student showing a tendency towards failure should be made. Because of the complexity of the subject, the vast amount of material which is required and the rapidity for so doing, together with the absolute necessity for comprehending each day's work as a foundation for the next, justifies this special work. Invariably it is beyond the scope of the classroom teacher, because of lack of time. But unless there be someone to search out the root of the individual failures, algebra will still retain its place among those studies high in mortality.

Fear

So like a bird
Beating its cage,
Its tune half sad
Half filled with rage,
It hung beside

My cottage door
And cast its shadow

On my floor.

Whene'er I heard
Its harsh, weird cry,
It seemed a reckless
Wind swept by,
And tore the petals
From the flowers
That edged a plot
Of happy hours.

Then one glad day,
Love showed his face,
The Craven left

Its dwelling place

And I was free

Who had been so ill

And I was free,

Its voice was still.

-MINNIE E. HAYS,

Canajoharie, New York.

Personality and History Teaching

SAMUEL M. LEVIN, COLLEGE OF THE CITY OF DETROIT,

N

MICHIGAN.

O fact stands out more clearly in the realm of education than that an imposing effort is being made to develop and perfect the mechanism of the teaching art. There is a weight of emphasis on how reading, writing, geography, arithmetic and kindred subjects should be taught; an enlargement, in other words, of what may be described as mere educational technology. Some critics naturally underrate or denounce this tendency. Such writers evince a greater regard for the teacher who thinks and creates, who awakens the imagination of students and unfolds their interest, than the one who boasts of skill in workmanship. They hold that the secret of success in teaching is found in the resources of a rich personality, and that power is attained through self-improvement in the form of varied experience and broad knowledge, rather than intensive application to the refinements of method.

It is undeniable that the ideal teacher, especially of history, must be a source of illumination, but he must be that largely by virtue of the ability he manifests to select and treat with discriminating intelligence the materials and actualities either of history or of some subject bearing close kinship with history, such as geography, political science and economics. Perhaps it may be said that the essence of the true teacher's art is brought out in a natural propensity for the best in content and the best in method; hence the ability always to call forth an abundant response of creative interest. Technical excellence in such cases can no more be dissociated from personality than the flight of a bird from its wings and body.

The case is different with the lower level of teaching ability.

At this level much more depends on what is done with the apparatus of the teaching art. An effective use of the necessary instruments may at least be depended on to give a cutting edge to one's work, so that it does not run the risk of being scoffed at or ignored, an evil of too frequent occurrence in the history classroom.

Here, too, however, an emphasis on method may lead to misconstruction. What is suggested is that such a teacher must know his tools and must master the necessary technique involved in using them. He must get by training from without, what the other gets from within. But the fact seems patent that no method can proceed without some necessary orientation on the part of the teacher, and some mutual adaptation between teacher and pupil. Whoever the teacher is, he must keep himself alert in mind and alive in spirit.

The principle here set forth grows even more imperative from the standpoint of content. What are the facts of history and what do they signify? It is a question easily put, but as intricate and confounding as life itself. The leading experts in history tell us with one accord that it is the purpose of history to explain man's social world and lay bare the roots of his social behaviour. "The most comprehensive aim that can be formulated for history instruction," writes Professor Henry Johnson, "is to make the world intelligible." This signifies that we are after the reality of things as is the chemist and biologist. The historian, however, follows another road, that of human life in its endless forms, motions and appearances during the centuries of time.

Assuming this to be true, are teachers of history in our high schools, taken by and large, prepared to enlist in this service? Have they tried hard to apprehend the actualities of the struggle that has marked the career of man on this earth? The fact is that it is not uncommon to find teachers who look upon the world as a stage, where life is both orderly and contented; nor is it rare to find those of self-satisfied

sentiment who regard that history the best which gives least offence to customary opinion and fixed habits of mind.

A misapprehension of the aim of history or a perversion of its discipline is, indeed, a grievous offence, but there is another problem. It is the mind of the boy or girl placed in the teacher's charge. Many a teacher still conceives of the mind as something receptive and inert, a mere vessel into which knowledge is to be poured. Yet this mind, in the words of a well known psychologist, "is as varied and deep and wide, in its own way, as is the physical world." We may go beyond what earlier psychologists were wont to consider, and speak of the springs of the unconscious in the life of boy and girl, of conflicts and repressions and of the pathologic track left by the unintelligent manipulation of the psychic material of a young person's life. The history teacher, of course, is merely an isolated agent in the vast corporate enterprise of education, and he may rightly protest that his responsibility is a limited one. True, but even that is allimportant. He holds a place of vantage in the educating of the future men and women, and he cannot do his part if he misapprehends or comfortably ignores mind, as science has revealed it to us. He is no more able to do this than the engineer is able to construct a steam engine while ignoring the physical world that makes the engine possible. Mind is the medium to which his teaching art must accommodate itself, and it follows that he must of necessity give heed to its delicate mechanism and to its subtle and intricate adjustments.

Indeed, this line of analysis applies with about equal force to the teacher's own mind. Is teaching a one-sided affair? It would be gross folly to make such confession. The teacher, too, has his instincts, mental habits, sentiments and will; his unconscious and conscious life. And without doubt much of the teacher's administration of the schoolroom, his standards of authority and discipline, his personal attitudes and relations with pupils, his presentation of subject-matter, his

judgments and reactions, are functions of his own psychic life. Whether the results which follow are good or bad depends upon the teacher even more than upon the pupil, for the latter is in his keeping and service. The one follows; the other dictates. The dictum, "Know thyself," assuredly deserves to be engraved on the consciousness of everyone in this profession.

It is simple to affirm these things, but it is another matter to follow the affirmation to its logical conclusion, for it necessarily involves the sort of criticism that one is least inclined to take up, criticism of self. Teachers attain notorious success in the art of glossing over their own irregularities of mind and curiosities of behaviour, but improvement is only possible if the teacher frankly recognizes that his own ego is not an exception to the general rule, and that it is just as likely to suffer from irregularity as that of his neighbor or pupil. Emotional distempers, lapse of judgment, mental sluggishness and habits of discursiveness-these are some of the ailments to which the teacher himself may be subject. The result, of course, is to vitiate the work of the classroom. There is one way of escape, and that is for such teacher to become observant of his own faults, and subject himself to the proper order of discipline and correction.

But the teacher, just because of his maturity, may have a great deal to overcome in this direction; in some cases even more than a younger person would. At the age of thirty or forty, with the fundamental discipline of education and life behind him, his personality is a psychological fait accompli. The path of his emotional and intellectual life is cut; and he is quite certain of walking in that path with monotonous regularity. Ordinarily he is a complex of instincts, habits and emotions, with spreading predilections of an intellectual, social and ethical kind, infinite in variety. If, in these thirty or forty years, they have been rightly moulded and directed, all is well; but if the conditioning process has been heedless or disordered, the consequences may be serious. The child