Reveries of a Schoolmaster | Page 2

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.
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