#38. Securing Attention.#--The greatest art in teaching is to secure attention. The highest form of attention is voluntary attention. The young child does not possess sufficient will-power to control attention; consequently in the early grades some other agent than a command of the will must hold attention. This other agent in a general way may be characterized as _interest_. In other words, the young child's interests hold his attention, and the thing in which he takes the greatest interest will easiest attract his attention.
#39.# There are certain well-known principles underlying the interest of the child. First, his curiosity; second, novelty, or unexpectedness; third, imitativeness; fourth, illustrations based upon his experience. The teacher cannot be too careful to consider what is of interest to a child. We cannot measure the interests of a child by the interests of an adult. Here the study of child nature is the only safe and adequate guidance.
#40. How Knowledge Reaches the Soul.#--There are but five gateways to the soul of a child, called the senses:--Seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling. There are no other channels of approach. Whatever increases the breadth of this sense-approach in a subject of study increases the interest of the learner in that subject. If I tell a child about a _ball_, I utilize his sense of hearing; if I show him a ball, at the same time I describe it, I utilize seeing and hearing; if I hand him a ball, as I describe it, I utilize touching, seeing, and hearing. A single fact reaching consciousness through the senses and recognized in consciousness is called a percept or a particular notion. It is sometimes called an idea. The soul in giving expression to an idea uses a word or some other sign for the idea. Thus words are the signs of ideas.
#41.# When other facts of a similar character reach consciousness, and are identified there with the first percept, the percept becomes a concept, general notion or general idea, just as the percept is an individual idea; that is, the percept stands for one object apprehended in consciousness; the concept stands for a group of similar objects under one name apprehended in consciousness. All the common nouns are concepts just as all proper nouns are percepts. For example, in the sentence, "Washington was a brave man," it is plain that "Washington" is a particular idea or percept and "man" is a general idea or concept.