THE TEACHER
=The Greatest Factor.=--Now, although we may have a beautiful school
campus, an adequate and artistic building, a library, laboratories and
workshops with all necessary physical or material appointments complete,
we may yet have a poor school; these things, however desirable, will not
teach alone. The teacher is the mainspring, the soul of the school; the
"plant," as it may be called, is only the body. A great person is one
with a great soul, not necessarily with a great body. Hence it is that a
great teacher with poor buildings and inferior equipments is
incomparably better than great buildings and equipments without a
competent teacher.
=What Education Is.=--Education is essentially and largely the
stimulation and transformation of one mind or personality by another. It
is the impression of one great mind or soul upon another, giving it a
manner of spirit, a bent, an attitude, as well as a thirst for
knowledge. This is too often lost sight of in the complexity of things.
Many people are inclined to think that educational equipment and
machinery alone will educate. There is nothing further from the truth.
Mark Hopkins would be a great teacher without equipment; buildings,
grounds, apparatus, and laboratories will not really educate without a
great personality behind the desk. There is probably nothing more
inspiring, more suggesting, more stimulating, or more transforming than
intimate contact with great minds. Thought like water seeks its level,
and for children to come into living and loving communication with a
great teacher is a real uplift and an education in itself.
As a saw will not saw without some extraneous power to give it motion,
neither will the gun do execution without the man behind it. The
locomotive is not greater than the man at the throttle, and the ship
without the man at the helm flounders aimlessly upon the sea. Just so, a
great personality must be behind the teacher's desk or there cannot be
in any sense a real school.
=What the Real Teacher Is.=--The true teacher is an inspirer; that is,
he breathes into his pupils his spirit, his love of learning, his method
of study, his ideals. He is a real leader in every way. Children--and we
are all children to a certain extent--are great imitators, and so the
pupils tend to become like the teacher.
The true teacher stimulates to activity by example. Where you find such
a teacher, things are constantly "doing"; people are thinking and
talking school all the time; education is in the atmosphere. The real
teacher is, to use a popular phrase, a "live wire." Something new is
undertaken every day. He is a man of initiative and push, and withal he
is a man of sincerity and tact. While he is retrospective and
circumspective he is also prospective--he is a man of the far-look-ahead
type.
=A Hypnotist.=--The teacher is in the true sense a suggester of good
things. He is an educational hypnotist. The longer I continue to teach
the more am I impressed with the fact that suggestion is the great art
of the teacher. Hence the true teacher is the leader and not the driver.
=Untying Knots.=--A man once said that the best lesson he ever learned
in school was the lesson of "untying knots." He meant, of course, that
every problem that was thrown to the school by the teacher was "tackled"
in the right spirit by the pupils. They investigated it and analyzed it;
they peered into it and through it to find all the strands of
relationship existing in it. It would be easier, of course, for the
teacher under these circumstances merely to cut the knot and have it all
done with, but this would be poor teaching. This would be _telling_, not
teaching. This would lead to passivity and not to activity on the part
of the pupils. And it may be said here that constant and too much
_telling_ is probably the greatest and most widespread mistake in
teaching. Teachers are constantly cutting the knots for children who
should be left to untie them for themselves. To untie a knot is to see
through and through a subject, to see all around it, to see the various
relations of its parts and, consequently, to understand it. This is
solving a problem; it is _dissolving_ it; that is, the problem becomes
a part of the pupil's own mind, and, having made it a part of himself,
he understands it and never forgets it.
This is the difference between not being able to remember and not being
able to forget. In the former case the so-called knowledge is not a part
of oneself; it is not vital. The roots do not penetrate beneath the
surface of our minds; they are, as it were, merely stuck on; the mental
sap does not circulate. In the latter case the knowledge is real; it is
alive and growing; there is a vital connection between it and ourselves.
It would be as difficult to tear it from us as it would to have our
hearts torn out and still live.
=Too Much Kindness.=--An illustration of the same point appears in the
following incident. A boy who owned a pet squirrel thought it a kindness
to the squirrel to crack all the nuts for it. The consequence was that
the squirrel's incisors, above and below, grew so long that they
overlapped and the animal could not eat anything. Too many teachers are
so kind to their pupils that they crack all the educational nuts for
them, with the consequence that the children become passive and die
mentally for want of activity. The true teacher will allow his pupils to
wrestle with their problems without interruption until they arrive at a
conclusion. If some pupil "goes into the ditch" and flounders he should
usually be allowed to get out by his own efforts as best he can. Here is
the place where the teacher "should be cruel only to be kind."
=The Button Illustration.=--Another illustration may help to bring to us
one of the characteristics of the really good teacher. When children, we
have all, no doubt, amused ourselves by putting a string through two
holes of a button and, after twirling it around between our thumbs,
drawing it steadily in measured fashion so as to make the button spin
and hum. If the string is drawn properly this will be successful;
otherwise it will become a perfect snarl. This common experience has
often seemed to me to typify two different kinds of school. In one,
where there is a great teacher "drawing" the school properly, you will
hear, incidentally, the hum of industry, for all are active. A school
which may be thus characterized is always better than the one
characterized by silence and inaction. A little noise--in fact a
considerable noise--is not inconsistent with a good school, and it
frequently happens that what we call "the silence of death" is due to
fear, which is always paralyzing.
=The Chariot Race.=--Still another illustration may help to make clear
what is meant by a good school and a good teacher. Lew Wallace, in his
account of the chariot race, makes Ben Hur and his rival approach the
goal with their horses neck and neck. He says that Ben Hur, in getting
the best out of his steeds, _sent his will out along the reins_. A
really spirited horse responds to the throb of his driver's hand upon
the rein. A good driver gets the best out of his horse; he and his horse
are in accord and the horse takes as much pride in the performance as
the driver does. This is analogously true of a good school.
The schoolroom is not a complete democracy--in fact, it is not a
democracy at all in the lower grades; it is or should be a benevolent
autocracy. The teacher within the schoolroom is the law-making body, the
interpreter of the laws, and the executor of the laws. The good teacher
does all this justly and kindly, and so elicits the admiration, the
respect, and the active support of the governed. He sends his will out
along the reins. Some schools--those with great teachers in charge--are
in this condition; they are coming in under full speed toward the goal,
guided by a master whose will stimulates the pupils to the greatest
voluntary activity. Other schools, we are sorry to say, illustrate the
conditions where the reins are over the dashboard and the school is
running away, pell-mell!
=Physically Sound.=--What are some of the characteristic attributes or
traits which a masterful and inspiring teacher should possess? In the
first place he should be physically sound. It may seem like a lack of
charity to say, and yet it is true, that any serious physical defect
should militate against, if not bar, one from the schoolroom. Any
serious blemish or noticeable defect becomes to pupils an ever-present
suggestive picture, and to some extent must work against, rather than
for, education. Other things being equal, those who are personally
attractive and have the most agreeable manners should be chosen. Since
children are extremely plastic and impressionable, and so susceptible
to the influence of ideas and ideals, beauty and perfection should,
whenever possible, be the attributes of the person who is to guide and
fashion them.
=Character.=--A teacher should be morally sound; he should "ring true."
One can give only what one has. A liar cannot teach veracity; a
dishonest person can not teach honesty; the impure cannot teach purity.
One may deceive for a time, but in the long run the echo of what we are,
and hence what we can give, will be returned. It is often thought that
children are better judges of moral defects and of shams than are grown
people; but, while this is not true, it is nevertheless a fact that many
children, in a short time, divine or sense the true moral nature of the
teacher. Children appreciate justice and will endure and even welcome
severity if they know that justice is coupled with it. They are not
averse to being governed with a firm hand. If pupils are allowed to do
just as they please they may go home at the close of the first day,
saying that they had a "lovely time" and liked their teacher, but in a
very few days they will tire of it and begin to complain.
=Well Educated.=--We need not, of course, contend at any length that a
teacher should be well educated, in the academic sense of the word. In
order to teach well, one must understand his subject thoroughly. It is
quite generally held that a teacher should be at least four years in
advance, academically, of the pupils whom he is to teach. Whether this
is true or not in particular cases, the fact remains that the teacher
should be full of his subject, should be at home in it, and should be
able to illustrate it in its various phases; he should be free to stand
before his class without textbook in hand and to give instruction from a
full and accurate mind. There is probably nothing that so destroys the
confidence of pupils as the lamentable spectacle of seeing the teacher
compelled at every turn to refer to the book for verification of the
answers given. It is a sign of pitiable weakness. If a distinction is to
be made between knowledge and wisdom a true teacher should be possessed
of the latter to a considerable extent. He should also have prudence, or
practical wisdom. Wisdom and prudence imply that fine perspective which
gives a person balance and tact in all situations. It should be noted
that there is a policy, or diplomacy, in a good sense, which does not in
any way conflict with principle; and the true teacher should have the
knowledge, the wisdom, and the tact to do and to say the right thing at
the right time and to leave unsaid and undone many, many things.
=Professional Preparation.=--In addition to a thorough knowledge of
subject matter every teacher should have had some professional
preparation for his work. Teaching, like government, is one of the most
complicated of arts, and to engage in it without any previous study of
its problems, its principles, and its methods seems like foolhardiness.
There are scores, if not hundreds, of topics and problems which should
be thought out and talked over before the teacher engages in actual work
in the schoolroom. When the solutions of these problems have become a
part of his own mind, they will come to his rescue as occasion demands;
and, although much must be learned by experience, a sound knowledge of
the fundamental principles of education and teaching will always throw
much light upon practical procedure. It is true that theory without
practice is often visionary, but it is equally true that practice
without any previous knowledge, or theory, is very often blind.
=Experience.=--In addition to the foregoing qualifications the teacher,
in order to be really masterful, must have had some--indeed
considerable--actual experience. It is this that gives confidence and
firmness to all our procedure. The young lawyer when he appears at the
bar, to plead his first case, finds his knees knocking together; but
after a few months or years of practice he acquires ease, confidence,
and mastery in his work. The same is true of the physician and the
teacher. Some successful experience always counts for much. School
boards, however, often over-estimate _mere_ experience. Poor experience
may be worse than none; and some good superintendents are willing, and
often prefer, to select promising candidates without experience, and
then train or build them up into the kind of teachers they wish them to
become.
=Choosing a Teacher.=--If I were a member of a school board in a
country district where there is either a good one-room school or a
consolidated school, I should go about securing a good teacher somewhat
as follows: I should keep, so to speak, my "weather eye" open for a
teacher who had become known to some extent in all the surrounding
country; one who had made a name and a reputation for himself. I should
inquire, in regard to this teacher, of the county superintendent and of
his supervising officers. I should make this my business; and then, if I
should become convinced that such a person was the one needed in our
school, and if I had the authority to act, I should employ such a person
regardless of wages or salary. If after a term or two this teacher
should make a satisfactory record, I would then promote him,
unsolicited, and endeavor to keep him as long as he would stay.
=A "Scoop."=--Sometimes there is considerable rivalry among the
newspapers of a city. The editors or local reporters watch for what they
call a "scoop." This is a piece of news that will be very much sought by
the public and which remains unknown to the people or, in fact, to the
other papers until it appears in the one that has discovered it. This is
analogous to what I should try to do in securing a teacher: I should try
to get a veritable educational "scoop" on all the other districts of the
surrounding country. The only way to secure such persons is for some
individual or for the school board to make this a specific business. In
the country districts this might be done by one of the leading
directors; in a consolidated school, by the principal or superintendent.
If it is true that "as the teacher so is the school," it is likewise
true that as is the principal or superintendent so are the teachers.
=What Makes the Difference.=--It will be found that a small difference
in salary will frequently make all the difference between a worthless
and an excellent teacher. It is often the ten or fifteen dollars a month
additional which secures the prize teacher; and so I should make the
difference in salary a secondary consideration; for, after all, the
difference amounts to very little in the taxation on the whole
community.
=A Question of Teachers.=--The question of teachers is the real problem
in education, from the primary school to the great universities. It is
the poor teaching of poor teachers everywhere that sets at naught the
processes of education; and when the American people, and especially the
rural people, realize that this is the heart and center of their
problem, and when they realize also that the difference, financially,
between a poor teacher and a good one is so small, they will rise to the
occasion and proceed to a correct solution of their problem.