The Teacher’s Morals
It seems almost unnecessary to say that a teacher should be moral. It is an important requisite. Although the teacher’s choice of his profession, his ability to teach and his preparation have been discussed first, the reader may consider the teacher’s morality the first requisite. The author can not conceive of a successful teacher, who would possess every essential quality except the quality of being moral. It is a foregone conclusion that a teacher is supposed to be a moral person. While this is true, sad to say there yet remain many teachers whose notions of a moral code are crude. They violate some of the smallest details of the moral code and thereby undermine their success, to say nothing about lessening the service they are attempting to render to mankind. It is not too radical to say that a teacher, above all other professional people must be moral. His idea of a moral code must not be vague; it must not contain conflicting ideas. He, above all, must have definite notions concerning morals. It is true that the term is too generally misused. Many teachers attempt to teach morals in such a way that the pupils have altogether a wrong idea of ethics and consequently, in their daily lives are doing many things that are immoral, still believing that they are shunning that which is not right.
It is the purpose of the following discussion to set the teacher right on what the term “moral” in its strictest sense includes; and what constitutes a breach of morality will be clearly set forth. For many years educators have been examining the moral requisites in a teacher, and there can be no doubt as to the correctness of these ideas. No attempt will be made to generalize, but specific and concrete ideas will be presented. In other words, what is immoral will be discussed in such plain terms that the teacher can easily frame for himself a workable moral code.