The Vitalized School Part 7

=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 compa.s.ses 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 att.i.tude 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 cla.s.s, 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 ill.u.s.trates 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 a.s.sess 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 cla.s.s, 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 a.s.suming 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 plat.i.tudes 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 a.n.a.lyze her own utterances.

While her neighbor is teaching she is talking, and then with sublime nonchalance she ascribes the r.e.t.a.r.dation 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 att.i.tude 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 pa.s.s 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 cla.s.s exercise they do not know what they are doing, and admitting so much we can readily cla.s.sify 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 pa.s.s 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 cla.s.s. 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 c.u.mbersome method of teaching?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XIII

THE ARTIST TEACHER

=Teaching as a fine art.=--Teaching is an art. This fact has universal recognition. But it may be made a fine art, a fact that is not so generally recognized. The difference between the traditional school and the vitalized school lies in the fact, to a large degree, that, in the former, teaching is regarded merely as an art, while in the latter it becomes a fine art. In the former, the teacher is an artisan; in the latter the teacher is an artist. The difference is broadly significant.

The artisan, in his work, follows directions, plans, specifications, and blue-prints that have been devised and designed by others; the artist imbues his work with imagination. The artisan works by the day--so much money for so many hours' work with pay day as his large objective; the artist does not disdain pay day, but he has an objective beyond this and has other sources of pleasure besides the pay envelope. The artisan thinks and talks of pay day; the artist thinks and talks of his work.

The artisan drops his work when the bell rings; the artist is so engrossed in his work that he does not hear the bell. The artisan plods at his task with a grudging mien; the artist works in a fine frenzy.

=Characteristic qualities.=--It is not easy to find the exact words by which to differentiate the traditional teacher from the artist teacher.

There is an elusive quality in the artist teacher which is not easily reduced to or described by formal words. We know that the one is an artist teacher and that the other is not. The formal examination may not be able to discover the artist teacher, but there is a sort of knowledge that transcends the findings of an examination, that makes her ident.i.ty 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 gla.s.s of water. Both the giver and the recipient of this respect are enn.o.bled 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 s.p.a.ce; 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-p.r.i.c.ks 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.