The child’s viewpoint.—This is no flight of fancy. Rather it is a reality in countless schoolrooms of the land if only the teachers were alive to the fact. But we have been so busy measuring, estimating, scoring, and surveying the child for our purposes that we have given but scant consideration to the child’s point of view as regards the teacher. We have not been quick to note the significant fact that the child is estimating, measuring, scoring, and surveying the teacher for purposes of its own and in the strictest obedience to the laws of its nature.
The child’s need of ideals.—Every child needs and has a right to ideals, and finds the teacher convenient both in space and in the nature of her work to act in this capacity. Because of the character of her work and her peculiar relation to the child, the teacher assumes a place of leadership, and the child naturally appropriates her as the lodestar for which his nature is seeking. And so, whether the teacher leads into the morass or into the jungle, the child will follow; but if she elects to take her way up to the heights, there will be the child as faithful as her shadow. If the teacher plucks flowers by the way, then, in time, gathering flowers will become habitual to the child, nor will there be any need to admonish the child to gather flowers. The teacher plucks flowers, and that becomes the child’s command. Education by absorption needs neither admonition nor homilies.
The ideal a perpetual influence.—And all this is life—actual life, fundamental life, and inevitable life. Moreover, the inevitableness of this phase of life serves to accentuate its importance. The idealized teacher gives to the child his ideals of conduct, literature, art, music, home, school, and service. Take this teacher out of his life and these ideals vanish. Better by far eliminate the formal instruction, important as that may be made to be, than to rob the child of his ideals. They are the influences that are ever active even when formal instruction is quiescent. They are potent throughout the day and throughout the year. They induce reactions and motor activities that groove into habits, and they are the external stimuli to which the spirit responds.
The teacher’s attitude.—The vitalized school takes full cognizance of this phase and means of education and gives large scope and freedom for its exercise and development. The teacher is more concerned with who and what her pupils are to be twenty years hence than she is in getting them promoted to the next grade. She knows full well that vision clarifies sight, and she is eager to enlarge their vision in order to make their sight more keen and clear. She, therefore, adopts as her own standards of life and conduct what she wishes for her pupils when they have come to maturity. She may not proclaim herself an ideal teacher or a model teacher, but she is cognizant of the fact that she is the model and the ideal of one or more pupils in her school and bases her rule of life upon this fact.
Prophetic conduct.—In her dress she decides between ornateness and simplicity as a determining factor in the lives of her pupils both for the present and for the years to come. In this she feels that she is but doing her part in helping to determine the trend and quality of civilization. She is reading such books as she hopes to find in their libraries when they have come to administer homes of their own. She is directing her thinking into such channels as will bear the thoughts of her pupils out into the open sea of bigness and sublimity. Knowing that pettiness will be inimical to society in the next generation, she is careful to banish it from her own life.
Her rule of life.—In her thinking she comes into intimate relations with the sea and all its ramified influences upon life. She invites the mountains to take her into their confidence and reveal to her the mysteries of their origin, and their influence upon the winds, the seasons, the products of the earth, and upon life itself. She communes with the great of all times that she may learn of their concepts as to the immensities which the mind can explore, as well as intricate and infinite manifestations of the human soul. She associates with the planets and rides the spaces in their company. She asks the flowers, the sunrise glow of the morning, the hues of the rainbow, and the drop of dew to explain to her what God is, and rejoices in their responses.
Her growth.—And so, through her thinking she grows big—big in her aspirations, big in her sympathies with all nature and mankind, big in her altruism, and big in her conceptions of the universe and all that it embraces. And when people come to know her they almost lose sight of the teacher in their contemplation of the woman. Her pupils, by their close contact and communion, became inoculated with the germs of her bigness and so follow the lead of her thinking, her aspirations, her sympathies, and her conceptions of life. Thus they grow into her likeness by absorbing her thoughts, her ideals, her standards, in short, herself.
Seeing life large.—The bigness of her spirit and her ability to see and feel life in the large superinduce dignity, poise, and serenity. She never flutters; but, calm and masterful, she moves on her majestic way with regal mien. Nor is her teaching less thorough or less effective because she has a vision. On the contrary, she teaches cube root with accuracy and still is able to see and to cause her pupils to see the index finger pointing out and up toward the mathematical infinities. She can give the latitude and longitude of Rome, and, while doing so, review the achievements of that historic city. She can explain the action of the geyser and still find time and inclination to take delight in its wonders. She can analyze the flower and still revel in its beauty. She can teach the details of history and find in them the footprints of great historical movements. All these things her pupils sense and so invest her with the attributes of an ideal.
Questions and Exercises
- Do most teachers realize to what extent they have influence?
- Is it comfortable to think that one is an example? If not, why not? Is it only teachers who need to feel that they are examples? Is it fair to demand a higher standard of the teacher and preacher?
- Give from your own experience instances in which you have absorbed an ideal which has persisted. Is there danger of adopting an ideal that, while it is worthy as far as it goes, is merely incidental and not worth while? (Such are an accurate memory of unimportant details, certain finesse in manners and speech, punctiliousness in engagements, exhaustiveness in shopping before making purchases, perfection in penmanship and other arts at the expense of speed: suggest others.)
- How can the contemplation of a rainbow educate? What education should result from a view of Niagara Falls?
- What qualities would a teacher have to possess that her influence aside from her teaching might be of more value than the teaching itself?
- That one may have influence is it enough for one to be good, or is it what one does that counts? Suggest lines of action for a teacher that would increase her influence for good.
- Explain how a fine unconscious influence exerted by a teacher helps to keep pupils in school.
- In Hawthorne’s story of the Great Stone Face what qualities were attained by those whom Ernest expected to grow into the likeness?
- Why did Ernest’s face come to resemble that of the great stone face?
- In what ways is good fiction of value to teachers?
- Cite something that you have gained from the unconscious influence of another.
- What attainments or qualities have you yet to acquire in order to stand out as “distinctive and regnant” to a good many pupils?
- A bacteriologist makes a “culture” of a drop of blood, multiplying many times the bacteria in it, to determine whether serious disease germs are prevalent. If the influence of a person could be observed in a large way, would that be conclusive as to the person’s character, just as the result of the culture proves the condition of the blood? May there not be an obscure element in the teacher’s character that is having a deleterious effect? Or is it only the outstanding features of his conduct that affect the pupils?
- Why is it more important to acquire ideals than to acquire knowledge?
- Describe the attitude of the teacher toward the pupils in the “vitalized” school.
- Show how the teacher should have in view the future of the pupils.
- Is it a compliment to be easily recognized as a teacher? Why or why not?
- Just what is meant by “narrowness” in a teacher? What is meant by “bigness”? What is their effect if the teacher is taken as an ideal?
- Can one instill high ideals in others without frequently absorbing inspiration himself? What are suitable sources?