Page:John Dewey's Interest and Effort in Education (1913).djvu/57

 or a cause of arrested development in an activity.

These formulæ are of course abstract and far from self-explanatory. But in the light of our prior discussion their significance should be obvious. When interest is objected to as merely amusement or fooling or a temporary excitation (or when in educational practice it does mean simply such things), it will be found that the interest in question is something which attaches merely to a momentary activity apart from its place in an enduring activity—an activity that develops through a period of time. When this happens, the object that arouses (what is called) interest is esteemed just on the basis of the momentary reaction it calls out, the immediate pleasure it excites. "Interest" so created is abnormal, for it is a sign of the dissipation of energy; it is a symptom that life is being cut up into a series of disconnected reactions, each one of which is esteemed by itself apart from what it does in carrying forward (or developing) a consecutive activity. As we have already seen, it is one thing to make, say, number interesting by merely