[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.