culture which has been accumulating through the ages. In the slow
process of human experience, running through countless generations, men
have made their discoveries in the fields of mathematics and science;
they have lived great events and achievements which have become history;
they have developed the social institutions which we call the State, the
church, the home, and the school; they have organized great industries
and carried on complex vocations; they have crystallized their ideals,
their hopes, and their aspirations in literature; and have with brush
and chisel expressed in art their concepts of truth and beauty. The best
of all this human experience we have collected in what we call a
curriculum, and placed it before the child for him to master, as the
generations before him have mastered it in their common lives. For only
in this way can the child come into full possession of his powers, and
set them at work in a fruitful way in accomplishing his own
life-purpose.
It is the function of the teacher, therefore, to stand as an
intermediary, as an interpreter, between the child and this great mass
of subject-matter that lies ready for him to learn. The race has lived
its thousands or millions of years; the individual lives but a few
score. What former generations took centuries to work out the child can
spend only a few months or a few years upon. Hence he must waste no time
and opportunity; he must make no false step in his learning, for he
cannot in his short life retrieve his mistakes. It is the work of the
teacher, through instruction and guidance, that is, through teaching, to
save the child time in his learning and development, and to make sure
that he does not lose his opportunity. And this is a great
responsibility.
Thus the teacher confronts a problem that has two great factors, the
_child_ and the _subject-matter_. He must have a knowledge of both these
factors if his work is to be effective; for he cannot teach matter that
he does not know, and neither can he teach a person whose nature he does
not understand. But in addition to a knowledge of these factors, the
teacher must also master a technique of instruction, he must train
himself in the art of teaching.
_The teacher must know the child._ It has been a rather common
impression that if one knows a certain field of subject-matter, he will
surely be able to teach it to others. But nothing could be further from
the truth than such an assumption. Indeed, it is proverbial that the
great specialists are the most wretched teachers of their subjects. The
nature of the child's mental powers, the order of their unfoldment, the
evolution of his interests, the incentives that appeal to him, the
danger points in both his intellectual and his moral development,--these
and many other things about child nature the intelligent teacher must
clearly understand.
And the teacher of the younger children needs this knowledge even more
than the teacher of older ones. For the earlier years of the child's
schooling are the most important years. It is at this time that he lays
the foundation for all later learning, that he forms his habits of study
and his attitude toward education, and that his life is given the bent
for all its later development. Nothing can be more irrational,
therefore, than to put the most untrained and inexperienced teachers in
charge of the younger children. The fallacious notion that "anyone can
teach little children" has borne tragic fruit in the stagnation and
mediocrity of many lives whose powers were capable of great
achievements.
_The teacher must know the subject-matter._ The blind cannot
successfully lead the blind. One whose grasp of a subject extends only
to the simplest rudiments cannot teach these rudiments. He who has never
himself explored a field can hardly guide others through that field; at
least, progress through the field will be at the cost of great waste of
time and failure to grasp the significance or beauty of what the field
contains.
Expressed more concretely, it is impossible to transplant arithmetic, or
geography, or history, or anything else that one would teach,
immediately from the textbook into the mind of the child. The subject
must first come to be very fully and completely a true possession of the
teacher. The successful teacher must also know vastly more of a subject
than he is required to teach. For only then has he freedom; only then
has he outlook and perspective; only then can he teach the _subject_,
and not some particular textbook; only then can he inspire others to
effort and achievement through his own mastery and interest. Enthusiasm
is _caught_ and not taught.
_The teacher must know the technique of instruction._ For teaching is an
art, based upon scientific principles and requiring practice to secure
skill. One of the greatest tasks of the teacher is to _psychologize_ the
subject-matter for his pupils,--that is, so to select, organize, and
present it that the child's mind naturally and easily grasps and
appropriates it. Teaching, when it has become an art, which is to say,
when the teacher has become an artist, is one of the most highly skilled
vocations. It is as much more difficult than medicine as the human mind
is more baffling than the human body; it is as much more difficult than
preaching as the child is harder to comprehend and guide than the adult;
it is as much more difficult than the law as life is more complex than
logic.
Yet, while we require the highest type of preparation for medicine, the
ministry, or the law, we require but little for teaching. We pay
enormous salaries to trained experts to apply the principles of
scientific management to our industries or our business, but we have
been satisfied with inexpert service for the teaching of our children.
We are making fortunes out of the stoppage of waste in our factories,
but allowing enormous waste to continue in our schools. _If we were to
put into practice in teaching the thoroughly demonstrated and accepted
scientific principles of education as we know them, we could beyond
doubt double the educational results attained by our children._
_Teaching in the rural school_
The criticisms just made on our standards of teaching will apply in some
degree to all our schools from the kindergarten to the university; but
they apply more strongly to the rural schools than to any other class.
For the rural schools are the training-ground for young, inexperienced,
and relatively unprepared teachers. Except for the comparatively small
proportion of the town or city teachers who are normal school or college
trained, nearly all have served an apprenticeship in the rural schools.
Thus the rural school, besides its other handicaps, is called upon to
train teachers for the more favored urban schools.
Careful statistical studies[5] have shown that many rural teachers, both
men and women, have had no training beyond that of the elementary
school. And not infrequently this training has taken place in the rural
school of the type in which they themselves take up teaching. The
average schooling of the men teaching in the rural schools of the entire
country is less than two years above the elementary school, and of
women, slightly more than two years. This is to say that our rural
schools are taught by those who have had only about half of a high
school course.
It is evident, therefore, that the rural teacher cannot meet the
requirement urged above in the way of preparation. He does not know his
subject-matter. Not only has he not gone far enough in his education to
have a substantial foundation, breadth of view, and mental perspective,
but he frequently lacks in the simplest rudiments of the immediate
subject-matter which he is supposed to teach. The examination papers
written by applicants for certificates to begin rural school teaching
often betray a woful ignorance of the most fundamental knowledge.
Inability to spell, punctuate, or effectively use the English language
is common. The most elementary scientific truths are frequently unknown.
A connected view of our nation's history and knowledge of current events
are not always possessed. The great world of literature is too often a
closed book. And not seldom the simple relations of arithmetical number
are beyond the grasp of the applicant. In short, our rural schools, as
they average, require no adequate preparation of the teacher, and do not
represent as much education in their teaching force as that needed by
the intelligent farmer, merchant, or tradesman.
The rural teacher does not know the child. But little more than children
themselves, and with little chance for observation or for experience in
life, it would be strange if they did. They have had no opportunity for
professional study, and psychology and the science of education are
unknown to them. The attempts made to remedy this fatal weakness by the
desultory reading of a volume or two in a voluntary reading-circle
course do not serve the purpose. The teacher needs a thorough course of
instruction in general and applied psychology, under the tutelage of an
enthusiastic expert who not only knows his subject, but also understands
the problems of the teacher.
The rural teacher does not know the technique of the schoolroom. The
organizing of a school, the proper classification of pupils, the
assignment of studies, the arrangement of a program of studies and
recitation, the applications of suitable regulations and rules for the
running of the school, are all matters requiring expert knowledge and
skill. Yet the rural teacher has to undertake them without instruction
in their principles and without supervisory guidance or help. No wonder
that the rural school is poorly organized and managed. It presents
problems of administration more puzzling than the town school, and yet
here is where we put out our novices, boys and girls not yet out of
their "teens"--young people who themselves have no concept of the
problems of the school, no knowledge of its complex machinery, and no
experience to serve as a guide in confronting their work. No industrial
enterprise could exist under such irrational conditions; and neither
could the schools, except that mental waste and bankruptcy are harder to
measure than economic.
Nor does the rural teacher know the technique of instruction any better
than that of organization and management. The skillful conducting of a
recitation is at least as severe a test upon mental resourcefulness and
skill as making a speech, preaching a sermon, or conducting a lawsuit.
For not only must the subject-matter be organized for immature minds
unused to the formal processes of learning, but the effects of
instruction upon the child's mind must constantly be watched by the
teacher and interpreted with reference to further instruction. This
skill cannot be attained empirically, by the cut-and-dried method,
except at a frightful cost to the children. It is as if we were to turn
a set of intelligent but untrained men loose in the community with their
scalpels and their medicine cases to learn to be surgeons and doctors
by experimenting upon their fellows.
As would naturally be expected, therefore, the teaching in the average
rural school is a dreary round of inefficiency. Handicapped to begin
with by classes too small to be interesting, the rural teacher is
mechanically hearing the recitations of some twenty-five to thirty of
these classes per day. Lacking at the beginning the breadth of education
that would make teaching easy, he finds it impossible to prepare for so
many different exercises daily. The result is that the recitations are
dull, spiritless, uninteresting. The lessons are poorly prepared by the
pupils, poorly recited, and hence very imperfectly mastered. The more
advanced work cannot stand on such a foundation of sand, and so,
discouraged, the child soon drops out of school.
When it is also remembered that the tenure of service of the teacher is
very short in the rural schools, the problem becomes all the more grave.
The average term of service in the rural schools is probably not above
two years, and in many States considerably below this amount. This
requires that half of the rural teachers each year shall be beginners.
It will be impossible, of course, as long as teaching is done so largely
by girls, who naturally will, and should, soon quit teaching for
marriage, to secure a long period of service in the vocation. Yet the
rural school is, as we have seen, also constantly losing its trained
teachers to the town and city, and hence breaking in more than its share
of novices.
Added to the disadvantage inevitably coming from the brief period of
service in teaching is a similar one growing out of a faulty method of
administration. In a large majority of our rural schools the contract is
made for but one term of not more than three months. This leaves the
teacher free to accept another school at the end of the term, and not
infrequently a school will have two or even three different teachers
within the same year. There is a great source of waste at this point,
owing to a change of methods, repetition of work, and the necessity of
starting a new system of school machinery. Industrial concerns would
hardly find it profitable to change superintendents and foremen several
times a year. We do this in our schools only because we have not yet
learned that it pays to apply rational business methods to education.
Nothing that has been said in criticism of rural teaching ought to be
construed as a reflection on the rural teachers personally. The fact
that they can succeed as well as they do under conditions that are so
adverse is the best warrant for their intelligence and devotion. It is
not their fault that they begin teaching with inadequate knowledge of
subject-matter, with ignorance of the nature of childhood, and without
skill in the technique of the schoolroom. The system, and not the
individual, is at fault. The public demands a pitifully low standard of
efficiency in rural teaching, and the excellence of the product offered
is not likely greatly to surpass what society asks and is ready to pay
for.
Once again we must turn to the consolidated school as the solution of
our difficulty. The isolated district school will not be able to demand
and secure a worthy grade of preparation for teaching. The educational
standards will not rise high enough under this system to create a public
demand for skilled teachers. Nor can such salaries be paid as will
encourage thorough and extensive study and preparation for teaching.
And, finally, the professional incentives are not sufficiently strong in
such schools to create a true craft spirit toward teaching.
While it is impossible to measure the improved results in teaching
coming from the consolidated school in the same objective way that we
can measure increased attendance, yet there is no doubt that one of the
strongest arguments for the consolidated school is its more skillful and
inspiring teaching. The increased salaries, the possibility of
professional association with other teachers, the improved equipment,
the better supervision, and above all, the spirit of progress and
enthusiasm in the school itself, all serve to transform teaching from a
treadmill routine into a joyful opportunity for inspiration and service.
_The training of rural teachers_
The training of the rural teacher has never been given the same
consideration as that of town or city teachers. It is true that normal
schools are available to all alike, and that in a few States the rural
schools secure a considerable number of teachers who have had some
normal training. But this is the exception rather than the rule. In the
Middle Western States, for example, where there is a rich agricultural
population, whole counties can be found in which no rural teacher has
ever had any special training for his work. Professional requirements
have been on a par with the meager salaries paid, and other incentives
have not been strong enough to insure adequate preparation.
State normal schools have, therefore, been of comparatively little
assistance in fitting teachers for the rural school. First of all the
rural school teacher ordinarily does not go to the normal school, for it
is not demanded of him. Again, if perchance a prospective rural teacher
should attend a normal school, a town or city grade position is usually
waiting for him when he graduates. For, in spite of the growth of our
normal schools, they are as yet far from being able to supply all the
teachers required for the urban grade positions, to say nothing about
the rural schools. The colleges and universities are, of course, still
further removed from the rural school, since the high schools stand
ready to employ those of their graduates who enter upon teaching.
In some States, as for example, Wisconsin, county normal schools have
been established with the special aim of preparing teachers for the
rural schools. While this movement has helped, it does not promise to
secure wide acceptance as a method of dealing with the problem. Greater
possibilities undoubtedly exist in the comparatively recent movement
toward combining normal training with the regular high school course.
Provision for such courses now exists in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio,
Texas, Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, and a number of other States.
Combining normal training with high school education has first of all
the advantage of bringing such training _to_ prospective teachers,
instead of requiring the teachers to leave home and incur additional
expense in seeking their training. From the standpoint of the public it
has the merit of economy, in that it utilizes buildings, equipment, and
organization already in existence instead of requiring new.
But whatever may be the method employed, the rural teachers should
receive better preparation for their work than they now have. This
means, _first_, that the State must make adequate provision for the
teacher to receive his training at a minimum of expense and trouble; and
_second_, that the standard of requirement must be such that the teacher
will be obliged to secure adequate preparation before being admitted to
the school. Even with the present status of our rural schools it is not
too much to require that every teacher shall have had _at least a
four-year high school education_, and that _a reasonable amount of
normal training_ be had either in conjunction with the high school
course, or subsequent to its completion. Indiana, for example, has found
this requirement entirely feasible, and a great influence in bettering
the tone of the rural school.
Wherever the rural teacher secures his training, however, one condition
must obtain: this preparation must familiarize him with the spirit and
needs of the agricultural community, and imbue him with enthusiasm for
service in this field. It is not infrequently the case that town high
school graduates, themselves never having lived in the country, possess
neither the sympathy nor the understanding necessary to enable them to
offer a high grade of service in the rural school. Not a few of them
feel above the work of such a position, and look with contempt or pity
upon the life of the farm. The successful rural teacher must be able to
identify himself very completely with the interests and activities of
the community; nor can this be done in any half-hearted, sentimental, or
professional manner. It must be a spontaneous and natural response
arising from a true interest in the people, a knowledge of their lives,
and a sincere desire for their welfare. Any preparation that does not
result in this spirit, and train in the ability to realize it in action,
does not fit for the rural school.
_Salaries of rural teachers_
The salaries paid teachers in general in different types of schools are
one measure, though not a perfect one, of their efficiency. Salary is
not a perfect measure of efficiency, (1) because economic ability to pay
is a modifying influence. When the early New England teacher was
receiving ten or twelve dollars a month and "boarding round," he was
probably getting all that the community could afford to pay him,
although he was often a college student, and not infrequently a
well-trained graduate. The salaries paid in the various occupations are
not (2) based upon any definite standards of the value of service. For
example, the _chef_ in a hotel may receive more than the superintendent
of schools, and the football coach more than the college president; yet
we would hardly want to conclude that the services of the cook and the
athlete are worth more to society than the services of educators. And
within the vocation of teaching itself there is (3) no fixed standard
for judging teaching efficiency. Nevertheless, in general, teaching
efficiency is in considerable degree measured by differences in salaries
paid in different localities and in the various levels of school work.
Based on the standard of salary as a measure, the teaching efficiency of
rural teachers is, as we should expect from starting nearly all of our
beginners here, considerably below that in towns or cities. A study by
Coffman[6] of more than five thousand widely distributed teachers as to
age, sex, salary, etc., shows that the average man in the rural school
receives an annual salary of $390; in town schools, of $613; and in city
schools, of $919. The average woman in the rural school receives an
annual salary of $366; in town schools, of $492; and in city schools, of
$591. Men in towns, therefore, receive one and one half times as much as
men in the country, and in cities, two and one half times as much as in
the country. Women in towns receive a little more than one and one third
times as much as women in the country, and in the cities almost one and
two thirds times as much as women in the country.
The actual amount of salary paid rural teachers is perhaps more
instructive than the comparative amounts. The income of the rural
teacher is barely a living wage, and not even that if the teacher has no
parental home, or a gainful occupation during vacation times. Out of an
amount of less than four hundred dollars a year the teacher is expected
to pay for a certificate, a few school journals and professional books,
and attend teachers institutes or conventions, besides supporting
himself as a teacher ought to live. It does not need argument to show
that this meager salary forces a standard of living too low for
efficiency. It would, therefore, be unfair to ask for efficiency with
the present standard of salaries.
Nor is it to be overlooked that efficiency and salaries must mount
upward together. It would be as unjust to ask for higher salaries
without increasing the grade of efficiency as to ask for efficiency on
the present salary basis. It is probable that the eighteen- or
nineteen-year-old boys and girls starting in to teach the rural school,
with but little preparation above the elementary grades, are receiving
all they are worth, at least as compared with what they could earn in
other lines. The great point of difficulty is that they are not worth
enough. The community cannot afford to buy the kind of educational
service they are qualified to offer; it would be a vastly better
investment for the public to buy higher teaching efficiency at larger
salaries.
No statistics are available to show the exact percentage of increase in
rural teachers' salaries during recent years, but this increase has been
considerable; and the tendency is still upward. In this as in other
features of the rural school problem, however, it will be impossible to
meet reasonable demands without forsaking the rural district system for
a more centralized system of consolidated schools. To pay adequate
salaries to the number of teachers now required for the thousands of
small rural schools would be too heavy a drain on our economic
resources. Under the consolidated system a considerably smaller number
of teachers is required, and these can receive higher salaries without
greatly increasing the amount expended for teaching. In this as in other
phases of our educational problems, what is needed is rational business
method, and a willingness to devote a fair proportion of our wealth to
the education of the young.
_Supervision of rural teaching_
Our rural school teaching has never had efficient supervision. The very
nature of rural school organization has rendered expert supervision
impossible, no matter how able the supervising officer might be. With
slight modifications, the office of _county superintendent_ is,
throughout the country, typical of the attempt to provide supervision
for the rural school. While such a system may have afforded all that
could be expected in the pioneer days, its inadequacy to meet
present-day demands is almost too patent to require discussion.