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whose monitorial system as used in New York City was described on page 69. Children were given tickets each day according to their success in various subjects. After a sufficient number of tickets had been accumulated these could be exchanged for badges of honor, or books, or even pocket knives and toys. Similar devices were widely used in certain Sunday schools. A description of this practice is given by Mark Twain in "Tom Sawyer," in the chapter entitled "Showing off in Sunday School."

The action is supposed to take place about 1840. The description opens with a picture of Tom at the door of the church on Sunday exchanging fish hooks, sticks of "lickrish," marbles, and other trifles for "yaller" tickets, blue tickets, and red ones. During the period before Sunday school opened, Tom carried on these high financial operations so successfully that he had accumulated a large supply of tickets by the time the pupils took their seats to recite their lessons. The children who were successful received one blue ticket for every two verses which they recited. On the ticket was printed a verse from the Bible. Ten blue tickets could be exchanged for one red one, and ten of the latter for a yellow ticket. Finally, after the pupil had earned ten yellow tickets he received in exchange for them a Bible. According to the story, Tom's conscientious sister, Mary, had, during two years, earned two Bibles in this manner while the "teacher's pet" had earned four or five. The ceremony of giving a child the Bible which he had earned made him so conspicuous that he was envied by all the other children who were spurred on to greater efforts in emulation of him.

Doubtless the reader recalls the dire adventure which befell Tom in his efforts to attain fame and prominence by the method of high finance instead of the slow process of memorizing verses. If you do not, you may spend a pleasant quarter of an hour reading the incident in Mark Twain's own inimitable account of it. For our present purposes, we

are merely concerned with it as an example of the practice which prevailed so generally in Sunday schools, of appealing to the instinct of emulation to spur pupils to greater efforts in their studies.

In public schools to-day teachers often place the names of children on the board with red stars and yellow stars opposite them to indicate various degrees of success. The general testimony concerning such appeals to emulation indicates that they are quite effective in getting many pupils to study attentively and diligently.

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3. Are the total effects of using individual emulation unsatisfactory? However, when we come to consider the total influence of appeals to emulation, we find ourselves in a dilemma. Many idealistic educators disapprove entirely of the use of emulation and rivalry in schools, because, they say, this practice merely increases in each pupil the tendency to scramble for more wealth or power, and that this selfish tendency is the basis of many social evils. Not only in social life but also in school, they say, it tends to develop unhappiness, hard feeling, and deceit.

Children's play is naturally strongly competitive.

On

the other hand, if we watch children at play, we find emulation such a large feature that Kirkpatrick says, "Competition is the most prominent element in the play of children from seven to twelve." (4: 157.) Since much of the energy of children during this age is spent in such competitive play, it makes us wonder whether playful competition is, after all, such a pernicious matter. Certainly in the play of children it does n't develop an overwhelming amount of unhappiness and hard feelings but, on the contrary, seems to be an essential feature of their happiest moments.

Rivalry in social life may be directed to worthy ends. Further light is thrown on our dilemma by examples from social life where competition, or rivalry, is used in the pursuit of some worthy end, such as raising funds for the Red

Cross. In this case, cities or teams or individuals compete vigorously with each other, but the harder they compete, the harder they are working for a desirable social outcome.

Emulation being directed in schools to secure beneficial results. Possibly the answer to our dilemma would be that emulation or rivalry is not in itself a pernicious tendency but, instead, is one of the most useful of human instincts in bringing about self-improvement and social improvement. The problem of directing it in social life so that people will compete in socially helpful ways is being solved by democratic governments which are restricting more and more the opportunities for individuals to acquire enormous fortunes and power and are interesting the efficient, competitive persons more and more in public enterprises. The problem of utilizing rivalry in schools is being solved not by eliminating it but, first, by setting up certain standard scores in arithmetic, handwriting, spelling, etc., and certain model achievements in other subjects which pupils become interested in equaling or beating, and, second, by having groups and classes compete with each other as illustrated in the fraction game on page 208. In these forms, the increasing use of well-directed competition is one of the most striking features of recent improvements in school-teaching.

Summary of discussion of general aspects of interest and attention. In our discussions of interests up to this point, we have noted the following ideas: (1) that interest is a helpful attitude in learning, as illustrated by the effective use of the adventure interest in teaching reading and history; (2) that utilizing children's interests thus becomes a good business proposition; (3) that the explanation of the value of using children's interests is found in the fact that they are the basis of spontaneous attention; (4) that care must be taken in using children's interests to see that their attention is not misdirected; (5) that if attention is properly directed, devices for sugar-coating uninteresting material are

often justified; and (6) in utilizing any inborn instinctive interest we must consider not only its effectiveness in getting certain present results but also its ultimate influence on the character of the pupil and in social life after school.

Important instincts used as basis of attention and interest. - In presenting these general facts about interests, we used as examples two very prominent instinctive interests; namely, the interests in adventure and in competition. These are called instinctive because they originate in certain human characteristics which are inborn; that is, are not the result of experience. We shall continue our discussion of utilizing children's interests as the basis of economy in learning by discussing a number of these instinctive interests, as follows:

A. Those used before Rousseau's humanitarian appeal to base teaching upon the instincts and capacities of childhood.

1. Fear of physical pain.

2. Fear of sarcasm and ridicule.

3. Rivalry for rewards and position.

B. Interests used in accordance with Rousseau's humanitarian, psychological method.

1. Interest in adventure and romance.

2. Interest in actions of people and animals.

3. Desire for social approval.

4. Interest in rhythm, rime, jingle, and song.

5. Curiosity, wonder, puzzle interest, problem interest, mental activity.

6. Interest in expression and communication.

7. Manipulation and general physical activity.

8. Collecting instinct.

9. Imitative play.

10. Interest in games.1

1 Precise psychology of instincts.- Students of psychology who desire to reduce this list of instinctive interests to its simplest components should read Thorndike's "Educational Psychology," Vol. I. The terms used above are chosen because they are readily understood by eighteen-year-old students who have had no psychology. The order of presentation of the interests is also determined by the apperceptional needs of such students.

1. Fear of physical pain generally used until 1800. It is hard to realize that in western Europe for hundreds of years the principal means of getting pupils to study their lessons was fear of physical punishment; but this was the case. There is plenty of evidence in the pictures of old-time schools, in the appeals to abolish the practice which were made by such famous writers as Erasmus (1466-1536), Comenius (1592-1670), Ascham (1515-1568), and Mulcaster (1530-1611), and in the records of the number of whippings given by schoolmasters. The picture on page 217, in which a large bunch of switches is held ready in each master's hand, is typical. The switches were held in such a convenient position, not because the boys were likely to be unruly or insubordinate but in order that the teacher might give a blow for each mistake as soon as the pupil made it while reciting.

Apart from the fact that for humanitarian reasons such punishment would not be tolerated at the present time, it would not be used because it is obviously ineffective. Instead of securing spontaneous attention, at the best it secures forced, divided attention under conditions that are very unfavorable to mental progress. For these reasons the use of the instinctive fear of physical pain as a stimulus to attention was generally discarded after the beginning of the nineteenth century.

2. Fear of sarcasm and ridicule. Somewhat akin to the appeal based on the fear of physical pain is that based on the instinctive fear of sarcasm and ridicule. This form of stimulus is still used by many teachers, who regard it as an effective instrument. Such teachers practice the use of sarcasm and ridicule as an art, and develop a vocabulary of stinging terms and expressions calculated to make the laziest pupil apply himself in order to avoid a repetition of the ridicule. It is true that such methods are often effective in securing attention and effort on the part of the pupil, but attention

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