only he enjoys himself during the time. But, if he works two hours
merely to get a passing grade or to escape punishment, the time thus
spent does not afford him the pleasure that rightfully belongs to him,
and some better motive should be supplied.

=The teacher's problem.=--The teacher's mission is not to make school
work easy, but, rather, to make the hardest work alluring and agreeable.
Here, again, she may need to take counsel with Tom Sawyer. Whitewashing
a fence is quite as hard work as solving a problem in decimals or cube
root. Much depends upon the mental attitude of the boy, and this in turn
depends upon the skill of the teacher and her fertility of mind in
supplying motives. Whitewashing a fence causes the arms to grow weary
and the back to ache, but the boys recked not of that. On the contrary,
they clamored for more of the same kind of work. This same spirit
characterizes the work of the vitalized school. The pupils live as
joyously in the schoolroom as they do outside, and the harder the work
the greater their joy.

When work is made a privilege by the expert teacher, school procedure
becomes well-nigh automatic and there is never any occasion for nagging,
hectoring, or badgering. Such things are abnormal in life and no less so
in the vitalized school. They are a confession on the part of the
teacher that she has reached the limit of her resources. She admits that
she cannot do what Tom Sawyer did so well, and so proclaims her
inability to articulate life and work effectively.


QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1. Read that chapter of "Tom Sawyer" which deals with the whitewashing