Craftsmanship in Teaching Part 7

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 important 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 organization to-day is that most teachers, like my teacher at that time, have so much to do that anything like individual attention at such moments is out of the question.

Next to individual attention, probably, the best way to overcome the difficulty is to give cla.s.s instruction in these matters,--to set aside a definite period for teaching pupils the technique of using books. If one could arouse a sufficiently general problem interest, this sort of instruction could be made most effective. But even if the problem interest is not general, I think that it is well to a.s.sume that it exists in some pupils, at least, and to give them the benefit of cla.s.s 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 particularly important in the upper grades and the high school, where pupils have sufficiently 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 information 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.

III

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 a.s.signment is all-important here, and that study questions and problems which can be answered or solved by 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 possible, 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 cla.s.s 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 while. If, in our training in the topical method, we are too formal and didactic, the art of study will begin and end right there. It is here that the factor of motivation 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, however, 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 important 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, probably, 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 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. Repet.i.tion, especially rhythmic repet.i.tion, 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 commonly to be a.s.sociated 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 const.i.tute 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.

IV

There are one or two points of a general nature in connection with the art of study that should be emphasized. In the first place, the upper-grade and high-school pupils are, I believe, mature enough to appreciate in some degree what knowledge really means. One of the fallacies 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 cla.s.s without further 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 acc.u.mulated. How many mistakes of life are due to the lack of the judicial att.i.tude 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 mistake opinion for fact in the field of psychology and education,--and I suppose that my own hasty acceptance of statements in other fields would have a similar effect upon the specialists of those fields.

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 perhaps, 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 unquestioned mastery of the technique of polar travel, his general reputation for honesty and caution in advancing 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 to 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-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 att.i.tude 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 knowledge and experience is likely to lead to unfortunate results. We have all sorts of ill.u.s.trations from the ignorant 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 authorities 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?

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 opportunity to let pupils work through some simple problems from the beginnings, struggling with the conditions somewhat as the discoverers themselves struggled; following up "blind leads" and toilsomely returning for a fresh start; meeting with discouragement; and finally feeling, 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 obstreperous 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 unpromising 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, and sickness, and innumerable disappointments up to the time when, in advancing years, success crowned his efforts.

All this may seem very remote from the prosaic task of teaching pupils how to study; and yet it will lend its influence toward the attainment of that end. For, after all, we must lead our pupils to see that some books, in spite of their formidable difficulties and their apparent abstractions, are still close to life, and that the truth which lies in books, and which we wish them to a.s.similate, has been wrought out of human experience, and not brought down miraculously from some remote storehouse of wisdom 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.

V

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 gradually and persistently and systematically lead him to grasp the method of study as a method,--that is, slowly and gradually to abstract the method from the particular cases to which he applies it and to emotionalize 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 life. 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 possess a high degree of patience,--that first principle of pedagogic skill,--but also that he have a comprehensive 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 controlled tests and experiments, that will enable us to get at the facts. Above all, let me protest against the incidental 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 subconscious is the first and last refuge of the psycho-faker, so incidental learning is the first and last refuge of soft pedagogy. And I mean by incidental learning, going at a teaching task in an indolent, unreflective, hit-or-miss fas.h.i.+on in the hope that somehow or other from this process will emerge the very definite results that we desire.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 14: A paper read before the Superintendents' Section of the Illinois State Teachers' a.s.sociation, December 29, 1910.]

~IX~

A PLEA FOR THE DEFINITE IN EDUCATION[15]

I

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 discuss with you this morning. My plea for the definite in education will be limited not only to the field of educational aims and values, but to a small corner 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 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 history is purely educational. I have had no special training in historical research. As you may perhaps infer from my discussion, my acquaintance with historical facts is very far from comprehensive. I speak as a layman in history,--and I do it openly and, perhaps, a little defiantly, for I believe that the last person to pa.s.s 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 regarding 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 maintained 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 a.s.sumed a disproportionate value in his eyes. Brain 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 specialists 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 determination.

II

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 instruction. 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 conduct. If my pupils act in no way more efficiently 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 efficient, 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 efficient conduct. While the machinery of the process, like the mills of the G.o.ds, certainly grinds slowly, it is some consolation to believe 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 machinery 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 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 a.s.sert that the facts of history have value because they can be directly applied to the needs of contemporary life. History, they will 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 type of reasoning may be said to ascribe a utilitarian value to the study of history. It a.s.sumes that historical knowledge is directly and immediately applicable 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 influence. It is extremely doubtful whether the knowledge that the voters have of the history of their country will be recalled and applied 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 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 conditions. 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 pa.s.s to the consideration of other values that have been proposed. The specialist in history, whose right to legislate upon this matter I have just called into question, will probably emphasize the disciplinary value of this study. Specialists are commonly enthusiastic over the disciplinary 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 recommend the same discipline for all minds. Again, we must not blame the specialist 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 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 mult.i.tude 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 knowledge is thought to work into action may be discussed under the head of the cultural value.

History, like literature, is commonly a.s.sumed 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 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.

III

The unsatisfactory 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 manifestly through accident, not through intelligent design. It is needless to point out the waste that such a blundering and haphazard adjustment entails. We all 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 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 influenced 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 living in the Far West, I came to know something of the Chinese, who are largely engaged, 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 overdrawn.

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 it a vigorous national prejudice in favor of precedent. But whatever we call it, it is a very dominant force in Chinese life. It is the trait that, perhaps more than any other, distinguishes Chinese conduct from European 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 altogether 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 a.s.sociate with the Chinese, save only the physical features. His hair is straight, his skin is saffron, 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 Englishman'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 convention. It is the thing to do, and the typical Englishman 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.