The Reconstructed School

by Francis B. Pearson

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.”