Part 1 (1/2)
The Vitalized School
by Francis B Pearson
PREFACE
The thoughtful observer must have noted in the recent past many indications of an awakened interest both in the concept of education and in school procedure on the part of school officials, teachers, and the public Educators have been developing pedagogical principles that strike their roots deep into the philosophy of life, and now their pronounce the consciousness of people of all ranks and causing theral part of the life process and not soes constitute an attempt to interpret some of the school processes in terest ways in which these processes may be made identical
It is hoped that teachers who h theive theer hope for the future of the school, and an access of zeal to press valiantly forward in their efforts to excel themselves
F B P
COLUMBUS, OHIO, January, 1917
THE VITALIZED SCHOOL
CHAPTER I
TEACHING SCHOOL
=Life and living co and teaching school The question ”Is she a school-teacher?” ; but the question ”Can she teach school?” ; but teaching school is life And any one who has a definition of life can readily find a definition for teaching school Much of the criticism of the work of the schools emanates from sources that have a restricted concept of life The artisan who defines life in terms of his own trade is i to do He would have the scope of the school narrowed to his concept of life If art and literature are beyond the limits of his concept, he can see no warrant for their presence in the school The work of the schools cannot be standardized until life itself is standardized, and that is neither possible nor desirable The glory of life is that it does not have fixity, that it is ever crescent
=Teaching defined=--Teaching schoollife by the laboratory ates of life for the pupils But, before these gates can be opened, the teacher must knohat and where they are This view of the teacher's work is neither fanciful nor fantastic; quite the contrary Life is the co and old, and the school should be so organized and ade to the best advantage both for themselves and for others If a child should be absent froether, or if he should be incarcerated in prison frohteenth year, he would still have life But, if he is in school during those twelve years, he is supposed to have life that is of better quality and more abundant Life is not measured by years, but by its own intensity and scope It has often been said that some people have more life in threescore and ten years than Methuselah had in his more than nine hundred years
=Life measured by intensity=--This statement is not demonstrable, of course, but it serves to make evident the fact that soiven time than others in the same time In this sense, life may be measured by the number of reactions to objectives
These reactionsa shop-, may not see the same objects; or oneto their ability to react The man as locked in a vault at the ceht he had spent four days in his ile hour by reason of the intensity of life during that hour
=Illustrations=--In the case of dreams, we are told that years may be condensed into minutes, or even seconds, by reason of the rapidity of reactions The rapidity and intensity of these reactions make themselves manifest on the face of the dreamer Beads of perspiration and facial contortions betoken intensity of feeling In such an experience life is intense If a mental or spiritual cycloh record of speed Life sohts But the distance between these extrereatly in different persons The life of one ht, or a hundred, or a thousand
The life of Job is an apt illustration No one has been able to sound the depths of his suffering, nor has any one been able to hts of his exaltation We may not readily compute the octaves in such a life as his
=The complexity of life=--It is not easy to think life, much less define it The elements are so numerous as to baffle and bewilder the mind It looks out at one frous-eyed
At one le and strive in a mad frenzy of competition; at another, in a quiet home, where a mother soothes her baby to sleep, where there is no coain, itofa canal to unite oceans; or, again, in the laboratory where thethe for the movements of the heavenly bodies as they file by his telescope, while another writes a proclamation thatan ar the storoes forth on his mission of mercy
=Manifestations of life=--These manifestations of life men call trade, commerce, history, mathematics, science, nature, and philanthropy And men write these words in books, and otherThen, still others divide and subdivide, and science becoebra, and geoonometry, and calculus, and astronoe And, in tiether, and sometimes strive for precedence
Thus, books accumulate into libraries and so add another to the azines are written to explain the books and their authors The motive behind the book is analyzed in an effort to discover the workings of the author's mind and heart In these revelations we so of the brook, and so of the dove, and so of the la of the lion In thehtning that rends the forest; the blossoms that filter from the trees and the avalanche that carries destruction; the rain that fructifies the earth and the hurricane that destroys
=Life in literature=--Back of these sights and sounds we discover men--Cicero, Demosthenes, Hohts and emotions of these ain, we come upon another manifestation of life
Literature is what it is because these e and so wrote it down large; and because they wrote it thus, what they wrote endures They stood upon the heights and saw the struggles of man with hienerated thoughts and feelings in them, and these they could not but portray And so literature and life are identical and not coordinates, as some would have us think