We are coming to understand as a matter of education that we may hope to develop relatively few men and women of great creative genius. The producers of work of great artistic worth are, for the most part, to be determined by native capacity rather than by school exercises. We must think of the great majority of school children as possible consumers rather than as producers. Schools which furnish a maximum of opportunity to enjoy music and pictures may hope to develop in their community a power of discrimination in these fields which will result in satisfaction with nothing less than the best. The player-piano and the phonograph may mean more in the development of musical taste in a community than all of the lessons which are given in the reading of music. The art gallery in the high school, the folk dances which have been produced as a part of the school festivals, the reading of the best stories, may prepare the way for the utilization of leisure time in the pursuit of the nobler pleasures. The teacher with a saving sense of humor, large in his power of appreciation of the great men and women of his time, and all of the time keen in his own enjoyment and in his ability to interpret for others those things which are most worth while in literature and in art, may count more largely in the life of the community than the one who is a master in some field of investigation. QUESTIONS 1. What are the characteristics of the mental states which are involved in appreciation? 2. Name the different types of situations in which appreciation may be developed. Give examples. 3. Does the power to criticize poetry or music necessarily involve appreciation? 4. To what degree may skill in creative work result in power of appreciation? 5. What are the elements involved in appreciating human nature? 6. Give an example of appreciation of intellectual powers. 7. What is the essential element in the appreciation of humor? 8. Explain how the power of appreciation is dependent upon training. 9. What values in the education of an individual are realized through growth in power of appreciation? 10. Why is it important for a teacher to seek to cultivate his own power of appreciation? 11. What poems, or pictures, or music would you expect first-grade children to enjoy? Why? 12. Would you expect fifth-grade children to grow in appreciation of poetry by having them commit to memory selections from Milton's Paradise Lost? Why? 13. Why is it important to allow children to choose the poems that they commit to memory, or the pictures which they hang on their walls? 14. Why would you accept spontaneous expression of approval of the characters in literature or in history, rather than seek to control the judgments of children in this respect? 15. How may teachers prove most effective in developing the power of appreciation upon the part of children? * * * * * IX. THE MEANING OF PLAY IN EDUCATION