Rensselaer Republican, Volume 12, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 January 1880 — The Teacher who is a Groove-Runner [ARTICLE]

The Teacher who is a Groove-Runner

BEN. F. TAYLOB. The most useless of stupidities is the teacher who is a groove-runner; who has swallowed text-books without digesting them, and feeds his pupils with the morsels as old pigeons feed squabs, until, like himself, they arc all victims of mental dyspepsia, which is a curious synonym fur education. Children subjected to such diet are as likely to get fat and strong as so mauy grist-mill hoppers, that swallow the grain without grinding the the kernel.' Such teachers forget that one, like Judith’s sister “Fee-ble-Mind” In Cooper’s novel, may have a prodigious memory. Who has not known a fool who remembered everything he heard and just as he heard it, who could run up and down a multiplication-table like a cat upon a ladder, and rattle off rule after rule without missing a word, and that was all there was of it —lie was a fool still? A good memory built into a well-made intellectual structure is a noble blessing, but that same memory with uolhing.to match it, is like a garret without any house under it; a receptacle for odds and ends, that are worth less than those papers that losers of lost pocket books are always advertising for, “of no value except to the owner.”

Take English grammar under the man of grooves. Learning to swim upom kitchen tables, buying a kit of tools aud so setlimg up for carpenters, arc all of a piece with his grammar. Hear them defining a prep’sition as “connecting Words and showing the relation between them,” when not one pupil inahundred ever finds out whether it is a blood relation or a relation by marriage. Hear them parse: “John strikes .Charles. ‘John’ is a noun, masculine gender, third person, because it’s spoken of, sing’lar number, noin’native case t’ ‘strikes.’ ‘Strikes’ is an irreg’lar active, trans’tive verb, strike, struck, stricken, indicative mode, present tense, third person singular, and ’grees with John. Verb must ’gree with its nom’tialivc case ’n’ number and person ’ ‘Charles’ is a noun, masculine gender, sing’lar number, third'person, ’cause it’s spoken of, objective case, and governed by ‘strikes.’ Active verbs govern the objective ease—please, sir,S’mantha and Joe is a making faces!” And all in the same breath! What ardor! What intellectual effort! What grooves! Meanwhile, grammars mcoded, amended, and amended, multiply. There are four things an) body can do: teach a school, drive a horse, edit a newspaper, and make a grammar. Meanwhile the same old high crimes aud misdemeanors against the statutes are daily committed. This comes of grooves and the lack of a professorship of common sense. Take geography. The young lady fresh from school, who from a steamer’s deck was shown an island, and with sweet simplicity, “Is there water on the other side of it?” bad all the discovered islands from the Archipelago to Madagascar ranged in grooves and at her tongue’s end. “Didn’t you know?” said thp father to his aoir, who expressed a great Surprise at some simple fact, “ditni’t you know it?” “Oh, no,” replied the little fellow, “I learned it a great while ago, but I never kn;w it beforeP

Take arithmetic. Show a boy who has finished the book, and can give chapter and verse without winking, a pile of wood, and tel) him to measure it, and ten-to oue he is puzzled. And yet he can pile up wood in the book,and give you the cords to a fraction, but then there isn’t a stick of fuel to be measured, and that makes it easier, because he onn ait ih his groove, and keep a wood-yard. “So you have completed arithmetic,” said tbe late Professor Pago, Qt tbe State Normal School, tto a new-oome candidate for au advanced "position;, please Sell me how much thirteen and a half pounds of pork will cost at eleven and a half cents a pound?” The price was chalked out in a twinkling. “Good,” said the pro-

feasor, “now tell me what It would coat if the pork were half fai?” The chalk lost its vivacity, the youth faced the blakboard doubtingly, and finally taming to the tcaoher with e face all apider-web-bed with the Tinea of perplexity, and with a little tonoh of oontempt at the simplicity of the “sum,” and. possibly, of himself, he said, “It seemu easy enough, bat I don’t know, whet todo with the fat!” That fellow was not w fool, bnt a grooverunner. A little condition was thrown in that he never saw in the book, and that grove of his had never been lubricated with fat pork. —Summer-Savory.