Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 58.djvu/595

Rh disinclination in the minds of his governors do not and cannot appeal to him as intrinsically valid. One can, of course, compel the performance of disagreeable tasks, and by repetition of compulsion one can convince a refractory youth that some achievement is always possible and necessary, in spite of his strong aversion to a particular kind of work. But what one usually cultivates, under such circumstances, is not a growing strength to master difficulties, but chiefly the habit of skilful, even of subtle evasion—the habit of calculating not how much one can do, but how little one must do.

Again, the effect of compelling a youth to pursue a subject permanently uninteresting is pernicious in another way. It cultivates the abominable habit of being satisfied with partial or inadequate achievement. Permanent lack of interest in a given field of work is an indication of corresponding incapacity; for growing interest and capacity always go together. Under such circumstances a youth never feels the glow of conscious mastery of the subject for its own sake; half achievement is the result of forced, half-hearted endeavor, and both become the rule.

The result may be even worse. To be constantly baffled undermines one's confidence in one's own powers, and ultimately imperils self-respect. To force a youth to work against the grain for its own sake is, therefore, futile, and worse than futile; for it not only fails to accomplish its purpose, but actually cultivates the evasion of school work, the aversion to school work, and, in extreme cases, it may even destroy the capacity for work of any sort. Morever, it must not be forgotten that evasion of work, aversion to work, and ennui are the fertile soil in which all the vices flourish.

Again, all such efforts to make a youth work 'against the grain,' for its own sake, by the pursuit of uninteresting studies are artificial, and wholly unnecessary. What we want a youth to acquire is the power of overcoming difficulties, and the corresponding habit of adequate achievement. This power and the corresponding habit are cultivated by overcoming difficulties, not by forced and unsuccessful attempts at overcoming them. Every subject affords abundant opportunity for overcoming difficulties, and when it is in harmony with the pupil's interests and powers, those difficulties will he overcome; first, because they lie in the way of further progress in a subject which he wishes to master; and second, because he possesses the requisite natural capacity for conquest, because he daily feels the sense of achievement—the strongest of all incentives to exertion. Hence, conquest may become the rule. Through conquest alone comes the habit of working in spite of difficulties, which is the kind of working against the grain worth trying for.

Finally, as was pointed out above, a man's life is more significant and richer in every way, the more his dominant interests and powers