INTEREST AND EFFORT
relationships, its value in connection with what already has significance for him. It is this bringing to consciousness of the bearings of the new material which constitutes the reality, so often perverted both by friend and foe, in "making things interesting."
In other words, the problem is one of intrinsic connection as a motive for attention. The teacher who tells the child he will be kept after school if he doesn't recite his geography lesson better[1] is appealing to the psychology of mediate interest. The old English method of rapping knuckles for false Latin quantities is one way of arousing interest in the intricacies of Latin. To offer a child a bribe, or a promise of teacher's affection, or promotion to the next grade, or ability to make money, or to take a position in society, are other modes. They are cases of transferred in-
- ↑ I have heard it argued in all seriousness that a child kept after school to study has often acquired an interest in arithmetic or grammar which he didn't have before, as if this proved the efficacy of "discipline" versus interest. Of course, the reality is that the greater leisure, the opportunity for individual explanation afforded, served to bring the material into its proper relations in the child's mind—he "got a hold" of it.
