And the first of these vows I shall call, for want of a better term, the
vow of "artistry,"--the pledge that the initiate takes to do the work
that his hand finds to do in the best possible manner, without reference
to the effort that it may cost or to the reward that it may or may not
bring.
I call this the vow of artistry because it represents the essential
attitude of the artist toward his work. The cynic tells us that ideals
are illusions of youth, and yet, the other day I saw expressed in a
middle-aged working-man a type of idealism that is not at all uncommon
in this world. He was a house painter; his task was simply the prosaic
job of painting a door; and yet, from the pains which he took with that
work, an observer would have concluded that it was, to the painter, the
most important task in the world. And that, after all, is the true test
of craft artistry: to the true craftsman the work that he is doing must
be the most important thing that can be done. One of the best teachers
that I know is that kind of a craftsman in education. A student was once
sent to observe his work. He was giving a lesson upon the "attribute
complement" to an eighth-grade grammar class. I asked the student
afterward what she had got from her visit. "Why," she replied, "that man
taught as if the very greatest achievement in life would be to get his
pupils to understand the attribute complement,--and when he had
finished, they did understand it."
In a narrower sense, this vow of artistry carries with it an
appreciation of the value of technique. From the very fact of their
normal school training, these graduates already possess a certain
measure of skill, a certain mastery of the technique of their craft.
This initial mastery has been gained in actual contact with the problems
of school work in their practice teaching. They have learned some of the
rudiments; they have met and mastered some of the rougher, cruder
difficulties. The finer skill, the delicate and intangible points of
technique, they must acquire, as all beginners must acquire them,
through the strenuous processes of self-discipline in the actual work of
the years that are to come. This is a process that takes time, energy,
constant and persistent application. All that this school or any school
can do for its students in this respect is to start them upon the right
track in the acquisition of skill. But do not make the mistake of
assuming that this is a small and unimportant matter. If this school did
nothing more than this, it would still repay tenfold the cost of its
establishment and maintenance. Three fourths of the failures in a world
that sometimes seems full of failures are due to nothing more nor less
than a wrong start. In spite of the growth of professional training for
teachers within the past fifty years, many of our lower schools are
still filled with raw recruits, fresh from the high schools and even
from the grades, who must learn every practical lesson of teaching
through the medium of their own mistakes. Even if this were all, the
process would involve a tremendous and uncalled-for waste. But this is
not all; for, out of this multitude of untrained teachers, only a small
proportion ever recognize the mistakes that they make and try to correct
them.
To you who are beginning the work of life, the mastery of technique may
seem a comparatively unimportant matter. You recognize its necessity, of
course, but you think of it as something of a mechanical nature,--an
integral part of the day's work, but uninviting in itself,--something to
be reduced as rapidly as possible to the plane of automatism and
dismissed from the mind. I believe that you will outgrow this notion. As
you go on with your work, as you increase in skill, ever and ever the
fascination of its technique will take a stronger and stronger hold upon
you. This is the great saving principle of our workaday life. This is
the factor that keeps the toiler free from the deadening effects of
mechanical routine. It is the factor that keeps the farmer at his plow,
the artisan at his bench, the lawyer at his desk, the artist at his
palette.
I once worked for a man who had accumulated a large fortune. At the age
of seventy-five he divided this fortune among his children, intending to
retire; but he could find pleasure and comfort only in the routine of
business. In six months he was back in his office. He borrowed
twenty-five thousand dollars on his past reputation and started in to
have some fun. I was his only employee at the time, and I sat across the
big double desk from him, writing his letters and keeping his accounts.
He would sit for hours, planning for the establishment of some industry
or running out the lines that would entangle some old adversary. I did
not stay with him very long, but before I left, he had a half-dozen
thriving industries on his hands, and when he died three years later he
had accumulated another fortune of over a million dollars.
That is an example of what I mean by the fascination that the technique
of one's craft may come to possess. It is the joy of doing well the work
that you know how to do. The finer points of technique,--those little
things that seem so trivial in themselves and yet which mean everything
to skill and efficiency,--what pride the competent artisan or the master
artist takes in these! How he delights to revel in the jargon of his
craft! How he prides himself in possessing the knowledge and the
technical skill that are denied the layman!
I am aware that I am somewhat unorthodox in urging this view of your
work upon you. Teachers have been encouraged to believe that details are
not only unimportant but stultifying,--that teaching ability is a
function of personality, and not a product of a technique that must be
acquired through the strenuous discipline of experience. One of the most
skillful teachers of my acquaintance is a woman down in the grades. I
have watched her work for days at a time, striving to learn its secret.
I can find nothing there that is due to genius,--unless we accept George
Eliot's definition of genius as an infinite capacity for receiving
discipline. That teacher's success, by her own statement, is due to a
mastery of technique, gained through successive years of growth checked
by a rigid responsibility for results. She has found out by repeated
trial how to do her work in the best way; she has discovered the
attitude toward her pupils that will get the best work from them,--the
clearest methods of presenting subject matter; the most effective ways
in which to drill; how to use text-books and make study periods issue in
something besides mischief; and, more than all else, how to do these
things without losing sight of the true end of education. Very
frequently I have taken visiting school men to see this teacher's work.
Invariably after leaving her room they have turned to me with such
expressions as these: "A born teacher!" "What interest!" "What a
personality!" "What a voice!"--everything, in fact, except this,--which
would have been the truth: "What a tribute to years of effort and
struggle and self-discipline!"
I have a theory which I have never exploited very seriously, but I will
give it to you for what it is worth. It is this: elementary education
especially needs a literary interpretation. It needs a literary artist
who will portray to the public in the form of fiction the real life of
the elementary school,--who will idealize the technique of teaching as
Kipling idealized the technique of the marine engineer, as Balzac
idealized the technique of the journalist, as Du Maurier and a hundred
other novelists have idealized the technique of the artist. We need some
one to exploit our shop-talk on the reading public, and to show up our
work as you and I know it, not as you and I have been told by laymen
that it ought to be,--a literature of the elementary school with the
cant and the platitudes and the goody-goodyism left out, and in their
place something of the virility, of the serious study, of the manful
effort to solve difficult problems, of the real and vital achievements
that are characteristic of thousands of elementary schools throughout
the country to-day.
At first you will be fascinated by the novelty of your work. But that
soon passes away. Then comes the struggle,--then comes the period, be it
long or short, when you will work with your eyes upon the clock, when
you will count the weeks, the days, the hours, the minutes that lie
between you and vacation time. Then will be the need for all the
strength and all the energy that you can summon to your aid. Fail here,
and your fate is decided once and for all. If, in your work, you never
get beyond this stage, you will never become the true craftsman. You
will never taste the joy that is vouchsafed the expert, the efficient
craftsman.
The length of this period varies with different individuals. Some
teachers "find themselves" quickly. They seem to settle at once into the
teaching attitude. With others is a long, uphill fight. But it is safe
to say that if, at the end of three years, your eyes still habitually
seek the clock,--if, at the end of that time, your chief reward is the
check that comes at the end of every fourth week,--then your doom is
sealed.