th the teacher and other pupils) and find his own way
out he will not learn, not even if he can recite some correct answer
with one hundred per cent accuracy. We can and do supply ready-made
"ideas" by the thousand; we do not usually take much pains to see
that the one learning engages in significant situations where his own
activities generate, support, and clinch ideas--that is, perceived
meanings or connections. This does not mean that the teacher is to stand
off and look on; the alternative to furnishing ready-made subject
matter and listening to the accuracy with which it is reproduced is not
quiescence, but participation, sharing, in an activity. In such shared
activity, the teacher is a learner, and the learner is, without knowing
it, a teacher--and upon the whole, the less consciousness there is, on
either side, of either giving or receiving instruction, the better.
IV. Ideas, as we have seen, whether they be humble guesses or
dignified theories, are anticipations of possible solutions. They are
anticipations of some continuity or connection of an activity and a
consequence which has not as yet shown itself. They are therefore tested
by the operation of acting upon them. They are to guide and organize
further observations, recollections, and experiments. They are
intermediate in learning, not final. All educational reformers, as we
have had occasion to remark, are given to attacking the passivity of
traditional education. They have opposed pouring in from without, and
absorbing like a sponge; they have attacked drilling in material as into
hard and resisting rock. But it is not easy to secure conditions which
will make the getting of an idea identical with having an experience
which widens and makes more precise our contact with the environment.
Activity, even self-activity, is too easily thought of as something
merely mental, cooped up within the head, or finding expression only
through the vocal organs.

While the need of application of ideas gained in study is acknowledged
by all the more successful methods of instruction, the exercises in
application are sometimes treated as devices for fixing what has
already been learned and for getting greater practical skill in its
manipulation. These results are genuine and not to be despised. But
practice in applying what has been gained in study ought primarily to
have an intellectual quality. As we have already seen, thoughts just
as thoughts are incomplete. At best