ble tasks, if attacked
in the right way, and persisted in with patience, often become
attractive in themselves. Over and over again in meeting the situations
of real life, I have been confronted with tasks that were initially
distasteful. Sometimes I have surrendered before them; but sometimes,
too, that lesson has come back to me, and has inspired me to struggle
on, and at no time has it disappointed me by the outcome. I repeat that
there is no technical knowledge that I have gained that compares for a
moment with that ideal of patience and persistence. When it comes to
real, downright utility, measured by this inexorable standard of getting
a living, let me commend to you the ideal of persistent effort. All the
knowledge that we can learn or teach will come to very little if this
element is lacking.

Now this is very far from saying that the pursuit of really useful
knowledge may not give this ideal just as effectively as the pursuit of
knowledge that will never be used. My point is simply this: that beyond
the immediate utility of the facts that we teach,--indeed, basic and
fundamental to this utility,--is the utility of the ideals and standards
that are derived from our school work. Whatever we teach, these
essential factors can be made to stand out in our work, and if our
pupils acquire these we shall have done the basic and important thing in
helping them to solve the problems of real life,--and if our pupils do
not acquire these, it will make little difference how intrinsically
valuable may be the content of our instruction. I feel like emphasizing
this matter to-day, because there is in the air a notion that utility
depends entirely upon the content of the curriculum. Certainly the
curriculum must be improved from this standpoint, but we are just now
losing sight of the other equally important factor,--that, after all,
while both are essential, it is the spirit of teaching rather than the
content of teaching that is basic and fundamental.

Nor have I much sympathy with that extreme view of this matter which
asserts that we must go out of our way to provide distasteful tasks for
the pupil in order to develop this ideal of persistence. I believe that
such a policy will always tend to defeat its own purpose. I know a
teacher who holds this belief. He goes out of his way to make tasks
difficult. He refuses to help pupils over hard places. He does not
believe in careful assignments of lessons, because, he maintains,