The thing for teachers to do is to cultivate in children all healthy
appetites for knowledge, to set up interesting aims and desires at
every step, to lead the approach to different fields of knowledge in
the spirit of conquest.
In the business world and in professional life men and women work with
abundant energy and will because they have desirable ends in view. The
hireling knows no such generous stimulus. Business life is full of
irksome and difficult tasks but the aim in view carries people through
them. We shall not eliminate the disagreeable and irksome from school
tasks, but try to create in children such a spirit and ambition as will
lead to greater exertions. To implant vigorous aims and incentives in
children is the great privilege of the teacher. We shall some day
learn that when a boy cracks a nut he does so because there may be a
kernel in it, not because the shell is hard.
In concluding the discussion of relative values we will summarize the
results.
_History_, in the liberal sense, surveys the field of human life in its
typical forms and furnishes the best illustrative moral materials.
_Nature study_ opens the door to the real world in all its beauty,
variety, and law.
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