small details, in the female sex, than in the male. So we ought to have separate scales; in the scheme of absolute justice between the males and females, we ought to apply separate doctrines. We ought to weigh a person's performance by that of his father or mother or grandparents and assign a place to heredity in considering the capacity of the individual, realizing the limits that are set by this individual. In aiming to do what can be best done in teaching we properly should study the

conditions to increase the accuracy so as to use them economically. Those conditions are found in the general law of least resistance which applies to all our mental life, of which Professor Baker has given a remarkably clear representation without in the least being aware that he was following psychological laws. This law is that a man does not do something for nothing; that he will take the easiest way to get toward his desired goal, that there is no inherent tendency in human nature to go right rather than wrong, that there is nothing natural in the pupils that will make them turn out accurate rather than inaccurate. In those particular cases, in fact, we have to work rather against nature. The general tendency is to do things gradually, especially in our mental operations. Nature does not require a very fine adjustment. The result is we do not have a provision, of nature, in favor of precision, of accuracy, as we do in favor of energy, or ambition, or courage, or some of those other equally desirable qualities of human nature. Our problem then is precisely this, to make accuracy pay, and, as Mr. Baker has said, to so arrange the situation that it will be for his own personal satisfaction, and better for him to be accurate than inaccurate; otherwise, he will probably not be. There is no psychological reason why, should he think himself able to get through his life and realize his aims and get what he wants without being accurate, he should then want to be accurate.

Now, we have two ways, commonly, of making the required thing, the desideratum, pay the person: We can somehow stir. up some intrinsic interest in it, by hook or crook, or by some stroke of genius get the person to take a specific interest in it and to work from a community interest, that is, social pride, such as a person would have in baseball or football or anything else which has got his interest intrinsically; or, we may say. that for a person to pass, to get into college, "You must spell so well. You must be able to attain to such and such a degree of precision. You must do your algebra and have your results come out true." As a general rule the nearer we get to the intrinsic source of zeal the better off we are. If you should try to bribe people into doing the amount of work that they do in connection with some game like billiards, or some game like

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