In the principle of motivation lies the most successful solution of the problem of interest in teaching. We have too long persisted in the "sugarcoating" conception of interest. We have regarded it as a process of "making agreeable." Interest has therefore been looked upon as a fictitious element introduced into teaching merely to inveigle the mind of the student into a consideration of what we are offering it. Our modern psychology teaches a truer conception of interest: a feeling accompanying self-expression. Interest has been defined as a feeling of worth in experience. Where this feeling of worth is aroused, the individual expresses his activity to attain the end that he perceives. Every act, every effort, to attain this end is accompanied by a distinctive feeling known as interest. When a class is quiet and gives itself to the teacher, it is obedient and polite, but not necessarily interested. The class that looks tolerantly at the stereopticon views that the instructor presents, or listens to the reading of the professor of English, is amused but not necessarily interested. But when the students ask questions about the pictures or ask the professor of English for further references, then have we evidence of real interest. Interest is, therefore, an active attitude toward life's experience. Rational motivation is almost a guarantee of this active attitude of interest.
Intelligent motivation in teaching has far-reaching values for both student and teacher. It stirs interest and guarantees attention and thus tends to keep aroused the activity of the students. It establishes an end toward which all effort of teacher and student must bend. It enables the student to follow a line of thought more intelligently, and occasionally to anticipate conclusions. For the teacher it serves as a standard, in terms of which he reorganizes his subject matter, judges the value of each topic, and omits socially useless matter which has too long been retained in the course in the fond hope that it will in some way develop the mind.
Beginning at the point of contact
The instructor who strives to motivate the subject matter he teaches usually begins with that phase of the subject which is most intimately related to the student's life and environment. Every subject worth teaching crosses the student's life at some point. The contacts between pupil and subject afford the most natural and the most effective starting points in the teaching of any subject.
The subject matter in a college course is too frequently so organized that it presents points of discrepancy between itself and the student. To the college student life is not classified and systematized to a nicety. Experiences occur in more or less accidental but natural sequence. Scientific classification is the product of a mature mind possessing mastery of a given portion of the field of knowledge. To thrust the student, who is just finding his way in a new course, into a thoroughly scientific classification of a subject, is to present in the introduction what should come in the conclusion.
Many a student taking his introductory course in psychology begins with a definition of the subject, its relation to all social and physical sciences, and its classification. All these are aspects of the subject which the mind conversant with it sees clearly and understands thoroughly, but which the inexperienced student accepts merely because the facts are printed in his textbook. The youthful mind is concerned with the present and with the immediate environment. Too many of our college courses, in the initial stages, transport the student into the realm of theory or into the distant past. The student cannot orientate himself in this new environment and is soon lost on the highways and byways of classification; to him the subject becomes a study of words rather than of vital ideas. Why must the introductory course in philosophy begin with the ancient philosophers, and give the major part of the term to the study of dead philosophers and their theories long since refuted and discarded, while vital modern philosophic thought is crowded into the last few sessions of the semester?
Illustrations of maxim. Begin at the point of contact
The pedagogical significance of beginning at the point of contact can best be understood and appreciated by illustrations of actual teaching conditions. Most initial courses in economics begin by positing that economics is the science of the consumption, distribution, and production of wealth. The student is told that in earlier systems of economics production was studied as the initial economic process, but that the more modern view makes consumption the starting process. All this the student takes on faith. He does not really see its bearings and its implications; he is as unconcerned with the new formulation as he is with the old; he feels at once far removed from economics. The succeeding lessons study economic laws with little reference to the economic life that the student lives. In a later chapter he learns a definition of wages, the forces that determine wage, and the mode of computing the share of the total produce that must go to wages.
Here we have a course that does not begin at the point of contact, that presents the very discrepancies between itself and the student that were noted before. How can we overcome them? By proceeding psychologically. The instructor refers to two or three important wage disputes in current industrial life; these conflicts are analyzed; the contending demands are studied, and the forces controlling the adoption of a new wage scale are noted. After this study of actual economic conditions the students are led to formulate their own definition of wages, and to discover the forces that determine wage. Their conclusions are of course tentative. The textbook or textbooks are consulted in order to verify the formulations and the conclusions of the class. Thus the course is developed entirely through a series of contacts with economic life. The final topic in the course is the formulation of a definition of economics. Now the class sums up all that it has seen and learned of economics during the year. The cold and empty definition now glows with meaning. Such a course awakens an intelligent interest in economic life; it develops a mode of thought in social sciences and a sense of self-reliance; it teaches the student that all conclusions are tentative and constantly subject to verification; it fosters a critical attitude toward printed text.
The college graduate who studied college mathematics, advanced algebra, trigonometry, analytical geometry, and calculus, looks back with satisfaction at work completed. Each of these subjects seemed to have little or no relation to the other; each was kept in a water-tight compartment. He remembers few, if any, of the formulæ, equations, and symbols. He recalls vividly his admiration of the author's ingenious method of deriving equations. Every succeeding theorem, formula, or equation was another puzzle in a subject which seemed to be composed of a series of difficult, unrelated, and unapplied mathematical proofs. The course ended, the mass of data was soon obliterated from the mind's active possessions.