The Reconstructed School Part 2

CHAPTER SIX

ASPIRATION

Browning says, "'Tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would do." The boy who has acquired the habit of wishing ardently in right directions is well on the way toward becoming educated. For earnest wishing precedes and conditions every achievement that is worthy the name.

The man who does not wish does not achieve, and the man who does wish with persistency and consistency does not fail of achievement. Had Columbus not wished with consuming ardor to circ.u.mnavigate the globe, he would never have encountered America. The Atlantic cable figured in the dreams and wishes of Cyrus W. Field long before even the preliminaries became realities. The wish evermore precedes the blueprint. It required forty-two years for Ghiberti to translate his dream into the reality that we know as the bronze doors of the Baptistry. But had there been no dreams there had been no bronze doors, and the world of art would have been the poorer.

Every tunnel that pierces a mountain; every bridge that spans a river; every building whose turrets pierce the sky; every invention that lifts a burden from the shoulders of humanity; every reform that gilds the world with the glow of hope, was preceded by a wish whose gossamer strands were woven in a human brain. The Red Cross of today is but a dream of Henri Dunant realized and grown large.

The student who scans the records of historical achievements and of the triumphs of art, music, science, literature, and philanthropy must realize that ardent wishing is the condition precedent to further extension in any of these lines, and he must be aware, too, that the ranks of wishers must be recruited from among the children of our schools. The yearning to achieve is the urge of the divine part of each one of us, and it naturally follows that whoever does not have this yearning has been reduced to the plane of abnormality in that the divine part of him has been subordinated, submerged, stifled. Every fervent wish is a prayer that emanates from this divine part of us, and, in all reverence, it may be said that we help to answer our own prayers. When we wish ardently we work earnestly to cause our dreams to come true. We are told that every wish comes true if we only wish hard enough, and this statement finds abundant confirmation in the experiences of those who have achieved.

The child's wishes have their origin and abode in his native interests and when we have determined what his wishes are, we have in hand the clue that will lead us to the inmost shrine of his native tendencies. This, as has been so frequently said, is the point of attack for all our teaching, this the particular point that is most sensitive to educational inoculation. If we find that the boy is eager to have a wireless outfit and is working with supreme intensity to crystallize his wish into tangible and workable form, quite heedless of clock hours, it were unkind to the point of cruelty and altogether unpedagogical to force him away from this congenial task into some other work that he will do only in a heartless and perfunctory way. If we yearn to have him study Latin, we shall do well to carry the wireless outfit over into the Latin field, for the boy will surely follow wherever this outfit leads. But if we destroy the wireless apparatus, in the hope that we shall thus stimulate his interest in Latin, the scar that we shall leave upon his spirit will rise in judgment against us to the end of life. The Latin may be desirable and necessary for the boy, but the wireless comes first in his wishes and we must go to the Latin by way of the wireless.

It is the high privilege of the teacher to make and keep her pupils hungry, to stimulate in them an incessant ardent longing and yearning.

This is her chief function. If she does this she will have great occasion to congratulate herself upon her own progress as well as theirs. If they are kept hungry, the sources of supply will not be able to elude them, for children have great facility and resourcefulness in the art of foraging.

They readily discover the lurking places of the substantials as well as of the tid-bits and the sweets. They easily scent the trail of the food for which their spiritual or bodily hunger calls. The boy who yearns for the wireless need not be told where he may find screws, bolts, and hammer. The girl who yearns to paint will somehow achieve pigments, brushes, palette, and teachers. Appet.i.te is the princ.i.p.al thing; the rest comes easy. The hungry child lays the whole world under tribute and cheerfully appropriates whatever fits into his wishes. If his neighbor a mile distant has a book for which he feels a craving, the two-mile walk in quest of that book is invested with supreme charm, no matter what the weather. The apple may be hanging on the topmost bough, but the boy who is apple-hungry recks not of height nor of the labyrinth of hostile branches. He gets the apple. As some one has said, "The soul reaches out for the cloak that fits it."

There is nothing more pathetic in the whole realm of school procedure than the frantic efforts of some teachers to feed their pupils instead of striving to create spiritual hunger. They require pupils to "take" so many problems, con so many words of spelling, turn so many pages of a book on history, and then have them try to repeat in an agony of effort words from a book that they neither understand nor feel an interest in. The teacher would feed them whether they have any craving for food or not. Such teachers seem to be immune to the teachings of psychology and pedagogy; they continue to travel the way their grandparents trod, spurning the practices of Pestalozzi, Froebel, and Francis Parker. They seem not to know that their pupils are predatory beings who are quite capable of ransacking creation to get the food for which they feel a craving. Not appreciating the nature of their pupils, they continue the process of feeding and stuffing them and thus fall into the fatal blunder of mistaking distention for education.

Ruth McEnery Stuart has set out this whole matter most lucidly and cogently in her volume ent.i.tled _Sonny_. In this story the boy had four teachers who took no account of his aspirations and natural tendencies, but insisted upon feeding him traditional food by traditional methods. To them it mattered not that he was unlike other boys. What was suitable for them must be equally suitable for him. The story goes that a certain school-master was expounding the pa.s.sage "Be ye pure in heart." Turning to the boys he exclaimed, "Are you pure in heart? If you're not, I'll flog you till you are." So with Sonny's four teachers. If he had no appet.i.te for their kind of food, they'd feed it to him till he had. But when the appet.i.te failed to come as the result of their much feeding, they banished him to outer darkness with epithets expressive of their disappointment and disgust. They washed their hands of him and were glad to be rid of him.

His next teacher, however, was different. She sensed his unlikeness to other boys and knew, instinctively, that his case demanded and deserved special treatment. She consulted his aspirations and appraised his native tendencies. In doing so, she discovered an embryo naturalist and thus became aware of the task to which she must address herself. So she spread her nets for all living and creeping things, for the beasts of the forest, the birds of the air, for plants, and flowers, and stones,--in short, for all the works of nature. In name she was his teacher, but in reality she was his pupil, and his other four teachers might have become members of the cla.s.s with rich profit to themselves. In his examination for graduation the boy utterly confounded and routed the members of the examining committee by the profundity and breadth of his knowledge and they were glad to check his onslaught upon the ramparts of their ignorance by awarding him a diploma.

It devolves upon the superintendent and teachers, therefore, to determine what studies already in the schools or what others that may be introduced will best serve the purpose of fostering aspiration. They cannot deny that this quality is an essential element in the spiritual composition of every well-conditioned child as well as of every rightly const.i.tuted man and woman. For aspiration means life, and the lack of aspiration means death.

The man who lacks aspiration is static, dormant, lifeless, inert; the man who has aspiration is dynamic, forceful, potent, regnant. Aspiration is the animating power that gives wings to the forces of life. It is the motive power that induces the currents of life. The man who has aspiration yearns to climb to higher levels, to make excursions into the realms that lie beyond his present horizon, and to traverse the region that lies between what he now is and what he may become. It is the dove that goes forth from the ark to make discovery of the new lands that beckon.

In a former book the author tried to set forth the influence of the poet in generating aspiration, and in this attempt used the following words: "When he would teach men to aspire he writes _Excelsior_ and so causes them to know that only he who aspires really lives. They see the groundling, the boor, the drudge, and the clown content to dwell in the valley amid the loaves and fishes of animal desires, while the man who aspires is struggling toward the heights whence he may gain an outlook upon the glories that are, know the throb and thrill of new life, and experience the swing and sweep of spiritual impulses. He makes them to know that the man who aspires recks not of cold, of storm, or of snow, if only he may reach the summit and lave his soul in the glory that crowns the marriage of earth and sky. They feel that the aspirant is but yielding obedience to the behests of his better self to scale the heights where sublimity dwells."

It were useless for teachers to pooh-pooh this matter as visionary and inconsequential or to disregard aspiration as a vital factor in the scheme of education. This quality is fundamental and may not, therefore, be either disregarded or slurred. Fundamental qualities must engage the thoughtful attention of all true educators, for these fundamentals must const.i.tute the ground-work of every reform in our school procedure. There can be life without arithmetic, but there can be no real life without aspiration. It points to higher and fairer levels of life and impels its possessor onward and upward. This needs to be fully recognized by the schools that would perform their high functions worthily, and no teacher can with impunity evade this responsibility. Somehow, we must contrive to instill the quality of aspiration into the lives of our pupils if we would acquit ourselves of this obligation. To do less than this is to convict ourselves of stolidity or impotence.

Chief among the agencies that may be made to contribute generously in this high enterprise is history, or more specifically, biography, which is quintessential history. A boy proceeds upon the a.s.sumption that what has been done may be done again and, possibly, done even better. When he reads of the beneficent achievements of Edison he becomes fired with zeal to equal if not surpa.s.s these achievements. Obstacles do not daunt the boy who aspires. Everything becomes possible in the light and heat of his zeal. Since Edison did it, he can do it, and no amount of discouragement can dissuade him from his lofty purpose. He sets his goal high and marches toward it with dauntless courage. If a wireless outfit is his goal, bells may ring and clocks may strike, but he hears or heeds them not.

To be effective the teaching of history must be far more than the mere droning over the pages of a book. It must be so vital that it will set the currents of life in motion. In his illuminating report upon the schools of Denmark, Mr. Edwin G. Cooley quotes Bogtrup on the teaching of history as follows: "History does not mean books and maps; it is not to be divided into lessons and gone through with a pointer like any other paltry school subject. History lies before our eyes like a mighty and turbulent ocean, into which the ages run like rivers. Its rushing waves bring to our listening ears the sound of a thousand voices from the olden time. With our pupils we stand on the edge of a cliff and gaze over this great sea; we strive to open their eyes to its power and beauty; we point out the laws of the rise and fall of the waves, and of the strong under-currents.

We strive by poetic speech to open their ears to the voices of the sea which in our very blood run through the veins from generation to generation, and, humming and singing, echo in our innermost being."

Such teaching of history as is here portrayed will never fall upon dull ears or unresponsive spirits. It will thrill the youth with a consuming desire to be up and doing. He will ignite at touch of the living fire. His soul will become incandescent and the glow will warm him into n.o.ble action. He yearns to emulate the triumphs of those who have preceded him on the stage of endeavor. If he reads "The Message to Garcia" he feels himself pulsating with the zeal to do deeds of valor and heroism. Whether the records deal with Clara Barton, Nathan Hale, Frances Willard, Mrs.

Stowe, Columbus, Lincoln, William the Silent, Erasmus, or Raphael, if these people are present as vital ent.i.ties the young people will thrill under the spell of the entrancing stories. Then will history and biography come into their own as means to a great end, and then will aspiration take its rightful place as one of the large goals in the scheme of education.

As Browning says, "A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?" and again:

What I aspired to be And was not, comforts me.

CHAPTER SEVEN

INITIATIVE

No one who gives the matter thoughtful consideration will ever deprecate or disparage the possession of the virtue of obedience; but, on the other hand, no such thoughtful person will attempt to deny that this virtue, desirable as it is, may be fostered and emphasized to such a degree that its possessor will become a mere automaton. And this is bad; indeed, very bad. We extol obedience, to be sure, but not the sort of blind, unthinking obedience that will reduce its possessor to the status of the mechanical toy which needs only to be wound up and set going. The factory superintendent is glad to have men about him who are able to work efficiently from blueprints; but he is glad, also, to have men about him who can dispense with blueprints altogether or can make their own. The difference between these two types of operatives spells the difference between leadership and mere blind, automatic following. Were all the workers in the factory mere followers, the work would be stereotyped and the factory would be unable to compete with the other factory, where initiative and leadership obtain.

One psychologist avers that ninety per cent of our education comes through imitation; but, even so, it is quite pertinent to inquire into the remaining ten per cent. Conceding that we adopt our styles of wearing apparel at the behest of society; that we fashion and furnish our homes in conformity to prevailing customs; that we permit press and pulpit to formulate for us our opinions and beliefs; in short, that we are imitators up to the full ninety per cent limit, it still must seem obvious to the close observer that the remaining ten per cent has afforded us a vast number and variety of improvements that tend to make life more agreeable.

This ten per cent has subst.i.tuted the modern harvester for the sickle and cradle with which our ancestors harvested their grain; it has brought us the tractor for the turning of the soil in place of the primitive plow; it has enabled us to use the auto-truck in marketing our products instead of the ox-teams of the olden times; it has brought us the telegraph and telephone with which to send the message of our desires across far s.p.a.ces; and it has supplied us with conveniences and luxuries that our grandparents could not imagine even in their wildest fancies.

A close scrutiny will convince even the most incredulous that many teachers and schools arc doing their utmost, in actual practice if not in theory, to eliminate the ten per cent margin and render their pupils imitators to the full one hundred per cent limit. We force the children to travel our standard pedagogical tracks and strive to fashion and fix them in our standard pedagogical molds. And woe betide the pupil who jumps the track or shows an inclination to travel a route not of the teacher's choosing! He is haled into court forthwith and enjoined to render a strict accounting for his misdoing; for anything that is either less or more than a strict conformity to type is accounted a defection. We demand absolute obedience to the oracular edicts of the school as a pa.s.sport to favor.

Conformity spells salvation for the child and, in the interests of peace, he yields, albeit grudgingly, to the inevitable.

In world affairs we deem initiative a real a.s.set, but one of the saddest of our mistakes in ordering school activities consists in our fervid attempts to prove that the school is detached from life and something quite apart from the world. We would have our pupils believe that, when they are in school, they are neither in nor of the world. At our commencement exercises we tell the graduates that they are now pa.s.sing across a threshold out into the world; that they are now entering into the realms of real life; and that on the morrow they will experience the initial impact of practical life. These time-worn expressions pa.s.s current, at face value, among enthusiastic relatives and friends, but there are those in the audience who know them to be the veriest cant, with no basis either in logic or in common sense. It is nothing short of foolishness to a.s.sert that a young person must attain the age of eighteen years before he enters real life. The child knows that his home is a part of the world and an element in life, that the grocery is another part, the post-office still another part, and so on through an almost endless list.

Equally well does he know that the school is a part of life, because it enters into his daily experiences the same as the grocery and the post-office. Full well does he know that he is not outside of life when he is in school, and no amount of sophistry can convince him otherwise. If the school is not an integral part of the world and of life, so much the worse for the school and, by the same token, so much the worse for the teacher. Either the school is a part of the world or else it is neither a real nor a worthy school.

The hours which the child spends in school are quite as much a part of his life as any other portion of the day, no matter what activities the school provides, and we do violence to the facts when we a.s.sume or argue otherwise. Here is a place for emphasis. Here is the rock on which many a pedagogical bark has suffered shipwreck. We become so engrossed in the mechanics of our task--grades, tests, examinations, and promotions--that we lose sight of the fact that we are dealing with real life in a situation that is a part of the real world. The best preparation for life is to practice life aright, and this is the real function of the school.

If teachers only could or would give full recognition to this simple, open truth, there would soon ensue a wide departure from some of our present mechanized methods. But so long as we cling to the traditional notion that school is detached from real life, so long shall we continue to pursue our merry-go-round methods. If we could fully realize that we are teaching life by the laboratory method, many a vague and misty phase of our work would soon become clarified.

Seeing, then, that the school is a cross-section of life, it follows, naturally, that it embodies the identical elements that const.i.tute life as a whole. We all know, by experience, that life abounds in vicissitudes, discouragements, trials, and obstacles, and the school, being a part of real life, must furnish forth the same elements even if of less magnitude.

There are obstacles, to be sure, and there should be. Abraham Lincoln once said, "When you can't remove an obstacle, plow around it." But teachers are p.r.o.ne to remove the obstacles from the pathway of their pupils when they should be training them to surmount these obstacles or, failing that for the time being, to plow around them. It is far easier, however, for the teacher to solve the problem for the boy than to stimulate him to solve it independently. If we would train the boy to leap over hurdles, we must supply the hurdles and not remove them from his path. Still further, we must elevate the hurdles, by easy gradations, if we would increase the boy's powers and prowess.

Professor Edgar James Swift says, "Man expends just energy enough to satisfy the demands of the situation in which he is placed." This statement is big with meaning for all who have a true conception of pedagogy and of life. In this sentence we see the finger-board that points toward high achievements in teaching. If the hurdles are too low, the boy becomes flaccid, flabby, sluggish, and lethargic. The hurdles should be just high enough to engage his full strength, physical, mental, and moral.

They should ever be a challenge to his best efforts. But they should never be so high that they will invite discouragement, disaster, and failure.

The teacher should guard against elevating hurdles as an exhibition of her own reach. The gymnasium is not a stage for exhibitions. On the contrary, it is a place for graduated, c.u.mulative training.

Our inclination is to make life easy and agreeable to our pupils rather than real. To this end we help them over the difficulties, answer questions which they do not ask, and supply them with crutches when we should be training them to walk without artificial aids. The pa.s.sing mark rather than real training seems to be made the goal of our endeavors even if we enfeeble the child by so doing. We seem to measure our success by the number of promotions and not by the quality of the training we give.

We seem to be content to produce weaklings if only we can push them through the gateway of promotion. It matters not that they are unable to find their way alone through the mazes of life; let them acquire that ability later, after they have pa.s.sed beyond our control. Again quoting from Professor Swift, "Following a leader, even though that leader be the teacher, tends to take from children whatever latent ability for initiative they may have."

There is a story of an indulgent mother who was quite eager that her boy should have a pleasant birthday and so asked him what he would most like to do. The answer came in a flash: "Thank you, Mother, I should most like just to be let alone." This answer leads us at once to the inner sanctuary of childhood. Children yearn to be let alone and must grow restive under the incessant attentions of their elders. In school there is ever such a continuous fusillade of questions and answers, a.s.signing of lessons, recitations, corrections, explanations, and promulgations, rules and restrictions that the children have no time for growing inside. They are not left to their own devices but are pulled and pushed about, and managed, and coddled or coerced all day long, so that there is neither time nor scope for the exercise and development of initiative. The teacher, at times, seems to think of the school as a mammoth syringe with which she is called upon to pump information into her bored but pa.s.sive pupils.

Silence is the element in which initiative thrives, but our school programs rarely provide any periods of silence. They a.s.sume that to be effective a school must be a place of bustle, and hurry, and excitement, not to mention entertainment. Sometimes the child is intent upon explorations among the infinities when the teacher summons him back to earth to cross a _t_ or dot an _i_. The teacher who would implant a thought-germ in the minds of her pupils and then allow fifteen minutes of silence for the process of germination, should be ranked as an excellent teacher. When the child is thinking out things for himself the process is favorable to initiative; but when the teacher directs his every movement, thought, and impulse, she is repressing the very quality that makes for initiative and ultimate leadership. When the boy would do some things on his own, the teacher is striving to force him to travel in her groove.

Henderson well says: "We do not invariably cultivate initiative by letting children alone, but in nine cases out of ten it is a highly effective method. In our honest desire for their betterment, the temptation is always to jump in and to do for them, when we would much better keep hands off, and allow them, under favorable conditions, to do for themselves.

They may do something which, from an objective point of view, is much less excellent than our own well-considered plan. But education is not an objective process. It is subjective and was wrapped up in the funny blundering little enterprise of the child, rather than in our own intrusive one." The crude product of the boy's work in manual training is far better for him and for the whole process of education than the finished product of the teacher's skill which sometimes pa.s.ses for the boy's own work. Some manual training teachers have many a sin charged to their account in this line that stands in dire need of forgiveness.

There are many worthy enterprises through which initiative may be fostered. Prominent among these are some of the home and school projects that are in vogue. These projects, when wisely selected with reference to the child's powers and inclination, give scope for the exercise of ingenuity, resourcefulness, perseverance, and unhampered thinking and acting. Besides, some of the by-products are of value, notably self-reliance and self-respect. A child yearns to play a thinking part in the drama of life and not the part of a marionette or jumping-jack that moves only when someone pulls the string. He yearns to be an ent.i.ty and not a mere echo. Paternalism, in our school work, does not make for self-reliance, and, therefore, is to be deplored. There is small hope for the child without initiative, who is helped over every slightest obstacle, and who acquires the habit of calling for help whenever he encounters a difficulty.

Here we have ample scope for the problem element in teaching and we are recreant to our opportunities and do violence to child-nature if we fail to utilize this method. We are much given to the a.n.a.lytic in our teaching, whereas the pupil enjoys the synthetic. He yearns to make things.

Constructing problems in arithmetic, or history, or physics makes a special appeal to him and we do violence to his natural bent if we fail to accord him the opportunity. We can send him in quest of dramatic situations in the poem, or derivatives in his reading lesson, set him thinking of the construction of farm buildings or machinery, or lead him to seek the causes that led up to events in history. In brief, we can appeal to his curiosity and intelligence and so engage the intensest interest of the whole boy.

A school girl a.s.sumed the task of looking after all the repairs in the way of plumbing in the home and, certainly, was none the worse for the experience. She is now a dentist and has achieved distinction both at home and abroad in her chosen profession. She gained the habit of meeting difficult situations without abatement of dignity or refinement. The school, at its best, is a favorable situation for self-education and the wise teacher will see to it that it does not decline from this high plane.

Only so will its products be young men and women who need no leading strings, who can find their way about through the labyrinth of life and not be abashed. They are the ones to whom we must look for leadership in all the enterprises of life, for they have learned how to initiate work and carry it through to success. That school will win distinction which makes initiative one of its big goals and is diligent in causing the activities of the pupils to reach upward toward the achievement of this end.

We may well conclude with a quotation from Dr. Henry van d.y.k.e: "The mere pursuit of knowledge is not necessarily an emanc.i.p.ating thing. There is a kind of reading which is as pa.s.sive as ma.s.sage. There is a kind of study which fattens the mind for examination like a prize pig for a county fair.

No doubt the beginning of instruction must lie chiefly in exercises of perception and memory. But at a certain point the reason and the judgment must be awakened and brought into voluntary play. As a teacher I would far rather have a pupil give an incorrect answer in a way which showed that he had really been thinking about the subject, than a literally correct answer in a way which showed that he had merely swallowed what I had told him, and regurgitated it on the examination paper."

CHAPTER EIGHT