Lecturing, as well as book-making, has its peculiar temptations. The lecturer must interest his hearers in order to hold them; he is tempted to play to the galleries, and to omit what is beyond the comprehension of the average audience. The book-maker, on the other hand, is tempted to display his learning, to make a show of depth and erudition. The student of pedagogy is supposed to be in search of profound wisdom. Those who write for him often dive so deep that their style becomes muddy. Unfortunately, some of the best treatises on education have been written in the style of the philosopher and wrought out on the plane of the university professor, although intended for undergraduates at normal schools, and for teachers whose meagre salaries do not enable them to pursue courses of study at institutions of higher learning. The lucid style of Spencer’s treatise on “Education” has done much to counteract this tendency. Yet many of the authors of our treatises on pedagogy seem to be haunted by a feeling similar to that of the German professor, who, on reading the opening chapters of a new book, and finding them to be intelligible to his colleagues, exclaimed, “Then I must rewrite these chapters; otherwise nobody will read my book through.”
Huxley has well described the penalty which must be paid by those who speak or write for the purpose of being understood. These are his words:
“At the same time it must be admitted that the popularization of science, whether by lecture or essay, has its drawbacks. Success in this department has its perils for those who succeed. The ‘people who fail’ take their revenge, as we have recently had occasion to observe, by ignoring all the rest of a man’s work and glibly labelling him a mere popularizer. If the falsehood were not too glaring, they would say the same of Faraday and Helmholtz and Kelvin.”
One who can never hope to rival the style of Spencer and Huxley and those to whom the latter refers, will nevertheless do well to emulate their skill in making difficult things plain to people who are not specialists or experts. He who writes for the teachers in our public schools should put aside his ambition to be considered erudite or profound, and endeavor above all things to be understood. Vague theories are apt to beget a bad conscience in those who teach and to destroy the joy which every one has a right to feel while doing honest and faithful work. Hence the writer offers no apology for heaping illustration upon illustration in the effort to make his meaning plain to those whom he aims to help.