Beefsteak

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Title:     Beefsteak
Author: Francis B. Pearson [More Titles by Pearson]

I am just now quite in the mood to join the band; I mean the vocational-education band. The excitement has carried me off my feet. I can't endure the looks of suspicion or pity that I see on the faces of my colleagues. They stare at me as if I were wearing a tie or a hat or a coat that is a bit below standard. I want to seem, if not be, modern and up-to-date, and not odd and peculiar. So I shall join the band. I am not caring much whether I beat the drum, carry the flag, or lead the trick-bear. I may even ride in the gaudily painted wagon behind a spotted pony and call out in raucous tones to all and sundry to hurry around to the main tent to get their education before the rush. In times past, when these vocational folks have piped unto me I have not danced; but I now see the error of my ways and shall proceed at once to take dancing lessons. When these folks lead in the millennium I want to be sitting well up in front; and when they get the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow I want to participate in the distribution. I do hope, though, that I may not exhaust my resources on the band and have none left for the boys and girls. I hope I may not imitate Mark Twain's steamboat that stopped dead still when the whistle blew, because blowing the whistle required all the steam.

I suspect that, like the Irishman, I shall have to wear my new boots awhile before I can get them on, for this new role is certain to entail many changes in my plans and in my ways of doing things. I can see that it will be a wrench for me to think of the boys and girls as pedagogical specimens and not persons. I have contracted the habit of thinking of them as persons, and it will not be easy to come to thinking of them as mere objects to practise on. The folks in the hospital speak of their patients as "cases," but I'd rather keep aloof from the hospital plan in my schoolmastering. But, being a member of the band, I suppose that I'll feel it my duty to conform and do my utmost to help prove that our cult has discovered the great and universal panacea, the balm in Gilead.

As a member of the band, in good and regular standing, I shall find myself saying that the school should have the boys and girls pursue such studies as will fit them for their life-work. This has a pleasing sound. Now, if I can only find out, somehow, what the life-work of each one of my pupils is to be, I'll be all right, and shall proceed to fit each one out with his belongings. I have asked them to tell me what their life-work is to be, but they tell me they do not know. So I suspect that I must visit all their parents in order to get this information. Until I get this information I cannot begin on my course of study. If their parents cannot tell me I hardly know what I shall do, unless I have recourse to their maiden aunts. They ought to know. But if they decline to tell I must begin on a long series of guesses, unless, in the meantime, I am endowed with omniscience.

This whole plan fascinates me; I dote upon it. It is so pliable, so dreamy, and so opalescent that I can scarce restrain my enthusiasm. But if I should fit one of my boys out with the equipment necessary for a blacksmith, and then he should become a preacher, I'd find the situation embarrassing. My reputation as a prophet would certainly decline. If I could know that this boy is looking forward to the ministry as his life-work, the matter would be simple. I'd proceed to fit him out with a fire-proof suit of Greek, Hebrew, and theology and have the thing done. But even then some of my colleagues might protest on the assumption that Greek and Hebrew are not vocational studies. The preacher might assert that they are vocational for his work, in which case I'd find myself in the midst of an argument. I know a young man who is a student in a college of medicine. He is paying his way by means of his music. He both plays and sings, and can thus pay his bills. In the college he studies chemistry, anatomy, and the like. I'm trying to figure out whether or not, in his case, either his music or his chemistry is vocational.

I have been perusing the city directory to find out how many and what vocations there are, that I may plan my course of study accordingly when I discover what the life-work of each of my pupils is to be. If I find that one boy expects to be an undertaker he ought to take the dead languages, of course. If another boy expects to be a jockey he might take these same languages with the aid of a "pony." If a girl decides upon marriage as her vocation, I'll have her take home economics, of course, but shall have difficulty in deciding upon her other studies. If I omit Latin, history, and algebra, she may reproach me later on because of these omissions. She may find that such studies as these are essential to success in the vocation of wife and mother. She may have a boy of her own who will invoke her aid in his quest for the value of x, and a mother hesitates to enter a plea of ignorance to her own child.

I can fit out the dancing-master easily enough, but am not so certain about the barber, the chauffeur, and the aviator. The aviator would give me no end of trouble, especially if I should deem it necessary to teach him by the laboratory method. Then, again, if one boy decides to become a pharmacist, I may find it necessary to attend night classes in this subject myself in order to meet the situation with a fair degree of complacency. Nor do I see my way clear in providing for the steeple-climber, the equilibrist, the railroad president, or the tea-taster. I'll probably have my troubles, too, with the novel-writer, the poet, the politician, and the bareback rider. But I must manage somehow if I hope to retain my membership in the band.

I see that I shall have to serve quite an apprenticeship in the band before I write my treatise on the subject of pedagogical predestination. The world needs that essay, and I must get around to it just as soon as possible. Of course, that will be a great step beyond the present plan of finding out what a boy expects to do, and then teaching him accordingly. My predestination plan contemplates the process of arranging such a course of study for him as will make him what we want him to be. A naturalist tells me that when a queen bee dies the swarm set to work making another queen by feeding one of the common working bees some queen stuff. He failed to tell me just what this queen stuff is. That process of producing a queen bee is what gave me the notion as to my treatise. If the parents want their boy to become a lawyer I shall feed him lawyer stuff; if a preacher, then preacher stuff, and so on.

This will necessitate a deal of research work, for I shall have to go back into history, first of all, to find out the course of study that produced Newton, Humboldt, Darwin, Shakespeare, Dante, Edison, Clara Barton, and the rest of them. If a roast-beef diet is responsible for Shakespeare, surely we ought to produce another Shakespeare, considering the excellence of the cattle we raise. I can easily discover the constituent elements of the beef pudding of which Samuel Johnson was so fond by writing to the old Cheshire Cheese in London. Of course, this plan of mine seems not to take into account the Lord's work to any large extent. But that seems to be the way of us vocationalists. We seem to think we can do certain things in spite of what the Lord has or has not done.

The one danger that I foresee in all this work that I have planned is that it may produce overstimulation. Some one was telling me that the trees on the Embankment there in London are dying of arboreal insomnia. The light of the sun keeps them awake all day, and the electric lights keep them awake all night. So the poor things are dying from lack of sleep. Macbeth had some trouble of that sort, too, as I recall it. I'm going to hold on to the vocational stimulation unless I find it is producing pedagogical insomnia. Then I'll resign from the band and take a long nap. I'll continue to advocate pudding, pastry, and pie until I find that they are not producing the sort of men and women the world needs, and then I'll beat an inglorious retreat and again espouse the cause of orthodox beefsteak.

[The end]
Francis B. Pearson's essay: Beefsteak

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