Interest and Effort in Education

V. The Place of Interest in the Theory of Education

v 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, becomes 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 emotional 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 PLACE 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 happens , 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 dependence 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 eatelt attention; it must be Iteld. 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 impulsive . are more or less continuous or enduring, such static, non-developing excitements, represent not interest, but an abnormal set of conditions . The positive contributions of the idea of interest to pedagogic theory are twofold. In the first place, it protects us from a merely 91 INTEREST AND EFFORT internal conception of mind j and, in the second place, from a merely external conception of subject-matter. (1)- Anyone 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 apparent that mind is one with intelligent Qr 11urposefulactivity - with an activity that '/Iteam something and in which the meaning counts as a factor in the developmentof 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 isconnected with thinking-of menta} 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 witb:...This. ga PLACE OF INTEREST IN THEORY something else must of necessity be mere symboIs ; 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-concrete facts, etc. -are introduced, it is as mere occasions for the mind to exercise its own separate 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, beeause a world cut off from -abstracted from - the world in which pupils as human beings live and act and suffer. Lack of «interest," lack of power to hold atten. tion and stir thought, are a necessary consequence of the unreality attendant upon stK:h a realm for study. Then it is concluded that the "minds tJ of children or of people in general are avers(. to learning, are indifferent to the concerns of inte1ligence. But such indifference and aversion are always evidence- either directly or as a consequence of previous bad conditions - that the appropriate conditions...