The Project Gutenberg eBook of Twenty Talks to Teachers, by Thomas E.
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Title: Twenty Talks to Teachers
Author: Thomas E. Sanders
Release Date: February 4, 2022 [eBook #67315]
Language: English
Produced by: The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWENTY TALKS TO
TEACHERS ***
This eBook was created in honour of Distributed Proofreaders 20th
Anniversary.
TWENTY TALKS
--TO--
TEACHERS
--BY--
THOMAS E. SANDERS
AUTHOR OF
“Management and Methods,” “Opening Exercises for Schools,”
“An Outline Guide to Civil Government,”
“Outline of Arithmetic,”
“The Sanders Report Card”
THE TEACHERS CO-OPERATIVE COMPANY
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE
COPYRIGHTED, 1908
----BY----
THOMAS E. SANDERS
PREFACE.
Twenty Talks to Teachers is an epitome of some of the discussions used
by the author in teachers’ institutes. It is not a profound book. It
was not intended to be. Its object is to call the attention of young
teachers to some of the every day conditions and problems which they
must solve for themselves. The average term of service of teachers is
little over three years, hence the great mass of teachers are young in
service. A number of these have expressed themselves as being pleased
with the discussions in institutes, especially so because they were
plain homely talks rather than learned discussions. Perhaps these and
others may appreciate them as well in the printed form.
No one is expected to agree with all that is said. If the topics are
suggestive to young teachers, if the book helps them over a few of the
hard places, if it sets them thinking on some topics, if the advice
that is given proves sound, and if it should encourage a few to deeper
study, better preparation and broader reading, it will have done well.
Trusting that it may form the basis of profitable discussions in
teachers’ institutes and meetings it is submitted to the great body of
young teachers whose zeal, enthusiasm and optimism, has done so much in
the past, is doing yet, and will continue to do so much for our schools
and out of whose work must grow in the future a worthy profession of
teaching.
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
AM I FIT TO TEACH? 7
CHAPTER II.
SHALL TEACHING BE MY LIFE WORK? 14
CHAPTER III.
SECURING A POSITION 21
CHAPTER IV.
PASSING THE EXAMINATION 31
CHAPTER V.
PROBLEMS OF THE YOUNG TEACHER 36
CHAPTER VI.
GRADING A SCHOOL 44
CHAPTER VII.
OPENING EXERCISES 55
CHAPTER VIII.
THE SPIRIT OF THE TEACHER 63
CHAPTER IX.
THE TEACHER’S LIBRARY 70
CHAPTER X.
THE TEACHER OUTSIDE THE SCHOOLROOM 80
CHAPTER XI.
GOOD TEACHING CONDITIONS 90
CHAPTER XII.
KEEPING GOOD CONDITIONS 96
CHAPTER XIII.
WHAT MAKES A GOOD SCHOOL? 105
CHAPTER XIV.
TEN TIME KILLERS 116
CHAPTER XV.
THE VALUE OF A HIGH SCHOOL COURSE 125
CHAPTER XVI.
A TALK ABOUT SPELLING 132
CHAPTER XVII.
ARITHMETIC IN THE SCHOOL 142
CHAPTER XVIII.
TEACHING LITERATURE 153
CHAPTER XIX.
THE TEACHER’S VACATION 166
CHAPTER XX.
THE TEACHER’S VIEW OF LIFE 172
CHAPTER I.
AM I FIT TO TEACH?
The talks that follow are addressed to young teachers. They treat
everyday problems in a homely way. I have tried to be plain and
pointed. I have omitted long terms. I do not speak of correlation,
apperception, spontaneity, etc., and I omit long psychological terms.
You get enough of these in county institutes and educational journals.
You are a school teacher. You have taught but a short time, and you
want to make a success of the work. You may not be even a professional
teacher. You hold neither a normal school diploma nor a life license.
Both of these are good, and a desire for one or both upon your part
would be commendable, but neither is all that is required to teach a
successful school. Some of the most impractical of visionary dreamers
I have ever known possessed the first, and the most tiresome of
moss-backs the second. Given a young man or a young woman of good
character and fair scholarship, desiring to teach school, with little
or no professional study or training, yet anxious to succeed, what may
I say to help them? What are the problems which they must face? What
advice and what cautions will they need, and how may I say this to be
most effective? This is my task.
Perhaps a little self-catechising on your part will be helpful. In
the daily hour of self-communion--and each teacher should have such
an hour--when you turn your thoughts inward and analyse your own
motives and shortcomings, ask yourself in all seriousness: “Am I fit
to teach?” You may not be a “born teacher.” Very few persons are. Few
indeed have the inborn qualities so strong that teaching and teaching
alone will satisfy. Few are so heavenly inspired that they may teach
and succeed at it in defiance of all rules or regulations or accepted
laws of pedagogy. There are some qualities that will help you and some
qualities that you may cultivate--qualities that are essential to the
person who would aspire to be leaders and models for young people. What
are some of these?
_1. Your character must be above reproach._--Whatever else you may
lack, your character must be above suspicion. Character, unquestioned
and unquestionable, first. Other things may be essential, but this is
the one first essential. If you are to be the model after which the
boys and the girls--the most priceless product of the state--will both
consciously and unconsciously fashion their lives, you must be in all
things a worthy model. Pure thoughts, pure words, sincerity, honesty,
earnest and deep convictions must be habitual with you. The purity of
your own thought, the sincerity of your own motives, flashing through
your eyes, the windows of your soul, must call out and strengthen the
purity and nobility of other minds. Your character and your reputation,
too, must stand the search light of the X-ray without showing flaw or
blemish. This, and this alone, is the character and reputation worthy
the teacher, the builder and architect of immortal minds.
Character is what you are; reputation is what others think you are.
Character is essential to pure manhood and pure womanhood, but
reputation also is essential to the teacher. Reputation cannot exist
long without character, but if from any cause however unjust your
reputation is lost even though character remain, your best usefulness
in that immediate community is gone. Then guard well your life if you
are to teach. Avoid not only evil but the appearance of it. Be not
prudish, but keep your reputation unsullied or seek not to stand as
teacher to the young.
_2. A thorough knowledge of the subject taught is essential to
success._--You cannot be a successful teacher of the things you do not
know. Clear-cut, definite, specific knowledge of a subject cannot be
obtained in the pupils when the teacher does not have it. You cannot
successfully teach up to the limit of your knowledge. There is a margin
between your teaching limit and your knowing limit. As you reach your
knowing limit in class, your questions become hazy, indefinite, crude.
You hesitate, you stammer, you repeat yourself, you thresh over and
over again the same thought. You lack proper perspective, and your
teaching becomes dry and tiresome. A thorough and systematic knowledge
of the subject you teach will give you teaching power.
Then, too, your teacher’s knowledge of the subject must be broader
and deeper and better organized than the pupil’s. You must see each
subject in its proper relation to other subjects. Each chapter must
be seen in its relation to the chapters which precede and follow it
in the development of the subject. The pupil’s knowledge of a subject
may end with the gathering and the understanding of facts, but the
teacher’s knowledge must include this and add to it the knowledge of
its deeper relations to other subjects and to mind growth. To teach a
subject is to learn that subject anew, to see it in a new light, in a
deeper and richer significance. You cannot as teacher reach your own
highest success with but a student’s knowledge and view of the subject
you teach. You must have a connected and logical view of the subject as
a whole, and also an intimate and accurate knowledge of the relations
of the parts. This deeper and broader knowledge, properly focused and
presented to pupils gives you strength as a teacher. The deeper, the
broader, the more accurate the knowledge of the subject, the better the
teaching, provided the teacher has tact to present it properly. You
must focus your efforts and bring your teaching into the range of the
pupil’s mental capacity and in an organized form so that pupils may
grasp it. You must stick to the subject, remembering that the minimum
of your knowledge of the subject without review will probably be the
pupil’s maximum after study.
_3. You must keep your knowledge fresh by study._--Growing minds alone
are fit to teach. Stale mental stock does not create fresh mental
appetites. Your attainments are of less importance than your mental
habits. To teach well you must keep growing. Scholarly habits are more
important than ripe scholarship with sluggish habits. Young teachers
often do the best work. They are thinking, investigating, growing. They
are full of life and enthusiasm, and the spirit is contagious with
their pupils. The teacher who is accurate in details without being
tiresome will train pupils to accuracy, unconsciously perhaps, but
successfully. The young teacher faces the future with faith, and hope
and enthusiasm. He is looking to the sunrise and not to the sunset.
He is winning laurels, not resting upon laurels already won. He is
losing his life in his work and will find it again in the lives of his
pupils. Should I choose an institution for myself or for others, I
should choose an institution in which a majority of the faculty were
yet young men, men making reputations rather than men who had made
reputations. The hope and faith, the fire and enthusiasm, the energy
and earnestness, which they bring to their work accomplishes more than
men resting on their accomplishments can possibly accomplish.
You must carry on some line of study or investigation, or systematic
reading, or else you must fossilize fast. This, when dealing with
immature minds year after year, is your only hope. It may be
mathematics, it may be history, it may be science, sociology, political
economy, music or art, it matters very little what the subject
is, but it must be something, and it must be pursued _regularly_,
_systematically_ and _persistently_. In no other way can you keep
growing and not be lost in the educational ruts. When you cease to grow
you begin to decay.
_4. You must love the work of teaching._--If after a fair trial you do
not love to teach and feel deep down in your own consciousness that
you cannot learn to love it, quit by all means and do it at once. No
one is fit to teach who finds the work thoroughly distasteful and who
does not have a genuine love for children and young people. No sadder
sight was ever seen than a long-faced pessimist in the school-room. It
is cruelty personified to keep children in the school-room under the
chilling, blighting influence of a sour-grained pessimistic teacher,
long since dead, else never alive to the beauty of nature and the
buoyancy of childhood--firmly convinced of the total depravity of all
children. Teachers should be full of health, beauty and good cheer.
They must be able to enlist the good-will, co-operation and sympathy of
young people. Children should not look to teachers as masters to drive
them to tasks and to exact penalties, but as friendly companions and
leaders, with strength of character, and force enough to inspire, to
guide, and to direct to higher and purer and nobler things. Teachers
must be able to see the beauties and harmonies of nature all about
them, and to lead pupils to feel and to appreciate the higher things
of life, ever looking upward, lifting upward and pointing upward.
_5. You must be sincere._--You must love your work and believe in it.
You must have a burning desire to help young people, and faith in your
ability to do so. Gushing and lip service will not suffice. The sincere
teacher is always ready to serve. Your actions will speak louder
than words. You will as a rule be in no hurry to leave the building
after school in the evening, but ready and willing and anxious to
consult, to help, to advise, to be of service. The primary teacher’s
success may be judged by the group of children that circle about her
at recess, or that wait to go home as she goes. The sincere teacher
is found at teachers’ meetings and associations, ready to help and on
time. If you are genuinely sincere in your profession you will own a
few professional books and add to them yearly. You will take and read
educational journals and periodicals, and find pleasure in the reading.
You will be found in the summer schools and colleges gaining help and
inspiration for your work. You will have faith in the profession of
teaching, and faith in yourself, and in your ability and worthiness to
be one of the leaders of the youth of our land.
_6. You must possess a worthy ambition._--You are a poor teacher
if you have reached the height of your ambition, intellectually,
professionally or successfully. If you are content or satisfied with
your work, you will let things drag. You should be ambitious to do the
best work of any teacher in your community. You ought to be ambitious
enough also to desire better facilities for teaching and broader
opportunities. We regret the itineracy and lack of stability in the
teaching profession. It is one of the problems of the day. But all this
is better than a body of teachers thoroughly content with conditions
as they are. The teacher content to adjust himself to the conditions of
a certain community and cloister himself there for life at a minimum
salary is lacking in the ambition to do the best work for himself or
others. The teacher who has ambition enough to improve and who seeks
to do his best because it is right and because he desires to advance
in his profession will kindle higher ambitions in his pupils and build
higher types of men and women. A worthy ambition, a proper rating of
your worth, pluck and stamina to stand for your rights, but to do it
decorously and properly, is essential to your best work as a teacher.
Ask yourself, seriously and earnestly, “Am I fit to teach?”
CHAPTER II.
SHALL TEACHING BE MY LIFE WORK?
Shall teaching be my life work? This question stares the sincere young
teacher squarely in the face. He must answer it sooner or later.
His answer means much to himself as well as to others. We speak of
the profession of teaching, but in the truer sense we have none at
present. Teaching may be “the noblest of professions and the sorriest
of trades,” but as long as our standards of entrance are so low and the
number of exits so many, teaching cannot be in its strictest sense a
profession. It is far behind medicine or law, and to a large number of
persons it is only a trade or a temporary occupation.
There are professional teachers. There are persons who have spent time
and money and mental energy studying the problems of the school and
of education. There are persons who seek earnestly to formulate the
truths and to reduce teaching to a science. Many of these truths are
as clearly worked out, as reliable and as completely accepted as are
many of the principles of law and medicine. The work is yet incomplete.
Shall I make it a life work and give to it my life and the best that is
in me? This is the question.
No man can answer this question for you. It is personal. The best that
can be done, and this is worth while, is to weigh the good and the bad
features and leave you to choose for yourself. So much depends upon the
individual. Let me say also that it is never too late to mend. I am one
who believes that there are thousands of good teachers, persons who are
teaching and doing it well, persons who are leaving their impress for
good upon boys and girls, and young men and young women, and who will
not make teaching their life-work, and have never intended to do so.
They are teaching now, and they are, for the time being, putting their
best self into the work. So long as they live in the work and get life
out of it nothing is lost. When they begin to slight it, turning their
energy to law or medicine or business, when their best self goes to
something else while they become “school keepers” instead of teachers,
it is time for them to quit.
And what about the lady teachers? Are they to make it a life work too?
That is also a question for the individual. To this large and growing
class of zealous, capable and untiring teachers the present and the
future owes a debt which the world can scarcely pay. There is but one
more sacred place--the wife and mother’s. The woman who quits teaching
to become the center of the home--the purest, the noblest, the most
sacred--she does not leave the profession. She is only promoted.
Let us look at the ugly side of the profession first.
_1. It is itinerate._--The best teacher in the best school in the
best county in the best state can hardly hope to live and die in the
same position. He cannot depend entirely upon teaching and plan and
build a home, plant his trees and feel confident he will rest beneath
their shade and eat their fruit in years to come. He may be ever so
conscientious, he may be ever so capable, and in time he must change.
The position will outgrow him or he will outgrow the position. He will
spank the wrong boy or refuse to spank him--it matters not--sooner or
later he will do what the powers that be at the time think is the wrong
thing, and then he must go. To the real lover of the settled home,
this is a serious drawback. Professionally it may not be so serious
as it seems. If you expect to teach as a life work you must expect to
change every few years either because you choose to change or because
you must. From the standpoint of your own professional advancement I
should advise you to move just awhile before it becomes necessary.
There are always places open, and they are often more easily secured
while things are pleasant in your present position.
_2. The money returns from teaching is less than in law, medicine, or
business._--The same amount of energy and ability used in teaching
would frequently bring many times its money returns in other things.
The successful lawyer or physician often makes several times the amount
in a year that the superintendent of his schools makes. So far as I
know the highest salaried educational position in the United States is
only ten thousand a year. It is a very common thing to find a physician
whose income is more than that. Hundreds of attorneys may be found
receiving many times this amount as salary, and ten thousand a year is
not now considered a large salary for the heads of business firms.
_3. The energy used is great._--Probably few other positions require
a greater amount of energy constantly. It is the little things which
sap the life of the teacher--the constant strain, the nervous tension,
the magnetism going out continuously, the half fear it may be that
something will go wrong.
_4. It is narrowing mentally._--Except in the highest college or
university positions the teacher is dealing with persons less mature,
less intellectual, and in one sense inferior. This is apt to cause him
to grow dictatorial, pedantic and conceited. It is often an excellent
thing for the teacher to come in contact with superiors, to run against
business men in a business manner, and learn other people’s estimate
of himself. To have some minor occupation--something besides teaching,
interesting but not all-absorbing, is often a boon to the teacher. It
keeps him from ruts and grooves and from fossilizing professionally.
The lawyer, the business man and the physician are often rubbing
against their equals and superiors, and this is a thought-awakener to
them which the teacher often misses.
_5. Teaching is for the young._--Teaching is a young man’s profession.
With a number of notable exceptions, the great mass of teachers are
under fifty. The teacher who has not made more than a local reputation
before he is fifty years old will find it hard to advance if he must
change. Hard as it may be upon the earnest, conscientious, hard-working
teacher, most of us if compelled to choose between a man of fifty and
a man of thirty would, if other things were equal, choose the man of
thirty. The successful physician at fifty may have shorter office
hours, charge larger fees and have cases coming to him for consultation
because of his age and experience. The lawyer at fifty is in his prime.
To him his clients come to consult upon important cases. Minor and
unimportant cases he turns over “to the boys.” But it is different with
the teacher at fifty. Every one is then trying to put him on the shelf,
and the chances are they will succeed.
These are the things which make against teaching as a life work, but
the picture has a brighter side--a side too often overlooked in this
day of dollar chasing.
_1. Teaching pays at least a comfortable living from the very
first._--Hundreds of persons enter it because of this fact, and many
remain for life because of their love for the work. The doctor and
the lawyer must go through a starvation period, and many of them do
not survive it. The lawyer that pays his necessary expenses and lives
comfortably from his fees during the first five years is on the high
road to success. The same is equally true of the physician. To tide
over this starvation period many take up side lines which prove fatal
to their real success, while others find subordinate salaried places in
firms and incorporations. The salary in teaching may be low, but it is
specific and certain, and meets present needs.
_2. Teaching keeps you in close touch with the best people._--Nothing
is more conducive to pure thoughts and upright conduct--not even the
ministry. To be looked at as a model and as a guide by the boys and
girls of a community day after day--if that does not inspire to noble
thoughts and actions, what will? A father and mother can see their son
or daughter leave home to teach with every assurance that no other
occupation will be a higher incentive to pure thinking and perfect
living. The best people of the community welcome them to their home,
the churches invite them to take part, and simple, trusting childhood
in its purity, looks to them for guidance. If this does not keep them
in paths of virtue they must show signs of total depravity. Do not
overlook the fact when choosing a life work, that for personal purity,
high ideals and constant inspiration to the highest, the purest and the
best of our natures, teaching is unsurpassed.
_3. Hours are shorter than in many occupations._--While the nerve strain
is great and worry and fear often intrude, the teacher has more time
than many other occupations. Exercise and recreation in the open air
an hour a day or more is always possible. If one likes to garden, to
raise chickens, or to tend flowers, they can find the time, and the
recreation will be beneficial. Teachers complain of the long hours
and hard work partly from habit and partly because they do not know
the long hours and real hardships of other occupations. To the person
who is prepared to teach and who has the gift or power to govern and
control without worrying about it, or having to continually fight for
it, teaching is not exhaustive drudgery. It is true, lessons must be
looked over and work planned outside of school, but even then there is
some time for relaxation and recreation.
_4. The rewards are many._--In a sense, most teachers teach for the
money--that is, if they were not paid for it very few could afford to
give their time to the work. The laborer is worthy of his hire, and yet
may the Lord pity the person and his pupils if he teaches for money
alone. The money will enable him to continue the work, and it should be
ample enough to give a comfortable living with all of the necessaries
of life and a few of the luxuries. It should be ample also to provide
for improvement and for necessary accessories to carry on the work and
to lay by enough for old age or a rainy day. But the money received
from teaching sinks into insignificance with the real teacher when
compared with the real pleasure one can get from his work, the good
he can do, the love and trust and confidence of his pupils. These,
with the uplift and noble aspirations which he can inspire with its
volumes of sunshine and gladness and progress which his teaching may
bring about are infinite. To have pupils group about you, to see them
cross the street sheepishly it may be but for no other purpose than to
speak to “teacher,” to share their troubles, to increase their joys,
to lead them to see more of the beauty and the harmony all about them
and to receive their letters in later life confessing their faults,
begging pardon for offenses you have long since forgotten, telling you
of successes, sharing little secrets and asking your advice--all these
are the rewards of every true teacher beside which the money received
is insignificantly mean.
_5. The work is intellectual._--It keeps you in contact with books and
the best minds of all ages. The greatest men of all time come and
converse with you. A pity it is if you see nothing but drudgery and
dull pupils and hard lessons and unruly boys and petty mischiefs and
little annoyances in teaching. If this is all you see, quit--never
teach again.
Teaching, if your heart is in the work, will keep you young. It will
bring you into contact with the best in life. It will be a constant
inspiration to pure thought and right conduct. It will give you the
love and respect of young people whose future joys and sorrows will be
your joys and sorrows, and whose successes will bring you pleasure.
Last and least, but nevertheless essential, it will remunerate
you until by thrift and economy you may lay up enough to live a
comfortable, even though it be a simple, life.
CHAPTER III.
SECURING A POSITION.
The problem of securing a position concerns not only the young teacher,
but often the experienced teacher as well. Thousands of young persons
begin the work of teaching for the first time each year. The securing
of the first school is usually a red-letter day for most persons who
are really anxious to teach. Most boards of education and school
officials hesitate to employ a teacher who has had no experience.
It is one of the conditions to be met in all occupations. Often
principals and older teachers are loudest in their demands that only
the experienced be employed, forgetting that there was a time when they
themselves were without experience. For a subordinate place where there
is not too much executive work, I should prefer the young person well
prepared to the teacher who has so much experience that they feel that
they know all that is needed to be known.
Most young persons, unless they have a good professional course to
begin with, teach first near their home. The time is coming, and let us
hope coming rapidly, when one or two years of professional study must
precede any attempt at teaching. It will be well for the pupils, well
for the schools and, in the long run, well for the teachers themselves.
Natural ability being equal, the young teacher who has a year or more
of professional study has a decided advantage. This professional
study gives clearer ideas of school and higher ideals of what should
be accomplished. When school officials and communities insist on
professional preparation and pay salaries sufficient to justify them
in demanding professional preparation, they have taken a long step
in advance toward a profession of teaching. Communities will then be
less dependent upon local teachers--the sons and daughters and nieces
and nephews of local politicians and relatives of prominent families.
Between these on the one hand and the indigent never-do-wells who
have a half charitable claim on the community and are pensioned with
a position in the schools there are many communities in which there
is little incentive for young persons to prepare for teaching. When a
professional preparation is required from all applicants things will be
different. Then those who look to teaching as a serious occupation will
have the advantage.
It is an unfortunate thing for the schools that so few teachers can
be progressive, up-to-date, and thoroughly alive to their own welfare
and continue to teach for a life time in their own locality. There
are a few examples of such teachers and such teaching. The person and
the opportunity met, but in many, many cases, in fact, very few cases
has the worthy person and the worthy position for such person come
together. President John W. Cook, in an address a few years ago, in
commenting upon this lack of opportunity, thought it the duty of the
community to increase the salary until we could have the best teachers
remaining continually at the same school or neighborhood. This sounds
plausible at first. It would seem strange, however, to see a man of
President Cook’s caliber content to continue to teach in the same
district school where he began. We may well wonder if it would have
been the same President Cook of national fame as an educator if he had
done so, or whether he had been dwarfed in the staying into a very
ordinary person--perhaps a cook without the capital letter.
The worthy, ambitious, successful teacher will in more than nine cases
out of ten sooner or later desire a position away from home. Then the
problem of how to secure a position becomes a live one to them. The
first thing, of course, is to find a vacancy, a place where a teacher
is wanted, and the second thing is to make the school officials believe
you are just the person for the position.
A good teachers’ agency can be of much service to you in finding the
vacancy. They serve the same purpose in locating teachers--and a
legitimate purpose it is, that a real estate agent does in buying or
selling real estate. The dealer in real estate brings the buyer and the
seller together. He serves both, and if a man of honesty and principle,
may be of service to both and his business in every way a creditable
one. The real estate man usually knows who wants to sell property,
knows something of the value of property, looks up the title and
records, and then brings the buyer and seller together, or takes charge
of the details entirely. To the person who has ever been served by a
good real estate agency no justification of the business is needed. The
same is true of a good teachers’ agency. A good agency spends hundreds
of dollars each year seeking information of where there are to be
vacancies and changes. School officials learn to depend upon many of
the reliable agencies to aid them in the selection of their teachers.
Agencies also often have some weight in the matter of recommending
teachers. This is especially true late in the season when unexpected
vacancies occur. Agencies are then often asked to select teachers for
the positions and school boards take them upon the recommendation of
the agency.
The greatest value of the teachers’ agency to you in the early
part of the season is in giving you reliable information in
regard to vacancies. They often know where vacancies are to occur
and the particulars of them. You would find it hard to collect
this information--the places where there are vacancies, salary,
qualifications desired, nature of work, etc. The information is
valuable and is worth to you the cost of the commission in that it
widens your field and chances. After you know these things, you must
then push your own claims to secure the place.
A good agency looks up your record as a student, as a teacher, and as a
person of good character, and if your record is not good it refuses you
membership. There are, however, many agencies that are only leeches,
depending upon membership fees for existence and caring little or
nothing for the real business of locating teachers. In selecting an
agency as in other things, you must use good judgment. There are many
agencies that do good, honest work for its members. They usually charge
a membership fee of two dollars and five per cent of the first year’s
salary, but they work faithfully for their members, and will not admit
to membership a teacher whose record is not good. Beware of the agency
that guarantees you a position. It cannot do it and do a legitimate
business.
After you know there is a vacancy, the next thing is to make the Board
of Education believe you are _the_ person for the place. You must
depend upon your own personality and ability in presenting your claims,
together with the aid of your friends. Applications are usually made in
writing, and often personal applications are called for before final
arrangements are made. Your letter of application should be brief,
specific, neatly written and well arranged. School boards are often
business men, busy with other duties besides school affairs. They want
the facts in the case--age, health, weight, education, experience,
success in teaching and governing, something of your personality,
etc. They will want personal references also that they may write and
get information about you direct, and very often ask very pointed
questions. They, in fact, want to know the very things which you would
probably want to know if you were employing a teacher. These facts
should be briefly told, but well. The better the language, the more
straightforward, the more forcible, the better it is arranged, the
stronger the impression, and the more attention it will receive. Into
your letter of application you must put your best self.
Let me emphasize the matter of arrangement of the letter. It goes
without saying that the letter must be neatly and plainly written or
type-written, and free from misspelled words. To my personal knowledge
many teachers fail to arrange the form of the letter to appeal to the
eye, and this is essential. Paragraphing counts for much in a letter
of application. The long, loose, scrawly, disjointed letter, hard to
follow when reading it, with pages mixed until you must turn the sheet
once or twice to tell for sure where the sentence is continued--these
letters often cost the writer a position, and it is right that they
should. Use the standard business letter size of paper of good quality.
Make your left-hand margin uniform. Write a neat, plain hand. Punctuate
properly, and above all paragraph so that the eye catches at a glance
each topic treated. If you are a teacher and do not know the value of
the margin in placing emphasis and attention upon a topic you should
study it before writing letters of application.
Do not ask a lot of questions in your letter of application--such as
size of place, cost of board, railroad facilities, etc. It is true
that these are important items to you. But the secretary of a school
board is too busy to answer all these points until you are seriously
considered for the position. You may be only one of fifty applicants.
With the help of a few members of the board he will in a few minutes
reduce them to probably half a dozen by eliminating those whose letters
do not appeal to them. If your letter of application has been neat
enough and strong enough to make a good impression it will be among
this half dozen. Now comes the actual consideration of the board. They
weigh and study this select half dozen. They may then eliminate two
or three of these and investigate and consider the remaining ones for
several days before coming to a conclusion.
Keep your application before the board. If your first letter is strong
enough to place you among the few to be carefully considered, these
days of investigation are critical times. The skill with which you
keep yourself before them will count much. Manage to write one or two
members of the board every two or three days. Be brief and be business
like, but do not seem to be anxious. Personal letters from those who
know you will be worth much. Have them addressed to different members
of the board. This will impress your name and application upon each
member. Each member will have a vote, and you must reach a majority to
win. Be careful also in the persons who write in your interests. Many
good men cannot write letters of recommendation and do it gracefully.
They either overstate or scatter. The list of references you give will
mean much.
If you are elected to the position then comes the time and opportunity
to make inquiry as to salary, work, expenses, etc., before accepting.
This can be done without giving offense or arousing the suspicion that
you will not accept. You may also accept only conditionally until you
know these points. After you have been offered a place, if you have
any doubts about the work, then ask your questions. Be pointed and
accurate, and expect a prompt and businesslike reply. If the conditions
are such that you cannot accept do not keep them waiting, but tell them
that you decline the place, and give them the reasons.
With your letter of application should go copies of a few good
testimonials from persons who know you and your work. Send also a
good photograph, and a self-addressed, government stamped envelope
for reply. Get some good brief testimonials from those who know you
best--your teachers and one or two business men. If you have taught,
get testimonials from the school board and patrons testifying to the
success of your work. Keep these original testimonials. Have neat
type-written copies made and send a few of these with each letter of
application. Offer to send others, and in writing the board later it is
well to enclose one or two new testimonials with each letter.
In addition to the testimonials, refer them to a few reliable persons
who know you and your worth. Ask the board to write these persons
asking about you. Many persons have little faith in a general
testimonial written to the public and for your own perusal. These
same persons often have much confidence in a personal, private letter
stating the same thing, or answering definite questions about you. For
reference it is best to give the names of persons who have not already
given you public testimonials. Select for such references persons who
know you, and persons who will answer promptly and specifically any
questions asked about you. Many good men who could and would give you a
good testimonial are so negligent and careless that they fail to answer
a letter of inquiry until it is too late. The busy business man who is
accustomed to attending to his mail promptly and on time often makes a
better reference than a man of more leisure. The first writes promptly,
while the second may carry the letter for a week or ten days before the
spirit moves him to reply. This delay is considered by the board making
the inquiry as a reluctance on his part to recommend you.
A good small photograph should go with each application. Good copies of
large photographs are inexpensive and answer the purpose well. Often
these photographs are not returned, and if the copy is a good one it
answers the purpose as well as a more expensive one. The photograph
should be plain, but showing you at your best. A front view is usually
best. The eyes and expression should be good. It should show you
neatly dressed, but modestly and becomingly. Its purpose should be to
emphasize your personality and not to show how pretty you can look.
The low-necked, short-sleeved dramatic-posed photographs sent out by
some teachers will and should defeat the applicant for a position as
teacher. Such photographs might be all right in gay Newport or some
other fashionable resort. But fortunately, a majority of our school
boards are composed of business men of common sense, modesty, and good
judgment. They are not seeking vaudeville performers, nor stage poses,
but persons of modesty and good common sense to teach school. Your
photograph should show these qualities in you, else in most cases it
will serve to defeat rather than to help you to a school position.
Enclose a self-addressed stamped envelope for reply. It will pay. This
will bring you more replies than a loose stamp enclosed. It is even
better if you use the government stamped envelope which may be had at
any postoffice. Applying for a school is a business matter, not social,
and business forms should be used. Use plain white paper, business
size, with envelopes to match, and write on one side of paper only,
numbering pages.
If the position is a good one and the contest close, the board may
request a personal visit. If possible, it is best for you to go. Five
minutes conversation may clinch a position which otherwise you would
lose. Make it a business call, not a social. Dress for business, not
for society. Be well groomed, but seemingly indifferent to dress. Be
at your best. If the trip is a long one stop at a hotel and rest and
dust before calling on the board. Excuses for personal appearance
may be reasonable, but to “land the job” your chances are better if
no excuses are necessary. It is a difficult trial to appear before a
board of strange men, an applicant for a position from them, and yet be
quiet and composed. It is a test of your personality, and if you acquit
yourself well it shows strength and usually secures you the position.
To be composed you may have to use will power and mental effort.
It is possible to do this successfully. In fact much of experience
consists in nothing more than the ability to keep composed under trying
conditions. Neither your life, health, happiness nor future success
depends entirely upon the result of the interview. It may be hard to
believe this at the time, but if you can make yourself realize it you
have struck the keynote to success. The members of the board are only
men, plain, blunt men, not always the strongest men. They are human
like yourself. Be frank, be independent, be courteous, look them square
in the eye, talk to the point, but do not talk too much. The interview
is often a contest of personalities, your own personality, and that of
the board. You must show composure and courage. This will secure for
you the position often over the strongest of applicants.
There is skill and art in one’s ability to secure a position. One
element of advancement and success will depend upon how you master
these.
CHAPTER IV.
PASSING THE EXAMINATION.
The formal examination of teachers is a necessary evil. It is one of
the ways of eliminating the incompetent. Examinations are necessary.
On the other hand, they sometimes license those who are utterly
incompetent and cut out those who would teach good schools. Taking the
examination, all in all, it is helpful. By eliminating the bad features
and encouraging the good they may be made better still.
Passing the examination is an ordeal that confronts most young teachers
and often older ones. We all feel better after it is over. Many of our
leaders in education, university professors, normal school teachers,
specialists and heads of departments along with many superintendents
would hesitate to stake their reputation as a teacher or educator upon
the answers to ten questions from each of ten subjects, these subjects
to be prepared and the answers graded by “the other fellow.” Yet this
is the ordeal to be passed by most young teachers. Is it any wonder
they dread it?
Every thinking man will concede that the usual examination does not
test the applicant’s ability to teach. The answers to a series of
questions will not do this thoroughly. A better and more sensible test
would be to have the applicant prepare a list of questions to test a
class that has just completed a given division of a subject. If the
teaching ability of some superintendents and examining boards were to
be tested by the lists of questions sometimes asked of teachers they
would be refused a third-grade license. The lists show quite evidently
that they were hurriedly made with little thought of testing the
applicant’s teaching ability. It is also true that the examination is
not even a good test of the applicant’s knowledge of the subject. The
real intelligence shown in the answers, the arrangement and scholarship
and neatness and accuracy are the essential things. Nothing can be more
ridiculous than a little two-by-four examiner or superintendent making
a list of questions, many of them narrow and indefinite, and then that
these same questions must be answered in certain specific words to make
grades on them. One examiner recently asked: “What did Washington do
before he crossed the Delaware?” Well, he did many things. But if the
applicant did not state that “he divided his army into three divisions,
etc.,” he missed the question intended by the examiner, and lost ten
per cent on that question. Examinations based upon such questions
are as much a farce as the method of holding a two weeks’ institute
and follow it by an examination based upon the subjects discussed
during the time. The whole time and energy of the teachers is spent in
cramming for the examination.
If an examination is to be a fair and reasonable one, the best
preparation for it is an intensive study of the subject upon which
you are to be examined. Do not study the subject with the thought of
examination uppermost in your mind. Study it with a view to mastering
and understanding it. Let the thought of what questions may be asked
on examination go. If you master the subject, all legitimate questions
asked on examination will be easily answered. The hard examination
to you is an examination in which you do not know how to answer the
questions. If you have mastered the subject you will very probably
know the answers to most of the reasonable questions asked. Cramming
for examination is usually time wasted. To study and cram on question
books and old lists of examination questions is time thrown away. Get
your text-book and try to master the principles and divisions of the
subjects, and your time is well spent.
If possible, be in good physical condition on the day of examination.
This counts for much. Some teachers overwork themselves preparing for
examination. They become nervous and do not sleep well. This leaves
them without reserve force and in poor physical condition when the
time comes. Other teachers work late the night before examination
and sleep little, often getting up early to study just before going
to examination. I have seen them bring a book in one hand glancing
at it to refresh their mind in the hall as they were passing to the
examination room. This anxiety saps their nerve force and leaves
them in no mental state for a strenuous day’s work. If early in the
examination they find something difficult to them they go to pieces and
do not recover during the day. Leave off both study and review. Do this
for at least twenty-four hours before time for examination. Keep your
mind from dwelling upon the examination. Take plenty of exercise and if
you find time hanging heavy, read some good story. Retire at your usual
time the night before examination and sleep your usual number of hours.
Get to the place of examination in time to have a half hour or more to
get familiar with the strange surroundings and to talk with teachers
before the examination is called. Nothing relieves one’s anxiety more.
Practice writing a few minutes before the actual work begins. This
makes your hand steady, and you are pleased with your first work. It
always pays you to be on time or ahead of time on examination day.
Go to the examination room prepared for work. Have either a good
fountain pen or a good easy penholder with some extra pens and a bottle
of ink. It may be your superintendent demands some special kind of
paper or manuscript book. Get this before going to the examination
unless the superintendent supplies them. Have also a blank book and
pencil and a sharp knife or a pencil sharpener. In other words, go to
the examination prepared for work just as you would expect your pupils
to come to school on examination day.
Work carefully and persistently, and as rapidly as possible. Nothing
is more detrimental to good work than to feel that you are behind with
your subject. Do not rush, but try to complete each subject in time to
review your paper before time is called. Neatness, accurate spelling,
and careful, systematic arrangement of your work will make a good
impression always, and get the good will of the examiner. Slovenness
and careless arrangement will unconsciously prejudice the examiner
against you. Your thought and answers must be unusually strong if they
overcome the prejudice unconsciously caused by poor writing or poor
arrangement.
Let me emphasize again the importance of systematic arrangement of
work. Poor penmanship, if it is uniform and legible, may be overlooked
if the work is properly arranged. Paragraphing, punctuation and general
arrangement count more than all else in making a neat manuscript. I
used to read the manuscript of an author frequently. His writing,
considered by itself, was poor--extremely poor. It required practice
to learn to read it, but it was uniform. It all looked alike. His
punctuation and paragraphing was almost perfect. The general impression
was good, and when you once mastered his particular letter formation
and learned to distinguish his a’s, his o’s and a few others, his
manuscript was easily read. The mechanical side of your examination
manuscript, will, if properly cared for, balance many little flaws in
the answers themselves.
Read the questions carefully. Hasty reading of questions will account
for many mistakes. After having read the question take time to think
the answer. Then condense the answer as much as possible, and have
it complete and clear. Number your answers to correspond with the
questions, leaving one or two lines blank between the answers. If you
have doubts about the meaning of a question, express it in writing, and
answer it according to the interpretation you think most plausible. Do
not be long-winded or wordy in your answers. Be brief, be accurate, be
neat.
Try to complete each subject in time to go over it carefully. Correct
any mistakes you may find before handing in your paper. It will be time
well spent. Many little mistakes, simply little slips of the hand, will
occur when your mind is centered upon the thought to be expressed. If
any work or calculations are transferred from your scratch book to your
manuscript be sure it is copied correctly. Frequently mistakes are made
in copying, but the examiner cannot know this, and must grade you in
what you place on your manuscript. He grades upon the accuracy of the
work as he finds it.
Approached properly, the examination should lose many of its terrors
for young teachers.
CHAPTER V.
PROBLEMS OF THE YOUNG TEACHER.
Experience in the school-room counts for much. Teaching soon fastens
certain personal peculiarities upon the teacher which makes him
readily distinguished from other persons. Fifty teachers visiting
Chicago had agreed to be so discreet in their conduct that no one
would judge them to be teachers. Much to their surprise they had not
walked two blocks from the depot until a dirty-faced bootblack called
out in a drawling tone: “First class in geography, stan’ up.” Some
of these eccentricities may be detrimental. Others are worth much
professionally, as they give other people confidence in your ability to
teach. They are recognized as ear-marks of the teacher.
Pupils and patrons are often more critical of young teachers than of
teachers who have had experience, and have established reputations
as being able to teach and to govern. They are looking for signs of
weakness. Fortunate is the young teacher who can stand this test. His
first and second schools will pretty well establish his standing in the
community. After that they will be less critical and more apt to take
things for granted.
One of the hardest problems of the young teacher is to acquire the
feeling of familiarity or composure in the school-room. New clothes
sometimes do not set well and new positions are the same. He hesitates,
his voice does not sound familiar, he feels and looks awkward, he
lacks confidence in himself, and instead of children being considerate
of these things they notice them and are quick to take advantage of
them. The rougher element of boys and the more careless of the girls
may take pleasure in the teacher’s discomfort. Such things try the
mettle of the teacher. If he is made of the right material and has good
judgment, he will come out all right. If he is naturally a coward or if
he is full of egotism and conceit the pupils may soon lead him a merry
chase. The more clearly he has the work planned, the more definite
his ideas of what and how and why to do, the easier to gain composure
in the school-room. Then, too, many excellent teachers are sensitive.
They may soon grow easy and composed in the school-room with only their
pupils before them. A caller or a visit from the principal or a school
official completely unnerves them. They are ill at ease, they blush and
blunder, and are always at a disadvantage. Familiarity and composure
are the fruits of experience and study and practice in the school-room.
Composure, a level head, a knowledge of what you want done, and why
you want it done and faith in your own ability to have it done gives
composure to the whole school. Restlessness, lack of faith in self,
fear of failure, these bring about the very conditions you are striving
to avoid, and the school becomes restless, noisy, hard to control.
The school takes its coloring from your own attitude, and when things
go wrong, begin to seek the cause in your own actions, disposition
and manners. Learn to study yourself without upbraiding, and yet with
determination to find the cause of your failure. Confidence in yourself
and courage backed by good judgment will make government easy. Remember
the government of a school is more a matter of mind than of physical
strength. The clearness of your mental vision, your insight into
motives, your ideals of school and of life and your knowledge of boy
and girl nature count infinitely more than your avoirdupois. In very
rare cases from home training or peculiar environment wrong motives of
true manhood may inspire a bully until force--mere physical force--is
the proper remedy, and a downright good threshing is the thing needed.
But such occasions are rare indeed, and the young teacher should feel
that there is something radically wrong in his own personality and
methods of government if he must resort to such measures often.
A young teacher must guard his health. You can’t teach day and night.
The petty worries of the school-room must not be carried to your home
or boarding place. Shake them from yourself when you quit the building
and grounds. Lock them in the school-room when you leave it, and if
you sleep soundly they will have vanished into thin air before the
door is opened the next day. Your health will react upon your work in
the school-room. Not the work, but the worry kills. During my first
three terms I taught school all day and dreamed school all night. The
dreaming was harder than the teaching. My best pupils, the ones who
would not for the world do anything to cause me trouble, were always
in mischief in my dreams. From the first, force yourself to think of
the pleasant things of the day as much as possible, and forget the
unpleasant or shut them from your thoughts. Too often you find after
sleepless nights of worry about some frivolous little breach of conduct
by some thoughtless boy the whole thing glides by without a ripple, and
the problem solves itself.
If you are blessed with a good digestion, the world ought to look
bright to you. No terrors in teaching are equal to those caused by
undigested beefsteak, and a dose of pepsin is often a far greater aid
in teaching than a six-foot switch. Eat plenty of nutritious food,
such as agrees with you, drink plenty of pure water, take plenty of
exercise in the open air, laugh when you can, meet and mingle with
people, think good thoughts, teach yourself to believe in your own
ability and success without growing egotistic, sleep not less than
eight hours in each twenty-four, and make it nine if you can sleep
soundly; keep clean, and the world and your school will move well with
you.
The mind is self-creative. It can make a “heaven of hell or a hell
of heaven” Milton tell us, and it is true. But there is a close
relation between its activity and mental coloring, and the physical
condition of the body. Teachers especially should learn to keep the
body and the mind each at its best. Each reacts upon the other, and
your school as well as your own happiness depends upon keeping both
in the best condition. Avoid late study, irregular habits, and all
kinds of dissipation. Planning and preparation of work is necessary,
but it is not the number of hours you work, it is the intensity of the
application that counts most. Systematize your work and work regularly
and intensely, but do not encroach upon your hours of sleep unless you
want to pay the penalty with interest. Let me say here parenthetically
that if all teachers had a fair knowledge of shorthand, enough to
enable them to record their own thoughts and to read their own notes
readily what a saving of time it would mean in the preparation of their
daily work. Would not it be worth while for every teacher to know this
much stenography?
Then, too, regular habits count for so much--regular eating, regular
sleeping, regular exercise. Teachers who board cannot always get
just what they want, but as a rule their accommodations are fairly
good--often as good as they would get at home. One can adjust
themselves to the conditions if these be regular. In most homes the
meals are served nearly on time, seldom varying more than half an
hour, but sleeping is often irregular. Regular sleep is perhaps the
most important item of all--a good bed, ventilation, comfort, quiet,
with little variation in retiring or rising--these are important to
the teacher who must meet with plenty of reserve and nerve force the
problems of the school-room next day.
There are various forms of dissipation. In addition, however, to
intoxicants as a beverage, the habitual use of many patent medicines
may be almost as injurious. Then, too, there are lighter beverages very
injurious. The coca-cola habit is little better than the beer-drinking
habit, and the same is true of many other drinks so “refreshing to
tired nerves.” One of the worst forms of dissipation is day-dreaming,
or simply idling away the time. If you have time to idle or to
day-dream, do it in the open air and in the sunshine where the exercise
will do you good or go forth on a still, clear night and watch the
movements of the heavenly bodies, the star-decked sky, and drink in its
inspiration and beauty. Much of the light reading--newspaper, magazine,
and the rag-time fiction so current--is the worst form of mental
dissipation.
The love-sick young man and the giddy girl are too often teachers, and
the time and energy in thinking and writing to one another is more than
is used in their teaching. I do not speak lightly of love or criticise
teachers for falling in love or in loving one another or in loving
some one who is not a teacher. Love in its highest form and love of
the individual as well as the love of humanity as a whole is essential
to the development of the person. Nothing creates higher ambition or
nobler impulses than love. To love a pure-minded woman--a teacher she
may be--is one of the greatest things that can happen to a young man.
It is equally valuable to a young woman. The young man or young woman
in love, with the hope that this love is or may be mutual, and when
this loved one is idolized as made up of all that is pure and worthy
and noble, is always safe. It gives new life and energy and ambition.
It can be seen in the flashing eye, the elastic step and the bodily
poise. No tonic is so life-giving, no beverage so invigorating, no view
of life so rich in its coloring. Health, hope, courage, ambition, all
good things follow in its wake. Such love as this is not dissipation.
But the love-sick young man who pines for his lady love--the last one
who smiled on him, it matters little who; the giddy girl who has two
strings to each of her half a dozen beaux and is too busy pulling these
strings to think of anything else--these are unfit to teach.
Then, too, the young teacher must sacrifice something to public
opinion. Public opinion may be ever so narrow, so unreasonable, so
unjust, but if you are to establish your reputation in that community
as a reliable, trustworthy teacher, you cannot afford to be indifferent
to it. I am speaking especially of the town, the village, and the
country where all eyes are on the teacher, and where every man, woman
and child knows him. In the towns, villages and the country the
teacher is relatively of greater importance than in the city. Young
men teaching in these communities cannot afford to do much keeping
company or going to see the girls, and young women teachers cannot
afford to have many beaux or even one regular one whose attentions are
quite noticeable to the public. The highest motives may prevail, the
enjoyment and pleasure may be great, and even then the teacher, like
the minister, must forego many things which would be unnoticed in
others, or else pay the price which is often dear enough. Sniggering
school boys and giggling school girls for weeks will nudge one another
and make remarks at your expense, and not always complimentary. Rail
against it if you will, but it makes matters worse. Laugh about it and
it often compromises your dignity. Punish for it, and you stir up a
hornets’ nest in the neighborhood. You can soon kill your influence in
that neighborhood for good by a little harmless indiscretion. Beware!
Just how to get the good will and respect of patrons and pupils no one
can tell you. It is a problem to be solved by your own good sense and
personality. It is easier to tell you what not to do than to tell you
what to do. The best advice is to be yourself, but to be your best
self. Do not try to show off. Do not try to advise on every topic that
comes up. Do not push yourself forward in outside matters. Listen
to those older than yourself. Weigh what they say, but in school
matters be your own boss. Talk little about your plans or your past
success. Keep your school room troubles strictly to yourself. Do not
criticise former teachers, and if teaching with other teachers beware
of criticising another teacher in the same school, however much you may
dislike their methods. The teacher may be ever so unpopular, and the
person may invite criticism ever so much, but it is your place to avoid
it. Then, too, do not criticise or praise one pupil before another
pupil or patron outside of school. It is dangerous, and a little tact
will enable you to avoid it. Your criticism will do no good, and your
praise may cause the bitterest of jealousy. “Miss Jones, don’t you
think Grace is smart?” said a little girl. “Yes, we have many smart
pupils in school,” replied Miss Jones, and the girl’s question was
answered and no jealousy created.
Your success and power for good in the neighborhood will be determined
very largely by the esteem and confidence the pupils and the patrons
place in you.
CHAPTER VI.
GRADING THE SCHOOL.
The planning and making of a course of study falls to the lot of few
teachers at present. Nearly every state has either a well-planned state
course or else the county is the unit, and the county superintendent or
the county board of education plan the course. While there is growth
along this line in many places, the organization of the schools is less
perfect, and the course of study is planned by the teacher in charge of
the school.
A uniform course of study is a great strength to the school system.
By uniformity, I do not mean dead uniformity, but intelligent,
rational uniformity. Not the uniformity that takes all the life
and individuality out of the teacher, but the uniformity that sets
definite, rational ends, and makes a proper criterion of work and
attainment possible in the different schools. What is needed is a
course of study flexible enough to be adjusted to the varying classes
and schools and uniform enough that the pupil leaving one school may
be easily and properly classified when he enters another school. Many
of our city systems have more red tape and system than any thing else,
but our country schools in most states will be improved by more system
and organization. Many able persons and many teachers of experience
will cry out against better grading of the country schools and declare
it cannot be done. This was the cry twenty-five years ago when my
own state began in a crude way to grade the country schools. It will
continue in every onward step taken.
Experienced teachers who have become used to the old way are often
the first to cry out against the change, and assert vehemently that
it will never work in the country school. Long after it has become an
accomplished fact there will be some who will refuse to see it. Like
the stubborn father whose son had told him he could show him snow in
June. Following the boy up a narrow little ravine, the boy pointed down
in the cavity of an old hollow stump and said, “Look there father,
there is the snow.” The father took care to close his eyes before
looking, and replied: “Son, I don’t see a bit of snow.”
The very argument used to prove that the country school cannot be
graded and follow a uniform course of study is the best argument for
gradation and a uniform course of study. I believe that every one who
has ever studied the subject will agree that a rational uniform course
of study will do the following things:
1. Secure better attendance.
2. Secure more regular attendance.
3. Keep pupils in school longer. Hundreds of pupils are kept in school
and do good work because of their desire and their parents’ desire that
they graduate. The desire for a diploma may not be the highest motive
for an education, but so far all of our best institutions have found it
necessary to hold to the custom.
4. Secure better work on the part of both teachers and pupils. The
tread mill grind of going over and over the same work year after year
disgusts many pupils with school life. Unless there is specific things
set for the grade, or in other words, if there is not a course of
study, very few schools but will repeat the same work with the same
class. When a boy in the ungraded school we went over the identical
work five years in succession, the only variation was the natural
variation from having three different teachers in the five years.
There is but one argument against the grading of the country schools.
That argument is that the pupils do not attend regularly. Grading is
one of the best promoters of regular attendance. If there is anything
that stirs parents and makes them alive to school matters and observant
of what is going on in school, it is for their boy or girl to fail to
be promoted. Irregular attendance is very apt to be remedied when they
find that it will endanger the promotion. This overcomes many a flimsy
excuse which would otherwise keep the child out of school near the
close of the year. It makes the work of school a reality, a business,
something to be rated along with any other kind of business instead of
an entertainment or place of amusement to be attended when there is
nothing else to do.
In my own experience I have never been troubled much with attendance
running down near the end of the year, although I have taught in
different schools, different localities, and often as late as the
middle of June. Pupils and parents knew that those who missed the last
month or the last few weeks of the term must stand an examination at
the opening of the next term before being promoted. It may have been a
false motive, but I believe it was as good and as legitimate a motive
as many parents have for keeping children out of school the last
month or six weeks of the term as is often done. Pupils want to come
and parents usually arrange to let them come rather than to risk an
examination after the summer’s vacation of three months.
While in common with all good teachers, I have put forth an extra
effort near the close of the school year to keep up school interest
and a good school spirit, I think the graded school course has helped
me much. As a boy, I attended the ungraded school where any pupil took
practically anything that suited him or his parents. I began teaching
in an ungraded school, and am glad that at the end of two years I left
it as well graded as many city schools. The schools of that county are
now well graded, much to the advantage of education in the country.
Two of my best teachers were bitterly opposed to the grading of the
country schools. They fought it in institutes, associations and at
every possible opportunity in conversation. One of them taught long
enough to be converted and see the error of his way, the other never
did surrender, quit teaching fifteen years ago, and thinks the world is
badly out of joint. The grading of country schools is coming, in fact,
is here in some form except in the most primitive communities. It is
the common sense plan, it is practical, it is efficient. It does not
have the hide-bound red tape of the city system, but it gives all the
interest of class stimulus and definite rational accomplishment as a
standard.
If you want to find individualism gone to seed, if you want to find
hobbies ridden hard, and to the everlasting detriment of children, go
to the ungraded public or average private school. The teacher leads
off on his hobby, and he magnifies the hobby as he goes. If it is an
ungraded public school, they go to seed on arithmetic, or history or
map-drawing, or the particular line that offers least resistance or
that fits the teacher’s particular whims best. If it is the average
ungraded primary private school, filled with mammas’ little angel
darlings, too pretty and too petted to go to the public school, it
is even worse. The teacher masticates everything, and puts it into
the most charming fashion and makes believe they are really doing
something. She is also discovering latent geniuses every few days.
If the child likes to use water colors, she is an embryo artist, and
her mother must develop this unusual talent. If the child can sing
“Merry Greeting to You” she is a musician and the mother must from that
day plan to keep her very exclusive and later send her to Paris to
finish. A uniform course of study planned properly, representing the
accumulated experience and judgment of our best educators, may have
some flaws, but on the other hand it saves many of the gravest mistakes
with the great mass of teachers and persons unaccustomed to thinking on
educational subjects.
The planning of a rational course of study is no small task. It will
vary with state and probably with the locality within the state. It
will vary much with the nation. The danger is that each small locality
may feel that their particular needs are different and must have
special attention. In making the course of study the knowledge of
the specialist is needed, toned down and corrected by the liberally
educated man with broader views. Conditions must be weighed and
due consideration for the worth of studies taken into account. The
scientist wants to magnify science, the historian history, the
mathematician mathematics, etc. It is in this particular that the
specialist in the high school or the grades must be held in check by
a liberal-minded superintendent or principal. Unless this is done,
each will overload the student with his specialty. I have had teachers
who if left to themselves would have monopolized the time of the high
school pupil with Latin. The student that did not know Latin was in the
estimation of that teacher a block-head, and should quit school and go
to work.
Examine a course of study and you will find revealed much of the
judgment and mental caliber of the teachers of the school. It is
not uncommon to find high schools proper with university curricula.
High-sounding names, often, are an attempt to hide the fact that it is
an ordinary high school and many times very ordinary indeed.
Before me is a recent catalogue of a collegiate institute--it would be
more appropriate to call it a village high school, that completes in
two years Latin, including Preparatory Latin, Cæsar, Cicero, Sallust,
Ovid and Virgil, and then devotes the last year to Greek. There must be
either intellectual giants in those parts or else some gigantic fools.
To the thinking man the course of study would be a signal to give the
school a wide berth.
We must not forget that the course of study is made for the child and
not the child for the course of study. It must not be too hide-bound.
There may be once in a while an exception to it. There may be
extraordinary children that will not fit into the ordinary course.
These should be treated as exceptions, and considered by themselves.
Study the cause and figure the results of such changes and then be true
to the child rather than to the course of study. The ungraded school
goes to one extreme. Each child is changed and classified for any sort
of whim. If he does not get all of to-day’s lesson he goes it alone,
thereby losing the incentive that comes from class competition. On the
other hand, the course of study may become a fetich until the pupil
that cannot make the uniform course is ignored. The saner, safer middle
ground is best.
Below is given a mere skeleton outline of a course of study. Roughly it
follows what is sometimes called the nationalized course. It would seem
that careful adjustment would adapt it to almost any kind of school.
The teacher or local board could follow its guidance as to subjects
and quickly allot the work in the different grades. The texts used,
the local conditions and the particular classes would thus be cared
for. One class perhaps could do more in arithmetic than the same grade
next year. Certain standards could be set. If the class could not
reach this standard they could come as near reaching it as possible,
and the remainder of the work could go over to the next year. The best
classes would set standards of attainment that succeeding classes
might be envious of equaling or surpassing. I have known teachers and
classes to snooze over simple interest for month after month while if
the teacher and the class had known that if they did not get a good
working knowledge of simple interest in one month that the class would
be considered slow or else the teaching poor, the work would have been
done and well done in one month. Teachers and classes accomplish most
when much is expected of them. That is one of the good things about
a uniform course of study. One school learns to compare itself with
another school, and both are benefited by it.
Set certain definite accomplishments for the class and the grade, do
well what work you undertake, but keep moving. The outline may help you.
I. Primary Grades.
1. First year.
1. Reading.
2. Writing
3. Spelling.
4. Language.
5. Numbers.
6. General lessons.
1. Singing.
2. Drawing.
3. Care of the body.
4. Calisthenics.
5. Morals and manners.
2. Second year.
1. Reading.
2. Writing.
3. Spelling.
4. Language.
5. Numbers.
6. General lessons.
1. Singing.
2. Drawing.
3. Care of the body.
4. Calisthenics.
5. Morals and manners.
3. Third year.
1. Reading.
2. Writing.
3. Spelling.
4. Language.
5. Primary arithmetic.
6. General lessons.
1. Singing.
2. Drawing.
3. Care of the body.
4. Calisthenics.
5. Nature study.
6. Morals and manners.
II. Intermediate grades.
1. Fourth year.
1. Reading.
2. Writing.
3. Spelling.
4. Language.
5. Arithmetic.
6. Geography.
7. General lessons.
1. Singing.
2. Drawing.
3. Health lessons.
4. Nature study.
5. Calisthenics.
6. Morals and manners.
2. Fifth year.
1. Reading and literature.
2. Writing.
3. Spelling.
4. Language.
5. Arithmetic.
6. Geography.
7. General lessons.
1. Music.
2. Drawing.
3. Hygiene.
4. Nature or agriculture.
5. Calisthenics.
6. Morals and manners.
3. Sixth year.
1. Literature.
2. Writing.
3. Spelling.
4. Elementary grammar.
5. Arithmetic.
6. Geography.
7. History.
8. General lessons.
1. Music.
2. Drawing.
3. Hygiene.
4. Nature or agriculture.
5. Calisthenics.
6. Morals and manners.
7. Sloyd.
III. Advanced grades.
1. Seventh year.
1. Literature.
2. Orthography.
3. Grammar.
4. Arithmetic.
5. Geography.
6. History.
7. Physiology.
8. General exercises.
1. Music.
2. Drawing.
3. Nature or agriculture.
4. Sloyd.
2. Eighth year.
1. Literature.
2. Orthography.
3. Grammar and composition.
4. Arithmetic.
5. Geography.
6. History.
7. Physiology.
8. General exercises.
1. Music.
2. Drawing.
3. Nature or agriculture.
4. Sloyd or manual training.
5. Literary exercises.
No one would expect you to have a daily lesson in all the above
subjects. For example, in the first year reading, writing, spelling and
language would be combined. In the second year these subjects in the
main would be combined. The general lessons need not be daily lessons
and often two or more years could be combined in the same instruction.
Calisthenics could be general exercises for all the grades or the
two advanced grades might be excused from these if you thought best.
History and geography might come on alternate days, or history and
physiology. The course is to represent the lines of study that in a
well-graded school are kept abreast. The allotment of time and the work
is left to the adjustment of the teacher or school.
CHAPTER VII.
OPENING EXERCISES.
No period of the day is so important in its influence on the day’s
work or so rich in opportunities for good in after life as the first
fifteen minutes after school is called in the morning. The teacher’s
task is not an easy one. Before her are as many dispositions as there
are pupils. Before her are the physical, mental and moral defects
of inheritance and the pernicious habits of home neglect and wrong
training. The rich and the poor, the high and the low, the proud
and the humble, the good and the bad, a heterogeneous group all are
there--and out of these the teacher is to construct the working unit,
the school.
The spoiled babe, the father’s favorite, the mother’s pet, the orphan
and the outcast, all meet here on common ground. The hope of a
democracy is based upon this meeting and mingling. The perpetuity of
our institutions must stand or fall by the results of such meeting.
Each here learns to estimate the other and the estimate is usually
the par value of the pupil. The banker’s boy must measure brains
with the bootblack and often each gets the best lesson of life in
that measurement. The banker’s boy often finds a worthy rival in the
bootblack and unconsciously rates him higher than if they had never
met. The bootblack may have higher hopes and ambitions kindled,
together with a better estimate of his own innate worth and this is
uplifting. Blood tells, but it as often tells weakness as strength,
and often the best lesson of a wealthy boy’s life is when he is
wallowed--wallowed physically as well as mentally--by some poor,
humble widow’s son upon whom he had always looked with contempt.
Out of this group of individuals, the teacher is each day to construct
the working unit, the school. They gather from various homes and
conditions, some gorged with indigestible dainties, others with
appetites hardly appeased with the plainest of food, some bubbling over
with fun and mischief, and others sour and sullen, all these are to
become a unit for the day’s work. To focus these minds, to draw them
from the petty home incidents of the morning, to put them into harmony
with the work of the day, the tuning of these minds is the one great
purpose of the daily opening exercises of the school.
But in the very process of the exercise there comes numerous
opportunities for the richest lessons of the school course. It gives
the opportunity for teaching lessons of patience, patriotism, duty,
love, respect, obedience, gratitude and devotion. Kindness to animals,
appreciation of the beautiful in art and nature and literature, higher
ideals of life, faith and hope and charity, and greatest of all the
criterion of the really educated person, liberal-mindedness--all of
these should find food in the unifying process of the school, the
opening exercise.
Perhaps, the one thing that will bear repetition oftenest and grow in
its good results by repetition in the opening exercise is singing. I
discriminate between singing and a lesson in music. A lesson in music
may not be one whit better for unifying the minds of the pupils than a
lesson in grammar or arithmetic. But singing is better. An angry pupil
cannot sing. In the singing he forgets his anger. Nothing so quickly
recalls the wandering minds of pupils and gets them into harmony
with the purpose of school, and makes them forget petty troubles,
as a good, soul-stirring song in which all unite. Patriotic songs,
devotional songs, folk songs, songs of the home and the heart, nature
songs--the list is long--all have their use in the opening exercise.
Glad or sad, as the teacher desires to stir the pupils, so let the
morning song be in opening exercise.
Even if the teacher sings but little, there will be found always the
faithful half dozen who can and will sing. The others will follow.
Choose the songs that nearly all like and sing with enthusiasm. For
the opening exercises not many songs are needed. If music is taught,
new songs may be learned, and the favorite ones added to the list for
morning use. Let me emphasize the fact that it is not the new and the
difficult, but the old, the familiar, the soul-stirring song that is
most useful in opening exercise. Something that all like, something
that all can sing, something that appeals to the emotions--these are
the songs for the opening of school.
It is well if the teacher is leader in music, it is well if you have an
organ or piano or other good instrument, it is well if you have song
books, but sing even if you have none of these. A few pupils will be
found who can lead, and many of the best music teachers advocate that
pupils should be taught to sing alone and not with the teacher. The
instrument is good, but not absolutely essential. Song books are very
valuable indeed, and most schools can obtain them, but if you do not
have them have each pupil make a copy of the words of a song in their
opening exercise note book and commit the words to memory. By all means
sing at the opening exercises of the day. Nothing will more quickly
drive out the peevishness, relieve the sullenness, and make glad the
whole school than the morning song well sung.
The opening exercise requires study, planning, and skill on the part
of the teacher. No lesson needs more planning and in no lesson will
you get better results if you do plan wisely and well. You must
know in advance what you will present, not leave it to the impulse
of the moment. Then, too, there must be variety. Children tire of
sameness. If pupils know weeks in advance just what to expect at the
opening exercise they will care less to be on time, especially if
this particular exercise does not happen to appeal to them. If there
is variety, if they feel that something new and good may occur any
morning, they are more apt to be on time. Tardiness will decrease as
the opening exercise increases in interest and value.
Make the opening exercise brief, interesting and pointed. I have
tried the various plans given below with success. The interest in
each particular exercise varied with the school, the class and the
conditions. If the pupils were particularly pleased I continued it
longer. If they showed that they were not especially pleased I left it
sooner and came back to it later, else omitted it in the future. These
suggestions worked out will I believe give you abundant material for a
year of school.
1. A cheerful song, or two or three cheerful songs with no
other exercise will often please the pupils. This is
especially true on days when pupils are in the mood to
sing. Choose songs that will suit the mood of the pupils at
the time.
2. A solo from some pupil or person or a duet from two pupils
makes a pleasing change. These will be all the more
pleasing if they come as a surprise to the school.
3. A humorous or pathetic story, either read or related, if
well done, is always interesting and instructive. Do not
spoil it by tacking a long moral to it. Pupils, most of
them, will get their own lesson. Neither grown people nor
children care to be preached to always.
4. Reading from the Scriptures, and without comment, may often
please and is always in place. This may be followed by a
brief prayer if it come from the heart. Religious service
in the public school must be free from sectarianism, and it
is well to guard such exercises carefully.
5. A cheerful devotional song followed by the Lord’s Prayer
given in concert by the school is good. Sincerity must
characterize all exercises of a devotional nature, else
they should be strictly avoided.
6. A brief summary of the world’s news of the week given by
some pupil may be made very interesting in many schools.
This is a splendid exercise for broadening the views and
life of the pupil.
7. Review the life of any great men dying. Prepare the leading
facts of their life carefully and pointedly so that pupils
will remember the facts and gain inspiration from the life.
8. Discuss in the same way the lives of great men yet living.
Avoid over praise and still better over-criticism. The
natural tendency to hero worship in children is an
uplifting force. Cultivate it. The past few years has seen
a tendency in muck-rake quarters to belittle men. There are
spots on the sun and perhaps faults in great men. Teach
pupils to enjoy the warmth and heat without worrying about
the spots. Teach them to look for the best in men rather
than the worst.
9. Discuss social questions such as strikes, elections, social
movements, etc. Be liberal in your views, avoid partisan
statements and bitter criticisms. The great purpose of
education is to make men think and to be charitable and
liberal in their thinking of others.
10. Place a maxim or motto on the board and discuss its meaning
and application with the school. This is very interesting
often and broadening to the views of the class. Many of
our maxims are rich with meaning, but pupils often fail to
grasp the meaning.
11. Perform or have some pupil perform an interesting
experiment in physics or chemistry, one that explains some
scientific fact or principle. This will prove intensely
interesting. It is no trouble to select several such, and
pupils are seldom tardy if they think they may miss such an
exercise.
12. Short queries are good if they are appropriate ones.
13. Information lessons on plants and animals, illustrated when
possible by objects or pictures, will be interesting and
profitable.
14. Discuss the manufacture of common articles, such as pens,
pencils, boots, shoes, buttons, cotton and woolen goods,
etc. If possible, have pupils visit such factories and
describe the processes. If you cannot take the pupils,
visit the factories yourself and observe the processes
carefully that you may describe them accurately and
interestingly.
15. Select famous historic quotations such as “Don’t give up
the ship,” “Millions for defense, but not a cent for
tribute,” and have pupils tell when, by whom and upon what
occasion they were uttered.
16. Give brief descriptions of historic places and things you
have seen. Be modest and be brief.
17. Describe the habits, manners, customs and life of strange
people. Material is easily found for this. Do not read it
to pupils, but prepare it and tell it to them.
18. Select some interesting book and read one or two chapters
each morning. Pupils will be anxious to follow the story
and will be greatly interested.
19. Have pupils give memory gems. This to me has been one of
the most uniformly successful opening exercises I have ever
tried. I have never had a class that tired of it. To have
the minds of pupils stored with beautiful gems of poetry
and prose, little life sermons, means much to the young
persons. One of my former pupils ten years later, himself
then a teacher, told me he valued that above everything
else I gave him. It had been a source of the greatest
pleasure to recall these and to add new ones at intervals.
20. Help pupils to better grasp facts by graphic illustrations
of them. Pupils have no conception of a billion. When we
read in our geography that the United States raised two and
a half billion bushels of corn a few years ago, it makes no
impression on the mind. Have pupils figure out how long a
procession of wagons would be required to haul it, counting
twenty bushels to the load and twenty feet of space for the
wagon and team. How many times would this procession reach
around the earth at the equator? The result may surprise
you unless you have figured on it, and I am sure it will
surprise your pupils. At least it will help them in some
little measure to grasp the enormity of the corn crop.
Then what becomes of all this corn? Another fact that can
be graphically illustrated is to have the class figure out
how many tons of water fell upon the school building last
year. You can find the average rainfall for your state or
locality. A cubic foot of water weighs about 62 1-2 pounds.
Then figure out the number of tons. Get your patrons to
figure on it before you tell them the amount or they may
doubt your veracity, or else your sanity. Dozens of such
topics may be used, and will make the most interesting of
opening exercises.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE SPIRIT OF THE TEACHER.
The more one studies the forces which combined make a successful
school, the more he sees that the teacher is the all-important
factor. Buildings, grounds, furniture, apparatus, books, all these
are important--and the material equipment of a school makes much
difference--but over and above these and vastly more important than
these, is the spirit of the teacher. From the contact of mind with
mind grows a quickened intellect. Mark Hopkins on one end of a log and
Garfield on the other, these, Garfield said, would make a university.
The teacher whose soul is on fire with her work, the pupil who is
willing to learn, these are the essentials of a good school. The
teacher, one whose heart is in the work, one who realizes the dignity
and the importance of teaching, one who not only knows the subject to
be taught and the laws of mental development, but has that innate tact
and worth and personal magnetism that draws young people to her, such a
teacher is a priceless gem. Such a teacher brings order out of chaos.
The pupils feel the magnetism of her presence. She enters into their
very lives, lifting them to higher things and leading the way.
It is the spirit of a teacher that governs a school. In one room is
disorder, a spirit of idleness and sometimes defiance, carelessness and
contempt for all that is pure and good and noble in school life--loose
paper, marred desks, paper wads, marked walls--you know the signs.
The teacher among her personal friends and intimate acquaintances
speaks always in contempt of the pupils, calling them her “mean
kids,” “hateful little imps,” “despisable brats,” etc. She longs for
the monthly return of pay day and the end of the term. She scolds,
frets, punishes, threatens, bribes and coaxes by turns and in rapid
succession, and then expresses surprise that the pupils of her room
take little interest in their work and are so “torn down mean.” She is
lacking in natural dignity and seriousness, and wonders why her pupils
are frivolous. She makes no daily preparation of lessons and cannot
understand why the children do not study. She is the giddiest of the
giddy in talking about her beaux, and wonders why the school girls are
so rude as to speak about their “fellows.”
The pupils of another room--and often the same pupils under another
teacher--are quiet, orderly, obedient, respectful and studious. She
does not gush. She is not petty and has no pets. She is quiet, bright,
cheerful, cheery, orderly, serious, natural, and has confidence in her
pupils. She speaks kindly and affectionately of her boys and girls,
neither thinking them faultless nor lauding them to the skies. Her
every act is an inspiration to her pupils. She plans her work, she
works to her plans, and the pupils both consciously and unconsciously
imitate her. She shapes the lives and destinies of her pupils for the
better. The work of such a teacher is above all money value. The former
is dear at any price.
The spirit of the teacher shows itself in the intellectual attitude of
the pupils. The teacher should be a living fountain, not a stagnant
pool. The growing mind is alone fit to teach. The best, the life-giving
teaching, which makes the pupil’s soul thirst for more is not being
done by men and women who have long since _completed_ their education.
I pity the high school pupil whose teacher adds nothing to his
intellectual growth each year. Were I seeking an institution in which
to educate a boy of mine, I should care very little for the religious
creed of the faculty, but I should prefer that there was diversity
among them and I should want good morals. I should care little for
the political faith of his teachers, but I should want them honest in
their convictions. My first and deepest concern would be the spirit of
the teachers in charge of the school. I should want a faculty mature
enough to have lost much of its freshness, but fresh enough to be
growing still. The average age should not exceed forty, men growing in
knowledge day by day, each strong in his specialty but pushing forward
to new and better things, broad enough to grasp life and to see things
from more than one angle, men whose gaze and hope is turned to the
sunrise and not to the sunset, men who are winning laurels and making
a name in their profession rather than men who have won laurels and
made a name and are now resting. Such teachers and the spirit of such
teaching would show in the intellectual attitude of the boy.
The spirit of the teacher will show itself in the pupil’s view of life.
I often think of one of my favorite teachers. I have forgotten most of
the lessons he taught me from books. Much of the algebra he taught me
has been relearned or else I do not know it. I violate daily many of
the rules of syntax he tried so hard to teach me, and yet he taught
me one of the greatest lessons of my life. He looked on life with a
broad perspective. He was liberal-minded. He taught us, unconsciously
perhaps, to be generous in our judgments of others. He opened our
minds and our lives to the beauties and harmonies of nature all about
us. The sunset took a brighter tint, the rainbow showed a deeper
color, the pansy gave a more delicate odor, life gleamed broader and
sweeter because of the unconscious inspiration of this man’s life.
Cheerfulness, hope, faith, trust in the eternal triumph of right
should be a part of every teacher’s faith. No carping, sour-grained,
narrow-minded teacher ever did much to develop healthy, hearty, liberal
views of life in the pupil. One of the greatest misfortunes of our
schools is the fact that occasionally such teachers are found in them.
The spirit of the teacher is shown in the attitude of the pupil in his
daily work. She cheers or depresses. Constant nagging would drag down
angels. If there is anything that saps the mental life of pupils, dulls
their intellectual desires, disgusts them with school and all that
pertains to it, it is the spirit of the grumbling, growling, whining,
probing, complaining teacher. Occasionally we meet such a teacher in
the schools, and her work is followed by the wreck of childish hopes
and ambitions. Her very atmosphere is blighting and dwarfing. Have you
ever met such a teacher? I trust not, and yet I fear you have. Here is
a sample:
“Now, George, you may tell us about Braddock’s defeat. Stand up and
tell us all about it. You remember you had that topic yesterday and did
not know it. I told you to take your book home with you last night and
to study all about this topic, you remember. You may stand up now and
try it again. Stand up straight. Get out from the desk. Now, that is
better. I have told you several times how I wanted you to stand when
you recite. Put down that rule and take your hand out of your pocket.
How often am I to tell you about that.
“A little louder, I can’t hear you. I told you the other day to speak
loud enough that you could be heard by any one in any part of the
room. You must remember what I tell you.
“Now, that is better. Stand up straight. Now, tell us all about
Braddock’s defeat. Begin over again. ‘Braddock was a British general
sent over to this country to help us,’ well that is all right so far.
Go on. Who was Braddock? Who was he and what had he done? Tell us all
about him.... Well, if the book does not say, you ought to have looked
it up in some other book. Didn’t I tell you I wanted you to read other
histories and not to depend on one text-book?
“Now, stand up and tell us all you know about Braddock’s defeat. You’ve
had that topic two days, and surely you can tell us something. You have
got to study your history. Take your book home with you to-night and
study the lesson three or four times. A great big boy like you ought to
know history. You will want to vote sometime. I would be ashamed if I
were you. Study that topic so you can tell us all about it to-morrow.
Remember this class completes history this year. If you are to be
promoted you will have to work. We will have an examination on all of
these topics, and after we have had these lessons over and over again,
if you do not pass it is not my fault. You will have to work, young
man, or fail. That is all I have to say about it.
“Remember, you have got to learn this lesson next time. If I were you,
I would try to use my brains, if I had any. It makes me tired when I
have to tell and tell you what to do and you do not care a cent. I am
just doing my best to help you, and you do not seem to appreciate it a
bit. I would be ashamed, and you would be if you had the least bit of
get up to you.
“Now, we must close. For to-morrow we shall review to-day’s lesson and
take down to the bottom of page 105, down to where you see the big,
black-faced letters which say, ‘William Pitt is made Prime Minister.’
I wonder what a Prime Minister is, anyhow. Well, you may think about
that. You may get down _to_ that topic for next time. Now, study this
lesson well, so that you can recite it right off to-morrow. Get a good
lesson next time. We did not get over the lesson to-day. Let’s do
better next time. Class excused.”
Of course, George left the recitation with a burning desire to learn
all about Braddock’s defeat. The inspiration was sufficient to do him
for life. The inspiration from the recitation in other subjects being
of the same satisfying kind, he withdrew from school two months later.
The spirit of a teacher sometimes kills.
The school, large or small, country or town, blest with a teacher of
broad mold, liberal-minded, active, studious, still learning, virtuous
and pure-minded, such a school is a dynamic force for good in the
neighborhood. Such a teacher is not worried by bad boys. Her energy
is not sapped by keeping order. She does not nervously pound the desk
or the call bell for quiet. Her very attitude begets quiet without
having to demand it. She may sit down and hear a recitation. Composure
on her part gets composure on the part of the pupils. If John forgets
himself and gets into mischief a look from her settles him. She does
not have to stop the recitation every few minutes to reprimand. She
does not nervously walk the aisle to keep order while she is hearing
a recitation. If a boy is devoid of principle and persists in doing
annoying things she lets him come to her instead of rushing back
after him. Her look of indignation and scorn makes him feel his
insignificance, and he does not try it often. She has learned the
lesson of letting the offender do the walking instead of the teacher.
When patrons and officials learn that it is the personality and
individuality, or the spirit of the teacher that counts in teaching,
then will they discriminate between teachers and school keepers, and be
willing to pay the former living salaries and encourage the others to
try new fields of labor.
CHAPTER IX.
THE TEACHER’S LIBRARY.
What do you read? A look at your library will reveal much of your
interest and professional zeal. Gypsies examine your hand or feel
of your head to tell your fortune and predict your future. If you
want revealed the future and the fortune of a teacher examine that
teacher’s library and see what books they read and have read. A glance
at the library will tell much of the teacher’s zeal, earnestness, and
enthusiasm in the profession. You can gauge them pretty accurately by
the books they read. One’s library, like one’s dress, oft proclaims
one’s character.
Of course the teacher does not confine herself to professional books
and reading alone. No one would expect such a thing. It would make
you narrow. If this had been your entire line of reading you would be
narrow now. The question is, do you ever read professional books and
professional literature? What faith would you have in a physician who
had never read medical books, and who did not take and read the current
literature of his profession? Would you engage a lawyer to defend your
interests or to look after your business who had never read or heard of
the great treatises on law? Would you entrust the life of your child to
the former? Would you intrust your business to the latter?
Would you then ask parents to entrust the education of their child to
you when you have never read nor heard of the literature that bears
upon teaching and education? If you neither read nor care for the
current literature of teaching, educational journals, and magazine
articles of merit bearing upon your work, do you think that you are
equipped properly for the best interest and education of the child? Can
you blame thinking men and women for criticising and often giving very
little deference to the teacher’s opinion of education? Is the mind so
much less important that good judgment would reject the physician and
the lawyer who have done no professional study, and accept the teacher,
ignorant of the literature of her line of work and who had never given
any study of why or how or what to teach in order to best develop the
child? Is the mind of less importance than the body? Is property dearer
to the parent than the child?
If teaching is a profession, or is ever to become one, teachers must
read the literature of the profession. If you are a professional
teacher, or if you are ever to become one, you must read and enjoy the
reading of good books on teaching and education. It is not the reading
alone but the keen interest and love for the reading. Teaching can
never become a profession until teachers become acquainted with the
literature of the profession, and even before they enter the profession
must show that they have made the acquaintance of this literature.
I have little faith in the teacher who does not care for good books,
and who does not own and read a few good books. The teacher who has
taught for a few terms and who has not at least the beginning of a
professional library ought to quit. It is an imposition upon the
public to continue year after year teaching when you do not have
interest enough in your work nor love enough for the profession to own
a few good books bearing upon your work. It is a sure sign that your
interest in teaching is a mere mercenary interest. You teach for the
dollars only. That is not so bad in itself if you want to give value
received for the dollars. Few of us could or would teach if there
were no salary attached, but there is a deeper and broader interest
that is above money value. This broader interest is lacking when the
teacher does not care to buy and read a few books each year upon her
professional work.
It is not the size of the library that counts. It is the reading and
the study and the assimilation of the contents of the library that
is of value. Your library should not only be well read, but steadily
growing. New books should be added from year to year, educational
journals and magazine articles bearing upon the present trend of
teaching and education should be found. They should be read carefully
and critically. You need not swallow without mastication every
newly-hatched theory or educational cure-all that is advocated. It is
the reading teacher that has ballast and is not swept away with every
new-fangled notion that is sprung upon the public by the educational
demagogue and sensationalist.
Your library need not be large, but it should be well-selected. It
should be bought for use and not for show. There is much difference
between the teacher’s working library and the teacher’s parlor show
library. It takes but a glance to recognize the difference. In the
working library there will be the regular text-books used in the
school course. These are for getting clear, systematic, fresh outlines
of the work from day to day. How often a five-minutes’ glance at the
author’s treatment of a subject at night will clear up two or three
days of work for the class. It lightens your work and it enables you
to organize what you give to the class. There should be a few other
late texts upon the subjects. From these you will get side lights and
little points of information to supplement the regular texts. There
should be a few more advanced texts upon several of the subjects from
which you may occasionally get view points to keep your own knowledge
from fossilizing. Advanced text-books and other good texts besides the
regular ones used by the pupils are the every day tools of the teacher.
A good dictionary is very essential. This dictionary need not be the
largest nor latest complete dictionary. Such a dictionary is proper
equipment for the schools, but the best working dictionary for the
teacher is often an academic or a student’s dictionary. You will refer
to these oftener. I know from experience. On my study desk are three
dictionaries--one is a late edition of one of the very best, the others
are academic dictionaries, late and standard, but books of from five to
eight hundred pages. I use the smaller ten times to the larger once.
When you buy a dictionary get one with the index. If your time is worth
a cent an hour it will soon repay you the extra cost. Then you will use
it oftener because it is more quickly done.
You need a good, authentic, up-to-date encyclopedia. This need not be
the largest, nor an expensive one. A two or a four-volumed encyclopedia
will often be of more use to you than a larger one. You will use
it oftener, just as in the case of the dictionary. In buying an
encyclopedia, do not be gulled by cheap reprints--something that treats
everything else in the world but the things you want, and treats these
at such length that you are lost in a mass of detail before you have
read half a page. The young teacher makes a mistake in buying a fifty
or seventy-five dollar encyclopedia when he has not twenty dollars
worth of other books in his library. Do not be so foolish as to think
an encyclopedia will give you all the knowledge that is ever wanted.
Thinking is what gives you power, not facts. Facts serve a useful
purpose in thinking, but unless they are organized you will get little
out of them. An encyclopedia can give you only general facts. Half a
hundred other books would be far more useful to you than a complete
encyclopedia.
You should have a good, small atlas for ready reference. This should be
fairly authentic and up-to-date at the time you buy it. Look carefully
at reprints and unauthentic compilations. They are many and often
costly. You can get a very reliable small usable atlas for a dollar or
two. The world is changing fast. An atlas soon gets out of date. When
you buy one get one that gives the latest census. The present atlases
giving the census of 1900 will soon be laid on the shelf after the
census of 1910 becomes available.
You should have a few good, authentic histories, histories of our own
country as well as general histories. Here, too, good text-books will
give you a bird’s-eye view and an understanding of things often better
than the larger histories. Get your general outline view first, and
then as time and opportunity offers get the deeper, more critical view
by the study of special events and topics. Teachers are lacking in
their knowledge of history. The teacher should have a well-organized
epitome of the world’s history clearly in mind. He should see the
nations come and go as he looks down the ages, and see the mile post
which each nation marked in the growth of civilization. Then he should
have a broader, closer knowledge of our own country, trying in every
case to see our national development and progress in the light of the
world’s progress rather than the events in themselves.
Do not forget biography. It is rich in interest and inspiration, not
only for the teacher as a person and an individual, but it is even
richer still in food for the teacher as a teacher. The pupil is hard
to find who is not or cannot be interested in biography if the teacher
is full of it. His history is his knowledge of the individual. He is
hungering for this knowledge of the individual if only the teacher
will point the way and show an interest in it. I may be wrong, but I
fear we are going to seed on myths and gods and heroes of the remote
past. Fairy stories and myths have their place. To say the child is
interested in them is not always conclusive argument. If the teacher
would get out and help build it the child would be intensely interested
in making a snow man. The difference between a teacher and an ideal
teacher is often the difference between the teacher that can inspire an
interest in sane, sensible, intelligent lines and the teacher that can
interest along the useless, unimportant lines. At least the teacher’s
library should be rich in biography. No book ever read so thoroughly
interested me when I was a boy as Franklin’s Autobiography, and no book
I ever read had greater influence on my life. To this day I find his
common-sense maxims coming up before me with telling force.
What fiction is more enjoyable than many of the biographies of our
great men? Read Grant’s Memoirs, read Phil Sheridan’s Life, read
the Autobiography of the teacher and diplomat, Andrew D. White. Can
you in fiction find anything more interesting? Then such books as
Blaine’s “Twenty Years in Congress,” Benton’s “Thirty Years,” Greeley’s
“American Conflict,” Davis’s “Rise and Fall of the Confederacy,” and
Nicolay and Hay’s “Life of Lincoln”--what teacher can begin one of
them and not become thoroughly absorbed in it, living over again the
scenes they describe. In mentioning the individual books, I do not
mean to imply there are not others just as interesting, but these are
types and valuable types, types with which teachers should be familiar.
Some of these should be found in the teacher’s library and the teacher
should know the contents.
Then there is pure literature, the great poems and poets, the classics.
Read and own Lowell, Longfellow, Whittier, Emerson, and Holmes. Start
with Longfellow, and after you have read the others mentioned and have
them on your library shelves add others as you like. Read fiction of
course. Begin with the better class. Read Hawthorne, Scott, Dickens,
Eliot and others. Read some of the later fiction but do not waste time
on every piece of rag-time fiction that comes from the press. Teachers
do not have time to do it, and it would lead to intellectual imbecility
if they did. We are smothering in a deluge of light literature of the
rag-time class--literally smothering beneath it. Teachers at least
should be discriminating enough to select intelligently the things
worth reading, but are they?
But what about professional reading? If you neglect professional
reading you ignore the profession that you are striving to build up.
Read psychology, methods, history of education, and educational views
and discussions, and keep up on what is going on in administration
of schools and changes in school laws. This concerns you and should
be of interest to you. The lives of the great educational reformers
of the world, the lives of a few of our own educators like Horace
Mann, David Page, and others, should be of intense interest to you.
Books on management, books on method, books on the science and art of
instruction, books giving in detail the plans, methods and devices
for teaching and handling a school, how can such things lack interest
for you? Many of these represent the best experience of intelligent
teachers for years. They have pointed out to you their faults and
mistakes. They have shown you the way. You are not to follow such
books blindly. But read discriminately they will become guides to
you. They will save you from the pitfalls of others. They will save
you nerve force and strength by giving you clearer notions of what to
expect and how to secure it. They will help you to govern bad boys and
naughty girls. Ignore them and you start in to re-discover all the
pitfalls of the teacher. Then read the plans and devices that add spice
and interest. They represent successful experience. Then the deeper
educational works, those which point out principles, the books that
are for laying the foundation for a real science of education and to
prepare the way for a profession of teaching, shall teachers neither
read, own, nor care for such books and yet call themselves teachers,
professional teachers?
Before leaving the subject of the teacher’s library, I want to caution
against some mistakes. I have seen the libraries of many teachers.
I think I can make pretty accurate predictions from looking at the
library of the teacher’s judgment, standing, and teaching ability. It
is lamentable that so many young teachers are gulled into buying sets
of books--a set of Shakespeare, a set of Irving, a set of Dickens, a
set of Scott, a set of the library of history, or a set of the world’s
literature, etc.
Mark you, I do not throw stones at any particular collection of books.
I have every respect for the agent and the publishers of such books.
In fact, I always feel like taking my hat off to the book agent when
I meet one. As an orphan boy I was reared in a home where there were
more than ten acres of land for each book in the home. The few that
were there had been sold by enterprising book agents, who made them
think their future prosperity and soul’s salvation depended very
largely upon whether they bought the book or not. If he succeeded in
making them believe this and would knock off fifty cents and board out
half the balance they would sometimes buy the book. One of these books
touched me and gave me some aspirations that have influenced my life.
Blessings be upon the agent that sold it, if he is living. If he is
dead, may his soul rest in peace and prosperity attend his posterity.
It is not the particular set of books, nor the publisher, nor the
agent, but the foolish spending of money for what will not do the
good for you that half of it well spent would do. It is a reflection
upon a teacher’s judgment when he allows himself to be talked into
buying a large set of books, uniform in price and binding, and much
alike. What does the average young teacher want with a whole set of
Shakespeare, or a whole set of Scott, or of Dickens. Life is too short
to read all the works of very many authors. You want to be familiar,
genuinely familiar, with five or six of Shakespeare’s best plays. You
want to know well three or four of Scott’s best novels. You want to be
familiar--to have read, re-read and lived over again and again with the
author Dickens’ David Copperfield, his Tale of Two Cities, Little Nell,
and perhaps one or two others. But you do not have time to read all of
Dickens, and if you had the time you could better spend it in reading
one or two of the best of some other author rather than wading through
the worst of Dickens. No author, not even Shakespeare, can always be at
his best. The teacher who knows thoroughly the three or four best of
an author’s writings may well afford to be ignorant of the others, and
use the time in growing familiar with the best of some other author.
Select your library. Put some good volumes of history, biography,
travel, fiction, and great poems in it. Do not neglect your
professional books. If you have taught ten years and do not have at
least twenty-five professional books, you have very little professional
spirit, and ought to quit teaching or begin reading. Let your library
be a working library. Do not get all your books the same size, shape
and binding. Nothing is a greater give away on one’s library. Working
libraries are not that way. Libraries bought in bulk, bought for show,
bought not because you need them or want them, but because some firm
or agent is pushing their sale, these are in large sets. Such is an
infallible sign that your library was not built up as a working, usable
library--a growth, and not a full-grown product at one time.
Your library will be a fair index of your professional standing, and
the practiced eye can readily paint you after examining your library.
CHAPTER X.
THE TEACHER OUTSIDE THE SCHOOL-ROOM.
Teaching has two sides. There is the school-room side and the public
or community side. Each is important. You cannot be a successful
teacher without mastering the first. You can’t hold your job long
unless you have some skill in the second. Your success in a community
is often measured more by the second than the first. In fact, the good
you do, the influence you exert on the lives of the pupils, the net
results of your work, is often a reflex of your skill and ability to
get along with the people, to get their respect, good will and hearty
co-operation.
You must know how to meet and mingle with people. You must understand
your patrons and many of their peculiar neighborhood whims. You must
know enough of human nature to get along with people, to be diplomatic
without being weak, and to get your way without stirring up determined
opposition. Confidence in yourself, freedom from excessive or offensive
egotism, a knowledge of the home life and surroundings of your patrons,
and that rarest of accomplishments, the ability to listen and say
little, these will help you. It will often happen also that you must
teach your patrons, and this requires more skill than to teach pupils.
You must teach them as if you taught them not. You must use diplomacy
without deceit or sham or show of weakness.
There will be certain local standards that you should respect if
you can do so conscientiously. I have taught in neighborhoods where
dancing and card-playing were considered long steps toward everlasting
perdition. The teacher who had gone to a public ball or dared dance
at a private home in the community would have been met with a storm
of opposition. In fact, it would have been almost as bad as if she
had gotten drunk. In such communities a teacher would do well to
avoid such amusements, and if she is skillful she need not commit
herself upon the matter. Leave the people to guess her real sentiment
on these things. On the other hand, if the teacher has been taught
to regard dancing, card-playing and kindred amusements as wrong, and
then teaches in a community where such things are common she need not
indulge in them. With an ordinary share of discretion she need not
give offense in declining invitations to such amusements should they
come. She cannot as a stranger do much in one or two terms toward
changing the sentiment of the community either for or against such
things. After long acquaintance she can build up her circle of friends
where other amusements take the place of these that are under ban.
Even in time she might create a tolerance for such indulgences, but
it is likely to cost more than it will come to. More real good can be
done by looking pleasant, and taking no real active partisan part in
either way. For my own part I can see no sin in a quiet, civil game of
cards. But my mother’s puritanical views forbade such as if it were
satan’s certain snare. Out of respect to my mother’s memory I have
never learned the names of the different cards in a deck, and unless I
simply applied my own judgment of the meaning of words could not tell
one card from another. I lost pleasant evenings occasionally during
my university course because of this “narrowness” as many called it.
Occasionally now, I must decline an evening out or else be a drag to
the entertainment feature. I have never offended any one so far as I
know, nor lost their respect and good will by refusing to take part
in a game. The sacred memory of my angel mother who died when I was
a child has far more than compensated me for all the pleasure I have
lost. For the other person, I can see no harm in a quiet game of cards;
for me to break my boyhood promise and later resolution would not only
rob it of all pleasure but would be a positive personal loss.
There are other indulgences also that the teacher must forego for
the sake of public opinion. Many a young man has lost a splendid
opportunity to make a reputation of being a good teacher in a community
by being indiscreet in keeping company. However unobjectionable the
girl, and however much he may be interested, he must remember that much
of the world dislikes a lover if that lover be the school teacher of
the neighborhood. People that think or care very little what the young
man in the store or the postoffice do, will resent too much company
keeping for the teacher. The young woman teaching should be even more
careful about keeping company. It is not good policy to do it, and it
will be more pleasure in the long run to be with young people, but do
very little keeping of young men’s company.
With your patrons you may be more free. Strict etiquette might dictate
that you wait until they have called on you. If you wait you will
know few of them and meet these after trouble has come up and they
call on you to make complaint. The teacher, like the preacher, if
there is strong personality and good address, can ignore many little
formalities, and no one will question it. Make the acquaintance of
as many of your patrons early in the term as you can. Be cordial, be
pleasant, be brief. Do not fawn. Do not gush nor bubble over. Do not
find fault. Do not tell all your plans for the year or make glowing
promises. Be yourself, but be your best self. Do not talk shop all
the time. Do not talk Shakespeare, politics, religion or the higher
criticism. You might soon interest them in the second and third, but
a discussion would probably do you no good. The first and last they
probably know little about and care less. Your ability to make friends
and to mix with people is limited often by your ability to talk to the
other person about something in which he is interested. The hardest
clam will open if you know how and where to touch it.
Learn how to shake hands. You are often judged by the handshake. The
hand, the eye, the voice--these if used properly quickly overcome
prejudice and barriers of opposition and build up forces in your favor.
If you can shake hands with a firm, hearty grasp, meet the eye with
frankness and composure, and speak in a pleasing, even, well-modulated,
quieting voice, you have the strength of Gibraltar at your back. If
you have knowledge and skill and personality and character to back the
first impression made by such a combination, you should be invincible.
If your handshake, however, is loose and passive, Uriah Heep-like, if
your eyes wander, and your voice is screechy or faltering, you should
begin at once to overcome these obstacles. They lie in your road to
success as a teacher, and you should lose no time in trying to overcome
them.
Many teachers lack poise. If you prefer, you may think of it as
personality or force of character. Whatever term you may use to name
it, it remains true that many teachers lack the ability to command
attention and respect, and to mingle readily among the best business
and professional men of the community. It is sometimes want of
experience, it is sometimes want of knowledge, and breadth of vision.
Teachers are too often narrow. They do not have the world view of
things they should have. It is sometimes bookishness and lack of
contact with the practical business side of the world. I am sorry to
think that it is sometimes caused by the feeling that the fact you are
a teacher is something to be apologized for. Teachers are so often
inclined to whimper and whine, to seek to be pitied and petted. They
brood over their imaginary troubles. They conclude the world does
not properly appreciate their efforts. They want the public to grant
them special favors and attentions instead of commanding the respect
and attention of the community by weight of their own strength and
personality.
The teacher should strive first to be a man or a woman in the best
sense of the term, strong mentally, morally and physically, with
personality and independence, but without rudeness. He should command
respect as a thinking person, avoid eccentricities and partisan
measures, have opinions of his own, but without flaunting them in the
face of others to provoke combat or opposition. Then to the respect
due him as a man will come, if his teaching justifies, the additional
respect due him as a teacher.
The teacher should ever be the apostle of education and high thinking,
a living example of the best product of the school and its worth. To
be a consistent preacher of right living, high thinking, and the power
of education in the progress and development of the state, he himself
should be a worthy example. Of all persons the teacher should be the
champion and the defender of the school and the cause of education.
He should be a high example of the best product of the schools and
education. His power, his carriage, his character, his thrift, his
independence, his zeal in good works, should bear testimony and be
the strongest argument for the schools. A genuinely good teacher,
who has the intellectual and moral force to be a man among men, such
a teacher in a few years will create a public sentiment that will
demand good schools, buildings, equipment and teachers of the best, in
the community in which he teaches. His influence will bear fruit for
generations.
As long as the teacher is a weakling, a figure-head, a crank, an
upstart, a person whose opinion--if he has one--on business or on
the questions of the day would be hooted or laughed at by every
level-headed business man of the community, there is little sentiment
for schools or education developed. If the whole energy of the teacher
is exhausted in keeping the problems solved in advance of his class,
if his personal appearance, his carriage, his address, his thrift, and
his thoughts are below the average business man of the community, many
of whom have little or no education or school training, it places the
school on the defensive. The hard-headed, but sober-minded, man of
affairs will look upon the teacher as a fair sample and typical product
of the schools, and will not regret that he lost such opportunities
when he was young, or perhaps he will thank his stars that he did not
have such things forced upon him.
My contention is that the teacher should be a man or woman of strong
personality, a worthy product of the school, a person whose judgment
and opinion of schools, of business, of the questions and the issues of
the day would be such that it would be respected by the best people of
the community. His opinions should have weight. He should have all the
elements that go to make up a successful business career. He should be
a man of force and character, whose influence would be felt in any line
he should take up. With such teachers the schools will become what they
should be. Such teachers will get results--results of the teaching act
and results in the material equipment of the schools. Buildings will
improve, conditions will improve, furniture and proper apparatus will
be forthcoming. The community will soon begin to look upon the schools
as safe investments, every dollar of which yields golden dividends;
then the community will be generous.
When teachers possess the strength, the force, the poise, the diplomacy
they should, good things will follow. Some of the criticism and carping
about the schools will be changed. It makes my Scotch-Irish blood to
tingle when I hear a few of these questions discussed. If it is not the
teacher’s business to defend the school whose is it?
One of these things that should arouse a teacher is the insinuation
still met in a few localities and among a few people--the would-be
blue-bloods, with more inheritance of money than brains--that the
public schools are pauper schools; or at least schools for poor people
only. Such sentiment in free America seems to me born of ignorance or
treason. I first heard it advocated by a physician, a native of New
York, a graduate of a church endowed school and a product of it. His
alma mater was supported by the contribution box passed at regular
intervals in his church to which many a poor washerwoman contributed
a far greater percentage of her earnings each time than the same
physician did in a twelve months. Yet this good hypocritically pious,
but deluded man, ridiculed the thought of the state supporting a
university at public expense. He kept private tutors to teach his
children that they might not have to attend the public school to mix
with all “the rabble,” as he declared. There could not be a better
indictment of his own education. He had failed to grasp the spirit of
American liberty and American institutions. His ideas were those of
effete aristocracy and wealth. The best lesson his boy may ever learn
will be when some son of a washerwoman, or some poor paper boy or
news seller meets him in competition in after life, and he goes down
ignominiously in the contest. The chances are if the contest comes, and
it will come in the present generation or in a near generation, the
sturdy bootblack will win. This same physician did not think himself a
partaker of charity by getting his mail at a government postoffice, by
drinking from a public fountain or having his house and lot protected
from the lake by Uncle Sam’s break water.
It is the duty of the state to educate. This is not the rich nor
the poor, but all. The state’s schools are maintained as a public
necessity, and for the whole people. The patron whose child attends
the public school is no more an object of charity or a pauper for that
reason than he is for patronizing the postoffice, using the city paved
streets or using the street lamps at night. There are many things
the public can do and do much more efficiently than they can be done
otherwise. Education is one of these things. Every man, woman and child
is benefited by good public schools, the bachelor and the childless
family as well as the family of a dozen children.
Another fallacy often advocated is that the people are not able to
support good schools. Nothing can have a less foundation in fact. Let
us think about it. It is a principle that is almost axiomatic that no
people can be pauperized by local taxes applied to local purposes.
Now, very little of the school taxes ever leaves the immediate
community. The teacher is often one of the community, and many times
of the immediate neighborhood. If the teacher is from a distance he
usually boards in the neighborhood and spends much of his earnings
in the neighborhood. The percentage of his salary that leaves the
community is not large. The expense of wood, repairs, and supplies
are usually spent in the immediate community. The money that leaves
the community is, as a rule, not as much as the state pays toward the
maintenance of the school. No people can be pauperized by the money
properly spent on their schools. It is only a short time until the
increased earning capacity of the more intelligent citizenship soon
begins to pay good dividends on the investment, even though part of the
money should find its way out of the community.
When the cry came to us from Cuba in 1898, no one claimed that we
were too poor to help. When later disturbances occurred, we sent our
soldiers to maintain peace, and our secretary of war and assistant
secretary of state were sent to restore order. No one said it cost too
much. Count the cost of our war with Spain and place against it the
money spent in the same time for schools and in fighting ignorance and
then say if we are able to have good schools. Spend the money to train
our young people to future usefulness which is spent in defense against
imaginary foreign enemies and the _world_ could not stand against us in
a generation.
Few Americans but point with pride to our growing navy, now world
famous and we hope effective. The launching of each new war ship is a
thrilling event to the nation. The daily papers for weeks tell of its
progress and every trifling event is carefully chronicled. Count how
long the cost of one of these vessels would support one of our state
universities. The mission of the university is to build up, to increase
human intelligence and happiness. The mission of the war vessel is to
destroy life and property and to make desolate.
Figure on these things, and then say whether or not we are too poor to
have the best of schools.
CHAPTER XI.
GOOD TEACHING CONDITIONS.
The life of the school is the teacher. There is less difference in
pupils than in teachers. Under a weak teacher pupils will take every
advantage they can. Under a strong teacher the pupils will behave as
well as they can. The difference in rooms is usually a difference in
teachers. If the equipment of rooms are the same or practically the
same, and the teacher is not over burdened with pupils, the spirit and
condition of the room will be determined by:
1. The teacher’s ideal of what constitutes good conditions.
2. The teacher’s strength and personality in getting results in conduct
and work.
3. The former training and efficiency of the class. This will be seen
more in the matter of attainment than in conduct. I have seen the worst
of classes in conduct transformed into a class of good behaviour in
three months by a change of teachers.
The teacher’s ideal of what constitutes good conditions counts for
much. This ideal is a composite product, a result of all the former
experiences of the teacher with her natural gifts. Training in good
schools, teaching under good conditions, professional study, and
natural high ideals in life count in one’s ideal of school. If the
teacher is satisfied with dirty desks and scraps of paper on the floor
she will get these conditions. If sloven, half-executed work suits her
she will get it. If disrespect, sullenness and angry retorts will pass
with her she will get them. If she is willing for the boys to whittle
on the desks, they will whittle. To the practiced eye a five-minutes’
glance at a school-room will show pretty well the spirit of the teacher
and her ability to get results.
High ideals of school work coupled with common sense and executive
ability will get results. High ideals will prevent you from being
satisfied with low standards in conduct or work. Common sense will
guide you over rough places, and executive ability will have nerve
force.
Common sense will keep you from attempting the impossible and then
worrying because you cannot accomplish it. It will keep you out of
difficulties in the school-room and in the community. So many teachers
are lacking in this great characteristic of the plain, honest, thinking
citizen. In a fit of anger they set a punishment impossible to be
inflicted and then compromise themselves by withdrawing it. Arbitrary
rules with no reason behind them often get teachers into trouble.
Sensible rules, common sense rules, rules that would stand the test
of good judgment, judiciously applied, bring good fruit. Setting a
specific punishment for _all_ pupils who for any cause go outside the
school ground, locking the doors at a certain time regardless of the
weather, forbidding any pupil from leaving the room, etc., the list
of arbitrary, unreasonable rules are many. Now we shall agree that a
healthy pupil should not have to leave the room once in three months.
Restrict it, be positive in the matter, but do not forbid it, and then
be compelled to vary the rule or do worse.
Most of the trouble in the school-room comes either from lack of action
on the teacher’s part or action that is hasty and hence injudicious.
The teacher of experience and one who has profited by experience could
give numerous cautions to young teachers, all of which summed up might
be the advice to use common sense. Among these cautions and suggestions
those of most importance might be named as follows:
_1. Remember that order in the school-room does not mean deathlike
stillness._--There is the noise of work--a noise pleasing to the ear of
the successful teacher, and the noise of idleness and confusion. The
first is as inspiring to a good teacher as the second is discouraging.
The stillness that comes through fear of punishment may be the worst
of conditions. Under routine drill to quietness under the eagle eye of
a so-called disciplinarian, the pupils are often on the borderland of
anarchy. They have never learned the lesson of self-control nor the
reasons for good behaviour.
Order means opportunity for effective work. The mind of the pupil and
the mind of the teacher in perfect contact; this is order. When a pupil
is preparing his lesson the author or text becomes the teacher, and
there must be perfect unity between his mind and the thought of the
text. Order, good order, permits this. Anything that disturbs this
contact is detrimental to the school and is that far poor order. The
criterion, then, for the teacher as to what constitutes good order is
how nearly are conditions perfect for proper contact of the minds of
the pupil and the teacher.
_2. Do not lose your head._--Composure counts for more perhaps in the
school-room than elsewhere. A nervous teacher makes a nervous school.
Teachers sometimes pace the floor like a wild animal in a cage. Learn
the art of sitting to hear a recitation without becoming lazy. Stand
with composure when you stand. If you cannot govern yourself you will
find it hard to govern others. Too many teachers are afraid there will
be disorder. They can neither sit nor stand with composure during a
recitation. They fidget and make the pupils fidgety. They watch the
bad boy suspiciously. They walk back to his desk repeatedly to see if
he is in mischief instead of waiting with composure, and if he does get
into mischief punishing him for it. If you show that you expect a boy
to be bad he will seldom disappoint you.
“Look for goodness, look for gladness,
You will find them all the while.”
Many, many times have I heard teachers say to pupils, “Sit down and be
still,” when I wanted to say to them, “Go and do the same thing.”
_3. In the long run pupils will give you the respect you deserve._--If
you think you have the meanest pupils in the world they will not
disappoint you. If you treat the pupils with firmness, and courtesy and
respect they usually return to you in kind. When after a few months
the majority of your pupils do not respect you, and have confidence in
you, begin to examine yourself. In changing teachers, especially if
your predecessor has been popular, you may for a few weeks feel that
the pupils are not in sympathy with you. Tact and good judgment will
win them if you have wearing qualities. Do not resent their feeling of
respect for the former teacher. Try to be worthy their respect, and
when you leave they will regret your leaving just as much.
_4. The teacher who has ceased to learn becomes a phonograph, and can
do nothing but repeat._--When you have something fresh, something new
to you, something worth while to bring to the recitation, do you know
how anxious you are for the time to come. The very gleam of the eye
tells to pupils that you have a message for them. You cannot have the
enthusiasm that appeals to childhood and continue to depend upon an old
stock of goods.
_5. You will find the school-room a good barometer._--When I began
teaching, bad days came and I worried about it. Things went wrong,
lessons were not well prepared, boys got into trouble on the
playground, and girls were idle. I was often in despair. But perhaps
the very next day was a delightful one. Everything went so well that
I disliked for night to come. It took me several terms before I found
out the relation of the weather to conduct, but it exists. The weather
barometer that hangs on your wall is little better in its predictions
of change than are the careful observations of the conduct of the
pupils. Ask a dozen teachers at night how the day passed, and see what
a majority will vote the same way. A bright morning, clouds gather and
thicken--a bad day. Clearing weather--good work in the school-room.
Observe if it is true.
_6. A pleasing voice, freshness and vivacity in the teacher, quickens
and inspires the class._--Her questions come as if she were really
seeking information. They are crisp and to the point. The answers are
cheery as if they were meant to impart information and not simply to
tell something already known. Her face beams at a good answer, making
the pupil believe he has done his teacher a favor by imparting the
information. A cheery smile and a quick question that in its answer
shows the error in the first follows a wrong reply. Discussions are
bright and animated, and full of life, but always respectful and
courteous. She is in strong contrast to the teacher that talks and
talks in a monotonous tone until half the class are sleepy and the
others thinking about everything else save the subject she is trying to
explain. One draws out information and stimulates thought. The other
pours in second-hand information and deadens thought. One sharpens
intellect. The other dulls it.
_7. Proper seating and grouping pupils, the calling of classes, the
distribution of wraps, the collection of papers, the passing of
classes, the dismission of school at recess and at night, the answering
of questions, the passing of pupils from the room or across the
floor--all these do much to make or mar the school._--A well-arranged
program that indicates not only the time and order of the recitation
but of the study period as well will help. Teachers make woeful
failures often from no other cause but that they fail to plan carefully
in advance just what to do, how to do it and when to do it.
_8. The afternoon dismission to the careful observer is a fair index
not only of the day but the teacher’s grasp of her school._--Teachers
often hurry to dismiss the children, anxious to be rid of the
responsibility. The pupils rush from the door with a jump and a shout
as boisterous as a wild group of Comanche Indians. Of all the periods
of the day, the one just before dismission is the one when the teacher
should show most composure and deliberation. Of all the periods of the
day, the pupils are most at the teacher’s mercy. Let them understand
that quiet and decorum precede dismission. If it requires one minute,
ten minutes or half an hour, let them know that no lines pass until all
is quiet and orderly. Then at the customary signals, the lines pass
quietly, orderly, respectfully.
_9. Running, jumping, or boisterous conduct in the school-room is
never in place._--The school-room should be looked upon as a pleasant
workshop, not a skating rink or vaudeville theater. Best results
always come where pupils are decorous in the room at all times. Quiet,
homelike conversation is in place, but no rude or boisterous conduct at
any time unless you expect to pay the penalty with interest in days to
come.
CHAPTER XII.
KEEPING GOOD CONDITIONS.
Your school began in September. Your pupils returned to school, most
of them glad vacation was over. They entered with high resolves to
make this year of work the best they had ever done. If you made a good
beginning, the first few weeks of school strengthened these resolutions
in many of your pupils. If you planned your work well each week,
if your program was thoughtfully prepared, if you assigned lessons
carefully, and if by your every act you showed without stating it that
you were master of the situation and that you knew what you wanted to
do, how you wanted it done, and why you wanted it done, the first few
weeks of the term passed pleasantly, and well begun may not be half
done, as the adage goes, but it counts for much.
October’s frost has now painted the landscape a myriad hue, and
November’s hazy days are fast approaching. The novelty of school is
beginning to dull. Pupils have grown used to the new teacher and stand
no longer in such awe. The truth is that for both teacher and pupils,
school has settled down to the real thing. Some of the high resolves
of the opening of the term are beginning to weaken under the regular
routine of school work. Dropping nuts have overcome the good resolution
of a few, and they have missed a day or two to lay up the winter’s
stock. Missing will be much easier now for these pupils the rest of the
year. Some of the larger boys who remained at home to sow the wheat
and help gather the corn are now entering. In the main they are good
boys, worthy boys, boys whose greatest ambition is to work faithfully
in school as well as on the farm, but their entrance has broken into
the class organization and unity. The teacher and the pupils from
now on recognize the school as a genuine business. The real problem
of government begins to face the teacher. Then, too, school interest
must not begin to drag, or else the holiday spirit will overbalance
school spirit. Unless there is genuine interest some, often many, may
become so infatuated with Santa Claus that they cannot study, and begin
holiday vacation early. Lost time is hard to recover, and lost interest
at the middle of a term is seldom completely restored.
Let us trust that your beginning was good. It is far easier to _form_
than to _reform_. Definite standards of conduct, order and system, good
common sense rules and regulations, good judgment, a knowledge of boys
and girls, insight into the spirit and motives that prompt actions in
young people, frankness and honesty with pupils, and above all the
saving grace in the teacher of a sense of humor and the knowledge
of the purifying and vivifying power of a hearty laugh--if you have
understood these and exercised them from the first day, reforms will
not be necessary. Still followed faithfully, they serve as correctives
and prevent the necessity of reforms later.
How then may the teacher keep conditions good? What are the things
to guard against in order to keep the school atmosphere wholesome,
the interest good, and the conduct up to the standard? There are a
few cautions which every teacher of experience would give the young
teacher. These watched well and the teacher will grow in the power to
govern and instruct. They will be found the key to a good school. While
they do not cover all points, no teacher ever succeeded thoroughly
and yet neglected many of them, and no teacher is a complete failure
if many of them are in every way successful. Perhaps in naming some
of these I may restate a few things mentioned in the chapter just
preceding.
_1. You must have good order._--Not simply quiet but intelligent
quietness. Children are controlled by internal and external motives.
Appeal to the former always, but be ready to use the latter should the
former fail. You must govern your pupils else they will run away with
you. If you are weak they will take every advantage of you they think
they dare to take. Do not blame the children if your room is littered,
desks marked and marred and scratched--they will soon learn to do it
if you are a negative quantity. They will never do it if you are the
positive force you should be.
Can you leave your room for ten minutes or half an hour and return to
find things moving on with proper decorum and orderly manner? If you
cannot do this, why not? The best teachers can do it. A class whose
former record had been bad, in two weeks’ time under another teacher
were entirely trustworthy, and during a ten months’ term were never
known to do a disorderly act, though the teacher was frequently out
of the room. Where the power? Where the fault? It can be done. Good
order implies that each pupil is able to do his best work at any or
all times without annoyance or external disturbance from others. Some
pupils may be idle, but their idleness must not be catching. It must
not disturb those who want to work. This is to be your criterion. Make
it a constant study how this and the other may affect the proper work
of your pupils. This will answer as well as it can be answered what you
may permit and what you cannot permit in your school.
Good order in the recitation demands that the mind of the teacher
and the pupils’ minds must focus upon the same thought. This is the
basis of all school rules. How does it affect the unity of mind of
the teacher and the class? If it tends to unity it is good. If it
tends to destroy unity, it is bad, and should not be allowed. If it is
incompatible with unity it should at once be forbidden. Let the young
teacher learn to measure conduct by this standard, and she will soon
solve the various perplexing questions, little in themselves but big
to her. “Shall I permit whispering?” “Shall I permit a child to get a
drink during school hours?” “Shall I stop a recitation to reprimand a
bad boy?” The best answer is found in the criterion--do that which will
result in the closest possible contact between the mind of the teacher
and the mind of the pupils in class.
Of course, in the application of the above principle we must often
choose between two evils. But the criterion is a good guide. If the
conduct of the pupil will disturb the mental unity of the class and
teacher more during the recitation than the reprimand, by all means
stop the recitation and give the reprimand. Be sure, however, that you
give the reprimand so effectively that it will seldom or never have to
be repeated while the pupil comes to school to you.
_2. Guard well your recess._--It is a critical time for the teacher.
Often it may be even detrimental to the school. It is in many ways
the test of the teacher’s power to govern. If she has quick insight
into child nature she may get some of the deepest glances at the real
nature of the pupils--the best and the worst traits of character--at
this period. Much of the disorder of the school-room has its origin at
recess. The playground and the open-air are the places for games and
sports. The school-room may be a place for relaxation and reasonable
conversation and jest, but if you value peace of mind and good
conditions for school work, never, never let it become a place for
games, boisterous conduct, or running and jumping at recess.
Pupils should from the first day enter the school room as though it
were sacred ground, dedicated to cheerful, pleasant, profitable work. I
do not mean that there should be a long face and a woebegone expression
upon entering the school-room, but the feeling of frivolity and
boisterousness must be laid aside. Running and jumping and boisterous
conduct in the room at recess makes the pupils familiar with such
conduct until it is no longer shocking to them when repeated after
recess. There should be a feeling of impressiveness but cheerfulness
upon entering the school-room which is conducive to study and right
conduct. Much of the sacredness, the calm, restful sweetness which
comes to us upon entering the church would be lost if all kinds of
noisy games and boisterous carousals were indulged in before the
opening of the church service.
The teachers should be at school at least half an hour before the time
for opening school. If the teacher is habitually late she should reform
or resign. The noisy disorder and pandemonium that so often reigns
in the school-room when the teacher is late is detrimental to school
during the day and often for days. Some of the worst disturbances of
the school will be prevented if the teacher is first to reach the
building in the morning. If pupils bring lunch and remain at school
during the noon hour the teacher should remain also. One teacher at
least should remain during the noon hour. The extra work and tax on the
teacher during this time is far less than the nerve force required to
set things right that will happen during the year if she is absent.
Proper decorum must be insisted upon when pupils enter the room after
intermissions. All racing and shouting and games should stop at the
first tap of the bell. The pupils then prepare to enter the room. This
will depend upon the size, location and entrance of the building. In
cities and larger towns where hundreds of pupils must be handled, the
regular march may be necessary. In smaller schools, falling into line
without regard to grade may be all that is necessary. In schools of
middle size pupils may fall into line by grades. At a second signal,
after all is quiet, the lines pass to the rooms in good order, the boys
removing their hats at the door as if they were entering the home or
a church. No pushing, shoving or racing is permitted. The teacher who
tries and is persistent and uniform about it, can by her kindness and
conduct, readily secure this order and decorum without seeming to force
it.
_3. Be systematic and orderly in calling and dismissing classes._--No
teacher can long maintain order and decorum in the school-room without
some system in calling and dismissing classes. One of the most
signal failures I ever knew--a normal school and university graduate
too--could be traced largely to his lack of system in calling and
dismissing classes. As one class was dismissed the next started to
the recitation seat and without signal. They raced, and scrambled
and rushed for certain favorite positions. They came pell-mell,
hurry-scurry, each trying to get there first, and it never seemed to
dawn upon the teacher that there was a better way or that the disorder
bred here hung about the work of the school like a millstone.
Each pupil should have a definite position for the recitation. If the
room is arranged so that there are separate recitation seats the
pupil’s position in class will be determined by:
1. The location of the pupil’s desk and his natural place in
the line as the class passes to recitation.
2. The kind of classmate with which he will be thrown at
recitation. Some pupils are so congenial that if thrown
near each other in the recitation, neither seem to be
able to behave. Two boys, reasonably good when separated,
may not be able to sit near one another without kicking,
pinching and whispering. Be sure that they are separated in
recitation.
Good order in the recitation, like good order in the study period, is
often influenced by the teacher’s good judgment in seating pupils.
There should be a definite signal for calling classes. It may be a
gentle tap of the bell, a rap of the pencil, or by calling “One” by
the teacher. I have always preferred the latter. The teacher may then
call the class from any position in the room. At the signal the pupils
begin to get ready to rise, if the class is to pass to the recitation
seat. If the recitation is to be in the study seat, all books, papers,
pencils, etc., not needed in the recitation are laid aside at this
signal. The second signal, “Two” is given, and each pupil stands
quietly by his desk, each knowing in which aisle he is to stand. After
all have risen, a third signal, “Three” is given, and each passes
quietly to his place in class, and at a gentle nod of the head of the
teacher or a fourth signal all are quietly seated.
If the recitation is to be at the study desks all books, pencils and
papers not needed in the recitation must be laid aside. These are
always disorder breeders, and serve only to distract attention. Flowers
in the springtime may often become a nuisance, as they come too often
between the pupil’s mind and the lesson. The same is true of perfumed
cards and numerous other innocent looking little things.
The same plan of calling a class may be used in dismissing it. After
the class is seated, give ample time for them to get all necessary
books and papers for preparing the next lesson before calling the next
class. Never seem to be in a hurry. Have your classes follow directions
promptly, but haste is waste of time.
_4. Train yourself to pleasant tones of voice and composure._--Perhaps
the teacher’s voice is one of the strongest elements that go to make up
that which we call personality. Even tones quiet and soothe. Guttural
tones, harsh, rasping, high-keyed tones grate upon the ear and get
disorder. Your command should be gentle, but none the less firm.
Believe in your own ability to govern. Unless you can do this you are
apt to fail. Give every command in pleasing tones, courteously, firmly,
never letting the voice show doubt or fear that it will not be obeyed.
A sharp, rasping command with the faintest lack of self-confidence
breeds contempt and leads to a trial of strength. If teachers could
hear themselves for a day, repeated with the exact inflection by the
phonograph, many of them would cease to wonder why their rooms are
noisy.
Composure in actions, along with firmness of voice, gentle tones and
decision of character makes the teacher master of the situation.
They make or mar the teacher’s record. Given these with enthusiasm
and you should have no serious trouble in keeping conditions good in
your school after you have made a good start. Your term is usually
pretty well established by the time it is half over. Your success
is determined by that time. The first good resolutions have been
strengthened and become well fixed. You have shown your ability or lack
of it in keeping conditions good, and the rest of the year should, if
this is good, pass without much to discourage.
CHAPTER XIII.
WHAT MAKES A GOOD SCHOOL?
In an institute of something over a hundred teachers, nearly all of
them comparatively young in the work, I was once asked to give a
ten-minutes’ talk on what makes a good school. I am glad that I was,
not because anything which I said was so helpful to the young teachers,
but because it set me thinking by what things I judge teachers and the
school. My notes show the following points, although I am not sure of
the exact wording of the talk:
_1. The teachers and the pupils of a good school should be happy._--A
good digestion, a clear conscience, and reasonable success are three
things that should make any man or woman happy. A healthy child has
the first and second, and their ideas and hopes and ambitions of
success are and should be at school age very largely wrapped up in
the successes of the school and the home. If the teacher is unhappy
the school becomes unhappy. A low nervous state, indigestion, worry
either about school or other things, trouble in the home, sorrow over
friends or family, uneasiness about financial matters or anything that
saps the energy or spoils the sleep of the teacher, is detrimental to
the school. Anything that disturbs the majority or even a considerable
minority of pupils interferes with the school. If the teacher is
thoroughly discouraged over school work or if a very large percentage
of the pupils are displeased with the teacher after the first month,
there can be no whole-souled, happy work and conditions in the school.
If you or any considerable number of your pupils are unhappy, try
if possible to remove the cause. Your results in teaching will be
infinitely better, the work will be less taxing to you, you and the
pupils will get more out of life at the time and more out of life
in the future if all are happy in the school-room. To the practiced
eye five minutes will tell whether the work is a work of pleasure to
teacher and pupils or whether it is a task to both.
_2. The whole atmosphere of the school must be conducive to good
work._--While the teacher and the pupils are happy it should be that
quiet happiness that makes for good work. Children may be boisterously
happy. The idea of a good time with many boys is the loudest noise
they can make. It is the quiet, composed happiness springing from
interesting work well done that gives the best atmosphere of the
school. It is the spirit, the atmosphere, the social or psychological
conditions growing out of the relations existing in the school that
gives life to the school and that educates in the broadest sense. This
is intangible and invisible, but it is easily discerned, and to the
discriminating principal or superintendent it will form very largely
his basis for judging the teacher and the school. In associations with
visiting principals in my own school and in visiting other principals,
a frank estimate has often been given of the relative success of
teachers. It is surprising often how the visiting principal can in five
minutes rate a teacher, and this rating will in the main agree with the
regular principal. The practiced eye of the principal should, like the
practiced eye of the physician, see more in a minute than the unskilled
would in a month. For my own part I trust very largely to the spirit
and atmosphere existing in a room, the social echo of the school, and
it is only occasionally that I am far wrong.
_3. The personality of the teacher and its influence on the
school._--Does she know what to do, does she know how to do it, does
she have the dignity to get this done promptly and well without it
ever entering the mind of a pupil to question its propriety or her
ability to get it done? Your personality should be strong enough
that it is rare indeed that any pupil dare to dispute your authority
and then you should have weight of character enough to prevent open
rebellion. The personality of the teacher, like the atmosphere of the
school, is intangible. Someone has said that personality is “cultured
individuality.” It is individuality with the corners ground off and
polished. It is the individuality that gets results without fighting
for it. It does not offend in taste, in physique, or personal bearing.
It is the personality that pleases and yet makes the pupil, the parent,
or the public to hesitate before it dares express a criticism.
The personality of the teacher reaches the outward as well as the
inward. It is read in the teacher’s dress and bearing. No teacher can
afford to neglect her dress and personal appearance. Dress need not
be costly, but it should be in taste. To the lady teacher, a becoming
dress, a spotless collar, an appropriate ribbon, hair neatly brushed,
teeth white as pearl, nails immaculate as ivory--these are potent
influences and will win over thoughtless boys and careless girls when
all the switches in a mile square, and other means of punishment known
to the modern school, would fail. Spotless attire is essential to the
lady teacher, but a man will find it of scarcely less importance. There
must be no suggestion of the dude and the dandy, but clean linen, well
kept hands and nails, clean teeth, uncontaminated breath, clothing that
fits and is free from dandruff and dust--everything of the gentleman
but nothing of the dude--these will count in your personality and go
to determine the worth of your school.
_4. The good school has interest and enthusiasm, but it must not be of
the soap-bubble variety._--If you have the first insight into human
nature, if you know the first thing about swaying pupils in mass, you
know that it is easy to waste energy, get up steam and chase fleeting
phantoms in school, make a tempest in a teapot, and be no farther along
at the end of the year educationally than at the beginning. The faddist
in the school-room, the teacher that periodically discovers the coveted
panacea that will relieve the pupils from all good, old-fashioned,
hard work, is as dangerous as the demagogue in politics. Interest and
enthusiasm should be well directed. Sanity should guide it. It should
drive toward a worthy goal, it should be tempered by rationality and
common sense. The interest should as soon as possible be transferred to
self interest. One of the most enthusiastic teachers I ever knew was
of the hypnotic, spellbinding kind. Pupils waved their hands, snapped
their fingers, and jumped up and down in their eagerness to tell what
they knew of a topic. Strange to many--not strange to the man who
knew something of good teaching--very, very few of the pupils of this
teacher either continued school after the graded school course or took
much interest in self-directed study or reading in after life.
_5. In a good school the teacher loves the work._--We have much unrest
in teaching. For years teachers have been inviting dissatisfaction.
They have brooded over fancied evils, poor salaries, and lack of tenure
of position, until the great mass of them have become infected. In
teaching as in other things, if you look up the stars will guide you,
if you look down the sewer may beckon. The young teacher often does
the best work because she is happy and contented with her lot in the
first school. When she begins to tire with teaching, when she begins
to look forward to the time when she can get more congenial work--in
the store, in the office, or possibly in the home--she grows more and
more dissatisfied with school, she grumbles more and more about low
salaries, an unappreciative public and bad children. In a good school
the teacher is in love with her work and feels that for the time being
nothing would tempt her to leave it.
_6. A good school will have a well-arranged program giving not only the
recitation periods but the study periods as well._--Systematic study
is essential. As a university student I found my time planned until
at certain times each day I found myself wanting to take up certain
studies. Just as one may become hungry at their usual time of eating,
so should one come to desire to do work at certain times. Too much
variation of a program weakens it in the minds of the children. This
program should be prepared with thought and care. There should be a
proper balance of study. Here is where good judgment in the relative
value of studies is shown. I visited a sixth grade once where as much
time was used each day on spelling as upon any other study. Now I
believe in spelling. I believe we are neglecting spelling, but I cannot
think it is worth as much and is justified in having as much time in
the sixth year as any other study of the school course, surely not if
the proper amount of attention to spelling has been given in the first
five years.
_7. In a good school the modern studies--music, drawing, manual
training and domestic science--will be recognized._--The two last will
be needed worse in some schools than others. The old-fashioned home
life is fast disappearing. Whether this is better or worse is not ours
to discuss. The fact is that under the modern trend pupils are not
taught to do the homely and valuable tasks that was so common forty
years ago. Then the boy made his sled, his wagon, his hobby horse, and
his ball bat. Now he buys them and loses the greatest good of all, the
skill and the development in making them. He got his manual training
then in his home life, now, except on the farm, he gets scarcely any of
such training, and must depend upon the initiative of the school, else
go forever without it. The girl then was busy with helping her mother
in the house work. She learned to cook, to sew, to make quilts, to
wash, iron, and scrub. In other words, she got a complete and efficient
training in domestic science in her own home, and often had not only
the practice in doing it but had an intense liking for it. Much is
changed now. The school must come to the demands and needs of the time
and give the girl some touch with, respect for, and knowledge of this
essential work or she never gets it.
Music is more an intellectual and cultural subject. It needs no
defense. The time is coming, and let us hope before many generations,
when as nearly all the people can sing ordinary music as can read the
ordinary book. Drawing, not necessarily the decorative art which so
often is called drawing, needs no justification. It leads to closer
observation, it is needed in the practical affairs of life, it develops
so many of the powers of the mind that as a cultural study it needs
no defense. A good school will recognize these modern studies. In the
country, the manual training may go more to the farmer’s needs, it
may be more closely allied to agriculture than in the cities. School
gardening is far more essential to the city child, however, than to
the country. In the crowded districts of the city, it is a rest and
recreation together with intense interest in a new and valuable line
of thought to tend the small school vegetable garden. In the country,
or in the city district, where each pupil has a vegetable garden at
home, and where the father often is skilled in the work of furnishing
vegetables for the market, the school garden is not worth the time and
energy put upon it. Like fashions in hats and dress the teacher who
feels that she must be up-to-date, must follow the fads and fashions
of New York, Chicago, Washington and other places regardless of the
difference in conditions, will have pupils spend an hour a day in
tending a vegetable garden when they had better be sent home to help
their parents to tend the family garden.
The modern studies, however, must be kept in their legitimate place.
When manual training has for its avowed purpose the making of a
carpenter or a mechanic, when the study becomes strictly practical
instead of educational, it is out of the proper province of the common
school. Even the high school is not to make doctors, lawyers, clerks,
mechanics, but to make thinking men and women, who then can with time
and direction soon develop into these others. The very purpose of
the school is to give in a large measure those things that have very
little connection with the later life of the individual. The increased
power to think, to analyze, to understand, the higher ideals of life,
the hopes, the aspirations, the ability to see the world in a broader
light and from a wider horizon--these are the essential things after
all. To save the boy from his dwarfing environment, to kindle in him
ambitions and desires, to give him broader views of life without making
him unreasonably discontent with his own lot is the great purpose of
the school. His life will be narrow enough in his little niche without
making his school training narrow him still more. The most impractical
of the so-called practical men often want every lesson in school to
be a lesson to save the time of apprenticeship instead of a lesson to
develop higher thinking power.
_8. In a good school the teacher or teachers will be
professional._--They will have studied the problems of the school and
have high ideas and ideals of what it should be and of its place in the
development of the life of the child. They will look on the purpose of
the school, and hold to these essentials even at risk of the criticism
of faddists. A thorough educator refused a principalship at a better
salary. When asked why, he replied that the qualities the board were
looking for must be found in a carpenter, a football coach, and a
peanut vender, and as he did not desire a position along either of
these lines, it would not be worth while to accept a position requiring
special qualifications along all of these lines. Eight hours a week was
to be devoted to manual training. He could use say a plane and a hammer
very well, but he had never had any desire to become a carpenter,
else he would have taken it up. He was expected to take charge of the
boys’ athletics, having daily drills and preparing them for the annual
festivities. He cared little for sport, and believed the playground
should be distinctly the place for self-initiative of pupils, feeling
that the greatest lessons of school life came from the fact that pupils
here were left free from the direction of teachers so that they might
have some chance at self-direction. The third requirement was that he
should be able to drill vaudeville school plays, sell popcorn, peanuts,
lemonade and other similar things to procure funds for decorating the
school, improving the grounds and furnishing money for athletic sports.
If he was to take up commercial life as a serious matter, he preferred
to go into business. These three lines absorbing most of his time and
sapping his energies made him prefer to remain where the thought and
energy of the principal was directed to the development of mind and
character.
In many schools the demand is for the carpenter, the football coach,
and the peanut vender combined for principal rather than the man who
sees the deeper problems of mental development.
_9. The teacher or teachers should be loyal to their school._--The
teacher who teaches in a district or school where she from any cause
dislikes the place, will not teach her best school. In cities some
teachers teach in certain districts only under protest, and never do
their best work. I should not seek to hold a teacher in my school when
I knew she was deeply dissatisfied with me or the school. Her work
would be forced, and she would unconsciously put less enthusiasm into
it. Just as the pupils should love their school and their teacher and
feel that they would not exchange it for any other school, so should
the teacher feel that her lot is well cast. The patrons should be as
loyal to the school and the teacher as the teacher is to the school.
Loyalty of teacher, pupils and patrons, will make a prosperous and
successful school.
_10. A good school is properly heated, lighted, ventilated and
carefully looked after by a trusty janitor._--Thousands of eyes are
ruined yearly by poor light, pupils are injured in health by poor
heating and ventilation. The care of the building counts for so much.
Proper janitor work is as necessary as any other work. It is hard
to keep clean and live in a hog pen. It is hard to think elevating
thoughts and live in dirt and dust and cobwebs. The schools, the
churches and the hotels are the best advertising agents of any
neighborhood. A good school near by often increases the market value
of a farm from ten to twenty dollars an acre. The same is true of a
church. The best class of emigrants, the best citizens who want to buy
a farm to live on and to cultivate do not care to go to localities
where there is not a majority, a strong, working, active majority of
the people interested, vitally interested, in such things. Environment
makes the price of property. The neighborhood of good schools and good
churches is worth more per square rod than the neighborhood which is
content to let its children be educated in a building fit only for a
sheep shed or to attend a dilapidated church.
_11. The good school has decorations for its walls._--These silent
but effective teachers grow into the lives of the pupils. Simplicity,
plainness, but good taste should be the test of the school decorations.
Get good pictures--not necessarily costly ones--get good, plain, but
artistic frames, select pictures that appeal to children, and yet
are artistic, and let them be hung in good taste on the wall. Do
not overcrowd, study the simple and the artistic in arrangement. In
selecting, do not forget the value of the portrait as a school picture.
Washington, the father of his country; Lincoln, true and noble, a man
of the common people; Longfellow, poet beloved by all; the list is a
long one--these features looking down daily grow into the lives of the
pupils. Then landscape views, Landseer’s animals, pictures of homes and
famous paintings, the list is almost endless. To these may be added a
few good statues. Good taste in the selection and the funds to buy
with will make any school-room what it should be as to decorations.
These are some of the first things that I should look for in judging
a school. Buildings and grounds and numerous other things cannot be
touched upon.
CHAPTER XIV.
TEN TIME KILLERS.
School time is precious. Each minute should count. The formation of
correct habits is the greatest end of school work. Surely then the
proper use of time is essential to a successful school. We lose time
in so many ways. It often looks as if teachers tried to waste time
purposely. We cultivate lazy habits in pupils by letting things drag.
They learn to snooze over their lessons, to grope about mentally, to
allow their minds to wander to irrelevant things, to put off until the
last minute what should be done promptly and well.
The teacher should not seem to hurry. The intense nervous tension
sometimes found is detrimental. But the school-room should be a
workshop in which pupils are intelligently and profitably busy. They
should be happy in their work, but they should be working. The work
should be done well, this brings even to little children the feeling
of satisfaction, the feeling that it is worth while in school. The
work should be intelligent, educative work. In the modern school
the strength and worth of the teacher and the principal is shown in
the intelligence and breadth of view with which the school work is
selected. We are going wild on busy work. Interest is an essential to
profitable work, but all work in which the teacher may get up interest
and enthusiasm may not be profitable work. To say that because pupils
are easily interested in raffia weaving, sewing, manual training,
etc., does not necessarily prove that these subjects are essential to
the best development. The child’s interest is usually a _borrowed_
interest, at least is _often_ a borrowed interest. You could get up
just as much interest in building a snow man, in jumping the rope, in
rolling rocks down a hill or splashing water in the brook as in the
raffia work or domestic science. It requires more than the fact that
children may be made to like a subject to justify its use in school.
The pupils should be busy and busy at intelligent, educative work. They
should be happy in that work. Happiness usually comes from the feeling
of doing something, and doing this thing well.
But let us notice some of the time killers. They are numerous. The ten
mentioned below are probably the most common among young teachers,
although it is not assumed that the list is complete.
_1. Lack of definite plans for the day._--For the teacher who has
never made definite plans for her daily work, it is hard for her to
understand the loss of time and energy--time and energy on the part
of the pupils and even more so, time and energy on the part of the
teacher. You should, from the course of study, know what is expected
of the grade in a term. Divide this by the number of months you have
to teach. Look over the work carefully, examine the text-book, note
what supplementary work you think the text will need. Then at the
beginning of each month write out briefly, but specifically, what you
want the class to do each week of the month. With this general outline
before you, work out in advance each day’s program for the first week.
At the end of the week prepare in the same way each day’s program for
the second week, etc. It will take but a few minutes, and it will be
profitable minutes to you and to the class.
If you find that you cannot do the work planned for the month, do not
worry about it, but do well as much of it as you can and pass the
rest over to the next month. If you find you can complete the work
of the month well, and have extra time, do not by any means keep the
class marking time and waiting. Take up the work of the next month.
The important thing is that you set yourself and your class a certain
task--I do not mean to imply that it is an unpleasant task--for each
month, each week and each day of the week. This lesson plan made at
times of leisure or when the mind is free to consider the work as a
unit will be a criterion for judging your own progress with the class
and will be a valuable guide in planning how best to present the
subjects to the class. It will save you much time and energy and worry
at the recitation periods when everything must be centered on the work
before you.
_2. By allowing slovenly work._--I believe that from one to two hours
a week are lost in the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth years, in the
subject of arithmetic alone, because the pupils in the first four years
are not properly drilled in the four fundamental processes of addition,
subtraction, multiplication and division. There should be snap and vim
and hustle in the early number work. The tables should be learned and
learned thoroughly. Pupils should be drilled in rapid combinations.
It may be well to know how to develop the multiplication table, but
knowing how to develop it will never take the place of knowing it. Time
is wasted in developing in early number work when it should be used in
knowing, in thorough committing to memory. When asked how many seven
times seven, the child should answer forty-nine as quickly and with
as little hesitation as if asked his own name. The drill should be so
perfect the mental response is instantaneous.
_3. By rusty machinery._--There are many things about the school that
must be looked upon as the machinery of the school. Order and decorum
are great time savers, but red-tape for its own sake is to be avoided.
Keep your thoughts centered on what you want done and how this can be
done with least loss of time. I was at the opening of a famous normal
school a few years ago. The freshman class was to be divided into
three sections. Two teachers, normal teachers too--teachers whose very
methods are supposed to be worthy models--spent over forty minutes in
making the division. It was tiresome to the class and tiresome to me to
observe. In less than ten minutes I should have passed about pointing
to each student numbering as I pointed, “first,” “second,” “third,”
“first,” “second,” “third,” etc. Then I should have asked all those
numbered “first” to take one part of the assembly room. All numbered
“second” to take another. All those numbered “third” to take another.
Then in ten minutes more by passing slips of paper I should have had
the names and addresses of each and the class could have been dismissed.
Time is wasted in the passing of classes, the distribution of wraps,
collecting of papers and necessary school movements. Teachers often
lose from two to five minutes by a clumsy method of collecting or
distributing papers. I saw a good part of a recitation period lost
recently by a teacher in a city school where I was visiting. She wanted
the composition papers collected and redistributed. There seemed to
be no system or forethought either in collecting or redistributing,
several pupils getting their own papers back for correction. Some such
plan as follows would have saved time, energy and discipline:
“Time.” All pupils stop work and sit in easy, graceful positions.
“Papers to the right.” Each places the paper to the right side of the
desk where the monitors can reach it easily.
“Collect.” Pupils in back row of seats acting as monitors quickly and
quietly collect the papers in regular order to the front.
“Exchange.” Monitors exchange papers in some regular order.
“Redistribute.” Monitors pass back to their seat, placing a paper on
each pupil’s desk as they pass.
With these five simple directions the compositions could have been
collected and redistributed for correction. No time is lost. There is
no noise or confusion. The very matter of collecting helps in order and
decorum.
Oil up the machinery of your school-room and see if you cannot gain
from ten to twenty minutes each day and at the same time get better
results.
_4. Lack of scholarship._--If a teacher has ballast and good judgment,
no amount of well-organized knowledge will hurt her. Narrow vision,
poor judgment as to what is essential and what is not, gets clouded
explanations. This leads to lack of interest and loss of time.
Clear-cut, definite knowledge on the part of the teacher will put life
and vim in the teaching.
_5. Grinding over and over again things already known well._--Nothing
is more detrimental to mental growth. Teachers too often fail to
discriminate between thoroughness and mere mechanical repetition. Be
thorough, but be alive. There is much drill work to be done. There is
no substitute for it. We fail often in the newer education because we
neglect drill and review, but there should be life in the work, not
mere marking of time and perfunctory repetition. Nowhere is drill
more necessary than in number work, and yet this drill need never drag
or become uninteresting. One of my fourth grade teachers had done
good work in the mechanical part of number work. Her class had been
accurate and rapid, and I had allowed them upon several occasions to
challenge other rooms. In fact they had done well the foundation work
in numbers so essential to good work in arithmetic in the upper grades.
To test them I asked the class to vote upon which they would prefer,
a fourth of a day picnic out on the lake front or to spend the same
time ciphering against some other room. They voted almost as a unit
to cipher against the other room. They had been doing the grinding
process, it is true, but do you think it had been marking time with
them? Every minute had been a pleasure to them because each had been
pitted against some other. This had made the work a contest and a
pleasure instead of a grind. It is the grind without the pleasure and
over something well known that kills.
_6. Assigning lessons without any thought on the teacher’s part of
their contents._--Many teachers would find it hard to solve the
problems which they assign to the class in the same time the class has
for preparation. The result is that they do not get over the lesson
next day. This leaving off part of the lesson day after day soon gets
a habit in the class to prepare only the first of the lesson, feeling
confident that they will never get down to the last of it. Teachers
should know the contents of the lesson they ask the class to prepare.
They should assign only what the class can do well in the time. Then
each member should feel that he is held strictly accountable for an
honest effort to get the whole lesson.
_7. Not teaching pupils how to prepare lessons._--The greatest service
a teacher can do for a class is to teach them how to study. Pupils
waste hour after hour in honest effort with little accomplished and
much discouragement by not knowing how to apply themselves to the
work before them. One of my boyhood spelling books has marks to show
that I had studied the lesson more than sixty times. I wanted to be
faithful, I thought I was doing the right thing. But I was not. I
should have learned the lesson by heart so that I could have spelled it
from beginning to end in less than sixty times study if I had really
studied. What a saving of time if my teacher had taught me how to study
my spelling, to think each word over slowly and carefully as I spelled
it to myself, to center my best efforts on the words in the list which
I was not sure of knowing, instead of studying all alike. Then if I had
been taught to study I should never have kept careful account as to how
many times I studied the lesson. My thought was to satisfy myself and
my teacher that I had tried, instead of getting the lesson. Frequently
spend a recitation with pupils until you feel sure they know how to
study and apply themselves. One of the greatest compliments a former
pupil ever paid me was when he said that I taught him how to apply
himself and how to study.
_8. Talking too much._--The greatest fault of all, the greatest loss
of time perhaps, when teachers as a body are considered, is the fault
of constant and often useless talking. Teachers repeat over and over
again. They scold and keep it up and keep it up. They explain and
explain and keep it up and keep it up.
“Full many a teacher you may know,
Along life’s slippery pathway walking,
Who left off thinking years ago,
But kept on talking.”
To spend time in further explanation and elucidation of any point
after it has dawned clearly on the pupil’s consciousness is a waste
of time to the pupil and has a tendency to destroy interest in the
subject. To explain a thing to them and then to explain it “in other
words” and “in other words” and then again “in other words,” as many
teachers do, is deadening to mental growth. I am not speaking of
repetition of knowledge in review to deepen and impress it firmly
on the mind. I am speaking of new knowledge. When the teacher has
explained a point briefly, definitely, understandingly, he catches the
gleam of recognition in the pupil’s eye, showing that the explanation
is understood. Further talk and explanation is useless and even
detrimental.
_9. Answering useless questions._--If the teacher is weak, there will
be a growing habit in many pupils to ask useless questions as well as
to ask over and over again for repetitions. I have known pupils who
would, unless restrained, ask for the repetition of half the words
in a spelling lesson. Speak distinctly, and teach pupils to listen
attentively. It is the part of the pupil’s duty to listen attentively
to every word of the teacher that is addressed to him or his class.
Another habit of many teachers is after a question has been properly
answered by some pupil, to again state the answer herself. Nothing is
more deadening either to the pupil who first gave the answer or to the
interest of the class. If a pupil answers a question accurately, no
further comment is necessary. For the teacher to repeat the answer is
worse than a waste of time.
Then there is the telltale pupil, who is always ready to run to the
teacher with little troubles, always being imposed upon by others.
Every teacher of experience knows such pupils. Discourage tattling,
but make sure the child is not being imposed upon. A little Italian
girl kept coming to me and to her teacher with all sorts of imaginary
grievances, until she came in one day with her tale of woe when I had
weightier matters to attend to. Rather more vigorous than polite, I
told her if she came to me with such hatched-up troubles again I should
punish her. It had the desired effect. Show pupils who have all kinds
of imaginary troubles how it becomes a duty for them to put themselves
in harmony with other pupils and to live agreeably with the school
family. Then with a careful lookout that they are not being imposed
upon deny them the right of coming to you with tales of woe, else you
may use much time every day chasing phantoms.
_10. Failing to keep the room ventilated._--No one can work vigorously
in contaminated air. It will be a great day when every school-room
will have proper heating and ventilation. For some years I have worked
where there were adequate provision for forcing pure, warm, filtered
air into every room in abundance, while the foul, impure, dusty air was
being constantly forced out. The value of pure air and ventilation can
readily be seen when one compares such conditions and contrasts them
with many school-rooms. No school can do proper work without proper
ventilation and heating. Do not neglect this important matter in your
school.
CHAPTER XV.
THE VALUE OF A HIGH SCHOOL COURSE.
These talks are directed especially to young teachers. It is presumed
that most of these are teachers in the grades or elementary schools.
Your highest success and greatest usefulness must be measured by
the lasting impressions you leave on your pupils. The worthy pupil
who catches fire and ambition from you to be something and to do
something, who years after can truthfully say it was from you that
he got his aspiration for a high-school course, these pupils are to
be the reward to you that is above all money value. I feel that I am
justly proud of the percentage of my grade pupils who have gone to high
school, and of my high school graduates that have taken a college or
university course. Yale, Columbia, Vanderbilt, Tulane, Purdue, Chicago
University, four State Universities, a number of normal schools and
smaller colleges have had my high school students later in life. Most
of them have made good. Many of them have done well, and in life are
doing something for themselves. Whether I have contributed anything to
these young men and women can hardly be told. But I rejoice in their
success. Occasional letters from many of them, and greetings I get when
we meet by accident, are some of the rewards which come to the earnest
teacher--rewards above any money value.
I believe in education. I believe that right education will increase
the value of the man. It will not make him do less work, but more. It
may change his line of work, but if the necessity comes he can with all
the energy and good cheer of the ignorant man do work no matter how
humble and often more of it for his education. Not only that, but the
boy of courage, and with a desire strong enough, if he have health, and
no one depending upon him for support, can earn his way through the
best high school or college. It is the measure of the grit of the boy.
The world turns aside to let the man pass that knows where he is going.
To kindle the fire of ambition in a capable boy, to call out the latent
force and set it in the right direction, that is the highest office of
the teacher.
Twenty-five years ago, when a boy of fourteen, in a country school, I
had as teacher a young man to whom I owe much. It was his first term
of school. Some patrons, in fact many, would not have voted the term a
success, but he reached many of the boys, and myself among them. From
him I received my first desire to be a teacher. From him dates my first
desire for an education, and the faith in myself that I could secure
it. Measured by the world’s standards he has not been a great success,
but to me his teaching was of the inspirational kind. It helped me to
get my bearings, it created worthy desires and ambitions. Later, I have
told him of the results of his teaching upon my own life and ambitions.
With a modesty that is unassumed he begs me not to mention it, and
thinks that it was simply a matter of chance.
A few years ago a father wrote asking me why he should send his son to
high school. I wrote him my reasons for doing so. Perhaps these reasons
may serve some young teacher for urging some other boy to go. They were
at the time the best I could summon, and are yet as good as I could
state in the limits of a personal letter.
_1. If your boy is worth a bag of shucks, it will make a far more able
man of him, mentally, morally and physically._--There are exceptions,
it is true, but the exceptions only prove the rule.
_2. High school teachers should be, and, if the high school is a good
one, are, broad gauge, scholarly men and women, educated in our best
colleges, normal schools and universities._--For a boy to come in close
contact with such manly men and womanly women as should and do form the
faculty of good high schools is above all money value to the boy. The
magic mental touch that comes to the boy in contact with scholarly men
and women of character, lifts him out of the hum-drum of life and makes
a thinking man of him.
_3. It will increase your boy’s money-making capacity._--The best
statistics available show that the illiterate man in the United States
earns less than $300 a year. The man with a common school education
earns $400 a year. The graduate of the high school earns over $600 a
year. Suppose your boy works from the time he is twenty until he is
sixty years old--an earning period of forty years--figure the increased
earning capacity the high school education will give him, and then
answer if you think it will pay. There are some exceptions, of course.
I take it that your boy is an average boy, as bright or brighter than
his father was at his age. If he is an average boy, this will represent
his chances. Fools and dudes are exceptions to all rules.
_4. A good high school course will give a broader field of activity to
your boy._--In every walk of life the demands are more and more for men
and women with more than a common school education. Firm after firm
announces that their employees must have at least a good high school
education. The mental discipline and self-control given by a good high
school course will give self-direction and grasp of conditions to your
boy long after the Latin endings and algebraic formulae which gave the
discipline have been forgotten. It is discipline for life’s duties that
is the real worth of the high school to the boy.
_5. The more thorough the education of your boy the larger will be
his adaptability to different kinds of work._--Blessed is the man
whose resources and intelligence are such that he can readily--if
circumstances demand it--find a dozen ways to make an honest living
for himself and family. Here it is that the great superiority of the
culture-giving, broad-gauge high school course is shown over the
trade-fitting, quick-time, short-cut, get-ready-in-a-hurry trade or
business school.
_6. The high school course will prepare your boy for the deeper and
broader training of the university._--If he is made of the right
material he will get the university training for himself, or urge you
to help him to secure it. If he does not go to the university the high
school course will fit him to become a successful leader in business or
lay the foundation for a professional course or career.
_7. The discipline and training of a high school course will not only
increase the earning capacity of your boy, but it will increase his
living capacity._--He will see more beauty in the evening sunset,
God’s wonderful watch care in the stars overhead, and more and sweeter
fragrance in the pansy at his feet. It will develop character and
manhood, give him thoughts and ideas of his own, make him broader in
his views of life, and raise him to a higher standard of manhood.
_8. The high school course should, and the chances are that it will,
discover the boy to himself._--This is the greatest discovery
any man can make--his own dignity, and worth, and capacity, and
inclination--these things discovered and the man has a stronger power
of his own to make life a success. If the high school discovers the boy
to himself it has been of infinite value to him.
_9. The high school course will increase your boy’s chances for
distinction in his life work._--A high authority, after much study of
census returns and biographical dictionaries, reaches the following
conclusions:
(1) That an uneducated child has but one chance out of 150,000
to gain distinction as a factor in the progress of the age.
(2) That a common school education increases his chances four
times.
(3) That a high school education will increase the chances over
the common school twenty-three times, or make his chances
for distinction eighty-seven times as great as if he were
without education.
_10. A high school education will make your boy a more positive force
in his community, his state, and the nation, socially, economically,
and politically._--With many noted exceptions, in the future as in the
past, our real constructive men, men whose monuments are their work,
will be men trained and disciplined in the best schools of the country.
If your boy will work in school, if he has any desire whatever to
continue in school, if he has the requisite amount of gray matter,
or if he has the capacity of the average American boy, give him the
advantage of a high school course. It will pay you and it will pay him.
Make some sacrifice on your part if necessary to do it. Do not spoil
him by giving him too much money. Teach him the worth of a dollar and
how to earn one honestly. Hold him to strict account of every cent
he spends, the day and date and for what spent. Teach him from the
very first to handle your money as he should handle the money of an
employer, accounting for his allowance each month without quaking,
quibbling or miscellaneous accounts, and he will handle his own money
better later in life.
Keep in close touch with his teachers, give them your loyal support,
see them frequently and make inquiries about the boy and his work. For
the boy’s sake do not take his part against the teachers if he should
be reprimanded by them for any cause. Do not tell his teachers too much
about his excellent qualities at home, and how smart he is. They may
soon know him as well as you do and maybe better. If they point out
some of his faults, listen to them and do not fly off the handle--the
chances are that they can see scores of faults that you have never
discovered. Show your genuine interest in the boy, their work and
the school. Take at least as much interest in the trainers of your
boy as you do in the trainer of that young horse of yours which you
confidently hope will take first prize next fall at the county fair.
Show your interest in the boy as much as the horse and the chances are
the results will be as good.
Understand your boy, and expect much from him. Let him know you expect
much from him and that you shall keep close track of his work and his
conduct. Study his report each month. If his grades are low, question
him about it, and question to the point. Know the subjects he studies
and who teaches each subject. Perhaps you know nothing in the world
about the subject yourself, but question him and let him justify the
study and what he is getting out of it. It will help you and do him
much good. It is this daily co-operation and sympathy, this close
oversight, the constant keeping in touch with the boy and his work,
and your loyalty to the teachers and the school that will determine
largely your boy’s success.
Yes, send your boy to high school, and these are my reasons for you
doing so.
CHAPTER XVI.
A TALK ABOUT SPELLING.
Most of the talks in this book are on the questions of school
management. Perhaps it would not be out of place to speak of the
teaching of a few subjects. This and the two following chapters are
devoted to the teaching side of the work. Spelling and arithmetic, the
teaching of these concern every teacher whatever her grade of work.
Literature is a neglected study in many of our schools, and yet a
life-giving subject. That is my reason for including that important
subject.
The suggestions given below on spelling may help young teachers. I have
used them at times in my own teaching and found them useful. No attempt
is made to be profound. If the hints are helpful, that is enough.
TWO GENERAL PLANS OF THE RECITATION.
I. _The Oral Method._--This is the method by which most of us learned
to spell twenty-five years ago. We memorized the letters of the word in
correct order, associating the sounds to some extent with the letters
themselves. There was a time when the method was almost universal in
the schools. It has some evident advantages:
1. Pupils are taught to pronounce words as they learn to spell
them.
2. Pupils acquire facility and readiness in dividing words
into syllables.
3. It is often a saving of time.
The method has some disadvantages also. Among these may be mentioned
the following:
1. Often pupils who spell well orally are poor spellers when
writing, and writing is the primary test of the speller.
2. The principal use of spelling is in writing. To spell
correctly in writing, the muscles of the hand and arm must
be trained to execute quickly and accurately the thought of
the mind.
3. The number of words spelled by each pupil in oral spelling
is less than in the written lesson.
No teacher ever accomplishes much in any subject without the hearty
interest and co-operation of the class. Any little device or method
that gives you an increased and deeper interest in the subject on the
part of your pupils is helpful. Variations in the recitation often adds
spice and interest to what otherwise might be dull routine. In oral
spelling I have found the following variations to be good:
_1. The position of the class._--As a rule, I prefer the class
to stand in straight line, with arms gently folded, while
the teacher stands quietly where she can have the eye of
each member of the class. When a word is missed, the pupil
spelling it correctly “passes up,” always as a mark of
courtesy going _behind_ the pupil “turned down.” I have
found, however, that occasionally for a few days to let
pupils be seated during the recitation period while the
teacher seated quietly before them pronounces the words,
gets interest and attention that the usual standing order
does not get.
_2. Never pronounce the words in regular order._--You may
pronounce up the columns, down the columns, or across the
columns, but never let the pupils know in what order the
words may be given to them. They will not then be tempted
to pick out and study the words which are likely to come to
them.
_3. It is sometimes a good drill in self-confidence and
attention to ignore all mistakes in spelling at the
time._--Any pupil below, noticing the mistake, may, when
his turn comes to spell, spell the word which was missed,
going above all who failed to note the mistake. This device
gets good results. Try it.
_4. Closely related to the above is the plan of passing a word
correctly spelled just as if it were misspelled._--See if
the next pupil will change the spelling with the hope of
getting it right or spell it the same way with confidence.
This is a splendid drill in self-reliance.
_5. Spelling matches._--These will never regain their former
interest in school and it is well that they do not, but
they often serve a good purpose and are interesting. There
are many varieties. Let us mention five kinds.
(_1_) _The method of choosing sides and spelling for
captain._--Two pupils “choose up.” These make some
guess for first choice of spellers. The one beating
in the guess--as for example at what page I have
opened this book or similar guess--gets first choice.
Then each chooses alternately, dividing the school
into two sides. Those who “choose up” spell first.
As fast as a pupil is “turned down” the next choice
on that side takes his place. When one side is down
it is best to spell through next time beginning with
last to be chosen on each side.
(_2_) _The one objection to the plan above is that the best
spellers do most of the spelling._--This may be
overcome by spelling by “tally.” The plan is to
let the captains who “choose up,” as in the first
method, stand in opposite corners of the room. Let
one stand in the northeast corner of the room while
the other stands in the southwest corner. As each
pupil is chosen he takes his place _on the left of
his captain_. When the choosing is over the pupils
will stand in two opposing bodies on opposite sides
of the room. Let all pupils on one side be called
“_Number One_” and all on the other side be called
“_Number Two_.” Each pupil is to keep this number no
matter where or in what position he may be while the
spelling is going on. Then two reliable pupils, one
from each side, are chosen to keep “tally.” You are
now ready to begin the spelling. Suppose you begin
with the captain on side “Number One.” He spells
the word correctly and crosses the room and takes
his place at the _foot_ of side “Number Two.” As he
crosses the floor he calls out in distinct tones
“_Number One_.” The pupils who are keeping “tally”
give side “Number One” one credit or “tally” by
placing a straight line in the column headed “Number
One.” The spelling then continues down side “Number
One.” If a word is missed the next below spells it
and passes up the same as in the ordinary oral
spelling class. When the last in side “Number One”
has spelled you pronounce the next word to the first
or captain of side “Number Two.” He spells the word
and crosses the room, calling out distinctly as he
crosses, “Number Two,” and side “Number Two” gets a
“tally.” By missing words you will notice that soon
the pupils from the different sides are all mixed
up. You see also that the best spellers will gain as
they pass above those who miss. The _best_ spellers
will then cross the room oftenest, thus calling their
number and giving the most credits to their side.
It takes but a moment to get the sides started to
spelling when you have studied the plan. The spelling
can be continued indefinitely. The side that gets
the most “tallies” is winner. Pupils will take great
interest in it. The poorest spellers get as much
practice in spelling as the best ones. You will find
it in every way practical just as soon as you and the
pupils understand the plan well. Another advantage
is that if you desire two persons may pronounce at
the same time without confusion, and thus double the
amount of practice in spelling in the same time.
(_3_) _Let the class stand._--Pronounce a word to the first
pupil, and let the second spell a word beginning with
the last letter of the word spelled by the first
pupil. Let the third pupil spell a word beginning
with the last letter of the word spelled by the
second pupil, etc. If a pupil misspells a word,
fails to think of a word or spells a word previously
spelled, he must be seated. This is a good drill not
only in spelling but in thinking of new words and for
increasing the pupil’s vocabulary.
(_4_) _Let each pupil name and spell a word of one
syllable._--A word of two syllables. A word of three
syllables, etc.
(_5_) _Let the class stand while the teacher gives the
first pupil one of a class of words._--The pupil
spells the word, and then pronounces another word of
the same class of words to the second and so on. If
the pupil misses the word, or fails to name another
word of the same class, he is seated. Numerous
classes of words may be given, suited to the grade,
the pupils or to the time. Here are a few suggestive
lists. The teacher can readily plan others: 1.
Domestic animals. 2. Fruits. 3. Trees. 4. Flowers. 5.
Birds. 6. Minerals. 7. Furniture. 8. Articles made of
iron. 9. Articles made of wood. 10. Names of cities.
11. Names of countries. 12. Names of persons.
II. _The Written Method._--The written method of teaching spelling is
now very largely used. It has the following advantages:
1. Pupils learn to spell more rapidly by sight than by sound.
2. In after life we use spelling only when writing.
3. Each pupil gets to spell more words in a written recitation
than in an oral recitation in spelling.
4. All pupils are kept busy during the recitation period.
5. Pupils may examine their mistakes and correct them. This
impresses the correct form more clearly upon their minds
than to simply correct them orally.
6. Written spelling is a more accurate test of scholarship
than oral spelling.
The principal objection made to the written method of the recitation
in spelling is that it requires more time than the oral. This can be
obviated by selecting only the more difficult words for spelling in the
recitation. Much time is wasted in the study of the spelling lesson.
Unless taught otherwise, pupils will spend just as much time “studying”
the easy, familiar words in the lesson as the more difficult ones. No
greater good can be done than to teach pupils how to study the lesson.
As soon as the pupil knows how to spell a word, and knows that he knows
how to spell it, he should eliminate it from the lesson and center his
attention upon those of which he is not sure. If the teacher remembers
that it is not always necessary to spell all the words in the lesson
the written method will appear more rational.
The written method also admits of less variation in the recitation
than the oral method. The two methods usually used are the blackboard
and the blank book method. Let the class pass to the blackboard. When
the board is clear, the class faces the teacher, who quickly divides
them into two or more sections by pointing to the pupils rapidly and
numbering, first, second; first, second; first, second; etc. This
separates the sections and lessens the probability of copying. He then
pronounces the words, naming the section and following by the word for
that section at once. Pronounce as rapidly as the pupils can spell
the words. Never let pupils get into the habit of snoozing over the
spelling lesson either in recitation or in study. He should write the
word correctly the first trial. No communication should be permitted.
When the words are spelled, the pupils may move one space either to the
right or the left and correct the work of another pupil, marking the
grade.
When pupils use blank books, the words may be written in vertical
columns, and each word numbered. If no special book is used it will be
well to use paper just large enough to spell one lesson on a page. No
communication is allowed, and when the pupil is done writing the word
he quietly raises his right hand to indicate to the teacher that he is
ready for the next word. The teacher can then judge when to pronounce
the next word from the number of hands raised. Unless the class is very
large it is best for the teacher to do the correcting. If the class
is large, the papers may be collected and redistributed. Wrong words
are checked and grades marked. Keep a list of the words misspelled and
drill on them from time to time. Have each pupil correct his mistakes
daily and keep a list of the words which he has missed during the term,
neatly and correctly written.
One device I have found very successful is to select lists of common
words often misspelled and words that pupils use and should by all
means know how to spell. Place ten of these words on the board daily,
and have pupils study them carefully for a few minutes. When the
recitation time comes erase the words from the board and pronounce
them to the class, having pupils write them. Then call upon pupils
separately, having them to pass quickly and write the word on the board
as he _has it written on paper_. At the end of the recitation the list
of words will be written on the board again correctly. The teacher can
keep marked on his original list the number of pupils who missed each
word. This will serve a valuable purpose in review and drill. Ten words
are few, and yet if each pupil learned the spelling of ten words each
school day, think what an increase in vocabulary it would mean in a few
years.
Any word having been used before may be given to the class at any
subsequent lesson. The class is to be held responsible for knowing
thoroughly all words of former lessons.
A few cautions may not be out of place either in written or oral
spelling.
1. As a rule give one trial in spelling a word, and never more
than two. The problem is to have the word so well known
that the first trial is all that is needed.
2. Pronounce distinctly, but do not, as a rule, pronounce the
word but once. There may be exceptions, but they should be
few.
3. Do not mispronounce a word in order that the pupil may
spell it correctly. Do not say sep-a-rate to make sure the
pupil gets an a in the second syllable.
4. Have pupils spell in natural tones. If teachers could hear
themselves pronounce a spelling lesson and hear their
pupils spell it--if they could hear this as the outsider
and disinterested person often hears it--they would soon
reform and reform the pupils.
5. Do not pronounce words to the class in the same order the
class has used in studying them.
6. It is a good rule to have each pupil pronounce the word
distinctly before he tries to spell it. It insures you that
the word is correctly understood and it serves to call
the pupil’s attention to the word, emphasizing it. If the
pupil does not understand the word then is the time for the
teacher to repronounce it.
7. In oral spelling the plan of having pupils pronounce each
syllable correctly as it is spelled is a good one. I would
not, however, urge that he should go back and pronounce all
the syllables each time he adds a new one. There is some
argument for it and some advantage in it, but the plan is
rather cumbersome.
CHAPTER XVII.
ARITHMETIC IN THE SCHOOL.
For generations arithmetic has held a prominent place in the school
curriculum. Should you teach any one or all of the first eight years of
school work the teaching of arithmetic will be of practical interest
to you. Even the most modern of school courses has not eliminated
arithmetic nor curtailed to any great extent the proportionate share
of attention given to it. Most teachers will admit that the subject
has been over-estimated, and that it is not of the great practical
value popularly attributed to it. The man in business does not use
the principles of arithmetic half so often as many believe. Outside
of the four fundamental processes and the principles of percentage,
the average merchant and trades people generally do not use much
arithmetic. The use of mechanical means of adding, subtracting,
multiplying, and dividing has become widespread. Few business men now
depend upon adding long columns of figures mentally. The adding machine
is quicker and absolutely correct.
Arithmetic has a practical value, but it is not its so-called practical
value that is its greatest worth. Few subjects in our school course
develop the mind in so many ways. Unless many of our newer subjects
prove their worth even beyond the fondest hopes of many of their
advocates, arithmetic must yet hold a prominent place in the school. It
is the teacher’s duty to teach it so as to make the best out of it for
the child.
I believe most teachers will agree that at present and in the past
much time has been wasted in arithmetic. The results achieved do not
justify the time spent. Whether these teachers will agree with me as
to the reasons for this I am doubtful. To get teachers to question
themselves on this point, and if possible to gain some time in this
subject, else get better results for the time spent, is the purpose of
this little talk.
_1. Our pupils lack intensity in the study._--I believe this is one of
our greatest faults. We allow the pupils to get into bad mental habits.
They snooze over the work. They put in too much time. Their thoughts
are allowed to go wool-gathering. They grow into time-killers instead
of learning clear, sharp business methods.
_2. Much time is lost in dry formalism._--We hold to the form and
neglect the content. We seek the husks rather than the ear. Some
formalism may be helpful, but to hold to it in all things is not only
a waste of time but it weakens the thought power. I knew a graduate of
a township high school, a bright boy and a boy in no way slow to grasp
things, that had been so thoroughly drilled in the formal analyses of
problems, following the dictum, “always teach your pupils to reason
from many to one, and then from one to many,” that after more than a
year in a store he told me he was never certain of an account until he
had written it out in formal fashion:
1. If twelve eggs are worth 18 cents.
2. One egg is worth 1-12 of 18 cents, which is 18-12, or 1 1-2 cent.
3. And 16 eggs is worth 16 times as much as one egg or 16 times 1 1-2
cents, which is 24 cents.
4. If eggs are 18 cents a dozen, 16 eggs are worth 24 cents.
It may have been logical reasoning, some of it may have been useful,
but to grind formalism into a boy for a twelve year’s course of study,
by never allowing anything to pass that was not “analyzed” was a loss
of time and mental discipline.
_3. Pupils are not trained to read and grasp the conditions of
problems._--Fifteen years’ experience with high school pupils leads
me to believe that their ability to understand English causes a loss
of time and results in arithmetic. Practice your pupils on problems
without figures until they look for conditions rather than figures.
Make numerous problems and let pupils tell you how to solve them. For
example, “If you have the length and the breadth of a rectangular
field stated in yards, how will you find the number of acres it will
contain?” If teachers would give all through the grades more attention
to problems without figures, pupils would accomplish more when they
come to using problems with figures because they could grasp the
conditions better.
_4. Teachers neglect the four fundamental processes._--It is not an
uncommon thing for pupils in the advance grades or even in high school
to be unable to add, subtract, multiply or divide with anything like
rapidity and accuracy. I am told the superiority of the German schools
in arithmetic comes very largely in the thorough and accurate manner in
which pupils are held to a mastery of the four fundamental operations
in the first four years. When the advanced work is reached pupils are
not handicapped by inaccurate results.
_5. Pupils are not taught to grasp each new subject and its purpose,
how it is like and how it differs from the subject that precedes
it._--Before beginning the new subject they should take an inventory of
what they already know of the new subject and then the teacher can make
clear to them the new things to learn. When the subject is complete
they have a grasp of it as a whole. Many of our newer and most popular
text-books in arithmetic are weak--unpardonably weak--because of too
close a devotion to the spiral and other methods that try to teach
each process and division of the subject just so far and then return
to it on the next trip around the auger in just such a time. The best
results more frequently come from the teachers and the texts that teach
one thing at a time. Then if the problems are well graded there is a
growing power on the part of the pupil to master the text for himself.
When a boy in my ’teens, I bought a book and solved the problems in
an advanced arithmetic, getting from the effort more growth than any
teacher could have gotten by using a text where the child must be led
all the way or else is lost in a maze of uncertainties. Do not teach
arithmetic in scraps and fragments if you want the pupils to understand
it. Connect each new subject with those that precede, and give them the
feeling of unity of the subject.
_6. Teachers neglect mental arithmetic._--There was once a special time,
set aside in the program for such study, now there is a tendency to
neglect it even in connection with the written work in arithmetic.
Nothing paves the way better for good work in written arithmetic than
mental arithmetic. The teacher states the problem orally, the pupil
states the conditions carefully, gives a good logical solution, and
the result or conclusion. The long problems solved without the use
of figures is not so important as the clear statement of conditions.
To multiply 746234 by 278 without making any figures is not half so
valuable in mental arithmetic as to tell how to solve a problem, giving
the reason for each step, without giving the numerical result.
These, it seems to me, are the chief reasons why our results in the
study of arithmetic are not richer. Now there should be three chief
aims in teaching arithmetic. If these are accomplished, the pupil has
not only the highest practical value of arithmetic, but the best and
richest of the cultural value also.
_The first aim should be accuracy._--This accuracy should include not
only accuracy in result, numerical result, but accuracy in reasoning
process, and accuracy in expression also. Mathematics is an exact
science. Its great cultural value lies in its training in exact
reasoning. The arithmetic that does not give exact numerical results is
poor--extremely poor. In fact, much of our work in arithmetic drills
to poor standards. The boy who gets nine problems out of ten--even
in routine drill work--is graded high. Suppose the boy goes into the
store or the bank and makes one mistake in ten computations--how long
would he hold his job? He would pass, but it would be off the pay roll.
Do we not make a mistake unless we hold up to pupils in all drill
work a standard of absolute accuracy? After the pupil has mastered
the mechanical processes until he is accurate, make sure that he is
accurate in reasoning process. Teachers often err here by confusing
numerical results with proper thought results. If a field is 40 rods
wide and 80 rods long, how many acres does it contain? After the pupil
is accurate in the fundamental processes, the real food in this problem
for the pupil is what is given, what is required, and how the results
required may be obtained from what is given. It is the steps in the
process, why and how they may be obtained--and not the numerical result
that is wanted. After these steps are fully in mind, as a drill in the
fundamental processes he may solve the problems and give you the answer
in figures.
_The second aim of arithmetic is rapidity._--This is the age of
electricity. Speed counts. Time is money. We have no time for frills.
The clearest, quickest, most direct processes are the best. Get the
correct results and get them quickly. The person who can do this is at
a premium, the person who cannot do it is at a discount. Teach pupils
to concentrate the attention upon the problem, shutting out all thought
of irrelevant things. This is discipline as well as training for good
results. Strive to keep your pupils from slothful habits in written
or mental arithmetic. The habit grows and lessens results as well as
wastes time.
_The third aim of arithmetic is neatness._--This is less important than
the other two, but it is important and should not be neglected. It
was made a shibboleth by teachers in the past. The form and neatness
counted for more than the thought. Manuscripts were carefully bound to
show the beauty and neatness of the work. Not long ago in a private
school I saw exhibited with pride the work of pupils in the class in
arithmetic, the chief merit of which was the faultless neatness of
which it was placed on the paper. Ignorant people and those who are
untrained in judging good work in school give credit for the form.
Those who judge intelligently look for the content as well as the
form. Teach pupils to orderly arrangement of work. The visitor in the
school-room, if familiar with the processes of arithmetic, should have
no trouble in following a solution on the blackboard or paper.
I cannot in the limits of this chapter go into detail of how particular
subjects are taught. Your teaching should center about these three
aims. Any method or device that helps any one of these is helpful.
Center your energies upon the essential things. Train pupils to
careful, accurate, rapid work. See that principles and processes are
made clear, but do not waste time trying to develop the processes down
in the grades where the children are and should be interested in the
memory work. Do not fool away time on the process of developing the
multiplication table and let pupils leave the subject without being
able to give the multiplication table. It may be useful to the child to
know how to find how many six times seven are by using chalk marks or
counters. The one thing that must not be neglected is to make sure that
the child knows that six times seven are forty-two. The results are the
practical things.
The first four years in school should make the pupils able to add,
subtract, multiply and divide, _and it should enable them to do this
quickly and accurately_. If I could get a class proficient in these--up
to my standard of proficiency--at the end of the fourth year, I should
give them a thorough knowledge of the practical arithmetic by the end
of the seventh year and they would have the eighth year for algebra or
commercial arithmetic.
A principal of one of the most thorough and reliable business colleges
of which I know told me that his greatest trouble in a commercial
course was to hold the students down to a regular systematic drill in
the fundamental processes of arithmetic. The trouble was that they
could not add accurately and quickly. Their results could not be relied
upon. Many of them he kept two periods of thirty minutes each daily on
rapid calculations in fundamental processes.
See that your pupils get correct ideas of number. Children think
figures instead of number. Two dollars to many is a figure two with
a dollar mark to the left. Two feet is a figure two with ft. to the
right. See that they think number rather than figure. This comes often
by having them make figures before they can use numbers.
Teach ideas instead of words. One-half does not mean a fraction to
many pupils--it means the figure one above the figure two with a
line between. Do not confuse a fraction with the manner in which a
fraction is expressed. Principles should precede rules and pupils
should comprehend these principles. I am even old-fashioned enough to
believe that often, very often, pupils should be asked to commit the
definitions and principles and rules as given in the book, but the
language and purpose of these same definitions, principles and rules
should be understood. The fault of the old plan was not that pupils
were to commit definitions but that the pupils failed to comprehend the
language and meaning of the definitions.
See that each new subject is properly related in the child’s mind with
the subject that preceded it. It will then become one step of the
ladder, something specific and definite in the child’s mind. When they
study decimals they should be able to recall and use any principles
learned when studying common fractions. When they learn percentage
there is little new to learn if they apply their knowledge of decimals.
If percentage is well learned there is little else to learn in interest.
These principles applied carefully will make your teaching of
arithmetic more fruitful. It will save you time to do the more
important work. Many teachers tell me it is hard for them to keep
children interested in the drill and abstract work. They find it hard
to keep pupils interested in addition until they become accurate and
rapid in results. I have never found it so. In fact, I have always
found the abstract drill problems to be the most fascinating work.
The only thing necessary is to call into play the spirit of contest
or rivalry. Take an excellent test for reviewing and drilling on the
tables.
Suppose pupils have learned all the combinations up to 100. Suppose
they have been drilled on adding by endings and the thing the class
needs is practice. Some such device as this will make splendid
practice. Draw a circle on the blackboard. On the circumference of
the circle write the numbers 6, 9, 5, 7, 8, 11, 9, 4, 5. Then in the
center of the circle write some number, let us say 7. To show what is
to be done with the numbers write a plus mark before the seven. That
will show that seven is to be added to each of the numbers on the
circumference in rapid succession, the pupil calling the result. John
is given a pointer to pass to the board and call the result. He will
point to each of the numbers written above calling the result after
adding 7 to it, as 13, 16, 12, 14, 15, 18, 16, 11, 12. Time John in
giving the answers. Then send Mary to the board and see if she cannot
beat him. The rivalry will be intense. Interest will be at fever
heat and drill will become a game and a pleasure. Place a sign of
multiplication before the seven and you have the whole drill changed
in a moment from addition to multiplication. In the same way it can be
changed to subtraction or to division. Change your numbers as soon as
the pupils begin to repeat the results from memory of position.
Baseball terms and other things may add spice and awaken some of the
sleepy boys that have never taken an interest. If he makes a mistake it
may be called a foul, if he does not get far without a mistake he is
out on first, etc. In the same way you may have an automobile race. The
circles may well be thought of as the automobile and try which can beat
giving the results. Should some one fail to give the correct results
his automobile breaks down. A little ingenuity of the teacher will keep
the drill work on abstract number and the learning of the tables a
fascinating game instead of a continuous grind.
The spirit of the contest can be profitably used in all subjects of
arithmetic by means of the ciphering match. Perhaps all teachers have
used the ciphering match as a stimulus to two of the great aims in
teaching arithmetic, accuracy and rapidity. Nothing will excel it in
this. To those who have not tried a ciphering match the following
directions will make it clear as to method. The more you use it and
study the results on the arithmetic work of your school the more you
will come to value it.
The ciphering match may be between members of the same class or
between different classes, or the whole school may be divided into
two classes by choosing up, or the teacher may call on pupils on any
order he chooses. You may state in advance what subjects may be used
in the match at a given time. To begin with it is well to limit to
addition. Later it may be any one of the four fundamental processes.
Then it makes a splendid review test when the class has completed any
particular subject or group of subjects. Then to encourage them to keep
well up on all subjects completed it is a good plan to allow them to
choose from any subject over which the class have passed during the
year. Short problems make the best drill for the ciphering match.
Send the two “captains,” if the school has chosen up, to the board.
Read them a problem. The first to _call_ the answer turns the other
one down. Make calling of the answer the test, as it relieves you of
watching them so closely. It is best to have another arithmetic or a
list of problems so that you will not lack for problems. As the next
pupil passes to the board he has the right of choice of subject and
calls this as he passes to the board. He may choose a subject in which
the first pupil is known to be weak or one perhaps in which he himself
is considered strong. The choosing of subjects is a fine stimulus to
keeping up in review all subjects previously gone over.
Do not give long, involved, complex problems. The purpose of the
ciphering match is drill on fundamentals and accuracy and quickness in
getting results. Long problems kill interest. If one class is pitted
against another or if the school is divided into two parts it is easy
to determine the victor. The individual who turns the most down is the
victor in one sense and then keeping a score of which side turns the
most down is often a good plan.
The best results of the ciphering match is the voluntary work and drill
you get from the pupils in preparation. They will time themselves.
They will practice to see who can solve the most problems in a given
time, they will solve problems at home or meet other pupils at a
neighbor’s house and get as much enjoyment out of it as they would at
card-playing and more profit. I have seen scores of boys quickened and
interested permanently in arithmetic from the ciphering match. Pupils
quit snoozing over their work and try to go direct for results. Try a
ciphering match a few times this year--often enough to get the pupils
thoroughly acquainted with the plan and see if you and they do not both
feel that it is profitable.
CHAPTER XVIII.
TEACHING LITERATURE.
Literature, History, Algebra, Civil Government--these have been
favorite subjects of mine. The teaching of each has brought me
pleasure. Perhaps literature in many schools is most neglected. I wish
that I might say something which would call the attention of teachers
to this subject. Let us discuss briefly the principles that should be
made clear to the class and then apply these to that beautiful poem of
Lowell’s: “The Vision of Sir Launfal.” This poem has been reprinted
in numerous cheap editions, and no teacher but can afford a copy and
secure a copy for each of his class.
The successful teacher of literature must believe in his subject. He
must believe with his whole heart that to lead a pupil to the proper
appreciation of a piece of pure literature is to place that pupil on a
higher spiritual plane; that it will lift that pupil above much that is
low and groveling and vicious, and give to him a constant companion and
monitor, which, like Copperfield’s Agnes, always points upward.
The teacher of literature must have read critically much of the
best literature. He must be especially familiar with the particular
selections he is to teach. He must know the selection in its bearings.
He must have studied it earnestly and critically, and in addition he
must have planned how he can best present it to his class so that they
may get most out of it. Less than this is apt to make the study of
literature in the school a mere farce.
But what is pure literature? By what criterion do we draw the line
between literature and other forms of writing? What distinguishes pure
literature from the news article? What distinguishes literature from
the statements of history or of scientific truths? I should reply
that the constructive energy of pure literature is “universal, ideal,
emotional life.”
_Pure literature must be universal._--Lowell tells us that a literary
man cannot air his private liver complaint to the public. He also
gives us his conception of literature in another place. “Literature
that loses its meaning, or the best part of it, when it gets beyond
the parish steeple, is not what I understand by literature. To tell
you when you cannot fully taste a book that it is because it is too
thoroughly national, is to condemn the book. To say it of a poem is
even worse, for it is to say that what should be true of the whole
compass of human nature is true only to some north-and-by-half-east
point of it. I can understand the nationality of Firdusa when, looking
sadly back to the former glories of his country, he tells us that ‘the
nightingale still sings old Persian.’ I can understand the nationality
of Burns when he turns his plow aside to spare the rough burr thistle,
and hopes he may sing a song or two for dear old Scotie’s sake.
That sort of nationality belongs to a country of which we are all
citizens--that country of the heart that has no boundaries laid down on
the map.”
_Literature must be ideal._--The lessons it brings are the ideals
of the soul’s possibilities. It quickens in the individual soul the
inspirations that are universal. The beautiful friendship of Damon and
Pythias is above our selfishness--an ideal lifting us above ourselves,
creating in us higher aspirations and showing us our own possibilities.
There are, it is true, various degrees of idealizations. Heroism may
be idealized and uplifting and yet not be to the degree of idealization
in Enoch Arden. The strength and beauty of women’s devotion may be
worthy of emulation and yet not reach the standard of Evangeline.
_Literature must be emotional._--It deals more with the heart than with
the head. The emotions of literature are of various kinds, but these
may be all summed up in the emotions of spiritual freedom. The soul is
constantly struggling to free itself from bondage, and every time a
limitation is removed the soul leaps with joy. In this lies much of the
educative power of literature. The all-inclusive pleasure of literature
is the soul’s joy in its hopes and its possibilities of freedom. The
reader, if he really reads, is forced to live for the time being at
least the ideal life pictured in the literature, and thus from day to
day his soul attains to higher levels.
THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL.
Let us now discuss “The Vision of Sir Launfal.” This is a work of
literary art, a gem from a master, beautiful in conception, beautiful
in execution, and beautiful in its inspiration to higher life. The
teacher who secures the proper conception of this poem by the pupil
rings a rising bell in the dormitory of that child’s soul. Methods of
teaching may vary with the personality of the teacher. The best method
of one teacher may or may not be the best method of another. It is
hoped the following suggestions may be helpful to some, and if so, they
were not written in vain.
The following general suggestions may pave the way for a closer study:
1. Study the legend of the “Holy Grail” carefully.
2. In connection with the study of “The Vision of Sir Launfal”
read Tennyson’s “Holy Grail” and “Idylls of the King,”
noting likeness and difference.
3. Have pupils read through the poem carefully until they
catch the movement and the rhythm. It is as great a
mistake to set a class to criticising a poem or picking to
pieces and analyzing the first paragraph of a selection of
literature before they have read it as a whole as it would
be to have them criticise a monument by having them examine
one or two of the blocks of granite at the quarry.
4. Keep closely before the student the standard and tests of
pure literature.
The first step then in the study of “The Vision of Sir Launfal”--and
the same would be true of any selection of literature--is to find the
author’s theme. The second step is to test this theme by the questions:
1. Is it universal?
2. Is it ideal?
3. Is it emotional?
These tests will determine the class of literature to which it belongs.
The theme of literature is its soul or purpose, but this soul must
have a body. The writer of literature does not speak in abstract
terms. He embodies the forms in concrete, visible forms. The ideal
image is presented in the real, the universal in the individual, and
these objective or concrete particulars become types or symbols of the
abstract or universal. Thus Hester in “The Scarlet Letter” and Jean
Valjean in “Les Misérables” are realizations of universal principles
in human nature. The building and the launching of the ship with
Longfellow is typical of national life. He who reads Evangeline and
sees but Evangeline the individual loses most of the poem. Evangeline
is the concrete individual form or embodiment of the abstract and the
universal--woman’s devotion. To see the universal symbolized by the
particular, to see Evangeline no longer as an individual, but as a
type--an ideal to which our souls may aspire--gives life to the study
of literature and makes it a monitor to our own soul.
Language is the medium which carries the theme through the embodiment
to the reader. In other forms of art, as in sculpture and painting,
the embodiment stands alone and the reader must make out of it what
he can. Literature, however, is more plastic. It may represent the
change, the rate of progress or development. Language brings a vivid
image before the mind, and may give the meaning of the image in terms
of life. Literary language must be beautiful. Its interpretation must
yield aesthetic pleasure; not only aesthetic pleasure, but sensuous
pleasure also. It must caress the ear. These pleasing qualities give
rise to euphony, harmony, rhythm, and rhyme in all its pleasing forms.
It includes also alliteration and the balanced sentence. Language has
both a form side and a sense side. It is the incarnation of thought,
and the soul is indispensable to the body. Language also awakens
sensuous pleasure by stimulating the imagination and the judgment. The
connotation of language is often of more importance than the denotation.
Now let us apply these principles more in detail to “The Vision of Sir
Launfal.”
THE THEME.
The theme of the poem is charity. The foundation of charity is our
feeling of kinship. Blood kinship is a strong bond and has been in all
of man’s history. The recognition of spiritual kinship has grown out
of blood kinship. The prejudice of the Greeks against the barbarian
came from the denial of blood kinship, while they failed to recognize
the higher spiritual kinship. For the same reason the Gentile and the
Jew were enemies. Monotheism--one God, one Father of all--lies at the
foundation of all true charity. No wonder the greatest of virtues is
charity. It is
“That thread of the all-sustaining beauty,
Which runs through all and doth all unite.”
The theme of the poem is not apparent at first. The poet, like the
organist, begins “doubtfully and far away.” This stanza is typical of
the universal method of thought. We approach the definite through the
vague and the indefinite. The stanza has no connection with the theme
of the poem. It is simply a prelude, and serves to prepare the mood of
the reader for what follows.
In the second stanza the theme is the unconscious rising to higher life
through the uplifting influences of nature about us--the winds, the
mountains, the woods, and the sea.
The theme of the third stanza is the cost of earthly things contrasted
with God’s gifts. Earth gets its price; it is only heaven can be had
for the asking. The theme of the next stanza is the power of a June day
unto righteousness. The general purpose of this beautiful description
of a June day is to bring the reader to a realization of the uplifting
influences about him. The particular purpose is to furnish the
immediate connection with Sir Launfal, in whom from this time the theme
is to be embodied. Mark the highly idealized upward impulse of a June
day. Even the clod climbs upward to a soul in the grass and flowers.
The theme in Part I., except the last stanza, is selfishness--unconscious
selfishness under the guise of a noble deed. The theme of the preceding
is continued, and shows strongly by contrast the uncharitable element
in Sir Launfal’s character. His own life was so bright his heart could
not be opened to the leper. Sorrow and reverses must touch him and
melt his selfishness. Unlike the bird, there is no song of sympathy in
the heart of Launfal, and like the castle he rebuffed the sunshine and
gloomed apart. Everything up to this point is unified in the one idea
of selfishness. The leper states this definitely. Heaven may be had
for the asking, but we rebuff the gifts of heaven as the castle does
the sunshine. Sir Launfal gives alms only; the gifts of true charity
must come from the heart. The knight rode to do a noble deed, but he
could have found the Holy Grail at his own castle gate had his heart
gone with his gift. He was seeking the husk instead of the grain. The
crusaders sought Christ by going to Jerusalem, and many yet seek Him
in the mere external ceremonies of the church. Notice how the leper
contrasts this false charity with the real:
“But he who gives but a slender mite,
And gives to that which is out of sight,
That thread of the all-sustaining beauty,
Which runs through all and doth all unite,
The hand cannot clasp the whole of his alms,
The heart outstretches its eager palms,
For a god goes with it and makes it store
To the soul that was starving in darkness before.”
Sir Launfal has realized the false charity; he is now to grow into the
true; and that is the problem to be worked out in the life of each
individual. It is the unceasing conflict between egoism and altruism,
between the individual and the universal self. In this conflict there
is a failure to recognize the self where the true self is found.
Failing to see the divinity in things we fail to see ourselves in them.
In the prelude to Part II. we have the inner beauty of life set over
against the external form. It requires the chilling influences of
winter to awaken the soul of Sir Launfal to the realities of life, to
enable him to recognize his kinship to the leper. His act was a small
one; little in the eyes of the world. He gave but a mouldy crust and a
drink of water, but
“The Holy Supper is kept indeed
In whatso we share with another’s need;
Not what we give but what we share,
For the gift without the giver is bare;
Who gives himself with his alms feeds three--
Himself, his hungering neighbor, and Me.”
If the pupils do not realize the theme, if they do not see it as
universal in time and place--as good to-day as in time of knighthood,
and as applicable to one individual as another--they have lost the
best, in fact all, of the good of the poem. If they really read the
poem they must live for the time being decidedly above the ordinary
level of charitable feeling.
THE EMBODIMENT.
The theme is embodied in a person. Sir Launfal is not simply Sir
Launfal the individual, but Sir Launfal the universal. He is the
potential of what you and I may become. We know nothing and care
nothing about the ordinary events of his life. Even the most
matter-of-fact person cares nothing about when or where he was born.
Age and clime do not concern us. We are interested only in his growth
in charity. The embodiment is not Sir Launfal only, but Sir Launfal
with all his accessories, the castle, the leper, summer, winter, etc.
Sir Launfal before the castle gate, confronted by the leper, stands
boldly out in the foreground of the picture in the beginning, and
the scene must be shifted until he stands confronted by the leper
again--from June to December of life--and Sir Launfal, and not the
leper, must change.
The heavenly influences must bring knight and leper together so that
each shall recognize their spiritual kinship, and in the beginning they
are the extremes of human life. The only ideal charity is the kind
which has power to bring together the extremes of life, to show how the
kinship in a person in the most abject and offensive condition of life.
Sir Launfal is a knight, and the sworn duty of a knight is to do good
to others and to protect and defend the weak. Here is the opportunity
to do good to one who needs help, but he fails utterly. He makes no
sacrifice in giving gold; he does not share his life; he gives the gold
in scorn.
Sir Launfal, the proud, selfish knight, can never realize his kinship
to the leper until his selfishness is overcome, until his heart is
changed. He is uncharitable to an ideal degree, and this is still more
idealized when we consider that the June day which inspired Launfal to
the keeping of his vow was a free gift. The poet describes the June
day until the reader feels its power unto higher living. The physical
and the spiritual are blended, and to such a degree is the spiritual
idealized that the reader consciously feels the uplifting impulse. The
class that does not feel this uplifting impulse does not really read
the poem.
The June day is called a perfect day. It is a time when earth is in
tune with higher life. Every clod feels a stir of might, and such an
idealized effect on the clod makes the reader reach and tower to a
higher life. But Sir Launfal’s selfishness makes him out of harmony
with nature all about him. The little bird, deluged with summer, sings
to the world:
“His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings,
And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings,”
but Sir Launfal’s heart sings only to the wide world, if it sings at
all. He does not respond to the quiet duty before him. Everything
but Sir Launfal is upward striving; selfishness like a lodestone, is
holding him down. At first it seems the poem lacks unity, but a careful
study shows that the preludes have the closest relation to the theme.
The uplifting influences of the free June day makes the selfishness of
Sir Launfal all the greater.
The castle is the embodiment of Launfal and selfishness. It, too,
was besieged by the summer, but “lay like an outpost of winter, dull
and gray.” The drawbridge dropped with a surly clang as the knight
dashed forth, but the sunshine went out of his soul with a thrill as
he beheld the leper. This picture is the embodiment of the emptiness
of the outward forms of charity--the mere almsgiving. The picture of
true charity is quite different. Sir Launfal and the leper meet again
before the same castle wall and again the leper begs an alms. The
chilling influences of life and the reverses of fortune have wrought
a change in Sir Launfal, and he now listens to the “grewsome thing.”
He recognizes in him not only a kinship, but sees in him the image
of Christ--the real Christ--while his life has been spent in seeking
only the shadow of Christ. The external contrast is as great as the
spiritual contrast. Sir Launfal is now an old, bent man. There is no
sign of Knighthood--he is “shelterless, shelterless, shelterless.”
The description of the little brook is, if possible, more delightful
than that of the June day, and is the embodiment of Sir Launfal’s
present life. The reader feels the joy of the fullness of inner
life independent of external circumstances. The warmth and comfort
inside the castle is a striking contrast with the cold outside, and
this expresses the condition of Sir Launfal. The inner life is now
triumphant over the outer. Contrast the picture of Sir Launfal leaving
the castle, and Sir Launfal returning to the castle. In the first the
outward life is triumphant over the inner. The external world is light
with warmth and cheer. In the second it is cold and bleak and gloomy,
while the ruddy glow comes from within. This growth is typical of
the progress of the soul from the pride of youth and inexperience to
the joy of the inner spiritual life of old age. It suggests also the
historical movement from external splendor of chivalrous deeds to inner
Christlike charity; the growth from symbolism to the thing symbolized.
The class should study the embodiment until they feel:
1. That the picture is accurate, vivid and full.
2. That it makes its appeal to the inner life of sympathy and love.
3. That there is perfect harmony between the real as presented in the
picture and the ideal as potential in human nature.
THE LANGUAGE.
The pupils should scan the poem to catch the music of the verse. Notice
the external mechanism, the language and its power to awaken aesthetic
pleasure. Note the freedom and variety of the structure. There is no
monotonous jingle. Rhythm is the primary element in poetic form, and
a return to it. There must be no fixed regularity in the departure
and the return. Notice the flexibility in the rhyme, as “knowing”
“growing,” “ear” “near,” “flowing,” “sky” “by,” “back” “lack,”
“chanticleer” “year,” “crowing.”
The measure is as free and as playful as the rhyme. The iambic is the
characteristic foot, but there is frequently variations by the use of
the anapest. The trochaic foot is used occasionally at the beginning
of the line. Notice the variations running through the poem and the
variations in the length and structure of the stanzas. The more complex
the movement of a poem, provided there is unity in it, the more music
there is in it. Stanzas cut by the same form and pattern are artificial
and mechanical.
The form of poetry, however, cannot be considered separate from the
thought and sentiment expressed. Alliteration, unless it fit the form
to the idea, is mere affectation. When the sentiment rises and falls
or moves with varying rapidity, the form of the stanza must vary. The
class should study the poem to see:
1. If there is any conflict between the form and meaning.
2. If the variation in form comes naturally with the variation of the
sentiment expressed.
Suggestion and allusion are well employed in the selections. The
author utilizes the reader’s knowledge of Wordsworth’s “Intimations
of Immortality,” the Bible story of Moses and Sinai, Druid religion,
and Tennyson’s “Idylls of the King,” and he does it skillfully. He does
not thrust it at the reader, but assumes the reader’s intelligence,
and the compliment is pleasing. The poems are few where we find the
objects presented so completely and transformed into spiritual types
so perfectly. Even the clod climbs to a soul. Note the suggestiveness,
the connotation, in “reaches” and “towers,” “groping blindly” and
“climbing.” All of them suggestive of the human soul’s ascent to higher
things.
The poem is a unit. It is “universal, ideal, emotional.” There is
complete fusion of form and content, a rounded fullness, completeness
and beauty which makes it a work of fine art. Do not let your
class leave it until they have stored their minds with beautiful
quotations--gems of thought and sentiment, jewels of expression--which
will bless and brighten and uplift them in after years.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE TEACHER’S VACATION.
Your school term has closed. Vacation is here. How shall you spend it?
That is the question.
Rest. That is the proper thing to do. Rest does not mean idleness,
however. Why are you tired? The merchant works twelve months in the
year, six days in the week and more hours in a day than you do? The
farmer, the mechanic and others do the same. They are glad to get
a week off once a year, and many of them do not get that. Why are
teachers so completely worn out at the close of the term? Why are
they so pale, so nervous? Why do they so often count the weeks, then
the days, and at last the hours before the term ends? Is there a
teacher of five years’ experience who has not at some time been guilty
of such counting? Is it the hard work? Is it the lack of agreeable
surroundings? Is it want of pure air and exercise, or is it worry?
Freed from anxiety, and to the lover of the work, teaching is neither
dull nor exhausting. The actual mental energy spent in teaching by
most teachers is not great. It is seldom that they give long continued
mental effort to one subject during school hours. In fact, the worst
drawback to teaching to one who seeks to be a scholar in the best sense
of the term, is that his attention is continually divided. He cannot
concentrate his mind on one subject long enough. He must divide his
time between government and the teaching process. For this reason,
those who wish to be scholars rather than teachers seek to teach in
the universities rather than in the primary or secondary schools. Here
they may specialize. Here their class work is free from government
proper. Their students are mature. The mature thought of the student
stimulates the teacher and the investigator. They are growing into ripe
scholarship instead of directing younger pupils in the elements of
subjects.
We may safely say it is not the unusual amount of thought devoted to
teaching that gives pallor to the cheek of so many teachers at the
close of the year, nor do we believe it is altogether due to unpleasant
surroundings. School houses are in many places far from inviting.
Two or three churches with stained glass windows and pretty homes of
comfort and refinement are often found near the most dilapidated old
tumbled-down school house, and a shame it is. But the teacher who
is master of the situation and a leader of children, can do much to
overcome this. Clean buildings and grounds with some good walks and a
few trees and flowers will follow as a result of a good teacher after a
few years in almost any school.
The teacher, too, usually secures room and board with a good family
where they may have comforts equal or superior to their own home.
Teachers are always welcome to the best society--it may not be the
low-necked, high-heeled variety--but the best and most substantial.
The best homes welcome them as guests and the biggest fat apples are
laid--an honest and worthy tribute--on the teacher’s desk. Churches
and societies in rural and village schools always welcome the teacher
with pleasure, and the teacher is lacking in mixing qualities who
does not get access to all the comforts and pleasures the community
affords. Their standards may not be your standards, but their honesty
and unconventionality will make up for much. One of the inexpressible
pleasures of teaching comes when you can lose your own selfishness
in your own quiet devotion to duty in the community. The worn-out
condition of the teacher, if she has the ability to adapt herself
to reasonable conditions, does not come from lack of congenial
surroundings.
Lack of fresh air and exercise may count for much. Many school-rooms
are poorly ventilated. Teachers standing breathe more impurities than
pupils seated. The windows should be slightly lowered at the top and
the room frequently flushed with fresh air for the benefit of both
teachers and pupils. Then most teachers do not take enough exercise.
Do you play at recess? Whether it is advisable to play with your
pupils or not depends upon your own power. Can you play with pupils
without sacrificing or compromising your dignity? Some persons can, and
others cannot. Some gain the good will of pupils by playing with them,
others lose it. You must know your own ability. Games in which you
can excel usually count in your favor. Games in which the pupils can
greatly excel you, are not apt to add to your standing or reputation
among pupils. But whether you play or do not play you should spend an
hour or two each day in exercise in the open air. A brisk walk to the
postoffice, an hour of work in the garden or with flowers, or the care
of chickens or anything which gives you exercise in the open air and
calls your thoughts from the work of the day is beneficial. The work
must be congenial, but the labor must not be so strenuous as to sap
your vitality. It should be of everyday occurrence, and yet so that in
extremely bad weather the time may be shortened. An hour of work in the
open air in something in which you have a genuine interest will put
life and vigor into your school work.
Worry kills. Relieved of all worry, the teaching profession would be
ideal, and yet worry springs almost all together from the imagination.
The teacher goes to school in the morning scared for fear of trouble.
A feeling of dread that something is going to go wrong, that some
calamity is about to befall, hangs over the teacher. She fears to look
out of the window or to step out on the playground for dread she will
see something wrong. It is this dread, this feeling that something
awful is going to happen, this worry which causes the pale face and the
nervous condition of the teacher at the close of school.
Then so many teachers never get the confidence of their school. They
are looking for open defiance or open rebellion at any minute. They
prowl about to find something going wrong. They tip-toe and sneak on
the pupils, confident always that pupils are plotting against them. It
is no wonder that pupils delight in annoying such a teacher. They stop
the recitation time after time to reprimand Johnnie in the back part
of the room. They pace the floor like a hyena in a cage, looking for
trouble. Let me suggest that if Johnnie is disturbing the recitation
to such an extent that something must be done that you let Johnnie do
the walking instead of yourself, and let your rebuke or punishment
be severe enough, and sincere enough, and complete enough, and yet
reasonable enough, that you will never have to stop the recitation
again to reprimand him.
Good common sense and self-control should be brought to bear on your
duties, and as an aid in making steady your nerves. As responsible as
the school-room is, pupils are not going to run off with the building.
Neither are they going to do anything unpardonably bad. Their youthful
faults and follies will be forgotten by you, and the neighborhood
too, in a few years. So what is the use of wasting the nervous force
and energy which ought to be directed towards the teaching process in
needless worry for fear something will happen.
You ask, “How can I help it?” You can help it:
_1. Use your will to control your mind._--You have read of the
soldier who found his knees trembling. Stopping short and
looking at them he said: “If you knew where I was going to
take you you would shake worse than that.” By centering his
mind upon other things he gained control of his shaking
knees. You, by exerting your will, may learn to calm your
fears.
_2. A large part of your nervousness comes from feeling that
you are not well prepared for the work._--You fear that
something will come up which you do not understand. You
are not right sure whether you can answer the questions
you are going to ask the class in to-day’s lesson. You
feel that the problems and questions of the school-room
are going to come to you as a surprise. The best remedy
for this is to study and plan and organize your knowledge
of the subject; to read carefully and critically but with
discrimination the plans, methods, devices and experiences
of other teachers. These may be found in journals and books
on methods and plans of teaching.
_3. Your vacation, while they should be free from worry and
unnecessary work, may be seeding time for storing up
many helpful things which will prevent worry in the
future._--Read a few good thoughtful professional books.
Question the plans and methods mentioned. Make clippings
of those things which will help you in the future, and
keep them in scrap-books, classifying these that you may
readily turn to any topic wanted. What stores of knowledge,
what amount of worry may thus be avoided by planning for
the future. Not only this, the planning itself will give
pleasure as its own reward at the time, with compound
interest in the future. Think over and plan and systematize
your work. Yes, I hear you say that you cannot plan then
so that you can use it the next year. You must revise your
plans, it is true. A plan is much more easily revised than
constructed anew. No teacher can use a plan over and over
without revision or adaptation to the individual class.
But during vacation is the time to make collections of
material, storehouses as it were, to interest your class
for next year.
_4. Do not neglect the rest and recreation and inspiration that
comes from a week at the county institute or a few weeks
at a good summer school._--The acquaintances made, the
inspiration received, the thought-producing ideas gained,
and the feeling of professional fellowship engendered is
worth many times its cost. With a vacation rightly used you
may come out of your next school term with more energy and
more physical strength.
It is the worry of the school-room that kills. Teachers must overcome
the worrying habit or succumb to its baneful influence.
CHAPTER XX.
THE TEACHER’S VIEW OF LIFE.
Of all the things that indirectly affect your teaching, as well as
your own personal happiness, nothing is of such importance as your
view of life. It gives coloring to your every act. It is a background
from which other things must take their tint. It shapes your views
and determines your actions unconsciously upon hundreds of the less
important things of life. It makes you a long-faced pessimist, sour and
grouchy, or it makes you an optimist, bright and cheery.
One’s view of life is not always entirely his own choosing. Health,
family, friends, success, may affect your view of life and in turn
be affected by this same view of life, but your view of life can be
consciously cultivated. You are what you are from three sources.
First, your inheritance. Color, race, nationality, physical features,
natural talent, etc., are not of our own choosing. These are for us
or against us. We are bound by these fetters and yet we cannot be
held morally accountable for them. They determine in a greater or
lesser degree our future in many things. Our moral responsibility
would make it our duty to accept without pride or regret, without
boasting or apology, without compliment or complaint, our God-given,
parent-inherited possibilities. From these we are to make the best
we can.
Second, You are what you are from your environment. In no marked
measure are we responsible for our environment in early life. While it
leaves its indelible traces on us, it is not of our own choosing. No
man is individually responsible for his own birthplace nor boyhood
home. Whether in the busy marts of trade or the seclusion of a frontier
farm, whether in primitive Patagonia or gay Paris--it may affect his
life and ideas and attainments, but for this there is little credit due
him as an individual because it was not of his own choosing.
The potent influence of environment and opportunity on the individual
is the hope of the teacher and the reformer. To improve this the state
spends its millions upon schools, education, good roads, mail service,
sanitation, etc. The great reformers of the ages have been true to
their highest ideals because of their faith in their ability to improve
the conditions of the masses of mankind. Our schools and reformatories
are based upon the same faith. We can improve the race by improving
the environment of the young. A careful study and contemplation of the
effects of improved environment upon the life of the individual should
nerve any teacher to the highest effort.
Third. You are what you are largely by your own efforts. The mature man
should be self-directive. Circumstances, inheritance and environment
may limit him, but he grows in strength and courage in fighting
and overcoming this environment. The ripened fruit of education is
intelligent individual self-direction. It is the aim and end of a
liberal education. It is the goal to which all else in education should
direct.
We believe, then, that it is possible for the individual--the thinking,
liberal-minded individual, the teacher trained to see not only the
highest ideals of education but to understand the principles and laws
of mental growth to attain such ideals--we believe that it is possible
for such a person to shape in a very large measure his view of life.
Upon the way he looks at life depends largely his health, happiness and
success.
“As a man thinketh, so is he.” This has been the thought of the great
religious reformers of the ages. Buddha and Christ, and all that go
between, agree in this one particular. They differ in what to believe,
but all agree that one’s innermost belief shapes and determines his
life and final reward. With Milton, I believe that “mind can make a
hell of heaven or a heaven of hell.” With these statements let us
see if we can make more clear how one’s view of life will enter the
practical affairs of the teacher and make for them of teaching either a
paradise or purgatory.
Contrast these views of farming--the first a farmer only; the second
a man on a farm. The one is narrowed in his view of life to his cabin
and forty acres. Each day is a ceaseless grind. The old statement that
there is nothing new under the sun is true so far as he is concerned.
His soul and life are dwarfed and swiveled. He ekes out a miserable
pittance day by day. Growling and miserly and grudgingly he makes
his simple exchanges at the country store. He haggles, and frets and
stews over prices, seeking a low and sinister motive in every man’s
transaction but his own. Of all men he thinks himself the most besought
and hard pressed. Day after day he spends in absolute idleness because
he can find nothing worth doing. His cattle, his corn and his surplus
supplies are so many cents saved for the winter’s clothing. The weeds
grow up to his front door, his fences are unkept, his stables are
falling down, and from the broken window panes hang “the signal rags of
shiftlessness.” Life holds for him no hope save the sordid things of
life. Narrowed and dwarfed and ignorant he goes his ceaseless round.
No beauty for him in the sky overhead or in the flower at his feet.
The storm cloud appeals only as it may break the drouth or blow down
the crops. His thoughts and his vocabulary are bounded by his daily
ceaseless round of small economies. Healthy, hearty, his view of life
is so narrow that what God intended for a man is little more than a
thing.
His neighbor measures all by its market value. The money it will
bring--this to him would measure anything less than a soul and would
tempt him to sell his soul. He buys land to raise corn to feed hogs to
buy more land to raise more corn to feed more hogs; to buy more land
to raise more corn to feed more hogs to buy more land and thus the
endless possession goes until he is gathered to his fathers and his
children have a chance to spend his earnings often in riotous living.
His view of life is broader than the first. He learns that there is a
difference in the quality of corn and hogs. To produce continuous crops
he must protect and build up the land. The stock of hogs and the care
they get make a difference in the profits. His view of life is bounded
by the almighty dollar. He is not hopeless, as he has interests outside
himself.
Contrast these with the man of liberal mold on the farm. The farm is
to him his apportioned part of God’s green earth, a place to live and
to be happy. An ever-changing scene and view makes life on the farm
to him a continuous panorama of beauty. The blueness of the sky, the
brightness of the stars, the balmy breezes, the landscape view, even
the heat of summer and the cold of winter add zest to his living. He is
ever thankful for sunshine or showers, pure air and fresh water, health
and exercise--thankful that his is an environment of taste and beauty.
He is busy and he is happy. His mind is centered on other things but
the dollars, and the comforts come as a side line and without worry or
fretting on his part. He rises with the lark to give another touch
here and there that will add to the growing of the crops or the beauty
of the home. He feels that by his labor he is not only keeping his wife
and family but helping to feed the hungry millions of mankind.
What a difference in the spirit of the man who feels that he is feeding
the hungry millions of the earth, helping in God’s great plan of
civilization and enlightenment and the miserable miser who seeks but
shade and shelter!
Your view of life changes the complexion of the things about you. It
puts spirit and energy into the most humdrum tasks. A necessary work
is an honorable work. Do that which your ability and your environment
makes necessary. Do it with cheerfulness and a will. Envy no man his
success until you are willing to pay for it what he has paid. By paying
the price you can win success for yourself. But success is not always
measured in dollars and cents. Teach yourself to view life and labor
in its broader light, and you will have found the philosopher’s stone
that dignifies labor well done, and draws pleasure from any honorable
occupation.
To deify your own work is the way to get pleasure and growth out of it.
Forget as far as possible the daily wage. Let the carpenter see himself
helping to build and improve the homes of mankind and he is ashamed of
shoddy work. The street sweeper should glow with civic pride. His work
is as essential as that of any man. When he realizes this, his work is
then not drudgery. He feels the worth of his work. He feels that he is
making his city the cleanest, the brightest, the healthiest and the
most beautiful in the world. When he turns at the end of his beat to
see behind him a street immaculate, there swells in him a worthy pride
of his work and his worth, a thrill as pardonable and as justifiable
as that in the mayor’s breast as he reviews his uniformed police.
The teamster with his load of coal, dirty and begrimed though he may
be, should forget his toil and drudgery in the conviction that he is
helping humanity to keep warm while in turn he is earning an honest
living and the comforts of home for himself and family.
Let the washerwoman, bending over her tub, feel that her work is not
only honorable, but necessary. Except for her, or others doing her
work, humanity in a few months time would be in a pitiful plight, and
our present civilization could not long exist. Dignify your own little
niche in life. See in all things the hand of an infinite power, shaping
and directing the destiny of man and then no work will be drudgery to
you.
You get out of life what you put into it. Measure and it is measured
back to you. Joy, sunshine, cheerfulness, obedience, these are
reflections of yourself. The brightest colors, the most beautiful
harmonies, are self-created products of your own mind. We see what we
look for, we hear what we listen for, we get what we give. We must
lose our life in our work if we are to find it again renewed and more
fruitful in the lives of our pupils. Love our pupils and they will love
us in return. See good in everybody and the goodness in them will rise
up then to greet the goodness in us. Have beauty in our own life and we
shall see beauty in the life about us--the rainbow, the storm cloud,
the landscape, the sparrow’s song, the brooklet’s ripple, will all find
an inspiring response in our natures.
Grouch and the world is grouchy. Fault-find and others will find
fault. Distrust and others will not have confidence in us. The world
and all things about us is one huge mirror from which our own image
is being reflected back to us. If we want to change the image begin
to consciously build up in ourselves a bigger, brighter, better view
of life and we shall begin to see bigger, brighter, better images
reflected back to us.
As a teacher learn to look on life with a healthy optimism. Get
a world view of humanity in its progress. Recognize yourself as
a force--infinitely small perhaps, but a necessary force in the
triumphant march. Dollars and cents are necessary to you to fill to
perfection this place--but over and above all money, sweeter and
more lasting, is the lives you can reach, the good you can do, the
pleasure you can inspire, the kindlier feelings you can cultivate in
your pupils. Cheered, upheld, inspired by such thoughts as these, no
community will be uninteresting, no school will be unworthy your best
efforts, no healthy, hearty, happy child but will stand before you an
instrument of infinite possibilities. Knowing what notes to strike you
can place it in harmony with God and the universe.
To see life in its larger views, to live life on a higher plane, to
lift others to this larger life is the opportunity of the true teacher.
Think you that teaching is dull?
Transcriber’s Note:
The text from the original publication from which this eBook was derived
has been retained as published specifically where:
• the text appears to be missing a number of articles and prepositions
• in several instances, subject and verb are not in agreement
• some apostrophes for ownership are missing
• inconsistencies appear between chapter headings and the body text
• there are anomalies in punctuation
Fractions on pages 63 and 143 have also been retained as printed in the
original publication, i.e. 62 1-2, 1-12, 18-12 and 1 1-2.
The following changes have been made:
Page 87
ignominously in the contest _changed to_
ignominiously in the contest
Page 95
as a pleasant workship _changed to_
as a pleasant workshop
Page 128
will be his adaptibility _changed to_
will be his adaptability
Page 135
a word is missed the the next below _changed to_
a word is missed the next below
Page 139
No communicaton is allowed _changed to_
No communication is allowed
Pages 156 and 164
Idyls of the King _changed to_
Idylls of the King
Page 156
Jean Valjean in “Les Miserables” _changed to_
Jean Valjean in “Les Misérables”
Page 157
and the soul is indispensible _changed to_
and the soul is indispensable
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