NEED OF PROBLEM

=Knowledge Gained Accidentally.=--It is evident, however, that at times
knowledge might be gained in the absence of any set problem upon which
the learner reacts. For example, a certain person while walking along a
road intent upon his own personal matters observed a boy standing near a
high fence. On passing further along the street, he glanced through an
opening and observed a vineyard within the inclosure. On returning along
the street a few minutes later, he saw the same boy standing at a near
by corner eating grapes. Hereupon these three ideas at once co-ordinated
themselves into a new form of knowledge, signifying stealing-of-fruit.
In such a case, the experience has evidently been gained without the
presence of a problem to guide the selecting and relating of the ideas
entering into the new knowledge. In like manner, a child whose only
motive is to fill paper with various coloured crayon may accidentally
discover, while engaged on this problem, that red and yellow will
combine to make orange, or that yellow and blue will combine to make
green. Here also the child gains valuable experience quite
spontaneously, that is, without its constituting a motive, or problem,
calling for adjustment.

=Learning without Motive.=--In the light of the above, a question
suggests itself in relation to the lesson problem, or motive. Granting
that a regular school recitation must contain some valuable problem for
which the learning process is to furnish a solution, and granting that
the teacher must be fully conscious both of the problem and of its mode
of solution, the question might yet be asked whether a problem is to be
realized by the child as a felt need at the beginning of the lesson. For
example, if the teacher wishes his pupils to learn how to compose the
secondary colour purple, might he have them blend in a purely arbitrary