Calgary Normal School - Chinook Yearbook (Calgary, Alberta Canada)

Page 9 text:

teigisiaais Minimal The Year Book Staff Business Advisor and Consulting Editor .Mr. J. M. Scott, M.Sc. Editor-in-Chief .Mary Burgess, B.Sc. Assistant Editor (Biography Editor) .Jessie Miller Literary ..Don Hamilton Social ...Ruth Rose Humor ...Edna Ham well Sport ..Bernice Ethredge Clubs .Stewart Hay THE BUSINESS STAFF Business Manager .John Gillanders Art ..William Jallep Photographs ...Douglas Van Volkenburg By Our Principal DR. COFFIN There would seem to be one commodity, at least, the production of which has not outrun consumption: namely, ideas. Only the human machine can produce ideas, and until some improvement in the human ma¬ chine appears, we shall probably continue to use the old stock of ideas. We are told that they are pretty well worn out. If so, it ought to be necessary very soon to do without them altogether. Huxley, who, at one time, spoke of the truly educated intellect as “a clear, cold logic engine. . . . ready ... to spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind,” expressed himself, at another time, as willing to be turned into a sort of clock and wound up every morning, if thereby he could be made to think, feel, and act right every moment of the day. Is this what we are trying to do in this job we call education? To wind up the old mechanism, equipped with its worn- out gears, so that it will continue to function in the old way until it breaks down altogether? There may be a sense, however, in which the pro¬ duction of ideas waits on consumption, just as in so many of the products of industry; that is, a sense in which we are not consuming ideas at all, in not mak¬ ing any use of them. Inert, idle ideas, it has long ago been pointed out, are a menace to life. We com¬ pass sea and land to find more of the idea product and ever more ingeniously labor to add it to the inert stock; but the stock is not being consumed, any more than grain stored in elevators is being consumed. We just have it. Suppose, instead of hunting for more stuff to en¬ cumber what we call the mind of the pupil, we could find some way of discovering what he has already and making it work. Ideas must first be born of percepts, and percepts come through the senses. Perhaps our task as teachers is nothing more than to open these gateways, the senses, to the world as it is,—not so much to what people say about it—and then watch for the ideas that develop. But we are so busy teaching other people’s “meanings” of what the world is that the pupil has no chance to find out any of it for him¬ self. Perhaps we already have enough ideas, if we could only make some of them work. (And that seems to be the same thing as getting them to make us work.) Every little while, for example, somebody comes round and uncovers an idea of the Master, or of the ancient prophets, an idea buried under the rub¬ bish heap of centuries of teaching and explaining, and offers it to us as something new. And still we won’t give it a chance to work. But only when ideas work will they create a de¬ mand for new ideas, for more production. Otherwise, we are just turning over the old stock, and are con¬ tent to have the machines wound up and kept going. We forget that there are both higher and lower centres of mental control, and that when the former have mastered anything new, they turn it over, figura¬ tively speaking, at least, to the lower, leaving them¬ selves free for new conquest. And unless these higher centres get some new activity, we really lose con¬ sciousness and go on living with our cortical centres asleep. What hope is there, in this never-ending school-room process of turning over the old stock, that we shall be succeeded by a new generation, newly and fully conscious? (Don’t get this mixed up with anything you’ve read about the “sub-conscious”). How would it be if our text books were just books of evidence, facts, pictures and other data for the senses, without explanations or interpretations? Is there enough native curiosity in a child to respond to these data with questions of his own? At least it is certain that if this native questioning might then be offered to some purpose, with some hope of arousing interest, and some assurance of being appropriated; that is, made one’s own. Literature, for example, may be just a recital of what somebody else has said, perhaps beautifully and wisely: or it may be the ex¬ pression, in masterly form, of what the reader himself has, however crudely, sensed and felt. Which should it be, to quicken the inert idea? Even poor old gram¬ mar might mean something if it served to answer a question about putting shades of meaning into suitable turns of form. Education is a big thing: the school can look after only a small part of it. Teaching is a part of it, and teaching is largely an enterprise of discovery and development; and telling is a part of teaching, if it comes in the right place. We have got a good many things out of their order; we can’t get the old ideas to work and so we fancy we need some genius production of new ' ideas. Let us see if we can do something with the old machine before we trade it in or scrap it altogether. Remember Cow ' per: “Know ' ledge and wisdom, far from being one. Have oft times no connection: knowledge dwells In heads replete with thoughts of other men, Wisdom in minds attentive to their own.” PAGE SEVEN