The dinner table abounds in
geography, and the teacher is quick to turn this fact to account in the
school. Her fertility of resources, coupled with her vital interest in
human beings and human affairs, soon establishes a reciprocal relation
between the home and the school. Similarly, she causes the language of
the school to flow out into the home, the factory, and the office.
=The skill of the teacher.=--History is not a school affair merely. It
is a life affair, and through all the currents of life it may be made to
flow. The languages, Latin, German, French, Spanish, are expressions and
interpretations of life, and they may be made to appear what they really
are if the teacher is resourceful enough and skillful enough to attach
them to the life of the pupil by the human ligaments that are ever at
hand. Chemistry, physics, botany, and physiology all throb with life if
only the teacher can place the fingers of the pupils on their pulses.
Given the human teacher, the human child, and the humanized teaching,
the vitalized school is inevitable.
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
1. What agencies have been employed with the expectation that they would
improve the school?
2. What are the reasons why some of these have not accomplished more?
3. Give instances in which the conservatism of teachers seems to have
stood in the way of utilizing the element of human interest.
4.
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