How to Teach Part 2

9. In what degree are we justified in speaking of the social instinct?

The instinct to imitate?

10. How can you use the fighting instinct in your work with children?

11. What can teachers do to influence the education which children have received or are getting outside of school?

12. What differences in action among the children in your cla.s.s do you attribute to differences in original nature? What to differences in education?

III. ATTENTION AND INTEREST IN TEACHING

Attention is a function of consciousness. Wherever consciousness is, attention must perforce be present. One cannot exist without the other.

According to most psychologists, the term attention is used to describe the form consciousness takes, to refer to the fact that consciousness is selective. It simply means that consciousness is always focal and marginal--that some ideas, facts, or feelings stand out in greater prominence than do others, and that the presence of this "perspective"

in consciousness is a matter of mechanical adjustment. James describes consciousness by likening it to a series of waves, each having a crest and sides which correspond to the focus and margin of attention. The form of the wave changes from a high sharp crest with almost straight sides in pointed, concentrated attention, to a series of mere undulations, when crests are difficult to distinguish, in so-called states of dispersed attention. The latter states are rare in normal individuals, although they may be rather frequent in certain types of low-grade mental defectives. This of course means that states of "inattention" do not exist in normal people. So long as consciousness is present one must be attending to something. The "day dream" is often accompanied by concentrated attention. Only when we are truly thinking of nothing, and that can only be as unconsciousness approaches, is attention absent. What is true of attention is also true of interest, for interest is coming more and more to be considered the "feeling side"

of attention, or the affective accompaniment of attention. The kind of interest may vary, but some kind is always present. The place the interest occupies may also vary: sometimes the affective state itself is so strong that it forces itself into the focal point and becomes the object of attention. The chief fact of importance, however, is that attention and interest are inseparable and both are coexistent with consciousness.

This selective action of consciousness is mechanical, due to the inborn tendencies toward attention possessed by human beings. The situations which by their very nature occupy the focal point in consciousness are color and brightness, novelty, sudden changes and sharp contrasts, rhythm and cadence, movement, and all other situations to which there are other instinctive responses, such as hunting, collecting, curiosity, manipulation, etc. In other words, children are born with tendencies to attend to an enormous number of situations because of the number of instinctive responses they possess. So great is this number that psychologists used to talk about the omnivorousness of children's attention, believing that they attended to everything. Such a general attention seems not to be true. However, it is because so many situations have the power to force consciousness to a crest that human beings have developed the intellectual power that puts them so far above other animals. That these situations do attract attention is shown by the fact that individuals respond by movements which enable them to be more deeply impressed or impressed for a longer time by the situations in question. For example, a baby will focus his eyes upon a bright object and then move eyes and head to follow it if it moves from his field of vision. Just what the situations are, then, which will arouse responses of attention in any given individual will depend in the first place upon his age, s.e.x, and maturity, and in the second place upon his experience. The process of learning very quickly modifies the inborn tendencies to attention by adding new situations which demand it. It is the things we learn to attend to that make us human rather than merely animal.

The fact of attention or selection must of necessity involve also inhibition or neglect. The very fact of the selection of certain objects and qualities means the neglect of others. This fact of neglect is at first just as mechanical as that of attention, but experiences teach us to neglect some situations which by original nature attracted attention.

From the standpoint of education what we neglect is quite as important as what is selected for attention.

The breadth of a person's attention, _i.e.,_ the number of lines along which attention is possible, must vary with age and experience. The younger or the more immature an individual is, the greater the number of different lines to which attention is given. It is the little child whose attention seems omnivorous, and it is the old person for whom situations worthy of attention have narrowed down to a few lines. This must of necessity be so, due to the interrelation of attention and neglect. The very fact of continuing to give attention along one line means less and less ability and desire to attend along other lines.

The question as to how many things, whether objects or ideas, can be attended to at the same time, has aroused considerable discussion. Most people think that they are attending to several things, if not to many, at the same second of consciousness. Experiments show that if four or five unrelated objects, words, or letters be shown to adults for less than one quarter of a second, they can be apprehended, but the probability is that they are photographed, so to speak, on the eye and counted afterwards. It is the general belief of psychologists at present that the mind attends to only one thing at a time, that only one idea or object can occupy the focal point in consciousness.

The apparent contradiction between ordinary experience and psychological experience along this line is due to three facts which are often overlooked. In the first place, the complexity of the idea or thing that can be attended to as a unit varies tremendously. Differences in people account for part of this variation, but training and experience account for still more. Our ideas become more and more complex as experience and familiarity build them up. Qualities which to a little child demand separate acts of attention are with the adult merged into his perception of the object. Just as simple words, although composed of separate letters, are perceived as units, so with training, more complex units may be found which can be attended to as wholes. So (to the ignorant or the uninstructed) what is apparently attending to more than one thing at a time may be explained by the complexity of the unit which is receiving the attention.

In the second place _doing_ more than one thing at a time does not imply attending to more than one thing at a time. An activity which is habitual or mechanical does not need attention, but can be carried on by the control exercised by the fringe of consciousness. Attention may be needed to start the activity or if a difficulty of any kind should arise, but that is all. For the rest of the time it can be devoted to anything else. The great speed with which attention can flash from one thing to another and back again must be taken into consideration in all this discussion. So far as attention goes, one can _do_ as many things at a time as he can make mechanical plus one unfamiliar one. Thus a woman can rock the baby's cradle, croon a lullaby, knit, and at the same time be thinking of ill.u.s.trations for her paper at the Woman's Club, because only one of these activities needs attention. When no one of the activities is automatic and the individual must depend on the rapid change of attention from one to the other to keep them going, the results obtained are likely to be poor and the fatigue is great. The attempt to take notes while listening to a lecture is of this order, and hence the unsatisfactoriness of the results.

The third fact which helps to explain the apparent contradiction under discussion is closely related to this one. It is possible when engaged with one object to have several questions or topics close by in the fringe of consciousness so that one or the other may flash to the focal point as the development of the train of thought demands. The individual is apparently considering many questions at the same time, when in reality it is the readiness of these a.s.sociations plus the oscillations of attention that account for the activity. The ability to do this sort of thing depends partly on the individual,--some people will always be "people of one idea,"--but training and experience increase the power.

The child who in the primary can be given only one thing to look for when he goes on his excursion may grow into the youth who can carry half a dozen different questions in his mind to which he is looking for answers.

By concentration of attention is meant the depth of the attention, and this is measured by the ease with which a person's attention can be called off the topic with which he is concerned. The concentration may be so great that the individual is oblivious to all that goes on about him. He may forget engagements and meals because of his absorption.

Sometimes even physical pain is not strong enough to distract attention.

On the other hand, the concentration may be so slight that every pa.s.sing sense impression, every irrelevant a.s.sociation called up by the topic, takes the attention away from the subject. The depth of concentration depends upon four factors. Certain mental and physical conditions have a great deal to do with the concentration of attention, and these will be discussed later. Individual differences also account for the presence or absence of power of concentration--some people concentrate naturally, others never get very deeply into any topic. Maturity is another factor that is influential. A little child cannot have great concentration, simply because he has not had experience enough to give him many a.s.sociations with which to work. His attention is easily distracted.

Although apparently absorbed in play, he hears what goes on about him and notices many things which adults suppose he does not see. This same lack of power shows itself in any one's attention when a new subject is taken up if he has few a.s.sociations with it. Of course this means that other things being equal the older one is, up to maturity at least, the greater one's power of concentration. Little children have very little power, adolescents a great deal, but it is the adult who excels in concentration. Although this is true, the fourth factor, that of training in concentration, does much toward increasing the power before full maturity is reached. One can learn to concentrate just as he can learn to do anything else. Habits of concentration, of ignoring distinctions and interruptions, of putting all one's power into the work in hand, are just as possible as habits of neatness. The laws of habit formation apply in the field of attention just as truly as in every other field of mental life. Laboratory experiments prove the large influence which training has on concentration and the great improvement that can be made. It is true that few people do show much concentration of attention when they wish. This is true of adults as well as of children. They have formed habits of working at half speed, with little concentration and no real absorption in the topic. This method of work is both wasteful of time and energy and injurious to the mental stability and development of the individual. Half-speed work due to lack of concentration often means that a student will stay with a topic and fuss over it for hours instead of working hard and then dropping it.

Teachers often do this sort of thing with their school work. Not only are the results less satisfactory, because the individual never gets deeply enough into the topic to really get what is there, but the effect on him is bad. It is like "constant dripping wears away the stone."

Children must be taught to "work when they work and play when they play," if they are to have habits of concentration as adults.

The length of time which it is possible to attend to the same object or idea may be reckoned in seconds. It is impossible to hold the attention on an object for any appreciable length of time. In order to hold the attention the object must change. The simple experiment of trying to pay attention to a blot of ink or the idea of bravery proves that change is necessary if the attention is not to wander. What happens is that either the attention goes to something else, or that you begin thinking about the thing in question. Of course, the minute you begin thinking, new a.s.sociations, images, memories, come flocking in, and the attention occupies itself with each in turn. All may concern the idea with which you started out, but the very fact that these have been added to the mental content of the instant makes the percept of ink blot or the concept of bravery different from the bare thing with which the attention began. If this change and fluctuation of the mental state does not take place, the attention flits to something else. The length of time that the attention may be engaged with a topic will depend, then, upon the number of a.s.sociations connected with it. The more one knows about a topic, the longer he can attend to it. If it is a new topic, the more suggestive it is in calling up past experience or in offering incentive for experiment or application, the longer can attention stay with it. Such a topic is usually called "interesting," but upon a.n.a.lysis it seems that this means that for one of the above reasons it develops or changes and therefore holds the attention. This duration of attention will vary in length from a few seconds to hours. The child who is given a problem which means almost nothing, which presents a blank wall when he tries to attend to it, which offers no suggestions for solution, is an ill.u.s.tration of the first. Attention to such a problem is impossible; his attention must wander. The genius who, working with his favorite subject, finds a mult.i.tude of trains of thought called up by each idea, and who therefore spends hours on one topic with no vacillation of attention, is an ill.u.s.tration of the second.

Attention has been cla.s.sified according to the kind of feeling which accompanies the activity. Sometimes attention comes spontaneously, freely, and the emotional tone is that accompanying successful activity.

On the other hand, sometimes it has to be forced and is accompanied by feelings of strain and annoyance. The first type is called Free[2]

attention; the second is Forced attention.

Free attention is given when the object of attention satisfies a need; when the situation attended to provides the necessary material for some self-activity. The activity of the individual at that second needs something that the situation in question gives, and hence free, spontaneous attention results. Forced attention is given when there is a lack of just such feeling of need in connection with the object of attention. It does not satisfy the individual--it is distinct from his desires at the time. He attends only because of fear of the results if he does not, and hence the condition is one of strain. All play takes free attention. Work which holds the worker because it is satisfying also takes free attention. Work which has in it the element of drudgery needs forced attention. The girl making clothes for her doll, the boy building his shack in the woods, the inventor working over his machine, the student absorbed in his history lesson,--all these are freely attending to the thing in hand. The girl running her seam and hating it, the, boy building the chicken coop while wis.h.i.+ng to be at the ball game, the inventor working over his machine when his thoughts and desires are with his sick wife, the student trying to study his history when the debate in the civics club is filling his mind,--these are cases when forced attention would probably be necessary.

It is very evident that there is no one situation which will necessarily take either free or forced attention because the determining factor is not in the situation _per se_, but in the relation it bears to the mind engaged with it. Sometimes the same object will call forth forced attention from one person and free from another. Further, the same object may at one time demand free attention and at another time forced attention from the same person, depending on the operation of other factors. It is also true that attention which was at first forced may change into free as the activity is persevered in.

Although these two types of attention are discussed as if they were entirely separated from each other, as if one occurred in this situation and the other in that, still as a matter of fact the actual conditions involve an interplay between the two. It is seldom true that free attention is given for any great length of time without flashes of forced attention being scattered through it. Often the forced attention may be needed for certain parts of the work, although as a whole it may take free attention. The same thing is true of occasions when forced attention is used. There are periods in the activity when free attention will carry the worker on. Every activity, then, is likely to be complex so far as the kind of attention used, but it is also characterized by the predominance of one or the other type.

The question as to the conditions which call out each type of attention is an important one. As has already been said, free attention is given when the situation attended to satisfies a need. Physiologically stated, free attention is given when a neurone series which is ready to act is called into activity. The situations which do this, other things being equal, will be those which appeal to some instinctive tendency or capacity, or to the self-activity or the personal experience of the individual and which therefore are in accord with his stage of development and his experience. Forced attention is necessary when the neurone tracts used by the attention are for some reason unready to act.

Situations to which attention is given through fear of punishment, or when the activity involves a choice of ideal ends as opposed to personal desires, or when some instinctive tendency must be inhibited or its free activity is blocked or interfered with, or when the laws of growth and experience are violated, take forced attention. Of course fatigue, disease, and monotony are frequent breeders of forced attention.

From the above discussion it must be evident that one of the chief characteristics of free attention is its unity. The mental activity of the person is all directed along one line, that which leads to the satisfying of the need. It is unified by the appeal the situation makes.

As a result of such a state the attention is likely to be concentrated, and can be sustained over a long period. Of course this means that the work accomplished under such conditions will be greater in amount, more thorough, and more accurate than could be true were there less unity in the process. The opposite in all respects is true of forced attention.

It is present when there is divided interest. The topic does not appeal to the need of the individual. He attends to it because he must. Part of his full power of attention is given to keeping himself to the work, leaving only a part to be given to the work itself. If there is any other object in the field of attention which is particularly attractive, as there usually is, that claims its share, and the attention is still further divided. Divided attention cannot be concentrated; it cannot last long. The very strain and effort involved makes it extremely fatiguing. The results of work done under such conditions must be poor.

There can be but little thoroughness, for the worker will do just as much as he must to pa.s.s muster, and no more. Inaccuracy and superficiality will characterize such work. Just as training in giving concentrated attention results in power along that line, so frequent necessity for forced attention develops habits of divided attention which in time will hinder the development of any concentration.

From a psychological viewpoint there can be no question but what free attention is the end to be sought by workers of all kinds. It is an absolutely false notion that things are easy when free attention is present. It is only when free attention is present that results worth mentioning are accomplished. It is only under such conditions that the worker is willing to try and try again, and put up with disappointment and failure, to use his ingenuity and skill to the utmost, to go out of his way for material or suggestions; in other words, to put himself into his work in such a way that it is truly educational. On the other hand, forced attention has its own value and could not be dispensed with in the development of a human being. Its value is that of means to end--not that of an end in itself. It is only as it leads into free attention that forced attention is truly valuable. In that place the part it plays is tremendous because things are as they are. There will always be materials which will not appeal to a need in some individual because of lack of capacity or experience; there will always be parts of various activities and processes which seem unnecessary and a waste of time to some worker; there will always be choices to be made between instinctive desires and ideal needs, and in each case forced attention is the only means, perhaps, by which the necessary conditions can be acquired that make possible free attention. It is evident, therefore, that forced attention should be called into play only when needed. When needed, it should be demanded rigorously, but the sooner the individual in question can pa.s.s from it to the other type, the better. This is true in all fields whether intellectual or moral.

A second cla.s.sification of attention has been suggested according to the answer to the question as to why attention is given. Sometimes attention is given simply because the material itself demands it; sometimes for some ulterior reason. The former type is called immediate or intrinsic attention; the latter is called derived, mediate, or extrinsic attention. The former is given to the situation for its own sake; the latter because of something attached to it. Forced attention is always derived; free attention may be either immediate or derived. It is immediate and derived free attention that needs further discussion.

It should be borne in mind that there is no sharp line of division between immediate and derived attention. Sometimes it is perfectly evident that the attention is given for the sake of the material--at other times there can be no doubt but that it is the something beyond the material that holds the attention. But in big, complex situations it is not so evident. For instance, the musician composing just for the love of it is an example of immediate attention, while the small boy working his arithmetic examples with great care in order to beat his seatmate is surely giving derived attention. But under some conditions the motives are mixed and the attention may fluctuate from the value of the material itself to the values to be derived from it. However this may be, at the two extremes there is a clear-cut difference between these two types of attention. The value of rewards and incentives depends on the psychology of derived free attention, while that of punishment and deterrents is wrapped up with derived forced attention.

Immediate free attention is the more valuable of the two types because it is the most highly unified and most strongly dynamic of all the attention types. The big accomplishments of human lives have been brought to pa.s.s through this kind of attention. It is the kind the little child gives to his play--the activity itself is worth while. So with the artist, the inventor, the poet, the teacher, the physician, the architect, the banker--to be engaged in that particular activity satisfies. But this is not true of all artists, bankers, etc., nor with the others all the time. Even for the child at play, sometimes conditions arise when the particular part of the activity does not seem worth while in itself; then if it is to be continued, another kind of attention must be brought in--derived attention. This ill.u.s.tration shows the place of derived attention as a means to an end--the same part played by forced attention in its relation to free. Derived attention must needs be characteristic of much of the activity of human beings.

People have few well-developed capacities, and there are many kinds of things they are required to do. If these are to be done with free attention, heartily, it will only be because of some value that is worth while that is attached to the necessary activity. As activities grow complex and as the results of activities grow remote, the need for something to carry over the attention to the parts of the activity that are seen to be worth while in the first place, or to the results in the second, grows imperative. This need is filled by derived attention, and here it shows its value as means to an end, but it is only when the need for this carrier disappears, and the activity as a whole for itself seems worth while, that the best results are obtained.

There is a very great difference between the kinds of motives or values chosen for derived attention, and their value varies in accordance with the following principles. Incentives should be closely connected naturally with the subject to which they are attached. They should be suited to the development of the child and be natural rather than artificial. Their appeal should be permanent, _i.e._, should persist in the same situation outside of school. They should really stimulate those to whom they are offered. They should not be too attractive in themselves. Applying these principles it would seem that derived interests that have their source in instincts, in special capacities, or in correlation of subjects are of the best type, while such extremely artificial incentives as prizes, half holidays, etc., are among the poorest.

The value of derived attention is that it gets the work done or the habit formed. Of course the hope is always there that it will pa.s.s over into the immediate type, but if it does not, at least results are obtained. It has already been shown that results may also be obtained by the use of forced attention, which is also derived. Both derived free attention and forced attention are means to an end. The question as to the comparative value of the two must be answered in favor of the derived free attention. The chief reasons for this conclusion are as follows. First, derived free attention is likely to be more unified than forced attention. Second, it arouses greater self-activity on the part of the worker. Third, the emotional tone is that of being satisfied instead of strain. Fourth, it is more likely to lead to the immediate attention which is its end. Despite these advantages of derived free attention over forced attention, it still has some of the same disadvantages that forced attention has. The chief of these is that it also may result in division of energy. If the means for gaining the attention is nothing but sugar coating, if it results in the mere entertainment of the worker, there is every likelihood that the attention will be divided between the two. The other disadvantage is that because of the attractiveness of the means used to gain attention it may be given just so long as the incentive remains, and no longer.

These difficulties may be largely overcome, however, by the application of the principles governing good incentives. This must mean that the choice of types of attention and therefore the provision of situations calling them out should be in this order: immediate free attention, derived free attention, forced attention. All three are necessary in the education of any child, but each should be used in its proper place.

The conditions which insure the best attention of whatever type have to do with both physical and mental adjustments. On the physical side there is need for the adaptation of the sense organ and the body to the situation. For this adaptation to be effective the environmental conditions must be controlled by the laws of hygiene. A certain amount of bodily freedom yields better results than rigidity because the latter draws energy from the task in hand for purposes of inhibition. On the mental side there is need for preparation in terms of readiness of the nerve tracts to be used. James calls this "ideational" preparation. This simply means that one can attend better if he knows something of what he is to attend to. Experimental evidence proves without doubt that if the subject knows that he is to see a color, instead of a word, his perception of it is much more rapid and accurate than if he does not have this preparation. This same result is obtained in much more complex sensory situations, and it also holds when the situation is intellectual. Contrary to expectation, great quietness is not the best condition for the maximum of attention; a certain amount of distraction is beneficial.

The problem of interest and of attention, from the point of view of teaching, is not simply to secure attention, but rather to have the attention fixed upon those activities which are most desirable from the standpoint of realizing the aim or purpose of education. As has already been suggested, children are constantly attending to something. They instinctively respond to the very great variety of stimuli with which they come in contact. Our schools seek to provide experiences which are valuable. In school work when we are successful children attend to those stimuli which promise most for the formation of habits, or the growth in understanding and appreciation which will fit them for partic.i.p.ation in our social life. We seek constantly in our work as teachers to secure either free or forced attention to the particular part of our courses of study or to the particular experiences which are allotted to the grade or cla.s.s which we teach. One of the very greatest difficulties in securing attention upon the part of a cla.s.s is found in the variety of experiences which they have already enjoyed, and the differences in the strength of the appeal which the particular situation may make upon the several members of the group. In cla.s.s teaching we have constantly to vary our appeal and to differentiate our work to suit the individual differences represented in the cla.s.s, if we would succeed in holding the attention of even the majority of the children.

Boys and girls do their best work only when they concentrate their attention upon the work to be done. One of the greatest fallacies that has ever crept into our educational thought is that which suggests that there is great value in having people work in fields in which they are not interested, and in which they do not freely give their attention.

Any one who is familiar with children, or with grown-ups, must know that it is only when interest is at a maximum that the effort put forth approaches the limit of capacity set by the individual's ability. Boys concentrate their attention upon baseball or upon fis.h.i.+ng to a degree which demands of them a maximum of effort. A boy may spend hours at a time seeking to perfect himself in pitching, batting, or fielding. He may be uncomfortable a large part of the time, he may suffer considerable pain, and yet continue in his practice by virtue of his great enthusiasm for perfecting himself in the game. Interest of a not dissimilar sort leads a man who desires position, or power, or wealth, to concentrate his attention upon the particular field of his endeavor to the exclusion of almost everything else. Indeed, men almost literally kill themselves in the effort which they make to achieve these social distinctions or rewards. We may not hope always to secure so high a degree of concentration of attention or of effort, but it is only as we approach a situation in which children are interested, and in which they freely give their attention to the subject in hand, that we can claim to be most successful in our teaching.

The teacher who is able in beginning reading to discover to children the tool which will enable them to get the familiar story or rhyme from the book may hope to get a quality of attention which could never be brought about by forcing them to attend to formal phonetic drill. The teacher of biology who has been able to awaken enthusiasm for the investigation of plant and animal life, and who has allowed children to conduct their own investigations and to carry out their own experiments, may hope for a type of attention which is never present in the carrying out of the directions of the laboratory manual or in naming or cla.s.sifying plants or animals merely as a matter of memory. Children who are at work producing a school play will accomplish more in the study of the history in which they seek to discover a dramatic situation, by virtue of the concentration of attention given, than they would in reciting many lessons in which they seek to remember the paragraphs or pages which they have read. The boy who gives his attention to the production of a story for his school paper will work harder than one who is asked to write a composition covering two pages. Children who are allowed to prepare for the entertainment of the members of their cla.s.s a story with which they alone are familiar will give a quality of attention to the work in hand which is never secured when all of the members of the cla.s.s are asked to reproduce a story which the teacher has read.

It is necessary at times to have children give forced attention. There are some things to be accomplished that must be done, regardless of our success in securing free attention. It is entirely conceivable that some boy or girl may not want to learn his multiplication tables, or his words in spelling, or his conjugation or declension in French, and that all that the teacher has done may fail to arouse any great amount of interest or enthusiasm for the work in question. In these cases, and in many others which might be cited, the necessity for the particular habit may be so great as to demand that every pupil do the work or form the habit in question. In these cases we may not infrequently hope that after having given forced attention to the work of the school, children may in time come to understand the importance of the experiences which they are having, or even become interested in the work for its own sake.

It is not infrequently true that after a period of forced attention there follows a time during which, on account of the value which children are able to understand as attached to or belonging to the particular exercise, they give free derived attention. Many boys and girls have worked through their courses in science or in modern languages because they believed that these subjects would prove valuable not only in preparing them for college, but in giving them a wider outlook on life. Their attention was of the free derived type. Later on some of these same pupils have become tremendously enthusiastic in their work in the fields in question, and have found such great satisfaction in the work itself, that their attention might properly be characterized as free immediate attention.

The importance of making children conscious of their power of concentrating their attention needs to be kept constantly in mind.

Exercises in which children are asked to do as much as they can in a period of five or ten minutes may be used to teach children what concentration of attention is and of the economy involved in work done under these conditions. The trouble with a great many adults, as well as with children, is that they have never learned what it is to work up to the maximum of their capacity. All too frequently in our attempts to teach children in cla.s.ses we neglect to provide even a sufficient amount of work to demand of the more able members of the group any considerable amount of continued, concentrated attention.

We seek in our work as teachers not only to secure a maximum of attention to the fields of work in which children are engaged, but also to arouse interests and enthusiasms which will last after school days are over. We think of interest often, and properly too, as the means employed to secure a maximum of attention, and, in consequence, a maximum of accomplishment. It is worth while to think often in our work in terms of interest as the end to be secured. Children should become sufficiently interested in some of the subjects that we teach to care to be students in these fields, or to find enjoyment in further work or activity along these lines, either as a matter of recreation or, not infrequently, as a means of discovering their true vocation in life.

That teacher who has aroused sufficient interest in music to enable the student of musical ability to venture all of the hard work which may be necessary in order to become a skillful musician, has made possibly his greatest contribution by arousing interest or creating enthusiasm. The teacher whose enthusiasm in science has led a boy to desire to continue in this field, even to the extent of influencing him to undertake work in an engineering school, may be satisfied, not so much in the accomplishment of his pupil in the field of science, as in the enthusiasm which has carried him forward to more significant work. Even for children who go no farther than the elementary school, interest in history, or geography, in nature study, or in literature, may mean throughout the life of the individuals taught a better use of leisure time and an enjoyment of the n.o.bler pleasures.

Successful teaching in any part of our school system demands an adjustment in the amount of work to be done, to the abilities, and even to the interest of individual children. Much may be accomplished by the organization of special cla.s.ses or groups in large school systems, but even under the most favorable conditions children cannot be expected to work up to the maximum of their capacity except as teachers recognize these differences in interest and in ability, and make a.s.signments and conduct exercises which take account of these differences.