3.
Single-mindedness. So far as the word is concerned, much that was said
under the head of "directness" is applicable. But what the word is here
intended to convey is completeness of interest, unity of purpose; the
absence of suppressed but effectual ulterior aims for which the
professed aim is but a mask. It is equivalent to mental integrity.
Absorption, engrossment, full concern with subject matter for its own
sake, nurture it. Divided interest and evasion destroy it.
Intellectual integrity, honesty, and sincerity are at bottom not matters
of conscious purpose but of quality of active response. Their
acquisition is fostered of course by conscious intent, but
self-deception is very easy. Desires are urgent. When the demands and
wishes of others forbid their direct expression they are easily driven
into subterranean and deep channels. Entire surrender, and wholehearted
adoption of the course of action demanded by others are almost
impossible. Deliberate revolt or deliberate attempts to deceive others
may result. But the more frequent outcome is a confused and divided
state of interest in which one is fooled as to one's own real intent.
One tries to serve two masters at once. Social instincts, the strong
desire to please others and get their approval, social training, the
general sense of duty and of authority, apprehension of penalty, all
lead to a half-hearted effort to conform, to "pay attention to the
lesson," or whatever the requirement is. Amiable individuals want to do
what they are expected to do. Consciously the pupil thinks he is doing
this. But his own desires are not abolished. Only their evident
exhibition is suppressed. Strain of attention to what is hostile to
desire is irksome; in spite of one's conscious wish, the underlying
desires determine the main course of thought, the deeper emotional
responses. The mind wanders from the nominal subject and devotes itself
to what is intrinsically more desirable. A systematized divided
attention expressing the duplicity of the state of desire is the result.
One has only to recall his own experiences in school or at the present
time when outwardly employed in actions which do not engage one's
desires and purposes, to realize how prevalent is this attitude of
divided attention—double-mindedness. We are so used to it that we
take it for granted that a considerable amount of it is necessary. It
may be; if so, it is the more important to face its bad intellectual
effects. Obvious is the loss of energy of thought immediately available
when one is consciously trying (or trying to seem to try) to attend to
one matter, while unconsciously one's imagination is spontaneously going
out to more congenial affairs. More subtle and more permanently
crippling to efficiency of intellectual activity is a fostering of
habitual self-deception, with the confused sense of reality which
accompanies it. A double standard of reality, one for our own private
and more or less concealed interests, and another for public and
acknowledged concerns, hampers, in most of us, integrity and
completeness of mental action. Equally serious is the fact that a split
is set up between conscious thought and attention and impulsive blind
affection and desire. Reflective dealings with the material of
instruction is constrained and half-hearted; attention wanders. The
topics to which it wanders are unavowed and hence intellectually
illicit; transactions with them are furtive. The discipline that comes
from regulating response by deliberate inquiry having a purpose fails;
worse than that, the deepest concern and most congenial enterprises of
the imagination (since they center about the things dearest to desire)
are casual, concealed. They enter into action in ways which are
unacknowledged. Not subject to rectification by consideration of
consequences, they are demoralizing.
School conditions favorable to this division of mind between avowed,
public, and socially responsible undertakings, and private,
ill-regulated, and suppressed indulgences of thought are not hard to
find. What is sometimes called "stern discipline," i.e., external
coercive pressure, has this tendency. Motivation through rewards
extraneous to the thing to be done has a like effect. Everything that
makes schooling merely preparatory
(See ante, p. 64)
works in this direction. Ends being beyond the pupil's present grasp, other
agencies have to be found to procure immediate attention to assigned tasks.
Some responses are secured, but desires and affections not enlisted must
find other outlets. Not less serious is exaggerated emphasis upon drill
exercises designed to produce skill in action, independent of any
engagement of thought—exercises have no purpose but the production
of automatic skill. Nature abhors a mental vacuum. What do teachers
imagine is happening to thought and emotion when the latter get no
outlet in the things of immediate activity? Were they merely kept in
temporary abeyance, or even only calloused, it would not be a matter of
so much moment. But they are not abolished; they are not suspended;
they are not suppressed—save with reference to the task in
question. They follow their own chaotic and undisciplined course. What
is native, spontaneous, and vital in mental reaction goes unused and
untested, and the habits formed are such that these qualities become
less and less available for public and avowed ends.
