Craftsmanship in Teaching

by William C. Bagley

Noon dismissal was due when I went into the corridor. Lines are forbidden in that school. At the stroke of the bell, the classroom doors burst open and bedlam was let loose. I had anticipated what was coming, and hurriedly betook myself to an alcove. I saw more spontaneity in two minutes than I had ever seen before in my life. Some boys tore through the corridors at breakneck speed and down the stairways, three steps at a time. Others sauntered along, realizing various propensities by pushing and shoving each other, snatching caps out of others' hands, slapping each other over the head with books, and various other expressions of exuberant spirits. One group stopped in front of my alcove, and showed commendable curiosity about the visitor in their midst. After exhausting his static possibilities, they tempted him to dynamic reaction by making faces; but this proving to be of no avail, they went on their way,—in the hope, doubtless, of realizing themselves elsewhere.

I left that school with a fairly firm conviction that I had seen the most advanced notions of educational theory worked out to a logical conclusion. There was nothing halfway about it. There was no apology offered for anything that happened. It was all fair and square and open and aboveboard. To be sure, the pupils were, to my prejudiced mind, in a condition approaching anarchy, but I could not deny the spontaneity, nor could I deny self-activity, nor could I deny self-realization. These principles were evidently operating without let or hindrance.

Before leaving the school, I took occasion to inquire concerning the effect of such a system upon the teachers. I led up to it by asking the principal if there were any nervous or anæmic children in his school. "Not one," he replied enthusiastically; "our system eliminates them." "But how about the teachers?" I ventured to remark, having in mind the image of a distracted young woman whom I had seen attempting to reduce forty little ruffians to some semblance of law and order through moral suasion. If I judged conditions correctly, that woman was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. My guide became confidential when I made this inquiry. "To tell the truth," he whispered, "the system is mighty hard on the women."

A few years ago I had the privilege of visiting a high school which was operated upon this same principle. I visited in that school some classes that were taught by men and women, whom I should number among the most expert teachers that I have ever seen. The instruction that these men and women were giving was as clear and lucid as one could desire. And yet, in spite of that excellent instruction, pupils read newspapers, prepared other lessons, or read books during the recitations, and did all this openly and unreproved. They responded to their instructors with shameless insolence. Young ladies of sixteen and seventeen coming from cultured homes were permitted in this school to pull each other's hair, pinch the arms of schoolmates who were reciting, and behave themselves in general as if they were savages. The pupils lolled in their seats, passed notes, kept up an undertone of conversation, arose from their seats at the first tap of the bell, and piled in disorder out of the classroom while the instructor was still talking. If the lessons had been tedious, one might perhaps at least have palliated such conduct, but the instruction was very far from tedious. It was bright, lively, animated, beautifully clear, and admirably illustrated. It is simply the theory of this school never to interfere with the spontaneous activity of the pupils. And I may add that the school draws its enrollment very largely from wealthy families who believe that their children are being given the best that modern education has developed, that they are not being subjected to the deadening methods of the average public school, and above all that their manners are not being corrupted by promiscuous mingling with the offspring of illiterate immigrants. And yet soon afterward, I visited a high school in one of the poorest slum districts of a large city. I saw pupils well-behaved, courteous to one another, to their instructors, and to visitors. The instruction was much below that given in the first school in point of quality, and yet the pupils were getting from it, even under these conditions, vastly more than were the pupils of the other school from their masterly instructors.

The two schools that I first described represent one type of the attempt that education has made to pioneer a new path through the wilderness. I have said that many of these attempts have ended by bringing the adventurers back to their starting point. I cannot say so much for these schools. The movement that they represent is still floundering about in the tamarack swamps, getting farther and farther into the morass, with little hope of ever emerging.

May I tax your patience with one more concrete illustration: this time, of a school that seems to me to have reached the starting point, but on that new and higher plane of which I have spoken?

This school is in a small Massachusetts town, and is the model department of the state normal school located at that place. The first point that impressed me was typified by a boy of about twelve who was passing through the corridor as I entered the building. Instead of slouching along, wasting every possible moment before he should return to his room, he was walking briskly as if eager to get back to his work. Instead of staring at the stranger within his gates with the impudent curiosity so often noticed in children of this age, he greeted me pleasantly and wished to know if I were looking for the principal. When I told him that I was, he informed me that the principal was on the upper floor, but that he would go for him at once. He did, and returned a moment later saying that the head of the school would be down directly, and asked me to wait in the office, into which he ushered me with all the courtesy of a private secretary. Then he excused himself and went directly to his room.

Now that might have been an exceptional case, but I found out later that is was not. Wherever I went in that school, the pupils were polite and courteous and respectful. That was part of their education. It should be part of every child's education. But many schools are too busy teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic, and others are too busy preserving discipline, and others are too busy coquetting for the good will of their pupils and trying to amuse them—too busy to give heed to a set of habits that are of paramount importance in the life of civilized society. This school took up the matter of training in good manners as an essential part of its duty, and it accomplished this task quickly and effectively. It did it by utilizing the opportunities presented in the usual course of school work. It took a little time and a little attention, for good manners cannot be acquired incidentally any more than the multiplication tables can be acquired incidentally; but it utilized the everyday opportunities of the schoolroom, and did not make morals and manners the subject of instruction for a half-hour on Friday afternoons to be completely forgotten during the rest of the week.

When the principal took me through the school, I noted everywhere a happy and courteous relation between pupils and teachers. They spoke pleasantly to one another. I heard no nagging or scolding. I saw no one sulking or pouting or in bad temper. And yet there was every evidence of respect and obedience on the part of the pupils. There was none of that happy-go-lucky comradeship which I have sometimes seen in other modern schools, and which leads the pupil to understand that his teacher is there to gain his interest, not to command his respectful attention. Pupils were too busy with their work to talk much with one another. They were sitting up in their seats as a matter of habit, and it did not seem to hurt them seriously to do so. And everywhere they were working like beavers at one task or another, or attending with all their eyes and ears to a recitation.

Now it seemed to me that this school was operated with a minimum of waste or loss. Every item of energy that the pupils possessed was being given to some educative activity. Nothing was lost by conflict between pupil and teacher. Nothing was lost by bursts of anger or by fits of depression. These sources of waste had been eliminated so far as I could determine. The pupils could read well and write well and cipher accurately. They even took a keen delight in the drills. And I found that this phase of their work was enlightened by the modern content that had been introduced. In their handwork and manual training they could see that arithmetic was useful,—that it had something to do with the great big buzzing life of the outer world. They learned that spelling was useful in writing,—that it was not something that began and ended within the covers of the spelling book, but that it had a real and vital relation to other things that they found to be important. They had their dramatic exercises in which they and their fellows, and, on occasions, their parents, took a keen delight, and they were glad to afford them pleasure and to receive congratulations at the close. And yet they found that, in order to do these things well, they must read and study and drill on speaking. They liked to have their drawings inspected and praised at the school exhibitions, but they soon found that good drawing and painting and designing were strictly conditioned by a mastery of technique, and they wished to master technique in order to win these rewards.