INTEREST AND EFFORT
IN EDUCATION

BY
JOHN DEWEY

PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY




HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

BOSTON, NEW YORK AND CHICAGO

Cbe fliterdiDc prc^ <ambribQe



COPYRIGHT, 1913, HY JOHN DEWEY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED



The opening paragraphs of the following essay
follow closely the author s monograph on In
terest as Related to Willie the First Year Book
of the National Herbart Society. The author is
indebted to the Society for permission to use this
material.




MBRIDGR . MASSACHUSETTS
U . S . A



CONTENTS

EDITOR S INTRODUCTION v

I. UNIFIED VERSUS DIVIDED ACTIVITY . . i

II. INTEREST AS DIRECT AND INDIRECT . . 16

III. EFFORT, THINKING, AND MOTIVATION. . 46

IV. TYPES OF EDUCATIVE INTEREST .... 65
V. THE PLACE OF INTEREST IN THE THEORY

OF EDUCATION 90

OUTLINE 97



EDITOR S INTRODUCTION

IT is a pleasant privilege to present the following
monograph to the profession and the public, for
there is no discussion which is more fundamental
to the interpretation and reform of current teach
ing than this statement of the functions of inter
est and effort in education. Its active acceptance
by ^teachers would bring about a complete trans
formation of classroom methods. Its appreciation
by the patrons of the schools would greatly
modify current criticism of the various programs
of educational reform. The worth of this pre
sentation is well summarized in the statement
that, if teachers and parents could know inti
mately only one treatise on educational proce
dure, it is greatly to be doubted that any other
could be found which would, within small com
pass, so effectively direct them to the points of
view, the attitudes of mind, and the methods of
work which are essential to good teaching.
By good teaching we here mean that provision
v



EDITOR S INTRODUCTION

of school experience wherein the child is whole
heartedly active in acquiring the ideas and skill
needed to deal with the problems of his expand
ing life. That our present instruction falls far
short of this standard must be obvious to all who
are not blinded by their professional adherence
to narrow scholastic measures of efficiency, or
by their loyal appreciation of the great contribu
tions already made by schools in spite of their de
fects. Somehow our teaching has not attracted
children to the school and its work. Too many
children leave school as soon as the law allows.
Too many pupils, still within the compulsory
attendance age, are retarded one, two, or more
grades. Too many of the able and willing of mind
are only half-engrossed with their school tasks.
And of; those who emerge from the schools, duly
certified, too many are skillful merely in an outer
show of information and manners which gives
no surety that the major part of their inner im
pulses are capable of rational and easy self-direc
tion. For a long time we have tolerated these
conditions in the belief that economic pressure
drives the poor out of school, and that the stu-
vi



EDITOR S INTRODUCTION

pidity or perversity of children accounts for their
retardation and their half-heartedness. But re
cent investigations have made us skeptical of
these easy defenses. The pressure of poverty
does not seem to be so great an influence on the
elimination of pupils as that attitude of child
and parent which doubts the worth of further
schooling. And we find that many children,
whom we have considered backward or perverse,
are merely bored by the unappealing tasks and
formalities of school life. The major difficulty
with our schools is that they have not adequately
enlisted the interests and energies of children in
school work. Good teaching, the teaching of the
future, will make school life vital to youth. In so
doing it will not lose sight of the demands and
needs of an adult society ; it will serve them
better in that it will have a fuller cooperation
of the children.

A single illustration will suffice to show how
completely we may fall short of realizing public
purposes in education if we fail to center our at
tention on the fundamental function and nature
of the learning process,
vii



EDITOR S INTRODUCTION

At the present hour we are very deeply con
cerned with the universal education of youth.
To this end we have established a compulsory
school attendance age, forbidden child labor, and
provided administrative machinery for executing
these legal guarantees of the rights of children.
Yet, a guarantee of school attendance will never
of itself fulfill the purposes of state education.
The parent and the attendance officer, reinforced
by the police power of the state, can guarantee
only one thing, the physical presence of the
child at school. It is left to the teacher to insure
his mental attendance by a sound appeal to his
active interests. A child s character, knowledge,
and skill are not reconstructed by sitting in a
room where events happen. Events must Jiappen
to him, in a way to bring a full and interested
response. It is altogether possible for the child
to be present physically, yet absent mentally.
He may be indifferent to school life, or his mind
may be focused on something remote from the
classroom. In either case he is not attending ;
he does not react to what occurs. The teacher
has not created an experience for him ; she has
viii



EDITOR S INTRODUCTION

not changed the child at all. Yet society has
guaranteed him freedom from industrial exploita
tion and provided a school system for one pur
pose, that he should be changed from an im
mature child with meager knowledge and power
into a responsible citizen competent to deal force
fully with the intricacies of modern life.

Our whole policy of compulsory education rises
or falls with our ability to make school life an
interesting and absorbing experience to the child.
In one sense there is no such thing as compul
sory education. We can have compulsory phy
sical attendance at school ; but education comes
only through willing attention to and participa
tion in school activities. It follows that the
teacher must select these activities with refer
ence to the child s interests, powers, and capaci
ties. In no other way can she guarantee that the
child will be present. The evil of the elimination
of pupils cannot be solved simply by raising the
compulsory school age ; or that of retardation by
promoting a given percentage of pupils regard
less of standards of grading; or that of half
hearted work by increasing the emphasis upon
ix



EDITOR S INTRODUCTION

authority, uniformity, coercion, drill, and ex
amination. The final solution is to be found in a
better quality of teaching, one which will absorb
children because it gives purpose and spirit to
learning.



INTEREST AND EFFORT IN
EDUCATION



UNIFIED VERSUS DIVIDED ACTIVITY

IN the educational lawsuit of interest versus effort,
let us consider the respective briefs of plaintiff and
defendant. In behalf of interest it is claimed that
it is the sole guarantee of attention ; if we can
secure interest in a given set of facts or ideas, we
may be perfectly sure that the pupil will direct
his energies toward mastering them ; if we can
secure interest in a certain moral train or line
of conduct, we are equally safe in assuming
that the child s activities are responding in that
direction ; if we have not secured interest, we
have no safeguard as to what will be done in any
given case. As a matter of fact, the doctrine of
discipline has not succeeded. It is absurd to sup
pose that a child gets more intellectual or men
tal discipline when he goes at a matter unwill-
i



INTEREST AND EFFORT

ingly than when he goes at it out of the fullness
of his heart. The theory of effort simply says
that unwilling attention (doing something dis
agreeable because it is disagreeable) should take
precedence over spontaneous attention.

Practically the appeal to sheer effort amounts
to nothing. When a child feels that his work is
a task, it is only under compulsion that he gives
himself to it. At every let-up of external pressure
his attention, released from constraint, flies to
what interests him. The child brought up on
the basis of "effort" acquires marvelous skill
in appearing to be occupied with an uninterest
ing subject, while the real heart of his ener
gies is otherwise engaged. Indeed, the theory
contradicts itself. It is psychologically impos
sible to call forth any activity without some in
terest. The theory of effort simply substitutes
one interest for another. It substitutes the im
pure interest of fear of the teacher or hope of
future reward for pure interest in the material
presented. The type of character induced is that
illustrated by Emerson at the beginning of his
essay on Compensation, where he holds up the

2



UNIFIED VERSUS DIVIDED ACTIVITY

current doctrine of compensation as implying
that, if you only sacrifice yourself enough now,
you will be permitted to indulge yourself a great
deal more in the future ; or, if you are only good
now (goodness consisting in attention to what is
uninteresting) you will have, at some future time,
a great many more pleasing interests that is,
may then be bad.

While the theory of effort is always holding
up to us a strong, vigorous character as the out
come of its method of education, practically we
do not get such a character. We get either the
narrow, bigoted man who is obstinate and irre
sponsible save in the line of his own preconceived
aims and beliefs ; or elsea character dull, mechani
cal, unalert, because the vital juice of spontane
ous interest has been squeezed out.

We may now hear the defendant s case. Life,
says the other theory, is full of things not inter
esting that have to be faced. Demands are con
tinually made, situations have to be dealt with,
which present no features of interest. Unless
one has had previous training in devoting him
self to uninteresting work, unless habits have
3



INTEREST AND EFFORT

been formed of attending to matters simply be
cause they must be attended to irrespective of
the personal satisfaction they afford, character
will break down or avoid the issue when con
fronted with the serious matters of life. Life is
not a merely pleasant affair, or a continual satis
faction of personal interests. There must be such
continual exercise of effort in the performance of
tasks as to form the habit of dealing with the
real labors of life. Anything else eats out the
fiber of character and leaves a wishy-washy,
colorless being ; a state of moral dependence,
with continual demand for amusement and dis
traction.

Apart from the question of the future, con
tinually to appeal even in childhood days to the
principle of interest is eternally to excite, that
is, distract the child. Continuity of activity is
destroyed. Everything is made play, amusement.
This means over-stimulation ; it means dissipa
tion of energy. Will is never called into action.
The reliance is upon external attractions and
amusements. Everything is sugar-coated for the
child, and he soon learns to turn from everything
4



UNIFIED VERSUS DIVIDED ACTIVITY

that is not artificially surrounded with diverting
circumstances. The spoiled child who does only
what he likes is an inevitable outcome.

The theory is intellectually as well as morally
harmful. Attention is never directed to the es
sential and important facts, but simply to the
attractive wrappings with which the facts are
surrounded. If a fact is repulsive or uninterest
ing, it has to be faced in its own naked character
sooner or later. Putting a fringe of fictitious in
terest around it does not bring the child any
nearer to it than he was at the outset. The fact
that two and two make four is a naked fact which
has to be mastered in and of itself. The child
gets no greater hold upon the fact by having at
tached to it amusing stories of birds or dande
lions than if the simple naked fact were presented
to him. It is self-deception to suppose that the
child is being interested in the numerical rela
tion. His attention is going out to and taking in
only the amusing images associated with this re
lation. The theory thus defeats its own end. It
would be more straightforward to recognize at
the outset that certain facts having little or no
5



INTEREST AND EFFORT

interest, must be learned and that the only way
to deal with them is through effort, the power of
putting forth activity independently of any ex
ternal inducement. In this way only is the disci
pline, the habit of responding to.serious matters,
formed which is necessary for the life that lies
ahead of the child.

I have attempted to set forth the respective
claims of each side of the discussion. A little re
flection will convince us that the strong point in
each argument lies not so much in what it says in
its own behalf as in its attacks on the weak places
of the opposite theory. Each theory is strong in
its negations rather than in its position. It is
not unusual, though somewhat surprising, that
there is generally a common principle uncon
sciously assumed at the basis of two theories
which to all outward appearances are the extreme
opposites of each other. Such a common prin
ciple is found on the theories of effort and in
terest in the one-sided forms in which they have
already been stated.

The common assumption is that of the exter
nality of the object, idea, or end to be mastered
6



UNIFIED VERSUS DIVIDED ACTIVITY

to the self. Because the object or end is assumed
to be outside self it has to be made interest
ing ; to be surrounded with artificial stimuli and
with fictitious inducements to attention. Or, be
cause the object lies outside the sphere of self,
the sheer power of "will," the putting forth of
effort without interest, has to be appealed to.
The genuine principle of interest is the principle
of the recognized identity of the fact to be learned
or the action proposed with the growing self ; that
it lies in the direction of the agent s own growth,
and is, therefore, imperiously demanded, if the
agent is to be himself. Let this condition of iden
tification once be secured, and we have neither to
appeal to sheer strength of will, nor to occupy
ourselves with making things interesting.

The theory of effort means a virtual division
of attention and the corresponding disintegra
tion of character, intellectually and morally. The
great fallacy of the so-called effort theory is that
it identifies the exercise and training of mind
with certain external activities and certain ex
ternal results. It is supposed that, because a child
is occupied at some outward task and because
7



INTEREST AND EFFORT

he succeeds in exhibiting the required product,
that he is really putting forth will, and that
definite intellectual and moral habits are in pro
cess of formation. But, as a matter of fact, the
exercise of will is not found in the external as
sumption of any posture ; the formation of moral
habit cannot be identified with ability to show
up results at the demand of another. The exer
cise of will is manifest in the direction of atten
tion, and depends upon the spirit, the motive,
the disposition in which work is carried on.

A child may externally be entirely occupied
with mastering the multiplication table, and be
able to reproduce that table when asked to do so
by his teacher. The teacher may congratulate
himself that the child has been exercising his
will power so as to form right habits. Not so,
unless right habit be identified with this ability
to show certain results when required. The ques
tion of educative training has not been touched
until we know what the child has been internally
occupied with, what the predominating direction
of his attention, his feelings, his disposition has
been while he has been engaged upon this task.
8



UNIFIED VERSUS DIVIDED ACTIVITY

If the task appeals to him merely as a task, it
is as certain psychologically, as is the law of
action and reaction physically, that the child is
simply engaged in acquiring the habit of divided
attention ; that he is getting the ability to direct
eye and ear, lips and mouth, to what is present
before him so as to impress those things upon his
memory, while at the same time he is setting his
thoughts free to work upon matters of real in
terest to him.

No account of the educative training actually
secured is adequate unless it recognizes the di
vision of attention into which the child is being
educated, and faces the question of what the
worth of such a division may be. External me
chanical attention to a task as a task is inevitably
accompanied by random mind-wandering along
the lines of the pleasurable.

The spontaneous power of the child, his de
mand for realization of his own impulses, cannot
be suppressed. If the external conditions are
such that the child cannot put his activity into
the work to be done, he learns, in a most miracu
lous way, the exact amount of attention that has
9



INTEREST AND EFFORT

to be given to this external material to satisfy the
requirements of the teacher, while saving up the
rest of his powers for following out lines of sug
gestion that appeal to him. I do not say that
there is absolutely no moral training involved in
forming these habits of external attention, but I
say that there is also a question of moral import
as to the formation of habits of intellectual dissi
pation.

While we are congratulating ourselves upon
the well-disciplined habits which the pupil is ac
quiring (judged by his ability to reproduce a les
son when called upon) we forget to commiserate
ourselves because his deeper nature has secured
no discipline at all, but has been left to follow
its own caprices and the disordered suggestions of
the moment. I do not see how anyone can deny
that the training of habits of imagination and
lines of emotional indulgence is at least equally
important with the development of certain out
ward habits of action. For myself, when it comes
to the moral question, not merely to that of prac
tical convenience, I think it is infinitely more
important. Nor do I see how anyone at all famil-
10



UNIFIED VERSUS DIVIDED ACTIVITY

iar with the great mass of existing school work
can deny that the greater part of the pupils are
gradually forming habits of divided attention. If
the teacher is skillful and wide-awake, if she is
what is termed a good disciplinarian, the child
will indeed learn to keep his senses intent in cer
tain ways, but he will also learn to direct his
thoughts, which should be concentrated upon
subject matter if the latter is to be significant,
in quite other directions. It would not be wholly
palatable if we had to face the actual condition
of the majority of pupils that leave our schools.
We should find this division of attention and the
resulting disintegration so great that we might
cease teaching in sheer disgust. None the less,
it is well for us to recognize that this state of
things exists, and that it is the inevitable out
come of those conditions which exact the simu
lation of attention without securing its essence.
The principle of " making " objects and ideas
interesting implies the same divorce between
object and self. When things have to be made in
teresting, it is because interest itself is wanting.
Moreover, the phrase is a misnomer. The thing,
1 1



INTEREST AND EFFORT

the object, is no more interesting than it was be
fore. The appeal is simply made to the child s
love of something else. He is excited in a given
direction, with the hope that somehow or other
during this excitation he will assimilate some
thing otherwise repulsive. There are two types
of pleasure. One is the accompaniment of activ
ity. It is found wherever there is successful
achievement, mastery, getting on. It is the per
sonal phase of an outgoing energy. This sort
of pleasure is always absorbed in the activity it
self. It has no separate existence. This is the
type of pleasure found in legitimate interest. Its
source lies in meeting the needs of the organism.
The other sort of pleasure arises from contact.
It marks receptivity. Its stimuli are external.
It exists by itself as a pleasure, not as the pleas
ure of activity. Being merely excited by some
external stimulus, it is not a quality of any act
in which an external object is constructively
dealt with.

When objects are made interesting, this latter
type of pleasure comes into play. Advantage is
taken of the fact that a certain amount of ex-

12



UNIFIED VERSUS DIVIDED ACTIVITY

citation of any organ is pleasurable. The pleasure
arising is employed to cover the gap between
self and some fact not in itself having interest.
The result is division of energies. In the case
of disagreeable effort the division is simultane
ous. In this case, it is successive. Instead of
having a mechanical, external activity and a ran
dom internal activity at the same time, there is
oscillation of excitement and apathy. The child
alternates between periods of overstimulation
and of inertness, as is seen in some so-called
kindergartens. Moreover, this excitation of any
particular organ, as eye or ear, by itself, creates
a further demand for more stimulation of the
same sort. It is as possible to create an appetite on
the part of the eye or the ear for pleasurable
stimulation as it is on the part of taste. Some
children are as dependent upon the recurrent
presence of bright colors or agreeable sounds
as the drunkard is upon his dram. It is this which
accounts for the distraction and dissipation of
energy characteristic of such children, for their
dependence upon external suggestion, and their
lack of resources when left to themselves.
13



INTEREST AND EFFORT

The discussion up to this point may be sum
marized as follows: Genuine interest is the ac
companiment of the identification, through ac
tion, of the self with some object or idea, because
of the necessity of that object or idea for the
maintenance of a self-initiated activity. Effort,
in the sense in which it may be opposed to inter
est, implies a separation between the self and
the fact to be mastered or task to be performed,
and sets up an habitual division of activities.
Externally, we have mechanical habits with no
mental end or value. Internally, we have ran
dom energy or mind-wandering, a sequence of
ideas with no end at all, because they are not
brought to a focus in action. Interest, in the
sense in which it is opposed to effort, means
simply an excitation of the sense organ to give
pleasure, resulting in strain on one side and list-
lessness on the other.

But when we recognize there are certain powers
within the child urgent for development, needing
to be acted out in order to secure their own effi
ciency and discipline, we have a firm basis upon
which to build. Effort arises normally in the at-



UNIFIED VERSUS DIVIDED ACTIVITY

tempt to give full operation, and thus growth and
completion, to these powers. Adequately to act
upon these impulses involves seriousness, absorp
tion, defmiteness of purpose ; it results in forma
tion of steadiness and persistent habit in the
service of worthy ends. But this effort never de
generates into drudgery, or mere strain of dead
lift, because interest abides the self is con
cerned tJiroughout. Our first conclusion is that
interest means a unified activity.



II

INTEREST AS DIRECT AND INDIRECT

WE now come to our second main topic, the
psychology of interest. I begin with a brief de
scriptive account. Interest is first active, projec-
tive, or propulsive. We take interest. To be
interested in any matter is to be actively con
cerned with it. Mere feeling regarding a sub
ject may be static or inert, but interest is dy
namic. Second, it is objective. We say a man has
many interests to care for or look after. We talk
about the range of a man s interests, his busi
ness interests, local interests, etc. We identify
interests with concerns or affairs. Interest does
not end simply in itself, as bare feelings may,
but is embodied in an object of regard. Third,
interest is personal ; it signifies a direct concern ;
a recognition of something at stake, something
whose outcome is important for the individual.
It has its emotional as well as its active and ob
jective sides. Patent law or electric inventions
16



INTEREST AS DIRECT AND INDIRECT

or politics may be a man s chief interest ; but
this implies that his personal well-being and satis
faction is somehow bound up with the prosperity
of these affairs.

These are the various meanings in which com
mon sense employs the term interest. The root
idea of the term seems to be that of being en
gaged, engrossed, or entirely taken up with some
activity because of its recognized worth. The
etymology of the term intcr-esse, "to be be
tween," points in the same direction. Interest
marks the annihilation of the distance between
the person and the materials and results of his
action ; it is the sign of their organic union. 1

i. The active or propulsive phase of interest

1 It is true that the term interest is also used in a definitely
disparaging sense. We speak of interest as opposed to prin
ciple, of self-interest as a motive to action which regards only
one s personal advantage; but these are neither the only nor the
controlling senses in which the term is used. It may fairly be
questioned whether this is anything but a narrowing or de
grading of the legitimate sense of the term. However that
may be, it appears certain that controversy regarding the use
of interest arises because one party is using the term in the
larger, objective sense of recognized value or engrossing ac
tivity, while the other is using it as equivalent to a selfish
motive.

17



INTEREST AND EFFORT

takes us back to the consideration of impulse and
the spontaneous urgencies or tendencies of ac
tivity. There is no such thing as absolutely diffuse
impartial impulse. Impulse is always differen
tiated along some more or less specific channel.
Impulse has its own special lines of discharge.
The old puzzle about the ass between two bundles
of hay is only too familiar, but the recognition
of its fundamental fallacy is not so common. If
the self were purely passive or purely indifferent,
waiting upon stimulation from without, then the
self illustrated in this supposed example would
remain forever helpless, starving to death, be
cause of its equipoise between two sources of
food. The error lies in assuming any such pas
sive condition. One is always already doing
something, intent on something urgent. And this
ongoing activity always gives a bent in one direc
tion rather than another. The ass, in other words,
is always already moving toward one bundle
rather than the other. No amount of physical
cross-eyedness could induce such mental cross-
eyedness that the animal would be in a condition
of equal stimulation from both sides. Wherever
18



INTEREST AS DIRECT AND INDIRECT

there is life there is activity, an activity having
some tendency or direction of its own.

In this primitive condition of spontaneous, im
pulsive activity we have the basis of natural
interest. Interest is no more passively waiting
around to be excited from the outside than is im
pulse. In the selective or preferential quality of
impulse we have the fact that at any given time,
if we are awake at all, we are always interested
in one direction rather than another. The con
dition either of total lack of interest, or of impar
tially distributed interest, is as mythical as the
story of the ass in scholastic ethics.

2. The objective side of interest. Every in
terest, as already said, attaches itself to an ob
ject. The artist is interested in his brushes, in
his colors, in his technicjue. The business man
is interested in the play of supply and demand,
in the movement of markets, etc. Take whatever
instance of interest we choose, and we shall find
that, if we cut out an object about which interest
clusters, interest itself disappears relapsing into
empty feeling.

Error begins in supposing the object already
1 9



INTEREST AND EFFORT

there, and then calling the activity into being.
Canvas, brushes, and paints interest the artist,
for example, because they help him discover and
promote his existing artistic capacity. There is
nothing in a wheel and a piece of string to arouse
a child s activity save as they appeal to some in
stinct or impulse already active, and supply it
with means of execution. The number twelve is
uninteresting when it is a bare, external fact ; it
has interest (just as has the top or wheelbarrow
or toy locomotive) when it presents itself as an
instrument of carrying into effect some dawning
energy or desire making a box, measuring
one s height, etc. And in its difference of degree
exactly the same principle holds of the most tech
nical items of scientific or historic knowledge
whatever furthers action, helps mental move
ment, is of interest.

3. We now come to the emotional phase.
Value is not only objective but also subjective.
There is not only the thing which is projected as
valuable or worth while, but there is also appre
ciation of its worth.

The gist of the psychology of interest may,
20



INTEREST AS DIRECT AND INDIRECT

accordingly, be stated as follows : An interest is
primarily a form of self-expressive activity
that is, of growth that comes through acting
upon nascent tendencies. If we examine this ac
tivity on the side of what is done, we get its ob
jective features, the ideas, objects, etc., to which
the interest is attached, about which it clusters.
If we take into account that it is j^-develop-
ment, that self finds itself in this content, we get
its emotional or appreciative side. Any account
of genuine interest must, therefore, grasp it as
out-going activity holding within its grasp an ob
ject of direct value.

There are cases where action is direct and im
mediate. It puts itself forth with no thought of
anything beyond. It satisfies in and of itself.
The end is the present activity, and so there is
no gap in the mind between means and end. All
play is of this immediate character. Purely
aesthetic appreciation approximates this type.
The existing experience holds us for its own
sake, and we do not demand that it takes us
into something beyond itself. With the child and
his ball, the amateur and the hearing of a sym-

21



INTEREST AND EFFORT

phony, the present object engrosses. Its value is
there, and is there in what is directly present.

On the other hand, we have cases of indirect,
transferred, or technically speaking, mediated
interest. Things indifferent or even repulsive in
themselves often become of interest because of
assuming relationships and connections of which
we were previously unaware. Many a student, of
so-called practical make-up, has found mathe
matical theory, once repellent, lit up by great
attractiveness after studying some form of en
gineering in which this theory was a necessary
tool. The musical score and the technique of
fingering, in which the child finds no interest
when it is presented as an end in itself, when it
is isolated, becomes fascinating when the child
realizes its place and bearings in helping him
give better and fuller utterance to his love of
song. Whether it appeals or fails to appeal is a
question of relationship. While the little child
takes only a near view of things, as he grows in
experience he becomes capable of extending his
range, and seeing an act, or a thing, or a fact
not by itself, but as part of a larger whole. If this

22



INTEREST AS DIRECT AND INDIRECT

whole belongs to him, if it is a mode of his own
movement, then the thing or act which it in
cludes gains interest too.

Here, and here only, have we the reality of the
idea of "making things interesting." I know of
no more demoralizing doctrine when taken
literally than the assertion of some of the op
ponents of interest that after subject-matter has
been selected, then the teacher should make it
interesting. This combines in itself two thorough
going errors. On one side, it makes the selection
of subject-matter a matter quite independent of
the question of interest that is to say of the
child s native urgencies and needs ; and, further,
it reduces method in instruction to more or less
external and artificial devices for dressing up the
unrelated materials, so that they will get some
hold upon attention. In reality, the principle of
" making things interesting " means that subjects
be selected in relation to the child s present ex
perience, powers, and needs ; and that (in case
he does not perceive or appreciate this relevancy)
the new material be presented in such a way as
to enable the child to appreciate its bearings, its
23



INTEREST AND EFFORT

relationships, its value in connection with what
already has significance for him. It is this bring
ing to consciousness of the bearings of the new
material which constitutes the reality, so often
perverted both by friend and foe, in "making
things interesting."

In other words, the problem is one of intrinsic
connection as a motive for attention. The teacher
who tells the child he will be kept after school
if he doesn t recite his geography lesson better 1
is appealing to the psychology of mediate inter
est. The old English method of rapping knuckles
for false Latin quantities is one way of arousing
interest in the intricacies of Latin. To offer a
child a bribe, or a promise of teacher s affection,
or promotion to the next grade, or ability to
make money, or to take a position in society, are
other modes. They are cases of transferred in-

1 I have it argued in all seriousness that a child kept after
school to study has often acquired an interest in arithmetic or
grammar which he did n t have before, as if this proved the
efficacy of "discipline" versus interest. Of course, the reality
is that the greater leisure, the opportunity for individual ex
planation afforded, served to bring the material into its proper
relations in the child s mind he " got a hold " of it.

24



INTEREST AS DIRECT AND INDIRECT

tcrcst. But the criterion for judging them lies
just here : How far is one interest externally at
tached to another, or substituted for another?
How far does the new appeal, the new motive,
serve to interpret, to bring out, to relate the
material otherwise without interest ? It is a ques
tion, again, of inter-cssc. The problem may be
stated as one of the relations of means and end.
Anything indifferent or repellent becomes of
interest when seen as a means to an end already
commanding attention ; or seen as an end that
will allow means already under control to secure
further movement and outlet. But, in normal
growth the interest in means is not externally
tied on to the interest in an end ; it suffuses,
saturates, and thus transforms it. It interprets
or revalues it gives it a new significance. The
man who has a wife and family has thereby a
new motive for his daily work he sees a new
meaning in it, and takes into it a steadiness and
enthusiasm previously lacking. But when he does
his day s work as a thing intrinsically disagree
able, as drudgery, simply for the sake of the final
wage-reward, the case is quite different. Means
25



INTEREST AND EFFORT

and end remain remote ; they do not permeate
one another. The person is no more really in
terested in his work than he was before ; in
itself, it is a hardship to be escaped from. Hence
he cannot give full attention to it ; he cannot put
himself unreservedly into it. But to the othei
man every stroke of work may literally mean his
wife and baby. Externally, physically, they are
remote; mentally, with respect to his plan of
living, they are one ; they have the same value.
In drudgery on the contrary means and end re
main as separate in consciousness as they are in
space and time. What is true of this is true of
every attempt in teaching to "create interest"
by appeal to external motives.

At the opposite scale, take a case of artistic
construction. The sculptor has his end, his ideal,
in view. To realize that end he must go through
a series of intervening steps which are not, on
their face, equivalent to the end. He must model
and mold and chisel ; perform a series of particu
lar acts, no one of which exhibits or is the beau
tiful form he has in mind, and every one of which
represents the putting forth of personal energy.
26



LNTEREST AS DIRECT AND INDIRECT

But because these are necessary means in
the achieving of his activity, the meaning of
the finished form is transferred over into these
special acts. Each molding of the clay, each
stroke of the chisel, is for him at the time the
whole end in process of realization. Whatever
interest or value attaches to the end attaches to
each of these steps. He is as much absorbed in
one as in the other. Any failure in this complete
identification means an inartistic product, means
that he is not really interested in his ideal. Upon
the other hand, his interest is in the end regarded
as an end of the particular processes which are
its means. Interest attaches to it because of its
place in the active process of what it is but
the culmination. He may also regret the ap
proach of the day that will put an end to such
an interesting piece of work. At all events,
it is not the mere external product that holds
him.

We have spoken freely of means and ends be
cause these terms are in common use. We must,
however, analyze them somewhat to make sure
they are not misunderstood. The terms " means "
27



INTEREST AND EFFORT

and "end" apply primarily to the position occu
pied by acts as stages of a single developing ac
tivity, and only secondarily to things or objects.
The end really means the final stage of an activity,
its last or terminal period ; the means are the
earlier phases, those gone through before the ac
tivity reaches its termination. This is plainly seen
in, say, the leisurely eating of a meal, as distinct
from rushing through it to have it over as soon as
possible ; in the playing of the game of ball, in
listening to a musical theme. In each case there
is a definite outcome ; after the meal is eaten, there
is a certain amount of food in the system ; when
the nine innings of the game of baseball are ended,
one side or the other has won. Henceforth
afterwards it is possible to separate the exter
nal result from the process, from the continuous
activity which led up to it. Afterwards we
tend to separate the result from the process ; to
regard the result of the process as the end and
the whole process as simply a means to the ex
ternal result. But in civilized society, eating is
not merely a means to getting so much food-
power into the system ; it is a social process, a
28



INTEREST AS DIRECT AND INDIRECT

time of family and friendly reunion ; moreover,
each course of the meal has its own enjoyment
just as a matter of partaking of food, that is, of
an active continuing process. Division into means
and end hardly has any meaning. Each stage of
the entire process has its own adequate signifi
cance or interest ; the earlier quite as much as
the latter. Even here, however, there is a tend
ency to keep the best till the last the dessert
comes at the end. That is, there is a tendency to
make the last stage a fulfil ling or consummating
stage.

In the hearing of the musical theme, the earlier
stages are far from being mere means to the
later ; they give the mind a certain set and dis
pose it to anticipate later developments. So the
end, the conclusion, is not a mere last thing in
time ; it completes what has gone before ; it
settles, so to speak, the character of the theme
as a whole. In the ball game, the interest may
intensify with every passing stage of the game ;
the last \r\Y\\ngfinalty settles who wins and who
loses, a matter which up to that time has been in
suspense or doubt. In the game, the last stage
29



INTEREST AND EFFORT

is not only the last in time, but also settles the
character of the entire game, and so gives mean
ing to all that has preceded. Nevertheless the
earlier parts of the game are true parts of the
game ; they are not mere means for reaching a
last inning.

In these illustrations we have seen how the
last stage may be the fulfilling, the completing,
or consummating of all that has gone before, and
may thus decide the nature of the activity as a
whole. In no case, however, is the end equiva
lent simply to an external result. The mere fact
that one side won the external result or object
- is of no significance apart from the game
whose conclusion it marks. Just so, we may say
that the value of x in an algebraic equation is 5.
But to say in general that x equals 5 is nonsense.
This result is significant only as the outcome of
a particular process of solving a particular equa
tion. If, however, the mathematical inquiry is
carried on to deal with other connected equa
tions, it is possible to separate the result, 5, from
what led up to it, and in further calculating to
use 5 independently of the equation whose
30



INTEREST AS DIRECT AND INDIRECT

tion it was. This fact introduces a further com
plication.

Many, most, of our activities, are intercon
nected. We not only have the process of eating
the meal, but we have the further use of the food
eaten its assimilation and transformation into
energy for new operations. The musical theme
heard may represent a step in a more continuous
process of musical education. The outcome of
the game may be a factor in determining the
relative standing of two clubs in a series of con
tests. An inventor of a new telephonic de
vice is preoccupied with the different steps of
the process ; but when the invention is com
pleted, it becomes a factor in a different set of
activities. When the artist has finished his pic
ture, his question may be how to sell that picture
so as to get a living for his family. This fact of
the employment of the result of one course of
action as a rcadymade factor in some other course
leads us to think of means and ends as fixed
things external to an activity, and to think of the
whole activity as a mere means to an external
product. The ball game is thus thought of as a



INTEREST AND EFFORT

mere means to winning, and that winning in turn
as a mere means to winning a series. Winning
the series may in turn be regarded as a mere
means of getting a sum of money or a certain
amount of glory, and so on indefinitely. Unless
discussion is to get confused, we must therefore
carefully distinguish between two senses of the
term end. While the activity is in progress,
"end" simply means an object as standing for
the culminating stage of the whole process ; it
represents the need of looking ahead and con
sidering what we are now doing so that it will
lead as simply and effectively as possible into
what is to be done later. After the activity has
come to its conclusion, " end " means the prod
uct accomplished as a fixed thing. The same
considerations apply to the term "means." Dur
ing the activity it signifies simply the materials
or ways of acting involved in the successive
stages of the growth of an activity up to its ful
fillment. After the activity is accomplished, its
product as detached from the action that led up
to it may be used as a means for achieving some
thing else.

32



INTEREST AS DIRECT AND INDIRECT

This distinction is not a merely theoretical
one, but one that affects the whole scope and
significance of interest in teaching. The purely
adventitious interests we have discussed mak
ing a thing interesting by the sugar-coating
method assumes a certain ready subject-mat
ter a subject-matter existing wholly independ
ently of the pupil s own activity. It then asks
how this alien subject-matter may be introduced
into the pupil s mind; how his attention may
be drawn away from the things with which it
is naturally concerned and drawn to this in
different, readymade external material. Some
interest, some bond of connection, must be
found. Prevalent practices and the training and
disposition of the teacher will decide whether
the methods of "hard" or of "soft" pedagogy
shall be resorted to; whether we shall have a
"soup-kitchen" type of teaching or a "peni
tentiary " type. Shall the indifferent thing (indif
ferent because lying outside of the individual s
scheme of activities) be made interesting by
clothing it with adventitious traits that are agree
able ; or by methods of threats by making
33



INTEREST AND EFFORT

attention to it less disagreeable than the con
sequences of non-attention so that study is a
choice of the lesser of two evils ?

Both of these methods, however, represent
failure to ask the right question and to seek for
the right method of solution. What course of ac
tivity exists already (by native endowment or by
past achievement) operative in the pupil s experi
ence with respect to which tJie thing to be learned,
the mode of skill to be acquired, is citJiera means
or an endf What line of action is there, that is
to say, which can be carried forward to its ap
propriate termination better by noting and using
the subject-matter? Or what line of action is
there, which can be directed so that when car
ried to its completion it will naturally terminate
in the things to be learned ? The mistake, once
more, consists in overlooking the activities in
which the child is already engaged, or in assum
ing that they are so trivial or so irrelevant that
they have no significance for education. When
they are duly taken into account the new sub
ject-matter is interesting on its own account in
the degree in which it enters into their operation.
34



INTEREST AS DIRECT AND INDIRECT

The mistake lies in treating these existing activ
ities as if they had reached their limit of growth ;
as if they were satisfactory in their present shape
and simply something to be excited; or else just
unsatisfactory and something to be repressed.

The distinction between means and ends ex
ternal to a process of action and those intrinsic
to it enables us to understand the difference be
tween pleasures and happiness. In the degree
in which anybody externally happens to fall upon
anything and to be excited agreeably by it, pleas
ure results. The question of pleasure is a ques
tion of the immediate or momentary reaction.
Happiness differs in quality from both a pleasure
and a series of pleasures. Children are almost
always happy, joyous and so are grown people
when engaged consecutively in any uncon
strained mode of activity when they are occu
pied, busy. The emotional accompaniment of the
progressive growth of a course of action, a con
tinual movement of expansion and of achieve
ment, is happiness; mental content or peace,
which when emphatic, is called joy, delight.
Persons, children or adults, are interested in what
35



INTEREST AND EFFORT

they can do successfully, in what they approach
with confidence and engage in with a sense of
accomplishment. Such happiness or interest is
not self-conscious or selfish ; it is a sign of devel
oping power and of absorption in what is being
done. Only when an activity is monotonous does
happiness cease to attend its performance, and
monotony means that growth, development, have
ceased ; nothing new is entering in to carry an
activity forward. On the other hand, lack of
normal occupations brings uneasiness, irritability,
and demand for any kind of stimulation which
will arouse activity a state that easily passes
into a longing for excitement, for its own sake.
Healthy children in a healthy family or social
environment do not ask, "What pleasure can
I have now? " but " What can I do now? " The
demand is for a growing activity, an occupation,
an interest. Given that, happiness will take care
of itself.

There is no rigid, insurmountable line between
direct and indirect interest. As an activity grows
more complex, it involves more factors. A child
who is simply building with blocks has an activity

36



INTEREST AS DIRECT AND INDIRECT

of very short time span ; his end is just ahead of
what he is doing at the moment namely, to
keep on building so that his pile grows higher
does not tumble down. It makes no difference
to him just what he makes, as long as it stands
up. When the pile tumbles, he is content to
start over again. But when he aims at some
thing more complicated, the erection of a certain
kind of structure with his blocks, the increased
complexity of the end gives the cycle of his ac
tions a longer time span ; arrival at its end is
postponed. He must do more things before he
reaches his result, and accordingly he must carry
that result in mind for a longer time as a control of
his actions from moment to moment. Gradually
this situation passes over into one where an
immediate activity would make no appeal at all
were it not for some more remote end which is
valuable and for the sake of which intervening
means, not of themselves of concern, are impor
tant. With trained adults an end in the distant
future, a result to be reached only after a term
of years, may stimulate and regulate a long series
of difficult intervening steps which, in isolation
37



INTEREST AND EFFORT

from the thought of the end, would be matters
of total indifference, or even repellent. From
this side, then, the development of indirect in
terests is simply a sign of the growth or expan
sion of simple activities into more complex ones,
requiring longer and longer periods of time
for their execution, and consequently involving
postponement of achieving the end which gives
decisive meaning and full worth to the interven
ing steps.

Not only, however, does the direct interest in
an object pass thus gradually and naturally into
indirect interest as the scope of action is pro
longed, but the reverse process takes place. In
direct values become direct. Everybody has heard
of the man who at first is interested in an ac
quisition of money because of what he can do
with it and who finally becomes so absorbed in
the mere possessing of gold that he gloats over
it. This clearly expresses an undesirable instance
of the change of means into end. But normal
and desirable changes of the same kind are fre
quent. Pupils who are first interested in, say,
number relations, because of what they can do
33



INTEREST AS DIRECT AND INDIRECT

with these relations in making something else
(at first interested, that is, in a branch of arith
metic simply as a means or tool), may become
fascinated by what they can do with number on
its own account. 1

Boys who are at first interested in skill in play
ing marbles or ball simply because it is a factor in
a game which interests them, become interested
in practicing the acts of shooting at a mark, of
throwing, catching, etc., and so arduously devote
themselves to the perfecting of skill. The tech
nical exercises that give skill in the game be
come themselves a sort of a game. Girls who are
interested in making clothes for a doll, simply
for the sake of the interest in playing with dolls,
may develop an interest in making clothes till the
doll itself becomes simply a sort of an excuse, or
at least just a stimulus, for making clothes.

If the reader will reflect upon his own course
of life over a certain period of time, he will find
that the sort of thing which is somewhat trivially
illustrated in these examples is of constant oc-

1 In our usual terminology interest in "concrete" number
passes into an interest in " abstract " number.

39



INTEREST AND EFFORT

currence. He will find that wherever his activ
ities have grown in extent and range of meaning
(instead of becoming petrified and fossilized),
one or other (or both) of two things has been
going on. On the one hand, narrower and simpler
types of interest (requiring a shorter time for
their realization) have been expanding to cover
a longer time. With this change they have grown
richer and fuller. They have grown to include
many things previously indifferent or even re
pulsive as the value of the end now takes up into
itself the value of whatever is involved in the
process of achieving it. On the other hand, many
things, that were first of significance only be
cause they were needed as parts of an activity
of interest only as a whole, have become valued
on their own account. Sometimes it will even
be found that they have displaced entirely the
type of activity in connection with which they
originally grew up. This is just what happens
when children outgrow interests that have pre
viously held them ; as when boys feel it is now
beneath them to play marbles and girls find
themselves no longer interested in their dolls.
40



INTEREST AS DIRECT AND INDIRECT

Looked at superficially, the original interest
seems simply to have been crowded out or left
behind. Examined more carefully, it will be found
that activities and objects at first esteemed simply
because of their place within the original activ
ity have grown to be of more account than that
for the sake of which they were at first enter-
tained. In many cases, unless the simpler and
seemingly more trivial interest had had sway
at the proper time, the later more important
and specialized activity would not have arisen.
And this same process can be verified in adult
development as well, as long as development goes
on. When it ceases, arrest of growth sets in.

We are now in a position to restate, in a more
significant way, the true and the false ways of
understanding the function of interest in educa
tion, and to formulate a criterion for judging
whether the principle of interest is being rightly
or wrongly employed. Interest is normal and
reliance upon it educationally legitimate in the
degree in which the activity in question involves
groivth or development. Interest is illegitimately
used in the degree in which it is either a symp-
41



INTEREST AND EFFORT

torn or a cause of arrested development in an
activity.

These formulae are of course abstract and far
from self-explanatory. But in the light of our prior
discussion their significance should be obvious.
When interest is objected to as merely amuse
ment or fooling or a temporary excitation (or
when in educational practice it does mean simply
such things), it will be found that the interest in
question is something which attaches merely to a
momentary activity apart from its place in an
enduring activity an activity that develops
through a period of time. When this happens,
the object that arouses (what is called) interest
is esteemed just on the basis of the momentary
reaction it calls out, the immediate pleasure it
excites. " Interest " so created is abnormal, for
it is a sign of the dissipation of energy ; it is a
symptom that life is being cut up into a series
of disconnected reactions, each one of which is
esteemed by itself apart from what it does in
carrying forward (or developing) a consecutive
activity. As we have already seen, it is one
thing to make, say, number interesting by merely
42



INTEREST AS DIRECT AND INDIRECT

attaching to it other things that happen to call
out a pleasurable reaction ; it is a radically differ
ent sort of thing to make it interesting by intro
ducing it so that it functions as a genuine means
of carrying on a more inclusive activity. In the
latter case, interest does not mean the excita
tion due to the association of some other thing
irrelevant to number ; it means that number is of
interest because it has a function in the further
ance of a continuous or enduring line of activity.
Our conclusion, then, is not simply that some
interests are good while others are bad ; but that
true interests are signs that some material, ob
ject, mode of skill (or whatever) is appreciated
on the basis of what it actually does in carrying
to fulfillment some mode of action with which a
person has identified himself. Genuine interest,
in short, simply means that a person has identi
fied himself with, or has found himself in, a
certain course of action. Consequently he is
identified with whatever objects and forms of skill
are involved in the successful prosecution of that
course. This course of action may cover greater
or shorter time according to circumstances, par-
43



INTEREST AND EFFORT

ticularly according to the experience and ma
turity of the person concerned. It is absurd to
expect a young child to be engaged in an activity
as complex as that of an older child, or the older
child as in that of an adult. But some expansion,
enduring through some length of time, is entailed.
Even a baby interested in hitting a saucer with a
spoon is not concerned with a purely momen
tary reaction and excitation. The hitting is con
nected with the sound to follow, and has interest
on that account ; and the resulting sound has in
terest not in its isolation, but as a consequence
of the striking. An activity of such a short span
forms a direct interest, and spontaneous play ac
tivities in general are of this sort. For (to repeat
what has already been said) in such cases it is
not necessary to bear the later and fulfilling
activities in mind in order to keep the earlier
activities agoing and to direct their manner of
performance and their order or sequence. But
the more elaborate the action, the longer the
time required by the activity ; the longer the
time, the more the consummating or fulfilling
stage is postponed ; and the longer the postpone-
44



INTEREST AS DIRECT AND INDIRECT

ment, the greater the opportunity for the inter
est in the end to come into conflict with interest
in intervening steps.

The next step in the discussion consists in
seeing that effort comes into play in the de
gree in which achievement of an activity is post
poned or remote ; and that the significance of
situations demanding effort is their connection
with thought.



Ill

EFFORT, THINKING, AND MOTIVATION

WHAT is it that we really prize under the name
of effort ? What is it that we are really trying to
secure when we regard increase in ability to put
forth effort as an aim of education ? Taken prac
tically, there is no great difficulty in answering.
What we are after is persistency, consecutiveness,
of activity: endurance against obstacles and
through hindrances. Effort regarded as mere in
crease of strain in the expenditure of energy is not
in itself a thing we esteem. Barely in itself it is a
thing we would avoid. A child is lifting a weight
that is too heavy for him. It takes an increas
ing amount of effort, involving increase of strain
which is increasingly painful, to lift it higher and
higher. The wise parent tries to protect the child
from mere strain ; from the danger of excessive
fatigue, of damaging the structures of the body,
of getting bruises. Effort as mere strained activ
ity is thus not what we prize. On the other hand,
46



EFFORT, THINKING, AND MOTIVATION

a judicious parent will not like to see a child too
easily discouraged by meeting obstacles. If the
child is physically healthy, surrender of a course
of action, or diversion of energy to some easier
line of action, is a bad symptom if it shows itself
at the first sign of resistance. The demand for
effort is a demand for continuity in the face of
difficulties.

This account of the matter is so obvious as to
lie upon the surface. When we examine into it
further, however, we find it only repeats what we
have already learned in connection with interest
as an accompaniment of an expanding activity.
Effort, like interest, is significant only in con
nection with a course of action, an action that
takes time for its completion since it develops
through a succession of stages. Apart from an
end to be reached, effort would never be anything
more than a momentary strain or a succession of
such strains. It would be a thing to be avoided,
not so much for its disagreeablcness as because
nothing comes of it save exposure to dangers of
exhaustion and accident. But where the action
is a developing or growing one, effort, willing-
47



INTEREST AND EFFORT

ness to put forth energy at any point of the entire
activity, measures the hold which the activity,
as one whole affair, has upon a person. It shows
how much he really cares for it. We never (if
we are sensible) take, in ourselves or in some
body else, the "will for the deed" unless there
is evidence that there really was a. will, a purpose ;
and the sole evidence is some striving to realize
the purpose, the putting forth of effort. If condi
tions forbid all effort, it is not a question of " will"
at all, but simply of a sympathetic wish.

This does not mean, of course, that effort is
always desirable under such conditions. On the
contrary, the game may not be worth the candle ;
the end to be reached may not be of sufficient
importance to justify the expenditure of so much
energy, or of running the risks of excessive strain.
Judgment comes in to decide such matters, and
speaking generally it is as much a sign of bad
judgment to keep on at all costs in an activity
once entered upon, as it is a sign of weak
ness to be turned from it at the first evidence
of difficulties. The principle laid down shows
that effort is significant not as bare effort, or



EFFORT, THINKING, AND MOTIVATION

strain, but in connection with carrying forward an
activity to its fulfillment : it all depends, as we
say, upon the end.

Two considerations follow, (i) On the one
hand, when an activity persists in spite of its tem
porary blocking by an obstacle, there is a situation
of mental stress : a peculiar emotional condition of
combined desire and aversion. The end continues
to make an appeal, and to hold one to the activ
ity in spite of its interruption by difficulties. This
continued forward appeal gives desire. The ob
stacle, on the other hand, in the degree in which
it arrests or thwarts progress ahead, inhibits ac
tion, and tends to divert it into some other chan
nel to avert action, in other words, from the
original end. This gives aversion. Effort, as a
mental experience, is precisely this peculiar com
bination of conflicting tendencies tendencies
away from and tendencies towards : dislike and
longing.

(2) The other consideration is even more im
portant, for it decides what happens. The emo
tion of effort, or of stress, is a warning to think t
49



INTEREST AND EFFORT

to consider, to reflect, to inquire, to look into the
matter. Is the end worthwhile under the circum
stances? Is there not some other course which,
under the circumstances, is better? So far as this
reconsideration takes place, the situation is quite
different from that of a person merely giving
up as soon as an obstacle shows itself. Even
if the final decision is to give up, the case is
radically different from the case of giving up
from mere instability of purpose. The giving
up now involves an appeal to reason, and may
be quite consistent with tenacity of purpose or
" strength of will." However, reflection may take
quite another course : it may lead not to re
consideration of ends, but to seeking for new
means ; in short, to discovery and invention also.
The child who cannot carry the stone that he
wishes may neither keep on in a fruitless strug
gle to achieve the impossible, nor yet surrender
his purpose; he may be led to think of some other
way of getting the stone into motion; he may
try prying it along with a bar. "Necessity is the
mother of invention."

In the latter case, the obstacle has, indeed,
50



EFFORT, THINKING, AND MOTIVATION

diverted energy; but the significant thing is that
energy is diverted into thinking; into an intelli
gent consideration of the situation and of available
ways and means. The really important matter in
the experience of effort concerns its connection
with thought. The question is not the amount of
sheer strain involved, but the way in which the
thought of an end persists in spite of difficul
ties, and induces a person to reflect upon the na
ture of the obstacles and the available resources
by which they may be dealt with.

A person, child or adult, comes, in the course
of an activity, up against some obstacle or diffi
culty. This experience of resistance has a double
effect; though in a given case one effect may
predominate and obscure the other. One effect
is weakening of the impetus in the forward direc
tion ; the existing line of action becomes more or
less uncongenial because of the strain required
to overcome difficulties. As a consequence, the
tendency is to give up this line of action and to
divert energy into some other channel. On the
other hand, meeting an obstacle may enhance a
person s perception of an end; may make him



INTEREST AND EFFORT

realize more clearly than ever he did before how
much it means to him ; and accordingly may
brace him, invigorate him in his effort to achieve
the end. Within certain limits, resistance only
arouses energy ; it acts as a stimulus. Only a
spoiled child or pampered adult is dismayed or
discouraged and turned aside, instead of being
aroused, by lions in the path unless the lions
are very fierce and threatening. It is not too
much to say that a normal person demands a cer
tain amount of difficulty to surmount in order
that he may have a full and vivid sense of what
he is about, and hence have a lively interest in
what he is doing.

Meeting obstacles makes a person project
more definitely to himself the later and consum
mating period of his activity ; it brings the end
of his course of action to consciousness. He now
thinks of what he is doing, instead of doing it
blindly from instinct or habit. The result becomes
a conscious aim, a guiding and inspiring purpose.
In being an object of desire, it is also an object
of endeavor.

This arousing and guiding function is exer-
52



EFFORT, THINKING, AND MOTIVATION

ciscd in two ways. Endeavor is steadied and made
more persistent when its outcome is regarded as
something to be achieved; and thought is stimu
lated to discover the best methods of dealing
with the situation. The person who keeps on
blindly pushing against an obstacle, trying to
break through by main strength, is the one who
acts unintelligently ; the one who does not pre
sent to himself the nature of the end to be
reached. He remains on the level of a struggling
animal, who by mere quantity of brute strength
tries to break down resistance and win to his goal.
The true function of the conditions that call
forth effort is, then, first, to make an individual
more conscious of tJic end and purpose of his
actions ; secondly, to turn his energy from blind,
or thoughtless^ struggle into rejlective judgment.
These two phases of thought are interdependent.
The thought of the result, the end as a conscious
guiding purpose, leads to the search for means
of achievement; it suggests appropriate courses
of action to be tried. These means as considered
and attempted supply a fuller content to the
thought of the end. A boy starts somewhat
S3



INTEREST AND EFFORT

blindly to make a kite; in the course of his oper
ations he comes across unexpected difficulties;
his kite does n t hold together, or it won t balance.
Unless his activity has a slight hold upon him,
he is thereby made aware more definitely of just
what he intends to make ; he conceives the object
and end of his actions more distinctly and fully.
His end is now not just a kite, but some special
kind of a kite. Then he inquires what is the mat
ter, what is the trouble, with his existing con
struction, and searches for remedial measures.
As he does this, his thought of the kite as a com
plete whole becomes more adequate; then he
sees his way more clearly what to do to make
the kite, and so on.

We are now in possession of a criterion for
estimating the place in an educative development
of difficulties and of effort. If one mean by a task
simply an undertaking involving difficulties that
have to be overcome, then children, youth, and
adults alike require tasks in order that there may
be continued development. But if one mean by a
task something that has no interest, makes no
appeal, that is wholly alien and hence uncongenial,
54



EFFORT, THINKING, AND MOTIVATION

the matter is quite different. Tasks in the former
sense are educative because they supply an in
dispensable stimulus to thinking, to reflective
inquiry. Tasks in the latter sense signify noth
ing but sheer strain, constraint, and the need of
some external motivation for keeping at them.
They are ////educative because they fail to intro
duce a clearer consciousness of ends and a search
for proper means of realization. They are mis-
educative, because they deaden and stupefy;
they lead to that confused and dulled state of
mind that always attends an action carried on
without a realizing sense of what it is all about.
They are also miseducative because they lead to
dependence upon external ends ; the child works
simply because of the pressure of the taskmaster,
and diverts his energies just in the degree in
which this pressure is relaxed; or he works be
cause of some alien inducement to get some
reward that has no intrinsic connection with
what he is doing.

The question to be borne in mind is, then, two
fold: Is this person doing something too easy
for him something which has not a sufficient
55



INTEREST AND EFFORT

element of resistance to arouse his energies, es
pecially his energies of thinking ? Or is the work
assigned so difficult that he has not the resources
required in order to cope with it so alien to
his experience and his acquired habits that he
does not know where or how to take hold ? Be
tween these two questions lies the teacher s task
for the teacher has a problem as well as the
pupil. How shall the activities of pupils be pro
gressively complicated by the introduction of
difficulties, and yet these difficulties be of a nature
to stimulate instead of dulling and merely dis
couraging ? The judgment, the tact, the intellec
tual sympathy of instructors is taxed to the ut
termost in answering these questions in the con
crete with respect to the various subjects of
study.

When an activity is too easy and simple, a
person either engages in it because of the im
mediate pleasurable excitement it awakens, or
he puts just enough of his powers upon it their
purely mechanical and physical side to per
form what is required in a perfunctory way, while
he lets his mind wander to other things where

56



EFFORT, THINKING, AND MOTIVATION

there is at least enough novelty to keep his fan
cies going. Strange as it may seem to say it, one
of the chief objections both to mechanical drill
work and to the assigning of subject-matter too
difficult for pupils is that the only activity to
which they actually incite the pupils is in lines
too easy for them. Only the powers already
formed, the habits already fixed, are called into
play ; the mind the power of thinking is
not called into action. Hence apathy in chil
dren naturally sluggish, or mind-wandering in
children of a more imaginative nature. What
happens when work too difficult, work beyond
the limits of capacity, is insisted upon? If the
teacher is professionally skilled, a pupil will not
be able entirely to shirk or to escape. He
must keep up the form of attentive study, and
produce a result as evidence of having been oc
cupied. Naturally he seeks shortcuts; he does
what he can do without recourse to processes
of thinking that are beyond him. Any external
and routine device is employed to "get the
answer" possibly surreptitious aid from others
or downright cheating. Any way, he does what
57



INTEREST AND EFFORT

is already easiest for him to do ; he follows the
line of least resistance. The sole alternative
is the use of initiative in thinking out the con
ditions of the problem and the way to go at it.
And this alternative is within his reach only
when the work to be done is of a nature to
make an appeal to him, or to enlist his powers ;
and when the difficulties are such as to stimu
late instead of depressing.

Good teaching, in other words, is teaching that
appeals to established powers while it includes
such new material as will demand their redirection
for a new end, this redirection requiring thought
intelligent effort. In every case, the educa
tional significance of effort, its value for an
educative growth, resides in its connection
with a stimulation of greater thoughtfulness t
not in the greater strain it imposes. Educative
effort is a sign of the transformation of a com
paratively blind activity (whether impulsive or
habitual) into a more consciously reflective
one.

For the sake of completeness of statement,
we will say (what hardly should now require
58



EFFORT, THINKING, AND MOTIVATION

statement on its own account) that such effort is
in no sense a foe of interest. It is a part of the
process of growth of activity from direct interest
to indirect. In our previous section, we considered
this development as meaning an increase of the
complexity of an activity (that is, of the number
of factors involved), and the increased impor
tance of its outcome as a motive, in spite of con
trary appeals, for devotion to intervening means.
In this section, we have brought out more em
phatically the fact that along with this increasing
remoteness of the end (the longer period required
for the consummation of an activity) goes a
greater number of difficulties to be overcome,
and the consequent need of effort. And our
conclusion has been that the effort needed is
secured when the activity in question is of such
positive and abiding interest as to arouse the
person to clearer recognition of purpose and to
a more thoughtful consideration of means of
accomplishment. The educator who associates
difficulties and effort with increased dcptJi and
scope of thinking will never go far wrong. The
one who associates it with sheer strain, sheer
59



INTEREST AND EFFORT

dead lift of energy, will never understand either
how to secure the needed effort when it is
needed nor the best way to utilize the energy
aroused.

It remains to apply what has been said to the
question of motivation. " Motive" is the name
for the end or aim in respect to its hold on action,
its power to move. It is one thing to speculate idly
upon possible results, to keep them before the
mind in a purely theoretical way. It is another
thing for the results contemplated or projected
to be so desired that the thought of them stirs
endeavor. "Motive" is a name for the end in its
active or dynamic capacity. It would be mere
repetition of our previous analysis to show that
this moving power expresses the extent to which
the end foreseen is bound up with an activity
with which the self is identified. It is enough to
note that the motive force of an end and the
interest that the end possesses are equivalent ex
pressions of the vitality and depth of a proposed
course of activity.

A word of warning may be in place against
taking the idea of motivation in too personals.
60



EFFORT, THINKING, AND MOTIVATION

sense, in a sense too detached, that is, from the
object or end in view. In the theory of instruc
tion, as distinct from its practice, the need of
motivation was for a long time overlooked or
even denied. It was assumed that sheer force of
will, arbitrary effort, was alone required. In prac
tice this meant (as we have seen) appeal to extrane
ous sources of motivation: to reverence for the
authority of teacher or text ; to fear of punish
ment or the displeasure of others ; to regard for
success in adult life; to winning a prize; to
standing higher than one s fellows; to fear of
not being promoted, etc. The next step was taken
when some educators recognized the ineffective
hold of such motives upon many pupils their
lack of adequate motivating force in the concrete.
They looked for motives which would have more
weight with the average pupil. But too often they
still conceived the motive as outside the subject-
matter, something existing purely in the feelings,
and giving a reason for attention to a matter that
in itself would not provide a motive. They looked
for a motive for the study or the lesson, instead
of a motive /// it. Some reason must be found in
61



INTEREST AND EFFORT

the person, apart from the arithmetic or the
geography or the manual activity, that might be
attached to the lesson material so as to give it
a leverage, or moving force.

One effect was to substitute a discussion of
" motives " in the abstract for a consideration of
subject-matter in the concrete. The tendency
was to make out a list of motives or "interests"
by which children in general or children of a
given age are supposed to be actuated, and then
to consider how these might be linked up with
the various lessons so as to impart efficacy to
the latter. The important question, however,
is what specific subject-matter is so connected with
the growth of the child s existing concrete capabil
ities as to give it a moving force. What is needed
is not an inventory of personal motives which we
suppose children to have, but a consideration of
their powers, their tendencies in action, and the
ways in which these can be carried forward by a
given subject-matter.

If a child has, for example, an artistic capacity
in the direction of music or drawing, it is not
necessary to find a motive for its exercise. The
62



EFFORT, THINKING, AND MOTIVATION

problem is not to find a motive, but to find ma
terial of and conditions for its exercise. Any
material that appeals to this capacity has by
that very fact motivating force. The end or object
in its vital connection with the person s activities
is a motive.

Another consequence of a too personal concep
tion of motivation is a narrow and external con
ception of use and function. It is justifiable to
ask for the utility of any educational subject-
matter. But use may be estimated from different
standpoints. We may have a readymade concep
tion of use or function, and try the value of what
is learned by its conformity to this standard. In
this case we shall not regard any pursuit as prop
erly motivated, unless we see that it performs
some special office that we have laid down as
useful or practical. But if we start from the
standpoint of the active powers of the children
concerned, we shall measure the utility of new
subject-matter and new modes of skill by the
way in which they promote the growth of these
powers. We shall not insist upon tangible ma
terial products, nor upon what is learned being

63



INTEREST AND EFFORT

put to further use at once in some visible way,
nor even demand evidence that the children
have become morally improved in some respect :
save as the growth of powers is itself a moral
gain.



IV

TYPES OF EDUCATIVE INTEREST

THE clow we have followed in our discussion of
interest is its connection with an activity engag
ing a person in a whole-hearted way. Interest is
not some one thing ; it is a name for the fact that
a course of action, an occupation, or pursuit ab
sorbs the powers of an individual in a thorough
going way. But an activity cannot go on in a void.
It requires material, subject-matter, conditions
upon which to operate. On the other hand, it re
quires certain tendencies, habits, powers on the
part of the self. Wherever there is genuine in
terest, there is an identification of these two
things. The person acting finds his own well-being
bound up with the development of an object to its
own issue. If the activity goes a certain way, then
a subject-matter is carried to a certain result, and
a person achieves a certain satisfaction.

There is nothing new or striking in the con
ception of activity as an important educational



INTEREST AND EFFORT

principle. In the form of the idea of " self-ac
tivity " in particular, it has long been a name for
the ultimate educational ideal. But activity has
often been interpreted in too formal and too in
ternal a sense, and hence has remained a barren
ideal without influence on practice; sometimes
it becomes a mere phrase, receiving the homage
of the lips only. To make the idea of activity
effective, we must take it broadly enough to
cover all the doings that involve growth of power
especially of power to realize the meaning of
what is done. This excludes action done under
external constraint or dictation, for this has no
significance for the mind of him who performs it.
It excludes also mere random reaction to an ex
citation that is finished when the momentary act
has ceased which does not, in other words,
carry the person acting into future broader fields.
It also excludes action so habitual that it has be
come routine or mechanical. Unfortunately action
from external constraint, for mere love of excite
ment and from mechanical force of habit are
so common that these exceptions cover much
ground. But the ground lying within these ex-
66



TYPES OF EDUCATIVE INTEREST

cepted fields is the ground where an educative
process is not going on.

The kinds of activity remaining as true educa
tive interests vary indefinitely with age, with
individual native endowments, with prior experi
ence, with social opportunities. It is out of the
question to try to catalogue them. But we may
discriminate some of their more general aspects,
and thereby, perhaps, make the connection of
interest with educational practice somewhat more
concretely obvious. Since one of the main rea
sons for taking self-activity in a formal sense
was ignoring the importance of the body and of
bodily instinct, we may well begin with interest
in activity in this most direct and literal sense.

i. It is an old story that the human young
have to learn most of the things that the young
of other animals do instinctively or else with a
slight amount of trying. Reflection on this fact
shows that in learning these things human off
spring are brought to the need of learning other
things, and also to acquiring a habit of learning
a love of learning. While these considerations
are fairly familiar, we often overlook their bear-



INTEREST AND EFFORT

ing upon the fact of physical activities. It follows
from them at once that in so far as a physical ac
tivity has to be learned, it is not merely physical,
but is mental, intellectual, in quality. The first
problem set the human young is learning to use
the organs of sense the eye, ear, touch, etc.
and of movement the muscles in connection
with one another. Of course, some of the mastery
achieved does not involve much mental experi
mentation, but is due to the ripening of physio
logical connections. But nevertheless there is
a genuinely intellectual factor when the child
learns that one kind of eye-activity means a cer
tain kind of moving of the arm, clasping of the
fingers, etc., and that this in turn entails a certain
kind of exploring with the fingers, resulting in ex
perience of smoothness, etc. In such cases, there
is not simply an acquisition of a new physical ca
pacity ; there is also learning in the mental sense ;
something has been found out. The rapidity of
mental development in the first year and a half of
infancy, the whole-hearted intentness and absorp
tion of the growing baby in his activities, the
joy that accompanies his increase of ability to
68



TYPES OF EDUCATIVE INTEREST

control his movements all of these things are
object-lessons, writ large, as to the nature of in
terest, and the intellectual significance of actions
that (externally judged) are physical.

This period of growth occurs, of course, before
children go to school ; at least before they go to
anything called school. But the amount and the
mode of learning in this school of action is most
significant in revealing the importance of types
of occupation within the school involving the
exercise of senses and movement. One of the
reasons (as already indicated) for the slight ad
vance made in putting in practice the doctrine of
self-activity (with its recommendation of mental
initiative and intellectual self-reliance, and its
attacks upon the idea of pouring in and passive
absorption) is precisely that it was supposed that
self-activity could be secured purely internally,
without the cooperation of bodily action through
play, construction of objects, and manipulation
of materials and tools. Only with children hav
ing specialized intellectual abilities is it possible
to secure mental activity without participation
of the organs of sense and the muscles. Yet how

09



INTEREST AND EFFORT

much of elementary schooling has consisted in
the imposition of forms of discipline intended to
repress all activity of the body ! Under such a
regime it is not surprising that children are
found to be naturally averse to learning, or that
intellectual activity is found to be so foreign
to their nature that they have to be coerced or
cunningly coaxed to engage in it ! So educators
blamed the children or the perverseness of human
nature, instead of attacking the conditions which,
by divorcing learning from use of the natural
organs of action, made learning both difficult and
onerous.

The teachings of Pestalozzi and of the sense-
training and object-lesson schools in pedagogy
were the first important influence in challeng
ing the supremacy of a purely formal, because
inner and abstract, conception of self-activity.
But, unfortunately, the psychology of the times
was still associated with a false physiology and
a false philosophy of the relations of mind and
body. The senses were supposed to be the in
lets, the avenues, the gateways, of knowledge, or
at least of the raw materials of knowledge. It
70



TYPES OF EDUCATIVE INTEREST

was not known that the sense-organs are simply
the pathways of stimuli to motor-responses, and
that it is only through these motor-responses,
and especially through consideration of the
adapting of sense-stimulus and motor-response
to each other that growth of knowledge occurs.
The sense-qualities of color, sound, contact, etc.,
are important not in their mere reception and
storage, but in their connection with the various
forms of behavior that secure intelligent control.
The baby would not arrive even at the knowl
edge of individual things, hat, chair, orange,
stone, tree, were it not for the active responses
through which various qualities are made mutually
significant of one another, and thereby knit into
coherent wholes. Even in the ordinary hard-and-
fast school, where it is thought to be a main
duty to suppress all forms of motor-activity, the
physical activities that are still allowed under
the circumstances, such as moving the eyes, lips,
etc., in reading to one s self ; the physical adjust
ments of reading aloud, figuring, writing, recit
ing, are much more important than is generally
recognized in holding attention. The outlet in



INTEREST AND EFFORT

action is so scanty and so accidental, however,
that much energy remains unutilized and hence
ready to break forth in mischief or worse ; while
mind takes flights of uncontrolled fancy, day
dreaming and wandering to all sorts of subjects.
The next great advance in the development
of a more real, less arbitrary conception of ac
tivity, came with Froebel and the kindergarten
movement. Plays, games, occupations of a con
secutive sort, requiring both construction and
manipulation, were recognized, practically for the
first time since Plato, as of essential educational
importance. The place of the exercise of bodily
functions in the growth of mind was practically
acknowledged. But the use of the principle was
still hampered and distorted by a false physiol
ogy and psychology. The direct contribution to
growth made by the free and full control of
bodily organs, of physical materials and appli
ances in the realization of purposes, was not un
derstood. Hence the value of the physical side
of play, games, occupations, the use of gifts, etc.,
was explained by recourse to indirect considera
tion by symbolism. It was supposed that the



TYPES OF EDUCATIVE INTEREST

educative development was not on account of
what was directly done, but because of certain
ultimate philosophical and spiritual principles
which the activities somehow symbolically stood
for. Save for the danger of introducing an ele
ment of unreality and so of sentimentality, this
misinterpretation of the source of value in the
kindergarten activities would not have been so
serious had it not reacted very decisively upon
the selection and organization of materials and
activities. The disciples of Froebel were not
free to take plays and modes of occupation upon
their own merits ; they had to select and arrange
them in accordance with certain alleged prin
ciples of symbolism, as related to a supposed
law of the unfolding of an enfolded Absolute
Whole. Certain raw materials and lines of action
shown by experience outside the school to be of
great value were excluded because the principles
of symbolic interpretation did not apply to them.
These same principles led, moreover, to an exag
gerated preference for geometrically abstract
forms, and to insistence upon rigid adherence to
a highly elaborate technique for dealing with
73



INTEREST AND EFFORT

them. Only within the last generation have the
advances of science and philosophy brought about
recognition of the direct value of actions and
a freer utilization of play and occupational ac
tivities. Conceived in this freer and more scien
tific way, the principles of Froebel undoubtedly
represent the greatest advance yet made in the
recognition of the possibilities of bodily action
in educative growth. The methods of Montessori
are based on a like recognition, with the advan
tage of additional technical knowledge ; and if the
tendency to reduce them to isolated mechanical
exercises (a tendency unfortunately attendant
upon the spread of every definitely formulated
system) can be resisted or overcome, they un
doubtedly suggest further resources that can be
utilized with younger children, or with older
children whose sensori-motor development has
been retarded.

2. In this discussion of physical activity I
have had in mind for the most part that of the
organs of the body, especially the hands, as em
ployed directly with simple materials, or at most
such simple appliances as a pencil, a brush, etc.
74



TYPES OF EDUCATIVE INTEREST

A higher form of activity involving the sensori-
motor apparatus of the body is found when the
control over external objects is achieved by means
of tools of some sort, or by the application of one
material to another. The use of a saw, a gimlet, a
plane, of modeling-sticks, etc., illustrate the inter
vention of tools. The use of a thread in sewing,
the application of heat and moisture in cooking
or other simple experimentations, illustrate the
use of one thing (or mode of energy) to bring
about a change in another thing. There is, of
course, no sharp distinction, either in practice or
in principle, between this form of activity and
the more direct kind just discussed. The organs
of the body especially the hands may be re
garded as a kind of tools whose use is to be.
learned by trying and thinking. Tools may be
regarded as a sort of extension of the bodily
organs. But the growing use of the latter opens
a new line of development so important in its
consequences that it is worth while to give it
distinctive recognition. It is the discovery and
use of extra-organic tools which has made pos
sible, both in the history of the race and of the
75



INTEREST AND EFFORT

individual, complicated activities of a long dur
ation that is, with results that are long post
poned. And, as we have already seen, it is this
prolongation and postponement which requires
an increasing use of intelligence. The use of
tools and appliances (in the broad sense) also
demands a greater degree of technical skill
than does mastery of the use of the natural
organs or rather, it involves the problem of
a progressively more complicated use of the
latter and hence stimulates a new line of
development.

Roughly speaking, the use of such intervening
appliances marks off games and work on one side,
from play on the other. For a time children are
satisfied with such changes as they can bring
about with their hands and by locomotion and
transportation. Other changes which they cannot
so effect they are satisfied to imagine, without
an actual physical modification. Let us "play"
let us "make-believe" that things are so and
so, suffices. One thing may be made to stand for
another, irrespective of its actual fitness. Thus
leaves become dishes, bright stones articles of



TYPES OF EDUCATIVE INTEREST

food, splinters of wood knives and forks, when
children are playing at setting a table. In free
play things are plastic to alter their nature as
mood or passing need dictates ; chairs now serve
as wagons, now as a train of cars, now as boats,
etc. In games, however, there are rules to be
followed ; so that things have to be used in
definite ways, since they are means for accom
plishing definite ends, as a club is a bat for hit
ting a ball. In similar fashion, children as their
powers mature want real dishes, real articles of
food ; and are better satisfied if they can actually
make a fire and cook. They want to use the
things that are fitted to their purposes and that
will really accomplish certain results, instead of
effecting them only in fancy. It will be found
that the change comes with ability to carry a
purpose in mind for a longer time. The little
child is impatient, as we say, for immediate re
turns, lie cannot wait to get the appropriate
means and use them in the appropriate way to
achieve the end : not because he is physically more
impatient than older persons, but because an end
that is not achieved almost at once gets away
77



INTEREST AND EFFORT

from his mind. To execute his purpose he makes
his "means" realize his ideas at one stroke of
the magic wand of imagination. But as ideas per
sist for a longer time they can be employed to
effect an actual transformation of conditions
a process that almost always requires the in
tervention of tools, or the use of intervening
appliances.

There seems to be no better name for the acts
of using intermediate means, or appliances, to
reach ends than work. When employed in this
way, however, work must be distinguished from
labor and from toil and drudgery. Labor means
a form of work in which the direct result accom
plished is of value only as a means of exchange
for something else. It is an economic term, being
applied to that form of work where the product
is paid for, and the money paid is used for objects
of more direct values. Toil implies unusual ardu-
ousness in a task, involving fatigue. Drudgery is
an activity which in itself is quite disagreeable,
performed under the constraint of some quite
extraneous need. Play and work cannot, therefore,
be distinguished from one another according to
78



TYPES OF EDUCATIVE INTEREST

the presence or absence of direct interest in what
is doing. A child engaged in making something
with tools, say, a boat, may be just as immedi
ately interested in what he is doing as if he were
sailing the boat. He is not doing what he does
for the mere sake of an external result the boat
nor for the mere sake of sailing it later. The
thought of the finished product and of the use
to which it is to be put may come to his mind,
but so as to enhance his immediate activity of
construction. In this case, his interest is free.
He has a play-motive ; his activity is essentially
artistic in principle. What differentiates it from
more spontaneous play is an intellectual qual
ity ; a remoter end in time serves to suggest and
regulate a series of acts. Not to introduce an
element of work in this sense when the child is
ready for it is simply arbitrarily to arrest his de
velopment, and to force his activities to a level of
sense-excitation after he is prepared to act upon
the basis of an idea. A mode of activity that was
quite normal in its own period becomes disinte
grating when persisted in after a person is ripe
for an activity involving more thought. We must
79



INTEREST AND EFFORT

also remember that the change from an activity
with an end near by to one with an end farther
off does not come all at once, nor at the same
time with respect to all things. A child may be
ready for occupation with tools like scissors,
paint and brush, for setting a table, cooking, etc.,
while with respect to other activities he is still
unable to plan and arrange ahead. Thus there is
no ground for the assumption that children of
kindergarten age are capable only of make-be
lieve play, while children of the primary grades
should be held to all work and no play. Only the
false idea about symbolism leads to the former
conclusion ; and only a false identification of in
terest and play with trivial amusement leads to
the latter conclusion. It has been said that man
is man only as he plays ; to say this involves
some change from the meaning in which play
has just been used. But in the broader sense of
whole-hearted identification with what one is doing
in the sense of completeness of interest, it is
so true that it should be a truism.

Work in the sense in which it has been de
fined covers all activities involving the use of
80



TYPES OF EDUCATIVE INTEREST

intervening materials, appliances, and forms of
skill consciously used in achieving results. It
covers all forms of expression and construction
with tools and materials, all forms of artistic and
manual activity so far as they involve the con
scious or thoughtful endeavor to achieve an end.
They include, that is, painting, drawing, clay
modeling, singing so far as there is any conscious
attention to means to the technique of exe
cution. They comprehend the various forms of
manual training, work with wood, metal, tex
tiles, cooking, sewing, etc., so far as these in
volve an idea of the result to be accomplished
(instead of working from dictation or an external
model which does away with the need for thought).
They cover also the manual side of scientific in
quiry, the collection of materials for study, the
management of apparatus, the sequence of acts
required in carrying on and in recording experi
ments.

3. So far as this latter interest the interest

in discovery or in finding out what happens under

given circumstances gains in importance, there

develops a third type of interest the distinc-

81



INTEREST AND EFFORT

tively intellectual interest. Our wording should
be carefully noted. The intellectual interest is
not a new thing, now showing itself for the first
time. Our discussion of the development of the
so-called physical activities of a baby, and of
the constructive work of children, youth, and
adults has been intended to show that intel
ligence, in the form of clear perception of the
result of an activity and search for and adapta
tion of means, should be an integral part of such
activities. But it is possible for this intellectual
interest to be subordinate, to be subsidiary, to
the accomplishment of a process. But it is also
possible for it to become a dominating interest,
so that instead of thinking things out and dis
covering them for the sake of the successful
achievement of an activity, we institute the ac
tivity for the sake of finding out something.
Then the distinctively intellectual, or theoretical,
interest shows itself.

As there is no sharp line of division in theory,

so there is none in practice. Planning ahead,

taking notice of what happens, relating this to

what is attempted, are parts of all intelligent or

82



TYPES OF EDUCATIVE INTEREST

purposive activities. It is the business of educa
tors to see that the conditions of expression of the
practical interests are such as to encourage the
developing of these intellectual phases of an ac
tivity, and thereby evoke a gradual transition to
the theoretical type. It is a commonplace that
the fundamental principle of science is con
nected with the relation of cause and effect. In
terest in this relation begins on the practical side.
Some effect is aimed at, is desired and worked
for, and attention is given to the conditions for
producing it. At first the interest in the achieve
ment of the end predominates; but in the degree
in which this interest is bound up with thougJit-
ful effort, interest in the end or effect is of ne
cessity transferred to the interest in the means
the causes which bring it about. Where
work with tools, gardening, cooking, etc., is
intelligently carried on, it is comparatively a
simple matter to secure a transfer of interest
from the practical side to experimentation for
the sake of discovery. When any one be
comes interested in a problem as a problem
and in inquiry and learning for the sake of
83



INTEREST AND EFFORT

solving the problem, interest is distinctively
intellectual.

4. Social interest, interest in persons, is a
strong special interest, and also one which inter
twines with those already named. Small chil
dren s concern with persons is remarkably intense.
Their dependence upon others for support and
guidance, if nothing else, provides a natural basis
for attention to people and for a wish to enter
into intimate connections with them. Then dis
tinctively social instincts, such as sympathy, imi
tation, love of approval, etc., come in. Children s
contact with other persons is continuous ; and
there are practically no activities of a child that
are isolated. His own activities are so bound up
with others, and what others do touches him so
deeply and in so many ways, that it is only at
rare moments, perhaps of a clash of wills, that a
child draws a sharp line between other peoples
affairs as definitely theirs and his own as exclu
sively his. His father and mother, his brothers
and sisters, his home, his friends are his ; they
belong to his idea of himself. If they were cut
away from his thought of himself, and from his
84



TYPES OF EDUCATIVE INTEREST

hopes, desires, plans, and experiences, the latter
would lose pretty much all their contents. Because
of limitations of experience and of intelligence,
there are many affairs of others that a child can
not make his own ; but within these limits a child s
identification of his own concerns with those of
others is naturally even more intense than that
of grown persons. He has not come into busi
ness rivalries with them ; the number of people
whom he meets who are not sympathetic with
his concerns is small ; it is through entering into
the actions of others, directly and imaginatively,
that he finds the most significant and the most
rewarding of all his experiences. In these re
gards, a child is likely to be more social in his
interests than the average adult.

This social interest not only, then, interfuses
and permeates his interest in his own actions
and sufferings, but it also suffuses his interest in
tilings. Adults are so accustomed to making a
sharp distinction between their relations to things
and to other persons ; their pursuits in life are
so largely specialized along the line of having to
do with things just as things, that it is difficult
85



INTEREST AND EFFORT

for them, practically impossible, to realize the
extent to which children are concerned with
things only as they enter into and affect the con
cerns of persons, and the extent to which a per
sonal-social interest radiates upon objects and
gives them their meaning and worth. A mo
ment s consideration of children s plays shows
how largely they are sympathetic and dramatic
reproductions of social activities; and thereby
affords a clew to the extent in which interest in
things is borrowed from their ideas of what peo
ple do to and with things. Much of the so-called
animistic tendency of children, their tendency
to personify natural objects and events, is at
bottom nothing but an overflow of their social
interests. It is not so much that they literally
conceive things to be alive, as that things are of
interest to them only when they are encom
passed with the interests they see exemplified
in persons ; otherwise things are, at first, more
or less matters of indifference to them.

No doubt some of the repulsiveness of purely
abstract intellectual studies to many children is
simply the reflex of the fact that the things the
86



TYPES OF EDUCATIVE INTEREST

facts and truths presented to them have been
isolated from their human context. This does
not mean, of course, that a mythological or fan
ciful human character should be attributed to
inanimate things ; but it does mean that imper
sonal material should be presented so far as pos
sible in the r61e it actually plays in life. Children
generally begin the study of geography, for ex
ample, with a social interest so strong that it is
fairly romantic. Their imaginations are fired by
the thought of learning how strange and far-away
peoples live and fare. Then they are fed on ab
stract definitions and classifications ; or, what is
almost as deadening, upon bare physical facts
about the forms of land and water, the structure
of continents, etc. Then there are complaints
that children have so little interest in the study
simply because they have not been touched
where they are at home. In such sciences as
physics and chemistry there are enough facts
and principles which are associated with human
concerns to supply adequate material for thorough
grounding in the methods of those sciences.
It is not necessary to do more than to allude
87



INTEREST AND EFFORT

to the close connection between social and moral
interests. 1 In those cases where direct interest
points one way and obligation another, no rein
forcement of the demand of duty is as strong as
that furnished by a realization of the interests of
others that are bound up with it. The abstract
idea of duty, like other abstract ideas, has nat
urally little motivating force. Social interests
have a powerful hold, which, by association, is
transferred to what is morally required. Thus a
strong indirect interest resists the contrary pull
of immediate inclination. The only other moral
point that need be mentioned here is that the
conception of interest as naturally a selfish or
egoistic principle is wholly irreconcilable with
the facts of the case. All interest is naturally in
objects that carry an activity forward or in ob
jects that mark its fulfillment ; hence the char
acter of the interest depends upon the nature of
these objects. If they are low, or unworthy, or
purely selfish, then so is the interest, but not
otherwise. The strength of the interest in other
persons and in their activities and aims is a

1 See Moral Principles in Education, in this Series.

88



TYPES OF EDUCATIVE INTEREST

natural resource for making activities broad,
generous, and enlightened in scope; while the
physical, manual, and scientific interests in their
identification with objects make for a broaden
ing of the self.



THE PLACE OF INTEREST IN THE THEORY
OF EDUCATION

WE conclude with a brief restatement setting
forth the importance of the idea of interest for
educational theory. Interests, as we have noted,
are very varied ; every impulse and habit that
generates a purpose having sufficient force to
move a person to strive for its realization, be
comes an interest. But in spite of this diversity,
interests are one in principle. They all mark an
identification in action, and hence in desire, effort,
and thought, of self with objects ; with, namely,
the objects in which the activity terminates
(ends) and with the objects by which it is carried
forward to its end (means). Interest, in the emo
tional sense of the word, is the evidence of the
way in which the self is engaged, occupied, taken
up with, concerned in, absorbed by, carried away
by, this objective subject-matter. At bottom all
misconceptions of interest, whether in practice
90



PLAGE OF INTEREST IN THEORY

or in theory, come from ignoring or excluding its
moving, developing nature; they bring an activity
to a standstill, cut up its progressive growth into
a series of static cross-sections. When this hap
pens, nothing remains but to identify interest
with the momentary excitation an object arouses.
Such a relation of object and self is not only
not educative, but it is worse than nothing. It
dissipates energy, and forms a habit of depend
ence upon such meaningless excitations, a habit
most adverse to sustained thought and endeavor.
Wherever such practices are resorted to in the
name of interest, they very properly bring it into
disrepute. It is not enough to catch attention ;
it must be held. It does not suffice to arouse
energy ; the course that energy takes, the results
that it effects are the important matters.

But since activities, even those originally im
pulsive, are more or less continuous or enduring,
such static, non-developing excitements, repre
sent not interest, but an abnormal set of condi
tions. The positive contributions of the idea of
interest to pedagogic theory are twofold. In
the first place, it protects us from a merely
9



INTEREST AND EFFORT

internal conception of mind ; and, in the sec
ond place, from a merely external conception of
subject-matter.

(i) Any one who has grasped the conception
of an interest as an activity that moves toward
an end, developing as it proceeds thought of this
end and search for means, will never fall into
the error of thinking of mind (or of the self) as
an isolated inner world by itself. It will be ap
parent that mind is one with intelligent or pur
poseful activity with an activity that means
something and in which the meaning counts as
a factor in the development of an activity. There
is a sense in which mind is measured by growth
of power of abstraction, and a very important
sense this is. There is another sense in which it
can be truly said that abstractness is the worst
evil that infests education. The false sense of
abstraction is connected with thinking of mental
activity as something that can go on wholly by
itself, apart from objects or from the world of
persons and things. Real subject-matter being
removed, something else has to be supplied in
its place for the mind to occupy itself with. This
92



PLACE OF INTEREST IN THEORY

something else must of necessity be mere sym
bols ; that is to say things that are not signs of
anything, because the first-hand subject-matter
which gives them meaning has been excluded
or at least neglected. Or when objects con
crete facts, etc. are introduced, it is as mere
occasions for the mind to exercise its own sepa
rate powers just as dumb-bells or pulleys and
weights are a mere occasion for exercising the
muscles. The world of studies then becomes a
strange and peculiar world, because a world cut
off from abstracted from the world in which
pupils as human beings live and act and surfer.
Lack of " interest," lack of power to hold atten
tion and stir thought, are a necessary conse
quence of the unreality attendant upon such a
realm for study. Then it is concluded that the
"minds " of children or of people in general are
averse to learning, are indifferent to the con
cerns of intelligence. But such indifference and
aversion are always evidence either directly
or as ;i consequence of previous bad conditions
- that the appropriate conditions for the exer
cise of mind are not there : that they are ex-
93



INTEREST AND EFFORT

eluded because there has been no provision of
situations in which things have to be intelligently
dealt with. Everything that is disparaging in the
common use of the terms academic, abstract,
formal, theoretical, has its roots here. 1

(2) The supposed externality of subject-matter
is but the counterpart phase of the alleged in
ternal isolation of mind. If mind means certain
powers or faculties existing in themselves and
needing only to be exercised by and iipon presented
subject-matter, the presented subject-matter must
mean something complete in its ready-made and
fixed separateness. Objects, facts, truths of geog
raphy, history, and science not being conceived
as means and ends for the intelligent develop
ment of experience, are thought of just as stuff
to be learned. Reading, writing, figuring are
mere external forms of skill to be mastered.
Even the arts drawing, singing are thought
of as meaning so many ready-made things, pic
tures, songs, that are to be externally produced

1 Of course, nothing that is said here is meant to depre
ciate the wonderful possibilities involved in an imaginative
experimentation with things, after the conditions of more direct
transactions with them have been met.

94



PLACE OF INTEREST IN THEORY

and reproduced. Then we have the situation
described in the early portion of this essay :
Some means must be found to overcome the
separation of mind and subject-matter ; problems
of method in teaching are reduced to various
ways of overcoming a gap which exists only be
cause a radically wrong method had already been
entered upon. The doctrine of interest is not a
short cut to "methods" of this sort. On the
contrary, it is a warning to furnish conditions
such that the natural impulses and acquired
habits, as far as they are desirable, shall obtain
subject-matter and modes of skill in order to de
velop to their natural ends of achievement and
efficiency. Interest, the identification of mind
with the material and methods of a developing
activity, is the inevitable result of the presence
of such situations.

Hence it follows that little can be accom
plished by setting up "interest" as an end or a
method by itself. Interest is obtained not by
thinking about it and consciously aiming at it, but
by considering and aiming at the conditions that
lie back of it, and compel it. If we can discover
95



INTEREST AND EFFORT

a child s urgent needs and powers, and if we can
supply an environment of materials, appliances,
and resources physical, social, and intellectual
to direct their adequate operation, we shall
not have to think about interest. It will take
care of itself. For mind will have met with what
it needs in order to be mind. The problem of
educators, teachers, parents, the state, is to pro
vide the environment that induces educative or
developing activities, and where these are found
the one thing needful in education is secured.