The Public School Teacher and Promotional

T

Examinations

HARRIET E. TUELL, MILTON, MASS.

(A Teacher's View)

HE teachers of the Commonwealth, the vast feminine majority, at least, are vowed, like the monks of the middle ages, to poverty, celibacy and obedience. There is this difference, however: the individual poverty is not mitigated by the wealth of the corporate body, and the obedience required is not unquestioning transfer of moral responsibility to a superior. That were simple. The modern teacher is not merely subservient to her superiors in office; she must also meet the demands of a critical public and her own accusing conscience. If these agree, well and good; if not, Heaven help her! Of these three mentors conscience is by far the most exacting. One whose work is subject every hour to the action and reaction of the childish mind, is keenly conscious of weaknesses hidden to the most interested observer. She has no need to cultivate the grace of humility. It is thrust upon her. The difficulties are many, but every teacher recognizes more clearly with each succeeding year of service that her greatest foes are within herself, her own ignorance and narrowness of view. Eagerly, therefore, does she welcome any scheme which promises relief. In this spirit have educators everywhere scanned the new system of promotional examinations for teachers recently instituted by the school committee of Boston. If repeated examinations are the true milestones to proficiency, all teachers wish to be examined forthwith. It may look like a thorny path, but, if it meets the requirements of the situation, their professional enthusiasm is equal to the demand.

The scheme in brief is this: all teachers, except principals and directors, whose compensation is on a sliding scale with a fixed increase for each succeeding year of service, must take a promotional examination before they are placed upon the

third year of their respective schedules and again before they receive the seventh year salary. These examinations shall consist of three parts: (1) success in the school during the preceding year; (2) professional study; (3) academic study in some one line. Here, at least, is frank recognition of the teacher's need for study, a necessity too often overlooked by' the powers that be.

Professional and academic training every educator needs undoubtedly. A distinguished German critic has said that inadequate preparation on the part of the teacher is the great evil to be remedied in our educational system. "If the majority of college teachers are hardly prepared to teach in a secondary school, if the majority of high school teachers are hardly fit to teach in a primary school, and if the majority of primary school teachers are just enough educated to fill a salesgirl's place in a millinery store, then every other reform is self-deceit."* If his premises are correct no one will question his conclusions. The Boston school authorities by their adoption of this examination system would seem to make open confession that, in their precinct at least, there is a large measure of truth in his criticism. Otherwise the system would have no excuse for being. But let no one suppose that any scheme of compulsory examination

will make of the milliner's clerk a scholar or a teacher.

No one is fit to enter on the profession of teaching who has not already felt the contact and lived in the company of men and women devoted to the search for truth for the truth's sake, and that alone. The true teacher has had her radiant morning visions; has herself glanced, if but for a moment, down the long vistas of the groves of Academe. Routine and red-tape may cloud the vision, but its influence is never quite lost. It is her task to pass on to the new generation some spark of that enthusiasm, to enlist their youthful eagerness and spirit in the sacred quest. One who attempts to do this by fear of examination or by a system of rewards and punishments is confessedly a failure. Yet she herself is now expected to give her best work in response to the same sort of argument. By moral power and high professional loyalty the New England school*Hugo Munsterberg, American Traits, p. 36.

teacher has in the past wielded a great influence for good. If she needs the goad of a set examination or deigns to respond to such urging, her power is indeed on the wane.

Given adequate training as a foundation, the teacher must of necessity build upon it and enlarge it to meet the daily need. In some subjects, as mathematics and the classics, knowledge gained in this way may be fairly tested by an examination. The requirements of the examiner and the classroom being one, no harm would be done by asking for an occasional report of progress. In other subjects, however, the best preparation for the classroom may diverge widely from the road to success in an examination. Suppose that the subject is history, and the topic for the day that grand old Athenian philosopher and teacher, Socrates. The instructor must know the main points in his life and teaching, the dates of his birth and death, the characteristics of his environment, and perhaps arguments as to the fidelity of Plato's portrait of him. This is the sort of information required for an examination, but will it meet the demand of those eager upturned faces? Will it satisfy their fresh enthusiasm, their serious, if childish wonder and curiosity as to this grave old world and they that have walked therein? Ah no! For that the teacher must have stood with the master in the market place, drunk deep with him at the banquet of Agathon, listened to the shrewd and searching questions of this "gadfly" of Athens, heard his homely eloquence in his own defence, and above all, have assisted at that last immortal conversation in the prison. By such study one may hope to bring a class in a measure directly under the influence of the Socrates of Plato. Without it, the mere facts about him will be but dead and lifeless things. But all this takes time, much time, and in the end contributes but slightly toward "success in school" for one day,-success which continued for the year counts but a beggarly third toward promotion. It is not knowledge that can be tested by question and answer. It is a kind of preparation that cannot be adequately described in a statement of methods of work. In the time it takes any teacher with proper regard for professional advancement might prepare a paper fairly bristling with facts and erudition. Is she to

shape her course toward that which she deems her highest service or to that which will bring the earliest pecuniary reward? The temptation is sore enough as it is, to "make the worse appear the better reason," to foster that which makes a show to parents and school officials at the expense of true scholarship, to seek popularity and follow the line of least resistance rather than insist upon thoroughness and sound discipline. Lower the teacher's ideals by direct appeal to low motives and the temptation is cruelly increased.

Few people realize what unmeasured and immeasurable good is done by public school teachers quite outside their regular professional duties. These inconspicuous women are not heroic or picturesque figures. They do not attract by their beauty. Teaching as a profession does not make for womanly grace or charm. The work is too arduous for that. Yet they are as truly deserving of honor as any missionaries who bear the name. Those whose work lies among the poor often literally clothe the naked, feed the hungry, and visit the sick. To the teacher, as to an oracle, comes the perplexed father who cannot keep his boy at home in the evening. Even the parents, oftentimes, do not know what quiet influence stopped the boy's smoking, and replaced his listlessness and indifference with something of manliness and vigor. All this reacts in a way on the teacher's class work, but after all it counts but little toward "success in school for the year," and not at all toward academic and professional studies. Yet, since the real work of the school is training for citizenship, who shall say that such service is justly to be overlooked?

There are many ways by which this class of workers may be helped. Their ignorance and narrowness are partly conditioned by their poverty. This it is rather than indifference, which keeps within narrow limits the number of books and lecture tickets they buy. This in many cases absolutely prohibits the foreign travel which they should regard not as a luxury but a necessity. In many schools even the books and apparatus necessary for efficient work are withheld from false ideas of economy.

No less unfortunate seems the growing tendency to make the

public school teacher the medium for all sorts of investigations and reforms, excellent in themselves, but hard to reconcile with the other demands on her time and strength. Statistics, medical inspection, free text-books, red-tape of all kinds, a thousand interruptions, often seem to a teacher with any conscience as to her work like the veritable fiend that troubled Launcelot Gobbo, "Well, my conscience says, 'Launcelot, budge not'; 'budge,' says the fiend, 'budge not,' says my conscience." It is not the work of teaching, but such conflicting claims that sap the strength of the public school teacher, sending her home at night too weary to make adequate preparation for the morrow. She does not beg for sympathy; she does not ask an easier life, but she does desire, yes longs ardently and passionately for means to make more fruitful the service to which she is dedicated. In the name of all true scholarship, as you love your children, see to it that the wellmeaning efforts in her behalf be guided by wisdom and understanding.

To this end the colleges and universities everywhere have established summer schools. By their aid the working teacher may fill the gaps in her professional training. They do a useful work, and are doubtless the very fount of inspiration to hundreds every year. Still the teacher who plans to spend a summer in that way will do well first to count the cost. It is a rare woman that has sufficient physical strength to endure the work of the school year, and the work of a summer school in addition, without serious loss of the freshness and buoyancy that are an important part of her stock in trade. It is, indeed, pleasant and profitable to supplement personal experience by comparison with others of the same occupation. Occasionally it may be worth while to spend a summer in that way. Usually, however, there are other and more important uses for the precious time. Quite as much as equipment and scholarship teachers need a knowledge of human nature. Unfortunately, but perhaps inevitably, they belong to a class apart. For nine months of the year they live with children. Children are delightful companions, none better, but it must be confessed that one whose life work is with them longs sometimes for the