The Teacher as a Leader
The teacher must be a leader—a true leader—a leader in social ethics, in private morals, in character-building, in religion, in fact in all that goes to make life worth while. This seems almost too much to demand of the teacher but it should be expected nevertheless, for it is not exaggeration to say that the teacher’s work is the greatest of all tasks. His clay is God’s chosen material. Every great work needs a controlling brain and a true heart and it is to be expected that God’s greatest work needs them in a superlative degree. If they are absent, the school is like a dead body without the vital spark. If the school is without the true and faithful teacher—even though all else be present, the best and most lasting results are impossible. The cry of the hearts of the children is that they be instructed and nourished and, finally, sent into the world fired with a zeal and purpose that will prompt them to the most heroic efforts in the world’s work.
It is the dream of every child to worship some hero, to be held spell-bound by some great life—a life that possesses some traits that appeal to him. The teacher must be the hero; the teacher must embody these traits. The child upon finding such a teacher will do his bidding gladly, will start on any mission at his request, and will be proud to serve the dictates of a master-will—a will influenced by the Divine will. How many men and women will admit that all the good that is in them and the usefulness they manifest, they owe to the example and teaching, or to the memory of some sainted teacher—a teacher who consecrated himself to God, thereby finding his place and wielding his influence over child life for good.
Though the teacher’s task seems to be the most difficult, after all its importance makes it the greatest and best, and what better or higher work is there than to help children and young men and women to a clearer vision of truth, to a nobler sense of duty, to encourage and inspire to higher ideals and motives of life, that are bounded only by eternity? It is the teacher, who at his best, stands between the child and the various experiences that await him. The teacher, from his larger store of knowledge, directs the child towards, and introduces him to, those forms of experience which are especially adapted to bring out and develop the element of perfect control.
Two teachers may use the same mechanism of methods—the one may fail and the other succeed. They may be using the same system of marking and grading, rewarding, and reporting to parents, still the one fails while the other succeeds. Their environments, too, may be the same. The failure of the one is to be sought in the teacher, so too, is the success of the other. The vital need is the proper qualification of the teacher.
“The responsibility of the schoolmaster does not end when the boy leaves school any more than the responsibility of the ship-builder ends on the day of the launch. Each is commissioned to construct a seaworthy vessel, competent to sail either in calm or in stormy seas, and each neglects his duty if he is content merely to build up a fairly handsome structure which will glide gracefully off the ways and keep afloat until the crowd has dispersed.”[[3]]
[3]. Welton and Blandford, Principles and Methods of Moral Training, p. 173. Warwick and York.