The Vitalized School Part 8

=Dynamic qualities.=--Her character is the sum of all her habits of thinking, feeling, and action and, therefore, is herself. Since she is an artist, her habits are all pitched in a high key and she is culture personified. Her immaculateness of body and spirit is not a superficial acquisition but a fundamental expression of her real self. Just as the electric bulb diffuses light, so she diffuses an atmosphere of culture.

She gives the artistic touch to every detail of her work because she is an artist, a genuine, sincere artist in all that makes up life. She has the heart of an artist, the eyes of an artist, the touch of an artist.

Whether these qualities are inherent or acquired is beside the point, at present, but it may be remarked, in pa.s.sing, that unless they were capable of cultivation, the world would be at a standstill. There is no place in her exuberant vitality for a jaundiced view, and hence her world does not become "stale, flat, and unprofitable."

=Aspiration and wors.h.i.+p.=--Every sincere, n.o.ble aspiration is a prayer; hence, she prays without ceasing in obedience to the admonition of the Apostle. And, let it be said in reverence, she helps to answer her own prayers. Her spirit yearns out toward higher and wider attainments every hour of the day, not morbidly but exultantly. And while she aspires she wors.h.i.+ps. The starry sky holds her in rapt attention and admiration, and the modest flower does no less. She is thankful for the rain, and revels in the beauty and abundance of the snow. The heat may enervate, but she is grateful, none the less, because of its beneficent influence upon the farmer's work. Like food and sleep, her att.i.tude of wors.h.i.+p conserves her powers and preserves her balance. When physical weariness comes, she sends her spirit out to the star, or the sea, or the mountain, and so forgets her burden in the contemplation of majesty and beauty. In short, her spirit is attuned to all beauty and sublimity and truth, and so she is inherently an artist.

=Professor Phelps quoted.=--In his very delightful book, "Teaching in School and College," the author, Professor William Lyon Phelps, says: "I do not know that I could make entirely clear to an outsider the pleasure I have in teaching. I had rather earn my living by teaching than in any other way. In my mind, teaching is not merely a life work, a profession, an occupation, a struggle; it is a pa.s.sion. I love to teach. I love to teach as a painter loves to paint, as a musician loves to play, as a singer loves to sing, as a strong man rejoices to run a race. Teaching is an art--an art so great and so difficult to master that a man or a woman can spend a long life at it, without realizing much more than his limitations and mistakes, and his distance from the ideal. But the main aim of my happy days has been to become a good teacher, just as every architect wishes to be a good architect, and every professional poet strives toward perfection. For the chief difference between the ambition of the artist and the ambition of a money-maker--both natural and honorable ambitions--is that the money-maker is after the practical reward of his toil, while the artist wants the inner satisfaction that accompanies mastery."

=Att.i.tude toward work.=--To these sentiments the artist teacher subscribes whole-heartedly, if not in words, certainly by her att.i.tude and practices. She regards her work not as a task but as a privilege, and thinking it a privilege she appreciates it as she would any other privilege. She would esteem it a privilege to attend a concert by high-cla.s.s artists, or to visit an art gallery, or to witness a presentation of a great drama, or to see the Jungfrau; and she feels the same exaltation as she antic.i.p.ates her work as a teacher. She sings on her way to school because of the privileges that await her. She experiences a fine flow of sentiment without becoming sentimental.

Teaching, to her, is a serious business, but not, in the least, somber.

Painting is a serious business, but the artist's zeal and joy in his work give wings to the hours. Laying the Atlantic cable was a serious business, but the vision of success was both inspiring and inspiriting, and temporary mishaps only served to stimulate to greater effort.

=The element of enthusiasm.=--To this teacher, each cla.s.s exercise is an enterprise that is big with possibilities; and, in preparation for the event, she feels something of the thrill that must have animated Columbus as he faced the sea. She estimates results more by the faces of her pupils than by the marks in a grade book, for the field of her endeavors is the spirit of the child, and the face of the child telegraphs to her the awakening of the spirit. Like the sculptor, she is striving to bring the angel of her dream into the face of the child; and when this hope is realized, the privilege of being a teacher seems the very acme of human aspirations. The animated face and the flas.h.i.+ng eye betoken the sort of life that her teaching aims to stimulate; and when she sees these unmistakable manifestations, she knows that her big enterprise is a success and rejoices accordingly. If, for any reason, her enthusiasm is running low, she takes herself in hand and soon generates the enthusiasm that she knows is indispensable to the success of her enterprise.

=Redemption of common from commonplace.=--She has the supreme gift of being able to redeem the common from the plane of the commonplace.

Indeed, she never permits any fact of the books to become commonplace to her pupils. They all know that Columbus discovered America in 1492, but when the recitation touches this fact she invests it with life and meaning and so makes it glow as a factor in the cla.s.s exercise. The humdrum traditional teacher asks the question; and when the pupil drones forth the answer, "Columbus discovered America in 1492," she dismisses the whole matter with the phonographic response, "Very good." What a farce! What a travesty upon the work of the teacher! Instead of being very good, it is bad, yea, inexpressibly bad. The artist teacher does it far better. By the magic of her touch she causes the imagination of her pupils to be fired and their interest to thrill with the mighty significance of the great event. They feel, vicariously, the poverty of Columbus in his appeals for aid and wish they might have been there to a.s.sist. They find themselves standing beside the intrepid mariner, watching the angry waves striving to beat him back. They watch him peering into s.p.a.ce, day after day, and feel a thousand pities for him in his suspense. And when he steps out upon the new land, they want to shout out their salvos and proclaim him a victor.

=The voyage of Columbus.=--They have yearned, and striven, and prayed with Columbus, and so have lived all the events of his great achievements. Hence, it can never be commonplace in their thinking. The teacher lifted it far away from that plane and made it loom high and large in their consciousness. A dramatic critic avers that the action of the play occurs, not upon the stage, but in the imagination of the auditors; that the players merely cause the imagination to produce the action; and that if nothing were occurring in the imagination of the people in the seats beyond what is occurring on the stage, the audience would leave the theater by way of protest. The artist teacher acts upon this very principle in every cla.s.s exercise. Neither the teacher nor the book can possibly depict even a moiety of all that she hopes to produce in the imagination of the pupils. She is ever striving to find the one word or sentence that will evoke a whole train of events in their minds.

Just here is where her superb art is shown. A whole volume could not portray all that the imagination of the pupils saw in connection with the voyage of Columbus, and yet the teacher caused all these things to happen by the use of comparatively few words. This is high art; this proclaims the artist teacher.

=Resourcefulness.=--In her work there is a fineness and a delicacy of touch that baffles a satisfactory a.n.a.lysis. She has the power to call forth Columbus from the past to reenact his great discovery in the imagination of her pupils--all without noise, or bombast, or gesticulation. She does what she does because she is what she is; and she needs neither copyright nor patent for protection. Her work is suffused with a rare sort of enthusiasm that carries conviction by reason of its genuineness. This enthusiasm gives to her work a tone and a flavor that can neither be disguised nor counterfeited. Her work is distinctive, but not sensational or pyrotechnic. Least of all is it ever hackneyed. So resourceful is she in devising new plans and new ways of saying and doing things that her pupils are always animated by a wholesome expectancy. She is the dynamo, but the light and heat that she generates manifest themselves in the minds of her pupils, while she remains serene and quiet.

=The thirteen colonies.=--With the poet Keats she can sing:

Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

Animated by this sentiment, she disdains no form of truth, whether large or small, for in every form of truth she finds beauty; and her spirit reacts to it on the instant, and joy is the resultant. This is the basis for her superb enthusiasm in every detail of her work as well as the source of her joyous living. Her pupils may name the thirteen original colonies without a slip, but that is not enough for her. The establis.h.i.+ng of these colonies formed a mighty epoch in history, and she must dwell upon the events until they throb through the life currents of her pupils. Names in books must mean people with all their hopes, their aspirations, their trials and hards.h.i.+ps, their sorrows and their joys.

The conditions of life, the food, the clothing, the houses, the modes of travel, and the dangers must all come into the mental picture. Hence it is that she prepares for the lesson on the colonies as she would make ready for a trip with the pupils around the world, and the mere giving of names is negligible in her inspiring enterprise.

=Every subject invested with life.=--She finds in the circulation of the blood a subject of great import and makes ready for the lesson with enthusiastic antic.i.p.ation. Her step is elastic as she takes her way to school on this particular day, and her face is beaming, for to-day comes to the children this stupendous revelation. She feels as did the college professor when he was just ready to begin an experiment in his laboratory and said to his students, "Gentlemen, please remove your hats; I am about to ask G.o.d a question." She approaches every truth reverently, albeit joyously, for she feels that she is the leader of the children over into the Promised Land. In the book already quoted, Professor Phelps says, "I read in a German play that the mathematician is like a man who lives in a gla.s.s room at the top of a mountain covered with eternal snow--he sees eternity and infinity all about him, but not much humanity." Not so in her teaching of mathematics; for every subject and every problem transports her to the Isle of Patmos, and the hour is crowded with revelations.

=Human interest.=--And wherever she is, there is humanity. There are no dry bones in her work, for she invests every subject with human interest and causes it to pulsate in the consciousness of her pupils. If there are dry bones when she arrives, she has but to touch them with the magic of her humanity, and they become things of life. Whether long division or calculus, it is to her a part of the living, palpitating truth of the world, and she causes it to live before the minds of the pupils. The so-called dead languages spring to life in her presence, and, like Aaron's rod, blossom and bring forth at her touch. Wherever she walks there are resurrections because life begets life. No science, no mathematics, no history, no language, can be dull or dry when touched by her art, but all become vital because she is vital. By the subtle alchemy of her artistic teaching all the subjects of her school are trans.m.u.ted into the pure gold of truth and beauty.

QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1. What kinds of arts are there other than the fine arts?

2. How do the motives of the artisan differ from those of the artist?

3. What are some of the characteristics that gain one the distinction of being an "artist" teacher?

4. Show that to enjoy respect is more worth while than to attract admiration.

5. Under what conditions can one have joy in his work? Can one do his best without it?

6. What is the result on one's work of brooding over troubles?

7. Henry Ford employs trained sociologists who see that the home relations of his employees are satisfactory. Why?

8. Is one who reads good literature to acquire culture as yet an "artist" teacher?

9. What const.i.tutes character?

10. What is the inference concerning one's culture if his clothes and body are not clean? If his property at the school is not in order?

11. How can one add to his culture? Is what one knows or what one does the more important part of it? Has a high degree of culture been attained by a person who must ever be on his guard?

12. Is feeling an important element of culture? Ill.u.s.trate.

13. What is the teacher's chief reward?

14. Can a teacher lead pupils to regard work as a privilege rather than as a task, unless she has that att.i.tude herself?

15. In what respects do you regard teaching as a privilege? In what respects is it drudgery to you?

16. Can enthusiasm result if there is a lack of joy in one's work? If there is a deficiency of physical strength? If there is a poor knowledge of the subject?

17. What causes historical facts to seem commonplace?

18. What elements should be emphasized in history to make it seem alive with meaning?

19. What principle of the drama comes into play in teaching, when a teacher desires to invest the subject with life?

20. What advantages are there in having variety in one's plans?

21. Why should one avoid the sensational in school work? What are the characteristics of sensationalism? Is the fact that a cla.s.s is unusually aroused a reason for decrying a method as sensational?

22. With what spirit should a teacher prepare to teach about the thirteen colonies?

23. Why should a teacher have great joy in the teaching of science?

24. Is interest in a subject as an abstract science likely to be an adequate interest? If so, is it the best sort of interest? Why?

25. From what should interest start, and in what should it function?

26. Summarize the ways in which the artist teacher will show herself the artist.

CHAPTER XIV

THE TEACHER AS AN IDEAL

=Responsibility of the exemplar.=--If the teacher could be convinced that each of her pupils is to become a replica of herself, she would more fully appreciate the responsibilities of her position. At first flush, she might feel flattered; but when she came into a full realization of the magnitude of the responsibility, she would probably seek release. If she could know that each pupil is striving to copy her in every detail of her life, her habits of speech, her bodily movements, her tone of voice, her dress, her walk, and even her manner of thinking, this knowledge would appall her, and she would shrink from the responsibility of becoming the exemplar of the child. She cannot know, however, to what extent and in what respects the pupils imitate her.

Nor, perhaps, could they themselves give definite information on these points, if they were put to the test. Children imitate their elders both consciously and unconsciously; so, whether the teacher wills it so or not, she must a.s.sume the functions of an exemplar as well as a teacher.