And so the first step to take in getting more efficient work from young
teachers, and especially from inexperienced and untrained teachers fresh
from the high school or the college, is to make sure that they know what
is expected of them. Now this looks to be a very simple precaution that
no one would be unwise enough to omit. As a matter of fact, a great many
superintendents and principals are not explicit and definite about the
results that they desire. Very frequently all that is asked of a
teacher is that he or she keep things running smoothly, keep pupils and
parents good-natured. Let me assert again that this ought to be done,
but that it is no measure of a teacher's efficiency, simply because it
can be done and often is done by means that defeat the purpose of the
school. As a young principal in a city system, I learned some vital
lessons in supervision from a very skillful teacher. She would come to
me week after week with this statement: "Tell me what you want done, and
I will do it." It took me some time to realize that that was just what I
was being paid to do,--telling teachers what should be accomplished and
then seeing that they accomplished the task that was set. When I finally
awoke to my duties, I found myself utterly at a loss to make
prescriptions. I then learned that there was a certain document known as
the course of study, which mapped out the general line of work and
indicated the minimal requirements. I had seen this course of study, but
its function had never impressed itself upon me. I had thought that it
was one of those documents that officials publish as a matter of form
but which no one is ever expected to read. But I soon discovered that a
principal had something to do besides passing from room to room, looking
wisely at the work going on, and patting little boys and girls on the
head.
Now a definite course of study is very hard to construct,--a course that
will tell explicitly what the pupils of each grade should acquire each
term or half-term in the way of habits, knowledge, ideals, attitudes,
and prejudices. But such a course of study is the first requisite to
efficiency in teaching. The system that goes by hit or miss, letting
each teacher work out his own salvation in any way that he may see fit,
is just an aggregation of such schools as that which I have described.
It is true that reformers have very strenuously criticized the policy of
restricting teachers to a definite course of study. They have maintained
that it curtails individual initiative and crushes enthusiasm. It does
this in a certain measure. Every prescription is in a sense a
restriction. The fact that the steamship captain must head his ship for
Liverpool instead of wherever he may choose to go is a restriction, and
the captain's individuality is doubtless crushed and his initiative
limited. But this result seems to be inevitable and he generally manages
to survive the blow. The course of study must be to the teacher what the
sailing orders are to the captain of the ship, what the stated course is
to the wheelsman and the officer on the bridge, what the time-table is
to the locomotive engineer, what Garcia and the message and the answer
were to Rowan. One may decry organization and prescription in our
educational system. One may say that these things tend inevitably toward
mechanism and formalism and the stultifying of initiative. But the fact
remains that, whenever prescription is abandoned, efficiency in general
is at an end.
And so I maintain that every teacher has a right to know what he is to
be held responsible for, what is expected of him, and that this
information be just as definite and unequivocal as it can be made. It is
under the stress of definite responsibility that growth is most rapid
and certain. The more uncertain and intangible the end to be gained, the
less keenly will one feel the responsibility for gaining that end.
Unhappily we cannot say to a teacher: "Here is a message. Take it to
Garcia. Bring the answer." But we may make our work far more definite
and tangible than it is now. The courses of study are becoming more and
more explicit each year. Vague and general prescriptions are giving
place to definite and specific prescriptions. The teachers know what
they are expected to do, and knowing this, they have some measure for
testing the efficiency of their own efforts.