9. As a result of utilizing these interests of children, the latter learn economically to work effectively and to enjoy even difficult serious tasks.

Interest is a helpful mental attitude in learning. In our discussions of learning processes we have emphasized the fact that a pupil learns through his own responses and that the latter are influenced in any situation by the pupil's past experience and present frame of mind. At the end of the preceding chapter we showed that the present frame of mind included not only certain fields of ideas or lines of thought but also certain mental attitudes, such as expectancy, curiosity, playfulness, etc. The words "interest" and "attention" are used to designate certain of these mental attitudes which are considered particularly helpful in getting pupils to make certain specific responses; that is, in directing their self-activity along definite educative lines.

Illustrated by use of interest in adventure in teaching reading. — To illustrate the importance of the attitude of interest as an aid in educating pupils, consider which of the following selections taken by Thorndike from actual school readers you would prefer to use in teaching primary children to read. The first selection, from a second reader published in 1878, runs as follows:

FOODS

We must never forget that we do not live to eat, but that we eat to live.

Our food is the flesh of beasts, birds, and fish, and the fruits of the earth.

Beef is the flesh of the ox, pork is the flesh of the pig, and mutton is the flesh of the sheep.

Apples grow on trees, and grapes grow on vines. Turnips and beets grow in the ground. . (6: 67)

Can you imagine a second-grade pupil getting up much enthusiasm about the above passage? Can you imagine him reading it voluntarily time and again and hungrily asking

the teacher for more stories about food? The next selection, from a second reader published in 1897, accompanies a picture of Longfellow, and runs as follows:

MR. LONGFELLOW

This is a picture of Mr. Longfellow.
He was the boy who lived near the sea.
He is an old gentleman in this picture.
He was a poet.

A poet has beautiful thoughts.

He writes them for others to read. . . .
When he was a boy he went to school.
Then he went to Bowdoin College. . .
He then went across the ocean.

When he came back he was a teacher in Bowdoin College. (6: 64)

You can easily see that this selection would have more attraction for seven-year-olds than the paragraph about foods. The picture of Longfellow would excite some momentary interest, but what of the sentences that follow? Our study of apperception revealed no more ill-adapted material than discussions of Bowdoin College for seven-year-olds. Most children would certainly not be attentive to such material unless they were forced to be. Contrast now the following "thriller" from a third reader published in the same year as the story of Mr. Longfellow :

KING TAWNY MANE

There was once a lion whose name was Tawny Mane. He was so strong that all the other animals were afraid of him, so he was called the king of the forest. He liked to kill every animal that came in his way, and there was no living thing in all the land that was safe from him.

At last, one day, all the animals met to talk about their troubles, and see if they could not find some plan to save themselves from King Tawny Mane. They talked a long time, and then agreed what to do.

In the evening they went together to the lion's den. King Tawny Mane had just had a full meal, so he did not try to harm any of them. What do you want here?" he roared.

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This frightened them very much. Some of them ran back into the thick woods. But the bravest stood still. Speak and tell me what you want," said the king.

Then Sharp Ears, the fox, stood up and spoke. (6: 65)

Can you imagine an ordinary child who would not be anxious to read on and find out what Sharp Ears said about the plan to send one animal each day to appease the king's hunger? Perhaps even you would like to know the adventure of little Cotton Tail which comes in the story after the following paragraphs:

At last the lot fell upon a little rabbit named Cotton Tail, and he was sent to make a call upon the king. He was in no hurry to go. He played along the road until after dinner time. Then, with big eyes and gentle steps, he went and stood at the lion's door.

King Tawny Mane was very hungry, and when he saw the rabbit he roared, "Why are you so late? Even the elephant knows better than to keep me waiting."

The rabbit bowed low and said, " I know I am late. But if you could only see what I have seen, you would not blame me.” What have you seen? said the lion. (6: 66)

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Interest in adventure prominent in social life; its use is effective in teaching reading. The interest which would carry a child or an adult through the above story is the same interest that made Homer's stories of the wanderings of Ulysses so popular with the Greeks and that now gives a popular journal a circulation of millions of copies each week. It is one of the strongest interests born in human beings; namely, the interest in adventure, in excitement, in romance. When coupled with the courageous and fighting instincts it carries thousands of red-blooded persons to all ends of the earth in search of new and thrilling experiences. At the same time it impels many of the most timid and

peace-loving to sit in their comfortable homes or at the movies, and thrill over the deeds of detectives and crooks, cowboys and hunters, soldiers and sailors, knights and their ladies. Obviously, we save much time and energy in teaching children to read if we can use this interest to keep them attentive during the reading period and to get them to read voluntarily out of school hours. Consequently many adventure stories are now read in the elementary school, from "The Three Billy Goats Gruff" in the first grade to "Treasure Island" in the upper grades.

Adventure interest also effectively used in history teaching. The interest in adventure and romance may be used with equal effectiveness in teaching history. This may be illustrated by two examples. In a large city a young but well-trained teacher was having difficulty with a fifth-grade class, all of poor foreign parentage, in getting them interested in English history. She made a trip to the superintendent's office and secured a set of supplementary historical readers which contained tales of adventure. The children immediately became interested; the books were read in school and out. The appeal made by the stories was well illustrated by the remark of one child who called across the room to a companion, “Say, Joe, was n't Richard a peach of a guy?”

The second example of the utilization of the adventure interest in teaching history is from the middle grades in The University of Chicago Elementary School, which possesses an excellent library of children's literature and supplementary reading material, to which the children have free access. In connection with the work in history, some of the children read very widely; for example, my own boy, now in the fifth grade, reads about three hundred pages each week-end. The books read vary from the cheap but excellent publications of the textbook companies to the beautiful but more expensive books by the English writer H. E. Marshall, entitled "Our Island Story," "Scotland's Story,"

The History of France," and "This Country of Ours: the Story of the United States." I have been interested in noting what parts my son reads and what parts he omits. He likes certain books, he says, because they are full of battles, and fights with Indians, and travel and adventures generally. Other books he will bring home from the library and return without reading them, because they lack the above elements. During my own boyhood, in the middle grades, I read five-cent novels and such books as "Ragged Dick" and "Frank on the Gunboat," to satisfy my craving for adventure stories. Obviously, when the school can divert some of the energy that ordinarily goes into such reading into historical reading, it is achieving important educational ends at small cost.

Utilizing children's interests is a business proposition, not a matter of sentiment. The use of the strong instinctive interest in atlventure as the basis for the effective teaching of reading and history in the primary and middle grades illustrates a number of general points concerning the utilization of children's active interests by teachers. The first point is that such utilization is a purely utilitarian, cold-blooded business proposition. There is nothing sentimental about it, any more than it would be considered a matter of sentiment for a traveling salesman to try to sell an improved adding machine to a business man by appealing to the man's interest in securing speed, economy, and accuracy in his bookkeeping. In the selling of most kinds of goods the salesman can assume, on the part of the prospective buyer, the existence of certain active interests which are an essential part of the latter's business activity. The salesman builds upon these in the same way that the teacher ought to build upon the active interests of pupils. The teacher does not have to create the interest in adventure; it already exists. It is an active tendency of children which daily manifests itself in their plays and games and stories and reading. The teacher