Doctrine and Covenants: Slattery, Living Teachers; Sharp, Education for Character; Weigle, Talks to Sunday School Teachers; Betts, How to Teach Religion.
CHAPTER IV
PERSONALITY
Outline—Chapter IV
The worth of a great teacher.—Good teachers not necessarily born.—Some boys' observations on teachers.—A high school survey.—Clapp's Essential Characteristics.—Betts' Three Classes of Teachers.—His list of qualities.
"A great teacher is worth more to a state, though he teach by the roadside, than a faculty of mediocrities housed in Gothic piles."—Chicago Tribune, September, 1919.
We may stress the sacred obligation of the teacher; we may discuss in detail mechanical processes involved in lesson preparation; we may analyze child nature in all of its complexity; but after all we come back to the Personality of the Teacher as the great outstanding factor in pedagogical success. That something in the man that grips people!
Very generally this Personal Equation has been looked upon as a certain indefinable possession enjoyed by the favored few. In a certain sense this is true. Personality is largely inherent in the individual and therefore differs as fully as do individuals. But of recent years educators have carried on extensive investigations in this field of personality and have succeeded in reducing to comprehensible terms those qualities which seem to be most responsible for achievements of successful teachers. Observation leads us all to similar deductions and constitutes one of the most interesting experiments open to those concerned with the teaching process.