Craftsmanship in Teaching

I

One way to be def­inite in ed­uca­tion is to for­mu­late as clear­ly as we can the aims that we hope to re­al­ize in ev­ery stage of our work. The task of teach­ing is so com­plex that, un­less we strive earnest­ly and per­sis­tent­ly to re­duce it to the sim­plest pos­si­ble terms, we are bound to work blind­ly and in­ef­fec­tive­ly.

It is on­ly one phase of this top­ic that I wish to dis­cuss with you this morn­ing. My plea for the def­inite in ed­uca­tion will be lim­it­ed not on­ly to the field of ed­uca­tion­al aims and val­ues, but to a small cor­ner of that field. Your morn­ing's pro­gram has dealt with the prob­lem of teach­ing his­to­ry in the el­emen­tary school. I should like, if you are will­ing, to con­fine my re­marks to this top­ic, and to at­tack the spe­cif­ic ques­tion, What is the his­to­ry that we teach in the grades to do for the pupil? I wish to make this lim­ita­tion, not on­ly be­cause what I have to say will be re­lat­ed to the oth­er top­ics on the pro­gram, but al­so be­cause this very sub­ject of his­to­ry is one which the lack of a def­inite stan­dard of ed­uca­tion­al val­ue has been keen­ly felt.

I should ad­mit at the out­set that my in­ter­est in his­to­ry is pure­ly ed­uca­tion­al. I have had no spe­cial train­ing in his­tor­ical re­search. As you may per­haps in­fer from my dis­cus­sion, my ac­quain­tance with his­tor­ical facts is very far from com­pre­hen­sive. I speak as a lay­man in his­to­ry,--and I do it open­ly and, per­haps, a lit­tle de­fi­ant­ly, for I be­lieve that the last per­son to pass ad­equate judg­ment up­on the gen­er­al ed­uca­tion­al val­ue of a giv­en de­part­ment of knowl­edge is a man who has made the de­part­ment a life study. I have lit­tle faith in what the math­emati­cian has to say re­gard­ing the ed­uca­tion­al val­ue of math­emat­ics _for the av­er­age el­emen­tary pupil_, be­cause he is a spe­cial plead­er and his con­clu­sions can­not es­cape the col­or­ing of his prej­udice. I once knew an en­thu­si­as­tic brain spe­cial­ist who main­tained that, in ev­ery grade of the el­emen­tary school, in­struc­tion should be re­quired in the anato­my of the hu­man brain. That man was an ex­pert in his own line. He knew more about the struc­ture of the brain than any oth­er liv­ing man. But know­ing more about brain mor­phol­ogy al­so im­plied that he knew less about many oth­er things, and among the things that he knew lit­tle about were the needs and ca­pac­ities of chil­dren in the el­emen­tary school. He was a spe­cial plead­er; he had been deal­ing with his spe­cial sub­ject so long that it had as­sumed a dis­pro­por­tion­ate val­ue in his eyes. Brain mor­phol­ogy had giv­en him fame, hon­or, and world­ly emol­uments. Nat­ural­ly he would have an ex­ag­ger­at­ed no­tion of its val­ue.

It is the same with any oth­er spe­cial­ist. As spe­cial­ists in ed­uca­tion, you and I are like­ly to overem­pha­size the im­por­tance of the com­mon school in the scheme of cre­ation. Per­son­al­ly I am con­vinced that the work of el­emen­tary ed­uca­tion is the most pro­found­ly sig­nif­icant work in the world; and yet I can re­al­ize that I should be no fit per­son to make com­par­isons if the wel­fare of a num­ber of oth­er pro­fes­sions and call­ings were at stake. I should let an un­bi­ased judge make the fi­nal de­ter­mi­na­tion.