VII. THAT OTHER TEACHER AND THAT TEACHER'S LABORATORY 46
The child is a born worker; activity is the law of his nature.
This book is simply the narrative of the working-out of an idea. The idea first came to me from memories of my own home, where tasks were assigned to us children and were made to seem important. With my father, the work was always carried on in the spirit of a game, and the game could be made as interesting as any other game; in the meantime something was being done that was worth while. Among many other memories there comes one of our laying a rail fence by moonlight, after a freshet had taken the other fence away; when the game was to get the line completed before the moon went down. I can still see father laying rail on rail, and enjoy his glowing enthusiasm at our accomplishment. The fence still stands. Besides seeking to make the work interesting in itself, father had a device to put a value on time for his boys by giving us free time after the tasks were completed to do as we saw fit.
The desire, after I became a teacher, to put myself in the enviable position of my father as an inspiring influence with children, was the motive that took my thoughts out of the schoolroom into the homes of my pupils. Should not the school be simply a group of people come together for improvement, with the teacher as their best friend, ready to discuss and promote everything that seems worth while? We found it easy to talk at school about the things the children were concerned with out of school. One spring my pupils carried home, from our little boxes at school, cabbage plants and tomato plants to become members of their families for the summer. Later we had a county school fair for the exhibition of the children's clear jelly and fine bread and vegetables and sewing and carpentry. The schools were trying to recognize "the whole child."
This book is written in the hope that parents, teachers, and children may be helped to work together more joyously and harmoniously on the real problems of life.
When I was teaching in the University of Oregon in the spring of 1910, I wrote and had published in the Oregon papers the following article:--
We all believe that civilization is founded upon the home. The school should be a real helper to the home. How can the school help the home? How can it help the home establish habits in the children of systematic performance of home duties so that they will be efficient and joyful home helpers? One way is for the school to take into account home industrial work and honor it. It is my conviction, based upon careful and continuous observation, that the school can greatly increase the interest the child will take in home industrial work by making it a subject of consideration at school. A teacher talked of sewing, and the girls sewed. She talked of ironing, and they wanted to learn to iron neatly. She talked of working with tools, and both girls and boys made bird houses, kites, and other things of interest. Recently a school garden was planned in a city and one of the boys was employed to plow the land. Seventy-five children were watching for him to come with the team. At last he came driving around the corner. _He_ could manage a _team_. He drove into the lot, and a hundred and fifty eyes looked with admiration at the boy who could unhitch from the sled and hitch to the plow; and then as he, "man-fashion,"--lines over one shoulder and under one arm,--drove the big team around the field, all could feel the children's admiration for the boy who could do something worth while. And I have seen a girl who could make good bread or set a table nicely get the real admiration of her schoolmates.