The teachers in apparent charge are almost
literally robots, who bow, smile, or try to teach
in response to buttons pushed by supervisors or
educational “specialists” who are entirely outside
the teaching situation. Even colleges and univer-
sities for the training of teachers prepare this
robot type of teachers. In attractive, modern, well-
equipped school buildings, these teachers “scien-
tifically” teach their daily rounds of swarming
pupils who must be treated as puppets controlled
by strings. The pupils are expected to absorb
something, but whether or not they have gained
a thing to make them individually better or wiser
boys and girls, they will pass the tests and stan-
dards imposed from outside or above. The right
proportion will fall in the A, B, C, D, and F
groups, thanks to the bell curve discovered in the
realm of statistics, not in the classroom.

Education: A Living Process

A desirable school has competent workmen and
ample modern equipment. Certainly these with
the children’s visible reactions are contributing
factors, but education is much more. It is a
living process, an invisible growth of ideas and
ideals, from embryos as they are planted into the
child’s consciousness, to a state bearing fruit and
functioning in his life. Such a philosophy is not
new, but the use of principles governing other
sciences of life and growth would deal a death
- blow to mary an educator’s pet theory. Topics
like “Enriched Curriculum,” “The Only Meth-
od,” “Character Education as a Subject,” and
“Education Justified” would lose their charms.
It makes no difference to the biologist what he

 

Ve Oran a

— CR@H, EG

produces so long as he reaps what he sows, and
reaps abundantly so he and others may profit by
his labors. The value of the curriculum and
methods by which subject matter is presented has
been overestimated. Just how or what the child
is taught makes little difference, but how that
knowledge functions in his life, is of vital im-
portance to him and to the world.

Effective teaching is the influencing of one life
or personality by another. No profession calls
for higher ideals and more desire for service than
teaching. Today, often the teacher with the high-
est ideals, and the most hours of effort and ser-
vice to her credit, stays farthest down the scale
of success as measured by so-called scientific in-
struments. The robot type of teacher who re-
sponds most graciously to the outside controls or
who demonstrates her work to the public in an
impressive and entertaining way (though these
demonstrations may be almost, if not quite, void
of any educational value) rises to seats of honor
and is the one most likely to fill a vacancy among
the button-pushers, or become a regulator of
other robots.

Scientific means and equipment are valuable
aids, but if genuine education is an increase in
one’s ability to live a fuller, happier, and more
useful life, a master teacher who understands and
has the confidence of a pupil, knows what will
affect his life now in the schoolroom and have a
favorable influence on his later life. The con-
trols on the outside justify this, or justify that;
they prove one method “scientifically” and con-
demn another. Frequently these decisions are re-
versed with the results of new or different measur-

 

 

 

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November, 1935 @ SDEA JOURNAL