are made more ready than others because of the general set or attitude of the thinker, and therefore any associate using those bonds brings satisfaction and is retained.  “The power that moves the man of science to solve problems correctly is the same that moves him to eat, sleep, rest, and play.  The efficient thinker is not only more fertile in ideas and more often productive of the ‘right’ ideas than the incompetent is; he is also more satisfied by them when he gets them, and more rebellious against the futile and misleading ones.  We trust to the laws of cerebral nature to present us spontaneously with the appropriate idea, and also to prefer that idea to others."[11]

The reasons for failure of teachers and educators of all kinds to train people to think are numerous. (1) Scarcity of brains which work primarily in terms of connections between subtle elements, relationships, etc. (2) Lack of knowledge or incorrect knowledge, due to narrow experience or poor memory. (3) Lack of the necessary habits of attention and criticism. (4) Lack of power of the more abstract and intellectual operations to bring satisfaction, due partly to original equipment and partly to training. (5) Lack of power to do independent work, due to poor training.  Schools cannot in any way make good the deficiency which is due to a lack of mental capacity.  They can, and should, do something to provide knowledge which is well organized around experiences which have proved vital to pupils.  Something can undoubtedly be done in the way of cultivating the habit of concentration of attention, and of making more or less habitual the critical attitude.  Within the range of the ability which the individuals to be educated possess, the school may do much to give training which will make independent work or thinking more common in the experience of school pupils, and therefore much more apt to be resorted to in the case of any problematic situation.

Possibly the greatest weakness in our schools, as they are at present constituted, is in the dependence of both teachers and children upon text-books, laboratory manuals, lectures, and the like.  In almost every field of knowledge which is presented in our elementary and high schools, more opportunity should be given for contact with life activities.  Such contacts should, in so far as it is possible, involve the organization of the observations which are made with relation to problems and principles which the subject seeks to develop.  In nature study or in geography in the elementary school many of the principles involved are never really mastered by children, by virtue of the fact that they merely memorize the words which are involved, rather than solve any of the problems which may occur, either by virtue of their intellectual interests, or on account of their meaning in everyday life.  The following of the instructions given in the laboratory manual does not necessarily result in developing the spirit of inquiry or investigation, nor even acquaint pupils with the method of the science which is supposed to be studied.