three: first, the apprehension of specific or particular facts; second, rational generalization; third, application and verification.
Preparation is getting the sense of a problem I. The processes having to do with particular facts are preparation and presentation. The best, indeed the only preparation is arousal to a perception of something that needs explanation, something unexpected, puzzling, peculiar. When the feeling of a genuine perplexity lays hold of any mind (no matter how the feeling arises), that mind is alert and inquiring, because stimulated from within. The shock, the bite, of a question will force the mind to go wherever it is capable of going, better than will the most ingenious pedagogical devices unaccompanied by this mental ardor. It is the sense of a problem that forces the mind to a survey and recall of the past to discover what the question means and how it may be dealt with.
Pitfalls in preparation The teacher in his more deliberate attempts to call into play the familiar elements in a student's experience, must guard against certain dangers. (i) The step of preparation must not be too long continued or too exhaustive, or it defeats its own end. The pupil loses interest and is bored, when a plunge in medias res might have braced him to his work. The preparation part of the recitation period of some conscientious teachers reminds one of the boy who takes so long a run in order to gain headway for a jump that when he reaches the line, he is too tired to jump far. (ii) The organs by which we apprehend new material are our habits. To insist too minutely upon turning over habitual dispositions into conscious ideas is to interfere with their best workings. Some factors of familiar experience must indeed be brought to conscious recognition, just as trans-
