Interest and Effort in Education/Outline

by John Dewey

Layout 2

OUTLINE

	I. UNIFIED VERSUS DIVIDED ACTIVITY.
1.	The educational lawsuit of interest versus effort	1
2.	The case against the current theory of effort	2
3.	The case against the current theory of interest	3
4.	Each is strong in its attacks upon the opposite theory	6
5.	Both fail to recognize the identity of facts and actions with the self	7
6.	Both are intellectually and morally harmful	7
7.	The child's demand for realization of his own impulses cannot be suppressed	8
8.	Emphasizing outward habits of action leaves the child's inner nature to its caprices	10
9.	Making things interesting substitutes the pleasure of excitation for that of activity	12
10.	The result is division of energies	13
	(a) In disagreeable effort it is simultaneous
	(b) In adventitious interest it is successive
11.	When properly conceived, interest and effort are vitally related	14
	II. INTEREST AS DIRECT AND INDIRECT
1.	A brief descriptive account of interest	16
2.	The active or propulsive phase	17
3.	The objective phase	19
4.	The emotional phase	20
5.	Interest is primarily a form of self-expressive activity	21
6.	Direct or immediated interest	21
7.	Indirect, transferred or mediated interest	22
8.	Two thoroughgoing errors	23
	(a) Selecting subject-matter regardless of interest
	(b) Making method a device for dressing up unrelated materials
9.	The criterion for judging cases of transferred interest	25
	(a) Are means and ends intrinsically connected?
	(b) Two illustrative cases
10.	Means and end are stages of a single developing activity	28
	(a) Three illustrations
11.	Failure follows the appeal to adventitious or substituted interests	33
12.	The true relation of subject-matter and the child's activities	34
13.	Consequences of this view for pleasure and happiness	35
14.	There is no rigid line between direct and indirect interests	36
15.	Indirect interests are symptomatic of the expansion of simple activities into more complex ones	38
16.	Indirect values become direct	39
17.	Interest is legitimate only when it fosters development	41
18.	Genuine interest indicates personal identification with a course of action	43
	III. EFFORT, THINKING, AND MOTIVATION
1.	The demand for effort is a demand for continuity in the face of difficulties	46
2.	It has no significance apart from an end to be reached	47
3.	Persistent but obstructed activity creates conflicting tendencies; dislike and longing	49
4.	The emotion of effort or stress is a warning to reflect	50
	(a) On the worth of the end
	(b) On the provision of new means
5.	The experience of difficulty may have a double effect
	(a) To weaken the impetus in a forward direction	51
	(b) To increase consciousness of the end	52
6.	A conscious aim inspirits and guides in two ways
	(a) It makes the individual more conscious of his purpose	53
	(b) It turns his energy from thoughtless struggle to reflective judgment	53
7.	The difference between educative and uneducative tasks	55
8.	The criteria to be borne in mind	56
	(a) Is it so easy that it fails to stimulate thought?
	(b) Is it so difficult that it discourages activity?
9.	Some specific consequences of violating these criteria	57
10.	Good teaching must stimulate initiative	58
11.	Difficulties and effort occur normally with increased depth and scope of thinking	59
12.	Motive is a name for end in its active or dynamic capacity	60
13.	Personal motivation cannot be thought of apart from an object or end in view	61
14.	The problem is not to find a motive, but materials and conditions for the exercise of activities	62
15.	The use and function of subject-matter is to promote the growth of personal powers	63
	IV. TYPES OF EDUCATIVE INTEREST
1.	Genuine interest is always marked by the absorption of powers in an occupation or pursuit	65
2.	Activity includes all the expressions that involve growth of power	66
	(a) It specially includes: Power to realize the meaning of what is done
	(b) It excludes action under external constraint, random reaction, and habitual action
3.	True educative interests or activities vary indefinitely	67
4.	Physical activity	67
	(a) In so far as physical activity has to be learned it is intellectual in value	68
	(b) The importance of school occupations which involves the exercise of senses and movements	69
	(c) Sense organs are simply the pathways of stimuli to motor responses	70
	(d) Growth of knowledge occurs In adapting sense-stimulus and motor response	71
	(e) The great value of a wide range of play games, and occupations	72
5.	Constructive activity	74
	(a) The use of tools and appliances makes possible development through complicated activities of long duration	75
	(b) The use of intervening tools distinguishes games and work from play	76
	(c) Work is distinguished from play only by the presence of an intellectual quality	79
	(d) Children need both work and play	80
6.	Intellectual activity	81
	(a) The intellectual phases previously subordinate, develop and become dominant	82
	(b) Interest in the theoretical becomes direct	83
7.	Social activity
	(a) The child early identifies his concerns with those of others	84
	(b) His social interest also suffuses his interest in things	86
	(c) Impersonal material should be presented in the rôle it actually plays in life	87
	(d) There is a close connection between social and moral interests	88
	(e) Interest itself is not selfish; its character depends upon its objects	88
	V. THE PLACE OF INTEREST IN THE THEORY OF EDUCATION
1.	All interests mark an identification of self with ends and means	90
2.	All misconceptions of interest come from ignoring its moving, developing nature	91
3.	The idea of interest protects pedagogical theory
	(a) From a merely internal conception of mind	92
	(b) From a merely external conception of subject-matter	94
4.	Interest is obtained by considering and aiming at the conditions that lie back of it	95