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THE TEACHER
ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES ON EDUCATION
BY GEORGE HERBERT PALMER AND ALICE FREEMAN PALMER
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1908
COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY GEORGE HERBERT PALMER
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
_Published November 1908_
SECOND IMPRESSION
PREFACE
The papers of this volume fall into three groups, two of the three being
written by myself. From my writings on education I have selected only
those which may have some claim to permanent interest, and all but two
have been tested by previous publication. Those of the first group deal
with questions about which we teachers, eager about our immeasurable art
beyond most professional persons, never cease to wonder and debate: What
is teaching? How far may it influence character? Can it be practiced on
persons too busy or too poor to come to our class-rooms? To subjects of
what scope should it be applied? And how shall we content ourselves with
its necessary limitations? Under these diverse headings a kind of
philosophy of education is outlined. The last two papers, having been
given as lectures and stenographically reported, I have left in their
original colloquial form. A group of papers on Harvard follows, preceded
by an explanatory note, and the volume closes with a few papers by Mrs.
Palmer. She and I often talked of preparing together a book on
education. Now, alone, I gather up these fragments.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. PROBLEMS OF SCHOOL AND COLLEGE
I. The Ideal Teacher 3
II. Ethical Instruction in the Schools 31
III. Moral Instruction in the Schools 49
IV. Self-Cultivation in English 72
V. Doubts About University Extension 105
VI. Specialization 123
VII. The Glory of the Imperfect 143
II. HARVARD PAPERS
VIII. The New Education 173
IX. Erroneous Limitations of the Elective System 200
X. Necessary Limitations of the Elective System 239
XI. College Expenses 272
XII. A Teacher of the Olden Time 283
III. PAPERS BY ALICE FREEMAN PALMER
XIII. Three Types of Women's Colleges 313
XIV. Women's Education in the Nineteenth Century 337
XV. Women's Education at the World's Fair 351
XVI. Why Go to College? 364
I
PROBLEMS OF SCHOOL AND COLLEGE
I
THE IDEAL TEACHER
In America, a land of idealism, the profession of teaching has become
one of the greatest of human employments. In 1903-04 half a million
teachers were in charge of sixteen million pupils. Stating the same
facts differently, we may say that a fifth of our entire population is
constantly at school; and that wherever one hundred and sixty men,
women, and children are gathered, a teacher is sure to be among them.
But figures fail to express the importance of the work. If each year an
equal number of persons should come in contact with as many lawyers, no
such social consequences would follow. The touch of the teacher, like
that of no other person, is formative. Our young people are for long
periods associated with those who are expected to fashion them into men
and women of an approved type. A charge so influential is committed to
nobody else in the community, not even to the ministers; for though
these have a more searching aim, they are directly occupied with it but
one day instead of six, but one hour instead of five. Accordingly, as
the tract of knowledge has widened, and the creative opportunities
involved in conducting a young person over it have correspondingly
become apparent, the profession of teaching has risen to a notable
height of dignity and attractiveness. It has moved from a subordinate to
a central place in social influence, and now undertakes much of the work
which formerly fell to the church. Each year divinity schools attract
fewer students, graduate and normal schools more. On school and college
instruction the community now bestows its choicest minds, its highest
hopes, and its largest sums. During the year 1903-04 the United States
spent for teaching not less than $350,000,000.
Such weighty work is ill adapted for amateurs. Those who take it up for
brief times and to make money usually find it unsatisfactory. Success is
rare, the hours are fixed and long, there is repetition and monotony,
and the teacher passes his days among inferiors. Nor are the pecuniary
gains considerable. There are few prizes, and neither in school nor in
college will a teacher's ordinary income carry him much above want.
College teaching is falling more and more into the hands of men of
independent means. The poor can hardly afford to engage in it. Private
schools, it is true, often show large incomes; but they are earned by
the proprietors, not the teachers. On the whole, teaching as a trade is
poor and disappointing business.
When, however, it is entered as a profession, as a serious and difficult
fine art, there are few employments more satisfying. All over the
country thousands of men and women are following it with a passionate
devotion which takes little account of the income received. A trade aims
primarily at personal gain; a profession at the exercise of powers
beneficial to mankind. This prime aim of the one, it is true, often
properly becomes a subordinate aim of the other. Professional men may
even be said to offer wares of their own--cures, conversions, court
victories, learning--much as traders do, and to receive in return a kind
of reward. But the business of the lawyer, doctor, preacher, and teacher
never squares itself by equivalent exchange. These men do not give so
much for so much. They give in lump and they get in lump, without
precise balance. The whole notion of bargain is inapplicable in a sphere
where the gains of him who serves and him who is served coincide; and
that is largely the case with the professions. Each of them furnishes
its special opportunity for the use of powers which the possessor takes
delight in exercising. Harvard College pays me for doing what I would
gladly pay it for allowing me to do. No professional man, then, thinks
of giving according to measure. Once engaged, he gives his best, gives
his personal interest, himself. His heart is in his work, and for this
no equivalent is possible; what is accepted is in the nature of a fee,
gratuity, or consideration, which enables him who receives it to
maintain a certain expected mode of life. The real payment is the work
itself, this and the chance to join with other members of the profession
in guiding and enlarging the sphere of its activities.
The idea, sometimes advanced, that the professions might be ennobled by
paying them powerfully, is fantastic. Their great attraction is their
removal from sordid aims. More money should certainly be spent on
several of them. Their members should be better protected against want,
anxiety, neglect, and bad conditions of labor. To do his best work one
needs not merely to live, but to live well. Yet in that increase of
salaries which is urgently needed, care should be used not to allow the
attention of the professional man to be diverted from what is
important,--the outgo of his work,--and become fixed on what is merely
incidental,--his income. When a professor in one of our large
universities, angered by the refusal of the president to raise his
salary on his being called elsewhere, impatiently exclaimed, "Mr.
President, you are banking on the devotion of us teachers, knowing that
we do not willingly leave this place," the president properly replied,
"Certainly, and no college can be managed on any other principle."
Professional men are not so silly as to despise money; but after all, it
is interest in their work, and not the thought of salary, which
predominantly holds them.
Accordingly in this paper I address those only who are drawn to teaching
by the love of it, who regard it as the most vital of the Fine Arts, who
intend to give their lives to mastering its subtleties, and who are
ready to meet some hardships and to put up with moderate fare if they
may win its rich opportunities.
But supposing such a temper, what special qualifications will the work
require? The question asked thus broadly admits no precise answer; for
in reality there is no human excellence which is not useful for us
teachers. No good quality can be thought of which we can afford to
drop. Some day we shall discover a disturbing vacuum in the spot which
it left. But I propose a more limited problem: what are those
characteristics of the teacher without which he must fail, and what
those which, once his, will almost certainly insure him success? Are
there any such essentials, and how many? On this matter I have pondered
long; for, teaching thirty-nine years in Harvard College, I have each
year found out a little more fully my own incompetence. I have thus
been forced to ask myself the double question, through what lacks do
I fail, and in what direction lie the roots of my small successes? Of
late years I think I have hit on these roots of success and have
come to believe that there are four of them,--four characteristics which
every teacher must possess. Of course he may possess as many more as
he likes,--indeed, the more the better. But these four appear
fundamental. I will briefly name them.
First, a teacher must have an aptitude for vicariousness; and second, an
already accumulated wealth; and third, an ability to invigorate life
through knowledge; and fourth, a readiness to be forgotten. Having
these, any teacher is secure. Lacking them, lacking even one, he is
liable to serious failure. But as here stated they have a curiously
cabalistic sound and show little relation to the needs of any
profession. They have been stated with too much condensation, and have
become unintelligible through being too exact. Let me repair the error
by successively expanding them.
The teacher's art takes its rise in what I call an aptitude for
vicariousness. As year by year my college boys prepare to go forth into
life, some laggard is sure to come to me and say, "I want a little
advice. Most of my classmates have their minds made up about what they
are going to do. I am still uncertain. I rather incline to be a teacher,
because I am fond of books and suspect that in any other profession I
can give them but little time. Business men do not read. Lawyers only
consult books. And I am by no means sure that ministers have read all
the books they quote. On the whole it seems safest to choose a
profession in which books will be my daily companions. So I turn toward
teaching. But before settling the matter I thought I would ask how you
regard the profession." "A noble profession," I answer, "but quite unfit
for you. I would advise you to become a lawyer, a car conductor, or
something equally harmless. Do not turn to anything so perilous as
teaching. You would ruin both it and yourself; for you are looking in
exactly the wrong direction."
Such an inquirer is under a common misconception. The teacher's task is
not primarily the acquisition of knowledge, but the impartation of
it,--an entirely different matter. We teachers are forever taking
thoughts out of our minds and putting them elsewhere. So long as we are
content to keep them in our possession, we are not teachers at all. One
who is interested in laying hold on wisdom is likely to become a
scholar. And while no doubt it is well for a teacher to be a fair
scholar,--I have known several such,--that is not the main thing. What
constitutes the teacher is the passion to make scholars; and again and
again it happens that the great scholar has no such passion whatever.
But even that passion is useless without aid from imagination. At every
instant of the teacher's life he must be controlled by this mighty
power. Most human beings are contented with living one life and
delighted if they can pass that agreeably. But this is far from enough
for us teachers. We incessantly go outside ourselves and enter into the
many lives about us,--lives dull, dark, and unintelligible to any but an
eye like ours. And this is imagination, the sympathetic creation in
ourselves of conditions which belong to others. Our profession is
therefore a double-ended one. We inspect truth as it rises fresh and
interesting before our eager sight. But that is only the beginning of
our task. Swiftly we then seize the lines of least intellectual
resistance in alien minds and, with perpetual reference to these, follow
our truth till it is safely lodged beyond ourselves. Each mind has its
peculiar set of frictions. Those of our pupils can never be the same as
ours. We have passed far on and know all about our subject. For us it
wears an altogether different look from that which it has for beginners.
It is their perplexities which we must reproduce and--as if a rose
should shut and be a bud again--we must reassume in our developed and
accustomed souls something of the innocence of childhood. Such is the
exquisite business of the teacher, to carry himself back with all his
wealth of knowledge and understand how his subject should appear to the
meagre mind of one glancing at it for the first time.
And what absurd blunders we make in the process! Becoming immersed in
our own side of the affair, we blind ourselves and readily attribute to
our pupils modes of thought which are not in the least theirs. I
remember a lesson I had on this point, I who had been teaching ethics
half a lifetime. My nephew, five years old, was fond of stories from the
Odyssey. He would creep into bed with me in the morning and beg for
them. One Sunday, after I had given him a pretty stiff bit of adventure,
it occurred to me that it was an appropriate day for a moral. "Ulysses
was a very brave man," I remarked. "Yes," he said, "and I am very
brave." I saw my opportunity and seized it. "That is true," said I. "You
have been gaining courage lately. You used to cry easily, but you don't
do that nowadays. When you want to cry now, you think how like a baby it
would be to cry, or how you would disturb mother and upset the house;
and so you conclude not to cry." The little fellow seemed hopelessly
puzzled. He lay silent a minute or two and then said, "Well no, Uncle, I
don't do that. I just go sh-sh-sh, and I don't." There the moral crisis
is stated in its simplicity; and I had been putting off on that holy
little nature sophistications borrowed from my own battered life.
But while I am explaining the blunders caused by self-engrossment and
lack of imagination, let me show what slight adjustments will sometimes
carry us past depressing difficulties. One year when I was lecturing on
some intricate problems of obligation, I began to doubt whether my class
was following me, and I determined that I would make them talk. So the
next day I constructed an ingenious ethical case and, after stating it
to the class, I said, "Supposing now the state of affairs were thus and
thus, and the interests of the persons involved were such and such, how
would you decide the question of right,--Mr. Jones." Poor Jones rose in
confusion. "You mean," he said, "if the case were as you have stated it?
Well, hm, hm, hm,--yes,--I don't think I know, sir." And he sat down. I
called on one and another with the same result. A panic was upon them,
and all their minds were alike empty. I went home disgusted, wondering
whether they had comprehended anything I had said during the previous
fortnight, and hoping I might never have such a stupid lot of students
again. Suddenly it flashed upon me that it was I who was stupid. That is
usually the case when a class fails; it is the teacher's fault. The next
day I went back prepared to begin at the right end. I began, "Oh, Mr.
Jones." He rose, and I proceeded to state the situation as before. By
the time I paused he had collected his wits, had worked off his
superfluous flurry, and was ready to give me an admirable answer.
Indeed in a few minutes the whole class was engaged in an eager
discussion. My previous error had been in not remembering that they, I,
and everybody, when suddenly attacked with a big question, are not in
the best condition for answering. Occupied as I was with my end of the
story, the questioning end, I had not worked in that double-ended
fashion which alone can bring the teacher success; in short, I was
deficient in vicariousness,--in swiftly putting myself in the weak one's
place and bearing his burden.
Now it is in this chief business of the artistic teacher, to labor
imaginatively himself in order to diminish the labors of his slender
pupil, that most of our failures occur. Instead of lamenting the
imperviousness of our pupils, we had better ask ourselves more
frequently whether we have neatly adjusted our teachings to the
conditions of their minds. We have no right to tumble out in a mass
whatever comes into our heads, leaving to that feeble folk the work of
finding in it what order they may. Ours it should be to see that every
beginning, middle, and end of what we say is helpfully shaped for
readiest access to those less intelligent and interested than we. But
this is vicariousness. _Noblesse oblige._ In this profession any one who
will be great must be a nimble servant, his head full of others' needs.
Some discouraged teacher, glad to discover that his past failures have
been due to the absence of sympathetic imagination, may resolve that he
will not commit that blunder again. On going to his class to-morrow he
will look out upon his subject with his pupils' eyes, not with his own.
Let him attempt it, and his pupils will surely say to one another, "What
is the matter to-day with teacher?" They will get nothing from that
exercise. No, what is wanted is not a resolve, but an aptitude. The time
for using vicariousness is not the time for acquiring it. Rather it is
the time for dismissing all thoughts of it from the mind. On entering
the classroom we should leave every consideration of method outside the
door, and talk simply as interested men and women in whatever way comes
most natural to us. But into that nature vicariousness should long ago
have been wrought. It should be already on hand. Fortunate we if our
great-grandmother supplied us with it before we were born. There are
persons who, with all good will, can never be teachers. They are not
made in that way. Their business it is to pry into knowledge, to engage
in action, to make money, or to pursue whatever other aim their powers
dictate; but they do not readily think in terms of the other person.
They should not, then, be teachers.
The teacher's habit is well summed in the Apostle's rule, "Look not
every man on his own things, but every man also"--it is double--"on
the things of others." And this habit should become as nearly as
possible an instinct. Until it is rendered instinctive and passes
beyond conscious direction, it will be of little worth. Let us then,
as we go into society, as we walk the streets, as we sit at table,
practice altruistic limberness and learn to escape from ourselves. A
true teacher is always meditating his work, disciplining himself for his
profession, probing the problems of his glorious art, and seeing
illustration of them everywhere. In only one place is he freed from
such criticism, and that is in his classroom. Here in the moment of
action he lets himself go, unhampered by theory, using the nature
acquired elsewhere, and uttering as simply as possible the fulness of
his mind and heart. Direct human intercourse requires instinctive
aptitudes. Till altruistic vicariousness has become our second
nature, we shall not deeply influence anybody.
But sympathetic imagination is not all a teacher needs. Exclusive
altruism is absurd. On this point too I once got instruction from the
mouths of babes and sucklings. The children of a friend of mine,
children of six and four, had just gone to bed. Their mother overheard
them talking when they should have been asleep. Wondering what they
might need, she stepped into the entry and listened. They were
discussing what they were here in the world for. That is about the size
of problems commonly found in infant minds. The little girl suggested
that we are probably in the world to help others. "Why, no indeed,
Mabel," said her big brother, "for then what would others be here for?"
Precisely! If anything is only fit to give away, it is not fit for that.
We must know and prize its goodness in ourselves before generosity is
even possible.
Plainly, then, beside his aptitude for vicariousness, our ideal teacher
will need the second qualification of an already accumulated wealth.
These hungry pupils are drawing all their nourishment from us, and have
we got it to give? They will be poor, if we are poor; rich if we are
wealthy. We are their source of supply. Every time we cut ourselves off
from nutrition, we enfeeble them. And how frequently devoted teachers
make this mistake! dedicating themselves so to the immediate needs of
those about them that they themselves grow thinner each year. We all
know the "teacher's face." It is meagre, worn, sacrificial, anxious,
powerless. That is exactly the opposite of what it should be. The
teacher should be the big bounteous being of the community. Other people
may get along tolerably by holding whatever small knowledge comes their
way. A moderate stock will pretty well serve their private turn. But
that is not our case. Supplying a multitude, we need wealth sufficient
for a multitude. We should then be clutching at knowledge on every
side. Nothing must escape us. It is a mistake to reject a bit of truth
because it lies outside our province. Some day we shall need it. All
knowledge is our province.
In preparing a lecture I find I always have to work hardest on the
things I do not say. The things I am sure to say I can easily get up.
They are obvious and generally accessible. But they, I find, are not
enough. I must have a broad background of knowledge which does not
appear in speech. I have to go over my entire subject and see how the
things I am to say look in their various relations, tracing out
connections which I shall not present to my class. One might ask what is
the use of this? Why prepare more matter than can be used? Every
successful teacher knows. I cannot teach right up to the edge of my
knowledge without a fear of falling off. My pupils discover this fear,
and my words are ineffective. They feel the influence of what I do not
say. One cannot precisely explain it; but when I move freely across my
subject as if it mattered little on what part of it I rest, they get a
sense of assured power which is compulsive and fructifying. The subject
acquires consequence, their minds swell, and they are eager to enter
regions of which they had not previously thought.
Even, then, to teach a small thing well we must be large. I asked a
teacher what her subject was, and she answered, "Arithmetic in the
third grade." But where is the third grade found? In knowledge, or in
the schools? Unhappily it is in the schools. But if one would be a
teacher of arithmetic, it must be arithmetic she teaches and not third
grade at all. We cannot accept these artificial bounds without damage.
Instead of accumulated wealth they will bring us accumulated poverty,
and increase it every day. Years ago at Harvard we began to discuss the
establishment of a Graduate School; and I, a young instructor, steadily
voted against it. My thought was this: Harvard College, in spite of what
the public imagines, is a place of slender resources. Our means are
inadequate for teaching even undergraduates. But graduate instruction is
vastly more expensive; courses composed of half a dozen students take
the time of the ablest professors. I thought we could not afford this.
Why not leave graduate instruction to a university which gives itself
entirely to that task? Would it not be wiser to spend ourselves on the
lower ranges of learning, covering these adequately, than to try to
spread ourselves over the entire field?
Doubting so, I for some time opposed the coming of a Graduate School.
But a luminous remark of our great President showed me the error of my
ways. In the course of debate he said one evening, "It is not primarily
for the graduates that I care for this school; it is for the
undergraduates. We shall never get good teaching here so long as our
instructors set a limit to their subjects. When they are called on to
follow these throughout, tracing them far off toward the unknown, they
may become good teachers; but not before."
I went home meditating. I saw that the President was right, and that I
was myself in danger of the stagnation he deprecated. I changed my vote,
as did others. The Graduate School was established; and of all the
influences which have contributed to raise the standard of scholarship
at Harvard, both for teachers and taught, that graduate work seems to me
the greatest. Every professor now must be the master of a field of
knowledge, and not of a few paths running through it.
But the ideal teacher will accumulate wealth, not merely for his pupils'
sake, but for his own. To be a great teacher one must be a great
personality, and without ardent and individual tastes the roots of our
being are not fed. For developing personal power it is well, therefore,
for each teacher to cultivate interests unconnected with his official
work. Let the mathematician turn to the English poets, the teacher of
classics to the study of birds and flowers, and each will gain a
lightness, a freedom from exhaustion, a mental hospitality, which can
only be acquired in some disinterested pursuit. Such a private subject
becomes doubly dear because it is just our own. We pursue it as we will;
we let it call out our irresponsible thoughts; and from it we ordinarily
carry off a note of distinction lacking in those whose lives are too
tightly organized.
To this second qualification of the teacher, however, I have been
obliged to prefix a condition similar to that which was added to the
first. We need not merely wealth, but an already accumulated wealth. At
the moment when wealth is wanted it cannot be acquired. It should have
been gathered and stored before the occasion arose. What is more
pitiable than when a person who desires to be a benefactor looks in his
chest and finds it empty? Special knowledge is wanted, or trained
insight, or professional skill, or sound practical judgment; and the
teacher who is called on has gone through no such discipline as assures
these resources. I am inclined to think that women are more liable to
this sort of bankruptcy than men. Their sex is more sympathetic than
ours and they spend more hastily. They will drop what they are doing and
run if a baby cries. Excellence requires a certain hardihood of heart,
while quick responsiveness is destructive of the larger giving. He who
would be greatly generous must train himself long and tenaciously,
without much attention to momentary calls. The plan of the Great
Teacher, by which he took thirty years for acquisition and three for
bestowal, is not unwise, provided that we too can say, "For their sakes
I sanctify myself."
But the two qualifications of the teacher already named will not alone
suffice. I have known persons who were sympathetically imaginative, and
who could not be denied to possess large intellectual wealth, who still
failed as teachers. One needs a third something, the power to invigorate
life through learning. We do not always notice how knowledge naturally
buffets. It is offensive stuff, and makes young and wholesome minds
rebel. And well it may; for when we learn anything, we are obliged to
break up the world, inspect it piecemeal, and let our minds seize it bit
by bit. Now about a fragment there is always something repulsive. Any
one who is normally constituted must draw back in horror, feeling that
what is brought him has little to do with the beautiful world he has
known. Where was there ever a healthy child who did not hate the
multiplication table? A boy who did not detest such abstractions as
seven times eight would hardly be worth educating. By no ingenuity can
we relieve knowledge of this unfortunate peculiarity. It must be taken
in disjointed portions. That is the way attention is made. In
consequence each of us must be to some extent a specialist, devoting
himself to certain sides of the world and neglecting others quite as
important. These are the conditions under which we imperfect creatures
work. Our sight is not world-wide. When we give our attention to one
object, by that very act we withdraw it from others. In this way our
children must learn and have their expansive natures subdued to
pedagogic exigencies.
Because this belittlement through the method of approach is inevitable,
it is all-important that the teacher should possess a supplemental
dignity, replacing the oppressive sense of pettiness with stimulating
intimations of high things in store. Partly on this account a book is an
imperfect instructor. Truth there, being impersonal, seems untrue,
abstract, and insignificant. It needs to shine through a human being
before it can exert its vital force on a young student. Quite as much
for vital transmission as for intellectual elucidation, is a teacher
employed. His consolidated character exhibits the gains which come from
study. He need not point them out. If he is a scholar, there will appear
in him an augustness, accuracy, fulness of knowledge, a buoyant
enthusiasm even in drudgery, and an unshakable confidence that others
must soon see and enjoy what has enriched himself; and all this will
quickly convey itself to his students and create attention in his
classroom. Such kindling of interest is the great function of the
teacher. People sometimes say, "I should like to teach if only pupils
cared to learn." But then there would be little need of teaching. Boys
who have made up their minds that knowledge is worth while are pretty
sure to get it, without regard to teachers. Our chief concern is with
those who are unawakened. In the Sistine Chapel Michael Angelo has
depicted the Almighty moving in clouds over the rugged earth where lies
the newly created Adam, hardly aware of himself. The tips of the fingers
touch, the Lord's and Adam's, and the huge frame loses its inertness and
rears itself into action. Such may be the electrifying touch of the
teacher.
But it must be confessed that not infrequently, instead of invigorating
life through knowledge, we teachers reduce our classes to complete
passivity. The blunder is not altogether ours, but is suggested by
certain characteristics of knowledge itself: for how can a learner begin
without submitting his mind, accepting facts, listening to authority, in
short becoming obedient? He is called on to put aside his own notions
and take what truth dictates. I have said that knowledge buffets,
forcing us into an almost slavish attitude, and that this is resented by
vigorous natures. In almost every school some of the most original,
aggressive, and independent boys stand low in their classes, while at
the top stand "grinds,"--objects of horror to all healthy souls.
Now it is the teacher's business to see that the onslaught of
knowledge does not enfeeble. Between the two sides of knowledge,
information and intelligence, he is to keep the balance true. While a
boy is taking in facts, facts not allowed to be twisted by any fancy
or carelessness, he is all the time to be made to feel that these facts
offer him a field for critical and constructive action. If they leave
him inactive, docile, and plodding, there is something wrong with
the teaching. Facts are pernicious when they subjugate and do not
quicken the mind that grasps them. Education should unfold us and
truth together; and to enable it to do so the learner must never be
allowed to sink into a mere recipient. He should be called on to
think, to observe, to form his own judgments, even at the risk of error
and crudity. Temporary one-sidedness and extravagance is not too high a
price to pay for originality. And this development of personal
vigor, emphasized in our day by the elective system and independent
research, is the great aim of education. It should affect the lower
ranges of study as truly as the higher. The mere contemplation of
truth is always a deadening affair. Many a dull class in school and
college would come to life if simply given something to do. Until the
mind reacts for itself on what it receives, its education is hardly
begun.
The teacher who leads it so to react may be truly called "productive,"
productive of human beings. The noble word has recently become
Germanized and corrupted, and is now hardly more than a piece of
educational slang. According to the judgments of to-day a teacher may be
unimaginative, pedantic, dull, and may make his students no less so; he
will still deserve a crown of wild olive as a "productive" man if he
neglects his classroom for the printing press. But this is to put first
things second and second things first. He who is original and fecund,
and knows how to beget a similar spirit in his students, will naturally
wish to express himself beyond his classroom. By snatching the fragments
of time which his arduous work allows, he may accomplish much worthy
writing and probably increase too his worth for his college, his
students, and himself. But the business of book-making is, after all,
collateral with us teachers. Not for this are we employed, desirable
though it is for showing the kind of mind we bear. Many of my most
productive colleagues have printed little or nothing, though they have
left a deep mark on the life and science of our time. I would encourage
publication. It keeps the solitary student healthy, enables him to find
his place among his fellows, and more distinctly to estimate the
contributions he is making to his subject. But let him never neglect his
proper work for that which must always have in it an element of
advertising.
Too long I have delayed the fourth, the disagreeable, section of my
paper. Briefly it is this: a teacher must have a readiness to be
forgotten. And what is harder? We may be excellent persons, may be daily
doing kindnesses, and yet not be quite willing to have those kindnesses
overlooked. Many a man is ready to be generous, if by it he can win
praise. The love of praise,--it is almost our last infirmity; but there
is no more baffling infirmity for the teacher. If praise and recognition
are dear to him, he may as well stop work. Dear to him perhaps they must
be, as a human being; but as a teacher, he is called on to rise above
ordinary human conditions. Whoever has followed me thus far will
perceive the reason. I have shown that a teacher does not live for
himself, but for his pupil and for the truth which he imparts. His aim
is to be a colorless medium through which that truth may shine on
opening minds. How can he be this if he is continually interposing
himself and saying, "Instead of looking at the truth, my children, look
at me and see how skilfully I do my work. I thought I taught you
admirably to-day. I hope you thought so too." No, the teacher must keep
himself entirely out of the way, fixing young attention on the proffered
knowledge and not on anything so small as the one who brings it. Only so
can he be vicarious, whole-hearted in invigorating the lives committed
to his charge.
Moreover, any other course is futile. We cannot tell whether those whom
we are teaching have taken our best points or not. Those best points,
what are they? We shall count them one thing, our pupils another. We
gather what seems to us of consequence and pour it out upon our classes.
But if their minds are not fitted to receive it, the little creatures
have excellent protective arrangements which they draw down, and all we
pour is simply shed as if nothing had fallen; while again we say
something so slight that we hardly notice it, but, happening to be just
the nutritive element which that small life then needs, it is caught up
and turned into human fibre. We cannot tell. We work in the dark. Out
upon the waters our bread is cast, and if we are wise we do not attempt
to trace its return.
On this point I received capital instruction from one of my pupils. In
teaching a course on English Empiricism I undertook a line of exposition
which I knew was abstruse. Indeed, I doubted if many of the class could
follow; but there on the front seat sat one whose bright eyes were ever
upon me. It seemed worth while to teach my three or four best men, that
man in particular. By the end of the term there were many grumblings. My
class did not get much out of me that year. They graduated, and a couple
of years later this young fellow appeared at my door to say that he
could not pass through Cambridge without thanking me for his work on
Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. Pleased to be assured that my questionable
methods were justified, and unwilling to drop a subject so agreeable, I
asked if he could tell precisely where the value of the course lay.
"Certainly," he answered. "It all centred in a single remark of Locke's.
Locke said we ought to have clear and distinct ideas. I don't think I
got anything else out of the course."
Well, at first I was inclined to think the fellow foolish, so to mistake
a bit of commonplace for gospel truth. Why did he not listen to some of
the profound things I was saying? But on reflection I saw that he was
right and I wrong. That trivial saying had come to him at a critical
moment as a word of power; while the deep matters which interested me,
and which I had been offering him so confidently day by day, being
unsuited to him, had passed him by. He had not heard them.
To such proper unthankfulness we teachers must accustom ourselves. We
cannot tell what are our good deeds, and shall only plague ourselves and
hinder our classes if we try to find out. Let us display our subjects as
lucidly as possible, allow our pupils considerable license in
apprehension, and be content ourselves to escape observation. But though
what we do remains unknown, its results often awake deep affection. Few
in the community receive love more abundantly than we. Wherever we go,
we meet a smiling face. Throughout the world, by some good fortune, the
period of learning is the period of romance. In those halcyon days of
our boys and girls we have a share, and the golden lights which flood
the opening years are reflected on us. Though our pupils cannot follow
our efforts in their behalf, and indeed ought not,--it being our art to
conceal our art,--yet they perceive that in the years when their happy
expansion occurred we were their guides. To us, therefore, their blind
affections cling as to few beside their parents. It is better to be
loved than to be understood.
Perhaps some readers of this paper will begin to suspect that it is
impossible to be a good teacher. Certainly it is. Each of the four
qualifications I have named is endless. Not one of them can be fully
attained. We can always be more imaginative, wealthy, stimulating,
disinterested. Each year we creep a little nearer to our goal, only to
find that a finished teacher is a contradiction in terms. Our reach will
forever exceed our grasp. Yet what a delight in approximation! Even in
our failures there is comfort, when we see that they are generally due
not to technical but to personal defects. We have been putting ourselves
forward, or have taught in mechanical rather than vital fashion, or have
not undertaken betimes the labor of preparation, or have declined the
trouble of vicariousness.
Evidently, then, as we become better teachers we also become in some
sort better persons. Our beautiful art, being so largely personal, will
at last be seen to connect itself with nearly all other employments.
Every mother is a teacher. Every minister. The lawyer teaches the jury,
the doctor his patient. The clever salesman might almost be said to use
teaching in dealing with his customer, and all of us to be teachers of
one another in daily intercourse. As teaching is the most universal of
the professions, those are fortunate who are able to devote their lives
to its enriching study.
II
ETHICAL INSTRUCTION IN THE SCHOOLS
Within a few years a strong demand has arisen for ethical teaching in
the schools. Teachers themselves have become interested, and wherever
they are gathered the question, "What shall this teaching be?" is
eagerly discussed. The educational journals are full of it. Within a
year there have been published seven books on the subject. Several of
them--it would be hardly an exaggeration to say all--are books of marked
excellence. Seldom does so large a percentage of books in a single year,
in a single country, and on a single subject reach so high a level of
merit. I shall not criticise them, however, nor even engage in the
popular discussion of which they form a part. That discussion concerns
itself chiefly with the methods by which ethics may be taught. I wish to
go behind this controversy and to raise the previous question whether
ethics should be taught to boys and girls at all.
Evidently there are strong reasons why it should be. Always and
everywhere it is important that men should be good. To be a good
man!--it is more than half the fulfilment of life. Better to miss fame,
wealth, learning, than to miss righteousness. And in America, too, we
must demand not the mere trifle that men shall be good for their own
sakes, but good in order that the life of the state may be preserved. A
widespread righteousness is in a republic a matter of necessity. Where
all rule all, each man who falls into evil courses infects his neighbor,
corrupting the law and corrupting still more its enforcement. The
question of manufacturing moral men becomes, accordingly, in a
democracy, urgent to a degree unknown in a country where but a few
selected persons guide the state.
There is also special urgency at the present time. The ancient and
accredited means of training youth in goodness are becoming, I will not
say broken, but enfeebled and distrusted. Hitherto a large part of the
moral instruction of mankind has been superintended by the clergy. In
every civilized state the expensive machinery of the Church has been set
up and placed in the hands of men of dignity, because it has been
believed that by no other engine can we so effectively render people
upright. I still believe this, and I am pretty confident that a good
many years will pass before we shall dispense with the ennobling
services of our ministers. And yet it is plain that much of the work
which formerly was exclusively theirs is so no longer. Much of it is
performed by books, newspapers, and facilitated human intercourse.
Ministers do not now speak with their old authority; they speak merely
as other men speak; and we are all asking whether in the immense
readjustment of faith now going on something of their peculiar power of
moral as well as of intellectual guidance may not slip away.
The home too, which has hitherto been the fundamental agency for
fostering morality in the young, is just now in sore need of repair. We
can no longer depend upon it alone for moral guardianship. It must be
supplemented, possibly reconstructed. New dangers to it have arisen. In
the complex civilization of city life, in the huge influx of untutored
foreigners, in the substitution of the apartment for the house, in the
greater ease of divorce, in the larger freedom now given to children, to
women, in the breaking down of class distinctions and the readier
accessibility of man to man, there are perils for boy and girl which did
not exist before. And while these changes in the outward form of
domestic life are advancing, certain protections against moral peril
which the home formerly afforded have decayed. It would be curious to
ascertain in how many families of our immediate time daily prayers are
used, and to compare the number with that of those in which the holy
practice was common fifty years ago. It would be interesting to know how
frequently parents to-day converse with their children on subjects
serious, pious, or personal. The hurry of modern life has swept away
many uplifting intimacies. Even in families which prize them most, a few
minutes only can be had each day for such fortifying things. Domestic
training has shrunk, while the training of haphazard companions, the
training of the streets, the training of the newspapers, have acquired a
potency hitherto unknown.
It is no wonder, then, that in such a moral crisis the community
turns to that agency whose power is already felt beneficently in a
multitude of other directions, the school. The cry comes to us
teachers, "We established you at first to make our children wiser;
we want you now for a profounder service. Can you not unite moral
culture with intellectual?" It may be; though discipline of the passions
is enormously more difficult than discipline of the mind. But at any
rate we must acknowledge that our success in the mental field is
largely staked on our success in the moral. Our pupils will not learn
their lessons in arithmetic if they have not already made some
progress in concentration, in self-forgetfulness, in acceptance of
duty. Nor can we touch them in a single section of their nature and hope
for results. Instruction must go all through. We are obliged to treat
each little human being as a whole if we would have our treatment
wholesome. And then too we have had such successes elsewhere that we
may well feel emboldened for the new task. Nearly the whole of life
is now advantageously surveyed in one form or another in our schools
and colleges; and we have usually found that advance in instruction
develops swiftly into betterment of practice. We teach, for example,
social science and analyze the customs of the past; but soon we find
bands of young men and women in all the important cities criticising
the government of those cities, suggesting better modes of voting, wiser
forms of charity; and before we know it the community is transformed.
We cannot teach the science of electricity without improving our
street-cars, or at least without raising hopes that they may some
day be improved. Each science claims its brother art. Theory creeps
over into action. It will not stay by itself; it is pervasive,
diffusive. And as this pervasive character of knowledge in the lower
ranges is perceived, we teachers are urged to press forward its
operation in the higher also. Why have we no school-books on human
character, the highest of all themes? Once direct the attention of our
pupils to this great topic, and may we not ultimately bring about
that moral enlargement for which the time waits?
I have stated somewhat at length the considerations in behalf of ethical
instruction in the schools because those considerations on the whole
appear to me illusory. I cannot believe such instruction feasible. Were
it so, of course it would have my eager support. But I see in it grave
difficulties, difficulties imperfectly understood; and a difficulty
disregarded becomes a danger, possibly a catastrophe. Let me explain in
a few words where the danger lies.
Between morals and ethics there is a sharp distinction, frequently as
the two words are confused. Usage, however, shows the meaning. If I call
a man a man of bad morals, I evidently mean to assert that his conduct
is corrupt; he does things which the majority of mankind believe he
ought not to do. It is his practice I denounce, not his intellectual
formulation. In the same way we speak of the petty morals of society,
referring in the phrase to the small practices of mankind, the
unnumbered actions which disclose good or bad principles unconsciously
hidden within. It is entirely different when I call a man's ethics bad.
I then declare that I do not agree with his comprehension of moral
principles. His practice may be entirely correct. I do not speak of
that; it is his understanding that is at fault. For ethics, as was long
ago remarked, is related to morals as geometry to carpentry: the one is
a science, the other its practical embodiment. In the former,
consciousness is a prime factor; from the latter it often is absent
altogether.