Craftsmanship in Teaching

by William C. Bagley

III

Another important step emphasized by the recent writers is the need for training children to pick out the significant features in the text or portion of the text that they are reading. This, of course, is work that is to be undertaken from the very moment that they begin to use books. How to do it effectively is a puzzling problem and one that will amply repay study and experimentation by the individual teacher. Much studying of lessons by teachers and pupils together will help, provided that the exercise is spirited and vital, and is not looked upon by the pupils as an easy way of getting out of recitation work. McMurry strongly recommends the marking of books to indicate the topic sentences and the other salient features. Personally, I am sure from my own experience that the assignment is all-important here, and that study questions and problems which can be answered or solved by reference to the text will help matters very much; but care must, of course, be taken that the continued use of such questions does not preclude the pupil's own mastery of the art of study. To eliminate this danger, it is well that the pupils be requested frequently to make out their own lists of questions, and, as speedily as possible, both the questions made by the pupil and those made by the teacher, should be replaced by topical outlines. By taking care that the questions are logically arranged,—that is, that a general question refer to the topic of the paragraph, and other subordinate questions to the subordinate details of the paragraph,—the transition from the questions to the topical outline may be readily made. Simultaneously with this will go the transition in recitation from the question-and-answer type to the topical type; and when you have trained a class into the habit of topical recitation,—when each pupil can talk right through a topic (not around it or underneath it or above it) without the use of "pumping" questions by the teacher,—you have gone a long way toward developing the art of study.

The transfer of this training, however, is quite another matter. There are pupils who can work up excellent topical recitations from their school text-books but who are utterly at sea in getting a grasp on a subject treated in other books. Here again the problem lies in getting the pupil to see the method apart from its content, and to show him that it really brings results that are worth while. If, in our training in the topical method, we are too formal and didactic, the art of study will begin and end right there. It is here that the factor of motivation is of supreme importance. When real problems are raised which require for their solution intelligent reading, the general worth of the method of study can be clearly shown. I do not go so far as to say that the pupil should never be required to study unless he has a real problem that he wishes to solve. In fact, I think that we still have a large place for the formal, systematic mastery of texts by every pupil in our schools. I do contend, however, that the frequent introduction of real problems will give us an opportunity to show the pupil that the method that he has utilized in his more formal school work is adequate and essential to do the thing that appeals to him as worth while. Only in this way, I believe, can we insure that transfer of training which is the important factor from our present standpoint.

And I ought also to say, parenthetically, that we should not interpret too narrowly this word "motivation." Let us remember that what may appeal to the adult as an effective motive does not always appeal to the child as such. Economic motives are the most effective, probably, in our own adult lives, and probably very effective with high-school pupils, but economic motives are not always strong in young children, nor should we wish them to be. It is not always true that the child will approach a school task sympathetically when he knows that the task is an essential preparation for the life that is going on about him. He may work harder at a task in order to get ahead of his fellow-pupils than he would if the motive were to fit him to enter a shop or a factory. Motive is largely a matter of instinct with the child, and he may, indeed, be perfectly satisfied with a school task just as it stands. For example, we all know that children enjoy the right kind of drill. Repetition, especially rhythmic repetition, is instinctive,—it satisfies an inborn need. Where such a condition exists, it is an obvious waste of time to search about for more indirect motives. The economical thing to do is to turn the ready energy of the child into the channel that is already open to it, so long as this procedure fits in with the results that we must secure. I feel like emphasizing this fact, inasmuch as the terms "problem interest" and "motivation" seem most commonly to be associated in the minds of teachers with what we adults term "real" or economic situations. To learn a lesson well may often be a sufficient motive,—may often constitute a "real" situation to the child,—and if it does, it will serve very effectively our purposes in this other task,—namely, getting the pupil to see the worth of the method that we ask him to employ.

IV

There are one or two points of a general nature in connection with the art of study that should be emphasized. In the first place, the upper-grade and high-school pupils are, I believe, mature enough to appreciate in some degree what knowledge really means. One of the fallacies of which I was possessed on completing my work in the lower schools was the belief that there are some men who know everything. I naturally concluded that the superintendent of schools was one of these men; the family physician was another; the leading man in my town was a third; and any one who ever wrote a book was put, ex officio so to speak, into this class without further inquiry. One of the most astounding revelations of my later education was to learn that, after all, the amount of real knowledge in this world, voluminous though it seems, is after all pitiably small. Of opinion and speculation we have a surplus, but of real, downright, hard fact, our capital is still most insignificant. And I wonder if something could not be done in the high school to teach pupils the difference between fact and opinion, and something also of the slow, laborious process through which real facts are accumulated. How many mistakes of life are due to the lack of the judicial attitude right here. What mistakes we all make when we try to evaluate writings outside of our own special field of knowledge or activity. Nothing depresses me to-day quite so much as the readiness with which laymen mistake opinion for fact in the field of psychology and education,—and I suppose that my own hasty acceptance of statements in other fields would have a similar effect upon the specialists of those fields.

Can general education help us out at all in this matter? I have only one or two suggestions to make, and even these may not be worth a great deal. In the recent Polar controversy, the sympathies of the general public were, I think, at the outset with Cook. This was perhaps, natural, and yet the trained mind ought to have withheld judgment for one reason if for no other,—and that one reason was Peary's long Arctic service, his unquestioned mastery of the technique of polar travel, his general reputation for honesty and caution in advancing opinions. By all the lessons that history teaches, Peary's word should have had precedence over Cook's, for Peary was a specialist, while Cook was only an amateur. And yet the general public discounted entirely those lessons, and trusted rather the novice, with what results it is now unnecessary to review,—and in nine cases out of ten, the results will be the same.

Could we not, as part of our work in training pupils to study, also teach them to give some sort of an evaluation to the authorities that they consult? Could we not teach them that, in nine cases out of ten, at least, the man who has the message most worth listening to is the man who has worked the hardest and the longest in his field, and who enjoys the best reputation among his fellow-workers? Sometimes, I admit, the rule does not work, and especially with men whose reputations as authorities have outlived their period of productivity, but even this mistake could be guarded against. Certainly high-school pupils ought distinctly to understand that the authors of their text-books are not always the most learned men or the greatest authorities in the fields that they treat. The use of biographical dictionaries, of the books that are appearing in various fields giving brief biographies and often some authoritative estimate of the workers in these fields, is important in this connection.

McMurry recommends that pupils be encouraged to take a critical attitude toward the principles they are set to master,—to judge, as he says, the soundness and worth of the statements that they learn. This is certainly good advice, and wherever the pupil can intelligently deal with real sources, it is well frequently to have him check up the statements of secondary sources. But, after all, this is the age of the specialist, and to trust one's untrained judgment in a field remote from one's knowledge and experience is likely to lead to unfortunate results. We have all sorts of illustrations from the ignorant man who will not trust the physician or the health official in matters of sanitation; because he lacks the proper perspective, he jumps to the conclusion that the specialist is a fraud. Would it not be well to supplement McMurry's suggestion by the one that I have just made,—that is, that we train pupils how to evaluate authorities as well as facts,—how to protect themselves from the quack and the faker who live like parasites upon the ignorance of laymen, both in medicine, in education, and in Arctic exploration?

And I believe that there is a place, also, in the high school, especially in connection with the work in science and history, for giving pupils some idea of how knowledge is really gained. I should not teach science exclusively by the laboratory method, nor history exclusively by the source method, but I should certainly take frequent opportunity to let pupils work through some simple problems from the beginnings, struggling with the conditions somewhat as the discoverers themselves struggled; following up "blind leads" and toilsomely returning for a fresh start; meeting with discouragement; and finally feeling, perhaps, some of the joy that comes with success after struggle; and all in order that they may know better and appreciate more fully the cost and the worth of that intellectual heritage which the master-minds of the world have bequeathed to the present and the future. And along with this, as they master the principles of science, let them learn also the human side of science,—the story of Newton, withholding his great discovery for years until he could be absolutely certain that it was a law; until he could get the very commonplace but obstreperous moon into harmony with his law of falling bodies;—the story of Darwin, with his twenty-odd years of the most patient and persistent kind of toil; delving into the most unpromising materials, reading the driest books, always on the lookout for the facts that would point the way to the explanation of species;—the story of Morse and his bitter struggle against poverty, and sickness, and innumerable disappointments up to the time when, in advancing years, success crowned his efforts.