School spirit

“ But it was all the idle dream of a truant lad, who would fain now, as on former occasions, have avoided going to school—that best and noblest of all schools, save the Christian one, in which honest Labour is the teacher—in which the ability of being useful is imparted, and the spirit of independence communicated, and the habit of persevering effort acquired; and which is more moral than the schools in which only philosophy is taught, and greatly more happy than the schools which profess to teach only the art of enjoyment. Noble, upright, self-relying Toil! ”

“ The everyday work of the school shows that children can live in school as out of it, and yet grow daily in wisdom, kindness, and the spirit of obedience—that learning may, even with little children, lay hold upon the substance of truth that nourishes the spirit, and yet the forms of knowledge be observed and cultivated; and that growth may be genuine and thorough, and yet a delight. ”

“ A friend who is a State inspector of public schools tells me that the first thing he looks for when he visits a school is the school spirit, the attitude of the pupils toward their teachers and the work of the school. If this is good, there is a foundation upon which to build fruitful work; if the spirit is bad, there is no possibility that the work of the school can be up to standard. For it is out of the schoolroom spirit, the classroom attitudes, that the effort necessary to growth and achievement must come.
The spirit of the classroom.—Do the children enjoy the lesson hour? ”

“ Every school has a character of its own, a spirit of its own; not that each boy in the school is just modelled on that type, but to a large extent each individual pupil is affected by the spirit of the school. ”

“ In exuberance of spirit and in fervent gratitude he looks back to the school that taught him to know that education is the process of world-building. And to the school he gives the credit for the large and beautiful world in which he lives.
Questions and Exercises Show how the world that one builds depends upon one’s own choosing. Do people seem to realize this truth when they do not build their world as they might? If pupils fail to realize it, what can the teacher do to help them? ”

“ And I am confident that the parents who have intrusted their children to us for any length of time will agree in saying that, while the children like, or love, to come to school, yet work, and not amusement, has been the spirit and teaching of the school ”

“ The ideal school situation is one in which the spirit of inquiry and investigation is constantly encouraged and in which children are developing ideals of service by virtue of their activity. A high school class in English literature in which children are at work in small groups, asking each other questions and helping each other in the solution of their problems, seems to the writer to afford unusual opportunity for the realization of the social aim of education. ”

“ By an extension of this principle and under the influence of a suitable teacher, the school-mob may be transformed into a co-operative society animated by one joyous and unselfish spirit: all the great powers of social suggestion being freely used for the highest ends. Thus we may introduce the pupil, at his most plastic age, into a spiritual-social order and let him grow within it, developing those qualities and skills on which it makes demands. ”

“ But teaching may be so watered down and sweetened, teachers may be so suave and condescending, as to bring about a condition of intellectual feebleness and moral softness which it is not easy for a child to overcome. The bracing atmosphere of truth and sincerity should be perceived in every school; and here again the common pursuit of knowledge by teacher and class comes to our aid and creates a current of fresh air perceptible even to the chance visitor, who sees the glow of intellectual life and moral health on the faces of teachers and children alike. ”

“ I am merely trying to demonstrate two facts: first, that the great breadth of the work of the school—embracing as it does, the development of the entire nature of the child, mental, moral, and physical, instead of merely the mental, that which was given her at first, is hers now not because of the home's neglect nor because the school has been unduly ambitious and grasping, but because we have come to see that life is a unity and can not be cut up into parts each separately developed. ”

“ At the school, the child is treated as a man. The fresh air, the blue sky, the bright and happy hilarity of boyhood are too often proscribed indulgences. And this is called, not murder, but education. ”

“ It deals in a bright and vigorous style with the kaleidoscopic, throbbing life of a great public school—that world in miniature which, in its daily opportunities and temptations, ambitions and failures, has so often afforded superabundant material for narratives powerful to enchain the attention and sway the emotions, whether to smiles or tears. ”

“ But while he was putting in a perfunctory attendance at lectures, his education was proceeding in another school—the school which, as in his after years he so insistently testified, affords the only real discipline for life—the world of real men and women. ”

“ The only question worth raising in this connection is how far school-teachers and school-rules are taken to heart by the average boy or girl—how far they are made to apply to their notions and motives, when school is left behind. School-books, school-teachers and school-discipline are so apt to be bunched together and relegated to a special corner of the mind.
Our second group—the influence of example and imitation—has probably always been a more important factor in shaping conduct and character. ”

“ Emulation, the desire of excelling, works wonders in the hands of the schoolmaster; and, indeed, this natural desire is an amazing spur to effort, both intellectual and moral. When in pursuit of virtue two or a score are ‘emulously rapid in the race,’ a school acquires a ‘good tone’ and parents are justified in thinking it the right place for their boy. ”

“ All in all, you feel sure, as you go back down the "old Lime-Kiln road," that the motto of the school will be fulfilled in the life of each of its students: "So enter that daily thou mayst become more thoughtful and more learned. So depart that daily thou mayst become more useful to thyself and to all mankind." ”

“ He seemed, in short, to harmonise by their combination in himself all the various qualities proper to a large and varied community of youths of nineteen or twenty, to which, when actually present there, he was felt from hour to hour to be indispensable. In fact school habits and standards had survived in a world not so different from that of school for those who are faithful to its type. ”

“ In addition to its purely educational advantages, the social and moral atmosphere of the school is of a high grade, tending to the building of character, the refinement of manners, and the cultivation of the real amenities of life. ”

“ Not far removed is the talent which mind-wandering school-boys display during the hours of instruction, of noticing every moment in which the teacher tells a story. I remember classes in which, instruction being uninteresting, and discipline relaxed, a buzzing murmur was always to be heard, which invariably stopped for as long a time as an anecdote lasted. ”

“ As the heart makes the home, the teacher makes the school. What we need above all things, wherever the young are gathered for education, is not a showy building, or costly apparatus, or improved methods or text-books, but a living, loving, illumined human being who has deep faith in the power of education and a real desire to bring it to bear upon those who are intrusted to him. ”

“ The school should be to the pupil not an intellectual drill-ground, but a second home; a place dear at the time, and to be gratefully remembered ever after; a place in which his whole nature, and especially what is best in him, may expand and grow. ”

“ No school could have been better taught; but this was the teaching of the school, as it is and must be of all schools that are worth anything: a boy must be brought up on truths, not imaginings; he must learn laws, not aspirations; he must be prepared for the world as it is, not as a visionary might see it.
Therefore this boy learnt at school the great code of conduct which obtains in the world. ”

“ For we, too, have gone, each of us, to a Public School with a preconceived idea of what school life would be, and each of us in turn has had that conception destroyed by actuality, and each in turn has had to create for himself his own picture. ”

“ The more my friends and I wandered afield with our little superficial interests and talents and passions, the more was the straight-forward earnestness of the school our blessing; and all that beautified and enriched our youth, and gave to it freshness and liveliness, would have turned out to be our ruin, if our elders had taken it seriously, and had formed a life's program out of petty caprices and boyish inclinations. ”

“ To make all this more direct we may look to the various sources from which enthusiasm may be derived. What does the school give us in this direction? Intellectual drill, broadening of mental horizon, professional training, all this we expect from school, college, and university and in every phase of this there is room for a thousand enthusiasms. Moreover, the school gives us comradeship, the outlook on the hopes and aspirations of our fellows. It opens to us the resources of young life, the luminous visions of the boys that are to be men. ”

“ One such tendency dominates many schools notwithstanding prodigious efforts on the part of the teachers to rouse slumbering minds. Indeed, the more the teacher works, the greater the incuria of the children, so the class is prodded with marks, the boys take places, the bogie of an oncoming examination is held before them. Some spasmodic effort is the result but no vital response and, though boys and girls love school, like their teachers and even their lessons, they care not at all for knowledge, for which the school should create enthusiasm. ”

“ The child learns to be obedient to his school, to be loyal to his comrades, just as later on in life he learns these qualities as they are presented in his university, his student society, and his profession. All of this he learns sooner than to reverence his conscience, his feeling of right, his individual impulse. ”

“ School had developed her capacity for pleasure and enjoyment: not until Life had developed her capacity for sorrow and pain would her education be complete. School had taught her to speak, to dress, and to act correctly: Life must teach her to feel. ”

“ We are apt to look at the school from an individualistic standpoint, as something between teacher and pupil, or between teacher and parent. That which interests us most is naturally the progress made by the individual child of our acquaintance, his normal physical development, his advance in ability to read, write, and figure, his growth in the knowledge of geography and history, improvement in manners, habits of promptness, order, and industry—it is from such standards as these that we judge the work of the school. ”

“ But an Honours or M. A. class must have enough boys to make it possible to hold discussions, mutual criticism of papers written by the boys, and informal exchange of ideas by students of the same “school”. In such classes the teacher’s duty is to inspire and guide, the student must do his own reading and noting, and therefore the impact of keen young mind on keen young mind is absolutely necessary to stimulate, precipitate and clarify thought. ”

“ No doubt children are well taught and happy in their lessons as things are, and this was specially true of the school in question; yet both teachers and children find an immeasurable difference between the casual interest roused by marks, pleasing oral lessons and other school devices, and the sort of steady avidity for knowledge that comes with the awakened soul. ”

“ The quietest, most obedient child is thought the best pupil, that is, the most impersonal individual is the model. So we see how the school confuses its conception of values. The [Pg 251] more the soul and body are passive, are willing to be controlled and receptive, so much the better are the results from the school standpoint. ”

“ To my mind, the usefulness of a school ends when it has taught a man to read and write and figure, and has brought out his capacity for being interested in his line. After that, let the man or boy get after what he is interested in, and get after it with all his might, and keep going ahead—that is school. ”

“ I think our lives are but the school in which we all have set lessons to learn, set tasks to perform; and our wise Teacher, so patient, so gentle, so loving with us, when the great examination day comes, will hold us strictly accountable for every slighted lesson, for every neglected duty. ”

“ Interest in school life is perpetual. The young student, facing new surroundings, finds an element of romance and strong appeal; and to the older graduate college days recall some of the most pleasant memories of the past. ”

“ For the teacher who understands the psychology of children, it is a true pleasure to witness the teaching at these Landerziehungsheime. The children take a delight in their school and become the comrades of their master. Physical exercise, [478] the development of the powers of reason and judgment, the education of the sentiments and will, are all harmoniously combined. The children are not given the dry text-books of our schools, but made familiar with the works of the great authors and men of genius. ”

“ Whatever may once have been the nursery of the human race, it is now to a great extent the school. Some part—it generally is the best part—of education takes place outside the class-room; but it must be remembered that the atmosphere of home is generally impregnated with the conventional traditions of the school and of the university. ”