The sources of interest therefore are varied and productive. Any one of the six is unlimited in extent and variety. Together they constitute a boundless field for a proper cultivation of the emotional as well as intellectual nature of man. A study of these sources of genuine interest and a partial view of their breadth and depth, reveals to teachers what our present school courses tend strongly to make them forget, namely, that the right kind of knowledge contains in itself the stimulus and the germs to great mental exertion. The dull drill upon grammar, arithmetic, reading, spelling, and writing, which are regarded as so important as to exclude almost everything else, has convinced many a child that school is veritably a dull place. And many a teacher is just as strongly convinced that keeping school is a dull and sleepy business. And yet the sources of interest are abundant to overflowing for him who has eyes to see. That these sources and materials of knowledge, arousing deep and lasting interests, are above other things adapted to children and to the school room, is a truth worthy of all emphasis.
Interest is a good test of the adaptability of knowledge. When any subject is brought to the attention at the right age and in the proper manner, it awakens in children a natural and lively feeling. It is evident that certain kinds of knowledge are not adapted to a boy at the age of ten. He cares nothing about political science, or medicine, or statesmanship, or the history of literature. These things may be profoundly interesting to a person two or three times as old, but not to him. Other things, however, the story of Ulysses, travel, animals, geography, and history, even arithmetic, may be very attractive to a boy of ten. It becomes a matter of importance to select those studies and parts of studies for children at their changing periods of growth, which are adapted to awaken and stimulate their minds. We shall be saved then from doing what the best of educators have so frequently condemned, namely, when the child asks for bread give him a stone, or when he asks for fish give him a serpent.
The neglect to take proper cognizance of this principle of interest in laying out courses of study and in the manner of presenting subjects is certainly one of the gravest charges that ever can be brought against the schools. It is a sure sign that teachers do not know what it means "to put yourself in his place," to sympathize with children and feel their needs. The educational reformers who have had deepest insight into child-life, have given us clear and profound warnings. Rousseau says: "Study children, for be sure you do not understand them. Let childhood ripen in children. The wisest apply themselves to what it is important to men to know, without considering what children are in a condition to learn. They are always seeking the man in the child, without reflecting what he is before he can be a man." It is well for us to take these words home and act upon them.
It is worth the trouble to inquire whether it is possible to select subjects for school study which will prove essentially attractive and interesting from the age of six on. Are there materials for school study which are adapted fully to interest first grade children? We know that fairy stories appeal directly to them, and they love to reproduce them. Reading and spelling in connection with these tales are also stirring studies. Reading a familiar story is certainly a much more interesting employment than working at the almost meaningless sentences of a chart or first reader. Number work when based upon objects can be made to hold the attention of little ones, at least in the last half of the first grade. They love also to see and describe flowers, rocks, plants, and pictures. It probably requires more skillful teaching to awaken and hold the interest in the first grade than in the second or any higher grade, unless older children have been dulled by bad instruction. On what principle is it possible to select both interesting and valuable materials for the successive grades? We will venture to answer this difficult question.
The main interest of children must be attracted by what we may call real knowledge subjects; that is, those treating of people (history stories, etc.,) and those treating of plants, animals, and other natural objects (natural science topics). Grammar, arithmetic, and spelling are chiefly form studies and have less native attraction for children. Secondly, it may be laid down as a fact of experience that children will be more touched and stimulated by particular persons and objects in nature than by any general propositions, or laws, or classifications. They prefer seeing a particular palm tree to hearing a general description of palms. A narrative of some special deed of kindness moves them more than a discourse on kindness. They feel a natural drawing toward real, definite persons and things, and an indifference or repulsion toward generalities. They prefer the story to the moral. Children are little materialists. They dwell in the sense-world, or in the world of imagination with very clear and definite pictures.
But while dealing with things of sense and with particulars, it is necessary in teaching children to keep an eye directed toward general classes and toward those laws and principles that will be fully appreciated later. In geography, arithmetic, language lessons, and natural science, we must collect more materials in the lower grades; more simple, concrete illustrations. They are the basis upon which we can soon begin to generalize and classify. The more attractive the illustrative materials we select, the stronger the appeal to the child's own liking, the more effective will be the instruction. A way has been discovered to make the study of the concrete and individual lead up with certainty to the grasp of general notions and even of scientific laws as fast as the children are ready for them. If the concrete object or individual is carefully selected it will be a type, that is, it illustrates a whole class of similar objects. Such a typical concrete object really combines the particular and the general. It has all the advantage of object-teaching, the powerful attraction of real things, but its comparison with other objects will also show that it illustrates a general law or principle of wide-reaching scientific importance. In both these steps natural interest is provided for in the best way. A full and itemized examination of some attractive object produces as strong an interest as a child is capable of. Then to find out that this object is a sort of key to the right interpretation of other objects, more or less familiar to him, has all the charm of discovery. The sunflower, for example, is a large and attractive object for itemized study. It the examination leads a step further to a comparison with other composite flowers, there will be an interesting discovery of kinship with dandelions, asters, thistles, etc. This principle of the type, as illustrating both the particular and general, is true also of geographical topics that lead a child far from home and call for the construction of mental pictures. The study of Pike's Peak and vicinity is very interesting and instructive for fourth grade children. The valleys, springs at Manitou, Garden of the Gods, Cheyenne Canon and Falls, the Cave of the Winds, the ascent of the peak by trail or by railroad, the views of distant mountains, the summit house on the barren and rugged top, the snow fields even in summer, the drifting mists that shut off the view, the stories of hardship and early history—these things take a firm hold on a child's interest and desire for knowledge. When this whole picture is reasonably complete a brief comparison of Pike's Peak with Mt. Washington, Mt. Marcy, Mt. Shasta, and Mt. Rainier, will bring forth points of contrast and similarity that will surprise and instruct a child. In every branch of study there are certain underlying principles and forms of thought whose thorough mastery in the lower grades is necessary to successful progress. They are the important and central ideas of the subject. It was a marked quality of Pestalozzi to sift out these simple fundamentals and to master them. It is for us to make these simple elements intelligible and interesting by the use of concrete types and illustrations drawn from nature and from human life. If we speak of history and nature as the two chief subjects of study, the simple, fundamental relations of persons to each other in society, and the simple, typical objects, forces, and laws of nature constitute the basis of all knowledge. These elements we desire to master. But to make them attractive to children, they should not be presented in bald and sterile outlines, but in typical forms. All actions and human relations must appear in attractive personification.
Persons speak and act and virtues shine forth in them. We do not study nature's laws at first, but the beautiful, typical life forms in nature, the lily, the oak, Cinderella, and William Tell. For children, then, the underlying ideas and principles of every study, in order to start the interest, must be revealed in the most beautiful illustrative forms which can be furnished by nature, poetry, and art. The story of William Tell, although it comes all the way from the Alps and from the distant traditional history of the Swiss, is one of the best things with which to illustrate and impress manliness and patriotism. The fairy stories for still younger children, are the best means for teaching kindness or unselfishness, because they are so chaste, and beautiful, and graceful, even to the child's thought. The most attractive type-forms and life-personifications of fundamental ideas in history and nature are the really interesting objects of study for children. To put it in a simple, practical form—objects and human actions, if well selected, are the best means in the world to excite curiosity and the strong spirit of inquiry. While dwelling upon this thought of the attractiveness of type-forms as personified in things or persons, we catch a glimpse of a far-reaching truth in education.
The idea of culture epochs, as typical of the steps of progress in the race, and also of the periods of growth in the child, offers a deep perspective into educational problems. In the progress of mankind from a primitive state of barbarism to the present state of culture in Europe and in the United States, there has been a succession of not very clearly defined stages. In point of government, for example, there has been the savage, nomad, patriarch, kingdom, constitutional monarchy, democracy, republic, federal republic. There have been great epochs of political convulsion in the conflicts with external powers and in civil struggles and revolutions. In the growth of handicrafts, arts, manufactures, and inventions, there has been a series of advances from the time when men first began to cultivate the ground, to reduce the metals, and to bring the forces of nature into service. In the development of human society, therefore, and in the progress of arts and human knowledge, there are certain typical stages whose proper use may help us to solve some of the difficult problems in educating the young. All nations have passed through some of these important epochs. The United States, for example, since the first settlements upon the east coast, have gone rapidly through many of the characteristic epochs of the world's history, in politics, commerce, and industry; in social life, education, and religion.
The importance of the culture epochs for schools lies in the theory, accepted by many great writers, that children in their growth from infancy to maturity, pass through a series of steps which correspond broadly to the historical epochs of mankind. A child's life up to the age of twenty, is a sort of epitome of the world's history. Our present state of culture is a result of growth, and if a child is to appreciate society as it now is, he must grow into it out of the past, by having traveled through the same stages it has traced. But this is only a very superficial way of viewing the relation between child and world history. The periods of child life are so similar to the epochs of history, that a child finds its proper mental food in the study of the materials furnished by these epochs. Let us test this. A child eight years old cares nothing about reciprocity or free silver, or university extension. Robinson Crusoe, however, who typifies mankind's early struggle with the forces of nature, claims his undivided attention. A boy of ten will take more delight in the story of King Alfred or William Tell than in twenty Gladstones or Bismarcks. Not that Gladstone's work is less important or interesting to the right person, but the boy does not live and have his being in the Gladstonian age. Not all parts of history, indeed, are adapted to please and instruct some period of youth. Whole ages have been destitute of such materials, barren as deserts for educational purposes. But those epochs which have been typical of great experiences, landmarks of progress, have also found poets and historians to describe them. The great works of poets and historians contain also the great object lessons upon which to cultivate the minds of children. Some of the leading characters of fiction and history are the best personifications of the steps of progress in the history of the race; Crusoe, Abraham, Ulysses, Alfred, Tell, David, Charlemagne, Moses, Columbus, Washington. These men, cast in a large and heroic mold, represent great human strivings and are adapted to teach the chief lessons of history, if properly selected and arranged. These typical individual characters illustrate the fundamental ideas that will give insight and appreciation for later social forms. They contain, hidden as it were, the essential part of great historical and social truths of far-reaching importance. The culture epochs will be seen later to be important in solving the problem of the concentration of instruction along certain lines, but in the present discussion their value is chiefly seen in their adaptability to arouse the interest of children, by supplying peculiarly congenial materials of instruction in the changing phases of child progress.
The interest most worth awakening in pupils is not only direct but permanent. Hawthorne's Golden Touch embodies a simple classic truth in such transparent form that its reperusal is always a pleasure. In the same way, to observe the autumn woods and flowers, the birds and insects, with sympathy and delight, leaves a lasting pleasure in the memory. The best kind of knowledge is that which lays a permanent hold upon the affections. The best method of learning is that which opens up any field of study with a growing interest. To awaken a child's permanent interest in any branch of knowledge is to accomplish much for his character and usefulness. An enduring interest in American history, for example, is valuable in the best sense, no matter what the method of instruction. Any companion or book that teaches us to observe the birds with growing interest and pleasure has done what a teacher could scarcely do better. This kind of knowledge becomes a living, generative culture influence. Knowledge which contains no springs of interest is like faith divorced from works. Information and discipline may be gained in education without any lasting interest, but the one who uses such knowledge and discipline is only a machine. A Cambridge student who had taken the best prizes and scholarships said at the end of his university career: "I am at a loss to know what to do. I have already gained the best distinctions, and I can see but little to work for in the future." The child of four years, who opens his eyes with unfeigned interest and surprised inquiry into the big world around him, has a better spirit than such a dead product of university training. But happily this is not the spirit of our universities now. The remarkable and characteristic idea in university life today is the spirit of investigation and scientific inquiry which it constantly awakens. We happen to live in a time when university teachers are trying to enlarge the bounds of human knowledge in every direction, to solve problems that have not been solved before. No matter what the subject, the real student soon becomes an explorer, an investigator in fields of absorbing interest. The common school can scarcely do better than to receive this generous impulse into its work. Can our common studies be approached in this inquisitive spirit? Can growth in knowledge be made a progressive investigation? A true interest takes pleasure in acquired knowledge, and standing upon this vantage looks with inquiring purpose into new worlds. Children in our schools are sometimes made so dyspeptic that no knowledge has any relish. But the soul should grow strong, and healthy, and elastic, upon the food it takes. If the teaching is such that the appetite becomes stronger, the mental digestion better, and if the spirit of interest and inquiry grows into a steady force, the best results may be expected.