clearly fixed aim is an aid in keeping him in the prescribed path. Too many college hours, especially in the social sciences, find the instructor beginning with his subject but ending anywhere in the field of human knowledge. These wanderings are entertaining enough, but they dissipate the energies of the students and produce a mental flabbiness already too well developed in the average college student. in college A second factor which contributes much toward the Motivation effectiveness of college teaching is the principle of moti- teaching vation. So long as most of the college course is prescribed, course by course, students will be found pursuing certain studies without an intelligent understanding of their social or mental worth. Ask the student "doing " prescribed logic to explain the value of the course. In friendly or intimate discussion with him, elicit his conception of the utilitarian or disciplinary worth of the prescribed Latin or mathematics in the arts course. He sees no relation between the problems of life and the daily lessons in many of these subjects. He submits to the teacher's attempts to graft this knowledge upon his intellectual stock merely because he has learned that the easiest course is to bend to authority. Instruction in too many college subjects is based, not on intelligent and voluntary attention, but on the discipline maintained by the institution or by the instructor. It is obvious that such instruction is stultifying to the teacher and can never develop in the student a liberal and cultured outlook upon life. The principle of motivation in teaching seeks to justify, to the student the experience that is presented as part of his college course. It is obvious that this motivation need not always be explained in terms of utilitarian values. A student of college age can be made to realize the mental, the cultural, or the inspirational values that justify the prescription of certain courses. The college instructor who tries to motivate courses in the appreciation of music or painting finds no great difficulty in leading his students to an enthusiastic conviction of their inspirational value. It is well worth taking the student into our confidence in these matters of aim and value. We must become more tolerant of the thoughtful student who makes honest inquiry as to the value of any of the presented courses. We must learn to regard such questions as signs of growing seriousness and increasing maturity and not as signs of impertinence. We constantly ask ourselves questions about the round of our daily task; we seek to know thoroughly their uses, their values, their meaning in our lives. Clear conception of use or value in teaching is as vital as it is in life for what is teaching if not the process of repeating life's experiences? In the principle of motivation lies the most successful solution of the problem of interest in teaching. We have too long persisted in the "sugarcoating" conception of interest. We have regarded it as a process of "making agreeable." Interest has therefore been looked upon as a fictitious element introduced into teaching merely to inveigle the mind of the student into a consideration of what we are offering it. Our modern psychology teaches a truer conception of interest: a feeling accompanying self-expression. Interest has been defined as a feeling of worth in experience. Where this feeling of worth is aroused, the individual expresses his activity to attain the end that he perceives. Every act, every effort, to attain this end is accompanied by a distinctive feeling known as interest. When a class is quiet and gives itself to the teacher, it is obedient and polite, but not necessarily interested. The class that looks tolerantly at the stereopticon views that the instructor presents, or listens to the reading of the professor of English, is amused but not necessarily interested. But when the students ask questions about the pictures or ask the professor of English for further references, then have we evidence of real interest. Interest is, therefore, an active attitude toward life's experience. Rational motivation is almost a guarantee of this active attitude of interest. Intelligent motivation in teaching has far-reaching values for both student and teacher. It stirs interest and guarantees attention and thus tends to keep aroused the activity of the students. It establishes an end toward which all effort of teacher and student must bend. It enables the student to follow a line of thought more intelligently, and occasionally to anticipate conclusions. For the teacher it serves as a standard, in terms of which he reorganizes his subject matter, judges the value of each topic, and omits socially useless matter which has too long been retained in the course in the fond hope that it will in some way develop the mind. The instructor who strives to motivate the subject matter he teaches usually begins with that phase of the subject which is most intimately related to the student's life and environment. Every subject worth teaching crosses the student's life at some point. The contacts between pupil and subject afford the most natural and the most effective starting points in the teaching of any subject. The subject matter in a college course is too frequently so organized that it presents points of discrepancy between itself and the student. To the college student life is not classified and systematized to a nicety. Experiences occur in more or less accidental but natural sequence. Scientific classification is the product of a mature mind possessing mastery of a given portion of the field of knowledge. To thrust the student, who is just finding his way in a new course, into a thoroughly scientific classification of a subject, is to present in the introduction what should come in the conclusion. Many a student taking his introductory course in psy chology begins with a definition of the subject, its relation to all social and physical sciences, and its classification. All these are aspects of the subject which the mind conversant with it sees clearly and understands thoroughly, but which the inexperienced student accepts merely because the facts are printed in his text-book. The youthful mind is concerned with the present and with the immediate environment. Too many of our college courses, in the initial stages, transport the student into the realm of theory or into the distant past. The Beginning at the point or contact wow! Illustrations of maxim, point of contact student cannot orientate himself in this new environment and is soon lost on the highways and byways of classification; to him the subject becomes a study of words rather than of vital ideas. Why must the introductory course in philosophy begin with the ancient philosophers, and give the major part of the term to the study of dead philosophers and their theories long since refuted and discarded, while vital modern philosophic thought is crowded into the last few sessions of the semester? The pedagogical significance of beginning at the point Begin at the of contact can best be understood and appreciated by illustrations of actual teaching conditions. Most initial courses in economics begin by positing that economics is the science of the consumption, distribution, and production of wealth. The student is told that in earlier systems of economics production was studied as the initial economic process, but that the more modern view makes consumption the starting process. All this the student takes on faith. He does not really see its bearings and its implications; he is as unconcerned with the new formulation as he is with the old; he feels at once far removed from economics. The succeeding lessons study economic laws with little reference to the economic life that the student lives. In a later chapter he learns a definition of wages, the forces that determine wage, and the mode of computing the share of the total produce that must go to wages. Here we have a course that does not begin at the point of contact, that presents the very discrepancies between itself and the student that were noted before. How can we overcome them? By proceeding psychologically. The instructor refers to two or three important wage disputes in current industrial life; these conflicts are analyzed; the contending demands are studied, and the forces controlling the adoption of a new wage scale are noted. After this study of actual economic conditions the students are led to formulate their own definition of wages, and to discover the forces that determine wage. Their conclusions are of course tentative. The textbook or textbooks are consulted in order to verify the formulations and the conclusions of the class. Thus the course is developed entirely through a series of contacts with economic life. The final topic in the course is the formulation of a definition of economics. Now the class sums up all that it has seen and learned of economics during the year. The cold and empty definition now glows with meaning. Such a course awakens an intelligent interest in economic life; it develops a mode of thought in social sciences and a sense of self-reliance; it teaches the student that all conclusions are tentative and constantly subject to verification; it fosters a critical attitude toward printed text. The college graduate who studied college mathematics, advanced algebra, trigonometry, analytical geometry, and calculus, looks back with satisfaction at work completed. Each of these subjects seemed to have little or no relation to the other; each was kept in a water-tight compartment. He remembers few, if any, of the formulæ, equations, and symbols. He recalls vividly his admiration of the author's ingenious method of deriving equations. Every succeeding theorem, formula, or equation was another puzzle in a subject which seemed to be composed of a series of diffi cult, unrelated, and unapplied mathematical proofs. The course ended, the mass of data was soon obliterated from the mind's active possessions. What is the meaning of it all? What is its relation to life? There is no doubt that much of this mathematics has its application to life's needs, and that these successive subjects of mathematics are thoroughly interdependent. But nothing in the mode of instruction leads the student to see either the application or the interrelation of all this higher mathematics. Would it not be better to give a single course called mathematics rather than these successive subjects? Would it not be more enlightening if each new mathematical principle were taught through a situation in building, engineering, or mechanics so that the student would at all times see the intimate relation between mathematical law and physical forces? Would not the disci |