But this case, of course, assumes an interest of the pupil in the subject, a willingness and even a desire to learn about it, a feeling that the matter is of some importance to himself. And come to think of it, these motives are generally present in the learning that goes on in the outside world. It is only in School that the pupil is expected to be unwilling to learn.
When you were a child, and passed the door of the village blacksmith shop, and looked in, day after day, you saw the blacksmith heating a piece of iron red hot in the furnace, or twisting it deftly with his pincers, or dropping it sizzling into a tub of water, or paring a horse’s hoofs, or hammering in the silvery nails with swift blows; you admired his skill, and stood in awe of his strength; and if he had offered to let you blow the bellows for him and shown you how to twist a red-hot penny, that would have been a proud moment. It would also have been an educational one. But suppose there had been a new shop set up in the town, and when you looked in at the open door you saw a man at work painting a picture; and suppose a bell rang just then, and the man stopped painting right in the middle of a brush-stroke, and commenced to read aloud “How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix”; and suppose when he was half way through, the bell rang again, and he said, “We will go on with that tomorrow,” and commenced to chisel the surface of a piece of marble; and then, after a little, somewhat exhaustedly, started in to play “The Rock of Ages” on a flute, interrupting the tune to order you to stand up straight and not whisper to the little boy beside you. There’s no doubt what you would think of him; you would know perfectly well that he was crazy; people don’t do things in that way anywhere in the world, except in school. And even if he _had_ assured you that painting and poetry, sculpture and music, were later in your life going to be matters of the deepest importance and interest, and that you should start in now with the determination of becoming proficient in the arts, it would not have helped much. Not very much.
It’s nonsense that children do not want to learn. Everybody wants to learn. And everybody wants to teach. And the process is going on all the time. All that is necessary is to put a person who knows something--really knows it--within the curiosity-range of some one who doesn’t know it: the process commences at once. It is almost irresistible. In the interest of previous engagements one has to tear one’s self away from all sorts of opportunities to learn things which may never be of the slightest use but which nevertheless are alluring precisely because one does not know them.