to the realization of any special end, as the hunger instinct is directed toward eating, for example. For this reason some psychologists call play a native impulse rather than an instinct. Whether called an impulse or an instinct play is blind and does not foresee the ends it serves, or may be made to serve. It, therefore, needs careful direction and control, but not interference. Parents and teachers must guide this impulse wisely to make it serve the many valuable ends of life. Through proper direction, play keeps a balance of all the physical powers and functions, thus providing for exercise, recreation and nutrition, which are essential to growth and development.

Play is the best regulator of the health and the use of energy. It is a powerful preventive medicine and can be directed into various forms of corrective activities and games, thus helping to restore the normal balance of powers and functions.

Play, like the artist's motive, finds its satisfaction in its own exercise, not in the achievement of some end outside itself. In this respect play differs from work. Through its tendency to preserve the balance of life, play forms a strong basis for a healthy development of physical, mental, moral, religious, and æsthetic life.

8. Work and Drudgery

[DEWEY, John, Interest and Effort, pp. 54-55, 78. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1913.1

There seems to be no better name for the acts of using intermediate means or appliances to reach ends than work. When employed in this way, however, work must be distinguished from labor and from toil and drudgery. Labor means a form of work in which the direct result accomplished is of value only as a means of exchange for something else. It is an economic term, being applied to that form of work where the product is paid for, and the money paid is used for objects of more direct value. Toil implies unusual arduousness in a task, involving fatigue. Drudgery is an activity which in itself is quite disagreeable, performed under the constraint of some quite extraneous need.

If one means by a task simply an undertaking involving difficulties that have to be overcome, then children, youth, and adults alike require tasks in order that there may be continued development. But if one mean by a task something that has no interest, makes no appeal, that is wholly alien and hence un

congenial, the matter is quite different. Tasks in the former sense are educative because they supply an indispensable stimulus to thinking, to reflective inquiry. Tasks in the latter sense signify nothing but sheer strain, constraint, and the need of some external motivation for keeping at them. They are uneducative because they fail to introduce a clearer consciousness of ends and a search for proper means of realization. They are miseducative, because they deaden and stupefy; they lead to that confused and dulled state of mind that always attends an action carried on without a realizing sense of what it is all about. They are also miseducative because they lead to dependence upon external ends; the child works simply because of the pressure of the task master and diverts his energies just in the degree in which this pressure is relaxed; or he works because of some alien inducement-to get some reward that has no intrinsic connection with what he is doing.

9. Interest and Drudgery

[HORNE, H. H., Philosophy of Education, pp. 191-196. Copyright, 1904, by the Macmillan Co.] (Adapted.)

Interest is one of the great words in education because it provides motive power for both pupils and teacher, giving aim to instruction and giving satisfyingness to the activity. As soon as the task becomes interesting for the learner, this task becomes an end of action in itself. It is engaged in for its own sake. While the task may have been disagreeable at first, it becomes more and more agreeable as the learner gains greater mastery of the task. The value of an activity, there fore, arises in the doing as well as in the deed.

Drudgery is an activity that causes the individual annoyance. The individual sees no purpose for doing the task.

Interest begets interest. It is contagious like all other feelings. If the teacher comes to the class burning with interest in the subject that she teaches for its own sake and for the pupils' sake, it can be safely predicted that her pupils will catch some of her interest. Interest changes as a child changes. Activities that are interesting to the primary child may not be interesting to the high school child. It is imperative, therefore, that teachers and parents attempt to adapt the instruction to children at the various age and

grade levels so as to make the greatest appeal to their interests. From what has been said it should not be inferred that the interest is really in the subject. The interest is in the child. Interest is subjective, not objective. The way for the teacher to build up interest in the child is to be interested in the subject herself, to encourage pupils to familiarize themselves thoroughly with the subject and then to react to what has been learned. If a student would become interested in the subject of psychology, for example, he must read as many psychology texts as possible, talk about it to his friends, write about it in his letters, write articles on it for the papers, and attempt to predict and control his own be havior and that of other in terms of psychology. He will soon find that the subject which was at first uninteresting and dull becomes more and more interesting as his knowledge of the subject increases and as his attitude toward it changes.

10. The Importance of Effort

It has been said that "that child is fortunate whose duties and pleasures always coincide, but that child is blessed who defies the attractions of the outside world in order to perform his duty." The individual's worth appears when he attacks a task that requires effort and persistence. The great difference between the feeble and the powerful, the great and the insignificant, is energy, indomitable will, and a driving purpose. An individual who possesses the qualities of determination and purpose will accomplish much. He makes circumstances; he creates opportunities; he is primarily master of his fate. It was Carlyle who gave us the true gospel of effort: "Sweat of the brow, and up from that, sweat of the brain; sweat of the heart, up from that, agony of bloody sweat' which all men have called divine. Oh, brother, this is the noblest thing yet discovered under God's sky!"

11. "Grind" in School Work

It is highly desirable that every schoolroom be bright and cheerful and the children happy. This does not mean that the children should do only the things that they wish to do.

It does not mean that school tasks are to be made easy. There are, and always will be, tasks that require considerable effort or even grind on the part of the pupil, at least in their early stages. As the child learns more about the subject, he will become more interested in it. Those school tasks which are neither too difficult nor too easy bring most satisfaction. If the task is so difficult the child is discouraged. If it is so easy that it requires no effort on his part, there is little resulting satisfaction. Other things equal, the tasks that require considerable effort in order to reach the goal but in which the learner is always successful bring most satisfaction. The teacher should attempt to interest the children in all of the activities so that periods of drudgery and grind will be of as short duration as possible.

12. Use and Preservation of Play Spirit

[GRUENBERG, B. C., Outlines of Child Study, p. 132. Copyright, 1924, by the Macmillan Co. Reprinted by permission.]

As a rule the spirit of play does not enter into the major activities of life; it can best be preserved by hobbies. They should therefore be cultivated for the value which play yields. The pursuit of a hobby stimulates effort, opens up lines of interest and maintains enthusiasms when there is nothing to do but work. It serves as a means for unifying many diverse interests and efforts, and to widen sympathies by giving experience in the field of varied pursuits and interests.

13. Using the Play Spirit in the School

[DEWEY, John and Evelyn, Schools of To-morrow, pp. 119-123. New York, E. P. Dutton & Co., 1915.]

The natural desire of children to play can, of course, be made the most of in the lowest grades, but there is one element of the play instinct which schools are utilizing in the higher grades that is, the instinct for dramatization, for make-believe in action. All children love to pretend that they are somebody or thing other than themselves; they love to make a situation. real by going through the motions it suggests. Abstract ideas are hard to understand; the child is never quite sure whether he really understands or not. Allow him to act out the idea and it becomes real to him, or the lack of understanding is shown

in what is done. Action is the test of comprehension. This is simply another way of saying that learning by doing is a better way to learn than by listening-the difference of dramatization from the work already described lies in the things the child is learning. He is no longer dealing with material where things are needed to carry out an act to a successful result, but with ideas which need action to make them real. Schools are making use of dramatization in all sorts of different ways to make teaching more concrete. For older children dramatization is used principally. . . either as a means of making the English or history more real, or simply for the emotional and imaginative value of his work. With the little children it is used as an aid in the teaching of history, English, reading, or arithmetic, and is often combined with other forms of activity.

Many schools use dramatization as a help in teaching the first steps of any subject, especially in the lower grades. A first-year class, for example, act the subject-matter of their regular reading lesson, each child having the part of one of the characters of the story, animal or person. This insures an idea of the situation as a whole, so that reading ceases to be simply an attempt to recognize and pronounce isolated words and phrases. Moreover, the interest of the situation carries children along, and enlists attention to difficulties of phraseology. . . . The dramatic factor is a great assistance in the expressive side of reading. Teachers are always having to urge children to read "naturally," to "read as they talk." But when a child has no motive for communication of what he sees in the text, knowing as he does that the teacher has the book and can tell it better than he can, even the naturalness tends to be forced and artificial. Every observer knows how often children who depart from humdrum droning, learn to exhibit only a superficial breathless sort of liveliness and a make-believe animation. Dramatization secures both attention to the thought of the text and a spontaneous endeavor, free from pretense and self-consciousness, to speak loudly enough to be heard and to enunciate distinctly. In the same way, children tell stories much more effectively when they are simply led to visualize for themselves the actions going on. . . . When children are drawing scenes involving action and posture, it is found that prior action is a great assistance. In the case of a pose of the body, the child who has done the posing is often found to draw better than those who have merely looked on. He has got the "feel" of the situation, which readily influences his hand and eye in