[ CHAPTER IV
The Conditions Determining Interest]
[71.] Interest means self-activity. The demand for a many-sided interest is, therefore, a demand for many-sided self-activity. But not all self-activity, only the right degree of the right kind, is desirable; else lively children might very well be left to themselves. There would be no need of educating or even of governing them. It is the purpose of instruction to give the right direction to their thoughts and impulses, to incline these toward the morally good and true. Children are thus in a measure passive. But this passivity should by no means involve suppression of self-activity. It should, on the contrary, imply a stimulation of all that is best in the child.
At this point a psychological distinction becomes necessary, namely, that between designedly reproduced, or “given,” and spontaneous representations. In recitations of what has been learned we have an example of the former; the latter appear in the games and fancies of children. A method of study that issues in mere reproduction leaves children largely in a passive state, for it crowds out for the time being the thoughts they would otherwise have had. In games, however, and in the free play of fancy, and accordingly also in that kind of instruction which finds an echo here, free activity predominates.
This distinction is not intended to affirm the existence of two compartments in which the ideas, separated once for all, would, of necessity, have to remain. Ideas that must by effort be raised into consciousness because they do not rise spontaneously, may become spontaneous by gradual strengthening. But this development we cannot count on unless instruction, advancing step by step, bring it about.
Interest must be conceived as self-propulsive activity toward an end. It is a part of the teacher’s function to assist the pupil in making the appropriate ideas strong and spontaneous. Occasionally a mere suggestion will change the whole mental attitude toward an end and the means for reaching it. A student one day approached his instructor with this query: “How can I get through this study with the least expenditure of time and effort?” The desired answer was first given. The instructor then remarked that there was another way of viewing the matter, viz., that one might consider how to get the most rather than the least out of the study. He then briefly unfolded its nature and possibilities, whereupon the student became one of the most interested members of the class. He had come with only an indirect interest in the subject as an end; he regarded the study as a required task and the means of passing upon it as so much drudgery; but he so changed his attitude toward it, that the study became an end personally desired, and the daily effort a pleasurable exercise of his self-directed power of thought. The interest that the instructor had aroused in the end was transferred to the means.
[72.] It is the teacher’s business, while giving instruction, to observe whether the ideas of his pupils rise spontaneously or not. If they do, the pupils are said to be attentive; the lesson has won their interest. If not, attention is, indeed, not always wholly gone. It may, moreover, be enforced for a time before actual fatigue sets in. But doubt arises whether instruction can effect a future interest in the same subjects.
Attention is a factor of such importance to education as to call for a more detailed treatment.
[73.] Attention may be broadly defined as an attitude of mind in which there is readiness to form new ideas. Such readiness is either voluntary or involuntary. If voluntary, it depends on a resolution; the teacher frequently secures this through admonitions or threats. Far more desirable and fruitful is involuntary attention. It is this attention that the art of teaching must seek to induce. Herein lies the kind of interest to be sought by the teacher.
Forced and spontaneous are more truly expressive terms than voluntary and involuntary in this connection. It is not meant that interested activity is against the will, or even indifferent to it. On the contrary, it is a form of activity that calls every resource of the mind into full play. The will is never so promptly active as when it is doing the things in which it is most interested; it is, however, a spontaneous, not a forced activity.