THE TEACHER AS A SKILLED LABORER.

CHARLES HENRY DOUGLASS, CONNECTICUT LITERARY INSTITUTION, SUFFIELD, CONN.

A vigorous and practical thinker has recently said in substance that teaching is an art founded on skill, not on scholarship; that it is a "craft not based on erudition at all." Such words from a leading educator are significant. The time when evidence of mere scholarship will satisfy a school or college board, has passed away. The public no longer trusts its youth without question to the care of book-worms or newly-fledged teachers recruited from the ranks of college honor men. There is a demand-and a just demand-for tangible results, and the learned man is pushed aside to make room for the skilled craftsman. The tendency is a good one; it is the pledge to the present generation that the next will be well trained.

Every radical change, however, in the method of an existing institution is liable to be pushed to an extreme. There is danger of forgetting that in proper education the mind gains much that eludes the examination or graduation test; much that refuses to show itself on parade; much that lies out of the control of the will. It came unsummoned and lies dormant until maturer years call it forth. It is the vital part of education—the germ that develops with the growth of life. All else is mere husk, which may have incidental uses, but whose real use is to protect the seed and supply its first nourishment.

The narrower the range of a mind, the more prominent is its special bent. So a teacher thoroughly trained in a single subject always impresses himself as a specialist-a man of one idea-while the teacher of broader culture who is the equal of the mere specialist in his skill, never parades his mere skill as his stock in trade. In the class room the man of capacity to teach, whether he is trained in one science or language or in many, concentrates attention upon the single subject in hand. If skilled in the art of instructing he is neither diffuse nor wandering. The man of narrower culture, by force of personal magnetism and lucid thought impresses the subject as with a hot iron. His mind becomes the pattern for the minds of his pupils, for there is no denying the fact that the pupil unconsciously adopts the tone and scope of mind of his teacher. The man

of broader culture does all this as effectively as his would-be-rival, and he does more. He makes his classes familiar with the workings of a mind of a higher and broader type. He can unconsciously diffuse an air of culture that reaches out of his own subject and connects it with the whole circle of knowledge. He can bring to his recitation not only the subject itself, with its own life, but vitalized also with the life and light of all that the wider range of his vision can reach. His pupils gain not only aptness, skill and discipline, but a breadth and depth that are worth as much. The teacher of limited or purely specialized training can never do this. He who has skill and culture is as successful as the narrow man in his special subject, and accomplishes the rest gratuitously and without consumption of time.

No corps of teachers made up of merely skilled instructors ever educates in any true sense. No one subject well taught gives true culture. No group of subjects taught as isolated and independent departments of knowledge, gives much depth of culture.

The great impulse to learning in this century has arisen from the cross-fertilization of science, language, history, art, politics and religion. The growing mind cannot be properly developed by pigeon holing it with language, science and mathematics. It must be taught to see what Plato calls "the relation of things;" its individuality must be developed; it must be inspired-breathed intowith the breath of life. The "trained craftsman," the teacher whose foundation is mere "skill" in some one thing, can never do this higher work. He doubts whether it belongs to education at all.

Many a man who looks back upon his school and college days, holds in affectionate remembrance as the man who helped his after life most, some instructor perhaps not superior to his associates as a teacher, but who had a genius for awakening the individuality of his pupils, and for creating a desire for the best things, and gave them a view of the heights to which men of brain might climb.

The sentences quoted at the beginning of this article were well said. They ought to be dinned into the ears of every teacher who puts his sole hope in scholarship or erudition, until he adds skill and trained method to his attainments. The fact which this article tries to make plain, ought also to be forced upon the attention of every narrowly trained specialist in teaching, until he shall reach out and grasp all that his capacity will permit of the great inheritance of the good, beautiful and true that the ages have left us.

college requiremeNTS IN ENGLISH.

At the meeting of the Massachusetts Teachers' Association last November, Prof. Shipman of Tufts College, read before the High School Section a temperate and well-considered paper on the subject of "English in Secondary Schools." An abstract of this paper has already been published, and has doubtless come to the notice of many of our readers. Dr. Shipman offered no plan for the adjustment of existing difficulties between the colleges and the preparatory schools in the matter of English. Assuming that these difficulties arose largely from the lack of consideration thus far given to the subject, he wished merely to stimulate discussion in order to arrive at a better understanding of the work in English now done.

The discussion of Dr. Shipman's paper was opened by Mr. Collar, Headmaster of the Roxbury Latin School. We quote somewhat at length from what Mr. Collar said because it seems to us to voice the sentiments of many preparatory teachers on this subject.

"I have listened with a good deal of pleasure to Dr. Shipman's paper, because the subject has been treated in a candid and judicial manner, and with a manifest appreciation of the difficulties which the present requirements for admission to college in English impose upon the schools. If he finds the results of the training in English unsatisfactory, his criticisms are neither depressing nor irritating in spirit and tone, like those to which he has referred, that have issued from a neighboring university, and have been wide spread over the country.

"But I confess my disappointment that in substance and in fact he seems to confirm much that has been said of the deplorable state of training in English in secondary schools. Reluctantly he is forced to confess that the outcome, judged by the college entrance examination, is exceedingly unsatisfactory. He finds that only one or two in a hundred attain to the maximum mark, and only thirty in a hundred get a mark of seventy-five. It would be interesting to know what per cent get between eighty-five and a hundred, for those, I presume, might be said to pass the examination with credit. Perhaps the number is so small that he did not care to state it.

"We have then, from the professors of English in two colleges in this vicinity, testimony that would seem to indicate pretty clearly a substantial failure on the part of the schools to meet the requirement of the colleges in their department.

"Dr. Shipman would make large allowance on account of the lack of time for English in the schools, and for the immaturity of candidates at the time of admission to college; but there still remains no inconsiderable proportion of failure which seems fairly chargeable to poor training. That there is a good deal of poor teaching in English, as in other subjects, I do not question; but on the other hand, I am satisfied that there is much more good work done than the colleges find evidence of. I happen to have personal knowledge of the instruction in English in several prominent feeders of these two colleges, and in my judgment it is not poor in any one of them, and in some is positively excellent. I have no doubt that the same is true of a good many other schools. What is the explanation of this apparent contradiction? It is not probably a mere difference of individual judgment, though some circumstances would appear to point that way. I may be permitted to say that of the boys whom I have sent to Harvard during the past five years, two or three on the average, each year, seemed likely to distinguish themselves in English on the entrance examination. In fact not one has passed "with credit," though several were able, once in college, to do work most satisfactory to their instructors.

"This serious allegation of poor work in English in the schools does not rest upon any actual inspection of the training by the colleges. It appears to rest solely upon the test of the entrance examination. That test is sufficiently unlike other tests of the same examination to raise the question whether it is not in some measure deceptive. The examination in English, set now by the associated colleges of New England, consists of two parts, the correction of bad English and the writing of an essay. The time allowed at Harvard is an hour and a half. Of this time I understand that about thirty minutes is supposed to go to the correction of faulty English, and an hour to the production of an essay. From fifteen to twenty sentences are set for correction, so that not to exceed two minutes on the average may be allowed for each sentence. I have heard an intelligent, educated teacher say that it has sometimes taken him twice or three times as long to make out the intended meaning of a single sentence, and that not unfrequently he was

unable to satisfy himself how a sentence should be corrected. The corrections are required to be made on the printed paper, though sometimes the only thing to do seems to be to recast an entire sentence. The perplexity of the candidate is still further increased by an implied hint, at the head of his paper, that some sentences may not need emendation. If the number of the sentences were much smaller, or if there were a plenty of time, this would be a commendable feature of the examination; as it is, it is an added torture.

"This preliminary task seems to be admirably calculated to compose the mind of the candidate for the writing of an original essay. The subject of the required essay is, of course, unknown. It may be any one of four or five, for to that degree a choice is allowed the candidate, of the innumerable topics that an examiner may fairly draw from the list of authors previously prescribed to be read. The reading of these books is supposed to be spread over two or three years preceding the examination. I am addressing a body of mature, intelligent, educated men and women, more or less practised in composition, and I ask you what you would think of the fairness of such a test as applied to yourselves. Let me suppose that within two or three years you have read, with interest and attention, eight or ten works; and that now, in the quiet of your own libraries, you are required to write an original essay, within sixty miuutes, on some one of a very small number of subjects, drawn by an examiner from any one of those works. Observe that the examination is intended to be not merely a test of your ability to write acceptable English. It presupposes unusual readiness in composition, with all that that implies, and a considerable amount of literary knowledge. This knowledge too must be at your finger-ends. I think you would declare the test an unreasonable one. You might succeed, but the chances are that you would not. It might easily happen that, by the expiration of the time you would not have put half a dozen sentences together.

"I forgot to add that the four or five subjects, from which you would be allowed to choose, would be selected by the examiner from a single work. It might be one that had not made a strong impression upon your mind, or one that was read so long ago as to leave rather dim recollections, either a circumstance that would greatly increase the chances of failure. If you should pronounce such a test preposterous, I do not think you would be beyond the mark.