CHAPTER XII

WHAT MAKES FOR INTEREST

     OUTLINE—­CHAPTER XII

Individual differences and interest.—­What makes for interest.—­Interest begets interest.—­Preparation is a great guarantee.—­Knowledge of the lives of boys and girls a great help.—­The factors of interestingness:  The Vital, The Unusual, The Uncertain, The Concrete, The Similar, The Antagonistic, The Animate.

After discussing the relation of interest to attention we still face the question:  What is it that makes an interesting object, or an idea interesting?  Why do we find some things naturally interesting while others are dull and commonplace?  Of course, everything is not equally interesting to all people.  Individual differences make clear the fact that a certain stimulus will call for a response in one particular person, quite unlike the response manifested in a person of different temperament and training.  But psychologists are agreed that in spite of these differences there are certain elements of interests that are generally and fundamentally appealing to human nature.  To know what it is that makes for interest is one of the prerequisites of good teaching.

But before naming these “factors of interestingness,” may we not also name and discuss briefly some other essentials in the matter of creating and maintaining interest?

In the first place it is good to remember that a teacher who would have his pupils interested must himself be interested.  If he would see their faces light up with the glow of enthusiasm, he must be the charged battery to generate the current.  Interest begets interest.  It is as contagious as whooping cough—­if a class is exposed it is sure to catch it.  The teacher who constantly complains of a dull class, very likely is simply facing a reaction to his own dullness or disagreeableness.  “Blue Monday” isn’t properly so named merely because of the drowsy pupil.  The teacher inevitably sets the pace and determines the tone of his class.  Many a teacher when tired, or out of patience, has concluded a recitation feeling that his pupils were about the most stupid group he has ever faced; the same teacher keyed up to enthusiasm has felt at the close of another recitation that these same pupils could not be surpassed.  A student with whom the writer talked a short time ago remarked that she could always tell whether the day’s class was going to be interesting under a particular teacher as soon as she caught the mood in which she entered the classroom.  Half-heartedness, indifference, and unpleasantness are all negative—­they neither attract nor stimulate.  Interest and enthusiasm are the sunshine of the classroom—­they are to the human soul what the sun’s rays are to the plant.