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How child activity de

mands application.

This is the true thoughtfulness and self-activity. It is simply a restatement in pedagogical terms of the old parable of the talents, that what we have inherited or accumulated is for use and not for hoarding.

The school then, like life itself, is as much a place for applying as for accumulating knowledge. The traditional idea of storing up knowledge against the evil day is narrowing and cramping in its influence upon child activity. The fact that children have quick memories and large receptive powers is not a safe ground for exclusive memory exercises. For children show such an overplus of activity in expressing and using their fund of knowledge that the argument in favor of application is at least equally strong. The avenues through which knowledge can be turned into use in childhood, and in school life itself, are so numerous as to constitute a full share of legitimate child life.

There is, therefore, a broad foundation upon which to base this demand for the full and complete expression of child life. Children are little men and women, and their impulses press on to a complete circuit of activity; perceiving, knowing, feeling, willing, or doing. In this series, the productive and constructive use of knowledge is as conspicuous as any other phase of effort. The doing always rounds out and perfects the knowing. Without pressing on to this final test of knowledge in use, the child's activ

ity is prematurely arrested. On the other hand, education, by its excessively theoretical tendency, may produce a whole race of inefficient and impractical men and women.

In all the essentials of character and power such people are apt to be weak and worthless. They deceive themselves and others with the semblance of learning and education, but they are inexpert and bungling in important affairs. The storage theory of knowledge needs to be reënforced by the present use theory, which organizes and unifies the incoming experience and gives it flexibility and aptness for still more important future service.

To teach children how to apply their knowledge requires much painstaking care and patience in the teacher. It is in their first efforts to apply knowledge that children are slow and bungling, and tax the long-suffering patience of teachers. Many a mother has made the fatal blunder of not letting her girls wash dishes or sew or make bread (even when they wanted to) because the girls were so awkward and blundering and unsuccessful in their first efforts. The mother prefers to do things herself rather than let the girls botch their work and waste materials. But the only road to success lies through this period of awkward and sometimes painful effort.

time now

Even with our present methods of teaching, the Amount of amount of time spent in applying principles constitutes a large proportion of the available school time. application,

given to

In arithmetic three-fourths of all the time is spent in applying rules to problems. In reading a still larger proportion is spent in the effort to put in practice the few simple principles of oral expres

sion.

The one chief purpose of language lessons is to cultivate the proper use of the correct forms of oral and written language. In grammar the parsing and interpretation of the rules of etymology and syntax, that is, application, take up a large share of the study. In writing and spelling we may say that the purpose for which they are studied is the necessity of their constant use in other branches. Drawing is now felt to be largely tributary (in the common school grades) to the other studies because of the service it can render in more clearly defining their objects and conceptions. In history and geography it would be more difficult to show the immediate uses of the knowledge acquired. This, however, is largely due to our faulty methods of memorizing facts, instead of studying out these facts in their important relations and uses. A general view of our school studies, as now taught, will show how fundamental is the principle of the application of knowledge.

But in order to secure the proper kind of thinking, self-activity, and organization of knowledge, still more time will have to be given to application. We are not wasting time when we stop and wait for children to think out the relations and use of what

they are learning. We may, indeed, seem to move slowly, but we are moving as fast as their thinking power will permit. It takes time for children to think out and adapt these principles to new and changed conditions. To neglect the cultivation of such thinking power as this for the sake of a little verbal fluency and memory drill, is short-sightedness and even folly.

In saying that the effort to apply knowledge is laborious, and that school study is thus rendered more rigorous and severe, we may seem to be laying an uncalled-for burden upon school children. But children will find in such applied study rich compensation for their effort. The truest satisfaction of all study comes from the conscious power to make ready use of it. Knowledge is always something of a burden and a discouragement till it has found an outlet in some definite form of utility. There is no point where we can stop in this movement toward knowledge and feel sure of its value, until the goal of useful application is reached. The real irksomeness and discouragement of study do not spring from proper efforts at application, but from the dull, often meaningless, memory drills, which do not even reach forward to clear knowledge, to say nothing of power to apply. Knowledge, which thus ends in a blind alley, and finds no entrance into the thoroughfares of life, is a deadening influence in our schools. It produces stagnation in voluntary effort, while

Power to apply knowl

edge as a source of

energy.

successful application of newly gathered knowledge leads out into the clear sunlight of conscious power.

Children who have learned to apply one lesson thoroughly are ready and eager to grapple with new problems. There is no better test of successful progress in studies than this power to render practical account of our possessions, and there is no better guarantee for future energetic effort.

One conclusion that springs from this entire discussion is that the proper use of knowledge has to be learned. It does not come by accident or inadvertence, but is the result of definite purpose and rigorous effort. Even if later life with its severer tests were not to follow, the school would need the tonic of this kind of effort to adapt and use knowledge in order to bring school work to proper unity and completeness.

We may now glance back at the lesson unit, in the treatment of which application is the final step. In working up to a general truth or concept through particulars, we have followed the inductive movement through the steps of preparation, presentation, comparison, and generalization. A single central thought which lies at the root of the lesson unity has dominated the entire movement. In the application we are still operating with this central truth, turning it about, testing it on new data, and detecting the various forms in which it clothes itself. The

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