LESSON XVI

ATTENTION AND APPERCEPTION: PRINCIPLES

How to engage the pupil's attention and make sure that he gets the meaning we want him to get, is the problem of this chapter.*

I. PSYCHOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES

1. The nature of attention. The best way to describe attention is by a figure of speech. The field of a camera, we all know, has a focus, a central point where the picture is perfectly clear and distinct. Things upon the margin of the field appear blurred and vaguely outlined in proportion to their distance from the focus. Just so the field of consciousness has a focus and a margin. The activity of the mind always centers itself about some one thing or group of things, some single idea or thought. It is the object of attention. Something else may take its place in the fraction of a second, for thought is quick; but for the moment it stands at the focus and other things are upon the margin. It is clear and distinct to the mental vision; they are more or less dim and blurred.

We are always paying attention to something or other. Attention is a constant characteristic of the mind's action. Every moment of consciousness has its focus. Not to give attention to anything would mean to be unconscious.

Attention cannot be kept long upon an unchanging object. It shifts rapidly. "Quick as thought" is a proverb. As soon as a thing has been brought into focus and has been clearly and distinctly apprehended, the mind moves on. That thing is now known; that problem is solved-now what next? Try to keep your attention upon an unchanging object-say the word "Lesson" at the top of this page-and you will find that you cannot, except by constantly having new thoughts about it. But to have a new thought is to change the object of attention. If the mental object changes—if we keep looking at it from new points of view, asking new questions about it, relating to new

* In connection with this chapter, the class should review what is said on attention in Lesson X., Section 6; and on apperception in Lesson IV., Section 3; Lesson XII., Section 3; and Lesson XIV., Section 5.

things we can keep the attention steadily upon the most wooden and changeless of external things.

2. There are two kinds of attention-voluntary and spontaneous. Attention is voluntary when we keep it directed upon some object by an act of will. It requires effort. We are more or less conscious of a split of impulses. We feel the pull of other things that claim attention; but we resist them and hold our minds to the chosen object. Attention is spontaneous when it is drawn to some object naturally and without effort. While tremendous effort may be put forth under stress of spontaneous attention, there is none needed to hold the attention itself upon its object. We are hardly conscious of the pull of other things, for the mind is being given to the strongest.

(1) Voluntary attention is a state of unstable equilibrium. It cannot long be sustained without lapsing into spontaneous attention. Either the mind wanders from the topic set, and must by an effort be pulled back to work; or we get interested in the task that was begun voluntarily, and further attention to it becomes spontaneous.

(2) Spontaneous attention depends upon one's interests. A man's interests, moreover, reflect what the man himself is. Interest may be best defined as a feeling of worth that accompanies self-expression. A thing is interesting to one just in so far as it gives him a chance to express what is within him, to realize in action his instincts, habits and ideas, and to press toward completion what he has begun. Interests may be classed as native or acquired, according as they depend chiefly upon instincts or upon habits and ideas. Yet most human interests spring from both sources. Instincts get set into habits, overlaid by experience and transformed by reason; yet they remain at the heart of life's deepest interests. He whose interests are instinctive merely is a savage; but he who has no other than acquired tastes is a fop.

3. Attention is apperceptive. We attend to things that we may understand them. It is for sake of getting the meaning of a given sensation or idea that we focus the activity of the mind upon it. Attention is an assimilative process. It brings what we know to the interpretation of what is as yet unknown; it arouses that which is within us to receive what comes from without; it throws the light of experience upon the new problem of the moment.

Attention is, in fact, the focal point where past and present meet to determine a meaning. A repetition of the old and familiar, with no new element, cannot hold the attention and may even fail to arouse it to a passing look. A presentation of the absolutely new, with no link of connection with past experience, would fail just as completely, for

it would be unintelligible. Neither the old alone nor the new alone can engage the attention. The old alone is flat and stale, and is met mechanically by habit; the new alone is meaningless. But when we can bring the past to bear upon the present; when we can see the old in the new and the new in the old, the new giving life to the old and the old giving meaning to the new-then interest awakens, the mind is alert and attention intent upon its problem. The best way for the teacher to get and hold attention is to fulfill the conditions of apperception.

And it is just as true that whatever means you use to get attention will enter vitally into the pupil's apperception of the truth presented. He must make his ideas for himself, we have said, and out of material from within himself. The meaning a new truth has for him depends upon the old ideas, the instincts and habits that he brings to bear upon it. And he will bring to its interpretation just those ideas, instincts and habits that you arouse within him as you seek to gain his attention. We might, indeed, compactly restate the law of apperception in these terms: The meaning of each new experience is determined by the appeal it makes upon attention.

II. THE TEACHER'S PROBLEM

4. The teacher must get and hold the attention of his class. It is for the teacher to get rather than for the class to give. If our pupils would only pay attention, we sometimes think, how well and interestingly we could teach! But that is to begin at the wrong end. If we would only teach as we ought, they would pay attention. The attention of a class depends upon the teacher. It is not so much a condition as a result of good teaching. If you need ask for attention, there is something the matter with you. It is your business so to teach that you grip the minds and hold the interest of your pupils.

There is no use to teach without attention. The pupil's body is with you, but his mind is not, and you are wasting words. Without attention you can do nothing. When it slips away your first concern must be to get it back.

It is positively harmful to teach without attention. Your pupils will go away with ideas distorted and garbled, a mixture of your teaching and their own fancies, yet will think that they have gotten the truth. No inattentive pupil feels that he is missing anything. He gets what is worse than no impression, a wrong one. Moreover, attention, like any other power of the mind, is subject to the law of habit. If you teach without it, you beget within your pupils the habit of inattention.

Spiritually, they grow to think lightly of sacred things; intellectually and morally, they are weakened.

"Teachers have a great deal to do with the formation of the intellectual habits which will cling to their pupils for the rest of their lives. . . . We ought all to feel some interest in the sort of mental character which our little scholars are acquiring during their intercourse with us. We must look forward to the time when the children will be men and women, and consider what sort of men and women we would have them be. We cannot help desiring that when, hereafter, they read a book, they shall read seriously; that when they hear a sermon, they shall not bring preoccupied or wandering minds to what they hear; that as they move along in life, they shall not be unobservant triflers, gazing in helpless vacancy on the mere surface of things, but shall be able to fix their eyes and their hearts steadily on all the sources of instruction which may be open to them. If they are ever to do this, it is necessary that they should have acquired in youth the power of concentrating their attention. This power is the one qualification which so often constitutes the main difference between the wise and the foolish, the successful and the unsuccessful men. Attention is the one habit of the mind which, perhaps more than any other, forms a safeguard for intellectual progress, and even, under the divine blessing, for moral purity. Now, every time a child comes into your class, this habit is either strengthened or weakened. Something is sure to be done, while the children are with you, to make them either better or worse in this respect for the whole of their future lives. Every time you permit disorder, trifling or wandering you are helping to lower and vitiate the mental character of your pupils. You are encouraging them to a bad habit. You are, in fact, doing something to prevent them from ever becoming thoughtful readers, diligent observers and earnest listeners, as long as they live."*

5. The teacher must engage the interest of his class. There are other ways, of course, of getting attention. You might demand it or coax for it, scare it into pupils or cajole it out of them, bribe them with rewards or appeal to their respect for yourself. But attention so gotten is unstable and of little worth. It cannot be long sustained, and while it does last, has no apperceptive value. These are but external The Art of Securing Attention," School Bulletin edition, pp. 117-119.

* Fitch :

means. They bear no relation to the truth you teach. You must arouse the pupil's interest in the subject itself, not merely in pleasing you, getting rewards or avoiding punishments. You ought so to teach that the truth may make its own appeal. You should make the pupil "feel that the subject claims attention for itself, not that you are claiming it for the subject." *

But this only brings us to the real problem of every teacher. Granted that we must get attention, and the kind of attention that springs from interest, the great question is-how? It is no easy thing to hold the interest of a class. And it is not a problem that can be solved once for all. You face it anew each Sunday.

(1) First of all, remove the distractions. Begin your effort to hold the attention and interest of your class, by eliminating all those things that would be apt to get it away from you. You are, in fact, a competitor for the attention of your pupil. You must contend with other things for it. It is not the total lack of attention that your teaching must combat so much as his proneness to pay attention to something else that is, for the moment, more interesting. Few inattentive pupils are mentally inert. Their minds are active, but in the wrong direction. They are busy thinking of something, but it is not what you want them to think of. The wise teacher, therefore, does all he can to weaken the competition of other things. He removes as completely as possible all distracting conditions.

This is why, ideally, each class should have a room of its own. It is hard to hold the interest and attention of a class if there are other classes all about it in the same room, each with its own buzz of discussion, and some with the inevitable loud-mouthed teacher who mistakes intensity of sound for forcefulness. The room should be furnished simply and comfortably, and for the use of the class. It should contain nothing in the way of furniture, pictures or paraphernalia that is not in line with the work you expect to do. This does not mean that it is to be bare and unattractive. Pictures, books, maps, tables for manual work, have their rightful place. It is the home and work-room of the class, and it should be both homelike and usable. But the teacher will rigidly exclude anything that has no connection with the work of the class and might distract their attention.

The teacher will see to it that the physical conditions of the classroom are favorable. The seats should be comfortable, the heat right, the air kept fresh. No one can give attention when fatigued or dulled by bad air. We must be at our best physically to do good mental work. *Fitch: op. cit., p. 89.