John Dewey - Ultimate Collection: 40+ Works on Psychology, Education, Philosophy & Politics
his energies of thinking? Or is the work assigned so difficult that he has not the resources required in order to cope with it—so alien to his experience and his acquired habits that he does not know where or how to take hold? Between these two questions lies the teacher's task—for the teacher has a problem as well as the pupil. How shall the activities of pupils be progressively complicated by the introduction of difficulties, and yet these difficulties be of a nature to stimulate instead of dulling and merely discouraging? The judgment, the tact, the intellectual sympathy of instructors is taxed to the uttermost in answering these questions in the concrete with respect to the various subjects of study.
When an activity is too easy and simple, a person either engages in it because of the immediate pleasurable excitement it awakens, or he puts just enough of his powers upon it—their purely mechanical and physical side—to perform what is required in a perfunctory way, while he lets his mind wander to other things where there is at least enough novelty to keep his fancies going. Strange as it may seem to say it, one of the chief objections both to mechanical drill work and to the assigning of subject-matter too difficult for pupils is that the only activity to which they actually incite the pupils is in lines too easy for them. Only the powers already formed, the habits already fixed, are called into play; the mind—the power of thinking—is not called into action. Hence apathy in children naturally sluggish, or mind-wandering in children of a more imaginative nature. What happens when work too difficult, work beyond the limits of capacity, is insisted upon? If the teacher is professionally skilled, a pupil will not be able entirely to shirk or to escape. He must keep up the form of attentive study, and produce a result as evidence of having been occupied. Naturally he seeks short cuts; he does what he can do without recourse to processes of thinking that are beyond him. Any external and routine device is employed to "get the answer"—possibly surreptitious aid from others or downright cheating. Any way, he does what is already easiest for him to do; he follows the line of least resistance. The sole alternative is the use of initiative in thinking out the conditions of the problem and the way to go at it. And this alternative is within his reach only when the work to be done is of a nature to make an appeal to him, or to enlist his powers; and when the difficulties are such as to stimulate instead of depressing.
Good teaching, in other words, is teaching that appeals to established powers while it includes such new material as will demand their redirection for a new end, this redirection requiring thought—intelligent effort. In every case, the educational significance of effort, its value for an educative growth, resides in its connection with a stimulation of greater thoughtfulness, not in the greater strain it imposes. Educative effort is a sign of the transformation of a comparatively blind activity (whether impulsive or habitual) into a more consciously reflective one.
For the sake of completeness of statement, we will say (what hardly should now require statement on its own account) that such effort is in no sense a foe of interest. It is a part of the process of growth of activity from direct interest to indirect. In our previous section, we considered this development as meaning an increase of the complexity of an activity (that is, of the number of factors involved), and the increased importance of its outcome as a motive, in spite of contrary appeals, for devotion to intervening means. In this section, we have brought out more emphatically the fact that along with this increasing remoteness of the end (the longer period required for the consummation of an activity) goes a greater number of difficulties to be overcome, and the consequent need of effort. And our conclusion has been that the effort needed is secured when the activity in question is of such positive and abiding interest as to arouse the person to clearer recognition of purpose and to a more thoughtful consideration of means of accomplishment. The educator who associates difficulties and effort with increased depth and scope of thinking will never go far wrong. The one who associates it with sheer strain, sheer dead lift of energy, will never understand either how to secure the needed effort when it is needed nor the best way to utilize the energy aroused.
It remains to apply what has been said to the question of motivation. "Motive" is the name for the end or aim in respect to its hold on action, its power to move. It is one thing to speculate idly upon possible results, to keep them before the mind in a purely theoretical way. It is another thing for the results contemplated or projected to be so desired that the thought of them stirs endeavor. "Motive" is a name for the end in its active or dynamic capacity. It would be mere repetition of our previous analysis to show that this moving power expresses the extent to which the end foreseen is bound up with an activity with which the self is identified. It is enough to note that the motive force of an end and the interest that the end possesses are equivalent expressions of the vitality and depth of a proposed course of activity.
A word of warning may be in place against taking the idea of motivation in too personal a sense, in a sense too detached, that is, from the object or end in view. In the theory of instruction, as distinct from its practice, the need of motivation was for a long time overlooked or even denied. It was assumed that sheer force of will, arbitrary effort, was alone required. In practice this meant (as we have seen) appeal to extraneous sources of motivation: to reverence for the authority of teacher or text; to fear of punishment or the displeasure of others; to regard for success in adult life; to winning a prize; to standing higher than one's fellows; to fear of not being promoted, etc. The next step was taken when some educators recognized the ineffective hold of such motives upon many pupils—their lack of adequate motivating force in the concrete. They looked for motives which would have more weight with the average pupil. But too often they still conceived the motive as outside the subject-matter, something existing purely in the feelings, and giving a reason for attention to a matter that in itself would not provide a motive. They looked for a motive for the study or the lesson, instead of a motive in it. Some reason must be found in the person, apart from the arithmetic or the geography or the manual activity, that might be attached to the lesson material so as to give it a leverage, or moving force.
One effect was to substitute a discussion of "motives" in the abstract for a consideration of subject-matter in the concrete. The tendency was to make out a list of motives or "interests" by which children in general or children of a given age are supposed to be actuated, and then to consider how these might be linked up with the various lessons so as to impart efficacy to the latter. The important question, however, is what specific subject-matter is so connected with the growth of the child's existing concrete capabilities as to give it a moving force. What is needed is not an inventory of personal motives which we suppose children to have, but a consideration of their powers, their tendencies in action, and the ways in which these can be carried forward by a given subject-matter.
If a child has, for example, an artistic capacity in the direction of music or drawing, it is not necessary to find a motive for its exercise. The problem is not to find a motive, but to find material of and conditions for its exercise. Any material that appeals to this capacity has by that very fact motivating force. The end or object in its vital connection with the person's activities is a motive.
Another consequence of a too personal conception of motivation is a narrow and external conception of use and function. It is justifiable to ask for the utility of any educational subject-matter. But use may be estimated from different standpoints. We may have a readymade conception of use or function, and try the value of what is learned by its conformity to this standard. In this case we shall not regard any pursuit as properly motivated, unless we see that it performs some special office that we have laid down as useful or practical. But if we start from the standpoint of the active powers of the children concerned, we shall measure the utility of new subject-matter and new modes of skill by the way in which they promote the growth of these powers. We shall not insist upon tangible material products, nor upon what is learned being put to further use at once in some visible way, nor even demand evidence that the children have become morally improved in some respect: save as the growth of powers is itself a moral gain.
IV
Types Of Educative Interest
The clew we have followed in our discussion of interest