Educating the Psychological Soul

Abstract

This paper draws from an exploration of the works of four prominent American educational psychologists –Granville Stanley Hall, William James, John Dewey and Edward Thorndike– to focus on principles governing principles governing the child development. The works of these authors are considered as functions that “psychologize” the child as a human “becoming” that is to be educated towards ethical and intelligent ends. Two historical vantage points are taken in the article: (1) To explore psychology as fabricating the moral child and (2) The mapping and orienting the self through reason through a psychology that opens the interior of the child to calculation and supervision. The approach explores educational psychology as an assemblage of discursive, intellectual and material practices that invite the student-child to see/be seen and to shape/be shaped in particular ways. Educating the autonomous self required modernized methods.