The Vitalized School Part 2

=Att.i.tude 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 h.e.l.l 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, pa.s.s 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 inst.i.tutions, 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 inst.i.tutions, 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 t.i.tle of education will be cloudy until such time as these inst.i.tutions have become a thing of the past. Both pulpit and press extol the efforts of society to build, equip, and maintain these inst.i.tutions, 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 pa.s.s 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 a.s.sumption 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 a.s.sets 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; s.e.x hygiene and eugenics; penal inst.i.tutions; medical science.

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER V

THE TEACHER-POLITICIAN

=The politician defined.=--The politician has been defined as one who makes a careful study of the wants of his community and is diligent in his efforts to supply these wants. This definition has, at the very least, the merit of mitigating, if not removing, the stigma that attaches to politicians in the popular thought. Conceding the correctness of this definition, it must be evident that society is the beneficiary of the work of the politician, and would be the gainer if the number of politicians were multiplied. The motive of self-interest lies back of all human activities, and education is constantly striving to stimulate and accentuate this motive. Even in altruism we may find an admixture of self-interest. The merchant who arranges his goods artistically may hope by this means to win more patronage, but, aside from this, he wins a feeling of gratification. His self-interest may look either toward a greater volume of business or to a better cla.s.s 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 compet.i.tion that is certain to fall to his lot. He is gratified at the increase of his popularity as a successful pract.i.tioner. 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 subst.i.tution.=--Education, in the large, is the process of making subst.i.tutions. Evermore, in school work, we are striving to subst.i.tute something better for something not so good. In brief, we are striving to subst.i.tute needs for wants. But before we can do this we must determine, by careful study and close observation, what the wants are. Ability to subst.i.tute needs for wants betokens a high type of leadership. The boy wants to read Henty, but needs to read d.i.c.kens or Shakespeare. How shall the teacher proceed in order to make the subst.i.tution? 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 subst.i.tute Shakespeare for Henty?

=Methods contrasted.=--Some teachers have attempted to make this subst.i.tution 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 pa.s.sage in Shakespeare. This pa.s.sage he would have read in his best style and then resumed the reading of Henty. Thus, by degrees, he would have effected the subst.i.tution, permitting the boy to think that this had been done on his own initiative.

=The principle ill.u.s.trated.=--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.

=Subst.i.tution ill.u.s.trated.=--This method of subst.i.tution becomes the rule of the school through the skill of the vitalized teacher. The lily of the valley is subst.i.tuted 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 subst.i.tutions, so, in fact, is society. Legislative bodies are striving to subst.i.tute 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 subst.i.tuting 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 subst.i.tutions. The farmer is subst.i.tuting 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 ill.u.s.tration of the process of making subst.i.tutions, and each subst.i.tuted 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 subst.i.tutions 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 subst.i.tutions.=--As a result of subst.i.tutions 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 subst.i.tutions as we move upward. The progress of civilization is measured by the character of these subst.i.tutions and the rapidity with which they are made. The people on the Isle of Marken make but few subst.i.tutions, 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 subst.i.tutions. 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 subst.i.tutions. 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 subst.i.tute our books for theirs. All the subst.i.tutions we hope to make presuppose a knowledge of their wants. Hence the methods of the missionary bear a close a.n.a.logy 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 const.i.tuents, 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 subst.i.tutions. 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 subst.i.tuted 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 subst.i.tution 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 subst.i.tutions 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 subst.i.tutions in the child's life.

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

8. Ill.u.s.trate how teachers may utilize for the education of the child seemingly harmful instincts.

CHAPTER VI