Reveries of a Schoolmaster | Page 2

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.
We have farm ballads and farm arithmetics, but as yet no one has written for us a book on farm pedagogy. I'd do it myself but for the feeling that some Strayer, or McMurry, or O'Shea will get right at it as soon as he has come upon this suggestion. That's my one great trouble. The other fellow has the thing done before I can get around to it. I would have written "The Message to Garcia," but Mr. Hubbard anticipated me. Then, I was just ready to write a luminous description of Yellowstone Falls when I happened upon the one that DeWitt Talmage wrote, and I could see no reason for writing another. So it is. I seem always to be just too late. I wish now that I had written "Recessional" before Kipling got to it. No doubt, the same thing will happen with my farm pedagogy. If one could only stake a claim in all this matter of writing as they do in the mining regions, the whole thing would be simplified. I'd stake my claim on farm pedagogy and then go on hoeing my potatoes while thinking out what to say on the subject.
Whoever writes the book will do well to show how catching a boy is analogous to catching a colt out in the pasture. Both feats require tact and, at the very least, horse-sense. The other day I wanted to catch my colt and went out to the pasture for that purpose. There is a hill in the pasture, and I went to the top of this and saw the colt at the far side of the pasture in what we call the swale--low, wet ground, where weeds abound. I didn't want to get my shoes soiled, so I stood on the hill and called and called. The colt looked up now and then and then went on with his own affairs. In my chagrin I was just about ready to get angry when it occurred to me that the colt wasn't angry, and that I ought to show as good sense as a mere horse. That reflection relieved the tension somewhat, and I thought it wise to meditate a bit. Here am