1.
It is easier to indicate what is meant by directness through negative
terms than in positive ones. Self-consciousness, embarrassment, and
constraint are its menacing foes. They indicate that a person is not
immediately concerned with subject matter. Something has come between
which deflects concern to side issues. A self-conscious person is
partly thinking about his problem and partly about what others think of
his performances. Diverted energy means loss of power and confusion of
ideas. Taking an attitude is by no means identical with being conscious
of one's attitude. The former is spontaneous, naive, and simple. It is
a sign of whole-souled relationship between a person and what he is
dealing with. The latter is not of necessity abnormal. It is sometimes
the easiest way of correcting a false method of approach, and of
improving the effectiveness of the means one is employing,—as golf
players, piano players, public speakers, etc., have occasionally to give
especial attention to their position and movements. But this need is
occasional and temporary. When it is effectual a person thinks of
himself in terms of what is to be done, as one means among others of the
realization of an end—as in the case of a tennis player practicing
to get the "feel" of a stroke. In abnormal cases, one thinks of himself
not as part of the agencies of execution, but as a separate
object—as when the player strikes an attitude thinking of the
impression it will make upon spectators, or is worried because of the
impression he fears his movements give rise to.
Confidence is a good name for what is intended by the term directness.
It should not be confused, however, with self-confidence which may be a
form of self-consciousness—or of "cheek." Confidence is not a name
for what one thinks or feels about his attitude it is not reflex. It
denotes the straightforwardness with which one goes at what he has to
do. It denotes not conscious trust in the efficacy of one's powers but
unconscious faith in the possibilities of the situation. It signifies
rising to the needs of the situation.
We have already pointed out (See p. 199)
the
objections to making students emphatically aware of the fact that they
are studying or learning. Just in the degree in which they are induced
by the conditions to be so aware, they are not studying and learning.
They are in a divided and complicated attitude. Whatever methods of a
teacher call a pupil's attention off from what he has to do and transfer
it to his own attitude towards what he is doing impair directness of concern
and action. Persisted in, the pupil acquires a permanent tendency to
fumble, to gaze about aimlessly, to look for some clew of action beside
that which the subject matter supplies. Dependence upon extraneous
suggestions and directions, a state of foggy confusion, take the place
of that sureness with which children (and grown-up people who have not
been sophisticated by "education") confront the situations of life.
