games to teach many useful facts and activities. Above the primary grades, games are used chiefly for drill, which, as a consequence, has become the phase of school work in which we often find the most intense interest. If I were asked to name the one feature of school work below the sixth grade in which I have seen pupils most eager and attentive, I should mention pure abstract drill games in arithmetic, absolutely unmotived by any other interest than that of the game. One example was described on page 208. Another example is the following from a second grade. The teacher has written on the board the following combinations to be added:

९९

A guessing game is played as follows: One child thinks of one of the sums and says, "I am thinking of a number." Another child runs to the board, takes a pointer, and choosing any combination gives the sum by asking, in case he points at the first one, Is it 19?" and so on until he picks out the one which the first child had in mind. A skilled teacher with a pack of large printed cards containing numbers, or words, or phonic syllables can stand before a class and conduct with children an educative drill game

Story of the picture on opposite page. This picture illustrates the same general points in teaching as do those on pages 236 and 238. In this picture second-grade children are shown presenting a little play based on the Arabian story of Tellah in Jennie Hall's "The Weavers and Other Workers." The latter book is read in connection with the study of shepherd life as indicated in the course of study described on page 137. Naturally the whole technique of constructing and presenting the play in the second grade is much simpler than in the case of the third grade described on page 237 or the fourth grade described on page 239. These pictures illustrate the utilization of children's interests in adventure, communication, and imitative play as a means of vitalizing and clarifying their ideas of social activities, and of interesting them in reading.

which equals in zest and interest any baseball game or "Ring-around-a-Rosy" game that children ever enacted themselves, and the drill games have no other practical motive for the children than have these common games.

Summary of discussion of special instinctive interests. This will conclude our discussion of the special instinctive interests of children which have been used or are being used to keep pupils in a frame of mind favorable to learning. We noticed that fear of physical pain and fear of sarcasm. and ridicule have been discarded not only for humanitarian reasons but because they arouse an unfavorable condition of forced divided attention. In place of these we find Rousseau's humanitarian psychological program of child study resulting in the use of the common instinctive interests in adventure, romance, actions of animals and people, social approval, rhythm, rime, jingle and song, puzzles, problems, mental activity, communication, manipulation, physical activity, collecting, imitative play, and games.

Children learn to work effectively through interesting activities. These active tendencies, strivings, and cravings of children, which we call their interests, are utilized or directed so as to get the worth-while tasks of the school accomplished energetically, effectively, and economically; they are not used merely to pamper the children or to amuse them. Through carrying out the strivings which these interests arouse, the children learn to work for more and more remote ends and purposes. For example, they begin reading with stories of their own pets, or stories of other animals. As their vocabulary grows, they attack more and more difficult reading to get the stories contained. They are assisted in mastering and remembering the vocabulary through drill games. As they acquire skill in reading, near the fourth grade, their interest in problems and in communication is utilized to get them to read widely in order to bring pertinent evidence and information to be presented

to the class. In this wide reading, their collecting instinct may be appealed to and result in training in gathering pictures, quotations, and other useful information from many sources. At the end of the training they have become skilled silent readers and more or less expert workers with books. They have been prepared to work effectively through activities, which, in the beginning in the kindergarten and first grade, are predominantly play, but which gradually take on the character of working for more and more remote ends as the pupils progress through the grades.

Pupils, cowboys, artists, executives, etc. may enjoy their work as a game. — Such work, however, at all stages may possess the playful characteristic of being fun in itself, of being intensely interesting at each stage. This is true also of much of the work of the world in which many teachers, writers, artists, speakers, mechanics, cowboys, professional soldiers and sailors, politicians, administrators, managers, and other kinds of workers are carried along, not by a sense of duty, but, to use a common expression, because they "like the game”—they can't give it up. Unfortunately, some workers do not take to their jobs in this spirit, but they are generally recognized as the less fortunate class. Certainly from the standpoint of creating favorable conditions for learning in school, which is the topic of this part of the text, it is much more economical and effective to create for pupils situations in which they attack their work with the same zest and interest as do the great workers of the world who "enjoy the game."

Work of life which involves learning may be intensely interesting. Another important point to consider in comparing the work of the school with the work of the world is that the latter may be divided into (1) activities in which new situations and new problems are continually arising, and (2) activities which are repeated with routine uniformity from day to day. Many of the workers noted in the

preceding paragraph are engaged largely in the first type of activities, in which the novelty and variety of experiences help to make the work interesting. However, any kind of job or activity may, in the different stages in learning it, illustrate this same contrast between (1) novelty and (2) routine sameness. Thus, cooking may be fascinating to a young housewife when she is learning it, but after she has mastered all the recipes which she can devise or afford, it may become humdrum monotony. Similarly, a stenographer's job may be quite interesting while she is learning the work in a new office, but after she has written and filed the same type of formal material day after day it may become dull and dead. Now, to which of these working situations in life should we compare the work of the school to the interesting process of learning a new job or to the humdrum routine of a job that is so monotonously the same that it has lost all interest and become drudgery? Obviously, since the school's tasks are predominantly those in which pupils are learning new ideas, meeting new situations and problems, and making new processes automatic, we are justified in comparing its work with the interesting periods of learning in life's work instead of comparing it with life's routine drudgery.

Interest in school work does not mean soft pedagogy; difficulties are interesting. —- Finally, it is perfectly clear from the above examples that utilizing pupils' interests in order to direct their energies along educational lines does not imply merely making studies easy for them. To be sure, some of the learning will be easy and all of it will be sufficiently easy so that pupils can understand and master the material in hand. Otherwise the principle of apperception would be violated and their efforts be fruitless and wasted. But much of their interested learning will present difficulties which call forth their best efforts. This is particularly true in the case of the interests in group emulation, problem solving, communication, and collecting, which

are strongly appealed to above the primary grades. Stimulated by these interests, a pupil may work long and hard in solving problems, formulating a composition or collecting specimens, pictures, folders, maps, etc.

Conclusion. The purpose of this chapter has been to show how the educative and serious tasks of the school can be learned most economically and effectively by utilizing children's active interests. From the illustration of using their interests in adventure stories as a means of teaching reading and history economically, we proceeded to the general points to be considered in utilizing any specific interest. These general aspects were summarized on page 213 and were followed by the evaluation of thirteen instinctive tendencies which have been utilized in schools, from the fear of physical pain to the interest in games. These were summarized on page 242 and followed by an argument to show that school activities based on these apparently playful interests may be very much like those phases of the work of the world which present new problems or situations from day to day in which adaptation or learning is called for. In the next chapter we shall consider types of learning which do not involve new problems or situations so much as they involve memorizing or practice or drill upon processes which are already understood. Even in these cases, however, as has been frequently suggested in the present chapter, we shall see how the zeal and interest of pupils enables teachers to secure, after short periods of drill, results that the old-fashioned schools failed to secure with prolonged periods of uninteresting grind.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

For beginners. - 1. Dewey, JOHN. The School and Society. (The University of Chicago Press, 1899; enlarged, 1915.) Pp. 59-73, on utilizing of children's instinctive interests in communication, construction, investigation, and artistic expression.