thrust the student, who is just finding his way in a new course, into
a thoroughly scientific classification of a subject, is to present in
the introduction what should come in the conclusion.

Many a student taking his introductory course in psychology begins
with a definition of the subject, its relation to all social and
physical sciences, and its classification. All these are aspects of
the subject which the mind conversant with it sees clearly and
understands thoroughly, but which the inexperienced student accepts
merely because the facts are printed in his textbook. The youthful
mind is concerned with the present and with the immediate environment.
Too many of our college courses, in the initial stages, transport the
student into the realm of theory or into the distant past. The
student cannot orientate himself in this new environment and is soon
lost on the highways and byways of classification; to him the subject
becomes a study of words rather than of vital ideas. Why must the
introductory course in philosophy begin with the ancient philosophers,
and give the major part of the term to the study of dead philosophers
and their theories long since refuted and discarded, while vital
modern philosophic thought is crowded into the last few sessions of
the semester?

=Illustrations of maxim. Begin at the point of contact=

The pedagogical significance of beginning at the point of contact can
best be understood and appreciated by illustrations of actual teaching
conditions. Most initial courses in economics begin by positing that
economics is the science of the consumption, distribution, and
production of wealth. The student is told that in earlier systems of
economics production was studied as the initial economic process, but
that the more modern view makes consumption the starting process. All
this the student takes on faith. He does not really see its bearings
and its implications; he is as unconcerned with the new formulation as
he is with the old; he feels at once far removed from economics. The
succeeding lessons study economic laws with little reference to the
economic life that the student lives. In a later chapter he learns a
definition of wages, the forces that determine wage, and the mode of
computing the share of the total produce that must go to wages.

Here we have a course that does not begin at the point of contact,
that presents the very discrepancies between itself and the student
that were noted