3.5.3 The Nature of Children Respond

As Norsworthy and Whitley point out, we are not especially concerned with the boundary lines between automatic actions, reflexes, and instincts—we are rather concerned with the fact that human beings possess native tendencies to act in particular ways.

Some psychologists stress them as instincts; others as capacities, but they have all pretty generally agreed that under certain stimuli there are natural tendencies to react.

These tendencies begin to manifest themselves at birth—they are all potentialities with the birth of the child—and continue to develop in turn, certain ones being more pronounced in the various stages of the child’s life.

Colvin in his The Learning Process, runs through the complete list of possibilities. According to him man, in a lifetime, is characterized by the following tendencies: Fear, anger, sympathy, affection, play, imitation, curiosity, acquisitiveness, constructiveness, self-assertion (leadership), self-abasement, rivalry, envy, jealousy, pugnacity, clannishness, the hunting and predatory instincts, the migratory instinct, love of adventure and the unknown, superstition, the sex instincts, which express themselves in sex-love, vanity, coquetry, modesty; and, closely allied with these, the love of nature and of solitude, and the aesthetic, the religious, and the moral emotions.

Sisson, in a little book that every teacher ought to know, The Essentials of Character, emphasizes the importance for teaching of ten tendencies: bodily activity, sense-hunger and curiosity, suggestibility, tastes and aesthetic appreciation, self-assertion, love, joy, fear, the growing-up impulse, the love of approbation.

As already indicated, the teacher should give attention to these tendencies that he may the better know how to proceed.

If he knows that the one great outstanding impulse of a boy of seven is to do something, he perhaps will be less likely to plan an hour’s recitation on the theory that for that hour the boy is to do nothing.

If he knows that one of the greatest tendencies of boys from ten to fourteen is to organize “gangs” for social and “political” purposes, he will very likely capitalize on this idea in building up a good strong class spirit.

Knowing that children naturally respond to certain stimuli in very definite ways, the teacher can better set about to furnish the right stimuli—he can be in a better position to direct and control behavior.

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