Craftsmanship in Teaching

by William C. Bagley

I

One way to be definite in education is to formulate as clearly as we can the aims that we hope to realize in every stage of our work. The task of teaching is so complex that, unless we strive earnestly and persistently to reduce it to the simplest possible terms, we are bound to work blindly and ineffectively.

It is only one phase of this topic that I wish to discuss with you this morning. My plea for the definite in education will be limited not only to the field of educational aims and values, but to a small corner of that field. Your morning's program has dealt with the problem of teaching history in the elementary school. I should like, if you are willing, to confine my remarks to this topic, and to attack the specific question, What is the history that we teach in the grades to do for the pupil? I wish to make this limitation, not only because what I have to say will be related to the other topics on the program, but also because this very subject of history is one which the lack of a definite standard of educational value has been keenly felt.

I should admit at the outset that my interest in history is purely educational. I have had no special training in historical research. As you may perhaps infer from my discussion, my acquaintance with historical facts is very far from comprehensive. I speak as a layman in history,—and I do it openly and, perhaps, a little defiantly, for I believe that the last person to pass adequate judgment upon the general educational value of a given department of knowledge is a man who has made the department a life study. I have little faith in what the mathematician has to say regarding the educational value of mathematics for the average elementary pupil, because he is a special pleader and his conclusions cannot escape the coloring of his prejudice. I once knew an enthusiastic brain specialist who maintained that, in every grade of the elementary school, instruction should be required in the anatomy of the human brain. That man was an expert in his own line. He knew more about the structure of the brain than any other living man. But knowing more about brain morphology also implied that he knew less about many other things, and among the things that he knew little about were the needs and capacities of children in the elementary school. He was a special pleader; he had been dealing with his special subject so long that it had assumed a disproportionate value in his eyes. Brain morphology had given him fame, honor, and worldly emoluments. Naturally he would have an exaggerated notion of its value.

It is the same with any other specialist. As specialists in education, you and I are likely to overemphasize the importance of the common school in the scheme of creation. Personally I am convinced that the work of elementary education is the most profoundly significant work in the world; and yet I can realize that I should be no fit person to make comparisons if the welfare of a number of other professions and callings were at stake. I should let an unbiased judge make the final determination.

II

The first question for which we should seek an answer in connection with the value of any school subject is this: How does it influence conduct? Let me insist at the outset that we cannot be definite by saying simply that we teach history in order to impart instruction. If there is one thing upon which we are all agreed to-day it is this: that it is what our pupils do that counts, not what they know. The knowledge that they may possess has value only in so far as it may directly or indirectly be turned over into action.

Let us not be mistaken upon this point. Knowledge is of the utmost importance, but it is important only as a means to an end—and the end is conduct. If my pupils act in no way more efficiently after they have received my instruction than they would have acted had they never come under my influence, then my work as a teacher is a failure. If their conduct is less efficient, then my work is not only a failure,—it is a catastrophe. The knowledge that I impart may be absolutely true; the interest that I arouse may be intense; the affection that my pupils have for me may be genuine; but all these are but means to an end, and if the end is not attained, the means have been futile.

We have faith that the materials which we pour in at the hopper of sense impression will come out sooner or later at the spout of reaction, transformed by some mysterious process into efficient conduct. While the machinery of the process, like the mills of the gods, certainly grinds slowly, it is some consolation to believe that, at any rate, it does grind; and we are perhaps fain to believe that the exceeding fineness of the grist is responsible for our failure to detect at the spout all of the elements that we have been so careful to pour in at the hopper. What I should like to do is to examine this grinding process rather carefully,—to gain, if possible, some definite notion of the kind of grist we should like to produce, and then to see how the machinery may be made to produce this grist, and in what proportions we must mix the material that we pour into the hopper in order to gain the desired result.

I have said that we must ask of every subject that we teach, How does it influence conduct? Now when we ask this question concerning history a variety of answers are at once proposed. One group of people will assert that the facts of history have value because they can be directly applied to the needs of contemporary life. History, they will tell us, records the experiences of the race, and if we are to act intelligently we must act upon the basis of this experience. History informs us of the mistakes that former generations have made in adjusting themselves to the world. If we know history, we can avoid these mistakes. This type of reasoning may be said to ascribe a utilitarian value to the study of history. It assumes that historical knowledge is directly and immediately applicable to vital problems of the present day.