In the first talk of William James he discusses how teaching is an art and psychology is a science. He talks about how they run parallel to one another and that neither one are subordinate to other.
There were several passages that stood out to me but the one that I liked the most was, “ The science of logic never made a man reason rightly, and the science of ethics (if there be such a thing) never made a man behave rightly. The most such sciences can do is to help us to catch ourselves up and check ourselves, if we start to reason or to behave wrongly; and to criticize ourselves more articulately after we have made mistakes. A science only lays down lines within which the rules of the art must fall, laws which the follower of the art must not transgress; but what particular thing he shall positively do within those lines is left exclusively to his own genius.” (p. 3) Without a doubt, this is something that we see and experience every day. I know everyone of us has had a fantastic teacher and a horrible teacher. I truly believe that the majority of the time those fantastic teachers think way outside the box (their own genius), while the horrible teacher is just doing what is required. The science can only take a teacher so far then the art has to take over to make it something great.
I agree with him when he say we can’t expect our teachers to also be psychologist, whoever shouldn’t they be required to learn and know about psychology in order to be better teachers? Shouldn’t we try to gain as much know as we can, no matter what our area of expertise?
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