The Vitalized School | Page 3

matter with which we have to do is life--nothing more and nothing less. We may call it history, or mathematics, or literature, or psychology,--but it still remains true that life is the real objective of all our activities. And, as has been already said, we are teaching life by the laboratory method. We are striving to interpret the thing in which we are immersed. We feel, and think, and aspire, and love, and enjoy. All these are life; and from this life we are striving to extract strength that our feeling may be deeper, our thinking higher, our aspirations wider and more lofty, our love purer and nobler, and our own enjoyment greater. By absorbing the life that is all about us we strive to have more abundant and abounding life.
=The teacher's province.=--Such is the province of one who essays the task of teaching school. School is life, as we have been told; but, at the same time, it is a place and an occasion for teaching life. If we could detach history from life, it would cease to be history. If literature is not life, it is not literature; and so with the sciences. These branches are but variants or branches of life, and all emanate from a common center. Whether we scan the heavens, penetrate the depths of the sea, pore over the pages of books, or look into the minds and hearts of men, we are striving after an interpretation of life.
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
1. Distinguish between a "school teacher" and a "man or woman who teaches school."
2. Discuss the importance of the following agencies of the school in securing for children "life of a better quality and more abundant": play; revitalized curricula; vitalized teachers; medical inspection; social centers; moral instruction.
3. Discuss both from the standpoint of present practice and ideal educational principles: "More abundant life rather than knowledge is the chief end of instruction."
4. What changes are necessary in school curricula and in the methods of school organization, instruction, and discipline, in order that the chief purpose of our schools, "more abundant life," may be realized?
5. Justify the apparent length of the school day to teachers and pupils, as a means of determining the quality of the work of the school.
6. Some teachers maintain that school is a preparation for life, while the author maintains that "school is life." Is this difference in the concept of the school a vital one?
7. How may this difference of concept affect the work of the teacher? the attitude of the pupil?
8. What definition of education will best harmonize with the ideals of this chapter?
CHAPTER II
THE TEACHER
=Teachers contrasted.=--The vitalized school is an expression of the vitalized teacher. In the hands of the teacher of another sort, the vitalized school is impossible. Unless she can see in the multiplication table the power that throws the bridge across the river, that builds pyramids, that constructs railways, that sends ships across the ocean, that tunnels mountains and navigates the air, this table becomes a stupid thing, a dead thing, and an incubus upon the spirits of her pupils. To such a teacher mathematics is a lifeless thing, without hope or potency, the school is a mere convenience for the earning of a livelihood, the work is the drudgery of bondage, and the children are little less than an impertinence. The vitalized teacher is different. To her the multiplication table pulsates with life. It stretches forth its beneficent hand to give employment to a million workers, and food to a million homes. It pervades every mart of trade; it loads trains and ships with the commerce of nations; and it helps to amplify and ennoble civilization.
=Vitalized mathematics.=--In this table she sees a prophecy of great achievements in engineering, architecture, transportation, and the myriad applications of science. In brief, mathematics to her is vibrant with life both in its present uses and in its possibilities. She knows that it is a part of the texture of the daily life of every home as well as of national life. She knows that it pertains to individual, community, and national well-being. Knowing this, she feels that it is quite worth while for herself and her pupils, both for the present and for the future. She feels that, if she would know life, she must know mathematics, because it is a part of life; that, if she would teach life to her pupils, she must teach them mathematics as an integral part of life; and that she must teach it in such a way that it will be as much a part of themselves as their bodily organs. She wants them to know the mathematics as they know that the rain is falling or that the sun is shining, because the rain, the sunshine, and the mathematics are all