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17. Apply the following precepts in your classroom teaching: (a) Remember that attentiveness is instinctive, and other things being equal, whatever makes the strongest bid for the pupil's attention will get it.

(b) Hold the attention through interest, thus building up good habits of work.

(c) Reward attention by satisfaction in the worth-whileness of the work. Commend good attention.

(d) Other things being equal, the physical attitude of attention should be required.

(e) Create interest in uninteresting things by connecting them with interesting things.

(f) Use interest both as a means and as an end.

REFERENCES

ANGELL, J. R., Introduction to Psychology (New York, Henry Holt & Co., 1918), Chap. i.

BETTS, G. H., The Mind and Its Education (New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1910), Chap. ii.

BOLTON, F. E., Everyday Psychology for Teachers (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1923), Chap. xi.

COLVIN, S. S., The Learning Process (New York, Macmillan Co., 1921), Chaps. xvii-xix.

FREEMAN, F. N., How Children Learn (Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1917), pp. 56-111.

DEWEY, John and Evelyn, Schools of To-morrow (New York, E. P. Dutton & Co., 1915), Chaps. ii-iv, vi.

GATES, A. I., Psychology for Students of Education (New York, Macmillan Co., 1924), Chap. ix.

JAMES, William, Talks to Teachers (New York, Henry Holt & Co., 1915), Chaps. x, xi.

Psychology (New York, Henry Holt & Co., 1915), Chap. xiii. KILPATRICK, E. A., Source Book in the Philosophy of Education (New York, Macmillan Co., 1923), pp. 469, 517.

MCDOUGALL, William, Social Psychology (Introduction to) (Boston, John B. Luce, 1921).

MILLER, H. L., Directing Study (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1922), Chap. v.

PARKER, S. C., Methods of Teaching in High Schools (Boston, Ginn & Co., 1920), Chap. xiv.

PILLSBURY, W. B., Attention (London, Sonnenschein, 1908). TITCHENER, E. B., Lectures on the Elementary Psychology of Feeling and Attention (New York, Macmillan Co., 1908).

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A Beginner's Psychology (New York, Macmillan Co., 1915), Chap. iv.

WARREN, H. C., Human Psychology (Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1919), pp. 140-141; 364-365.

WILSON, G. M., Motivation of School Work (Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1916).

WOODWORTH, R. S., Dynamic Psychology (New York, Columbia University, 1918), pp. 66-76; 100-104.

YERKES, R. M., Introduction to Psychology (New York, Henry Holt & Co., 1911), Chap. xxii.

CHAPTER XVII

PLAY AND THE PLAY SPIRIT IN EDUCATION

A debate has been going on for years over the question of the merits of work, play and drudgery in education. The educational psychologists are generally agreed that work done on the play level is done better and more economically than when the activity degenerates into drudgery. The selections made for this chapter emphasize both the hygienic aspects of play as play, and of work carried on in the spirit of play.

The selections on muscle training by Hall stress a point that is too little emphasized to-day (1,2,3,4,5). The meaning of play and the significance of the play spirit are treated (6,7). The relation of interest and effort is clearly indicated in the adaptations and excerpts. The manner in which the play spirit can be preserved and the use of the play spirit are described by Gruenberg and Dewey. The selection from Judd on the periods in development of play is suggestive for teachers who wish to base their practices on sound psychology.

1. Psycho-Motor Education

[HALL, G. Stanley, Youth, pp. 8-9. New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1907.]

Modern psychology thus sees in muscles organs of expression for all efferent processes. . . . Muscle culture develops braincenters as nothing else yet demonstrably does. Muscles are the vehicles of habituation, imitation, obedience, character, and even of manners and customs. . . . Skill, endurance, and perseverance may almost be called muscular virtues; and fatigue caprice, ennui, restlessness, lack of control and poise, muscular faults.

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2. Muscle Culture

[HALL, G. Stanley, Youth, pp. 76-77. New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1907.]

Not only is all muscle culture at the same time brain-building, but a bookworm with soft hands, tender feet, and tough rump from much sitting, or an anæmic girl prodigy, "in the morning hectic, in the evening electric," is a monster. Play at its best is a school of ethics. It gives not only strength but courage and confidence, tends to simplify life and habits, gives energy, decision, and promptness to the will, brings consolation and peace of mind in evil days, is a resource in trouble and brings out individuality.

3. Aims of Exercise

[HALL, G. Stanley, Youth, p. 80. New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1907.]

The best exercise for the young should thus be more directed to develop the basal powers old to the race than those peculiar to the individual, and it should enforce those psycho-neural and muscular forms which race habit has handed down rather than insist upon those arbitrarily designed to develop our ideas of symmetry regardless of heredity. The best guide to the former is interest, zest, and spontaneity.

4. Dancing as an Expression of Motor Needs

[HALL, G. Stanley, Youth, p. 88. New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1907.] [Folk] dancing is one of the best expressions of pure play and of the motor needs of youth. Perhaps it is the most liberal of all forms of motor education.

5. Stress on Accessory Muscles

[HALL, G. Stanley, Youth, pp. 12-13. New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1907.]

School and kindergarten often lay a disproportionate strain on the tiny accessory muscles, weighing altogether but a few ounces, that wag the tongue, move the pen, and do fine work requiring accuracy. But still at this stage prolonged work requiring great accuracy is irksome and brings dangers homologous to those caused by too much fine work in the kindergarten before the first adjustment of large to small muscles, which lasts until adolescence, is established. Then disproportion be

tween function and growth often causes symptoms of chorea. The chief danger is arrest of development and control of the smaller muscles. Many occupations and forms of athletics, on the contrary, place the stress mainly upon groups of fundamental muscles to the neglect of finer motor possibilities. Some who excel in heavy athletics no doubt coarsen their motor reactions, become not only inexact and heavy but unresponsive to finer stimuli, as if the large muscles were hypertrophied and the small ones arrested. On the other hand, many young men, and probably more young women, expend too little of their available active energy upon basal and massive muscle work, and cultivate too much, and above all too early, the delicate responsive work. This is perhaps the best physiological characterization of precocity and issues in excessive nervous and muscular irritability.

6. The Meaning of Play

Play may be considered as an activity carried on for the sake of the activity itself. It is an activity that one finds predominating in the young, but not absent in older individuals. Play is not one specialized, isolated, original tendency. It is to be regarded as the arousal of many instincts combined, depending on the readiness of the neurones to respond and the general laws of exercise and effect. In few cases, if any, does this tendency appear alone. It finds different forms of expression at the different age levels. The law of readiness determines the kind of play engaged in at the different periods. The law of effect determines the length of the time children play. It persists until skill is acquired and, above all, makes the activity for them play, instead of work. The law of exercise makes possible the modification of the original play tendency.

7. The Play Motive

[SHREVES, Rolland Merritt, "Educational Use of the Play Motive," Education, December, 1921, Vol. 42, pp. 217-218.] (Abridged.)

The foregoing discussion has led to the conclusion that play is a natural impulse, possessed by both man and animal. The impulse is instinctive, in the sense of being inborn. It differs from other instincts in that its activity is not directed

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