OUR COMMON SCHOOL SYSTEM. UNirOEM VOLUMES BY THE SAME ATJTHOB. Published at $1.50 each. SUMMER REST, SKIRMISHES AND SKETCHES. A NEW A TMO SPHERE. STUMBLING-BLOCKS, GALA-DAYS. COUNTRY LIVING AND COUNTRY THINKING. WOOL GATHERING. WOMAN S WRONGS. SERMONS TO THE CLERGY. FIRST LOVE IS BEST. OUR COMMON SCHOOL SYSTEM. BY GAIL HAMILTON. 6v ''.//c5..../.^..«..L.cl| bostonY estes & l a uri at, 301 Washington Street. Copyright iS8o. EsTEs & Lauriat. CONTENTS. Equalizing Wages . . High Schools . . . • . Industrial Schools . • . Normal Schools^ The Form of Blanks Examination under the Microscope The Supervisory Fever Milk for Babes Official Supervision and Personal Supervision On the World-wide Sea . Purification by Supervision The Foolishness of Teaching Corporal Punishment Salary of Teachers The Degradation of the Teacher For Substance of Doctrine PAGB. 9 21 47 67 89 ^33 159 173 187 203 219 227 255 267 289 32s EQUALIZING WAGES. SUGGESTIONS CONCERNING OUR SCHOOLS. D>*iC EQUALIZING WAGES. IN a city famous for its schools, a discussion sprang up concerning methods of education. Among other suggestions, one writer says: — " If the question of salary were left to a vote of the people, the pedagogues, instead of getting more, would be obliged to be satisfied with less. To be plain, they are made of the very same materials as laborers, and do not require any more to sustain life; nor are they a whit more deserving; nor should they get a cent more for their time or services. And as to the female teachers, it would be hard to make most people believe that they should receive for their services and time so much more than their equally-deserving and hard- worked sisters, the tailoress and work-gii"ls of the various workshops and facto- ries in our midst, who are obliged to work, and diligently, too, from early morn till night, for about one-half what the school- teachers get for only four or five hours. " The truth is, the people are beginning to think, that as a bank-teller, a city treasurer, or other high dignitary receives 9 lo . Equalizing Wages, three thousand dollars, or at that rate, per annum, a laborer at anj business ought to have just as much. . . . The over- seeing of a job, the duties of a cashier, or the calling of a teacher, is less laborious, and men are not so foolish as to neglect fitting themselves therefor, rather than be obliged to take hold of a pickaxe, a shovel, or a wheelbarrow. " Salaries must come down. Female teachers ought not to getover four hundred dollars per annum, and, for masters, one dollar per hour, which, for twenty-six hours will give them twenty-six dollars per week ; and then they must not be paid for vacations, which, indeed, they have no more right to than any laborer in the city's employ." This, to be sure, is the view of ignorance ; but igno- rance has a claim to be heard. Ignorance votes ; ignorance pays taxes ; ignorance has rights which all men are bound to respect ; and even to ignorance we should give fair hearing and courteous consideration. The gist of this writer's argument is that teachers should be, and be considered, on a level with all other laborers. He thinks that the master who teaches his children should be paid in the same way as the man who spades his garden or shovels sand on his railroad. He would have the schoolmistress on exactly the same grade as the maid-of-all-work in his kitchen. Or rather, since the female teacher is to be paid but four hundred dollars, while the price of ordinary board in his town is not less than seven dollars per week and often more, and the wages of the maid-of-all-work is Equalizifig Wages. II three dollars a week besides her board, he chooses his teacher to be of a considerably lower grade than his maid-of-all-work. This change of base may be a profitable and desira- ble one ; but, before we make a violent attempt to brin^ it about, let us see exactly where it leads us. To reduce the salaries of teachers to those of labor- ers would in the first place materially lessen taxation ; and this is a result always welcome. But when the rank and the pay are those of laborers, the duty will of course devolve upon laborers. The schools will be taught by men and women who have the education and qualifications of dirt-shovellers and chambermaids. I say nothing against these classes. There is no dis- grace in shovelling dirt or sweeping floors. The best men and women in the world have made these actions fine. But fitness for such work is not hard to get or rare to find ; and when you have decreed that you want in your schools only the very same materials as labor- ers, and that your teachers shall be paid not a cent more than laborers, what have you a right to expect but that you shall have laborers for your teachers ? But there are scores of men in every village, and hundreds in every town, and thousands in every city, who will not be satisfied to have their children so taught. The consequence will be that the rich and the intelligent will take their children out of the public X2 Equalizing- Wages. schools and put them in private schools. There will thus be a division between the rich and the poor, be- tween the educated and the unlearned, — a division con- stantly deepening and widening. It will then be the interest of the rich and well-to-do to have the public schools as cheap and poor as possible. On the present system our public schools are a most democratic insti- tution. The poor are educated at the expense of the rich. Elegant school-houses, costly apparatus, educated and accomplished teachers are just as much at the ser- vice of the hod-carrier as of the millionnaire. The mer- chant's boy at the most expensive private school in the land is no better fitted for college than is the son of the washerwoman at the high school, without money and without price. As a result and a very desirable result, the merchant's son, the millionnaire's son, if he be bright and clever and honorable, does not often go to the private school when the high school is accessible, but studies in the high school of his own city and graduates by the side of his clever though penniless colleague. Thus the rich and the poor meet together on common ground with common interests, an4 with a respect or a con- tempt for each other formed on mutual knowledge, on fair comparison, and honorable competition, — a union which is of the greatest practical value to both in after- life. Take away your educated teachers and your cor- responding salaries, and you have changed all that. Equalizing Wages, 13 The people will have cheap schools to their heart's content. The rich, that is the heavy tax-payers, will at great expense send their own children to private schools, and will, of course, desire the public schools to be as inexpensive as possible. The children of the poor will be, as at present, confined to the public schools, where they will receive such instruction as Bridget and Sandy may be able to afford. But is the outlook encouraging? Would this state of things be considered an improve- ment upon the present ? Glance at the reasons why our protestant does not think this state of things would follow. He thinks that the calling of city-treasurer, the overseer, the cashier, the teacher, is less laborious than that of the manual laborer, and men and women will resort to it on that account even though the wages are reduced to those of the laborer. A man will teach at a dollar an hour, rather than xiig at a dollar an hour. A woman will teach for two dollars and a half a week, rather than make beds at three, because the work is so much easier. This might be true if the writer could only bring the whole Avorld around to his way of thinking. His own standard of value is time. He does not think prepara- tion of any account. He does not put brain-work any higher than muscular work. He does not allow any weight to responsibility, or any price to rarity. He. mentions indeed few cases ; but his argument applies 14 Equalizing Wages, equally to all. The president of a railroad* the judge of the Supreme Court, the clergyman, the trustee, the business magnate, spends no more hours a day in his office than the schoolmaster in his schoolroom ; and his pay should be the same. He is made of the same materials as laborers, he does not require any more to sustain life, and he should not get a cent more for his time or services. Yet among all people who are con- ducting business in their own interests, on their own responsibility, for their own emolument, there is a wide- spread prejudice in favor of inequality of service and of wages. A bank is willing to pay one man three thousand dollars a year and to another man it will not pay a penny. A congregation will cheerfully, nay, eagerly, beg one clergyman to receive five thousand dollars a year from them ; and to another clergyman they will only give leave to withdraw. Two women will spend the same number of hours over a story; and for one the publishers pay gladly thousands of dollars ; and the other brings only three cents a pound from the rag-peddlers. A gentleman in mercantile circles said a few days ago of another gentleman who had J:empo- rarily retired from business for health and recreation, that twenty houses would gladly pay him ten thousand dollars a year on account of his well-known trustworthi- ness. A woman lately refused a salary of two thousand dollars as teacher in a private school ; and another, twelve hundred dollars as writer in a child's paper. Equalizing Wages, 1 5 All these things must be changed before the screw- can be applied to school-teachers. Before a " peda- gogue " will be '■' satisfied with less " than he now gets, you must make him " obliged " to be satisfied. Bring the pressure to bear on him now, and he will immedi- ately slip from under it. Reduce the woman's salary from eight hundred to four hundred, and if she is worth anything, if she has ability, if she earned the eight hundred, she leaves her school. The ones you would retain would be only those who could do nothing else, and nothing more. It is true that for every one that resigns, there would be twenty new candidates. The place of every teacher in the United States could doubtless be filled at four hundred dollars a year : so the presidency of every bank and every railroad, the occupancy of every pulpit, and every post of honor and trust in the country could doubtless find possessors at a salary of two thousand dollars a year. Yet be- sotted corporations persist in paying five, ten, fifteen, twenty, thousand dollars for choice. There seems to be a blind, foolish conspiracy between firms and the men they want. The first consents to pay, and the sec- ond assumes to demand, twenty times the sum paid to other laborers, irrespective of the fact that the high- priced wretch eats no more, and weighs no more, and works no more hours, than the laborer. Nay, when we go even among our hard-worked sis- 1 6 Equalizing Wages. ters, the tailoresses, we find the same sort of inequality. The deft and nimble artisan* who can make a suit of clothes, or fashion an elegant costume, or maintain a costly establishment, is far more abundantly remuner- ated than her equally-deserving and hard-worked sister, the slopwork-maker. The cook who has mastered the intricacies of French dishes works fewer hours than she who barely knows how to boil and bake, and who waits upon herself and the whole house besides. Yet the former receives fifty dollars a month, and the latter twelve. Our economist must change all this before he can bring his reform into working-order. It is of no use for a city to expect to secure service at one-half or one-third the market-price. A woman may prefer teaching rather than sewing without regard to salary ; but public schools can never retain thousand-dollar teachers at four-hun- dred-dollar prices, as long as private schools abound, glad to take them at a thousand dollars. Of this re- former it may be truly said, his field is the world. He has to remodel npt only every class but every industry of society. He must overturn and overturn, till every business-principle is reconstructed. It is not only such "high dignitaries " as tellers and treasurers, who are to be converted, but "the people" themselves, in whose behalf he girds himself to battle. For while he declares with one breath that if the question of salary were Equalizing Wages. i*j left to "the people," the "pedagogue" would fare ill, in the next he asserts that " the people " are beginning to think all laborers should fare as well as the bank- teller ; that is, the same " people " at the same time are levelling pedagogues down to laborers, and levelling laborers up to cityitreasurers. At which pleasant little seesaw, our political economist may safely be left, with the assurance that the game will last him "during the remainder of his natural life. 2» HIGH SCHOOLS. HIGH SCHOOLS. IJUT the discontent of ignorance is a warning. JLJ While it is impossible that children should be educated too much, it is possible that they shall be educated unsymmetrically. It is possible that they shall be educated to dependence and not to indepen- dence. It is possible that too much money is spent for some things and too little for others. In spite of the money, talent, enthusiasm and pride, enlisted in our public-school system, is there not danger that we lose sight of the object ? For education is a means, not an end. It is a wonderful and a charming sight to see the orderly regiments of boys and girls, on dress-parade, drilled into uniformity, marching and countermarching with a rhythm of musical motion ; and when I attend examinations, and see, besides this, the wonderful manipulations upon the blackboard, and the problems solved, the learning so featly rolled off from girlish lips and boyish fingers, I marvel to think there was a time when I knew as much as they do. And if the object of the schools be to have and display (21) 22 High Schools, a perfectly- working machine, the drill and the discip- line have splendidly succeeded. If what the republic needs is girls and boys familiar with abstruse science, here they are made to order, at the shortest notice, and on the most reasonable terms. I confess I think our American predilections have almost universally been in this direction. Education has been the watchword and talisman of our country. And a noble watchword it is. But we find ourselves confronted by a practical difficulty to which we cannot close our eyes. We have a country largely undeveloped, with resources vastly in excess of the means to unlock them, laborers scarce, and labor high, and, on the other side, hosts of young men and young women with nothing to do. The mechanical trades are open to them, call to them indeed with abundant work and abundant wages ; but they do not hear, or do not heed the call. They are willing to go into stores, to be book-keepers, copyists, clerks; but to learn a trade, to serve an apprentice- ship, — this they are not willing to do. They have been through the grammar schools, and partially or wholly through the high schools. They are, in some sense, highly educated. They are familiar with draw- ing : they have a pleasant, if superficial, acquaintance with science. By the aid of a dictionary, they can read one or two languages. They have good manners, refined tastes, correct habits ; and, naturally, they wish High Schools. 23 to bring their acquisitions to market. They desire an occupation and a society in which their accomplish- ments will be employed and appreciated. French and Latin and the higher mathematics seem to them thrown away on a stone-mason. It is true the book-keeper hardly needs or uses them more ; but the book-keeper wears a coat and clean linen at his work, while the stone-mason must protect himself with blouse and over-all. The book-keeper associates with well-dressed and intelligent persons, while the stone-mason asso- ciates with over-alls like his own and with intelligence often inferior. So the girl and the boy pass months and years in waiting for some genteel occupation, while useful and homely though perfectly honorable work lies all around them. A clergyman in a rural city was querying, not long ago, as to what could be done with the unemployed intelligence and education of the town; and iit the same place a most gentlemanlike' and intelligent carpenter, well on in middle age, told me that he was the youngest carpenter in town who had served full apprenticeship. The trade was passing into the hands of an inferior class of men, who had no class-pride, cared little for skill or excellence in their work, but learned just enough to make a show, then set up for themselves, and were earning great wages for inferior, shoddy work. It is small use to blame the young people for this 24 High Schools. No one wants to descend in the scale, and especially does not a young person with his imagination all aglow. It is simply that society has educated him above his condition. But there, unhappily, it leaves him. It fits him for pleasant, intellectual work ; but it does not provide that work. It unfits him for coarse and com- mon work, almost for fine, if mechanical work ; but it leaves him dependent upon that. It gives him the education of the rich ; but it gives him none of the immunities of the rich. He has all the tastes and aspirations of wealth, but all the necessities and limi- tations of poverty. Is there not a touch of cruelty in this ? Is it not possible, then, that the ver}' point of which we are most proud is the very point in which we are weak ? We boast that in our high schools we give to the poor just as much and just as good as we give to the rich ; but why give anything to either ? What right has government to bestow luxury of education any more than luxury of dress .'' What right has it to tax the public for a high school education any more than for a college education "i The primary school education, the common education, it does not give but require. It recognizes a certain degree of education as requisite to intelligence and good citizenship. A rudimental knowledge of reading, writing, geography, and arithmetic, it, as a general thing, believes necessary High Schools. i^ to give, the republic a firm foundation. It is therefore proper that government should furnish the means to secure what it requires for citizenship. It does this, not directly for the citizen, but directly for the sake of the republic, and through that, indirectly, to the citizen. It does not furnish a boon: it demands a preparation. It does not make the citizen a proletary, but a participator. Beyond this is it right or wise to go ? When a town has attained a certain population, it is required by law to establish a high school ; but nobody is required by law to go to it. In no town nor village is there any truant-officer to force children of any age into the high school. No parent is fined for not sending his boy. No high school diploma is demanded at the polls. It is thereby conceded that a high school education is not necessary to the safety of the republic. Why then should law enforce a supply of gratuitous education any more than it enforces gratuitous carpets and carriages'? W'e have not a paternal government. But education is so much more important and enno- bling than any other luxury ! The height of the higher classes determines the height of the lower. The more learned are the learned classes, the more intelligent are the unlearned. The poor are thus helped along a path which, but for this, they could not tread. Edu- cation, by this means, is not confined to the rich ; but rich and poor meet together to the advantage of both. 26 High Schools. True; but everything is worth what it costs. The education which any boy or girl takes because it is presented to him is not to be compared with that which he takes because he will have it. The young man wlio is lounging about town waiting for a chance to copy deeds, or transfer figures from one paper to another, or pull down parcels of silk from shelf to counter, or any. thing else light and easy, is not the boy who has gone through fire and water to get his education. That boy had a definite design ; and he will accomplish it. He is educated, not because he lived near a high school, but because he had the divine hunger and thirst for knowledge ; and knowledge, at the price he paid for it, is solid and marketable property to its possessor. The question is not of education or of ignorance. It is whether the money of the people shall be used for the education of all or whether it shall be used for the education of the few. I think it better for the public money to be used upon the schools that educate the many and not upon the schools that educate the few. Yet it is unfair to raise the cry of aristocracy against the present system, with all its complications, high schools included. In some respects it is the most democratic of institutions. It is not only true that all the schools are open to all the people ; but it is also true that the rich are taxed far beyond their proportion of direct benefit. If a man is poor, his share of the high school tax is almost High Schools. 27 imperceptible \ but he can send his twelv? children to the high school, where they will receive just as warm a welcome and just as careful culture as the one daughter of the rich man. And this is wholesome ; a very decided benefit arising from our present system is the mingling and measuring against each other of different classes of society, — a benefit which inures' quite as much to the rich as to the poor. Our present system, costly and elaborate though it be, is in theory far more democratic than a more simple and inexpen- sive one. It puts a costly education within reach of the poorest boy. The Governor of New York has never summoned me to armed interference in his cause, and I certainly do riot feel that moral responsibility for New York which I feel for Massachusetts. Nevertheless, logic is logic even in a New York Democrat and fallacy is fallacy even in a School Journal. When the Governor says in his message : '* To the extent of giving to evei-y child in the state a good common school education, sufficient to enable him or her to understand and perform the duties of American citizenship, and to carry on intelligently and successfully the ordinary labors of life, the common schools are and should be objects of the deepest con- cern to the whole community," I understand and applaud. But when the New York School Journal replies to the Governor that " Our Common School System does not zS High Schools. even pretend, in any of its departments, to go beyond this limit;" I do not understand; or if I understand, I do not agree. The School Journal enforces its declaration by ask- ing " What is it to understand and perform the duties of American citizenship ? One of those duties is to read and understand the laws which he (?) has to obey. Another is to be able to make those laws. A third is to'be capable of administering and executing them. "All natural born male citizens are eligible to all offices, even the Presidency ; and all naturalized male citizens are eligible to every office, with a very few exceptions. . . . " In a free State, one of the great objects of the free common school is to qualify the whole body of citizens for the performance of every duty that may fall to them by reason of their citizenship." It seems to me that this " Educational " writer, in an '' Educational " Journal, utterly misapprehends the whole scope and drift not only of our public school system but of our whole system of government. Pre- paring every child for the duties of citizenshiiD, he treats as one and the same thing with preparing every child for every duty that may fall to him while he is a citizen. That he means this in the fullest sense is attested by his illustration which embraces all offices, from the lowest to the highest. But a moment's atten- High Schools. 29 tion to the meaning of words must convince him of the incorrectness of his declaration. Is it any object of the free common school to qualify the whole body of citizens to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, or General of the Army, or Admiral in the Navy, or an Expert yellow-fever Committee-man? Our free-school system never pretends to this office. Our " Educator " is wrong at both ends of his argument. He puts into our Free School system many more objects than it ever aspired to, and he takes away from this system a great deal which it has actually attempted. The Common-School System does not undertake to qualify all citizens for all duties, and it does undertake to qualify them beyond the point which the State requires. Some States demand an Educational test for suffrage ; some demand education through a term of years. No State demands a High-School education, yet the Sys- tem undertakes to give it. What the State does under- take and what it should undertake is to give to every child a fair start in the race ; to demand of every citizen education enough to enable him to perform the ordi- nary duties — not the extraordinary duties — of American citizens. It demands intelligence enough to do what is the duty of every man ; not training enough to do what is required of only a few men. It furnishes to every child a basis for education. The Public-School System gives to every child a knowledge of reading, 30 High . Schools, writing, and the elements of arithmetic, grammar and geography. This is the foundation of the whole super- structure. It may even be said that when a child has learned to read and write, he is educated. The world of science is open to him. All the rest is in his own hands. It is true, that the High School is, in theory, open to all ; but actually, it is only the very few, who can and do take advantage of it. Of every hundred pupils, who attend the lower schools, statistics show that not more than five, in many places, not more than three, attend the High School. The majority get no benefit from the High Schools, other than that indirect benefit which they get equally from private academies and colleges. They yet reap, indeed, disadvantage ; for too often the instruction in the lower schools is shaped, not to the greatest good of the great number who are to find their only schooling in these schools, but to the demands of those who are to go into the High School. The Grammar School aims to fit pupils for the High School. It shapes its course of study for the five pupils who will graduate at the High School. It ought to fit pupils for entering into active life, intelligent. It ought to shape its course of instruction for the ninety- five or ninety-seven who will have no course of instruction except that which the Grammar Schools furnish. The High School may offer to the poor the High Schools, 31 same education as to the rich ; but the poor do not take it. They cannot take it. The poor cannot afford the time that it requires. -The poor must be at work earning their -own living, when they are old enough to go to the High School. The great majority of those who attend the High Schools are from the well-to-do classes, who are able to educate their children themselves, in the higher branches. A large majority of the High School pupils are boys and girls who have no especial rage for learning, who have no especial necessity for labor, who are in the High School because it is a pleasant and profitable way of passing the years of their youth. If the High School did not exist, a good many of them would be equally well educated at private schools, a good many of them would be learning useful trades, a very few of them would be resolutely working their way through a liberal education ; just as many would render distinguished service to the State, just as many would illustrate advanced thought and shed down radiance upon the lower ranks. As it is, the State does neither one thing nor another. It does not confine itself to bestowing upon all the education that it requires of all. Nor does it bestow upon the few whom it selects for especial training anything to be compared to the education bestowed by private academies and colleges. It com- plicates the school system, increases its expense, and 33 High Schools. ^ exposes it to hostility, and after all, leaves its few ^ beneficiaries far below, ridiculously below the pupils of private institutions.. Every argument that applies to | the State support of High Schools applies equally to the State support of colleges. If the object of common schools is "to qualify the whole body of citizens for the performance of any and every duty that may fall to them by reason of their citizenship," including the competent discharge of all the duties of " all offices, even the Presidency," then the common-school system is simply imbecile in stopping short with the High School.' The High School is grotesquely impotent to do any such thing, and our Common-School System should go on to establish Colleges, Law Schools, Medical Schools, and all universities, in the widest scope of that term. Our fathers were wiser in their generation than the sons. They began with the college. If we are to be controlled by their acts, instead of being influenced by their spirit, we must adopt into our Common-School System all institutions of learning whatever. The founders of this country — those founders who made this country worth living in, the New England fathers — set college and common school side by side. In 1635, free schools were recognized by law in Massa- chusetts. In 1636, Harvard College was instituted. It was not till 1642 that the General Assembly ordered High Schools. 33 that every village of fifty families should have a school in which reading and writing should be taught ; and that every township of 100 families should support a grammar-school where Latin and Greek should be taught. In 1639, schools were supported by tax in Hartford and New Haven : in 1650, the first code of Connecticut required parents and guardians to cause their children to be taught to read and to learn the catechism ; required, as in Massachusetts, every fifty householders to establish a school, ^nd every 100 house- holders to establish a grammar-school. In 1700, the Connecticut and New Haven colonies withdrew their support from Harvard and united in forming a college of their own. The common school, the high school, the college, advanced with equal step ; but all these were far nearer to the private schools of our own day than to the public schools. Our fathers were not legis- lating for the great nation which we have ^ecome, but for the small religious society into which they had organized themselves. Their college was a theological seminary. They were establishing a religious com- munity for themselves and for their children. They had only themselves to look to for support. Outside of them was a wilderness peopled with savages. They founded their schools from the same motives of self- preservation that made them build their houses. There were no schools anywhere to which they could send their 34 High Schools. children ; they must either establish schools or their children must grow up in ignorance. They established schools, and established them in such a way as should most equably diffuse the cost and most easily meet the convenience of the community. Their schools were religious, like our Sunday-schools. They were, in fact, more like the parochial schools of the Roman Catholics, of which we disapprove, than like the actual public schools which we have established. " After God had carried us safe to New England, and we had builded our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, reared convenient places for God's wor- ship, and settled the civil government, one of the first things we longed for and looked after was to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity, dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to Mie churches." The same au- thority which established and supported the schools for reading and writing established and supported the classical grammar schools and the college. Harvard was founded and named by the State. It belonged to the colony just as the primary school belonged to the colony, and it was established for the express and ex- pressed purpose of promoting piety and godliness as well as knowledge. It is idle, it is illogical, it is the mark of an undisci- plined mind, to demand the maintenance of high schools as a continuance of the practice of our fathers. High Schools. 35 Their devotion to learning should animate us, but their strict adherency to common sense should also stimu- late us to emulation. The method of their devotion was dictated by their circumstances. We also should adapt ourselves to our circumstances, not to theirs. We are amply furnished with academies and colleges endowed by private munificence, private benevolence, private ambition, open to all. The abolition of high schools would not be a blow struck at education, for there would be schools remaining just as good, and ample for all who should seek them ; and many of these schools, and many of the best of these schools, are so cheap that no boy need be, and no resolute boy would be, deterred by the cost from entering them. Those who have persistency enough to use their education to advantage in after life, have persistency enough to gain education in early years. Why should the State depart from the simple principle of giving to every child, of forcing upon every child, sufficient education to enable him to become a good citizen, and stop far short of the education required to make him learned ? Why should it provide him with education that rather unfits than fits him for a trade, yet does not, and does not pretend to fit him for the ministry ? The Rev. Joseph Cook, advocating high schools with characteristic courtesy and modesty, designates those who oppose high schools as the froth and dregs of 36 H^^J^ Schools. society, and stigmatizes this opposition as the work of a foreign priesthood. Only a mind unaccustomed or disinclined to discrimination could so confound the issue. It is possible, but it is not logical, to confuse common schools and high schools, and to assume that opposition to the one is opposition to the other — that the disestablishment of high schools and the establish- ment of parochial schools are part and parcel of the same movement. The two questions are two questions, and not one. ■ ''High schools," says Mr. Joseph Cook, "are the homes of the great middle class ; primary education is not enough. We must bring the masses up to a point where they can guide their own studies. Common- school education does not fit one to regulate his own reading." Yet even this novel argument for high schools fails before the fact, that we do not get "the masses" into the high schools after we establish them ! The high school only plucks from three to five out "of the masses" to guide their studies, while the remaining ninety-five are left -to regulate their own reading just as if there were no high schools at all. Nor is this high school education shaped merely or chiefly to the needs of those fev; of the masses who will go to no higher school, but largely to the still fewer who will go from the high school to the college. Another evil, and a most undemocratic one, is that High Schools. 37 the best teachers, the most highly educated and the most highly paid, are not put into the primary schools, where all the children have the benefit of their culture, but into the high schools, where only three or five per cent, of the children come in contact with them. That is, instead of giving the best advantages to those who have the most ne^d of them, we give them to those who have the least. The child who can devote only the few years of early infancy to mental pursuits, we put off with a half-educated or not educated teacher, while the best gifts are bestowed upon those who can be furnished with the best elsewhere. The School Commissioner of Ohio, in som.e excellent remarks on high schools, says that the three-one-hundredths of the public school teachers of Ohio who are in the high schools receive one-ninth of the money paid for instruction. In Boston about oi>e-tenth.of the teachers are in the high schools, teaching about one-twenty- second part of all the pupils, and receiving about one-sixth of all the salary. The ^v£rage number of pupils to a teacher in the high schools is 25.1 ; in the grammar schools, 46.8; in the primary schools, 45.4. No one will deny that, as the pupil approaches the teacher in character and attainments, the pleasure of teaching him increases, and the trouble of teaching him diminishes. It requires far more vitality to engage and direct twenty little children than twenty boys and 38 High Schools. girls of fifteen years. Yet we put nearly twice as many little restless bodies and fresh, untrained minds into the care of the primary teacher as we put of taught and trained pupils under the high-school teacher. And then we give to the high-school teacher the higher salary, and, most fatal of all, we do not think it necessary for the primary teacher, who has the first and widest and deepest work to do, to be furnished with all the resour- ces which education can provide, but fancy that any woman who can read and write — especially if she have had a touch-and-go at the normal school — is abundantly able to manage these little ones. It is not possible to set too high a value on education. The more thorough it is in the few the more beneficial is it to the many. The deepest, the broadest, the most liberalizing culture is to be desired. The scholarship of the scholar is the boon and blessing of the unlearned. The many are uplifted by the trained and far-reaching intelligence of the few. Especially is a reading popu- lace the rich soil out of which spring the noblest growths of intellect. But I venture to say no man ever con- ferred distinction upon this country who owed his power to the high school. No man ever illustrated the annals of this country who would not have been equally illus- trious had the high school never existed. This matter is not wholly one of theory. We have the two systems — education bestowed, and education High Schools. - 39 purchased — under full headway, in conditions not precisely the same, but sufficiently similar to throw light on the discussion. In all our smaller villages, only the rudimentary education is furnished by the public. High Schools, graded schools, music-masters, drawing-masters, school-superintendents, and military precision pertain only to cities and to towns which number a certain considerable population. A country village of eight hundred inhabitants has its district schools. In these are taught reading, writing, geog- raphy, arithmetic, grammar, a little history, if desired; and, if the teacher be amiable, he or she will gratify the more advanced and studious pupil with as much algebra as there is time -for. It may be predicted, in the first place, that there is little time for anything. The school of forty pupils is broken up into numerous minute classes. Grading is not so much as known among them. There are seven or eight spelling- classes, and four or five reading-classes, and three or four geography-classes, and two or three grammar- classes; and, as for the arithmetic-classes, their name is Legion. A few are counting up apples and tops in somebody's First Lessons ; a few are painfully " skip- ping about" in the multiplication-table; a few are lumbering along through compound reduction and proportion and partial payments ; and the elder or the cleverer pupils are rushing upon the reefs of the final 40 High Schools. problems. One teacher has them all in leash ; and the military discipline consists in tapping them in from recess with a ferule on the window-panef; and permitting them to take turns in sweeping the school- house and bringing the bucket of water daily from some neighboring well. This is all the education the town affords. What are the results ? In point of show, they are not to be compared to the city schools; but, in prac- tical effect, they compare not wholly unfavorably. No pupil is kept back by another's dilatoriness, conse- quently there is a sort of self-creating emulation ; and the bright scholars make more rapid advance than in a more thoroughly organized school. They do not move in appointed lines ; but they move with rapidity and independence. Organization suffers ; but individuality gains. They leave school. Not a boy or girl in town to the best of my knowledge and belief, suffers from ennui) loiters in idleness, hesitates for something to do. They become farmers, masons, carpenters, shoemakers, errand-boys, milliners, dressmakers, worsted-workers. A few of them go out of town to a private academy for two or three terms, to their own pleasure and great advantage, and at their own cost. Those in whom the rage for learning burns go through a thorough course of education at seminary or college. It matters not whether they are rich or poor. As one excellent High Schools, 41 parent expressed it, "Johnny must have his larnin." And Johnny does have it. It is a noteworthy fact, that, through a term of years, this little village, with no public means of education except the district schools, graduated more students from college, in the ratio of its population, than any of the neighboring cities. And of these graduates, I never heard that one was a failure. All were respectable, self-supporting, useful citizens; and some became distinguished. Most of them fought their own way, with little or no help from their families. They borrowed money from their neighbors, who have infinite respect for education. They taught school in the winter vacations and made hay in the summer. They conquered education ; and it became to them a sharp sword and a staff of strength. For the intelligence of those who do not go to college, I can only say that the town-business is conducted with a tolerably rigid adherence to law and decorum. There is apparently no more folly, and no less honesty, than may be predicated, let us say, of New York. The church and the parish organizations are maintained with dignity and with the average liberality. The prayer-meetings of the church are better conducted than any city prayer-meeting that I ever attended. There is less droning, less vulgarity, less bad grammar, and less self-conceit, with more simplicity and directness. Poverty is almost unknown, 4 3 High Schools. and almost disreputable. Everybody is industrious, well-to-do, and decently dressed. To the eye of the observer, there is no test by which they do not com- pare favorably with the members of any city community in the same rank of life. Why may not some of the methods of the country work well in the city ? I know that where hundreds of pupils are congregated in one building, each one can- not be permitted to do that which is right in his own eyes. There must be uniformity to ward off confusion. But it should be always borne in mind that this neces- sary uniformity is a necessary disadvantage. It is not a thing desirable for its own sake. It is praiseworthy only so far as it promotes intellectual efficiency. So far as it substitutes mechanical action for mental spon- taneity, it is disastrous. So far as it carries a pupil along by the action of machinery, and relieves him from individual responsibility, it is not a signal benefit. But, beyond this, why should a city provide any more complex education for its children than does the coun- try ? Suppose it simply puts within the reach of every child the education which the republic requires and leaves the rest to the child's own will and ability, or to its parents ? Drawing and music are agreeable, and a knowledge of them is convenient ; but the same may be said of French and oil-painting. We look at the high school, we admire its beauty, its order, its High Schools, 43 learning ; we see the grand march of the whole public- school system as it passes on from strength to strength, and from glory to glory ; and it seems well-nigh sacri- lege to lift so much as a finger against its beautiful pro- portions. If the object be to perfect a system, then we are, doubtless, on the right road : but if the object be to institute a select, industrious, prosperous, and contented community, there is surely room for doubt. No pret- tier sight can be shown to the Prince of Wales than a Music Hall full of white-robed, flag-bearing school chil- dren ; and a class of boys and girls at the blackboard, frisking through Euclid's hardest problems as if it were a game of fox-and-geese, is a sight calculated to inspire the minds of adults with mingled awe and humility. But three hundred idle, well-dressed, well-educated young men applying for one insignificant clerkship ; fifty clergy- men crowding one ecclesiastical broker's shop on Satur- day afternoon; a hundred young ladies answering an advertisement for one copyist; throngs of intelligent, refined, and healthy persons, in the youth and prime of their years, blocking the doorway of every supposed easy- going routine office in the country, — is not an inspiring sight. I do not say, take away education that these people may be left on a low plane to work at common things ; but I do suggest whether it is wise for the State, any more than for the individual, to interfere with the operation of natural laws. I would by every legitimate 44 High Schools. means, advance and encourage education ; but the law of Nature is that cost is the measure of value. Give to all the boys and girls a fair start in the race, but give them not the prizes till they have won them. Let the city and the country occupy the same ground of fur- nishing to all the opportunity of becoming what they are required to become, — good citizens; but let the rest be a matter for their own choice and ability. If they will be learned, cultivated, distinguished, let them earn the distinctions ; but let them not be tempted by opportunity to an education without cost, without purpose, without enthusiasm, — an education refining, ornamental, in many respects admirable, but an educa- tion which has the one fatal defect of leaving them stranded on the bleak shores of life without the ability to take care of themselves. INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS. INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS. THE inutility of the high school, the unsatisfactory results of our school system are undoubtedly the cause of a large part of the interest now attaching to technical or industrial schools. Our people lavish their money upon the school system, upon the education of their children, with a promptness and generosity almost pathetic. But we do not reap a corresponding harvest. We have no greater proportion of learned men than we used to have ; we have a greater number of unem- ployed men and women and we have a great number of unskilled mechanics. It is seen that the high school only partially fits boys for the learned professions. It does nothing at all to fit them for mechanics. The remedy suggested is more schools, more system, more cost. Again I say, if the perfection of a system be our object, this is a good way to accomplish it. If we are to change our form of government into a monarchical or a parental government, this is a proper step. A system that takes in all the trades is more of a system than (47) ^\.S Industrial Schools. one that leaves them all out. A government that directs and furnishes the tuition and the occupation of all its subjects governs a great deal more than one which leaves all this to the subjects themselves. But if we are not dissatisfied with our form of government, if we be- lieve in a Republic, if we believe that citizens are men and not children, if we believe it is better for a man to walk even crookedly on his own feet, than to go straight in government leading strings, we should view with suspicion the establishment of Industrial Schools by the government. One reason against industrial schools is their mani- fest and unavoidable inaldequacy. You cannot teach all the industries. What shall be the principle of selec- tion ? If you have a school for carpentering, must you -not also have one to teach the mason, the plumber, the farmer, the miner, the sea-captain, the gas-fitter, the shop-keeper ? By what right, on what ground, shall the State give free tuition to the boy who is going to be an architect, while the boy who is going to be a stage-actor must shift for himself ? The State ought to furnish tu- ition in all trades or tuition in none. It is unjust and unreasonable for Massachusetts to tax the fishermen of Hyannis to teach a Boston boy how to whittle, while the Hyannis boy has to learn fishing on his ^ own account. So far as this Industrial discussion has proceeded it Iud7istrial Schools. 49 has been not in the direction of thorough but of super- ficial Industrial training — just as the Normal School does not furnish a superior education to teachers but formulates an inferior one, just as the High School gives only an inadequate basis for professional work and no basis at all for trade's ingenuity. I hear the instructions given verbally, and by cards and blackboard, to a boy of eight j and I do not wonder that his righteous soul is vexed, as his curly head reposes on the pillow, with the names and the nature of equilateral and scalene and isosceles, with quadrilateral and quadrangle, and rhom- boid and rhombus, and sector and quadrant. Are these more conducive to the greatest good of the greatest number, or are they more accessible to the childish mind, than the rivers of his own hemisphere? I shall be told to look at the results. I do look at them, and am astonished at the excellence of the drawings dis- played- Nevertheless I observe that, of the eight complete pictures upon the blackboard at exhibition, seven have the same initials attached. Yet all the pu- pils are required to buy drawing-books and to take les- sons in drawing. I have not seen any Industrial School plan which proposes to take a boy in the rough and turn him out a thorough skilled tailor as did the old system of apprenticeship. All that it pro- poses to do is to give him a smattering of some trade. All that it proposes to do is to add to our "system" a dab 50 Industrial Schools, of mechanics. We are to have all the cost of all the great extra machinery of the industrial interests, but what the boy is to get is a mere slight superficial half hour or so of Industrial something added to his intellec- tual training. Mr. Walter Smith, an Englishman who has succeeded in attaching himself to the school System of Boston after great native opposition — but under whom it is only fair to admit Boston is still res- tive, lays out his plan thus — and I am certainly safe in taking Boston as the highest exponent of educational advancement in all respects, for she herself has said it. " Judging from the experience of other countries as well as the result of what has already been done in this, the following plan is the most economical and successful method by which technical education may be promoted in this country. " I. That industrial drawing should be taught in the public day-school as an elementary part of general ed- ucation, and that industrial drawing and modelling be taught in free evening classes, to persons of both sexes who are not in attendance at day-schools. To become general, this should be accomplished by an act of the legislature of each state. " 2. That a state normal art school for the training of teachers and designers be established in each capital city or other convenient centre, in connection with an industrial museum and art gallery. Indzistrlal Schools. 51 "3. That the teachers of drawing in normal schools, evening drawing classes or schools of art, be required to possess the certificate of qualification to act as teach- ers, awarded upon examination by the state normal art schools. " 4. That the national government establish, or assist in the establishment of, a great technical school of in- dustrial art at Washington." Here let it be observed we have a magnificent plan comprising a great National Art School at Washington, and State Art Schools, Museums and Galleries in every city and all the red tape of examinations and certificates ; but all that the actual pupil actually gets out of this great Industrial System is a little bit of drawing tucked in among his other studies. There has never been a time since the foundation of the government when he could not get that if he wished it without any system at all. It is not proposed to teach drawing enough to make a child an artist. One of the reports says that "the Supervisor of drawing — " observe how the craze for supervision has penetrated the departments — " the Supervisor of drawing, — " of whom I venture to say no artist in this country has even so much as heard, and I do not say this to blame the Supervisor; if any committee in this nation choose to give a woman a good salary as drawing-mistress, I do not ^2 Industrial Schools. blame her for taking the salary whether she be an artist or not — " the Supervisor of drawing resigned her office at the end of two years during which she had not only taken the general superintendence of that department . . . but had given a complete course of instruction to the teachers of those schools. The highest merit of her work is that it is no longer needed, as she has enabled most or all of her pupils to become efficient and suc- cessful teachers." I think I am safe in assuming that ever}' person at all acquainted with art knows that artists are not turned out in that way by the gross. The art that can be " efficiently and successfully " learned and taught by devoting to it one or two tired hours a week during two years of hard work in another absorbing profession is not an art of sufficient value to serve as foundation for supervision of drawing, or National Museums. I venture to say that if the parents of New England wish their children to learn so much art as that, there is not a teacher in New England fit to be in the schoolroom, who could not teach it to her pupils by her own unas- sisted reason without the slightest help from any supervi- sor whatever. Tell the bright and cultivated New England girls, the educated and self-reliant teachers, that you wish them to teach drawing and they will teach it, and will teach as much as the supervisors know and more than the supervisors teach, and they will teach it Industrial Schools, 53 mthout costing the state one additional penny for their own tuition. But let us look well before we take this step. Already our bridges are crashing beneath our feet, and our houses tumbling over our heads, because they are so badly built. Men will not serve apprenticeship to the trades, but with little learning and less experience rush in as master-builders ; and property and limb and life suffer in consequence. What smattering of art we can give children in the common schools will make few artists or architects : it is, I fear, far more likely to make pupils think art is an easy mistress, and that their "little learning," so lightly gained, and their few strokes, so ja^untily made, and so liberally praised, will just as well enable them to design, to build, and to criticize, as a course of education at the Institute of Technology. It should be remembered also in solving this problem and before we go very deep into this costly and magnifi- cent system, that the whole theory and practice of Mr. Walter Smith is violently condemned by artists them- selves in the interests of art. The man who stands at the head and front of the movement to make art general is bitterly condemned by the specialists in his own line. Drawing has been for some time in the schools ; and already the world is divided into two parties, each of which accuses the other of gross ignorance and inaccu- 54 Industrial Schools, racy, of false drawing, false faith, bad principles, and the very bad practices of theft and fraud ; so that we have the testimony of experts, declaring that all the money hitherto spent has been spent on grossly wrong and foolish methods, which is not encouraging. Of the merits of the controversy I know nothing, but h-as the state a right to make so costly an experiment on ground so debatable ? Respecting the importance of teaching every child to read, write and cipher, there is no difference of opinion. Respecting the importance of teaching him to draw there is great diiTerence of opin- ion. Is it wise to ignore that difference and undertake to impose drawing upon all by a plan which incurs the hostility not only of those who are indifferent or opposed to all drawing, but of a very large class who are skilled in art and who oppose this as an essentially inartistic and hurtful method ? Deeper than this lies the radical heresy out of which all this false doctrine springs. Prof. Walter Smith said before the school superintendents, convened in Washington — and he says it not alone — that public education is the "fitting of youth for the occupations of adult life and the duties of good citizenship. It can never be too often repeated that our public school education contemplates no such thing. It has never proposed or pretended to fit youth "for occu- pations." Where is the public school or the public I?id2ist7-ial Schools. 55 school code that ever assumed to fit a man to be a gardener or a blacksmith, a woman to be a mil- liner or sick-nurse ? The only occupation for which our public schools assume to fit their pupils is teaching. The High Schools assume to fit their pupils partially ..for the learned professions. Why should the State furnish these geometrical and artistic instructions ? They are surely not necessary to intelligent suffrage, to the safety of the republic. "Because," is the reply, "these principles lie at the foundation of all industrial education." But what right have we to call upon the State to provide industrial education, any more than medical or marine education ? We have not a paternal government. The State undertakes, and should under- take, to furnish only that which lies at the basis of all educations alike, which is, therefore, equally valuable to all, and not appropriate merely to a small proportion of the community. She concerns herself, not with the gains of a few, but with the stability of the republic. It is no part of the State's business to forestall appren- ticeship, to furnish artists for the chintz manufacturers, any more than tea-tasters for the Chinese merchants or horses and carriages for impecunious writers on lovely midsummer mornings. I see no reason why the public should pay for the apprenticeship of teachers and the partial apprenticeship of doctors any more than for that of blacksmiths. I see no reason why we should have 56 Industrial Schools. normal schools and high schools any more than why we should have brick-kiln schools and shoemaking schools. But to put a museum in every city and a national gallery in Washington neither abolishes the in- consistency, nor helps along the mechanic. " The literary part of our education has advanced," says Prof. Walter Smith, " until it monopolizes all the precious time of our youth, and the trades and manu- factures in which so many have to be employed are ignored in our schemes of education . . . until the name of the native-born American mechanic is a synonyme for want of skill." I should like to know in what country Prof. Walter Smith finds the name of the native-born American me- chanic a synonyme for want of skill. Not in 'certainly the nations that attended the last" Paris Exposition. Not in the nations that gave Tiffany of New York the highest prizes for silver-work and made him the fashion. Not in the German nation whose emperor declared that no ma- chinery of the world was complete until the Americans had put on the finishing touch. Not in the nations that gave Americans the first prizes for their second-class locomotives and were left far in the rear by American ploughs. Prof. Graham Bell did not think so when asked why so large a proportion of inventions came from this country and why he, a Scotchman, born and educated in Scotland, should choose America for his field of action. Industrial Schools, 5^ He declared that it was because he could not easily obtain in England the appliances which his work re- quired. " If he went to an instrument-maker and ordered any- thing out of the usual way, he was met with all sorts of difficulties, and v/hen these were over he was confounded by the cost. In America, on the other hand, the instrument-makers and manufacturers lay themselves out specially to secure the custom of inventors. They will go to any expense or submit to any inconvenience in the way of disarranging their ordinary procedure. Of course they do not do this purely in the interests of science. They find their account in the business they secure should the invention turn out to be a practicabil- ity. They are always glad to get new ideas, or be themselves put on the track." The juries of awards of the Paris Exposition did not think so since the general summing up of all the results of all the exhibits is that "the United States — though the last to enter the lists, though restricted in time, space, expenditure and exhibits — has taken more awards tha7t any other nation^ and has opened up markets hitherto closed to us." The very moment when this Americah nation is not only sending oatmeal to Scotland and beef-steak to England and cotton to all the world ; but sill«s to France and watches to Switzerland and the finest parts 58 I7tdust7-ial ScJiooIs. of music-boxes to Italy and steam enginery to Russia and cutlery to Manchester and carriages to London, — this very moment is seized upon by our South Kensing- ton professor to announce in the capital of the United States that the name of the natural-born American me- chanic is a synonyme for want of skill. It follows as the night the day that the name of his foreign-born European customer is a synonyme for want of sense. There is plenty of pooi mechanical work in the United States, I sorrowfully admit. A victim to the impish freaks of an insane American clock which I bought under the combined stress of patriotism and poverty, I am ready to believe any ill of the American mechanic and solemnly warn every one to invest his ten dollars until it becomes twenty and then buy a French clock. But none the less is the native-born American mechanic — when he gives his mind to it — the best mechanic under the sun ; and one of the reasons why he is the best mechanic is that he has a mind to give to it and that mind has been cultivated by the "literary education " of his childhood. That "the precious time of youth " is monopolized by literary education is the glory not the defect of our school system. For the larger part of our youth this is the only time that can be devoted to intellectual pursuits. When they grow up they must go into the bread-winning trades. I should Ifuhtstriai ScJwcls. 59 be extremely sorry to see the short time they have for mental culture abbreviated by the thrusting in of me- chanical work before its time. Let them have all the learning they will take. Let them be taught by the most capable and cultured teachers that no time may be wasted, but every moment consciously or uncon- sciously be moulding them to refinement, to intelligence, to noble living. Prof. Walter Smith's claims for the art of drawing are so enormous as to excite suspicion. It would seem indeed to be the Lost Art, the forlorn hope of the world. The reason why our workmen are out of employment is that drawing is not taught in the schools. "When suffering from the same cause the first thing England did was to establish schools of art in the centres of manu- factures but that did little good. The next experiment was to teach drawing in the public schools, and train highly skilled teachers of art, and therein" was found the remedy." And while Prof. Walter Smith was enunci- ating this newly found remedy for hard times, his coun- trymen were eating mule's flesh to keep themselves from starvation. This drawing of inferences is certainly a most remarkable free-hand drawing. Prof. Walter Smith's theory against Socialism, Nihi- lism, Communism at home, as against Starvation abroad, is the same thing — the teaching of drawing in the public schools. He considers that the chief danger to 6o Industrial Schools. social and political order in Massachusetts for instance lies in her 3 16,000 workmen. "Massachusetts exists to- day by virtue of her manufacturing or industrial inter- ests. . . . Massachusetts holds her position among her sister states by virtue of the labor of 316,000 of her mechanics and artisans. . . . The State passed a law in 1870 that drawing should be taught to all children in the public schools." How lamely lags the logic again ; for it was not till 1870 that Massachusetts legislated drawing into the public schools ; so that if the "position " to which Mr. Smith refers, is as he implies, a leading position — and I trust no Bostonian native or naturalized would so far forget the truth of history as to admit that in any re- spect Massachusetts could occupy any but a leading position — she must have led, without drawing in the schools. That is, according to South Kensington rea- soning, Massachusetts occupies her leading position — even exists as a state — by reason of her industrial interests which have grown up without compulsory drawing in the public schools. Therefore compulsory drawing in the public schools is indispensable to the advancement of industrial inter- ests. And as Prof. Smith goes on he warms with his own eloquence till not only do the axe and the ploughshare radiate as much national glory on the shelves of the Industrial Schools. * 6l great national industrial Art Museum which he is going to build at Washington, as does the sword kept bright at West Point ; but the ordinary education of the public schools, the reading, writing, geography, arithmetic and grammar to which the great mass of our people have hitherto been confined, and which we have considered with all its defects, as our great safeguard against polit- ical and religious tyranny, collapses beneath his wither- ing gaze into " a miserable 3 R education" ! But if we will adopt the British fashion of infusing into our educa- tion a decoction of drawing, the Professor promises it shall be to us " what embankments are to the Dutch or its fleet to the English people." As the American- continent has hitherto been able to keep itself out of water without general recourse to embankments, and as we have not been able to detect any analogy in the position or the sensations of the United States without school drawing ^ and England without her fleet, this somewhat airy substitute for a fleet does not commend itself to our enthusiasm so ar- dently as might be desired. The good Dr. Bartol of Boston, if the report of his address, adopted and endorsed by the School Report of the city, is to be accepted, went even beyond Prof. Walter Smith in his sanguine prognostications of the benefits to be wrought by Industrial Education. " The first argument was from nature itself; and the 62 . Industrial Schools. second from physiology, the connection of the mind with the flesh. The third argument was the economy of health ; and the fourth, that industrial education is the condition of honesty. Fifth, it would solve this question of intemperance ; and sixth, it would banish poverty. Seventh, industrial education would be a divining-rod to detect mechanical or artistic genius and talent which is now mostly left to the discovery of chance ; and eighth, we learn this lesson from experi- "ence. Ninth, industrial education is the only thing to be relied upon for that new desire of the time, the eman- cipation of woman. Tenth, it would be the diffusion among all classes of useful knowledge. Eleventh, industrial education would be happiness ; and twelfth, it would be human fellowship. Thirteenth, industrial education is the best preparation for that hereafter which we call heaven." If happiness here and bliss hereafter are to be se- cured by teaching trades in the public schools, far be it from me to place the smallest pebble of a stumbling-stone in the way of salvation. Dr. Bartol embodies in his own person so much of that sweetness and light " which we call heaven," that I receive all his teachings upon the subject with great confidence. I remember also that Rev. Mr. Herrick has affirmed his belief " that Boston would be known above, not for her Athenian culture " — which must be a blow to Boston — but as Mr. Herrick Industrial Schools, 63 is a clergyman of my own denomination I accept his testimony also. And I congratulate Boston that while she can no longer hope to enter Heaven with Attic grace, it is much better to enter as a shoemaker's appren- tice than not to enter at all ! NORMAL SCHOOLS. NORMAL SCHOOLS. WHATEVER objections lie against high schools and industrial schools lie against normal and training schools, while beyond and above these are objections from which high schools and industrial schools are free. It may be a question whether we have the right to impose upon the public the high edu- cation of a fev^r, but there is no question that the few are highly educated. The high schools do give pupils, so far as they go, a good classical education. Industrial schools if established will give th^ir pupils mechanical skill. Normal and training schools are not only objectionable because — if this be an objection — they undertake to give a few, at the expense of the many, a higher education than the safety of the Republic de- mands of all : not only because they give to a certain class an education which other classes have to furnish themselves, but because they do not accomplish, and in the nature of things cannot accomplish, but must retard the very end for which they are established. They not (67) 6S Normal Schools, only do not secure us good teaching, but they stand in the way of good teaching. The only training school that is of use for teach- ers is the school in which they are teaching. What is necessary for a good teacher is, first, natural ability, the teaching tact — hiack. This is born and not made. No training can give it ; happily, no training can wholly take it away, though training does a great deal to ham- per it. Secondly, the teacher needs education which the schools for education supply. These good gifts are improved by experience, but by real experience, in actual work, not by sham experience in learning other people's work, or in play-work. Teaching is the one thing that cannot be taught. To teach teaching is to teach nature, experience, mechanism — under which our schools are now suffering. A good teacher, sound, strong, great-hearted, independent, courteous — that is the true normal school. What we want is to put such teachers in our schools ; not to take a wooden man and put him in a wooden school that he may be hewed and chipped into the exact similitude of a thousand other wooden men ! If our primary, and grammar, and high schools are what they ought to be, they are all normal schools; for in them all is good teaching practised every day. The mind, the very being of the graduate, is shaped, and moulded, and polished by the conscious and unconscious influence of the teachers by whom he Normal Schools. 69 has been instructed from year to year. If these are not good teachers, it is foolish and extravagant to patch up their bad work by the fresh expense of normal schools ; the true way is to put the normal school money, and the normal school teachers back' into the primary schools, that all the children may have the benefit of them, and not simply the few who m#iy wish to be teachers, or the still fewer who will prove to be good teachers. The remedy which one superintendent suggests for mechanical teaching is to put inexperienced teachers " in charge of the older pupils who have not been subjected to a mechanical process," so that "the inexperienced teachers would learn ways of the teachers who had charge of the scholars before them." What is that but a mechanical process ? What is that but the mere imitation of the methods of some one whom the teacher has never seen, and whose wa3^s he adopts by a mere mechanical servility? The pupil who is under a teacher of strongly marked individuality is insensibly moulded into his shajDC, adopts his ways by sympathy and admiration, by an unconscious assim- ilation and growth which guides, but hinders not, the development of his own faculties. Our normal school apostles give no weight, no influence, no consideration to any teaching until we reach the normal schools. They assume that the pupil learns nothing of the teacher 7o JVorjnal Schools. under whose strong grasp he lives and learns for years, but must wait until he gets into the normal school, and stares at teaching as teaching. But it is the exemplifi- cation of good teaching in his teacher — it is the long contact with the firm and furnished mind of his teacher which fits the pupil, so far as he can be fitted, for teaching — not a pseudo-practical or superficial study in the normal schools. We do not want inexperienced teachers to learn the ways of their predecessors. We want them to teach their onw way. What they lack in experience, they often make up in enthusiasm. What we want in schools is fresh blood, originality, individuality, variety, life. The training that we need is the training of memory, judgment, conscience, nerve and sinew into the best American citizen which the boy or girl is capable of becoming. The training of training schools and nor- mal schools is the training of all into subjugation to one, the training of teachers and pupils into uniformity and drill and dwarfage. The ideal of the system is to take a key and wind up at the centre and have the whole mechanism, to the very circumference, tick, and strike, and move with unchanged regularity. And this is a good ideal for a clock. For a school system it is a bad ideal. Drill and routine are so bad for the human mind that they ought always to be viewed with suspicion. Where bodies of human beings are to act or to be acted Normal Schools. *ji upon together there must be some routine, but it must be kept always at the minimum for the maximum of force. Nothing can be more harmful for the mental development of a city than to have a training school established in the city, and to take the teachers from that training school. Monotony and mediocrity will be stamped all over it. It would be better to have every teacher from a different school and a different State. Good education should be demanded in teachers. It is not now demanded. With all our right hand super- visions and our left-hand inspections, men are at the head of grammar schools who could not prepare a class for the high school to save their lives. Women are teachers in primary schools and grammar schools who never had the equivalent of one year's thorough study at any high school or academy that fits for college. The reason of this is not the lack of high schools or academies. We need not establish normal schools to furnish education. There are high schools and private schools enough to give an educated teacher to every school that will have one. The education of the nor- mal schools is not equal to the education of the high schools and seminaries. Compared with them, it is shorter, more slight and superficial. We do not hayp educated teachers because we do not demand them. We content ourselves with uneducated teachers, and 72 Normal Schools, try to make up for it by normal schools to bring them up to one mark, and superintendents and examiners, and a system which hides their defects under routine but does not make good teachers. If now we should abolish all this, and should simply demand that every teacher should be a graduate of a high school or a seminary, or should pass an examination which should be equivalent to such graduation, or should bring to the committee some satisfactory certificate of equal education, we should give an impetus to education which would be almost a revolution. The learning which normal and training schools im- part can be better taught by the high schools and acad- emies already established. Their training in teaching is in the direction of uniformity and mechanism and mental subjugation, which is already the bane of our schools and is against individuality and independence and self-direction and self-reliance which we sorely need. The interest which our people take in education is almost pathetic, it is so high, so strong, so self-sacrific- ing, so instructive. Before me lies an account of the dedication of a normal school house in a quiet village. The faithful, simple, and honorable account credits to " Money raised by the town, . . , $15,000. From sale' of old barn and apples, $ 20.50 Realized from village subscription, $ 7,170. Normal Schools. 73 I know what the sale of old barns and apples means. Twenty-five dollars for the barn besides bricks and cart- age. When apples are worth marketing it is not a bearing year. When there is a good apple crop, barrels cost a dollar and a quarter apiece, apples are fifty cents a barrel and the vinegar never comes. You have to sell a good many old barns to keep the apple- orchard from ruining 3'ou. These people spent nearly thirty thousand dollars upon their new school-house. The building committee made no charge and received nothing for their services, but acted solely from public spirit. What ought not to be expected from a commu- nity whose motives and moods are so high .? What wonder that the people came together to the dedication of their noble edifice with gladness of heart and brought forth the headstone thereof with shoutings, crying Grace, Grace unto it ? But observe now this normal school requires for admission only such education as can be had in the common country district schools — the ordinary educa- tion which all acquire, with a very slight infusion of history, algebra, physiology added — only so little as many a young woman gives to the advanced pupils who desire it. These pupik, the normal school proposes to take and to graft upon their common school course its own course of one year in " thorough reviews of the elementary English branches, mental science, i:hemistry, ^zj Normal Schools. physics, algebra, geometry, English literature, civil gov- ernment, school economy dietetics." All this effort is made, all this money is expended, all these congratula- tions are exchanged over one year's scramble along the outskirts of science. And this is called the higher education. It is not the higher education. It is the lower edu- cation. It is not meeting a demand for higher education. It is descending to the clamor for a lower education. We are either not able or not willing to employ only educated teachers and so we organize ignorance, and sprinkle it over with scientific terminology and give it a diploma and send it into our school-houses as a grad- uate of *a normal school. I will prove this from the very pamphlet which cele- brates this normal school. The memorial which was sent to the legislature pray- ing for its establishment says " are more teachers demanded each year than are supplied by the graduating classes from the two normal schools? It seems that the answer must be in the negative. The standard of qualification demanded by our school managers is very low .... Quite a number of the normal graduates of good reputation and success have no schools. The facts seem to warrant the conclusion that no more nor- mal schools of the same class and grade as our present schools are now demanded." Normal Schools, 75 What then ? Did the memorialist give up the idea of establishing more normal schools and address him- self to the task of elevating public sentiment till parents shall see that educated teachers are a necessity in a free state? Not at all. He immediately proceeded to let down the schools to the level of ignorance. *'The course in our normal schools is two years . . . I would, therefore, ask the establishment of a normal school on a plan somewhat different from our present schools. Let the course be limited to six months !" And in evident acknowledgment of the slight and superficial education which such a ^' course " can give, the *' circular " of this school says, " The object of the course is the study and practice of methods of teaching, rather than t]\Q 'acquisition of knowledge of subjects to be taught'^ They announce formally that they do not demand the higher education as a requisite for admission to the normal school and they formally announce that they do not profess to give it in the school. Could words be plainer ? The normal school is not to meet or to make a demand for educated teachers ; it is not to broaden, to deepen, to liberalize the mind by knowledge; it is simply to put ignorance in decent clothes. And the good people who have wrought this folly in Israel meet and make merry over it. In the very act 76 No7'mal Schools. of lov/ering the flag of their fathers, they call the world to witness how bravely they bear it aloft. The chair- man of the building committee says he cannot better conclude his remarks than in quoting from an address delivered seventy-two years before, upon the occasion of the dedication of an Academy, by a man of wisdom and righteousness who, during a distinguished service of twenty-eight years among this people as principal and instructor of the academy, was honored of all men. He then quotes : "Much praise is due to our civil fathers for their readiness to incorporate and endow this nursery of learning. . . . May the Author of ev- ei-y good gift furnish its instructors and overseers with wisdom and discretion, and feed its pupils with knowl- edge and understanding. May infidelity and impiety, vice and ignorance, be banished from its walls. May it foster none who reverence and love not the God of their fathers and the Redeemer of men May this Academy be distinguished for learning, virtue, and good order, till time shall be no longer ! " All this is sincere, simple, and solemn, when ap- plied to the academy of seventy years ago which w^as meant to be a nursery of learning, a feeder of the churches, but is grotesque when applied to a normal school and its six months' scamper over books, and which barely saves itself from sham by formally pro- Normal Schools. *j^ fessing not to be a nursery of learning but a drill- master of ignorance. *' Situated on a convenient eminence," says the gal- lant governor in his turn, not apparently considering it his duty to throw a wet blanket over the new school- house, " in the midst of this historic town and among an intelligent and refined people traditionally friendly and helpful to scholars in consequence of years of association with successive generations of pupils of the academy and the seminary" — But they would never have been traditionally friendly if they had had only six months association with scholars. The academy I venture to say would never have been heard of and would never have surrounded itself with a refined and intelligent people, would never have sent out one " scholar " into the world, had it confined itself to a six months' or a year's skirmish with the picket-guard of illiteracy. Of the academy I know nothing, but I hazard the assertion that its reverend instructor was a scholar, . that its pupils received as thorough and finished an education as any school in New England gave, and that its graduates went into the world as well fitted and furnished to all good works as any school or tutor in the land could make them, and not merely veneered with the terminology of learning ! Still another, unwillingly glorying in our shame, brought out the record of the fathers. 78 Normal Schools, " The people of this town years before this province became a State were distinguished for their culture, and for the sacrifices which they made to secure the establishment among them of an advanced institution of learning " — This to a people who had made all their sacrifices to secure a retrograde, inferior, superficial seat of learning! As if a normal school, professedly not established for culture were, like the good old academy, a nursery of learning; and not consecrated to the legitimization, the deification and the perpetuation of ignorance. " New York expends annually upon her normal schools," says one admiringly and for our ensample, "nearly one hundred and seventy thousand dollars." And the governor of New York in his last annual message says, " So far as I can learn, the normal schools established in various parts of the State are, with two or three exceptions, wholly useless and fail almbst en- tirely to accomplish the objects for which they were established and for which the State is annually paying large amounts of money from the Treasury." Is this an encouraging sign for the establishment of more normal schools ? "Forty years ago," says the orator, " the legislature of Massachusetts made its first appropriation for normal schools. Since then the work of their establishment has Normal Schools. 'j^ gone bravely forward." And a school superintendent of Massachusetts says in his report: " Our normal schools as now constituted seem to me to fall far short of their purposes, for though they serve to give good suggestions, they often beget a conceit, that a more thorough training would dissipate. They may in some cases prevent absolutely poor teachers, but I doubt if they ever make good ones." And this superintendent is writing under the shadow of the Boston normal school, which requires of its candidates as a preparation for entrance the completion of a high-school course of instruction. If now the year's course at the normal school serve to beget conceit even when grafted upon a high-school course, what is it likely to beget when grafted professedly only upon such preparation "as would entitle "the holder to the lowest grade certificate to teach," in a State where its memorialist declares that "agents in hiring teachers have regard to cheapness, not to quali- fications ? Almost any person can procure a certificate to teach." Is the money so hardly raised from the sale of the old barn and the cider apples, so nobly and touchingly contributed by the citizens of the village — is it wisely spent in an institution whose characteristic trait is to beget conceit, and whose best work is to give good suggestions.-* Is it wise and well to spend the 8o Normal Schools, people's money, raised either by taxation or by voluntary contribution, in a work whose benefit is so problemati- cal that those, whose position should make them best acquainted with its results, can only say that it " may in some cases prevent absolutely poor teachers, but we doubt if they ever make good ones ?" That this superintendent is not alone in his doubts of the efficacy of the normal school is proved by the Report of the Boston superintendent for 1876. He says " Twenty-four years ago, a Normal School . •. . . was established on a rational basis Very soon the original plan, purpose, and organization of the school were radically changed, and it is hardly an exaggeration to say that ^during almost the whole period that has elapsed since the establishment of the school the ar- rangements and provisions have been insuffi- cient and unsatisfactory."- If the original establishment were rational, when it was radically changed it must have beconfe irrational, that is, absurd ; so that for more than half its existence the leading normal school of the leading community of the universe, which other States naturally lookiip to as their nursing mother, was going on in a perfectly absurd manner — was of course wasting the money spent upon its support. Is this an encouraging circumstance for other normal school men ? . Is it better now? " We have now," says the super- Normal Schools, 8i intendent, " a well-organized and efficient normal school, established on a broad and firm foundation The peculiar difficulty which a school like this has to contend with is that of discriminating between those of its pupils who have talent for teaching and those who have not, and of convincing the latter that it is their duty to engage in some other occupation. If the head- master finds in the course of the year [the course of training is only for one year] that there are some pupils who give little promise of success, he may perhaps pri- vately advise them to withdraw from the school. But such advice is usually most unwelcome, and is rarely accepted as wise and impartial. Still it seems desirable that such advice should be given in some cases." With one superintendent attesting that the normal schools may in some cases prevent absolutely poor teach- ers but he doubts if they ever make good ones, and with another superintendent treading so cautiously around this prevention of poor teachers and building up a Chinese wall of ifs and mays and perhapses and in some cases, I should say that Massachusetts combines with the more outspoken New York in offering to sister States but a forlorn hope of greatly improving the quality or elevating the standard of teaching by her one year's or six months' course in the normal school. Mr. Charles Francis Adams, jr., in his late pamphlet on the Common Schools, says that the greater part of 82 Normal Schools, the scholars in the Quincy common schools, at their examinations in 1873 could only stammer and bungle along in their reading. " In other words, it appeared, as the result of eight years' school-teaching, that the children, as a whole, could neither write with facility nor read fluently .... The fact was that the exam- inations had shown that In far too many cases they could neither read nor write at all ... . It was, in a word, all smatter, veneering and cram ..." Yet dur- ing those years the annual cost to the town of educa- ting each child in the public schools had increased from six dollars to fifteen dollars ... It was plain that a great waste of the public itioney was steadily going on ; . . . that is, of the amount the town was spend- ing, not fifty cents out of each dollar were effectually spent." And Mr. Adams expressly says that "the Quincy schools at that time were neither better nor worse than those of the surrounding towns; they were, indeed, fairly to be classed among those of the higher order, such as are usually looked for in the more populous, and well- to-do communities in the immediate vicinity of Boston. Yet normal schools have been supported by Massa- chusetts in Boston and " in the immediate vicinity of Boston " for forty years ! Further than this, when the Quincy superintendent of schools reached the conclusion that he did not under- Normal Schools, ' 83 stand the service of teaching, what did he do ? Says Mr. Adams, " he had gone abroad in search of that training which he was unable to get in America, and at a comparatively mature age had made himself master of the modern German theories of common-school education." So that, if Mr. Adams be a competent witness, our best schools, in the very communities where normal schools are most numerous and of longest standing, under the very shadow of this "well-organized and effi- cient normal school," make a meaningless farce of edu- cation; and when a man arises who wishes to understand teaching, he cannot learn in our normal schools, but must go to Germany for training, precisely the same as if our normal schools had no existence. Yet the Congressional Report gives one hundred and fifty-two Normal Schools in this country with eleven hundred and eighty-nine instructors. Arguing still further from his own • experience the necessity of normal schools, a speaker says ; " I recall the successive teachers under whom I came as a boy. I do not think that there was an ignorant man among them, nor one who failed to hold us in due order ; but this I can say of them, teachers in the school, and I might almost add, professors in the college, that there was only one of them all who was truly competent to teach, only one who knew how to inspire a whole school 84 Normal Schools. with his own enthusiasm in study, who knew how to ad- just his flexible methods to the needs and capacities of every scholar, until he made a school composed of one part braggarts, and the other part dullards, a company of happy, earnest students . . . That teacher ! His life, his fire in the school-room, his kindly look, his frown, his lucid explanations, his illustrations so new and startling to us, his appeals to our individual minds, and adroit drawings forth of capacities within us of whose possession we had never dreamed \ his ways of pricking conceit, his patience with slow, stolid intellects, and the moral elevation he gave us, quickening our sense of justice, making us to despise a lie, compelling us to love him so that I think we could have died for him ! I recall only one such and he was" — a graduate of a normal school. Truly this is a fascinating even a thrill- ing portrait — I surrender. If a normal school can manufacture this kind of teacher in six months or a year or even two years, I yield to the normal school all my homage. But what is this ? Not a normal scholar? "I recall only one such, and /;/;;2 my father bailed out of jail to put him over us, having wit enough to see that there was some other than an evil genius in the man . . . The man was a criminal ! Yes. Who can explain the anomaly ? One thing I know, he could teach !" One thing I do not know, and that is what connection Normal Schools. 85 this criminal teacher had with, what encouragement he gave to, the establishment of normal schools. If we are advocating the doctrine that our teachers should first be jail-birds, that our " Educators " should learn in suffering what they teach in song, I can see the point ; but in the light of untutored reason, I read on that crim- inal's brow only the lesson that teachers are born not made. THE FORM OF BLANKS. THE FORM OF BLANKS. WE seem to have reached the time when a patriotic, progressive, and economical people needs, every two days, to remind itself that only two things are abso- lutely essential to a perfect school system : teachers and pupils. School-houses are convenient, but excellent schools have been held in the back chamber of an over- large dwelling-house. Books are the most important of the non-essentials, but with born teachers and bright scholars a first-class school can be carried on with almost any kind of a book. A committee-man to represent the community serves to simplify matters, to facilitate the conduct of business ; but outside of this, nearly every thing is riffraff. Conventions, state, county and town ; school supervisors, school superintendents, school- boards are tolerable devices for busy idleness, for mounting hobbies, for expending rhetoric, for practising oratory, for exchanging courtesies, for giving a good sal- ary to certain unoccupied citizens ; but they are of small use to the schools. They are gratifying to the few men (89) 90 The Form of. Blanks. and women who receive the salaries and who no doubt honestly try to earn them. But they do not advance the work of education. It is the teachers and the teachers only who do the real work ; and the teachers are not helped but hampered and hindered by the multiplied machinery that is noisily rattling around out- side the school-houses. Whoever will turn his atten- tion from the talk about our schools to the schools themselves will see that they are at this moment gasping under the intolerable weight of petty and pestering supervision. Unhappily the drift of every movement is in the di- rection of more supervision, more machinery, more com- plication. The tendency is not to put more brains in- side the school-room, but more offices outside. The same report that suggests an increase of school overseers will suggest a decrease in the number of teachers to pupils. The remedy proposed for poor teaching is not better men to teach but more men to theorize about teaching. The prevalent idea among " educators " seems to be that the true way to solve the problem is to "inspect " it. Only have "examinations'* enough and the work is done. The very principle that underlies supervision is wrong. " The weak point in the Massachusetts school system," said a superintendent of schools, just appointed to go thither and strengthen it. "is in its supervision" — which The Forin of Blanks, 91 is true though not as he meant it. *' You cannot have good work in a factory without having good overseers.'* The fatal weakness which is fastening upon Qur schools is succinctly suggested in this one figure. The thing which a school ought not to be, the thing which our sys- tem of supervision is strenuously trying to make the school into, is a factory, with the superintendents for overseers and the teachers for workmen. In no sense can a school be considered a factory without injury to the idea of a school ; but in whatever sense a school is a factory, the pupils are the real operatives and the teach- er is the real overseer. The superintendent is a mere modern invention for receiving a salary, whose benefi- cence seldom rises above harmlessness, whose activity is usually mischievous. '' The clamor that business men should be put upon school boards is absurd," said a superintendent of schools in a public address. "As well select school teachers to run a hospital. The State Board of educa- tion ought to be largely composed of teachers." Here also is the same false idea developed that the schools are to be " run " not by the teachers in them, but by a Board outside of them. The teachers ought to run the schools exactly as doctors run a hospital. The doctors do not meet in a Board a mile away and send an order into the hospital to cut off so many arms on Monday and administer so many pills on Tuesday. 92 The Form of Blanks. That is left to the men who are standing over the bedsides of the patients. Everything which a school Board ought to do can be done by business men just as well as by teachers. Everything that teachers ought to do is done in the school-room. All that any school Board ought to do is the mere outside business manage- ment, the unprofessional work. All the professional work should be carried on by and left entirely to pro- fessional teachers in the school-room. When I read the voluminous, dignified, and able school reports, I confess I am filled with admiration of our school "system." But when I make and mark a cross section of the system, and see the work that goes into it and the children that come out of it, I perceive that the old parable repeats itself : as thy servant was busy here and there, the man was gone. The servants of the people are sonorouslv busy, here there and every- where, about the " system ;" but meanwhile the child for whom it is, was, or ought to be created, has escaped un- taught. Not long ago, in the most highly civilized city of the universe, there sprang up a very pretty quarrel between the superintendent of schools and the Board of super- visors. The superintendent received a salary of $4000 a year. The six supervisors received a salary of $3700 each. Naturally they all wished to do something to satisfy their consciences by way of earning their salaries; The Form of Blanks. 93 but as there was nothing to do, the teachers doing all the real work, they, as naturally, fell foul of each other; and the quarrel being very bitter got into the news- paper. How many such quarrels are hushed up in the committee rooms the tax-paying public does not know, but this one broke bounds and affirmed in the public prints that " if the majority report was adopted it left the superintendent practically nothing to do, while on the other hand if the minority report was adopted it would degrade the supervisors." So it seems that the Board and the superintendent agreed that there was only work enough for one. But the Board put it very politely. They did not once hint that the office of superintendent should be abolished. Nothing so prac- tical and un-" system "-atic as that escaped their wary lips. They only said that " the majority, placing the entire executive management and control in the Board of supervisors, do so on the ground that it is necessary, to secure comprehensive and efficient work, and also to relieve the superintendent of the details of daily visi- tation and personal inspection " [notice that the super- intendent had not asked to be relieved : he was fighting strenuously against being so relieved !] " so that he may devote hwiself to a more thorotcgh study of the world-wide field of public-school education and render greater service as a coufisellor and adviser T^ Note the cool cruelty of this interloping Board. 94 The Porin of Blanks. The poor superintendent was to be lifted, will you nill you, from the whole field of his actual duties and set adrift upon the " world-wide " sea of "study." He was to be deprived of all power in order that he might ''advise'* better. Under the dainty disguise of being relieved from the details of daily visitation and personal inspec- tion, the dismayed superintendent saw himself stripped of his natural right and dear delight of walking into the school-houses and nagging the teachers ; and bidden to partake himself to the cold comfort of " studying the world-wide field of public-school education " what- ever that may mean. The moralist of the press judiciously and judicially pronounced it " largely a question of administration that belongs to the school committee rather than the general public." But as the general public has all the bills to pay, it 'seems to be quite proper for the general public to peep in through the chinks whenever it has opportunity and see what the superintendents and supervisors are really about. Two years after this sharp internecine strife over the fact that there was not work enough to go round, I observe that the School Board of the same city came to the conclusion that the text-books of the schools ought to be changed. Yet, with Board, and committee, and superintendent, and the long summer vacation, the September newspapers were printing such paragraphs The Ponn of Blanks. 95 as this: " Two weeks of the school term have passed and nobody knows as yet what text-books are to be used. The teachers will soon be like the men who were required to make bricks without straw." How long the schools went on at random before this ener- getic supervision could concentrate itself upon the right geography \ through what world-wide fields the super- intendent had to roam before he could pluck the perfect flower of a spelling book ; or whether the majority by " placing the entire executive management and control in the Board of supervisors have yet secured the com- prehensive and efficient work of deciding from what book a pupil shall learn the multiplication-table, I have not been careful to ascertain. But I do not believe a single successful and prosperous private school can be found in this country or a single public school for which the principal, male or female, is alone responsible, that, after two months' vacation, gathered its pupils fresh and then dawdled on a fortnight without knowing what books it was to use ! Close by stands a great brick school-house, frequented by hundreds of pupils, and ten or twelve teachers, su- pervised by ten committee men and one superintendent of schools. Yet,- after a two months' vacation, the teachers and pupils were afloat, and the school-house unoccupied for a week, because no principal had been secured; and on the second week the superintendent 96 The Porm of Blanks. was seeking a female " substitute " to act as principal till a man whom he had precipitately selected, but who could not give all his time for a week or so, should be ready to appear. Yet all this time, superintendent and teachers were on full salary, and the hundreds of little wanderers were expected to come out at the end of the term as well furnished mentally as if they had given all their time to their studies. What are the school superintendents doing ? They are grinding their organs in the public halls. They are taking to themselves the credit of whatever value is in the schools, every particle of which credit usually belongs to the teachers who do all the work that is anything worth. They are hindering and bothering, discouraging and de- moralizing the teachers by giving them so many useless things to do that they have little time to do useful things; by giving then so much petty pother- ing that they have not time to do important work. They are destroying the individuality of the teachers by cumbering them with so many of their theoretical plans, that the teachers have neither time nor spirit to form or to execute their own plans which are plans springing from actual knowledge of actual needs, and not from the exigencies of an idleness that must be busy. They are insulting and degrading the teachers by im- posing upon them rules and demanding from them reports which a teacher may properly impose upon and The Form of Blanks. 97 require of the pupil but which are^ utterly subversive of the position of a teacher. They are thereby forcing out and forcing back from the schools the good teachers, all active, original, independent and stimulating minds, and are retaining and attracting for the schools only such as are obliged by poverty to teach, and such others as are so listless and sluggish and uninter- ested that they care not what they do or leave undone, if they can but get through the term decently and get their money at the end. The supervision is thus eating out all the life of the schools by making them a round and routine of uniformity and mechanical drill ; taking from the teacher freedom, ambition and influence, and sacrificing the pupil to a showy and sonorous " system." " The new secretary," says the delighted reporter, *' has the reins now fairly in hand and if his life and health be spared there is every reason to believe that the public school system of the State will receive . a marked impress from his administration." Whether the public schools will be improved, whether the pupils will have firmer mental fibre on leaving them, no one hints, but the system will be more systematic. *' County supervision, the meeting of school commit- tees, and high schools are the three leading topics " of the report ; so that two-thirds of the discussions are of matters outside the schools themselves, and the other third is of the smallest the least practical and the 98 The For7n of Blanks » least attended of the schools ! The supervision and the school committee and the high school claim all his at- tention. The numerous primary and grammar schools where the great populace receives its education, where the masses of the nation are prepared for republican government, escape his notice ! '' Some of the secretary's best work thus far has been done in — " in what ? "In conducting Teachers' Insti- tutes ! " " Nine of these were held for nine successive weeks in the autumn, and he and others of the best ed- ucators of the State were thus brought into personal con- tact with a very large number of teachers, giving them the latest and most improved methods of instruction." But the teachers have just as free access to the latest r.nd most approved methods of instruction as have the superintendents and the educators. The teachers are just as good authority on methods as are the educators. The teachers are not an ignorant and narrow class of pariahs, who do not read the newspapers, do not travel, do not observe, do not think, but must sit at the feet of the educators to learn what is good for them to know. The teachers are just as intelligent, just as learned, just as refined as the superintendents and the educators, and they generally know a good deal more about teach- ing than do the educators. There is no more reason why the superintendent should gather the teachers for instruction than there is why the teachers should gather The Form of Blanks, 99 the superintendents. The teachers can give the super- intendents points quite as munificently as the superin- tendents can give them to the teachers. If these Teachers' Institutes were held during vacation, they were taking time which could be much more properly, spent in unprofessional frolic. If they were held in term time, they were taking teachers away from their proper and profitable work in the school-room. The time which belongs to the children whose parents are paying taxes for their education was frittered away in pursuance of a useless and visionary system. Teach- ing can be learned and practised only in the school- room. An admirable and epigrammatic though unconscious summary of the work of school superintendents was given not long ago in the newspaper report of the doings of the Association of New England School Superintend- ents. After recording the various nominations of offi- cers for the ensuing year it concluded .with the startling information, that " the subject of the form of blanks, as reported by the committee on Statistics, was next considered." Nothing can more truly and tersely describe the work of school superintendents than " the form of blanks '* — the shape of nothing. Let us look at some of these " blanks " after the New lOo The For7n of Blanks. England school superintendents had put their heads together to produce them. Here is a " blank " sent in to the various schools by one of these " comprehensive and efficient " super- intendents. (See page loi.) I beg to ask whether it is really essential to the per- petuity of the Republic to pay a man $2500 a year to sit down to the primer and pick out exploitations for the first class to spell, and refreshmeiit for the second class, and employment for the third class, and satisfaction for the fourth class, and kindness for the fifth class and thankfully for the sixth class. Is there any possible reason why the teachers of those classes, at six or eight hundred dollars a year, cannot do that precisely as well as an outside man at $ 2500 ? Would the symmetry of our school system be menaced, would the object of clas- sification be sacrificed, if refreshment had been delegated to the first class and satisfaction to the fifth ? Is no one but a superintendent capable of that fine mental analy- sis which can detect the progress of the sixth class by the way it spells thankfully^ but could find no unit of measurement if the explorations of the first class had dropped out of line .? I think teachers ought to be equal to this " compre- hensive and efficient work." I go further, I go a great deal further, and every real teacher will go with me, and affirm that any teacher who has a right to be a teacher The Fo7'm of Blanks. lOI SCHOOL. AN EXERCISE IN SPELLING UPON WORDS SELECTED FROM THE READING-LESSONS FOR THE COMING YEAR. OCTOBER, 1878, FIRST CLASS. No. of Scholars present, WORDS TO SPELL. Preparation Weighed Guest . Prayer Stealthily Familiar Fleecv. Buried Catastrophe Blasphemy Panicide . Prejudice . Asperse Superseded Fitting Survey Chasm Business . Skilful _ . Explorations FAIL- URES. FAIL- URES. FOURTH CLASS. No. of Scholars present, WORDS To SPELL. Peasants Vineyards Specimen Slippers M.iidens Vicinity Leisurely Incapable Conveyed Inteliijjeut Patiently Pigeons Boisterous. Gracious Believe Soveteign Friendly Deceive • Fashion Satisfaction FAIL- URES. SECOND CLASS No. of Scholars present. WORDS TO SPELL. Especially Wrestled . Hopping . Lilies . Threshold Doubting Transferred Iceberg Neighbors Handkerchief Counterfeit Science Enlargement Difference Superiority Frequented Relieved . Petted Papa . Refreshment FIFTH CLASS. No. of Scholars present, . WORDS TO SPELL. Precious Punctual , Physician Shipwreck Machinery Saucers Liquid Headache Juice . Autumn Convenient Anchored Seized Reindeer Awkward Banana Sensible Brilliant Bi.-.cuit Kindness FAIL- URES. FAIL- URES. THIRD CLASS. No of Scholars present, WORDS TO SPELL. Forfeited . Perverse . Amiable Sincerity . Diary . Citizen Honorable Responsive Valiant Eloquence Resided Ornaments Reverence Displayed Supplicants Receipts Marriage • Families . Foreign Employment FAIL- URES. SIXTH CLASS. No. of Scholars preseiit, WORDS Tp SPELL. Obedient . Volume Opportunity Operations Agility Perceive Gnawed Guessing . Pursued . Handwriting Monarch . Anxious Steadily Conquer . Laughing . Thorouglily Kneeling . Dazzling . Ungrateful j Thankfully I02 The JForjJt of Blanks. can teach spelling her own way better than she can teach it the superintendent's way. The true teacher is always fertile in resources and directs each day's devices to each day's needs. To thrust upon a teacher whose hands are full and over-full of her own work — ingen- ious often and always patient and effective — these wooden arbitrary blanks is a piece of impertinence to the teacher and a waste to the public which has to pay for the paper and printing of a useless piece of machin- ery. The teacher would do the whole work a great deal better without a farthing's extra cost. If she can- not do it the remedy is not to raise up another piece of machinery to do it for her, but dismiss her and find a woman who can. There are plenty of them. Here is another blank. (See page 103.) Here the superintendent and the school committee have succeeded in solidifying and formulating the degradation of the teacher. The teacher is to report to the superintendent as an in ferior to a superior. He or she is not supposed to have energy, self- respect, self-interest, esprit de corps enough to stand to his business, but must be held up to it by marks, as a pupil is held up to study, -as a factory hand is held up to the loom. But to whom does the superin- tendent report absence and when was a superintendent ever known to provide a substitute ? Imagine Dr. Arnold of Rugby, Mr. Capron of Hartford, Mr. Wa- The Ponn of Blanks. 103 Here is another Blank. City of Office Superintendent of Public Schools. [In School Committee, May 16, 1878, it was ordered that "each Teacher shall, at the end of each school term, send to the Superintendent of Schools a report of the number of school sessions in which he or she has been absent from school during that school term, the reasons of such absences, the names of the substi- tutes, and the number of school sessions each substitute was employed in his or her school ; and if any teacher is absent from school, he or she shall immediately give notice of such absence, and the reason therefor, to the Sub-Committee hav- ing charge of the school, and to ihe Superintendent."] .School. Report of. , for the Tertn^ 187 Number of Sessions absent from School., NAMES OF SUBSTITUTES. No. of Sessions Employed. Cause of Absence. I04 The Por7n of Blanks. ternouse of Newton, reporting that they had stayed away from school three hours, one to attend a funeral, one to meet a wife at the railroad station and one be- cause the turkey was stuffed with oysters. But the superintendents keep at a respectful distance from this grade of teachers. They confine their attentions to the grammar and primary schools whose teachers are mostly women and uneducated men. They all walk softly before college diplomas but head an army of women with unflinching courage. They are mighty in the spelling-book, but I never heard of a superintendent mousing around a high school with selected problems in the higher mathematics, or intricate Greek render- ings. These reports demanded of teachers are absolutely useless. The money spent in printing them, the time spent by teachers in filling them out and by superin- tendents in sending them in, are absolutely thrown away. A school is automatic or it is nothing. If a teacher be not honest, conscientious, up to the mark, of his own impulse, he cannot be made so by any outside pressiire. If unnecessary absence and tardiness, if laxness, indo- lence, indifference, be not organically impossible to the teacher, there is but one remedy, dismissal. To create and pay a superintendent to piece out the teacher's de- fects is a foolish, useless, wasteful device. The real teacher is prompt, alert, energetic, effective, because it is The Form of Blanks, T05 in him to be so. If it is not in him, no one can put it in. So far from being kept in place by a report he can- not be dismissed from his place too soon. The time- server is not improved, but the real teacher is insulted and exasperated by this childish and petty requirement. " Teaching," says a superintendent in his Report, "should have the talents and energies of our best edu- cated and highest cultivated men and women, men and women who in addition to their talents and culture feel that a dignity and a responsibility belong to the work worthy of their most conscientious efforts." But how many of our best educated men and our most highly cultivated women will be likely to rush into the school-room if they are to be considered and treated as mere lip-servers without any pride or conscience in their profession and ready to slip out of the school-room and neglect their classes at any moment, if not restrained by the knowledge that they must give a report thereof to the superintendent! How much "dignity" is likely to accrue to the teacher from the knowledge assumed by the superintendent that she can only be kept in line by a carpenter's rule ? I append another "form of blank" to show the " comprehensive and efficient work " of the school super- intendent. (See page 106.) Here it will be seen, the school committee has a meeting to order the school superintendent to or- io6 The Po7'7}i of Blanks. City of Office Superinte7ideiit of Public Schools. [In School Committee, September 12, 1877, and January 24, 1878, it was ordered that the Superintendent each month obtain and keep a record of certain statistics pertaining to the schools. The teachers are therefore requested to fill the following blanks, and make returns on or before the Wednesday following the first Saturday of each month. J Statistics of the School, For the -week co7itammg the first Saturday OF THE Month of 187 Nuvther of teachers, including the Master, ... . Average number of Pupils to a teacher. Master not included. . RECORD OF THE DIFFERENT ROOMS. Names of Teachers. G A L W P T Total, R. No. of the Room. G. Grade of Class. A. Average attendance for the week. L. Largest number present at any session during the week. W. Whole number belonging to each room on the last day of the week. P. Num- ber of instances of tardiness on the part of the pupils during the week. T. Number of instances of tardiness on the part of teachers during the month just ended. [The whole number should include those temporarily absent on account of sickness or for other cause. To find the number of pupils to a teacher, divide the whole number of pupils by the number of teachers, not including the Master.] The JRor?)! of Blanks. 1 07. der the school teachers to bring in certain statistics. The committee demand the statistics and the teachers furnish them. The superintendent is nothing but a middleman passing the papers back and forth — of no more real use than the dukes and counts who stood between the bureau-drawer and Louis the Fourteenth handing his shirt around among themselves according to rank, while the grand monarch stood shivering for the moment when etiquette should permit it to be pulled over his royal head ! The opinion held b}^ the school superintendent of the intelligence of his teachers is suggested by his paternal explanations. One of the requirements is : "Average number of pupils to a teacher, master not included." "To find the number of pupils to a teacher," says this amiable lady from Philadelphia to the Elizabeth Elizas and Solomon Johns of the school-room Peterkins, '''' divide the whole number of pupils by the number of teachers, not including the master." That the teachers of this country could ever find out how to ascertain "the average number of pupils to a teacher, master not included," if the superintendent had not told them ; and whither the schools would drift but for this " com.prehensive and efficient work" of supervision, it is not easy for the uneducational mind to loS The For 771 of Blanks. In pursuance of the same " efficient and comprehen- sive" system of red tape statistics, a superintendent came to the grammar school house after twelve on Monday noon with intent to be there in season to in- form the teachers of the result of an official meeting regarding the Centennial held on the previous Saturday as " the [male] principal was not able to go " and the female assistants were not expected to attend. Most of the teachers had left the building and the superin- tendent came again in the afternoon. Now one would suppose that even if the principal had not been able to attend, he ought, on a salary of 15^2500, to be able to hear and deliver the Report of the superintendent. On the contrary four of the assistants, receiving a salary less than one-third of his, from as many classes, are called to leave their work in the midst of recitation and de- tained for half an hour to receive a detailed account of action ; and before they are fairly at work with their classes again, they are again interrupted and asked to go around on their respective floors and communicate their information to the other teachers ! The same superintendent was ordered by the com- mittee to ascertain the possibility of consolidating rooms by inquiring the number of pupils in the different classes. Instead of earning a part of his salary of $3000 by going around and getting the statistics himself, he put a pa- per into the hands of a busy teacher who received a The Form of Blanks. 109 salary of $850, and she visited the whole fifteen rooms, got the number of pupils in each room and the num- ber of sittings In each class, and returned the paper to him, and he I suppose handed in his " comprehensive and efficient " work to the committee. But what a blow would be struck at our beautiful " system " if the com- mittee should ask the teacher to count her pupils instead of organizing a superintendent to ask the teacher to perform that comprehensive and efficient work ! Not long ago, a boy of the third class in a school thoroughly furnished with all the officers required by our efficient " system " was eating candy in school and was directed by his teacher to throw it into the waste- basket ! He complied at once, remarking as he passed her that she was "ad — d fool " in tones loud enough to be heard throughout the room. The teacher sent him home and appealed to the superintendent of schools, who replied that "had she suspended the boy, he could do something but now did not like' to interfere and would rather the committee should settle it." The com- mittee were consulted, the boy remaining in school the while, and the committee held up the discipline of the school and the beauties of the '• System " by the start- ling assurance to the boy that for the next offence of ^ whatever nature, he was to be " sent to me !" A revolutionary proceeding from the responsibility of which a comprehensive and efficient superintend- 10 no The Form of Blafiks. ent of schools might well shrink ! And in their annual report the committee declare that " it is impossible to overestimate the services of our superintendent," who among other things "is constantly hastening the settlement of all questions of management and discipline that demand authoritative interposition !" Let me give, at the risk of being tiresome, another instance of the rapidity with which a superintendent hastens the settlement of all questions of management which require authoritative interposition. However tiresome it may be to the reader, it is not half so tiresome as it is to the teacher whose work is almost neutralized by this petty "authoritative interpo- sition." And here let me say also that I am writing of facts, not rumors nor generalities nor newspaper stories. I am writing of things that actually happened and are re- corded in the private journals of teachers made up at the time and on the spot. "Just as school began, the principal came in standing with his back to the scholars, shading either side of his face with a hand, and asked in a very mysterious way, "Did you ever keep a boy half an hour after school because he went out in school-time ?" I. Never, Prin. Stop and think. The I^^orm of Blanks. iii I. I don't think I have stayed fivQ minutes after school a day this term. Prin. You sure ? I. Very sure. Why? Prin. There is a complaint that you have and that you told the scholars that the superintendent sanctioned it. I. Who told you this ? Prin. The superintendent. I. Where is he now? There is no truth in it. Prin. He called at my house this noon and told me so. [Then starting to go out I called him back and said] " I wish you would stop and explain to me what you mean." Prin. Well, that is all. He says there have very often been complaints from the parents, and the last is from your room. I. I will see the superintendent at once. Prin. No, I would not do anything about it. It will make him nervous. I. Nervous ! Has not he made me nervous ? Why should I not find out about it at once ? Prin. Because I would not. There is no use, he is nervous enough now. I. I shall send to his house at once. Which I did — stopping my school work to write a 112 The JFort?i of Bla^iks. note in which I asked if he would send me the name of the parent who had made such a complaint. The note came back to me. He had been gone from the house fifteen minutes. At four o'clock I went down to the superintendent's office. I. I came to you to understand better a complaint that you made to Mr. Principal that I had kept a boy half an hour after school, because he had asked and re- ceived permission to leave the room, and that 1 had also said to the scholars that you sanctioned such a thing. Sup. Well, no, not exactly that. It did not come from a parent. I. Not from -a parent ? From whom then ? Sup. Well, I don't know as I have any right to say. I. Of course you have a right. The complaint has been made to you and I think you ought to tell me from whom. Sup. Well, it came from one of the committee. I. It does not matter — committee or parent — it is wholly without foundation. Will you tell me who it was? Sup. Mr. Committee ; but I think you have mis- understood about my not sanctioning such a rule. I should sanction it in certain cases, but I did not like the idea of its going abroad in the community that because a boy left the room, he should always stay his half hour.* * * The Form of Blanks, 113 I. Thank you for telling me who made this com- plaint. I will see Mr. Committee at once. Sup. No, I will see him myself and save you the trouble. Very well, if you will do so and have this contra- dicted, I will be greatly obliged to you. Sup. I will do so certainly at once. This was Thursday afternoon. Hearing nothing Friday, I went to Mr. Committee's house at four o'clock. He was out— would not be in till six. After tea I went again. I. I have traced a complaint [naming it] from one of the parents to you. There is no truth in it, and I would like to have you tell me what you know about it, who it was. Com. How did you know about it ? I. I was told by the principal that the superintend- ent had complained to him. I have seen the super- intendent and he tells me you made theJ complaint. Com. Well, I don't know as I have any right to give you the name, though I don't just know why I should not. It was Mr. Smith. I. Mr. Smith? Com. Yes, Henry Smith's father. You have such a boy in your school t I. Yes. Com. Well, his father says you kept him one day 10* 1 1 4 The Form of Blanks. after school half an hour because he asked and you let him go out in school-time ; that his mother had sent a note asking you to grant any such request. I. I have never had a line from her. When did his father make this complaint ? Com. Wednesday, and he said it was the day before. I. Tuesday ? The boy came into my room for the first time Monday. It is a little singular that I should have kept the boy so long the day after he first camiC to me. Com. Not at all strange. A good teacher would enforce her rules the first day. I. I can only say there is no truth in any such report .... I am obliged to you for what you have told me. I v/ill see Mr. Smith now and see what cause he has for such a complaint. I went to the store where Mr. Committee thought I should find him. I saw the grandfather. I. I am looking for your son, I think. Has he a son in the Blank School ? Grandpere. Yes. I. Can I see him .'' G. He is quite sick ; left the store this afternoon, unable to stay. I. By going to his house will it be possible for me to see him ? G. No. Not to-night. He is too sick. The For7}i of Blanks. 115. I went home. The next morning, the boy Smith brought me a note from his mother asking for him per- mission to leave the room. I called the boy into my little room and asked him, what day did I keep you half an hour after school ? Boy. You have never kept me half an hour. I. Why, yes, I hear I have this week, and I want you to remember what day it was. Boy. Does it say so in that note ? I. No. I have it in another way, and I want you to remember the day. Boy. You have never kept me half an hour. I. Have I ever kept you at all t Boy. No, except ^one day when you kept the whole line ; then I did not go till the last one. I. How long was that ? Boy. Perhaps five minutes. Not more than that. He took his seat. . A very short time after, Mr. Com- mittee came in. I told him what I had said and done. He seemed surprised and called the boy out of the room and was gone some time. Coming back, he stayed only long enough to say *' it is very strange." Hearing nothing more from Mr. Committee or the father, after dinner, I presented niyself at the store. Is Mr. Smith here ? No ; he is at hoir^e. Do you ex- pect him here this afternoon? Very likely, but not at all sure. I took the number of his house and went Ii6 The Form of Blanks, there. When he came into the room, I introduced my- self. I. I understand you have made a complaint to this effect, etc., etc., etc. Mr. S. I .? Why, no, not at all. I. Have not you said to Mr. Committee that I kept your boy, etc., etc. Mr. S. Certainly not. I. It is very singular. He told me you had made a complaint to him. S. It might have been Mrs. Smith. Let me speak to her. I. (Finding him slipping from my hold.) It is wholly unnecessary. I did not understand the complaint to have come from Mrs. Smith. S. (After talking some time longer) Just let me speak to Mrs. Smith. I. Very well. If you will come back with her I have no objection. They both came back. Mrs. Smith disclaimed all knowledge of the affair, not even having seen Mr. Com- mittee till the night before. I. Has your son ever complained to you that I have kept him ? Mrs. S. No, on the contrary he has said several times this week that you were not in the habit of keeping the scholars after school. The Form of Blanks. 117 I. I will see Mr. Committee again. I am very sure that he told me that it was Mr. Smith who com- plained to him and I must still think that he did. I certainly was not prepared to hear him say then, "Well, I don't know but that I was the one who made such a complaint to him, but I did not speak of it with a view to making any trouble. I remember I only -asked him if his superintendent sanctioned any such punish- ment for I thought it rather hard. I did not say that you had kept Henry. In fact I don't think I knew in what room he was. But I am very sorry. I am willing to make all the reparation in my power. What can I do? I requested him to see both" the superintendent and committee and state the whole thing to them. Oh ! yes, certainly he would. Would he see the committee at once ? Why, yes, if I said so. I did say so decidedly and came away. This was Saturday. Hearing nothing all day Monda}^, I called Harry at night. Will you ask your father if he has seen the committee and don't fail to bring me word in the morning. In the morning this note came from Mrs. Smith : (" Mr. Smith has called both on superintendent and committee. Everything is explained satisfactorily on both sides. It seems Mr. Committee's own boy made the same mistake as Henry and went home and told his father it was a committee rule ; and Mr. Committee, Ii8 The I^orm of Blanks. having given leave to some teachers to keep troublesome scholars half an hour, did not wish it to become a gen- eral rule and so corrected it. The superintendent said it was not to find fault but to have it understood that it was not a committee rule and no one need think themselves accused.) I have been expecting the super- intendent in ever since to acquit me, but he has failed to put in an appearance. Perhaps it makes him nervous to think of it." I should be very glad if some eulogizer of our inval- uable " system " would point out the exact spot where the "authoritative interposition" of the inestimable superintendent touched this momentous question of dis- cipline to the facilitation of its settlement. To the un- systematic mind there seems to have been no question at all except what was gotten up by the mischief-making hands of idle outside ofhcials. The teacher had no trou- ble with the pupil. The pupil made no complaint of the teacher. The parents had no question except about what the committee had said and done. And when the father, as was his right and duty, spoke to the committee about what seemed to him a hard rule, neither committee nor superintendent had the manliness to defend or to exon- erate the teacher, nor the business efficiency to ascertain the exact state of things and set the father right; but, as has been done from Adam down, they shoved and shouldered the blame upon the woman where it would The Form of Blanks. 119 have remained to this day, had she not been a woman of spirit and straightforwardness who declined to per- mit this little question of mismanagement and discipline to settle itself quite so hastily as the superintendent and committee had designed ! On one side of a half-sheet of letter paper is printed this form of blank. (See p. 120.) To what depths of ennui must a superintendent of schools have descended before he could cudgel such questions as these from his tortured brain ! What wastes of desuetude must be inferred before that fagged brain could form and write these questions, and send them to the press, and correct the proof, and inspect the revise and yet not see how foolish and cumbersome and impo- lite they are ! The busy teacher is absorbed in doing the work. The idle superintendent drones in to harass him by making him leave off and write essays about it. The real teacher instinctively apprehends the part of his work that is least profitable, instinctively dwells lightly on that, and as instinctively gives most attention to the most profitable part. If he disapproves of any part of the course of study, he talks it out at all times and to all persons whenever and wherever he chooses, ho7'es the committee and harangues the parents and writes to the newspapers, and pencil-marks in the school- books those blessed paragraphs which the pupils need not learn. I20 The Form of Blanks. •fe. I I 5? VO 00 a H O 3 o o n3 o i ^ & 2 ^ o -(-» 3 ^ „ ^ ^ (U o «+-! OJ cu CJ o .s i5 .*^ >-l -. en rt 3 ^ o o Si fi ^ ^ c ^(U c3 *> c .s rt C! bjo 3 > ? ^ ~. T3 /^ 3 ^3 CLi -P — « -5. <4-i :3 o Cl. K5 J3 8 ^5 The Form of Blanks, I3i And what must be thought of the manners of a super- intendent of schools who in addressing a community of teachers most of whom are his social and intellectual peers, and some of whom are his superiors, arrogates to himself superior virtue, and orders the teachers to consult the interests of their pupils as if they would heed only their own selfish preferences but for his per- sonal intervention. The grotesqueness of sending these rude missives to the Mr. Caprons or the Dr. Arnolds is palpable even to the superintending eye, but their au- thors scatter them broadcast over the desks of women and fancy because women have no vote and no voice in public protest, that they do not resent and repel the impertinence ! It may not escape the reader's notice that the super- intendent gives only a vulgar fraction of a half sheet to the teachers' replies. If the teacher had any spon- taneous opinions on these subjects she might possibly like a little more space than remains, "on this sheet." But the answers are not of any importance. The good superintendent is only striving to keep himself busy, and the spiritual comfort he receives from the mental effort of propounding the questions is far more impor- tant than anything the working world may say in reply. I question if the superintendent even read the answers thoroughly. One more form of blank : II 122 The Po7^m of Blanks. FOR TEACHERS. Make a list of ten words in common use most frequently^ mispronounced, not includingy«5/ or tvell. Prepare general questions about Reading or Reading-Books. Also questions upon the following pieces : 1st Class. Lessons — — 2nd " " 21 35 3rd " *■ — — 4th " '' — — 5th - 6th '^ " — — Return by 7th November. Here the belabored superintendent seems to have betaken himself to the next stage after the spelling struggle. Having exhausted orthography he applies to elocution and turns his " comprehensive and efficient" mind to devising and printing and proof-correcting and distributing girculars ordering the "teachers " to "pre- pare " and " return " at a certain set time to the super- intendent such questions as a real teacher puts to her pupils thirteen to the dozen every day, and never thinks of it again. But what the teacher does spontaneously, impulsively, with interest and enthusiasm, out of the fertility of her own mind, becomes a bore and an exasperation when she is ordered to do it by an outside, arbitrary power. At the very time she is ordered to do this she has planned to be doing something else. And what she does, The For 771 of Blanks. 1 23 she wishes to do for her class and not for the super- intendent. She is never without suspicion that what he wants are her ingenuity and experience to piece out his own defects. The real teacher is spontaneous, alert, rapid. She instinctively seizes the strong and the weak points of her pupils, applies the proper stimulus to each, and passes on quickly to something else ; and there is so much to do and so little time in which to do it that she must pass on quickly or the opportunity is lost. But we think we have greatly advanced beyond our fathers because we have invented a superintendent who goes clattering clumsily on wooden shoes after the teach- er, calling upon her to stop in her pressing and impor- tant work for her pupils, and write it off and square it down and send it in to him. As things are, she feels under obligation to do it, but she does it at the expense of the pupil. We have circulars, statistics, and reports, and tables, and forms of blanks, and we glorify our sys- tem ; but the pupil suffers. We sacrifice unto our net and burn incense unto our drag ; drag and net are well enough to catch fish with, but very mean gods to worship. Sometimes, some teachers feel bound to obey orders from the superintendent and sometimes they do not. A certain superintendent issued the fiat that '* sentence- writing was to receive especial attention until the tenth of April to make ready for the Centennial even if other studies had to be neglected." Of course at the end of 124 The Form of Blanks, the school-year in July just as much would be expected of the classes, so that this amounted only to so much extra labor. " Now," said a spirited and successful teacher, " I do not in the least care for this myself ; and if he had said we will give especial attention to shoemaking and pork-packing for the next three months, I would produce the shoe and the pig, say nothing, and go on as I pleased ; but there are so many teachers who will fret and worry over it, that I am ex- asperated ; and I think it, besides, an entirely false ba- sis on which to work — this selecting any one thing on which to drill, drill, drill, and pass the results on to the exhibition as a sample of the natural working of our school system." I append a "Form of Blank" for sentence-writing: DIRECTIONS FOR THE EXERCISES. JUNE 8, 1S78. Each teacher will have such exercises written as will best show the work for the year. Any old exercise, either original or dictated, may be repro- duced j not copied. It is suggested that the 5th and 6th classes confine their writing to one page; that the other classes use both pages — one page for an original exercise, either a letter or compo- sition. Teachers, howevei", need feel under no restraint because of the suggestion. The exercises are to be written during the usual school- hours, without reference to books or aid from teachers. They The Po7'in of Blaiiks. 125 can be written on slates or paper and then copied, but should not be recopied without stating the fact on paper. The exercises are not intended to be an examination for the promotion of scholars. Teachers are requested not to put marks of any kind on the papers. It would perhaps be difficult for the superintending mind to make a more brilliant exhibition of its micro- scopic tendencies. It is nothingness raised to the third power. The absolute unimportance of the orders seems to be heightened by the remark that teachers need not observe them ! In the warmest and busiest season of the year, when pupils and teachers are at high pressure preparing for their useless and mischievous summer examinations, the idle superintendent goes into the school houses at four o'clock in the afternoon dis- tributing these Forms of Blanks to be used next day, burdening the teachers and pupils with this load of extra work piled upon their already stupidly overladen shoulders, yet carefully avoiding one finger's weight up- on his own back by the canny provision, "The exercises are not intended to be an examination for the promotion of* scholars." If they had been, the superintendent himself might have been forced to take the responsi- bility of examining and marking them for the summer examinations ; but by this disclaimer, he evades all such responsibility and simply makes it a work of supererogation. Yet this useless and capricious order, 1 26 The Ponn of Blanks. given without consultation with teachers, applying tests already amply supplied by other processes and not intended to have any bearing on the approaching exami- nations, involved mechanical drudgery of preparations which occupied the exasperated teachers till eleven o'clock at night. And the money raised for the real work of teaching, goes to paying a man two or three thousand dollars a year — besides printers' bills — for evolving from his so-called brain and imposing upon teachers and pupils this " educational" trash. Amid a good deal of mischief which Satan finds for the idle hands of a school superintendent to do was the or- der that no teacher should give out to her pupils as late as half past eleven or half past three any problem in arithmetic to be solved before dismission. The reason alleged was that it excited \kv^ pupils, made them restless and uneasy if they could not finish the work. A teach- er who had often and successfully tried this device for smoothing out her own ruffles and her pupils', when it had been an unusually hard day, was asked what she should do about it. She quietly replied that she should keep on and find out whether the superintendent meant her! She has kept on a good while and I do not think the superintendent has yet discovered that he did mean her ! Every born teacher knows that success, one might The Form of Blanks, 127 almost say, consists in keeping pupils interested and in keeping them busy. Idleness is the fruitful mother of mischief and if the teacher can devise ways to make the pupil forget his last few listless moments in spirited work, she is a wise and ingenious teacher. The notion that our boys and girls have not stamina enough to stand the wear and tear of an arithmetic question at half past eleven in the morning, or at half past three in the afternoon is a pitiful one. Any American citizen should be ashamed to be the parent of such a child ; but if x\merican children are such, the path of reform is straight. Dismiss the children at half-past eleven or half-past three or when ever the hour comes that their flabby brains and puny muscles and relaxed nerves must stop work, and send them into fresh air and frolics and freedom ; but do not detain them in constrained idleness in the putrid air of the school-room to become more and more enervated. The born teacher, if she is also born strong, can do a good deal to neutralize the mischievous intermeddling of the superintendent. The poor teacher flounders in futile struggle even with his suggestions. A well- meaning and unobjectionable school superintendent once cautiously expressed the opinion that the reading in the schools was the thing most open to hostile criti- cism. Of course all the working reading- teachers had not waited for this suggestion which is a perfecdy safe 128 The Porm of Blanks. one for any superintendent to make. Indeed it is not a little curious to observe the caution with which super- intendents report. The most common remark is that while " there is a great deal of improvement manifest, there is still much to be desired." The first clause in- dicates that, the superintendent has done a great deal and therefore justified his existence ; the second that there is a great deal still to do and therefore his office must still be continued. It only occurs to me that the teachers could say this just as well as the superintendent. He knows the shortcomings of his class just as well as the superintendent knows them, and he knows the sig- nificance of these shortcomings a great deal better than any outsider knows them. But I happened to be witness to the effect which these superintending criti- cisms had on one — male — teacher who never saw any defect until it was pointed out to him, and then it ap- peared to him a defect only because it was pointed out to him. All the morning exercises were most incongru- ously varied with premonitions of the reform which was to come upon the afternoon reading. '" The su- perintendent found fault with your reading." " Get your other lessons so as to have more time for the reading ! " ''I am going to attend more to the reading to get ready for examination." And all the .time the good man never disclosed the slightest suspicion that he was appealing to any but scholarly motives or that The Porm of Blanks. 129 he was governed and incited by any but manly, profes- sional impulses ! So in the afternoon the class was summoned all to- gether and not as usual in squads. Unfortunately the lesson selected was the twenty-third Psalm, "The Lord is my Shepherd," and the teacher began in loud tones, ruler in one hand and book in the other, "Read louder, 'The Lord is my Shepherd,' louder ! " and down comes the ruler on the desk with a bang. "Now read that over again and open your mouth. 'Though I walk through the valley of the Shadow of death' " — another rap with the ruler that makes the very books bounce. Then with still higher tones he rides more rough-shod than ever over a line or two by way of example "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my LIFE ! " — so emphasizing not to say hallooing the last word and banging a doubly fierce accompaniment with his baton, that it seemed to be a struggle between the utterance of the word life and the. crash of the ruler as to which should make the most noise ; and thus they went over and over the twenty-third Psalm until every member in a class of twenty or more had had his rol- licking tilt into the valley of the shadow of death, and forever all its sweetness and sanctity had trampled under foot. EXAMINATION UNDER THE MICROSCOPE. EXAMINATION UNDER THE MICROSCOPE. ONE especial form into which the rage for super- vising seems to have rushed is examination. If the teachers can only be examined enough and if the schools can only be examined enough, children will be well educated. Some of our school superintendents, for want of something better to do, have even gone into an elaborate analysis of the various kinds and philosophies of examination and the subtle metaphysical distinctions between examination and inspection. "An inspection is a visitation for the purpose of observation, of over- sight of superintendence." "An examination is a thorough scrutiny and investi- gation, in regard to certain definitely determined mat- ters for a specific purpose." That is, an inspection is a visitation for the purpose of observation. An examination is an investigation for a specific purpose. Is an examination then made with- out a visitation. Is not observation a purpose? (.133) 134 Examination under the Alicroscope, " The aim of inspection is to discover to a greater or less extent the tone and spirit of the scliool, the conduct and application of the pupils, the management and meth- ods of the teacher, and the fitness and condition of the premises." " The object of the examination is to arrive at a just estimate of merit, or attainments or progress." Is not an estimate of progress implied in an estimate of attainments ? What is the merit of a school — which we are told must be ascertained by examination — ex- cept its tone and spirit, the conduct of the pupils and the teacher, — which we are told must be ascertained by inspection ? We then have a still more labored division of exam- inations into three kinds. "Examinations of classes, to ascertain their progress and to determine the rank of the pupils composing the class. "Examination of pupils, for promotion, for gradua- tion, and for distinctions or honors. "Examination of schools and classes, with reference mainly to the merit and standing of the teachers." A classification that is worthy of Dogberry's analyt- ical mind. " Many, sir, they have committed false report." " Moreover they have spoken untruths : Secondarily, they are slanders j ^Examination under the Microscope. 135 Sixth and lastly, they have belied a lady ; Thirdly, they have verified unjust things ; And, to conclude, what you lay to their charge." How can you have an examination of schools except by an examination of classes? How can you ascertain the nierit of teachers except by the work they do for pu- pils? How can you examine classes, or schools, or pupils without ascertaining, in the very act, the merit of the teachers ? Having examined the schools, and the classes, and the pupils, what sort of process is the su- perintendent driving at, separate from these examina- tions — to ascertain the merit and standing of the teacher? By aid of these purely imaginary distinctions he succeeds in spreading his essay on examinations over seventeen printed pages of his report — but in not one of them does he give us the smallest inkling of what this teacher's examination is. Under that head he prints only the most useless generalities. He tells us what the examination should do and what sort of man the examiner should be, but he does not give a hint of the way to do it. It is to be a guide and stim- ulus to the teacher, he says. " The examination should be so conducted as to discover and appreciate merit, to encourage sound teaching, — teaching that trains a-nd educates ; teaching that is solid rather than showy ; teach- ing that aims at the highest good of the pupils, morally and physically, as well as intellectually." All as fine 136 Examination under the Microscope. as a fiddle but how to do it ? How conduct an exami- nation for instance so as to find out whether the teacher aims at the highest good of the pupils? Will you question the teacher or will you question the pupils. If the latter will you ask them directly if their teacher aims at their highest good, or will you find out by their geography and arithmetic examinations ? If the latter you are landed instantly in the midst of the regular examinations, and the third classification may be entirely dismissed. If the former let us have a few affidavits from pupils certifying the reasons for the belief that is in them, that their teacher is aiming at their highest good. Or is it the teachers that are to be questioned ? Are they to be questioned in school or out? And if a teacher has once been admitted on examination, what right has the superintendent to order sub-examinations ? what right has he to a teacher's time out of school, or what right has he to take a teacher's time away from the pupils in school? When this Report was published, the newspapers came out with this analysis of the different sort of ex- aminations as if it really meant something — as if here was a great and mysterious work which made education in the nineteenth century something extraordinary. On the contrary it has no meaning whatever. It is much ado about nothing. Examination is as simple as a b c. Examination goes along with instruction every day of JExamination under the Alicroscope, 137 a scholar's life. The process of teaching is a process of examination as well. Every good teacher, every teacher who is fit to be a teacher, knows the rank and progress of every class and every pupil under her care. She knows who are fit for promotion and who are fit for graduation and who deserve honors. She does not trouble herself with meaningless generalities about sound teaching or highest good. She is concerned solely in making her pupils learn and comprehend their lessons and behave as well as possible each day. No school examination whatever is of the slightest use to the pupil or the teacher except the examination of each class in recitation "every day. This examination the superintendent may superintend if he choose. He will be very much in the way. He will divert the attention of the pupils and probably embarrass the good teacher and tempt the poor ones to take on airs, but so long as the "System" ordains a superintendent I know no law that empowers a teacher to keep him out of her school-room. Possibly, indeed, he is as much out of mischief there as anywhere. The pupil's rank, his fitness for promotion or gradua- tion are known to the teacher by each day's experience; are remembered and recorded by each day's marks which are the formal basis for his next year's standing. The teacher is the best, the only judge. If she does not judge wisely and rank justly, she is not fit to be a 138 Examination under the Mic7'oscope. teacher. She has a radical .unfitness which cannot be amended by "examination " but by a dismissal and the selection of another teacher. All examinations super- added to this daily examination, whether they be public and oral or private and written, are a needless drain upon the nervous energy, the vital force of both teacher and pupil. The one may entertain the parents and excite the children. The other is an intolerable burden to both teacher and children. Neither is of any use to the pupils. The time and vitality consumed by them should be devoted to fresh study and real progress. 0ur whole system of reviews and examinations in school is burdensomely cumbrous and extravagantly expensive. I may assume that the memory of our own school-days is fresh in all our minds. We can very well recall the interest we took in some studies, the lack of interest we felt in others. I doubt not our experi- ence is almost universally the same. The first breaking ground was delightful. We took each lesson each day with fresh interest. But when the book was finished, and two or three weeks of review came, it was all a drag. Neither teacher nor pupils had the stimulus of novelty. I would abolish the whole system of reviews. The very fact that they are without interest is a strong indication that they are without benefit. But, without a review, how can the pupil pass his examination Examination under the Microscope. 139 and be promoted ? I would abolish the examination, too. No one whose attention has not been called to it can guess the burden which the close and careful in- vestigation of the hundreds of thousands of annual, semi-annual, and tri-annual examination papers in the grammar schools and high schools imposes upon teachers. It is a wholly dry, uninteresting and exas- perating work, and it is equivalent to the employment of a regiment of extra teacher-force. It is no part of the natural duty of a teacher, and I cannot see that it is productive of the least good. The pupil's standing for the next term or the next year is determined by it. But the teacher knows beforehand perfectly well what the pupil's standing ought to be ; and if he desires to formulate that standing, to prevent the possibility of its being decided, or suspected of being decided, by the pique or partiality of the teacher, to have something to show the parent as a reason for his son!s promotion or degradation, there is the daily record of his daily reci- tation and behavior, — a standard just as statistical and fixed, and far more trustworthy. Multiplication is the very best review of addition. Division is the very best review of subtraction. Alge- bra is the proper review of arithmetic ; and rhetoric and logic are the best reviews of grammar. The cram of a three-weeks' review preparatory to examination has no more tendency to fasten facts in the mind than izjo Examination under the Allci'oscope. the building-up of a new science on the foundations of the old. Every day's lesson should be thoroughly learned, and exactly recorded. That record, at the end of the term, should decide the pupil's rank for the next term. If he has studied faithfully, and mastered fairly, he has derived all the good necessary from the pursuit. A two or three weeks' cursory ramble over the old ways, which have lost their novelty, will but fatigue and bore him to little purpose. If he has been idle and unfaithful, he will not be likely to recover much ground in two weeks. Let him feel that it is minute, daily fidelity that must do his work, and not a lazy, careless lounging for ten weeks, to be made up by a spasmodic spring at the end. This is neither scholarly nor business-like. If his daily record gives him the requisite percentage for promotion, he is promoted : if not, he remains where he is. But the faithful and studious, though necessa- rily somewhat flagging, not to say jaded, pupils are not stimulated by the factitious interest of a test examina- tion to tread over again a path from which their feet have already beaten out the greenness, and their hands have plucked the flowers. I even venture to go farther, and question whether a pupil's advance from class to class shall depend so entirely upon his standing in the lower class. Ambi- tion is a great spur \ but, first and last, there are many Examination under the Microscope. 141 dull, stupid, plodding children, who are conscientious and industrious, but who never seem actually to master anything. They hang on to a study and clutch a few rags of fact here and there ; but they are constitutionally disabled from comprehending it. There are others not stupid but one-sided. They may be unconquerably dull at figures but instinctively clever in history. I knew a girl who w^ent through her botany with but one answer to every question, to the great amusement of her classmates. It was sheer stupidity that could give only the one plaintive, pathetic, hesitating response of " cellular tissue." But it was a clear case of genius, when a little Cambridge boy, the other day, closed his list of the exports of Massachusetts with "many learned men from Harvard College." If such chil- dren must stay in the fourth class until they have an intelligent and consistent acquaintance with fourth-class studies, they may mull on in the fourth, class forever or be disheartened and disgusted and leave school. But they will imbibe, pick up, and otherwise possess them- selves of, a great deal of stray information regarding those studies j and they would do the same regarding the studies of the third class, and the second class, and the first class, if they could be permitted to enter those classes. Now as their parents must pay their full share of the taxes which support the higher classes and the high schools, is it quite fair that these children 143 JBxaminatio7i under the Mla'oscope. should be deprived of all the advantages of those schools because they cannot utilize some of them ? If a boy cannot do the very best should he not be en- couraged to do the next best? If he cannot get as much out of arithmetic as his neighbor is that a rea- son why he should not be allowed to get anything out of algebra or chemistry ? Let the system of marking be the same as it now is. Let any proper percentage be required for rank-admission to a class. But let there be such a thing as admission without rank. If, upon consultation, parents prefer that their children should not remain in the lower class but should go into the advanced class without rank, let them go, to seize and assimilate what knowledge they can, to get all the floating benefits that come from class association, and to find perhaps by and by, the very stimulus they need to start them in some new and bright career, or, at the very least, to gather from novelty and variety all the information that can be available to them. Ambi- tion will not be dispensed with ; for those alone are honorary members who have won their spurs j but neither will slowness and dullness be doomed perpetually to the outer darkness of the monotonous lowest class. The bright pupils will not be kept back ; for the tasks will be set to their measure and not to that of the weaker brethren. They will have all the credit of proficiency, all tlie aids to ability, and all the stimulus Examination U7tder the Microscope. 143 of competition; while the more slow, perhaps more stupid^ but perhaps also more gifted, more peculiar, and more original minds will be able to get out of the school-training everything in it which is adapted to their nature and capacities. If written examinations are drudgery to the teacher, uselessness to the pupil, and a waste to the community, public examinations are still worse. They are not only useless but demoralizing. They introduce a false standard of scholarship, a false motive of action. Writ- ten examinations are tolerably accurate tests. There may be here and there some unfair failure through mere nervousness ; but ordinarily the good scholar and the poor scholar show themselves with a degree of exact- ness on their examination-papers. The only objection is that they show themselves with even greater exact- ness on their daily record, and, therefore, the other one is unnecessary. But a public oral examination is no criterion whatever of scholarship. It is not scholarship but self-possession and confidence that carry the day. If these are combined with scholarship, well ; if not, the faithful but timid pupil has the bitter regret of un- deserved failure. This however is but a slight and comparatively unimportant objection, since this is an inequality of fortune that inheres in nature rather than in circumstance, and must last through life with more or less modification. It is not only in school but in 144 Examhtation U7ider the Microscope. the world that self-possession gives advantage ; and it may be not ill that the child should early recognize this fact, if so be he may try to overcome timidity and secure self-possession. What is radically wrong is that " ex- amination " is too often made to bear heavily upon methods of study. The whip and spur applied are not fidelity, the necessity of learning a lesson because it is right and scholarly to do so, because a lesson half learned is a shabby and slovenly performance, a disgrace and a detriment, but "examination is coming." The pupils are urged to do what will make them appear best at examination. And this is the worst kind of unschol- arly motive because the results are themselves unschol- arly. Prizes are sometimes given in schools and sums of money in colleges. These are often objected to as unworthy motives. And it is certainly no more scholarly or noble to learn a lesson accurately for money than it is to learn it successfully for show. But the money is offered for exactness and acquisition. The boy who is studying for a prize does real studying. He is learning to apply himself, to deny himself, to conquer his books, and after he has done this, and in and by the doing, he acquires the training which study is intended to give. But studying for show is but a cheap superficial thing. That which shows best is not necessarily that which implies thoroughness, assiduity, and perseverance. A flimsy and faithless pupil can be trained for exhibition. Examination luider the Aficroscope. 145 An indifferent teacher may be a brilliant manipulator and showman. The public examination is often but a public exhibi- tion. It is not to ascertain but to display proficiency. To the community, to the actual existence of the school, it may be important. Our school-system is expensive. Tax-payers must be kept good natured. There is per- haps no surer method of attaining the desired end than to dress the cljildren in their best clothes, and send them to the blackboard to draw, and make them sing and read and spell, before an admiring audience. Their bloom and youth and cleverness are all-conquer- ing ; and their schools are seated more firmly than ever in our affections. We see the charm of what is done. We see little of what it cost or of what is left undone. But it will not do to give up this slight actual contact between the schools and the community. No. But is there not a more excellent way? Suppose we have the public exhibition just the same. The children come just the same in gala dress. Arrange whatever festive exercises you choose ; but instead of hap-hazard recita- tions in geography and arithmetic, let the exhibition gather around, and centre in, the public reading of the actual record of the best scholars. The dullards should not be mortified by their dulness in black and white ; but let there be a roll of honor in each study on which shall be inscribed the names of those who have at- 13 146 Exa?nination under tJie Aficroscope. tained a certain percentage, together with the percen- tage attained. This may include behavior, lateness, attendance, as well as study • so that those who cannot be great may have a chance to be good. Thus, without destroying the modesty of a child by making him stand and speak alone before a public audience, you can yet gratify and stimulate an honorable ambition, and do it v;ithout any uncertainty or injustice. His prominence and praise do not depend upon his momentary mood, his timidity, or his nervousness in public : they depend upon his daily, solitary faithfulness to duty. That which they tend to establish is a habit of right living; and what they tend to promote are exactness and thorough- ness. There may be a presentation of floweis, or med- als, or money ; but the point is, that what is rewarded and feted is not sham and shoddy, sound and fury, signifying nothing, but solid value. This would put a stop at once and forever to all " preparing for examina- tions." It would give to the teachers the duty, .and that alone, which belongs to them, — of performing each day that day's duties. If some exercises of drawing, read- ing, reciting, or singing, were desired they would be furnished : but they would be furnished simply as amusement and exhibition by those best drilled in such arts : they would not be palmed off as an indication of the general proficiency of the school. A large part of the strain and drain, both upon teachers and pupils, Examination under the Microscope. 147 would be removed. We should not, as now, have the heaviest burden imposed upon them when they were least able to bear it ; but the close of the term would bring what it ought to bring, — rest. When a study had been once faithfully studied, it would be dropped and that would be the end of it. The wearied mind would not be forced through a mere mechanical and most tiresome drill of review ; but after a sufficient season of repose it would take up a fresh and higher science ; and listlessness would give way to energy. Much is said about overwork in schools. We see that teacher and pupil are nervous, easily broken down. Both are frequently leaving school in search of health. The children have not the care-free faces, the plump- ness, the bloom, which should characterize childhood ; nor have the teachers the fixity and firmness of strength, the robust hardihood, which should characterize men and women. The reasons are not far to seek. It is not the learning or the training of schools : it is nothing that belongs to the legitimate work of teaching. It is the multiplication of tasks, that tire without training: it is the piling-up of a ponderous machinery, that does no work but its own " demnition grind," and is paid for out of the purse of the parent, and the blood of the child j and it is, first, last, and always, the pestilent and poison- ous air, without which, it would seem, no modern school- house can be considered thoroughly furnished unto all 148 Examination under the Microscope. good work. Give to the pupils only the task of learning faithfully each day's lesson, and gaining, each day, a record of faithfulness ; never burden any day with the negligence or the disability of a previous day, except as it must naturally come with the added difHculty of that day's task ; let there be no fearful looking-for of future judgment, which may be inexact and capricious ; let the pupils never be tempted to roll up great bundles of knowledge to be laid in a heap at the feet of the com- mittee on examination-day ; let them have plenty of fresh, untainted air to breathe, — and I think the puny pupils and the nervous teachers would slowly disappear from our schoolrooms, and their places be supplied by women and children with spring in their souls, and muscles in their bodies, as well as brains in their skulls. In conducting a public school examination, if exami- nations there must be, the greatest care should be taken to preserve intact the pride and sensitiveness of both teacher and pupils. The object of the examination is to find out how things are, not to show how they ou^t to be : it is to see what the pupils know, not what they da not know. If the methods of the teacher be bad, if he be superficial, uninteresting, inaccurate, incapable, examination-day is no time to correct or reveal his mis- takes, or to supply his deficiencies. If he be young, inexperienced, or a woman (the rhetoric may be at fault, but I trust not so the logic), he will have difficulty Examination under the Alicroscope. 149 enough in carrying himself well without extraneous stumbling-blocks. I think therefore that it is generally better, more fair, and conclusive, to leave the examina- tion in the hands of the teacher, than to delegate it to any member or members of the examining board. It is on the old Scripture principle, " My sheep know my voice." The pupils are familiar with their teacher and his ways of questioning ; and that familiarity, and the confidence it inspires, are likely to give them command of their knowledge ; while the stranger's voice, and his different way of looking at things, are likely to drive their small store of information out of their poor little heads. If, however, the examining committee do put the questions, they can hardly confine themselves too closely to the book and the subject-matter. They should know exactly the pages which the class have been studying and on which they ought to be prepared ; and then the point is to ascertain whether the pupils know, not cognate things, ramifying things, parallel cases, facts which depend on the principles laid down on those pages, but whether they know those pages themselves. We hear a great deal said about pupils being taught to think ; and examiners are sometimes so eager to find out whether pupils can think, that they are but bunglers in finding oiit what they know. But the first requisite to thought is knowledge. We need facts and not inferences. Let us make sure that 13* 150 Examination imder the Microscope, pupils know what is in the book, and trouble ourselves less about what is outside the book. In our desire to make learning interesting, we are in danger of forgetting that it needs first to be accurate and sure. No amuse- ment, no interest, no explanation, no illustration, is any substitute for the action of the individual pupil's own mind, for his ability to pin his attention to his book without aid from any person. With all our object-teaching and all our new methods, there remains, as at the beginning, just one thing to do j and that is, to make the pupil lay hold of his geography- lesson, and his grammar-lesson, and his arithmetic- lesson, and learn it thoroughly. And the way to learn it is to commit it to memory. It is not necessary to worry about his understanding it. The surest way to understand it is to commit it to memory. If a boy grapple a fact with his memory, he will he in the direct line of grappling it with his comprehension. If he does not fully comprehend it at first, he will grow up to it. The understanding is in no other way so strengthened as by the stores of memory. The mind acts on the facts with which memory has en- dowed it. Judgment is based upon memory. Let us then be sure first that the pupil has learned his lesson. In trying to ascertain how vigorously and promptly the mind acts on what it has learned, we should not forget that nothing so discourages and demoralizes ^Examination under the Microscope. 151 children as to be asked questions which they cannot answer. It does not signify that they are not to blame for their inability. They have no discernment to tell them what they ought to know and what they need not know. They feel that the creditable thing is to an- swer all questions put to them ; and if they cannot answer them they seldom suspect there is anything un- fair in the question ; but they feel that they are not pleasing their teacher, they are mortified before their parents, and are made generally uncomfortable. I have seen a class of little boys and girls, ten and twelve years old, fresh faced, and beautiful in gala robes, evi- dently running over with knowledge which they had been a whole term in acquiring, and which they were innocently and charmingly eager to display, stand up before a good-natured, well-meaning gentleman who, no doubt, thought he was doing God service, and be speedily brought to shame and confusion of face be- cause he would not ask them of what they knew, but persisted in leading them by untrodden ways. It is true that his questions involved the principle which had been studied ; but it is true, also, that they implied a generalization which we have no right to require of children. We do not always ourselves make a brilliant foray into these fresh fields. If a girl of twelve, who has never, studied Latin, has a tolerable notion of wiTat the 152 Examiitation under the Microscope. equinox is, I do not see that much is added to her store by being told that it comes from two Latin words mean- ing equal and night. There is certainly not enough added to compensate her for the mortification of being obliged, before a roomful of her mothers and aunts, to reply to any question, " I don't know." Among the birds of a certain answer in geography appeared the condor. " How large is the condor?" asked the benevolent gentleman. The little girl hesitated. " Is it a large or a small bird ?" "A large bird." ''Well, how large.?" " The largest there is." Now, if it were necessary to put the question, here was an intelligent and sufficiently accurate answer ; and, if the examiner had been as wise as he was good, he would have given the girl a commendation, and dis- missed her triumphantly with honors easy. But he could not let well enough alone, and must needs rush on to his own destruction. " Cannot you tell me how large ?" No answer. '' As large as a calf?" As if a calf had any deter- minate size, and could be made a standard ! Surely the little girl's idea of a condor was as accurate as the comm*ttee-man's idea of a calf. Examination tinder the Mici'oscope. 153 A little boy gave the definition of reduction, — " The changing of numbers from one denomination to another." " What have you left out ? " asked the committee. The boy paused. If he could have been permitted to collect his senses in silence, no doubt he would have found the missing link ; but the benevolent gentleman pursued his lucubrations. "You have left out the most important part of the definition. You have left out four words which contain the most important part of the definition." Of course a child of twelve cannot listen to a grown-up gentleman and carry on an abstract mental process at the same time. Adult people in society can sometimes assuage their sufferings in that way ; but it requires skill and practice. Another pupil supplied the deficiency, — "without changing their value." I question the fact. It seems to me that the adequate definition of reduction is what the boy gave ; that the added clause is not only not the most important part, but is really no part of the definition. True, the value is not to be changed ; but that is an extraneous matter. If you have changed the value of the number you have done something besides reduce. You may add that or any other negative clause to the definition, without destroying, but also without increasing, its accuracy. It remains that reduction is the changing of numbers 154 Examinatlo7i under the Microscope, from one denomination to another. Is it not so, Monsieur Mon Frere ? The children's questions were answered and their examples performed, with promptness and correctness; but the ill-starred committee could not leave them their little triumph unmarred, must needs try to get into, and bring out of, their heads, that multiplication by a frac- tion is division. Oh ! if men would but know in this their day the (in some respects) narrow range of a child's mind ! Fractions are complicated, at best. If a boy can learn the mechanical processes, for heaven's sake let alone the "philosophy of it. If he can add fractions, and multiply fractions, and divide fractions, with ease and readiness, be content, and do not try to muddle them all together : it is not of the slightest use. This committee worked on the class till he got out the answers he wanted \ but he got them only by exclusion. It was easy to see that the right answers came only because the other answers had been pronounced wrong. One of the brightest boys in the class said succinctly after he got home, " Mr. Committee was wrong there. I looked in the book afterward." That was what his long and lucid explanation amounted to. Get the processes into the young minds, and the rationale will come of itself in its own good time. In the best of schools, a vast amount of geography, arithmetic, g■ra^^mar, and especially philology, must be JExafJzhiation tinder the Microscope. 155 left unlearned. With the best of teachers, the cofii- mittee on examination-day can ask thousands of ques- tions which the pupils cannot answer. Some of the information they are incapable of grasping. A great deal of it is quite within their power. But time is limited. Many matters of interest must be slightly touched, and many more left untouched. A good teacher is the best judge of what he can do aild what the pupil can do. He will explain and suggest as far as is practicable ; but there will be many things, both about calves and condors, that must be left to future reading. Many mathematical principles must be rele- gated to the pupils' maturer years. It is easy for a committee to ask interesting questions and convey much valuable information : it would be equally easy and agreeable for the teacher to do it if you would give him time. But the teacher has the steady pull, day after day, week after week. Why should the com- mittee come in once or twice a term, only to divert the minds of pupils in presence of their parents and thereby put himself into contrast, perhaps unfavorable, to the teacher, who does all the real work ? " Mention three domestic animals," said a teacher. " A horse." " Yes. Now the second." " Another horse." ^ " No. I want your others to be a different kind." 156 Exammation under the Microscope. -" Two cows." Certainly, a horse and two cows are three domestic animals ; but is it worth while to vex these dear little devious yet direct minds with complex processes ? Rather let us strengthen them with simplicity, with^ order, with routine, with small requirements rigidly secured, with small victories generously awarded. Let us be sure that a little learned by themselves is more worth than a great deal explained or taught by their teachers. The channel must be narrow, or it never can be either wide or deep. THE SUPERVISORY FEVER. THE SUPERVISORY FEVER. HAVING given such definite and valuable direc- tions for examinations as that they shall be conducted — '*5^/' the superintendent goes on to say that *' if the schools are not wisely examined, it is as well perhaps to leave them without it (?) altogether." The next step naturally is to limn the wise examiner, whose mind we discover is to be so liberalized by a wide range of educational reading and study that he will "look sharper" for merits than for demerits. '' He should fear only two things : he should fear to do injustice and he should fear himself." And if he " looks sharp " enough we should certainly think that he would fear himself. Having depicted this educational Spartan in terms so glow^ing that the superintendent himself stands before his own picture in despair of ever realizing it, he turns right about face and declares to our surprise that *' instead of saying nobody is equal to such a work, and therefore it must be dispensed with, we should rather * get the best ' and trust to the (159) l6o The Supervisory Fever. law of supply and demand " to do better- by and by. That is, we must dc the work wisely or not do it at all ; but if we can find no one able to do the work wisely, we must do the best we can ! Behold how good and pleasant and consistent a thing it is to have the mind liberalized by a wide range of educational reading and study ! And yet this examination which is so important, by which, "if at all, will be hastened the dawning of that day when there will be' no cramming, no high pressure, no idleness," and many other evil things which give great weight to the "if at all;" this examination, which is to do so vastly greater a work than teaching and which requires in the examiner a hitherto impossible combination of gifts and graces, is after all second to — what ? Not to teaching — that is servant of servants to its brethren — but to supervision. " This function is next in importance and in point of difficulty to that of the chief supervision, which overlooks the whole econo- my of the system." The examiners, momentous and barely and rarely possible as they are, appear after all but on a lower form, while the superintendent is the sweet little cherub that sits up aloft and " overlooks " the scene. I ought not to omit the confession that our superin- tendent does give one direction for conducting the examination. Having described what it is to do, and The Supervisory Pever. i6i the Coming Man who is to do it, it seems to occur to him that " as to the method and plan of procedure something must be said, but my limits will not permit details y Verily our superintendent is wise in his generation. He follows his own prescription. He fears himself. He has pages of rotund and sonorous description of the lofty ends to be pursued by the lofty examiner and prescribed to the humble teacher. But when it dawns upon his mind that it is desirable to give a little practical and definite suggestion as to the steps by which these are to be attained, he sweeps it grandly aside with the conclusive remark " My limits will not permit details." There is ample room for useless theorizing but no room for one useful hint ; with the single exception that the superintendent's pet notion is so indelibly impressed upon his brain that, without shattering his great ideal, he is able to stoop from his mount of vision long enough to give us the one subtle and startling " detail " that the examiner must march to his field of glory armed with a Form of Blank ! It followed inevitably that when these vague general- ities and these intersecting functions began to be put into actual operation, the clash of arms resounded. To carry on and carry out the notion of these intricate "examinations" a special Board of supervisors was created. But no sooner was this Board in existence, 1 62 The Supervisory Fever, than all the Boarders lifted up their voices and began to cry aloud. " / want to be an angel, and with the angels stand" and instantly started to climb alongside the sweet little cherub — who naturally did not like it. He thought there was not more than room enough for one. He looked into their ascending and aspiring eyes and he saw already a disposition to oust him from his seat and set him afloat "on the world-wide sea." " The supervi- sors," said the cherub mournfully and apprehensively, " seem to have conceived that the title by which they are designated is equivalent to the title superintendents . . They have proceeded to assume the ' supervision ' of the schools in groups, * that the teachers may know to whom specially to apply when they wish for assistance or counsel^^ which means that they have assumed the functions of superintendents ... I find nothing in the regulations requiring or permitting the supervisors to exercise this function. But the superintendent is di- rectly commanded to exercise this function. The language is : 'he shall advise the teachers on the best methods of instruction and discipline.' It is plain that if six other persons may at the same time go to all the schools and counsel and direct in regard to these matters, having no responsibility to any chief, then there are seven persons exercising conflicting functions." In this fight of the functions observe how one The Supervisory Fcjer, 163 function has entirely changed color under the superin- tendent's apparently unconscious hands. The superin- tendent quotes the regulations against the supervisors thus : " He shall advise the teachers." He quotes the supervisors against the regulations thus : " that the teachers may know to whom specially to apply when they wish for assistance or coufisel.''^ But making origi- nal comments on these regulations he says, "if six other persons may at the same time go to all the schools and cotmsel and direct there are seven persons exercising conflicting functions." Thus betwixt the masthead and the ground, the assistance and counsel and advice of the superintendents and supervisiors and regulations, guaranteed by law, have been gerrymandered by the superintendent into direction^ which is an altogether different thing and does not appear to have been contemplated in the regulations. But after all, the especial spectacle to which I wish to call attention is — the seven adult citizens at a cost of $25,000 or thereabouts, quarrelling as to which of them shall advise the teachers ! Not one of them proposes to go into the school-room and do the honest work of teaching: the sole bone of contention is which shall have the exclusive right to go pottering around the school-room to bother the teacher ; " to whom specially to apply when they wish for assistance or counsel'^ 164 The Supervisory Fever, I venture to say the teachers wished assistance and counsel from none of them. I venture to say that the Board was created at no demand from good and efficient teachers. If the teachers were free to speak their mind they would depose and say that all they wanted of the Board was to stand out of their sunshine. It would be interesting to know how many teachers ever cried with a great and bitter cry, "give us a superintendent to reign over us !" how many parents of their own motion besieged the polls for a Board of supervisors. The superintendent admits that his office was created only " after prolonged and stren- uous opposition " and that " the regulations prescribing the duties of the office seemed to be designed to pre- vent the incumbent from doing harm, rather than to invest him with power to do good." This shows that the people made a good fight ; that they yielded only step by step, and that they wisely and patriotically at the very last tried to reduce to its lowest terms the evil which they could not wholly prevent. If there were any positive and ultimate standard of right and wrong in teaching, whi^h some might definitely attain and which all would definitely recognize, it might be well to set the few in high places not only to counsel but to direct those who walk and work below. But there is no such standard. As many as there are teachers and "educators " so many theories are there — - The Supervisory Fever, 165 and the theory of the teacher is just as likely to be the true one as the theory of the educator. Whoever examines the different reports will find the theories of the various superintendents flatly contradicting each other. After the present superintendent had with infinite difficulty got his Board of Supervisors ordained for the special purpose of examination and inspection, he announced that the theory they had adopted was " radically wrong." How much better off then was the public for the tens of thousands of dollars they had spent in pursuit of inspection ? Another superintendent starts with a theory of fre- quent written examinations ; that " each examination shall cover all the work that has preceded it for the year, and in such studies as arithmetic . . . each ex- amination will embrace the entire subject as far as studied." To the slight objection that this will require too much of both teacher and pupil and that the pupil cannot be expected to keep fresh in his mind subjects which he studied months before, the superintendent airily answers, " Why ? if the pupils have been thor- oughly taught, and what is to be said of a system that tolerates anything but thorough teaching ? No subject should be taught in our schools with which the pupil should not be made so familiar in its important features that an examination at any time will not be deemed a hardship." 1 66 The Supervisory Fever. Let us look at this. A class of boys learns geometry so well that at the close of their term they can solve any problem and demonstrate any theorem in the twelve books of Euclid at call. They leave school and go, one to his farm and another to his merchandise and except a professor or two, not one of them looks at a geometry book for twent}^ years. At the end of that time how many of them could even state the tenth proposition, seventh book ? Our superintendent would force little children to do what the grown men of col- leges are not required to do. Harvard University has very wisely instituted double examinations so that a boy may be examined in his studies while he is fresh from their pursuit and not wait till he wishes to enter college and be obliged to go over the whole at once. The plan proposed by this superintendent is so objec- tionable that no child ought to be sent to a school where it is even attempted to be practised. It imposes a burden on teacher and pupil which is not only fatal but unscholarly. The mere bugbear of such exam- inations is enough to scare all elasticity and buoyancy out of any ambitious or intellectual pupil. His work ceases to be a pleasurable, vigorous, and dignified com- mand of each day's duties rising ever more and more into a love of learning, and becomes a mere preparation for examination. No opportunity is left the teacher for The Supervisoj-y Pever. 167 ingenuity or indulgence. Everything must bend to the demand of this outside iron examination. And the superintendent rather gloats over his power to harass and annoy the teacher. The objection that these examinations "cause great anxiety among the teachers is to my mind a recommendation. I entirely agree with superintendent Blank who says . . . 'that any system of inspection which shall occasion the teacher little or no anxiety must be a contemptible farce.' " On the contrary anxiety hinders work. Anxiety is the concomitant of weakness. Anxiety always implies something wrong. The good teacher goes to her prop- er work, interested, confident, cheerful, equal to her task, and imparts her own tone and spirit to her pupils. It is in this spirit that good work must be done. An anxious teacher is so far a weak and undesirable teach- er; and any man or any plan that tends to impose anxiety upon the teacher is a nuisance that cannot be too soon abolished. On the other hand, equally objectionable is this superintendent's theory that the primary school teacher is to make the subject seem to the pupil more like a story than a lesson. A teacher should aim at invigo- ration, not enervation. She should make her pupils feel not that lesson is story, that work is play, that duty is amusement, but that lesson in season is a better thing than story out of season, that work is a higher sort of 1 68 The Stifervisoi'y Fever. thing than play — that duty is more satisfactory than amusement. Children enjoy overcoming obstacles just as much as grown people enjoy it and they acquire firmness and fibre in the act. They need of all things to be ^taught that a thing is not to be shirked because it is disagreeable, and that there is no victory like the solution of a stubborn problem by will and nerve. To illustrate the poor way in which history is taught, a superintendent tells of some pupils who gave a very full account of the difficulties met by Columbus before setting sail, mentioned the date of the discovery of America, the encouragement received from Queen Isabella, and all the points essential and non-essential to be found in the text-book. But when, not ten min- utes later, the superintendent asked about what time Queen Isabella lived, not one in the class could tell, and the superintendent consequently pronounces the exercises a failure. I should say that it was the superintendent who was a failure. I should be very much ashamed of myself, if, after a class had demon- strated that they knew when Columbus discovered America and that Queen Isabella helped him, I could not get out of them when Queen Isabella lived. I venture to say that ninety-nine out of every hundred teachers could do it. I venture to say that if that superintendent had been out of the way, the class teacher could have done it. The children had done their whole The Sufervisory Fever. 169 duty in learning the lesson. Any good teacher by one or two demure questions — almost by a significant look, would have had every hand in the class springing up, every eye sparkling, every little form wriggling with eagerness to tell when Isabella lived. By what blunt address, by what wooden questioning even a superin- tendent could contrive to depress these young brains into total inaction, it is hard to imagine, but he did it and seems not to have the faintest surmise that it was his own fault ! . He relates another instance in another state where the pupil narrated with commendable accuracy the particu- lars of the bombardment of Boston Heights from Charlestown. At the close the examiner, "pleased with the readiness of the pupil, tested the intelligence of his answer by asking where this Charlestown was situated. ' In South Carolina, sir,' was the prompt reply. This is a type, though it may be an exaggerated one, of a recitation in history." It is-nothing of the sort. It is a type of the stupidity and stolidity of a possibly intelligent man when he has to deal with a child's mind. Every one who is at all familiar with the workings of his own mind knows how easy it is, under a slight surprise, momentarily to forget a perfectly familiar fact ; how common it is not instantly to recognize a perfectly familiar fact presented at a new angle. ' * Who will open the Senate at the extra session ? '* i^o The Supervisory Fever. was asked. " The Secretary I suppose," replied anoth- er who knew quite well both that the Vice President is President of the Senate and that the Vice President is in office till iS8i. "Why is Mr. Davis not in the House ? " asked another. " He is not returned " was the reply of one who knew perfectly that California loses her representation in the House until autumn. If you had asked these questions directly : does the Vice President preside through the extra session ? does California choose her representatives in season for the extra session ? the replies would have been instantly accurate. But, hitting the mind at an angle, the question glanced off, futile. How much more easy for the inexperienced young mind to see all the bearings of a question at first glance ! MILK FOR BABES. MILK FOR BABES. WE have pages of school reports filled with theo- ries of different superintendents as to the best methods of teaching reading, and pages more as to the best method of teaching writing. But who shall decide which is the best? "Many excellent teachers advocate" each method. Let every teacher have his own method. There is no reason why a superintendent should be set over any number of teachers and impose upon them the method he thinks best. Most of us learned to read and write without any method at all. By a certain mode, says one superintendent, " In the course of three or four months the pupils are enabled to write with considera- ble facility sentences made up of small words." But here is a little girl of seven years who in the course of three or four weeks has learned to write sentences with considerable facility and with no method, except teasing her sisters and her cousins and her aunts to set copies for her and roaring with rage when she was not satis- fied with her efforts. Her sole advantage was that she (173) 174 Milk for Babes. was not hampered with schools and supervision, her sole motive '*to catch up with Nanny!" If she had been tampered with by the " system " I suppose she too would have to drag along like the pupils aforesaid till " the second half of the second year" before she would have learned to w^rite. But left to herself, here is a composition which she has this moment finished of her own accord in the second half of the second month of her hap-hazard tuition : My cat is very pritty. And will with us play. The dog is black with yellow lags. The dog dose like me and so the cat. The dog will come when I call it. And so will the cat. When I tham milk gife the cat will begin to drink befor the dog. Then the dog will come out. And the cat will put her povv in the milk and spatter it all abuot. The dogs name is Captaif C . The cats name is pinafor. Miss Ely said the dog ought to be named ralph arid the cat josephind. But as I did not want to chand ther names. I let them stay as thay were. Thas morning the cat got into the market basket. In the basket thar were some stor berry boss. Wall the cat had got her pors on the top of the boss when thay fell over. The end. What our schools are for is to teach children to write, not to teach them to write by some particular method. Is it worth while to pay a superintendent three or four thousand dollars a year to enforce upon teachers a sys- tem of doubtful value ? A superintendent reports that "a child would probably spend as much time in the study of the word exploration Milk fo7' Babes. 1 75 as in that of preparatloii ; and yet three hundred scholars belonging to different schools, writing these words without study, failed on ihem in the ratio of one to thirty-two. On the w^ords I'efreshment and especially^ the failures were as one to forty-six." It is truly mel- ancholy to see the people's money wasted in taxes to pay a grown man three thousand dollars a year for such maundering. Three hundred children are taken from their proper tasks and- set to writing words ordered by the superintendent, and the teachers of those three hundred pupils have to supervise the writing and exam- ine the papers and sum the failures — for you maybe sure that the superintendent reduces his own drudgery to its lowest terms ; and then the teachers hand in their lists and the full-grown man makes out the ratio and the city is at the cost of printing — what ? what every one knew before, that preparation will be oftener '' missed " than exploratio7i ; because the first a in preparation is pronounced short! Equally sapient are the hints for teaching arithmetic : *' A lessson of ten examples all in division is not so profitable as one which contains two examples under each of the preceding rules and four in division." But you cannot do an example in division without doing an example under at least two of the preceding rules, and you cannot prove your example in division without taking in the third. 176 Milk for Babes. When a superintendent has swelled his report with all the useless information he can originate, he bor- rows more frqm other officials as useless as himself. ''The supervisors of the schools of have issued a pamphlet entitled ' Suggestions accompanying the Course of Study for the Grammar and Primary Schools.' [Observe that they wisely make no suggestions for the High Schools.] These suggestions are the result of ex- tended experience and observation, and would be of permanent value to our teachers." And then follows the pamphlet which ought to be entitled " Pap for the Teachers," and which so far from being of any perma- nent value to the teachers are so feeble, so primitive so goody-goody that no teacher can be of any per- manent value who can be benefited by them. These paternal supervisors kindly caution teachers at the outset " against the expectation of great and immediate results." Teachers are so accustomed to see boys and girls precipitate themselves into men and women by the second day of school, that this caution is exceedingly well-timed. " The work to be accomplished by the several classes will depend much on the capacity and aptness of the teacher." The supervisors it will be observed are hedging at the outset, so that if their sug- gestions are not fruitful of good, they have the teacher ready led out for scapegoat. " It will of course be un- derstood, that, though the exercises are essentially the Milk for Babes, 177 same in the several classes, they are expected to be progressive." That is, the highest class in school is to have different work to do from the lowest class. How fortunate that the teachers have a superintendent and the superintendent has supervisors from whom can be borrowed this valuable intelligence, this latest and most approved method of teaching ; that the highest and the lowest classes are not to be taught the same lessons ! " In the oral exercises pupils should be required to speak audibly and distinctly." Six supervisors in one town borrowed by the superintendent in another town to "suggest" to teachers that they do what every obscur- est teacher in the obscurest country district has been steadfastly doing time out of mind. '* As soon as pupils begin to write, care should be taken that every sentence should begin with a capital, that the word should be spelt correctly " — and sun- dry similar remote and recondite suggestions ; yet I dare say my seven-year old little maid will get her dog's "lags" straight just as quickly as if she had seven supervisors pulling at each leg. " At first only the most prominent objects in a picture, or the most obvious qualities of an object, should receive attention. Thus, in examining a picture in the reading- book, in answer to suggestive questions by the teacher, the pupil will say that he sees two little girls, that they are looking at a bird's nest, that the nest has four eggs 178 Milk for Bah es. in it, and that tlie bird is sitting near by on the branch of the tree. "This, perhaps, is sufficient for the lowest class. At a later stage the skilful teacher will find no difficulty in interesting the pupil in the skill with which the nest is made, the beauty of the eggs and the motherly anxiety of the bird whose hiding-place has been discov- ered." Observe that these momentous distinctions are only secured by the uncertain tenure of a " perhaps." With all the learning of the six supervisors transported from their own to another city " perhaps " the heavens would not fall, " perhaps" our school "system" would not be rolled together as a scroll even if the pretty little eggs or the frightened little mother were pointed out to the lowest class ! We might just as wisely pay our taxes to support a Board to print a manual for mothers, "suggesting" that when the children are in long clothes it will " per- haps " be well to confine their arithmetic lessons to the attractive formula: " This little pig went to market This little pig staid at home, This little pig had breakfast, This little pig had none ; And this little pig went squeak, squeak, squeak." but that when the boy enters Harvard College he should, "perhaps" relinquish his seat in his mother's lap, Milk for Babes. 179 and be taught to view his toes in a more anatomical light. As in the primary schools so in the grammar schools the work '' should be progressive, more being required both in thought and expression as we advance towards the higher classes." In only one respect do the super- visors apparently not expect progression : they assume that the teachers of the lower and the higher classes of the lower and higher schools make no advance in intel- ligence, but are equally idiotic. *'A teacher should set an example in reading naturally and intelligently .... " Constant care must be taken to prevent screaming, shouting, and drawling." — '' Varied and interesting methods to secure good spelling, and at the same time to lead pupils to a good choice of words in speech and writing, will occur to teachers." Be sure they will ; why then pay six super- visors % 20,000 a year to print a pamphlet to say so ? '' Neatness and legibility should be required in the written exercises." Was ever a school established in which the teacher labored for blots and blurs ? "To encourage and secure the individuality which ought to characterize good writing, blank books .... are recommended to be used." " Upon the lowest line of each page of the copy-book let the pupil write his name and age, the name of the i8o Milh for Babes. school and class, and the date when the page was com- pleted." "In studying the Constitution of the United States, and of Massachusetts, read the documents themselves," — as if, without this " suggestion" the teacher would teach the Constitution out of Watts' Psalms and Hymns. The Board like our whilom superintendent fears it- self, and wisely and prudently leaves the "details, and with some slight exceptions, methods, of teaching arith- metic to the wisdom and skill of the teachers them- selves." While it was about it, the Board might just as well have left the whole thing in the same safe place. It has, however, taken care to determine the general subjects and the generai order of subjects so as to prevent the teachers from beginning with their infant classes on square root, and graduating the High School classes with simple addition, which the teachers would undoubtedly do if left to their own imbecility. "Of the familiar principles which should determine the methods of teaching arithmetic, none deserve greater attention than the following : — " I . That in childhood the activities of perception are greater than other mental activities. 2. That- both single and related perceptions must be clear and distinct in order that the memory may do its proper work. 3. That the imagination and reflective powers of children cannot live and thrive on abstractions, but Milk for Babes, i8i must feed daily and hourly on present or recalled perceptions, or on conceptions that may at any moment be realized in thought. 4. That a cheap, third-hand metaphysics is of no more use in teaching a child the multiplication-table than a knowledge of the history and whereabouts of the lost tribes of Israel is essential to the profitable sale of a threadbare coat to the old clo' man." Any slight foreign element in these " suggestions " "may at any moment be realized in thought." The .supervisors are guilty of great neglect of duty in not telling the teachers how many hours a day they ought to give " attention" to these ''familiar principles," and what particular form their " attention " should take, and at what hour the devotion should begin. Shall the teachers say a sort of early mass at six o'clock in the morning, or would it be well to have a muezzin call from the church steeples at high noon, or shall the teachers squat cross-legged on prayer-rugs at the ring- ing of the curfew bell in speechless contemplation of the stupendous principle " that, as thought involves a consciousness of identity, similarity, or difference, and as these relations are the basis of thought in num- bers, but cannot be clearly conceived in an ' abstract ' form by children, there should be, at the very start, and during the study of elementary arithmetic, exercises which involve the perception of the relations of num* 16 1 83 Milk for Babes. bered objects ?" When laws to this effect are introduced into our revised statutes, I trust our tired teachers will improve the time allotted to this " attention " and calmly lie down on their prayer-rugs and go to sleep, for it is only a cumbrous and stilted abstraction of the lively little concrete which we all tripped along in our early days : If Mary had one cherry in one hand and two in the other, how many cherries had she in both ? Under the head of "Miscellaneous" we have the comfortable supervising "suggestion" that "the half hour under this head is also meant to provide the teachers with a few comparatively spare moments in which they can attend to various details." That is, having sawed logs all day they can be allowed the "miscellaneous" half hour to chop a little brush for fun ! Did it ever occur to these six supervisors that a teacher, left to himself, might possibly plan a few comparatively spare moments in which to execute his comparatively unimportant details without borrowing the brains of a sister city, or even having a Board organized to impend over him ? It is enough to drive teachers wild to be subjected to such insensate impertinence ; and to reflect that while they are paid five or six or seven hundred dollars a year for real work, these wiseacres get three or four thousand for their incomprehensible fatuity. And yet I am far from blaming these superinten- Milk for Babes. 1S3 dents and supervisors. They are doubtless well- meaning men and women. They design to be honest and harmless. They wish to earn their salaries. The only trouble is that they are supernumeraries. The only trouble is that there is nothing for them to do. The real work of schools is teaching. To create offices outside is to reduce officers to these pitiable devices to do something that looks like work. The public may be imposed upon by these sober and decorous shams, these phantasms of work — but the teachers are not. The teachers laugh at them. The teachers know that these stately and formal "Suggestions" are the very truisms and platitudes of teaching and have gone with- out saying from the time when the memory of man runneth not to the contrary. But take never so good a man and put him in receipt of a good salary — in a position where he is supposed to have something to do and where there is really nothing to do, and he will make violent and probably ridiculous efforts to do some- thing. The chances are that something will be mis- chief ! OFFICIAL SUPERVISION AND PERSONAL SUPERVISION OFFICIAL SUPERVISION AND PERSONAL SUPERVISION. IF it be said that suggestions from the supervisors and superintendents are but a small part of their work : that the main thing is to secure good teaching, to keep teachers up to their work ; to see that only good teachers are employed, and that poor ones are pre- vented or dismissed, I reply that in this also their work is fallacious, fictitious, phantasmal. It must ever be borne in mind that a school is not a factory. The work of a school is not mechanical. If tile- drain pipes do not stand the required strain they fly apart under the inspector's test and may be re- turned on the contractor's hands. But there is no exact mechanical test by which teaching can be judged, nor do we even approximate a test by appointing a supervisor or a superintendent. We do in theory. We do in the school reports. In actual practice we do not ; on the contrary we go a step backwards. The chil- dren are the truest reporters, the parents are the only (187) 1 88 Official and Personal Supervision. trustworthy supervisors. In the country districts where we have neither Boards nor supervision, where the only examination is intrusted to the wisdom, prudence, and skill of the committee man, we know in a week whether the teacher is good or good-for-nothing. We never trouble ourselves about a Board of examiners, but I never heard of a town meeting in the vestry appoint- ing for the examining committee a man who was not equal to the task of examining the teacher. It is generally the minister, or the lawyer, or the doctor. It is, I think without exception, a man competent to the work — and very seldom is a teacher appointed who is intellectually disqualified, disqualified in any way that an examination could develop. When the teacher fails it is because he has not the teaching tact — that no examination could discover. It is just as practicable, just as easy, and just as imperative for parents in the city to supervise the schools, as it is for parents in the country. The child's talk, habits, interest in school are the signs by which to detect the character of his teaching — not the appointment of a man and the pages of a report. If parents think that, by the delegation of their duties and the payment of a salary, these duties are performed, the children must pay the penalty. Un- less the parents do it, no one is doing it. It is not done. The parejit relinquishes the responsibility for the teaching of his child to the superintendent. The Official and Personal Supervision. 189 superintendent is a man. Most of the teachers are women. All that the women have to do then is to address tliemselves to the superintendent. It matters not how poor a teacher a woman is, if she can get into the good graces of the superintendent; and the ease with which she can do this and her ability to do it have no relation whatever with her ability to teach. The artful woman, the insinuating woman, the woman who flatters the superintendent, the woman who minis- ters to his indolence, or the woman who thinks him worth her wiles — and these women are not neces- sarily bad women : they may be very mzo, and good women — these women are quite as likely to be held in high esteem of men superintendents as are the experi- •i enced, conscientious and effective teachers, whose first thought is their pupils, and not themselves nor a super- intendent. In theory, on the pages of the scjiool report the superintendent is a virtuous abstraction, seeking only the welfare of the community, separating the wheat from the tares with prompt and uncompromising fidelity and with an omniscient discrimination. As a matter of fact, he is only a man and entirely a man. Viewed in the most amiable light, he does not wish to be odious to the masters, he wishes to stand well with the women ; he does not wish to be at loggerheads with the commit- tee, to involve the community in warfare. He does 190 Official and Personal Sitfcrvision. not wish to assume unpleasant responsibility nor endanger his own election and salary*. He longs to have everything go smoothly and without censuring observation. The parents have given their duty over into the hands of the superintendent, and they are not' likely to trouble him. The women can gen- erally lead him to see whatever they wish him to see. So the report comes out and the committee compliments the superintendent and the superintendent compliments the committee and they both compliment the teachers and we all congratulate ourselves on the success of our common school S3^stem. But the incom- petent, the uneducated, the uncouth, the false and flim- sy, the sham and showy teachers remain in school all the same. How is it with the private schools ? Exeter and Ando- ver, Ipswich, and South Hadley, the great schools of the past and the present — do they or did they have a superintendent and a Board of examiners and pages of essays on the method of appointment and inspection and examination ? Who examined Miss Mitchell of Vassar and Miss Cowles of Farmington to see whether they were competent? Who supervised Miss Stanwood of Elmira to insure her adoption of the latest and most im- proved methods of instruction? Who keeps tally of Presi- dent McCosh's headaches and absences or latenesses in his class attendance ? I never heard — no private school Official and Perso7zal Stipervisio7i. 191 ever heard of this machinery from the foundation of the world. The men whose schools are not supported by government, but whose existence depends upon their excellence, — these men keep their eyes upon their own pupils and upon the world at large. When they see a desirable teacher either trained up in their own classes or looming up in some other quarter, they grab him. That is all the process there is. And when they have their teacher, he works in with the others and the whole is a self-moving, self-adjusting, self-regulating machine. If the teacher is a good teacher he gener- ally stays as long as he can be kept* Of course mistakes are made, private schools as well as public schools being conducted by mortal men ; but the private schools, without any machinery whatever for outside supervision, secure just as good teachers with the whole matter in the sole charge of the teachers, as do the public schools with all their cumbrous, costly and com- plicated machinery. The schools and academies are in charge of trustees who make no pretence of being "educators," who are ministers, lawyers, merchants, rich men of business, and who leave to the teachers the whole internal arrangements of the school, its supervis- ion, superintendence, recitations, examinations and inspection of both teachers and pupils. These schools whose teachers are selected without method or machin- ery, without any test of examination, these schools whose 192 Official a7id Personal Supervision, success depends solely upon their excellence and whose excellence is attested solely by common report, by the talk, the scholarship, the habits and manners of tlie pupils and the standing of the teachers in society, are as good schools in every respect as the public schools about which we have this incessant din and roar and rattle of supervising and examining machinery. Nay, the position of the teachers in private' schools is so much better, so much more dignified, independent, manly and womanly than in the public schools, that the private schools are constantly attracting the best teach- ers and the public schools are tending more and more to be taught only by menials. The arrogance and ignorance of school ofiicers in those parts of our country most over-ridden by the " System " are so great that no lady or gentleman would enlist as a teacher under them unless compelled by necessity. So long as public school teachers are subjected to "management," so long as the state employs men to "manage the teachers," so long as the teachers are counted an inferior class who are to report and submit to a superior outside class called supervisors or superintendents or examiners or inspectors, while the teachers of private schools are selected and sought for their reputation, are treated like ladies and gentlemen, like women and men who have self-respect and professional pride, and not like lip- servants, so long will you have and will tend more and Official and Personal Supervision. 193 more to have the ladies and gentlemen, scholars and specialists, in the private schools ; while the public schools will be given over to mediocrity and machinery, to uncultivated minds, to ungentle manners, to a low and subservient spirit. All our school " system " is gradu- ally and not slowly taking our children out from the influence and impress of mental and spiritual individual strength and subjecting them only to servile labor. A few examples will give an idea of the value of a report. On one page of a report the high school is complimented — I think high schools are generally com- plimented — with the statement that "at the annual examination the report of the members of the full Board was for the most part such as to give the highest credit both to teachers and pupils." Sixteen pages afterwards the reporter had forgotten his desire to com- pliment the high school teachers in his desire to advo- cate a higher standard of admission to the high school rather than an enlargement of the high school build- ing, and he inconsiderately argues : " By this policy .... the valuable and costly services of its teachers would be no longer wasted on scholars incapable of profiting by them." But what had become of those incapable scholars, where away had those wasted efforts been tucked when the reporter was reflecting "the highest credit " both on teachers and pupils ? In their report the committee declare with imposing 194 Official and Personal ^7(pe7'vision. stateliness that ''it is impossible to overestimate tlie services of our superintendent, who maintains the balance between the past and the future which befits his office, being at once wisely conservative and cau- tiously progressive, never forsaking a method or usage till he can replace it by a better, never taking a step in advance till he knows precisely where his footfall will be. As an intermediary between school and school, and between the several schools and the sub-committees in charge of them, he is constantly communicating important information, facilitating hopeful experiment, quickening the march of improvement, and hastening the settlement of all questions of management and discipline that demand authoritative interposition." I defy any person to read this description of his char- acter and functions without being impressed with the majesty and might of the superintendent. It is there- fore all the more surprising, it is " positively shocking," to go on to the next paragraph and find, when you come down to those dangerous things called " details," that the only thing worth mentioning which the superin- tendent has actually done, the one thing of sufficient magnitude to be lifted out of obscurity into the publicity and prominence of report, by a committee that for- mally declares at the outset its design of offering only such suggestions " as may be deemed of sufficient importance to be made public," — is that "he has dis- Official and Personal Supervision. 195 tributed among the schools large numbers of cards, some containing fresh materials, others with cuttings from books, periodicals, and newspapers, pasted on them " for the reading classes ! Truly it must be im- possible to overestimate the services of a man employed at two or three thousand dollars a year to cut out news- paper scraps and paste them on a card ! With what a solemn sense of responsibility must he open his morning journal, holding himself in wisely conservative suspense over the poet's corner or the column of anecdotes, till he knows precisely where his footfall will be, then winding in with his cautiously progressive scissors and winding out as an intermediary between school and school, maintaining the balance between glue-pot and scrap-book which befits his office and constantly com- municating to the teachers such important information as is hidden from the v/ise and prudent press and pupil and is revealed only to superintending babes ! Unluckily the report affirms instantly that " in some of the primary schools the teachers have carried into execution the sanie plan, cutting up story-books and numbers of 'The Nursery, and constructing by means of them series of cards for the use of their classes." Does not the terrible suspicion immediately arise in the ingenuous mind that possibly the services of the superin- tendent may have been over estimated ; that possibly the teachers might have been safely left to cut up their 196 Official and Personal Supervision. own Nurseries and paste their own scrap-books, and fetch and carry their own gossip between school-house and school-house ? It may perhaps be impertinent and unimportant to suggest here a faint query whether it be not a sort of wantonness to cut up and mutilate story-books and Nurseries for the sake of pasting school-room cards. The -reading-books in schools are themselves nothing but extracts selected for reading — pasted cards on a large scale. If the pupils have learned to read well these books, have they not learned as much about reading as their short and few school-days can afford ? If the teacher desires something more, can she not bring the books and the Nurseries, whole, to her class and thus give them extra lessons in reading, without at the same time giving them a lesson in waste, and with- out marring the deference due to books ? For Round Robin reasoning, I will match the follow- ing school report with anything that can be produced outside our Solar " System." "During the larger part of the year, the absence of the principal [of a High School] has demonstrated at once the worth of his services, and the ability and faithfulness of those on whom the chief charge of the institution devolved " during his absence. " For the whole of this period Mr. Lancaster dis- charged the duties of acting principal, in addition to 17 Official and Personal Supervision. 197 those belonging to his office as a classical teacher ; and to his energy and efficiency, [etc., etc.,] it is mainly due that the classes showed no appreciable deficit in the quality or quantity of their work. The principal has now resumed his charge with . . . reasonable hope that he may continue his duties without further inter- ruption. 'This we earnestly desire His work as principal can be fully estimated only by its sus- pension." That is, the school goes on just as well without him as with him. Therefore, he is indispensable to the school ! The value of a principal's services are demonstrated by the fact that a sub-teacher can do them all in addi- tion to his own work ! A principal's work can be fully estimated only by its suspension, during which suspension the school goes on exactly the same as if the principal were going on with it ! I have long suspected that the principal of a school was the least important officer in it. I am now almost ready to believe that he should take his place with the superintendent, supervisor, and other supernumeraries outside of it ! I do not believe there was another teacher in that high school whose duties the assistant could have discharged for nearly a year in addition to his own. I do not believe there is a sub-teacher in a 198 Official ajzd Personal Stcpei'vision. grammar school whose work could be perfectly well done, whose classes could be just as well taught during a year's absence, by a fellow-assistant in addition to her own. If an energetic and effective female assistant in grammar or high school were attacked with a month- long bronchitis, principal and superintendents and supervisors and training-school would swarm in fifteen minutes after a substitute, sooner than think of not having one; but in our magnificent "system" the principal is getting to be so mere a figure-head that almost any teacher can pose for him. Said a lively sub-master when asked to subscribe for a bust of his principal. " I will pay the whole sum if you will put in the marble as substitute. It would be just as useful !" I fear that our principals and superintendents and committees are falling into the slme snare that besets our sister States. Commissioner Watson of the New York Board of education laments "that widespread entanglement of detail which makes the administration of the school system from the superintendent's ofHce so closely resemble a mutual admiration society." We have always understood that the mutual admira- tion society had its origin in Boston, but it was supported entirely by private munificence. It was never in the pay of the State. I recommend to all who worship our school " sy?- Official and Personal Supervision. 199 tem," to all who take their opinions of its excellence from school reports and school boards, the testimony of commissioner Watson that superintendent Kiddle " has really the making of 3,000 teachers and the control of the army of 100,000 children. He has been over thirty years in the school system here and is something of an autocrat. The Board were, to a man, I think, his friends. His election last October was gen- eral and unanimous." I recommend to them then to read superintendent Kiddle's book on spiritualism and to reflect that for thirty years the teachers of New York have been made subject to the mind which produced that book ! It is only lately that this mind has been led or left to give a sign by which the world should know its quality, but it has been the same mind all the time and all the way. ON THE WORLD-WIDE SEA. ON THE WORLD-WIDE SEA. WHEN our superintendents leave their " compre- hensive and efficient work " of forming blanks at home, to embark on the world-wide sea of public- school study, what do they bring back from the voyage ? A fresh stock of " system," nothing else. The State school superintendents convened in Washington and their announced programme was that "the session will continue several days, and will devote most of the time to considering and discussing questions now pending before Congress which have a bearing upon the educational interests of the country. Among the most important of these are the propositions to distrib- ute the proceeds from the sale of public lands among the States for educational purposes, the establishment of a national educational museum, and the strengthen- ing of the national bureau of education." All of which means the creation of new offices and the payment of new salaries for gingerbread work. It does not mean that a single efficient teacher will (203) 204 On the World-wide Sea. have his salary raised, that a single inefficient teacher will 'be displaced by a vigorous and efficient one, or that a single languid young brain will be stimulated into heartier exercise. Then they talked about industrial schools and the metric system and southern education and foreign fashions, and they listened to the Supreme Court and visited the President and went home. But meanwhile the teachers, the real workers, had been hard at it all the time in their schoolrooms. One gentleman read, we are informed, a paper on Education in Switzerland. At another meeting of a State Association, a superintendent surveyed the foreign field and declared that " the amount of money which is paid for popular education in Massachusetts is so much that, in that respect, Massachusetts stands foremost in the world." This may very well be, but the amount of money expended on schools is no criterion of the excellence of the schools. The school system of Massachusetts, with all its supervision and all its superintendence, and all its expensiveness, is so ineffective, it so magnifies and nourishes itself, and so neglects, not to say dwarfs, the pupils, that a child may go through the whole course from primary to high school inclusive without a single absence or tardiness and receive his diploma of gradu- ation, and come out thoroughly illiterate, absolutely On the World-wide Sea. 205 uneducated, absolutely untrained — with no accomplish- ment except slang, with no taste above dime novels, with neither brain nor nerve nor muscle braced for the battle of life. This I have seen, and seeing it was what first directed my attention to our school " system." The taxes of the people go to fatten " organization " and the children suffer. *' If Massachusetts is to bear the position it now sustains," says a superintendent bringing his sheaves with him from "the world-wide ^eld," "the German system of pedagogy must be adopted." " Another lack in Massachusetts is a systematic organization of the school system a thorough revision of the school laws should be made, and this never can be without studying the school law of Austria, a master work of master minds. It contains a guide to be observed by every schoolmaster. All their schools have connected systematic organization. " In Prussia provisions are made for all the machin- ery." "In Germany where they undertake to build school-houses they do not take the whim of some upstart architect, backed up by some committee on buildings, that never saw anything but a district school-house. They have a regular official architect, who must be a good man in his line, and he, in consultation with those who know what a school-house should be, plans a proper one." 2o6 071 the Woi'ld-widc Sea. It would hardly be possible for a superintendent to make a more perfect and more pitiable display of his ignorance, his narrowness, his utter unfitness for his position than this. He goes abroad with but one idea — " System." He comes home with that idea intensified. He never dreams of inquiring whether the Swiss, the Austrian, the Prussian citizen, be a freer, stronger, more intelligent, more upright man than our own. The village people, of their own will and choice, employing the village carpenter to build as good a school-house as they can command, may elicit the sympathizing re- spect of a de Tocqueville ; but this comprehensive and efficient school superintendent sees in it only an upstart architect and an ignorant committee, and reserves all his admiration for that paternal government which chooses the architect and builds the school-houses and tells the people how long to go and what to do after they come out ! A very fine influence this to shape the minds of our young republicans. The Rev. Leonard Woolsey Bacon, who I believe was never sent out by the "System" into the world-wide sea of public school education, but made the plunge on his own private and personal account has, in a single cas- ual newspaper column, showed a more comprehensive and real insight into the nature and needs of education than all the schoolmasters together. I beg pardon of the schoolmasters — I mean the educators. He says: On the World-%vide Sea. 207 My friend, the village pastor near my house just out- side of Geneva, looked puzzled when I told him that, on the American plan of public education, we had worse schools and better education than in Switzerland — that our average boy gets far inferior instruction, -and our average man knows a great deal more. But it was true, nevertheless ; and before we got through with the subject, I believe he saw the point of it. Their system of public education is the pride o^ Geneva. It begins with the primary school, and cul- minates in the university with its many faculties for all departments of science, and its technical schools for fine and useful arts. And the system, down to the organization of the primary school of the poorest and remotest peasant village of the little canton, is operated and directed from the Bureau of Public Instruction in the Hotel de F///*? at Geneva. Consequently, it is well directed. Teachers are appointed, books and apparatus purchased, courses of study determined, at the centre of government of the tiny State, by experienced officials, under the direction of a member of the executive council ; and it "goes without saying" that the work is better done than if it were in the hands of local committees in each village, predisposed to the encour- agement of native talent. All the dignity of the gov- ernment is brought to bear to sustain- the prestige of the schools. How excellent is this school organization, both in the city high schools and in the ordinary school of a country village, I have reason gratefully to testify; and I could not but acknowledge to my friend, the pastor, that this work of the Bureau of public instruction was far better done than that of the average " school- deestrick " committee in America, and that the apparent working of the school was more effective. Yet there is no mistake about it — the people are nothing like so \ve.\\ educated a people. This is obvious in their very faces, but also in a hundred more statistical forms of evidence; 2o8 On the World-wide Sea. as, for instance, in the annual examination of the militia recruits, who consist of all able-bodied young men arriving at a certain age. The number of these who have forgotten, from disuse, the very rudiments of their school-learning, is so large as to have become a sub- ject of anxious consideration to the friends of popular education. '^ But,'' asks my friend, the pastor, " wherein lies the difference ? We have the same free institutions. Lib- erty and equality are perhaps more emphatically built into the basis of our constitution than of yours. Every man has the stimulus of an unlimited career open before him here as with you. It is not strange that in a State like Prussia, for all its superb and ubiquitous school system, the growing peasant should relapse into stupid illiteracy, simply from lack of use. But Switz- erland is a free country, if any is. Every man has his share in the affairs of the country." "Yes," said I, "in the affairs of the country, and that is all ; not in the affairs of the town, and parish, and local school. Suppose that your peasants here had it on their hands to see to it that the village school was what it ought to be, and should begin to find it impor- tant that their children should have as good advantages as their neighbors'; do you not think there would be a different state of things in the village ?" " I do, indeed," thought the pastor, "and a pretty mess it would be !" " I have no doubt you are right. Things would get sadly mixed. When it came to appointing a new teacher, the jury of the vicinage would not be reliable for an intelligent verdict. On the subject of the course and methods of study, they would not be clear in their views. I cannot picture to myself the agents of Hachette, and Firmin Didot, and the other great pub- lishers, going about to the members of the village school committee to urge the superior merits of their respec- tive idiool geographies, or approaching the leading On the World-wide Sea, 2oc^ farmers of the neighborhood with arguments on the excellence of the Pestalozzian or inductive method, as represented in their new French grammar. There is no doubt that this kind of direction would be bad for your village school, and still worse for the school sys- tem of the canton. It would break up its beautiful symmetry and set everything at sixes and sevens. But it would do more than the finest organization can do to accomplish the ends for which schools and school systems exist. It would give you, by and by, what we have in America, a farm and village population capable of directing the schools of their own children. Your people have not faith in the American principle that it is better for a community to manage its own affairs and do it badly, than to have them well managed from out- side. Your democracy is of the French type, which does not go much beyond giving to all the people a voice in creating a central administration, which then absorbs into itself all conduct of local affairs, instead of leaving them to the people locally interested in them." And so with many words, scarce persuaded I my Swiss brother that our better education in America was owing, not indeed to our worse school system, but to the things which make our school system worse. I need add nothing to this. It touches the very heart of our national life. But our schoolmaster abroad never so much as saw it. He saw only " the system." He never glanced at the men behind the system. He plunged headlojag into monarchism, centralization, paternal government. We must have German pedagogy or we are lost. We must have a government ar- chitect to build our school-houses for us or we are a laughing-stock, The very pride and pith of our civili- 2IO On tJie World-wide Sea. zation, the one thing alone which differences us from all other nations, the underlying principle of self-govern- ment on which we are still hardly past the stage of experiment, this comprehensive and efficient school superintendent scornfully swept away without even knowing it ! A great deal is said about the awards granted by the Expositions and the various "exhibits" made of popu- lar education at the Centennial. There can be no exhibits made of popular education except the exhibit of the citizens whom this popular education educates. We have had a glimpse of the falseness of such exhibits as were made, but no exhibits can be conclusive. The results of the schools are not to be found in maps and drawings, in graphic charts or wooden models, in blackboards and school-houses, blanks or funds. It is in the brains and hearts of the boys and girls who draw the maps and sit in the chairs and write on the blackboards j it is in the integrity and self-reliance, the firmness and faith and judgment and justice of the men and women that those boys and girls will become. Can you carry this work to the exhibition and cet it on a shelf and attach to it^a label and award it a prize? The "system" was exhibited, I grant. But who loves the " system" ? It is a great, cumbrous, costly, crushing structure shutting out from teachers and children the free light and air, the full swing and play On the World-wide Sea. 3ii of powers. We respect and compassionate the teach- ers. We love the boys and girls. "The foreign display of maps, models, and other apparatus for illustrative teaching," says one of the assistant commissioners at the exhibition, " was far in advance of anything of the like kind in the American exhibit. Germany, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, and the Dominion of Canada were especially worthy of mention in this regard. It would, however, have added much to the value of the exhibits of these countries, if they had shown more students^ work — most of them hav- ing done nothing at all in this direction. Even the little that was shown, if we may except this class of work in the Japanese and Swiss departments, and the industrial drav/ing in the Swedish — was of no considerable merit." Exactly. An admirable system. Everything to do with and everything provided by government, but the trifling matter of what was done chiefly left out and the small part left in, good for nothing ! Again, in the exhibit of school-houses, another com- missioner says : " It is to be regretted that the different cities and states gave themselves almost exclusively to the display of ^h^ photograph views, etc*, of the build- ings, and that very few were so thoughtful as to bring out those features of school-houses and the appurte- nances thereto which must always be serious problems to schoolmen. In this respect architects were freely 212 On the^ World-wide Sea. represented — the f radical inafiagers of schools scarce- ly claimed any attention, even the models of the school- houses were defeccive, in that they did not expose for ready and convenient inspection the internal arrange- ments for the accommodation of pupils and teachers." Certainly not. One of the last things which our elaborate " system " takes into account is the accom- modation of pupils and teachers. It unconsciously represented itself with far greater accuracy by showing to the world at Philadelphia photographic views of the outside of school-houses ! Even about these school-houses which were exhibited, our doctors disagree : " The school-houses in Germany are as much better than we have as can be imagined," says one school superintendent. "But when we turn to the school-house," says another, " the contrast is greatly in our favor. . . . The display of perspective drawings, photographs, and especially of well-construct- ed models of American school buildings, was certainly unexcelled by that of any foreign nation. In the number and size of school buildings in proportion to our population, we are probably far in advance of any other nation ^-epresented at Philadelphia." So that if we should give up our "upstart architect," and have recourse to the " German system of pedagogy " and a "regular official architect," we should still be likely to have as many quarrels among those "who On the World-'ivlde Sea. 213 know what a school-house should be," as we have now among those who "never saw anything but a district school-house." At the late Paris exhibition our educational depart- ment has been lauded in the highest terms — I am far from saying unjustly. I have no doubt that great energy and skill were brought to bear on the presenta- tion. But the superintendent himself says : " Educa- tional literature — by which I mean all printed matter bearing directly on education — was by far the most important part of our exhibition." That of itself shows that a very large part of the "most important part of our [educational] exhibition " was trash. " Our aim was to secure from each State complete sets of educational reports, and copies of all text-books, issued by contemporary American publishers for elementary and secondary instruction." Think of the quantity of rubbish piled up in that little 22 x 25 room ! For no matter how good the " educational literature " and " the copies of all text-books "may have been, one of our school superintendents says in his "Report:" "To so great an extent is the abuse of books carried that one is almost driven to say that they are one of the great ob- stacles in the way of even a tolerable knowledge of history." And the latest school report of the leading city of the solar system goes far beyond history and recommends the sweeping away of text-books altogeth- 18* 214 On the World-zuide Sea, er and the adoption of object-teaching. So we have the imposing spectacle of " by far the most important part of our exhibition " consisting in exhibiting a depart- ment of our "system" which the highest authorities have already discarded. As if our mechanics had carried spinning wheels, and Tiffany, a silver " turnip" watch ! In summing up the " success of the exhibits " the superintendent of the educational department himself says, "Perhaps no exhibit excited more attention than that of the higher education of women, represented by Vassar, Wellesley, Mount Holyoke and the Georgia College at Rome." Every one of which I believe is a school founded and conducted by private benevolence, private munificence, private patronage, and has no more connection with our public school system than have the parochial schools of the Jesuits ! "Belgium," continues our superintendent, "devoted much time and money to its exhibition. Liberal pro- visions have been made for normal schools on a grand scale, and technical schools receive the same promi- nence as in France. There are capital schools for teaching weaving. The exhibition of bonnets and complete dresses made in schools was unique. Belgium also has schools for teaching women to design and to make artificial flowers. Ten years ago Jules Simon said that the majority of Belgians could not read, a 071 the World-wide Sea. 215 fact proving them to be below the French, twenty-seven per cent, of whom according to the same authority were equally illiterate." Now let us group our facts and our inferences : France and Belgium, m the very fore front of Europe where normal schools are a part of the system and have been going on at full tide for more than a hundred years, and now number nearly a thousand, contain a population of whom twenty-seven per cent, in France, and more than fifty per cent, in Belgium cannot read. In New England, which has had normal schools but a little while and whose normal schools are still few in number, a native born American who cannot read is so rare as to make no appreciable per cent. France and Belgium have industrial schools in full operation, "which" says one superintendent "excel anything we have ever yet dreamed of." The United States have, to the best of my knowledge and belief, no industrial schools at all. "The United States, though the last to enter the lists, though restricted in time, space, expenditure, and exhibits," ancf though three thousand miles away, while " France made extraordinary efforts " and Belgium " devoted much time and money," and both were close at hand — the United States "took proportionately more awards than any other nation ! " The one principle on which our State was founded, the one idea which distinguishes us from the old nations, 2i6 On the World-wide Sea. the one advance which makes our government an exper- iment, is the principle of individual development by individual effort, the least possible government interfer- ence, the greatest possible individual freedom. The experiment has so far been brilliantly successful. The people have educated themselves better than they have been educated by kings. Why should we relinquish our experiment ? Why should we depart from our prac- tice? Without industrial schools we took more industrial prizes, without normal schools we have better education than the nations which have both. Shall we now turn about and adopt their methods, or press on to greater conquests in our own ? PURIFICATION BY SUPERVISION. PURIFICATION BY SUPERVISION. BLIND to facts, bent on theories, the movement is still towards more superintendents, more super- vision. It is not good teachers and good teaching that our "system" craves. It is not teachers with sense and skill, pupils with brains and blood ; but " a most thorough supervision over our schools is most necessary." "The west is outstripping New England in educational progress, because they employ a system of supervisors." It is not simply supervisors that we are clamoring for now, but a system of supervisors ! We even ramify out into intricate ' ingenuities. A county and state system of supervision should be insti- tuted, but we are relieved by finding that " a majority of the counties would need but one superintendent while some of the larger might require two or three " and the Legislature is besought to make provision for the appointment of these officers. " Of the 23,000 public school teachers in Ohio," says the State Commissioner, "at least 10,000 are as utterly unfit to teach children as (219) 220 Purification by Supervision. to practise law, but with intelligent, skilled, and honest supervision there might be hope." What reason, I ask, is there to hope or believe that supervision will be any more intelligent, honest, or skilled than teaching ? The supervisors and the teachers must come from the same source, — the people. The Ohio commissioner says that at least fifty per cent, of the public school teachers of Ohio are unfit to teach and that it is because the people who elect school officers are careless, or indifferent in the matter of choosing ; that the selection of candidates is too often a question of availability rather than fitness. But how is this criminal carelessness in the selection of school officers going to be corrected by giving the people more officers to select? Of the % 4,957,254 paid to the public school teachers of Ohio, the commissioner declares % 2,000,000 to be worse than thrown away on incapable teachers who are employed by criminally indifferent or destruc- tively ignorant boards.of education. Now what guar- antee have the people of Ohio that the wheels within wheels of state and county and town supervisors, on whom they are exhorted to spend some more thousands of dollars, will not be just as criminally indifferent as the boards, just as destructively incapable as the teachers? Why is it not just as feasible for the city wards and the rural districts to select good teachers at first hand, as it is to select good supervisors to select Purification by Supervision, 221 the good teachers ? The Ohio commissioner avows that poor supervision is worse than none j that in- competent or inefficient supervision is an evil more dangerous to popular education than the combined antagonism of factions will or can ever be ) that the unscrupulous or unskilled superintendent is worse than an incumbrance ; he causes an immeasurable injury to the good teachers and to popular education which he threatens to destroy. To all this I most cordially agree, but how can more supervision be the remedy ? The Legislature,' he says, should provide competent supervision ; but are not the "narrow-minded, unscrup- ulous, scheming, corruptly ambitious, caucusing school- men " going to lobby the Legislature to secure vicious and partisan supervision just as vigorously as they now cajole or caucus bad teachers into place ? But " the public should see to it that this supervision is com- petent." So the public should see to it that the teaching is good. Yet in the very next paragraph the commissioner says that "whatever imperfections, carelessness, incompetence, extravagance, evils of any character, are connected with school management, are largely, if not entirely, due to culpable if not criminal apathy on the part of the public ; the public is respon- sible forthe election of every incompetent or unfit school officer ; for the employment of incompetent and incapa- ble teachers." Why should we suppose that the public, 19 222 Purification by Supervision. which is so criminally apathetic in choosing teachers and Boards, will turn about and be wise and alert when the officers whom it is to choose are called supervisors ? If there is one motive which may be counted on as uni- versal, it is love of offspring. If there is one point be- yond others in whi'ch men's interest may always be taken for granted it is the welfare of their own children. If then they are not careful to secure fitness in men and women who are to come in direct contact with these little ones, and shape all their future life, it is idle to suppose they will be exacting in the selection of persons who are to come into relations with them only at three or four removes. If they consult availability rather than fitness in the persons who are to be close to their chil- dren why should we suppose they will consult fitness rather than availability in those who are to stand several degrees remote ? Again, how does the fact that fifty per cent, of the teachers of Ohio are unfit for their work tally with the Centennial deductions in another part of the same report? '* The pupils' work of the Ohio educational exhibit, taken as a whole, was superior to the pupils' work of any other educational exhibit, taken as a whole. . . . " The excellence or superiority of the Ohio Educa- tional Exhibit was due, to some extent, to the fact that only the city and village schools were represented, and Purification by Supervision 223 the superiority of these schools is largely due to the intelligent legislation and management given to city and Tillage schools and not given to ungraded schools. The legislator who takes pride in the public schools of Ohio may do so, not because of anything he has done as a legislator to improve the condition of these schools, but because of the intelligence and indefatigable energy of the teachers of the state. ' * The ungraded scj^ools of Ohio had no representation in the Ohio educatipnal exhibit." Are we not confronted here with some rather start- ling juxtapositions ? If Ohio has fifty per cent, of teachers who are unfit to teach and yet her pupils' work at the Exhibit surpassed that of air others, must we not infer that Massachusetts and all other states except Ohio have more than fifty per cent, of incompetent teachers ? What is the proof that the ungraded schools, if they had been represented, would have lowered the general average? What is the proof that the country boy wrestles less vigorously with vulgar fractions than the city boy ; or that the country girl's composition is spelled worse than the city girl's of the same age 1 My own observation is that the mind of the city pupil is quite as liable to be deadened by drill as the mind of the country pupil is to grow torpid through inaction. If the excellence of the city schools is due to the 224 Purification by Supervision. intelligent legislation they have had, why should the legislator be snubbed by the assurance that it is not owing to anything he has done ? Who has done the legislation if not the legislator? If this superiority is due to legislation and manage- ment outside, how can it be due to the intelligence and indefatigable energy of the teachers inside the schools ? If, as this school commissioner says," nowhere else in the public service, except alone among public school officers, can there be found such^a large per cent, of incompetence, ignorance — culpable and criminal igno- rance — indifference, inefficiency, and native incapacity to do the work engaged in, as can be found in the army of persons employed to teach in the public schools \ " and if in spite of this low estate of the teachers, the school exhibit of Ohio is better than that of any other state ; if, that is, the lowest branch of the public service in Ohio is higher than that in any other state, is it not time to surcease our inane jesting and supplant it with devout thanksgiving that the rank and file of this country is chiefly officered from Ohio ? THE FOOLISHNESS OF TEACHING. THE FOOLISHNESS OF TEACHING. THE tendency to elaboration and away from sim- plicity has not confined itself to the " system" outside the school-house but has penetrated the walls. Idle hands have multiplied tasks for busy hands. We have drawing and music in the schools ; we are intro- ducing sewing; we are talking about science and trades and languages. It is absurd, say the school-managers, to teach a child the names of all the branches of the Amazon, and leave him in ignorance of the principle by which water rises in a pump. The theory of aiming at mental 'discipline primarily is to be discarded, and we are to aim, instead, at imparting the greatest amount of the most useful information. Half the time we devote to reading would give the pupil a knowledge of the French language. Spelling should bow to weightier matters on the prin- ciple that actuated President Felton to apologize for his numerous orthographical blunders, by saying, " Spelling isn't my business. Take up Greek, and I am ready for (227) 228 The Foolishness of Teaching. you." Spelling consists merely of verbal signs ; and to re- quire accuracy in retaining them consumes an immense proportion of time, and works great mental mischief. The mind should not be dwarfed to gain 'even tolerable spelling, but should be taught incidentally. Thus shine the new lights. No doubt many pupils would much prefer to take their spelling "incidentally," rather than bear any. longer the yoke of " accuracy ; " but I cannot help thinking that when a boy sits down to a collection of words, and puts his mind on them, and abstracts it from everything else until he has possessed himself of their spelling, he has acquired a mental vigor which no " incidental " learning could give him. These things are, indeed, sometimes carried to excess ; and I have myself waxed wroth over the utterly unreasonable and ignorant length of a spelling-lesson given to a girl eight years old. But because too much weakens, it does not follow that just enough cannot strengthen. If a man is a famous Greek scholar, and president of Har- vard University, he can afford not to know how to spell ; but if the butcher, the baker and the candlestick-maker do not spell their accounts and their love-letters correctly, it will infallibly be laid to ignorance, madam, sheer ignorance ; and they will not stand so high in the community as if they had displa3^ed more accuracy in retaining verbal signs. I cannot think our small men- The PoGllshtiess of Teachuig. 229 tal stature is fairly attributable to our early bouts wth Amity, Jollity, Nullity, Polity, The dwarfing began farther back than that. No doubt there is a point where geography ceases to be a virtue in a public school ; but why should it be pieced out with a pump ? I do not see that it is any more neces- sary to a man's happiness to know why water rises in a pump than why it rises in the Amazon R'iver. I am surrounded by persons who know why the water rises in a pump ; but not one of them can tell me why it will not rise in my cistern. A thousand men may have Torricelli and Galileo at their tongues' ends; but, if the cook tells them that thS pump sucks, nine hundred- and ninety-nine of them will send off to the plumber as promptly as if they believed only that Nature abhors a vacuum. The dullest clod can draw water just as deftly as the philosopher. The knowledge of atmos- pheric pressure is, therefore, no more ^'useful" than the knowledge of geography. "Facts" are on very nearly the same level in point of "usefulness;" at least, such facts as are brought, or are proposed to be brought, within school-boy range ; but surely that educa- tion which is systematic, logical, comprehensive, is better than that which cleals with isolated and disconnected 230 The FoolisJmess of Teaching, facts. It is better to give a boy an accurate, if gen- eral, idea of the formation and outline of the world he lives in than to select one particular pebble in it, and descant on that. To discard the theory of aiming primarily at mental discipline^ and to adopt in its stead the theory of imparting the greatest amount of the most- useful information, seem to me the fiat of ignorance, not of culture. Our business is not chiefly to impart information, but to teach children how to value, gain, and use information for themselves. The information that can be imparted to the juvenile mind during its scholastic term is but narrow and scanty ; but that mind may be so trained, that, all its life long, it can gain lore with ease and rapidity. We do not make good huntsmen by providing men with game at the outset, but by showing them how to handle and hold and sharpen their weapons. If, in practising, one can also bring down game, it is well ; but in all the prepar- atory course, the main object is practice, not prey. The proposed introduction, into our common schools, of " elementary geometry, natural philosophy, drawing, and the elements of chemistry," cannot be contemplated without misgiving ; and the suggested introduction of the French language sends a chill through the natural heart. Considering that a large number of our school- children come from and go to unlettered homes, and that they leave school at the age of fourteen, it must be TJie Foolishness of leaching. 231 confessed that the time is short. What unearthly effects may we not expect, when upon the wild olive-tree of their native tongue shall be grafted the still wilder shoots of the foreign speech ! Doubtless some of our present intricacies could be cut away with advantage. A part of "the miserable three R's" could, unquestionably, be profitably curtailed. Possibly room could be made for the natural sciences ; but I fear we should be found simply to have increased perplexity, and to have ex- tended superficiality. Nor should we carry mental discipline too far, even in the common branches. I have occasion to consult a grammar ; and I open, by chance, upon a page in the first quarter of the book, and see ♦' COMPOUND WORDS." " I. Words are cojnpounded vfhen they unite in meaning as one descriptive term, and, also, when they make a new or permanent name that varies in meaning from the separated words : *' Long-eared, red-hot (etc.) '* 2. Compound words are /iyp/ie?ied when first formed or but little used, and, also, when the parts do not poalesce as- smoothly as syllables of one word, or might be misunder- stood : " Rosy-fingered, ant-hill (etc.) '• 3. Compound words are consolidated as they come into general or familiar use, provided the parts coalesce like the eyllables of one word, and under one chief accent : 233 The Foolishness of Teaching, "Statesman, salesman (etc.). ** Errors in regard to compound words are so common, and dictionaries are so unreliable, that we subjoin a more minute analysis, which maj be carefully examined now, and referred to afterwards when needed." Then follows nearly a page and a half of very fine print regarding these compound words. I glance at the beginning to see if I have not mis- taken the book. No. The author in his Preface "hopes he has produced more nearly just such a manual as the great majority of public schools throughout our country now require. . . . This book has been written with particular reference to the schoolroom." It is, then, a school book intended for use, and is used, in common schools. But I object to such instruc- tion as this, that it serves to darken counsel by words without knowledge. I suppose children in grammar schools are from ten to fourteen years old. I suppose we all agree that the aim of the schools is not to make scholars or mere grammarians, but intelligent and valuable citizens of a republic. It is desirable, that as carpenters, farmers, cooks, seamstresses, they be able to keep their own accounts, to talk accurately, to read understanding^, to vote intelligently, to pass just judg- ment upon affairs, to see that the republic receive no detriment. We are not to pursue language into its delicate shad- The Poolishness of Teaching. 233 ings, figures into the higher mathematics, geography into its remotest ramifications. What we want is sim- ply broad Hnes of demarcation. What we want is merely foundation-work. What we want is the geography and grammar and arithmetic of ordinary life, the great general principles which shall make men and women intelligent ; which shall give them an understanding of their own country, and their own language, and their own business ; v/hich shall make them speak and act with tolerable correctness ; which shall be a good basis for the higher education, if they choose to go on to the higher education; but which shall not intrench, or even fancy itself to intrench, upon the higher education. With this idea in view, it seems to me that the page of grammar which I have quoted is absolutely worthless. For all the ordinary purposes of common schools, long^ eared and red-hot are sufficiently explained in the ordi- nary adjective, and do not need a word of additional discussion. Moreover, what is said about them is a great deal harder to understand than the words them- selves. An ordinary child, after he has learned his les- son in adjectives, could master red-hot at first hand ; but nine out of ten of my readers would have to read those rules more than once, and with considerable care, in order to take in their bearings. Why should you bother a child who has only a few years to study, who, at fourteen or sixteen, must leave school, and earn his 20 234 ^^^^ Foolishness of TcacJihzg. own living, — why should you bother him with long words and uninteresting statements that are not of the slightest use to him, when there are so many things that he ought to learn and the learning of which will give him the same mental discipline? The author gives his "more minute analysis," because errors in compound words are so common, and dictionaries are so unreliable. I do not think that such errors are very common ; they are not very gross ; they are easily corrected by the eye and almost impossible of correction by rules ; but, com- mon or uncommon, is it worth while to try to educate the masses of children under fourteen years of age to a point beyond the dictionary ? If they are trained up to the dictionary, can we not afford to leave the rest to private taste and not to public taxation ? • Again : I find pronouns divided into personal, relative, interrogative, and adjective, and subdivided into com- pound personal, double possessive personal, compound relative, double relative, responsive relative, indefinite (with a slant at indirect interrogatives), distributive, definite, indefinite, and reciprocal. I find sentences kaleidoscoped into elements simple, compound, modi- fied, unmodified, independent, principal, subordinate, connective, coordinate with another, correlative with another, and into a nature simple, composite, declar- ative, interrogative, imperative, exclamatory, affirmative, negative. The Foolishness of Teaching, 235 I turn to the early, say the eighteenth page of a children's grammar, and I read : — '•Any change which varies the application or meaning of the predicate, whether produced by altering either of the words (copula or attribute) which represent it, or hy adding ©ther words to it, is called a modification of the predicate. *•(«) As it is the chief object of the subject to represent some person or thing as the basis of an affirmation, so it is the principal office of the predicate to denote what is affirmed. But, like the subject, it can be made, by certain changes, to represent other properties not essential to it as predicate. *. "When the modification takes place by uniting two verbal forms, or by altering the form either of the copula or attri- bute, it is called an accident or an accidental property of the predicate; and the variation is called an injiection. "Mode relates to the manner of the assertion, not to that of the thing asserted, and therefore afreets the copula rather than the attribute. Hence, when a verb contains the copula and attribute united, mode should be regarded as affecting the assertioti^ and not the action.''^ When we come to analyze such a sentence as " the boy beat his dog," v/e learn that the predicate is lim- ited by a complex objective element of the first class. We learn, too, that the essential point of dissimilarity in the parts of any complex element is that one simple element stands 2^^ principle, or basis ^ and that all others are subordinate to it. 236 The Foolishness of Teaching. Honest reader, do you think this is interesting read- ing? Yet this is what your children are required not only to read, but to learn. I confess that to me it seems utterly dreary, weary, and forlorn, a desert of dry bones. And if you and I, delighting in language, studying its histoty, its niceties, its possi- bilities, with delight, could not be induced by love or money to master all these intricacies, why should we enforce them upon little children ? They are of no use. Not only will the carpenter and the farmer never concern himself with them ; but even the clergyman, the lecturer, the writer, will give them the go-by the moment he leaves the school-room. When the boy has left school, he will never hear of a complex objective element, or a responsive pronoun, to the day of his death. Nor are these intricate elaborations and sub- divisions apparently conducive to clearness of thought. On the very first page of one of these analytical gram- mars, I find : — ''4. Definition. — A sentence is a set of words making a complete statement. "5. All our talk consists of sentences. When we say any- thing, we make a sentence. Vv''e cannot say anything without making a sentence." Can we not, indeed ? Did no person ever say, " Oh ! ah! What a fine morning! Cold weather to-day! The Foolishness of Teaching. 237 What an able sermon ! What wretched confusion of thought"! " We waste time and money and mind in these fine- spun distinctions. The general rules of grammar, the general structure of sentences, the ordinary, old- fashioned parsing, is enough for the object for which common schools are established. This highly techni- cal and artificial analysis is simply running grammar into the ground. It is foreign to the true lover of lan- guage. It throws no more light on its real meaning and gives no more mastery of its uses, than the simple analysis of the old time. It distracts the attention of children from the real source and beauty and use of words. It fritters away time that ought to be devoted to more important matters. It imposes upon ignorant and immature minds the abstractions that belong, if anywhere, only to maturity and scholarship. The old- fashioned Smith's Grammar that opened fire with, — Q^ ''What is jour name? Q. ''What is the name of the town in which jou live? Q^ ''What does the word noun mean? Ans. The word noun means name, Qj. "What, then, may your name be called? Ans. "A noun." was just as good for all the purposes for which gram- mar is taught in the public schools as any grammar that has superseded it. A very large part of the work 238 The Foolishness of Teaching". and money spent in changing school books is spent in the interest of the writers and publishers of school books, and not in the interests of the pupils or of their parents. Often the interests of pupil and parent are sacrificed to the interests of writer and publisher. An ordinary book depends for its sale upon its own merits, or upon influences that may be brought to bear upon individuals. A school book is not presented to a tenth part of the persons who are to be its pur- chasers, but to a small number of committee-men. If, by any means, they can be induced to adopt it, whole schools purchase it, — are, in a manner, forced to pur- chase it ; and it has thus a market beyond that of the most sensational novel. The parents grumble, and — buy. A very small sum goes out of the pocket of each purchaser. A very large sum goes into the pocket of the proprietor. Meanwhile, the children have a book that may be better than its predecessors, but is just as likely to be worse. I have known men, principals of schools, to narrate the infinite pains taken to procure a " model sheet " of punctuation, which is supposed to serve as guide. After the professional scholastics had exhausted their knowl- edge and ingenuity on it, the sheet was taken to the leading proof-readers in simdry renowned printing- houses, and then regarded as conclusive ; and any vari- The Poolishiiess of Teaching. 239 ation from their decision would be a presumptuous dis- agreement with the highest earthly authority. This is not only trivial but illiterate. Mathematics is an exact science. Punctuation is not an exact sci- ence. All the proof-readers in the world cannot dic- tate a decision between semicolon and period, between parentheses and dashes, between commas and non- commas ! The only use of punctuation is to point the sense. To uplift it into a momentous and difficult problem, to whose solution the intellect of universities , must be summoned, is simply and gravely ridiculous. Any teacher who does not know enough of grammar and rhetoric, who has not education enough, to decide on general principles every case of punctuation that can come before her without reference to any authority whatever, does not know enough to be a teacher. Any teacher who fancies punctuation to be a matter so doubt- ful, so difficult, so important as to justify consultation and reflection ; who fancies it to be a matter so scien- tific as to permit demonstration, so rigid as to have only one right and all else wrong, — any teacher, in short, who does not punctuate by instinct, is too illiterate to be a teacher. For any group of men to prescribe a " model sheet" as guide to teachers is to frame illiteracy into a law ; is to weigh down the -brows of teachers with the iron crown of ignorance. It is never to be forgotten that a city school of six 240 The Poolishfiess of Teaching. or eight or ten hundred children cannot be so easily and simply conducted as a country school of forty or fifty pupils. On the other hand, it is equally impor- tant to remember that the multiplication of machinery is not in itself a mark of excellence ; that the greatest attainable simplicity is just as desirable in a large school as in a small. Machinery is only means to an end. Everything which tends to exalt the machinery above the work which it produces is wrong ; and all such machinery is not only useless to the pupils, but is a needless expense to the community which sustains the schools. A great deal of time is wasted in school by making children go through certain cumbrous, useless, and tiresome formulas of recitation and explanation. In- stead of being encouraged to march quick and straight to the heart of the question, and so attain mental ce- lerity, they are made to climb painfully and formally over all the successive points. If the question is " 7 times 5 is how many times 7 ?" they are not allowed to answer "5," but are made to say, " 7 times ^ is 5 times 7." But the gist of the matter is all in giving the answer 5. The rest is clumsiness, repetition. The de- fence is that thus the child is taught accurac}^ thorough- ness, language. Not at all. He is taught to be a bore. That style of conversation in ordinary society would make a man intolerable. The child's arithmetic is The Foolishness of Teachiitg. 241 just as thorough when he gets the answer correctly as when he restates the question. He is hampered in his mental agility to no purpose whatever. I would let a child jump at his mathematical conclusion with just as much rapidity as he can command, and let him jump his own way. There is no need that every boy in a class should go through the same process in sub- traction j one way is as good as another provided the answer is right. Nor is.it necessary to burden children with learning the rules. The rules are only to en- able pupils to do the examples. And we should be very tender about enforcing explanation from a child. It is idle to say that he must thoroughly under- stand one thing before he goes on to anotheTr. It is- hardly too much to say that in this world we do not thoroughly understand anything. Why demand of a child more than we exact from ourselves? A large part of our mental furnishing is ready-made. Our stock in trade is chiefly second-hand. Not one person in a hundred, in a thousand, understands simple, multiplica- tion. We can go through the process with great facility ; but we never should have invented it ourselves. The explanation of it is abstruse philosophy — the memo- rizing and understanding of the rule require a stretch of attention and a comprehension and command of language which we ought not to impose upon the tender strength of the little children. Their memory an(^ 342 "^he Foolishness of Teaching. their perception and tlieir language will have ample scope in learning the things they must know. Their little feet should not be v/earied with scrambling along rough ways that lead nowhere. - There are indeed a thousand pleasant and useful ways that must be passed by. Shall a child not go on until he understands the present thoroughly ? What is the capital of Massachusetts ? Boston. What is a capital ? The boy is very ill-taught who does not know that it is the place where the legislature meets and that the leg- islature is the assembly that makes laws. But know- ins: this does he therefore understand the matter thor- oughly ? On the contrary he is only one step beyond i)Ot undcFstanding it at all. The nature of the law, the- story of despotism, the rise of popular government, in- deed the w^hole history of the world revolve in ever widening circles around the simple fact that Boston is the capital of Massachusetts. No book, no supervisor, no " system," no theory can decide how much of this it is v/orth while to impart to the school-boy. Only a cultivated teacher who is familiar with it herself and knows also the capacity of her pupils can judge. When she has given them all they can digest, and perhaps a good deal which is not to be instantly assimilated .but rather to be held in reserve till their minds shall have grown up to if and Jiave a use for it, she knows — none better— -that_ she has not given them anything The Poolishness of Teaching. 243 worthy to be called a thorough understanding of it, but only a few connected facts, a slight intelligent outline to help them classify their future facts and judge more correctly of events. The really good teacher knows that a pupil can be thorough in nothing except in performing the simple and definite task set before him. She can be sure that he has thoroughly learned his lesson. She cannot be sure that he thoroughly under- stands it. s While information is not the main object of schools, it should not be forgotten that information is a very im- portant matter. Information is food for the child's mind. He is not to be gorged and glutted with it ; but he is to be nourished and strengthened with it. It is wasteful and wicked to train his memory, his accuracy, his language with the learning, the classifying, the sta- ting of dry, useless, metaphysical abstractions when all his faculties can be just as well trained with useful, interesting, and suggestive facts. On the other hand, the same system which binds as with cords these opening minds is as lax in one direc- tion as it is tense in another. In the multiplication of offices we are trying to invent a medical supervisor ; and in his frantic endeavor to create something to do, this aimless and anxious but amiable gentleman has an- nounced the extraordinary theory that the child of the period is too fragile to be sent to school promptly and 244 "^^^ PoolisJmess of Teaching, to learn his lessons thoroughly and hence these " petty restrictions " should be pretermitted. " He is, perhaps, marked for tardiness, and hence eats his meals in a state of trepidation lest he come late to school ; he is marked for each recitation ; he is constantly inquiring how he stands." With unerring precision our medical inspector has alighted upon the two " petty restrictions " which are perhaps as important as any that his whole education can teach a child — promptness at school and perfection/ in recitation. Promptness is one-half the battle, aspi- ration for perfection is the other half. A mother who cannot manage her child!s breakfast so that he can eat it comfortably in season for school is a very poor mother, and the medical inspector can help her out better by going into her kitchen and building the fire himself than by going into the school-room and telling her boy he need not be there in season ; while any boy whose brain cannot bear the wear and tear of being marked each day according to his recitation might as well be sent to South Boston at once. Healthy children ought not to be kept back to the slow steps of such weaklings. I have referred before to the proposed abolition of text-books in schools — an abolition which seems to me admirably adapted to increase the weakness and cripple the strength of children. *' Lecturer Allen of The Foolishness of Teaching. 245 Harvard " is reported to teach " that it would be an im- mense gain if text-books in common schools were entirely abolished — v/ith the exception of some ver}^ brief man- ual of dates and results as a guide to memory ! History, physics and astronomy, for example, should be taught orally." Mr. Allen's reason is the rather remarkable one that the growing number and cost of text-books, and the crowding of school-work, will force this method as the only escape from a break-down of the entire system! It is true that school-work is crowded. It is true that text-books have become ^ burden . But because a man is given to appetite, must he be fed with a spoon by a nurse? Take off the useless machine-work from the school, stem the tide of new coming text-books ; but do not tie the children up to a teacher's lips. It is a part of the school's business to teach the pupils to go alone. A teacher may teach a boy a lesson in history better than the boy can learn it from a book ; but more important than the historical knowledge to be derived from either book or teacher, is the power to acquire a lesson himself. Every boy must live his own life alone. He needs to be endowed with personal, individual strength. He should be taught not to lean against some one else, but to stand erect on his own feet. Oral teaching is a specious, a showy, a dangerous thing. It may produce great apparent immediate results in knowl- edge; but it has a weakening effect upon the pupil's self- 246 The FoolisJiness of Teaching. reliance and mental fibre. A boy ought not to depend on his teacher to teach him, but on his own self to learn. As soon as he leaves school, he must depend upon him- self. He will not be able to carry his teacher around with him. It is much better that in school, under a wise tutelage, he should form the habit of self-direction. The good teacher will'always combine with text-books, oral teaching enough. This, like all else, depends upon and should be left to the teacher. To make a rule about it is to have recourse to machinery and think that will answer instead of mind. To take away text- books and make the pupil depend solely upon the teacher is to put the main work upon the teacher and leave the boy to an enervating dependence, an un- manly dilettanteism. The only sensible thing to do is to secure teachers educated and wise, and leave them to use text-books and oral teaching in whatever propor- tion they think proper and find useful. " A State superintendent, who had made during a long term of office hundreds of visits to ungraded country schools, declared that he never once saw a teacher conducting a recitation without a text-book in , hand ; that he seldom saw either teacher or pupil at the blackboard ; that he never saw a school-globe actually in use ; that he never saw a teacher give an object lesson; that he never heard a lesson on morals or manners ; that he never saw but one school-cabinet ; The Foolishness of Teaching. 247 that he never saw a reading class trained to stand erect and hold a book properly ; that he never heard a teacher give a lesson in local geography ; that classes, when asked to point north, uniformly pointed upwards to the zenith ; that he never heard a spelling dictated " in which the teacher did not mispronounce on^ormore words ; and that he never found a school where the pupils had been trained to write a letter, either of busi- ness or friendship." And what of it all ? A teacher can conduct a recitation just as well with a text-book in hand as without it. A fool does not become a sage because he sucks his thumbs instead of thumbing his books. Some of the very best teachers this country ever saw taught with text-book in hand. This superintendent has taken into his head as an eternal and immutable principle that teaching should be done without text-books and so goes through the schoobhouses measuring everything by his own standard as if it were the invariable unit. And indeed for the whole of his negatives, one may say that if our schools are to be judged by what the superintendents do not see and do, we enter instantly upon the region of infinite mathematics. I could match every one of his negatives with a positive. I can show him schools superintended by superintendents and supervised by supervisors, graded and grounded on all modern improvements and full-fed with the 248 The Foolislutess of TeacJmig. latest and most improved methods of teaching — whose male principals issue orders to their assistants that "Teachers will not allow their pupils to roll their whoops in the yard." All the machinery of the most perfectly organized " system " in this Republic has not been able to per- suade its highly organized principal that his sub- teachers, during small-pox season, could not find " a list of the infected houses in the Boston Herald." Did our peripatetic superintendent *ever find an ungraded schoolmaster announce or denounce the stair-mount- ing as " a Herculanean task ? " Would it not be better for even a graded city schoolmaster to let the superin- tendent see him conduct a recitation with spelling-book in hand, rather than head his list of words for the examination of pupils with a self-evolved "affraid?" I think it no worse for the country teacher not to use a blackboard at all than it is for the city teacher to adorn it with infinite flourishes in green crayon of "No Wispering in School." Had my superintendent visited his city grade.s with the same assiduity which he be- stowed on the country schools he might have studied for a day the interesting though hitherto insoluble problem, placed upon the blackboard by the male principal, " What is a trancetive verb ? " And all the morals and manners of the most highly organized '' system" and all the grading of the schools could not The Poolishness of Teaching. 249 keep the principal from sitting in the presence of female pupils and female assistants with his feet scarcely below the level of his head. I never saw nor heard a pupil point to the zenith when asked to point north, and if pupils do it "uniformly" under the questioning of a school superintendent, it is doubtless a case of unconscious cerebration showing the rather startling influence of Mr, Kiddle's remarkable researches in the upper world. So far however from dismissing superintendent Kiddle on account of his spiritual meanderings, not to say maunderings, I would gladly grant leave to be to all the superintendents if they would strictly observe a contract to confine their attentions to the unseen v^orld and leave solely to the teachers the management of the schools in this ! ! If my superintendent's negatives are all true it Only shows the deadening effects of our school "system." Twenty, thirt}^, fifty years ago, before we were weighed down with centralization and Boards and machinery, I do not believe the most remote country school could be found which did not use a blackboard every day if it had one, and did not teach its pupils both manners and morals and north and south. The odium which supervisory conceit attempts to cast upon ungraded schools, upon unsupervised schools, upon un" system "ized schools, is entirely gratuitous. I am not unfamiliar" with that kind of schpol. I re- 21* 250 The PooUsJniess of Tcachhig. member it with affection and delight. We used to make *' cuddy-houses " of our seats in winter with cloaks and shawls. We used to slide down the slanting aisles, made slippery with tin dipperfuls of water in summer, in a manner quite shocking to the soul of a systematic superintendent. The only "examination " of teachers was in the minister's study and he was so kind-hearted that he v/ould not have rejected a fly ; but our teachers, chosen without method and examined without pretence, have gone out into all the earth and their words unto the ends of the world. One young professional student I remember earned our undying gratitude by recording only two tardinesses for the term — explaining that only two had failed to be in before recess. It does not sound well in a system but we were not idiots and we appreciated the joke. I do not remember any special lecture on morals or manners, but his own gentleness and the mild and delicate patience with which he used to encourage the almost inaudible recitation of one bashful girl were a daily and hourly lesson in courtesy. The best and most effective lesson on both morals and manners was administered unconsciously and instinc- tively by a young country girl who was teacher in the same ungraded school. A big, rude, uncouth boy, moved, 1 believe, by some boyish " dare,", stepped up softly behind her one " noon-time" as she sat bending over her table, and left a kiss on* her white shoulder. The Foolishness of Teaching. 251 With awe I saw then, with pride I now remember, how the slow scarlet blood crept into her cheek ; but no other movement betrayed her shock, and the whole room's silent shame was the boy's best discomfiture. Of all our hap-hazard teachers, I remember best one good-for- nothing, and I am pleased to reflect and not ashamed to confess that we made his life a burden to him by our pranks, and waited for no Board of examiners to pro- nounce him incompetent. I am surprised as I recall one after another our random teachers, and remember how many of the women were not only conscientious but gentle, lady-like, helpful, successful teachers ; how many of the men, who must have been mere youthful , students, were quiet, gentleman-like, faithful and real teachers. CORPORAL PUNISHMENT. CORPORAL PUNISHMENT. WITHIN a few years some of our communities have forbidden all resort to corporal punish- ment for refractory pupils. They have denounced it as barbarous and degrading. An indiscreet adminis- tration of it aroused an excitement as indiscreet as the original sin. Instead of removing the one offender, we remove from all hands the weapon with which he has offended : it is always so much easier to generalize than to discriminate. Nevertheless I relapse into barbarism sufficiently to suggest whether in the present state of our civiliza- tion and our school-organization, corporal punishment be not a means of grace which we cannot abolish, and have not abolished, without injury. The necessity of using it is very, perhaps increasingly, rare. The teach- er who frequently and freely resorts to it is presumptively unfit for his situation. The remedy is not to exclude the rod but to exclude that teacher. But the power to use personal chastisement should vest in the teacher, 256 Corporal Punishment, and is a preventive of mischief. Corporal punishment has never been abolished in the kingdoms of nature or of grace. Few well-trained or even ill-trained families exist, in which, at some time or other, in greater or less de-** gree, some resort to it has not been found necessary, or made expedient. Many a mother testifies that while five of her children can be governed by a look or an appeal to their reason or their love, the sixth is amenable only to the argument of a little whisk. Every teacher knows that there are boys v^ho, by some inward conformation, or some defect of home-training, do not respond to the ordinary motives of tRe schoolroom. Our delicacy which thinks it unmanly and barbarous to flog these boys has no last resort but to send them home. But what is this ? We are depriving them of school privi- leges. We are wresting from them the opportunities for education. We are sending them back to parents who have already shown themselves incapable of train- ing their children. Instead of supplementing the defects of home we intensify them. We give the little victims over, unhelped and hardened, to the cruel indulgence, to the fatal unwisdom of their untaught, incapable guar, dians. To turn many of the boys out of school is to turn them upon the street, is to let them loose into a life of idleness and lawlessness. It is unjust to the parents as well as ruinous to the child. The former have paid their share,of the taxes which Corporal Punishment. 257 support the school, and they have a right to all the benefit which the school is capable of bestowing. When they send their children to school, the school ought to teach and govern them, not send them home again. This is just what the naughty boys want. In very many cases the rod would not need to be used. If the boy knows that by playing tricks, or by pro- longed idleness, or contumacy, or rebellion, he will only be sent adrift, he will play the tricks and wrench himself free from restraint. If he know, on the con- trary that the result of his tricks and his manners will be personal chastisement, public di?K:omfiture, and social disgrace, with his tasks to be performed just the same at the end of it all, he will be very likely to give over his contention before it be meddled with. The mere knowledge that a rod impends is the turning- point between vice and virtue. The boy may not be inherently vicious but "roguish." Half his trouble is the turbulence of his animal spirits, the overflow of his vitality, hitherto unrestrained, lawless, and, if left lawless, certain to work mischief. The school supplies just that element of austerity, perhaps of justice, which the home-training lacked, and which the boy's character needed. I have heard teachers, who them- selves never inflicted corporal punishment, aflfirm that the evil effects of its abolition were clearly percepti- ble. Its use is as salutary as its abuse is brutal. Its 358 Corporal Punishment. abolition in school is as unwise as would be its aboli- tion in the family ; while its abuse in school has been far less common than its abuse in the family, since the superior cultivation and control of the teacher more than offset the superior affection of the untrained parenj, and is therefore a safer guaranty against pas- sion and consequent excess and injustice. The sweep- ing away of corporal punishment from schools is the flowering of that tare of weakness which springs to vigorous growth side by side with the wheat of kind-, ness in our rich American soil. It is the same vague, blind, emasculate, injudicious complaisance which winks at crime, and shrinks from punishment, and pardons out ; and is not so far removed from cruelty to the community as it is from beneficence to the criminal. And always and everywhere it is, to the full measure of its influence, subversive of manhood, and fatal to character. If the good God should ever change his mind so far as to give children only into the hands of those who will bring them up to all good principles and practices, in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, it might well be that the severer forms of penalty would naturally fade out, and disappear from the schools. But at pres- ent nothing seems to be farther from his thought ; and . . we must plan accordingly. Not long ago a young woman in a public school of Corporal Punishment. 259 Iowa was whipped by a male teacher. She was twenty- one years old. Not being in firm health her father wrote a request that the teacher excuse her from algebra. He refused, and as her recitation was not satisfactory he called her to account for it. She pleaded the excuse she had brought from her father. He replied, " None of your sass, or I will take the hickory to you," and thereupon raised his weapon, described as about four feet long and half an inch in diameter at the larger end, and gave her a dozen blows whose marks lasted two months. This story does not sound true, but the newspapers report the case and report it as having been twice tried and decided in the supreme court of Iowa. Assuming it to be true, would Iowa remedy the evil by passing a . law forbidding corporal punishment in schools ? Not in the least. On the contrary, so long as Iowa permits brutal ignorant and vulgar villains to take charge of her public schools, it is well to retain the pOwer of whipping young women, in order that the lowans may be re- minded from time to. time what sort of beast it is to whom they intrust their children. If a man have not sense enough to enQourage a pupil to study a part of the day when she has not health enough to study all day, if a teacher be a sufficiently untamed savage to think that a girl is to be taught by beatings, or that the proper mode of addressing a woman is " none of your sass," 26o Corporal Punishment, and if the lowans have no way of finding it out except by occasionally offering up a young woman in sacrifice, it would be a pity to forbid them the possibility of their Iphigenia. Perhaps Iphigenia may presently object to it with spirit and power enough to induce the suspicion that the best and surest way to banish the brutality is to banish the brute. Boston presents herself in an equally unfavorable light when her public prints declare that " one of the most successful principals in the city, according to general estimation, has been known to direct a pri- mary teacher to use the rattan as a means of over- coming a nervous shyness on the part of a little girl pupil less than six years of age." I cannot think that this is true. I believe that the rules of the Boston School Board forbid corporal punishment for girls ; but supposing it to be true, should we gain much by forbiddingcorporal punishment, while retaining as teachers that species of animated nature which is only prevented by a Board rule from beating nervous little girls six years old ? I suspect the actual amount of corporal punishment has been very much overrated, and that. the power of using it has very seldom been abused. An over- whelming majority of teachers have never inflicted it. An overwhelming majority of pupils have never suf- fered it. Just the same is it true, unhappily, that there Corporal Punishment, 261 are in the public schools pupils — generally boys of evil homes — to whom this often unspoken menace seems to be the concluding motive. Recognizing this fact, un- willing entirely to act without such recognition, yet true to its instinct of doing anything and everything but the one thing needful, our school '' system " makes no movement to secure teachers so wise as to be trust- worthy, but seeks to avert the evil only by binding re- strictions upon teachers whom it tacitly admits to be untrustworthy. '' Ordered, that the committee on rules and regu- lations be requested to consider the expediency of reporting an order providing that the use of corporal punishment in all forms be forbidden in the sixth classes of the primary schools, unless special permission be given in individual cases.'* But "individual cases" are the only ones upon whom corporal punishment is inflicted — without any committee. Or does the committee suppose that the primary teachers usually go up and down beating the little ones in regular order, or that they thrash around right and left promiscuously. The only thing such rules really do is to injure the influence and destroy the authority of teachers by taking — before the eyes of the pupil — the judgment out of the hands of the teacher and putting it into the hands of the committee, thus virtually telling the pupil that his teacher is not 263 Co7'poral Punishment. to be trusted. In the next sentence this matter is presented formally. "Ordered, that a committee of special discipline be appointed, consisting of five members, who shall have authority to grant such permission whenever they deem it needful." This is but making a bad matter worse. This is not abolishing corporal punishment. If there is aught de- basing, brutalizing, unjust in corporal punishment, this retains it all and degrades the teacher besides. This is simply transferring the power from one person to an- other ; and transferring it from the person who knows all the circumstances and is responsible, to persons who know nothing whatever of the circumstances and* are largely irresponsible. I do not assert the infallibility of teachers. I do not deny that the teacher like all other men and women ^ will " bear watching." The community and the com- mittee have not only the right but the duty to hold the teacher to strict accountability for every official act. But it is a gross misunderstanding of the requisite qualifications of a teacher to shield children against his violence by abolishing corporal punishment, and it is a great misapprehension of the position of the teach- er to withdraw judgment from his hands and put it into the hands of an outside corporation. They do these things better in Ohio. In Cleveland Co7'Poral Punishme7it. 263 the matter is left entirely to the discretion of teachers. They use corporal punishment whenever in their judg- ment the case requires it, subject to no outside interfer- ence. But they are required to report to the Board every case in full detail : the offence, the general charac- ter of the offender, the home influences surrounding him, the other means which have been employed for his reform, the notification of his behavior to his parents and to the principal, and the number of such previous notifications, and the result of the punishment. I do not see how it is possible to improve upon this method. The rod is still left for a warning to evil doers. The teacher is made, as he should be, sole and supreme judge of its necessity, but responsible for its use to a definite tribunal, and so minutely responsible that the very fact of having recourse to it gives almost a moral certainty of its necessity. We may set never so many safeguards around the rod; but the only one that is of real account is a teacher wise enough to'know when to use it, and when to let it alone. A teacher who is at once gentle and inflexible ; who has sympathy with the young mind, and can put himself in its place ; who demands accuracy, but does not overwhelm timidity ; who can discriminate between fun and falsehood, between weakness and viciousness, between incapacity and idleness ; who has a hundred eyes to see what ought to be seen, but can 264 Corpo7'al Pnnish7nent. also, on occasion, be a little blind and a little deaf; a man in short who, besides learning, has imagination and sense, — such a one need be hampered by no limi^ tations in teaching or in governing ; while, to put into a position of the utmost delicacy and importance a hot- headed, uncultivated, and narrow-minded person, and expect to make him useful or harmless by merely dis- arming him, seems to be the furthest in the world from intelligent economy," or judicious government. TEACHERS' SALARIES, SALARY OF TEACHERS. • ^'TT^HE largest item of expense in the conduct of A. schools, " says the report naively, " is the cost of instruction ! ! " By a process of natural logic economy chips away at this " largest item," and the next sen- tence is, "Within the past two years the salaries of teachers have twice been reduced, and a large reduction has thus been made in this item." The largest item in boarding a child is the cost of food ; we have therefore bought cheaper food and a large reduction has thus been made in this item. But is there not danger that this cheaper food has less nourishment; that the milk is watered, the sugar sanded, the butter rank ? If reduction must be made, if expenses must be lessened, would it not be better to take away the china and put earthen ware in its place, to take off the the table- cloth and eat from the bare boards, to send the waiter from behind the children's chairs and let them wait upon each other ; in short, is not the fresh, wholesome, tooth- some, and ample food of the very first importance (267) 268 Salary of Teachers. to the child and the very last thing to be diminished either in quality or quantity? By no means, says the committee, the cost of instruction is the largest item of expense. But it ought to be. Schools are established for instruction and for nothing else. Cut off everything exc^t instruction, but leave that untouched. Not so. Having, openly confessed that it has twice within two years reduced the salaries of the teachers, it concludes that " the most important work in our schools at pres- ent " is a supervision of the teachers. That is, attract poor work by reducing the pay of the workers, be con- tent with poor teachers who do not understand their business and cannot be trusted to do their business, and then make up for it by spending several thousand dollars for a supervision of the work. '" If then," says another superintendent on a salary of about $4,000, "if then, retrenchment is to be made, it must be effected either by cutting down salaries or by increasing the number of pupils to a teacher ; or, what amounts to the same thing, by reducing the num- ber of teachers." That is, a reduction can be made not by lopping off supernumeraries but 'by curtailing essentials. The same superintendent admits in his report that his ownjofnce was created only after long and strenuous opposition. That is, a great many people think the office unnecessary. But probably no one will be found to say that forty-nine children are Salary of Teachers, 269 too few to take up a primar}' teacher's time and strength. Indeed a superintendent not five miles away from this gentleman declares his belief that no teacher "has the vitality to give to five hours of daily work with his classes. Three hours of earnest, faithful class-work is the utmost that should be required." The superin- tendent himself says that except for the expense it would be better to change from forty-nine to forty — but considering the expense he recommends the change from forty-nine to fifty-six ; but does not hint that thirty or forty thousand dollars be saved by abolishing the doubtful offices of superintendent and supervisors until such time as the unanimous voice of the tax-pnyers and parents cry out for them. A report protests against the extravagance of having only one janitor for several buildings because of the great waste of coal and the injury to furnaces caused thereby. But the waste of vitality and mental fibre and nervous force caused by having too many children under one teacher cannot be measured by a thermometer or reckoned by the coal- man's bills — so we will cram and crowd the children together and give the teacher no time nor opportunity to get acquainted wqth the character, to study the na- ture, to guide the development of each child ; but we will keep the supervisors at their important work of recommending to the teachers to advise the pupils to write their names in their copy-books ! 23 270 Salary of Teachers. I have searched in vain thrcfUgh three hundred pages of a certain Middle State School Report to find any recommendatiq;! to raise the salary of a single teacher in the State, but I find several pages devoted to the necessity of raising the salary of the State Commission- ers of schools. It is argued that he shall be provided with a travelling fund large enough to enable him to visit each county in the State; that his work requires such especial fitness and ability, and such incessant,- hard and skilled labor that more reasonable and ade- quate compensation should be paid him j that the fact that he is out of the line of political promotion and pro- fessional advancement should act in the way of increase ing his salary to compensate for the sacrifice of his ambition ; that he is worth more than he receives or he is worth nothing ; that the State's reputation for honest liberality requires the payment to him of a larger salary ; that, in short, if the commissioner cannot have his salary increased and his travelling fund supplied, the State would better dispense with its commissioners altogether. I do not see the salary of the commissioners on the pages of the report, but I find that the average month- ly wages of the teachers are about forty-seven dollars. I hazard the conjecture that the wages of the commis^ sioner are more than that. For political promotion he is no further out of line than are all the female teachers,- and for professional advancement than are the large Salary of Teachers. 271 majority I think I may say of all the teachers — not one of whom receives any compensation in consideration and for not one of whom does he advocate any increase of salary on that account. When we come to his " incessant, hard, and skilled labor," the case is even clearer. To drive around through all the counties of a State seeing other people work is not half so exhaustive of vitality as to stay all the year between four walls and work yourself. The state commissioner goes when he likes, comes when he likes, sees men, sees places, has a breezy, holiday sort of life, an undefined, elastic sort of work with no exact standard of accomplishment and no competent tribunal of judgment. If he is ill a day or two, if he is idle a day or two, if he is pleasuring a day or two, it is of no importance to any one. The real work of the schools is gohig on just the same, all the time, without him as well as with him ; because that work is done by the teach- ers who are always there, who have a definite task to ac- complish, who are always surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses and who cannot be absent for a day or an hour without being missed and without adding to some other person's work. A morning paper in San Francisco shows that the west has not been slow in following the east in the establishment of ''system ;" "20 per cent, of the public school money of that city," it says, "is squandered in 372 Salary of Teachers. unnecessarily high salaries, in expensive ornamental studies, in running costly machinery and like extrava- gance. A primary teacher, who would earn $150 per month if she had pro rata tuition on her class, actually receives from $50 to $70. per month. The bulk of the work of the department is done by these teachers. The difference between what they would receive and what they do receive is devoted to paying high salaries for figure-heads, very many of whom are an injury to' the department." In New York the board-of education compelled the teachers to bear $432,000 of the whole reduction of $550,000, or in another light the appropriation of 1878 was $153,000 below the appropriation for 1877, and they cut down the teachers' salaries to the extent of $152,400, thus making the teachers bear all the burden of retrenchment except $600. Yet the sum expended on books and stationery was $170,000, janitors $126,0.00, fuel $80,000, superintendents and clerks $76,500, inci- dental expenses of board $20,000, for purchasing, leasing and procuring sites, repairs, enlargements, alterations, etc., $550,000. Yet all these items are left untouched. No inquiry is made into commissions or percentages. Not a penny less can be paid to plumb- ers and carpenters, to janitors, superintendents, and publishers ; but the teachers who do all the work for which the sites and superintendents, the percentages Salary of Teachers. 273 and the plumbers exist, are cut down summarily to the lowest living rate. Is a system which permits, which pursues such practices a thing to be overween- ingly proud of ? In Cambridge, Mass., the salaries of the female assistants in the grammar schools -that is, of the persons who do the solid work of teaching -have been reduced from $700- $850 to $500 -$650; of the teachers in the primary schools from $700 to $500- $600. The training school, however, is continued with its salaries from $575 to $900; the music teach- er is continued at a salary of $2000, and the superin- tendent at a salary of $2700. The salary of the su- perintendent remains higher than that of any teacher except the high school master. In that city the wages- of a good dressmaker are not considered unreasonable at $3.50 per day. The Press, which reports these proceedings, reports that Dr. Peabody of Harvard University, who was not in favor of reducing any salaries that were already as low as ^700, declared $7.00 per week to be the common price for teachers' board. But another member of the committee, whose own success in life has not been hampered by any over- anxiety on points of grammar, and who may naturally suppose that it is not worth while to put a great deal of cost into the unimportant item of instruction, cogently inquired '* If the teacher in i860 could live on a salary 274 Salary of Teacher :>. of $350, why can she not do so now? " and the reduc- tion was effected. In Boston, in the* Report for 1876, the expenditures are so lumped that I cannot get at the salaries of the teachers or superintendents in detail. But I find that the whole amount of the salaries of the teachers was $1,235,375.24, while incidental expenses including the salaries of the outside officials were $502,259.03, nearly half the cost of the teaching. The whole amount ex- pended during the year for new school-houses, and land for the same, was $277,746.57, - " a sum consider- ably below the average of the expenditure for these purposes for the last ten years The average cost per sitting was $152.36." The cost per scholar in the day school for tuition was $25.94 ; for incidentals $10.21. I view statistics with great suspicion : if I read these statistics aright the incidentals of instruction in Boston cost about two-fifths as much as the instruction itself, while it costs about six times as much to get a boy seated where he can be taught as it does to teach him ! In a little country village a few miles from Boston, which has neither supervisor nor superintendent, the amount paid the teachers for the last financial year was $1,075.50. The incidental expenses including the salaries of officials outside were $150.37. The whole amount expended on school-houses was $41.87. Salury of Teachers. 275 Boston spent on incidentals nearly half what she spent on teaching. This little hamlet spent on incidentals not quite one-seventh. Boston spent on school-houses for the last ten years nearly one-fifth what she pays for instruction. My hamlet»has spent about one twenty- sixth. The boys and gifls in the hamlet school-houses are just as comfortable as the boys and girls of the Bos- ton school-houses. The school report shows just as good practical supervision of the schools, just as thorough an acquaintance and satisfaction with the conditions of the schools, and just as fair a command of the English lan- guage on the part of the citizens in committee, as the Bos- ton school report with all its costly supervision. There are nft fine moral suggestions that a man must fear himself, but there is the practical suggestion that the North school-house wants cleansing and paint inside and some grading of the grounds. The East is in good condition, but as a matter of economy we would recommend a coat of paint on the outside and suggest that the wood- shed has never been painted. Not a word is spoken about organizing examination of teachers ; but all red tape is severed at a single snip by the resolution at the beginning of the year not to employ from " out of town any but experienced teachers, with good recom- mendations, both as to their moral character and fitness as teachers." I may add that as a result three of the four male teachers were college-bred men, and all were 276 Salary of Teachers. "gentlemen of good character, faithful and efficient ■ teachers' securing the confidence of their pupils and discharging all their duties satisfactorily." Yet the last annual report of the Board of Education gives the present annual income of the school fund as $140,369, and the additional sfertling statement made in the simplest manner and reported in the newspapers without comment as if unto this end was the school- fund foreordained from the foundation of the world : "About half the income goes to meet the expenses of th^ Board of Education and its secretary, and especial agents who are engaged in holding teachers' institutes and visiting schools. The remainder is divided among the towns whose valuation is below a certain amount.'* That is, half the income goes to support supernum- eraries who are clinging to the outside of the school system, only half to the real workers in the school- room. The Board, the agents, the visitors who go and come when and where they like, whp are doing the play-work of teaching teachers and " inspecting " schools, get just as much money as the village schools for which the money was appropriated. My hamlet aforesaid reports ""'from Massachusetts School Fund $216.26." It reaps no benefit of Board, or secretary, or teachers' institutes, or school visitors. It looks after its schools itself. It pays each of its four summer teachers $25 a month for five and one-fourth months. What the Board Salary of Teachers. . 277 of Education and the teachers institutes and the special examiners do for us is to take away from every child in town two months of schooling which he would other- wise have and which it is supposed the school fund was founded to furnish him. And this bread is taken out of the children's mouths and given to the educational tramps who " traipse " across the country holding teachers' insti- tutes either in term time when teachers ought to be teaching, or in vacation when they ought to be recreating. "While," says the Boston School Report, "the committee do not admit, what could hardly be admitted by Bostonians, that the schools of Boston are inferior in any respect to the schools of any other place on the face of the globe, they are prepared to assert the opin- ion that too much is undertaken in our schools and consequently too little is accomplished at a much larger expense than if the requirements were more reason- able." In this statement, Boston comes perhaps as near as she ever will come to the admission that " God alone is great." Not falling one hair's-breadth behind her leadership of every " other place on the face of the globe," she does virtually confess that she has not at- tained the mark for the prize of her own high calling. As our whilom superintendent would say, she fears only one thing, she fears herself. She has outstripped all competition ; she has now only to make a jump on 278 Salary of Teachers. her own account and get ahead of herself. Candor compels me to admit that she has done it. She says, sharing the universal naivete," The largest item of expense for carrying on our schools is that for salaries." But she redeems her naivete by the next statement : " The committee believe that this item can be reduced by discontinuing the services of some spe- cial and needless teachers." The committee proceed thereupon to disband the Kindergarten, to curtail the Sewing School, to dismiss some of the supervisors. All these are steps in the right direction. But the Boston School Report of the present year, 1879, as appears in the Boston Journal, makes with preternatural tranquillity the most startling revelations. It says : '' Notwithstanding an increase of more than 1200 pupils in the public schools, the expenses, as compared with those of last year, have been reduced $62,453.17. The estimated expenditure for the next school year is $55,819 less than the estimate for 1878-9 though a trifle more than the actual expense for that year. Doubtless the work of expenditure can be carried still further if the committees having separate inter- ests in charge severally cooperate in the wishes and purpose of the board as a whole." And in the very next paragraph the report " con- demns the policv of crowding so many pupils into one Salary of TeacJiers. 279 room, and in speaking of the consequent strain upon female teachers — a strain so great that the average ab- sence of female teachers on account of sickness hr.3 been three times as great as that of male teachciT — suggests the advisability of forming a corps of assistant teachers composed of those who have passed tl: rough our schools and received certificates of qualification, to relieve the primary teachers an hour a day by teaching in their presence and with the benefit of their sugges- tions." Think of it — Boston, the Athens of America, the foun- tain of culture, the original hunting-ground of refine- ment, a city set on a hill, on three hills, and not half high enough at that for the world to contemplate — Boston quietly chucks her children into Black Holes and then congratulates herself on having reduced her expen- ditures ! She could reduce her expenses probably another fifty thousand dollars if, instead of slowly suf- focating her pupils in crowded rooms with a slowly suffocating female teacher, she would simply take them out on the bridge and drop them into Charles river. But what is her remedy for her crowded rooms? Nothing less than the extraordinary device of putting more people in them ! It is not suggested to have more rooms or fewer pupils ; to relieve the teacher by taking a few classes or a single class from her and giving them to another's care ; but into her crowded 28o Salary of Teachers. room is to come another woman without experience, without responsibility, without pay, to do bunglingly what the teacher does skilfully. That is, the teacher, besides teaching the children, has to teach an appren- tice ! This is relieving the teachers indeed. And as if to leave no stone unturned of inpracticability, this in- experienced and unpaid helpmeet is to be embarrassed and hampered by teaching under the eyes of an experi- enced and self-possessed teacher. It is difficult for a veteran teacher to do her work well when watched. To a neophyte it would be practically impossible. It is perfectly easy to lower the salaries of teachers. There will be no decrease of teachers because of any reduction of salaries. Indeed low-price teachers are easier to come at than high-price teachers. Doubtless the mayor of Syracuse is right in saying that even good teachers can sometimes be obtained at less than $380 a year. The little village of which I have spoken got its good teachhers at the rate of $250 a ye^r. And when Bos- ton and Syracuse, and San Francisco, have reduced their teachers' salaries ten, twenty, thirty per cent., there will be no immediate revolution. The teachers will not retire in a body, leaving the children to run into "the streets. The parents will not generally or immediately know that anything has happened. Just the same the influence will be baleful. The schools will deteriorate. The children will suffer. The one thing needful to a Salary of Teachers. 281 good school is a good teacher. The contact of a large, cultivated mind, association with a genial, gentle, cour- teous, upright, inflexible nature — that is the one good gift to our children. The character, the personality of theteacher,^is more influential upon the child than books. Three months of a gentleman, of a lady, of a scholar, are worth more to the child than twelve months of a drone, a dolt, a clown, a vulgarian. The salary of a day-laborer, of a housemaid, of a field-hand will not attract the best class of persons into the schoolroom. They may sometimes put into such port, under stress of weather, but it is only temporarily. With wages at the lowest living point our schools will receive only tke dregs of all other professions, the raw material of all occupations. The men and women who are not good for anything else will be teachers. The young people who mean to be something else will step on our schools to reach it. The rich will educate their children at private schools under accomplished teachers. The poor will drag along still more heavily than they now drag, under more and more coarse and ignorant teach- • ers. The only direction which economy should take, the only direction which real economy can take is to lop off superfluities and build up necessities. School- houses, furniture, machinery should be reduced to their lowest terms, and teachers should be raised to the 24 2S2 Salary of Teachers, highest power. All the money that can be spent in securing good teaching is money well spent. Yet when the superintending mind is directed to the necessity of better teaching, it passes over the ap- pliances for education which already exist, and sees in the acknowledged necessity only an opportunity for more system, more organization, more cost. Just as if schools and academies and colleges were not already open to as many as 'wish to enter, one of our sapient superintendents at a recent conven- tion advocated "that in order to establish teaching as a profession, it would be well for each State to institute a corporate board of instructors who shall examine can- 'didates for positions in the public schools, and that they may be organized as a corporate college of precep- tors, who shall fix a course in which all the candidates must be proficient, and that the college give them a license to teach for a certain number of years." Of course this corporate board of instructors and this corporate college of preceptors is not expected to work for nothing. All the preceptors and the instruc- tors are to have a handsome salary from the State — so that the proposal for better teachers starts off with a whole new set of outside salaried officials to begin with, but without a single penny to spend on the actual ed- ucation of the actual teachers who are to go into the schoolrooms and do the work. Salary of Teachers. 283 But we may say, if it does not educate teachers, it secures teachers who are educated. How does it se- cure them unless the State make a law that no one shall teach in the public schools until he has been licensed by the precious board of preceptors ? Is the State likely to make such a law ? Are the towns likely to submit to a law which shall limit their choice of teach- ers to the judgment of a board of preceptors a hundred miles away? If these laws are not made, what is the board of preceptors going to do about it ? After the board has carefully whittled itself out and seated its corporation around the table waiting for its candidates to come up and be examined, will they be likely to come ? When a young man has his diploma from Exe- ter Academy and a young woman has hers from Bradford, is it at all probable that they will file out to Worcester to get a license from an unknown Board of pre- ceptors to teach in the Andover and Bradford primary schools ? Is it at all probable that Bradford and An- dover will require or wish them to do it ? The way to make teaching a profession is to require the same education for it as for other professions. There is no royal road to learning for schoolmasters any more than for clergymen. When as large a propor- tion of teachers as of lawyers are distinguished for in- tellectual acumen and intellectual cultivation, teaching • will rank as high as the law. All the instructors of 284 Salary of Teachers. New England may incorporate themselves into a col- lege and hold themselves in readiness to paste th'e pro- fessional label on the backs of all candidates, but they will not hasten the coming of that day by one second. And when that day comes the corporation of preceptors may instantly disband, for no bona fide college graduate will so much as lift his hand to receive the preceptoral diploma. He has the real article. It is not the college or the high school alone that needs the highly educated teacher. The lowest class of the lowest primary needs her just as much. The cultivated mind tells in the ABC class as much as in the Greek class. I wish that no teacher might enter our schoolrooms who had not at least completed an academy course of study, or its equivalent. The natu- ral teacher is benefited by it even more than the teacher who is made, not born. The only justification of our present low salaries is that so many of our teachers are worth no more. They have little education, small preparation. Some of our male teachers are mere figure-heads, kept in place only by the work of female assistants. They do not earn their salaries. Some of our women are absolutely unfit to teach. But the true remedy is not to retain these teachers on low or reduc'e them to lower salaries, but dismiss them altogeth- er. We cannot afford them. They are dear at any price. Any teacher who does not fully earn his present Salary of Teachers, 285 salary earns nothing. A very large majority of our chil- dren have only the few years of the primary, the gram- mar, the district school, for the intellectual preparation of their life. What they do of study must be done quickly. They must go to shop and farm, to kitchen and sewing-machine, with only such training, such ed- ucation as they can get during these few years. It is cruel that they should not have the best. The college, high school, academy, will take care of their own. The great mass have only the primary state schooling. It ought to be poured into them and evolved out of them at every moment by the best known methods. The very best minds, the very highest cultivation, the most refined taste, the most polite manners, should be set up in the common schools for example and in- struction so that the pupil should have before him not simply his books and his time, but a model of behavior, a fountain of wisdom, a pattern ; so that in his play as well as in his study, when he goes out and when he comes in, he shall associate with a superior intelligence, and shall thus unconsciously himself acquire elevation of mind and grandeur of character. 24* THE DEGRADATION OF THE TEACHER. THE DEGRADATION OF THE TEACHER. IF I have said it nine hundred and ninty-nine times, let me now say it for the thousandth time with the emphasis which our " system" compels, that it is not Boards, nor superintendents, nor committees, that decide the character of schools : it is the teacher ; and the teacher should be the centre of dignity and the deposi- tary of power. One of the most fatal possible mistakes in any administration is to impose responsibility with- out conferring power. It is not just to make a man accountable for that which he does not control. We sometimes speak of the abuse of patronage; but no abuse can be greater than to deniand reckoning of the head of any department, yet give him no power to select or to remove his assistants, or to devise and ad- just his own methods. Teachers are the persons on whom rests the blame or the praise of the schools ; and to them should power belong. If a teacher is not capable of managing her own class, the remedy is not (2S9) 290 The Degradatio7i of the Teacher. to set a superior- officer to manage her, but to dismiss her, and put a competent teacher in her place. If a principal have not sense enough to know and conscience enough to perform his school duties, the remedy is to dismiss him \ not to make a rule that every principal shall teach three hours a day. That does not put brains into his skull nor honor into his blood. It not only insults and incenses every worthy principal, but it leaves the worthless principal to drag out his slow length just as uselessly as before. The relation of teachers to superin- tendent, or committee, or principal, is not the relation of rank and file to a colonel or general, nor of railroad em- ployes to president and directors : it is rather that of a clergyman to the parish officers, or of a representative to his constituents, or of an editor to his subscribers. The teacher is a servant hired by the community through the committee, but a servant serving through his intel- lect — a servant to whose judgment much must be left \ who is responsible for results, but whose methods are not to be dictated; who is to be consulted, who may be advised, who can be dismissed, but who is never to be ordered. In a well-instructed community and a well-arranged school, there is no clashing of authority. Committee, superintendent, principal and assistants respect each other, and work together for the common good. Any other course is suicidal. It is strange that there should The Degradation of the Teacher. Z'^i ever be any other. Teaching is so much easier, the machinery runs so much more smoothly, the pupils are so much better taught, when officers work in har- mony, and all bear themselves as ladies and gentlemen, that self-indulgence alone would seem to prescribe this course. Yet other courses are taken. Committees will sometimes issue orders without consultation, and against the judgment of a large majority of the teachers to whom the orders are conveyed. They issue orders which im- ply in teachers a lack of discretion that ought to be fatal to their existence as teachers. Text-books are changed, new departments of instruction are introduced, radically different methods of teaching are attempted by commit- tee or by principals, without request from the teachers, without consultation with the teachers, against the ad- vice and protest of the teachers, and the very teachers who are most closely concerned, and whose hearty co- operation ought to be essential to the success of the experiment. If the principal of a school is not fit to judge of the text-books and methods proper to his own school, he is not fit to be principal. Yet a member of the school committee in Washington was reported in the morning papers, not long since, to have objected to consulting teachers regarding text-books, on the ground that it was not dignified or desirable for employers to consult those they employed. It seems hardly possible for ignorance 292 The Degradation of the Teacher, and vulgarity combined to go so far. If the assistant teachers are not worthy of being consulted on such topics, they are not worthy to be teachers. Do not parents and teachers alike see that, in all these dis- cords, children are the real sufferers? Whatever lowers the dignity of the teacher injures the status of the child. If the teacher have no dignity, it is wrong to impose him upon the child. If parents do not wish their children to be taught by menials, they should not engage menials, nor expect teachers to play the part of menials. If teachers wish their occupation to be con- sidered as a profession of dignity and honor, they should maintain their own dignity unimpaired, whether against principal, or superintendent, or committee, or complaining parent, or each other. If the committee wish effective work, successful schools, they should, by every point of their own demeanor, by every courtesy of bearing, and suavity of intercourse, maintain in themselves and in teachers self-respect, and minister to respect, deporting themselves always as gentlemen to gentlemen and to ladies. If teachers are not ladies and gentlemen, they should be dismissed for those who are. If this is not possible, still more should they be won over to grace by grace, to culture by culture. Trouble never comes this way. Trouble comes always by arrogance, ignorance, assumption, and incivility. In a school thoroughly furnished with all the modern The Degradation of the Teacher, 293 improvements a boy, the son of a member of the school committee, was frequently late. The regulations of the school required the teacher to receive a "satisfactory excuse." His teacher considered a written excuse from parents the only satisfactory one and required it of all her pupils. Every teacher understands, and every in- telligent person will readily understand, that, this does not mean an explanation of the causes of the pupil's absence or lateness, but is in the nature of a certificate from the parent that he is aware and approves of his child's course. This boy's father either through lack of original endowment, or the defective training of Har- vard college, or the depressing effects of official life, found himself unable to cope with this intricate problem and when reluctantly obliged to send notes for his son's non-appearance produced such specimens as the follow- ing : "Walter's absence, or rather tardiness yesterday was caused by his going to town with me." "Walter's tardiness this morning was owing to his being too deeply interested in his occupation to remem- ber how late it was." "I hereby certify that at two o'clock p. m., on Mon- day, Jan. 22, 1877, the physical condition of Walter C. Committee was not such as to allow of his being sent to school." "A member of the school committee came in to dis- cuss the salary question, and thereby caused the boys to 25 294 '^^^^ Deg7'adatio7i of the Teacher, be late to school by preventing the dinner from being served in time." When an office-holder chooses to put his domestic affairs into his official communications, it maybe admis- sible to suggest w^hat would otherwise be an imperti- nence that, in the benighted realm of ungraded schools, the presence of a friend is not considered a reason for keeping dinner off the table, but rather for hurrying it on ! If dinner is never to be eaten until guests are safely out of the house, no wonder that master Walter's " physical condition " interferes with his intellectual pursuits, and no wonder master Walter's papa dislikes to give a note every time ! Finally, the poor gentleman's overstrained patience snapped. The boy came in late on Monday morning and took his seat without a word. His teacher called him to her desk and asked for his note. He replied that he hadn't any. He had to take care of his sister. *• Did your father know you were late ? " "Yes." " Bring your note in the afternoon." In the afternoon he took his seat again silently. His teacher asked him for the note. " Father was busy and could not write it." " Will he be any less busy in the morning ?" " I don't know." *' You may bring your note in the morning." The Degradation , of the Teacher. 295 The morning came and again no note. '* Where is your note, Walter ?" " Father was as busy as he was yesterday and could not write it." " You may bring me that note this afternoon without fail. Be sure that it is done." Afternoon came. The embarrassed boy loitered a little at the teacher's desk while passing and she asked him if he had anything to say to her. '' No." " Did you bring your note ?" " Father was eating his dinner and said he could not write a note then." She of course could not blame the boy, but resolved to have recourse to the father after school. Before dismissal, however, this helpful and sensible committee came to the schoolhouse and informed the teacher that he had come to see why she wanted so many letters ! " I do not want any letters. I only want the notes of excuse. I think it very hard for you to make all this trouble on so small a point. ^ How am I to decide in any other way ? I know the rules do not say ' written ' but ' satisfactory ,' and an excuse is not satisfactory to me unless it is written by the parent. If I require notes from George and Thomas and James and William and Harry, how can I draw the line and excuse Walter or any other pupil ? Even Edith, who is as near perfection 296 The Degt-adation of the Teacher. as a girl can be and in whom I fully trust, always brings me a note. I cannot say to her 'you need not bring me one ' and to James ' you must bring me a note, I can't trust you;' and to George ' I am not sure whether I can trust you or not, so you must bring me a note.' In such a case I should be continually in trouble with the parents." It would be little to ask that a man who is on the school committee should have intelligence and imagina- tion enough to see this without taking private lessons in it; but it seems otherwise to the gods. Our com- mittee was not convinced. ''It is nevertheless very singular," he replied, " that a boy in this room is obliged to bring notes while his brother in another room is fully trusted. It seems very strange to his parents. Have you ever made any inquiries of the other teachers as to their methods ?" " I have talked with Miss A. She felt that she ought to have been very particular in requiring notes but feared she had been very lax." " Have you said anything to anybody else ?" "Yes, to Miss B. I have told her of all the trouble I have had in getting notes in this case." '' Did she say she required notes ?" "I never asked her." " Should you judge she did require them ?'* The Degradation of the Teacher. 297 ** Yes, from what I know of her, I feel very sure she requires them." " Are there no rules of the building that all follow?" "I know of none." Here the committee had struck a trail which, if he had been bright enough to follow it, would have led him out of the woods. But his eyes were holden, and after talking half an hour longer he turned to go saying, "Well, I guess you shall have your note in the morning." But the teacher called him back saying, " I do not want you simply to say I may have the note. I want you to tell me whether \ am right or wrong. If I am wrong I will try to see where and how I can do better. If I am right I wish you to tell me so. I want it fully settled now, that I may have no more trouble." Confronting thus the awful necessity of a decision, Mr. Committee met the emergency with comparative energy : " Well, yes, as you feel about it I suppose it is right. At any rate you shall have your note." The next morning the boy brought the note and the teacher fondly hoped this momentous question was set at rest forever. Vain illusion ! There is a mental machinery so ponderous that when once started it seems to revolve by its own inertia. The second morning after, as the teacher went into her room, she was followed by Mr. Committee who said 25* 298 The Degradation of tJ=c Teacher. to her, " I only wanted to say that I have been making inquiries of some of the teachers and I find it has not been the custom to demand written notes, and though I think perhaps you have gone too far to make any al- teration this year, yet another 3^ear 1 should advise a dif- ferent course, and not draw the line as tightly as you have this." A few mornings after he came again, saying he would like to speak to the teacher when she had leisure and then asked if she^had a copy of the School Regulations printed in 1870 or before. ''Yes, somewhere, but I don't know that I can find it at once." " I have a copy, but I cannot find it. I did not know until last night that the word 'written ' was ever used. I have found that it was used and that afterward the word 'satisfactory' was substituted. " But / never knew the word ' written ' was there at all. You have not misunderstood me, I hope. I knew I had no authority from the committee so far as that word was concerned." " No, I remember you said it was ^^ov^x own idea." The next morning Mr. Committee was encountered in the hall. He only came to say that he had carried the old Report to her room and had found that the word " written " was in a Report prior to his connection with the schools. The Dcg7'adation of the Teacher. 299 When the teacher went to school Monday morning, she found him bright and early on the steps. Unlock- ing the door for him he accompanied her in and, though stopping a moment on the lower floor, followed her to her room before she had time to remove her wrappings. He came " to ask if she really believed that no child's verbal excuse was a satisfactory one, and why did she not require the notes to be written in French or German ; she might have done so with just as much propriety as to require them at all," and so on and so on. It is not necessary to go over the whole old ground again. The frequent appearance of Walter's papa presently became a mild jest with the other teachers, who would inquire of Walter's teacher if "her apparition " was coming to-day ? It was finally suggested that the whole matter be decided by referring it to the whole committee for authoritative and final decision. One of the teachers, therefore, one who had been many years in the school, and who, during the absence of the principal, had been selected by the committee to preside over the school with its fourteen teachers and six hundred pupils, and had done so with entire ease and success, and in perfect harmony with all her fellow teachers, wrote to the school committee : ^' I learn that a membeV of the school committee has taken exceptions to the requirement of a written excuse for his son's absence or tardiness. 300 The Degradation of the Teacher. " Having been in the habit, for a long term of years, of requiring such notes from my pupils, on the princi- ple that no child's verbal excuse was a ' satisfactory ' one, I ask the decision of the Board, whether I have acted contrary to the spirit of the school regulations ?" To the e3^e of the un-system-atic " educator," it would seem that this was not only a proper 'but the proper thing to do. It is hardly conceivable, in the first place, that any actual human organization is on so microscopic a scale as to be able to make a disputed point of so small and simple and open a matter ; but since the point was disputed, the one way to settle it was to ask the decision of the Board, and have the understanding clear and the practice uniform. The decision of this efficient Board — consisting of fourteen grown men — was to return the letter unan- swered. And there has never been any answer; and the committee has never made any decision ; and for aught I know, the gentle committee-man is pottering around after the female teachers to this very day. Is it any- wonder that Massachusetts is imploring women to come to the rescue of her schools, and to cast a vote in school matters ? After this discourtesy from the committee, the teacher maintained perfect silence upon the matter, until the close of the term. At the examination, her depart- ment received special commendation from the commit- The Degradation of the Teacher. 301 tee. At their regular meeting she was, as usual, re- elected. At the last moment, receiving no apology from the committee, she sent in her resignation, not to the Committee, but to her principal. This resignation the principal put into the hands of that member of the Committee who had special charge of this school, and Walter's teacher put also into the hands of one of the Committee a statement of the discussion between her- self and another member of the committee, which had been the object of the question. And with this knowl- edge of the resignation of the teacher, and of the cause of that resignation, the committee had the hardi- hood, formally to order, and publicly to declare, in the newspapers, twelve days after the teacher had resigned, " that she be dismissed !" giving no hint that she had herself resigned ; or that any action had been taken in the case, except their own act of dismissal. I have given this at some length and at the risk of fatiguing my readers, because it illustrates in so many ways the degradation, which our school system is con- stantly and rapidly suffering. And I shall further risk the fatigue of my readers by specifying to parents the points to which I beg their particular attention. I. There can be no effectiveness in teaching if teaching is to be at the mercy of petty and pestering intermed- dling under the guise of supervision. The vital energy and nervous force expended in meeting a petty official 302 The Deg7'adation of the Teacher. bothering over notes of excuse are greater than that ex- pended legitimately by the teacher upon her whole class. That is, a committee-man springing up like a Jack-i'-the- box on every doorstep, and protruding like a skeleton from every closet, will absorb the vitality of the teach- ers and rob so much from the pupils. 2. The multiplication of machinery makes trouble and does not save it, at the same time that it is degrading the teacher into a machine. The trouble in this case came neither from teacher nor pupil, but from the com- mittee, purely and solely. It is true that the committee protested after the matter was over that he had not been acting as committee. Terrified apparently at the result of his intermeddling he vow^ed that he had not been in- termeddling ; that he had no authority in this school, that it belonged to another committee. But when he was haunting the teacher at her downsitting and up- rising and advising her the next term to conform to his notions, he was either speaking as a member of the school committee, or as a very impertinent private citizen. 3. The kind of person who will be willing to take the petty and minute supervision which our " system " re- quires and advocates, is a petty and minute sort of person and his influence upon the schools will be a belittling influence. No man is going to act as nursery governess to female school-teachers who is good for anything else. The Degradation of the Teacher, 303 The men who are capable of doing a man's work in the world will have no time to spend in twitching a woman's apron-strings and hindering her from doing hers. When therefore we remove the schools from the authority of the teachers and put them under the control, in all minute points, of outside persons we are deliberately placing them under the control of mediocrity and infe- riority. 4. The tendency of our " system " is to degrade the teachers more and more by the perhaps unconscious sub- jection of the teacher's duties to the machinery. I have shown before how the " advise" of the regulations be- came the "direct" of the superintendent. Here the regulations honored the teacher by demanding an ex- cuse which should be " satisfactory." The committee dishonored the teacher by attempting to prescribe the . kind of excuse which should be satisfactory. Put the teacher is the person designated alike by the regulations and by reason to decide what sort of excuse shall be satis- factory. It is true that the committee complained bitterly after the mischief was done that he had not " decided," that he had only advised ; but he bewailed with equal bitterness the impression that he was acting as a parent claiming immunity for his own boy, maintaining that he was acting solely from principle. But when the teach- ers sought to get from the committee an authoritative settlement of the matter as a question of principle, they 304 The Degradation of the Teacher. received what, among gentlemen, is considered as rank a mark of disrespect as can be shown, the return of the letter unanswered ; while the original sinner took the " decision " into her own spirited little hands, in the most personal and un-principle-d manner, by informing the committee-man that she considered the action of his Board disrespectful and cowardly; and that, from this time, if his boy were absent or tardy every morn- ing and afternoon she would never ask him for a note, and should require one from every other scholar in school. But though fourteen men together can bravely attack an absent woman, one man alone in a woman's presence is an inappreciable force ; so the poor com- mittee-man took his punishment meekly and gave no sign, nor ever moved the wing, or opened his mouth, or peeped for his " principle.'' But if a father of pupils and a member of the school committee, four limes send^ to his boy's teacher an impertinent note of excuse, and four times refuses to send her any excusd at all, and five times goes to her school-room to inquire and to rcmon- sttate, and ends with allowing the propriety of the teacher's pursuing her own course the remainder of the year, but advises her to adopt his course afterwards, and all the while is not acting as a parent for his child, nor as a committee having authority ; then I maintain that the "system " should provide a teacher with some unerring test, by which she shall be able to know when to elimi- The Degi'udation of the Teacher. 305 nate from her interlocutor his quality of parent and of committee and when to be aware that she is talking only wath the residuum of a man ! 5. The ruinous condition of the official mind is pal- pable in the committee's concern, not that his boy was absent or tardy so much but that his father was obliged to write " so many letters " about it. The annoyance is to be prevented not by sending the boy promptly to school, but by shifting the trouble of excusing him from official' shoulders ! Is it,safe, is it wise, to subject our schools to the control of outside men who have no. responsibility for teaching, and who think promptness at school of no importance except as the required ex- cuse for absence disturbs their own dinner? 6. The multiplication of officers and the piling up of machinery increase the danger of inefficiency and in- justice by distributing and so destroying responsibility. In this instance a teacher of ^unquestioned ability, con- firmed by long-continued success, Was in substance officially and slanderously attacked by a committee, every man of whom in personal and individual associa- tion w^ould no doubt bear himself towards all women as is the habit of x'\merican gentlemen. It chanced that no mischief was wrought in this case because the teach- er was of independent resources and of a position which commanded a choice ; but it might just as easily have happened to one whose necessities or whose responsi- 26* 3o6 The Degradatio7i of the Teacher. bilities would have compelled her to remain, or to whose reputation in the commencement of her career^ the slanderous report of dismissal might have been seriously injurious if not fatal. These men officially and collec- tively allowed themselves to be betrayed into a flagrant discourtesy and injustice, because the " system " is con- stantly degrading teachers into menials and concentrat- ing authority and dignity in the hands of outside men, who have nothing whatever to do with the actual teach- ing and have the slightest possible contact with the children. Teachers themselves are not always so mindful of each other's dignity as the instinct of self-preservation should make them. Avery amusing discussion was reported in the papers a while ago. An organized company of teachers were considering whether the interests of the schools would be promoted by increasing the relative number of male teachers. One gentleman thought it was a conceded fact, that women could teach primary schools better than men, but that other schools could be better taught by men. Another gentleman thought that male teachers were too few, and that men should come in and occupy many of the places now held by women, because nineteen out of twenty young women who enter into the occupation of teaching do it not with the view of making it a life-work ; they do not study with the view of rising higher and The Degradation of the Teacher. 807 higher ; women intend to teach but a comparatively short time, and therefore do not prepare themselves to teach in the high schools. Another thought the time women devoted to preparing their minds and hearts for teach- ing is much too short, and that their shortness of service is a reason that they are less devoted and earnest as teachers than men. They have less learning, and less time to learn, than men ; one reason being the time they are obHged to spend in sewing. Another thought, that, if schools should be raised to the highest standard, they should have at their head those who intend to make it a business for life. Let as many as possible who teach in the schools be trained as well as possible, and then . be under the direction of a head who will make it a business. One poor woman is reported to have piped a plaintive note of dissent by affirming that, if men had to make their own coats and iron their own collars, they would not have much time to devote to studying. But generally the men seem to have had everything their own way. It is not, perhaps, quite fair to accept a newspaper presentation as accurate ; but the reporters and the teachers laid their heads together with a result similar to that suggested by Sydney Smith's wit. The gentlemen seem rather to have assumed the question than to have discussed it. They were more occupied, apparently, in accounting for their own superi- 3o8 The Degradation of the Teacher, ority than in discovering it. But says a superintendent, of schools in the same state and neighborhood, in his report : — '•The profession of teaching has no dignity. It is fre- quently, I had ahnost said, in the majority of cases, entered upon as a makeshift or a stepping-stone, and is generally regarded by the man himself, and always by the public, as a work of which one should rather be ashamed than proud . . . The pride a lawyer feels in his profession, and the want of it felt by a teacher in his, is but a reflection of public sentiment, and is generally well grounded. The public demands training and culture of its lawyers, and accepts almost anything in its teachers." After such an arraignment, it is a Httle odd to see a body of male teachers assembling themselves together for the purpose of painfully trying to find why it is that they know so much more than women, and con- cluding that it is because they stick to their business so much better. Writing as I am in a community where schools have always been taught by men, and always by men who have failed in some other business in the past, or who have been preparing for some other business in the future, or who have been eking out the insufficient returns of some other business pur- sued in connection with teaching ; never, to the best of my knowledge and belief, by men with whom teaching was meant to be a business for life, I own I am sur- The Degradation of the Teacher. 309 prised at the short range of those who can stand up and say before the country, that the reason men are so superior to women is because women do not make it a life-work. Suppose that instead of trying to find out why men are more earnest, devoted, and effective teachers than women, we spend a little time in ascertaining whether they are such. It is a matter difficult to prove ; but perhaps we can approximate a conclusion. I have never known in New England any woman who attained distinction in teaching, or who ever, for a series of years, maintained her place at the head of a seminary or any academy, or any school as high in rank as a grammar school, without earning her honors ; without being- recognized as a woman of decided individual merit, as well as mark ; without being, outside of her school- room, an acknowledged social influence. But I have repeatedly seen men in such positions, whose mental acquisitions and endowments were notice- abl}'' moderate ; who, as men, had small social or political weight ; who owed their position more to tact, and in some cases to truckling, than to teaching ; and who, without the superior efficiency of their female sub- ordinates, could not have maintained themselves for a month. One of the largest and most influential news- papers of New York, in an editorial article remarkable for its insinht — so remarkable that I think it must 3IO T7ie Degradation of the Teacher. have been written by a woman — says: "The simple truth is, teachers are the rarest men in the world. . . . There are plenty of men who feel called to get a living by being teachers. ... It would go hard, but he (a principal) did not get one or two persons among his teaching force that are really good teachers. . But . . there are not good teachers enough in the whole coun- try to teach properly the children of the single State of New York. Nay, but this statement is absurdly short of what might justly be said. There are not born and made teachers enough in the whole country to teach the children of New York city alone as they should be taught." I have yet to see any college-bred male or female principal of high school or academy, who would admit that the female assistants were less efficient than the male. I have yet to see any father or mother of sound judgment, or, for that matter, of any sort of judgment who considered the children to be less thoroughly taught by a woman than by a man. I have yet to see any pupils who complain of the infe- rior discipline of female as compared with male train- ing. Reflecting on sundry male teachers we have known, to whom the greatest boon that justice could grant would be the mercy of its silence, and the many women, cultivated, ladylike, self-reliant, commanding, thorough, untiring; and then listening to the felicitations of that group of schoolmasters over their own assumed superi- The Drjy-radatwn of the Teacher. 311 ority, the onl}^ appropriate argument in response seems to be that of the poet : '• To take them as I would mischievous boys, And shake their heads together." They said (and experts have said something like it) that "women have less nervous energy and physical force " than men, and, therefore, cannot make so good teachers, cannot last so long. That may be ; but the point is not how much force a teacher has, but how much he uses. If a man is lazy and will not work, he is no better teacher than a woman who is weak, and cannot work. Personal and practical observation teaches that women expend a great deal more nervous force in school than men. So far from being less earnest and devoted than men, they are far more so. They throw themselves into their work with a great deal more whole-heartedness, with a great deal less reserve than men. The actual effective wearing' work of schools, the steady plod, is done by women. They give out, not because they are weak, but because they are overworked. There is no pursuit more absorbing, more exhaustive to the vital energies, than teaching. L,et men take hold of it as women take hold of it, not with the touch-and- go of a well-nigh supernumerary "head," but with the unrelenting grit and grip of hands, and they will find that their own " nervous force" has limits. If men 312 The Degradation of the Teacher. wculd draw a little more generously on their abounding nervous force, women would not be forced to draw so exhaustively on their slenderer stock. Yet I have heard a male principal who was borne along through his whole school-life on the shoulders of his assistants affirm with childlike naivete that somehow his teach- ers all tired out sooner than he did ! I have known a male principal say to an overworked female assistant seeking an interview, "if it is any trouble with the scholars I can't bear it, I am too sensitive. You may go to the committee or anything, but don't come to me." The late Mr. S. M. Capron of Hartford taught as women teach, — in detail, with thoroughness. He was he^d and hands both. All of his school he saw ; but a part of his school he was. -He did not content him- self with "directing;" he went also into the toil and moil of actual teaching. He did not stand on the plat- form and dictate experiments : he tested himself the quality of the process. One of his co-laborers says, " He had no need to speak" [to secure from his assist- ants their best work]: "so high was his own standard, so exquisite the finish of everything he did, that he was himself a perpetual admonition." Alike by his fidelity and efficiency, by his minute and his far-reach- ing observation, by his fineness and his power, he com- manded the affection and the admiration of his teachers and his pupils — and he died at forty-one. The Degradation of the Teacher . 318 The claim of superior knowledge set up by this Mutual Admiration Society of teachers seems as re- markable as their claim of superior earnestness. I be- lieve that the male teachers of our academies and high schools are largely college graduates; but, also, the fe- male teachers are largely seminary graduates. The women who are teaching the higher grade of schools have availed themselves of the best means of education open to them, quite as universally as have the men; nor do I believe that one principal in a hundred finds any lack of learning in his female assistants. For the grammar schools and the primary schools not so much can be said ; but how much can be said of the gram- mar masters ? "• Here," says an impatient, working, female teacher, "meeting after meeting has been held of grown men- masters, the object of which, so far as I could learn, was to decide whether ' five tons of Franklin coal ' should all begin with capitals, and should a line be left between the writing of the subject and the composition ? and similar important matters !" "Well," writes another female teacher, "we went to the teachers' meeting this afternoon. The superintend- ent, poor man, was at his wits' ends, to take up the time till the drawing teacher came, three-quarters of an hour later, and he could only spread over forty minutes, and oh ! what folly and nonsense ! The same old Walter 27 314 The Degj-adation of ilc Teacher. Smith platitudes rehashed and served out to nine able- bodied men — not able-minded to sit there and listen — and how I wished every one of them, separately and singly could be shut up for a day between two real men till they were brought to their knees in prayer and hu- miliation for the nonsense they had aided and abetted ! After several circumlocutions it was announced that it had been decided best to have the grammar teachers come together out of school hours but once a month ! Meanwhile, the drawing-master goes around into the several rooms. His coarseness exceeded Miss A's expectations ; but fell short of mine." Certainly the women can find as lively and well sus- tained faults with the men, as the men with the women ; and what reason in the nature of things why they should not? How many of the grammar schoolmasters of Boston and Brookline and Newton and Cambridge, of New York and Brooklyn and Jersey City, are college-bred men ? How much time did they devote to " preparing their minds and hearts for teaching?" and in what did such preparation consist ? How much of the time that is apent by their female assistants in sewing is spent by them in studying ? And, for their study, what profi- ciency have they to show in science, art, language, phil- osophy ? Rev. James Fraser, sent over from England to in- The Degradatlo7i of the Teacher. 315 spect our schools, reports "the much greater natural ap- titude for the work of a teacher, possessed by Ameri- cans generally, and particulai'ly by American women. They certainly have the gift of turning what they do know to the best account." The lamentable fact is that neither male nor female teachers are so well educated that they can afford to throw stones at each other ; but when men so far forget propriety as to hurl them at their female assistants, it is the first and most imperative duty of the latter to sacri- fice feeling, hit back, and give good measure. Society does not demand educated teachers, and therefore it does not have them. It demands educated lawyers, clergymen, doctors, high-school teachers, and there- fore it does have them. But it sees nothing unreason- able in intrusting the education of a large majority of its children to a man who has failed as a pettifogger, who has broken down as a doctor, or to a girl who could not enter the lowest class of the high school. This is done simply from motives of economy. Women pre- ponderate in schools, not because they soften the boys, but because they cost less than men. One of our So- lons thought, that, throughout district schools, the idea that there is not money enough to employ gentlemen teachers should be dispelled. I should like to see him dispel it. I should like to set him down in a rural dis- trict I wot of, and see him convince the parents, that it 3i6 The Degradation of tJie Teacher, is better for them to pay fifty dollars a summer month to a college sophomore than thirty to an experienced and successful woman. I should like to see him go into the city wards, and convince the parents that they would find their account in paying to such men as are willing to teach, eighteen or twenty or twenty-five hundred dol- lars, rather than in employing such women as they can get for six or eight hundred. When these men say that women mean to teach but a short time, and therefore do not prepare themselves to teach in the high schools, I ask, what better prepara- tion for teaching in the high schools exists than taking the high-school course of study under cultivated and accomplished teachers? And of those v/ho graduate at high schools, what is the ratio of boys to girls ? As a general thing, when women begin to teach, they have no definite idea of ceasing to teach. They give themselves to the work with ardor, with enthusiasm, with conscientiousness. They have so great a natural fit- ness for teaching, that defects of education are more largely atoned for than society has any right to expect. Many of them never marry : none of them, apparently, give themselves so much concern about it as these gen- tlemen seem to have given for them. But whether they marry or not, the qualities which fit them for mar- riage fit them for teaching. Unlike any other profes- sion, this is in the line of their natural life. What The Degradation of the Teacher. 317 makes a woman the successful head of a school makes her successful as head of a family. I venture to affirm, that the ranks of silly, characterless, inefficient wives and mothers have never been recruited from the ranks of successful school-teachers. Unless a girl is en- gaged to be married at the time she begins teaching, she enters upon her work with as much whole-hearted- ness as if she meant to teach all her life ; and gener- ally she works as faithfully, she is as acceptable to the parents, as much respected by the pupils, as much esteemed by her comrades, as capable of' being princi- pal, and as valuable a member of society, as the scarcely better educated male principal, who receives three and four times her salary. It is perhaps in conformity with this theory that the circular of Smith College, founded by a woman for wom- en, presents us a long list of teachers, every man of whom is dignified with the title of "professor," while every woman of them is only a " teacher." ' Or, by a sort of unconscious cerebration it may be the escape of a deeper truth that the men only " profess " to teach while the women do the real teaching ! That well-beloved teacher and citizen, as honored as he was honorable, the late S. M. Capron, of whom I have spoken before, understood and practised the prin- ciple of courtesy, — understopd it rather through his generous instincts and noble heart than by any intellect- 27* 3i8 The Deg7'adation of the Teacher. ual process, and practised it, no doubt, unconsciously; and he secured the utmost harmony and efficiency in his school, together with an affection that was only not adoration. One of his teachers says of him in a little private memorial : " He multiplied himself through his teachers ; if he had been less to them, he could not have been so much to the school. So deep was his impress upon their own minds, and so durable his moulding force upon the conditions under which they worked, that those who served under him cannot even now separate that part of their success which is fairly their own from that part which had its source in him. . . . His successes were all genuine. We believed in him, because in his province, he was the ablest man we knew. We deferred to him, because he was wiser than us all. We loved him for a goodness that was above this world. ... By him, alone of all men, it was pleas- ant to every one to be surpassed. . . . This breadth of scholarship enabled him to give help and sympathy : it never tempted him to domineer and annoy. The air is not so free as he left his assistants in that which was their province. Thus unfettered, they were doubly bound : faith and honor were engaged that they would do their best. . . . However the principal of a school may possess the confidence of his subordinates, it would seem to be in the nature of things, that there should be sometimes a conflict of opinions, a deliberate sacrifice The Degradation of the Teacher. 319 of private conviction to authority. Mr. Capron, how- ever, was an example to the contrary. In yielding to him, there was no conscious submission. His way rec- ommended itself as the best : his opinion had only to be stated in order to be shared. The deference which he commanded in meetings of the faculty might have been called servile, if it had not been so affectionate. He always invited free discussion, claimed but one vote, and yielded without contest, when the day went against him ; but his doing so was an occasion of consternation to the rest, so apt was it to be followed by disaster. An almost unanimous vote would sometimes be recon- sidered and reversed, in consequence of a decided opin- ion from him. ... 'I don't agree with Mr. Capron on this point,' said a teacher, himself mighty in counsel, ' but I hope he will settle the matter in accordance with his own judgment ; for experience has taught me that, when I differ from him, I am sure to be in the wrong.' . . . His greatness of spirit was contagious. Where he was, harmony was a habit ; magnanimity became a fashion. Among so many teachers, succeeding each other through so many years, not all could have been by nature noble; but most found grace to become or to appear so. In his generous presence, small jealousies, little rancor, could not live." We have no standard by which to measure the influ- ence of such a man. 320 The Degradation of the Teacher, When we have such teachers, the best we can do in our children's interest is to let them alone. .If we have not such teachers, let us come as near it as possible ; but let all our efforts be directed to putting good material into our schools, and not to patching up poor material. No amount of machinery, no interference of outside authority, can help a poor teacher, or do anything but hinder a good one. Of one of the best public schools that ever came into the range of my vision, the com- mittee is like clay in the hands of the potter. They do everything that the teachers tell them to do, and noth- ing that the teachers tell them not to do ; and there is no unsoundness in them. Big and broad-shouldered, they bear every burden that is laid upon them, without the smallest attempt at revolt. Good-natured, great- hearted and largely wise, though unversed in the mere technics of school, their counsel is often sought, and always welcome. Not unfrequently a sudden ray of simple business-sense, cast by them almost at random, will flash illumination upon a knotty problem which has long baffled the teachers. But whether or no they have any immediate errand, or any light to throw upon a vexed question, their faces are always welcome : their mere presence is comfort and encouragement and good cheer. But it must be said, too, that, in this school, the teachers are almost without exception, the gentle and cultured offspring of gentle and cultured The Degradation of the Teacher. 321 families, — ladies and gentlemen, who, not only in scholarship and professional accomplishments, but in manners, attitude, and conversation, and all social graces, are worthy of being accepted as models by the children whom they teach. With such teachers and such committee, it would be very difficult to make trouble in the schools, or to wean the descendants of Puritan and Pilgrim from their devotion to the idea of education as the safeguard of the republic. It fell to my lot to be reared in a community, from which the traditions of great teachers have not yet departed. Mary Lyon, Miss Yeaton, Miss Grant, Mrs. Cowles, — their names are still a power to conjure by, though all but one have gone over to the majority ; and that one, resting from her labors in the serene evening of her brilliant life, is still bright enough and strong enough to chase a thousand School Boards, and two like her would put ten thousand to flight. I never heard that these women borrowed leave to be; from any school superintendents or school supervisors, or ever plotted to have their work considered a profession, or ever trotted across country to get a convention or a com- mittee to make rules for them or to tell them when they might stay away from school. They sat at desks every one Hke a queen on her throne, and said to one man go and he went, and to another man come and he came, and to a third do this and he did it, minister or mer- 323 The Degradation of the Teacher, chant, doctor or deacon, and honored himself in the doing. They not only ruled over the pupils under their charge ; but by their moral vigor, their intellectual power, and their spiritual supremacy, their influence penetrated through the very framework of society and left its mark on all the region round about. When they counselled, it was in quiet country homes as if one had enquired of the oracle of God, and when they honored the parsonage or the farmhouse with a visit it was the entertainment of angels not unaware. Near enough to them to know the grandeur and nobility (5f their lives, as well as the high esteem of men in which they were held, I learned to reverence the profession of the teacher ; and all the combined and continuous efforts of our public school-system to vulgarize and degrade the work have never been able to make me unlearn that lesson. FOR SUBSTANCE OF DOCTRINE. FOR SUBSTANCE OF DOCTRINE. IT is to the credit of our people that they expend their money so freely for the education of their chil- dren ; but lavish expenditure is not the sole sign or channel of wisdom. The education of the young re- public is not a luxury to be cut off when times are hard : but the educational fund is the conscience-money of the people, saved out of hard earnings for a high purpose ; and it should be at all times administered with the most upright and intelligent economy. Have the enormously-increased expenditures of late years been attended by a corresponding increase in the quality of education and character ? For it cannot be too often repeated that no amount of excellence in the machin- ery is any substitute for excellence of results. The tools are of value only for the work they do. Our schoolhouses have not been more really or rap- idly improved than our dwelling-houses, which have been left solely to private enterprise. Our public schools have certainly no more than kept pace with our private schools, which have received neither help nor hin- drance from the state. There was a time when the ^ . (32s) 326 Por Substance of Doct7'ine. district met, selected its own prudential committee, dis- cussed its own affairs, decided upon its own measures. The minister was generally one of the committee. A large number of the best men of the district attended these meetings, joined the committee in visiting the schools at the beginning and end of every term, and knew, almost from week to week, what was going on in the "district." Nobody was paid. It was an honor- ary and patriotic service ; and I think I venture on no disputed ground when I say that it was well done. But we have changed all that ; and I cannot see that the change is for the better. Certainly the fathers do not, in the country districts, visit the schools as they used to do. The committee dinners have fallen off, which may partially account for, but may also result from, lack of interest. The clergyman is counted out ; and the paid committees have everything pretty much their own way. I do not say that it is a bad way ; but it is not so good as the old way. It is not so good in this, that the schools are not so set in the heart of the community as they used to be. The children are not so near the parents. They are let out by contract as it were to the teacher and committee, and are no longer the constant and tender care of the community of whom they are the chief charm and charge. Superin- tendence has passed away from those whose interest had the keenness of personal acquaintance, relation- For Substance of Doctrine. 327 ship, and responsibility, into the hands of a paid and professional officer. The result does not show pupils more apt, more eager, more docile, more industrious, more persistent. We consider it good economy to select low-pricer' teachers and eke out their defects by establishing schools to train them and by setting overseers to watch them. We turn a caravan of children without regard to age, sex, or previous condition of servitude or society, into a caravansera of brick perched upon an arid grind of gravel, and then call upon all the world to stand off, and admire our system. Six hun- dred or a thousand children are put into one house, to be taught by a band of women who are not required to be well educated, who are seldom heard of, and whose wages scarcely average more than those of a first-class cook in a private family. They are superin- tended by a "head," who is not required to be better taught than they, who gets the greater part of the sal- ary, the credit, and renown, and who is himself super- intended by a superintendent of schools who enjoys such education as it has pleased Heaven to endow him withal, and who is himself superintended by a body of men called a committee. Yet with responsibility di- vided, and credit misplaced, and adequate preparation nothing accounted of, a vast amount of difficult and excellent work is done. 328 Por Substance of Doctrine, But why persist in working at a disadvantage if we can far more easily and profitably work to advantage ? Why give all our thoughts to amending and none at all to the advisability of reconstructing ? We are rushing headlong with our " system " as confidently as if it had been transmitted to us from Mount Sinai on tables of stone. Accommodation of the masses is getting to mean accommodation in the mass. But is it possible that there is no other, no better, way of disposing of our children, than to build huge structures, story above story, and then fill them to the brim with boys and girls? I confess I look upon these unwieldy receptacles not with pride but with dismay. They are evidences of poverty not of wealth. They seem devised of set purpose to turn our children, by their inevitable work- ing, into machines, not into citizens of independence and self-direction. Their cumbrousness and their costliness are equally appalling. But not content with our own calamities, we are striving to entail disaster. '' The schoolhouses in Germany are as much better than we have as can be imagined," says a distinguished school-manager, after having descanted upon the excel- lence of Boston schoolhouses ; "and, when built, they will last two thousand years ;" which is the very worst thing to be known about a schoolhouse. Why, in the world, in this world at least, should any one want a For Substance of Doctrine. 3129 schoolhouse to last tv;o thousand 3iears ? What an imper- tinence to saddle sixty generations with our crudeness and our ignorance ! We have been building stone hos- pitals for the future ; and, when the top stone was laid, we discovered that the best kind of hospital is the fragile structure of boards, built to be taken down at the end. of three years. Whoever has entered one of our magnificent schoolhouses during school hours, and has been smitten by the sudden change from the pure out- door air to the foul and noisome atmosphere of the schoolrooms, can but shudder at the thought of satu- rating that brick and wood with the fetid exhalations of two thousand years and turning the little children into it all the while. When to this we add the danger from defective flues and pillars, the weary climbing of teachers and girls, and little children, up the long flights of stairs, the noise necessarily attendant upon so large a gathering of children, the constraint and the machinery indispensable to prevent confusion, but otherwise utterly useless, utterly foreign to the individ- ual growth, I think it will be admitted that the next advance will be, not in the direction of more costly, more spacious, or more durable buildings, but of more cheerful, more accessible, and more humane ones. We shall leave our goods to be stored in sky-lqfts, but shall keep our children on the earth as long as possible. I should be glad, this day, to see every educational 28* 330 For Substance of Doctrine. " pile " given over to men and merchandise, and our school-children housed in pleasant little cheap wooden structures, not above two stories high at most, with honest green turf, and. honest brown mould, in the yards, and honest clean sand in the corner if you like, and not a forlorn waste of bricks and gravel ; with no more pupils than two or three women ean easily and thoroughly teach ; with snugness and comfort reigning, and individuality not imperatively ruled out. I would have the schoolhouses so cheaply built, that each gen- eration could afford to carry out its own ideas. The people's money should not be locked up in brick and stone, to stand for generations, the brazen monuments of our perhaps guiltless, but none the less burdensome ignorance, a stumbling-block in the way of progress. Building-funds should rather buy land, that the fresh little lungs may be swept through and through with fresh air, that even the city children shall have room enough to play and be shaded and sunned and cared for in their play, and not broil on a crunching gravel waste, or bake against a brick wall, or shrivel in a piti- less unbroken wind. So a school shall be a nursery of health, as well as of intelligence, a source of vigor to body and to mind. Nor should these schools be run by machinery, like a Waltham watch-factory, — the greater the number, the greater the efficiency, and every piece alike. They should be treated as human beings, each Por Substance of Doch'ine. 331 individual soul run in a different mould, and needing prompt and peculiar carei There should be so few pupils in the mass, that every one should be within the teacher's range ; and mind, heart, and body alike, be the object of skilful and intelligent training and care and love. The duties of teachers and the salaries of teachers should approximate, and responsibility should easily be traced and known. There should be no male prin- cipal at the distant, not to say inaccessible summit of a mountain-chain of teachers, Vith a salary thrice and four times that of the female subordinates, under the mistaken idea that only a man can organize and administer. Organization should take its proper place in the rear, and teaching should take its proper place at the front ; and he who can best teach — that is, he who can best stimulate and guide the infant mind and heart — shall be chosen teacher, and shall have an adequate and honorable salary, whether he be man or woman. As economy is to be consulted, we will con- sult it, not by reducing the salaries of teachers, the persons who do the indispensable work, and concern- ing whose character and fitness we cannot be too exacting, but by cutting off at one fel-l swoop the unnecessary stepping-stones, not to say stumbling- blocks, between the community and the teachers. State Boards should be summarily splintered ; and our 332 Por Substance of Doctrine. • lately-invented superintendent of schools would escape annihilation only by the skin of his teeth. In our re- constructed system, when the principal is simply the head of a few classes, a practical and active teacher, and when the schools are many, a school-superintendent may be very convenient as errand-boy ; that is, to do the outside work which is necessary but mechanical, and foreign to the real work of teaching. But he should be only a convenience, elected by the district that wants him and for as long a time as it wants him ; and if the district be large and populous, he may be a useful and busy person. Ordinarily, however, the very best school- superintendents are the fathers and mothers, the uncles, aunts, grandmothers, and older brothers and sisters of the pupils. Give us good teachers and small schools, and let all this costly paraphernalia go, as tending to distraction rather than to education. If this be not possible, if we must go on with our wholesale machine-made schooling, under which, per- haps, "Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, . . . And the individual withers, And the world is more and more," let US at least not boast of it. It is the best we can do. We have not time nor mind to give our children what they need : we give what we can afford. But let us have a very present consciousness that it is a poor For Substance of Doctrine. 333 giving, a great improvement on nothing, but very far short of the ideal of a nation which believes that its first duty and its most sacred charge are the rearing of its children. A few wise men would, doubtless, theorize a far more logical and symmetrical path for our village life than the one in which we stumble along : but we are far stronger men and women for tracking and following our own path. We may concede, what is by no means proven, that a State Board can give us a more elegantly-constructed school system than we can build for ourselves : and it would yet be true that it is better for the people to man- age their own schools. We are in the most healthy con- dition when every parent, and I may say every adult, feels a personal interest in, and responsibility for, the well-being of the schools, and not when we feel that some Board, or appointee, or any official whatever whom we but remotely touch is doing the work for which we are in no wise an"^werable. We are apt to forget that what we aim at in mechanical processes is precisely the opposite of what we should aim at in mental processes. Hence the delusion and the snare by which we are beguiled. All that we want in a row of pins is uni- formity and perfection : what we want in a row of chil- dren is the perfection of individuality. A well ordered machine can dispose of the pins ; but children cannot be trained up in the gross. Each child is as isolated a 334 ^o^ Substance of Doctrine. fact as if he were the only child in the world; and the object of all education is to make out of every child the best man, woman, citizen, that he is capable of becoming. Nor can this ever be done by generalizations, how- ever lofty, but only by hard, definite work. When a high authority desires "to remind educators, as they begin a new year of work, that their business is ... to find out first the highest ideal capacity for manhood and womanhood in each of them, and then help them to realize it," what, exactly, has it in view ? Just down the hill, I see the tower of a neat little schoolhouse, where the educator is a young woman, ed- ucating at a salary of thirty dollars a month. She has thirty pupils, let us say, and probably hears as many as twenty-five classes recite every day. Her pupils range from the pretty timid little four-year-old, half homesick for her mother's lap as she lisps out her lovely broken letters, to the stalwart boy of fourteen in a hand-to-hand fight with vulgar fractions and partial payments. They troop by, to and from school, laugh- ing, chattering, pushing each other off the sidewalk, pelting each other, which I do not care for, but pelting also my few Roxbury russets which the canker worms disdained, — a merry, frank, careless crew, who will nevertheless grow up into sedate and sober citi- zens. I have movings of benevolence towards them ; For Substance of Doctrine. 335 and how can I better gratify my kindly impulses than by turning to their teacher (I beg her pardon, educa- tor) , and reminding her what her business really is ? It is true that her business may possibly be none of mine. She has been educating some half-dozen, perhaps a dozen years, and might be supposed to know what she is about. At any rate, personal observation, study, and experiment are better than any theorizing; and a wo- man who cannot learn from years of experience may safely be counted on for not learning from any outside suggestion. None the less for that will I sit tranquilly at my desk, and, as her wild horde comes thronging in, I will suggest — what? Simply this, that she "first find out the highest ideal capacity for manhood and woman- hood in each of them, and then help them to develop and realize it." Easy things to understand ! Unless she turns upon me, and asks me how to do it ; in which case I am lost. What is the highest ideal capacity for manhood and womanhood in the children, which she is to discover? I do not know, unless it means that she is to discover exactly how great a man each boy can become, and how great a woman each girl is to grow into. The world has generally supposed that the only way to discover this was to wait and see. Nothing short of omniscience is considered equal to the task of forecasting the man from the boy, the woman from the girl ; and omniscience we have never, 33^ . For Substance of Doctrine, in this school-district, been able to engage as educator at thirty dollars a month. Nor do I believe that the cities — which pay their young women munificently (from two hundred to six or eight hundred a year), and which do not count inability to enter the high school as a disqualification for teaching in the grammar school^ — have been more successful. For the ordinary young woman, whose progress towards omniscience has barely taken her past the milestones of Greenleafs Arithmetic and Guyot's Geography, few things can be more dis- heartening than to be told at the starting-point that her first problem is to cipher out the unknown and the unknowable. No doubt they assemble overall the land on the first Monday of September, educators experi- enced and inexperienced, rested, fresh, — I will not insult them, and stultify myself by saying, eager and enthusiastic for their work. On the contrary, I doubt not they turn longing looks to the green fields and blue waters, the freedom and frolic they have left, and the schoolroom seems to them humdrum, and life too tire- some, and it is Blue Monday everywhere. But courage, comrades ! You have fidelity which is better than eag- erness, and resolution which outwears enthusiasm ; and in a few days you settle down to work, and the sweet- ness of lost leisure remains only to strengthen you for the future and not to discontent you with the present. You enter your schoolrooms — or does the new dialect For Substance of Doctrine. 337 prescribe education-rooms ? — ready to work and wait, to guide, control, and help, prepared' to hear recita-' tions, and examine answers, and record progress, and repress mischief. But to " find out the highest ideal capacity for manhood and womanhood " in each of 3^our thirty or three hundred pupils, — this you have not bargained for. Courage again, comrades ! We writers, we have not the least idea what we are talking about. We speak great swelling words, because the sound of them pleases our ears. We stand sometimes, even in the pulpit, and reason of faith and works and justification and sanctifi- cation, without evolving or recognizing one practical, vital truth or idea, simply because, to some minds, these words did and do mean ideas, and they uttered them with a force that arrested attention and influenced life. So the words sound good to lis, and soothe us, and by that token, perhaps, benefit us ; but of simple and direct meaning, as- bargain-words and business- words have meaning, they are void. So we gratify our inborn patriotism and virtue by fusilading our public men with fine general maxims on the grandeur of nobility and versatility and incorruptibility, \\hich are worth no more for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, than the paper they are written on. Likewise, do not be dismayed because we express our friendly designs towards the rising genera- -9 338 For Substance of Doctrine, tion in high heroics to you. If I might speak a word, when, I grant, a41 speech is impertinent, I would quietly say, never mind the liighest ideal capacities. We know nothing about it, and cannot by searching find it out, — not you, nor I, nor Launcelot, nor any other. The only way to discover what a boy will be is to make him into it. The only way to do that is by doing the thing which lies nearest to hand. Your business is to make the boys and girls learn their arithmetic lesson and their gram. mar lesson and their geography lesson from books, or boards, or blocks, according to your own taste or skill if supernumeraries will but let you alone ; to make your pupils know that they know it, and are not simply willing to run the risk of being discovered in not knowing it ; to make them thoroughly understand the difference between knowing a lesson, and knowing something about it ; to make them hate lying and stealing and swearing and rudeness and vulgarity, if you can, and, if faults of birth and breeding render this impossible, then to make them afraid to lie and swear and steal and misbehave. Let the boy's highest ideal capacity take care of itself, but charge yourself with knowing of a surety whether he has worked his example in arithmetic out of his own brain, or whether he has copied the answer from a key, or the process from his seatmate's slate. If you cannot ascertain this by your own inward light, without recourse to testimony, you will make but a poor hand at ideal For Substance of Doctrbie. 339 capacity. If you can make a girl reluctant to ask as- sistance, exultant at conquering her own difficulties, dis- dainful of deception, and self-denying enough to repel and reject the dreadful school-slang, you are as near the direct road to her highest ideal capacity as if you lived laborious days in trying to evolve some indefinite, sonorous abstraction. A girl ought to be taught her geography and arith- metic in so thorough, commanding and conscientious fashion that it shall stand her in good stead whenever she sweeps the stairs and lead her to sweep out the cornei-s, and when she dusts the table to dust under the books, and when she sews to sew finely and firmly or coarsely and slightly according as the task demands. A boy should be taught so to master his lessons as to form in him the habit of being on time for all his life long, and make him hold his occupations stanchly in hand and always to keep his word. Children can learn very little science in their short school life but the one thing they should learn is mastery. School, we are often told, should be made as much like home as possible. Not at all. Not in the least. Not even like the ideal home. Still less like the thousands of homes from which the children actually come. School is a half-way house between home and the re- lentless, self-seeking world. School is the border land between dependence and subjection on the one side 340 Fof Substance of Doctrine. and independence and self-direction on the other. Of the two, school is more like a little world than a great home. Its type is society rather than family. The child does not go suddenly from the special care and guidance of two grown persons, of whom he is the dearest object in life, into the great pushing world that cares for him not at all. He goes into a modified world — into a community indeed that has no regard for him but under the care and control of a person who, without special love, is still hired to take special yet common care of him. Parental weakness may often have worked disastrously to the child's development. It is for the school to supply that defect — to be strong where the mother was weak, to be firm where the father faltered, to be just where parental control was partial, to be calm where it was turbulent, equable where it was uncertain, tender where it was stern, encouraging where it was repressive, symmetrical where it was unsightly, supplementary where it was judicious. The father and mother ought to be on each side of the child, a wall of beneficent, inexorable law, until he shall learn to be a law unto himself. But too often they fall flat whenever the little child lurches up against them. It is for the teacher to continue this support if it be begun ; to fashion it with just, gentle, and most skilful effort, if the proper work have failed the proper hands. So, from the tenderness of an over- For Substa7ice of Doctrine. 341 soft and from the depression of an over-harsh home the little citizen shall presently and pleasantly spring up into erectness, strength, solidity, self-reliance, self-poise. It is not any outside " system " which can do this. It is the teacl]er. The school is not the super- visors, superintendents, boards, journals of education, teachers' conventions, forms of blanks, yearly reports. The teacher is the school. *' The Harvard examinations for women," says one of our astute public philosophers, who would cast away both net and drag in politics trusting that fish will come in through pure moral suasion, but who in school-matters are ever ready to sacrifice unto the net and burn incense to the drags as the only gods, " The Harvard examina- tions for women, conducted in New York by Professor Childs, have just closed. The New York Tribime looks forward to the day when Harvard shall provide for those women intending to become teachers a regular course * administered by professors who shall have both learn- ing and special genius for such work.' " I know a girl who took the Harvard examinations. She was barely seventeen. She had never been to school regularly in her life. She had gone a little here and a little there and had stayed at home a great deal. She had picked up a little Latin and a little French and a little mathematics — painful as it is to say it but I can't tell a lie — from her sisters and her cousins and her aunts. 29* 342 Por Suhstajice of Doctrine. She had romped over the hills and had grown like a wild olive tree till the women of her family became a- larmed and went out into the barn to ask her father what should be done with her. The autocrat of all the Russias listened to their statement — with ill-concealed impatience, I should say, except that he belongs to a race which never lets concealment of its impatience like a worm i' the bud feed on its damask ^cheek — es- pecially in the bosom of its own family — and then thun- dered down from the hay-mow his imperial ukase ''let her tramp." So she tramped as aforetime, deviating into a schoolhouse occasionally as the spirit moved her, till it suddenly occurred to her sorrowing female relatives that it would be a good thing for her to take the Har- vard examinations and see whether she really knew anything or not. As it struck my lady's fancy favorably, she took the "preliminaries," which I am told are con- sidered to be as nearly equal to the Freshmen and Sophomore years as the female mind is able to approach the male mind ; and having quietly cleared away some obscurities in the statement of the problems presented to her, she stood in Algebra 95. Arithmetic 96. English Literature and Composition . 70.6 Latin 77.5 Geometry 66. Por Substance of Doctritic. 343 It seems to me that some inference is fairly deduci- ble from this tabulation, but I confess I do not exactly know what it is. I do know that my wise and blessed damosel was as free of our school system as Gideon's fleece of water when there was dew on all the ground. Why should we look forward to the day when Har- vard shall provide for women intending to become teachers a regular course ? What claim has Harvard to be a teacher of teachers ? Is her success with young men so brilliant and exceptional as to create a pre- sumption that she would infuse fresh intellectual and moral life into our young women ? Within the past year such paragraphs as the following have been passing around the country uncontradicted : The only circumstance which marred Commencement Day at Harvard College was the drunkenness which followed the class reunions in the afternoon. This evil is naturally con- fined more to the younger classes. And what the canker-worm of one paper left, the caterpillar of another hath eaten : We learn from a gentleman residing in Cambridge, that the closing scene on Commencement night at Harvard Col- lege was a disgrace to all concerned. Many of the graduates as well as some of the other students were drunk, and the drinking on the campus was open and unconcealed. The one paragraph attributes drunkenness to the younger classes, the other spreads it among the gradu- 344 ^^'^ Substance of Dcctri7te. ates ; between them we have Harvard College reeling to and fro. New England professed to be shocked awhile ago because two or three Senators appeared, inebriated, on the floor of the Senate. Why should she be shocked ? What does she expect ? If she grad- uate drunkards from her institutions of learning, if she make drunkards in her colleges, is it not the height of hypocrisy for her to pretend to be scandal- ized because they occasionally, in after life, stagger out into the daylight? When, in a deliberative assembly of American citizens, a man or two, under the excite- ment and fatigue of days and nights of continuous ses- sions, resorts to intoxicating stimulants and presents himself to his peers and the public as something less than a man — it is indeed lamentable. But when young men, in the fore-front of our civilization, in the first flower and freshness of their manhood, signalize their entrance into responsible and self-directing life by flocking and falling into degrading, sottish sensuality, it is "horrible, hateful, monstrous, not to be told." Have the professors of Elmira and Vassar and Wellesley ever sent their girl-graduates reeling on the campus, that they should sit at the feet of Harvard to learn how to teach ? . The same paper that looks to Harvard for the rising of woman's Star in the East says : Fo7' Substa7tce of Doctrine. 345 The world moves slowly; men have apparently not yet quite realized the use of brains. It speaks ill for the culture of the time and of the country that the paragraphs of intelli- gence from all our largest universities show twenty sentences concerningathletics to one sentence referring to mental instruc- tion. Feet and hands outweigh the head still as in barbarous times. Is this again a reason why the " mental instruction " of young women who are to be teachers should be in- trusted to Harvard ? Shall the last final touch of science be given to young women by their own schools, or shall it be transferred to the schools that celebrate their gradua- tion with drunken orgies and float one flag for learning and nineteen flags for rowing — pronounced as you please? Again, the same paper remarks that " a party of thir- ty Harvard students had been visiting a brewery recent- ly, and was given a collation by the proprietor. " " One hundred and fifty students are said to have visited the ' Black Crook ' at its first appearance at the Globe Theatre last week, occupying the front seats and making the audience familiar with their ' rah ! rah ! rah ! ' We should not suggest these two places as the best helps to young men who are fitting to be leaders in the intellect- ual and moral questions of the day." Why then suggest that the professors, who send their students a hundred and fifty strong to the Black Crook 34^ Por S7ihsia7icc of Doctriuc. and thirty strong to the brewery, should have the train- ing also of our women teachers? Would it mend the matter to have thirty girls go out of their schoolrooms to drink beer beside the under -graduates, or would the " rah ! rah ! rah !" sound sweeter from the lips of one hundred and fifty young ladies, who had flocked from their " regular course " room at Harvard to pursue their studies of- the Black Crook? Nevertheless, it. is right to be taught by an enemy or by a very defective friend. I have little love for Harvard College, little admiration for its government, little respect for its work, great scorn for some of its methods. Yet the last and best word on education has been spoken by the president of Harvard College, — all the more significant that it was no formal and pre- pared statement ; seems indeed, to have been unappre- ciated by the president himself, — to have coruscated from him, as it were, in a spasm of illumination, which he is half inclined to deny ; for he says of it subse- quently, when adversely questioned, that it was "inci- dental ; and I am quite willing that it should go for what it was momentarily worth." There spake the man relapsed into himself. Thus spake the man under the divine afflatus : "I may as well abruptly avow, as the result of my reading and observation in the matter of education, that I recognize but one mental acquisition as an es- For Substance of Doctrine. ^^J sential part of the education of a lady or gentleman^- namely, an accurate and refined use of the mother tongue. Greek, Latin, French, German, mathematics, natural and physical science, metaphysics, history and aesthetics, are all profitable and delightful, both as train- ing and as acquisitions, to him who studies them with intelligence and love ; but not one of them has the least claim to be called an acquisition essential to a lib- eral education or an essential part of a sound training." I shall watch President Eliot from this time forth. There is no telling what revelations may not come to a man who has had even a "momentary " glimpse of so profound and hidden a truth ; and though the lightning may not strike him a second time, there is always an interest attaching to a man who has survived one flash ! Nothing so marks the truth of his words as the in- credulity with which they were received; "Will President Eliot offer the public some fuller explanation of his meaning ?" was asked by some of our best and wisest men ; but that was what President Eliot could not do. He tried, but he did not succeed. He talked about salt and oatmeal, but to no purpose. His words were not susceptible of explanation. They were already as simple and succinct as words can be. If a man does not understand them, it is solely because he is not sufficiently educated, because he has not that one mental acquisition which is the only essential part 34^ F'or Substance of Doctrine, of education, — an accurate and refined use of the mother tongue. He does not understand the meaning and use of words. His interlocutors professed them- selves satisfied, and said he must have been, at least partially, misreported — which only proves the more, how utterly they failed to comprehend him ; for the word reported was the true word, and if it were mis- reported, then the misreporter was a greater prophet than the president. "What training to the powers of observation is given by the study of the mother tongue ? What training to the art faculties ? What to the knowledge of abstract truths? What to the faculties which deal with abstract truths? What to the power of reasoning? Does pres- ident Eliot mean that an acquaintance with the mother tongue trains every faculty which is trained by mathe- matics, science, metaphysics and aesthetics ? Or does he mean that the training of these faculties is not essen- tial to a good education, that education may be partial and yet adequate ?" So questioned the puzzled but ''educated " men, and showed by that token that they were not educated — that they lacked the one mental acquisition essential to edu- cation, an accurate and refined knowledge of words. President Eliot said nothing whatever about the study of the mother tongue. But educated men are so little educated that they not only do not use words accu- For Substance of Doctrine. 349 rately, but they do not understand words accurately used. Next to parents, in partnership with parents, the future of the republic lies in the hands of teachers. Human nature here is exactly the same as it is in other countries. The human heart is open to the same influ- ences, the human mind is governed by the same laws, the human body is subject to the same limitations. The only thing in which we differ from the old world, the only thing which makes this republic an experiment, w^e cannot too often repeat, is self-government. It is but a century or two since the idea seems to have dawned upon the nations that a-sovereign existed for his people, not the people for the sovereign. We are simply trying the experiment whether a people cannot be its own sovereign. But with individual responsibility must come individual development to make the experiment success- ful. We wish to reduce government to its lowest possible terms, to raise the individual to his highest possible power. The American idea is to have the State do as little as possible for the individual, the individual do as much as possible for himself. The very act of helping him- self strengthens his ability to help himself. Those men and women who are laboring for organization, for sys- tem, for uniformity ; laboring to put schools and trades and professions into the hands of the State, are laboring for the idea of the old kingdoms and against the idea 350 , For Substance of Doctrine. of the new republic. Yet our educational writers seem largely to have forgotten or never to have accepted this fact. They lament that " we are far from having ad- ministrative unity in our cultural organism," not remem- bering that individual activity is a thousand times better for the education of citizens than administrative unity. They pronounce that " Germany has taken, in its cultural organism, the only correct course by labor- ing profoundly in each and all its branches," and in the selfsame paragraph assert that " there is nowhere so little depth of individuality as in Germany " — not see- ing that that course cannot be correct which trenches upon the individual. They would enforce upon us the pedagogic books of Austria as the master- work of master-minds and do not heed that Austria with all her masterful system has just forbidden all evangelical work ; has notified the missionaries of the American Board that no religious meetings of any kind can be held, that no native Austrian must even be within hearing of Protestant family worship, and that any in- fraction of the law is to be punished with imprisonment. Must we copy closely a system which rears citizens who will permit themselves to be thus domineered ? They quote enthusiastically a foreign professor's re- joicing that, "the real people's school is now a state institution, where reading, writing, arithmetic, with reli- gion, are taught" — and, apparently, do not see that For Substance of Doctrifte. 351 the triumph consists in having taken education out of the hands of kings, princes and priests and put it in- to the hands of the State ; not in having it taken out of the hands of the people and put into the hands of the State. To withdraw education from the power of the anointed few, the rich and the noble, and to put reading and arithmetic into the hands of the many at the ex- pense of the State, are very like what we have done our- selves. To take the arts and trades and sciences out of the hands of the people and put them into the hands of the State is for us to trace a backward path, while even the old monarchies are following in ours. "Public teachers are now public officers, which is a great improvement upon the old way when the only cultivated teacher was the priest, and the school be- came a dependency of the church;" but it is not an improvement upon the new way of having the public teacher the officer of the community that employs him, and not of the State Government. It is better that the teacher should be an officer of the State than of the Church, but it is better that he should be an officer of the district than of the State. What the State should do is to provide for the safety of the republic ; to provide for all opportunity to ac- quire the education which it demands from all. Beyond this it seems unquestionably best to leave everything to individual self-direction. Kindergartens, professional 352 For Suhstattce of Doctrine* universities, trades-schools, cooking-schools, may safely be left to the people. Where they are wanted they will spring up. Where the need and the demand are greater than the ability to supply, the State may con- sider whether it shall not nourish and strengthen with judicious aid until the necessity depart, or the young institution be strong enough to stand without sup- port. Thus flexible to the wants of the people, spring- ing from the people, under their control, changing with their intelligence, open to all experiment, but on so small a scale that failure is not fatal, our school sys- tem should be a vital and vitalizing organism, not a clumsy, unsightly scafl"olding. No harm is done even if our schools do not keep step to the music of union. No harm is done if one teacher teaches . arithmetic from a book, and another teaches it without a book, and another teaches it both with and without, provided only arithmetic be taught. It is safer to trust the natural rivalry of inde- pendent ambition, the natural working of unhampered intelligence, than it is to depend upon fiat teaching from a central office. There is usually no more intellect at the central office than there is in the schoolrooms, and there is never enough to go round. If from some mountain-top schools were made to be surveyed, their uniform downsittings and uprisings and forth-puttings would be an imposing spectaclQ. For Stih stance of Doch'lne. 353 But they are made for the sole, separate advantage of each little mind in them, and that mind is not helped along the stony path of " seven times one is seven " by another little mind trudging along the same road a hundred miles off. All this military movement grati- ftes the grown-up officials outside the schoolhouse but it only grinds down and files down the growing pupil inside. Uniformity for any show whatever is baleful. it should always be kept in strict subserviency to indi- tddual development. What uniformity is necessary to (he best possible work of each pupil — that should be compassed. Beyond this, uniformity is a burden and a stumbling-block. Least of all is it to be dreaded or deprecated that one school differs from another school in glory. It is better to have each school set in the heart of the community, responsible to the parents, con- trolled by the parents, dependent upon the parents. It is better that parents should know and feel that what they do not will not be done. It would be more trouble, but that is what the world is made for. The fashioning of human character is the one object to which, so far as we know, all suns and systems tend. To this end the skies were hung, the stars were swung, the seas were hollowed, the soil enfertilized. What part this world may have in the movement of all worlds we do not yet know. But nothing in this world is better worth human while tl;an the development of the human being, the improve- 354 -^'^^ Substance of Doctrine. ment of the human race. The human race is only to be improved through the individual. And individual character is chiefly set during the first fourteen years of life. The family is the one divine institution to cradle the helpless human being with the unspeakable tender- ness he needs. All the rest is left for man to do and to de- vise. We think we have discovered that all are wiser than any one. In local self-government the machinery may not run so smoothly as in absolute centralization, but the human being is more advantaged. It is better that each school district shall manage its own school in its own way than that any central power manage all schools in its way, though some district schools may suffer in consequence. But it-is not only wise, it is safe to trust the people. It is not only better that a community should go without a church than to have a state church forced upon them, but the people are as thoroughly furnished to good works. The gospel is preached in New Eng- land just as widely through individual effort as it could be by state command. Education left to individual am- bition, individual emulation, individual selfishness, would be just as deeply and widely and wisely pursued as now, when spasmodically and partially provided by the gov- ernment and smothered by system. Teachers left to their own responsibility and ingenuity would give us a thousand-fold better schools than such as now strut Por Substance of Doctrine, 355 along in good marching order but with no other valu- able trait, under the superintendent's wand. It is not a question of modes or moods. It concerns the very life of the republic. We have made the daring and doubtful experiment of universal suffrage. With- out intelligence it is not even doubtful, it is certain dis- aster. Intelligence does not consist in drawing on blackboards, or standing on any list whatever, or even being happy in school, though it be not incompatible with any of these. Inte^igence con^sts in understand- ing the meaning of words, in knowing cause and effect, in discriminating between certainty and probability, in selecting the essential from the incidental. In the wake of real intelligence, character almost .inevitably follows. The ranks of the agrarian, the tramp, the thief, are not largely reinforced by those who judge clearly truth from error, and see distinctly the differ- ence between a principle which is eternal, and a temp- tation which is temporary and illusive. There is no safety against the encroachment of the dangerous classes except in a counter encroachment upon them of the intelligent classes. That encroachment can be compassed only by the slow and sole process of building up aright the mind and character of each boy and girl separately. It cannot be done in the mass. It cannot be done by the gross. It cannot be done by machine. It needs hand-sewing. 356 For Substance of Doctrine, Socialism, communism, nihilism, are rife and rank abroad and already begin to lift their horrid heads a- mong us. Assassination is a dastardly crime, commu- nism is a suicidal resource ; nevertheless the communists and the socialists and tlfe nihilists are men, and their wild outbursts are it may be but the thrusts of frenzied agony. They suffer they know not why, but they strike out at the phantom which represents to them oppression, and the shadow deepens and darkens upon them. *• Yet I doubt not through the ages, one increasing pur- pose runs, And the thoughts of men arc widened bj the process of the suns." Let us in this new republic head off communism by becoming all communists : communists in so far as the republic is the common inheritance, the common bles- sing, the common glory ; communists not to level dis- tinctions but to guarantee to every human being his natural power to acquire, his natural right to enjoy distinction ; communists not to destroy property but to give to every human being in his infancy so much edu- cation and intelligence and virtue as shall enable him to acquire properly and to detect fraud and to resist op- pression. If the time has come when a powerful ecclesiasticism will marshal itself against the public school, the time has come for republicanism to marshal itself to defend imiImS,);. ^^ CONGRESS 019 886 554