Craftsmanship in Teaching by Bagley, William Chandler - III

Craftsmanship in Teaching

III

The unsatisfactory character of these three values that have been proposed for history--the utilitarian, the disciplinary, and the cultural--is typical of the values that have been proposed for other subjects. Unless the aim of teaching any given subject can be stated in definite terms, the teacher must work very largely in the dark; his efforts must be largely of the “hit-or-miss” order. The desired value may be realized under these conditions, but, if it is realized, it is manifestly through accident, not through intelligent design. It is needless to point out the waste that such a blundering and haphazard adjustment entails. We all know how much of our teaching fails to hit the mark, even when we are clear concerning the result that we desire; we can only conjecture how much of the remainder fails of effect because we are hazy and obscure concerning its purpose.

Let us return to our original basic principle and see what light it may throw upon our problem. We have said that the efficiency of teaching must always be measured by the degree in which the pupil's conduct is modified. Taking conduct as our base, then, let us reason back and see what factors control conduct, and, if possible, how these “controls” may be influenced by the processes of education working through the lesson in history.

I shall start with a very simple and apparently trivial example. When I was living in the Far West, I came to know something of the Chinese, who are largely engaged, as you know, in domestic service in that part of the country. Most of the Chinese servants that I met corresponded very closely with what we read concerning Chinese character. We have all heard of the Chinese servant's unswerving adherence to a routine that he has once established. They say in the West that when a housewife gives her Chinese servant an object lesson in the preparation of a certain dish, she must always be very careful to make her demonstration perfect the first time. If, inadvertently, she adds one egg too many, she will find that, in spite of her protestations, the superfluous egg will always go into that preparation forever afterward. From what I know of the typical Oriental, I am sure that this warning is not overdrawn.

Now here is a bit of conduct, a bit of adjustment, that characterizes the Chinese cook. Not only that, but, in a general way, it is peculiar to all Chinese, and hence may be called a national trait. We might call it a vigorous national prejudice in favor of precedent. But whatever we call it, it is a very dominant force in Chinese life. It is the trait that, perhaps more than any other, distinguishes Chinese conduct from European or American conduct. Now one might think this trait to be instinctive,--to be bred in the bone rather than acquired,--but this I am convinced is not altogether true. At least one Chinese whom I knew did not possess it at all. He was born on a western ranch and his parents died soon after his birth. He was brought up with the children of the ranch owner, and is now a prosperous rancher himself. He lacks every characteristic that we commonly associate with the Chinese, save only the physical features. His hair is straight, his skin is saffron, his eyes are slightly aslant,--but that is all. As far as his conduct goes,--and that is the essential thing,--he is an American. In other words, his traits, his tendencies to action, are American and not Chinese. His life represents the triumph of environment over heredity.

When you visit England you find yourselves among a people who speak the same language that you speak,--or, perhaps it would be better to say, somewhat the same; at least you can understand each other. In a great many respects, the Englishman and the American are similar in their traits, but in a great many other respects they differ radically. You cannot, from your knowledge of American traits, judge what an Englishman's conduct will be upon every occasion. If you happened on Piccadilly of a rainy morning, for example, you would see the English clerks and storekeepers and professional men riding to their work on the omnibuses that thread their way slowly through the crowded thoroughfare. No matter how rainy the morning, these men would be seated on the tops of the omnibuses, although the interior seats might be quite unoccupied. No matter how rainy the morning, many of these men would be faultlessly attired in top hats and frock coats, and there they would sit through the drizzling rain, protecting themselves most inadequately with their opened umbrellas. Now there is a bit of conduct that you cannot find duplicated in any American city. It is a national habit,--or, perhaps, it would be better to say, it is an expression of a national trait,--and that national trait is a prejudice in favor of convention. It is the thing to do, and the typical Englishman does it, just as, when he is sent as civil governor to some lonely outpost in India, with no companions except scantily clad native servants, he always dresses conscientiously for dinner and sits down to his solitary meal clad in the conventional swallow-tail coat of civilization.

Now the way in which a Chinese cook prepares a custard, or the way in which an English merchant rides in an omnibus, may be trivial and unimportant matters in themselves, and yet, like the straw that shows which way the wind blows, they are indicative of vast and profound currents. The conservatism of the Chinese empire is only a larger and more comprehensive expression of the same trait or prejudice that leads the cook to copy literally his model. The present educational situation in England is only another expression of that same prejudice in favor of the established order, which finds expression in the merchant on the Piccadilly omnibus.

Whenever you pass from one country to another you will find this difference in tendencies to action. In Germany, for example, you will find something that amounts almost to a national fervor for economy and frugality. You will find it expressing itself in the care with which the German housewife does her marketing. You will find it expressing itself in the intensive methods of agriculture, through which scarcely a square inch of arable land is permitted to lie fallow,--through which, for example, even the shade trees by the roadside furnish fruit as well as shade, and are annually rented for their fruit value to industrious members of the community,--and it is said in one section of Germany that the only people known to steal fruit from these trees along the lonely country roads are American tourists, who, you will see, also have their peculiar standards of conduct. You will find this same fervor for frugality and economy expressing itself most extensively in that splendid forest policy by means of which the German states have conserved their magnificent timber resources.

But, whatever its expression, it is the same trait,--a trait born of generations of struggle with an unyielding soil, and yet a trait which, combined with the German fervor for science and education, has made possible the marvelous progress that Germany has made within the last half century.

What do we mean by national traits? Simply this: prejudices or tendencies toward certain typical forms of conduct, common to a given people. It is this community of conduct that constitutes a nation. A country whose people have different standards of action must be a divided country, as our own American history sufficiently demonstrates. Unless upon the vital questions of human adjustment, men are able to agree, they cannot live together in peace. If we are a distinctive and unique nation,--if we hold a distinctive and unique place among the nations of the globe,--it is because you and I and the other inhabitants of our country have developed distinctive and unique ideals and prejudices and standards, all of which unite to produce a community of conduct. And once granting that our national characteristics are worth while, that they constitute a distinct advance over the characteristics of the other nations of the earth, it becomes the manifest duty of the school to do its share in perpetuating these ideals and prejudices and standards. Once let these atrophy through disuse, once let them fail of transmission because of the decay of the home, or the decay of the school, or the decay of the social institutions that typify and express them, and our country must go the way of Greece and Rome, and, although our blood may thereafter continue pure and unmixed, and our physical characteristics may be passed on from generation to generation unchanged in form, our nation will be only a memory, and its history ancient history. Some of the Greeks of to-day are the lineal descendants of the Athenians and Spartans, but the ancient Greek standards of conduct, the Greek ideals, died twenty centuries ago, to be resurrected, it is true, by the renaissance, and to enjoy the glorious privilege of a new and wider sphere of life,--but among an alien people, and under a northern sun.

And so the true aim of the study of history in the elementary school is not the realization of its utilitarian, its cultural, or its disciplinary value. It is not a mere assimilation of facts concerning historical events, nor the memorizing of dates, nor the picturing of battles, nor the learning of lists of presidents,--although each of these factors has its place in fulfilling the function of historical study. The true function of national history in our elementary schools is to establish in the pupils' minds those ideals and standards of action which differentiate the American people from the rest of the world, and especially to fortify these ideals and standards by a description of the events and conditions through which they developed. It is not the facts of history that are to be applied to the problems of life; it is rather the emotional attitude, the point of view, that comes not from memorizing, but from appreciating, the facts. A mere fact has never yet had a profound influence over human conduct. A principle that is accepted by the head and not by the heart has never yet stained a battle field nor turned the tide of a popular election. Men act, not as they think, but as they feel, and it is not the idea, but the ideal, that is important in history.

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