The School by A. W. SPAULDING

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 6, 1908

The School

By A. W. SPAULDING

The School of Shop and Field

“The Youngest Member took up his tale. “I shall never be satisfied,” he said, “until I hold my classes in the shop.”

“With you, then,” suggested the Pleasant Member, “it is cap and apron instead of cap and gown.”

“We left the cap-and-gown idea so long ago,” replied the Youngest Member, “that I was not consciously contrasting them. But I have learned since I came here, that the boys who are with me in my work are the ones whom I know best, and whom I can help most. They have not only learned more in a practical way while at work in the steam-fitting, firing, and other industrial departments, than they have learned in the class room; but I have learned more of their needs and aspirations, and we have come into closer relations in the work of God in which we are engaged. I begrudge the time of the class.”

“But would you not have to have classes just the same?” asked the Oldest Member. “Would you teach the theory while you were applying the practise? Wouldn’t you find it more profitable to spend a class-hour in studying the science, and then a period of labor in applying it?”

“No doubt,” admitted the Youngest Member, “there are points the study of which seem to demand a different condition than shop conditions; but I am not sure about it. If it should prove more profitable to make the class, then the class should be made. But experiment must prove that. There are trade-schools which teach the sciences right in the shop, and you never saw better attention paid. The students are earnest because they are at work, and know that their hands, not their mouths, must show what they learn.”

“But learning is not the end of life,” said the Lady Teacher. “We must not forget that our purpose in life is to give truth, not merely to get it. So far as I know, I agree with you about the value of shop-teaching as contrasted with class-teaching. But the world’s trade-schools surely can not be our complete model; for our aims are different from theirs.”

“And further,” said the Oldest Member, “it is only certain sciences, or perhaps certain parts of certain sciences, that you could teach in the shop. Arithmetic and geometry and physics may partly be demonstrated in your mechanical work, but that is not the full extent of school work, by any means. You may modify the teaching of one or two branches, and still not destroy the school.”

“Destroying the school,” asserted the Youngest Member, “is the farthest from my thought. I wish to make fuller the meaning of the school. I have taken the shop as a symbol, thinking particularly of my own work. What I mean is that every study should be carried on where it can be put into practise. And the natural and the exact sciences can be demonstrated in the shop and the field.”

“Now my ideal of the school is the place where we are to learn what we can use; and the sooner we use it, the better the mastery we obtain of our subject. Let us suppose a group of four or five family schools in a community of unbelievers. If there I take my class of carpenters out to build houses for people, I shall expect by the character of our work, by the nature of our conversation, and by the uprightness of our dealings, to impress the truth, silently but effectively, and teach some who perhaps can be reached in no other way.”

“And the same thing is true for the girl students,” said the Lady Teacher. “If as a dressmaker I go into a home, and, as I must, come closely in contact with many of its members, the character of my work and my demeanor will tell for the truth. Or if I go as a cook, or as a nurse, or in any other capacity, I am not merely a servant of the household, I am a servant of the Lord Jesus, and his ambassador.”

“But where is the school?” queried the Oldest Member.

“The school,” put in the Pleasant Member, “is going about doing good. And it was by that kind of school, we may know, if we will take the trouble to read ‘An Illustration of His Methods,’ in the book ‘Education,’ that the gospel was preached to the whole world in one generation.”

“I do not know, of course,” said the Youngest Member, “how much time we should have to spare for this custom work, but I believe our progress would be greater if we should adopt this, and cut off much of our labored study of unapplied theory. It is harder to make a tree than to grow one.”

“But that is only the beginning. In such a school, if in locating we planned for some natural advantages, such as water-power (or, lacking that, cheap fuel for steam-power), it would be possible to make all the industries necessary

for the maintenance of simple civilized life. And though we may now see but dimly the problems of the future, it is evident from the Testimonies that we shall not go amiss if in some places we prepare for trade difficulties. But the principal advantage in having these facilities is in the training of our students to be skilful and resourceful. We must have connected with our schools a printing shop, a mill, a blacksmith shop, perhaps sometime shops for wagon-making, machine work, and weaving and knitting. With cheap power, we can make these, by the application of steam, electricity, or directly of water. And thus we can instruct in all these lines.

“And I do not wish to omit,” went on the Youngest Member, “a method of science study which I may seem to have crowded out by my insistence upon shop work. I believe in the use of books in the study of science; for certainly no one of us, however proficient, has more than a very little knowledge of the science men have discovered. But when it comes to teaching botany, zoology, astronomy, etc., I believe in having my students study the things more than reports about the things. Especially with the children, I should wish to see them afield with their teachers in many a study hour, studying the life of birds and insects, plants and animals, observing the laws and the graces of nature in running brooks, rounded stones, clouds of the sky, and sunbeams of the air. Far rather this than to see them dreaming over the most highly colored nature-study book. If they are to learn ‘The Brook,’ and ‘The Daffodils,’ and ‘Seven Times One,’ I should like to have those melodious numbers mingle in their memories with tinkling of the water and the nodding of yellow cups and the cheerful hum of the ‘dusty fellow.’”

“And on the Sabbath,” added the Lady Teacher, “after a week of studying the application of God’s laws in nature, would not we and our children appreciate so much more deeply the handwriting of God in nature, as we pass on our way along the paths and through the fields to Sabbath-school and church?”

“And be learning more,” said the Oldest Member, “of the secret of the nature-teaching of our Master.”

A. W. SPAULDING.