minds as good or evil, without observing what state it is, what mental
coloring, what inner live process, that makes them good or evil,” is the
habit of the unprofessional mind; and, as Professor Royce goes on to
say, “this habit is so ingrained in most of us that it is always hard
to learn to substitute diagnosis for mere estimation, and a loving study
of the process for mere external liking or disliking of the person.” A
teacher might be defined as one to whom everything that children do or
say has become a sign. She thereby loses much careless amusement which
other people find in their sayings and doings, and she shrinks, with a
protest which she has often no right to express, from many an account
of the subjects which are being taught to them, or the ways in which
they have responded to some way of managing. She stands in the realm of
realities, not in that of phenomena, and gains thereby much more pain
than pleasure; for, like a surgeon continually surrounded by children
with badly set or deformed limbs, she at present must live in the company
of minds that have, as a rule, been under the treatment of ignorant and
unthinking practitioners. Human vivisection is by no means rare in many
an American home, where most of the time is spent in exploiting growing
children for the amusement or interest of the parents or visitors. The
child is interesting to its parents, and many a question is asked of it
“just to see what it will say.” Thus many a subject is suggested before
the mind is in the proper state for its reception, growth according to
the divine plan is thwarted, reflection confused, and what should have
been a pleasure to the child becomes a pain.
Too much stress cannot be laid upon the necessity of harmony between
the state of growth of the girl’s mind and the nature of the study in
which she is engaged. Professor James calls attention to the fact that
every instinct has its own time of ripening. When the speech instinct
has ripened, and not before, the child begins to talk. Earlier, when the
walking instinct has come to maturity and needed expression, he begins
to try to walk. When the flying instinct is ripe, the little birds quit
the nest. It makes all the difference in the world whether the girl takes
up a subject at the time when her mind is in the proper state for it,
and those mothers who will not allow her to learn to read till she is
seven years old are wrong. The mind has by that time passed the stage at
which it can do without disgust the work necessary to learn the perfectly
arbitrary signs that express language, and passively protests against
the unsuitable labor. Equally wrong are those teachers who fancy that
because two girls of widely different ages know about the same amount
of French, they may be put into the same French class. The method of
teaching must differ entirely with them, even though they should have the
same lesson to learn from the same text-book. This fact is one reason why
it is desirable to have the school so arranged that one teacher shall
not be confined to one class, but shall have opportunity to act on minds
of different ages. This tends to make better teachers through the varied
interest which it promotes, and the wider outlook which it presents over
the mind at different stages of growth, and we cannot have a good school
without good teachers, no matter how many pupils we have. We must in
some way keep our teachers fresh, or we lose the whole game. A London
astronomer[4] remarks, in the preface to his recent book, “Virtually, the
observer himself constitutes the most important part of the telescope;
it is useless having a glass of great capacity at one end of a tube and
a man of small capacity at the other.” In teaching, the teacher is the
observer; the school, if properly organized, is the tube; the subjects
taught, the glass; and the girl, the heavenly body to be learned about.
The analogy is as perfect as any analogy can be between matter and spirit.
The true teacher does not need to be told of the vivid pleasure which
shows itself on the girl’s face when a perception of relations between
hitherto disconnected facts strikes across the mind, and when what
has been so far troublesome and annoying chaos, at the right question
suddenly slides into order and conformity to law. She does not need to
be told, because that is the reward she is looking for, and if she have
the power of the teacher, she can never fail of it. Professor James,
in his _Psychology_, recognizes the great pleasure generated by a real
conviction by characterizing conviction as a lofty emotion. To be able
to create this lofty pleasure, and to repeat the process till the child
herself seeks for it, is to be a teacher. But the teacher’s function is
a higher one than that of simply creating pleasure, however high and
however vivid; for to accomplish anything she must hold the attention of
the pupil, and teach her how to bring back wandering attention; and “the
faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention over and over
again is the very root of judgment, character, and will.”
It is just here that the school, as a factor in the little girl’s
education, differentiates itself from the home, which should have
prepared her for its training. Those schools which advertise themselves
as like homes simply proclaim that they do not know what the function
of either is. In the home the child is a part of a whole, held together
by natural relation and affection; in the school the wholeness is
constituted by human law acting on individuals who are in a great degree
independent. In the home, tenderness and pity come in and often save the
offender from the result of her action; in the school they can never do
so. It is in the school first that she feels herself a responsible member
of a community, where each one has the same rights as herself, and where
the other members do not belong to her. She may defend the members of her
own family, even though they do wrong, because they are hers, but in the
school she first learns to judge action in and for itself as right or
wrong, expedient or inexpedient, and this not alone for her, but for the
community of which she finds herself a component part. Then, too, the
affairs of the home cannot be carried on with that regard for absolute
punctuality which marks the business of any well-conducted school; to try
to do so would destroy the comfort of the home, for its members would
feel all the time as if about to start on a railroad journey, and that
would certainly not be feeling at home. The school is an institution,
in its every minutest detail arranged for the conscious direction of
children, while the home must largely include in its purposes the comfort
and rest of the adult members. The true home brings up the child as a
member of a family, a natural relation, instructing her in the ways of
civilized society, teaching her obedience and respect for her elders,
reverence for authority, human and divine; the school receives her after
this has been done, corrects her opinion of herself and her own people by
putting her into relation with the members of other families, makes of
her a responsible member of a community, holds her strictly to regularity
and punctuality, gradually leads her to the thought of real individual
responsibility by making her bear with strict impartiality the legitimate
results of all her actions, makes a steady demand upon her voluntary
attention for periods of time suited to her age, gives her rest at proper
times, but demands of her always that work shall he work, and play,
play. Here she learns the difference between personal and impersonal
authority, for the teacher during school hours, she cannot help dimly
feeling, is not quite the same person that she is when she meets her
elsewhere, while her mother is always her mother. Then, intellectually,
she is stimulated by the company of others of her own age who are doing
the same things that she is doing, and measuring herself by them, she
gets her estimate of herself healthily corrected. Every day she comes
into contact with older girls, the members of higher classes though under
the same discipline, who seem to her very wise, and, if the school be a
successful one, very good. This opens to her glimpses of fields lying far
beyond her own outlook, to the full sight of which she hopes by patient
continuance in well-doing to attain. As she goes on, she finds other
children in classes below her, who seem to her very small, and who are
puzzling over difficulties which she has surmounted, and who, if, as I
have said before, the school be a successful one, find more difficulty
in self-control than she. Thus, in the daily and intertwined life of the
whole school, she is living over again her past, and taking glimpses of
the promised land of her own future, and all this, of incalculable value
to her, could not be attained in her own home.
The managing a school so that it may be in this way a unit, an organic
unit—the interweaving of all its parts by the teacher who holds it all
in her consciousness—is one of the most important things which she has
to do. In comparison with this, the selection of text-books is a very
minor matter. One thing, however, is essential, and that is, that in
this her assistants shall work intelligently with her. They must be of
original character and have their own ways, for otherwise they would
not be teachers at all, but they must be plastic enough to be moulded
into some degree of conformity with the thought of the head teacher, and
they must have the capacity for growth which will bring them finally to
seize the principles underlying the whole fabric, after which they may
safely be left entirely to their own devices, for then they will work in
harmony with the school. Nothing is sadder than a school where no two
roads meet, where the girls go from one teacher, with a certain set of
requirements, to another who makes entirely different demands, till all
rules take on the appearance of arbitrariness and caprice, and nothing
has any fixed value. No lesson could be worse than this for a girl, who
is by nature—or shall I say by all her education—inclined to look upon
law without any comprehension of its tremendous significance, and to
regard her own whims and fancies as of equal value with law, because she
is accustomed to see them so often yielded to through the fondness of
her own people. Especially therefore in girls’ schools should this unity
be insisted on, for girls stand in need of it much more than boys. The
latter are sure to get levelling enough when they come into contact with
the outside world, but the girl remains a sort of queen in her father’s
house till she becomes queen in that of her husband, and she is, as a
rule, sheltered from the rude contact with the demands of business and
of civil law, which is the only thing to make any one realize their
reality. We never can know that a thing is hard and pitiless in its
unyielding till we strike against it. Almost as bad is the school that
puts the little girl in a class-room and keeps her for a whole year
under the exclusive influence of one teacher. The child needs to come
under differing influences, the more the better, if the underlying
controlling principle be the same. The school must be composed of classes
in sufficient number to cover the whole school life of the girl, and
none of these classes should be too small; for the class must be used
as a means of influence on each individual in it, both intellectually
and morally. The differences of opinion among its different members, the
different experiences of the little girls, the various points of view
assumed as a result of these latter, and, above all, the errors that are
made, afford to the skilful teacher the very best material with which
to influence the young mind. Then these add to the zest with which she
carries on the work, and therefore to her power. To teach a class is as
much more inspiring than to teach a single pupil as to play first violin
in an orchestra is more inspiring than to perform on the jew’s-harp. To
manage a great school of the kind that I have hinted at is to conduct the
orchestra.
Herbart says, “Instruction must be carried out, first, with energy, in
order that interest may be awakened; second, with breadth, in order
that interest may be many-sided; and, lastly, with unity of purpose,
in order that intelligence may not be distracted.” For all of these
purposes the influence of the class on the individual mind may be said
to be imperatively necessary. It is required of the teacher, and not
unreasonably, since she must be an artist, that she shall continually
do the impossible—that is, that while she gives her whole attention to
the one child who is reciting, she shall at the same moment be fully
conscious not only of the presence, but also of the state of mind, of
every other child in the class. She must always work _on the class_, not
on the individual member, and must hold with a strong hand the whole of
it, not only as to order, but also as to intellectual activity, under the
power of her dominating authority. Authority is a stumbling-block to the
American, and perhaps to all those who live in our time, but all the more
is it needed. It is quite impossible to teach, in any sense of the term,
a mind which refuses to be dominated to a certain degree by the teacher;
and here comes again the impossible into the teacher’s experience, for
while she dominates, she must also leave free. That the impossible is
done, however, can never be doubted by any one who has watched the work
of a recitation in skilful hands, and has had enough insight to feel the
delicate reciprocal play which goes on all through it between teacher and
class. Indeed there must always be “a function of authority which exceeds
any given stage of the disciple’s experience.” So the teacher must always
be in two places at once—her own mental place and that of her little
pupil; this demands the greatest sensitiveness of nature on her part,
and it is for this reason, perhaps, that a woman, other things being
equal—and often where they are not perfectly equal—may be a far better
teacher than a man.
While emphasizing the absolute need of unity in the school, we must not
forget the equal need of a great degree of fluidity or plasticity. For
we are dealing with human minds, and not with material whose laws are
definitely known, and, as has been said before, with material of which
no two samples are alike, and all sorts of adjustments are continually
to be made. Especially is this the case in a private school for girls,
where the pupils come to us from all sorts of teaching and worse than
no teaching, and do not all enter classes at the same time. Here again
the impossible demands to be done, for neither unity nor plasticity
must be sacrificed; the two must be harmonized; and as the conditions
are continually changing, so a constant adjustment becomes necessary.
All parts must continually work together for one common end. It is of
no more significance to the teacher of a school like this that a thing
is impossible than it was to Beethoven that the human voice was not
capable of singing the chorus in his Ninth Symphony. He had nothing to
do with the capacity of the human voice; the music demanded that the
chorus should be written so, and so accordingly he wrote it. A changeless
school programme cannot be arranged for an entire year, nor indeed for
any considerable part of a year. Continual changes become necessary, but
these must be made with the least possible effect upon the pupils, and
the least possible disturbance of the regular routine of the school. Such
things can be done, and successfully done, but only when all the teachers
in the school are always in touch, all working with a strong pull in the
same line, and this because they are all under control of a competent
head.
In a school thus managed, disorder becomes impossible, and the problem of
government an insignificant factor. For, in the first place, there is no
time for the wandering of attention, which gives room for disorder; and,
in the second place, the whole spirit of the united school is against
it. Governing does not consist in allowing disorder to happen, and then
punishing it. It consists in seeing every smallest wandering of attention
at its very beginning, and so preventing disorder. To do this the teacher
must be conscious of every pupil at every second. Nothing is easier than
this when one can do it. The experienced teacher seems to have acquired
a kind of sixth sense, by which she knows at once when she has lost
the attention of any one of twenty pupils whose minds should be on the
same subject. She feels that in that particular part of the room the
electric current is not running; that is all there is of it. To a certain
degree, every one who addresses an audience has this consciousness,
feels the connection between himself and his hearers as a mass, and is
inspired or deadened by its condition; but the teacher must feel it with
every individual mind of the class, and there is no more vital contact
than that of teacher and pupil. Especially is the matter of order and
government important in girls’ schools, where the popular mind thinks it
to be of small consequence. But in this matter, as well as in that of
learning, while the mind of the guide must retain continually a strong
dominating influence, the governing force must come from the little girl
herself, and hence to arouse and cultivate the power of self-control must
be the first aim in every regulation of the whole school. It is not so
much knowledge as power that the growing girl and the mature woman need,
and that is what the school must, above all, give her, or fail lamentably
of its mission. There can be no greater reward for a teacher than to
have one of her girls, grown to womanhood, come to her and say: “I have
been through such or such a hard experience, and I know that if it had
not been for the self-control which I learned in this school, I should
have failed; but I thought of the school and of you, and I went through
it. I had to come and tell you so.” The school to which such testimony
can be brought is a success, and has no need of long rows of percentages
of ninety-nine against the names of its graduates in competitive
examinations. But such testimony can be won only through the eternal
vigilance of its principal in every smallest detail of its management.
The unthinking will call her a martinet, and the mothers who are tender
of their children will think her severe. But the tenderness which seeks
to arm the woman for the battle of life, and to give her adequate views
of her responsibility, is perhaps not unworthy of its name, and
“need not fear the spight
Of grudging foes, ne favor ask of friends,
But in the strength of its own constant might,
Neither to one itself nor other bends.”
As to bad schools—schools that in stretching after the mint and anise
and cumin lose all that might have given success—they are many. It seems
sometimes that there is no profession in which there is so much humbug as
in that of education; and the utter inability of the parent to determine
what kind of a school it is into which he decides to put his little girl
has, to those who stand behind the scenes, very much of the pitiful.
When, however, we think of one or two other professions, we doubt, and
are silent. One is reminded of the nurse-maid who never stood in need of
a thermometer for the water for the baby’s bath, because if the baby
came out red, she knew it had been too hot, and if it came out blue, she
knew it had been too cold. Too many a father finds, when it is too late,
that he made a mistake in the school to which he trusted the training
of his little girl. But how could he have known before? There was much
shrewdness in the employer who, quite unmindful of the applicant’s having
afterwards been graduated from Yale, engaged him at once as soon as he
knew that he had been expelled from a certain university. For a girl
to have been at some schools for any length of time is a certificate
of frivolity, lack of consistent purpose and thoroughness, and, what
is of far more consequence, of any real reverence for truth or her own
womanhood.
Dr. Fitch says, “Human beings, whether male or female, come into the
world not only ‘to get a living,’ but to live; and the life they live
depends largely on what they know and care about, upon the breadth of
their intellectual sympathy, upon their love of truth, upon their power
of influencing and inspiring other minds;” and “even if the knowledge
or power may seem to have no bearing at all upon the special business
or definite duties of a woman, yet if it be felt by its possessor
to make life more full, more varied, and more interesting and better
worth living, no other justification is needed for placing the largest
opportunities within her reach.” Two points in these words deserve
special notice—the first, that it is the satisfaction of the woman
herself in the knowledge acquired, and not the opinion of the outside
world, which should decide what she should study; and the second, the
stress which Dr. Fitch lays upon the desirability of rendering her life
more varied than it has been in the past. For these have a bearing
on the arrangement of the school studies for the little girl, though
they are often entirely left out of account by those who are ready to
tell the teacher what should be done in school. While it is true that
knowledge should be varied—a little in many directions is far better,
perhaps, than a great deal in only one—it still must be insisted on that
the main object of the school is not to convey information, but, if
the term may be used without offence, to make the girl “level-headed,”
so that she shall have possession of herself, and be able to meet any
demands, no matter how unexpected, which may front her in the years to
come. Professor James says, and truly, “To give power to suspend belief
in presence of an emotionally exciting idea is the highest result of
education.” But Professor William G. Hale had said this before him, and
not only theoretically, but practically, in every Freshman recitation in
his class-room at Cornell University, for the power to suspend belief
is the very essence of all the teaching to translate. There could be
no more apt illustration of the way in which character is affected for
better or worse by intellectual teaching—which at first sight would seem
to have no connection with morals—than the way in which those students
are taught to suspend their judgment over an ablative or genitive till
the rest of the sentence has shown which ablative or genitive it really
is. No woman who has been taught after this model will be very likely in
difficult circumstances to make up her mind as to a course of action till
she has carefully taken note of all the elements which should go to form
a decision. And if this were the characteristic of American women, how it
would transform American homes!