And first let us see what it may do to stimulate a general interest in knowledge. Of late I have seen cropping out here and there what seems to me a pedagogical heresy—the thesis that no kind of training is of value in fitting the pupil for anything but the definite object that it has in view. We can, according to this view, teach a boy to argue about triangles, but this will not help him in a legal or business discussion. We may teach him to solve equations, and he will then be an equation-solver—nothing else. We may teach him to read Greek and he will then be some sort of a Greek scholar, but his reaction to other attempts to teach him will not be affected. Anything like a general training is a contradiction in terms. If this is true, a great part of what I am saying is foolish, but I do not believe it. Doubtless we have exaggerated the effect of certain kinds of training. The old college graduate who, having been through four years of Latin, Greek, and mathematics, considered himself able with slight additional training, to undertake to practice law or medicine or manage a parish, was probably too sanguine. Yet I refuse to believe that a man’s brain is so shut off in knowledge-tight compartments that one may exercise one part of it without the slightest effect on the others. I cannot now write with my toes, but I am sure that I could learn to do so much more quickly because I know how to use my fingers for the purpose.
And it is indubitable, I think, that the best general preparation for mental activity of whatever kind is contact with the minds of others—early, late, and often. It tones up all one’s reactions—makes him mentally stronger, quicker, and more accurate. Some children get this at home, where there is a numerous family of persons who are both thoughtful and mentally alert. Some meet at home, besides members of the family, visitors who add to the variety of their contacts. Few get it in school, with much variety. And it is futile to expect most of our children to get it anywhere directly from persons. This being the case, it is wonderfully fortunate that we have so many of the recorded souls of human beings between the covers of books. With them mental contacts may be numerous, wide, and easy. To interest a man in a stretch of country take him up to a height whence he may overlook it. There is a patch of woods, there a hill, there is a winding stream. He will see in imagination the wild flowers under the trees, the windswept rocks behind the hill, the trout in the stream. He will wonder, too, what unimagined things there may be and he will long to find out. To interest a pupil in a subject turn him loose in a room containing a hundred books about it. He will browse about, finding a dozen things that he understands and a hundred that he does not. He will get such a bird’s-eye view that his stimulated imagination will long for closer acquaintance. And if you want to interest him in the world of ideas in general, turn him loose in a general library. The things that he will get are not to be ascertained by an examination. They are intangible, but their results are not.
In an illuminating article on the events just preceding the present European war, Professor Munroe Smith holds that it was precipitated chiefly by bringing to the front at every step military rather than diplomatic considerations. The trouble with military men, he says, is that they take no account of “imponderables”—by which he means public opinion, national feeling, injured pride, joy, grief—all those things, intellectual and emotional, that cannot be expressed in terms of men, guns, supplies, and military position. I have been wondering whether some other technically trained persons—educators, for instance, do not tend toward a similar neglect of imponderables, measuring educational values solely in terms of hours, and units, and the passing of examinations. It is a fault common to all highly trained specialists. The Scripture has a phrase for it, as for most things—“ye neglect the weightier matters of the law—judgment and faith.” These, you will note, are to be classed with Professor Munroe Smith’s “imponderables,” whereas mint, anise, and cummin are commercial products.
At least one noted educator, William James, did not make this error, for he bids us note that the emotional “imponderable”—though he does not use this word—possesses the priceless property of unlocking within us unsuspected stores of energy and placing them at our disposal. “I thank thee, Roderick, for the word,” says Fitz-James in “The Lady of the Lake”: “it nerves my heart; it steels my sword.” One would hardly expect to find educational psychology in Scott’s verse, but here it is. The word that Roderick Dhu spoke (I forget just what it was, but I think he called his rival a bad name) unlocked in Fitz-James an unexpected store of reserve energy, and the result, as I recall it, was quite unfortunate from the Gaelic point of view. We cannot afford to neglect the imponderables; and it is their presence and their influence that are fostered by a collection of books. If you will add together the weight of leather, paper, glue, thread, and ink in a book you will get the whole weight of the volume. There is naught ponderable left; and yet what is left is all that makes the thing a book—all that has power to influence the lives and souls of men—the imponderable part, fit for the unlocking of energies.
I would not have you think, although I believe this to be at bottom a matter of principles, that it is not possible to apply these principles very directly and concretely in the daily practice of an educational institution. I desire to call your attention for a moment to the testimony of one who has had great experience and practice in the administration of a collection of books in such an institution and in their use for the purposes already outlined—Mr. Frederick C. Hicks, assistant librarian of Columbia University, New York City, from whose recent review article on this subject I propose to quote a few paragraphs. Mr. Hicks is writing primarily of college instruction, but, as he notes in the first paragraph that I shall quote, what he says applies with equal cogency to the secondary school. He writes:
The general tendency in all instruction today, including even that in preparatory and high schools, is from what may be called the few-book method to the many-book method—a recognition of the power of the printed page for which librarians have always stood sponsor. The lecture, note-taking, text-book and quiz method of instruction is fast passing away in undergraduate as well as in graduate study. Textbooks are still in use in undergraduate and Master of Arts courses, but they have been relegated to a subordinate position. Emphasis is laid on work done and the assimilation of ideas gathered from many sources rather than upon memorizing the treatise of one author. Necessarily, references are chiefly to easily accessible works of secondary authority, and reading instead of research is the objective.
From the library point of view, the growth of the laboratory or case method of instruction appears to be an independent phenomenon. It should be noticed, however, that coincident with it is the general tendency to adopt a policy of teaching each subject with emphasis on its relations to other subjects.
Most universities now give courses for which no textbook is available. For instance, Professor Frederick J. Turner, of Harvard University, announces in a syllabus of 116 pages that there is no textbook suitable for use in his course on the History of the West in the United States. He thereupon gives citations to about 2,100 separate readings contained in 1,300 volumes, and says that his course requires not less than 120 pages of reading per week in these books. Professor James Harvey Robinson’s course in Columbia University on the History of the Intellectual Class in Western Europe has no textbook; and the reading for a class of 156 students is indicated in a pamphlet of 53 pages, containing references to 301 books. Illustrations could be taken from almost any subject in the university curriculum.
This is essentially a teacher’s view. Listen now to that of a public librarian, Mr. John Cotton Dana, of Newark, New Jersey. He says:
In our high schools we spend literally millions of dollars to equip laboratories, kitchens, carpenter shops, machine shops, and what not, to be used by a small part of the pupils for a small part of the short school day. This is partly because so to do is the fashion of the hour, partly also because the products of work in those shops, kitchens, and laboratories can be seen, touched, and handled, are real things even to the most unintelligent.