A brief course in the teaching process

by George D. Strayer

On the side of mental development, education consists in preserving and stimulating the child’s interest in the materials and processes with which he may come in contact. Intellectual training aims to develop the man or woman who is mentally alert, active in investigation, and controlled by reason. It is to this intellectual education that our schools have devoted the larger part of their time. The school is the agency set aside by society for transmitting culture, and the teacher must always concern herself largely with the intellectual life of children.

Our modern view of education is leading us to stress, along with physical and intellectual education, a kind of training which aims to develop the individual whose moral standards are positive rather than negative. Moral-social education should establish ideals of social service as well as standards of individual righteousness.

Along with physical, moral-social, and intellectual-cultural education, there is need for that type of training which will enable each individual to do some particular work with a high degree of efficiency. This type of education we commonly call vocational. It is only recently that we have come to realize that it is not enough to train an individual with respect to general intelligence and morality, but that it is also just as fundamental that our education provide the training necessary for success in the particular calling which each individual is to enter. For the preparation of clergymen, doctors, lawyers, teachers, and engineers, whose vocations require a maximum of intellectual achievement, it is true that we have long had our vocational schools. We are coming now to appreciate the fact that equality of opportunity demands that special training be given to those who are to enter the industries. Indeed, our vocational schools must multiply until there is training offered for each and every calling before we can claim to provide that training which is essential for social efficiency.

Another problem is that of the training for leisure. In society as at present constituted, it is possible for many individuals, and it should ultimately be possible for all, to have a considerable amount of leisure time. The contribution of each individual in his special line of work, and his general interest in the whole community, will depend in a considerable degree upon the proper use of leisure time. Our education must, therefore, attempt to equip men with interests and ideals which make for the nobler enjoyments.

Keeping in mind the sympathetic, wise, active social individual, made so by the process of acquiring experience or making of adjustments, both physical and mental, we have yet to reduce our aim to the terms of schoolroom practice. What can a teacher hope to do in this hour, with this group of children to work with?

First of all the teacher can work for the formation of habits which are socially desirable and for the inhibition of those which are undesirable. “Education is for behavior, and habits are the stuff of which behavior consists.”[1] The school may be a very important factor in the formation of habits in each of the fields of education mentioned above. If the school is organized on a rational social basis, it must continually present opportunities for actions which should become habitual, and the future efficiency of the learner depends upon gaining such control of much of the knowledge which we teach that the response desired becomes habitual. The social virtues of promptness, regularity, helpfulness, industry, fidelity, honesty, truthfulness, cleanliness, both physical and mental, patriotism, and the like, should be made habitual in connection with the situations which demand their exercise. The physical habits acquired in childhood are of the utmost significance throughout life. Much of arithmetic, spelling, writing, geography, history, and even of literature and art, will be significant in proportion as we have reduced our knowledge to the automatic basis of habit. One cannot stop to reason everything out; life is too short. We gain time and energy for the higher activities of life in proportion as we reduce the responses which occur frequently to the basis of habits. In vocational schools one of the chief aims is the formation of habits of skill. Later we shall want to discuss in detail the methodology of habit formation.

Every teacher recognizes that one of the ends which must be achieved by the school is knowledge. We shall not here enter into the discussion of the problem of what knowledge is of most worth, since for the teacher this choice is usually made and prescribed in the course of study. One cannot, however, refrain from suggesting that much that is taught would be eliminated, if we kept constantly in mind the end for which we strive. The following criteria, proposed by Professor Frank M. McMurry, will be suggestive from the standpoint of teaching, whether the teacher determines the curriculum or not.

“We hold to the following propositions in the rejection of subject matter.[2]

“1. Whatever cannot be shown to have a plain relation to some real need of life, whether æsthetic, ethical, or utilitarian in the narrower sense, must be dropped.

“2. Whatever is not reasonably within the child’s comprehension.