Dr. Ernest Fox Nichols, the new president of Dartmouth College, gives
this bit of classic advice to teachers:
In twenty years of teaching and observation, I have become
convinced of some things connected with teaching as a
profession. No teacher can hope to inspire and lead young men to
a level of aspiration above that on which he himself lives and
does his work. Young men may reach higher levels, but not by his
aid. The man in whose mind truth has become formal and passive
ought not to teach. What youth needs to see is knowledge in
action, moving forward toward some worthy end. In nobody’s mind
should it be possible to confuse intellectual with ineffectual.
Let it not be said:
We teach and teach
Until like drumming pedagogs we lose
The thought that what we teach has higher ends
Than being taught and learned.
It ought to be impossible, even in satire, to say, “Those who
can, do; those who can’t, teach.”
(3175)