Page:John Dewey's Interest and Effort in Education (1913).djvu/73

 is already easiest for him to do; he follows the line of least resistance. The sole alternative is the use of initiative in thinking out the conditions of the problem and the way to go at it. And this alternative is within his reach only when the work to be done is of a nature to make an appeal to him, or to enlist his powers; and when the difficulties are such as to stimulate instead of depressing.

Good teaching, in other words, is teaching that appeals to established powers while it includes such new material as will demand their redirection for a new end, this redirection requiring thought—intelligent effort. In every case, the educational significance of effort, its value for an educative growth, resides in its connection with a stimulation of greater thoughtfulness, not in the greater strain it imposes. Educative effort is a sign of the transformation of a comparatively blind activity (whether impulsive or habitual) into a more consciously reflective one.

For the sake of completeness of statement, we will say (what hardly should now require