Craftsmanship in Teaching

II

The first ques­tion for which we should seek an an­swer in con­nec­tion with the val­ue of any school sub­ject is this: How does it in­flu­ence con­duct? Let me in­sist at the out­set that we can­not be def­inite by say­ing sim­ply that we teach his­to­ry in or­der to im­part in­struc­tion. If there is one thing up­on which we are all agreed to-​day it is this: that it is what our pupils do that counts, not what they know. The knowl­edge that they may pos­sess has val­ue on­ly in so far as it may di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly be turned over in­to ac­tion.

Let us not be mis­tak­en up­on this point. Knowl­edge is of the ut­most im­por­tance, but it is im­por­tant on­ly as a means to an end--and the end is con­duct. If my pupils act in no way more ef­fi­cient­ly af­ter they have re­ceived my in­struc­tion than they would have act­ed had they nev­er come un­der my in­flu­ence, then my work as a teach­er is a fail­ure. If their con­duct is less ef­fi­cient, then my work is not on­ly a fail­ure,--it is a catas­tro­phe. The knowl­edge that I im­part may be ab­so­lute­ly true; the in­ter­est that I arouse may be in­tense; the af­fec­tion that my pupils have for me may be gen­uine; but all these are but means to an end, and if the end is not at­tained, the means have been fu­tile.

We have faith that the ma­te­ri­als which we pour in at the hop­per of sense im­pres­sion will come out soon­er or lat­er at the spout of re­ac­tion, trans­formed by some mys­te­ri­ous pro­cess in­to ef­fi­cient con­duct. While the ma­chin­ery of the pro­cess, like the mills of the gods, cer­tain­ly grinds slow­ly, it is some con­so­la­tion to be­lieve that, at any rate, it _does_ grind; and we are per­haps fain to be­lieve that the ex­ceed­ing fine­ness of the grist is re­spon­si­ble for our fail­ure to de­tect at the spout all of the el­ements that we have been so care­ful to pour in at the hop­per. What I should like to do is to ex­am­ine this grind­ing pro­cess rather care­ful­ly,--to gain, if pos­si­ble, some def­inite no­tion of the kind of grist we should like to pro­duce, and then to see how the ma­chin­ery may be made to pro­duce this grist, and in what pro­por­tions we must mix the ma­te­ri­al that we pour in­to the hop­per in or­der to gain the de­sired re­sult.

I have said that we must ask of ev­ery sub­ject that we teach, How does it in­flu­ence con­duct? Now when we ask this ques­tion con­cern­ing his­to­ry a va­ri­ety of an­swers are at once pro­posed. One group of peo­ple will as­sert that the facts of his­to­ry have val­ue be­cause they can be di­rect­ly ap­plied to the needs of con­tem­po­rary life. His­to­ry, they will tell us, records the ex­pe­ri­ences of the race, and if we are to act in­tel­li­gent­ly we must act up­on the ba­sis of this ex­pe­ri­ence. His­to­ry in­forms us of the mis­takes that for­mer gen­er­ations have made in ad­just­ing them­selves to the world. If we know his­to­ry, we can avoid these mis­takes. This type of rea­son­ing may be said to as­cribe a util­itar­ian val­ue to the study of his­to­ry. It as­sumes that his­tor­ical knowl­edge is di­rect­ly and im­me­di­ate­ly ap­pli­ca­ble to vi­tal prob­lems of the present day.

Now the dif­fi­cul­ty with this val­ue, as with many oth­ers that seem to have the sanc­tion of rea­son, is that it does not pos­sess the sanc­tion of prac­ti­cal test. While knowl­edge doubt­less af­fects in some way the present pol­icy of our own gov­ern­ment, it would be very hard to prove that the in­flu­ence is in any way a di­rect in­flu­ence. It is ex­treme­ly doubt­ful whether the knowl­edge that the vot­ers have of the his­to­ry of their coun­try will be re­called and ap­plied at the bal­lot box next Novem­ber. I do not say that the study of his­to­ry that has been go­ing on in the com­mon schools for a gen­er­ation will be en­tire­ly with­out ef­fect up­on the com­ing elec­tion. I sim­ply main­tain that this in­flu­ence will be in­di­rect,--but I be­lieve that it will be none the less pro­found. One's vote at the next elec­tion will be de­ter­mined large­ly by im­me­di­ate and present con­di­tions. But the way in which one in­ter­prets these con­di­tions can­not help be­ing pro­found­ly in­flu­enced by one's his­tor­ical study or lack of such study.

If it is clear, then, that the study of his­to­ry can­not be jus­ti­fied up­on a pure­ly util­itar­ian ba­sis, we may pass to the con­sid­er­ation of oth­er val­ues that have been pro­posed. The spe­cial­ist in his­to­ry, whose right to leg­is­late up­on this mat­ter I have just called in­to ques­tion, will prob­ably em­pha­size the dis­ci­plinary val­ue of this study. Spe­cial­ists are com­mon­ly en­thu­si­as­tic over the dis­ci­plinary val­ue of their spe­cial sub­jects. Their own minds have been so well de­vel­oped by the pur­suit of their spe­cial branch­es that they are im­pelled to rec­om­mend the same dis­ci­pline for all minds. Again, we must not blame the spe­cial­ist in his­to­ry, for you and I think the same about our own spe­cial type of ac­tiv­ity.

From the dis­ci­plinary point of view, the study of his­to­ry is sup­posed to give one the mas­tery of a spe­cial method of rea­son­ing. His­tor­ical method in­volves, above all else, the care­ful sift­ing of ev­idence, the min­utest scruti­ny of sources in or­der to judge whether or not the records are au­then­tic, and the ut­most care in com­ing to con­clu­sions. Now it will be gen­er­al­ly agreed that these are de­sir­able types of skill to pos­sess whether one is an his­to­ri­an or a lawyer or a teach­er or a man of busi­ness. And yet, as in all types of dis­ci­pline, the dif­fi­cul­ty lies, not so much in ac­quir­ing the spe­cif­ic skill, as in trans­fer­ring the skill thus ac­quired to oth­er fields of ac­tiv­ity. Skill of any sort is made up of a mul­ti­tude of lit­tle spe­cif­ic habits, and it is a cur­rent the­ory that habit func­tions ef­fec­tive­ly on­ly in the spe­cif­ic sit­ua­tion in which it has been built up, or in sit­ua­tions close­ly sim­ilar. But whether this is true or not it is ob­vi­ous that the teach­ing of el­emen­tary his­to­ry pro­vides very few op­por­tu­ni­ties for this type of train­ing.

A third view of the way in which his­tor­ical knowl­edge is thought to work in­to ac­tion may be dis­cussed un­der the head of the cul­tur­al val­ue. His­to­ry, like lit­er­ature, is com­mon­ly as­sumed to give to the in­di­vid­ual who stud­ies it, a cer­tain amount of that com­mod­ity which the world calls cul­ture. Pre­cise­ly what cul­ture con­sists in, no one, ap­par­ent­ly, is ready to tell us, but we all ad­mit that it is re­al, if not tan­gi­ble and de­fin­able, nor can we de­ny that the in­di­vid­ual who pos­sess­es cul­ture con­ducts him­self, as a rule, dif­fer­ent­ly from the in­di­vid­ual who does not pos­sess it. In oth­er words, cul­ture is a prac­ti­cal thing, for the on­ly things that are prac­ti­cal are the things that mod­ify or con­trol hu­man ac­tion.

It is doubt­less true that the study of his­to­ry does add to this in­tan­gi­ble some­thing that we call “cul­ture,” but the dif­fi­cul­ty with this val­ue lies in the fact that, even af­ter we have ac­cept­ed it as valid, we are in no way bet­ter off re­gard­ing our meth­ods. Like many oth­er the­ories, its truth is not to be de­nied, but its truth gives us no inkling of a so­lu­tion of our prob­lem. What we need is an ed­uca­tion­al val­ue of his­to­ry, the recog­ni­tion of which will en­able us to for­mu­late a method for re­al­iz­ing the val­ue.