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The Vitalized School

by Francis B. Pearson · English · Gutenberg #17588 · 429,726 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Vitalized School

Author: Francis B. Pearson


        
Release date: January 23, 2006 [eBook #17588]

Language: English

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Credits: E-text prepared by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)


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E-text prepared by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier, and the Project Gutenberg
Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net/)



Transcriber's note:

   Italicized words are enclosed by underscores (_italic_).

   Bold-faced words are enclosed by equal signs (=bold=).





THE VITALIZED SCHOOL

by

FRANCIS B. PEARSON

Superintendent of Public Instruction of Ohio
Author of "The Evolution of the Teacher"
"The High School Problem"
"Reveries of a Schoolmaster"







New York
The MacMillan Company
1918
Copyright, 1917,
by the MacMillan Company.
Published February, 1917.
Reprinted January, 1918.





PREFACE


The thoughtful observer must have noted in the recent past many
indications of an awakened interest both in the concept of education and
in school procedure on the part of school officials, teachers, and the
public. Educators have been developing pedagogical principles that
strike their roots deep into the philosophy of life, and now their
pronouncements are invading the consciousness of people of all ranks and
causing them to realize more and more that the school process is an
integral part of the life process and not something detached from life.

The following pages constitute an attempt to interpret some of the
school processes in terms of life processes, and to suggest ways in
which these processes may be made identical.

It is hoped that teachers who may read these pages may find running
through them a strand of optimism that will give them increased faith in
their own powers, a larger hope for the future of the school, and an
access of zeal to press valiantly forward in their efforts to excel
themselves.

F. B. P.

COLUMBUS, OHIO,
January, 1917.




TABLE OF CONTENTS


CHAPTER

      I. TEACHING SCHOOL
     II. THE TEACHER
    III. THE CHILD
     IV. THE CHILD OF THE FUTURE
      V. THE TEACHER-POLITICIAN
     VI. SUBLIME CHAOS
    VII. DEMOCRACY
   VIII. PATRIOTISM
     IX. WORK AND LIFE
      X. WORDS AND THEIR CONTENT
     XI. COMPLETE LIVING
    XII. THE TIME ELEMENT
   XIII. THE ARTIST TEACHER
    XIV. THE TEACHER AS AN IDEAL
     XV. THE SOCIALIZED RECITATION
    XVI. AGRICULTURE
   XVII. THE SCHOOL AND THE COMMUNITY
  XVIII. POETRY AND LIFE
    XIX. A SENSE OF HUMOR
     XX. THE ELEMENT OF HUMAN INTEREST
    XXI. BEHAVIOR
   XXII. BOND AND FEAR
  XXIII. EXAMINATIONS
   XXIV. WORLD-BUILDING
    XXV. A TYPICAL VITALIZED SCHOOL




THE VITALIZED SCHOOL




CHAPTER I

TEACHING SCHOOL


=Life and living compared.=--There is a wide difference between
school-teaching and teaching school. The question "Is she a
school-teacher?" means one thing; but the question "Can she teach
school?" means quite another. School-teaching may be living; but
teaching school is life. And any one who has a definition of life can
readily find a definition for teaching school. Much of the criticism of
the work of the schools emanates from sources that have a restricted
concept of life. The artisan who defines life in terms of his own trade
is impatient with much that the school is trying to do. He would have
the scope of the school narrowed to his concept of life. If art and
literature are beyond the limits of his concept, he can see no warrant
for their presence in the school. The work of the schools cannot be
standardized until life itself is standardized, and that is neither
possible nor desirable. The glory of life is that it does not have
fixity, that it is ever crescent.

=Teaching defined.=--Teaching school may be defined, therefore, as the
process of interpreting life by the laboratory method. The teacher's
work is to open the gates of life for the pupils. But, before these
gates can be opened, the teacher must know what and where they are. This
view of the teacher's work is neither fanciful nor fantastic; quite the
contrary. Life is the common heritage of people young and old, and the
school should be so organized and administered as to teach people how to
use this heritage to the best advantage both for themselves and for
others. If a child should be absent from school altogether, or if he
should be incarcerated in prison from his sixth to his eighteenth year,
he would still have life. But, if he is in school during those twelve
years, he is supposed to have life that is of better quality and more
abundant. Life is not measured by years, but by its own intensity and
scope. It has often been said that some people have more life in
threescore and ten years than Methuselah had in his more than nine
hundred years.

=Life measured by intensity.=--This statement is not demonstrable, of
course, but it serves to make evident the fact that some people have
more of life in a given time than others in the same time. In this
sense, life may be measured by the number of reactions to objectives.
These reactions may be increased by training. Two persons, in passing a
shop-window, may not see the same objects; or one may see twice as many
as the other, according to their ability to react. The man who was
locked in a vault at the cemetery by accident, and was not discovered
for an hour, thought he had spent four days in his imprisonment. He had
really lived four days in a single hour by reason of the intensity of
life during that hour.

=Illustrations.=--In the case of dreams, we are told that years may be
condensed into minutes, or even seconds, by reason of the rapidity of
reactions. The rapidity and intensity of these reactions make themselves
manifest on the face of the dreamer. Beads of perspiration and facial
contortions betoken intensity of feeling. In such an experience life is
intense. If a mental or spiritual cyclometer could be used in such a
case, it would make a high record of speed. Life sometimes touches
bottom, and sometimes scales the heights. But the distance between these
extremes varies greatly in different persons. The life of one may have
but a single octave; of the other, eight, or a hundred, or a thousand.
The life of Job is an apt illustration. No one has been able to sound
the depths of his suffering, nor has any one been able to measure the
heights of his exaltation. We may not readily compute the octaves in
such a life as his.

=The complexity of life.=--It is not easy to think life, much less
define it. The elements are so numerous as to baffle and bewilder the
mind. It looks out at one from so many corners that it seems Argus-eyed.
At one moment we see it on the Stock Exchange where men struggle and
strive in a mad frenzy of competition; at another, in a quiet home,
where a mother soothes her baby to sleep, where there is no competition
but, rather, a sublime monopoly. Again, it manifests itself in the
clanking of machinery where men are tunneling the mountain or
constructing a canal to unite oceans; or, again, in the laboratory where
the microscope is revealing the form of the snow crystal. One man is
watching the movements of the heavenly bodies as they file by his
telescope, while another writes a proclamation that makes free a race of
people. Another man is leading an army into battle, while some Doctor
MacClure is breasting the storm in the darkness as he goes forth on his
mission of mercy.

=Manifestations of life.=--These manifestations of life men call trade,
commerce, history, mathematics, science, nature, and philanthropy. And
men write these words in books, and other men write other books trying
to explain their meaning. Then, still others divide and subdivide, and
science becomes the sciences, and mathematics becomes arithmetic, and
algebra, and geometry, and trigonometry, and calculus, and astronomy.
Here mathematics and science seem to merge. And, in time, history and
geography come together, and sometimes strive for precedence.

Thus, books accumulate into libraries and so add another to the many
elements of life. Then magazines are written to explain the books and
their authors. The motive behind the book is analyzed in an effort to
discover the workings of the author's mind and heart. In these
revelations we sometimes hear the rippling of the brook, and sometimes
the moan of the sea; sometimes the cooing of the dove, and sometimes the
scream of the eagle; sometimes the bleating of the lamb, and sometimes
the roaring of the lion. In them we see the moonbeams that play among
the flowers and the lightning that rends the forest; the blossoms that
filter from the trees and the avalanche that carries destruction; the
rain that fructifies the earth and the hurricane that destroys.

=Life in literature.=--Back of these sights and sounds we discover
men--Cicero, Demosthenes, Homer, Isaiah, Shakespeare, Milton, Dante. We
trace the thoughts and emotions of these men and find literature. And in
literature, again, we come upon another manifestation of life.
Literature is what it is because these men were what they were. They saw
and felt life to be large and so wrote it down large; and because they
wrote it thus, what they wrote endures. They stood upon the heights and
saw the struggles of man with himself, with other men, and with nature.
This panorama generated thoughts and feelings in them, and these they
could not but portray. And so literature and life are identical and not
coördinates, as some would have us think.

=Life as subject matter in teaching.=--In teaching school, therefore,
the subject matter with which we have to do is life--nothing more and
nothing less. We may call it history, or mathematics, or literature, or
psychology,--but it still remains true that life is the real objective
of all our activities. And, as has been already said, we are teaching
life by the laboratory method. We are striving to interpret the thing in
which we are immersed. We feel, and think, and aspire, and love, and
enjoy. All these are life; and from this life we are striving to extract
strength that our feeling may be deeper, our thinking higher, our
aspirations wider and more lofty, our love purer and nobler, and our own
enjoyment greater. By absorbing the life that is all about us we strive
to have more abundant and abounding life.

=The teacher's province.=--Such is the province of one who essays the
task of teaching school. School is life, as we have been told; but, at
the same time, it is a place and an occasion for teaching life. If we
could detach history from life, it would cease to be history. If
literature is not life, it is not literature; and so with the sciences.
These branches are but variants or branches of life, and all emanate
from a common center. Whether we scan the heavens, penetrate the depths
of the sea, pore over the pages of books, or look into the minds and
hearts of men, we are striving after an interpretation of life.


QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1. Distinguish between a "school teacher" and a "man or woman who
teaches school."

2. Discuss the importance of the following agencies of the school in
securing for children "life of a better quality and more abundant":
play; revitalized curricula; vitalized teachers; medical inspection;
social centers; moral instruction.

3. Discuss both from the standpoint of present practice and ideal
educational principles: "More abundant life rather than knowledge is the
chief end of instruction."

4. What changes are necessary in school curricula and in the methods of
school organization, instruction, and discipline, in order that the
chief purpose of our schools, "more abundant _life_," may be realized?

5. Justify the apparent length of the school day to teachers and pupils,
as a means of determining the quality of the work of the school.

6. Some teachers maintain that school is a preparation for life, while
the author maintains that "school is _life_." Is this difference in the
concept of the school a vital one?

7. How may this difference of concept affect the work of the teacher?
the attitude of the pupil?

8. What definition of education will best harmonize with the ideals of
this chapter?




CHAPTER II

THE TEACHER


=Teachers contrasted.=--The vitalized school is an expression of the
vitalized teacher. In the hands of the teacher of another sort, the
vitalized school is impossible. Unless she can see in the multiplication
table the power that throws the bridge across the river, that builds
pyramids, that constructs railways, that sends ships across the ocean,
that tunnels mountains and navigates the air, this table becomes a
stupid thing, a dead thing, and an incubus upon the spirits of her
pupils. To such a teacher mathematics is a lifeless thing, without hope
or potency, the school is a mere convenience for the earning of a
livelihood, the work is the drudgery of bondage, and the children are
little less than an impertinence. The vitalized teacher is different. To
her the multiplication table pulsates with life. It stretches forth its
beneficent hand to give employment to a million workers, and food to a
million homes. It pervades every mart of trade; it loads trains and
ships with the commerce of nations; and it helps to amplify and ennoble
civilization.

=Vitalized mathematics.=--In this table she sees a prophecy of great
achievements in engineering, architecture, transportation, and the
myriad applications of science. In brief, mathematics to her is vibrant
with life both in its present uses and in its possibilities. She knows
that it is a part of the texture of the daily life of every home as well
as of national life. She knows that it pertains to individual,
community, and national well-being. Knowing this, she feels that it is
quite worth while for herself and her pupils, both for the present and
for the future. She feels that, if she would know life, she must know
mathematics, because it is a part of life; that, if she would teach life
to her pupils, she must teach them mathematics as an integral part of
life; and that she must teach it in such a way that it will be as much a
part of themselves as their bodily organs. She wants them to know the
mathematics as they know that the rain is falling or that the sun is
shining, because the rain, the sunshine, and the mathematics are all
elements of life. Her great aim is to have her pupils experience the
study just as they experience other phases of life.

=The teacher's attitude.=--Such a teacher with such a conception of life
and of her work finds teaching school the very reverse of drudgery. Each
day is an exhilarating experience of life. Her pupils are a part of life
to her. She enjoys life and, hence, enjoys them. They are her
confederates in the fine game of life. The bigness and exuberance of her
abundant life enfolds them all, and from the very atmosphere of her
presence they absorb life. Their studies, under the influence of her
magic, are as much a part of life to them as the air they breathe or the
food they eat. No two days are alike in her school, for life to-day is
larger than it was yesterday and so presents a new aspect. Her spirit
carries over into their spirits the truths of the books, and these
truths thus become inherent.

=College influences.=--She teaches life, albeit through the medium of
subjects and books, because she knows life. Her college work did not
consist in the gathering together of many facts, but in accumulating
experiences of life. Many of these experiences were acquired
vicariously, but they were no less real on that account. Her generous
nature was able to withstand the most assiduous efforts of some of her
teachers to quench the flames of life that glowed in the pages of books,
with the wet blanket of erudition. She was able to relive the thoughts
and feelings of the authors whose books she studied and so make their
experiences her own. She could reconstitute the emotional life of her
authors and gain potency through the transfusion of spirit. Her books
were living things, and she gleaned life from their pages.

=Reading and life.=--She can teach reading because she can read. Reading
to her is an experience in life. The words on the printed page are not
meaningless hieroglyphics. They are the electric wires which connect the
soul of the author with her own, and through which the current is
continually passing. When she reads Dickens, Tiny Tim is never a mere
boy with a crutch, but he is Tiny Tim, and, as such, neither men nor
angels can supplant him on the printed page. She knows the touch of him
and the voice of him. She laughs with him; she cries with him; she prays
with him; she lives with him. In her teaching she causes Tiny Tim to
stand forth like a cameo to her pupils, with no rival and no peer. This
she can do because he is a part of her life. She has no occasion either
to pose or to rhapsodize. Sincerity is its own explanation and
justification.

=Power of understanding.=--When she reads "Little Boy Blue" she can hear
the sobbing of a heartbroken mother and thus, vicariously, comes to know
the universality of death and sorrow. But she finds faith and hope in
the poem, also, and so can see the sunlight suffusing the clouds of the
mother's grief. Thus she enters into the feeling of motherhood and so
shares the life of all the mothers whose children are her pupils. In
every page she reads she crosses anew the threshold of life and gains a
knowledge of its joys, its sorrows, its triumphs, or its defeats. In
short, she reads with the spirit and not merely with the mind, and thus
catches the spiritual meaning of what she reads. She can feel as well as
think and so can emotionalize the printed page. Nature has endowed her
with a sensory foundation that reacts to the emotional situations that
the author produces. Thus she understands, and that is the prime
desideratum in reading. And because she understands, she can interpret,
and cause her pupils to understand. Thus they receive another endowment
of life.

=Books as exponents of life.=--She has time for reading as she has time
for eating and drinking, and for the same reason. To her they are all
coördinate elements of life. She eats, and sleeps, and reads because she
is alive; and she is more alive because she eats, and sleeps, and reads.
She taps the sources of spiritual refreshment, without parade, and
rejoices in the consequent enrichment of her life. She does not smite
the rock, but speaks to it, and smiles upon it, and the waters gush
forth. She descends into Hades with Dante, and ascends Sinai with Moses,
and is refreshed and strengthened by her journeys. She sits enrapt as
Shakespeare turns the kaleidoscope of life for her, or stands enthralled
by Victor Hugo's picture of the human soul. Her sentient spirit is
ignited by the fires of genius that glow between the covers of the book,
and her fine enthusiasm carries the divine conflagration over into the
spirits of her pupils. There is, therefore, no drag or listlessness in
her class in reading, because, during this exercise, life is as buoyant
and spontaneous as it is upon the playground.

=The meaning of history.=--In her teaching of history she invests all
the characters with life, because to her they are alive. And because
they are alive to her they are alive to her pupils. They are instinct
with power, action, life. She rehabilitates the scenes in which they
moved, and, therefore, they must be alive in order to perform their
parts. They are all flesh and blood people with all the attributes of
people. They are all actuated by motives and move along their appointed
ways obedient to the laws of cause and effect. They are not named in the
book to be learned and recited, but to be known. She causes her pupils
to know them as they would come to know people in her home. Nor do they
ever mistake one for the other or confuse their actions. They know them
too well for that. These characters are made to stand wide apart, so
that, being thus seen, they will ever after be known. History is not a
directory of names, but groups of people going about their tasks. They
hunger, and thirst, and love, and hate, and struggle with their
environment as their descendants are doing to-day.

=Language and vitality.=--When she is teaching a language, it is never
less than a living language. In Latin the syntax is learned as a means,
never an end. The big things in the study loom too large for that. The
pupils become so eager to see what Cæsar will do next that they cannot
afford the time to stare long at a mere ablative absolute. They are
following the parade, and are not to be turned aside from their large
purpose by minor matters. They are made to see and hear Cicero; and Rome
becomes a reality, with its Forum, its Senate, and its Mamertine. When
Dido sears the soul of the faithless Æneas with her words of scorn, the
girls applaud and the boys tremble. When Troy burns, there is a real
fire, and Achates is as real as the man Friday. When the shipwrecked
Trojans regale themselves with venison, it is no make-believe dinner,
but a real one. Where such a teacher is, there can be no dead language,
no dry bones of history, and no stagnation in the stream of life.


QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1. What suggestions are offered for the vitalization of mathematics?
history? reading? language?

2. In what ways is vitalization of subject matter related to its
socialization?

3. How may motivation in teaching the multiplication table be assisted
by vitalization?

4. What is to be included in the term "read" in the sentence "She can
teach reading because she can read"?

5. Add to the author's list of children in literature whom the vitalized
teacher may introduce as companions to her pupils.

6. Why is extended reading essential to success in teaching?

7. What works of Dante have you read? of Victor Hugo? of Shakespeare?
How will the reading of such authors improve the teaching ability of
elementary teachers?

8. What are the distinguishing characteristics of the vitalized teacher?




CHAPTER III

THE CHILD


=The child as the center in school procedure.=--The child is the center
of school procedure in all its many ramifications. For the child the
building is erected, the equipment is provided, the course of study is
arranged and administered, and the teacher employed. The child is major,
and all else is subsidiary. In the general scheme even the teacher takes
secondary place. Teachers may come and go, but the child remains as the
focus of all plans and purposes. The teacher is secured for the child,
and not the child for the teacher. Taxpayers, boards of education,
parents, and teachers are all active in the interests of the child; and
all school legislation, to be important, must have the child as its
prime objective. Colleges of education and normal schools, in large
numbers, are working at the educational problem in an effort to develop
more effective methods of training the teachers of the child. A host of
authors and publishers are giving to the interest of the child the
products of their skill. In every commonwealth may be found a large
number of men and women whose time and energies are devoted to the work
of the schools for the child.

=All children should have school privileges.=--All these facts are
freely admitted, wherever attention is called to them, but we still have
truant officers, and child labor laws. We admit the facts, but, in our
practices, strive to circumvent their application. If the school is good
for one child, it is good for all children. Indeed, the school is
maintained on the assumption that all children will take advantage of
and profit by its presence. If there were no schools, our civilization
would surely decline. If school attendance should cease at the end of
the fifth year, then we would have a fifth-year civilization. It rests,
therefore, with the parents of the children, in large measure, whether
we are to have an eighth-grade civilization, a high-school civilization,
or a college civilization.

=Parental attitude.=--Schools are administered on the assumption that
every child is capable of and worthy of training, and that training the
child will make for a better quality of civilization. The state regards
the child as a liability during his childhood in the hope that he may be
an asset in his manhood. In this hope time and money are devoted to his
training. But, in the face of all this, there are parents, here and
there, who still look upon their own children as assets and would use
them for their own comfort or profit. They seem to think that their
children are indebted to them for bringing them into the world and that
their obligation to the children is canceled by meager provision of
food, shelter, and clothing. They seem not to realize that "life is more
than fruit or grain," and deny to their children the elements of life.

=The rights of the child.=--All this is a sort of preface to the
statement that the child comes into the world endowed with certain
inherent rights that may not be abrogated. He has a right to life in its
best and fullest sense, and no one has a right to abridge this measure
of life, or to deprive him of anything that will contribute to such a
life. He goes to the school as one of the sources of life, and any one
who denies him this boon is doing violence to his right to have life. He
does not go to school to study arithmetic, but studies arithmetic as one
of the elements of life; and experience has demonstrated that arithmetic
may be learned in the school more advantageously than elsewhere. He goes
to school to have agreeable and profitable life. Each day is an integer
of life and must be made to abound in life if it is to be accounted a
success.

=Child life.=--Again, the child has a right to the quality of life that
is consistent with and congenial to his age. A seven-year-old should be
a seven-year-old, in his thinking, in his activities, in his amusements,
and in his feeling. We should never ask or want him to "put away
childish things" at this age, for these childish things are a proof of
his normality and good health. His buoyant life and good health may
prove disastrous to the furniture in his home, but far better marred
furniture than marred childhood. If, at this age, he should become as
quiet and sedate as his father, his parents and teacher would have cause
for alarm. It is the high privilege of the parent and the teacher to
direct his activities, but not to abridge or interdict them. If the
teacher would reduce him to inaction and silence, she may well reflect
that if he were an imbecile he would be quiet. He will not pass this way
again; and if he is ever to have the sort of life that is in harmony
with his age, he must have it now.

=Childhood curtailed.=--He has a right, also, to the full measure of
childhood. This period is relatively short, and any curtailment does
violence to his physiological and psychological nature. All the years of
his childhood are necessary for a proper balancing of his physical and
mental powers, that they may do their appointed work in after years.
Entire volumes have been devoted to this subject, but, in spite of these
volumes, some mothers still try to hurry their daughters into the duties
and responsibilities of adult life. One such mother went to the high
school to get the books of her fifteen-year-old daughter and, upon being
asked why the daughter was leaving school, replied, "Oh, she's keeping
company now." That daughter will never be the hardy plant in
civilization that she ought to be, because she was reared in a hothouse
atmosphere. That mother had no right to cripple the life of her child by
thwarting nature's decrees.

=Detrimental effects.=--The pity of it all is that the child is at the
mercy of the parent, or of the teacher, as the case may be. We become so
eager to have "old heads on young shoulders" that we begrudge the child
the years that are necessary for the shoulders to attain that maturity
of strength that is needful for supporting the "old heads." Then ensues
a lack of balance, and, were all children thus denied their right to the
full period of youth, we should have a distorted civilization. Dickens
inveighs against this curtailment of youth prodigiously, and the marvel
is that we have failed to learn the lesson from his pages. We need not
have recourse to Victor Hugo to know the life of little Cosette, for we
can see her prototype by merely looking about us.

=The child's right to the best.=--As the child has a right to life in
its fullness, so he has a right to all the agencies that can promote
this type of life. If he meets with an accident he has a right to the
best surgical skill that can be secured, and this right we readily
concede; and equally he has a right to the best teacher that money will
secure. If he has a teacher that is less than the best, the time thus
lost can never be restored to him. A lady who had an unskillful teacher
in her first year in the high school now avers that he maimed her for
life in that particular study. Life is such a delicate affair that it
demands expert handling. If we hope to have the child attain his right
to be an intelligent coöperating agent in promoting life in society,
then no price is too great to pay for the expert teaching which will
nurture the sort of life in him that will make him effective.

=The child's native tendencies.=--Then, again, the child has a right to
the exercise of the native tendencies with which he is endowed. In fact,
these tendencies should be the working capital of the teacher, the
starting points in her teaching. There was a time when the teacher
punished the child who was caught drawing pictures on his slate. Happily
that sort of barbarity disappeared, in the main, along with the slate.
The vitalized teacher rejoices in the pictures that the child draws and
turns this tendency to good account. Through this inclination to draw
she finds the real child and so, as the psychologists direct, she begins
where the child is and sets about attaching to this native tendency the
work in nature study, geography, or history. When she discovers a
constructive tendency in the child, she at once uses this in shifting
from analytic to synthetic exercises in the school order. If he enjoys
making things, he will be glad of an opportunity to make devices, or
problems, or maps.

=The play instinct.=--She makes large use, also, of the play instinct
that is one of his native tendencies. This instinct is constantly
reaching out for objects of play. The teacher is quick to note the
child's quest for objects and deftly substitutes some phase of school
work for marbles, balls, or dolls, and his playing proceeds apace
without abatement of zest. The vitalized teacher knows how to attach the
arithmetic to this play instinct and make it a fascinating game. During
the games of arithmetic, geography, history, or spelling, life is at
high tide in her school and the work is thorough in consequence. Work is
relieved of the onus of drudgery whenever it appears in the guise of a
game, and the teacher who has skill in attaching school studies to the
play instinct of the child will make her school effective as well as a
delight to herself and her pupils. In such a plan there is neither place
nor occasion for coercion.

=Self-expression.=--Another right of the child is the right to express
himself. The desire for self-expression is fundamental in the human
mind, as the study of archæology abundantly proves. Since this is true,
every school should be a school of expression if the nature of the child
is to have full recognition. Without expression there is no impression,
and without impression there is no education that has real value. The
more and better expression in the school, therefore, the more and better
the education in that school. In the vitalized school we shall find
freedom of expression, and the absence of unreasoning repression. The
child expresses himself by means of his hands, his feet, his face, his
entire body, and his organs of speech, and his expression through either
of these means gives the teacher a knowledge of what to do. These
expressions may not be what the teacher would wish, but the expression
necessarily precedes intelligent teaching.

=Imagination.=--These expressions may reveal a vivid imagination, but
they are no less valuable as indices of the child's nature on that
account. It is the very refinement of cruelty to try to interdict or
stifle the child's imagination. But for the imagination of people in the
past we should not have the rich treasures of mythology that so delight
us all. Every child with imagination is constructing a mythology of his
own, and from the gossamer threads of fancy is weaving a pattern of life
that no parent or teacher should ever wish to forbid or destroy. Day by
day, he sees visions and dreams dreams, and so builds for himself a
world in which he finds delight and profit. In this world he is king,
and only profane hands would dare attempt to dethrone him.

=The child's experiences.=--His experiences, whether in the real world,
or in this world of fancy, are his capital in the bank of life; and he
has every right to invest this capital so as to achieve further
increments of life. In this enterprise, the teacher is his counselor and
guide, and, in order that she may exercise this function sympathetically
and rationally, she must know the nature and extent of his capital. If
he knows a bird, he may invest this knowledge so as to gain a knowledge
of many birds, and so, in time, compass the entire realm of ornithology.
If he knows a flower, from this known he may be so directed that he may
become a master in the unknown field of botany. If he knows coal, this
experience may be made the open sesame to the realms of geology. In
short, all his experiences may be capitalized under the direction of a
skillful teacher, and made to produce large dividends as an investment
in life.

=Relation to school work.=--Thus the school becomes, for the child, a
place of and for real life, and not a place detached from life. There he
lives effectively, and joyously, because the teacher knows how to
utilize his experiences and native dispositions for the enlargement of
his life. He has no inclination to become a deserter or a tenant, for
life is agreeable there, and the school is made his chief interest. His
work is not doled out to him in the form of tasks, but is graciously
presented as a privilege, and as such he esteems it. There he learns to
live among people of differing tastes and interests without abdicating
his own individuality. There he learns that life is work and that work
is the very quintessence of life.


QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1. How should dividends on school investments be estimated?

2. What are the inherent rights of childhood?

3. What use may be made of play in the education of children?

4. Explain why adults are often unwilling to coöperate through lack of
opportunity to play in childhood.

5. Illustrate from your own knowledge and experience how the exercise of
native tendencies may be the means of education.

6. What modes of self-expression should be used by pupils of elementary
schools? of high schools?

7. What may the vitalized teacher do to assist in the development of
self-expression? What should she refrain from doing?

8. Suggest methods whereby the teacher may discover the content of the
child's world.

9. How may the child's experience, imagination, and expression be
interrelated?

10. Why is the twentieth century called the "age of the child"?




CHAPTER IV

THE CHILD OF THE FUTURE


=Rights of the coming generations.=--Any school procedure that limits
its interests and activities to the present generation takes a too
restricted view of the real scope of education. The children of the next
generation, and the next, are entitled to consideration if education is
to do its perfect work and have complete and convincing justification.
The child of the future has a right to grandfathers and grandmothers of
sound body and sound mind, and the schools and homes of the present are
charged with the responsibility of seeing to it that this right is
vouchsafed to him. In actual practice our plans seem not to previse
grandfathers and grandmothers, and stop short even of fathers and
mothers. The child of the next generation has a right to a father and a
mother of untainted blood, and neither the home nor the school can
ignore this right.

=Transmitted weaknesses.=--If these rights are not scrupulously
respected by the present generation, the child of the future may come
into the world under a handicap that all the educational agencies
combined can neither remove nor materially mitigate. If he is crippled
in mind or in body because of excesses on the part of his progenitors,
the schools and hospitals may help him through life in a sorry sort of
fashion, but his condition is evermore a reminder to him of how much he
has missed in comparison with the child of sound body and mind. If such
a child does not imprecate even the memory of the ancestors whose
vitiated blood courses through his stricken body, it will be because his
mind is too weak to reason from effect to cause or because his
affliction has taught him large charity. He will feel that he has been
shamefully cheated in the great game of life, with no hope of
restitution. By reason of this, his gaze is turned backward instead of
forward, and this is a reversal of the rightful attitude of child life.
Instead of looking forward with hope and happiness, he droops through a
somber life and constantly broods upon what might have been.

=Attitude of ancestors.=--Whether he realizes it or not, he reduces the
average of humanity and is a burden upon society both in a negative and
in a positive sense. In him society loses a worker and gains a
dependent. Every taxpayer of the community must contribute to the
support which he is unable to provide for himself. He watches other
children romp and play and laugh; but he neither romps, nor plays, nor
laughs. He is inert. Some ancestor chained him to the rock, and the
vultures of disease and unhappiness are feeding at his vitals. He asks
for bread, and they give him a stone; he asks for life, and they give
him a living death; he asks for a heaven of delight, and they give him a
hell of despair. He has a right to freedom, but, in place of that, he is
forced into slavery of body and soul to pay the debts of his
grandfather. Nor can he pay these debts in full, but must, perforce,
pass them on to his own children. Sad to relate, the father and
grandfather look upon such a child and charge Providence with unjust
dealing in burdening them with such an imperfect scion to uphold the
family name. They seem blind to the patent truth before them; they seem
unable to interpret the law of cause and effect; they charge the
Almighty and the child with their own defections; they acquit themselves
of any responsibility for what is before their eyes.

=Hospitals cited.=--Our hospitals for abnormal and subnormal children,
and our eleemosynary institutions, in general, are a sad commentary upon
our civilization and something of a reflection upon the school as an
exponent of and a teacher of life. If the wards of these institutions,
barring the victims of accidents, are the best we can do in the way of
coming upon a solution of the problem of life, neither society nor the
school has any special warrant for exultation. These defectives did not
just happen. The law of life is neither fortuitous nor capricious. On
the contrary, like begets like, and the law is immutable. With lavish
hand, society provides the pound of cure but gives only superficial
consideration to the ounce of prevention. The title of education will be
cloudy until such time as these institutions have become a thing of the
past. Both pulpit and press extol the efforts of society to build,
equip, and maintain these institutions, and that is well; but, with all
that, we are merely trying to make the best of a bad situation.
Education will not fully come into its own until it takes into the scope
of its interests the child of the future as well as the child of the
present; not until it comes to regard the children of the present as
future ancestors as well as future citizens.

=The child as a future ancestor.=--If the children of the future are to
prove a blessing to society and not a burden, then the children of the
present need to become fully conscious of their responsibilities as
agencies in bringing to pass this desirable condition. If the teacher or
parent can, somehow, cause the boy of to-day to visualize his own
grandson, in the years to come, pointing the finger of scorn at him and
calling down maledictions upon him because of a taint in the family
blood, that picture will persist in his consciousness, and will prove a
deterrent factor in his life. The desire for immortality is innate in
every human breast, we are taught, but certainly no boy will wish to
achieve that sort of immortality. He will not consider with complacency
the possibility of his becoming a pariah in the estimation of his
descendants, and will go far in an effort to avert such a misfortune.
There is no man but will shudder when he contemplates the possibility of
having perpetuated upon his gravestone or in the memory of his
grandchild the word "Unclean."

=The heart of the problem.=--Here we arrive at the very heart of the
problem that confronts the home and the school. We may close our eyes,
or look another way, but the problem remains. We may not be able to
solve it, but we cannot evade it. Each day it calls loudly to every
parent and every teacher for a solution. The health and happiness of the
coming generations depend upon the right education of the present one,
and this responsibility the home and the school can neither shirk nor
shift. We take great unction to ourselves for the excellence of the
horses, pigs, and cattle that we have on exhibition at the fairs, but
are silent as to our failures in the form of children, that drag out a
half-life in our hospitals. In one state it costs more to care for the
defectives and unfortunates than to provide schooling facilities for all
the normal children, but this fact is not written into party platforms
nor proclaimed from the stump. In the face of such a fact society seems
to proceed upon the agreeable assumption that the less said the better.

=Misconceptions.=--We temporize with the fundamental situation by the
use of such soporifics as the expressions "necessary evil" and the like,
but that leaves us exactly at the starting point. Many well-meaning
people use these expressions with great frequency and freedom and seem
to think that in so doing they have given a proof of virtue and public
spirit. It were worthy only of an iconoclast to deprecate or disparage
the legislative attempts to foster clean living. All such efforts are
worthy of commendation; but in sadness it must be confessed that,
laudable as these efforts are, they have not produced results that are
wholly satisfactory. Defectives are still granted licenses to perpetuate
their kind; children still enervate their bodies and minds by the use of
narcotics; and society daintily lifts its skirts as it hurries past the
evil, pretending not to see. Legislation is an attempt to express public
sentiment in statutory form; but public sentiment must precede
legislation if it is to become effective. Efforts have been made through
the process of legislation to deny the granting of marriage licenses to
people who are physically unsound, but the efforts came to naught
because public sentiment has not attained to this plane of thinking.
Hence, we shall not have much help from legislation in solving our
problem, until public sentiment has been educated.

=The responsibility of the school.=--This education must come, in large
part, through the schools, but even these will fail until they come into
a full realization of the fact that their field of effort is life in the
large. Time was when the teacher thought she was employed to teach
geography, grammar, and arithmetic. Then she enlarged this to include
boys and girls. And now she needs to make another addition and realize
that her function is to teach boys and girls the subject of Life, using
the branches of study as a means to this end. In a report on the work of
the schools at Gary, Indiana, the statement is made that the first
purpose of these schools seems to be to produce efficient workers for
the mills. This seems to savor of the doctrine of educational
foreordination, and would make millwork and life synonymous. Life is
larger than any mill. We may be justified in educating one horse for the
plow and another for the race track, but this justification rests upon
the fact that horses are assets and not liabilities.

=Clean living.=--Clean living in this generation will, undeniably,
project itself into the next, and we have only to see to it that all the
activities of the school function in clean living in the child of
to-day, and we shall surely be safeguarding the interests of the child
of the future. But clean living means more than mere externals. The
daily bath, pure food, fresh air, and sanitary conditions are essential
but not sufficient in themselves. Clean thinking, right motives, and a
high respect for the rights and interests of the future must enter into
the scheme of life. There must be no devious ways, no back alleys, in
the scheme, but only the broad highway of life, open always to the
sunlight and to the gaze of all mankind. All this must become thoroughly
enmeshed in the social consciousness and in the daily practice of every
individual, before the school can lay claim to success in the art of
teaching efficient living.


QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1. Investigate the following agencies as means for providing future
generations with ancestors of untainted blood: legislation; moral
education; physical education; sex hygiene and eugenics; penal
institutions; medical science.

2. Enumerate some of the physical and mental handicaps of the child who
is not well born.

3. What powerful appeal for clean living may be made to the adolescent
youth?

4. As a concrete example of children being punished for the sins of
their fathers even unto the third and fourth generation, read the
history of the Juke family.

5. To what extent does the school share the responsibility for the
improvement of the physical and moral quality of the children of the
future?

6. What kind of teaching is needed to meet this responsibility?

7. Reliable authorities have estimated that 60 per cent or 12,000,000 of
the school children of America are suffering from removable physical
defects; that 93 per cent of the school children of the country have
defective teeth; and that on the average the health of children who are
not in attendance at school is better than that of those who are in
school. In the light of these facts discuss the failure or success of
our schools in providing fit material for efficient citizenship.




CHAPTER V

THE TEACHER-POLITICIAN


=The politician defined.=--The politician has been defined as one who
makes a careful study of the wants of his community and is diligent in
his efforts to supply these wants. This definition has, at the very
least, the merit of mitigating, if not removing, the stigma that
attaches to politicians in the popular thought. Conceding the
correctness of this definition, it must be evident that society is the
beneficiary of the work of the politician, and would be the gainer if
the number of politicians were multiplied. The motive of self-interest
lies back of all human activities, and education is constantly striving
to stimulate and accentuate this motive. Even in altruism we may find an
admixture of self-interest. The merchant who arranges his goods
artistically may hope by this means to win more patronage, but, aside
from this, he wins a feeling of gratification. His self-interest may
look either toward a greater volume of business or to a better class of
patrons, or both. While he is enlarging the scope of his business, he
may be elevating the taste of his customers. In either case his
self-interest is commendable. A successful merchant is better for the
community than an unsuccessful one.

=Self-interest.=--The physician is actuated by the motive of
self-interest, also. His years of training are but a preparation for the
competition that is certain to fall to his lot. He is gratified at the
increase of his popularity as a successful practitioner. But he
prescribes modes of living as well as remedies, and so tries to
forestall and prevent disease, while he is exercising his curative
skill. He tries not only to restore health, but also to promote good
health in the community by his recommendations of pure food, pure water,
fresh air, and exercise. His motives are altruistic even while he is
consulting self-interest. None but the censorious will criticize the
minister for accepting a larger parish even with a larger salary
attached. The larger parish will afford him a wider field for
usefulness, and the larger salary will enable him to execute more of his
laudable plans.

=The methods of the politician.=--Hence it will be seen that, in the
right sense, merchants, physicians, and ministers are all politicians in
that they seek to expand the sphere of their activities. Like the
politician they study the wants of the people in order to win a starting
point for leadership. True, there are quacks, charlatans, hypocrites,
and demagogues, but none of these, nor all combined, avail to disprove
the validity of the principle. It has often been said that the churches
would do well to study and use the art of advertising that is so well
understood by the saloons. This is another way of saying that the
methods of the politician will avail in promoting right activities as
well as wrong ones. The politician, whether he is a business man or a
professional man, proceeds from the known to the related unknown, and
thus shows himself a conscious or unconscious student of psychology. He
studies that which is in order to promote that which should be.

=Leadership.=--The politician aspires to leadership, and that is
praiseworthy, provided his cause is a worthy one. If the cause is
unworthy, the cloven foot will soon appear and repudiation will ensue,
which will mark him unsuccessful as a politician. He may be actuated by
the motive of self-interest, in common with all others, but this
interest may focus in the amelioration of conditions as they are or in
the advancement of his friends. The satisfaction of leadership is the
sole reward of many a politician, with the added pleasure of seeing his
friends profit by this leadership. A statesman is a politician grown
large--large in respect to motives, to plans and purposes, and to
methods. The fundamental principle, however, remains constant.

=The politician worthy of imitation.=--The successful politician must
know people and their wants. He must know conditions in order to direct
the course of his activities. Otherwise, he will find himself moving at
random, and this may prove disastrous to his purposes. Much misdirected
effort has been expended in disparaging the politician and his methods.
If the man and his methods were better understood, they would often be
found worthy of close imitation in the home, in the school, in the
church, in the professions, and in business.

=Education and substitution.=--Education, in the large, is the process
of making substitutions. Evermore, in school work, we are striving to
substitute something better for something not so good. In brief, we are
striving to substitute needs for wants. But before we can do this we
must determine, by careful study and close observation, what the wants
are. Ability to substitute needs for wants betokens a high type of
leadership. The boy wants to read Henty, but needs to read Dickens or
Shakespeare. How shall the teacher proceed in order to make the
substitution? Certainly it cannot be done by any mere fiat or ukase.
Those who are incredulous as to the wisdom of establishing colleges of
education and normal schools to generate and promote methods of teaching
have here a concrete and pertinent question: Can a college of education
or normal school give to an embryo teacher any method by which she may
effectively substitute Shakespeare for Henty?

=Methods contrasted.=--Some teachers have attempted to make this
substitution by means of ridicule and sarcasm and then called the boy
stupid because he continued to read his Henty. Others have indulged in
rhapsodies on Shakespeare, hoping to inoculate the boy with the
Shakespearean virus, and then called the boy stolid because he failed to
share their apparent rapture. The politician would have pursued neither
of these plans. His inherent or acquired psychology would have
admonished him to begin where the boy is. He would have gone to Henty to
find the boy. Having found him, he would have sat down beside him and
entered into his interest in the book. In time he would have found
something in the book to remind him of a passage in Shakespeare. This
passage he would have read in his best style and then resumed the
reading of Henty. Thus, by degrees, he would have effected the
substitution, permitting the boy to think that this had been done on his
own initiative.

=The principle illustrated.=--The vitalized teacher observes, profits
by, and initiates into her work the method of the politician and so
makes her school work vital. Beginning with what the boy wants, she
lures him along, by easy stages, until she has brought him within the
circle of her own wants, which are, in reality, the needs of the boy.
The boy walks along in paces, let us say, of eighteen inches. The
teacher moderates her gait to harmonize with his, but gradually
lengthens her paces to two feet. At first, she kept step with him; now
he is keeping step with her and finds the enterprise an exhilarating
adventure. She is teaching the boy to walk in strides two feet in
length, and begins with his native tendency to step eighteen inches.
Thus she begins where the boy is, by acquainting herself with his wants,
attaches her teaching to his native tendencies, and then proceeds from
the known to the related unknown. Libraries abound in books that explain
lucidly this simple elementary principle of teaching, but many teachers
still seem to find it difficult of application.

=Substitution illustrated.=--This method of substitution becomes the
rule of the school through the skill of the vitalized teacher. The lily
of the valley is substituted for the sunflower, in the children's
esteem, and there is generated a taste for the exquisite. The copy of
the masterpiece of art supplants the bizarre chromo; correct forms of
speech take the place of incorrect forms; the elegant usurps the place
of the inelegant; and the inartistic gives place to the artistic. The
circle of their wants is extended until it includes their needs, and
these, in turn, are transformed into wants. Thus all the pupils ascend
to a higher level of appreciation of the things that make for a more
comfortable and agreeable civilization. They work under the spell of
leadership, for real leadership always inspires confidence.

=Society and the school.=--At its best, society is but an enlarged copy
of the vitalized school. Or, to put it in another way, the vitalized
school is society in miniature. As the school is engaged in the work of
making substitutions, so, in fact, is society. Legislative bodies are
striving to substitute wise laws for the laws that have fallen behind
the needs of the times, that the interests of society may be fully
conserved. The church is substituting better methods of work in all its
activities for the methods that have become antiquated or ineffective.
This it does in the hope that its influence may be broadened and
deepened. Ministers and officials are constantly pondering the question
of substitutions. The farmer is substituting better methods of tilling
the soil for the methods that were in vogue in a former time before
science had invaded the realms of agriculture, to the end that he may
increase the yield of his fields, make larger contributions to commerce,
increase his profits, and so be better able to gratify some of the
higher desires of his nature.

=The automobile factory.=--Each successive model in an automobile
factory is a concrete illustration of the process of making
substitutions, and each substituted part bears witness to a close
scrutiny of past experiences as well as of the wants of prospective
purchasers. The self-starter was a want at first; but now it is a need,
and, therefore, a necessity. If the school would but make as careful
study of the boy's experiences and his wants as the manufacturer does in
the case of automobiles, and then would attach the substitutions to
these experiences and wants, the boy would very soon find himself in
happy possession of a self-starter which would prove to be the very
crown of school work. The automobile manufacturer is both a psychologist
and a politician.

=Results of substitutions.=--As a result of substitutions we have better
roads, better houses, better laws, cleaner streets, better fences,
better machinery, more sanitary conditions, and a higher type of
conduct. We step to a higher level upon the experiences of the past and
make substitutions as we move upward. The progress of civilization is
measured by the character of these substitutions and the rapidity with
which they are made. The people on the Isle of Marken make but few
substitutions, and these only at long intervals, and so they are looked
upon as curiosities among humans. In all our missionary enterprises we
are endeavoring to persuade the peoples among whom we are working to
make substitutions. Instead of their own, we would have them accept our
books, our styles of clothing, our plans of government, our modes of
living, our means of transportation, and, in short, our standards of
life. But, first of all, we must learn their standards of life;
otherwise we cannot proceed intelligently or effectively in the line of
substitutions. We must know their language before we can teach them
ours, and we must translate our books into their language before we can
hope to substitute our books for theirs. All the substitutions we hope
to make presuppose a knowledge of their wants. Hence the methods of the
missionary bear a close analogy to the methods of the politician.

=The Idealist.=--This is equally true of the vitalized teacher. She is a
practical idealist. In the words of the poet, her reach is beyond her
grasp, and this proclaims her an idealist. In her capacity as a
politician she makes a close study of the wants of her constituents,
both pupils and parents, and so learns how best to articulate school
work with the interests of the community. She does not hold aloof from
her pupils or their homes, but studies them at close range, as do the
missionary and the politician. She lives among them and so learns their
language and their modes of thinking and living. Only so can she come
into sympathetic relations with them and be of greatest service to them
in promoting right substitutions. She finds one boy surcharged with the
instinct of pugnacity. This tendency manifests itself both in school and
at home. Her own conclusions are ratified by the parents. He wants to
fight. His whole nature cries aloud for battle. In such a case, neither
repression nor suppression will avail. So she attaches a phase of school
work to this native disposition and gives his pugnacious instinct a fair
field.

=An example.=--Enlisting him as her champion in a tournament, she pits
against him a doughty antagonist in the form of a problem in arithmetic.
In tones of encouragement she gives the signal and the fight is on. The
boy pummels that problem as he would belabor a schoolmate on the
playground. His whole being is focused upon the adventure. And when he
has won his meed of praise, he feels himself a real champion. The
teacher merely substituted mind for hands in the contest and so fell in
with his notion that fighting is quite right if only the cause is a
worthy one. He is quick to see the distinction and so makes the
substitution with alacrity and with no loss of self-respect. Ever after
he disdains the vulgar brawl and does not lose the fighting instinct.
Thus the vitalized teacher by knowing how to make substitutions wins for
society a valiant champion. If we multiply this example, we shall
readily see how such a teacher-politician deserves the distinction of
being termed a practical idealist.


QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1. Distinguish the following terms: demagogue; politician; statesman;
and practical idealist.

2. Subject to what limitations should a successful teacher be a
politician?

3. Enumerate the qualities of a successful politician that teachers
should possess.

4. How does the author define education? Criticize this definition.

5. What resemblances has the process of education to the evolution of
machinery? to the evolution of biological species?

6. Describe methods by which the tactful teacher may secure helpful
substitutions in the child's life.

7. In what respects does society resemble a vitalized school?

8. Illustrate how teachers may utilize for the education of the child
seemingly harmful instincts.




CHAPTER VI

SUBLIME CHAOS


=Acquisitiveness.=--In fancy, at least, we may attain a position over
and far above the city of London and from this vantage-place, with the
aid of strong glasses, watch a panorama that is both entrancing and
bewildering. The scene bewilders not alone by its scope, but still more
by its complexity. The scene is a shifting one, too, never the same in
two successive minutes. Here is Trafalgar Square, with its noble
monument and the guardian lions, reminding us of Nelson in what is
accounted one of the most heroic naval engagements recorded in history.
As we look, we reconstitute the scene, far away, in which he was
conspicuous, and reread in our books his stirring appeal to his men.
Thence we glance up Regent Street and see it thronged with equipages
that betoken wealth and luxury. Richly dressed people in great numbers
are moving to and fro and giving color to the picture. A shabby garb
cannot be made to fit into this picture. When it appears, there is
discord in the general harmony. All this motion must have motives behind
it somewhere; but we can only conjecture the motives. We have only
surface indications to guide us in our quest for these. But we are
reasonably certain that these people are animated by the instinct of
acquisition. They seem to want to get things, and so come where things
are to be had.

=Desires for things intangible.=--There are miles of vehicles of many
kinds wending their tortuous, sinuous ways in and out along streets that
radiate hither and thither. They stay their progress for a moment and
people emerge at Robinson's, at Selfridge's, at Liberty's. Each of these
is the Mecca of a thousand desires, and faces beam with pleasure when
they reappear. Some desire has evidently been gratified. Others alight
at the National Gallery and enter its doors. When they come forth it is
obvious that something happened to them inside that building. The lines
of care on their faces are not so evident, and their step is more
elastic and buoyant. Their desires did not have tangible things as their
objectives as in the case of the people who entered the shops for
merchandise, but their faces shine with a new light and, therefore,
their quest must have been successful. As we look, we realize that
desires for intangible things may be as acute as for tangible ones, and
that the gratification of these desires produces equal satisfaction.

=Westminster Abbey.=--Not far away other throngs are invading
Westminster Abbey. In those historic and hallowed precincts they are
communing with the Past, the Present, and the Future. All about them is
the sacred dust of those who once wrought effectively in affairs of
state and in the realm of letters. History and literature have their
shrine there, and these people are worshipers at that shrine. All about
them are reminders of the Past, while the worshipers before the Cross
direct their thoughts to the Future. Earth and Heaven both send forth an
invitation for supreme interest in their thoughts and feelings. History
and literature call to them to emulate the achievements whose monuments
they see about them, while the Cross admonishes them that these
achievements are but temporal. Here they experience a fulfillment of
their desires. Their knowledge is broadened, and their faith is lifted
up. The Past thrills them; the Future inspires them; and thus the
Present is far more worth while.

=House of Parliament.=--Across the way is Parliament, and this conjures
up a long train of events of vast import. The currents that flow out
from this power-house have encircled the globe. Here conquests have been
planned that electrified nations. Here have been generated vast armies
and navies as messengers of Desire. Here have been voted vast treasures
in execution of the desires of men for territorial extension and
national aggrandizement. These halls have resounded with the eloquence
of men who were striving to inoculate other men with the virus of their
desires; and the whole world has stood on tiptoe awaiting the issue of
this eloquence. Momentous scenes have been enacted here, all emanating
from the desires of men, and these scenes have touched the lives of
untold millions of people.

=Commerce.=--We see the Thames near by, teeming with ships from the
uttermost corners of the earth, and we think of commerce. We use the
word glibly, but no mind is able to comprehend its full import. We know
that these ships ply the seas, bearing food and clothing to the peoples
who live far away, but when we attempt to estimate the magnitude of
commerce, the mind confesses to itself that the problem is too great. We
may multiply the number of ships by their tonnage, but we get, in
consequence, an array of figures so great that they cease to have any
meaning for the finite mind. The best and most that they can do for us
is to make us newly aware that the people who dwell in the jungles of
Africa, who roam the pampas of South America, who climb the Alps, the
Rockies, the Andes, and the Himalayas, all have desires that these ships
are striving to gratify.

=Social intercourse.=--Going up the river to Hampton Court we see people
out for a holiday. There are house-boats with elaborate and artistic
fittings and furnishings, and other craft of every sort that luxury can
suggest. One could imagine that none but fairies could stage such a
scene. The blending of colors, the easy dalliance, the rippling
laughter, the graceful feasting, and the eddying wavelets all conspire
to produce a scene that serves to emphasize the beauty of the shores.
Underneath this enchanting scene of variegated beauty we discover the
fundamental fact that man is a gregarious animal, that he not only
craves association with his kind but that playing with them brings him
into more harmonious communion with them. In their play they meet upon
the plane of a common purpose and are thus unified in spirit. Hence, all
this beauty and gayety is serving a beneficent purpose in the way of
gratifying the inherent desire of mankind for social intercourse.

=The travel instinct.=--At Charing Cross the commerce drama is
reënacted, only here with trains instead of boats, and, mainly, people
instead of merchandise. Here we see hurry and bustle, and hear the
shriek of the engine and the warning blast of the guard. Trains are
going out, trains are coming in. When the people step out upon the
platforms, they seem to know exactly whither they are bound. There are
porters all about to help them achieve their desires, and cabs stand
ready at the curb to do their bidding. Here is human commerce, and the
trains are the answer to the call of the human family to see their own
and other lands. These trains are swifter and more agreeable for nomads
than the camel of the desert or the Conestoga wagon of the prairie. The
nomadic instinct pulls and pushes people away from their own door-yards;
hence railways, trains, engines, air brakes, telegraph lines, wireless
apparatuses, and all the many other devices that the mind of man has
designed at the behest of this desire to roam about.

=Monuments.=--Further down the Thames we see Greenwich, which regulates
the clocks for the whole world, and furnishes the sea captain the
talisman by which he may know where he is. Over against St. Paul's is
the Bank of England, which for long years ruled the finances of the
world. Yonder is the Museum, the conservator of the ages. There is the
Rosetta Stone, which is the gateway of history; there the Elgin Marbles,
which proclaim the glory of the Greece that was; there the palimpsests
which recall an age when men had time to think; and there the books of
all time by means of which we can rethink the big thoughts of men long
since gone from sight. There are things that men now call curiosities
that mark the course of minds in their struggles toward the light; and
there are the sentiments of lofty souls that will live in the hearts of
men long after these giant stones have crumbled.

=Desire for pastoral beauty.=--Beyond the city, in the alluring country
places, we see a landscape that delights the senses, ornate with hedges,
flowers, vine-clad cottages, highways of surpassing smoothness, fertile
fields, and thrifty flocks and herds. There are carts and wagons on the
roads bearing the products of field and garden to the marts of trade.
Men, women, and children zealously ply the hoe, the plow, or the shovel,
abetting Nature in her efforts to feed the hungry. In this pastoral
scene there is dignity, serenity, and latent power. Its beauty answers
back to the æsthetic nature of mankind, and nothing that is artificial
can ever supplant it in the way of gratifying man's desire for the
beautiful.

=Economic articulation.=--Through all the diversified phases of this
panorama there runs a fundamental principle of unity. There are no
collisions. In the economy of civilization the farmer is coördinate with
the artist, the artisan, and the tradesman. But, if all men were
farmers, the economic balance would be disturbed. The railroad engineer
is major because he is indispensable. So, also, is the farmer, the
legislator, the artist, and the student. There is a degree of
interdependence that makes for economic harmony. The articulation of all
the parts gives us an economic whole.

=Aspirations.=--This panorama is a picture of life; and the school is
life. Hence the panorama and the school are identical; only the school
is larger than the panorama, even though the picture is reduced in size
to fit the frame of the school. The pupils in the school have dreams and
aspirations that reach far beyond the limits of the picture of our
fancy. And all these aspirations are a part of life and so are
indigenous in the vitalized school. And woe betide the teacher who would
abridge or repress these dreams and aspirations. They are the very warp
and woof of life, and the teacher who would eliminate them would
suppress life itself. That teacher is in sorry business who would fit
her pupils out with mental or spiritual strait-jackets, or mold them to
some conventional pattern, even though it be her own. These pupils are
the prototypes of the people in our panorama, and are, therefore,
animated by like inclinations and desires.

=Desire is fundamental.=--Here is a boy who is hungry; he desires food.
But so does the man who is passing along the street. The man is focusing
all his mental powers upon the problem of how he shall procure food. The
man's problem is the boy's problem and each has a right to a solution of
his problem. The school's business is to help the boy solve his problem
and not to try to quench his desire for food or try to persuade him that
no such desire exists. This desire is one of the native dispositions to
which the work of the school is to attach itself. Desires are
fundamental in the scheme of education, the very tentacles that will lay
hold upon the school activities and render them effective. The teacher's
large task is to strengthen and nourish incipient desires and to cause
the pupil to hunger and thirst after the means of gratifying them.

=Innate tendencies.=--Each pupil has a right to his inherent
individuality. The school should not only begin where the boy is, but
should begin its work upon what he is. Only so can it direct him toward
what he ought to be. If the boy would alight at the National Gallery in
order to regale himself with the masterpieces of art, why, pray, should
the teacher try to curtail this desire and force him into Westminster
Abbey? If she will accompany him into the Gallery and prove herself his
friend and guide among the treasures of art, she will, doubtless,
experience the joy of hearing him ask her to be his companion through
the Abbey later on. The Abbey is quite right in its way and the boy must
visit it soon or late, but to this particular boy the Gallery comes
first and he should be led to the Abbey by way of the Gallery. In school
work the parties are all personally conducted, but the rule is that a
party is composed of but one person.

=Illustration.=--The girl is not to be condemned because she desires to
visit the Selfridge shop rather than the Museum. The teacher may
rhapsodize upon the Museum to the limit of her strength, but the girl is
thinking of the beautiful fabrics to be seen at the shop, and,
especially, of the delicious American ice cream that can be had nowhere
else in London. It is rather a poor teacher who cannot lead the girl to
the British Museum by way of Selfridge's. If the teacher finds the task
difficult, she would do well to traverse the route a few times in
advance. The ice cream will help rather than hinder when they stand, at
length, before the Rosetta Stone or read the original letter to Mrs.
Bixby. The store and the Museum are both in the picture, and the teacher
must determine which should come first in the itinerary of this girl.
The native dispositions and desires will point out the way to the
teacher.

The old-time schoolmaster was fond of setting as a copy in the
old-fashioned copy book "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy";
but, later, when he caught Jack playing he gave him a flogging, thus
proving himself both inconsistent and deficient in a knowledge of
psychology and fair play. If we are going to Greenwich we shall save
time by taking the longer journey by way of Hampton Court. As we disport
ourselves amid the beauties and gayeties of the Court we can prolong our
pleasures by anticipating Greenwich, and so make our play the anteroom
of our work.

=Variety in excellence.=--In the vitalized school we shall find each
pupil eager in his quest of food for the hunger he feels, and the
teacher rejoicing in the development of his individuality. She would not
have all her pupils attain the same level even of excellence. They are
different, and she would have them so. Nor would she have her school
exemplify the kind of order that is to be found in a gallery of statues.
Her school is a place of life, eager, yearning, pulsating life, and not
a place of dead and deadening silence. Her pupils have diversified
tastes and desires and, in consequence, diversified activities, but work
is the golden cord that binds them in a healthy and healthful unity.
This is sublime chaos, a busy, happy throng, all working at full
strength at tasks that are worth while, and all animated by hopes and
aspirations that reach out to the very limits of space.


QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1. What may the school do to give helpful direction and needed
modifications to the instinct of acquisition?

2. The ultimate ends of education are more efficient production and more
intelligent consumption. How and by what means may the school bring
about a more intelligent choice of tangible and intangible things?

3. What hint may the teacher of geography receive from the brief
description of London's points of interest?

4. Compare a vitalized school with the panorama of London.

5. To what extent must individual differences be recognized by the
teacher in the recitation? in discipline?

6. Suggest means whereby pupils may be induced to spend their evenings
with Dickens, Eliot, Macaulay, or Irving in preference to the "movies."




CHAPTER VII

DEMOCRACY


=A conflict.=--There was a fight on a railway train--a terrific fight.
The conductor and two other Americans were battling against ten or more
foreigners. These foreigners had come aboard the train at a mining town
en route to the city for a holiday. The train had hardly got under way,
after the stop, when the fight was on. The battle raged back and forth
from one car to the other across the platform amid the shouts and
cursing of men and the screams of women. Bloody faces attested the
intensity of the conflict. One foreigner was knocked from the train, but
no account was taken of him. The train sped on and the fight continued.
Nor did its violence abate until the train reached the next station,
where the conductor summoned reënforcements and invoked the majesty of
the law in the form of an officer. The affray, from first to last, was
most depressing and gave to the unwilling witness a feeling that
civilization is something of a misnomer and that men are inherently
ferocious.

=Misconceptions.=--More mature reflection, however, served to modify
this judgment, and the application of some philosophy resolved the
distressing combat into a relatively simple proposition. The conductor
and his assistants were fighting for their conception of order, and
their opponents were fighting for their conception of manhood. Reduced
to its primal elements, the fight was the result of a dual
misconception. The conductor was battling to vindicate his conception of
order; the foreigners were battling to vindicate their conception of the
rights of men in a democracy. Neither party to the contest understood
the other, and each one felt himself to be on the defensive. Neither one
would have confessed himself the aggressor, and yet each one was
invading the supposed rights of the other. Judicial consideration could
readily have averted the whole distressing affair.

=Foreign concept of democracy.=--The foreigners had come to our country
with roseate dreams of democracy. To their conception, this is the land
where every man is the equal of every other man; where equal rights and
privileges are vouchsafed to all men without regard to nationality,
position, or possessions; where there is no faintest hint of the caste
system; and where there are no possible lines of demarcation. Their
disillusionment on that train was swift and severe, and the observer
could not but wonder what was their conception of a democracy as they
walked about the streets of the city or gave attention to their bruised
faces. Their dreams of freedom and equal rights must have seemed a
mockery. They must have felt that they had been lured into a trap by
some agency of cruelty and injustice. After such an experience they must
have been unspeakably homesick for their native land.

="Melting pot."=--Their primary trouble arose from the fact that they
had not yet achieved democracy, but had only a hazy theoretical
conception of its true meaning. Nor did the conductor give them any
assistance. On the contrary he pushed them farther away into the realm
of theory, and rendered them less susceptible to the influence of the
feeling for democracy. Before these foreigners can become thoroughly
assimilated they must know this feeling by experience; and until this
experience is theirs they cannot live comfortably or harmoniously in our
democracy. To do this effectively is one of the large tasks that
confront the American school and society as a whole. If we fail here,
the glory of democracy will be dimmed. All Americans share equally in
the responsibility of this task. The school, of course, must assume its
full share of this responsibility if it would fully deserve the name of
melting pot.

=Learning democracy.=--Meeting this responsibility worthily is not the
simple thing that many seem to conceive it to be. If it were, then any
discussion appertaining to the teaching of democracy would be
superfluous. This subject of democracy is, in fact, the most difficult
subject with which the school has to do, and by far the most important.
Its supreme importance is due to the fact that all the pupils expect to
live in a democracy, and, unless they learn democracy, life cannot
attain to its maximum of agreeableness for them nor can they make the
largest possible contributions to the well-being of society. It has been
said that the seventeenth century saw Versailles; the eighteenth century
saw the Earth; and the nineteenth century saw Humanity. Then the very
pertinent question is asked, "Which century will see Life?" We who love
our country and our form of government fondly hope that we may be the
first to see Life, and, if this privilege falls to our lot, we must come
to see life through the medium of democracy.

=The vitalized school a democracy.=--Life seems to be an abstract
something to many people, but it must become concrete before they can
really see it as it is. Democracy is a means, therefore, of transforming
abstract life into concrete life, and so we are to come into a fuller
comprehension of life through the gateway of democracy. The vitalized
school is a laboratory of life and, at the same time, it is the most
nearly perfect exemplification of democracy. The nearer its approach to
perfection in exemplifying the spirit and workings of a democracy, the
larger service it renders society. If the outflow from the school into
society is a high quality of democracy, the general tone of society will
be improved. If society deteriorates, the school may not be wholly at
fault, but it evidently is unable to supply to society reënforcement in
such quantity and of such quality as will keep the level up to normal.

=Responsibility of the individual.=--In society each individual raises
or lowers the level of democracy according to what he is and does. The
idler fails to make any contributions to the well-being of society and
thus lowers the average of citizenship. The trifler and dawdler lower
the level of democracy by reason of their inefficiency. They may
exercise their right to vote but fail to exercise their right to act the
part of efficient citizens. If all citizens emulated their example,
democracy would become inane and devitalized. Tramps, burglars,
feeble-minded persons, and inebriates lower the level of democracy
because of their failure to render their full measure of service, and
because, in varying degrees, they prey upon the resources of society and
thus add to its burdens. Self-reliance, self-support, self-respect, as
well as voting, are among the rights that all able-bodied citizens must
exercise before democracy can come into its rightful heritage.

=The function of the school.=--All this and much more the schools must
teach effectively so that it shall be thoroughly enmeshed in the social
consciousness or their output will reveal a lack of those qualities that
make for the larger good of democratic society. Democracy must be
grooved into habits of thought and action or the graduates of the
schools will fall short of achieving the highest plane of living in the
community. They will not be in harmony with their environment, and
friction will ensue, which will reduce, in some degree, the level of
democracy. Hence, the large task of the school is to inculcate the habit
of democracy with all that the term implies. Twelve years are none too
long for this important work, even under the most favorable conditions
and under the direction of the most skillful teaching. Indeed, civic
economy will be greatly enhanced if, in the twelve years, the schools
accomplish this one big purpose.

=Manifestations of democratic spirit.=--We may not be able to resolve
democracy into its constituent elements, but the spirit that is attuned
to democracy is keenly alive to its manifestations. The spirit so
attuned is quick to detect any slightest discord in the democratic
harmony. This is especially true in the school democracy. A discordant
note affects the entire situation and militates against effective
procedure. In the school democracy we look for a series and system of
compromises,--for a yielding of minor matters that major ones may be
achieved. We look for concessions that will make for the comfort and
progress of the entire body, and we experience disappointment if we fail
to discover some pleasure in connection with these concessions. We
expect to see good will banishing selfishness and every semblance of
monopoly. We expect to find every pupil glad to share the time and
strength of the teacher with his fellows even to the point of
generosity, and to find joy in so doing. We expect to find each pupil
eager to deposit all his attainments and capabilities as assets of the
school and to find his chief joy in the success of all that the school
represents.

=Obstacles in the path.=--But it is far easier to depict democracy than
to teach it. In fact, the teacher is certain to encounter obstacles, and
many of these have their source in American homes. Indeed, some of the
most fertile sources of discord in the school may be traced to a
misconception of democracy on the part of the home. One of these
misconceptions is a species of anarchy, which appropriates to itself the
gentler name of democracy. But, none the less, it is anarchy. It
disdains all law and authority, treads under foot the precepts of the
home and the school, flouts the counsels of parents and teachers, and is
self-willed, obstinate, and defiant. Democracy obeys the law; anarchy
scorns it. Democracy respects the rights of others, anarchy overrides
them. Democracy exalts good will; anarchy exalts selfishness. Democracy
respects the Golden Rule; anarchy respects nothing, not even itself.

=Anarchy.=--When this spirit of anarchy gains access to the school, it
is not easily eradicated for the reason that the home is loath to
recognize it as anarchy, and resents any such implication on the part of
the school. The father may be quite unable to exercise any control over
the boy, but he is reluctant to admit the fact to the teacher. Such a
boy is an anarchist and no sophistry can gloss the fact. What he needs
is a liberal application of monarchy to fit him for democracy. He should
read the Old Testament as a preparation for an appreciative perusal of
the New Testament. If the home cannot generate in him due respect for
constituted authority, then the school must do so, or he will prove a
menace to society and become a destructive rather than a constructive
agency. Here we have a tense situation. Anarchy is running riot in the
home; the home is arrayed against the attempts of the school to correct
the disorder; and Democracy is standing expectant to see what will be
done.

=Snobbery.=--Scarcely less inimical to democracy than anarchy is
snobbery. The former is violent, while the latter is insidious. Both
poison the source of the stream of democracy. If the home instills into
the minds of children the notion of inherent superiority, they will
carry this into the school and it will produce a discord. A farmer and a
tenant had sons of the same age. These lads played together, never
thinking of superiority or inferiority. Now the son of the tenant is
president of one of the great universities, and the son of the
proprietor is a janitor in one of the buildings of that university.
Democracy presents to view many anomalies, and the school age is quite
too early for anything approaching the caste system or snobbery. The
time may come when the rich man's son will consider it an honor to drive
the car for his impecunious classmate.

=Restatement.=--It needs to be repeated, therefore, that democracy is
the most difficult subject which the school is called upon to teach, not
only because it is difficult in itself, but also because of the attitude
of many homes that profess democracy but do not practice it. To the
influence of such homes one may trace the exodus of many children from
the schools. The parents want things done in their way or not at all,
and so withdraw their children to vindicate their own autocracy. They
are willing to profit by democracy but are unwilling to help foster its
growth. They not only lower the level of democracy but even compel their
children to lower it still more. The teacher may yearn for the children
and the children for the teacher, but the home is inexorable and
sacrifices the children to a misconception of democracy.

=Coöperation.=--Democracy does not mean fellowship, but it does mean
coöperation. It means that people in all walks of life are animated by
the common purpose to make all their activities contribute to the
general good of society. It means that the railroad president may shake
hands with the brakeman and talk with him, man to man, encouraging him
to aspire to promotion on merit. It means that this brakeman may become
president of the road with no scorn for the stages through which he
passed in attaining this position. It means that he may understand and
sympathize with the men in his employ without fraternizing with them. It
means that every boy may aspire to a place higher than his father has
attained with no loss of affection for him. It does not mean either
sycophancy or truculence, but freedom to every individual to make the
most of himself and so help others to make the most of themselves.

=The democratic teacher.=--Democracy is learned not from books but from
the democratic spirit that obtains in the school. If the teacher is
surcharged with democracy, her radiating spirit sends out currents into
the life of each pupil, and the spirit of democracy thus generated in
them fuses them into homogeneity. Thus they become democratic by living
in the atmosphere of democracy, as the boy grew into the likeness of the
Great Stone Face.


QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1. How may elementary teachers inculcate the principles of true
democracy?

2. By what means may public schools assist in the transformation of
illiterate foreigners into "intelligent American citizens"?

3. What are some of the weaknesses of democracy which the public school
may remedy? the press? public officials? the people?

4. Are such affairs as are described in the beginning of the chapter
peculiar to democracies? Why or why not?

5. How may school discipline recognize democratic principles, thereby
laying the foundation of respect for law and order by our future
citizens?

6. What qualities of citizens are inconsistent with a high level of
democracy?

7. Discuss the extent to which the management of the classroom should be
democratic.

8. How may the monarchical government of a school fit pupils for a
democracy? How may it unfit them?

9. In what ways may the following institutions raise the level of
democracy: centralized schools? vocational schools? junior high schools?
moonlight schools? evening schools?




CHAPTER VIII

PATRIOTISM


=Patriotism as a working principle.=--The vitalized school generates and
fosters patriotism, not merely as a sentiment, but more particularly as
a working principle. Patriotism has in it a modicum of sentiment, to be
sure, as do religion, education, the home, and civilization; but
sentiment alone does not constitute real or true patriotism. The man who
shouts for the flag but pursues a course of conduct that brings
discredit upon the name of his country, belies the sentiment that his
shouting would seem to express. The truly patriotic man feels that he
owes to his country and his race his whole self,--his mind, his time,
and his best efforts,--and the payment of this obligation spells life to
him. Thus he inevitably interprets patriotism in terms of industry,
economy, thrift, and the full conservation of time and energy, that he
may render a good account of his stewardship to his country.

=Spelling as patriotism.=--With this broad conception in mind the
teacher elevates patriotism to the rank of a motive and proceeds to
organize all the school activities in consonance with this conception.
Actuated by this high motive the pupils, in time, come to look upon
correct spelling not only as a comfort and a convenience, but also as a
form of patriotism in that it is an exponent of intelligent observation
and as such wins respect and commendation from people at home and people
abroad. Or, to put the case negatively, if we were all deficient in the
matter of spelling, the people of other lands would hold us up to
ridicule because of this defect; but if we are expert in the art of
spelling, they have greater respect for us and for our schools. Hence,
such a simple matter as spelling tends to invest the flag of our country
with better and fuller significance. Thus spelling becomes woven into
the life processes, not as a mere task of the school, but as a privilege
vouchsafed to every one who yearns to see his country win distinction.

=Patriotism a determining motive.=--In like manner the teacher runs the
entire gamut of school studies and shows how each one may become a
manifestation of patriotism. If she has her pupils exchange letters with
pupils in the schools of other countries, they see, at once, that their
spelling, their writing, and their composition will all be carefully
assessed in the formation of an estimate of ourselves and our schools.
It is evident, therefore, that the pupils will give forth their best
efforts in all these lines that the country they represent may appear to
the best advantage. In such an exercise the motive of patriotism will
far outweigh in importance the motive of grades. Besides, the letters
are written to real people about real life, and, hence, life and
patriotism become synonymous in their thinking, and all their school
work becomes more vital because of their patriotism.

=History.=--In the study of history, the pupils readily discover that
the men and women who have given distinction to their respective
countries have done so, in the main, by reason of their attainments in
science, in letters, and in statesmanship. They are led to think of
Goethals in the field of applied mathematics; of Burbank in the realm of
botany; of Edison in physics; of Scott and Burns in literature; of Max
Müller in philology; of Schliemann in archæology; of Washington and
Lincoln in the realm of statesmanship; and of Florence Nightingale and
Clara Barton in philanthropy. They discover that France deemed it an
honor to have Erasmus as her guest so long as he found it agreeable to
live in that country, and that many countries vied with one another in
claiming Homer as their own. Phillips Brooks was a patriot, not alone
because of his profession of love for his country, but because of what
he did that added luster to the name of his country.

=Efficiency.=--The study of physiology and hygiene affords a wide field
for the contemplation and practice of patriotic endeavor. The care of
the body is a patriotic exercise in that it promotes health and vigor,
and these underlie efficiency. Anything short of efficiency is
unpatriotic because it amounts to a subtraction from the possible best
that may be done to advance the interests of society. The shiftless man
is not a patriot, nor yet the man who enervates his body by practices
that render him less than efficient. The intemperate man may shout
lustily at sight of the flag, but his noise only proclaims his lack of
real patriotism. An honest day's work would redound far more to the
glory of his country than his noisy protestations. Seeing that behind
every deliberate action there lies a motive, the higher the motive the
more noble will be the action. If, then, we can achieve temperance
through the motive of patriotism, society will be the beneficiary, not
only of temperance itself, but also of many concomitant benefits.

=Temperance.=--Temperance may be induced, of course, through the motives
of economy, good health, and the like, but the motive of patriotism
includes all these and, therefore, stands at the summit. Waste, in
whatever form, is evermore unpatriotic. Conservation is patriotism,
whether of natural resources, human life, human energy, or time. The
intemperate man wastes his substance, his energies, his opportunities,
his self-respect, and his moral fiber. Very often, too, he becomes a
charge upon society and abrogates the right of his family to live
comfortably and agreeably. Hence, he must be accounted unpatriotic. If
all men in our country were such as he, our land would be derided by the
other nations of the world. He brings his country into disrepute instead
of glorifying it because he does less than his full share in
contributing to its well-being. He renders himself less than a typical
American and brings reproach upon his country instead of honor.

=Sanitation.=--One of the chief variants of the general subject of
physiology and hygiene is sanitation, and this, even yet, affords a
field for aggressive and constructive patriotism. Grime and crime go
hand in hand; but, as a people, we have been somewhat slow in our
recognition of this patent truth. Patriotism as well as charity should
begin at home, and the man who professes a love for his country should
make that part of his country which he calls his home so sanitary and so
attractive that it will attest the sincerity of his profession. If he
loves his country sincerely, he must love his back yard, and what he
really loves he will care for. It does him no credit to have the flag
floating above a home that proclaims his shiftlessness. His feeling for
sanitation, attractiveness, and right conditions as touching his own
home surroundings will expand until it includes his neighborhood, his
county, his State, and his entire country.

=A typical patriot.=--A typical patriot is the busy, intelligent,
frugal, cultured housewife whose home is her kingdom and who uses her
powers to make that kingdom glorious. She regrets neither the time nor
the effort that is required to make her home clean, artistic, and
comfortable. She places upon it the stamp of her character, industry,
and good taste. She supplies it with things that delight the senses and
point the way to culture. To such a home the crude and the bizarre are a
profanation. She administers her home as a sacred trust in the interests
of her family and never for exhibition purposes. Her home is an
expression of herself, and her children will carry into life the
standards that she inculcates through the agency of the home. Life is
better for the family and for the community because her home is what it
is, and, in consequence, her patriotism is far-reaching in its
influence. If all homes were such as this, our country would be
exploited as representing the highest plane of civilization the world
has yet attained. The vitalized teacher is constantly striving to have
this standard of home and home life become the standard of her pupils.

=Mulberry Bend.=--In striking contrast with this home are conditions in
Mulberry Bend, New York, as described by a writer thoroughly conversant
with conditions as they were until recently--conditions, however, now
much bettered: "These alleys, running from nowhere to nowhere, alongside
cellars where the light never enters and where nothing can live but
beast-men and beast-women and rats; behind foul rookeries where skulk
the murderer and the abandoned tramp; beside hideous plague-spots where
the stench is overpowering--Bottle Alley, where the rag-pickers pile
their bags of stinking stuff, and the Whyo Roost where evil-visaged
beings prowl about, hunting for prey; dozens of alleys winding in and
out and intersecting, so that the beast may slay his prey, and hide in
the jungle, and be safe; these foul alleys--who shall picture them, or
explore their depths, or describe their wretchedness and their
hideousness?... Upon the doorsteps weary mothers are nursing little
babies who will never know the meaning of innocent childhood, but will
be versed in the immoral lore of the Underworld before they learn their
alphabet. Ragged children covered with filth play about the pushcarts
and the horses in the street, while their mothers chatter in greasy
doorways, or shout from upper windows into the hordes below, or clatter
about creaky floors, preparing the foul mess of tainted edibles which
constitutes a meal."

With many other phases of this gruesome picture this author deals, and
then concludes with the following: "But in the rookeries which, like
their inmates, skulk and hide out of sight in the crowded street; in
these ramshackle structures which line the back alleys, and there breed
their human vermin amid dirt and rags--in these there is no direct
sunlight throughout the long year. Rookeries close to the front windows,
shutting out light and air, and rookeries close to the rear windows, and
rookeries close to each side, and never a breath of fresh air to
ventilate one of these holes wherein men and women and children wallow
in dirt, and live and fight and drink and die, and finally give way to
others of their kind." So long as such conditions as these continue in
our country, sanitation as a manifestation of patriotism will not have
done its perfect work, and the stars and stripes of our flag will lack
somewhat of their rightful luster.

=Patriotism in daily life.=--When the influences of hygiene and of home
economics, taught as life processes and not merely as prerequisites for
graduation, by teachers who regard them as forms of patriotism,--when
these influences have percolated to every nook and cranny of our
national life,--to the homes, the streets and alleys, the farms, the
shops, the factories, and the mines, such conditions as these will
disappear, and we as a nation shall then have a clearer warrant for our
profession of patriotic interest in and devotion to the welfare of our
country as a whole. But so long as we can look upon insanitary
conditions without a shudder; so long as we permit dirt to breed disease
and crime; so long as we make our streams the dumping places for débris;
so long as we tolerate ugliness where beauty should obtain; and so long
as our homes and our farms betray the spirit of shiftlessness,--so long
shall we have occasion to blush when we look at our flag and confess our
dereliction of our high privilege of patriotism.

=The American restaurant.=--Perhaps no single detail of the customs that
obtain in our country impresses a cultivated foreigner more unfavorably
than the régime in our popular restaurants. The noise, the rattle and
clatter and bang, the raucous calling of orders, and the hurry and
confusion give him the impression that we are content to have feeding
places where we might have eating places. He regards all that he sees
and hears as being less than proper decorum, less than a high standard
of intelligence, less than refined cultivation, and less than agencies
that contribute to the graces of life. He marvels that we have not yet
attained the conception that partaking of food amounts to a gracious and
delightful ceremony rather than a gastronomic orgy. His surprise is not
limited to the people who administer these establishments, but extends
to the people who patronize them. He marvels that the patrons do not
seek out places where there is quiet, and serenity, and pleasing
decorum. He returns to his own land wondering if the noisy restaurant is
typical of American civilization. He may not know that the study of
domestic science in our schools has not had time to attain its full
fruition in the way of inculcating a lofty conception of life in the
dining room.

=Thrift as patriotism.=--Another important phase of patriotism is
thrift; and here, again, we have come short of realizing our
possibilities. There are far too many people who have failed to lay in
store against times of emergency, far too many who care only for to-day
with slight regard for to-morrow. Moreover, there are far too many who,
despite sound bodies, are dependents, contributing nothing to the
resources of society, but constantly preying upon those resources. There
are in our country not fewer than one hundred thousand tramps, and by
some the number has been estimated at a half-million. If this vast army
of dependents could be transferred to the ranks of producers, tilling
our fields, harvesting our crops, constructing our highways of travel,
redeeming our waste places, and beautifying our streams, life would be
far more agreeable both for them and for the rest of our people. They
would become self-supporting and so would win self-respect; they would
subtract their number from the number of those who live at public
expense; and they would make contributions to the general store. They
would thus relieve society of the incubus of their dependence, and
largely increase the number of our people who are self-supporting.

=Some contrasts.=--We are making some progress in the line of thrift
through our school savings and postal savings, but we have not yet
attained to a national conception of thrift as an element of patriotism.
This is one of the large yet inspiring privileges of the vitalized
school. Thrift is so intimately identified with life that they naturally
combine in our thinking, and we have only to reach the conception that
our mode of life is the measure of our patriotism in order to realize
that thrift and patriotism are in large measure identical. The
industrious, frugal, thrifty man is patriotic; the unthrifty, lazy,
shiftless man is unpatriotic. The one ennobles and honors his country;
the other dishonors and degrades his country.

=Conclusion.=--If the foregoing conclusions are valid, and to every
thoughtful person they must seem well-nigh axiomatic, then the school
has a wide field of usefulness in the way of inculcating a loftier and
broader conception of patriotism. The teacher who worthily fills her
place in the vitalized school will give the boys and girls in her care
such a conception of patriotism as will give direction, potency, and
significance to every school activity and lift these activities out of
the realm of drudgery into the realm of privilege. Her pupils will be
made to feel that what they are doing for themselves, their school, and
their homes, they are doing for the honor and glory of their country.


QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1. In what ways and to what extent should patriotism affect conduct?

2. Indicate methods in which patriotism may be used as an incentive to
excel in the different branches of study.

3. What branches of study should have for their sole function to
stimulate the growth of patriotism? Discuss methods and give instances.

4. Distinguish from patriotism each of the following counterfeits:
sectionalism; partisanship; nationalism; and jingoism. Should teachers
try to eradicate or sublimate these sentiments? How?

5. What should be the attitude of the teacher of history toward
Commodore Decatur's toast: "My country, may she always be in the right;
but right or wrong, my country"?

6. Cite recent history to prove that temperance and sanitation are
necessary for the realization of national victories and the perpetuation
of the common welfare.

7. Is the "Golden Rule" a vital principle of patriotism? Why?

8. How are culture and refinement related to patriotism? thrift?

9. Make a list of songs, poems, novels, paintings, and orations that are
characterized by lofty patriotic sentiments. Name some that are usually
regarded as patriotic but which are tainted with inferior sentiments.

10. Discuss the adaptability of these to the different periods of
youthful development and the methods whereby their appeal may be made
most effective.




CHAPTER IX

WORK AND LIFE


=Tom Sawyer.=--Tom Sawyer was one of the most effective teachers that
has figured in the pages of the books; and yet we still regard Mark
Twain as merely the prince of humorists. He was that, of course, but
much more; and some day we shall read his books in quest of pedagogical
wisdom and shall not be disappointed. It will be recalled that Tom
Sawyer sat on the top of a barrel and munched apples while his boy
companions whitewashed the fence in his stead. Tom achieved this triumph
because he knew how to emancipate work from the plane of drudgery and
exalt it to the plane of a privilege. Indeed, it loomed so large as a
privilege that the other boys were eager to barter the treasures of
their pockets in exchange for this privilege. And never did a fence
receive such a whitewashing! There wasn't fence enough and, therefore,
the process must needs be repeated again and again. The best part of the
entire episode was that everybody was happy, Tom included. Tom was happy
in seeing his plan work, and the other boys were happy because they were
doing work that Tom had caused them to become eager to do.

=Work as a privilege.=--To make work seem a privilege is a worthy task
for the school to set before itself, and if it but achieves this it will
prove itself worth all it costs. At first thought, it seems a stupendous
task, and so it is. But Tom Sawyer accomplished it in an easy, natural
way, with no parade or bombast. He had habit and tradition to contend
against, just as the school has, but he overbore these obstacles and won
the contest. Some of those boys, before that morning, may have thought
it ignoble to perform menial tasks; but Tom soon overcame that feeling
and led them to feel that only an artist can whitewash a fence properly.
Some of them may have been interpreting life as having a good time, but,
under the tutorage of Tom, they soon came to feel that having a good
time means whitewashing a fence.

=The persistency of habit.=--In striving to exalt and ennoble work, the
school runs counter to habits of thought that have been formed in the
home, and these habits prove stubborn. The home has so long imposed work
as a task that the school finds it difficult to make it seem a
privilege. The father and mother have so often complained of their work,
in the presence of their children, that all work comes to assume the
aspect of a hardship, if not a penalty. It often happens, too, that the
parents encourage their children to think that education affords
immunity from work, and the children attend school with that notion
firmly implanted in their minds. They seem to think that when they have
achieved an education they will receive their reward in the choicest
gifts that Fortune has to bestow, and that their only responsibility
will be to indicate their choices.

=Misconceptions of work.=--Still further, when children enter school
imbued with this conception of work, they feel that the work of the
school is imposed upon them as a task from which they would fain be
free. If their parents had only been as wise as Tom Sawyer and had set
up motives before them in connection with their home activities and thus
exalted all their work to the plane of privilege, the work of the school
would be greatly simplified. It is no slight task to eradicate this
misconception of work, but somehow it must be done before the work of
the school can get on. Until this is done, the work of the school will
be done grudgingly instead of buoyantly, and work that is done under
compulsion is never joyous work. Nor will work that is done under
compulsion ever be done in full measure, as the days of slavery clearly
prove.

=Illustrations.=--Life and work are synonymous, and no amount or form of
sophistry can abrogate their relation. The man who does not work does
not have real life, as the invalid will freely witness. The tramp on the
highway manages to exist, but he does not really live, no matter what
his philosophy may be. Many children interpret life to mean plenty of
money and nothing to do, but this conception merely proves that they are
children with childish misconceptions. They see the railway magnate
riding in his private car and conceive his life to be one of ease and
luxury. They do not realize that the private car affords him the
opportunity to do more and better work. They see the president of the
bank sitting in his private office and imagine that he is idle, not
realizing that his mind is busy with problems of great magnitude,
problems that would appall his subordinates. They cannot know, as he
sits there, that he is projecting his thoughts into far-off lands, and
is watching the manifold and complex processions of commerce in their
relations to the world of finance.

=Concrete examples.=--They see the architect in his luxurious
apartments, but do not realize that his brain is directing every
movement of a thousand men who are causing a colossal building to tower
toward the sky. They see a Grant sitting beneath a tree in apparent
unconcern, but do not know that he is bearing the responsibility of the
movements of a vast army. They see the pastor in his study among his
books, but do not know the travail of spirit that he experiences in his
yearning for his parishioners. They see the farmer sitting at ease in
the shade, but do not know that he is visualizing every detail of his
farm, the men at their tasks, the flocks and herds, the crops, the
streams, the machinery, the fences, and the orchards and vineyards. They
see the master of the ship, standing on the bridge clad in his smart
uniform, and imagine that he is merely enjoying the sea breezes the same
as themselves, not knowing that his thoughts are concentrated upon the
safety of his hundreds of passengers and his precious cargo.

=The potency of mental work.=--Only by experience may children come to
know that work may be mental as well as physical, and the school is
charged with the responsibility of affording this experience. Through
experience they will come to know that mind transcends matter, and that
in life the body yields obedience to the behests of the mind. They will
come to know that mental work is more far-reaching than physical work,
in that a single mind plans the work for a thousand hands. They will
learn that mental work has redeemed the world from its primitive
condition and is making life more agreeable even if more complex. They
will come to see the mind busy in its work of tunneling mountains,
building canals and railways, navigating oceans, and exploring the sky.
They will come to realize that mental work has produced our libraries,
designed our machinery, made our homes more comfortable and our fields
more fertile.

=Work a blessing.=--As a knowledge of all these things filters into
their minds, their conception of life broadens, and they see more and
more clearly that life and work are fundamentally identical. They see
that work directs the streams of life and gives to life point, potency,
and significance. They soon see that knowledge is power only because it
is the agency that generates power, and that knowledge touches life at
every point. They will come to realize that work is the one great luxury
in life, and that education is designed to increase the capacity for
work in order that people may indulge in this luxury more abundantly.
The more work one can do, the more life one has; and the better the work
one can do, the higher the quality of that life. They learn that the
adage "Work to live and live to work" is no fiction but a reality.

=Work and enjoyment.=--The school, therefore, becomes to them a workshop
of life, and unless it is that, it is not a worthy school. It is not a
something detached from life, but, rather, an integral part of life and
therefore a place and an occasion for work. The school is the Burning
Bush of work that is to grow into the Tree of Life. But life ought to
teem with joy in order to be at its best, and never be a drag. Work,
therefore, being synonymous with life, should be a joyous experience,
even though it taxes the powers to the utmost. If the child comes to the
work of the school as the galley-slave goes to his task, there is a lack
of adjustment and balance somewhere, and a readjustment is necessary. It
matters not that a boy spends two hours over a problem in arithmetic if
only he enjoys himself during the time. But, if he works two hours
merely to get a passing grade or to escape punishment, the time thus
spent does not afford him the pleasure that rightfully belongs to him,
and some better motive should be supplied.

=The teacher's problem.=--The teacher's mission is not to make school
work easy, but, rather, to make the hardest work alluring and agreeable.
Here, again, she may need to take counsel with Tom Sawyer. Whitewashing
a fence is quite as hard work as solving a problem in decimals or cube
root. Much depends upon the mental attitude of the boy, and this in turn
depends upon the skill of the teacher and her fertility of mind in
supplying motives. Whitewashing a fence causes the arms to grow weary
and the back to ache, but the boys recked not of that. On the contrary,
they clamored for more of the same kind of work. This same spirit
characterizes the work of the vitalized school. The pupils live as
joyously in the schoolroom as they do outside, and the harder the work
the greater their joy.

When work is made a privilege by the expert teacher, school procedure
becomes well-nigh automatic and there is never any occasion for nagging,
hectoring, or badgering. Such things are abnormal in life and no less so
in the vitalized school. They are a confession on the part of the
teacher that she has reached the limit of her resources. She admits that
she cannot do what Tom Sawyer did so well, and so proclaims her
inability to articulate life and work effectively.


QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1. Read that chapter of "Tom Sawyer" which deals with the whitewashing
episode.

2. What principles of teaching did Tom Sawyer apply?

3. Discuss, from the pupils' viewpoint, how the study of different
subjects may be made a privilege.

4. In accordance with Tom Sawyer pedagogy, discuss plans for the
formation of the reading habit in pupils. How direct the pupils' choice
of reading matter?

5. How would you demonstrate to pupils that mental work is more
exhausting than manual labor?

6. Why is work a blessing? How convince an indolent pupil of this truth?

7. State the chief problem of the teacher.

8. Show that the pedagogical doctrines of this chapter are not to be
classified under the head of "soft pedagogy."




CHAPTER X

WORDS AND THEIR CONTENT


=Initial statement.=--Life and words are so closely interwoven that we
have only to study words with care in order to achieve an apprehension
of life. Indeed, education may be defined as the process of enlarging
the content of words. No two of us speak the same language even though
we use the same words. The schoolboy and the savant speak of education,
using the same word, but the boy has only the faintest conception of the
meaning of the word as used by the savant. We must know the content of
the words that are used before we can understand one another, either in
speaking or in writing. For one man, a word is big with meaning; for
another, the same word is so small as to be well-nigh meaningless. To
the ignorant boor, the word "education" means far less than the three
R's, while to the scholar the word includes languages, ancient and
modern, mathematics through many volumes, sciences that analyze the
dewdrop, determine the weight of the earth and the distances and
movements of the planets, history from the Rosetta Stone to the latest
presidential election, and philosophy from Plato to the scholar of
to-day.

=The word "education."=--And yet both these men spell and pronounce the
word alike. The ignorant man has only the faintest glimmering of the
scholar's meaning of the word when he speaks or writes it. Still the
word is in common use, and people who use it are wont to think that
their conception of its meaning is universal. If the boor could follow
the expansion of the word as it is invested with greater and greater
content, he would, in time, understand Aristotle, Shakespeare,
Gladstone, and Max Müller. And, understanding these men, he would come
to know philosophy, literature, and language, and so would come to
appreciate more fully what education really is. In contemplating the
expansion of the word, one might easily visualize the ever widening
circle produced by throwing a pebble into a pool; but a better
conception would be the expansion of a balloon when it is being
inflated. This comparison enables one to realize that education enlarges
as a sphere rather than as a circle.

=The scholar's concept of the sea.=--The six-year-old can give the
correct spelling of the word _sea_ as readily as the sage, but the sage
has spent a lifetime in putting content into the word. For him, the word
epitomizes his life history. Through its magic leading he retraces his
journeys through physiography and geology, watching the sea wear away
two thousand feet of the Appalachian Mountains and spread the detritus
over vast areas, making the great fertile corn and wheat belt of our
country. He knows that this section produces, annually, such a quantity
of corn as would require for transportation a procession of teams that
would encircle the earth nine times, at the equator, and he interprets
all this as sea. The word leads him, also, through the mazes and
mysteries of meteorology, revealing to him the origin of the rain, the
snow, the dew, and the frost, with all the wonders of evaporation,
condensation, and precipitation.

=Further illustration.=--He can discern the sea in every blade of grass,
in every leaf, and in every flower. In the composition of his own body,
he finds that ninety per cent of it is sea. He finds his heart pumping
the sea through his veins and arteries as a vital part of the life
process; and through the power of capillary attraction, the sea is
coursing through every hair of his head. In the food upon his table, the
meat, the bread, the milk, the vegetables, and the fruits, he finds the
sea. Not his poetry, but his science follows the raindrop from the roof
to the rivulet, on to the river, then to the ocean, then into vapor and
on into rain down into the earth, then up into the tree, out into the
orange, until it finally reappears as a drop of juice upon the rosy lip
of his little six-year-old.

=The child's conception.=--Whether the child ever wins the large
conception of the sea that her father has depends, in part, upon the
father himself, but, in a still larger degree, upon her teacher. If the
teacher thinks of the sea merely as a word to be spelled, or defined, or
parsed, that she may inscribe marks in a grade book or on report cards,
then the child will never know the sea as her father knows it, unless
this knowledge comes to her from sources outside the school. Instead of
becoming a living thing and the source of life, her sea will be a desert
without oasis, or grass, or tree, or bird, or bubbling spring to refresh
and inspire. It would seem a sad commentary upon our teaching if the
child is compelled to gain a right conception of the sea outside the
school and in spite of the school, rather than through and by means of
the school.

=The quest of teacher and child.=--The vitalized teacher knows the sea
as the sage knows it, and can infuse her conception into the
consciousness of the child. She feels it to be her high privilege to
lead the child on in quest of the sea and to find, in this quest,
pulsating life. In this alluring quest, she is putting content into the
word, and thus discovering, by experience, what life is. This is
education. This is the inviting vista that stretches out before the eyes
of the child under the spell and leadership of such a teacher. In their
quest for the meaning of the sea, these companions, the child and the
teacher, will come upon the fields of grain, the orchards, the flocks
and herds, the ships, the trains, and the whole intricate world of
commerce. They will find commerce to be a manifestation of the sea and
moreover a big factor in life. It will mean far more than mere cars to
be counted or cargoes to be estimated in the form of problems for the
class in arithmetic. The cargoes of grain that they see leaving the port
mean food for the hungry in other lands, and the joy and vigor that only
food can give.

=The sea as life.=--At every turn of their ramified journey, these
learners find life and, best of all, are having a rich experience in
life, throughout the journey. They are immersed in life and so are
absorbing life all the while. Wider and wider becomes their conception
of life as exemplified by the sea, and their capacity for life is ever
increasing. Day by day they ascend to higher levels and find their
horizon receding farther and farther. For them, life enlarges until it
embraces all lands, the arts, the sciences, the languages, and all
history. Whether they pursue the sea into the mountains; to the steppes,
plateaus, or pampas; to the palace or the hovel; to the tropics or the
poles,--they find it evermore representing life.

=The word "automobile."=--It would seem to be quite possible to
construct a twelve-year course of study based upon this sort of study of
words and their content with special emphasis upon the content. Since
life is conterminous with the content of the words that constitute one's
vocabulary, it is evident that the content of words becomes of major
importance in the scheme of education. To be able to spell the word
"automobile" will not carry a young man very far in his efforts to
qualify as a chauffeur, important though the spelling may be. As a mere
beginning, the spelling is essential, but it is not enough. Still the
child thinks that his education, so far as this word is concerned, is
complete when he can spell it correctly, and carry home a perfect grade.
No one will employ the young man as a driver until he has put content
into the word, and this requires time and hard work. He must know the
mechanism of the machine, in every detail, and the articulation of all
its parts. He must be able to locate trouble on the instant and be able
to apply the remedy. He must be sensitive to every slightest sound that
indicates imperfect functioning. This, of course, carries far beyond the
mere spelling of the word, but all this is essential to the safety of
his passengers.

=Etymology.=--Etymology has its place, of course, in the study of words,
but it stops short of the goal. It may be well to take the watch apart
in order to make an examination of its parts, but until it is
reconstituted and set going, it is useless as a watch. So with a word.
We may give its etymology and rhapsodize over its parts, but thus
analyzed it is an inert thing and really inane so far as real service is
concerned. If word study does not carry beyond the mere analysis, it is
futile as a real educative process. To be really effective, the word
must be instinct with life and busy in the affairs of life, and not a
mere specimen in a museum. Too often our work in etymology seems to be
considered an end in itself, rather than a means to an end.

=The word in use.=--Arlo Bates says that the word "highly" in the
Gettysburg Speech is the most ornate word in the language in the setting
that Lincoln gave it. The merest tyro can give its etymology, but only
when it was set to work by a master did it gain potency and distinction.
The etymology of the word "fidelity" is reasonably easy, but this
analysis is powerless to cause the child to thrill at the story of
Casabianca, or of Ruth and Naomi, or of Esther, or Antigone, or
Cordelia, or Nathan Hale, or the little Japanese girl who deliberately
bit through her tongue that she might not utter a syllable that would
jeopardize the interests or safety of her father. The word analyzed is a
dead thing; the word in use is a living thing. The word merely analyzed
is apt to be ephemeral; the word in use is abiding and increasingly
significant. As the child puts more and more content into the word, he,
himself, expands at the same rate in the scope and power of his
thinking. Words are the materials out of which he weaves the fabric of
life, and the pattern depends upon the content of his words.

=Illustrations from art.=--The child can spell the word "art" and can
repeat the words of the book by way of a memorized definition, but he
cannot define the word with even a fair degree of intelligence. He
cannot know the meaning of the word until its significance becomes
objectified in his life processes. This requires time, and thought, and
experiences with books, with people, and with galleries. In short, he
must live art before he can define the word; and his living art invests
the word with content. The word will grow just as he grows in his
conception of art. At first, he may denominate as art the simple little
daubs of pictures that he makes with the teacher's hand guiding his
brush. But, later on, as he gains a larger conception, these things will
appear puerile if not silly. The time may come when he can read the
thoughts of the masters as expressed in their masterpieces. Then, and
only then, will he be able to define the word.

=Michael Angelo.=--At the age of fifteen, Michael Angelo wrought the
Mask of the Satyr, which would not be considered a work of art if that
were the only product of his chisel. What he did later was the
fulfillment of the prophecy embodied in the Mask. At the age of eighty,
he produced the Descent from the Cross, which glorifies the Duomo in
Florence. In between these productions, we find his David, his Moses,
the Sistine Ceiling, with many others scarcely less notable. He rose to
a higher and higher conception of art as he lived art more and more
fully, and his execution kept pace with the expansion of his conception.
He gave content to the word both for himself and for the world until now
we associate, in our thinking, art with his name. He himself is now, in
large measure, our definition of art--and that because he lived art.

=The child's conception of truth.=--In his restricted conception, the
boy conceives truth to be the mere absence of peccadillos. He thinks
that his denial of the charge that he was impolite to his sister, or
that he went on a foraging expedition to the pantry, is the whole truth
and, indeed, all there is to truth. It requires a whole lifetime to
realize the full magnitude of his misconception. In the vitalized
school, he finds himself busy all day long trying to find answer to the
question: What is Truth? In the Alps, there is a place called Echo Glen
where a thousand rocks, cliffs, and crags send back to the speaker the
words he utters. So, when this boy asks What is Truth? a thousand voices
in the school and outside the school repeat the question to him: What is
Truth? Abraham Lincoln tried to find the answer as he figured on the bit
of board with a piece of charcoal by the firelight. Later on, he wrote
the Emancipation Proclamation, and in both exercises he was seeking for
the meaning of truth.

=The work of the school.=--Christopher Columbus was doing the same thing
in his quest, and thought no hardship too great if he could only come
upon the answer. Galileo, Huxley, Newton, Tyndall, Humboldt, Darwin,
Edison, and Burbank are only the schoolboys grown large in their search
for the meaning of truth. They have enlarged the content of the word for
us all, and by following their lead we may attain to their answers.
Every school study gives forth a partial answer, and the sum of all
these answers constitutes the answer which the boy is seeking.
Mathematics tells part of the story, but not all of it; science tells
another part, but not all of it; history tells still another part, but
not all of it. Hence, it may be reiterated that one of the prime
functions of the vitalized school is to invest words with the largest
possible content.


QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1. To what extent is education the process of enlarging the content of
words?

2. As a concrete illustration of the differences in the content of
words, compare various definitions of education. Choose typical
definitions of education to reflect the ideas of different educational
periods.

3. Suggest other methods than the use of the dictionary for the
enlargement of the pupil's content of words.

4. How may words be vitalized in composition?

5. Should the chief aim of language work in the grades be force,
accuracy, or elegance in the use of language?

6. Add to the author's list of words, other words the content of which
may be expanded by education.

7. How may the vitalized teacher encourage in pupils the formation of
habits of careful diction?

8. How remove unnatural stilted words and expressions from the oral and
written expressions of pupils?




CHAPTER XI

COMPLETE LIVING


=The question raised.=--That education is a preparation for complete
living has been quoted by every teacher who lays any sort of claim to
the standard definitions. Indeed, so often and so glibly has the
quotation been made that it is well-nigh axiomatic and altogether trite.
But we still await any clear explanation of what is meant by complete
living. On this point we are still groping, with no prophetic voice to
tell us the way. By implication we have had hints, and much has been
said on the negative side, but the positive side still lies fallow. When
asked for an explanation, those who give the quotation resort to
circumlocution and, at length, give another definition of education,
apparently conscious of the mathematical dictum that things that are
equal to the same thing are equal to each other. So we continue to
travel in a circle, with but feeble attempts to deviate from the course.

=The vitalized school an exemplification.=--Nor will this chapter
attempt to resolve the difficult situation in which we are placed. It is
not easy to define living, much less complete living. All that is hoped
for here is to bring the matter to the attention of all teachers and to
cause them to realize that the quest for a definition of complete living
will be for them and for their pupils an exhilarating experience. The
vitalized school will belie its name if it does not strive toward a
solution of the difficulty, and any school that approximates a
satisfactory definition will be proclaimed a public benefactor. In fact,
the school cannot lay claim to the distinction of being vitalized if it
fails to exemplify complete living, in some appreciable degree, and if
it fails to groove this sort of living into a habit that will persist
throughout the years. This is the big task that the school must essay if
it would emancipate itself from the trammels of tradition and become a
leader in the larger, better way. Complete living must become the ideal
of the school if it would realize the conception of education of which
it is a professed exponent.

=Incomplete living.=--The man who walks with a crutch; the man who is
afflicted with a felon; the man who lacks a hand or even a
finger,--cannot experience complete living. Through the power of
adaptation the man with a crutch may compass more difficult situations
than the man with sound legs will attempt, but he cannot realize all the
possibilities of life that a sound body would vouchsafe to him. The man
without hands may learn to write with his toes, but he is not employed
as a teacher of penmanship. His life is a restricted one and, therefore,
less than complete. We marvel at the exhibitions of skill displayed by
the maimed, but we feel no envy. We may not be able to duplicate their
achievements, but we feel that we have ample compensation in the normal
use of our members. We know instinctively that, in the solitude of their
meditations, they must experience poignant regrets that they are not as
other people, and that they must pass through life under a handicap.

=The sound body.=--It is evident, therefore, that soundness of body is a
condition precedent to complete living. The body is the organism by
means of which the mind and the spirit function in terms of life; and,
if this organism is imperfect, the functioning will prove less than
complete. Hence, it is the province of the school to so organize all its
activities that the physical powers of the pupils shall be fully
conserved. The president of a large university says that during his
incumbency of seventeen years they have found only one young woman of
physical perfection and not a single young man, although the tests have
been applied to thousands. College students, it will be readily
conceded, are a selected group; and yet even in such a group not a
physically perfect young man was found in tests extending over seventeen
years. If a like condition should be discovered in the scoring of live
stock at our fairs, there would ensue a careful investigation of causes
in the hope of finding a remedy.

=Personal efficiency.=--We shall not achieve national efficiency until
every citizen has achieved personal efficiency, and physical fitness is
one of the fundamental conditions precedent to personal efficiency. Here
we have the blue print for the guidance of society and the school. If we
are ever to achieve national efficiency, we must see to it that every
man and woman, every boy and girl, has a strong, healthy body that is
fully able to execute the behests of mind and spirit. This may require a
stricter censorship of marriage licenses, including physical
examinations; it may require more stringent laws on our statute books;
it may require radical changes in our methods of physical training; and
it may require the state to assume some of the functions of the home
when the home reveals its inability or unwillingness to cope with the
situation. Heroic treatment may be necessary; but until we as a people
have the courage to apply the remedies that the diagnosis shows to be
necessary, we shall look in vain for improvement.

=Physical training.=--Seeing that it is so difficult to find a man or a
woman among our people who has attained physical perfection, it behooves
society and the schools to take a critical inventory of their methods of
physical training and their meager accomplishments as a preliminary
survey looking to a change in our procedure. We seem to have delegated
scientific physical training to athletics and pugilism, with but scant
concern for our people as a whole. If pink-tea calisthenics as practiced
mildly in our schools has failed to produce robust bodies, then it is
incumbent upon us to adopt a régime of beefsteak. What the traditional
school has failed to do the vitalized school must attempt to do or
suffer the humiliation of striking its colors. There is no middle
course; it must either win a victory or admit defeat in common with the
traditional school. The standard is high, of course, but every standard
of the vitalized school is and ought to be high.

=Cigarettes.=--If the use of cigarettes is devitalizing our boys, and
this can be determined, then the manufacture and sale must be prohibited
unless our legislative bodies would plead guilty to the charge of
impotence. But we are told that public sentiment conditions the
enactment of laws. If such be the case, then the school and its
auxiliaries should feel it a duty to generate public sentiment. If
cigarettes are harmful, then they should be banished, and the task is
not an impossible one by any means. As to the injurious effects of
cigarettes, as distinguished an authority as Thomas A. Edison says the
following:

    "The injurious agent in cigarettes comes principally from the
    burning paper wrapper. The substance thereby formed is called
    'acrolein.' It has a violent action on the nerve centers,
    producing degeneration of the cells of the brain, which is quite
    rapid among boys. Unlike most narcotics, this degeneration is
    permanent and uncontrollable. I employ no person who smokes
    cigarettes."

We have eliminated dangerous explosives from our Fourth of July
celebrations, and the ban can as easily be placed upon any other
dangerous product. Just here we inevitably meet the cry of paternalism,
but we shall always be confronted by the question to what extent the
government should stand aside and see its citizens follow the bent of
their appetites and passions over the brink of destruction. It is the
inherent right of government to maintain its own integrity, and this it
can do only through the conservation of the powers of its citizens. If
paternalism is necessary to this end, then paternalism is a governmental
virtue. Better, by far, some paternalism than a race of weaklings.

=Military training.=--We may shrink away from military training in the
schools, just as we shrink from the régime of pugilism; but we may
profit by observing both these types of training in our efforts to
develop some method of training that will render our young people
physically fit. We need some type of training that will eliminate round
and drooping shoulders, weak chests, shambling gait, sluggish
circulation, and shallow breathing. The boys and girls need to be, first
of all, healthy animals with large powers of endurance, elastic,
buoyant, graceful, and in general well set up. These conditions
constitute the foundation for the superstructure of education. The
placid, anæmic, fiberless child is ill prepared in physique to attain to
that mastery of the mental and spiritual world that makes for an
approximation to complete living.

=Examples cited.=--If one will but make a mental appraisement of the
first one hundred people he meets, he will see among the number quite a
few who reveal a lack of physical vigor. They droop and slouch along and
seem to be dragging their bodies instead of being propelled through
space by their bodies. They can neither stand nor walk as a human being
ought to stand and walk, and their entire ensemble is altogether
unbeautiful. We feel instinctively that, being fashioned in the image of
their Maker, they have sadly declined from their high estate. Their
bodily attitude seems a sort of apology for life, and we long to invoke
the aid of some teacher of physical training to rescue them from
themselves and restore them to their rightful heritage. They are weak,
apparently ill-nourished, scrawny, ill-groomed; and we know, without the
aid of words, that neither a vigorous mind nor a great spirit would
choose that type of body as its habitation.

=The body subject to the mind.=--A healthy, vigorous, symmetrical body
that performs all its functions like a well-articulated, well-adjusted
mechanism is the beginning, but only a beginning. Next comes a mind that
is so well trained that it knows what orders to give to the body and how
to give them. Many a strong body enters the door of a saloon because the
mind is not sufficiently trained to issue wise orders. The mind was
befuddled before the body became so, and the body becomes so only
because the mind commands. Intoxication, primarily, is a mental
apostasy, and the body cannot do otherwise than obey. If the mind were
intent upon securing a book at the library, the body would not have seen
the door of the saloon, but would have been urgent to reach the library.
There is neither fiction nor facetiousness in the adage, "An idle brain
is the devil's workshop." On the contrary, the saying is crammed full of
psychology for the thoughtful observer. Hence, when we are training the
mind we are wreaking destruction upon this workshop.

=Freedom a condition precedent.=--Complete living is impossible outside
the domain of freedom. The prisons show forth no examples of complete
living. But mental thralldom is quite as inimical to complete living as
thralldom of the body. The mind must know in order to move among the
things of life in freedom. Ignorance is slavery. The mind that is unable
to read the inscription on a monument stands baffled and helpless, and
no form of slavery can be more abject. The man who cannot read the bill
of fare of life is in no position to revel in the good things that life
offers. The man who cannot read the signboards of life gropes and
flounders about in the byways and so misses the charms. If he knows the
way, he has freedom; otherwise he is in thralldom. The man who cannot
interpret life as it shows itself in hill, in valley, in stream and rock
and tree, goes through life with bandaged eyes, and that condition
affords no freedom.

=Street signs.=--A man who had been traveling through Europe for several
weeks, and had finally reached London, wrote enthusiastically of his
pleasure at being able to read the street signs. All summer he had felt
restricted and hampered, but when he reached a country where the street
signs were intelligible, he gained his freedom. Had he been as familiar
with Italian, German, and French as he is with English, life would have
been for him far more nearly complete during that summer and therefore
much more agreeable and fertile. There is no more exhilarating
experience than to be able to read the street signs along the highway of
life, and this ability is one of the great objectives of every vitalized
school.

=Trained minds.=--Nature reveals her inmost secrets only to the trained
mind. No power can force her, no wealth can bribe her, to disclose these
secrets to others. Only the mind that is trained can gain admission to
her treasure house to revel in its glories. John Burroughs lives in a
world that the ignorant man cannot know. The trained mind alone has the
key that will unlock libraries, art galleries, the treasure houses of
science, language, history, and art. The untrained minds must stand
outside and win what comfort they can from their wealth, their social
status, or whatever else they would fain substitute for the training
that would admit them. All these things are parts of life, and those who
cannot gain admission to these conservatories of knowledge cannot know
life in its completeness.

=Achievements of trained minds.=--In order to know life in the large,
the mind must be able to leap from the multiplication table to the
stars; must become intimate with the movements of the tides, the
glacier, and the planets; must translate the bubbling fountain and the
eruption of Vesuvius; must be able to interpret the whisper of the
zephyr and the diapason of the forest; must be able to hear music in the
chirp of the cricket as well as in the oratorios; must be able to delve
into the recesses of the mine and scale the mountain tops; must know the
heart throbs of Little Nell as well as of Cicero and Demosthenes; must
be able to see the processions of history from the cradle of the race to
the latest proclamation; and must sit in the councils of the poets, the
statesmen, the orators, the artists, the scientists, and the historians
of all time. A mind thus trained can enter into the very heart of life
and know it by experience.

=Things of the spirit.=--But education is a spiritual process, as we
have been told; and, therefore, education is without value unless it
touches the spirit. Indeed, it is only by the spirit that we may test
the quality of education. It is spirit that sets metes and bounds and
points the way to the fine things of life. A man may live in the back
alley of life or on the boulevard, according to the dictates of the
spirit. If his spirit cannot react to the finer things, his way will lie
among the coarse and bizarre. If he cannot appreciate the glory that is
revealed upon the mountain, he will gravitate to the lower levels. If
his spirit is not attuned to majestic harmonies, he will drift down to
association with his own kind. If he cannot thrill with pleasure at the
beauty and fragrance of the lily of the valley, he will seek out the
gaudy sunflower. If his spirit cannot rise to the plane of Shakespeare
and Victor Hugo, he will roam into fields that are less fruitful. The
spirit that is rightly attuned lifts him away from the sordid into the
realms of the chaste and the glorified; away from the coarse and ugly
into the realm of things that are fine and beautiful; and away from the
things that are mean and petty into the zone of the big, the true, the
noble, and the good. And so with body, mind, and spirit thus doing their
perfect work, he can, at least, look over into the promised land of
complete living.

=Altruism.=--We are commanded to let our light shine, and this command
is a noble and an inspiring one. A man who by such training as has been
depicted approximates complete living is prepared to let his light shine
primarily because he has light, and in the next place because his
training has made him generous in spirit and altruistic; and his
greatest joy comes from letting his light so shine that others may catch
his spirit and move up to higher planes of living.


QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1. Why is education not satisfactorily defined by saying that it is a
preparation for complete living? Who first stated this definition?

2. What is the relation of the school to complete living?

3. What further training should the school give in better living than to
teach the pupils what it is?

4. Give an idea of what is meant by incomplete living so far as the body
is concerned.

5. Show that soundness of body is necessary to realize one's best.

6. What are some reasons for the scarcity of physically perfect men and
women?

7. Have we been able to eliminate physical defects and develop physical
merits in people to the same extent that we have in domestic animals?

8. What are some of the things that have been done to improve physical
man? Which of these have to do primarily with heredity and which with
rearing or training?

9. Why is the possession of healthy bodies a matter of national concern?

10. Wherein does physical training seem to have failed to attain its
ends?

11. What are the arguments, from the standpoint of the physically
efficient life, for the regulation or prohibition by the government of
the sale of injurious products?

12. What are the benefits of such a type of training as military
training?

13. Show how the lack of proper training of the mind may result in a
less efficient body.

14. In our present civilization what conditions may give rise to mental
thralldom? Upon what is mental freedom conditioned?

15. How can the trained mind get the most out of life and contribute the
most to it?

16. Explain how the spirit is the dominant element in complete living.

17. Why is one who is living the complete life sure to be altruistic?




CHAPTER XII

THE TIME ELEMENT


=The question stated.=--There are many, doubtless, who will deny, if not
actually resent, the statement that some do more real teaching in ten
minutes than others do in thirty minutes. But, in spite of denials, the
statement can be verified by the testimony of a host of expert observers
and supervisors. Indeed, stenographic reports have been made of many
class exercises by way of testing the truth of this statement, and these
reports are a matter of record. Assuming the validity of the statement,
therefore, it is pertinent to inquire into the causes that underlie the
disparity in the teaching ability of the ten-minute teacher and the
thirty-minute teacher. The efficiency expert would be quick to seize
upon this disparity in the rate of progress as the starting point in his
critical examination. In a factory a like disparity would lead to
unpleasant consequences. The workman who consumes thirty minutes in
accomplishing a piece of work that another does in ten minutes would be
admonished to accelerate his progress or else give way to a more
efficient man. If we had instruments of sufficient delicacy to test the
results of teaching, we should probably discover that the output of the
ten-minute teacher is superior in quality to that of the thirty-minute
teacher. For we must all have observed in our own experience that the
clarity of our thinking depends upon its intensity.

=Examples.=--A young man who won distinction as a college student had a
wide shelf fitted up on one side of his room at which he stood in the
preparation of all his lessons. His theory was that the attitude of the
body conditions the attitude of the mind. Professor James gives assent
to this theory and avers that an attitude of mind may be generated by
placing the body in such an attitude as would naturally accompany this
mental attitude. This theory proclaims that, if the body is slouching,
the mind will slouch; but that, if the body is alert, the mind will be
equally so. Another college student always walked to and fro in his room
when preparing his history lesson. A fine old lady, in a work of
fiction, explained her mental acumen by the single statement, "I never
slouch." Every person must have observed many exemplifications of this
theory in his own experience even if he has not reduced it to a working
formula.

=Basic considerations.=--Any consideration of the time element, in
school work, must take into account, therefore, not only the number of
minutes involved in a given piece of work, but also the intensity of
effort during those minutes. Two minds, of equal natural strength, may
be fully employed during a given period and yet show a wide difference
in the quality and quantity of the results. The one may be busy all the
while but slouch through the minutes. The other may be taut and
intensive, working at white heat, and the output will be more extensive
and of better quality. The mind that ambles through the period shows
forth results that are both meager and mediocre; but the mind whose
impact is both forceful and incisive produces results that serve to
magnify the work of the school. Thus we have placed before us two basic
considerations, one of which is the time itself, in actual minutes, and
the other is the character of the reactions to external stimuli during
those minutes.

=Two teachers compared.=--In order to consider these factors of the
teaching process with some degree of definiteness it will be well to
have the ten-minute teacher and the thirty-minute teacher placed in
juxtaposition in our thinking. We shall thus be able to compare and
contrast and so arrive at some clear judgments that may be used as a
basis for generalizations. We may assume, for convenience and for
concreteness, that the lesson is division of fractions. There will be
substantial agreement that the principle involved in this subject can be
taught in one recitation period. The reasons for some of the steps in
the process may come later, but the child should be able to find his way
to the correct answer in a single period. Now if one teacher can achieve
this result in thirty minutes and the other in ten minutes, there is a
disparity in the effectiveness of the work of these teachers which is
worthy of serious consideration. The ten-minute teacher proves that the
thirty-minute teacher has consumed twenty minutes of somebody's time
unnecessarily. If the salary of this thirty-minute teacher should be
reduced to one third its present amount, she would inveigh against the
reduction.

=School and factory compared.=--If she were one of the operators in a
factory, she would not escape with the mere penalization of a salary
reduction. The owner would argue that he needed some one who could
operate the machine up to its full capacity, and that, even if she
should work without salary, her presence in the factory would entail a
loss in that the output of her machine was so meager. If one operator
can produce a shoe in ten minutes and the other requires thirty minutes
for the same work, the money that is invested in the one machine pays
dividends, while the other machine imposes a continuous tax upon the
owner. This, of course, will be recognized as the line of argument of
the efficiency expert, but it certainly is not out of place to call
attention to the matter in connection with school work. The subject of
efficiency is quite within the province of the school, and it would seem
to be wholly within reason for the school to exemplify its own
teachings.

=Appraisal of teaching expertness.=--The teacher who requires thirty
minutes for division of fractions which the other teacher compasses in
ten minutes consumes twenty minutes unnecessarily in each recitation
period, or two hundred minutes in the course of the day. The efficiency
expert would ask her to account for these two hundred minutes. In order
to account for them satisfactorily she would be compelled to take an
inventory of her acquired habits, her predilections, her attitude toward
her pupils and her subjects, and any shortcomings she may have in regard
to methods of teaching. She would, at first, resent the implication that
the other teacher's method of teaching division of fractions is better
than her own and would cite the many years during which her method has
been used. When all else fails, tradition always proves a convenient
refuge. We can always prove to-day by yesterday; only, by so doing, we
deny the possibility of progress.

=The potency of right methods.=--A teacher of Latin once used twenty
minutes in a violent attempt to explain the difference between the
gerund construction and the gerundive construction. At the end of the
time she had the pupils so completely muddled that, for months, the
appearance of either of these constructions threw them into a condition
of panic. To another class, later, this teacher explained these
constructions clearly and convincingly in three minutes. In the meantime
she had studied methods in connection with subject matter. Another
teacher resigned her position and explained her action by confessing
that she had become so accustomed to the traditional methods of teaching
a certain phase of arithmetic that it was impossible for her to learn
the newer one. Such a teacher must be given credit for honesty even
while she illustrates tragedy.

=The waste of time.=--In explaining the loss of two hundred minutes a
day the teacher will inevitably come upon the subject of methods of
teaching, and she may be put to it to justify her method in view of its
results. The more diligently she tries to justify her method, the more
certainly she proclaims her responsibility for a wrong use of the
method. Those twenty minutes point at her the accusing finger, and she
can neither blink nor escape the facts. The other teacher led her pupils
into a knowledge of the subject in ten minutes, and this one may neither
abrogate nor amend the record. As an operative in the factory she holds
in her hand one shoe as the result of her thirty minutes while the other
holds three. Conceding that results in the school are not so tangible as
the results in the factory, still we have developed methods of
estimating results in the school that have convincing weight with the
efficiency expert. We can estimate results in school work with
sufficient accuracy to enable us to assess teaching values with a goodly
degree of discrimination.

=Possibilities.=--It would be a comparatively simple matter to compute
in days and weeks the time lost during the year by the thirty-minute
teacher, and then estimate the many things that the pupils could
accomplish in that time. If the thirty-minute teacher could be
transformed into a ten-minute teacher, the children could have three
more hours each day for play, and that would be far better for them than
the ordeal of sitting there in the class, the unwilling witnesses, or
victims, of the time-wasting process. Or they might read a book in the
two hundred minutes and that would be more enjoyable, and the number of
books thus read in the course of a year would aggregate quite a library.
Or, again, they might take some additional studies and so make great
gains in mental achievements in their twelve years of school life. Or
they might learn to work with their hands and so achieve self-reliance,
self-support, and self-respect.

=Conservation.=--In a word, there is no higher type of conservation than
the conservation of childhood, in terms of time and interest. The two
hundred minutes a day are a vital factor in the life of the child and
must be regarded as highly valuable. The teacher, therefore, who
subtracts this time from the child's life is assuming a responsibility
not to be lightly esteemed. She takes from him his most valuable
possession and one which she can never return, try as she may. Worst of
all, she purloins this element of time clandestinely, albeit
seductively, in the guise of friendship. The child does not know that he
is the victim of unfair treatment until it is too late to set up any
defense. He is made to think that that is the natural and, therefore,
only way of school, and that he must take things as they come if he is
to prove himself a good soldier. So he musters what heroism he can and
tries to smile while the teacher despoils him of the minutes he might
better be employing in play, in reading, or in work.

=The teacher's complacency.=--This would seem a severe indictment if it
were incapable of proof, but having been proved by incontrovertible
evidence its severity cannot be mitigated. We can only grieve that the
facts are as they are and ardently hope for a speedy change. The chief
obstacle in the way of improvement is the complacency of the teacher.
Habits tend to persist, and if she has contracted the habit of much
speaking, she thinks her volubility should be accounted a virtue and
wonders that the children do not applaud the bromidic platitudes which
have been uttered in the same form and in the same tones a hundred
times. She is so intoxicated with her own verbosity that she can neither
listen to the sounds of her own voice nor analyze her own utterances.
While her neighbor is teaching she is talking, and then with sublime
nonchalance she ascribes the retardation of her pupils to their own
dullness and never, in any least degree, to her own unprofitable use of
their time.

=The voluble teacher.=--And while she rambles on in her aimless talking
the children are bored, inexpressibly bored. It is axiomatic that the
learning process does not flourish in a state of boredom. Under the
ordeal of verbal inundation the children wriggle and squirm about in
their seats and this affords her a new point of attack. She calls them
ill-bred and unmannerly and wonders at the homes that can produce such
children. She does not realize that if these children were grown-ups
they would leave the room regardless of consequences. When they yawn,
she reminds them of the utter futility of casting pearls before swine.
All the while the twenty minutes are going and the pupils have not yet
learned how to divide fractions. Over in the next room the pupils know
full well how to divide fractions and the teacher is rewarding their
diligence with a cookie in the form of a story, while they wait for the
bell to ring. Out of the room of the thirty-minute teacher come the
children glowering and resentful; out of the other room the children
come buoyant and happy.

=The test of teaching.=--Not alone did the former teacher use the time
of her pupils for her own ends, but, even more, she dulled their
interest, and the damage thus inflicted cannot be estimated. Many a
child has deserted the school because the teacher made school life
disagreeable. She was the wet blanket upon his enthusiasm and chilled
him to the marrow when he failed to go forward upon her traditional
track. The teacher who can generate in the minds of her pupils a
spiritual ignition by her every movement and word will not be humiliated
by desertions. Indeed, the test of the teacher is the mental attitude of
her pupils. The child who drags and drawls through the lesson convicts
the teacher of a want of expertness. On the other hand, when the pupils
are all wide-awake, alert, animated, eager to respond, and dynamic, we
know that the teacher has brought this condition to pass and that she is
a ten-minute teacher.

=Meaningless formalities.=--One of the influences that tends to deaden
the interest of children is the ponderous formality that sometimes
obtains. The teacher solemnly calls the roll, although she can see at a
glance that there are no absentees. This is exceedingly irksome to
wide-awake boys and girls who are avid for variety. The same monotonous
calling of the roll day after day with no semblance of variation induces
in them a sort of mental dyspepsia for which they seek an antidote in
what the teacher denominates disorder. This so-called disorder betokens
good health on their part and is a revelation of the fact that they have
a keen appreciation of the fitness of things. They cannot brook monotony
and it irks them to dawdle about in the anteroom of action. They are
eager to do their work if only the teacher will get right at it. But
they are impatient of meaningless preliminaries. They see no sense in
calling the roll when everybody is present and discredit the teacher who
persists in the practice.

=Repeating answers.=--Still another characteristic of the thirty-minute
teacher is her habit of repeating the answers that pupils give, with the
addition of some inane comment. Whether this repeating of answers is
merely a bad habit or an effort on the part of the teacher to
appropriate to herself the credit that should otherwise accrue to the
pupils, it is not easy to say. Certain it is that school inspectors
inveigh against the practice mightily as militating against the
effectiveness of the teaching. Teachers who have been challenged on this
point make a weak confession that they repeat the answers unconsciously.
They thus make the fatal admission that for a part of the time of the
class exercise they do not know what they are doing, and admitting so
much we can readily classify them as belonging among the thirty-minute
teachers.

=Meanderings.=--Another characteristic is her tendency to wander away
from the direct line and ramble about among irrelevant and
inconsequential trifles. Sometimes these rambles are altogether
entertaining and enable her pupils to pass the time pleasantly, but they
lack "terminal facilities." They lead from nowhere to nowhere in the
most fascinating and fruitless meanderings. Such expeditions bring back
no emoluments. They leave a pleasant taste in the mouth but afford no
nourishment. They use the time but exact no dividends. Like sheet
lightning they are beautiful but never strike anything. They are
soothing sedatives that never impel to action. They lull to repose but
never vitalize.

=The ten-minute teacher.=--It is evident, therefore, that only the
ten-minute teacher is worthy of a place in the vitalized school. She
alone is able and willing to conserve, with religious zeal, the time and
interest of the pupils. To her their time and interest are sacred and
she deems it a sacrilege to trifle with them. She knows the market value
of her own time but does not know the value of the time of the possible
Edison who sits in her class. She gives to every child the benefit of
the doubt and respects both herself and her pupils too much to take
chances by pitting herself against them and using their time for her own
purposes. Moreover, she never permits their interest to flag, but knows
how to keep their minds tense. Their reactions are never less than
incisive, and, therefore, the truths of the lesson groove themselves
deep in their consciousness.


QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1. What is meant by the time element in teaching?

2. How is an operation in a factory timed? For what purpose? What are
some of the results that have accrued from the timing of work by
efficiency experts?

3. How can teaching be timed approximately? Is it probable that more of
this will be done in the future by supervisors and investigators? Would
you resent the timing of your work? Would you appreciate it? Why?

4. What may be done, in the matter of bodily positions, to improve
mental time-reactions of the student? Of the teacher?

5. The literature of a typewriter manufacturer carries the precept "Sit
erect." What are the reasons?

6. What two factors must be considered in estimating mental work with a
view to time considerations?

7. If the attainment of school results by the teacher were treated as
the attainment of factory results by the operator, what would happen if
a large per cent of the time spent on a process were unnecessary?

8. Apply the factory manager's argument in detail to the teacher's
efficiency. If you can, show wherein it fails to apply.

9. What result besides waste of time may come of a cumbersome method of
teaching?

10. How can one acquire a clear-cut method?

11. A professor of physics was asked by a former student who was
beginning to teach for suggestions on the teaching of physics. His only
reply was "Know your subject thoroughly." Was this a satisfactory
response? Give reasons for your opinion.

12. If the teacher can have lessons finished with greater rapidity, what
can be done with the time thus remaining?

13. Show that the teacher must attend to the conservation of time in
order to protect the child.

14. In what way besides the direct waste of the minutes is the
expenditure of undue time unfortunate?

15. In what particular way do many teachers lose much of the
recitation-lesson or study-lesson period?

16. What are the results of an undue expenditure of time in this way?

17. What is the relation between the waste of time in school and the
exodus of children from the upper grades?

18. What do you think of a teacher who persists in "meaningless
formalities"?

19. How does the repeating of answers by the teacher affect the pupils?

20. A teacher says she repeats answers often because pupils speak low
and indistinctly. What are the proper remedies for this?

21. What should be the teacher's rule in regard to digressions?

22. Why should every teacher strive to be a "ten-minute" teacher, and
why should every supervisor strive to recommend no others?

23. What corollary can be drawn on the advisability of the employment of
no teachers except those recommended by competent supervisors?




CHAPTER XIII

THE ARTIST TEACHER


=Teaching as a fine art.=--Teaching is an art. This fact has universal
recognition. But it may be made a fine art, a fact that is not so
generally recognized. The difference between the traditional school and
the vitalized school lies in the fact, to a large degree, that, in the
former, teaching is regarded merely as an art, while in the latter it
becomes a fine art. In the former, the teacher is an artisan; in the
latter the teacher is an artist. The difference is broadly significant.
The artisan, in his work, follows directions, plans, specifications, and
blue-prints that have been devised and designed by others; the artist
imbues his work with imagination. The artisan works by the day--so much
money for so many hours' work with pay day as his large objective; the
artist does not disdain pay day, but he has an objective beyond this and
has other sources of pleasure besides the pay envelope. The artisan
thinks and talks of pay day; the artist thinks and talks of his work.
The artisan drops his work when the bell rings; the artist is so
engrossed in his work that he does not hear the bell. The artisan plods
at his task with a grudging mien; the artist works in a fine frenzy.

=Characteristic qualities.=--It is not easy to find the exact words by
which to differentiate the traditional teacher from the artist teacher.
There is an elusive quality in the artist teacher which is not easily
reduced to or described by formal words. We know that the one is an
artist teacher and that the other is not. The formal examination may not
be able to discover the artist teacher, but there is a sort of knowledge
that transcends the findings of an examination, that makes her identity
known. She is a real flesh and blood person and yet she has a
distinctive quality that cannot be mistaken even though it eludes
description. She exhales a certain exquisiteness that reveals itself in
the delicacy and daintiness of her contact with people and the objective
world. Her impact upon the consciousness is no more violent than the
fragrance of the rose, but, all at once, she is there and there to stay,
modest, serene, and masterful.

She is as gentle as the dawn but as staunch as the oak. She has
knowledge and wisdom, and, better still, she has understanding; she
needs no diagram. Her gaze penetrates the very heart of a situation but
is never less than kindly, and her eyes are never shifty. Her aplomb,
her pose, and her poise belong to her quite as evidently as her hands.
She is genuine and altogether free from affectation. Her presence
stimulates without intoxicating, and she accepts the respect of people
with the same naturalness and grace as would accompany her acceptance of
a glass of water. Both the giver and the recipient of this respect are
ennobled by the giving. Indeed she would far rather have the respect of
people, her pupils included, than mere admiration, for she knows full
well that respect is far more deeply rooted in the spirit and bears
fruit that is more worth while. Her nature knows not inertia, but it
abounds in enterprise, endeavor, and courage that are born of a high
purpose.

=Joy in her work.=--Her teaching and her life do not occupy separate
compartments but are identical in time and space; only her teaching is
but one phase or manifestation of her life. She fitly exemplifies the
statement that "Art is the expression of man's joy in his work." She has
great joy in her work and, therefore, it is done as any other artist
does his work. She enjoys all life, including her work. Indeed, she has
contracted the habit of happiness and is so engrossed in the big
elemental things of life that she can laugh at the incidental pin-pricks
that others call troubles. She differentiates major from minor and never
permits a minor to usurp the throne. Being an integral part of her life,
her work takes on all the hues of her life. For her, culture is not
something added; rather it is a something that permeates her whole
nature and her whole life. She does not read poetry and other forms of
literature, study the great masterpieces of music and art, and seek
communion with the great, either in person or through their works--she
does not do these things that she may acquire culture, but does them
because she has culture.

=Dynamic qualities.=--Her character is the sum of all her habits of
thinking, feeling, and action and, therefore, is herself. Since she is
an artist, her habits are all pitched in a high key and she is culture
personified. Her immaculateness of body and spirit is not a superficial
acquisition but a fundamental expression of her real self. Just as the
electric bulb diffuses light, so she diffuses an atmosphere of culture.
She gives the artistic touch to every detail of her work because she is
an artist, a genuine, sincere artist in all that makes up life. She has
the heart of an artist, the eyes of an artist, the touch of an artist.
Whether these qualities are inherent or acquired is beside the point, at
present, but it may be remarked, in passing, that unless they were
capable of cultivation, the world would be at a standstill. There is no
place in her exuberant vitality for a jaundiced view, and hence her
world does not become "stale, flat, and unprofitable."

=Aspiration and worship.=--Every sincere, noble aspiration is a prayer;
hence, she prays without ceasing in obedience to the admonition of the
Apostle. And, let it be said in reverence, she helps to answer her own
prayers. Her spirit yearns out toward higher and wider attainments every
hour of the day, not morbidly but exultantly. And while she aspires she
worships. The starry sky holds her in rapt attention and admiration, and
the modest flower does no less. She is thankful for the rain, and revels
in the beauty and abundance of the snow. The heat may enervate, but she
is grateful, none the less, because of its beneficent influence upon the
farmer's work. Like food and sleep, her attitude of worship conserves
her powers and preserves her balance. When physical weariness comes, she
sends her spirit out to the star, or the sea, or the mountain, and so
forgets her burden in the contemplation of majesty and beauty. In short,
her spirit is attuned to all beauty and sublimity and truth, and so she
is inherently an artist.

=Professor Phelps quoted.=--In his very delightful book, "Teaching in
School and College," the author, Professor William Lyon Phelps, says: "I
do not know that I could make entirely clear to an outsider the pleasure
I have in teaching. I had rather earn my living by teaching than in any
other way. In my mind, teaching is not merely a life work, a profession,
an occupation, a struggle; it is a passion. I love to teach. I love to
teach as a painter loves to paint, as a musician loves to play, as a
singer loves to sing, as a strong man rejoices to run a race. Teaching
is an art--an art so great and so difficult to master that a man or a
woman can spend a long life at it, without realizing much more than his
limitations and mistakes, and his distance from the ideal. But the main
aim of my happy days has been to become a good teacher, just as every
architect wishes to be a good architect, and every professional poet
strives toward perfection. For the chief difference between the ambition
of the artist and the ambition of a money-maker--both natural and
honorable ambitions--is that the money-maker is after the practical
reward of his toil, while the artist wants the inner satisfaction that
accompanies mastery."

=Attitude toward work.=--To these sentiments the artist teacher
subscribes whole-heartedly, if not in words, certainly by her attitude
and practices. She regards her work not as a task but as a privilege,
and thinking it a privilege she appreciates it as she would any other
privilege. She would esteem it a privilege to attend a concert by
high-class artists, or to visit an art gallery, or to witness a
presentation of a great drama, or to see the Jungfrau; and she feels the
same exaltation as she anticipates her work as a teacher. She sings on
her way to school because of the privileges that await her. She
experiences a fine flow of sentiment without becoming sentimental.
Teaching, to her, is a serious business, but not, in the least, somber.
Painting is a serious business, but the artist's zeal and joy in his
work give wings to the hours. Laying the Atlantic cable was a serious
business, but the vision of success was both inspiring and inspiriting,
and temporary mishaps only served to stimulate to greater effort.

=The element of enthusiasm.=--To this teacher, each class exercise is an
enterprise that is big with possibilities; and, in preparation for the
event, she feels something of the thrill that must have animated
Columbus as he faced the sea. She estimates results more by the faces of
her pupils than by the marks in a grade book, for the field of her
endeavors is the spirit of the child, and the face of the child
telegraphs to her the awakening of the spirit. Like the sculptor, she is
striving to bring the angel of her dream into the face of the child; and
when this hope is realized, the privilege of being a teacher seems the
very acme of human aspirations. The animated face and the flashing eye
betoken the sort of life that her teaching aims to stimulate; and when
she sees these unmistakable manifestations, she knows that her big
enterprise is a success and rejoices accordingly. If, for any reason,
her enthusiasm is running low, she takes herself in hand and soon
generates the enthusiasm that she knows is indispensable to the success
of her enterprise.

=Redemption of common from commonplace.=--She has the supreme gift of
being able to redeem the common from the plane of the commonplace.
Indeed, she never permits any fact of the books to become commonplace to
her pupils. They all know that Columbus discovered America in 1492, but
when the recitation touches this fact she invests it with life and
meaning and so makes it glow as a factor in the class exercise. The
humdrum traditional teacher asks the question; and when the pupil drones
forth the answer, "Columbus discovered America in 1492," she dismisses
the whole matter with the phonographic response, "Very good." What a
farce! What a travesty upon the work of the teacher! Instead of being
very good, it is bad, yea, inexpressibly bad. The artist teacher does it
far better. By the magic of her touch she causes the imagination of her
pupils to be fired and their interest to thrill with the mighty
significance of the great event. They feel, vicariously, the poverty of
Columbus in his appeals for aid and wish they might have been there to
assist. They find themselves standing beside the intrepid mariner,
watching the angry waves striving to beat him back. They watch him
peering into space, day after day, and feel a thousand pities for him in
his suspense. And when he steps out upon the new land, they want to
shout out their salvos and proclaim him a victor.

=The voyage of Columbus.=--They have yearned, and striven, and prayed
with Columbus, and so have lived all the events of his great
achievements. Hence, it can never be commonplace in their thinking. The
teacher lifted it far away from that plane and made it loom high and
large in their consciousness. A dramatic critic avers that the action of
the play occurs, not upon the stage, but in the imagination of the
auditors; that the players merely cause the imagination to produce the
action; and that if nothing were occurring in the imagination of the
people in the seats beyond what is occurring on the stage, the audience
would leave the theater by way of protest. The artist teacher acts upon
this very principle in every class exercise. Neither the teacher nor the
book can possibly depict even a moiety of all that she hopes to produce
in the imagination of the pupils. She is ever striving to find the one
word or sentence that will evoke a whole train of events in their minds.
Just here is where her superb art is shown. A whole volume could not
portray all that the imagination of the pupils saw in connection with
the voyage of Columbus, and yet the teacher caused all these things to
happen by the use of comparatively few words. This is high art; this
proclaims the artist teacher.

=Resourcefulness.=--In her work there is a fineness and a delicacy of
touch that baffles a satisfactory analysis. She has the power to call
forth Columbus from the past to reënact his great discovery in the
imagination of her pupils--all without noise, or bombast, or
gesticulation. She does what she does because she is what she is; and
she needs neither copyright nor patent for protection. Her work is
suffused with a rare sort of enthusiasm that carries conviction by
reason of its genuineness. This enthusiasm gives to her work a tone and
a flavor that can neither be disguised nor counterfeited. Her work is
distinctive, but not sensational or pyrotechnic. Least of all is it ever
hackneyed. So resourceful is she in devising new plans and new ways of
saying and doing things that her pupils are always animated by a
wholesome expectancy. She is the dynamo, but the light and heat that she
generates manifest themselves in the minds of her pupils, while she
remains serene and quiet.

=The thirteen colonies.=--With the poet Keats she can sing:

  Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all
  Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

Animated by this sentiment, she disdains no form of truth, whether large
or small, for in every form of truth she finds beauty; and her spirit
reacts to it on the instant, and joy is the resultant. This is the basis
for her superb enthusiasm in every detail of her work as well as the
source of her joyous living. Her pupils may name the thirteen original
colonies without a slip, but that is not enough for her. The
establishing of these colonies formed a mighty epoch in history, and she
must dwell upon the events until they throb through the life currents of
her pupils. Names in books must mean people with all their hopes, their
aspirations, their trials and hardships, their sorrows and their joys.
The conditions of life, the food, the clothing, the houses, the modes of
travel, and the dangers must all come into the mental picture. Hence it
is that she prepares for the lesson on the colonies as she would make
ready for a trip with the pupils around the world, and the mere giving
of names is negligible in her inspiring enterprise.

=Every subject invested with life.=--She finds in the circulation of the
blood a subject of great import and makes ready for the lesson with
enthusiastic anticipation. Her step is elastic as she takes her way to
school on this particular day, and her face is beaming, for to-day comes
to the children this stupendous revelation. She feels as did the college
professor when he was just ready to begin an experiment in his
laboratory and said to his students, "Gentlemen, please remove your
hats; I am about to ask God a question." She approaches every truth
reverently, albeit joyously, for she feels that she is the leader of the
children over into the Promised Land. In the book already quoted,
Professor Phelps says, "I read in a German play that the mathematician
is like a man who lives in a glass room at the top of a mountain covered
with eternal snow--he sees eternity and infinity all about him, but not
much humanity." Not so in her teaching of mathematics; for every subject
and every problem transports her to the Isle of Patmos, and the hour is
crowded with revelations.

=Human interest.=--And wherever she is, there is humanity. There are no
dry bones in her work, for she invests every subject with human interest
and causes it to pulsate in the consciousness of her pupils. If there
are dry bones when she arrives, she has but to touch them with the magic
of her humanity, and they become things of life. Whether long division
or calculus, it is to her a part of the living, palpitating truth of the
world, and she causes it to live before the minds of the pupils. The
so-called dead languages spring to life in her presence, and, like
Aaron's rod, blossom and bring forth at her touch. Wherever she walks
there are resurrections because life begets life. No science, no
mathematics, no history, no language, can be dull or dry when touched by
her art, but all become vital because she is vital. By the subtle
alchemy of her artistic teaching all the subjects of her school are
transmuted into the pure gold of truth and beauty.


QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1. What kinds of arts are there other than the fine arts?

2. How do the motives of the artisan differ from those of the artist?

3. What are some of the characteristics that gain one the distinction of
being an "artist" teacher?

4. Show that to enjoy respect is more worth while than to attract
admiration.

5. Under what conditions can one have joy in his work? Can one do his
best without it?

6. What is the result on one's work of brooding over troubles?

7. Henry Ford employs trained sociologists who see that the home
relations of his employees are satisfactory. Why?

8. Is one who reads good literature to acquire culture as yet an
"artist" teacher?

9. What constitutes character?

10. What is the inference concerning one's culture if his clothes and
body are not clean? If his property at the school is not in order?

11. How can one add to his culture? Is what one knows or what one does
the more important part of it? Has a high degree of culture been
attained by a person who must ever be on his guard?

12. Is feeling an important element of culture? Illustrate.

13. What is the teacher's chief reward?

14. Can a teacher lead pupils to regard work as a privilege rather than
as a task, unless she has that attitude herself?

15. In what respects do you regard teaching as a privilege? In what
respects is it drudgery to you?

16. Can enthusiasm result if there is a lack of joy in one's work? If
there is a deficiency of physical strength? If there is a poor knowledge
of the subject?

17. What causes historical facts to seem commonplace?

18. What elements should be emphasized in history to make it seem alive
with meaning?

19. What principle of the drama comes into play in teaching, when a
teacher desires to invest the subject with life?

20. What advantages are there in having variety in one's plans?

21. Why should one avoid the sensational in school work? What are the
characteristics of sensationalism? Is the fact that a class is unusually
aroused a reason for decrying a method as sensational?

22. With what spirit should a teacher prepare to teach about the
thirteen colonies?

23. Why should a teacher have great joy in the teaching of science?

24. Is interest in a subject as an abstract science likely to be an
adequate interest? If so, is it the best sort of interest? Why?

25. From what should interest start, and in what should it function?

26. Summarize the ways in which the artist teacher will show herself the
artist.




CHAPTER XIV

THE TEACHER AS AN IDEAL


=Responsibility of the exemplar.=--If the teacher could be convinced
that each of her pupils is to become a replica of herself, she would
more fully appreciate the responsibilities of her position. At first
flush, she might feel flattered; but when she came into a full
realization of the magnitude of the responsibility, she would probably
seek release. If she could know that each pupil is striving to copy her
in every detail of her life, her habits of speech, her bodily movements,
her tone of voice, her dress, her walk, and even her manner of thinking,
this knowledge would appall her, and she would shrink from the
responsibility of becoming the exemplar of the child. She cannot know,
however, to what extent and in what respects the pupils imitate her.
Nor, perhaps, could they themselves give definite information on these
points, if they were put to the test. Children imitate their elders both
consciously and unconsciously; so, whether the teacher wills it so or
not, she must assume the functions of an exemplar as well as a teacher.

=Absorbing standards.=--If we give full credence to Tennyson's
statement, "I am a part of all that I have met," then it follows that we
have become what we are, in some appreciable measure, through the
process of absorption. In other words, we are a composite of all our
ideals. The vase of flowers, daintily arranged, on the breakfast table
becomes the standard of good taste thenceforth, and all through life a
vase of flowers arranged less than artistically gives one a sensation of
discomfort. A traveler relates that in a hotel in Brussels he saw window
curtains of a delicate pattern; and, since that time, he has sought in
many cities for curtains that will fill the measure of the ideal he
absorbed in that hotel. Beauty is not in the thing itself, but in the
eye of the beholder, and the eye is but the interpreter of the ideal.
One person rhapsodizes over a picture that another turns away from,
because the latter has absorbed an ideal that is unknown to the former.

=Education by absorption.=--This subject of absorption has not received
the careful attention that its importance warrants. In the social
consciousness education has been so long associated with books, and
formal processes, that we find it difficult to conceive of education
outside of or beyond books. If, as we so confidently assert, education
is a spiritual process, then whatever stimulates the spirit must be
education, whether a landscape, a flower, a picture, or a person. The
traveler who sits enrapt before the Jungfrau for an hour or a day is
becoming more highly educated, even in the absence of books and
formalities. The beauty of the mountain touches his spirit, and there is
a consequent reaction that fulfills all the claims of the educational
processes. In short, he is lifted to a higher plane of appreciation, and
that is what the books and the schools are striving to achieve.

=The principle illustrated.=--In the presence of this mountain the
tourist gains an ideal of grandeur which becomes his standard of
estimating scenery throughout life. A boy once heard "The Dead March"
played by an artist, and when he was grown to manhood that was still his
ideal of majestic music. A traveler asserts that no man can stand for an
hour on the summit of Mt. Rigi and not become a better and a stronger
man for the experience. A writer on art says that it is worth a trip
across the ocean to see the painting of the bull by Paul Potter; but
that, of course, depends upon the ideals of the beholder. All these
illustrations conform to and are in harmony with the psychological
dictum that in the educational process the spirit reacts to its
environment.

=The teacher as environment.=--But the environment may include people as
well as inanimate objects, mountains, rivers, flowers, and pictures.
And, as a part of the child's environment, the teacher takes her place
in the process of education by absorption. A city superintendent avers
that there is one teacher in his corps who would be worth more to his
school than the salary she receives even if she did no teaching. This
means that her presence in the school is a wholesome influence, and that
she is the sort of environment to which the pupils react to their own
advantage. It might not be a simple thing to convince some taxpayers of
the truth of the superintendent's statement, but this fact only proves
that they have not yet come into a realization of the fact that there
can be education by absorption.

=The Great Stone Face.=--The people of Florence maintain that they need
not travel abroad to see the world, for the reason that the world comes
to them. It is true that many thousands visit that city annually to win
a definition of art. There they absorb their ideals of art and thus
attain abiding standards. In like manner the child may sojourn in the
school to gain an ideal of grace of manner and personal charm as
exemplified by the teacher, and no one will have the temerity to assert
that this phase of the child's education is less important than those
that are acquired through the formal processes. The boy in the story
grew into the likeness of the "Great Stone Face" because that had become
his ideal, and not because he had had formal instruction in the subject
of stone faces, or had taken measurements of or computed the dimensions
of the one stone face. He grew into its likeness because he thought of
it, dreamed of it, absorbed it, and was absorbed by it, and reacted to
it whenever it came into view.

=Pedagogy in literature.=--Hawthorne, in this story, must have been
trying to teach the lesson of unconscious education or education by
absorption, but his readers have not all been quick to catch his
meaning. Teachers often take great unction in the reflection that they
afford to the child his only means of education, and that but for them
the child would never become educated at all. We are slow to admit that
there are many sources of education besides the school, and that formal
instruction is not the only road to the acquisition of knowledge.
Tennyson knew and expressed this conception in the quotation already
given, but we have not acquired the habit of consulting the poets and
novelists for our pedagogy. When we learn to consult these, we shall
find them expressing many tenets of pedagogy that are basic.

=The testimony of experience.=--But we need not go beyond our own
experiences to realize that much of our education has been unconsciously
gained, that we have absorbed much of it, and, possibly, what we now
regard as the most vital part of it. We have but to explore our own
experiences to discover some person whose standards have been effective
in luring us out of ourselves and causing us to yearn toward higher
levels; who has been the beacon light toward which our feet have been
stumbling; who has been the pattern by which we have sought to shape our
lives; and for whom we feel a sense of gratitude that cannot be
quenched. The influence of that person has been a liberal education in
the vital things that the books do not teach, and we shudder to think
what we might have been had that influence not come into our lives. This
ideal is not some mythical, far-away person, but a real man or woman who
has challenged our admiration by looks, by conduct, by position, and by
general bearing in society.

=The one teacher.=--This preliminary part of the subject has been dwelt
upon thus at length in an effort to win assent to the general
proposition that unconscious education is not only possible, but an
actuality. This assent being once given, the mind feels out at once for
applications of the principle and, inevitably, brings the parent and the
teacher into the field of view. But the parent is too near to us in
time, in space, and in relation to afford the illustration that we seek,
and we pass on to the teacher. In the experience of each one of us there
stands out at least one teacher as clear in definition as a cameo. This
teacher may not have been the most scholarly, or the most successful in
popular esteem, or even the most handsome, but she had some quality that
differentiates her in our thinking from all others. Others may seem but
a sort of blur in our memory, but not so this one. She alone is
distinct, distinctive, and regnant.

=Her supremacy.=--The vicissitudes of life have not availed to dethrone
her, nor have the losses, perplexities, and sorrows of life caused the
light of her influence to grow dim. She is still an abiding presence
with us, nor can we conceive of any influence that could possibly
obliterate her. She may have been idealized by degrees, but when she
came fully into our lives she came to stay. She came not as a transient
guest, but as a lifelong friend and comrade. She crept into our lives as
gently as the dawn comes over the hills, and since her arrival there has
been no sunset. Nor was there ever by pupil or teacher any profession or
protestation, but we simply accepted each other with a frankness that
would have been weakened by words.

=The rôle of ideal.=--But the rôle of ideal is not an easy one. It is a
comparatively simple matter to give instruction in geography,
arithmetic, and history, but to know one's self to be the ideal of a
child, or to conceive of the possibility of such a situation and
relation, is sufficient to render the teacher deeply thoughtful. Once it
is borne in upon her that the child will grow into her likeness, she
cannot dismiss the matter from her thinking as she can the lesson in
grammar. The child may be unconscious of the matter, but the teacher is
acutely conscious. When she stands before her class she sees the child
growing into her image, and this reflection gives cause and occasion for
a careful and critical introspection. She feels constrained to take an
inventory of herself to determine whether she can stand a test that is
so sear

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