“Usefulness is the rent we pay for room upon the earth.”—Dorothea Beale.
It is only thirteen years since Dorothea Beale passed over to the other side to enter on the greater service which we believe is granted to all who toil here in singleness of heart. In her theories of education, in her outlook on life, she was of our day. Her methods of teaching are still employed in our best schools, and the teacher can still find her essays on teaching suggestive and helpful.
Yet we live in another world. Since August 1914, we have passed through experiences that have changed for ever the values of things. Nothing can ever be the same again. We of our generation are faced not with one little difficulty or another but with the building of a new world. The old civilisation lies in dust at our feet. With it have gone many things that were very dear to us, our security, our comfort, our national serenity, our happy-go-lucky individualism. With it, too, have gone the best of our young manhood, those on whom much of the work of the immediate future was to rest.
Nor is it without significance that to women at this hour have come for the first time direct power in politics and opportunity to do any work of which they are capable. On them must fall the work that the dead and disabled would have done. To the men of England and of other countries came the call to give their lives: to the women no less comes the same call.
Perhaps the greatest need of the world just now is work: not only for the production of material necessities, but for its steadying, sanity-restoring power. After four years of the passions and sorrows of war, mankind has not yet regained its mental balance; and in honest, steady work, it will perhaps most surely win again the gift it has lost.
In the building of a new world there is no force so great as that of education in its many aspects, the most important of which is that of the home. Teachers realise that what is done at school is as nothing compared with the enormous power of home education, composed as it is of all the influences of early childhood. Parents must always be the chief educators, and for this reason parenthood must be one of the most sacred of human relationships and one of the highest callings. It is at home a child learns to look at the great things of life from the right or the wrong angle: it is at home he learns to reverence the good and the true or to hold them in contempt. Parenthood requires a great preparation of heart and soul, for it brings with it the greatest of all responsibilities, that of guiding human souls into the right pathway.
Of late years the need for teachers has been great, the supply being less than the demand. Many teachers are still needed, and to the girl of intellectual interests and power who is seeking a profession, the question may well arise, whether she should adopt that of a teacher. There are many matters to be faced in considering this.
Teaching brings with it few of the rewards for which the ordinary person craves. Financially, its prizes are few: for the most part it is a badly-paid profession, especially considering the years of training it involves. It brings with it little renown. Even the greatest teachers are known in a comparatively narrow circle, at any rate during their lives. Praise and appreciation are almost unknown, whilst criticism is given, as was the medicine of last century, in large doses and at frequent intervals. If it is properly done, the work is hard. Real teaching implies ceaseless learning. It is imperative to keep a mind open to all new thought and new ideas, not only in the educational work but in the world at large. It is necessary, too, to acquire the wisdom to deal with what is new, so that to some extent the true may be separated from the false, the lofty from the base. It is a work, moreover, that is a perpetual test of character, worth, and spirit. There are no teachers worthy of the name, who do not frequently shrink from the magnitude of their task and tremble at their own lack of power. The teacher is called to incessant mental and spiritual work. Only as he or she lives an active life in mind and soul can he hope to have any success in training the young for life.
But the chief question after all is that of personal fitness. There are two essentials; the first is a love of children; the second is some love of study and of teaching. There can be no good work done without love of the children we teach: a teacher who does not love children would probably be serving God better if she were breaking stones by the roadside. The love of the work itself increases as time goes on. As a rule the desire to teach indicates some aptitude for the work; though between the eager expectancy of the untried student and the quiet joy of the skilled teacher, lie many dark valleys which must perforce be passed. This, however, is not peculiar to teaching. It is common to all work of a personal nature, in fact is inherent in all high living.
For those who wish to teach, the great problem arises: “What kind of teaching shall I undertake?” It is a difficult one to solve.