Interest and education; the doctrine of interest and its concrete application

Front matter

Book-J]J2L

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT

Interest is the greatest loord in Education.

Preface

The purpose of this volume is to make a concrete application of the doctrine of interest to the matter and methods of education.

So long as mere training of the intelligence through drill upon the school arts, such as reading, spelling, grammar, and arithmetic, is regarded as the chief function of the elementary school, there is small need for any specific doctrine of interest. One naturally refrains from being tedious in instruction when one might just as well be interesting, precisely for the same reason that one does not willingly appear unkempt or ill dressed in society. But to sharpen the intellect, all we have to do is to keep it alert by drilling it and by occupying it with the solution of problems of steadily increasing difficulty. Such work does not necessitate any glowing enthusiasm; it needs only steady application. It is not strange, therefore,

Viii PREFACE

that to those who conceive the sole end and aim of instruction to be the development of the intellect, the term ' interest ' is not a word to conjure with.

Is it certain, however, that instruction should confine itself to one aspect of the mind ? Besides intelligence the child has feelings and volition. His feelings involve the group of mental states that we call instinct, impulse, emotion, desire, interest, pleasure, pain, etc. Moreover, his volitions are intimately connected with his feelings. May it not be that to establish desirable permanent mental attitudes toward men and their institutions and toward Nature and her living creatures is one of the choicest opportunities, not to say most imperative duties, of the school ? Yet one's view of the world, one's hospitalit}^ or hostility respecting the order of things, is far more a matter of feeling than of intelligence. Why does a church desire to have the spiritual nurture of children committed to its care ? Surely not to drill their intellects, but rather to influence their feelings, to fix in desirable and permanent form their attitude toward God and man and

PREFACE IX

the church. Why do schools in the slums of New York have the children salute the flag and sing patriotic songs ? It is to secure that love of country which marks the good citizen. Is it not as important in every other field of training that the feelings of children should be tenderly nourished and properly directed, that abiding enthusiasms should be awakened in them, that their attitude toward men and things should not only be lighted by intelligence, but warmed by the glow of feeling ?

When feeling as well as intellect is to be included in education, it is necessary that instruction should involve more than mental drill ; it must include also such bodies of ideas as the feelings can cling to; it must impart knowledge capable of arousing enthusiasm; it must reveal nature and social institutions in such manner that desirable and permanent disposition toward them may be developed. If we wait for life itself to form the disposition, too much is left to accident. Misfortune or mistake may easily embitter and harden the heart ; whereas, had proper mental attitudes been formed during the school period, the individual would have

X PKEFACE

had a saner outlook. We must not make sweetness and light in life depend upon shrewdness or good fortune; it should emanate from the inmost depths of the soul.

Again, mental attitude toward the world has its outcome in volition, since conduct is the legitimate conclusion of desire and interest. This brings instruction into line with the development of the whole mind, and greatly extends the influence of the school in the formation of character. The old-time reliance upon inhibition of undesirable tendencies in the training of the will has a certain warrant that will endure, since negation and prohibition are necessary elements in the proper training of the young. But the affirmative, or positive, side of character-forming is still more important; for, as we cultivate disposition through intelligence, so we shape character through disposition.

All this means that we need a body of instruction in which interest and volition may take root, and a doctrine of interest capable of being applied to the subject matter of instruction.

PREFACE XI

But interest, enthusiasm, mental attitude, and volitional habits are not the creation of a day ; they are the growth of years. For this reason, methods of teaching have a powerful influence in generating and developing them. The doctrine of interest, therefore, finds its application in the field of methods as well as in that of knowdedge.

The second, third, and fourth sections of this book are little more than restatements of the doctrine of interest advanced by Dr. Dewey, to whom the volume is inscribed. Considerable portions of Sections VI and VII have been printed, the former in The School and Home Journal and the latter in G-unton^s Blagazine. Several of the sections on Method owe much of their content and order to Baumeister's Handhuch, The author has received many helpful suggestions from Mr. Thomas D. Bolger, both in the revision of manuscript and in the correction of proofs.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. How Interest arises among Primitive

Men 1

II A More Fundamental Conception Of Interest

It might be thought that the presence of objects is enough to arouse interest in them. Yet if this were true, it is difficult to see why the same objects should arouse interest in some and aversion in others, while still others may remain indifferent. Evidently the objects, at least among primitive men, would have to have some perceived relation to survival. It did not take the American Indian long to become interested in firearms, so intimately were these seen to be related to his survival, whether game or enemies were considered. But even to this day the uncivilized Indian remains indifferent to agricultural machinery.

On the other hand, it might be thought that the mind through its own activity creates ideals of objects and then becomes interested in them. 11

But this ignores the function of instinctive action to secure survival, as in the case of fear or hunger, the mating instinct, and the like. Each of these suppositions is one-sided. A more adequate conception of the group of psychical states known as impulse, desire, interest, volition, is that the self is seeking through its own activity to express or realize itself. At first this effort at self-expression is, as we have seen, merely a doing of the things that lead to physical survival. But as life broadens, and something more than food and clothing becomes necessary for those forms of survival that we prize, the field for self-active expression constantly widens, so that, with the growth of new ideals, new motives to action appear, new interests absorb the mind. In other words, the interest that was once instinctive becomes conscious, and is directed by intelligence.

The idea of self-expression is of far-reaching significance, both for the development of the individual mind, and for the development of civilization itself. Our instincts and impulses are products of heredity. Long ages of struggle

FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTION OF INTEREST 13

for existence have implanted in us the resultants, so to speak, of the qualities of mind that have in the past been necessary for survival. One set of impulses pertains to food, another to the avoidance of dangers, another to the perpetuation of the race. To these primitive impulses leading to survival, we add many others from the higher aspects of human life, like curiosity to know, response to beauty, reverence for what is good and noble. Many of the impulses that were forhierly useful in securing survival are now unimportant, and may properly be ignored. This is especially true of our fears. Dr. G. Stanley Hall has discovered that children are subject to some 298 fears, most of which relate to bodily preservation. It is needless to say that under the conditions of modern civilization most of these fears are groundless, and should be overcome. " What casts out fear ? " asks Dr. Hall ; "love, which is the opposite. Children fear night, trees, thunder and lightning, bugs and snakes, and many other objects of nature. Teach them to love these things, that is, to feel an interest in them. When we have love

14 INTEKEST AND EDUCATION

distributed over all things in the world that are worthy of being loved, then we have education."

Professor Davidson ^ conceives education to be the process of transforming the original nature of man into his ideal nature. According to this view, the history of mankind is no more than the record of different races in this process of development. In his original nature, a man would, perhaps, not differ from a lion in the general purpose of his self-expression ; he would be fierce in his aggression when seeking food ; he would be playful when comfortable, angry when crossed in his natural desires ; in short, he would be merely one of many in a struggle for existence in which the welfare of the one might mean the detriment of the others. But in realizing his ideal nature, a man transforms this original selfish struggle for his individual welfare into cooperative activities in which he best conserves his own welfare by taking thought for that of others. In short, he transfers his activities from an

1 See Introduction to "The Education of the Greek People," D. Appleton & Co.

FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTION OF INTEREST 15

animal to a social economy. Even primitive men, like the Eskimo, work together for common ends. This social economy in its highest expression involves all that we know by the name of industrial cooperation, education, ethics, altruism, and religion. Whatever the individual does, therefore, he does to realize or express some aspect of himself. This mental activity, taking root first in the instincts and impulses of the physical nature, and developing into conscious desire for the realization of certain ends, is at bottom nothing but the effort to express self in accordance with the varying ideals implanted by physical nature or developed by growing insight into the ideal nature of the man.

The complexity of this idea of self-expression is seen when we consider the multiplicity of the ends with which a man may identify himself. Every man has many selves: he is a hierarchy of me's, as Professor James ^ calls him. " In its widest possible sense," he says, " a man's Me is the sum total of all that he can call his, not only his body and his psychic powers, but 1 See "Psychology, Briefer Course," pp. 176-216.

ills clothes and his house, his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works, his lands and horses, his yacht and bank account. All these things give him the same emotions. If they wax and prosper, he feels triumphant; if they dwindle and die, he feels cast down, not necessarily in the same degree for each thing, but in much the same way for all." Each man is at once a material me, a social me, and a spiritual me, and when he is working for any phase of any one of these, we may say that he is expressing himself. When these selves come into competition, as, for instance, when a man must decide which he will satisfy first, his own appetite or that of his children, we may still say that he is expressing himself, no matter which aspect of himself may prevail, and notwithstanding the fact that we discriminate between his higher and his lower self. Professor James says again, with respect to the rivalry and conflict of the different me's: "With most objects of desire, physical nature restricts our choice to but one of the many represented goods, and even so it is here. I am often confronted by the necessity of stand-

FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTION OF INx^REST 17

ing by one of my empirical selves and relinquishing the rest. Not that I would not, if I could, be both handsome and fat, and well dressed, and a great athlete, and make a million a year ; be a wit, a hon vivant^ and a lady-killer, as well as a philosopher; a philanthropist, statesman, warrior, and African explorer, as well as a 'tone-poet' and saint. But the thing is simply impossible. The millionnaire's work would run counter to the saint's ; the ho7i vivant and the philanthropist would trip each other up; the philosopher and the lady-killer could not well keep house in the same tenement of clay. Such different characters may conceivably at the outset of life be alike possible to man. But to make any one of them actual, the rest must more or less be suppressed. So the seeker of his truest, strongest, deepest self must review the list carefully, and pick out the one on which to stake his salvation. All other selves thereupon become unreal, but the fortunes of this self are real. Its failures are real failures, its triumphs real triumphs, carrying shame and gladness with them."

It will be seen from the foregoing that the idea of self-expression is as broad as the conception of self. The essential point is that the activity in which we are interested proceeds from within. Its source is internal ; its expression is outgoing. With the Eskimo the cycle — energy, goods, consumption, more energy — pertains to the things that preserve his physical existence ; with an artist the cycle — energy, artistic production, sesthetic satisfaction, renewed energy — pertains to a higher aspect of the self, which may emerge when the lower is provided for. Let the artist become hungry and cold, or shabby in dress, however, and he will revert to the cycle of the Eskimo, even though he hunts a customer rather than a seal.

j We may say in general that interest is a feeling that accompanies the idea of self-expression. It has its origin in the^' exhilaration, the sense of power, of mastery, that goes with every internally impelled effort to realize a condition for the survival of the self, whether such survival touch one aspect of the man or another. Interest is therefore dynamic in char-

FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTION OF INTEREST 19

acter. It has its primary root in inherited impulse. We have impulses to eat, to run, to hunt, to work, to talk, to play, to avoid dangers, to seek pleasures. But these impulses with modern men, as with primitive peoples, are always directed toward some object, in the approach of which we find the realization of some aspect of our mental or physical being. There is, as Dr. Dewey says, no break between the impulse and the self ; for the impulse is nothing more than an involuntary, and perhaps almost unconscious, effort at self-expression.

Ill

THE OBJECT OF INTEREST

In primitive life the object of interest stands in close relation to the conditions for survival, and so standing is unmistakable. But it is just as plain that in our own daily life interest must have an object toward which the self 'Strives. The artist is interested indeed in his own artistic result, the picture ; but he is likewise interested in everything that contributes to the result, — his brushes, his paints and their mixing, his canvas, the light in his study, the pose of his model. He is, in short, interested in every object or act that pertains to his self-realization as an artist in the particular picture upon which he happens to be working. It is not art in general, the mere idea of art as an abstraction, that chains his attention, but the actual ends which he sets before himself, and the means which he conceives as necessary to the accomplishment of

THE OBJECT OF INTEREST 21

these ends. These are all definite objects to which his interest attaches. The business man is not interested in abstractions, but in the quantity and quality of goods, in the markets, the supply, the demand, how his goods compare in quality and price with those of his neighbors, how he can attract trade by giving or seeming to give the most possible for a certain price. The clergyman is interested in his congregation, in the individual souls whose eternal welfare he would promote, in his church, his pulpit, his salary, his sermon. This is necessarily true, for it is the object alone that gives meaning to the activity. The self does not run like an empty mill, producing nothing, seeking no product ; but it is the object which shows to consciousness the quality of the impulse. It gives meaning to the activity. Impulse itself is said to be blind; it is the object that helps to make it intelligent. We must not make the error of supposing that the object comes first, thus calling the activity into being. The artist's materials would not interest the physician. He would regard them as so much rubbish, obstacles, perhaps, to self-expression. Nor would a case of surgical instruments, as such, interest the artist. As contemplated, they probably would be regarded with indifference. If by mistake they were substituted for his own implements, they would be regarded as obstacles to self-expression, hence with aversion. His only interest in them would be to remove them. But the thought of self-expression comes first; then the artist's materials are objects of interest to him because aids to self-expression. The thought of relieving suffering by surgical operations is the conception the surgeon has of liis own self-realization, and his instruments as aids to such realization become at once objects of interest. A toy to a child is a matter of indifference except as it aids him to realize some form of self-expression in his play. It then becomes a means to enable him to realize himself in play, and as such, is an object of interest.

Thus far the situations that have been instanced have all been direct, or immediate, in character. In the case of the Eskimo spearing a walrus, or the artist moulding a statue, the object pursued has been one of intimate, con-

THE OBJECT OF INTEREST 23

Crete self-expression in the struggle for existence, — in the one case physical, in the other artistic. But in the school the object sought often seems wofully remote from any analogous self-expression on the part of the pupil. The learning of a grammar lesson or the translation of a Latin sentence may seem as remote from real life as self-denial now is from heaven hereafter. It may not seem to the pupil that he is doing this work for himself. He may feel no inner need, no impulse to self-expression, that urges him on to accomplishment. The fact that the school period has not been regarded as a part of life, but rather as a preparation for subsequent life, has led to the view that study performs a purely instrumental function, that it simply prepares the pupil to do something in the future.

This gap between the impulse to self-expression and the realization of it in any way the pupil can understand, has, in conjunction with some of our inherited notions about the effort essential to work, led to two antithetic theories of the means to be adopted to get the work done. One theory, that of effort, maintains that the sheer dead lift of will is the only sure means of getting the child to the goal, and the only way whereby his mind can be trained to do the hard things that are sure to confront him in later life. The other theory, that of pleasurable excitation, holds that it is only by making the object interesting that the mind will work freely and without constraint. The advocate of effort would drive his pupil to the object to be accomplished; that of pleasure would allure him to it. The one would compel, the other coax. Dr. Dewey has portrayed at length the arguments pro and con for these two theories under the guise of an educational lawsuit, in his monograph on " Interest as related to Will." ^

There is a common error underlying the two antithetic doctrines that effort on the one hand and mere pleasure on the other should be the motives to action. The error lies in ignoring the conception that all effort for the realization of an end is an effort at self-expression, and in assuming that it is an effort to attain some object quite external to 1 University of Cliicago Press.

THE OBJECT OF INTEREST 25

the self. It is evident that, if the object is thus external to the self, it must be made interesting if pleasure is to be an exciting cause of activity, or effort must be expended if the object is to be attained without such pleasurable excitation. As Dr. Dewey points out, when either effort alone or pleasure alone is made the motive to action, there is necessarily a divided attention in the pupil. In the case of effort, there is mechanical attention to the matter in hand sufficient to satisfy the teacher, or perhaps to attain the end; but there is accompanying this mechanical attention a mind-wandering in accordance with the subjective interests that may be present at the time. The boy may be apparently attending to his lesson either in recitation or in study, and at the same time have a running consciousness of ball games, hunting or fishing, or gathering nuts or making windmills or water-wheels, or whatever form of amusement may happen to be present to his thoughts. His mind thus alternates between his pleasures and the mechanical activity aroused by the teacher's demands. On the other hand, if an object is external to the self-expression of the child, another teacher may seek to secure his attention to it by making the object pleasurable. The object has to be made interesting, but the attention aroused is not due to true interest. ■ It is due rather to a transient pleasurable excitement. Baldwin says that, whereas interests are stimuli to voluntary attention, 'affects' are stimuli to involuntary attention. When, objects have to be made interesting, it is evident that the involuntary attention is appealed to. The activity is not truly one of self-expression, though it may be very intense for the time being. As soon as the excitation ceases, attention and interest flag, so that there is a sort of oscillation between excitement and apathy. In the case of effort, the divided attention is simultaneous; in the other, it is successive, being an alternation of alert attention and indifference. The conception of working to attain ends as a manifestation of self-expression completely solves these difficulties, whether they are of a merely practical or of a psychological nature. If the object is external to the self, then the mind may, like a top, be

THE OBJECT OF INTEREST 2T

whipped into activity by pleasurable excitement or by painful anticipation. In either case, we have a serious split in the activity of the mind itself. But if the attainment of an end is truly an expression of self, even of the self temporarily or unworthily conceived, then we can find in interest a complete reconciliation of the antithesis between effort and allurement. For a genuine interest is nothing but the feeling that accompanies this identification of the self through action with some object or idea. In this case, effort becomes the result of interest, and interest becomes the consciousness of the value of the end and of the means necessary to reach it.

IV The Personal Or Subjective Side Of Interest 1

1. Intey^est a Feeling of Worth. — Interest, it has already been said, is a feeling. This, like all feelings, is not to be defined. It is only to be felt. More precisely, it is a feeling of the worth, to the self, of an end to be attained. The subjective side of the artist's interest is the constant feeling that self-expression in the form of art is of value to him. Perhaps it is regarded as the greatest thing in the world. All professional interest on its subjective side involves this same feeling of worth. To mend the broken law is the greatest thing in the world to the lawyer ; to mend the broken body is the most worthy form of self-expression to the physician ; to heal the broken and contrite heart, to mend the broken moral law,

1 This section and, in a measure, the two preceding sections are a restatement of Dr. Dewey's theory of interest. (See his " Interest as related to Will.") 28 to save the souls of the perishing, is the most worthy thing of all to the minister. To the politician, interest in politics is a sense of worth to the self arising from party service. To the statesman, to serve one's country is the noblest form of self-expression. To the soldier, self-expression in the form of courageous deeds may go to the extent of self-extinction. The sense of worth in this form of self-expression may exceed the worth even of life itself.

2. Immediate vs. mediate interest. — We need at this point to make a further subdivision of the subject according as the ends and means of expression coincide in time or not. In all cases of immediate interest, there is no break between the end of self-expression and the act of self-expression, for the act is the end and the end is the act. The best illustration of this is perhaps play. Every child has a natural impulse to realize itself in this form of activity. So universal is the instinct of play, that it is common to the young of almost all animals, as well as to children. There is no thought here of effort, and no thought of pleasure, for the activity is the end in itself. When a game is over, the end is accomplished, the self has been expressed, the pleasure has been experienced. Although children put forth great effort in their play and experience great pleasure in it, yet we can easily see that the end and the means coincide in time; that they fuse the one into the other, so that it is only by a logical analysis that we can distinguish the end from the means. There are forms, moreover, of sesthetic enjoyment in which the same thing is true. To an observer, the end of the music is the hearing of the music. The purpose of a picture is the enjoyment of its contemplation. It is conceivable, of course, that one might listen to music for the sake of imitating it, that one might study a picture in order to copy it; but in all cases of contemplative enjoyment of art, the end and the means likewise fuse. They coincide in time and are only to be distinguished in thought.

In most cases, especially in educational activities, the end and the means do not coincide in time. The realizing of self in a given end, as in the possession of material objects or the acquisition of knowledge, is usually an extended process. In the case of the sculptor, the self must be mediated with the end to be attained by a series of exercises, before the perfect statue can be produced. There must be a long series of activities intervening between the idea of the end and its realization. The figure must be modelled in clay and then chiselled out from the marble. So, in the school, the task set before the pupil can be accomplished only by a series of intervening activities. It is at this point that the one-sided theories about interest and effort appear. One party, thinking only of the emotional side, identifies pleasure with interest; the other, thinking only of the intellectual phase, identifies volition with effort. It is evident, moreover, that education is chiefly concerned with the doctrine of mediate interests. Whenever the object to be attained is a reality only as an idea, the end and the means necessarily fall apart. It is at this point that we come to the distinction between drudgery and work.

3. Drudgery and Work. — The mind must have some sort of interest in the thought of realizing itself, or expressing itself by attaining a certain end, whether that end pertain to physical well-being or aesthetic satisfaction or intellectual attainment. But the object to be attained being only an idea, it is evident that self-expression requires a series of intervening activities. If the interest in the end alone remains and no interest attaches to the means, then we have drudgery. If, however, the interest attaching to the end is present also in the means for reaching the end, then we have work. It is conceivable that the workman may have great interest in the dollar he is to receive for his day's wages, and yet be indifferent to, or detest, the labor itself, which is the means for reaching the dollar. In this case we would have drudgery. Many forms of routine work conform to this idea. The housewife may grow sick of the drudgery of washing dishes, of sweeping floors, of mending garments; for, though the end to be attained is seen to be a necessary and desirable one, the interest naturally attaching to the end to be attained is often not attached to the means for attaining it. A workman in a modern factory may spend eight hours a day, year in, year out, in turning a piece of iron into a certain shape. Though he may have an interest in the perfect bicycle which is to be produced or in winning his daily bread, it is conceivable that he should have no interest in this dull routine of labor, which would then partake of the nature of pure drudgery. In the same way, a pupil may have a direct or an indirect interest in learning a grammar lesson, or solving a problem in arithmetic, or performing any other one of the school duties, yet have no interest at all in the means for accomplishing this phase of self-expression. School work to such a one is drudgery.