. The qualities of seen and touched things have a bearing
on what is done, and are alertly perceived; they have a meaning. But
when pupils are expected to use their eyes to note the form of words,
irrespective of their meaning, in order to reproduce them in spelling or
reading, the resulting training is simply of isolated sense organs and
muscles. It is such isolation of an act from a purpose which makes it
mechanical. It is customary for teachers to urge children to read with
expression, so as to bring out the meaning. But if they originally
learned the sensory-motor technique of reading--the ability to identify
forms and to reproduce the sounds they stand for--by methods which did
not call for attention to meaning, a mechanical habit was established
which makes it difficult to read subsequently with intelligence. The
vocal organs have been trained to go their own way automatically in
isolation; and meaning cannot be tied on at will. Drawing, singing, and
writing may be taught in the same mechanical way; for, we repeat, any
way is mechanical which narrows down the bodily activity so that a
separation of body from mind--that is, from recognition of meaning--is
set up. Mathematics, even in its higher branches, when undue emphasis
is put upon the technique of calculation, and science, when laboratory
exercises are given for their own sake, suffer from the same evil.

(c) On the intellectual side, the separation of "mind" from direct
occupation with things throws emphasis on things at the expense of
relations or connections. It is altogether too common to separate
perceptions and even ideas from judgments. The latter are thought to
come after the former in order to compare them. It is alleged that the
mind perceives things apart from relations; that it forms ideas of them
in isolation from their connections--with what goes before and comes
after. Then judgment or thought is called upon to combine the separated
items of "knowledge" so that their resemblance or causal connection
shall be brought out. As matter of fact, every perception and every idea
is a sense of the bearings, use, and cause, of a thing. We do not really
know a chair or have an idea of it by inventorying and enumerating its
various isolated qualities, but only by bringing these qualities into
connection with something else--the purpose which makes it a chair and
not a table; or its difference from the kind of chair we are accustomed
to, or the "period" which