The Vitalized School Part 16

BOND AND FREE

=Spiritual freedom.=--There is no slavery more abject than the bondage of ignorance. John Bunyan was not greatly inconvenienced by being incarcerated in jail. His spirit could not be imprisoned, but the imprisonment of his body gave his mind and spirit freedom and opportunity to do work that, otherwise, might not have been done. If he had lived a mere physical life and had had no resources of the mind upon which to draw, his experience in the jail would have been most irksome.

But, being equipped with mental and spiritual resources, he could smile disdain at prison bars, and proceed with his work in spiritual freedom.

Had he been dependent solely, or even mainly, upon food, sleep, drink, and other contributions to his physical being for his definition of life, then his whole life would have been restricted to the limits of his cell; but the more extensive and expansive resources of his life rendered the jail virtually nonexistent.

=Ill.u.s.trations.=--It is possible, therefore, so to furnish the mind that it can enjoy freedom in spite of any bondage to which the body may be subjected. Indeed, the whole process of education has as its large objective the freedom of the mind and spirit. Knowledge of truth gives freedom; ignorance of truth is bondage. A man's knowledge may be measured by the extent of his freedom; his ignorance, by the extent of his bondage. In the presence of truth the man who knows stands free and unabashed, while the man who does not know stands baffled and embarra.s.sed. In a chemical laboratory the man who knows chemistry moves about with ease and freedom, while the man who does not know chemistry stands fixed in one spot, fearing to move lest he may cause an explosion. To the man who knows astronomy the sky at night presents a marvelous panorama full of interest and inspiration, to the man who is ignorant of astronomy the same sky is merely a dome studded with dots of light.

=Rome.=--The man who lacks knowledge of history is utterly bewildered and ill at ease in the Capitoline Museum at Rome. All about him are busts that represent the men who made Roman history, but they have no meaning for him. Nero and Julius Caesar are mere names to him and, as such, bear no relation to life. Cicero and Caligula might exchange places and it would be all one to him. He takes a fleeting glance at the statue of the Dying Gaul, but it conveys no meaning to him. He has neither read nor heard of Byron's poem which this statue inspired. He sees near by the celebrated Marble Faun, but he has not read Hawthorne's romance and therefore the statue evokes no interest. In short, he is bored and uncomfortable, and importunes his companions to go elsewhere.

When he looks out upon the Forum he says it looks the same to him as any other stone quarry, and he roundly berates the shiftlessness of the Romans in permitting the Coliseum to remain when the stone could be used for building purposes, for bridges, and for paving. The Tiber impresses him not at all for, as he says, he has seen much larger rivers and, certainly, many whose water is more clear. In the Sistine Chapel he cannot be persuaded to give more than a pa.s.sing glance at the ceiling because it makes his neck ache to look up. The Laoc.o.o.n and Apollo Belvedere he will not see, giving as a reason that he is more than tired of looking at silly statuary. He feels it an imposition that he should be dragged around to such places when he cares nothing for them. His evident boredom is pathetic, and he repeatedly says that he'd far rather be visiting in the corner grocery back home, than to be spending his time in the Vatican.

=Contrasts.=--In this, he speaks but the simple truth. In the grocery he has comfort while, in the Vatican, he is in bondage. His ignorance of art, architecture, history, and literature reduces him to thralldom in any place that exemplifies these. In the grocery he has comfort because he can have a share in the small talk and gossip that obtain there. His companions speak his language and he feels himself to be one of them.

Were they, by any chance, to begin a discussion of history he would feel himself ostracized and would leave them to their own devices. If they would retain him as a companion they must keep within his range of interests and thinking. To go outside his small circle is to offer an affront. He cannot speak the language of history, or science, or art, and so experiences a feeling of discomfort in any presence where this language is spoken.

=History.=--In this concrete ill.u.s.tration we find ample justification for the teaching of history in the schools. History is one of the large strands in the web of life, and to neglect this study is to deny to the pupil one of the elements of freedom. It is not easy to conceive a situation that lacks the element of history in one or another of its phases or manifestations. Whether the pupil travels, or embarks upon a professional life, or a.s.sociates, in any relation, with cultivated people, he will find a knowledge of history not only a convenience but a real necessity, if he is to escape the feeling of thralldom. The utilitarian value of school studies has been much exploited, and that phase is not to be neglected; but we need to go further in estimating the influence of any study. We need to inquire not only how a knowledge of the study will aid the pupil in his work, but also how it will contribute to his life.

=Restricted concepts.=--We l.u.s.tily proclaim our country to be the land of the free, but our notion of freedom is much restricted. In the popular conception freedom has reference to the body. A man can walk the streets without molestation and can vote his sentiments at the polls, but he may not be able to take a day's ride about Concord and Lexington with any appreciable sense of freedom. He may walk about the Congressional Library and feel himself in prison. He may desert a lecture for the saloon in the interests of his own comfort. He may find the livery stable more congenial than the drawing-room. His body may experience a sort of freedom while his mind and spirit are held fast in the shackles of ignorance. A Burroughs, an Edison, a Th.o.r.eau, might have his feet in the stocks and still have more freedom than such a man as this. He walks about amid historic scenes with his spiritual eyes blindfolded, and that condition of mind precludes freedom.

=Real freedom.=--We shall not attain our high privileges as a free people until freedom comes to mean more than the absence of physical restraint. Our conception of freedom must reach out into the world of mind and spirit, and our educational processes must esteem it their chief function to set mental and spiritual prisoners free. We have only to read history, science, and literature to realize what sublime heights mind can attain in its explorations of the realms of truth, and, since the boys and girls of our schools are to pa.s.s this way but once, every effort possible should be made to accord to them full freedom to emulate the mental achievements of those who have gone before. They have a right to become the equals of their predecessors, and only freedom of mind and spirit can make them such. Every man should be larger than his task, and only freedom of mind and spirit can make him so. The man who works in the ditch can revel among the sublime manifestations of truth if only his mind is rightly furnished.

=Spelling.=--The man who is deficient in spelling inevitably confines his vocabulary to narrow limits and so lacks facility of expression and nicety of diction. Accordingly, he suffers by comparison with others whose vocabulary is more extensive and whose diction is, therefore, more elegant. The consciousness of his shortcomings restricts the exuberance of his life, and he fails of that sense of large freedom that a knowledge of spelling would certainly give. So that even in such an elementary study as spelling the school has an opportunity to generate in the pupils a feeling of freedom, and this feeling is quite as important in the scheme of life as the ability to spell correctly. In this statement, there is no straining for effects. On the contrary, many ill.u.s.trations might be adduced to prove that it is but a plain statement of fact. A cultured lady confesses that she is thrown into a panic whenever she has occasion to use the word _Tuesday_ because she is never certain of the spelling.

=The switchboard.=--Life may be likened to an extensive electric switchboard, and only that man or woman has complete freedom who can press the right b.u.t.ton without hesitation or trepidation. The ignorant man stands paralyzed in the presence of this mystery and knows not how to proceed to evoke the correct response to his desires. It has been said that everything is infinitely high that we cannot see over. Hence, to the man who does not know, cube root is infinitely high and, as such, is as far away from his comprehension as the fourth dimension or the precession of the equinoxes. In the presence of even such a simple truth as cube root he stands helpless and enthralled. He lives in a small circle and cannot know the joy of the man whose mind forgathers with the big truths of life.

=Comparisons.=--The ignorant man cannot accompany this man upon his mighty excursions, but must remain behind to make what he can of his feeble resources. The one can penetrate the mysteries of the planets and bring back their secrets; the other must confine his thinking to the weather and the crops. The one can find entertainment in the Bible and Shakespeare; the other seeks companionship among the cowboys and Indians of the picture-films. The one sits in rapt delight through an evening of grand opera, reveling on the sunlit summits of harmony; the other can rise no higher in the scale of music than the raucous hand organ. The one finds keen delight among the masterpieces of art; the other finds his definition of art in the colored supplement. The one experiences the acme of pleasure in communing with historians, musicians, artists, scientists, and philologists; the other finds such a.s.sociations the very acme of boredom. The one finds freedom among the big things of life; the other finds galling bondage.

=Three elements of freedom.=--There are three elements of freedom that are worthy of emphasis. These are self-reliance, self-support, and self-respect. These elements are the trinity that const.i.tute one of the major ultimate aims of the vitalized school. The school that inculcates these qualities must prove a vital force in the life of the pupil; and the pupil who wins these qualities is well equipped for the work of real living. These qualities are the golden gateways to freedom, nor can there be a full measure of freedom if either of these qualities be lacking. Moreover, these qualities are c.u.mulative in their relations to one another. Self-reliance leads to and engenders self-support, and both these underlie and condition self-respect. Or, to put the case conversely, there cannot be self-respect in the absence of self-reliance and self-support.

=Self-reliance.=--It would not be easy to over-magnify the influence of the school that is rightly conducted in the way of inculcating the quality of self-reliance and in causing it to grow into a habit. Every problem that the boy solves by his own efforts, every obstacle that he surmounts, every failure that he transforms into a success, and every advance he makes towards mastery gives him a greater degree of self-reliance, greater confidence in his powers, and greater courage to persevere. It is the high privilege of the teacher to cause a boy to believe in himself, to have confidence in his ability to win through. To this end, she adds gradually to the difficulties of his work, always keeping inside the limits of discouragement, and never fails to give recognition to successful achievements. In this way the boy gains self-reliance and so plumes himself for still loftier flights. Day after day he moves upward and onward, until at length he exemplifies the sentiment of Virgil, "They can because they think they can."

=This quality in practice.=--The self-reliance that becomes ingrained in a boy's habits of life will not evaporate in the heat of the activities and compet.i.tion of the after-school life. On the contrary, it will be reenforced and crystallized by the opportunities of business or professional life, and, in calm reliance upon his own powers, he will welcome compet.i.tion as an opportunity to put himself to the test. He is no weakling, for in school he made his independent way in spite of the lions in his path, and so gained fiber and courage for the contests of daily life. And because he has industry, thrift, perseverance, and self-reliance the gates of success swing wide open and he enters into the heritage which he himself has won.

=The sterling man.=--His career offers an emphatic negation to the notion that obtains here and there to the effect that education makes a boy weak and ineffective, robbing him of the quality of sterling elemental manhood, and fitting him only for the dance-hall and inane social functions. The man who is rightly trained has resources that enable him to add dignity and character to social functions in that he exhales power and bigness. People recognize in him a real man, capable, alert, and potential, and gladly pay him the silent tribute that manhood never fails to win. He can hold his own among the best, and only the best appeal to him.

=Self-respect.=--And, just as he wins the respect of others, so he wins the respect of himself, and so the triumvirate of virtues is complete.

Having achieved self-respect he disdains the cheap, the bizarre, the gaudy, and the superficial. He knows that there are real values in life that are worthy of his powers and best efforts, and these real values are the goal of his endeavors. Moreover, he has achieved freedom, and so is not fettered by precedent, convention, or fads. He is free to establish precedents, to violate the conventions when a great principle is at stake, and to ignore fads. He can stand unabashed in the presence of the learned of the earth, and can understand the heartbeats of life, because he has had experience both of learning and of life. And being a free man his life is fuller and richer, and he knows when and how to bestow the help that will give to others a sense of freedom and make life for them a greater boon.

QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1. Account for the production of some of our greatest religious literature in prison or in exile. Give other instances than the one mentioned by the author.

2. Give your idea of the author's concept of the terms "bondage" and "freedom."

3. Add to the instances noted in this chapter where ignorance has produced bondage.

4. Defend the a.s.sertion that the cost of ignorance in our country exceeds the cost of education. The total amount spent for public education in 1915 slightly exceeded $500,000,000.

5. How do the typical recitations of your school contribute to the happiness of your pupils? Be specific.

6. How may lack of thoroughness limit freedom? Ill.u.s.trate.

7. How may education give rise to self-reliance? Self-respect?

8. Show that national and religious freedom depend upon education.

CHAPTER XXIII

EXAMINATIONS

=Prelude.=--When the vitalized school has finally been achieved there will result a radical departure from the present procedure in the matter of examinations. A teacher in the act of preparing a list of examination questions of the traditional type is not an edifying spectacle. He has a text-book open before him from which he extracts nuts for his pupils to crack. It is a purely mechanical process and only a mechanician could possibly debase intelligence and manhood to such unworthy uses. Were it not so pathetic it would excite laughter. But this teacher is the victim of tradition. He knows no other way. He made out examination questions in accordance with this plan fifteen years ago and the heavens didn't fall; then why, pray, change the method? Besides, men and women who were thus examined when they were children in school have achieved distinction in the world's affairs, and that, of itself, proves the validity of the method, according to his way of thinking.

=Mental atrophy.=--It seems never to occur to him that children have large powers of resistance and that some of his pupils may have won distinction in spite of his teaching and his methods of examination and not because of them. His trouble is mental and spiritual atrophy. He thinks and feels by rule of thumb, "without variableness or shadow of turning." In the matter of new methods he is quite immune. He settled things to his complete satisfaction years ago, and what was good enough for his father, in school methods, is quite good enough for him. His self-satisfaction would approach sublimity, were it not so extremely ludicrous. He has a supercilious sneer for innovations. How he can bring himself to make concessions to modernity to the extent of riding in an automobile is one of the mysteries.

=Self-complacency.=--His complacency would excite profound admiration did it not betoken deadline inaction. He became becalmed on the sea of life years ago, but does not know it. When the procession of life moves past him he thinks he is the one who is in motion, and takes great unction to himself for his progressiveness--"and not a wave of trouble rolls across his peaceful breast." So he proceeds to copy another question from the text-book, solemnly writing it on a bit of paper, and later copying on the blackboard with such a show of bravery and gusto as would indicate that some great truth had been revealed to him alone. In an orotund voice he declaims to his pupils the mighty revelations that he copied from the book. His examination regime is the old offer of a mess of pottage for a birthright.

=Remembering and knowing.=--In our school practices we have become so inured to the question-and-answer method of the recitation that we have made the examination its counterpart. As teachers we are constantly admonishing our pupils to remember, as if that were the basic principle in the educational process. In reality we do not want them to remember--we want them to know; and the distinction is all-important.

The child does not remember which is his right hand; he knows. He does not remember the face of his mother; he knows her. He does not remember which is the sun and which is the moon; he knows. He does not remember snow, and rain, and ice, and mud; he knows.

=Questions and answers.=--But, none the less, we proceed upon the agreeable a.s.sumption that education is the process of memorizing, and so reduce our pupils to the plane of parrots; for a parrot has a prodigious memory. Hence, it comes to pa.s.s that, in the so-called preparation of their lessons, the pupils con the words of the book, again and again, and when they can repeat the words of the book we smile approval and give a perfect grade. It matters not at all that they display no intelligent understanding of the subject so long as they can repeat the statements of the book. It never seems to occur to the teacher that the pupil of the third grade might give the words of the binomial theorem without the slightest apprehension of its meaning. We grade for the repet.i.tion of words, not for intelligence.

=Court procedure.=--In our school practices we seem to take our cue from court procedure and make each pupil who recites feel that he is on the witness stand experiencing all its attendant discomforts, instead of being a cooperating agent in an agreeable enterprise. We suspend the sword of Damocles above his head and demand from him such answers as will fill the measure of our preconceived notions. He may know more of the subject, in reality, than the teacher, but this will not avail. In fact, this may militate against him. She demands to know what the book says, with small concern for his own knowledge of the subject. We proclaim loudly that we must encourage the open mind, and then by our witness-stand ordeal forestall the possibility of open-mindedness.

=Rational methods.=--When we have learned wisdom enough, and humanity enough, and pedagogy enough to dispense with the quasi-inquisition type of recitation, the transition to a more rational method of examination will be well-nigh automatic. Let it not be inferred that to inveigh against the question-and-answer type of recitation is to advocate any abatement of thoroughness. On the contrary, the thought is to insure greater thoroughness, and to make evident the patent truth that thoroughness and agreeableness are not incompatible. Experience ought to teach us that we find it no hardship to work with supreme intensity at any task that lures us; and, in that respect, we are but grown-up children. We have only to generate a white-heat of interest in order to have our pupils work with intensity. But this sort of interest does not thrive under compulsion.

=a.n.a.lysis and synthesis.=--The question-and-answer method evermore implies a.n.a.lysis. But children are inclined to synthesis, which shows at once that the a.n.a.lytic method runs counter to their natural bent. They like to make things, to put things together, to experiment along the lines of synthesis. Hence the industrial arts appeal to them. But constructing problems satisfies their inclination to synthesis quite as well as constructing coat-hangers or culinary compounds, if only the incitement is rational. The writers of our text-books are coming to recognize this fact, and it does them credit. In time, we may hope to have books that will take into account the child's natural inclinations, and the schools will be the beneficiaries.

=Thinking.=--In the process of synthesis the pupil is free to draw upon the entire stock of his acc.u.mulated resources, whereas in the question-and-answer method he is circ.u.mscribed. In the question-and-answer plan he is encouraged to remember; in the other he is encouraged to think.

In our theories we exalt thinking to the highest pinnacle, but in our practice we repress thinking and exalt memory. We admonish our pupils to think, sometimes with a degree of emphasis that weakens our admonition, and then bestow our laurel wreaths upon those who think little but remember much. Our inconsistency in this respect would be amusing if the child's interests could be ignored. But seeing that the child pays the penalty, our inconsistency is inexcusable.

=Penalizing.=--The question-and-answer regime, in its full application, is not wholly unlike a punitive expedition, in that the teacher asks the question and sits with pencil poised in air ready to blacklist the unfortunate pupil whose memory fails him for the moment. The child is embarra.s.sed, if not panic-stricken, and the teacher seems more like an avenging nemesis than a friend and helper. Just when he needs help he receives epithets and a condemning zero. He sinks into himself, disgusted and outraged, and becomes wholly indifferent to the subsequent phases of the lesson. He feels that he has been trapped and betrayed, and days are required for his redemption from discouragement.

=Traditional method.=--In the school where this method is in vogue the examination takes on the color and character of the recitation. At the close of the term, or semester, the teacher makes out the proverbial ten questions which very often reflect her own bias, or predilections, and in these ten questions are the issues of life and death. A hundred questions might be asked upon the subjects upon which the pupils are to be tested, but these ten are the only ones offered--with no options.

Then the grading of the papers ensues, and, in this ordeal, the teacher thinks herself another Atlas carrying the world upon her shoulders. The boy who receives sixty-seven and the one who receives twenty-seven are both banished into outer darkness without recourse. The teacher may know that the former boy is able to do the work of the next grade, but the marks she has made on the paper are sacred things, and he has fallen below the requisite seventy. Hence, he is banished to the limbo of the lost, for she is the supreme arbiter of his fate.

No allowance is made for nervousness, illness, or temperamental conditions, but the same measuring-rod is applied to all with no discrimination, and she has the marks on the papers to prove her infallibility. If a pupil should dare to question the correctness of her grades, he would be punished or penalized for impertinence. Her grades are oracular, inviolable, and therefore not subject to review. She may have been quite able to grade the pupils justly without any such ordeal, but the school has the examination habit, and all the sacred rites must be observed. In that school there is but one way of salvation, and that way is not subject either to repeal or amendment. It is _via sacra_ and must not be profaned. Time and long usage have set the seal of their approval upon it and woe betide the vandal who would dare tamper with it.

=Testing for intelligence.=--This emphatic, albeit true, representation of the type of examinations that still obtains in some schools has been set out thus in some detail that we may have a basis of comparison with the other type of examinations that tests for intelligence rather than for memory. For children, not unlike their elders, are glad to have people proceed upon the a.s.sumption that they are endowed with a modic.u.m of intelligence. They will strive earnestly to meet the expectations of their parents and teachers. Many wise mothers and teachers have incited children to their best efforts by giving them to know that much is expected of them. It is always far better to expect rather than to demand. Coercion may be necessary at times, but coercion frowns while expectation smiles. Hence, in every school exercise the teacher does well to concede to the pupils a reasonable degree of intelligence and then let her expectations be commensurate with their intelligence.

=Concessions.=--It is an affront to the intelligence of a child not to concede that he knows that the days are longer in the summer than in winter. We may fully expect such a degree of intelligence, and base our teaching upon this a.s.sumption. In our examinations we pay a delicate compliment to the child by giving him occasion for thinking. We may ask him why the days are longer in summer than in winter and thus give him the feeling that we respect his intelligence. Our examinations may always a.s.sume observed facts. Even if he has never noted the fact that his shadow is shorter in summer than in winter, if we a.s.sume such knowledge on his part and ask him why such is the case, we shall stimulate his powers of observation along with his thinking. If the teacher asks a boy when and by whom America was discovered, he resents the implication of cra.s.s ignorance; but if she asks how Columbus came to discover America in 1492, he feels that it is conceded that there are some things he knows.

=Ill.u.s.trations.=--If we ask for the width of the zones, we are placing the emphasis upon memory; but, if we ask them to account for the width of the zones, we are a.s.suming some knowledge and are testing for intelligent thinking. If we ask why the sun rises in the east and sets in the west we are, once again, a.s.suming a knowledge of the facts and testing for intelligence. If we ask for the location of the Suez, Kiel, and Welland ca.n.a.ls, we are testing for mere memory; but, if we ask what useful purpose these ca.n.a.ls serve, we are testing for intelligence. When we ask pupils to give the rule for division of fractions, we are testing again for mere memory; but when we ask why we invert the terms of the divisor, we are treating our pupils as rational beings. Our pedagogical sins bulk large in geography when we continually ask pupils to locate places that have no interest for them. Such teaching is a travesty on pedagogy and a sin against childhood.

=Intelligence of teacher.=--If the teacher is consulting her own ease and comfort, then she will conduct the examination as a test for memory.