It has many opportunities. The teacher’s task is not to teach opinions, but to lay the foundations of sound moral standards on which all true opinion must rest.
The world needs teachers: not the perfunctory worker who takes up one of the most sacred of callings as a means of livelihood, but the teacher who is willing to consecrate herself for the work.
At the end of that powerful novel of Robert Herrick’s, “The Healer,” is a vivid scene. The old doctor, whose gift had been lost through the exacting claims of an unsuitable marriage, is walking arm-in-arm with a young student. The older man has recognised in the younger the power he himself once had, the gift of healing. Very affectionately he lays his hand on the lad’s shoulder.
“Remember,” he says—I quote from memory—“this gift of yours will demand whole-hearted devotion and will be satisfied with nothing less than your life.”
So with the work of teaching. It is a profession that demands whole-hearted devotion. To those who give to it their lives it brings many joys, great opportunities, and the satisfaction that constant giving alone bestows. It has many dangers and many temptations, but these lose much of their power over the teacher who tries to realise in practice as well as in theory:—
“That the influence of personal character has been from the first the great means of bearing truth into men’s hearts.”
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Raikes. “Dorothea Beale of Cheltenham.” Constable.
Beale. “Addresses to Teachers.” Longmans.
Beale. “Studies in Literature, New and Old.” Longmans.