ramatic intensity he is master of, in order that
the pupils may be in a proper mood to approach the study of the poem. In
a grammar lesson on "The Adverbial Objective" the preparation should
consist of a review of the functions of the adverb as modifying a verb,
an adjective, and sometimes another adverb. Upon this knowledge alone
can a rational idea of the adverbial objective be built. In an
arithmetic lesson on "Multiplication of Decimals," in a Form IV class,
the preparation should involve a review of the meaning of decimals, of
the interconversion of decimals and fractions (for example, .05 = 5
hundredths; 27 ten-thousandths = .0027, etc.); and of the multiplication
of fractions. Unless the pupil can do these operations, it is obviously
impossible to make his knowledge of multiplication of decimals anything
more than a merely mechanical process.

PREPARATION MERELY AIDS SELECTION

Before closing our consideration of preparation as a stage of method, it
will be well again to call attention to the fact that this is not one
of the four recognized stages of the learning process, but rather a
subsidiary feature of the second, or apperceptive stage. In other words,
actual advance is made by the pupil toward the control of a new
experience, not through a review of former experience, but by an active
relating of elements selected from past experience to the interpretation
of the new problem.

CHAPTER XI

LEARNING AS A RELATING ACTIVITY

OR

PROCESS OF SYNTHESIS

=Learning a Unifying Process.=--It has been seen that the learner, in
gaining control of new knowledge, must organize into the new experience
elements selected from former experiences. For instance, when a person
gains a knowledge of a new fruit (guava), he not only brings forward in
consciousness from his former knowledge the ideas--rind, flesh, seed,
etc.,--to interpret the strange object, but also associates these into a
single experience, a new fruit. So long also as the person referred to
in an earlier chapter retained in his consciousness as distinct factors
three experiences--seeing a boy at the fence, seeing the vineyard, and
finally, seeing the boy eating grapes--these would not, as three such
distinct experiences, constitute a knowledge of grape-stealing. On the
other hand, as soon as these are combined, or associated by a relating
act of thought, the different factors are organized into a new idea
symbolized by the expression, _grape-st