IV

Lacking this accurate type of data regarding methods, the next recourse

is to the actual teaching of those teachers who are recognized as

efficient. Wherever such a teacher may be found, his or her work is well

worth the most careful sort of study. Success, of course, may be due to

other factors than the methods employed,--to personality, for example.

But, in every case of recognized efficiency in teaching that I have

observed, I have found that the methods employed have, in the main, been

productive of good results when used by others. The experienced teacher

comes, through a process of trial and error, to select, perhaps

unconsciously, the methods that work best. Sometimes these are not

always to be identified with the methods that theoretical pedagogy had

worked out from _a priori_ bases. For example, the type of lesson which

I call the "deductive development" lesson[7] is one that is not included

in the older discussions of method; yet it accurately describes one of

the methods employed by a very successful teacher whose work I

observed.

One way, then, to improve the efficiency of young teachers, in so far as

improvement in methods leads to improved efficiency, is to encourage the

observation of expert teaching. The plan of giving teachers visiting

days often brings excellent results, especially if the teacher looks

upon the privilege in the proper light. The hyper-critical spirit is

fatal to growth under any condition. Whenever a teacher has come to the

conclusion that he or she has nothing to learn from studying the work of

others, anabolism has ceased and katabolism has set in. The

self-sufficiency of our craft is one of its weakest characteristics. It

is the factor that more than any other discounts it in the minds of

laymen. Fortunately it is less frequently a professional characteristic

than in former years, but it still persists in some quarters. I recently

met a "pedagogue" who impressed me as the most "knowing" individual that

it had ever been my privilege to become acquainted with. An enthusiastic

friend of his, in dilating upon this man's virtues, used these words:

"When you propose a subject of conversation in whatever field you may

choose, you will find that he has mastered it to bed rock. He will go

over it once and you think that he is wise. He starts at the beginning

and goes over it again, and you realize that he is deep. Once more he

traverses the same ground, but he is so far down now that you cannot

follow him, and then you are aware that he is profound." That sort of

profundity is still not rare in the field of general education. The

person who has all possible knowledge pigeonholed and classified is

still in our midst. The pedant still does the cause of education

incalculable injury.

Of the use to which reading circles may be put in improving the

efficiency of teaching, it is necessary to say but little. Such

organizations, under wise leadership, may doubtless be made to serve a

good purpose in promoting professional enthusiasm. The difficulty with

using them to promote immediate and direct efficiency lies in the

paucity of the literature that is at our disposal. Most of our

present-day works upon education are very general in their nature. They

are not without their value, but this value is general and indirect

rather than immediate and specific. A book like Miss Winterburn's

_Methods of Teaching_, or Chubb's _Teaching of English_[8] is especially

valuable for young teachers who are looking for first-hand helps. But

books like this are all too rare in our literature.

On the whole, I think that the improvement of teachers in the matter of

methods is the most unsatisfactory part of our problem.[9] All that one

can say is that the work of the best teachers should be observed

carefully and faithfully, that the methods upon which there is little or

no dispute should be given and accepted as standard, but that one should

be very careful about giving young teachers an idea that there is any

single form under which all teaching can be subsumed. I know of no term

that is more thoroughly a misnomer in our technical vocabulary than the

term "general method." I teach a subject that often goes by that name,

but I always take care to explain that the name does not mean, in my

class, what the words seem to signify. There are certain broad and

general principles which describe very crudely and roughly and

inadequately certain phases of certain processes that mind undergoes in

organizing experience--perception, apperception, conception, induction,

deduction, inference, generalization, and the like. But these terms have

only a vague and general connotation; or, if their connotation is

specific and definite, it has been made so by an artificial process of

definition in which counsel is darkened by words without meaning. The

only full-fledged law that I know of in the educative process is the law

of habit building--(1) focalization, (2) attentive repetition at

intervals of increasing length, (3) permitting no exception--and I am

often told that this "law" is fallacious. It has differed from some

other so-called laws, however, in this respect: it always works.

Whenever a complex habit is adduced that has not been formed through the

operation of this law, I am willing to give it up.

V

A third general method of improving the efficiency of teaching is to

build up the notion of responsibility for results. The teacher must not

only take the message and deliver it to Garcia, or to some other

individual as definite and tangible, but he must also bring the answer.

So far as I know there is no other way to insure a maximum of efficiency

than to demand certain results and to hold the individual responsible

for gaining these results. The present standards of the teaching craft

are less rigorous than they should be in this respect. We need a craft

spirit that will judge every man impartially by his work, not by

secondary criteria. You remember Finlayson in Kipling's _Bridge

Builders_, and the agony with which he watched the waters of the Ganges

tearing away at the caissons of his new bridge. A vital question of

Finlayson's life was to be answered by the success or failure of those

caissons to resist the flood. If they should yield, it meant not only

the wreck of the bridge, but the wreck of his career; for, as Kipling

says, "Government might listen, perhaps, but his own kind would judge

him by his bridge as that stood or fell."

President Hall has said that one of the last sentiments to be developed

in human nature is "the sense of responsibility, which is one of the

highest and most complex psychic qualities." How to develop this

sentiment of responsibility is one of the most pressing problems of

education. And the problem is especially pressing in those departments

of education that train for social service. To engender in the young

teacher an effective prejudice against scamped work, against the making

of excuses, against the seductive allurements of ease and comfort and

the lines of least resistance is one of the most important duties that

is laid upon the normal school, the training school, and the teachers'

college. To do well the work that has been set for him to do should be

the highest ambition of every worker, the ambition to which all other

ambitions and desires are secondary and subordinate. Pride in the

mastery of the technique of one's calling is the most wholesome and

helpful sort of pride that a man can indulge in. The joy of doing each

day's work in the best possible manner is the keenest joy of life. But

this pride and this joy do not come at the outset. Like all other good

things of life, they come only as the result of effort and struggle and

strenuous self-discipline and dogged perseverance. The emotional

coloring which gives these things their subjective worth is a matter

very largely of contrast. Success must stand out against a background of

struggle, or the chief virtue of success--the consciousness of

conquest--will be entirely missed. That sort of success means strength;

for strength of mind is nothing more than the ability to "hew to the

line," to follow a given course of effort to a successful conclusion, no

matter how long and how tedious be the road that one must travel, no

matter how disagreeable are the tasks involved, no matter how tempting

are the insidious siren songs of momentary fancy.

What teachers need--what all workers need--is to be inspired with those

ideals and prejudices that will enable them to work steadfastly and

unremittingly toward the attainment of a stated end. What inspired Rowan

with those ideals of efficiency that enabled him to carry his message

and bring back the answer, I do not know, but if he was a soldier, I do

not hesitate to hazard an opinion. Our regular army stands as the

clearest type of efficient service which is available for our study and

emulation. The work of Colonel Goethals on the Panama Canal bids fair to

be the finest fruit of the training that we give to the officers of our

army. If we wish to learn the fundamental virtues of that training, it

is not sufficient to study the curriculum of the Military Academy.

Technical knowledge and skill are essential to such results, but they

are not the prime essentials. If you wish to know what the prime

essentials are, let me refer you to a series of papers, entitled _The

Spirit of Old West Point_, which ran through a recent volume of the

_Atlantic Monthly_ and which has since been published in book form.

They constitute, to my mind, one of the most important educational

documents of the present decade. The army service is efficient because

it is inspired with effective ideals of service,--ideals in which every

other desire and ambition is totally and completely subordinated to the

ideal of duty. To those who maintain that close organization and

definite prescription kill initiative and curtail efficiency, the record

of West Point and the army service should be a silencing argument.

And yet education is more important than war; more important, even, than

the building of the Panama Canal. We believe, and rightly, that no

training is too good for our military and naval officers; that no

discipline which will produce the appropriate habits and ideals and

prejudices is too strenuous; that no individual sacrifice of comfort or

ease is too costly. Equal or even commensurable efficiency in education

can come only through a like process. From the times of the ancient

Egyptians to the present day, one vital truth has been revealed in every

forward movement; the homely truth that you cannot make bricks without

straw; you cannot win success without effort; you cannot attain

efficiency without undergoing the processes of discipline; and

discipline means only this: doing things that you do not want to do, for

the sake of reaching some end that ought to be attained.

The normal schools and the training schools and the teachers' colleges

must be the nurseries of craft ideals and standards. The instruction

that they offer must be upon a plane that will command respect. The

intolerable pedantry and the hypocritical goody-goodyism must be

banished forever. The crass sentimentalism by which we attempt to cover

our paucity of craft ideals must also be eliminated. Those who are most

strongly imbued with ideals are not those who cheapen the value of

ideals by constant verbal reiteration. Ideals do not often come through

explicitly imparted precepts. They come through more impalpable and

hidden channels,--now through stately buildings with vine-covered towers

from which the past speaks in the silence of great halls and cloistered

retreats; now through the unwritten and scarcely spoken traditions that

are expressed in the very bearing and attitude of those to whom youth

looks for inspiration and guidance; now through a dominant and powerful

personality, sometimes rough and crude, sometimes warm-hearted and

lovable, but always sincere. Traditions and ideals are the most

priceless part of a school's equipment, and the school that can give

these things to its students in richest measure will have the greatest

influence on the succeeding generations.