The self-education of the teacher should include (a) Mental leisure.The high pressure at which most people live is not favourable to much individual thought. A girl at college may well feel that her three years there are the great opportunity of her life for taking in the ideas of living leaders of thought, and for making friends with her equals. She is hardly to be blamed if every moment of her day is occupied with hard work, anxiety about her schools, and with the social amusements which are part of the education of college life. Still, this full and happy life involves a danger that should be guarded against, a danger lest the girl should be so much occupied in living her own life, that she has no leisure to stop and think out what should be the principles and the aim to guide her in moulding—as every teacher does—the lives of others.
(b) Knowledge of the world.The moral thoughtfulness, which Dr. Arnold demanded of his VI. Form, is the main requisite for a true teacher: no dexterity in imparting knowledge will make her an educator if this is lacking. The study of character and practical casuistry, though not on the list of “final schools” at any university, is yet the most indispensable of all “schools” for a teacher. It may well be that her opportunities of gaining knowledge of the world are restricted by her circumstances. College is her furthest flight, and this is a world of its own with the disadvantage of being disproportionately peopled by too many of one generation. Under ordinary conditions of family life, the rising generation is kept in touch with maturer ideas by a fair proportion of uncles and aunts, as well as by fathers and mothers; but, at college, the niece’s world is narrowed (though this is not usually the light in which it strikes them) by the exclusion of aunts! College undoubtedly gives much knowledge of character to a thoughtful student, but its experiences need to be brought into true proportion by comparison with the larger world beyond.
There are many novels, essays and biographies which afford a good substitute for knowledge of the world to the girl who has a quiet home, besides the many books bearing directly on the study and formation of character, which every teacher and mother and elder sister should read. Such are: Sir Henry Taylor’s autobiography and letters, The Memorials of Miss Charlotte Williams Wynne; all Sir Arthur Helps’ works and Mr. Hutton’s essays. Miss Mozley has written two volumes of essays which are full of delicate insight into character: one, Social Essays, reprinted from The Saturday Review, can only be obtained second-hand, but her Essays from Blackwood are still in print. Sir Henry Taylor’s Notes on Life, and Lord Chesterfield’s Letters (selections) will also be found very useful. Among the more directly educational books, attention should be directed to L’Education Progressive, by Madame Neckar de Saussure; La Famille, by the Comte de Gasparin; L’Education des Filles, by Fénélon; L’Education des Mères de Familles, by Aimée Martin; Principles of Education, Notebook of an Elderly Lady, Youth and Age (all three by Miss Elizabeth Sewell); Miss Yonge’s Womankind, Miss Mason’s Home Education, Miss Shirreff’s Intellectual Education, Mrs. William Grey’s Thoughts for Girls on Leaving School, and Mr. Sidgwick’s Form Discipline.
Nothing can replace in a teacher the study of individual peculiarities of character: the motives, the special hindrances, the growth of each child in her class must be studied and individually met, if she is to rise to the true level of her work.
(c) Insight into character.This is assuming that the teacher feels the full responsibility of being put in a position where, by the way in which she teaches French, or mathematics, she can help or hinder the spiritual growth of each of her pupils. But even supposing that this overruling underlying motive of every true educator be put aside for the moment, and we consider only the smaller question of more or less success in imparting knowledge—still, this very success (other things being equal) will lie with that teacher who has the insight into the peculiar disposition of each child, who can bring to bear on each nature the motives which appeal to it and who can foresee and obviate the difficulties, which vary in each child, according to its mental, moral and physical equipment. In all ways scholastic success is furthered by seeking first something higher still. A great educator used to say: “If you teach one boy arithmetic only and another boy arithmetic and religion, other things being equal, the second boy will beat the first in arithmetic, because his nature is more widely developed”.
Moral responsibility of the teacher.But it may be thought that this is asking more of teachers than can be fairly expected. A girl who has taken life from the outside, with a comfortable, one might almost say, “wholesome” disregard of motives and such-like complications, who looks forward to giving her lesson in a special subject, and to then being free to be as untouched by the “malady of thought,” as absorbed in games and the amusements of life, as was rightfully her state at fifteen, may well feel that she is not prepared to enter on teaching as a career combining the responsibility of doctor and clergyman. If so, let her consider carefully before she adopts the teaching profession.
A teacher is as much morally bound as any mother to consider the principles of the inner life, to think out a clear conception of her moral and intellectual aims for her children, and as such bound to feel constant moral responsibility for what she does, and is, and for how she improves herself.
It is true we see both mothers and teachers take up their responsible positions in life without this moral thoughtfulness, and we sometimes see the children turning out well in spite of it. But the fact that Nature has wonderful curative and educative powers, does not lessen the personal responsibility of those who should have used art to improve nature. Children have been known to recover from illness in spite of a doctor’s mistakes or neglect, but we do not therefore condone the doctor’s carelessness.
If a girl is not prepared to take up the teaching profession from its deepest, i.e., its only true side; if she wishes to remain thoughtless, then let her choose some other form of livelihood—millinery, clerkship, gardening—where outward diligence will fairly meet all demands, so far as mere honesty to her employer is concerned.
But let the teacher who shrinks from moral responsibility remember that, in this side of her work alone, is to be found permanent interest. All mechanical work must pall sooner or later, and teaching is little better than mechanical, if it is of the external kind. Elementary teaching is often called mechanical, because its subjects and their extent are very limited, but Latin grammar in the high school is, after a time, capable of becoming quite as dull as English Grammar in the elementary school. Or, rather, both are equally capable of being interesting if, and only if, the teacher cares supremely for what is more important than any grammar, the development of each child who learns from her.