Page:John Dewey's Interest and Effort in Education (1913).djvu/102

 facts and truths—presented to them have been isolated from their human context. This does not mean, of course, that a mythological or fanciful human character should be attributed to inanimate things; but it does mean that impersonal material should be presented so far as possible in the rôle it actually plays in life. Children generally begin the study of geography, for example, with a social interest so strong that it is fairly romantic. Their imaginations are fired by the thought of learning how strange and far-away peoples live and fare. Then they are fed on abstract definitions and classifications; or, what is almost as deadening, upon bare physical facts about the forms of land and water, the structure of continents, etc. Then there are complaints that children have so little interest in the study—simply because they have not been touched where they are at home. In such sciences as physics and chemistry there are enough facts and principles which are associated with human concerns to supply adequate material for thorough grounding in the methods of those sciences.

It is not necessary to do more than to allude