Chapter 13

But to go back just a moment: let us consider it from the standpoint of mere physical betterment. We know that a muscle unused means a muscle undeveloped, and that, on the contrary, intelligent, systematic use, with a definite purpose in view, will accomplish wonders in physical development. We know something as to what a physical trainer can do with a bunch of raw foot-ball material. We know how the gymnasium can metamorphose a loose-jointed, lop-sided, stoop-shouldered, shamble-gaited young fellow. We know what the brisk recruiting officer can do with the "awkward squad." In the one case as in the other, the physical training stands him upon his feet; it takes the kinks out of his back; it throws his head up; it unties the knots in his legs; it puts fire into his eye. The good red blood courses thru his veins, and even shows itself in his cheeks. He walks with an elastic step. Every organ of his body is doing its duty. He no longer needs liver pills, digestive tablets or wizard oil.

I said "mere physical betterment," didn't I? Well, you can not have "mere" physical betterment. In every case suggested above, there is something better than physical improvement. Without knowing why, or how, the young fellow, after the training suggested, in addition to being a more perfectly functioning animal, a better working flesh-and-blood machine, is several rounds higher up on the ladder of manhood. He looks you in the eye. He gives your hand a regular Stearns grip. He dares to say that his soul is his own. And why? Because the life-giving oxygen is getting down into the long-neglected corners of his lungs. Because his heart is forcing this purified blood thru his veins building up his system and incidentally throwing off the waste and poisonous matter, so that, relieved of the dregs, the bodily organs can really function. And if that is true of the "gizzard" it is likewise true of the brain. He can feel more keenly, think more wisely. But all this can be done by physical exercise alone. Some of the best of these results can be obtained by the use of the mere punching bag; by running around the house, if you run often enough and fast enough; all alone with the dumb bells or Indian clubs, if you keep at it long enough, or even by walking out to the University on the railroad tracks and saving your street car nickels. But taken thus, these exercises constitute a mere medicine. And people don't take medicine until they have to. And for some strange reason they won't take this kind even then unless some doctor prescribes it in consideration of the payment of a good sized fee. Why is it? Simply because we prize things in proportion to their cost?

Now, we want these results and even better ones. And we don't want to pay the doctor's fees for this or any other kind of medicine in order to get them. What are we going to do about it? Isn't there some sugar coating that we can put on to these physical exercise pills to make them a little more palatable? Can't we in some way make ourselves believe that we are eating candy instead of taking quinine? For you know that we grown-ups have not lost all our powers of imagination. How often we play make believe, even yet! I'll tell you what we can do. Let's have this same physical exercise idea but introduce into it the element of sport which Webster defines as "that which diverts and makes mirth." Let's do these stunts "for the fun of it" instead of as a medicine. We'll get the results, just the same, and thus get double pay for our pains. I fancy that the skiing and the skating, the snow-shoeing and the curling of which we are to hear, all have that element tucked away somewhere in their anatomy.

But you may ask me what more there is than the results already mentioned to be gotten from these physical exercises, if we succeed in covering up the quinine with Mr. Webster's molasses. I've used Indian clubs and dumb bells by the hour; I've walked to the University in season and out of season; I've even run around the house--and as a result have experienced the exhilaration that comes from such vigorous discipline. I've been better for it, physically, and therefore, of course, mentally. More oxygen, better blood, firmer bodily tissue including better nourished brain cells, have done their beneficent work. But yet, as I look back and see myself going thru these various maneuvers, I am fully confident of the fact that all this time I was also doing something else--that my poor brain cells, which really needed recuperation more than any other part of my body, that these brain cells were still at work, that I was all the time carrying on a more or less strenuous train of thought as exhaustive as tho I were seated in my study chair, or standing before my class in the recitation room. More than one lecture, or address, have I worked out while walking to and from the University.

Now, one of the most important things for us to do is occasionally to stop thinking, or at least to stop thinking along our accustomed lines. We should give those few brain cells that are being made to work over-time a chance to rest once in a while. We are living too fast. Our lives are too intense. We are running our machines under high pressure, and some of them are already showing the results altho they are almost new. Unless there is a change, new ones will have to take their places ere long. The rate of speed of the life of the modern American business and professional man, the rate of speed of the life of the modern American society woman, is something terrific. We are wearing ourselves out before our time. Modern life is so complex, so exacting, so wearing, that we are losing all the joy of living. We are at our own firesides so seldom and for such short periods that we scarcely know our own little ones. Longfellow's "Children's Hour" that came "as a pause in the day's occupation," is almost wholly unknown in most American homes. There is no "pause" in the day's occupation. The occupation goes right on till after these "children" are soundly asleep in their beds and begins again before they are awake in the morning. And all this is true even of us, right here in this select circle, the "favored ones," many would call us.

But I am not giving a diatribe on American life, so will not pursue the matter farther. All that I am trying to do is simply this: to call attention to the fact that we are living _fast_--faster than our physical and mental make-up can long stand; that we have already reached the danger point. And what are we going to do about it? Well, we shall have to do many things before the problems are all solved, the difficulties all met. As a slight relief, and to answer a question raised a little earlier in the paper, I am suggesting the sports--those activities that both rejuvenate the physical man and also "divert and make mirth." Into these we can not carry our teaching and our preaching and our making of social calls. The goods of the merchant, the notes of the banker, the briefs of the lawyer, the annoyances of the teacher, and the cares of the housewife, alike, would all have to be left behind. The mind could rest while the body and the spirit are being recreated. An hour a day, in the open air, with fears and anxieties and schemes all cast aside, in companionship with kindred spirits similarly divested of that which troubles and makes afraid, all engaged in recreative sports, would do more to make us physically well, morally strong, and civilly decent than all the pills of the doctors, all the texts of the preachers, and all the keys of the jailers!

In keeping with the world-wide movement in this direction our own people, in their civic capacity, have already acted and have thus become the possessor of splendid park facilities which offer ample opportunities, when fully developed, for a sane out-of-door life of a population many times as large as ours at the present time. And as we all know, the Park Board has entered intelligently and systematically upon this matter of development and improvement. Much has already been done. Very much more is fully outlined in the minds of the Park Board. I think it is their purpose--and I fully believe that they will carry it out--to proceed in this matter of development just as rapidly as the people show, by their use of the facilities progressively offered, an appreciation.

Nearly all the work done thus far, such as clearing away the rubbish, making the shady retreats usable, fitting up picnic grounds, caring for the tennis courts, golf links, and other game reserves, as well as erecting pavilions and other conveniences, has looked toward putting the grounds into condition for summer use. And the response on the part of the people has been gratifying. As rapidly as the parks have been put into shape, they have been generously used by an appreciative people. It has done my heart good, many times, especially on Sundays in the hot summer months, to see the numbers of people, and _the people_, who were really using the parks. They have been the people, in a large mesure, who can not easily get elsewhere the best things that the parks give.

Thus far, as said, the plans for development have looked mainly toward summer use, But I am especially glad to note a recent improvement that shows that the Park Board has the winter use of the parks also definitely in mind. I refer to the new skating rink in Riverside Park. It is a most commendable institution. I very much hope that it will be extensively used, not only by the people living in that part of the city, but by those of all sections. It belongs to all of us. Here is an opportunity for a most delightful winter sport freely offered. If appreciated, as shown by its use, I have no doubt that it will be duplicated next winter, and on a larger scale, in Lincoln Park. And if we show that we appreciate this, other features will be added.

Perhaps I should stop here, but I can not lose the opportunity of saying just a word to connect this topic with the great playground movement, and therefore in behalf of providing facilities for winter and summer sports alike, for our boys and girls--our young people.

Do you realize fully that the boys and girls of to-day--yours and mine, yes, and just as truly those less favored--those into whose lives there comes but little cheer, into whose stomachs there goes but little nourishing food, and into whose lungs, but little oxygen--do you realize, I ask, that these boys and girls are to be the men and women of to-morrow, with all the responsibilities of the world resting upon their shoulders? Do we want them to enter upon the duties of life stoop-shouldered, flat-chested, spectacle-eyed? Do we want them to be anæmic, pessimistic, nervous wrecks? Do we want them to be mental weaklings and moral cowards? Do we want them even to approximate these conditions? No? Then, with all our provisions for their wants and their needs, let us be sure to develop those things which minister so largely to the development of the opposite characteristics. Prevention is not only cheaper than cure, it is also better. Let us see that our parks are developed with provisions for our boys and girls as well as for the adults. Let us see that playgrounds are scattered over our city and provision made for both winter and summer sports.

In addition to the Riverside Park skating rink, I wish the City Council or the Board of Education would establish one on the grounds of the Winship school, another at the Central building, and still a third on the Belmont grounds. This could be done at nominal cost. What a splendid opportunity it would give to all the children of the city to engage in this most healthful and invigorating sport! It would give them their needed entertainment and relaxation in the pure, invigorating, out-of-door air. It would surround them with an emotional atmosphere that is at once normal, natural, and spiritually health-giving. Instead of these conditions, what do we find? Many of our young boys and girls and very many of those a little older--those just entering upon manhood and womanhood, when both emotional and physical atmosphere count for so much in the forming of habits and the choosing of ideals--many of these future men and women are finding their entertainment and their relaxation (and mind you, at the close of a day in school or in the evening after a day spent in the poorly ventilated office or store) in the moving-picture show or at the vaudeville. And in these places the air is apt to be both hot and impure, and all the physical conditions enervating. The emotional atmosphere, too, is sure to be abnormal, unnatural, and spiritually deadening. We find here, and in too large quantity to be a negligible factor, the atmosphere, the conditions, the associations, that help greatly to breed incorrigibles, truants, and laggards in our schools; that develop juvenile delinquents, hasty marriages, and early divorces; that send into the world paupers, grafters, and criminals. Not all the conditions are such in all such places, it is true, but as affecting young life these are usually the dominating ones.

I am not condemning the theater. It has its legitimate place, and a large place it is, in normal, healthy, American life. I am merely declaiming against these lower forms as usually conducted for commercial gain--these perversions of the true theater idea--these institutions that deal so largely in the sensational elements and appeal so strongly to the passions. I am told that the cheap theater is the poor man's club. I very much doubt if that is its chief function or, rather, that its chief result is a wholesome quickening of the better nature of this poor man--that its chief accomplishment is to send him back to his home kinder, truer, and stronger, thru either the relaxation or the instruction, to grapple with the difficulties of life. I greatly fear that, as usually conducted, its influence upon the adult is at best but the temporary slaking of an unhealthy and never-satisfied thirst, and that upon the child and the adolescent it is a distinct blunting of all the finer sensibilities and elements of character. But even these lower forms are not all bad. There is enough of good in them to warrant an attempt at improvement rather than elimination. They can be improved, made clean, and wholesome, and thus become a positive factor in the development of right character. I doubt if it will be done, however, until some other motive than personal gain shall be responsible for their management. Still, as they are, they might be very greatly bettered if in some way those most deeply interested in the outcome could have a choice in the selection of the material to be used.

One of the best ways to counteract the harmful influence of the poorly conducted moving picture show and the vaudeville is to develop something better to take their places. Let it be something that contains the life-giving principles, something that will appeal with equal force to the impressionable youth, and yet be clean and wholesome and natural. Shall we not look upon the public playground for the children, and the park system, for all, as a promising hope? And, properly developed, would they not soon come to act on the young, both physically and psychically, as a prevention, thus making a later cure unnecessary? And upon adults, might we not reasonably expect their use to tend toward making less attractive, and so to the eventual abandonment of, many of these practises and forms of entertainment and recreation that are now so sapping of both physical and psychical life?

IX

THE FUNCTION OF TEACHERS COLLEGE

_An Address delivered before the North Dakota State Teachers Association on December 27, 1906. It later appeared in the January and February, 1910, issues of "Education"_

Among the various educational institutions of the United States to-day, the one which, as it seems to me, is attracting the most intelligent attention on the part of our educational thinkers, and the one upon the right solution of whose problems depends, in a high degree, the success of our entire educational system, is the institution for the education of teachers. For we all have come, finally, to accept as true the statement of the old German writer, "School reform means schoolmaster reform," also that other, used so effectively in the days of our own early educational revival, "As is the teacher so is the school." And we are ready to-day to admit that those statements are true whether applied to the ungraded rural school with its noticeable lack of needed equipment, to the perfectly graded school of the city with every facility that human ingenuity can devise and money procure, or to the college and university where scholarship and culture are supposed to make their abode and contribute of their fullness. For I care not, and you care not, what be the physical and material equipment of the school; I care not, nor do you, what be the scholastic attainments of the one called teacher; if he isn't able to teach, that is, to cause to learn, we all know that the school, in just the mesure of his inability, is a failure. One thing further we all know, and that is this: one plank in our great educational platform is belief in the necessity of an institution set apart for the preparation of teachers. We are irrevocably committed to the idea. It is a part of our educational creed. Fortunately, in our educational evolution we have left far behind us the stage when the wisdom of that institution was seriously questioned. Our pedagogical forefathers, valiant explorers, discoverers, heroes, educational statesmen--Carter, Mann, Page, Sheldon and others--have left us this priceless heritage. It remains for us to-day merely to analyze the institution, agree upon the respective functions of its various types, and then apply ourselves with intelligent vigor each to the solution of his own problems.

As we look around us, we clearly distinguish three distinct types of the institution under discussion. The oldest, best known, and most numerous is called the state normal school. It dates from the time of Horace Mann and Edmund Dwight, the former of whom recognized the need and knew how to inaugurate the movement, the latter, having unbounded faith in Mr. Mann, provided the funds. Nearly every state in the union has now one or more intelligently at work. All that have not, have practically the same thing under another name--normal departments in connection with the state universities.

The next type, in order of time and numbers, as well, is found in connection with the higher educational institutions of the country. It has various names, as "Department of Education," "School of Education," "Division of Education," "Pedagogical Department," "School of Pedagogy" and "Teachers College." Probably the name most common in the past has been "Department of Education," or "Pedagogical Department," tho in the developed form it is changing to "School of Education" or "Teachers College." Of these, there are at work, according to the 1909 report of the Commissioner of Education, 171. That is, there are 171 colleges and universities maintaining at least a department, or chair, of education, and giving professional instruction of college grade.

The third type, latest in appearance and as yet fewest in number, but with fair promise of rapid increase and great usefulness, is the county school, called "County Normal Training Class" in Michigan and "County Training School" in Wisconsin, in which two states the movement is at its best. Indeed, I do not know of any other state in which the work has been thus definitely organized. Of these, Michigan had, a year ago, forty-one, and Wisconsin, twenty. Possibly in this connection one ought to mention the good work being done in high schools in several states, but seen at its best in Nebraska and New York. Yet this work is but an adjunct to the high school, and does not so clearly approach a separate institution.

Of these three types it is the second which is the subject of the present discussion--whose function I seek. It is really immaterial whether we use, in the discussion, the appellation of Minnesota and say "College of Education," or that of Harvard and call it "Division of Education," or that of Columbia, Missouri, and North Dakota, and say "Teachers College." For they are all one and the same institution with but slightly different systems of organization. I use the latter term because more familiar and more likely, I think, as time passes, to prevail.

But these three types are so closely connected that the function of one cannot be clearly seen alone. Therefore I propose very briefly to examine the establishment of each so as to learn why it was called into existence--what function it was originally expected to perform. I shall then briefly examine present conditions, trying to discover if any changes have taken place in the general educational situation of sufficient moment to make necessary a rearrangement or readjustment. Finally, I shall draw my conclusions as to present functions, and with a more careful analysis of certain factors state the reasons for those conclusions as briefly as possible.

First, as to state normal schools: it is, of course, entirely unnecessary to go into details as to organization or early work of this institution in our country. I am stating what is known to all when I say that Horace Mann in Massachusetts, Henry Barnard in Connecticut, David Page in New York, and William Phelps in New Jersey had one and only one thought in view in working for the establishment of normal schools and for the development of their work. They, one and all, were seeking some means for providing better teachers for the common schools. No one, so far as I am able to discover, at this time even suggested that any other teachers needed a special preparation for their work. To be sure, the American high school was hardly under way when the normal school movement was inaugurated, in 1839, there being then but half a dozen in the entire country. Ten years later there were but eighteen. There was, however, in those days a large number of academies giving secondary instruction. But there was no thought of looking to the normal schools for academy teachers, they came from the colleges. Indeed, generally speaking, the academies and high schools as then being developed, were offering a higher grade of academic work than the normal schools, and they were rather assisting the latter in the production of teachers. This was especially true in New York, a movement having there been inaugurated by which, thru financial aid from the State, many of the academies were offering normal school instruction and sending out into the rural schools and city grades a very creditable product. And the character of the movement in the East has continued to be the character of the movement as it has swept Westward. I think there has not been established in the United States a single state normal school whose function has not been understood to be the preparation of teachers for the common schools. And by "common schools" I mean the first eight grades of the public school, including both rural and urban communities, for it has been only in recent years that we have carefully discriminated between the two.

Next, let us look at the teachers college. Bear in mind that I use the term as referring to the institution, or department, under whatever name it may be known, that is doing professional work in the preparation of teachers in connection with colleges and universities. In taking up the topic, attention needs first to be called to two facts: the rapid development of our high school system and the high degree of success already attained by our normal schools.