was unwilling to be disciplined.
In the other direction, the tendency was towards a negative conception
of discipline, instead of an identification of it with growth in
constructive power of achievement. As we have already seen, will
means an attitude toward the future, toward the production of possible
consequences, an attitude involving effort to foresee clearly and
comprehensively the probable results of ways of acting, and an active
identification with some anticipated consequences. Identification
of will, or effort, with mere strain, results when a mind is set up,
endowed with powers that are only to be applied to existing material. A
person just either will or will not apply himself to the matter in hand.
The more indifferent the subject matter, the less concern it has for the
habits and preferences of the individual, the more demand there is
for an effort to bring the mind to bear upon it--and hence the more
discipline of will. To attend to material because there is something
to be done in which the person is concerned is not disciplinary in this
view; not even if it results in a desirable increase of constructive
power. Application just for the sake of application, for the sake of
training, is alone disciplinary. This is more likely to occur if the
subject matter presented is uncongenial, for then there is no motive
(so it is supposed) except the acknowledgment of duty or the value of
discipline. The logical result is expressed with literal truth in the
words of an American humorist: "It makes no difference what you teach a
boy so long as he doesn't like it."

The counterpart of the isolation of mind from activities dealing with
objects to accomplish ends is isolation of the subject matter to be
learned. In the traditional schemes of education, subject matter means
so much material to be studied. Various branches of study represent so
many independent branches, each having its principles of arrangement
complete within itself. History is one such group of facts; algebra
another; geography another, and so on till we have run through the
entire curriculum. Having a ready-made existence on their own account,
their relation to mind is exhausted in what they furnish it to acquire.
This idea corresponds to the conventional practice in which the program
of school work, for the day, month, and successive years, consists
of "studies" all marked off from one another, and each supposed to be
complete by itself--for educatio