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influence which training has on concentration and the great improvement
that can be made. It is true that few people do show much concentration
of attention when they wish. This is true of adults as well as of
children. They have formed habits of working at half speed, with little
concentration and no real absorption in the topic. This method of work
is both wasteful of time and energy and injurious to the mental
stability and development of the individual. Half-speed work due to lack
of concentration often means that a student will stay with a topic and
fuss over it for hours instead of working hard and then dropping it.
Teachers often do this sort of thing with their school work. Not only
are the results less satisfactory, because the individual never gets
deeply enough into the topic to really get what is there, but the effect
on him is bad. It is like "constant dripping wears away the stone."
Children must be taught to "work when they work and play when they
play," if they are to have habits of concentration as adults.

The length of time which it is possible to attend to the same object or
idea may be reckoned in seconds. It is impossible to hold the attention
on an object for any appreciable length of time. In order to hold the
attention the object must change. The simple experiment of trying to pay
attention to a blot of ink or the idea of bravery proves that change is
necessary if the attention is not to wander. What happens is that either
the attention goes to something else, or that you begin thinking about
the thing in question. Of course, the minute you begin thinking, new
associations, images, memories, come flocking in, and the attention
occupies itself with each in turn. All may concern the idea with which
you started out, but the very fact that these have been added to the
mental content of the instant makes the percept of ink blot or the
concept of bravery different from the bare thing with which the
attention began. If this change and fluctuation of the mental state does
not take place, the attention flits to something else. The length of
time that the attention may be engaged with a topic will depend, then,
upon the number of associations connected with it. The more one knows
about a topic, the longer he can attend to it. If it is a new topic, the
more suggestive it is in calling up past experience or in offering
incentive for experiment or application, the longer can attention stay
with it. Such a