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Title: Reveries of a Schoolmaster

Author: Francis B. Pearson

Release Date: July 29, 2004 [EBook #13049]

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REVERIES OF A SCHOOLMASTER ***

Produced by Al Haines

REVERIES OF A SCHOOLMASTER

BY

FRANCIS B. PEARSON

STATE SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION FOR OHIO

AUTHOR OF "THE EVOLUTION OF THE TEACHER," "THE HIGH-SCHOOL PROBLEM," "THE VITALIZED SCHOOL."

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

NEW YORK CHICAGO BOSTON

COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. IN MEDIAS RES II. RETROSPECT III. BROWN IV. PSYCHOLOGICAL V. BALKING VI. LANTERNS VII. COMPLETE LIVING VIII. MY SPEECH IX. SCHOOL-TEACHING X. BEEFSTEAK XI. FREEDOM XII. THINGS XIII. TARGETS XIV. SINNERS XV. HOEING POTATOES XVI. CHANGING THE MIND XVII. THE POINT OF VIEW XVIII. PICNICS XIX. MAKE-BELIEVE XX. BEHAVIOR XXI. FOREFINGERS XXII. STORY-TELLING XXIII. GRANDMOTHER XXIV. MY WORLD XXV. THIS OR THAT XXVI. RABBIT PEDAGOGY XXVII. PERSPECTIVE XXVIII. PURELY PEDAGOGICAL XXIX. LONGEVITY XXX. FOUR-LEAF CLOVER XXXI. MOUNTAIN-CLIMBING

REVERIES OF A SCHOOLMASTER

CHAPTER I

IN MEDIAS RES

I am rather glad now that I took a little dip (one could scarce call it a baptism) into the Latin, and especially into Horace, for that good soul gave me the expression in medias res. That is a forceful expression, right to the heart of things, and applies equally well to the writing of a composition or the eating of a watermelon. Those who have crossed the Channel, from Folkstone to Boulogne, know that the stanch little ship Invicta had scarcely left dock when they were in medias res. They were conscious of it, too, if indeed they were conscious of anything not strictly personal to themselves. This expression admits us at once to the light and warmth (if such there be) of the inner temple nor keeps us shivering out in the vestibule.

Writers of biography are wont to keep us waiting too long for happenings that are really worth our while. They tell us that some one was born at such a time, as if that were really important. Why, anybody can be born, but it requires some years to determine whether his being born was a matter of importance either to himself or to others. When I write my biographical sketch of William Shakespeare I shall say that in a certain year he wrote "Hamlet," which fact clearly justified his being born so many years earlier.

The good old lady said of her pastor: "He enters the pulpit, takes his text, and then the dear man just goes everywhere preaching the Gospel." That man had a special aptitude for the in medias res method of procedure. Many children in school who are not versed in Latin would be glad to have their teachers endowed with this aptitude. They are impatient of preliminaries, both in the school and at the dinner-table. And it is pretty difficult to discover just where childhood leaves off in this respect.

So I am grateful to Horace for the expression. Having started right in the midst of things, one can never get off the subject, and that is a great comfort. Sometimes college graduates confess (or perhaps boast) that they have forgotten their Latin. I fear to follow their example lest my neighbor, who often drops in for a friendly chat, might get to wondering whether I have not also forgotten much of the English I am supposed to have acquired in college. He might regard my English as quite as feeble when compared with Shakespeare or Milton as my Latin when compared with Cicero or Virgil. So I take counsel with prudence and keep silent on the subject of Latin.

When I am taking a stroll in the woods, as I delight to do in the autumn-time, laundering my soul with the gorgeous colors, the music of the rustling leaves, the majestic silences, and the sounds that are less and more than sounds, I often wonder, when I take one bypath, what experiences I might have had if I had taken the other. I'll never know, of course, but I keep on wondering. So it is with this Latin. I wonder how much worse matters could or would have been if I had never studied it at all. As the old man said to the young fellow who consulted him as to getting married: "You'll be sorry if you do, and sorry if you don't." I used to feel a sort of pity for my pupils to think how they would have had no education at all if they had not had me as their teacher; now I am beginning to wonder how much further along they might have been if they had had some other teacher. But probably most of the misfits in life are in the imagination, after all. We all think the huckleberries are more abundant on the other bush.

Hoeing potatoes is a calm, serene, dignified, and philosophical enterprise. But at bottom it is much the same in principle as teaching school. In my potato-patch I am merely trying to create situations that are favorable to growth, and in the school I can do neither more nor better. I cannot cause either boys or potatoes to grow. If I could, I'd certainly have the process patented. I know no more about how potatoes grow than I do about the fourth dimension or the unearned increment. But they grow in spite of my ignorance, and I know that there are certain conditions in which they flourish. So the best I can do is to make conditions favorable. Nor do I bother about the weeds. I just centre my attention and my hoe upon loosening the soil and let the weeds look out for themselves. Hoeing potatoes is a synthetic process, but cutting weeds is analytic, and synthesis is better, both for potatoes and for boys. In good time, if the boy is kept growing, he will have outgrown his stone-bruises, his chapped hands, his freckles, his warts, and his physical and spiritual awkwardness. The weeds will have disappeared.

The potato-patch is your true pedagogical laboratory and conservatory. If one cannot learn pedagogy there it is no fault of the potato-patch. Horace must have thought of in medias res while hoeing potatoes. There is no other way to do it, and that is bed-rock pedagogy. Just to get right at the work and do it, that's the very thing the teacher is striving toward. Here among my potatoes I am actuated by motives, I invest the subject with human interest, I experience motor activities, I react, I function, and I go so far as to evaluate. Indeed, I run the entire gamut. And then, when I am lying beneath the canopy of the wide-spreading tree, I do a bit of research work in trying to locate the sorest muscle. And, as to efficiency, well, I give myself a high grade in that and shall pass cum laude it the matter is left to me. If our grading were based upon effort rather than achievement, I could bring my aching back into court, if not my potatoes. But our system of grading in the schools demands potatoes, no matter much how obtained, with scant credit for backaches.