The pupil versus the teacher

Preface

THE CHIEF PRACTICAL AIM OF THIS BOOK IS TO ELEVATE THE POSITION OF THE TEACHER BY INTERPRETING SCHOOL LIFE OF TO-DAY IN THE LIGHT OF ITS HISTORY AND FROM THE STANDPOINT OF AN IDEAL- ISTIC PHILOSOPHY.

PHILADELPHIA, NOVEMBER, I9OO

Contents

PAQE

I . THE PUPIL VERSUS THE

TEACHER i

CHAPTER I. Historic Developments

In the olden time a child was often viewed as a little lump of wickedness; to-day too often as a little angel. The see-saw of history has seldom brought about a stranger change. During the Nineteenth Century the young Hercules, natural science, has come forward with giant strides. Though fraught with much good to the human race, yet a multitude of evils has followed in its wake. A hundred years have passed and the threatening clouds of the French Revolution still hover over us. Has that great experiment in democracy been a failure? In belittling the past and in its hatred for those in power, did it not go too far? In trying to begin anew, did it not wish to throw away the very foundations on which it must build? With much of this spirit in our life to-day, may we not be in danger of losing the soul of truth hidden in the errors of the older age?

Long, long before that terrible outburst, were sown the seeds of the new gospel, and when the fury of the storm had been spent, scarcely any side of human life had escaped. Of all the changes good and bad, that followed, the school got its share, and there is need to look more deeply into the thoughts upon which our school work is grounded with a view to getting rid of the evils, and by holding to the good, raise school work to a higher plane.

Laissez faire in economics, do-as-you-please in ethical theory, unbridled freedom in abstract democracy, and natural individualism in education have as their rock-bottom thought this assumption: What is natural, is good. When that is cast into the limbo of departed vanities, where it should be, the writings of the naturalist school may be rated at their real worth.

A little thinking will show that the word "natural" is quite rubber-like; it can be stretched to cover many sins. Certain easy-going folk, whose consciences take vacations, need never be without a balm to heal the wounds which otherwise would prove painful. Their wrong-doing comes natural to them. Certain light-fingered gentry may find their hands wandering toward somebody's pocket. Perhaps such is easy and natural for him to do; though, as a reason for theft it will be likely to carry little weight with the policeman who gets hold of the thief.

Even were every natural thing easy, it would not therefore be good. In the widest meaning of the word, everything is natural, and if what is natural is good, everything is good. This is shocking enough to one's moral sense to bring the whole thought under suspicion. Much that is natural is surely bad and is so treated by writers who tell us to do this and that, or to use this method and that method because it is the natural one. That some things are good and should be sought for, and others bad and should be avoided, is true alike of law, morals, religion and economics.

Should nature be our guide? Should we do as nature does? Nature may mean so many things that it means nothing. Nature neither weeps nor rejoices. Often cruel, merciless and wasteful, nature would justify the most bloodthirsty deeds that blacken the pages of history. "Nature, as positive observation reveals her to us, is a thing that can have no claim either on our reverence or our approbation. Once apply any moral test to her conduct, and as J. S. Mill has so forcibly pointed out, she becomes a monster. There is no crime that men abhor or perpetrate that nature does not commit daily on an exaggerated scale. She knows no sense either of justice or mercy. ... At one moment she will be blessing a country with plenty, peace and sunshine; and ^he will the next moment ruin the whole of it by an earthquake. Now she is the image of thrift, now of prodigality; now of the utmost purity, now of the most revolting filth; and if, as I say, she is to be judged by any moral standard at all, her capacities for what is admirable not only make her crimes the darker, but they also make her virtues partake of the nature of sin."

The friend of naturalism who urges a choice of the good things in nature, so far gives up his fight and owns that he has been sailing under false colors, for he sees that it is the goodness of the thing and not its naturalness that makes it worthy of our choice. Nature from a human standpoint is a mixture of good and bad, though, as having no personality, deserving neither praise nor blame, it may be better to say nature is morally indifferent. Knowing this, it becomes our task rather to raise natural forces to a moral level, than to sit idly by and growl at the fate or ill luck that placed us here, like a brute growling at the sunshine and too lazy to find or make a shady place for himself.

In the childhood of the race man was warlike and savage; he built a wall about his city; his lower nature ruled; he knew little how to fight disease, famine and pestilence, and perhaps less how to make nature's powers serve him. As the race grew older, his warlike nature slowly became softened ; he even comforts his dying enemy and nurses the wounded back to health; the old, the feeble and unfortunate are lovingly cared for; nature's forces are harnessed; and man's better parts grow in power over the worse.

Were we to think naturalism altogether bad, we would do a great wrong. Great is its faith in the goodness of man; yet with all its truth, it fails to mark off sharply the good from the bad; it gives us no test we can trust; and in its eagerness to foster the good, it forgets to crush out the bad. Both its virtues and vices have found a place in the school-room; and helped by a great philosophy of the day, it has given to childhood a meaning unique in the history of education.

CHAPTER II. Evolution and School Method

Closely linked with the doctrine of naturalism has been the great law of evolution, which though bearing many words of wisdom, yet more than once has been a harbor for those who like to back up their fads by a catchy phrase or strike their enemies dumb by uttering the magical words of a popular philosophic formula, "From the homogeneous to the heterogeneous." Yet with all its faults I love it still. In one way it has been worked almost to death. Its upholders, fixing their gaze chiefly upon the good things it has brought, have twisted its meaning in the interest of that easy-going optimism which finds in a new phrase a cure-all for the woes of the world. There is a darker side to the picture.

Though we can not say with Schopenhauer that this world is the worst of all possible worlds, for we can fancy it much worse; neither can we say with Leibnitz that it is the best. Wickedness as well as goodness has evolved. The mere fact of evolution carries with it no guarantee of righteousness. Evolution is not a moral law; the survival of the fittest is not now upon a moral plane, and therein lies its greatest weakness.

The growth of knowledge has wrought changes in the ways of teaching children ancl governing them. New methods seem to spring up like mushrooms. Teachers are urged to teach this, because the child likes it; or that, because it is interesting; or the other, because it is natural. These stand or fall with their underlyingassumptions: What the child likes is therefore good — What is interesting is therefore good — What is natural is therefore good. None of these is the real ground of our choice either of branches to be taught or methods of teaching. Each may be good, but not necessarily good. Each may be worth something to the teacher, but only as a means to an end, and the end must be ethical. Wherever the child's likings and interests override the moral ideal, those likings should be rendered harmless. What is special to each child can be fostered in the school-room only when it conforms to the ethical laws which the school aims to realize. Not to do so brings lawlessness into the school under the plea of individual freedom and makes the whims of childhood the guide of our school practice. It were vain to deny that danger lurks in the free rein given to Young America.

The Revival of Learning; the Reformation; the break-up of the feudal system; the uprisings of the people against constituted authority; the growth of natural science with its companions, agnostic philosophy and hedonistic ethics, have all helped to carry the principle of individual freedom far beyond reasonable bounds, even in some cases so far as to declare too much freedom to be impossible and all restraint criminal. At bottom it is a question of what kind of freedom we are to have; the best is the only kind worthy of the name and that is moral freedom. The sooner we adapt our school methods to that end the better.

The results of the new methods in education do not bear out their rosy promises ; the trouble is in the methods, which are based on a onesided view of human nature, and though their main strength has come from the evolutionists, yet if we look more searchingly into the facts of evolution, there will be found much showing how poorly its meaning has been read.

If the law of evolution be true, what is the child? Not a bundle of goodness, by any means. Indeed, it has been said, "Man was formerly little less than an angel; evolution has made him little more than a monkey." In body and mind the child of the civilized man shows many traits characteristic of the adult savage. The facts gathered by Darwin and others point to a more or less brutal ancestry. In spite of the work of the Peace Societies and other humanizing agencies, "the ape and tiger" in man are rather slow in dying. In the year of our Lord 1900, certain brawny bruisers received over $30,000 for pummeling each other in the presence of several thousand spectators. It is needless to multiply instances illustrating the ways in which natural impulses seek satisfaction even in the centres of civilization.

Compare the civilized adult with the child according to the theory of evolution. The man is farther removed from savagery. He has passed through stages, physical, mental and moral, which are unmeaning to the child. The child concerns himself with things rather than thoughts, with physical activities rather than selfcriticism. He likes tales of fairies, goblins, dragons and other monsters; the grotesque and abnormal delight him; he admires bigness rather than moral character. These impair his judgment, while wider and more varied experience makes man the more responsible being and gives a balance of mind and worth of judgment impossible to the child. In his ability to organize, in his greater specialization of function, in his knowledge and guidance of industrial forces, man proves himself on a higher economic plane than the child. Eliminating individual exceptions and allowing for the conflict of economic and physical with the moral and aesthetic and the many ways in which they intertwine and change each other, our abstract comparison proves man better than the child. Such is the result evolution leads us to look for and such we would expect on Ziller's culture epoch theory.

With even greater force the same truth applies to the teacher. If the ordinary man be superior to the child, still greater is the superiority of the teacher, socially, mentally, morally, aesthetically and economically. The teacher is one of the favored few. Less than ten per cent, of the pupils that begin education in the elementary schools ever reach the high schools. If education elevates, not many pupils will attain the eminence of the teacher.

The teacher then being theoretically and, as a rule, practically a better being than the child, let us examine some obvious conditions of American life to see whether the teacher is rated at her true worth.

CHAPTER III. The Child vs. the Teacher

On more than one occasion a certain supervising principal said, "Nine-tenths of the disorder in the school-room is the fault of the teacher." This and other sayings of his rest on the assumption, "The child has a right to take advantage of the teacher and the teacher must blame herself if she can not prevent him." Many a time a teacher on taking an unruly boy to that principal, was told, "Miss B., it is your fault." A not very polite but quite forcible proverb sums up that principal's individualistic philosophy, "Each one for himself and the devil take the hindmost."

Teachers commenting on deficiencies in the children were told, "It is your duty to teach this, that and the other to overcome these deficiencies." She could take nothing for granted. The child was all rights, no duties; the teacher all duties and no rights that the child was bound to respect. Such a theory stands almost self-condemned. It is a glaring and extreme reaction from the historical school and not only fails to make allowance for the obvious deductions from the theory of evolution, but also overlooks facts essential to the ethical adjustment of the relations between pupil and teacher.

When the child becomes a god needing propitiation, and the teacher a worshiper at the shrine, the teacher's position is certainly humiliating. More than one American boy views the teacher as a lawful prey. Flashy, trashy novels, the influence of the streets, the comparative laxity of home discipline help to render many children less ruly in school and the teacher's lot more burdensome. Even in the high schools, pupils play tricks on their betters, the professors, and even conspire to produce disorder in the class. Children and especially spoiled ones have too much power, and they feel it and exercise it. Having its basis in naturalism, it manifests a contempt for authority, a don't-care-I-do-as-I-please spirit. It is no uncommon thing to hear a pupil speak disrespectfully of a teacher. "Do you think I'm going to mind her?" Some even are brazen enough to say to a teacher, "You are only a public servant. My father pays his taxes. I am entitled to an education."

Such a system in sacrificing the teacher sacrifices the school work also. A few determined, vicious pupils have a teacher almost at their mercy. Only the exceptional teacher can stand the strain of discipline and suffer but little therefrom. In theory teachers are granted but little authority; to maintain that they must be wideawake, continually on the alert, meeting each outbreak as it occurs; held responsible for successful teaching and discipline by supervisors, assistant superintendents, directors and parents, no wonder many teachers go home wearied and worried and perhaps passing a sleepless night or disturbed by bad dreams, return to school in an irri-

ii table frame of mind. A teacher may be very good morally and possess ability to communicate knowledge and yet fail in an American school because she is lacking in the doubtfully desirable qualities of the police officer. Not only the teacher but also the best boys and girls in a class suffer from the disorder occasioned partly by lax theories. Just as the good citizen pays for the keep of criminals in the jails, so does the good pupil pay for the disorder caused by the bad. The bad boy is kept in the room at the expense of the good, the better sacrificed for the worse.

My appeal is therefore for greater strictness and less laxity; for increase in the authority of the teacher and decrease in the power of the children.

I once heard an eminent Philadelphia economist and theologian say, "The American child is the terror of the European hotel. In reaction from the strict methods of our forefathers the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction. Let us help to get it back to the right place."

In a lecture delivered July 6, 1900, Professor Schoenrich said, "The fundamental evil in American education is a lack of training to obedience. 'Obedience is the first duty of the pupil, of the child, of man,' is one of the first principles in the German system of education. 'But in a free country,' we often hear said, 'we have no right to compel the child to obedience; it must be convinced by reasoning.' Aye, if children understood reasoning it would not be necessary to first educate them."

Referring" to tricks played by pupils, I once heard a French professor say, "Such sings would not be sought of at ze Academie." I have reason to believe that they would not be tolerated in Germany, either.

Speaking of desirable methods a principal said. "The teacher should win the respect of the pupils. " So utterly perverted has become the standpoint! Stated in that abstract way, I do not hesitate to say that the very reverse is nearei the truth, "The pupils should win the respect ol the teacher." Respect is a relative term. There are different kinds. The teacher, as such, is entitled to respect for her authority. It is not to be won. It is to be given as deserved. It should be guaranteed. We now have the anomaly of compulsory education without compulsory obedience. The very idea of teacher as superior and of pupil as inferior carries with it the fundamental assumption of obedience to authority. Pupils are not at school to be critics of the teacher; the teacher is not there at their approval. Criticism, appointment and removal of a teacher should be the function of her superiors, not her inferiors. Qualities that one pupil will respect another may not. On any decent ethical theory a teacher is entitled to respect from pupils by virtue of her superior intellectual abilities, her moral character, her recommendations and appointment by those far wiser than children. If she is to win respect, it must be respect for additional qualifications, such as brilliancy, lovableness, not for her authority. The integrity of the school rests upon the inferiority of pupil to teacher and the obedience of the former to the latter. That is absolutely essential; for we often obey and respect those whom we do not love and often disrespect and disobey those whom we do. Does that sound odd? None the less it is true. Respect for authority, not love, is the absolutely necessary requisite for a school system. We may have both, but if one must go, let it be love. American children have not yet reached that culture epoch in which love is all in all.

Here we may be met by the example of Pestalozzi. But let those using Pestalozzi show how he would work in Philadelphia to-day. Could teachers establish relations with pupils as did Pestalozzi? Would it be desirable if they could? Is there no essential difference in the conditions of American life and influence of American institutions, which spoils the analogy and weakens the force of the argument? Moreover, Pestalozzi's methods of teaching would scarcely meet with the approval of any board of education at this end of the nineteenth century.

In view of all the facts, do we not pay too much in misdirected effort, nervous prostration, waste of school supplies and the long train of evils caused by disorderly pupils? Is it not too much of a sacrifice to give the teacher so little authority, so many functions and so much responsibility?

Believing our present system works injustice to all concerned, I submit the following suggestions as indicating lines along which we may profitably direct our investigations :

i. Minimize discipline by minimizing need ror it in the school-room, and thereby

2. Minimize the nervous strain on the teacher

(a) Guaranteeing respect for her authority in the matter of order.

(b) More varied and efficient punishment than we now have.

(c) Holding pupils and parents more responsible than we do now.

3. (a) If the teacher be given proper authority and commensurate means for enforcing it, then she can be held strictly responsible for both order and successful teaching of the subjects.

(b) If, however, she be denied the appropriate means for enforcing her authority in the school-room, she can be held responsible for neither.

(c) If responsibility for order be thrown on parents, pupils and principals, then the teacher can be held responsible only for successful teaching of the subjects.

I therefore call in question the ethical basis underlying the relations now theoretically subsisting between pupil and teacher.

I shall now pass to a consideration of certain methods recommended for maintaining order in school.

CHAPTER IV. The Futility of Reasoning

Reasoning with children is not so good as it has been painted. The child as such is impulsive rather than rational. The limitations of his mind prevent him from seeing his conduct in the light of high moral reasons. No reasons are likely to change the mind of a pupil prone to argue. Moreover, the pupil that appreciates the reasons inherent in conduct and can ac + because of them will seldom be in need of reasoning or moral suasion. What reasons can be given for good conduct in school? Duty to self, to classmates, to teacher, to parents, to society; these may be reinforced by love of teacher and parents, by the desire to please them, by the honor of having done well, by the other good results that follow and the bad ones avoided. Are not these the very best of reasons? If these reasons do not make a pupil good, reason is futile. More than one teacher has found that out by bitter experience.

Moreover, unless judiciously used, reasoning has a tendency to lower the teacher to the level of the pupil. It has the appearance of putting the teacher under obligation to justify her conduct to the pupil, who may come in time to view it as his right to have an explanation of the teacher. The opposite course is far better. He is to obey because he is pupil; she to require obedience becaues she is teacher; the reasons therefor the pupil will understand and appreciate when older, though he may already know the most important. A fallacy runs through the entire argument in favor of reasoning and moral suasion — namely, when he knows what is right, he will therefore do what is right. Non sequitur, as any intelligent person knows. Not only so, but we often suppose a child does not know, when he does. After going to school for six or seven years he is a stupid child that does not know what the school requires in the way of order. Try a seventh grade child; ask him why talking is wrong in the school-room; select other instances of disorderly conduct; question him skilfully, aiming to discover reasons he could bring against it. You will find he knows quite well what is right, but in common with many older folks fails to do right. Let the teacher assume her function self-sufficient, not needing justification, giving the pupil no right to an explanation. The school is good; the pupil must assume that. The teacher gives only right commands; he must assume that. To allow a pupil to question either is to strike a blow at the very foundation of school discipline.

Appealing to a boy's sense of duty and sense of honor is often useless. Those most in need of it are as a rule those least affected by it. Boys loving honor and revering duty give a teacher no trouble; and in a different sense there is that American "schoolboy honor" whose chief pride lies in shielding culprits. In the strict sense appealing to honor and duty is appealing to motives yet unborn.

The few vicious and turbulent spirits in a class that look upon school as a prison, upon the teacher as a tyrant, view an appeal to honor and duty as a confession of weakness. In so far as it partakes of the nature of reasoning it is open to all the objections stated above.

Love and kindness are not cure-alls. When injudiciously used, when bestowed on the undeserving, their effects are decidedly bad. Need I mention teachers that have failed because they were too kind, too loving, too good-natured? Love and kindness are more or less relative terms; what is kindness to one may not be to another. Frank appreciates his teacher more because kind; John views kindness as a sign of weakness, a bribe almost, and he takes advantage of the teacher. Forgiveness may come too easy and be unjust; and often the disapproval of the teacher amounts to nothing because John respects not the teacher and values not her approval. When the teacher's authority is absolute and unquestioned, then love and kindness become valuable, additional methods; but while children remain selfish and narrow and fail in duty, so long will love and kindness carry with them no guarantee against imposition. Not love and kindness, but respect for authority and fear of the consequences keep children in order the first days they go to their new teacher. Well and good if she can maintain that order; but let the strangeness wear off and "familiarity breed contempt," she may as well bid good-bye to those first few pleasant days of the new term. Have you never heard it said,

''Miss So-and-So is a successful teacher; she has good order; she gets it by love and kindness"?

But does she get it first by love and kindness? Does she not realize her authority of paramount importance in back of it all? Will she not become more distant and dignified if her authority be in danger, and uphold it and preserve it at the expense of her kindness ?

A teacher may be kind and dignified too. The pupil may always feel the act coming as from a superior. In these democratic days we are prone to let down the bars between unequals and suffer the consequences. What is a kind teacher? Is it one that gives presents or pets the pupils? Or just one that is not harsh? Such kindness is not positive, but negative or neutral, meaning simply absence of cruelty. Is the kind teacher one that gives encouragement to all? Surely not; for stated thus abstractly she must encourage the bad and undeserving as well as the good. Indiscriminate kindness and encouragement are injustices. Not any inherent virtue in kindness per se, but the self-evident justice in encouraging the deserving makes our acts worthy.

Just as kindness in the teacher may mean absence of cruelty, so may goodness in a pupil mean only absence of badness. The good boy is often a passive one; the bad often active. He that refrains from disorder is good, whatever be his motives; he that commits disorder is bad, whatever be his motives. The activity of the bad boy makes him prominent and his example is more impressive than that of the good boy who is unobtrusive. Time and time again have I heard a boy try to excuse his own misconduct by appealing to the bad behavior of some one whose example he followed; never have I heard a boy condemn his own misconduct by comparing it with the good conduct of a better boy whose example he should have followed. So great is the selfrighteousness of the American child! "Two wrongs make a right" is the fundamental principle of the moral arithmetic of the angelic (?) pupil, and sometimes of his parents also.

To be more specific, the bad boy is to the good as positive malevolence to "negative beneficence," the former expressing itself in active aggressions disregarding the rights of others, the latter in passive non-participation in aggressions rather than in positive measures helping to secure greater respect for the rights of others.

"Secure order by having interesting lessons." Interest is not a cure-all. Pupils may become so interested as to create disorder by jumping out of their seats, jostling each other and by talking about the interesting lesson make it difficult for the teacher to restore order and continue her work. Interest is relative. All can not be equally interested. Not only so, but there are cases in which it is the order that makes the lesson interesting and not the reverse. A lesson not interesting when the class is disorderly often becomes interesting when order is restored. Why? Perhaps because the principal comes into the room. Pupils brighten up, answer the questions asked, attend earnestly to the lesson which would have been just as interesting in the absence of the principal had they been orderly. No change in the teacher or her methods, but fear of the constituted authority producing order, made interest possible. This same truth underlies the maxim. "We must have order or we cannot teach."

Interest really the means to an end has tended to become the end itself. It has its limits. If what is interesting is good, then what is most interesting is most good. Determining our course of study accordingly, for the boys we might introduce blood and thunder tales of the wild and woolly West; for the girls love stories, the fashions and other vanities of femininity; for both, the comic pages of our Sunday journals, stories of the knight and his lady fair and the court intrigues of the Middle Ages. In addition to this entertaining material ,the boys might be given a course in practical pugilism supplemented by study of the lives of great prize-fighters from Heenan and Savers to Corbett and Jeffries. How interesting! But sufficiently absurd to bid us pause. Yet such absurdity is the legitimate conclusion of a naturalistic view making interest the be-all and end-all of school methods. Children are interested in many things not good for them. The existence of a principle guiding our choice of interests demonstrates how thoroughly our methods must be subordinated to moral law, to the absolute Ought determining our needs as rational beings.