During the whole period of childhood and adolescence we may never assume that the results of previous education, whether they be favorable or unsatisfactory, are permanent.  Whether we succeed or not in achieving the ends which we desire, the fact of modifiability, of docility, and of plasticity remains.  The teacher who seeks to understand the individuals with whom he works, both in terms of their original nature and in terms of their previous education, and who at the same time seeks to substitute for a lower phase of an instinctive tendency a higher one, or who tries to have his pupils respond to a situation by inhibiting a particular tendency by forming the habit of meeting the situation in another way, need not despair of results which are socially desirable.

QUESTIONS

1.  May a teacher ever expect the children in his class to be equal in achievement?  Why?

2.  Why is it not possible to educate children satisfactorily by following where instincts lead?

3.  Which of the instincts seem most strong in the children in your class?

4.  Can you give any example of an instinctive tendency which you think should have been outgrown but which seems to persist among your pupils?

5.  Give examples of the inhibition of undesirable actions based upon instinctive tendencies by means of (1) punishment, (2) disuse, (3) substitution.

6.  How can you use the tendency to enjoy mental activity?

7.  Why does building a boat make a stronger appeal to a boy than engaging in manual training exercises which might involve the same amount of activity?

8.  Cite examples of collections made by boys and girls in which the ideas associated with the objects collected may be more important than the objects themselves.

9.  In what degree are we justified in speaking of the social instinct?  The instinct to imitate?

10.  How can you use the fighting instinct in your work with children?

11.  What can teachers do to influence the education which children have received or are getting outside of school?

12.  What differences in action among the children in your class do you attribute to differences in original nature?  What to differences in education?

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III.  ATTENTION AND INTEREST IN TEACHING

Attention is a function of consciousness.  Wherever consciousness is, attention must perforce be present.  One cannot exist without the other.  According to most psychologists, the term attention is used to describe the form consciousness takes, to refer to the fact that consciousness is selective.  It simply means that consciousness is always focal and marginal—­that some ideas, facts, or feelings stand out in greater prominence than do others, and that the presence of this “perspective”