Whoever treats of interest inevitably treats of attention, for to say
that an object is interesting is only another way of saying that it
excites attention. But in addition to the attention which any object
already interesting or just becoming interesting claims--passive
attention or spontaneous attention, we may call it--there is a more
deliberate attention,--voluntary attention or attention with effort, as
it is called,--which we can give to objects less interesting or
uninteresting in themselves. The distinction between active and passive
attention is made in all books on psychology, and connects itself with
the deeper aspects of the topic. From our present purely practical point
of view, however, it is not necessary to be intricate; and passive
attention to natively interesting material requires no further
elucidation on this occasion. All that we need explicitly to note is
that, the more the passive attention is relied on, by keeping the
material interesting; and the less the kind of attention requiring
effort is appealed to; the more smoothly and pleasantly the classroom
work goes on. I must say a few more words, however, about this latter
process of voluntary and deliberate attention.
One often hears it said that genius is nothing but a power of sustained
attention, and the popular impression probably prevails that men of
genius are remarkable for their voluntary powers in this direction. _But
a little introspective observation will show any one that voluntary
attention cannot be continuously sustained,--that it comes in beats._
When we are studying an uninteresting subject, if our mind tends to
wander, we have to bring back our attention every now and then by using
distinct pulses of effort, which revivify the topic for a moment, the
mind then running on for a certain number of seconds or minutes with
spontaneous interest, until again some intercurrent idea captures it and
takes it off. Then the processes of volitional recall must be repeated
once more. Voluntary attention, in short, is only a momentary affair.
The process, whatever it is, exhausts itself in the single act; and,
unless the matter is then taken in hand by some trace of interest
inherent in the subject, the mind fails to follow it at all. The
sustained attention of the genius, sticking to his subject for hours
together, is for the most part of the passive sort. The minds of
geniuses are full of copious and original associations. The subject of
thought, once started, develops all sorts of fascinating consequences.
The attention is led along one of these to another in the most
interesting manner, and the attention never once tends to stray away.
In a commonplace mind, on the other hand, a subject develops much less
numerous associates: it dies out then quickly; and, if the man is to
keep up thinking of it at all, he must bring his attention back to it by
a violent wrench. In him, therefore, the faculty of voluntary attention
receives abundant opportunity for cultivation in daily life. It is your
despised business man, your common man of affairs, (so looked down on by
the literary awarders of fame) whose virtue in this regard is likely to
be most developed; for he has to listen to the concerns of so many
uninteresting people, and to transact so much drudging detail, that the
faculty in question is always kept in training. A genius, on the
contrary, is the man in whom you are least likely to find the power of
attending to anything insipid or distasteful in itself. He breaks his
engagements, leaves his letters unanswered, neglects his family duties
incorrigibly, because he is powerless to turn his attention down and
back from those more interesting trains of imagery with which his genius
constantly occupies his mind.
Voluntary attention is thus an essentially instantaneous affair. You can
claim it, for your purposes in the schoolroom, by commanding it in loud,
imperious tones; and you can easily get it in this way. But, unless the
subject to which you thus recall their attention has inherent power to
interest the pupils, you will have got it for only a brief moment; and
their minds will soon be wandering again. To keep them where you have
called them, you must make the subject too interesting for them to
wander again. And for that there is one prescription; but the
prescription, like all our prescriptions, is abstract, and, to get
practical results from it, you must couple it with mother-wit.
The prescription is that _the subject must be made to show new aspects
of itself; to prompt new questions; in a word, to change_. From an
unchanging subject the attention inevitably wanders away. You can test
this by the simplest possible case of sensorial attention. Try to
attend steadfastly to a dot on the paper or on the wall. You presently
find that one or the other of two things has happened: either your field
of vision has become blurred, so that you now see nothing distinct at
all, or else you have involuntarily ceased to look at the dot in
question, and are looking at something else. But, if you ask yourself
successive questions about the dot,--how big it is, how far, of what
shape, what shade of color, etc.; in other words, if you turn it over,
if you think of it in various ways, and along with various kinds of
associates,--you can keep your mind on it for a comparatively long time.
This is what the genius does, in whose hands a given topic coruscates
and grows. And this is what the teacher must do for every topic if he
wishes to avoid too frequent appeals to voluntary attention of the
coerced sort. In all respects, reliance upon such attention as this is a
wasteful method, bringing bad temper and nervous wear and tear as well
as imperfect results. The teacher who can get along by keeping
spontaneous interest excited must be regarded as the teacher with the
greatest skill.
There is, however, in all schoolroom work a large mass of material that
must be dull and unexciting, and to which it is impossible in any
continuous way to contribute an interest associatively derived. There
are, therefore, certain external methods, which every teacher knows, of
voluntarily arousing the attention from time to time and keeping it upon
the subject. Mr. Fitch has a lecture on the art of securing attention,
and he briefly passes these methods in review; the posture must be
changed; places can be changed. Questions, after being answered singly,
may occasionally be answered in concert. Elliptical questions may be
asked, the pupil supplying the missing word. The teacher must pounce
upon the most listless child and wake him up. The habit of prompt and
ready response must be kept up. Recapitulations, illustrations,
examples, novelty of order, and ruptures of routine,--all these are
means for keeping the attention alive and contributing a little interest
to a dull subject. Above all, the teacher must himself be alive and
ready, and must use the contagion of his own example.
But, when all is said and done, the fact remains that some teachers have
a naturally inspiring presence, and can make their exercises
interesting, while others simply cannot. And psychology and general
pedagogy here confess their failure, and hand things over to the deeper
springs of human personality to conduct the task.
* * * * *
A brief reference to the physiological theory of the attentive process
may serve still further to elucidate these practical remarks, and
confirm them by showing them from a slightly different point of view.
What is the attentive process, psychologically considered? Attention to
an object is what takes place whenever that object most completely
occupies the mind. For simplicity's sake suppose the object be an object
of sensation,--a figure approaching us at a distance on the road. It is
far off, barely perceptible, and hardly moving: we do not know with
certainty whether it is a man or not. Such an object as this, if
carelessly looked at, may hardly catch our attention at all. The optical
impression may affect solely the marginal consciousness, while the
mental focus keeps engaged with rival things. We may indeed not 'see' it
till some one points it out. But, if so, how does he point it out? By
his finger, and by describing its appearance,--by creating a premonitory
image of _where_ to look and of _what_ to expect to see. This
premonitory image is already an excitement of the same nerve-centres
that are to be concerned with the impression. The impression comes, and
excites them still further; and now the object enters the focus of the
field, consciousness being sustained both by impression and by
preliminary idea. But the maximum of attention to it is not yet reached.
Although we see it, we may not care for it; it may suggest nothing
important to us; and a rival stream of objects or of thoughts may
quickly take our mind away. If, however, our companion defines it in a
significant way, arouses in the mind a set of experiences to be
apprehended from it,--names it an enemy or as a messenger of important
tidings,--the residual and marginal ideas now aroused, so far from being
its rivals, become its associates and allies. They shoot together into
one system with it; they converge upon it; they keep it steadily in
focus; the mind attends to it with maximum power.
The attentive process, therefore, at its maximum may be physiologically
symbolized by a brain-cell played on in two ways, from without and from
within. Incoming currents from the periphery arouse it, and collateral
currents from the centres of memory and imagination re-enforce these.
In this process the incoming impression is the newer element; the ideas
which re-enforce and sustain it are among the older possessions of the
mind. And the maximum of attention may then be said to be found whenever
we have a systematic harmony or unification between the novel and the
old. It is an odd circumstance that neither the old nor the new, by
itself, is interesting: the absolutely old is insipid; the absolutely
new makes no appeal at all. The old _in_ the new is what claims the
attention,--the old with a slightly new turn. No one wants to hear a
lecture on a subject completely disconnected with his previous
knowledge, but we all like lectures on subjects of which we know a
little already, just as, in the fashions, every year must bring its
slight modification of last year's suit, but an abrupt jump from the
fashion of one decade into another would be distasteful to the eye.
The genius of the interesting teacher consists in sympathetic divination
of the sort of material with which the pupil's mind is likely to be
already spontaneously engaged, and in the ingenuity which discovers
paths of connection from that material to the matters to be newly
learned. The principle is easy to grasp, but the accomplishment is
difficult in the extreme. And a knowledge of such psychology as this
which I am recalling can no more make a good teacher than a knowledge of
the laws of perspective can make a landscape painter of effective skill.
A certain doubt may now occur to some of you. A while ago, apropos of
the pugnacious instinct, I spoke of our modern pedagogy as being
possibly too 'soft.' You may perhaps here face me with my own words, and
ask whether the exclusive effort on the teacher's part to keep the
pupil's spontaneous interest going, and to avoid the more strenuous path
of voluntary attention to repulsive work, does not savor also of
sentimentalism. The greater part of schoolroom work, you say, must, in
the nature of things, always be repulsive. To face uninteresting
drudgery is a good part of life's work. Why seek to eliminate it from
the schoolroom or minimize the sterner law?
A word or two will obviate what might perhaps become a serious
misunderstanding here.
It is certain that most schoolroom work, till it has become habitual and
automatic, is repulsive, and cannot be done without voluntarily jerking
back the attention to it every now and then. This is inevitable, let the
teacher do what he will.
It flows from the inherent nature of the subjects and of the learning
mind. The repulsive processes of verbal memorizing, of discovering steps
of mathematical identity, and the like, must borrow their interest at
first from purely external sources, mainly from the personal interests
with which success in mastering them is associated, such as gaining of
rank, avoiding punishment, not being beaten by a difficulty and the
like. Without such borrowed interest, the child could not attend to them
at all. But in these processes what becomes interesting enough to be
attended to is not thereby attended to _without effort_. Effort always
has to go on, derived interest, for the most part, not awakening
attention that is _easy_, however spontaneous it may now have to be
called. The interest which the teacher, by his utmost skill, can lend to
the subject, proves over and over again to be only an interest
sufficient _to let loose the effort_. The teacher, therefore, need never
concern himself about _inventing_ occasions where effort must be called
into play. Let him still awaken whatever sources of interest in the
subject he can by stirring up connections between it and the pupil's
nature, whether in the line of theoretic curiosity, of personal
interest, or of pugnacious impulse. The laws of mind will then bring
enough pulses of effort into play to keep the pupil exercised in the
direction of the subject. There is, in fact, no greater school of effort
than the steady struggle to attend to immediately repulsive or difficult
objects of thought which have grown to interest us through their
association as means, with some remote ideal end.
The Herbartian doctrine of interest ought not, therefore, in principle
to be reproached with making pedagogy soft. If it do so, it is because
it is unintelligently carried on. Do not, then, for the mere sake of
discipline, command attention from your pupils in thundering tones. Do
not too often beg it from them as a favor, nor claim it as a right, nor
try habitually to excite it by preaching the importance of the subject.
Sometimes, indeed, you must do these things; but, the more you have to
do them, the less skilful teacher you will show yourself to be. Elicit
interest from within, by the warmth with which you care for the topic
yourself, and by following the laws I have laid down.
If the topic be highly abstract, show its nature by concrete examples.
If it be unfamiliar, trace some point of analogy in it with the known.
If it be inhuman, make it figure as part of a story. If it be
difficult, couple its acquisition with some prospect of personal gain.
Above all things, make sure that it shall run through certain inner
changes, since no unvarying object can possibly hold the mental field
for long. Let your pupil wander from one aspect to another of your
subject, if you do not wish him to wander from it altogether to
something else, variety in unity being the secret of all interesting
talk and thought. The relation of all these things to the native genius
of the instructor is too obvious to need comment again.
One more point, and I am done with the subject of attention. There is
unquestionably a great native variety among individuals in the type of
their attention. Some of us are naturally scatterbrained, and others
follow easily a train of connected thoughts without temptation to swerve
aside to other subjects. This seems to depend on a difference between
individuals in the type of their field of consciousness. In some persons
this is highly focalized and concentrated, and the focal ideas
predominate in determining association. In others we must suppose the
margin to be brighter, and to be filled with something like meteoric
showers of images, which strike into it at random, displacing the focal
ideas, and carrying association in their own direction. Persons of the
latter type find their attention wandering every minute, and must bring
it back by a voluntary pull. The others sink into a subject of
meditation deeply, and, when interrupted, are 'lost' for a moment before
they come back to the outer world.
The possession of such a steady faculty of attention is unquestionably a
great boon. Those who have it can work more rapidly, and with less
nervous wear and tear. I am inclined to think that no one who is without
it naturally can by any amount of drill or discipline attain it in a
very high degree. Its amount is probably a fixed characteristic of the
individual. But I wish to make a remark here which I shall have occasion
to make again in other connections. It is that no one need deplore
unduly the inferiority in himself of any one elementary faculty. This
concentrated type of attention is an elementary faculty: it is one of
the things that might be ascertained and measured by exercises in the
laboratory. But, having ascertained it in a number of persons, we could
never rank them in a scale of actual and practical mental efficiency
based on its degrees. The total mental efficiency of a man is the
resultant of the working together of all his faculties. He is too
complex a being for any one of them to have the casting vote. If any
one of them do have the casting vote, it is more likely to be the
strength of his desire and passion, the strength of the interest he
takes in what is proposed. Concentration, memory, reasoning power,
inventiveness, excellence of the senses,--all are subsidiary to this.
No matter how scatter-brained the type of a man's successive fields
of consciousness may be, if he really _care_ for a subject, he will
return to it incessantly from his incessant wanderings, and first and
last do more with it, and get more results from it, than another
person whose attention may be more continuous during a given interval,
but whose passion for the subject is of a more languid and less
permanent sort. Some of the most efficient workers I know are of the
ultra-scatterbrained type. One friend, who does a prodigious quantity of
work, has in fact confessed to me that, if he wants to get ideas on any
subject, he sits down to work at something else, his best results coming
through his mind-wanderings. This is perhaps an epigrammatic
exaggeration on his part; but I seriously think that no one of us need
be too much distressed at his own shortcomings in this regard. Our mind
may enjoy but little comfort, may be restless and feel confused; but it
may be extremely efficient all the same.