The Reconstructed School | Page 8

to use it in generating power. Knowledge is convenient and serviceable, but its greatest utility lies in the fact that it can be employed in producing power.
We are prone to take our judgments ready-made and have been relying upon the copy-books of the fathers rather than our own reasoning powers. If we had only learned in childhood the distinction between knowledge and wisdom; if we had learned that knowledge is not power but merely potential; and if we had learned that knowledge is but the means to an end and not the end itself, we should have been spared many a delusion and our educational sky would not now be so overcast with clouds. We have been proceeding upon the agreeable assumption that arithmetic, geography, and history are the goals of every school endeavor, the Ultima Thule of every educational quest. The child studies arithmetic, is subjected to an examination that may represent the bent or caprice of the teacher, manages to struggle through seventy per cent of the answers, is promoted to the next higher grade, and, thereupon, starts on his journey around another circle. And we call this education. These processes constitute the mechanics of education, but, in and of themselves, they are not education. One of the big problems of the school today is to emancipate both teachers and pupils from the erroneous notion that they are.
The child does not go to school to learn arithmetic and spelling and grammar. The goal to be attained is far higher and better than either of these or all combined. The study of arithmetic may prove a highly profitable means, never the end to be gained. This statement will be boldly challenged by the traditional teacher, but it is so strongly intrenched in logic and sound pedagogy that it is impregnable. The goal might, possibly, be reached without the aid of arithmetic, but, if a knowledge of this subject will facilitate the process, then, of course, it becomes of value and should be used. Let us assume, for the moment, that the teacher decides to set up thoroughness as one of the large objectives of her teaching. While she may be able to reach this goal sooner by means of arithmetic, no one will contend that arithmetic is indispensable. Nor, indeed, will any one contend that arithmetic is comparable to thoroughness as a goal to be attained. If the teacher's constant aim is thoroughness, she will achieve even better results in the arithmetic and will inculcate habits in her pupils that serve them in good stead throughout life. For the quality of thoroughness is desirable in every activity of life, and we do well to emphasize every study and every activity of the school that helps in the development of this quality.
If the superintendent were challenged to adduce a satisfactory reason why he has not written thoroughness into his course of study he might be hard put to it to justify the omission. He hopes, of course, that the quality of thoroughness will issue somehow from the study of arithmetic and science, but he lacks the courage, apparently, to proclaim this hope in print. He says that education is a spiritual process, while his course of study proves that he is striving to produce mental acrobats, relegating the spiritual qualities to the rank of by-products. His course of study shows conclusively that he thinks that knowledge is power. Once disillusion him on this point and his course of study will cease to be to him the sacrosanct affair it has always appeared and he will no longer look upon it as a sort of sacrilege to inject into this course of study some elements that seem to violate the sanctities of tradition.
Advancing another brief step, we may try to imagine the superintendent's suggesting to the teachers at the opening of the school year that they devote the year to inculcating in their pupils the qualities of thoroughness, self-control, courage, and reverence. The faces of the teachers, at such a proposal, would undoubtedly afford opportunity for an interesting study and the linguistic reactions of some of them would be forcible to the point of picturesqueness. The traditional teachers would demand to know by what right he presumed to impose upon them such an unheard-of program. Others might welcome the suggestion as a means of relief from irritating and devastating drudgery. In their quaint innocence and guilelessness their souls would revel in rainbow dreams of preachments, homilies, and wise counsel that would cause the qualities of self-control and reverence to spring into being full-grown even as Minerva from the head of Jove.
But their beatific visions would dissolve upon hearing the superintendent name certain teachers to act as a committee to determine and report upon the studies that would best serve the purpose