Teaching, a science: the teacher an artist

CHAPTER I. CHAPTER li

The Science, or the End of Teaching, ... 45

CHAPTFR III The Toola and Instruments, . , g4

CHAPTER IV, Arranging and Managing the Material, , , . 1 1 5

CHAPTER V.

Schools, in their Kinds, Sorts and Varieties, . 16 j

IV CONTENTS.

CHAPTER VI.

Page.

Common {Sehoois, ..,..., 203

CHAPTER VII.

CHAPTER Vlll.

To the Young, . ... 289

Preface

This book is not an experiment, but an experience. Facts are here stated rather than theories ; yet the former verify the latter as held by the author, in common with numerous educators of the past and the present. The experienced may speak without ^immodesty, although many have already spoken on the same topic ; while it is not a necessary consequence that nothing remains unsaid. Should nothing new remain, the testimony of a person for years conversant with theory and practice, may aid the inquiries of many, and especially of such as are influenced by the number as well as the character of witnesses,

A right to be heard conceded, an author must still consider whether his experience has been sufficiently long and varied in favorable circumstances, to render his m#re testimony of value, in case he advances nothing new. Mis-judgment on this point is very possible. For, while men over-rate their talents and under-rate their influence, yet most think that a specialty belongs to their lives which authorizes the obtrusion of themselves upon the world.

Vi PREFACE.

The author's reasons for deeming his experience of some value are these : — During twenty-five years he has been a teacher. In the transition from boyhood he was a private tutor in a gentleman's family. His early manhood was passed, first, as principal of a State institution, and then as a professor when that institution became a college. Since then, and during the prime of life, he has been principal of schools various in their character, some incorporated, some independent and private. These schools have been, some day-schools, some boarding-schools, and others a combination of both. He has been also an assistant, and thus he has learned to follow as well as to lead, to receive as well as give orders. Mathematics, sciences, languages, and the inferior and superior branches of the english, have been taught by him ; ahd his pupils have been of several nations, of both sexes, of every age, and of two opposite colors— descendants of Ham, and also of Japhet. Schools under his care have been hundreds of miles asunder, differing in latitude, morally and politically, not less than geographically ; thus compelling him, if not inclined, to several modes of teaching, government and discipline. From all which, and similar reasons, he judges that the world will give him a favorable hearing.

But more than the force of this consi^leration is claimed for a perusal of the book : it states some things new, and some old things in a new way, and both advantageous to the educational cause. The real value, if the new things and methods are discovered, must be determined by the courteous reader.

PREFACE. Vii

In preparing the work, certain books were suggested as containing valuable hints : the author, however, declined consulting these. A few works on education, in whole or in part, have, in the course of his life, been read, but never with the least view of obtaining materials for his own. His own was to be an experience, and that cannot be transferred. He has, too, always wished to write rather than compile. Works recommended may be better or worse than this ; courtesy allows the former. But the value of this book depends not in the least on its comparative merits. Its main value is in the separate and independent testimony ; experience and inference are stamped on the pages.

Ideas derived from reading and conversation are undoubtedly in a work of this kind. They are, perhaps, in the following chapters never in a detached form ; they are woven with the texture, and contribute to form a whole piece. Possibly one or two phrases, and frequent sayings, whose parents are dead or unknown, have been adopted as the author's own ; yet he pleads guilty to the fault of being, usually, himself, and speaking his own words. He has been constantly mindful of the poet's caution about following nature — that it was his own. The fashion, of late, in educational essays, lectures and treatises, has, indeed, been the other way ; but some prefer being out of the fashion, even if they must, in consequence, be out of the world. Originality may be nothing very striking ; yet our own copper thoughts may please better than silver ideas stolen from a neighbor.^ Novelty, at least, is refreshing.

Viii PREFACE.

The younger class of professional teachers may be most interested in this work. These must, for a time, follow mainly authority. However seeming the paradox, they, who modestly submit, in earlier life, to proper authority, are the only persons that become, afterwards, independent of authority. These " grow wiser than their teachers," and are taught by masters how to become themselves authority for others. The self-willed, in spite of all empty notions of independence, are preparing for a servitude endless and severe. Humility before exaltation, dependence before freedom, is a law of our being.

Views, indeed, different from those elsewhere obtained, perhaps opposite, may be presented "in this work. Then, the young teacher must decide, whether to follow the former authorities or the new ; or he may question both. The smoothness of a too easy credence is roughened ; unthinking obedience is disturbed ; he stands in the midst of wholesome doubts. Deeper search commences, that leads to thorough investigation, not of books — these he now in a measure distrusts — but of his subject as it offers in daily practice. He is compelled to study nature. Soon comes a modification of former opinions ; and finally, a set of opinions self-originated, and compounded of old and new.

Resulting systems cautiously, slowly, and laboriously created in honest minds, independent and capable of thinking, must, of necessity, agree in essential features ; and that essential agreement is truth and nature. While different minds arrive at the same or similar conclusions, still each mind is a sep-

PREFACE. ix

arate originator. For the results are all reached by separate and independent efforts. A thinker is virtually alone in the mental world ; although the visible and tangible teems with individuals creating, at the same moment, the same systems and theories. Originality does not mean singularity. Millions see the same sun ; but each man sees for himself and not another. He does not see because others see ; and without eyes he would see nothing. So is it in the world of thought, so with all arts and sciences, and so with the art and science of teaching,

The present work is mainly valuable as one of the resulting systems. If true, it must coincide with the experience of many. Idiosyncratic peculiarities may be discovered, or possibly suspected ; yet it follows not, that seeming peculiarities may not prove, after all, truth and nature.

From these remarks, a work of this kind may not prove without value to teachers and theoretic educators, of maturer age. Few know absolutely everything belonging to their profession. Men, too, of sterling abilities are truly modest ; and when long isolated, they often become timid. Then they value highly in others, what they themselves possess in greater degree and abundance. On many points they have correct opinions ; but still they are not confident in their conclusions. Could they only know that other thinkers hold the same conclusions, they would be bold. With them, two are better than one ; although they themselves may be giants, and their comrades pigmies.

PREFACE.

But theories and practices need occasional corrections. And even seeming peculiarities in an author, may awaken a salutary suspicion of peculiarity in the reader. Habit becomes, indeed, a second nature ; still, a habit may be like an old and favorite coat- — the worse from the wearing, and scarcely worth the mending. If the book is instrumental in furnishing a better habit, although such may, at first, sit awkwardly and pinch and rub, it may, in time, make some worthy gentlemen comport themselves according to the dignity of the profession.

Books and systems of education are not reviewed in these chapters. Reasons are not studiously given for animadversion or commendation. Professed artists are allowed to furnish opinions ; and these opinions have weight with the reader according to his estimation of the author. They may, indeed, be subjected to examination ; although, where we surrender ourselves to the character of a writer, we think that a surrender to argument, and an acquiescence in logical conclusions. An author, however, who deems his opinions truth, cannot object if they are regarded as rules, whether the induction be perceived or not. His own mind is satisfied ; he presumes his opinions will benefit others. Yet, they who are moved by authority against a book or a system to-day, will easily to-morrow be moved in its favor by a greater, or possibly equal authority.

The author is willing that his remarks should be applied or appropriated justly ; but earnestly does he deprecate special application and appropriation, in any of the communities where he may have been

PREFACE.

XI a resident. Few, very tew teachers have such cause of gratitude, and to more friends and acquaintances, in different sections of the Union, than himself. He has not, indeed, been exempt from unpleasant things ; yet honestly does he affirm that all have been not more than a small drop of bitter in a full cup of sweetness. He has every reason to love his profession ; and nothing would be more painful, than a mis-appHcation or a mis-appropriation of his severe animadversions.

This book may be read without detriment by any class. It is designed, however, for teachers, theoretical and practical, and for educators generally for all who have children to educate or intend to have ; for trustees of schools, visitors^ and examiners, and all who attend examinations ; for legislators, both those who are deemed fit for the house of assembly by majorities, and those that think themselves fit, and who will be sent when the political complexion changes, and the logic of majority changes with it ; for true patriots and philanthropists, and all that would be thought such. It is designed somewhat particularly for clergymen and students of divinity. It has a very special eye to the interest of book-makers and book-mongers ; and even the book-agents, that show off and talk off school-books with an admirable liquidity of glibness, and offer " new lamps for old ones," may find in this book some profitable hints relative to their benevolent vocation.

In general, the style of the work is the simple style of testimony. No pretension is made to be

Xii PREFACE.

ranked as a book of elegant literature. The author rather walks in slippers than steps in boots. But criticism is not deprecated : the author expects to be set right where he is wrong. If scourging is merited, he may wince, but he will not whine ; and if critics are mistaken, he may perchance endeavor to show their errors. And yet, in justice to himself, it must be said that a better choice of words among synonyms, a more terse style, and an easier flow of sentences, might, perhaps, have characterized the book, if time and opportunity had been at the author's disposal. But, like his other productions, this has, of necessity, been hurried ; his study being in no particular place, and the merry sound of juvenile I'oices being ever in his ear. He will try and do better next time.

In conclusion, he says, ex animo, that he aims in this work solely at usefulness ; if he fails in that intention, his sorrow will be unfeigned.

CHAPTER I.

THE ARTIST.

The just appreciation of our own, is no disparagement of other men's office, character, or dignity. It is sometimes due to persons who sustain a character, or discharge the duties of an office, or administer a law, to set such in their true Hght. The neglect of that duty is not infrequently fraught with many and great evils. We may, at any time — we must, at certain times — magnify our office.

The character and office of the teacher, if not the first, are among the first, in importance and dignity. Nor does courtesy, or proper humility, require this remark to be restricted to the profession as it might be ; it is true of the profession as it exists. Teachers enough, of every age, and in all the grades, can be selected, who, embodying in themselves all that usually challenges admiration, insph'es confidence, and begets reverence in beholders, show plainly that the possible and desirable is in the concrete as well as the abstract. 2

14 CHAPTER I.

Measuring importance, grandeur, dignity, by the nature of a service and the end to be attained, the profession of a teacher stands eminent. Its end is to form man ; or, it fits man for his duties. The numberless essays on education ; the laws ever made in civilized nations, with the rich endowments presented by the State ; the countless books and apparatus of instruction ; the almost countless teachers and schools ; the lectures on all these principal and subordinate topics ; these, and the like, all proclaim, with endless repetition, and with a thousand voices, the opinions of the good, the wise, the learned, the patriotic, the Christian, the philosopher, and the statesman, concerning the training of man. These all say that man untaught, untrained, undisciplined, is, with all his native powers, of small value, either to himself or the world.

Not only is man placed in a world of materials, to be arranged, fashioned, wrought, and applied to uses ; but man himself, especially in his earlier days, is a material to be fashioned by his superiors, and thus to become adapted to the ends of his riper and mature state. Without the forming hand of others, man, like the unwrought materials of the earth in a confused mass, would be almost valueless. Sometimes, like these, he would be a nuisance. At best he could become but a tool in the hands of the adept and educated. lie may have much negative happiness, and be forced into industrious habits, while dwelling in an enlightened community where cultivated intellects give him the law, and guide, and govern, and protect ; but, deprived of these advan-

THE ARTIST.

tages by accident, and thrown back into the savage state, and remaining himself uneducated, he would soon degenerate into the worst forms of barbarism.

It is a great error, and it has an extensive and baleful influence on sound learning, the common opinion entertained oftener' than it is expressed, and yet often expressed in places polished and refined : that as many are rich, and prosperous, and caressed, and honored, who are without even the rudiments of education, therefore, the discipline of the schools, and of learning, is not essential. And this opinion, like a thousand similar falsities, gains strength from the unguarded remarks of pettishness and disappointment in the well-educated themselves. Yet the error is as egregious as when non-resistants, encompassed in their homes by the militia of the country, and the bulwarks of defence, tell us how secure they are in ultra-peace principles, without fighting or self-defence ! Let such pitch a tent, or rear a barkhut, in the far-oflf prairies, or the wide and tangled forest, away from friends and amid bandits, and that will test the truth of the ultra principles of non-resistants. So is it with the unlearned and undisciplined.

Would we see at once what these fortunate persons would have been without the advantages of a cultivated society for the place of their residence ? Behold it in the savage state itself ! The external difl^erences between the brute and the man are scarcely greater and more apparent than between the man of nature and the man of art ! And harsh as it may seem, we yet must ever rank, and generally speaking we deserve to rank, in the scale of

CHAPTER 1.

excellence according to the degree of our mental and moral culture.

On this point observations may be indefinitely extended ; for, after volumes should have been written to prove and illustrate the position, that man is truly man only when educated and disciplined, much and different would remain unsaid.

Is the teacher indispensably requisite to this formation ? or rather this creation ? — for an educated man is as much a creation as a painting or a statue.

The materials, indeed, of the moral and mental formation are sought by the artist within and not without his subject ; but all the qualities of the artist must belong to the teacher : quick and keen perception, the faculty of arrangement, taste, skill, tact, patience, enthusiasm ! What, then, the vastness, the dignity, the grandeur of the teacher's profession !

In some things a maker is known from his works ; in others his work is admired, but with no thought of himself. And yet in this latter class of creations or formations,the maker is no less worthy admiration, and reverence, and thanks, than in the former.

In poetry, painting, statuary, music, architecture, and some other arts, the formations of which break upon the monotony of life, and delight with comparative novelty, thus serving to recreate the minds of beholders ; or the formations of which force and rivet, for awhile, our attention, by being placed amidst surrounding objects, dull and ordinary, perhaps discordant ; in these we see the beauties, the grandeurs, at once. We spontaneously cry, How

THE ARTIST. j^

wonderful ! how delightful ! how majestic ! and, at the same moment, with feelings in unison with the real excellence of the works, we think of the maker. An isolated monument — a triumphal arch — a solemn cathedral — a stately ship, graceful in the repose of a swan-like dignity upon the bosom of still waters — awake sentiments of admiration and reverence, not only towards the works, but towards the workman and contriver.

Myriads of common things, however, awake no interest. We think no more of them and their makers than if, like mushrooms, they had fortuitously sprung from the earth. Yet many such things are intrinsically excellent ; some are grand ; and talents the most versatile, and genius the most commanding, marked the originators and doers. Who is stirred with profound emotions in beholding daily the machinery of a cotton factory, or any other wonderful, half-sentient, life-moving apparatus ? Who thinks of contrivance, and skill, and of architects, on the bank of a canal, or on a Macadamized road ? Yet great minds conceived and created these.

The surpassing glories of a diurnal sun ; the matchless beauties of a nightly moon ; the sweet fragrance of garden flowers ; or the changeful and grateful colors of the meadow's grass, do not always instantly move the soul of the beholders : but the sudden gleam of strange meteors ; or the keen vibration of the unexpected lightning ; or the awful roar of the deep-voiced thunder ; the heavy moan of the ocean's mountain waves ; or the throes of the earth's agony in the convulsions of an earthquake ;

28 CHAPTER 1.

these speak and are heard — these stir the stagnant depths of the heart, and force us to exclaim, ^' Great is God."

Thus in regard to education : its admirable and important effects are so common that, Hke the rising of the sun, and the falling of the dew, and the congealing of the frost, they ordinarily arrest no attention — they are things of course — they happened yesterday, we see them to-day, they will be to-morrow. But when some herculean achievement in literature or science, or some literary work, aside from the common track, is announced, then the mind is attentive, and notices the vast wideness of man cultivated from man in his native nothingness ; and then the true excellence of all the means of education — its schools, and colleges, and teachers, and professors, and books — all come in for a share of admiration and praise.

The teacher, in his office and profession, aims at these grand results. As such results are wonderful, noble, beneficial, so is that office full of all dignity and grandeur ; and this, whether, from the commonness of the excellencies, they are noticed and admired or not. Nay, as our souls are frequently moved in serious meditation on what is most common, so the more we consider the daily and hourly excellencies and advantages of education — the deep horror of darkness that would be, if all its lights were withdrawn or extinguished — the more shall we revere the men of instruction !

Teaching is a science ; and the teacher, redacing its principles to practice, is an artist. That many

THE ARTIST. J 9

professed teachers are incompetent, is admitted : every profession has its pretenders. That few competent teachers are fully sensible of the majesty of their office, and its many and great responsibilities, is too true : selfishness is more general and dominant than benevolence. But the true teacher is an artist. He resembles not an engineer on a steam-car, nor a helmsman at the rudder of a ship. Such men must be faithful and watchful, yet do they need little intelligence and skill beyond the ability to turn a spiggot, or to push a lever, according to rules prescribed by the master-spirits of the boiler and the compass. The existence of so many teachers, however, whose competency is only that of an ordinary engineer and helmsman, and the great deficiency on the score of generous and elevated enthusiasm in many who otherwise are masters, show how deeply rooted in the very core of the community is the belief, that education is indispensable to the well-being of that community. The heathen nations, rather than be without any God, choose a thousand : the world, for a similar reason, tolerate false teachers ; and where the good cannot be obtained, content themselves with the bad.

The true teacher is an artist — a former — a creator. Books, apparatus, systems of instruction, are his implements. With these tools he erects his edifice, he shapes his block of marble. He that depends on these tools to do his work in education, is no teacher in the lofty and proper sense of the term. He resembles more the mason that looks to the hod and trowel to erect the wall, or the statuary that

CHAPTER I.

asks the chisel to create ! Some — many — do, indeed, teach by line and rule, even as a street organist plays music by a crank : the latter produces the same tunes, with endless reiteration, till the mechanism wears out ; the former do with one mind w^hat is done with another, and by applying the same instruments, and in the same manner ! or, they administer books and lessons as quacks do their pills, potions, and panaceas ; they are equally pretenders.

No competent teacher undervalues suitable books, apparatus, and systems. But, without the competent teacher, all such things must be more or less insufficient ; sometimes they may be injurious. A botch may essay to use the tools of a master-workman ; and, although he may to many seem to use them aright, to the discerning, his work will be the same as caricature. A good carpenter will prefer, indeed, a good adze, because he can do better than with a poor one ; but the botch would often cut the worse, and in a wrong direction.

Instruments for many trades and handicrafts may be so improved that a child may do the labor of a man ; and an apprentice, or, indeed, a person ignorant of all arts, may do as well as the most adroit and skilful workman : yet not so in education. That cannot be done by mere machinery. Whoever, therefore, aims, in making school-books, at such perfection as that, in elementary education, accomplished and competent masters may be dispensed with, aims at an utter impossibility. His claims to such contrivances merit contempt. He has never been properly schooled himself He can be classed only with the makers and venders of nostrums and specifics ; and all who buy his quackeries, and, without any skill and genius of their own, expect by such means to become teachers, are like the credulous and sapient folk that procure an herb-doctor's book of directions, and his botanical chest, and commence the practice of medicine. No wise and learned man, if an honest man, can make such books ; and an honest man, without learning, is incompetent to make any books for schools.

The teacher, as an artist, possesses intellectual and moral qualifications that must class him with the best, and show that his office or profession ranks among the highest in dignity and importance. The teacher must be, among other things, a philosopher, a judge, a ruler, a parent, a preacher ; and he must be, also, learned and scientific. He must have power over himself. He must be conversant with men as well as books. He must be disinterested. He must possess an ardent love of learning, and must delight in his creations, as specimens of an approximation to the beau ideal. And this spirit, and this enthusiasm, make him press onward through difficulties and discouragements, and over obstacles and impediments, unwearied, towards the attainment of his end, unmoved by the carpings of the envious, the insolence of the rich and covetous, the revilings of the slanderous, the prejudices of the ignorant, the baseness of the fraudulent, the anger of the revengeful, the ingratitude of the thankless and the vile ! He has contemplated the way ; he has seen its dangers and darkness ; he has heard the fierce cries of 2*

22 CHAPTER 1.

the wild beasts, and the howl of the cruel tempest ! He has counted the cost, and at the end of a laborious life of toil and sweat, he has seen poverty and reproach ; and yet he has resolved that he will educate ! He has done this, even as others say, I will paint ! I will carve ! I will write !

This man's reward is not the paltry price so often, so very often, doled out by grudging spirits, and with an unwilling hand and a supercilious brow, as if the pittance were more than a price ! as if a master gave something to a slave ! or as if the teacher receiving his fee were a hateful necessity to be borne — a beggar to be fed ! No ! the teacher's soul, stung, indeed, at meanness, suspicion, distrust, thanklessness ; pitying ignorance, with its self-complacency and conceit ; indignant at the repetition of petty frauds — his soul soars away up, far above the grovelling, and looks from the lofty heights far onward, when his productions shall stand majestic among the cultivated sons of earth ! He sees his children enacting and guarding laws, administering justice, defending right, punishing evil, vindicating the wronged and oppressed, patronizing the arts, repelling the invader, by skill as well as by force ; he sees him, with keen and burnished weapons, asserting and defending truth ! he sees him an ambassador from God to man — a preacher of the gospel of Christ ! And then calmly, yet with a thrill, does the teacher await that day, when the voice of One shall say, before assembled worlds, " Well done ! thou good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord !"

Rarely does the world see in an artist more than his skill. What constitutes skill few can explain ; few, indeed, can understand in what it consists, if it were explained. Generally, practice is deemed skill. The differences between an ordinary and a great painter, or between an inferior and a superior poet, are regarded as differences o^ practice ! Rules, it is supposed, are in existence, by a persevering compliance with which any one may become an artist, and emerge from dim obscurity to broad light — may become, at last, a master !

The importance of rule, embodying the wisdom and discovery of experience in the past, and tested by the daily application of laborious diligence, is acknowledged. Rule is even necessary to skill. But he that reaches the summit heights in art, must have genius, and be a philosopher.

Rules are only the expression of principles and truths, in their broadest shapes and forms. They present merely the tangible and visible ; they cannot embody what is ethereal and spiritual. What rules do show, is truth ; and what is formed in art, must have essentially all that rules contain. And the formation must have also what rules do not contain : it must have sometimes more — sometimes less — sometimes a difference and variety — and always a vitality, a breathing spirit, not in the rules. That spirit must be bt^thed into the creation by the artist himself ! Indefinable things, and countless, rules cannot contain ; they were never made to contain them ! Sounds to move the soul with sadness, or joy, can never be evoked from an imperfect in-

24 CHAPTER 1.

strument of music even by a master's hand ; and yet, in vain does other than a master's hand touch the keys or strings of a perfect instrument ! The other may play by note and he may play by rule ; but his performance will be noise in comparison of the master's melody.