done has a like effect. Everything that
makes schooling merely preparatory (See ante, p. 55) works in this
direction. Ends being beyond the pupil's present grasp, other agencies
have to be found to procure immediate attention to assigned tasks. Some
responses are secured, but desires and affections not enlisted must
find other outlets. Not less serious is exaggerated emphasis upon
drill exercises designed to produce skill in action, independent of any
engagement of thought--exercises have no purpose but the production of
automatic skill. Nature abhors a mental vacuum. What do teachers imagine
is happening to thought and emotion when the latter get no outlet in
the things of immediate activity? Were they merely kept in temporary
abeyance, or even only calloused, it would not be a matter of so much
moment. But they are not abolished; they are not suspended; they are
not suppressed--save with reference to the task in question. They follow
their own chaotic and undisciplined course. What is native, spontaneous,
and vital in mental reaction goes unused and untested, and the habits
formed are such that these qualities become less and less available for
public and avowed ends.

4. Responsibility. By responsibility as an element in intellectual
attitude is meant the disposition to consider in advance the probable
consequences of any projected step and deliberately to accept them: to
accept them in the sense of taking them into account, acknowledging them
in action, not yielding a mere verbal assent. Ideas, as we have seen,
are intrinsically standpoints and methods for bringing about a solution
of a perplexing situation; forecasts calculated to influence responses.
It is only too easy to think that one accepts a statement or believes a
suggested truth when one has not considered its implications; when one
has made but a cursory and superficial survey of what further things one
is committed to by acceptance. Observation and recognition, belief and
assent, then become names for lazy acquiescence in what is externally
presented.

It would be much better to have fewer facts and truths in
instruction--that is, fewer things supposedly accepted,--if a smaller
number of situations could be intellectually worked out to the point
where conviction meant something real--some identification of the self
with the type of conduct demanded by facts and foresight of results. The
most permanent bad results of undue complication of school subject