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Wandering Teachers

This article, published in La América, New York, in May 1884, presents Martí’s view that education in rural areas should combine work and study.

“But how would you establish that system of wandering teachers that we have not seen mentioned in any book on education and you recommended in the last year’s number of La América, which I have before me?” An enthusiastic gentleman from Santo Domingo respectfully asks us this question.

We will tell him briefly that it is an important matter, but not how to accomplish it.

There is a heap of essential truths that can fit upon the wings of a hummingbird, and yet they are the key to national peace, to spiritual advancement, and to the greatness of one’s country.

Men must be kept in the knowledge of the land, and of the durability and transcendence of life.

Men must live in the peaceful natural and inevitable enjoyment of freedom, the way they live enjoying air and light.

A nation in which a taste for wealth and a knowledge of the sweetness, needs and pleasures of life do not develop equally is condemned to death.

Men must know the composition, enrichment, changes and applications of the material elements from whose development they derive the healthful pride of one who works directly with Nature, the bodily strength derived from contact with the forces of the land, and the honest and secure wealth produced by its cultivation.

Men need someone to stir their compassion often, to make their tears flow, and to give their souls the supreme benefit of generous feelings; for through the wonderful compensation of Nature whoever gives of himself, grows; and whoever withdraws within himself, living for small pleasures and afraid to share them with others, thinking only of greedily satisfying one’s own appetites, will gradually change from a man into pure solitude, carrying in his heart all the gray hair of winter time. He becomes within — and appears to others — an insect.

Men grow, they grow physically and visibly, when they learn something, when they begin to possess something, and when they have done some good.

Only fools or egoists talk about misfortune. Happiness exists on earth, and it can be won by means of the prudent exercise of reason, the knowledge of universal harmony, and the constant practice of generosity. He who seeks it elsewhere will not find it, for after having drained all the cups life has to offer, only in this way will he find flavor. A legend of the Spanish American lands tells that at the bottom of ancient cups there was a picture of Christ, so that when one of them was drained, people said: “Until we meet, my Lord!” At the bottom of those cups a heaven unfolded — serene and fragrant, endless and overflowing with tenderness!

Being good is the only way to be free.

Being cultured is the only way to be free.

With human nature in general, however, to be good, one has to be prosperous.

And the only open road to a constant and facile prosperity is that of knowing, cultivating and benefiting from the inexhaustible and indefatigable elements of Nature. Nature, unlike men, is not jealous. Unlike men, she has no hates or fears. She does not bar the way to anyone. Men will always need the products of Nature. And since every region produces only certain products, active trade will always assure wealth and freedom from want for all peoples.

So now there is no need to engage in a crusade to reconquer the Holy Sepulcher. Jesus did not die in Palestine; he is alive in every man. Most men have gone through life half asleep; they ate and drank, but learned nothing about themselves. Now one must go on a crusade to reveal to men their own natures, and give them, with plain and practical scientific knowledge, the personal independence that fortifies a man’s kindliness and gives rise to the pride and decency of being an amiable creature living in the great universe.

This, then, is what the teachers must take to the rural areas. Not merely explanations in the field of agriculture and mechanical implements, but the tenderness which is so lacking in men and does them so much good.

The farmer cannot leave his work to go many miles to see some incomprehensible geometric figures, to learn the names of capes and rivers and peninsulas in Africa, and to be provided with empty didactic lessons. The farmer’s children cannot leave the paternal farm and day after day, go mile after mile, to learn Latin declensions and short division. And yet the farmers comprise the most valuable, healthful, and red-blooded segment of the population, because they receive directly and in full measure the emanations of the soil from whose friendly inter course they live. Cities are the minds of nations; but their hearts, from where the mass of blood is sent in all directions, are in the countryside. Men are still mechanical eaters and the shrines of worry. We must make every man a torch.

For we are proposing, therefore, nothing less than a new religion with its new priests! We are describing nothing less than the missions by which the new era will soon begin to spread its religion! The world is changing; the regal priestly vestments, so necessary in the mystical ages of man, are lying upon their deathbed. Religion has not disappeared, it has been transformed. Above the affliction into which a study of the details and slow evolution of human history plunges observers, one can see that men are growing, and that they have already climbed halfway up Jacob’s ladder; what beautiful poems are in the Bible! If huddled upon a mountain peak one suddenly glances at human progress, one will see that people have never loved each other as they do now, that in spite of the painful disorder and abominable selfishness to which a momentary absence of ultimate beliefs and faith in Eternal Truth is leading the inhabitants of this transitory age, the benevolence and impetus to expand, now burning in everyone, has never been of greater concern to human beings than they are today. They have stood up like friends eager to meet and move forward to a mutually happy encounter.

We walk upon the waves and are tossed about and caught in their swirling motion; perturbed by their action, we fail to see — and do not stop to examine — the forces that move them. But when the sea is calm, we can rest assured that the stars will be nearer to the earth. Man will finally sheathe his sword of battle in the sun!

All this is what we could call the spirit of wandering teachers. How happy the peasants would be if some good man arrived now and then to teach them things they did not know, and with the warmth of a communicative manner leave in their spirits the quietude and dignity that always remain after seeing an honest and loving man! Instead of talking about cattle breeding and crops, there would be an occasional discussion — until the subject could be covered thoroughly — of what the teacher taught, of the curious implements he brought them, of a simple way to cultivate the particular plant they have been working so hard to develop, of what a fine teacher he is. Because he makes them impatient, they would talk about when he would come again so they might ask him what has been occurring to them ever since they began to acquire knowledge; for their minds have been expanding incessantly, and they have started to think. How happy all of them would be to leave their hoes and shovels, and filled with curiosity, take refuge in the teacher’s campaign tent!

Extensive courses could not be given, but if their propagators made a thorough study, they could certainly sow and cultivate the seeds of their ideas. They could awaken the appetite for knowledge.

And this would be a sweet intrusion, carried out in agreement with what is a common concern of the human soul; since the teacher would instruct the peasants in practical and beneficial things in a gentle manner, those peasants would gradually and effortlessly absorb a body of knowledge which begins by flattering and satisfying their interests. For whoever attempts to make men better must not disregard their evil passions; he must consider these as an extremely important factor and see to it that he does not work against them, but rather for them.

Instead of sending pedagogues through the rural areas, we would send conversationalists; instead of pompous schoolmasters, educated people responsive to the doubts presented to them by the ignorant, able to respond to the questions prepared for their arrival. They would observe when the farmers made mistakes in agricultural procedure, or when they overlooked some sort of wealth that could be developed, so they could be informed of these things and at the same time told how to remedy them.

In short, it is necessary to engage in a campaign of gentleness and knowledge, and give the farmers a corps — not yet in existence — of missionary teachers.

The itinerant school is the only kind that can eliminate peasant ignorance.

And in the rural areas, as well as in the cities, it is urgent to replace sterile and indirect book learning with the direct and fruitful knowledge of Nature.

It is urgent to open normal schools for practical teachers, to then scatter them over the valleys, mountains and outlying regions, much as the Amazonian Indians tell us that to create men and women Father Almalivaca scattered the seeds of moriche palm over all the earth!

Time is wasted upon elementary literary education, for it creates people aspiring to pernicious and fruitless values. The establishment of a fundamental scientific education is as necessary as the sun.