I
Efficiency seems to be a word to conjure with in these days. Popular
speech has taken it in its present connotation from the technical
vocabulary of engineering, and the term has brought with it a very
refreshing sense of accuracy and practicality. It suggests blueprints
and T-squares and mathematical formulæ. A faint and rather pleasant odor
of lubricating oil and cotton waste seems to hover about it. The
efficiency of a steam engine or a dynamo is a definitely determinable
and measurable factor, and when we use the term "efficiency" in popular
speech we convey through the word somewhat of this quality of certainty
and exactitude.
An efficient man, very obviously, is a man who "makes good," who
surmounts obstacles, overcomes difficulties, and "gets results." Rowan,
the man who achieved immortality on account of a certain message that he
carried to Garcia, is the contemporary standard of human efficiency. He
was given a task to do, and he did it. He did not stop to inquire
whether it was interesting, or whether it was easy, or whether it would
be remunerative, or whether Garcia was a pleasant man to meet. He simply
took the message and brought back the answer. Here we have efficiency in
human endeavor reduced to its lowest terms: to take a message and to
bring back an answer; to do the work that is laid out for one to do
without shirking or "soldiering" or whining; and to "make good," to get
results.
Now if we are to improve the efficiency of the teacher, the first thing
to do is to see that the conditions of efficiency are fulfilled as far
as possible at the outset. In other words, efficiency is impossible
unless one is set a certain task to accomplish. Rowan was told to carry
a message to Garcia. He was to carry it to Garcia, not to Queen Victoria
or Li Hung Chang or J. Pierpont Morgan, or any one else whom he may have
felt inclined to choose as its recipient. And that is just where Rowan
had a decided advantage over many teachers who have every ambition to be
just as efficient as he was. To expect a young teacher not only to get
results, but also to determine the results that should be obtained,
multiplies his chances of failure, not by two, as one might assume at
first thought, but almost by infinity.
Let me give an example of what I mean. A young man graduated from
college during the hard times of the middle nineties. It was imperative
that he secure some sort of a remunerative employment, but places were
very scarce and he had to seek a long time before he found anything to
which he could turn his hand. The position that he finally secured was
that of teacher in an ungraded school in a remote settlement.
School-teaching was far from his thoughts and still farther from his
ambitions, but forty dollars a month looked too good to be true,
especially as he had come to the point where his allowance of food
consisted of one plate of soup each day, with the small supply of
crackers that went with it. He accepted the position most gratefully.
He taught this school for two years. He had no supervision. He read
various books on the science and art of teaching and upon a certain
subject that went by the name of psychology, but he could see no
connection between what these books told him and the tasks that he had
to face. Finally he bought a book that was advertised as indispensable
to young teachers. The first words of the opening paragraph were these:
"Teacher, if you know it all, don't read this book." The young man threw
the volume in the fire. He had no desire to profit by the teaching of an
author who began his instruction with an insult. From that time until he
left the school, he never opened a book on educational theory.
His first year passed off with what appeared to be the most encouraging
success. He talked to his pupils on science and literature and history.
They were very good children, and they listened attentively. When he
tired of talking, he set the pupils to writing in their copy books,
while he thought of more things to talk about. He covered a great deal
of ground that first year. Scarcely a field of human knowledge was left
untouched. His pupils were duly informed about the plants and rocks and
trees, about the planets and constellations, about atoms and molecules
and the laws of motion, about digestion and respiration and the wonders
of the nervous system, about Shakespeare and Dickens and George Eliot.
And his pupils were very much interested in it all. Their faces had that
glow of interest, that look of wonderment and absorption, that you get
sometimes when you tell a little four-year-old the story of the three
bears. He never had any troubles of discipline, because he never asked
his pupils to do anything that they did not wish to do. There were six
pupils in his "chart class." They were anxious to learn to read, and
three of them did learn. Their mothers taught them at home. The other
three were still learning at the end of the second year. He concluded
that they had been "born short," but he liked them and they liked him.
He did not teach his pupils spelling or writing. If they learned these
things they learned them without his aid, and it is safe to say that
they did not learn them in any significant measure. He did not like
arithmetic, and so he just touched on it now and then for the sake of
appearances.
This teacher was elected for the following year at a handsome increase
of salary. He took this to mean a hearty indorsement of his methods;
consequently he followed the same general plan the next year. He had
told his pupils about everything that he knew, so he started over again,
much to their delight. He left at the close of the year, amidst general
lamentation. School-teaching was a delightful occupation, but he had
mastered the art, and now he wished to attack something that was really
difficult. He would study law. It is no part of the story that he did
not. Neither is it part of the story that his successor had a very hard
time getting that school straightened out; in fact, I believe it
required three or four successive successors to make even an impression.
Now that man's work was a failure, and the saddest kind of a failure,
for he did not realize that he had failed until years afterward. He
failed, not because he lacked ambition and enthusiasm; he had a large
measure of both these indispensable qualities. He failed, not because he
lacked education and a certain measure of what the world calls culture;
from the standpoint of education, he was better qualified than most
teachers in schools of that type. He failed, not because he lacked
social spirit and the ability to coöperate with the church and the home;
he mingled with the other members of the community, lived their life and
thought their thoughts and enjoyed their social diversions. The
community liked him and respected him. His pupils liked him and
respected him; and yet what he fears most of all to-day is that he may
come suddenly face to face with one of those pupils and be forced to
listen to a first-hand account of his sins of omission.
This man failed simply because he did not do what the elementary teacher
must do if he is to be efficient as an elementary teacher. He did not
train his pupils in the habits that are essential to one who is to live
the social life. He gave them a miscellaneous lot of interesting
information which held their attention while it lasted, but which was
never mastered in any real sense of the term, and which could have but
the most superficial influence upon their future conduct. But, worst of
all, he permitted bad and inadequate habits to be developed at the most
critical and plastic period of life. His pupils had followed the lines
of least effort, just as he had followed the lines of least effort. The
result was a well-established prejudice against everything that was not
superficially attractive and intrinsically interesting.
Now this man's teaching fell short simply because he did not know what
results he ought to obtain. He had been given a message to deliver, but
he did not know to whom he should deliver it. Consequently he brought
the answer, not from Garcia, but from a host of other personages with
whom he was better acquainted, whose language he could speak and
understand, and from whom he was certain of a warm welcome. In other
words, having no definite results for which he would be held
responsible, he did the kind of teaching that he liked to do. That
might, under certain conditions, have been the best kind of teaching
for his pupils. But these conditions did not happen to operate at that
time. The answer that he brought did not happen to be the answer that
was needed. That it pleased his employers does not in the least mitigate
the failure. That a teacher pleases the community in which he works is
not always evidence of his success. It is dangerous to make a statement
like this, for some are sure to jump to the opposite conclusion and
assume that one who is unpopular in the community is the most
successful. Needless to say, the reasoning is fallacious. The matter of
popularity is a secondary criterion, not a primary criterion of the
efficiency of teaching. One may be successful and popular or successful
and unpopular; unsuccessful and popular or unsuccessful and unpopular.
The question of popularity is beside the question of efficiency,
although it may enter into specific cases as a factor.