Chemical Digest EDUCATIONAL WEAVING The art of weaving as a metaphor for any constructive piece of work has long since become trite, hut one is forced to recognize the plausibility of the term. W. W. Vaughan' uses it thus: "In the factory the loom stands as the essential machine for the creation of the stuff that is to clothe or adorn. I n life the school stands for the fashioning of the fabric of character. The lengthwise threads of the warp must be crossed by the threads of the weft, or woof, before feeble isolation can become compact and serviceable texture. . Supposing that the warp represents in education the influences that shape the child's destiny as imagined by the State or the parent, now enlarging, now cramping in their d e c t ; the crossthreads are those the teacher with skilful or clumsy hand, as the case may be, shoots, with the help of the shuttle, across the warp." Even as the original hand loom has been supplanted by many new devices, the educational loom has been changed; the three R's have been replaced by more complicated programs which have often been the outgrowth of momentary needs. ". . . There is hardly more difference between the mat on which the half-civilized man knelt to pray and the varied and extetisive products of modern cloth and ribbon looms than there is between the program of an elementary school a hundred years ago and what the children learn today. And yet, as I have said, chance, or caprice, or sentiment has had more to do with its development than any clear idea in men's minds as t o what should he meant by education. At one time we have talked of educational ladders, a t another of broad highways; but such blessed and consoling phrases, though possibly politically fruitful, have been certainly educationally barren. The ladders have too often only enabled the pupils to climb to narrow hut overcrowded platforms, and, though on the broad highways progress has been pleasant enough, the travelers along them have at last been brought face t o face with the precipice of unemployment, or have been led from the toil that wrings the sweat from the brow in factory or field to the toil that curves man's hack on the office-stool or by the counter-side." It is of primary importance that the warp he so constituted as to admit of a pattern of creditable character being woven upon it. Thus, do we not attempt t o develop the intellectual ability of all to too great an extent? What is the measure of education? Mr. Vaughan says: '"The Warp and the Woof in Education," I.Educ. and Sch. World, 57, 597-602
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(1925).
VOL.2, NO. 11
EDUCATIONAL WSAVING
1071
"The agricultural laborer, with his knowledge of and often tender sympathy with animal life, his watchings of the seasons, his weather lore, his skill, his beautiful skill, in building or thatching the rick, his power to drive a straight line with the plough, his ability by wise, almost ruthless, severity t o fortify the quickest hedge, is a better-educated man, even though he left the school-room at thirteen, than many a clerk who suffered complete immersion in a secondary-school course, and, satisfied with the benefits of his baptism, has since then only become a little more skilled in figures and filing." Whereas educational courses are designed toward vocational ends, might not the inspiration in that direction be given by the teacher or woof rather than the warp? "We need to teach more convincingly how to break the spell of gold, how to measure happiness not by 'the purple of great place' but by some other standard, how to sail past seductive prosperity, not with hands tied nor with ears stopped up with wax as Ulysses coasted the dangerous shore, but unfettered, and even attentive to choose a glimpse of truth, a love of beauty, in preference to worldly or material success. This, after all, is the power that Plato would have education produce. "If it is on the warp that depends the plan of education, if it is in the warp that extent of opportunities, the aspiration of the community or the parent, find expression, sometimes thoughtless, sometimes mistaken expression, i t is on the woof that the pattern depends, the texture, the durability, the possibilities, the charm of the fabric, or the human character. And the woof is the teacher's opportunity. If he is wise he will recognize that each individual has not the same aptitudes; if he is wiser still he will refrain from labeling one set of aptitudes as good, another as bad. "The teacher has no sensitive weaver's finger, no miller's golden thumb, by which he can infallibly test his judgment, and yet the shuttle must fly back and forth, because if the teacher rests, the threads will soon he tangled; and even when he works there are other workers too, some deliberately, with Penelope-like perversity, unraveling by night the labor of the day, others bringing confusion into the pattern by adding threads of strange colors and uncertain strength. Because teachers feel this they often occupy the whole of a child's leisure aad endeavor to monopolize its mental activities." The task of the teacher is truly one of great possibilities, for it is to him that we must look for broader educational development. W. R. W.
Educate more for individuality. for character, and not for mere scholarship.-JOFIN BL~OUGHS
