"In the laboratory of life, each newcomer repeats the old
experiments, and laughs and weeps for himself. We will be
explorers, though all the highways have their guideposts and every
bypath is mapped. Helen of Troy will not deter us, nor the wounds
of Cæsar frighten, nor the voice of the king crying 'Vanity!' from
his throne dismay. What wonder that the stars that once sang for
joy are dumb and the constellations go down in
silence."—Arthur Sherburne Hardy: The Wind of Destiny.
We tend, I think, to look upon the advice that we give to young people
as something that shall disillusionize them. The cynic of forty sneers
at what he terms the platitudes of commencement addresses. He knows
life. He has been behind the curtains. He has looked upon the other side
of the scenery,—the side that is just framework and bare canvas. He has
seen the ugly machinery that shifts the stage setting—the stage setting
which appears so impressive when viewed from the front. He has seen the
rouge on the cheeks that seem to blush with the bloom of youth and
beauty and innocence, and has caught the cold glint in the eyes that,
from the distance, seem to languish with tenderness and love. Why, he
asks, should we create an illusion that must thus be rudely dispelled?
Why revamp and refurbish the old platitudes and dole them out each
succeeding year? Why not tell these young people the truth and let them
be prepared for the fate that must come sooner or later?
But the cynic forgets that there are some people who never lose their
illusions,—some men and women who are always young,—and, whatever may
be the type of men and women that other callings and professions desire
to enroll in their service, this is the type that education needs. The
great problem of the teacher is to keep himself in this class, to keep
himself young, to preserve the very things that the cynic pleases to
call the illusions of his youth. And so much do I desire to impress
these novitiates into our calling with the necessity for preserving
their ideals that I shall ask them this evening to consider with me some
things which would, I fear, strike the cynic as most illusionary and
impractical. The initiation ceremonies that admitted the young man to
the privileges and duties of knighthood included the taking of certain
vows, the making of certain pledges of devotion and fidelity to the
fundamental principles for which chivalry stood. And I should like this
evening to imagine that these graduates are undergoing an analogous
initiation into the privileges and duties of schoolcraft, and that
these vows which I shall enumerate, embody some of the ideals that
govern the work of that craft.
And the first of these vows I shall call, for want of a better term, the
vow of "artistry,"—the pledge that the initiate takes to do the work
that his hand finds to do in the best possible manner, without reference
to the effort that it may cost or to the reward that it may or may not
bring.
I call this the vow of artistry because it represents the essential
attitude of the artist toward his work. The cynic tells us that ideals
are illusions of youth, and yet, the other day I saw expressed in a
middle-aged working-man a type of idealism that is not at all uncommon
in this world. He was a house painter; his task was simply the prosaic
job of painting a door; and yet, from the pains which he took with that
work, an observer would have concluded that it was, to the painter, the
most important task in the world. And that, after all, is the true test
of craft artistry: to the true craftsman the work that he is doing must
be the most important thing that can be done. One of the best teachers
that I know is that kind of a craftsman in education. A student was once
sent to observe his work. He was giving a lesson upon the "attribute
complement" to an eighth-grade grammar class. I asked the student
afterward what she had got from her visit. "Why," she replied, "that man
taught as if the very greatest achievement in life would be to get his
pupils to understand the attribute complement,—and when he had
finished, they did understand it."
In a narrower sense, this vow of artistry carries with it an
appreciation of the value of technique. From the very fact of their
normal school training, these graduates already possess a certain
measure of skill, a certain mastery of the technique of their craft.
This initial mastery has been gained in actual contact with the problems
of school work in their practice teaching. They have learned some of the
rudiments; they have met and mastered some of the rougher, cruder
difficulties. The finer skill, the delicate and intangible points of
technique, they must acquire, as all beginners must acquire them,
through the strenuous processes of self-discipline in the actual work of
the years that are to come. This is a process that takes time, energy,
constant and persistent application. All that this school or any school
can do for its students in this respect is to start them upon the right
track in the acquisition of skill. But do not make the mistake of
assuming that this is a small and unimportant matter. If this school did
nothing more than this, it would still repay tenfold the cost of its
establishment and maintenance. Three fourths of the failures in a world
that sometimes seems full of failures are due to nothing more nor less
than a wrong start. In spite of the growth of professional training for
teachers within the past fifty years, many of our lower schools are
still filled with raw recruits, fresh from the high schools and even
from the grades, who must learn every practical lesson of teaching
through the medium of their own mistakes. Even if this were all, the
process would involve a tremendous and uncalled-for waste. But this is
not all; for, out of this multitude of untrained teachers, only a small
proportion ever recognize the mistakes that they make and try to correct
them.
To you who are beginning the work of life, the mastery of technique may
seem a comparatively unimportant matter. You recognize its necessity, of
course, but you think of it as something of a mechanical nature,—an
integral part of the day's work, but uninviting in itself,—something to
be reduced as rapidly as possible to the plane of automatism and
dismissed from the mind. I believe that you will outgrow this notion. As
you go on with your work, as you increase in skill, ever and ever the
fascination of its technique will take a stronger and stronger hold upon
you. This is the great saving principle of our workaday life. This is
the factor that keeps the toiler free from the deadening effects of
mechanical routine. It is the factor that keeps the farmer at his plow,
the artisan at his bench, the lawyer at his desk, the artist at his
palette.
I once worked for a man who had accumulated a large fortune. At the age
of seventy-five he divided this fortune among his children, intending to
retire; but he could find pleasure and comfort only in the routine of
business. In six months he was back in his office. He borrowed
twenty-five thousand dollars on his past reputation and started in to
have some fun. I was his only employee at the time, and I sat across the
big double desk from him, writing his letters and keeping his accounts.
He would sit for hours, planning for the establishment of some industry
or running out the lines that would entangle some old adversary. I did
not stay with him very long, but before I left, he had a half-dozen
thriving industries on his hands, and when he died three years later he
had accumulated another fortune of over a million dollars.
That is an example of what I mean by the fascination that the technique
of one's craft may come to possess. It is the joy of doing well the work
that you know how to do. The finer points of technique,—those little
things that seem so trivial in themselves and yet which mean everything
to skill and efficiency,—what pride the competent artisan or the master
artist takes in these! How he delights to revel in the jargon of his
craft! How he prides himself in possessing the knowledge and the
technical skill that are denied the layman!
I am aware that I am somewhat unorthodox in urging this view of your
work upon you. Teachers have been encouraged to believe that details are
not only unimportant but stultifying,—that teaching ability is a
function of personality, and not a product of a technique that must be
acquired through the strenuous discipline of experience. One of the most
skillful teachers of my acquaintance is a woman down in the grades. I
have watched her work for days at a time, striving to learn its secret.
I can find nothing there that is due to genius,—unless we accept George
Eliot's definition of genius as an infinite capacity for receiving
discipline. That teacher's success, by her own statement, is due to a
mastery of technique, gained through successive years of growth checked
by a rigid responsibility for results. She has found out by repeated
trial how to do her work in the best way; she has discovered the
attitude toward her pupils that will get the best work from them,—the
clearest methods of presenting subject matter; the most effective ways
in which to drill; how to use text-books and make study periods issue in
something besides mischief; and, more than all else, how to do these
things without losing sight of the true end of education. Very
frequently I have taken visiting school men to see this teacher's work.
Invariably after leaving her room they have turned to me with such
expressions as these: "A born teacher!" "What interest!" "What a
personality!" "What a voice!"—everything, in fact, except this,—which
would have been the truth: "What a tribute to years of effort and
struggle and self-discipline!"
I have a theory which I have never exploited very seriously, but I will
give it to you for what it is worth. It is this: elementary education
especially needs a literary interpretation. It needs a literary artist
who will portray to the public in the form of fiction the real life of
the elementary school,—who will idealize the technique of teaching as
Kipling idealized the technique of the marine engineer, as Balzac
idealized the technique of the journalist, as Du Maurier and a hundred
other novelists have idealized the technique of the artist. We need some
one to exploit our shop-talk on the reading public, and to show up our
work as you and I know it, not as you and I have been told by laymen
that it ought to be,—a literature of the elementary school with the
cant and the platitudes and the goody-goodyism left out, and in their
place something of the virility, of the serious study, of the manful
effort to solve difficult problems, of the real and vital achievements
that are characteristic of thousands of elementary schools throughout
the country to-day.
At first you will be fascinated by the novelty of your work. But that
soon passes away. Then comes the struggle,—then comes the period, be it
long or short, when you will work with your eyes upon the clock, when
you will count the weeks, the days, the hours, the minutes that lie
between you and vacation time. Then will be the need for all the
strength and all the energy that you can summon to your aid. Fail here,
and your fate is decided once and for all. If, in your work, you never
get beyond this stage, you will never become the true craftsman. You
will never taste the joy that is vouchsafed the expert, the efficient
craftsman.
The length of this period varies with different individuals. Some
teachers "find themselves" quickly. They seem to settle at once into the
teaching attitude. With others is a long, uphill fight. But it is safe
to say that if, at the end of three years, your eyes still habitually
seek the clock,—if, at the end of that time, your chief reward is the
check that comes at the end of every fourth week,—then your doom is
sealed.
And the second vow that I should urge these graduates to take is the vow
of fidelity to the spirit of their calling. We have heard a great deal
in recent years about making education a profession. I do not like that
term myself. Education is not a profession in the sense that medicine
and law are professions. It is rather a craft, for its duty is to
produce, to mold, to fashion, to transform a certain raw material into a
useful product. And, like all crafts, education must possess the craft
spirit. It must have a certain code of craft ethics; it must have
certain standards of craft excellence and efficiency. And in these the
normal school must instruct its students, and to these it should secure
their pledge of loyalty and fidelity and devotion.
A true conception of this craft spirit in education is one of the most
priceless possessions of the young teacher, for it will fortify him
against every criticism to which his calling is subjected. It is
revealing no secret to tell you that the teacher's work is not held in
the highest regard by the vast majority of men and women in other walks
of life. I shall not stop to inquire why this is so, but the fact cannot
be doubted, and every now and again some incident of life, trifling
perhaps in itself, will bring it to your notice; but most of all,
perhaps you will be vexed and incensed by the very thing that is meant
to put you at your ease—the patronizing attitude which your friends in
other walks of life will assume toward you and toward your work.
When will the good public cease to insult the teacher's calling with
empty flattery? When will men who would never for a moment encourage
their own sons to enter the work of the public schools, cease to tell us
that education is the greatest and noblest of all human callings?
Education does not need these compliments. The teacher does not need
them. If he is a master of his craft, he knows what education means,—he
knows this far better than any layman can tell him. And what boots it to
him, if, with all this cant and hypocrisy about the dignity and worth of
his calling, he can sometimes hold his position only at the sacrifice of
his self-respect?
But what is the relation of the craft spirit to these facts? Simply
this: the true craftsman, by the very fact that he is a true craftsman,
is immune to these influences. What does the true artist care for the
plaudits or the sneers of the crowd? True, he seeks commendation and
welcomes applause, for your real artist is usually extremely human; but
he seeks this commendation from another source—from a source that metes
it out less lavishly and yet with unconditioned candor. He seeks the
commendation of his fellow-workmen, the applause of "those who know, and
always will know, and always will understand." He plays to the pit and
not to the gallery, for he knows that when the pit really approves the
gallery will often echo and reëcho the applause, albeit it has not the
slightest conception of what the whole thing is about.
What education stands in need of to-day is just this: a stimulating and
pervasive craft spirit. If a human calling would win the world's
respect, it must first respect itself; and the more thoroughly it
respects itself, the greater will be the measure of homage that the
world accords it. In one of the educational journals a few years ago,
the editors ran a series of articles under the general caption, "Why I
am a teacher." It reminded me of the spirited discussion that one of the
Sunday papers started some years since on the world-old query, "Is
marriage a failure?" And some of the articles were fully as sickening in
their harrowing details as were some of the whining matrimonial
confessions of the latter series. But the point that I wish to make is
this: your true craftsman in education never stops to ask himself such
questions. There are some men to whom schoolcraft is a mistress. They
love it, and their devotion is no make-believe, fashioned out of
sentiment, and donned for the purpose of hiding inefficiency or native
indolence. They love it as some men love Art, and others Business, and
others War. They do not stop to ask the reason why, to count the cost,
or to care a fig what people think. They are properly jealous of their
special knowledge, gained through years of special study; they are
justly jealous of their special skill gained through years of discipline
and training. They resent the interference of laymen in matters purely
professional. They resent such interference as would a reputable
physician, a reputable lawyer, a reputable engineer. They resent
officious patronage and "fussy" meddling. They resent all these things
manfully, vigorously. But your true craftsman will not whine. If the
conditions under which he works do not suit him, he will fight for their
betterment, but he will not whine.
And yet this vow of fidelity and devotion to the spirit of schoolcraft
would be an empty form without the two complementary vows that give it
worth and meaning. These are the vow of poverty and the vow of service.
It is through these that the true craft spirit must find its most
vigorous expression and its only justification. The very corner stone of
schoolcraft is service, and one fundamental lesson that the tyro in
schoolcraft must learn, especially in this materialistic age, is that
the value of service is not to be measured in dollars and cents. In this
respect, teaching resembles art, music, literature, discovery,
invention, and pure science; for, if all the workers in all of these
branches of human activity got together and demanded of the world the
real fruits of their self-sacrifice and labor,—if they demanded all the
riches and comforts and amenities of life that have flowed directly or
indirectly from their efforts,—there would be little left for the rest
of mankind. Each of these activities is represented by a craft spirit
that recognizes this great truth. The artist or the scientist who has an
itching palm, who prostitutes his craft for the sake of worldly gain, is
quickly relegated to the oblivion that he deserves. He loses caste, and
the caste of craft is more precious to your true craftsman than all the
gold of the modern Midas.
You may think that this is all very well to talk about, but that it
bears little agreement to the real conditions. Let me tell you that you
are mistaken. Go ask Röntgen why he did not keep the X-rays a secret to
be exploited for his own personal gain. Ask the shade of the great
Helmholtz why he did not patent the ophthalmoscope. Go to the University
of Wisconsin and ask Professor Babcock why he gave to the world without
money and without price the Babcock test—an invention which is
estimated to mean more than one million dollars every year to the
farmers and dairymen of that state alone. Ask the men on the geological
survey who laid bare the great gold deposits of Alaska why they did not
leave a thankless and ill-paid service to acquire the wealth that lay at
their feet. Because commercialized ideals govern the world that we know,
we think that all men's eyes are jaundiced, and that all men's vision is
circumscribed by the milled rim of the almighty dollar. But we are
sadly, miserably mistaken.
Do you think that these ideals of service from which every taint of
self-seeking and commercialism have been eliminated—do you think that
these are mere figments of the impractical imagination? Go ask Perry
Holden out in Iowa. Go ask Luther Burbank out in California. Go to any
agricultural college in this broad land and ask the scientists who are
doing more than all other forces combined to increase the wealth of the
people. Go to the scientific departments at Washington where men of
genius are toiling for a pittance. Ask them how much of the wealth for
which they are responsible they propose to put into their own pockets.
What will be their answer? They will tell you that all they ask is a
living wage, a chance to work, and the just recognition of their
services by those who know and appreciate and understand.
But let me hasten to add that these men claim no especial merit for
their altruism and unselfishness. They do not pose before the world as
philanthropists. They do not strut about and preen themselves as who
would say: "See what a noble man am I! See how I sacrifice myself for
the welfare of society!" The attitude of cant and pose is entirely alien
to the spirit of true service. Their delight is in doing, in serving, in
producing. But beyond this, they have the faults and frailties of their
kind,—save one,—the sin of covetousness. And again, all that they ask
of the world is a living wage, and the privilege to serve.
And that is all that the true craftsman in education asks. The man or
woman with the itching palm has no place in the schoolroom,—no place in
any craft whose keynote is service. It is true that the teacher does not
receive to-day, in all parts of our country, a living wage; and it is
equally true that society at large is the greatest sufferer because of
its penurious policy in this regard. I should applaud and support every
movement that has for its purpose the raising of teachers' salaries to
the level of those paid in other branches of professional service.
Society should do this for its own benefit and in its own defense, not
as a matter of charity to the men and women who, among all public
servants, should be the last to be accused of feeding gratuitously at
the public crib. I should approve all honest efforts of school men and
school women toward this much-desired end. But whenever men and women
enter schoolcraft because of the material rewards that it offers, the
virtue will have gone out of our calling,—just as the virtue went out
of the Church when, during the Middle Ages, the Church attracted men,
not because of the opportunities that it offered for social service, but
because of the opportunities that it offered for the acquisition of
wealth and temporal power,—just as the virtue has gone out of certain
other once-noble professions that have commercialized their standards
and tarnished their ideals.
This is not to say that one condemns the man who devotes his life to the
accumulation of property. The tremendous strides that our country has
made in material civilization have been conditioned in part by this type
of genius. Creative genius must always compel our admiration and our
respect. It may create a world epic, a matchless symphony of tones or
pigments, a scientific theory of tremendous grasp and limitless scope;
or it may create a vast industrial system, a commercial enterprise of
gigantic proportions, a powerful organization of capital. Genius is
pretty much the same wherever we find it, and everywhere we of the
common clay must recognize its worth.
The grave defect in our American life is not that we are hero
worshipers, but rather that we worship but one type of hero; we
recognize but one type of achievement; we see but one sort of genius.
For two generations our youth have been led to believe that there is
only one ambition that is worth while,—the ambition of property.
Success at any price is the ideal that has been held up before our boys
and girls. And to-day we are reaping the rewards of this distorted and
unjust view of life.
I recently met a man who had lived for some years in the neighborhood of
St. Paul and Minneapolis,—a section that is peopled, as you know, very
largely by Scandinavian immigrants and their descendants. This man told
me that he had been particularly impressed by the high idealism of the
Norwegian people. His business brought him in contact with Norwegian
immigrants in what are called the lower walks of life,—with workingmen
and servant girls,—and he made it a point to ask each of these young
men and young women the same question. "Tell me," he would say, "who are
the great men of your country? Who are the men toward whom the youth of
your land are led to look for inspiration? Who are the men whom your
boys are led to imitate and emulate and admire?" And he said that he
almost always received the same answer to this question: the great names
of the Norwegian nation that had been burned upon the minds even of
these workingmen and servant girls were just four in number: Ole Bull,
Björnson, Ibsen, Nansen. Over and over again he asked that same
question; over and over again he received the same answer: Ole Bull,
Björnson, Ibsen, Nansen. A great musician, a great novelist, a great
dramatist, a great scientist.
And I conjectured as I heard of this incident, What would be the answer
if the youth of our land were asked that question: "Who are the great
men of your country? What type of achievement have you been led to
imitate and emulate and admire?" How many of our boys and girls have
even heard of our great men in the world of culture,—unless, indeed,
such men lived a half century ago and have got into the school readers
by this time? How many of our boys and girls have ever heard of
MacDowell, or James, or Whistler, or Sargent?
I have said that the teacher must take the vow of service. What does
this imply except that the opportunity for service, the privilege of
serving, should be the opportunity that one seeks, and that the
achievements toward which one aspires should be the achievements of
serving? The keynote of service lies in self-sacrifice,—in
self-forgetfulness, rather,—in merging one's own life in the lives of
others. The attitude of the true teacher in this respect is very similar
to the attitude of the true parent. In so far as the parent feels
himself responsible for the character of his children, in so far as he
holds himself culpable for their shortcomings and instrumental in
shaping their virtues, he loses himself in his children. What we term
parental affection is, I believe, in part an outgrowth of this feeling
of responsibility. The situation is precisely the same with the
teacher. It is when the teacher begins to feel himself responsible for
the growth and development of his pupils that he begins to find himself
in the work of teaching. It is then that the effective devotion to his
pupils has its birth. The affection that comes prior to this is, I
think, very likely to be of the sentimental and transitory sort.
In education, as in life, we play altogether too carelessly with the
word "love." The test of true devotion is self-forgetfulness. Until the
teacher reaches that point, he is conscious of two distinct elements in
his work,—himself and his pupils. When that time comes, his own ego
drops from view, and he lives in and for his pupils. The young teacher's
tendency is always to ask himself, "Do my pupils like me?" Let me say
that this is beside the question. It is not, from his standpoint, a
matter of the pupils liking their teacher, but of the teacher liking his
pupils. That, I take it, must be constantly the point of view. If you
ask the other question first, you will be tempted to gain your end by
means that are almost certain to prove fatal,—to bribe and pet and
cajole and flatter, to resort to the dangerous expedient of playing to
the gallery; but the liking that you get in this way is not worth the
price that you pay for it. I should caution young teachers against the
short-sighted educational theories that are in the air to-day, and that
definitely recommend this attitude. They may sound sweet, but they are
soft and sticky in practice. Better be guided by instinct than by
"half-baked" theory. I have no disposition to criticize the attempts
that have been made to rationalize educational practice, but a great
deal of contemporary theory starts at the wrong end. It has failed to go
to the sources of actual experience for its data. I know a father and
mother who have brought up ten children successfully, and I may say that
you could learn more about managing boys and girls from observing their
methods than from a half-dozen prominent books on educational theory
that I could name.
And so I repeat that the true test of the teacher's fidelity to this vow
of service is the degree in which he loses himself in his pupils,—the
degree in which he lives and toils and sacrifices for them just for the
pure joy that it brings him. Once you have tasted this joy, no carping
sneer of the cynic can cause you to lose faith in your calling. Material
rewards sink into insignificance. You no longer work with your eyes upon
the clock. The hours are all too short for the work that you would do.
You are as light-hearted and as happy as a child,—for you have lost
yourself to find yourself, and you have found yourself to lose yourself.
And the final vow that I would have these graduates take is the vow of
idealism,—the pledge of fidelity and devotion to certain fundamental
principles of life which it is the business of education carefully to
cherish and nourish and transmit untarnished to each succeeding
generation. These but formulate in another way what the vows that I have
already discussed mean by implication. One is the ideal of social
service, upon which education must, in the last analysis, rest its case.
The second is the ideal of science,—the pledge of devotion to that
persistent unwearying search after truth, of loyalty to the great
principles of unbiased observation and unprejudiced experiment, of
willingness to accept the truth and be governed by it, no matter how
disagreeable it may be, no matter how roughly it may trample down our
pet doctrines and our preconceived theories. The nineteenth century left
us a glorious heritage in the great discoveries and inventions that
science has established. These must not be lost to posterity; but far
better lose them than lose the spirit of free inquiry, the spirit of
untrammeled investigation, the noble devotion to truth for its own sake
that made these discoveries and inventions possible.
It is these ideals that education must perpetuate, and if education is
successfully to perpetuate them, the teacher must himself be filled with
a spirit of devotion to the things that they represent. Science has
triumphed over superstition and fraud and error. It is the teacher's
duty to see to it that this triumph is permanent, that mankind does not
again fall back into the black pit of ignorance and superstition.
And so it is the teacher's province to hold aloft the torch, to stand
against the materialistic tendencies that would reduce all human
standards to the common denominator of the dollar, to insist at all
times and at all places that this nation of ours was founded upon
idealism, and that, whatever may be the prevailing tendencies of the
time, its children shall still learn to live "among the sunlit peaks."
And if the teacher is imbued with this idealism, although his work may
take him very close to Mother Earth, he may still lift his head above
the fog and look the morning sun squarely in the face.
Although the month is March and not November, it is never unseasonable
to count up the blessings for which it is well to be thankful. In fact,
from the standpoint of education, the spring is perhaps the appropriate
time to perform this very pleasant function. As if still further to
emphasize the fact that education, like civilization, is an artificial
thing, we have reversed the operations of Mother Nature: we sow our seed
in the fall and cultivate our crops during the winter and reap our
harvests in the spring. I may be pardoned, therefore, for making the
theme of my discussion a brief review of the elements of growth and
victory for which the educator of to-day may justly be grateful, with,
perhaps, a few suggestions of what the next few years may reasonably be
expected to bring forth.
And this course is all the more necessary because, I believe, the
teaching profession is unduly prone to pessimism. One might think at
first glance that the contrary would be true. We are surrounded on every
side by youth. Youth is the material with which we constantly deal.
Youth is buoyant, hopeful, exuberant; and yet, with this material
constantly surrounding us, we frequently find the task wearisome and
apparently hopeless. The reason is not far to seek. Youth is not only
buoyant, it is unsophisticated, it is inexperienced, in many important
particulars it is crude. Some of its tastes must necessarily, in our
judgment, hark back to the primitive, to the barbaric. Ours is
continually the task to civilize, to sophisticate, to refine this raw
material. But, unfortunately for us, the effort that we put forth does
not always bring results that we can see and weigh and measure. The
hopefulness of our material is overshadowed not infrequently by its
crudeness. We take each generation as it comes to us. We strive to lift
it to the plane that civilized society has reached. We do our best and
pass it on, mindful of the many inadequacies, perhaps of the many
failures, in our work. We turn to the new generation that takes its
place. We hope for better materials, but we find no improvement.
And so you and I reflect in our occasional moments of pessimism that
generic situation which inheres in the very work that we do. The
constantly accelerated progress of civilization lays constantly
increasing burdens upon us. In some way or another we must accomplish
the task. In some way or another we must lift the child to the level of
society, and, as society is reaching a continually higher and higher
level, so the distance through which the child must be raised is ever
increased. We would like to think that all this progress in the race
would come to mean that we should be able to take the child at a higher
level; but you who deal with children know from experience the principle
for which the biologist Weismann stands sponsor—the principle, namely,
that acquired characteristics are not inherited; that whatever changes
may be wrought during life in the brains and nerves and muscles of the
present generation cannot be passed on to its successor save through the
same laborious process of acquisition and training; that, however far
the civilization of the race may progress, education, whose duty it is
to conserve and transmit this civilization, must always begin with the
"same old child."
This, I take it, is the deep-lying cause of the schoolmaster's
pessimism. In our work we are constantly struggling against that same
inertia which held the race in bondage for how many millenniums only the
evolutionist can approximate a guess,—that inertia of the primitive,
untutored mind which we to-day know as the mind of childhood, but which,
for thousands of generations, was the only kind of a mind that man
possessed. This inertia has been conquered at various times in the
course of recorded history,—in Egypt and China and India, in Chaldea
and Assyria, in Greece and Rome,—conquered only again to reassert
itself and drive man back into barbarism. Now we of the Western world
have conquered it, let us hope, for all time; for we of the Western
world have discovered an effective method of holding it in abeyance, and
this method is universal public education.
Let Germany close her public schools, and in two generations she will
lapse back into the semi-darkness of medievalism; let her close both her
public schools and her universities, and three generations will fetch
her face to face with the Dark Ages; let her destroy her libraries and
break into ruin all of her works of art, all of her existing triumphs of
technical knowledge and skill, from which a few, self-tutored, might
glean the wisdom that is every one's to-day, and Germany will soon
become the home of a savage race, as it was in the days of Tacitus and
Cæsar. Let Italy close her public schools, and Italy will become the
same discordant jumble of petty states that it was a century ago,—again
to await, this time perhaps for centuries or millenniums, another
Garibaldi and Victor Emmanuel to work her regeneration. Let Japan close
her public schools, and Japan in two generations will be a barbaric
kingdom of the Shoguns, shorn of every vestige of power and
prestige,—the easy victim of the machinations of Western diplomats. Let
our country cease in its work of education, and these United States must
needs pass through the reverse stages of their growth until another race
of savages shall roam through the unbroken forest, now and then to reach
the shores of ocean and gaze through the centuries, eastward, to catch
a glimpse of the new Columbus. Like the moving pictures of the
kinetoscope when the reels are reversed, is the picture that imagination
can unroll if we grant the possibility of a lapse from civilization to
savagery.
And so when we take the broader view, we quickly see that, in spite of
our pessimism, we are doing something in the world. We are part of that
machine which civilization has invented and is slowly perfecting to
preserve itself. We may be a very small part, but, so long as the
responsibility for a single child rests upon us, we are not an
unimportant part. Society must reckon with you and me perhaps in an
infinitesimal degree, but it must reckon with the institution which we
represent as it reckons with no other institution that it has reared to
subserve its needs.
In a certain sense these statements are platitudes. We have repeated
them over and over again until the words have lost their tremendous
significance. And it behooves us now and again to revive the old
substance in a new form,—to come afresh to a self-consciousness of our
function. It is not good for any man to hold a debased and inferior
opinion of himself or of his work, and in the field of schoolcraft it is
easy to fall into this self-depreciating habit of thought. We cannot
hope that the general public will ever come to view our work in the true
perspective that I have very briefly outlined. It would probably not be
wise to promulgate publicly so pronounced an affirmation of our
function and of our worth. The popular mind must think in concrete
details rather than in comprehensive principles, when the subject of
thought is a specialized vocation. You and I have crude ideas, no doubt,
of the lawyer's function, of the physician's function, of the
clergyman's function. Not less crude are their ideas of our function.
Even when they patronize us by saying that our work is the noblest that
any man or woman would engage in, they have but a vague and shadowy
perception of its real significance. I doubt not that, with the majority
of those who thus pat us verbally upon the back, the words that they use
are words only. They do not envy us our privileges,—unless it is our
summer vacations,—nor do they encourage their sons to enter service in
our craft. The popular mind—the nontechnical mind,—must work in the
concrete;—it must have visible evidences of power and influence before
it pays homage to a man or to an institution.
Throughout the German empire the traveler is brought constantly face to
face with the memorials that have been erected by a grateful people to
the genius of the Iron Chancellor. Bismarck richly deserves the tribute
that is paid to his memory, but a man to be honored in this way must
exert a tangible and an obvious influence.
And yet, in a broader sense, the preëminence of Germany is due in far
greater measure to two men whose names are not so frequently to be
found inscribed upon towers and monuments. In the very midst of the
havoc and devastation wrought by the Napoleon wars,—at the very moment
when the German people seemed hopelessly crushed and defeated,—an
intellect more penetrating than that of Bismarck grasped the logic of
the situation. With the inspiration that comes with true insight, the
philosopher Fichte issued his famous Addresses to the German people.
With clear-cut argument couched in white-hot words, he drove home the
great principle that lies at the basis of United Germany and upon the
results of which Bismarck and Von Moltke and the first Emperor erected
the splendid structure that to-day commands the admiration of the world.
Fichte told the German people that their only hope lay in universal,
public education. And the kingdom of Prussia—impoverished, bankrupt,
war-ridden, and war-devastated—heard the plea. A great scheme that
comprehended such an education was already at hand. It had fallen almost
stillborn from the only kind of a mind that could have produced it,—a
mind that was suffused with an overwhelming love for humanity and
incomparably rich with the practical experiences of a primary
schoolmaster. It had fallen from the mind of Pestalozzi, the Swiss
reformer, who thus stands with Fichte as one of the vital factors in the
development of Germany's educational supremacy.
The people's schools of Prussia, imbued with the enthusiasm of Fichte
and Pestalozzi,[3] gave to Germany the tremendous advantage that enabled
it so easily to overcome its hereditary foe, when, two generations
later, the Franco-Prussian War was fought; for the Volksschule gave to
Germany something that no other nation of that time possessed; namely,
an educated proletariat, an intelligent common people. Bismarck knew
this when he laid his cunning plans for the unification of German states
that was to crown the brilliant series of victories beginning at Sedan
and ending within the walls of Paris. William of Prussia knew it when,
in the royal palace at Versailles, he accepted the crown that made him
the first Emperor of United Germany. Von Moltke knew it when, at the
capitulation of Paris, he was asked to whom the credit of the victory
was due, and he replied, in the frank simplicity of the true soldier and
the true hero, "The schoolmaster did it."
And yet Bismarck and Von Moltke and the Emperor are the heroes of
Germany, and if Fichte and Pestalozzi are not forgotten, at least their
memories are not cherished as are the memories of the more tangible and
obvious heroes. Instinct lies deeply embedded in human nature and it is
instinctive to think in the concrete. And so I repeat that we cannot
expect the general public to share in the respect and veneration which
you and I feel for our calling, for you and I are technicians in
education, and we can see the process as a comprehensive whole. But our
fellow men and women have their own interests and their own departments
of technical knowledge and skill; they see the schoolhouse and the
pupils' desks and the books and other various material symbols of our
work,—they see these things and call them education; just as we see a
freight train thundering across the viaduct or a steamer swinging out in
the lake and call these things commerce. In both cases, the nontechnical
mind associates the word with something concrete and tangible; in both
cases, the technical mind associates the same word with an abstract
process, comprehending a movement of vast proportions.
To compress such a movement—whether it be commerce or government or
education—in a single conception requires a multitude of experiences
involving actual adjustments with the materials involved; involving
constant reflection upon hidden meanings, painful investigations into
hidden causes, and mastery of a vast body of specialized knowledge which
it takes years of study to digest and assimilate.
It is not every stevedore upon the docks, nor every stoker upon the
steamers, nor every brakeman upon the railroads, who comprehends what
commerce really means. It is not every banker's clerk who knows the
meaning of business. It is not every petty holder of public office who
knows what government really means. But this, at least, is true: in
proportion as the worker knows the meaning of the work that he does,—in
proportion as he sees it in its largest relations to society and to
life,—his work is no longer the drudgery of routine toil. It becomes
instead an intelligent process directed toward a definite goal. It has
acquired that touch of artistry which, so far as human testimony goes,
is the only pure and uncontaminated source of human happiness.
And the chief blessing for which you and I should be thankful to-day is
that this larger view of our calling has been vouchsafed to us as it has
been vouchsafed no former generation of teachers. Education as the
conventional prerogative of the rich,—as the garment which separated
the higher from the lower classes of society,—this could scarcely be
looked upon as a fascinating and uplifting ideal from which to derive
hope and inspiration in the day's work; and yet this was the commonly
accepted function of education for thousands of years, and the teachers
who did the actual work of instruction could not but reflect in their
attitude and bearing the servile character of the task that they
performed. Education to fit the child to earn a better living, to
command a higher wage,—- this myopic view of the function of the school
could do but little to make the work of teaching anything but drudgery;
and yet it is this narrow and materialistic view that has dominated our
educational system to within a comparatively few years.
So silently and yet so insistently have our craft ideals been
transformed in the last two decades that you and I are scarcely aware
that our point of view has been changed and that we are looking upon our
work from a much higher point of vantage and in a light entirely new.
And yet this is the change that has been wrought. That education, in its
widest meaning, is the sole conservator and transmitter of civilization
to successive generations found expression as far back as Aristotle and
Plato, and has been vaguely voiced at intervals down through the
centuries; but its complete establishment came only as an indirect issue
of the great scientific discoveries of the nineteenth century, and its
application to the problems of practical schoolcraft and its
dissemination through the rank and file of teachers awaited the dawn of
the twentieth century. To-day we see expressions and indications of the
new outlook upon every hand, in the greatly increased professional zeal
that animates the teacher's calling; in the widespread movement among
all civilized countries to raise the standards of teachers, to eliminate
those candidates for service who have not subjected themselves to the
discipline of special preparation; in the increased endowments and
appropriations for schools and seminaries that prepare teachers; and,
perhaps most strikingly at the present moment, in that concerted
movement to organize into institutions of formal education, all of those
branches of training which have, for years, been left to the chance
operation of economic needs working through the crude and unorganized
though often effective apprentice system. The contemporary fervor for
industrial education is only one expression of this new view that, in
the last analysis, the school must stand sponsor for the conservation
and transmission of every valuable item of experience, every usable fact
or principle, every tiniest perfected bit of technical skill, every
significant ideal or prejudice, that the race has acquired at the cost
of so much struggle and suffering and effort.
I repeat that this new vantage point from which to gain a comprehensive
view of our calling has been attained only as an indirect result of the
scientific investigations of the nineteenth century. We are wont to
study the history of education from the work and writings of a few great
reformers, and it is true that much that is valuable in our present
educational system can be understood and appreciated only when viewed in
the perspective of such sources. Aristotle and Quintilian, Abelard and
St. Thomas Aquinas, Sturm and Philip Melanchthon, Comenius, Pestalozzi,
Rousseau, Herbart, and Froebel still live in the schools of to-day.
Their genius speaks to us through the organization of subject-matter,
through the art of questioning, through the developmental methods of
teaching, through the use of pictures, through objective instruction,
and in a thousand other forms. But this dominant ideal of education to
which I have referred and which is so rapidly transforming our outlook
and vitalizing our organization and inspiring us to new efforts, is not
to be drawn from these sources. The new histories of education must
account for this new ideal, and to do this they must turn to the masters
in science who made the middle part of the nineteenth century the period
of the most profound changes that the history of human thought
records.[4]
With the illuminating principle of evolution came a new and generously
rich conception of human growth and development. The panorama of
evolution carried man back far beyond the limits of recorded human
history and indicated an origin as lowly as the succeeding uplift has
been sublime. The old depressing and fatalistic notion that the human
race was on the downward path, and that the march of civilization must
sooner or later end in a cul-de-sac (a view which found frequent
expression in the French writers of the eighteenth century and which
dominated the skepticism of the dark hours preceding the
Revolution)—this fatalistic view met its death-blow in the principle of
evolution. A vista of hope entirely undreamed of stretched out before
the race. If the tremendous leverage of the untold millenniums of brute
and savage ancestry could be overcome, even in slight measure, by a few
short centuries of intelligence and reason, what might not happen in a
few more centuries of constantly increasing light? In short, the
principle of evolution supplied the perspective that was necessary to an
adequate evaluation of human progress.
But this inspiriting outlook which was perhaps the most comprehensive
result of Darwin's work had indirect consequences that were vitally
significant to education. It is with mental and not with physical
development that education is primarily concerned, and yet mental
development is now known to depend fundamentally upon physical forces.
The same decade that witnessed the publication of the Origin of
Species also witnessed the birth of another great book, little known
except to the specialist, and yet destined to achieve immortality. This
book is the Elements of Psychophysics, the work of the German
scientist Fechner. The intimate relation between mental life and
physical and physiological forces was here first clearly demonstrated,
and the way was open for a science of psychology which should cast aside
the old and threadbare raiment of mystery and speculation and
metaphysic, and stand forth naked and unashamed.
But all this was only preparatory to the epoch-making discoveries that
have had so much to do with our present attitude toward education. The
Darwinian hypothesis led to violent controversy, not only between the
opponents and supporters of the theory, but also among the various camps
of the evolutionists themselves. Among these controversies was that
which concerned itself with the inheritance of acquired characteristics,
and the outcome of that conflict has a direct significance to present
educational theory. The principle, now almost conclusively
established,[5] that the characteristics acquired by an organism during
its lifetime are not transmitted by physical heredity to its offspring,
must certainly stand as the basic principle of education; for everything
that we identify as human as contrasted with that which is brutal must
look to education for its preservation and support. It has been stated
by competent authorities that, during the past ten thousand years, there
has been no significant change in man's physical constitution. This
simply means that Nature finished her work as far as man is concerned
far beyond the remotest period that human history records; that, for all
that we can say to-day, there must have existed in the very distant past
human beings who were just as well adapted by nature to the lives that
we are leading as we are to-day adapted; that what they lacked and what
we possess is simply a mass of traditions, of habits, of ideals, and
prejudices which have been slowly accumulated through the ages and which
are passed on from generation to generation by imitation and instruction
and training and discipline; and that the child of to-day, left to his
own devices and operated upon in no way by the products of
civilization, would develop into a savage undistinguishable in all
significant qualities from other savages.
The possibilities that follow from such a conception are almost
overwhelming even at first glance, and yet the theory is borne out by
adequate experiments. The transformation of the Japanese people through
two generations of education in Western civilization is a complete
upsetting of the old theory that as far as race is concerned, there is
anything significantly important in blood, and confirms the view that
all that is racially significant depends upon the influences that
surround the young of the race during the formative years. The complete
assimilation of foreign ingredients into our own national stock through
the instrumentality of the public school is another demonstration that
the factors which form the significant characteristics in the lower
animals possess but a minimum of significance to man,—that color, race,
stature, and even brain weight and the shape of the cranium, have very
little to do with human worth or human efficiency save in extremely
abnormal cases.
And so we have at last a fundamental principle with which to illumine
the field of our work and from which to derive not only light but
inspiration. Unite this with John Fiske's penetrating induction that the
possibilities of progress through education are correlated directly with
the length of the period of growth or immaturity,—that is, that the
races having the longest growth before maturity are capable of the
highest degree of civilization,—and we have a pair of principles the
influence of which we see reflected all about us in the great activity
for education and especially in the increased sense of pride and
responsibility and respect for his calling that is animating the modern
teacher.
And what will be the result of this new point of view? First and
foremost, an increased general respect for the work. Until a profession
respects itself, it cannot very well ask for the world's respect, and
until it can respect itself on the basis of scientific principles
indubitably established, its respect for itself will be little more than
the irritating self-esteem of the goody-goody order which is so often
associated with our craft.
With our own respect for our calling, based upon this incontrovertible
principle, will come, sooner or later, increased compensation for the
work and increased prestige in the community. I repeat that these things
can only come after we have established a true craft spirit. If we are
ashamed of our calling, if we regret openly and publicly that we are not
lawyers or physicians or dentists or bricklayers or farmers or anything
rather than teachers, the public will have little respect for the
teacher's calling. As long as we criticize each other before laymen and
make light of each other's honest efforts, the public will question our
professional standing on the ground that we have no organized code of
professional ethics,—a prerequisite for any profession.
I started out to tell you something that we ought to be thankful
for,—something that ought to counteract in a measure the inevitable
tendencies toward pessimism and discouragement. The hopeful thing about
our present status is that we have an established principle upon which
to work. A writer in a recent periodical stoutly maintained that
education was in the position just now that medicine was in during the
Middle Ages. The statement is hardly fair, either to medicine or to
education. If one were to attempt a parallel, one might say that
education stands to-day where medicine stood about the middle of the
nineteenth century. The analogy might be more closely drawn by comparing
our present conception of education with the conception of medicine just
prior to the application of the experimental method to a solution of its
problems. Education has still a long road to travel before it reaches
the point of development that medicine has to-day attained. It has still
to develop principles that are comparable to the doctrine of lymph
therapy or to that latest triumph of investigation in the field of
medicine,—the theory of opsonins,—which almost makes one believe that
in a few years violent accident and old age will be the only sources of
death in the human race.
Education, we admit, has a long road to travel before it reaches so
advanced a point of development. But there is no immediate cause for
pessimism or despair. We need especially, now that the purpose of
education is adequately defined, an adequate doctrine of educational
values and a rich and vital infusion of the spirit of experimental
science. For efficiency in the work of instruction and training, we need
to know the influence of different types of experience in controlling
human conduct,—we need to know just what degree of efficiency is
exerted by our arithmetic and literature, our geography and history, our
drawing and manual training, our Latin and Greek, our ethics and
psychology. It is the lack of definite ideas and criteria in these
fields that constitutes the greatest single source of waste in our
educational system to-day.
And yet even here the outlook is extremely hopeful. The new movement
toward industrial education is placing greater and greater emphasis upon
those subjects of instruction and those types of methods whose
efficiency can be tested and determined in an accurate fashion. The
intimate relation between the classroom, on the one hand, and the
machine shop, the experimental farm, the hospital ward and operating
room, and the practice school, on the other hand, indicates a source of
accurate knowledge with regard to the way in which our teachings really
affect the conduct and adjustment of our pupils that cannot fail within
a short time to serve as the basis for some illuminating principle of
educational values. This, I believe, will be the next great step in the
development of our profession.
There has been no intention in what I have said to minimize the
disadvantages and discouragements under which we are to-day doing our
work. My only plea is for the hopeful and optimistic outlook which, I
maintain, is richly justified by the progress that has already been made
and by the virile character of the forces that are operating in the
present situation.
On the whole, I can see no reason why I should not encourage young men
to enter the service of schoolcraft. I cannot say to them that they will
attain to great wealth, but I can safely promise them that, if they give
to the work of preparation the same attention and time that they would
give to their education and training for medicine or law or engineering,
their services will be in large demand and their rewards not to be
sneered at. Their incomes will not enable them to compete with the
captains of industry, but they will permit as full an enjoyment of the
comforts of life as it is good for any young man to command. But the
ambitious teacher must pay the price to reap these rewards,—the price
of time and energy and labor,—the price that he would have to pay for
success in any other human calling. What I cannot promise him in
education is the opportunity for wide popular adulation, but this, after
all, is a matter of taste. Some men crave it and they should go into
those vocations that will give it to them. Others are better satisfied
with the discriminating recognition and praise of their own
fellow-craftsmen.
Efficiency seems to be a word to conjure with in these days. Popular
speech has taken it in its present connotation from the technical
vocabulary of engineering, and the term has brought with it a very
refreshing sense of accuracy and practicality. It suggests blueprints
and T-squares and mathematical formulæ. A faint and rather pleasant odor
of lubricating oil and cotton waste seems to hover about it. The
efficiency of a steam engine or a dynamo is a definitely determinable
and measurable factor, and when we use the term "efficiency" in popular
speech we convey through the word somewhat of this quality of certainty
and exactitude.
An efficient man, very obviously, is a man who "makes good," who
surmounts obstacles, overcomes difficulties, and "gets results." Rowan,
the man who achieved immortality on account of a certain message that he
carried to Garcia, is the contemporary standard of human efficiency. He
was given a task to do, and he did it. He did not stop to inquire
whether it was interesting, or whether it was easy, or whether it would
be remunerative, or whether Garcia was a pleasant man to meet. He simply
took the message and brought back the answer. Here we have efficiency in
human endeavor reduced to its lowest terms: to take a message and to
bring back an answer; to do the work that is laid out for one to do
without shirking or "soldiering" or whining; and to "make good," to get
results.
Now if we are to improve the efficiency of the teacher, the first thing
to do is to see that the conditions of efficiency are fulfilled as far
as possible at the outset. In other words, efficiency is impossible
unless one is set a certain task to accomplish. Rowan was told to carry
a message to Garcia. He was to carry it to Garcia, not to Queen Victoria
or Li Hung Chang or J. Pierpont Morgan, or any one else whom he may have
felt inclined to choose as its recipient. And that is just where Rowan
had a decided advantage over many teachers who have every ambition to be
just as efficient as he was. To expect a young teacher not only to get
results, but also to determine the results that should be obtained,
multiplies his chances of failure, not by two, as one might assume at
first thought, but almost by infinity.
Let me give an example of what I mean. A young man graduated from
college during the hard times of the middle nineties. It was imperative
that he secure some sort of a remunerative employment, but places were
very scarce and he had to seek a long time before he found anything to
which he could turn his hand. The position that he finally secured was
that of teacher in an ungraded school in a remote settlement.
School-teaching was far from his thoughts and still farther from his
ambitions, but forty dollars a month looked too good to be true,
especially as he had come to the point where his allowance of food
consisted of one plate of soup each day, with the small supply of
crackers that went with it. He accepted the position most gratefully.
He taught this school for two years. He had no supervision. He read
various books on the science and art of teaching and upon a certain
subject that went by the name of psychology, but he could see no
connection between what these books told him and the tasks that he had
to face. Finally he bought a book that was advertised as indispensable
to young teachers. The first words of the opening paragraph were these:
"Teacher, if you know it all, don't read this book." The young man threw
the volume in the fire. He had no desire to profit by the teaching of an
author who began his instruction with an insult. From that time until he
left the school, he never opened a book on educational theory.
His first year passed off with what appeared to be the most encouraging
success. He talked to his pupils on science and literature and history.
They were very good children, and they listened attentively. When he
tired of talking, he set the pupils to writing in their copy books,
while he thought of more things to talk about. He covered a great deal
of ground that first year. Scarcely a field of human knowledge was left
untouched. His pupils were duly informed about the plants and rocks and
trees, about the planets and constellations, about atoms and molecules
and the laws of motion, about digestion and respiration and the wonders
of the nervous system, about Shakespeare and Dickens and George Eliot.
And his pupils were very much interested in it all. Their faces had that
glow of interest, that look of wonderment and absorption, that you get
sometimes when you tell a little four-year-old the story of the three
bears. He never had any troubles of discipline, because he never asked
his pupils to do anything that they did not wish to do. There were six
pupils in his "chart class." They were anxious to learn to read, and
three of them did learn. Their mothers taught them at home. The other
three were still learning at the end of the second year. He concluded
that they had been "born short," but he liked them and they liked him.
He did not teach his pupils spelling or writing. If they learned these
things they learned them without his aid, and it is safe to say that
they did not learn them in any significant measure. He did not like
arithmetic, and so he just touched on it now and then for the sake of
appearances.
This teacher was elected for the following year at a handsome increase
of salary. He took this to mean a hearty indorsement of his methods;
consequently he followed the same general plan the next year. He had
told his pupils about everything that he knew, so he started over again,
much to their delight. He left at the close of the year, amidst general
lamentation. School-teaching was a delightful occupation, but he had
mastered the art, and now he wished to attack something that was really
difficult. He would study law. It is no part of the story that he did
not. Neither is it part of the story that his successor had a very hard
time getting that school straightened out; in fact, I believe it
required three or four successive successors to make even an impression.
Now that man's work was a failure, and the saddest kind of a failure,
for he did not realize that he had failed until years afterward. He
failed, not because he lacked ambition and enthusiasm; he had a large
measure of both these indispensable qualities. He failed, not because he
lacked education and a certain measure of what the world calls culture;
from the standpoint of education, he was better qualified than most
teachers in schools of that type. He failed, not because he lacked
social spirit and the ability to coöperate with the church and the home;
he mingled with the other members of the community, lived their life and
thought their thoughts and enjoyed their social diversions. The
community liked him and respected him. His pupils liked him and
respected him; and yet what he fears most of all to-day is that he may
come suddenly face to face with one of those pupils and be forced to
listen to a first-hand account of his sins of omission.
This man failed simply because he did not do what the elementary teacher
must do if he is to be efficient as an elementary teacher. He did not
train his pupils in the habits that are essential to one who is to live
the social life. He gave them a miscellaneous lot of interesting
information which held their attention while it lasted, but which was
never mastered in any real sense of the term, and which could have but
the most superficial influence upon their future conduct. But, worst of
all, he permitted bad and inadequate habits to be developed at the most
critical and plastic period of life. His pupils had followed the lines
of least effort, just as he had followed the lines of least effort. The
result was a well-established prejudice against everything that was not
superficially attractive and intrinsically interesting.
Now this man's teaching fell short simply because he did not know what
results he ought to obtain. He had been given a message to deliver, but
he did not know to whom he should deliver it. Consequently he brought
the answer, not from Garcia, but from a host of other personages with
whom he was better acquainted, whose language he could speak and
understand, and from whom he was certain of a warm welcome. In other
words, having no definite results for which he would be held
responsible, he did the kind of teaching that he liked to do. That
might, under certain conditions, have been the best kind of teaching
for his pupils. But these conditions did not happen to operate at that
time. The answer that he brought did not happen to be the answer that
was needed. That it pleased his employers does not in the least mitigate
the failure. That a teacher pleases the community in which he works is
not always evidence of his success. It is dangerous to make a statement
like this, for some are sure to jump to the opposite conclusion and
assume that one who is unpopular in the community is the most
successful. Needless to say, the reasoning is fallacious. The matter of
popularity is a secondary criterion, not a primary criterion of the
efficiency of teaching. One may be successful and popular or successful
and unpopular; unsuccessful and popular or unsuccessful and unpopular.
The question of popularity is beside the question of efficiency,
although it may enter into specific cases as a factor.
And so the first step to take in getting more efficient work from young
teachers, and especially from inexperienced and untrained teachers fresh
from the high school or the college, is to make sure that they know what
is expected of them. Now this looks to be a very simple precaution that
no one would be unwise enough to omit. As a matter of fact, a great many
superintendents and principals are not explicit and definite about the
results that they desire. Very frequently all that is asked of a
teacher is that he or she keep things running smoothly, keep pupils and
parents good-natured. Let me assert again that this ought to be done,
but that it is no measure of a teacher's efficiency, simply because it
can be done and often is done by means that defeat the purpose of the
school. As a young principal in a city system, I learned some vital
lessons in supervision from a very skillful teacher. She would come to
me week after week with this statement: "Tell me what you want done, and
I will do it." It took me some time to realize that that was just what I
was being paid to do,—telling teachers what should be accomplished and
then seeing that they accomplished the task that was set. When I finally
awoke to my duties, I found myself utterly at a loss to make
prescriptions. I then learned that there was a certain document known as
the course of study, which mapped out the general line of work and
indicated the minimal requirements. I had seen this course of study, but
its function had never impressed itself upon me. I had thought that it
was one of those documents that officials publish as a matter of form
but which no one is ever expected to read. But I soon discovered that a
principal had something to do besides passing from room to room, looking
wisely at the work going on, and patting little boys and girls on the
head.
Now a definite course of study is very hard to construct,—a course that
will tell explicitly what the pupils of each grade should acquire each
term or half-term in the way of habits, knowledge, ideals, attitudes,
and prejudices. But such a course of study is the first requisite to
efficiency in teaching. The system that goes by hit or miss, letting
each teacher work out his own salvation in any way that he may see fit,
is just an aggregation of such schools as that which I have described.
It is true that reformers have very strenuously criticized the policy of
restricting teachers to a definite course of study. They have maintained
that it curtails individual initiative and crushes enthusiasm. It does
this in a certain measure. Every prescription is in a sense a
restriction. The fact that the steamship captain must head his ship for
Liverpool instead of wherever he may choose to go is a restriction, and
the captain's individuality is doubtless crushed and his initiative
limited. But this result seems to be inevitable and he generally manages
to survive the blow. The course of study must be to the teacher what the
sailing orders are to the captain of the ship, what the stated course is
to the wheelsman and the officer on the bridge, what the time-table is
to the locomotive engineer, what Garcia and the message and the answer
were to Rowan. One may decry organization and prescription in our
educational system. One may say that these things tend inevitably toward
mechanism and formalism and the stultifying of initiative. But the fact
remains that, whenever prescription is abandoned, efficiency in general
is at an end.
And so I maintain that every teacher has a right to know what he is to
be held responsible for, what is expected of him, and that this
information be just as definite and unequivocal as it can be made. It is
under the stress of definite responsibility that growth is most rapid
and certain. The more uncertain and intangible the end to be gained, the
less keenly will one feel the responsibility for gaining that end.
Unhappily we cannot say to a teacher: "Here is a message. Take it to
Garcia. Bring the answer." But we may make our work far more definite
and tangible than it is now. The courses of study are becoming more and
more explicit each year. Vague and general prescriptions are giving
place to definite and specific prescriptions. The teachers know what
they are expected to do, and knowing this, they have some measure for
testing the efficiency of their own efforts.
But to make more definite requirements is, after all, only the first
step in improving efficiency. It is not sufficient that one know what
results are wanted; one must also know how these results may be
obtained. Improvement in method means improvement in efficiency, and a
crying need in education to-day is a scientific investigation of methods
of teaching. Teachers should be made acquainted with the methods that
are most economical and efficient. As a matter of fact, whatever is done
in that direction at the present time must be almost entirely confined
to suggestions and hints.
Our discussions of methods of teaching may be divided into three
classes: (1) Dogmatic assertions that such and such a method is right
and that all others are wrong—assertions based entirely upon a priori
reasoning. For example, the assertion that children must never be
permitted to learn their lessons "by heart" is based upon the general
principle that words are only symbols of ideas and that, if one has
ideas, one can find words of his own in which to formulate them. (2) A
second class of discussions of method comprises descriptions of devices
that have proved successful in certain instances and with certain
teachers. (3) Of a third class of discussions there are very few
representative examples. I refer to methods that have been established
on the basis of experiments in which irrelevant factors have been
eliminated. In fact, I know of no clearly defined report or discussion
of this sort. An approach to a scientific solution of a definite problem
of method is to be found in Browne's monograph, The Psychology of
Simple Arithmetical Processes. Another example is represented by the
experiments of Miss Steffens, Marx Lobsien, and others, regarding the
best methods of memorizing, and proving beyond much doubt that the
complete repetition is more economical than the partial repetition. But
these conclusions have, of course, only a limited field of application
to practical teaching. We stand in great need of a definite experimental
investigation of the detailed problems of teaching upon which there is
wide divergence of opinion. A very good illustration is the controversy
between the how and the why in primary arithmetic. In this case, there
is a vast amount of "opinion," but there are no clearly defined
conclusions drawn from accurate tests. It would seem possible to do work
of this sort concerning the details of method in the teaching of
arithmetic, spelling, grammar, penmanship, and geography.
Lacking this accurate type of data regarding methods, the next recourse
is to the actual teaching of those teachers who are recognized as
efficient. Wherever such a teacher may be found, his or her work is well
worth the most careful sort of study. Success, of course, may be due to
other factors than the methods employed,—to personality, for example.
But, in every case of recognized efficiency in teaching that I have
observed, I have found that the methods employed have, in the main, been
productive of good results when used by others. The experienced teacher
comes, through a process of trial and error, to select, perhaps
unconsciously, the methods that work best. Sometimes these are not
always to be identified with the methods that theoretical pedagogy had
worked out from a priori bases. For example, the type of lesson which
I call the "deductive development" lesson[7] is one that is not included
in the older discussions of method; yet it accurately describes one of
the methods employed by a very successful teacher whose work I
observed.
One way, then, to improve the efficiency of young teachers, in so far as
improvement in methods leads to improved efficiency, is to encourage the
observation of expert teaching. The plan of giving teachers visiting
days often brings excellent results, especially if the teacher looks
upon the privilege in the proper light. The hyper-critical spirit is
fatal to growth under any condition. Whenever a teacher has come to the
conclusion that he or she has nothing to learn from studying the work of
others, anabolism has ceased and katabolism has set in. The
self-sufficiency of our craft is one of its weakest characteristics. It
is the factor that more than any other discounts it in the minds of
laymen. Fortunately it is less frequently a professional characteristic
than in former years, but it still persists in some quarters. I recently
met a "pedagogue" who impressed me as the most "knowing" individual that
it had ever been my privilege to become acquainted with. An enthusiastic
friend of his, in dilating upon this man's virtues, used these words:
"When you propose a subject of conversation in whatever field you may
choose, you will find that he has mastered it to bed rock. He will go
over it once and you think that he is wise. He starts at the beginning
and goes over it again, and you realize that he is deep. Once more he
traverses the same ground, but he is so far down now that you cannot
follow him, and then you are aware that he is profound." That sort of
profundity is still not rare in the field of general education. The
person who has all possible knowledge pigeonholed and classified is
still in our midst. The pedant still does the cause of education
incalculable injury.
Of the use to which reading circles may be put in improving the
efficiency of teaching, it is necessary to say but little. Such
organizations, under wise leadership, may doubtless be made to serve a
good purpose in promoting professional enthusiasm. The difficulty with
using them to promote immediate and direct efficiency lies in the
paucity of the literature that is at our disposal. Most of our
present-day works upon education are very general in their nature. They
are not without their value, but this value is general and indirect
rather than immediate and specific. A book like Miss Winterburn's
Methods of Teaching, or Chubb's Teaching of English[8] is especially
valuable for young teachers who are looking for first-hand helps. But
books like this are all too rare in our literature.
On the whole, I think that the improvement of teachers in the matter of
methods is the most unsatisfactory part of our problem.[9] All that one
can say is that the work of the best teachers should be observed
carefully and faithfully, that the methods upon which there is little or
no dispute should be given and accepted as standard, but that one should
be very careful about giving young teachers an idea that there is any
single form under which all teaching can be subsumed. I know of no term
that is more thoroughly a misnomer in our technical vocabulary than the
term "general method." I teach a subject that often goes by that name,
but I always take care to explain that the name does not mean, in my
class, what the words seem to signify. There are certain broad and
general principles which describe very crudely and roughly and
inadequately certain phases of certain processes that mind undergoes in
organizing experience—perception, apperception, conception, induction,
deduction, inference, generalization, and the like. But these terms have
only a vague and general connotation; or, if their connotation is
specific and definite, it has been made so by an artificial process of
definition in which counsel is darkened by words without meaning. The
only full-fledged law that I know of in the educative process is the law
of habit building—(1) focalization, (2) attentive repetition at
intervals of increasing length, (3) permitting no exception—and I am
often told that this "law" is fallacious. It has differed from some
other so-called laws, however, in this respect: it always works.
Whenever a complex habit is adduced that has not been formed through the
operation of this law, I am willing to give it up.
A third general method of improving the efficiency of teaching is to
build up the notion of responsibility for results. The teacher must not
only take the message and deliver it to Garcia, or to some other
individual as definite and tangible, but he must also bring the answer.
So far as I know there is no other way to insure a maximum of efficiency
than to demand certain results and to hold the individual responsible
for gaining these results. The present standards of the teaching craft
are less rigorous than they should be in this respect. We need a craft
spirit that will judge every man impartially by his work, not by
secondary criteria. You remember Finlayson in Kipling's Bridge
Builders, and the agony with which he watched the waters of the Ganges
tearing away at the caissons of his new bridge. A vital question of
Finlayson's life was to be answered by the success or failure of those
caissons to resist the flood. If they should yield, it meant not only
the wreck of the bridge, but the wreck of his career; for, as Kipling
says, "Government might listen, perhaps, but his own kind would judge
him by his bridge as that stood or fell."
President Hall has said that one of the last sentiments to be developed
in human nature is "the sense of responsibility, which is one of the
highest and most complex psychic qualities." How to develop this
sentiment of responsibility is one of the most pressing problems of
education. And the problem is especially pressing in those departments
of education that train for social service. To engender in the young
teacher an effective prejudice against scamped work, against the making
of excuses, against the seductive allurements of ease and comfort and
the lines of least resistance is one of the most important duties that
is laid upon the normal school, the training school, and the teachers'
college. To do well the work that has been set for him to do should be
the highest ambition of every worker, the ambition to which all other
ambitions and desires are secondary and subordinate. Pride in the
mastery of the technique of one's calling is the most wholesome and
helpful sort of pride that a man can indulge in. The joy of doing each
day's work in the best possible manner is the keenest joy of life. But
this pride and this joy do not come at the outset. Like all other good
things of life, they come only as the result of effort and struggle and
strenuous self-discipline and dogged perseverance. The emotional
coloring which gives these things their subjective worth is a matter
very largely of contrast. Success must stand out against a background of
struggle, or the chief virtue of success—the consciousness of
conquest—will be entirely missed. That sort of success means strength;
for strength of mind is nothing more than the ability to "hew to the
line," to follow a given course of effort to a successful conclusion, no
matter how long and how tedious be the road that one must travel, no
matter how disagreeable are the tasks involved, no matter how tempting
are the insidious siren songs of momentary fancy.
What teachers need—what all workers need—is to be inspired with those
ideals and prejudices that will enable them to work steadfastly and
unremittingly toward the attainment of a stated end. What inspired Rowan
with those ideals of efficiency that enabled him to carry his message
and bring back the answer, I do not know, but if he was a soldier, I do
not hesitate to hazard an opinion. Our regular army stands as the
clearest type of efficient service which is available for our study and
emulation. The work of Colonel Goethals on the Panama Canal bids fair to
be the finest fruit of the training that we give to the officers of our
army. If we wish to learn the fundamental virtues of that training, it
is not sufficient to study the curriculum of the Military Academy.
Technical knowledge and skill are essential to such results, but they
are not the prime essentials. If you wish to know what the prime
essentials are, let me refer you to a series of papers, entitled The
Spirit of Old West Point, which ran through a recent volume of the
Atlantic Monthly and which has since been published in book form.
They constitute, to my mind, one of the most important educational
documents of the present decade. The army service is efficient because
it is inspired with effective ideals of service,—ideals in which every
other desire and ambition is totally and completely subordinated to the
ideal of duty. To those who maintain that close organization and
definite prescription kill initiative and curtail efficiency, the record
of West Point and the army service should be a silencing argument.
And yet education is more important than war; more important, even, than
the building of the Panama Canal. We believe, and rightly, that no
training is too good for our military and naval officers; that no
discipline which will produce the appropriate habits and ideals and
prejudices is too strenuous; that no individual sacrifice of comfort or
ease is too costly. Equal or even commensurable efficiency in education
can come only through a like process. From the times of the ancient
Egyptians to the present day, one vital truth has been revealed in every
forward movement; the homely truth that you cannot make bricks without
straw; you cannot win success without effort; you cannot attain
efficiency without undergoing the processes of discipline; and
discipline means only this: doing things that you do not want to do, for
the sake of reaching some end that ought to be attained.
The normal schools and the training schools and the teachers' colleges
must be the nurseries of craft ideals and standards. The instruction
that they offer must be upon a plane that will command respect. The
intolerable pedantry and the hypocritical goody-goodyism must be
banished forever. The crass sentimentalism by which we attempt to cover
our paucity of craft ideals must also be eliminated. Those who are most
strongly imbued with ideals are not those who cheapen the value of
ideals by constant verbal reiteration. Ideals do not often come through
explicitly imparted precepts. They come through more impalpable and
hidden channels,—now through stately buildings with vine-covered towers
from which the past speaks in the silence of great halls and cloistered
retreats; now through the unwritten and scarcely spoken traditions that
are expressed in the very bearing and attitude of those to whom youth
looks for inspiration and guidance; now through a dominant and powerful
personality, sometimes rough and crude, sometimes warm-hearted and
lovable, but always sincere. Traditions and ideals are the most
priceless part of a school's equipment, and the school that can give
these things to its students in richest measure will have the greatest
influence on the succeeding generations.