WORK AND LIFE
=Tom Sawyer.=--Tom Sawyer was one of the most effective teachers that
has figured in the pages of the books; and yet we still regard Mark
Twain as merely the prince of humorists. He was that, of course, but
much more; and some day we shall read his books in quest of pedagogical
wisdom and shall not be disappointed. It will be recalled that Tom
Sawyer sat on the top of a barrel and munched apples while his boy
companions whitewashed the fence in his stead. Tom achieved this triumph
because he knew how to emancipate work from the plane of drudgery and
exalt it to the plane of a privilege. Indeed, it loomed so large as a
privilege that the other boys were eager to barter the treasures of
their pockets in exchange for this privilege. And never did a fence
receive such a whitewashing! There wasn't fence enough and, therefore,
the process must needs be repeated again and again. The best part of the
entire episode was that everybody was happy, Tom included. Tom was happy
in seeing his plan work, and the other boys were happy because they were
doing work that Tom had caused them to become eager to do.
=Work as a privilege.=--To make work seem a privilege is a worthy task
for the school to set before itself, and if it but achieves this it will
prove itself worth all it costs. At first thought, it seems a stupendous
task, and so it is. But Tom Sawyer accomplished it in an easy, natural
way, with no parade or bombast. He had habit and tradition to contend
against, just as the school has, but he overbore these obstacles and won
the contest. Some of those boys, before that morning, may have thought
it ignoble to perform menial tasks; but Tom soon overcame that feeling
and led them to feel that only an artist can whitewash a fence properly.
Some of them may have been interpreting life as having a good time, but,
under the tutorage of Tom, they soon came to feel that having a good
time means whitewashing a fence.
=The persistency of habit.=--In striving to exalt and ennoble work, the
school runs counter to habits of thought that have been formed in the
home, and these habits prove stubborn. The home has so long imposed work
as a task that the school finds it difficult to make it seem a
privilege. The father and mother have so often complained of their work,
in the presence of their children, that all work comes to assume the
aspect of a hardship, if not a penalty. It often happens, too, that the
parents encourage their children to think that education affords
immunity from work, and the children attend school with that notion
firmly implanted in their minds. They seem to think that when they have
achieved an education they will receive their reward in the choicest
gifts that Fortune has to bestow, and that their only responsibility
will be to indicate their choices.
=Misconceptions of work.=--Still further, when children enter school
imbued with this conception of work, they feel that the work of the
school is imposed upon them as a task from which they would fain be
free. If their parents had only been as wise as Tom Sawyer and had set
up motives before them in connection with their home activities and thus
exalted all their work to the plane of privilege, the work of the school
would be greatly simplified. It is no slight task to eradicate this
misconception of work, but somehow it must be done before the work of
the school can get on. Until this is done, the work of the school will
be done grudgingly instead of buoyantly, and work that is done under
compulsion is never joyous work. Nor will work that is done under
compulsion ever be done in full measure, as the days of slavery clearly
prove.
=Illustrations.=--Life and work are synonymous, and no amount or form of
sophistry can abrogate their relation. The man who does not work does
not have real life, as the invalid will freely witness. The tramp on the
highway manages to exist, but he does not really live, no matter what
his philosophy may be. Many children interpret life to mean plenty of
money and nothing to do, but this conception merely proves that they are
children with childish misconceptions. They see the railway magnate
riding in his private car and conceive his life to be one of ease and
luxury. They do not realize that the private car affords him the
opportunity to do more and better work. They see the president of the
bank sitting in his private office and imagine that he is idle, not
realizing that his mind is busy with problems of great magnitude,
problems that would appall his subordinates. They cannot know, as he
sits there, that he is projecting his thoughts into far-off lands, and
is watching the manifold and complex processions of commerce in their
relations to the world of finance.
=Concrete examples.=--They see the architect in his luxurious
apartments, but do not realize that his brain is directing every
movement of a thousand men who are causing a colossal building to tower
toward the sky. They see a Grant sitting beneath a tree in apparent
unconcern, but do not know that he is bearing the responsibility of the
movements of a vast army. They see the pastor in his study among his
books, but do not know the travail of spirit that he experiences in his
yearning for his parishioners. They see the farmer sitting at ease in
the shade, but do not know that he is visualizing every detail of his
farm, the men at their tasks, the flocks and herds, the crops, the
streams, the machinery, the fences, and the orchards and vineyards. They
see the master of the ship, standing on the bridge clad in his smart
uniform, and imagine that he is merely enjoying the sea breezes the same
as themselves, not knowing that his thoughts are concentrated upon the
safety of his hundreds of passengers and his precious cargo.
=The potency of mental work.=--Only by experience may children come to
know that work may be mental as well as physical, and the school is
charged with the responsibility of affording this experience. Through
experience they will come to know that mind transcends matter, and that
in life the body yields obedience to the behests of the mind. They will
come to know that mental work is more far-reaching than physical work,
in that a single mind plans the work for a thousand hands. They will
learn that mental work has redeemed the world from its primitive
condition and is making life more agreeable even if more complex. They
will come to see the mind busy in its work of tunneling mountains,
building canals and railways, navigating oceans, and exploring the sky.
They will come to realize that mental work has produced our libraries,
designed our machinery, made our homes more comfortable and our fields
more fertile.
=Work a blessing.=--As a knowledge of all these things filters into
their minds, their conception of life broadens, and they see more and
more clearly that life and work are fundamentally identical. They see
that work directs the streams of life and gives to life point, potency,
and significance. They soon see that knowledge is power only because it
is the agency that generates power, and that knowledge touches life at
every point. They will come to realize that work is the one great luxury
in life, and that education is designed to increase the capacity for
work in order that people may indulge in this luxury more abundantly.
The more work one can do, the more life one has; and the better the work
one can do, the higher the quality of that life. They learn that the
adage "Work to live and live to work" is no fiction but a reality.
=Work and enjoyment.=--The school, therefore, becomes to them a workshop
of life, and unless it is that, it is not a worthy school. It is not a
something detached from life, but, rather, an integral part of life and
therefore a place and an occasion for work. The school is the Burning
Bush of work that is to grow into the Tree of Life. But life ought to
teem with joy in order to be at its best, and never be a drag. Work,
therefore, being synonymous with life, should be a joyous experience,
even though it taxes the powers to the utmost. If the child comes to the
work of the school as the galley-slave goes to his task, there is a lack
of adjustment and balance somewhere, and a readjustment is necessary. It
matters not that a boy spends two hours over a problem in arithmetic if
only he enjoys himself during the time. But, if he works two hours
merely to get a passing grade or to escape punishment, the time thus
spent does not afford him the pleasure that rightfully belongs to him,
and some better motive should be supplied.
=The teacher's problem.=--The teacher's mission is not to make school
work easy, but, rather, to make the hardest work alluring and agreeable.
Here, again, she may need to take counsel with Tom Sawyer. Whitewashing
a fence is quite as hard work as solving a problem in decimals or cube
root. Much depends upon the mental attitude of the boy, and this in turn
depends upon the skill of the teacher and her fertility of mind in
supplying motives. Whitewashing a fence causes the arms to grow weary
and the back to ache, but the boys recked not of that. On the contrary,
they clamored for more of the same kind of work. This same spirit
characterizes the work of the vitalized school. The pupils live as
joyously in the schoolroom as they do outside, and the harder the work
the greater their joy.
When work is made a privilege by the expert teacher, school procedure
becomes well-nigh automatic and there is never any occasion for nagging,
hectoring, or badgering. Such things are abnormal in life and no less so
in the vitalized school. They are a confession on the part of the
teacher that she has reached the limit of her resources. She admits that
she cannot do what Tom Sawyer did so well, and so proclaims her
inability to articulate life and work effectively.
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
1. Read that chapter of "Tom Sawyer" which deals with the whitewashing
episode.
2. What principles of teaching did Tom Sawyer apply?
3. Discuss, from the pupils' viewpoint, how the study of different
subjects may be made a privilege.
4. In accordance with Tom Sawyer pedagogy, discuss plans for the
formation of the reading habit in pupils. How direct the pupils' choice
of reading matter?
5. How would you demonstrate to pupils that mental work is more
exhausting than manual labor?
6. Why is work a blessing? How convince an indolent pupil of this truth?
7. State the chief problem of the teacher.
8. Show that the pedagogical doctrines of this chapter are not to be
classified under the head of "soft pedagogy."