John Dewey's (1956/1899) take-home message was that there exists a gap between school and home that makes school a bleak place without life. The take-home message of this chapter is that critical feeling can improve this state by employing strategies aimed at enhancing the experience of learning, by making learning interesting, and by fostering intuition and insight. The chapter has four sections. First, I review evidence that metacognitive feelings enhance the learning process, in line with the claim in Chapter 5 that each act of perception and thought – and therefore of learning – is accompanied by a feeling. Second, I discuss emotions in the classroom. The third section will address the closing of the gap between school and the life of the child. Knowledge about how to catch the attention of students enables teachers to make instruction lively and content interesting. The final section of this chapter reveals how school can be filled with life by fostering intuition and by eliciting aha-experiences.

Thus far I have addressed questions concerning education at the end of each chapter in Part II. I have looked at how parents and instructors may teach critical feeling in various domains, such as well-being, skill learning, living together, and marketing. This chapter looks at critical feeling within school education. Proponents of a liberal society may be skeptical about the role of schools in critical feeling; they may argue that parents educate their children while schools are institutions that impart the knowledge necessary for the future economic success of both the students and the nation; they may encounter the notion of an education to happiness with skepticism, …