felt needs. We must do more than put a sugar-coat over an unchanged inner material; we must leaven the whole lump. Our problem is not to make a lesson interesting by tricks of method or by adding to it stories or other material pleasant but extraneous; it is to bring out of each lesson its intrinsic interest.*

There are times of extremity, of course, when the teacher has no choice. He is driven to appeal to any interest, however remote, that will give him access to the mind of the pupil. Such extremity may result from his own failure to bring out the essential interest of the lesson. Usually, however, it comes simply from the lack of that personal confidence and respect of the class for the teacher that underlies all effective teaching. The teacher just beginning work with an unruly gang of boys or with a self-satisfied, giggling bevy of girls, must win them first in any way he can. He may have to begin with something utterly foreign to the truth he means ultimately to bring out. The "point of contact" he first seeks is that between his pupils and himself; only later can he seek to make contact between their needs and a lesson point.

7. Attention, interest, apperception, are but three aspects of one and the same mental process-that, in short, is the point which this chapter seeks to make plain. Attention is a name for clear and definite mental activity; interest is its motive and apperception its result. Interest determines both the direction of attention and the meaning of that to which attention is paid. To know how to call forth the right interest is one of the vital secrets of effective teaching. We cannot learn that secret all at once. But we shall be kept from many mistakes if we remember that interest is more than a means which the teacher may employ; it is an end of education. We must do more than use the pupil's interests to get his attention for a passing hour; the chief aim of our work is the development within him of a genuine, many-sided, comprehending interest in all those things of life that have real worth. Our pupils will likely forget every particular fact that we teach them; but the interests we have fed will remain. The teacher does well, therefore, to put to himself now and then the question, “Am I, or am I not, appealing to interests that I would have permanent, or that I can use in the development of worthy life attitudes?" If you can answer that question in the affirmative, and really get and hold the interest of your class, you are succeeding in your work.

* Cf. Dewey: "The Child and the Curriculum," p. 38.

QUESTIONS

1. What do you understand by attention?

2.

why?

"Attention cannot be kept long upon an unchanging object"

3. What two kinds of attention are distinguished in this chapter? 4. What do you understand by the "unstable equilibrium" of voluntary attention?

5. What is interest? Discuss the relation of interest and attention. 6. In what senses is attention an apperceptive process?

7. Why must the teacher get and hold the attention of his class? 8. Why is it a positive harm to teach without the attention of the class?

9. Discuss some of the distractions to attention which lie within the teacher's power to remove.

10. What positive conditions must the teacher fulfill if he would engage the interest of his class?

II. Why ought a teacher know more than he intends to present to his class?

12. What do you understand by the phrase "point of contact" as used in this chapter? What by "keeping alive”?

13. Why should the teacher appeal to that interest whose apperceptive value is highest?

LESSON XVII

ATTENTION AND APPERCEPTION: METHODS

The last chapter dealt with principles; in this we shall seek to apply them. We shall consider some of the particular methods which the teacher may use to hold the attention and interest of his pupils and to help them understand the truth.

1. Continuity. By continuity we shall understand the connection of lessons with one another. The lessons should have connection— historical or logical; and the teacher should try to make the pupil see and understand it.

It is possible, of course, to present each lesson in and for itself. The lessons of a quarter or a year thus constitute a mere series—like a string of pearls, each in itself a finished work of art, but only strung together. But such a procedure involves a great waste of energy. It is poor economy to begin over again each Sunday, and to face anew the problem of engaging the interest of the class. Yet that is what the teacher does who fails to make clear the continuity of the lessons. The class may often enough compel you to begin anew the battle for interest; but you are foolish deliberately to plan to do so. Strive to carry interest over from Sunday to Sunday. Make each lesson lead up to the next and help set its problems. So teach that what the pupil gets may make him want more. Gather a headway of interest. Every day's teaching should make the next easier.

Teaching that lacks continuity, moreover, fails to realize one of the ends at which all teaching should aim. It fails to organize the truth within the mind of the pupil. He learns so many scattered stories and facts, moral maxims and spiritual truths; but never gets them put together, save in some haphazard fashion of his own. Much of what has been taught him will drop out of mind, simply for lack of connecting links with the rest of his knowledge; and the whole will lack perspective. The teacher must help the pupil, not only to get ideas, but to systematize and unify them. Organization is no less important than impression.

Three counsels are important, though obvious:

(1) The work of organization must be done a bit at a time, week after week. Do not wait until review Sunday, and expect to do it all then.

You

(2) Make sure that the connection you teach is the real one. must find continuity in the Bible, not put it there. You have no right to substitute an imagined connection of your own for that which the lessons actually possess.

(3) Study the whole before you attempt to teach the part. Many Sunday school teachers study wrongly. They simply keep a week ahead of the class, or even-be it confessed with shame-right with the class. They live from hand to mouth, each week preparing just enough material to fill out the teaching period on the coming Sunday. They cannot rightly connect lesson with lesson in the mind of the pupil because their own vision is limited to the matter immediately in hand, with, perhaps, a glance ahead. The teacher ought to know his whole subject before he begins to teach. When you enter upon a new series of lessons-say the life of David or the history of the early Church-go over the whole ground. Get a plan for the series. You will then know how to plan each lesson, that it may not only be clear in itself, but contribute to the final organization of the truth.

2. Correlation. By correlation we shall understand the connection of the Sunday school lessons with the rest of the pupil's education. The teacher should not ignore, but build upon the work of the public schools.

Of all the ideas which the pupil will bring to bear upon your teaching, and which will determine its meaning for him, none are more easily accessible than those which he is acquiring day by day in the schools. That much of his experience at least you can get definitely acquainted with. You can find out just what ideas he has gotten, what stories he knows, what facts of history and science he has learned, what things he can and cannot do, what interests he has acquired. You can meet him then on common ground, and present the truth in ways that he will understand.

This does not mean that you are to use the methods of the public school, simply that you take account of the ideas it gives to your pupils and use them as an apperceptive basis. You will question the pupil about what he has already learned, and use his answers in the development of new truth. You will illustrate the lesson with stories that the school has made familiar. You will appeal to biography and history, and to his growing acquaintance with the facts of nature. You will connect Bible geography with that of the world at large.

The advantages of such correlation are: (1) It arouses the interest and self-activity of the pupil. It unites new and old within him. It makes him think, and gives him a chance to express himself and con

tribute to the discussion. (2) It gives the class confidence in their teacher. Every item of correlation is to them so much evidence of the breadth and accuracy of his knowledge. (3) It begets within the pupil a sense of the unity of spiritual truth and material fact, of religion and the life of every day. (4) It actually brings about this unity, and so makes the truths learned in Sunday school more permanent and usable. We really possess ideas only in so far as we are able to call them up when needed; and that ability depends, we remember, upon the laws of association. To insure the permanence and future usefulness to the pupil of anything we teach, we must multiply its associations with other things—and with such things, be it marked, as he is apt often to meet or to have in mind. If the spiritual truths we teach in Sunday school are ever to count for much in the actual life of our pupils, we must not be content simply to connect the lessons with one another or to construct a system of doctrine that is internally self-consistent. We must reach out into the rest of knowledge and into life itself to make associations. We must, by question and illustration, by allusion and direct cross-reference, weave connections with the rest of the pupil's ideas. We must make religion an integral part of that larger organization of ideas and powers at which education aims as a whole.

The dangers to be guarded against are: (1) That of wandering from the point. It is easy to be led off into details of correlation, till the real point of the lesson is obscured. (2) That of a wrong attitude on the part of the pupil. He may dislike his school work; and your attempt at correlation may only succeed in transferring the dislike. Correlation is most valuable at those periods in the pupil's development when he is most interested in what he is learning at school. We have seen that middle childhood is such a period. Later adolescence is another, for those who are still in school or college and are laying hold of the great truths of science. In later childhood and early adolescence, on the other hand, school is often enough a bore. In any case, your problem is an individual one. You must find a "point of contact" for each pupil. (3) That of too little knowledge on your part. Do not attempt to correlate your teaching with that of the public school unless you know thoroughly just what your pupils are getting there. Otherwise they will soon find out that you do not know everything that you are talking about; and you will lose their confidence.

3. Illustration. There is no surer way to bring the truth home to the minds and hearts of those we teach than by effective illustration.