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Edited by
Catalin Brylla
Mette Kramer

Cognitive
Theory
and
Documentary
Film
 Cognitive Theory and Documentary Film

“The editors of Cognitive Theory and Documentary Film make ambitious claims
about the usefulness of cognitive theory for understanding the documentary as
well as the fiction film—and their volume more than delivers. Equipped with a
fuller picture of the mind as embodied and socially networked, the authors here
offer exciting approaches to a wide range of work including biographies, anima-
tions, nature films, docudramas and ‘fake news’ websites, while attending as well
to the creative processes and aims of documentary filmmakers.”
—Cynthia Freeland, Professor of Philosophy, University of Houston, USA

“Cognitive film research is about narrative fiction, or so it seems. This milestone

volume presents the cognitive approach to documentary. Specialists in the field—
some of them documentarists themselves—paint a vivid picture of the rich experi-
ences that an exceptionally multifarious genre gives rise to. They document how
people watching documentaries construct and engage with other people, their
minds, emotions, realities, truths and actions. Moreover they highlight in convinc-
ing detail the amazing variety of aesthetics displayed by documentaries supporting
viewers’ experiences.”
—Ed Tan, Professor of Media Entertainment University of Amsterdam,
The Netherlands

“Represents a welcome first foray into the relation of cognitive theory to docu-
mentary film studies. It not only expands our conceptions of documentary but asks
us to consider not only how we see reality through films but how films shape our
notions of reality. The ideas are complex but are made more accessible through the
straightforward writing of many of its contributors.”
—David MacDougall, Professor of Visual Anthropology,
Australian National University, Australia

“This unique collection is likely to become a landmark in documentary studies. It

is ambitious, innovative, sometimes provocative but always rigorous. Its pioneer-
ing approach to the complex relationship between selfhood, emotion, subjectivity,
cognition and the art of the record is utterly convincing and inherently valuable.”
—Anita Biressi, Professor of Media and Society,
University of Roehampton, UK
“Cognitive Theory and Documentary Film is an exceptionally rewarding read.
Featuring probing accounts of such timely topics as post-truth, stereotyping,
trans-species empathy, and filmmakers’ use of cognitive theory, the volume more
than delivers on its ambitious promises. Featuring a formidable team of contribu-
tors and evidencing great clarity of purpose, Cognitive Theory and Documentary
Film provides conceptual tools, arguments, and examples that deserve attention,
within and beyond the academy.”
—Mette Hjort, Chair Professor of Humanities and Dean of Arts,
Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong

“This collection of essays, through the emphasis on thought processes, brings an

original approach to documentary reception and representation. Even more
important, this book will expand the reach and boundaries within the study of
cognitive theory itself, which can only benefit from the further influence of doc-
umentary production on this field. Thus the reader has a view from both ends of
the telescope, and in a truly interdisciplinary fashion, which surely has to be
welcomed.”
—Jane Chapman, Professor of Communications,
Lincoln University, UK

“Brylla and Kramer’s impressive interdisciplinary and international selection of

scholars lead a ground-breaking extension of cognitivist theory into documentary
film studies.”
—Trevor Ponech, Associate Professor of English,
McGill University, Canada
 Catalin Brylla • Mette Kramer
Editors

Cognitive Theory and

Documentary Film
Editors
Catalin Brylla Mette Kramer
University of West London University of Copenhagen
London, UK Copenhagen, Denmark

ISBN 978-3-319-90331-6    ISBN 978-3-319-90332-3 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90332-3

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018942708

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
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electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub-
lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the
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 Foreword

The specter of madness plagues our love of methodology. Methods can

narrow our field of vision, tie us to a predetermined dogma, limit our
imagination, blind us to alternatives that call on us to forfeit fundamental
assumptions, and yet, we embrace them. Film studies has embraced them
with exceptional vigor from the early genre/auteur studies through struc-
tural, poststructural, psychoanalytic, Marxist, feminist, formalist and semi-
otic approaches and on to phenomenology and cognitive theory, among
others. Clearly, there are benefits to such a wild embrace or this wagon
train of methodologies would have pulled up into a defensive circle to
watch others stream past with alternatives less beholden to a body of sys-
tematic thought.
One clear benefit, abundantly evident throughout this volume, is the
opportunity to see things from the other end of the stick, as it were. That
is exactly what Galileo did when he moved the earth to the periphery of
the solar system and replaced it with the sun. Everything astronomical
took on a new meaning and a fresh perspective. Much the same can be said
for our pantheon of critical methodologies from an auteur theory that
discovered the directorial “termites” within the seemingly monolithic stu-
dio system to semiotics that proposed we understand cinema as a language
that lacked a grammar, and a psychoanalysis that regarded narrative as
systematic, and highly gendered play in the field of desire.
Cognitive theory takes hold of the other end of the critical stick as well.
It helps us see things anew by urging us to see them differently. As these
essays demonstrate, this line of sight is not the same as what it was when
cognitive theory first arrived as a formalistic, grammar-like catalogue of

v
vi FOREWORD

how mental processing takes place in relation to a film. Cognitive theory

has grown in sophistication and complexity. It joins many of the issues that
other methods tackle and, in Catalin Brylla and Mette Kramer’s Cognitive
Theory and Documentary Film, does so with particular reference to docu-
mentary. How is a documentary different from a fiction, if it is? What
changes when we cognitively process a documentary versus a fiction or
even a docudrama? How do we come to empathize with characters or
social actors? Do animal characters in wildlife documentaries change the
nature of our response? How do we experience emotions and embodied
experiences through documentary? How do we assess truth value? What
effect do preexisting cognitive schema and social stereotypes have on our
understanding and engagement? What types of interviews prevail and how
do their effects differ? Why do viewers differ in their response to specific
works if our cognitive mechanisms are the same?
Such a rich array of questions was hardly in the forefront of my mind
when I first encountered David Bordwell’s Narration in the Fiction Film
in 1987, but his introduction of neoformalist—cognitive theory into film
study got me thinking. I saw things in a new light. I was not ready to sign
up as a follower on a path that seemed profoundly misguided in certain
ways, but I was ready to rethink assumptions I have taken for granted
about the nature of documentary.1 I asked myself I if could do something
like what Bordwell had done, that is, Could I develop a more systematic,
rigorous understanding of the documentary than had been proposed in
previous work? Was documentary sufficiently accounted for by memoirs,
interviews, and vaguely conceived histories? Were there not underlying
principles of formal organization in need of exploration, such as the vari-
ous modes of documentary that subsequently occurred to me? Could
insights gained from the study of fiction film transfer to the nonfiction
film? The answer became Representing Reality (1991), which, in turn, and
to my surprise, became one of the starting points for what is now the richly
cultivated field of documentary film studies. It strikes me that sometimes

1
See my “Form Wars: The Political Unconscious of Formalist Theory,” in Jane Gaines,
ed., Classical Hollywood Narrative: The Paradigm Wars (Duke University Press, 1992):
49–77. Most of my critical view of Bordwell would now be understood as a rejection of the
first wave of cognitive theory and its formal, structural, ahistorical, and decontextualized
approach to narrative, cinema, and the viewer as a hypothetical entity more akin to a black
box than a socially situated individual. As Catalin Brylla and Mette Kramer’s introductory
chapter, “Intersecting Documentary and Cognitive Theory,” indicates, cognitive theory has
moved significantly beyond that starting point.
 FOREWORD
   vii

the sidelong glance can provide a way forward and that is precisely what I
think this volume provides for many of us who are not cognitive theorists
in our own right.
In many ways, Cognitive Theory and Documentary Film is both a step
forward and back. Forward in the evolution of cognitive theory toward a
more complex view of human behavior from a neuroscientific perspective
fused with strong elements of a variety of other more affect-oriented
approaches such as phenomenology and social cognition, and back in a
return to many of the preoccupations of classic rhetoric. Gone is the effort
to formalize mental processing into abstract algorithms that apply to each
and every one of us regardless of external factors. Present is a deep con-
cern for the ways in which a text engages viewers and predisposes them to
see the world, and even act in the world, in a certain way. This was always
the great divide between rhetoric and fiction. Fiction is, in my view, an
allegorical act aimed at creating a parallel universe in which we can identify
qualities akin to the qualities we find in our everyday world. Rhetoric is a
persuasive act aimed at offering us a distinct perspective on the world we
already occupy. It is closer to a metaphor that’s meant, a way of saying
“Reality is like this, isn’t it?” Rhetoric is the province of politicians, trial
lawyers, essayists, reporters and many if not most documentary filmmak-
ers. It is why I once described documentary as a “discourse of sobriety” in
its more conventional forms.
Both fictional texts and rhetorical ones adopt aspects of narrative story-
telling to achieve their ends. That has proven a source of confusion in
many cases since it has been historically more tempting to align narrative
technique with fiction than documentary. That was certainly the tactic of
Dziga Vertov and John Grierson, among others, in the early days of docu-
mentary. But narrative can serve both masters. The line between fiction
and documentary, as several essays here argue, is a finer, more fluid one
than we sometimes suppose. There remains a tendency, in some of the
essays here, and elsewhere, to continue to perform a mopping up opera-
tion to remind us of this: documentaries are not necessarily true—they tell
stories; documentaries construct characters from social actors (real peo-
ple), build suspense, and create empathy by means not unlike those of
fiction films. They are, in fact, a fiction (un)like any other. These essays
take us on a journey to discover some of the many ways in which docu-
mentaries are like and unlike fiction films.
Another way to say this is that documentaries take up the problem of
dissoi logoi directly. This Greek term referred to cases where different
viii FOREWORD

points of view contend but no one point of view can claim, though claim
it will, that it and only it represents the truth of the matter.2 These are
issues involving values and beliefs, understanding and interpretations, ide-
ology, or what Catalin Brylla’s chapter, “A Social Cognition Approach to
Stereotyping in Documentary Practice,” refers to as “folk-psychological
narratives.” God exists. God does not exist. Capitalism gives the greatest
benefit to the greatest number. Capitalism immiserates vast numbers in its
quest for profit. Central governments and diversely populated nation
states deserve priority over local governments and more monolithic com-
munities, or vice versa. Fossil fuels are a prime source of energy vital to our
future. Fossil fuels are a prime cause of global warming; they endanger the
future.
Values and beliefs, understanding and interpretations change with time
and place but they take hold of the human imagination at a deep level.
Documentaries explore what it means to hold one form of belief, to
embody one set of values over another. They often set out to predispose
us to see things one way rather than another. They do so rhetorically, and
sometimes poetically. Cognitive theory, in these essays, contributes to our
understanding of how they go about doing so. The essays explore the
many “complex embodied cognitive activities,” as Veerle Ros, Jennifer
O’Connell, Miklós Kiss and Annelies van Noortwijk term it in their

2
Richard Lanham develops the meaning and use of the term brilliantly in his A Handlist
of Rhetorical Terms (University of California Press, 2012). The following explanation elabo-
rates on Lanham’s insights.

In essence, dissoi logoi posits that one side (logos) of an argument defines the existence
of the other, creating a rhetorical situation in which at least two logoi struggle for
dominance. In contrast, Western culture’s implicit assumption that argument is about
truth or falsity urges one to assume that one side of the argument is true or more
accurate and that other accounts are false or less accurate. Quite differently, Sophists
acknowledge that one side of the argument might in a particular context represent the
“stronger” logos and others the “weaker,” but this does not preclude a weaker logos
from becoming the stronger in a different or future context. Sophism assumes that
the stronger logos, no matter how strong, will never completely overcome competing
logoi and earn the title of absolute truth. Rather—and this is the heart of dissoi logoi—
at least one other perspective is always available to serve as another to the stronger
argument.

In Richard D. Johnson-Sheehan, “Sophistic Rhetoric,” Theorizing Composition: A Critical

Sourcebook of Theory and Scholarship in Contemporary Composition Studies, ed., Mary Lynch
Kennedy (Greenwood, 1998).
 FOREWORD
   ix

c­ hapter “Toward a Cognitive Definition of First Person Documentary,”

that go into this effort to predispose us to see the world as others want us
to. Cognitive theory now goes beyond reason—as we routinely do as well.
It tackles questions of the nature of emotions and emotional response, of
empathy and its arousal or dissipation, of seduction and its sway, of stereo-
types and their mobilization or subversion.
Documentaries are sometimes considered ways of conveying informa-
tion. They inform us about the world. And yet, they are never simply that.
Tables, charts, spreadsheets convey information but documentaries speak
in the voice of a filmmaker and convey a perspective on the world. This is
why the rhetorical tradition is such a crucial resource. It is far more than a
way to make an argument effectively, although it is well known for its
contribution to oration and court room debate. It is, more essentially, a
way to win hearts and minds, to convince others in a compelling way that
one way of seeing things is preferable to another. This is not a matter of
factual detail alone, not when we enter the realm of dissoi logoi, although
contradicting proven facts seldom makes for good rhetorical practice. It is
more a matter of finding the ways and means of predisposing viewers to
believe, internalize, and even act upon a particular view of how things
“really” are in the world. It is a matter of credible, convincing, and com-
pelling representations of the sort fruitfully explored by classic rhetoric.
Work to the margins of what we might consider the heart and soul of
documentary—the stand-alone work by a specific individual who addresses
a given topic in a distinct style and with a recognizable voice—makes this
matter yet more clear. Reality TV shows like the The Real Housewives fran-
chise, American Ninja Warrior, or Duck Dynasty strain credibility; they
may not fully convince, and yet they may well be compelling. Truth is not
in the air so much as absorption into a particular view of reality, quite often
a view of reality as spectacle, that borrows heavily from a documentary
tradition and the affective and cognitive activity it invites in order to pre-
dispose us to say “Yes, reality is like this—at least for the moment.
Advertisements and political campaign ads carry out similar procedures
but with even more blatant uses of rhetoric and style not only to predis-
pose us to see things as they want us to but to act upon these predisposi-
tions in ways that have significant consequences.
In other words, placing documentary in general upon the shrine of
sober discourse can be an error. It is not sobriety we seek so much as
engagement, conviction, and belief. It is the use of rhetoric and narrative
technique that so often provides it. In documentary films, information
x Foreword

may serve more as bait or lure than as the heart of the matter. Knowledge
may be a basic goal but it is heavily tempered by the voice and point of
view of the maker and the specific form of predisposition desired from the
viewer. In this light, cognitive theory can also help address questions
regarding the particular conception and structure of documentaries from
a film production perspective, as discussed in some of the essays. It is in the
exploration of these matters that this collection invites us to see documen-
tary from a different angle, to take up the other end of the stick.
What is at stake for us, ultimately, is the getting of wisdom, something
non-transferable and inexplicable, something beyond words or the form
and structure of any given work. Cognitive theory contributes to our
understanding of the process by which we encounter, assess, internalize,
and take guidance for our actions from the representations, documentary
and otherwise, that we encounter. Wisdom contributes to the long-term
survival of our society, if not our civilization. It relies on reasons, which
reason may not know, but which we can understand and deploy. This vol-
ume invites us to take one more step on that journey toward wisdom that
lies beyond the values and beliefs, myths and ideologies, categories and
interpretations we may take for granted but not yet fully understand.

School of Cinema, San Francisco State UniversityBill Nichols

San Francisco, CA, USA
 Contents

1 Introduction: Intersecting Cognitive Theory and

Documentary Film   1
Catalin Brylla and Mette Kramer

Part I The Mediation of Realities  19

2 A Documentary of the Mind: Self, Cognition and

Imagination in Anders Østergaard’s Films  21
Ib Bondebjerg

3 Little Voices and Big Spaces: Animated Documentary

and Conceptual Blending Theory  39
Juan Alberto Conde Aldana

4 Documentary Spectatorship and the Navigation of

“Difficulty”  59
John Corner

5 Docudrama and the Cognitive Evaluation of Realism  75

Torben Grodal

xi
xii CONTENTS

6 The Duties of Documentary in a Post-Truth Society  93

Dirk Eitzen

Part II Character Engagement 113

7 Characterization and Character Engagement in the

Documentary 115
Carl Plantinga

8 The Difficulty of Eliciting Empathy in Documentary 135

Jan Nåls

9 Fake Pictures, Real Emotions: A Case Study of Art

and Craft 149
Aubrey Tang

10 Engaging Animals in Wildlife Documentaries: From

Anthropomorphism to Trans-species Empathy 163
Alexa Weik von Mossner

Part III Emotions and Embodied Experience 181

11 Collateral Emotions: Political Web Videos and Divergent

Audience Responses 183
Jens Eder

12 Slow TV: The Experiential and Multisensory

Documentary 205
Luis Rocha Antunes
 CONTENTS
   xiii

13 Toward a Cognitive Definition of First-P ­ erson

Documentary 223
Veerle Ros, Jennifer M. J. O’Connell, Miklós Kiss, and
Annelies van Noortwijk

14 The Communication of Relational Knowledge in the

First-Person Documentary 243
Mette Kramer

Part IV Documentary Practice 261

15 A Social Cognition Approach to Stereotyping in

Documentary Practice 263
Catalin Brylla

16 A Cognitive Approach to Producing the Documentary

Interview 281
Michael Grabowski

17 Documentary Editing and Distributed Cognition 303

Karen Pearlman

Index 321
 Notes on Contributors

Luis Rocha Antunes holds a PhD in Film Studies from the University of
Kent and a PhD in Aesthetics from the Norwegian University of Science
and Technology. He is the author of The Multisensory Film Experience: A
Cognitive Model of Experiential Film Aesthetics (Intellect, 2016). His main
research interests revolve around experientiality and the senses in film.
Ib Bondebjerg is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Media,
Cognition and Communication at the University of Copenhagen. He was
Chairman of The Danish Film Institute (1997–2000), founder and direc-
tor of the Centre for Modern European Studies (2008–2011) and chair-
man of the Danish Research Council for the Humanities (1993–1997).
He is co-editor of the book series Palgrave European Film and Media
Studies and on the editorial board of the Journal of Documentary Studies.
He was the co-director of three European research projects: Changing
Media—Changing Europe (2000–2005), Media and Democracy in the
Network Society (2002–2006) and Mediating Cultural Encounters
Through European Screens (2013–2016). His most recent books in
English are Media, Democracy and European Culture (co-edited) (Intellect,
2008); Engaging with Reality: Documentary and Globalization (Intellect,
2014), European Cinema and Television: Cultural Policy and Everyday
Life (co-edited) (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); and Transnational European
Television Drama: Production, Genres and Audiences (co-authored)
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).
Catalin Brylla is Senior Lecturer in Film at the University of West
London. Focusing on documentary film studies, cognitive film theory,

xv
xvi Notes on Contributors

phenomenology and visual anthropology, his research aims for a pragmatic

understanding of documentary spectatorship in relation to experience,
empathy and narrative comprehension. He has co-edited, with Helen
Hughes, Documentary and Disability (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) and is
currently writing a book on stereotypes and spectatorship in documentary
film. As a practice-led researcher, he has made documentaries about blind-
ness and women’s football in Zanzibar. His films have been screened and
broadcast internationally.
Juan Alberto Conde Aldana has a degree in Communication Studies,
an MA in Philosophy and a PhD in Semiotics from the University of
Limoges. He is Assistant Professor in Semiotics on the master’s program
in semiotics at the Jorge Tadeo Lozano University, Bogota. His research
interests include visual semiotics, graphic narratives, interactive media and
sound studies.
John Corner is Visiting Professor in Media and Communication at the
University of Leeds and Professor Emeritus of the University of Liverpool.
He has published widely since the 1970s in a range of international jour-
nals and in books. His monographs include The Art of Record (Manchester
University Press, 1996) and, more recently, Theorising Media (Manchester
University Press, 2011) and Political Culture and Media Genre (Palgrave
Macmillan, 2012). His long-standing research interests include the his-
tory and development of documentary forms, theories of media power
and the changing forms of political mediation.
Jens Eder is Professor of Audiovisual Media, Aesthetics and Storytelling
at the Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF. After studying phi-
losophy and literature, he worked as a script editor for German television
and taught film studies, media studies and communication studies at uni-
versities in Hamburg, Mainz and Mannheim. He has written several books
and papers on audiovisual narrative, characters, digital media, transmedial-
ity, and representations of human nature, politics and emotions in the
media. His publications in English include Image Operations: Visual Media
and Political Conflict, edited with Charlotte Klonk (Manchester University
Press, 2017); Characters in Fictional Worlds, edited with Fotis Jannidis
and Ralf Schneider (De Gruyter, 2010); and three papers in the journal
Projections: The Journal for Movies and Mind, including the most recent,
“Films and Existential Feelings” (2016). He is currently writing a mono-
graph about media and affects/emotions.
 Notes on Contributors 
   xvii

Dirk Eitzen is Professor of Film and Media Studies at Franklin &

Marshall College, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and an award-winning docu-
mentary producer. He has previously published in The Velvet Light Trap,
Post Script and Iris, among other journals. His article, “When is a
Documentary? Documentary as a Mode of Reception” has initiated
debates amongst the cognitive film theory community, especially since it
shifts the neoformalist focus from the film text to the actual reception
process. He is therefore considered one of the few cognitive film scholars
to have pioneered the analysis of documentary.
Michael Grabowski is Associate Professor of Communication at
Manhattan College, New York. He is the editor of Neuroscience and
Media: New Understandings and Representations (Routledge, 2014). His
work on documentaries, feature films, commercials, music videos and
news has played at the Guggenheim, the Smithsonian, film festivals, and
on broadcast and cable networks. He serves as a Senior Research Consultant
for Audience Theory, which advises television and cable networks, OTT
providers and new media companies. Grabowski’s work explores how dif-
ferent forms of mediated communication shape the way people think and
act within their symbolic environment.
Torben Grodal is Professor Emeritus at the University of Copenhagen.
In addition to several books and articles on literature, he has authored
Moving Pictures: A New Theory of Genre, Feelings, and Emotions (Oxford
University Press, 1997); Embodied Visions: Evolution, Emotion, Culture
and Film (Oxford University Press, 2009); an introduction to film theory
in Danish, Filmoplevelse (2003); and edited Visual Authorship: Creativity
and Intentionality in the Media (Museum Tusculanum Press, 2005). He
has also published articles on film, emotions, narrative theory, art films,
video games and evolutionary film theory. His most recent articles include
“How film genres are a product of biology, evolution and culture—an
embodied approach” (Palgrave Communications, 2017) and “Die Hard
as an Emotion Symphony” (Projections, 2017).
Miklós Kiss is Assistant Professor in Film and Media Studies at the
University of Groningen. His research intersects the fields of narrative and
cognitive film theories. Published in anthologies and academic journals
(including Projections, Scope, Senses of Cinema, Necsus, New Cinemas,
New Review of Film and Television Studies), he is an editorial board mem-
ber of [in]Transition, the first peer-reviewed academic journal of
xviii Notes on Contributors

videographic film studies. His recent books are Film Studies in Motion:
From Audiovisual Essay to Academic Research Video (co-authored with
Thomas van den Berg) (Scalar, 2016) and Impossible Puzzle Films: A
Cognitive Approach to Contemporary Complex Cinema (co-authored with
Steven Willemsen) (Edinburgh University Press, 2017).
Mette Kramer is a film lecturer at the University of Copenhagen. She has
written on emotion and cognitive film theory in a number of Danish and
international film journals and anthologies. She is currently finishing a
book project on attachment, cognition and affect.
Jan Nåls is a scriptwriter, author and editor, film educator and commu-
nications scholar. He is currently Lecturer in Directing and Scriptwriting
at Arcada University of Applied Sciences, Helsinki. He has been active in
teaching and researching intercultural communication for the past decade,
primarily in a documentary-film exchange program between South Africa,
Ghana and Finland. His research interests include the functions and effects
of empathy in visual narratives, a topic on which he has published exten-
sively. His latest scriptwriting effort is an award-winning novella film,
Beware of Thin Ice (2017). Author of several works on varied topics, such
as sports betting and modern theatre, his most recent titles include a fic-
tional biography of Finnish maverick and smuggler Algoth Niska
(Borderline, 2015) and a work on set design in theatre (Skenographia,
2015).
Annelies van Noortwijk is a senior lecturer in the Department of Arts,
Culture and Media Studies at the University of Groningen. Her current
research concentrates on contemporary documentary practice, with a spe-
cific interest in questions of engagement, resistance and ethics, and the
penetration of artistic discourse into non-traditional forms of art. Recent
publications include “The Other, the Same: Towards a Metamodern
Poetics with Heddy Honigmann” in Female Authorship in Contemporary
Documentary Media (Edinburgh University Press, 2018) and “See Me,
Feel Me, Touch Me, Heal Me, La question de la mémoire dans le docu-
mentaire à l’epoque métamoderne” in Un Art documentaire: Enjeux esthé-
tiques, politiques et ethiques (Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2017).
Jennifer M. J. O’Connell is a junior lecturer in the Department of Arts,
Culture and Media at the University of Groningen. She graduated with
honors with a thesis on first-person documentary. She is also the main film
programmer of the International Film Festival Assen, a festival that centers
 Notes on Contributors 
   xix

on women and film. Her research focuses on documentary theory and film
festival policy. Recent publications include two entries on the Netherlands
in Women Screenwriters: An International Guide (Palgrave Macmillan,
2015) and an interview with Rada Šešić (co-authored with Annelies van
Noortwijk) in Documentary Film Festivals: History, Politics, Challenges
(Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming).
Karen Pearlman is a senior lecturer at Macquarie University, Sydney, and
the author of Cutting Rhythms: Intuitive Film Editing (Focal Press, 2016).
Her creative-practice research film, Woman with an Editing Bench (2016),
won the Australian Teachers of Media Award for Best Short Fiction and
the Australian Screen Editors Guild (ASE) Award for Best Editing in a
Short Film, along with six other film festival prizes. Other publications
from her ongoing research into editing, cognition and feminist film histo-
ries include “Editing and Cognition Beyond Continuity” in Projections:
The Journal for Movies and Mind (2017) and co-editing a special 2018
issue of Apparatus: Film, Media and Digital Cultures of Central and
Eastern European on women and editing.
Carl Plantinga is Professor of Film and Media at Calvin College,
Michigan. He is the author of three books, including Rhetoric and
Representation in Nonfiction Film (Cambridge University Press, 1997),
Moving Viewers: American Film and the Spectator’s Experience
(University of California Press, 2009), and Screen Stories: Emotion and
the Ethics of Engagement (Oxford University Press, 2018). Plantinga is
also co-editor of Passionate Views: Film, Cognition, and Emotion
(Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999) and The Routledge Companion
to Philosophy and Film (Routledge, 2008). He is currently working
on a book about the relationship between realism and the imagination
in narrative film and documentary with the working title,
Alternative Realities.
Veerle Ros is a PhD student in Film and Media Studies at the University
of Groningen. She is currently working on a dissertation that explores the
cognitive and hermeneutic dynamics of authenticity attribution in docu-
mentary film viewing. Her recent publications include “Disrupted PECMA
Flows: A Cognitive Approach to the Experience of Narrative Complexity
in Film” (co-authored with Miklós Kiss) in Projections: The Journal for
Movies and Mind (Spring 2018) and “The Living Landscape of Jakarta in
Leonard Retel Helmrich’s Documentary Triptych” (co-authored with
xx Notes on Contributors

Annelies van Noortwijk) in Filmurbia: Screening the Suburbs (Palgrave

Macmillan, 2017).
Aubrey Tang is a PhD candidate in the Department of Comparative
Literature at the University of California, Irvine. Her research interests
include the history and phenomenology of perception, sensations and cin-
ema, Chinese and Sinophone film historiography, and Hong Kong cin-
ema. Her essays on Chinese literature and cinema have appeared in the
journal Frontiers of Literary Studies in China and the collected volume Li
Ang’s Visionary Challenges to Gender, Sex, and Politics (Lexington Books,
2013). She has contributed a chapter on Shanghai sensationalism, “The
Sensations of Semicolonial Shanghai: A Phenomenological Study of the
Short Stories by Liu Na’ou”, to Sensationalism and the Genealogy of
Modernity: A Global Nineteenth Century Approach (Palgrave Macmillan,
2017). A practicing Tibetan Buddhist, she has a great interest in the topic
of compassion, and currently teaches college writing at Irvine Valley
College.
Alexa Weik von Mossner is Associate Professor of American Studies at
the University of Klagenfurt. Her research explores the theoretical inter-
sections of cognitive science, affective narratology and environmental lit-
erature and film. She is the author of Cosmopolitan Minds: Literature,
Emotion, and the Transnational Imagination (University of Texas Press,
2014) and Affective Ecologies: Empathy, Emotion, and Environmental
Narrative (Ohio State University Press, 2017), the editor of Moving
Environments: Affect, Emotion, Ecology, and Film (Wilfrid Laurier
University Press, 2014), and the co-editor, with Sylvia Mayer, of The
Anticipation of Catastrophe: Environmental Risk in North American
Literature and Culture (Winter 2014).
 List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 The basic prototypes of documentary. Source: Ib Bondebjerg

(2014a)32
Fig. 3.1 A marriage-of-opposites blend. Source: Juan Alberto Conde
Aldana (2016) 43
Fig. 3.2 Voice/image blend in animated documentary. Source: Juan
Alberto Conde Aldana (2016) 46
Fig. 3.3 Children’s and professional drawings. Source: Jairo Eduardo
Carrillo, Oscar Andrade, Pequeñas Voces (2011) 49
Fig. 3.4 Narrative and viewpoint spaces in Pequeñas Voces. Source:
Juan Alberto Conde Aldana (2016) 52
Fig. 3.5 The complete blending network of Pequeñas Voces. Source:
Juan Alberto Conde Aldana (2016) 54
Fig. 16.1 EFP setup. Source: Lindsay Gordon (2016) 285
Fig. 16.2 ENG setup for the documentary Touristic Intents (2014,
Mat Rappaport). Source: Ted Hardin (2014) 288
Fig. 16.3 The Interrotron. Source: Michael Grabowski (2015) 291

xxi
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Intersecting Cognitive Theory

and Documentary Film

Catalin Brylla and Mette Kramer

Preamble
This collection of essays is the first major study to explore the intersection
between cognitive theory and documentary film studies. As such, it offers
a vital interpretation not only of how we perceive reality through docu-
mentary, but also of how we perceive it because of documentary. Western
audiences live in a mass-mediated culture that filters reality through the
prism of factual media; hence, their emotional and cognitive comprehen-
sion of the world is, to a significant extent, informed and consolidated by
documentary film. The essays in this volume seek to illuminate the pro-
duction, exhibition and reception of documentaries, exploring intratextu-
ality (in which filmmakers employ narrative and aesthetic strategies to
achieve particular audience responses and effects) and extratextuality
(whereby filmmaking practices and sociocultural traditions negotiate the
indexical link between representations and their real-life counterparts).
The interplay between these levels means that documentaries have a

C. Brylla (*)
University of West London, London, UK
M. Kramer
University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
e-mail: mettekramer@mail.dk

© The Author(s) 2018 1

C. Brylla, M. Kramer (eds.), Cognitive Theory and Documentary
Film, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90332-3_1
2 C. BRYLLA AND M. KRAMER

greater potential than fiction films to impact our attitudes towards and
interaction with the world, helping construct our social, cultural and indi-
vidual identities. This collection aims to demonstrate that cognitive theory
represents an invaluable tool for film scholars and practitioners, allowing
them to comprehend the range of documentary’s implications within a
wider context than that of just filmmaking or film scholarship.
Although these essays are not concerned with the definition or historic-
ity of the concepts (or disciplines) of “cognitive theory” and “documen-
tary” (arguably, this could turn into a philosophical minefield, providing
little insight into documentary spectatorship), it may be helpful to offer a
brief explanation of the rationale behind the choice of title, particularly as
it highlights the contributions’ common denominators and provides a
loose demarcation for the collection as a whole. Cognitive theory encom-
passes a variety of theoretical strands that span several disciplines, includ-
ing film studies, neuroscience and social psychology. Broadly speaking,
there have been three historical waves of cognitive (fiction) film analysis.1
The first regarded film as a text to be deciphered using predominantly
neoformalist and constructivist methods (e.g. Bordwell 1985; Branigan
1992). The second shifted the focus from film-as-text to film-as-reception,
initially building on linguistic and computational models of cognition
(e.g. Anderson 1998; Buckland 2000) but eventually moving towards
multimodal approaches that transcend Cartesian mind–body dualism to
consider embodied responses in addition to cognitive processes (e.g.
Smith 1995; Tan 1996; Plantinga 2009a; Grodal 2009). The third and
latest wave has theoretically and empirically explored cognition as
grounded in the human body and its interaction with the environment
(e.g. Hasson et al. 2008; Gallese and Guerra 2012; Smith 2013; Coëgnarts
and Kravanja 2015a), and has tentatively begun to use contextual para-
digms, such as spectators’ individual differences and sociocultural settings
(e.g. Barratt 2014; Tan and Bálint 2017; Bondebjerg 2017). This wide-­
reaching cumulative trajectory has solidified cognitivism into what
Gregory Currie (2004, p. 106) calls a “programme” rather than a specific
theory, encouraging the interdisciplinary deployment of various theories,
adapted to the case study at hand. When applied to documentary, this

1
Although cognitive theory has developed differently in separate disciplines, some
common historical threads can be discerned—for instance, in media studies (see Nannicelli
and Taberham 2014), psychology (see Pecher and Zwaan 2006), literature studies (see
Goldman et al. 1999) and the philosophy of science (see Wang 2015).
 INTRODUCTION: INTERSECTING COGNITIVE THEORY… 3

paradigm enables the analysis of a multitude of spectatorship dimensions,

such as sensory perception, narrative comprehension, character empathy
and the evaluation of realism, as well as the examination of various dimen-
sions of authorship, including creativity, ethics, reflexivity and activism.
Documentary is an equally multilayered term that has also undergone
several modifications since its inception. These can be traced in a historical
arc that reaches from John Grierson’s (1966, pp. 147–148) early defini-
tion of documentary as the “creative treatment of actuality” to John
Corner’s (2000, p. 688) coinage of the term “post-documentary,” which
he describes as the “result of the widespread dispersal (and, in part, per-
haps dissipation) of documentarist energies and appeals across a much
larger area of audio-visual culture.” Corner, however, is prudent to men-
tion that the prefix “post” does not suggest the collapse of the concept of
documentary into postmodern doubt; rather, the term refers to the fact
that the concept has shifted from a rhetorical and didactic concern with
generic requirements to a recognition of documentary’s cultural and com-
mercial popularity as mediated through a greatly expanded range of for-
mats and new modes of realist-factual entertainment. Corner alludes to
the heterogeneous array of popular and democratic audiovisual nonfiction
genres consumed (but also to a large degree produced) by a mass society.
This is the umbrella under which the documentary dimension of this book
operates.
The collection, however, is not intended as a parochial counterpoint to
the plethora of cognitive studies of fiction film; on the contrary, it aims to
expand the very notion of film and highlight the permeable boundary
between fiction and documentary. Indeed, the long-established divide
between documentary and fiction is counterproductive when studying
particular documentary forms. Nevertheless, on a methodological level,
the book’s focus on documentary (in its widest possible sense) and its
exclusion of traditional fiction forms (which have been extensively cov-
ered elsewhere) is designed to expand scholarly research into uncharted
territories. It addresses, on the one hand, the lacuna in cognitive film stud-
ies in relation to documentary analysis, and on the other, the omission of
cognitive models in documentary studies. In terms of cognitive scholar-
ship, our hope as editors of this volume is that the study of nonfiction film
gains a momentum that propels it to the status that fiction film enjoys as
an area of academic interest.
This focus on documentary is also intended to challenge archaic notions
of the genre and encourage the reconfiguration and expansion of research
4 C. BRYLLA AND M. KRAMER

frameworks to encompass a wide spectrum of nonfiction audiovisual

media, including classical as well as contemporary documentary forms that
deviate from the doctrine of factuality. In terms of its form and concep-
tion, documentary is far more prone than fiction to a bricolage approach,
constantly intermixing different aesthetics, authorial interventions and
modes of spectatorial address. Furthermore, the disciplinary or institu-
tional contexts and extratextual functions that surround documentary
production and reception often overlap, blurring the boundaries between,
for example, reportage, ethnographic film, drama, educational film, pro-
motional video and avant-garde film. Hence, documentary, as a malleable
and rather elusive concept, provides the scholar with a flexibility that
eschews the determinism and constraints found in other audiovisual
genres. Essentially, our aim is to demonstrate that the synergy between
cognitive and documentary studies yields rigorous yet pragmatic method-
ologies for mapping Corner’s “post-documentaries,” including such
diverse formats as web videos, reality TV, essay films, performative docu-
mentaries, docudramas and animated documentaries.

The Intersection of Cognitive Theory

and Documentary Studies

Far from wishing to categorize scholars as belonging to strictly demar-

cated disciplines or fields of inquiry, this collection in fact aims to bypass
such perceived disciplinary boundaries. Yet, it may be helpful here to
briefly map the possible reasons for the relatively ossified divisions that
have historically inhibited a substantially evolving convergence between
documentary and cognitive film studies, and to highlight the few scholarly
works that have transcended these divisions.
Documentary scholars, on the one hand, generally deem cognitive
models too limited: they lament these models’ reliance on normative sci-
entific paradigms that, firstly, only account for a universalized audience
reception, neglecting sociocultural and historical framings (e.g. Smaill
2010, p. 8), and secondly, limit the scope of spectatorship to knowledge
acquisition through rationalist inquiry (e.g. Renov 2004, p. 149). A glance
at the existing body of work that uses cognitive models for film analysis
appears to justify the first argument as, despite occasional theoretical
acknowledgments of social, cultural, political and historical contexts (e.g.
Peterson 1996; Plantinga 2009b; Bondebjerg 2017), applied studies have
 INTRODUCTION: INTERSECTING COGNITIVE THEORY… 5

been scarce at best.2 This is one of the gaps this collection attempts to
address. In terms of the second assertion, cognitive film theory’s evolution
towards embracing non-rationalist approaches that account for affective
and subjective viewer experience has had little exposure or acknowledge-
ment outside the discipline itself. As a consequence, fossilized views about
the stagnant nature of (classical) cognitive theory are still pervasive among
non-cognitive film scholars.
On the other hand, cognitive film scholars have largely favored the
analysis of fiction film over documentary—and nonfiction in general. This
can be attributed to four factors. Firstly, cognitive film theory was estab-
lished in the 1990s, arguably as an antithesis to the poststructuralist,
Marxist, psychoanalytic and semiotic Screen tradition (Bordwell and
Carroll 1996; Tan 1996; Plantinga and Smith 1999). Since the Screen
scholars focused mainly on fiction, it was logical that the cognitivists would
offer their alternative theories in the same territory. Secondly, the public
popularity of mainstream fiction is believed to overshadow that of docu-
mentary, despite Corner’s observation that documentary has increasingly
moved towards the mainstream. As one of the cognitivists’ declared aims
is to understand our most common movie experience—our fascination
with and the pleasure we derive from mainstream films—through analyz-
ing prototypical narratives (Shimamura 2013, p. 4), it is perhaps not sur-
prising that documentary is thought to offer little scope for the study of
mainstream audiences. However, whereas it is true that cinema documen-
taries have a still-limited—albeit growing—popularity, documentary con-
tent on television (especially reality TV, infotainment and newscasts) and
online (for example, compilation films, mashups and audiovisual memes)
has become increasingly popular and ubiquitous.
The third factor also relates to the question of popularity. This is the
classical notion of documentaries as rhetorical or didactic—in Bill Nichols’
(1991, p. 3) words, “discourses of sobriety”. They are considered inca-
pable of eliciting the same emotions and character engagement as fiction
narratives. But while this may hold true for certain documentary forms
(wildlife films and current affairs, for example), this belief needs to be
revised for forms such as character-driven observational documentaries
and docudramas, which have a closer kinship with fiction. In contrast, the

2
Notable exceptions include the cultural contextualization of spatiotemporal perception
(e.g. Barratt 2014; Coëgnarts and Kravanja 2015b) and the cultural-historical contextualiza-
tion of spectatorship (e.g. Hake 2012; William 2017).
6 C. BRYLLA AND M. KRAMER

fourth factor is the opposite perception that documentaries use the same
aesthetics and produce the same cognitive responses as fiction films (e.g.
Shimamura 2013, p. 21). This assumption is plausible if seen in terms of
the viewers’ sensory and low-level cognitive responses as these are identi-
cal for fiction and nonfiction film, leading to the conclusion that a multi-
tude of cognitive models can be applied equally to both. However, this
bottom-up approach excludes essential top-down considerations, such as
reality-status checks to determine whether the viewed content is fiction or
nonfiction (Barratt 2007) and consequentiality (the awareness of real-life
implications) (Eitzen 2007). In any case, these two contradictory perspec-
tives, one based on the opposition and one on the correspondence between
documentary and fiction films, are symptomatic of the indeterminate
nature of documentary due to the large spectrum of forms and functions
involved in generating different modes of “documentary relationship”
with viewers. Hence, these perspectives may be valid for particular case
studies but are precarious as generalized positions, which is why the con-
tributions to this volume avoid making a universal case for either.
Yet, despite all these hurdles, tentative intersections between documen-
tary and cognitive theory do exist. Within documentary studies, for
instance, explicit references to spectatorial cognition are occasionally made
in relation to narrative and aesthetics (e.g. Richardson and Corner 1986;
Austin 2007; Corner 2008) and the representation of space (e.g. Chanan
2010). Other than that, however, there are only faint traces of cognitive
considerations, as when textual analyzes draw inferences about audience
reception (e.g. Renov 1993; Nichols 1994; Winston 2008) and documen-
taries are categorized as certain “modes” (e.g. Nichols 2001; Ward 2005).
While not applying cognitive models per se, documentary scholars, espe-
cially those adopting ethnographic (e.g. MacDougall 1998, 2006; Pink
2015) and psychoanalytic (e.g. Renov 2004; Cowie 2011; Piotrowska
2013) angles, have also addressed general questions about the emotions
and embodied experiences at play in documentary production and recep-
tion. However, these texts are still too remote from the psychological
frameworks based on empirical studies and theoretical discourses employed
in the natural sciences.
Within the field of cognitive film studies, a handful of film scholars have
engaged in the study of documentary, particularly with regard to its speci-
ficity when compared with fiction (e.g. Currie 1999; Ponech 1999; Carroll
2003; Plantinga 2005; Eitzen 2007), its different modes of narrative address
(e.g. Odin 1989; Plantinga 1997; Smith 2007) and its spectatorial recep-
 INTRODUCTION: INTERSECTING COGNITIVE THEORY… 7

tion (e.g. Bondebjerg 1994; Eitzen 1995; Plantinga 2013). Although these
texts are seminal landmarks that have provided key paradigms for this book,
they remain largely embryonic and isolated. An overarching discussion that
builds on, adapts, expands or revises their methodologies has yet to develop.
Such a discussion needs to take into account that the vast divergence in
documentary forms, institutions, exhibition platforms and audiences over
the last few decades has rendered a categorical and generalized examination
of documentary problematic. Carl Plantinga (2005) illustrates this point
succinctly by extrapolating two recurrent documentary models found in
scholarly work, “documentary as indexical record” and “documentary as
authorial assertion,” and arguing that their abstract generalization of the
concept of documentary fails the applied test of real case studies. By con-
trast, almost all the contributions to this collection adopt a grounded meth-
odology investigating a very particular body of films or a specific case study.

A Pragmatic Approach
Pragmatism, in combination with Merleau-Ponty’s and Heidegger’s phe-
nomenological ideas, has been a major paradigm in the relatively recent
strand of embodied cognition studies (Madzia and Jung 2016, pp. 3–5;
Wang 2015), and several chapters in this book advance research questions
related to the “4EA” (Embodied, Embedded, Enacted, Extended,
Affective) attributes of cognition. Our understanding of pragmatic
research follows in the same tradition, though on a more fundamental
level: the premise that documentary spectatorship is shaped by the degree
of filmic mediation relative to certain viewing contexts. Eitzen (1995,
p. 92) provides the basis for this premise by proclaiming that documentary
is a “mode of reception” and needs to be studied, not as a kind of “film
text” but as a kind of “reading,” an approach that is reminiscent of the
shift mentioned earlier from the first to the second historical wave of film
cognitivism. This reception-driven approach largely bypasses questions
about the actual definition of documentary (p. 98). Eitzen also concludes
that “[d]ocumentaries are presumed to be truthful, even though consider-
ations about the veracity of particular [authorial] assertions may play little
role in how viewers actually make sense of them” (p. 88). The study of
documentary spectatorship, therefore, needs to analyze the spectator’s
cognitive and affective perception of the documentary’s “mediated”
­reality, in which the degree of mediation is as variable as the spectator’s
awareness of it.
8 C. BRYLLA AND M. KRAMER

Similarly, Bondebjerg (1994, pp. 82–83) argues that the pragmatic

approach requires the mapping of textual, social and cultural elements in
relation to psychological frameworks as well as institutional practices. This
mapping relates not only to audiences, but also to filmmakers themselves.
Bondebjerg considers documentary reception as an intersubjective media-
tion of reality, involving a “communicative contract” between film/film-
maker and audience. This is shaped by filmmaking practices and the
audience’s schematic configurations of mental frameworks based on their
perceptual and embodied capacities as well as their past experiences
(pp. 66–67). Plantinga (2013, pp. 43–46), too, stresses the importance of
a contextual, grounded and reception-focused line of inquiry, arguing that
when confronted with truth claims (for example, in social-activist docu-
mentaries), audiences understand that documentaries are structured rhe-
torical discourses and evaluate the film’s indexical veracity using textual
cues, trust in the filmmaker or institution, critics’ reviews and common-­
sense psychology.
Eitzen’s, Bondebjerg’s and Plantinga’s pragmatic ideas integrate
dimensions of documentary spectatorship based on intratextual, extratex-
tual and intertextual considerations, thus enabling the researcher to survey
of a wide spectrum of documentary forms and functions. A pragmatic-­
cognitive study of documentary production and reception requires the
building of bridges between the natural sciences, the social sciences and
the humanities, and between theory and practice. This is why this volume
features contributions by filmmakers, film theorists and scientists.
Bondebjerg (2015) argues that such an interdisciplinary collaboration is
essential for an understanding of the way human cognition and emotion
operate in culture and society; biology (particularly neurobiology) is nec-
essarily embedded in that understanding. This perspective has played an
important role in editing this volume, as it initially informed our selection
of contributors, suggestions for revisions and, ultimately, the sectionaliza-
tion of the book into four parts that represent four areas of scholarly inter-
est we advocate for the cognitive study of documentary.3

1. The Mediation of Realities

2. Character Engagement
3. Emotions and Embodied Experience
4. Documentary Practice

3
See Brylla and Kramer (forthcoming) for the development of a theoretical framework
based on these research areas.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
address is worth remembering always, he must recite it several
times during the next week, and go over it again next month, next
term, and next year. There will come a time, depending upon his
native retentiveness and upon his method of memorizing, when it will
no longer be necessary to repeat it for the sake of fixing the address
in memory. It will not take a great deal of time to recall that which we
believe we have fixed permanently last week or last month, and by
doing this we shall add greatly to the probability of possible recall a
year or ten years from now, and incidentally discover, much to our
surprise, how much has already escaped.
Teachers often unconsciously follow the cramming method in their
attempt to have children advance rapidly; and, as is always the case
when this method is employed, what has apparently been learned is
soon forgotten. Fortunately for all concerned, many of the responses
which need to be reduced to an automatic basis are demanded over
and over again as the child progresses from grade to grade, and are
thus provided for. But much that is now lost could be retained, and
each succeeding teacher could accomplish more than is now
customary, if only this principle of habit formation were commonly
observed.
In the case of a series of responses to be made automatic, be
careful to include each member of the series: Much of our work is
weak because it lacks system. If we are engaged in teaching
addition combinations, we should be absolutely certain that we have
taught every possible combination. If we want to be sure that
children know how to write numbers up to one million, we must have
given them drill on all of the possible difficulties. If children are
always to respond correctly when problems involving two steps in
reasoning are presented, we must have been careful to provide for
the purpose of drill all of the combinations of situations involving
addition, multiplication, subtraction, and division which can occur.
For any other similar field, the same care must be exercised.
The greater part of the time should be spent in drilling upon that
part of the work which presents special difficulty. There is no use in
spending one’s time equally on all of the words included in any list.
Some of them can probably be spelled with little or no drill, while
others may require very careful study and many repetitions. In any
other field the same situation will be found. Many of the responses
desired will be reduced to the basis of habit readily, and a few will
require continued attention. It is the function of the teacher to
discover these special difficulties as soon as possible, to clear up
any obscurity in ideas which may stand in the way, and then to drill
with special reference to these special cases.
Briefly summarized, it is the function of the teacher in guiding
pupils in the formation of habits to see to it that they have the correct
idea of the thing to be done; to secure the maximum of motive and to
maintain the maximum of attention during the process; to guard
against carelessness and lapses by insisting upon the accuracy or
the adequacy of the responses; to provide occasion for repetitions
from time to time with gradually lengthened intervals; to be careful
not to omit any of a group or series of responses equally important;
to spend the greater part of the time and energy of both herself and
pupils upon those cases which present special difficulty.

For Collateral Reading

W. C. Bagley, The Educative Process, Chapter XXII.
S. H. Rowe, Habit Formation and the Science of Teaching, Chapter XIII.

Exercises.
1. Name the subjects or parts of subjects in which drill work is essential.
2. What was there of value in the old-fashioned method of choosing sides and
“spelling down”?
3. Name some of the devices which you have used in drill work, and justify their
use.
4. What argument can you advance for postponing the beginning of writing
lessons until the middle of the first year or later?
5. Which would be better: to present the multiplication table in regular series (3 ×
1 = 3; 3 × 2 = 6; 3 × 3 = 9, etc.), or in some other order? (3 × 5 = 15; 3 × 2 = 6; 3 ×
7 = 21; 3 × 4 = 12, etc.)
6. If a boy was writing a composition and wanted to use a word that he did not
know how to spell, what would you expect him to do?
 7. What are the objections to learning rules of spelling?
8. In a drill lesson in arithmetic, which would you consider the better: to have the
children work as individuals for the highest score, or to divide them into groups and
have one group try to do better than the other?
9. Criticize the following lesson, as a fourth-grade exercise in spelling. The
teacher placed the following list of words on the board, and told the pupils to study
them.
believe conduct have
forget agriculture manufacture
store plow wagon
cultivate harness exports
crops dairy freight
drought fertilizer transport
depot wheat
10. A teacher who spent a large part of her time having the class recite the
multiplication tables in concert was distressed to find that a majority of the class
did not know the tables when examination time came. What was the explanation?
11. In a school where the children had a forty-minute period for a writing lesson,
the results during the last ten minutes were invariably poorer than during the first
quarter of the period. How could you hope to change the result?
12. In some schools the teachers always spend two weeks before the
examination period in review of the term’s work. Why are such reviews necessary
in some cases, while children do just as well in examinations in other schools
which do not have this review period?
13. A teacher taught children that they could always tell how much nine times
any number was by subtracting one from that number for the tens place, then
adding a number which will make nine for the units place (e.g. 5 × 9 = ? 5 - 1 = 4
(tens); 4 + 5 = 9. ∴ 5 is the number of units, and 5 × 9 = 45). Is this a good way to
teach this table?
14. How can you know when it is wise to discontinue drill work?
15. Do you think it necessary to plan for a drill lesson?
16. Could you plan your work so that your pupils will know at the end of the year
all of the poems you have taught during the previous eight or ten months?
 CHAPTER V

THE INDUCTIVE LESSON

We are skeptical to-day of that sort of teaching which aims mainly

to equip children with a body of accepted knowledge in order that
they may some time find use for this body of information in later life.
We emphasize, rather, the control of mental activity which makes for
the discovery of truth and the avoidance of error. Thinking of this sort
is purposeful. We control or direct our ideas toward some end,
toward the solution of some problem. One great purpose of teaching
must be to provide the opportunity and the stimulus for this kind of
thinking. We may not be able to lay down any fixed order of
procedure, nor to devise any set of rules whereby children may be
trained to be good reasoners; but we can consider what is involved
in the process, point out the possibilities of interference, and suggest
some of the means to be employed in encouraging this type of
mental activity on the part of children. In this chapter we shall confine
ourselves to that type of reasoning which we call inductive. This type
of schoolroom exercise has usually been treated as composed of
five steps; namely, preparation, presentation, comparison and
abstraction, generalization, and application. We shall employ this
classification to guide us in our discussion of the process.
Preparation: To prepare a child to reason in a given situation from
the data in hand to the conclusions which must of necessity follow, it
is first of all necessary that he should see that the situation presents
a problem. We reason only when we have some aim or purpose
which can be satisfied by the process. But if consciousness of aim or
problem is at the foundation of this type of thinking, and if we are to
deal with children in groups, it is essential that the situation which
involves the problem be made the common possession of all. The
step of preparation presents these two problems to the teacher: (1)
to find a basis in experience already had, or to provide the
experience which involves the problem to be considered; (2) to make
the children feel the necessity for the solution, i.e. to make the
problem vital to them.
In considering the necessity for common experience as a basis for
discovering the problem to children, we are dealing with the principle
of apperception. Briefly stated, it is this,—that any object or situation
has meaning for us only as it connects itself with and is interpreted
by our previous experience. Suppose, for example, that a group of
first-grade children were asked to tell what made seeds grow. It is
possible that some of them would not know, could not interpret from
past experience, the meaning of seeds. If the class were at work in a
large city, we could be sure that many had never been conscious
that growing plants had any connection with seeds, and there would
be few, if any, who had ever noticed the conditions under which such
growth takes place. The first problem for the teacher in this case
would be solved only when, through recall of past experiences,
observations, or experiments, the experience “seeds growing”
became the common possession of the group. This is an extreme
case, one in which the experience which involves the problem is
entirely wanting. At the other end of the series, we may have a
problem for consideration, the basis for which is found in
experiences common to all children. But even though this be the
case, there will still be need for the recall of the experience and for
making prominent some factor heretofore unnoticed before the
children will be ready to reason. We may suppose that all children
have had experience with streets or roads, but we shall want to
recall many of these experiences in order to make significant the
problem of transportation which we wish to consider in the class in
home geography.
The step of preparation has only partially accomplished its
purpose when the experience necessary to the realization of the
problem has been recalled or provided. Still greater skill is required
in making the child conscious of the problem. Indeed, it may well be
argued that in the curriculum as it is at present organized, very many
of the problems that we ask children to solve are problems for them
only because we, as teachers, require that that certain piece of work
be done. Often the child’s problem consists mainly in avoiding, as far
as possible, the work which we require, which has little or no
significance for him. Children would do much more thinking if we
were only more careful to give them childish problems to solve. Too
frequently the organization of knowledge which we impose is
influenced exclusively by our adult logical conceptions. Not that
children should be illogical, but rather that child logic and the child’s
ability to reason depend upon his ability to appreciate problems,
upon his experience, and upon his ability to interpret that experience.
When we impose our adult point of view upon him, when we ask him
to take our problem and with the data that we supply ask him to work
out our solution, whatever else may be said of the exercise, it may
not be called an exercise in reasoning by children.
If we do respect the child’s experience and point of view, the task
still remains of making all of the group of children we teach
conscious of the aim as their problem. There is no greater test of
teaching skill than this. Can the teacher, after having brought to mind
the experiences which are relevant to the work she wishes the
children to do, make them conscious of a lack in this experience; can
she awaken the need for further consideration of past experience
and a desire to reconstruct and to amplify it? In proportion as she is
able to accomplish this result, we may be sure that children are
reasoning upon problems which are vital to them, and that the
motive has been provided which will secure the maximum of
controlled intellectual activity on their part. The best single test of the
accomplishment of this ideal is to require that the statement of aim
be made by the children themselves as a result of the guidance we
have given. This conception of the meaning and significance of the
aim suggests the solution of the difficulty which some people find in
harmonizing the idea of instruction with the doctrine of self-activity.
Instruction, when properly conducted, does not impose the ideas,
the problems, or the conclusions of adults upon children. Rather we
are concerned in instruction with the child’s experience, his tendency
to react, his need of adjustment; and our function as teachers is to
guide him, to stimulate him to his own best efforts, to insure the
maximum of self-activity while we guide this activity toward the
accomplishment of ends which are desirable. The difficulty is, of
course, that the problem for solution at any given time may not be
equally vital to every member of the group. Here is where the
element of control enters somewhat in opposition to the self-activity
of the individual. But this condition of affairs is necessarily true both
in school and out of it, for society sets up for us certain norms or
standards of experience which must be realized by all, and we must
for the sake of economy handle children in groups. If the problem is
not beyond the child’s comprehension, if it deals with situations
which are significant to him, if the solution derived has some bearing
on his future action, if he has carefully scrutinized his experience in
the light of the problem stated and has brought to bear those
elements which are significant for its solution, we may be confident
that the activity resulting is closely akin to that which is found in the
controlled thinking of men the world over.
In order that it may be more easy for children to focus their
attention upon the problem in hand, there is considerable advantage
in a clear, concise, concrete, and preferably a brief statement of the
aim.[7] A problem is half solved when one can state it clearly. So long
as the problem is not sufficiently well defined to admit of accurate
statement on the part of pupils, there is danger that there may be
much wandering in its consideration. One of the great lessons to be
taught in work of this sort is the need of examining the ideas as they
suggest themselves to see whether or not they are relevant.
The argument as it has been stated above points to the statement
of aim as the culmination of the step of preparation. This does not
mean that a considerable period must always elapse in the conduct
of an exercise of this type before the aim can be stated. There are
occasions, and when the teaching has been good they should be
frequent, when the lesson should begin with the statement of the
problem discovered in a previous lesson and made clear in the
assignment of work. In other cases the same aim may hold for
several days; i.e. until the problem is solved. In general, as we
advance through the grades, the ends for which children work should
become relatively more remote, and the achievement of these ends
should require a longer period of work. There is an advantage in
setting up subsidiary aims which will make steps of progress in the
realization of the larger purpose.
Another distinction that it is well to keep in mind concerns the
development of intellectual interests on the part of children. The
characteristic aim for a first-grade child may make its appeal chiefly
to his desire for satisfaction, which has little intellectual significance;
but education fails if it does not make for an increase of interest in
intellectual activity. For example, a first-grade boy may be led to
count because he wants to be able to tell how many marbles he has,
or how to measure the materials he uses in constructive work; while
the mathematician may work night and day upon a problem of
mathematics because of a purely speculative interest in the result.
We may not hope to produce the great mathematician in the
elementary school, but we may hope after a certain point has been
reached in our study of arithmetic that a boy will recognize the
necessity for drill in addition simply because he realizes that in the
ordinary affairs of life this knowledge is required.
Presentation: The full realization of the problem to be solved
involves a consideration of data already at hand in experience.
When we have the problem clearly in mind, we examine this
experience more carefully to see what bearing it may have upon the
solution, or we gather further data, observe more critically or more
extensively, or experiment in such a manner as to involve the
solution of our problem. What is the function of the teacher during
this part of the process? There is no single answer to this question.
Sometimes the work of the teacher will consist almost wholly in
helping children to recall their past experience and to apply it to the
question at hand. At another time, when experience is lacking, the
teacher must direct children to the sources of data, guide them in
their observations or experiments, or even give them outright all of
the data that she can bring to bear on the situation. It will not always
be economical to wait for children to gather the data for themselves,
just as it is not always feasible to require them to reach conclusions
for themselves. There are times when the best teaching consists in
demonstration, and occasions arise when the only feasible course
for the teacher is to literally flood the children with data from which
they may draw their conclusions.
Again the problem of gathering data becomes the problem of
memory. We want children to think, and we should insist that they
gather facts with reference to the solution of some problem; but the
solution may not always be immediate. We may suspend judgment
while we gather further facts and organize them. The facts gathered
for one purpose, when rearranged with reference to a new problem,
take on a new meaning. If this be true, we may not in our zeal for
clear thinking neglect the tools with which we work. There may be
some people who have a great many facts and who reason little, but
no one can reason without data. Our ability to think logically upon
any topic is conditioned by our ability to see facts in new relations, to
reorganize our data with reference to new problems; but facts we
must have, and a memory stored with facts is one of the greatest
aids to thinking.
One of the means mentioned above for the gathering of data was
observation. It is necessary that we appreciate the fact that
observation involves something more than having the thing present
to the senses. Our observations are significant for our thinking when
we have clearly in view the problem which the observations are to
help solve. Teachers sometimes make the mistake of supposing that
when children have objects with which to work they have a problem.
It is not unusual to hear teachers speak of objective work as
concrete work. Now the concreteness of a situation is not at all
dependent upon the presence of objects. Logically a situation may
be concrete, and yet present no objects to the senses. On the other
hand, objects may be present, children may be directed to use them,
and yet in the absence of any real problem the work done may be of
the most abstract sort. Objects help to make a situation concrete
when the problem under consideration demands their presence, or
when they help to make clear the situation under consideration. For
example, children may have peas or beans in solving problems in
addition; they serve to present objectively the reality which is
symbolized by the teacher or pupils in their written work, but this
does not make the work in addition concrete. The concreteness of
these exercises will depend upon the need which children feel of the
ability to find the sum of two or more numbers. The beans will be
significant, beyond their use as objects, to illustrate the one-to-one
correspondence between symbolic representation and reality, only if
the problem of summation which at that time engages their attention
concerns the sum of certain numbers of beans. Indeed, it may be
claimed that the use of one set of objects continuously to illustrate a
process in arithmetic hinders rather than helps the child in his ability
to reason in this situation, since he may come to consider this
chance relationship of beans and addition as essential. He may think
that he ought always to add when he is given beans.
A good illustration of the necessity for a well defined problem for
guidance when observations are to be made is found in the futility of
much work that is done, or rather left undone, when children are
taken on excursions. The directions which follow for the conduct of
excursions are those which should be followed whenever work in
observation is required, those which have reference to the handling
of a large group of children in the field being added.
1. The teacher must have clearly defined in her own mind the
purpose of the observation. If the teacher has not definitely
formulated the problem, the observation of the children will surely be
purposeless.
2. It is not enough that the teacher know just what data she
expects the children to gather toward the solution of a particular
problem; she must know exactly what data are available under the
conditions governing the observation.
3. The preliminary work must have prepared children for their
observations by giving them very definite problems to solve. Often it
will be advantageous to have these problems written in notebooks.
4. Children not only need to want to see, but also need to be
directed while they are observing. Nothing is easier than to look and
not see that which is essential.
 5. It is always advisable to test the success of the observations
while they are being made. There is nothing more difficult than to
correct a misconception growing out of careless or inadequate
observations.
6. It is well to remember that not merely number of observations
counts in the solution of a problem. It is rather observations under
varying conditions which give weight to our conclusions. One
intensive observation may be worth a thousand careless ones.
7. When children are taken on excursions, great care must be
exercised to keep them under proper guidance and control. The
organization of children into smaller groups with leaders who are
made responsible for their proper observance of directions will help.
These leaders should have been over the ground with the teacher
before the excursion. The assistance of parents, teachers, or of older
pupils will at times be necessary.
8. There should be definite work periods during the excursion, just
as in the schoolroom or laboratory.
9. A whistle, as a signal for assembling at one point, will help in
out-of-door work, provided it is clearly understood that this signal
must be obeyed immediately, and under all circumstances.
Comparison and abstraction: With the problem clearly defined and
the data provided, the next step consists of comparison and the
resulting abstraction of the element present in all of the cases which
makes for the solution of the problem. In the ordinary course of our
thinking the sequence is as follows: We find ourselves in a situation
which presents a problem which demands an adjustment; we make
a guess or formulate an hypothesis which furnishes the basis for our
work in attempting to solve the problem; we gather data in the light of
the hypothesis assumed, which, through comparison and
abstraction, leads us to believe our hypothesis correct or false; if the
hypothesis seems justified by the data gathered, it is further tested or
verified by an appeal to experience; i.e. we endeavor to see whether
our conclusion holds in all cases; if this test proves satisfactory, we
generalize or define; and lastly this generalization or definition is
used as a point of reference or truth to guide in later thinking or
activity.
There is danger that we may overlook the very great importance of
inference in this process. We cannot say just when this step in the
process will be possible, but it is possibly the most significant of all.
A situation presents a problem. Our success in solving the problem
depends upon our ability to infer from the facts at our command.
Often many inferences will be necessary before we succeed in
finding the one that will stand the test. Again with the problem in
mind we may be conscious of a great lack of data and may postpone
our inference while we collect the needed information. There is one
fallacy that must be carefully guarded against in dealing with
children, as also with adults; namely, the tendency once the
inference has been made to admit only such data as are found to
support this particular hypothesis.
It is this ability to infer, to formulate a workable hypothesis, which
distinguishes the genius from the man of mediocre ability. It is the
ability to see facts in new relations, the giving of new meaning to
facts which may be the common possession of all, that characterizes
the great thinker. Other people knew many of the facts; but it took
the mind of a Newton to discover the relationship existing among
these data which he formulated in the law that all bodies attract each
other directly in proportion to their weight and inversely in proportion
to the square of the distance separating them. As we teach children
we should encourage the intelligent guess. We would not, of course,
encourage mere random guessing, which may be engaged in by
children to have something to say or to blind the teacher. A child who
offers a guess or hypothesis should be asked to give his ground for
the inference, should show that his guess has grown out of his
consideration of the data in hand. It is fallacious to suppose that this
kind of thinking is beyond the power of children. They have been
forming their inferences and testing them in action from the time that
they began to act independently.
There is one element in the consideration of the step of
comparison which cannot be too much emphasized, and that is that
it is not the comparison of things or situations which present striking
likenesses which gives rise to the highest type of thinking. To look at
a dozen horses and then to conclude that all horses have four legs is
merely a matter of classification; to observe that the sun, chemical
action, electricity, and friction produce heat, and to arrive at the
generalization from these cases, apparently so unlike, that heat is a
mode of motion is the work of a genius. In general, it is safe to say
that we would greatly strengthen our teaching if we were only more
careful to see to it that our basis for generalization is found in
situations presenting as many variations as possible. For example, if
we want to teach a principle in arithmetic, the way to fix it and to
make it available for further use by our pupils is not to get a number
of problems all of which are alike in form and statement; but rather
we should seek as great a variety as is possible in the language
used or symbols employed that is compatible with the application of
the principle to be taught. In an interesting article on reasoning in
primary arithmetic, Professor Suzzallo has pointed out the fact that
children’s difficulty in reasoning is often one of language.[8] The
trouble has been that teachers have always used a set form, or a
very few forms of expression, when they described situations which
involved any one of the arithmetical processes. Later when the child
is called upon to solve a problem involving this process he does not
know which process to apply because he is unfamiliar with the form
of expression used. To succeed in teaching children when to add
involves the presentation of the situations which call for addition with
as great a variation as is possible, i.e. by using not one form, but all
of the words or phrases which may be used to indicate summation.
In like manner in other fields the examples for comparison will be
valuable in proportion as they present variety rather than uniformity
in those elements which are not essential. Equally good illustration
can be had from any other field. If we want pupils to get any
adequate conception of the function of adjectives, we should use
examples which involve a variety of adjectives in different parts of
sentences. In geography the concept “river” will be clear only when
the different types of rivers have been considered and the non-
essential elements disregarded.
 Generalization: When we feel that we have solved the problem,
we are ready to state our generalization. There is considerable
advantage in making such a statement. One can never be quite sure
that he has solved his problem until he finds himself able to state
clearly the results of his thinking. To attempt to define or to
generalize is often to realize the inadequacy of our thought on the
problem. Children should be encouraged to give their own definition
or generalization before referring to that which is provided by the
teacher or the book. Indeed, the significance of a generalization for
further thinking or later action depends not simply upon one’s ability
to repeat words, but rather upon adequate realization of the
significance of the conclusion reached. The best test of such
comprehension is found in the ability of the pupil to state the
generalization for himself.
There is very great danger, if definitions or generalizations are
given ready-made to children, that they will learn to juggle with
words. The parrot-like repetition of rules of syntax, or principles of
arithmetic, never indicates real grasp of these subjects. Children
think most when the requirement for thinking is greatest, and none
are readier than they to take advantage of laxness on the part of the
teacher in this respect. It is not only when the formal statement of
principles or definitions is called for that the teacher needs to be on
her guard. At any stage of the process, if the teacher will only take
their words and read meaning into them, some children will be found
ready to substitute words for thought. It is really a mistake to tell a
child that you know what he means even though he did not say it.
Language is the instrument which he employs in thinking, and, if his
statement lacked clearness or definiteness, the chances are very
great that his thinking has failed in these same particulars. Instead of
encouraging children in loose thinking by accepting any statement
offered, it would be much better to raise the question of the real
significance of the statement, to inquire just what was meant by the
words used. Such procedure will help to make children more careful
in expressing themselves, and will inevitably tend to clearer thinking.
Application: Whatever conclusions we have reached, whatever
truths we have satisfactorily established, influence us in our later
thought and action. But even though this is true, there is a decided
advantage in providing for a definite application of the results of the
thinking which children have done as soon as possible and in as
many different ways as is feasible. In the first place, such application
makes clearer the truth itself, and helps to fix it in mind. Again, the
conclusion arrived at to-day is chiefly significant as a basis for our
thinking of to-morrow, and it is as we apply our conclusions that new
problems arise to stimulate us to further thought. Then, too, the
satisfaction which comes when one feels his power over situations
as a result of thinking is the very best possible stimulus to further
intellectual activity. Finally, we need to show children the application
of that which they have learned to the life which they live outside of
the school. We are not apt to err on the side of too frequent or too
varied application of the generalizations we have led children to
make. Rather we shall have to study diligently to provide enough
applications to fix for the child the habit of verification by an appeal to
experience.
A few words by way of caution concerning the inductive lesson
may not be out of place.
First: Not all school work can be undertaken on this general plan.
There are times when the end to be accomplished is distinctly not
the discovery of some new truth, but rather the fixing of some habit.
There are exercises which are distinctively deductive, some which
aim to produce habits, and others which seek to secure appreciation.
But more of this is in the succeeding chapters.
Second: Even when we seek to establish truth, we cannot always
develop it by an appeal to the experience of children nor to
observations which they can make. We shall have, on some
occasions, to supply the data, and in still other cases it will be most
economical to demonstrate the truth of the position which we desire
to have them take. There are occasions when the solution of the
problem is not possible for children. In this last instance we shall
have to provide the authoritative statement. Indeed, it may be argued
that one of the lessons which we all need to learn is respect for the
expert. We cannot settle all of the problems which arise, but we may
choose from among those who profess to have found a solution. Our
education ought to help us to avoid the quack and the charlatan. The
habit of logical thinking on the part of children, and expert knowledge
in some field, however small, is the only protection which the school
can give against the pretensions of those who represent themselves
as the dispensers of truth.[9]
Third: There is a grave danger that we may help children too
much. Some teachers interpret the inductive development lesson to
mean that each step in the thinking required must be carefully
prepared for and quickly passed. They consider that they have
taught the best lesson when there has been no hitch in the progress
from the statement of aim to the wording of the generalization. The
suggestive question which makes thinking on the part of children
unnecessary is a favorite measure employed. If we stop to consider
what thinking means, we cannot fail to see the fallacy of such work.
We all do our best thinking, not when the problem to be solved is
explained by some one else and all of the difficulties removed, but
rather when we find the problem most difficult of solution.
If children are at work on problems which are vital to them, we
may expect them to continue to work even though they make
mistakes. Indeed, the best recitation may be the one that leaves the
children not with a solution skillfully supplied for them by the teacher,
but rather with a keen realization of the problem, and with a
somewhat clearer idea of the direction in which the solution may be
sought. It is the teacher’s work to help the child to see the problem,
and, seeing the problem herself from the child’s point of view, to
stimulate the child to his best effort. The teacher must know not only
the pupil’s attitude of mind toward the problem and how his mind is
most likely to react, but also the mental activity required to master
properly the issue that has been raised. On the one hand, the
teacher’s equipment consists of a knowledge of the minds of the
children whom she teaches, and on the other a knowledge of the
subject to be taught, not simply as a body of knowledge more or less
classified or organized, but as a mode of mental growth.[10] What the
teacher needs is a clear realization of the difficulties which the pupils
must meet, and the way in which childish minds may best overcome
these obstacles. When such sympathy exists between teacher and
pupil, we may expect that pupils will constantly grow stronger in their
ability to think logically, instead of becoming more and more
dependent upon the teacher. And this is our great work as teachers,
to render our services unnecessary.
Fourth: No teacher should attempt to outline her work on the basis
of the steps indicated in the discussion of the inductive method
without a clear realization of the fact that these steps cannot be
sharply differentiated, that they are not mutually exclusive. To define
a problem adequately may mean that we have passed through the
whole process. At any step in the process after the problem is
defined, and some hypothesis formed, we may wish to verify our
guess by an appeal to known facts, and often we shall find it
necessary to abandon the hypothesis already formed and provide
another as a basis for further thinking. It is true that the natural
movement of the mind is roughly indicated by the steps named; but it
must be remembered that no mind can possibly arrive at the solution
of a real problem by adhering to a fixed order of procedure. We do
not by our teaching create the power of logical thought; we rather
guide a mind that naturally operates logically. We can never teach
children to reason, but we can provide the occasion for logical
thinking, and can guard against the common fallacies. Our success
will depend upon a clear realization of the possibilities of the child
mind and of the subjects we teach as part of their growth and
development.
Teaching by Types: Teaching by means of types is sometimes
discussed as a separate method, while in reality it is simply one form
of the inductive process. As was indicated in our discussion of
observation above, there are times when the consideration of a
single situation or object in detail may be worth more than a
thousand careless observations. It is especially true that a
thoroughly adequate knowledge of one object or case of a class
prepares in the best possible way for future observations of
members of the same class. Familiarity with the life history of one
animal or plant will help us greatly to understand other animals and
plants, because that which is most essential in all has been carefully
observed in the case considered. Now let us suppose that several
plants and animals have been studied. If the cases which are
considered are truly typical, it may be possible for the student to
appreciate not simply the individuals belonging to the classes
studied, but also something of the interrelation of the several
classes. This illustration, given because it represents in a general
way something of the method followed in the study of science,
represents a very common method of procedure in the ordinary
affairs of life. None of us can hope to support our conclusions by a
careful scrutiny of all possible cases. We take something on
authority; namely, that the individual case considered is
representative of a large group, then after we have investigated the
one case we apply our conclusions to the whole group. Of course
there is one great danger. We may be overhasty in our
generalizations. No fallacy is more common than the emphasis
placed upon non-essentials by those whose observations have been
limited. The stories of the traveler who generalizes, after seeing one
red-headed child or after eating at one hotel, concerning the children
and hotels of the country visited, are too common to need repetition
here. Where observations are necessarily limited, the important
consideration is to get cases that seem as different as possible in
order that that which is essential may be differentiated from the non-
essential or accidental.
Teaching by types in our ordinary school work has been applied
most frequently to the subject of geography. Applying the principle
stated above, we shall be careful in teaching rivers, mountains,
cities, commerce, or any other geographical notion to see to it that
the individual cases considered are as widely different as possible.
To teach New York City, Philadelphia, and Chicago only would give
children a very erroneous idea of the concept “city.” They are all
exceptionally large, all American, all modern. There are cities
smaller, with peculiarities due to age, to location, and to the ideas
and resources of the people building them. A better selection would
be New York City, London, Tokyo, Venice, Cairo, and Munich.
Objection could still very well be offered that this list is too short to
include all classes. There can be no doubt that to have taught any
city carefully will aid greatly in understanding the notion “city” and in
appreciating other cities, but manifestly any final generalization
concerning cities must wait until our knowledge of geography has
been widely extended. The same conclusion would be reached were
any other notion of geography, or any other study, subjected to the
same test. There is, however, no harm in forming tentative
judgments. Indeed, we must all do this every day of our lives. The
main issue is to see to it that there is no mistake as to the tentative
character of the conclusions reached, that the open-minded attitude
be preserved.

For Collateral Reading

C. A. and F. M. McMurry, The Method of the Recitation, Chapters VI to IX
inclusive.
John Dewey, How We Think, Chapters XII to XV inclusive.

Exercises.
1. What is the purpose of the step of preparation in the inductive lesson? When
would you begin an inductive lesson with a statement of aim or problem? What
value is there in having children state the aim of a lesson? When during the lesson
should the aim be referred to?
2. How would you hope to have country children get a clear idea of a city? Could
you develop this idea with sufficient definiteness by asking questions?
3. What preparation would you think necessary for a class that were taking their
first trip to a dairy?
4. What was wrong in the class where, after a trip to the country, a small child
said, “A cow is a small animal with four legs that likes to live in the mud and
grunt”?
5. Would you allow a boy to perform an experiment in nature study that you
knew would result unsatisfactorily?
6. A teacher used the following sentences in her attempt to teach the function of
an adjective; criticize the list given.
The red apple is sweet.
The green grass is soft.
The yellow house is large.
The tall man is sick.
The largest horse is fast.
Suggest a better list of sentences for the purpose indicated.
 7. In what sense is it true that an induction begins with a generalization? How do
you proceed when you modify a generalization which you once held as true?
8. A pupil defined a river as a stream of water flowing through the land. How
would you hope to secure a more accurate generalization from him?
9. What is the function of a lecture on Germany to a group of children studying
the geography of Europe? Do you think such a lecture would be as valuable as a
lesson in which the pupils are asked to find out why German commerce has
developed so rapidly during the past twenty years?
10. Under what conditions would you require children to commit to memory the
definitions found in their textbooks?
11. If your pupils were reading Kipling’s Jungle Book, would you try to make your
lessons inductive?
12. What difficulties would you encounter in trying to teach children who live in
the Mississippi Valley the meaning of the term mountain? How could you hope to
overcome these difficulties?
13. The following illustrative problems were used by a teacher who was
presenting the subject of percentage to a class for the first time. Can you improve
the list?
A man who had $10,000 lost 25 per cent of his money. How much did he lose?
A horse which cost $250 was sold at a loss of 10 per cent. How much did the
owner lose?
A house which cost $25,000 was burned. It was insured for 50 per cent of its
value. How much did the owner receive from the insurance company?
A suit of clothes which cost the dealer $18 was sold at a gain of 25 per cent.
How much did the dealer gain on the suit?
14. Which would be better, to tell a group of children of a trip which you took to a
cattle ranch, show them pictures, and possibly read a description of ranch life, or
spend the same amount of time questioning these same children in the hope of
developing some adequate idea of this type of life? If you follow the first method,
could you be sure that children had derived accurate ideas from your description?
15. Write a series of questions which you would use in developing the
generalization, “Men who live in cities are dependent upon those who live in the
country for the necessities of life.”
16. How would you defend the following statement: It is more important that a
pupil should have worked out the solution of a single problem in which he is
interested, than that he should have learned, without solving the problems for
himself, the answers to a dozen problems from books which he is asked to read.