and doing in connection therewith. If his letter lacks definiteness, he is glad to learn how to improve it. Precision and clearness are now inherent in a real life situation. This is one instance of a project, the living purpose of the doer and learner dominating and guiding each step of the process. Suppose a girl has at length secured. her mother's permission to make a dress "all by herself." Her attitude makes a project of the whole affair, whereas, if the sewing teacher sets as a task sewing ten straight seams, there will probably be many in the class to whom the activity is no project but a mere task and nothing more. So, also, if a group of children give a play, we have a group project, provided all purposed conjointly. The poet who spends hours and days on a poem is working on a project. The statesman who makes an argument for a great cause is engaged in a project. The mother, whose faith tells her that fervent prayer in behalf of her wayward son will avail to quicken again his hardened heart, is engaged in a purposeful act that enlists her whole being, and involves her whole faith in God, and her whole philosophy of life. A project then can take every form that human purpose and endeavor can take. The distinguishing essence is an effective purpose. It was indicated above that projects may be individual affairs or they may be carried on by groups. It is clear at once that a group project is the essence of the "socialized recitation," though not all group projects need be of this type. It may be well to distinguish several types of projects differentiated according to the types of purposes involved. I myself distinguish four. Type I is that in which the dominating purpose demands. embodiment in some form. The illustrations given above were all of this kind. This is sometimes called the Constructive Type, though it must be made clear that the construction need not be material; it can be, as we saw, of as spiritual a substance as prayer itself. The distinction is best seen in the contrasting types. Type IIis that in which the dominating purpose is to enjoy some (aesthetic) experience. I hear there is a sunset, I purpose to enjoy it to the extent of my being; so with a poem, or a play, or an opera. A child who asks his mother for a story purposes a project in Type II. These two types are often correlatives. The poet writes. the poem (Type I); we enjoy it (Type II). Da Vinci paints the Mona Lisa (Type ); you and I stand enraptured before his masterpiece (Type II). Type II we may call the Appreciation Project. A third is Type III, where the dominating purpose is to solve a problem, to clear up some intellectual conflict. A problem we may often easily recognize; so also a boat. Solving a problem is another and different thing; so likewise is sailing a boat different from the boat itself. may contemplate solving the problem or sailing the boat, but I may say in the end: "No, it is too much trouble," or "I not conhaven't the time," or "I am cerned." So far, no project. But if I determine to solve the problem, and set to work effectively at it, then I am enHave gaged in a project of Type III. I I made clear the difference between a problem and a project? Problems are very common in geography, science, and history. Projects of Type III should, I think, also be very common in the teaching and learning of science, geography, and history; but, so far, most teachers cannot institute projects. It is a distressing fact, but true. Perhaps after a while we shall know more about an effective technique for building and arousing purposes. The fourth and last type of project is that in which the dominating purpose is to acquire some item or degree of knowl edge or skill. edge or skill. So close is this to old fashioned drill that I almost fear to give it place, but it exists as a type form and we need it. I remember that my teacher once conceived the very evident idea that my handwriting was not as good as it should be, and I was required to practice under her direction. But I took it as a task imposed from without and practiced in but a desultory fashion. Later, I myself woke up to the fact that I was ashamed of my penmanship, and for several years I practiced in season and out. It had then become for me an engrossing project. A colleague asked a group of us to tell him what was back of the Gunpowder Plot. The answers were scant indeed. I determined to look it up when I got home, and learn more about it than the "fifth of November and gunpowder, treason, and plot." This, then, was a project to me of Type IV. So far, we have done little more than define and distinguish. Am I warranted in saying that practically all school activities worth considering can conceivably appear as one or the other of the four types differentiated? If any of you doubt this, I shall be glad to learn of it more definitely. Attention should again be called to the distinction between individual and group projects, and it should be pointed out that any one of these four types might conceivably appear as a subordinate part of any other. In particular, any construction project worthy of the name is almost sure to involve a number of subordinate projects of Type III. So close is the connection that some less discerning cannot distinguish which is means and which is end, what is main purpose and what is subordinate means to this as an end. If so far we have mainly learned what we mean by a project, it is now all the more necessary to ask why we should use projects. Cui bono? An inclusive answer can be given at once, but the justification of the answer will require detailed treatment. The inclusive answer is that the project utilizes in almost remarkable fashion most of the desirable tendencies in modern education. In the first place, the purposeful act is the typical unit of the admirable and effective life. The life animated and controlled by worthy purposes, we admire and emulate. The mere drifter, who takes life as it comes, without purpose and without effort, we despise. If the persevering pursuit of worthy purposes constitutes thus the worthy and efficient life, should we not seek early to educate our children accordingly? Could we, reasoning in advance, think of a preparation more promising of good results than one which provides practice in the choice and pursuit of purposes? To choose purposes wisely and worthily is certainly a desirable characteristic. Can this characteristic be built in the youth, save by such practice in the choice and pursuit of purposes as will tend to cor rect errors in the choice and feebleness of pursuit? How is it now? The teacher and the school authorities do practically all the choosing that is done in school; so that the children perforce acquire their habits of choosing on the playground or street, where the more forward of their fellows set the fashion in choosing. For my part, I wish to see the difficult art of choosing taught in school, where the teacher can help guide the process. But choosing cannot be taught apart from some opportunity to choose-all the time under wise teacher guidance. This, of course, means a different notion of school. It means having things go on in school, in which children can enter purposefully. Without such actual living, I have very little faith in the school's being a place to prepare for living. Does this mean that the teacher abdicates? Exactly no, but it does mean a more complex kind of teaching, one that expects the school time. to be made up typically of life itself. In other words, only by living-under prop erly selective guidance-can the child many is "self-activity," and there is much learn better how to live. Again, we have for many years agreed that school work should not be so abstract. There must be more of concrete ness, more of objectivity of "real" problems, in it. We have not always distinguished that what is very concrete to one may be very abstract to another who has not progressed so. To you and me 334 yards is very concrete, but to a very young child it is painfully abstract. If anyone uses purposeful acts, we can be sure that he is living in the realm of the concrete, because no one can purpose in terms that he feels beyond him. Purpose means the essence of concreteness exactly adapted to the degree of development of each. Still again, we have heard much-pro and con-about interest. We have been told that without interest there is no effort and little learning. We have contrariwise heard that to try always to interest children is to spoil them, and most of us have agreed. Now, the factor of purpose will, I believe, solve the puzzle. Where purpose is, there we have one kind of interest-a good interest, if the purpose be worthy-which shows itself in effort, in an inner urge which would of itself, and from within, push the child on in the face of obstacles and hindrances. Such a state of interest we all wish. In a case where no purpose is present, there the weak and foolish teacher has often, in times past, cajoled and promised and sugar-coated, and this we all despise. Purpose then-its presence or its absence-exactly distinguishes the desirable and manly interest from the mushy type of anything-to-keep-the-dearthings-interested or amused. It is purpose, then, that we want, worthy purposes, urgently sought. Get these, and the interest will take care of itself. All that is good we'll have. to be said for it. However, is it not at once evident that what was desired was an activity that springs from within, from the same inner urge that we saw above? In other words, the purposeful act is at the same time self-activity. Froebel complicated his discussion with some doubtful metaphysics, but, this factor corrected, self-activity is quite nearly an old name for what we here advocate. A more recent term or idea is one that distinguishes the concomitant aspects of any learning activity from the more immediate or primary aspects. The boy who sets out to make a boat that he can sail in will undoubtedly learn much about making boats; but he will also have learned self-reliance, that it pays to take pains, that accuracy counts, etc., etc. These concomitant learnings, while slower to get, have perhaps most to do with what we call character. In school we promote on the other aspects of learning; but in life these concomitants count no less than the immediate learnings. Now, it needs little discussion from me to point out that good concomitants come best from successful purposing. Where the child never sees his work as anything but tasks, irksome tasks, bad concomitants are the outcomes-those of shirking, dawdling, hating school, and the like. Perhaps clearer than anything I have yet urged is the fact that purpose secures organization and a weighing of comparative values. As long as facts and data are mere facts and mere data, and the school treats them all as "free and equal," the child with difficulty sees things in relation, and has no basis for preferring one fact to another. In life, on the contrary, it is the relation, the pertinence, of facts that counts-in truth, we have hard work to remember facts that are not related. Now, he who has, under a dominating purpose, sought facts Another phrase that has attracted pertinent to his purpose, and has so or ganized them as to attain his purpose, has got at once a relatedness and an organization possible in no other way. The question of comparative values, so far as they concern this purpose, is solved en route. As I hope to show in a noment, he will, for valid reasons, also remember all of this, so that we may conclude that purpose effects an organization of material and data in a way to produce immediate results and supply a model for future needs, and at the same time it fixes the whole in the nervous system as a relatively permanent possession of the doer and learner. That purposing means more effective learning, needs more attention than I give it in this talk. Nevertheless, this claim is of all, perhaps, the most significant. In the past few years, knowledge of the conditions under which learning takes place has greatly increased. Among much that might be said, I shall here call attention to two factors most important for us. One is that where any response is made with satisfaction, the tendency to respond in that fashion is strengthened (and, contrariwise, when a response is made with annoyance, the tendency to respond in that way is weakened). This "law of learning" underlies practically all of the valuable learning in the world. The greater the satisfaction, the quicker and more lasting the learning. The other psychological principle to which I call attention is one technically called "set," "mind-set," or "attitude." For my present purpose I shall call it "mind-set-toward-an-end." The cat which with deliberate cunning sets out to slip upon a bird and catch it, is acting under the influence of this mind-set-toward-anend. So also is the politician who sets out to win an election, or the boy who is going to make his team win the championship. Let us note the steps of activity proceeding from such a mind-set as they appear, say, in the girl making her on. first dress. We have first an inner urge, not an outer compulsion, that pushes her Obstacles only stimulate to greater activity. Second, there is a readiness for action of all girls' inner resources so far as they might in anywise pertain to making the dress. If she walks along the street, certain shop windows are bound. to catch her eye, while others, the hardware store, for instance, she will pass without knowing its presence. If she sees a dress that might furnish a suggestion, she is all alert to learn what she can from it. Any remarks about fabrics will attract her attention. Such words as "latest," "chic," "ton," and the like, have an attraction for her. She is equally dull of hearing or seeing to anything that would distract her. Suppose now she succeeds in making the dress. Her success means satisfaction, and satisfaction in proportion to the strength of her purpose. This satisfaction, by the law of learning given above, tends to fix in her all the responses which brought the success. Whatever of thought or movement that entered consciously into bringing her success, these are by the attendant satisfaction fixed in her. She could the next day do better. As for forgetting what she did or how she did it, that is impossible. There may be many before me right now who can to this day recall a similar experience in their own lives, the details of which are even yet astonishingly clear. When this fixing of responses is taken in connection with the choice and organization of data, a very strong case is made out for utilizing purposes. The purpose gives the mind-set-towardan-end, supplies or is the inner urge, makes all pertinent inner resources, and contributes satisfaction when success crowns the efforts. This satisfaction, then, fixes the organized data and factors of thought, knowledge, and movement, so that the child comes out with an effective organization of pertinent knowledge and skill fixed in his mental make-up as a permanent possession. Then what is the place of the teacher in all this? Does the emphasis on child purposing mean teacher abdication? Does it mean that the teacher is to await the spontaneous purposing of the child, and then accept whatever may come? By no means soever. This negative must be made clear. The emphasis placed above on the practice in wise purposing indicates what seems the proper line to follow. But to make the discussion more accurate, let us first ask what the characteristic steps of a typical project are. These steps I have myself provisionally accepted as follows: Purposing, planning, executing, judging. A word or two about these and their relation to each other may be useful. It has been clear in all that precedes that the presence of the felt purpose is the key to the whole point of view under discussion. Naturally this, then, is put first. It is at once clear that the purpose should permeate and direct the planning at each stage. The purpose as thus present in, and expressed through, the plan, should control the execution. The judging must be primarily in terms of the purpose. Has the result fulfilled the aim set by the purpose? Our question then becomes: What respective parts have teacher and pupil as regards each of these essential steps in the conception and prosecution of a project? As regards purposing, with certain dan. ger points observed, the more fully the purpose can be formulated by the child, the better. The more important of these dangers would seem to be, first, that the purpose judged in itself and in its relations, be a wise and fruitful one and, this being granted, second, that the child as he grows older, adopt and enter upon his purpose with increasing consideration of its consequences and value. These two demands are clearly correlatives, the one relating to the objective character of the project, the other to the child's increasing ability and disposition to ascertain this character and act accordingly. With these two points cared for, there seems, as was said above, good reasons for wishing the child, as far as may be feasible, himself to conceive, and-after appropriate deliberation-adopt the purpose. Among the things we most wish for is the ability to get from any novel situation a fruitful suggestion for dealing with it, and in close connection with this, the ability and disposition to conceive an effectual purpose to accept and prosecute the suggestion thus conceived. Just how far initiative can be built upon a child we cannot now tell, but in default of scientific knowledge, common sense. seems to tell us that at any rate certain attitudes closely connected with the exercise of initiative can be built. It is these attitudes, making apparently for initiative, that we here seek. From this consideration the wise teacher will encourage the child initiating purposes-guarding, of course, against the two dangers already pointed out. But whether or not the child can himself conceive the initial suggestion of the purpose, we must not lose sight of the fact that the child must eventually make the purpose his own, if the project is going to fulfill the demands we have laid down in all that has gone before. As to the step of purposing, then, the teacher will seek to have the children themselves originate their projects-guarding always the danger points and will in any event use every endeavor to have the children make an acceptable purpose so fully their own that the purpose thereafter impels to an activity which it at the same time permeates and directs. (If this cannot be done, something is wrong either in the present. or past.) The step of planning requires an analogous discussion. The advantage to the |