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The Educational Balance, Efficiency and Thinking (1916) THERE ARE TWO TRAITS WHICH have to go together and which have to be balanced with each other in order that we may get an adequate and rounded development of personality, and for that reason there are two factors which have to be constantly borne in mind in all teaching and borne in mind in such a way that we do not first tend to one and develop one, and then, forgetting that, develop the other, but that we keep the two balanced together all the time. I call those two factors efficiency and thought. Efficiency, or skill in execution and good, orderly, effective method and technique of doing things which is under control. The other, thinking, or the recognition of the meaning of what we do, having a definite, well-thought-out and comprehensive plan or purpose in our actions. Now, I do not care whether it is in school or out, in business, in politics, in science, or art, I find everywhere that these two factors are required for real, successful accomplishment. The business man has got to have his orderly habits of work. He has got to have his skill which belongs to his particular business, just as must the physician or the lawyer have a method of skillful operation which enables him to do promptly and without confusion in a regular, consecutive way, without waste, without constant faults and wasted moves, the things which he needs to do. So the scientific man in his laboratory has to have command of the technique of his particular method of inquiry. If he is a chemist, he has got to be able to handle and manipulate his materials and his tools in the way that they call for. If he is a mathematician, he has got another set of tools and apparatus and another mode of skill. But he has to have that same definite control of materials. So with the housewife in the household; so on through all these undertakings. At the same time, just as the artist might have a fine technique 41 First published in Indiana State Teachers’ Association, Proceedings (1916), 188–93, from address given on 27 October 1916, at the annual meeting in Indianapolis, 25–28 October 1916. 42 The Classroom Teacher with the instrument and yet the use of that instrument would not move people, would not affect them on any very deep level, because there was no feeling back of it or because there were no ideas expressed in it, so, of course, a business man might have a certain technique or skill but never rise above the level of a bookkeeper or accountant, never become able or competent really to take hold of the entire business and manage it for himself, because of the lack of ability intellectually to analyze situations, to see what the factors are and to form a broad plan, form a mental synthesis, that would bring these things together. So, I take it, while I have not any particular experience in that line, a housekeeper might know enough to handle a broom and the dishpan and the dishrag and all the other particular things where skill is needed in the household, and yet be a poor housekeeper for lack of ability to control these activities intellectually and make a plan, which would make the different details of the day’s work and the day’s duties that had to be attended to, fit into each other in some kind of harmonious and effective way. Now, before we go on I want to generalize, in a way, what I have been saying. What elements of life is it that those two factors correspond to? Why do we need both this regular formed habit of action on the one hand, ability to do a thing with uniformity and promptness twice over, and on the other hand require this capacity to think? It is because there are two factors in every situation that we have to deal with. On the one hand there are certain factors that are stable, that are uniform, that are repeated from place to place, from time to time, from situation to situation. Now, if everything in life were fixed and uniform, habits, skilled habits, would answer every purpose and all that would ever be needed would be for teachers in the schoolroom to train for efficiency. They would drop the element of thought practically out of consideration. What...

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