The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners by William Henry Pyle
page 72 of 245 (29%)
page 72 of 245 (29%)
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their environment. But in the human race it is one of the chief factors
in adjustment to environment. Imitation is one of the main factors in education. Usually the quickest way to teach a child to do a thing is to show him how. Through imitation we acquire our language, manners, and customs. Ideals, beliefs, prejudices, attitudes, we take on through imitation. The tendency to imitate others coupled with the desire to be thought well of by others is one of the most powerful factors in producing conformity. They are the whips which keep us within the bounds of custom and conventionality. The tendency to imitate is so strong that its results are almost as certain as are those of inherited tendencies. It is almost as certain that a child will be like his parents in speech, manners, customs, superstitions, etc., as it is that he will be like them in form of body. He not only walks and talks and acts like his parents, but he thinks as they do. We, therefore, have the term _social heredity_, meaning the taking on of all sorts of social habits and ideals through imitation. The part that imitation plays in the education of a child may be learned by going to a country home and noting how the boy learns to do all the many things about the farm by imitating his father, and how the girl learns to do all the housework by imitating her mother. Imitation is the basis of much of the play of children, in that their play consists in large part of doing what they see older people doing. This imitative play gives them skill and is a large factor in preparing for the work of life. =Dramatization.= Dramatization is an aspect of imitation, and is a means of making ideas more real than they would otherwise be. There is nothing |
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