3. To understand and appreciate the viewpoints and beliefs of other people and to adopt them for or adapt them to our own life, 4. To be genuinely curious and to ask worthwhile questions, especially about the causes and effects of things. To imagine new things and new conditions. To think of things, not only as they are, but as they ought to be. To initiate, to improve, to make a new earth and a new heaven in our own yard and our own life.

5. To take the problems of everyday life and break them up into workable parts. To gather the necessary information, sift it, organize it, and use it to obtain correct solutions, and then to use the solutions obtained for the attack on other problems. To do this, not only with our little difficulties, but also with our hard problems, those problems which require weeks, months, or years for solution.

How can we train our pupils in these and other aspects of everyday thinking? The rule is a simple one. Provide motivated and directed practice in those things which are to be achieved.

If the pupils are to develop skill in the judging of biscuits, give them practice in judging biscuits and supervise the practice so as to insure the proper use of time and the gradual development of skill. If they are to learn to judge compositions, give them practice in judging compositions.

If it is desired to increase the ability of the pupils to understand and appreciate the viewpoints of others, give them practice in trying to understand and appreciate the viewpoints, ideas, and beliefs of their schoolmates, their parents, and their neighbors.

If the pupils are to develop initiative, let them exercise it in the life and activities of the school. Encourage them to ask questions, to offer suggestions, and to express opinions.

If skill in coöperative thinking is to be obtained, provide opportunities for and encourage coöperative study and work.

In all these things it must be borne in mind that no amount of practice by the teacher, however excellent such practice may be both in quality and in its effects on the teacher, will produce skill in the pupils. Also that the work of the school is that of learning, and that, consequently, much "trial and error" is to be expected and tolerated.

Why have we not accomplished more in training our pupils for a more excellent thought-life? One of the reasons is that we were never trained to do it. When we went to school, we memorized and recited what was set before us. Now we teach as we were taught.

Another reason is that we have not been aware that there are many distinct types of thinking and that the development of

skill in each of them requires specific practice. We know that a person does not become a good judge of poetry by practice in judging doughnuts, however excellent the doughnuts may be, but much of our school work has been done as if we expected such a miracle to happen.

Perhaps there is yet another reason. As teachers we have not understood clearly the importance of the work of the common schools and the function which they should perform in raising the average level of thinking on the part of our citizens and thus producing a more efficient government. The ordinary, but none the less important, duties of the average citizen consists in a representative government like ours, in selecting capable and honest men and women for public offices. The voter must know the difference between a real leader and a mere hireling. He must also be able to serve as an intelligent juryman when questions are to be decided by general vote.

Thinking and the training in thinking, like charity, should begin at home. Practice in good citizenship begins by attending to the "motes" in our own precinct. As skill is developed, it may be possible to tackle the "beams" in national and international affairs. We have understood that for the blind to lead the blind brings disaster. We have not been sufficiently aware that blindness in the followers constitutes an opportunity and an invitation for blind leaders. The number of demagogues and the amount of jingoism in our political life at a given time is a measure of the blindness and the failure to think clearly on the part of us average citizens. It is also a measure of the inefficiency of the training in our public schools.

What would happen if the teachers, nearly a million altogether, in the public and private schools of our country were to become enthusiastic about the development of a more excellent thought-life and bend all their energies toward its cultivation both in themselves and in their pupils? What would happen if all the teachers in other countries also became enthusiastic promoters of better thinking?

14. Children's Thinking Illustrated

[BROWN, H. W., "Thoughts and Reasonings of Children," Pedagogical Seminary, 1892, Vol. 2, pp. 358-396.]

A child five or six years of age, after having visited her father in a mill in which some rather noisy machinery was in operation, came to the conclusion that up in the sky there must be

a lot of machinery which God puts in motion whenever He wants thunder. A four-year-old boy desired to be permitted to go out in the rain because it would make him grow. A five-yearold girl exclaimed, on seeing a crooked tree: "Oh, see that tree sitting down!" Another five-year-old reasoned that because a person's eyes were gray she was getting old. A seven-year-old boy concluded that toads have rheumatism because they hop. A five-year-old boy, upon seeing an electric light being set up in front of his home, informed his mother that God would not have to make the moon any more. A six-year-old girl reasoned that when God wanted rain He pulled a string, like the string on the shower bath in her home. A seven-year-old boy, on being asked in the morning by his aunt whom he was visiting whether he had said his prayers the night before, replied that he had not. His aunt warned him that he must always do so, or else God would not take care of him. The child replied: "Well, he did." A four-year-old girl saw some plaster dogs in a store and asked if they were alive. On being told that they were not, the child replied: "But they are standing on their feet."

15. Particular Personal Experiences a Necessary Basis for Abstractions

[DEWEY, John, How We Think, pp. 131-132. New York, D. C. Heath & Co., 1910.]

A blind man can never have an adequate understanding of the meaning of color and red; a seeing person can acquire the knowledge only by having certain things designated in such a way as to fix attention upon some of their qualities. This method of delimiting a meaning by calling out a certain attitude toward objects [the attitude of disregard for some qualities and selection of others] may be called denotative or indicative. It is required for all sense qualities-sounds, tastes, colors-and equally for all emotional and moral qualities. The meanings of honesty, sympathy, hatred, fear, must be grasped by having them presented in an individual's first-hand experience. . . . However advanced the person is in knowledge and in scientific training, understanding of a new subject, or a new aspect of an old subject, must always be through these acts of experiencing directly the existence or quality in question.

16. Teachers Must Allow Pupils to Evaluate Their

Suggestions

[DEWEY, John, How We Think, pp. 97-98. New York, D. C. Heath & Co., 1910.]

The inductive inference, the guess, is formed by the student (ordinarily); if it happens to be correct, it is at once accepted by the teacher; or if it is false, it is rejected. If any amplification of the idea occurs, it is quite likely carried through by the teacher who thereby assumes the responsibility for its intellectual development. But a complete, an integral, act of thought requires that the person making the suggestion (the guess) be responsible also for reasoning out its bearings upon the problem in hand; that he develop the suggestion at least enough to indicate the ways in which it applies to and accounts for the specific data of the case. Too often. . . after calling out the spontaneous reflections of the pupils, their guesses or ideas about the matter, [the teacher], merely accepts or rejects them, assuming himself the responsibility for their elaboration. In this way, the function of suggestion and of interpretation is excited, but it is not directed and trained.

17. Criticise All Suggestions

[DEWEY, John, How We Think, p. 76. New York, D. C. Heath & Co., 1910.]

Acceptance of the suggestion in its first form is prevented by looking into it more thoroughly. Conjectures that seem plausible at first sight are often found unfit or even absurd when their full consequences are traced out. Even when reasoning out the bearings of a supposition does not lead to rejection, it develops the idea into a form in which it is more apposite to the problem. . . . Suggestions at first seemingly remote and wild are frequently so transformed by being elaborated into what follows from them as to become apt and fruitful.

18. Training to Think

[ADAMS, John, "The Golden Guess," Educational Review, May, 1924, Vol. 67, pp. 257-259.]

It is the teacher's business to discover what element of truth underlies each of the false answers his pupils supply. (And, we might add, to discover what basis of fact underlies the right answers received.) Every time that she succeeds in getting at

the true reason for the false answer she should give herself a good mark; every time she cannot, she should give herself a bad one. For it is her business to know just this sort of thing. When asked, for example, to supply an instance of a collective noun, the boy answers: "A vacuum cleaner," the teacher has to determine whether the boy is impertinent, or is misled by the suggestion of the term collective. If he looks knowing, and turns round for the applause of his classmates, the wise teacher will take no note of his facetiousness, but merely get some other pupil to supply an orthodox collective noun. If, on the other hand, he is genuinely surprised at the failure to satisfy, he is entitled to the explanation that will rectify his hypothesis. . . . It was not a guess, but a confused explanation that resulted in the exposition of an inquest: "When you have died unexpectedly you are cross-examined by a coroner." Every time a pupil has a rational explanation for his answer, however farfetched the explanation may be, he must be exonerated from the charge of illegitimate guessing.

The teacher asks: "What is a lie?" and at once gets the confident reply: "Saying what is not true." The teacher proceeds to confront the pupil with the case of Columbus, who came back from his voyage and said he had discovered another route. to India. Was he telling a lie? The pupils reconsider and suggest that a lie is telling what is not true and knowing that it is not true. This is confronted by the case of the novelist who tells what is not true and what he knows is not true. Is the novelist then telling lies? The pupils realize that he is a sort of licensed liar, but do not feel justified in condemning him. Accordingly, they amend their definition into "telling knowingly what is not true, and getting some benefit from it." At this point the teacher brings in the case of Sir Walter Scott and the large sums he used to make, and the pupils are once more sent on their travels. . . . In their doubt the children welcome gleefully the problem whether it is a lie for a boy who had run round a field in eight minutes to say he had run round it in seven and one-half. This time there was no hesitation: this was emphatically a lie. The notion of an unfair advantage was accordingly added to the definition, and the pupils' minds were at rest. This result does not provide a perfect definition of a lie, but it does lead to a working definition suitable for the state at which the pupils found themselves.

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