840 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXIV. No. 626. 



oft-repeated verdict and believed himself a 

 dunce in mathematics. He would have 

 gone through life with that conviction 

 stamped into his brain had not chance 

 thrown a West Point appointment in his 

 way. Spurred by pride and ambition, he 

 resolved to review arithmetic by himself 

 and at least pass the entrance examination 

 to the military academy. To his great sur- 

 prise he found arithmetic easy to his ma- 

 turer powers and very interesting, and he 

 entered the military academy with flying 

 colors. Then he took all of the mathe- 

 matics which he had hated over again. 

 They were a delightful revelation to him. 

 He graduated among the engineers, a fine 

 mathematician, and he is to-day at the head 

 of an engineering school of high grade. I 

 have the story from his lips. 



I have had unusual opportunity to ob- 

 serve similar cases, and in a measure to 

 help students who have been the victims of 

 bad judgment on the part of teachers or 

 parents, and so have been led or allowed to 

 dislike subjects which they should have en- 

 joyed, and to underrate their mental facul- 

 ties because they had attempted to exercise 

 brain cells which were not yet properly 

 developed. 



The importance of this subject can not 

 be overestimated. How many lives have 

 been shortened; how many intellects have 

 been dwarfed and stunted; how many ca- 

 reers have been partial failures— all due 

 to early and inconsiderate teaching. Op- 

 portunities to redeem and save those of 

 great possibilities, like the one I have men- 

 tioned, are rare — and the vast majority of 

 victims never fully recover. In our zeal 

 we have often overshot the mark. The 

 proverbial intellectual strength and vigor 

 of country boys coming up to the univer- 

 sity is due not wholly to outdoor life, phys- 

 ical exercise and plain food. I am inclined 

 to believe it is due in part, and perhaps a 

 great part, to their escape from too much 

 schooling and too much crowding. What 



the country boy needs (and what he often 

 lacks) is not so much longer sessions and 

 rapid promotions as more accomplished 

 teachers. 



A word more about the importance of 

 interest as a condition of healthy mental 

 growth. I maintain that attention is as 

 necessary to the growth and development 

 of the brain as exercise is to the develop- 

 ment of a muscle; and that interest is the 

 condition of a lively attention. When in a 

 school or lecture room the limit of close 

 attention is reached, the lesson or lecture 

 should close, for the educational process has 

 already stopped. It is not only useless, 

 but it is worse than useless, to go on when 

 the class or audience refuses for any reason 

 to attend. I, therefore, doubt the educa- 

 tional value of subjects which are not, and 

 perhaps can not be, made interesting. 



Of course I do not claim that all selected 

 studies can be made equally interesting, or 

 that any one study can be made equally 

 interesting to all pupils, even when the 

 pupils are properly graded; but I do claim 

 that a lively interest is necessary, and that 

 educational progress is very nearly propor- 

 tional to the strength of that interest. 



But all educators do not agree with me 

 here. A Harvard professor recently wrote 

 as follows : ' ' The practical aim of a general 

 education is such training as shall enable a 

 man to devote his faculties intently to mat- 

 ters which of themselves do not interest 

 him. The very fact that the abstractions 

 of mathematics must generally seem repel- 

 lently lifeless, is part of the secret of their 

 educational value." He praises the 'elder 

 education' which "through daily hours, 

 throughout all their youthful years, com- 

 pelled boys, in spite of every human reluc- 

 tance, to fix their attention on matters 

 which, of themselves, could never have held 

 attention for five minutes together. "^ 



* Professor Wendell, North American Review, 

 September, 1904. 



