I call this the vow of artistry because it represents the essential attitude of the artist toward his work.  The cynic tells us that ideals are illusions of youth, and yet, the other day I saw expressed in a middle-aged working-man a type of idealism that is not at all uncommon in this world.  He was a house painter; his task was simply the prosaic job of painting a door; and yet, from the pains which he took with that work, an observer would have concluded that it was, to the painter, the most important task in the world.  And that, after all, is the true test of craft artistry:  to the true craftsman the work that he is doing must be the most important thing that can be done.  One of the best teachers that I know is that kind of a craftsman in education.  A student was once sent to observe his work.  He was giving a lesson upon the “attribute complement” to an eighth-grade grammar class.  I asked the student afterward what she had got from her visit.  “Why,” she replied, “that man taught as if the very greatest achievement in life would be to get his pupils to understand the attribute complement,—­and when he had finished, they did understand it.”

In a narrower sense, this vow of artistry carries with it an appreciation of the value of technique.  From the very fact of their normal school training, these graduates already possess a certain measure of skill, a certain mastery of the technique of their craft.  This initial mastery has been gained in actual contact with the problems of school work in their practice teaching.  They have learned some of the rudiments; they have met and mastered some of the rougher, cruder difficulties.  The finer skill, the delicate and intangible points of technique, they must acquire, as all beginners must acquire them, through the strenuous processes of self-discipline in the actual work of the years that are to come.  This is a process that takes time, energy, constant and persistent application.  All that this school or any school can do for its students in this respect is to start them upon the right track in the acquisition of skill.  But do not make the mistake of assuming that this is a small and unimportant matter.  If this school did nothing more than this, it would still repay tenfold the cost of its establishment and maintenance.  Three fourths of the failures in a world that sometimes seems full of failures are due to nothing more nor less than a wrong start.  In spite of the growth of professional training for teachers within the past fifty years, many of our lower schools are still filled with raw recruits, fresh from the high schools and even from the grades, who must learn every practical lesson of teaching through the medium of their own mistakes.  Even if this were all, the process would involve a tremendous and uncalled-for waste.  But this is not all; for, out of this multitude of untrained teachers, only a small proportion ever recognize the mistakes that they make and try to correct them.