which cause a child to do the desired thing, or to acquire the desired knowledge. In this case the child learns, but the producer of the chance stimuli does not teach. The teaching act consists of something more specific. It involves an understanding of the reactive attitude of the child.

A knowledge of the child's reactive attitude, like that of the chicken, is gained directly or indirectly through experience. One may attain it through introspecting his own response to stimuli when in the learning period. He may attain it through a comparison of the results secured and the stimuli employed in his endeavor to teach others. Through experimentation he may have measured carefully the relative value of stimuli in developing abilities. Indeed he may have acquired much insight into the secrets of child behavior through a systematic study of general and genetic psychology. It matters little how this knowledge is secured, but it is important that it be possessed by the teacher.

Knowledge of Appropriate Stimuli. - A knowledge of an adequate social aim, a knowledge of subject-matter, and of how children react to their environment, though essential to good teaching, are not sufficient. A knowledge of appropriate stimuli is a fundamental factor also. Through the process of growth, the school has evolved economical ways and means of securing the desired reactions of children. These accumulated and perfected ways and means - devices, or forms of stimuli- constitute the technique of classroom procedure. Skilled technique in the classroom is quite as important as it is in the hospital or in the laboratory. Forms of presenting subject-matter such as the lecture method, textbook method, developing

method, or combinations of these methods; various types of questions; forms of expression or statements employed in mathematics, or in language; illustrations, dramatization, synthetic and analytic approaches to phonograms, and all the like-illustrate what is meant by a knowledge of the appropriate stimuli required to insure efficient teaching.

Skillful Control of Stimuli. Skill in directing appropriate stimuli is also essential to good teaching. It is not sufficient to know that questions to be effective must be concrete, definite, simple, attractive, and problematic. Good teaching involves power to use such questions. It is not sufficient to know that self-activity is essential to the acquisition of power. A teacher should be skilled in the use of the devices which stimulate self-activity. It is not sufficient to know that comparison is a most effective device for stimulating interest and forcing generalizations. Teaching involves skill in forcing comparisons which provoke thought. It is not enough to know that illustrations are much more effective than explanations. The successful teacher is skilled in the use of illustrations.

It is in this phase of the teaching act that experience counts for most. Skill involves the formation of habits through consistent and persistent effort. Long and consistent experience is needed to insure dependable and worthy skill in the use of teaching devices.

One may control all of the

Enthusiasm for Teaching. above factors and yet be a relatively poor teacher. The last factor in the process of analysis, but certainly not the last in order of importance, is that of enthusiasm for the process of teaching. As a dynamic phase of conduct this factor is as important in times of peace as in times of war.

It is as fundamental to success in teaching as to success in fighting.

Many a scholarly teacher has been unable to provoke thought or arouse interest because of a lack of visible enthusiasm. It has been said that enthusiasm is contagious. Certainly its possession by the teacher arouses a wholesome, hearty coöperation on the part of children. Fortunate is the teacher who has an abundant enthusiasm in his work. It cannot take the place of scholarship, skill, and the other factors, for they are essential. It can and will supplement and energize them and make them function.

We hear much of personality and of the appeal of subject-matter in connection with the teacher. No wellinformed person will attempt to belittle their importance in the teaching act. They are exceedingly vital. However, they can be reached only through the procedure outlined above. One can scarcely conceive of a teacher possessing a poor personality, so far as it pertains to teaching, or of his failing to cause the subject-matter to appeal to children, if he possesses a mastery of these teaching factors in a superlative degree. Such a possession insures success and it will go far to determine a desirable classroom personality.

Summary. Let us summarize the factors involved in solving an ordinary problem and those involved in successfully teaching one to solve such a problem. In the successful solution of an ordinary problem the performer has a definite aim, a knowledge of the materials, skill in adjusting the materials to the end in view, and enough enthusiasm to keep him on the job until the aim is realized.

In order to teach successfully the teacher will need to control the factors involved in doing and in addition to these

factors he will need to know the social aim of education, the structure and function of subject-matter, the reactive attitude of children, and the stimuli best suited to occasion the desired reactions; to possess skill in the employment of these stimuli, and to have an unabating enthusiasm for the process of transforming children through these agencies from what they are to what they ought to become.

CHAPTER II

THE AIMS OF PUBLIC-SCHOOL TEACHING

The Goal of Instruction. In an era of unparalleled economic progress in which scientific principles are applied with precision and results are measured in absolute units, it is only natural that one should hear much of educative aims and educative values. The application of business methods to the work of the schoolroom has forced the educationist out into the open. In order to meet the practical demands made upon him he is obliged to define clearly the goal of instruction and its relation to social needs, and to point out clearly the educative processes by which it is attained most economically.

In view of the fact that the exponents of educational theory have had different basic experiences and different training, it is not strange that there is a lack of complete agreement as to the function of public education. And while a complete agreement is somewhat remote, it is essential to progress that a working hypothesis based upon the best that is accepted in education be established for the purpose of rationalizing teaching. It is now widely recognized that the school was and is established by society to subserve its ends; that these ends are relative and not absolute in quality, depending entirely upon the social conditions and upon the insight of the members who constitute the school units.