Theory and practice of teaching

Front matter

THEORY AND PRACTICE

OF

TEACHING.

Preface To The First Edition

It is ill protesting too much. Many good resolutions of silence made and confirmed during thirty years of school-work, as every hope of a public character which brightened the early days was destroyed, have been broken by the appearance of this book. Success only strengthened the conviction that it was useless to speak; and yet when the conviction seemed strongest some folly has swept it away. Or is it instinct, like the prescient idiotcy of the butterfly, that lays its eggs on cabbage leaf, or nettle, forced by a blind impulse to thwart its ov/n experience, and deposit part of its life where no sign warrants an idea that it will be allowed to live? Perhaps a strong behef that anything, which has a touch of true life in it, will live somewhere or viil Preface to the Fh^st Edition.

other is at the bottom of it all, however overlaid by chiller wisdom. So this bit of life goes forth. And if it does any work or worker good, cheers, or helps a single toiling fellow-creature, the writer will have had his reward. It may be that another hand and heart may take this up, enrich it with wealth of his own, fill it full of prevailing power, and send it on, a higher creation, in a fortunate hour, to a happier end.

The School House, Uppingham, May, 1S83.

Preface To The Second Edition

He, who from whatever motive appears for a lost cause, may be well pleased at obtaining a hearing ; and need not wonder if the toleration granted him be somewhat due to an unconsciousness of the meaning of his statements. If a nation has in practice decided against teaching, it is likely that they will take the word in their own sense and refuse to admit a different interpretation of it. Hence the uselessness of speaking on the subject. But the hope that a worker's words might cheer and help fellow-workers has been fully verified. So the author, joining hands with English-speaking brethren in far distant lands, sends out this second edition

X Preface to the Second Edition.

cheered and strengthened himself by having cheered and strengthened others ; certain now that there are seeds of hfe in it, which touch the lives of others^ even as they came out of his own hfe first.

The School House, Uppingham, May, 1885.

Chapter I. Page

011a Podrida

CHAPTER n.

The Philosopher's Stone i8

CHAPTER ni.

Legs not Wings 41

CHAPTER IV.

Stupidity banished • , 56 xii Contents.

CHAPTER V.

PAGE Market Price, and Real Value. The Auctioneer's Hammer,

and the Swine-herd's Horn ...... 65

CHAPTER VI.

Real Value. Growing eyes . . . , , , • 83

CHAPTER VII.

Observation. Mental Law. Accuracy 94

CHAPTER VIII.

The Schoolboy's Briar-patch, Latin and Greek . . . 103

CHAPTER IX.

The Furniture Shop, and the Skilled Workman . . .121

CHAPTER X.

Contents. xiii.

Part II. The Practice Of Teaching

CHAPTER I.

PAGE

The Workman, and the Reader . . , , , . 143

CHAPTER H.

The Raw Material, Structure, Teaching .... 149

CHAPTER HI.

The Lecturer 157

CHAPTER IV.

Thought-stamps J not Argument . . . . . , • 164

CHAPTER V.

Inattention, Indifference, Sleep . . . . • • I73

CHAPTER VL Memory. Feed it • 183 xiv Contents,

CHAPTER VII.

PAGE

The Blurred Chromograph. Sham Mistakes. Snores. Lunatic Mistakes. No Answers . . . . . .192

CHAPTER VIII.

Run the Goose down . , 202

CHAPTER IX.

Playing with the bat upside down 210

CHAPTER X.

CHAPTER XI.

Thought governs Words 226

CHAPTER XII.

A schoolboy's chapter « 237

CHAPTER XIII.

Punishment . « 245

CHAPTER XIV.

The dead hand, and the Shadow of death . , . « 252

PART I,

CHAPTER I.

THE THEORY OF TEACHING.

Olla Podrida,

Some people have thought that vast changes demand something more definite to justify them than a vast difficulty; and sympathise with the hares in the fable, who wished to know a little more about the noise behind them before they leapt into the pit in front. Theorists have even ventured to imagine that a clear perception of elementary principles tested by practical experience should precede action on a large scale. There have existed men bold enough to hint in private that work involving the most varied and skilful application of mind and machinery is no fit subject for amateur authority. It has even been asserted that m very compHcated working conditions, if the skilled workman does not know how to do the work, at least no one else does. England has found her difficulty, and appears to be in a state of uneasy self-satisfaction about education.

T. I

2 Indicrestio7i and crudities.

o

School-buildings are being put up everywhere. And if school-buildings are schools, be happy, the thing is done. There is much Inspecting going on everywhere. And if Inspectors are schools, be happy, the thing is done. Droves of children are driven in every^vhere. And if droves of children are schools, be happy, the thing is done. There is much boasting of the money spent in schools, as if the more spent the better the deed, with somewhat the complacence of the miUionaire, who glorifies his new potatoes because they cost a guinea apiece; but those who eat them are not quite clear whether the guinea-apiece glow, or the indigestion, is the right feeling. For indigestion there is; a great deal of it. The restless movements betray stomachs ill at ease. There is no peace. Everybody talks. Cabinet Ministers lay down the law. Philosophers lay down the law. The very school-boys lay down the law. And the public take sides with much vehemence. That is easy : for there are many sides to take. The congratulations of one Cabinet Minister are met by the sarcasms of another; philosopher finds philosopher bar the way; and partizans have every opportunity, that diversity of opinion and total absence of experience can give, of following their own predilections. There is however a general agreement in crying out for different novelties to be taught, without casting a thought on the question whether any real teaching is as yet possible; or even whether any power of teaching anything properly is in existence. There is a great cry for new subjects; but no voice raised for new teaching. Possibly because most people are acquainted with books; whilst the idea of

Schools are silent, gurgoyles spout, 3

dealing with minds may be unknown. At all events, known or unknown, no one names the unwelcome stranger. But there is much rushing to and fro, much confident action, much dead pressure, authority busy at work, and that general infallibiUty of dictation, which betokens a great outbreak with all its wants and all the inexperience of experimenting. It may seem curious that whilst this irruption has burst into the realm of school, overrun school-husbandry, and swarmed like locusts over the land, one voice has not been heard, and in one quarter a great silence has reigned. Schools have been invaded; schools have been operated on; and schools have been dumb. But it is not unnatural. The voice of the skilled workman, who has spent his life in trying to teach, finds nothing to invite speech. Their lips have been sealed. Wliy speak when so many are speaking? What chance of being heard, when everybody knows what no one has tried so much better than those who have, and who bring nothing but the harvest of their lives into the fray ?

So no one, who has observed the laws of human action, will wonder at this absence of the skilled workman, for when the waters are muddied the fish are not seen. But mud is not reform, though often mistaken for it. A sudden awakening to new needs in an old domain always creates this turmoil. Numbers have been pinched by the old, or felt the want of something new. The general carpenters of the universe are up and doing at once, eager for a job; all the clever ignorance of amateurs is in flood; aspirants for a name, and — a cause, see an opening; all the gurgoyles of the public buildings

4 The one-eyed man.

spout; in this way a movement is hurried on from outside with abrupt and prevailing power by tliose who feel all the inconveniences, and more, but know none of the difficulty. Like a large party suddenly discharged on an out-of-the-way Inn, everybody shouts, and wants, and expects everything, without the slightest idea where it is to come from. Those, whose business it is, have enough to do in doing what they can • do for a time, without entering into discussions. So the schools have been silent, and busy; and perhaps not altogether unmindful of the true version of the old Proverb, '•'-that in the kingdom of the blind the o?ie-eyed mail is himg." Nevertheless this present book, somewhat tempered by fear of the gallows, makes its appearance; and is a contribution, be it wise or foolish, from the side of the practical Teacher. Certainly it is an intrusion into the great company who have hitherto been eloquent on the question; and is not unconscious of a certain diffidence in the presence of so many distinguished personages. The Drawing-room assembly with its brilliant array of talkers is an imposing sight; and the fustian jacket of the working man looks somewhat out of place, and brings a sense of awkwardness to its wearer. Yet if work is the subject, and there is anything in knowing how to work, a working man's facts may be better than an orator's words. They may serve to draw attention to things which have been overlooked; may put working necessities in a different light; and though they smell somewhat of oil and machinery may recall to more glib debaters that there is oil and machinery to be dealt with. The man who comes fresh from the work, and with some knowledge of what can,

A new despotism. 5

or cannot, be done with the machinery and material employed, and carries his worlc-shop in his brain, feels instinctively the gulf there is between himself and his welldressed companions. He is utterly bewildered by the omniscient Babel around him. All his practical instincts are at fault. As he listens his solid experience seems to become a dissolving viev/, and melt imperceptibly away. He cannot build either theory or practice on the aerial foundation offered to him so confidently. To be silent appears cowardly. But how speak when the stored up gains of his life are put on a level with brain-spun gossamers, and carry less authority? It may be cowardly to be silent j but it casts a slur on Hfe to condescend to speak on such terms.

The most important elementary truths have not been brought forward at all. No one has. asked the simple question, what it costs to teach anything properly to each boy in a class. No one has examined whether it is possible under existing conditions to teach each boy. And of course the further questions, What is the percentage of untaught? what becomes of the untaught? and what becomes of the teachers, who have not time to teach, and never learn how to teach in consequence? have not come to the surface. The air is full of questions of principle, not one of which has been settled, though many are trying them unsettled, trying them in the most costly way. Vast systems have been set on foot. The land is full of new authorities; the land is full of new buildings, so different in kind that they cannot all be right. Large sums are being lavished, and for the first time in English History a despotic power is lay-

6 Our bigoted forefathers and Liberty.

ing down railroads for the minds of men, and insisting that all shall travel by their lines, and be taxed in the name of liberty and enlightenment to pay for them. Our poor old bigoted forefathers, who foolishly loved, and foolishly gave free gifts with a liberal hand to promote what they loved; and who calculated that in the long run freedom and love would produce the most loving and effective work, have indeed been convicted of folly. Liberty knows no such squeamishness; and they have been taught what liberty means. Their free gifts have been taken away; the one thing they loved most laid under a ban, and a policeman domiciled in their homes to teach them liberal ideas. This is a little puzzling to those who are not to the manner born. To some few it almost seems like a new bride in their dead mother's place; if indeed she is dead. But, dead or not dead, this new Liberty reigns, and every one who is not a fool does homage to the eldest child of advanced thought, which indeed has advanced so far that perhaps it has got quite round the circle again. The old Liberty is dead, the new Liberty reigns. And great are the acclamations, and varied the cries. Fustian-jacket does not know quite what to make of it all. There are so many surprises. A few of the rival cries shall be given to show that this perplexity is not an imaginary picture. To begin with, we are told boldly, as indeed we ought to be told, that the people must be educated; and that no money can be better spent than the money which ensures that the people are educated. Everybody heartily, ex animo, body and soul, agrees with the great axiom. But here the unanimity ceases. What is education.^ Is it

Popes dichtm, 7

the article now in the market? Who are the people to be educated? and how? These and many similar questions disturb the smooth perfection of the axiom quoted. "Knowledge is power" say some; get knowledge, give knowledge, and millennium begins. Others quote Pope with approval, or would do so if they had ever read him.

"A little learning is a dangerous thing, Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring."

Which however may be common-sensed into plainer English thus,

"A little money is a dangerous snare, Get thousands, but of sixpences beware."

Then a doubt arises whether the thousands are always better than the sixpences. It may be that a blind Samson pulling down the fabric of his home and his country on the head of all he loves best, amidst the congratulations of himself and his party, is less to be envied than the poor cripple, who, however misled, is too weak to do the same. All are agreed again that it is a debt owed to children to give them proper teaching. But who owes the debt? And, What is proper teaching? Do the parents owe the debt? and if so, at what period is it right and wise to make someone else pay it? In ancient times the enlightened Greek, or Roman, who was blessed with children, whom he could not feed, or did not want to feed, settled the question in a simple way, by exposing them. It was wrong, but logical, and effectual. Logical, inasmuch as no man has any right to call a life into the world which he cannot maintain. He is bound either to destroy it, or accept the cost of it. The sacred gift of

8 The endozument of beer.

life demands full acknowledgment. The ancients met the dilemma boldly by putting an end to the life. We demur to this. But was it the duty of the State to prevent this great crime by passing a law Ihat everybody should be taxed to provide for his neighbour's child, and remove the responsibility of life from the authors of life, by relieving the traitors against life from the penalties of treason? Or in plain vernacular, at what point is it right to make the moral, thrifty, patient worker pay for his idle neighbour's illegitimate child, or illegitimate beer, or any other illegitimacies he may have a mind to? For that question lies at the root of all State support of those who don't pay by taxes levied on those who do. The mode of payment makes no difference. It comes to the same in the end whether a shilling is given under compulsion direct to the sturdy beggar who proceeds to spend it in beer, or the State takes it, as a compulsory tax, and hands it over to the alms-claimant, through some high-sounding title indirectly. The illegitimate child is supported by the thrifty man's earnings in both cases. No doubt the practice of exposing infants was cruel, nay criminal; but when ought the law to step in and punish the good man for his neighbour's cruelty, and fine him for his own self-denial by making him pay for another's self-indulgence ?

The exposure of infants was got rid of in time but certainly not by laws compelling the community to rear them, as w^e are doing. No great natural law can be broken with impunity by man-made law, and some think, with St Paul, the duty of self-maintenance a great natural law, and that those who bring life into the world must

Education and natural laws. 9

bear the responsibility of their act. They want to know what is the difference in principle between the parents who expose the children they have brought into the world to the misery of ignorance and crime, and the parents, who in old heathen days brought children into the world with the same criminal neglect, and settled the matter by getting rid of them by exposing them to death. Are we to have State dinners, as well as State schools ? State feeding shops for the body, as well as State feeding shops for the mind? A line must be drawn somewhere. Everybody cannot pay everybody else's debts. A line, they say, must be drawn somewhere, at what course in the State feeding is it to be drawn? at grammar? or at pudding? When does the law of robbing your thrifty neighbour, if he is in a minority, come in ? And more important still, at what point does it stop ? Is a man rich or poor who can afford to spend half his income on beer and maintain his wife and family with the other half, as contrasted with the man who spends 2 per cent, in drink, and has every penny besides preoccupied in struggling to keep an honourable position? Which of the two ought to pay for the other's child ? The experiment is not new. It has been tried on a grand scale. For a thousand years the civilised world strove to solve this problem. The Church in the name of religion and charity, whilst labouring with one hand, bribed idleness with the other, until the number of non-workers became intolerable, and the whole fabric broke up, and flooded Europe with unprovided poor. Yet at the beginning how beautiful the ideal seemed, how high was its claim. All the learning, and almost all the industry of their time lo Thuggee sugar.

took shelter In the monasteries, or roamed the world with the mendicant orders. But the canker of unearned gain proved too strong ; a little spot at first, it spread till it tainted the whole ; so all fell to pieces ; and the problem of life, and how to deal with unthrift, began again. Various have been the remedies tried, the gallows, the guillotine, bribery, poor laws ; and all have failed. Now once more, say they, the State steps in with the old nostrum new gilt, and proposes to endow idleness, unthrift, and self-indulgence in a disguised way ; and establish new State mendicant orders in a mendicant school garb, of a neo-mediseval type. As if the taste of other people's money ever left the lips that once have touched it; or ever failed, like the sacred sugar of the Thug, once tasted, to do in time its deadly work of robbery and wrong. Is the nation at a vast expense distributing Thuggee sugar ? Many ask this question. Others again wish to know whether a little knowledge, even if honestly got, is the thing wanted; or if wanted, may not be bought too dear. The sixpennyworth of knowledge, derided by Pope, but not despised by common sense, may be too heavily weighted by its conditions. If bought by the sacrifice of independence it is too dear. A manly independence which faces its own responsibiHties in a brave and honest way, is better than a little more learning with a pauperised heart, even if the learning is got. Character is worth more than sixpence, especially sixpennyworth of alms, a bit of another man's life in coin. No one can get from another what it is his duty to do himself. A man can no more do his neighbour's duty for him than he can eat his neighbour's dinner for him ;

What has legislation to say? ii

a truth too often forgotten. And he who is master of himself and his passions does not want a beggar's pittance from his neighbour to enable him to indulge his appetites at his neighbour's expense. To put it in a different form j how ma,ny sixpennyworths of knowledge go to make a noble character ? Exactly as many as the number of cannon that go to make an honest man. Power is not wisdom, nor knowledge honour. The distinction between help which is kind, and the pauperising, which is a cruel parody of kindness, requires to be marked ; it is not yet done. The distinction between knowledge and training requires to be marked. It is not yet done. What is Education ? We ought to know after so many years of legislation. Legislation is supposed to know what it is legislating about. The whole system of schools in this country has been reconstructed at a vast expense, much of it permanent and unchangeable. What answer have these architects of mind given to the great question which their reconstructive work supposes them to have mastered ? Is Education the making the mind full ? or is it making the mind strong? Is teaching the putting in facts, or drawing out and practising latent powers ? Or is there something else not yet above the horizon ?

Examinations and Inspection suggest a dark continent to the explorer's foot. But one thing is certain. Examinations and Inspection proceed on the hypothesis that the work is known, and the process of working perfect. The Examiner, from the height of superior knowledge, only has to see whether the school follows out successfully a known and perfect method. A Government Examination and Inspection, with its overwhelming

12 Examinations and perfection.

power both of the purse and of authority, runs all the work of all the schools before long into one mould; since anything original is outside the Inspector's range, any new method absent from his plan, any discovery wasted time in his court. Government Examination and Inspection, if they certify merit, imply a position of perfection reached, and the clear superiority of the perfect judge over all he passes judgment on. But this implies death to all originality, and all progress of an original kind. Some say that the present processes are not perfect, and that there is no such superiority. Some think that liberty to improve is a valuable item in Education. Then again, what is Examination ? on what principle is it to be conducted ? Does any one know ? We have not however yet reached the sagacious experience of Rome, so that two Examiners cannot meet without laughter. Our augury is still a science, and believed in. Is special teaching or general culture best ? Bread-winning work, or mental gymnastics and brain-exercise ? What necessities govern mankind in this field of labour ? What natural laws are there v/hich cannot be evaded or broken, however much men try ? Natural laws, of. the time that the individual can spare for self-preparation before he is forced to work for food ; natural laws, of the strength of body and strength of mind that the individual brings to his task ; natural laws, of the risk the individual runs of not succeeding in the higher kind of work, even if he can give time, and is fairly strong. All these, whether men like it or not, affect education, decide infallibly the main possibilities ; and in the long run fix with an iron rigidity what different classes can do, and cannot do; and, unless

Education and trade laws, 13

a nation sinks to the level of the savage, by fixing this, fix the position of the classes as classes for ever. What is the unit of calculation by which in any given instance the cost of teaching can be calculated, on the basis that each boy is honestly taught, and neither the boy defrauded of his teaching because he is slovf, nor the teacher of his pay ? As far as teaching is a trade, the honest cost of the honest trade article ought to be known, and given. What then is the true price of a Teacher in the market? and why? If the true price is not given, somebody must suffer. And the further question arises, whether, if the teacher suffers, a system which requires martyrs to work it truly does not in the second generation get worked by cheats ? If the taught, it is for the parents to consider whether the possible success of a few is compensation for the certain failure of the many. A thousand such gossamers are floating in the air, restless and intangible j up to the present time floating at random, merely cobwebbing the popular brain. Again, the power of the State to check all original progress, and kill by praise, is great. Can the State through any agency whatever award praise and blame year by year, and judge degrees of merit in schools without dishonesty? or can it only judge whether they are cut to the State pattern ? How ought the Schoolmasters to be treated? Should they be made subject to their inferiors, and their skilled work placed under non-workmen ? Through their agency thought and knowledge pass into every educated mind in the nation. They are the leaders of mind to the great majority. If the leaders are degraded will it benefit the led ? And they are degraded if freedom is not given ; if

14 A nation defonned.

there is no belief in skill ; no trust that skill in the long run knows how to work best. It is easy to sneer at the word "leader," but it is a bad thing for those who sneer if the sneer is deserved; for the worse the trainers are, the more powerful is their effect. If the whole nation was passed through a system of Chinese foot bandages in childhood, what would become of our workmen and soldiers ? But Schools do pass the whole nation through a course of bandaging ; and if the bandaging is wrong the clubfooted mind, with one perverted idea, like an excrescence, praised because it is unusual and artificial, becomes very possible. Supposing the due proportion between two great principles is lost, intellect versus character for example, and the intellect is fed at the expense of the body and feelings, the nation becomes all head and no body, like a dwarf; and its leaders do incalculable mischief by having their humanity thus stunted and distorted, with much power, and little sympathy to make the power kindly. Or perchance the failures lose all sympathy, and gain little power, and become hollow-headed animals. The prize-winners big-headed dwarfs, the neglected boys hollow-headed animals, with no intellectual skill, and yet bred up to put faith in intellect, and to fall a prey in consequence to every talker of words, till a plague of words possesses the land. Once more, how ought the State to deal with the leaders of thought and knowledge? Should they be considered as skilled workmen engaged in work requiring consummate skill, who understand their work and are ready to do it? or, as carrying out the instructions of a higher authority, that understands the work, which they merely execute as instruments ? If so.

The State and the Teachers. 15

who are these authorities that understand complicated work which they have never done ? Are they Statesmen, or are they Philosophers? In neither case have they ever taught a child. Is it in teaching only that to have had no experience qualifies for being an authority? Or is the skilled workman interested in his work, or the unskilled workman not interested in his work, most likely to make the work prosper ? If the Schoolmaster is not a skilled workman, who is ? Who knows the work better, or is being trained to know the work better? Charles V. discovered at last that if a man could not make clocks keep time to a second, he was not likely to succeed with the far more varied machinery of mind. Query, Is this true or not? seeing that the school clocks will soon have to strike by St Stephen's. Such questions require answering. They have not been answered. Nay, they have not, some of them, been asked. None have been considered judicially, on their own merits, apart from the pressure of the hour. These are a few of the loose thoughts that are running about, riderless. Many more might be found. But enough has been said to show that a great and undefined movement is going on in a haphazard and undefined way. Every earnest mind must rejoice that there is movement. There is life in movement. As long as there is liberty to move there is hope. If a strong new life is pushing out it needs space ; space it must have, and space is cleared oftentimes by overthrow and pain. The war of opinions, and the crash of decayed glories, may be, and must be, full of trouble, often accompanied by great pain. There is nothing really to dread in this, if it is caused by the push of growing life. But true life grows from within