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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14567 ***
+
+School Efficiency Monographs
+
+THE RECONSTRUCTED SCHOOL
+
+by
+
+FRANCIS B. PEARSON
+
+Superintendent of Public Instruction for Ohio
+
+Author of _The Evolution of the Teacher_, _The High School Problem_,
+_Reveries Of A Schoolmaster_, and _The Vitalized School_
+
+World Book Company
+
+1921
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+In our school processes there are many constants which have general
+recognition as such by thoughtful people. On the other hand, there are
+many variables which should be subjected to close scrutiny to the end that
+they may be made to yield forth the largest possible returns upon the
+investment of time and effort. These phases of school procedure constitute
+the real problem in the work of reconstruction, and the following pages
+represent an effort to point the way toward larger and better results in
+the realm of these variables. In general, the aims and purposes of the
+worker determine the quality of the work done. If, therefore, this volume
+succeeds in stimulating teachers to elevate the goals of their endeavors,
+it will have accomplished its purpose.--F.B.P.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+  CHAPTER
+
+     I. A PRELIMINARY SURVEY OF THE TASK BEFORE THE SCHOOL
+    II. THE PAST AS RELATED TO THE PRESENT
+   III. THE FUTURE AS RELATED TO THE PRESENT
+    IV. INTEGRITY
+     V. APPRECIATION
+    VI. ASPIRATION
+   VII. INITIATIVE
+  VIII. IMAGINATION
+    IX. REVERENCE
+     X. SENSE OF RESPONSIBILITY
+    XI. LOYALTY
+   XII. DEMOCRACY
+  XIII. SERENITY
+   XIV. LIFE
+        INDEX
+
+
+
+
+THE RECONSTRUCTED SCHOOL
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ONE
+
+A PRELIMINARY SURVEY OF THE TASK BEFORE THE SCHOOL
+
+
+When people come to think alike, they tend to act alike; unison in
+thinking begets unison in action. It is often said that the man and wife
+who have spent years together have grown to resemble each other; but the
+resemblance is probably in actions rather than in looks; the fact is that
+they have had common goals of thinking throughout the many years they have
+lived together and so have come to act in unison. The wise teacher often
+adjusts difficult situations in her school by inducing the pupils to think
+toward a common goal. In their zeal for a common enterprise the children
+forget their differences and attain unison in action as the result of
+their unison in thinking. The school superintendent knows full well that
+if he can bring teachers, pupils, and parents to think toward a common
+goal, he will soon have unity of action. When people catch step mentally,
+they do the same physically, and as they move forward along the paths of
+their common thinking, their ways converge until, in time, they find
+themselves walking side by side in amiable and agreeable converse.
+
+In the larger world outside the school, community enterprises help to
+generate unity of thinking and consequent unity of action. The pastor
+finds it one of his larger tasks to establish a focus for the thinking of
+his people in order to induce concerted action. If the enterprise is one
+of charity, the neighbors soon find themselves vying with one another in
+zeal and good will. In the zest of a common purpose they see one another
+with new eyes and find delight in working with people whose society they
+once avoided. They can now do teamwork, because they are all thinking
+toward the same high and worthy goal; lines of demarcation are obliterated
+and spirits blend in a common purpose. Unity of action becomes inevitable
+as soon as thinking becomes unified.
+
+Coöperation follows close upon the heels of community thinking. In the
+presence of a great calamity, rivalries, differences of creed and party,
+and long-established animosities disappear in the zeal for beneficent
+action. In the case of fire or flood people are at one in their actions
+because they are thinking toward the common goal of rescue. They act
+together only when they think together. Indeed, coöperation is an
+impossibility apart from unified thinking. Herein lies the efficacy of
+leadership. It is the province of the leader to induce unity of thinking,
+to animate with a common purpose, knowing that united action will
+certainly ensue. If he can cause the thinking of people to center upon a
+focal point, he establishes his claim to leadership.
+
+What is true of individuals is true, also, of nations. Before they can act
+in concert, they must think in concert, and, to do this, they must acquire
+the ability to think toward common goals. If, to illustrate, all nations
+should come to think toward the goal of democracy, there would ensue a
+closer sympathy among them, and, in time, modifications of their forms of
+government would come about as a natural result of their unity of
+thinking. Again, if all nations of the world should set up the quality of
+courage as one of the objectives of their thinking they would be drawn
+closer together in their feelings and in their conduct. If the parents and
+teachers of all these nations should strive to exorcise fear in the
+training of children, this purpose would constitute a bond of sympathy
+among them and they would be encouraged by the reflection that this high
+purpose was animating parents and teachers the world around. Courage, of
+course, is of the spirit and typifies many spiritual qualities that
+characterize civilization of high grade. It is quite conceivable that
+these qualities of the spirit may become the goals of thinking in all
+lands. Thus the nations would be brought into a relation of closer
+harmony. Had a score of boys shared the experience of the lad who grew
+into the likeness of the Great Stone Face, their differences and
+disparities would have disappeared in the zeal of a common purpose and
+they would have become a unified organization in thinking toward the same
+goal.
+
+We cannot hope to achieve the brotherhood of man until the nations of the
+world have directed their thinking toward the same goals. What these goals
+shall be must be determined by competent leadership through the process of
+education. When we think in unison we are taken out of ourselves and
+become merged in the spirit of the goal toward which we are thinking. If
+we were to agree upon courage as one of the spiritual qualities that
+should characterize all nations and organize all educational forces for
+the development of this quality, we should find the nations coming closer
+to one another with this quality as a common possession. Courage gives
+freedom, and in this freedom the nations would touch spiritual elbows and
+would thus become spiritual confederates and comrades. By generating and
+developing this and other spiritual qualities the nations would become
+merged and unity of feeling and actions would surely ensue. Since love is
+the greatest thing in the world, this quality may well be made the major
+goal toward which the thinking of all nations shall be directed. When all
+peoples come to think and yearn toward this goal, hatred and strife will
+be banished and peace and righteousness will be enthroned in the hearts of
+men. When there has been developed in all the nations of the earth an
+ardent love for the true, the beautiful, and the good, civilization will
+step up to a higher level and we shall see the dawn of unity.
+
+We who are indulging in dreams of the brotherhood of man must enlarge our
+concept of society before we can hope to have our dreams come true. It is
+a far cry from society as a strictly American affair to society as a world
+affair. The teaching of our schools has had a distinct tendency to
+restrict our notion of society to that within our own national boundaries.
+In this we convict ourselves of provincialism. Society is far larger than
+America, or China, or Russia, or all the islands of the sea in
+combination. It may entail some straining at the mental leash to win this
+concept of society, but it must be won as a condition precedent to a fair
+and just estimate of what the function of education really is and what it
+is of which the schoolhouse must be an exponent. Society must be thought
+of as including all nations, tribes, and tongues. In our thinking, the
+word "society" must suggest the hut that nestles on the mountain-side as
+well as the palace that fronts the stately boulevard. It must suggest the
+cape that indents the sea as well as the vast plain that stretches out
+from river to river. And it must suggest the toiler at his task, the
+employer at his desk, the man of leisure in his home, the voyager on the
+ocean, the soldier in the ranks, the child at his lessons, and the mother
+crooning her baby to sleep.
+
+We descant volubly upon the subjects of citizenship and civilization but,
+as yet, have achieved no adequate definition of either of the terms upon
+which we expatiate so fluently. Our books teem with admonitions to train
+for citizenship in order that we may attain civilization of better
+quality. But, in all this, we imply American citizenship and American
+civilization, and here, again, we show forth our provincialism. But even
+in this restricted field we arrive at our hazy concept of a good citizen
+by the process of elimination. We aver that a good citizen does not do
+this and does not do that; yet the teachers in our schools would find it
+difficult to describe a good citizen adequately, in positive terms. Our
+notions of good citizenship are more or less vague and misty and,
+therefore, our concept of civilization is equally so.
+
+Granting, however, that we may finally achieve satisfactory definitions of
+citizenship and civilization as applying to our own country, it does not
+follow that the same definitions will obtain in other lands. A good
+citizen according to the Chinese conception may differ widely from a good
+citizen in the United States. Topography, climate, associations,
+occupations, traditions, and racial tendencies must all be taken into
+account in formulating a definition. Before we can gain a right concept of
+good citizenship as a world affair we must make a thoughtful study of
+world conditions. In so doing, we may have occasion to modify and correct
+some of our own preconceived notions and thus extend the horizon of our
+education.
+
+What society is and should be in the world at large; what good citizenship
+is and ought to be in the whole world; and what civilization is, should
+be, and may be as a world enterprise--these considerations are the
+foundation stones upon which we must build the temple of education now in
+the process of reconstruction. Otherwise the work will be narrow,
+illiberal, spasmodic, and sporadic. It must be possible to arrive at a
+common denominator of the concepts of society, citizenship, and
+civilization as pertaining to all nations; it must be possible to contrive
+a composite of all these concepts to which all nations will subscribe; and
+it must be possible to discover some fundamental principles that will
+constitute a focal point toward which the thinking of all nations can be
+directed. Once this focal point is determined and the thinking of the
+world focused upon it, the work of reconstruction has been inaugurated.
+
+But the task is not a simple one by any means; quite the contrary, for it
+is world-embracing in its scope. However difficult the task, it is, none
+the less, altogether alluring and worthy. It is quite within the range of
+possibilities for a book to be written, even a textbook, that would serve
+a useful purpose and meet a distinct need in the schools of all lands. At
+this point the question of languages obtrudes itself. When people think in
+unison a common language is reduced to the plane of a mere convenience,
+not a necessity. The buyer and the seller may not speak the same language
+but, somehow, they contrive to effect a satisfactory adjustment because
+their thinking is centered upon the same objective. When thinking becomes
+cosmopolitan, conduct becomes equally so. If this be conceded, then it is
+quite within the range of possibilities to formulate a course of study for
+all the schools of the world, if only we set up as goals the qualities
+that will make for the well-being of people in all lands. True, the means
+may differ in different lands, but, even so, the ends will remain
+constant. A thousand people may set out from their homes with Rome as
+their destination. They will use all means of travel and speak many
+languages as they journey forward, but their destination continues
+constant and they will use the best means at their command to attain the
+common goal. Similarly, if we set up the quality of loyalty as one of our
+educational goals, the means may differ but the goal does not change and,
+therefore, the nations will be actuated by a common purpose in their
+educational endeavors.
+
+The one thing needful for the execution of this ambitious program of
+securing concerted thinking is to have in our schools teachers who are
+world-minded, who think in world units. Such teachers, and only such, can
+plan for world education and world affairs, and bring their plans to a
+successful issue. Some teachers seem able to think only of a schoolroom;
+others of a building; others of a town or township; still others of a
+state; some of a country; and fewer yet of the world as a single thing. A
+person can be no larger than his unit of thinking. One who thinks in small
+units convicts himself of provincialism and soon becomes intolerant. Such
+a person arrogates to himself superiority and inclines to feel somewhat
+contemptuous of people outside the narrow limits of his thinking. If he
+thinks his restricted horizon bounds all that is worth knowing, he will
+not exert himself to climb to a higher level in order that he may gain a
+wider view. He is disdainful and intolerant of whatever lies beyond his
+horizon, and his attitude, if not his words, repeats the question of the
+culpable Cain, "Am I my brother's keeper?" He is encased in an armor that
+is impervious to ordinary appeal. He is satisfied with himself and asks
+merely to be let alone. He is quite content to be held fast bound in his
+traditional moorings without any feeling of sympathy for the world as a
+whole.
+
+The reverse side of the picture reveals the teacher who is world-minded.
+Such a teacher is never less than magnanimous; intolerance has no place in
+his scheme of life; he is in sympathy with all nations in their progress
+toward light and right; and he is interested in all world progress whether
+in science, in art, in literature, in economics, in industry, or in
+education. To this end he is careful to inform himself as to world
+movements and notes with keen interest the trend and development of
+civilization. Being a world-citizen himself, he strives, in his school
+work, to develop in his pupils the capacity and the desire for
+world-citizenship. With no abatement of thoroughness in the work of his
+school, he still finds time to look up from his tasks to catch the view
+beyond his own national boundaries. If the superintendent who is
+world-minded has the hearty coöperation of teachers who are also
+world-minded, together they will be able to develop a plan of education
+that is world-wide. To produce teachers of this type may require a
+readjustment and reconstruction of the work of colleges and training
+schools to the end that the teachers they send forth may measure up to the
+requirements of this world-wide concept of education. But these
+institutions can hardly hope to be immune to the process of
+reconstruction. They can hardly hope to cite the past as a guide for the
+future, for traditional lines are being obliterated and new lines are
+being marked out for civilization, including education in its larger and
+newer import.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWO
+
+THE PAST AS RELATED TO THE PRESENT
+
+
+In a significant degree the present is the heritage of the past, and any
+critical appraisement of the present must take cognizance of the influence
+of the past. That there are weak places in our present civilization, no
+one will deny; nor will it be denied that the sources of some of these may
+be found in the past. We have it on good authority that "the fathers have
+eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge." Had the
+eating of sour grapes in the past been more restricted, the present
+generation would stand less in need of dentistry. When we take an
+inventory of the people of the present who are defective in body, in mind,
+or in spirit, it seems obvious that the consumption of sour grapes, in the
+past, must have been quite extensive. If the blood of the grandfather was
+tainted, it is probable that the blood of the grandchild is impure.
+
+The defects of the present would seem to constitute a valid indictment
+against the educational agencies of the past. These agencies are not
+confined to the school but include law, medicine, civics, sociology,
+government, hygiene, eugenics, home life, and physical training. Had all
+these phases of education done their perfect work in the past, the present
+would be in better case. It seems a great pity that it required a world
+war to render us conscious of many of the defects of society. The draft
+board made discoveries of facts that seem to have eluded the home, the
+school, the family physician, and the boards of health. Many of these
+discoveries are most disquieting and reflect unfavorably upon some of the
+educational practices of the past. The many cases of physical unfitness
+and the fewer cases of athletic hearts seem to have escaped the attention
+of physical directors and athletic coaches, not to mention parents and
+physicians. Seeing that one fourth of our young men have been pronounced
+physically unsound, it behooves us to turn our gaze toward the past to
+determine, if possible, wherein our educational processes have been at
+fault.
+
+The thoughtful person who stands on the street-corner watching the
+promiscuous throng pass by and making a careful appraisement of their
+physical, mental, and spiritual qualities, will not find the experience
+particularly edifying. He will note many facts that will depress rather
+than encourage and inspire. In the throng he will see many men and women,
+young and old, who, as specimens of physical manhood and womanhood, are
+far from perfect. He will see many who are young in years but who are old
+in looks and physical bearing. They creep or shuffle along as if bowed
+down with the weight of years, lacking the graces of buoyancy and
+abounding youth. They are bent, gnarled, shriveled, faded, weak, and
+wizened. Their faces reveal the absence of the looks that betoken hope,
+courage, aspiration, and high purpose. Their lineaments and their gait
+show forth a ghastly forlornness that excites pity and despair. They seem
+the veriest derelicts, tossed to and fro by the currents of life without
+hope of redemption.
+
+Their whole bearing indicates that they are languid, morbid, misanthropic,
+and nerveless. They seem ill-nourished as well as mentally and spiritually
+starved. They seem the victims of inherited or acquired weaknesses that
+stamp them as belonging among the physically unfit. If the farmer should
+discover among his animals as large a percentage of unfitness and
+imperfection, he would reach the conclusion at once that something was
+radically wrong and would immediately set on foot well-thought-out plans
+to rectify the situation. But, seeing that these derelicts are human
+beings and not farm stock, we bestow upon them a sneer, or possibly a
+pittance by way of alms, and pass on our complacent ways. Looking upon the
+imperfect passersby, the observer is reminded of the tens of thousands of
+children who are defective in mind and body and are hidden away from
+public gaze, a charge upon the resources of the state.
+
+Such a setting forth of the less agreeable side of present conditions
+would seem out of place, if not actually impertinent, were we inclined to
+ignore the fact that diagnosis must precede treatment. The surgeon knows
+full well that there will be pain, but he is comforted by the reflection
+that restoration to health will succeed the pain. We need to look squarely
+at the facts as they are in order to determine what must be done to avert
+a repetition in the future. We have seen the sins of the fathers visited
+upon the children to the third and fourth generation and still retained
+our complacency. We preach temperance to the young men of our day, but
+fail to set forth the fact that right living on their part will make for
+the well-being of their grandchildren. We exhibit our thoroughbred live
+stock at our fairs and plume ourselves upon our ability to produce stock
+of such quality. In the case of live stock we know that the present is the
+product of the past, but seem less ready to acknowledge the same fact as
+touching human animals. We may know that our ancestors planted thorns and
+yet we seem surprised that we cannot gather a harvest of grapes, and we
+would fain gather figs from a planting of thistles. But this may not be.
+We harvest according to the planting of our ancestors, and, with equal
+certainty, if we eat sour grapes the teeth of our descendants will surely
+be put on edge.
+
+If we are to reconstruct our educational processes we must make a critical
+survey of the entire situation that we may be fully advised of the
+magnitude of the problem to which we are to address ourselves. We may not
+blink the facts but must face them squarely; otherwise we shall not get
+on. We may take unction to ourselves for our philanthropic zeal in caring
+for our unfortunates in penal and eleemosynary institutions, but that will
+not suffice. We must frankly consider by what means the number of these
+unfortunates may be reduced. If we fail to do this we convict ourselves of
+cowardice or impotence. We pile up our millions in buildings for the
+insane, the feeble-minded, the vicious, the epileptic, and plume ourselves
+upon our munificence. But if all these unfortunates could be redeemed from
+their thralldom, and these countless millions turned back into the
+channels of trade, civilization would take on a new meaning. Here is one
+of the problems that calls aloud to education for a solution and will not
+be denied.
+
+One of the avowed purposes of education is to lift society to a higher
+plane of thinking and acting, and it is always and altogether pertinent to
+make an inventory to discover if this laudable purpose is being
+accomplished. Such an inventory can be made only by an analyst; the work
+cannot be delegated either to a pessimist or to an optimist. In his
+efforts to determine whether society is advancing or receding, the analyst
+often makes disquieting discoveries.
+
+It must be admitted by the most devoted and patriotic American that our
+civilization includes many elements that can truly be denominated
+frivolous, superficial, artificial, and inconsequential. As a people, we
+seek to be entertained, but fail to make a nice distinction between
+entertainment and amusement. War, it is true, has caused us to think more
+soberly and feel more deeply; but the bizarre, the gaudy, and the
+superficial still make a strong appeal to us. We are quite happy to wear
+paste diamonds, provided only that they sparkle. So long have we been
+substituting the fictitious for the genuine that we have contracted the
+habit of loose, fictitious thinking. So much does the show element appeal
+to us that we incline to parade even our troubles. Simplicity and
+sincerity, whether in dress, in speech, or in conduct, have so long been
+foreign to our daily living and thinking that we incline to style these
+qualities as old-fogyish.
+
+A hundred or more young men came to a certain city to enlist for the war.
+As they marched out through the railway station they rent the air with
+whooping and yells and other manifestations of boisterous conduct. These
+young fellows may have hearts of gold, but their real manhood was overlaid
+with a veneer of rudeness that could not commend them to the admiration of
+cultivated persons. Inside the station was another group of young men in
+khaki who were quiet, dignified, and decorous. The contrast between the
+two groups was most striking, and the bystanders were led to wonder
+whether it requires a world-war to teach our young men manners and whether
+the schools and homes have abdicated in favor of the cantonment in the
+teaching of deportment. In the schools and the homes that are to be in our
+good land we may well hope that decorum will be emphasized and magnified;
+for decorum is evermore the fruitage of intellectuality and genuine
+culture.
+
+As a nation, we have been prodigal of our resources and, especially, of
+our time. We have failed to regard our leisure hours as a liability but,
+like the lotus eaters, have dallied in the realm of pleasure. Like
+children at play, we have gone on our pleasure-seeking ways all heedless
+of the clock, and, when misfortune came and necessity arose, many of us
+were unwilling and more of us unable to engage in the work of production.
+In some localities legislation was invoked to urge us toward the fields
+and gardens. We have shown ourselves a wasteful people, and in the wake of
+our wastefulness have followed a dismal train of disasters, cold, hunger,
+and many another form of distress. Deplore and repent of our prodigality
+as we may, the effects abide to remind us of our decline from the high
+plane of industry, frugality, and conservation of leisure. Nor can we hope
+to avert a repetition of this crisis unless education comes in to guide
+our minds and hands aright.
+
+Again, we have been wont to estimate men by what they have rather than by
+what they are, and to regard as of value only such things as are quoted in
+the markets. Wall Street takes precedence over the university and to the
+millionaire we accord the front seat even in some of our churches. We
+accept the widow's mite but do not inscribe her name upon the roll of
+honor. We give money prizes for work in our schools and thus strive to
+commercialize the things of the mind and of the spirit. We have laid waste
+our forests, impoverished our fields, and defiled our landscapes to
+stimulate increased activity in our clearing-houses. Like Jason of old, we
+have wandered far in quest of the golden fleece. We welcome the rainbow,
+not for its beauty but for the bag of gold at its end. We seek to scale
+the heights of Olympus by stairways of gold, fondly nursing the conceit
+that, once we have scaled these heights, we shall be equal to the gods.
+
+To indulge in even such a brief review of some of the weak places and
+defections of society is not an agreeable task, but diagnosis must
+necessarily precede the application of remedies. If we are to reconstruct
+education in order to effect a reconstruction of society we must know our
+problem in advance, that we may proceed in a rational way. Reconstruction
+cannot be made permanently effective by haphazard methods. We must
+visualize clearly the objectives of our endeavors in order to obviate
+wrong methods and futility. We must have the whole matter laid bare before
+our eyes or we shall not get on in the work of reconstruction. It were
+more agreeable to dwell upon our achievements, and they are many, but the
+process of reconstruction has to do with the affected parts. These must be
+our special care, these the realm for our kindly surgery and the arts of
+healing. We need to become acutely conscious that the present will become
+the past and that there will be a new present which will take on the same
+qualities that now characterize our present. We need to feel that the
+future will look back to our present and commend or condemn according to
+the practices of this generation. And the only way to make a sane and
+right future is to create a sane and right present.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THREE
+
+THE FUTURE AS RELATED TO THE PRESENT
+
+
+In planning a journey the one constant is the destination. All the other
+elements are variable, and, therefore, subordinate. So, also, in planning
+a course of study. The qualities to be developed through the educational
+processes are the constants, while the agencies by which these qualities
+are to be attained are subject to change. The course of study provides for
+the school activities for the child for a period of twelve years, and it
+is altogether pertinent to inquire what qualities we hope to develop by
+means of these school activities. To do this effectively we must visualize
+the pupil when he emerges from the school period and ask ourselves what
+qualities we hope to have him possess at the close of this period. If we
+decide upon such qualities as imagination, initiative, aspiration,
+appreciation, courage, loyalty, reverence, a sense of responsibility,
+integrity, and serenity, we have discovered some of the constants toward
+which all the work of the twelve years must be directed. In planning a
+course of study toward these constants we do not restrict the scope of the
+pupil's activities; quite the reverse. We thus enlarge the concept of
+education both for himself and his teachers and emphasize the fact that
+education is a continuous process and may not be marked by grades or
+subjects. For the teachers we establish goals of school endeavor and thus
+unify and articulate all their efforts. We focus their attention upon the
+pupil as they would all wish to see him when he completes the work of the
+school.
+
+If children are asked why they go to school, nine out of ten, perhaps,
+will reply that they go to school to learn arithmetic, grammar, geography,
+and history. Asked what their big purpose is in teaching, probably three
+out of five teachers will answer that they are actuated by a desire to
+cause their pupils to know arithmetic, grammar, geography, and history.
+One of the other five teachers may echo something out of her past
+accumulations to the effect that her work is the training for citizenship,
+and the fifth will say quite frankly that she is groping about, all the
+while, searching for the answer to that very question. It would be futile
+to ask the children why they desire knowledge of these subjects and there
+might be hazard in propounding the same question to the three teachers.
+They teach arithmetic because it is in the course of study; it is in the
+course of study because the superintendent put it there; and the
+superintendent put it there because some other superintendent has it in
+his course of study.
+
+Now arithmetic may, in reality, be one of the best things a child can
+study; but the child takes it because the teacher prescribes it, and the
+teacher takes it on faith because the superintendent takes it on faith and
+she cannot go counter to the dictum of the superintendent. Besides, it is
+far easier to teach arithmetic than it would be to challenge the right of
+this subject to a place in the course of study. To most people, including
+many teachers, arithmetic is but a habit of thinking. They have been
+contracting this habit through all the years since the beginning of their
+school experience, until now it seems as inevitable as any other habitual
+affair. It is quite as much a habit of their thinking as eating, sleeping,
+or walking. If there were no arithmetic, they argue subconsciously, there
+could be no school; for arithmetic and school are synonymous. Again, let
+it be said that there is no thought here of inveighing against arithmetic
+or any other subject of the curriculum. Not arithmetic in itself, but the
+arithmetic habit constitutes the incubus, the evil spirit that needs to be
+exorcised.
+
+This arithmetic habit had its origin, doubtless, in the traditional
+concept of knowledge as power. An adage is not easily controverted or
+eradicated. The copy-books of the fathers proclaimed boldly that knowledge
+is power, and the children accepted the dictum as inviolable. If it were
+true that knowledge is power, the procedure of the schools and the course
+of conduct of the teachers during all these years would have ample
+justification. The entire process would seem simplicity itself. So soon as
+we acquire knowledge we should have power--and power is altogether
+desirable. The trouble is that we have been confusing knowledge and wisdom
+in the face of the poet's declaration that "Knowledge and wisdom, far from
+being one, have ofttimes no connection." Our experience should have taught
+us that many people who have much knowledge are relatively impotent for
+the reason that they have not learned how to use their knowledge in the
+way of generating power. Gasoline is an inert substance, but, under
+well-understood conditions, it affords power. Water is not power, but man
+has learned how to use it in generating power. Knowledge is convenient and
+serviceable, but its greatest utility lies in the fact that it can be
+employed in producing power.
+
+We are prone to take our judgments ready-made and have been relying upon
+the copy-books of the fathers rather than our own reasoning powers. If we
+had only learned in childhood the distinction between knowledge and
+wisdom; if we had learned that knowledge is not power but merely
+potential; and if we had learned that knowledge is but the means to an end
+and not the end itself, we should have been spared many a delusion and our
+educational sky would not now be so overcast with clouds. We have been
+proceeding upon the agreeable assumption that arithmetic, geography, and
+history are the goals of every school endeavor, the Ultima Thule of every
+educational quest. The child studies arithmetic, is subjected to an
+examination that may represent the bent or caprice of the teacher, manages
+to struggle through seventy per cent of the answers, is promoted to the
+next higher grade, and, thereupon, starts on his journey around another
+circle. And we call this education. These processes constitute the
+mechanics of education, but, in and of themselves, they are not education.
+One of the big problems of the school today is to emancipate both teachers
+and pupils from the erroneous notion that they are.
+
+The child does not go to school to learn arithmetic and spelling and
+grammar. The goal to be attained is far higher and better than either of
+these or all combined. The study of arithmetic may prove a highly
+profitable means, never the end to be gained. This statement will be
+boldly challenged by the traditional teacher, but it is so strongly
+intrenched in logic and sound pedagogy that it is impregnable. The goal
+might, possibly, be reached without the aid of arithmetic, but, if a
+knowledge of this subject will facilitate the process, then, of course, it
+becomes of value and should be used. Let us assume, for the moment, that
+the teacher decides to set up thoroughness as one of the large objectives
+of her teaching. While she may be able to reach this goal sooner by means
+of arithmetic, no one will contend that arithmetic is indispensable. Nor,
+indeed, will any one contend that arithmetic is comparable to thoroughness
+as a goal to be attained. If the teacher's constant aim is thoroughness,
+she will achieve even better results in the arithmetic and will inculcate
+habits in her pupils that serve them in good stead throughout life. For
+the quality of thoroughness is desirable in every activity of life, and we
+do well to emphasize every study and every activity of the school that
+helps in the development of this quality.
+
+If the superintendent were challenged to adduce a satisfactory reason why
+he has not written thoroughness into his course of study he might be hard
+put to it to justify the omission. He hopes, of course, that the quality
+of thoroughness will issue somehow from the study of arithmetic and
+science, but he lacks the courage, apparently, to proclaim this hope in
+print. He says that education is a spiritual process, while his course of
+study proves that he is striving to produce mental acrobats, relegating
+the spiritual qualities to the rank of by-products. His course of study
+shows conclusively that he thinks that knowledge is power. Once
+disillusion him on this point and his course of study will cease to be to
+him the sacrosanct affair it has always appeared and he will no longer
+look upon it as a sort of sacrilege to inject into this course of study
+some elements that seem to violate the sanctities of tradition.
+
+Advancing another brief step, we may try to imagine the superintendent's
+suggesting to the teachers at the opening of the school year that they
+devote the year to inculcating in their pupils the qualities of
+thoroughness, self-control, courage, and reverence. The faces of the
+teachers, at such a proposal, would undoubtedly afford opportunity for an
+interesting study and the linguistic reactions of some of them would be
+forcible to the point of picturesqueness. The traditional teachers would
+demand to know by what right he presumed to impose upon them such an
+unheard-of program. Others might welcome the suggestion as a means of
+relief from irritating and devastating drudgery. In their quaint innocence
+and guilelessness their souls would revel in rainbow dreams of
+preachments, homilies, and wise counsel that would cause the qualities of
+self-control and reverence to spring into being full-grown even as Minerva
+from the head of Jove.
+
+But their beatific visions would dissolve upon hearing the superintendent
+name certain teachers to act as a committee to determine and report upon
+the studies that would best serve the purpose of generating reverence, and
+another committee to select the studies that would most effectively
+stimulate and develop self-control, and so on through the list. It is here
+that we find the crux of the whole matter. Here the program collides with
+tradition and with stereotyped habits of thinking. Many superintendents
+and teachers will contend that such a problem is impossible of solution
+because no one has ever essayed such a task. No one, they argue, has ever
+determined what subjects will effectually generate the specific qualities
+self-control or reverence, no one has ever discovered what school studies
+will function in given spiritual qualities. According to their course of
+reasoning nothing is possible that has not already been done. However,
+there are some progressive, dynamic superintendents and teachers who will
+welcome the opportunity to test their resourcefulness in seeking the
+solution of a problem that is both new and big. To these dynamic ones we
+must look for results and when this solution is evolved, the work of
+reconstruction will move on apace.
+
+Reverting, for the moment, to the subject of thoroughness: it must be
+clear that this quality is worthy a place in the course of study because
+it is worthy the best efforts of the pupil. Furthermore, it is worthy the
+best efforts of the pupil because it is an important element of
+civilization. These statements all need reiteration and emphasis to the
+end that they may become thoroughly enmeshed in the social consciousness.
+If we can cause people to think toward thoroughness rather than toward
+arithmetic or other school studies, we shall win the feeling that we are
+making progress. Thoroughness must be distinguished, of course, from a
+smattering knowledge of details that have no value. In the right sense
+thoroughness must be interpreted as the habit of mastery. We may well
+indulge the hope that the time will come when parents will invoke the aid
+of the schools to assist their children in acquiring this habit of
+mastery. When that time comes the schools will be working toward larger
+and higher objectives and education will have become a spiritual process
+in reality.
+
+It will be readily conceded that the habit of mastery is a desirable
+quality in every vocation and in every avocation. It is a very real asset
+on the farm, in the factory, in legislative halls, in the offices of
+lawyer and physician, in the study, in the shop, and in the home. When
+mastery becomes habitual with people in all these activities society will
+thrill with the pulsations of new life and civilization will rise to a
+higher level. But how may the child acquire this habit of mastery? On what
+meat shall this our pupil feed that he may become master of himself,
+master of all his powers, and master of every situation in which he finds
+himself? How shall he win that mastery that will enable him to interpret
+every obstacle as a new challenge to his powers, and to translate
+temporary defeat into ultimate victory? How may he enter into such
+complete sense of mastery that he will not quail in the presence of
+difficulties, that he will never display the white flag or the white
+feather, that he will ever show forth the spirit of Henley's _Invictus_,
+and that nothing short of death may avail to absolve him from his
+obligations to his high standards?
+
+These questions are referred, with all proper respect, to the
+superintendent, the principal, and the teachers, whose province it is to
+vouchsafe satisfactory answers. If they tell us that arithmetic will be of
+assistance in the way of inculcating this habit of mastery, then we shall
+hail arithmetic with joyous acclaim and accord it a place of honor in the
+school regime,--but only as an auxiliary, only as a means to the great end
+of mastery. If they assure us that science will be equally serviceable in
+our enterprise of developing mastery, then we shall give to science an
+equally hearty welcome. However, we shall emphasize the right to stipulate
+that, in the course of study, the capitals shall be reserved for the big
+objective thoroughness, of the habit of mastery, and that the means be
+given in small letters and as sub-heads.
+
+We may indulge in the conceit that a flag floats at the summit of a lofty
+and more or less rugged elevation. The youth who essays the task of
+reaching that flag will need to reinforce his strength at supply stations
+along the way. If we style one of these stations arithmetic, it will be
+evident, at once, that this station is a subsidiary element in the
+enterprise and not the goal, for that is the flag at the top. These supply
+stations are useful in helping the youth to reach his goal. We may
+conceive of many of these stations, such as algebra, or history, or Greek,
+or Chinese. Whatever their names, they are all but means to an end and
+when that end has been attained the youth can afford to forget them, in
+large part, save only in gratitude for their help in enabling him to win
+the goal of thoroughness.
+
+The child eats beefsteak because it is palatable; the mother prescribes
+beefsteak and prepares it carefully with the child's health as the goal of
+her interests. Moreover, she has a more vital interest in beefsteak
+because she is thinking of health as the goal. For another child, she may
+prescribe eggs and, for still another, milk or oatmeal, according to each
+one's needs. Health is the big goal and these foods are the supply
+stations along the way. The physician must assist in determining what
+articles of food will best serve the purpose and to this end he must
+cooperate with the mother in knowing his patients. He must have knowledge
+of foods and must know how to adapt means to ends, never losing sight of
+the real goal. The inference is altogether obvious. A superintendent must
+write the prescription in the form of a course of study and he may not
+with impunity mistake a supply station for the goal. He must have
+knowledge of the pupils and know their individual needs and native
+interests. Having gained this knowledge, he will supply abundant electives
+in order to assist each child in the best possible way toward the goal.
+
+If, then, the relation between major ends and minor means has been made
+clear, we are ready for the statement that these major ends may be made
+the common goals of endeavor in the schools of all lands. Thoroughness is
+quite as necessary in the rice fields of China as in the wheat fields of
+America, as necessary in the banks of Rome as in the banks of New York,
+quite as essential to mercantile transactions in Cape Town as in Chicago,
+and quite as essential to home life in Tokyo as in San Francisco. If these
+big objectives are set up in the schools of all countries pupils,
+teachers, and people will come to think in unison and thus their ways will
+converge and they will come to act in unison. The same high purposes will
+actuate and animate society as a whole and this, in turn, will make for a
+higher type of civilization and accelerate progress toward unity in school
+procedure.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOUR
+
+INTEGRITY
+
+
+Integrity connotes many qualities that are necessary to success in the
+high art of right and rational living and that are conspicuous, therefore,
+in society of high grade. It is an inclusive quality, and is, in reality,
+a federation of qualities that are esteemed essential to a highly
+developed civilization. The term, like the word from which it is derived,
+_integer_, signifies completeness, wholeness, entirety, soundness,
+rectitude, unimpaired state. It implies no scarification, no blemish, no
+unsoundness, no abrasion, no disfigurement, no distortion, no defect. In
+ordinary parlance integrity and honesty are regarded as synonyms, but a
+close analysis discovers honesty to be but one of the many manifestations
+of integrity. Lincoln displayed honesty in returning the pennies by way of
+rectifying a mistake, but that act, honest as it was, did not engage all
+his integrity. This big quality manifested itself at Gettysburg, in the
+letter to Mrs. Bixby, in visiting the hospitals to comfort and cheer the
+wounded soldiers, and in his magnanimity to those who maligned him.
+
+In every individual the inward quality determines the outward conduct in
+all its ramifications, whether in his speech, in his actions, or in his
+attitude toward other individuals. It is quite as true in a pedagogical
+sense as in the scriptural sense that "Men do not gather grapes of thorns
+or figs of thistles," and, also, that "By their fruits ye shall know
+them." The stream does not rise higher than the source. What a man is
+doing and how he is doing it tells us what he is. When we would appraise a
+man's character we take note of his habits, his daily walk and
+conversation in all his relations to his fellows. If we find a blemish in
+his conduct, we arrive at the judgment that his character is not without
+blemish. In short, his habitual acts and speech, in the marts of trade, in
+the office, in the field, in the home, and in the forum betoken the
+presence or absence of integrity. It follows, then, as a corollary that,
+if we hope to have in the stream of life that we call society the elements
+that make for a high type of civilization we must have integrity at the
+source; and with this quality at the source these elements will inevitably
+issue forth into the life currents. This being true, we have clear warrant
+for the affirmation that integrity is a worthy goal toward which we do
+well to direct the activities of the school.
+
+Integrity in its large import implies physical soundness, mental
+soundness, and moral soundness. In time we may come to realize that
+physical soundness and mental soundness are but sequences of moral
+soundness, or, in other words, that a sound body and a sound mind are
+manifestations of a right spirit. But, for the present, we may waive this
+consideration and think of the three phases of integrity--physical, mental
+and moral. If, at the age of eighteen years, the boy or girl emerges from
+school experience sound in body, in mind, and in spirit, society will
+affirm that education has been effective. To develop young persons of this
+type is a work that is worthy the best efforts of the home, the school,
+the church and society, nor can any one of these agencies shift or shirk
+responsibility. The school has a large share of this responsibility, and
+those whose duty it is to formulate a course of study may well ask
+themselves what procedure of the school will best assist the child to
+attain integrity by means of the school activities.
+
+In our efforts to generate this quality of integrity, or, indeed, any
+quality, it must be kept clearly in mind every day and every hour of the
+day that the children with whom we have to do are not all alike. On the
+contrary, they differ, and often differ widely, in respect of mental
+ability, environment, inheritances, and native disposition. If they were
+all alike, it would be most unfortunate, but we could treat them all alike
+in our teaching and so fix and perpetuate their likeness to one another.
+Some teachers have heard and read a hundred times that our teaching should
+attach itself to the native tendencies of the child; yet, in spite of
+this, the teacher proceeds as if all children were alike and all possessed
+the same native tendencies. Herein lies a part of the tragedy of our
+traditional, stereotyped, race-track teaching. We assume that children are
+all alike, that they are standardized children, and so we prescribe for
+them a standardized diet and serve it by standardized methods. If we were
+producing bricks instead of embryo men and women our procedure would be
+laudable, for, in the making of bricks, uniformity is a prime necessity.
+Each brick must be exactly like every other brick, and, in consequence, we
+use for each one ingredients of the same quality and in like amount, and
+then subject them all to precisely the same treatment.
+
+This procedure is well enough in the case of inanimate bricks, but it is
+far from well enough in the case of animate, sentient human beings. It
+would be a calamity to have duplicate human beings, and yet the
+traditional school seems to be doing its utmost to produce duplicates. The
+native tendencies of one boy impel him toward the realms of nature, but,
+all heedless of this big fact, we bind him hard and fast to some academic
+post with traditional bonds of rules and regulations and then strive to
+coerce him into partaking of our traditional pabulum. His inevitable
+rebellion against this regime we style incorrigibility, or stupidity, and
+then by main strength and authority strive to reduce him to submission
+and, failing in this, we banish him from the school branded for life. Our
+treatment of this boy is due to the fact that another boy in the school is
+endowed with other native tendencies and the teacher is striving to
+fashion both boys in the same mold.
+
+In striving to inculcate the quality of integrity, wholeness, soundness,
+rectitude in Sam Brown our aim is to develop this specific boy into the
+best Sam Brown possible and not to try to make of him another Harry Smith.
+We need one best Sam Brown and one best Harry Smith but not two Harry
+Smiths. If we try to make our Sam Brown into a second Harry Smith, society
+is certain to be the loser to the value of Sam Brown. We want to see Sam
+Brown realize all his possibilities to the utmost, for only so will he win
+integrity. Better a complete Sam Brown, though only half the size of Harry
+Smith, than an incomplete Sam Brown of any size. If the native tendencies
+of Sam Brown lead toward nature, certain it is that by denying him the
+stimulus of nature study, we shall restrict his growth and render him less
+than complete. If we would produce a complete Sam Brown, if we would have
+him attain integrity, we must see to it that the process of teaching
+engages all his powers and does not permit some of these powers to lie
+fallow.
+
+If Sam Brown is a nature boy, no amount of coercion can transform him into
+a mathematics boy. True he may, in time, gain proficiency in mathematics,
+but only if he is led into the field of mathematics through the gateway of
+nature. He may ultimately achieve distinction as a writer, but not unless
+his pen becomes facile in depicting nature. Unless his native interests
+are taken fully into account and all his powers are enlisted in the
+enterprise of education toward integrity, he will never become the Sam
+Brown he might have been and the teacher cannot win special comfort in the
+reflection that she has helped to produce a cripple. We can better afford
+to depart from the beaten path, and even do violence to the sanctity of
+the course of study, than to lose or deform Sam Brown. If his soul yearns
+for green fields and budding trees, it is cruel if not criminal to fail to
+cater to this yearning. And only by cultivating and ministering to this
+native disposition can we hope to be of service in aiding him to achieve
+integrity.
+
+It needs to be emphasized that integrity signifies one hundred per cent,
+nothing less, and that such a goal is quite worth working toward. On the
+physical side, the problem looms large before us. Since we can produce
+thoroughbred live stock that scores one hundred per cent, we ought to
+produce one hundred per cent men and women. In a great university,
+physical examinations covering a period of seventeen years discovered one
+physically perfect young woman and not one physically perfect young man.
+Our live stock records make a better showing than this. For years we have
+been quoting "a sound mind in a sound body" in various languages but have
+failed in a large degree to achieve sound bodies. Nor, indeed, may we hope
+to win this goal until we become aroused to the importance of physical
+training in its widest import for all young people and not merely for the
+already physically fit, who constitute the ball teams. If the child is
+physically sound at the age of six, he ought to be no less so at the age
+of eighteen. If he is not so, there must have been some blundering in the
+course of his school life, either on the part of the school itself or of
+the home. When we set up physical soundness as the goal of our endeavors
+and this ideal becomes enmeshed in the consciousness of all citizens, then
+activities toward this end will inevitably ensue. Physical training will
+be made an integral part of the course of study, medical and dental
+inspection will obtain both in the school and in the home, insanitary
+conditions will no longer be tolerated, intemperance in every form will
+disappear, and every child will receive the same careful nurture that we
+now bestow upon the prize winners at our live-stock exhibition. The
+thinking of people will be intent toward the one hundred per cent standard
+and, in consequence, they will strive in unison to achieve this goal.
+
+The large amount of incompleteness that is to be found among the products
+of our schools may be traced, in a large measure, to our irrational and
+fictitious procedure in the matter of grading. We must keep records, of
+course, but it will be recalled that in the parable of the talents men
+were commended or condemned according to the use they made of the talents
+they had and were not graded according to a fixed standard. Seeing that
+seventy-five per cent will win him promotion, the boy devotes only so much
+of himself to the enterprise as will enable him to attain the goal and
+directs the remainder of himself to adventures along the line of his
+native tendencies. The only way by which we can develop a complete Sam
+Brown is so to arrange matters that the whole of Sam Brown is enlisted in
+the work. Otherwise we shall have one part of the boy working in one
+direction and another part in another direction, and that plan does not
+make for completeness. We must enlist the whole boy or we shall fail to
+develop a complete boy. If we can find some study to which he will devote
+himself unreservedly, then we may well rejoice and can afford to let the
+traditional subjects of the course of study wait. We are interested in Sam
+Brown just now and he is far more important than some man-made course of
+study. We are interested, too, in one hundred per cent of Sam Brown, and
+not in three fourths of him. If arithmetic will not enlist all of this boy
+and nature will enlist all of him, then arithmetic must be held in
+abeyance in the interest of the whole boy.
+
+The seventy-five per cent standard is repudiated by the world of affairs
+even though it is emphasized by the school. Seventy-five per cent of
+accuracy will not do in the transactions of the bank. The accounts must
+balance to the penny. The figures are right or else they are wrong. There
+is no middle ground. In the school the boy solves three problems but fails
+with the fourth. None the less he wins the goal of promotion. Not so at
+the bank. He is denied admission because of his failure with the fourth
+problem. Seventy-five will not do in joining the spans of the great bridge
+across the river. We must have absolute accuracy if we would avoid a wreck
+with its attendant horrors. The druggist must not fall below one hundred
+per cent in compounding the prescription unless he would face a charge of
+criminal negligence. The wireless operator must transcribe the message
+with absolute accuracy or dire consequences may ensue. The railway crew
+must read the order without a mistake if they would save life and property
+from disaster.
+
+But, in the school, the teachers rejoice and congratulate one another when
+their pupils achieve a grade of seventy-five. It matters nothing,
+apparently, that this grade of seventy-five is a fictitious thing with no
+basis in logic or reason, in short a mere habit that has no justification
+save in tradition, and that, in very truth, it is a concession to
+inaccuracy and ignorance. When we promote the boy for solving three out of
+four problems we virtually say to him that the fourth problem is
+negligible and he may as well forget all about it. Sometimes a teacher
+grieves over a grade of seventy-three, never realizing that another
+teacher might have given to that same paper a grade of eighty-three. We
+proclaim education to be a spiritual process, and then, in some instances,
+employ mechanics to administer this process. By what process of reasoning
+the superintendent or the teacher arrives at the judgment that
+seventy-five is good enough is yet to be explained. Our zeal for grades
+and credits indicates a greater interest in the label than in the contents
+of the package.
+
+Teaching is a noble work if only it is directed toward worthy goals.
+Nothing in the way of human endeavor can be more inspiring than the work
+of striving to integrate boys and girls. The mere droning over geography,
+and history, and grammar is petty by comparison. And yet all these studies
+and many others may be found essential factors in the work and they will
+be learned with greater thoroughness as means to a great end than as ends
+in themselves. The supply stations take on a new meaning to the boy who is
+yearning to reach the flag at the top. But it needs to be said here that
+the traditional superintendent and teacher will greet this entire plan
+with a supercilious smile. They will call it visionary, unpractical, and
+idealistic--then return to their seventy-five per cent regime with the
+utmost complacency and self-satisfaction. It is ever so with the
+traditional teacher. He seeks to be let alone, that he may go on his
+complacent way without hindrance. To him every innovation is an
+interference, if not a positive impertinence. But, in spite of the
+traditional teacher, the school is destined to rise to a higher level and
+enter upon a more rational procedure. And we must look to the dynamic
+teacher to usher in the renaissance--the teacher who has the vitality and
+the courage to break away from tradition and write integrity into the
+course of study as one of the big goals and think all the while toward
+integrity, physical, mental, and moral.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIVE
+
+APPRECIATION
+
+
+Education may be defined as the process of raising the level of
+appreciation. This definition will stand the ultimate test. Here is
+bed-rock; here is the foundation upon which we may predicate appreciation
+as a goal in every rational system of education. Appreciation has been
+defined as a judgment of values, a feeling for the essential worth of
+things, and, as such, it lies at the very heart of real education. It must
+be so or civilization cannot be. Without appreciation there can be no
+distinction between the coarse and the fine, none between the high and the
+low, none between the beautiful and the ugly, none between the sublime and
+the commonplace, none between zenith and nadir. Hence, appreciation is
+inevitable in every course of study, whether the authorities have the
+courage to proclaim it or not. Just why it has not been written into the
+course of study is inexplicable, seeing that it is fundamental in the
+educational process. It is far from clear why the superintendent permits
+teachers and pupils to go on their way year after year thinking that
+arithmetic is their final destination, or why he fails to take the
+tax-payers into his confidence and explain to them that appreciation is
+one of the lode-stars toward which the schools are advancing. In his heart
+he hopes that the schools may achieve appreciation, and it would be the
+part of frankness and fairness for him to reveal this hope to his teachers
+and to all others concerned.
+
+It is common knowledge that business affairs do not require more than ten
+pages of arithmetic and it would seem only fair that the study of the
+other pages should be justified. These other pages must serve some useful
+purpose in the thinking of those who retain them, and, certainly, no harm
+would ensue from a revelation of this purpose. If they are studied as a
+means to some high end, they will prove no less important after this fact
+has been explained. We may need more arithmetic than we have, but it is
+our due to be informed why we need it; to what use it is to be put. These
+things we have a right to know, and no superintendent, who is charged with
+the responsibility of making the course of study, has a right to withhold
+the information. If he does not know the explanation of the course of
+study he has devised, he ought to make known that fact and throw himself
+"on the mercy of the court."
+
+In these days of conservation and elimination of waste every subject that
+seeks admission to the course of study should be challenged at the door
+and be made to show what useful purpose it is to serve. Nor should any
+subject be admitted on any specious pretext. If there are subjects that
+are better adapted to the high purposes of education than the ones we are
+now using, then, by all means, let us give them a hearty welcome.
+
+Above all, we should be careful not to retain a subject unless it has a
+more valid passport than old age to justify its retention. If Chinese will
+help us win the goal of appreciation more effectively than Latin, then, by
+all means, we should make the substitution. But, in doing so, we must
+exercise care not to be carried away by a yearning for novelty. Least of
+all should any subject be admitted to the course of study that does not
+have behind it something more substantial and enduring than whim or
+caprice.
+
+The subjects that avail in generating and stimulating the growth of
+appreciation are many and of great variety. Nor are they all found in the
+proverbial course of study of the schools. When the boy first really sees
+an ear of corn from another viewpoint than the economic, he finds it
+eloquent of the marvelous adaptations of nature. From being a mere ear of
+corn it becomes a revelation of design and beauty. No change has taken
+place in the ear of corn, but a most important change has been wrought in
+the boy. Such a change is so subtle, so delicate, and so intangible that
+it cannot be measured in terms of per cents; but it is no less real for
+all that. It is a spiritual process and, therefore, aptly illustrates the
+accepted definition of education. Though it defies analysis and the rule
+of thumb, the boy is conscious of it and can say with the man who was born
+blind, "One thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see," and no
+cabalistic marks in a grade-book can express the value of the change
+indicated by that statement.
+
+The sluggard deems the sunrise an impertinence because it disturbs his
+morning slumber; but such a change may be wrought in him as to cause him
+to stand in reverence before the very thing he once condemned. The
+sunrise, once an affront, is now nothing less than a miracle, and he
+stands in the sublime presence with uncovered and lowered head. He is a
+reverent witness of the re-birth of the world. An hour ago there was
+darkness; now there is light. An hour ago the world was dead; now it is
+gloriously alive. An hour ago there was silence; now there is sound of
+such exquisite quality as to ravish the soul with delight. As the first
+beams of sunlight come streaming over the hills, ten thousand birds join
+in a mighty chorus of welcome to the newborn day and the world is flooded
+with song; and the whilom sluggard thrills under the spell of the scene
+and feels himself a part of the world that is vibrant with music. Can it
+be denied that this man is all the better citizen for his ability to
+appreciate the wonderfulness of a sunrise?
+
+But while we extol and magnify the quality of appreciation, it is well to
+note that it cannot be superinduced by any imperial mandate nor does it
+spring into being at the behest of didacticism. It can be caught but not
+taught. Indeed, it is worthy of general observation that the choice things
+which young people receive from the schools, colleges, and normal schools
+are caught and not taught, however much the teachers may plume themselves
+upon their ability to impart instruction. Education, at its best, is a
+process of inoculation. The teacher is an important factor in this process
+of generating situations that render inoculation far more easy; and we
+omit one of the most vital things in education when we refer only to the
+teacher's ability to "impart instruction." The pupil gets certain things
+in that room, but the teacher does not give them. The teacher's function
+is to create situations in which the spirit of the pupil will become
+inoculated with the germs of truth in all its aspects. If he could give
+the things that the pupils get, then all would share alike in the
+distribution. If the teacher could impart instruction, he certainly would
+not fail to lift all his pupils over the seventy-five per cent hurdle.
+
+If instruction or knowledge could be imparted, education would no longer
+be a spiritual process but rather one of driving the boy into a corner,
+imparting such instruction as the teacher might decree and keeping on
+until the point of saturation was reached or the supply of instruction
+became exhausted, when the trick would be done. The process would be as
+simple as pouring water from one vessel into another. Sometimes the
+teacher of literature strives to engender appreciation in a pupil by
+rhapsodizing over some passage. She reads the passage in a frenzy of
+simulated enthusiasm, with a quaver in her voice and moisture in her eyes,
+only to find, at the end, that her patient has fallen asleep. Appreciation
+cannot be generated in such fashion. The boy cannot light his torch of
+appreciation at a mere phosphorescent glow. There must be heat behind the
+light or there can be no ignition. The boy senses the fictitious at once
+and cannot react to what he knows to be spurious. Only the genuine can win
+his interest.
+
+Napoleon Bonaparte once said that no one can gaze into the starry sky at
+night for five minutes and not believe in the existence of God. But to
+people who lack such appreciation the night sky is devoid of significance.
+There are teachers who never go forth to revel in the glories of this
+star-lit masterpiece of creation, because, forsooth, they are too busy
+grading papers in literature. Such a teacher is not likely to be the cause
+of a spiritual ignition in her pupils, for she herself lacks the divine
+fire of appreciation. If she only possessed this quality no words would be
+needed to reveal its presence to the boy; he would know it even as the
+homing-pigeon knows its course. When the spirits of teacher and pupils
+become merged as they must become in all true teaching, the boy will find
+himself in possession of this spiritual quality. He knows that he has it,
+the teacher knows that he has it, and his associates know that he has it,
+and one and all know that it is well worth having.
+
+It is related of Keats that in reading Spenser he was thrown into a
+paroxysm of delight over the expression "sea-shouldering whales." The
+churl would not give a second thought to the phrase, or, indeed, a first
+one; but the man of appreciation finds in it a source of pleasure. Arlo
+Bates speaks with enthusiasm of the word "highly" as used in the
+Gettysburg Speech, and the teacher's work reaches a high point of
+excellence when it has given to the pupil such a feeling of appreciation
+as enables him to discover and rejoice in such niceties of literary
+expression. It widens the horizon of life to him and gives him a deeper
+and closer sympathy with every form and manifestation of life. Every phase
+of life makes an appeal to him, from bird on the wing to rushing
+avalanche; from the blade of grass to the boundless plains; from the
+prattle of the child to the word miracles of Shakespeare; from the stable
+of Bethany to the Mount of Transfiguration.
+
+Geography lends itself admirably to the development of appreciation if it
+is well taught. Indeed, to develop appreciation seems to be the prime
+function of geography, and the marvel is that it has not been so
+proclaimed. In this field geography finds a clear justification, and the
+superintendent who sets forth appreciation as the end and geography as the
+means is certain to win the plaudits of many people who have long been
+wondering why there is so much geography in the present course of study.
+Certainly no appreciation can develop from the question and answer method,
+for no spiritual quality can thrive under such deadening conditions. If
+the questions emanated from the pupils, the situation would be improved,
+but such is rarely the case. Teaching is, in reality, a transfusion of
+spirit, and when this flow of spirit from teacher to pupil is unimpeded
+teaching is at high tide. When the subject is artfully and artistically
+developed the effect upon the child is much the same as that of unrolling
+a great and beautiful picture. The Mississippi River can be taught as a
+great drama, from its rise in Lake Itasca to its triumphal entry into the
+Gulf. As it takes its way southward pine forests wave their salutes, then
+wheat fields, then corn fields, and, later, cotton fields. Then its
+tributaries may be seen coming upon the stage to help swell the mighty
+sweep of progress toward the sea. When geography is taught as a drama,
+appreciation is inevitable.
+
+The resourceful teacher can find a thousand dramas in the books on
+geography if she knows how to interpret the pages of the books, and with
+these inspiring dramas she can lift her pupils to the very pinnacle of
+appreciation. Such tales are as fascinating as fairy stories and have the
+added charm of being true to the teachings of science. A raindrop seems a
+common thing, but cast in dramatic form it becomes of rare charm. It
+slides from the roof of the house and finds its way into the tiny rivulet,
+then into the brook, then into the river and thus finally reaches the sea.
+By the process of evaporation, it is transformed into vapor and is carried
+over the land by currents of air. As it comes into contact with colder
+currents, condensation ensues and then precipitation, and our raindrop
+descends to earth once more. Sinking into the soil at the foot of the tree
+it is taken up into the tree by capillary attraction, out through the
+branches and then into the fruit. Then comes the sunshine to ripen the
+fruit, and finally this fruit is harvested and borne to the market, whence
+it reaches the home. Here it is served at the breakfast table and the
+curtain of our drama goes down with our raindrop as orange-juice on the
+lip of the little girl.
+
+When we come to realize, in our enlarged vision, the possibilities of
+geography in fostering the quality of appreciation, our teaching of the
+subject will be changed and vitalized, our textbooks will be written from
+a different angle, and our pupils will receive a much larger return upon
+their investment of time and effort. The study of geography will be far
+less like the conning of a gazetteer or a city directory and more like a
+fascinating story. In our astronomical geography we shall make many a
+pleasing excursion into the far spaces and win stimulating glimpses into
+the infinities. In our physical geography we shall read marvelous stories
+that outrival the romances of Dumas and Hugo. And geography as a whole
+will reveal herself as the cherishing mother of us all, providing us with
+food, and drink, and shelter, and raiment, giving us poetry, and song, and
+story, and weaving golden fancies for the fabric of our daily dreams.
+
+And when, at length, through the agency of geography and the other means
+at hand, our young people have achieved the endowment of appreciation,
+life will be for them a fuller and richer experience and they will be
+better fitted to play their parts as intelligent, cultivated men and
+women. The gateways will stand wide open through which they can enter into
+the palace of life to revel in all its beauteous splendor. They will
+receive a welcome into the friendship of the worthy good and great of all
+ages. When they have gained an appreciation of the real meaning of
+literature, children who have become immortal will cluster about them and
+nestle close in their thoughts and affections,--Tiny Tim, Little Jo,
+Little Nell, Little Boy Blue, and Eppie. A visitor in Turner's studio once
+said to the artist, "Really, Mr. Turner, I can't see in nature the colors
+you portray on canvas." Whereupon the artist replied, "Don't you wish you
+could?" When our pupils gain the ability to read and enjoy the message of
+the artist they will be able to hold communion with Raphael, Michael
+Angelo, Murillo, Rembrandt, Rosa Bonheur, Titian, Corot, Andrea del Sarto,
+Correggio, Fra Angelico, and Ghiberti. In the realms of poetry they will
+be able to hold agreeable converse with Shelley, Keats, Southey, Mrs.
+Browning, Milton, Victor Hugo, Hawthorne, Poe, and Shakespeare. And when
+the great procession of artists, poets, scientists, historians,
+dramatists, statesmen, and philanthropists file by to greet their gaze,
+entranced they will be able to applaud.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIX
+
+ASPIRATION
+
+
+Browning says, "'Tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man
+Would do." The boy who has acquired the habit of wishing ardently in right
+directions is well on the way toward becoming educated. For earnest
+wishing precedes and conditions every achievement that is worthy the name.
+The man who does not wish does not achieve, and the man who does wish with
+persistency and consistency does not fail of achievement. Had Columbus not
+wished with consuming ardor to circumnavigate the globe, he would never
+have encountered America. The Atlantic cable figured in the dreams and
+wishes of Cyrus W. Field long before even the preliminaries became
+realities. The wish evermore precedes the blueprint. It required forty-two
+years for Ghiberti to translate his dream into the reality that we know as
+the bronze doors of the Baptistry. But had there been no dreams there had
+been no bronze doors, and the world of art would have been the poorer.
+Every tunnel that pierces a mountain; every bridge that spans a river;
+every building whose turrets pierce the sky; every invention that lifts a
+burden from the shoulders of humanity; every reform that gilds the world
+with the glow of hope, was preceded by a wish whose gossamer strands were
+woven in a human brain. The Red Cross of today is but a dream of Henri
+Dunant realized and grown large.
+
+The student who scans the records of historical achievements and of the
+triumphs of art, music, science, literature, and philanthropy must realize
+that ardent wishing is the condition precedent to further extension in any
+of these lines, and he must be aware, too, that the ranks of wishers must
+be recruited from among the children of our schools. The yearning to
+achieve is the urge of the divine part of each one of us, and it naturally
+follows that whoever does not have this yearning has been reduced to the
+plane of abnormality in that the divine part of him has been subordinated,
+submerged, stifled. Every fervent wish is a prayer that emanates from this
+divine part of us, and, in all reverence, it may be said that we help to
+answer our own prayers. When we wish ardently we work earnestly to cause
+our dreams to come true. We are told that every wish comes true if we only
+wish hard enough, and this statement finds abundant confirmation in the
+experiences of those who have achieved.
+
+The child's wishes have their origin and abode in his native interests and
+when we have determined what his wishes are, we have in hand the clue that
+will lead us to the inmost shrine of his native tendencies. This, as has
+been so frequently said, is the point of attack for all our teaching, this
+the particular point that is most sensitive to educational inoculation. If
+we find that the boy is eager to have a wireless outfit and is working
+with supreme intensity to crystallize his wish into tangible and workable
+form, quite heedless of clock hours, it were unkind to the point of
+cruelty and altogether unpedagogical to force him away from this congenial
+task into some other work that he will do only in a heartless and
+perfunctory way. If we yearn to have him study Latin, we shall do well to
+carry the wireless outfit over into the Latin field, for the boy will
+surely follow wherever this outfit leads. But if we destroy the wireless
+apparatus, in the hope that we shall thus stimulate his interest in Latin,
+the scar that we shall leave upon his spirit will rise in judgment against
+us to the end of life. The Latin may be desirable and necessary for the
+boy, but the wireless comes first in his wishes and we must go to the
+Latin by way of the wireless.
+
+It is the high privilege of the teacher to make and keep her pupils
+hungry, to stimulate in them an incessant ardent longing and yearning.
+This is her chief function. If she does this she will have great occasion
+to congratulate herself upon her own progress as well as theirs. If they
+are kept hungry, the sources of supply will not be able to elude them, for
+children have great facility and resourcefulness in the art of foraging.
+They readily discover the lurking places of the substantials as well as of
+the tid-bits and the sweets. They easily scent the trail of the food for
+which their spiritual or bodily hunger calls. The boy who yearns for the
+wireless need not be told where he may find screws, bolts, and hammer. The
+girl who yearns to paint will somehow achieve pigments, brushes, palette,
+and teachers. Appetite is the principal thing; the rest comes easy. The
+hungry child lays the whole world under tribute and cheerfully
+appropriates whatever fits into his wishes. If his neighbor a mile distant
+has a book for which he feels a craving, the two-mile walk in quest of
+that book is invested with supreme charm, no matter what the weather. The
+apple may be hanging on the topmost bough, but the boy who is apple-hungry
+recks not of height nor of the labyrinth of hostile branches. He gets the
+apple. As some one has said, "The soul reaches out for the cloak that fits
+it."
+
+There is nothing more pathetic in the whole realm of school procedure than
+the frantic efforts of some teachers to feed their pupils instead of
+striving to create spiritual hunger. They require pupils to "take" so many
+problems, con so many words of spelling, turn so many pages of a book on
+history, and then have them try to repeat in an agony of effort words from
+a book that they neither understand nor feel an interest in. The teacher
+would feed them whether they have any craving for food or not. Such
+teachers seem to be immune to the teachings of psychology and pedagogy;
+they continue to travel the way their grandparents trod, spurning the
+practices of Pestalozzi, Froebel, and Francis Parker. They seem not to
+know that their pupils are predatory beings who are quite capable of
+ransacking creation to get the food for which they feel a craving. Not
+appreciating the nature of their pupils, they continue the process of
+feeding and stuffing them and thus fall into the fatal blunder of
+mistaking distention for education.
+
+Ruth McEnery Stuart has set out this whole matter most lucidly and
+cogently in her volume entitled _Sonny_. In this story the boy had four
+teachers who took no account of his aspirations and natural tendencies,
+but insisted upon feeding him traditional food by traditional methods. To
+them it mattered not that he was unlike other boys. What was suitable for
+them must be equally suitable for him. The story goes that a certain
+school-master was expounding the passage "Be ye pure in heart." Turning to
+the boys he exclaimed, "Are you pure in heart? If you're not, I'll flog
+you till you are." So with Sonny's four teachers. If he had no appetite
+for their kind of food, they'd feed it to him till he had. But when the
+appetite failed to come as the result of their much feeding, they banished
+him to outer darkness with epithets expressive of their disappointment and
+disgust. They washed their hands of him and were glad to be rid of him.
+
+His next teacher, however, was different. She sensed his unlikeness to
+other boys and knew, instinctively, that his case demanded and deserved
+special treatment. She consulted his aspirations and appraised his native
+tendencies. In doing so, she discovered an embryo naturalist and thus
+became aware of the task to which she must address herself. So she spread
+her nets for all living and creeping things, for the beasts of the forest,
+the birds of the air, for plants, and flowers, and stones,--in short, for
+all the works of nature. In name she was his teacher, but in reality she
+was his pupil, and his other four teachers might have become members of
+the class with rich profit to themselves. In his examination for
+graduation the boy utterly confounded and routed the members of the
+examining committee by the profundity and breadth of his knowledge and
+they were glad to check his onslaught upon the ramparts of their ignorance
+by awarding him a diploma.
+
+It devolves upon the superintendent and teachers, therefore, to determine
+what studies already in the schools or what others that may be introduced
+will best serve the purpose of fostering aspiration. They cannot deny that
+this quality is an essential element in the spiritual composition of every
+well-conditioned child as well as of every rightly constituted man and
+woman. For aspiration means life, and the lack of aspiration means death.
+The man who lacks aspiration is static, dormant, lifeless, inert; the man
+who has aspiration is dynamic, forceful, potent, regnant. Aspiration is
+the animating power that gives wings to the forces of life. It is the
+motive power that induces the currents of life. The man who has aspiration
+yearns to climb to higher levels, to make excursions into the realms that
+lie beyond his present horizon, and to traverse the region that lies
+between what he now is and what he may become. It is the dove that goes
+forth from the ark to make discovery of the new lands that beckon.
+
+In a former book the author tried to set forth the influence of the poet
+in generating aspiration, and in this attempt used the following words:
+"When he would teach men to aspire he writes _Excelsior_ and so causes
+them to know that only he who aspires really lives. They see the
+groundling, the boor, the drudge, and the clown content to dwell in the
+valley amid the loaves and fishes of animal desires, while the man who
+aspires is struggling toward the heights whence he may gain an outlook
+upon the glories that are, know the throb and thrill of new life, and
+experience the swing and sweep of spiritual impulses. He makes them to
+know that the man who aspires recks not of cold, of storm, or of snow, if
+only he may reach the summit and lave his soul in the glory that crowns
+the marriage of earth and sky. They feel that the aspirant is but yielding
+obedience to the behests of his better self to scale the heights where
+sublimity dwells."
+
+It were useless for teachers to pooh-pooh this matter as visionary and
+inconsequential or to disregard aspiration as a vital factor in the scheme
+of education. This quality is fundamental and may not, therefore, be
+either disregarded or slurred. Fundamental qualities must engage the
+thoughtful attention of all true educators, for these fundamentals must
+constitute the ground-work of every reform in our school procedure. There
+can be life without arithmetic, but there can be no real life without
+aspiration. It points to higher and fairer levels of life and impels its
+possessor onward and upward. This needs to be fully recognized by the
+schools that would perform their high functions worthily, and no teacher
+can with impunity evade this responsibility. Somehow, we must contrive to
+instill the quality of aspiration into the lives of our pupils if we would
+acquit ourselves of this obligation. To do less than this is to convict
+ourselves of stolidity or impotence.
+
+Chief among the agencies that may be made to contribute generously in this
+high enterprise is history, or more specifically, biography, which is
+quintessential history. A boy proceeds upon the assumption that what has
+been done may be done again and, possibly, done even better. When he reads
+of the beneficent achievements of Edison he becomes fired with zeal to
+equal if not surpass these achievements. Obstacles do not daunt the boy
+who aspires. Everything becomes possible in the light and heat of his
+zeal. Since Edison did it, he can do it, and no amount of discouragement
+can dissuade him from his lofty purpose. He sets his goal high and marches
+toward it with dauntless courage. If a wireless outfit is his goal, bells
+may ring and clocks may strike, but he hears or heeds them not.
+
+To be effective the teaching of history must be far more than the mere
+droning over the pages of a book. It must be so vital that it will set the
+currents of life in motion. In his illuminating report upon the schools of
+Denmark, Mr. Edwin G. Cooley quotes Bogtrup on the teaching of history as
+follows: "History does not mean books and maps; it is not to be divided
+into lessons and gone through with a pointer like any other paltry school
+subject. History lies before our eyes like a mighty and turbulent ocean,
+into which the ages run like rivers. Its rushing waves bring to our
+listening ears the sound of a thousand voices from the olden time. With
+our pupils we stand on the edge of a cliff and gaze over this great sea;
+we strive to open their eyes to its power and beauty; we point out the
+laws of the rise and fall of the waves, and of the strong under-currents.
+We strive by poetic speech to open their ears to the voices of the sea
+which in our very blood run through the veins from generation to
+generation, and, humming and singing, echo in our innermost being."
+
+Such teaching of history as is here portrayed will never fall upon dull
+ears or unresponsive spirits. It will thrill the youth with a consuming
+desire to be up and doing. He will ignite at touch of the living fire. His
+soul will become incandescent and the glow will warm him into noble
+action. He yearns to emulate the triumphs of those who have preceded him
+on the stage of endeavor. If he reads "The Message to Garcia" he feels
+himself pulsating with the zeal to do deeds of valor and heroism. Whether
+the records deal with Clara Barton, Nathan Hale, Frances Willard, Mrs.
+Stowe, Columbus, Lincoln, William the Silent, Erasmus, or Raphael, if
+these people are present as vital entities the young people will thrill
+under the spell of the entrancing stories. Then will history and biography
+come into their own as means to a great end, and then will aspiration take
+its rightful place as one of the large goals in the scheme of education.
+As Browning says, "A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a
+heaven for?" and again:
+
+  What I aspired to be
+  And was not, comforts me.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN
+
+INITIATIVE
+
+
+No one who gives the matter thoughtful consideration will ever deprecate
+or disparage the possession of the virtue of obedience; but, on the other
+hand, no such thoughtful person will attempt to deny that this virtue,
+desirable as it is, may be fostered and emphasized to such a degree that
+its possessor will become a mere automaton. And this is bad; indeed, very
+bad. We extol obedience, to be sure, but not the sort of blind, unthinking
+obedience that will reduce its possessor to the status of the mechanical
+toy which needs only to be wound up and set going. The factory
+superintendent is glad to have men about him who are able to work
+efficiently from blueprints; but he is glad, also, to have men about him
+who can dispense with blueprints altogether or can make their own. The
+difference between these two types of operatives spells the difference
+between leadership and mere blind, automatic following. Were all the
+workers in the factory mere followers, the work would be stereotyped and
+the factory would be unable to compete with the other factory, where
+initiative and leadership obtain.
+
+One psychologist avers that ninety per cent of our education comes through
+imitation; but, even so, it is quite pertinent to inquire into the
+remaining ten per cent. Conceding that we adopt our styles of wearing
+apparel at the behest of society; that we fashion and furnish our homes in
+conformity to prevailing customs; that we permit press and pulpit to
+formulate for us our opinions and beliefs; in short, that we are imitators
+up to the full ninety per cent limit, it still must seem obvious to the
+close observer that the remaining ten per cent has afforded us a vast
+number and variety of improvements that tend to make life more agreeable.
+This ten per cent has substituted the modern harvester for the sickle and
+cradle with which our ancestors harvested their grain; it has brought us
+the tractor for the turning of the soil in place of the primitive plow; it
+has enabled us to use the auto-truck in marketing our products instead of
+the ox-teams of the olden times; it has brought us the telegraph and
+telephone with which to send the message of our desires across far spaces;
+and it has supplied us with conveniences and luxuries that our
+grandparents could not imagine even in their wildest fancies.
+
+A close scrutiny will convince even the most incredulous that many
+teachers and schools arc doing their utmost, in actual practice if not in
+theory, to eliminate the ten per cent margin and render their pupils
+imitators to the full one hundred per cent limit. We force the children to
+travel our standard pedagogical tracks and strive to fashion and fix them
+in our standard pedagogical molds. And woe betide the pupil who jumps the
+track or shows an inclination to travel a route not of the teacher's
+choosing! He is haled into court forthwith and enjoined to render a strict
+accounting for his misdoing; for anything that is either less or more than
+a strict conformity to type is accounted a defection. We demand absolute
+obedience to the oracular edicts of the school as a passport to favor.
+Conformity spells salvation for the child and, in the interests of peace,
+he yields, albeit grudgingly, to the inevitable.
+
+In world affairs we deem initiative a real asset, but one of the saddest
+of our mistakes in ordering school activities consists in our fervid
+attempts to prove that the school is detached from life and something
+quite apart from the world. We would have our pupils believe that, when
+they are in school, they are neither in nor of the world. At our
+commencement exercises we tell the graduates that they are now passing
+across a threshold out into the world; that they are now entering into the
+realms of real life; and that on the morrow they will experience the
+initial impact of practical life. These time-worn expressions pass
+current, at face value, among enthusiastic relatives and friends, but
+there are those in the audience who know them to be the veriest cant, with
+no basis either in logic or in common sense. It is nothing short of
+foolishness to assert that a young person must attain the age of eighteen
+years before he enters real life. The child knows that his home is a part
+of the world and an element in life, that the grocery is another part, the
+post-office still another part, and so on through an almost endless list.
+Equally well does he know that the school is a part of life, because it
+enters into his daily experiences the same as the grocery and the
+post-office. Full well does he know that he is not outside of life when he
+is in school, and no amount of sophistry can convince him otherwise. If
+the school is not an integral part of the world and of life, so much the
+worse for the school and, by the same token, so much the worse for the
+teacher. Either the school is a part of the world or else it is neither a
+real nor a worthy school.
+
+The hours which the child spends in school are quite as much a part of his
+life as any other portion of the day, no matter what activities the school
+provides, and we do violence to the facts when we assume or argue
+otherwise. Here is a place for emphasis. Here is the rock on which many a
+pedagogical bark has suffered shipwreck. We become so engrossed in the
+mechanics of our task--grades, tests, examinations, and promotions--that
+we lose sight of the fact that we are dealing with real life in a
+situation that is a part of the real world. The best preparation for life
+is to practice life aright, and this is the real function of the school.
+If teachers only could or would give full recognition to this simple, open
+truth, there would soon ensue a wide departure from some of our present
+mechanized methods. But so long as we cling to the traditional notion that
+school is detached from real life, so long shall we continue to pursue our
+merry-go-round methods. If we could fully realize that we are teaching
+life by the laboratory method, many a vague and misty phase of our work
+would soon become clarified.
+
+Seeing, then, that the school is a cross-section of life, it follows,
+naturally, that it embodies the identical elements that constitute life as
+a whole. We all know, by experience, that life abounds in vicissitudes,
+discouragements, trials, and obstacles, and the school, being a part of
+real life, must furnish forth the same elements even if of less magnitude.
+There are obstacles, to be sure, and there should be. Abraham Lincoln once
+said, "When you can't remove an obstacle, plow around it." But teachers
+are prone to remove the obstacles from the pathway of their pupils when
+they should be training them to surmount these obstacles or, failing that
+for the time being, to plow around them. It is far easier, however, for
+the teacher to solve the problem for the boy than to stimulate him to
+solve it independently. If we would train the boy to leap over hurdles, we
+must supply the hurdles and not remove them from his path. Still further,
+we must elevate the hurdles, by easy gradations, if we would increase the
+boy's powers and prowess.
+
+Professor Edgar James Swift says, "Man expends just energy enough to
+satisfy the demands of the situation in which he is placed." This
+statement is big with meaning for all who have a true conception of
+pedagogy and of life. In this sentence we see the finger-board that points
+toward high achievements in teaching. If the hurdles are too low, the boy
+becomes flaccid, flabby, sluggish, and lethargic. The hurdles should be
+just high enough to engage his full strength, physical, mental, and moral.
+They should ever be a challenge to his best efforts. But they should never
+be so high that they will invite discouragement, disaster, and failure.
+The teacher should guard against elevating hurdles as an exhibition of her
+own reach. The gymnasium is not a stage for exhibitions. On the contrary,
+it is a place for graduated, cumulative training.
+
+Our inclination is to make life easy and agreeable to our pupils rather
+than real. To this end we help them over the difficulties, answer
+questions which they do not ask, and supply them with crutches when we
+should be training them to walk without artificial aids. The passing mark
+rather than real training seems to be made the goal of our endeavors even
+if we enfeeble the child by so doing. We seem to measure our success by
+the number of promotions and not by the quality of the training we give.
+We seem to be content to produce weaklings if only we can push them
+through the gateway of promotion. It matters not that they are unable to
+find their way alone through the mazes of life; let them acquire that
+ability later, after they have passed beyond our control. Again quoting
+from Professor Swift, "Following a leader, even though that leader be the
+teacher, tends to take from children whatever latent ability for
+initiative they may have."
+
+There is a story of an indulgent mother who was quite eager that her boy
+should have a pleasant birthday and so asked him what he would most like
+to do. The answer came in a flash: "Thank you, Mother, I should most like
+just to be let alone." This answer leads us at once to the inner sanctuary
+of childhood. Children yearn to be let alone and must grow restive under
+the incessant attentions of their elders. In school there is ever such a
+continuous fusillade of questions and answers, assigning of lessons,
+recitations, corrections, explanations, and promulgations, rules and
+restrictions that the children have no time for growing inside. They are
+not left to their own devices but are pulled and pushed about, and
+managed, and coddled or coerced all day long, so that there is neither
+time nor scope for the exercise and development of initiative. The
+teacher, at times, seems to think of the school as a mammoth syringe with
+which she is called upon to pump information into her bored but passive
+pupils.
+
+Silence is the element in which initiative thrives, but our school
+programs rarely provide any periods of silence. They assume that to be
+effective a school must be a place of bustle, and hurry, and excitement,
+not to mention entertainment. Sometimes the child is intent upon
+explorations among the infinities when the teacher summons him back to
+earth to cross a _t_ or dot an _i_. The teacher who would implant a
+thought-germ in the minds of her pupils and then allow fifteen minutes of
+silence for the process of germination, should be ranked as an excellent
+teacher. When the child is thinking out things for himself the process is
+favorable to initiative; but when the teacher directs his every movement,
+thought, and impulse, she is repressing the very quality that makes for
+initiative and ultimate leadership. When the boy would do some things on
+his own, the teacher is striving to force him to travel in her groove.
+
+Henderson well says: "We do not invariably cultivate initiative by letting
+children alone, but in nine cases out of ten it is a highly effective
+method. In our honest desire for their betterment, the temptation is
+always to jump in and to do for them, when we would much better keep hands
+off, and allow them, under favorable conditions, to do for themselves.
+They may do something which, from an objective point of view, is much less
+excellent than our own well-considered plan. But education is not an
+objective process. It is subjective and was wrapped up in the funny
+blundering little enterprise of the child, rather than in our own
+intrusive one." The crude product of the boy's work in manual training is
+far better for him and for the whole process of education than the
+finished product of the teacher's skill which sometimes passes for the
+boy's own work. Some manual training teachers have many a sin charged to
+their account in this line that stands in dire need of forgiveness.
+
+There are many worthy enterprises through which initiative may be
+fostered. Prominent among these are some of the home and school projects
+that are in vogue. These projects, when wisely selected with reference to
+the child's powers and inclination, give scope for the exercise of
+ingenuity, resourcefulness, perseverance, and unhampered thinking and
+acting. Besides, some of the by-products are of value, notably
+self-reliance and self-respect. A child yearns to play a thinking part in
+the drama of life and not the part of a marionette or jumping-jack that
+moves only when someone pulls the string. He yearns to be an entity and
+not a mere echo. Paternalism, in our school work, does not make for
+self-reliance, and, therefore, is to be deplored. There is small hope for
+the child without initiative, who is helped over every slightest obstacle,
+and who acquires the habit of calling for help whenever he encounters a
+difficulty.
+
+Here we have ample scope for the problem element in teaching and we are
+recreant to our opportunities and do violence to child-nature if we fail
+to utilize this method. We are much given to the analytic in our teaching,
+whereas the pupil enjoys the synthetic. He yearns to make things.
+Constructing problems in arithmetic, or history, or physics makes a
+special appeal to him and we do violence to his natural bent if we fail to
+accord him the opportunity. We can send him in quest of dramatic
+situations in the poem, or derivatives in his reading lesson, set him
+thinking of the construction of farm buildings or machinery, or lead him
+to seek the causes that led up to events in history. In brief, we can
+appeal to his curiosity and intelligence and so engage the intensest
+interest of the whole boy.
+
+A school girl assumed the task of looking after all the repairs in the way
+of plumbing in the home and, certainly, was none the worse for the
+experience. She is now a dentist and has achieved distinction both at home
+and abroad in her chosen profession. She gained the habit of meeting
+difficult situations without abatement of dignity or refinement. The
+school, at its best, is a favorable situation for self-education and the
+wise teacher will see to it that it does not decline from this high plane.
+Only so will its products be young men and women who need no leading
+strings, who can find their way about through the labyrinth of life and
+not be abashed. They are the ones to whom we must look for leadership in
+all the enterprises of life, for they have learned how to initiate work
+and carry it through to success. That school will win distinction which
+makes initiative one of its big goals and is diligent in causing the
+activities of the pupils to reach upward toward the achievement of this
+end.
+
+We may well conclude with a quotation from Dr. Henry van Dyke: "The mere
+pursuit of knowledge is not necessarily an emancipating thing. There is a
+kind of reading which is as passive as massage. There is a kind of study
+which fattens the mind for examination like a prize pig for a county fair.
+No doubt the beginning of instruction must lie chiefly in exercises of
+perception and memory. But at a certain point the reason and the judgment
+must be awakened and brought into voluntary play. As a teacher I would far
+rather have a pupil give an incorrect answer in a way which showed that he
+had really been thinking about the subject, than a literally correct
+answer in a way which showed that he had merely swallowed what I had told
+him, and regurgitated it on the examination paper."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHT
+
+IMAGINATION
+
+
+In his very stimulating book, _Learning and Doing_, Professor Swift quotes
+from a business man as follows: "Modern business no longer waits for men
+to qualify after promotion. Through anticipation and prior preparation
+every growing man must be largely ready for his new job when it comes to
+him. I find very few individuals make any effort to think out better ways
+of doing things. They do not anticipate needs, do not keep themselves
+fresh at the growing point. If ever they had any imagination they seem to
+have lost it, and imagination is needed in a growing business, for it is
+through the imagination that one anticipates future changes and so
+prepares for them before they come. Accordingly, as a general proposition,
+the selection of a man for a vacancy within the organization is more or
+less a matter of guesswork. Now and then an ambitious, wide-awake young
+man works into the organization and in a very short time is spotted by
+various department managers for future promotion, but the number of such
+individuals is discouragingly small. The difficulty with which we are
+always confronted is that our business grows faster than do those within
+it. The men do not keep up with our changes. The business grows away from
+them, and quite reluctantly the management is frequently compelled to go
+outside for necessary material. We need, at the present time, four or five
+subordinate chiefs in various parts of the factory and I can fill none of
+the positions satisfactorily from material in hand."
+
+This business man, unconsciously perhaps, puts his finger upon one of the
+weak places in our school procedure. He convicts us of stifling and
+repressing the imagination of our pupils. For it is a matter of common
+knowledge that every normal child is endowed with a vivid imagination when
+he enters school. No one will challenge this statement who has entered
+into the heart of childhood through the gateway of play. He has seen a rag
+doll invested with all the graces of a princess; he has seen empty spools
+take on all the attributes of the railway train; and he has seen the
+child's world peopled with entities of which the unimaginative person
+cannot know. Children revel in the lore of fairyland, and in this realm
+nothing seems impossible to them. Their toys are the material which their
+imagination uses in building new and delightful worlds for them. If this
+imagination is unimpaired when they become grown-ups, these toys are
+called ideals, and these ideals are the material that enter into the lives
+of poets, artists, inventors, scientists, orators, statesmen, and
+reformers. If the child lacks this quality at the end of his school life,
+the school must be held responsible, at least in part, and so must face
+the charge of doing him an irreparable injury. It were better by far for
+the child to lose a leg or an arm somewhere along the school way than to
+lose his imagination. Better abandon the school altogether if it tends to
+quench the divine fire of imagination. Better still, devise some plan of
+so reconstructing the work of the school that we shall forever forestall
+the possibility of producing a generation of spiritual cripples.
+
+The business man already quoted gives to the schools their cue. He shows
+the need of imagination in practical affairs and, by implication, shows
+that the school has been recreant to its opportunities in the way of
+stimulating this requisite quality. We must be quite aware that the men
+and women who have done things as well as those who are doing things have
+had or have imagination. Otherwise no achievements would be set down to
+their credit. It is the very acme of unwisdom to expect our pupils to
+accomplish things and then take from them the tools of their craft.
+Imagination is an indispensable tool, and the teacher assumes a grave
+responsibility who either destroys or blunts it. Unless the school
+promotes imagination it is not really a school, seeing that it omits from
+its plans and practices this basic quality. Too much emphasis cannot be
+laid upon this patent truth, nor can we deplore too earnestly the tendency
+of many teachers to strangle imagination.
+
+We all recognize C. Hanford Henderson as one of our most fertile and sane
+writers on educational themes and we cannot do better just here than to
+quote, even at some length, from his facile pen: "To say of man or woman
+that they have no imagination is to convict them of many actual and
+potential sins. Such a defect means obtuseness in manners and morals,
+sterility in arts and science, blundering in the general conduct of life.
+Children are often accused of having too much imagination, but in reality
+that is hardly possible. The imagination may run riot, and, growing by
+what it feeds upon, come dangerously near to untruthfulness,--the store of
+facts may have been too small. But the remedy is not to cripple or kill
+the imagination; it is rather to provide the needed equipment of facts and
+to train the imagination to work within the limits of truth and
+probability. The unimaginative man is exceedingly dull company. From the
+moment he opens his eyes in the morning until he closes them at night, he
+is prone to the sins of both omission and commission. No matter how good
+his intentions, he constantly offends. No matter how great his industry,
+he fails to attain. One can trace many immoralities, from slight breaches
+of manners to grave criminal offenses, to a simple lack of imagination.
+The offender failed to see,--he was, to all intents and purposes, blind.
+At its best, imagination is insight. It is the direct source of most of
+our social amenities, of toleration, charity, consideration,--in a word,
+of all those social virtues which distinguish the child of light." Another
+fertile writer says: "Many a child has been driven with a soul-wound into
+corroding silence by parents who thought they were punishing falsehood
+when they were in reality repressing the imagination--the faculty which
+master-artists denote as the first and loveliest possession of the
+creative mind."
+
+Some of our boys will be farmers but, if they lack imagination, they will
+be dull fellows, at the very best, and, relatively speaking, not far above
+the horse that draws the plow. The girls will be able to talk, but if they
+lack imagination they can never become conversationalists. The person who
+has imagination can cause the facts of the multiplication table to
+scintillate and glow. The person who lacks imagination is unable to invest
+with interest and charm even the mountain, the river, the landscape, or
+the poem. The gossip, the scandal-monger, or the coarse jester proves his
+lack of imagination and his consequent inability to hold his own in real
+conversation. We hope, of course, that some of our pupils may become
+inventors, but this will be impossible unless they possess imagination. A
+sociologist states the case in this fashion: "Wealth, the transient, is
+material; achievement, the enduring, is immaterial. The products of
+achievement are not material things at all. They are not ends, but means.
+They are methods, ways, devices, arts, systems, institutions. In a word,
+they are _inventions_." In short, to say that one is an inventor is but
+another way of saying that he has imagination.
+
+It is one thing to know facts but quite another thing to know the
+significance of facts. And imagination is the alembic that discovers the
+significance of the facts. A thousand men of England knew the facts
+touching the life and education of the children of that country, but the
+facts remained mere facts until the imagination of Dickens interpreted
+them and thus emancipated childhood from the thralldom of ignorance and
+cruelty. A thousand men knew the fact touching the steam that issues from
+the tea-kettle, but not until Watts discovered the significance of the
+fact did the tea-kettle become the precursor of the steam-engine that has
+transformed civilization. It required the imagination of Newton to
+interpret the falling of the apple and to cause this simple, common fact
+to lead on to the discovery of the great truth of gravitation. Had Galileo
+lacked imagination, the chandelier might have kept on swinging but the
+discovery of the rotation of the earth would certainly have been
+postponed.
+
+In this view of the matter we can see one of the weaknesses of some of the
+work in our colleges as well as in other schools. The teachers are fertile
+in arriving at facts, but seem to think their tasks completed with these
+discoveries and so proclaim the discovery of facts to be education. It
+matters not that the facts are devoid of significance to their students,
+they simply proceed to the discovery of more facts. They combine two or
+more substances in a test-tube and thus produce a new substance. This fact
+is solemnly inscribed in a notebook and the incident is closed. But the
+student who has imagination and industry inquires "What then?" and
+proceeds with investigations on his own initiative that result in a
+positive boon to humanity. Imagination takes the facts and makes something
+of them, while the college teacher has disclosed his inability to cope
+with his own students in fields that only imagination can render
+productive.
+
+To quote Henderson once again: "In most of our current education, instead
+of cultivating so valuable a quality, we have stupidly done all that we
+can to suppress it. We have not sufficiently studied the actual boy before
+us to find out what he is up to, and what end he has in mind. On the
+contrary, we proclaim, with curious indifference, some end of our own
+devising, and with what really amounts to spiritual brutality, we try to
+drive him towards it. We do this, we irresponsible parents and teachers,
+because we ourselves lack imagination, and do not see that we are
+blunting, instead of sharpening, our human tool. Yet we define education
+in terms of imagination when we say that education is the unfolding and
+perfecting of the human spirit; or, that education is a setting-up in the
+heart of the child of a moral and æsthetic revelation of the universe; for
+the human spirit which we are trying to establish is not a fact, but a
+gracious possibility of the future."
+
+Happy is the child whose teacher possesses imagination; who can touch the
+common things of life with the magic wand of her fancy and invest them
+with supreme charm; who can peer into the future with her pupils and help
+them translate the bright dreams of today into triumphs in the realms of
+art, music, science, philosophy, language, and philanthropy; and who
+builds air-castles of her own and thus has the skill to help the children
+build theirs. It is not easy, if, indeed, it is possible, for the teacher
+to quicken imagination in her pupils unless she herself is endowed with
+this animating quality. Dr. Henry van Dyke puts the case thus: "I care not
+whether a man is called a tutor, an instructor, or a full professor; nor
+whether any academic degrees adorn his name; nor how many facts or symbols
+of facts he has stored away in his brain. If he has these four
+powers--clear sight, quick imagination, sound reason, strong will--I call
+him an educated man and fit to be a teacher." And, of a surety,
+imagination is not the least of these.
+
+To this end every teacher should use every means possible to keep her
+imagination alive and luxuriant, and never, on any account, permit the
+exigencies of her task to repress it. The success of her pupils depends
+upon her, and she should strive against stagnation as she would against
+death. The passing out, the evaporation of imagination is an insidious
+process, and when it is gone she is but a barren fig-tree. If her
+imagination is strong and healthy she cannot have a poor school and her
+pupils will bless her memory throughout the years. As applying to every
+grade of school we may well note the words of Van Dyke: "Every true
+university should make room in its scheme for life out-of-doors. There is
+much to be said for John Milton's plan of a school whose pupils should go
+together each year on long horseback journeys and sailing cruises to see
+the world. Walter Bagehot said of Shakespeare that he could not walk down
+a street without knowing what was in it. John Burroughs has a college on a
+little farm beside the Hudson; and John Muir has a university called
+Yosemite. If such men cross a field or a thicket they see more than the
+seven wonders of the world. That is culture. And without it, all
+scholastic learning is arid, and all the academic degrees known to man are
+but china oranges hang on a dry tree." And without imagination this type
+of culture is impossible.
+
+All reforms and, indeed, all progress depend upon imagination. We must be
+able to picture the world as it ought to be before we can set on foot
+plans for betterment. It is the high province of the imagination to enter
+into the feelings and aspirations of others and so be able to lend a hand;
+to build a better future out of the materials of the present; to soar
+above the solemnities and conventions of tradition and to smile while
+soaring; to see the invisible and touch the intangible; and to see the
+things that are not and call them forth as realities. Seeing that the
+business man, the fertile-brained essayist, and the gifted poet agree in
+extolling the potential value of imagination, we have full warrant for
+according to it an honored place in the curriculum of the school. Too long
+has it been an incidental minor; it is now high time to advance it to the
+rank of a major.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER NINE
+
+REVERENCE
+
+
+At the basis of reverence is respect; and reverence is respect amplified
+and sublimated. A boy must be either dull or heedless who can look at a
+bird sailing in the air for five minutes and not become surcharged with
+curiosity to know how it can do it. His curiosity must lead him to an
+examination of the wing of a bird, and his scrutiny will reveal it as a
+marvelous bit of mechanism. The adjustment and overlapping of the feathers
+will convince him that it presents a wonderful design and a no less
+wonderful adaptation of means to ends. He sees that when the bird is
+poised in the air the wing is essentially air-tight and that when the bird
+elects to ascend or descend the feathers open a free passage for the air.
+Even a cursory examination of the bird's wing must persuade the boy that,
+with any skill he might attain, he could never fabricate anything so
+wonderful. This knowledge must, in the nature of things, beget a feeling
+of respect, and thereafter, whenever the boy sees a bird, he will
+experience a resurgence of this feeling.
+
+Some one has said, "Everything is infinitely high that we can't see over,"
+and because the boy comes to know that he cannot duplicate the bird's wing
+it becomes infinitely high or great to him and so wins his respect. To the
+boy who has been taught to think seriously, the mode of locomotion of a
+worm or a snake is likewise a marvel, and he observes it with awe. The boy
+who treads a worm underfoot gives indisputable evidence that he has never
+given serious thought to its mode of travel. Had he done so, he would
+never commit so ruthless an act. The worm would have won his respect by
+its ability to do a thing at which he himself would certainly fail. He
+sees the worm scaling the trunk of a tree with the greatest ease, but when
+he essays the same task he finds it a very difficult matter. So he tips
+his cap figuratively to the worm and, in boyish fashion, admits that it is
+the better man of the two. And never again, unless inadvertently, will he
+crush a worm. Even a snake he will kill only in what he conceives to be
+self-defense.
+
+An American was making his first trip to Europe. On the way between the
+Azores and Gibraltar the ship encountered a storm of great violence. For
+an hour or more the traveler stood on the forward deck, watching the
+titanic struggle, feeling the ship tremble at each impact of the waves,
+and hearing the roar that only a storm at sea can produce. Upon returning
+to his friends he said, "Never again can I speak flippantly of the ocean;
+never again can I use the expression, 'crossing the pond.' The sea is too
+vast and too sublime for that." He had achieved reverence. Many a child in
+school can spell the name of the ocean and give a book definition rather
+glibly, who, nevertheless, has not the faintest conception of what an
+ocean really is. The tragedy of the matter is that the teacher gives him a
+perfect mark for his parrot-like definition and spelling and leaves him in
+crass ignorance of the reality. The boy deals only with the husk and
+misses the kernel. When he can spell and define, the work has only just
+begun, and not until the teacher has contrived to have him emotionalize
+the ocean will he enter into the heart of its greatness, and power, and
+utility in promoting life, and so come to experience a feeling of respect
+for it. When it has won his respect he can read Victor Hugo's matchless
+description of the sea with understanding, measurable appreciation, and,
+certainly, a thrill of delight.
+
+It is rare fun for children, and even for grown-ups, to locate the
+constellations, planets, and stars. Of course, the North Star is
+everybody's favorite because it is so steady, so reliable, so dependable.
+We know just where to find it, and it never disappoints us. Two boys who
+once were crossing from New York to Naples found great delight in a star
+in the Southern sky that retained its relative position throughout the
+journey. At the conclusion of dinner in the evening the boys were wont to
+repair to the deck to find their star and receive its greetings. In their
+passage through the Mediterranean they became curious, wondering how it
+came about that the star failed to change its relative position in their
+journey of three thousand miles. When they realized that their star is the
+apex of a triangle whose base is three thousand miles but whose other legs
+are so long that the base is infinitesimally short by comparison, their
+amazement knew no bounds and for the first time in their lives they gained
+a profound respect for space.
+
+This new concept of space was worth the trip across the ocean to those
+boys, and the wonder is that space had never before meant anything more or
+other than a word to be spelled. The school and the home had had boundless
+opportunities to inculcate in them a sense of space, yet this delightful
+task was left to a passenger on board the ship. But for his kindly offices
+those boys might have gone on for years conceiving of space as merely a
+word of five letters. It would have been easy for parent or teacher to
+engender in them some appreciation of space by explaining to them that if
+they were to travel thirty miles a day it would require twenty-two years
+to reach the moon,--which is, in reality, our next-door neighbor,--and
+that to reach the sun, at the same rate of travel, would require more than
+eight thousand years, or the added lifetimes of almost three hundred
+generations. But they were sent abroad to see the wonders of the Old World
+with no real conception of space and, therefore, no feeling of respect for
+it. Before their trip abroad they never could have read the last two
+verses of the eighth chapter of Romans with any real appreciation.
+
+Still our schools go on their complacent way, teaching words, words, words
+that are utterly devoid of meaning to the pupils, and, sad to relate, seem
+to think their mission accomplished. The pupils are required to spell
+words, define words, write words, and parse words day after day as if
+these words were lifeless and meaningless blocks of wood to be merely
+tossed up and down and moved hither and thither. So soon as a word becomes
+instinct with life and meaning, it kindles the child's interest at its
+every recurrence and it becomes as truly an entity as a person. It is then
+endowed with attributes that distinguish it clearly from its fellows and
+becomes, to the child, a vivid reality in the scheme of life. To our two
+boys every star that meets their gaze conjures up a host of memories and
+helps to renew their spiritual experience and widen their horizon. Space
+is a reality, to them, a mighty reality, and they cannot think of it
+without a deep sense of respect.
+
+There are people of mature years who have never given to their hands a
+close examination. Such an examination will disclose the fact that the
+hand is an instrument of marvelous design. It will be seen that the
+fingers all differ in length but, when they grasp an orange or a ball, it
+will be noted that they are conterminous--that the ends form a straight
+line. This gives them added purchase and far greater power of resistance.
+Were they of equal length the pressure upon the ball would be distributed
+and it could be wrested from the grasp far more readily. No mechanical
+contrivance has ever been designed that is comparable to the hand in
+flexibility, deftness, adaptability, or power of prehension. It can pick
+up a needle or a cannon-ball at will. Its touch is as light as a feather
+or as stark as a catapult. It can be as gentle as mercy or as harsh as
+battle. It can soothe to repose or rouse to fury. It can express itself in
+the gentle zephyr or in the devastating whirlwind. Its versatility is
+altogether worthy of notice, and we may well hold the lesson in history in
+abeyance, for the nonce, while we inculcate due respect for the hand. For
+no one can contemplate his hand for five minutes and not gain for it a
+feeling of profound respect.
+
+What is true of the hand is true of the whole human body. This is the very
+acme of created things; this is God's masterpiece. How any one can fail to
+respect such a wonderful piece of work is beyond explanation. The process
+of walking or of breathing must hold the thoughtful person enthralled and
+enchanted. But, strange as it may seem, there are those who seem not to
+realize in what a marvelous abode their spirits have their home. Such
+scant respect do they have for their bodies that they defile them and
+treat them with shameless ignominy. They saturate them with poisons and
+vulgarize them with unseemly practices. They seem to regard them as mere
+property to be used or abused at pleasure and not temples to be honored.
+The man who does not respect his own body can feel no respect or reverence
+for its Creator nor for the soul that dwells within it. Such a man lacks
+self-respect and self-respect is the fertile soil in which many virtues
+flourish. The teaching of physiology that fails to generate a feeling of
+deep respect for the human body is not the sort of teaching that should
+obtain in our schools.
+
+Again, a person who is possessed of fine sensibilities sees in the apple
+tree in full bloom a creation of transcendant beauty and charm. The poet
+cannot describe it, nor can the artist reproduce it. It is both a mystery
+and a miracle. Into this miracle nature has poured her lavish treasures of
+fertility, of rain, of sunshine, and of zephyrs, and from it at the zenith
+of its beauty the full-throated robin pours forth his heart in melodious
+greeting. It may be well to dismiss the school to see the circus parade,
+but even more fitting is it to dismiss the school to see this burst of
+splendor. In its glorious presence silence is the only language that is
+befitting. In such a presence sound is discord, for such enchantment as it
+begets cannot be made articulate. Its influence steals into the senses and
+lifts the spirit up. To defile or despoil such beauty would be to
+desecrate a shrine. But the sordid man sees in this symphony of color
+nothing else than a promise of fruit. His response is wholly physical, not
+spiritual at all. His spiritual sense seems atrophied and he can do
+nothing but estimate the bushels of fruit. He feels no respect for the
+beauty before him and it is evident that somewhere along the line his
+spiritual education was neglected. He excites our sympathy and our hope
+that his children may not share his fate.
+
+In the way of illustrating this quality of respect, we reach the climax in
+the thirty-eighth chapter of the Book of Job and following. The dramatic
+element of literature here reaches its zenith. God is the speaker, the
+stricken, outcast Job is the sole auditor, and the stage is a whirlwind.
+It is related of the late Professor Hodge that, on one occasion when he
+was about to perform an experiment in his laboratory, he said to some
+students who stood near, "Gentlemen, please remove your hats; I am about
+to ask God a question." But here in this chapter we have a still more
+sublime situation, for God is here asking questions of the man. And these
+questions dig deep into the life of the man and show him how puny and
+impotent is the finite in the presence of the Infinite. In this presence
+there is neither pomp, nor parade, nor vaunting, nor self-aggrandizement,
+nor arrogance. Even the printed page cannot but induce respect,
+devoutness, and profound reverence, for it tells of nature's wonders--the
+snow-crystals, the rain, the dewdrop, the light, the cloud, the
+lightning--and reveals to the bewildered sight some apprehension of the
+Author of them all.
+
+The reader must, by now, have divined the conclusion of the whole matter.
+Without respect there can be no reverence; and, without reverence, there
+can be neither education nor civilization that is worth while. Some one
+has defined reverence as "that exquisite constraint which leads a man to
+hate all that is unsuitable and sordid and exaggerated and to love all
+that is excellent and temperate and beautiful." This definition is both
+comprehensive and inclusive, and the superintendent may well promulgate it
+in his directions to his teachers. All teaching has to do with Truth and,
+in the presence of Truth, whether in mathematics, or science, or history,
+or language, the teacher should feel that he stands in the presence of the
+Burning Bush and hears the command, "Put off thy shoes from off thy feet,
+for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground." It seems a thousand
+pities that even college students rush into the presence of the Burning
+Bush in hobnailed shoes, shouting forth the college yell as they go.
+
+The man who is reverent disclaims everything that is cheap, or vulgar, or
+coarse, or unseemly. He is so essentially fine that the gaudy, the
+bizarre, and the intemperate, in whatever form, grate upon his
+sensibilities. He respects himself too much to be lacking in respect to
+others. He instinctively shrinks away from ugly vulgarization as from a
+pestilence. He is kindly, charitable, sympathetic, and sincere.
+Exaggeration, insinuation, and caricature are altogether foreign to his
+spirit. In his society we feel inspired and ennobled. His very presence is
+a tonic, and his tongue distills only purity. His example is the lodestar
+of our aspirations, and we fain would be his disciples. We feel him to be
+something worshipful in that his life constantly beckons to our better
+selves. To be reverent is to be liberally educated, while to be irreverent
+is to dwell in darkness and ignorance. To be reverent is to live on the
+heights, where the air is pure and tonic and where the sunlight is free
+from taint. To be reverent is to acknowledge our indebtedness to all those
+who, in art, in science, in literature, in music, or in philanthropy, have
+caused the waters of life to gush forth in clear abundance. To be reverent
+is to stand uncovered in the presence of Life and to experience the thrill
+of the spiritual impulses that only an appreciation of life can generate.
+If this is reverence, then the school honors itself by giving this quality
+a place of honor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TEN
+
+SENSE OF RESPONSIBILITY
+
+
+Every one who has had to do with Harvey's Grammar will readily recall the
+sentence, "Milo began to lift the ox when he was a calf." Aside from the
+interest which this sentence aroused as to the antecedent of the pronoun,
+it also enunciated a bit of philosophy which caused the pupils to wonder
+about the possibility of such a feat. They were led to consider such
+examples of physical strength as Samson, Hercules, and the more modern
+Sandow and to wonder, perhaps, just what course of training brought these
+men to their attainment of physical power. It is comparatively easy for
+adults to realize that such feats as these men accomplished could only
+come through a long process of training. If a man can lift a given weight
+on one day, he may be able to lift a slightly heavier weight the next day,
+and so on until he has achieved distinction by reason of his ability to
+lift great weights. So it is in this matter of responsibility. It need
+hardly be said that responsibility is the heaviest burden that men and
+women are called upon to lift or carry. We need only think of the
+responsibilities pertaining to the office of the chief ruler of a country
+in time of war, or of the commanding general of armies, or of the
+president of large industrial concerns, and so on through the list. Such
+men bear burdens of responsibility that cannot be estimated in terms of
+weights or measures. We can easily think of the time when the manager of a
+great industrial concern was a child in school, but it is not so easy to
+think of the six-year-old boy performing the functions of this same
+manager. However, we do know that the future rulers, generals, managers,
+and superintendents are now sitting at desks in the schools and it
+behooves all teachers to inquire by what process these pupils may be so
+trained that in time they will be able to execute these functions.
+
+In some such way we gain a right concept of responsibility. We cannot
+think of the six-year-old boy as a bank president but, in our thinking, we
+can watch his progress, in one-day intervals, from his initial experience
+in school to his assumption of the duties pertaining to the presidency of
+the bank. In thus tracing his progress there is no strain or stress in our
+thinking nor does the element of improbability obtrude itself. We think
+along a straight and level road where no hills arise to obstruct the view.
+Each succeeding day marks an inch or so of progress toward the goal. But
+should we set the responsibilities of the bank president over against the
+powers of the child, the disparity would overwhelm our thinking and our
+minds would be thrown into confusion. Our thinking is level and easy only
+when we conceive of strength and responsibility advancing side by side and
+at the same rate.
+
+It would be an interesting experience to overhear the teacher inquiring of
+the superintendent how she should proceed in order to inculcate in her
+pupils a sense of responsibility. We should be acutely alert to catch
+every word of the superintendent's reply. If he were dealing with such a
+concrete problem as Milo and the calf, his response would probably be
+satisfactory; but when such an abstract quality as responsibility is
+presented to him his reply might be vague and unsatisfactory. His thinking
+may have had to do with concrete problems so long that an abstract quality
+presents a real difficulty to his mental operations. Yet the question
+which the teacher propounds is altogether pertinent and reasonable and, if
+he fails to give a satisfactory reply, he will certainly decline in her
+esteem.
+
+The normal child welcomes such a measure of responsibility as falls within
+the compass of his powers and acquits himself of it in a manner that is
+worthy of commendation. This open truth encourages the conviction that the
+superintendent who can give to the teacher a definite plan by which she
+will be able to develop a sense of responsibility, will commend himself to
+her favor, if not admiration. They both know full well that if the pupil
+emerges from the school period lacking this quality he will be a helpless
+weight upon society and a burden to himself and his family, no matter what
+his mental attainments. He will be but a child in his ability to cope with
+situations that confront him and cannot perform the functions of manhood.
+Though a man in physical stature he will shrink from the ordinary duties
+that fall to the lot of a man and, like a child, will cling to the hand of
+his mother for guidance. In all situations he will show himself a
+spiritual coward.
+
+The problem is easy of statement but by no means so easy of solution. At
+the age of six the boy takes his place at a desk in the school. Twenty
+years hence, let us say, he will be a railway engineer. As such he must
+drive his engine at forty miles an hour through blinding storm, or in inky
+darkness, or through menacing and stifling tunnels, or over dizzy bridges,
+or around the curve on the edge of the precipice--and do this with no
+shadow of fear or hint of trepidation, but always with a keen eye, a cool
+head, and a steady hand. In his keeping are the lives of many persons, and
+any wavering or unsteadiness, on his part, may lead to speedy disaster.
+Somewhere along the way between the ages of six and twenty-six he must
+gain the ability to assume a heavy responsibility, and it would seem a
+travesty upon rational education to force him to acquire this ability
+wholly during the eight years succeeding his school experience. If, at the
+age of eighteen, he does not exhibit some ability in this respect, the
+school may justly be charged with dereliction.
+
+Or, twenty years hence, this boy may be a physician. If so, he will find a
+weeping mother clinging to him and imploring him to save her baby. He will
+see a strong man broken with sobs and offering him a fortune to save his
+wife from being engulfed in the dark shadows. His ears will be assailed
+with delirious ravings that call to him for relief and life. He will be
+importuned by the grief-crushed child not to let her mother go. He will be
+called upon to grapple with plague, with pestilence, with death itself.
+Unless he can give succor, hope departs and darkness enshrouds and
+blights. He alone can hold disease and death at bay and bid darkness give
+place to light and cause sorrow to vanish before the smile of joy. He
+stands alone at the portal to do battle against the demons of devastation
+and desolation. And, if he fails, the plaints of grief will penetrate the
+innermost chambers of his soul. He must not fail. So he toils on through
+the long night watches, disdaining food and rest, that the breaking day
+may bring in gladness and crown the arts of healing. And the school that
+does not share in the glory of such achievement misses a noble
+opportunity.
+
+Again, twenty years hence, the little girl who now sits at her desk,
+crowned with golden ringlets, will be a wife and mother, and the mistress
+of a well-conditioned home. She is a composite of Mary and Martha and in
+her kingdom reigns supreme and benign. In her home there is no hint of
+"raw haste, half-sister to delay," for long since she acquired the habit
+of serene mastery. She meets her manifold responsibilities with a smile
+and sings her way through them all. If clouds arise, she banishes them
+with the magic of her poise and amiability. She can say with Napoleon, "I
+do not permit myself to become a victim of circumstances; I make
+circumstances." Back in the school she learned order, system, method, and
+acquired the sense of responsibility. At first the teacher's desk was her
+special care, and by easy gradations the scope of her activities was
+widened until she came to feel responsible for the appearance of the
+entire schoolroom. Now in her womanhood she is a delight to her husband,
+her children, her guests, and her neighbors. Emergencies neither daunt her
+nor render her timorous, but, serene and masterful, she meets the new
+situation as a welcome novelty, and, with supreme amiability, accepts it
+as a friendly challenge to her resourcefulness. She needs not to apologize
+or explain, for difficulties disappear at her approach because, in the
+school, responsibility was one of the major goals of her training.
+
+Or, again, two decades hence this child may have attained to a position in
+the world of affairs where good taste, judgment, perseverance,
+self-control, graciousness, and tact are accounted assets of value. But
+these qualities, gained through experience, are as much a part of herself
+as her hands. A thousand times in the past has the responsibility been
+laid upon her of making selections touching shapes, colors, materials, or
+types, till now her judgment is regarded as final. Her self-control has
+become proverbial, but it is not the miracle that it seems, for it has
+become grooved into a habit by much experience. She met all these lions in
+her path at school and vanquished them all, with the aid of the teacher's
+counsel and encouragement. She can perform heroisms now because she long
+since contracted the habit of heroisms. And responsibility is most
+becoming to her now because in the years past she learned how to wear it.
+She has multiplied her powers and usefulness a hundred-fold by reason of
+having learned to assume responsibility.
+
+She has learned to lift her eyes and scan the far horizon and not be
+afraid. With gentle, kindly eyes she can look into the faces of men and
+women in all lands and not be abashed in their presence. She can soothe
+the child to rest and prove herself a scourge to evil-doers, all within
+the hour. She knows herself equal to the best, but not above the least.
+She does not need to pose, for she knows her own power without ever
+vaunting it. Her simplicity and sincerity are the fragrant bloom of her
+sense of responsibility both to herself and her kind. She gives of herself
+and her means as a gracious discharge of obligation to the less fortunate,
+but never as charity. She feels herself bound up in the interests of
+humanity and would do her full part in helping to make life more worth
+while. Her touch has the gift of healing and her tongue distills kindness.
+Her obligations to the human family are privileges to be esteemed and
+enjoyed and not bur-dens to be endured and reviled. And she thinks of her
+superintendent and teachers with gratitude for their part in the process
+of developing her into what she is, and what she may yet become.
+
+Only such as the defiant, wicked, and rebellious Cain can ask the
+question, "Am I my brother's keeper?" The man who feels no responsibility
+for the character and good name of the community of which he is a member
+is a spiritual outcast and will become a social pariah if he persists in
+maintaining his attitude of indifference. For, after all, responsibility
+amounts to a spiritual attitude. If the man feels no responsibility to his
+community he will begrudge it the taxes he pays, the improvements he is
+required to make, and will be irked by every advance that makes for civic
+betterment. To him the church and school will seem excrescences and
+superfluities, nor would he grieve to see them obliterated. His exodus
+would prove a distinct boon to the community. He may have a noble
+physique, good mentality, much knowledge, and large wealth, and yet, with
+all these things in his favor, he is nevertheless a liability for the
+single reason that he lacks a sense of responsibility. Could his teachers
+have foreseen his present attitude no efforts, on their part, would have
+seemed too great if only they could have forestalled his misfortune. And
+it is for the teachers to determine whether the boy of today shall become
+a duplicate of the man here portrayed.
+
+Every man who lives under a democratic form of government has the
+opportunity before him each day to raise or lower the level of democracy.
+When the night comes on, if he reflects upon the matter, he must become
+conscious that he has done either the one or the other. Either democracy
+is a better thing for humanity because of his day's work and influence, or
+it is a worse thing. This is a responsibility that he can neither shift
+nor shirk. It is fastened upon him with or against his will. It rests with
+him to determine whether he would have every other man and every boy in
+the land select him as their model and follow his example to the last
+detail. He alone can decide whether he would have all men indulge in the
+practices that constitute his daily life, consort with his companions,
+hold his views on all subjects, read only the books that engage his
+interest, duplicate his thoughts, aspirations, impulses, and language, and
+become, each one, his other self. Every boy who now sits in the school
+must answer these questions for himself sooner or later, nor can he hope
+to evade them. Happy is that boy, therefore, whose teacher has the
+foresight and the wisdom to train him into such a sense of responsibility
+as will enable him to answer them in such a way that the future will bring
+to him no pang of remorse.
+
+Thomas A. Edison is one of the benefactors of his time. He reached out
+into space and grasped a substance that is both invisible and intangible,
+harnessed it with trappings, pushed a button, and the world was illumined.
+There were years of unremitting toil behind this achievement, years of
+discouragement bordering on despair, but years in which the light of hope
+was kept burning. We accept his gift with the very acme of nonchalance and
+with little or no feeling of gratitude. Perhaps he would not have it
+otherwise. We do not know. But certain it is that his marvelous
+achievement has made life more agreeable to millions of people and he must
+be conscious of this fact. At some time in his life he must have achieved
+a sense of responsibility to his fellows and this worthy sentiment must
+have become the guiding principle in all his labors. If some teacher
+fostered in him this sense of responsibility, she did a piece of work for
+the world that can never be measured in terms of salary. She did not teach
+arithmetic, or grammar, or geography. She taught Edison. And one of the
+big results of her teaching was his attainment of this sense of
+responsibility which far overtops all the arithmetic and history that he
+ever learned. The man who carried the message to Garcia is another fitting
+illustration of this same principle. In executing his commission he
+overcame difficulties that would have seemed insurmountable to a less
+intrepid man. He kept his eye on the goal and endured almost unspeakable
+hardships in pressing forward toward this goal. Somehow and somewhere in
+his life he had learned the meaning of responsibility and so felt that he
+must not fail. The world came to know him as a hero because he was a hero
+at heart and his heroic achievement had its origin in the training that
+led him to feel a sense of responsibility.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ELEVEN
+
+LOYALTY
+
+
+When the boy overhears a companion put a slight upon the good name of his
+mother, he does not deliberate but, like a flash, smites the mouth that
+defames. He may deliberate afterward, for the mind then has a fact upon
+which to work, but if he is a worthy son it is not till afterwards.
+Spiritual impulses are as quick as powder and as direct as a shaft of
+light. So quick are they that we are prone to disregard them in our
+contemplation of their results. We see the boy strike and conclude, in a
+superficial way, that his hand initiated the action, nor take pains to
+trace this action back to the primal cause in the spiritual impulse. True,
+both mind and body are called into action, but only as auxiliaries to
+carry out the behests of the spirit. When the man utters an exclamation of
+delight at sight of his country's flag in a foreign port, the sound that
+we hear is but the conclusion or completion of the series of happenings.
+It is not the initial happening at all. On the instant when his eyes
+caught sight of the flag something took place inside the man's nature.
+This spiritual explosion was telegraphed to the mind, the mind, in turn,
+issued a command to the body, and the sound that was noted was the final
+result. In a general way, education is the process of training mind and
+body to obey and execute right commands of the spirit. This definition
+will justify our characterization of education as a spiritual process.
+
+Seeing, then, that the body is but a helper whose function is to execute
+the mandates of the spirit, and seeing, too, that education is a process
+of the spirit, it follows that our concern must be primarily and always
+with the spirit as major. It is the spirit that reacts, not the mind or
+the body, and education is, therefore, the process of inducing right
+reactions of the spirit. The nature of these reactions depends upon the
+quality of the external stimuli. If we provide the right sort of stimuli
+the reactions will be right. If, today, the spirit reacts to a beautiful
+picture, tomorrow, to the tree in bloom, the next day to an alluring
+landscape, and the next to the glory of a sunrise, in time its reactions
+to beauty in every form will become habitual. If we can induce reactions,
+day by day, to beautiful or sublime passages in literature, in due time
+the spirit will refuse to react to what is shoddy and commonplace. By
+inducing reactions to increasingly better musical compositions, day after
+day, we finally inculcate the habit of reacting only to high-grade music,
+and the lower type makes no appeal. By such a process we shall finally
+produce an educated, cultivated man or woman, the crowning glory of
+education.
+
+The measure of our success in this process of education will be the number
+of reactions we can induce to the right sort of stimuli. In this, we shall
+have occasion to make many substitutions. The boy who has been reacting to
+ugliness must be lured away by the substitution of beauty. The beautiful
+picture will take the place of the bizarre until nothing but such a
+picture will give pleasure and satisfaction. Indeed, the substitution of
+beauty for ugliness will, in time, induce a revolt against what is ugly
+and stimulate the boy to desire to transform the ugly thing into a thing
+of beauty. Many a home shows the effects of reaction in the school to
+artistic surroundings. The child reacts to beauty in the school and so
+yearns for the same sort of stimuli in the home. When the little girl
+entreats her mother to provide for her such a ribbon as the teacher wears,
+we see an exemplification of this principle. When only the best in
+literature, in art, in nature, in music, and in conduct avail to produce
+reactions, we may well proclaim the one who reacts to these stimuli an
+educated person. It is well to repeat that these reactions are all
+spiritual manifestations and that the conduct of mind and body is a
+resultant.
+
+To casual thinking it may seem a far cry from reactions and external
+stimuli to loyalty, but not so by any means. The man or woman who has been
+led to react to the Madonna of the Chair, the Plow Oxen, or the ceiling of
+the Sistine Chapel will experience a revival and recurrence of the
+reaction at every sight of the masterpiece, whether the original or a
+reproduction. That masterpiece has become this person's standard of art
+and neither argument, nor persuasion, nor sophistry can divorce him from
+his ideal. The boy's mother is one of his ideals. He believes her to be
+the best woman alive, and it were a sorry fact if he did not. Hence, when
+her good qualities are assailed his spirit explodes and commands his right
+arm to become a battering-ram. The kindness of the mother has caused the
+boy's spirit to react a thousand times, and his reaction in defending her
+name from calumny was but another evidence of an acquired spiritual habit.
+
+Hence it is that we find loyalty enmeshed in these elements that pertain
+to the province of psychology. It must be so, seeing that these elements
+and loyalty have to do with the spirit, for loyalty is nothing other than
+a reaction to the same external stimuli that have induced reactions many
+times before. In setting up loyalty, therefore, as one of the big goals of
+school endeavor the superintendent has only to make a list of the external
+stimuli that will induce proper reactions and so groove these reactions
+into habit. His problem, thus stated, seems altogether simple but, in
+working out the details, he will find himself facing the entire scheme of
+education. If he would induce reactions that spell loyalty he must make no
+mistake in respect of external stimuli, for it must be reiterated that the
+character of the stimuli conditions the reactions. We may not hope to
+achieve loyalty unless through the years of training we have provided
+stimuli of the right sort.
+
+If the sentiment of loyalty concerns itself with the teachings of the
+Bible and the tenets of the church, we call it religion; if it has to do
+with one's country and what its flag represents, we call it patriotism;
+and in many another relation we call it fidelity. Hence it is obvious that
+loyalty is an inclusive quality and in its ramifications reaches out into
+every phase of life. This gives us clear warrant for making it one of the
+prime objectives in a rational, as distinguished from a traditional,
+scheme of education. The progressive superintendent who is endowed with
+perspicacity, resourcefulness, altruism, and faith in himself will consult
+the highest interests of the boys and girls of his school before he
+relegates the matter to oblivion. To such as he we must look for advance
+and for the redemption of our schools from their traditional moorings. To
+such as he we must look for the inoculation of the teachers with such
+virus as will render them vital, dynamic, and eager to essay any new task
+that gives promise of a larger and better outlook for their pupils.
+
+In the second chapter of Revelation, tenth verse, we read, "Be thou
+faithful unto death and I will give thee the crown of life." Now this is
+quite as true in a psychological sense as it is in a scriptural sense. It
+is a great pity that we do not read the Bible far more for lessons in
+pedagogy. However, too many people misread the quoted passage. They
+interpret the expression "unto death" as if it were "until death." This
+interpretation would weaken the expression. The martyrs would not recant
+even when the fires were blazing all about them or when their bodies were
+lacerated. They were faithful unto death. In his poem _Invictus_ Henley
+says,
+
+  In the fell clutch of circumstance
+  I have not winced nor cried aloud;
+  Under the bludgeonings of chance,
+  My head is bloody but unbowed.
+
+And only so can the spirit hope to achieve emancipation and win out into
+the clear. This is the crown of life. Michael Angelo represents Joseph of
+Arimathea standing at the tomb of the Master with head erect and with the
+mien of faith. He did not understand at all, and yet his faithful heart
+encouraged him to hope and to hold his head from drooping. He was faithful
+even in the darkness and on the morning of the Resurrection he received
+his crown.
+
+When we set up loyalty as one of our major goals we shall become alert to
+every illustration of it that falls under our gaze. The story of Nathan
+Hale will become newly alive and will thrill as never before. Over against
+Nathan Hale we shall set Philip Nolan for the sake of comparison and
+contrast. Even though our pupils may regard Joan of Arc as a fanatic, her
+heroism and her fidelity to her convictions will shine forth as a star in
+the night and her example as illustrating loyalty will be as seed planted
+in fertile soil. In our quest for exemplars we shall find the pages of
+history palpitating with life. We may sow dead dragon's teeth, but armed
+men will spring into being. Thermopylæ will become a new story, while
+William Tell and Arnold Winkelried will take rank among the demigods.
+Sidney Carton will become far more than a mere character of fiction, for
+on his head we shall find a halo, and Horace Mann will become far more
+than a mere schoolmaster. Historians, poets, novelists, statesmen, and
+philanthropists will rally about us to reinforce our efforts and to cite
+to us men and women of all times who shone resplendent by reason of their
+loyalty.
+
+Our objective being loyalty, we shall omit the lesson in grammar for today
+in order to induce the spirits of our pupils to react to the story of
+Jephthah's daughter. For once they have emotionalized it, have really felt
+its power, this story will become to them a rare possession and will
+entwine itself in the warp and woof of their lives and form a pattern of
+exceeding beauty whose colors will not fade. They shall hear the solemn
+vow of the father to sacrifice unto the Lord the first living creature
+that meets his gaze after the victory over his enemies. They shall see him
+returning invested with the glory of the victor. Then the child will be
+seen running forth to meet him, the first living creature his gaze has
+fallen upon since the battle. They will note her gladness to see him and
+to know that he is safe. They will see the dancing of her eyes and hear
+her rippling, joyous laughter. They will become tense as the father is
+telling her of his vow. But the climax is reached when they hear her
+saying, "My father, if thou hast opened thy mouth unto the Lord, do to me
+according to that which hath proceeded out of thy mouth." And, with bated
+breath, they see her meeting death with a smile that her father may keep
+his covenant with the Lord. Ever after this story will mark to them the
+very zenith of loyalty, and the lesson in grammar can await another day.
+
+Again, instead of the regular reading lesson the school may well
+substitute the story of David, as given in the eleventh chapter of
+Chronicles. "Now three of the thirty captains went down to the rock to
+David, into the cave of Adullam; and the host of the Philistines encamped
+in the valley of Rephaim. And David was then in the hold, and the
+Philistines' garrison was then at Bethlehem. And David longed, and said,
+'O that one would give me drink of the water of the well of Bethlehem that
+is at the gate.' And the three brake through the host of the Philistines,
+and drew water out of the well of Bethlehem, that was by the gate, and
+took it, and brought it to David; but David would not drink of it, but
+poured it out to the Lord, and said, 'My God forbid it me, that I should
+do this thing. Shall I drink the blood of these men that have put their
+lives in jeopardy? for with the jeopardy of their lives they brought.'
+Therefore he would not drink it."
+
+Without any semblance of irreverence we may paraphrase this story slightly
+and have our own General Pershing stand in the place of David asking for
+water. Then we can see three of his soldiers going across No Man's Land in
+quest of the water which he craves. When they return, bearing the water to
+him from the spring in the enemy's territory, we can see him pouring the
+water upon the ground and refusing to drink it because of the hazard of
+the enterprise. No fulsome explanation will need to be given to impress
+upon the pupils the loyalty of the soldiers to their general, nor yet the
+loyalty of the general to his soldiers. Or again, in the oral English two
+of the pupils may be asked to tell the stories of Ruth and Esther, and
+certain it is, if these stories are told effectively, the pupils will
+thrill with admiration for the loyalty of these two noble characters.
+
+On his way home for vacation a college student was telling his companion
+on the train of the trip ahead, relating that at such a time he would
+reach the junction and at a certain hour he would walk into his home just
+in time for supper; he concluded by paying a tribute to the noble
+qualities of his mother. This man is now an attorney in a large city and
+it is inconceivable that he can ever be guilty of apostasy from the ideals
+and principles to which he reacted in his boyhood in that village home.
+Whatever temptations may come to him, the mother's face and voice and the
+memory of her high principles will forbid his yielding and hold him steady
+and loyal to that mother and her teaching. He must feel that if he should
+debase himself he would dishonor her, and that he cannot do. He can still
+hear her voice echoing from the years long gone, and feel the kindly touch
+of her hand upon his brow. When troubles came, mother knew just what to do
+and soon the sun was shining again. It was her magic that made the rough
+places smooth, her voice that exorcised all evil spirits. She it was who
+drove the lions from his path and made it a place of peace and joy. To be
+disloyal to her would be to lose his manhood.
+
+Whatever vicissitudes befall, we yearn to return to the old homestead, for
+there, and there alone, can we experience, in full measure, the reactions
+that came from our early associations with the old well, the bridge that
+spans the brook, the trees bending low with their luscious fruit, the
+grape arbor, the spring that bubbles and laughs as it gives forth its
+limpid treasure, the fields that are redolent of the harvest season, and
+the royal meal on the back porch. The man who does not smile in recalling
+such scenes of his boyhood days is abnormal, disloyal, and an apostate.
+These are the scenes that anchor the soul and give meaning to
+civilization. The man who will not fight for the old home, and for the
+memory of father and mother, will not fight for the flag of his country
+and is, at heart, an alien. But the man who is loyal to the home of his
+early years, loyal to the memory of his parents, and loyal to the
+principles which they implanted in his life, such a man can never be less
+than loyal to the flag that floats over him, loyal to the land in which he
+finds his home, and ever loyal to the best and highest interests of that
+land. Never, because of him, will the colors of the flag lose their luster
+or the stars grow dim. He will be faithful even unto death, because
+loyalty throbs in his every pulsation, is proclaimed by his every word, is
+enmeshed in every drop of his blood and has become a vital part of
+himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWELVE
+
+DEMOCRACY
+
+
+In a recent book H.G. Wells says that education has lost its way. Whether
+we give assent to this statement or not, it must be admitted that it is a
+direct challenge to the school, the home, the pulpit, the press, to
+government, and to society. If education has indeed lost its way, the
+responsibility rests with these educational agencies. If education has
+lost its way, these agencies must unite in a benevolent conspiracy to help
+it find it again. The war has brought these agencies into much closer
+fellowship and they are now working in greater harmony than ever before.
+This is due to the fact that they are working to a common end, that they
+are animated by a common purpose. The war is producing many readjustments
+and a new scale of values. Many things that were once considered majors
+are now thought of as minors, and the work of reconstruction has only just
+begun. Civilization is now in the throes of a re-birth and people are
+awakening from their complacency and thinking out toward the big things of
+life. They are lifting their gaze above and beyond party, and creed, and
+racial ties, and territorial boundaries, and fixing it upon their big
+common interests. More and more has their thinking been focused upon
+democracy, until this has become a watchword throughout the world. About
+this focal point people's thoughts are rallying day by day, and their
+community of feeling and thinking is leading to community of action.
+
+Primarily, democracy is a spiritual impulse, the quintessence of the
+Golden Rule. "As a man thinketh in his heart so is he," and this spiritual
+quality inevitably precedes and conditions democracy in its outward
+manifestations. Feeling, thinking, willing, doing--these are the stages in
+the law of life. The Golden Rule in action has its inception in the love
+of man for his fellow-man. The action is but the visible fruitage of the
+invisible spiritual impulse. The soldier in the trench, the sailor on the
+ship, the nurse in the hospital, the worker in the factory, and the
+official at his desk, all exemplify this principle. The outward
+manifestations of the inward impulse, democracy, are many and varied, and
+the demands of the war greatly increased both the number and variety.
+People essayed tasks that, a few years ago, would have seemed impossible;
+nor did they demean themselves in so doing. The production and
+conservation of food has become a national enterprise that has enlisted
+the active coöperation of men, women, and children of all classes, creeds,
+and conditions. Rich and poor joined in the work of war gardens, thinking
+all the while not only of their own larders but quite as much of their
+friends across the sea. And while they helped win the war, they were
+winning their own souls, for they were yielding obedience to a spiritual
+impulse and not a mere animal desire. Thus Americans and the people of
+other lands, like children at school, are learning the lesson of
+democracy. Moreover, they are now appalled at the wastage of former years
+and at the cheapness of many of the things that once held their interest.
+
+In this process of achieving an access of democracy it holds true that
+"There is no impression without expression." Each reaction of the spirit
+tends to groove the impression into a habit, and this process has had a
+thousand exemplifications before our eyes since the opening of the war.
+People who were only mildly inoculated with the democratic spirit at first
+became surcharged with this spirit because of their many reactions. They
+have been obeying the behests of spiritual impulse, working in war
+gardens, eliminating luxuries, purchasing bonds, contributing to
+benevolent enterprises, until democracy is their ruling passion. Every
+effort a man puts forth in the interest of humanity has a reflex influence
+upon his inner self and he experiences a spiritual expansion. So it has
+come to pass that men and women are doing two, three, or ten times the
+amount of work they did in the past and doing it better. Their aroused and
+enlarged spiritual impulses are the enginery that is driving their minds
+and bodies forward into virgin territory, into new and larger enterprises,
+and thus into a wider, deeper realization of their own capabilities. So
+the leaven of democracy is working through difficulties of surpassing
+obduracy and resolving situations that seemed, in the past, to be beyond
+human achievement. And of democracy it may be said, as of Dame Rumor of
+old, "She grows strong by motion and gains power by going. Small at first
+through fear, she presently raises herself into the air, she walks upon
+the ground and lifts her head among the clouds." On the side of democracy,
+at any rate, it would seem that education is beginning to find its way
+again.
+
+In the thinking of most people democracy is a form of government; but
+primarily it is not this at all. Rather it is a spiritual attitude. The
+form of government is an outward manifestation of the inward feeling. Our
+ancestors held democracy hidden in their hearts as they crossed the ocean
+long before it became visible as a form of government. The form of
+government was inevitable, seeing that they possessed the feeling of
+democracy, and that they were journeying to land in obedience to the
+dictates of this feeling. In education for democracy the form of
+government is an after-consideration; that will come as a natural
+sequence. The chief thing is to inoculate the spirits of people with a
+feeling for democracy. This germ will grow out into a form of government
+because of the unity of feeling and consequent thinking. When this
+spiritual attitude is generated, not only does the form of government
+follow, but people meet upon the plane of a common purpose and give
+expression to their inner selves in like movements. They come to realize
+that, in a large way, each one is his brother's keeper. They are drawn
+together in closer sympathy and good-will; artificial barriers disappear;
+and they all become interested in the common good. Their interests,
+purposes, and activities become unified, and life becomes better and
+richer. Actuated by a common impulse, they exemplify what Kipling says in
+his _Sons of Martha_:
+
+  Lift ye the stone or cleave the wood to make a path more fair or flat,
+  Lo, it is black already with blood some Son of Martha spilled for that,
+  Not as a ladder from Earth to Heaven, not as an altar to any creed,
+  But simple Service, simply given, to their own kind, in their common need.
+
+As Dr. Henry van Dyke well says, "It is the silent ideal in the hearts of
+the people which molds character and guides action."
+
+It will be admitted without qualification that the school, when well
+administered, constitutes a force that a altogether favorable to the
+development of the spirit of democracy, and no one will deny that
+democracy is a worthy goal toward which the activities of the school
+should be directed. It is easy to see just how geography, for instance,
+may be made a means to this end. The members of the class represent many
+conditions of society, but in the study of geography they unite in a
+common enterprise and have interests in common. Thus their spirits merge
+and, for the time, they become unified in a common quest. They become
+coordinates and confederates in this quest of geography, and the spirit of
+democracy expands in an atmosphere so favorable to growth. These pupils
+may differ in race, in creed, or in color, but these differences are
+submerged in the zeal of a common purpose. Lines of demarcation are
+obliterated and they are drawn together because of their thinking and
+feeling in unison. The caste system does not thrive in the geography class
+and snobbery languishes. The pupils have the same books, the same
+assignments, the same teacher, and share alike in all the privileges and
+pleasures which the class provides. Their grades are given on merit, with
+no semblance of discrimination. In short, they achieve the democratic
+attitude of spirit by means of the study of geography.
+
+If the teacher holds democracy in mind, all the while, as the goal of
+endeavor, she will find abundant opportunities to inculcate and develop
+the democratic ideal. By tactful suggestion she directs the activities of
+the children into channels that lead to unity of purpose. Where help is
+needed, she arranges that help may be forthcoming. Where sympathy will
+prove a solace, sympathy will be given, for sympathy grows spontaneously
+in a democratic atmosphere. Books, pictures, and flowers come forth as if
+by magic to bear their kindly messages and to render their appointed
+service. By the subtle alchemy of her very presence, the teacher who is
+deeply imbued with the spirit of democracy fuses the spirits of her pupils
+and causes them to blend in the pursuit of truth. Thus she brings it to
+pass that the spirit of democracy dominates the school and each pupil
+comes to feel a sense of responsibility for the well-being of all the
+others. So the school achieves the goal of democracy by means of the
+studies pursued, and the pupils come to experience the altruism, the
+impulse to serve, and the centrifugal urge of the democratic spirit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THIRTEEN
+
+SERENITY
+
+
+Serenity does not mean either stolidity or lethargy; far otherwise. Nor
+does it mean sluggishness, apathy or phlegmatism; quite the contrary. It
+does mean depth as opposed to shallowness, bigness as opposed to
+littleness, and vision as opposed to spiritual myopia. It means dignity,
+poise, aplomb, balance. It means that there is sufficient ballast to hold
+the ship steady on its way, no matter how much sail it spreads. When we
+see serenity, we are quite aware of other spiritual qualities that foster
+it and lift it into view. We know that courage is one of the hidden
+pillars on which it rests and that sincerity contributes to its grace and
+charm. It is a vital crescent quality as staunch as the oak and as
+graceful as the rainbow. It evermore stands upon a pedestal, and a host of
+devotees do it homage. It is as majestic and beautiful as the iceberg but
+as warm-hearted as love. It has reserve, and yet it attracts rather than
+repels. A thousand influences are poured into the alembic of the spirit,
+and serenity issues forth in modest splendor.
+
+This quality of the spirit both betokens and embodies power, and power
+governs the universe. Its power is not that of the storm that harries and
+devastates, but rather that of the sunshine that fructifies, purifies,
+chastens, and ripens. It does not rush or crash into a situation but
+steals in as quietly as the dawn, without noise or bombast, and, by its
+gentle influence, softens asperities and wins a smile from the face of
+sorrow, or discouragement, or anger. Its presence transforms discord into
+harmony, irradiates gloom, and evokes rare flowers from the murky soil of
+discontent. Whatever storms may rage elsewhere and whatever darkness may
+enshroud, it ever keeps its place as the center of a circle of calm and
+light. It is Venus of Milo come to life, silently distilling the beauty
+and splendor of living. In its presence harshness becomes gentleness,
+hysteria becomes equanimity, and sound becomes silence. From its presence
+vaunting and vainglory and arrogance hasten away to be with their own
+kind. By its power, as of a miracle, it changes the dross into fine gold,
+the grotesque into the seemly, the vulgar into the pure, the water into
+wine. Into the midst of commotion and confusion it quietly moves, saying,
+"Peace, be still!" and there is quiet and repose. Like the sun-crowned
+summit of the mountain, it stands erect and sublime nor heeds the cloudy
+tumult at its feet. In the school, the teacher who exemplifies and
+typifies this quality of serenity is never less than dignified but,
+withal, is never either cold or rigid. Children nestle about her in their
+affections and expand in her presence as flowers open in the sunshine. She
+cannot be a martinet nor, in her presence, can the children become
+sycophants. Her very presence generates an atmosphere that is conducive to
+healthy growth. There is that impelling force about her that draws people
+to her as iron filings are drawn to the magnet. Her smile stills the
+tumult of youthful exuberance and when the children look at her they gain
+a comprehensive definition of a lady. Her poise steadies the children in
+all the ramifications of their work, her complete mastery of herself wins
+their admiration, and her complete mastery of the situation wins their
+respect. They become inoculated with her spirit and make daily advances
+toward the goal of serenity. Knowledge is her meat and drink and, through
+the subtle alchemy of sublimation, her knowledge issues forth into wisdom.
+She does not pose, for her simplicity and sincerity have no need of
+artificial garnishings. Her outward mien is but the expression of her
+spiritual power, and when we contemplate her we know of a truth that
+education is a spiritual process.
+
+To the teacher without serenity, the days abound in troubles. She is
+nervous, peevish, querulous, and irritable, and her pupils become equally
+so. She thinks of them as incorrigibles and tells them so. To her they
+seem bad and she tells them so. Her animadversions reflect upon their
+parents and their home life as well as themselves and she takes unction to
+herself by reason of her strictures. Her spiritual ballast is unequal to
+the sail she carries and her craft in consequence careens and every day
+ships water of icy coldness that chills her pupils to the heart. She has
+knowledge, indeed much knowledge, but she lacks wisdom, hence her
+knowledge becomes weakness and not power. She has spiritual hysteria which
+manifests itself in her manner, in her looks, and in her voice. Her
+spiritual strength is insufficient for the load she tries to carry and her
+path shows uneven and tortuous. She nags and scolds in strident tones that
+ruffle and rasp the spirits of her pupils and beget in them a longing to
+become whatever she is not. She is noisy where quiet is needful; she
+causes disturbance where there should be peace; and she disquiets where
+she should soothe. She may have had training, but she lacks education, for
+her spiritual qualities show only chaos. The waters of her soul are
+shallow and so are lashed into tumult by the slightest storm. She lacks
+serenity.
+
+The test of a real teacher is not whether she will be good _to_ the
+children but, rather, whether she will be good _for_ the children, and
+these concepts are wide apart. If our colleges and normal schools could
+but gain the notion that their function is to prepare teachers who will be
+good _for_ children they might find occasion to modify their courses
+radically. Unless she has serenity the teacher is not good for children,
+for serenity is one of the qualities which they themselves should possess
+as the result of their school experience and it is not easy for them to
+achieve this quality if the teacher's example and influence are adverse.
+We test prospective teachers for their knowledge of this subject and that,
+when, in reality, we should be trying to determine whether they will be
+good for the pupils. But we have contracted the habit of thinking that
+knowledge is power and so test for knowledge, thinking, futilely, that we
+are testing for power. We judge of a teacher's efficacy by some marks that
+examiners inscribe upon a bit of paper, "a thing laughable to gods and
+men." She may be proficient in languages, sciences, and arts and still not
+be good for the children by reason of the absence of spiritual qualities.
+None the less, we admit her to the school as teacher when we would decline
+to admit her to the hospital as nurse. We say she would not be good for
+the patients in the hospital but nevertheless accept her as the teacher of
+our children.
+
+In Ephesians we read, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace,
+longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance," and
+such an array of excellent spiritual qualities should attract the
+attention of all the agencies that have to do with the preparation of
+teachers. We need only to make a list of the opposites of these qualities
+to be convinced that the teacher who possesses these opposites would not
+be good for the children. Now serenity embodies all the foregoing
+excellent qualities and, therefore, the teacher who has serenity has a
+host of qualities that will make for the success and well-being of her
+pupils. Again, quoting from Henderson: "My whole point is that these
+spiritual qualities in a boy are infinitely more important to his present
+charm and future achievement than any amount of academic training, than
+the most complete knowledge of reading, writing, arithmetic, history,
+geography, grammar, spelling, classics, and natural science. For charm and
+achievement are of the Spirit. It is very clear, then, that we ought to
+make these spiritual qualities the major end of all our endeavor during
+those wonderful years of grace; and that we ought to allow the
+intellectual development, up to fourteen years at least, to be a
+by-product, valuable and welcome certainly, but not primarily sought
+after. In the end we should get much the larger harvest of intellectual
+power, and much the larger man."
+
+We cannot hope to achieve the reconstructed school until our notion of
+teaching and teachers has been reconstructed. When we secure teachers who
+have education and not mere knowledge, we may begin to hope. We must look
+to the colleges and normal schools to furnish such teachers. If they
+cannot do so, our schools must plod along on the path of tradition without
+hope of finding the better way. There are faint indications, however, here
+and there, that the colleges and normal schools are beginning to stir in
+their sleep and are becoming somewhat aware of their opportunities and
+responsibilities. We shall hail with acclaim the glad day when they come
+to realize that the preparation of teachers for their work is a task of
+large import and goes deeper than facts, and statistics, and theories, and
+knowledge. If they furnish a teacher who has the quality of serenity, we
+shall all be fully alive to the fact that that quality is the luscious and
+nutritious fruitage of scholarship, of wide knowledge, of much reading, of
+deep meditation, and keen observation. But these elements, either singly
+or in combination, are but veneer unless they strike their roots into the
+spiritual nature and are thus nourished into spiritual qualities.
+Excavating into serenity, we shall discover the pure gold of scholarship;
+we shall find knowledge in great abundance; we shall find the spirit of
+the greatest and best books; and we shall come upon the cloister in which
+meditation has done its perfect work.
+
+The machine that is run to the extreme limit of its capacity splutters,
+sizzles, hisses, and quivers, and finally shakes itself into a condition
+of ineffectiveness. But the machine that is run well within the limits of
+its capacity is steady, noiseless, serene, effective, and durable. So with
+people. The person who essays a task that is beyond his capacity is
+certain to come to grief and to create no end of disturbance to himself
+and others before the final catastrophe. If the steam-chest or boiler is
+not equal to the task, wisdom and safety would counsel the installation of
+a larger one. Here is one of the tragedies of our scheme of education. The
+spirit is the power-plant of all life's operations and in this plant are
+many boilers. Instead of calling more and more of these into action, we
+seem intent upon repressing them and thus we reduce the capacity of the
+plant as a whole. When we should be lighting or replenishing the fires
+under the boilers of imagination, initiative, aspiration, and reverence,
+we spend our time striving to bank or quench these fires and in playing
+and dawdling with the torches of arithmetic, grammar, and history with
+which we should be kindling the fires. Thus we diminish the power of the
+plant while life's activities are calling for extension and enlargement.
+We seem to be trying to train our pupils to work with one or but few
+boilers when there are scores of them available if only we knew how to
+utilize them.
+
+Hence, it must appear that reserve-power and serenity are virtually
+synonymous. The teacher who has achieved serenity never uses all the power
+at her command and, in consequence, all her actions are easy, quiet, and
+even. She is always stable and never mercurial or spasmodic. She
+encounters steep grades, to be sure, but with ease and grace she applies a
+bit more power from her abundant supply and so compasses the difficulty
+without disturbing the calm. She is fully conscious of her reservoir of
+power and can concentrate all her attention upon the work in hand. The
+ballast in the hold keeps the mast perpendicular and the sails in position
+to catch the favoring breeze. We admire and applaud the graceful ship as
+it speeds along its course, giving little heed to the ballast in the hold
+that gives it poise and balance. But the ballast is there, else the ship
+would not be moving with such majestic mien. Nor was this ballast provided
+in a day. Rather it has been accumulating through the years, and bears the
+mark of college halls, of libraries, of laboratories, of the auditorium,
+of the mountain, the ocean, the starry night, of the deep forest, of the
+landscape, and of communion with all that is big and fine.
+
+Socrates drinking the hemlock is a fitting and inspiring illustration of
+serenity. In the presence of certain and imminent death he was far less
+perturbed than many another man in the presence of a pin-prick. And his
+imperturbability betokened bigness and not stolidity. While his disciples
+wept about him, he could counsel them to calmness and discourse to them
+upon immortality. He wept not, nor did he shudder back from the ordeal,
+but calm and masterful he raised the cup to his lips and smiled as he
+drank. His serenity won immortality for his name; for wherever language
+may be spoken or written, the story of Socrates will be told. History will
+not permit his name to be swallowed up in oblivion, not alone because he
+was the victim of ignorance and prejudice but also because his serenity,
+which was the offspring and proof of his wisdom, did not fail him and his
+friends in the supreme test. It is not a slight matter, then, to set up
+serenity as one of the goals in our school work. Nor is it a slight matter
+for the teacher to show forth this quality in all her work and so inspire
+her pupils to follow in her footsteps.
+
+We hope, of course, that the boys and girls of our schools may attain
+serenity so that, even in their days of youth, urged on as they are by
+youthful exuberance, they may be orderly, decorous, and kindly-disposed.
+We would have them polite, as a matter of course, but we would hope that
+their politeness may be a part of themselves and not a mere accretion.
+They will have joy of life, but so does their teacher who is possessed of
+serenity. Joy is not necessarily boisterous. The strains of music are no
+less music because they are mellow. We would have our young people think
+soberly but not solemnly. And when all our people, young and old, reach
+the goal of serenity they will extol the teachers and the schools that
+showed them the way.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOURTEEN
+
+LIFE
+
+
+Finally, we come to the chief among the goals, which is life itself. In
+fact, life is the super-goal. We study manual arts, science, and language
+that we may achieve the goals of integrity, imagination, aspiration, and
+serenity, and these qualities we weave into the fabric of life. Upon the
+spiritual qualities we weave into it, depend the texture and pattern of
+this fabric and the generating and developing of these qualities and the
+weaving of them into this fabric--this we call life. When we look upon a
+person who is well-conditioned and whose life is well-ordered, in body, in
+mind, and in spirit, we know, at once, that he possesses integrity,
+initiative, a sense of responsibility, reverence, and other high qualities
+that compose the person as we see him. We do not reflect upon what he
+knows of history, of geography, or of music, for we are taking note of an
+exemplification of life. Indeed, the presence or absence of these
+qualities determines the character of the person's life. Hence it is that
+life is the supreme goal of endeavor. Life is a composite and the
+crown-piece of all the qualities toward which we strive by means of
+arithmetic and grammar--in short, of all our activities both in school and
+out.
+
+One of our mistakes is that we confuse life and lifetime, and construe
+life to mean the span of life. In this conception the unit of measurement
+is so large that our concept of life evaporates into a vague
+generalization. Life is too specific, too definite for that. The quality
+of life may better be measured and tested in one-hour periods of duration.
+When the clock strikes nine, we know that in just sixty minutes it will
+strike ten. In the space of those sixty minutes we may find a
+cross-section of life. In a single hour we may experience a thousand
+sensations, arrive at a thousand judgments, and make a thousand responses
+to things about us. In that hour we may experience joy, sorrow, love,
+hate, envy, malice, sympathy, kindliness, courage, cowardice, pettiness,
+magnanimity, egoism, altruism, cruelty, mercy--a list, in fact, that
+reaches on almost interminably. If we only had a spiritual cyclometer
+attached to us, when the clock strikes ten we should have an interesting
+moment in noting the record. Only in some such way may each one of us gain
+a true notion of what his own life is. The one-hour period is quite long
+enough for a determination of the spiritual attitude and disposition of
+the individual.
+
+It is no small matter to achieve life, big, full, round, abounding,
+pulsating life; but it is certainly well worth striving for. Some one has
+defined sin as the distance between what one is and what he might have
+been; and this distance measures his decline from the sphere of life to
+which he had right and title. For life is a sphere, seeing that it extends
+in all directions. Its limits are conterminous with the boundaries of time
+and space. The feeble-minded person has life, but only in a very
+restricted sphere. He eats; he drinks; he sleeps; he wanders in narrow
+areas; and that is all. His thinking is weak, meager, and fitful. To him
+darkness means a time for sleeping, and light a time for eating and
+waiting. He produces nothing either of thought or substance, but is a
+pensioner upon the thinking and substance of others. His eyesight is
+strong and his hearing unimpaired; but he neither sees nor hears as normal
+persons do, because his spirit is incapable of positive reactions, and his
+mind too weak to give commands to his bodily organs at the behest of the
+spirit. In the language of psychology, he lacks a sensory foundation by
+which to react to external stimuli.
+
+In striking contrast is the man whose sphere of life is large, whose
+spirit is capable of reacting to the orient and the occident, to height
+and depth, and whose mind flashes across the space from the dawn to the
+sunset, and from nadir to zenith. Space is his playground, and his
+companions are the stars. Such a man feels and knows more life in an hour
+than his antithesis could feel and know in a century. To his spirit there
+are no metes and bounds; it has freedom and strength to make excursions to
+the far limits of space and time. Life comes to him from a thousand
+sources and in a thousand ways because he is able to go out to meet it.
+There has been developed in him a sensory foundation by which he can react
+to every influence the universe affords, to light and shadow, to joy and
+sorrow, to the near and the far, to the then and the now, to the lowly and
+the sublime, and to the finite and the Infinite. He has a big spirit,
+which is first in command; he has a strong, active mind, which is second
+in command; and he has a loyal company of bodily organs that are able and
+willing to obey and execute commands.
+
+To such a man we apply all the epithets of compliment and commendation
+which the language yields and cite him as an exemplification of life at
+high tide, of life in its supreme fullness and splendor. The knowledge of
+the world comes to his doors to do his bidding; before him the arts and
+sciences make their obeisance; and wisdom is his pillar of cloud by day
+and his pillar of fire by night. Therefore we call him educated; we call
+him a man of culture; we call him a gentleman; and all because he has
+achieved life in abundant measure. Having imagination, he is able to peer
+into the future, anticipate world movements, and visualize the paths on
+which progress will travel. Having initiative as his badge of leadership,
+he is able to rally hosts of men to his standard to execute his behests
+for civic, national, and world betterment. Having aspiration, he obeys the
+divine urge within him and moves onward and upward, eager to plant the
+flag of progress upon the summit that others may see and be stimulated to
+renewed hope and courage.
+
+And he has integrity, for he is a real man. He has wholeness,
+completeness, soundness, and roundness. He is an integer and never counts
+for less than one in any relation of life. He cannot be a mere cipher, for
+he is dynamic. He rings true at every impact of life, is free from dross
+and veneer, and is genuine through and through. There was arithmetic, back
+along the line somewhere, but it has been absorbed in the big quality
+which it helped to generate and develop. And it is better so. For if he
+were now solving decimals and square root he would be but a cog and not
+the great wheel itself. He has grown beyond his arithmetic as he has grown
+beyond his boyhood warts and freckles, for the larger life has absorbed
+them. Yet he feels no disdain either for freckles or arithmetic, but
+regards them as gracious incidents of youth and growth. He cannot read his
+Latin as he once could, but he does not grieve; for he knows it has not
+been lost but, in changed form, is enshrined in the heart of integrity.
+
+Again, he has the qualities of thoroughness, concentration, a sense of
+responsibility, loyalty, and serenity. He is big enough, and true enough
+both to himself and others, to pursue a straight and steady course. To
+him, life is a boon, a privilege, an investment, an opportunity, a
+responsibility, and, therefore, a gift too precious to be squandered or
+frivoled away. To him, hours are of fine gold and should be seized that
+they may be fused and fashioned into a statue of beauty. Being loyal to
+this conception, he moves on from achievement to achievement nor stops to
+note that fragrant flowers of blessing and benediction are springing forth
+luxuriantly in his path. His spirit is big with rightness, his brain is
+clear, his conscience is clean, his eyes look upward, his words are
+sincere, his thoughts are lofty, his purposes are true, and his acts
+distill blessings. He is no mere figment of fancy, but rather a noble
+reality whose prototype may be found on the bench, in the forum, in the
+study, in the sanctum, in the school and the college, in the factory, on
+the farm, and in the busy mart.
+
+And, withal, he is a success as a human being. His sincerity is proverbial
+in all things, both great and small. In him there is nothing of the
+mystic, the hermit, or the sybarite. He has great joy of life, and this
+joy is true, honest, and real, and never simulated. He drinks in life at
+every pore, and gives forth life that invigorates and inspires whomsoever
+it touches. His laugh is the expression of his wholesome nature; his words
+are jewels of discrimination; his every sentence bears a helpful message;
+his fine sense of humor mellows and illumines every situation; and his
+face always shows forth the light within. Children find delight in his
+society, and the exuberant vitality of his nature wins for him the
+friendship of all living creatures. Birds seem to sing for him, and
+flowers to exhale their odors for his delight. For the influences of
+birds, flowers, streams, trees, meadows, and mountains are enmeshed in his
+life. Nature reveals her secrets to him and gives to him of her treasures
+because he goes out to meet her. Because he smiles at nature she smiles
+back at him, and the union of their smiles gives joy to those who see.
+
+Moreover, he is a product of the reconstructed school, for this school
+does already exist, though in conspicuous isolation. But the oasis is
+accentuated by its isolation in the desert which spreads about it and is
+the more inviting by contrast. When, as a child, he entered school, the
+teacher, who was in advance of her time in her conception of the true
+function of the school, made a close and sympathetic appraisement of his
+aptitudes, his native dispositions, his daily environment, and the bent of
+his inherent spiritual qualities. First of all, she won his confidence.
+Thus he found freedom, ease, and pleasure in her presence. Thus, too,
+there ensued unconscious self-revelation and nothing in his life evaded
+her kindly scrutiny. He opened his mind to her frankly and fully, and
+never after did she permit the closing of the door. Only so could she
+become his teacher.
+
+She regarded him as an opportunity for the testing of all her knowledge,
+all her skill, and the full measure of her altruism. Nor was he the
+proverbial mass of plastic clay to be molded into some preconceived form.
+Her wisdom and modernity interdicted such a conception of childhood as
+that. Rather, he was a growing plant, waiting for her skill to nurture him
+into blossom and fruitage. Some of his qualities she found good; others
+not. The good ones she made the objects of her special care; the others
+she allowed to perish from neglect. Her experience in gardening had taught
+her that, if we cultivate the potatoes assiduously, the weeds will
+disappear and need not concern us. She discerned in him a tender shoot of
+imagination and this she nurtured as a priceless thing. She fertilized it
+with legend, story, song, and myth, and enveloped it in an atmosphere of
+warmth and joyousness. She led him into nature's realm, that his
+imagination might plume its wings for greater flights by its efforts to
+interpret the heart of things that live. Thus his imagination learned to
+traverse space, to explore sights and sounds his senses could not reach,
+and to construct for him another world of beauty and delight.
+
+So, too, with the other spiritual qualities. Upon these goals her gaze was
+fixed and she gently led him toward them. She taught the arithmetic with
+zest, with large understanding, and in a masterly way, for she was causing
+it to serve a high purpose. Whatever study she found helpful, this she
+used as a means with gratitude and gladness. If she found the book ill
+adapted to her purpose, she sought or wrote another. If pictures proved
+more potent than books, the galleries obeyed the magic of her skill and
+yielded forth their treasures. She yearned to have her pupil win the goals
+before him; everything was grist that came to her mill if only it would
+serve her purpose. She disdained nothing that could afford nourishment to
+the spirit of the child and give him zeal, courage, and strength for the
+upward journey. If more arithmetic was needful, she found it; if more
+history, she gave it; and if the book on geography was inadequate, she
+supplemented from libraries or from her own abundant storehouse of
+knowledge. She dared to deviate from the course of study, if thereby the
+child might more certainly win the goals toward which she ever looked and
+worked.
+
+In the boy, she saw a poet, a philosopher, a prophet, an artist, a
+musician, a statesman, or a philanthropist, and she worked and prayed that
+the artist in the child might not die but that he might grow to stalwart
+manhood to glorify the work of her school. In each girl she saw another
+Ruth, or Esther, or Cordelia, or Clara Barton, or Frances Willard, or
+Florence Nightingale, or Rosa Bonheur, or Mrs. Stowe, or Mrs. Browning.
+And her heart yearned over each one of these and strove with power to
+nourish them into vigorous life that they might become jewels in her crown
+of rejoicing. She must not allow one to perish through her ignorance or
+malpractice, for she would keep her soul free from the charge of murder.
+And in the fullness of manhood and womanhood her pupils achieved the full
+symphony of life. They had won the goals toward which their teacher had
+been leading. Their spiritual qualities had converged and become life, and
+they had attained the super-goal. In the joy of their achievement their
+teacher repeated the words of her own Teacher, "I am come that they might
+have life, and that they might have it more abundantly."
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+    [Transcriber's Note: Page numbers converted to Chapter numbers.]
+
+  Altruism, 12
+  American civilization, 2
+  Apple tree, 9
+  Arithmetic, 3
+    as means, never as end, 3
+  Aspiration, 5, 7
+
+  Bible, 11
+  Body, mind, spirit, 11
+  Bogtrup, 6
+  Browning, 6
+
+  Cant, 7
+  Children, let alone when, 7
+  Citizenship, concept of, 1
+  Civilization, 1
+  Clean living, 2
+  Columbus, 6
+  Concept of life, 14
+  Cooley, 6
+  Course of study, 3
+  Culture, 8
+
+  David, 11
+  Democracy, 1, 12
+    spiritual attitude, 12
+  Democratic ideal, 12
+  Destination, 3
+  Dickens, 8
+  Draft board, 2
+  Dynamic teacher, 4
+
+  Edison, 6
+  Education, newer import of, 1
+    definition of, 5
+    a spiritual process, 13
+  Esther, 11
+  Excelsior, 6
+
+  Farmers, 8
+  Field, 6
+  Froebel, 6
+  Future as related to present, 3
+
+  Galileo, 8
+  Geography, 5
+  Grandchildren, 2
+  Great Stone Face, 1
+
+  Hand, 9
+  Harvey's Grammar, 10
+  Henderson, C. Hanford, 8
+  Hercules, 10
+  History, 6
+  Hodge, 9
+  Hugo, Victor, 9
+  Hungry pupils, 6
+
+  Ideals, 8
+  Imagination, 8
+  "Impart instruction," 39 5
+  Incompleteness, 4
+  Incorrigibility, 4
+  Initiative, 7
+  Integrity, 4
+    meaning of, 4
+  Inventions, 8
+
+  Job, 9
+  Jove, 3
+
+  Keats, 5
+  Kipling, 12
+  Knowledge and wisdom, 3
+
+  Life, 14
+  Lincoln, 4
+  Loyalty, 11
+
+  Madonna of the Chair, 11
+  Major ends, 3
+  Man-made course of study, 4
+  Manual training, 7
+  Minerva, 3
+  Minor ends, 3
+  Model man, 10
+  Model woman, 10
+  Mother, 11
+
+  Napoleon, 5
+  North Star, 9
+
+  Objects of teaching, 3
+  Old age, 5
+  Old Glory, 11
+  Olympus, 2
+
+  Parker, 6
+  Past as related to the present, 2
+  Paternalism, 7
+  Pestalozzi, 6
+  Physical training, 4
+  Physician, 10
+  Preliminary survey of task before reconstructed school, 1
+  Present, as related to the past, 2
+    as related to the future, 3
+  Process of reconstruction, 2
+
+  Question and answer method, 5
+
+  Reactions, 11
+  Reconstructed school, survey of, 1
+  Relation of past to present, 2
+  Reserve-power, 13
+  Respect, 9
+  Responsibility, 10
+  Revelation, 11
+  Reverence, 9
+  Ruth, 11
+
+  Samson, 10
+  Sandow, 10
+  School is cross-section of life, 7
+  Serenity, 13
+    defined, 13
+  Shakespeare, 5
+  Sin, 14
+  Sluggard, 5
+  Socrates, 13
+  Spiritual attitude, 10
+  Spiritual coward, 10
+  Spiritual hysteria, 13
+  Standardized children, 4
+  Statistics, 13
+  Stimuli, 11
+  Stuart, Ruth McEnery, 6
+  Survey of task before reconstructed school, 1
+  Swift, Edgar James, 7, 8
+
+  Teachers, kinds of, 1
+    test of, 13
+  Teaching, objects of, 3
+  Thoroughness, 3
+  Tractor, 7
+  Tradition, 3
+  Traditional teacher, 4
+  Truth, 9
+
+  Unity, dawn of, 1
+
+  Van Dyke, Henry, 7, 12
+
+  Wall Street, 2
+  War gardens, 12
+  Wells, H.G., 12
+  Words, 9
+  World-minded superintendents and teachers, 1
+  World war, 2
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+World Book Company
+The House of Applied Knowledge
+Established, 1905, by Caspar W. Hodgson
+Yonkers-on-Hudson, New York
+2126 Prairie Avenue, Chicago
+
+Publishers of the following professional works: School Efficiency Series,
+edited by Paul H. Hanus, complete in thirteen volumes; Educational Survey
+Series, seven volumes already issued and others projected; School
+Efficiency Monographs, eleven numbers now ready, others in active
+preparation.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+SCHOOL EFFICIENCY MONOGRAPHS
+
+    Anderson
+Education of Defectives in the Public Schools
+
+    Arp
+Rural Education and the Consolidated School
+
+    Butterworth
+Problems in State High School Finance
+
+    Cody
+Commercial Tests and How to Use Them
+
+    Baton
+Record Forms for Vocational Schools
+
+    McAndrew
+The Public and Its School
+
+    Mahoney
+Standards in English
+
+    Mead
+An Experiment in the Fundamentals
+
+    Pearson
+The Reconstructed School
+
+    Reed
+Newsboy Service
+
+    Richardson
+Making a High School Program
+
+    Tidyman
+The Teaching of Spelling
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14567 ***