to have too much interest in a lesson, but it is quite common to have that interest badly distributed. In the course of teaching there is frequently a struggle of interests and if the teacher desires to guide the pupil in one direction, he must study the clash of interests in order the more effectively to favor the one that he desires to prevail. He must learn the art of killing interest as well as the art of rousing interest. Now the best way of killing interest is not by opposing it, but by gratifying it. So soon as an interest has been satisfied, it dies a natural death. In all cases he must try to avoid rousing any interest that is likely to be more powerful than the main line of interest that runs through the lesson. In spite of all his endeavors, however, the teacher will often find that he has called up powerful interests that compete with the interest he has mainly in view; and in any case, even the subsidiary interests he arouses must be dealt with as they arise, or they will form a powerfully distracting force. Side issues must be treated in such a way as to satisfy all the interest they excite, while the main subject of the lesson is managed so as to maintain the interest to the end." False Views of Interest. According to Thorndike: "It is a common error to confuse the interesting with the easy and to argue that the doctrine of interest is false because it is wrong to make everything easy. This is an error, because in fact the most difficult things may be very interesting and the easiest things very dull. A second common error is to confuse the feeling of interest with pleasure, and to argue that we cannot make school work interesting because some necessary features of it simply are not pleasurable. It is of course true that many things must be done by a school pupil which produce no pleasure, but they may nevertheless be done with interest. A tug of war and putting up a heavy dumbbell the fiftieth time are definitely painful, but may be very interesting. A third common error is to over-estimate the strength of children's interests in abstract thinking. For the majority of all minds, and the great majority of untutored minds, demand content, mental stuff, actual color, movement, life, and 'thingness' as their mental food. "There are two failures of teaching with respect to interest. The first is the failure to arouse any mental zest in a class, to lift the class out of a dull, listless, apathetic good behavior or keep them from illicit interests in grinning at each other, playing tricks, chewing candy, and the like. This we all recognize as failure. The second type succeeds in getting interest, but the interest is in the wrong thing. Many a class sits entranced as the teacher shows them pictures-they are thoroughly interested and attentive-but they have no interest whatever in the principle or fact which the pictures are to illustrate. A lecturer can always get interest by telling funny stories, but again and again he will find that the real content of his lecture has been entirely neglected. Too often the picture, the story, the specimen, or the experiment removes as much interest from the lesson itself by distracting the pupil as it adds by its concreteness, life, and action. It is never enough to keep a class interested. They must be interested in the right thing." Some Helpful Suggestions. Note Professor James' Rule: "Any object, not interesting in itself, may become interesting through becoming associated with an object in which an interest already exists. The two associated objects grow, as it were, together. Again, the most natively interesting object to anyone is his own personal self and its fortunes. Lend the child his books, pencils, etc., then give them to him and see the new light with which they at once shine in his eyes. Thus in teaching, begin with subjects in the line of the child's own personal, native interests; and then, step by step, connect your new teaching and new objects. with these old ones." This is what is involved in the old Herbartian doctrine of "Preparation," often so difficult of compre hension. Says Dr. Dewey, again: "A question often asked is: 'If you begin with the child's ideas, impulses, and interests, so crude, so random and scattering, so little refined or spiritualized, how is he going to get the necessary discipline, culture, and information?" If there were no way open to us except to excite and indulge these impulses of the child, the question might be asked. We should have to ignore and repress the activities, or else to humor them. But if we have organization of equip 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. *TEACHING OF BIBLE CLASSES. See. Moore. pp. 22-40. SUNDAY SCHOOL SCIENCE. Holmes. pp. 55-60. 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? 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 |