CHAPTER

      I. Teaching school
     II.  The teacher
    III.  The child
     IV.  The child of the future
      V. The teacher-politician
     VI.  Sublime chaos
    VII.  Democracy
   VIII.  Patriotism
     IX.  Work and life
      X. Words and their content
     XI.  Complete living
    XII.  The time element
   XIII.  The artist teacher
    XIV.  The teacher as an ideal
     XV.  The socialized recitation
    XVI.  Agriculture
   XVII.  The school and the community
  XVIII.  Poetry and life
    XIX.  A sense of humor
     XX.  The element of human interest
    XXI.  Behavior
   XXII.  Bond and Fear
  XXIII.  Examinations
   XXIV.  World-building
    XXV.  A typical vitalized school

THE VITALIZED SCHOOL

CHAPTER I

TEACHING SCHOOL

=Life and living compared.=—­There is a wide difference between school-teaching and teaching school.  The question “Is she a school-teacher?” means one thing; but the question “Can she teach school?” means quite another.  School-teaching may be living; but teaching school is life.  And any one who has a definition of life can readily find a definition for teaching school.  Much of the criticism of the work of the schools emanates from sources that have a restricted concept of life.  The artisan who defines life in terms of his own trade is impatient with much that the school is trying to do.  He would have the scope of the school narrowed to his concept of life.  If art and literature are beyond the limits of his concept, he can see no warrant for their presence in the school.  The work of the schools cannot be standardized until life itself is standardized, and that is neither possible nor desirable.  The glory of life is that it does not have fixity, that it is ever crescent.

=Teaching defined.=—­Teaching school may be defined, therefore, as the process of interpreting life by the laboratory method.  The teacher’s work is to open the gates of life for the pupils.  But, before these gates can be opened, the teacher must know what and where they are.  This view of the teacher’s work is neither fanciful nor fantastic; quite the contrary.  Life is the common heritage of people young and old, and the school should be so organized and administered as to teach people how to use this heritage to the best advantage both for themselves and for others.  If a child should be absent from school altogether, or if he should be incarcerated in prison from his sixth to his eighteenth year, he would still have life.  But, if he is in school during those twelve years, he is supposed to have life that is of better quality and more abundant.  Life is not measured by years, but by its own intensity and scope.  It has often been said that some people have more life in threescore and ten years than Methuselah had in his more than nine hundred years.