ment and of materials, there is another path open to us. We can direct the child's activities, giving them exercise along certain lines, and can thus lead up to the goal which logically stands at the end of the paths followed.

"If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.' Since they are not, since really to satisfy an impulse or interest means to work it out, and working it out involves running against obstacles, becoming acquainted with materials, exercising ingenuity, patience, persistence, alertness, it of necessity involves discipline ordering of power-and supplies knowledge."

Professor Adams makes this statement: "There can be no interest in one simple, isolated idea. Only by being brought into relation to other ideas can it capture interest. This is what the psychologist means when he says: 'We cannot attend to anything that does not change.' Our will is incapable of fixing our attention for more than a second or two upon an isolated idea. That is, pure voluntary attention cannot be maintained for more than a few seconds at a time. Consider what happens in your own case when you try hard to read a difficult and, for you, uninteresting book. You find your attention wandering every few minutes, and have to recall it by an effort of the will. Your reading is made up of a long series of alternations between attention and inattention.'

QUESTIONS FOR THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION.

1. Explain clearly the root reason why the false notion of Interest with Effort is both ineffective and injurious.

2. In what lines do a Child's Interests mainly lie?

3. Will Interest differ at various ages? Why or why not? Explain by examples.

4. What Suggestions do you consider of most worth for Interest?

5. Think out definitely how you propose to make next Sunday's Lesson intrinsically interesting.

6. Why should we kill Interest at times?

7. What False Views of Interest are prevalent?

CHAPTER XVII.

THE ART OF QUESTIONING.

SUGGESTED READINGS.

*TEACHER TRAINING. Roads. pp. 81-83.

THE ART OF QUESTIONING. Fitch.

THE ART OF TEACHING. Fitch. Chap. VI.

THE FOUNDATIONS OF EDUCATION. Moore. pp. 22-40. *ADULT BIBLE CLASSES. Wood.

*TEACHING OF BIBLE CLASSES. See.

SUNDAY SCHOOL SCIENCE. Holmes. pp. 55-60.
PEDAGOGICAL BIBLE SCHOOL. Haslett.

The Art of Questioning.

pp. 276-278.

All lesson books are provided with questions; but all are not good questions. All teachers question; but few teachers question either properly or well. Principal Moore has given two rules on questioning: "(1) Spend your time in questioning, and not in lecturing. (2) Let your questions be those of a teacher, and not of an examiner." What does he mean? What does he mean? Miss Caroline Leighton says, from Socrates, "Ask anyone a question rather than state a fact to him if you would arouse his interest." Uses of Questions.

Fitch says, in his little handbook on the ART OF QUESTIONING: "It is very possible for a teacher in a Sunday School to be fluent in speech, earnest in manner, happy in his choice of illustration, and to be a very inefficient teacher nevertheless. We are often apt to think it enough if we deliver a good lesson, and to forget that, after all, its value depends upon the degree in which it is really received and appropriated by the children. Now, in order to secure that what we teach shall really enter their minds, and be duly fixed and comprehended there, it is above all things necessary that we should be able to use effectively the important instrument of instruction to which our attention is now to be drawn." Adding, in his larger book on

Teaching, that we use Questions: (1) to find out what a child knows, in order to prepare him for further learning. This is the point of contact, as above, finding the known to attach the unknown. (2) To discover his misconceptions and difficulties. (3) To secure his activity and attention while you are teaching him. (4) To test the result of what you have taught. Dr. Roads says: "A man's knowledge is shown as much by the questions he asks as by those he can answer." Christ and Socrates were the ideal interrogators.

What is the Effect of a Question?

It stirs up investigation, leading to the answer to "Who?" "What?" "How?" etc. It awakens the dormant memory; it stimulates curiosity and research; it develops reasoning power. Questioning has been called "the shuttle that weaves the fabric" of education. "Any fool can ask a question," says the proverb; and Mr. Holmes naively adds, "No fool can ask a wise one." It takes careful study of the broadest thought to frame judicious questions. Study Plato's Dialogues; Socrates in Xenophon's Memorabilia; and above all the questions of Jesus, the Ideal Questioner.

Method of Sunday School Questioning.

All leading educators are agreed on the point that Lesson Books should not, as a rule, contain Question and Answer. The Answer should be sought for. Fitch does allow that the Church Catechism is the most ideal bit of Question-and-Answer Production ever framed; but even this must be cautiously used. The general use of Question-and-Answer Books is unpedagogical, unnatural, about 50 years behind the times, and, fortunately, rapidly passing away. Nor should the answers to the questions for home study be found directly with the questions. The pupil should search for them, as near to the original Source as possible. Again, while questions in text books for home study are proper guiding-strings for teacher and pupils, the best and the most natural work in class will be accomplished with the lesson books laid aside, with new and original questions asked and the lesson "developed" apparently (though not really, for all has been carefully planned at home) offhand by the teacher. Imagine a teacher in geography in public school (and remember your

pupils live five days in that atmosphere) reading with difficulty, through a pair of glasses, questions on the location of New England Manufactories, as she bends over a cramped and scrawly paper. Says Fitch: "That is the best questioning which stimulates action on the part of the hearer, and gives him a habit of thinking and enquiring for himself-which makes him rather a skilful finder than a patient receiver of the truth." There is only one kind of action we can surmise as likely to be “stimulated" by much of the Sunday School Questioning. Here is a sample from a New England "Sabbath School Question Book" of a few years since: "Did you ever read in your library books about good children who died very happy?" "How many years of Sabbaths has a person lived who is fifty years old?" "Which would you prefer to lose, your dinner to-day, or your Sunday School instruction ?" Most of us can guess what the reply to this interrogation should be!

Kinds of Questions.

Professor F. A. Manny, quoting from Fitch, gives three kinds: (1) Descriptive Questions, mere fact, with typical word "What?" (2) Narrative, process or method, with typical word "How ?" (3) Explanatory, meaning or use, with typical word "Why ?"

Perhaps a simpler and better division of Questions, from the view-point of internal character, is that of Prof. McMurry, into Fact Questions and Thought Questions. The former are "Who?" "Where?" "What?" the latter are "How?" and "Why?" Fact Questions should be almost the exclusive type before the age of 8 or 9; they should predominate, with some Thought Questions, from that age to Adolescence (12 years on); while they should be subsidiary to Thought Questions from Adolescence onward. This is because the former are concrete and belong to the concrete age, the age of Acquisition; while the latter are more abstract, and come in gradually as Reflection develops. This differentiation should be constantly borne in mind.

Professor McMurry, looking at it from the view-point of the lesson, gives (1) Preliminary Questions, that is one should start off with some broad, searching, all-round Review Question, that gets the pupils at once in touch with the lesson for the day;

rounds them up, so to speak; collects their wits; connects the new with the old; focuses the gist of the previous lessons and connects them all together into a well-knit scheme. Some large "left-over problem" from previous lesson; some wide generalization that would come from the comparison of a large number of formerly considered facts, such are excellent "starters."

(2) Leading Questions, around which shorter, subsidiary ones are wielded. These leading questions form the backbone or skeleton of the lesson plan, in the new material.

(3) Frequent Review Questions, which sum up the points made thus far in new work. Children's memories are short at first, and their "weaving ability" limited. The younger the children, the more needful this gathering together of points and loose ends. Every five minutes or so, sum up, with "Let's see where we are. What new facts have we learned?" This re

capitulation drives new material home "apperceptively.”

(4) Final Review Questions that gather up the scheme of the entire lesson. Thus we also connect the present lesson with a few words on the following one for next week. We have here again the "formal steps" of teaching reproduced in Questioning, i.e., Preparation, Presentation, Association or Comparison, Generalization, Application.

Questioning as viewed by Professor Fitch is divided by him as follows: "Questions as employed by teachers may be divided into three classes, according to the purposes which they may be intended to serve. There is, first, the preliminary or experimental question, by which an instructor feels his way, sounds the depths of his pupils' previous knowledge, and prepares them for the reception of what it is designed to teach. Then, secondly, there is the question employed in actual instruction, by means of which the thoughts of the learner are exercised, and he is compelled, so to speak, to take a share in giving himself the lesson. Thirdly, there is the question of examination, by which a teacher tests his own work after he has given a lesson and ascertains whether it has been soundly and thoroughly learned. If we carefully attend to this distinction we shall understand the meaning of the saying of a very eminent teacher, who used to say of the interrogative method, that by it he first questioned the