SHALL TEACHING BE MY LIFE WORK?
Shall teaching be my life work? This question stares the sincere young
teacher squarely in the face. He must answer it sooner or later.
His answer means much to himself as well as to others. We speak of
the profession of teaching, but in the truer sense we have none at
present. Teaching may be “the noblest of professions and the sorriest
of trades,” but as long as our standards of entrance are so low and the
number of exits so many, teaching cannot be in its strictest sense a
profession. It is far behind medicine or law, and to a large number of
persons it is only a trade or a temporary occupation.
There are professional teachers. There are persons who have spent time
and money and mental energy studying the problems of the school and
of education. There are persons who seek earnestly to formulate the
truths and to reduce teaching to a science. Many of these truths are
as clearly worked out, as reliable and as completely accepted as are
many of the principles of law and medicine. The work is yet incomplete.
Shall I make it a life work and give to it my life and the best that is
in me? This is the question.
No man can answer this question for you. It is personal. The best that
can be done, and this is worth while, is to weigh the good and the bad
features and leave you to choose for yourself. So much depends upon the
individual. Let me say also that it is never too late to mend. I am one
who believes that there are thousands of good teachers, persons who are
teaching and doing it well, persons who are leaving their impress for
good upon boys and girls, and young men and young women, and who will
not make teaching their life-work, and have never intended to do so.
They are teaching now, and they are, for the time being, putting their
best self into the work. So long as they live in the work and get life
out of it nothing is lost. When they begin to slight it, turning their
energy to law or medicine or business, when their best self goes to
something else while they become “school keepers” instead of teachers,
it is time for them to quit.
And what about the lady teachers? Are they to make it a life work too?
That is also a question for the individual. To this large and growing
class of zealous, capable and untiring teachers the present and the
future owes a debt which the world can scarcely pay. There is but one
more sacred place--the wife and mother’s. The woman who quits teaching
to become the center of the home--the purest, the noblest, the most
sacred--she does not leave the profession. She is only promoted.
Let us look at the ugly side of the profession first.
_1. It is itinerate._--The best teacher in the best school in the
best county in the best state can hardly hope to live and die in the
same position. He cannot depend entirely upon teaching and plan and
build a home, plant his trees and feel confident he will rest beneath
their shade and eat their fruit in years to come. He may be ever so
conscientious, he may be ever so capable, and in time he must change.
The position will outgrow him or he will outgrow the position. He will
spank the wrong boy or refuse to spank him--it matters not--sooner or
later he will do what the powers that be at the time think is the wrong
thing, and then he must go. To the real lover of the settled home,
this is a serious drawback. Professionally it may not be so serious
as it seems. If you expect to teach as a life work you must expect to
change every few years either because you choose to change or because
you must. From the standpoint of your own professional advancement I
should advise you to move just awhile before it becomes necessary.
There are always places open, and they are often more easily secured
while things are pleasant in your present position.
_2. The money returns from teaching is less than in law, medicine, or
business._--The same amount of energy and ability used in teaching
would frequently bring many times its money returns in other things.
The successful lawyer or physician often makes several times the amount
in a year that the superintendent of his schools makes. So far as I
know the highest salaried educational position in the United States is
only ten thousand a year. It is a very common thing to find a physician
whose income is more than that. Hundreds of attorneys may be found
receiving many times this amount as salary, and ten thousand a year is
not now considered a large salary for the heads of business firms.
_3. The energy used is great._--Probably few other positions require
a greater amount of energy constantly. It is the little things which
sap the life of the teacher--the constant strain, the nervous tension,
the magnetism going out continuously, the half fear it may be that
something will go wrong.
_4. It is narrowing mentally._--Except in the highest college or
university positions the teacher is dealing with persons less mature,
less intellectual, and in one sense inferior. This is apt to cause him
to grow dictatorial, pedantic and conceited. It is often an excellent
thing for the teacher to come in contact with superiors, to run against
business men in a business manner, and learn other people’s estimate
of himself. To have some minor occupation--something besides teaching,
interesting but not all-absorbing, is often a boon to the teacher. It
keeps him from ruts and grooves and from fossilizing professionally.
The lawyer, the business man and the physician are often rubbing
against their equals and superiors, and this is a thought-awakener to
them which the teacher often misses.
_5. Teaching is for the young._--Teaching is a young man’s profession.
With a number of notable exceptions, the great mass of teachers are
under fifty. The teacher who has not made more than a local reputation
before he is fifty years old will find it hard to advance if he must
change. Hard as it may be upon the earnest, conscientious, hard-working
teacher, most of us if compelled to choose between a man of fifty and
a man of thirty would, if other things were equal, choose the man of
thirty. The successful physician at fifty may have shorter office
hours, charge larger fees and have cases coming to him for consultation
because of his age and experience. The lawyer at fifty is in his prime.
To him his clients come to consult upon important cases. Minor and
unimportant cases he turns over “to the boys.” But it is different with
the teacher at fifty. Every one is then trying to put him on the shelf,
and the chances are they will succeed.
These are the things which make against teaching as a life work, but
the picture has a brighter side--a side too often overlooked in this
day of dollar chasing.
_1. Teaching pays at least a comfortable living from the very
first._--Hundreds of persons enter it because of this fact, and many
remain for life because of their love for the work. The doctor and
the lawyer must go through a starvation period, and many of them do
not survive it. The lawyer that pays his necessary expenses and lives
comfortably from his fees during the first five years is on the high
road to success. The same is equally true of the physician. To tide
over this starvation period many take up side lines which prove fatal
to their real success, while others find subordinate salaried places in
firms and incorporations. The salary in teaching may be low, but it is
specific and certain, and meets present needs.
_2. Teaching keeps you in close touch with the best people._--Nothing
is more conducive to pure thoughts and upright conduct--not even the
ministry. To be looked at as a model and as a guide by the boys and
girls of a community day after day--if that does not inspire to noble
thoughts and actions, what will? A father and mother can see their son
or daughter leave home to teach with every assurance that no other
occupation will be a higher incentive to pure thinking and perfect
living. The best people of the community welcome them to their home,
the churches invite them to take part, and simple, trusting childhood
in its purity, looks to them for guidance. If this does not keep them
in paths of virtue they must show signs of total depravity. Do not
overlook the fact when choosing a life work, that for personal purity,
high ideals and constant inspiration to the highest, the purest and the
best of our natures, teaching is unsurpassed.
_3. Hours are shorter than in many occupations._--While the nerve strain
is great and worry and fear often intrude, the teacher has more time
than many other occupations. Exercise and recreation in the open air
an hour a day or more is always possible. If one likes to garden, to
raise chickens, or to tend flowers, they can find the time, and the
recreation will be beneficial. Teachers complain of the long hours
and hard work partly from habit and partly because they do not know
the long hours and real hardships of other occupations. To the person
who is prepared to teach and who has the gift or power to govern and
control without worrying about it, or having to continually fight for
it, teaching is not exhaustive drudgery. It is true, lessons must be
looked over and work planned outside of school, but even then there is
some time for relaxation and recreation.
_4. The rewards are many._--In a sense, most teachers teach for the
money--that is, if they were not paid for it very few could afford to
give their time to the work. The laborer is worthy of his hire, and yet
may the Lord pity the person and his pupils if he teaches for money
alone. The money will enable him to continue the work, and it should be
ample enough to give a comfortable living with all of the necessaries
of life and a few of the luxuries. It should be ample also to provide
for improvement and for necessary accessories to carry on the work and
to lay by enough for old age or a rainy day. But the money received
from teaching sinks into insignificance with the real teacher when
compared with the real pleasure one can get from his work, the good
he can do, the love and trust and confidence of his pupils. These,
with the uplift and noble aspirations which he can inspire with its
volumes of sunshine and gladness and progress which his teaching may
bring about are infinite. To have pupils group about you, to see them
cross the street sheepishly it may be but for no other purpose than to
speak to “teacher,” to share their troubles, to increase their joys,
to lead them to see more of the beauty and the harmony all about them
and to receive their letters in later life confessing their faults,
begging pardon for offenses you have long since forgotten, telling you
of successes, sharing little secrets and asking your advice--all these
are the rewards of every true teacher beside which the money received
is insignificantly mean.
_5. The work is intellectual._--It keeps you in contact with books and
the best minds of all ages. The greatest men of all time come and
converse with you. A pity it is if you see nothing but drudgery and
dull pupils and hard lessons and unruly boys and petty mischiefs and
little annoyances in teaching. If this is all you see, quit--never
teach again.
Teaching, if your heart is in the work, will keep you young. It will
bring you into contact with the best in life. It will be a constant
inspiration to pure thought and right conduct. It will give you the
love and respect of young people whose future joys and sorrows will be
your joys and sorrows, and whose successes will bring you pleasure.
Last and least, but nevertheless essential, it will remunerate
you until by thrift and economy you may lay up enough to live a
comfortable, even though it be a simple, life.