eed in holding the
attention of even the majority of the children.

Boys and girls do their best work only when they concentrate their
attention upon the work to be done. One of the greatest fallacies that
has ever crept into our educational thought is that which suggests that
there is great value in having people work in fields in which they are
not interested, and in which they do not freely give their attention.
Any one who is familiar with children, or with grown-ups, must know that
it is only when interest is at a maximum that the effort put forth
approaches the limit of capacity set by the individual's ability. Boys
concentrate their attention upon baseball or upon fishing to a degree
which demands of them a maximum of effort. A boy may spend hours at a
time seeking to perfect himself in pitching, batting, or fielding. He
may be uncomfortable a large part of the time, he may suffer
considerable pain, and yet continue in his practice by virtue of his
great enthusiasm for perfecting himself in the game. Interest of a not
dissimilar sort leads a man who desires position, or power, or wealth,
to concentrate his attention upon the particular field of his endeavor
to the exclusion of almost everything else. Indeed, men almost literally
kill themselves in the effort which they make to achieve these social
distinctions or rewards. We may not hope always to secure so high a
degree of concentration of attention or of effort, but it is only as we
approach a situation in which children are interested, and in which they
freely give their attention to the subject in hand, that we can claim to
be most successful in our teaching.

The teacher who is able in beginning reading to discover to children the
tool which will enable them to get the familiar story or rhyme from the
book may hope to get a quality of attention which could never be brought
about by forcing them to attend to formal phonetic drill. The teacher of
biology who has been able to awaken enthusiasm for the investigation of
plant and animal life, and who has allowed children to conduct their own
investigations and to carry out their own experiments, may hope for a
type of attention which is never present in the carrying out of the
directions of the laboratory manual or in naming or classifying plants
or animals merely as a matter of memory. Children who are at work
producing a school play will accomplish more in the study of the history
in which they seek to discove