EDITOR'S OUTLOOK
A
SHORTER CATECHISM FOR TEACHERS. The art of teaching has this in common with the graphic and the literary a r t s t h a t the secret of genuine achievement lies in having someth'mg significant to say. No degree of perfection in technic can compensate for a paucity of ideas. The distinction between technic or facility of expression and the moment of the idea expressed is so elementary in artistic criticism that one marvels to see it so infrequently applied in the evaluations of everyday life. For every artist of whatsoever sort there are thousands of competent technicians. The artist has something to say and he knows how to say it. The technician would know how to say something if only he had something
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We do not wish to be misunderstood as casting aspersions npon the competent technician. He can often execute ideas of more creative minds which otherwise would never 6nd expression. He can do many useful things that call for no ideas a t all. On the whole he is a valuable member of society and merits respect. He invites contempt only when he imagines himself to be an artist and gives himself airs accordingly. The great curse of American'public education is that it is carried on for the most part by technicians who imagine themselves to be teachers. With all due respect to ow normal schools, teachers' colleges, and departments of education, they have done little enough to disabuse the minds of their customers of delusions of grandeur. We have yet tolearn of such an institution which cross-questions applicants for entrance somewhat as follows.
"So you wish to teach. What do you know that you think is worth teaching?" "What intellectual capital have you that you think worth sharing with rising generations?" "Have you evolved or adopted a point of view that makes possible a new outlook on any field of subjedmatter, however limited?' "Have you in your own mind organized any body of subject-matter, however limited, into a logically ordered, coherent unit?" "Have you acquired, or laid definite plans to acquire, any cultural background for the subject you contemplate teaching?" About an hour of oral quizzing in this vein should constitute a salutary experience for prospective teachers. Naturally, we would not demand-that all applicants pass the test with flying colors as a prerequisite to acceptance, any more than we would demand that all children give evidence of hashg something significant to say before being taught to write. However, such a preliminary examination might be counted npon to weed out a few of the most hopeless misfits and to awaken accepted candidates to a keener sense of their responsibilities. Certainly no teacher-training institution should grant a diplo-, and-no state should grant a teacher's certificate, to any would-be pedagogue who failed to make a good showing in a similar final examination. For those who had once imagined that institutions of learning would automatically make teachers of them and who are beginning to suspect the fallacy of that assumption, it is not altogether too late. Self-questioning is always in order.
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