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I have just read a- most able article in the
November Mercury1 by Dr. Chase, former presi*
dent of the University:^ Kortli Oarolina, and a
review of an article in a magazine by; Edgar W;
Knight of the University faculty. Those scholar
ly gentlemen were dealing with educational prob
lems, but. chiefly with those of the colleges and,
universities. They are comforting jn that I am
convinced that-these articles of mine are as perti
nent to the broader' field of public school educa
tion as theirs to the higher realms. If the larger
magazines„ can afford to publish them; then, I
conclude, The State's Voice is justified in giving,
space to these cogitations. I commend particu
larly to the attention/of all thinking citizens of
the state Dr. Chase’s article, w - - ’ - ' ’
I devoted. the last article chiefly to the impor
tance of having teachers of high native intelli
gence, saying in effect; that .no.abiount or kind of
training for teaching can take the place of origi
nal brains. >
Lumpie or me urccuyenew
of Native Talfcnt..
Here is an example. In 1881 or 1882 the
greatest break in former methods of teaching
English grammar that was ever made in the state
was made by the adoption of Reed and Kellogg’s
grammars, which emphasized the analysis of sen
tences instead of the rote parsing of words, ala
Smith for example. A system of diagramming
was thereby introduced. My teacher that winter
had never seen anything like the Reed and Kel
logg system before. "Though I was only twelve I
was given the Higher Lessons in English, Ask
W. F. Marahall^^igteran. teacher of Raleigh.'wl
yiously, had’been to school hardly. more _than 30
months herself.- Ifet she taught that booh as suc
cessfully as any college graduate could have done.
She was simply a woman of the highest-grade in
tellect, and needed nobody to show her how ,to
teach a book written in plain English, and'in
that four-month term I learned in a large meas
ure what English grammar I know. As said
previously, the teacher' of. A-l native mentality
understands. And that is the first requisite in
teaching anything. It is possible for an under
standing teacher to discover and remove the bar
rier in the understanding of a pupil.
In a Georgia school the son of the mayor of
the town was studying, not the Higher Lessons
I had studied as a child,-but as a fifteen-year old
youth he was studying the Grade Lessons. ■ He
was good in arithmetic. I therefore knew he had
seasoning power. But that boy-could not, after
I know not how many years studying English
before 1 Caine, name the'subject or predicate of
a simple sentence to save °his life. I -had ex
plained possibly a dozen times, but kept on pre
senting the matter in new lights. One day I was
sitting with him at his desk. He seemed* no nearer
able to discriminate T>etween the functions -of
words than in the beginning. But all at once he
saw the light and looked up in astonishment and
said: “Why it’s like arithmetic; it has sense iu
it.” The job was done. Grammar was Uo more
trouble to.him. All the prior teaching had meant
nothing to him, and now he didn^t need any more
teaching to count. . The removing of the hairier
to his understanding was the one- task of ^ the
leacner. • ?* . r-« * ' .;*■ X':
“He Can’t Learn.” ?;V'
A few hours before thjg ffijyytten, I-saw a ■
yoar old boy loafing in ‘boHliUB- drug store. X
asked if he didn’t go to school. Hie. replied, No.
When asked why, he stated that he didn’t start
to school till he was eleven and that the teachers
have told him he cannot learn and that he might
Quit if he wished to.' He had quit, evidently con
duced that he cannot learn. Yet the hoy
festly has good sense, and he seemed^ too candid
to be lying about what has happened. I do not
oven know whether it was in a Dunn school. But
if it happened at all, it was a tragedy. He mjy
oe “thing-minded” but that is no reason why ho
shouldn’t be taught, white -the chief attention ,i®
being given, possibly,-to those-*who-will learn nn
dor almost any cireumstances. ~ A teacher of ^
intelligence should account it a greater victory
tiiscpyer ‘ bi» mentalityr^tb •fit' means to- the end
:- in His^case—than to “pass” all the brighter pu
pils 'With an A grading. - The question- arises as
about such lads, :He-wa® bbrii''ju8t asthe'-great
expenditure for schools ;b<egkh,in Iforth -Carolina;
yet -here he ir Coming tip:in u haphazard way and
liable to become a burden upon the state in years
to come.; And I guarantee that he can learn, if
not by “means of one medium by another. When
I was helping that Georgia boy; see day-light in
grammar, I -had the'understanding pupils assist
ing the less understanding at the boards. . My task
for the time was to save the utterly blank mind*
That eleven-year old boy,- entering the "first grade,
- elearly had nointf^ligeht treatment; Ifo-method
taught iir the" educational courses would redeem
the situation. It takes native ability; an under
-standing mind,1 to reach such eases, j •-<
The Second-Reason forthe Existence of
Lawer-Crade Intellects in the
I - showed last issue that the chief reason for
the existence of low-or Iov?er-grade intellects in
the teaching: f9?cc As. c9.wphr6tL Mth earlier days
was the draft of the profession, industry, office
work, public work, etc., upon the material of first
rank. The second, reason is that "there is no real.
test for certification upon a proper basis. As Dr.
Chase, in the article referred to,, lamented the
Ph. D. eraze, so North Carolina may lament the
red-tape route to the teacher’s job.
: Take so many, courses of this and that and you
mas teach. Remain on the job so long and your
-ua assent
. ^ will -. he -_
^_
Jita. 5T.et anybody who knows anything at .all
about the 20th century .schools knows that
cheating was never more rampant, arid > that
*grades are, in too iriany cases,'no assurance at all
of scholarship standing, and certainly none of
character.
There is no real test of character and adapta
bility to school work, and a teacher- who has no
character,’.is a menace to the state. Teaching is
a holy task. It calls for the best in the best;
. North Carolina,. shouM provide some means of
sifting out the intcliectiiftlly feeble and the un
moral (I do not, say.immoral) from the'strong
mentalities and the ^moral: candidates for positions
m the schools. ;,, p.v ;. • ■
As -suggested Iasi Isiri'e, yh|h pne/ has taught
for a year or two/ it "id- possibleA<f judge by the
fruits. But one' does not have .to wait for a
winesap apple tree to bear -fruit to. know that it
is a winesap, nor a crab. An. experienced or
•hardist, or even this writer, can identify a wme
sap tree yards away from it almost any time of
year. A young, man or young woman who has
apparently, never given a serious thought to any
thing and whose ambition is to have a big time m
almost assuredly a crab.
That type of. candidate bears tne mares as
deeply imprinted before, he or. she enters' -the
-school roorii as after a y£a¥ 'or two of teaching.
But if one of that type hah been inadvertently
employed, there will he no excuse after she. has
taught a year; her true character. should mani
fest itself. And the interest of the children out
weighs a hundred-fold that of the teacher as a
teacher. It should be emphatically impressed
upon all school people that the schools are for the
/education of the children, and no* for ine* and
■women called teachers to make a living m.
Cbwr^Profes«o«iaKziiig tihe ^
Dr. Chase, in the article referred ter ahoye,
scores the attitude , of the Pb. D's. in the colldge
faculties. They lose sight of the ta* at hand
to instruct undergraduates in subject matter that
seldom requires any scholarly studies, and* with
f view to mKng a feputatidn*for themselves
■among ftrir
•w
' book; which
rthosewbo
‘Subject nst|t
theif^eyes^
'day' when they
cteacheft htrt
tr^exead bw anybody except
tsMbout as^ma^fe about the
au|P^ -They have
hpon the
ill no longfer bp u«*e college.
.in the -univCTsffy
. Suehr a'spirit has prevaileff’amohg fh$ :teacher$
of North Carolina. Not all the thongs.tifong-^
summer school, courses have -been doing-so with, a •’
view to making themselves better teachers} -but
with a view -to promotion, or at least such az^ ;
7 idea I -got during the flush times; As remarked
earlier, I hive attended only one summer achopl r ^
for teaehers.\ Then"! * found men-find- women ; U.§'
there who would much-h^ter . have, been learning
something to teach than driving ahead-in a course *
reputedly intended to make them better teacher*.
Again, I say with emphasis, no man or Somali
can teach what he or she does not know. I am
going to tell you here what I discovered with i •;
respect to a group , of about thirty, principals trod • -
high school -teachers," including one university
- professor, who hoarded at the old hotel in. Chapel
Hill in 1924. . . - . ^ 7 -
it there is a matter at universal concern « »
that of climate. And climate depends upon the
power of water to absorb heat and hold- it in
latent form and then • to release it. I may say
positively that it is impossible to usderstand the
changes of climate at all without a knowledge of
this, property of water. Yet it incidentally .de^
veloped in that-hotel group that not one of those
principals or high school teachers understood
that physical characteristic of water. In fact; It
had to get. the backing of Prof. A, H.. Patterson;
professor of physics at that time,^ in order to con
vince any of the group that a given weight of ice
had several times as much cooling 'effect as the
same weight of ice-cold' water.' One principal
even denied that, wgter could-be a» as'ic?£Vv
- - YSte'itsfinlie ftfo the abifityWf water to
'iiabwrb1 aod; ” ' "" ‘ "
physical geographies and TA the gefleral science
books taught in the high schools; or tho^e books
were not deserving a place in: the schools. I
learned all about the matter from Maury’s physi
cal geography in the winter of 1885" and 1886
and have understood it from that day to this. Yet
here wars a hunch of professional teachers who,
t, ev.ery one of them, Lad had apparently a much
better chance to. get h .real knowledge of such
rthings who ;knewjnot the first basic-principle of
latent heat, and therefore nothing of the basis of
climatic changes. The last one of. the bunch, I
■am quite sure, would have hooted at the idea of
“wasting time” in school teaching, Latin, or
Greek But I have often wondered what they
did know. I had been to school years less than
any college graduate among them, and just about
all of them were college graduates; yet Y“jew
Latin and Greek, had studied all the higher
•mathematics taught in the state forty-five yew*8
ago, and also knew something about the ordinary
phenomena of nature. What they knew to teach
-would, apparently, have been hard to discover;
yet they were driving ahead for further advancer
ment in the theory and artof teaching. Of eoi^se
this was only one reed shaking in .the *indr but
its pointing was so positive that , the directmn..ot
the windcould scarcelybequestionea. . .
I want the time to return when N ortirtJarolina
teachers must know.'things from the ground up.
Do you recall the interview with a county apper
intendent who deplored the urbanmtipft-of .the
country schools; saying that there .were large bey?
and girls iu the country schools of his county who
could notr name three of the native trees of their
immunityf> Isn’t, such a state of afters a poor
commentary upon a school system that has prob
*ably»absorbed more money withm the last tour
teen: years -than all the schools of the slate had
'absorbed' in due hundred years prior to 1920J
Isn’t it anothk- commentary when yon can a*
"the average school boy of ten to fifteen what- a
fourth of 2 1-2 is and find he cannot tell you l 7
The Text Books Partly to Blame. \
But let’s, lay part, of the blame on. the text
■books of the Jast twenty years. Some of them
have been as unteachable as . any that could be
mnde. There was that set of readers of the war
-and post-war^period that was based, apparently,
^n anS%ic Motion. I recall a class of children
5ho.|S f|t learned Jto read laboring .over the
Sjany pajlesjof “Golden Riy$r”^ -The jgood ofcdjg,
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