Page:John Dewey's Interest and Effort in Education (1913).djvu/48

 This distinction is not a merely theoretical one, but one that affects the whole scope and significance of interest in teaching. The purely adventitious interests we have discussed—making a thing interesting by the sugar-coating method—assumes a certain ready subject-matter—a subject-matter existing wholly independently of the pupil's own activity. It then asks how this alien subject-matter may be introduced into the pupil's mind; how his attention may be drawn away from the things with which it is naturally concerned and drawn to this indifferent, readymade external material. Some interest, some bond of connection, must be found. Prevalent practices and the training and disposition of the teacher will decide whether the methods of "hard" or of "soft" pedagogy shall be resorted to; whether we shall have a "soup-kitchen" type of teaching or a "penitentiary" type. Shall the indifferent thing (indifferent because lying outside of the individual's scheme of activities) be made interesting—by clothing it with adventitious traits that are agreeable; or by methods of threats—by making