s, there is, in
the second place, a premium put on shilly-shallying and procrastination.
The future prepared for is a long way off; plenty of time will intervene
before it becomes a present. Why be in a hurry about getting ready for
it? The temptation to postpone is much increased because the present
offers so many wonderful opportunities and proffers such invitations to
adventure. Naturally attention and energy go to them; education accrues
naturally as an outcome, but a lesser education than if the full stress
of effort had been put upon making conditions as educative as possible.
A third undesirable result is the substitution of a conventional average
standard of expectation and requirement for a standard which concerns
the specific powers of the individual under instruction. For a severe
and definite judgment based upon the strong and weak points of the
individual is substituted a vague and wavering opinion concerning what
youth may be expected, upon the average, to become in some more or less
remote future; say, at the end of the year, when promotions are to take
place, or by the time they are ready to go to college or to enter
upon what, in contrast with the probationary stage, is regarded as the
serious business of life. It is impossible to overestimate the loss
which results from the deflection of attention from the strategic point
to a comparatively unproductive point. It fails most just where it
thinks it is succeeding--in getting a preparation for the future.

Finally, the principle of preparation makes necessary recourse on a
large scale to the use of adventitious motives of pleasure and pain. The
future having no stimulating and directing power when severed from the
possibilities of the present, something must be hitched on to it to make
it work. Promises of reward and threats of pain are employed. Healthy
work, done for present reasons and as a factor in living, is largely
unconscious. The stimulus resides in the situation with which one is
actually confronted. But when this situation is ignored, pupils have to
be told that if they do not follow the prescribed course penalties will
accrue; while if they do, they may expect, some time in the future,
rewards for their present sacrifices. Everybody knows how largely
systems of punishment have had to be resorted to by educational systems
which neglect present possibilities in behalf of preparation for a
future. Then, in disgust with the harshness and impotency