namely, that a pupil's response is also influenced by his present frame of mind; hence the teacher should take steps to put him in a frame of mind conducive to the responses which she desires; she should prepare his mind, set his mental stage, as it were, for the mental action that is to follow. This we call the doctrine of preparation.

Examples of influence of mental backgrounds; the word "bay" again. As an example of the influence of a person's general frame of mind in determining his mental response, we may use again the varied interpretations of the word "bay." In reading the sentence "Pupils in geography learn to define river, lake, gulf, bay, etc.," almost any person would think of the geographic meaning of "bay" instead of thinking of a bay horse or a bay window or the bay leaf used in seasoning. This similarity of response or interpretation is due to the fact that the earlier suggestions in the sentence have put the reader in the geographic frame of mind. The similarity in the responses may thus be contrasted with the variety of responses noted on page 169, where the same word "bay" was presented without preliminary preparation of a mental background.

Mistake in reading caused by wrong background. — Another example of the influence of a person's frame of mind in determining his response to a situation is found in the following incident from my own experience:

I was riding in a train and happened to look over the shoulder of the man in front of me at the newspaper he was reading. I could just see the top of the paper and read there the following large headline, extending clear across the page:

GOOD HATS A QUARTER

Inasmuch as I always take advantage of end-of-the-season reduction sales of men's furnishings, this statement interested me (although good hats for a quarter seemed impossible) and I decided to look into the matter further when I got a chance. Soon the

man left his seat to go into the smoking car. I picked up his paper and, turning to the desired page, found that instead of reading

the headline read

GOOD HATS A QUARTER

GOD HATES A QUITTER

It was Monday morning and the paper in question contained reports of Sunday sermons printed with large-type headlines running clear across the page. If I had been in the religious frame of mind at the time, instead of the bargain-hunting frame of mind, I might have read the headline correctly at the first glance.

Colorless sentence given varied meanings by different backgrounds. Further examples of the great variety of mental responses which may be aroused by the same words being projected against different mental backgrounds are given by Adams in the following quotation:

Take some such colorless sentence as "Think of him," and note the difference effected by projecting it against the following backgrounds:

A picture in Life of a low-class photographer trying to encourage a pleasant expression on his female sitter's face. [Think of him.] A widow laying flowers on a grave and addressing her little girl. [Think of him.]

A religious revival meeting. [Think of Him.]

A French schoolmaster during the Franco-Prussian War pointing to a picture of the first Napoleon. [Think of him.]

A conspirators' meeting where a traitor's name has been mentioned. [Oooo! think of him!] (1: 93)

Pupils' irrelevant answers illustrate influence of wrong line of thought. In school we find many examples of the influence of mental backgrounds in producing varied responses by pupils. These examples often occur in the unexpected answers in response to a question that was intended to elicit an entirely different line of thought, as illustrated by Adams in the following quotation :

A question is asked, for example, the answer to which is known to be within the range of the pupil's knowledge. There is no doubt about the matter. . . . The question is, however, so expressed that the pupil, with the best intention in the world, cannot discover against which background he is expected to project the ideas concerned. Accordingly he projects them against the first available background, in the hope that this may be the right one.

"Where was St. Paul converted?" asks the teacher, speaking from a geographical background. "In the ninth chapter of the Acts," responds the pupil, from a background of textual reference. In testing the intelligence of a class the inspector asks, "Where do you find gates?" The pupil, from a background made up of puzzling experiences of the Socratic method, answers, "We don't find gates, we make them." From a historico-geographical background the inspector desired to elicit the deleterious effect of a large town on the purity of a river. He brought out the fact that Robert the Bruce [1274-1329] spent his latter years at Roseneath on the Clyde in Scotland, and that as a recreation he very probably — according to the inspector-fished in the river. The question that was to incriminate those who were responsible for the pollution of the Clyde took the form "Why could n't the Bruce fish there now?" From a background of plain common sense came the reply," Because he's dead.” (1: 96)

Absurd answers in written tests show predominance of wrong set of mind. Perhaps the strangest examples of the predominant influence of some special frame of mind or mental background in determining the mental responses of a pupil are found in the wrong answers in written examinations. In such cases the teacher often marvels at the absurdly irrelevant responses that the pupils make. Striking illustrations of such absurd answers were secured by Thorndike (5 98) when he gave a reading test to children in the upper grades. A portion of the test read as follows:

Read this and then write the answers to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8. Read it again as often as you need to.

Tom gave a gray cat to Mary. She gave him a black dog. 1. What did Tom give the girl?

2. What did the girl give Tom?

3. What was the girl's name?

(Five similar questions completed the eight.)

In writing his answers, one pupil was evidently strongly influenced by a recent written lesson in substituting pronouns for nouns. Hence, instead of answering the questions. he merely copied them, but substituted pronouns, thus:

1. What did he give the girl?

2. What did the girl give? 3. What was her name?

The reader may be interested in guessing what mental background was predominant in the case of the pupil who, instead of answering the questions, merely copied them, but followed each with certain phrases as indicated below:

९९

I. What did Tom give the girl?" said Mary.

2.

What did the girl give Tom?" asked her sister. 3. 'What was the girl's name?" said her mother.

Cross section of pupil's mental responses would reveal strange contrasts. The strangely irrelevant responses which appear in pupils' written papers are instructive in suggesting that equally irrelevant and confused mental responses must be taking place during oral recitations. If a teacher could get a cross-section view of the mental responses being made by her pupils at any moment, it might surprise her with its weird and strange contrasts.

Teacher must put pupils in favorable frame of mind; must prepare mental backgrounds. The educational inference which is drawn from the above facts is that a teacher should take special care to put the pupils in the proper frame of mind for the lines of thought which she desires them to pursue; she should set the mental stages for the mental

action that is to follow; she should arrange the mental backgrounds upon which her statements and questions will fall. Steps to do this may vary from a few simple remarks at the beginning of a lesson to very elaborate precautions consuming a whole lesson period in preparation for lessons that are to follow.

Examples of step of preparation.—The following examples are illustrations of such preparatory steps taken by teachers. I. A second-grade class was reading "Cinderella." At the beginning of the period the teacher reviewed the story as far as they had read. She then said: "Let us each take some character and read its part. Where no character is required, I will read. Let's see if we can finish the story to-day." At the end of the period the children begged to remain a few minutes after the recess bell rang, in order to finish the story.

2. A third-grade class in Chicago was studying the water supply of the city. They were ready to discuss the laying of a pipe line out into Lake Michigan. At the beginning of the period the teacher had the class recall the earlier methods used to secure water; namely, dipping water out of the lake, digging wells, using water wagons, etc.

3. In a fourth-grade class the topic for the period was the Roman soldiers. Before taking it up the children talked about the American soldiers, their needs, the fact that they were having measles, the Red Cross work which the children, were doing, the gathering of magazines for the soldiers, etc.

4. A fifth-grade class was studying "Robin Hood." They were outlining the action of the story preparatory to dramatizing it. The teacher said: "To-day we want to continue the story from where we left off, picking out the important points to put in your notebooks. Let us first review the points which you already have in your books."

5. An upper-grade class was beginning the study of the surveying of the Northwest Territory. In this connection