Misapprehension of analysis in education

Even when it is definitely stated that intellectual and physical analyses are different sorts of operations, intellectual analysis is often treated after the analogy of physical; as if it were the breaking up of a whole into all its constituent parts in the mind instead of in space. As nobody can possibly tell what breaking a whole into its parts in the mind means, this conception leads to the further notion that logical analysis is a mere enumeration and listing of all conceivable qualities and relations. The influence upon education of this conception has been very great.21 Every subject in the curriculum has passed through—or still remains in—what may be called the phase of anatomical or morphological method: the stage in which understanding the subject is thought to consist of multiplying distinctions of quality, form, relation, and so on, and attaching some name to each distinguished element. In normal growth, specific properties are emphasized and so individualized only when they serve to clear up a present difficulty. Only as they are involved in judging some specific situation is there any motive or use for analyses, i.e. for emphasis upon some element or relation as peculiarly significant.

      Effects of premature formulation

      The same putting the cart before the horse, the product before the process, is found in that overconscious formulation of methods of procedure so current in elementary instruction. (See p. 60.) The method that is employed in discovery, in reflective inquiry, cannot possibly be identified with the method that emerges after the discovery is made. In the genuine operation of inference, the mind is in the attitude of search, of hunting, of projection, of trying this and that; when the conclusion is reached, the search is at an end. The Greeks used to discuss: "How is learning (or inquiry) possible? For either we know already what we are after, and then we do not learn or inquire; or we do not know, and then we cannot inquire, for we do not know what to look for." The dilemma is at least suggestive, for it points to the true alternative: the use in inquiry of doubt, of tentative suggestion, of experimentation. After we have reached the conclusion, a reconsideration of the steps of the process to see what is helpful, what is harmful, what is merely useless, will assist in dealing more promptly and efficaciously with analogous problems in the future. In this way, more or less explicit method is gradually built up. (Compare the earlier discussion on p. 62 of the psychological and the logical.)

      Method comes before its formulation

      It is, however, a common assumption that unless the pupil from the outset consciously recognizes and explicitly states the method logically implied in the result he is to reach, he will have no method, and his mind will work confusedly or anarchically; while if he accompanies his performance with conscious statement of some form of procedure (outline, topical analysis, list of headings and subheadings, uniform formula) his mind is safeguarded and strengthened. As a matter of fact, the development of an unconscious logical attitude and habit must come first. A conscious setting forth of the method logically adapted for reaching an end is possible only after the result has first been reached by more unconscious and tentative methods, while it is valuable only when a review of the method that achieved success in a given case will throw light upon a new, similar case. The ability to fasten upon and single out (abstract, analyze) those features of one experience which are logically best is hindered by premature insistence upon their explicit formulation. It is repeated use that gives a method definiteness; and given this definiteness, precipitation into formulated statement should follow naturally. But because teachers find that the things which they themselves best understand are marked off and defined in clear-cut ways, our schoolrooms are pervaded with the superstition that children are to begin with already crystallized formulæ of method.

      Judgment reveals the bearing or significance of facts: synthesis

      As analysis is conceived to be a sort of picking to pieces, so synthesis is thought to be a sort of physical piecing together; and so imagined, it also becomes a mystery. In fact, synthesis takes place wherever we grasp the bearing of facts on a conclusion, or of a principle on facts. As analysis is emphasis, so synthesis is placing; the one causes the emphasized fact or property to stand out as significant; the other gives what is selected its context, or its connection with what is signified. Every judgment is analytic in so far as it involves discernment, discrimination, marking off the trivial from the important, the irrelevant from what points to a conclusion; and it is synthetic in so far as it leaves the mind with an inclusive situation within which the selected facts are placed.

      Analysis and synthesis are correlative

      Educational methods that pride themselves on being exclusively analytic or exclusively synthetic are therefore (so far as they carry out their boasts) incompatible with normal operations of judgment. Discussions have taken place, for example, as to whether the teaching of geography should be analytic or synthetic. The synthetic method is supposed to begin with the partial, limited portion of the earth's surface already familiar to the pupil, and then gradually piece on adjacent regions (the county, the country, the continent, and so on) till an idea of the entire globe is reached, or of the solar system that includes the globe. The analytic method is supposed to begin with the physical whole, the solar system or globe, and to work down through its constituent portions till the immediate environment is reached. The underlying conceptions are of physical wholes and physical parts. As matter of fact, we cannot assume that the portion of the earth already familiar to the child is such a definite object, mentally, that he can at once begin with it; his knowledge of it is misty and vague as well as incomplete. Accordingly, mental progress