The New Spirit in Education
I
IN one of his most engaging essays, Ian Hay relates an anecdote about a graduate of a famous British public school whom he asked for a few reminiscences of a former headmaster, — his mannerisms, his prejudices, his hobbies, — in short, his personality.
‘He was a holy terror,’ announced the Old Boy, after a moment’s rumination.
‘Quite so, but in what way?’
‘I can’t remember anything particular about him except that he was a holy terror — and the greatest man that ever lived.’
‘But can’t you tell me something personal about him? Did n’t you ever meet him?’
‘Oh, yes, I met him,’ was the reply, with visible emotion. ‘Three or four times. And that reminds me, I can tell you something personal about him. The old swine was left-handed! A great man, a very great man.’
In some such unpredictable fashion romantic traditions gather around bygone schoolmasters. A teacher may have original theories of education and a passionate desire to inspire his pupils; yet all his ‘saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,’ will vanish, leaving only some paltry residuum. What do you and I recall to-day of that Pons Asinorum over which we struggled? How many of Vergil’s smooth hexameters — let’s be honest with ourselves! — could we read before the fire, without a translation, with either pleasure or profit?
What we do remember is only too often some isolated fact upon which the instructor laid no stress. For many years my boys preparing for college had to read the poetry of John Keats. I was accustomed to draw their attention to the melody, the irresistible magic, of the marvelous lines in the noble odes. Yet the one detail which every student retained as an alumnus — a point which I always mentioned casually, without emphasis — was that Keats was born in a livery stable, at the sign of the Swan and Hoop. By what weird cerebral process ‘ faery lands forlorn’ should be forgotten while this trivial genealogical accident should be retained in the mind I leave to the psychologist to explain.
Even when we think we remember, we are sometimes mistaken. An old Andoverian was recently eulogizing one of his most stimulating masters. ‘To this day, because of something he said,’declared the graduate, ‘I have never forgotten the word for “owl” in Latin. Almost two decades later I distinctly recollect it, though in looking it up in my abridged Latin dictionary I find it not even listed. But I shall never forget hibou.’
It is understandable why the word in question was not in the lexicon, for the term employed by the Romans was bubo, not hibou. That such a blunder should be made reflects no discredit upon either teacher or pupil. The significant matter is that, although the instructor was one of the most gifted in the United States, what one of his students recalled most distinctly was the Latin word for ‘owl’ — and that inaccurately. From the standpoint of factual knowledge, that course was not an unqualified success.
Considered unphilosophically, such stories should make us skeptical and desperate. But when the worst has been alleged, when it is conceded that, except in vocational and professional schools, facts have a disconcerting habit of vanishing from the memory, there still remains ground for optimism. When knowledge disappears, something more valuable may linger — an enduring curiosity or ambition aroused by the spirit of a great teacher. Someone said of Sanderson of Oundle, ‘He did not want to deck-load a boy with knowledge, but rather fit him out as “well-found” and seaworthy for the voyage of life.’ The ideal education is that which an immature mind absorbs almost unconsciously from close contact with a more mature one — such relationship as existed between Alexander Hamilton and George Washington, between John Hay and Abraham Lincoln, between Henry Cabot Lodge and Henry Adams. In Hamilton, Hay, and Lodge some fire was kindled by association with a glowing intellect, and the flame was one which the world will not willingly let die.
If we could make each promising youth private secretary to some Roosevelt or Wilson, with an opportunity to observe and imitate, we should be establishing a perfect system of education. Unfortunately this is not always practicable. What can be done is to place boys in schools where they will be touched and stirred by genuine personalities — not pedants, not cloistered hermits, not specialists, but men.
Even this policy cannot always be followed, for such men and such schools are rare. But it is comforting to know that conditions are better than they were. It is easy to be critical of presentday schools and colleges, and perhaps those of us who have been long associated with them discern their weaknesses too clearly. Only when we investigate the practice of a century ago can we realize how much advancement has been made. Our schools are far from flawless, but they are highly civilized as compared with those of Ichabod Crane’s day. Although we have no basis for complacency, a comparison may possibly dissipate our gloom and convince us that, while we have not yet arrived, we are at least definitely on the right path.
II
The curriculum of our grandfathers in both preparatory schools and colleges consisted almost entirely of Latin, Greek, and Mathematics. Asked the question how Harvard prepared its class of 1856 for ‘this active, bustling, hard-hitting, many-tongued world, caring little for authority and little for the past,’ Charles Francis Adams replied that it compelled him and his classmates, directly and indirectly, to devote the best part of their school lives ‘to acquiring a confessedly superficial knowledge of two dead languages.’ In 1877, Dr. Roswell D. Hitchcock, speaking at the inauguration of President Seelye, of Amherst, said, ‘It must not be forgotten that the three grand staples of a liberal culture are Mathematics, Greek, and Latin; and in this order.’ A theologian who could be so dogmatic upon the subject of education must have been happily free from doubt on every controversial matter. In the twentieth century we are perhaps a little less confident. The day for experimentation, even for improvement, has not quite gone by.
It seems only yesterday that the course of study in reputable schools included no American history, civics, or economics, very little science, almost no contemporary literature, and only a hint of music and the fine arts. The programme at Andover in the 1860’s, like that of other New England academies, consisted of heavy doses of the classics and mathematics, lightened by some public speaking and Bible study. As a schoolboy in Central New York when the new century opened, I read Johnson’s Rasselas and Burke’s Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies — works as little fitted to my childish intelligence as a full dress suit would be to a native Eskimo. In general, it is fair to say that seventy-five years ago virtually no direct attempt was made to train boys — or girls — to adjust themselves to the environment in which, after leaving school, their lot was to be cast.
The methods of instruction were still mediæval, not to say primitive. The universal practice was the recitation, adopted as a convenient opportunity of ascertaining whether or not the student had learned the assigned lesson. There was little discussion in the classroom, the teacher laying down the law from his throne and the pupil submissively accepting it. Independent thinking was neither encouraged nor tolerated. The textbook was, as a rule, the unquestioned source of information. The routine was fixed, and punishments were frequently inflicted. A favorite procedure in the 1820’s was the verbatim memorization of Cheever’s Accidence, a Latin grammar of the period. Very little effort was made to arouse interest in a subject. The master’s doctrine was, ‘ Learn this — if you don’t, I’ll make you.’ The relationship between him and his students was what Professor George Herbert Palmer called ‘an ignoble game of matching wits, in which the teacher is smart if he can catch the boy, and the boy is smart if he can know nothing without being found out.’ This indictment may sound too severe, even to those who were sufferers from the system; but it can be sustained by evidence from innumerable sources. Good teachers appeared throughout the century, but they were hampered by tradition, by formalism, and by an unwillingness to defy the custom of the country.
School was looked upon, in general, as a place to be avoided. I have been at some pains to collect quotations from well-known men regarding their school days, and they constitute material for a doctor’s thesis on ‘The Pessimistic Alumnus.’ ’I have often wondered,’ wrote Senator Lodge, ‘why there is so little real education to be had, and why, as a rule, what passes under that name is so dry and meaningless and sometimes so repulsive.’ Henry Adams reckoned his preparatory school training, from ten to sixteen years old, ‘as time thrown away.’ The attitude of children toward their instructors was one of fear and awe. The great headmasters were both policemen and detectives, lying in wait for possible offenders and spying upon them in their indiscretions. There was no friendliness, no feeling that both teachers and taught were associated together in the pursuit of knowledge.
I have been trying scrupulously not to paint a false picture. But it is difficult not to remember a group of miserable lads huddled together before dawn on a January Monday to write down the headings of a yesterday’s sermon on Justification by Faith; a bevy of full-blooded youngsters on a June afternoon mumbling in unison a list of deponent verbs, while their thoughts were out under the warm sky; or a slow-minded but sensitive child literally writhing under the caustic comments of a pedagogical bully. Those who survived best were the callous, the rugged, the sophisticated. All were put through the same ritual, like ‘rookies’ in the army, for each one of whom the standardized routine was considered to be equally efficacious. The shy and the impudent, the reticent and the garrulous, the sluggish and the clever, had identical treatment. Education was tacitly viewed as a process by which information was driven into a resisting cranium. From this experience, the victim was supposed to emerge with a sounder character because of the ordeal which he had endured.
Gradually, and not without resistance to reforms, education has become more intelligent and efficient. Herbert Spencer, in his epoch-making articles of the 1850’s, expounded a liberal doctrine: ‘Education of whatever kind has for its proximate end to prepare a child for the business of life’; ‘Throughout youth, as in early childhood and in maturity, the process of education should be one of self-instruction’; ‘The efficiency of tuition will, other things being equal, be proportionate to the gratification with which tasks are performed.’ These ideas, though not new, were stated with exceptional vigor and gained recognition from the public. Progressive Education was organized as a movement and slowly adopted as a creed. No one familiar with educational gatherings to-day can deny that there has been an astounding change in the attitude of the teacher toward his pupils. He regards them now as individuals, not as a dozen or a hundred similar units, and treats them not only with firmness but also with sympathy.
Among the specific improvements, the curriculum has been modernized and enriched for the benefit of the students. The excessive amount of foreign languages and of mathematics is being reduced, and will be still further diminished. History has at last been assigned a prominent position in the course of study, and increased attention is being paid to science and the fine arts. Hobbies of various kinds are permitted and encouraged. In order to ascertain what fields of knowledge a boy should enter, he is subjected to a battery of tests, calculated to reveal aptitudes and tendencies. In the better schools, public and private, the masters look upon themselves as physicians of the mind, whose duty it is to discover differences in personality and make allowances for them. Obviously the point may be reached beyond which no sensible school wishes to go. The morons, the hopelessly stubborn, the neurotic, and the congenitally diseased cannot be handled like normal boys. But even in a group of those who are plainly to become average citizens, the deviations from type are sufficiently numerous to require tact. The policy of beating every delinquent until he does his task is antiquated. No doubt there are some bull-necked youths for whom a sound caning is advantageous, but ninety-nine out of a hundred flourish under kindness, like flowers in the sun.
III
If these remarks seem platitudinous, I am glad, for their truth must then be incontrovertible. The proper procedure with a boy who is deficient in his French or his biology is first to find out why he is failing — not to drop him out of school or crush him with restrictions. In justice to him he should be examined with the same care which a doctor employs in a case of mumps. Distorted glands, enlarged tonsils, a poor physical inheritance, a nerve-racking family history, even a recent bereavement — any one of these may be responsible; and it is the business of a good school to seek the cause before applying a remedy. Almost by accident I discovered that a fine sturdy young fellow who did not seem to be doing well needed an oculist; and the specialist reported that the lad was afflicted with ‘mirror vision,’ probably congenital, which had made reading for him a tedious, almost a painful operation. No wonder that he did not make progress!
So far as methods are concerned, education has undergone in three generations almost a complete revolution. It used to be axiomatic that the power of a master’s will or the swish of his cane could counteract the most sinful propensities of boy nature. To some extent this could be done, especially with pupils of better than average intelligence, whose minds could be forced to function even in subjects which they instinctively detested. Many of this type have battled with required mathematics and passed examinations creditably, only to abandon figures forever as soon as they escaped from compulsion. It was Herbert Spencer who said, very wisely, ‘As long as the acquisition of knowledge is rendered habitually repugnant, so long will there be a prevailing tendency to discontinue it when free from the coercion of parents and masters.’
If we believe that education is an unceasing, continuous process from the cradle to the grave, and not just a list of courses or a succession of unrelated and jerky movements of a zigzag variety, we must create intellectual curiosity and not kill it. Doubtless the patience required for battling with an incorrigible antipathy contributes to the building of character, in spite of the allegation of modern psychologists that such a transfer of power does not exist. But we may pay too heavy a price for the iron which is supposed to enter the soul through incessant drill in case endings. Iron is a resistant metal, and may become rusty. The boy trained by the pounding system may please his teacher for the moment, but the ultimate result may be that indicated by Bishop William Lawrence in his delightful Memories of a Happy Life: ‘We studied our Latin and Greek grammar, learned interminable lists of exceptions to rules, and in spite, no doubt, of the best teaching of that time, those of us who were of only average ability got a distaste for the classical authors for whose enjoyment we had struggled through the grammar.’ I have in mind a brightlooking youth who had ‘taken’ firstyear Latin five times. ‘Say, I don’t believe I know as much about it now as I did when I had had it three months,’ he confessed the other day. Certainly nature did not intend him to be a classicist.
Not long ago a relative of mine who had suffered from inexplicable attacks of illness consulted a specialist who, after a rapid and picturesque investigation, announced that his patient was peculiarly susceptible to eggs in any form or disguise. Eggs were eliminated from her diet, and she shortly recovered health and happiness. I can understand how a boy may undergo tortures from chronic grammar poisoning and develop a kind of permanent mental ailment. But I was told that my aunt, if her case had been treated judiciously, could have acquired an immunity to the obnoxious eggs. The method, however, was all-important. So, too, a shrewd teacher can overcome a pupil’s initial aversion to such a subject as physics. If you beat a dog for refusing to enter the water, he usually will either growl or cringe, depending on his disposition; but I have often watched a wise master gradually urge a puppy toward a stream and finally persuade him to swim across it. Dr. Alexander Meiklejohn once said, in connection with a similar problem, ‘I admit that you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink. I admit you cannot make a student drink, but I believe you can make him thirsty.’ This principle is, I am sure, fundamental in education.
Some of our modern classrooms would shock a teacher of half a century ago because of their informality. Boys no longer sit in rigid positions at uncomfortable desks, making recitations by coming forward to the platform and standing awkwardly in front of their mates. In some schools they gather around a table, talking and discussing in an easy, natural manner. There is order, — discipline, if you wish to call it so, — but it is not the constant supervision of the old days. There is less imposition of authority on the part of the instructor, and less docility on the part of the student. The more brilliant boys are allowed greater freedom for development and self-instruction. The plodders are guided more slowly and watchfully over the same path. When school days have been left behind, the graduates look back at them without shuddering and even with a feeling that the pursuit of knowledge is not altogether an ordeal.
IV
That the modern school is a friendly, somewhat intimate place — not a penitentiary — is due largely to the influence of the teacher. The old-time pedagogue was likely to be remote, inaccessible, and austere, convinced that his function was chiefly punitive. His twentieth-century successor is more amiable, more coöperative, perhaps more worldly. It must be admitted that there were even a century ago some wise and stimulating teachers, with the ability to arouse younger disciples. But with even the best of them the relationship was that between a drill sergeant and his squad of privates, and the idea of compulsion was seldom absent. The modern technique has given real teachers a chance.
We have learned to-day that each boy, no matter where he goes to school, really educates himself; that is, his inherited inclinations, his temperament, his subconscious urges and animosities, determine the direction in which his curiosity will turn. It would have been useless to try to mould Macaulay into a mathematician or Burbank into a poet. Some remote, uncharted ancestor may be responsible for a lad’s adventures in astronomy or his hatred for linguistic study; and his personality, complex and often contradictory in its elements, is the blending of factors which science is only just beginning to discern and define. Furthermore, it changes with the process of growth so that a bent which has been inconspicuous until adolescence will suddenly become a dominant motive in a boy’s conduct. Unerringly each pupil in a class is selecting the material which excites him most; and his success will be largely determined by the strength and permanence of his interest.
Practical minds will immediately ask whether there is not an irreducible minimum of knowledge with which every child, whether he likes it or not, must be acquainted. This cannot be disputed. A future American citizen should know how to speak and read and write his own language, how to carry through simple processes in arithmetic, how to adjust himself to his neighbors. He should be acquainted with the history of his country, with its form and methods of government, with its geography, with its famous men and women; he should be exposed to the assumptions and conclusions of science; and he should be taught some appreciation of music and the other fine arts.
These things are, I think, essential. Beyond these, at a stage not yet accurately determined, differentiation should begin. It is pitiful to watch a lad without an ear for harmony forced by an adoring but foolish mother to spend hours in pounding the keys of a piano; and it is equally sad to observe a boy with a passion for snakes and bugs having his ardor quenched by a pail of pedagogical ice water.
The responsibility rests ultimately with the teacher, who, after the statistics have been compiled and the graphs prepared, must administer the appropriate treatment — encouragement to the timid, warning to the indolent, even reproof to the refractory. The recent movement for smaller classes has justification, for it enables a master to bestow more personal attention upon his pupils. But, above all, the relationship between them and him must be cordial. When I first became a headmaster, I found that every boy summoned to my office entered trembling with apprehension. Having ascertained that one of the ablest seniors was without a good suit of clothes for Commencement, I sent for him to offer him twenty-five dollars from a fund at my disposal. He walked in visibly frightened and, as he sat down, asked with a forced smile, ‘What have I done, sir?’ I hastened to reassure him, and the tears came into his eyes. We were soon on friendly terms and his embarrassment vanished. But the incident taught me a very salutary lesson.
Every faculty member should treat his students as if they were to become his equals, perhaps his superiors. He will do well to reflect on the case of a certain Samuel Johnson, once a schoolmaster, who had as a student a quickwitted lad named David Garrick. After the school failed for lack of patronage, the two went together to London, where the younger man forged rapidly ahead of his senior. While the future Great Lexicographer was struggling obscurely in Grub Street, the actor was accumulating a fortune at Drury Lane. The clumsy, slow-moving Johnson was temporarily outstripped in the race of life by a youngster who only a short time before had been reciting to him a list of Latin prepositions taking the ablative. No teacher can tell what Wilson, what Pershing, what Robert Frost, may be occupying that third seat from the left in the back row. Professor Garman at Amherst taught within a few years Dwight W. Morrow, Justice Harlan F. Stone, Congressman Bertrand H. Snell, and Calvin Coolidge.
V
It has been intimated that conditions in our schools are better now than they were. What has been called the Progressive Education Movement has done much to alter the situation. The Progressive Educators, like all enthusiasts, have sometimes gone too far. Among them have been fanatics, emotionalists, charlatans, contemptuous of traditions, aiming chiefly to criticize and destroy. But it is largely because of the sanity, the courage, and the persistence of their leaders that education in the United States is more effective under Franklin Roosevelt than it was under Andrew Jackson.
It would not be amiss if teachers took a day off once a month to meditate on what it is all about — what their function is and how it can best be fulfilled. We can dispense a certain amount of essential information, such as details about case endings and algebraic formulas, the names of important artists, the dates of the Norman Conquest and the Battle of Bunker Hill, the facts regarding the Manchester School, the Binomial Theorem, and the arresting of diabetes. We can give a boy power by teaching him how to speak and write convincingly, how to budget his time, how to distinguish between a Velasquez and a chromo. We can even build his character, by developing through precept and example a fondness for truth and a recognition of the meaning of noblesse oblige; for, in spite of contrary opinion, we cannot in our schools ignore the basic principles of morality, of civic responsibility, of unselfishness, of individual subordination to the common good. Finally we can so interest him in his mental and spiritual progress that he will toil unceasingly to expand and intensify his powers. ‘My education,’ wrote Calvin Coolidge, ‘began with a set of blocks which had on them the Roman numerals and the letters of the alphabet. It is not yet finished.’ For a man who amounts to anything education is limitless, and is being acquired at sixty as well as at sixteen.
What can a teacher accomplish? He can encourage logic, arouse intellectual curiosity, inculcate the habit of weighing evidence, and foster a hatred for prejudice and bigotry. This the right kind of schoolmaster can do. And ultimately, in every discussion of this topic, we return, not to equipment or curriculums or policies, but to the personality of the teacher. If he himself has sympathy, fairness, tact, intelligence, tolerance, and a sense of humor, he can become a guide to life and leave his stamp upon a younger generation. In the hands of such a leader, education becomes what it ought to be — not just a job, but a fine art.