ARE YOU A ROBOT?
TEACHERS AND PROFESSIONAL CONTROL OF THE TEACHING PROFESSION*

MARIE M. CRISLER
Junior High School, Lead, South Dakota

GCL FED MOORE has completed a costly
and unique doll house, the most beautiful in
the world. It has a robot princess for its mistress
and beautiful dolls for occupants. The pretty
actress is the general manager, who directs the
entire institution from the outside. _

Our modern institution of education appears to
be approaching a similar state. We have an
elaborate edifice, utilizing the latest and best in
scientific knowledge and workmanship, yet it is
found wanting in the balance of human relation-
ships, because the control is from the outside.

The Specialists’ Role

Only educators, well removed from the child-
teaching ranks, have time, means, and permission
to control the educational profession. Being out-
side the real school situation, their vision is sub-
jected to the refractions of distance and artificial
illumination. Other attractions—details, reports,
politics, conventions, teachers’ meetings, publicity,
and so on—divide their attention and lessen their
already imperfect and blurred vision. If anyone
can find an article or book on educational thought,
philosophy, or methods that is written by someone
actually engaged in classroom teaching on the
public school level, he is a keen observer and
should become an astronomer who discovers new
stars. College professors, superintendents, super-
visors, and critic teachers write, but they direct
from outside the actual classroom situation. They
are specialists in research and administration who
contribute valuable information and theory, or-
ganize and unify the teaching profession, and
serve as go-betweens for the school and society.
Their advice affects the institution, but does it
affect the education that takes place in the in-
stitution?

One may see the whole situation more clearly
from the outside, some may argue. When inside
there is always a part out of view and one’s at-
tention is necessarily limited to a small scope.
The teacher, schoolroom, equipment, methods, and
children with their visible and artificial reactions
to unnatural circumstances, can be seen best as a

 

*Winning article on the subject in one of eight
divisions in the second nationwide contest of last spring,
sponsored by State Teachers Magazines, Inc.; of. which
the SDEA Journal is a member. Other winning articles
of the other divisions will be used during the school year.

SDEA JOURNAL e November, 1935

 

Marie M. Crisler

Marie M. Crisler was reared in Colorado and
attended elementary and high school in Denver
and Weld County. She was graduated from
Teachers College high school and holds a B. A.
degree from Colorado State College of Educa-
tion, Greeley. She has done additional work with
the Palmer School, Chicago, the University of
Iowa and the University of Wichita. Her chief
interest is junior high school education with a
major in natural sciences, and minors in social
sciences and English. Miss Crisler has taught in
schools near Greeley, and at Silverton, Colo., and
now teaches social science and penmanship in the
junior high school at Lead, So. Dak. Teaching
in the most desolate and most prosperous of
agricultural and mining districts gives Miss
Crisler what she terms a real educational course
in the science of life.
unit by one looking on. That perspective is what
has been termed education, while as a matter of
fact, it constitutes only the setting and the tools,
with these rarely checked against the judgment
of teachers’ feeling free-to express their honest
convictions. :

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