The importance of being rich in unsolved problems is not likely to be
overestimated. Most well-informed adults who have little "push" are
not lazy by nature; they have merely failed to fall in love with
worthy aims. That is often partly because education has been allowed
to mean to them little more than the collecting of facts. If it had
included the collection of interesting and valuable purposes as well,
their devotion to proper aims in life might have grown as have their
facts; then their energy might have kept pace with their knowledge.

If students, therefore, regularly occupy a portion of their study time
in thinking out live questions that they hope to have answered by
their further study, and interesting uses that they intend to make of
their knowledge, they are equipping themselves with motive power both
for study and for the broader work of life.

_2. As a basis for the selection and organization of facts_

One of the constant dangers in study is that facts will be collected
without reference either to their values, as previously stated, or to
their arrangement. Nature study frequently illustrates this danger.
For instance, I once witnessed a recitation in which each member of a
class of eleven-year-old children was supplied with a dead oak leaf
and asked to write a description of it in detail. The entire period
was occupied with the task, and following is a copy of one of the
papers, without its figures.

THE OAK LEAF.

Greatest length......... Length of the stem....