Part 5 (1/2)

III

But I a away, from my text You will re that we can teach the child is to attack strenuously and resolutely any problem that confronts him whether it pleases him or not, and I wanted to be certain that you did not misinterpret me to mean that we should, for this reason, make our school tasks unnecessarily difficult and laborious 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 tier

Now if this ideal of persistent effort is thethat can coain, as I analyze what I obtained fro that disagreeable tasks are often orth doing, the factor that has helpedthe situations that confronted ressive and persistent attack, we le indefinitely without much result All problems of life involve certain common factors The essential difference between the educated and the uneducated rant each an equal measure of pluck, persistence, and endurance, lies in the superior ability of the educated man to analyze his probleently rather than blindly to its solution I ive aany problem; furthermore I maintain that the education of the present day, in spite of the anathe this in richer measure than it has ever been done before But there is no reason e should not do it in still greater measure

I once kneofruit for coe 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 ahad not been directed in any way toward the problems of horticulture The orchards had borne exceptionally well for several years, but one season, when the fruit looked especially pro just before the picking season, and oneboth these men went out into their orchards, to find the fruit very badly ”specked” Now the conventional thing to do in such cases ell known to both ood deal of technical infor inoutfit, prepared soorously at ith his pumps So far as persistence and enterprise went, bothBut 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 succumb to its corrosive influence

Now this here the difference in training showed itself The orchardist orked by rule of thuht and spent his ti his luck The other set diligently at work to analyze the situation His education had not taught hii, for parasitic fungi were not very well understood when he was in school But his education had left with hieneral method of procedure for just such cases, and that ht him how to find the information that he needed, provided that such inforht him that human experience is crystallized in books, and that, when a discovery is made in any field of science,--no matter how specialized the field and no ,--the discovery is recorded in printer's ink and placed at the disposal of those who have the intelligence 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 ested 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 kne to use indices and tables of contents and various other devices that facilitate the gathering of infor over the pedantry of ress through thethat had been found out about this specific disease He learned that its spores are encased in a gelatinous sac which resisted the entrance of the chemicals He found how the spores were reproduced, how they wintered, how they gerh 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 ators had left off, and then he applied a principle he had learned from his education; na new truths are the methods of close observation and controlled experiiven that ht 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, priained either in school or in actual experience His superiority lay in the fact that he kne 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 o about to discover facts that had been undetected by previous investigators I care not whether he got this knowledge in the eleht have secured it in any one of the three types of institution, but he had to learn it soe man has to learn it in some school and under an explicit and conscious method of instruction

IV

But perhaps you would eneral 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 inforation?

I maintain that these important useful ideals may be effectively impressed al of every subject affords innumerable opportunities to force horadual process--a process in which the concrete instances are numerous and rich and ieneral truth e are greatly nize 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 ain the strength and the power that we expect all to gain, lies in the inability of the average individual to draw a general conclusion froeneral in the particular We have insisted so strenuously upon concrete instruction that we have perhaps failed also to insist that fact without law is blind, and that observation without induction is stupidity gone to seed

Let o, I visited an eighth-grade class during a geography 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 soood 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 vastlyinformation 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 shi+fting ice, the treacherous open leads, the lack of ga marches on scant rations, the short hours and the uncomfortable conditions of sleep; and how from these that fundae ca in sentioodyism” And then the other and equally ie in thee 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 shi+p that could withstand the tremendous pressure of the floes; and soion, and how to travel with dogs and sledges;--and sogled 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 stands as a type of what success in any undertaking hth-grade pupils were absorbing,--the world-old lesson before which all others fade into insignificance,--the lesson, naained only by those who are willing to pay the price

And I i the continent of Africa in their geography work, they will learn so more than the names of rivers and ine that they will link these facts with the naave 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 sa out of their own little conquests,--if the problems of arithmetic do not furnish an opportunity to conquer the pressure ridges of partial payht of bank discount, or if the intricacies of forrammar do not resolve themselves into the North Pole of correct expression,--I have reat triuet our pupils to see the fundaly trivial and transitory We are fond of dividing school studies into the cultural and the practical, into the humanities and the sciences Believethat is not practical at basis, and there is no practical study that has not its huo to some pains to search the that education can do is to imbue the pupil with the ideal of effortful achievement which will lead hireeable tasks that fall to his lot I have said that the next eneralthe probleeneral 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 h he possesses the other two in a very generous e He isthe probleently and effectively And yet he has failed toWhy? Siood living Measured byexcellently well Measured by his own standard, he is a loomy and out of harmony with the world, si than a financial one He is by profession a civil engineer His work is s He has it in him to attain to professional distinction 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 nuh the bluest kind of spectacles

Now, to my mind that man's education failed somewhere, and its failure lay in the fact that it did not develop in him ideals of success that would havefactors 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 hted down the ress to the forces of superstition and fraud and error Education has accomplished this function, I think, passably ith respect to the ic, deated to the limbo of exposed fraud Their conquest has been one of the e The truths of science have at last triu 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 perspective, of distorted values, of inadequate standards If belief in witchcraft or in ic is bad because it falls short of an adequate interpretation of nature,--if it is false because it is inconsistent with huineer friend represents is tenfold worse than witchcraft, measured by the same standards If there is any lesson that hu force, it is surely this: Every race which has yielded to the deratification has gone down the swift and certain road to national decay Every race that, through unusual rip 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 superstition consists in believing so that is inconsistent with rational huolden calf is by far the erous form of superstition that has ever befuddled the human intellect

But, you ask, what can education do to alleviate a 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 ill live it unless he has to? It is easy to say that man should have social and not individual standards of success and achievement, but what effect will your puerile assertion have upon the situation that confronts us?

Yes; it is easier to be a pessimist than an optis 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 education can lift the japanese people froenerations; if education can in a single century transforest 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 arranted in our assuainst Maineer friend toward life is the result of twisted ideals A goodout into life with a siain their ideals, not fros 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 ily as I can against this false standard of which ineer friend is the victiive ood living consists in as it is to give thee and skill that will enable the If my students who are to beco 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 evidences of luxury beyond their means, if this irritation sours their dispositions and checks their spontaneity, their efficiency as teachers is greatly lessened or perhaps entirely negated And if her plane than professional efficiency, I dread for the safety of the bridges that he builds His education as an engineer should have fortified hiency It should have left him with the ideal of craftsmanshi+p supreme in his life And if his technical education failed to do this, his general education ought, at least, to have given hiht direction

I believe that all for in this respect as they should be Again you say to me, What can education do when the spirit of the tily on the other side? But what is education for if it is not to preserve reat truths that the race has wrung froht have been the fate of Ro every child in the E the years that witnessed her decay and downfall, those schools could have kept steadily, persistently at work, ieneration the virtues thatand virile--the virtues that enabled them to lay the foundations of an eotten 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 trusteeshi+p of the acy that the past has left to the present and to the future? If this is not our function in the sches, 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 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 questions 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 shortcos 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 elee rises within ainst teaching as a profession (and against the work of the elementary and secondary school in particular) by reatest handicap under which the profession of teaching labors In every other important field of human activity 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 criticisestion This plan s on too conservative a basis; but it avoids the danger into which we as a profession have fallen,--the danger of ”half-baked” theories and unet a respectable hearing at our great national educationalnew and bizarre to propose And the reater is the measure of adulation that he receives The result of this is a continual straining for effect, an enorh most of them are happily short-lived, keep us in a state of continual tur that there areeducation hit the mark of utility in addition to those that I have rades who are teaching little children the arts of reading and writing and co vastly iven credit for doing; for reading and writing and the manipulation 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 refine other useful things So their pupils to be well hts of others They are teaching children one of the most basic and fundas that a gentles that society will not stand How etting a living could be avoided if one had only learned this lesson passing well! What a pity it is that soress are failing in just this particular--are sending out into the world an annual crop of boys and girls who reat 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 chastening scourge comes sometimes, alas, too late!

There is no feature of school life which has not its almost infinite possibilities of utility But after all, are not the basic and fundas these ideals that I have named? And should not ho teach stand for idealism in its widest sense? Should we not ourselves subscribe an undying fidelity to those great ideals for which teaching must stand,--to the ideal of social service which lies at the basis of our craft, to the ideals of effort and discipline that , to the ideal of science that dissipates the black night of ignorance and superstition, to the ideal of culture that humanizes mankind?

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