Now in a figurative way this explains how we have come to take our present attitude toward the problem of drill or training in the process of education.  Drill means the repetition of a process until it has become mechanical or automatic.  It means the kind of discipline that the recruit undergoes in the army,—­the making of a series of complicated movements so thoroughly automatic that they will be gone through with accurately and precisely, at the word of command.  It means the sort of discipline that makes certain activities machine-like in their operation,—­so that we do not have to think about which one comes next.  Thus the mind is relieved of the burden of looking after the innumerable details and may use its precious energy for a more important purpose.

In every adult life, a large number of these mechanized responses are absolutely essential to efficiency.  Modern civilized life is so highly organized that it demands a multitude of reactions and adjustments which primitive life did not demand.  It goes without saying that there are innumerable little details of our daily work that must be reduced to the plane of unvarying habit.  These details vary with the trade or profession of the individual; hence general education cannot hope to supply the individual with all of the automatic responses that he will need.  But, in addition to these specialized responses, there is a large mass of responses that are common to every member of the social group.  We must all be able to communicate with one another, both through the medium of speech, and through the medium of written and printed symbols.  We live in a society that is founded upon the principle of the division of labor.  We must exchange the products of our labor for the necessities of life that we do not ourselves produce, and hence arises the necessity for the short cuts to counting and measurement which we call arithmetic.  And finally we must all live together in something at least approaching harmony; hence the thousand and one little responses that mean courtesy and good manners must be made thoroughly automatic.

Now education, from the very earliest times, has recognized the necessity of building up these automatic responses,—­of fixing these essential habits in all individuals.  This recognition has often been short-sighted and sometimes even blind; but it has served to hold education rather tenaciously to a process that all must admit to be essential.

Drill or training, however, is unfortunate in one important particular.  It invariably involves repetition; and conscious, explicit repetition tends to become monotonous.  We must hold attention to the drill process, and yet attention abhors monotony as nature abhors a vacuum.  Consequently no small part of the tedium and irksomeness of school work has been due to its emphasis of drill.  The formalism of the older schools has been described, criticized, and lampooned in professional literature, and even in the pages of fiction.  The disastrous results that follow from engendering in pupils a disgust for school and all that it represents have been eloquently portrayed.  Along with the tendency toward ease and comfort in other departments of human life has gone a parallel tendency to relieve the school of this odious burden of formal, lifeless, repetitive work.