It is impossible to overestimate the
loss which results from the deflection of attention from the
strategic point to a comparatively unproductive point. It fails
most just where it thinks it is succeeding -- in getting a
preparation for the future.
Finally, the principle of preparation makes necessary recourse on
a large scale to the use of adventitious motives of pleasure and
pain. The future having no stimulating and directing power when
severed from the possibilities of the present, something must be
hitched on to it to make it work. Promises of reward and threats
of pain are employed. Healthy work, done for present reasons and
as a factor in living, is largely unconscious. The stimulus
resides in the situation with which one is actually confronted.
But when this situation is ignored, pupils have to be told that
if they do not follow the prescribed course penalties will
accrue; while if they do, they may expect, some time in the
future, rewards for their present sacrifices. Everybody knows
how largely systems of punishment have had to be resorted to by
educational systems which neglect present possibilities in behalf
of preparation for a future. Then, in disgust with the harshness
and impotency of this method, the pendulum swings to the opposite
extreme, and the dose of information required against some later
day is sugar-coated, so that pupils may be fooled into taking
something which they do not care for.
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