elaborate sets of apparatus in the whole hemo-lymph circulation of the body. It is only by frequent muscular exercise that the cerebral and spinal vasomotor action can be kept lively,— in part because of the conspicuous reciprocal action between the cerebral blood and that of the muscles and abdominal viscera. A frequent shaking up of the blood supply of the brain is the surest means, we may well suppose, of avoiding "mental" and general fatigue in school as elsewhere, especially when really abundant oxygen is at hand to aid the metabolism of the brain, the other nerves and the muscles.

The last element of school fatigue that we mentioned was eye strain, a subject that has been as extensively discussed for many years as it deserves to be, for it certainly is an important factor. Frequent periods of exercise of the muscles while marching about the room would effectually minimize this sort of strain on the brain by changing the optical focus and by vascular relief in the eyes and complex optic centers.

But considerations other than those of school fatigue enter this problem. For example, it has been well said by some one that under-exposure and under-exercise shorten more lives than does more explicit disease. We need not however, call up the antique Spartan problem as to the "toughening" of children by exposure, for that relates more especially to persons of less than school age. Few authorities it is likely would deny the entire safety and great importance of habituating children at the age of say eight years to a normal amount of exposure to cold air and even to cold wet air. In normal individuals (and such only should be in the regular public schools) "colds" come at least very rarely from such exposure, and pneumonia perhaps never. Sudden changes in room temperature (the humidity should be always high) are seldom harmful so long as the vasomotor apparatus, especially in the skin, is in vigorous condition. The practice here proposed for schools would accomplish both at once of these conditions-toughening of the skin and the perfection of vasomotion. Moreover, it would teach ample ventilation in the only way it can be effectively taught, namely, by continual example, so that more or less open windows the year round would be soon universal in the homes-in itself a valuable achievement in the lodgings of the average school child, for warmth need not be sacrificed.

This practice would naturally aid in the warfare against tuberculosis. Moreover, it would make much less common the infection of other pupils with diphtheria, scarlatina, measles, etc., from the cases that are sure occasionally to escape detection by the school nurses and the teacher.

The toilet rooms might, when necessary, be visited at these semi-hourly rest and ventilation periods. Furthermore a definite one-piece recess would not be necessary, although usually desirable in addition to still further lessen school fatigue.

In general it is impossible to believe that this practice efficiently carried out would not lead to much better attention from the pupils; make their work more vigorous and, in general more efficient, partly because more pleasant; and give it both more snap and more interest, while relieving wholly that restlessness of body and mind which is so frequently the immediate cause of minor misbehavior.

Objections to this plan would come in three ways chiefly, as it seems. In the first place, there would be a tendency in the less progressive school managements to oppose it as an innovation, because involving a necessary slight rearrangement of the school curriculum. But this same inertia is liable to oppose the adopting of any sort of labor-causing improvement, and need not be further answered.

Some of the teachers themselves might at first think it an additional burden on an already much underpaid profession, for the proper carrying out of the plan would demand at least an elementary knowledge of physical exercises. At the present time of rapid advance in physical education, however, among all classes and particularly among all teachers, this possible objection would seem to have little force, since the knowledge and labor involved is now an indispensable requisite of every sort of class instructors of youth. Besides, the frequent change would rest the teachers hardly less than their pupils.

Whatever parents might find fault with the practice would be unworthy of serious notice simply because their objection, as has been perhaps now sufficiently demonstrated, would be due to ignorance of modern hygiene. On the other hand the intelligent majority of parents would welcome heartily the inevitable addition that it would make to the health-giving knowledge of their children, and to their general efficiency in their school work.

Some Suggestions Concerning Interest

FRANK D. Blodgett, professor OF LOGIC AND PEDAGOGICS, STATE NORMAL

I

SCHOOL, ONEONTA, NEW YORK

T seems almost superfluous when there has already been written such an abundance of valuable material on the subject of interest for any one to add to the amount. The purpose of this article, however, is not to increase material but to diminish it; not to expand but to simplify. The ideas herein presented have been used by the writer in his pedagogical classes in normal work, and the fact that they have apparently been of practical value to some students has influenced him to reduce them to written form. Since the fact is conceded that interest is fundamental in education any new presentation or simplification of that fundamental may be worthy of consideration.

The doctrine of Herbart that the specific object of instruction is to develop many-sided, harmonious, direct interest marked an epoch in educational progress. Let us recall Herbart's wellknown classification of interest and consider a few ideas that are directly suggested by it. The kinds of interest, he says, are two: first, interest in knowledge; second, interest in society. The first kind may be either empirical or speculative or aesthetic; the second either sympathetic or social or religious. In other words the dominating interest of each life may be along any one of six lines, and will lie in one or the other of the two general groups.

The problem of the teacher seems to be to assist in the development of a human being by presenting knowledge to his mind: in other words to act as a go-between, to perform an introduction. On the one hand lies the great field of knowledge, of fact, of achievement; on the other a group of human beings. The first group is to be presented to the second in such a manner that the best and highest in the second may be developed. The person not a teacher who says to the teacher that the latter's work must be monotonous since he has to go over and over again the same subjects fails to grasp the other side of the

problem. He fails to see that no matter how old the facts the new minds to which these facts are to be presented furnish a condition of affairs that prevents absolutely any condition of sameness from confronting a teacher. The best teacher, then, will be one who is interested in knowledge and in society at the same time: that is, interested in the facts to be presented and in the pupils who are to receive the facts.

It is very obvious that the first group just mentioned, i. e., the facts, is a more constant and a more definite factor in the problem than is the second group, i. e., the pupils. A genius in knowledge of facts may be a very poor teacher because of his little knowledge of the human element in education. The great student of facts may or may not be a great student of human beings. Hence the explanation as to why so many profound scholars cannot teach is evident. The tendency on the part of so many of our educational institutions to make the number of degrees possessed by a candidate and the number of books he has written the only requisite for securing a teaching position is to be deplored. On the other hand, interest in human beings alone with a very limited command of facts and poor scholarship tends to produce a teacher whose work is unstable and unsafe,-one more likely to strive for showy effects than for genuine worth.

But to return to the classification under discussion. There seem to be cross lines connecting very closely the three subheads of each group with the three of the other group. The mind that finds greatest interest in empirical knowledge and the mind that finds greatest interest in society in the sympathetic group are alike characterized by the interrogation "what." "What is this object?" says the former; "what can I do for you?" says the latter. So, too, the second sub-heads in each group are characterized by the ever-present "why." "Why is this fact so?" says the former; "why is this social condition so?" says the latter. So with the third sub-heads: both the mind of aesthetic interest in knowledge and of religious interest in society are characterized by exclamations, "How beautiful!" "how sad!" "how sublime!" they both say.

We

We may then rearrange the classification of Herbart. may say that interest expresses itself in three ways: (1) By the

question "What," which includes the empirical and sympathetic minds. (2) By the question "Why," which includes the speculative and social minds. (3) By some exclamation of appreciation, wonder, admiration or their opposites, which includes the aesthetic and religious minds. It is difficult to characterize this group by a single word, but perhaps the exclamation "Ah!" will serve the purpose, although the idea conveyed by it is incomplete and perhaps somewhat misleading. Examining these three classes more critically it becomes evident that here we have found the relationship between Herbart's division and that of President Hadley. President Hadley, it will be recalled, has divided minds into three dominating types: the economic or practical, the scientific or factseeking and the aesthetic or emotional. It is obvious that the question "what" is the keynote of the economic or practical mind. “What is this good for," "what is this worth," are questions ever present in this type of mind. In equal degree the question "why" dominates the scientific or fact-seeking mind. "Why does A precede B?" "why does this phenomenon occur?" questions the scientific mind. And the mind that contents itself with exclamations of admiration or disapproval is the aesthetic mind.

Of course, few minds are of an extreme type exemplifying one phase to the exclusion of all others. But it is reasonable to believe that in each mind one approach to interest is more direct than the others. While it is true, in a measure, that pupils are likely to be interested in any subject in which a teacher of strong personality is interested, it is also evident that the path of least resistance toward that interest is conditioned by the pupil's particular type of mind.

A leading educational writer has urged that no one can make things interesting, for they are interesting if only the observer can secure the right point of view. The teacher, however, must so present the facts that the minds of the class from their various points of view can see the qualities that will most interest them. Attracted at first by these particular qualities it is by no means unlikely that their minds may so develop that other points of view may attract them as well.