Gambar halaman
PDF
ePub

use of "methods," is an error fatal to the best interests of education; and there can be no question that many schools are suffering frightfully from ignoring or undervaluing this paramount qualification of the true teacher. But in urging the need of psychology in the preparation of the teacher there is no question of ignoring personal power or of finding a substitute for personal magnetism. It is only a question of providing the best opportunities for the exercise of native capacity for the fullest development and most fruitful application of endowments of heart and brain. Training and native outfit, culture and nature, are never opposed to each other. It is always a question, not of suppressing or superseding, but of cultivating native instinct, of training natural equipment to its ripest development and its richest use. A Pheidias does not despise learning the principles necessary to the mastery of his art, nor a Beethoven disregard the knowledge requisite for the complete technical skill through which he gives expression to his genius. In a sense it is true that the great artist is born, not made; but it is equally true that a scientific insight into the technics of his art helps to make him. And so it is with the artist teacher. The greater and more scientific his knowledge of human nature, the more ready and skilful will be his application of principles to varying circumstances, and the larger and more perfect will be the product of his artistic skill.

But the genius in education is as rare as the genius in other realms of human activity. Education is, and forever will be, in the hands of ordinary men and women; and if psychology-as the basis of scientific

insight into human nature-is of high value to the few who possess genius, it is indispensable to the many who have not genius. Fortunately for the race, most persons, though not "born" teachers, are endowed with some "genial impulse," some native instinct and skill for education; for the cardinal requisite in this endowment is, after all, sympathy with human life and its aspirations. We are all born to be educators, to be parents, as we are not born to be engineers, or sculptors, or musicians, or painters. Native capacity for education is therefore much more common than native capacity for any other calling. Were it not so, human society could not hold together at all. But in most people this native sympathy is either dormant or blind and irregular in its action; it needs to be awakened, to be cultivated, and above all to be intelligently directed. The instinct to walk, to speak, and the like are imperious instincts, and yet they are not wholly left to "nature"; we do not assume that they will take care of themselves; we stimulate and guide, we supply them with proper conditions and material for their development. So it must be with this instinct, so common yet at present so comparatively ineffective, which lies at the heart of all educational efforts, the instinct to help others in their struggle for self-mastery and self-expression. The very fact that this instinct is so strong, and all but universal, and that the happiness of the individual and of the race so largely depends upon its development and intelligent guidance, gives greater force to the demand that its growth may be fostered by favourable conditions; and that it may be made certain and reasonable in its action, instead of being left blind and

faltering, as it surely will be without rational culti

vation.

To this it may be added that native endowment can work itself out in the best possible results only when it works under right conditions. Even if scientific insight were not a necessity for the true educator himself, it would still remain a necessity for others in order that they might not obstruct and possibly drive from the profession the teacher possessed of the inborn divine light, and restrict or paralyze the efforts of the teacher less richly endowed. It is the mediocre and the bungler who can most readily accommodate himself to the conditions imposed by ignorance and routine; it is the higher type of mind and heart which suffers most from its encounter with incapacity and ignorance. One of the greatest hindrances to true educational progress is the reluctance of the best class of minds to engage in educational work precisely because the general standard of ethical and psychological knowledge is so low that too often high ideals are belittled and efforts to realize them even vigorously opposed. The educational genius, the earnest teacher of any class, has little to expect from an indifference, or a stolidity, which is proof alike against the facts of experience and the demonstrations of science.

2. The Second Resource is experience. This, again, is necessary. Psychology is not a short and easy path that renders personal experience superfluous. The real question is: What kind of experience shall it be? It is in a way perfectly true that only by teaching can one become a teacher. But not any and every sort of thing which passes for teaching or for "experience" will

make a teacher any more than simply sawing a bow across violin strings will make a violinist. It is a certain quality of practice, not mere practice, which produces the expert and the artist. Unless the practice is based upon rational principles, upon insight into facts and their meaning, "experience" simply fixes incorrect acts into wrong habits. Nonscientific practice, even if it finally reaches sane and reasonable results-which is very unlikely does so by unnecessarily long and circuitous routes; time and energy are wasted that might easily be saved by wise insight and direction at the

outset.

The worst thing about empiricism in every department of human activity is that it leads to a blind observance of rule and routine. The mark of the empiric is that he is helpless in the face of new circumstances; the mark of the scientific worker is that he has power in grappling with the new and the untried; he is master of principles which he can effectively apply under novel conditions. The one is a slave of the past, the other is a director of the future. This attachment to routine, this subservience to empiric formula, always reacts into the character of the empiric; he becomes hour by hour more and more a mere routinist and less and less an artist. Even that which he has once learned and applied with some interest and intelligence tends to become more and more mechanical, and its application more and more an unintelligent and unemotional procedure. It is never brightened and quickened by adaptation to new ends. The machine teacher, like the empiric in every profession, thus becomes a stupefying and corrupting influence in his surroundings; he him

self becomes a mere tradesman, and makes his school a mere machine shop.

3. The Third Resource is authoritative instruction in methods and devices. At present, the real opposition is not between native skill and experience on the one side, and psychological methods on the other; it is rather between devices picked up no one knows how, methods inherited from a crude past, or else invented, ad hoc, by educational quackery-and methods which can be rationally justified-devices which are the natural fruit of knowing the mind's powers and the ways in which it works and grows in assimilating its proper nutriment. The mere fact that there are so many methods current, and constantly pressed upon the teacher as the acme of the educational experience of the past, or as the latest and best discovery in pedagogy, makes an absolute demand for some standard by which they may be tested. Only knowledge of the principles upon which all methods are based can free the teacher from dependence upon the educational nostrums which are recommended like patent medicines, as panaceas for all educational ills. If a teacher is one fairly initiated into the real workings of the mind, if he realizes its normal aims and methods, false devices and schemes can have no attraction for him; he will not swallow them "as silly people swallow empirics' pills"; he will reject them as if by instinct. All new suggestions, new methods, he will submit to the infallible test of science; and those which will further his work he can adopt and rationally apply, seeing clearly their place and bearings, and the conditions under which they can be most effectively employed. The difference be

« SebelumnyaLanjutkan »