THE TEACHER AS AN IDEAL
=Responsibility of the exemplar.=--If the teacher could be convinced
that each of her pupils is to become a replica of herself, she would
more fully appreciate the responsibilities of her position. At first
flush, she might feel flattered; but when she came into a full
realization of the magnitude of the responsibility, she would probably
seek release. If she could know that each pupil is striving to copy her
in every detail of her life, her habits of speech, her bodily movements,
her tone of voice, her dress, her walk, and even her manner of thinking,
this knowledge would appall her, and she would shrink from the
responsibility of becoming the exemplar of the child. She cannot know,
however, to what extent and in what respects the pupils imitate her.
Nor, perhaps, could they themselves give definite information on these
points, if they were put to the test. Children imitate their elders both
consciously and unconsciously; so, whether the teacher wills it so or
not, she must assume the functions of an exemplar as well as a teacher.
=Absorbing standards.=--If we give full credence to Tennyson's
statement, "I am a part of all that I have met," then it follows that we
have become what we are, in some appreciable measure, through the
process of absorption. In other words, we are a composite of all our
ideals. The vase of flowers, daintily arranged, on the breakfast table
becomes the standard of good taste thenceforth, and all through life a
vase of flowers arranged less than artistically gives one a sensation of
discomfort. A traveler relates that in a hotel in Brussels he saw window
curtains of a delicate pattern; and, since that time, he has sought in
many cities for curtains that will fill the measure of the ideal he
absorbed in that hotel. Beauty is not in the thing itself, but in the
eye of the beholder, and the eye is but the interpreter of the ideal.
One person rhapsodizes over a picture that another turns away from,
because the latter has absorbed an ideal that is unknown to the former.
=Education by absorption.=--This subject of absorption has not received
the careful attention that its importance warrants. In the social
consciousness education has been so long associated with books, and
formal processes, that we find it difficult to conceive of education
outside of or beyond books. If, as we so confidently assert, education
is a spiritual process, then whatever stimulates the spirit must be
education, whether a landscape, a flower, a picture, or a person. The
traveler who sits enrapt before the Jungfrau for an hour or a day is
becoming more highly educated, even in the absence of books and
formalities. The beauty of the mountain touches his spirit, and there is
a consequent reaction that fulfills all the claims of the educational
processes. In short, he is lifted to a higher plane of appreciation, and
that is what the books and the schools are striving to achieve.
=The principle illustrated.=--In the presence of this mountain the
tourist gains an ideal of grandeur which becomes his standard of
estimating scenery throughout life. A boy once heard "The Dead March"
played by an artist, and when he was grown to manhood that was still his
ideal of majestic music. A traveler asserts that no man can stand for an
hour on the summit of Mt. Rigi and not become a better and a stronger
man for the experience. A writer on art says that it is worth a trip
across the ocean to see the painting of the bull by Paul Potter; but
that, of course, depends upon the ideals of the beholder. All these
illustrations conform to and are in harmony with the psychological
dictum that in the educational process the spirit reacts to its
environment.
=The teacher as environment.=--But the environment may include people as
well as inanimate objects, mountains, rivers, flowers, and pictures.
And, as a part of the child's environment, the teacher takes her place
in the process of education by absorption. A city superintendent avers
that there is one teacher in his corps who would be worth more to his
school than the salary she receives even if she did no teaching. This
means that her presence in the school is a wholesome influence, and that
she is the sort of environment to which the pupils react to their own
advantage. It might not be a simple thing to convince some taxpayers of
the truth of the superintendent's statement, but this fact only proves
that they have not yet come into a realization of the fact that there
can be education by absorption.
=The Great Stone Face.=--The people of Florence maintain that they need
not travel abroad to see the world, for the reason that the world comes
to them. It is true that many thousands visit that city annually to win
a definition of art. There they absorb their ideals of art and thus
attain abiding standards. In like manner the child may sojourn in the
school to gain an ideal of grace of manner and personal charm as
exemplified by the teacher, and no one will have the temerity to assert
that this phase of the child's education is less important than those
that are acquired through the formal processes. The boy in the story
grew into the likeness of the "Great Stone Face" because that had become
his ideal, and not because he had had formal instruction in the subject
of stone faces, or had taken measurements of or computed the dimensions
of the one stone face. He grew into its likeness because he thought of
it, dreamed of it, absorbed it, and was absorbed by it, and reacted to
it whenever it came into view.
=Pedagogy in literature.=--Hawthorne, in this story, must have been
trying to teach the lesson of unconscious education or education by
absorption, but his readers have not all been quick to catch his
meaning. Teachers often take great unction in the reflection that they
afford to the child his only means of education, and that but for them
the child would never become educated at all. We are slow to admit that
there are many sources of education besides the school, and that formal
instruction is not the only road to the acquisition of knowledge.
Tennyson knew and expressed this conception in the quotation already
given, but we have not acquired the habit of consulting the poets and
novelists for our pedagogy. When we learn to consult these, we shall
find them expressing many tenets of pedagogy that are basic.
=The testimony of experience.=--But we need not go beyond our own
experiences to realize that much of our education has been unconsciously
gained, that we have absorbed much of it, and, possibly, what we now
regard as the most vital part of it. We have but to explore our own
experiences to discover some person whose standards have been effective
in luring us out of ourselves and causing us to yearn toward higher
levels; who has been the beacon light toward which our feet have been
stumbling; who has been the pattern by which we have sought to shape our
lives; and for whom we feel a sense of gratitude that cannot be
quenched. The influence of that person has been a liberal education in
the vital things that the books do not teach, and we shudder to think
what we might have been had that influence not come into our lives. This
ideal is not some mythical, far-away person, but a real man or woman who
has challenged our admiration by looks, by conduct, by position, and by
general bearing in society.
=The one teacher.=--This preliminary part of the subject has been dwelt
upon thus at length in an effort to win assent to the general
proposition that unconscious education is not only possible, but an
actuality. This assent being once given, the mind feels out at once for
applications of the principle and, inevitably, brings the parent and the
teacher into the field of view. But the parent is too near to us in
time, in space, and in relation to afford the illustration that we seek,
and we pass on to the teacher. In the experience of each one of us there
stands out at least one teacher as clear in definition as a cameo. This
teacher may not have been the most scholarly, or the most successful in
popular esteem, or even the most handsome, but she had some quality that
differentiates her in our thinking from all others. Others may seem but
a sort of blur in our memory, but not so this one. She alone is
distinct, distinctive, and regnant.
=Her supremacy.=--The vicissitudes of life have not availed to dethrone
her, nor have the losses, perplexities, and sorrows of life caused the
light of her influence to grow dim. She is still an abiding presence
with us, nor can we conceive of any influence that could possibly
obliterate her. She may have been idealized by degrees, but when she
came fully into our lives she came to stay. She came not as a transient
guest, but as a lifelong friend and comrade. She crept into our lives as
gently as the dawn comes over the hills, and since her arrival there has
been no sunset. Nor was there ever by pupil or teacher any profession or
protestation, but we simply accepted each other with a frankness that
would have been weakened by words.
=The rôle of ideal.=--But the rôle of ideal is not an easy one. It is a
comparatively simple matter to give instruction in geography,
arithmetic, and history, but to know one's self to be the ideal of a
child, or to conceive of the possibility of such a situation and
relation, is sufficient to render the teacher deeply thoughtful. Once it
is borne in upon her that the child will grow into her likeness, she
cannot dismiss the matter from her thinking as she can the lesson in
grammar. The child may be unconscious of the matter, but the teacher is
acutely conscious. When she stands before her class she sees the child
growing into her image, and this reflection gives cause and occasion for
a careful and critical introspection. She feels constrained to take an
inventory of herself to determine whether she can stand a test that is
so searching and so far-reaching.
=The teacher's other self.=--As she stands thus in contemplation she sees
the child grown to maturity with all her own predilections--physical,
mental, spiritual--woven into the pattern of its life. In this child
grown up she sees her other self and can thus estimate the qualities of
body, mind, and spirit that now constitute herself, as they reveal
themselves in another. She thus gains the child's point of view and so is
able to see herself through the child's eyes. When she is reading a book,
she is aware that the child is looking over her shoulder to note the
quality of literature that engages her interest. When she is making a
purchase at the shop, she finds the child standing at her elbow and
duplicating her order. When she is buying a picture, she is careful to
see to it that there are two copies, knowing that a second copy must be
provided for the child. When she is arranging her personal adornment, she
is conscious of the child peeping through the door and absorbing her with
languishing eyes.
=The status irrevocable.=--Wherever she goes or whatever she does, she
knows that the child is walking in her footsteps and reënacting her
conduct. Her status is irrevocably fixed in the life of the child, nor
can any philosophy or sophistry absolve her from the situation. She
cannot abdicate her place in favor of another, nor can she win immunity
from responsibility. She is the child's ideal for weal or woe, nor can
men or angels change this big fact. Through all the hours of the day she
hears the child saying, "Whither thou goest I will go," and there is no
escape.
=The child's viewpoint.=--This is no flight of fancy. Rather it is a
reality in countless schoolrooms of the land if only the teachers were
alive to the fact. But we have been so busy measuring, estimating,
scoring, and surveying the child for our purposes that we have given but
scant consideration to the child's point of view as regards the teacher.
We have not been quick to note the significant fact that the child is
estimating, measuring, scoring, and surveying the teacher for purposes
of its own and in the strictest obedience to the laws of its nature.
=The child's need of ideals.=--Every child needs and has a right to
ideals, and finds the teacher convenient both in space and in the nature
of her work to act in this capacity. Because of the character of her
work and her peculiar relation to the child, the teacher assumes a place
of leadership, and the child naturally appropriates her as the lodestar
for which his nature is seeking. And so, whether the teacher leads into
the morass or into the jungle, the child will follow; but if she elects
to take her way up to the heights, there will be the child as faithful
as her shadow. If the teacher plucks flowers by the way, then, in time,
gathering flowers will become habitual to the child, nor will there be
any need to admonish the child to gather flowers. The teacher plucks
flowers, and that becomes the child's command. Education by absorption
needs neither admonition nor homilies.
=The ideal a perpetual influence.=--And all this is life--actual life,
fundamental life, and inevitable life. Moreover, the inevitableness of
this phase of life serves to accentuate its importance. The idealized
teacher gives to the child his ideals of conduct, literature, art,
music, home, school, and service. Take this teacher out of his life and
these ideals vanish. Better by far eliminate the formal instruction,
important as that may be made to be, than to rob the child of his
ideals. They are the influences that are ever active even when formal
instruction is quiescent. They are potent throughout the day and
throughout the year. They induce reactions and motor activities that
groove into habits, and they are the external stimuli to which the
spirit responds.
=The teacher's attitude.=--The vitalized school takes full cognizance of
this phase and means of education and gives large scope and freedom for
its exercise and development. The teacher is more concerned with who and
what her pupils are to be twenty years hence than she is in getting them
promoted to the next grade. She knows full well that vision clarifies
sight, and she is eager to enlarge their vision in order to make their
sight more keen and clear. She, therefore, adopts as her own standards
of life and conduct what she wishes for her pupils when they have come
to maturity. She may not proclaim herself an ideal teacher or a model
teacher, but she is cognizant of the fact that she is the model and the
ideal of one or more pupils in her school and bases her rule of life
upon this fact.
=Prophetic conduct.=--In her dress she decides between ornateness and
simplicity as a determining factor in the lives of her pupils both for
the present and for the years to come. In this she feels that she is but
doing her part in helping to determine the trend and quality of
civilization. She is reading such books as she hopes to find in their
libraries when they have come to administer homes of their own. She is
directing her thinking into such channels as will bear the thoughts of
her pupils out into the open sea of bigness and sublimity. Knowing that
pettiness will be inimical to society in the next generation, she is
careful to banish it from her own life.
=Her rule of life.=--In her thinking she comes into intimate relations
with the sea and all its ramified influences upon life. She invites the
mountains to take her into their confidence and reveal to her the
mysteries of their origin, and their influence upon the winds, the
seasons, the products of the earth, and upon life itself. She communes
with the great of all times that she may learn of their concepts as to
the immensities which the mind can explore, as well as intricate and
infinite manifestations of the human soul. She associates with the
planets and rides the spaces in their company. She asks the flowers, the
sunrise glow of the morning, the hues of the rainbow, and the drop of
dew to explain to her what God is, and rejoices in their responses.
=Her growth.=--And so, through her thinking she grows big--big in her
aspirations, big in her sympathies with all nature and mankind, big in
her altruism, and big in her conceptions of the universe and all that it
embraces. And when people come to know her they almost lose sight of the
teacher in their contemplation of the woman. Her pupils, by their close
contact and communion, became inoculated with the germs of her bigness
and so follow the lead of her thinking, her aspirations, her sympathies,
and her conceptions of life. Thus they grow into her likeness by
absorbing her thoughts, her ideals, her standards, in short, herself.
=Seeing life large.=--The bigness of her spirit and her ability to see
and feel life in the large superinduce dignity, poise, and serenity. She
never flutters; but, calm and masterful, she moves on her majestic way
with regal mien. Nor is her teaching less thorough or less effective
because she has a vision. On the contrary, she teaches cube root with
accuracy and still is able to see and to cause her pupils to see the
index finger pointing out and up toward the mathematical infinities. She
can give the latitude and longitude of Rome, and, while doing so, review
the achievements of that historic city. She can explain the action of
the geyser and still find time and inclination to take delight in its
wonders. She can analyze the flower and still revel in its beauty. She
can teach the details of history and find in them the footprints of
great historical movements. All these things her pupils sense and so
invest her with the attributes of an ideal.
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
1. Do most teachers realize to what extent they have influence?
2. Is it comfortable to think that one is an example? If not, why not?
Is it only teachers who need to feel that they are examples? Is it fair
to demand a higher standard of the teacher and preacher?
3. Give from your own experience instances in which you have absorbed an
ideal which has persisted. Is there danger of adopting an ideal that,
while it is worthy as far as it goes, is merely incidental and not worth
while? (Such are an accurate memory of unimportant details, certain
finesse in manners and speech, punctiliousness in engagements,
exhaustiveness in shopping before making purchases, perfection in
penmanship and other arts at the expense of speed: suggest others.)
4. How can the contemplation of a rainbow educate? What education should
result from a view of Niagara Falls?
5. What qualities would a teacher have to possess that her influence
aside from her teaching might be of more value than the teaching itself?
6. That one may have influence is it enough for one to be good, or is it
what one does that counts? Suggest lines of action for a teacher that
would increase her influence for good.
7. Explain how a fine unconscious influence exerted by a teacher helps
to keep pupils in school.
8. In Hawthorne's story of the _Great Stone Face_ what qualities were
attained by those whom Ernest expected to grow into the likeness?
9. Why did Ernest's face come to resemble that of the great stone face?
10. In what ways is good fiction of value to teachers?
11. Cite something that you have gained from the unconscious influence
of another.
12. What attainments or qualities have you yet to acquire in order to
stand out as "distinctive and regnant" to a good many pupils?
13. A bacteriologist makes a "culture" of a drop of blood, multiplying
many times the bacteria in it, to determine whether serious disease
germs are prevalent. If the influence of a person could be observed in a
large way, would that be conclusive as to the person's character, just
as the result of the culture proves the condition of the blood? May
there not be an obscure element in the teacher's character that is
having a deleterious effect? Or is it only the outstanding features of
his conduct that affect the pupils?
14. Why is it more important to acquire ideals than to acquire
knowledge?
15. Describe the attitude of the teacher toward the pupils in the
"vitalized" school.
16. Show how the teacher should have in view the future of the pupils.
17. Is it a compliment to be easily recognized as a teacher? Why or why
not?
18. Just what is meant by "narrowness" in a teacher? What is meant by
"bigness"? What is their effect if the teacher is taken as an ideal?
19. Can one instill high ideals in others without frequently absorbing
inspiration himself? What are suitable sources?