CHILDREN'S QUESTIONING. 805 



difficulties in reducing it to practice. They are always talking 

 about attention, interest, and independent thought, even to their 

 pupils, while they are continually heading off the development of 

 those desirable attributes by restricting their pupils to answering 

 questions referring to tasks which they have set. Certainly their 

 pupils seldom find " delight " in their questions, but, on the con- 

 trary, find comfort in evasion, as they very frequently say they 

 understand the subject under question when they do not, in order 

 to get rid of the galling questions which seem especially designed 

 to reveal their deficiencies and bring about their disgrace. 



Supervisor Martin, one of the keenest and wisest observers on 

 the Board of Supervisors of Public Schools in Boston, says in his 

 report recently issued : " If there be a general weakness, it lies in 

 the failure to develop in the pupils the ambition and the power 

 of self-help. The skill of the teachers is more fully exhibited in 

 their presentation of subjects than in stimulating pupils to inde- 

 pendent efi^ort. Much of the work is simple giving and taking 

 and giving back." Independent effort being generally wanting, 

 spontaneity of necessity must be wanting, because there can be 

 no independent effort where there is no desire or will to make it. 

 In this regard probably the schools of Boston are no more deficient 

 than schools at large. 



But, in view of all the talk made at educational conventions 

 during many decades, it is remarkable how little progress in spon- 

 taneity has been made in school, even since Froebel's time. 



Froebel said : " I must not neutralize and deaden that spon- 

 taneity which is the mainspring of all the machinery ; I must 

 rather encourage it, while ever opening new fields for its exercise, 

 and giving it new directions. Can I not then even now gradually 

 transform their play into work, but work which shall look like 

 play, work which shall originate in the same or similar impulses, 

 and exercise the same energies as I see employed in their own 

 amusements and occupations ? " Pestalozzi also claimed that 

 " spontaneity and self-activity are the necessary conditions under 

 which the mind educates itself, and gains power and independ- 

 ence." 



A careful distinction should be made between children's activ- 

 ities and self-activities, the one often being confounded with the 

 other by teachers. Generally their activities in school result from 

 a compelling force of will, of laws, of penalties, all of whicn are 

 kept well out of sight in some schools, but in the immediate fore- 

 ground in most schools. This compelling force is often necessary 

 under present conditions, but not so often as practice would make 

 it appear. 



Generally teachers' traditions and scholastic training are no 

 safe guides in dealing with self-activities educationally. Self- 



