The Vitalized School

by Francis B. Pearson

Examples.—A young man who won distinction as a college student had a wide shelf fitted up on one side of his room at which he stood in the preparation of all his lessons. His theory was that the attitude of the body conditions the attitude of the mind. Professor James gives assent to this theory and avers that an attitude of mind may be generated by placing the body in such an attitude as would naturally accompany this mental attitude. This theory proclaims that, if the body is slouching, the mind will slouch; but that, if the body is alert, the mind will be equally so. Another college student always walked to and fro in his room when preparing his history lesson. A fine old lady, in a work of fiction, explained her mental acumen by the single statement, “I never slouch.” Every person must have observed many exemplifications of this theory in his own experience even if he has not reduced it to a working formula.

Basic considerations.—Any consideration of the time element, in school work, must take into account, therefore, not only the number of minutes involved in a given piece of work, but also the intensity of effort during those minutes. Two minds, of equal natural strength, may be fully employed during a given period and yet show a wide difference in the quality and quantity of the results. The one may be busy all the while but slouch through the minutes. The other may be taut and intensive, working at white heat, and the output will be more extensive and of better quality. The mind that ambles through the period shows forth results that are both meager and mediocre; but the mind whose impact is both forceful and incisive produces results that serve to magnify the work of the school. Thus we have placed before us two basic considerations, one of which is the time itself, in actual minutes, and the other is the character of the reactions to external stimuli during those minutes.

Two teachers compared.—In order to consider these factors of the teaching process with some degree of definiteness it will be well to have the ten-minute teacher and the thirty-minute teacher placed in juxtaposition in our thinking. We shall thus be able to compare and contrast and so arrive at some clear judgments that may be used as a basis for generalizations. We may assume, for convenience and for concreteness, that the lesson is division of fractions. There will be substantial agreement that the principle involved in this subject can be taught in one recitation period. The reasons for some of the steps in the process may come later, but the child should be able to find his way to the correct answer in a single period. Now if one teacher can achieve this result in thirty minutes and the other in ten minutes, there is a disparity in the effectiveness of the work of these teachers which is worthy of serious consideration. The ten-minute teacher proves that the thirty-minute teacher has consumed twenty minutes of somebody’s time unnecessarily. If the salary of this thirty-minute teacher should be reduced to one third its present amount, she would inveigh against the reduction.

School and factory compared.—If she were one of the operators in a factory, she would not escape with the mere penalization of a salary reduction. The owner would argue that he needed some one who could operate the machine up to its full capacity, and that, even if she should work without salary, her presence in the factory would entail a loss in that the output of her machine was so meager. If one operator can produce a shoe in ten minutes and the other requires thirty minutes for the same work, the money that is invested in the one machine pays dividends, while the other machine imposes a continuous tax upon the owner. This, of course, will be recognized as the line of argument of the efficiency expert, but it certainly is not out of place to call attention to the matter in connection with school work. The subject of efficiency is quite within the province of the school, and it would seem to be wholly within reason for the school to exemplify its own teachings.

Appraisal of teaching expertness.—The teacher who requires thirty minutes for division of fractions which the other teacher compasses in ten minutes consumes twenty minutes unnecessarily in each recitation period, or two hundred minutes in the course of the day. The efficiency expert would ask her to account for these two hundred minutes. In order to account for them satisfactorily she would be compelled to take an inventory of her acquired habits, her predilections, her attitude toward her pupils and her subjects, and any shortcomings she may have in regard to methods of teaching. She would, at first, resent the implication that the other teacher’s method of teaching division of fractions is better than her own and would cite the many years during which her method has been used. When all else fails, tradition always proves a convenient refuge. We can always prove to-day by yesterday; only, by so doing, we deny the possibility of progress.

The potency of right methods.—A teacher of Latin once used twenty minutes in a violent attempt to explain the difference between the gerund construction and the gerundive construction. At the end of the time she had the pupils so completely muddled that, for months, the appearance of either of these constructions threw them into a condition of panic. To another class, later, this teacher explained these constructions clearly and convincingly in three minutes. In the meantime she had studied methods in connection with subject matter. Another teacher resigned her position and explained her action by confessing that she had become so accustomed to the traditional methods of teaching a certain phase of arithmetic that it was impossible for her to learn the newer one. Such a teacher must be given credit for honesty even while she illustrates tragedy.

The waste of time.—In explaining the loss of two hundred minutes a day the teacher will inevitably come upon the subject of methods of teaching, and she may be put to it to justify her method in view of its results. The more diligently she tries to justify her method, the more certainly she proclaims her responsibility for a wrong use of the method. Those twenty minutes point at her the accusing finger, and she can neither blink nor escape the facts. The other teacher led her pupils into a knowledge of the subject in ten minutes, and this one may neither abrogate nor amend the record. As an operative in the factory she holds in her hand one shoe as the result of her thirty minutes while the other holds three. Conceding that results in the school are not so tangible as the results in the factory, still we have developed methods of estimating results in the school that have convincing weight with the efficiency expert. We can estimate results in school work with sufficient accuracy to enable us to assess teaching values with a goodly degree of discrimination.

Possibilities.—It would be a comparatively simple matter to compute in days and weeks the time lost during the year by the thirty-minute teacher, and then estimate the many things that the pupils could accomplish in that time. If the thirty-minute teacher could be transformed into a ten-minute teacher, the children could have three more hours each day for play, and that would be far better for them than the ordeal of sitting there in the class, the unwilling witnesses, or victims, of the time-wasting process. Or they might read a book in the two hundred minutes and that would be more enjoyable, and the number of books thus read in the course of a year would aggregate quite a library. Or, again, they might take some additional studies and so make great gains in mental achievements in their twelve years of school life. Or they might learn to work with their hands and so achieve self-reliance, self-support, and self-respect.

Conservation.—In a word, there is no higher type of conservation than the conservation of childhood, in terms of time and interest. The two hundred minutes a day are a vital factor in the life of the child and must be regarded as highly valuable. The teacher, therefore, who subtracts this time from the child’s life is assuming a responsibility not to be lightly esteemed. She takes from him his most valuable possession and one which she can never return, try as she may. Worst of all, she purloins this element of time clandestinely, albeit seductively, in the guise of friendship. The child does not know that he is the victim of unfair treatment until it is too late to set up any defense. He is made to think that that is the natural and, therefore, only way of school, and that he must take things as they come if he is to prove himself a good soldier. So he musters what heroism he can and tries to smile while the teacher despoils him of the minutes he might better be employing in play, in reading, or in work.

The teacher’s complacency.—This would seem a severe indictment if it were incapable of proof, but having been proved by incontrovertible evidence its severity cannot be mitigated. We can only grieve that the facts are as they are and ardently hope for a speedy change. The chief obstacle in the way of improvement is the complacency of the teacher. Habits tend to persist, and if she has contracted the habit of much speaking, she thinks her volubility should be accounted a virtue and wonders that the children do not applaud the bromidic platitudes which have been uttered in the same form and in the same tones a hundred times. She is so intoxicated with her own verbosity that she can neither listen to the sounds of her own voice nor analyze her own utterances. While her neighbor is teaching she is talking, and then with sublime nonchalance she ascribes the retardation of her pupils to their own dullness and never, in any least degree, to her own unprofitable use of their time.