To think is to live for thought is the soul of things. The boundary between life and non-life is fading away. The heart-throbs of the inanimate atom are little less wonderful than the highest flights of man's imagination. The Universe is sprung of thought. Whether the idea was born in God for Immanence does not matter so long as the symmetry of the Universe, the harmony of the spheres compels the conception of some grate imperative imagination as having been the cause of it all. Neither does it matter it there is or not thought in the living and non-living materials that surround us. For creation is thought and the rolling words in pathless space must lose their ways were it not for some Over-seeing Wisdom standing by and bidding them bear themselves along the destined courses.
In the human sphere thought is of the very stuff of life. To think little is to live little and to think abundantly is to live in all of life's aspects. The visible power to think the best of Nature's manifold gifts to man is his glory. By it man part of creation is himself become creator and the crown of animated things. It is because of this gift that man may even by in some real sense his own maker and the march of human progress gathering pace as the centuries speed witnesses the marvellous impulses of him mind. Man tears the veils of ultimate secrets chases the clouds races with the wind piercing darkness and plucking his opportunities as it were from the Creator's own hands Nature's child he often vies with Nature in creative mood and would fain conquer her. And the eternal woman as it appears would give her last-born the supremacy over things.
Look man's power has been reared mainly with the diverse stones quarried from thought. The crystal tide of thinking streams through the veins of civilization making it live and grow. Life wideness from thinking and the stature of man increases the adventure of his mind. To think is to grow.
Observe the child carefully. It thinks more than it cries. It annexes the new world by understanding it does it not to innocent little thing? Child of discovery its child care is to bring new spoils to its store. It may be difficult to tell who conscious thought by which is meant the beginning of reason appears in the child but nobody can escape that looks at the child from observing the grand intellectual offensive it launches against the amazing world to which it has been so recently summoned by an inscrutable call. Look at the child between the ages of one and three years. Explorer and discoverer, how strives, what waves of joy flow across its face when it has found out a flower for itself what throngs of wonder, forerunner and conqueror of knowledge swell in its eyes what and all thing it seizes with its hungry hands impelled by its hungry mind! This is the beginning of human life, and if this first spontaneous and abundant energy of the mind should shrink in succeeding year the environment the elders create for the child is to blame. The purpose of the school is to give the child those auspicious elements in which it can grow to the size indicated by its early days. The shool must therefore supplement the home and overcome its deficiencies. If children lose the abundance and wonder of their first years as they grow the home the teacher and the school have obviously conspired to cheat them of their own. Life cannot be fully lived without thought and the sense of wonder inspired by the changing manifestations of the Universe. The individual must think for society to go forward. The individual must think for society to go forward. The individuality of the unit is the promise of the mass. Discipline levels but education must develop each in his own image. Sameness is good but difference is better. Submission is peace but adventure is progress. Praiseworthy is the formation of habit for habits are like wheels for life to roll smoothly but the power to break them and build a new is a high privilege. Man kind is not a mass but men and women striving to stand together but unwilling to be alike. To render thought in systems caste as to suppress the natural disposition of growth to the pitch for progress and to rob action of its variety and health of its over widening reach. It is the duty of the school foster the elements of common welfare by encouraging each individual to think for himself and to act no less for others than for himself. It is the duty of the teacher to make his pupils think.
Since Dewey preached his philosophy Learning by doing as formed one of the major planks in the pedagogic platform. The eye sees what the hand does and the sight gladdens the . The making of a toy the flying of a kite the trunding a hoop are al visible fulfilments of the creative instinct. It said that the dream fulfils the wish. Action fulfils the mind. Action are the dreams of the Inner man ordered and guided and sustained by him. In brief, the mind is the marshal the man's relations with matter and the mind must be fed that action might increase and be abundant and if one might vary the figure the mind might be called the imping-off ground of action and the larger the space the mind occupies the richer action becomes. Thought being thus the food of deed the teacher must know what a wise caterer he has to be.
"Mens sana in corpore sano."
Mental and bodily health in just proportion is the educational ideal. The old phychology drew the line sharply between body and mind. We are beginning to know better. Body and mind are one and indistinguishable, and to try to develop the unmindful of the needs of the mind or to try the other any round is to follow a dubious wisdom. In the health and of life the muscles of the mind are no less important than nose of the body. The pure athlete is abnormal and faces the risk of shortage of days in just the same way and to the same extent as the pure intellectual does. The present physical of Indian youth has rightly become a subject of lament. The deterioration is visible but it is not as well realized that there is there must be almost equal mental decay in spite of generally accepted notions to the contrary. Book learning and examination success give no reliable data to assess the quality of the mind. Original thought is a good criterion and it is not easy to decide that its volume in the country is all reassuring. Thus even from the stand point of the abstracte cult of able bodies the development of the mind through proper stimulation of thought is strongly indicated.
In keeping in mind the importance of thought stimulation in the educative process the teacher perhaps needs to be for warned against certain spurious forms of thought which are peculiarly fertile source of deception in modern times. More people in these days think themselves thinkers. The claim can hardly be maintained. It is true that the pretence deceive themselves as much as it does others but that does not make the danger of counterfeit thought any the less. In the age when the daily output of ideas from the press almost hourly get increased in volume and more and more insistent and the bread winning business of ordinary folks tends to put more and more stain on their none too plentiful energies it is only natural that thinking is readily borrowed, sometimes unconsciously and afterwards as readily mistaken for one's own ware. It is, therefore commonly seen that most people especially the literate classes are inclined to pose as thinkers while in reality they are only borrowers of thought. The class room is not immune from this danger for boys and girls are not averse from learning the tricks and manners of their elders. The teacher has certainly to distinguish between thinking and thinking to be able to tell the authentic metal however unpolished it is presented from the uttered currency however genuine the latter might appear. The first sincere efforts of the juvenile mind do not easily take polish. On the other hand, their rough style can tell the teacher that his peoples are on the right track.
From what has been said it must be fairly clear that teaching to think is no small part of the responsibilities of the teacher. Now the question rises how? A cut and drived answer is impossible or one in a word.
The teacher perhaps will have himself to think to be able to teach thinking. He himself will have to provide the real article to evoke it in his pupils to tempt them to the skies and lead the way. This is perhaps a tall order. However, more than the silent teacher makes the silent class the thinking teacher makes the thinking class and the best way for the teacher to learn thinking if he happens to have not learnt it is to begin thinking, striving to give his own responses to the appeal of the objects and experiences about him.
Is it not a common practice to bewail the monotony of teaching? While the succeeding batches of peoples come up against succeeding layers of new things the teacher is regretted (regrets himself as much) for his being obliged to stay put in the same layer. He is not always aware that he may have himself to thank. Whatever be the subject he teaches he can switch it into new light every time he teaches it if he is sufficiently awake to its possibilities and in the measure he teaches it freshly he must stir the minds of his pupils. The teacher has therefore to be a thinker for his own sake and if he is that he gradually extends the thoughtful care to his pupils. It is fatal for the teacher to clap the extinguisher on his mind and to remain immured within the four corners of his bald routine. There is no more distressing sight than the old and experienced teacher lading out instruction from his frowsy granery of notes. The thing is a curious fulfilment of the school curriculum although according to the strick letter of the law it might be just the right and proper thing to do.
Another important thing to be remembered is that excessive information is the enemy of thought. Too much fuel congests the fire. It is better to tend it than to press it with wood if the intention is to make it burn brighter and brighter. To swathe the pupils in adipose information is certainly more easy than to be the vestal guardinas of the minds. Mental food is slow to digest and it undigested clogs the wheels of the mind more than undigested physical food does the organs of the body. The motto of mental purveyor ought to be. To give little by little slowly and slowly. It is a doubtful solicitude that would the school syllabus with too many subjects for althrough art long and life is short it is neither possible nor even advisable force the pace of the young mind.
Some of the directions in which the teacher of thinking likely to receive help may now be briefly considered. There indeed no subject but gives a chance to the teacher to awake thought in his pupils. Even history does which seems to the days completely domesticated to the purposes of cram. Do the pupils realize that in history they are offered opportunities of holding converse with their own ancestors? Are they in any way affected by the pageant of civilizations rising flourishing and sinking to doom? History is pre-eminently a subject to call for and educate the feelings and the human imaginations which an intimate part of the mechanism of thinking. It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of nourishing and educating the feelings for man is ninety per cent feeling and then percent other things. They are the engine of action and no wise education endeavour can spare any effort to make them strong and to make them wise. History invites such effort but more than other wise the soul of history is forgotten and the adjacent incident and pompously put over the footlights. All this is a fresh remainder that unless the teacher is willing to help education cannot get much chance to become progressively satisfying to the need of life.
Take geography that delightful subject that bids travel and exploration come to the classroom. Geography almost imperatively asks thought to awake and arise geography that has not been savagely stripped of its wealth and beauty. The map is but an aid to the mind and its purpose ought to end there, but how often does the map swallow the earth, its diverse races and teeming populations its fascinating spectacles of Nature grandeur of man's industry and his customs and manners. How often does the map the impassive material illusion become all the reality. Fact of which fiction is but a liveried servant is ought to awaken in the young their most healthy bouts of imagination which is thought in high speed. The lifeless that are often made to do duty for the living things of which human life is composed are often so cold and from them the mind shrinks.
Truth to tell, if geography does not promote imagination given against the combined ill will of teacher and pupils the map the abstracted mountain river and cape there is most certainly a miscarriage of elementary educational justice the school atmosphere to be tracked out and rectified. The Monsoon can vivify the mind just as it does the faded earth and the mind's streams just as the rivers of India swell and roll with the new waters pouring from the skies. Where is the pupil or teacher that will not look up at the brave spirits that went forth one awful afternoon not so very long ago to their immortal death under the eaves of that most silent and muysterious of witnesses the Mount Everest calling calling like a voice from the heavens? If there be any he should stand forth. This is criticism one objects which it is not so certain it is. There is an amiable error commonly occurring in the teaching of geography when eyes come to the edge of shutting and when the curtain threatens to drop upon the mind that needs (does it not?) to be told. The teacher who is alive to the glory of quickening thought mends the error swiftly enough for it becomes more and more a necessity of his existence. Geography is trice-human and comes calling awakening and making happy the mind awaiting introduction to the wonders of the world.
Science, mathematics even sloyd become powerful instruments of mental culture when properly directed. It may be a platitide but it is worth repeating that the scientific habit of mind serves the cause of science better far than scientific knowledge. Have I made the pupils think to probe a problem with their own minds to see the electron in the solid universe the interaction of symbols and how they speak to perceive the embodiments hiding in wood? These are questions that occur again and again to those who would enable their pupils to stand on their own legs. But is it also possible to render the school into fossils and formulas and for the authors of the transaction to get away from the scene with the consoling fancy that God is in heaven and all is right with the world.
Any idea if pushed beyond the limits of its purpose is capable of becoming pestilential. The idea of making education easy has for instance been extensively subjected to . Education is difficult and we cannot get away from the fact without also getting away from education itself. Wherever education has been actually made easy precious little education is really seen to exist. The baby has been thrown away with the bath. One of the stern conditions laid down by right education is that those who aspire to its graces and favours will have to come up against resistance and climb it. A bit of hard labour is certainly better met with a song to cheer up the heart; none the less the hard labour has got to be done to be extinguished. If education is not made unnecessarily dreary the limit of possible importation of easiness into it is probably reached. But the misread idea of easy education has affected the teaching of most subjects to the great ratardation of the growth and development of the mental faculties. The subject that has been least affected by this subtle virus is composition and its importance in the education of thought is supreme.
Composition is supreme in the construction of the mind because it is creative. Compsosition in creative in all stages of life from childhood to age. The single sentence if it is original is a created thing the temple of a thought. An essay, which means an attempt in words, is an assemblage of living thoughts dug from the living mind. Composition is doing as much as the moulding of clay. The mind if it is not dead has always dreams is often filled to overflowing with them. The hands and restless. They hunger to do it give habitation and shape to the dreams within. The material used differs according to the nature of the body in view. It is colour common matter such as clay or wood behaviour or words. Of these words are the filmiest the most effective and the most delicate in the great work of the translation of the mind into the visible form. Words are indeed as delicate as extensive and deep as the mind itself. They can therefore, hold the mirror to the mind as nothing else can. Language is the outward symbol of all thought. Language is therefore, at once the easiest and most difficult to use, easiest because it lies so ready to hand most difficult because it lies so near to the mind that it must be used faithfully to be true, because sincerity, the eluding substance is its soul. Words change the face of things but words are also like vapour.
Being so near to the mind and so eminently fitted to speak for it language is the most direct means of amplifying thought. Every new word found and conquered is a permanent addition to the mind. Every new word spoken or written is an exercise to it. Every sentence is an expression and very true expression brings a sense of triumphant joy to the soul. Composition is, therefore, the highest of class room pastimes the king of indoor games.
If the teacher could prove its pleasures to the pupils he might almost go home and sleep in the proud conviction that he has made himself unnecessary to them, which is the crowning perfection of his work.
Composition is, however, generally the best hated of things to teach and learn in schools. It is generally even the despair of teacher and pupil alike. Oral composition lessons are often grim and silent. Written composition is often chaos.
The teacher will develop the mind of his pupils in the measure in which he is able to evolve interest from timidity and indifference order grace and simplicity from the clamour of barbarian words. And this is not so insurmountable a difficulty as it seems.
The sincere appeal is seldom thrown away. The right model seldom comes vain. The teacher need not be afraid of throwing his pearls before swine, of giving the holy things to the dogs. In composition, which is practically thought in the process of growth it is the initial unwillingness the initial reticence, reserve and fear that the teacher has got to overcome. Once this is done he begins to sit face to face with the very minds of his pupils watching and rejoicing how they grow.
Love of words leads to love of ideas and ideas if they are true and alive wring expression from the hands. Wen the right spirit begins, which it is the teacher's job to help to begin the mind awakens expands and grows of itself. He will then see hoy crisp and fresh the original how eager for growth young minds are.
When this stage is reached come new ideas eager sentences and new essays bearing glittering certainties. Oral work is flooded with original voices. Composition becomes a class magazine on the pages of which the little minds parade in joyous competition. The outlines of thought fling themselves across many miles and the teacher is rewarded not only by the success of his work but by the new and golden affections of his pupils.
There is indeed infinite temptation for him to bend composition to the great end of upbringing the mind.
And let this subject be now concluded. Teaching to think is teaching at its greatest and whatever be the means employed no teacher can long remain a teacher without teaching his pupils to think for thought when all is said, is the greatest part of men and women.