From "A Jacques Barzun Reader." Copyright © 2002 by Jacques Barzun. Published by HarperCollins Publishers Inc., New York, NY.
p. 387
The Art of Making Teachers
Now that the collapse of the American public school is admitted on all hands, after thirty years of blindness on one side and defensive lying on the other, attention has turned to the question, What about the teachers---are they to blame or are they victims too? And the related question follows, Where should we turn for good teachers? For shortage is added to the other woes.
If is a fact of nature that there are more born poets than born teachers. But the world's work cannot depend on genius; it must make do with talent, that is to say, fair material properly trained. Up to now teacher training has been done by people unfitted for the job. By temperament they have no interest in Learning or capacity for it; by purpose they are bent not on instruction but on social work. They care little about history or science or good English, but they grow keen about any scheme of betterment; one recent proposal is: teach the importance of washing the hands.
The result of half a century of this world-reforming attitude may be seen in the language in which educationists think and talk. Its characteristics are: abstraction instead of direct naming; exaggeration of goals and results; seeing the student not as an individual but as an example of some psychological generality; taking any indirect means in place of the straight one; and mistaking words for facts, and intentions for hard work.
Such is the educationist mind everywhere. A few years ago New York City, finding its school system in bad shape, set up a task force to look into the trouble and devise remedies. After a time, a large gathering of interested and qualified persons was invited to hear of any progress made. An impressive and fluent official took about an hour to describe the committee's procedure, summarize its report, and explain how the recommendations worked to reform the whole system. Then she asked for questions. One bold spirit ventured "Could you tell us what success you have had so far?" The answer: "We have had complete success. All the heads of department to whom we sent the report have replied that it met with their full approval."
Nothing happened, of course. The educationist spirit is that of bureaucracy---marks on paper take precedence over reality---and bureaucracy is inconvertible. Indeed, some observers have lately said that no system, anywhere in the country, can be changed. Physicists can transmute (change, transform) the chemical elements but not the schools.
In short, teacher training is based on a strong anti-intellectual bias, enhanced by lack of imagination. The trainers live in a cloud of nomenclature, formulas, "objectives," evaluations, and "strategies." By instinct, it seems, doing is held at arm's length; any call for change starts with a pompous windup: "When we talk about goals, we imply a context for action that transcends a dictionary definition. Institutional planning embraces mission, goals, and objectives, while business strategic planning defines roles, goals, and tactics. Goals . . . theoretically can be commonly defined and shared so that everyone is heading in the right direction."
To most teachers this mode of thought is or becomes second nature; the school-teaching profession believes in fantasy. No doubt strong minds escape the blight, but they must go on to do their good teaching despite the creed and its oppressive atmosphere.
What, then, are the native qualities to look for in the person who, though not one of those born to the task, would make a good teacher? And what sort of training should such a person get? As to the first requirement: brains enough to feel bewildered and revolted by the educationist language---and courage enough to admit it. Next, a strong interest in some branch of learning, meaning any one of the genuine school subjects. Which those are can be found every day in the newspaper articles that bewail the failure of the schools. Nobody writes about the poor showing in "Shopping and Community Resources."
In addition, a teacher should have some interests beyond his or her specialty. In bearing, in manner of thinking and talking, a teacher should quite naturally appear to be a person with a mental life, a person who reads books and whose converse with colleagues is not purely 'business' shop; that is, not invariably methods and troubles, but substance as well. There is no hope of attracting students to any art or science and keeping up their interest without this spontaneous mental radiation. When it is reported that the teaching of biology imparts nothing but a rooted dislike of science, it is easy to see what disconnection exists between the mind of the teacher and the nature of the subject.
A key phrase in the foregoing is 'naturally have a mental life.' It implies that the teacher 'likes' books and ideas. With these likes, the teacher will not become a pedant (dogmatist) or a martinet (a strict disciplinarian) and will avoid another failing now often seen: false modesty and self-consciousness. Addressing parents, a teacher from a very good school confides: "Teaching is part performance, part pratfall---at least, my teaching is so. I never know what's coming when I go into a class." Then resign and take a less scary job. But the words are insincere---conventional hokum to show that the speaker is not highbrow or know-it-all, that a teacher is only a person older than his students, not wiser or better informed---"we all learn together." (The cliche that a teacher learns from his students is true, but the thing learned is not at all the same and it is not a continuous "course.")
Now suppose a young woman, a young man, with a good mind and normal common sense, who is eager to become a teacher. Training to fulfill this ambition calls for nothing complicated or abstruse (Latin: put away, hidden). The all-important thing is mastery of a subject matter. Ideally, it should be the freely chosen major in college. This main subject needs to be supplemented by courses in other fields, to give awareness of their contents and outlook and their relation to the main subject. Providing this "environment" is the ancient goal of a liberal education, which may be likened to a map of the mental life with one region of it extremely familiar, because it is "home." For the teacher, a history of educational theories would complete the program. It should be made clear too that science and mathematics are liberal arts, not some mystery of recent growth and suddenly in demand "for the twenty-first century."
Speaking of science, should the teacher learn psychology, child psychology in particular? No. The science, which is by no means settled, is like other sciences; it yields only generalities; and teaching is par excellence the adaptation of one particular mind to another. There is no such thing as 'the' child---at any age. Teaching is not the application of a system, it is an exercise in perpetual discretion (caution, diplomacy). One pupil, too timid, needs to be cheered along; another calmed down for the sake of concentration. Correcting faults and errors must take different forms (and words) in individual cases and must usually be accompanied by praise for the good achieved. Variety of tasks is indicated for some and steady plugging (proceed laboriously) for others. The class is not to be spoken to in the same way as the single child, and fostering emulation (Latin: rivaled, equaled) must not generate anxious competitiveness.
Now, no method on earth will teach ahead of time when, how, and to whom these purposely contrary acts are right or wrong. Intuition---for want of a better term---is the true guide. A good teacher can spot a gifted child without learning the twenty-two characteristics listed in 'The Encyclopedia of Education.' The few pointers of a general sort that would help an apprentice (trainee) teacher can be found in William James's "Talks to Teachers," a small book still in print after a century.
The way to learn the art of teaching is by imitation. To teach well one should have had at least one good teacher and been struck, consciously or not, by the means employed and the behavior displayed. It follows that practice teaching is an indispensable part of the training. But here lies the appalling predicament of the present hour: How can imitation and practice teaching produce anything but the kind of teachers we have had, misdirected and miseducated? Unless bypassed, the profession will perpetuate, in all good faith and with heart-melting slogans, the damnable errors that have killed instruction and made the classroom a center for expensive waste. (1991)
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Where the Educational Nonsense Comes From
The first thing we must know under this heading is where the educational nonsense does 'not' come from. The usual random guesses conceal the facts. I call nonsense any plan or proposal or 'critique' which disregards the known limits of schooling or teaching. Schooling means teaching in groups. Thus a plan that might be workable if applied by a gifted tutor to a single child living continuously in the same house becomes nonsense when proposed for classroom instruction in an institution designed for hundreds or a national system designed for millions.
Similarly, the limits of teaching are transgressed if the plan presupposes extraordinary talents or devotion in the teacher. Finally, nonsense is at the heart of such proposals as replace definable subject matters with vague activities copied from "life" or with courses organized around "problems" or "attitudes." The attempt to inculcate (instill) directly, as a subject of instruction, any set of ethical, social, or political virtues is either indoctrination or foolery. In both cases it is something other than schooling. That fact is not in conflict with another fact, which is that schools indirectly impart principles of conduct. Schools reinforce some portion of the current ethos (spirit, character, morality), if only because teachers and books and the normal behavior of those brought together exemplify the moral habits of the time and place.
Summing up these definitions and generalities, we may say that educational nonsense comes from proposing or promoting something else than the prime object of the school, which is the removal of ignorance. (1971)
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"Talks to Teachers On Psychology" by William James, Copyright © 1899, 1900 by William James
VIII. THE LAWS OF HABIT
It is very important that teachers should realize the importance of habit, and psychology helps us greatly at this point. We speak, it is true, of good habits and of bad habits; but, when people use the word 'habit,' in the majority of instances it is a bad habit which they have in mind. They talk of the smoking-habit and the swearing-habit and the drinking-habit, but not of the abstention-habit or the moderation-habit or the courage-habit. But the fact is that our virtues are habits as much as our vices. All our life, so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits,—practical, emotional, and intellectual,—systematically organized for our weal or woe, and bearing us irresistibly toward our destiny, whatever the latter may be.
Since pupils can understand this at a comparatively early age, and since to understand it contributes in no small measure to their feeling of responsibility, it would be well if the teacher were able himself to talk to them of the philosophy of habit in some such abstract terms as I am now about to talk of it to you.
I believe that we are subject to the law of habit in consequence of the fact that we have bodies. The plasticity of the living matter of our nervous system, in short, is the reason why we do a thing with difficulty the first time, but soon do it more and more easily, and finally, with sufficient practice, do it semi-mechanically, or with hardly any consciousness at all. Our nervous systems have (in Dr. Carpenter's words) grown to the way in which they have been exercised, just as a sheet of paper or a coat, once creased or folded, tends to fall forever afterward into the same identical folds.
Habit is thus a second nature, or rather, as the Duke of Wellington said, it is 'ten times nature,'—at any rate as regards its importance in adult life; for the acquired habits of our training have by that time inhibited or strangled most of the natural impulsive tendencies which were originally there. Ninety-nine hundredths or, possibly, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of our activity is purely automatic and habitual, from our rising in the morning to our lying down each night. Our dressing and undressing, our eating and drinking, our greetings and partings, our hat-raisings and giving way for ladies to precede, nay, even most of the forms of our common speech, are things of a type so fixed by repetition as almost to be classed as reflex actions. To each sort of impression we have an automatic, ready-made response. My very words to you now are an example of what I mean; for having already lectured upon habit and printed a chapter about it in a book, and read the latter when in print, I find my tongue inevitably falling into its old phrases and repeating almost literally what I said before.
So far as we are thus mere bundles of habit, we are stereotyped creatures, imitators and copiers of our past selves. And since this, under any circumstances, is what we always tend to become, it follows first of all that the teacher's prime concern should be to ingrain into the pupil that assortment of habits that shall be most useful to him throughout life. Education is for behavior, and habits are the stuff of which behavior consists.
To quote my earlier book directly, the great thing in all education is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy. It is to fund and capitalize our acquisitions, and live at ease upon the interest of the fund. For this we must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can, and as carefully guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous. The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every bit of work are subjects of express volitional deliberation. Full half the time of such a man goes to the deciding or regretting of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all. If there be such daily duties not yet ingrained in any one of my hearers, let him begin this very hour to set the matter right.
In Professor Bain's chapter on 'The Moral Habits' there are some admirable practical remarks laid down. Two great maxims emerge from the treatment. The first is that in the acquisition of a new habit, or the leaving off of an old one, we must take care to launch ourselves with as strong and decided an initiative as possible. Accumulate all the possible circumstances which shall reinforce the right motives; put yourself assiduously in conditions that encourage the new way; make engagements incompatible with the old; take a public pledge, if the case allows; in short, envelope your resolution with every aid you know. This will give your new beginning such a momentum that the temptation to break down will not occur as soon as it otherwise might; and every day during which a breakdown is postponed adds to the chances of its not occurring at all.
I remember long ago reading in an Austrian paper the advertisement of a certain Rudolph Somebody, who promised fifty gulden reward to any one who after that date should find him at the wine-shop of Ambrosius So-and-so. 'This I do,' the advertisement continued, 'in consequence of a promise which I have made my wife.' With such a wife, and such an understanding of the way in which to start new habits, it would be safe to stake one's money on Rudolph's ultimate success.
The second maxim is, Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life. Each lapse is like the letting fall of a ball of string which one is carefully winding up: a single slip undoes more than a great many turns will wind again. Continuity of training is the great means of making the nervous system act infallibly right. As Professor Bain says:—
"The peculiarity of the moral habits, contradistinguishing them from the intellectual acquisitions, is the presence of two hostile powers, one to be gradually raised into the ascendant over the other. It is necessary above all things, in such a situation, never to lose a battle. Every gain on the wrong side undoes the effect of many conquests on the right. The essential precaution, therefore, is so to regulate the two opposing powers that the one may have a series of uninterrupted successes, until repetition has fortified it to such a degree as to enable it to cope with the opposition, under any circumstances. This is the theoretically best career of mental progress."
A third maxim may be added to the preceding pair: Seize the very first possible opportunity to act on every resolution you make, and on every emotional prompting you may experience in the direction of the habits you aspire to gain. It is not in the moment of their forming, but in the moment of their producing motor effects, that resolves and aspirations communicate the new 'set' to the brain.
No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one's sentiments may be, if one has not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one's character may remain entirely unaffected for the better. With good intentions, hell proverbially is paved. This is an obvious consequence of the principles I have laid down. A 'character,' as J.S. Mill says, 'is a completely fashioned will'; and a will, in the sense in which he means it, is an aggregate of tendencies to act in a firm and prompt and definite way upon all the principal emergencies of life. A tendency to act only becomes effectively ingrained in us in proportion to the uninterrupted frequency with which the actions actually occur, and the brain 'grows' to their use. When a resolve or a fine glow of feeling is allowed to evaporate without bearing practical fruit, it is worse than a chance lost: it works so as positively to hinder future resolutions and emotions from taking the normal path of discharge.
This leads to a fourth maxim. Don't preach too much to your pupils or abound in good talk in the abstract. Lie in wait rather for the practical opportunities, be prompt to seize those as they pass, and thus at one operation get your pupils both to think, to feel, and to do. The strokes of behavior are what give the new set to the character, and work the good habits into its organic tissue. Preaching and talking too soon become an ineffectual bore.
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