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Chapters 8 and 9 in Talks to Teachers on Psychology were compelling yet confounding. Although James eloquently discussed the laws of habits, these ideas seem difficult to translate into practice for teachers. For instance, I wonder, how a teacher should compete with the habits of the culture and family of the child. One of James’ maxims was “Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life” (James, 1899/1962, p. 35). Since every minute step in opposition (of the forming habit) has the power to undo a potentially effective habit, what should a teacher do? In this case, it may be reasonable and beneficial to incorporate a child’s culture and family since much of the student’s time is spent outside of the classroom. However, if reinforcement by a child’s family is missing, then the teacher’s plan could fall apart. In essence, the teacher’s intentions for forming effective habits are at the mercy of the child’s expanded environment.

I completely agree that habits should be practiced as often as possible, however what happens when the environment is not conducive to forming that habit? Last year I began exercising at the Johnson Center on UK’s campus. Since I am a night owl, I would exercise around 10 pm, three to four times a week during the spring semester. Then summer break happened. Surprisingly, the center was not open during my normal workout hours. This led me to miss many workouts and eventually quit exercising there. This example makes me wonder how a teacher could help a student practice effective habits, when the teacher is only in control of a small piece of the child’s environment.

It is puzzling to figure out how a teacher could actually use the information that James provided to positively impact students, given the teacher’s constraints. One possible solution would be to teach generalizable habits that are strong enough to withstand environmental forces. In the book Outliers, Gladwell suggested that those at the top of their field practiced at least 10,000 hours or 10 years before they became outliers. James suggested the same type of practice where a student will “find himself one of the competent ones of his generation, in whatever pursuit he may have singled out” (James, 1899/1962, p. 39). The interesting part however, is that Gladwell also highlighted how certain environmental factors, along with hours of practice, undeniably helped to ensure the fate of these experts.