It is necessary at times to have children give forced attention.  There are some things to be accomplished that must be done, regardless of our success in securing free attention.  It is entirely conceivable that some boy or girl may not want to learn his multiplication tables, or his words in spelling, or his conjugation or declension in French, and that all that the teacher has done may fail to arouse any great amount of interest or enthusiasm for the work in question.  In these cases, and in many others which might be cited, the necessity for the particular habit may be so great as to demand that every pupil do the work or form the habit in question.  In these cases we may not infrequently hope that after having given forced attention to the work of the school, children may in time come to understand the importance of the experiences which they are having, or even become interested in the work for its own sake.  It is not infrequently true that after a period of forced attention there follows a time during which, on account of the value which children are able to understand as attached to or belonging to the particular exercise, they give free derived attention.  Many boys and girls have worked through their courses in science or in modern languages because they believed that these subjects would prove valuable not only in preparing them for college, but in giving them a wider outlook on life.  Their attention was of the free derived type.  Later on some of these same pupils have become tremendously enthusiastic in their work in the fields in question, and have found such great satisfaction in the work itself, that their attention might properly be characterized as free immediate attention.

The importance of making children conscious of their power of concentrating their attention needs to be kept constantly in mind.  Exercises in which children are asked to do as much as they can in a period of five or ten minutes may be used to teach children what concentration of attention is and of the economy involved in work done under these conditions.  The trouble with a great many adults, as well as with children, is that they have never learned what it is to work up to the maximum of their capacity.  All too frequently in our attempts to teach children in classes we neglect to provide even a sufficient amount of work to demand of the more able members of the group any considerable amount of continued, concentrated attention.

We seek in our work as teachers not only to secure a maximum of attention to the fields of work in which children are engaged, but also to arouse interests and enthusiasms which will last after school days are over.  We think of interest often, and properly too, as the means employed to secure a maximum of attention, and, in consequence, a maximum of accomplishment.  It is worth while to think often in our work in terms of interest as the end to be secured.  Children should become sufficiently interested in some of the