PROBLEMS IN OBSERVATION AND INTROSPECTION
1. Which fatigues you more, to give attention of the nonvoluntary type, or the voluntary? Which can you maintain longer? Which is the more pleasant and agreeable to give? Under which can you accomplish more? What bearing have these facts on teaching?
2. Try to follow for one or two minutes the "wave" in your consciousness, and then describe the course taken by your attention.
3. Have you observed one class alert in attention, and another lifeless and inattentive? Can you explain the causes lying back of this difference? Estimate the relative amount of work accomplished under the two conditions.
4. What distractions have you observed in the schoolroom tending to break up attention?
5. Have you seen pupils inattentive from lack of (1) change, (2) pure air, (3) enthusiasm on the part of the teacher, (4) fatigue, (5) ill health?
6. Have you noticed a difference in the habit of attention in different pupils? Have you noticed the same thing for whole schools or rooms?
7. Do you know of children too much given to daydreaming? Are you?
8. Have you seen a teacher rap the desk for attention? What type of attention was secured? Does it pay?
9. Have you observed any instance in which pupils' lack of attention should be blamed on the teacher? If so, what was the fault? The remedy?
10. Visit a school room or a recitation, and then write an account of the types and degrees of attention you observed. Try to explain the factors responsible for any failures in attention, and also those responsible for the good attention shown.