built on that plan. The chief reason why pupils do not learn to think as we wish them to is because our teaching situations often do not require thought, in the sense in which we use the term. Many of our school-room exercises employ verbal memory largely, if not wholly.

When a pupil is required to make a box, say, of prescribed dimensions, and for a definite purpose, he has a constant and unvarying standard by which to test the efficiency of his thinking. When he is brought face to face with a concrete situation where things must be made to fit together, or operate together, then he is compelled to think, and he is made sooner or later to realize that he can not go on in a mechanical, verbal way, and come out right. Whenever a person is obliged to make things work, he will think as effectively as it is possible for him to do. If in our teaching we can arrange a program of exercises of this concrete, dynamic character, we can keep pupils thinking up to the limit of their constantly enlarging capacity. Really the art of teaching consists mainly in realizing this plan to its fullest extent in all studies-in arithmetic, geography, nature study, language, and all the rest. It should be recognized in this connection that some of the greatest thinkers among us have never been trained in the schools; and some of the men one knows

who have been through all the schools are babes in thinking ability. Of course, these are extreme instances, but they illustrate the psychological law involved in the problem before us.

The more one sees of teaching the more convinced he becomes that the genuinely successful teacher is the one who knows how to bring pupils to the point where they can see

The supreme test of a good

method

things as they are, and can discover the causal relations between experiences. In schoolrooms where pupils have got into the habit of going to class and reciting memoriter the words and rules they have learned, the skilful teacher will follow them right through, and cause them to deal with concrete cases and illustrations, in order to show whether they actually know what they are talking about, or whether they are just reciting. There is no cut-and-dried method of accomplishing this, but it ought to be the chief concern of teachers from the kindergarten through the university. In this way, pupils may be got into an attitude or habit of thinking, so that in due time they will, as a matter of course, endeavor to discover the causal connections between all their experiences, which, as we have seen, is the only reason for which thinking has been preserved in the race.

Recently the pupils in the junior class of a high

school were required to write down a list of "forty The test applied important events which hapto a history lesson pened in European history." They were expected to give the exact date of each event, and the names of the men and women connected therewith. It was not asked that any relationship be shown between the different events mentioned. The whole forty might relate to a particular period, or might concern any one man even, provided the pupils could hunt up forty of his deeds which were of sufficient importance to become matters of record. The aim of the teacher in assigning this task was to compel her pupils to "memorize at least forty events covering the period of European history which had been studied."

In executing this task the pupils made constant use of their text-books. They would start looking through the table of contents; and when they came upon a phrase such as "The Battle of Waterloo", they would make a note of the date and event. Then they would run on until they came across something else that seemed to be an "event," and they would jot it down to be memorized. Frequently the pupils would ask one another, and any older persons to whom they could gain access, whether "The Battle of Waterloo" was really an "event", or what it was. They said the teacher made it absolutely imperative

that they should get only "events". When some of these pupils were asked what there was in history besides "events", they were unable to respond. And what is more serious, they were not very much interested to find out what else there could be. What they wanted to do was to get the names of forty events in order to meet the test which the teacher would make at the appointed hour. The present writer tried out some of these pupils by asking them what difference there was between a cause in history and an event; and there was not one reasonably satisfactory answer given. The responses indicated that these particular pupils had gained no clear notion of causes operating in European history. They had been impressed mainly with the supreme value of unrelated dates, names and events.

Certain of the pupils being observed with reference to their method of performing this task, it was Formal exactness noticed that their chief fear was rather than ef- that they might not get the exact fective thinking dates. They were sure it would not be satisfactory to say that a given event occurred in such a period or about such a year—for instance, that Alaska was purchased about such a time. The precise year must be memorized for the examination. But it was evident that the exact year for any event would not be permanently remembered. Al

though the class had previously been over these events, it is significant to note that not one pupil in ten could be sure of any date without hunting it up in his text-book or elsewhere. What possible value could it be to these pupils to try to remember forty dates? Was it not a positive injury to right historical thinking to require the memorizing of the precise year of an event by novices, since this would be forgotten, and the event itself would not be located in its relation to other events in European history? If the pupils had been asked simply to learn about when, and especially in connection with what related events any event occurred, they would have been more likely to have got a feeling for the relation of important periods to one another.

The chief defect in such a lesson as the above, which is typical of much that may be seen in the schools, is that it fails to exalt what is of prime importance in the study of the subject in hand. If the teacher had said, "Bring me an account of five events in European history, and show me what led to these events, what followed them, and how European life and history were affected by them," she would have drawn the attention of her class to knowledge of genuine value, and within the range of interest and capacity of pupils in the junior year of the high school. It will not be doubted by any