to be overcome in the fight for automatic control. One thing is certain, and that is that there must be no "backing down," no "letting up," until the habit is formed.

Many teachers of magnetic personality who understand how to arouse appropriate emotional responses fail in the formation of fundamental habits because they do not realize that permanent habits are extremely hard to form, and that they are formed only after persistent and constant repetition.

Repetition is the watchword. Not mere repetition, but repetition saturated with enthusiasm and differentiated at critical points by sharp discrimination. Repetition in concert is ineffective as a device in habit formation because the cognitive factor is in the background. In learning to count, a child will say over and over again 11, 12, and 15, unless his teacher establishes an association with 12 which will force 13 instead of 15 into his consciousness. Discrimination is essential to patch up the little defects in the habit. Memory gems are too frequently taught by the concert method. Since the rhyme is learned easily, the teacher draws a wrong conclusion as to the value of concert work in the teaching of habit.

School administration offers a very serious drawback to the formation of adequate habits, in that it interferes with the proper amount of repetition. Teachers usually cut the course of study into eight sections. The teacher of each grade feels responsible for everything assigned to her. From the standpoint of knowledge this can be cared for easily; from the standpoint of habit, never. Teachers who are conscious of the significance of repetition in the process of establishing habits will never assume that the drill work done in the preceding grades is adequate. It

makes no difference how well it was done, it needs to be checked and tested at intervals to insure permanent results.

Teachers in the intermediate and grammar grades should interview the former teachers of their children in order to determine more clearly their essential needs. Teachers should familiarize themselves also with the course of study to the extent of selecting the fundamental drill exercises involved, that nothing which ought to be done will be neglected.

We have experienced much of the cyclic presentation of subject-matter, and while a moderate use of it is justified by good pedagogy it is reasonably certain that fewer cycles will be needed if administrators see to it that the fundamental skills be accumulative in character by passing them on to successive teachers. In a way this is still largely an implicit responsibility. Never will the child come into his own until it has become explicit in administrative and professional circles. Some one will say that the overcrowded curriculum precludes the possibility of carrying out such a visionary scheme. Not infrequently subnormality with its accompanying slow rate of classroom work is due to failure in the fundamental habits. Students with good memories (so-called) usually rank high in class work and make advancement easily. If one through proper systemization and coöperation can make all the children's memories relatively good, he will have more time for supplementary work.

Attentive repetition is a responsibility that rests not only upon the work of the particular classroom and the particular teacher, but upon supervising officers and those who are responsible for the carrying out of the course of study. Frequent visitations of grade teachers to rooms above and

below their own, conferences by supervisors relative to the extent of carrying this work on from grade to grade, to detect if any teacher or group of teachers is neglecting this responsibility, will make for better conditions than one is likely to realize through unsystematic effort.

Fourth Step in Teaching Habit. The oft-quoted remark of the immortal Rip that he would not count this one [drink] has a positive significance in the establishment of habits. As Professor James pointed out, "He may not count it, and a kind Heaven may not count it; but it is being counted none the less. Down among his nerve cells and fibers the molecules are counting it, registering and storing it up to be used against him when the next temptation arises." It is the exceptions, either by consent or habit, which open the floodgates of the impulses, permitting them to flow down the old habit path only to make resistance to the new order greater than ever.

1

Once a movement is on foot to break up a bad habit by the substitution of a new one, after the foregoing steps have been taken, the teacher must be eternally vigilant to the end that no exceptions occur. Frequently teachers set out to secure better positions, better grammatical form, better articulation and pronunciation, better writing, and many other things, but soon fail to maintain a persistent unswerving front, with the result that little or nothing is accomplished.

At first there is frequently an abundance of enthusiasm and everything goes on well. Then unexpected troubles begin. The most obstinate boy in the class, apparently by mistake, neglects to do the thing required. The teacher tries to justify this lack of duty on various grounds. Soon 1 Psychology, James.

others do likewise until the attempted reform has passed into "ancient" history and the children are more deeply rooted in the wrong habit than before the reform was attempted.

More success in this sort of endeavor will be attained if relatively few difficult things are attempted at one time and if those few things are held to tenaciously until the victory is won. If rightly won, it will be enjoyed by students and teacher alike. We must insist that it will never be economically done until the student does enjoy the new skill he possesses.

The four steps enumerated above the first by Bagley, the second and third which are deductions from Bain by Professor James, and the last by James should be made explicit by teachers who are really concerned in teaching habits economically. Teaching fundamentals are no less subject to fundamental laws than are the other endeavors of man. It is only by a scientific application of these laws that fundamental skills can be taught most economically.

CHAPTER VIII

THE EMOTIONAL FACTOR IN TEACHING

Emotional Aspects of the Self. - Rational and automatic

controls have been treated as if each were a distinct and separate faculty functioning independently in the control of human affairs. In reality nothing is farther from the truth. They are but two aspects or manifestations of the many-sided self in its attempt to come in contact with and to control its environment. Each has been treated separately to insure a greater degree of simplicity and clearness. In like manner and for the same purpose, the emotional aspect of the self is to receive separate and isolated treatment here.

The emotions are a potent factor in the stimulation and direction of one's thoughts and actions. Emotional inertia is coexistent with intellectual and motor inertia, and vice versa. A great crisis like the World War stirs the emotions, which in turn whip the intellect and will into a state of amazing virility. Mob psychology and business acumen, alike in the last analysis, reveal a dominant emotional factor.

INTEREST

Though interest is a common phase of the emotional factor of method, from the standpoint of both terminology and content, there is an abundance of evidence to warrant