I wish to discuss with you briefly a very commonplace and oft-repeated
theme,--a theme that has been handled and handled until its
once-glorious raiment is now quite threadbare; a theme so full of
pitfalls and dangers for one who would attempt its discussion that I
have hesitated long before making a choice. I know of no other theme
that lends itself so readily to a superficial treatment--of no theme
upon which one could find so easily at hand all of the proverbs and
platitudes and maxims that one might desire. And so I cannot be expected
to say anything upon this topic that has not been said before in a far
better manner. But, after all, very few of our thoughts--even of those
that we consider to be the most original and worth while--are really new
to the world. Most of our thoughts have been thought before. They are
like dolls that are passed on from age to age to be dressed up and
decorated to suit the taste or the fashion or the fancy of each
succeeding generation. But even a new dress may add a touch of newness
to an old doll; and a new phrase or a new setting may, for a moment,
rejuvenate an old truth.
The topic that I wish to treat is this, "The Ideal Teacher." And I may
as well start out by saying that the ideal teacher is and always must be
a figment of the imagination. This is the essential feature of any
ideal. The ideal man, for example, must possess an infinite number of
superlative characteristics. We take this virtue from one, and that from
another, and so on indefinitely until we have constructed in imagination
a paragon, the counterpart of which could never exist on earth. He would
have all the virtues of all the heroes; but he would lack all their
defects and all their inadequacies. He would have the manners of a
Chesterfield, the courage of a Winkelried, the imagination of a Dante,
the eloquence of a Cicero, the wit of a Voltaire, the intuitions of a
Shakespeare, the magnetism of a Napoleon, the patriotism of a
Washington, the loyalty of a Bismarck, the humanity of a Lincoln, and a
hundred other qualities, each the counterpart of some superlative
quality, drawn from the historic figure that represented that quality in
richest measure.
And so it is with the ideal teacher: he would combine, in the right
proportion, all of the good qualities of all of the good teachers that
we have ever known or heard of. The ideal teacher is and always must be
a creature, not of flesh and blood, but of the imagination, a child of
the brain. And perhaps it is well that this is true; for, if he existed
in the flesh, it would not take very many of him to put the rest of us
out of business. The relentless law of compensation, which rules that
unusual growth in one direction must always be counterbalanced by
deficient growth in another direction, is the saving principle of human
society. That a man should be superlatively good in one single line of
effort is the demand of modern life. It is a platitude to say that this
is the age of the specialist. But specialism, while it always means a
gain to society, also always means a loss to the individual. Darwin, at
the age of forty, suddenly awoke to the fact that he was a man of one
idea. Twenty years before, he had been a youth of the most varied and
diverse interests. He had enjoyed music, he had found delight in the
masterpieces of imaginative literature, he had felt a keen interest in
the drama, in poetry, in the fine arts. But at forty Darwin quite by
accident discovered that these things had not attracted him for
years,--that every increment of his time and energy was concentrated in
a constantly increasing measure upon the unraveling of that great
problem to which he had set himself. And he lamented bitterly the loss
of these other interests; he wondered why he had been so thoughtless as
to let them slip from his grasp. It was the same old story of human
progress; the sacrifice of the individual to the race. For Darwin's loss
was the world's gain, and if he had not limited himself to one line of
effort, and given himself up to that work to the exclusion of everything
else, the world might still be waiting for the _Origin of Species_, and
the revolution in human thought and human life which followed in the
wake of that great book. Carlyle defined genius as an infinite capacity
for taking pains. George Eliot characterized it as an infinite capacity
for receiving discipline. But to make the definition complete, we need
the formulation of Goethe, who identified genius with the power of
concentration: "Who would be great must limit his ambitions; in
concentration is shown the Master."
And so the great men of history, from the very fact of their genius, are
apt not to correspond with what our ideal of greatness demands. Indeed,
our ideal is often more nearly realized in men who fall far short of
genius. When I studied chemistry, the instructor burned a bit of diamond
to prove to us that the diamond was, after all, only carbon in an
"allotropic" form. There seems to be a similar allotropy working in
human nature. Some men seem to have all the constituents of genius, but
they never reach very far above the plane of the commonplace. They are
like the diamond,--except that they are more like the charcoal.
I wish to describe to you a teacher who was not a genius, and yet who
possessed certain qualities that I should abstract and appropriate if I
were to construct in my imagination an ideal teacher. I first met this
man five years ago out in the mountain country. I can recall the
occasion with the most vivid distinctness. It was a sparkling morning,
in middle May. The valley was just beginning to green a little under
the influence of the lengthening days, but on the surrounding mountains
the snow line still hung low. I had just settled down to my morning's
work when word was brought that a visitor wished to see me, and a moment
later he was shown into the office. He was tall and straight, with
square shoulders and a deep chest. His hair was gray, and a rather long
white beard added to the effect of age, but detracted not an iota from
the evidences of strength and vigor. He had the look of a Westerner,--of
a man who had lived much of his life in the open. There was a ruggedness
about him, a sturdy strength that told of many a day's toil along the
trail, and many a night's sleep under the stars.
In a few words he stated the purpose of his visit. He simply wished to
do what half a hundred others in the course of the year had entered that
office for the purpose of doing. He wished to enroll as a student in the
college and to prepare himself for a teacher. This was not ordinarily a
startling request, but hitherto it had been made only by those who were
just starting out on the highroad of life. Here was a man advanced in
years. He told me that he was sixty-five, and sixty-five in that country
meant old age; for the region had but recently been settled, and most of
the people were either young or middle-aged. The only old men in the
country were the few surviving pioneers,--men who had come in away back
in the early days of the mining fever, long before the advent of the
railroad. They had trekked across the plains from Omaha, and up through
the mountainous passes of the Oregon trail; or, a little later, they had
come by steamboat from St. Louis up the twelve-hundred-mile stretch of
the Missouri until their progress had been stopped by the Great Falls in
the very foothills of the Rockies. What heroes were these graybeards of
the mountains! What possibilities in knowing them, of listening to the
recounting of tales of the early days,--of running fights with the
Indians on the plains, of ambushments by desperadoes in the mountain
passes, of the lurid life of the early mining camps, and the desperate
deeds of the Vigilantes! And here, before me, was a man of that type.
You could read the main facts of his history in the very lines of his
face. And this man--one of that small band whom the whole country united
to honor--this man wanted to become a student,--to sit among adolescent
boys and girls, listening to the lectures and discussions of instructors
who were babes in arms when he was a man of middle life.
But there was no doubt of his determination. With the eagerness of a
boy, he outlined his plan to me; and in doing this, he told me the story
of his life,--just the barest facts to let me know that he was not a man
to do things half-heartedly, or to drop a project until he had carried
it through either to a successful issue, or to indisputable defeat.
And what a life that man had lived! He had been a youth of promise,
keen of intelligence and quick of wit. He had spent two years at a
college in the Middle West back in the early sixties. He had left his
course uncompleted to enter the army, and he had followed the fortunes
of war through the latter part of the great rebellion. At the close of
the war he went West. He farmed in Kansas until the drought and the
grasshoppers urged him on. He joined the first surveying party that
picked out the line of the transcontinental railroad that was to follow
the southern route along the old Santa Fé trail. He carried the chain
and worked the transit across the Rockies, across the desert, across the
Sierras, until, with his companions, he had--
"led the iron stallions down to drink
Through the cañons to the waters of the West."
And when this task was accomplished, he followed the lure of the gold
through the California placers; eastward again over the mountains to the
booming Nevada camp, where the Comstock lode was already turning out the
wealth that was to build a half-dozen colossal fortunes. He "prospected"
through this country, with varying success, living the life of the
camps,--rich in its experiences, vivid in its coloring, calling forth
every item of energy and courage and hardihood that a man could command.
Then word came by that mysterious wireless and keyless telegraphy of the
mountains and the desert,--word that back to the eastward, ore deposits
of untold wealth had been discovered. So eastward once more, with the
stampede of the miners, he turned his face. He was successful at the
outset in this new region. He quickly accumulated a fortune; he lost it
and amassed another; lost that and still gained a third. Five successive
fortunes he made successively, and successively he lost them. But during
this time he had become a man of power and influence in the community.
He married and raised a family and saw his children comfortably settled.
But when his last fortune was swept away, the old _Wanderlust_ again
claimed its own. Houses and lands and mortgages and mills and mines had
slipped from his grasp. But it mattered little. He had only himself to
care for, and, with pick and pan strapped to his saddlebow, he set his
face westward. Along the ridges of the high Rockies, through Wyoming and
Montana, he wandered, ever on the lookout for the glint of gold in the
white quartz. Little by little he moved westward, picking up a
sufficient living, until he found himself one winter shut in by the
snows in a remote valley on the upper waters of the Gallatin River. He
stopped one night at a lonely ranch house. In the course of the evening
his host told him of a catastrophe that had befallen the widely
scattered inhabitants of that remote valley. The teacher of the district
school had fallen sick, and there was little likelihood of their getting
another until spring.
That is a true catastrophe to the ranchers of the high valleys cut off
from every line of communication with the outer world. For the
opportunities of education are highly valued in that part of the West.
They are reckoned with bread and horses and cattle and sheep, as among
the necessities of life. The children were crying for school, and their
parents could not satisfy that peculiar kind of hunger. But here was the
relief. This wanderer who had arrived in their midst was a man of parts.
He was lettered; he was educated. Would he do them the favor of teaching
their children until the snow had melted away from the ridges, and his
cayuse could pick the trail through the cañons?
Now school-keeping was farthest from this man's thoughts. But the needs
of little children were very near to his heart. He accepted the offer,
and entered the log schoolhouse as the district schoolmaster, while a
handful of pupils, numbering all the children of the community who could
ride a broncho, came five, ten, and even fifteen miles daily, through
the winter's snows and storms and cruel cold, to pick up the crumbs of
learning that had lain so long untouched.
What happened in that lonely little school, far off on the Gallatin
bench, I never rightly discovered. But when spring opened up, the master
sold his cayuse and his pick and his rifle and the other implements of
his trade. With the earnings of the winter he made his way to the school
that the state had established for the training of teachers; and I count
it as one of the privileges of my life that I was the first official of
that school to listen to his story and to welcome him to the vocation
that he had chosen to follow.
And yet, when I looked at his face, drawn into lines of strength by
years of battle with the elements; when I looked at the clear, blue
eyes, that told of a far cleaner life than is lived by one in a thousand
of those that hold the frontiers of civilization; when I caught an
expression about the mouth that told of an innate humanity far beyond
the power of worldly losses or misfortunes to crush and subdue, I could
not keep from my lips the words that gave substance to my thought; and
the thought was this: that it were far better if we who were supposed to
be competent to the task of education should sit reverently at the feet
of this man, than that we should presume to instruct him. For knowledge
may come from books, and even youth may possess it, but wisdom comes
only from experience, and this man had that wisdom in far greater
measure than we of books and laboratories and classrooms could ever hope
to have it. He had lived years while we were living days.
I thought of a learned scholar who, through patient labor in amassing
facts, had demonstrated the influence of the frontier in the development
of our national ideals; who had pointed out how, at each successive
stage of American history, the heroes of the frontier, pushing farther
and farther into the wilderness, conquering first the low coastal plain
of the Atlantic seaboard, then the forested foothills and ridges of the
Appalachians, had finally penetrated into the Mississippi Valley, and,
subduing that, had followed on westward to the prairies, and then to the
great plains, and then clear across the great divide, the alkali
deserts, and the Sierras, to California and the Pacific Coast; how these
frontiersmen, at every stage of our history, had sent back wave after
wave of strength and virility to keep alive the sturdy ideals of toil
and effort and independence,--ideals that would counteract the mellowing
and softening and degenerating influences of the hothouse civilization
that grew up so rapidly in the successive regions that they left behind.
Turner's theory that most of what is typical and unique in American
institutions and ideals owes its existence to the backset of the
frontier life found a living exemplar in the man who stood before me on
that May morning.
But he would not be discouraged from his purpose. He had made up his
mind to complete the course that the school offered; to take up the
thread of his education at the point where he had dropped it more than
forty years before. He had made up his mind, and it was easy to see that
he was not a man to be deterred from a set purpose.
I shall not hide the fact that some of us were skeptical of the outcome.
That a man of sixty-five should have a thirst for learning was not
remarkable. But that a man whose life had been spent in scenes of
excitement, who had been associated with deeds and events that stir the
blood when we read of them to-day, a man who had lived almost every
moment of his life in the open,--that such a man could settle down to
the uneventful life of a student and a teacher, could shut himself up
within the four walls of a classroom, could find anything to inspire and
hold him in the dull presentation of facts or the dry elucidation of
theories,--this seemed to be a miracle not to be expected in this
realistic age. But, miracle or not, the thing actually happened. He
remained nearly four years in the school, earning his living by work
that he did in the intervals of study, and doing it so well that, when
he graduated, he had not only his education and the diploma which stood
for it, but also a bank account.
He lived in a little cabin by himself, for he wished to be where he
would not disturb others when he sang or whistled over his work in the
small hours of the night. But his meals he took at the college
dormitory, where he presided at a table of young women students. Never
was a man more popular with the ladies than this weather-beaten
patriarch with the girls of his table. No matter how gloomy the day
might be, one could always find sunshine from that quarter. No matter
how grievous the troubles of work, there was always a bit of cheerful
optimism from a man who had tasted almost every joy and sorrow that life
had to offer. If one were in a blue funk of dejection because of failure
in a class, he would lend the sympathy that came from his own rich
experience in failures,--not only past but present, for some things that
come easy at sixteen come hard at sixty-five, and this man who would
accept no favors had to fight his way through "flunks" and "goose-eggs"
like the younger members of the class. And even with it all so complete
an embodiment of hope and courage and wholesome light-heartedness would
be hard to find. He was an optimist because he had learned long since
that anything but optimism is a crime; and learning this in early life,
optimism had become a deeply seated and ineradicable prejudice in his
mind. He could not have been gloomy if he had tried.
And so this man fought his way through science and mathematics and
philosophy, slowly but surely, just as he had fought inch by inch and
link by link, across the Arizona desert years before. It was a much
harder fight, for all the force of lifelong habit, than which there is
none other so powerful, was against him from the start. And now came the
human temptation to be off on the old trail, to saddle his horse and get
a pick and a pan and make off across the western range to the golden
land that always lies just under the sunset. How often that turbulent
_Wanderlust_ seized him, I can only conjecture. But I know the spirit of
the wanderer was always strong within him. He could say, with Kipling's
_Tramp Royal_:
"It's like a book, I think, this bloomin' world,
Which you can read and care for just so long,
But presently you feel that you will die
Unless you get the page you're reading done,
An' turn another--likely not so good;
But what you're after is to turn them all."
And I knew that he fought that temptation over and over again; for that
little experience out on the Gallatin bench had only partially turned
his life from the channels of wandering, although it had bereft him of
the old desire to seek for gold. Often he outlined to me a
well-formulated plan; perhaps he had to tell some one, lest the fever
should take too strong a hold upon him, and force his surrender. His
plan was this: He would teach a term here and there, gradually working
his way westward, always toward the remote corners of the earth into
which his roving instinct seemed unerringly to lead him. Alaska, Hawaii,
and the Philippines seemed easy enough to access; surely, he thought,
teachers must be needed in all those regions. And when he should have
turned these pages, he might have mastered his vocation in a degree
sufficient to warrant his attempting an alien soil. Then he would sail
away into the South Seas, with New Zealand and Australia as a base. And
gradually moving westward through English-speaking settlements and
colonies he would finally complete the circuit of the globe.
And the full fruition of that plan might have formed a fitting climax to
my tale, were I telling it for the sake of its romance; but my purpose
demands a different conclusion. My hero is now principal of schools in a
little city of the mountains,--a city so tiny that its name would be
unknown to most of you. And I have heard vague rumors that he is rising
rapidly in his profession and that the community he serves will not
listen to anything but a permanent tenure of his office. All of which
seems to indicate to me that he has abandoned, for the while at least,
his intention to turn quite all the pages of the world's great book, and
is content to live true to the ideal that was born in the log
schoolhouse--the conviction that the true life is the life of service,
and that the love of wandering and the lure of gold are only siren calls
that lead one always toward, but never to, the promised land of dreams
that seems to lie just over the western range where the pink sunset
stands sharp against the purple shadows.
The ending of my story is prosaic, but everything in this world is
prosaic, unless you view it either in the perspective of time or space,
or in the contrasts that bring out the high lights and deepen the
shadows.
But if I have left my hero happily married to his profession, the
courtship and winning of which formed the theme of my tale, I may be
permitted to indulge in a very little moralizing of a rather more
explicit sort than I have yet attempted.
It is a simple matter to construct in imagination an ideal teacher. Mix
with immortal youth and abounding health, a maximal degree of knowledge
and a maximal degree of experience, add perfect tact, the spirit of true
service, the most perfect patience, and the most steadfast persistence;
place in the crucible of some good normal school; stir in twenty weeks
of standard psychology, ten weeks of general method, and varying
amounts of patent compounds known as special methods, all warranted pure
and without drugs or poison; sweeten with a little music, toughen with
fifteen weeks of logic, bring to a slow boil in the practice school,
and, while still sizzling, turn loose on a cold world. The formula is
simple and complete, but like many another good recipe, a competent cook
might find it hard to follow when she is short of butter and must
shamefully skimp on the eggs.
Now the man whose history I have recounted represents the most priceless
qualities of this formula. In the first place he possessed that quality
the key to which the philosophers of all ages have sought in vain,--he
had solved the problem of eternal youth. At the age of sixty-five his
enthusiasm was the enthusiasm of an adolescent. His energy was the
energy of an adolescent. Despite his gray hair and white beard, his mind
was perennially young. And that is the only type of mind that ought to
be concerned with the work of education. I sometimes think that one of
the advantages of a practice school lies in the fact that the teachers
who have direct charge of the pupils--whatever may be their
limitations--have at least the virtue of youth, the virtue of being
young. If they could only learn from my hero the art of keeping young,
of keeping the mind fresh and vigorous and open to whatever is good and
true, no matter how novel a form it may take, they might, like him,
preserve their youth indefinitely. And I think that his life gives us
one clew to the secret,--to keep as close as we can to nature, for
nature is always young; to sing and to whistle when we would rather
weep; to cheer and comfort when we would rather crush and dishearten;
often to dare something just for the sake of daring, for to be young is
to dare; and always to wonder, for that is the prime symptom of youth,
and when a man ceases to wonder, age and decrepitude are waiting for him
around the next corner.
It is the privilege of the teaching craft to represent more adequately
than any other calling the conditions for remaining young. There is time
for living out-of-doors, which some of us, alas! do not do. And youth,
with its high hope and lofty ambition, with its resolute daring and its
naive wonder, surrounds us on every side. And yet how rapidly some of us
age! How quickly life seems to lose its zest! How completely are we
blind to the opportunities that are on every hand!
And closely related to this virtue of being always young, in fact
growing out of it, the ideal teacher will have, as my hero had, the gift
of gladness,--that joy of living which takes life for granted and
proposes to make the most of every moment of consciousness that it
brings.
And finally, to balance these qualities, to keep them in leash, the
ideal teacher should possess that spirit of service, that conviction
that the life of service is the only life worth while--that conviction
for which my hero struggled so long and against such tremendous odds.
The spirit of service must always be the cornerstone of the teaching
craft. To know that any life which does not provide the opportunities
for service is not worth the living, and that any life, however humble,
that does provide these opportunities is rich beyond the reach of
earthly rewards,--this is the first lesson that the tyro in schoolcraft
must learn, be he sixteen or sixty-five.
And just as youth and hope and the gift of gladness are the eternal
verities on one side of the picture, so the spirit of service, the
spirit of sacrifice, is the eternal verity that forms their true
complement; without whose compensation, hope were but idle dreaming, and
laughter a hollow mockery. And self-denial, which is the keynote of
service, is the great sobering, justifying, eternal factor that
symbolizes humanity more perfectly than anything else. In the
introduction to _Romola_, George Eliot pictures a spirit of the past who
returns to earth four hundred years after his death, and looks down upon
his native city of Florence. And I can conclude with no better words
than those in which George Eliot voices her advice to that shade:
"Go not down, good Spirit: for the changes are great and the speech
of the Florentines would sound as a riddle in your ears. Or, if you
go, mingle with no politicians on the marmi, or elsewhere; ask no
questions about trade in Calimara; confuse yourself with no
inquiries into scholarship, official or monastic. Only look at the
sunlight and shadows on the grand walls that were built solidly and
have endured in their grandeur; look at the faces of the little
children, making another sunlight amid the shadows of age; look, if
you will, into the churches and hear the same chants, see the same
images as of old--the images of willing anguish for a great end,
of beneficent love and ascending glory, see upturned living faces,
and lips moving to the old prayers for help. These things have not
changed. The sunlight and the shadows bring their old beauty and
waken the old heart-strains at morning, noon, and even-tide; the
little children are still the symbol of the eternal marriage
between love and duty; and men still yearn for the reign of peace
and righteousness--still own that life to be the best which is a
conscious voluntary sacrifice."