Miss Petrie's Avocation

NECESSITY, not choice, was primarily the cause of the adoption by Miss Petrie of the profession of teaching. Carpentry, which her father followed under the more euphonious name of contracting, was not largely remunerative in the town of Enterprise, and when Miss Petrie, robed in white swiss muslin, had declaimed with many gestures her graduating " oration ” on “ Who would be free, himself must strike the blow,” and faced the cold world, she found herself faced in turn by the alternative of “ doing something” outside, or washing dishes and darning stockings for the well-filled house of Petrie.

Either fired by ambition or stimulated by a distaste for dishwashing, Miss Petrie took her first step up the ladder of fame by choosing pedagogy as her profession. In other words, she applied to the township trustee for a country school, and asked her father for five dollars with which to pay her tuition in the summer “ Normal ” held in Enterprise each vacation by the county superintendent and the superintendent of the Enterprise schools for the purpose of increasing their insufficient incomes.

As the county teachers had long since learned that patrons of the Normal had no difficulty in securing licenses to teach, the attendance was large, and Miss Petrie found herself shoulder to shoulder with the pedagogical talent, male and female, of every township in the county.

The road through the new country opened to Miss Petrie by this gate of instruction, while not a royal one, was at least level and easy to travel. By a study of the monthly examination questions prepared by the State Board of Education (these published each month, with answers, in the State School Educator, which thus assured itself of a bona fide circulation of as many paid subscribers as there were teachers in the state), one soon became familiar with the Board’s manner of questioning and was prepared therefor. In arithmetic, for instance, the applicant was so unfailingly required to calculate the capacity of a square cistern, that had one of the school patrons asked his teacher to tell him the capacity of his own (round) cistern, the said pedagogue would have been subjected to much embarrassment and confusion. In grammar, the only strain on the intellect was the committing to memory of the entire volume prescribed by the law for state use ; and in geography, he or she who could trace the wanderings of a bushel of wheat from Duluth to Archangel, name the capital of Alaska, and bound Indiana, was assured of a grade of one hundred per cent. History was likewise simple. The dates of the four colonial wars alternated from month to month with the great battles of the Civil War ; while a description of the battle of New Orleans was sure to follow a question on the Alien and Sedition Laws, and these to be followed by a list of the Presidents of the United States, in order. In reading, the most stupid teacher could make up six questions on such lines as

For example, “What is a porringer? What is a little porringer ? Who is speaking ? What did she have in her little porringer ? What time in the day is it ? Where is ‘ there ’ ? ” And a perusal of a thin volume on The Principles and Practice of Teaching assured moderately correct answers on the Science of Teaching.

The instruction in the Normal along the lines suggested by the Board of Education, and the manner and vocabulary attained by six weeks’ constant association with the county teachers, so fully equipped Miss Petrie that she passed successfully the examination held on the Saturday following the close of the Normal, and received the six months’ license granted to beginners.

The township school in which Miss Petrie began her labors (the township trustee was a friend of old John Petrie and had not hesitated when asked to give the girl a school, as he and John were juggling a bridge contract in which he expected a rake-off) was the average country school in which the teacher taught twelve or more classes a day in everything from A B C’s to United States history, and in which she had to look sharp, or the older boys who had “figured clear through ” Ray’s Higher Arithmetic for several seasons would catch her in some mistake. Miss Petrie was reasonably conscientious, and being moderately bright, her work was sufficiently successful to assure her of a school in town the next year. The town merchant had been elected a member of the School Board, and he reasoned that if the girl had a school in town she would not only be able to pay the bill old John owed him, but would see the necessity of so doing if she expected to keep her place.

As a “ city ” teacher, Miss Petrie began better to realize the importance of her calling. She still attended the Normal because licenses were indispensable, and she sat in the Institutes while various county and state educational lights made diagrams of “John is good” and subdivided the mind into Intellect, Sensibilities, and the Will. And having acquired a remarkable facility in computing the capacity of square cisterns, and in tracing the wanderings of a bushel of wheat over the universe, and her labors in the schoolroom (she had the primary grade under the then prevailing theory that that was the place to “ break in ” new teachers) being limited to teaching her pupils to print, to count to ten, to read at concert pitch from a large chart, and to sing “ by ear ” various simple and innocuous melodies, her evenings and Sundays were free for other amusements.

These were naturally very mild, public opinion in Enterprise not countenancing any great gayety on the part of its educators. She could not, therefore, play cards, but she might go boat riding and picnicking; and attend Sunday-school, where she taught a class ; and prayer meeting, and have beaux, of whose calls the neighbors kept account with a view toward complaining to the trustees, if they seemed too frequent.

Among these callers was the new county superintendent, an unmarried man of middle age, attracted apparently by Miss Petrie’s devotion to her school work.

Miss Petrie, however, gave him little encouragement, although she accepted his attentions at the Reading Circle, recently organized, and had received from him, as presents, several volumes which the teachers of the state had been ordered by the Board of Education to “ review.”

This book reviewing was regarded by the State Board of Education as a step forward, a progression toward higher ideals in the noble profession of teaching, by taking which the candidate would be better fitted for leading the youth of the state into the broad fields of literature. The applicant for license was given the choice of David Copperfield, The Scarlet Letter, or Vanity Fair, and because reviewing was heretofore unheard of in Enterprise and vicinity, the county superintendent was soon overwhelmed with bulky manuscripts in pale ink, in which the writer endeavored to condense the whole story into several thousand words, and failed ignominiously, or had copied several chapters word for word and added the last chapter, evidently trusting that the superintendent would look only at the first page and the last. The Institute instructors who had droned away heretofore for the week on “John is good ” now found a new field in talking on book reviews, and in outlining the newly prescribed Reading Circle work.

This Reading Circle work, so Miss Petrie soon learned, was not compulsory, but the teacher who took the four years’ course, passing each year the examinations, received a diploma which exempted her forever from answering the questions on the Science of Teaching, when passing the examination for license. As the questions on the Science of Teaching were taken each month from some book in the Reading Circle course, those teachers who saw no escape through the loophole of matrimony perceived the wisdom of having the agony over in four years, and hastened to buy the books at prices prescribed by the Reading Circle Board, places on which were eagerly sought by “ leading” state educators.

Miss Petrie, who by this time was beginning to feel some pride in the profession which seemed destined to be her life work, was giving up moonlight boat rides, picnics, and other small frivolities, and bore the distinction of being the first teacher in the county to adopt the new word method of teaching reading, plunged into the Reading Circle work with great zeal. She attended the meetings of the city circle, whose membership decreased in the course of the first year from twelve to three, in spite of the fact that the county superintendent, still unmarried, was chairman ex officio, and read in the four years Watts’s On the Mind, Hailman’s Lectures on Education, Sully’s Handbook of Psychology, and Boone’s Education in the United States, varied by such lighter works as Green’s England, and The Lights of Two Centuries.

By the practice of rigid economy she was enabled to spend a few weeks at Bay View one summer, and to attend a session of a summer school at a college in the state, and this, her Reading Circle diploma, and her high standing at home, enabled her to secure a position in the schools of a neighboring city. She was further assisted to this end by her manner, which was a happy combination of the severe style of address in vogue at the time of her entrance into the work with the melting sweetness of the present day, and the correctness of her speech. Never in the most exciting discussion did Miss Petrie drop into the colloquial “have n’t,” “ did n’t,” or “ could n’t; ” her “ has nots ” and her “ could nots ” were never elided, and her articulation and accent of the final syllable of “ children ” would have aroused envy even in the breast of the president of the National Association of Teachers had he chanced to hear her speak.

And now Miss Petrie, who had started out rather aimlessly, with no higher aim than to avoid dishwashing, and in whose breast were finally kindled some sparks of true ambition to succeed in her calling, was caught by the strong current of modern education and swept forward resistlessly.

At eight o’clock in the morning she must be in the schoolroom to write on the board the lessons for the day, because the superintendent’s fad was to avoid the use of text-books whenever possible. After school there was more of the same work, varied by correcting papers, because the superintendent demanded that all the children’s work be written. She must also find time to take country rides in search of flowers and shrubs in their season, and of rabbits, owls, and other beasts, birds, and insects, of which the children were to write their impressions.

On Saturday mornings the superintendent thoughtfully provided recreation for his teachers in the form of lectures by celebrated apostles of Child Study and Nature Study, which Miss Petrie, with the others, was required to attend. She also found it necessary to take several courses of private study in drawing, painting, music, science, and calisthenics, as the supervisors of these subjects came infrequently, and the instruction rested principally in her hands. In her spare time, there were entertainments to be prepared for, that teacher whose pupils could present portions of a Wagner opera or a Shakesperean play being considered of much higher professional rank than her fellows who confined their efforts to stereopticon lectures and recitations from the American poets. In the summer, those teachers who could keep out of a sanitarium were expected to refresh their minds and elevate the standard of their professional work by attending the summer school of some university.

After five years of this work, Miss Petrie suddenly reappeared in Enterprise, where she spent the first entire summer with her family since the second year of her professional career. When autumn came and the bell in the old schoollhouse across the street announced the opening of the school year, she still remained at home. To the county superintendent, still unmarried, who called shortly after her return, Miss Petrie explained herself.

“ I took a pride in my profession,” said she, “ and while many younger girls broke down, I was able to keep on, on the principle, I suppose, of the man who began to carry the calf in its infancy. I entered upon my career in the days when the work was simple, and assumed the new burdens one by one, so I was better able to bear them. If I had undertaken to lift them all at once I might have failed like some of the others. As it was, I never had to go to a sanitarium, even once!

“ No, it was not that which brought me back here. I taught my primary grades carefully. I began, as you know, with the old A B C method in the country school. I taught printing first. I taught the word method and the sentence method. I taught writing, Oh, John ! I taught Spencerian writing, and I taught vertical writing, and I taught reformed vertical writing, and I hear that this year they are going back to Spencerian. I taught those babies to sew, to paint in water colors, and to write compositions on the Greek gods. I had them make original nature investigations, and I never was sorry for them, not once. But when, last spring, our superintendent told us that he wanted to introduce the new object method, and gave us preliminary instruction, and I learned that after I had written ‘jump’ on the blackboard, and printed it, and spelled it, I was to stand up on the platform and jump, as an illustration, I felt that the last straw had been placed on the camel’s back. Maybe I had been breaking, gradually. Anyway, I have saved a little money, and I decided to come back to Enterprise to rest. It may be by the time I am rested they will have returned to the old methods, as they have in writing, and I can begin over again.”

She said this resolutely, but the county superintendent was nevertheless emboldened to put the question that had for years been trembling on his lips, and Miss Petrie accepted him with a smile of satisfaction.

“ I have loved you all this time,” he said, “ and I am sure I can make you happy. I, too, have my troubles. The examinations are becoming so severe that it is very difficult to answer the questions. You have got to use your reason these days, and work out psychological problems even in arithmetic and grammar, while the geography and history examinations are all taken out of the newspapers. ‘ When was Tolstoi banished ? ’Write a brief biography of Aguinaldo;’ ‘How old is Queen Wilhelmina ? ’ ' Give the population of Luzon.' I certainly need a helpmate, and with your advantages you can be of great assistance to me in grading the papers.”

Miss Petrie smiled a wintry smile. Even in Cupid’s toils she was not altogether to escape from the new education.

Kate Milner Robb.