THE ARTIST TEACHER
Teaching as a fine art.—Teaching is an art. This fact has universal recognition. But it may be made a fine art, a fact that is not so generally recognized. The difference between the traditional school and the vitalized school lies in the fact, to a large degree, that, in the former, teaching is regarded merely as an art, while in the latter it becomes a fine art. In the former, the teacher is an artisan; in the latter the teacher is an artist. The difference is broadly significant. The artisan, in his work, follows directions, plans, specifications, and blue-prints that have been devised and designed by others; the artist imbues his work with imagination. The artisan works by the day—so much money for so many hours’ work with pay day as his large objective; the artist does not disdain pay day, but he has an objective beyond this and has other sources of pleasure besides the pay envelope. The artisan thinks and talks of pay day; the artist thinks and talks of his work. The artisan drops his work when the bell rings; the artist is so engrossed in his work that he does not hear the bell. The artisan plods at his task with a grudging mien; the artist works in a fine frenzy.
Characteristic qualities.—It is not easy to find the exact words by which to differentiate the traditional teacher from the artist teacher. There is an elusive quality in the artist teacher which is not easily reduced to or described by formal words. We know that the one is an artist teacher and that the other is not. The formal examination may not be able to discover the artist teacher, but there is a sort of knowledge that transcends the findings of an examination, that makes her identity known. She is a real flesh and blood person and yet she has a distinctive quality that cannot be mistaken even though it eludes description. She exhales a certain exquisiteness that reveals itself in the delicacy and daintiness of her contact with people and the objective world. Her impact upon the consciousness is no more violent than the fragrance of the rose, but, all at once, she is there and there to stay, modest, serene, and masterful.
She is as gentle as the dawn but as staunch as the oak. She has knowledge and wisdom, and, better still, she has understanding; she needs no diagram. Her gaze penetrates the very heart of a situation but is never less than kindly, and her eyes are never shifty. Her aplomb, her pose, and her poise belong to her quite as evidently as her hands. She is genuine and altogether free from affectation. Her presence stimulates without intoxicating, and she accepts the respect of people with the same naturalness and grace as would accompany her acceptance of a glass of water. Both the giver and the recipient of this respect are ennobled by the giving. Indeed she would far rather have the respect of people, her pupils included, than mere admiration, for she knows full well that respect is far more deeply rooted in the spirit and bears fruit that is more worth while. Her nature knows not inertia, but it abounds in enterprise, endeavor, and courage that are born of a high purpose.
Joy in her work.—Her teaching and her life do not occupy separate compartments but are identical in time and space; only her teaching is but one phase or manifestation of her life. She fitly exemplifies the statement that “Art is the expression of man’s joy in his work.” She has great joy in her work and, therefore, it is done as any other artist does his work. She enjoys all life, including her work. Indeed, she has contracted the habit of happiness and is so engrossed in the big elemental things of life that she can laugh at the incidental pin-pricks that others call troubles. She differentiates major from minor and never permits a minor to usurp the throne. Being an integral part of her life, her work takes on all the hues of her life. For her, culture is not something added; rather it is a something that permeates her whole nature and her whole life. She does not read poetry and other forms of literature, study the great masterpieces of music and art, and seek communion with the great, either in person or through their works—she does not do these things that she may acquire culture, but does them because she has culture.
Dynamic qualities.—Her character is the sum of all her habits of thinking, feeling, and action and, therefore, is herself. Since she is an artist, her habits are all pitched in a high key and she is culture personified. Her immaculateness of body and spirit is not a superficial acquisition but a fundamental expression of her real self. Just as the electric bulb diffuses light, so she diffuses an atmosphere of culture. She gives the artistic touch to every detail of her work because she is an artist, a genuine, sincere artist in all that makes up life. She has the heart of an artist, the eyes of an artist, the touch of an artist. Whether these qualities are inherent or acquired is beside the point, at present, but it may be remarked, in passing, that unless they were capable of cultivation, the world would be at a standstill. There is no place in her exuberant vitality for a jaundiced view, and hence her world does not become “stale, flat, and unprofitable.”
Aspiration and worship.—Every sincere, noble aspiration is a prayer; hence, she prays without ceasing in obedience to the admonition of the Apostle. And, let it be said in reverence, she helps to answer her own prayers. Her spirit yearns out toward higher and wider attainments every hour of the day, not morbidly but exultantly. And while she aspires she worships. The starry sky holds her in rapt attention and admiration, and the modest flower does no less. She is thankful for the rain, and revels in the beauty and abundance of the snow. The heat may enervate, but she is grateful, none the less, because of its beneficent influence upon the farmer’s work. Like food and sleep, her attitude of worship conserves her powers and preserves her balance. When physical weariness comes, she sends her spirit out to the star, or the sea, or the mountain, and so forgets her burden in the contemplation of majesty and beauty. In short, her spirit is attuned to all beauty and sublimity and truth, and so she is inherently an artist.
Professor Phelps quoted.—In his very delightful book, “Teaching in School and College,” the author, Professor William Lyon Phelps, says: “I do not know that I could make entirely clear to an outsider the pleasure I have in teaching. I had rather earn my living by teaching than in any other way. In my mind, teaching is not merely a life work, a profession, an occupation, a struggle; it is a passion. I love to teach. I love to teach as a painter loves to paint, as a musician loves to play, as a singer loves to sing, as a strong man rejoices to run a race. Teaching is an art—an art so great and so difficult to master that a man or a woman can spend a long life at it, without realizing much more than his limitations and mistakes, and his distance from the ideal. But the main aim of my happy days has been to become a good teacher, just as every architect wishes to be a good architect, and every professional poet strives toward perfection. For the chief difference between the ambition of the artist and the ambition of a money-maker—both natural and honorable ambitions—is that the money-maker is after the practical reward of his toil, while the artist wants the inner satisfaction that accompanies mastery.”
Attitude toward work.—To these sentiments the artist teacher subscribes whole-heartedly, if not in words, certainly by her attitude and practices. She regards her work not as a task but as a privilege, and thinking it a privilege she appreciates it as she would any other privilege. She would esteem it a privilege to attend a concert by high-class artists, or to visit an art gallery, or to witness a presentation of a great drama, or to see the Jungfrau; and she feels the same exaltation as she anticipates her work as a teacher. She sings on her way to school because of the privileges that await her. She experiences a fine flow of sentiment without becoming sentimental. Teaching, to her, is a serious business, but not, in the least, somber. Painting is a serious business, but the artist’s zeal and joy in his work give wings to the hours. Laying the Atlantic cable was a serious business, but the vision of success was both inspiring and inspiriting, and temporary mishaps only served to stimulate to greater effort.
The element of enthusiasm.—To this teacher, each class exercise is an enterprise that is big with possibilities; and, in preparation for the event, she feels something of the thrill that must have animated Columbus as he faced the sea. She estimates results more by the faces of her pupils than by the marks in a grade book, for the field of her endeavors is the spirit of the child, and the face of the child telegraphs to her the awakening of the spirit. Like the sculptor, she is striving to bring the angel of her dream into the face of the child; and when this hope is realized, the privilege of being a teacher seems the very acme of human aspirations. The animated face and the flashing eye betoken the sort of life that her teaching aims to stimulate; and when she sees these unmistakable manifestations, she knows that her big enterprise is a success and rejoices accordingly. If, for any reason, her enthusiasm is running low, she takes herself in hand and soon generates the enthusiasm that she knows is indispensable to the success of her enterprise.
Redemption of common from commonplace.—She has the supreme gift of being able to redeem the common from the plane of the commonplace. Indeed, she never permits any fact of the books to become commonplace to her pupils. They all know that Columbus discovered America in 1492, but when the recitation touches this fact she invests it with life and meaning and so makes it glow as a factor in the class exercise. The humdrum traditional teacher asks the question; and when the pupil drones forth the answer, “Columbus discovered America in 1492,” she dismisses the whole matter with the phonographic response, “Very good.” What a farce! What a travesty upon the work of the teacher! Instead of being very good, it is bad, yea, inexpressibly bad. The artist teacher does it far better. By the magic of her touch she causes the imagination of her pupils to be fired and their interest to thrill with the mighty significance of the great event. They feel, vicariously, the poverty of Columbus in his appeals for aid and wish they might have been there to assist. They find themselves standing beside the intrepid mariner, watching the angry waves striving to beat him back. They watch him peering into space, day after day, and feel a thousand pities for him in his suspense. And when he steps out upon the new land, they want to shout out their salvos and proclaim him a victor.
The voyage of Columbus.—They have yearned, and striven, and prayed with Columbus, and so have lived all the events of his great achievements. Hence, it can never be commonplace in their thinking. The teacher lifted it far away from that plane and made it loom high and large in their consciousness. A dramatic critic avers that the action of the play occurs, not upon the stage, but in the imagination of the auditors; that the players merely cause the imagination to produce the action; and that if nothing were occurring in the imagination of the people in the seats beyond what is occurring on the stage, the audience would leave the theater by way of protest. The artist teacher acts upon this very principle in every class exercise. Neither the teacher nor the book can possibly depict even a moiety of all that she hopes to produce in the imagination of the pupils. She is ever striving to find the one word or sentence that will evoke a whole train of events in their minds. Just here is where her superb art is shown. A whole volume could not portray all that the imagination of the pupils saw in connection with the voyage of Columbus, and yet the teacher caused all these things to happen by the use of comparatively few words. This is high art; this proclaims the artist teacher.
Resourcefulness.—In her work there is a fineness and a delicacy of touch that baffles a satisfactory analysis. She has the power to call forth Columbus from the past to reënact his great discovery in the imagination of her pupils—all without noise, or bombast, or gesticulation. She does what she does because she is what she is; and she needs neither copyright nor patent for protection. Her work is suffused with a rare sort of enthusiasm that carries conviction by reason of its genuineness. This enthusiasm gives to her work a tone and a flavor that can neither be disguised nor counterfeited. Her work is distinctive, but not sensational or pyrotechnic. Least of all is it ever hackneyed. So resourceful is she in devising new plans and new ways of saying and doing things that her pupils are always animated by a wholesome expectancy. She is the dynamo, but the light and heat that she generates manifest themselves in the minds of her pupils, while she remains serene and quiet.
The thirteen colonies.—With the poet Keats she can sing:
Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
Animated by this sentiment, she disdains no form of truth, whether large or small, for in every form of truth she finds beauty; and her spirit reacts to it on the instant, and joy is the resultant. This is the basis for her superb enthusiasm in every detail of her work as well as the source of her joyous living. Her pupils may name the thirteen original colonies without a slip, but that is not enough for her. The establishing of these colonies formed a mighty epoch in history, and she must dwell upon the events until they throb through the life currents of her pupils. Names in books must mean people with all their hopes, their aspirations, their trials and hardships, their sorrows and their joys. The conditions of life, the food, the clothing, the houses, the modes of travel, and the dangers must all come into the mental picture. Hence it is that she prepares for the lesson on the colonies as she would make ready for a trip with the pupils around the world, and the mere giving of names is negligible in her inspiring enterprise.
Every subject invested with life.—She finds in the circulation of the blood a subject of great import and makes ready for the lesson with enthusiastic anticipation. Her step is elastic as she takes her way to school on this particular day, and her face is beaming, for to-day comes to the children this stupendous revelation. She feels as did the college professor when he was just ready to begin an experiment in his laboratory and said to his students, “Gentlemen, please remove your hats; I am about to ask God a question.” She approaches every truth reverently, albeit joyously, for she feels that she is the leader of the children over into the Promised Land. In the book already quoted, Professor Phelps says, “I read in a German play that the mathematician is like a man who lives in a glass room at the top of a mountain covered with eternal snow—he sees eternity and infinity all about him, but not much humanity.” Not so in her teaching of mathematics; for every subject and every problem transports her to the Isle of Patmos, and the hour is crowded with revelations.
Human interest.—And wherever she is, there is humanity. There are no dry bones in her work, for she invests every subject with human interest and causes it to pulsate in the consciousness of her pupils. If there are dry bones when she arrives, she has but to touch them with the magic of her humanity, and they become things of life. Whether long division or calculus, it is to her a part of the living, palpitating truth of the world, and she causes it to live before the minds of the pupils. The so-called dead languages spring to life in her presence, and, like Aaron’s rod, blossom and bring forth at her touch. Wherever she walks there are resurrections because life begets life. No science, no mathematics, no history, no language, can be dull or dry when touched by her art, but all become vital because she is vital. By the subtle alchemy of her artistic teaching all the subjects of her school are transmuted into the pure gold of truth and beauty.