Craftsmanship in Teaching

IV

But what are the spe­cif­ic ide­als and stan­dards for which our na­tion stands and which dis­tin­guish, in a very broad but yet ex­plic­it man­ner, our con­duct from the con­duct of oth­er peo­ples? If we were to ask this ques­tion of an old­er coun­try, we could more eas­ily ob­tain an an­swer, for in the old­er coun­tries the na­tion­al ide­als have, in many cas­es, reached an ad­vanced point of self-​con­scious­ness. The ed­uca­tion­al ma­chin­ery of the Ger­man em­pire, for ex­am­ple, turns up­on this prob­lem of im­press­ing the na­tion­al ide­als. It is one aim of the of­fi­cial cours­es of study, for in­stance, that his­to­ry shall be so taught that the pupils will gain an over­ween­ing rev­er­ence for the reign­ing house of Ho­hen­zollern. Nor is that new­er ide­al of na­tion­al uni­ty which had its seed sown in the Fran­co-​Prus­sian War in any dan­ger of ne­glect by the watch­ful eye of the gov­ern­ment. Not on­ly must the teach­er im­press it up­on ev­ery oc­ca­sion, but ev­ery at­tempt is al­so made to bring it dai­ly fresh to the minds of the peo­ple through great mon­uments and memo­ri­als. Scarce­ly a ham­let is so small that it does not pos­sess its Bis­mar­ck _Denkmal_, of­ten sit­uat­ed up­on some com­mand­ing hill, telling to each gen­er­ation, in the sub­lime po­et­ry of form, the great­ness of the man who made Ger­man uni­ty a re­al­ity in­stead of a dream.

But in our coun­try, we do not thus con­scious­ly for­mu­late and ex­press our na­tion­al ide­als. We rec­og­nize them rather with avert­ed face as the ado­les­cent boy rec­og­nizes any virtue that he may pos­sess, as if half-​ashamed of his weak­ness. We have mon­uments to our heroes, it is true, but they are of­ten in­ac­ces­si­ble, and as of­ten they fail to con­vey in any ad­equate man­ner, the great­ness of the lessons which the lives of these heroes rep­re­sent. Where Ger­many has a hun­dred or more im­pres­sive memo­ri­als to the ge­nius of Bis­mar­ck, we have but one ad­equate memo­ri­al to the ge­nius of Wash­ing­ton, while for Lin­coln, who rep­re­sents the typ­ical Amer­ican stan­dards of life and con­duct more faith­ful­ly than any oth­er one char­ac­ter in our his­to­ry, we have no memo­ri­al that is at all ad­equate,--and we should have a thou­sand. Some day our peo­ple will awake to the pos­si­bil­ities that in­here in these pal­pa­ble ex­pres­sions of the im­pal­pa­ble things for which our coun­try stands. We shall come to rec­og­nize the vast ed­uca­tive im­por­tance of per­pet­uat­ing, in ev­ery pos­si­ble way, the deep truths that have been es­tab­lished at the cost of so much blood and trea­sure.

To em­body our na­tion­al ide­als in the per­son­ages of the great fig­ures of his­to­ry who did so much to es­tab­lish them is the most el­emen­tary method of in­sur­ing their con­ser­va­tion and trans­mis­sion. We are be­gin­ning to ap­pre­ci­ate the val­ue of this method in our in­tro­duc­to­ry cours­es of his­to­ry in the in­ter­me­di­ate and low­er gram­mar grades. The his­tor­ical study out­lined for these grades in most of our state and city school pro­grams in­cludes main­ly bi­ograph­ical ma­te­ri­als. As long as the pur­pose of this study is kept steadi­ly in view by the teach­er, its val­ue may be very rich­ly re­al­ized. The dan­ger lies in an ob­scure con­cep­tion of the pur­pose. We are al­ways too prone to teach his­to­ry di­dac­ti­cal­ly, and to teach bi­ograph­ical his­to­ry di­dac­ti­cal­ly is to miss the mark en­tire­ly. The aim here is not pri­mar­ily in­struc­tion, but in­spi­ra­tion; not mere­ly learn­ing, but al­so ap­pre­ci­ation. To tell the sto­ry of Lin­coln's life in such a way that its true val­ue will be re­al­ized re­quires first up­on the part of the teach­er a sin­cere ap­pre­ci­ation of the great les­son of Lin­coln's life. Lin­coln typ­ifies the most sig­nif­icant and rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Amer­ican ide­als. His ca­reer stands for and il­lus­trates the great­est of our na­tion­al prin­ci­ples,--the prin­ci­ple of equal­ity,--not the equal­ity of birth, not the equal­ity of so­cial sta­tion, but the equal­ity of op­por­tu­ni­ty. That a child of the lowli­est birth, reared un­der con­di­tions ap­par­ent­ly the most un­fa­vor­able for rich de­vel­op­ment, lim­it­ed by the sternest pover­ty, by lack of for­mal ed­uca­tion, by lack of fam­ily pride and tra­di­tions, by lack of an en­vi­ron­ment of cul­ture, by the hard ne­ces­si­ty of earn­ing his own liveli­hood al­most from ear­li­est child­hood,--that such a man should at­tain to the high­est sta­tion in the land and the proud­est em­inence in its his­to­ry, and should have ac­quired from the ap­par­ent­ly un­fa­vor­able en­vi­ron­ment of his ear­ly life the very qual­ities that made him so ef­fi­cient in that sta­tion and so per­ma­nent in that em­inence,--this is a mir­acle that on­ly Amer­ica could pro­duce. It is this con­cep­tion that the teach­er must have, and this he must, in some mea­sure, im­press up­on his pupils.