dren.
But temperament is by no means all of life and con-
duct. In a certain sense, the older one gets, and cer-
tainly the wiser one gets, the more one outgrows one's
native temperament. Even the limitations of it are
overcome. Consequently, superficial readers of human
nature, who profess to know what a person is like as
soon as they see him, are often greatly misled. In a
certain sense, ideas are far more important than tem-
perament, the only qualification being that tempera-
ment causes one rather persistently to reject opposing
kinds of ideas. Here we come to one of the more im-
portant principles of education, that the teacher often
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CLASS TEACHING AND MANAGEMENT
should persist in that definite training of a learner which
ho most resists.
In fact, this is education, — to make to come forth
from the educatee qualities that are not likely to appear
but for and because of compulsion.
The first thing that the teacher is to recognize in
dealing with younger human beings is that they are
now to see the world through his eyes. The course of
study constitutes a panorama of views of the world.
Its pictures move slowly or rapidly as the teacher moves
them. The very moods in which the onlookers observe
the pictures are largely the making of the mover of the
panorama. These moods are matters of the adjust-
ments of the various temperaments of the teacher and
of the pupils. The panorama may move very, very
slowly, but it cannot stop, and it cannot be reversed,
for the process of time is irreversibly forward. The rate
can be greatly varied, or it may be made monotonously
the same. Some pupils are all the time losing some
picture of the panorama. None observes them all. To
announce "Same lesson to-morrow" is only juggling
with terms, for there are no "same lessons" in life, not
even in school-life. Even review lessons and tests are
in part advance work. In them, one sees more of the
panorama, by climbing higher. Often, and often in the
review, one learns more of what is really to oneself
new material than in any advance lesson. But what
one sees is largely what the teacher points out.
Secondly, in interpreting the course of study, the
teacher needs constantly to keep in mind the great units
of the relation of its subject-matter. What the child
sees are, as it were, disjecta membra, scattered limbs.
Even in liigh school and college what the youth sees are
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THE TEACHER AS INTERPRETER
but regions of knowledge rather than wholes. These
relations are not to be taught to the pupils; but they
must nevertheless not be lost sight of by the teacher,
for they give coherence and lucidity to his teaching.
Y
To illustrate: — That interest is but a higher mode of
percentage, percentage but a mode of fractions, fractions
a mode of ratio, ratio a mode of division, and division
a mode of subtraction, which last by paradox is a
mode of counting or adding the unit, — all this does
not greatly concern even a bookkeeper in charge of
accounts and certainly is beyond the needs of the primary
child; but the teacher needs to see these and even more
extensive relations of quantity and number in order to
follow the true order and method and to interpret correctly
the errors of the learners. In such a subject as history, the
teacher must know all the great movements in their causes
and chronology and comparative relations in order not to
be puzzled himself by the events that he discusses with his
class. It may indeed be that only a few of the facts thus
assembled will ever be actually required in his class teach-
ing, — that the knowledge does not often save him from con-
fessing ignorance to his young pupils, — but this is not so
much the principle in issue as that to keep his class in the
historic track, one must himself know both the track itself
and its place in universal and comparative history. To be
specific: We can hardly expect our elementary school
children to understand the meaning of the slavery question
as adults understand it ; but the teacher who does not know
that behind the slavery issue were ages-old ancestral tradi-
tions of slavery and the primitive dislike of work con-
fronted by a new social order of free wage-labor and a new
sense of the dignity of labor as a means of ambition is cer-
tain to misinterpret much of what both Douglas and Lincoln,
both Calhoun and the New England poets said about slavery.
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CLASS TEACHING AND MANAGEMENT
Third, to interpret the course of study, the teacher
needs a philosophy of knowledge. It is not enough to
have a philosophy of personal conduct and thorough
and complete knowledge of the subjects to be taught.
One recjuires also an understanding of the relations of
the great subjects of thought and science to one another.
That arithmetic is the working tool of all science and
also of all economic relations among men, that geog-
raphy explains the physical basis of history and history
tells the significance of geography, that reading and
language are the gateways to all human intercourse
upon the plane of ideas, that biology is the key to
physiology and physiology the key to psychology and
psychology in turn the key to philosophy are a few of
the simplest facts in a philosophy of knowledge. One
needs never to allude to them in an elementary class-
room, but one who is constantly in such a class-room
needs to have a mind that organizes its actual teaching
output and conducts the discipline of the pupils in the
light of just these facts. It is quite beyond the range
of this treatment to present a philosophy of knowledge,
but it is highly appropriate to say here that one who in-
tends adequately to interpret the course of study to
children will constantly throughout life endeavor to
get clearer and larger views of the interrelations of the
knowledge-units afforded by the great forms and modes
of thought, such as time, space, cause-and-effect, rela-
tion, quality, quantity, force, motion, beauty, necessity,
duty, and life. To weave together the strands of all the
class-room activities into the texture of living mind, the
teacher needs himself to make of the warp, woof and nap
of his own knowledge a true cloth.
To promote this harmony of his own powers and to
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THE TEACHER AS INTERPRETER
offset some of the disintegrating influences of associa-
tion with immature minds, the teacher needs to keep
dihgently in the way of association through books with
the best minds of the race in their products of poetry,
drama, essay, fiction, science, pliilosophy, history, and
in the way of companionship with the ablest adults of
his community. This is far more necessary for the
class teacher than for the super\'isory officers who are
one or more removes from direct contact with children.
In fact, for the supervisory officers, precisely the oppo-
site caution is necessary, for what they need most is to
try to get into touch with the children for whom all
their plans are provided and whose nature they need
to know and to feel constantly.
As interpreter of the course of study to young persons,
the teacher needs to know specifically certain items of
sufficient importance to be enimierated here. They
are all involved in the foregoing generalizations; but
lest they be lost sight of, I enumerate them. Perhaps
others are of equal importance, but none can be of
greater importance than some that follow here, or are
included above.
First, life is a process, not a status; a flood, not a
pool.' It is in part a physical process, with marked
stages. It is a process of adjustment of inner forces
impinging upon and being impinged upon by external
forces. These inner forces may be considered as the
heritages from past ancestry. Few of them are in evi-
dence at birth: they keep coming in every day in later
' Nature is being born. Life is growth, — being exists only as
becoming. Nothing now is, but everything is coming to be. — See
Weber, History of Philosophy, on Hegel, p. 502. (Thilly, trans-
lator.)
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CLASS TEACHING AND MANAGEMENT
life. This is especially notable at adolescence when in
four or five cases in twenty the child who has been like
some maternal (or paternal) ancestor swings across into
the likeness of a more or less opposite paternal (or in
the other instance maternal) ancestor. One suspects
that some lines of cells atrophy while other lines come
vigorously into action. The outer forces include cli-
mate, housing, labor, food, clothing, hours and condi-
tions of sleep, air, bathing, economic ease or anxiety,
and similar matters.
Life is mainly a psychical process, likewise with
marked stages. This also is a process of adjustment of
inner forces, — aptitudes, dislikes, resistances, — imping-
ing upon and being impinged upon by external forces.
Each stage in the adjustment of notions and habits is
either a victory, a defeat or a compromise between the
character, — intelligence, efficiency, morality, — of the in-
dividual and the ideas that came before him. From
the day of his birth to that of his death, a man is his
reaction, that is, his temperament. But this '' reaction "
or "temperament" is not a fixed mould but a fluid
condition.
Second, each soul is free, to a certain undeniable ex-
tent. Each soul can withhold its action, can elect to
do nothing. One cannot create his ^environment, but
one can (1) resist it, if need be to death, or (2) reconcile
oneself to it or (3) do nothing.
This truth is of the greatest importance in teaching.
It is the touchstone to test the educability and the
virtue of the child. The nature of liis freedom, — of his
choice in the presence of opportunity, — constitutes the
limits of the educability of a pupil. In this sense,
education is a moral issue rather than, intellectual. And
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THE TEACHER AS INTERPRETER
the teachers of the world so proclaim it, everywhere
asserting that industry is more than a substitute for
talent since industry produces talent. In the sense in
which teachers use this term "industry/' — or its equiva-
lents in other languages, — it means the free will that
chooses to undergo pain and fatigue and deprivation of
ease and of pleasure in order to pursue ideals and to
effect changes in one's own nature.
Third, modern society is a vast complex that may
be analyzed as in part institutional, in part dynamic,
in part factional and in part individual. The great
social institutions are property, family, religion, occupa-
tion, government, education, amusement, charity, busi-
ness, and war. These institutions are social habits
affecting the general welfare so strongly as to compel
the unquestioning support of nearly all individuals.
The dynamic factors of a modern civilized society are
its associations and movements, such as parties, causes,
reforms. Institutions are conservative, movements are
progressive. Clan and tribal tradition and habits per-
sist into modern life in many forms and modes — such as
cliques, conspiracies, secret societies and clubs, the
factions between parties, the boss and the gang. Lastly,
we have the individuals, of whom some are blessings to
community and nation and some are curses. These in-
dividuals live, work, play, seemingly alone. Some are
men of genius : some are criminals.
It is necessary clearly to see that institutions, move-
ments, factions and individuals cannot all be classed
as "good" or "bad." In some respects, some of
them are bad or pernicious, others are good or
benevolent; and still others apparently are indiffer-
ent.
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CLASS TEACHING AND MANAGEMENT
To illustrate : — It will not serve the cause of historic truth
or the further progress of the race to assert as many now do
that ''war is evil," and that "peace is good." War is often
the price of righting wrongs, — a purification by blood and
death. Peace nourishes both wheat and tares: a society
long peaceful is always corrupt and overtolerant of cor-
niption. Peace invariably organizes hypocrisy. In a
world of peace, men become mummers. In a world of war,
they become frank and real, whereby the sheep's clothing
is torn from the wolf. And yet war is worse, both peace
and war being alternately necessary until the end.
— Daniel ix : 26.
To illustrate again : — Education is not always the greatest
of blessings to an individual. (I am using education here
not in its philosophical sense but popularly.) The actual
education of many a boy has been a training in the hy-
pocrisy of assuming a virtue when one has it not.
We may well note that many social movements are
retrogressive and calculated to reproduce former condi-
tions wliich the society had outgrown. Though the
proposition is not universally true that revivals of past
conditions are always unfortunate, the historical ex-
ceptions are few until the time when a society turns
down grade and general deterioration has set in. Teach-
ers as well as all other citizens may. wisely view with
suspicion all social movements whose engineering pro-
ceeds from persons but recently come from Europe. In
his transformation into an American citizen, the Hun-
garian peasant, the German soldier, the French bour-
geois, and the English mechanic sometimes try to im-
pose monarchical, feudal or tribal conceptions of class
and mass upon our democracy.
To be specific in this connection: Nothing is more
110
THE TEACHER AS INTERPRETER
important in American life than the independence and
entire separation of Church and State, government and
rehgion. So higlily regarded by most Americans is this
principle that the general tendency in most States is to
extend it to the independence and separation as far as
possible of State and School, government and education,
or more plainly politics and teaching.
Again to specify: According to modern psychology,
the mind is one life, manifesting itself in various forms
and modes, — in "faculties" or facilities, in single actions
or ideas, judgments, endeavors or in series of actions
or habits, purposes, intentions, — in other words, in
functionings either central or peripheral. That mind is
not yet well-educated which seems to have ''compart-
ments" with no intercommunicating doors, which is
inconsistent, disorderly, irregular, which does not go
steadily and gradually toward some goal but flits about
purposelessly or rushes hither and thither hop-skip-and-
jump. That teacher does best who takes such a prin-
ciple as that above regarding the freedom of government
from ecclesiastical relations and the freedom of religion
from political relations and uses it judiciously both in
his history-teaching and in his own conduct toward all
others including his pupils. Such is the concrete mean-
ing, — in a single phase, — of the unity of mind. What is
the value of knowing arithmetic unless one who is
employed and in good health can keep one's own finan-
cial affairs solvent?
The teacher as interpreter of the course of study
should be an example, a model, an exemplar, both of
the scholarship implied in the course and of the con-
duct appropriate in the scholar. To the mind of the
child, perhaps these two qualities become most evident
111
CLASS TEACHING AND MANAGEMENT
in two specific phases, — scholarship in the sense of ac-
curate information in reply to the questions so common
upon the lips of children, and conduct in the sense of
fulfilling those duties which are so often the subject of
a teacher's homilies.
The teacher who does not know how to answer in
detail such questions as "I thought that the Mississippi
was the biggest river in the world, isn't it?"; or "Oh,
is Longfellow dead! When did he die?"; or "What
use is this algebra, anyway?"; or "Please tell me the
meaning of 'feudal'?", — the questions are legion, — not
only loses an opportunity, occasionally priceless, to feed
an inquiring mind but loses also some measure, however
small, of the confidence that every small human being
instinctively places in the authorities.
But the ethical aspects of this matter are yet more
important. We demand of adults certain virtues, many,
though not all of them, beginning in early childhood.
The moral growth may perhaps be expressed in these
stages: — Children obey persons, youth obey maxims,
young men and women obey principles, and mature men
reason, in each stage realizing thereby the highest
morality within their possibilities. When children try
to obey maxims, they get into just as much trouble as
when they refuse from whim and caprice to obey the
direct and specific orders of persons. At the other and
liigher reach of the moral scale, for grown man to apply
principles rigidly is often to fail of the better morality.
He must reason and adjust principles to conditions, even
though to narrower and less experienced men he seems
to violate some one principle. But is there no highest
quality that is invariably right? Undoubtedly, but it
is a quality that is largely rational and not often
112
THE TEACHER AS INTERPRETER
prescriptive of details, — honor or loyalty. In the con-
flict of the good qualities, the lower must always give
place to the higher within the range of the individual's
age-limitations; and virtue consists not in being good
but in becoming better. We decry the "school-boy
honor" that causes him to conceal the derelictions
of his fellows, because honor in tliis instance is a
barrier to the enforcement of special rights. To be
specific: In my own experience, a high school during
a session was set on fire by a senior pupil to con-
ceal the theft of a valuable microscope. It took the
authorities two weeks to break down in that school the
silence imposed upon all tongues by "school-boy honor"
and to discover who set the building on fire, and why.
The culprit was then placed for a term in an asylum
for the criminal insane upon the recommendation of
competent alienists. Of course, with an incendiary
about, no life was safe in that school. It does not fol-
low that such honor is invariably to be broken down,
for it is the "mother" of a later honor that is righteous
and necessary.
The great word of morals is "duty," and duty is noth-
ing but obedience to the authority that the person should
recognize at his age. The highest duty of the full-
grown man is to follow his own best j udgment, all tilings
considered, which literally involves trying to consider
all things, including whatever may appear to be " the
will of God." But the highest duty of the small child is
promptly to do what his mother at home or his teacher
at school orders liim to do.
In the course of study of the elementary school, there
is one subject greatly concerned with the defining of
one of man's highest duties, patriotism; and this study
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CLASS TEACHING AND MANAGEMENT
is American history. The scorn that men of the genera-
tion of the Civil War felt for those who stayed at home
was due to the fact that when the life of one's nation is
at stake, one has no right to stay at home even to pro-
vide sii))port for wife and children. To our country and
its institutions, each one of us owes life itself in the
literal sense, for our country provides the relations of
property, business and marriage whence each one of
us issues. Our country gives us being and maintains
us. It is our father and our mother. It is a matter
of duty to the teacher of elementary children in higher
grades and the high school teacher to teach, and quite
within the comprehension of such children and youth
to learn, the meaning of patriotism in times of peace
and in times of war. One of the great deficiencies of
the American character is the unwillingness of the so-
called ''better class" of citizens to serve their country
in public office in times of peace. Such citizens usually
allege "pressure of private business" or "too great sen-
sitiveness to criticism," forgetting that salaries of public
oflficers should be small, so as to secure the services of
the unmercenary and patriotic and to exclude others,
or forgetting that the sense of doing public duty bravely
is one of the finest qualities of human nature. One
of the beautiful things about teaching is that it is
a non-mercenary occupation, providing only a liveli-
hood and seldom a generous one at that. It may indeed
be that the teacher is underpaid and should receive a
more generous living, but no wise man desires to see
teaching in public schools (or any other office of our
democracy) an occupation of profit. Upon the lips of
teachers, therefore, the inculcation of the duty of un-
selfish patriotism is appropriate.
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THE TEACHER AS INTERPRETER
Since the teacher is conspicuously the person who
teaches and practices in a democracy, — side by side with
the soldier, the policeman, the fireman, and the govern-
ment clerk, — the quieter duties of patriotism, it is proper
for him to consider the question of the relation of the
individual to the secret societies, the factions and clans
that persist into modern life. These concern women
but little, though they concern men greatly. Only the
Chinese Empire has more of this secret and factional
life than has the American Republic. Strong central
governments never tolerate such organizations freely.
The peace of the past forty-five years has permitted the
multiplication of all these kinds of societies. Whether
or not they tend to the more liberal humanity that is
the order of the time to come must, in each instance, be
inquired into as a matter of fact, but so much as this
the teacher should inculcate and exemplify that he
should encourage only such secret clubs and divisive
factions as he believes surely help forward the general
welfare.
There is a fine materialism, elegant and often fascinat-
ing, that is just as dangerous to the best life of the
teacher as is the gross materialism that is so plain in
most of the affairs and concerns of our present stupen-
dous civilization. The delightful materialism, on its
surface, appears conducive to the best interests of the
spirit. It draws attention to the machinery of educa-
tion, — to finer buildings and more commodious, to larger
salaries and to better tenure of office, to more artistic
methods of teaching, to travel and to culture; and it
says, — Seek these things; for when you have them, you
will be able to do better work as teachers, for you will
be happier, wiser and healthier. And when we have
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CLASS TEACHING AND MANAGEMENT
them, so we will, so we will, if — if we do not seek them
at all. For the words of Jesus are literally true, "Seek
ye first the kingdom of heaven and its righteousness, and
all these things will be added unto you." It is literally
not worth while to have them, — they will be but vexa-
tion of spirit, — until they have come as results of seek-
ing things that are in themselves worth while, — peace
and truth and order and aspiration, the approval of the
best, for a daily life of patience, moderation, industry,
and interest in the welfare of others.
A course of study is essentially a spiritual thing: it
is concerned with a man's inner and real life. Between
the man who knows such an inner life — ^who is religious
— and the man who cares for the outer life — who is
materialistic — there has been and forever will be war.
Both men fight within nearly every one of us. In this
sense, that teacher is a true interpreter of the course of
study, who lives in such fashion and speaks in such
language that all men and all children see that he knows
upon which side ultimately and of right the battle always
goes. For in the dialectic of history, the nation of ideas,
the religious people always wins fairly enough to trans-
mit its ideas to the civilization that lies ahead. And in
the dialectic of individual lives, the final victory, the
ultimate triumph necessarily rests with that man in us
who knows that "the price of wisdom is above rubies"
and therefore gets wisdom as the principal thing to be
had of life.
I
"A certain order, then, proper to each, becoming in-
herent in each, makes each thing good." — Plato, Gorgias,
§133. 380 B.C.
I
CHAPTER V
THE DAY'S WORK— ITS PLAN AND RECORD
The variety of duties. — Frictions. — -Daily preparation. — Daily
programs in a graded elementary school. — High school programs. —
Advance plans versus records of accomplishment. — A new class.
THERE is a deal of difference in the kind and in the
quahty of the work that different teachers naust
perform every day of their hves. One teacher has
twenty small children for three or four hours a day.
Another has half a thousand in the course of a week,