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CALIFORNIA

CALIF.

CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

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CRAFTSMANSHIP
IN TEACHING

BY
WILLIAM CHANDLER BAGLEY

AUTHOR OF "THE EDUCATIVE PROCESS," "CLASSROOM
MANAGEMENT," "EDUCATIONAL VALUES," ETC.

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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

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PREFACE

The following papers are published chiefly because they
treat in a concrete and personal manner some of the prin-
ciples which the writer has developed in two previously
published books, The Educative Process and Classroom
Management, and in a forthcoming volume, Educational
Values. It is hoped that the more informal discussions
presented in the following pages will, in some slight
measure, supplement the theoretical and systematic
treatment which necessarily characterizes the other
books. In this coimection, it should be stated that the
materials of the first paper here presented were drawn
upon in writing Chapter XVIII of Classroom Manage-
ment, and that the second paper simply states in a dif-
ferent form the conclusions reached in Chapter I of
The Educative Process.

The writer is indebted to his colleague, Professor L. F.
Anderson, for many criticisms and suggestions and to
Miss Bemice Harrison for invaluable aid in editing
the papers for publication. But his heaviest debt, here
as elsewhere, is to his wife, to whose encouraging sym-
pathy and inspiration whatever may be valuable in this
or in his other books must be largely attributed.

Urbana, Ilunois,
March i, iqii.

vii

CONTENTS

CHATTBK PACK

I. Craftsmanship in Teaching i

II. Optimism in Teaching 23

III. How MAY WTE Promote the Effictency of the

Teaching Force ? 43

IV. The Test of Efficiency in Supervision . . 63
V. The Supervisor and the Teacher ... 77

VI. Education and Utility 96

VII. The Scientific Spirit in Education . . .123

VIII. The Possibility of Training Children to Study 144

IX. A Plea for the Definite in Education . .164

X. Science as Related to the Teaching of Liter-
ature 191

XI. The New Attitude toward Drill . . . 204

XII. The Ideal Teacher 229

CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

Craftsmanship in Teaching*

" In the laboratory of life, each newcomer repeats the old experi-
ments, and laughs and weeps for himself. We will be explorers,
though Jill the highways have their guideposts and every bypath
is mapped. Helen of Troy will not deter us, nor the wounds of
Caesar frighten, nor the voice of the king crying 'Vanity! ' from
his throne dismay. What wonder that the stars that once sang for
joy are dumb and the constellations go down in silence." — Arthur
Sherburne Hardy: The Wind of Destiny.

We tend, I think, to look upon the acjvice that we give
to young people as something that shall disillusionize
them. The cynic of forty sneers at what he terms the
platitudes of commencement addresses. He knows life.
He has been behind the curtains. He has looked upon
the other side of the scenery, — the side that is just frame-
work and bare canvas. He has seen the ugly machinery
that shifts the stage setting — the stage setting which
appears so impressive when viewed from the front. He
has seen the rouge on the cheeks that seem to blush with

* An address to the graduating class of the Oswego, New York, State
Normal School, February, 1907.

2 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

the bloom of youth and beauty and innocence, and has
caught the cold glint in the eyes that, from the distance,
seem to languish with tenderness and love. Why, he asks,
should we create an illusion that must thus be rudely
dispelled ? Why revamp and refurbish the old platitudes
and dole them out each succeeding year ? Why not tell
these young people the truth and let them be prepared for
the fate that must come sooner or later ?

But the cynic forgets that there are some people who
never lose their illusions, — some men and women who
are always yoimg, — and, whatever may be the type of
men and women that other callings and professions desire
to enrol^ in their service, this is the type that education
needs. ^ The great problem of the teacher is to keep him-
self in this class, to keep himself young, to preserve the
very things that the cynic pleases to call the illusions of
his youth. And so much do I desire to impress these
novitiates into our calling with the necessity for preserv-
ing their ideals that I shall ask them this evening to
consider with me some things which would, I fear, strike
the cynic as most illusionary and impractical. The ini-
tiation ceremonies that adjnitted the young man to the
privileges and duties of knighthood included the taking
of certain vows, the making of certain pledges of devotion
and fidelity to the fundamental principles for which chiv-
alry stood. And I should like this evening to imagine
that these graduates are undergoing an analogous initia-
tion into the privileges and duties of Schoolcraft, and

CRAPTSMANSmP EST TEACHING 3

that these vows which I shall enumerate, embody some
of the ideals that govern the work of that craft.

And the first of these vows I shall call, for want of a
better term, the vow (^"artistry," — the pledge that the
initiate takes to do the work that his hand finds to do in
the best possible manner, without reference to the effort
that it may cost or to the reward that it may or may not
bring.

I call this the vow of artistry because itjepresents the
essential attitude of the artist toward his work. The
cynic tells us that ideals are illusions of youth, and yet,
the other day I saw expressed in a middle-aged working-
man a type of idealism that is not at all uncommon in this
world. He was a house painter ; his task was simply the
prosaic job of painting a door ; and yet, from the pains
which he took with that work, an observer would have
concluded that it was, to the painter, the most important
task in the world. And that, after all, is the true test of
craft artistry: to the true craftsman the work that he is
doing must be the most important thing that can be done.
One of the best teachers that I know is that kind of a
craftsman in education. A student was once sent to
observe his work. He was giving a lesson upon the "at-
tribute complement" to an eighth-grade grammar class.
I asked the student afterward what she had got from her
visit. "Why," she replied, "that man taught as if the

4 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

very greatest achievement in life would be to get his
pupils to understand the attribute complement, — and
when he had finished, they did understand it."

In a narrower sense, this vow of artistry carries with
it an appreciation of the value of technique. From the
very fact of their normal school training, these graduates
already possess a certain measure of skill, a certain
mastery of the technique of their craft. This initial
mastery has been gained in actual contact with the
problems of school work in their practice teaching.
They have learned some of the rudiments; they have
met and mastered some of the rougher, cruder difficul-
ties. The finer skill, the deUcate and intangible points
of technique, they must acquire, as all beginners must
acquire them, through the strenuous processes of self-
discipline in the actual work of the years that are to
come. This is a process that takes time, energy, con-
stant and persistent application. All that this school
or any school can do for its students in this respect is
to start them upon the right track in the acquisition
of skill. But do not make the mistake of assuming
that this is a small and unimportant matter. If this
school did nothing more than this, it would still repay
tenfold the cost of its establishment and maintenance.
Three fom-ths of the failures in a world that sometimes
seems full of failures are due to nothing more nor less
than a wrong start. In spite of the growth of profes-
sional training for teachers within the past fifty years.

CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING 5

many of our lower schools are still filled with raw recruits,
fresh from the high schools and even from the grades,
who must learn every practical lesson of teaching through
the medium of their own mistakes. Even if this were
all, the process would involve a tremendous and un-
called-for waste. But this is not all ; for, out of this
multitude of untrained teachers, only a small propor-
tion ever recognize the mistakes that they make and try \
to correct them.

To you who are beginning the work of life, the^astery
of technique may seem a comparatively imimportant
matter. You recognize its necessity, of course, but
you think of it as something of a mechanical nature,
— an integral part of the day's work, but uninviting in
itself, — something to be reduced as rapidly as possible
to the plane of automatism and dismissed from the
mind. I beUeve that you will outgrow this notion.
As you go on with your work, as you increase in skill,
ever and ever the fascination of its technique will take
a stronger and stronger hold upon you. This is the
great saving principle of oiu" workaday life. This is
the factor that keeps the toiler free from the deadening
effects of mechanical routine. It is the factor that
keeps the farmer at his plow, the artisan at his bench,
the lawyer at his desk, the artist at his palette.

I once worked for a man who had accumulated a
large fortune. At the age of seventy-five he divided
this fortune among his children, intending to retire;

'li

6 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

but he could find pleasure and comfort only in the
routine of business. In six months he was back in his
office. He borrowed twenty-five thousand dollars on
his past reputation and started in to have some fun. I
was his only employee at the time, and I sat across the
big double desk from him, writing his letters and keep-
ing his accounts. He would sit for hours, planning for
the estabUshment of some industry or running out the
lines that would entangle some old adversary. I did
not stay with him very long, but before I left, he had a
half-dozen thriving industries on his hands, and when
he died three years later he had accumulated another
fortune of over a million dollars.

That is an example of what I mean by the fascina-
tion that the technique of one's craft may come to
possess. It is the joy of doing well the work that you
know how to do. The finer points of technique, —
those little things that seem so trivial in themselves
and yet which mean everything to skill and efficiency,
— what pride the competent artisan or the master
artist takes in these ! How he dehghts to revel in the
jargon of his craft ! How he prides himself in possessing
the knowledge and the technical skill that are denied the
layman !

I am aware that I am somewhat imorthodox in urg-
ing this view of your work upon you. Teachers have
been encouraged to believe that details are not only
unimportant but stultifying, — that teaching ability is

CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING 7

a function of personality, and not a product of a tech-
nique that must be acquired through the strenuous
discipline of experience. One of the most skillful ^
teachers of my acquaintance is a woman down in the /v^w
grades. I have watched her work for days at a time, ^_rjvv
striving to learn its secret. I can find nothing there
that is due to genius, — unless we accept George Eliot's
definition of genius as an infinite capacity for receiving
discipline. That teacher's success, by her own state-
ment, is due to a mastery of technique, gained through
successive years of growth checked by a rigid respon-
sibiUty for results. She has found out by repeated trial
bow to do her work in the best way ; she has discovered
the attitude toward her pupils that will get the best
work from them, — the clearest methods of presenting
subject matter; the most effective ways in which to
drill; how to use text-books and make study periods
issue in something besides mischief ; and, more than all
else, how to do these things without losing sight of the
true end of education. Very frequently I have taken
visiting school men to see this teacher's work. Invari-
ably after leaving her room they have turned to me
with such expressions as these: "A bom teacher!'*
"What interest!" "What a personality !" "What a
voice ! " — everything, in fact, except this, — which
would have been the truth: "What a tribute to years
of effort and struggle and self -discipline ! "
I have a theory which I have never exploited very

8 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

seriously, but I will give it to you for what it is worth.
It is this: elementary education especially needs a
literary interpretation. It needs a literary artist who
will portray to the public in the form of fiction the real
life of the elementary school, — who will idealize the
technique of teaching as Kipling idealized the technique
of the marine engineer, as Balzac idealized the technique
of the journalist, as Du Maurier and a hundred other
noveUsts have idealized the technique of the artist. We
need some one to exploit our shop-talk on the reading
pubUc, and to show up our work as you and I know it,
not as you and I have been told by laymen that it ought
to be, — a literature of the elementary school with the
cant and the platitudes and the goody-goodyism left
out, and in their place something of the virility, of the
serious study, of the manful effort to solve difficult
problems, of the real and vital achievements that are
characteristic of thousands of elementary schools through-
out the country to-day.

At first you will be fascinated by the novelty of your
work. But that soon passes away. Then comes the
struggle, — then comes the period, be it long or short,
when you will work with your eyes upon the clock,
when you will count the weeks, the days, the hours,
the minutes that he between you and vacation time.
Then will be the need for all the strength and all the
energy that you can summon to your aid. Fail here,
and your fate is decided once and for all. If, in your

CRAPTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING 9

work, you never get beyond this stage, you will never
become the true craftsman. You will never taste the
joy that is vouchsafed the expert, the efl&cient crafts-
man.

The length of this period varies with different indi-
viduals. Some teachers "find themselves" quickly.
They seem to settle at once into the teaching attitude.
With others is a long, uphill fight. But it is safe to
say that if, at the end of three years, your eyes still
habitually seek the clock, — if, at the end of that time,
your chief reward is the check that comes at the end of
every fourth week, — then your doom is sealed.

Ill

And the second vow that I should urge these gradu-
ates to take is the vow of fidelity to the spirit of their
calling. We have heard a great deal in recent years
about making education a profession. I do not like
. that term myself. Education is not a profession in the
I sense that medicine and law are professions. It is
rather a craft, for its duty is to produce, to mold, to
fashion, to transform a certain raw material into a use-
ful product. And, like all crafts, education must
possess the craft spirit. It must have a certain code of
craft ethics; it must have certain standards of craft
excellence and efficiency. And in these the normal
school must instruct its students, and to these it should
secure their pledge of loyalty and fidelity and devotion.

10 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

A true conception of this craft spirit in education is
one of the most priceless possessions of the young teacher,
for it will fortify him against every criticism to which
his calling is subjected. It is revealing no secret to tell
you that the teacher's work is not held in the highest
regard by the vast majority of men and women in other
walks of life. I shall not stop to inquire why this is so,
but the fact cannot be doubted, and every now and
again some incident of Ufe, trifling perhaps in itself,
will bring it to your notice; but most of all, perhaps
you will be vexed and incensed by the very thing that
is meant to put you at your ease — the patronizing
attitude which your friends in other walks of life will
assume toward you and toward your work.

When will the good public cease to insult the teacher's
calhng with empty flattery? When will men who
would never for a moment encourage their own sons
to enter the work of the public schools, cease to tell us
that education is the greatest and noblest of all human
callings? Education does not need these compliments.
The teacher does not need them. If he is a master of
his craft, he knows what education means, — he knows
this far better than any layman can tell him. And
what boots it to him, if, with all this cant and hypocrisy
about the dignity and worth of his caUing, he can some-
times hold his position only at the sacrifice of his self-
respect ?

But what is the relation of the craft spirit to these

CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING II

facts? Simply this: the true craftsman, by the very
fact that he is a true craftsman, is immune to these
influences. What does the true artist care for the plau-
dits or the sneers of the crowd ? True, he seeks com-
mendation and welcomes applause, for your real artist
is usually extremely human; but he seeks this com-
mendation from another source — from a source that
metes it out less lavishly and yet with unconditioned
candor. He seeks the commendation of his fellow-
workmen, the applause of "those who know, and always
will know, and always will understand." He plays to
the pit and not to the gallery, for he knows that when
the pit really approves the gallery will often echo and
reecho the applause, albeit it has not the sUghtest con-
ception of what the whole thing is about.

What education stands in need of to-day is just this :
a stimulating and pervasive craft spirit. If a human
caUing would win the world's respect, it must first
respect itself ; and the more thoroughly it respects itself,
the greater will be the measure of homage that the
world accords it. In one of the educational journals a
few years ago, the editors ran a series of articles under
the general caption, "Why I am a teacher." It re-
minded me of the spirited discussion that one of the
Sunday papers started some years since on the world-
old query, "Is marriage a failure?" And some of the
articles were fully as sickening in their harrowing details
as were some of the whining matrimonial confessions of

12 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

the latter series. But the point that I wish to make is
this: your true craftsman in education never stops to
ask himself such questions. There are some men to
whom Schoolcraft is a mistress. They love it, and their
devotion is no make-believe, fashioned out of sentiment,
and donned for the purpose of hiding inefl&ciency or
native indolence. They love it as some men love Art,
and others Business, and others War. They do not
stop to ask the reason why, to count the cost, or to
care a fig what people think. They are properly jealous
of their special knowledge, gained through years of
special study; they are justly jealous of their special
skill gained through years of discipline and training.
They resent the interference of laymen in matters purely
professional. They resent such interference as would
a reputable physician, a reputable lawyer, a reputable
engineer. They resent officious patronage and "fussy"
meddling. They resent all these things manfully, vigor-
ously. But your true craftsman will not whine. If the
conditions under which he works do not suit him, he
will fight for their betterment, but he will not whine.

And yet this vow of fidelity and devotion to the
spirit of Schoolcraft would be an empty form without
the two complementary vows that give it worth and
meaning. These are the'vaw of poverty and the vow
of service. It is through these that the true craft

CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING I3

spirit must find its most vigorous expression and its
only justification. The very corner stone of Schoolcraft
is service, and one fundamental lesson that the tyro in
Schoolcraft must learn, especially in this materialistic
age, is that the value of service is not to be measured
in dollars and cents. In this respect, teaching resembles
art, music, literature, discovery, invention, and pure
science; for, if all the workers in all of these branches
of human activity got together and demanded of the
world the real fruits of their self-sacrifice and labor, —
if they demanded all the riches and comforts and ameni-
ties of hfe that have flowed directly or indirectly from
their efforts, — there would be little left for the rest of
mankind. Each of these activities is represented by a
craft spirit that recognizes this great truth. The artist
or the scientist who has an itching palm, who prosti-
tutes his craft for the sake of worldly gain, is quickly
relegated to the oblivion that he deserves. He loses
caste, and the caste of craft is more precious to your
true craftsman than all the gold of the modern Midas.
You may think that this is all very well to talk about,
but that it bears little agreement to the real condi-
tions. Let me tell you that you are mistaken. Go ask
Rontgen why he did not keep the X-rays a secret to be
exploited for his own personal gain. Ask the shade of
the great Helmholtz why he did not patent the ophthal-
moscope. Go to the University of Wisconsin and ask
Professor Babcock why he gave to the world without

14 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

money and without price the Babcock test — an invention
which is estimated to mean more than one million
dollars every year to the farmers and dairymen of that
state alone. Ask the men on the geological survey who
laid bare the great gold deposits of Alaska why they
did not leave a thankless and Ul-paid service to acquire
the wealth that lay at their feet. Because commer-
cialized ideals govern the world that we know, we
think that all men's eyes are jaundiced, and that all
men's vision is circumscribed by the milled rim of
the almighty dollar. But we are sadly, miserably
mistaken.

Do you think that these ideals of service from which
every taint of self-seeking and commerciaUsm have been
eliminated — do you think that these are mere figments
of the impractical imagination? Go ask Perry Holden
out in Iowa. Go ask Luther Burbank out in CaUfornia.
Go to any agricultural college in this broad land and
ask the scientists who are doing more than all other
forces combined to increase the wealth of the people.
Go to the scientific departments at Washington where
men of genius are toiling for a pittance. Ask them
how much of the wealth for which they are responsible
they propose to put into their own pockets. What will
be their answer? They will tell you that all they ask
is a living wage, a chance to work, and the just recog-
nition of their services by those who know and appre-
ciate and understand.

CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING 1 5

But let me hasten to add that these men claim no
especial merit for their altruism and imselfishness,
They do not pose before the worid as philanthropists.
They do not strut about and preen themselves as who
would say: "See what a noble man am I ! See how I
sacrifice myself for the welfare of society!" The atti-
tude of cant and pose is entirely aUen to the spirit of
true service. Their delight is in doing, in serving, in
producing. But beyond this, they have the faults and
frailties of their kind, — save one, — the sin of covetous-
ness. And again, aU that they ask of the world is a
living wage, and the privilege to serve.

And that is all that the true craftsman in education
asks. The man or woman with the itching palm has
no place in the schoolroom, — no place in any craft
whose kejmote is service. It is true that the teacher
does not receive to-day, in all parts of our country, a
living wage ; and it is equally true that society at large
is the greatest sufferer because of its penurious policy
in this regard. I should applaud and support every
movement that has for its purpose the raising of teachers'
salaries to the level of those paid in other branches of
professional service. Society should do this for its own
benefit and in its own defense, not as a matter of charity
to the men and women who, among all public servants,
should be the last to be accused of feeding gratuitously
at the public crib. I should approve all honest efforts
of school men and school women toward this much-

1 6 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

desired end. But whenever men and women enter
Schoolcraft because of the material rewards that it
offers, the virtue will have gone out of our calling, —
just as the virtue went out of the Church when, during
the Middle Ages, the Church attracted men, not because
of the opportunities that it offered for social service, but
because of the opportimities that it offered for the acqui-
sition of wealth and temporal power, — just as the
virtue has gone out of certain other once-noble profes-
sions that have commercialized their standards and
tarnished their ideals.

This is not to say that one condemns the man who
devotes his life to the accumulation of property. The
tremendous strides that our country has made in ma-
terial civilization have been conditioned in part by this
type of genius. Creative genius must always compel
our admiration and our respect. It may create a world
epic, a matchless symphony of tones or pigments, a
scientific theory of tremendous grasp and limitless scope ;
or it may create a vast industrial system, a commercial
enterprise of gigantic proportions, a powerful organiza-
tion of capital. Genius is pretty much the same wherever
we find it, and everywhere we of the common clay must
recognize its worth.

The grave defect in our American life is not that we
are hero worshipers, but rather that we worship but
one type of hero ; we recognize but one type of achieve-
ment ; we see but one sort of genius. For two genera-

CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING I7

tions our youth have been led to believe that there is
only one ambition that is worth while, — the ambition
of property. Success at any price is the ideal that has
been held up before ovu: boys and girls. And to-day we
are reaping the rewards of this distorted and unjust
view of life.

I recently met a man who had lived for some years
in the neighborhood of St. Paul and Minneapolis, — a
section that is peopled, as you know, yery largely by
Scandinavian immigrants and their descendants. This
man told me that he had been particularly impressed
by the high idealism of the Norwegian people. His
business brought him in contact with Norwegian immi-
grants in what are called the lower walks of life, — with
workingmen and servant girls, — and he made it a point
to ask each of these young men and young women the
same question. "Tell me," he would say, "who are
the great men of your country? Who are the men
toward whom the youth of your land are led to look for
inspiration? Who are the men whom your boys are
led to imitate and emulate and admire?" And he said
that he almost always received the same answer to this
question : the great names of the Norwegian nation that
had been burned upon the minds even of these working-
men and servant girls were just four in number : Ole
Bull, Bjomson, Ibsen, Nansen. Over and over again he
asked that same question; over and over again he
received the same answer: Ole Bull, Bjomson, Ibsen,
c

l8 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

Nansen. A great musician, a great novelist, a great
dramatist, a great scientist.

And I conjectured as I heard of this incident, What
would be the answer if the youth of our land were
asked that question: "Who are the great men of your
country? What type of achievement have you been
led to imitate and emulate and admire?" How many
of our boys and girls have even heard of our great men
in the world of culture, — unless, indeed, such men
lived a half century ago and have got into the school
readers by this time ? How many of our boys and girls
have ever heard of MacDowell, or James, or Whistler,
or Sargent?

I have said that the teacher must take the vow of
service. What does this imply except that the oppor-
tunity for service, the privilege of serving, should be
the opportunity that one seeks, and that the achieve-
ments toward which one aspires should be the achieve-
ments of serving? The keynote of service lies in self-
sacrifice, — in self-forgetfulness, rather, — in merging
one's own Ufe in the lives of others. The attitude of the
true teacher in this respect is very similar to the atti-
tude of the true parent. In so far as the parent feels
himself responsible for the character of his children, in
so far as he holds himself culpable for their shortcomings
and instrumental in shaping their virtues, he loses him-
self in his children. What we term parental affection
is, I believe, in part an outgrowth of this feeling of

CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING I9

resp>onsibility. The situation is precisely the same with
the teacher. It is when the teacher begins to feel him-
self responsible for the growth and development of his
pupils that he begins to find himself in the work of
teaching. It is then that the effective devotion to his
pupils has its birth. The affection that comes prior to
this is, I think, very likely to be of the sentimental and
transitory sort.

In education, as in life, we play altogether too care-
lessly with the word "love." The test of taye devotion
is self-forgetfulness. Until the teacher reaches that
point, he is conscious of two distinct elements in his
work, — himself and his pupils. When that time
comes, his own ego drops from view, and he lives in and
for his pupils. The young teacher's tendency is always
to ask himself, **_Po my pupils like me?" Let me say
that this is beside the question. It is not, from his t
' standpoint, a matter of the pupils liking their teacher, \
but of the teacher liking his pupils. That, I take it,
must be constantly the point of view. If you ask the
other question first, you will be tempted to gain your
end by means that are almost certain to prove fatal,
— to bribe and pet and cajole and flatter, to resort
to the dangerous expedient of playing to the gallery;
but the liking that you get in this way is not worth
the price that you pay for it. I should caution young '
teachers against the short-sighted educational theories
that are in the air to-day, and that definitely recom-

20 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

mend this attitude. They may sound sweet, but they
are soft and sticky in practice. Better be guided by
instinct than by "half-baked" theory. I have no dis-
position to criticize the attempts that have been made
to rationalize educational practice, but a great deal of
^cpntemporary theory starts at the wrong end. It has
failed to go to the sources of actual experience for its
data. I know a father and mother who have brought
up ten children successfully, and I may say that you
could learn more about managing boys and girls
from observing their methods than from a half-dozen
prominent books on educational theory that I could
name.

And so I repeat that the true test of the teacher's
fidelity to this vow of service is the degree in which he
loses himself in his pupils, — the degree in which he
lives and toUs and sacrifices for them just for the pure
joy that it brings him. Once you have tasted this joy,
no carping sneer of the cynic can cause you to lose faith
in your calling. Material rewards sink into insignifi-
cance. You no longer work with your eyes upon the
clock. The hours are all too short for the work that
you would do. You are as light-hearted and as happy
as a child, — for you have lost yourself to find yourself,
and you have found yourself to lose yourself.

CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING 21

And the^ final vow that I would have these graduates
take is the vow of ideahsm, — the pledge of fideUty and
devotion to certain fundamental principles of life which
it is the business of education carefully to cherish and
nourish and transmit untarnished to each succeeding
generation. These but formulate in another way what
the vows that I have aheady discussed mean by impU-
cation. One is the ideal of social service, upon which
education must, in the last analysis, rest its case. The
second is the ideal of science, — the pledge of devotion
to that persistent unwearying search after truth, of
loyalty to the great principles of unbiased observation
and unprejudiced experiment, of willingness to accept
the truth and be governed by it, no matter how dis-
agreeable it may be, no matter how roughly it may
trample down our pet doctrines and our preconceived
theories. The nineteenth century left us a glorious heri-
tage in the great discoveries and inventions that science
has estabhshed. These must not be lost to posterity;
but far better lose them than lose the spirit of free in-
quiry, the spirit of untrammeled investigation, the noble
devotion to truth for its own sake that made these dis-
coveries and inventions possible.

It is these ideals that education must perpetuate,
and if education is successfully to perpetuate them, the
teacher must himself be filled with a spirit of devotion

22 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

to the things that they represent. Science has triumphed
over superstition and fraud and error. It is the teacher's
duty to see to it that this triumph is permanent, that
mankind does not again fall back into the black pit of
ignorance and superstition.

And so it is the teacher's province to hold aloft the
torch, to stand against the materialistic tendencies that
would reduce all human standards to the common de-
nominator of the dollar, to insist at all times and at all
places that this nation of ours was founded upon ideal-
ism, and that, whatever may be the prevailing tendencies
of the time, its children shall still learn to hve " among
the sunUt peaks." And if the teacher is imbued with
this idealism, although his work may take him very
close to Mother Earth, he may still lift his head above
the fog and look the morning sun squarely in the face.

Optimism m Teaching^

Although the month is March and not November, it is
never unseasonable to count up the blessings for which it
is well to be thankful. In fact, from the standpoint of
education, the spring is perhaps the appropriate time to
perform this very pleasant function. As if still further to
emphasize the fact that education, like civilization, is an
artificial thing, we have reversed the operations of Mother
Nature : we sow our seed in the fall and cultivate our
crops during the winter and reap our harvests in the
spring. I may be pardoned, therefore, , for making the
theme of my discussion a brief review of the elements of
growth and victory for which the educator of to-day may
justly be grateful, with, perhaps, a few suggestions of
what the next few years may reasonably be expected to
bring forth.

And this course is all the more necessary because,

I believe, the teaching profession is unduly prone to

pessimism. One might think at first glance that the

contrary would be true. We are surrounded on every

side by youth. Youth is the material with which we

* An address before the Oswego, New York, County Council of Educa-
tion, March 28, 1908.

24 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

constantly deal. Youth is buoyant, hopeful, exu-
berant ; and yet, with this material constantly sur-
rounding us, we frequently j&nd the task wearisome
and apparently hopeless. The reason is not far to seek.
Youth is not only buoyant, it is unsophisticated, it is
inexperienced, in many important particulars it is crude.
Some of its tastes must necessarily, in our judgment,
hark back to the primitive, to the barbaric. Ours is
continuaUy the task to civilize, to sophisticate, to refine
this raw material. But, unfortimately for us, the effort
that we put forth does not always bring results that
we can see and weigh and measure. The hopefulness
of our material is overshadowed not infrequently by its
crudeness. We take each generation as it comes to us.
We strive to lift it to the plane that civilized society
has reached. We do our best and pass it on, mindful
of the many inadequacies, perhaps of the many failures,
in our work. We turn to the new generation that takes
its place. We hope for better materials, but we find no
improvement.

And so you and I reflect in our occasional moments
of pessimism that generic situation which inheres in the
very work that we do. The constantly accelerated
progress of civilization lays constantly increasing bur-
dens upon us. In some way or another we must ac-
complish the task. In some way or another we must
lift the child to the level of society, and, as society is
reaching a continually higher and higher level, so the

OPTIMISM IN TEACHING 2$

distance through which the child must be raised is
ever increased. We would like to think that all this
progress in the race would come to mean that we should
be able to take the child at a higher level; but you
who deal with children know from experience the prin-
ciple for which the biologist Weismann stands sponsor —
the principle, namely, that acquired characteristics
are not inherited ; that whatever changes may be
wrought during life in the brains and nerves and
muscles of the present generation cannot be passed on
to its successor save through the same laborious process
of acquisition and training ; that, however far the
civilization of the race may progress, education, whose
duty it is to conserve and transmit this civilization,
must always begin with the "same old child."

This, I take it, is the deep-lying cause of the school-
master's pessimism. In our work we are constantly
struggling against that same inertia which held the
race in bondage for how many millenniums only the
evolutionist can approximate a guess, — that inertia of
the primitive, imtutored mind which we to-day know
as the mind of childhood, but which, for thousands of
generations, was the only kind of a mind that man
possessed. This inertia has been conquered at various
times in the course of recorded history, — in Egypt
and China and India, in Chaldea and Assyria, in
Greece and Rome, — conquered only again to reassert
itself and drive man back into barbarism. Now we of

26 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

the Western world have conquered it, let us hope, for
all time; for we of the Western world have dis-
covered an effective method of holding it in abeyance,
and this method is universal public education.

Let Germany close her pubhc schools, and in two
generations she will lapse back into the semi-darkness
of medievahsm; let her close both her public schools
and her universities, and three generations will fetch
her face to face with the Dark Ages; let her destroy
her libraries and break into ruin all of her works of art,
all of her existing triumphs of technical knowledge and
skill, from which a few, self-tutored, might glean the
wisdom that is every one's to-day, and Germany will
soon become the home of a savage race, as it was in the
days of Tacitus and Caesar. Let Italy close her public
schools, and Italy will become the same discordant
jumble of petty states that it was a century ago, —
again to await, this time perhaps for centuries or mil-
lenniums, another Garibaldi and Victor Emmanuel to
work her regeneration. Let Japan close her public
schools, and Japan in two generations will be a bar-
baric kingdom of the Shoguns, shorn of every vestige of
power and prestige, — the easy victim of the machina-
tions of Western diplomats. Let our country cease in its
•work of education, and these United States must needs
pass through the reverse stages of their growth imtil
another race of savages shall roam through the un-
broken forest, now and then to reach the shores of

OPTIMISM IN TEACHING 2?

ocean and gaze through the centuries, eastward, to
catch a glimpse of the new Columbus. Like the moving
pictures of the kinetoscope when the reels are reversed,
is the picture that imagination can unroll if we grant
the possibility of a lapse from civilization to savagery.

And so when we take the broader view, we quickly
see that, in spite of our pessimism, we are doing some-
thing in the world. We are part of that machine which
civilization has invented and is slowly perfecting to
preserve itself. We may be a very small part, but, so
long as the responsibility for a single child rests upon
us, we are not an unimportant part. Society must
reckon with you and me perhaps in an infinitesimal
degree, but it must reckon with the institution which
we represent as it reckons with no other institution that
it has reared to subserve its needs.

In a certain sense these statements are platitudes.
We have repeated them over and over again until the
words have lost their tremendous significance. And it
behooves us now and again to revive the old substance
in a new form, — to come afresh to a self-consciousness
of our fimction. It is not good for any man to hold a
debased and inferior opinion of himself or of his work,
and in the field of schoolcraft it is easy to fall into this
self-depreciating habit of thought. We cannot hope
that the general public will ever come to view our work
in the true perspective that I have very briefly out-
lined. It would probably not be wise to promulgate

28 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

publicly SO pronounced an affirmation of our function
and of our worth. The popular inind must think in
concrete details rather than in comprehensive principles,
when the subject of thought is a specialized vocation.
You and I have crude ideas, no doubt, of the lawyer's
function, of the physician's function, of the clergyman's
function. Not less crude are their ideas of our func-
tion. Even when they patronize us by sa3dng that our
work is the noblest that any man or woman would
engage in, they have but a vague and shadowy per-
ception of its real significance. I doubt not that, with
the majority of those who thus pat us verbally upon
the back, the words that they use are words only. They
do not envy us our privileges, — unless it is our summer
vacations, — nor do they encourage their sons to enter
service in our craft. The popular mind — the nontech-
nical mind, — must work in the concrete; — it must have
visible evidences of power and influence before it pays
homage to a man or to an institution.

Throughout the German empire the traveler is brought
constantly face to face with the memorials that have
been erected by a grateful people to the genius of the
Iron Chancellor. Bismarck richly deserves the tribute
that is paid to his memory, but a man to be honored
in this way must exert a tangible and an obvious in-
fluence.

And yet, in a broader sense, the preeminence of Ger-
many is due in far greater measure to two men whose

OPTIMISM IN TEACHING 29

names are not so frequently to be found inscribed upon
towers and monuments. In the very midst of the havoc
and devastation wrought by the Napoleon wars, — at
the very moment when the German people seemed
hopelessly crushed and defeated, — an intellect more
penetrating than that of Bismarck grasped the logic
of the situation. With the inspiration that comes
with true insight, the philosopher Fichte issued his
famous Addresses to the German people. With clear-
cut argument couched in white-hot words, he drove
home the great principle that lies at the basis of United
Germany and upon the results of which Bismarck and
Von Moltke and the first Emperor erected the splendid
structure that to-day conmiands the admiration of the
world. Fichte told the German people that their only
hope lay in universal, pubUc education. And the king-
dom of Prussia — impoverished, bankrupt, war-ridden,
and war-devastated — heard the plea. A great scheme
that comprehended such an education was already at
hand. It had fallen almost stillborn from the only
kind of a mind that could have produced it, — a mind
that was sufifused with an overwhelming love for hu-
manity and incomparably rich with the practical experi-
ences of a primary schoolmaster. It had fallen from the
mind of Pestalozzi, the Swiss reformer, who thus stands
with Fichte as one of the vital factors in the develop-
ment of Germany's educational supremacy.
The people's schools of Prussia, imbued with the

30 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

enthusiasm of Fichte and Pestalozzi/ gave to Ger-
many the tremendous advantage that enabled it so
easily to overcome its hereditary foe, when, two genera-
tions later, the Franco-Prussian War was fought ; for
the Volksschule gave to Germany something that no
other nation of that time possessed; namely, an edu-
cated proletariat, an intelligent common people. Bis-
marck knew this when he laid his cimning plans for the
imification of German states that was to crown the
brilliant series of victories beginning at Sedan and end-
ing within the walls of Paris. William of Prussia knew
it when, in the royal palace at Versailles, he accepted
the crown that made him the fiirst Emperor of United
Germany, Von Moltke knew it when, at the capitula-
tion of Paris, he was asked to whom the credit of the
victory was due, and he replied, in the frank simplicity
of the true soldier and the true hero, "The schoolmaster
did it."

And yet Bismarck and Von Moltke and the Emperor
are the heroes of Germany, and if Fichte and Pestalozzi
are not forgotten, at least their memories are not
cherished as are the memories of the more tangible and
obvious heroes. Instinct lies deeply embedded in hu-
man nature and it is instinctive to think in the con-
crete. And so I repeat that we cannot expect the

' It should be added that the movement toward universal education
in Germany owed much to the work of pre-Pestalozzian reformers, —
especially Francke and Basedow.

OPTIMISM IN TEACHING 3 1

general public to share in the respect and veneration
which you and I feel for our calling, for you and I are
technicians in education, and we can see the process
as a comprehensive whole. But our fellow men and
women have their own interests and their own depart-
ments of technical knowledge and skill; they see the
schoolhouse and the pupils' desks and the books and
other various material symbols of oiu: work, — they see
these things and call them education ; just as we see a
freight train thundering across the viaduct or a steamer
swinging out in the lake and call these things com-
merce. In both cases, the nontechnical mind asso-
ciates the word with something concrete and tangible;
in both cases, the technical mind associates the same
word with an abstract process, comprehending a move-
ment of vast proportions.

To compress such a movement — whether it be
commerce or government or education — in a single
conception requires a multitude of experiences involv-
ing actual adjustments with the materials involved;
involving constant reflection upon hidden meanings,
painful investigations into hidden causes, and mastery
of a vast body of specialized knowledge which it takes
years of study to digest and assimilate.

It is not every stevedore upon the docks, nor every
stoker upon the steamers, nor every brakeman upon
the railroads, who comprehends what commerce really
means. It is not every banker's clerk who knows the

32 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

meaning of business. It is not every petty holder of
public office who knows what government reaUy means.
But this, at least, is true: in proportion as the worker
knows the meaning of the work that he does, — in pro-
portion as he sees it in its largest relations to society
and to life, — his work is no longer the drudgery of
routine toil. It becomes instead an intelligent process
directed toward a definite goal. It has acquired that
touch of artistry which, so far as human testimony goes,
is the only pure and uncontaminated source of hiuiian
happiness.

And the chief blessing for which you and I should
be thankful to-day is that this larger view of our call-
ing has been vouchsafed to us as it has been vouch-
safed no former generation of teachers. Education as
the conventional prerogative of the rich, — as the
garment which separated the higher from the lower
classes of society, — this could scarcely be looked upon
as a fascinating and upUfting ideal from which to derive
hope and inspiration in the day's work; and yet this
was the commonly accepted function of education for
thousands of years, and the teachers who did the actual
work of instruction could not but reflect in their atti-
tude and bearing the servile character of the task that
they performed. Education to fit the child to earn a
better living, to command a higher wage, — this myopic
view of the function of the school could do but little
to make the work of teaching anything but drudgery;

OPTIMISM IN TEACHING 33

and yet it is this narrow and materialistic view that
has dominated our educational system to within a com-
paratively few years.

So silently and yet so insistently have our craft
ideals been transformed in the last two decades that
you and I are scarcely aware that our point of view
has been changed and that we are looking upon our
work from a much higher point of vantage and in a
light entirely new. And yet this is the change that has
been wrought. That education, in its widest meaning, is
the sole conservator and transmitter of civilization to suc-
cessive generations found expression as far back as Aris-
totle and Plato, and has been vaguely voiced at intervals
down through the centuries; but its complete estabUsh-
ment came only as an indirect issue of the great scientific
discoveries of the nineteenth century, and its application
to the problems of practical Schoolcraft and its dissemina-
tion through the rank and file of teachers awaited the
dawn of the twentieth century. To-day we see expres-
sions and indications of the new outlook upon every
hand, in the greatly increased professional zeal that
animates the teacher's calling ; in the widespread move-
ment among all civilized countries to raise the standards
of teachers, to eliminate those candidates for service
who have not subjected themselves to the discipline of
special preparation ; in the increased endowments and
appropriations for schools and seminaries that prepare
teachers; and, perhaps most strikingly at the present

34 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

moment, in that concerted movement to organize into
institutions of formal education, all of those branches
of training which have, for years, been left to the chance
operation of economic needs working through the crude
and unorganized though often effective apprentice sys-
tem. The contemporary fervor for industrial educa-
tion is only one expression of this new view that, in the
last analysis, the school must stand sponsor for the
conservation and transmission of every valuable item of
experience, every usable fact or principle; every tiniest
perfected bit of technical skill, every significant ideal or
prejudice, that the race has acquired at the cost of so
much struggle and suffering and effort.

I repeat that this new vantage point from which to
gain a comprehensive view of our calling has been at-
tained only as an indirect result of the scientific investiga-
tions of the nineteenth century. We are wont to study
the history of education from the work and writings of a
few great reformers, and it is true that much that is valu-
able in our present educational system can be understood
and appreciated only when viewed in the perspective
of such sources. Aristotle and Quintilian, Abelard and
St. Thomas Aquinas, Sturm and Philip Melanchthon, Co-
menius, Pestalozzi, Rousseau, Herbart, and Froebel still
live in the schools of to-day. Their genius speaks to us
through the organization of subject-matter, through the
art of questioning, through the developmental methods of
teaching, through the use of pictures, through objective

OPTIMISM IN TEACHING 3$

instruction, and in a thousand other forms. But this domi-
nant ideal of education to which I have referred and which
is so rapidly transforming our outlook and vitalizing our
organization and inspiring us to new efforts, is not to be
drawn from these sources. The new histories of educa-
tion must account for this new ideal, and to do this they
must turn to the masters in science who made the middle
part of the nineteenth century the period of the most pro-
found changes that the history of human thought records.^
With the illuminating principle of evolution came a new
and generously rich conception of hmnan growth and
development. The panorama of evolution carried man
back far beyond the limits of recorded hvrnian history and
indicated an origin as lowly as the succeeding uplift has
been subUme. The old depressing and fatalistic notion
that the human race was on the downward path, and
that the march of civilization must sooner or later end
in a cul-de-sac (a view which found frequent expres-
sion in the French writers of the eighteenth century and
which dominated the skepticism of the dark hours preced-
ing the Revolution) — this fatalistic view met its death-
blow in the principle of evolution. A vista of hope en-
tirely undreamed of stretched out before the race. If the
tremendous leverage of the untold millenniums of brute
and savage ancestry could be overcome, even in slight

• WhUe the years from 1840 to 1870 mark the period of intellectual
revolution, it should not be inferred that the education of this period
reflected these fundamental changes of outlook. On the contrary, these
years were in general marked by educational stagnation.

36 CRAFTSMANSHIP Df TEACHING

measure, by a few short centuries of intelligence and rea-
son, what might not happen in a few more centuries of
constantly increasing hght? In short, the principle of
evolution suppUed the perspective that was necessary to
an adequate evaluation of human progress.

But this inspiriting outlook which was perhaps the
most comprehensive result of Darwin's work had indirect
consequences that were vitally significant to education.
It is with mental and not with physical development that
education is primarily concerned, and yet mental develop-
ment is now known to depend fundamentally upon phys-
ical forces. The same decade that witnessed the publica-
tion of the Origin of Species also witnessed the birth of
another great book, Uttle known except to the specialist,
and yet destined to achieve immortality. This book is the
Elements of Psychophysics, the work of the German sci-
entist Fechner. The intimate relation between mental life
and physical and physiological forces was here first clearly
demonstrated, and the way was open for a science of psy-
chology which should cast aside the old and threadbare
raiment of mystery and speculation and metaphysic,
and stand forth naked and unashamed.

But all this was only preparatory to the epoch-
making discoveries that have had so much to do with our
present attitude toward education. The Darwinian hy-
pothesis led to violent controversy, not only between the
opponents and supporters of the theory, but also among
the various camps of the evolutionists themselves.

OPTIMISM IN TEACHING 37

Among these controversies was that which concerned
itself with the inheritance of acquired characteristics,
and the outcome of that conflict has a direct signifi-
cance to present educational theory. The principle, now
almost conclusively estabUshed,^ that the character-
istics acquired by an organism during its lifetime are
not transmitted by physical heredity to its offspring,
must certainly stand as the basic principle of education ;
for everything that we identify as human as contrasted
with that which is brutal must look to education for its
preservation and support. It has been stated by compe-
tent authorities that, during the past ten thousand years,
there has been no significant change in man's physical
constitution. This simply means that Nature finished
her work as far as man is concerned far beyond the re-
motest period that human history records ; that, for all
that we can say to-day, there must have existed in the
very distant past human beings who were just as well
adapted by nature to the lives that we are leading as we
are to-day adapted ; that what they lacked and what we
possess is simply a mass of traditions, of habits, of ideals,
and prejudices which have been slowly accumulated
through the ages and which are passed on from generation
to generation by imitation and instruction and training
and discipline ; and that the child of to-day, left to his own
devices and operated upon in no way by the products of

* The writer here accepts the conclusions of J. A. Thomson (Heredity,
New York, 1908, ch. vii).

45579

38 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

civilization, would develop into a savage undistinguish-
able in all significant qualities from other savages.

The possibihties that follow from such a conception
are almost overwhelming even at first glance, and yet
the theory is borne out by adequate experiments. The
transformation of the Japanese people through two gener-
ations of education in Western civilization is a complete
upsetting of the old theory that as far as race is concerned,
there is anything significantly important in blood, and
confirms the view that all that is racially significant
depends upon the influences that surround the yoimg of
the race during the formative years. The complete
assimilation of foreign ingredients into our own na-
tional stock through the instrumentality of the public
school is another demonstration that the factors which
form the significant characteristics in the lower animals
possess but a minimum of significance to man, — that
color, race, stature, and even brain weight and the shape
of the cranium, have very little to do with human worth
or human efficiency save in extremely abnormal cases.

And so we have at last a fundamental principle with
which to illumine the field of our work and from which to
derive not only light but inspiration. Unite this with
John Fiske's penetrating induction that the possibilities
of progress through education are correlated directly with
the length of the period of growth or immaturity, — that
is, that the races having the longest growth before matur-
ity are capable of the highest degree of civilization, —

OPTIMISM IN TEACHING 39

and we have a pair of principles the influence of which we
see reflected all about us in the great activity for educa-
tion and especially in the increased sense of pride and
responsibility and respect for his calling that is animating
the modern teacher.

And what will be the result of this new point of view ?
First and foremost, an increased general respect for the
work. Until a profession repects itself, it cannot very
well ask for the world's respect, and until it can respect
itself on the basis of scientific principles indubitably
established, its respect for itself will be httle more than
the irritating self-esteem of the goody-goody order which
is so often associated with our craft.

With our own respect for our calling, based upon this
incontrovertible principle, will come, sooner or later,
increased compensation for the work and increased pres-
tige in the community. I repeat that these things can
only come after we have established a true craft spirit.
If we are ashamed of our calling, if we regret openly and
publicly that we are not lawyers or physicians or dentists
or bricklayers or farmers or anything rather than teachers,
the public will have little respect for the teacher's calling.
As long as we criticize each other before laymen and
make light of each other's honest efforts, the public
will question our professional standing on the ground that
we have no organized code of professional ethics, — a
prerequisite for any profession.

I started out to tell you something that we ought to be

40 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

thankful for, — something that ought to counteract
in a measure the inevitable tendencies toward pes-
simism and discouragement. The hopeful thing about
our present status is that we have an established
principle upon which to work. A writer in a recent
periodical stoutly maintained that education was in
the position just now that medicine was in during the
Middle Ages. The statement is hardly fair, either to
medicine or to education. If one were to attempt a
parallel, one might say that education stands to-day
where medicine stood about the middle of the nine-
teenth century. The analogy might be more closely
drawn by comparing our present conception of education
with the conception of medicine just prior to the appli-
cation of the experimental method to a solution of its
problems. Education has still a long road to travel
before it reaches the point of development that medicine
has to-day attained. It has still to develop principles
that are comparable to the doctrine of lymph therapy or
to that latest triumph of investigation in the field of
medicine, — the theory of opsonins, — which almost makes
one believe that in a few years violent accident and old
age will be the only sources of death in the human race.
Education, we admit, has a long road to travel before
it reaches so advanced a point of development. But
there is no immediate cause for pessimism or de-
spair. We need especially, now that the purpose of
education is adequately defined, an adequate doctrine

OPTIMISM IN TEACHING 4I

of educational values and a rich and vital infusion of
the spirit of experimental science. For efficiency in the
work of instruction and training, we need to know the
influence of different types of experience in controlling
human conduct, — we need to know just what degree of
efficiency is exerted by our arithmetic and literature, our
geography and history, our drawing and manual training,
our Latin and Greek, our ethics and psychology. It is
the lack of definite ideas and criteria in these fields
that constitutes the greatest single source of waste in
our educational system to-day.

And yet even here the outlook is extremely hopeful.
The new movement toward industrial education is
placing greater and greater emphasis upon those sub-
jects of instruction and those types of methods whose
efficiency can be tested and determined in an accurate
fashion. The intimate relation between the classroom,
on the one hand, and the machine shop, the experi-
mental farm, the hospital ward and operating room,
and the practice school, on the other hand, indicates a
source of accurate knowledge with regard to the way
in which our teachings really affect the conduct and
adjustment of our pupils that cannot fail within a short
time to serve as the basis for some illuminating principle
of educational values. This, I believe, will be the next
great step in the development of our profession.

There has been no intention in what I have said to
minimize the disadvantages and discouragements under

42 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

which we are to-day doing our work. My only plea is
for the hopeful and optimistic outlook which, I main-
tain, is richly justified by the progress that has already
been made and by the virile character of the forces that
are operating in the present situation.

On the whole, I can see no reason why I should not
encourage young men to enter the service of school-
craft. I cannot say to them that they will attain to
great wealth, but I can safely promise them that, if
they give to the work of preparation the same atten-
tion and time that they would give to their education
and training for medicine or law or engineering, their
services will be in large demand and their rewards not
to be sneered at. Their incomes will not enable them
to compete with the captains of industry, but they will
permit as full an enjoyment of the comforts of life as it
is good for any young man to command. But the am-
bitious teacher must pay the price to reap these re-
wards, — the price of time and energy and labor, — the
price that he would have to pay for success in any other
human calling. What I cannot promise him in educa-
tion is the opportunity for wide popular adulation, but
this, after all, is a matter of taste. Some men crave it
and they should go into those vocations that will give
it to them. Others are better satisfied with the dis-
criminating recognition and praise of their own fellow-
craftsmen.

Ill

How May We Promote the Efficiency of the
Teaching Force '

Efficiency seems to be a word to conjure with in these
days. Popular speech has taken it in its present conno-
tation from the technical vocabulary of engineering, and
the term has brought with it a very refreshing sense of
accuracy and practicality. It suggests blueprints and
T-squares and mathematical formulae. A faint and rather
pleasant odor of lubricating oil and cotton waste seems
to hover about it. The efficiency of a steam engine or
a dynamo is a definitely determinable and measurable
factor, and when we use the term ''efficiency" in pop-
ular speech we convey through the word somewhat of
this quality of certainty and exactitude.

An efficient man, very obviously, is a man who "makes
good," who surmounts obstacles, overcomes difficulties,
and "gets results." Rowan, the man who achieved im-
mortality on account of a certain message that he carried
to Garcia, is the contemporary standard of human effi-

* A paper read before the Normal and Training Teachers' Conference
of the New York State Teachers' Association, December 27, 1907.

44 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

dency. He was given a task to do, and he did it. He
did not stop to inquire whether it was interesting, or
whether it was easy, or whether it would be remunerative,
or whether Garcia was a pleasant man to meet. He
simply took the message and brought back the answer.
Here we have efficiency in human endeavor reduced to its
lowest terms: to take a message and to bring back an
answer ; to do the work that is laid out for one to do with-
out shirking or "soldiering" or whining; and to "make
good," to get results.

Now if we are to improve the efficiency of the teacher,
the first thing to do is to see that the conditions of effi-
ciency are fulfilled as far as possible at the outset. In
other words, efficiency is impossible unless one is set a
certain task to accompHsh. Rowan was told to carry a
message to Garcia. He was to carry it to Garcia, not to
Queen Victoria or Li Hung Chang or J. Pierpont Mor-
gan, or any one else whom he may have felt inclined
to choose as its recipient. And that is just where
Rowan had a decided advantage over many teachers
who have every ambition to be just as efficient as he was.
To expect a young teacher not only to get results, but
also to determine the results that should be obtained,
multiplies his chances of failure, not by two, as one might
assume at first thought, but almost by infinity.

Let me give an example of what I mean. A young man
graduated from college during the hard times of the
middle nineties. It was imperative that he secure some

EFFICIENCY OF TEACHERS 45

sort of a remunerative employment, but places were very
scarce and he had to seek a long time before he found any-
thing to which he could turn his hand. The position that
he finally secured was that of teacher in an ungraded
school in a remote settlement. School-teaching was far
from his thoughts and still farther from his ambitions,
but forty dollars a month looked too good to be true, espe-
cially as he had come to the point where his allowance
of food consisted of one plate of soup each day, with the
small supply of crackers that went with it. He accepted
the position most gratefully.

He taught this school for two years. He had no super-
vision. He read various books on the science and art of
teaching and upon a certain subject that went by the
name of psychology, but he could see no connection be-
tween what these books told him and the tasks that he
had to face. Finally he bought a book that was adver-
tised as indispensable to young teachers. The first words
of the opening paragraph were these: "Teacher, if you
know it all, don't read this book." The young man
threw the volume in the fire. He had no desire to profit
by the teaching of an author who began his instruction
with an insult. From that time until he left the school,
he never opened a book on educational theory.

His first year passed off with what appeared to be the
most encouraging success. He talked to his pupils on
science and literature and history. They were very good
children, and they Hstened attentively. When he tired of

46 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

talking, he set the pupils to writing in their copy books,
while he thought of more things to talk about. He
covered a great deal of ground that first year. Scarcely
a field of human knowledge was left untouched. His pu-
pils were duly informed about the plants and rocks and
trees, about the planets and constellations, about atoms
and molecules and the laws of motion, about digestion and
respiration and the wonders of the nervous system, about
Shakespeare and Dickens and George EUot. And his
pupils were very much interested in it all. Their faces
had that glow of interest, that look of wonderment and
absorption, that you get sometimes when you tell a little
four-year-old the story of the three bears. He never
had any troubles of discipline, because he never asked
his pupils to do anything that they did not wish to do.
There were six pupils in his " chart class." They were
anxious to learn to read, and three of them did learn.
Their mothers taught them at home. The other three
were still learning at the end of the second year. He
concluded that they had been "born short," but he liked
them and they liked him. He did not teach his pupils
spelling or writing. If they learned these things they
learned them without his aid, and it is safe to say that
they did not learn them in any significant measure. He
did not like arithmetic, and so he just touched on it now
and then for the sake of appearances.

This teacher was elected for the following year at a
handsome increase of salary. He took this to mean a

EFFICIENCY OF TEACHERS 47

hearty indorsement of his methods; consequently he
followed the same general plan the next year. He had
told his pupils about everything that he knew, so he
started over again, much to their delight. He left at the
close of the year, amidst general lamentation. School-
teaching was a deUghtful occupation, but he had mas-
tered the art, and now he wished to attack something
that was really difficult. He would study law. It is no
part of the story that he did not. Neither is it part of
the story that his successor had a very hard time getting
that school straightened out; in fact, I believe it re-
quired three or four successive successors to make even
an impression.

Now that man's work was a failure, and the saddest
kind of a failure, for he did not realize that he had failed
until years afterward. He failed, not because he lacked
ambition and enthusiasm; he had a large measure of
both these indispensable quahties. He failed, not be-
cause he lacked education and a certain measure of what
the world calls culture ; from the standpoint of education,
he was better qualified than most teachers in schools
of that type. He failed, not because he lacked social
spirit and the ability to cooi>erate with the church and the
home ; he mingled with the other members of the com-
munity, lived their life and thought their thoughts and
enjoyed their social diversions. The community liked
him and respected him. His pupils liked him and re-
spected him; and yet what he fears most of all to-day

48 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

is that he may come suddenly face to face with one of
those pupils and be forced to listen to a first-hand ac-
count of his sins of omission.

This man failed simply because he did not do what the
elementary teacher must do if he is to be efficient as an
elementary teacher. He did not train his pupils in the
habits that are essential to one who is to live the social
life. He gave them a miscellaneous lot of interesting
information which held their attention while it lasted,
but which was never mastered in any real sense of the
term, and which could have but the most superficial
influence upon their future conduct. But, worst of all,
he permitted bad and inadequate habits to be developed
at the most critical and plastic period of life. His pupils
had followed the lines of least effort, just as he had fol-
lowed the lines of least effort. The result was a well-
established prejudice against everything that was not
superficially attractive and intrinsically interesting.

Now this man's teaching fell short simply because he
did not know what results he ought to obtain. He had
been given a message to deliver, but he did not know to
whom he should deliver it. Consequently he brought the
answer, not from Garcia, but from a host of other per-
sonages with whom he was better acquainted, whose lan-
guage he could speak and understand, and from whom he
was certain of a warm welcome. In other words, having
no definite results for which he would be held responsible,
he did the kind of teaching that he liked to do. That

EFFICIENCY OF TEACHERS 49

might, under certain conditions, have been the best kind
of teaching for his pupils. But these conditions did not
happen to operate at that time. The answer that he
brought did not happen to be the answer that was needed.
That it pleased his employers does not in the least mitigate
the failure. That a teacher pleases the community in
which he works is not always evidence of his success.
It is dangerous to make a statement like this, for some are
sure to jump to the opposite conclusion and assume that
one who is unpopular in the community is the most suc-
cessful. Needless to say, the reasoning is fallacious.
The matter of popularity is a secondary criterion, not a
primary criterion of the efficiency of teaching. One may
be successful and popular or successful and impopular;
imsuccessful and popular or unsuccessful and unpopular.
The question of popularity is beside the question of effi-
ciency, although it may enter into specific cases as a factor.

And so the first step to take in getting more efficient
work from young teachers, and especially from inexperi-
enced and untrained teachers fresh from the high school
or the college, is to make sure that they know what is
expected of them. Now this looks to be a very simple
precaution that no one would be unwise enough to omit.
As a matter of fact, a great many superintendents and
principals are not explicit and definite about the results
that they desire. Very frequently all that is asked of a

50 CRATTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

teacher is that he or she keep things running smoothly,
keep pupils and parents good-natured. Let me assert
again that this ought to be done, but that it is no meas-
ure of a teacher's efficiency, simply because it can be
done and often is done by means that defeat the purpose
of the school. As a yoimg principal in a city system, I
learned some vital lessons in supervision from a very
skillful teacher. She would come to me week after week
with this statement : "Tell me what you want done, and
I will do it." It took me some time to reaUze that that
was just what I was being paid to do, — telling teachers
what should be accomphshed and then seeing that they
accomplished the task that was set. When I finally
awoke to my duties, I found myself utterly at a loss to
make prescriptions. I then learned that there was a
certain document known as the course of study, which
mapped out the general line of work and indicated the
minimal requirements. I had seen this course of study,
but its function had never impressed itself upon me. I
had thought that it was one of those documents that
officials pubhsh as a matter of form but which no one is
ever expected to read. But I soon discovered that a
principal had something to do besides passing from room
to room, looking wisely at the work going on, and pat-
ting little boys and girls on the head.

Now a definite course of study is very hard to con-
struct, — a course that will tell explicitly what the pupils
of each grade should acquire each term or half-term in the

EFFICIENCY OF TEACHERS 5I

way of habits, knowledge, ideals, attitudes, and preju-
dices. But such a course of study is the first requisite to
efficiency in teaching. The system that goes by hit or
miss, letting each teacher work out his own salvation in
any way that he may see fit, is just an aggregation of
such schools as that which I have described.

It is true that reformers have very strenuously criti-
cized the policy of restricting teachers to a definite course
of study. They have maintained that it curtails indi-
vidual initiative and crushes enthusiasm. It does this in
a certain measure. Every prescription is in a sense a
restriction. The fact that the steamship captain must
head his ship for Liverpool instead of wherever he may
choose to go is a restriction, and the captain's individu-
ality is doubtless crushed and his initiative limited. But

this result seems to be inevitable and he generally
manages to survive the blow. The course of study
must be to the teacher what the sailing orders are to
the captain of the ship, what the stated course is to
the wheelsman and the officer on the bridge, what the
time-table is to the locomotive engineer, what Garcia and
the message and the answer were to Rowan. One may
decry organization and prescription in our educational
system. One may say that these things tend inevitably
toward mechanism and formalism and the stultifying of
initiative. But the fact remains that, whenever pre-
scription is abandoned, efficiency in general is at an end.
And so I maintain that every teacher has a right to

52 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

know what he is to be held responsible for, what is ex-
pected of him, and that this information be just as definite
and unequivocal as it can be made. It is under the stress
of definite responsibility that growth is most rapid and
certain. The more uncertain and intangible the end to
be gained, the less keenly will one feel the responsibiUty
for gaining that end. Unhappily we cannot say to a
teacher : "Here is a message. Take it to Garcia. Bring
the answer." But we may make our work far more defi-
nite and tangible than it is now. The courses of study
are becoming more and more explicit each year. Vague
and general prescriptions are giving place to definite and
specific prescriptions. The teachers know what they are
expected to do, and knowing this, they have some meas-
ure for testing the eflSciency of their own efforts.

But to make more definite requirements is, after all,
only the first step in improving efficiency. It is not suffi-
cient that one know what results are wanted ; one must
also know how these results may be obtained. Improve-
ment in method means improvement in efficiency, and
a crying need in education to-day is a scientific investiga-
tion of methods of teaching. Teachers should be made
acquainted with the methods that are most economical
and efficient. As a matter of fact, whatever is done in
that direction at the present time must be almost entirely
confined to suggestions and hints.

EFFICIENCY OF TEACHERS 53

Our discussions of methods of teaching may be divided
into three classes : (i) Dogmatic assertions that such and
such a method is right and that all others are wrong —
assertions based entirely upon a priori reasoning. For
example, the assertion that children must never be per-
mitted to learn their lessons " by heart" is based upon
the general principle that words are only symbols of ideas
and that, if one has ideas, one can find words of his own in
which to formulate them. (2) A second class of discus-
sions of method comprises descriptions of devices that
have proved successful in certain instances and with cer-
tain teachers. (3) Of a third class of discussions there are
very few representative examples. I refer to methods
that have been estabUshed on the basis of experiments in
which irrelevant factors have been eliminated. In fact,
I know of no clearly defined report or discussion of this
sort. An approach to a scientific solution of a definite
problem of method is to be found in Browne's mono-
graph, The Psychology of Simple Arithmetical Processes.
Another example is represented by the experiments of
Miss Steflfens, Marx Lobsien, and others, regarding the
best methods of memorizing, and proving beyond much
doubt that the complete repetition is more economical
than the partial repetition. But these conclusions have,
of course, only a limited field of application to prac-
tical teaching. We stand in great need of a definite
experimental investigation of the detailed problems of
teaching upon which there is wide divergence of opinion.

54 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

A very good illustration is the controversy between the
how and the why in primary arithmetic. In this case,
there is a vast amount of "opinion," but there are no
clearly defined conclusions drawn from accurate tests.
It would seem possible to do work of this sort concerning
the details of method in the teaching of arithmetic,
spelling, grammar, penmanship, and geography.

Lacking this accurate type of data regarding methods,
the next recourse is to the actual teaching of those
teachers who are recognized as efficient. Wherever such
a teacher may be found, his or her work is well worth the
most careful sort of study. Success, of course, may be
due to other factors than the methods employed, — to
personahty, for example. But, in every case of recog-
nized efficiency in teaching that I have observed, I have
foimd that the methods employed have, in the main, been
productive of good results when used by others. The
experienced teacher comes, through a process of trial
and error, to select, perhaps unconsciously, the methods
that work best. Sometimes these are not always to be
identified with the methods that theoretical pedagogy
had worked out from a priori bases. For example, the
type of lesson which I call the "deductive development"
lesson ^ is one that is not included in the older discus-
sions of method ; yet it accurately describes one of the
' See Educative Process, New York, 1910, Chapter XX.

EFFICIENCY OF TEACHERS 55

methods employed by a very successful teacher whose
work I observed.

One way, then, to improve the efficiency of young
teachers, in so far as improvement in methods leads to
improved efficiency, is to encourage the observation of ex-
pert teaching. The plan of giving teachers visiting days
often brings excellent results, especially if the teacher
looks upon the privilege in the proper Ught. The hyper-
critical spirit is fatal to growth under any condition.
Whenever a teacher has come to the conclusion that he or
she has nothing to learn from studying the work of others,
anabolism has ceased and katabolism has set in. The
self-sufficiency of our craft is one of its weakest character-
istics. It is the factor that more than any other discounts
it in the minds of laymen. Fortunately it is less fre-
quently a professional characteristic than in former
years, but it still persists in some quarters. I recently
met a " pedagogue " who impressed me as the most "know-
ing" individual that it had ever been my privilege to
become acquainted with. An enthusiastic friend of his,
in dilating upon this man's virtues, used these words:
"When you propose a subject of conversation in whatever
field you may choose, you will find that he has mastered
it to bed rock. He will go over it once and you think that
he is wise. He starts at the beginning and goes over it
again, and you realize that he is deep. Once more he
traverses the same ground, but he is so far down now that
you cannot follow him, and then you are aware that he is

56 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

profound." That sort of profundity is still not rare in the
field of general education. The person who has all pos-
sible knowledge pigeonholed and classified is still in our
midst. The pedant still does the cause of education in-
calculable injury.

Of the use to which reading circles may be put in im-
proving the efficiency of teaching, it is necessary to say
but little. Such organizations, under wise leadership,
may doubtless be made to serve a good purpose in pro-
moting professional enthusiasm. The difficulty with
using them to promote immediate and direct efficiency
lies in the paucity of the literature that is at our disposal.
Most of our present-day works upon education are very
general in their nature. They are not without their
value, but this value is general and indirect rather than
immediate and specific. A book like Miss Winterburn's
Methods of Teaching, or Chubb's Teaching of English ^ is
especially valuable for young teachers who are looking
for first-hand helps. But books like this are all too rare
in our literature.

On the whole, I think that the improvement of teachers
in the matter of methods is the most imsatisfactory part
of our problem.^ All that one can say is that the work of

* Rowe's HMt Formation (New York, 1909), Briggs and Coffman's
Reading in Public Schools (Chicago, 1908), Foght's The American Rural
School, Adams's Exposition and Illustration in Class Teaching (New
York, 1 910), and Perry's Problems of Elementary Education (New York,
1910) should certainly be added to this list.

* " It seems to me one of the most pressing problems in pedagogy to-
day is that of method. ... It is the subject in which teachers of peda-

EFFICIENCY OF TEACHERS $7

the best teachers should be observed carefully and faith-
fully, that the methods upon which there is little or no
dispute should be given and accepted as standard, but
that one should be very careful about giving young
teachers an idea that there is any single form under
which all teaching can be subsumed. I know of no term
that is more thoroughly a misnomer in our technical
vocabulary than the term "general method." I teach a
subject that often goes by that name, but I always take
care to explain that the name does not mean, in my class,
what the words seem to signify. There are certain broad
and general principles which describe very crudely and
roughly and inadequately certain phases of certain pro-
cesses that mind undergoes in organizing experience —
perception, apperception, conception, induction, deduc-
tion, inference, generalization, and the like. But these
terms have only a vague and general connotation; or,
if their connotation is specific and definite, it has been
made so by an artificial process of definition in which
counsel is darkened by words without meaning. The
only full-fledged law that I know of in the educative
process is the law of habit building — (i) focalization,
(2) attentive repetition at intervals of increasing length,

gogy in G)llege3 and Universities are weakest to-day. Of what practical
value is all our study of educational psychology or the history of education,
our child study, our exp)erimental pedagogy, if it does not finally result in
the devising of better methods of teaching, and make the teacher more
skillful and efifective in his work." — T. M. Balliet : "Undergraduate
Instruction in Pedagogy," Pedagogical Seminary, vol. xvii, 1910, p. 67.

58 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

(3) permitting no exception — and I am often told that
this " law " is fallacious. It has differed from some other
so-called laws, however, in this respect : it always works.
Whenever a complex habit is adduced that has not been
formed through the operation of this law, I am willing
to give it up.

V
A third general method of improving the efficiency of
teaching is to build up the notion of responsibility for
results. The teacher must not only take the message
and deliver it to Garcia, or to some other individual as
definite and tangible, but he must also bring the answer.
So far as I know there is no other way to insure a maxi-
miun of efficiency than to demand certain results and to
hold the individual responsible for gaining these results.
The present standards of the teaching craft are less rigor-
ous than they should be in this respect. We need a craft
spirit that will judge every man impartially by his work,
not by secondary criteria. You remember Finlayson in
Kipling's Bridge Builders, and the agony with which he
watched the waters of the Ganges tearing away at the
caissons of his new bridge. A vital question of Finlay-
son's life was to be answered by the success or failure of
those caissons to resist the flood. If they should yield, it
meant not only the wreck of the bridge, but the wreck of
his career; for, as KipUng says, "Government might
listen, perhaps, but his own kind would judge him by his
bridge as that stood or fell."

EFFICIENCY OF TEACHERS 59

President Hall has said that one of the last sentiments
to be developed in human nature is "the sense of respon-
sibility, which is one of the highest and most complex
psychic qualities." How to develop this sentiment of
responsibility is one of the most pressing problems of
education. And the problem is especially pressing in
those departments of education that train for social
service. To engender in the young teacher an effective
prejudice against scamped work, against the making of
excuses, against the seductive allurements of ease and
comfort and the hues of least resistance is one of the most
important duties that is laid upon the normal school, the
training school, and the teachers' college. To do well the
work that has been set for him to do should be the highest
ambition of every worker, the ambition to which all other
ambitions and desires are secondary and subordinate.
Pride in the mastery of the technique of one's calling is
the most wholesome and helpful sort of pride that a man
can indulge in. The joy of doing each day's work in the
best possible manner is the keenest joy of life. But this
pride and this joy do not come at the outset. Like all
other good things of life, they come only as the result of
effort and struggle and strenuous self-discipline and
dogged perseverance. The emotional coloring which
gives these things their subjective worth is a matter very
largely of contrast. Success must stand out against a
background of struggle, or the chief virtue of success
— the consciousness of conquest — will be entirely

6o CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

missed. That sort of success means strength; for
strength of mind is nothing more than the abihty to
** hew to the line," to follow a given course of effort to
a successful conclusion, no matter how long and how
tedious be the road that one must travel, no matter
how disagreeable are the tasks involved, no matter how
tempting are the insidious siren songs of momentary
fancy.

What teachers need — what all workers need — is to
be inspired with those ideals and prejudices that will en-
able them to work steadfastly and unremittingly toward
the attainment of a stated end. What inspired Rowan
with those ideals of efficiency that enabled him to carry
his message and bring back the answer, I do not know,
but if he was a soldier, I do not hesitate to hazard an
opinion. Our regular army stands as the clearest type of
efficient service which is available for our study and emula-
tion. The work of Colonel Goethals on the Panama
Canal bids fair to be the finest fruit of the training that we
give to the officers of our army. If we wish to learn the
fundamental virtues of that training, it is not sufficient
to study the curriculum of the Military Academy.
Technical knowledge and skill are essential to such re-
sults, but they are not the prime essentials. If you wish
to know what the prime essentials are, let me refer you to
a series of papers, entitled The Spirit of Old West Point,
which ran through a recent volume of the Atlantic
Monthly and which has since been published in book

EFFICIENCY OF TEACHERS 6l

form. They constitute, to my mind, one of the most
important educational documents of the present decade.
The army service is efficient because it is inspired with
efifective ideals of service, — ideals in which every other
desire and ambition is totally and completely subordi-
nated to the ideal of duty. To those who maintain that
close organization and definite prescription kill initiative
and curtail efl&ciency, the record of West Point and the
army service should be a silencing argument.

And yet education is more important than war ; more
important, even, than the building of the Panama Canal.
We believe, and rightly, that no training is too good for our
military and naval ofiicers ; that no discipline which will
produce the appropriate habits and ideals and prejudices
is too strenuous ; that no individual sacrifice of comfort
or ease is too costly. Equal or even commensurable
efficiency in education can come only through a like pro-
cess. From the times of the ancient Egyptians to the
present day, one vital truth has been revealed in every
forward movement ; the homely truth that you cannot
make bricks without straw; you cannot win success
without effort; you cannot attain efficiency without
undergoing the processes of discipline; and discipline
means only this: doing things that you do not want
to do, for the sake of reaching some end that ought to
be attained.

The normal schools and the training schools and the
teachers' colleges must be the nurseries of craft ideals

62 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

and standards. The instruction that they offer must be
upon a plane that will command respect. The intoler-
able pedantry and the hypocritical goody-goodyism must
be banished forever. The crass sentimentalism by which
we attempt to cover our paucity of craft ideals must also
be eliminated. Those who are most strongly imbued
with ideals are not those who cheapen the value of
ideals by constant verbal reiteration. Ideals do not often
come through explicitly imparted precepts. They come
through more impalpable and hidden channels, — now
through stately buildings with vine-covered towers from
which the past speaks in the silence of great halls and
cloistered retreats; now through the unwritten and
scarcely spoken traditions that are expressed in the very
bearing and attitude of those to whom youth looks for
inspiration and guidance ; now through a dominant and
powerful personaUty, sometimes rough and crude, some-
times warm-hearted and lovable, but always sincere.
Traditions and ideals are the most priceless part of a
school's equipment, and the school that can give these
things to its students in richest measure will have the
greatest influence on the succeeding generations.

The Test of Efficiency in Supervision*

I KNOW of no way in which I can better introduce my
subject than to describe very briefly the work of a super-
intendent who once furnished me with an example of a
definite and effective method of supervision. This man
was a "long range" superintendent. It was impossible
for him to visit his schools very frequently, and so he did
the next best thing : he had the schools brought to him.
When I first saw him he was poring over a pile of papers
that had just come in from one of his schools. I soon
discovered that these papers were arranged in sets, each
set being made up of samples taken each week from the
work of the pupils in the schools under his supervision.
The papers of each pupil were arranged in chronological
order, and by looking through the set, he could note the
growth that the pupil in question had made since the
beginning of the term. Upon these papers, the superin-
tendent recorded his judgment of the amount of improve-
ment shown both in form and in content.

* A paper read before the fifty-second annual meeting of the New York
State Association of School Commissioners and Superintendents, Novem-
ber 8, 1907.

64 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

I was particularly impressed by the character of his
criticisms. There was nothing vague or intangible about
them. Every annotation was clear and definite. If pen-
manship happened to be the point at issue, he would note
that the lines were too close together; that the letters
did not have sufl&cient individuaUty ; that the spaces
between the words were not sufficiently wide; that
the indentation was inadequate; that the writing was
cramped, showing that the pen had not been held prop-
erly ; that the margin needed correction. If the papers
were defective from the standpoint of language, the criti-
cisms were equally clear and definite. One pupil had
misspelled the same word in three successive papers.
"Be sure that this word appears in the next spelling hst,"
was the comment of the superintendent. Another
pupil habitually used a bit of false syntax : "Place this
upon the list of errors to be taken up and corrected."
Still others were uncertain about paragraphing : "Devote
a language lesson to the paragraph before the next written
exercise." On the covers of each bundle of class papers,
he wrote directions and suggestions of a more general
nature; for example: "Improvement is not sufficiently
marked; try for better results next time"; or: "I note
that the pupils draw rather than write; look out for
free movement." Often, too, there were words of well-
merited praise: "I like the way in which your pupils
have responded to their drill. This is good. Keep it up."
And not infrequently suggestions were made as to con-

THE TEST OF EFFICIENCY IN SUPERVISION 65

tent: "Tell this story in greater detail next time, and
have it reproduced again " ; or: " The form of these papers
is good, but the nature study is poor; don't sacrifice
thought to form."

In similar fashion, the other written work was gone
over and annotated. Every pupil in this system of
schools had a sample of his written work examined at
regular and frequent intervals by the superintendent.
Every teacher knew just what her chief demanded in
the way of results, and did her best to gain the results
demanded. I am not taking the position that the results
that were demanded represented the highest ideals of
what the elementary school should accompHsh. Good
penmanship and good spelling and good language, in the
light of contemporary educational thought, seem to be
something like happiness — you get them in larger
measure the less you think about getting them. But
this possible objection aside, the superintendent in ques-
tion had developed a system which kept him in very
close touch with the work that was being done in widely
separated schools.

He told me further that, on the infrequent occasions
when he could visit his classrooms, he gave most of his
time and attention to the matters that could not be
supervised at "long range." He found out how the
pupils were improving in their reading, and especially
in oral expression, in its syntax, its freedom from errors
of construction, its clearness and fluency. He listed the

66 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

common errors, directing his teachers to take them up
in a systematic manner and eradicate them, and he did
not fail to note at his next visit how much progress had
been made. He noted the condition of the blackboard
work, and kept a Ust of the improvements that he sug-
gested. He tested for rapidity in arithmetical processes,
for the papers sent to his office gave him only an index
of accuracy. He noted the habits of personal cleanliness
that were being developed or neglected. In fact, he had
a long list of specific standards that he kept continually
in mind, the progress toward which he constantly
watched. And last, but by no means least, he carried
with him wherever he went an atmosphere of breezy
good nature and cheerfulness, for he had mastered the
first principle in the art of both supervision and teaching ;
he had learned that the best way to promote growth in
either pupils or teachers is neither to let them do as they
please nor to force them to do as you please, but to get
them to please to do what you please to have them do.

I instance this superintendent as one type of efl5ciency
in supervision. He was efficient, not simply because he
had a system that scrutinized every least detail of his
pupils' growth, but because that scrutiny really insured
growth. He obtained the results that he desired, and he
obtained uniformly good results from a large number of
young, untrained teachers. We have all heard of the
superintendent who boasted that he could tell by look-
ing at his watch just what any pupil in any classroom

THE TEST OF EFFICIENCY IN SUPERVISION 67

was doing at just that moment. Surely here system
was not lacking. But the boast did not strike the vital
point. It is not what the pupil is doing that is funda-
mentally important, but what he is gaining from his ac-
tivity or inactivity; what he is gaining in the way of
habits, in the way of knowledge, in the way of standards
and ideals and prejudices, all of which are to govern his
future conduct. The superintendent whom I have de-
scribed had the qualities of balance and perspective that
enabled him to see both the woods and the trees. And
let me add that he taught regularly in his own central
high school, and that practically all of his supervision was
accomplished after school hours and on Saturdays.

But my chief reason for choosing his work as a type is
that it represents a successful effort to supervise that
part of school work which is most difficult and irksome to
supervise; namely, the formation of habits. Whatever
one's ideals of education may be, it still remains true that
habit building is the most important duty of the elemen-
tary school, and that the efficiency of habit building can
be tested in no other way than by the means that he
employed; namely, the careful comparison of results at
successive stages of the process.

The essence of a true habit is its purely automatic
character. Reaction must follow upon the stimulus in-
stantaneously, without thought, reflection, or judgment.

68 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

One has not taught spelHng efficiently until spelling is
automatic, until the correct form flows from the pen
without the intervention of mind. The real test of the
pupil's training in spelUng is his ability to spell the word
correctly when he is thinking, not about spelling, but
about the content of the sentence that he is writing.
Consequently the test of efficiency in spelling is not an
examination in spelling, although this may be valuable
as a means to an end, but rather the infrequency with
which misspelled words appear in the composition work,
letter writing, and other written work of the pupil. Simi-
larly in language and grammar, it is not sufficient to in-
struct in rules of syntax. This is but the initial process.
Grammatical rules function effectively only when they
function automatically. So long as one must think and
judge and reflect upon the form of one's expression, the
expression is necessarily awkward and inadequate.

The same rule holds in respect of the fundamental
processes of arithmetic. It holds in penmanship, in artic-
ulation and enunciation, in word recognition, in moral
conduct and good manners; in fact, in all of the basic
work for which the elementary school must stand spon-
sor. And one source of danger in the newer methods
of education lies in the tendency to overlook the impor-
tance of carrying habit-building processes through to a
successful issue. The reaction against drill, against
formal work of all sorts, is a healthful reaction in many
ways. It bids fair to break up the mechanical lock step

THE TEST OF EFFICIENCY IN SUPERVISION 69

of the elementary grades, and to introduce some welcome
life, and vigor, and wholesomeness. But it will sadly
defeat its own purpose if it underrates the necessity of
habit building as the basic activity of early education.

What is needed, now that we have got away from the
lock step, now that we are happily emancipated from
the meaningless thralldom of mechanical repetition and
the worship of drill for its own sake — what is needed now
is not less drill, but better drill. And this should be the
net result of the recent reforms in elementary education.
In our first enthusiasm, we threw away the spelling
book, poked fun at the multiplication tables, decried
basal reading, and relieved ourselves of much wit and
sarcasm at the expense of formal grammar. But now we
are swinging back to the adequate recognition of the true
purpose of drill. And in the wake of this newer concep-
tion, we are learning that its drudgery may be lightened
and its efl&ciency heightened by the introduction of a
richer content that shall provide a greater variety in
the repetitions, insure an adequate motive for effort, and
reUeve the dead monotony that frequently rendered the
older methods so futile. I look forward to the time
when to be an efficient drillmaster in this newer sense of
the term will be to have reached one of the pinnacles of
professional skill.

Ill

But there is another side of teaching that must be super-
vised. Although habit is responsible for nine tenths of

70 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

conduct, the remaining tenth must not be neglected. In
situations where habit is not adequate to adjustment,
judgment and reflection must come to the rescue, or
should come to the rescue. This means that, instead of
acting without thought, as in the case of habit, one ana-
lyzes the situation and tries to solve it by the application
of some fact or principle that has been gained either from
one's own experience or from the experience of others.
This is the field in which knowledge comes to its own ;
and a very important task of education is to fix in the
pupils' minds a number of facts and principles that will
be available for appUcation to the situations of later life.

How, then, is the efficiency of instruction (as distin-
guished from training or habit building) to be tested?
Needless to say, an adequate test is impossible from the
very nature of the situation. The efficiency of imparting
knowledge can be tested only by the effect that this
knowledge has upon later conduct; and this, it will
be agreed, cannot be accurately determined until the
pupil has left the school and is face to face with the
problems of real life.

In practice, however, we adopt a more or less effective
substitute for the real test — the substitute called the ex-
amination. We all know that the ultimate purp)ose of
instruction is not primarily to enable pupils successfully
to pass examinations. And yet as long as we teach as
though this were the main purpose we might as well be-
lieve it to be. Now the examination may be made a very

THE TEST OF EFFICIENCY IN SUPERVISION 7 1

valuable test of the efficiency of instruction if its limita-
tions are fully recognized and if it does not obscure the
true purpose of instruction. And if we remember that the
true purpose is to impart facts in such a manner that they
may not only "stick" in the pupil's mind, but that they
may also be amenable to recall and practical appKcation,
and if we set our examination questions with some refer-
ence to this requirement, then I believe that we shall find
the examination a dependable test.

One important point is likely to be overlooked in the
consideration of examinations, — the fact, namely, that
the form and content of the questions have a very
powerful influence in determining the content and
methods of instruction. Is it not pertinent, then, to in-
quire whether examination questions cannot be so framed
as radically to improve instruction rather than to en-
courage, as is often the case, methods that are pedagogi-
cally unsoimd ? Granted that it is well for the child to
memorize verbatim certain unrelated facts, even to mem-
orize some, facts that have no immediate bearing upon
his life, granted that this is valuable (and I think that a
little of it is), is it necessary that an entire year or half-
year be given over almost entirely to "cramming up"
on old questions ? Would it not be possible so to frame
examination questions that the "cramming" process
would be practically valueless?

What the pupil should get from geography, for in-
stance, is not only a knowledge of geographical facts, but

72 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

also, and more fundamentally, the power to see the rela-
tion of these facts to his own life; in other words, the
ability to apply his knowledge to the improvement of
adjustment. Now this power is very closely associated
with the ability to grasp fundamental principles, to see
the relation of cause and effect working below the sur-
face of diverse phenomena. Geography, to be practical,
must impress not only the fact, but also the principle
that rationaUzes or explains the fact. It must empha-
size the "why" as well as the "what." For example:
it is well for the pupil to know that New York is the
largest city in the United States ; it is better that he
should know why New York has become the largest city
in the United States. It is well to know that South
America extends very much farther to the east than
does North America, but it is better to know that this
fact has had an important bearing in determining the
commercial relations that exist between South America
and Europe. Questions that have reference to these
larger relations of cause and effect may be so framed that
no amount of "cramming" will alone insure correct an-
s^yers. They may be so framed that the pupil will be
forced to do some thinking for himself, will be forced to
solve an imaginary situation very much as he would
solve a real situation.

Examination questions of this type would react benefi-
cially upon the methods of instruction. They would tend
to place a premium upon that type of instruction that

THE TEST OF EFFICIENCY IN SUPERVISION 73

develops initiative in solving problems, instead of encour-
aging the memoriter methods that tend to crush what-
ever germs of initiative the pupil may possess. This does
not mean that the memoriter work should be excluded.
A solid basis of fact is essential to the mastery of principles.
Personally I beUeve that the work of the intermediate
grades should be planned to give the pupil this factual
basis. This would leave the upper grades free for the
more rational work. In any case, I believe that the
efficiency of examinations may be greatly increased by
giving one or two questions that must be answered
by a reasoning process for every question that may be
answered by verbal memory alone.

Thus far it seems clear that an absolute standard is
available for testing the efficiency of training or habit
building, and that a fairly accurate standard may be
developed for testing the efficiency of instruction. Both
training and instruction, however, are subject to the
modifying influence of a third factor of which too little
account has hitherto been taken in educational discus-
sions. Training results in habits, and yet a certain sort of
training may not only result in a certain type of habit,
but it may also result in the development of something
which will quite negate the habit that has been developed.
In the process of developing habits of neatness, for ex-
ample, one may employ methods that result in prejudicing

74 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

the child against neatness as a general virtue. In this
event, although the little specific habits of neatness may
function in the situations in which they have been de-
veloped, the prejudice will effectually prevent their ex-
tension to other fields. In other words, the general emo-
tional effect of training must be considered as well as the
specific results of the training. The same stricture ap-
pUes with equal force to instruction. Instruction im-
parts knowledge ; but if a man knows and fails to feel, his
knowledge has little influence upon his conduct.

This factor that controls conduct when habit fails, this
factor that may even negate an otherwise efficient habit,
is the great indeterminate in the work of teaching.
To know that one has trained an effective habit or im-
parted a practical principle is one thing ; to know that in
doing this, one has not engendered in the pupil's mind a
prejudice against the very thing taught is quite another
matter.

That phase of teaching which is concerned with the
development of these intangible forces may be termed
"inspiration" ; and it is the lack of an adequate test for
the efficiency of inspiration that makes the task of super-
vision so difficult and the results so often unsatisfactory.

Nevertheless, even here the outlook is not entirely
hopeless. One may be tolerably certain of at least two
things. In the first place, the great "emotionalized preju-
dices" that must come predominantly from school in-
fluences are the love of truth, the love of work, respect for

THE TEST OF EFFICIENCY IN SUPERVISION 75

law and order, and a spirit of cooperation. These factors
undoubtedly have their basis in specific habits of honesty,
industry, obedience, and regard for the rights and feeUngs
of others ; and these habits may be developed and tested
just as thoroughly and just as accurately as habits of
good spelhng and correct syntax. Without the solid
basis of habit, ideals and prejudices will be of but little
service. The one caution must be taken that the methods
of training do not defeat their own purpose by engender-
ing prejudices and ideals that negate the habits. It is
here that the personahty of the teacher becomes the all-
important factor, and the task of the supervisor is to
determine whether the influence of the personahty is good
or evil. Most supervisors come to judge of this influence
by an imdefined factor that is best termed the "spirit of
the classroom."
\lf The second hopeful feature of the task of supervision
in respect of inspiration is that this "spirit" is an
extremely contagious and pervasive thing. In other
words, the principal or the superintendent may dominate
every classroom under his supervision, almost without
regard to the limitations of the individual teachers.
Typical schools in every city system bear compelling
testimony to this fact. The principal is the school.

And if I were to sum up the essential characteristics of
the ideal supervisor, I could not neglect this point. After
all, the two great dangers that beset him are, first, the
danger of sloth — the old Adam of laziness — which will

76 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

tempt him to avoid the details, to shirk the drudgejy^o
escape the close and wearisome scrutiny of little things ;
and, secondly, the sin of triviality, — the inertia which
holds him to details and never permits him to take the
broader view and see the true ends toward which details
are but the means. The proper combination of these
two factors is all too rare, but it is in this combination
that the ideal supervisor is to be found.

THE SUPERVISOR AND THE TEACHER

It is difficult not to be depressed by the irrational
radicalism of contemporary educational theory. It would
seem that the workers in the higher ranges of educa-
tional activity should, of all men, preserve a balanced
judgment and a sane outlook, and yet there is prob-
ably no other human calling that presents the strange
phenomenon of men who are called experts throwing
overboard everything that the past has sanctioned, and
embarking without chart or compass upon any new ven-
ture that happens to catch popular fancy. The non-pro-
fessional character of education is nowhere more painfully
apparent than in the expression of this tendency. The
literature of teaching that is written directly out of ex-
perience — out of actual adjustment to the teaching
situation — is almost laughed out of court in some educa-
tional circles. But if one wishes to win the applause of
the multitude one may do it easily enough by proclaim-
ing some new and untried plan. At our educational
gatherings you notice above everything else a straining
for spectacular and bizarre effects. It is the novel that

78 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

catches attention; and it sometimes seems to me that
those who know the least about the educational situation
in the way of direct contact often receive the largest
share of attention and have the largest influence.

It is in the attitude of the public and of a certain pro-
portion of school men toward elementary teaching and the
elementary teacher that this destructive criticism finds
its most pronoimced expression. Throughout the length
and breadth of the land, the eflSciency of the pubhc school
and the sincerity and inteUigence of those who are giving
their lives to its work are being called into question. It
is discouraging to think that years of service in a calling
do not quahfy one to speak authoritatively upon the
problems of that calling, and especially upon technique.
And yet it is precisely upon that point of technique
that the criticisms of elementary education are most
drastic.

Our educational system is sometimes branded as a
failure, and yet this same educational system with all
its weaknesses has accompUshed the task of assimilating
to American institutions and ideals and standards the
most heterogeneous infusion of alien stocks that ever
went to the making of a united people. The elemen-
tary teacher is criticized for all the sins of omission
that the calendar enumerates, and yet this same ele-
mentary teacher is daily lifting millions of children
to a plane of civilization and culture that no other
people in history have even thought possible. I am

THE SUPERVISOR AND THE TEACHER 79

willing to admit the deficiencies of American education,
but I also maintain that the teachers of our lower
schools do not deserve the opprobrium that has been
heaped upon them. I believe that in education, as in
business, it would be a good thing if we saw more of the
doughnut and less of the hole. When I hear a prominent
educator say that we must discard everything that we
have produced thus far and begin anew in the realm of
educational materials and methods, I confess that I am
discouraged, especially when that same authority is ex-
tremely obscure as to the materials and methods that we
should substitute for those that we are now employing.
I heard that statement at a recent meeting of the Depart-
ment of Superintendence, and I heard other things of like
tenor, — for example, that normal schools were perpetuat-
ing types of skill in teaching that were unworthy of per-
petuation, that the observation of teaching was valueless
in the training of teachers because there was nothing that
was being done at the present time that was worthy of
imitation, that practice teaching in the training of young
teachers is a farce, a delusion, and a snare. Those very
words were employed by one man of high position to ex-
press his opinion of contemporary practices. You cannot
pick up an educational journal of the better sort, nor open
a new educational book, without being brought face to
face with this destructive criticism.

I protest against this, not only in the name of justice,
but in the name of common sense. It cannot be possible

8o CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

that generations of dealing with immature minds should
have left no residuum of effective practice. The very
principle of progress by trial and error will inevitably
mean that certain practices that are possible and helpful
and effective are perpetuated, and that certain other pro-
cesses that are ineffective and wasteful are eliminated.
To repudiate all this is the height of folly. If the history
of progress shows us anything, it shows us that progress
is not made by repudiating the lessons of experience.
Theory is the last word, not the first. Theory should
explain : it should take successful practice and find out
what principles condition its efficiency ; and if these
principles are inconsistent with those heretofore held,
it is the theory that should be modified to suit the facts,
not the facts to suit the theory.

My opponents may point to medicine as a possible
example of the opposite procedure. And yet if there
is anything that the history of medical science dem-
onstrates, it is that the first cues to new discoveries
were made in the field of practice. Lymph therapy,
which is one of the triumphs of modem medicine, was
discovered empirically. It was an accident of practice,
a blind procedure of trial and success that led to
Jenner's discovery of the virtues of vaccination. A
century passed before theory adequately explained the
phenomenon, and opened the way to those wider ap>-
plications of the principle that have done so much to
reduce the ravages of disease.

THE SUPERVISOR AND THE TEACHER 8 1

The value of theory, I repeat, is to explain successful
practice and to generalize experience in broad and
comprehensive principles which can be easily held in
mind, and from which inferences for further new and
eflfective practices may be derived. We have a small
body of sound principles in education to-day, — a body
of principles that are thoroughly consistent with suc-
cessful practice. But the sort of principles that are
put forth as the last words of educational theory are
often far from sound. Personally I firmly believe that
a vast amount of damage is being done to children by
the application of fallacious principles which, because
they emanate from high authority, obtain an artificial
validity in the minds of teachers in service.

I cannot understand why, when an educational ex-
periment fails lamentably, it is not rejected as a failure.
And yet you and I know a number of instances where
certain educational experiments that have undeniably
reversed the hypotheses of those who initiated them
are excused on the ground that conditions were not
favorable. That, it seems to me, should tell the whole
story, for precisely what we need in educational prac-
tice is a body of doctrine that will work where condi-
tions are unfavorable. We are told that the successful
application of mooted theories depends upon the proper
kind of teachers. I maintain that the most effective
sort of theory is the sort that brings results with such
teachers as we must employ in our work. It would

82 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

be a poor recommendation for a theory of medicine to
say that it worked all right when people are healthy
but failed to help the sick. Nor is it true that good
teachers can get good results by following bad theory.
They often obtain the results by evading the theory,
and when they live up to it, the results faithfully re-
flect the theory, no matter how skillful the teaching.

Statements like these are very apt to be miscon-
strued or misinterpreted unless one is very careful to
define one's position; and, after what I have said, I
should do myself an injustice if I did not make certain
that my position is clear. I beUeve in experimentation
in education. I beheve in experimental schools. But
I should wish these schools to be interpreted as experi-
ments and not as models, and I should wish that the
failure of an experiment be accepted with good, scien-
tific grace, and not with the unscientific attitude of
making excuses. The trouble with an experimental
school is that, in the eyes of the great mass of teachers,
it becomes a model school, and the principles that it
represents are apphed ad libitum by thousands of
teachers who assume that they have heard the last
word in educational theory.

No one is more favorably disposed toward the rights
of children than I am, and yet I am thoroughly con-
vinced that soft-heartedness accompanied by soft-

THE SUPERVISOR AND THE TEACHER 83

headedness is weakening the mental and moral fiber
of hundreds of thousands of boys and girls through-
out this country. No one admires more than I admire
the sagacity and far-sightedness of Judge Lindsey, and
yet when Judge Lindsey's methods are proposed as
models for school government, I cannot lose sight, as
so many people seem to lose sight, of the contingent
factor ; namely, that Judge Lindsey's leniency is based
upon authority, and that if Judge Lindsey or any-
body else attempted to be lenient when he had no
power to be otherwise than lenient, his " bluff "
would be called in short order. If you will give to
teachers and principals the same power that you give
to the police judge, you may well expect them to be
lenient. The great trouble in the school is simply this :
that just in the proportion that leniency is demanded,
authority is taken away from the teacher.

And I should perhaps say a qualifying word with
regard to my attitude toward educational theory. I
have every feeling of affection for the science of psy-
chology. I have every faith in the value of psycho-
logical principles in the interpretation of educational
phenomena. But I also recognize that the science of
psychology is a very young science, and that its data
are not yet so well organized that it is safe to draw
from them anything more than tentative hypotheses
which must meet their final test in the crucible of prac-
tice. Some day, if we work hard enough, psychology

84 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

will become a predictive science, just as mathematics
and physics and chemistry and, to a certain extent,
biology, are predictive sciences to-day. Meantime
psychology is of inestimable value in giving us a point
of view, in clarifying our ideas, and in rationalizing the
truths that empirical practice discovers. A very few
psychological principles are strongly enough established
even now to form the basis of prediction. Among the
most important of these are the laws of habit building,
some laws of memory, and the larger principles of
attention. Successful educational practice is and must
be in accord with these indisputable tenets. But the
bane of education to-day is in the pseudo-science, the
"half-baked" psychology, that is lauded from the house-
tops by untrained enthusiasts, turned from the presses
by irresponsible pubUshing houses, and foisted upon the
hungry teaching public through the ever-present medium
of the reading circle, the teachers' institute, the summer
school, and I am very sorry to admit (for I think that
I represent both institutions in a way) sometimes by
the normal schools and universities.

Most of the doctrines that are turning our practice
topsy-turvy have absolutely no support from competent
psychologists. The doctrine of spontaneity and its
attendant laissez-faire dogma of school government is
thoroughly inconsistent with good psychology. The
radical extreme to which some educators would push
the doctrine of interest when they maintain that the

THE SUPERVISOR AND THE TEACHER 85

child should never be asked to do anything for which
he fails to find a need in his own life, — this doctrine
can find no support in good psychology. The doctrine
that the preadolescent child should understand thor-
oughly every process that he is expected to reduce to
habit before that process is made automatic is utterly
at variance with long-established principles which were
well understood by the Greeks and the Hebrews twenty-
five hundred years ago, and to which Mother Nature
herself gives the lie in the instincts of imitation and
repetition. It is conceivable that these radical doc-
trines were justified as means of reform, especially in
secondary and higher education, but, even granting this,
their function is fulfilled when the reform that they
exploited has been accomplished. That time has come
and, as palpable untruths, they should either be modified
to meet the facts, or be relegated to oblivion.

It is safe to say that formahsm is no longer a
characteristic feature of the typical American school.
It is so long since I have heard any rote learning in a
schoolroom that I am wondering if it is not almost
time for some one to show that a little rote learning
would not be at all a bad thing in preadolescent educa-
tion. We ridicule the memoriter methods of Chinese
education and yet we sometimes forget that Chinese

86 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

education has done something that no other system of
education, however well planned, has even begun to do
in the same degree. It has kept the Chinese empire a
unit through a period of time compared with which the
entire history of Greece and Rome is but an episode.
We may ridicule the formahsm of Hebrew education,
and yet the schools of rabbis have preserved intact the
racial integrity of the Jewish people during the two
thousand years that have elapsed since their geographi-
cal unity was destroyed. I am not justifying the
methods of Chinese or Hebrew education. I am quite
willing to admit that, in China at any rate, the game
may not have been worth the candle; but I am still
far from convinced that it is not a good thing for chil-
dren to reduce to verbal form a good many things that
are now never learned in such a way as to make any
lasting impression upon the memory ; and our criticism
of oriental formalism is not so much concerned with the
method of learning as with the content of learning, —
not so much with learning by heart as with the char-
acter of the material that was thus memorized.

But, although formalism is no longer a distinctive
feature of American education, formahsm is the point
from which education is most frequently attacked, —
and this is the chief source of my dissatisfaction with
the present-day critics of our elementary schools. In
a great many cases, they have set up a man of straw
and demohshed him completely. And in demolishing

THE SUPERVISOR AND THE TEACHER 87

him, they have incidentally knocked the props from
under the feet of many a good teacher, leaving him
dazed and uncertain of his bearings, stung with the con-
viction that what he has been doing for his pupils is
entirely without value, that his life of service has been
a failure, that the lessons of his own experience are not
to be trusted, nor the verdicts of his own intelligence
respected. Go to any of the great summer schools and
you will meet, among the attending teachers, hundreds
of faithful, conscientious men and women who could
tell you if they would (and some of them will) of the
muddle in which their minds are left after some of the
lectures to which they have hstened. Why should they
fail to be depressed? The whole weight of academic
authority seems to be against them. The entire ma-
chinery of educational administration is wheeling them
with relentless force into paths that seem to them
hopelessly intricate and bewildering. If it is true, as I
think it is, that some of the proposals of modem edu-
cation are an attempt to square the circle, it is certainly
true that the classroom teacher is standing at the pres-
sure points in this procedure.

We hear expressed on every side a great deal of sym-
pathy for the child as the victim of our educational
system. Sympathy for childhood is the most natural
thing in the world. It is one of the basic human in-
stincts, and its expressions are among the finest things
in human life. But why limit our sympathy to the

88 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

child, especiaUy to-day when he is about as happy and
as fortunate an individual as anybody has ever been in
all history. Why not let a little of it go out to the
teacher of this child? Why not plan a little for her
comfort and welfare and encouragement? It is her
skill that is assimilating the children of our alien popu-
lation. It is her strength that is Hfting bodily each
generation to the ever-advancing race levels. Her work
must be the main source of the inspiration that will
impel the race to further advancement. And yet when
these half-million teachers who mean so much to this
coimtry gather at their institutes, when they attend
the summer schools, when they take up their professional
journals, what do they hear and read ? Criticisms of their
work. Denunciations of their methods. Serious doubts
of their intelligence. Aspersions cast upon their sin-
cerity, their patience, and their loyalty to their superiors.
This, mingled with some mawkish sentimentalism that
passes under the name of inspiration. Only occa-
sionally a word of downright commendation, a sign of
honest and heartfelt appreciation, a note of sympathy
or encouragement.

Carnegie gives fifteen million dollars to provide pen-
sions for superannuated college professors; but the
elementary teacher who is not fortunate enough to die
in harness must look forward to the almshouse. The
people tax themselves for magnificent buildings and
luxurious furnishings, but not one cent do they offer for

THE SUPERVISOR AND THE TEACHER 89

teachers' pensions. What a blot upon Western civiliza-
tion is this treatment of the teachers in our lower schools.
These people are doing the work that even the savage
races universally consider to be of the highest type.
Benighted China places her teachers second only to the
literati themselves in the place of honor. The Hindus
made the teaching profession the highest caste in the
social scale. The Jews intrusted the education of their
children to their Rabbis, the most learned and the
most honored of their race. It is only Western civili-
zation — it is almost only our much-lauded Anglo-
Saxon civilization — that denies to the teacher a sta-
tion in life befitting his importance as a social servant.

But what has all this to do with school supervision?
As I view it, the supervisor of schools as the overseer
and director of the educational process, is just now
confronted with two great problems. The first of these
is to keep a clear head in the present muddled condition
of educational theory. From the very fact of his posi-
tion, the supervisor must be a leader, whether he will
or not. It is a maxim of our profession that the prin-
cipal is the school. In our city systems the supervising
principal is given almost absolute authority over the
school of which he has charge. In him is vested the
ultimate responsibility for instruction, for discipline, for
the care and condition of the material property. He

90 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

may be a despot if he wishes, benevolent or otherwise.
With this power goes a corresponding opportunity.
His school can stand for something, — perhaps for
something new and strange which will bring him into
the limelight to-day, no matter what its character;
perhaps for something solid and enduring, something
that will last long after his own name has been for-
gotten. The temptation was never so strong as it is
to-day for the supervisor to seek the former kind of
glory. The need was never more acute than it is to-day
for the supervisor who is content with the impersonal
glory of the latter type.

I admit that it is a somewhat thankless task to do
things in a straightforward, effective way, without fuss
or feathers, and I suppose that the applause of the
gallery may be easily mistaken for the applause of the
pit. But nevertheless the seeker for notoriety is doing
the cause of education a vast amount of harm. I know
a principal who won ephemeral fame by introducing
into his school a form of the Japanese jiu-jitsu physical
exercises. When I visited that school, I was led to
believe that jiu-jitsu would be the salvation of the
American people. Whole classes of girls and boys were
marched to the large basement to be put through their
paces for the delectation of visitors. The newspapers
took it up and heralded it as another indication that
the formalism of the pubhc school was gradually break-
ing down. Visitors came by the hundreds, and my

THE SUPERVISOR AND THE TEACHER 9 1

friend basked in the limelight of public adulation while
his colleagues turned green with envy and set them-
selves to devising some means for turning attention in
their direction.

And yet, there are some principals who move on in
the even tenor of their ways, year after year, while all
these currents and countercurrents are seething and
eddying around them. They hold fast to that which
they know is good until that which they know is better
can be found. They believe in the things that they do,
so the chances are greatly increased that they will do
them well. They refuse to be bulhed or sneered at or
laughed out of court because they do not take up with
every fancy that catches the popular mind. They have
their own professional standards as to what constitutes
competent schoolmanship, — their own standards gained
from their own specialized experience. And somehow
I cannot help thinking that just now that is the type
of supervisor that we need and the type that ought
to be encouraged. If I were talking to Chinese teach-
ers, I might preach another sort of gospel, but Ameri-
can education to-day needs less turmoil, less dis-
traction, fewer sweeping changes. It needs to settle
itself, and look around, and find out where it is and
what it is trying to do. And it needs, above all, to rise
to a consciousness of itself as an institution manned
by intelligent individuals who are perfectly competent
themselves to set up craft standard and ideals.

92 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

But in whatever way the supervisor may utilize the
opportunity that his position presents, his second great
problem will come up for solution. The supervisor is
the captain of the teaching corps. Directly under his
control are the mainsprings of the school's Ufe and
activity, — the classroom teachers. It is coming to be
a maxim in the city systems that the supervisor has
not only the power to mold the school to the form of
his own ideals, but that he can, if he is skillful, turn
weak teachers into strong teachers and make out of
most unpromising material, an efficient, homogeneous
school staff. I believe that this is coming to be con-
sidered the prime criterion of effective school super-
vision, — not what skill the supervisor may show in
testing results, or in keeping his pupils up to a given
standard, or in choosing his teachers skillfully, but
rather the success with which he is able to take the
teaching material that is at his hand, and train it into
efficiency.

A former Commissioner of Education for one of our
new insular possessions once told me that he had come
to divide supervisors into two classes, — (i) those who
knew good teaching when they saw it, and (2) those
who could make poor teachers into good teachers. Of
these two types, he said, the latter were infinitely more
valuable to pioneer work in education than the former,

THE SUPERVISOR AND THE TEACHER 93

and he named two or three city systems from which he
had selected the supervisors who could do this sort of
thing, — for there is no limit to this process of training,
and the superintendent who can train supervisors is
just as important as the supervisor who can train
teachers.

It would take a volume adequately to treat the
various problems that this conception of the super-
visor's function involves. I can do no more at present
than indicate what seems to me the most pressing
present need in this direction. I have found that
sometimes the supervisors who insist most strenuously
that their teachers secure the cooperation of their pupils
are among the very last to secure for themselves the
cooperation of their teachers.

And to this important end, it seems to me that we
have an important suggestion in the present condition
of the classroom teacher as I have attempted to describe
it. As a type, the classroom teacher needs just now
some adequate appreciation and recognition of the work
that she is doing. If the lay pubUc is unable adequately
to judge the teacher's work, there is all the more reason
that she should look to her supervisor for that recog-
nition of technical skill, for that commendation of good
work, which can come only from a fellow-craftsman,
but which, when it does come, is worth more in the
way of real inspiration than the loudest applause of the
crowd.

94 CRATTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

Upon the whole, I believe that the outlook m this
direction is encouraging. While the teacher may miss
in her institutes and in the summer school that sort of
encouragement, she is, I believe, finding it in larger
and larger measure in the local teachers' meetings and
in her consultations with her supervisors. And when
all has been said, that is the place from which she should
look for inspiration. The teachers' meeting must be
the nursery of professional ideals. It must be a place
where the real first-hand workers in education get that
sanity of outlook, that professional point of view, which
shall fortify them effectively against the rising tide
of unprofessional interference and dictation which, as I
have tried to indicate, constitutes the most serious
menace to our educational welfare.

And it is in the encouragement of this craft spirit, in
this lifting of the teacher's caUing to the plane of craft
consciousness, it is in this that the supervisor must, I
believe, find the true and lasting reward for his work.
It is through this factor that he can, just now, work the
greatest good for the schools that he supervises and the
community that he serves. The most effective way to
reach his pupils is through the medium of their teachers,
and he can help these pupils in no better way than to
give their teachers a justifiable pride in the work that
they are doing through his own recognition of its worth
and its value, through his own respect for the significance
of the lessons that experience teaches them, through his

THE SUPERVISOR AND THE TEACHER 95

own suggestive help in making that experience profit-
able and suggestive. And just at the present moment,
he can make no better start than by assuring them of
the truth that Emerson expresses when he defines the
true scholar as the man who remains firm in his belief
that a popgun is only a popgun although the ancient
and honored of earth may solemnly affirm it to be the
crack of doom.

Education and Utility^

I WISH to discuss with you some phases of the prob-
lem that is perhaps foremost in the minds of the teach-
ing public to-day : the problem, namely, of making edu-
cation bear more directly and more efifectively upon the
work of practical, everyday hfe. I have no doubt
that some of you feel, when this problem is suggested,
very much as I felt when I first suggested to my-
self the possibility of discussing it with you. You
have doubtless heard some phases of this problem dis-
cussed at every meeting of this association for the past
ten years — if you have been a member so long as that.
Certain it is that we all grow weary of the reiteration
of even the best of truths, but certain it is also that
some problems are always before us, and until they are
solved satisfactorily they will always stimulate men to
devise means for their solution.

I should say at the outset, however, that I shall not
attempt to justify to this audience the introduction of

^ An address before the Eastern Illinois Teachers' Association, October
IS, 1909. Published as a Bulletin of the Eastern Illinois Normal School,
October, 1909.

EDUCATION AND UTILITY 97

vocational subjects into the elementary and secondary
curriculums. I shall take it for granted that you have
already made up your minds upon this matter. I shall
not take your time in an attempt to persuade you that
agriculture ought to be taught in the rural schools, or
manual training and domestic science in all schools. I
am personally convinced of the value of such work and
I shall take it for granted that you are likewise con-
vinced.

My task to-day, then, is of another type. I wish to
discuss with you some of the impUcations of this matter
of utility in respect of the work that every elementary
school is doing and always must do, no matter how
much hand work or vocational material it may intro-
duce. My problem, in other words, concerns the ordi-
nary subject-matter of the curriculum, — reading and
writing and arithmetic, geography and grammar and
history, — those things which, like the poor, are always
with us, but which we seem a Uttle ashamed to talk
about in pubhc. Truly, from reading the educational
journals and hearing educational discussion to-day, the
layman might well infer that what we term the "useful "
education and the education that is now offered by the
average school are as far apart as the two poles. We
are all famihar with the statement that the elementary
curriculum is eminently adapted to produce clerks and
accountants, but very poorly adapted to furnish re-
cruits for any other department of life. The high

98 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

school is criticized on the ground that it prepares for
college and consequently for the professions, but that it
is totally inadequate to the needs of the average citizen.
Now it would be futile to deny that there is some truth
in both these assertions, but I do not hesitate to affirm
that both are grossly exaggerated, and that the cur-
riculum of to-day, with all its imperfections, does not
justify so sweeping a denunciation. I wish to point
out some of the respects in which these charges are
fallacious, and, in so doing, perhaps, to suggest some
possible remedies for the defects that every one will
acknowledge.

In the first place, let me make myself perfectly clear
upon what I mean by the word "useful." What, after
all, is the "useful" study in our schools? What do
men find to be the useful thing in their hves? The
most natural answer to this question is that the useful
things are those that enable us to meet effectively the
conditions of life, — or, to use a phrase that is per-
fectly clear to us all, the things that help us in getting
a living. The vast majority of men and women in this
world measure all values by this standard, for most of
us are, to use the expressive slang of the day, "up
against" this problem, and "up against" it so hard
and so constantly that we interpret everything in the
greatly foreshortened perspective of immediate neces-
sity. Most of us in this room are confronting this

EDUCATION AND UTILITY 99

problem of making a living. At any rate, I am con-
fronting it, and consequently I may lay claim to some
of the authority that comes from experience.

And since I have made this personal reference, may
I violate the canons of good taste and make still an-
other ? I was face to face with this problem of getting
a living a good many years ago, when the opportimity
came to me to take a college course. I could see noth-
ing ahead after that except another struggle with this
same vital issue. So I decided to take a college course
which would, in all probabiUty, help me to solve the
problem. Scientific agriculture was not developed in
those days as it has been since that time, but a start
had been made, and the various agricultural colleges
were offering what seemed to be very practical courses.
I had had some early experience on the farm, and I
decided to become a scientific farmer. I took the
oourse of Jour^yeare and secured my degree. The
course was as useful from the standpoint of practical
agriculture as any that could have been devised at the
time. But when I graduated, what did I find? The
same old problem of getting a living still confronted me
as I had expected that it would ; and alas ! I had
got my education in a profession that demanded
capital. I was a landless farmer. Times were hard
and work of all kinds was very scarce. The farmers of
those days were inchned to scoff at scientific agricidture.
I could have worked for my board and a little more,

lOO CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

and I should have done so had I been able to find a job.
But while I was looking for the place, a chance came
to teach school, and I took the opportunity as a means
of keeping the wolf from the door. I have been en-
gaged in the work of teaching ever since. When I was
able to buy land, I did so, and I have to-day a farm of
which I am very proud. It does not pay large divi-
dends, but I keep it up for the fun I get out of it, —
and I like to think, also, that if I should lose my job as
a teacher, I could go back to the farm and show the
natives how to make money. This is doubtless an
illusion, but it is a source of solid comfort just the
same.

Now the point of this experience is simply this: I
secured an education that seemed to me to promise the
acme of utiHty. In one way, it has fulfilled that promise
far beyond my wildest expectations, but that way was
very different from the one that I had anticipated.
The technical knowledge that I gained during those
four strenuous years, I apply now only as a means of
recreation. So far as enabling me directly to get a
living, this technical knowledge does not pay one per
cent on the investment of time and money. And yet
I count the training that I got from its mastery as,
perhaps, the most useful product of my education.

Now what was the secret of its utility ? As I analyze
my experience, I find it summed up very largely in two
factors. In the first place, I studied a set of subjects

EDUCATION AND UTILITY lOI

for which I had at the outset very little taste. In study-
ing agriculture, I had to master a certain amount of
chemistry, physics, botany, and zoology, for each and
every one of which I felt, at the outset, a distinct aver-
sion and dislike. A mastery of these subjects was
essential to a realization of the purpose that I had in
mind. I was sure that I should never like them, and
yet, as I kept at work, I gradually found myself losing
that initial distaste. First one and then another opened
out its vista of truth and revelation before me, and
almost before I was aware of it, I was enthusiastic
over science. It was a long time before I generalized
that experience and drew its lesson, but the lesson, once
learned, has helped me more even in the specific task
of getting a hving than anything else that came out of
my school training. That experience taught me, not
only the necessity for doing disagreeable tasks, — for
attacking them hopefully and cheerfully, — but it also
taught me that disagreeable tasks, if attacked in the
right way, and persisted in with patience, often become
attractive in themselves. Over and over again in meet-
ing the situations of real Ufe, I have been confronted
with tasks that were initially distasteful. Sometimes I
have surrendered before them; but sometimes, too,
that lesson has come back to me, and has inspired me
to struggle on, and at no time has it disappointed me
by the outcome. I repeat that there is no technical
knowledge that I have gained that compares for a

102 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

moment with that ideal of patience and persistence.
When it comes to real, downright utility, measured by
this inexorable standard of getting a living, let me
commend to you the ideal of persistent effort. All the
knowledge that we can leam or teach will come to very
little if this element is lacking.

Now this is very far from saying that the pursuit of
really useful knowledge may not give this ideal just as
effectively as the pursuit of knowledge that will never
be used. My point is simply this: that beyond the
immediate utiHty of the facts that we teach, — indeed,
basic and fundamental to this utility, — is the utility
of the ideals and standards that are derived from our
school work. Whatever we teach, these essential fac-
tors can be made to stand out in our work, and if
our pupils acquire these we shall have done the basic
and important thing in helping them to solve the prob-
lems of real Ufe, — and if our pupils do not acquire these,
it will make little difference how intrinsically valuable
may be the content of our instruction. I feel like em-
phasizing this matter to-day, because there is in the air
a notion that utiUty depends entirely upon the content
of the curriculum. Certainly the curriculum must be
improved from this standpoint, but we are just now
losing sight of the other equally important factor, —
that, after all, while both are essential, it is the spirit of
teaching rather than the content of teaching that is
basic and fimdamental.

EDUCATION AND UTILITY IO3

Nor have I much sympathy with that extreme view of
this matter which asserts that we must go out of our
way to provide distasteful tasks for the pupil in order
to develop this ideal of persistence. I beUeve that such
a policy will always tend to defeat its own purpose. I
know a teacher who holds this belief. He goes out of
his way to make tasks difficult. He refuses to help
pupils over hard places. He does not believe in careful
assignments of lessons, because, he maintains, the pupil
ought to learn to overcome difficulties for himself, and
how can he learn unless real difficulties are presented?

The great trouble with this teacher is that his policy
does not work out in practice. A small minority of his
pupils are strengthened by it ; the majority are weakened.
He is right when he says that a pupil gains strength only
by overcoming difficulties, but he neglects a very impor-
tant qualification of this rule, namely, that a pupil gains
no strength out of obstacles that he fails to overcome. It
is the conquest that comes after effort, — this is the
factor that gives one strength and confidence. But when
defeat follows defeat and failure follows failure, it is
weakness that is being engendered — not strength.
And that is the trouble with this teacher's pupils. The
majority leave him with all confidence in their own ability
shaken out of them and some of them never recover from
the experience.

And so while I insist strenuously that the most useful
lesson we can teach our pupils is how to do disagreeable

I04 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

tasks cheerfully and willingly, please do not understand
me to mean that we should go out of our way to provide
disagreeable tasks. After all, I rejoice that my own
children are learning how to read and write and cipher
much more easily, much more quickly, and withal much
more pleasantly than I learned those useful arts. The
more quickly they get to the plane that their elders have
reached, the more quickly they can get beyond this plane
and on to the next level.

To argue against improved methods in teaching on the
ground that they make things too easy for the pupil is,
to my mind, a grievous error. It is as fallacious as to
argue that the introduction of machinery is a curse be-
■ cause it has diminished in some measure the necessity
for human drudgery. But if machinery left mankind to
rest upon its oars, if it discouraged further progress and
further effortful achievement, it would be a curse : and if
the easier and quicker methods of instruction simply
bring my children to my own level and then fail to stimu-
late them to get beyond my level, then they are a curse
and not a blessing.

I do not decry that educational policy of to-day
which insists that school work should be made as simple
and attractive as possible. I do decry that misinter-
pretation of this policy which looks at the matter from
the other side, and asserts so vehemently that the child
should never be asked or urged to do something that is
not easy and attractive. It is only because there is so

EDUCATION AND UTILITY 10$

much in the world to be done that, for the sake of
economizing time and strength, we should raise the child
as quickly and as rapidly and as pleasantly as possible
to the plane that the race has reached. But among all
the lessons of race experience that we must teach him
there is none so fundamental and important as the lesson
of achievement itself, — the supreme lesson wrung from
human experience, — the lesson, namely, that every ad-
vance that the world has made, every step that it has
taken forward, every increment that has been added to
the sum total of progress has been attained at the price of
self-sacrifice and effort and struggle, — at the price of
doing things that one does not want to do. And unless a
man is willing to pay that price, he is bound to be thd|P
worst kind of a social parasite, for he is simply Uving on
the experience of others, and adding to this capital noth-
ing of his own.

It is sometimes said that universal education is essen-
tial in order that the great mass of humanity may live in
greater comfort and enjoy the luxuries that in the past
have been vouchsafed only to the few. Personally I
think that this is all right so far as it goes, but it fails to
reach an ultimate goal. Material comfort is justified
only because it enables mankind to live more effectively
on the lower planes of life and give greater strength and
greater energy to the solution of new problems upon the
higher planes of life. The end of life can never be ade-
quately formulated in terms of comfort and ease, noi

Io6 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

even in terms of culture and intellectual enjoyment;
the end of life is achievement, and no matter how far we
go, achievement is possible only to those who are willing
to pay the price. When the race stops investing its capi-
tal of experience in further achievement, when it settles
down to take life easily, it will not take it very long to
eat up its capital and revert to the plane of the brute.

But I am getting away from my text. You will remem-
ber that I said that the most useful thing that we can
teach the child is to attack strenuously and resolutely
any problem that confronts him whether it pleases him
iR)r not, and I wanted to be certain that you did not mis-
interpret me to mean that we should, for this reason,
make our school tasks unnecessarily difficult and labori-
ous. After all, while our attitude should always be one
of interesting our pupils, their attitude should always be
one of effortful attention, — of willingness to do the task
that we think it best for them to do. You see it is a sort
of a double-headed policy, and how to carry it out is a
perplexing problem. Of so much I am certain, however,
at the outset: if the pupil takes the attitude that we are
there to interest and entertain him, we shall make a sorry
fiasco of the whole matter, and inasmuch as this very
tendency is in the air at the present time, I feel justified
in at least referring to its danger.

Now if this ideal of persistent effort is the most useful

EDUCATION AND UTILITY 107

thing that can come out of education, what is the next
most useful ? Again, as I analyze what I obtained from
my own education, it seems to me that, next to learning
that disagreeable tasks are often well worth doing, the
factor that has helped me most in getting a living has
been the method of solving the situations that confronted
me. After all, if we simply have the ideal of resolute and
aggressive and persistent attack, we may struggle indefi-
nitely without much result. All problems of life involve
certain common factors. The essential difference be-
tween the educated and the uneducated man, if we
grant each an equal measure of pluck, persistence, and
endurance, lies in the superior ability of the educated
man to analyze his problem effectively and to proceedl^
intelligently rather than blindly to its solution. I
maintain that education should give a man this ideal
of attacking any problem ; furthermore I maintain that
the education of the present day, in spite of the
anathemas that are hurled against it, is doing this in
richer measure than it has ever been done before. But
there is no reason why we should not do it in still
greater measure.

I once knew two men who were in the business of raising
fruit for commercial purposes. Each had a large orchard
which he operated according to conventional methods
and which netted him a comfortable income. One of
these men was a man of narrow education : the other a
man of Uberal education, although his training had not

I08 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

been directed in any way toward the problems of horti-
culture. The orchards had borne exceptionally well for
several years, but one season, when the fruit looked
especially promising, a period of wet, muggy weather
came along just before the picking season, and one morn-
ing both these men went out into their orchards, to find
the fruit very badly "specked." Now the conventional
thing to do in such cases was well known to both men.
Each had picked up a good deal of technical information
about caring for fruit, and each did the same thing in
meeting this situation. He got out his spraying outfit,
prepared some Bordeaux mixture, and set vigorously at
work with his pimips. So far as persistence and enter-
-^ prise went, both men stood on an equal footing. But it
happened that this was an unusual and not a conventional
situation. The spraying did not alleviate the condition.
The corruption spread through the trees like wildfire,
and seemed to thrive on copper sulphate rather than suc-
cumb to its corrosive influence.

Now this was where the difference in training showed
itself. The orchardist who worked by rule of thumb,
when he found that his rule did not work, gave up the
fight and spent his time sitting on his front porch be-
moaning his luck. The other set diligently at work to
analyze the situation. His education had not taught him
anything about the characteristics of parasitic fungi, for
parasitic fungi were not very well understood when he was
in school. But his education had left with him a general

EDUCATION AND UTILITY IO9

method of procedure for just such cases, and that method
he at once applied. It had taught him how to find the
information that he needed, provided that such informa-
tion was available. It had taught him that human experi-
ence is crystallized in books, and that, when a discovery is
made in any field of science, — no matter how specialized
the field and no matter how trivial the finding, — the dis-
covery is recorded in printer's ink and placed at the dis-
posal of those who have the inteUigence to find it and apply
it. And so he set out to read up on the subject, — to
see what other men had learned about this peculiar kind
of apple rot. He obtained all that had been written
about it and began to master it. He told his friend about
this material and suggested that the latter follow the
same course, but the man of narrow education soon found
himself utterly at sea in a maze of technical terms. The
terms were new to the other too, but he took down his
dictionary and worked them out. He knew how to use
indices and tables of contents and various other devices
that facilitate the gathering of information, and while his
uneducated friend was storming over the pedantry of
men who use big words, the other was making rapid prog-
ress through the material. In a short time he learned
everything that had been found out about this specific
disease. He learned that its spores are encased in a ge-
latinous sac which resisted the entrance of the chemicals.
He found how the spores were reproduced, how they
wintered, how they germinated in the following season ;

no CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

and, although he did not save much of his crop that year,
he did better the next. Nor were the evidences of his
superiority limited to this very useful result. He found
that, after all, very little was known about this disease,
so he set himself to find out more about it. To do this,
he started where other investigators had left off, and then
he applied a principle he had learned from his education;
namely, that the only valid methods of obtaining new
truths are the methods of close observation and con-
trolled experiment.

Now I maintain that the education which was given
that man was effective in a degree that ought to make his
experience an object lesson for us who teach. What he
had found most useful at a very critical juncture of his
business life was, primarily, not the technical knowledge
that he had gained either in school or in actual experience.
His superiority lay in the fact that he knew how to get
hold of knowledge when he needed it, how to master it
once he had obtained it, how to apply it once he had
mastered it, and finally how to go about to discover facts
that had been undetected by previous investigators. I
care not whether he got this knowledge in the elementary
school or in the high school or in the college. He might
have secured it in anyone of the three types of institution,
but he had to learn it somewhere, and I shall go further
and say that the average man has to learn it in some
school and imder an explicit and conscious method of in-
struction.

EDUCATION AND UTILITY III

But perhaps you would maintain that this statement of
the case, while in general true, does not help us out in
practice. After all, how are we to impress pupils with this
ideal of persistence and with these ideals of getting and
applying information, and with this ideal of investiga-
tion ? I maintain that these important useful ideals
may be efifectively impressed almost from the very outset
of school life. The teaching of every subject affords in-
numerable opportunities to force home their lessons. In
fact, it must be a very gradual process — a process in
which the concrete instances are numerous and rich and
impressive. From these concrete instances, the general
truth may in time emerge. Certainly the chances that
it will emerge are greatly multiplied if we ourselves
recognize its worth and importance, and lead our pupils
to see in each concrete case the operation of the general
principle. After all, the chief reason why so much of our
education miscarries, why so few pupils gain the strength
and the power that we expect all to gain, Hes in the in-
a^ility of the average individual to draw a general con-
clusion from concrete cases — to see the general in the
particular. We have insisted so strenuously upon con-
crete instruction that we have perhaps failed also to
insist that fact without law is bhnd, and that observation
without induction is stupidity gone to seed.

Let me give a concrete instance of what I mean. Not

112 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

long ago, I visited an eighth-grade class during a geog-
raphy period. It was at the time when the discovery of
the Pole had just set the whole civilized world by the ears,
and the teacher was doing something that many good
teachers do on occasions of this sort : she was turning the
vivid interest of the moment to educative purposes.
The pupils had read Peary's account of his trip and they
were discussing its details in class. Now that exercise
was vastly more than an interesting information lesson,
for Peary's achievement became, under the skillful touch
of that teacher, a type of all human achievement. I wish
that I could reproduce that lesson for you — how vividly
she pictured the situation that confronted the explorer, —
the bitter cold, the shifting ice, the treacherous open leads,
the lack of game or other sources of food supply, the long
marches on scant rations, the short hours and the un-
comfortable conditions of sleep ; and how from these
that fundamental lesson of pluck and endurance and
courage came forth naturally without preaching the moral
or indulging in sentimental "goody-goodyism." And
then the other and equally important part of the lesson,
— how pluck and courage in themselves could never have
solved the problem; how knowledge was essential, and
how that knowledge had been gained : some of it from the
experience of early explorers, — how to avoid the dreaded
scurvy, how to build a ship that could withstand the tre-
mendous pressure of the floes ; and some from the Eski-
mos, — how to live in that barren region, and how to

EDUCATION AND UTILITY II3

travel with dogs and sledges ; — and some, too, from
Peary's own early experiences, — how he had struggled
for twenty years to reach the goal, and had added this
experience to that until finally the prize was his. We
may differ as to the value of Peary's deed, but that it
staads as a type of what success in any undertaking
mfiaaia, no one can deny. And this was the lesson that
these eighth-grade pupils were absorbing, — the world-old
lesson before which all others fade into insignificance, —
the lesson, namely, that achievement can be gained only
by those who are wilhng to pay the price.

And I imagine that when that class is studying the con-
tinent of Africa in their geography work, they will learn
something more than the names of rivers and mountains
and boundaries and products, — I imagine that they will
link these facts with the names and deeds of the men who
gave them to the world. And when they study history,
it will be vastly more than a bare recital of dates and
events, — it will be alive with these great lessons of
struggle and triumph, — for history, after all, is only the
record of human achievement. And if those pupils do not
find these same lessons coming out of their own little con-
quests, — if the problems of arithmetic do not furnish an
opportunity to conquer the pressure ridges of partial
payments or the Polar night of bank discount, or if the in-
tricacies of formal grammar do not resolve themselves
into the North Pole of correct expression, — I have mis-
judged that teacher's capacities ; for the great triumph

114 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

of teaching is to get our pupils to see the fundamental
and the eternal in things that are seemingly trivial and
transitory. We are fond of dividing school studies into
the cultural and the practical, into the humanities and
the sciences. Believe me, there is no study worth the
teaching that is not practical at basis, and there is no
practical study that has not its hvunan interest and its
humanizing influence — if only we go to some pains to
search them out.

I have said that the most useful thing that education
can do is to imbue the pupil with the ideal of effortful
achievement which will lead him to do cheerfully and
effectively the disagreeable tasks that fall to his lot.
I have said that the next most useful thing that it can do
is to give him a general method of solving the problems
that he meets. Is there any other useful outcome of a
general nature that we may rank in importance with these
two ? I believe that there is, and I can perhaps tell you
what I mean by another reference to a concrete case.
I know a man who lacks this third factor, although he
possesses the other two in a very generous measure. He
is full of ambition, persistence, and courage. He is
master of the rational method of solving the problems
that beset him. He does his work intelligently and
effectively. And yet he has failed to make a good living.
Why? Simply because of his standard of what consti-
tutes a good living. Measured by my standard, he is

EDUCATION AND UTILITY II5

doing excellently well. Measured by his own standard,
he is a miserable failure. He is depressed and gloomy
and out of harmony with the world, simply because he
has no other standard for a good living than a financial
one. He is by profession a civil engineer. His work
is much more remunerative than is that of many other
callings. He has it in him to attain to professional dis-
tinction in that work. But to this opportunity he is
blind. In the great industrial center in which he works,
he is constantly irritated by the evidences of wealth and
luxury beyond what he himself enjoys. The millionaire
captain of industry is his hero, and because he is not
numbered among this class, he looks at the world through
the bluest kind of spectacles.

Now, to my mind that man's education failed some-
where, and its failure lay in the fact that it did not
develop in him ideals of success that would have made
him immune to these irritating factors. We have often
heard it said that education should rid the mind of the
incubus of superstition, and one very important effect of
universal education is that it does offer to all men an
explanation of the phenomena that formerly weighted
down the mind with fear and dread, and opened an easy
ingress to the forces of superstition and fraud and error.
Education has accomplished this function, I think, pas-
sably well with respect to the more obvious sources of
superstition. Necromancy and magic, demonism and
witchcraft, have long since been relegated to the limbo of

Il6 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

exposed fraud. Their conquest has been one of the most
significant advances that man has made above the
savage. The truths of science have at last triumphed,
and, as education has diffused these truths among the
masses, the triumph has become almost universal.

But there are other forms of superstition besides those
I have mentioned, — other instances of a false perspec-
tive, of distorted values, of inadequate standards. If
belief in witchcraft or in magic is bad because it falls
short of an adequate interpretation of nature, — if it is
false because it is inconsistent with hvrnian experience, —
then the worship of Mammon that my engineer friend
represents is tenfold worse than witchcraft, measured by
the same standards. If there is any lesson that human
history teaches with compelling force, it is surely this :
Every race which has yielded to the demon of individual-
ism and the lust for gold and self-gratification has gone
down the swift and certain road to national decay.
Every race that, through unusual material prosperity,
has lost its grip on the eternal verities of self-sacrifice
and self-denial has left the lesson of its downfall written
large upon the pages of history. I repeat that if super-
stition consists in believing something that is incon-
sistent with rational human experience, then our present
worship of the golden calf is by far the most dangerous
form of superstition that has ever befuddled the hvmian
intellect.

But, you ask, what can education do to alleviate a

EDUCATION AND UTILITY 117

condition of this sort ? How may the weak influence of
the school make itself felt in an environment that has
crystallized on every hand this unfortunate standard?
Individualism is in the air. It is the dominant spirit
of the times. It is reenforced upon every side by the
unmistakable evidences of national prosperity. It is easy
to preach the simple life, but who will Uve it unless he
has to ? It is easy to say that man should have social
and not individual standards of success and achieve-
ment, but what effect will your puerile assertion have
upon the situation that confronts us ?

Yes ; it is easier to be a pessimist than an optimist. It
is far easier to lie back and let things run their course than
it is to strike out into midstream and make what must be
for the pioneer a fatal effort to stem the current. But is
the situation absolutely hopeless ? If the forces of educa-
tion can lift the Japanese people from barbarism to en-
lightenment in two generations; if education can in a
single century transform Germany from the weakest to
the strongest power on the continent of Europe ; if five
short years of a certain type of education can change the
course of destiny in China ; — are we warranted in our
assumption that we hold a weak weapon in this fight
against Mammon?

I have intimated that the attitude of my engineer
friend toward Ufe is the result of twisted ideals. A good
many young men are going out into life with a similar
defect in their education. They gain their ideals, not

Il8 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

from the great wellsprings of human experience as
represented in history and literature, in religion and art,
but from the environment around them, and consequently
they become victims of this superstition from the outset.
As a trainer of teachers, I hold it to be one important part
of my duty to fortify my students as strongly as I can
against this false standard of which my engineer friend is
the victim. It is just as much a part of my duty to give
my students effective and consistent standards of what a
good living consists in as it is to give them the technical
knowledge and skill that will enable them to make a good
hving. If my students who are to become teachers have
standards of hving and standards of success that are
inconsistent with the great ideal of social service for which
teaching stands, then I have fallen far short of success
in my work. If they are constantly irritated by the evi-
dences of luxury beyond their means, if this irritation
sours their dispositions and checks their spontaneity, their
eflSciency as teachers is greatly lessened or perhaps en-
tirely negated. And if my engineer friend places worldly
emoluments upon a higher plane than professional effi-
ciency, I dread for the safety of the bridges that he builds.
His education as an engineer should have fortified him
against just such a contingency. It should have left
him with the ideal of craftsmanship supreme in his hfe.
And if his technical education failed to do this, his general
education ought, at least, to have given him a bias in the
right direction.

EDUCATION AND UTILITY II9

I believe that all forms of vocational and professional
education are not so strong in this respect as they should
be. Again you say to me, What can education do
when the spirit of the times speaks so strongly on the
other side ? But what is education for if it is not to pre-
serve midst the chaos and confusion of troublous times the
great truths that the race has wrung from its experience ?
How different might have been the fate of Rome, if Rome
had possessed an educational system touching every child
in the Empire, and if, during the years that witnessed her
decay and downfall, those schools could have kept steadily,
persistently at work, impressing upon every member of
each successive generation the virtues that made the
old Romans strong and virile — the virtues that enabled
them to lay the foundations of an empire that crumbled
in ruins once these truths were forgotten. Is it not the
specific task of education to represent in each generation
the human experiences that have been tried and tested
and found to work, — to represent these in the face of
opposition if need be, — to be faithful to the trusteeship
of the most priceless legacy that the past has left to the
present and to the future ? If this is not our function in
the scheme of things, then what is our function ? Is it to
stand with bated breath to catch the first whisper that will
usher in the next change ? Is it to surrender all initiative
and simply allow ourselves to be tossed hither and yon by
the waves and cross-waves of a fickle public opinion?
Is it to cower in dread of a criticism that is not only unjust

120 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

but often ill-advised of the real conditions under which we
are doing our work ?

I take it that none of us is ready to answer these ques-
tions in the affirmative. Deep down in our hearts we
know that we have a useful work to do, and we know that
we are doing it passably well. We also know our defects
and shortcomings at least as well as one who has never
faced our problems and tried to solve them. And it is
from this latter type that most of the drastic criticism,
especially of the elementary and secondary school, ema-
nates. I confess that my gorge rises within me when I
read or hear the invectives that are being hurled against
teaching as a profession (and against the work of the
elementary and secondary school in particular) by men
who know nothing of this work at first hand. This is
the greatest handicap under which the profession of teach-
ing labors. In every other important field of human ac-
tivity a man must present his credentials before he takes
his seat at the council table, and even then he must sit
and listen respectfully to his elders for a while before he
ventures a criticism or even a suggestion. This plan may
have its defects. It may keep things on too conserv-
ative a basis ; but it avoids the danger into which we as
a profession have fallen, — the danger of "half-baked"
theories and unmatured policies. To-day the only man
that can get a respectable hearing at our great national
educational meetings is the man who has something new
and bizarre to propose. And the more startling the pro-

EDUCATION AND UTILITY 121

posal, the greater is the measure of adulation that he
receives. The result of this is a continual straining for
effect, an enormous annual crop of fads and fancies,
which, though most of them are happily short-lived, keep
us in a state of continual turmoil and confusion.

Now, it goes without saying that there are many ways
of making education hit the mark of utility in addition to
those that I have mentioned. The teachers down in the
lower grades who are teaching little children the arts of
reading and writing and computation are doing vastly
more in a practical direction than they are ever given
credit for doing ; for reading and writing and the manipu-
lation of numbers are, next to oral speech itself, the prime
necessities in the social and industrial world. These arts
are being taught to-day better than they have ever been
taught before, — and the technique of their teaching is
undergoing constant refinement and improvement.

The school can do and is doing other useful things.
Some schools are training their pupils to be well mannered
and courteous and considerate of the rights of others.
They are teaching children one of the most basic and
fundamental laws of himian life; namely, that there
are some things that a gentleman cannot do and some
things that society will not stand. How many a painful
experience in solving this very problem of getting a living
could be avoided if one had only learned this lesson pass-
ing well ! What a pity it is that some schools that stand

122 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

to-day for what we call educational progress are failing in
just this particular — are sending out into the world an
annual crop of boys and girls who must learn the great
lesson of self-control and a proper respect for the rights of
others in the bitter school of experience, — a school in
which the rod will never be spared, but whose chasten-
ing scourge comes sometimes, alas, too late !

There is no feature of school life which has not its
almost infinite possibilities of utiUty. But after all, are
not the basic and fundamental things these ideals that I
have named? And should not we who teach stand for
idealism in its widest sense? Should we not ourselves
subscribe an undying fideUty to those great ideals for
which teaching must stand, — to the ideal of social serv-
ice which lies at the basis of our craft, to the ideals
of effort and discipline that make a nation great and its
children strong, to the ideal of science that dissipates the
black night of ignorance and superstition, to the ideal of
culture that humanizes mankind ?

The Scientific Spirit in Education^

I know that I do not need to plead with this audience
for a recognition of the scientific spirit in the solution
of educational problems. The long life and the en-
viable record of this Society of Pedagogy testify in
themselves to that spirit of free inquiry, to the calm
and dispassionate search for the truth which lies at
the basis of the scientific method. You have gathered
here, fortnight after fortnight, to discuss educational
problems in the light of your experience. You have
reported your experience and listened to the results
that others have gleaned in the course of their daily
work. And experience is the corner stone of science.

Some of the most stimulating and clarifying discus-
sions of educational problems that I have ever heard have
been made in the sessions of this Society. You have
been scientific in your attitude toward education, and
I may add that I first learned the lessons of the real
science of education in the St. Louis schools, and under
the inspiration that was furnished by the men who

* An address delivered before the St. Louis Society of Pedagogy, April
16, 1910,

124 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

were members of this Society. What I knew of the
science of education before I came to this city ten years
ago, was gleaned largely from books. It was deductive,
a priori, in its nature. What I learned here was the
induction from actual experience.

My very first introduction to my colleagues among
the school men of this city was a lesson in the science of
education. I had brought with me a letter to one of
your principals. He was in the office down on Locust
Street the first Saturday that I spent in the city. I
presented my letter to him, and, with that true Southern
hospitality which has always characterized your corps,
he took me immediately under his wing and carried me
out to luncheon with him.

We sat for hours in a little restaurant down on Sixth
Street, — he was my teacher and I was his pupil. And
gradually, as the afternoon wore on, I realized that I
had met a master craftsman in the art of education.
At first I talked glibly enough of what I intended to do,
and he listened sympathetically and helpfully, with a
little quizzical smile in his eyes as I outlined my am-
bitious plans. And when I had run the gamut of my
dreams, he took his turn, and, in true Socratic fashion,
yet without making me feel in the least that I was
only a dreamer after all, he refashioned my theories.
One by one the Httle card houses that I had built up
were deftly, smoothly, gently, but completely demolished.
I did not know the A B C of schoolcraft — but he did

THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT IN EDUCATION 1 25

not tell me that I did not. He went at the task of
instruction from the positive point of view. He proved
to me, by reminiscence and example, how different are
actual and ideal conditions. And finally he wound up
with a single question that opened a new world to me.
"What," he asked, "is the dominant characteristic of
the child's mind?" I thought at first that I was on
safe ground — for had I not taken a course in child
study, and had I not measured some hundreds of school
children while working out a university thesis? So I
began with my list. But, at each characteristic that I
mentioned he shook his head. "No," he said, "no;
that is not right." And when finally I had exhausted
my list, he said to me, "The dominant characteristic of
the child's mind is its seriousness. The child is the most
serious creature in the world."

The answer staggered me for a moment. Like ninety-
nine per cent of the adult population of this globe, the
seriousness of the child had never appealed to me. In
spite of the theoretical basis of my training, that single,
dominant element of child life had escaped me. I had
gained my notion of the child from books, and, I also fear,
from the Sunday supplements. To me, deep down in
my heart, the child was an animated joke. I was im-
mersed in unscientific preconceptions. But the master
craftsman had gained his conception of child life from
intimate, empirical acquaintance with the genus boy.
He had gleaned from his experience that fundamental

126 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

truth: "The child is the most serious creature in the
world."

Sometime I hope that I may make some fitting ac-
knowledgment of the debt of gratitude that I owe to
that man. The opportunities that I had to talk with
him were all too few, but I did make a memorable visit
to his school, and studied at first hand the great work
that he was doing for the pupils of the Columbia dis-
trict. He died the next year, and I shall never forget
the words that stood beneath his picture that night in
one of the daily papers: "Charles Howard: Architect
of Character."

The essence of the scientific spirit is to view experi-
ence without prejudice, and that was the lesson that I
learned from the school system of St. Louis.

The difference between the ideal child and the real
child, — the difference between what fancy pictures a
schoolroom to be and what actual first-hand acquaint-
ance shows that it is, the difference between a precon-
ceived notion and an actual stubborn fact of experience,
— these were among the lessons that I learned in these
schools. But, at the same time, there was no crass
materialism accompanying this teaching. There was
no loss of the broader point of view. A fact is a fact,
and we cannot get around it, — and this is what scien-
tific method has insisted upon from its inception. But
always beyond the fact is its significance, its meaning.

THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT IN EDUCATION 1 27

That the St. Louis schools have for the last fifty years
stood for the larger view ; that they have never, so far
as I know, exploited the new and the bizarre simply
because it was new and strange, — this is due, I be-
lieve, to the insight and inspiration of the man^ who
first fashioned the framework of this system, and
breathed into it as a system the vitalizing element of
idealism. Personally, I have not always been in sym-
pathy with the teachings of the Hegelian philosophy, —
I have not always understood them, — but no man
could witness the silent, steady, unchecked growth of
the St. Louis schools without being firmly and indelibly
impressed with dynamic value of a richly conceived and
rigidly wrought system of fundamental principles. The
cause of education has suffered much from the failure
of educators to break loose from the shackles of the past.
But it has, in some places, suffered still more from the
tendency of the human mind to confuse fundamental
principles with the shackles of tradition. The rage for
the new and the untried, simply because it is new and
untried, — this has been, and is to-day, the rock upon
which real educational progress is most likely to be
wrecked. This is a rock, I believe, that St. Louis has
so far escaped, and I have no doubt that its escape has
been due, in large measure, to the careful, rigid, laborious,
and yet illuminating manner in which that great captain
charted out its course.

» Dr. W. T. Harris.

128 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

III

Fundamentally, there is, I believe, no discrepancy, no
inconsistency, between the scientific spirit in education
and what may be called the philosophical spirit. As I
have suggested, there are always two dangers that
must be avoided : the danger, in the first place, of think-
ing of the old as essentially bad ; and, on the other
hand, the danger of thinking of the new and strange
and unknown as essentially bad ; the danger of confus-
ing a sound conservatism with a blind worship of estab-
ished custom; and the danger of confusing a sound
radicalism with the blind worship of the new and the
bizarre.

Let me give you an example of what I mean. There
is a rather bitter controversy at present between two
factions of science teachers. One faction insists that
physics and chemistry and biology should be taught in
the high school from the economic point of view, — that
the economic applications of these sciences to great
human arts, such as engineering and agriculture, should
be emphasized at every point, — that a great deal of
the material now taught in these sciences is both use-
less and unattractive to the average high-school pupil.
The other faction maintains that such a course would
mean the destruction of science as an integral part of
the secondary culture course, — that science to be cul-
tural must be pure science, — must be viewed apart

THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT IN EDUCATION 1 29

from its economic applications, — apart from its rela-
tions to the bread-and-butter problem.

Now many of the advocates of the first point of
view — many of the people that would emphasize the
economic side — are animated by the spirit of change
and unrest which dominates our latter-day civilization.
They wish to follow the popular demand. ''Down with
scholasticism!" is their cry; "Down with this blind
worship of custom and tradition ! Let us do the thing
that gives the greatest immediate benefit to our pupils.
Let us discard the elements in our courses that are hard
and dry and barren of practical results." Now these
men, I believe, are basing their argument upon the
fallacy of immediate expediency. The old is bad, the
new is good. That is their argument. They have no
sheet anchor out to windward. They are willing to
drift with the gale.

Many of the advocates of the second point of view
— many of the people who hold to the old line, pure-
science teaching — are, on the other hand, animated by
a spirit of irrational conservatism. "Down with radical-
ism! " they shout ; "Down with the innovators ! Things
that are hard and dry are good mental discipline. They
made our fathers strong. They can make our children
strong. What was good enough for the great minds of
the past is good enough for us."

Now these men, I believe, have gone to the other
extreme. They have confused custom and tradition

130 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

with fundamental and eternal principles. They have
thought that, just because a thing is old, it is good,
just as their antagonists have thought that just because
a thing is new it is good.

In both cases, obviously, the scientific spirit is lack-
ing. The most fundamental of all principles is the
principle of truth. And yet these men who are teachers
of science are — both classes of them — ruled them-
selves by dogma. And meantime the sciences are in
danger of losing their place in secondary education.
The rich promise that was held out a generation ago
has not been fulfilled. Within the last decade, the en-
rollment in the science courses has not increased in
proportion to the total enrollment, while the enroll-
ment in Latin (which fifteen years ago was about to be
cast upon the educational scrap heap) has grown by
leaps and bounds.

Now this is a type of a great many controversies in
education. We talk and theorize, but very seldom do
we try to find out the actual facts in the case by any
adequate tests.

It was the lack of such tests that led us at the Uni-
versity of Illinois to enter upon a series of impartial
investigations to see whether we could not take some of
these mooted questions out of the realm of eternal con-
troversy, and provide some definite solutions. We
chose among others this controversy between the eco-
nomic scientists and the pure scientists. We took a high-

THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT IN EDUCATION I3I

school class and divided it into two sections. We tried
to place in each section an equal number of bright and
mediocre and dull pupils, so that the conditions would
be equalized. Then we chose an excellent teacher, a
man who could approach the problem with an open
mind, without prejudice or favor. During the present
year he has been teaching these parallel sections. In
one section he has emphasized economic appUcations;
in the other he has taught the class upon the customary
pure-science basis. He has kept a careful record of his
work, and at stated intervals he has given both sections
the same tests. We propose to carry on this investi-
gation year after year with different classes, different
teachers, and in different schools. We are not in a
hurry to reach conclusions.

Now I said that the safeguard in all work of this
sort is to keep our grip firm and fast on the eternal
truths. In this work that I mention we are not trying
to prove that either pure science or applied science
interests our pupils the more or helps them the more
in meeting immediate economic situations. We do not
propose to measure the success of either method by
its effect upon the bread-winning power of the pupil.
What we believe that science teaching should insure, is
a grip on the scientific method and an illuminating in-
sight into the forces of nature, and we are simply at-
tempting to see whether the economic applications will
make this grip firmer or weaker, and this insight clearer

132 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

or more obscure. I trust that this point is plain, for it
illustrates what I have just said regarding the danger of
following a popular demand. We need no experiment
to prove that economic science is more useful in the
narrow sense than is pure science. What we wish to
determine is whether a judicious mixture of the two
sorts of teaching will or will not enable us to realize
this rich cultural value much more effectively than a
traditional purely cultural course.

Now that illustrates what I think is the real and
important application of the scientific spirit to the solu-
tion of educational problems. You wiU readily see that
it does not do away necessarily with our ideals. It
is not necessarily materialistic. It is not necessarily
ideaUstic. Either side may utilize it. It is a quite
impersonal factor. But it does promise to take some
of our educational problems out of the field of useless
and wasteful controversy, and it does promise to get
men of conflicting views together, — for, in the case
that I have just cited, if we prove that the right ad-
mixture of methods may enable us to realize both a
cultural and a utilitarian value, there is no reason why
the culturists and the utilitarians should not get together,
cease their quarreling, take off their coats, and go to
work. Few people will deny that bread and butter is a
rather essential thing in this life of ours ; very few will
deny that material prosperity in temperate amounts is
good for all of us ; and very few also will deny that far

THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT IN EDUCATION I33

more fundamental than bread and butter — far more
important than material prosperity — are the great
fundamental and eternal truths which man has wrought
out of his experience and which are most effectively
crystallized in the creations of pure art, the master-
pieces of pure literature, and the discoveries of pure
science.

Certainly if we of the twentieth century can agree
upon any one thing, it is this : That life without toil is
a crime, and that any one who enjoys leisure and com-
fort and the luxuries of living without paying the price
of toil is a social parasite. I believe that it is an im-
portant function of public education to impress upon
each generation the highest ideals of living as well as
the arts that are essential to the making of a livelihood,
but I wish to protest against the doctrine that these
two factors stand over against one another as the posi-
tive and negative poles of human existence. In other
words, I protest against the notion, that the study of
the practical everyday problems of human hfe is without
what we are pleased to call a culture value, — that in
the proper study of those problems one is not able to
see the operation of fundamental and eternal principles.

I shall readily agree that there is always a grave
danger that the trivial and temporary objects of every-
day life may be viewed and studied without reference
to these fundamental principles. But this danger is
certainly no greater than that the permanent and eter-

134 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

nal truths be studied without reference to the actual,
concrete, workaday world in which we live. I have
seen exercises in manual training that had for their
purpose the perfection of the pupil in some little art
of joinery for which he would, in all probability, have
not the slightest use in his later life. But even if he
should find use for it, the process was not being taught
in the proper way. He was being made conscious
only of the little trivial thing, and no part of his in-
struction was directed toward the much more important,
fundamental lesson, — the lesson, namely, that "a little
thing may be perfect, but that perfection itself is not a
little thing."

I say that I have witnessed such an exercise in the
very practical field of manual training. I may add
that I went through several such exercises myself, and
emerged with a disgust that always recurs to me when
I am told that every boy will respond to the stimulus
of the hammer and the jack plane. But I should hasten
to add that I have also seen what we call the humani-
ties so taught that the pupil has emerged from them
with a supreme contempt for the Ufe of labor and a
feeling of disgust at the petty and trivial problems of
human life which every one must face. I have seen
art and literature so taught as to leave their students
not with the high purpose to mold their lives in ac-
cordance with the high ideals that art and literature
represent, not the firm resolution to do what they

THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT IN EDUCATION I35

could to relieve the ugliness of the world where
they found it ugly, or to do what they could to
ennoble life when they found it vile; but rather
with an attitude of calm superiority, as if they were
in some way privileged to the delights of aesthetic
enjoyment, leaving the baser born to do the world's
drudgery,

I have seen the principles of agriculture so taught as
to leave with the student the impression that he could
raise more corn than his neighbor and sell it at a higher
price if he mastered the principles of nitrification; and
all without one single reference to the basic principle of
conservation upon which the welfare of the human
race for all time to come must inevitably depend, —
without a single reference to the moral iniquity of
waste and sloth and ignorance. But I have also seen
men who have mastered the scientific method, — the
method of controlled observation, and unprejudiced
induction and inference, — in the laboratories of pure
science; and who have gained so overweening and
hypertrophied a regard for this method that they have
considered it too holy to be contaminated by applica-
tion to practical problems, — who have sneered con-
temptuously when some adventurer has proposed, for
example, to subject the teaching of science itself to the
searchlight of scientific method.

I trust that these examples have made my point
clear, for it is certainly simple enough. If vocational

136 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

education means simply that the arts and skills of in-
dustrial life are to be transmitted safely from genera-
tion to generation, a minimum of educational machinery
is all that is necessary, and we do not need to worry
much about it. If vocational education means simply
this, it need not trouble us much ; for economic condi-
tions will sooner or later provide for an effective means
of transmission, just as economic conditions will sooner
or later perfect, through a blind and empirical process
of elimination, the most effective methods of agricul-
ture, as in the case of China and other overpopulated
nations of the Orient.

But I take it that we mean by vocational education
something more than this, just as we mean by cultural
education something more than a veneer of language,
history, pure science, and the fine arts. In the former
case, the practical problems of life are to be lifted to
the plane of fundamental principles ; in the latter case,
fundamental principles are to be brought down to the
plane of present, everyday Ufe. I can see no dis-
crepancy here. To my mind there is no cultural sub-
ject that has not its practical outcome, and there is no
practical subject that has not its humanizing influence
if only we go to some pains to seek it out. I do not
object to a subject of instruction that promises to put
dollars into the pockets of those that study it. I do
object to the mode of teaching that subject which fails
to use this effective economic appeal in stimulating a

THE SCIENTrFIC SPIRIT IN EDUCATION I37

glimpse of the broader vision. I do not object to the
subject that appeals to the pupil's curiosity because it
informs him of the wonderful deeds that men have done
in the past. I do object to that mode of teaching this
subject which simply arouses interest in a spectacular
deed, and then fails to use this interest in the inter-
pretation of present problems. I do not contend that
in either case there must be an explicit pointing of
morals and drawing of lessons. But I do contend that
the teacher who is in charge of the process should
always have this purpose in the forefront of his con-
sciousness, and — now by direct comparison, now by
indirection and suggestion — guide his pupils to the
goal desired.

I hope that through careful tests, we shall some day
be able to demonstrate that there is much that is good
and valuable on both sides of every controverted educa-
tional question. After all, in this complex and intricate
task of teaching to which you and I are devoting our
Uves, there is too much at stake to permit us for a
moment to be dogmatic, — to permit us for a moment
to hold ourselves in any other attitude save one of
openness and reception to the truth when the truth
shall have been demonstrated. Neither your ideas nor
mine, nor those of any man or group of men, living or
dead, are important enough to stand in the way of the
best possible accomplishment of that great task to which
we have set our hands.

138 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

But I did not propose this morning to talk to you
about science as a part of our educational curriculum,
but rather about the scientific spirit and the scientific
method as effective instruments for the solution of our
own peculiar educational problems. I have tried to
give you reasons for believing that an adoption of this
policy does not necessarily commit us to materialism
or to a narrowly economic point of view. I have at-
tempted to show that the scientific method may be
applied to the solution of our problems while we still
retain our faith in ideals ; and that, unless we do retain
that faith, our investigations will be without point or
meaning.

This problem of vocational education to which I
have just referred is one that is likely to remain im-
solved until we have made a searching investigation
of its factors in the light of scientific method. Some
people profess not to be worried by the difficulty of
finding time in our elementary and secondary schools
for the introduction of the newer subjects making for
increased vocational efficiency. They would cut the
Gordian knot with one single operation by eliminating
enough of the older subjects to make room for the
new. I confess that this solution does not appeal to
me. Fimdamentally the core of the elementary cur-
riculum must, I believe, always be the arts that are

THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT IN EDUCATION I39

essential to every one who lives the social life. In other
words, the language arts and the number arts are, and
always must be, the fundamentals of elementary edu-
cation. I do not believe that specialized vocational
education should ever be introduced at the expense of
thorough training in the subjects that already hold
their place in the curriculum. And yet we are con-
fronted by the economic necessity of solving in some
way this vocational problem. How are we to do it?

It is here that the scientific method may perhaps
come to our aid. The obvious avenue of attack upon
this problem is to determine whether we cannot save
time and energy, not by the drastic operation of elimi-
nating old subjects, but rather by improving our
technique of teaching, so that the waste may be re-
duced, and the time thus saved given to these new
subjects that are so vociferously demanding admission.
In Cleveland, for example, the method of teaching
spelling has been subjected to a rigid scientific treat-
ment, and, as a result, spelling is being taught to-day
vastly better than ever before and with a much smaller
expenditure of time and energy. It has been due, very
largely, to the application of a few well-known prin-
ciples which the science of psychology has furnished.

Now that is vastly better than saying that spelling is
a subject that takes too much time in our schools and
consequently ought forthwith to be eliminated. In
all of our school work enough time is undoubtedly

14© CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

wasted to provide ample opportunity for training the
child thoroughly in some vocation if we wish to vocation-
alize him, and I do not think that this would hurt
him, even if he does not follow the vocation in later Ufe.

To-day we are attempting to detect these sources of
waste in technique. The problems of habit building or
memorizing are already well on the way to solution.
Careful tests have shown the value of doing memory
work in a certain definite way — learning by unit
wholes rather than by fragments, for example. Experi-
ments have been conducted to determine the best
length of time to give to drill processes, such as spelling,
and penmanship, and the fundamental tables of arith-
metic. It is already clearly demonstrated that brief
periods of intense concentration are more economical
than longer periods during which the monotony of
repetition fags the mind to a point where it can no
longer work effectively. We are also beginning to see
from these tests, that a systematic method of attacking
such a problem as the memorizing of the tables will do
much to save time and promote efficiency. We are
finding that it is extremely profitable to instruct chil-
dren in the technique of learning, — to start them out
in the right way by careful example, so that much of
the time and energy that was formerly dissipated, may
now be conserved.

And there is a suggestion, also, that in the average
school, the vast possibiUties of the child's latent energy

THE SCIENTIFIC SPEEUT IN EDUCATION I4I

are only imperfectly realized. A friend of mine stumbled
accidentally upon this fact by introducing a new method
of grading. He divided his pupils into three groups
or streams. The group that progressed the fastest was
made up of those who averaged 85 per cent and over
in their work. A middle group averaged between 75
per cent and 85 per cent in their work, and a third,
slow group was made up of those who averaged below
75 per cent. At the end of the first month, he found
that a certain proportion of his pupils, who had formerly
hovered around the passing grade of 70, began to forge
ahead. Many of them easily went into the fastest
stream, but they were still satisfied with the minimum
standing for that group. In other words, whether we
like to admit it or not, most men and women and boys
and girls are content with the passing grades, both in
school and in hfe. So common is the phenomenon that
we think of the matter fatalistically. But supply a
stimulus, raise the standard, and you will find some of
these individuals forging up to the next level.
j^ Professor James's doctrine of latent energies bids fair
to furnish the solution of a vast number of perplexing
educational problems. Certain it is that our pupils of
to-day are not overburdened with work. They are
sometimes irritated by too many tasks, sometimes
dulled by dead routine, sometimes exhilarated to the
point of mental ennui by spectacular appeals to im-
mediate interest. But they are seldom overworked, or

142 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

even worked to within a healthful degree of the fatigue
point.

Elementary education has often been accused of
transacting its business in small coin, — of dealing with
and emphasizing trivialities, — and yet every time that
the scientific method touches the field of education, it
reveals the fundamental significance of little things.
Whether the third-grade pupil should memorize the
multiplication tables in the form, "8 times 9 equals 72"
or simply "8-9's — 72 " seems a matter of insignificance
in contrast with the larger problems that beset us.
And yet scientific investigation tells us clearly and
unequivocally that any useless addition to a formula
to be memorized increases the time for reducing the
formula to memory, and interferes significantly with its
recall and application. It may seem a matter of trivial
importance whether the pupil increases the subtrahend
number or decreases the minuend number when he
subtracts digits that involve taking or borrowing; and
yet investigation proves that to increase the subtrahend
number is by far the simpler process, and eliminates
both a source of waste and a source of error, which, in
the aggregate, may assume a significance to mental
economy that is well worth considering.

In fact, if we are ever to solve the broader, bigger, more
attractive problems, — like the problem of vocational
education, or the problem of retardation, — we must
first find a solution for some of the smaller and seemingly

THE SCIENTIFIC SPnOT IN EDUCATION 143

trivial questions of the very existence of which the lay
public may be quite unaware, but which you and I know
to mean an untold total of waste and inefficiency in the
work that we are tr)dng to do.

And one reason why the scientific attitude toward edu-
cational problems appeals to me is simply because this
attitude carries with it a respect for these seemingly
trivial and commonplace problems; for just as the
greatest triumph of the teaching art is to get our pupils to
see in those things of life that are fleeting and transitory
the operation of fundamental and eternal principles, so the
glory of the scientific method lies in its power to reveal the
significance of the conmionplace and to teach us that no
slightest detail of our daily work is necessarily devoid of
inspiration ; that every slightest detail of school method
and school management has a meaning and a significance
that it is worth our while to ponder.

The Possibility of Training Children how to
Stxjdy*

In its widest aspects, the problem of teaching pupils
how to study forms a large part of the larger educational
problem. It means, not only teaching them how to read
books, and to make the content of books part of their own
mental capital, but also, and perhaps far more signifi-
cantly, teaching them how to draw lessons from their own
experiences ;) not only how to observe and classify and
draw conclusions, but also how to evaluate their ex-
perience — how to judge whether certain things that they
do give adequate or inadequate results.

In the narrower sense, however, the art of study may be
said to consist in the ability to assimilate the experiences
of others, and it is in this narrower sense that I shall dis-
cuss the problem to-day. It is not only in books that
human experience is recorded, and yet it is true that the
reading of books is the most economical means of gaining
these experiences ; consequently, we may still further

^ A paper read before the Superintendents' Section of the Illinois State
Teachers' Association, December 29, 1910.

144

TRAINING CHILDREN HOW TO STUDY 145

narrow our problem to this : How may pupils be trained
effectively to glean, through the medium of the printed
page, the great lessons of race experience?

The word "study" is thus used in the sense in which
most teachers employ it. When we speak of a pupil's
studying his lessons, we commonly mean that he is bend-
ing over a text-book, attempting to assimilate the contents
of the text. Just what it means to study, even in this
narrow sense of the term, — just what it means, psycho-
logically, to assimilate even the simplest thoughts of
others, — I cannot teU you, and I do not know of any one
who can answer this seemingly simple question satisfac-
torily. We all study, but what happens in oUr minds
when we do study is a mystery. We all do some think-
ing, and yet the psychology of thinking is the great un-
discovered and unexplored region in the field of mental
science. Until we know something of the psychology of
thinking, we can hope for very little definite information
concerning the psychology of study, for study is so in-
timately bound up with thinking that the two are not
to be separated.

But even if it is impossible at the present time to ana-
lyze the process of studying, we are pretty well agreed as
to what constitutes successful study, and many rules have
been formulated for helping pupils to acquire effective
fiamts of study. These rules concern us only indirectly
at the present time, for our problem is still narrower in its
scope. It has to do with the possibility of so training

146 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

children in the art of study, not only that they may study
effectively in school, but also that they may carry over the
habits and methods of study thus acquired into the tasks
of later life. In other words, the topic that we are dis-
cussing is but one phase of the problem of formal disci-
pline, — the problem of securing a transfer of training
from a specific field to other fields ; and my purpose is to
view this topic of "study" in the light of what we know
concerning the possibilities of transfer.

Let me take a specific example. I am not so much con-
cerned with the problem of getting a pupil to master a
history lesson quickly and effectively, — not how he may
best assimilate the facts concerning the Missouri Com-
promise, for example. My task is rather to determine
how we can make his mastery of the Missouri Compro-
mise a lesson in the general art of study, — how that
mastery may help him develop what we used to call the
general power of study, — the capacity to apply an effec-
tive method of study to other problems, perhaps, very
far removed from the history lesson; in other words,
how that single lesson may help him in the more general
task of finding any type of information when he needs it,
of assimilating it once he has found it, and of applying it
once he has assimilated it.

In an audience of practical teachers, it is hardly neces-
sary to emphasize the significance of doing this very thing.
From one point of view, it may be asserted that the whole
future of what we term general education, as distinguished

TRAINING CHILDREN HOW TO STUDY 147

from technical or vocational education, depends upon our
ability to solve problems like this, and solve them satisfac-
torily. We can never justify universal general education
beyond the merest rudiments unless we can demon-
strate acceptably that the training which general educa-
tion furnishes will help the individual to solve the every-
day problems of his life. Either we must train the pupil
in a general way so that he will be able to acquire special-
ized skill more quickly and more efifectively than will the
pupil who lacks this general training ; or we must give
up a large part of the general-culture courses that now
occupy an important part in our elementary and secon-
dary curriculmns, and replace these with technical and
vocational subjects that shall have for their purpose the
development of specialized efl5ciency.

All teachers, I take it, are alive to the grave dangers
of the latter policy. Whether we have thought the
matter through logically or not we certainly /ee/ strongly
that too early speciahzation will work a serious injury to
the cause of education, and, through education, to the
larger cause of social advancement and enlightenment.
We view with grave foreboding any poUcy that will shut
the door of opportunity to any child, no matter how
humble or how unpromising. And yet we also know that,
imless the general education that we now offer can be dis-
tinctiy shown to have a beneficial influence upon special-
ized efficiency, we shall be forced by economic conditions
into this very policy. It is small wonder, then, that so

148 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

many of our educational discussions and investigations
to-day turn upon this problem ; and among the various
phases of the problem none is more significant than that
which is covered by our topic of to-day, — How may we
develop in the pupil a general power or capacity for gain-
ing information independently of schools and teachers ?
If we could adequately develop this power, there is much
in the way of specialized instruction that could be safely
left to the individual himself. If we could teach him
how to study, then we could perhaps trust him to master
some of the principles of any calling that he undertakes
in so far as these principles can be mastered from books.
To teach the child to study effectively is to do the most
useful thing that could be done to help him to adjust
himself to any environment of modem civilized life into
which he may be thrown. For there is one thing that
the more radical advocates of a narrow vocational edu-
cation commonly forget, and that is the constant change
that is going on in industrial processes. When we limit
our vocational teaching to a mere mastery of technique,
there is no guarantee that the process which we teach
to-day may not be discarded in five or ten years from
to-day. Even the narrower technical principles which
are so extremely important to-day may be relatively
insignificant by the time that the child whom we are
training takes his place in the industrial world. But if
we can arm the individual with the more fundamental
principles which are fixed for all time ; and if, in addi-

TRAINING CHILDREN HOW TO STUDY 149

tion to this, we can teach him how to master the
specialized principles which may come into the field un-
heralded and unexpected, and turn topsy-turvy the older
methods of doing his work, then we shall have done
much toward helping him in solving that perplexing
problem of gaining a livelihood.

I shall not try in this discussion of the problem of study
to summarize completely the principles and precepts that
have been presented so well in the four books on the
subject that have appeared in the last two years. I do
not know, in fact, of any book that is more useful to the
teacher just at present than Professor Frank McMurry's
How to Study and Teaching how to Study. It is a book
that is both a help and a delight, for it is clear and well-
organized, and written in a vivacious style and with a
wealth of concrete illustration that holds the attention
from beginning to end. The chief fault that I have to find
with it is the fault that I have to find with almost every
educational book that comes from the press to-day, —
the tendency, namely, to imply that the teacher of to-day
is doing very little to solve these troublesome problems.
As a matter of fact, many teachers are securing excellent
results from their attempts to teach pupils how to study.
Otherwise we should not find so many energetic young
men to-day who are making an effective individual mas-
tery of the principles of their respective trades and pro-

150 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

fessions independently of schools and teachers. Our atti-
tude toward these questions, far from being that of the
pessimist, should be that of the optimist. Our task
should be to seek out these successful teachers, and find
out how they do their work.

Among the most important points emphasized by the
recent writers upon the art of study is the necessity for
some form of motivation in the work of mastering the
text. We all know that if a pupil feels a distinct need for
getting information out of a book, the chances are that he
will get it if the book is available and if he can read. To
create a problem that will involve in its solution the
gaining of such information is, therefore, one of the best
approaches to a mastery of the art of study. It is, how-
ever, only the beginning. It furnishes the necessary
energy, but does not map out the path along which this
energy is to be expended. And this is where the greater
emphasis, perhaps, is needed.

One of the best teachers that I ever knew taught the
subject that we now call agronomy, — a branch of agri-
cultural science that has to do with field crops. I was a
mere boy when I sat imder his instruction, but certain
points in his method of teaching made a most distinct
impression upon me. Lectures we had, of course, for
lecturing was the orthodox method of class instruction.
But this man did something more than merely lecture.
He assigned each one of his students a plat of ground on
the college farm. Upon this plat of ground, a definite

TRAINING CHILDREN HOW TO STUDY I51

experiment was to be conducted. One of my experiments
had to do with the smut of oats. I was to try the effect of
treating the seed with hot water in order to see whether it
would prevent the fungus from later destroying the ripen-
ing grain. The very nature of the problem interested
me intensely. I began to wonder about the life-history
of this fungus, — how it looked and how it germinated
and how it grew and wrought its destructive influence.
It was not long before I found myself spending some of
my leisure moments in the Ubrary trying to find out
what was known concerning this subject. I was not so
successful as I might have been, but I am confident that
I learned more about parasitic fungi under the spur of
that curiosity than I should have done in five times the
number of hours spent in formal, meaningless study.

But the point of my experience is not that a problem
interest had been awakened, but rather that the white
heat of that interest was not utilized so completely as it
might have been utilized in fixing upon my mind some im-
portant details in the general method of running down
references and acquiring information. That was the
moment to strike, and one serious defect of our school or-
ganization to-day is that most teachers, like my teacher
at that time, have so much to do that anything like indi-
vidual attention at such moments is out of the question.

Next to individual attention, probably, the best way to
overcome the difficulty is to give class instruction in these
matters, — to set aside a definite period for teaching

152 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

pupils the technique of using books. If one could arouse
a sufficiently general problem interest, this sort of in-
struction could be made most effective. But even if the
problem interest is not general, I think that it is well to
assume that it exists in some pupils, at least, and to give
them the benefit of class instruction in the art of study,
— even if some of the seed should fall upon barren soil.

This aspect of teaching pupils how to study is particu-
larly important in the upper grades and the high school,
where pupils have sufl&ciently mastered the technique of
reading to be intrusted with individual problems, and
where some reference books are commonly available.
Chief among these always is the dictionary, and to get
pupils to use this ponderous volume effectively is one of
the important steps in teaching them how to study.
Here, too, it is easy to be pedantic. As I shall insist
strenuously a little later, the chief factor in insuring a
transfer of training from one subject to another is to
leave in the pupil's mind a distinct consciousness that
the method that he has been trained to follow is worth
while, — that it gets results. The dictionary habit is
likely to begin and end within the schoolroom unless
steps are taken to insure the operation of this factor.
It is easy to overwork the dictionary and to use it
fruitlessly, in so great a measure, in fact, that the pupil
will never want to see a dictionary again.

Aside from the use of the dictionary, is the use of the
helps that modern books provide for finding the informa-

TRAINING CHILDREN HOW TO STUDY 1 53

tion that may be desired, — indices, tables of contents,
marginal and cross-references, and the like. These, again,
are most significant in the work of the upper grades and
the high school, and here again if we wish the skill that is
developed in their use to be transferred, we must take
pains to see that the pupil really appreciates their value,
— that he realizes their time-saving and energy-saving
functions. I do not know that there is any better way to
do this than to let him flounder around without them for
a little so that his sense of their value may be enhanced
by contrast.

Another important step emphasized by the recent
writers is the need for training children to pick out the
significant features in the text or portion of the text that
they are reading. This, of course, is work that is to be
undertaken from the very moment that they begin to use
books. How to do it effectively is a puzzling problem
and one that will amply repay study and experimentation
by the individual teacher. Much studying of lessons by
teachers and pupils together will help, provided that the
exercise is spirited and vital, and is not looked upon by the
pupils as an easy way of getting out of recitation work.
McMurry strongly recommends the marking of books to
indicate the topic sentences and the other salient features.
Personally, I am sure from my own experience that the
assignment is all-important here, and that study ques-
tions and problems which can be answered or solved by

154 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

reference to the text will help matters very much ; but
care must, of course, be taken that the continued use
of such questions does not preclude the pupil's own
mastery of the art of study. To eliminate this danger, it
is well that the pupils be requested frequently to make
out their own lists of questions, and, as speedily as pos-
sible, both the questions made by the pupil and those
made by the teacher, should be replaced by topical
outlines. By taking care that the questions are logically
arranged, — that is, that a general question refer to the
topic of the paragraph, and other subordinate questions to
the subordinate details of the paragraph, — the transition
from the questions to the topical outline may be readily
made. Simultaneously with this will go the transition
in recitation from the question-and-answer type to the
topical type ; and when you have trained a class into the
habit of topical recitation, — when each pupil can talk
right through a topic (not around it or underneath it or
above it) without the use of "pumping" questions by the
teacher, — you have gone a long way toward developing
the art of study.

The transfer of this training, however, is quite another
matter. There are pupils who can work up excellent
topical recitations from their school text-books but who
are utterly at sea in getting a grasp on a subject treated
in other books. Here again the problem lies in getting
the pupil to see the method apart from its content, and
to show him that it really brings results that are worth

TRAINING CHILDREN HOW TO STUDY 1 55

while. If, in our training in the topical method, we are
too formal arid didactic, the art of study wUl begin and
end right there. It is here that the factor of motiva-
tion is of supreme importance. When real problems are
raised which require for their solution intelligent reading,
the general worth of the method of study can be clearly
shown. I do not go so far as to say that the pupil should
never be required to study unless he has a real problem
that he wishes to solve. In fact, I think that we still
have a large place for the formal, systematic mastery of
texts by every pupil in our schools. I do contend, how-
ever, that the frequent introduction of real problems
will give us an opportunity to show the pupil that the
method that he has utilized in his more formal school
work is adequate and essential to do the thing that appeals
to him as worth while. Only in this way, I believe, can
we insure that transfer of training which is the impor-
tant factor from our present standpoint.

And I ought also to say, parenthetically, that we should
not interpret too narrowly this word "motivation."
Let us remember that what may appeal to the adult as
an effective motive does not always appeal to the child
as such. Economic motives are the most effective, prob-
ably, in our own adult lives, and probably very effective
with high-school pupils, but economic motives are not
always strong in young children, nor should we wish them
to be. It is not always true that the child will approach a
school task sympathetically when he knows that the task

156 CR.\FTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

is an essential preparation for the life that is going on
about him. He may work harder at a task in order to get
ahead of his fellow-pupils than he would if the motive
were to fit him to enter a shop or a factory. Motive is
largely a matter of instinct with the child, and he may,
indeed, be perfectly satisfied with a school task just as it
stands. For example, we all know that children enjoy
the right kind of drill. Repetition, especially rhythmic
repetition, is instinctive, — it satisfies an inborn need.
Where such a condition exists, it is an obvious waste of
time to search about for more indirect motives. The
economical thing to do is to turn the ready energy of the
child into the channel that is already open to it, so long as
this procedure fits in with the results that we must secure.
I feel like emphasizing this fact, inasmuch as the terms
"problem interest" and "motivation" seem most com-
monly to be associated in the minds of teachers with what
we adults term "real" or economic situations. To learn
a lesson well may often be a sufficient motive, — may
often constitute a "real" situation to the child, — and if
it does, it will serve very effectively our purposes in this
other task, — namely, getting the pupil to see the worth
of the method that we ask him to employ.

There are one or two points of a general nature in
connection with the art of study that should be empha-
sized. In the first place, the upper-grade and high-school

TRAINING CHILDREN HOW TO STUDY 1 57

pupils are, I believe, mature enough to appreciate in some
degree what knowledge really means. One of the falla-
cies of which I was possessed on completing my work in
the lower schools was the belief that there are some
men who know everything. I naturally concluded that
the superintendent of schools was one of these men;
the family physician was another; the leading man in
my town was a third ; and any one who ever wrote a book
was put, ex officio so to speak, into this class without fur-
ther inquiry. One of the most astounding revelations
of my later education was to learn that, after all, the
amount of real knowledge in this world, voluminous
though it seems, is after all pitiably small. Of opinion
and speculation we have a surplus, but of real, downright,
hard fact, our capital is still most insignificant. And I
wonder if something could not be done in the high school
to teach pupils the difference between fact and opinion,
and something also of the slow, laborious process through
which real facts are accumulated. How many mistakes
of life are due to the lack of the judicial attitude right
here. What mistakes we all make when we try to
evaluate writings outside of our own special field of
knowledge or activity. Nothing depresses me to-day
quite so much as the readiness with which laymen mis-
take opinion for fact in the field of psychology and edu-
cation, — and I suppose that my own hasty acceptance
of statements in other fields would have a similar effect
upon the specialists of those fields.

158 CRAPTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

Can general education help us out at all in this matter ?
I have only one or two suggestions to make, and even
these may not be worth a great deal. In the recent
Polar controversy, the sympathies of the general public
were, I think, at the outset with Cook. This was per-
haps, natural, and yet the trained mind ought to have
withheld judgment for one reason if for no other, — and
that one reason was Peary's long Arctic service, his un-
questioned mastery of the technique of polar travel,
his general reputation for honesty and caution in advanc-
ing opinions. By all the lessons that history teaches,
Peary's word should have had precedence over Cook's, for
Peary was a specialist, while Cook was only an amateur.
And yet the general public discounted entirely those
lessons, and trusted rather the novice, with what results
it is now unnecessary to review, — and in nine cases out
of ten, the results will be the same.

Could we not, as part of our work in training pupils to
study, also teach them to give some sort of an evaluation
J;o the authorities that they consult? Could we not
teach them that, in nine cases out of ten, at least, the man
who has the message most worth listening to is the man
who has worked the hardest and the longest in his field,
and who enjoys the best reputation among his fellow-
workers ? Sometimes, I admit, the rule does not work,
and especially with men whose reputations as authorities
have outlived their period of productivity, but even this
mistake could be guarded against. Certainly high-

TRAINING CHILDREN HOW TO STUDY 1 59

school pupils ought distinctly to understand that the
authors of their text-books are not always the most
learned men or the greatest authorities in the fields that
they treat. The use of biographical dictionaries, of the
books that are appearing in various fields giving brief
biographies and often some authoritative estimate of the
workers in these fields, is important in this connection.

McMurry recommends that pupils be encouraged to
take a critical attitude toward the principles they are set
to master, — to judge, as he says, the soundness and
worth of the statements that they learn. This is certainly
good advice, and wherever the pupil can intelligently
deal with real sources, it is well frequently to have him
check up the statements of secondary sources. But,
after all, this is the age of the specialist, and to trust one's
untrained judgment in a field remote from one's knowl-
edge and experience is likely to lead to unfortunate re-
sults. We have all sorts of illustrations from the igno-
rant man who will not trust the physician or the health
official in matters of sanitation; because he lacks the
proper perspective, he jumps to the conclusion that the
specialist is a fraud. Would it not be well to supplement
McMurry's suggestion by the one that I have just made,
— that is, that we train pupils how to evaluate authori-
ties as well as facts, — how to protect themselves from the
quack and the faker who live like parasites upon the
ignorance of laymen, both in medicine, in education, and
in Arctic exploration ?

l6o CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

And I believe that there is a place, also, in the high
school, especially in connection with the work in science
and history, for giving pupils some idea of how knowledge
is really gained. I should not teach science exclusively
by the laboratory method, nor history exclusively by the
source method, but I should certainly take frequent op-
portunity to let pupils work through some simple prob-
lems from the beginnings, struggling with the conditions
somewhat as the discoverers themselves struggled; fol-
lowing up "blind leads" and toilsomely returning for a
fresh start; meeting with discouragement; and finally
feeUng, perhaps, some of the joy that comes with success
after struggle ; and all in order that they may know better
and appreciate more fully the cost and the worth of that
intellectual heritage which the master-minds of the world
have bequeathed to the present and the future. And
along with this, as they master the principles of science,
let them learn also the human side of science, — the story
of Newton, withholding his great discovery for years
until he could be absolutely certain that it was a law;
until he could get the very commonplace but obstreper-
ous moon into harmony with his law of falling bodies ; —
the story of Darwin, with his twenty-odd years of the
most patient and persistent kind of toil ; delving into
the most impromising materials, reading the driest
books, always on the lookout for the facts that would
point the way to the explanation of species ; — the
story of Morse and his bitter struggle against poverty,

TRAINING CHILDREN HOW TO STUDY l6l

and sickness, and innumerable disappointments up
to the time when, in advancing years, success crowned
his efiforts.

All this may seem very remote from the prosaic task of
teaching pupils how to study ; and yet it will lend its in-
fluence toward the attainment of that end. For, after
all, we must lead our pupils to see that some books, in
spite of their formidable difiiculties and their apparent
abstractions, are still close to life, and that the truth which
lies in books, and which we wish them to assimilate, has
been wrought out of human experience, and not brought
down miraculously from some remote storehouse of wis-
dom that is accessible only to the elect. We poke a good
deal of fun at book learning nowadays, and there is a
pedantic type of book learning that certainly deserves all
the ridicule that can be heaped upon it. But it is not
wise to carry satire and ridicule too far in any direction,
and especially when it may mean creating in young minds
a distrust of the force that, more than any other single
factor, has operated to raise man above the savage.

To teach the child the art of study means, then, that
we take every possible occasion to impress upon his
mind the value of study as a means of solving real and
vital problems, and that, with this as an incentive, we
graduaUy and persistently and systematically lead him
to grasp the method of study as a method, — that is,

1 62 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

slowly and gradually to abstract the method from the
particular cases to which he applies it and to emotion-
alize it, — to make it an ideal. Only in this way, so
far as we may know, can the art be so generalized as
to find ready application in his later Ufe. To this end,
it is essential that the steps be taken repeatedly, — not
begun to-day and never thought of again until next
year, — but daily, even hourly, insuring a little growth.
This means, too, not only that the teacher must pos-
sess a high degree of patience, — that first principle of
pedagogic skill, — but also that he have a comprehen-
sive grasp of the problem, and the ability to separate
the woods from the trees, so that, to him at least, the
chief aim will never be lost to view.

But, even at its best, the task is a severe one, and
we need, here as elsewhere in education, carefully con-
trolled tests and experiments, that will enable us to get
at the facts. Above all, let me protest against the in-
cidental theory of teaching pupils how to study. To
adopt the incidental policy in any field of education, —
whether in arithmetic, or spelling, or reading ; whether
in developing the power of reasoning or the memory,
or the art of study, — is to throw wide open the doors
that lead to the lines of least resistance, to lax methods,
to easy honors, to weakened mental fiber, and to scamped
work. Just as the pernicious doctrine of the subcon-
scious is the^ first and last refuge of the psycho-faker,
so incidental learning is the first and last refuge of soft

TRAINING CHILDREN HOW TO STUDY 1 63

pedagogy. And I mean by incidental learning, going
at a teaching task in an indolent, unreflective, hit-or-
miss fashion in the hope that somehow or other from
this process will emerge the very definite results that
we desire.

A Plea for the Definite in Education^

One way to be definite in education is to formulate
as clearly as we can the aims that we hope to realize in
every stage of our work. The task of teaching is so
complex that, unless we strive earnestly and persistently
to reduce it to the simplest possible terms, we are bound
to work blindly and ineffectively.

It is only one phase of this topic that I wish to dis-
cuss with you this morning. My plea for the definite
in education will be Umited not only to the field of edu-
cational aims and values, but to a small comer of that
field. Your morning's program has dealt with the
problem of teaching history in the elementary school.
I should like, if you are willing, to confine my remarks
to this topic, and to attack the specific question, What
is the history that we teach in the grades to do for the
pupil ? I wish to make this limitation, not only because
what I have to say will be related to the other topics
on the program, but also because this very subject of

• An address delivered March i8, 1910, before the Central Illinois
Teachers' Association.

164

A PLEA FOR THE DEFINITE IN EDUCATION 1 65

history is one which the lack of a definite standard of
educational value has been keenly felt.

I should admit at the outset that my interest in his-
tory is purely educational. I have had no special
training in historical research. As you may perhaps
infer from my discussion, my acquaintance with his-
torical facts is very far from comprehensive. I speak
as a layman in history, — and I do it openly and, per-
haps, a little defiantly, for I believe that the last person
to pass adequate judgment upon the general educational
value of a given department of knowledge is a man
who has made the department a life study. I have
little faith in what the mathematician has to say regard-
ing the educational value of mathematics for the average
elementary pupil, because he is a special pleader and his
conclusions cannot escape the coloring of his prejudice.
I once knew an enthusiastic brain specialist who main-
tained that, in every grade of the elementary school,
instruction should be required in the anatomy of the
human brain. That man was an expert in his own line.
He knew more about the structure of the brain than
any other living man. But knowing more about brain
morphology also implied that he knew less about many
other things, and among the things that he knew little
about were the needs and capacities of children in the
elementary school. He was a special pleader; he had
been dealing with his special subject so long that it had
assumed a disproportionate value in his eyes. Brain

1 66 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING'

morphology had given him fame, honor, and worldly
emoluments. Naturally he would have an exaggerated
notion of its value.

It is the same with any other specialist. As special-
ists in education, you and I are likely to overemphasize
the importance of the common school in the scheme of
creation. Personally I am convinced that the work of
elementary education is the most profoundly significant
work in the world ; and yet I can realize that I should
be no fit person to make comparisons if the welfare of a
number of other professions and callings were at stake.
I should let an unbiased judge make the final deter-
mination.

The first question for which we should seek an answer
in connection with the value of any school subject is
this : How does it influence conduct ? Let me insist
at the outset that we cannot be definite by saying
simply that we teach history in order to impart in-
struction. If there is one thing upon which we are all
agreed to-day it is this: that it is what our pupils do
that counts, not what they know. The knowledge
that they may possess has value only in so far as it
may directly or indirectly be turned over into action.

Let us not be mistaken upon this point. Knowledge
is of the utmost importance, but it is important only as
a means to an end — and the end is condu9t. If my

A PLEA FOR THE DEFINITE IN EDUCATION 1 67

pupils act in no way more efl5dently after they have
received my instruction than they would have acted
had they never come under my influence, then my
work as a teacher is a failure. If their conduct is less
efl&cient, then my work is not only a failure, — it is a
catastrophe. The knowledge that I impart may be
absolutely true; the interest that I arouse may be
intense ; the affection that my pupils have for me may
be genuine ; but all these are but means to an end, and
if the end is not attained, the means have been futile.

We have faith that the materials which we pour in
at the hopper of sense impression will come out sooner
or later at the spout of reaction, transformed by some
mysterious process into eflicient conduct. While the
machinery of the process, Uke the mills of the gods,
certainly grinds slowly, it is some consolation to beUeve
that, at any rate, it does grind ; and we are perhaps fain
to believe that the exceeding fineness of the grist is
responsible for our failure to detect at the spout all of
the elements that we have been so careful to pour in
at the hopper. What I should like to do is to examine
this grinding process rather carefully, — to gain, if
possible, some definite notion of the kind of grist we
should like to produce, and then to see how the ma-
chinery may be made to produce this grist, and in what
proportions we must mix the material that we pour into
the hopper in order to gain the desired result.

I have said that we must ask of every subject that

l68 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

we teach, How does it influence conduct? Now when
we ask this question concerning history a variety of
answers are at once proposed. One group of people
will assert that the facts of history have value because
they can be directly applied to the needs of contem-
porary Hfe. History, they wiU tell us, records the
experiences of the race, and if we are to act intelligently
we must act upon the basis of this experience. History
informs us of the mistakes that former generations have
made in adjusting themselves to the world. If we
know history, we can avoid these mistakes. This t3^e
of reasoning may be said to ascribe a utilitarian value
to the study of history. It assumes that historical
knowledge is directly and immediately appHcable to
vital problems of the present day.

Now the difficulty with this value, as with many
others that seem to have the sanction of reason, is that
it does not possess the sanction of practical test. While
knowledge doubtless affects in some way the present
policy of our own government, it would be very hard
to prove that the influence is in any way a direct in-
fluence. It is extremely doubtful whether the knowl-
edge that the voters have of the history of their coun-
try will be recalled and apphed at the ballot box next
November. I do not say that the study of history
that has been going on in the common schools for a
generation will be entirely without effect upon the
coming election. I simply maintain that this influence

A PLEA FOR THE DEFINITE IN EDUCATION 1 69

will be indirect, — but I believe that it will be none
the less profound. One's vote at the next election will
be determined largely by immediate and present con-
ditions. But the way in which one interprets these
conditions cannot help being profoundly influenced by
one's historical study or lack of such study.

If it is clear, then, that the study of history cannot
be justified upon a purely utilitarian basis, we may
pass to the consideration of other values that have been
proposed. The speciaUst in history, whose right to
legislate upon this matter I have just called into ques-
tion, will probably emphasize the disciplinary value of
this study. SpeciaUsts are commonly enthusiastic over
the discipUnary value of their special subjects. Their
own minds have been so well developed by the pursuit
of their special branches that they are impelled to rec-
ommend the same discipline for all minds. Again, we
must not blame the speciaUst in history, for you and I
think the same about our own special type of activity.

From the disciplinary point of view, the study of
history is supposed to give one the mastery of a special
method of reasoning. Historical method involves, above
all else, the careful sifting of evidence, the minutest
scrutiny of sources in order to judge whether or not the
records are authentic, and the utmost care in coming
to conclusions. Now it will be generally agreed that
these are desirable types of skill to possess whether one
is an historian or a lawyer or a teacher or a man of

lyO CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

business. And yet, as in all types of discipline, the
difficulty lies, not so much in acquiring the specific
skill, as in transferring the skill thus acquired to other
fields of activity. Skill of any sort is made up of a
multitude of little specific habits, and it is a current
theory that habit functions effectively only in the
specific situation in which it has been built up, or in
situations closely similar. But whether this is true or
not it is obvious that the teaching of elementary history
provides very few opportunities for this type of training.

A third view of the way in which historical knowl-
edge is thought to work into action may be discussed
under the head of the cultural value. History, like
literature, is commonly assimied to give to the individual
who studies it, a certain amount of that commodity
which the world calls culture. Precisely what culture
consists in, no one, apparently, is ready to tell us, but
we all admit that it is real, if not tangible and definable,
nor can we deny that the individual who possesses
culture conducts himself, as a rule, differently from the
individual who does not possess it. In other words,
culture is a practical thing, for the only things that are
practical are the things that modify or control human
action.

It is doubtless true that the study of history does add
to this intangible something that we call "culture,"
but the difficulty with this value lies in the fact that,
even after we have accepted it as valid, we are in no

A PLEA FOR THE DEFINITE IN EDUCATION I71

way better off regarding our methods. Like many
other theories, its truth is not to be denied, but its
truth gives us no inkling of a solution of our problem.
What we need is an educational value of history, the
recognition of which will enable us to formulate a
method for realizing the value.

The imsatisfactory character of these three values
that have been proposed for history — the utilitarian,
the disciplinary, and the cultural — is typical of the
values that have been proposed for other subjects.
Unless the aim of teaching any given subject can be
stated in definite terms, the teacher must work very
largely in the dark; his efforts must be largely of the
" hit-or-miss" order. The desired value may be realized
under these conditions, but, if it is realized, it is mani-
festly through accident, not through iateUigent design.
It is needless to point out the waste that such a blunder-
ing and haphazard adjustment entails. We aU know
how much of our teaching fails to hit the mark, even
when we are clear concerning the result that we desire ;
we can only conjecture how much of the remainder fails
of effect because we are hazy and obscure concerning its
purpose.

Let us return to our original basic principle and see
what light it may throw upon our problem. We have
said that the efficiency of teaching must always be

172 -CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

measured by the degree in which the pupil's conduct is
modified. Taking conduct as our base, then, let us
reason back and see what factors control conduct.
and, if possible, how these " controls " may be influ-
enced by the processes of education working through
the lesson in history.

I shall start with a very simple and apparently trivial
example. When I was hving in the Far West, I came
to know something of the Chinese, who are largely en-
gaged, as you know, in domestic service in that part of
the country. Most of the Chinese servants that I met
corresponded very closely with what we read concerning
Chinese character. We have all heard of the Chinese
servant's unswerving adherence to a routine that he has
once established. They say in the West that when a
housewife gives her Chinese servant an object lesson in
the preparation of a certain dish, she must always be
very careful to make her demonstration perfect the
first time. If, inadvertently, she adds one egg too
many, she will find that, in spite of her protestations,
the superfluous egg will always go into that preparation
forever afterward. From what I know of the typical
Oriental, I am sure that this warning is not over-
drawn.

Now here is a bit of conduct, a bit of adjustment,
that characterizes the Chinese cook. Not only that,
but, in a general way, it is peculiar to all Chinese, and
hence may be called a national trait. We might call

A PLEA FOR THE DEFINITE IN EDUCATION 1 73

it a vigorous national prejudice in favor of precedent.
But whatever we call it, it is a very dominant force in
Chinese Ufe. It is the trait that, perhaps more than
any other, distinguishes Chinese conduct from Euro-
pean or American conduct. Now one might think this
trait to be instinctive, — to be bred in the bone rather
than acquired, — but this I am convinced is not alto-
gether true. At least one Chinese whom I knew did
not possess it at all. He was born on a western ranch
and his parents died soon after his birth. He was
brought up with the children of the ranch owner, and
is now a prosperous rancher himself. He lacks every
characteristic that we commonly associate with the
Chinese, save only the physical features. His hair is
straight, his skin is safifron, his eyes are slightly aslant,
— but that is all. As far as his conduct goes, — and
that is the essential thing, — he is an American. In
other words, his traits, his tendencies to action, are
American and not Chinese. His life represents the
triumph of environment over heredity.

When you visit England you find yourselves among a
people who speak the same language that you speak, —
or, perhaps it would be better to say, somewhat the
same; at least you can understand each other. In a
great many respects, the Englishman and the American
are similar in their traits, but in a great many other
respects they differ radically. You cannot, from your
knowledge of American traits, judge what an English-

174 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

man's conduct will be upon every occasion. If you
happened on Piccadilly of a rainy morning, for example,
you would see the English clerks and storekeepers and
professional men riding to their work on the omnibuses
that thread their way slowly through the crowded
thoroughfare. No matter how rainy the morning, these
men would be seated on the tops of the omnibuses,
although the interior seats might be quite unoccupied.
No matter how rainy the morning, many of these men
would be faultlessly attired in top hats and frock coats,
and there they would sit through the drizzling rain,
protecting themselves most inadequately with their
opened umbrellas. Now there is a bit of conduct that
you cannot find duplicated in any American city. It
is a national habit, — or, perhaps, it would be better
to say, it is an expression of a national trait, — and
that national trait is a prejudice in favor of conven-
tion. It is the thing to do, and the typical English-
man does it, just as, when he is sent as civil governor
to some lonely outpost in India, with no companions
except scantily clad native servants, he always dresses
conscientiously for dinner and sits down to his solitary
meal clad in the conventional swallow-tail coat of
civilization.

Now the way in which a Chinese cook prepares a
custard, or the way in which an English merchant rides
in an omnibus, may be trivial and unimportant matters
in themselves, and yet, like the straw that shows which

A PLEA FOR THE DEFINITE IN EDUCATION 1 75

way the wind blows, they are indicative of vast and
profound currents. The conservatism of the Chinese
empire is only a larger and rnore comprehensive ex-
pression of the same trait or prejudice that leads the
cook to copy literally his model. The present educa-
tional situation in England is only another expression
of that same prejudice in favor of the established order^
which finds expression in the merchant on the Piccadilly
omnibus.

Whenever you pass from one country to another you
will find this difference in tendencies to action. In
Germany, for example, you will find something that
amounts almost to a national fervor for economy and
frugality. You will find it expressing itself in the care
with which the German housewife does her marketing.
You will find it expressing itself in the intensive methods
of agriculture, through which scarcely a square inch of
arable land is permitted to lie fallow, — through which,
for example, even the shade trees by the roadside fur-
nish fruit as well as shade, and are annually rented for
their fruit value to industrious members of the com-
munity, — and it is said in one section of Germany
that the only people known to steal fruit from these
trees along the lonely country roads are American
tourists, who, you will see, also have their peculiar
standards of conduct. You will find this same fervor
for frugality and economy expressing itself most ex-
tensively in that splendid forest policy by means of

176 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

which the German states have conserved their magnifi-
cent timber resources.

But, whatever its expression, it is the same trait, —
a trait born of generations of struggle with an un-
yielding soil, and yet a trait which, combined with the
German fervor for science and education, has made
possible the marvelous progress that Germany has
made within the last half century.

What do we mean by national traits? Simply this:
prejudices or tendencies toward certain typical forms
of conduct, common to a given people. It is this com-
munity of conduct that constitutes a nation. A coun-
try whose people have different standards of action
must be a divided country, as our own American history
sufficiently demonstrates. Unless upon the vital ques-
tions of human adjustment, men are able to agree, they
cannot live together in peace. If we are a distinctive
and unique nation, — if we hold a distinctive and
imique place among the nations of the globe, — it is
because you and I and the other inhabitants of our
country have developed distinctive and unique ideals
and prejudices and standards, all of which unite to
produce a community of conduct. And once granting
that our national characteristics are worth while, that
they constitute a distinct advance over the characteris-
tics of the other nations of the earth, it becomes the
manifest duty of the school to do its share in perpetuat-
ing these ideals and prejudices and standards. Once

A PLEA FOR THE DEFINITE IN EDUCATION 1 77

let these atrophy through disuse, once let them fail of
transmission because of the decay of the home, or the
decay of the school, or the decay of the social institu-
tions that typify and express them, and our country
must go the way of Greece and Rome, and, although
our blood may thereafter continue pure and unmixed,
and our physical characteristics may be passed on from
generation to generation unchanged in form, our nation
will be only a memory, and its history ancient history.
Some of the Greeks of to-day are the lineal descendants
of the Athenians and Spartans, but the ancient Greek
standards of conduct, the Greek ideals, died twenty
centuries ago, to be resurrected, it is true, by the renais-
sance, and to enjoy the glorious privilege of a new and
wider sphere of life, — but among an alien people, and
under a northern sun.

And so the true aim of the study of history in the
elementary school is not the realization of its utilitarian,
its cultural, or its disciplinary value. It is not a mere
assimilation of facts concerning historical events, nor
the memorizing of dates, nor the picturing of battles,
nor the learning of lists of presidents, — although each
of these factors has its place in fulfilling the function of
historical study. The true function of national history
in our elementary schools is to establish in the pupils*
minds those ideals and standards of action which dif-
ferentiate the American people from the rest of the
world, and especially to fortify these ideals and stand-

178 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

ards by a description of the events and conditions
through which they developed. It is not the facts of
history that are to be applied to the problems of life;
it is rather the emotional attitude, the point of view,
that comes not from memorizing, but from appreciating,
the facts. A mere fact has never yet had a profound
influence over human conduct. A principle that is
accepted by the head and not by the heart has never
yet stained a battle field nor turned the tide of a popu-
lar election. Men act, not as they think, but as they
feel, and it is not the idea, but the ideal, that is im-
portant in history.

But what are the specific ideals and standards for
which our nation stands and which distinguish, in a
very broad but yet explicit manner, our conduct from
the conduct of other peoples? If we were to ask this
question of an older country, we could more easily
obtain an answer, for in the older countries the national
ideals have, in many cases, reached an advanced point
of self-consciousness. The educational machinery of
the Grerman empire, for example, turns upon this prob-
lem of impressing the national ideals. It is one aim of
the ofl5cial courses of study, for instance, that history
shall be so taught that the pupils will gain an overweening
reverence for the reigning house of Hohenzollem. Nor
is that newer ideal of national unity which had its seed

A PLEA FOR THE DEFINITE IN EDUCATION 1 79

sown in the Franco-Prussian War in any danger of neg-
lect by the watchful eye of the government. Not only
must the teacher impress it upon every occasion, but
every attempt is also made to bring it daily fresh to the
minds of the people through great monuments and me-
morials. Scarcely a hamlet is so small that it does not
possess its Bismarck Denkmal, often situated upon some
commanding hill, telling to each generation, in the sub-
lime poetry of form, the greatness of the man who made
German unity a reality instead of a dream.

But in our country, we do not thus consciously formu-
late and express our national ideals. We recognize them
rather with averted face as the adolescent boy recog-
nizes any virtue that he may possess, as if half-ashamed
of his weakness. We have monuments to our heroes,
it is true, but they are often inaccessible, and as often
they fail to convey in any adequate manner, the great-
ness of the lessons which the lives of these heroes repre-
sent. Where Germany has a hundred or more im-
pressive memorials to the genius of Bismarck, we have
but one adequate memorial to the genius of Washington,
while for Lincoln, who represents the typical American
standards of life and conduct more faithfully than
any other one character in our history, we have no
memorial that is at all adequate, — and we should have
a thousand. Some day our people will awake to the
possibilities that inhere in these palpable expressions of
the impalpable things for which our country stands.

l8o CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

We shall come to recognize the vast educative im-
portance of perpetuating, in every possible way, the
deep truths that have been established at the cost of
so much blood and treasure.

To embody our national ideals in the personages of
the great figures of history who did so much to estab-
lish them is the most elementary method of insuring
their conservation and transmission. We are beginning
to appreciate the value of this method in our introduc-
tory courses of history in the intermediate and lower
grammar grades. The historical study outlined for
these grades in most of our state and city school pro-
grams includes mainly biographical materials. As long
as the purpose of this study is kept steadily in view
by the teacher, its value may be very richly realized.
The danger lies in an obscure conception of the pur-
pose. We are always too prone to teach history didac-
tically, and to teach biographical history didactically
is to miss the mark entirely. The aim here is not pri-
marily instruction, but inspiration ; not merely learning,
but also appreciation. To tell the story of Lincoln's Ufe
in such a way that its true value will be realized requires
first upon the part of the teacher a sincere appreciation
of the great lesson of Lincoln's life. Lincoln typifies the
most significant and representative of American ideals.
His career stands for and illustrates the greatest of our
national principles, — the principle of equality, — not
the equality of birth, not the equality of social station,

A PLEA FOR THE DEFINITE IN EDUCATION l8l

but the equality of opportunity. That a child of the
lowliest birth, reared under conditions apparently the
most unfavorable for rich development, limited by the
sternest poverty, by lack of formal education, by lack
of family pride and traditions, by lack of an environ-
ment of culture, by the hard necessity of earning his
own livelihood almost from earliest childhood, — that
such a man should attain to the highest station in the
land and the proudest eminence in its history, and
should have acquired from the apparently unfavorable
environment of his early life the very qualities that
made him so efl5cient in that station and so permanent
in that eminence, — this is a miracle that only America
could produce. It is this conception that the teacher
must have, and this he must, in some measure, im-
press upon his pupils.

In the teaching of history in the elementary school,
the biographical treatment is followed in the later gram-
mar grades by a systematic study of the main events
of American history. Here the method is different,
but the purpose is the same. This purpose is, I take
it, to show how our ideals and standards have developed,
through what struggles and conflicts they have become
firmly established; and the aim must be to have our
pupils relive, as vividly as possible, the pain and the
struggles and the striving and the triumph, to the end

1 82 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

that they may appreciate, however feebly, the heritage
that is theirs.

Here again it is not the facts as such that are im-
portant, but the emotional appreciation of the facts, and
to this end, the coloring must be rich, the pictures
vivid, the contrasts sharply drawn. The successful
teacher of history has the gift of making real the past.
His pupils struggle with Columbus against a frightened,
ignorant, mutinous crew; they toil with the Pilgrim
fathers to conquer the wilderness; they follow the
bloody trail of the Deerfield victims through the forest
to Canada; they too resist the encroachments of the
Mother Country upon their rights as English citizens;
they suffer through the long winter at Valley Forge and
join with Washington in his midnight vigils; they re-
joice at Yorktown; they dream with Jefferson and
plead with Webster; their hearts are fired with the
news of Sumter; they clinch their teeth at Bull Run;
they gather hope at Donelson, but they shudder at
Shiloh; they struggle through the Wilderness with
Grant; tired but triumphant, they march home from
Appomattox ; and through it all, in virtue of the limit-
less capacities of vicarious experience, they have shared
the agonies of Lincoln.

Professor Mace, in his essay on Method in History^
tells us that there are two distinct phases to every his-
torical event. These are the event itself and the hu-
man feeling that brought it forth. It has seemed to

A PLEA FOR THE DEFINITE IN EDUCATION 1 83

me that there are three phases, — the event itself, the
feeling that brought it forth, and the feeling to which
it gave birth; for no event is historically important
unless it has transformed in some way the ideals and
standards of the people, — unless it has shifted, in some
way, their point of view, and made them act differently
from the way in which they would have acted had the
event never occurred. One leading purpose in the teach-
ing of history is to show how ideals have been trans-
formed, how we have come to have standards different
from those that were once held.

Many of our national ideals have their roots deep
down in English history. Not long ago I heard a
seventh-grade class discussing the Magna Charta. It
was a class in American history, and yet the events that
the pupils had been studying occurred three centuries
before the discovery of America. They had become
familiar with the long list of abuses that led to the
granting of the charter. They could tell very glibly
what this great document did for the English people.
They traced in detail the subsequent events that led
to the establishment of the House of Commons. All
this was American history just as truly as if the events
described had occurred on American soil. They were
gaining an appreciation of one of the most fundamental
of our national ideals, — the ideal of popular govern-
ment. And not only that, but they were studying
popular government in its simplest form, uncomplicated

184 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

by the innumerable details and the elaborate or-
ganizations which characterize popular government
to-day.

And when these pupils come to the time when this
ideal of self-government was transplanted to American
soil, they will be ready to trace with intelligence the
changes that it took on. They will appreciate the
marked influence which geographical conditions exert
in shaping national standards of action. How richly
American history reveals and illustrates this influence
we are only just now beginning to appreciate. The
French and the English colonists developed different
types of national character partly because they were
placed imder different geographical conditions. The
St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes gave the French an
easy means of access into the vast interior of the con-
tinent, and provided innumerable temptations to ex-
ploitation rather than a few incentives to development.
Where the French influence was dispersed over a wide
territory, the English influence was concentrated. As
a consequence, the English energy went to the develop-
ment of resources that were none too abimdant, and to
the establishment of permanent institutions that would
conserve these resources. The barrier of the Appalachi-
ans hemmed them in, — three hundred miles of alternate
ridge and valley kept them from the West until they
were numerically able to settle rather than to exploit
this country. Not a little credit for the ultimate Eng-

A PLEA FOR THE DEFINITE IN EDUCATION 1 85

lish domination of the continent must be given to these
geographical conditions.

But geography does not tell the whole story. The
French colonists differed from the English colonists
from the outset in standards of conduct. They had
brought with them the principle of paternalism, and,
in time of trouble, they looked to France for support.
The English colonists brought with them the principle
of self-reliance and, in time of trouble, they looked only
to themselves. And so the old English ideals had a
new birth and a broader field of application on Ameri-
can soil. There is nothing finer in our country's history
than the attitude of the New England colonists during
the intercolonial wars. Their northern frontier cover-
ing two hundred miles of unprotected territory was
constantly open to the incursions of the French from
Canada and their Indian allies, to appease whom the
French organized their raids. And yet, so deeply im-
planted was this ideal of self-reliance that New Eng-
land scarcely thought of asking aid of the mother coun-
try and would have protested to the last against the
permanent establishment of a military garrison within
her limits. For a period extending over fifty years.
New England protected her own borders. She felt the
terrors of savage warfare in its most sanguinary forms.
And yet, uncomplaining, she taxed herself to repel the
invaders. The people loved their own independence
too much to part with it, even for the sake of peace,

l86 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

prosperity, and security. At a later date, unknown to
the mother country, they raised and equipped from their
own yoimg men and at their own expense, the punitive
expedition that, in the face of seemingly certain defeat,
captured the French fortress at Louisburg, and gave
to English military annals one of its most briUiant
victories. To get the pupil to live through these
struggles, to feel the impetus of idealism upon conduct,
to appreciate what that almost forgotten half-century
of conflict meant to the development of our national
character, would be to realize the greatest value that
colonial history can have for its students. It lays bare
the source of that strength which made New England
preeminent in the Revolution, and which has placed
the mint mark of New England idealism upon the coin
of American character. Could a pupil who has hved
vicariously through such experiences as these easily for-
sake principle for policy ?

A newspaper cartoon published a year or so ago, gives
some notion of the danger that we are now facing of
losing that idealism upon which our country was founded.
The cartoon represents the signing of the Declaration of
Independence. The worthies are standing about the
table dressed in the knee breeches and flowing coats of the
day, with wigs conventionally powdered and that stately
bearing which characterizes the typical historical paint-
ing. John Hancock is seated at the table prepared to
make his name immortal. A figure, however, has just

A PLEA FOR THE DEFINITE IN EDUCATION 187

appeared in the doorway. It is the cartoonist's conven-
tional conception of the modem Captain of Industry.
His silk hat is on the back of his head as if he had
just come from his office as fast as his forty-horse-power
automobile could carry him. His portly form shows
evidences of intense excitement. He is holding his
hand aloft to stay the proceedings, while from his lips
comes the stage whisper: "Gentlemen, stop ! You will
hurt business!" What would those old New England
fathers think, could they know that such a conception
may be taken as representing a well-recognized tendency
of the present day ? And remember, too, that those old
heroes had something of a passion for trade themselves.
But when we seek for the source of our most important
national ideal, — the ideal that we have called equality
of opportunity, — we must look to another part of the
country. The typical Americanism that is represented
by Lincoln owes its origin, I believe, very largely to geo-
graphical factors. It could have been developed only
imder certain conditions and these conditions the Middle
West alone provided. The settling of the Middle West
in the latter part of the eighteenth and the early part of
the nineteenth centuries was part and parcel of a rigid
logic of events. As Miss Semple so clearly points out in
her work on the geographic conditions of American his-
tory, the Atlantic seaboard sloped toward the sea and
its people held their faces eastward. They were never
cut off from easy communication with the Old World,

l88 CRAPTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

and consequently they were never quite freed from the
Old World prejudices and standards. But the move-
ment across the mountains gave rise to a new condition.
The faces of the people were turned westward, and cut
off from easy communication with the Old World, they
developed a new set of ideals and standards under the
stress of new conditions. Chief among these conditions
was the immensity and richness of the territory that
they were settling. The vastness of their outlook and
the wealth of their resources confirmed and extended the
ideals of self-reliance that they had brought with them
from the seaboard. But on the seaboard, the Old World
notion of social classes, the prestige of family and sta-
tion, still held sway. The development of the Middle
West would have been impossible imder so severe a
handicap. With resources so great, every stimulus must
be given to individual achievement. Nothing must be
permitted to stand in its way. The man who could do
tilings, the man who could most effectively turn the
forces of nature to serve the needs of society, was the
man who was selected for preferment, no matter what
his birth, no matter what the station of his family.

We might, in a similar fashion, review the various other
ideals, which have grown out of our history, but, as I have
said, my purpose is not historical but educational, and
the illustrations that I have given may suffice to make my
contention clear. I have attempted to show that the
chief purpose of the study of history in the elementary

A PLEA FOR THE DEFINITE IN EDUCATION 1 89

school is to establish and fortify in the pupils' minds the
significant ideals and standards of conduct which those
who have gone before us have gleaned from their ex-
perience. I have maintained that, to this end, it is not
only the facts of history that are important, but the ap-
preciation of these facts. I have maintained that these
prejudices and ideals have a profound influence upon
conduct, and that, consequently, history is to be looked
upon as a most practical branch of study.

The best way in this world to be definite is to know our
goal and then strive to attain it. In the lack of definite
standards based upon the lessons of the past, our domi-
nant national ideals shift with every shifting wind of
public sentiment and popular demand. Are we satisfied
with the individualistic and self-centered idealism that
has come with our material prosperity and which to-day
shames the memory of the men who founded our Re-
public ? Are we negligent of the serious menace that
confronts any people when it loses its hold upon those
goods of life that are far more precious than commercial
prestige and individual aggrandizement ? Are we losing
our hold upon the sterner virtues which our fathers pos-
sessed, — upon the things of the spirit that are permanent
and enduring ?

A study of history cannot determine entirely the domi-
nant ideals of those who pursue it. But the study of
history if guided in the proper spirit and dominated by

IpO CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

the proper aim may help. For no one who gets into the
spirit of our national history, — no one who traces the
origin and growth of these ideals and institutions that I
have named, — can escape the conviction that the
elemental virtues of courage, self-reliance, hardihood,
unselfishness, self-denial, and service lie at the basis of
every forward step that this country has made, and that
the most precious part of our heritage is not the material
comforts with which we are surrounded, but the sturdy
virtues which made these comforts possible.

Science as Related to the Teaching of Litera-

TURE*

The scientific method is the method of unprejudiced
observation and induction. Its function in the scheme
of life is to furnish man with facts and principles, — state-
ments which mirror with accuracy and precision the con-
ditions that may exist in any situation of any sort which
man may have to face. In other words, the facts of
science are important and worthy because they help us
to solve the problems of life more satisfactorily. They
are instrumental in their function. They are means to an
end. And whenever we have a problem to solve, when-
ever we face a situation that demands some form of ad-
justment, the more accurate the information that we
posses concerning this situation, the better we shall be
able to solve it.

Now when I propose that we try to find out some facts
about the teaching of English, and that we apply the
scientific method in the discovery of these facts, I am
immediately confronted with an objection. My opp)0-

* A paper read before the English Section of the University of Illinois
High- School Conference, November 17, 1910.

191

192 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

nent will maintain that the subject of English in our
school curriculum is not one of the sciences. Taking
Enghsh to mean particularly English literature rather
than rhetoric or composition or grammar, it is clear that
we do not teach Uterature as we teach the sciences. Its
function differs from that of science in the curriculum.
If there is a science of literature, that is not what we are
teaching in the secondary schools, and that is not what
most of us believe should be taught in the secondary
schools. We think that the study of literature should
transmit to each generation the great ideals that are crys-
tallized in literary masterpieces. And we think that, in
seeing to it that our pupils are inspired with these ideals,
we should also teach Uterature in such a way that our
pupils will be left with a desire to read good Uterature as
a source of recreation and inspiration after they have fin-
ished the courses that we offer. When I speak of "in-
spiration," "appreciation," the development of "taste,"
and the like, I am using terms that have little direct
relation to the scientific method; for, as I have said,
science deals with facts, and the harder and more stub-
born and more imyielding the facts become, the better
they represent true science. What right have I, then,
to speak of the scientific study of the teaching of Eng-
Ush, when science and Uterature seem to belong to two
quite separate rubrics of mental Ufe?

I refer to this point of view, not because its inconsist-
encies are not fully apparent to you even upon the sur-

SCIENCE AS RELATED TO LITERATURE 1 93

face, but because it is a point of view that has hitherto
interfered very materially with our educational progress.
It has sometimes been assumed that, because we wish to
study education scientifically, we wish to read out of it
everything that cannot be reduced to a scientific formula,
— that, somehow or other, we intend still further to in-
tellectualize the processes of education and to neglect the
tremendous importance of those factors that are not
primarily intellectual in their nature, but which belong
rather to the field of emotion and feeling.

I wish, therefore, to say at the outset that, while I
firmly believe the hope of education to lie in the applica-
tion of the scientific method to the solution of its prob-
lems, I still hold that neither facts nor principles nor
any other products of the scientific method are the most
important "goods" of life. The greatest "goods" in
Ufe are, and always must remain, I beheve, its ideals,
its visions, its insights, and its sympathies, — must al-
ways remain those qualities with which the teaching of
literature is primarily concerned, and in the engendering
of which in the hearts and souls of his pupils, the teacher
of literature finds the greatest opportunity that is
vouchsafed to any teacher.

The facts and principles that science has given us
have been of such service to humanity that we are prone
to forget that they have been of service because they
have helped us more effectively to realize our ideals and
attain our ends; and we are prone to forget also that,

194 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

without the ideals and the ends and the visions, the facts
and principles would be quite without function. I have
sometimes been taken to account for separating these
two factors in this way. But unless we do distinguish
sharply between them, our educational thinking is bound
to be hopelessly obscure.

You have all heard the story of the great chemist who
was at work in his laboratory when word was brought
him that his wife was dead. As the first wave of anguish
swept over him, he bowed his head upon his hands and
wept out his grief; but suddenly he lifted up his head,
and held before him his hands wet with tears. "Tears ! "
he cried; "what are they? I have analyzed them:
a little chloride of sodivun, some alkaline salts, a little
mucin, and some water. That is all." And he went
back to his work.

The story is an old one, and very likely apocryphal,
but it is not without its lesson to us in the present
connection. Unless we distinguish between these two
factors that I have named, we are likely either to take
this man's attitude or something approaching it, or to
go to the other extreme, renounce the accuracy and pre-
cision of the scientij5c method, and give ourselves up
to the cult of emotionalism.

Now, while we do not wish to read out of the teaching
of literature the factors of appreciation and inspiration,
we do wish to find out how these important functions of
our teaching may be best fulfilled. And it is here that

SCIENCE AS RELATED TO LITERATURE 1 95

facts and principles gained by the scientific method not
only can but must furnish the ultimate solution. We
have a problem. That problem, it is true, is concerned
with something that is not scientific, and to attempt
to make it scientific is to kill the very life that it is our
problem to cherish. But in solving that problem, we
must take certain steps ; we must arrange our materials
in certain ways ; we must adjust hard and stubborn facts
to the attainment of our end. What are these facts?
What is their relation to our problem ? What laws gov-
ern their operation? These are subordinate but very
essential parts of our larger problem, and it is through the
scientific investigation of these subordinate problems
that our larger problem is to be solved.

Let me give you an illustration of what I mean. We
may assume that every boy who goes out of the high
school should appreciate the meaning and worth of self-
sacrifice as this is revealed (not expounded) in Dickens's
delineation of the character of Sidney Carton. There is
our problem, — but what a host of subordinate problems
at once confront us ! Where shall we introduce The
Tale of Two Cities? Will it be in the second year, or the
third, or the fourth? Will it be best preceded by the
course in general history which will give the pupil a time
perspective upon the crimson background of the French
Revolution against which Dickens projected his master
character ? Or shall we put The Tale of Two Cities first
for the sake of the heightened interest which the art of

196 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

the novelist may lend to the facts of the historian ?
Again, how may the story be best presented? What
part shall the pupils read in class ? What part shall they
read at home? What part, if any, shall we read to
them ? What questions are necessary to insure appreci-
ation ? How many of the allusions need be run down
in order to give the maximal effect of the masterpiece ?
How may the necessarily discontinuous discussions of the
class — one period each day for several days — be so
counteracted as to insure the cumulative emotional
effect which the appreciation of all art presupposes?
Should the story be sketched through first, and then
read in some detail, or will one reading suffice?

These are problems, I repeat, that stand to the chief
problem as means stand to end. Now some of these
questions must be solved by every teacher for himself,
but that does not prevent each teacher from solving them
scientifically. Others, it is clear, might be solved once
and for all by the right kind of an investigation, — might
result in permanent and universal laws which any one
could apply.

There are, of course, several ways in which answers
for these questions may be secured. One way is that of
a priori reasoning, — the deductive procedure. This
method may be thoroughly scientific, depending of course
upon the validity of our general principles as applied to
the specific problem. Ordinarily this validity can be
determined only by trial; consequently these a priori

SCIENCE AS RELATED TO LITERATURE 1 97

inferences should be looked up>on as hypotheses to be
tested by trial under standard conditions. For example,
I might argue that The Tale of Two Cities should be
placed in the third year because the emotional ferment
of adolescence is then most favorable for the engender-
ing of the ideal. But in the first place, this assumed
principle would itself be subject to grave question and
it would also have to be determined whether there is
so little variation among the pupils in respect of physio-
logical age as to permit the application to all of a gen-
eralization that might conceivably apply only to the
average child. In other words, all of our generalizations
applying to average pupils must be applied with a
knowledge of the extent and range of variation from
the average. Some people say that there is no such
thing as an average child, but, for all practical purposes,
the average child is a very real reaUty, — he is, in fact,
more numerous than any other single class; but this
does not mean that there may be not enough variations
from the average to make unwise the application of our
principle.

I refer to this hypothetical case to show the extreme
difl&culty of reaching anything more than hypotheses by
a priori reasoning. We have a certain number of fairly
well established general principles in secondary education.
Perhaps those most frequently employed are our generali-
zations regarding adolescence and its influences upon the
mental and especially the emotional life of high-school

198 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

pupils, Stanley Hall's work in this field is wonderfully
stimulating and suggestive, and yet we should not forget
that most of his generalizations are, after all, only plau-
sible hypotheses to be acted upon as tentative guides for
practice and to be tested carefully under controlled condi-
tions, rather than to be accepted as immutable and im-
changeable laws. We sometimes assume that all high-
school pupils are adolescents, when the likelihood is that
an appreciable prop)ortion of pupils in the first two years
have not yet reached this important node of their devel-
opment.

I say this not to minimize in any way the importance
that attaches to adolescent characteristics, but rather to
suggest that you who are daily dealing with these pupils
can in the aggregate add immeasurably to the knowledge
that we now have concerning this period. A tremen-
dous waste is constantly going on in that most precious
of all our possible resources, — namely, human experi-
ence. How many problems that are well solved have
to be solved again and again because the experience has
not been crystallized in a well-tested fact or principle;
how many experiences that might be well worth the effort
that they cost are quite worthless because, in undergoing
them, we have neglected some one or another of the rules
that govern inexorably the validity of our inferences
and conclusions. That is all that the scientific method
means in the last analysis : it is a system of principles that
enable us to make our experience worth while in meeting

SCIENCE AS RELATED TO LITERATU|IE I99

later situations. We all have the opportunity of con-
tributing to the sum total of human knowledge, if only
we know the rules of the game.

I said that one way of solving these subordinate prob-
lems that arise in the realization of our chief aims in
teaching is the a priori method of applying general prin-
ciples to the problems. Another method is to imitate
the way in which we have seen some one else handle the
situation. Now this may be the most effective way
possible. In fact, if a sufficient number of generations of
teachers keep on bUndly plunging in and floundering
about in solving their problems, the most effective
methods will ultimately be evolved through what we call
the process of trial and error. The teaching of the very
oldest subjects in the curriculimi is almost always the best
and most effective teaching, for the very reason that the
blundering process has at last resulted in an effective
procedure. But the scientific method of solving prob-
lems has its very function in preventing the tremendous
waste that this process involves. English literature is a
comparatively recent addition to the secondary curricu-
lum. Its possibiUties of service are almost imlimited.
Shall we wait for ten or fifteen generations of teachers to
blunder out the most effective means of teaching it, or
shall we avail ourselves of these simple principles which
will enable us to concentrate this experience within one
or two generations?

I should like to emphasize one further point. No one

200 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

has greater respect than I have for what we term experi-
ence in teaching. But let me say that a great deal of
what we may term "crude" experience — that is, ex-
perience that has not been refined by the apphcation of
scientific method — is most untrustworthy, — unless,
indeed, it has been garnered and winnowed and sifted
through the ages. Let me give you an example of some
accepted dictums of educational experience that con-
trolled investigations have shown to be untrustworthy.

It is a general impression among teachers that specific
habits may be generalized ; that habits of neatness and
accuracy developed in one line of work, for example, will
inevitably make one neater and more accurate in other
things. It has been definitely proved that this transfer
of training does not take place inevitably, but in reality
demands the fulfillment of certain conditions of which
education has become fully conscious only within a com-
paratively short time, and as a result of careful, system-
atic, controlled experimentation. The meaning of this
in the prevention of waste through inadequate teaching
is fully apparent.

Again, it has been supposed by many teachers that the
home environment is a large factor in the success or failure
of a pupil in school. In every accurate and controlled
investigation that has been conducted so far it has been
shown that this factor in such subjects as arithmetic and
spelling at least is so small as to be absolutely neghgible
in practice.

SCIENCE AS RELATED TO LITERATURE 20I

Some people still believe that a teacher is born and not
made, and yet a careful investigation of the efficiency of
elementary teachers shows that, when such teachers
were ranked by competent judges, specialized training
stood out as the most important factor in general effi-
ciency. In this same investigation, the time-honored
notion that a college education will, irrespective of
specialized training, adequately equip a teacher for his
work was revealed as a fallacy, — for twenty-eight
per cent of the normal- school graduates among all the
teachers were in the first and second ranks of efficiency
as against only seventeen per cent of the college gradu-
ates; while, in the two lowest ranks, only sixteen per
cent of the normal-school graduates are to be foimd as
against forty-four per cent of the college graduates.
These investigations, I may add, were made by uni-
versity professors, and I am giving them here in a
university classroom and as a university representative.
And of course I shall hasten to add that general scholar-
ship is one important essential. Our mistake has been
in assuming sometimes that it is the only essential.

Very frequently the controlled experience of scientific
investigation confirms a principle that has been derived
from crude experience. Most teachers will agree, for
example, that a certain amount of drill and repetition is
absolutely essential in the mastery of any subject. Every
time that scientific investigation has touched this prob-
lem it has uimiistakably confirmed this belief. Some very

202 CRArTSM.\NSHIP IN TEACHING

recent investigations made by Mr. Brown at the Charles-
ton Normal School show conclusively that five-minute
drill periods preceding every lesson in arithmetic place
pupils who undergo such periods far in advance of others
who spend this time in non-drill arithmetical work, and
that this improvement holds not only in the number
habits, but also in the reasoning processes.

Other similar cases could be cited, but I have proba-
bly said enough to make my point, and my point is
this : that crude experience is an unsafe guide for prac-
tice; that experience may be refined in two ways —
first by the slow, halting, wasteful operation of time,
which, has established many principles upon a pinnacle
of security from which they will never be shaken, but
which has also accomplished this result at the cost of in-
numerable mistakes, blunders, errors, futile efforts, and
heartbreaking failures ; or secondly, by the application
of the principles of control and test which are now at our
service, and which permit present-day teachers to con-
centrate within a single generation the growth and devel-
opment and progress that the empirical method of trial
and error could not encompass in a millennium.

The teaching of English merits treatment by this
method. I recommend strongly that you give the plan
a trial. You may not get immediate results. You may
not get valuable results. But in any case, if you care-
fully respect the scientific proprieties, your experience
will be worth vastly more than ten times the amoimt of

SCIENCE AS RELATED TO LITERATURE 203

crude experience; and, whether you get results or not,
you will undergo a valuable discipline from which may
emerge the ideals of science if you are not already
imbued with them. I always tell my students that,
even in the study of science itself, it is the ideals of
science, — the ideals of patient, thoughtful work, the
ideals of open-mindedness and caution in reaching con-
clusions, the ideals of unprejudiced observation from
which selfishness and personal desire are eliminated, —
it is these ideals that are vastly more important than
the facts of science as such, — and these latter are sig-
nificant enough to have made possible our present prog-
ress and our present amenities of life.

The New Attitude toward Drill*

Wandering about in a circle through a thick forest is
perhaps an overdrawn analogy to our activity in at-
tempting to construct educational theories; and yet
there is a resemblance. We push out hopefully — and
often boastfully — into the unknown wilderness, abso-
lutely certain that we are pioneering a trail that will
later become the royal highway to learning. We
struggle on, ruthlessly using the hatchet and the ax
to clear the road before us. And all too often we come
back to our starting point, having unwittingly described
a perfect circle, instead of the straight line that we had .
anticipated.

But I am not a pessimist, and I like to believe that,
although our course frequently resembles a circle, it is
much better to characterize it as a spiral, and that,
although we do get back to a point that we recognize,
it is not, after all, our old starting point ; it is an ho-
mologous point on a higher plane. We have at least
climbed a little, even if we have not traveled in a straight
line.

1 An address before the Kansas State Teachers' Association, Topeka,
October 20, 19 10.

304

THE NEW ATTITUDE TOWARD DRILL 20$

Now in a figurative way this explains how we have
come to take our present attitude toward the problem
of drill or training in the process of education. Drill
means the repetition of a process imtil it has become
mechanical or automatic. It means the kind of dis-
ciphne that the recruit undergoes in the army, — the
making of a series of comphcated movements so thor-
oughly automatic that they will be gone through with
accurately and precisely, at the word of command. It
means the sort of discipline that makes certain activi-
ties machine-hke in their operation, — so that we do
not have to think about which one comes next. Thus
the mind is relieved of the burden of looking after the
innumerable details and may use its precious energy
for a more important purpose.

In every adult life, a large number of these mechan-
ized responses are absolutely essential to efficiency.
Modern civilized life is so highly organized that it
demands a multitude of reactions and adjustments
which primitive life did not demand. It goes without
saying that there are innumerable Uttle details of our
daily work that must be reduced to the plane of un-
varying habit. These details vary with the trade or
profession of the individual ; hence general education
cannot hope to supply the individual with all of the
automatic responses that he will need. But, in addition
to these specialized responses, there is a large mass of
responses that are common to every member of the

206 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

social group. We must all be able to communicate
with one another, both through the medium of speech,
and through the medium of written and printed sym-
bols. We live in a society that is founded upon the
principle of the division of labor. We must exchange
the products of our labor for the necessities of life that
we do not ourselves produce, and hence arises the ne-
cessity for the short cuts to counting and measurement
which we call arithmetic. And finally we must all live
together in something at least approaching harmony ;
hence the thousand and one little responses that mean
courtesy and good manners must be made thoroughly
automatic.

Now education, from the very earliest times, has
recognized the necessity of building up these auto-
matic responses, — of fixing these essential habits in all
individuals. This recognition has often been short-
sighted and sometimes even blind ; but it has served
to hold education rather tenaciously to a process that
all must admit to be essential.

Drill or training, however, is unfortunate in one im-
portant particular. It invariably involves repetition;
and conscious, explicit repetition tends to become
monotonous. We must hold attention to the drill
process, and yet attention abhors monotony as nature
abhors a vacuum. Consequently no small part of the
tedium and irksomeness of school work has been due
to its emphasis of drill. The formalism of the older

THE NEW ATTITUDE TOWARD DRILL 207

schools has been described, criticized, and lampooned in
professional literature, and even in the pages of fiction.
The disastrous results that follow from engendering
in pupils a disgust for school and all that it represents
have been eloquently portrayed. Along with the
tendency toward ease and comfort in other departments
of human life has gone a parallel tendency to relieve
the school of this odious burden of formal, lifeless,
repetitive work.

This "reform movement," as I shall call it, repre-
sents our first plunge into the wilderness. We would
get away from the entanglements of drill and into the
clearings of pleasurable, spontaneous activities. A new
sim of hope dawned upon the educational world.

You are all familiar with some of the more spectac-
ular results of this movement. You have heard of
the schools that eliminated drill processes altogether,
and depended upon clear initial development to fix the
facts and formulae and reactions that every one needs.
You have heard and perhaps seen some of the schools
that were based entirely upon the doctrine of spon-
taneity, governing their work by the principle that the
child should never do anything that he did not wish
to do at the moment of doing, — although the advo-
cates of this theory generally qualified their principle
by insisting that the skillful teacher would have the
child wish to do the right thing all the time.

Let me describe to you a school of this type that I

208 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

once visited. I learned of it through a resident of
the city in which it was located. He was delivering
an address before an educational gathering on the
problems of modern education. He told the audience
that, in the schools of this enlightened city, the an-
tiquated notions that were so pernicious had been
entirely dispensed with. He said that pupils in these
schools were no longer repressed; that all regimenta-
tion, line passing, static posture, and other barbaric
practices had been abolished; that the pupils were free
to work out their own destiny, to realize themselves,
through all forms of constructive activity; that drills
had been eliminated; that corporal punishment was
never even mentioned, much less practiced; that all
was harmony, and love, and freedom, and spontaneity.

I listened to this speaker with intense interest, and,
as his picture unfolded, I became more and more con-
vinced that this city had at last solved the problem.
I took the earliest opportunity to visit its schools. When
I reached the city I went to the superintendent's office.
I asked to be directed to the best school. "Our schools
are all 'best,'" the secretary told me with an intona-
tion that denoted commendable pride, and which cer-
tainly made me feel extremely humble, for here even
the laws of logic and of formal grammar had been
transcended. I made bold to apologize, however, and
amended my request to make it apparent that I wished
to see the largest school. I was directed to take a cer-

THE NEW ATTITUDE TOWAKD DRILL 209

tain car and, in due time, found myself at the school.
I inferred that recess was in progress when I reached
the building, and that the recess was being celebrated
within doors. After some time spent in dodging about
the corridors, I at last located the principal.

I introduced myself and asked if I could visit his
school after recess was over. "We have no recesses
here," he replied (I could just catch his voice above
the din of the corridors); "this is a relaxation period
for some of the classes." He led the way to the oflSce,
and I spent a few moments in getting the " lay of the
land." I asked him, first, whether he agreed with the
doctrines that the system represented, and he told me
that he believed in them impUcitly. Did he follow them
out consistently in the operation of his school ? Yes, he
followed them out to the letter.

We then went to several classrooms, where I saw chil-
dren realizing themselves, I thought, very efifectively.
There were three groups at work in each room. One
recited to the teacher, another studied at the seats, a
third did construction work at the tables. I inquired
about the mechanics of this rather elaborate organiza-
tion, but I was told that mechanics had been eliminated
from this school. Mechanical organization of the
classroom, it seems, crushes the child's spontaneity,
represses his self-activity, prevents the effective opera-
tion of the principle of self-realization. How, then, did
these three groups exchange places, for I felt that the
9

2IO CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

doctrine of self-realization would not permit them to
remain in the same employment during the entire
session. "Oh," the principal repUed, "when they get
ready to change, they change, that's all."

I saw that a change was coming directly, so I waited
to watch it. The group had been working with what
I should call a great deal of noise and confusion. All
at once this increased tenfold. Pupils jumped over
seats, ran into each other in the aisles, scurried and
scampered from this place to that, while the teacher
stood in the front of the room wildly waving her arms.
The performance lasted several minutes. "There's
spontaneity for you," the principal shouted above the
roar of the storm. I acquiesced by a nod of the head,
— my lungs, through lack of training, being unequal to
the emergency.

We passed to another room. The same group sys-
tem was in evidence. I noticed pupils who had been
working at their seats suddenly put away their books
and papers and skip over to the construction table. I
asked concerning the nature of the construction work.
"We use it," the principal told me, "as a reward for
good work in the book subjects. You see arithmetic is
dead and dry. You must give pupils an incentive to
master it. We make the privileges of the construction
table the incentive." "What do they make at this
table?" I asked. "Whatever their fancy dictates,"
he replied. I was a little curious, however, to know

THE NEW ATTITUDE TOWARD DRILL 211

how it all come out. I saw one child start to work on
a basket, work at it a few minutes, then take up some-
thing else, continue a little time, go back to the basket,
and finally throw both down for a third object of self-
realization. I called the principal's attention to this
phenomenon. "How do you get the beautiful results
that you exhibit?" I asked. "For those," he said,
"we just keep the pupils working on one thing until it
is finished." "But," I objected, "is that consistent
with the doctrine of spontaneity?" His answer was
lost in the din of a change of groups, and I did not
follow the investigation further.

Noon dismissal was due when I went into the corri-
dor. Lines are forbidden in that school. At the stroke
of the bell, the classroom doors burst open and bedlam
was let loose. I had anticipated what was coming, and
hurriedly betook myself to an alcove. I saw more
spontaneity in two minutes than I had ever seen before
in my life. Some boys tore through the corridors at
breakneck speed and down the stairways, three steps at
a time. Others sauntered along, realizing various pro-
pensities by pushing and shoving each other, snatching
caps out of others' hands, slapping each other over the
head with books, and various other expressions of ex-
uberant spirits. One group stopped in front of my
alcove, and showed commendable curiosity about the
visitor in their midst. After exhausting his static pos-
sibilities, they tempted him to dynamic reaction by

212 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

making faces; but this proving to be of no avail, they
went on their way, — in the hope, doubtless, of realiz-
ing themselves elsewhere,

I left that school with a fairly firm conviction that I
had seen the most advanced notions of educational
theory worked out to a logical conclusion. There was
nothing halfway about it. There was no apology
offered for anything that happened. It was all fair
and square and open and aboveboard. To be sure,
the pupils were, to my prejudiced mind, in a condition
approaching anarchy, but I could not deny the spon-
taneity, nor could I deny self-activity, nor could I deny
self-realization. These principles were evidently operat-
ing without let or hindrance.

Before leaving the school, I took occasion to inquire
concerning the effect of such a system upon the teachers.
I led up to it by asking the principal if there were any
nervous or anaemic children in his school. "Not one,"
he replied enthusiastically; "our system eliminates
them." "But how about the teachers?" I ventured to
remark, having in mind the image of a distracted young
woman whom I had seen attempting to reduce forty
little ruffians to some semblance of law and order through
moral suasion. If I judged conditions correctly, that
woman was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. My
guide became confidential when I made this inquiry.
"To tell the truth," he whispered, "the system is mighty
hard on the women."

THE NEW ATTITUDE TOWARD DRILL 213

A few years ago I had the privilege of visiting a high
school which was operated upon this same principle.
I visited in that school some classes that were taught
by men and women, whom I should number among the
most expert teachers that I have ever seen. The in-
struction that these men and women were giving was
as clear and lucid as one could desire. And yet, in spite
of that excellent instruction, pupils read newspapers,
prepared other lessons, or read books during the recita-
tions, and did all this openly and unreproved. They
responded to their instructors with shameless insolence.
Young ladies of sixteen and seventeen coming from
cultured homes were permitted in this school to pull
each other's hair, pinch the arms of schoolmates who
were reciting, and behave themselves in general as if
they were savages. The pupils lolled in their seats,
passed notes, kept up an undertone of conversation,
arose from their seats at the first tap of the beU, and
piled in disorder out of the classroom while the in-
structor was still talking. If the lessons had been
tedious, one might perhaps at least have palliated such
conduct, but the instruction was very far from tedious.
It was bright, lively, animated, beautifully clear, and
admirably illustrated. It is simply the theory of this
school never to interfere with the spontaneous activity
of the pupils. And I may add that the school draws
its enrollment very largely from wealthy families who
believe that their children are being given the best that

214 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

modem education has developed, that they are not
being subjected to the deadening methods of the aver-
age public school, and above all that their manners
are not being corrupted by promiscuous mingling with
the offspring of illiterate immigrants. And yet soon
afterward, I visited a high school in one of the poorest
slum districts of a large city, I saw pupils well-behaved,
courteous to one another, to their instructors, and to
visitors. The instruction was much below that given
in the first school in point of quality, and yet the
pupils were getting from it, even under these conditions,
vastly more than were the pupils of the other school
from their masterly instructors.

The two schools that I first described represent one
type of the attempt that education has made to pioneer
a new path through the wilderness. I have said that
many of these attempts have ended by bringing the
adventurers back to their starting point. I cannot say
so much for these schools. The movement that they
represent is still floundering about in the tamarack
swamps, getting farther and farther into the morass,
with Uttle hope of ever emerging.

May I tax your patience with one more concrete
illustration: this time, of a school that seems to me to
have reached the starting point, but on that new and
higher plane of which I have spoken ?

This school is in a small Massachusetts town, and is
the model department of the state normal school located

THE NEW ATTITUDE TOWARD DRILL 215

at that place. The first point that impressed me was
typified by a boy of about twelve who was passing
through the corridor as I entered the building. In-
stead of slouching along, wasting every possible moment
before he should return to his room, he was walking
briskly as if eager to get back to his work. Instead of
staring at the stranger within his gates with the impu-
dent curiosity so often noticed in children of this age,
he greeted me pleasantly and wished to know if I were
looking for the principal. When I told him that I was,
he informed me that the principal was on the upper
floor, but that he would go for him at once. He did,
and returned a moment later saying that the head of
the school would be down directly, and asked me to
wait in the ofl&ce, into which he ushered me with all the
courtesy of a private secretary. Then he excused him-
self and went directly to his room.

Now that might have been an exceptional case, but
I found out later that is was not. Wherever I went in
that school, the pupils were polite and courteous and
respectful. That was part of their education. It
should be part of every child's education. But many
schools are too busy teaching reading, writing, and
arithmetic, and others are too busy preserving disci-
pline, and others are too busy coquetting for the good
will of their pupils and trying to amuse them — too
busy to give heed to a set of habits that are of para-
mount importance in the life of civilized society. This

2l6 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

school took up the matter of trammg in good manners
as an essential part of its duty, and it accomplished
this task quickly and effectively. It did it by utilizing
the opportunities presented in the usual course of
school work. It took a little time and a little atten-
tion, for good manners cannot be acquired incidentally
any more than the multiplication tables can be acquired
incidentally ; but it utilized the everyday opportunities
of the schoolroom, and did not make morals and man-
ners the subject of instruction for a half-hour on Friday
afternoons to be completely forgotten during the rest of
the week.

When the principal took me through the school, I
noted everywhere a happy and courteous relation be-
tween pupils and teachers. They spoke pleasantly to
one another. I heard no nagging or scolding. I saw
no one sulking or pouting or in bad temper. And yet
there was every evidence of respect and obedience on
the part of the pupils. There was none of that happy-
go-lucky comradeship which I have sometimes seen in
other modern schools, and which leads the pupil to
understand that his teacher is there to gain his interest,
not to command his respectful attention. Pupils were
too busy with their work to talk much with one an-
other. They were sitting up in their seats as a matter
of habit, and it did not seem to hurt them seriously to
do so. And everywhere they were working like beavers
at one task or another, or attending with all their eyes
and ears to a recitation.

THE NEW ATTITUDE TOWAKD DRILL 21 7

Now it seemed to me that this school was operated
with a minimum of waste or loss. Every item of energy
that the pupils p>ossessed was being given to some edu-
cative activity. Nothing was lost by conflict between
pupil and teacher. Nothing was lost by bursts of
anger or by fits of depression. These sources of waste
had been eliminated so far as I could determine. The
pupils could read well and write well and cipher accu-
rately. They even took a keen delight in the drills.
And I found that this phase of their work was en-
Ughtened by the modem content that had been intro-
duced. In their handwork and manual training they
could see that arithmetic was useful, — that it had
something to do with the great big buzzing life of the
outer world. They learned that spelling was useful in
writing, — that it was not something that began and
ended within the covers of the speUing book, but that
it had a real and vital relation to other things that
they found to be important. They had their dramatic
exercises in which they and their fellows, and, on occa-
sions, their parents, took a keen delight, and they were
glad to afford them pleasure and to receive congratula-
tions at the close. And yet they found that, in order
to do these things well, they must read and study and
drill on speaking. They liked to have their drawings
inspected and praised at the school exhibitions, but they
soon found that good drawing and painting and design-
ing were strictly conditioned by a mastery of technique,

2l8 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

and they wished to master technique in order to win
these rewards.

Now what was the secret of the efl&ciency of this
school? Not merely the fact that it had introduced
certain types of content such as drawing, manual train-
ing, domestic science, dramatization, story work, —
but also that it had not lost sight of the fundamental
purpose of elementary education, but had so organized
all of its studies that each played into the hands of
the others, and that everything that was done had
some definite and tangible relation to everything else.
The manual training exercises and the mechanical
drawing were exercises in arithmetic, but, let me remind
you, there were other lessons, and formal lessons, in
arithmetic as well. But the one exercise enhghtened
and made more meaningful the other. In the same way
the story and dramatization were intimately related to
the reading and the language, but there were formal
lessons in reading and formal lessons in language. The
geography illustrated nature study and employed lan-
guage and arithmetic and drawing in its exercises. And
so the whole structure was organized and coherent
and unified, and what was taught in one class was
utilized in another. There was no needless duplication,
no needless or meaningless repetition. But repetition
there was, over and over again, but always it was effec-
tive in still more firmly fixing the habits.

One would be an ingrate, indeed, if one failed to

THE NEW ATTITUDE TOWARD DRILL 219

recognize the great good that an extreme reform move-
ment may do. Some very precious increments of
progress have resulted even from the most extreme and
ridiculous reactions against the drill and formalism of
the older schools. Let me briefly summarize these really
substantial gains as I conceive them.

In the first place, we have come to recognize distinctly
the importance of enlisting in the service of habit building
the native instincts of the child. Up to a certain point
nature provides for the fixing of useful responses, and we
should be unwise not to make use of these tendencies. In
the spontaneous activities of play, certain fundamental
reactions are continually repeated imtil they reach the
plane of absolute mechanism. In imitating the actions
of others, adjustments are learned and made into habits
without effort ; in fact, the process of imitation, so far as
it is instinctive, is a source of pure delight to the young
child. Finally, closely related to these two instincts, is
the native tendency to rep)etition, — nature's primary
provision for drill. You have often heard little children
repeat their new words over and over again. Frequently
they have no conception of the meanings of these words.
Nature seems to be untroubled by a question that has
bothered teachers ; namely, Should a child ever be
asked to drill on something the purpose of which he
does not understand? Nature sees to it that certain
essential responses become automatic long before the
child is conscious of their meaning. Just because

220 CRAPTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

nature does this is, of course, no reason why we should
imitate her. But the fact is an interesting conunentary
upon the extreme to which we sometimes carry our
principle of rationalizing everything before permitting
it to be mastered.

I repeat that the reform movement has done excellent
service in extending the recognition in education of these
fundamental and inborn adaptive instincts, — play, imi-
tation, and rhythmic repetition. It has erred when it
has insisted that we could depend upon these alone, for
nature has adapted man, not to the complicated con-
ditions of our modern highly organized social life, but
rather to primitive conditions. Left to themselves, these
instinctive forces would take the child up to a certain
point, but they would still leave him on a primitive plane.
I know of one good authority on the teaching of reading
who maintains that the normal child would learn to read
without formal teaching if he were placed in the right
environment, — an environment of books. This may be
possible with some exceptional children, but even an
environment reasonably replete with books does not ef-
fect this miracle in the case of certain children whom I
know very well and whom I like to think of as perfectly
normal. These children learned to talk by imitation and
instinctive repetition. But nature has not yet gone so
far as to provide the average child with spontaneous im-
pulses that will lead him to learn to read. Reading is a
much more complicated and highly organized process.

THE NEW ATTITUDE TOWARD DRILL 221

And SO it is with a vast number of the activities that our
pupils must master.

Another increment of progress that the reform move-
ment has given to educational practice is a recognition of
the fact that we have been requiring pupils to acquire
unnecessary habits, imder the impression, that even if the
habits were not useful, something of value was gained in
their acquisition. As a result, we have passed all of our
grain through the same mill, unmindful of the fact that
different Ufe activities required different types of grist.
To-day we are seeing the need for carefully selecting the
types of habit and skill that should be developed in all
children. We are recognizing that there are many phases
of the educative process that it is not well to reduce to an
automatic basis. When I was in the elementary school
I memorized Barnes's History of the United States and
Harper's Geography from cover to cover. I have never
greatly regretted this automatic mastery; but I have
often thought that I might have memorized something
rather more important, for history and geography could
have been mastered just as effectively in another way.

In the third place, and most important of all, we have
been led to analyze this complex process of habit building,
— to find out the factors that operate in learning. We
have now a goodly body of principles that may even be
characterized by the adjective "scientific." We know
that in habit building, it is fundamentally essential to get
the pupil started in the right way. A recent writer states

222 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

that two thirds of the difl&culty that the teacher meets
fixing habits is due to the neglect of this principle. Inad-
equate and inefficient habits get started and must be
continually combated while the desirable habit is being
formed. How important this is in the initial presentation
of material that is to be memorized or made automatic we
are just now beginning to appreciate. One writer in-
sists that faulty work in the first grade is responsible for
a large part of the retardation which is bothering us so
much to-day. The wrong kind of a start is made, and
whenever a faulty habit is formed, it much more than
doubles the difficulty of getting the right one well under
way. We are slowly coming to appreciate how much
time is wasted in drill processes by inadequate methods.
Technique is being improved and the time thus saved is
being given to the newer content subjects that are de-
manding admission to the schools.

Again, we are coming to appreciate as never before the
importance of motivating our drill work, — of not only
reading into it purpose and meaning so that the pupil will
understand what it is all for, but also of engendering in
him the desire to form the habits, — to undergo the dis-
cipline that is essential for mastery. Here again the
reform movement has been helpful, showing us the waste
of time and energy that results from attempting to fix
habits that are only weakly motivated.

All this is a vastly different matter from sugar-coating
the drill processes, imder the mistaken notion that some-

THE NEW ATTITUDE TOWARD DRILL 22$

thing that is worth while may be acquired without effort.
I think that educators are generally agreed that such a
policy is thoroughly bad, — for it subverts a basic prin-
ciple of human life the operation of which neither educa-
tion nor any other force can alter or reverse. To teach
the child that the things in life that are worth doing are
easy to do, or that they are always or even often intrinsi-
cally pleasant or agreeable, is to teach him a lie. Human
history gives us no examples of worthy achievements that
have not been made at the price of struggle and effort, —
at the price of doing things that men did not want to do.
Every great truth has had to struggle upward from defeat.
Every man who has really found himself in the work of
life has paid the price of sacrifice for his success. And
whenever we attempt to give our pupils a mastery of the
complicated arts and skills that have lifted civilized man
above the plane of his savage ancestors, we must expect
from them struggle and effort and self-denial.

Let me quote a paragraph from the report of a recent
investigation in the psychology of learning. The habit
that was being learned in this experiment was skill in the
use of the typewriter. The writer describes the process
in the following words :

"In the early stages of learning, our subjects were all very much
interested in the work. Their whole mind seemed to be sponta-
neously held by the writing. They were always anxious to take up
the work anew each day. Their general attitude and the resultant
sensations constituted a pleasant feeling tone, which had a helpful
reactionary effect upon the work. Continued practice, however,

224 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

brought a change. In place of the spontaneous, rapt attention of
the beginning stages, attention tended, at certain definite stages of
advancement, to wander away from the work. A general feeling
of monotony, which at times assumed the form of utter disgust,
took the place of the former pleasant sensations and feelings,
T^e, writing became a disagreeable task. The unpleasant feeUngs
now present in consciousness exerted an ever-restraining effect on
the work. As an exp>ert skill was approached, however, the
learners' attitude and mood changed again. They again took a
keen interest in the work. Their whole feeling tone once more
became favorable, and the movements delightful and pleasant.
The expert typist ... so thoroughly enjoyed the writing that it
was as pleasant as the spontaneous play activities of a child. But
in the course of developing this permanent interest in the work,
there were many periods in nearly every test, many days, as well as
stages in the practice as a whole, when the work was much disliked,
periods when the learning assumed the r61e of a very monotonous
task. Our records showed that at such times as these no progress
was made. Rapid progress in learning typewriting was made only
when the learners were feeling good and had an attitude of interest
toward the work." *

Who has not experienced that feeling of hopelessness
and despair that comes at these successive levels of the
long process of acquiring skill in a complicated art?
How desperately we struggle on — striving to put every
item of energy that we can command into our work, and
yet feeling how hopeless it all seems. How tempting then
is the hammock on the porch, the fascinating novel that
we have placed on our bedside table, the happy company
of friends that are talking and laughing in the next room ;
or how we long for the green fields and the open road;

* W. F. Book, Journal of Educational Psychology, vol. i, 1910, p. 195.

THE NEW ATTrrUDE TOWARD DRILL 22$

how seductive is that siren call of change and diversion,
— that evil spirit of procrastination ! How feeble, too,
are the efforts that we make under these conditions !
We are not making progress in our art, we are only mark-
ing time. And yet the psychologists tell us that this
marking time is an essential in the mastery of any compli-
cated art. Somewhere, deep down in the nervous sys-
tem, subtle processes are at work, and when finally in--
terest dawns, — when finally hop)e returns to us, and
life again becomes worth while, — these heartbreaking
struggles reap their reward. The psychologists call
them "plateaus of growth," but some one has said that
"sloughs of despond" would be a far better desig-
nation.

The progress of any individual depends upon his ability
Jto. pass through these sloughs of despond, — to set his
face resolutely to the task and persevere. It would be
the idlest folly to lead children to believe that success
or achievement or even passing abiUty can be gained in
any other manner. And this is the danger in the sugar-
coating process.

But motivation does not mean sugar-coating. It
means the development of purpose, of ambition, of in-
centive. It means the development of the wilhngness
to undergo the discipline in order that the purpose may be
realized, in order that the goal may be attained. It
means the creating of those conditions that make for
strength and virility and moral fiber, — for it is in the

226 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

consciousness of having overcome obstacles and won
in spite of handicaps, — it is in this consciousness of
conquest that mental strength and moral strength have
their source. The victory that really strengthens one is
not the victory that has come easily, but the victory
that stands out sharp and clear against the background
of effort and struggle. It is because this subjective
contrast is so absolutely essential to the consciousness of
power, — it is for this reason that the "sloughs of de-
spond" still have their function in our new attitude
toward drill.

But do not mistake me : I have no sympathy with that
educational " stand-pattism " that would multiply these
needlessly, or fail to build solid and comfortable highways
across them wherever it is possible to do so. I have no
sympathy with that philosophy of education which ap-
proves the placing of artificial barriers in the learner's
path. But if I build highways across the morasses,
it is only that youth may the more readily traverse the
region and come the more quickly to the points where
struggle is absolutely necessary.

You remember in George Eliot's Daniel Deronda the
story of Gwendolen Harleth. Gwendolen was a butterfly
of society, a young woman in whose childhood drill and
discipline had found no place. In early womanhood, she
was, through family misfortune, thrown ui)on her own
resources. In casting about for some means of self-
support her first recourse was to music, for which she had

THE NEW ATHTUDE TOWARD DRILL 227

some taste and in which she had had some slight training.
She sought out her old German music teacher, Klesmer,
and asked him what she might do to turn this taste and
this training to financial account. Klesmer's reply svmas
up in a nutshell the psychology of skill :

"Any great achievement in acting or in music grows with the
growth. Whenever an artist has been able to say, 'I came, I saw,
I conquered,' it has been at the end of patient practice. Genius,
at firet, is little more than a great capacity for receiving disci-
gUne. Singing and acting, like the fine dexterity of the juggler with
his cup and balls, require a shaping of the organs toward a finer
and finer certainty of effect. Your muscles, your whole frame,
must go like a watch, — true, true, true, to a hair. This is the
work of the springtime of life before the habits have been
formed."

And I can formulate my own conception of the work of
habit building in education no better than by paraphras-
ing KJesmer's epigram. To increase in our pupils the
capacity to receive discipline; to show them, through
concrete example, over and over again, how persistence
and effort and concentration bring results that are
worth while; to choose from their own childish experi-
ences the illustrations that will force this lesson home;
to supplement, from the stories of great achievements,
those illustrations which will inspire them to effort;
to lead them to see that Peary conquering the Pole,
or Wilbur Wright perfecting the aeroplane, or Morse
struggling through long years of hopelessness and dis-
couragement to give the world the electric telegraph, —

228 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

to show them that these men went through experiences
diflfering only in degree and not in kind from those which
characterize every achievement, no matter how small, so
long as it is dominated by a unitary purpose ; to make
the inevitable sloughs of despond no less morasses, per-
haps, but to make their conquest add a permanent incre-
ment to growth and development : this is the task of our
drill work as I view it. As the prophecy of Isaiah has it :
"Precept must be upon precept ; precept upon precept ;
line upon line ; hne upon line ; here a little and there a
little." And if we can succeed in giving our pupils this
vision, — if we can reveal the deeper meaning of struggle
and effort and self-denial and sacrifice shining out
through the Uttle details of the day's work, — we are our-
selves achieving something that is richly worth while;
for the highest triumph of the teacher's art is to get his
pupils to see, in the small and seemingly trivial affairs of
everyday life, the operation of fundamental and eternal
principles.

XII

The Ideal Teacher^ ^

I WISH to discuss with you briefly a very commonplace
and oft-repeated theme, — a theme that has been han-
dled and handled until its once-glorious raiment is now
quite threadbare ; a theme so full of pitfalls and dangers
for one who would attempt its discussion that I have hesi-
tated long before making a choice. I know of no other
theme that lends itself so readily to a superficial treatment
— of no theme upon which one could find so easily at
hand all of the proverbs and platitudes and maxims that
one might desire. And so I cannot be expected to say
anything upon this topic that has not been said before in
a far better manner. But, after all, very few of our
thoughts — even of those that we consider to be the
most original and worth while — are really new to the
world. Most of our thoughts have been thought
before. They are like dolls that are passed on from age to
age to be dressed up and decorated to suit the taste or the
fashion or the fancy of each succeeding generation. But
even a new dress may add a touch of newness to an old

* An address to the graduating class of the Oswego, New York, State
Normal S'.hool, Februarj', 1908.

239

230 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

doll; and a new phrase or a new setting may, for a
moment, rejuvenate an old truth.

The topic that I wish to treat is this, "The Ideal
Teacher." And I may as well start out by saying that
the ideal teacher is and always must be a figment of the
imagination. This is the essential feature of any ideal.
The ideal man, for example, must possess an infinite num-
ber of superlative characteristics. We take this virtue
from one, and that from another, and so on indefinitely
until we have constructed in imagination a paragon, the
counterpart of which could never exist on earth. He
would have all the virtues of all the heroes ; but he would
lack all their defects and all their inadequacies. He
would have the manners of a Chesterfield, the courage
of a Winkelried, the imagination of a Dante, the eloquence
of a Cicero, the wit of a Voltaire, the intuitions of a Shake-
speare, the magnetism of a Napoleon, the patriotism of a
Washington, the loyalty of a Bismarck, the humanity of
a Lincoln, and a hundred other qualities, each the counter-
part of some superlative quality, drawn from the historic
figure that represented that quality in richest measure.

And so it is with the ideal teacher : he would combine,
in the right proportion, all of the good qualities of all of
the good teachers that we have ever known or heard of.
The ideal teacher is and always must be a creature, not
of flesh and blood, but of the imagination, a child of the
brain. And perhaps it is well that this is true; for,
if he existed in the flesh, it would not take very many of

THE IDEAL TEACHER 23 1

him to put the rest of us out of business. The relentless
law of compensation, which rules that unusual growth in
one direction must always be counterbalanced by defi-
cient growth in another direction, is the saving principle
of human society. That a man should be superlatively
good in one single line of effort is the demand of modern
life. It is a platitude to say that this is the age of the
specialist. But specialism, while it always means a gain
to society, also always means a loss to the individual.
Darwin, at the age of forty, suddenly awoke to the fact
that he was a man of one idea. Twenty years before, he
had been a youth of the most varied and diverse interests.
He had enjoyed music, he had foimd delight in the
masterpieces of imaginative literature, he had felt a keen
interest in the drama, in poetry, in the fine arts. But
at forty Darwin quite by accident discovered that these
things had not attracted him for years, — that every
increment of his time and energy was concentrated in a
constantly increasing measure upon the imraveling of
that great problem to which he had set himself. And he
lamented bitterly the loss of these other interests; he
wondered why he had been so thoughtless as to let them
slip from his grasp. It was the same old story of human
progress ; the sacrifice of the individual to the race. For
Darwin's loss was the world's gain, and if he had not
limited himself to one line of effort, and given himself
up to that work to the exclusion of everything else, the
world might still be waiting for the Origin of Species, and

232 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

the revolution in human thought and human life which
followed in the wake of that great book. Carlyle defined
genius as an infinite capacity for taking pains. George
Eliot characterized it as an infinite capacity for receiving
discipline. But to make the definition complete, we need
the formulation of Goethe, who identified genius with the
power of concentration: "Who would be great must
limit his ambitions; in concentration is shown the
Master."

And so the great men of history, from the very fact of
their genius, are apt not to correspond with what our
ideal of greatness demands. Indeed, our ideal is often
more nearly reaHzed in men who fall far short of genius.
When I studied chemistry, the instructor burned a bit of
diamond to prove to us that the diamond was, after all,
only carbon in an "allotropic" form. There seems to be
a similar allotropy working in human nature. Some men
seem to have all the constituents of genius, but they
never reach very far above the plane of the commonplace.
They are like the diamond, — except that they are more
like the charcoal.

I wish to describe to you a teacher who was not a genius,
and yet who possessed certain quaUties that I should
abstract and appropriate if I were to construct in my
imagination an ideal teacher. I first met this man five
years ago out in the mountain country. I can recall
the occasion with the most vivid distinctness. It was a
sparkling morning, in middle May. The valley was just

THE roEAL TEACHER 233

beginning to green a little under the influence of the
lengthening days, but on the surrounding mountains the
snow line still hung low. I had just settled down to my
morning's work when word was brought that a visitor
wished to see me, and a moment later he was shown into
the ofl5ce. He was tall and straight, with square shoul-
ders and a deep chest. His hair was gray, and a rather
long white beard added to the effect of age, but detracted
not an iota from the evidences of strength and vigor.
He had the look of a Westerner, — of a man who had
lived much of his life in the open. There was a rugged-
ness about him, a sturdy strength that told of many a
day's toil along the trail, and many a night's sleep under
the stars.

In a few words he stated the purpose of his visit. He
simply wished to do what half a hundred others in the
course of the year had entered that office for the purpose
of doing. He wished to enroll as a student in the college
and to prepare himself for a teacher. This was not ordi-
narily a startling request, but hitherto it had been made
only by those who were just starting out on the highroad
of life. Here was a man advanced in years. He told
me that he was sixty-five, and sixty-five in that country
meant old age; for the region had but recently been
settled, and most of the people were either young or
middle-aged. The only old men in the country were the
few surviving pioneers, — men who had come in away
back in the early days of the mining fever, long before

234 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

the advent of the railroad. They had trekked across the
plains from Omaha, and up through the mountainous
passes of the Oregon trail ; or, a little later, they had come
by steamboat from St. Louis up the twelve-hundred-mile
stretch of the Missouri until their progress had been
stopped by the Great Falls in the very foothills of the
Rockies. What heroes were these graybeards of the
mountains! What possibilities in knowing them, of lis-
tening to the recounting of tales of the early days, — of
running fights with the Indians on the plains, of ambush-
ments by desperadoes in the mountain passes, of the lurid
life of the early mining camps, and the desperate deeds
of the Vigilantes! And here, before me, was a man of
that type. You could read the main facts of his history
in the very lines of his face. And this man — one of
that small band whom the whole country united to
honor — this man wanted to become a student, — to sit
among adolescent boys and girls, listening to the lectures
and discussions of instructors who were babes in arms
when he was a man of middle life.

But there was no doubt of his determination. With
the eagerness of a boy, he outlined his plan to me ; and in
doing this, he told me the story of his life, — just the
barest facts to let me know that he was not a man to do
things half-heartedly, or to drop a project until he had
carried it through either to a successful issue, or to indis-
putable defeat.

And what a life that man had lived ! He had been a

THE IDEAL TEACHER 235

youth of promise, keen of intelligence and quick of wit.
He had spent two years at a college in the Middle West
back in the early sixties. He had left his course uncom-
pleted to enter the army, and he had followed the fortunes
of war through the latter part of the great rebellion. At
the close of the war he went West. He farmed in Kan-
sas until the drought and the grasshoppers urged him
on. He joined the first surveying party that picked out
the line of the transcontinental railroad that was to
follow the southern route along the old Santa Fe trail.
He carried the chain and worked the transit across the
Rockies, across the desert, across the Sierras, until, with
his companions, he had —

" led the iron stallions down to drink
Through the canons to the waters of the West."

And when this task was accomplished, he followed the
lure of the gold through the California placers ; eastward
again over the mountains to the booming Nevada camp,
where the Comstock lode was already turning out the
wealth that was to build a half-dozen colossal fortunes.
He "prospected" through this country, with varying
success, living the life of the camps, — rich in its experi-
ences, vivid in its coloring, calling forth every item of
energy and courage and hardihood that a man could
command. Then word came by that mysterious wireless
and keyless telegraphy of the mountains and the desert,
— word that back to the eastward, ore deposits of imtold

236 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

wealth had been discovered. So eastward once more,
with the stampede of the miners, he turned his face.
He was successful at the outset in this new region. He
quickly accumulated a fortune ; he lost it and amassed
another; lost that and still gained a third. Five suc-
cessive fortunes he made successively, and successively
he lost them. But during this time he had become a
man of power and influence in the community. He
married and raised a family and saw his children com-
fortably settled.

But when his last fortune was swept away, the old
Wanderlust again claimed its own. Houses and lands and
mortgages and mills and mines had shpped from his grasp.
But it mattered Uttle. He had only himself to care for,
and, with pick and pan strapped to his saddlebow, he set
his face westward. Along the ridges of the high Rockies,
through Wyoming and Montana, he wandered, ever on
the lookout for the glint of gold in the white quartz.
Little by little he moved westward, picking up a sufficient
living, until he found himself one winter shut in by the
snows in a remote valley on the upper waters of the Galla-
tin River. He stopped one night at a lonely ranch house.
In the course of the evening his host told him of a catas-
trophe that had befallen the widely scattered inhabitants
of that remote valley. The teacher of the district school
had fallen sick, and there was little likelihood of their
getting another until spring.

That is a true catastrophe to the ranchers of the high

THE IDEAL TEACHER 237

valleys cut off from every line of communication with the
outer world. For the opportunities of education are
highly valued in that part of the West. They are
reckoned with bread and horses and cattle and sheep,
as among the necessities of life. The children were
crying for school, and their parents could not satisfy
that peculiar kind of hunger. But here was the relief.
This wanderer who had arrived in their midst was a
man of parts. He was lettered; he was educated.
Would he do them the favor of teaching their children
until the snow had melted av/ay from the ridges, and his
cayuse could pick the trail through the canons ?

Now school-keeping was farthest from this man's
thoughts. But the needs of Uttle children were very
near to his heart. He accepted the offer, and entered
the log schoolhouse as the district schoolmaster, while a
handful of pupils, numbering all the children of the com-
munity who could ride a broncho, came five, ten, and
even fifteen miles daily, through the winter's snows and
storms and cruel cold, to pick up the crumbs of learning
that had lain so long untouched.

What happened in that lonely little school, far off on
the Gallatin bench, I never rightly discovered. But when
spring opened up, the master sold his cayuse and his pick
and his rifle and the other implements of his trade. With
the earnings of the winter he made his way to the school
that the state had established for the training of teachers ;
and I count it as one of the privileges of my life that I

238 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

was the first oflScial of that school to listen to his story and
to welcome him to the vocation that he had chosen to
follow.

And yet, when I looked at his face, drawn into lines of
strength by years of battle with the elements; when I
looked at the clear, blue eyes, that told of a far cleaner
life than is lived by one in a thousand of those that hold
the frontiers of civilization ; when I caught an expression
about the mouth that told of an innate humanity far
beyond the power of worldly losses or misfortunes to
crush and subdue, I could not keep from my lips the words
that gave substance to my thought ; and the thought was
this : that it were far better if we who were supposed to
be competent to the task of education should sit rever-
ently at the feet of this man, than that we should presume
to instruct him. For knowledge may come from books,
and even youth may possess it, but wisdom comes only
from experience, and this man had that wisdom in far
greater measure than we of books and laboratories and
classrooms could ever hope to have it. He had Uved
years while we were living days.

I thought of a learned scholar who, through patient
labor in amassing facts, had demonstrated the influence
of the frontier in the development of our national ideals ;
who had pointed out how, at each successive stage of
American history, the heroes of the frontier, pushing
farther and farther into the wilderness, conquering first
the low coastal plain of the Atlantic seaboard, then the

THE IDEAL TEACHER 239

forested foothills and ridges of the Appalachians, had
finally penetrated into the Mississippi Valley, and, sub-
duing that, had followed on westward to the prairies,
and then to the great plains, and then clear across the
great divide, the alkali deserts, and the Sierras, to Cali-
fornia and the Pacific Coast; how these frontiersmen,
at every stage of our history, had sent back wave after
wave of strength and virility to keep alive the sturdy
ideals of toil and effort and independence, — ideals that
would counteract the mellowing and softening and de-
generating influences of the hothouse civilization that
grew up so rapidly in the successive regions that they
left behind. Turner's theory that most of what is typ-
ical and unique in American institutions and ideals owes
its existence to the backset of the frontier life found a
living exemplar in the man who stood before me on that
May morning.

But he would not be discouraged from his purpose.
He had made up his mind to complete the course that the
school offered ; to take up the thread of his education at
the point where he had dropped it more than forty years
before. He had made up his mind, and it was easy to see
that he was not a man to be deterred from a set purpxjse.

I shall not hide the fact that some of us were skeptical
of the outcome. That a man of sixty-five should have
a thirst for learning was not remarkable. But that a man
whose life had been spent in scenes of excitement, who
had been associated with deeds and events that stir

240 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

the blood when we read of them to-day, a man who had
lived almost every moment of his life in the open, — that
such a man could settle down to the uneventful Ufe of a
student and a teacher, could shut himself up within the
four walls of a classroom, could find anything to inspire
and hold him in the dull presentation of facts or the dry
elucidation of theories, — this seemed to be a miracle
not to be expected in this realistic age. But, miracle or
not, the thing actually happened. He remained nearly
four years in the school, earning his Hving by work that
he did in the intervals of study, and doing it so well that,
when he graduated, he had not only his education and the
diploma which stood for it, but also a bank account.

He lived in a little cabin by himself, for he wished to
be where he would not disturb others when he sang or
whistled over his work in the small hours of the night.
But his meals he took at the college dormitory, where he
presided at a table of young women students. Never
was a man more popular with the ladies than this weather-
beaten patriarch with the girls of his table. No matter
how gloomy the day might be, one could always find
sunshine from that quarter. No matter how grievous the
troubles of work, there was always a bit of cheerful opti-
mism from a man who had tasted almost every joy and
sorrow that life had to offer. If one were in a blue funk
of dejection because of failure in a class, he would lend the
sympathy that came from his own rich experience in
failures, — not only past but present, for some things that

THE IDEAL TEACHER 241

come easy at sixteen come hard at sixty-five, and this man
who would accept no favors had to fight his way through
"flunks" and "goose-eggs" like the younger members of
the class. And even with it all so complete an embodi-
ment of hope and courage and wholesome Ught-hearted-
ness would be hard to find. He was an optimist because
he had learned long since that anything but optimism
is a crime ; and learning this in early life, optimism had
become a deeply seated and ineradicable prejudice in his
mind. He could not have been gloomy if he had tried.
And so this man fought his way through science and
mathematics and philosophy, slowly but surely, just as
he had fought inch by inch and link by link, across the
Arizona desert years before. It was a much harder fight,
for all the force of Ufelong habit, than which there is none
other so powerful, was against him from the start. And
now came the human temptation to be off on the old trail,
to saddle his horse and get a pick and a pan and make off
across the western range to the golden land that always
lies just under the sunset. How often that turbulent
Wanderlust seized him, I can only conjecture. But I
know the spirit of the wanderer was always strong within
him. He could say, with Kipling's rram/>i?oya/. •

"It's like a book, I think, this bloomin' world,
Which you can read and care for just so long,
But presently you feel that you will die
Unless you get the page you're reading done,
An' turn another — Ukely not so good ;
But what you're after is to txim them all."

242 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

And I knew that he fought that temptation over and
over again ; for that little experience out on the Gallatin
bench had only partially turned his life from the channels
of wandering, although it had bereft him of the old desire
to seek for gold. Often he outlined to me a well-for-
mulated plan; perhaps he had to tell some one, lest the
fever should take too strong a hold upon him, and
force his surrender. His plan was this : He would teach
a term here and there, gradually working his way west-
ward, always toward the remote corners of the earth
into which his roving instinct seemed unerringly to lead
him. Alaska, Hawaii, and the Philippines seemed easy
enough to access; surely, he thought, teachers must
be needed in all those regions. And when he should
have turned these pages, he might have mastered his
vocation in a degree sufl&cient to warrant his attempting
an alien soil. Then he would sail away into the South
Seas, with New Zealand and Australia as a base. And
gradually moving westward through English-speaking
settlements and colonies he would finally complete the
circuit of the globe.

And the full fruition of that plan might have formed
a fitting climax to my tale, were I telling it for the sake
of its romance ; but my purpose demands a different con-
clusion. My hero is now principal of schools in a Httle
city of the mountains, — a city so tiny that its name
would be unknown to most of you. And I have heard
vague rumors that he is rising rapidly in his profession and

THE IDEAL TEACHER 243

that the community he serves will not listen to anything
but a permanent tenure of his office. All of which seems
to indicate to me that he has abandoned, for the while at
least, his intention to turn quite all the pages of the
world's great book, and is content to live true to the ideal
that was bom in the log schoolhouse — the conviction
that the true life is the life of service, and that the love
of wandering and the lure of gold are only siren calls
that lead one always toward, but never to, the promised
land of dreams that seems to lie just over the western
range where the pink sunset stands sharp against the
purple shadows.

The ending of my story is prosaic, but everything in
this world is prosaic, unless you view it either in the per-
spective of time or space, or in the contrasts that bring
out the high hghts and deepen the shadows.

But if I have left my hero happily married to his pro-
fession, the courtship and winning of which formed the
theme of my tale, I may be permitted to indulge in a very
little moralizing of a rather more explicit sort than I have
yet attempted.

It is a simple matter to construct in imagination an
ideal teacher. Mix with immortal youth and abounding
health, a maximal degree of knowledge and a maximal
degree of experience, add perfect tact, the spirit of true
service, the most perfect patience, and the most steadfast
persistence ; place in the crucible of some good normal
school; stir in twenty weeks of standard psychology,

244 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

ten weeks of general method, and varying amounts of pat-
ent compounds known as special methods, all warranted
pure and without drugs or poison ; sweeten with a little
music, toughen with fifteen weeks of logic, bring to a slow
boil in the practice school, and, while still sizzling, turn
loose on a cold world. The formula is simple and com-
plete, but like many another good recipe, a competent
cook might find it hard to follow when she is short of
butter and must shamefully skimp on the eggs.

Now the man whose history I have recounted repre-
sents the most priceless qualities of this formula. In the
first place he possessed that quality the key to which the
philosophers of all ages have sought in vain, — he had
solved the problem of eternal youth. At the age of sixty-
five his enthusiasm was the enthusiasm of an adolescent.
His energy was the energy of an adolescent. Despite
his gray hair and white beard, his mind was perennially
young. And that is the only type of mind that ought
to be concerned with the work of education. I sometimes
think that one of the advantages of a practice school Ues
in the fact that the teachers who have direct charge of
the pupils — whatever may be their Hmitations — have
at least the virtue of youth, the virtue of being young.
If they could only learn from my hero the art of keep-
ing young, of keeping the mind fresh and vigorous and
open to whatever is good and true, no matter how novel
a form it may take, they might, like him, preserve their
youth indefinitely. And I think that his life gives us

THE IDEAL TEACHER 245

one clew to the secret, — to keep as close as we can to
nature, for nature is always young ; to sing and to whistle
when we would rather weep; to cheer and comfort
when we would rather crush and dishearten; often to
dare something just for the sake of daring, for to be young
is to dare ; and always to wonder, for that is the prime
symptom of youth, and when a man ceases to wonder,
age and decrepitude are waiting for him around the next
corner.

It is the privilege of the teaching craft to represent
more adequately than any other calling the conditions
for remaining young. There is time for living out-
of-doors, which some of us, alas ! do not do. And
youth, with its high hope and lofty ambition, with its
resolute daring and its naive wonder, surrounds us on
every side. And yet how rapidly some of us age ! How
quickly life seems to lose its zest ! How completely are
we blind to the opportunities that are on every hand !

And closely related to this virtue of being always young,
in fact growing out of it, the ideal teacher will have, as
my hero had, the gift of gladness, — that joy of hving
which takes life for granted and proposes to make the
most of every moment of consciousness that it brings.

And finally, to balance these qualities, to keep them in
leash, the ideal teacher should possess that spirit of serv-
ice, that conviction that the life of service is the only life
worth while — that conviction for which my hero strug-
gled so long and against such tremendous odds. The

246 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING

spirit of service must always be the cornerstone of the
teaching craft. To know that any life which does not
provide the opportunities for service is not worth the
living, and that any Ufe, however humble, that does
provide these opportunities is rich beyond the reach of
earthly rewards, — this is the first lesson that the tyro
in Schoolcraft must learn, be he sixteen or sixty-five.

And just as youth and hope and the gift of gladness are
the eternal verities on one side of the picture, so the spirit
of service, the spirit of sacrifice, is the eternal verity that
forms their true complement ; without whose compensa-
tion, hope were but idle dreaming, and laughter a hollow
mockery. And self-denial, which is the keynote of serv-
ice, is the great sobering, justifying, eternal factor that
symbolizes humanity more perfectly than anything else.
In the introduction to Romola, George EUot pictures a
spirit of the past who returns to earth four hundred
years after his death, and looks down upon his native city
of Florence. And I can conclude with no better words
than those in which George Eliot voices her advice to
that shade :

" Go not down, good Spirit : for the changes are great and the
speech of the Florentines would sound as a riddle in your ears. Or,
if you go, mingle with no politicians on the marmi, or elsewhere ;
ask no questions about trade in Calimara ; confuse yourself with no
inquiries into scholarship, official or monastic. Only look at the
sunlight and shadows on the grand walls that were built solidly
and have endured in their grandeur ; look at the faces of the little
children, making another sunUght amid the shadows of age ; look, if
you will, into the churches and hear the same chants, see the same

THE IDEAL TEACHER 247

images as of old — the images of willing anguish for a great end, of
beneficent love and ascending glory, see upturned Uving faces, and
lips moving to the old prayers for help. These things have not
changed. The sunlight and the shadows bring their old beauty and
waken the old heart-strains at morning, noon, and even-tide;
the little children are still the symbol of the eternal marriage be-
tween love and duty ; and men still yearn for the reign of peace and
righteousness — still own that life to be the best which is a con-
scious voluntary sacrifice."

'T^HE following pages contain advertisements of
books by the same author or on kindred subjects

By WILLIAM CHANDLER BAGLEY

Superintendent of the Training Department, State Normal School,
Oswego, N.Y.

Classroom Management :

Its Principles £ind Technique

Cloth, xvii + 332 pages, $i.2j net

This book considers the problems that are consequent upon the massing
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school management receive adequate attention ; the first day of school ;
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ishment; absence and tardiness, etc. In addition to these, however, a
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The ELducative Process

Cloth, xix + JjS pages, $r.2^ net

The book aims to prevent a waste of energy on the part of the young
teacher by setting forth a systematic and comprehensive view of the task
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the attainment of the end. The best idea for the author's plan of treat-
ment can be had from his division of the book. Part I discusses the
function of education and of the school in biological and sociolc^cal
terms. Part II continues the same topic from the psychological stand-
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three periods of child-development: the transitional, the formative, the
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ideals in the educative process, and Part VI concludes with the technique
of teaching.

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

64-66 Fifth Atuiim, Haw York

The Macmillan Pedagogical Library

Sixteen volumes, 4.700 pages, price, $12.00

This Library consists of sixteen helpful and stimulating professional
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signed. They are handsomely bound in green cloth, i2mo, with gilt
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It will be found that practically every topic of interest to teachers
professionally has been treated, from many points of view, in the more
than two hundred (2CX)) chapters contained in the Pedagogical Library.
The press notices and comments by practical educators all over the
country, many of whom have not only read the books but also used them
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age teacher to read them with pleasure and profit.

The titles are as follows:

I. The Philosophy of Education

By Herman H. Horne, Assistant Professor of Philosophy and
Education, Dartmouth G^Uege.

n. The Meaning of Education

By Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia University.

m. Outlines of Psychology

By JosLUi RoYCE, Professor of the History of Philosophy, Harvard
University.

IV. The Physical Nature of the Child

By Stuart H. Rowe, Professor of Psychology and the History of
Education, Training School for Teachers, Brooklyn, New York.

V. Fundamentals of Child Study

By Edwin A. Kirkpatrick, Department of Psychology and Child
Study, State Normal School, Fitcbburg, Mass.

VI. School Hygiene

By the late Edward R. Shaw.

Vn. Interest and Education

By Charles DeGarmo, Professor of the Science and Art of Edu-
cation, Cornell University.

Vm. The Teaching of English -

By Percival Chubb, Principal of High School Department, Ethi-
cal Culture School, New York City.

IX. The Teaching of Elementary Mathematics

By David Eugene Smith, Professor of Mathematics, Teachers
College, Columbia University.

X. The Elements of General Method

By Charles A. McMurrv.

XI. The Method of the Recitation

By Charles A. McMurry and Frank M. McMurry, Professor of
the Theory and Practice of Teaching, Teachers College, Columbia
University.

Xn. Special Method in Primary Reading

By Charles A. McMurry.

Xm. Special Method in Elementary Science

By Charles A. McMurry.

XIV. Special Method in Geography
By Charles A. McMurry.

XV. Special Method in the Reading of English Classics
By Charles A. McMurry.

XVI. Special Method in History
By Charles A. McMurry.

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

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A Cyclopedia of Education

Edited by PAUL MONROE, Ph.D.

Professor of the History of Education, Teachers College, Columbia University ;

Author of "A Text-Book in the History of Education," " Brief

Course in the History of Education," etc

The need of such work is evidenced : By the great mass of varied educational
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The men who need it are : All teachers, professional men, editors, ministers,
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Among the departmental Editors associated with Dr. Monroe are Dr. Elmer
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WiLHELM MiJNCH, of Berlin University, Germany, Prof. JOHN Dewey, of
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Cal., Prof. Foster Watson, of the University College of Wales, Dr.
David Snedden, Commissioner of Education for the State of Massa-
chusetts, and others.

Send for a descriptive circular and list of contributors to Volume I

To be completed in five large octavo volumes, each $5.00 net

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The Philosophy of Education

By HERMAN HARRELL HORNE, Ph.D.

Professor of the History of Philosophy and of the History of Education, New
York University

Cloth, 8vo, xvii + zg^ page^t $i-SO net

A connected series of discussions on the foundations of education in the
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mental science are applied to the understanding of educational problems.
The field of education is carefully divided, and the total discussion is
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science, and art

The Psychological Principles of Education

By HERMAN HARRELL HORNE, Ph.D.

C/otA, i2mo, xiii + 43s p^gt^t ^'^•75 *t^f

The relationship of this book to the author's " Philosophy of Education " is
that, whereas the first was mostly theory with some practice, this is mostly
practice with some theory. This volume lays the scientific foundations for
the art of teaching so far as those foundations are concerned with psychol-
ogy. Tiie author is the " middleman " between the psychologist and the
teacher, taking the theoretical descriptions of pure psychology and trans-
forming them into educational principles for the teacher. In the Intro-
duction the reader gets his bearing in the field of the science of
education. The remainder of the book sketches this science from the
standpoint of psychology, the four parts of the work, Intellectual Educa-
tion, Emotional Education, Moral Education, and Religious Education,
being suggested by the nature of man, the subject of education. A special
feature is the attention paid to the education of the emotions and of the will

Idealism in Elducation

Or First Principles in the Making of Men and Women

By HERMAN HARRELL HORNE, Ph.D.

Author of " The Philosophy of Education " and " The Psychological Principles
of Education "

Cloth, i2mo, xxi + 183 pages, index, %ias '"''■ h »»«»/, %i.34

Note. — Professor Home here discusses three things which he regards as
fundamental in the building of human character, — Heredity, Environment,
and Will. His method of nandling these otherwise heavy subjects, makes
the book of interest, even to the general reader.

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DYNAMIC FACTORS IN EDUCATION

By M. V. O'Shea, Professor of the Science and Art of Education, Univer-
sity of Wisconsin. Cloth. i2mo. xiii + 320 pages. $1.2^ net.

This volume is the result of the author's conviction that the motor
and physical factors should receive more attention than they now do
in most cases. In the first part he shows that in the early years, at
any rate, motor expression is essential to all learning, and he has
indicated how the requirements of dynamic education can be pro-
vided for in all departments of school work. Attention is paid also
to the definite order in which the motor powers develop. The
second part of the book treats the relation between fatigue and
activity. On the one side the nature and causes of fatigue are dis-
cussed and then the effects upon mind and body are traced. Much
space is given to pointing out ways and means of carrj'ing on the
work of the schoolroom without overtaxing the pupil. Dr. O'Shea
has summarized the investigations made upon the different topics
discussed by specialists and has added his own observations made
upon children whose development he has followed in detail for a
number of years. Topics for investigation and discussion designed
to encourage the reader to make practical tests and applications of
the principles developed are added to each chapter.

LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION

ByM.V. O'Shea. lamo. Cloth. xvii+ 347 pages. $1.2$ net.

A study of the psychology of linguistic development derived from
observation of children from the beginning of expressive activity
until mastery of the mother tongue in its vocal and auditory forms
has been acquired. The history and methods of these observations,
and the deductions made in reference to linguistic functions, form
the substance of a volume which will have great interest for all
students both of language and of mental development.

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METHODS IN TEACHING

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tions by young pupils trained under this method are given.

A BRIEF COURSE IN THE HISTORY OF
EDUCATION

By Paul Monroe, Ph.D., Professor in the History of Education,
Teachers College, Columbia University. 8vo. Qotb. xviii + 409
pages. $1.25 net.

This is practically a condensation of Professor Monroe's " Text-
book in the History of Education," issued more than two years ago,
and still the most extensive work on the subject in English. The
present abbreviation has been made in answer to the demands of
normal schools and teachers' training classes which have not the
time to devote to the study of the larger text. Nevertheless it treats
of all the general periods, and of most of the topics discussed in tha
larger work.

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