3. Subservience to authority.
The mere desire to please a teacher influences pupils of all ages to watch the teacher's expressions and gestures and to answer what is wanted, rather than what is sincerely thought. In Sunday school, in particular, children can scarcely be got to give sincere answers; they are so eager to please that they say what they think they ought to think, rather than what they really think. Undue respect for professors often has an overpowering influence on university students. The writer has known of several instances where students of good ability have almost lost the power to proceed with an argument, on the unexpected discovery that their view was opposed to that of some instructor.
The subservience to books is as striking as that to teachers. The history lesson of a certain class of eleven-year-old children contained the following paragraph on the appearance of the Indians: "When the first white men came to our shores, they found the country inhabited by the people Columbus had named Indians. They had copper- colored skin, coarse, jet-black hair, high cheek bones, thick lips, small eyes, and no whiskers." The children had considerable difficulty in reproducing the substance of this paragraph, attempting it several times. The writer, who was observing the class, remembered, however, having seen an Indian exhibition only a few weeks before, which included Indian men, squaws, boys and girls, and even papooses, and which this same class had visited in a body. After three rather unsuccessful attempts to relate the contents of the paragraph, the class were reminded of their visit to the Indians, and were then asked to tell how they looked. Forgetting about the text, they had no difficulty in doing this, for they were speaking out of their own experience.
Subjects like geography and grammar likewise frequently contain facts that pupils have long known; yet in school there is such an undue respect for print that many children dare not subordinate such matter to their own experience, and for that reason they have the same difficulty with it as though it were new.
It is rare for even the college student to assert his independence of both teacher and book. One of the greatest surprises that the writer received in a two years' college course was produced in a rhetoric class. The students were ordinarily assigned about twenty pages of advance text per day, which was reproduced in the recitation. On one occasion a student who was called upon did very well until he was interrupted by the professor in charge on account of an omitted topic. The professor gave the cue, but obtained no response; then, since the student usually knew his lesson, the professor exercised a special degree of patience and tried twice more to start him off. Failing, however, he impatiently asked, "Why didn't you tell about so and so"? "Why," replied the student, "I did remember something about that; but I didn't think that it was worth talking about." In the estimation of the entire class that man deserved a medal, and the writer still thinks so. There is subject-matter in most text-books that students are called upon to memorize which they feel is not worth reproduction, and they are often right; but most college students are as still as mice when it comes to declaring the fact. Their timidity in purely intellectual matters is equaled only by their boldness in playing pranks that require mere physical courage.
Subservience to mere custom is as common as that to teacher and to print. If certain pictures or musical selections have come to be generally admired, few persons to whom they fail to appeal have the courage to acknowledge the fact. There is much pretended enjoyment in art galleries.
The rate of progress acquiesced in by students is often greater than fidelity to self will allow. The amount of text and the number of references assigned frequently leave no possible time for reflection, although reflection is the sole means by which the self can react on ideas so as truly to assimilate them. Not seldom both teachers and students are conscious of this fact and even lament it, yet they continue in the same course. The result is that the average student learns to disregard his own questions, doubts, and suggestions, and is smothered by his studies. Only the exceptional nature rebels, as in case of the rhetoric, and follows his own gait, even in opposition to the teacher.
4. The abnormal lack of initiative in class.
In order to test the power of initiative of young people in study, the writer once selected a class of twenty children, ranging from ten to twelve years of age, who were doing the work of the fifth school year. They were only average pupils in home advantages and native ability. But the school to which they belonged, being the practice department of a training college for teachers, undoubtedly allowed a greater degree of freedom to the individual and possessed more merits than the ordinary public school. Nine of the children had attended this particular school from the beginning, and several of the others had gone there one or more years; and every one of the five different teachers that the class had had, had been a graduate of a state normal school, or of a teachers' college, or of both. Here, if anywhere, one might expect a good degree of independence on the part of the pupils. Also, the writer had been personally acquainted with the class from the beginning, so that they felt reasonably at home with him when he took charge of them in geography and history. After spending two thirty-minute periods with them on successive days, considering various review questions in geography, the writer, acting as teacher, assigned them the following lesson of map questions in the text- book:—
Here is a relief map of the continent on which we live. What great highland do you find in the West? In the East? In what direction does each extend? Which is the broader and higher? Where is the lowest land between these two highlands? Trace the Mississippi River. Name some of its largest tributaries, etc.