William Chandler Bagley - Craftsmanship in Teaching
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William Chandler Bagley >> Craftsmanship in Teaching
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14 CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING
by
WILLIAM CHANDLER BAGLEY
Author Of "The Educative Process," "Classroom Management," "Educational
Values," Etc.
New York
The MacMillan Company
1912
All rights reserved
Copyright, 1911, by the MacMillan Company.
Set up and electrotyped. Published April, 1911. Reprinted June, October,
1911; May, 1912.
Norwood Press
J.S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
TO MY PARENTS
PREFACE
The following papers are published chiefly because they treat in a
concrete and personal manner some of the principles which the writer has
developed in two previously published books, _The Educative Process_ and
_Classroom Management_, and in a forthcoming volume, _Educational
Values_. It is hoped that the more informal discussions presented in the
following pages will, in some slight measure, supplement the theoretical
and systematic treatment which necessarily characterizes the other
books. In this connection, it should be stated that the materials of the
first paper here presented were drawn upon in writing Chapter XVIII of
_Classroom Management_, and that the second paper simply states in a
different form the conclusions reached in Chapter I of _The Educative
Process_.
The writer is indebted to his colleague, Professor L.F. Anderson, for
many criticisms and suggestions and to Miss Bernice Harrison for
invaluable aid in editing the papers for publication. But his heaviest
debt, here as elsewhere, is to his wife, to whose encouraging sympathy
and inspiration whatever may be valuable in this or in his other books
must be largely attributed.
URBANA, ILLINOIS,
March 1, 1911
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING 1
II. OPTIMISM IN TEACHING 23
III. HOW MAY WE PROMOTE THE EFFICIENCY OF THE TEACHING FORCE? 43
IV. THE TEST OF EFFICIENCY IN SUPERVISION 63
V. THE SUPERVISOR AND THE TEACHER 77
VI. EDUCATION AND UTILITY 96
VII. THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT IN EDUCATION 123
VIII. THE POSSIBILITY OF TRAINING CHILDREN TO STUDY 144
IX. A PLEA FOR THE DEFINITE IN EDUCATION 164
X. SCIENCE AS RELATED TO THE TEACHING OF LITERATURE 191
XI. THE NEW ATTITUDE TOWARD DRILL 204
XII. THE IDEAL TEACHER 229
CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING
~I~
CRAFTSMANSHIP IN TEACHING[1]
I
"In the laboratory of life, each newcomer repeats the old
experiments, and laughs and weeps for himself. We will be
explorers, though all the highways have their guideposts and every
bypath is mapped. Helen of Troy will not deter us, nor the wounds
of Caesar frighten, nor the voice of the king crying 'Vanity!' from
his throne dismay. What wonder that the stars that once sang for
joy are dumb and the constellations go down in
silence."--ARTHUR SHERBURNE HARDY: _The Wind of Destiny_.
We tend, I think, to look upon the advice that we give to young people
as something that shall disillusionize them. The cynic of forty sneers
at what he terms the platitudes of commencement addresses. He knows
life. He has been behind the curtains. He has looked upon the other side
of the scenery,--the side that is just framework and bare canvas. He has
seen the ugly machinery that shifts the stage setting--the stage setting
which appears so impressive when viewed from the front. He has seen the
rouge on the cheeks that seem to blush with the bloom of youth and
beauty and innocence, and has caught the cold glint in the eyes that,
from the distance, seem to languish with tenderness and love. Why, he
asks, should we create an illusion that must thus be rudely dispelled?
Why revamp and refurbish the old platitudes and dole them out each
succeeding year? Why not tell these young people the truth and let them
be prepared for the fate that must come sooner or later?
But the cynic forgets that there are some people who never lose their
illusions,--some men and women who are always young,--and, whatever may
be the type of men and women that other callings and professions desire
to enroll in their service, this is the type that education needs. The
great problem of the teacher is to keep himself in this class, to keep
himself young, to preserve the very things that the cynic pleases to
call the illusions of his youth. And so much do I desire to impress
these novitiates into our calling with the necessity for preserving
their ideals that I shall ask them this evening to consider with me some
things which would, I fear, strike the cynic as most illusionary and
impractical. The initiation ceremonies that admitted the young man to
the privileges and duties of knighthood included the taking of certain
vows, the making of certain pledges of devotion and fidelity to the
fundamental principles for which chivalry stood. And I should like this
evening to imagine that these graduates are undergoing an analogous
initiation into the privileges and duties of schoolcraft, and that
these vows which I shall enumerate, embody some of the ideals that
govern the work of that craft.
II
And the first of these vows I shall call, for want of a better term, the
vow of "artistry,"--the pledge that the initiate takes to do the work
that his hand finds to do in the best possible manner, without reference
to the effort that it may cost or to the reward that it may or may not
bring.
I call this the vow of artistry because it represents the essential
attitude of the artist toward his work. The cynic tells us that ideals
are illusions of youth, and yet, the other day I saw expressed in a
middle-aged working-man a type of idealism that is not at all uncommon
in this world. He was a house painter; his task was simply the prosaic
job of painting a door; and yet, from the pains which he took with that
work, an observer would have concluded that it was, to the painter, the
most important task in the world. And that, after all, is the true test
of craft artistry: to the true craftsman the work that he is doing must
be the most important thing that can be done. One of the best teachers
that I know is that kind of a craftsman in education. A student was once
sent to observe his work. He was giving a lesson upon the "attribute
complement" to an eighth-grade grammar class. I asked the student
afterward what she had got from her visit. "Why," she replied, "that man
taught as if the very greatest achievement in life would be to get his
pupils to understand the attribute complement,--and when he had
finished, they did understand it."
In a narrower sense, this vow of artistry carries with it an
appreciation of the value of technique. From the very fact of their
normal school training, these graduates already possess a certain
measure of skill, a certain mastery of the technique of their craft.
This initial mastery has been gained in actual contact with the problems
of school work in their practice teaching. They have learned some of the
rudiments; they have met and mastered some of the rougher, cruder
difficulties. The finer skill, the delicate and intangible points of
technique, they must acquire, as all beginners must acquire them,
through the strenuous processes of self-discipline in the actual work of
the years that are to come. This is a process that takes time, energy,
constant and persistent application. All that this school or any school
can do for its students in this respect is to start them upon the right
track in the acquisition of skill. But do not make the mistake of
assuming that this is a small and unimportant matter. If this school did
nothing more than this, it would still repay tenfold the cost of its
establishment and maintenance. Three fourths of the failures in a world
that sometimes seems full of failures are due to nothing more nor less
than a wrong start. In spite of the growth of professional training for
teachers within the past fifty years, many of our lower schools are
still filled with raw recruits, fresh from the high schools and even
from the grades, who must learn every practical lesson of teaching
through the medium of their own mistakes. Even if this were all, the
process would involve a tremendous and uncalled-for waste. But this is
not all; for, out of this multitude of untrained teachers, only a small
proportion ever recognize the mistakes that they make and try to correct
them.
To you who are beginning the work of life, the mastery of technique may
seem a comparatively unimportant matter. You recognize its necessity, of
course, but you think of it as something of a mechanical nature,--an
integral part of the day's work, but uninviting in itself,--something to
be reduced as rapidly as possible to the plane of automatism and
dismissed from the mind. I believe that you will outgrow this notion. As
you go on with your work, as you increase in skill, ever and ever the
fascination of its technique will take a stronger and stronger hold upon
you. This is the great saving principle of our workaday life. This is
the factor that keeps the toiler free from the deadening effects of
mechanical routine. It is the factor that keeps the farmer at his plow,
the artisan at his bench, the lawyer at his desk, the artist at his
palette.
I once worked for a man who had accumulated a large fortune. At the age
of seventy-five he divided this fortune among his children, intending to
retire; but he could find pleasure and comfort only in the routine of
business. In six months he was back in his office. He borrowed
twenty-five thousand dollars on his past reputation and started in to
have some fun. I was his only employee at the time, and I sat across the
big double desk from him, writing his letters and keeping his accounts.
He would sit for hours, planning for the establishment of some industry
or running out the lines that would entangle some old adversary. I did
not stay with him very long, but before I left, he had a half-dozen
thriving industries on his hands, and when he died three years later he
had accumulated another fortune of over a million dollars.
That is an example of what I mean by the fascination that the technique
of one's craft may come to possess. It is the joy of doing well the work
that you know how to do. The finer points of technique,--those little
things that seem so trivial in themselves and yet which mean everything
to skill and efficiency,--what pride the competent artisan or the master
artist takes in these! How he delights to revel in the jargon of his
craft! How he prides himself in possessing the knowledge and the
technical skill that are denied the layman!
I am aware that I am somewhat unorthodox in urging this view of your
work upon you. Teachers have been encouraged to believe that details are
not only unimportant but stultifying,--that teaching ability is a
function of personality, and not a product of a technique that must be
acquired through the strenuous discipline of experience. One of the most
skillful teachers of my acquaintance is a woman down in the grades. I
have watched her work for days at a time, striving to learn its secret.
I can find nothing there that is due to genius,--unless we accept George
Eliot's definition of genius as an infinite capacity for receiving
discipline. That teacher's success, by her own statement, is due to a
mastery of technique, gained through successive years of growth checked
by a rigid responsibility for results. She has found out by repeated
trial how to do her work in the best way; she has discovered the
attitude toward her pupils that will get the best work from them,--the
clearest methods of presenting subject matter; the most effective ways
in which to drill; how to use text-books and make study periods issue in
something besides mischief; and, more than all else, how to do these
things without losing sight of the true end of education. Very
frequently I have taken visiting school men to see this teacher's work.
Invariably after leaving her room they have turned to me with such
expressions as these: "A born teacher!" "What interest!" "What a
personality!" "What a voice!"--everything, in fact, except this,--which
would have been the truth: "What a tribute to years of effort and
struggle and self-discipline!"
I have a theory which I have never exploited very seriously, but I will
give it to you for what it is worth. It is this: elementary education
especially needs a literary interpretation. It needs a literary artist
who will portray to the public in the form of fiction the real life of
the elementary school,--who will idealize the technique of teaching as
Kipling idealized the technique of the marine engineer, as Balzac
idealized the technique of the journalist, as Du Maurier and a hundred
other novelists have idealized the technique of the artist. We need some
one to exploit our shop-talk on the reading public, and to show up our
work as you and I know it, not as you and I have been told by laymen
that it ought to be,--a literature of the elementary school with the
cant and the platitudes and the goody-goodyism left out, and in their
place something of the virility, of the serious study, of the manful
effort to solve difficult problems, of the real and vital achievements
that are characteristic of thousands of elementary schools throughout
the country to-day.
At first you will be fascinated by the novelty of your work. But that
soon passes away. Then comes the struggle,--then comes the period, be it
long or short, when you will work with your eyes upon the clock, when
you will count the weeks, the days, the hours, the minutes that lie
between you and vacation time. Then will be the need for all the
strength and all the energy that you can summon to your aid. Fail here,
and your fate is decided once and for all. If, in your work, you never
get beyond this stage, you will never become the true craftsman. You
will never taste the joy that is vouchsafed the expert, the efficient
craftsman.
The length of this period varies with different individuals. Some
teachers "find themselves" quickly. They seem to settle at once into the
teaching attitude. With others is a long, uphill fight. But it is safe
to say that if, at the end of three years, your eyes still habitually
seek the clock,--if, at the end of that time, your chief reward is the
check that comes at the end of every fourth week,--then your doom is
sealed.
III
And the second vow that I should urge these graduates to take is the vow
of fidelity to the spirit of their calling. We have heard a great deal
in recent years about making education a profession. I do not like that
term myself. Education is not a profession in the sense that medicine
and law are professions. It is rather a craft, for its duty is to
produce, to mold, to fashion, to transform a certain raw material into a
useful product. And, like all crafts, education must possess the craft
spirit. It must have a certain code of craft ethics; it must have
certain standards of craft excellence and efficiency. And in these the
normal school must instruct its students, and to these it should secure
their pledge of loyalty and fidelity and devotion.
A true conception of this craft spirit in education is one of the most
priceless possessions of the young teacher, for it will fortify him
against every criticism to which his calling is subjected. It is
revealing no secret to tell you that the teacher's work is not held in
the highest regard by the vast majority of men and women in other walks
of life. I shall not stop to inquire why this is so, but the fact cannot
be doubted, and every now and again some incident of life, trifling
perhaps in itself, will bring it to your notice; but most of all,
perhaps you will be vexed and incensed by the very thing that is meant
to put you at your ease--the patronizing attitude which your friends in
other walks of life will assume toward you and toward your work.
When will the good public cease to insult the teacher's calling with
empty flattery? When will men who would never for a moment encourage
their own sons to enter the work of the public schools, cease to tell us
that education is the greatest and noblest of all human callings?
Education does not need these compliments. The teacher does not need
them. If he is a master of his craft, he knows what education means,--he
knows this far better than any layman can tell him. And what boots it to
him, if, with all this cant and hypocrisy about the dignity and worth of
his calling, he can sometimes hold his position only at the sacrifice of
his self-respect?
But what is the relation of the craft spirit to these facts? Simply
this: the true craftsman, by the very fact that he is a true craftsman,
is immune to these influences. What does the true artist care for the
plaudits or the sneers of the crowd? True, he seeks commendation and
welcomes applause, for your real artist is usually extremely human; but
he seeks this commendation from another source--from a source that metes
it out less lavishly and yet with unconditioned candor. He seeks the
commendation of his fellow-workmen, the applause of "those who know, and
always will know, and always will understand." He plays to the pit and
not to the gallery, for he knows that when the pit really approves the
gallery will often echo and reecho the applause, albeit it has not the
slightest conception of what the whole thing is about.
What education stands in need of to-day is just this: a stimulating and
pervasive craft spirit. If a human calling would win the world's
respect, it must first respect itself; and the more thoroughly it
respects itself, the greater will be the measure of homage that the
world accords it. In one of the educational journals a few years ago,
the editors ran a series of articles under the general caption, "Why I
am a teacher." It reminded me of the spirited discussion that one of the
Sunday papers started some years since on the world-old query, "Is
marriage a failure?" And some of the articles were fully as sickening in
their harrowing details as were some of the whining matrimonial
confessions of the latter series. But the point that I wish to make is
this: your true craftsman in education never stops to ask himself such
questions. There are some men to whom schoolcraft is a mistress. They
love it, and their devotion is no make-believe, fashioned out of
sentiment, and donned for the purpose of hiding inefficiency or native
indolence. They love it as some men love Art, and others Business, and
others War. They do not stop to ask the reason why, to count the cost,
or to care a fig what people think. They are properly jealous of their
special knowledge, gained through years of special study; they are
justly jealous of their special skill gained through years of discipline
and training. They resent the interference of laymen in matters purely
professional. They resent such interference as would a reputable
physician, a reputable lawyer, a reputable engineer. They resent
officious patronage and "fussy" meddling. They resent all these things
manfully, vigorously. But your true craftsman will not whine. If the
conditions under which he works do not suit him, he will fight for their
betterment, but he will not whine.
IV
And yet this vow of fidelity and devotion to the spirit of schoolcraft
would be an empty form without the two complementary vows that give it
worth and meaning. These are the vow of poverty and the vow of service.
It is through these that the true craft spirit must find its most
vigorous expression and its only justification. The very corner stone of
schoolcraft is service, and one fundamental lesson that the tyro in
schoolcraft must learn, especially in this materialistic age, is that
the value of service is not to be measured in dollars and cents. In this
respect, teaching resembles art, music, literature, discovery,
invention, and pure science; for, if all the workers in all of these
branches of human activity got together and demanded of the world the
real fruits of their self-sacrifice and labor,--if they demanded all the
riches and comforts and amenities of life that have flowed directly or
indirectly from their efforts,--there would be little left for the rest
of mankind. Each of these activities is represented by a craft spirit
that recognizes this great truth. The artist or the scientist who has an
itching palm, who prostitutes his craft for the sake of worldly gain, is
quickly relegated to the oblivion that he deserves. He loses caste, and
the caste of craft is more precious to your true craftsman than all the
gold of the modern Midas.
You may think that this is all very well to talk about, but that it
bears little agreement to the real conditions. Let me tell you that you
are mistaken. Go ask Roentgen why he did not keep the X-rays a secret to
be exploited for his own personal gain. Ask the shade of the great
Helmholtz why he did not patent the ophthalmoscope. Go to the University
of Wisconsin and ask Professor Babcock why he gave to the world without
money and without price the Babcock test--an invention which is
estimated to mean more than one million dollars every year to the
farmers and dairymen of that state alone. Ask the men on the geological
survey who laid bare the great gold deposits of Alaska why they did not
leave a thankless and ill-paid service to acquire the wealth that lay at
their feet. Because commercialized ideals govern the world that we know,
we think that all men's eyes are jaundiced, and that all men's vision is
circumscribed by the milled rim of the almighty dollar. But we are
sadly, miserably mistaken.
Do you think that these ideals of service from which every taint of
self-seeking and commercialism have been eliminated--do you think that
these are mere figments of the impractical imagination? Go ask Perry
Holden out in Iowa. Go ask Luther Burbank out in California. Go to any
agricultural college in this broad land and ask the scientists who are
doing more than all other forces combined to increase the wealth of the
people. Go to the scientific departments at Washington where men of
genius are toiling for a pittance. Ask them how much of the wealth for
which they are responsible they propose to put into their own pockets.
What will be their answer? They will tell you that all they ask is a
living wage, a chance to work, and the just recognition of their
services by those who know and appreciate and understand.
But let me hasten to add that these men claim no especial merit for
their altruism and unselfishness. They do not pose before the world as
philanthropists. They do not strut about and preen themselves as who
would say: "See what a noble man am I! See how I sacrifice myself for
the welfare of society!" The attitude of cant and pose is entirely alien
to the spirit of true service. Their delight is in doing, in serving, in
producing. But beyond this, they have the faults and frailties of their
kind,--save one,--the sin of covetousness. And again, all that they ask
of the world is a living wage, and the privilege to serve.
And that is all that the true craftsman in education asks. The man or
woman with the itching palm has no place in the schoolroom,--no place in
any craft whose keynote is service. It is true that the teacher does not
receive to-day, in all parts of our country, a living wage; and it is
equally true that society at large is the greatest sufferer because of
its penurious policy in this regard. I should applaud and support every
movement that has for its purpose the raising of teachers' salaries to
the level of those paid in other branches of professional service.
Society should do this for its own benefit and in its own defense, not
as a matter of charity to the men and women who, among all public
servants, should be the last to be accused of feeding gratuitously at
the public crib. I should approve all honest efforts of school men and
school women toward this much-desired end. But whenever men and women
enter schoolcraft because of the material rewards that it offers, the
virtue will have gone out of our calling,--just as the virtue went out
of the Church when, during the Middle Ages, the Church attracted men,
not because of the opportunities that it offered for social service, but
because of the opportunities that it offered for the acquisition of
wealth and temporal power,--just as the virtue has gone out of certain
other once-noble professions that have commercialized their standards
and tarnished their ideals.
This is not to say that one condemns the man who devotes his life to the
accumulation of property. The tremendous strides that our country has
made in material civilization have been conditioned in part by this type
of genius. Creative genius must always compel our admiration and our
respect. It may create a world epic, a matchless symphony of tones or
pigments, a scientific theory of tremendous grasp and limitless scope;
or it may create a vast industrial system, a commercial enterprise of
gigantic proportions, a powerful organization of capital. Genius is
pretty much the same wherever we find it, and everywhere we of the
common clay must recognize its worth.
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