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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

1. [Teaching School]
2. [The Teacher]
3. [The Child]
4. [The Child of the Future]
5. [The Teacher-Politician]
6. [Sublime Chaos]
7. [Democracy]
8. [Patriotism]
9. [Work and Life]
10. [Words and their Content]
11. [Complete Living]
12. [The Time Element]
13. [The Artist Teacher]
14. [The Teacher as an Ideal]
15. [The Socialized Recitation]
16. [Agriculture]
17. [The School and the Community]
18. [Poetry and Life]
19. [A Sense of Humor]
20. [The Element of Human Interest]
21. [Behavior]
22. [Bond and Fear]
23. [Examinations]
24. [World-Building]
25. [A Typical Vitalized School]

THE VITALIZED SCHOOL

CHAPTER I

TEACHING SCHOOL

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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 searching and so far-reaching.

The teacher’s other self.—As she stands thus in contemplation she sees the child grown to maturity with all her own predilections—physical, mental, spiritual—woven into the pattern of its life. In this child grown up she sees her other self and can thus estimate the qualities of body, mind, and spirit that now constitute herself, as they reveal themselves in another. She thus gains the child’s point of view and so is able to see herself through the child’s eyes. When she is reading a book, she is aware that the child is looking over her shoulder to note the quality of literature that engages her interest. When she is making a purchase at the shop, she finds the child standing at her elbow and duplicating her order. When she is buying a picture, she is careful to see to it that there are two copies, knowing that a second copy must be provided for the child. When she is arranging her personal adornment, she is conscious of the child peeping through the door and absorbing her with languishing eyes.

The status irrevocable.—Wherever she goes or whatever she does, she knows that the child is walking in her footsteps and reënacting her conduct. Her status is irrevocably fixed in the life of the child, nor can any philosophy or sophistry absolve her from the situation. She cannot abdicate her place in favor of another, nor can she win immunity from responsibility. She is the child’s ideal for weal or woe, nor can men or angels change this big fact. Through all the hours of the day she hears the child saying, “Whither thou goest I will go,” and there is no escape.